#no I have not read Homestuck recently and I tried to I REALLY DID but 8 gave up halfway through act 6

[parag00n]

Lighting/background practice but it turned into my old middle school otp WOOOO

I picked up a johndave fic, blacked out for a week, and when I came back I found myself feverishly drawing a lot of johndave. art block is no more but im squarely in homestuck johndave brainrot rn 👍 strap urselves in for more pepsicola WEEEE (just bear with me I’ll be drawing ninjago in time for season 2 of DR)

[metavandetta23]

nobody is going to read this, so I am just gonna put it out there warning: rambling from some fucking guy ever. you have been warned.

life sucks, blah blah blah, but instead of just complaning about that, how about I give you bit explenation as to why. so sit down there one of my 121 followers. If anyone of you read that is and not just clicked follow on one art I made and buzzed off (no offense there, just saying.) Okay so you might ask, why now out of sudden i blow like up that. Here is the answer: See, I have been doing creative stuff like, be it art, writing, music or whatever for past..... lets say 4-5 years. As you might guess, some of these ventures didnt pan out in the end. i mean, its given. It happens. Let me mention some of the things I tried over the years. I tried making a homestuck comic on mspa when I first started doing creative stuff. I managed to get pretty far compared to most projects I will mention, but I didnt finish in the end. Why? I got burned out, because I worked on it full non stop. Then I tried having a cool rp campagin session with pals from discord server I known. That ended in tragedy, especially after one of them out of fucking blue, send a fucking gore of dead person. None of us expected this to happen. Earlier I tried music, couldnt do that thing earlier unless you call "music" by swapping midis with shitty piano font. Well, atleast it didnt end up with a gore.

Then I tried working on some ut aus. Did it even work? HAHAHAHAHAHA, what do you think? Ofcourse, not. Didnt peak interest, because I didnt capture interest basically. Anyways this goes on and on. Deltarune au there, some another rp server there and there (one turned into glorified horny rp out of college setting that I tried initially, pal if you are reading this, sorry but this server just sucked ass) I think you might start seeing a pattern here. You would think eventually. That being "Gee meta, thats sure lot of failures, you must have atleast succed one time BIG right?" Haha, no. Okay I did manage to finish some of my stuff but like. really really low bar stuff. so essentially in the eyes for everyone, nothing. See, most of the failures from these projects came from me doing solo. You would think me teaming up with someone would help? Not really, unless I literally pay them money for it, tough fucking luck. Out of 5 years of me doing creative shit, only 4 people helped me out that I recall. they couldnt helped me out for long in the end, but i appreciated for them when they could. all rest of people? Fucking went ghost and then I was left alone, figuring this shit out myself. It isnt fun knowing that you put trust in someone, only in the end to be alone in this in the end. I wish I was so fucking talented, creative, witty or self efficent as the people i asspire to, the artists i admire who make works of artm writers who can write witty, fun but touching stories. I wish I could be at thier level, so I could make great works of art. But atlas, I am not. I dont seek glory or fame, even if it would be nice. No, I just want people to enjoy creating what I make, to feel like I have impact on the world, that people can share with. to make connections with. Look in the end I am just 20 year old guy from europe, that isnt much good at anything, including social life, apperantly. Only thing I am good at is pixel art, but just barely. I am very much uncreative person. and unconfident and rather hopeless one these days, despite how much I try to hide in fake smiles.

I dont have much better way to end this sort of ramble, besides mentioning tobys recent post from spring newslettter and my view on it. "There's times where it feels like your hopes and dreams are simply slipping away from you. That the things you wanted to achieve are floating away from you in the sky while you lie there, fallen in a crater, your wing torn off, never to grow back. Bitterness grows, and you feel like you may never leave the ground again.

But

That's not true.

You can still fly.

Even if you lose a piece of yourself, even if it feels like you can't get up anymore, you can. You can fly with one wing. You can fly without any wings."

Can you really even fly, even if you feel like a part of yourself was torn off? That it happened right before you could even took off. No matter how much you struggle, scream and rage. You can still never to be able to fly like others, much even take off from ground. No matter how much you try. You feel shackled to ground, to the bones of earth. While you look towards as sky, as other people dance in the air beyond your wildest imagination. Its so beautiful, yet so out of your reach. Cries of helps can be heared coming from you from miles in the air. But they all fall on the deaf ears. Or maybe its just out of bliss ignorance? You cant say. You want to join them, join them so badly. To feel like you could finally be a part of something greater. To feel like you could belong somewhere. To be cared. But you just cant. It wasnt meant to be made. Resentment grows inside your soul. As that feeling rots inside you more and more. Part of you wishes this feeling to be gone, to never be felt. But the other part, says otherwise. It wants that liberty desperately, looking with its green eyes at them. Why they? Why not me. Why not me at all!?. You just want what they have yourself. It grows inside you more and more as you allow it to. You eventually consdering tearning off other people wings. Even if you cant ever fly agian, doesnt mean you should be the only who suffer like this right? And why do they deserve to fly, anyway. They would be better off without that, you think. Plus, even in this state. You know you can do this option. To cripple someone, just to make yourself feel better even if its only for a moment. But then you realise. If you ever would reach to that point. Whatever drive you initally, would be just gone. In fear of your insecurities and weakness. You decide to lie up, instead. Rendering your shackled and vulerable. Locked inside, with no way or out. Perhpas in the end.... Its better if you dont fly at all...

[homestuckdailyweekly]

Homestuck Daily - Week 4/End of Month 1 - 5/11/2024

Today marks the end of the first month of my real time Homestuck reread. If my math is correct (and that is a big if), I have 83 months of reading Homestuck left. Based on some more math, I first read Homestuck roughly 50 months ago. I don't know what point I am making with this, except for the fact that time is long and strange.

If I am being honest, I am finding it a hard time to write this update, because it feels like basically nothing happened this entire week. It probably doesn't help that I've been playing Hades 2, an extremely fun and good game, all week. So everything I have to say about this week of Homestuck is colored by an implicit "And I read this instead of playing Hades 2 in that exact moment." Hell, I could be playing Hades 2 right now, but I am writing this instead.

In case you haven't noticed, dear reader that definitely exists, I don't exactly know what I'm doing with this one here. I know, after I worked so hard on developing a strict and rewarding format these past few weeks, I'm throwing it all away to ramble here and now. The thing you need to know about me, though, is that I make terrible decisions. Always have, always will. I promise I'll get to a point, but we'll get there on my own time.

Where was I. Oh right. 50 months ago. Valentines Day 2020. That was the day I began my first Homestuck read through. My girlfriend at the time- she would break up with me a few months later for non-Homestuck related reasons- was a Homestuck fan, and had tried and failed to convince me to read the comic before. We even spent a date night playing friend sim, which I tried my best not to be confused by. Well, Valentines day came, and I decided I would finally relent to my girlfriend's recommendation, and I spent the day reading Homestuck in my college dorm room. And when I started, I did not stop. Not for a long time. You see, it was a Friday, a Friday very early in the semester, in fact. I had nothing I needed to do and 3 whole days where I did not need to treat myself as a human being. I denied myself food, water, sleep, and human dignity as I read Homestuck, all the while texting my girlfriend my reactions. I think the only time I took a break that weekend was on Saturday, to play in a Vampire the Requiem game I had recently joined. I don't know exactly how far through Homestuck I had gotten when I attended the game- but it was further than a person should be less than 24 hours after starting the webcomic.

Which brings me to my point. How quickly into my binge did I get to the parts of this comic that has now taken me a month to reach? An hour? Less than that? I don't know and am unwilling to do the work to find that out. I don't think I had gone all-in on Homestuck at this point, but I do remember being entertained by the Sylladex fuckery that was going on. I found it intriguing, this little puzzle of mechanics, the audience and John struggling against an unintuitive game mechanic that refused to make things easy. That was 50 months ago. So far on my read through, all I really feel as I get to each new gag about Sylladexes is "Oh, today is just this, huh." A part of me is sad and disappointed these gags aren't landing for me in the way they once had. A part of me is worried what else in this comic will suffer with the addition of time. But then I got to the last page of this week's updates, page 137, a loading animation for SBURB set to Sburban Jungle by Michael Guy Bowman, and that worry melts away.

Sburban Jungle is a song that lights my imagination ablaze with visions of epic machinations. I am the kind of person who listens to music not just because I like a song, but because that song puts images in my head that I can't tear myself from exploring as fully as I can. Even back when I was a kid in highschool, I would spend my bus rides home listing to my ipod, imagining grand adventures and fantastic scenes set to whatever music I was listening to. Sburban Jungle brings me back to those days, I think. That feeling that I find so hard to describe right now is part of why I love Homestuck, I think. It is a story about 4 kids, friends, playing a game together. A game where anything can be possible. A game where music brings actions scenes of epic and mythical scale- like the kind I would think about on the bus ride home- to life. That game hasn't started yet, we are still playing a game I'd like to call "Inventory Management if the Inventory Management hated you". But we'll get there eventually.

I have read Homestuck in realtime for 1 month. I will continue this for 83 more months. There'll be many months where I read nothing, and I'll need to think up something to post during those weeks. There'll be months where I'll struggle to keep everything I want to discuss in individual coherent posts. Homestuck is a land of contrasts, and I am going to experience those contrasts in the fullness of time's length. This is a terrible idea, but those are my favorite kinds.

Now that this is written and done with, time to play some more Hades 2.

[komahi-arts]

WEB COMIC PLANNING

This post is related to Homestuck, not to my usual Megaman oc posting stuff.

