#i never even finished homestuck lmao...

[savefrog]

thank you to that tumblr post that said to create a trollsona in 2023 because a friendgroup of mine did all the quizzes and shit and then descended into goddamn madness and ended up with a goddamn sburb session spreadsheet with lands, classpects, consorts, strife specibi, THE WHOLE SHEBANG even wikipedia diving for Denizen names with THEMATIC MEANINGS and shit it was the most free and healing 24 hours of my life i think of it fondly on this day, apparently the anniversary of Cascade which I didn't learn until AFTER I dredged all this back up. mad world.

[joeyclaire]

You’re my go to source for knowledge about honestuck, so could you explain why it’s called homestuck?

it’s a reference to earthbound

[starsnores]

Not to sound stupid but…. I never really understood the “karkats blood is red because he’s a lime blood” thing (I never really read homestuck)

so there used to be a limeblood caste that sat between gold and olive on the spectrum but they were wiped out, calliope said it's bc they had special powers and that made them a threat but there's nothing concrete about why or how it happened. It's implied that karkat's blood color is a mutation specifically of that caste bc his sign is cancer, between sollux and nepeta, so that makes him lime and the extended zodiac they released confirms that.

i would definitely recommended trying to read it through if you haven't! I liked it, at least until the retcon and then i wasn't super into it anymore but i finished it, even if i don't remember post-retcon stuff that clearly lmao. if you have trouble concentrating on text there are some read throughs of it on youtube if that's easier. and the easiest way to read it is probably with the unofficial homestuck collection.

[unluckyxse7enart]

Another Homestuck-on-the-meteor fic snippet I never finished, this time a chatfic centered on Davekat - specifically Karkat struggling with his quadrant and turning to Kanaya about it. Despite being about Davekat (only semi-directly) I think my favorite bits are all Kanaya's, lmao.

���••

-carcinoGenetecist began trolling grimAuxilliatrix-

CG: KANAYA.

GA: Yes?

CG: CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT SOMETHING?

CG: SOMETHING IMPORTANT?

GA: Well This Is Rather Unusual.

GA: I Don't Mind, But Are You Sure You Shouldn't Go To Your Moirail Instead?

CG: ACTUALLY...

CG: THATS JUST IT

CG: I CANT REALLY GO TO HIM ABOUT IT BECAUSE ITS

CG: KIND OF

CG: ABOUT HIM.

GA: I See.

GA: That Is A Conundrum.

GA: Very Well. My Auricular Sponges Are Open To What You Might Have To Say.

CG: SEE, THE THING IS

CG: I'VE BEEN THINKING LATELY AND

CG: I'M NOT SURE I WANT HIM TO BE MY MOIRAIL ANYMORE.

GA: Oh Dear.

GA: Well, Humans Aren't Exactly Well Versed In The Intricacies Of Quadrants.

GA: I Suppose An Inadequacy In Filling One They Aren't Familiar With Is Something Of An Inevitability.

CG: ER

CG: ACTUALLY, THAT WASN'T WHERE I WAS GOING WITH THAT.

CG: DON'T GET ME WRONG, HAVING A HUMAN TRY TO BE A SUCCESSFUL MOIRAIL WITHOUT BLURRING THE LINES IS AN ENORMOUS BULGE-BITING CHALLENGE

CG: BUT AS FAR AS HAVING ALIENS IN YOUR QUADRANTS GO, DAVE ISN'T... ACTUALLY THAT BAD OF A MOIRAIL ALL THINGS CONSIDERED?

CG: HE'S STILL HEAPS BETTER THAN GAMZEE IS, NOT THAT THAT'S SAYING MUCH.

GA: I See.

GA: Well, If It Isn't That Dave Is Being An Unsuccessful Moirail, As I Had First Presumed, Then What Is The Problem?

GA: Is It One Of Those "It's Not You, It's Me" Things That Your Favorite Movies Are So Fond Of Employing?

CG: KANAYA, FOR GOG'S SAKE DON'T MAKE ME SAY IT.

GA: Say What.

CG: THAT

CG: DAMMIT

CG: THAT I WANT HIM

CG: IN ANOTHER QUADRANT.

GA: Ah.

CG: DON'T "Ah" ME LIKE THAT

GA: Wouldn't Dream Of It.

GA: So?

CG: SO WHAT?

GA: Which Quadrant Do You Want Him In?

CG: WELL THAT'S

CG: KIND OF WHY I CAME TO YOU.

CG: I'M NOT SURE WHICH QUADRANT I WANT HIM IN.

CG: IF I'M COMPLETELY FUCKING HONEST, I'M NOT EVEN THAT SURE I WANT TO END OUR MOIRALLEGIANCE, EVEN IF FOR THE SAKE OF STARTING NEW IN ANOTHER QUADRANT.

GA: That Is A Real Problem.

GA: Have You Considered Seeking An Auspitice?

GA: Not That I'm Volunteering, Mind You.

CG: YES, KANAYA, I'M PERFECTLY AWARE YOU ARE VERY SELECTIVE IN WHO YOU'D AUSPITICIZE FOR, I DON'T NEED A REMINDER.

CG: AND WHILE I HAD CONSIDERED IT, ALSO CONSIDER:

CG: WHO THE FUCK *COULD* I GO TO??

CG: I CONSIDERED ASKING TEREZI, BUT... WELL, GIVEN HER HISTORY WITH BOTH OF US INDIVIDUALLY I HIGHLY DOUBT SHE'D WANT ANYWHERE NEAR US TOGETHER IN A QUADRANT

CG: I WOULDN'T TRUST VRISKA AS FAR AS I COULD THROW HER

CG: GAMZEE CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO SHOW HIS STUPID CLOWN FACE AROUND ANYONE BUT ME

CG: NOT THAT I'D TRUST HIM AS AN AUSPITICE EITHER

CG: WHICH LEAVES YOU AND ROSE WHICH

CG: YOU'VE ALREADY MADE YOUR STANCE CLEAR, AND ROSE AND DAVE WOULDN'T EVEN CONSIDER IT GIVEN THEIR WEIRD HANGUPS ON BLOOD TIES AND RELATIONSHIPS

CG: NO OFFENSE, BUT THAT'S HONESTLY A RELIEF BECAUSE I WOULDN'T WANT ANY HUMAN AS AN AUSPITICE NO MATTER HOW KNOWLEDGEABLE THEY ARE ON THE SUSBJECT. NOT EVEN ROSE.

CG: SO I HAVE FUCKALL IN THE AUSPITICE PAGEANT TO SELECT FROM WITH MY KEEN JUDGE EYE

CG: AND ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT THERE'S AN EVEN *BIGGER* PROBLEM.

CG: HOW THE BLISTERING BLUE HELL WOULD I EVEN BROACH THIS SUBJECT WITH DAVE???

CG: HE'S ALWAYS BEEN WEIRD ABOUT QUADRANTS.

CG: NEVER MIND I'M RELUCTANT TO ADMIT TO HIM THAT I'M VACILLATING IN THE FIRST PLACE...

GA: If You Don't Mind My Asking, Why Is That?

CG: Vacillation Is Perfectly Natural In A Quadrant Needing Auspiticizing.

CG: WELL

CG: I MEAN

CG: YEAH, I KNOW.

