#both for dirk hes putting his plans into motion

[throwntotheair]

The idea that Dirk and John both share a flash with "Rise Up" in the title...

But for John, his is "John. Rise up." Note: he - him - John, not his role but him as a person. And it's not formatted as a command. The WV/Mayor was grieving his windy boy. This was a plea. For John specifically.

And for Dirk, his is "Prince of Heart: Rise up." Note: it's not about Dirk, it's about his role that he has to play. It's about the stuff he has to put in motion. It's less about him and more of what he can do. And this one is formatted like a command.

I feel like the Always Sunny guy with my massive conspiracy board - like!! LIKE!!! Do you see what Im saying? Do you say what Im seeing???

[cartasmojadas]

Another scene from the childhood friends dirkjohn AU I’ve been messing around with. Takes place after this and before this. 

John pierces Dirk’s ears.

John is already in his pajamas when he hears the rhythmic tapping on his window. He lets out a short yelp before remembering that Dirk had already told him he was on his way.

“Aren’t you grounded?” John pushes the window open and yawns. 

Dirk shushes him and uses John’s shoulders as leverage as he goes through the familiar motions of crawling through the second-story window into John’s bedroom.

“I am grounded, Egbert, so keep it down unless you want to rat me out.” 

John rolls his eyes but braces himself for Dirk’s weight as he finally finds his footing. Dirk lands gracefully and quietly. 

His Dad and sister are already asleep, he thinks but even if they weren’t, Dirk always moves so quietly John doesn’t think they would even be able to notice. 

“You still down to help?” Dirk asks as he closes the window behind him before making himself comfortable on John’s bed. 

John turns on the classical music station the old radio is stuck on and hopes that it adds a quiet buffer to their voices. 

“Help with what? You should be helping me with my geometry homework. I think I might actually fail next week’s test.”

Dirk waves him off, “I’ll help with that later, or better yet, you should come to tutoring with the guys from the engineering club.” He digs through his backpack. 

An uncomfortable tightness spreads over John’s chest. A feeling he’s becoming a little more familiar with. 

John frowns and joins Dirk on the bed, their sides pressed against each other until Dirk freezes for a moment and scoots away, and ends up dangerously close to the edge of the bed. 

“Why can’t we just do one-on-one?” 

Dirk stops rummaging for his supplies and looks at John through the reflection on the dressing mirror hanging on the wall. Dirk watches John’s expression sour as he stares at his empty hands like he sees something Dirk can’t.

They look like an unlikely pair, with John dressed in mismatched socks, an oversized t-shirt, and his hair already sticking up in all sorts of directions like he was already sleeping; while Dirk looks like he is ready to head out to a rave with his meticulous hair and carefully planned black outfit.

“Do you not like the guys from the club?” Dirk asks. It’s a question he’s been meaning to ask for a while. As much as Dirk craves spending time alone with John, he’s doing his best to avoid the awkwardness that has seeped into their relationship. But he worries that their interests are just a little too different. 

They just don’t seem to click the same way ever since Dirk came out.

John’s frown deepens, “No, they’re fine,” he swallows. He’s not sure how to tell Dirk that the reason he doesn’t like hanging out with the engineering club because he feels left out whenever he’s with them. John loves to see his friend in his element, it means that Dirk shines brighter, drawing everyone in. But John always gets stuck watching on the sidelines as Dirk’s friends monopolize his attention. And it makes John, by his own private admission, irrationally jealous. 

He doesn’t like the way that makes him feel.

“Then why not? I think there are a few dudes who are better at explaining math, compared to me.” Dirk hands John a small pink plastic tray with a cheery depiction of a happy sun and clouds.

“I just can’t focus the same way,” John says with enough definitiveness that Dirk simply nods. 

“For sure, okay.” He drops a couple of sandwich bags on the tray. When they make a dull clacking sound John stares down at the contents. 

Dirk smirks, “You ready to pierce my ears?”

John’s jaw and stomach drop in tandem. “What?” He squawks. “Are you nuts?”

“C’mon, Egbert,” Dirk doesn’t beg but his voice is dripping with nervous adrenaline in a way John hasn’t heard in a while. 

It’s contagious.

“I can’t ask anyone else. I wouldn’t trust Rose or Roxy to not fuck up my earlobes.”

And that eases the tension in John’s chest. 

“Why can’t you go to a parlor or something? Tell Roxy to take you to Claire's.” John is already moving to face Dirk, inspecting his earlobes from afar.

More of the tension dissipates when a single choked laugh escapes Dirk. 

“They require parental consent and we both know my dad would never agree.”

“He’s gonna kill you when he sees your ears tomorrow. And if he finds out  I helped he will never let me see you again,” John sighs knowing full well that wouldn’t stop him from seeing Dirk. He begins inspecting Dirk’s tools. 

“He won’t find out,” Dirk’s voice drops to a low whisper, “It’ll just be a secret between us bros. Right?” 

Dirk means to sound teasing, recalling the way they used to share secrets and promises as kids, but instead, he flinches when he catches John looking away, his ears bright red. The sight triggers the plume of something hot that rises from his gut whenever he’s reminded of how bad he’s crushing on John and how much it probably inconveniences his friend.

John is not embarrassed. 

Or he is but not for the reasons Dirk suspects. 

There’s something in Dirk’s tone that forces some of John’s suppressed dream memories to resurface and John knows he needs to collect himself before he tries to make eye contact again. 

“So,” Dirk clears his throat, “Go wash your hands? I’ll look up some youtube videos?” he says quietly.

Grateful for the excuse, John jumps out of the bed wordlessly and scrambles out the door. 

John returns a few minutes later with clean hands and a wet face. 

Dirk smirks, “I said wash your hands not take a shower.” 

John shrugs, “Hey, you have a ten-step face routine, I wash my face with soap and call it good.”

John sticks his tongue out when Dirk grimaces, “We will fix that later,” Dirk mutters and pats the empty spot on the bed. 

Carefully, John climbs back in the bed and takes in the faintest scent of menthol and nicotine that comes off Dirk when he leans closer to show him the video on his phone. It’s probably the reason why he’s grounded in the first place. A small act of rebellion toward his strict parents.

Both boys shift uncomfortably and do their best to focus on the instructions on the video and not on each other’s proximity. 

They have to watch the video multiple times and after the sixth time, John tells Dirk he thinks he’s ready. 

He puts on the latex gloves Dirk brought with him and preps the tools on the plastic tray that Dirk holds over his lap. He’s shaking as he straddles (hovering, neither could handle it if John just took a seat on Dirk’s thigh) and starts massaging Dirk’s earlobe the way the woman on the video instructed.

Dirk’s breathing is staggered and John wonders if Dirk is more nervous than he originally let on.

“I-Icepack?” Dirk chokes out. 

“R-right,” John breathes out and reaches for it. He holds it to Dirk’s ear and quietly counts to 30 and then reaches for the safety pin. 

Dirk’s head is spinning unable to focus on a single thing and instead finds himself on sensory overload. John’s the closest he’s ever been to Dirk since they used to wrestle in elementary school, and Dirk desperately pleads to whatever benevolent power might have mercy on his hormonal teenage ass that they keep his body in check.

He’s also acutely aware that the icepack wasn’t very cold and that piercing his ear is probably going to hurt a lot.

“Okay, ready?” John’s voice shakes.

“Just do it, man, do it. Fucking stab me. Pop my goddamn ear cherry. Do it, dude.” Dirk’s voice also shakes.

John takes a sharp breath in and pushes. 

Dirk hisses and curses. He reaches for a fist full of John’s shirt. It might have made John self-conscious of their position if he wasn’t also shivering with adrenaline. 

He follows the next steps of the video and makes a move to get off Dirk. 

“Wait, what about the other one?” 

John groans, “Bro, no. I can’t. My legs are freakin’ jelly. That was terrifying!”

Dirk tightens his grip on the shirt, “John, you can’t leave me with one pierced ear.”

John chews on his lip. “Fine,” He groans again, “But don’t you ever forget I’m your best friend.”

He doesn’t mean for it to sound so bitter but the words roll out of John’s mouth with enough edge to make Dirk look at him with a puzzled expression. 

John a lot less gentle and Dirk, knowing what’s coming, can’t hold back a garbled sob. 

Glad that the worst is finally done, John gently wipes away a runaway tear from Dirk’s face and softly shushes him. 

“And now we wait,” He carefully moves off Dirk. 

Dirk nods and balls his to keep from reaching up to touch his pulsing ears. 

There’s the loud artificial sound of a phone shutter. 

“Sorry,” John mumbles. “I wanted a picture to commemorate the occasion,” he says with a sheepish smile. 

What Dirk means to sound like an annoyed huff comes out as a stumbling suspire. 

“C’mere, let’s take a selfie.”

John beams, his nerves finally calming and a deep sense of peace washing over him. The bed is loud as he crawls back over and lets Dirk put an arm over his shoulders to pull him in carefully. 

Dirk takes the picture and frowns down at the exhausted faces on screen. 

They take another one once Dirk has the studs in. 

That one becomes John’s home screen.

[lockedstuck]

sorrow that you keep

March 2021 - Sollux Captor

“Vitals!” Dirk announces, rapping on your door with his knuckles. “C’mon, let’s get this over with so I can serve breakfast!”

When you walk out of your room, there’s already a line leading out of the treatment room. The person in front of you, a dark-skinned kid with an Angela Davis-style afro - Karkat, you think his name is - curses up a blue streak while he waits in line.

“I don’t see why I had to get a prissy fucking bastard with insomnia as my goddamn roommate. I didn’t ask for any of this fucking shit. Fucking involuntary status, fucking dumbshit Eridan, I hope this fucking hospital burns down.”

It’s too early to put up with this guy, especially with the migraine you woke up with.

“Not tryna piss you off or anything but do you think you could keep it down with your tirade?”

If looks could kill, the glare Karkat shoots you would have rendered you to a pile of smoldering ash.

“I haven’t had a cigarette in six days, it’s seven oh fuck in the morning, my roommate wakes up seventeen times a night, and I might be losing my job because my shithead brother signed me into this fucking place, so you can go straight the fuck to hell,” Karkat replies.

“Are you this obnoxious later in the day, or did they just forget to give you your ativan last night?”

“I don’t even take ativan, dumbfuck.” He squares up. Maybe if he weren’t five foot one, you’d actually be afraid. “I’ll knock you out if you keep talking, though.”

Behind you, a guy with eyes so dark that they might be violet moves to plant a hand on Karkat’s shoulder. It’s your roommate, Gamzee Makara, who appears to sleep for fifteen hours a day. Karkat surprisingly refrains from flinching or scowling. You probably wouldn’t scowl at this guy if you had the opportunity either; he’s easily six foot four, his hair curling around his ears and sticking out worse than Karkat’s.

“Now there’s no reason to get up an’ motherfucking truculent with the new guy so early in the morning.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Makara, if you tell me to calm down and wait for the morning miracles, I’ll kill you too.”

“There’s no need to wait, Karbro. The sunrise is a miracle in and of itself. When I looked at the ceiling in my room, I saw miracles. Everywhere.”

“They need to put you on haldol, man.”

“I don’t need no helldogs telling me what to do. I just go with the flow.”

“Of course,” Karkat says, almost fondly. “You and your motherfucking miracles.”

When it’s nearly Karkat’s turn for vitals, Dirk escorts Roxy over to the nurses’ station. She blows a kiss at Karkat, who raises his hand in half-salute. Ignacio walks out of the charting room and takes a look at her.

“Miss Lalonde, I have medication for you. This’ll help with the shakes, hypertension, and sweating.”

Roxy puts her hands on her hips and winks at him. “Again, cutiepie?”

Ignacio rolls his eyes at her and shakes his head, his mohawk moving slightly with the motion. He hands her a medication cup and a paper cup of water. She swallows her medication down fluidly, without drinking any of the water. That has to be an xbox achievement.

During breakfast, as Eridan continues to scowl and bitch about his lack of breakfast (he has ECT today), and Karkat tells him to stop being an overdramatic fuckass before he stabs him with a fork, Dr. Vandayar pulls you aside for one of his “no big deal” discussions.

Otherwise known as morning check-in.

Truth be told, you rather like Dr. V, or Krishna, which is what he told you that you could call him, even though he has a doctorate.

He got you access to sharps, your body wash, and your clothes. He means well, and aside from when he checks in every morning, he doesn’t force you to talk if you don’t want to.

“How are you doing today, Mr. Captor?” he asks.

You shrug. “I’m okay, I guess. Pretty much the same as yesterday.”

Then come the “one to tens”, as you’ve come to think of them. Krishna has his little clipboard balanced on his thigh.

“Urges to hurt other people, one to ten?”

You think of Karkat Vantas and that smug fucking look on his face.

“Two.” It’s always less than three. Maybe that’s why he starts with it.

“Urges to hurt yourself, one to ten?”

You contemplate yesterday’s DBT handout, Roxy’s outburst about self-destruction, and its many varying connotations.

“Eight,” you reply.

“Suicidal thoughts, one to ten?”

“Nine.”

“Active or passive?”

“Passive, mostly. Fleetingly active. I don’t want to live if I’m going to burden people, the usual.”

“Do you have any plans to seriously harm yourself on the unit?”

“No. Not here,” you say. “Everything I’d want to do would require me to be outside.”

“I see,” Krishna says. “Have you been seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there?”

“No.”

“What about feeling like people are out to get you, or sending you special messages?”

“No. Nothing like that. I get enough of that shit at home.”

Dr. V does not laugh at your attempt to joke about your chaotic home life.

If you were to be completely honest, you’re wondering when your medications are going to start working, or if they’re going to start working. Talking to the other patients has been a double-edged sword. So many of them have been on a million different drugs without relief.

Logically, you know that it’ll probably take whatever you’re on more than a week to cure you, but… You’re scared. You’re not in full control and it scares you. There’s a reason you slit your throat. There’s a reason you’re here.

You’re scared the melancholy will wrap itself around you like a shroud, and never relinquish its hold. You’re scared you’ll hate yourself and this life forever.

“I thank you for your honesty, Sollux,” Dr. V says, once he makes his notes. “Any uses of target behaviors that I should be aware of?”

“I cut myself with a plastic knife on Friday evening. Not deep enough to need medical attention, though.”

You scan his expression for evidence of emotion, but he has the mother of all poker faces. All he does is write your answers down in his incomprehensible shorthand,

“How did that make you feel?” he asks. “Remember, it didn’t necessarily have to make you feel anything.”

You shrug. “It helped relieve the tension in the moment, I guess.”

“But it also made me feel disappointed later on,” you go on. “Disappointed at myself. I’m such a fucking idiot for relapsing.”

