#and when it finally did leak it was not only terrible from script to acting to directing but it was also BORING

[imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl]

Love On-Set (Pt. 07 of 10)

Pairing: Dacre Montgomery X Reader

Summary: You knew acting on Stranger Things season 3 would be a challenge, and you also knew, from the start, you'd have to work closely with Dacre Montgomery. But is wasn't a big deal for you, since this is your job and you're determined to act professionally. You had it all figured out, or so you thought, until the moment you were out face to face with Dacre. Then, this job became a lot harder than it was supposed to be, since you can't seem to focus whenever you're around Dacre. And you'll have to be around him a lot until the end of production.

Word count: 3 K

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{Dacre Montgomery Masterlist}

{Stranger Things Masterlist}

×

Kisses

The only reason why you didn't talk to Dacre at the airport was because you thought you'd have a couple of hours before shooting. But you were wrong. The flight was terribly late, and you had no choice but to go straight to set, and as soon as you got there, you and Dacre were pulled apart so you could get ready.

Already in your outfit, you stare at the mirror as your hairstylist gives the final touches, mumbling in response to whatever she's talking about. Your leg is bouncing nervously, as you regret not having called Dacre yesterday night. Or driven to his house. Anything really. Maybe it would a lot easier if you two had some time, but life has a way of complicating things.

“And you're ready,” Laura says and you manage to smile and thank her. “Now go before James comes yelling at us again.”

“Alright.” Mumbling under your breath, you stand up and leave the dressing room only to be rushed into the parking lot. Dacre is already there, talking to James. The wind makes you shiver and you brace yourself... Well, you think it's the wind that makes you shiver, what else could it be?

“...despite the delay, we'll get everything done in time so–” James swallows the words when he sees you. “(Y/N), great. Hope you made a safe trip here. I was just talking to Dacre about the upcoming scenes you two will shoot. There's just so much chemistry that I had to add more kisses.” Oh... You should've read the new script. “But I'm sure it won't be a problem since you two seem to be getting along very well.”

“Yeah, of course...” The first thing you'll do when you get to your hotel room is read every single line of this scrip. It'll be better if you're mentally prepared for what's to come.

But you're not prepared for this.

“Alright, everybody into position.” The director announces before walking away, leaving you and Dacre alone. Well, not exactly since you can't ignore the camera guys, the microphones... All the rest.

“Sorry, we couldn't talk before... This.” Dacre apologizes, but you shake your head slightly.

“But we will.” Nodding more to yourself than to him, you hope nobody is listening to this conversation. “Right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Alright, guys, c'mon,” James says and Dacre walks away as you take a deep breath. Thinking over the lines, you let yourself fall into character, remembering the backstory that leads to this moment. “Everybody set? Ok... Action!”

Turning around, you look at Dacre as he crosses the parking lot. “I can't believe you took almost an hour to get here, Hargrove!” You yell, walking to end the distance between the two of you. “There's a freaking Demidog in the pool!”

“The thing is dead. So why the hurry?” He flashes Billy's a cocky smile, and you struggle to keep the irritated expression on your face. “Chill.”

“Don't tell me to chill. Can't you miss one single date?” Giving action to Amy's jealousy attack, you punch Dacre in the chest, and he gives a small step back as he rolls his eyes. “Not even when there's an interdimensional monster involved?”

“Why the hell you always think I'm with some girl?” When you move to push him again, Billy grabs Amy's wrists. This was improvised, you think. Or is it on the new script? Dacre's grip is soft though, and you put on an annoyed face as you try to set free, uselessly.

“Because that's where you always are.” Putting a frustrating undertone in the sentence, you sigh. “But it doesn't matter. We have a much bigger fish to fry.”

“The damn thing is dead, it can wait.”

You get why Amy falls for Billy. Or are your fellings for Dacre clouding your judgment? Putting up a fight, you try to free yourself of his grip, making sure to stumble backward until your back hits a car. “Let go of me! I'm tired of this shit.” Slowly, Amy gives up fighting. Physically and emotionally. The moment you stop moving, Dacre let's go of your wrists, his arms coming to trap you in between the car and his body.

“I know you're jealous. I just need to figure out why.” Billy leans closer, and you can feel yourself drowning in Dacre's eyes, more beautiful than the ocean.

“I said it once and I'll say it again. I won't be one of your many flings...” Your voice is low, and as the cameras move closer, you know it's about to happen. God, it's so damn hard to keep up the act. You can feel Dacre's chest every time he breaths in, and you want to pull him even closer. “...so... Back the hell off.” Putting your hand on his chest, you know that the action that would make more sense here would be Amy trying to push him away again... But you fail to do that, Amy slowly disappearing as you break character for the hundredth time. Instead of pushing him away, your fingers slowly clench around the collar of his jacket, grabbing it. Dacre's eyes burn on you, and you know he wants it to.

“Who said I want you to be a fling?”

Then you don't know who moves first. If it's Dacre who leans forward or if it's you, pulling him. But it happens, fast and needy. First kisses shouldn't be like this. They're supposed to be short and sweet, shy even. But part of you is thankful for the situation you're in right now, because it justifies how you cling onto him, how deep the kiss is, hot and passionate. Billy and Amy were both craving for this moment, but so were you. And so were Dacre because his grip around you is tight, his lips keeping a quick pace, one that you're more than happy to follow. You hand find its way to his hair, as he holds the small of your back, needing to have you closer, if that even possible. The cameras are long forgotten, and there's no set, no show, nothing. Just his taste, fresh and sweet, inebriating. There's something in the background, some familiar sound trying to reach you, but you push it away, ignore it, tiptoeing even more to try and match Dacre's high, wishing he would lift you up.

“CUT!” James' voice sounds like a freaking thunder, and it wakes you up. With your heart beating insanely fast, you suddenly go back to reality, probably blushing harder than ever as you step away from Dacre. He takes a while to let go of you, intense eyes locked on yours as he tries to catch his breath, falling out of the stupor too. “That was... Good. That was good.” James says, and when you look around, you notice people staring. That wasn't... Discreet, and now you know that what you heard was James yelling ‘cut’ half a dozen times.

Running a hand through your hair, you have to fight back the urge to touch your lips, the kiss burning in your head... You really hope James will need another take.

“Are you ok?” Dacre asks, taking a quick look around before taking your hand in his.

“Yeah...” Biting your lip, you nod, staring at him. This just gave you a rush of adrenaline, making you feel brave. “More than ok, actually.”

Dacre's lips break into a smile, his thumb caressing the back of your hand. “Well, judging by James' obsession with the perfect lighting, I bet he'll need a couple more takes to get it done.”

“I really hope so. I–” You're cut short for a commotion. Several people move to surround James, who soon starts cursing. “What's going on?” You mutter, exchanging a glance with Dacre before walking over the sea of people. That's when you see the rest of the cast, and you just now remember they were here too... And they just saw everything... Millie won't let you hear the end of it.

“Who the hell did this?” James shouts, and a lot of people start apologizing. Giving the others a glance, you notice they have their eyes glued to their phones.

“Oh, no...” Something leaked, you're so damn sure. Rushing to the guys, you stand beside Noah, taking a look at his screen. “What happened?”

“The kiss. The first you shot. Someone here recorded and published on YouTube ten minutes ago.” As Noah speaks, he hands you over his phone and you read the news article he was reading. ‘Exciting scene from Stranger Things 3 leaks: Amy Halpert and Billy Hargrove are definitely a couple’.

“Shit.” You mutter, leaning closer to Dacre so he can read it too. “Who did it?”

“We have no idea,” Natalia answers, looking up from her phone. “But I watched it. Whoever did this stopped recording right before the cameras fell.”

This sucks. Giving Noah his cellphone back, you sigh. “It's really mean to do that. There's a lot of operations to keep the set free from curious eyes and someone from the inside leaks it? That's ridiculous.”

“James will sue whoever did this,” Dacre adds.

“Excuse me, guys.” Ryan comes, a tablet on his hand and a very worried expression on his face. “James wants you to stay here until we find out who did this.” He says, giving you a quick glance before looking back at his tablet. “You got the trailers here so... I think you'll be comfortable. Sorry, but James is–”

“RYAN!”

“James' orders. Sorry.” Rolling his eyes and sighing, he gives his back at you.

“We'll have to stay? I didn't do it.” Gaten exclaims, clearly pissed.

“Me neither. I was too busy watching the kiss with my own eyes.” Natalia complains but gives you a glance.

Well, you would like to get to your bed, but complaining won't help and you're exhausted from the flight. “I'm calling it a night.” You mutter, upset that this whole thing happened. The leaking, of course. “I'll take a shower to wash the 80's from my skin and I'll go see my trailer.” You haven't seen it yet, since it's meant for the Battle of Starcout scenes, which you'll probably shoot throughout the night.

“Me too,” Dacre says, then turning at you. “I'll find your trailer after if that's alright.”

“Sure.” Smiling, you blush to feel all those eyes on you. “See you soon, then.”

• • •

You're lucky to have your baggage here. Maybe the flight being delayed wasn't so bad as it seemed. After showering and handing the outfit back to your stylist, you follow her directions to where the trailers are. They're in the very back of the set, in a large area, set side by side. You're surprised to see the trailer doesn't look like a trailer on the inside, but like an actual house, only a little tiny. There's a main space with a couch, a table, and a TV, then a kitchen with a stove, an oven, and a sink. A bathroom with a shower. And on the very back, the thing you needed the most after this long day. A well-equipaded room with a huge bed. Smiling, you let your piece of baggage fall as you climb on the bed, lying on your back and sighing in relief.

Jumping back to your feet, you decide to change into something more comfortable. So you exchange your jeans for light gray sweatpants and a black spaghetti strap tank top before lying back down. You're happy you ate on the plane, or else you'd be starving right now.

But despite all the thoughts in your head, you can't help but come back to the main event of the day. Your fingers come to touch your lips, as you close your eyes to bring the memory back. You're upset you didn't get to do more takes. The cold and nervousness you were feeling vanished so quickly, at the same moment his lips collided on yours. So hot and intense. Breathtaking.

You're dragged away from your thoughts by a knock on the door. Dacre. He told you he'd come. Taking a deep breath and fixing your simple clothes the best you can, you make your way to the door, thinking you should've picked something better to put on. “Hey.” You mutter when you swing the door open, gesturing for him to come in. “Did you see your trailer?”

“Yeah. I stopped by to leave my luggage.” He answers, stepping inside and looking down at you. “These things look bigger from the inside.”

“Definitely.” Clearing your throat, you gesture at the back of the trailer, to the bedroom. You know how awkward it may be, but there's a burning on your back that won't let you sit on the couch. “I hope you don't mind but could we talk while I lie down? My back hurts real bad from the five hours we had to spend at the airport.”

“I don't mind at all.” Nodding, you walk back to the bedroom, throwing yourself on the bed. “So. Who do you think leaked the video?” Dacre asks as he sits on the edge.

“I have no idea. All I know is that is wasn't me. And it wasn't you.” Staring at the ceiling, you try not to feel very self-conscious right now. “I was too busy on scene.”

“Me too.” He mutters. “Where does it hurt, by the way?”

“On my shoulder blades.” You answer, looking at him. He looks very handsome, as usual, despite wearing a simple white T-shirt. “Those airport chairs weren't very nice to me.”

“I can give you a massage if you want.” Dacre stares at you dead serious, which means he's not joking.

You wish you had the adrenaline rush from earlier, so it'd push the words right off your mouth, and maybe you wouldn't be blushing. “Uhm... If you want to.”

“Alright, lie on your stomach.” He says, taking off his shoes and climbing on the bed.

“Fine.” Mumbling, more to yourself than to him, you roll over, grabbing a pillow to rest your head. Breathing deeply, you feel the mattress moving under Dacre's weight as he places himself beside you.

“Let me know if it hurts, alright?” The moment you nod, you feel his hands on your back. And he must know what he's doing because it does feel good. The butterflies on your stomach are wide awake now, since Dacre has his hands on you, strong but delicate at the same time, rubbing and softly pushing your muscles.

“If I knew you were good at this I'd have asked.” You say with a smile, pulling the small amount of hair that still falls on your back out of his way. Dacre gets this as a permission to put a little more pressure, just enough to make you relax. His fingers slide under the fabric of your shirt, but you don't mind.

“Glad I can help.”

You just mumble in response, suddenly feeling your tiredness taking over as you close your eyes shut. Falling asleep now is the last thing you want because it's so good to be around Dacre, and you think you may finally understand where you both stand in all this situation. What you're feelings are and if they can take you somewhere.

“It's ok, I'm alright now.” You speak up, moving to lie on your side. “If you continue I'll fall asleep in a matter of seconds.”

“If you're tired I can go.” He gestures at the door, already moving.

“No. Stay.” Bursting out, you sit up, grabbing his arm. You can't believe what you just said. What you just asked of him. “If you want, of course.”

Dacre stands still for a while, frozen before he settles down on the bed again. “Alright.” You can tell he's tired too, by the way his eyes are heavy.

“Let's play a game. Who sleeps first loses.” The idea comes suddenly to your head, and it seems to lighten up the mood.

“And what will I get when I win?” He has a cocky smile on his lips as he lies down, facing you.

“When? Don't get overconfident.” Moving a little to get comfortable, you take a deep breath when your eyes set upon his. Blue and calming. “I'm gonna win.” You say, winking at him.

“I really doubt that.” As he speaks, Dacre brings his hand to your face, fingers sliding from your forehead to your eyelids, forcing you to close your eyes. “You'll lose, so better start making peace with that.” His voice, low and deep, sends a shiver down your spine.

You were just about to answer, to say something, when you notice how his hand lingers, moving to caress your cheek, thumb rubbing the soft skin on your jaw until it reaches your chin. Slowly, painfully slow, it comes to your lower lip. His touch burns, making your head spin around. The memory of the kiss fills your head, and you know you want to do that again.

Swallowing hard, you gather all the courage you can to move closer to him, ending all the space between your bodies and, being really brave for once, going for the thing you want. That you need the most right now. You connect your lips to his, feeling relieved as if a burden was suddenly lifted when you feel him kissing you back. Dacre's hand remain on your cheek, and yours rest on his chest, feeling his muscles under the soft fabric of his shirt. The kiss is slower this time, as if you're both discovering, unrevealing each other. But you don't mind. You love it as much as you loved the other one.

It sucks when you have to break apart to breathe. But when you do, you remain close, your foreheads touching because you just can't force yourself to pull away from him now. “Sorry, I... I had to.” You mutter under your breath.

“It's alright.” Dacre's hand comes to encircle your waist, keeping you close. “If you didn't, I'd have to.” He giggles. “I've been dying to kiss you, (Y/N).”

“Me too.” You whisper. “What you said in the message... I feel the same way. That kiss... I really wanted it and that wasn't Amy, it was me.” Maybe it's the sleep winning over you, but the words just come out. You need him to know. You need to let it out and you hope it means something to him. “Dacre, I... I really like you. A lot.”

You blush when he smiles, but soon enough a giggle escapes your lips. “Then I'd like to take you on a second date. As soon as James lets us out of this set.”

“I'd love that.” Giggling like a teenager, you kiss him again, a peck on the lips that linger a little too long. But not long enough. “Uhm... You can crash here if you want.” You decide to offer since you just noticed you're already on the bed, all tangled on each other. “I think we already reached the point of no return here.”

“I agree...”

“Are we... Are we going to sleep like this?” You ask, putting a strand of hair behind your ear.

“However you like.”

Biting your lip to hold back a smile, you turn around. Dacre is fast to hold you, a strong arm pushing your back against his chest. “Is this ok?”

“Yeah.” You both move to get more comfortable and you lay your hand on top of his, on your stomach.

You've never been like that with anyone, so close, so... Intimate. But you like it. And you can't believe it's Dacre who's holding you this way.

×

@baker151910 @shinydixon @dreamin-of-dacre @hanoi15 @lickmymelaninn @foccus @multific @uncookspaget @kellysimagines @peakascum @thisbreakableheaven

[girlbossblackbeard]

(Beware this is a long ask) Reading that post from occamshipper and wow. How did they even come to the conclusion that Cas gained a soul and went to Heaven? Like it's canon that angels that die go to the Empty, it's canon that the deal Cas made with the Shadow to get Jack back meant that feeling true happiness would make the Empty take Cas and it's canon that God can take someone out of the Empty. So it's logical to come to the conclusion that Cas' love confession to Dean caused him to feel true happiness and lead to the Empty taking him and then when Jack became God, he got Cas out of the Empty and together they rebuilt Heaven. Also how's it wrong for anyone to describe the Empty as superhell? We all saw the Empty mentally torturing Cas so that he'd go back to resting. Ruby and I believe Lucifer too said the Empty isn't a peaceful place. Furthermore, where are they getting at peace=going to Heaven? As a Christian, while Heaven is a peaceful place, when I die the reason why I'd be at peace is because I lived a good life and because I made the lives of those around me better because I tried my best to be good to others and help others as much as possible. Reuniting with loved ones is not the goal of getting into Heaven, it's just the cherry on top. Okay so how does that all relate back to Cas? It relates back to him because his true happiness was the simple act of loving Dean unconditionally (even if he felt Dean would never love him back) and that by sacrificing himself by experiencing true happiness, it meant he could save Dean's life. That's why he was at peace with going back to a place of torture. Finally the Heaven ending for Cas is terrible. While this ending is better than Cas suffering for eternity in the Empty, why exactly would Cas be happy in a place where he was mocked and tortured for loving Dean and where they were always trying to play on his worst fear (Dean not loving him back and only seeing him as a tool for him and Sam) as a means to manipulate him to into serving them again. Another reason why Cas' ending sucked was because Cas never got closure on the whole does Dean love me for who I am or does he only love me for what I can do. As a fan, I do believe that Dean does love Cas for who he is but it's really shitty that it can be left to interpretation due to the fact of Dean never mentioning the confession and us never getting a confession from Dean. Finally, even if the confession did give us Destiel, as you mentioned in canon it's still one sided. Heck even if it was reciprocated, killing off Cas immediately after would still be homophobic and the fact that they had to turn Billie into an outright villian for the sole purpose of setting up that confession is super racist because why are we killing the only current POC on the show to further the story of Dean (a white dude). All in all, while I'm happy that people can still find joy in the ending and I'd never be one to take that away from others, we can't turn off the critical thinking parts of our brain and refuse to call out the problematic elements of the last few episodes

Wee doggies you weren’t kidding! But yeah you pretty much summed it all up here. I think the leaked scripts also help solidify even more what we already knew; that Cas was sent to the empty with Billie after his confession. Those parts of the script are what I was trying to convey to the other user since my friend who worked on set and has the full original scripts from that season read that scene out loud to me after 15.18 aired, but now y’all get to read the real thing for yourselves! The only thing I diverge from you on is that I personally think Cas’s heaven ending is fine, and if it was done correctly, it would’ve been the ideal ending for him in my mind. Dean would inevitably have ended up there and I like to think that they spend the rest of eternity together, wherever that may be :) And now that Jack is running the show, I would hope that Cas can rebuild his relationship with the idea of heaven and try to form much happier memories than the ones you pointed out of him getting tortured and mocked and cast out, which are all very true! And I also share your frustration with Cas never really getting closure re: Dean’s feelings. Whether they were reciprocated or not, he (and we the audience) deserved to hear it. 

Don’t even get me started on the bury your gays trope and the racism surrounding Billie’s death (and then the subsequent, classic misogyny of Billie’s replacement’s death almost immediately after!), I can, will, and actively have driven myself crazy just thinking about how poorly these characters were handled in those scenes. Thank you for sharing all your thoughts! I really loved getting to read your perspective on the confession and how the show was wrapped. Ultimately I agree with you, I think if someone can find happiness in the final episodes I don’t want to take that away from them but we also can’t just turn a blind eye to glaring issues that the show repeatedly fails on.

[homespork-review]

HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 1

CHEL: Yes, Act 5 Act 1; here begin the “act acts”. Just go with it.

FAILURE ARTIST: Welcome to Act 5 a.k.a. The Act Everyone Skipped To So They Could Get To Those Grey Demons. While I was a reader before Act 5, I wasn’t a huge fan until this part. The trolls are a great species. Different enough to be fascinating, but not different enough humans can’t relate. And what exactly is in their pants? That’s for the fandom to figure out.

BRIGHT: And fandom accepted the challenge with enthusiasm.

CHEL: Also, they’re fuggin’ adorable. It took me a while to get used to nonhumans in the sprite style and I thought they were creepy-looking at first, but we also see them in the more noodly style used in the dramatic moments with the kids, like the fall of Prospit, and that helped them grow on me a lot.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Act starts off with a grey planet with a green moon and a pink moon. A prompt box like the one for the Kids’ introductions is above it. In the box are letters in a script blatantly stolen borrowed from The Elder Scrolls games and turned 180 degrees. (Later on, when Hussie made a game that people paid money for, he couldn’t exactly use a stolen font so the team made an all-new font. But the old font is probably in the print books). Anyway, in case you’re curious, the letters spell out “Turdodor Fuckball”. This is the wrong name, and the right name is…Trollplanet. Though it’s called Alternia in the flavor text below and everywhere else.

So starts the arc called Hivebent. We cut to CG in a very grey room flapping his mouth occasionally at nothing. He’s introduced much the way John was.

This young troll stands in his respiteblock. It just so happens that today, the 12th bilunar perigee of the 6th dark season's equinox, is the day of this young troll's larval awakening, also known as his wriggling day. Though it was six solar sweeps ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name! Six Alternian solar sweeps, for convenient reference, is equivalent to thirteen Earth years. Earth, also for convenient reference, is a planet that does not yet exist. What will the name of this young troll be?