BTW, lots of text ahead!!! Read if you want to, ofd. It is just some stuff I want to talk about and really REALLY wanna share it with someone

When I was around 13-14 years old, I tried making an web comic on that one MS Paint fan comic site (I remember I named the comic ">RESTART...", I wasn't creative with names bth). As far as I remember, the comic barely even had any progress before I gave up on them due to personal reasons. Not even the first character got introduced :/

Nowadays, the comic kind of turned into lost media, and it disappeared.

But back to recent times.

A few weeks ago, I accidentally found a little folder from around 2012 with some drawings of the characters I was going to use for the comic and, since summer break is slowly reaching my way and [Insert some other valid reason here], I got the idea to maybe bring that idea back and even post it on the MS Paint fan page (I still don't remember how it's called, I'm doing this post in a rush rn because I have kind of a bunch of stuff to do)

So, I would like to talk to you, person that decided to read all this crap, to...

Doomed Session

(The name idea came from a fail of a session I did with someone on Genesis Project)

Rushes resume about the comic? Same as the original Homestuck. Kids play a game, game fucks shit around, now they have to save the world.

But for this comic's case, it is a corrupted copy of the game, leading to a lot of other things to happen rather than just the world's destruction. More will be explained when I start to ACTUALLY work on the comic. I have some lore in mind, I just have to find a way to put them into works.

But for now, all I have for character material is this chart for the trolls:

(The signs with * are trolls I've already created around 2012)

I've also made some traditional doodles for most of them (I still need to do the 6-7 lasting trolls on the list):

And for the human...That's all I have

(Created with Genesis Project)

And well, for now, that's all I have for now

if you decided to read till here, thank you for you attention.(But seriously though, you didn't had to read all that shit. I appreciate it though)

Until future updates! :DD

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 2,543

Equius: Read first memo.

Author commentary:

The introduction of "memos" as a new dialogue medium was a pretty exciting addition to the overall toolkit of character interaction. Mainly because it was the first venue that allowed for more than just two people to talk to each other at once. The result is the feeling of a messy chat room, rather than a direct message conversation. Except even messier, because this is where the characters begin to play around with the feature that lets them talk to each other across different points on the timeline. The net result of this, mostly, is just Karkat creating an almost infinite supply of new, self-fulfilling ways of owning himself in front of all his friends. This device was a great device to throw into the mix of later Act 5 action. Many good things were done with it, and it really shook the story out of some overly comfortable patterns of character interplay. I give it five stars. I mean, I give everything I do five stars. But this time, I give five stars to this particular five-star rating.

Let's sift through the temporal structure here. Equius is currently reading this memo, which Karkat started six hours ago. This means that when Equius talks, he's the only one referred to as "current" (CCT). Everyone else here is some past version of themselves (PCG, PGC, PTA), even those who replied in the recent past, like Sollux did a half hour ago. Later, a future Karkat relative to Equius (FCG) chimes in from all the way toward the end of the session to remark on how embarrassing this all is. This is how all memos work, a complete quagmire of people scattered across the timeline tripping over each other, arguing, and complaining about how stupid the entire bulletin board is. It's a microcosm of Karkat's later trolling efforts of the humans, or at least a decent accidental beta test of the idea. Something he starts out with certain intentions for and tries to do in an organized way, but it completely backfires and devolves into pure chaos he has no control over, in an endless feedback loop of gratuitous self-owns.

Five hours from when Karkat types this, he's looking at dead Sollux on his monitor and probably remembering this memo exchange. Which, according to the laws of sadstuck, just makes the death all the more tragic. He thought Sollux was joking, then blocked him. Karkat seems to have a habit of doing this. Recall that he did basically the same thing when Tavros messaged him to tell him he was just paralyzed. There's kind of a sad conflict in Karkat's personality, where he genuinely cares deeply for all his friends but is so busy and so caught up in his own bullshit all the time that he obliviously glides right over the moments where they're actually in serious trouble.

FCG's message from 612 hours in the future is the first data point that gives us a good sense of the span of the session length. We don't know that's the end of the session from this memo yet—that confirmation comes a bit later—but this at least gives us a sense of what the players are in for. Another odd rule of these memos is that, apparently, before you actually contribute to one you can scroll through the entire thing and read it, beginning to end, including all the messages made deep in the future. So someone who wasn't impatient like Karkat could actually take time to study it, understand everything that's going to happen, and then jump back into the discussion at certain predestined moments they've already read. But the moment you contribute, you sort of collapse the memo's waveform so to speak—you can't read anything after that and just have to fly blind like in an ordinary conversation. Naturally, Karkat gives the memo a half-assed skim before diving into composing it from the start with his blustering nonsense. Does this make perfect sense? Is it scientifically and logically AIRTIGHT? well, maybe not. But it does lead to a lot of funny conversations.

Equius says "here in the future, this bulletin has come to be regarded as something of a joke," even though he's only six hours into Karkat's future while reading this. I guess a born snob will use literally any point of superiority to be snobby with. Blood color, being a few hours in the future, whatever. His observation is worth a laugh, but really, what he probably means is, he scrolled way ahead to see the future of the memo and has observed how many people in the memo mock him for it. He's already identifying more with people from weeks ahead in the timeline than with Karkat, who's only a few hours behind, just for the sake of giving him a hard time. In fact, even Karkat starts doing this to himself. Maybe more than anyone else.

[overtrolled]

Omg so many good HS questions!! UM #1, 5, 29, 38, 39, 40, 89, 91, 98. If this is too many, Just 38, 39, 40 :*

It's not too many, let's see

1. When did you first get into Homestuck? I got into it in 2014 when I was 20. I tried to start in 2012 but i bounced off the first 100 pages.

5. Ever made a trollsona? No, though I did make a fan troll at one point and i've made troll ocs for a fic i don't think i ever posted.

29. Favorite Friendsim character? WITH IT UNDERSTOOD THAT I HAVE NOT FINISHED FRIENDSIM YET, and that I have only looked at the first 3 volumes recently, my favorite is probably Amisia Erdehn. I remember really liking Bronya, though, and i like her a fair deal so far.

38. OTP? hmmm, i dunno if i have an absolute favorite pairing. I always enjoy some rosemary, so let's go with that. Man, you know, before i started reading homestuck, most gay romance plots I saw went like this: This is the GAY character, X. There's another GAY character Y. Will they end up together? Yes/No they both die horribly. The way that HS had rose get a whole character arc before she started dating Kanaya, with someone who she had chemistry with before so it didnt come out of nowhere, managed to get through the bitter cynical shell i had around canon gay romance that i had erected around that time.

39. NOTP? flushed Tavris. I've mentioned it earlier in this month, but I simply can't see it happening, i wouldn't want it to happen, and it just is generally unpleasant as a concept to me. I get, on some level, why someone might find the idea of love conquering all appealing, or of the pairing being aesthetically interesting, but like... no, sorry i hate it.

40. BROTP? Meowrails! I love the way their relationship goes from this standoffish semi-antagonistic, we're-stuck-with-each-other thing to this tenderness toward the end. and bc i'm a weird freak, i also love when weird freaks are allowed to be happy and find love without becoming normal or being punished by the narrative for it. If moirails don't count as BROTP, i honestly don't know. there are so many great friendships in HS. John and Dave come to mind, John and Rose, Karkat and Kanaya, even Jane and Dirk to some extent

89. Favorite Homestuck fanartists? I definitely can't answer this one. there's so much great fanwork, by so many talented artists, animators, writers, musicians. There are some truly wonderful things out there, I can't pick.

91. Favorite hemocaste? idk, to be honest. i don't think about it in those terms much. i like the idea of being a sea dweller, i also like the idea of having chucklevoodoos/fear powers. Purple or Fuchsia then.

98. What characters do you relate most to? hm. I relate a lot to Rose, the drive to know, to understand, to feel the fury of injustice, the desire to lash out in response. I relate to Roxy, the struggle to moderate impulse, poorly attempting to put your own desires to the side for the sake of your friends. I relate to Jake, the yearning for something more than one's life, the friction between masculine and feminine self image, the fear that you are unable to feel the emotions you are supposed to with other people. I could probably go on.

Thanks for the ask!

[cleverthylacine]

why are you into the wild kratts as someone who is "way over 40" ............. that is a childs show like not even in the cartoon network tweeny way like. its an actual pbs childrens learning show. what on earth

Because the brothers have done an episode in this show about thylacines, and I am obsessed with thylacines, and it was a much better show about thylacines than a lot of things I've seen that were aimed at "grownups". So, I watched the other episodes, and I learned a lot from them. I am actually a member of a conservation group and like other shows about animals, and I found that while there's a lot of silliness in the show, there's a lot more information in than there is in a lot of actual documentaries :)

You are correct that it's an actual educational show. I don't care for RPF, and the main characters are actual real people that I have MET, so I do not write fanfiction for it. But I like the fan art.

Chris and Martin are genuinely awesome people. I had the honour of having a fun conversation with them at an event and they told me about their experiences trying to find thylacines in Australia (sadly, not successful) and about looking for fossas in Madagascar (I also love fossas). They did find the fossas of course.

I read and write fanfiction for Transformers, Homestuck and Gravity Falls.

Most fanfiction of the Wild Kratts show does NOT interest me. People ship the brothers, which I personally find gross, but because I am not an anti with a brain full of fire ants, I ignore the existence of these fics.

Instead of complaining about them or sending the authors nasty notes, I go and read things that I actually enjoy. If you are an anti, you should try this. Fandom is supposed to be actually fun.

The era we live in is rough. We are still having a pandemic. I work in health care. We recently had an insurrection of racist assholes that tried to take over the government here in the USA. There has recently been a movement to undo all the progress we have made toward giving trans people and non-gender-conforming people their rights, which includes like over half my friends. While the world is actually a better place than it was when I was the age you probably are, in that people actually are shocked enough by the murder of black people by cops that they protest it, and same-sex marriage is legal, there are a lot of people out there who are really angry that the world is becoming less unfair and they are showing their vitriol and hatefulness all over the place.