Dr. V jots this down as well, and shuffles through his papers.

“I wouldn’t use that language to describe yourself. Ridding yourself of maladaptive coping mechanisms can be quite difficult, especially if they have worked for you in the past,” he says. “Nevertheless, do you think you need to be on one-to-one for a few days? So that you stop hurting yourself while you’re here?"

You shake your head vehemently. “Absolutely not. I won’t do what I did again.”

“That is reassuring to hear. I’ll refrain from filling out the paperwork that would put you on constant observation for self-injury. That said, though, there is something you also need to do to prevent that.”

You roll your eyes a little. “You want me to contract for safety, don’t you? Like, filling out one of those sheets that says I’ll grab someone else before I decide to hurt myself. Otherwise I end up on one-to-one, right?”

Dr. V nods at you, before going on. “Yes, that is the general idea. You may either fill it out with me later on in the afternoon, or with a member of the staff with whom you are more comfortable.”

“I’d rather fill it out with you, to be perfectly honest. I trust you.”

He smiles. “I am very glad to hear that, Sollux. I don’t have any further questions for the moment.”’

You get out of your conference with Krishna, and walk into the dayroom.  

Gamzee sits there, watching Good Morning America. He’s got a small smile on his face, and a faraway look in his eye, like he’s both here and not. You call his name to get his attention. It works, his dark eyes trained on you.

“You mind if I sit down?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Naw, it’s cool. You can even change the channel if that’s somethin’ you wanna do.”

He’s built like a linebacker, all broad shoulders and muscles. He could probably snap you in half if he wanted to. You take the seat next to him and he smiles serenely at you.

“So what’s up?” he asks.

“Nothing, man. Just got outta session with Dr. V. He wanted to make sure I didn’t want to hurt myself.”

Gamzee looks thoughtful. He pulls a red paper flower out of his shorts and hands it to you.

“I folded that a couple days ago. You can have it, if you want.”

“For what?”

“For when you need to up an fuckin’ remember the miracles. Like we talked about last night.”

Last night, Gamzee harangued you at length about the Mirthful Messiahs, and the Dark Carnival, and with a practiced skill you have learned from your sibling’s rants about the NYPD following them, you tuned him out utterly. You really hope he doesn’t count you as a believer in his weird ass faith, which seems like some kind of psychotic juggalo cult.

He’s a nice guy, though. You know he’s not utterly harmless, but he seems easygoing enough. You fiddle around with and tear at a piece of paper until you have a square, which you then use to make a paper crane.

“Hey, Gamzee,” you say. He glances up at you.

“Yeah?”

You hand him the paper crane. “You know, the Japanese believe if you fold a thousand of these, you get a wish. I’m not folding a thousand cranes, but this is for you.”

“I will cherish it every day of my motherfucking life.”

You think he means it, too.

Art group is at 11. Katya herds everyone who wants to show up into the art room. So far, that’s you, Roxy, Karkat, June, Gamzee, Calliope, and Porrim. Karkat nods his head at you, and then inclines it toward the door. He wants to talk to you one-on-one. Whatever the fuck about?

He looks like he’s swallowed a lemon before he deigns to speak to you, all pursed lips and narrowed eyes. You’re tempted to ask him what the fuck’s eating him, and then he speaks.

“Listen. I want to apologize about earlier this morning,” he says. “I was in a foul fucking mood, and I need to work on not taking that shit out on other people.”

Wait, seriously? He can’t actually think you’re still upset about that; you get cursed out worse by your sibling on a daily basis, and that’s when they’re in a good mood.

“Accepted,” you reply. “Don’t worry about it, man.”

Faint relief breaks out on Karkat’s features.

Katya has all of you gather around before she constructs a box out of a weirdly shaped piece of cardboard that looks as if it’s been cut so that a small briefcase sized box could be constructed.

“These are what I like to call coping boxes. You make the box, and then you decorate it. You can put anything in here. Things that make you feel good, or that make you think, or handouts you get during other groups. Whatefur you want!”

She hands a box to each of you, after she puts out tempera and acrylic paint, colored markers, gel pens, and colored pencils.

You weren’t planning to keep any of your distress tolerance handouts in the box, but maybe you should. Gamzee’s staring at you while he paints, and that’s kind of weird, at least until you get a good look at how he’s decorating his coping box.

He’s painting halfway decent pictures of you, Roxy, Karkat, Calliope and Eridan on the front part of the box, with the word “friends”, in purple cursive.

He counts you as a friend even though the only thing you’ve really had to do with him was vaguely listen while he spouted his weird theories about the mirthful messiahs?

You have to hand it to him, though. Kid’s a real artist, probably - no, definitely - good enough to paint portraits for money over in Washington Square Park or something. Karkat gets a decent look at what Gamzee’s painting and blushes.

“Oh, come on, you didn’t have to put me on the damn box,” he says.

“But you are my best friend in the whole wide motherfucking universe,” Gamzee replies.

Karkat splutters something and looks like he’d like to object, then just sighs, and tells him to make sure he gets Karkat’s good side. 

“Hey, Gamzee!” Roxy calls.

“Yes, Roxybro?”

“Does painting that mean you’re gonna paint me like one ‘a’ your French girls one of these days?”

Gamzee gives this a good half-minute of thought.

“I ain’t up an’ got any motherfuckin’ French girls.”

Meanwhile, you focus on your tree. It looks like a lollipop with antennae, but whatever, that’s going to be as good as it gets. You ask Katya if you can get a piece of paper to paint on, she “of course”s you and hands you a piece of printer paper.

What will you paint today, Sollux Captor? More trees?

Tears spring to your eyes, and just when you think the worst is over, they start trailing down your face. Roxy recoils and apologizes to you, thinking she’s done something, and all you do is cry harder, you fuckup. You can’t do a goddamn thing right. Only things you’re good for are fixing computers and having nervous breakdowns.

Katya looks up from praising Calliope and Gamzee’s collaboration, and walks up to you.

“Hey - no, it’s okay, mew don’t have to cover your face - what’s wrong?”

She crouches so that she’s eye level with you as you sit in your chair. It somehow makes you feel even worse, like you’re some small child that can’t control their emotional outbursts. Come to think of it, you were like this as a kid, too. Tuna was the outgoing twin who made all the friends, and you were the twin who would start crying if you accidentally colored outside the lines.

“It’s alright. If you don’t want to paint, maybe you’d like to go for a walk?” she asks. You shake your head emphatically.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “It’s just that I’ve never really been good at artistic stuff. Sorry I suck so bad.”

“Art group is not about being good or bad stylistically,” Katya says. “It’s about expressing yourself. As long as you’re doing that, you’re fine. I like your tree. You and Roxy are both excellent at trees.”

Roxy, who has been sitting next to you, using highlighters to draw what looks either like a really bad tree or a neon colored mushroom cloud, gives you a small little smile.

“Wanna draw with me?” she asks.

At first, you assume she’s found some oblique way to hit on you the way she does everyone else, but then she hands you the bottle of black tempera paint and a couple of colored markers. You don’t know what she expects you to do with them. Your tree sucks way more than hers.

“If you can’t think of anything to draw, why not try making patterns?” Katya asks.

You guess you can do that. You start drawing red and blue circles on your piece of paper, clustering them closer and closer together. 

Apropos of nothing, you remember the time in undergrad where you and Ray couldn’t get back to campus in time to beat the blizzard. You and she slept overnight in your car, parked in a gas station. Outside, nothing but a vast, enveloping white, what you imagine death or infinity must look like. The whole world rendered down to the slope and curve of dunes and valleys.

If you think hard enough, you can feel the wind rocking the car, can imagine the sound of Ray’s teeth chattering, or the occasional slip of her hands as she does a tarot reading. Another one. Another one down, another one down, another one bites the dust, Queen playing through your radio speakers. She sits in the front passenger seat, one leg bent beneath her.

“You think we’re ever gonna get out of here?” she asks.

At this moment, you ask yourself that same question. It’s a little different, now.

You wish you could take your seven eighths of a computer engineering degree and come up with a way out of this, but you can’t. That’s your problem. You’re only you, and you’ve never been good at managing your emotions.

[ardenttheories]

What determines what moon a character dreams on? I know we have those weird scenarios w Vriska and Nepeta so idk how to pick which one to use for an OC

Though I can’t find the post right now (which is incredibly frustrating and I will be trying to find it again later), I did write on this some time ago. From my very vague recollection of how I think it worked best…

It’s entirely dependent, I think, on what will benefit the Player most: to be nourished by the welcoming, gentle nature of Prospit, or to be challenged by the harsh, cutthroat nature of Derse. 

Think, for instance, if Jade would have thrived on Derse. While she probably would have made friends with the Dersites, the Black King and Queen, the Agents, and needless to say the Horrorterrors might have been too much for her. She’s terrified of the Horrorterrors; what if her only source of information had been them from the start? Would she have been able to commune with them in order to learn the truth of their session, to keep paradoxes stable, as she does in Homestuck? Or would she have rejected them entirely, tried to stop herself from sleeping as much as possible, etc, etc. 

Conversely, what if she tried to start a rebellion on Derse? Jade is incredibly strong-willed, and tends to stick to her guns; if she thought the Dersites were under tyranic rule, would she really just sit there and let it happen, especially if she’s quite literally left in the dark? Would that be beneficial for the session, knowing that if she did this, either the Black Queen would try to take out Jade and John on Derse or the King and Queen would be prematurely defeated? What does that teach her as a Witch of Space?

In the same vein, if Rose had been a Prospitian, it… would have been much too easy for her. She’s a Seer of Light. If she was sleeping on the Moon that just threw prophetic clouds at her, what would she learn? She’d never have to seek out Light, never have to Learn from benefactors, because it’d all just be right there. It’d put her at a significant disadvantage, because then she’d never need a reason to - for instance - create the cue ball. Why bother doing that, thereby activating her powers as a Seer of Light, when she can more easily fall asleep?

Additionally, would Rose spend more of her time asleep if she were to wake up on Prospit and see the clouds? Would that actually benefit her, or the session, if she ended up spending more time staring at the clouds than putting her plans into motion, actively seeking out her information, when that’s such a significant part of her journey as a Seer?

You can see this pattern a lot in all of the characters throughout Homestuck. Why is Vriska a Prospit Dreamer? Because if she’d woken up earlier the kinder nature of Prospit would have encouraged her to be a much softer Player, and being on the same Moon as Terezi and Tavros might have likewise encouraged her to face past mistakes (and thereby go down the same growth path as (Vriska) did as a ghost). Meanwhile, Derse… might have made her worse. Encouraged her bad behaviours and the ideology that she needs to be violent and vicious and abrasive to survive, that it’s her against the world and she can’t reveal weakness. 

Why is Eridan a Derse Dreamer? Because he needs to see the negative effects of the societal structure that he’s trying to convince himself he holds so dear in a non-Alternian context. He needs to be in a position where he can Destroy Hope and benefit his team - not by Destroying the Hope of the Prospitians, who are so Hopeful and need to stay that way, but by Destroying the Hope of the Dersites to weaken them in the war. He needs to see that this is something he can do, that he’ll be treated positively for it.

I think, in some ways, it might also be a subconscious reflection of the Player’s general personality (think John or Jade, both sweet and peppy characters who definitely fit more in with the general vibe of Prospit), or of who they want to be - their Ideal Self (think Jane, who maybe needs to learn some of the positive Prospitial attributes to combat some of the negativities of Life). Sometimes, it’s what they think they deserve, and then becomes something that subverts their expectations (e.g. Dirk, who seems to fit well in Derse’s cutthroat environment, but who instead rises up with the people).

So in my mind there’s a lot more to which Moon a Player ends up on than just “Active vs Passive”, and admittedly I think a lot of this is because Hussie never really planned things out in advance. We know, for instance, that the trolls were an on-the-fly addition, as were the Classpects that came with them. It’s not far to assume, therefore, that when Hussie first introduced Prospit and Derse, they were centred more heavily around the HarleyBerts (positive, bright, happy, outgoing, naive) and Strilondes (darker, mysterious, more underhanded, reserved) than anything else - their family traits. 

Having to then shove 12 more characters into something he hadn’t fully fleshed out at first, and which was focused so exclusively on the four characters he’d actually planned for, can’t have been easy. Trying to then explain what the reasoning for these decisions were a decade later just makes things messy. 

To bring this back to the actual question about your OC - you essentially have to think about which Moon would most benefit your Player. Which are they going to thrive on, or will most positively affect them? Which will make them grow into a better person? Will the brightness of Prospit encourage or disillusion them? Will the severity of Derse challenge or terrify them? Which motives them more? Which will make them a better Player? 

You can also think about the other stuff I mentioned - which Moon most vibes with their personality or who they want to be, or what they think they deserve but ultimately subverts those expectations - but I recognise that can be very complicated, too, so you can skip that part. 

There’s no 100% way to determine if you’re going to end up on Derse or Prospit, unfortunately. It’s just going to take a lot of thinking to come to that decision. It’s predominantly about individual needs.

[thelifetimechannel]

“So what the fuck was all that” or, I acknowledge that we laid all this plot stuff out like 3 years ago so if you forgot here’s a rundown of what Coda’s Deal was

As some background, when we first started this project, the main idea was to have the versions of the kids we were invested in win the game. But as we kept working, and as the world around us got progressively nastier (and listen, I drafted this explanatory post months ago, so the ride don’t stop on that account), that didn't feel like enough. The game is sick. The game is broken. The game tortures children and builds new worlds off their backs. SBURB is what gave Caliborn the power he used to become the monster he did. How would simply playing by SBURB's rules and giving it a win be a victory? To quote TLC!Roxy,

TG: when the meteors start coming down again do we just watch? TG: when we get 2 the new universe callies gonna b there and we have 2 let her suffer bc the loop says so TG: so if the rules are still gonna force us 2 do shitty stuff do we ever rly get out?? TG: how do u win a game like that?

And so, the game became the last villain. Or what the game represents: an endless cycle of profiting off torment, promoting creation at any cost. I wanted the kids to break the cycle, since so much of the story centered around breaking out of bad patterns (personal, societal, structural). Especially in light of... everything going on in the world, I wanted to tell a story about a bunch of people who had gone through absolute hell and said, No one else should ever have to do this. I wanted to tell a story about survivors saying, Tomorrow is going to be better than today, and we are going to make sure that happens. That's a conclusion several of the characters start to come to in the later parts of the comic, until Rose directly states that her goal is to make a better system (following in her Act 4 footsteps after having learned to balance destruction with creation):

ROSE: There has to be a better way to perpetuate reality. ROSE: We may be trapped in a time loop when it comes to the cherub session, but beyond that... ROSE: I don't know what, or how, but I want to do something for the world we create, if that's where we're spat out. ROSE: If we let it keep selecting a few malleable lost children as the sole survivors to keep this cycle going, we're no better than the puppetmaster we're trying to escape.