However, like Dave, he attacks the prompt box. He doesn’t want to do all the little gags and patterns.

CHEL: Thank God!

FAILURE ARTIST: This Hivebent arc will go much faster than the four acts before it. No dawdling along for this species. There’s twelve characters to be introduced and characterized before this is done.

CHEL: That said, it’s still going to be much, much longer than the others.

FAILURE ARTIST: So, CG’s name is Karkat Vantas. All of the troll names have a 6-6 pattern and are usually named after astrological and mythological motifs. Karkata is the Sanskrit name for the constellation Cancer and Vantas...is a prostate cancer treatment drug. Don’t look at me, I didn’t name him.

CHEL: It’s also possibly connected to “vanitas”, relating to Karkat’s simultaneous arrogance and lack of self-worth.

FAILURE ARTIST: Today is Karkat’s wriggling day. Let’s meet the birthday boy. He loves movies, though the narrator says he has terrible taste. In his room, there’s edited posters of “50 First Dates”, “Serendipity”, and “Hitch” that makes them look like troll movies, including lots of small type for the title. Like John, he likes to program but he’s not good at it. In fact, he’s so bad his programs are basically computer viruses. He wants to join a military organization called the THRESHECUTIONERS when he grows up. His weapon of choice is the sickle, possibly as a counterpart to John’s hammer.

He chats with his friends on a new program called Trollian, which is a reference to the real-life chat program Trillian. Fans forget that Trollian was a new program, except for Nepetaquest where the plot revolves around the making of that improbable software.

CHEL: Which begs the question of how they communicated before. Most of them don’t seem to have met each other in real life yet. Obvious answer is a different chat program, but in that case, why draw attention to Trollian being new instead of just having it be how they communicated from the start? It doesn’t really add anything IMO.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, talking with his friends drives him BATSHIT UP THE FUCKING BELFRY, which is a very human phrase.

The first prompt Karkat gets is to examine the slimy pod in his room. This pod is a recuperacoon and serves as a bed. Trolls need that slime to help assuage the terrible visions of blood and carnage that plague the dark subconscious of your species. Why do they have these species-wide bad dreams and how does slime help? It’s never said.

CHEL: The slime appears to be a form of drug, possibly a sedative. In Hiveswap we see it also has minor healing properties. Why trolls would have evolved to consistently suffer nightmares isn’t brought up here, but there are possible explanations later.

FAILURE ARTIST: Actually, after Act 6, recuperacoons aren’t mentioned. Also, oddly enough, the narration says sleeping is done nightly but we later learn trolls are nocturnal. The terms night and day aren’t used consistently in Hivebent.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 20

Karkat gets into the pod, but immediately regrets it. He changes his clothes (off-screen of course) into clothes that look exactly the same. This is because Trolls think fashion is stupid.

Next, he examines his movie posters. Turns out trolls have their own version of John Cusack, among other celebrities. Troll Adam Sandler is his favorite actor and one person he doesn’t want to do violence against. In his narration, he thinks Sweet Baby Jegus though Jegus isn’t actually a thing in troll culture.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 21

Karkat tries to captchalogue his sickle and we get some more sylladex hijinx! His modus becomes too heavy and literally falls through the floor. I thought picking up weapons was different from captchaloging stuff? We’re told these hijinx won’t last long and eventually Karkat trades his modus with his hacker friend. Good. For now, he just picks up the big black book on his dresser.

The big black book is about a programming language called ~ATH and for some reason is in Roman script. It’s a morbid little language and there’s a cartoon figure of the Grim Reaper and a fake (or real?) quote from Troll Will Smith. Karkat finds this language incredibly hard. There’s probably some sick programmer jokes I’m missing here.

CHEL: There’s one I’ve been informed of; ~ is called a tilde, so the name of the program is “tilde-ath”, or “till death”. I can’t say I recognise any others though.

FAILURE ARTIST: Karkat steps outside. He lives in a huge grey and red house (or hive) in a suburb as sterile as John’s. Trolls create their own homes as toddlers after beating the trials in the brooding caverns. First hint of how harsh Alternia is, yet everyone has their own housing which is sweet.

It's almost as if your people have placed great cultural importance on teaching children to become architecturally adept while very young. It has been this way since ancient times. No one seems to know why that is.

Hmmm…

Karkat almost has a poetic moment while looking out at the moons, but he rejects poetry. He also rejects mailboxes, which trolls don’t have because they have no mail.

CHEL: Do they mean no paper letters because they all have internet? I recall that they do receive packages.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think they have courier service but no dedicated government postal system.

So instead of poetry, Karkat talks about AMBITION. He wants to be something great but he doesn’t know what exactly. We’ll see where this character arc takes him.

We get a little detail about the Alternian calendar and it concludes with “You have a feeling it's going to be a long night.”

Karkat goes back inside. He checks out a Game Grub magazine with a disgusting image of a leaking grub and a DVD for his favorite television show. The show is THE THRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR, which is a take-off on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air but is about a green threshecutioner cadet who sasses up the bluebloods in his flaysquad pretty good. The “green” and “blueblood” parts aren’t turns of phrases but literal. Given the strict hierarchy we find out trolls are under, it’s amazing there’s a series about a sassy subordinate. Maybe he’s only sassy in Karkat’s mind.

CHEL: Actually, that’s not too unbelievable.

FAILURE ARTIST: The title of the show doesn’t follow the convention of troll movie titles and that’s because 1) television is a newer medium and 2) it would ruin the joke.

Finally, Karkat gets down to business on his computer. His first friend to “troll” him has a purple Capricorn sign. Now, this friend is a character that though I’m now quite attached to, I didn’t much care about them in the beginning. I’ll try to be objective though.

terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] TC: wHaT iS uUuUuP mY iNvErTeBrOtHeR? CG: WHAT IN THE SWEET ALMIGHTY TAINTCHAFING FUCK DO YOU WANT. TC: NoT a MoThErFuCkInG tHiNg BrO. TC: oThEr ThAn I bE cHeCkIn OuT hOw My BeSt MoThErFuCkIn FrIeNd Is At Yo.

Yes, my first thought too was “that’s a really annoying typing style”. Karkat agrees and complains about TC’s typing style. TC temporarily goes all lowercase but says it feels uncomfortable. Karkat complains more about how awful TC is and wonders what he did to deserve such a terrible friend. Instead of being offended, TC says friendship is beautiful and confusingly calls it a TrOlL dIsEaSe. We’ll see some stuff that suggests trolls don’t have friendship or at least don’t consider it in high regard but mostly trolls have friends like humans do.

BRIGHT: Despite his protests, Karkat has eleven friends, in a society that is not set up to facilitate this. I’m pretty sure that when I was his age I had maybe three.

FAILURE ARTIST: TC waxes on miracles like the carbonation in a bottle of Faygo. Yeah, trolls have Faygo.

CHEL: That’s a gag, though, so no WSP point.

FAILURE ARTIST: Karkat tells him that’s just carbonation but TC rejects science as just stealing the magic from miracles.

CHEL: It comes up more clearly later, but we’ll tell you now that TC’s entire character at this point, especially that line, is basically a shoutout to the Insane Clown Posse song “Miracles”.

Watch on YouTube

FAILURE ARTIST: After some more bantering, TC gets down to business: TA is going to play a game. Karkat says he’s not interested but TC says TA is Karkat’s best friend, which is sad when you consider TC calls Karkat “best friend”.

CHEL: TA, if you don’t remember, is twinArmageddons, the computer programmer.

FAILURE ARTIST: TC gets distracted by a horn going off and even types out a surprised yell. Karkat tell TC to get rid of the horns and TC says “MaN yOu KnOw YoU wAnNa GiVe My HoRnS a GoOd SqUeEzE. :o)” which sounds really flirty. Karkat says if he meets a kid as annoying as TC, he’ll convert to TC’s religion. TC is happy about this. With that, the conversation ends.

We cut to TC and he’s a motherfucking clown, baby! But I’ve already re-capped so much and need to give someone else a turn.

CHEL: Okay, I shall step up! TC’s actual name proves to be GAMZEE MAKARA, and he’s wearing a purple Capricorn sign. The name Gamzee was picked by a forumite as a reference to another user who went by Gammy, but it may also be a reference to “Gämse”, the German name for the chamois goat. Makara is the Sanskrit name for Capricorn, and also the name for a type of creature from Hindu folklore which would include the Capricorn sea-goat. There are several other layers of possible and probably-coincidental meaning listed on the Wiki, which we’d have to bring up spoilers to discuss, so we’ll save that for later.

Beyond his name and sign, Gamzee has clown makeup, explosively curly hair, long spiral horns, and a slightly glazed expression. Nightmarish pictures of evil clowns plaster his walls, his floor is piled with bicycle horns, juggling clubs, and Faygo bottles, and an oversized unicycle is propped against the wall. When he picks up a Faygo bottle and his “husktop” computer, his MIRACLE MODUS is seen, a hideously complicated mishmash of various styles which flickers and spins obnoxiously. Even Gamzee doesn’t know how it works, he just likes to watch the colours.

FAILURE ARTIST: Gamzee belongs to a RATHER OBSCURE CULT that believes in a BAND OF ROWDY AND CAPRICIOUS MINSTRELS who are CLOWNS OF A GRIM PERSUASION WHICH MAY NOT BE IN FULL POSSESSION OF THEIR MENTAL FACULTIES. Basically, he’s a Juggalo who worships the troll equivalent of Insane Clown Posse. Though the cult is called obscure and said to be looked down upon, later it is shown to be a state-sponsored religion. I guess maybe it’s just Gamzee’s particular denomination that’s looked down upon.

CHEL: “Obscure” also means “hidden”, so the retcon could be justified in the sense of it being mysterious? Or it might be related to spoilery Hiveswap theories. We can get into those if we ever get round to Hiveswap.

Gamzee attempts to ride the unicycle, but fails - unsurprisingly, since it’s taller than he is and he attempts to ride it by standing on the saddle. He falls off into a pile of horns, and decides instead to sample the luridly green pie on the counter, which turns out to in fact be made of the same SOPOR SLIME that trolls sleep in.

You aren't supposed to eat that slime. It does funny things to a troll's head. But you were never taught that on account of a lousy upbringing. Your custodian was always out to sea.

Gamzee arms himself with a juggling club to use against the alleged hostile SEA DWELLERS and heads out to wait for his missing guardian.

FAILURE ARTIST: His hive appears to not have a front door so I don’t know what’s keeping the hostile sea dwellers out.

CHEL: Someone contacts him online and he intends to settle down with a Faygo and answer, but he doesn’t know how to retrieve things from his miracle modus. Gamzee performs a short prayer to your beloved MIRTHFUL MESSIAHS, the faces of the two members of Insane Clown Posse superimposed over the background, and throws a pinch of SPECIAL STARDUST in his face. We never find out what exactly “special stardust” is; it appears to just be glitter, but it comes up much later. His attempts fail, however, as the modus instead launches his Faygo miles out to sea.

You wonder if you can just... Just sort of reach over... And...

Apparently the sylladex modus can be physically reached, so there was no need for the endless pages of shenanigans in the first place. *quiet rage* But anyway, gallowsCalibrator is trolling him.

FAILURE ARTIST: GC asks G4MZ33Z if he’d like to play G4M3Z3Z with her. He replies "hEy YeAh ThAt SoUnDs LiKe ThE mOtHeRfUcKiN sHiT's BiTcHtItS!" She says something very tsundere in reply:

GC: 1T SUR3 1S H4RD TO 1GNOR3 TH3 W31RD TH1NGS YOU S4Y SOM3T1M3S! GC: BUT 1M GONN4 GC: TH3 ONLY R34SON 1M 4SK1NG YOU 1S B3C4US3 YOUR N4M3 1S L1K3 G4M3 GC: 4ND NO OTH3R R34SON GC: G3T 1T??? >:]

Gamzee isn’t offended she said this and GC gets annoyed he’s always rolling with the punches. She says that’s why Karkat can’t stand him. Harsh in hindsight. GC gets down to business and tells Gamzee they are going to H4V3 SOM3 MOTH3RFUCK1NG SH1TTY B1TCH3S PL4Y1NG TOG3TH3R. He asks if they could play later because he’s waiting for tHe OlD gOaT (which happens to also be a nickname for Satan).

TC: yOu KnOw HoW iT iS wItH fAmIlY. GC: NO, NOT R34LLY! GC: 4DURRRR DURR DURP TC: Oh YeAh... GC: DURRRRRRRRRRRRR GC: W4Y TO GO, HOW DO3S TH4T STUP1D BOTTL3D SYRUP OF YOURS T4ST3 W1TH YOUR HOOF SO F4R UP YOUR MOUTH??? GC: >:] TC: sOoOoOoOrY.

This is the first time we find out GC has an unusual homelife. Yet it isn’t true that she has no family.

BRIGHT: And given how rarely Gamzee’s guardian is around, it’s not like he has much of a family either. Or a standard homelife.

CHEL: That’s also an... excessive response to a slip-up, but from what we see later, that’s how almost all the trolls talk to each other all the time.

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s also problematic, because she’s doing an ableist imitation of the speech of people with mental disabilities. Though I suppose trolls aren’t meant to be PC.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

Gamzee suggests GC play with Karkat instead. She rejects this idea and says she used to play with him but he got too annoying. Gamzee then agrees to play and says give him a minute. She says he’ll just space out and that’s what he does. When he gets back into the conversation, he makes a second faux pas.

TC: hAvE yOu EvEr EvEn SeEn ThE oCeAn? TC: oR i MeAn SmElLeD iT... TC: SoRrY. GC: >:[

People really get on this but it’s just the regular type of mistake people make while talking to blind or sight-impaired friends and he did apologize. Other characters say worse and never apologize. Some readers who know what happens later might attribute malice but right now he’s just a guy who does a lot of troll pot and makes mistakes.

CHEL: I know when I was eleven the blind kid in my class and I had a sort of running gag of “see you later”. It also isn’t very clear whether either of them is actually hurt by anything the other is saying. They don’t seem to be.

This is also probably a time to bring up certain things about Gamzee’s cultural coding. Even though we later find out he’s one of the highest-ranking trolls, certain cues about him would make people think of a lower-class human, namely his syntax, his eating semi-inedible substances (lack of access to other food?) and his love for cheap gross soda. (I’ve drunk Faygo. It’s weird.) This could just be a troll thing not being exactly the same as human things and also down to his guardian not being there, but there’s more.

Gamzee’s word usage involves a lot of quirks which are usually associated with African American Vernacular English, e.g. addressing others as “brother” or “sister” and using “be” instead of “am” or “are” or just leaving them out completely. His hair is probably supposed to look unbrushed, but it can also be interpreted as textured. His religious behaviours get described with the word “voodoo” a lot, and while this is a bit of a stretch I personally interpreted his typing and syntax as a Southern drawl plus he lives close to water, thus cementing an association with actual Vodoun in my head even though his actual practices aren’t anything like it. While the members of Insane Clown Posse, the band which inspired a lot of Gamzee’s behaviours, are both white, rap is a strongly black-associated musical style, and Gamzee is later shown to be interested in rapping. Stereotypical juggalos are white, but culture considers them to be worthy of mockery because they’re white people behaving in ways associated with black people. Add in his absent male guardian, drug use, and acting “trashy” when he’s one of the richest trolls, and this all adds up to a very clear mental image of him as a not-very-flattering portrayal of a black person. Coding a nonhuman character strongly with a human racial group isn’t a problem in itself, but when it comes off as supposed to be funny, it’s not exactly SU Garnet levels of good representation, is it? The fact that Hussie, prior to Homestuck, was known for drawing some incredibly racist comics (also including rape, abortion, and drug jokes, so be warned) doesn’t help; we won’t add points for those because we’re judging HS on its own merits and it’s possible for people to change and regret prior prejudices, but it sheds new light on things that’ll come up.

Individual CP points for his language, his hair, his voodoo association, his rapping, his Disappeared Dad, his drug use, and his being coded as poor despite not being so, I think. None of these would be bad on their own or portrayed as less “look at how funny/creepy this guy is”, but...

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 26

BRIGHT: The first time I read Homestuck, I didn’t realise that Gamzee was meant to be disliked until somewhere in the middle of Act 6. I thought his situation was sad, but Gamzee himself seemed pretty nice, if dopey and not terribly motivated. I still quite like him. Did anyone else find something similar?

CHEL: Yeah, me. I thought he was pretty adorable.

FAILURE ARTIST: Gamzee suffers from abuse in the form of neglect. Though his guardian is arguably not quite responsible, it’s still abuse. As a result, Gamzee eats a dangerous substance and it’s probably why he lets people walk all over him. This is more obviously bad than Dave’s homelife. Yet it’s not ever dealt with and is even mocked. Hussie says in the annotation for this scene that there weren’t actually hostile seadwellers and Gamzee’s guardian just said that to keep Gamzee inside because he was ashamed of him. We find out later that seadwellers ARE hostile. This bit about Gamzee being gaslit is probably a joke then about how embarrassing Gamzee is. Yet isn’t it abusive to make up threats to your children to keep them isolated? Lots of fans consider Gamzee embarrassing too and so don’t see anything in this.

BRIGHT: Not to mention that it’s pretty fucked up to say Gamzee deserves abuse for being embarrassing, when that neglect and abuse is the reason he acts the way he does in the first place!

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 19 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 30

CHEL: One CP for the “humorous” drug use and another each for the “joke” gaslighting and neglect, and another for the illogical justification. Wow, that count’s really starting to spike already! And I think now might be a good time to introduce another count…

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 1

This will be used whenever the author is clearly showing a lack of respect to the characters or situations that he himself created, in this case by setting up an abusive situation and mocking it when we’re supposed to have sympathy for another abuse sufferer.

BRIGHT: Depressingly, it gets worse later. Significantly worse.

CHEL: Not to mention, if Gamzee’s supposed to stay inside and his guardian’s absent all the time, and trolls “don’t get mail”, how does he feed himself? Even with the sopor, where does that come from? Is it just secreted by the pod or what? Does the pod need to eat? We’re never told. In Hiveswap, the sequel game, we do see that trolls can receive packages, but I would class packages under “mail”, so saying trolls don’t have it is needlessly confusing.

We cut back to Karkat, doing some coding which I’m sure would be very amusing if I knew the first thing about coding. Apparently the biggest problem with ~ATH is the near-impossibility of terminating its infinite loops.

What many ~ATH coders do is import finite constructs and bind the loops to their lifespan. For instance the main loop here will terminate on the death of the universe, labeled U. That way you only have to wait billions of years for it to end instead of forever. You have bound a subloop to the lifespan of the code's author, which is you. Any routine at the end will execute when you die.

So apparently coding is literally magic in this ‘verse? This is backed up by a code sent by TA:

This code, when executed, immediately causes the user's computer to explode, and places a curse on the user forever, along with everyone he knows, and everyone he'll ever meet. Not surprisingly, later on you would run this code in a fit of stupidity.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Internet is magic, why not programming?

BRIGHT: I think the coding is a pretty nifty thematic fit with the whole concept of SBURB! If you’ve got a video game that can affect reality, it’s reasonable to extrapolate that coding can do something similar, even if only by piggybacking off the Game’s infrastructure. And once they get into the Medium, it makes even more sense.

CHEL: True! In the meantime, TA trolls Karkat. Karkat’s speech pattern is remarkably similar to Dave’s, except infinitesimally less wordy and much angrier.

TA: KK dont fliip your 2hiit about thii2 but iim 2ettiing you up two play a game wiith 2ome people. CG: WHY WOULD I FLIP MY SHIT ABOUT THAT. TA: becau2e you fliip your 2hiit about everythiing. CG: WELL WILL YOU LOOK AT THIS. CG: HERE IS MY SHIT, AND YET IT REMAINS UNFLIPPED.

*snerk*

CG: JUST SITTING THERE ON THE SKILLET, GETTING BURNED ON ONE SIDE. CG: IT'S A MIRACLE. TA: oh no are you iinto miiracle2 now two becau2e iif you are youre fiired preemptiively from the game. CG: FUCK NO. TA: ok niice. CG: MIRACLES ARE LIKE POOP STAINS ON GOD'S UNDERWEAR. TA: eheheh makiing fun of people2 reliigiion2 i2 the be2t thiing two do. CG: THAT'S WHY HE HIDES THEM, THEY'RE FUCKING EMBARRASSING. CG: GOD LAUNDERS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS.

Very Judeo-Christian concept of God for an alien species.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 22

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s seemingly no other troll religion but Gamzee’s cult and that has dual gods, not monotheism.

CHEL: Anyway, TA is setting up a game of SBurb, or SGRUB as the trolls call it, which he made from 2ome crazy technology AA dug out of 2ome ruiin2. Karkat hasn’t been told about this by AA, whom he deems “SO SPOOKY”, and whose full handle seen in the chat roll is apocalypseArisen - spooky indeed and thematically appropriate. Mention is made of TA’s WEIRD MUTANT BRAIN; exactly what this means isn’t described yet except that it doesn’t mean he can read Karkat’s mind. TA refuses to elaborate on what he’s discussing with AA on the grounds that it’s private, and this leads into an insult-exchanging session.

TA: nobody hate2 hiim2elf more than you iidiiot. CG: YEAH WELL I HATE YOU WAY MORE THAN I HATE MYSELF, AND THAT'S FUCKING SAYING SOMETHING. CG: IN FACT I HATE YOU MORE THAN I HATE MYSELF AND YOU HATE YOURSELF AND YOU HATE ME COMBINED.

