#kankri whos never been allowed to say no

[dalishthunder]

The Negotiating Table

Rate: Explicit Pairing: Cronus Ampora/Kankri Vantas Words: 1,539 Power Bottom, Degradation, Kink Negotiation, Use of Safe Words

100d under the cut

You can feel him inside of you, writhing, undulating like a little slice of human heaven. You want to sing, but all you can do is hum against the ball gag in your mouth, drool dripping uncomfortably down your chin, but then he says something. He always fuckin says something. He can never keep that big mouth of his shut for more than a moment.... But you- you don't mind. You don't mind-

He says your name and you try so hard to fixate on that. Just that. But he won't shut up. And you....

Your name is Cronus Ampora, and right now you really wish it wasn't.

This was supposed to be fun. When Kankri had asked you to help him understand the physicality of relationships, you had imagined something sweet as your first time.... Together or course. Because you were a real romantic guy who got tail on the regular and... yeah even in your head that sounded fake.

But sweet little overbearing Kankri? It should have been gentle and... and... not with your hands bound to your horns because, yeah, you were into that shit but you'd always imagined your first time being more... magical? No. Magic was fake and stupid. Even in daydreams.

Not that you'd complain though. You were Cronus fucking Ampora and you were having the time of your life... right? So what if he yelled at you when you tried to touch him? It was fine as long as he was touching you. So what if he had some kinks that really didn't do it for you? His bulge certainly was....

"You really do give highbloods a bad name when you act like this, Cronus." You wish you could see him, see that stupid smile on his face. The mocking one. You'd called him out the first time, never figured him for the kind of person with a degradation kink. He was so high and mighty and preachy though... maybe it wasn't such a stretch for him to be like this.

Now he just had you muzzled with a gag in your mouth so you couldn't talk back. You could if you really wanted to... It was just made of plastic, you could easily crunch it if you needed to. Not that you would need to because you were having a blast-

"You really must be ever so desperate to let a mutant penetrate that nook of yours; Honestly such desperation is quite unbecoming. It's fortuitous for you that I'm so beneficent isn't it?" He absolutely purred. "After all, could you imagine what your fellow caste-mates would have to say if he knew you were debasing yourself so?"

Debasing.... How were you debasing yourself? You were getting fucked, right? That was the opposite of debasing. That was basing. You were based.

So why did it matter what other people thought? Why should you ca-

"I wonder what your lusus would say if it knew just how much of a degenerate you were? Human kin and mutant chaser.... You probably want to be filled up like a little mammal."

Even just in your mind the look of abject disappointment on pops' face was palpable. Your lips peeled back in a grimace because this was heading towards some very unsexy territory which was really problematic because he had his bulge up your nook and you really wanted to get off.

If only you could get him to shut up for a glubdamn minute.

"Or even our peers, could you imagine what they would say about us if they knew?"

Probably 'About time!' or 'Good for them!' or something like that or-

"The gossip. 'How could someone as discerning as Kankri bring himself so low to mix slurry with the desperate Cronus Ampora?' Not that anyone will ever know, will they."

The heat of his skin lit a fire along your jaw. The first time he'd touched you outside of tying you up. It hit you dead on like a scuttlebuggy cruising full speed. This was the first time he'd touched you and...

And you were going to bite him. You were going to sink your teeth into that little neck of his until there was ruby red rivulets running down your chin. Claim him so thoroughly and visibly that he would be forced to admit to everyone he was fucking you.

"I'm not even sure I'd have an answer for th-"

The dig of plastic along your gums brought you back to reality.... You opened your mouth, the remains of the ball gag falling out... And all you could do was let out a shaky breath.

"Xylophone."

Your own voice surprised you. After all, you'd told yourself you were tough enough, you could do this, you could... dear glub you just wanted him to touch you and.... It felt shameful pulling it out.

Kankri on his part immediately stopped moving. Probably just as uncomfortable as you were now. Fuck, you shouldn't have pulled out the safe word you should have just let him get you off then maybe ghost him.

Haha ghost him.

Because you were both ghosts....

"Are you okay, Cronus?" He sounded about as awkward as you felt and that brought you some modicum of comfort.

"Just gimme a minute, chief." You tried to put on a smile, but you were sure it fell flat. "You mind untyin' me a little?"

You felt him shift, sitting up to loosen your bindings. And after what felt like forever he started talking again. "Do you want to-"

 "Why  are   you fuckin' me?" You interrupted him.

  "We agreed to explore our interests in a non-judgemental environment."

  So it really was just that... huh....

  "Can we try something different today?" You asked, finally confident enough that you weren't going to cry in front of him to lift up your blindfold.

  He looked at you peculiarly. "I suppose you are allowed to explore as well."

