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[birchbow]

Chapter 42: The Intention Of The Order

Summary:

Attempt to make prayer leads you to everywhere and nowhere.  All the same tangles and confusions you were already lost in only come sharp to the forefront.  A faithful highblood does what they want, lives and dies and kills at their own amusement.  A dutiful troll gives body and blood to the march of the empire.  A Grand Highblood gives his soul to the holy ruin and ruckus, the joyful slaughter, the glory of the church, and a Grand Highblood gives his life to the claws of Her Imperious Condescension.

[birchbow]

H8ppy Homestuck Day!!!!!!!! :oD

Who could have predicted that the young man simply standing in his bedroom would have led to such a legacy of clown church, sexualized old men, and Gamzee just getting absolutely wrecked 24/7

I for one, am quite glad circumstances led to this ^_^

Honestly though lmao. Honestly just so delighted there are people who have come to this weird clown sandbox to play with me! Can I talk to people in real life about this fic? No lmao! Am I incredibly proud of my half-a-million-plus words and the improvement it's let me make and the fun I've had? Yeah absolutely! And I'm so glad I've met all the people I have, through it. :D Happy very late Homestuck day and I'm glad to have you guys here.

[birchbow]

Halloz has left a hole in my chest I don’t think will ever heal. Birch I just wanted to say your writing is spectacular it really leaves me withthe feels!!!! So excited for the new chapter!!!

Aw, I'm glad! I'm a soft little weenie and I'm so sad about the concept of anything like....lost and never regained, chances lost, things like that. And. God. Sad old men who are kind of resigned to being still kind of in love. It's great. >8)c

[birchbow]

gamzee reminding kurloz about devotions before sleep reminded me to pray the (jewish, not clown church) morning service today, so thanks for that!

Glad I could help! :D

[birchbow]

Have you ever went into detail abt how you think bulges/nooks work? Seems simple enough, cooch and tentadick, but I started thinking abt it and like... how the hell does everything on the inside work? Whats really the point of having the "afab" bits if trolls depend on mother grub to reproduce? Gestures vaguely to bulges??? What?????

So okay. Honestly much like the drone season thoughts I posted a while ago, this makes sense to me if you consider a species that has the reproductive strategy they do, but consider them several millennia ago.

It makes sense for buckets to be a convenient adaptation that trolls came up with but it doesn't make sense for them to be a pre-requisite for their species to breed! So instead, in lieu of buckets, it makes sense to me trolls would just have an organ that's meant entirely for fluid storage and was hooked to both nook and bulge, and would just mix genetic material via fucking each other so it mixed internally. They don't need a uterus to gestate babies; by the same token, an organ that just exists to hold fluid and keep it body temperature and genetically viable before eventually expelling it after long-term storage is not something the human body needs, but would be pretty necessary if you procreate like trolls but don't have the technology of buckets yet lol.

In that case, the nook would basically be an entry point for that storage organ, which I don't know if I personally have ever mentioned by a name in a fic, although I know I've made reference to a seedflap which in my head is the entry point for it--about where a human might have a cervix, although in this case much more intended for potential ingress, depending on relative sizes. And the bulge would just be the means of getting genetic material into your partner so they could store it.

various points of note that come to mind:

This does mean that whenever a troll in Ancient Times fucked a partner, if they hadn't emptied out recently, the odds aren't bad that they would actually have some mixture of their own genetic material and somebody else's in there. And would not come entirely your own come, which is a wild concept as a human.

A reasonable excuse if you were pretending to be a slightly different shade than you were and got caught because of slurry: uhhh I fucked somebody yellow-blooded, that's why it looks lime instead of jade. BYE!!

Also means that although there was no concern about getting somebody pregnant, any form of STI that trolls could contract would be a pretty huge deal before vessels/buckets became a thing and it became more reasonable to clean out after fucking a single partner. Anything that spreads through fluid exchange, highly transmissible and dangerous!

Because most trolls in modern days haven't had to retain large amounts or for long, they tend to get cramping and a feeling of fullness for much smaller amounts than their ancient relatives would have.

Not wanting a bucket immediately after you fucked would have some connotations--old-fashioned, but romantic. A little sexy and kinky.

Modern trolls just don't have the carrying capacity they used to. >:I Buckets have ruined our bodies!!! Retain your slurry, it's natural!!! It gives you the power of your natural connection with the Mother Grub!!! << the modern troll's equivalent of the nofap guy.

Anyway there you go that's been my general theory in the porn I'm writing, ta-da~~

[birchbow]

I’m not sure if it has come up before, but do clowns have any fuschia paint at all? Sometimes people have fancy rainbow stuff - but is it the entire hemospectrum or “the entire hemospectrum except not the very top because holy shit where would we even get that??” Heiress blood or maybe a gift from Meenah has got to be Rare As Fuck if they’re allowed to have it.