Karkat calls a timeout long enough for TA to explain how they’re playing the game; he intends there to be two teams, Red and Blue, 2o that there2 a better chance of at lea2t one group wiinniing. Karkat agrees this sounds sensible, but flies off the handle on finding out that TA and GC are the team leaders, not him. Karkat spews insults and accusations of cheating, while TA snipes back. This is presumably the moment depicted in this page’s art, in which Karkat yells angrily and flails wildly at his keyboard.

CG: HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF YOUR COCOON IN THE MORNING KNOWING YOU'RE THE WORST THING A UNIVERSE WAS EVER RESPONSIBLE FOR? CG: ALSO IT MUST BE HARD WITH YOUR HANDS TO PERSISTENTLY BOTHERING EVERY MUTATED SET OF GENITALS PEPPERING THAT GHASTLY HUSK YOU PAWN OFF AS A BODY. CG: HAS A FEMALE EVER LOOKED AT YOU WITHOUT AT ONCE TURNING SKYWARD AND ERUPTING LIKE A VOMIT VOLCANO, ANSWER ME THAT.

As later pointed out, trolls reproduce bisexually, so why he specified females here is odd. There is a fan theory I’ve seen that TA is straight, as he’s only seen with female partners and rejects a possible male one, but Karkat demonstrates in a later conversation that he has no concept of gender preference, so if TA is, Karkat doesn’t know that. I guess he could mean that he himself has looked at TA without becoming a vomit volcano, but I doubt that was what Hussie was thinking since it isn’t clear if they’ve ever actually met face to face.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 23

Anyway, TA tells Karkat that he’s laughing at Karkat’s immaturity, and that if he really wants to be Red Team leader, he should talk to GC.

CG: I GUESS THESE CONVERSATIONS WE HAVE DO GET KIND OF EMBARRASSING IN RETROSPECT. CG: ARE WE NOT FRIENDS ANYMORE BECAUSE OF STUFF I SAID. TA: eheheheh you LIITERALLY a2k me that every tiime are you jokiing. TA: ii cant even tell anymore.

Okay, that’s adorable. But anyway, after seeing their conversations, you can see what we mean when we say it’s apparently normal for trolls to say horrible things to each other, so why fans and Hussie himself single out some instances and not others is stupid.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 20

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s another example that trolls do have friendship, though possibly not the same way humans do.

Also, though he’s not doing it to her face, Karkat is insulting GC’s blindness. Which is not just problematic but also silly given that her blindness is a super-power.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 31

After a quick panel where Karkat worries about an encounter with a “CRABBY” someone downstairs, we cut to GC. She is in a very colorful room, unlike Karkat’s grey one, and surrounded by stuffed dragon toys. On her wall is graffiti of a dragon and disturbingly a noose. Photorealistic books are piled on her desk. She’s introduced and we finally get her name: TEREZI PYROPE.

Terezi is the word for “Libra” in multiple languages, but it also might be a reference to the gender-bending blind prophet Tiresias. Pyrope is a type of red garnet and she does love red a lot.

Terezi lives alone deep in the woods (which does raise the question of how she gets all her stuff in a mail-free planet). She loves dragons, including the plushie series called SCALEMATES.

CHEL: Her walls are also decorated in the scales of dragons, which actually do exist on Alternia. Libra. Scales. Geddit?

FAILURE ARTIST: She likes roleplaying and once did a more extreme type until she had an accident that’s not explained at the time. Her big interest and motivation is JUSTICE and she wants to be a LEGISLACERATOR when she grows up. She doesn’t need TROLLBRAILLE (does such a thing exist?)...

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 24

... since as we know she has special powers. Alternian law is called BRUTAL and indeed it’s so terrible I have to side-eye Terezi for loving it.

CHEL: She claims to love JUSTICE, but Alternian law has very little to do with justice of any kind, as we see when she decides to start roleplaying it with her toys.

On Alternia, there is no such thing as a defense attorney, or a defense. In a courtblock, the word defense itself is offensive.

Not to mention the judge, a chalk depiction of whom adorns her wall, is known as HIS HONORABLE TYRANNY.

Also, do thirteen-year-olds regularly roleplay with their plush toys? I guess ones who are isolated from all actual life forms they could play with instead might.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi’s scenario this time is the trial of SENATOR LEMONSNOUT, played by a yellow scalemate. Given that Alternia seems to be an absolute monarchy, I wonder where she gets the concept of senators.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 25

Terezi stares down the yellow plush toy before she starts slapping it. She fantasizes about the toy crying tears. The yellow plush toy’s crime is embezzlement, using a currency called imperial beetles. Whether this is a real currency or something Terezi made up we don’t know.

CHEL: As we see later, she’s using a bag of literal beetles in the game. Not sure if they are currency, if she went and caught them, or if trolls can buy them in bags.

FAILURE ARTIST: If you are reading this comic sometime post-2015, there’s two choices. One of them is [???????] Ignore that choice. It becomes relevant only much later. For now, we go to Terezi calling a witness.

Unfortunately, said-witness is a green plush who has been stabbed by a photo-realistic dagger. Apparently, defense attorneys are verboten but murdering witnesses is expected. Alternian justice, everyone.

BRIGHT: It might be moderately less batshit if we assume that Terezi’s obtained all her legal knowledge from TV, movies, and books, and this is a dramatic embellishment rather than the way Alternian trials actually function. She does live on her own in the middle of a forest, after all.

On the other hand, this planet is inhabited solely by children, the over-the-top cruelty is entirely in keeping with Alternia so far, and I don’t think we ever see any of it contradicted.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi finds a bag of beetles and that’s all that’s needed to sentence the “criminal”. Her method is to flip a coin called a caegar that has two-heads on it, one of them with a cut on it. The narration says this is like Two-Face from the Batman comics and the villain of the movie No Country for Old Men, though those media don’t exist in the troll universe. Still, trolls have the same trope. She flips the coin and though the result is favorable to Lemonsnout, Terezi declares she can’t see the coin because

SHE'S BLIND, REMEMBER?

She “kills” the stuffed toy by hanging it, like she’s done with many of her stuffed toys. We see now she lives in a tree house (or hive) in a blue and purple forest.

CHEL: In most media, a character being set up like this would be a villain or set up for a heel-face turn, or at least a massive source of conflict over the differing moralities of the different societies. We’ll see if anything ever comes of that.

FAILURE ARTIST: She finishes up by licking her chalk portrait of His Honorable Tyranny. Weird kid.

She gets her weapon (a photo-realistic cane as used by real-life people with vision impairment) and gets down to recruiting members for her team. Her first target is AC, short for arsenicCatnip, who appears as a speech bubble with the Leo sign in olive. The narration says Terezi likes to roleplay with AC, but only facetiously. Terezi and AC roleplay as a DRAGONYY'YYD and some type of big cat. Terezi tries to eat AC’s cub but AC bribes her with an animal called a BULL CHOL3RB34R.

CHEL: AC types with a symbol like this at the front :33 < and with a heavy spurrinkling of cat puns. From what she says about her character, the type of cat in question has two mouths, and it’s later stated that :33 is in fact supposed to be a cat face, one mouth atop the other. The evolutionary or indeed anatomical usefulness of this feature is unclear. Perhaps it’s so they can bite down on prey and vocalise to communicate at the same time? That would be more useful for a pack hunter… Anyway.

FAILURE ARTIST: That done, Terezi asks AC to play a game and has to clarify she means outside of the game they are already playing. AC is interested but she says she has to get purrmission from a certain guy. Terezi thinks it’s ridiculous AC is scared of him because she kills big animals with her bare hands and lives far away from him. AC knows it’s ridiculous but she still wants to get permission. The relationship looks bad now but we later find out it’s part of troll society and it’s odd that Terezi thinks AC is motivated by fear. Anyway, AC says she’ll ask the guy and the conversation ends on that.

CHEL: I don’t know if Hussie either had come up with the relationship system or even decided if those two were going to have a relationship at this point. If he did, he might not have meant them to be in that relationship yet at this point, they could have started it later. It’s not really clear. Not a problem, though, serial writing develops that way sometimes.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi trolls Gamzee but thankfully it cuts off before we have to re-read the entire conversation. Next, Terezi has to deal with Karkat. She doesn’t want to ask him to play except as a last resort.

However, Karkat trolls Terezi to tell her he’s the leader of the Red Team now. Terezi doesn’t care though since she just wants to play the game. Karkat says she’ll be second-in-command but Terezi’s sarcastic reply turns him off the idea. The two insult each other and Terezi mock-flirts with Karkat.

GC: 4NYTH1NG TO G3T YOU TO STOP B31NG SUCH 4 B4BY CG: WHAT'S A BABY. GC: OH GC: 1TS L1K3 4 MYTH1C4L L1TTL3 P1NK MONK3Y

CHEL: Once again, babies only come in Caucasian, apparently. Also, doesn't the word "baby" apply as an adjective to non-human species all the time?

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 26

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out that Terezi is not supposed to have a LUSUS and if she did, the world would come to an end. Karkat is also confused by this statement. Karkat blames the trees for her weirdness and offers to move her into one of his neighbor’s hives. One of his neighbors has been CULLED (killed) and Karkat is blase about this. Terezi turns down his offer. Karkat excuses himself to DEAL WITH THIS GRUMPY CUSTOMER.

We cut to a little later. Karkat’s hive is covered in colorful paint and in the middle of a lake of red. This is the LAND OF PULSE AND HAZE and Karkat is the KNIGHT OF BLOOD. Karkat now has the weapon HOMES SMELL YOU LATER, a sickle in 90s colors. He trolls Terezi and complains about how she wrecked his home. Another running gag: girls ruining boy’s homes. He says she messed with his LOAD GAPER. Terezi (and us) call that a toilet. Toilet is blue blooded vernacular. Later on, highbloods use the term load gaper so I guess Hussie forgot this interesting world-building. Karkat is also upset by the paint job that wasted lots of grist. Terezi calls his fighting adorable and Karkat says it’s ADORABLOODTHIRSTY. He wants to be the next one to connect to a client and she says it doesn’t work that way. It’s only at the end he brings someone in. The priority now is to save her from the meteors by getting her in the game. Karkat hadn’t heard of the meteors until now and is very alarmed. Terezi tells Karkat to talk to apocalypseArisen, twinArmageddons, AG, or CT. There’s a conspiracy going on with those four people. With that, Terezi says she’s got to go.

CHEL: Also, an important point comes up in that conversation; Terezi demands to know what colour Karkat’s blood is, and he refuses to tell her. In case you haven’t picked it up by now, troll society is in fact supposed to be stratified by the colour of their blood. Literal blue blood is towards the higher end of the rankings; Terezi’s on the greener end of blue, so securely middle class. Karkat types in and wears grey, which is not a natural troll blood colour, and the other trolls consider this weird and suspicious. Looking at the list of names on Trollian, we see they range through the rainbow, except for some reason the greens, blues, and purples are split into several layers. I was confused by this at first; I knew he needed twelve colours instead of seven, but it seemed weird that they weren’t more spread out. Then again, social stratification does get a lot stricter up at the top. I thought perhaps the reds, browns, and yellows also come in other shades but just get lumped together because they’re peasants and no one cares? It’s not discussed in canon, but someone actually does have an explanation for it; it’s what you get when the RGB and CMYK colour wheels overlap.

A little while ago, a spooky-looking young troll lady with glowing white eyes and a maroon Aries shirt sign - this being the colour of apocalypseArisen, so this is presumably her - hovers over a frog-topped temple extremely similar to the one on Jade’s island. With a wave of her hand, the frog’s head breaks off and crashes to the ground.

You're not sure why you did that, really. There'll probably turn out to be a reason. There's a reason for everything. Understanding this lets you be reckless.

Somewhere else, Gamzee’s Faygo bottle, now photorealistic, lands at the feet of a mysterious someone who is wearing striped pants and what appear to be blue and purple bowling shoes, of all things. This person complains about Rubbish from the LAND DWELLERS and picks up the bottle with a hand wearing a purple ring emblazoned with an Aquarius symbol; the name in that colour text in the chat, should the reader go back to check, is caligulasAquarium.

FAILURE ARTIST: How fucked up was troll Caligula? Maybe he just broke troll taboos.

CHEL: The implication of him having an aquarium is making me picture Troy McClure.

We go back to Karkat’s hive and rewind a little, to see him deal with the earlier-mentioned crabby customer…

And we need to provide the text from this page in its entirety so we can discuss it.

FAILURE ARTIST: If you want to know why Homestucks go so crazy over buckets, read this and weep!

You go downstairs and confront your custodian, which is another term for a frightening beast known as a LUSUS NATURAE. Your lusus has looked after you since you were very young in lieu of any biological parents, whom you have never known. No young troll ever knows his or her blood parents, nor could such lineage ever be accurately traced. Adult trolls supply their genetic material to the FILIAL PAILS carried by imperial drones and offered to the monstrous MOTHER GRUB deep underground in the brooding caverns. She then combines all the genetic material into one diabolical incestuous slurry, and lays hundreds of thousands of eggs at once. The eggs hatch into young larval trolls which wriggle about to locate a cozy stalactite from which to spin their cocoons. After they pupate, the young troll with his or her newfound limbs undergoes a series of dangerous trials. If they survive, they are chosen by a member of the diverse and terrifying subterranean monster population native to Alternia. This creature becomes the troll's lusus, and together they surface and choose a location to build a hive. The building process is facilitated by CARPENTER DROIDS left on the planet to cater to the young. But only for building. They're on their own otherwise. The vast majority of adult trolls are off-planet, serving some role in the forces of ongoing imperial conquest, besieging other star systems in the name of Alternian glory. The culture and civilization on the homeworld is maintained almost entirely by the young. Trolls sure are weird!

CHEL: “Lusus naturae”, to start with, is Latin for “freak of nature”. Probably it means something else in Alternian.

FAILURE ARTIST: The lusus system is so bizarre. How long have they been using it? When we see what could be called a Bizarro Alternia, they also have lusus, so it’s not just because adults can’t raise children.

CHEL: Naturally-evolved symbiosis and parasitism are hardly unknown among animals on Earth, though no real ones really work like this. The closest I can think of among vertebrates are cuckoos and similar birds, where the egg is laid in another species’ nest and the hatchling kills or starves out the original offspring. This isn’t what’s happening here, as the lusus doesn’t have offspring of its own and wouldn’t appear to have any particular reason to let a young troll latch onto it, not to mention young trolls presumably look nothing like the offspring of a creature like that, and lususes/lusi (I don’t think there’s an officially accepted plural? The fandom latched onto the very non-Latin but suitably alien “lusii”) come in wildly varying species, so it’s not a case of a specific two-species symbiotic bond like clownfish and anemones. However, trolls do have psychic powers, so it could always be handwaved with a form of mental link.

BRIGHT: Bizarre as it is, the lusus system is nicely alien! I think that in this case, the lack of explanation actually works in its favour -- there’s nothing to point to and say ‘but that explanation doesn’t make sense’. I do like a good explanation, but in the case of background worldbuilding I think it’s fine to chuck something in and move on.

Also, we now discover that Jade had a perfectly normal childhood by troll standards. (Er, minus the murderous neighbours.)

FAILURE ARTIST: The narration says the “vast majority” of adult trolls are off-planet. This implies some small percentage of adults are on-planet. In the spin-off series Hiveswap Friendsim, there are characters on Alternia who get into, well, adult situations. The writers on Twitter clarified that there are trolls who are over eighteen Earth years but under the age of expulsion on Alternia. In one game, there’s adults who should be off-planet but aren’t, though how many trolls risk that is unknown.

CHEL: The age of majority in numerous Earth cultures is or has been twenty or twenty-one, so that’s probably what the writers were going for. Or, of course, just trying to avoid backlash from the Tumblr anti-shipping population. There are also cases where adults really should be on-planet but don’t appear to be, but we’ll get to that in the Friendsims.

I have to say I’m rather concerned by what appears to be a serious bottleneck in the reproduction system. According to everything we see, there is only one Mother Grub for the whole planet. What happens if something happens to her? Replacements are bred in the same way as queen bees or ants, but destroying the cavern where she resides would put a major crimp in troll society for a long time even if there was a replacement around. With ants and bees, there is generally more than one hive per species.

BRIGHT: We do meet one Virgin Mother Grub later on, and she’s acting as a lusus. I always assumed that there were at least a few around, otherwise having one potential backup breeder taken out of the pool should have raised a lot more fuss than it apparently did.

Moreover, while the Brooding Caverns aren’t described in Homestuck, they are described in Friendsim, and it is literally a single giant cave with the Mother Grub in the middle, surrounded by grubs, young trolls, and lusii. In one of the game routes, the Mother Grub is in fact injured by a distressed lusus, which would be easily prevented by having her in a separate room. There are apparently no barriers to an outsider just wandering in, and given that this is Alternia, said outsider could probably do quite a lot of damage if they so chose.

CHEL: Particularly since most lusii are extremely dangerous, and there are a hell of a lot of them there. It’s also been brought up in the Tumblr parts of fandom that it would be incredibly easy to rebel against the dystopian regime by taking the Mother Grub hostage or destroying/damaging the caverns.

FAILURE ARTIST: Karkat fights his lusus like the human kids fought theirs, but without a cool animation. It’s just a gif and a link to a 38 second tune. You’ll notice in the background on the fridge there’s a crude drawing of the crabby creature: a callback to John’s drawing.

We cut to TA, the troll we saw earlier get bonked by a key. TA has his glasses off and under them are a red eye and a blue eye. He puts them on dramatically in a reference to the CSI: Miami meme everyone has forgotten. After a long Dave-like block of text describing how this dude is cool but not cool, it turns out we won’t be introduced to him.

Cut to a troll with a green Leo sign on her shirt and horns that look a lot like cat ears. She looks cute but there’s blood on her walls. The narration is unnerved by her so we go back to TA.

TA’s name is SOLLUX CAPTOR.

CHEL: The name is taken from the mythological twins of the Gemini constellation, Pollux and Castor. The combination of sol-lux could also be read to mean “sunlight”.

FAILURE ARTIST: Behind him is what looks like a computer mainframe but covered in a yellow substance. On the wall, there’s red-and-blue writing. His recuperacoon has two openings, though it’s never even brought up why.

You are apeshit bananas at computers, and you know ALL THE CODES. All of them. You are the unchallenged authority on APICULTURE NETWORKING. And though all your friends recognize your unparalleled achievements as a TOTALLY SICK HACKER, you feel like you could be better. It's one of a number of things you SORT OF BEAT YOURSELF UP ABOUT for NO VERY GOOD REASON during sporadic and debilitating BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS. You have a penchant for BIFURCATION, in logic and in life. Your mutant mind is hounded by the psychic screams of the IMMINENTLY DECEASED. Your visions foretell of the planet's looming annihilation, and yet unlike the typical sightless prophet of doom, you are gifted with VISION TWOFOLD.

I used to think “imminently deceased” meant “recently deceased” and not “going to be deceased”. Either way, it’s really a Blessed With Suck power.

Lots has been made of Sollux’s BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS but I don’t think Hussie was seriously thinking of bipolar depression. Still makes for good fanfiction.

CHEL: Please don't use "bipolar" to just mean moody, Hussie.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 32 You have developed a new game, adapted via CODE PARSED FROM THE RUNES AND GLYPHS IN AN ANCIENT UNDERGROUND TEMPLE. You believe this game to be THE SALVATION OF YOUR RACE, though you are not sure how yet. To ensure success, you will distribute the game to two teams of friends, a RED TEAM and a BLUE TEAM. You will lead the latter group.

One guess what this game is. We also see “friends” being used in the normal human sense.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 27

The prompter tells Sollux to equip ninja stars, but it turns out he has psionic powers that allow him to move objects with a purple aura. However, in moving the ninja stars, he messes up and slices the BEEHOUSE MAINFRAMES. Little purple bees buzz around him and send him messages in beenary code. The prompter tells Sollux to taste the honey but he refuses.

You do not under any circumstance eat the MIND HONEY. The consequences are highly unpleasant.

Remember that. The mind honey is only supposed to be a soporific for his lusus.

Sollux snaps his fingers (spelling out 2NAP in his quirk) and the bees fall asleep.

CHEL: I only just noticed the “2nap” = “to nap” pun.

BRIGHT: Also, while Sollux does have psychic powers, those powers are not related to animal control. So this is a little strange.

FAILURE ARTIST: Sollux goes to his computer while stepping over video games, which in this world are colorful grubs. He first talks with Terezi. She knows about his game to save the world and immediately picks the Red Team. He wonders how she knew there would be a red team but she says it’s easy to guess he would make a red team and a blue team. This observation annoys him and he goes on a rant.

TA: maybe iim more of an aubergiine guy plu2 whatever that putriid color is you type wiith, what ii2 that, turqoii2e?

I have a headcanon he can only see red and blue and that’s why he doesn’t know what color Terezi types in. Considering his society is based on color this would be quite a disability.

CHEL: I’ve also seen headcanons he’s colourblind and struggles to remember which colours go where on the hemospectrum, as at one point he complains about how yellow is the lowest on the totem pole apart from something he can’t remember, while talking to someone who’s lower. (It’s actually third from the bottom.)

FAILURE ARTIST: They then talk about how this game will save the world. He isn’t sure how but he says AA can back him up on this. Terezi thinks he’s right...mostly. He says before this is done he will die twice and go blind, but he figures that’s what happens to a prophet of doom. He compares this to an angel getting its wings and we find out trolls consider angels to be feathery demons. Terezi wonders if this doom-and-gloom isn’t just part of his brain problems. He is offended by this reasoning and compares it to clown pieing, which in retrospect is scarier on Alternia than on Earth. He tells her to talk to AA and Terezi says AA hasn’t been the same lately. Sollux and Terezi say they’ll take the game seriously but they also goof around about it.

