#Usually I'm also not a fan of writing from the 1st person perspective. It feels weird to me when i do. This didn't however. I liked it.

[akechis-special-case]

Sorry, this went on in my head as it just kept hurting like crazy (it is somewhat better now). This is anything but a drabble but... Yeah. Something short I did as a warm up. Also I usually never write in first person but I wanted to try it again after years (last time I wrote in first person was almost a decade ago I think).

The Right Medicine

A Collection Of Very Short Stuff

Words: 400

“Goro, my head hurts~” I mutter, though despite the pain in  my voice it sounds more like a pleading tease. 

It is enough to get his attention however, making him turn to me with a sigh. “And what do you want me to do about it?” He asks, rolling his eyes before looking down at me. Is it a hint of annoyance in his tone or is he sounding like this because he is used to it?

In any case, seeing his expression never gets old. And, well, who would I be if not his whiny, little thing sometimes? So I respond: “Make it feel better. Please?”

“Feel better? Really?”

I nod.

“How am I even supposed to—” Yet he pauses, putting two and two together before it hits him. I can see the flush on his cheeks, the sudden fumbling around. He is trying to keep himself together now. “Y… You mean…”

I nod again, eagerly waiting as I lean myself a little forward, waiting for his next move. He turns his gaze, shifting it from spot to spot. I then hear a mumble under his breath, a faint ‘Fine’ before he leans forward for a moment.

It is only for a short moment, a second at most. One of his hands moves some of the hair aside so he can press his lips against my forehead no problem. My own cheeks burn up, they always do. And yet it always makes me unable to hold back a smile.

He pulls back, our gazes meet again. “Th… There. Better?” He asks, visibly bashful yet trying to mask it by seeming calm. It only makes him look a little grumpy though.

I chuckle softly. “Yeah, a little, Thanks.” I respond. Though just when he things he is off the hook I step closer and add: “Though I might need more. Please?”

Despite me pulling stuff like this all the time it seems that he cannot help his reactions at all. He lights up so much that he may as well look like a fire hydrant. The words seem to be stuck in his throat yet he seems to be able to open his mouth again, even if it starts with yet another sigh. “You’re impossible sometimes…” He mutters in the end yet I can see that faint smile on his face. Secretly he doesn’t mind this at all, does he?

[lunastarhawk]

I am privileged to be your #6 and we have talked through several of these over the years! But I want to pick your brain on:

#7, #13, #18, and #24

I’m also tossing #56 at you. I have plenty of nice things to say about your writing, but I want you to something nice about your writing ❤️

Oooh questions! (To this ask game)

I'm gonna answer 6 first even though you didn't ask it because... Excuse me ma'am you're not just a beta, you're the VIP MVP and if the question is how important are you to the process, the answer is there would be no process. So. There. <3

7. How do you choose which pov to write from?

For the general pov I just... really don't like 1st person. I did it for my first Arcana fics because The Arcana itself is 1st person. 2nd person just feels... wrong. "Y/n" can get in the bin. I much prefer 3rd because I can narrate the character as well as see their perspective, and it's easier to change pov between characters. It seems mad to me now that I ever considered writing ToM as 1st person.

When it comes to the characters, I tend to alternate povs, and usually it just feels obvious from what part of the story I want to tell. Sometimes I don't want to know what a person's perceiving, I want someone else to perceive them. Aside from that, it's either "hmm I wonder what that one's thinking right now", or it's whoever shouts "MY TURN" at me the loudest.

13. What's a common writing tip you almost always follow?

Er. I'm not very good at taking advice or tips (see also my answer to 24 lol). I just make it up as I go along. If anyone ever gave "wing it" as a writing tip, I follow that one.

18. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

Titles are my nemesis. Occasionally I come up with a good one in advance, like the two I've got for ToM's endings. Most commonly, I get the whole thing tagged and saved as a draft on AO3 and still don't have a title. I tend to read through the story and see if a line or quote jumps out that can be used. If I get desperate I'll resort to song lyrics.

24. Worst writing advice anyone gave you?

'Write what you know.' I know nothing, my stories would be blank pages.

But in general I'm kinda bad at taking advice or tips or whatever. I'm just watching the little people running around in my head, and writing what they're doing. If I was to get bogged down by the dos and don'ts and rules and things I have to think about, I'd lose heart and then I'd lose my story. Whether fan fiction or original work, I write for me, for fun, from my heart, and if my heart wants to wing it with no outline, no structure, forget adjectives, use run-on sentences, too many semi-colons and start sentences with And or But, who's gonna stop me huh. Who.

