#anyway. he coined the phrase 'stream of consciousness'

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

it's funny that not until i was flipping through reference material in the norton edition of the turn of the screw i got from the library did i make the connection that perhaps american literature's most famous ghost story was written by a guy whose brother was an active member of the society for psychical research

[veilder]

First Lines Meme

List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

Thanks for the tag, @nock-and-bolt! I'll do my best with this, lol. u^_^

I only have 12 (published) fics in total and they're all DBH, lol. So that's all you're gonna get. XD I'll do them chronologically, oldest to newest.

1. “Hank is short for Henry, isn’t it?” (In a Name) -- Ah, the question of the day, isn't it? Perfect way to start off a fic about identity issues, lol. XD

2. The factory looked like a stereotypical hideout for smugglers and kidnappers. (In a Flash) -- Indeed, it was a perfect hideout for smugglers and kidnappers, lol.

3. Detective Gavin Reed had quite the reputation surrounding his name. (The Nearness of You) -- How much of that reputation is hiding his soft side, though? That's the real question. ~_^

4. She notices him staring from his regular seat in the corner. (Common Grounds) -- More wholesome than it sounds, I promise. She works at a coffeeshop and he's very shy. XD

5. Connor chose the 15th of August. (In Your Own Time) -- Ah. A good start to a fic about birthdays and what they mean to different people. Including androids.

6. MODEL RK999999999999999999999999... (Inception) -- This one actually starts off with a full-on glitchy start-up sequence, but I won't subject you to the whole thing. u^_^

7. “Gavin?"/With a mighty twitch, he jolted back to reality, legs slipping off of the desk where he'd had them perched. (A Small Sip of Love) -- Forgive me for doing two sentence here, but just Gavin's name is maybe a little too ambiguous, even for me. XD

8. He lived in the rivers and the streams, the foam in the current, the undertow beneath. (The Lark Ascending) -- Gosh, I love this one. I went full-out with the imagery in my Elemental!AU and the opening line already gives you a feel for that. Makes me nostalgic.

9. He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop. (A Simple Equation) -- But he sure does it anyway, doesn't he? XD

10. The crescent moon sheds a pallid light across the mist and water down below, the docks cast in shades of silver and shadow. (don't go without me) -- Well dang, I came in hard with this opener, lol. Very vivid. Nice job, past me. XD

11. The silver moon hung full and heavy in the star-strewn sky, its pale rays painting undulating patterns across a quiet sea. (Reflections) -- Gotta start out a mermaid!AU with a description of the sea, right? It's like the law. XD

12. The elevator ascends with a quiet hum, accented only by the metallic clinks of a coin flipping through the air. (we're just two lost souls (swimming in a fish bowl)) -- Ah, what better way to start off a canon-divergent soulmate!AU than with a play-by-play retelling of the opening scene of the game, right?

And that's it! So, as far as patterns go, there are certainly a few. For the most part, I really like starting off my fics with a really snappy, short phrase, something that instantly sets the scene and grabs your attention. Connor asking about Hank's name, Gavin's reputation, accidental eavesdropping, etc, all of them are a short, succinct summation of what the story is gonna be about. Or at least the inciting incident for it. I quite often like establishing things immediately, especially in my oneshots.

But the other pattern is, of course, the overly-loquacious descriptions, lol. Man, when I am in the mood to go full-on purple prose, y'all better watch out, because then you end up with things like, "The crescent moon sheds a pallid light," or "it's pale rays painting undulating patterns across a quiet sea," lol. And I don't really use this technique often, but I try to use it to great effect. When I open a fic like this, I want to set a particular mood or tone. With "The Lark Ascending," it was a fantastical, almost myth-like setting. With "Reflections," it was a sort of calm before the storm. With "don't go without me," it was a heavy atmosphere to fit the mood. With "we're just two lost souls," it was a strict adherence to canon. And I guess I never even consciously realized I was doing this? It just seemed appropriate at the time. Very interesting to look back on now, though, and see that I kinda have two very distinct styles. XD

