#but it's originally from Friendsim

[mokii639]

(mallek's version here)

Listen. I wouldn’t just fuck an alien. I’d take an alien out on a date, to their favorite restaurant. I’d marathon an aliens favorite show with them. I’d spoon an alien every night. I’d bring an alien little random tokens and gifts to remind them of my affection. I’d help an alien work through their emotional issues and family baggage. I’d adopt a shelter pet with an alien and raise him as our very own son. I’d grow old with an alien, every blissful year of our union reminding us of how much we cherish each other. I’d make love to an alien.

[theartisticapparition]

genuinely would love to know anything & everything u can tell me about every single character bc i am Completely Enthralled by this au, but if i had to pick one ig i'd say tyzias :)

Okay so Tyzias right? We love her. Awesome character we meet at Hiveswap friendsim, hopefully even cooler in AtlaSwap So I don't really have a detailed idea of what her background story was like. And, I say this quite often but i'm not very good at writting but hell I could try maybe? Maybe make it a hobby and make a fic of this Au on Ao3. Gotta be good at being bad at things sometimes.. Also because Im p much content starved so truthfully, I appreciate the asks in my inbox even though it took me a month to respond. sorry asker; Anyhow, so upon making this Au I want it to translate almost identical or what makes sense to their original selves in the Hiveswap Universe. That being said. I'm thinking Tyzias Entykk be a council member trying to influence the Earth Kingdom into being a bit more involved in maybe taking in refugees from other tribes and yes even fire nation refugees. Unfortunately, and understandably so, other earth kingdom council members would not be fond of that idea.

I really like Tyzias in friendsim where she is doing what she can to 'improve' the Alternian system into maybe being a bit less brutal and racists. Like she knows she can't make a significant change by herself. She mentions this in her good ending route. How she might not be able to do it but she trusts someone out there can.

Viola, freak of nature lost air nomad/ avatar MSPAR. I hope this makes sense!

[davekat-sucks]

hey um what you think degin of marvus (verison friendsim2)?

I get it's part of interpretation art style, but seriously, why the dreadlocks? When his hair looks more messy floof

Part of it is likely because either the fandom's stereotype on the purplebloods being black or the artists/team themselves only seeing said purplebloods as black. The other trolls in Friendsim 2 don't have many features to connect to a specific ethnicity and some being close to on-model from the original Hiveswap Friendsim game.

If that look was part of some original character that doesn't have connection to Hiveswap or Homestuck, I would have been fine. His outfit is cool and love the accessories on his dreadlocks. Clearly someone on the team wants that BBC when they drew him. Hopefully it is just the BBC they are focusing on and not the scat omorashi fetish parts that the original route and writer had written when first introducing said character. But I'm not a fan of fanon interpretations being part of projects like Hiveswap Friendsim. I get they are indie because it is a fan game. But when you got an art style like that contrasting to others like this, it kind of ruins the immersion and experience of going through the game if they are all going to have different art styles without no rhyme or reason behind. The art style change is not part of a joke or part of a meta narrative. It's just contrasting.

[mokii639]

Chixie Roixmr's VRChat Avatar is now for sale!

Here is Chixie! I made this avatar from scratch on Blender, based off the artwork from HIVESWAP: Friendsim. She has toggles for a microphone and a mask, and comes with both PC and Quest versions. I am not adding GoGo Loco this time, but you can easily add it with VRCFury on your own! Make sure to follow their instructions and you have all of your things on the Avatar Creator Companion properly updated!

You can:

Edit this model to create different versions of the character.

This avatar must stay the same character.

Please remember to credit me!

You can't:

Take parts of this avatar for other avatars.

Make your own original character from this avatar.

Sell these avatars/edits of these avatars or profit from them in any way

Make these avatars NSFW (nudity, sexual acts, etc.)

Upload public versions of edits of this model.

Redistribute any files of this model.

Have fun!

I am in no way affiliated with What Pumpkin and I hold no rights for this character, HIVESWAP, HIVESWAP: Friendsim or HOMESTUCK. This is fanart.