CG: BUT HE'S NOT EXACTLY FAMILIAR WITH THAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW HE'LL TAKE IT.

CG: HUMANS ONLY HAVE ONE 'QUADRANT', REMEMBER.

CG: WHAT IF THE MERE CONCEPT OF VACILLATION IS A DEALBREAKER FOR HIM?

CG: HELL, EVEN THE CONCEPT OF BEING MY MOIRAIL WAS ENOUGH TO SEND HIM OFF ON SOME BULGE-STROKING RAP TANTRUM ABOUT WHO KNOWS WHAT, I COULD BARELY EVEN LISTEN TO THE FIRST FIVE WORDS BEFORE TUNING IT OUT.

CG: IMAGINE MY COMPLETE AND UTTER SURPRISE WHEN HE ACTUALLY SAID HE’D THINK ABOUT IT.

CG: AND THEN *AGREED* TO IT.

CG: BUT HE STILL DOESN’T GET THE FINER CONCEPTS OF QUADRANTS AND IF *I* CAN BARELY RECOGNIZE WHEN I’M ABOUT TO VACILLATE THEN HOW UNDER THE BLISTERING SUN WOULD I BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN IT SO THAT EVEN A SHITTING WIGGLER CAN UNDERSTAND IT.

CG: BECAUSE YOU KNOW HE’S GOING TO GET LOST IF I EXPLAIN IT A LEVEL ABOVE THAT.

[hms-no-fun]

I hope this ask doesn't come off as rude at all-- and I apologize if it does!-- but as an aspiring writer, I'm honestly really confused by some of the early choices in Godfeels, and I'm curious if I'm just not "getting it". I saw some posts about it pop up in the tag (and they WERE very shitty and rude about it :/), but I'd love to hear your explanation/take on June's big character change immediately post-realization, and especially the... "Trickster Arc", I guess it could be called? The former I get to some extent, but I'm really curious about the choice to do all THAT so early in the story with the trickster candy.

Seriously love your work, your narration is honestly a big inspiration to me in terms of how meta it gets and how close it gets to communicating directly with both the main character AND the audience!

no rudeness detected at all! this is a great question, in fact it’s one i’ve been kinda hoping someone would ask because i’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot these last few months. but i get the sense that you’re at least a little new here, so uh, yeah, hello, when people ask me interesting questions i tend to answer at great length. so strap in for that after the break lmao. also as a note, there will be some spoilers for all of godfeels here but please don’t let that scare you away, they’re all contextless and, if anything, might honestly make the rest of the story *more* enjoyable as a result.

as far as "getting it" goes, i've talked at length about the how & why of the violence in godfeels in multiple places so i'll try to avoid rehashing that too much here. but one thing i want to emphasize right off the bat is that i never intended godfeels to be an ongoing thing. you talk about the trickster arc happening “so early in the story” but when i wrote godfeels 1 i didn’t plan on writing more. i didn’t even plan on making john trans! my idea of what the sum total of godfeels 2 would be when i started writing it wound up being completely different from the finished work. i didn’t plan to make this thing so long. i didn’t plan for june to accidentally on purpose kill her friends while drunk and then retcon it. i didn’t plan on turning the whole thing into a space opera. it all just happened to me, man. i kept writing because i kept finding more interesting things to say. and it’s important to specify that when i started gf1 i hadn’t written fiction in years. i think if you jumped ahead to godfeels 3 part 1 chapter 8, no matter how you feel about the content we’d at least be able to agree that in the years since 2019 i’ve become a much much better writer. if you want more insight into how my process has evolved, i’ve written so so so much about it, too much maybe even, in the #sarahposts tag.

anyway, now i want to talk about june's "big character change." the extent to which her trickster arc makes sense or feels in character seems to vary wildly from person to person. what always bugs me about "ooc" as a criticism is that godfeels starts six years and change after the end of homestuck. let's remember that the protagonists of homestuck were sixteen when the comic ended. now i want you to ask yourself if you as you were at 16 would think that you as you are now was "in character." or vice versa! probably not, right? it doesn’t even have to have been six years. i was STILL sixteen when i started to get embarrassed of who i was at sixteen!

that should be all i need to say, but it isn’t. and it doesn't really get to the core of the issue anyway. i am not nor have i ever been interested in writing "a sequel to homestuck,” even though it has kind of just become that anyway. godfeels has always been about the meaty existential drama you can tease out through the complicated character dynamics of these fucked up traumatized gods. godfeels has always been my way of analyzing the themes and ideas of homestuck, the existential ramifications of the mechanics of SBURB and the classpects and retcon (let’s remember that i wrote godfeels around the same time that i took over hosting duties on the perfectly generic podcast). godfeels has also always been about me and my trauma. i even used to joke that june was my self-insert character, though i've seen that line repeated unironically by enough people who haven't read godfeels that i've stopped saying it. because it's not true! june is very, very different from me... i just happen to see my life reflected in her eyes.

to immediately rehash what i said i wouldn't, june eg8ert arose out of my frustration with most versions of the june egbert headcanon particularly in the summer of 2019. let's call her "hairclips june." hairclips june is always smiling, usually with smiling friends, she's wearing hairclips and has nonzero tit and is A Woman Now. as i said in my video, while i don't begrudge anyone their comfort food, this simply was not my experience with coming out as a trans woman. and of all the characters, i’d always identified most with john. also i thought, you know, these kids are SERIOUSLY messed up, every single one of them has died multiple times, they've seen things and done things no one should ever have to. and retcon! god, what a mindfuck retcon is.

those are the primal ingredients of godfeels. what if june came out and everyone wasn't chill about it? some folks say that's out of character and, idk, i guess that's arguably true. but i had friends who were very vocal trans allies who’d been in queer relationships who still stopped talking to me after i came out. let me tell you i spent a lot of time fucked up in the head over how "out of character" that was for them, to the extent that i blamed myself for their reaction because surely they couldn't be so out of character. to which one might respond, well, why do this as a homestuck fic then? why not just do my own original thing instead?

and i guess the answer is that i didn't want to and i still don't, really. it's not just about the characters for me. i like the rules of the homestuck universe. i find it interesting how it mechanically reflects being a fictional narrative. and, you know, maybe it's easier for me to process violent intrusive thoughts through a character who is capable of acting on those thoughts and then immediately undoing them consequence-free. retcon is, in fact, sort of the perfect mechanism for exploring violent intrusive thoughts because it lets us play out the fantasy without lasting diegetic harm, such that we can just focus on the existential and moral questions of the phenomenon itself. and like, yeah, that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. but isn’t it still just as valid a topic to explore in fiction as anything else?

like em or not, people have intrusive thoughts. people have violent impulses. sometimes they even act on them. the unpleasantness of a phenomenon shouldn’t dictate whether it is acceptable to depict in fiction-- if anything, we ought to take our instinctive desire to look away as an urgent invitation to look closer instead. as i’ve been wont to say for years and years now, “problematic” implies a problem to be solved. that which is human is inherently complicated. to pretend it’s all good or bad excises humanity from the equation, or at least flattens the range of acceptable humanity. all of which is my extremely soapboxy way of saying (as i’ve said a million times by now), yes, godfeels june is problematic. that is in fact what godfeels is about.

