#also sorry for lack of art my free time is spent working on cosplay

[viatrix-glow]

a producer who loves her knights

[thewadapan]

Cowboy

(I wrote a short story for the Homestuck Discord’s first writing contest. This is where I’d put a content warning, but if I’m any more specific I’ll spoil it, so consider this a warning of its own.)

Mad Joey had never been much good at naming things. He was good at cards, and drinking large quantities of terrible lager, and had quite the uncanny ability to walk more than ten feet on his hands alone - but whenever he was asked to name something, he’d just pick the first thing that came into his head. On his tenth birthday, his mother had bought him a cat, which he’d named “Kitty” - it had ended up dying a couple of months later, in an unfortunate accident involving a litter tray and a lighter. His mother had herself died only a few months after that, coincidentally in another incident involving a lighter - although, in this case, it had not been a litter tray, but rather several gallons of petrol.

The name “Mad Joey” had been his own invention, too. All of his friends (well, both of them) agreed that it was a terrible name: Joey was not mad - so they argued - just a bit of a prick.

Despite the fact that he’d been riding on it for almost two whole days, Mad Joey’s workhorse had yet to receive a name of its own. It was a tired thing, propelled along by four spindly legs which somehow managed to transmit each and every undulation of the ground beneath up through the worn saddle and straight into Mad Joey’s ass - even though not one of its legs touched the floor. The workhorse’s repulsor technology worked fine on the level roads found on the core planets, where remaining a fixed difference above the ground made for a relatively smooth ride. Here in the outer reaches, however, its lack of suspension was sorely felt.

“Piece o’ shit,” Mad Joey muttered, thinking that’d make a fine name for his steed.

Glancing back through the thick cloud of fine smoke being kicked up behind his vehicle, Mad Joey could see the faint outline of his pursuer’s speeder - noticeably bigger than the last time he’d looked. He was losing ground.

Searing pain shot through Mad Joey’s arm, the product of a harpoon fired by the pilot of the craft behind. “Fuck!” he yelled as he let go of the reins and tried to pull it free. “Son of a bitch!” It was no use. The cable was already taut; he found himself being dragged from the craft, face-planting into the dust below and rolling to a stop.

By the time he’d recovered, the other speeder had come to a stop. He ignored it and remained where he was on the windswept ground. With his good arm, he tore off his helmet. Though it stank something fierce, the air here was just about breathable - of course, it’d have to be, for what he was planning.

Mad Joey sat up, retrieved his flask from his suit, and took a long swig of the whiskey contained within. It tasted like piss, and he almost choked on it. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the speeder’s occupant climbed out and approached through the settling smoke. “A’ight mate, this has been a laugh, but enough’s enough,” a voice crackled from behind the mirrored glass of their helmet. “You gonna come quietly? I got a taser.”

Mad Joey laughed at that. He was busy stuffing a rag into the flask - a difficult task, with just one hand to work with, but not an impossible one. “Not a chance, partner,” he said, trying the word out for size.

“The fuck’s that voice you’re doing?”

Slowly, Mad Joey got to his feet. “Here’s how this is gonna go down,” he drawled. “You’re gonna turn around, get back in that speeder, and mosey the hell away from this dustball.”

His adversary took a step forward. “And why the fuck’s that?”

Mad Joey gestured around expansively. “Gunpowder.”

“You what?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Mad Joey chose to repeat himself. “...Gunpowder.”

“Nah mate, I heard you, it’s just…” They trailed off, their helmet swivelling as they took in their surroundings - as if for the first time. “Wait, that’s what this shit is?”

In answer, Mad Joey brandished a lighter. This proved tricky, because his good hand already had a flask in it, but he managed.

“Naaah, that’s fuckin’ batty. The whole planet’s made of this shit. How the fuck would a rock like this even form?” They shook their head. “This is why you’re doing all cowboy shit, innit?”

“Ah’m gonna blow this whole place sky high,” Mad Joey said, “go out in a blaze o’ glory.” His bad arm was stinging like a bitch. His good hand was shaking. “They’ll see the blast from the central planets.”

