well regardless of where you got it from i really love that line, i think it adds an interesting angle to their relationship. what do you think bro knew about the nature of the game and dave’s destiny for him to think of raising dave that way? im also curious about the subject matter of the fics you may have gotten inspiration from

thanks i think so too

i dont remember unfortunately; in regards to the fics. i dont really read fics nowadays and i do tend to read short ones to avoid This happening- where i absorb something and forget about it

more about bro under cut

i feel like bro knew some things; i like to keep certain parts of the ‘game’ aspect of their reality away from them

like for example: bro doesn’t know EVERYTHING about what hes supposed to do. like he wasnt spawned in with I am A Guardian in his brain; he was a whole ass human person for 24 years until he got dave

growing up a lot of his information came from cal because since he was destined to be a guardian, he had nagging feelings in the back of his mind telling him to do certain things: get this apartment, do this that way, etc. and cal just enforced those

i think dirk’s reason for raising dave that way is a combintion of the fact that thats the only way cal(iborn) referred to dave and that bro was never allowed to actually bond with dave (because caliborn made him believe that platonic affection is in fact not platonic at all and is instead sexual[the implications when bro is constantly carrying around cal with his arms around his neck btw. insane.])

i’ve talked about it a lil bit with input from error707-thatdude (whos training to dooooo… something w psychological development of kids or something? sorry i forgored) on stream and the lack of interaction/affection can be potentially fatal to human children

so every time dirk wanted to do what honestly, his instincts were telling him to do (hold dave, be gentle [even if stiff]) , he wasn’t able to because he had caliborn in his ear whispering that he was being deeply fucking inappropriate with his goddamn son which . Jesus Christ. (ive come to the conclusion bc of this that the daves we see in canon are the daves that made it past childhood, as error707 said: the exceptions)

the fact that caliborn constantly told him about how dave was the knight and he needed to be the knight. he needed to enter the medium. if he didn’t enter the medium then everything that dirk’s entire life has been leading up to has been a disappointment, a mistake, and he doesn’t want to disappoint his very dear best friend cal does he? hee hee hee.

he also told him about how dave is SUPPOSED to be. cool, stoic. that kinda stuff, bc calibrn has a bit of a gay thing for both of them im sure.

+ the deep feeling inside of dirk that he Knew cal was right (something something; destiny/fate/will of the universe/etc), that dirk existed to do this; to get cal into the medium, to get dave into the medium, to make them stronger, led to dirk thinking of dave as his goal instead of anything remotely resembling family-

all of that accumulates into his brain dissassociating dave from himself as family and instead as a goal and a figure of something he NEEDS to polish or it wont work when the gear is inserted into the frame

things like this are delicate and they HAVE to be taken special care of during assembly, or you’ll be left with nothing. (go watch how its made- wristwatches. its like that.)

sorry if all this doesnt make sense; feel free to ask for clarification and ill happily provide