there's an extent to which i think this can be blamed on how rooted we are IN june's perspective in gf1 and 2. i don't think people really appreciate the fact that godfeels 1 is john threatening to commit suicide and almost going through with it. that's the context in which her friends react poorly to her coming out; i mean, she's literally sleeping on rose's couch because everyone's so worried about her! i think that, by being completely within june's perspective for all of these events, we don't really get a good sense of the interpersonal dynamics at play (probably because i didn't even really understand them myself until later). instead we just see people who should know better acting like dicks.

i think whether or not june’s trickster arc is canonically palatable to you depends very much on whether or not you've had a dear friend disappoint you so much that you're no longer on speaking terms.

but if we want to reel this back from the abstract philosophical, maybe it’s enough to say that we just have different interpretations of these characters? they’re not monoliths, you know. different people see different things in different characters. some folks get a lot out of hairclips june and that’s okay. maybe i was a bitch about other people’s headcanons back in 2019 when redditors were calling me and my friends abusive pedophiles for liking vriska, but i gave up that fight when the redditors got what they wanted (to harass a group of queer creators offline and out of their jobs). if someone wants to woobify gamzee, whatever man, go right ahead. that ain’t my cup of tea and i personally don’t think that’s very in character either, but that’s why i don’t read it. it ain’t for me and that’s fine. i like homestuck BECAUSE these characters can mean so many things to so many people. is this variability not precisely the thing that makes the postcanon era so interesting?

i have my idea of who these characters are based on who they were in the comic and i work very hard to keep them in character, but i also don't want them to be trapped in amber. i want them to grow and change and become different people, because homestuck itself is obsessed with inescapable absolute archetypes (ie the ultimate self, or the captchalogue system) and i enjoy troubling that. i enjoy swimming in a sea of weird problematic dilemmas. that’s what’s fun about fiction for me, you can think about and write about all the most difficult and even fucked up things you like, and it definitionally cannot cause real material nonconsensual harm to another human being. and yet we get so tied up in the question of harm anyway! maybe that makes sense when talking about marvel movies, but this is fanfiction we’re talking about. this is HOMESTUCK fanfiction. if i were to go on twitter right now and post “homestuck is good” i’d end the day with at least five comments saying “lol no it’s not.” SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE WILL HAVE HOMESTUCK AVATARS. there are few things as cringe as liking homestuck even among people who like homestuck, so who cares? i like homestuck, i like the epilogues, i like hs2, and i think a pretty gargantuan majority of this fandom are subliterate babies. that’s why i don’t engage with them or make much of an attempt to bridge the gap. i think godfeels and its cool little fandom is all the better for how much work it requires of the reader to “get it” as it were. i wish more people would give it a chance, or at the very least not immediately throw me and a lot of my friends under the bus at every possible opportunity, but what can you do? i just write. people will react how they will react. what matters to me is that it stays true to itself as a work, and that it grows with me and my audience and my collaborators. trying to backpedal or soften the edges would just ruin the whole thing, likely alienate my current readers and inevitably invite even more bad faith readings. no thanks!

some folks stop reading godfeels after june's trickster arc, and i can respect that. if you get to that part of the story and don't like it, chances are you're not gonna like the rest of it! and in that sense, i guess you could say i “chose” to have june’s trickster arc happen so “early on” as a litmus test for the reader. as annoying as it can be feeling like i’m constantly having to address this exact issue, i vastly prefer it to a bunch of people hate-reading something that wasn’t made for them. but again, i didn’t know this was “early on” when i wrote it, because i didn’t plan it to happen. i didn’t intend for june to go on a killing spree, she just did it and i as writer decided, you know what? this is way more interesting than what i had planned. and then dirk became the antagonist because, oops, june coming out fucked up all the schemes he has that play out in the homestuck epilogues. and i guess in THAT sense, the palatability of godfeels depends on whether or not you liked and/or tolerated the homestuck epilogues and homestuck^2. these, too, are not for everyone. but godfeels is not a replacement for them, as some folks like to claim (god bless them). i’m not interested in rewriting homestuck or fixing its sequels. ok well that’s not entirely true, i think the epilogues did jake REAL dirty and that’s become a big focus of mine going forward. but even then, i don’t pretend the epilogues didn’t happen. in fact if you’ve read all of 3.1, you know just how cosmically important they end up being.

but this is, i guess, kind of the crux of the issue for me. june’s trickster arc happens very early on in the story, yes, and that’s deliberately challenging on a lot of levels. june spends a great deal of time being challenged by it herself! but folks who stop there (if they even make it that far) often act like the whole story is grimdark wish-fulfillment violence or me airing out my irrational hatred of Boys (????), and that's just not true. i don’t give a shit about that. we get to june's trickster arc at around the 25,000 word mark, out of the current grand total of over 400,000 words. her violence is functionally the prologue, and she spends the entire rest of this story suffering the consequences of those actions. so if i am frustrated with this line of questioning, a lot of it comes down to the fact that if you just read the rest of the story you’d see that i have in fact had all of the same thoughts you’ve likely had. i know people who think i did dirk dirty in gf2, and i actually kind of agree! which is why dirk comes back and has a difficult, complicated relationship with his past self. people complain about certain characters being ooc, which i can certainly understand because when i started godfeels i really did not have a great grasp on them! but also, if you kept reading godfeels you’d know that the tension of whether or not someone is cosmically “in character” is a huge running theme of this story. june’s friends react poorly to her coming out in part because it seems out of character for her! hell, phenomenologically how *could* june be in character after coming out when she barely even knows who she is yet? her whole thing in gf1 is that she doesn’t know who she is anymore! just realizing that you’re trans changes you, changes how you see the world, how you relate to other people. or it did for me, anyway. risk, dare, X, angel dirk, and silverbark are all sorts of caught up in this question. and if you’ve gotten to the end of 3.1 you’ll know about the concept of denexustic radiation:

and that’s just the tip of the metaphysical iceberg. all of which is to say that this is a feature, not a bug. so it’s always very funny to me when people drop out so early on only to complain about the very same problematics that i’ve spent three years and 400,000 words exploring.

BUT. but. yeah godfeels 1 and 2 are messy. the gf3 prologue is very messy. it’s a serial narrative that has changed shape multiple times over the years, and barring a bit of polish on gf1 around when i started writing gf3 i generally refuse to go back and rewrite things. there’s a lot i would do differently today, but if i had done it differently then the story as it is today would not exist. and i love this story! i might look back on gf2 and feel like it’s rushed and messy, but i know that it was the best i could do at the time. it’s a reflection of who i was as a writer then. i live with the ramifications of that for the same reason i don’t delete the old videos on my channel from before i came out/learned what communism was: because i don’t like to pretend that the present was always present. i’m a different person now, a different writer. i made mistakes, i learned, and i changed. i will continue this process for the rest of my natural life, as will you.

ultimately i guess my answer here is that godfeels is a flawed work written by a flawed person, and the extent to which readers relate to it seems to have a lot to do with how much their flaws overlap with mine. i get lots of people telling me my characters are in character. i get people telling me they’re more in character than some canon! and it’s not that i weigh those comments as more valuable, i just see it as an indication of who my audience is. i’m not writing for people who want more hiveswap, and i’m certainly not writing for people who dismissed hs^2 out of hand. i’m just writing for myself and my friends, and it just so happens that some people seem to get a lot out of it.