How to accomplish that? Well, one of the forces that serves as an antagonist is the Alpha timeline.  Characters who make perfectly good decisions that simply deviate from what the Alpha demands are punished with death and banishment to the furthest ring.

ARADIA: working within the alpha timeline can be frustrating ARADIA: sometimes in my role as the maid of time i had to doom timelines where we succeeded because it would cause a paradox down the line ARADIA: for example you had to create the cancer in the humans genesis frog, otherwise a whole chain of events contributing to our own existence wouldnt be! ARADIA: there were realities where you didnt make the same mistakes ARADIA: there were some where we all did great

*

TG: it sux that it works this way TG: that u need some sort of hacky workaround 2 not die bc someone down the line fucked up or mayb u were just in the wrong place at the wrong time

In canon, it is established that the Alpha timeline is based on Lord English, as Scratch explains by saying,

The path which alone has my absolute mastery is the alpha timeline, a continuum I define as that which boasts exclusive rights both to my birth and to my death, two circumstantially simultaneous events.

Which means, without the Lord of Time forcing all viable timelines to feed into his being, multiple timelines could hypothetically coexist as long as none of them break other pre-existing loops.

ARADIA: english narrowed the options to direct all energy toward his desired outcomes much like a virus repurposing a cells production mechanisms to reproduce itself instead ARADIA: but he is gone now ARADIA: there are plenty of realities my selves left behind that could have survived if not for his loops and his insistence on wiping clean all offshoots that did not contribute to him ARADIA: an insistence that bled into the very laws of the universe ARADIA: but with his defeat the way forward is much broader

The alpha timeline isn't the only oppressive force at play, however. The other is the game and behind that, Skaia itself. Skaia is portrayed as a benevolent force for creation, but it supports a system where killing children isn't a bug. It's a feature. It's very devoted to the bigger picture and the greater good at the expense of the people caught in the system's gears, which sounds... familiar. Sure, Skaia could just exist, but Homestuck is an origin story. Almost everything has a starting point, so why not Skaia and the game too?

DIRK: The point is, this game didn't come out of nowhere. DIRK: Someone had to make it.

It made sense to me to have a benevolent cherub behind that, just as a malevolent cherub is behind the alpha timeline. So, enter alt!Calliope.

CALLIOPE: through the rules of the game that brought you here, i gave you my blessing. CALLIOPE: in doing so i hope i have created a battlefield for soldiers to rise up against him, even as my efforts brought about his own birth. CALLIOPE: both he and i labor bound to our own path from creation to destruction, locked in an ouroboros that will only end when you have passed through the final door.

JADE: just to make sure im understanding you correctly JADE: youre behind the game that ruined our lives?

And if one Muse of Space got us into this mess...

CALLIOPE: if she'd grown Up with friends like i had, she woUldn't have bUilt it that way, i know she woUldn't have. ROSE: Maybe this is your chance to set it right. CALLIOPE: what? ROSE: You're a Muse of Space too. ROSE: If she had the ability to craft the inner workings of an entire multiverse-spanning system and set it in motion, you must have that potential too. ROSE: Maybe you can change the rules.

In the walkarounds, Rose starts making her case to the other characters.

ROSE: Your mistake with the DNA affected our game session, which means the frog's construction influences how SBURB games launched within it are played. ROSE: If you did that accidentally, we might be able to influence future SBURB sessions intentionally.

And in the last update before our two flashes, they make their plan and put it to a vote.

ROXY: we need 2 come up w/ a world we like

That brings us to Coda. The alpha timeline (red snake) winds around the dream bubbles filled with ghosts who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Skaia's influence (green snake) winds around the events it engineered. We see the characters digging into DNA readouts, temple carvings, etc. to figure out how to reverse engineer the game. Then Calliope makes it happen, banishing the ouroboros of the two cherubs' influence so they won't poison the new universe. But of course, if we are banishing the alpha timeline and saying any number of realities can exist concurrently, we can't see any of them. That would be pinning us down to one. So, as Calliope works her magic, the viewers lose sight of the characters, so they can finally be free. Because if we're rebelling against authority, even we authors have to step aside in the end.

And so, for now, let’s drop the curtains and take our bow. :) As for what’s behind those curtains, who’s to say? Maybe us. Maybe you. Maybe everyone. 

[protecticarus]

Could you write a brotzly drabble with dirk being touchstarved and lots of cuddling? Happy ending preferably but it's up to you ahdjabdh love your writing btw!

thank you very much! i’m glad you like it! x

time to venture into the fluffier world of fanfiction! back to the regular angst programming later on folks!

i’m not sure if you wanted established relationship or not, but this kind of toys with the possibility.

this is fairly short & simple. hope you like it tho!

~

Considering all the eccentric things that came with meeting and sort of accidentally befriending Dirk Gently, it wasn’t that surprising that it took Todd a while to notice the touching thing.

Sure, Todd wasn’t a very popular guy, at least not anymore, and therefore didn’t have many friends. He also wasn’t a very affectionate guy. Actually the only person he could remember voluntarily hugging in years was Amanda.

That is, until Dirk.

Somewhere during the time travel chaos the thought crossed Todd’s mind. Dirk was a touchy guy. Todd had had a hand on his shoulder, a thigh touching his while sitting or a shoulder bumping his as he walked more often in the past week than he had for the previous couple of years combined.

Todd also realized that he didn’t mind it.

You might think you’d be a bit on guard when touched on a regular basis by a total stranger who broke into your home and then proceeded to drag you into an insane time travel psychi- sorry, holistic, adventure but Todd found it strangely comforting.

Then Blackwing happened.

After they found Dirk in the trunk of the old car in the tree (seriously, what was his life even) and the two shared an excited hug while jumping up and down, screaming each other’s names excitedly… Dirk got distant. Both physically and mentally.

Todd never realized just how much he liked having the Brit patting him on the shoulder or leaning into him in a diner booth until it wasn’t a regular occurrence anymore.

Everything was so hectic with the Bergsberg police, the boy and creepy Suzie that there was never a good time to reach out to Dirk and ask about how he really was, not without being interrupted at least.

And then it was over and things were back to normal. Well, what they considered normal by that point. Including the casual but habitual touches.

Only this time, Todd was so glad Dirk was back to his old habits, he started reciprocating more.

When Dirk scooted to sit closer to him in a booth, Todd would make sure their shoulders touched. When Dirk excitedly bumped their shoulders together, Todd would grin and repeat the motion. Once, when Dirk touched his thigh to Todd’s while sitting next to each other on the couch, Todd let his hand fall down to lay on Dirk’s thigh. He’d never forget the blush that crept up on the detective’s neck all the way up to his ears.

Todd wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he’d become more touchy as well or something else, but Dirk became more and more persistent to have some sort of physical contact with Todd whenever possible. He became almost clingy.

If they were sitting on the couch, he would casually lift his long legs to rest on Todd’s lap. Instead of telling Todd to move out of the way of bicycles and such, he’d link his arm with Todd’s and pull him closer to himself. If he suddenly got a hunch, he’d grab Todd’s hand and pull him along to wherever they were supposed to head to next.

The biggest difference was when they were alone though. Todd would almost call it… Cuddling. It was starting to blur the line between platonic and… Something else.

One day, as they were sitting on the couch, if you could call it sitting, it was more like slouching, Todd decided to bring it up.

“Hey Dirk?” He asked, looking down at the detective who currently had his head on Todd’s lap, his nose buried in Todd’s shirt.

“Yes, Todd?” Came the muffled answer.

“You’re a… You’re a cuddly person, huh?” Todd awkwardly said. Not exactly what he’d planned on saying but he’d go with it.

“I am?” Dirk replied after a lengthy pause.

“Yeah, I mean… You haven’t noticed?” Todd asked.

“I guess not. Does it… Bother you?” Dirk asked carefully.

“No! No, it’s totally fine. Just… Something I noticed.” Todd replied quickly.

“Oh. Alright.” Dirk said.

“So, we’ve established that I don’t mind. I’m just wondering… You do realize that most guys, guys that are just friends I mean, don’t really do that. Right?” Todd mumbled.

Dirk stiffened a bit in his lap. “I-I suppose. Well, if I’m honest you’re the first man friend I’ve had, or any gendered friend for that matter, so, I’m sure you know about that sort of thing more than I do.” Dirk rambled.

“Right. I guess I’m just wondering… If that’s a you thing or a… A me thing.” Todd said.

Dirk sat up, putting a bit of distance between them. “What do you mean?”

Todd reached to scratch the back of his neck. “I mean… Is that something you’d do with anyone or… Just me?”

Dirk thought for a moment. “You’re my only best friend.”

Todd couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I know, but like… If I wasn’t.” He tried to explain awkwardly.

Dirk blinked a few times. “I guess I’m not sure. I just like… Being close to you.”

Todd swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Dirk replied.

“Okay.” Todd said dumbly.

“I guess… I guess no one else has ever let me be very close to them.” Dirk shrugged.

Todd thought for a moment. “What about when you were a kid?”

Dirk laughed dryly. “You mean in Blackwing? The only touching that occurred in Blackwing was either grabbing or pushing or-”

Todd cringed. “No… No, of course not. I mean like… Your parents?”

Dirk went quiet for a moment. “I don’t remember time before Blackwing very well. But from what I do I gather there wasn’t a lot of… Closeness.” Dirk mumbled.

“Like… Your parents didn’t hug you or… I don’t know, hold your hand or something?” Todd asked.

Dirk shrugged. “Not that I remember. They would’ve been the only people to do that before you but I don’t think they did. I’m fairly certain they didn’t.”

Suddenly it dawned on Todd. He might be the only person who’s ever hugged Dirk. Or held his hand. Or casually patted him on the shoulder. Or be close to him at all, at least without a threat of violence… If you didn’t count Farah or Amanda. And they weren’t very touchy people in general.

Todd sighed and turned to fully face Dirk. “You know… There’s like studies and stuff about how important touch is to children.”

Dirk looked confused. “Alright. Well, I’m not a child.”

Todd laughed. “Yeah, I know, but you were. And you had a… Very strange childhood.”

Dirk laughed too. “That’s one way to put it.”

Todd smiled. “What I mean is… It makes sense that you’d crave that kind of contact now. Since you, you know… Didn’t have that before. As a kid.”

Dirk’s brows furrowed as he weighed Todd’s words. “I suppose.”

“Well, anyway, I’m glad to, you know… Give you that.” Todd replied awkwardly.

Dirk smiled. “Thank you.”

Todd thought for a moment and then leaned over to wrap his arms around Dirk. Dirk’s arms came up to wrap themselves around Todd in return.

“I do like this.” Dirk whispered.

Todd blushed. “Yeah, it’s alright.”

They stayed like that for a while, a comfortable silence surrounding them. At some point they'd shifted to lean against the back of the couch, still holding each other, their legs now tangled together, hanging off the couch.

After a while, Dirk spoke up again.

“It might be a Dirk thing, but it might also be a little bit of a Todd thing.”

Todd hid his grin into Dirk’s shoulder.

~

if you have any ideas for fics, send me prompts! my inbox is always open! x

[mo-nighean-rouge]

Gone- III

Jamie Fraser prepares to send Claire and Faith through the stones. A last-minute interference puts them all at stake.

Part I | Part II | AO3

A/N: Yes, this story still exists. Super shout out to @phoenixflames12 for being a pro beta and helping me shape this part up. Keep in mind that the following selection includes graphic depictions of violence.

Previously:

Jamie strained his eyes to see the rows of white tents visible through the trees ahead. Even from far away, their supply of men, ammunition, morale, highlighted the utter foolishness of the Scots marching into battle that day.

The hopelessness of Jamie marching into their camp right now.

But somewhere in its maze of red, his future laid unprotected.

There was no other solution. No other outcome he could live with. That he could die with, today. Je Suis Prest.

April 16, 1746 | Redcoat Camp – Culloden Moor

Jamie crept through the underbrush, Fergus hot on his heels. They stepped lightly, their trail discernible only to a trained eye like Murtagh’s. 

Their teamwork reminded him of another early morning mission that they’d completed together — a day that now felt like it had occurred in a different lifetime. 

If only he had focused on keeping his family out of the line of fire rather than falling into bed with the enemy… Jamie brushed off the darkening thoughts crowding his mind. He had plenty of present worries to bide him for now.

The camp was still awakening in the clearing beyond, about a hundred yards from their concealed path. The soldiers’ boastful remarks traveled over the wind to Jamie’s ear. Their morale was clearly high, unlike the spirits of the ill and weary men whom he’d left behind just last night.

The shuffling of tent canvas increased as Jamie and Fergus rounded the corner of the encampment. General Wade’s men were putting the finishing touches on their uniforms and moving off to seek nourishment before facing the trial to come.

Jamie motioned for Fergus to follow as he took a roundabout turn back to the north end of the camp. Crouching behind a boulder, they studied the ramshackle cabin. He knew that the commander of the bloody dragoons would not settle for the harsh conditions of a tent when greater accommodations were possible – meager though they still may be.

The soldiers guarding the back door of the cabin were the last barrier between Jamie and his defenseless daughter. Jamie spied the moment of decision in Fergus’s eyes as his expression transitioned from cowed, to slackened, to enraged. He had no doubt that these were the men that had ripped Faith from her godfather’s arms. 

Jamie said nothing, nor did he inhibit the lad as he charged the redcoat closest to him. The men’s defenses were slow at the end of their night watch, allowing Fergus to cut the first down in one silent swoop. Jamie took care of the other in similar fashion, leaving no survivors. 

He regretted this necessity, particularly for Fergus in his youth and inexperience. The handful of soldiers that they had encountered in the wood had been simply knocked out for the time being, but no personal vendetta was held against those men.

Jamie’s heart grew heavier at the sight of the gouge marks in the cabin’s doorframe and the cracked window to its side. He crossed himself in memory of the fate of the family that had not long ago made an honest livelihood on this land.

Inhaling sharply, he exchanged one last nod with Fergus before pushing through the door.

“Fraser!” Randall’s voice was a sneer as he turned toward the sound of their disruption. “You’re just in time!”

Much as Jamie expected, Randall was not straggling to start the day like many of his subordinates, but seemed to have been up for hours. A feast of stale scones and preserves was set upon a table in one corner; Faith’s chin barely cleared its surface from her position in a high-backed chair, a napkin tucked into the collar of her homespun dress.

“Da!” she squeaked, suddenly animated at the sight of familiar faces.