As for my favorite opener... It really is so hard to pick. I quite like them all and I think they're very appropriate for each of these fics. But... Well, there is something about "The Lark Ascending" that just always hits me where I live and the opening is no exception. It's not a fic that I think resonates with very many people, but it means a lot to me personally. And I love how it just immediately establishes that we're dealing with something different with the descriptor of the first main character. I tried so hard to keep my descriptions of the River consistent through the whole fic and this is where they all start, lol. It almost makes me wanna sit down and re-read it, honestly. I'm so intrigued in spite of myself. XD

This was such an interesting bit of self-reflection, honestly. I really liked this exercise and looking back through my old fics like this. Honestly, this has been one of my favorite tag games so far, lol! As for tagging others... Well, I don't want to bother anyone specifically, but if you see this and you'd like to take a stab at it, please do! You can go ahead and tag me, I'd love to see some more responses! :D

[autumnblogs]

Day 5: Imaginary Friends and Repressed Subconsciouses

https://homestuck.com/story/836

We open to Dave having the shit - and the softness - beaten out of him by Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/838

These are exactly the sort of things a void player would say. This page lends itself to the interpretation that Rose is inverted and acting more like a Witch of Void than a Seer of Light, exactly the same way that Jade is acting like a Seer of Time. (Of course, Rose is either being sarcastic or placating herself. The reality is that, as she pretty much immediately demonstrates, she can’t help but pry for the true underlying meaning of what Jade is saying, grasping at information, and with it, power over her situation.)

I’ve already called attention to the dearth of conversations between these two characters - they’re not going to talk a lot between now and when Rose goes Grimdark. I think it’s just a shame. I wonder if it’s because Rose feels like Jade has her life under control, yearns for that, and in typical Rose fashion, decides that Jade is judging her for her lack of control? She is remarkably cool toward Jade, and I expect that to at least some degree, it’s because she feels inferior to her.

@volatileleporegina​ and I had a discussion on Discord where they guess that this is like, the dichotomy between Seers and Witches.

Rose probably envies the fact that Jade has her shit together. Witches are at their best and their happiest when they can go apeshit, seize control of a situation, and act completely on instinct. Seers are at their best and their happiest when they have inner peace, control of their situation, and control over their emotions.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/845

More speech patterns here. John does not use a lot of prepositions, and his language is very hesitant - he rarely asserts anything important, and has a pretty strong tendency to use phrases like “I guess, I figure, I think, I might” and so on and so on.

John also talks like he’s from the west coast of the USA, at least in a caricaturish way - he uses a lot of old school surfer slang that got co-opted into generic cool culture, like rad, although not nearly to the same extent as later parody character Latula.

https://homestuck.com/story/855

As a character who will eventually be revealed to be a Hero of Hope, Grandpa Harley dwells in the realm of fantasy. While he fills the mould of the idealized adventurer-hero - a true Pulp Fiction Macho Genius Archaeologist in the mould of Doc Savage or Indiana Jones, his relationship with other human beings is more... theoretical.

I wonder if it says anything about Hope in general that all of the Heroes of Hope in the story are practically incapable of having positive relationships in their lives? Before I tended to chalk Jake’s failure up to being a Page, and simply needing more time, but Eridan and Cronus sabotage all of their relationships as well.

Perhaps I’ll come back to this train of thought in the future. For now, Grandpa and Jake alike are characters who I consider wretches, and pitiable wretches at that. I have far less patience for Grandpa though. More of that as we go.

I should be open about the fact that, while I’ve been a bit more forgiving with Mom Lalonde, the fact is that, with the exception of Dad Egbert, I consider all four of the Beta Guardians to be abusive parents; Nanna is an exception as well if she is counted to be one of the guardians). Their conduct in raising their children is at the very least inexcusable, although if they demonstrated any repentance, it would perhaps be forgivable; in all their cases, by the end of the comic, it is too late for that (although they get another lease on life through the Alpha Kids, which if you don’t mind me showing my hand, I think is the entire point of the Alpha Kids from a storytelling perspective- reconciliation of the parents with the children.)

https://homestuck.com/story/859

One thing I have always liked about Jade is that she does not negotiate with terrorists. You go girl :)

https://homestuck.com/story/874

Rose lives in either Ontario or Upstate New York. I think someone found that the coordinates of her house are in Rainbow Falls.

