#and how she uses it to kill vriska while in her ancestral cosplay

[conceptofjoy]

What're ur thoughts on trans masc Roxy and the symbol of bro's sword as the choice to take on the mantle of masculinity w/o the baggage the Striders carry w/ it. I kinda mourn the way it implicitly decanonizes Roxy as a trans woman, but it's space for positive masculinity ig

i mean its incredibly sad we’re literally fighting for table scraps right. hs is gay asf until when it comes to explicit trans rep. i still prefer characters like jane, nepeta, dirk and karkat for t masc hcs. i dont rlly see the issue of being a flawed individual and trans? esp bc internalized homophobia and transphobia is a part of growing up in a cishet society. anyways, not what u asked lol.

ehhh i prefer the katana roxy used to deal the final blow more being a symbol of her slaying hic along with dirk. anyways roxy’s deal is that she’s above the ‘rules’ and can do impressive things with that including societal rules w gender. she can do what ever she wants forever.

swords r more of a striserket thing imo, symbol of masking untouchable power/hero thing. vris wields her spinneret sword when fighting jack after he kills terezi and karkat. then dirk wields his legendary unbreakable katana he uses to mirror his bro. and dave… u dont need me to spell it out lol.

[paragonrobits]

Can I ask for some Eridan/Vriska teaming up in a pirate FLARP against some foes if possible?~

“'We invite anyone who has the courage, the nerve, and thesteel, to plumb our dungeon of doom!'” went the note sent to everynaval FLARPer in the region, signed with only two signs, in lightblue and violet; respectively, the signs of the scorpion and thewaterbearer. “'If you have the might to win, dare... the MAUSOLEUMOF NIGHTMARES!'”

And Vriska smirked as dozens of unsuspecting rivals, each of themcontesting for a highly ranked spot in the regional FLARPingcontests, went straight into the vast labyrinth floating upon thesea, assembled from dozens of ships sunk by Eridan and Vriska, andthen raised up and mashed together. Trolls went in and then...

Well, they wouldn't come out. Their bodies did, most of the time.Sometimes. The point was to get bodies to feed to Spidermom andisolate lusii to feed to Feferi's lusus, but in any case the dungeonworked amazingly. Lured by the promise of treasure, people delvedinto the dungeon and ran afoul of the many, many horrendouslyunfair traps.

Years later, those who survivedthe Mausoleum would speak in hushed whispers of the horrible trapsthere. A sphere of annihilating energy housed in the mouth of astatue in a room set up to make you think you were supposed to openup the statue to solve a puzzle. A host of puzzles, dozens of them,each of which Eridan had flawlessly calibrated to kill whoever didanything in them, leaving behind their loot. No one ever got morethan a few rooms in, ever.

It would go down in troll history(which, to be fair, was on borrowed time at this point) as the mosthideous unfair, horrifically unbalanced and just plain meanpuzzle dungeons ever conceived.Even worse than the creations of 'What A Jackass' Jolstoni, themeanest puzzlemaker in all Alternia, who had taken the creed of 'allpuzzles should be super murdery' to a logical extreme, at least untilsome unknown fuchsia got bit by a cube puzzle he made.

Vriska yawned, slouching down thesteps of the dungeon's secret inner workings, going through secretpassageways to the treasury where they kept all the sweetloot they'd accrued from theirmany fallen foes. “What's up, fishface,” she said, clapping himon the back with her kickass robot arm. “I was thinking that maybetonight we could-”

Eridan held an arm out.Dramatically. His cape fanned out, covering her view of the treasury.(He had to stand on a table to block her view, so he clearly had goneto some effort ahead of time.)

“Uhh,” she said.

He lowered his arm. Vriska gaspedin horror.

There are many unspeakablyhorrible sights on Alternia. The pits where the culled are sent todie in their trials. The courts where the doomed are sentenced. Anyplace remotely near a fuchsia, at least until Feferi was born. Emptyfood preparation blocks. But there is nothing worse than the sight ofan empty treasure chamber atleast to a pirate-themed FLARPer.

“Our treasure trove,” Eridanbegan. “Has been stolen!”

“...Uh, yeah, I worked thatout,” Vriska said, giving him a look.