i’m gonna close out here by actually finally directly addressing your question with what i think you were ultimately hoping for: some writing advice.

the rules don’t exist. there are things that can make some art better or some art worse but they are not universal. the rules are fake and if you hold every story you touch to those rules, you’re gonna have a bad time. a story is not static and it is never truly yours. you discover it. sometimes you can expand it or alter it in ways but, at least in my experience, doing so more often than not just kills the whole thing-- or at least demands a complete reconceptualization. all of which takes time, and we live in a world where taking time to get in touch with and hone your craft is considered sort of a bad economic decision. but art is what it is and it does what it does and we can either play with it or we can put it in a cage.

what i like about making art is that i am not entirely in control. i have my plans, my schemes, my ideas, but the fun of writing is just putting a bunch of characters in a room together and seeing what they do. quite often they do things i would never expect, that are far truer to their character than i anticipated. my experience has always been that the more you outline a story before you write it, the harder it is to actually write that story. when i know everything that’s gonna happen on a moment to moment level, the whole thing falls dead on the page. but obviously you need to know SOME things! and i’ll say that from the inception of gf3 back in december 2019 to now, very very few of the broad strokes of my plans have changed. if you’ve read all of 3.1 you know there’s a very specific timeline at play in the backstory of a group of characters we’ll be spending a lot of time with in 3.2. there are no questions or mysteries or whatever else i’ve introduced to this story that i did not have at least the sense of an explanation for. but these are simply bullet points that dictate the endpoint of a path and suggest something of the moral/philosophical/emotional arc that needs to occur in order to get there. the real meat of it comes out in the act of writing itself, and that’s what i’m here for. it’s a gamble that doesn’t always pay off, and it does mean that i have almost 80,000 words of material i ended up rewriting or cutting sitting in a doc somewhere, but that’s worth it for me.

if art is to be relevant, it must have the capacity to make an audience uncomfortable. if art is to be essential, it must have the capacity to demand a strong reaction (positive or negative) from everyone who sees it. if art is to be true, it must have the capacity to reflect the disquiet contradictions of simple existence that we desperately wish to ignore in our daily lives. that doesn’t mean everyone has to or should read difficult art, or like it, or make it. but it has always existed and it will always exist, and i think it is essential for writers and critics alike to learn to stop themselves from mistaking a common storytelling method for THE storytelling method. and frankly, most of the art i love most in this world is art that i didn’t particularly like the first time we crossed paths.

and lastly, never forget the inarguable truth that the audience bears quite a lot of responsibility in this equation. you are never, as a writer, inflicting anything on your reader, because your reader can always opt out at any moment they wish. if something doesn’t work, yeah, that’s a problem you can fix. art is a conversation in that way, or at least ought to be. but at the same time, art has no obligation to be perfect, or smooth, or easy to consume. the rules are fake. they exist to be broken. the pursuit of perfection is a dead end. just make shit

okay this one has gone on QUITE long enough lmao i hope there’s something useful in there for you somewhere and uhhhh i hope you enjoy the rest of godfeels if you haven’t already read it!

[galaxywarp]

you've probably discussed these things before but idk so im curious: who is your favorite homestuck character? and which is your fave from each "category" like alpha/beta kids/trolls etc?

also have you finished it? i started reading like 2011-ish and stopped shortly after the gigapause but i wanna reread the whole thing one of these days.

being into homestuck back when it was ongoing was such a formative experience for me. there never has been & never will be another fandom like it imo.

Kanaya was my favorite because I first read Homestuck when I was about 13/14 and I was realizing I was gay and I latched onto her as a lesbian I could relate to lmao. I loved her and Rose and met one of my best friends on a Trollmegle chat room roleplaying as Rose and Kanaya. Me and her still are friends and I’m 27 years old now lmfao

Beta kids I’m kind of torn between Rose and Dave. Alpha kids I love Roxy. Trolls, I’m gonna say still Kanaya, but I also really like Karkat (and his friendship with Kanaya)

I would be curious tho if I re-read it, if my favorite characters might change now that I’m older!

I read Homestuck in full, every single page (including Intermission duh) when I first started reading — that is, i read it until I was all caught up. At the time I remember Jane had just been introduced. in other words, recently after the Scratch/alpha timeline

I kept up with updates pretty consistently after that but I can’t really remember when I dropped off. I remember Caliborn’s [Enter] animation which was amazing. But then I don’t remember much beyond Dave and Dirk’s deep talk and Vriska shenanigans

I definitely know I watched [S] Collide. But I don’t really even remember how Homestuck ended (if it ever did even end lmfao). I know John opened the door. I know they won

One day I hope to reread it!

[grassbreads]

Writer Interview Game

I was tagged for this by @torterrachampion . Thank you!!

Since this is my fandom-specific account, I'm going to keep these answers mostly limited to fanfiction.

When did you start writing?

I have been writing my entire life. I was one of those kids that was convinced I was going to write a novel at age 10 (although I never got further than a couple of chapters). For fanfiction specifically, the first fic I ever wrote was a halloween story project for middle school that I turned into D.Gray-man fanfiction. I started writing and publishing fic for real the following summer, when I was 14. (Much like the novels in elementary school, I never actually finished one of the longfics I started in high school).

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

Big time lmao. A *lot* of the original fiction I read is horror, and although I've played around with the idea of writing a horror fic, I'm yet to find a good concept for one. I'm also a huge lover of long multi-chapter fics and elaborate AUs, but I publish mostly oneshots.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I honestly cannot remember ever having my work compared to specific other writers?

But as I said, I love elaborate longfic AUs yet really struggle to write them myself (long projects are my enemy), so I would sell my soul to be able to emulate the works of travelingneuritis or oxfordroulette, both of whom I really admire. I've written whole long posts before about how much oxfordroulette's Homestuck fics impressed and impacted me when I first read them like 6 years ago.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

My writing space is anywhere in my apartment :). Sometimes I write at my desk, but more often I'm curled up or crosslegged on my couch or futon. Gotta be cozy and comfy.

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Since fic is a pretty casual hobby for me these days, I mostly just kinda write when inspiration strikes (hence why I publish roughly one fic per year). That said, rereading canon scenes featuring the characters I'm writing always helps me get their voice into my head.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

I don't know if I write enough to have big recurring themes? I like writing about characters that aren't doing well mentally, but that's both broad and not always applicable.

I suppose it does always make me laugh when I see "Christmas" listed among my most-used tags on Ao3. I'm not even a christian, but I've written two fics set during christmas bc gift exchanges make for good fluff, and with my output, two times puts it in my top 10.

What is your reason for writing?

Sometimes a story worms its way into my brain so deeply that canon just isn't enough. I need to live in that world to a degree beyond what I can get from canon content alone. And when there isn't enough existing fic by others to scratch that itch, or when there isn't enough of the right *type* of existing fic, I simply have to sit down and make my own.

Also, writing fanfiction is fun :).

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I'd like to think I'm good at characterization, at least most of the time. And I think I'm good at making sure things flow.

How do you feel about your own writing?