56. What's something about your writing that you pride yourself on.

First of all, how dare you.

Okay let's see... I guess I can take pride in actually finishing things (yes yes I see you side-eyeing ToM after more than two years, but slow and steady wins the race innit). Maybe I can take pride in the fact that ToM is taking so long because it's frickin novel trilogy length at this point.

I do like how I write character interaction and relationships tbh. If I can read it like banter between two mates down the pub who also happen to be deeply in love and horny for each other, I'm happy.

But specific to fan fiction, what I'm most proud of is that I've written canon characters true to their character, and especially their voice. I've had enough people tell me they like how I write Julian that I can be proud of that. It's important to do him justice, ya know?

And I'm proud of Altheia and Favian tbh. And some of my other secret OCs. My home grown blorbos. I love them to bits and pieces so I should take pride in them too tbh.

Yeah. Character voice and sassy, teasing, loving banter. I can be proud of that.

And as a whole, I'm actually proud of Tides of Memories :)

[ardenttheories]

I don't expect a super serious answer from this, but I'm just curious. in a perfect world, how would hs^2 be written? do you have any particular headcanons or plot lines that would be interesting to explore? I understand the hesitation in answering a question like this, because other people might try to discredit your critiques under the guise of "well its not ur headcanons so that's why ur mad". anyways, just curious because I respect your perspective and ideas

In complete honesty? The first thing I would consider vital is a diverse team of people - genuinely diverse - to consider every point of representation with. I’m talking people of different races (to avoid the anti-black coding of Gamzee), with mental illnesses (to avoid the ableism in both Gamzee and Dirk), with different gender identities (to more accurately and healthily portray Jade, Roxy, Vriska, June - any character we could feasibly want to make trans or nonbinary), with different romanticisms and sexualities (so that we could write genuine MLM and WLW relationships without falling into homophobic pitfalls; to avoid biphobic stereotypes), and overall, with different traumatic experiences and triggers (so that we could more accurately gauge what triggers would need to be tagged and how to go over them in an appropriate and respectful manner).

We could never be 100% perfect, but with a team like that, we could at least get close to it. 

Additionally, I’d bring back either fan prompts or closely listen to fan theories and conversations. Homestuck^2 was touted to be written with the fandom in mind; to consider the direction we were asking it to go in, while basing it around a general barebones structure. I’d want to make sure we were including as much of that in as humanly possible. So, if a fan theory seemed like it’d fit into the story? I’d want to include that with the rest of the text; if the fans liked a specific character? I’d want to try and include them more often. Little things to show that we’re listening and that we’re writing the story WITH the fans - like how early Homestuck used to be.

On an actual storyline basis, I really do love the concept of Meat and Candy; that there’s one timeline that goes off the rails and one that is very rigidly stuck to a track. I wouldn’t want to change that concept entirely, but I would want to make it more palpatable for people to read. 

This would mean, for me, absolutely getting rid of anything to do with Yiffany. I’d completely replace that with Dave and Jade having a child together via ectobiology; how Jade has to raise their child in Dave’s absence after he goes missing, how that affects her, who she turns to for comfort and help. 

I’d want to focus Candy more on that feeling of helplessness and dissociation. On John feeling adrift in a world that doesn’t quite connect with him, that doesn’t entirely feel real; how that would affect his relationships, his friends, his family. In this timeline, all of the rebellion stuff would be completely background to the interpersonal connections everyone has (the things that supposedly don’t matter, as is the point of Candy), with much more emphasis on how useless and frivolous the whole war is. It’d get to a point where nobody actually knows why they’re fighting anymore except for the fact that they are, and that even Jane, who started it out of a genuine fear for the human race, is getting tired of it, is losing resources, is starting to realise that she’s drifting away from her own child. 

A truce would be garnered, started by Jane who just very much wants to reconnect with her son, with Karkat taking on the role as troll emissiary. It features long talks in a large, empty room, pouring over papers, where Jane admits that she doesn’t actually know what anyone is up to these days, how long it’s been since she’s seen her husband, since she’s seen John, and Karkat quietly confesses that it’s been several years since he’s seen Dave or Jade, and that he misses them both. 