  You grinned, leaning down to kiss him which he... sort of reciprocated with a very chaste, tight lipped stance where he didn't pull away.  He didn't particularly like kissing... he'd said so but you figured he got to take you out of your comfort zone then you got to take him out of his for a little while.

  Thems the breaks.

  He held your eye contact and you slid your point stubs under his sweater and he grit his jaw. "Is all this touching really necessary?"

  "What do you mean 'is it necessary?' Of course it's necessary, we're pailing!" You snapped.

  "You know how I feel about touching, Cronus."

  You pinched the bridge of your nose doing your best not to reach down and bite him like you had wanted to only a few moments ago. "Well, maybe I   like   touching, Kanny." You ground your hips against him, bulge tangling with his searing hot one. You were pretty sure that's what human heaven was supposed to be like. You hoped you'd go there if you double died.

  "Cronus, I don't mean to kink shame you  ,   but you're being very difficult and inconsiderate right now. If you don't stop touching me I'm going to have to call this whole thing off. Also do not ever call me Kanny again. Kankri is my name."

  You sighed, placing your hands on your own thighs instead of his grubscars. "Fine."

 You rocked your hips so that his bulge lined up with your nook again and slid home. God his mutant body was so fucking hot both literally and metaphorically.

  "Fuck, you feel so good." You murmured as he started writhing in you again, the tip bumping up against your seedflap in the most delicious way. "That's it.... Just like that."

  He for the most part remained silent, a look of concentration on his face. You were tempted to kiss him again, but he'd probably just shove you off and go on his way. So you just renewed your efforts, trying to get off as fast as possible so that you couldn't fuck this up any more than you already had. You could feel it all building, getting ready to  burst.

  He said something about a bucket so you reached over and got the little disposable one taking both of your bulges twined together with your hand and stroking them. It came as a swift relief, your violet mixing with his mutant candy red as he let out a strangled cry.

  You flopped down on the plank beside him, narrowly missing the bucket with your knee. "Wasn't that so much better, kitten?"

  He turned away from you, which was understandable because he was little, prudish Kankri, and got up, cleaning himself off and getting dressed in his ridiculous pants.

  He was cute.

  "It appears we may not be as compatible with our exploring as I had hoped." He said after a while.

 Oh.

  You were pretty sure that your pump biscuit  was trying to worm its way out of your throat  . "I can change!"

 Yeah... you could change.

 Kankri looked over his shoulder, a glint in his eye. "Well I suppose if you're willing to put in the work it would be remiss of me to not at least try giving our arrangement another look over."

[autumnblogs]

Day 43: Openbound

We’ll principally be doing Act 6 Intermission 3 today, so expect lots of pictures in this one!

Believe it or not, I initially didn’t like Openbound very much; I felt like it kind of dragged on my first readthrough, and generally had a pretty hard time getting myself to care about the Dancestors. They’re a pretty unsympathetic bunch.

Then again, lots of Homestuck characters are pretty unsympathetic! I’ve been really feeling that in the second half, as retrospect allows me to view a lot of secondary characters through the lens that we’re not intended to get attached to them.

That said, Openbound is actually pretty key to helping us understand the second half of the comic, I think, and makes explicit a lot of the themes that it explores, and how it builds upon the first half.

I think that the theme of Openbound as a self-contained work within Homestuck that we can use as a tool to decode Homestuck can be concisely stated like this; “Nostalgia and a desire for unity with the past causes toxic stagnation.”

So, aside from the introduction that we’ve already gotten to Meenah through the short conversation she had with the other kids, this is our first real opportunity to get to know her! Boy is she obsessed with money.

Money, like Cake, is a symbol that is associated with the Aspect of Life. As an aspect principally associated with Raw Power - the power to do what you want, unfettered by the stringent restrictions that are associated with Doom - it’s natural that Life would be associated with money.

The origin of money in history is pretty nebulous; it precedes the invention of writing, so any theory concerning its invention is ultimately conjecture. What I think is interesting about money is that the move toward a monetary economy in history mostly (but not always) happens as a result of the fact that it is way more efficient to collect taxes; the state mints standard coins, only accepts taxes in the form of standard coins, and propagates them into the economy by buying goods and services from the market.

It’s a tool of government, and even though Meenah may abrogate her inheritance, the Princess can’t escape her birthright. Money offers control, security... and power. What makes all of this extra interesting is that money is effectively worthless in the afterlife. Here, there’s actually nothing for her to really buy or spend it on; anyone can dream up whatever they want with ease.

It’s a nice bit of callback humor that Meenah has the same reaction to discovering the Thorns of Oglogoth that Rose does, but unlike Rose, Meenah actually does destroy them on the spot.

For being so headstrong and dangerous, there are ways in which Meenah is really pretty surprisingly sensible.