[piklsprites]

ok i guess im doing this now

shit i'll be able to finish quickly -stuff of the hs characters that were in the original comic n shit -outfit swaps (godtier bases used 1 2, dreamself base used) -handholding edits (base used) -ministrifes (base used)

stuff that i will also do but will take probably a little longer and will probably be slightly lower priority -ocs (please provide images off-anon for the love of g -hiveswap characters -anything animated -^2sprites or any like kernelsprite fusion stuff (base used) -alterniabound/openbound/that 1 postcanon ren.py page/etc talksprites (resource)

stuff i wont do -basic shindig rundown of no harmful offensive gross incest shit -friendsim/pquest sprites (im not good a;t those apologies

u can use my edits for whatever the fuck u want EXCEPT FOR the ones of other peoples ocs that is kind of weird. ones of hs characters and your ocs are fine but other peoples is a big no

+bonus sprite examples bc awesome

[note i tend to procrastinate on and forget about shit a lot so each request will take anywhere from 2 hours to several months probably but i will 100% get 2 all of them eventually]

[cannoliparty]

talking about rustbloods

I LOVE RUSTBLOODS!!! im a fan of a lot of trolls and bloodcastes but the way rustblood characters are portrayed in the comic is just too cool for me to NOT call out!!! this post will be an overview/me prattling on about the rustbloods in homestuck, and even the caste as a whole!

quick overview on time! its an aspect connected to mechanics, inevitability, death and so on. it can even be connected with music, due to the timing in bars of songs or the progression of time as music plays.

furthermore, to talk about rustbloods as a whole, theyre connected to the original sgrub players of alternia, which would be aradia and the handmaid. its important to give explanations on these connections and thats exactly what ill be doing! i havent read hiveswap or played the friendsim so i will not be using those rustbloods as a reference to look at.

the beta troll rustblood is aradia, maid of time. she embodies the time in her session, and as a maid she keeps her aspect "tidy"! aradia was especially connected to the death in the time aspect. she had died, been trapped in a body not hers, been a sprite and so on. for a while, she WAS made of death and therefore that was a way of being made of time. but when they were at the universe gate and aradia sent out all her different aradiabots, that was her way of roleplaying as a witch of time (her ancestor!), as she manipulated previous timelines to CREATE (maid word!) more time for her friends to act! though maids are considered an active class, they "prepare others with their aspect" and otherwise tend to stay in the background always tending to their aspect themselves, helping the session grow. aradia did this in multiple ways. first was when she first died, and worked with the spirits to get her sgrub session started. and we all know death/the dead are very related to time.. then, after godtiering, she travelled to countless dream bubbles, keeping those memories and times afloat, doing the "housekeeping" a maid does with their aspect. and theres also aradias off-screen timeline travels, as at one point she says shes been through hundreds of years worth of doomed timelines! all of these actions are inextricably linked to time, and even sometimes the death in it, and further proves how aradia is made of time. in the end, aradia has always been maid/made of time, and the inevitability of time allowed her to accept her challenge of self-relying easily, and shes a solid character!!

so i believe how rustbloods connect to aradia is through that "made of time" play on words! this means rustbloods can be heavily related to any part of the time aspect whether its death/spirits, mechanics and routine, or just a sense of inevitability. its loose, but rustbloods take what aradias putting down, and relate to it how they can. they also carry the self-reliance of maids, and are usually very powerful in that same sense!

the rustblooded ancestor is the handmaid, one of the 2-3 ancestors who made it off alternia. shes also a witch of time! witches are naturally rebellious of their aspects rules, which brings about their nature-changing powers. the handmaid rebelled from the timeless inevitability of having to serve lord english, and tried to overcome it as hard as she could, but doc scratch unfortunately guaranteed her fate. its also of note that witches tend to have familiars (jade with bec, feferi with her lusus) and so the handmaids would be lord english!

the beforus counterpart of the handmaid is damara, also a witch of time! she embodies her classpect in a fuller manner, as she had some free will of her own. of course, she has the alpha troll curse (NOT GETTING ANY SCREENTIME...) T_T;.... but its obvious shes very rebellious against inevitability and instead does things her own way, which is not caring too much about anything!

this connects rustbloods to doing what they want with the sense of inevitability, death, etc... time is of the essence, and they inherited the witch's powers of doing whatever they want with that essence!

overall, i hope this makes sense!!! i know aradia has like 300 more words dedicated to her but she IS the one with the most screentime..... but damara & the handmaid are genuinely some of my favorites in homestuck and if they got more to themselves as characters i can guarantee itd be QUALITY stuff to talk about!!! as usual feel free to leave feedback or add on to rustbloods however youd like ^_^

[friendsim2]

just finished around 2/3 of volume 12, i love so much the entire dreamscape / real world mechanic and lore-wise, love the way purplebloods and their history is represented and currently romancing Lynera. i'm in love with this volume so far thank you all so much (and whoever had the idea of making TechniColor Heart an actual thing, i'd hug u)

That was me (game's director/lead writer here) - TechniColor Heart was actually in production for a few months. The April Fool's joke trailer was just a fake-out using footage from the actual game (within a game) - it's original inception goes back to the "we'll put sex in the game" meme we did on Twitter.