After that, a lot of the content of Candy would focus on healing. They would get back to their happily ever after, even though some things would never be the same, and there would still be inconsequentialities. It would also correspond with John coming to the slow realisation that he really doesn’t need a plot to be happy at all; that just because it doesn’t matter to the overarching story doesn’t mean it can’t matter to him. 

The Candy timeline, therefore, would close early; it would fade from our view just as Dirk feared, but it would be happy and content, and free from any further meddling. I’d essentially want to enforce this idea that, yes, we can still have happy endings - even if they aren’t “full of meaning”. They can still be satisfying.

The Meat timeline, on the other hand, would have a significant focus on Dirk and his attempts to continue the plot. I think it would be fun, admittedly, if nothing went the way he thought it would. That after all of his villany and his acceptance of destruction in order to facilitate something he thought would be better, he actually just lost complete and utter control. 

The plot isn’t something that he alone can continue. It’s created with character conflict, with motivations and rises and falls and losses and gains; trying to recreate SBURB, to try and restart the cycle, isn’t what a plot needs to be. It isn’t what he thinks it will do. 

I’m unsure if you’ve seen this recently, but there’s been a lot of fanwork around the Lord!Jake English idea that went around several years back (when people saw the Caliborn sona). Now, this I’d want to put into it. 

Jake, fed up with being stepped on, walked over, hurt, suffering from the trauma of being completely and utterly ruined by Dirk, absolutely flips shit. He chases after Dirk to seek revenge, to cut short whatever bullshit he’s trying to do, and therefore much of the comic becomes this constant back and forth with an increasing fear for Dirk the closer Jake gets as he traverses Paradox Space.

It’s very much clear that when Jake arrives, Dirk will lose. There’s no question about it. Nobody suggests that anything else will happen. There’s several arguments on Meat’s Earth C over whether or not they should try to stop Jake, or let him stop Dirk - and whether or not Jake will calm down afterwards or continue his rampage. 

In the end, Dirk fails. Jake catches up to him, and just before he hits the killing blow, the entire thing goes dark. Our narrator dead, the plot abandoned; there is nothing more to see. This I would want to use to enforce the idea that, yes, plot can still be satisfying as hell and still have integral moments and be heavy and harsh - but it can also end in a way that leaves open questions because that shows that it isn’t the best ending you can get. 

And then we jump back to Terezi, using her Seer powers. Both timelines have been her trying to use her powers to See what’s in store, where she should go, what she should do. She’s still floating through Paradox Space, looking for Vriska, and as such she’s met with this... sort of internal dilemma. 

She knows, now, that the chances of her dying out here are high. She also knows that even if she does survive, she’s pretty much never going to see Vriska again anyway. She knows there’s a chance at a happier relationship with John, and that the only way she can get that is if she somehow manages to make a timeline where Meat and Candy merge together at once. 

So, she flies back. She manages to arrive on Earth C the day of John’s big decision, and interrupts him before he can go to the picnic. Through their dialogue, John gets it stuck in his head that, hey, there’s something BIGGER out here that you need to do, but you need to do that amazing thing again where you make a third Choice.

When John arrives at the picnic, he decides to eat some of the pumpkin instead - to which you might be thinking, what pumpkin? The one he put there, of course, using his retcon powers.

So we start on the Pumpkin timeline, written entirely in the 1st person narrative from John’s POV. It’s a completely biased interpretation of what’s going on, but it’s honest to John’s own thoughts and feelings, too, allowing everyone to act the way they usually would do without any influence, but still having a narrative touch. 

It shows John actively fighting to free the timeline from Dirk’s and Alternate Calliope’s narrative controls, those little hooks they’ve planted in it since time began, with a lot of back-and-forth as the two talk to John through the narration (which, he hears their voices as thoughts in his head). 

John attempts to free them both from their own biases and chains, encouraging Alternate!Calliope to leave the space she’s isolated herself in and join Earth C while convincing Dirk to undo the bullshit villain schtick he’s on (and that plot or no plot, there’s still a reason worth living for). 

It’d be a timeline filled with references back to original Homestuck (and funny quips from both Alternate!Calliope and Dirk along the way), a lot of morality discussion, plenty of theorising on narrative control and arcs and the placement of plot and fluff in a satisfying story, and have plenty of representation and romance and hints towards kids, too (such as nonbinary RoxyJaneCallie, DaveJadeKat, aromantic Jake, JohnDirk [because I couldn’t stop myself, honestly, with how their Classpects work so well hand in hand], and definitely RoseMary being the first to adopt a child that they absolutely do not call Vriska). 