“Not to worry, Fraser. I’ve explained to her how close I am with her parents, and that we’ve simply been waiting for you for the fun to begin.” Randall’s eyes gleamed darkly, his mouth set in a subtle smirk.

He crossed the narrow space to stand behind Faith’s chair, gripping the back of it. “After all, there was no mistaking these beastly curls and wild blue eyes.”

Revulsion choked Jamie at the sight of the vile man’s hand caressing his child’s cheek luridly as she looked back and forth between them in confusion. But he couldn’t move, not yet.

“Though it seems that perhaps you’ve brought me a trade?” Randall tilted his chin toward Fergus, considering the boy. “I’m nothing if not negotiable.” He scooped Faith up and placed her on his hip. Her lower lip puckered out at the unfamiliar touch as she began to quiver in his arms and struggle against him.

Fergus, who had been quaking in his boots but nevertheless standing his ground, lunged forward at this, leading a startled Faith to cry out. “Oui, for mon sœur –”

Jamie pulled the tense lad back to him, his voice cold and steady in the silence. “Ye ken fine it will not be either of these weans that stay behind today.”

Randall’s mouth split into sly smile, his dirty laugh ringing out. “You’re an easier sell than I expected!”

“Hold on, ye mad bastard,” Jamie could not stop his voice from shaking with badly suppressed rage. “Ye’ll ensure the children’s safe exit from these grounds first.”

The Englishman shrugged, releasing his hold on Faith as if she were nothing more than a rag doll, letting her drop to the floor with a cry.

Fergus lurched forward to gather her into his embrace, tucking her face into his shoulder. She continued to howl, struggling in his arms. “Da,” she grunted, gesturing toward Jamie.

Randall walked through the front door of the cabin to confer with the next ranking officer. 

Jamie listened carefully to discern whether he held his word. It was all he could do to resist the tug on his heart from ignoring Faith’s squalling.

Fergus swallowed audibly as he kept a hold on Faith. “Milord...” He nodded in farewell just as Randall re-entered the cabin.

“We don’t have all day, Fraser. As I’m to understand it, my life hangs in a balance today.” He jutted his chin sharply toward the narrow cot situated in the corner of the room.

Fergus took regretful steps toward the back door, turning the knob much more carefully than Jamie did before. He trudged back into the chilly April morning. 

Randall turned to face Jamie, greed in his eyes.

Before the door had time to swing shut, Jamie’s wame dropped to his feet as Claire appeared behind Randall, cloak billowing in the breeze admitted through the open space.

She gathered Randall’s neck in the crook of her elbow and slit his throat in one swipe. His eyes widened as he choked on his own spurting blood, but the last expression to cross his face was a defiant smirk as he fell to the ground.

Jamie’s breath came easily for the first time that day. A healer she may be, but Claire also knew where to strike to do the most harm.

As she wiped her dirk clean, Jamie guided her out the door with an arm around her waist. Claire stopped just long enough to collect a distraught Faith from Fergus.

________________________________________ 

Claire held her little girl’s chin between two unsteady fingers as their eyes met for the first time in months. Her face was red, cheeks splotchy and eyes flooded, but she appeared to be in one piece. Before Faith could react, Claire whispered shakily: “We have to be very quiet, do you understand me? Like the mice in Auntie’s root cellar!” 

She ran her thumb over Faith’s cheek. Attempting a strained smile for her daughter, Claire tried to spark some joy into her words – as if it was just a game and their survival was not on the line. As if they all had their whole lives to spend together, and not just the next few hours.

Faith, still sniffling, nodded tersely, tucking one tiny hand under Claire’s kerchief, the other wrapping around the back of her neck. Claire cupped the back of her daughter’s head, noticing her subtle changes and growth during their time apart.

It was hardly the reunion she had dreamt of for her family since hopelessly marching away from Lallybroch, but it was all they would have now.

Leaving the carnage of the cottage behind them, the party dashed away, the wood growing thicker as they continued on. Faith’s inevitable jostling against Claire as they ran made her long for the days when her baby’s tiny form could fit in a sling against her chest, safely tucked away from the world.

But Claire knew of no other way to keep her safe from the danger she’d brushed with today.She had stood outside the back door of the cabin for countless agonizing moments, fear unceasing that some element of their plan might fall through.

But they had finally beaten Black Jack Randall at his own wicked games. His gross obsession with pain had been satisfied for the last time in his own bloody death.

Claire fully expected, still, to be scolded by Jamie for her own definitive decision. The original plan, formulated quickly when she and Murtagh had caught up with Jamie and Fergus as they had observed the camp from afar, had been for her to wait with the horses as Murtagh followed in his godson’s footsteps to infiltrate the camp.

But Donas had been particularly skittish as Murtagh had hobbled him, likely detecting the pent-up anxiety that had plagued those around him. The other horses had followed suit, obstinate against the orders commanded to them. There was simply no way that Claire, at least 8 weeks gone, would have been able to keep them safely under control. 

She still doubted that Jamie would see the situation in the same light.

Claire noticed Faith slackening in her arms, as she often did upon becoming more relaxed. While a calm – or even sleeping – child would be easier to navigate today, she knew she couldn’t carry them both the rest of the way to meet Murtagh.

“Jamie…” She panted, breathless from exertion.

He turned from his position directly to her left, eyes terrifying and himself poised to cut down any man, woman, or coo that threatened her.

Claire bounced Faith once in a final effort to maintain her hold, but she still unstable in her arms. “Would you take her?” she pleaded to her husband, only loudly enough to be heard over the wind. There was still no telling how soon soldiers might find Randall’s body and pursue them.

Jamie bent toward her, still in motion, and lifted a stiff Faith from her arms. The caress of his fingers left her skin chilled as soon as their warmth left her.

As they carried on, Claire felt the effects of their brisk pace in her underfed and overtaxed body. The stitch in her side grew almost unbearable, her belly rolling violently.

At last their horses were visible in the distance. They made it the few more yards to their rendezvous point; Jamie and Fergus kept pace with her, though she knew they could move faster if they wanted to.

Claire dashed to the shrubbery just as Murtagh spotted and approached them. This time the vomiting felt much worse, as there was nothing left in her belly to come back up. Big hands tugged through her hair as Jamie gathered it up and held it away from her face, one palm resting on her hip to support her, then help her up as she stood.

She leaned into her husband as they walked back to the group, spotting Faith asleep against Murtagh’s shoulder, and Fergus already mounted on his steed.

Jamie boosted Claire into Brimstone’s saddle gently, then cuddled a tartan-swaddled Faith to his chest after accepting her back from Murtagh.

Claire’s heart tugged as she studied the downtrodden group as they set off. They had all just been through Hell and back for her, only to still face a tragic outcome.

Murtagh and Jamie navigated an extensive path back to the base of Craigh Na Dun. Though they prayed that any nearby redcoats were on the battlefield rather than lurking in the woods to detain traitors to the crown, they still made every effort to avoid commonly traversed areas.

The sharp set of Jamie’s shoulders revealed not only his heartache over what was to come, but guilt for evading the fateful battle to which he had resigned himself for months. He appeared to be lost in his own thoughts, interrupting them only to lean forward and leave soft kisses in Faith’s windblown curls.

Claire longed to rub the tension out of his back, then run her fingers through his red curls until he grinned like an oversized cat, eyes crinkled in pleasure.

But they would have no more quiet moments, whispering in the dark and moving together in the shadows of a single lit candle as Faith slept soundly on her cot in the corner of the Laird’s bedroom.

Images of a life with Frank flashed into her mind, but soon were drowned out by her last memory of Jack Randall. The sight of him lying still on the ground, features frozen in a disturbing smirk, would likely never leave her mind. Even in death, the likeness to Frank’s appearance – though dirty, ill, and vile – was haunting.

How she would be able to look into Frank’s face every day for the rest of her life without seeing Jack, she didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine passing Faith off to Frank to tuck her into bed. Her hand drifting to her belly, she shuddered to think of sharing this child with Frank. She couldn’t feel anything yet, but the nagging idea of something being there had finally shaped itself into a confirmation of the future in her mind. This baby would only ever know Frank, rather than the man that had laid down his life for the child to have a chance at one.

It was dark by the time the stones became visible in the distance, and the ache in Claire’s heart sharpened. She watched Jamie halt his horse as they approached, glancing back and forth between the crest of the hill and the cabin at its foot. After turning to meet Claire’s eye, he guided Donas in the direction of the cabin. One more night.

With only a glance between the two, Murtagh acquiesced to Jamie’s silent plea to seek out their supper, while the rest filed into the cabin forlornly.

They ate their meagre supper in silence, saving the important words for the next morning. The pressure of the day soon caught up with them, and they arranged themselves for sleep in the small space.

Fergus curled up to Claire before laying down, reminding her of the young boy who dozed on a Parisian couch, many sleepy mornings ago. She pulled him to her and tangled her fingers in his hair. Her own son.

Faith, whose eyes had popped open just before supper to warily survey her surroundings, snuggled into Claire’s other side, gesturing to her father and patting the space next to her with a huge yawn.

Jamie complied, sliding one arm under his daughter and curving his opposite hand over Claire’s hip. Claire doubted either of them would sleep that night.

Claire’s gratitude brought tears to her eyes as she watched Murtagh set himself up just beyond the doorway to guard his clan one last time.

________________________________________

As dawn greeted them, Jamie rose once more, supported his wife as she stood, then swung his dazed daughter into his arms.

Claire’s kiss to Fergus’s sleeping head felt like a knife twisting into Jamie’s wame, but it was her extended hug with Murtagh and the tears shining in his eyes as he whispered into her ear that broke his heart.

Jamie took Claire’s hand and led her through the doorway, then helped her keep her balance as they advanced up the steep hill. Before Claire or Dhia, Faith, were inhibited by the unearthly sounds the stones emitted, he stopped them and hung his head.

“Da loves ye,” he whispered to Faith in English, then repeated in Gaelic, the words a haunting lullaby on his tongue. “My strong, bright, beautiful lass.” He passed her gently to Claire even as she wriggled, then looked deep into his wife’s eyes. 

Her lip was already quivering as she swallowed, eyes streaming. She held onto the side of his neck with her free hand. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive you.” Her voice shook. “But I’ll miss you more every day that passes.”

Jamie nodded, thumbing the tears from under her eyes. “I’ll find ye,” he promised. “I’ll wait the 200 years. Wherever you are, I shall be.”

Their mouths met once more, teeth crashing desperately. He held onto Claire’s waist and Faith’s wee back as he walked them to the stones beyond.

Faith vibrated in Claire’s arms, reacting to the all-encompassing terror of the sounds surely engulfing her. She burrowed her face into her mother’s arasaid, trying to muffle the noise.

Jamie placed an open hand at Claire’s belly. “Name him Brian?” he whispered. “After my Da.”

Claire nodded as he lifted her right hand and kissed her ring, followed by each finger, then placed it on the tallest stone. “Until we meet again.”

They faded away before his eyes, just as Claire had nearly done on another bleak morning, years ago.

They were gone. 

To be continued.

[nostalgebraist]

Some more Epilogues notes -- mostly things I don’t entirely understand that I’m curious about, although in the course of writing this I realized some things that weren’t initially clear to me, so there’s those too

(Spoilers)

-- Classpect stuff was significant in a few places, most straightforwardly with Roxy’s inscrutability to Dirk (although that may have just been an excuse on Dirk’s part?).

-- Heart, as an aspect, is all about “individuality” (see the description here), which fits with Dirk’s narcissism.  And Dirk here embodies both sides of the double meaning in “Prince” ("destroyer of [aspect]" or "one who destroys via [aspect]"), as he overwrites the individuality of everyone else so that his own can grow to encompass everything.

-- Another example is the role of Hope, which comes up twice in close succession, in the Jake and John dancing scene and then in the Obama scene.  Both of these scenes are also lowercase-h hopeful in tone, which stands out markedly relative to everything else.

-- This is quite different from the portrayals of Hope the aspect in HS proper, which (IIRC) tended to focus on Hope players stubbornly believing in straight-up falsehoods or empty platitudes.  They did derive power from this, but in a game-mechanical way where a strong enough false belief could generate blasts of magic energy even if the belief has no other upsides, not via the beliefs having demonstrable psychological value (“fake it till you make it” or something).  But in the Epilogues, Hope does seem to be about psychological value.

-- Hope also has very concrete effects (that aren’t magic energy blasts).  John does talk to Roxy.  As for Dave, well . . .

-- There’s definitely something chilling about Dave accepting his “awakening” so quickly, no questions asked, especially when it seems to have entailed the immediate destruction of so much of what made Dave the guy he was:

The doubts, the confusion, the insecurities of the man lying here all died along with his body. 

-- Someone (in Discord?) said they thought this was masterminded by Dirk, which makes a lot of sense.  Esp. given that Obama explicitly knew Dirk, and delivers his own version of the “he taught me about many things” line.

-- Thinking about it more, it’s implied pretty clearly that Davebot is part of Dirk’s plan.  As Dirk says outright in Meat 41, he expects to be killed by Dave, and has or will take actions to help bring this about:

That’s why when someone finally comes knocking for the price I owe, I’ll fully welcome it. By then it’ll have been a long time coming, and I’ll probably have done more than my share to make sure, somewhere along the way, it all got put into motion. What good is a villain who doesn’t have a satisfying dramatic comeuppance in store for him? So yeah, the next time I die, let’s pencil it in as a Just Death. And let’s also have it on good authority that the next time Dave cuts off my head, it’ll be for good.

I’ll be looking forward to that day just as much as the next guy.

-- If I understand correctly, the Meat postscript has Davebot traveling with Aradia into the Meat timeline, but he doesn’t actually appear anywhere else in the Epilogues besides that scene and the Obama scene.  Aradia doesn’t appear in Meat before the postscript either, actually.  Maybe I’m wrong that the postscript depicts them entering the Meat timeline?  If so, where are they going?  (N. B. I answer this question to my satisfaction later in the post.)

-- While looking over both the endings in the course of writing the above, I was struck by Calliope’s final words in Meat:

they will believe they are on a quest to retrieve a wife and rescue a friend. but they will discover their true mission is of much greater cosmic significance than they imagined. the seer is firmly in the thrall of the prince and will not easily be pried away. [...]

as for me, i will be there wherever they go, so long as my conduit remains alive, alert, and present. but only as a guide with the lightest possible touch, and only to block the insidious mandates of the prince from within his sphere of influence. the rest of my presence can simply be reduced to a string of words. a recorded stream of ideation with a particular texture and cadence, but aside from that, there is nothing that should be considered remarkable about its source. one speaker can easily be swapped for another, and then another, under the right circumstances. speakers can duel, predominate, overassert, or fall back, as one does into the comforting blanket of space.

and until i am needed again, this is exactly what i will do. i leave all who inhabit this reality with a recorded stream that is colorless, sourceless, and quietly divested of accountability. for if i were to insist upon anything else, could i really be considered worthy of protecting the very cosmos i describe?

farewell.