I really like a majority of the things I've written, or at least the stuff I've written as an adult. My really old writing makes me cringe a little sometimes, but I look back on it fondly, and I still reread newer stuff like An Act of Trust and Idle God, Idol Gossip for my own amusement.

The brief answer is that overall, I'm quite proud.

If either of you are interested in joining, I'll tag @cinammonelles and @azapofinspiration :)

[fleshengine]

oh yeah guess what my dad has started reading homestuck. I haven't even been pressuring him into it. Like I did years ago but he never got through act 1, then this morning after dreaming about him having nuclear codes, he texts me that he just finished act 2. He also asked me when it gets good and I had to tell him that he's almost there. Also I tried to get him to use the Unofficial Homestuck Collection and he said installing an app to read a comic was making him think about alcohol. (He's not an alcoholic, that's my mom, he's just being silly.) hmmmm... you know the meme that homestuck changes people's genders? Well my dad is already really eggy, maybe reading homestuck would help move him along. Would be pretty sick to have a trans mom. Then I'd have THREE MOTHER FIGURES. Something something mommy joke lol. It would rock especially because my birthname was the same as my dad's and his was the same as his dad's and his dad's (yeah I'm a fourth what of it) but when I came out I changed mine legally to a feminine version of the same name. Maybe my dad would do the same thing. We could turn the name into a bigender/genderless version of itself. Then when I have my first kid I can demand that my partner let me name them my name but a fifth. lmao. God I need this to happen. Oh also my computer did that thing where its monitor shuts off as I'm writing so I've been writing all this blind again.

[hypnostheory]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Howdy, so I was tagged by @kiwiana-writes , @littlemisskittentoes and @affectionatelyrs , who I’d like to thank for being very supportive and friendly. Thanks besties!

1. How many works do you have in Ao3?

So this is changing by the day sometimes lol, right now I’m sitting at 16 fics, 2 are currently unfinished, 5 are chapter fics.

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

Again, changing by the day it feels, but 132,329 words so far. That’s about the length of A Tale Of Two Cities.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Right now it’s FirstPrince (Red, White, and Royal Blue), but I have a Good Omens fic and several Homestuck fics.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. i hit my peak at seven feet

2. and that’s the way i loved you

3. something good and right and real

4. trouble’s gonna follow where i go

5. wanna know that body like it’s mine

Combined, these fic have 4,089 kudos.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to reply to every comment, but sometimes it’s a little overwhelming. I absolutely try to respond to all comments that have more than one sentence, but if I miss you I’m sorry and I promise I’m going to get to you at some point!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Sir we write smut here, this is not a tragic writing space lol. If I had to pick I think then I think you don’t want to know me is going to have one of the sadder endings but even still it’s gonna be happy because I’m not a sad writer lol.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

All of them? I mean, the sappiest ending is somewhere between i hit my peak at seven feet and something good and right and real.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, I mean the closest is someone who said my work was like disturbing or somethingbut I think that was actually a compliment???

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

This is like asking the Pope if he’s Catholic lmao. Yes I do, it’s primarily D/s dynamics, and almost always an AU one shot.

10. Do you write crossovers? If so, what’s your craziest one?

I do not. I sometimes put subtle references to other fandoms in my fics, but no crossovers.

11. Have you ever had your fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, my partner has tho. If someone found out my fic was stolen I’d like to know, but honestly if you see something I’m writing and get inspired by it just write your own version and tag me so I can read it Y’know.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don’t think so, but I have had someone offer to translate a fic into Chinese. I’m down if anyone wants to, but I only speak English and a moderate level of Spanish so I couldn’t check someone’s work.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

So my partner and I can get very collaborative, and I absolutely run my shit past people before it goes live, but for the most part I’m doing it all by myself.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Listen I love FirstPrince with all my heart but DaveKat is my first OTP and I’m never letting those fuckers go.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably never will?

Hmm, so I want to finish that Good Omens fic I mentioned but honestly that started in a weird time and I’m not sure if it’s got legs. Aside from that I’m trying to finish everything I start! (Or at least everything I publish!)

16. What are your writing strengths?

So from comments, I’d say my prose and my dynamics. I’d agree, I think my style is based in my education in poetry, so I can for sure get colorful. And I really enjoy the politics of a relationship, so I’ll sit there and wax poetics about the nature of soulmates daily and nightly lol. I also just write a lot very fast, so that’s a strength I guess.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions. I’ll explain emotions to death but explaining how people look is more challenging. I also have issues with finishing things, which I’ve been trying really hard to work on.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

So I’m from Texas, so if it’s Spanish dialogue I’m comfortable. For the main part, I’m not going to write dialogue out word for word if the POV character doesn’t understand what’s being said, which takes out a lot of that issue for me. I think putting a foreign language in a fic is something that can be done very poorly, so I want to avoid that.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Publically? Homestuck. That’s my answer.

20. Favorite fic that you’ve written?

Oh god, having to pick between my own kids basically. i hit my peak at seven feet is so important to me, it’s a very personal story and it really catapulted me back into writing fic. I also love there’s nowhere in the world like, which is the first fic I published in this account and is a really fun work about one of my hyper interests, so if you like 80s theme parks and Homestuck, give it a spin.

I’m tagging anyone who wants to do this, so feel free to blame me and take a spin! But also I’m absolutely tagging @futureseaempress 💖

[coridallasmultipass]

well one of family never ends' author's other fics is the epilogue of course ;) but ipgd also wrote people don't do that (alphacest), homestuck watches boku no pico, and like the first uucest fic

YAASS OMG.

ANON.

Thank you.

Deeply and truly thank you. Saved me a real pain. It was People Don't Do That. Gonna reread it ASAP. I don't remember if I read the uucest one, but I powered thru a lot of fics while I was sick in Jan, and I don't remember like 90% of those two weeks. (Like, as I'm going thru the tag I'm reading now, I'll see something unclicked and go to read it, finish the fic like OMG SO GOOD, and then scroll a little more and I see my name at the top of the kudos list and it's like, wait, when tf did I read this? It was when I was sick.)

Ughhhh. I ADORE the dynamic of whichever younger Strider being the instigator, and it fits Alphacest so deliciously. (I don't even know what to say here without being so fucking overtly horny for Alpha Dave in general but that's not new lmao.)

But seriously, the scene on the roof where Dirk took Dave's underwear, like. I died. There's no other way to put it. It fucking killed me. I'm going to remember that forever, it was so good.

[teethw0lf]

I had the horrific idea to get high and write about Mista and Narancia getting high using a concept I had already joked about with a friend and this is how it turned out. I wrote it in notes app so I’ll just copy and paste it 💀.

Pizza Heroes

Five edibles. Five. One two three four five. That was the bet. If Mista and Narancia could not finish watching “Low Quality Family Guy Memes” without even so much as cracking a tiny baby smile. The tiniest of all smiles ever in the whole world. They’d have to wake up in the morning and take 5 edibles or more. They’d never done more. But they did today. Fuck them. They were underestimating their power. They were gonna prove them wrong so good. Holy fuck LMAO.

So it was five. That was the requirement. But no. What they took was 10.