So yes, I do enjoy shows that are intended for children. There are times when I really need 30 minutes of fun in which all of the problems will be solved by the end of the episode and none of them will be "people want to murder other people for stuff they can't help". Sometimes I just want to watch two guys' heroic self-inserts bash nasty rich people who want to poach wild animals for incredibly stupid reasons.

Now please run along and get off my lawn.

[hms-no-fun]

As you have mentioned the idea of Terezi using mind powers to project June back to Alternia Vriska to help her sort through things as Vriska's headmate, I just wanted to say that it sounded really interesting to read. You also mentioned in a recent ask that a lot of your ideas tend to cycle around and be used later so maybe there's stuff you can't say to avoid spoiling but if that ideas was mostly scrapped for the direction godfeels took it would still be really interesting as a what if.

We see trolls observing earth or indirectly experiencing it through a more original earth based Earth C but we don't see many humans directly experiencing Alternia aside from Hiveswap and Friendsim kinda, so seeing June experiencing Alternia and Vriska dealing with June in her head sounds like a gripping read.

i can't say with absolute certainty that we'll never see something along these lines someday, but i can tell you right now that i didn't spend 250,000 words expanding on the theme of diverging from canon just to go back to alternia for yet another captive perspective on events we've already seen.

you're right that it sounds like a gripping concept, i can definitely see it in my head... but part of why chapter 8 went in the direction it did is because, ultimately i was bored of the standard template provided by homestuck. i think everyone's on the same page that alternia doesn't REALLY work as a functional society, like we all know it's a metaphor and a joke and a mirror for the human characters and their trauma but not a world in the tolkien sense... but the same is VERY true of earth c, especially post-credits.

so for me, as a storyteller who tries to look at everything from a materialist perspective, this sloppy patchwork of non-worlds really started feeling like a hindrance when i started trying to bring in realistic-ish elements of political economy (wow this is so unrelated to your question lmao). so while i can see how a fic of june being projected backwards and becoming vriska's headmate practically writes itself in a lot of ways... it's not something i want to write anymore. i don't like doing the same thing twice, you know? i want to move this story on to a more interesting (to me) and, hopefully, more materially-grounded patchwork of worlds.

with that said, if someone out there wants to steal this idea and write assassin's creed: alternia, consider this me giving you my blessing. i want to read that story too, you know?

[lordterrax]

Lightbound

Aside from what Andrew Hussie wrote, and what I wrote on my LordOfClasspect blog about lightbound. There is something I wanted to go further into detail about that is pretty evidently clear in all examples of Lightbound that I think is pretty interesting.

So basically, aside from knowledge Lightbound are marked by an extreme challenge with Morality. Hussie describes that lightbound tend to find loopholes around the rules. This generally works out for them but it becomes a problem in that they often times end up with a distorted or grey perspective of morality, which leads into a tendency that when they do Wrong, they are explicitly Evil and marked by a curse.

Rose Lalonde tried to loophole the game Sburb, and in the process directly destroyed the game's architecture and doomed the entire session even for her friends. Nearly casting them all out into the Void to be eaten by the horrorterrors. Whether explicit or implicit she became the villain defacto. Even her alcoholism in general signifies that she doesn't care enough to recognize that even her seemingly lowly necessary Seer title was absolutely critical and responsible for the success and wellbeing of not just herself but her friends as well. Similar to Dirk's darkest bout of negligence towards his friends but more direct, straightforward and exact.

Vriska snapped the spine of an innocent and continues on destiny's path as if she will face no consequences. Constantly hijacks the plot and spotlight regardless of whether this is actually optimal or not. Her best character development came when she was humble and beating herself up as an inverted expression of her role. Then she could face up to her direct fault and flaws.

Aranae becomes so selfish she will literally doom another version of herself to do it, trying to make herself Alpha by force. In the process she disrupts both Jake and Dirk, Jake in a fundamental way and makes it clear she has no qualms with hurting Dirk to get what she wants. She goes from an extremely patient and kind being to one of impatience and grey morality.

Outside of Homestuck Canon, you have Rick Sanchez, who is an apt example to bring wider representation. As Rick Sanchez is a Lord of Light. Recently it was revealed in a canonical short written by Justin Roiland that Rick is in fact Morty. Rick hands Morty a potion saying that it's from excretions from the memory parasite in season 2, and that it will turn Morty into Rip Van Winkle. He also overlaps his reflection with Morty's face, and points saying "Rick Sanchez". Thus it's officially confirmed Morty is Rick, and the implications and realizations for what this means are endless.

For one, it puts things in perspective. Throughout the entire show Rick and Morty's stories run right alongside each other. And it clearly paints a contrast and shows the way the world works for Morty compared to how it works for Rick. There's also countless references and scenes that completely change context if you realize they are actually synchronized time events synchronizing Rick and Morty in a way that makes it plainly clear that due to Time Shenanigans, everything Morty does and goes through influences and changes Rick's character, memory, etc. So much so to the point that it's obvious everything Morty does IS Rick's actual back story, and Rick "already did it" before, as it's defined when Morty does it for the first time.

The realization is clear. Morty is bullied, is dumber than others around him, and struggles hard to keep up with others. Somewhere along the line, originally, Morty just shifted into prop comedy and entertainment like his father Jerry, before eventually getting into Science and realizing that the mathematical, concrete, and absolute nature of Science played really well with his Asperger Syndrome. He then at some point invents a portal gun, and explores the universe. At some point he flies under the alias Rick Sanchez, which in the real world is a notorious alias for people needing a fake identity especially people who have done so many crimes they can never get clean.

Rick and Morty are so opposite it's not even funny. Yet that's what makes this so obvious. Somewhere along the way Morty has an Ego Death because of how the universe treats him, and he evolves into everything he wasn't. This is why Rick suffers and explains his absolutely nihilistic and cynical view of the world. Because as Morty he learned the hard way that the universe does not care about you, does not play fair, and will just keep pushing and pushing with no limit. Eventually he just snapped and flipped it around so at least he always wins.

Now the relevance here is astounding. As Morty he was a Muse of Void. Inspiring the Void but in a Blackwing way. Morty seems innocent and harmless and like the Hero, but his actions always invariably lead to suffering, death, and evil. Evil Morty is predominated Morty and makes it clear that Morty is just in all ways inherently Evil and Destructive, but in a Passive way. Rick in contrast may contradictingly claim he doesn't care, thinks morality is bullshit, and does things which are morally fucked up. But inversely when challenged by the Devil, has a special passion for wiping him in the dust. Meanwhile even his worst acts which seem on the surface to be so reprehensible that they are unforgivable, what we are shown are things which with a good enough reason to balance it out, actually makes him a Savior.

It's actually Morty who is contradictory. Void is ambivalent and while Voidbound have half Light in them, Morty is the one who is ambivalent when it really matters and doesn't actually care when he absolutely should. Only to challenge Rick's authority and to rebel does Morty act like he's the good guy that really cares. Needless to say if we read the entire story a different way, Rick was inverted originally. As a single entity he became Light more and more over time, but it was a long process of trial and error. In the process to becoming the All Powerful Rick, Morty carries a lot of Moral Baggage. Every Rick has done something virtually ubforgiveable but continues moving through the universe running on as much borrowed time as he can get. Not really deserving everything he has and is but continues on anyways. Changing the Rick and Morty story in a very keen way if you view it as 1 continuous character both ways. Making Rick appear more like Vriska.

Basically if we view it as 1 singular and linear storyline. Then Rick is trying to run along after doing whatever evil and trying to escape the very consequences he created in the process. Nevermind that Morty gaining so much knowledge and changing personality so radically has warped his perception of everything so radically. That he can hardly tell right from wrong, and has no sense of what he is or isn't allowed to do. And technically he has the power to back it up. So much so it's hinted throughout the show of how Morty would have abused his science to do things for his own personal gain. Fridge Horror stuff.

The point is this is a perfect example of what I mean about Lightbound. Even Thor from Marvel Avengers has the fact that his family has a history of Genocide, and it's in his own veins as much as it was in his father's.

Lightbound embody the aspect of Perfection and Holiness. But as it has become obvious this has to be a story of a flawed mortal BECOMING the epitome of this... And God/The Universe is so forgiving and encompassing that nobody said you couldn't break a few eggs to make an omelet. What matters is where you end up/the destination/your intended goal.

Lightbound may mess up more than others, and in vastly worse ways than other Bound. But they succeed more than others do, and go farther.

[bladekindeyewear]

Okay so, I have no idea who Aesma is. What does "Turning Vriska into Homestuck's Aesma" mean in this context?

I really don’t want to get into it much, as Kill Six Billion Demons is truly incredible from top to bottom so far and I think it’s more fun to go in blind.  Ideally, ignore everything I have to say and go read it some time.  (Be sure to read the text posts under every so-odd page, the sometimes-present hover-over alt-text too, et cetera.)  Like, don’t even read this post, even though it isn’t really a spoiler.

However, to sum it up if you want it.....

In the mythological pantheon outlined in K6BD, Aesma is the mother of chaos and quite seemingly the embodiment of the Id.  In stories of her exploits with titles like “Aesma and the Three Masters (and the lessons she never learned)”, Aesma is depicted as the epitome of willful selfishness and ignorant wickedness, a committer of atrocities both intentional and inadvertent -- and is also the most beloved of the Creator’s children by said Creator, not just for stripping bare the hubris of others, even the Divine, but for embodying the selfish drive of Life that distinguishes (and in this Creator’s view, should rightly distinguish) the living from nothingness.  She is selfish to the point of stupidity, egotistical in a way that is constantly self-defeating, and yet a paradoxically shining example of an attitude one must embrace in some respect to truly strive in life -- and an example none that live should believe themselves above.  Even the angels begin their prayers with her name in deference, though not exactly entirely admiringly.