-- This is clearly talking about Calliope as the black-text narrator of something, but what?  The most intuitive reading is “the undepicted future of the Meat timeline” (“i will be there wherever they go [...] i leave all who inhabit this reality with a recorded stream”).  Maybe this is teasing a potential if unlikely sequel, in which we’d read the text Calliope tells us she’ll write.

-- Or, maybe that’s missing the point: the narrator is as real as everything else in this story, so “I’ll continue to write Meat but in black text” is no different from any other statement of intent that a character might make.

-- Still, I felt in general like the ending(s) were very pointedly leaving room for a sequel.  cephiedvariable says she doesn’t know whether there are any plans for a continuation, and that she thinks it’s a complete story as is.  Which it is, but it also ends at what would be a tense, cliffhanger-like moment in a serial work, with multiple promises that whatever happens next will be extremely important.

-- One of those promises is in the Candy postscript (“what will arguably be the most important session in the history of Sburb”), and on the topic of the Candy postscript, it’s an obvious callback to Scratch and the Handmaiden on their spaceship.  Dunno if there’s anything that can be gleaned from that, though.  

-- As for that Sburb session, I have no clue?  Maybe I just missed some indication of just what Dirk’s actual intent is, although paging through Meat now, I can’t find one.

-- Anyway, back on the topic of aspects, there is also something going on with Space and Time, right?  Calliope has immense and perhaps unparalleled Space-aligned powers (and uses a Space player, Jade, as her mouthpiece), and the most analogous Time-aligned force seems to be Dave:

And then, time seems to stop altogether. As if the aspect itself has suspended its forward motion, bowing before the unprecedented transformation taking place. It defers to its greatest knight, risen anew.

[...]

DAVEBOT: its about fuckin time

-- This fits with Dirk using Davebot for his own ends, and perhaps the answer to “where do Davebot and Aradia go?” is “into the same undepicted future of the Meat timeline that Calliope’s writing in black text.”  (Aradia is, of course, a time player too.)

-- Although I don’t understand Time and Space in HS enough to know what I should make of the fact that the big conflict here is a Time vs. Space conflict.

-- Relatedly, I just noticed this in Dirk’s final monologue in Meat 41:

Who could wield such control over people’s choices and the course of events without ultimately becoming the enemy of anyone who notices? Maybe only a stronger person than I could manage to pull it off. Someone like Dave.

-- That’s very ominous and I don’t know what to make of it.

[ask-the-vampeasle]

The leader scoops the child up with a smile causing Rose to giggle. “Oh but I thought you said stories were boring my little bat?”

“Only when Dirk tells them, you make good stories!”

She sets him down next to Karma again, “Alright but no commentary, our guest here wants to know how our pack started.” She boops his nose making him laugh again as he hugs his toy. Standing up straight again the weavile begins her tale.

“A few thousand years ago our pack didn’t exist, instead they were part of a larger kingdom. A kingdom of vampires who were feared across the land. They were lead by a powerful ruler who had no patience for mortals and cruelly slaughtered any in his path. Many hunters tried to take him down, but all failed.

One day a young warrior tried to storm the castle, they were horribly underprepared with nothing but what they could scrape up from their home. On their way to the castle they got in a fight with a young vampire, the warrior would have lost but the vampire showed mercy. Both were injured and as they tended to their wounds they told each other their stories, the warrior of how they wanted to avenge their slain family, the vampire of how they were forced to change and how they hated how their ruler treated mortals. Learning more about each other they parted ways with plans of how to stop the violence between their kinds.

Returning to their kingdom the vampire secretly gathered an army of others who wished for change. The warrior returned to their own village to spread word of a plan and gain the following they needed. Soon the plan was put in motion and the vampires and mortals teamed up to claim war on the cruel ruler. For years the fight went on but eventually the ruler was dethroned and the mortals and peace seeking vampires had won.

With their kingdom broken the remaining vampires separated into smaller groups and went into hiding. For even if they fought for peace between them many mortals continued to view them as evil monsters and would hunt them down. One of those groups that went into hiding was what would later become this one.

I hope this story satisfied you?”

@thevaporeonstoryteller

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p14 reaction

So. I'm just going to put my thoughts under the cut due to the important events last time.

---

Vriska: perma-death or not? I wouldn't count on it, but I wouldn't be surprised either if her getting sucked into the Black Hole would be retconned. It could be said that John's retcons create seperate timelines, so that'd mean at least one version of Vriska is cursed to that ill fate.

It would seem not even Light can escape a black hole. Science: 1, magical fairy dust: 0

Guess it remains to be seen whether LE will even get sucked in as well. If not, Alternate Calliope's swansong had only the effect of ending the Green Sun, removing one of the ways LE was invincible but nothing more.

Though I guess she did manage to pocket that other character associated with 8-balls, huh? :mspa: Maybe in that sense the black hole can count as a red herring, even! It didn't kill LE, just like how Dave didn't kill him with his eggsword in the victory timeline, but an expy, Lord Noir. Perhaps it's part of why LE's eyes have stopped on the 8-balls, they're the only remaining balls to pocket, or some such.

Anyway, I presume it's back to Earth C now. I'd like to see Jane go see Roxy & Calliope, but I wouldn't mind picking up any of the other plot threads either.

---

"Jake yawns" Pfff, that continues from the previous page - John felt the moment approaching where reality yawns too hard and snaps in half. That could be taken literally, but I also think it could be that his dream may have ended right about here each time as well, meaning 'reality' ended and was replaced by the actual real world.

"and knocks on the window to Jane’s office again." So... Guess fake date night has already arrived. :P I'm guessing Jake flew over, though it could have been on his own power, he may have taken a plane.

"he’s been hovering here for way too long" Pfff, okay I took that to be in a descriptive way, but it's probably literal, Blaperile points out. I thought the window he knocked on was for her office door.

"The sunset has turned the head offices of Crockercorp into a shimmering glass monolith—a beacon, if you will, of the future, visible for miles in every direction.

Jane probably likes to think about it that way at least." Oooh, does Jake have any ideas to the contrary? That would be interesting, that he thinks it's more ominously looking.

"venetian blind" Right, her office still has that private-eye vibe going on, with the sun falling in between the shades.

"he responds with his specialty: incomprehension." ... Never mind, the narration is providing us with more detail than Jake can personally pick up on.

"The exasperated hand motions Jane tries next work better.

JAKE: Oh! The front door, of course!" Guess she can't open the window from the inside. Seems like a health or safety hazard, if you ask me.

"He whistles a quaint little ditty to himself while he waits for the elevator to go up to the top floor." Making his own elevator music then? Elevatorstuck, or the Girl from Whatsit?

"The whole place is candlelit, and Jane is reclining on her desk, sprawled out like a lounge singer on a grand piano." ... Laying it on a big thick, I see. Well, so much for making it a very public date. Guess Jane is going to try and charm him first, to presumably hilarious effect.

"Specifically: a blue lounge singer, on a blue piano" I'd say this might have worked better on Grandpa, given who he married (re: Hiveswap).

"New Prospit" So, those are both places in the Carapacian Kingdom, eh? Maybe New Derse-y's the dingy suburb to New Prospit's sprawling metropolis.

"Like all of his impulsive purchases, the tacky thing is gathering dust in a pile somewhere in one of the hundreds of spare rooms in his mansion, which now primarily functions as a very expensive warehouse for his atrocious hoarding habits." ... Well then! Guess he's really starting to fall into the same habits as Grandpa then! Could we take this to mean that some of his purchases which we derived his interests from were just things he picked up in a spur of the moment purchase?

"JANE: Come have a glass of scotch with me Jake. We have so much to discuss." So Jane is really giving off mixed signals here - on purpose? His favorite attire on a girl, but his least favorite drink. Or she wants his attention, but none of the affection he might be more inclined to give out when tipsy.

"She’s really bad at this, she thinks. “This” being seduction. She’s so bad at it, in fact, that Jake immediately recognizes her ruse for what it is. ... Jane is lashed both by the scotch in her face and how quickly her plan has fallen apart." I'm actually less convinced Jake has read her intentions than I am convinced Jane might be misreading him just as much as he is misreading her. Jake could've gulped the drink down to posture, not knowing how to handle her comment. But hey, we'll see.

"She is staring at the ceiling like she hopes it will split open and suck her into a supermassive black hole so she doesn’t have to deal with anything that is going on right now." Sorry, Jane, you're the wrong blue lady.

"JANE: Oh, no, of course not. I just wanted to...

JANE: To... talk about the economy." Next up Jake is like: "May I refer you to our mutual friend, then? He'd be better at this." :p

"JAKE: By jove the economy! Jane my dear friend please tell me all about the economy!

Jake doesn’t care about the economy. But he’s an ardent supporter of changing the subject." Jake may have a taste for adventure, but he'll flee from any battlefield of emotions gladly.

"JANE: Ah, it’s doing quite well right now actually.

JAKE: I should hope so!" Pwa-pwa-pwaaaaaah. :P So much for changing the subject.

"JANE: But it might not continue to do so in the future, which you can guess is of great concern to me, being that I am a pioneering entrepreneur." Ah yes, she'll try to prevent the economy from crashing, but in doing so, she just might make it crash, if Dave's to believed.

"adequately explain to me this conundrum which i admit i am not up to dick on.

JANE: You..." Dave and Jake are masters of ironic and innocuous innuendo, respectively.

"Jane laughs quite sincerely as he ruffles his jacket through her hair.

JANE: Oh, Jake, you really have no idea what’s going on, do you?

JAKE: Wait is this...

JAKE: Is this about the election muckup? Because i—

Jane puts a finger to Jake’s lip and shushes him. It’s a very smooth move." This is what Dirk must've gone through, actually, trying to get it through that thick skull that flirting was what was going on here.

"an awful lot of thinking as of late.

... this new universe.

JANE: You must admit that it’s a lot to grasp, and I’m not certain we’ve all taken the time to truly contemplate our place in it." Well, true, but here's the part where you lead all that thinking to a wrong conclusion, I presume.

"Who are they now? The same Jake and Jane who passed like particularly dysfunctional ships in the night a decade ago? Or is Jane wiser, and Jake kinder? Are they better versions of themselves?" Oooh, Jane has actually been thinking about some valid issues there. Well, especially valid to us, as long-time readers who now visit these same characters again after all these years have passed for us and them. Still, it's something I could see John struggling with as well.

"JANE: Haven’t we really just been... drifting these last seven years?

JANE: Drifting, both in the sense of failing to fulfill our personal potentials,

JANE: And in the sense of... well, drifting apart?" Well, the only one who completed his planet's prophecy, that we know for sure, is John, and the guy has been falling into a depression. So... yeah, everything hasn't been hunky dory for a long time. But some of them take better to drifting than others, Dave is a fine example of the former, in the sense that's his more like his natural state, though it isn't a real good one admittedly.

"The years go by so fast. And...

JANE: I miss you." Aww. But I fear she might be missing the memories more than the man in the flesh. We'll see.

"The moment goes from calculated to genuine in an instant." Oh Jane, really? I thought a little better of you. At least the moment's changing.

"Jake can’t stop himself from ..." ... Wow, Jake is really putting the moves on her, go figure! Guess the boy had practice.

"So he kisses her." Well! Guess they finally got this past them! *reads further* Ah-hoh-hum! Well, Jane's probably surprised by a) his kissing, good or not, and b) that she might actually be feeling something again for him.

"The inevitable consummation of a whirlwind romance fit for the big screen." ... Jake. Jake this is a real thing happening to you, not some movie script. Boy.

"Jane’s baby-soft palm, unmarred by the calluses of deft swordsmanship" Hah, that's the second reference to Dirk and Jake's (former???) relationship, first the kissing Dirk criticized him on, now this. :P Also, heh, guess it's a long while since Jane did extensive baking herself, then, if her skin's that smooth.

"Those rare, intimate moments that Jake was allowed to slip off Dirk’s shades and look upon his face, unobstructed, stand out more clearly in his mind than almost any other in his life." A Strider without his shades is a very rare moment indeed. It's their facade, their mask.

*reading on* Jake, being with one lover while comparing them mentally to your former one? That's not going to end well for any party involved. And here Jane might have hoped to leave that love triangle behind.

"But his hair is so much softer than it looks. His heart too. When a heart like that opens up to you, it opens up the whole world as well. A world of increased appreciation for combat, philosophy, life, love...

JAKE: Yelp!!!" *mental facepalm* Oh Jakey boy, you sure thought yourself into shooting your own foot there.

"JAKE: I

JAKE: I

JAKE: Ihavetogorightnowsorry." Pffff, he's going to fly straight back to throw himself into Dirk's arms now, right? The poor man won't know what hit him. Or maybe he will. ... In any case, this could screw up Dirk's plan to back Jane for presidency, if she realizes what this was all about and takes it personal. She didn't before, but that's not to say she'll only blame Jake this time around.

"grabs the bottle of near-untouched scotch" Oh boy, maybe Jake actually wants to get hungover before assessing what he just felt. :p

"before kicking open the latch to one of Jane’s giant windows and letting himself out." Hey what do you know, she COULD have let him in!

"she closes the window, sits in her CEO chair and speed-dials the number for her one-man Kitchen Cabinet." ... Depending on how I interpret this, she's either calling her Dad (unlikely given her current state)... or ... her personal hitman/bodyguard? ... Wait, is the fact she employed/enslaved Jack Noir canon for the epilogues?

"

DIRK: Yo, what up?

JANE: Not Jake, apparently." ... Ah. Well, the only way I associate Dirk with the kitchen is with a refrigerator stuffed with swords, so you can forgive me. The fact that Kitchen Cabinet's acronym is KC (Green) is probably not important. Oh, right, the cabinet of a politician, maybe?

"

DIRK: Wow. Going straight for the double entendre, huh?

DIRK: How much of that scotch did you have?" Dirk... was in on this. Dirk... knew. Dirk... cold. Cold hearted. But well, glad to see his gears within gears still don't run as smoothly as he'd wish.

"DIRK: Were you nice to him?

JANE: Well, I...

DIRK: I told you, you can’t be nice to Jake.

JANE: ..." So he says that, and yet what turned the situation around was Jake thinking about all the times Dirk WAS being nice to him.

"Jane squeezes her eyes shut and, very softly and quietly, bumps her head against the edge of her desk.

JANE: Why do I feel as if we’ve had this exact conversation, almost word for word, before?