We cut back to the spooky troll from before. She kicks the frog statue so hard it all breaks off.

The prompter tells Sollux to deal with apocalypseArisen, the spooky troll we just saw. AA asks Sollux if he set up the teams, but without a question mark. He says he’s working on it. He asks if she’ll be happy to get out and leave the voiice2 behind. He says it would suck to have them stay until death, a statement which will become very ironic. AA says she’s 0k with a l0t 0f things...including their failure masquerading as victory. Sollux is angry at her pessimism. He gets more angry when he finds out the game will actually wipe out their people. He says he refuses to be team leader, but she says he was never going to be that. He threatens her with psionics and says he could do things that would make [her] head 2piin liike dervii2h iin a fuckiing blender which makes me wonder how trolls have Sufism.

CHEL: How many humans know where the term comes from? I could buy it as Translation Convention regarding, say, a clown cult thing, although everything seems to imply the trolls are speaking “English”. Still, the idiom comes from human Western culture, so...

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 28

FAILURE ARTIST: She says she’s coming up, which only confuses Sollux.

He goes and tells Terezi and then Karkat that the Game has been aborted. Terezi is confused but doesn’t say much. Karkat accuses Sollux of trying to kick him out. Karkat declares the friendship cancelled, showing again trolls have friends. Karkat insults Sollux’s programming skills and threatens to run ~ATH. Sollux tells him not to be Karkat doesn’t listen.

TA: KK DO NOT RUN THAT CODE. TA: hello?????????????? carcinoGeneticist's [CG'S] computer exploded. TA: oh my god.

That is some amazing chat program.

The explosion kills Crabdad. Turns out that code causes the death of ALL of Karkat’s friend’s lusii. Each lusus gets prototyped, which seems heartwarming but turns out very bad for their session. We see Gamzee mourning his Goatdad’s death by harpooning in a moment that’s very sad, even considering how terrible a parent Goatdad is.

CHEL: And here I want to go back to Gamzee for a bit. The commentary, as we mentioned, says that Goatdad “told” him to stay indoors and was ashamed of him. However, in the actual comic, everything is set up to show the lusii as being non-sapient, i.e. not able to talk to their charges and not in possession of a concept of shame. They behave like regular animals, Sollux says his is dumb enough to walk right off the roof if not tethered, and the trolls go on repeatedly about how happy they are to have prototyped their lusii because now they can actually communicate verbally with them for the first time, as Rose did with Jaspers. This is similarly inconsistent in the later-written Pesterquest games, which we’ll get to eventually. So either Hussie forgot that lusii aren’t the same as parents…

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 29

… or he claimed they were sapient when they weren’t before, solely to use them to bash Gamzee.

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 2

FAILURE ARTIST: Back to Sollux. He tries deleting all his computer viruses, but there’s one he can’t delete. It has a flashing billiard ball next to execute. It’s set to go off after the universe ends and even Sollux doesn’t know what it does. The narrator does know.

When executed, the subprogram will summon an indestructible demon into the recently voided universe. This monstrous being with the power to travel through time is inconvenienced very little by his arrival upon THE GREAT UNDOING. He has the entire cadaver of the expired universe to pick apart at his whim. From its birth through its swelling maturity and tapering decay. In a reality he is known to have marked for predation, he will go about assembling followers through various epochs, even going as far as personally establishing the parameters for his future summoning. Sollux couldn't know that the virus is essentially a formality. The demon is already here.

Sollux hears grumbling noises coming from the ceiling. His lusus, a BICYCLOPS, is kept chained to the roof of his COMMUNAL HIVE STEM and regularly fed and fought.

CHEL: A bicyclops, later also referred to as a biclops, is a roughly humanoid being with two heads, each with one big eyeball. A hivestem is basically a block of flats, made out of a giant hexagonal tube-like structure with small grey hive-homes built into the sides. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be the literal stem of some kind of gigantic plant or not. Pretty cool if it is.

FAILURE ARTIST: In the night sky, there’s a few meteors. Turns out AA is floating outside.

We cut to GA wielding a chainsaw while riding a moth-like lusus against a colorful background. She lives in the middle of the desert in a home like Jade’s. However, we aren’t introduced to her.

BRIGHT: There are giant colourful sails attached to the towers. I’m not sure how practical that is, but it has definite flair.

FAILURE ARTIST: Instead, we are introduced to AT. His name is TAVROS NITRAM. He turns out to be a wheelchair user. I think this was ascended fanon based on his love of flying. How well Homestuck treats this disabled character we’ll see. His lusus is a little bull with wings. He’s surrounded by playing cards, stuffed animals, and posters of fairies. A lance is leaned against his wall.

CHEL: “Tavros” obviously derives from Taurus, and might also be from Davros, a wheelchair-using Doctor Who villain. Nitram is “Martin” backwards, which according to the wiki might be connected to Mary Martin, an actress who played Peter Pan, or Martin McGuinness, an Irish politician whose planned prosecution was codenamed Operation Taurus. It might also derive from nitrate, which causes “brown blood disease” in fish.

You are known to be heavily arrested by FAIRY TALES AND FANTASY STORIES. You have an acute ability to COMMUNE WITH THE MANY CREATURES OF ALTERNIA, a skill you have utilized to CAPTURE AND TRAIN a great many. They are all your friends, as well as your warriors, which you pit in battle through a variety of related CARD AND ROLE PLAYING GAMES. You used to engage in various forms of MORE EXTREME ROLEPLAYING with some of your other friends before you had an accident. You like to engage in the noble practice of ALTERNIAN SLAM POETRY, possibly the oldest, most revered, and certainly freshest artform in your planet's rich history. You have a profound fascination with the concept of FLIGHT, and all lore surrounding the topic. You believe in FAIRIES, even though they AREN'T REAL.

The name of his lusus may be ascended fanon too, if I’m remembering correctly. Its name, mentioned later, is Tinkerbull, and it’s the cutest thing ever I want a million of them.

Tavros is prompted to Cut to the chase and play card games immediately, and picks a Pokemon ripoff called FIDUSPAWN. He deals himself a favourable hand and lobs an OOGONIBOMB, a jelly-looking blob, at the HOST PLUSH. The Oogonibomb hatches into a terrifying face-hugger-like monster, which latches onto the plush, then scuttles out of the way in time for a larger monster to explode out of said plush.

BRIGHT: Alternian card games sure are something!

HORSARONI, I CHOOSE YOU!!!!!!

CHEL: Horsaroni devours the fidusucker face-hugger in preparation for battle, and Tavros uses his awesome bestial communion abilities [to] bend the ferocious stallion to [his] whim while Tinkerbull looks on nervously. Tavros succeeds in getting the beast under control, and… gets it and Tinkerbull to take a nap together. Everybody wins.

FAILURE ARTIST: He plans on making Horsaroni have sex in the future. Whoa boy.

CHEL: The prompt tells Tavros to roll up the ramp which leads to the top of his rather high recuperacoon, and to hop in, which he does, followed by much reasonable complaining about how it’ll take an hour for him to change his clothes, plus the four-wheel device rolls back down the ramp without him. Also, it’s noted that his horns make it impossible to get fully inside the cocoon, which makes it hard to get any solid shuteye. So, wait, trolls can breathe while fully submerged in the slime? There’s no elaboration as of yet, but it’s possible Hiveswap will discuss that.

FAILURE ARTIST: This slapstick with a disabled character is unfortunate. Terezi never had to deal with this bullshit.

CHEL: Not to this extent, anyway.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 33

After much cleanup which we thankfully don’t have to read through, he gets back in his chair and picks up his JOUSTING LANCE.

FAILURE ARTIST: We get a look outside of Tavros’ hive as he thinks about his future plans. He lives in a windmill by a cliff and in his yard he has a practice dummy with...is that a pail???

CHEL: Considering trolls’ opinions of pails, I hope it’s a trashcan, but the bucket thing might be a retcon for the sake of humour.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, he hopes to be a CAVALREAPER when he grows up, if he isn’t culled (aka murdered) for his disability. Rather optimistic of him to think there’s a chance he won’t be culled. I think this is when we first find out about Alternian eugenics. Odd that it didn’t come up when we were introduced to Terezi.

BRIGHT: Terezi’s disability doesn’t really impact her ability to function, though. Her smellovision is accurate enough to let her read and she doesn’t have any trouble moving around. Tavros’s disability is clearly an actual disability that hinders him in a lot of ways. Given Alternian society as we’ve seen it so far, Terezi might be fine. Tavros would need assistive measures and that makes him a write-off.

There’s also the matter of personality. Terezi tends to be confident; Tavros generally isn’t. Add in Terezi’s midblood status to Tavros’s lowblood position, and it makes sense for it to come up now.

FAILURE ARTIST: Tavros admires his fairy posters, including one saying “ Pupa Pan” with a silhouette of a winged troll. This is the troll version of Peter Pan and their one also includes “indians”, just they are “weird aliens”.

CHEL: Can’t say I’m too pleased about that, personally.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 33

FAILURE ARTIST: I don’t know if Andrew Hussie read Peter Pan but when I read it it felt very Hussie. Anyway, Tavros keeps his bedroom window open for Pupa Pan and splashes SPECIAL STARDUST on his face. The same substance Gamzee uses? Hmmm.

Andrew Hussie takes a jab at the fanon he decided to ascend:

You have had this interest [in flying] far prior to your accident. Being paralyzed isn't what made you want to be able to fly. That would be dumb and would make no sense. Being paralyzed does sort of make you want to be able to walk, though.

CHEL: Uh… haha? Are we supposed to laugh here, or feel bad, or what?

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?:21

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out in Friendsim that terrestrial flight is verboten, though Hussie probably didn’t think of that until much later.

We cut to the future briefly to see Tavros has robot legs. Because it would be terrible to have a disabled character just remain disabled! /s

CHEL: To be fair, they’re in a world which has the technology to make near-perfect robotic limbs and he wants to be able to walk again. One could argue that having that technology is problematic in terms of it being an easy handwave, but since they have intergalactic spaceships it might seem somewhat weird if they didn’t have robot parts. The existence of prosthetics in a society which kills its disabled as standard is a bit odd, but not impossible if they have whole robots. Though it begs the question where he got the wheelchair.

BRIGHT: Well, it could be that prosthetics aren’t standard, this is just a special situation. He doesn’t get them until after he’s entered the Game, after all.

CHEL: Disturbingly, and perhaps more fittingly for troll society, the legs were fitted after his real ones were removed via chainsaw, apparently sans anaesthetic.

GORE GALORE: 11

BRIGHT: It kind of looks like he got chainsawed through the waist. If that is the case, then a lot of important organs would have been mangled and would need replacing — at least if he was human. We don’t know anything about how troll guts are laid out, but there’s no reason to believe they’re radically different to the human setup.

CHEL: None of the troll gang appear to be medics, either. How is he not dead?

FAILURE ARTIST: The legs were built by an unnamed male character who likes to break as well as make robots.

Occasionally though, he will allow philanthropy to override misanthrobopy.

Misanthrobopy. I didn’t notice that until now.

GA was the one to chainsaw Tavros, with the male character watching in the shadows. That character has the Sagittarius sign and a broken horn. We learn his name later but never how he broke that horn.

BRIGHT: Which is also a point in favour of getting prosthetic limbs being somewhat unusual — Tavros only gets his because an acquaintance with specialised knowledge takes an interest.

FAILURE ARTIST: So, back to the present...of the past. Tavros is being trolled by both Gamzee and someone known as AG. He deals with AG first. With this, we get our first dialogue from Homestuck’s most Homestuck character. AG, or arachnidsGrip, brags about being on the Blue Team and mocks Tavros for being on the team full of 8lind girls and lame 8oys and cranky iiiiiiiim8eciles. Tavros says they’re probably right, but then says he promised someone not to talk to them. This person turns out to be Tavros’ imaginary friend Rufio, the personification of his self-esteem. GA was the one who gave him the advice. While that’s not a bad coping mechanism, he really shouldn’t be telling AG about it. AG complains about GA’s meddling and says GA was just making fun of Tavros with that advice. AG complains about how long it’s taking for the Blue Team to get going. In the end, AG says it will be like old tiiiiiiiimes and gives a winking emoticon.

After that conversation with a frienemy, Tavros raps with his friend-friend Gamzee. Gamzee apologizes for zoning out, but unlike everyone else who talks to him Tavros isn’t angry. Awww…

Tavros shares the good news that they are both on the Red Team, though Tavros says it came from someone he doesn’t want to talk about. Gamzee had already heard and he’s very excited. Tavros does an }:o) emoticon and Gamzee is tickled pink that Tavros “stole his nose”. That might be flirting among trolls. They make plans to “slam” but first Gamzee explains the Game plan. Terezi has connected to Karkat and now Gamzee has to connect to Terezi. However, she’s off in the woods doing something. For now, Gamzee has to get Tavros connected to him. He says something that I’ve seen people point to as a sign he’s bad to the bone.

TC: sO jUsT dOwNlOaD tHiS mOtHeRfUcKeR i'M sEnDiNg YoU sO wE cAn KiCk ThIs BiTcH dOwN tHe StAiRs.

This is probably a callback to Dave getting kicked down the stairs and not a conscious callback on Gamzee’s part. Really, usually when Gamzee says “bitch” it’s just another way of saying “thing”. He’s not kicking anyone down the stairs. Not yet.

Then again, he later says:

TC: JuSt LeT mE sNeAk Up On ThIs BoTtLe Of FaYgO aNd SnAp ItS nEcK lIkE iM a FuCkIn LaUgHsSaSsIn.

So he is a little sinister.

CHEL: Hardly any more so than Terezi the hanging fetishist, though!

BRIGHT: Or the guy who codes viruses that blow up his friends’ computers.

FAILURE ARTIST: After all the foreplay for their rap session, the dialogue ends with:

You both then proceed to have one of the worst rap-offs in the history of paradox space.

Only much later do we see this rap-off. We also find out Gamzee’s feelings towards Tavros. Yet this conversation alone was enough to sail that ship.

We cut to Terezi in a burning woods. This is where we find out what the deal with Terezi’s “family” is. Her lusus is a giant teal egg on an even larger DOOMSDAY SCALE. Inside the egg is a blind dragon. The dragon can communicate telepathically via dreams. It was how Terezi learned to “see” after the accident. This answers some questions while leaving so many unanswered. Like why does Terezi sleep in her street clothes?

CHEL: Balanced on the other side of the scale is a gargantuan skull with troll-like horns and a sort of goat-y shape. We’ll see the kind of creature it comes from later.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi dreams of Prospit, and we see it as she “sees” it: gauzy and throbbing.

Her lusus hatches from the heat, but is immediately killed by a meteor. A sympathetic ally puts it in the kernelsprite and that sympathetic ally is clown boy. So put that on his scorecard.

With the egg hatched, the doomsday device displays 6:12. The arc number for this arc.

CHEL: Karkat’s “wriggling day” is 6/12, which actually makes him a Gemini rather than a Cancer. Guess it’s different for trolls.

FAILURE ARTIST: Finally, we are introduced properly to AA. The one with the inconsistent horns.

Your name is ARADIA MEGIDO.

CHEL: “Aradia” is the name of a “messiah” of witchcraft in Charles Godfrey Leland’s “Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches”, effectively a piece of paganism fanon. “Megido” is derived from Mount Meggido, the place from which the word Armageddon is derived and where the final battle of said event will supposedly occur, and a powerful spell in the video game Shin Megami Tensei. It might also be related to “Meido”, 冥途 めいど, the Japanese equivalent of Purgatory, and “meido”, メイド, meaning maidservant, relevant to her low blood status and later her game class.

You once had a number of INTERESTS, which in time you have LOST INTEREST IN. You seem to recollect once having a fondness for ARCHEOLOGY, though now have trouble recalling this passion. It nonetheless has led you to find your PRESENT CALLING, which came through the discovery of these MYSTIC RUINS on which you presently stand, and which you recently DESECRATED OUT OF BOREDOM. Guiding you to this calling were the VOICES OF THE DEAD, which you have been able to hear since you were young. The voices have become louder as THE GREAT UNDOING approaches. This trend in escalation began after an ACCIDENT involving a CERTAIN KIND OF ROLE PLAYING, which might have been another of your interests once upon a time. It doesn't matter much anymore. The accident resulted in the DEATH OF YOUR LUSUS, which prompted you to leave your home and take up these ruins as residence. On the instruction of your ANCESTORS, you have recovered MYSTERIOUS TECHNOLOGY from the ruins, and convinced a friend to adapt it into a GAME THAT WILL BRING ABOUT THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR CIVILIZATION. And by convinced, you suppose you mean tricked.

CHEL: She chooses to try to take something from her sylladex, but it works on the OUIJA modus, which means she can only take what the spirits allow her to take.

BRIGHT: This has to be the weirdest, most senseless modus yet.

CHEL: They produce a card with the Crosbytop, which she found on a dig a while ago. GA’s trying to contact her.

She's always bugging you. Bugging and fussing and meddling. What's her deal! You guess it's flattering that she wants to talk to you so much though. You're ok with it. You're ok with a lot of things.

She answers, with an “0h n0000000” on seeing GA, who asks if this is “The Night You Blow Everything Up”.

GA: Is There Nothing I Can Do To Change Your Mind AA: n0 AA: 0r yes AA: yes theres n0thing AA: and n0 y0u cant AA: but y0u sh0uldnt pretend as if y0u believe this has anything t0 d0 with the state 0f my mind AA: 0r the decisi0ns it will make 0r has already made GA: Yeah I Guess Not GA: I Thought Id Be Friendly Though GA: And Remind You That You Do In Fact Have A Hand In All The Terrible Things That Are About To Happen GA: Because Thats What Friends Are For GA: And The Fact That What Ensues Will Be Terrible GA: Is An Immutable Fact I Am Stating For The Record GA: And The Fact That We Will Not Be On The Same Team Is Similarly Immutable GA: It Does Not Mean That Teamwork Is What Isnt Taking Place Here AA: s0rry i didnt f0ll0w that GA: Ill Be Here To Help GA: If You Need Me AA: 0k AA: thanks

Honestly, this is giving me shipping ideas which will only make sense once more about trolls has been explained. Pin in that.

BRIGHT: How does GA know it will be terrible?

CHEL: Stay tuned. We’ll find out.

Aradia checks on Sollux and has the conversation we already have seen, which is linked back to instead of copied, thank goodness. Huss seems to have mastered that part of the timeline. Aradia arrives at his hivestem and levitates the Bicyclops, while meteors begin to fall, and AG trolls her. AG is revealed to be female and seen in silhouette; she has a blue Scorpio symbol, one pointed horn, one forked one, and long hair. Remember this character for later.

AG: Do you have Mr. Two Eyes all 8efuddled and flustered in your we8 of lies? AG: Or Mr. Four Eyes? AG: Hmmmmmmmmm. AG: I don't know. Which nickname do you think would 8e suita8ly derogatory in this case Aradia? AA: h0w ab0ut AA: eight eyes AA: minus seven AG: ::::P

FAILURE ARTIST: God, I love Aradia. Though I guess if you’re reading this for the first time you won’t get her jab here until later.

CHEL: Aradia protests that she didn’t trick him. AG says it doesn’t matter, and declares that once the game starts she and Aradia will be the Blue Team co-leaders, only asking afterwards if this is okay with Aradia, who doesn’t care. She tells Aradia she has a present for her, “Just from me. From me alone and no8ody else”, and wants a special team name for just the two of them, which Aradia doesn’t want to bother with.

AG: I just thought it would 8e really fitting. AG: Kind of like a fresh start, you know? AG: I don't know, what are our shared interests? I guess I never really thought a8out this! I guess I'm used to thinking of you as the enemy. There must 8e some overlap in profiles. AG: Come oooooooon, let's 8rainstorm! AA: 0_0 AG: Man, it'll 8e great. We'll 8e unstoppa8le. Surely you must admit it will 8e nice to re8ound from the Team Charge de8acle! AA: i never think ab0ut that anym0re AG: Oh maaaaaaaan, I'm so dum8! Here I am running my mouth and opening up old wounds, while at the very same time trying to make amends! What an idiot.

I hope AG’s fans are not stupid enough to assume she was sincere on that last line, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think that AG thinks she’s being sincere.

CHEL: She asks if Aradia’s “loser” male friend will be on the Blue Team, which Aradia says he isn’t, calls him dead weight (messing up her own quirk in the process, which would usually be “dead w8”), ignores Aradia’s declaration that she didn’t exclude him, and heads off to “give him a hard time” despite Aradia’s protest. From this we can presume said friend is Tavros.

We see AG’s face in the next page; she has blue makeup, one blackened lens in her spectacles, a cyborg arm, and a nasty grin.

FAILURE ARTIST: It kills me that we can’t just say who she is now. I’m sure she’s broken through cultural osmosis. However, instead of an introduction, we go to Sollux and Aradia.

Sollux apologizes for flying off the handle. He says even though he quit as leader, he’ll still play and do his best. In his self-degradation, he says something very odd.

TA: liike 2ome low cla22 guy wiith... whatever color blood ii2 lower on the hiierarchy than miine. TA: what2 wor2e than yellow? TA: fuck thii2 confu2iing ca2te 2y2tem.

You’d think he’d know by now, especially given how important the hierarchy is supposed to be.

CHEL: Especially since the person he’s talking to is not only lower on the hierarchy than him, but also one of his closest friends and (minor spoiler) possibly his love interest. This is where the “colourblind” theory for him comes from.