You COULD say that some of the writers of Homestuck^2 love Vriska a bit more than the average fan, to say the least, and a little more than Andrew did.  And you could both judge from the story’s current contents and expect from the known views of said writers that they are PERHAPS more likely to focus on how awesome she is than the pain and suffering her continued refusal to learn anything will keep bringing down on everyone.  Showing her toxic flaws off, sure, but at the same time (in some crucial ways) having the narrative almost “forgive” them because she gets results. NOT that they've quite done so YET, not entirely! But they might.

That possibility worries me.

As far as Vriska went, the pre-Epilogue ending of Homestuck was pretty perfect for the story’s themes:  Vriska DID get to save the day, glory-hogging and fighting Lord English in the way she THOUGHT she wanted... but in the process was denied the Ultimate Reward, was in fact rendered irrelevant in the ways that ACTUALLY mattered and was left excluded from the happiness promised to those who decided that creating the next world and living in it mattered more to them than cosmic victory.  She chose relevance over everything else, and Paradox Space cursed her by granting her wish. (Never learning her lesson... and paying dearly for it, in ways she doesn't even realize.)

The Epilogues undermine her further.  They show that she was barely a cog in the machine that resulted in Lord English’s defeat.  They give her a second POTENTIAL chance at eventual happiness, but do so by “banishing her to irrelevance” and thrusting her into the “non-canon” storyline.  It was revealed recently in HS^2 that the history books of the Candy timeline didn’t even really give her actions any credit.

So... pretty much the worst thing I could imagine Homestuck^2 doing -- and I COULD imagine it doing this, unfortunately -- is taking this nigh-unrepentant abuser who has barely regretted her actions and torn the souls and potential out of characters like Tavros who were doomed never to recover from it, and “correcting” this ending a bit.  To have her potentially ruin an ENTIRE POST-VICTORY EARTH with another meteor apocalypse (or try to), to continue her same selfish attitude portrayed in FURTHER “heroic” light, and then have the narrative ITSELF imply that everyone should be thanking her in the end????

There are some good lessons to learn from Vriska’s better qualities.  However, K6BD’s mythological stories of Aesma treat her depiction VERY carefully, or I guess I should say heavy-handedly -- leaving NO illusions or ambiguity about the evil of her actions, the caustic ignorance inherent in the lessons she refuses to learn, turning a selfish perpetual-child into an almost-pitiable one that ultimately DOES “lose”... even as the story cautions everyone not to pity her, as to think oneself too much “better” than her is a grave and arrogant error.  That deliberate, clear nuance would be LOST if the same reverent narrative treatment were ultimately given to Vriska.  Homestuck^2 would become a vehicle to forgive her abuse, her choice of ignorance, as something that can be ultimately padded over or mulliganed at the last minute.  The stories of Aesma carefully depict her to show that if she had learned ANY lesson -- ANY at all in the multiple opportunities given to her throughout her storied life -- she could have been not just the Creator’s most beloved, but truly the greatest in every respect WE value.  And the tragedy that she does not is both unforgivable / deserving of mockery, AND a cautionary, frank depiction of Humanity itself as sharing that same blind failing.

Homestuck is another work that constantly tries to show the value in people who are flawed -- even dangerous.  (Unsurprising that they’d share this, given how K6BD began as an adventure on the MSPA Forums.)  Trying to blindly do the SAME to Vriska as Aesma, though, to finally end the story of the Homestuck series as one that gives her her “due credit”, risks communicating an awful lesson that her crimes were “worth it” despite trampling over the will of almost everyone else who exists, both inside and outside canon.  If it’s not done VERY, VERY CAREFULLY.

I hope they avoid this route altogether, and instead -- since it’s unlikely she’ll purely “die” achieving relevance at the cost of happiness again -- have her finally accept SOME degree of mediocrity in a way that actually learns her a fucking lesson for once, and doesn’t just let Vriska shut her sins into the closet and lean casually on the door, after a brief show of considering contrition or a disproportionately-small sob that her victims’ roiling, broken ghosts would roll their eyes at.

[burningdarkfire]

tagged by @saturdaysky​, thank you! always very happy to talk about writing 🤠

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

36 on ao3, with many others left in the past on livejournal or ffnet

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

162k. it’s kind of a shame it doesn’t have the majority of my pre-2011 output as i never ported over my top four or five longest fics. i would’ve loved to see some genuine lifetime totals!

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

9 on ao3 (critrole, nier, hetalia, overwatch, trc, voltron, no. 6, star wars, tiger & bunny). if you expand trc to include anything clamp and throw in code geass then that covers everything i’ve ever published, though homestuck is by far the fandom i have the most WIPs for despite never finishing a single one and deserves a shoutout

4) What are your top five fics by kudos?

take my hand / take my whole life too: critrole, 9k, how essek and caleb’s relationship evolves through touch

blue sky, warm sun: critrole, 3.5k, six mornings caleb wakes with essek

dark night, bright stars: critrole, 3k, six nights caleb spends with essek

kitty love: star wars, 1.5k, kylo ren forms a bond with hux’s cat millicent

the walls kept tumbling down: critrole, 2k, caleb spontaneously visits essek after a hard day

commentary and further answers are below the cut!

spots 1-3 on the list are gladly accepted, given that i also think they’re some of my best and most broadly-appealing shadowgast. kitty love gets its spot despite being pure, pointless crack because it’s for a huge fandom, which is fine and fun but i don’t have a lot of personal attachment to it

the walls kept tumbling down is a surprise! it was a self-indulgent “i want a fic exactly like this to fix my mood and instead of digging through the internet for one i’ll just make one up” that i only worked on for a couple of days. i’m glad it clicked for other people!

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i always try to respond to comments, although sometimes a week or two pass by before i can find the energy to sit down and do it

admittedly comments have gone unanswered during months or years when i’m not writing fic and then it feels too awkward to a) go back and respond, and b) respond to any further comments on the fic even if they come in when i’m active. so instead those comments haunt my ao3 inbox forever (oops)

i do appreciate every single one though, and there are some comments that i go back to read if i need a pick-me-up just because they were so nice 😊

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i’ll link my no. 6 fic forgive me because it still dominates my top fics in terms of hits despite being 387 words long. i wrote it in 2011 in less than half an hour, if i’m remembering correctly, and there are a few clever bits in it that i’m still quite proud of

7) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i don’t usually write or read “pure” crossovers but i do like fusion AUs where characters from one work are imported into the setting of another work

but it’s fandom-dependent. critrole has been an outlier in that i can count on one hand the number of AU fics i’ve read and liked enough to remember. some of my favourite canon-adjacent fics veer off wildly, but they’ve still got their roots in the universe

i’ve published 17 critrole fics myself and they’re all canon-adjacent. i’m only now working on my first fusion-type AU 🤷‍♂️

8) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

i have one distinct memory of receiving criticism on a fic. in hindsight, it was constructive and pretty fair, but i was a young teen and so it still haunts me

9) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

i do!! and i’m excited about it because it’s fairly new to me!

i write to the characters, and what kind of relationship i think they’d have, but it’s probably true that my interests tend towards certain relationship dynamics

10) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i’m aware of!

11) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, actually! this was about about a decade ago so sadly the details have been lost in the haziness of memory and the inaccessibility of ffnet. i tried to dig it up last night but couldn’t find it again 😔

12) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i don’t ... think so? my current roommate and i tried co-writing when we were teenagers but none of that got published. it’s possible i’m forgetting something from my livejournal/early tumblr days because i remember doing a lot of ask games and challenges with other writers and fandom friends

now i’m just an introvert who avoids invites to discords because i feel like i simply Do Not Have Time so 🤡 not sure it’s anywhere on the horizon

13) What’s your all time favourite ship?

i used to have shipping walls and pairing lists until 2015 or so but i have since accepted that i am changeable like the wind. my interests come and go!

i am a multi-shipper though as a general rule. i’ve never had such a loyalty to a pairing that it would bother me to pair one half with someone else, and i also don’t care at all whether or not a ship is canon. it’s just about what’s interesting!

14) What’s a WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

i’ve had remarkably sequential focus for my critrole fics and finished nearly every idea i’ve had so far. however, this ACME AU is testing me lol and i’ve spent so much time on it that my list of other ideas to write is only getting longer and longer. nothing is abandoned yet, because not much else has even been started, but i am starting to sweat a little

15) What are your writing strengths?

i love my writing style! i value simplicity and clarity: no flowery descriptions, easy words, few similes, little variance in sentence structures, etc. it can vary, based on my mood or the characters i’m writing, but i like doing more with less

i’ve spent years working at my own style and it is so satisfying to read something i wrote in 2011 and feel how familiar it still is while being able to pick out what i would change

16) What are your writing weaknesses?

recently, it’s been plot. if it can’t be conveyed by 2-4 characters talking to each other then i don’t know how to do it anymore 😭 i’m most invested in emotional resolutions, but it’s probably a good idea to have things happen sometimes!

17) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i really do not enjoy this when it’s used as a “character quirk”. this includes nicknames, common phrases even if they are spoken that way in canon, and .. everything, really, that’s in a different language

i’ve spent a lot of time in spaces where it seemed widely agreed that doing so was not welcome, and i’ve had considerable fandom “culture shock” reading critrole fics. there are plenty of reasons to have caleb speaking “zemnian” or to emphasize his accent, and those reasons don’t need to be lofty or deep, but i do think there should be a reason beyond “haha this guy says ja instead of yeah”

i promise, absolutely pinky swear, that i don’t judge anyone on an individual basis for doing this. it seems to be a deep-seated fandom trend in this case and i just wish it wasn’t

18) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

tsubasa reservoir chronicle (trc) all the way back in 2010. tsubasa, my beloved, how you changed my life 💕

19) What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

i like different ones for different reasons, but the top contender might be such is the endlessness for nier automata. it’s a vampire/werewolf enemies-to-lovers fusion AU where i put 2b and 9s in an original universe of mine that i wrote about a lot when i was a teenager

i feel like i did a spectacular job of adapting the universe for nier and i thought i conveyed a lot about the world in a relatively short number of words (the entire fic is just under 5k). i’ve considered more than once that i should use this version of the universe going forward because i enjoy it so much!

-

thanks again for the tag, sky, and i’ll leave this open to anyone else who wants to try as i think most of my mutuals have already been included. don’t be shy about tagging me in your answer if you take my open invite as i love reading these! 💖

[mandaloriandy]

Fic Writer Interview

I suppose I should... actually get around to doing this.

I was tagged by @maderilien, @stormwarnings, and @willowcrowned! (that’s what I get for putting off doing this, I get ganged up on.) (I’m just joking, I am very touched that you all thought of me)

How many works do you have on AO3?

49

What's your total AO3 word count?

339,898

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

oh fuck there's so many. uhhhh 32 apparently. big yikes. I'm just gonna copy-paste the list over, that'll be easiest. A lot of these are overlaps but alas such is life

1. Star Wars - All Media Types (24) 2. Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (18) 3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types (7) 4. TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms (4) 5. Homestuck (4) 6. Doctor Who & Related Fandoms (3) 7. Avatar: Legend of Korra (3) 8. Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (3) 9. Marvel Cinematic Universe (2) 10. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV) (2) 11. The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types (2) 12. Doctor Who (2) 13. Ender Series - Orson Scott Card (1) 14. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) (1) 15. Iron Man (Movies) (1) 16. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (1) 17. Original Work (1) 18. Sherlock (TV) (1) 19. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) (1) 20. Big Hero 6 (2014) (1) 21. Emelan - Tamora Pierce (1) 22. The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien (1) 23. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga (1) 24. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien (1) 25. Captain America (Movies) (1) 26. Paranatural (Webcomic) (1) 27. Torchwood (1) 28. Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica (1) 29. Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types (1) 30. Star Wars: Rebels (1) 31. Doctor Who (2005) (1) 32. The Hobbit - All Media Types (1)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

To nobody's surprise, my top 5 fics by kudos are (in order) the first 5 parts to the Jedi Shmi AU.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Oof. I used to. But I ended up spiralling pretty badly uhhhh a couple years ago and had to stop. I feel like I should reply to comments, especially those wonderful long ones, but even though I do this whole writing thing, I always have a really hard time, like, knowing what to say to them? Like "akjsdfk;jf thank you" always feels inadequate, but writing a well thought-out reply takes a stupidly large amount of brainpower, and I'll leave them marked as unread if I want to reply to them and then they just accumulate in my inbox and I end up spiralling again, since it just continues to exist as a mental load of something I have to do and the avoidance just gets bigger and bigger the longer I put it off and–

look, I just get into my own head too much about it. I respond to questions, usually. I love all the comments but I can't let myself overthink it, and the easiest way to do that is to not let myself reply.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I guess Obi-Wan’s Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Life doesn’t count because it... doesn’t have an ending yet? and I don’t know how angsty that ending is going to be. Even Composing Hallelujah doesn’t count because it ends happier than in canon, even though it’s... y’know, not exactly happy-ending.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

Hahaha I don't do crossovers often, but I have done them, and the craziest one I've actually written is probably my Sailor Moon/Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic. It’s especially crazy because I’ve only seen a few episodes of sailor moon lol

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

lmao YEP

There's this one, like Ender's Game/Doctor Who fic I wrote and posted on FFN back in middle school. And it got a ton of hate, as far as I can tell mostly from the same person, talking about like, how bad and non-canonical and whatever it was. And when I migrated over to AO3, I reposted it there too. This was in like 2012. The migration, at least, the fic was written in... idk, 2010?

And then. In 20-fucking-19.

I got a comment saying "Terrible. Makes zero sense. It’s like the author threw canon out the window and took a shit on it." like lmao what??????

(for reference: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361723?show_comments=true#comments and https://www.fanfiction.net/r/7621672/)

(like what the actual fuck was this person on)

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Not any that I've been brave enough to post. And… also… nothing that I've actually written more than a few paragraphs on… I keep chickening out. I did recently make a deal with a friend, though, so… we'll see. If I do, it’s probably going to be quite dark, because that’s the kind of smut I like to read.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I sincerely hope not.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!! See how the blackbird walks into russian and just recently In all your wanderings into french!!!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've tried. It's never gone… especially well? I don't think any of them ever actually ended up complete, they all just petered out after a while.

What's your all time favorite ship?

I don't really have an "all-time favorite" anything, let alone a ship. I'm a horrible multishipper and I'm going to cause problems on purpose

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Sigh. Probably my intricate, 30-something-k unpublished Silmarillion Helcaraxë fic. It has so many moving pieces. I know where most of them end up but it's going to take so much effort to get there

What are your writing strengths?

writing

What are your writing weaknesses?

writing

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Hm. Given that I mostly write fic for SF/F, I don't run into the "real life languages" problem a lot. I end up working with conlangs of various complexity, for the most part, and for those… I'll sprinkle in a word or two if it makes sense, especially swear words and stuff. But for most of those conlangs, grammar is… less well-determined than vocabulary, so I almost never do phrases, let alone full sentences. I'll just put it in italics (if the POV character understands it) or say "and they said something unintelligible in [x language]" or the like.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I think………. let me check the dates on this. I think the actual first fanfiction I wrote was sometime in fifth or sixth grade, for this "Zenda" book series I read?? Either that or Harry Potter.

What's your favorite fic you've written?

A big shout-out goes to The Lichtenberg Figure, which I can’t believe is the only Tamora Pierce fanwork I’ve published, but for my favorite... it's gotta be Messenger. Like, looking back, there is a bunch about it that I am very not happy with, and a lot of things I think didn't come across the way I wanted, and things I would not write the same way now, years down the line, as I have very differently balanced understandings of… well, a lot of these same characters. But, fuck, I just can't let go of Mandalorian!Beru.

No pressure tags!! @apaladinagain @determamfidd @faeymouse @lumateranlibrarian (apologies if you’ve already done this one and I haven’t seen it!)

[bettsfic]

do you know anything about like, the development of the purity rhetoric that now seems to be ubiquitous in fandom and how it got there? i used to be on tumblr in like, 2014 and only recently came back to fandom and i remember everyone being generally kind of cool with things like incest ships and morally grey characters (speaking specifically re the frozen fandom and elsa/anna here lmao) whereas now it seems like the conversation about those things has drastically shifted and i am..puzzled by it

this is what i imagine that experience was like for you:

according to fanlore, purity culture started in the homestuck fandom which. based on what i know of homestuck, that tracks. however i’ve never been in homestuck so i’m not sure what that transformation was like. all i know is my personal experience with the disk horse. afaik there’s no cohesive timeline of events across fandom, and i lack the time and resources to be able to make one myself. if anyone knows of one, or wants to make one, please let me know.

i do know that purity culture is a movement started by very young teenagers, who were maybe 13-15 in 2014 and are now 18-20. they were 8-10 when ao3 was founded, and therefore seem to have a limited knowledge of fan history, censorship, and critical thinking. i’m hoping that since they’re now entering college, they’ll get some insight and broader social awareness, and this movement will finally die out in the next few years. 

on any other platform, at any other time, their toxic rhetoric would not have gained traction. but here and now, on tunglr dot com where anyone can gain a platform, where mob mentality thrives and inciting an anonymous dogpile is as easy as hitting Post, where the brokenness of this place makes it difficult to control the content you’re exposed to -- it’s the perfect storm. we live in an age of hopelessness. young people grow up with social media as an extension of their identities, tethered to devices that hold all the information in the world. i think it’s fair for them to be afraid of their futures, and i can understand the desire to control the online spaces where they have the most agency, where their voices are the loudest. 

that may explain why, but not how. as in, where did they pick up this mentality at all? @freedom-of-fanfic (whose work is a necessity in understanding the disk horse) connected anti-shipping to TERF rhetoric. i’ve linked the fanlore page because it has all of the links and some of the responses. i honestly do believe that the language surrounding purity culture has its ugly roots in TERFdom. at its core, purity culture -- the policing of female and queer sexuality -- is misogyny. 

when i started writing destiel circa 2014, fandom was as you described. wincest was a juggernaut on par with destiel. teen wolf was full of underage and noncon. a/b/o was on the rise. it seemed like fandom was a genre without restraint -- anything you wrote, if it found the right audience, would be celebrated unabashedly. people who have been following me for a long time know that i was addicted to adderall at the time and pounding out all sorts of manic nonsense. i remember living on the validation of comments (and at the time, there were lots of comments. not so much anymore, but that’s another story). i got critical comments only rarely, and they were the type that i admired -- readers without judgment thinking through the story, reacting to it earnestly. i made some of my best friends because they left long, critical comments on my work. sometimes they didn’t like it, sometimes they did, but ultimately, they were engaged, and that’s what counted.

