It’s Father’s Day, so it seems like a good time to write about Dave, Lily’s adoptive father.

Dave was always a difficult character to write, and there were multiple reasons for that.

Reason number 1:  I didn’t know what a “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” story was when I started writing Lily.  I mean, I kinda understood the concept, but I didn’t know it had a name.  But as I continued writing, I started watching anime (which I’ve mostly grown past now) and realized that it’s a thing.  It’s a genre characterized by, well… cute girls doing cute things.  But also by the fact that there are few male characters, and often no male characters.

Clearly I didn’t go whole hog into the no male characters trope, but I did have very few.  There’s Dave, David, “owner” (who we never find out his real name.  It’s some Indian name I never got around to choosing), Jack, Liz’s boyfriend, and pretty much every other male character in the story is a jerk, a creep, or ends up in jail/prison. (I’m thinking of a few exceptions after I wrote this, but it’s true in essence.)

In hindsight, this says a lot about me.

Reason number 2:  I don’t really know how to write men.  This might be surprising, because I am one, but the truth is that pretty much everyone who knows me would know that I suck as a man.  I’ve always tended to identify more with women.  (This is not the same thing at all as identify as a woman).  I don’t get boys or men, and I find them difficult to understand and interact with.  It’s not that I hate them at all, but I just don’t understand them.  I kind of understand women.  You’d think this would make my life easier in some ways, but noooooo.

And reason number 3:  My father sucked.  I mean, seriously sucked.  I have no role models with which to write a good male father character.  My father died a couple of years ago.  I don’t remember the exact date and I don’t care.  It’s a particular effort not to wish him to be in hell at the moment (I don’t, but sometimes I catch myself slipping).

But when I wrote Dave, I didn’t want to let any of these things get in the way.  So I ended up writing a male character that had a difficult time with emotion, mostly kept to himself, and was a very logical, analytic and thoughtful person.  But on the other hand, he also was very protective, was not afraid to step in to keep Sabby in check when she needed it (that happened at least once), and was actually a pretty good father, if flawed.

That’s why Dave was difficult to write, in the end.  I didn’t know how to write him.

There’s nothing wrong with a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things story.  Let’s be honest, a story full of women can be kind of mercurial and go off the rails a bit, and sometimes male characters are needed to bring stability.  That’s kind of the role Dave and Jack filled for Lily, in a way.  Even in the CGDCT stories where there are no males, there’s often a female that takes the male role of keeping things in check.

I’m not upset with how I wrote the men in this story.  I’m really not.  That’s because there really is nothing wrong with a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things story, and it was really important to me to explore the relationships between Lily and her sisters.  Women to tend to form very strong friend groups, and I wanted to explore the dynamics of that.  And I think I did a pretty good job.  In that kind of story, there’s not really a place for a male as a main character.  I accept this.  But on the other hand, I don’t think the story would have been what it is without Dave.  Diana had a single mother and her father was a deadbeat.  But if Sabby were a single mother…  I don’t think it would have turned out well.  Dave was necessary to the story and Lily loved him deeply.  And he loved Lily just as much.  Even if he had a hard time showing it sometimes.

Put another way, I think I would have rather had Dave than my own father.

And that means I did an okay job writing him.

So… some things about Dave I never put in the story.  He didn’t like to talk too much about his past.  He wasn’t in the military.  But he did have some close friends that were, and they died in the gulf war or some such.  He also knew some people who were in the WTC when the towers fell in 2001.  So he had a lot of experience with losing people close to him to war or other things.  That’s why he always got a little depressed when memorial day, etc., came around.  It’s not that he was some kind of super-patriotic guy, or anything, but he remembered, and it made him sad.

But he has a hard time with emotions, so he just sat in his chair and let the world go by sometimes.

His prank wars with Lily were legendary, but that’s kind of his way of showing love, in a way.  He met his match with her, but gave as good as he got.  Lily didn’t mention it too much, but he also had a rather weird sense of humor, and was the type to tell dad jokes sometimes and make everyone groan.  He also really loved Sabby and took his duties as a husband and a father seriously.  Sabby was a difficult woman to wrangle, but she always remembered what made her fall in love with him in the first place, so she was willing to be a little submissive when she needed to.  He didn’t take charge often, but when he did, she knew he was probably right, so she let him.  Even if she hated that and had to blow off some steam.

I mean, putting cayenne pepper in chocolate pudding?  That’s genius.  Especially when you’re dealing with Lily…

Anyway…  I think Dave turned out to be a decent character, even if I didn’t do the best job writing him sometimes.

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