It’d fill plotholes the fandom wants to be filled, and it’d have drama, of course, in the form of figuring out a way to destroy Lord English that doesn’t inherently lead to the Candy timeline. But it’d go back and forth between the heavy, plot-filled moments and the slower, relationship-based moments, with more humanising and development of Dirk and Alternate!Calliope and John as rounded characters.

That’s the best my tired mind can come up with right now. It’s something I’ve daydreamed about a lot, actually; how I’d rewrite Homestuck^2, or what my own ending to Homestuck would be using it as a foundation. I hope it makes sense! It’s a fun little thought experiment, honestly.

[koushirouizumi]

(Personal)

(re last thing rb'd)

I've seen that post around before and like, yeah, I want to. I also believe fan base history + archival is super important. (There's a ton of stuff I've saved and archived from Adv-02, Frontier, etc fan bases over time too, including sections of many of my old mutuals' Adventure fics and O.C. site things, though I also don't have 'everything' there since I usually saved stuff just 'as I went'.)

I want to re-post everything I created (maybe even some stuff r.p.'d elsewhere, if I can manage to effectively 'summarize' all that somehow) before 2k10~2k15~ on This Site especially.

... But yeah it can be difficult. (Probably more than some people may realize.)

Some of my stuff is on my old laptop which is currently out of commission rn until it gets fixed, (it may not even GET fixed - it could be a hard drive crash - the power button isn't powering it) but a lot of the rest (of stuff that was on my site specifically) is still archived /somewhere/ or otherwise literally on my old 02 O.C. shrine C.D. Like I literally have a whole C.D. where the site still exists offline (You just can't view the backgrounds because it's not 'online' so to speak, so the white text is on a white background and I have to highlight to read it, until I fix everything via a lot of re-uploding and re-writing of some 25+ pages including the 'character profiles' sections that I also have to re-write for all Adventure + 02 Chosen.)

... But also, like, I made that site when I was literally Young Me.

I've found out a lot about myself since and a lot of my perspectives have completely changed for the better. But even if I re-created the whole site from scratch, it'd just be ... different. Now. I don't really know how to explain it well.

A lot of the imgs I used back then were much lower quality. I'll have to go through and re-cap everything on my own time, and even then... it'd feel different, wouldn't it? The low-quality caps I borrowed from other sites back then who allowed free use, those were kind of what made the feel of the site. That kind of thing.

So I could double the amount of pages - which would take a lot more work - a high quality, polished version; and the original version with the low quality caps. But even then...

Some sections would still have to change completely, just because I've grown and my mentality has changed from what I originally wrote.

Even then, the shrine is my own personal thing, I can 'archive' it in my own time and just use it to store my own works, caps, etc...

I completely lost some of my 1st D.G.M.N a.m.v.s as it was. The original Frontier "Warriors" one is completely gone. (The one I made since was a re-make going purely by my own memory of scenes and timings I likely initially included.) The one (two?) I made for Takuya separately, I never found again. The experimental other few D.G.M.N and super early Y.G.O D.M. A.M.V.s (possibly also a Sonic one or two) were also gone.

My 2 Naruto A.M.V.s got deleted when a sweep of purges happened, and at one point both got re-uploaded by other fans without full credit to me, then deleted from those fans' accts when those accts got purged ? /again/ and I still, between multiple comp + external hard-drive failings, never got the back-ups saved in time. (Even those 2 Naruto A.M.V.s were super experimental and mainly just emotional timing so used a lot of 'larger', un-trimmed clips. But I still appreciated my attempts with those and wish I had them back, especially since I never went back to making Naruto stuff again after.)

Idek. I just have some conflicting feelings still.

It's all kind of why I just started back up with immediately focusing on Koushiro post-all That happening. "One Week" was the most 'recent' A.M.V. I had available at the time and I really wanted it up-loaded, along with my Taichi A.M.V. But even then, my love for Koushiro's chara was definitely there, having snuck up from the days of the O.C. site to kick me from behind. I'm still upset I didn't get to get to Koushiro's full character arc in my O.C.s story way back in the day, when Koushiro had a lot more active positivity and support by other fans (and wasn't actively being constantly re-written and sidelined out of Koushiro's own canon story by them). It was semi re-written using inspiration from the original outline in "The Past World" and even then it's only in sections still.

I don't really know where I'm going with these thoughts.

Maybe I'll archive what I can someday, but... yeah.