Chapter Text
Dave: Begin well-written backstory ===>
You don't know when you first realised you were a boy.
You faintly remember when you were a kid, maybe 7, and your Bro told you that you were getting to that age where you needed your own room so he said he'd move out into the lounge and let you have his room, which, at first, was difficult, but you soon grew to appreciate the fuck out of it.
Back then he still called you Elizabeth, which for some reason you hated, so eventually he switched to calling you your middle name, Dave, short for David. You don't remember when, but you fucking loved it.
At first, you thought that maybe it was because it sounded a lot like "Dirk" which was your Bro's name, of whom you adored the hell out of. Shit, you idolised him. He wore shades, so you did too and you copied him to every extend you could, ultra-ironic ways and hella strifing skills included. To cut that shit short, your Bro was the fucking best caregiver and you would shove a freshly-sharpened longsword up anyone's ass who said otherwise.
Bro definitely made things a lot easier as well because he didn't gender things (hell, he watched my little pony and you're pretty sure he did it unironically) and, thankfully, you never remember him gendering you. Unfortunately, that did not help when you were out in the real world.
...You don't know when you first realised you were a boy, but you remembered when you were first tricked into thinking that you weren't.
You were 9 and it was coming up to your 10th birthday and your Bro had told you that he would take you out and "finally get you your own fucking katana that's not a total piece of shit, aight?" as a birthday gift. When he took you to the store he told you in fine detail what exactly you should look for when buying any sort of sword. Usually when your Bro went into intense monologue you zoned out or got distracted, but this shit was crucial information to you at the time. When he was done, you nodded and began to walk further into the store, but stopped confused when you realised he wasn't following.
"Bro," you called out, voice as steady and cool as it always was, "you aren't gonna follow?"
He walked up to you again and you thought he was going to then follow you, but he stopped and placed a pale white hand on your shoulder.
"Consider this an exercise, lil man, find the best katana without my help, kay?"
"But Bro-"
"C'mon. Once you've selected, come find me an' I'll be here, browsing for myself."
You stared at him for a while before he knelt down on one knee, his hand still on your shoulder as he presumably looked into your eyes (it was impossible to know as you both were wearing dark tinted anime shades).
"Dave. You got this. I believe in you," and he followed through with an ironicly melodramatic speech of encouragement, before he stood up and moved his hand from your shoulder and flicked you on the nose. "Go on, now scram, kid."
You sighed and he stood up and you both walked in the opposite directions. You soon found the katana section and you closely examined each an every one of them, until one of the shop keepers came up to you and asked if you needed help with anything.
"Nah, I'm just looking for a sword for my bro," you told them, the lie rolling off of your tongue as smooth as a baby's ass. Seriously, so smooth you could touch it and it your hand would slip right off because there was no friction at all to stabilise it. That was how smooth you were. But for reals, you had to lie because of the obvious dilemma that is they would kick you out and possibly arrest your Bro is they realised you were looking for a sword for yourself. To use. The shopkeeper looked convinced. See? What did you say? Smooth. As. A. Baby's. Fucking. Butt.
"Well, if you're looking for one for your brother-" they begin, but you shush them.
"I know what I'm doing." The shopkeeper did not look convinced this time.
"I don't think so," they protested.
"Well I do."
They shook their head. "What would a little girl like you kno-"
You broke your neutral face and frowned in confusion. What?
"What"
"-know about swords?" They continued obliviously, before taking the hint that something was wrong by the way you were staring at them so oddly. "What do you mean what?"
"....you called me a girl?" You say. They laugh and this just confuses you more.
"Don't think you're old enough to be called a woman yet! You're, what, 10?"
"In a couple of days I will be."
"See? Maybe in a few years-"
".....And I'm a guy." Their face just fell into a frown, similar to yours.
"Uhm," they say.
"Uhm," you mimic.
The rest of the conversation was a bit of a haze; you don't particularly enjoy remembering all of the times strangers blatantly misgender you, especially that particular time because that's when everything went downhill.
You begin to notice it after that when people call you "she" or "pretty" and when they tell you that you would look better with your hair long and if you wore a nice dress. You notice it when you watch tv and all of the girls have large chests and all the guys have lumps in their pants. It breaks your heart because you're just so confused, and even more so when you can tell that it's hurting Bro to look at you because he can see right through your cool guy persona.
You were 11 when he gave you the talk.
He told you the physical differences between a designated boy and a designated girl and explained to you in detail what you might be experiencing in the next few years. He tells you that your chest might grow and that you might start bleeding "down there" and you nod and say "cool" or "whatever" at each of the facts that make you feel worse and worse about yourself.
Your name is Dave Strider and right now you feel like you've just died on the inside.
After Bro tells you "all the shit you need to know" he paps you on the shoulder and leaves for a short while which is good because you just want to be alone. You mope around for a bit, and spend a lot of time looking at yourself in the mirror, confused at how you could be seen as a girl. It was ridiculous, but maybe it was just because you had always seen yourself as a boy, and you weren't exactly ever treated like a girl so... Your mind wanders until you're beginning to panic about never being seen as a boy and maybe you'll never be one maybe you're not and there's something definitely wrong with you and okay maybe it's not so much of a problem now because you're flat chested and shit but like bro said what if you grow up to have massive boobs and a girls face and oh my god oh my god oh my-
Your computer bleeps at you, informing you that someone is pestering you and thus interrupting your mini-crises. Sitting at your computer and opening up pesterchum gains you the information that it is your best bro John who you def wouldn't mind talking to rn so you spare about a solid hour about nothing important and you reply to every message of his asap (not caring if you seemed overeager because you knew he loved it) until nine blue words popped up on the screen and made you stop entirely; "Hey! we should all totally meet up one day!!!!!!!!!" Your hands shake as they go to type a reply, unsure what to say. You mean, on one hand you loved John, as you did with the small group of online friends he was referring to that basically just included him, Rose and Jade, as well as some other weird trolls that kept trying (and failing) to prank you.
You loved them and you really did want to meet them, but you introduced yourself as Dave. They assumed you were a guy. You did too, to be fair, and you...were. You'd like to believe you were, but at the same time, you weren't. You didn't want to see them if it meant they found out, so you go to type a lame excuse, but when you guess you spent a bit longer having a mini-panic attack than you thought because when you start typing, the blue words return on the screen and John asks "hello??? :/" and, c'mon, you can't let down a cutie like John Egbert, so you settle with sending "hells yeah" and you continue on with your conversation.
*******
By the time you were 13, you looked like a guy, you acted like a guy, to everyone who knew you, you were a guy and you, well, just were one. Your Bro bought you stuff that did something to your hormones to make you look more masculine (he said he thought it would be better to start before puberty) and you were tall and lean and had a mostly-flat chest and your albino-caused platinum blond hair was always kept short and "ironically" messy which definitely helped. You even successfully mastered the art of lowering your voice to make it sound cool and casual to the point where it became practically natural, and most importantly masculine.
Thanks to your Bro, life was pretty fucking fantastic in terms of your gender identity although it was still something you hadn't told anyone because you were still hella insecure. So, when he died it hurt like hell... ...but you don't want to talk about that, so why don't we move on?
Years in the future, but not that many. ===>