DIRK: Because we have. Many times." So, it's of course similar to when Jane and Dirk talked about their misgivens about Jake in the session, it must also remind her of when Jake talked to her about his feelings for Dirk... And yet I think Dirk might be saying the truth, in that there might be a multitude of alternate Janes, even some post-victory, and alternate Dirks, who have memories of an identical conversation between the two of them, which he's slowly accumulating.

"Dirk doesn't wait. There’s a shadow cast in his doorway that is much more important than the election. Rose is braced against the doorframe" Cool. At least his biological daughter is more important to him than scheming. Though scheming might be involved in his dealing with his daughter's illness. Scheming's never not on the table with Dirk.

"She has her head tipped just so, her pale hair falling across in her face at an angle that bisects her perfectly neutral expression. Dirk sets down his phone and acknowledges her with a nod.

ROSE: Well,

ROSE: Go on." Hah, I had a feeling he might have been wrapping the conversation up quickly as he sensed her approaching. But Rose must've heard pieces, and picked up on something, migraine or not. It's going to be a pleasure to see them talk in person.

[ardenttheories]

Dirk Route notes:

Very long, very rambly. I went on a fucking journey with this one. And... probably have to try and kick my ass back into gear about reading Homestuck^2. 

- Why did the Reader have that flash of a failed end? That’s significantly more in depth than other death scenes have been, and in general this isn’t a power we’ve seen from the Reader beyond maybe the pie-scene and other scenes wherein someone else has influenced them. Have I missed something (as I’m still not caught up from Tavros onwards) or is this subtle Dirk influence at a time he’s not aware of his powers?

- Dirk potentially being excited at the first human touch he’s ever had hurts my heart, just a little

- Dirk disliking the sea because it’s a physical boundary to reflect the metaphysical boundary of his distance to human society is fucking SAD

- On that note, Dirk fucking loves theatrics and is almost too excited to have another friend, particularly one he can interact with. This poor by is so desperate for attention

- Again, Dirk can interpret when the dead end is coming up, and steers Reader away from it - which allows them to vividly imagine it. There has to be a union of powers occuring here, Dirk’s Heart with the Light bestowed upon the Reader?

- Reader can hold the Sord because of their disconnect from the narrative and their simplistic form and I think that’s beautiful. It also brings into question what will happen to reality if the Reader wields it for long enough.

    - Update: What happens when Reader swings the Sord?

- DIRK LAUGHS, HAS DIMPLES AND FRECKLES. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A FUCKING DRILL!!

- Dirk thinks he needs to “earn” the right to see his friends. That’s... just about the saddest thing I’ve ever read. He’s so mean to himself. He doesn’t think he’s actually worthy of seeing them without proving his worth first.

- Dirk being unable to stop the thought that the game’s in motion simply because he can’t handle the idea that everything that was planned has been tipped right the fuck up by Reader, and believing that he can still put things back on course, partly being linked to a possible suicide if he’d literally been unable to continue with the game or to visit his friends/get the promise he’d always been promised signals that he’s always had a very strong connection to narrative relevance and his own sense of importance within it. Lacking that importance, or that strict narrative to follow, ruins Dirk

- Dirk finally giving the Reader his trust, just. He’s so eager for friendship, huh? Scared to trust but pleased by the results. 

- OH GOD FUCK ULTIMATE DIRK. First of all, how’s he found Dirk and the Reader? Is it through their connection, as Splinters? He mentioned trying to ignore it - this must be a universal part of him being the Ultimate Self. He’s connected to Dirk, perhaps living it, and... not pleased with what he sees. Which leads onto a second thought; how much does he hate seeing himself happy? Both instances of his arrows pointed to his smile - and his scribbles crossed out his face, his head. He doesn’t like seeing himself vulnerable, trusting, and willing to make friends. 

- Well, there’s some interesting rammifications in the fact that Dirk speaks through a Dirklog. His narrative control only lets him communicate through a Homestuck-recognisable style? Why the fuck is he so buff.

- What the fuck do you mean he’s making a species from scratch? What the fuck have I missed in Homestuck^2?

- Ultimate Dirk still seeing people only as what their arcs define them as, their narrative role, rather than as actual people who exist outside of that concept... And, interestingly, implying that he can fix the entire timeline. Would he intend to go back in time and fix it, or remodel it as it is? Curious how he hasn’t attempted to fix it before - which, yeah, he said he was waiting for Reader to die, but why not before this point?

- Reader finally remembers Homestuck, and Dirk considers the Reader as enough of a friend that he’s concerned for them. This is not how I wanted this to go down, but I wonder if this will increase the power the Reader has over the narrative?

- The Reader refusing to stoop to Dirk’s level and instead remaining firm that he won’t wrench Dirk’s choice away from him... please. Reader oh my god make things right. With that said, young-Dirk is still being so caring to Reader. It shows... a lot about my theory on Princes, honestly; that friendship tends to be what they have least of, and that it’s what they need to change their toxic course. That seems to be the biggest divider between Dirk and Ultimate Dirk - although I will note the irony that Ultimate Dirk, being the Prince of Heart, is destroying his Self by refusing to allow Dirk happiness.

- “Your alliegence is not to the story, but to the people within it” <- a primary example of what Ultimate Dirk’s doing. He’s not connected to the people within the story anymore, just the story itself. He’s forsaking those people for the narrative they live within. Nurturing the text rather than the people he used to love.

- “... wanted to align every part of yourself to know it all, feel it all”. Fuck. Is that what Dirk thinks this is? No wonder he’s gone off the deep end and assumes this is the Ultimate form of himself, the purest sense. He’s completely fucking insane. Not so much in the traditional sense as in the fact that he’s so overwhelmed with his Self that he thinks he has it all figured out. Reader’s right. He can’t imagine existing on a path that isn’t Ultimate Dirk any longer, and I think is so far up his own ass about it that he doesn’t even begin to assume that anything outside of Ultimate Dirk is worth it. He sees that as his perfect self. 

- The point on Dirk not needing to create more pain to control how much punishment he gets and what he deserves brings me back to the Meat Epilogue - Dirk positioning himself as the villain because he believes that’s what he should be. Reader’s trying so hard to encourage Dirk not to be that, to tell him he can have better, but Dirk’s self loathing is so severe he believes he deserves punishment. I would assume just for existing.

- “And you know how he loves -- though it’s fierce (to a definite fault), he does not do it easily” Fucking owch. That’s the Dirk we see in canon. The Dirk that couldn’t bear the thought that he’d hurt Roxy because he didn’t love her, the Dirk that adored her and saw her as their perfect leader, the Dirk who had something good to say about all of his friends, the Dirk who held Dave and talked him through his abuse with Bro. He loves a fucking lot, even if he doesn’t love freely.

- Ultimate Dirk pointing out that Dirk won’t be able to live a happy life because he’ll always wonder if it was the right choice is fucking me up. That boy can just never be happy, huh?

- OH GOD I KNOW THAT’S EARTH C. THAT’S THE TOWER DIRK OFFED HIMSELF ON IN CANDY. OH GOD NO.

- Oh my god he got Candy Dave, a Dave who just lost his Dirk, to come talk to Dave. That’s so fucking sad, what the fuck. On top of that, “Does Dirk even believe that others can, of their own violition, love him?” Yeah, probably not. He thinks he has to manipulate people into loving him - we see that for sure with Jake in Homestuck, during their main intro section - and even now, seeing Dave, he’s not sure he can just... chill out with him. Why is this route so fucking sad.

- Dave looking heartbroken when he says “it’s okay to not have all the answers”. You know he wishes he could’ve said that to Candy Dirk. But it’s interesting, too, how Dirk fixates on canon and that being the answer, and anything that’s not canon meaning he has NO answers - is that what Ultimate Dirk is so afraid of? Not knowing? It seems very likely that this lack of control and uncertainty of what he’s doing is why Dirk becomes suicidal. 

- Forgot to mention this early, but also “The ends justifies the means”; you mean, Ultimate Dirk, the same way Bro justified beating the shit out of Dave and forcing him through daily abuse with the fact that it “had to happen” for him to survive the game? They’re... a lot more similar than I realised.

- Something to note, interestingly:

Ultimate Dirk has the Heart symbol. Dirk has the hat symbol. Candy Dave has the scratched record symbol and the Time symbol at once. There’s an implication here that there’s more unity in Candy Dave than in Dirk as a whole - that Dave has accepted the things he’s experienced both as a kid and as a retired hero. Which would make sense, considering this is the non-canonical Candy timeline, prior to him becoming a robot; one where he’s still relatively unimplemented. Ultimate Dirk is still trying to identify himself with the game, with relevance, while Dirk is just a kid, on that precipice of choice.

- ... What shit did Dirk have to deal with on his end? I need to check Homestuck^2

- The importance of Dirk making his own choice is incredible. The allowance to NOT regret it, to make his own “right” choice, and not to be forced to question what things should have been... holy shit. And what a fucking switch. We’re playing AS Dirk. We’re not making this choice for him, it really is just HIM doing it. I fucking love this. Narratively speaking, this is cool as fuck, and it says something awesome - that Dirk’s right choice is the Reader and Dave, not Ultimate Dirk, which leads to a bad end. 

- Dirk’s innate need to know is, ultimately, what ruins him in the end. I find it endlessly fucking interesting that he doesn’t seem wholly into it, though - that he’s trying to convince himself as much as the Reader that it’s right.

- “It’s not about this being the real timeline or the fake one, the hard one or the easy one. It’s about it being his. If he wants it.” I will never stop being sad and elated at the same time over this single paragraph. Dirk finally accepting that he doesn’t need answers, grandeur, or a narrative. He just needs to accept his timeline, let himself live within it. 

- Oh. Well that WAS a happy ending, until Ultimate Dirk CHOPPED THE FUCKING THING IN HALF TO REVEAL THE CODE.

- Ultimate Dirk slamming Reader into the Afterw@rd? Okay. Sure. Lets roll with it. Hi Aysha. 

- Well. I need to process everything with the Director. Ultimately, it’s... just a lot to pick apart, even if it’s very blunt. She used the Reader because, knowing what’d happen, the Reader would’ve been too eager to avoid some things and force others to happen too quickly, would’ve been too awkward or weird to truly make friends - hence, lost memory. But why? I’m not quite sure about that. Doc Scratch had a reason for Friendsim - to put everyone in place for Hiveswap - but why Pesterquest? The Director mentions about things being... better? That Reader’s taken these kids universally destined to end up without happy endings, and given them a chance at a happy ending, but I really don’t know why.

- What the fuck does “they’re an artifact of the medium” mean? Where the hell did Dirk steal those muscles from? 

- Ultimate Dirk, still so fixated on character arcs that he sees Eridan’s gender exploration as a “gender arc”, and not personal development on a more human level. It’s... actually a little worrying how impersonal he’s gotten. He’s not even really seeing any of the characters as people anymore.

- “Happy people don’t get stories told about them” ... he’s. Technically not wrong. Without conflict, there’s no story; there NEEDS to be something to overcome, some arc to follow, for a good, compelling story. But I’m not sure Dirk realises that they don’t need that. They don’t need a story arc because they can just exist and be, outside of the spotlight. They don’t need OUR focus. Even if we don’t see it, they can still exist - which brings an interesting point to the Epilogues, honestly. They were a sort of punishment for our own curiosity to see how the story ended, to see more - and really, that’s what Dirk thrives on. He needs the “and more” after, not the happy ending. He needs a story, needs to be seen. 

- Ah. Ultimate Dirk trying to take over the narrative has me slightly fucked up, not gonna lie.

- Ah. So my original theories were right, and why shit never made sense even all the way back in Jade’s route. This IS the Alpha timeline, and the Reader has been doing a retcon the whole time, turning the Alpha into an outright Doomed timeline. Nothing makes sense or works because it can’t. Paradoxically, the Reader isn’t creating a new timeline - they’re changing the only one that “matters”. They’re actually changing Homestuck.

- “You would create a paradox so catastrophic it would literally tear the multiverse apart”. Well. At least we know what happens when the foundation universe is fucked up by an outside influence. 

- You get the option to not betray your friends... and the game just closes. The only way to get an ending where you don’t ruin everything you’ve worked towards is one where you never see what happens next, where you don’t have to make that choice, where you just let everything go black. Fuck.

- Sidenote: The Director wins out against Ultimate Dirk because it isn’t his arc. It’s not his story, not his role, and he doesn’t have the same power over it. And, of course, the Director is the one writing it. She has the ultimate power. 

- The Green Sun being able to tear at the narrative within Reader is... interesting, to say the least. And just that description of Reader... “The impossibility that is you, protagonist, reader, carrier of the story”. They really are just this weird little metanarrative entity that doesn’t have any right to exist, and maybe only makes the barest amount of sense to actually exist. But the Green Sun being the sum of all the narratives - the narrative itself?

- IS THIS ULTIMATE READER. DID THEY JUST MAKE THEMSELF ULTIMATE. WHAT THE FUCK. 

- They did not. They just became a First Guardian and created a fucking Locked Timeline. What the hell are the rammifications of this in regards to Homestuck? Reader’s removed this timeline from the narrative itself, while also remaining within it - so maybe this means that everything’s... both stable and unstable, somehow impossibly allowed to exist at once? Homestuck, Pesterquest, Homestuck^2? I assume Pesterquest is now disconnected from the rest of the canonical universe - in order to stop everything from ceasing to exist entirely - because how else could it work? A universe that only exists once. 

- The Reader made the single best timeline. One where the kids can just exist happily. I’m unsure if this is a good or bad thing - that yeah, there should be no consequences, since Reader is looking over them, but on the other hand... is this really the good ending we’re allowed? Will more be added to this, the good ending abruptly continued and the story resumed? There’s a lot of things unanswered - such as what’s going to happen with HIC, since there’s no game influence left to provide her with LE power - but do we want them answered when we know the Epilogues were our punishment for wanting answers? Will they be answered?

So the question becomes: Sequel, or no sequel? And what does the True Ending mean in the grand scheme of things?