“Look, I've been up here fortwo and a half hours waiting for your dumb ass to get up and see thistravesty! Least you could do is let me get out my cool dramaticspeech.”

“You were up here for two and ahalf hours and that's the most you came up with ahead of time?”

“OKAY SHUT THE HELL UP andlet's get going, we have a treasure to reclaim.”

“HELL YEAH,” Vriska said,running off into a completely different room, popping off her arm andthrowing it at Eridan. It incidentally managed to smack him in theback of the head. She came back a few minutes later, dressed in asuper cool pirate-themed outfit that so happened to look exactly likeher ancestor's favorite outfit. Eridan was already dressed in hisoutfit. Also, she'd swapped out her robot arm for a giant pirate hookwith a built in cannon.

They high fived. They immediatelyregretted this, because you really don't want to high five someonewhen your hand is now a giant hook/cannon.

A short while later, becauseEridan had also prepared a ship ahead of time, their ship set out.They tended to go through a few dozen every perigee, and simply stolenew ships from defeated foes; this one had been looted from an armadaof trolls all arising in response to inflammatory comments Eridan andVriska had made regarding the latest editions of FLARP's needlesschanges to rules they didn't care for. (This sort of thing was prettycommonplace on Alternia; an entire planet of children from a speciesprone to wild mood extremes, without any adult supervision and withmysterious interferences to make them more bloodthirsty? It wasunavoidable.) This ship was the only one to survive; Vriska blamedEridan for being too trigger-happy with his weird ancestral lightningthingy. Eridan blamed Vriska for mind controlling people intoblasting each other without even waiting for a sick cameraopportunity.

This one had been renamed theRevengence Rising, forreasons that Vriska was unclear on. Eridan would only say that he sawit in a dream, borne to him by the terrible things he saw in hisdreams, and swept off dramatically.

The Revengence didn'tso much float as it insinuated itself through the water, slicingthrough the tides and the occasional smaller ship that ran afoul ofthe giant underwater ramming blades beneath it, raising a pink-huedflag. The pink of tyranny had only one meaning; there would be noprisoners, just as a true heiress left no survivors. Both Eridan andVriska were considering changing the flag's color, because since theyknew Feferi so well, they couldn't quite reconcile that with... well,her. (They chose to decide that Feferi was just super weird.)

They soon came across theirquarry, a ship low in the water from the weight of its treasures, anda very big ship at that, too. It had to be, to hold all thattreasure. Vriska seethed at the sight of it, her one good eyenarrowed and her fangs scraping against her lower lip. “I am gonnakick their ass! I am gonna kick the boat's ass!”

“Boats don't have those,”Eridan pointed out.

“I am gonna build it an ass soI can kick it!”

“Use shitty wood, otherwiseyou're gonna make it look better than it really is.”

“Shit, I wouldn't have thoughtof that. Good save.”

“It's what I do,” Eridan saidsmugly.

“Hey!” Vriska yelled into amegaphone, directing it at the ship. “HEY, YOU! TREASURE STEALINGASSHOLES THAT STOLE THE TREASURE WE STOLE FIRST!”

There was a pause. The enemy shipwiggled with activity. “What?” A faint, reedy voice called back.

“I said HEY YOU!” Vriskayelled.

“WHAT?'

“I SAID... goddamit, are weeven close enough for them to hear us?” Vriska turned to thelowblooded troll closest to them on their crew. “I said, are weclose enough for that?”

Karkat Vantas, roped into thisarrangement as a result of a complicated bet involved a largepineapple and the world's second-nicest hat he was trying to barterwith Equius for reasons unknown, rolled his eyes. “I don't goddamnknow. If they're constantly yelling about what you said, GEE, I DON'TKNOW, that's probably a pretty solid indication, huh?!”

“You're the worst cabin boyever. I don't know why Terezi recommended you.”

“I thought Terezi swore to killyou and eat all your shoes,” Karkat said.

“Eh, inbetween vows to make mesuffer for my misdeeds or whatever, she yells at me about how greatyou are. It's weird and sickening.”

“Oh. Wait she did... she didwhat? She talks about... me?” Karkat fell to the ground, staring atthe moons. “Inbetween acts of vowing horrible revenge? Oh... that'sthe most romantic thing I ever heard... I need to write poetry aboutthis.”