Lord English can destroy ghosts - this has always been a pretty disturbing thought for me. I may have said something to this effect before, but if I haven’t I’m a free-thinking Theist - raised in the Church, and largely independent in terms of beliefs, but I’m still pretty convinced that there is some kind of life after death. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much in works that have final death as a general presupposition, but it always bothers me when some kind of eternal life after death exists in a setting, and can be arbitrarily denied by evil beings with some power or another, like how some Demons and Liches can destroy or devour a soul in Dungeons and Dragons.

In Homestuck though, it fits with the themes established by the ways in which everyone God Tiers - spiritual power can be pretty arbitrary, and generally signifies very little about the moral worth of the one who has it; it does not intrinsically elevate the one who has it. It fits with its general criticism of power and the powerful, whether that’s the Mayor’s hatred of Kings, or the associating of corporatism with the worst parts of Jane’s characterization and Crockercorp in general.

Lord English has the power to destroy ghosts and end the lives of immortals not because he has attained to any kind of heightened spiritual awareness. He’s just some douchebag who through cosmic serendipity was in the right place at the right time to become basically all-powerful.

I adore Meenah’s spark. Who gives a fuck if Lord English is invincible? She knows exactly what she’s going to do when she gets her hands on him, and she’s got a plan from the outset. I think it’s also interesting the way that even though Meenah is absolutely taken by the spectacle of power, it isn’t sufficient to make her want to join up with English. Only soft power works on Meenah Peixes; emotional intimacy, friendship... keeping her entertained. All of these are the actual way to moderate her violent and dangerous personality.

While neither Rose nor Meenah is a parallel character to either Gendo or Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion (I think, actually, that Dirk is the character who most strongly parallels both of them), this bit reminds me of the way that Ritsuko describes both of them;

Rose says of herself and Meenah, “You’re not very good at this, are you? ... talking to people.”

Ritsuko says of Gendo and Rei, “They’re not very adept (at)... living, I suppose.”

The same can really be said of a lot of characters in Homestuck, particularly the ones who primarily find their identity in some form of power-seeking. Whether it’s Rose, or Dirk, or Meenah, or even someone as innocuous as Jake, none of them is particularly adept at living.

Rose is pretty conciliatory with Meenah; given her attraction to danger and darkness, it’s probably not surprising that she makes such an obvious pass at Meenah in spite of the fact that she probably knows what their relationship was in another life.

Further evidence that Rose is the horniest Homestuck character.

“you know how it is with ancestors

they just kind of hold this inexplicable power over you”

Dave continues to progress down the path of not giving a shit, as did Sollux before him.

He’s not quite to the level of reluctance that he eventually adopts, of choosing to just not engage with English at all.

Gods are, to some extent, aware of the various narrative forces that govern their existence.

About the only thing this piece of nasty trash has in common with Karkat is the extent to which they both blabber, and he helps create contrast with the other, somewhat more likable dancestors. Kankri is pretty much openly contemptible, and really in the worst way. I’m almost inclined to call him a concern troll because of the extent to which his verbal essays exist purely to make him feel better about himself. Any time it comes time for him to listen to people who historically actually suffered from the systems they were involved in, Kankri shows his true colors, slut-shaming and misogynistic.

Unsurprisingly, The Other Thief is also the vector for English’s ideology in her session, “turning us against each other to make us stronger.” While Kurloz may be a worshipper of English, and Damara may have thrown in her lot with the demon because of her nihilistic despair, Meenah (rather like Dirk!) is clearly driven toward a life of violence, and restless action for its own sake.

Now we’re starting to get some insight into Feferi’s style of rulership, which in turn, probably gives us some insight into Jane. For Feferi, leadership means taking power away from the people you’re leading if it seems like they have the potential to hurt themselves (or to be a drain on society if left to their own devices). It represents a violation of agency, perhaps not so severe as the kind that Vriska perpetrates usually.

Feferi and Jane are the sort of people, I think, who want to create a perfect world - but it’s important to them that they’re the one who’s creating that world, and less important that the world is perfect for anyone in particular. Just perfect.

https://homestuck.com/story/5288

John’s whole self-conception, and especially his conception of himself as a man, and someone who might be growing up to take on the same roles as his Father, is tied up in the icons of dadliness and masculinity in the movies that he likes.

So we should expect that his disillusionment with his past will change the way that he thinks about his future, and what he’s going to do with it. It’s a shame that this line of questioning never goes anywhere in Homestuck proper, but I’ll use it as evidence in the “John/June Egbert is trans” folder. Reminds me of how my decisive lack of affinity for the Boy Scouts serves as a nice little retrospective bit of evidence in my own trans narrative.