[urlocallesbiab]

initially, like any reasonably polite tumblr user, i meant to keep my ramblings to the tags, but i've, uh, ran out of space. tl;dr i liked this work a lot!!

so, here goes

i really really love this!! the descriptions are so evocative, the dialogue is so alive, and the concept is so fun!!!

i'm a huge fan of the way you describe characters here! the physical details are fairly limited (because, well, one writes a script first and casts actors later), and instead you focus on this incredibly vivid Vibe that should define the characters and help the casting director grasp the idea they'll be shaping: here's todd, devensive but secretly soft; here's amanda, washed out from inner turmoil. get to know a person in two or less sentences! i feel like even if i had never watched a minute out of dghda, i would be able to picture them exactly the way they need to be pictured. you get what they're about!!

also amanda and tina are such a good duo, i can't believe i haven't thought about them before but now i'll be thinking about them forever! their dynamic is So fun, it's like they were made for each other! (that whole scene was Great, but i think i was most impressed by the bit about tina taking a "swig of old Pepsi from a half full Litre-sized bottle on the coffee table"; the image was Very vivid and gross! and i mean that in an excited way)

also i love how this script approaches mental & physical illness and additiction from angels that feel more compassionate/involved than those of canon; (i'm not sure how to properly put this into words, but things like tina approaching her medication in a relaxed, mundane, light-hearted manner, or amanda using terms like "sensory overload" when describing pararibulitis — they feel like something that the dghda writers room [from what we've seen] perhaps wouldn't write, but a person who has hands-on experience with mental ilnesses, and who cares a lot about portraying it well, that person would); i love how, these differences notwithsanding, the characters sound Exactly like they did in canon. the dialogue is so on point! like, it gives a strong feeling that you're Intimately familiar with this show, and understand & appreciate it for what it is; you know it so perfectly well that you can fix it without breaking it. that's some intricate work! or, to put it shorter, the dialogue here is exactly like in dghda, but slightly better

the scenes with amanda alone were powerful, horrible, and i felt them in my bones. the music swelling, then distorting, amanda's face paling, then distorting, "it is what it is"; the despair! it's perfectly painful.

regency dandy dirk is Perfect, his first (discounting the half-appearance at the very beginning) appearance out of a painting is Perfect, and "Both sides have a tendency to run at the mouth and are almost excruciatingly English." made me snort. you write him so well! his s1-esque squabbles with todd are SO funny ("no to the yes or yes to the no"!!! if that was a show this would be my favorite quote), and i love his beautiful disregard for the motion etiquette of both the living and the dead; dirk gently does whatever dirk gently wants!! (also "the breathless expectancy in DIRK’S voice and face"... god, he's in love, isn't he?)

also dirk's back-and-forth with farah is great! i love that those two are already friends :3 (also ww2 land girls is a perfect era and role for her!). also i'm really intrigued by the notion that farah is somewhat friends with bart (or at the very least talks to her, and does so more than dirk) — that, too, is a friendship i've never considered, but probably should!! i wonder if there was planned more of their interactions down the road. (also on the topic of stuff that intrigues me: the mystery number that called amanda and the mystery painting that todd stared at both caught my attention!!)

so yeah, i loved this, thank you so much for sharing it, cheers! <3

P.S.: as a heads-up, those "Made in Highland" watermarks Terribly fuck up the formatting in the doc by pushing words and lines out of place :( this work reads way better through screenshots

My partner and I binged all of Ghosts BBC and then this happened so I thought I’d write it as a screenplay to actually practice my very rusty screenwriting. Under the cut is the first 25 minutes of the first ‘episode.’ I’ve played around with different ways of sharing this but short of a Google doc it’s the easier thing I can work out without needing a lot of painful re-formatting. Apologies for the far-from-industry-standard formatting, btw. I don’t usually share WIPs but! It’s Halloween!

CW: recreational drug use (cannabis), reference to past drug addiction. Canon-typical depictions of pararibulitis (fire/burning).

Pairing/s & Relationships: Todd Brotzman/Dirk Gently, eventual Farah Black/Tina Tevetino (doesn’t appear in this excerpt). Amanda Brotzman & Tina Tevetino, Farah Black & Dirk Gently, eventual Farah & Todd & Dirk, Amanda Brotzman & Todd Brotzman.

Characters: Todd Brotzman, Amanda Brotzman, Dirk Gently, Farah Black, Tina Tevetino, eventual others.

Tags: Alternate Universe, Crossover/Fusion, Humour, Brotzman Sibling Angst, Fluff/Romance

Summary: When chronically ill and chronically struggling Amanda Brotzman unexpectedly inherits a large manor estate in England, she jumps at the chance to take control of her life. With her friend Tina in tow, she moves to the UK - and finds that Bronfman Estate is not only large and hopelessly dilapidated - it’s very, very haunted.

Featuring: Found family vibes, Dirk as an ill-fated Regency dandy, and most of the canon cast being dead in fun ways.

Cont’d under cut in pictures, but the resolution is horrible, so here is a link to a pdf on Google.

Keep reading

[whipped-for-kpop-fics]

Blood.

This is what happens when I have an idea for a comedy comic strip but can’t draw.

Min Yoongi (Suga) x Y/N

Supernaturl au. Smuttish. Kinda crack(comedy for those who don’t know the term crack)?

1.7k words

A few months ago, you met a guy and it was pretty much lust at first sight. You saw him from across the bar and your heart beat erratically at the sight of this beautiful creature. As if he heard the sudden increase in your heart rate, he looked directly at you and your eyes met. Shivers ran down your spine and excitement pooled in your stomach. His gaze was dark and mysterious with a hint of danger and you had never wanted to be beside someone more in your life. So, you arose from your seat and made your way through the crowd to him but by the time you reached his stool, he was gone.

You returned to the bar almost every day for just over a week in hopes of meeting the handsome stranger again but, he never showed.

It was two weeks after your eyes were first blessed with his visuals that you came across the man again. You were sat up to your desk at the travel agency where you worked when suddenly a figure stood behind you, looming over your frame. Seeing a shadow had taken over the papers you were supposed to be working on, while actually fantasising about the handsome stranger, you turned to find out who was blocking your light to find the man plaguing your every waking moment stood there, leering down at you.

"Oh, hello." You squeaked in surprise, pleasant surprise but you tried to keep your cool facade. A cool facade he easily saw through, how could he not when you were literally shaking with excitement, your heart pumping so hard and fast he could see the blood rushing through a slightly protruding vein in your neck.

"You've been looking for me." It was a statement, spoke in a harsh tone that was meant to scare you off, give you a silent warning but, the deepness of his voice vibrated through your body sending delicious ripples up your thighs. "Why?"

"I uh-" You swallowed hard and shuffled in your chair, hoping to look more put together when you spoke your next words. "How can I be looking for you when you're the one in my place of business?" You retorted, a slight, teasing smirk lifting one side of your mouth. He stared for a few seconds in shock at your obvious flirtations before a flash of an amused smile quirked his lips, vanishing so fast you almost doubted your own vision.

"I guess I am." He nodded before pulling over a chair to sit directly opposite you. He leant down onto his spread knees with his elbows and studied you. "What's your name?" You pointed to your name badge and he scoffed, chuckling slightly. "I can read, I want to hear you say it."

"Why?"

"To make up for not asking you two weeks ago."

"Y/N, my name is Y/N."

"Y/N." He hummed moving to sit back but he didn't close his legs and it made you want to get on your knees between his spread thighs. "Pleasure to meet you Y/N, my name is Yoongi."

And that was how it started, your casual relationship. It wasn't casual in the sense that you both saw other people because neither of you did, you were only interested in one another. It was casual in the sense that nothing had been agreed upon, at least not officially. At least once a week, Yoongi would take you out for the evening and spoil you, treat you like a queen before dropping you at your house with a simple kiss. Of course you spoke between dates, via phone call and text but you only saw one another on the evenings he took you out. That meant you didn't have much time together, alone. You were always in public places enjoying just being in one another's company but you yearned for more. Yoongi was an incredibly attractive guy with perfect, pale skin that made you envy him, soft black hair that you longed to run your fingers through and tug in hopes of earning a moan and deep, beautiful brown eyes that looked at you so intensely, like you were his next meal. You wanted Yoongi and you wanted him bad.

It was three months exactly after your first date that Yoongi finally took you to his home. It was a lavish, spacious apartment with a beautiful view of the city. His choice of decor was simple and practical, everything had its use or purpose, even the decorative pieces had multiple uses. He used a specific colour scheme; black, white and grey with splashes of red here and there. The living area was open plan and started as soon as you entered the home. But that didn't interest you. You wanted to know about his bedroom. On the other side of the living room, in the centre of the back wall stood a lone, black door.

"Is that your bedroom?" You asked slyly.

"Would you like to see?" You nodded and Yoongi smirked before leading you over. He opened the door and motioned inside.

That's how you wound up naked on his bed with his head between your thighs. "Fuck, I want to bite you so much." He growled, running his nose along your inner thigh as he took a break from eating you out with such enthusiam it was as if you were his last meal. "You taste so fucking good, Y/N." He nuzzled his face into your thigh, spreading wetness onto your flesh before turning his attention back to where you really wanted him. You moaned instantly and arched your back off of the matress.

Usually, you didn't like to watch when a guy went down on you but it was Yoongi and you wanted to know how he looked with his dark eyes peering up at you. So, you opened your eyes and lifted your head to look down. The moment you saw his face you froze and your eyes widened. "Ohmygod!" You shrieked, shimmying up with bed quickly with your hands over your mouth in shock. "I am so fucking sorry, I didn't know."

Yoongi looked up at you, his dark hair a mess and falling into his eyes and that was pretty fucking hot but as soon as you got to his nose, you freaked out. His lower face was covered in blood.

"I thought I had another week left!" You explained.

"What?" He mumbled. "Come back here." He tugged on your ankle but you quickly pulled it out of his grasp making him sigh in annoyance. "What is wrong with you?"

"Are you not aware what is going on with my vagina right now?!"

"I was enjoying myself eating it." He pointed out, looking nothing short of frustrated at the disruption.

"My fucking period started and you just carried on?!"

"Well, yeah." Yoongi looked at you as if it was obvious he would, as if it was stupid to suggest he do anything else. "What else do you expect from a vampire?"

"A what?!" You yelled. You of course knew vampires existed, you knew they walked and lived amongst humans and had for decades. Honestly, you had no problem with them, most of them just tried to live like everyone else, like humans, and fed off animals or blood substitues. Some of your friends and coworkers were vampires, your brother even married one last year. But, you had never realised Yoongi was one. "You're a vampire?"

"You...you didn't know?" He moved to kneel up then, showing you his bare torso and erection that was trying to break free from the constraints of his dark grey boxers. "How could you not know?"

"You never told me!"

"I thought it was obvious, most people know as soon as they meet me." You just continued to stare in shock. "For a start, my skin, it's pale, I clearly don't get much sunlight."

"Not all vampires are pale, my sister in law goes to a tanning salon."

"I have fangs."

"They're not obvious, I've never seen you hungry so I didn't know you have them. I thought they're just slightly pointed canines, mine were like that when I was little."

"You never wondered why we only meet after sun set, or on cloudy days?"

"I assumed you can only spare time in the nights and I never realised we only meet on cloudy days."

Yoongi moved to sit down on the edge of his bed with his back to you while he took in the fact you were incredibly clueless.

"So all this time, you never realised I'm a vampire?"

"No."

"And...do you have a problem with it?"

"No."

"Then lay back down so I can finish eating you out." He demanded impatiently, getting up and turning to face you. You looked at him with an incredulous look. "What?"

"I just, you really want to do that?" He nodded firmly and you bit your lip nervously. "I've never had a guy go down on me while I'm on my period, it seems kind of...weird."

"You've only been with humans?" You nodded. "Well there you have it. Tasting your blood is a turn on, Y/N." Yoongi informed as he crawled back onto the bed. "And I love making girls cum with my mouth so getting both is making me so fucking hard."

"But, doesn't it taste horrible? Because it's period blood?"

"No, it's got a fuller flavour, it's thicker, I can't explain it really. It's like, living on vegetables despite being a meat eater and then finally getting a nice thick steak."

"Oh." You nodded in understanding.

"So now you know, you gonna let me carry on?" You nodded shyly and returned to your previous position on the bed.

"Can't beleive you didn't know I'm a fucking vampire." He chuckled as he settled back between your legs.

"Shut up."

"I literally said I wanted to bite you like five times in the past half an hour."

"Why don't you use that pretty little tongue of yours for something better than talking, huh?" You suggested, a sharp almost demanding tone to your voice. Yoongi licked his lips before growling and diving back in.

The fact that Yoongi was a vampire didn't bother you and surprisingly, the fact he was eating you out while you were on your period suddenly didn't bother you either. You finally got the man you had been lusting after and you were going to enjoy every fucking second of it.

iI know I’m supposed to be writing other stuff but this idea just came tome and I had  to write it

I’ll now get back to watching Dirk Gently’s Holistic detective agency and pretending I’m going to do some work lol

~Chee

[corvid-knight]

Demon Eyes - chapter 28

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740258/chapters/33368232

A phone's ringing, and someone's nudging your shoulder.

Those two events might be connected.

You're going to keep your eyes shut and ignore them both.

Like fuck you are. Quit trying to play dead, motherfucker; it's not like I can answer your phone.

Okay, so apparently you're not allowed to ignore them. You open your eyes, see Kurloz leaning over you, and immediately close them again. "Jesus Christ, dude."

Don't act like you weren't expecting me.

"Look, you're not exactly the best fucking thing for a guy to see right when he wakes up. Can you fuckin' blame me?"

Yes.

"...fuck off."

He pushes something into your hand. Your phone, you're pretty sure. Deal with your kin.

"My—shit. D." Now, that gets you to sit up and fumble with the phone for a second, glancing at Kurloz as you hit the Accept Call button. "Where the fuck is this place, anyway?"

Pocket dimension. Scratch claimed it and started building his mansion here sometime before humans figured out how to get a handle on fire.

"Well, fuck. Wonder if I'm gonna get charged for a long-distance call."

Kurloz just shrugs and sits back on his heels, one hand coming up to feel at where Karkat ripped his stitches out as D starts talking in your ear. Or at least as the call connects and you hear what he's saying.

"—fucking pick up, fuck, Dave—fuckin' say something, kiddo, if you're there and not fucking dead you need to—"

"Yo, D."

"Oh thank god." He lets out a relieved breath, and you hear something thump on his end. Sounds like he just slammed his hand against the hood of the truck. "What was with that last call, man? Are you okay? Is Karkat still with you? What the hell's going on? Is—"

"Dude, stop for a second—I just woke up, I can't keep track of this shit." Fuck. Karkat. You almost panic before you glance the right way and see him sprawled on the floor a couple feet from you, apparently unconscious. He's breathing, anyway, and you can feel his presence in your mind, so you're going to assume he's okay. Hopefully.

"The fuck do you mean, you just woke up—"

"D."

"Yeah?"

"Either calm the fuck down or hand Dirk the goddamn phone."

"Dirk's running diagnostics on Hal right now; you're stuck with me. And I'm not calming down until you answer my fucking questions!"

Okay, that's fair. What were his questions again?