So I basically spent 3 months writing, coding, and doing UI design to put that in there. The assets are a combination of Friendsim 2 assets and backgrounds I did and sprites that Riotbreaker did for another game (it was cancelled in its original form and another studio may or may not be continuing it at some point, but without the original assets). I'm a big fan of committing to the bit - to the point where every one of the "hahaha wouldn't it be funny if we put this in the game?" jokes has not, in fact, been a joke.

Originally there was gonna be a shorter and less interesting dream sequence in that bit there that had a Tyzias/Tagora trial sequence (we actually had that sequence completely done with recorded dialogue) as well as some small walk-around segments using existing assets.

There were also a couple cut mini-games from Volume 12 - a sliding tile puzzle and a "light up the lights" type puzzle, neither of which was very fun - so those got replaced with Tetris and Fire Fling, respectively. (if you talk to Mallek about his GameDude console in the TechniColor Heart segment, you can actually play Gameboy versions of those games to practice them)

Overall, Volume 12 has probably been our most involved volume. One of the things I wanted to get right going into this game was how the purple bloods are portrayed, because there's a lot of baggage associated with how they're shown in canon, and I wanted to approach the whole thing thoughtfully and make it an impactful experience.

I cannot stress enough how important the contribution of the route's primary writer, Miranda Holliday, was to the experience of that route. They laid down the framework (and wrote most of the first half of the route) for a lot of the themes and how they tie into real-world issues of ethnicity, race, and culture. I picked up what they put down and then they went back over what I'd written in the second half to tighten up some of the language and provide feedback on the way the themes were developed.

Also, the route's sprite designer, Cole, was instrumental in fleshing out the character designs and giving them a unique character. Riotbreaker ended up doing the finished sprite sets off the original designs, and she did an awesome job of following Cole's reference designs.

Also, unique among the routes, we had the stark contrast between the dreamscape backgrounds (done by Dave Fowler) and the real-world backgrounds (done by Herk Lapaduza, who's done work on a couple other volumes both released and unreleased!). The dreamscape in particular was very much an exercise in "have fun with it!" to the artist, and the result was a delightfully surreal experience to contrast with the much more grounded style of the other backgrounds.

Lastly, our VAs for this route really helped sell their characters' unique personalities. Valentine was my choice to play Marvus from before we even started this game (there's an interesting story there - before FS2 was a thing I was going to do a fan dub of my Delightful Abattoir Hiveswap novel, so some of the voice cast comes from that!), and Miranda, Jason and Vyn did an amazing job with Akhnai, Barzum/Baizli, and Chahut.

[gatsby-system-folks]

Hi besties

I didn't feel like deleting this commission post. Thankfully, the friend who I opened commissions to help has stable housing now. I'm not saying commissions closed, I'm just busy lol.

Illustration:

Some examples of my work

I'll also do relatively short comics. This is a snippet from my webcomic. A sketch is $10, colored sketch is $15, lineart is $10, colored lineart is $15. Shading or lighting on anything will add $10. I'm not separating character art and landscape art, both have the same rate, but something with more than 5 characters or something set in a city (or otherwise densely populated/elaborate area) will be a little more ($5 for every character above 5, and an extra $10 for an elaborate scene). Comics are the same, each page (not each panel) will be treated as a piece.

Writing:

I'll write for ocs, and from:

Homestar Runner

Rise of the tmnt

The Usagi Chronicles

Gorillaz

Good Omens

Undertale/Deltarune

Homestuck (and its affiliates, such as pesterquest or friendsim)

Venom

Moon Knight

Treasure Planet

Hellboy

Doctor Who

Our Flag Means Death

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit

The original 6 Star Wars movies

The Spiderverse series, itsv and atsv

The Davina skit from Rab C Nesbitt. (I see yall shipping Davina with Mrs. Robinson and I love yall)

If something's not on this list, you can still ask, and if I've seen whatever the media is I'll probably write it. On the other hand, if i haven't seen all of the content for the medias listed above, I'll have to do some research so it might not be the best work (ie the only reason I'm limiting this to the first 6 star wars movies is because I haven't seen any more than that)

I'll do ships between canon characters or between ocs, I'm not comfortable doing x reader content at this point. Also.. they don't have to be ships lol I also do just. Fics.