FAILURE ARTIST: Aradia tells Sollux to come to the window because she’s outside. He complains that he can’t see her and she tells him to look closer. He does so while grumbling about psychics. Aradia snaps her fingers and he falls asleep...in the dangerous mind honey.

CHEL: How does she do that? I don’t think she has mind control abilities, does she? All I remember is her throwing boulders around… did she Force-choke him into unconsciousness?

BRIGHT: Maybe she did it the same way Sollux knocked his bees out.

FAILURE ARTIST: Cut to much later. Meteors are falling furiously and all the teammates except Sollux are in the Medium. Sollux wakes up but with mind honey in his mouth. We find out what mind honey does to trolls like Sollux: it causes him to do an OPTIC BLAST , destroying the roof of his apartment and killing yet another lusus. Which just raises the question of why he let the mind honey flow on his floor.

Now, we are introduced to my Zodiac troll.

Your name is NEPETA LEIJON.

CHEL: Nepeta is the Latin genus name for catnip, and Leijon is the archaic spelling of “lejon”, the Swedish word for lion. It should be pronounced “lay-on”, but Hussie said “pronounce everything in the least affected manner possible, from an American perspective”, so I’ve always mentally heard it as “lee-jon” or possibly “lay-shawn”.

You live in a CAVE that is also a HIVE, but still mostly just a CAVE. You like to engage in FRIENDLY ROLE PLAYING, but not the DANGEROUS KIND. Never the DANGEROUS KIND. It's TOO DANGEROUS! Too many of your good friends have gotten hurt that way. Your daily routine is dangerous enough as it is. You prowl the wilderness for GREAT BEASTS, and stalk them and take them down with nothing but your SHARP CLAWS AND TEETH! You take them back to your cave and EAT THEM, and from time to time, WEAR THEIR PELTS FOR FUN. You like to paint WALL COMICS using blood and soot and ash, depicting EXCITING TALES FROM THE HUNT! And other goofy stories about you and your numerous pals. Your best pal of all is A LITTLE BOSSY, and people wonder why you even bother with him. But someone has to keep him pacified. If not you, then who? Everyone has an important job to do.

So the dangerous kind of roleplaying is more dangerous than taking down wild beasts.

CHEL: Which is already pretty damn dangerous!

You never know when you might encounter some unsuspecting prey. Or when some prey might encounter an unsuspecting you! On Alternia, everything is considered unsuspecting prey by everything else.

FAILURE ARTIST: Also just noticed her “hive” has windows even though it’s a cave and the windows don’t actually seem to open to anything? We never get to see any of her cave outside of this so who knows how it works.

CHEL: Maybe she painted them on?

Her lusus is a big cat, with the double mouths already mentioned in her roleplaying. I still don’t know what evolutionary purpose this serves. However, her trolltag is arsenicCatnip, and the double mouths are depicted as two threes; arsenic’s atomic number is 33. It’s little references and in-jokes like this that keep me loving HS despite its worst parts. I can’t get enough of these things.

Said cat is named POUNCE DE LEON, a reference to the explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, seeker of the Fountain of Youth.

You and she go on adventures together in search of the FOUNTAIN OF CUTE. You ride your sure-pawed mount into the rugged frontier. And sometimes she rides you when she gets tired, which is frequently. It sure will be sad when she dies. But who knows when or how that will happen. We might not even really have the time to find out! Later there was a cave-in.

Note the cave paintings on her walls, which are in red, black, and pale grey, and large black animal corpses in the foreground. It’s not clear if the animals themselves are black or they’re just in silhouette, but they contrast with the lusii, which are all white. These beasts also bleed mammalian red, which Nepeta uses for paint, while the lusii bleed the same colour as their respective troll charges. What precisely the lusii are and how they’re different from a regular animal is never really made clear. They could be separate species, or they could be regular animals psychically or biologically bonded to a troll and metamorphosing because of that. Or Hussie might not have thought it out that far.

Karkat’s trolling Nepeta on her DRAWING TABLET COMPUTER. She wishes she could adapt it to a fetch modus because her own one is frustrating, and answers him. She has to handwrite what she says on Trollian, and surrounds it with doodles of cats.

AC: :33 < *ac perks up curiously* AC: :33 < *she wiggles her rear end a bit and then chases something she s33s bounce into one of karkats shoes* CG: KARKAT CAN'T BELIEVE HE HAS TO SINK THIS LOW. CG: KARKAT CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S ASKING AN AUTISTIC GIRL IN A CAVE TO JOIN HIS TEAM. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 34

Thanks, asshole. I’ve seen fans assume this means Nepeta is literally autistic, and she could be, but either way Karkat is clearly using it as an insult here, not a literal description.

Anyway, Karkat explains to Nepeta what’s going on. He, Terezi, Gamzee, and Tavros are already playing; Tavros needs a server player. GA is lined up for the Red Team, but doesn’t want to connect yet for mysterious reasons, so Nepeta’s the best candidate. Nepeta agrees, but wants to talk to someone else first.

CG: HOW CAN YOU BE BEST FRIENDS WITH THE ONLY GUY ON THE PLANET WHO'S A BIGGER ASSHOLE THAN ME. AC: :33 < hes not so bad! CG: HE'S SCUM. CG: BUT DO WHATEVER YOU'VE GOT TO DO I GUESS. CG: TAVROS IS WAITING.

This seems quite a distance from Nepeta declaring that the guy she needs to talk to “scares her” earlier on. May be a retcon.

Said friend proves to be the blue Sagittarius boy, still in shadow. I think here it’s time to add on a point we brought up but did not count when observing the Pesterchum Trollslum: his handle is centaursTesticle. I remind everyone the trolls are supposed to be thirteen. What a charming child. I guess maybe it’s excusable because he’s not a mammal himself, but still.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 9

He says hi, but becomes frustrated when Nepeta roleplays at him. He types in dark b100, is e%cessively formal, and precedes each line with a D→ emoticon, the significance of which will be explained in a moment.

CT: D --> This is f001ishness upon one hundred thousand prior, equally unsolicited f001ishnesses

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s weird that his first word is “hi”, considering how formal he usually is.

CHEL: Could be because he knows Nepeta well? A concession to her mannerisms?

He expects Nepeta to follow his orders; she stops roleplaying, but complains about him being “so lame!” and never roleplaying with her, even though he will go out of his way to find words with “x” or “loo” in them so he can use his quirk. He tells her off for using foul language at things as mild as “what the hell?” and she apologises.

CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else! CT: D --> Well, green b100d is ok, but it's not great CT: D --> But that's why you're lucky to have me to 100k out for you CT: D --> Because you don't know better, and you can't fight the role the mother had in store for you

This relationship looks rather worrying from a human perspective, I must say. Still, Nepeta seems to be holding her own in the argument, and he’s not physically present so there’s little he can do to actually harm her if things go south.

FAILURE ARTIST: Yeah, early on this relationship looks bad, but this relationship is one of the more popular ones in Homestuck.

CHEL: Did he plan their relationship, or ascend the fanon? Do we know?

FAILURE ARTIST: I would say there wasn’t enough time for Equius/Nepeta to be fanon, giving the quick update rate for this arc, but fandom does work fast.

Nepeta doesn’t seem to be just against the hemospectrum but rather ignorant of it, which is odd considering how important it’s supposed to be. Then again, she does live in a cave.

BRIGHT: Considering how important the hemospectrum is supposed to be, a surprising number of characters don’t understand it or care about it. That’s two out of nine so far. And while the hemospectrum does add a layer of complication, it’s not that complicated. There are only (spoiler) eleven colours in official use, and most readers pick them up pretty quickly. Characters living in a society which violently enforces it should have a working grasp of it, even if they think it’s stupid as all get-out.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 26

CHEL: Nepeta points out he always puts his bow and arrow symbol at the start of lines, which she considers a sign of playfulness and he considers “highly dignified symbols”. Nepeta asks if he’s ever successfully fired a bow, and he refuses to talk about it.

CT: D --> The topic is making me CT: D --> Sweat

He does this a lot. Here it seems to be a sign of feeling awkward and embarrassed, but later on it will be the source of CALL CPA PLEASE points.

They argue; Nepeta calls him a “weirdo and a cr33p!” and says it’s good she’s there to watch out for him in turn because no one else likes him, and he tells her off for eating animals. So trolls aren’t fully carnivorous? Their teeth suggest they should at least lean more strongly that way than humans do, but I guess eating vegetation wouldn’t be impossible for them.

CT: D --> You're wrong about me, Nepeta CT: D --> I do like to play games CT: D --> But they must be e%tremely important games with very high stakes CT: D --> Not the kind played by trans100cent green wigglers who let 100se an e%cremental surge hard in their wiggler-bottom diaperstubs

Nice callback, though I’m kind of surprised he said “bottom” since he draws the line at “hell”. Also, why the hell would trolls have diapers? They’re raised by literal animals, most of which don’t have hands to change them with!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 27

FAILURE ARTIST: What we see later of troll infants, they don’t have bottoms to diaper.

CHEL: Equius informs Nepeta he’s leading the Blue Team; she’s already on the Red Team, but he forbids her to join it and says she must join him.

AC: :33 < *ac rolls her eyes almost as hard as she is rolling around in this really interesting smell* CT: D --> The thought of you fraternizing with and abetting those stink-b100ded h001igans strikes me as scandal beyond measure CT: D --> I'm afraid you're too delicate to withstand that sort of corruption

Didn’t he also forbid her from associating with the people on the Blue Team on the grounds of them being too dangerous to hang out with? There’s no pleasing this guy.

Nepeta tells Tavros she can’t join him. She’s angry at her friend, though she’s still obeying him, but Tavros thinks it’s for the best.

AC: :33 < *ac curls up in tavroses lap* AT: oKAY, *i, AT: fOR THE TIME BEING, aND, AT: fOR THE SAKE OF THIS FANTASY SCENARIO, i PRETEND, AT: tHAT MY CAT ALLERGIES AREN'T THAT BAD,* [...] AT: wELL, AT: iF YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM BEFORE, AT: yOU MIGHT HAVE PLAYED GAMES WITH US BEFORE, AT: aND SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU,

All very well, but notice what’s wrong with this picture?

I am… not particularly happy about more wheelchair slapstick going as far as to cause what I guess could be called either pet death or parent death. Most people in wheelchairs are able to not do that. Wouldn’t he at least notice it going over the bump? The “lol the weak wimpy kid has allergies” thing isn’t marvellous either; Tavros’ supposed wimpiness isn’t a huge deal yet, but it will be.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 35

BRIGHT: Uh...okay, wow. I somehow didn’t notice Tinkerbull dying like that the first time I read this, and WTF, Hussie?

Tavros reminisces about his role-playing days. We get a flashback to him standing in his room pre-paralysis, dressed in a green Peter Pan outfit and wielding a very short lance he calls a ‘daggerlance’. He is preparing to play FLARP, an EXTREME ROLE PLAYING game which can have serious real-world consequences if played without caution. Tavros is part of Team Charge, and they will be playing against Team Scourge.

The other member of Team Charge is Aradia. Tavros starts a chat with her, and Aradia sounds a lot more animated in this one. She actually seems pretty cheerful and enthusiastic! They talk a bit about Tavros’s choice of class, the Boy-Skylark; apparently it’s not very strong early on, but picks up some powerful abilities once you reach a high level. Put a pin in that, it’s not directly relevant but it does echo some Class traits later on.

Tavros’s FLARP grub lays some eggs ...

CHEL: Troll technology is disgusting.

BRIGHT: … which hatch into neon pixellated bats called GAMING FLAPSTRACTIONS. These contain the data used to provide the roleplaying scenario, and will also follow live instructions provided by the ‘clouder’. One member of Team Scourge will act as Tavros’s clouder, creating a challenging scenario for him to adventure through. Aradia will be the clouder for Terezi, the other member of Team Scourge. The flapstractions are tied to the player’s vital attributes, which is what makes this sort of role playing so dangerous. It’s interesting that apart from SGRUB, trolls have video games which physically affect the real world, or at least some of the players.

CHEL: Which brings up a comment we made on an earlier Act; does everyone in John’s version of Earth have sylladexes, and do all their videogames affect reality? We never see.

BRIGHT: A little way into the game, and Tavros has been backed up to the edge of a cliff by a couple of FLARP monsters. His clouder contacts him to ask why he’s not moving; turns out it’s AG. Tavros tells her that the monsters are too strong for the level he’s at. AG responds by mocking him, calling him weak, and urging him to either advance or abscond. Tavros asks her to hold on, and tries to contact Aradia for help, then Terezi.

We get another glimpse of AG! She has a blue sign, has one hooked horn and one with a crescent tip, messy hair, and here is wearing an eyepatch with seven red dots over one eye. She appears to be standing in the field with Tavros, which clearly isn’t possible.

CHEL: Holograms, presumably.

BRIGHT: Tavros can’t get through to either Aradia or Terezi. AG starts messaging him again, telling him to roll the dice. Tavros, entirely sensibly, declines to do so, as he’s run the numbers and the monsters are too strong to beat no matter how well he rolls. AG says that if he won’t move, she’ll make him move.

AT: i THOUGHT, AT: yOU COULDN'T USE POWERS, AT: i MEAN, rEAL LIFE POWERS, nOT GAME ONES, AT: iT'S AGAINST THE RULES, AG: 8ut if you are going to 8reak the rules and refuse to roll, what choice do I have!

Using her psychic powers, she then takes control of his body.

And walks him off the cliff.

AG: Fly, Pupa!!!!!!!! AG: Flyyyyyyyy!

CHEL: This is our introduction to the most controversial character in the whole fandom, and quite possibly one of the most controversial in any fandom. So much as mentioning this girl can start huge flamewars, and there was an entire section of the official Homestuck forum set off for talking about her so it didn’t taint the experience on the other boards. We’ll see more of this behaviour from her later, and discuss the fandom’s opinion of it as we go.

AG types out a long string of mocking laughter, with eight exclamation marks. I believe five is the point Pratchett deemed to be a sign of insanity, what does eight signify? Anyway, Tavros takes out his phone and texts the first person he thinks of; Karkat.

adiosToreador [AT] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] AT: aG JUST JUMPED ME OFF A CLIFF, AT: wITH MY BRAIN, AT: aND, uHH AT: mY LEGS, aLSO, AT: aND NOW, tHEY FEEL, AT: iNVISIBLE, AT: wOW, i'M SURE THERE WAS A BETTER WAY TO SAY THAT, AT: aNYWAY, AT: tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS, AT: tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT, AT: oF ME GETTING HURT, CG: HEY ASSHOLE, STOP PLAYING GAMES FOR GIRLS. carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling adiosToreador [AT]

It’s times like these I wonder if we should have stolen the RP1 spork’s “Why Are We Meant To Like You, Again?” count. Let’s tally up the ones we have…

First off, Karkat, you’re a sexist dick and a bully, and the narrative never calls you out on it, nor do the other characters.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 36

Second, two SLAMMER points, one for the sexism, and one for hanging up on a clearly injured person, when Karkat is supposed to be portrayed as “prickly but caring”, which is not consistent with this even if he doesn’t much like Tavros or know him well at this point.

SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 3

And third, what the hell is the point of the “GAMES FOR GIRLS” comment? Karkat’s phrasing implies that this is a contemptible, weak thing to do. Considering the incredibly dangerous nature of the game, that makes no sense at all. Fandom likes to charitably interpret it as meaning that female trolls are expected to be more violent than the male ones and Karkat’s telling Tavros not to get himself hurt, but that doesn’t work either because in every other situation Tavros is socially punished for not being violent, forthright, and traditionally masculine, and as I said, Karkat’s phrasing and immediate hanging-up on Tavros implies contempt, not concern. If it was meant the way a human boy would put it, what the hell are games for troll boys like?!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 28

One way I’ve played it in fanfic is that female trolls are expected to be the strategisers, while male ones just barge on through, but that’s just my personal idea, not canon.

BRIGHT: Really the only way this could be read as not completely awful is if Karkat thought Tavros was role-playing the injury. But there’s no reason for him to think that; Karkat’s made his lack of interest in it abundantly clear, and we never see Tavros initiate a role-playing chatlog with anyone, even one of the other FLARPers. In fact, all the FLARPers seem to confine their role-playing to the game itself; the only person who role-plays in chatlogs is Nepeta. (And after this, it’s easy to see why CT didn’t want her FLARPing.) So Karkat’s being a real dick here.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s not really any charitable explanation for this. The fandom is just content to prove Karkat wasn’t sexist on human terms.

BRIGHT: Also, this is an impressively coherent summary of events from Tavros. If I’d just walked off a cliff and broken my back, I’m not sure I’d be up to texting anybody, let alone explaining things that clearly. Tavros gets short shrift for being weak, but he’s really pretty tough.

We jump back to Karkat in the Medium, having just finished the conversation with Terezi we saw earlier. AG starts messaging him, and Karkat is really not impressed.

AG: Hey 8rave leader. CG: OH MY GOD, WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME. AG: Can I join your team? CG: YES I'M GLAD YOU ASKED, BECAUSE THERE IS A WIDE OPEN SLOT FOR THE MOST VILE BACKSTABBING SOCIOPATH WHO EVER LIVED. CG: YOU REALLY HELPED ME OUT OF A JAM BY STEPPING FORWARD. AG: Vile 8acksta88ing sociopath? Karkat, did you copy and p8ste that phrase directly from your personal ad descri8ing what you are looking for in a lady? CG: HA HA HA! CG: MORE CAGEY CUTESY BULLSHIT. CG: LIKE I'M NOT UP TO MY LOBE STEM WITH THAT ALREADY HAVING TO DEAL WITH TEREZI. CG: YOU BOTH MUST HAVE BEEN INSUFFERABLE WHEN YOU WERE A TEAM. CG: YOUR OPPONENTS PROBABLY ALL JUST TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE AFTER A FEW MINUTES OF PUTTING UP WITH YOUR FANGY GRINNED DRIVEL. CG: THAT'S PROBABLY HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN WHEN THE SHIT HIT THE THRESHER.

AG continues to mess around and Karkat continues to be adamant about not wanting to be friends with her. He warns her not to use her mind control abilities on his teammates, and finishes up with something that actually seems to hit home.

CG: I'VE GOT THE BETTER SCOURGE SISTER ON MY TEAM AND IF YOU BREAK YOUR TRUCE YOU'LL HAVE TO ANSWER TO HER. CG: THE FUNNY THING IS SHE WAS ALWAYS WAY BETTER THAN YOU EVEN WITHOUT ANY POWERS. CG: YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, I KNOW YOUR WHOLE STORY. CG: YOU WERE ALWAYS JEALOUS SHE COULD MANIPULATE PEOPLE SO WELL WITHOUT RESORTING TO CHEAP MIND TRICKS. CG: HAHA, I CAN TELL THIS BURNS YOU AND I CAN'T EVEN PAW THROUGH YOUR DUMPSTER! CG: CHALK IT UP AS ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY.

It’s interesting that although Karkat is extremely cagey about his blood colour, he identifies himself here as a lowblood. Granted, that’s the most logical conclusion to make -- a highblood would have no reason to conceal their blood caste -- but blood colour wasn’t even being discussed until he brought it up.

Karkat ends the chatlog, and then immediately starts messaging AG again.

AG: Oh, 8ack so soon! Did your thum8 slip on the 8utton???????? AG: I guess you can't get enough of me. AG: ::::) CG: YOU MADE ME DO THAT. CG: AND YOU KNOW IT. AG: You 8n't got nothing on me and you can't prove shit!!!!!!!! AG: Anyway, Karkat, I just wanted to say. AG: <3

...okay, I assume she’s using that in a mocking way, because we never get any other indication that she’s romantically interested in Karkat, but man, that threw me for a moment.

FAILURE ARTIST: AG says she can read Karkat’s mind and it’s implied she made Karkat slip up, but you’d think even with Karkat’s mind being a dumpster she’d still find it impossible to resist finding out his blood color.

CHEL: Impossible to not find it, in fact! It must be pretty prominent in his thoughts if it’s important enough to hide.

BRIGHT: The narration then hops to the blue Sagittarius boy, and...uh.

Wow, those sure are a lot of weirdly sexual posters and dismantled robots.

Let’s not beat about the bush here: Teens are (generally) interested in sex and very good at getting hold of depictions of it. On the other hand...thirteen is kind of on the young end for that. Also, most people don’t display their pornography proudly on their walls, although as I type this I remember that cheesecake pin-ups used to be a thing. Heck, maybe they still are. Either way, this is kind of disturbing.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 10

CHEL: Then again, I was never very close to any teenage boys when I was that age; for all I know, maybe they would stick their porn on their walls if they didn’t have parents to stop them.

I’d like to point out the unfortunate implications in having the narrator sound as disturbed as they do in conjunction with all his posters being of male characters. There are plenty of other reasons to be disturbed, plus his interactions with girls are even more disturbing, but as we proceed we’ll see hints that that possibly was meant to be part of the disturbance. Hussie has a real discomfort with m/m attraction, and it shows more than he meant it to.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 37

Since the trolls aren’t mammals and their anatomy isn’t necessarily anything a mammal would recognise, fandom’s occasionally had some fun with interpreting this as him not realising the posters are so explicit and just having them because he thinks they look cool, but that’s obviously not the intended meaning.

BRIGHT: I think the reader is also meant to be bothered by the posters being furry art. Honestly that part doesn’t bother me, but furries were the butt of a lot of jokes back in 2009 -- and possibly still are, although I haven’t seen any for years.