i remember my first policing-type comment, i think at the start of all the purity nonsense. it was a destiel fic, and someone very angrily told me i should tag my bottom!cas because it was triggering. i’ve thought about that comment a lot over the years. top/bottom discourse is nothing new, but to say that bottom castiel is triggering? that was ridiculous. but then i realized -- there was a writer in fandom at the time i won’t name, who was known for being extremely sensitive (for bottom!cas especially, which they found triggering), and their very dedicated following offered fic that was safe for their fave to read. i have nothing against this person at all. they were not part of the purity discourse, they were up front about their sensitive nature, and as far as i knew (i believe i met them at a con once?) they were very kind. 

but that commenter had been clearly influenced by this person and believed that a specific fictional character receiving anal sex from another specific fictional character was actual, real triggering content, and it was my obligation as a writer to tag for it. which i did, because i felt bad, and i was baffled by that request. at the time, i wanted more than anything to be liked, and conformed wherever i could. if i got such a request now, i would ignore it because it was rudely written and honestly kind of bonkers. i’d happily add a tag for something i may have missed, or even something i’d never considered before, but there’s no reason a person can’t make that request politely. 

this situation isn’t about purity discourse proper (the commenter didn’t tell me not to write the fic, and it had nothing to do with morality), but it’s the earliest example i can think of where the process of policing had occurred: a person of influence on tumblr affected their follower’s thinking, and that follower felt entitled to command another writer to conform to that ideology.

i could be completely wrong about making these connections. maybe that commenter truly believed bottom!cas was a legitimate widespread trauma. they did not say the fic was triggering to them, but that it might be to some other people, in the same way purity police say “think of the CHILDREN” when in fact they don’t give a fuck about children at all. 

after destiel i moved to stucky, which was, at the time, a juggernaut ship where anyone could write anything. this was also the time when the term “cinnamon roll” became incredibly popular, circa 2015. it was a fun and seemingly innocuous meme, but it positioned the ideas of “purity” and “wholesomeness” in sharp relief, and cemented these ideas by beginning to give it a distinct vocabulary. “trash” was pitched as its opposite. stucky is where i first came into contact with “antis.” in destiel, there had been ship wars, sure, but it was of a different flavor than antis. destiel vs wincest wasn’t about morality in 2014. it was about everything but.

in stucky in 2015, however, the disk horse was running rampant. the MCU had a sub-section of fandom called HTP (hydra trash party) in which steve and/or bucky have dubious or nonconsensual relations with various or many members of hydra. this is the first time i remember being aware of morality becoming a cornerstone of shipping. HTP was loathed by purity police. by the time i wrote a stucky bdsm au, i’d accumulated multiple nasty anons, rude comments from entitled readers, and other nonsense that all said the same thing: your filth is not welcome here in our space of purity. go away.

but the release of the force awakens is what really turned the tide. TFA offered three major ships: stormpilot (as it was called at the time, now finnpoe), reylo, and kylux. the fandom that developed around the sequels was firmly divided. franzeska wrote an amazing meta about this phenomenon which gives some insight into the seeds of purity policing. in short, stormpilot should have been the primary pairing of the sequels, but instead many of the badwrong writers from other fandoms (and HTP specifically, which was how i entered the fandom) flocked to the blank slate of kylux. 

it took a long time for the ship to gain traction. a friend told me that kylux had started with angry star wars racists who hated that there was diversity in the sequel trilogy. and i told them no, i was there, there were twelve of us and a cornchip, and all we cared about was the dirty/darkly comedic potential of these two ridiculous villain characters in one of the biggest franchises of all time. it wasn’t that complicated. i don’t mean to dismiss the discussion of race in fandom; i think it’s important to acknowledge that racism, as franzeska describes far better than i can, plays a huge part in fandom, particularly in star wars, and it’s an important and ongoing discussion to be having, especially given what kelly marie tran has gone through, and how it affected (presumably) rose tico’s extremely limited presence in TROS.

the early fics of kylux weren’t particularly taboo. they were post-TFA hurt/comfort mostly, then slowly the bdsm and power dynamics crept in. those of us who wanted to get away from purity discourse had finally found a new home. for a while. 2016 was the golden era of kylux. we were all very happy.

i remember talking to a friend about how there were certain things i couldn’t write in certain ships. being from ye olden days of fandom, she was appalled by this idea, and told me i could write anything for any ship i wanted, wasn’t that was the whole point of transformative works? and i agreed! but i tried to explain, if you post badwrong for a fandom of purity police, you’re going to, at best, get dogpiled in your comments/inbox. at worse they will find you, call your employer, and try to ruin your life. people will tell you to kill yourself. they’ll report your tumblr and try to get your blog shut down. there are real-life, harrowing consequences to writing taboo fic, and many who write fic as a hobby don’t have the emotional energy to field these risks.

around this time, discord became popular, which offered a private space for badwrong writers to congregate. i had started grad school and didn’t have much time to write fic. metoo was happening. tromp got elected. kylux was slowly turning mainstream so a lot of us turned our attention to gradence in fantastic beasts. some went on to hannibal and other fandoms that hadn’t yet caught the attention of purity police (but it was, as it is now, just a matter of time). kylux, i feel, was specifically decimated by a single fan creator, who was like a police chief. they would get wind of someone writing underage or noncon and write a call-out post about them, and that writer/artist would get pitchforked. a few times, my comments or posts got screencapped, and posts were written urging people to stop reading my works because of how heinously immoral i was. this happened to several of my friends too. 

the great tumblr tittyban of 2017 happened, which only added fuel to the fire and further legitimized the purity movement. i shifted hesitantly to the 100 fandom, which seemed small in comparison to supernatural, marvel, and star wars. i thought it was a chill place. i was wrong; it was just as toxic as other fandoms. but i also didn’t care anymore, and i appreciated that i was mostly left alone. more importantly, i found a lot of support from other people who were as tired of the purity as i was, and @the100kinkmeme was reborn. 

the state of things is pretty abysmal. there are some really amazing writers out there writing under multiple sock accounts, keeping their fandom identities shattered so as not to call attention to themselves. as much as i understand why writers do that, and i respect that decision, i also think it’s sad. it deprives readers the chance to read that author’s other works. it limits the sense of community and our ability to make friends. it fractures the future of the genre.

what’s most important to acknowledge is that none of this is happening solely in fandom. i went to a writers’ conference where 2 of 3 panels were about the history of moral policing and censorship in art. it is worth noting that of the 40-ish visiting writers on faculty, only one (1) was a woman of color (jaimaica kincaid). naturally, older rich white people who have spent their life in the arts are all about death of the author, separation of art and artist. they’re on the total opposite side of purity police, and they won’t acknowledge at all that racism and sexism are a problem in the creative world. they don’t have any nuance on the discussion, or modern perspectives in light of metoo or popular culture. 

this went on longer than i anticipated. i neglected to mention YFIP (your fave is problematic) an old blog that started the idea of call-out culture by pulling receipts on celebrities, and how call-out culture led to cancel culture, which also aided in the purity disk horse. i think a lot can be said about how some of this stuff is genuinely good (metoo and holding men accountable for their bullshit) while also being profoundly toxic (punishing criminals via mob mentality, ruining their careers and livelihoods through social media, rather than giving them their due process in court. i understand it -- the judicial system is built by the hands of the very predators we seek to condemn, but still. the jury of the internet is never a fair trial). 

if you want to read more, my tag is tsatp (the sacred and the profane). i’m sure i’ve left out a lot, but i can only speak to my experience. i think it would be good if people would share their experience dealing with purity policing, too, so we might get a cohesive timeline in place. feel free to reblog and add your story.

[the-magnus-archives-wiki]

Red string & Spiders

The Web is obviously gonna be important in season 5 and ive been meaning to dig into some of it’s threads (hah) for a while. Now, I know about Web!Martin and I admit that it’s a possibility, but i dont personally see the narrative taking that route. 

I don’t know that all these connections are intentional manipulations either, but I’m just gonna work under the assumption that they are and see where it gets me. Somewhere behind the scenes, Annabelle and the Mother are playing five dimensional chess and laughing at all of us.

This ended up being a bit long (1.5k words, whoops!) so it’s going under a cut.

123: Web Development. 

“You would have to write out, and post, in full, a horrible event that had happened to you, or someone that you loved.“ This sounds an awful lot like Annabelle is collecting statements, possibly scouting victims and potential vectors through which she can influence the Institute? She starts doing this in early 2015 and that brings me to

16: Arachnophobia & 39: Infestation

Carlos Vittery's name is found in the Chelicerae website. His experience happened in early 2015 and he made his statement in April. Investigating his statement is what brings Martin into contact with Jane Prentiss and sets into motion a chain of events that saves everyone during the Infestation. ie, he ends up living at the archives and stashes the extra fire extinguishers and the corkscrew.

Of course, Prentiss is also forced to start the wormpocalypse early after Jon accidentally discovers it when killing a spider.

147: Weaver & 80: The Librarian

It’s that damn lighter. From 147: “I realise that addiction is one of the strongest vectors of control there is.“ Leitner wouldn’t have been left alone if Jon hadn’t gone for a smoke, or just vaped instead. (Daisy helpfully mentions that he smokes Silk cut brand at one point -.-)

Of course, the lighter was delivered alongside the web table and destroying it is also what directly lead Jon to meeting Leitner in the first place. idk if the goal here would’ve been to actually get Leitner killed or if that was just a side-effect of pushing Jon further along his journey?¨

121: Far Away

The Web sends Oliver Banks to feed Jon a statement and encourage him to go full avatar. It’s just very kind and helpful, huh?

130: Meat

It helpfully points toward using a body part as an anchor when entering the coffin. This whole mess gets Jon marked by both the Flesh and the Buried.