I would imagine that generally-speaking it's only been seen in paintings done by the Grand Highblood--sources differ on whether he's just highly favored with the blood of killed heiresses or if his rumored tryst with the empress combined with his rumored murder kink means he's somehow convinced her to let him bleed her.

Regardless, everybody in the church agrees it makes him pretty motherfucking badass lol.

[birchbow]

Just wanna say how not over I am of halores lil collar and boob window. Fr fr wanna drag that man around on a leash

PRESUMPTUOUS!!!!!

HOW DARE

[birchbow]

seeing verato in that line up in his slutty little heels has only made me really motherfucking sure i need to see that twink obliterated

hsssss >:oY

(correct)

[birchbow]

Sketchbook scanning time: PoF edition! feat. the page where I hashed out Yozuna's Whole Deal, Halores, and the page with the prompt "Fashion" which I immediately filled with various clown outfits lmao.

Still waiting for a good chance to use y'all, Silly Big Clown Pants With Thong And Underboob, Fat Fabulous Candystripe Dandy, Croptop Clown Monk, and Tits Out Masquerade. I love you. mwah

[birchbow]

Is Travye's behemoth jawbone club a reference to Samson's donkey jawbone club? Either way it's metal as hell

It's very much a Samson reference haha.

[birchbow]

I don’t know if this has been asked before but how often does Kurloz get challenged for the title of GHB?

I don't believe it has been asked, no! And to answer the question; not super often on a lowblood scale but relatively regularly on a highblood scale haha. Certainly much less now than his first few centuries! He's such a familiar fixture at this point, and such an awe-inspiring figure to the new generations as they arrive, that nobody but the most ambitious highbloods consider "Grand Highblood" as an attainble goal. Ship's captain, yes, but the actual top bitch position??? Are you crazy??

[birchbow]

during the wader party gamzee mentions that he and kurloz are wearing special, super-detailed paint for the occasion. did they do their own (or each other's?) or are there faithful who specialise in "i can do the fanciest motherfucking paint around for your fancy do"? relatedly, how do the various paint designs get - for lack of a better word - canonised? it seems like there's some kind of system of classification going on, since gamzee wears "one of the basic-ass fools" at one point

I was thinking that they did their own! I've set it up enough as a private spiritual practice that I would think it's mostly something one does for oneself--quite possibly one COULD find reference documents and unofficial guides but if anybody else was going to do it it would probably be your quadrants! A lot of observing your peers and adding intricacies, figuring out what you want to look like and also what you want to bring across.

As far as the "basic-ass fools" go, I think in much the same way the Grand Highblood wears either the frowning or smiling Death's Head, the new baby faithful tend to start out with either an incredibly basic frown or smile--if an obviously pupated and mature member of the church goes out with just the barest minimum of painted face, simple smile, paint around the eyes, maybe something small on the cheeks or nose--that would strike their peers as strange on sight!

[birchbow]

Every so often I remember your description of Travye’s laughter as “a low and holy-gorgeous thing” and I have to take a moment to internally flail about Stædfast. Your writing is so so so so good 😭😭😭

!! :D :D Hooray! I am a little in love with most of my characters and hopefully it comes across in all my writing--of course this fic especially, and of COURSE Travye especially lmao. I wouldn't have spent so much screentime on this man's tits if I wasn't also at least a little bit gone over the dude.

[birchbow]

sorry if you’ve answered this before or if I forgot or missed it in fic, but how did Meenah react when she found out Karkat has gills? I can imagine she was real excited about it and maybe took him swimming, unless she was put off by the implications of a warmblooded troll having gills (I also imagine that there are underwater areas of ships that are predominantly inhabited by seadwellers, or they maybe have pools? I could be wrong)

I think by the time she found out about the gills, she already knew he had some weird mutant traits--I do think it probably gave her pause! And it's lucky for Karkat that by the time he pupated and turned out to have little fins as well she was already emotionally invested! Very discomforting to see someone so hotblooded they're not even on the spectrum, but with traits associated with your ruling class.

RE: pools, whole decks underwater is such a fun concept but it seems really hard to maintain in space haha. At the very least though there are definitely pools! Especially because I don't imagine that seadwellers should go too long without filtering water through their gills! Meenah ofc has the biggest pool and it's probably lined in gold or something lmao.

[birchbow]

i love that you write trolls as having nictitating membranes (my most-wished-for physical feature)! are there any other fun bits of xenobiology that you've not got a chance to mention in the fic itself?