FAILURE ARTIST: Personally, when I saw this panel, I was peeved that he wasn’t introduced yet. I liked the cut of his jib for displaying such “art”. Of course, there’s also the shiner his lusus sports which may play a part in the narrator’s discomfort.

BRIGHT: The narration is as disturbed as I am, although possibly for different reasons, and promptly switches to a brief glimpse of the last troll we have to meet, who has dark pink goggles, a Pisces sign, and is prodding a cuttlefish with a trident. Before we can learn anything more about her, off we go again!

This time we return to Aradia, who is flying across the countryside atop the severed head of the frog statue. Her hive, when she reaches it, is in ruins and overgrown by vegetation.

You haven't been here since the night of the accident. On that night you found your CALLING. The voices of the dead grew louder, urging you to return to the ruins you discovered not long before. You left so abruptly, you didn't even have time to bury your lusus. But that's fine, because trolls don't typically bury their dead. Leaving bodies to be consumed by wild animals is more customary.

We’ve already seen that role-playing accidents on Alternia can be pretty damn extreme, and given that Aradia has telekinesis it’s not a stretch that property damage could get involved, but this is still very effective build-up to the reveal of What’s Up With Aradia. On my first read-through I was really curious about what had happened, and I still think it holds up well.

Aradia starts up the game and allows her co-leader to enter first, since she always intended to enter second. She then has Nepeta connect to her as her server player, and starts setting up the equipment. Since she doesn’t have a dead lusus to prototype the kernelsprite with, she uses the head of the frog statue instead. The dead have assured her that this is critical for later success.

Compelling your nonplussed server player to perform this task might have proven difficult. Luckily your telekinesis, an ability greatly magnified through your CALLING, would be sufficient to move the massive object, whereas the game cursor likely would not. Your server player simply watched in mystification.

Sprite sorted out, Aradia enters the Medium. Her classpect is MAID OF TIME, and her planet is the LAND OF QUARTZ AND MELODY, which is very pretty. It was important for her to enter second because her client player, presumably AG, has a present for her which can’t be replicated with grist, so they’re going to have to travel through the Gate above their house to get it to her.

Nepeta, meanwhile, is watching in befuddlement, because she can’t see Aradia on the screen...up until Aradia merges with the Frogsprite.

She couldn't see you up until the moment after the sprite's second prototyping. Because you were dead all along.

HOLY SHIT.

The first time I read Homestuck, this reveal blew me away. (Granted, I was a bit confused by all the hopping around between characters and time points. It makes much more sense on the second read.) It probably wasn’t intended as much of a surprise, given the next page…

We are all completely blown away by this stunning revelation.

Fair enough.

[staygoldsunshine]

The Kindling

(A sort of short story I wrote for my Fiction Writing class that I’m thinking of expanding over the winter break. Hope you guys like it!)

    Something is growing on my spine.

    Whatever it is, it’s not a part of me. It burns beneath my skin like an infection, along the uneven segments of bone all fused together by the cords of my nerves and my pained, fragmented thoughts. I’m an oven, heated from within. Steam curls off of my exposed skin and drifts up into the light leaking in through the windows--the pink and blue of neon and the silver glow of the moon. Take a deep breath and try to relax, I tell myself. Panic only makes it sink its claws deeper.

    I lift the back of my loose shirt covering the raised skin that appears so monstrous when I rise to look into the mirror. I twist and crane my neck only to freeze at the sight of how much it has grown in just a week, now glowing like embers through my skin. Soon I won’t be able to hide it with just an oversized jacket anymore. Soon people are going to start asking questions. More questions, that is. They already wonder why I’ve disappeared, why I no longer call back, why I stopped going to classes or band practice or anywhere at all. All the stories I’ve ever heard say that the monster should stay locked away in its cave. How do I explain that to them? How do I tell them that this is all my fault?

    The bottle of pain medicine sits empty on my bedside table, and I heave a deep sigh that sends a puff of steam into the air. My teeth grind inside my mouth as the thing on my spine digs its claws into my muscles and pulls like it’s trying to shape me into something else. I pull back. Stretching, massaging, hot showers, more medicine--they call it chronic fatigue. Only I know the truth, and I’d like to keep it that way for as long as I can. When the monster does come out of its cave, it has to be careful, after all. One wrong move and the torches and pitchforks come out. One wrong move and it loses its head.

    Night air only strengthens it, but this is the only time that I’ll risk leaving my apartment, under the kind hand of the moon when no one looks too close and everyone is a little bit stranger. The rain-slicked pavement reflects streetlights, traffic lights, and bright windows in little patches of gold and green littering the ground as I flee for cover from the slight drizzle. Down the darkened stairway into the tunnels beneath the city, I can feel the thing on my spine shift with every step. The sickly green subway car speeds along, piloting only three passengers that don’t care to look at one another. Instead I study the still-drying graffiti of green flames consuming a giant, monster rat--someone has quite an imagination.

    Three stops, switch lines, two more stops. Get off. Avoid eye contact. It’s like a slow, winding dance with the underground world of brushing bodies who won’t have time to notice one monster among the mix.

    The street above is bustling, even at night, maybe especially at night. Strings of lights criss-cross above the crowd from building to building like manmade constellations, and I slip beneath these cold stars to find the collection of ratty tents--swirling candy cane colors that are faded from sun and rain--where the people laugh a little louder and smile a little wider. Few things make me feel like I’m not just some sort of doomed host to a wriggling, burning parasite, but this place certainly distracts for a little while.

    No one minds the way that I keep my eyes down or my hood up. They’re too busy ogling the performers. Glistening dancers in their jewels and dripping silks are huddled next to the lion that prowls around politely with a fledgling tamer, age four, riding on his back. The fire breathers scatter cinders across the dying, trampled grass, and they skitter across the toes of my shoes like stardust. Warm little flakes of burning snow.

    One of them offers me a suggestive smile as if my curiosity might possibly entail something more, and my eyes flit away like startled birds. Torches and pitchforks, I remind myself. Quickly stepping through the hustle and the jostle of sharp shoulders and pointing fingers, I find myself at the very last tent in the horseshoe-shaped carnival that lives on this little corner of town. The last tent is silent and solemn as sweet, purple smoke curls upwards from it into the night sky.

    My spine burns like stoked coals, and I breathe smoke like the tent that billows in the slight breeze. An exhale of cinders, a deep inhale of that poisonous night air that this thing finds so refreshing even as I choke. My shaking hands pull back the heavy canvas of the tent’s opening. Coughs make ash feathers flutter in my lungs, and a crackling voice calls out, “Enter, child, and shut that infernal opening.”

    The interior of the tent is even more enchanting than its mysterious exterior. The incense burns on a small table only about a foot tall, and a woman of curves and curls has seated herself across several cushions and pillows decked in embroideries and tassels. She looks like she might’ve been a princess of Arabia at one point many, many years ago. Now she looks more like a grandmother--out of sorts, lost in a circus with a few glass jewels on her fingers. “How have you been since we last spoke?”

    My silence is answer enough. She’s the only one who knows about my… ailment. That’s what she likes to call it, and I don’t mind that over the term that I use. Her name is Jasmine, that’s what she likes to call herself, and she tells stories of deserts and thieves and lost treasures hidden beneath the ever-moving sands. Whether she’s really seen any of these things or not, she’s a talented storyteller, and she never picks up the same thread twice. Each one spools out into a vast unknown of wonder and that sweet-smelling smoke that fills up the tent in place of oxygen. She curls one of those golden threads around her finger now and tugs.

    To escape into these stories, even for just a little while, is a welcome relief.

    “They say the prince still haunts that oasis, waiting to spirit away his true love to their castle in the clouds,” Jasmine finishes finally with a sigh. “Isn’t that romantic, child?”

    “Yes,” I say and not without meaning it, but she can see in the way that my hands twist the hem of my shirt that I did not only come for a story this time. “Jasmine… about my ailment.”

    She stops fanning herself with her painted fan for a moment and glances towards me with milky eyes that reflect the low light like the moon winking in at the fraying seams of the tent. “Haven’t you found a way to get rid of it yet?” Jasmine sighs again. She’s a professional at the art of sighing, practically invented it herself. “How terrible for you, my darling.” One of her silken bony hands reaches forward and takes one of mine. “Are you ready now? For what we’ve spoken of before? I know that you were frightened, but…”

    “I’m still not sure.” I can feel the thing inside of me grow defensive, its spines rising up and pressing against my skin. My nails bite down into the palm of the hand Jasmine isn’t holding until the pain subsides, and I sigh, not with the same theatrics as her but with enough frustration to jostle the creature beneath my skin. “But if there’s someone I could talk to, I think I’m ready for that at least.”

    Jasmine dips her hand into one of the silken folds of her robes and draws out a yellowed business card which she places into the palm of my hand. “Go to this address and tell them that I sent you. They handle all sorts of cases like yours.”

    Felix Fitzwilliam’s Second-Hand Horror Shop, the card reads in curling, faded script, with an address listed underneath.

    “All sorts? You mean there are others like me who have experienced this?” I lean forward, a tick too far and the thing on my spine flutters slightly in agitation. I wince and lean back again. “Or something similar?”

    Jasmine nods her silver head. “Yes, of course, child. You’re not the only one who’s had something strange awaken inside of you. It is a danger that many face, and like you, it is one that they try to face alone.” She adds another lump of the strange, golden wax to the burner, and more smoke begins to fill the room, making it hard to see her. “Don’t make the mistake of letting it control you forever. One day, it’s going to get too big to carry around on your back.”

    The smoke burns my eyes now, and the painted fan in Jasmine’s hand flicks open again like the wings of a paper butterfly, curling the smoke with the gentlest movements of her wrist. In another moment, she’s disappeared entirely deeper into the tent, and I’m left with nothing but a business card and a face full of smoke.

    Sage advice from a circus act comes with its nuances, of course.

[hawthornewhisperer]

How about a celebrity AU ! I know it's wrong to ship actual people together but Henry and Anya are adorable so instead how about Geralt and Yennefer as costars in a raunchy tv show going around the world promoting it while beginning to catch feelings for each other 😂

I went a little off prompt but I think you’ll like it anyway, nonny. Also on Ao3.

“Cut,” Tissaia called from behind her bank of screens.  She stood and wiped her hands on her sensible black trousers. “We’ll do the scene with Marco and Alessandro next, and then the closet with Dominic and Maria after lunch.”

Yennefer rose from her seat behind the banquet table and adjusted her dress.  It wasn’t so much a “dress” as “lots of strings of beads arranged in swoops and curtains to imitate a dress” and it was hardly comfortable.  Her only saving grace was that she was only shooting from the waist up today, which meant she could wear sneakers instead of the six inch spike heels her character Maria favored.

Her trailer was, as usual, about five degrees too warm to be fully comfortable.  She sighed, digging a water bottle from her mini fridge, and flopped down on the narrow couch.  A knock sounded at the door and she didn’t even bother to lift her head. “Come in!” she yelled.

Geralt stuck his head in. “Thought you might want to run lines before this afternoon,” he said, holding up the pages.

As this afternoon’s scenes was supposed to be one of the pivotal scenes of the entire season, another rehearsal couldn’t hurt.  Dominic and Maria’s sexual tension had been at a low, rolling boil for two and a half seasons and this episode— while trapped in a closet avoiding an attack by a rival family— the younger son of the Ricci mob was going to finally confess his love for his brother’s wife.

Nothing else would happen in this episode, but Yennefer suspected she was in for several sex scenes with Geralt before the season finale, particularly given The Family’s penchant for raunchy nudity.  She was fine with that in theory— she’d been tits out at least half a dozen times already— but the be honest, the thought of intimate scenes with Geralt made her a little twitchy.

Not because he’d been anything but respectful.  But when she worked with Istredd, her skin didn’t tingle at every chance brush of his fingers the way it did with Geralt.  And that, more than anything, made her nervous.

“Yeah, come on in,” she said, pushing herself up to sit.  She grabbed the afternoon’s scene and leaned back against the couch’s arm, while Geralt perched his considerable bulk on the far end of the couch.  That was another thing about Geralt: he was massive.  He moved easily, like a dancer, but there was no way to hide the fact that working with him in a tiny faux supply closet was going to be like being stuck in a bird cage with a bear.

They started at the top, which was just chatter about the attack and whether or not they’d be safe in the closet.  If it was a full rehearsal she’d be caged in his arms against a wall, but neither of them bothered to even stand. Geralt looked at her, pages hanging loosely between his knees.  “You know, right?” he said softly. “You have to know.”

“Dom, don’t,” Yennefer whispered back, but her knees felt weak even though she was sitting.  Yennefer had been acting since she was eleven— Tissaia had given her first job, even— and never, in all her years of experience, had she had such difficulty telling reality from pretend as she did with Geralt.  He’s just that good of an actor, she told herself.

Geralt frowned and looked back at his lines.  “Should we stand for this? Might be easier if we’re in rough blocking, at least, since the next part involves a lot of, uh, body language.”

He wasn’t wrong, she knew that much, so she stood and leaned against the flimsy wall of her trailer, pages clutched in her fist like a shield even though she didn’t need them at all.  Geralt stood in front of her, but he was a good foot farther away than the scene called for. “Dom, don’t,” she repeated, picking up the scene where they left off.

“Don’t?” he said, a little anger leaking into his voice.  “Do you know what it’s like for me? Seeing you with him, day after day, knowing he’s—” Geralt broke off and looked away.

“Your father will kill you, Dom.  He’ll kill me too. Riccis don’t—”

“Riccis don’t betray the family,” he finished.  Geralt set the papers down on her coffee table and crowded her against the wall. “But what about betraying ourselves? Denying ourselves what we want?” He gently touched a strand of beads on her shoulder, fingertips finding her skin underneath in a delicate caress.

“What we want doesn’t matter. All that matters is the family.”

“Fuck the family,” he said fiercely, cupping her jaw with his massive hand.  Yennefer’s mouth went dry and she met his gaze evenly, her heart pounding so loudly they could probably hear it on set.  “I love you, Maria. I have loved you since I met you, and I’m not going to die for this fucking family without telling you.”

As the script called for, she traced his eyebrow with the tip of her finger, skating it down his cheek and trailing across his upper lip.  Breathing had never been so difficult. Geralt caught her hand with his and pressed it to his mouth, eyes never leaving hers.

This was the end of the scene.  A gunman would burst in and take Maria prisoner, and the episode would end with Dominic preparing to find her.  That was it. They were done with their lines, and Geralt could go back to his trailer and she could press a cold water bottle to her face until the flush that had crawled up her neck three lines ago faded.

But Geralt didn’t let go of her hand and Yennefer didn’t even try to move away.  He laced their fingers together instead, golden eyes questioning, and when she gave a tiny jerk of her head he bent down and sealed their lips together, kissing her hard.

And even though it was a terrible idea to make out with your costar, Yennefer kissed him back.

[nickblaine]

script notes part 2 (nick)

as promised here are my notes on the season 2 scripts i read, still with the heavy Nick bias. if you missed it, you can see my season 1 post here!

btw i did not write up the scenes that are already in the “script to screen” clips - like the ambulance scene, etc - since you can already see those for yourself.

uhh the writers get spicy with the love scenes in this season. felt like an erotic novel at times. i actually read the phrase “stroked his soft penis until it was hard” with my own eyes not once but twice... those table reads must’ve been a real treat 👀

June being rough with Nick wasn’t in the script, that was Lizzie. in the script Nick just kisses June and backs her up against a wall before they bone all day.

June told Nick all about the letters and how she got them during her time at the Globe, so he knows what they are when he catches her burning them later. (this wasn’t a cut scene, it’s just mentioned during said burning) also they apparently got really used to being a normal couple during that time, and going back to sneaking around is one of the hardest things June has to adjust to when she returns to the Waterfords.

June seeing Nick in the kitchen for the first time after she was caught was “like watching her life preserver float away”

when Aunt Lydia shows up at the Waterford house and makes comments about the baby’s father while Nick tries super hard to look casual - this is when Fred realizes the baby is actually his

Nick is worried sick about June “becoming Offred” again. when he asks Serena Joy to get June a different kind of doctor, he was acting entirely on his anxiety. this is what sets off Serena Joy’s jealousy aaaand...

Nick’s wedding was entirely Serena Joy’s idea. she just manipulates Fred into setting it in motion.

the wedding really did break Nick. him saying he’ll have a child of his own someday was not a dig at Fred, it was him “showing his belly to the alpha” and disclaiming their child 😭

June still thinks about Nick a lot. the scene where she walks into the kitchen and finds Fred grumpily eating a snack, she actually went in there hoping it was Nick.

Nick told June that he loves her because it’s why he can’t consummate his marriage (besides, of course, being hella grossed out by it) so it wasn’t just a random declaration with bad timing, it was basically “i can’t do this BECAUSE i love you”

during the consummation, good old “hole in the sheet” was not present in the script. also Nick thinks about June and touches himself before the actual act (see my first note 😳) then just pretty much closes his eyes and does it. he feels sick the whole time. i was trying not to scream in the library while reading this

there was nothing fishy about the weird scene with Pryce where Nick requests a transfer. it’s mostly dialogue again. but Nick was described as “shattered” (note that this is a word usually only used to describe June) by the consummation so he was apparently just panicking. this season put heavy emphasis on the breaking of Nick.

also the red center explosion was written from Nick’s perspective. he’s standing with the other drivers and about to light a cigarette when boom.

the loss of Pryce affected Nick because he saw him as “an ally and protector” (i feel like protector is an interesting choice of words)

June and Nick’s kiss at the hospital was mostly dialogue. all the touching and Nick wiping away her tears was Max and Lizzie.

June and Nick holding hands in 2x08 was also unscripted

Nick returns to his apartment stressing hard about June going to Fred’s office (where Serena Joy gets beaten) when Eden jumps him about the curtains

when Eden finds the letters and Nick gets pissed - “Nick assumes the role of patriarch with frightening ease” but he later gets mad at himself for it

the script does not clarify whether or not Eden read the letters so it must be irrelevant. this scene only brings the focus on Nick feeling overwhelmed and trapped in his own house.

when Nick is about to leave for Canada, it says he stays cold with Eden because he has not forgiven himself for scolding her

with all the Eden scenes there is a lot of “Nick doesn’t know what to say; chooses silence” going on

when Nick meets Luke - the only thing different from the “script to screen” clip is that when Nick tells Luke he’s just a driver, he pauses and adds that he lives above the garage with his wife. this is why Luke isn’t suspicious of his relationship with June.

Nick and June’s reunion after Canada was apparently the first time they had touched in months

June was unable to process the news about Luke, and Nick was “hit by the strength of this woman” gosh darniT

when he says “i love you” for the second time, June doesn’t respond because “it’s all too complicated to put into words”

Eden’s breakdown after kissing Isaac is described as a “teenage temper tantrum” and Nick was really sad for her but also 100% over his life at the moment 😬

when Nick is sitting alone flicking his lighter, he’s thinking about how he could’ve become a father that day 😭

Nick tearing up during the June/Hannah reunion was not in the script

Nick holds and comforts June as Hannah is leaving with the Martha, before Hannah runs back to her. i was surprised by this as there were still Guardians present. he also runs to her and drops to his knees in the snow to hold her again after Hannah is gone.

there is no mention of Nick in the script during the birth of their child. June is really worried for him at the beginning of this episode, but that’s it.

in the church when June starts leaking milk at the sound of Holly crying, Nick is “amazed and moved” by it while Fred is “repelled” because he’s trash

Holly is referred to only as Nichole from this point on and i really Hate it

in the Hawaii scene, Nick’s line is actually “the baby is so beautiful” but Max says “our baby” in the final cut 😭 bless you Max

Nick walked away from June’s comfort after Eden’s execution because he knew if he opened up to her he would break down

there was a cut scene where he goes back to his empty apartment and really does break down

when Rita and June are going through Eden’s belongings, there was a part where Nick is bringing the stuff in and gets sad looking at it. June holds his hand and finally gets to comfort him, right in front of Rita who’s just like “we been knew”

the “your girlfriend is a badass” scene was mostly dialogue. again, all the touching was Max and Lizzie.

the scene when Nick holds Holly is described in the script as “a real family portrait” to juxtapose Fred and Serena Joy’s family portrait 😭

June saying “i love you” to Nick was completely genuine, nothing in the script implies otherwise. Nick is described as speechless. this scene is written like a sort of happy ending for Nick and June in season 2, and mirrors the pregnancy scene in season 1.

Nick was not aware that June may escape in the last episode, but when he looked up at the house he had a gut feeling that she was going to do it.

some other random things i took note of:

when June is going through newspaper clippings at the Globe, there’s so much info about Gilead being dumped here. she listens to recordings on a tape and the script describes everything she is finding in detail. i was running out of time at this point so i’ll need to go back and take notes on this scene specifically because it’s super interesting.

during the false labor scene when Fred is entertaining commanders in his office, there is heavy emphasis on Commander Horace having a baby with his wife and the fact that he “hopes to make all commanders like Fred obsolete” so i think this may be revisited in season 3

Serena Joy was absolutely VILE during the 2x10 rape scene. even Fred feels guilt immediately afterwards and can recognize that June is a person. but Serena Joy was only upset that it was more difficult than she expected. June’s crying makes Serena realize she “might actually be a terrible person” which makes her feel weak, and the weakness makes her angry. the script goes on to say that she hates June for fighting back and making it harder than it needed to be. she even holds June down by her neck at some point. remind me again why anyone is stanning for a Serena Joy redemption??

also despite Serena Joy being complete rotten garbage, after June tells Emily “call her Nichole” she actually goes on to say “tell her about Serena, that she loved her” (instead of “tell her i love her”) because the writers apparently had amnesia while making season 2

after reading all these scripts my conclusion is that Nick/June appears to be endgame. it’s definitely NOT a lustful tryst, or a convenient affair. their whole story reads like an epic romance - season 1 especially - and Max and Lizzie added SO much depth and chemistry to their interactions when they didn’t have to. i can tell that the writers put real effort into shaping Nick into the ideal love interest for someone in June’s position, while Luke is more of an afterthought. they wouldn’t do all that if June was meant to give up Nick and go back to Luke in the end.

i think in the final cut of the show they tried to scale back the romantic aspects and put more focus on survival, but it’s still real. and yeah, the main reason i did this is because people are prone to interpreting Nick’s character wrong, even though Max is great at getting these nuances across. he shouldn’t be dismissed as a non-victim just because he happens to be a Guardian.

also, since these posts are picking up steam, if anyone has questions about something specific that i may not have mentioned, i’ll answer while the scripts are still fresh in my mind! i’ll be returning to the library at some point as well, so if there’s something you want me to look up, i will take note.