Some examples of my work:

I'm gonna keep it simple and do $20 per thousand words, but there's not a minimum word count. That's $0.02 per word lol. When you describe the fic ill give you an estimate of how many words I can do it in, and we can adjust. If the fic goes more than 150 words over the final estimate then it's flat-rate (as in the price doesn't continue to climb)

Poetry

Any subject really. I'll add examples of my work when the website I post on is fixed. Poetry is twice the price of fic

Editing:

Keep it under 5,000 words for now. $8 per hour. I'll edit fic, essays, etc.

Worldbuilding:

If you need help figuring out a magic system, how pipes connect your city, weird biological facts about your aliens, or even just where to put the castle parking lot, I can help. Same rules of fic writing and editing: if we chat worldbuilding for an hour, it'll be $8. If you want a 500 word summary of your new worlbuilding, that'll be $10. The text of the chat of course is free, you can pause your time of course, and whatever time I spend writing the summary isn't double charged. So an hour of chatting+ a 500 word summary would be $18

What I won't work with, in any format

Heavy nsfw- light is ok

Incest, pedophilia, noncon etc

Hate, bigotry, overly political work, bullying

Torture

Glorification of not good things. Depiction does not equal glorification

Case by case: real, living people. Context below.

What I won't draw, specifically:

Gore

abuse (such as beating, verbal, emotional)

Self harm

Everything is case-by-case, if something makes me uncomfortable I'm not going to do it. You may not put my work into an ai scraper of any kind. Also I'll say it again, depiction does not equal glorification.

Context on real people: I mean if you want me to just draw a picture of Margot Robbie that's most likely fine, or write about the wacky secret society that Laura Ingals and St. Patrick were running that's probably fine, or if a real living person appears in the background that's probably fine (I see you good omens fans having Crowley and Hozier hang out at a bar), but I won't write shipping for real, currently living people, nor will i make them the mc of a story. I'd prefer not for dead people either, but that's not a hard rule. Once again, case by case.

[lndigoblood]

More high-Quality Zebruh Codakk transparents, from the Friendsim Zebruh route's Good Ending!

Left: Original Right: Edit without MSPA Reader

Part 1 here.

[bebackthen]

TW..Homestuck !! /halfj0ke | oc ref and edit

did a edit of my oc/sona and my current favorite bug from friendsim... cirava ... i just found out theyre in hiveswap too.. augh, i need it to be put on switch so bad istg.

anyway this is. extremely different than what ive mostly been posting.. some pals of mine have infected me with the worms. i like drawing the trolls what can i say. anyway ref for my guy below. theyre purpleblooded and when i get to redrawing them, theyll have a kidcore/weirdcore aesthetic. i just wanted to give em a purple outfit cause i felt nostalgic for their original form... sighs wistfully.. i remember when jacksepticeye played hiveswap.. that was the first time i had ever seen a homestuck before..i fell in love with the little alien bugs<33. ahh.. the deep lore for me is WAAYYY back when i was a wee lad my trollsona was even my online handle/persona. anywho the old design was ugly and unrefined cause i didnt know ✨the lore✨ at the time.

the name is said as either Zrfrox ("zir" like grr and "frox" like roxy.) or Zrfrox ("zer" as spelled and "frox" as faux) i say both.

[mmmmalo]

with all youve said on troll reproduction, do you think ancestors on alternia are really a thing? the only trolls we know have ancestors at all werent even born in the brooding caverns but in a lab within sgrub, and their ancestors are essentially ectobiological copies. there is no indication that any other trolls on the entire planet have ancestors, and i think its more likely that its a myth spread by scratch to keep the trolls on the paths to their destinies or whatnot. would be interested to see your take or if theres even anything textual to back this up

There's no indication because we don't talk about any other trolls until Friendsim, at which point the new meta is that the original twelve have become the stereotypes from which caste traits are derived... and that in itself is a description of "troll reproduction" because it's a Doylist description of how new trolls are created. My basic impression is that even troll reproduction in the original story was sort of formed around the comic's medium from the get go: it describes death and rebirth, being reduced to gooey essence and forming anew on the other side of a time portal, which is how characters like Rose regard the turning of the page. Every click of the arrow becomes cause to worry about mixed atoms. Likewise the ancestor divide strikes me chiefly as a scratch in miniature, a cause to reflect on what the same person might have done different circumstances, and their relationship with those possibilities.

