Dirk is obsessed with puppets and has decorated his apartment with them. His collection includes both paintings of them and various marionettes, dressed in super cool gangster/pimp clothing. In contrast to John and Rose's disgust for their guardians' obsessions, Dave thought his Dirk's puppets were very cool, but has mentioned to Rose that they're starting to unsettle him. Bro has one signature ventriloquism puppet he uses to rap and is never far from: Lil Cal. He enjoys playing mind games and is stealthy like a ninja. He is a master of different kinds of Modi. He knows how to weaponize a Sylladex, and according to Dave, the two brothers often have "hashrap" battles, where they insert keywords into rap to launch the contents of their sylladices at each other. Aside from rapping and over the top violence, Dirk also took to creating chatbots that he would have autonomously bid for his obtuse smuppet pornography as a means to generate money. According to Dave, these chatbots would always be almost, but not quite at the precipice of becoming self-aware. His post-scratch self likened the hobby to taking care of a flock of pigeons. This predilection towards creating intelligent programs is not dissimilar to his post-scratch's own vested interests in robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as his creation of his self-aware Auto-Responder. Appearance:Bro Strider (the pre-scratch incarnation of Dirk Strider and Dave's older adoptive brother/guardian in Homestuck) is a tall, slender man. He wears a gray hat, pointy light-colored hair, a plain white T-shirt, black pants, black fingerless gloves, gray shoes, and his signature sharp, opaque black sunglasses.