[ohrosalinds]

katherine mcnamara. genderfluid. they/them.  ／  rosalind cox just pulled up blasting fly by hilary duff — that song is so them! you know, for a twenty-four year old singer & actor, i’ve heard they’re really -capricious, but that they make up for it by being so +gregarious. if i had to choose three things to describe them, i’d probably say plaid shirts open with a white shirt underneath, thrift shop knick knacks, the smell of cinnamon, and childhood stardom. here’s to hoping they don’t cause too much trouble! ( vc: hilary duff, bridgit mendler & ana golja )

rosalind’s basically the same as they were the last time i played them, but i’ve edited a couple of things.  so here’s their new intro u know the drill like this to plot w them.  

rosalind’s 24, their birthday just passed at the beginning of the month.  

rosalind was born to laurel whittmore-cox on august fifth during a summer rainstorm.  rosalind’s father died months before their birth and they still to this day do not know much about him.  but they never minded.  their mom, and their maternal grandfather gus were more than enough.  

rosalind was “discovered” at the age of two.  they were at their mother’s office ( laurel’s a producer for movies & tv shows ) and it started a career for the redheaded baby.  mostly print ads for a while, a couple of tv shows and movies but nothing big.  that is until rosalind was nine years old and was cast as the titular role in disney’s lizzie mcguire.  and they dyed their hair blonde for the role. 

honestly, it was a dream.  rosalind’s mother was an executive producer and rosalind really loved playing lizzie.  it was her favorite thing.  she was excited to go to work every day.  her friends were great.  she loved her tv family.  and it was fun playing a role that really felt at home, as she was going through similar things as lizzie at the time of the show.  since rosalind was in middle school at the time when lizzie was airing.  

when rosalind was eleven years old ( and four months, not that that’s a needed detail ) they were going through this period of discovery.  figuring out who she wanted to be, as lizzie’s final season was filming.  they had just found music as an outlet and were working on writing and coming up with their own things, hoping to release something after lizzie ended.  

during this time rosalind read something and was watching a lot of television and something struck the blonde.  following research and time of discovery, rosalind found out about the term genderfluid.  and after reading about it and learning more.  it was like a lightbulb moment and they were like “this is it.  that’s me.”  and they decided to start using they/them pronouns because it felt right. 

rosalind told their family over dinner one night and while both laurel and gus were confused, they adjusted well.  it took laurel until rosalind was seventeen years old to finally not use “she/her” accidentally.  

but rosalind had this whole show riding on their shoulders and they just knew that this coming out was not going to be good.  people would talk and things would not end well for them, it could ruin the end of the series.  it was going to be a scandal, because it went against what the producers and execs wanted for their show’s star.  and, of course, lizzie was one of the number one shows on children’s programming right then too.  while everything was going on, still working on the final season, the problem was also that rosalind didn’t want to not use their pronouns because it’s who they are.  

so rosalind came out to the cast and the crew, to people whom they considered family.  it was a slow thing, not a big announcement, and people were mostly accepting.  by the end of the series filming, most of the people they worked with every day had adjusted to using the proper pronouns most of the time.   

rosalind thought they were finally free of the station and the pushy execs who only wanted their agenda pushed forward, other than working still with their record label for this music they had been creating.  but, as luck would have it, the producers and executives had gotten together to bring about a feature film for the show.  

and rosalind couldn’t say no, lizzie was still very much a part of who they were.  and getting to work with the people again ( even so soon after saying goodbye ) it was something they wanted to do.  

so after the small “break”, almost thirteen year old rosalind went off to italy to film this movie.  ( fact: they turned 13 while filming in italy ).

and while they were there with the cast and crew and people who loved and supported them, someone back home leaked their gender pronouns and caused a big stink.  

executives flew in when they were almost finished with filming and it was a big to do.  rosalind was scheduled to go on a tour after the film finished filming since their album was almost completed.  but the executives were nervous about what everything would be.  it was a lot of meetings and rosalind had to deal with the pressure of filming the movie and worrying about their own future and if the film they, and everyone else, worked so hard on would be released.  

the company did what they do best and decided that after the movie, rosalind should go on tour for their music right away.  so rosalind was rushed to a local studio to finish the final touches of the album, which was released before the film had finished.  

despite the immense pressure, rosalind was happy.  they were doing what they loved, writing music, acting, and singing.  

of course, going on a big tour meant rules and guidelines from the corporation.  a lot of them restricting what rosalind could say and talk about in interviews, which they had done before, but never to this same degree. now rosalind was completely restricted.  in fact, they had to read from a script and they had a personal handler from the company with them at all times. 

it didn’t help that they were touring for music on top of doing press for the lizzie film.  

it should have been the time of their life.  it really should have, but alas.  it was a time where rosalind was sleeping less and less every night and working on finding themself in the little spare time they had.  

it was building up a lot, taking a toll on the young teen.  

rosalind’s biggest personal problem with the press was that everyone who interviewed them was using she/her pronouns and completely ignoring the fact they’d even stated a preference for using they/them.  

it led to them having a bit of a …. MELTDOWN during an interview when they were asked a pretty terrible question.

footage went viral on tmz and mtv of rosalind pulling off their microphone in the middle of an interview, irate and yelling at who people later found out was their disney appointed handler,  “i’m sick of using the wrong pronouns for this bullshit! it’s not fair!”

the footage can still be found on multiple websites, and people tend to talk about it a lot still.  

the next thing they knew, the second half of the tour was cancelled, “creative differences” had been cited.  however, rosalind was still under contract with the record label, and even though they were basically blacklisted from working for quite some time, rosalind had to work on new music for a company that didn’t want them.  

rosalind released a second album soon after the end of the tour.  once their duties in the contract were finished and all obligations filled--rosalind left the company and went to “normal life”.  

the teen -- a redhead now, the blonde hair finally gone ( people called it shedding the disney baggage ) -- left los angeles to live with their grandpa gus outside of boston.  they maintained a job working at gus’ thrift/antique shop the little things.  and did their best to maintain a regular teenage existence.  which is hard when you spent your childhood on film.  

for a while, rosalind did a youtube channel in their later high school years.  sometimes they still post, but it’s sporadic if anything.  they used to do a lot of q&a videos.  they would often talk about working on music and talking about their gender identity and sexuality ( they’re pansexual ).  they wanted to have a voice for themselves, and doing something like that was the best way to do that. 

with everything, rosalind kept from saying anything outwardly bad about their old parent company.  people never understood why--when it was clear that they had been terribly unhappy and troubled at the old company.  

recently, rosalind has opened up about it.  they experienced a lot of wrongdoings from the company in their childhood, given the company’s outright display of their gender identity and how it didn’t fit with the image.  but rosalind still wished nothing but the best for the people whom they’d worked with.  there was nothing that the cast & crew had done wrong to them.  the people with whom they spent so many hours of their formative years were nothing but excellent and kind and hardworking people.  

they’re a people person, loving to be around other people.  but they’re also always a bit nervous about big crowds.  idk what it is.  one on one they’re amazing and chatty, but crowds make them nervous?  but stage stuff is wonderful? they can definitely hold themselves in a crowd or captivate a room.  

they’ve done a handful of made for television movies in the recent years.  recently they’ve released new music after a long period of nothing.  they did an extended play belong and a full length album then & now.  ( rosalind’s early music is canon hilary duff ie metamorphasis and hilary, which for rp purposes is called rosalind )  

rosalind is currently labelless.  they haven’t been with a parent label since everything at their old one blew up.  

they have a fear of being controlled by any company if they were to work for a specific label again, so they haven’t cared to look for one.  

maybe they’ll tour again in the future?? who knows.  

rosalind was recently cast to play DAPHNE BLAKE in an upcoming live action scooby doo television series.  

[accio-spaceman]

VORTEX Magazine - Issue 87

May 2016)

Download for FREE on the Big Finish website

Time For Ten

Kenny Smith goes behind the scenes on Big Finish’s most high-profile release yet.

[Above: David Tennant. Text reads Time For Ten - Kenny Smith goes behind the scenes on Big Finish’s most high-profile release yet.]

Let’s be honest – we’ve all been wanting David Tennant to play the Doctor for Big Finish since, well, the first day he got the job. Newspapers at the time of his casting as the Tenth Doctor made mention of the fact he’d already worked on the Doctor Who audios alongside Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

(Full Article Under Cut)

Of course, Big Finish have wanted him to return to the part and bring the Tenth Doctor back to life on audio.

And executive producer Nicholas Briggs – a friend of David’s for years – reveals the man himself has been just as keen as everyone else to get back into the studio with Big Finish.

Nick says: “David and I had a conversation about his doing Big Finish long, long before we got a licence to do plays based in his era. He actually, light-heartedly, encouraged me to go out and get the licence. At one stage, Michael Stevens and I had plans for Big Finish and Audiogo to do a coproduction of audio drama featuring the Tenth Doctor. But David’s schedule and Audiogo’s demise meant that plan didn’t materialise. But when we finally got the licence, I did chat to David on the phone. He eventually came up with the idea of a special, three-CD release.”

Line producer David Richardson adds: “The pitch for the Big Finish/ AudioGO co-production still exists – although none of the stories made it into this collection. The plan back then was to have episodes with a running theme, one that would climax with a big reveal and the return of a character from the Tenth Doctor era – but when we came to do this set of the Doctor and Donna stories, it was felt that it was best to go down the route of individual, unconnected episodes.”

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little.

 This month sees the eagerly anticipated return of David, alongside Catherine Tate as everyone’s favourite temp from Chiswick, Donna Noble.

However, the process of getting them back together hasn’t been an easy one.

Big Finish executive producer and company chairman Jason Haigh-Ellery says: “We’ve had a lot of support in getting series based around the New Legacy Doctors. When the time was right, the BBC gave us the rights and helped us to get these productions up and running as soon as possible.

“We’re really pleased to have got David and Catherine back together.

“I first did Big Finish with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred many years ago, certainly before Doctor Who was as central a part of my life as it has become since.”

– David Tennant

“Someone said to me, ‘Why did you announce John Hurt and David Tennant just a few weeks apart?’ The thing is, it took about two weeks to sort John out and get him into studio. With David and Catherine, it took a year – and you don’t want to announce anything until you have it recorded.

“It wasn’t in any way planned to announce them as closely together as we did, it just took us a year to sort out dates when we could get David and Catherine in studio together again.

“It was very important to both of them that they were there, acting together, so they could get that old feeling going again.

“A lot of people have said that David and Catherine’s relationship on-screen was some of the best stuff in 21st century Doctor Who, as a favourite combination of Doctor and companion. Seeing them work together, you can tell it’s obvious the two of them love working together and enjoy it.

“It was well worth waiting a year for, to have them together.”

Nick continues: “Once the BBC accepted the proposal, David Richardson and script editor Matt Fitton started working on story ideas, and kept me informed all along the way. It looked like we might get David and Catherine into studio fairly imminently then, so the scripts were worked on quite quickly. Then, when they were ready and tentative studio bookings made, David and Catherine – very busy people! – suddenly became unavailable. So we had to wait quite a while. So it’s true to say those scripts were then waiting for the final bookings to be made. So that’s why, when the information was leaked on the internet, we couldn’t comment, because we weren’t one hundred per cent sure it was actually going to happen. We had everything crossed!

David Richardson adds: “We certainly began story lining back in the summer of 2014, and the scripts were all signed off by May 2015. So they sat on the shelf for several months before we were able to get David and Catherine together in October.”

[Above David Tennant and Catherine Tate.]

When it was revealed in October last year that David Tennant was to play the Doctor for Big Finish, it marked his return to the Moat Studios after an absence of a decade.

Speaking to producer David Richardson, David Tennant recalls: “I first did Big Finish with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred many years ago, certainly before Doctor Who was as central a part of my life as it has become since.

“I was always keen to come and play. I did a few different characters, one with Colin Baker, one with David Warner and some Dalek stuff with Nick Briggs. It was always something I really enjoyed.

“It was a lovely little job when it came along, so it’s nice to return to that because doing audio stuff is always really good fun.

“There’s an immediacy to it – you turn up and haven’t learned the lines – you prepare a little but basically you are flying by the seat of your pants, to a certain extent, and if you have got lots of good actors who inspire you and make it good fun, it’s really not a bad way to spend a day.

“It’s quite tiring and it’s quite intensive because you do a story in a day, faster than you work on Radio 4, but there’s such an energy to this stuff, you can’t help but be barrelled along by it. It took about two weeks to do a show on TV!”

Jason Haigh-Ellery was particularly delighted to welcome David back into the Big Finish family.

He says: “You know what, it didn’t feel like David had been away for a decade. That’s just unbelievable. When David came back it felt he’d only been away for a year or so, it really didn’t feel like it had been 10 years.

“As ever, David was lovely to everybody, and he slotted right back in. “David has an amazing memory and he remembers everyone’s name. He just walked in and went around, saying hello to everybody. He was wonderful.

“It’s great having him back, and I hope we will do more with him.”

Being back as the Doctor has been a joy for David, but he admits it was a bit of a worry to start with.

He says: “It’s been really good fun. I was a bit nervous about whether I would slip into it with ease, or would it be a bit of a stretch, but it really felt like returning to a comfy pair of trousers, rather than a scratchy vest.

“It’s all quite high energy, the character, but once you key into it, it always makes sense.

“That was always the key to it, it was very tiring to do, but they’ve also been invigorating. It has its own momentum, I think.

“I’d always used the script as my springboard, really, from what Russell T Davies and the other writers wrote and that’s what I’ve continued to do here. You take what’s on the page and use it as your starting point.

“If you come at a character like this with pre-conceived notions, that you might play him like this or that, the danger is you can be fighting the actual story and the script – the whole thing has got to evolve as one piece.”

David was particularly pleased to be reunited with Catherine Tate – with whom he has also worked on Comic Relief, Much Ado About Nothing and Never Mind The Buzzcocks and the recent Shakespeare Live – as they have a firm established friendship.

He says: “I think Catherine and I always got on, right from the moment she came to do the tiny bit at the end of Doomsday. She came down and shot the cliffhanger for series two. It took all of half-an-hour and from that moment, we got on – and always have done. That’s something we can hopefully bring to the characters.

“We’ve worked together in various places and in various ways and it’s something we enjoy doing. It’s just always nice to see her and it’s nice to play.”

“I think Catherine and I always got on, right from the moment she came to do the tiny bit at the end of Doomsday.”

– David Tennant

For the Big Finish production team, there was a huge sense of relief when they finally got their leading man and woman into studio after months of planning.

Nick says: “There was a great sense of occasion. And it was wonderful to hear David and Catherine working together. I actually thought Catherine’s performance was slightly different to her performance on TV. She seemed far more restrained than I expected her to be.

“But she’s a very shrewd actress, and she knew just how to pitch it when acting so close to a microphone.

“The camaraderie existed the moment people arrived at the studio, that people were familiar with each other.”

– David Richardson

[Above Left to right: Beth Chalmers, Blake Ritson, Alice Krige, and Alan Cox]

“I think what she’s done for us is rather beautiful and often very moving in all sorts of unexpected ways.

“I’ve run out of words to describe how brilliant David is. He’s a lovely chap. Very easygoing and fun to work with and… well, he just delivers! It’s such a joy to behold.”

David Richardson adds: “In the months running up to the recording, I’d got myself in a terrible state of stress. “It was clear every step of the way how momentous these episodes would be, and I felt the pressure that they had to be as good as they possibly could be, and that David and Catherine should have as great a time as they possibly could recording it.

“Of course, I needn’t have worried. For two huge, international stars they are very laid back and approachable people. It was lovely to sit and chat with David in the green room, and to hear him say he had bought our Blake’s 7 audios and enjoyed them!

“Nick let me cast all the plays, and I was very careful to hire people that we knew were accomplished actors and fun to be around, but also to have some people who David and Catherine would know and feel comfortable working with. So it was great to have Niky Wardley, who was one of the mainstays of The Catherine Tate Show. Alex Lowe and Alan Cox knew both David and Catherine. Dan Starkey had worked with them on the TV series… It meant the cameraderie existed the moment people arrived at the studio, that people were familiar with each other.

“Oh, and I cast Alice Krige because she really is one of my favourite actors, and one of my favourite people to be with at the studio. I’ve worked with Alice three times now, and we just sit and have the most extraordinary conversations about life. She’s wonderful.”

The pair found there to be so many highlights over the three studio days.

Nick pauses, before saying: “There are so many. But I think my personal highlight was when Catherine found so many poignant moments in Death and The Queen. I had, rather unfairly, pigeon-holed it as pure knockabout comedy. But Catherine saw past that and at one point brought a tear to my eye.”

David admits: “The moment I’ll always remember is recording the very first scene. David and Catherine threw themselves into it like they’d never been away. I was in the control room, and Matt Fitton was sitting on the sofa and we just turned to each other and grinned the biggest grins… I love all three scripts – Technophobia is just right for a Tenth Doctor opening story. Time Reaver is wildly imaginative but also quite personal and dramatic too. And Death and the Queen is bonkers and touching and brilliant.”

David Tennant adds: “I think the three scripts, like the TV show, are very individual in themselves.

“They are very different types of stories and they each had quite unique concepts to them, whether it’s the tone or the entire story.

“The first one is a much more recognisable world, with the conceit of it. You expect it to be one type of story but it’s another. It’s very clever. I think the third is quite an unusual world. Like the TV show at its best, they are fun, new ways of telling the same type of stories.”

[Above Cover for “Technophobia” by Matt Fitton, featuring a banner that reads “BBC Doctor Who - David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Technophobia by Matt Fitton, featuring Rachael Stirling and Niky Wardley”, and a photo of David Tennant. Background features the Big Finish logo, text that reads “Brand New Adventures - Full Cast Audio Drama” and photos of mobile phones, a Koggnossenti (the story’s antagonists), Catherine Tate, and David Tennant.]

Technophobia is very much a story in the mould of a Doctor Who television episode from the Russell T Davies era.

Set in the present day, it features a menace from an area where people wouldn’t expect it to come.

David Tennant says: “What I love about the first story is it’s quite a recognisable, traditional Doctor Who set-up, where it would seem that the machines are taking over – and that’s the kind of thing we’ve seen before – and there’s a brilliant twist.

“It’s a wonderful and rather chilling idea. It’s not an idea I’ve come across in Doctor Who before.”

Joining the cast is Niky Wardley playing Bex. Niky is no stranger to Big Finish, after appearing as the Eighth Doctor’s companion Tamsin Drew.

She tells Vortex: “What a treat to work with Catherine and David on Big Finish. David Richardson had asked me to be in it but I had no idea who else was in it until I saw the cast list a few days before so it was the best surprise!

“I was lucky enough to be recording with them on their first day, so to see them walk into their booths and then voice the Doctor and Donna again, after such a hiatus, was incredible.

“They bounced back to life straight away such is their amazing chemistry. David’s energy as the Doctor is so affecting, he sweeps you along with him and Catherine’s genius with comedy makes it just the perfect partnership. It was thrilling to be a part of it.”

 [Above Cover for “Time Reaver” by Jenny T Colgan, featuring a banner that reads “BBC Doctor Who - David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Time Reaver by Jenny T Colgan, featuring Sabrina Bartlett, Terry Molloy, and Dan Starkey”, and a photo of David Tennant. Background features the Big Finish logo, text that reads “Brand New Adventures - Full Cast Audio Drama” and photos of lasers, the story’s antagonist, Gully, Catherine Tate, and David Tennant.]

[Above Left to right: John Banks, Dan Starkey, Alex Lowe, Sabrina Bartlett, and Terry Malloy.]

Time Reaver takes the Doctor and Donna back out into space.

David Tennant enjoyed the story, saying: “It’s nice to have a big, proper sci-fi story on a big alien world, but as with the other stories we’ve done, we kind of think it’s going to be one type of story, about gun runners or this terrible weapon that’s going to destroy everything, and actually it’s even more interesting than that.

“It’s about a civilisation that doesn’t quite operate on the same moral framework as everyone else and how that can be confused when they move out into the stars, and there’s some lovely character stuff going on there as well.”

In the guest cast is Dan Starkey, playing Dorn. These days he’s best known to Doctor Who fans as Strax from the Paternoster Gang, alongside the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, but he was delighted to work with the leading pair – for a very nostalgic reason.

He reveals: “It was a great day. David and Catherine were there at the very start of my ‘professional’ Doctor Who career, when I joined them in series four for The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky, so it was nice to come back to them again, now Big Finish are doing new series Who.

“Most actors enjoy radio because it’s just good fun. We get the work done, and we can have a laugh with it. It’s always good being in the green room at the Moat then having a great lunch – and with David and Catherine around, it was great fun. You can tell they really get on.