It seems odd to me for no reason at all that Rose would be a Canadian when all of the other characters in the comic are ambiguously American, and there are a number of other reasons it would fit for Rose to be from upstate NY, not the least of which is that it is a part of Lovecraft Country, and the home of the principle madman from HP’s “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” a story about a hick from Upstate New York who has insane dreams that he cannot express with his limited vocabulary. It turns out that this unassuming crazy person is actually a mortal manifestation of an extra-dimensional star-god, and he forms a friendship with the viewpoint character, an intern at the hospital where he has been institutionalized. While the magic dreams ultimately prove to be too much for the mortal frame and give him a heart attack, he contacts his friend the intern via a dream to express to him that he dearly hopes that the two of them meet again one day beyond the wall of sleep.

Another reason is that I’ve always viewed Rose as being an extremely affected person. Nobody talks the way that Rose talks - her words are all extremely deliberately chosen in a way that doesn’t fit the pattern of the other characters’ more stream-of-consciousness writing styles. Rose thinks in Prose, whereas her friends all write like they talk. I like to imagine, for this reason, that Rose has a transatlantic accent like Katharine Hepburn, which is to say, a learned accent. Back in old-timey times, actors, newscasters, the wealthy, and so on would take classes to learn how to pronounce words in a sophisticated way that nobody naturally spoke in - a bit like Received Pronunciation on the other side of the pond. It’s long since died out, but it fits the sort of affected, stuffy, faux-aristocratic manner that Rose styles herself with. It’s a blend of Manhattanite and Londoner pronunciation, and I think it suits her.

Anyway, there you go. There’s something that you just learned about my inner life and how I think way too much about tiny details like “What would Rose’s voice sound like?”

https://homestuck.com/story/876

Dave lives in Texas. For this reason, I have decided that he sounds like a cowboy. No particular cowboy, just some cowboy.

Jade lives in the Pacific Ocean, and I have a very specific head voice picked out for her - Anna Paquin, particularly young Anna Paquin who portrayed Sheeta in Castle in the Sky, although I’ve always imagined Jade to have a much broader kiwi accent.

https://homestuck.com/story/879

I wonder if Nanna’s oven works at all like Biscuits’?

https://homestuck.com/story/893

Nothing ever really came of Dr. Brinner’s mail. Law of Conservation of detail tells us that he might be one of pipefan413′s coworkers (maybe fedorafreak?) but we’ll never know.

https://homestuck.com/story/905

It’s not totally clear to me exactly what’s going on here, but I have a couple of theories.

Theory #1: This is Mom Lalonde’s childhood room from when she grew up. It makes sense to me that the Lalonde House and the Lab might be a package deal, especially since we see Roxy growing up in a similar setting, but with far more prolific modular structures.

Theory #2: As theory #1, but this is also Mom Lalonde’s current accommodation. Tea parties and tea seem to be shorthand in Homestuck for immaturity and avoidance in particular - characters like Nepeta, Mom, and Grandpa use Tea Parties to retreat into childish fantasy instead of confronting the real, hard problems they have to deal with.

https://homestuck.com/story/919

Jade’s strife with Grandpa might lend some credence to the idea that she uses imaginary friends (who are also us, the audience!) to cope with her loneliness.

https://homestuck.com/story/926

Even the extraordinary cynicism and antipathy of Rose Lalonde can’t resist adorable kittens.

https://homestuck.com/story/935

Jaspers’ secret seems to be the genetic code of a First Guardian, although whether Rose actually got it from this mysterious kitty-cat, or whether it was buried in her subconscious all along is probably a coin flip. (I would put my money on the subconscious thing.)