So even though it sort doesn't really make biological sense for a species to have no clear beginning or end, my impression of troll reproduction is that it's just cloning mediated by a bug ass that's hungry for blood, circulating a small set of genes indefinitely. So sure, ancestors are real.

[relaxxattack]

hold up- is HS2 the only place where we see the trolls with food and like have the intention of eating the food? the only thing I remember in HS was them referencing "grub sauce" or beverages 😭

i can't recall seeing them with food in hs2 either, unless you count sollux's very human looking sandwich

from what i remember, in the original comic they reference foods such as grubloaf and loaf supplement, and i swear they mention potatoes at one point but i can't find it anywhere. and of course grubsauce and beverages

really if you want the names of more food shit, hiveswap and friendsim are going to be your ways to go, since they take place on alternia and have a lot of that kind of thing

[searedtroutpeacharugula]

To quote the most wise and noble scholars of our age, "well, THAT just happened!"

I don't think any of us could have possibly expected this, but Homestuck^2, the (much-maligned) Homestuck sequel, is back.

And to top that off, it's looking good.

James Roach, who composed many of the tracks for Homestuck's more recent projects and was generally one of the few well-known people still openly associated with the IP in any official capacity, has formed the Homestuck Independent Creative Union, or HICU, with Andrew Hussie's blessing. Dedicated to finally completing the long-abandoned HS^2 project (now rebranded as simply Homestuck: Beyond Canon) as well as working on even more Homestuck projects in the future(!!!), HICU would appear to be the greatest hope that Homestuck has for the future.

Now, I'm going to preface this by saying two things. First: I have only been involved in the Homestuck fandom since the beginning of this year, and I only finished the original comic last month. I am by no means a long-time fandom member, nor do I have the same experiences with the fandom that many other people have had. Second: I have not read/played the Homestuck Epilogues, Homestuck^2, or any meaningful amount of Hiveswap Friendsim or Pesterquest. While I am familiar with a couple concepts from post-canon Homestuck, I am unfamiliar with any of the works in their entirety.

That being said, I still want to discuss my opinion on the sudden return of post-canon, and what I think the future of Homestuck may be. My time as a Homestuck may have so far been relatively brief, but the comic has made an incredible impact on my life. HS holds a special place in my heart, and even if I'm not the most well-educated fan I still want to put my opinion out there.

I am, to put it in simple terms, cautiously optimistic about the return of Homestuck^2. To my knowledge, HS^2 has so far been a complete and total trainwreck. Now, I'm not personally in a place to judge the work: after all, I haven't read the damn thing. But if what I've heard is true, then HS^2 seems almost irredeemably bad. There's a chance, however, that the HICU will be able to turn this around. By taking the writing in a new direction, proving to the fandom that they know what they're doing, and trying their best to fix this, they might just be able to make this work.

James Roach and the rest of the HICU seem genuinely very passionate about Homestuck. It's clear that they love this universe and only want the best for it; and I think that's the most important thing.

If there's one thing that has defined the Homestuck fandom for the past few years, it's been cynicism. You'd be hard-pressed to find a single fan who thought Homestuck had any sort of future ahead of it outside of Hiveswap; post-canon was practically dead, Andrew Hussie had long since moved on to greener, clown-filled pastures, and a large, faceless corporation with seemingly no interest in the IP had become the publisher. Suffice to say, it wasn't a good time to be a Homestuck fan.

But now, with the formation of the HICU, there's something the Homestuck fandom hasn't seen in a long, long time: hope. There is a chance, however slim, that Homestuck will be getting new, well-written, well-characterized content. Homestuck has a future, it has a chance at redemption!

I just hope that James Roach and the rest of the HICU don't fuck this up. Maybe, just maybe, if we're fucking lucky, Homestuck can leave this years-long slump.

Alright, I'm done rambling. I've got a lot of stuff to read: after all, I don't want to miss the return of Homestuck, no matter how it turns out!