"Uh. Okay, Karkat's here but he's still out—I woke up before him for once, maybe 'cause Kurloz decided I was the one who needed to take this fucking call—"

He was asking for you, not Vantas. Seemed to be under the impression he was talking to you when I tried to answer that motherfucker.

"If you were on the phone with him, why the fuck did you wake me up?"

Kurloz just gives you an exasperated look and motions at his stitched mouth.

"...oh."

"Dave, what the fuck's going on?"

"You seem to think I have a fuckin' answer to that—"

You and Vantas killed a demigod.

"Uh, Kurloz says we killed a demigod."

There's a good thirty seconds of silence.

Then, "What the fuck?"

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

"As far as I can tell? I'm fine. Karkat's unconscious." You scoot over closer to the demon, putting one hand on his chest and letting your mind half-merge with his. He doesn't feel like he's been hurt. "I'm...pretty sure he'll be okay. I have no fucking clue where my sword went..."

Mortal weapons weren't meant to kill something like Scratch. It's motherfucking gone, kiddo.

"Damn. I liked that sword."

"I know some bladesmiths; we can go get you a new sword to make up for this shitty-ass birthday...where are you, anyway?"

What did Kurloz say? Oh, yeah. "Pocket dimension."

"...and you get cell service there."

"Again, do you really think I know what's going on—"

Karkat groans, his eyes half-opening.

"Whoops, hang on, D—consider yourself on hold for a minute."

"Hey, wait—"

Before he can finish protesting, you hand the phone off to Kurloz (ignoring the look he gives you) and lean over Karkat, offering him a smile as his eyes focus on you. "Hey, man."

"...hey." The smile you get back is more confused than anything, but you can feel the demon's rising worry drain away as you pull him up to lean on you. "Two questions."

"Hit me with 'em."

Karkat purrs as you wrap an arm around his shoulders. "Mmm. Are you okay?"

"Definitely. Need a new set of clothes. My sword's gone."

"The one you killed that basilisk with?"

"Yep."

"Well, fuck." He growls softly, shaking his head. "That's going to be fun to replace."

"Eh. It was worth it, I think."

"Oh?" He looks over at you, eyebrows raising a little. "Anyway. Question number two. What the fuck did we just do, Dave?"

"Kurloz says we killed a demigod."

"That bastard Scratch is a demigod?"

"I mean, he was, but yeah. You don't remember killing him?"

Karkat hesitates for a second, then shakes his head. "No. You flipped us, tangled us up until I couldn't tell myself from you. That's all I remember."

"Huh. Weird."

Not really. Demons were never meant to stand against that motherfucker; you rode him, used him as a tool, and only you keep the memory. Safer for him that way. Kurloz holds out the phone again. Take this thing.

Karkat eyes him for a moment. "Why the fuck are you still here again?"

I'm your ride home. The travel orbs won't bond with the new owner for a couple days at least. Take the phone.

"Wait, new owner?" you ask.

The Speaker huffs out a breath through his nose, eyes flaring brighter with irritation. Passage of ownership.

You can feel Karkat's understanding and surprise as he processes that. "Alright, one of y'all explain what that means."

"It's a magic thing," Karkat says slowly. "You know how some powers pass down through family lines? Yeah, well, this is another setup for that shit—it's more for items owned, property, than it is for powers themselves. Almost nobody uses this setup anymore, because ownership only passes to whoever kills the last fucking owner. Gives everybody an excuse to try to kill whoever holds the current title."

"So...we own this fucking mansion?"

Precisely. And you're pretty fucking safe from any other motherfuckers who want to own it, mostly because nobody still knows it exists. Kurloz's mouth twists into a tiny smile. Well. Other than me.

"You planning on killing us, going after ownership of this place?" you ask him.

He shakes his head. Not unless you don't take your motherfucking phone back.

Karkat laughs as you roll your eyes and take the phone out of the Speaker's hand.

It takes ten minutes before you can calm D down enough for him to let you hang up so Kurloz can take you back. You go with one of the white cueball things in your pocket; the Speaker says you need to keep it on or near you for the next week or so.

Lightning and fire obscures your vision just like last time, but this time it's white where it was green. Before it even fades away, D more-or-less tackles you, wrapping his arms around you and lifting you off your feet.

"Holy fucking shit, Dave—"

"D, you're gonna get blood on you—"

"Ask me if I care—"

Okay, fair enough. You quit worrying about that, for the moment at least, instead hugging him back and letting yourself grin. Opening your mind to Karkat so he can feel his fucking relieved you are to come back to your family—how happy you are right now—is almost automatic.

"You're going to smother him, D," Dirk points out. As soon as D lets you go, though, Dirk's grabbing you and pulling you into a hug of his own, just a little more gentle than D's. "You leave me outside again when shit's going down," he whispers in your ear, "I'm going to kill you, you know that?"

"I know, man, I know." And you do—you can feel Dirk's stress finally draining, as he pulls away. Even if he didn't have to see you die, he still had to handle not knowing what was happening, and he's sensitive enough to know when magic as major as raising the dead and teleportation's happening near him. "Is Hal okay?"

"Right here." The shikigami taps your shoulder, grinning at you when you pull back from Dirk. There's a bruise across his left temple, but he looks fine otherwise. "You're going to have to give me a play-by-play of what I missed, you know."

"Definitely."

As you step back and slip an arm around Karkat's waist, D asks, "Y'all ready to go home?"

Dirk and Hal nod, and you and Karkat answer in unison.

"Hell fucking yes."

[blaperile]

Homestuck Epilogues - Meat - Page 12 (Epilogue 2 Page 4)

[utopianparadoxist]

Knights and Pages - Serving, Service and Ownage

[Author’s Note: This is a repost of Love, Faith and Fantasy--my piece on Jake and Dirk’s character arcs and the relevance of Knights and Pages in understanding them. I thought breaking it up into chunks would make the content more accessible, and give me room to flesh out each argument. Thus there will be some updates to the content. Hopefully this will mean more people can easily approach it!] [Pt. 2 - Faith and Fear] [Pt. 3 - Fearful Heart] [Pt. 4 - Noble]  [Pt. 5 - As You Wish]

In my last post, I advanced the idea that Pages are an Active class and Knights are Passive. In so doing, I made the mistake of implying Pages are all secretely hyperintelligent supergeniuses who use everyone knowingly. That wasn’t exactly my intent, but that’s fine--sloppy execution on my part. My bad.

What I didn’t do is discuss the potential key verbs Knights and Pages might operate under--because I honestly didn’t have one I felt confident in. In the wake of discussing the piece with @theworstpersonintheworld (misleadingly named), he made a suggestion that struck me deeply, and once I started thinking about the story in those terms everything truly fell into place.  

I think it will be useful in explaining the dynamic between Jake and Dirk as I see it, so I’d like to make the case for it here before we move forward.

The key verb for both Knights and Pages is ‘Serve’. This puts them in direct thematic opposition to Rogues and Thieves, who ‘Steal’, which lines up with those dual systems Sburb loves so much--after all, if Princes and Bards are ‘Destroy’ classes, it’s reasonable to assume there is also a ‘Create’ set, right?

Knights Serve their Aspect to others. Pages use their Aspect to Serve themselves. To establish this and contrast against Jake’s actions later, let’s see how this model applies to Dave, Karkat and Tavros. First, the Knights, and an outline of the different executions the Serve verb can take.

Serve can mean:

1. To provide, or give (a counterpoint to Take)

2. To provide service for

3. To own or defeat, in literal or rhetorical battle (in the colloquial ‘You Got Served’ sense). 

From the outset, Dave has a reputation for providing his friends with his Time, serving them long rambling diatribes to consume and enjoy.--often far exceeding the time they’re willing to spend on the conversation.

Karkat does the same thing--often offering Pacts and Bonds to friends that he likes while simultaneously offering his services in helping them figure out relationship problems. 

Davesprite comes back from the future and literally empowers not just Dave, but John by providing him Time in the form of a Hammer with Time powers. 

Dave’s primary contribution to the Beta session is to run loops around the session, constantly gathering all relevant resources possible so that his friends don’t need to worry at all about limitations like money or access to weapons and can do whatever they feel like. 

Essentially, Dave takes care of the minutiae. He provides a service to his friends--putting them in the best position possible to act out their own wills. 

Karkat’s ultimate contribution to his session is similar--ultimately, Karkat’s main role was to maintain the bonds between all his friends. LIke Dave’s, Karkat’s nature affects every single other player, keeping them bound towards a common goal and thus bettering their odds of winning the game. (it’s worth noting I think Vriska’s view of Sburb is wrong here.) 

This predisposition to giving service to others is also likely why Knights seem to end up helping out with Frog Breeding duties so often. This is essentially the most important game objective, and so helping the Space player in completing it is also helping every other player in step. 

And then there’s this. There’s a colloquial definition of Serve that derives it’s use from the term “Get Served”, which Urban Dictionary defines as: To be completely owned or shown up by someone. Kinda like Dave does to us here--which Karkat also does, by the way, before going on a rant outlined by his ambitions and silhouetted with Blood colors. 

When Karkat wants to make something bite, he ends a relationship. Refuses to continue offering his Aspect, basically. This is also something Dave does repeatedly--he overwhelms Tavros with a time-consuming and epically sassy document, and makes Time-based power plays against Karkat as a gesture of antagonism. 

To serve someone in this sense essentially means to defeat them in rhetorical or literal battle, explaining why Aradia describes Knights as a powerful Warrior class--one of the definitions this wordplay allows for is a class that uses its Aspect to deal devastating, embarrassing defeats.

Dave obviously uses Time powers to fight, thus enabling him to Own/Serve his enemies in this sense, but Karkat is much more interesting here. Karkat also seems to fill the second stipulation Calliope puts onto Passive classes--that is, that they tend to function with less awareness of their Aspect, their Aspect working through them rather than under their direct control, as if through “The Will of the Aspect”. 

Every time Karkat wins a confrontation in Homestuck, he does so by establishing a connection. You can argue Karkat’s aware he does this with Gamzee, but he doesn’t really parse it as doing a Knight of Blood thing. But with Clover he doesn’t realize what he’s doing at all! He thinks he just beat this green elf dude, but what actually happens is Clover wanted to enter a relationship with him. 

What goes ignored is how unlikely a win this is--because Clover is so lucky, he straight up could not be defeated normally. Clover loses this fight not because he’s overpowered, but because he benefits even more than Karkat does. Clover is a horndog, and in his view there’s no better outcome to this fight than Getting Lucky. Karkat wins unawares, as if through the Will of Blood. 

Contrast this with Jake’s win. Jake beats the felt, shocking Crowbar--but Crowbar doesn’t benefit from this at all. Jake does. Jake is the one who wants to be seen as an impressive adventuring hero, and by exposing Crowbar to an unforeseen possibility, he achieves that. 

I’d like to posit a corollary attribute that I believe holds true for all Classes, as well. This one is not explicitly advanced textually, but I believe I can back it up. It takes place along a different axis. I posit that just as the classes affect their Aspect, so too they are affected BY their Aspect.

So in addition to the Active/Passive distinction, we could read both Knights and Pages as ones who are Served by their Aspect.

This is true of Dave, as he gets owned by his Bro in an explicitly time-consuming fight. And the trend continues as he then gets saved by his future selves over and over again throughout the session--being served in both senses:

In this sense, Dave also operates “As if through the Will of the Aspect”, even as he’s in control of his actual powers. He’s presented with stable time loops that he has to obey, and it’s kind of a loaded question whether any given Present Dave would have taken the same path had he not already been given the path to follow from his future selves. 

Now, to contrast before we move on to the rest of this series, a few notes on Tavros:

Tavros’ main psychic abilities correspond to his Classpect--he’s able to move animals to serve his will, providing them direction. The reading that Pages inspire their Aspect in others isn’t totally off, in my view. What it misses is that Pages seem to inspire in others a desire to serve or help them. To benefit themselves somehow. 

Vriska clearly perceives her actions towards Tavros a kind of twisted service, and while I don’t want to put the picture here, Tavros certainly ends up getting Served through Flight--a Breath concept. Tavros also gets the ability to fly early on, like John does--and Tavros gets it directly through Vriska’s service, one of the few times her efforts are actually helpful. 

This doesn’t extend to just Vriska, though. Tavros inspires Kanaya and even Equius--who ordinarily wouldn’t help on account of the Hemospectrum--to provide him with robot legs, extending his freedom of motion, again a concept linked to Breath. This again benefits no one except Tavros. 

Perhaps more telling is this visual language, which suggests Tavros was about to actually Do the Windy Thing--when he was acting under his own will and directing it for a goal he had in mind. Possibly healing? Who knows, we never find out, because this is Vriska. Needless to say, when asked to do things HER way and the way she would most benefit from....Tavros can’t do it. It’s not what comes naturally to him.  

And of course, this reading puts a whole new spin on Tavros’ final act in the story. If we’re reading Pages as intrinsically kind of selfish and self-motivated, then Tavros’ motivation here isn’t to provide a useful service to Vriska. It’s to do something so useful she can’t possibly deny it, so he can have the pleasure of owning her. 

This is Vriska getting Served. This is an immutable fact that is being stated for the record. That it is genuinely helpful does not mean that Vriska getting fucking wrecked isn’t what is taking place here.  Notably, Tavros immediately gives power over the army to Meenah, because he doesn’t give a shit about responsibility. Tavros had a goal, and the ghosts helped him achieve it. 

A final note:

If this reading of Knights and Pages happens to bother you because it means that the Beta session has an uneven distribution of Active/Passive classes, consider the dynamics of both sessions:

In the beta session, Rose essentially takes and follows orders from the Horrorterrors and Doc Scratch, whilst also distributing orders to Dave and John (who each take further orders from troll girls and Jade).

 All of this is ultimately in support of the plan Jade commits to herself, plans herself, and executes herself--taking Active control of the entire session in one fell swoop at the last instant.

In the Alpha session, all three Active players flounder and stifle themselves and each other with nothing meaningful to do and no way to receive substantial benefit. 

Ultimately, it is the Passive player--Roxy--who rises above the constraints of her session and achieves more or less competence at understanding her role and powerset by the end of the session.

In the session that requires constant action and change, there’s Three passives to one Active. In the session that requires patience, introspection, and connecting with each other, the inverse is true. The incentives and natural skills of the players are set at odds in both cases, stacking the cards against them.

In fact, @arrghus  makes an insightful point about these unbalanced sessions: 

Namely, that this puts the kids in the exact same position as the Trolls’ Red and Blue teams--which ALSO have an uneven distribution of Passive/Active classes under this reading, only reaching equilibrium when added together. 

This segment covered, we can move on to Jake, and how this reading of Pages reflects on him. 

This series has been a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.

If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.

See you again soon, everyone. Until then,

Keep rising.