https://homestuck.com/story/938

For all her pretension, Rose Lalonde is a sad thirteen year old girl whose mother spends too much time sozzled to help her make sense of a confusing and chaotic world. It would be nice for her to be able to make sense of the world and get some sense of constancy, but then part of the point of Sburb is to teach its players that nothing in life is constant.

https://homestuck.com/story/949

Resolving some of the uncertainty around his Dad will allow John to consciously perceive the graffiti he’s been subconsciously scribbling around his room. You knew that already, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a big deal for him. I’ll take a stab at why this is the case - one of the recurring motifs in Homestuck is characters avoiding uncomfortable truths through avoidance and stagnation - if they don’t want to think about something, they really really don’t think about it, to the point of not being able to perceive it at all. Here, John magically gains the ability to see some of the graffiti drawn by his dream self by being confronted with the truth about his Dad. For other characters, I think, it will be less magical.

https://homestuck.com/story/965

Calling attention to John’s lexicon again, I feel like it’s an overlooked fact that he uses turn of the decade hacker slang a lot too - just peppers his language with it.

https://homestuck.com/story/980

Jade, like John, actually has two separate Guardians - her deceased bio-parent, and this devilbeast. The terminology for these white-and-electric-green monsters, First Guardians, suggests that from a mythological perspective, they function as Ur-Parental figures, raising a civilization to adulthood so that its members can go on to play Sburb, participating in the reproductive cycle of the Universe.

https://homestuck.com/story/988

The fact that Mom Lalonde’s “Room” is full of booze supports my hypothesis that she still lives in her little girl’s lab bedroom.

Rose doesn’t make a big deal out of what’s in her Mom’s bedroom the way that John is, but I think that her exploration of the laboratory serves as effectively a long-form version of the same experience that John has just had. They’re both learning plenty about their enigmatic guardians.

Rose is a smart girl. She’s figured out what is going on, even if she hasn’t thought about it at the surface-level of the narration yet.

https://homestuck.com/story/1004

John Egbert is a young man who does not really like himself very much.

https://homestuck.com/story/1023

The very first time Rose shows genuine vulnerability to pretty much anyone in the comic. “Maybe I am just being a friend?”

https://homestuck.com/story/1028

Dreams in Homestuck are material events than can have material effects on the characters’ reality - but on the other hand, spending loads of time dreaming can prevent you from having a meaningful effect on your session.

Homestuck is a little ambivalent about dreams but I think it’s safe to say that something close to is stance would be to say that what goes on unacknowledged inside of your head is still a part of you even if you can’t perceive it. Characters who spend all of their time in dreams though, paradoxically won’t make all that much progress toward actually understanding it. Tavros and Jade both spend loads of time in their dreams on Prospit, and while Jade does it because she has Vriska-induced narcolepsy, I think we’re supposed to draw a line from one to the other.

Neither of them is in an emotional state to tough out the process of digging up what’s beneath the surface, and resolving the tension between what’s inside of them and what’s outside of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/1049

This creepy little guy is here because Gamzee sent him. I’m going to pay careful attention to the sequence of events that leads him here, because I have a hunch that John’s weird clown fixation somehow leads to Gamzee’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/1064

The fact that the Joker only has two holes in his punchcard suggests that clowns come very close to being elemental in the Homestuck universe.

That is not a surprise.

https://homestuck.com/story/1069

We’ll conclude the day with John’s alchemy session, and come back tomorrow where I’ll finally get around to stating another one of Homestuck’s major throughlines. For now though, I’ll point out that pretty much everything John has created here has some kind of Dad imagery or another (Although all the Cosby gags have aged incredibly poorly, don’t forget that at one point he was America’s Dad!)

With the possible exception of the Bunny Wizard hat which combines some Rose imagery with some John imagery! No wonder she thought it was as cool as he did.

For now, Cam signing off, something something not alone.