[torchedtriad]

why are trolls? (part 1)

If you're anything like me (im so, so sorry if you are), then you probably have spent way too much of your precious human lifespan thinking about the intricacies of the Alternian ecosystem and the place of Trolls within it. As of the present day as seen in Homestuck and Hiveswap, Trolls have assumed a place roughly analogous to that of humanity in their planet's ecosystem despite the numerous significant differences between the two sapient species. The question that I'm looking to conjure up an answer to is: why? What is the evolutionary path that has led the Trolls to their present state of being? What I've landed on is this: Alternia is, as we know, a very dangerous world. For some reason or another, life on the surface of the planet has always been especially harsh. It's no wonder, then, that it would foster such a wide variety of subterranean life. Among Alternia's "diverse and terrifying subterranean monster population" are those that we know today as Lusus Naturae, the creatures which in Alternia's present day serve as the symbiotic guardians of young trolls. One thing that particularly piqued my interest about Lusii is that they are described as being "subterranean" creatures, and yet they feature an adaptation- their luxurious white coats- which protects their bodies from the threat of the Alternian sun (as mentioned in Friendsim). The implication of this is that while Lusii *originate* in Alternia's cavernous depths, they have evolved to spend at least some portion of their lifespan on the planet's surface. Were this to be true, it would mean that at some point in any Lusus' life, it must make its journey to the surface and cross through the mouth of one of an Alternian cavern. And what creatures do we know to make their homes in such an environment? Trolls! Well, sort of. Despite being an advanced space-faring species which has already exhibited both the will and desire to implement new technology to "streamline" the reproductive process (re: place it more firmly in the hands of the fascist Alternian state), the Alternians seem more than content with the continued use of natural caverns for the purposes of their brooding caverns rather than choosing to develop specialized spaces for the purpose.

[jonayariley]

so i have been curious for the longest time since the couple was revealed in all your projects, and its piqued, idk if you've answered something like this before so if so just throw me the link if needed but i must know your elchixie thoughts.

like the hows, the whys, what hc's based off canon, fanon, whatever you have for em just, ramble bout em, i find myself curious on many a crackship and the urge to poke brains on the reasonings for em (and no offense i just, don't think i can go through so many fic chapters to learn some info on this ship sorry)

Oh boy oh boy you sure did come to the right place! I may have talked about this in other places, but idk that I've ever have someone just outright ask, and I think you'd probably be sifting through mostly commentary on Friendsim 2 to find any details and that's like... hours of video to watch, so this ask was a good idea!

I guess the heart of why I love the Elwurd/Chixie dynamic so much is a combination of "I can fix her" and "they should have talked." Allow me to elaborate!

Elwurd

So, I really like the idea of exploring how characters can grow and change (or, conversely, refuse to change) over time. When I was writing my Hiveswap novels (and I later carried this over to Friendsim 2, but those came first so they get first credit here), I really wanted to explore how Elwurd could evolve as a character. Like, in the original Friendsim and Hiveswap games she's kinda one-note - not, like, bad or anything... just she's gay and flirty and she's kinda a jerk sometimes. But there's only so much you can do with a character in a short visual novel route and a handful of dialogue boxes as a side character in an adventure game.

But I wanted to explore the idea of how Elwurd's outward "fuck everyone else" attitude might be something she puts up as a way of not having to deal with the horrors of her reality. The combination of being expected to support the Empire as a cerulean (something she doesn't have any interest in doing) and still being kinda powerless to actually do anything to change things. So she throws herself into escapism - drugs and booze and casual hookups. There's a line in Delightful Abattoir that I keep circling thematically with Elwurd:

I just want to not have to feel that pain all the time. So I do things to escape from it a few minutes at a time. Is that so bad?

And that's kind of where she's at in the beginning of her arc, headspace-wise. Like I said, I carried a lot of this forward to Friendsim 2, albeit with a more grounded take on the world that follows the original Friendsim.

Chixie

She's someone who exists in this precarious space - a lowblood who's in the Alternian entertainment industry, which already puts her under a very uncomfortable spotlight. As a marginalized person, you don't really have a lot of room to make mistakes in the public eye, because you're judged way more harshly for it - or seen as a representative for your entire class of existence as a person. So that's already a lot of pressure, added to the whole secret identity thing with the Mask.