Narancias muscles had just started to go on strike just as the both of them got epic fnaf ninja mr. beast jumpscared by Mistas phone. It was loud as all hell and it almost had a rude ass tone to its voice, like it was going “HEY YOU PIECE OF ASS POTHEADS PICK UP NOW.” so naturally mista picked it up, while Narancia stared on in bewilderment only properly described by a cursed emoji reaction image from the depths of Gen Z Pinterest.

“Oh hell- nah. Oh sorry haha. No I was talking to somebody else. Um I’m sick. Cmon- dude ok alright uh. Ok.”

Mista hung up.

He faced Narancia with a look of horror.

They faced eachother with a look of horror.

Only properly described by two cursed emoji reaction images from the depths of Gen Z Pinterest.

Oh god oh fuck.

“Narancia we gotta go to work dude.”

They weren’t even all the way high yet but the thoughts in their brains were already falling out of their nostrils and also ear holes as soon as they formulated, leaving no time and no ability to maintain a proper conversation with anything and anyone. Including the house fly that was annoying them.

“Hey MOTHERFUCKER”

Narancia threw a gnarly punch at the fly but it landed on mistas huge tit.

“AAAAUUUGGGGHHHHHHH’!!!!!!!!!”

He threw his hands up in agony like that one cursed emoji reaction image gif thing where the emoji disintegrates away while holding its hands up and making a face of true and utter distraught.

“Sorry bro. There was a fly.”

They managed to drive to work by sheer luck and sheer luck alone. Narrowly missing a cruel and painful death several times over and somehow not really realizing it unless the other car honked then it was “WOAH FUCK!!!!!”

Dominoes

Expensive ass overrated pizza. Mista and Narancia thought their pizza was just any ass pizza and that that good and definately not $45 for like a medium pizza or something fuck them. But they worked there so whatever.

After clocking in, the two of them put on their dominoes pizza hats with the anime lines behind them and victorious and suspenseful music playing and they grasped each others hands in camaraderie and best friendship and possibly maybe a homestuck romance reference or something really fucking nerdy and cringe and gay like that and they posted up behind the counter. Alone as the fly in Narancia and Mistas house thought it was when Narancia punched it into a tit that must have been like a gigantic and majestic mountain to that tiny little fly. Death by boob mountain. That is hilarious Narancia decided and he randomly doubled over and lost his shit laughing. He could not hold it in. He could not even try to hold it in. He couldn’t. It just came out like vomit except it was laughing. What was he laughing about? Idk honestly I myself can’t remember what I just wrote so you put two and two together okay? Ok.

Narancias laughing made Mista start laughing too.

“Bro stop that you’re making me laugh”

He said with a breathless “heeheehaahaa”

Omfg he sounded just like a donkey.

Narancia was laughing like that chimpanzee at the campfire named Sugriva when asked “is it dinner time”

“Hey mista. If you had a fursona do you think it would be a donkey?” He asked, giggling.

“A donkey? Fucking why.”

Mista asked pretending to be offended because technically he was being called an ass. But ass is a butt and that’s fucking hilarious oh my gods.

The gods are probably shaking their heads at them right now as they stand there making stupid jokes and forgetting what they were supposed to do right here and now. Unbeknownst to them both they are ignoring several orders and are both standing behind the cash register and 4 people have come and and then left after seeing these weirdo loser furries talk about their fursonas.

“Mine would be a chIIIMP-“ Narancia couldn’t finish that last sentence before he started laughing again and it forced the tail end of his sentence to get all loud and yelly. Fuck chimps are so fucking funny. They are so fucking silly and they make loud screaming sounds and it’s hilarious.

“Nah!! Chimps are scary! Buff as hell. Stronger than any man.” Said Mista.

“I’m hungry” said Narancia.

“Oh wait FUCK OH SHIT.”

They both turned their heads so fast the air went through their ears and made a SHOOSH sound.

They’ve been sitting here ignoring 10 orders.

Mista and Narancia scramble into the kitchen like shaggy and scooby doo. Or more like shaggy and shaggy because they are both human men and not a dog. Mista pulls out his Bluetooth speaker and it starts playing his playlist for work. They are not actually allowed to do this but nobody is here not even a manager so fuck those bitches.

They make artful and beautiful pizzas. Narancia sways back and fourth while putting toppings on his pizza to Slow Dancing In The Dark by Joji.

The music fills him with such a floaty and blue emotion. Oh it was so pretty. And sad. Slow dancing is such a pretty name for a song. Slow dancing in the dark. That was just classically romantic and so so lovely. It was roses and dewdrops and a faun stumbling in the rain with an arrow in its back.

Damn it NO this fic is supposed to be funny, Narancia thought, the fourth wall being held in his determined and angry grasp and shaken by the throat. This will NOT become an angsty crush fic.

But then, suddenly, Mista turned around to face Narancia and he said “I want to talk to you about something I saw the other day and it’s really interesting and cool.”

Narancia nodded. Still schmoovin except the song has changed to “Fourth Of July” by Sufjan Stevens.

“No what change the song Mista this song makes my eyes water.”

“I was trying to tell you something hold on-“

“Mista my heart is SENSITIVE AND MUSHY!!!!”

“Okay okay fine”

“Alright tell me”

“Okay Narancia so there is this thing called homestuck-“

Narancia was trying to listen to Mista but he was too busy on trying to make sure the pizza didn’t look like it was made by a person who was extremely high. Oh shit. What if they could tell based off of the pepperoni symmetry.

The phone started ringing. Oh fuck. Oh shit. Wait how long have we been making these pizzas. Just two pizzas. No way….an hour? Oh fuck. No no no.

He picked up the phone.

“This is Pizza”

They hung up.

Mista was laughing at him.

“Mista we are going to get fucking fired I’m so scared bro I’m so fufkced I’m so fucked oh fuck.”

Mista was reminded of the vine with the kid slamming the oven to the beat while his dad plays the horn and they are wearing sunglasses. He thinks about imitating the horn tune and slamming the oven to the beat like the video to make Narancia laugh and stop getting scared, but he didn’t wanna break the oven. What if he was accidentally too rough. So he just went

“Doodoodoodoodoodoodooodoodoofooodoodoodoo”

“Mista what are you doing. Holy fuck we have like. A million orders.”

Narancia started shaking his hands next to his head and pacing and sobbing and crying.

Mista didn’t like seeing Narancia cry! Oh no? His friend. He had to create a distraction. Woah man his muscles were totally not having it. His brain was just a big playdough mound bumpin around in his skull. It was like he was made out of lead. His tounge and his fingers were getting numb and tingly. Yo he was SO high. Woah. Uh oh. Oh no.

Right distraction.

“Okay Narancia so like listen this might make you feel better. So theres this thing called homestuck and there are humans and trolls and they play a game. And theres different kinds of romance but I can’t remember the one that makes me feel about-“

Oh fuck he almost said ‘you’. Narancia can’t know that Mista was totally mega cringe down for him?!!!!!!!

“About this person I think is pretty cute and stuffs.”

His story was not helping Narancia. In fact he was sitting on the floor rocking back and fourth and sobbing but almost completely silent with his mouth hanging open and his eyes squeezed shut like he’s a toddler that fell down and it hurt. The door rang. Oh shit. He tried to pretend like Narancia wasn’t losing his mind behind the counter.