“I very much enjoyed that period of the show, with the Tenth Doctor and Donna. It’s very strange now, thinking back to how much time has passed since then.

“I loved the way the Doctor and Donna were just great mates, going around, solving problems, and at that point, it felt like Doctor Who was really back and had taken over television. It was a great time to be involved in it and get on the bandwagon!

“Not having to sit in the make-up chair for three hours is something I always appreciate!

“It’s a great script by Jenny Colgan, that really captures that breathless rush that was there in the series four stories. You can really picture the bright colours, and there’s lots of pathos as well. It’s got that tension, which is really familiar as well.”

Another guest star in Time Reaver is another man who has spent most of his TV Doctor Who career behind a mask. Terry Molloy plays Rone in this story, but is best remembered for playing Davros against Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy’s Time Lords.

Terry recalls: “It was lovely to be at the microphone with David again, as we had previously worked together back in the 90s on a radio version of Edward Bond’s play The Sea. In Time Reaver, the studio fizzed with the energy and pace he always brings to the Doctor, and of course the interplay between him and Catherine Tate was fast, furious and very funny!”

 “It was a great day. David and Catherine were there at the very start of my ‘Professional’ Doctor Who career.”

– Dan Starkey

[Above Cover for “Death and the Queen” by James Goss, featuring a banner that reads “BBC Doctor Who - David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Death And The Queen by James Goss, featuring Alice Krige, Alan Cox, and Blake Ritson”, and a photo of David Tennant. Background features the Big Finish logo, text that reads “Brand New Adventures - Full Cast Audio Drama” and photos of strom clouds, a skull wearing a black hood, Catherine Tate, and David Tennant.]

Rounding off this first trilogy is Death and the Queen.

David Tennant was delighted with the script: “Death and the Queen is kind of like a twisted fairytale. It’s got some slightly deconstructed elements which make it the most broadly funny, the most broadly comic, of the three. That always works for the Doctor and Donna as a pairing.

“It also goes to some quite dark, quite unusual places and you also get to see Donna at her best. She struggles with finally getting her fairytale wedding, and nothing quite works out as she would imagine.”

Joining the guest cast is Beth Chalmers as Hortense.

She grins: “I’ve now worked with every single one of the Big Finish Doctors – I’ve worked with the others to a greater or lesser degree over the years, and in the last year, I’ve now added John Hurt and David Tennant – which is pretty cool.

“It was a bit cloak and dagger being in this one, as I was only told about it a couple of weeks before we went into the studio. I think I was doing one of the John Hurt episodes, when David Richardson asked me what I had coming up, and I asked him, ‘Why?’ He told me it was something they were keeping very, very quiet and told me it was these two, David and Catherine.

“Catherine Tate is a real treat to work with, but David Tennant is just so classy – he’s amazing. It’s fantastic to work with great actors and he’s such a brilliant guy too. I’ve worked with his wife Georgia before and you hear such lovely things about him from other people who have worked with him – and it’s all true. David’s got a kind of left-field, zany madness to him – he’s brilliant.

“I was really thrilled and knew there weren’t that many being made, so it was amazing to be one of the few actors to be asked.”

Beth found herself having to work hard on her character. “This story is a bit like a period drama, with a medieval castle. I did most of my scenes with Catherine Tate, who was speaking in her modern way with her modern rhythms, but I had to use a period voice. It’s hard to keep that going when she’s being funny, quippy, cool and modern, while I had to stick with the medieval voice.

“But when you compare the two voices, it makes her even more funny.

“It was a great story to do – it was fun, and almost cartoony, but I don’t mean that in any way to sound disrespectful.

“There weren’t too many vortexes and galaxies to worry about, so I could understand it!

“I also loved working with Blake Ritson – I was bowled over when I heard him doing his stuff.

“It was a great day, and it felt really special in the studio. I’m really looking forward to hearing how it all sounds in the finished version.”

 Responsible for the music and sound design on the trio of tales is Howard Carter.

Having worked on the War Doctor box sets, The Diary of River Song and UNIT, he’s loving the chance to get the Tenth Doctor onto his CV.

When first asked to work on this series, Howard admits he was: “Very excited! I’ve been working on the new series releases for the past seven months and knew these were coming up so it’s great to finally get stuck in. I read all of the scripts in one sitting and was thrilled at how brilliant they were and how much scope there was for me to be creative with the sound design and the music.”

How did he approach the plays – did he try to evoke Murray Gold’s style, as well as doing his own?

Howard explains: “With the Big Finish audios I’ve always felt that we should be moving the world of Doctor Who forward rather than creating pastiches of what’s been before. While it’s important to retain a certain level of stylistic familiarity I was keen to make sure the musical language was fresh and not too restricted by Murray’s style. His sound has been so integral to the characterisation and general atmosphere of the show that it would be foolish to ignore, but at the same time I feel the plays are best served by taking a step forward.

“As such, I wanted to create a score that wouldn’t sound out of place in the world that people are familiar with, while letting my own influences and style filter through. The music is still very thematic with certain motifs running through the boxset, but my main aim was to write scores that best serve these plays and the overall atmosphere of the set.”

He adds: “It’s a great privilege to be working on these stories. The scripts are so fantastic it’s both humbling and exciting to be bringing them to life knowing that so many people will get the chance to hear the Doctor and Donna back together. I can only hope people have as much fun listening to them as much as I’ve had working on them.”

 The final element that really seals the deal for these audios are the covers, which have been created by Tom Webster.

As with the rest of the Big Finish team, Tom was delighted to be working on these releases.

He adds: “I was so excited to work with the David and Catherine images. I think the moment where I started to cut the images out was where it really hit me, the Tenth Doctor and Donna in Big Finish. Amazing!

“I found it quite easy to create a feel for the era on the special deluxe edition, I set out to emulate the style of the series box sets and particularly the vanilla DVDs. I wanted to go with very bright, vibrant colours and the most dynamic photos that I could use.

“I decided from an early stage that I wanted to play with a TARDIS interior motif - so I created something inspired by the coral structures, which provided a nice framework. The vanilla covers were lots of fun, as I was tasked with making each one distinctly different. Technophobia really feels like a Russell T Davies episode one, so I really wanted to go for a bright and brash impactful image.

“I’m actually extremely happy with them all, I spent lots of time getting them just the way I’d imagined when reading the scripts. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be doing such huge releases for Big Finish and I didn’t want to let anyone down. I hope people enjoy them!”

 Since the Big Finish Tenth Doctor audios were first announced, they have received plenty of coverage in the media, from publications as diverse as Jenny Colgan’s local newspaper the Ayrshire Post, to national papers like the Daily Mirror, whilst they’ve also had numerous mentions on TV, including a big plug on The Jonathan Ross Show on ITV.

David Richardson says: “We knew the reaction was going to be huge. And it was probably bigger than that! So it was brilliant, and such a relief to have the secret out there having kept it to ourselves for so long. We’d had a year of whispering in locked rooms and sending coded emails – and suddenly all the world knew!”

Nick adds: “Can I just say too how delighted I was? It was one of those things. We’d been living with these plays for so long. It seemed almost surreal that we were actually doing them. And when our listeners and other Doctor Who fans loved the idea too… It was simply amazing.”

Jason was particularly pleased that Big Finish received so many mentions when David was doing the media rounds to promote his Netflix series Jessica Jones.

He laughs: “I feel like sending the publicist for Jessica Jones a bunch of roses!

“They did a great job to get David on a lot of programmes to talk about Jessica Jones, and we kind of hijacked their promotional tour!

“Of all the things we’ve done over the years, that definitely got us the most media attention.

“David, I’m sure, knows how much he was loved as Doctor Who. If he ever had any doubts, I think going round and doing publicity for Jessica Jones, where everyone asked him about doing the Big Finish audios, has shown how much people are still interested in him and love him as the Doctor.”

– VORTEX Magazine, Issue 87, Pages 6-15

 [Above Cover of “The Tenth Doctor Adventures: Volume 1″. Text reads: “David Tennant - Catherine Tate BBC Doctor Who The Tenth Doctor Adventures Three Full Cast Audio Adventures Technophobia - Time Reaver - Death And The Queen” Background features the Big Finish logo, Catherine Tate, David Tennant, the TARDIS, Time Reaver’s antagonist, Gully, a black hooded figure, and a castle.]

 The Tenth Doctor Adventures: Volume 01

Technophobia

London’s Technology Museum faces a revolution. Is it all down to simple human stupidity, or is something more sinister going on?

Time Reaver

An illegal weapon is loose on the streets of spaceport planet Calibris - and the Vacintians are closing in…

Death and the Queen

The Wedding of all Weddings comes under attack by a skeleton army. Can Queen Donna save her people from Death itself?

 Written By: Matt Fitton, Jenny T Colgan, James Goss

Directed By: Nicholas Briggs

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Niky Wardley (Bex), Rachael Stirling (Jill Meadows), Chook Sibtain (Brian), Rory Keenan (Kevin), Jot Davies (Lukas), Alex Lowe (Soren), Sabrina Bartlett (Cora), Terry Molloy (Rone), John Banks (Gully), Dan Starkey (Dorn), Blake Ritson (Rudolph), Alice Krige (Queen Mum), Beth Chalmers (Hortense), Alan Cox (Death)

 Available as deluxe five-disc box set, limited edition of 5,000, and as individual vanilla releases.

For full details visit www.bigfinish.com . 

[thesydneyfeminists]

Joss Whedon and Vee: It’s Complicated

By: Vee H.

Here’s the thing, I have a confusing relationship with Joss Whedon. If we were “Facebook official” (does anyone still call it that, or have I just revealed my true spiritual age of 105?) our relationship status would be “it’s complicated”. It didn’t used to be like that; as a teenager, I probably would have said my favourite tv show was Buffy The Vampire Slayer, with its spin-off, Angel, in second place. I fell in love with a premise that Whedon certainly did not create (one girl in all the world, blah blah) nor was he the best at executing it. Whether it was the characters he’d created, the actors playing them, the witty scripts and storylines – or a mix of all of these things, I was hooked. I staunchly defended the show, and by proxy, Whedon himself, from any harsh criticisms, and overlooked anything that now, as a 32-year-old, stands out as (and I hate using this word) problematic. I followed him from Buffy; to Angel, Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog, Dollhouse (look, I skipped Firefly for some reason, I’ve tried dipping a toe in but space cowboys aren’t for me, it seems), and that’s not to mention the movies he had a hand in (not an exhaustive list) – The Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers and The Avengers Age of Ultron. I was loyal, if Whedon’s name was attached, most likely, I was all in. There was something comforting and familiar about his humour, the way he told his stories – all of them laughably simple but layered to make them more complex. Like Shrek and onions.

So maybe you’re wondering where I took a left turn, jumped off the Joss Whedon Fan Train, as it were. Admittedly, it was a slow process, it wasn’t just a running leap off into the unknown post-Whedon world. A few years after Angel ended, some things circulated in the Buffy and Angel fandoms, rumours of how he treated his favourites, and those who had fallen out of favour with him. One of those people being Charisma Carpenter. In 2009 at a convention, a fan asked her how she felt about Cordelia’s last story line in Angel and how the show changed after her departure. While she didn’t explicitly come out and say the exact reason, she hinted that Whedon had been mad at her for making certain life decisions that would directly impact the vision he had for his show. Rumours have long since abounded that, in short, he punished her for falling pregnant. Obviously, no one but Carpenter and Whedon know the true story and at the time of hearing it, I took it with a grain of salt, but that seedling sat in the back of my mind and began to grow. After all, it explained a lot about the fourth season of Angel, and why the character of Cordelia made a complete 360. It was here that my relationship with Whedon started to sour, I began to question how someone who was so outspoken and publicly proud to be a feminist, could treat a woman that he had worked with for nearly a decade like that.

With that knowledge in mind, it was hard not to view some of the dialogue and plot points in his media a little differently, this is only one small example, but looking back, there is way too much slut shaming going on in Buffy to the point where Faith (my favourite character in the whole series, don’t @ me, I’ll defend her until I die) is seen as a lesser person than everyone else, because other female characters (Willow, Cordelia and Buffy herself) have branded her as a “cleavagey slutbomb”. Sure, ok, she goes and kills a bunch of people but they focus on her being slut much more than a psychopath – and I feel the need to point out that we only actually saw her sleep with one person (Xander) by the time the slut shaming actually started, and not that we should count, but Faith only slept with three people (Xander, Robin, and Riley in Buffy’s body) in the whole course of the show. And she killed four humans. Which means in Joss Whedon’s world, if you’re a woman, having sex is a worse crime than murder. Not exactly a feminist message.

Cut to just last year, when Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, came out with a heartbreakingly honest account of just what went down in their marriage. Details of his infidelity, gaslighting and emotional manipulation came spilling out of her, and sure, you could argue she was an embittered ex-wife, wanting to hit him where it would hurt the most, but it’s interesting to note that Whedon himself has never actually outright denied or refuted these claims. And ok, infidelity does not strip you of the right to call yourself a feminist, but as written by Clementine Ford “it's about how he absolved himself in a letter sent to Cole after his infidelity had finally been exposed, blaming the women he cheated with, calling them "beautiful, needy, aggressive young women" who "surrounded" him.” It’s about how he used his feminist badge as a shield, claiming he was raised feminist so he just liked women better, or how he claimed in a letter to Cole, and I quote, “in many ways I was the HEIGHT of normal, in this culture. We’re taught to be providers and companions and at the same time, to conquer and acquire — specifically sexually — and I was pulling off both!”

With all of these things in mind, I started to see Whedon’s feminism as what it likely is; performative, a way to excuse his behaviour, a safeguard to hide behind as if to say, “oh no, I am not like other men at all, although I may act as other men do and fully accept my privilege as a cis-het white male, I’m different. Because I’m a feminist so when I do these terrible things to women, it’s ok, because I love, respect and support women.” Maybe he truly believes he’s a feminist, publicly, he flies the flag very well, and there’s no denying he’s profited from this label, heralded as a great feminist hero, an ally to women everywhere. It’s only when you start to scratch the surface, peel back the layers of the Shrek-onion, do you start to see him for what he (in my mind) really is. A dudebro playing at being the nice guy, someone who says all the right things but whose actions don’t quite match up, in fact, they crumble under any real scrutiny (for further proof of this, go read the leak of the Wonder Woman script, allegedly by Whedon. If you can make it through the whole thing, I’ll buy you a coffee – hell if you can make it through the first 10 pages).

Where does that leave Joss and I then? I admit that I’m conflicted, in a culture that has moved more and more towards “cancelling” people I’m the proverbial fence sitter. I acknowledge that there are people, media, etc that are problematic (the dreaded word) and I think everyone has the right to decide whether or not to consume said media. And for myself, personally, I endlessly flip between the two schools of thought. I won’t watch anything new with Johnny Depp, nor anything from Woody Allen, for example, but I have gone back (since Amber Heard spoke of her abuse at his hands) and watched some of Depp’s older movies. Some people have told me that they disagree, that even watching his older stuff is wrong, that I should ban all forms of Depp media from my life otherwise I am giving him my tacit approval, and that’s their choice and their right, but I suppose I’m still working out where I want to draw the line. I (maybe naively and incorrectly) believe that I can view a piece of media and know its flaws, or the flaws of the person behind it, but still somewhat enjoy it for what it is, or the story it’s telling.

Maybe that’s where I am with Whedon, somewhere in between, neither in the black or the white, somewhere in the shades of grey, because that’s how life is sometimes. I don’t think he’s a fully bad person, nor do I think he’s a fully good person. I think he’s human, and humans are inherently flawed. And maybe that feels like a cop out, but it’s all I have to offer right now. My view of him will never be as it once was, and thus my viewing of the media he has created and produced will likely reflect that. Re-watching Buffy and Angel has become a different experience; I’m no longer blindly swept up in the twists and turns, the witty repartee between characters, but instead viewing through a different lens, one where I question what message he's really trying to send, what his true intentions are. Instead of laughing at every single joke, they never quite land right with me anymore, my childish naivety gone, replaced with the simmering anger of a woman who wonders why sexist jokes and judgements are supposed to be funny, why the rape of a female character is an excusable plot device to teach men a lesson. It’s exhausting to second guess someone I don’t even know, but this is the brave new world that a combination of his behaviour and my own feminist journey has left me in. These days, I wouldn’t ever say “I love Joss Whedon”, like I would’ve back in my teenage years, more likely you’ll find me saying “I loved Buffy but God it’s weird to watch as an adult”.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

Sources:

http://oranges8hands.tumblr.com/post/117924895453/charisma-carpenter-transcript-on-being-fired

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_igTbXKPck

https://www.thewrap.com/joss-whedon-feminist-hypocrite-infidelity-affairs-ex-wife-kai-cole-says/

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/clementine-ford-why-joss-whedons-treatment-of-exwife-kai-cole-matters-20170821-gy16lx.html

https://indiegroundfilms.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wonder-woman-aug7-07-joss-whedon.pdf

Image sources:

Yahoo.com

tenplay.com.au

[professor-tammi]

response to @ultraericthered‘s post here (I’m not reblogging purely because it’s a very long post without a cut haha, please put them under cuts :D)

most of what I said about Lusamine and the stories in USUM/SuMo is, ofc, my personal opinion. a lot of people like stories with higher stakes more, and that’s fine, I usually still enjoy them (cliche or not!), but as someone who has a mother who’s pretty much exactly like Lusamine and can relate very strongly to Gladion and Lillie, having the plot conclude with Lillie facing and standing up to her  mother hit me much harder. so it’s very much a personal thing, absolutely!

And you seem to assume, like others have, that scenes in which Lusamine shows her most negative traits and is shown to be a shitty parent should only be in the story if they’re to serve as a way to cement Lusamine as an irredeemable villain and build up to Lillie chewing her out for it later on. But all those things could also serve to set up character development, as USUM delivered on.

here’s the reason why Lusamine getting the development she did bugs me: narcissists don’t really change. I guess it’s not technically impossible, but it’s exceptionally rare. they believe themselves to be perfect and the most beautiful and important people in the world; anything that goes awry is someone else’s fault, clearly, because they can do no wrong! they are highly unlikely to admit that they’re damaging the people around them and should be seeking help.

this doesn’t mean they’re inhuman monsters, or that they’re always controlling and petty -- indeed, they often have moments of kindness intermingled with their cruelty, and even in the original SuMo, a bit of that kindness shines through from Lusamine (we hear Lillie talk about the moment she shared with her mother in the rain when she was younger, and after defeating Mother Beast, she sees Lillie in a new light and describes her as beautiful). but those moments of selfishness and manipulativeness don’t just go away. narcissists don’t work like that. but to be fair, that’s not something most people would know unless they’d spent a majority of their lives living with one...

if you read stories from children of narcissistic parents, you will find that pretty much all of them tell you their parents never changed, no matter what they did. so when USUM has Lusamine change the way she does, I feel rather uneasy, because that’s not a good message to be sending out to abused children (or anyone, really) -- trying to change a narcissist in real life is almost always futile, and the best option is to distance yourself! in SuMo, I feel like the game wants you to believe Lusamine changed, but since it’s technically more ambiguous, I choose to believe she most likely did not and that she, Lillie and Gladion ultimately went their separate ways. I know that’s not what the writers intended, but at least the interpretation doesn’t conflict with what’s in the game. USUM doesn’t really have that ambiguity.

but yes; if, theoretically, a narcissist mother were to undergo character development, then the development Lusamine undergoes in USUM is exactly what they’d need to do, ie acknowledge that their children are their own people with their own wants and needs. I appreciate the game for that, at the very least, but almost all of this development is bonus content and not part of the main story, which is a shame to me. (for the record: I saw the full script of the game immediately after it leaked and can assure you I haven’t missed any content. I love spoilers more than anyone! :P)

Uh, Lillie always ends up going back to her even in SuMo, and that one was far from forgivable (Lusamine wasn’t even fully unconscious post-game - Lillie tells us that she regained consciousness off-screen and that she’s been gently scolded” about what she did wrong). 

no, she doesn’t go back to her, she takes her along to Kanto intending to a) find a cure for her condition, and b) travel the world and become a trainer. why does she want to find this cure if her mother’s so terrible, you ask? because human relationships are complicated, and Lillie’s obviously not about to just let her die. most children with intermittently abusive parents probably also acknowledge that their parents have done some good by them, and that’s what makes cutting them off so hard. Lillie tells Lusamine she’s terrible, yes (and she is), but she also understands that her mother isn’t wholly evil and clearly is still attached to her in some way or another. (meanwhile, the main story in USUM has Lillie walk off with Lusamine after the Necrozma battle, which is what I meant by “Lillie going back to her”... perhaps I should’ve said “with her”?)

but I do agree with you on one point! I don’t think the conclusion to SuMo’s story was quite satisfactory and I don’t really like that Lillie seems to forgive Lusamine. it’s mostly that the journey there was better (again, for me!), I think. it does leave a lot of questions open.

and as for the final bit... you say Lusamine definitely came into contact with Nihilego before the events of the game -- where’s the proof? there’s none, is there? you claim Guzma didn’t fuse with Nihilego, but you don’t know this; it could’ve very well happened off-screen. perhaps most importantly, when Nihilego first appears before Lusamine in the game, she acts as if she’s never seen it before. if she had, it most likely would’ve had some sort of code name already, but instead she simply describes it as a “poor creature”, and talks about saving it from its suffering... a rather strange reaction for something she’s supposed to have met with before! and hey, if you’re going to say that your assumptions are inarguable, what’s stopping me from saying that mine are just as inarguable? ;) (obviously they’re not, and at the end of the day, they’re still assumptions.)