The lawperson looked around again, one hand raised to their helmet to shield their eyes. It was almost midday, and the sun bore down brightly. “No, they won’t - there won’t be any blast, mate, the wind’ll put it out.”

Mad Joey faltered. “Reckon it’ll be enough to take the both of us out, at least.” He looked down at the cable dangling from his arm. It was like a lasso, he thought. “Get outta here. Tell ‘em Mad Joey won, tell ‘em he burned his way into hell.”

“You didn’t win shit,” they snorted - forcing a burst of static out through the speakers in their suit. “They had the fires out in like, ten minutes - fire service’s a lot better than it used to be. They literally only want you for wasting everyone’s time.” They advanced, arms spread wide - but Mad Joey raised the lighter, and they froze. “This is fucking daft,” they pressed. “Mate, look, I dunno who you are, I dunno how you found this rock, but you gotta admit this is a bit much.”

Mad Joey looked away, and his gaze fell upon the workhorse, which had crashed into a nearby dune and now rested with all four legs pointing in the air. “I killed my mu- mom,” he stuttered. “I burned the house down with her in it, ‘cause she was a bitch, and nobody knew I did it.”

“You…” The lawperson reached up with both hands and removed their helmet. From beneath the mirrored glass, Mad Joey saw a face emerge which was a faint reflection of his own - older, with bleached-blonde hair - and heard a distantly familiar voice. “...Joel?”

“Mum,” said Mad Joey. He staggered forward, dropping the lighter and the flask. They fell into the gunpowder, which didn’t ignite.

“I didn’t even recognise you,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “You look like shit. Also, you were talking in a fucking cowboy voice, you twat.”

“I just thought it’d be cool,” sobbed Mad Joey. “Cowboys are so fucking cool, Mum,” he bawled.

“Shh,” Joel’s mother said, drawing him into a hug. “You don’t have to be a cowboy to be cool.”

“I know, Mum, I’m so sorry-”

“-No, I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing him tighter. “I’m sorry I was such a shit mum. After- after the fire- after I’d thought you died- I tried to sort my shit out, really.”

“You did, Mum,” said Mad Joey. “You’re a fuckin’ police lady. That’s cool as shit.” After a couple of moments, he pushed her away slightly. “Watch this,” he said, taking a couple of steps back. He sucked in a deep breath, then quickly bent over forwards, flipping up so that he was standing on his hands. Unfortunately, one of his arms still had a harpoon sticking out of it, and it gave way instantly - sending him crashing into the dust with a shriek. “Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!”

“I-” started his mother, not really sure what she’d just witnessed.

“Nah, nah, I’m all- fuck! I’m- I’m all right. Fuck. Was just… I can do this cool thing, where I walk on my hands, y’know.”

“I know,” she nodded, not knowing. She knelt down next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry I shot you - we’ll get you to a hospital or something, get it looked at, yeah?”

“Are- are you gonna arrest me?” asked Mad Joey, haltingly.

His mother nodded again. “You did crimes, Joel. I’m sorry.” She reached into a compartment in her suit and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “I know I’m your mum, but crimes are against the law.”

“Yeah, okay.” Mad Joey wiped the tears from his eyes, before holding out his hands. Once the handcuffs were on, his mother helped him into the speeder, and - as they flew away - he stared down at the planet of gunpowder in pensive thought. After thinking for a while, he spoke up. “Mum… now that we’re up here… do you wanna set the gunpowder off?”

She turned around in the driver’s seat. “Haven’t you burnt enough things today?”

Joel supposed he had.

Commentary

The Homestuck Discord got a new #writing channel towards the end of December, last year, after a survey in which a few users requested one. For some reason I didn’t post there until over a month later, but - as the amount of time I spent in the server increased - I found myself growing fairly invested in the channel. See, it’s always struggled a lot in terms of activity - often playing host to one or two short conversations, if that - and, as it was introduced on an experimental basis, it’s always in danger of being archived.

