I’m LAUGING SO HARD KARKAT WAS SO EMOTIONALLY UNCOMFORTABLE HE FLIPPED BACKWARDS AND HUNG BY HIS KNEES OVER AN ENDLESS ABYSS AND THEN HE HEARS JOHN TALKING AND HE’S JUST LIKE
do you know what this means though ?? listen. listen
dave spends three years examining the ways he’s internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity and explicitly ties those things together and connects them to his fucked up ideas about heroism and how it was keeping him from realizing he was attracted to guys
and bro was a huge factor in that, bro encouraged this exact bullshit by being dave’s primary example of heroism and masculinity and also actively forcing a hypermasculine + hypercompetent persona on him and making him feel inadequate and it fucked him up so bad
this is not to discount societal influence of course but listen. bro, however unintentionally, was instrumental in dave repressing his sexuality. and dave knows it.
and what this means is there’s no way. after that monologue. there is no way dave knew bro was gay.
this WHOLE TIME. HE HAD NO FUCKING IDEA.
he might have suspected but he would have dismissed it when he was younger, and he might have figured it out on the meteor but christ can you imagine if he didn’t?? he’s gonna talk to roxy and she’s gonna casually mention dirk is gay and dave is going to fucking explode
he spent the better part of 13 years fucked up by this and then 3 years working through it and he knows bro is partially to blame for that and bro was gay this WHOLE GODDAMN TIME AND IT’S SO OBVIOUS NOW AND HE’S GOING TO BE SO ANGRY HE NEVER KNEW
(I just wanna add on a slightly different note that bro’s behavior, especially the facets of it you touch on here, are really reminiscent of caliborn and I’m reminded strongly of that post going around about li'l cal’s theoretical influence on bro)
not sure how i feel about the upd8….i think like john i feel like there were too many ‘deep’ conversations in what was meant to be a friendly bro meet up. too much at once, methinks