It was Trish.

“Why the fuck are you guys at work like this.”

“Because they wouldn’t let me call out big cheese says I’ll get a write up.”

“You guys look like you’re totally pulling this off and having absolutely no problems. Where is Narancia.”

Trish looked like an emotion Mista couldn’t comprehend. Like dorcelessness. Or maybe she was being sarcastic. Shit was he autistic?

Narancia tried to say “I’m here.” from behind the counter but he only made a sad sobbing sound.

Trish peeked from around the corner at him and he almost got ejected from his body.

“AAAUGH!!!”

he sounded just like Darwin from the amazing world of gumball.

Oh fuck his heart. It was so fast. Holy shit he can’t swallow. It’s like he can’t swallow what if he starts choking. What he he has a SEIZURE!! oh-

“Mista I think Narancia needs to go home.”

Trish poked Narancia like he was a roadkill.

“I need to go to the hospital guys. Can you overdose on weed? I think I’m dying. PleSe don’t let me die.”

“No you can’t overdose on weed, Narancia, oh my fuck- Mista. MISTA.”

Mista was thinking about troll romance.

Then Fugo walked in.

“Did you get the pizza or what it’s been fucking 35 mins- oh my fucking god why are you guys at work.”

“Fugo please tell Trish I could be having heart failure!!!!”

Narancia wailed.

Trish rolled her eyes so hard that it looked like it hurt and it probably did because she rubbed them after.

“Oh god you guys I swear I’m not crazy. Was our shit LACED!?”

Fugo scoffed “no you fucking idiot you took ten fucking edibles that’s what’s going on here.”

“Fugooooo” Narancia wailed.

Trish and Fugo looked at Mista who was staring off into space still standing behind the counter and thinking about troll romance. He couldn’t wait to tell his friends all about this new cool and very much brand new thing called homestuck.

Fugo leaned over to see the absolute state the kitchen was in. As expected there was a burnt pizza in the oven and a pizza that was halfway made and stil frozen halfway falling off the counter. The speaker was playing “DICKE TITTEN” by Rammstein. Ah hell yeah. This was fugos groove he loved pissed sounding German men singing industrial metal.

[charmikarma]

i'm crazy cuz sometimes i get so painfully nostalgic for the innocent wonder of early homestuck. like so nostalgic it makes me physically ill. and like i could go back and reread it again i guess, even though i just finished my reread a month ago lmao, but i would get to the "you have a feeling it's going to be a long day." page and i'll just cry instead. but anyway it's never the same when you know where it's going and like homestuck is not even that sad of a comic but the last few hundred pages still make me feel sad because they feel like an illusion because the epilogues pretty much disregard them. and like i love the epilogues but holy fuck do they sour those last conversations of homestuck for me. and also they're so depressing. and they make the note of desolation page i mentioned above so. like. like they put that page SO into perspective it hurts. wow what the fuck did i just type

[davekat-sucks]

Do you believe, or would like to believe, that they're really still working in HS^2?

Cuz if their plan is to really post all of it at once, then it would make sense it's taking an inhumane amount of time. Tons of nonsense text, pristine art devoid of heart, maybe another two gifs if we're lucky. Maybe one animation if the weather is nice and they're in a good mood. And the dead silence is sadly common for anything Homestuck since a long while ago, so I can't help but wonder.

Personally, I like to think it'll be finished someday. Not because I care, b-baka, but because I am very interested in seeing what sins against fiction they wrote, what punches against their audience they can throw, what dirt they chose to bury what's left of what was once supposed to be Homestuck.

And if they just never do: Oh no. What a shame. Anyway. I got so many fanfics to read, arts to reblog, little gray aliens to ship. Sorry for your loss, Hussie, lmao.

With news that Homestuck^2 was only made to pay off the debt to Viz Media, they might be consulting how to justify or deny such allegations. Which is taking them even longer to share everything they had planned out. Andrew Hussie and WhatPumpkin's reputation has been going down the drain throughout the years that it's hard to really trust them. I'd be damned if any one of those guys came to SAHcon this year to announce Hiveswap Act 3 and nobody, whether it is the people in the con, WP, or audience, tries to bring up about Homestuck^2 or Viz Media. It would suck if a revelation like that would soon be brushed under the rug as if it never happened or matter. Part of me doesn't think they are and I wish they would just announce they canned the project entirely instead of leaving it up in the air and speculation. If only because they want to focus on other things like Hiveswap Act 3 or they genuinely don't care about the Homestuck series anymore.

[carochinha]

19 Questions for Fic Writers!

I got tagged by @storybookprincess, thank you so so so much!!!

1. How many fics do you have on AO3?

Roughly... 16. That's not bad. Quite a respectable number!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

328,674

Damn. That a lotta word. Wild to think a third of those words are from a single fic huh

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Bit of a lot of things. Hunter x Hunter and Daiya no Ace are my big ones, but I've also written for Kingdom Hearts, Haikyuu, Black Clover, Project Sekai and....... Homestuck.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

"A Very Hisoka Wedding" stands head and shoulders above anything else at 1,143 kudos, which is legit insane. This fic isn't close to being my best. It isn't close to being my most innovative. It isn't even the longest! And yet it has more Hits, Kudos and Bookmarks than anything else I've ever written. Wild. Following that, we have "(Country Roads, Take Me)Home for the Holidays" at 365, my actual magnum opus so far, "Kiss Me Once, Kiss Me Twice" at 321, a short Black Clover ficlet that somehow keeps getting love, "Weekend at Leorio's" at 295 and "Pink Love" at 256.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I used not to respond to comments, but in the past couple of years I've been trying to respond to every comment I get. I like getting responses to my comments when I post on other fics, so I also want people to get that happiness. Besides, it's only polite!

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

...what is angst, signed, a permanently happy ending girlie.

Anyway it's probably "Quadratum Has Pocky", a KH drabble I wrote for Pocky Day which did not leave me with a lot of space for happy endings.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Literally all of them LMAO

But I guess "Red Eyes, Take Warning", my HxHBB fic this year gets special mention by giving Kurapika, the fandom's tragic boy, a happily-ever-after.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Sometimes. Home for the Holidays got a couple of comments once we got to the spicy part about how I should have tagged which character topped. That was wild. I'm talking like, HUGE paragraphs.

But not usually, no.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I did once! It was the vanillaest M/M ever written, but I sure did write it!

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I do really like inter-sports-anime crossovers. I once wrote a Haikyuu x Daiya no Ace ficlet that was quite fun!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not since I was 15 doing it myself translating my terrible Digimon fics into English lmao.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Favourite is a complicated word. All-time, however, isn't.

I've been an Akuroku girlie since 2005 and by GOD I will persist.

(the ship I most wish would become canon, however, is also from KH, but it's Soriku, which I've never even written about.....yet)

14. What’s a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

My Hunter x Hunter Praxis AU.

Huge AU, spanning five years, each of which focusing on a different set of characters, with highly specific references to a highly specific university culture from my country that like two people reading would understand. It's also technically a Reincarnation AU.

Yeah I'm never getting that written.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Apparently, characterization and making my character actions and plots seem believable in the context of canon. Which is good, because I really do strive for character voice matching the original, so I'm happy with this assessment by my readers LMAO

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

DESCRIBING ACTION.