This isn’t really the place to examine the channel in detail. What I will say is that perhaps its most important role is to provide a place for people to shill their own writing, where it would otherwise be buried in #general or laughed out of #mspa-lit.

I’m pretty sure I was the first person to meaningfully suggest doing a #writing contest, all the way back towards the end of February: “could be a two-week contest with a decent prompt, where idk the winning story gets posted in #shilling or something”. It wasn’t until after spiral became the art-cosplay pseudo moderator that anything came of this - only instead of one prompt, there was to be four, and instead of a #shilling post being the prize a couple of the server’s resident artists offered to grant a free commission to each of the winners.

Determined to put my money where my mouth was, I got right to work on my own entry. First, I had to pick from the prompts:

DIALOGUE PROMPT: "You don't want to live in a society like this, yet you don't want to do anything about it!"

ART PROMPT: “Chilly Night” by Martyna "Marcia" Chmielewska

SETTING PROMPT: A vast, barren planet devoid of most resources except one rare mineral.

SENTENCE PROMPT: In the ballroom, full of swishing skirts and duplicity, there was one thing left unaccounted for.

I was sorely tempted by the “we live in a society” prompt, but didn’t think it’d be possible to incorporate it naturally into a piece.

(As it happened, a few people did choose that prompt, and I was pleasantly surprised by how effectively they used the line.)

In the end, I settled on the one which fell within my own comfort zone - the setting prompt. I remembered seeing a post by Drew Linky which mentioned “nitroglycerin”, and - even if it didn’t quite fit the spirit of the prompt - I couldn’t get the idea of a planet made entirely of explosives out of my head. So I ran with it.

I did a bit of research into what large amounts of dynamite looked like when they exploded - by which I mean I watched some random YouTube video - and decided that gunpowder would be a much more evocative substance to make a planet from; it’d look like black sand.

The thing that I found most rewarding when writing this story was that each new idea felt like a natural progression from the last. Gunpowder evoked Western stories, so I decided to present the story as a standard Western - only to pull the rug out from under the reader as the description of the “workhorse” progresses and it becomes apparent that the story’s set in place. I wanted to have an outlaw and a sheriff of sorts, and they needed to be on the planet for a reason.

You can probably guess how the story’s opening line came about. I was staring at a brand new Google Doc and wanted to give it a title, and went with the first thing that came into my head: “Cowboy”. To get myself in the mood, I wound up reading some article about gambling in the Old West (effectively none of which made its way into the story). All of the little details and anecdotes in the first couple of paragraphs were pulled pretty much from thin air; I very much wrote this story by the seat of my pants, rarely stopping to go back and edit or to plan ahead, so in retrospect I’m pretty pleased with the extent to which I was able to incorporate them into the story’s climax.

The idea that Joey’s workhorse has no suspension was probably inspired on a subconscious level by the scooter which I used to ride as a kid. It had solid wheels, which meant you felt every bump in the road. Boy, that thing was fun. The ground’s described as having undulations, by which I meant the wavy patterns left in wind-swept sand; the fact that the planet’s windy is important, as it’s later stated that Mad Joey probably won’t be able to spread a fire across its whole surface.

I liked the idea that the workhorse was kicking up a big cloud of gunpowder as it went - kinda like those ships in The Last Jedi - which seemed to mirror the semi-literal trail of smoke which Mad Joey had been leaving all his life. Speaking of things inspired by sci-fi, didn’t somebody get a harpoon through a limb in Firefly? I had a specific image in my head when I wrote that scene, but I’ve forgotten where exactly it was from.

The line about the air being breathable plants the idea that he’s planning to set something on fire - of course, by then, we already know he’s capable of arson.

I probably only included the beat about whiskey because of the infamous “pass the whiskey” voice line from Fistful of Frags, which I’d briefly played a month or so prior to writing the story. From there, the idea that he’d make a kind of Molotov cocktail using the whiskey was a natural step - see what I mean about this story writing itself?