And tbh, I see the Mask as being kind of an open secret - like, she doesn't even change clothes, so it doesn't seem like no one would be able to figure it out, but also I really like playing with the idea of the Empire allowing a certain level of performative/superfluous rebellion among the population. Basically, you can talk about it as long as you aren't actually causing problems. And that's going to be frustrating to Chixie too because she wants to actually make a difference.

I see her as someone with a lot of trust issues - not a lot of super close friends, and she's clearly not dealing well with the stress either, given that we see her in canon having issues with substance use.

In my Hiveswap novels and Friendsim 2, I added the extra layer of having to deal with having Zebruh as her manager - someone who wants to exploit her both from a commercial perspective and sexually (he keeps hitting on her in Friendsim 2 and in Delightful Abattoir they're in an outright abusive relationship at first).

Elwurd/Chixie

So, independently there's a lot going on, but the other part of this is I feel like these two would naturally run in some of the same circles. Elwurd is shown hanging out in a bar, partying, etc. in canon - and seems like someone who would absolutely be involved in the underground music scene and run in some of the same underground circles as Chixie, even if it was just to sell folks drugs.

In Friendsim 2, I added the layer of having Elwurd basically acting as a roadie for Chixie's band sometimes - she's just kind of hanging out in the same places and with the same people (like fellow dissatisfied cerulean blood Mallek) and the whole "just trying to avoid thinking about this shit too much" attitude is gonna drive her to do something to keep her mind off the existential bullshit that is her life. Why not help a pretty bronze blood carry an amp and run some cables, right?

I really like the idea of these two eventually talking and starting to connect over some similarities - disgust for the Empire, a feeling of helplessness in their lives, a desire for things to be different somehow. They don't take exactly the same angle towards things - I'd say Elwurd is far more self-destructive and Chixie is more kind of "rage against the machine" about it - but I think there's enough common ground that they could end up talking and getting closer.

I've always liked the headcanon that Chixie is demisexual - probably a good deal of personal bias going into that (and - yknow - "vibes"), but it's a fun element to toss in there. That means that Elwurd/Chixie is always going to be something that's a slow burn and is always kinda fragile. In Friendsim 2 you have to line a few things up right for them to actually consider being matesprits, and in the Hiveswap novels it takes a while for them to end up together.

And, like, I feel like their attitudes temper each other. Elwurd finds someone to ground her self-destructive tendencies, and Chixie finds someone who helps her feel less isolated and less inside her own head all the time. They both still run in the same circles, and Elwurd always struck me as someone who'd be down with the idea of fucking over the Empire, so the whole Mask/rebellion thing isn't a hard sell.

Anyway, that turned out very much longer than I expected, but I hope it gives you some insight into why I keep gravitating to that ship! As far as I can tell, it's a pretty uncommon one and it's like - just something that worked its way into my brain and now I'm obligated to include it literally everywhere!

[pixelkip]

pestered quest be upon ye

Just finished pq with the bestie and holy FUCK dude it brought back all the shit I was feeling when I first finished it. Vol 14 makes me fucking feel things good god.

Rambling under the cut bc this post is longer than I thought it'd be tldr I really like pq's ending and the music used for it so I remixed them. First one is from 2020 2nd was finished yesterday

So . I've remixed a couple songs from vol. 14, first one is one I made 2020 so it isn't as good as anything I've made more recently but i still think it sounds pretty good and it's honestly just very special to me

Ok it says just embittered shore but it also references a few other songs from homestuck/pesterquest/friendsim bc I had the urge to fit as many motifs in there as possible skfjksjfks but it's primarily embittered shore

2nd one I finished literally yesterday and only exists cause I noticed the Rex Duodecim Angelus motif in Normal Song Name is NOT IN THE SAME KEY AS THE REST OF THE SONG WHY IS IT LIKE THAT THE MELODY IS STILL IN F MINOR LIKE THE ORIGINAL BUT THE ACTUAL SONG IS IN C MINOR RAAAA . so I made my own remix sort of out of spite for that and then I ended up actually trying to make an interesting arrange of it :3

Don't know if tagging will work (using tumblr mobile browser version to post audio I'm fighting for my life out here) but major thanks to @eyes-and-pies for letting me experience pesterquest again with you, including tolerating my overdramatic reading of mspar's dialogue because getting to share that with you and see ur reactions was so incredibly fun