Hill Top Road, pt 1

There’s A Lot Too Unpack Here

So they’re originally using this place to ensnare fresh adults and filling them with spiders. I think it is a place of power and essentially a production facility for the hollow type of spider person that Trevor encounters in 56. These might very well be the “spider husks” that got Daisy sectioned in the first place. 

Then there’s the whole mess with Agnes. I still don’t feel like I fully understand what went down there. Let’s look at these two quotes:

“she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way.” (Eugene Vanderstock, 139)

“It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house.” (Gertrude, 145)

So we have ties that bind between Fielding/Hill Top, Agnes and Gertrude. The way Eugene talks about it, seems that being bound to Hill Top wouldn’t prevent her from realising her destiny, but being bound to Gertrude did. And while waiting for Gertrude to die, doubt crept into her and made her unfit for their grand ritual.

I still don’t understand why the uprooting of the tree at Hill Top is what spurred Agnes to finally end it though. It seems like that might’ve broken the bond between her and that place, which you’d think is a good thing? idk, maybe we’re not done with Agnes yet, or I’m just overthinking it.

Hill Top Road, pt 2

Season 5 babey!

“I can’t say much about exactly what happened within the walls of that house, but it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.” (Eugene, 139)

“There is something wrong with Hill Top Road. You know it as well as I do. Some strange scar on reality at the center of - whatever it is that the Spider is spinning.” (Helen, 146)

First, idk if it’s anything but this kinda reminds me of how Jon is marked by every fear. 

Second, episode 114. This is the episode I keep coming back to when thinking about Hill Top Road cause what the heck is up with this:

“I went to clean that house on April the 23rd 2009 which, according to all of you, is tomorrow. But it can’t be. That was two weeks ago. I’ve tried to talk to my friends about it. Those of my friends I can find, but they seem distant, like they don’t really know me. Everything is just... wrong. I can’t find my favourite coffee shop. And I don’t know who you people are.“

This whole episode reeks of alternate universe and I’m just ??? Additionally, the lady talks about the tree in the backyard, but it was uprooted in 2006, so even more AU vibes. Of course, it could be mental manipulation, someone altering her memories, but that seems like a weird red herring that Jon doesn’t even pursue. 

Alternatively, we’ve seen NotThem rewrite reality around a person and at this time the NotThem was bound to the Web table. I don’t think that’s anything, particularly given that the table was destroyed, but it’s a thought. (And NotSasha was very recently released back into the world so, hmm)

Ultimately I feel like the lady in 114 may have been a kind of experiment? A trial run to see exactly how they could harness this scar in reality, or to see if they needed to exacerbate it further? Whatever it is, I’m certain it’s gonna be Important™ in season 5.

81: A Guest for Mr. Spider

I don’t think baby-Jon was necessarily targeted beyond being a convenient victim. Him walking away from Mr Spider alive though, that may have made him interesting. I wonder if the Web being the first to mark him carries special significance and that’s maybe why it’s been assisting him? Its highly speculative but the Web did also mark Gertrude and it sounds like it may have been her first mark too. (Assuming the cat thing to be a joke)

Maybe it’s trying to use this to hijack Elias’ ritual somehow? Or to do a second ritual? Or the order of the marks has no significance and all it wanted Jon for was the Mass Ritual?

110: Creature Feature & 136: The Puppeteer

I feel like I know the least about these two. I don’t know to what extent they’re really connected but Neil Lagorio and the film angle seems like a big thing, and Annabelle’s presence makes me think it’s part of something bigger.

So Lagorio is supposed to be creating a spider animatronic but is actually housebound (you could even say homestuck). Annabelle shows up at his place and spends 5 months doing something before he dies. As news of his death break, a big spider monster kidnaps ~100 actors. It doesn’t feel like a big leap to say that he probably created (or was used to create) some sort of spider in the end.

idk what the end goal here is though, why did Annabelle send Lagorio’s original cuts to the Institute? Why is one body a year washing up on a beach? Are they just using them to lay eggs in, or as food? Just killing people isn’t very spider-y but I guess everyone needs to eat?

This whole thing is giving me ritual vibes but I don’t think that’s it? At least not your standard ritual.

Elias & 160

I feel like the Web has definitely helped us get to 160 but I don’t think Elias is directly working with it. They just seem to share the completion of the Mass Ritual as a goal. (Or maybe they are working together and Elias is getting played somehow, that’d be nice.)

Annabelle straight up says “Maybe I’ve occasionally been nudging something here and there to keep you safe, to keep everything on track” and she directly calls out his compulsion to read statements, which Elias’ ultimately uses to set it off. I feel like, if she wanted to stop it, she would’ve just found some way to kill Jon.

I don’t know if the final goal was just to piggyback on Elias’ ritual though, that feels a bit too simple, especially since Hill Top Road hasn’t been resolved. There’s probably some further, sinister plot at play that just needed the fearpocalpyse to be a thing. I don’t know what it is, but it’s gonna involve a big spider and Hill Top Road.

[othercat2]

Jam: Egg fic with worldbuilding but no title 1/?

So this is a thing I’ve been putting up on the homestuck gang discord. I decided to play with the “oviparous trolls” au thing. As you do. As usual, I have no idea of what I’m doing, and there’s a lot of worldbuilding.

_________________________

He's fussing (he is not fussing this is his first clutch okay) with the temperature controls of the incubator. Four eggs was  a reasonable sized first clutch and they were all on the small end. (But perfectly acceptable Zahhak!) Karkat snapped pictures of the speckled eggs and sent them to their genetors with his usual message of "red and blue slurry still does not make purple grubs." In honor of some of the most idiotic questions he'd  been asked by someone supposedly not a subadult. (Zahhak was lucky his matesprit put up with him.)

After egg coddling was breakfast and waiting for his attendant to arrive with his schedule. (And check his work.  Fucking up temps for a clutch could alter their projected caste or render them nonviable.) Karkat was hoping Kanaya was going to be bringing him good news from the medics; he's been on rest for what feels like forever and wants to get back to his work out. He checks the news feeds and catches up to social media. He also does a lot of shit talking at various internet hate friends. He's  doing some online shopping when Kanaya turns up. He's about to offer her a muffin and some coffee but...

"Kanaya are you okay?" She did not look okay.  "The Cavern Matre called me into her office," Kanaya says in a numb little voice. "Something terrible has happened."

Karkat felt a little thrill of panic at that. "Did something happen to my genitors?" He asked. “Zahhak doesn't  message too often but usually I'm exchanging stupid smilies and emojis with Megido by now."

Kanaya shook her head. "No this is something else. Worse."

"Worse?" Karkat asks. Kanaya nods. "The other attendants are speaking to their genetrices," she says.

"The Matres felt this would be better than simply announcing this during assembly."

"Announce what Kanaya?" Karkat asks.

Kanaya takes a breath. "Despite the strictest security measures we've discovered there's been trafficking of a genetrix bloodline."

"Holy shitfuck." It was easy to see why it hadn't been announced during assembly there would have been a fucking riot. "How?" Cavern security by necessity was tight for the very purpose of preventing kidnappings. Genetrices were trained to fight or take more extreme measures if taken. The punishments for attempting a kidnapping were gruesome.

"We don't  have all the details yet. The Church hasn't been very forthcoming."

"Of course. Mother Grub forbid they give a full report to the ones it's  relevant to." Kanaya gives him a look of reproof. Or tries to. Karkat's pretty good at staring her down.

"I'm sure we'll know more soon. There could be a reason behind the with held information."

Karkat did not agree but also didn't  want to argue. The reproductive and attending castes relative independance was hard won. It was also fragile. He knew that in the early days of his castes creation there had been total chaos until the early prototypes, led by the Signless had proven  it was more trouble than it was worth for the highbloods to try to keep their own little pet genetrix. The idea of an entire bloodline having been stolen was an immense blow. ( And horrifying purely from a stance of compassion. ) After breakfast Kanaya checked on the eggs temperature and the development of the embryos.

She checks his notations and makes a few of her own. Karkat tries not to fidget too much. They go to assembly next. Karkat takes his sickles. Out in the corridor are other adult genetrices and their attendants, all armed. The mood is too tense for the usual greetings and shit talking. Everyone heads into the assembly hall.

The Matre of the Cavern, flanked by the Matres of Medical, Education, Support, Assessment, and Genetics were on the stage. As a group they bowed. "By now you've been informed of the crime," the Matre of the Cavern says.  "We still don't have the details.  What we do know is that since  our Cavern is closest the genetrices will be brought here."

There was a flurry of questions, but the Matre of the Cavern signaled for quiet and  the Matre of Assessment stepped up. "The line has three living members. A third molt adult, a gravid adolescent and a two sweep old child. We don't  yet know if there were others that were sold elsewhere or culled."

"What's going to happen with the traffickers?" one of the older genetrices asks in a hard voice.

The Matre blinks. "They're ours of course. As always."

"Clowns," the genetrix points out as if this alone was an argument.  (It probably was. Fasces' most frequent genitors were a kismesis pair who were deacons in cult of the twin messiahs.)

The Matre's mouth twitches like she's  trying not to laugh. "I don't  think convincing them to turn over the criminals or what's  left will be a problem," she says.

More questions were asked about the situation and plans for the bloodline. Most of them were deflected, though Support indicated plans for housing and integration if possible were being discussed.  Karkat knew he wasn't the only one to shudder at the "if possible."

Assembly turned to other subjects such as the graduation of the most recent brood from the trials, the up coming Ascension for the next brood, and the Fete of the Last. (Karkat was on the decoration and planning committee for his sector of the Cavern.) There was also an announcement that due to the discovered theft, the Caverns had called off the Lottery and all genitors who hadn't taken vows were being asked to leave early. No one was especially happy about this.

