Ouroboros Reveal
I wrote life doesn’t let you play nice, as a remix to Ashkatom’s Our Lives On Holiday. I’ve never really written Sollux and Eridan before, and had a great time examining the series of FLARPing events through the Pompous Prince’s eyes. As an additional bonus, Ash started adding chapters to the fic (which was originally a oneshot) and a handful of the things I guessed at ended up getting confirmed in the later chapters. Funtimes!
So yeah. You should go read it and tell me what you think!
Not What We Planned On - 9/14
In which everyone has Problems (except maybe John) and some more reality about their reality comes out. The Adults Talk and the kids sortof Listen.
Also, everyone goes on a field trip.
It was John’s idea.
(Grandpa helped.)
(Extra thanks to Roach and Miko for betaing, and much love to Nella and Jayuna for being moral support as I struggled with this.)
Not What We Planned On 7/14
And much delayed, here’s Chapter 7. And I apologize in advance, because this is where the excrement rises to hit the spinning bladed cooling unit. Here on A03
The screams are more like wails and you stop in the living room to a scene out of Amityville. Grandpa Harley looks like he tried to Pollock with only two tubes of paint and there’s purple and blue soaked into the shoulders of his blinding green silk pyjamas. Zahhak looks like a corpse, more blue paint blood and bruise than he is troll. Nepeta is sobbing, scratching and cursing like a ball of furious cat and you realize Grandpa has a decent amount of red added to his mix and that shit is not right.
You’re about to catch kitty before her claws do any more damage when you almost trip over Nitram and Makara, who are on the floor and God, Makara looks like he fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down and Nitram’s bleeding orangeybrown onto the white carpet from half a dozen claw marks across his arms and shoulders.
Jesus fucking Christ.
In which Amanda braindumps about Mr Zahhak
Eee! Thank you! I do think Equius is a really, really messed up troll and getting to write from his POV is fun because of that. Finding a way to make him sympathetic as a character is a challenge but one I really enjoy, especially because he’s not exactly the archetype most people find themselves falling under. He’s kindof a jerk, and he’s got serious, serious issues with things like right and wrong (what he did to Aradia is so so wrong and he hadn’t even considered that at the time) as well as control (he dies with a smile on his face. Dude.) But at the same time, he builds Vriska’s arm, and Tavros’ legs, and all those robots. He wants to be creative - and he fails so often at it. He wants to appreciate the great things in life - and he has no taste. And he is genuinely trying his best to protect Nepeta, and she truly pities him in turn. And pity comes not only out of being pathetic, but by being genuinely liked as well, so there needs to be a reason she cares so deeply for him. Put all that together and you have my Equius - who is a lot like Feferi, in a very different strand. He’s been raised to know and believe one thing, he’s learned that most of it is wrong and he genuinely wants to Make It Better and BE STRONGER and Be The Better Troll he knows he is - and he fails at it more than he succeeds. He wants to do the right thing - but because he doesn’t understand what the right thing is, he often does the wrong thing with the right intentions. Which doesn’t make it better, and sometimes makes it worse.
But does make him sympathetic. So I glee to hear that I succeed! When you don’t like a character and a fic manages to change that opinion, it’s a shiny shiny thing. I keep hearing from people that I’m getting them to appreciate Equius and Nepeta and I flail every time because it’s a seriously high compliment. So thanks!
(And thus Amanda proves she really likes to go on about headcanon. >_>)
Not What We Planned On - 6/14
Your stewardess - there are five of you, a stewardess and a pilot - tells you to prepare for takeoff and points out the emergency exits with a thousand dollar smile, on the strange and unlikely chance you survive the inevitable crash and need to drag yourself from the twisted burning wreckage. What? Nervous? You? Never.
Terezi does her best to spoil the mood by licking the remote that’s attached to her chair. You have to hand it to flight chick - her plastic smile doesn’t move an inch. She demonstrates the personal television sets for Terezi and only wipes her hand discreetly on her skirt when she thinks no one is looking. It’s something to know that the trolls read as human enough to pass airport security (though you barely had to do more than show your id, so much for worrying about the TSA) but their weirdness translates clear through. It would probably be better if you could do something about that strangeness, but yeah, you know a lost cause before you start it. Besides, there’s something about how Terezi doesn’t give a fuck about what people are thinking or doing about her. You respect that (and might maybe, though you wouldn’t admit it ever, admire it).
The plane starts, the rumble of the engine traveling up through the floor and into your feet and shaking you to your bone. You’re not gripping the armrest of your seat so hard you can hear the plastic crack. You’re not staring carefully ahead at the TV screen in front of you, completely unaware of what it’s even showing. You are not taking deep, steady breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth and pushing down on your diaphragm like the downward dog. You are not quietly grateful at the cool grey hand that covers your own and squeezes and that the owner doesn’t point out all the things you are not doing, she just complains about how strange everything smells. You are Dave Strider, the fucking Knight of Time. You aren’t afraid of hurtling through the air at a thousand miles per hour in a ten ton metal coffin you have no control over.
Strider’s don’t do fear.
(This fic. This fic is eating me. 70 000 words. If I keep at this rate - and I expect to - it’s going to finish at around 150 000. As someone who used to struggle to finish 1000 word drabbles, this makes me so damn proud I have no words.
Also, I keep getting the best comments ever. ^_^)
Snippet: NWWPO Chapter 6
You don’t say goodbye to your house or your room or your swimming spot or the beach because you know you’ll be back and besides they don’t need goodbyes. You would have wished your animal friends goodbye if you had any, but Bec always chased them off. (That’s why you can’t be girl Tarzan, you explained to Dave once. Because you’d have to have a lot more cool animal friends who talked to you than just an awesome but jealous dog. He told you that if it walked like a goat and looked like a goat and sounded like a cat it was probably still a goat, though almost definitely one destined for YouTube. It was so ironic you still aren’t sure what he meant.)
Chapter 6 will be up as soon as I get it back from my beta, but I wanted to share something because I am damn proud of this chapter (and hell, this story in general).
And now that it’s done, I guess it’s time to catch back up to comments again~
‘Til All the Stars Are Yours: A Homestuck Snippet.
Eridan Ampora is a young, well regarded Captain in Her Imperial Condescension’s fleet. He learned a lot of lessons from sGrub, but maybe not all the ones he should have.
…he pinned the visiting troll with a look that he’d practiced for weeks in front of a mirror. (It was important to have eyes and a gaze that could freeze opponents with fear, Dualscar had written, and it had certainly proved a useful skill.) “I do not recall givin you permission to touch my crew. In fact, I think I’d fuckin recall givin an aggressive fuckup like you permission to do anything besides breathe on my ship.”
New Chapter: Not What We Planned On.
In which Karkat Vantas hates Earth with a platonic rage so potent it’s impressive he doesn’t catch fire, John Egbert introduces his troll houseguests to the tradition of movie-watching forts, Vriska Sekret attempts romance and finds it difficult and Aradia Megido is just happy no one is dead and fears it may not remain that way. Guest starring Mr Egbert and his shopping list.
my finger is on the button: Fic Spotlight: Space Bro (Sol/Kar) By JumpingJackTrash
In which Karkat Vantas is a surly ex-Marine who is absolutely for sure NOT a gray space alien, nor has he ever been a gray space alien at any point in his life ever, regardless of what this weirdo Sollux Captor claims when they meet in a bar one miserable Friday night.
I should have gone to bed. Instead I clicked a link and ended up reading all 8 parts of this. ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT and hilariously funny and terribly sweet all at once. totally recc checking it out!
(Source: vastderp)