As astute followers may have noticed from my art on here, the amount of xeno I apply to trolls changes wildly depending on what's fun and convenient lol. I like drawing trolls with chitinous claws that take up the whole last knuckles but also I like writing people getting fingered so like, practicality is always going to win out there. The fact that if Gamzee or Kurloz (or a variety of other purplebloods) got under saltwater about half of their freckles are actually DON'T FUCK WITH ME glowy seadweller bio-luminescence is unlikely to come up in fic! I enjoy the idea that trolls can see UV, but since that's something everybody in an all-trolls fic could do, it's never going to be mentioned. Trolls usually being able to completely regrow lost fangs--Kurloz can't regrow the top left one of his eyeteeth because the hit he took was so bad it actually fucked up the bone and the socket where the tooth would go. That's everything that comes to mind right now!

[birchbow]

Was Kurloz titled before he became the GHB? And relatedly, does the clown pope need to sign off on titles, or just public consensus of other highly regarded clowns? (I could imagine that Kurloz might have been doing a balancing act of demonstrating to others that he is going to be a serious contender for the throne while also avoiding drawing the attention of Rakhem before he felt ready to challenge? But also it seems like the former GHB didn’t pay much attention to his faithful flock, and maybe being titled doesn’t require his stamp of approval? But then again Kurloz did have a bit of a meteoric rise by typical standards so maybe there just wasn’t opportunity before he was already crowned?)

TBH regardless of how getting a title usually works, my internal narrative says that Kurloz was intent on demonstrating that he was serious about taking the throne, and very intentionally didn't take a title because of that. "I've got the only one I want in mind and it's Grand Highblood" kind of vibes. As far as approval from the GHB for titles goes... a few interesting possibilities spring to mind;

the consensus of the community is what solidifies a title, in much the same way that you can WANT a nickname but until the people around you make it happen, you don't really have a nickname. You can come up with the coolest name you can think of but if nobody agrees you deserve it or it fits you it's not going to fly. Conceptually hilarious tbh.

the GHB is supposed to approve titles for members of the church--potentially only if the title in some way speaks to their religious status? You can be the Sanguise or Brother Cullclaw or whatever, but you can't be the Carnival or Sister Holyfang without the okay from the head of the church? In which case since Rakhem was already becoming aware of Kurloz as a potential threat as he was coming up, he probably would have slapped down any attempt to gain a title even if Kurloz wanted one.

Either way, Kurloz didn't have one before he took over, haha. :D To answer your actual question.

[birchbow]

I love pitch relationships, and I love the way you write them, but I gotta say they kinda escape my understanding sometimes. For example, there was good chance that Kurloz would have killed eridan, and tho eridan namedropped Karkat and kinda put it out there that they hang out, he didn’t explicitly say how close they are. Wouldn’t something like killing your spade’s good friend ruin even a pitch relationship and flip it platonic? Gamzee was only concerned about Karkat being sad about eridan dying, not that kurloz wouldve been the reason he was dead (tho maybe this has more to do with gamzee not questioning kurloz’ authority and also not liking eridan lmao). Or does alternian might makes right culture plus kurloz’ status muddle things up like that? I guess the untoxxic and the inquirer are together despite the lusus murder, but I figured the fact that Ianche didn’t kill Veneno’s lusus himself helps prevent platonic feelings of hatred creep in?? Ultimately, even if I may not always grasp where the boundaries are in these relationships, I find the interactions and emotions super intriguing! Patiently looking forward to the next update.

It sounds like this is kind of a what-if question, so if I'm rambling about the wrong things you'll have to let me know--but tbh in any relationship (romantic, sexual, or otherwise) they're going to involve a lot of weighing your own needs and wants against another person's, balancing how you have differing priorities from each other, deciding what might be a fun joke or fun date or fun kink to try, and whether you might guess wrong and sour things between you... In troll society, that does definitely include just like, murder lol.

So like, if Kurloz had shrugged that name-drop off and killed Eridan, especially if that fact was presented casually or callously to Karkat, he would certainly have been furious! I don't think he would have tried to actually attack or kill Kurloz, especially once the initial anger wore off, because he has two other quadrants that are tightly bound up with the guy and also he knows he's not going to win a one-on-one fight with Murder Pope, but he'd be deeply pissed.

Societally, Kurloz is fully inside the rules to kill almost anybody he wants, and Eridan's not vital in the court yet so even his status doesn't really protect him--but the checks and balances of "I don't care about this person but they have a lot of allies who seem like they'd try to get back at me"/"I do care about THIS troll's opinion of me, though, and I'd rather not piss them off" seem like a pretty crucial part of Alternian culture. See: the paralyzing->haunting->murder->maiming->blinding situation in canon hahaaa.

Anyway, in the same way that sometimes it's hard to pinpoint a single thing that could turn a human relationship from "we're (relationship)" to "we're done"--and in the same way that's usually the culmination of lots of smaller things, rather than a one-way and irreversible switch--I don't think there's going to be a hard rule for this stuff for kismeses either! Just lots of people guessing whether or not they've fucked up and trying to stumble their way through.