If I ever have to write an action scene, I just don't. There is no combat in my fics, not because I dislike it, but because I can't write it lol.

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Have done it. Will continue doing it when I find it appropriate. Helps when the POV character also isn't supposed to understand the language, because then you're just on the same page :D

18. First fandom you wrote for?

Digimon Adventure my beloved <3

(the fics themselves are also beloved, because although they're bad, I can see where I came from and how that shaped me into the writer I am today. My bad fics are a part of me and my journey just as much as my 100k word epics are.)

19. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Pausing + looking off into the distance.

You do realize this is an impossible question?

All the fics for me are... connections, within myself and with the people around me. Writing each one was a battle of finding the right words within me, the joy of sharing little snippets with friends, asking for help and bouncing off ideas. Listening to music and building the plot in my head as I walk, thinking about it as I fall asleep. Pouring my longing, my affection, my grief, and my hopes into these words, trying to connect with whoever will read them.

So I guess I'll say it's "All The Things He Said". It's the first fic I wrote for Daiya no Ace, a fandom I knew no one in. And I needed a beta. Trying to find that beta actually led me to finding one of my best friends, so I'm very thankful to this fic.

Anyway, tagging people! I'll tag @wingsonghalo because she had to read my bad Digimon fic and @tomioneer because of all I said in the last question!

[cmdonovann]

quantum break appreciation month: a quick retrospective

so, first of all, wow, it was WAY more effort than i thought to just POST SOMETHING EVERY DAY. i put a lot of pressure on myself to only post The Good Stuff to this blog, and boy golly is my standard of "good stuff" higher than it ought to be! so this has been great practice for me in "finished is better than perfect."

second of all, i wanna put together a quick rundown of everything i did this month!

Announcement post

April 1st: My Bleeding Clock (My Immortal AU) fanfic for April Fool's Day

April 2nd: Playlist to go with My Bleeding Clock

April 3rd: Sketch of 2010!Beth

April 4th: Sketch of Jack and Beth

April 5th: Reblogged my old post about last year's anniversary zine, as well as a new little sketch to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the game's release

April 6th: Doodle of Beth in a skirt (with pockets!)

April 7th: I literally just posted a passage I like from the QB:ZS novel

April 8th: Started posting old art... completed set of the halo series here!

April 9th: More old art (Jack/Paul this time)

April 10th: More old art, LNEHH edition

April 11th: More old art, Will Joyce edition

April 12th: Some Jack/Paul art to celebrate me and my husband's anniversary :3c

April 13th: QUANTUM BREAK HOMESTUCK AU!!!

April 14th: Surprise! it's even more old Jack/Paul art!

April 15th: Wow! I can't believe it's more Jack/Paul art!

April 16th: Apparently I was busy this day because I just reblogged LNEHH, lol

April 17th: Quantum Break characters, but as Skyrim characters

April 18th: Some blinkie gifs I made using blinkies.cafe

April 19th: A sweater I made using the linocut stamps from last year's anniversary zine

April 20th: Another blinkie gif, hehe

April 21st: Meta post about color palettes and color usage in Quantum Break

April 22nd: A little QB divider I made for my fansite (WIP)

April 23rd: Some terrible glitter gifs, also for the WIP fansite

April 24th: Minecraft skins of a bunch of QB characters!

April 25th: I was also apparently busy this day, cuz all I did was make a stupid phone background for myself XD

April 26th: Took a swing at pixel art

April 27th: A promo for the Quantum Break Discord Server I run!

April 28th: Wrote another chapter of My Bleeding Clock...

April 29th: Art of Jack and Paul :3

April 30th: Started a new longfic: The Symmetry of Fear!

holy shit. that's a lot. i am retroactively impressed with my past self for doing all this, lmao. nice.

third of all! i wanna note that i started several projects this month that i have yet to finish. of course i'm not confining my quantum break posting to one month of the year (impossible) but i will take my time finishing the... uh... three fics and two meta essays i have unfinished, as well as the fansite i am working on. i want these to be GOOD, so i'm not going to rush them. i'm glad this month gave me to juice to finally get these projects started, though!

and lastly... why did i even do this project/event in the first place?

well... good question. i imagine i'm not the only one who has been Going Through It for a while now, and i just... really needed a big project to focus on for a while. and quantum break is like, one of the only things that i never get tired of thinking about, so... are you seeing my logic here?

all that said, i do genuinely want to work on putting more love out into the world. and i love quantum break! i want other people to love it too! (or at least, i want other people to look at my passion for it and be like "i dont go here but you keep doing your funky little thing my man," you know what i mean?)

so, big thanks to everyone who has encouraged me this month, whether it be in reblog tags, in the quantum break discord server, or elsewhere. also, big thanks to my husband, who i would not have married if not for our mutual obsession with quantum break, and who is always down to listen to me talk about my various theories and fic ideas. and finally, a big thanks to remedy, for making this dumb game that i love so so so much.

[hms-no-fun]

number six for the Homestuck ask meme!!!

what got me into homestuck? ah, it's... [long dramatic pause] complicated

i didn't read homestuck start to finish until i think near the end of 2015, finishing sometime in spring 2016. that might be a little early in the timeline though? it's hard to say. my best friend at the time urged me to read it because he was obsessed, and this was around the time of that "is homestuck the modern ulysses" video and the michael lutz homestuck piece for vice, so there was a lot of-- wait hold the fuck the phone, that idea channel video came out in 2012 and that lutz article came out in 2019???? dude what lmao okay well i'm officially an unreliable narrator

point is he got me to read it and i did and i loved it but i didn't really understand a lot of what happened. then my friend and i had a big falling out (which served as a partial inspiration for dave's reaction to june in godfeels 2.1), and it wasn't until late 2018 that i encountered a lot of the homestuck renaissance material that would reshape my understanding of the comic to what it is today.

but the funny thing? i actually read problem sleuth when it was still ongoing! might've even read jailbreak before that? in the early 2000s i read a looooooooooooooot of webcomics, and i'm ngl that's a huge foundation of my sense of humor. ryan north, kc green, david malki, kate beaton, meredith gran, allie brosh, a bunch of others... and i mean, god, of course i read ctrl+alt+del, penny arcade, vg cats. the awful christian furry opus JACK (which i read years before sandman, unfortunately for me). andrew hussie was right in there with that milieu, so i always thought of them as just like... Another One Of Those Guys. so many folks from that scene emerged out of the same online edgelord gamer subculture that birthed the true classics of Adult Swim. so when i got older, stopped reading webcomics as much, then got back into homestuck, i was kind of shocked to see how reactionary people were about hussie's past? that was just the scene, man. and andrew, like everyone else in that scene whose work remains relevant, grew right the fuck out of it. that growth is a big part of what i love about homestuck, because the arc of the kids learning to be less awful over the course of its runtime very much resonated with my experience growing up and out of that scene.

i think there's a lot of stuff in early homestuck especially that can be tough to understand because it's so rooted in that early internet culture, when gamers were nostalgic for point and click adventure games and thought they'd never see one hit the mainstream ever again. ah, what innocent times... unfortunately it turned out that point and click adventure games were never good and that's why homestuck is a documentary