After assembly was a doctor appointment where Karkat was approved for "light exercise." The doctor from long experience with her patient told him that extended sets with his sickles did not constitute light exercise. Twenty minutes a day, with a three minute increase over the next twelve weeks. "This is a monumental load of feculence in the backed up sewers of stupid bullshit I have to deal with," Karkat griped.

"I don't caaare," Zheydh almost sings. "This is what you get for over exerting yourself while gravid! You fainted and probably traumatized the class you were teaching Vantas. Then you wouldn't take my advice because quote 'you're not the one whose a waddling troll turducken.' Now I get to have my revenge."

"I hate you so much," Karkat says. "Shut up Kanaya."

"I didn't say anything," Kanaya says, amused.

"I can hear your I told you so," Karkat says, giving his attendant a glower.

"I doubt you're developing telepathy Karkat," Kanaya says teasingly.

 After the doctor appointment Karkat teaches his Lit class and goes to lunch. Then he attends  a section meeting where the main topics are morning assembly and the next environmental failure drill. (They were past due for a bolide emergency procedure. There was also strong argument for an actual raid drill.)

The meeting ran over, but he didn't get into very much trouble with his supervisor in the creche over it. The wigglers however were very sad he was late and manipulated extra story time out of him. After creche was dinner, which he shared with Kanaya.

The next few days were much the same except for an underlying simmer of anger for the traffickers. They still hadn't found out how it had happened, still weren't sure if the clowns were going to turn them over. Assembly was generally full of shouting that the Matres couldn't quite mediate.

The clown ship finally docks in the Cavern bay. It's surprisingly small and sleek and for a Church ship. (The cult had its  own shipyards and from what he'd heard their ships tended to be much bigger than standard Imperial ship  classes.) It's  painted with multicolored eyes and wings that spiral from bow to stern, and it's  maybe a quarter  the size of a cathedral ship. The ship is disturbingly named  Dance of the Angel.

Karkat is very very surprised when the Cavern Matre sends him a message that he's been asked to come with her to the ship and meet with the   Grand Highblood. "What the fuck?" Karkat asks. He waves his shelltop at Kanaya. "What is this? Am I reading this right?"

"I...it would seem so," Kanaya says. "The Grand Highblood wants to meet you."

“Why?" Kanaya gives him a look as if he's being deliberately obtuse. "Perhaps for some reason he feels is related to your Ancestor?" she suggests.

Karkat stares blankly back. "My Ancestor and nine caegars can get me a vaguely historically accurate romance novel."

"Karkat," Kanaya says. "I don't know whether you're being prickly about your Ancestor or you really believe that."

"It can be both!" Karkat says. "It's not like I have any special rank or responsibilities. Isn't it even in his will? 'If I should have a Descendant or if such should still exist in the future generations, put no burdens on him he doesn't take up.' I mean I'm  pretty sure there was a whole thing about it."

Kanaya smiles at Karkat. "Maybe that's something you could bring up with him.

 Karkat snorts. "Right I'm sure that's going to go over well," he says. There's a certain amount of fussing and preparation before Karkat is judged presentable for his meeting. Despite Kanaya's best efforts, he's never had much in the way of formal attire. There are some festival clothes, casual clothes, clothes for socializing or meeting with his genitors. But nothing really formal.

Kanaya ends up putting him into his favorite black velvet divided skirt, bright red long sleeved tunic, and a darker red robe with a wide black fabric belt. Also included were low leather boots, and a veiled hat. His only jewelry are some steel rings, and an ear cuff. He arms himself with his electric dart device (concealed) and his sickle (very much not concealed). Kanaya of course, is already dressed and perfectly made up. Her colors are the traditional jade green and black, though with  accents of genetrix bright red. She has no obvious weapons, but Karkat knows she's carrying.

"Ready?" she asks. Karkat nods, and  they both head out the door. They're met at the ship by the Matre of the Caverns, and a huge indigo, obviously a Church deacon.

"Karkat," the Matre says by way of greeting. "And Kanaya."

"Matre," Karkat and Kanaya chorus, and give a salute. They give another salute to the deacon.

"All y'all follow me," the deacon says, and heads up  gangway of the ship.

The Matre heads up first behind the deacon, followed by Karkat, with Kanaya taking up the rear. The inside of the ship is decorated much the way the exterior is. Eyes and feathered wings and spirals in rainbow hues. There are more indigo crewmen, who step aside as they pass. Karkat can hear conversation, and music, many voices singing.

The deacon leads them down several passages, and into something between an office and a sitting block. There  are low chairs and multicolored cushions everywhere, and a small dais where the Grand Highblood is sitting on more cushions in front of a low desk with books and readers scattered everywhere, along with a high end computing device. He's huge, and his paint is strangely simple. Flat, blank white, which seems to mean something to the Matre, because she gasps.

The three of them start to bow, but the Grand Highblood waves. "Sit yourselves down," the Grand Highblood says. When they've done so, (with some hesitation) he continues with, "Let me give you the full debrief," he says. "My word to your ears. There were rumors of undocumented crew and false papers. It was the legislacerators game at first, thinking it was stolen eggs or stolen grubs and wigglers, subadults. But it turned to something more heinous. A high barrister brother was bribed with a genetrix, and being not an idiot called on the church. We took over and rooted them out."

"You found only three?" The Matre of the Cavern asked. It was an oddly blunt question.

“That's on me," the Grand Highblood says. "The traffickers killed most of them, trying to destroy evidence, like they thought we wouldn't wring the truth from them. There was just the oldest of the line, the one the oldest  locked himself in a bitty room with, and the wiggler given to the barrister."

As he speaks, there's movement by the Grand Highblood's lap, behind the table. What seemed like another pile of colorful cloth turns out to be a troll. An adult genetrix, with white hair wearing what looks like second hand Church motley. He's long limbed, and skinny instead of the usual blocky build of most genetrices, and if he were standing, would be almost as tall as the Grand Highblood. He blinks sleepily at them.  "Sup."

There is a look of unmistakable fondness on the Grand Highblood's face. "You went and fell asleep on me again, thinking I'm a relaxation platform."

"No, I'm being sultry as fuck," the genetrix says.

"More like a underfed purrbeast," the Grand Highblood says. "We're at the Cavern. These are all to being your kin." The gentrix's eyes flick from the Matre, to Kanaya and Karkat. "I'm Matre Markstar, the Matre of this Cavern," the Matre says. "This is Kanaya Maryam, and Karkat Vantas, how should we call you?" "

Dhuvid Straid," the genetrix says.

"We're still in pursuit of some of the traffickers, who went on with a whole cloning lab and canisters of frozen tissue, but the most of them we'll be handing them over," the Grand Highblood says. "All mostly in one piece."

The Cavern Matre bows where she sits. "We thank you for rescuing our charges."

The Grand Highblood's mouth tilts in a slanted smile that reveals the curves of his fangs. "All I did was do my duty toward the children of the Mother, didn't I?" he casts a glance toward Karkat, deep indigo-purple eyes have a certain gleam to them. "Clever motherfucker, your Ancestor," he says to Karkat. "We the last children of the mother have a duty to each other and the future He was all sneaky talking about the castes outside of his newly formed one. You have his miraculous way with words? You've been quiet enough."

"With all respect, Highblood, if you want an argument with my Ancestor, you should hire a necromancer," Karkat says in a flat tone. The Grand Highblood laughs quietly. "It's the Descendant I wanted a word with," he says. "I promised Dhuvid his kin would be safe and together, and I won't turn them over to anyone who'd keep them apart or harm them."

Matre Markstar looks momentarily offended by that,but she recovers. "Sir, are you implying you want Teacher Vantas to mentor or take custody of the genetrice line?"

"Sister, I want him to have the care of Dhuvid's little brothers," the Grand Highbllood. "As I promised him."  A beat. "There being a matter of serendipity between us, such that I would take over his care."

"Frail and wilting flower, that's me." Dhuvid says. "I need the gentlest and sweetest pale pity."

"You speak more true than you know, rattle bones," the Grand Highblood says, amused. "With your permit I'd get to doing that, jade sister. My Descendant's taking over the hunt for the traffickers and all Church duties so I settle Dhuvid in."

 "Accommodations may be arranged, Highblood," Markstar says. "I will have the Imperial suite prepared for you."

"I'll be put up with Dhuvid by wherever Vantas is," the Grand Highblood says.

"The genetrice apartments are separate from the genitor and admittance suites," Markstar says. "Genitors generally do not go there, for obvious reasons." "Quadrants and the genitors that take vows do," the Grand Highblood points out.  "I want to see where you'll be mewing up my diamond, and see all how you'll be treating him and his kin. I'll take whatever vows the genitors that don't leave do."

"That would mean you don't leave," Karkat blurts over whatever probably more polite version of "what the fuck," Markstar was about to voice. "It is not actually like Servitors of the Genetrices down in the genetrice apartments," Karkat says, naming a series of porn videos that everyone has been warned about. (Since genitors often got weird ideas, especially the older high caste trolls still around from the last Mothergrub's broods.) "The imperial suiteblock is supposed to be all fancy and shit, according to your station. Dhuvid and his line are probably going to be in the infirmary getting checked over before anyone gets moved anywhere, anyway."

"You think I don't know what I'm asking for?" The Grand Highblood asks, voice hard."I'll stay by him, where ever he's put up."

"Enduring great privations and all that shit," Dhuvid says. He's leaning up against the Highblood's side, and despite the bland tone, there's a certain amount of tension in his shoulders. "Boss, explain me a thing, what's this argument about?" a beat. "You said it was goinng to be safe here."

"So I did,"  Grand Highblood says. "And it is, there's just these little particulars."

[pochapal]

rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking: 

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3. 

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it. 

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with. 

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.