It’s around this point that the dialogue kicks in. When I wrote this story, I’d been working on “The Beast Within (My Pants)” for a good couple of months, and I quickly found myself slipping into the abrasive cartoonishly-British voice I’d used for many of those characters. Mad Joey himself speaks with my own poor impression of a cowboy, which seemed about right. In all honesty, I’m not sure how well the conversation comes off. My goal was to juxtapose the absurdity of many of the lines against the fact that Mad Joey is getting talked down from the edge, so to speak.

I found myself tripping over the fact that I hadn’t established a gender to his pursuant - I’d given them an opaque helmet and described them in ambiguous terms to keep my options open. In reality, this effectively shut down other avenues for the story’s resolution, because - in terms of economy of narrative - I had to provide some kind of payoff. Glancing back at the beginning of the story told me that I had only one option - Mad Joey was being chased by none other than his own mother. I felt like this was an effective twist because her dialogue seems pretty... laddish? It also generally seems to fit the themes of contrivance and absurdity I’d established with, y’know, a planet made of gunpowder.

The turning point occurs around the time that Mad Joey looks at the workhorse and sees it lying dead on the ground. You see him almost drop his persona in the line “I killed my mu- mom”; he soon drops the drawl entirely.

After the twist is revealed, the dissonance ramps up to eleven. I’m particularly happy with the exchange “Cowboys are so fucking cool, mum” / “Shh. You don’t have to be a cowboy to be cool.” Also,  “You did crimes, Joel. I’m sorry. I know I’m your mum, but crimes are against the law.” Something I’ve always found is that, in real life, emotionally-charged moments like this are often very ugly things, where the things people say would seem very strange to an outsider. Mad Joey’s attempt to walk on his hands serves to emphasise this theme.

In terms of the story’s main theme, it’s... kind of a story about shilling? Or at least, within the context of #writing itself, it’s about doing things you don’t really want to do just for the sake of being known, of having people pay attention to you. Ultimately, the story presents this as something harmful - it almost leads to Mad Joey’s oblivion - and says that resolution comes from people who already care as opposed to the nebulously-defined world at large.

I paid a fair bit of attention to the presentation of the story, because I wanted to draw people into it. Once I’d written it, I deliberately cut it down until it fit on four pages instead of four-and-a-bit; I thought people’d be more inclined to read a four-page story than a five-page one. I’ve been trying to minimise my use of italics for a while now - it’s a crutch, and it causes trouble when copying text around - which I suppose would hypothetically make it easier for people to post quotes in Discord without having to mess around adding markdown back in. There are a couple of places where I had no choice but to use italics, but for the most part I think this was a successful effort.

The plan, once I’d drawn readers in, was to challenge them. The use of profanity is excessive. The story’s central conceit doesn’t make a lot of sense. The twist is contrived. The ending doesn’t quite feel complete. Like Mad Joey’s own persona, this was, to a certain extent, an attention-seeking stunt. Why, then, was this story met with abject silence?

See, #writing is slow enough that most of its users see everything that happens there. A lot of other stories got feedback of some kind. If you think I’m going somewhere with this, I’m not - I was genuinely quite perplexed by this response, and still am. Oh well. The three winning entries all turned out to be genuinely better than my own - which I was glad for, because the thought of this piece o’ shit being the best thing the Homestuck Discord could muster is pretty depressing.

Speaking of depressing, the second contest is in a very strange limbo at the moment, having received only a handful of entries and having provoked little to no discussion. I’ve been pretty busy working on other stuff, and wasn’t too fussed on the prompts, so I guess I’m at least partially to blame for that. Hopefully the channel will flourish a little more in the future...

If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy the short stories I wrote for the r/WritingPrompts subreddit a couple of years ago, which can be found under the header What Our Future Looks Like on the list of things I made. Some of them are pretty ropey, so read at your own risk! In terms of my longer works, I recommend checking out Retrace Steps.

See you space cowboy...