I'm so fucking invested in your turnabout au I'm going to explode please just like ramble if you up to it

hoo boy lets do it

so atm my favourite part of the au to think about is post scratch bro and his relationship with hal, post scratch roxy and what dave would think about him. like for example i don't think he'd be this big superstar like post scratch dave was in canon, his work against the condence would be much more subtle. i imagine him working much more closely with roxy and grandpa jake - its not clear in canon how much dave, rose and jade collaborated together, they for sure were in contact, but its honestly up to interpretation. those three in the au would probably work very closely together, maybe roxy and dirk could help jake with building up skaianet - dirk as an engineer and rox as a programmer. they'd also have their own gigs on the side, roxy would sure as hell hijack crocercorp with malware every chance she got, and dirk would have some obscure websites that'd spread propaganda against condence under the veil of weird puppet stuff and insane chatbots. he'd probably write some kind of this universes detective pony parody book and get it published and it'd become one of the most recognisable pieces of literature documenting the takeover of the troll empire and the rebellion against it

(some quick designs of hal and bro i pulled outta my ass)

honestly he'd probably become some sort of vigilante batman-esque figure in this universe?? he'd show up unexpected, blow some crockercorp warehouses and disappear into the night. and after hal joins him when he builds him a body the media would paint them as some sort of twin antiheroes lmfao

oh man and hal. it'd go simialrly as it was in canon, dirk would fuck around and copy his brain at a young age and they'd HATE each other at first. like dirk would feel responsible for creating hal, and hal would resent the shit outta him - like how dare he be the one who gets to keep the body and hal must be stuck in a pair of glasses, trapped with no means of escaping? but they'd start working together when they find out about dave and the future to ensure their lil bro has the best chances of survival, and in time they'd bond over it and their shared work against condy. they'd come up with a plan so that hal goes into sleep mode until the arrival of the meteor (bc no way in hell dirk would make hal go through hundreds of years of lonely existance, watching as humanity slowly ceases to exist and unable to do anything about it, he'd go nuts).

and the day finally comes when dirk would have to go face the batterwitch so he'd put hal in the apartment and they would tell each other one last goodbye and dirk would put hal in the sleep mode. and hal would wake up like only seconds passed, not years upon years, only the vast ocean streching as far as his eyes could see behind the dirty, dusty windows, and he'd know his one brother is long dead, gone while facing the enemy he was destined to lose against but had to do it anyway, and the other one moments from crashing into the waters below on a meteor sent by some insane video game that creates new universes. he'd sit there for a while, reality slowly sinking in, and he'd probably desperatly wish like he hasn't in years, to be human again and to mourn his losses the human way, because as advanced as his robotic body was he haven't thought about updating it with some goddamn tearducks.

on a lighter note, imagine dirk crunching numbers for three days straight to figure out how much food he'd have to stock in the apartment to make sure dave doesn't grow up malnourished, desperately googling "how much calories does an *insert age* year old need". he'd be banned from every supermarket in at least two states. he would walk into the store and employees would start weeping at the sight of him. i think about it a lot