“God, this is sickening,”Eridan said, wrinkling his snout.

“Hell yeah,” Vriska said,shaking her head and unconsciously putting her arm around Eridan'sshoulder.  “Just plain weird.”

Eridan put his arm around herwait, with no conscious thought on his part. “This flush pining isjust embarrassing.”

“Yeah.” A small pause. “Didwe forget something?”

They looked up, and saw the shipsignificantly closer. A purple blood waved to them; Vriska judged himthe leader of the crew, if only because he had the biggest andfanciest hat. In pirate terms, he was so obviously the Leader. “So,uh, you were trying to say something to us?”

“Yeah!” Vriska drew hersword, and with her other hand, extended her harpoon. She got backinto character, as Eridan did the same. “I, the dread MarquiseSpinneret Mindfang, demand that you return my stolen treasure hoard!”

“And I, the fearsome pirateDualscar, demand your land-cursed BLOOD!”Eridan shouted, drawing Ahab's Crosshairs and pointing it in a waythat indicated he had every intention of just driving it intopeople's chests like a spear.

The captain considered it. “No.”

“Give us the treasure,”Vriska threatened. “And then we'll kill you!”

The enemy crew stared across thedeck. From the floor, Karkat said, “Don't you mean, 'or'?”

“We know what we said!”Eridan snarled. “And get below decks, you could get hurt if there'sa fight!” He paused, and trying to save face, quickly added, “And!And, uh. If you get hurt or somethin', Terezi will wear my skin as afancy cape! I don't want to become a cosplay!”

Karkat groaned and rolled belowdecks. “I'm going, I'm going!”

The enemy captain shrugged. “So,it's a fight you want, huh? Then, it's a fight you'll-”

“DIE DIE DIE!” Vriskascreamed, catapulting herself across the two ships, heedless of apotential fall into the sea. She landed with a sword right in thecaptain's neck, her hook through the first mate, and she twistedaway. Purple and blue bloodrained down around her, and with a swish of her long coat, she raisedher robot arm as her arm cannon unfurled, blasting out a flurry ofshots that tore open the side of the ship.

“You shits stay here and trynot to be failures,” Eridan said to his crew, and dove into thesea. A moment later, he erupted out from the other side of the ship.In his native element he was far faster and stronger, and leaped highinto the air, landing with each, Crosshairs down and through thechest of the first unwary crewtroll. He twisted aside, putting thebody in the path of a sword blow coming his way, and a blast from theCrosshairs toppled the mast over, onto another grouping of enemycrewtrolls.

Vriska was laughing now, swordand cannon akimbo, and Eridan laughed too, the both of them moving ina fierce frenzy through the crew. Swords and shields clashedtogether, bows strung out and fired only to hit crewtrolls used asliving shields, and as soon as Eridan was able to aim (though hepreferred the thrill and martial honor of a melee), they were wipedfrom the world, along with several portions of the ship.

Cannon blasts, piercing lightfrom the Crosshairs and the sheer ferocity of the pair, fighting backto back, ended the first in short order. Most ship boardings are overfast, and this was done in a matter of minutes. When it was done, theship was listing, too many holes in its side to keep on from... well,taking on water. Vriska and Eridan stood, back to back, cape and coatflapping in the breeze as they posed with their weapons crossing. Oneof the enemy crewtrolls, in exchange for his life, took a photo ofthem.

“So, uh, are you gonna dosomething about the ship?” That crewtroll said.

Eridan blinked. “What aboutit?”

“It's sort of sinking. From allthe damage you did,” the crewtroll said, with just a hint ofreproach.

“...Oh shit~!”Eridan and Vriska said. Vriska ran to the side and called out to hership, “Towing cables! Ready the hooks, you know what to do!”

Several modified cannons, on thebroad side of the ship, opened up and fired; massive hooks slammedinto the side of the ship and chains reeled it in, towing the largership closer to them and supporting it. It wobbled ominously, butdidn't sink.

Vriska sighed in relief. “Ourtreasure, and more importantly, my reputation, are saved!”

Eridan checked a small watch.“And it's not even second breakfast. God, butthis is gonna be a slow day, isn't it?”

Vriska twirled him close to her.“Day's still young, fishface. Bet ya we can get into more trouble~”