Based on the number of trans Eagle Scouts I know, I feel like there’s a certain extent to which it be like, a fast-track to figuring that out about yourself, like, you tried all the boy stuff and just decided, nope! Not for me.

https://homestuck.com/story/5290

Man, especially if we continue to read this section of Homestuck as conflating the characters and the audience, this whole section reads as John not just having a meltdown about Con Air, but also generally having a meltdown about his own story so far - everything he’s done in Sburb, etc. It just all feels lame and shitty in retrospect, when it was something that was kind of exciting at the time, at least up until the point where his loved ones all dropped dead there at the end.

It turns out that there was nothing particularly edifying about John’s suffering.

https://homestuck.com/story/5300

Teens can be such monsters. It’s the anniversary of Bro’s Death too. Davesprite is probably as broken up about that as John is about Dad, but it’s hard for boys/men to talk about that kind of thing with each other.

Cronus is even more of an incel than Eridan. He may be the most singularly contemptible character in Paradox Space. Do I hate anyone more than Cronus? No, I think I do not.

I won’t have a lot to say about the middle leg of Openbound; it’s relatively empty of substance, and not much that happens in it is ever relevant again compared to the first and second legs.

I like to think that this leg of the journey is, more than anything, a chance to ruminate on some joke characters who were already parodies; parodies of parodies, a joke made at the expense of an existing joke. The kind of thing Dirk Strider would write, basically.

Hey check it out, the Year of Our Lord 2012, and Andrew was starting to show some mild sensitivity in his choice of words. Just mild enough to have the lowest character in the story show a tiny bit of sensitivity himself.

This leg of the adventure does give us some more insight into Meenah’s character. Just like Vriska, she’s all about being a hardass super-murder, until she starts causing problems for the people she actually cares about.

Being Evil Sucks.

This is a really weird sentiment for Karkat to have in light of like, everything else about the latter half of the comic. I mean, he hasn’t exactly had the epiphany yet that the ideas that he has about being a leader are kind of awful and shitty, so it’s possible that he’s talking the Condesce up to avoid thinking about that. IDK.

He also immediately claims he’ll leave behind the meteor to go and join Meenah’s army, so maybe Karkat is just in a pretty low place in general? That tracks.

Karkat’s little conversation with Terezi explains at the two thirds mark of Openbound exactly what this whole thing is about.

Almost the entire second half of the comic is about examining the character’s guardians, and their relationships with them. The Guardians - Grandpa and Bro especially - are hyped up to be these outrageous badasses, both in-and-out of universe, and their ambivalent relationship with their kids creates this ambiguity throughout the comic about whether the kids are worthy, whether they’re living up to their parents’ legacy - and it’s the kind of thing that plagues them throughout.

But the thing is, Ancestors can be lame, or even terrible. They’re not really anything to aspire to, and the image of success that they project onto the world is one of learned confidence, and usually that only if they’ve really managed to make it.

Even the best parents are flawed, and instead of trying to measure up to them, growing up healthy usually means learning what those flaws are, and committing not to reproduce them.

Parents don’t suck; they can be awesome, and generally speaking, for a long part of our life, they’re all we’ve got. It’s hard not to love them. But we shouldn’t turn them into idols.

(On another note, it’s one hundred percent fitting for Terezi’s Ancestor to be an outrageous coolgirl. Terezi is perpetually anxious about being cool enough, the sort of person who is breathlessly fun to be around, who commands the attention of everyone around her, and she’s surrounded by them wherever she goes.)

https://homestuck.com/story/5340

John’s distress leads him to dream about his dead Dad, and boy is he angry. He spends a lot of the second half of the comic seething in rage directed at whomever is responsible for all the suffering he and his friends endure, dishing out beatdowns toward those responsible, but I’ve never gotten the impression that these little outbursts of his are particularly rewarding for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/5358

That was quite a blow. He knocked out like a tenth of Jack’s health bar.

https://homestuck.com/story/5387

Depending on where you’re standing some really totally different things can matter to different people. From Vriska’s point of view, the things that happened back when she was alive totally don’t matter at all anymore - only the matter of Cosmic importance that is fighting Lord English.

But the stuff that matters to the people she left behind, and the suffering she’s responsible for - especially for putting Terezi in a position where she had to slay her - all of that still matters very much to the people who are alive, which is what makes her self-conception as someone who is on the side of the angels now really... not sit well.

She clearly hasn’t changed all that much. She just thinks, as usual, that now that things are even, now that the score is settled, things can go back to the way they were before.

https://homestuck.com/story/5388

Tavros and Vriska are really bad for each other in general. Like, it’s not good for her to be around someone as pliable as Tavros is, and it’s plain to everybody that it’s not good for him to be around her either; whenever he’s around her, he apes her bogus inflated self-esteem in all the worst ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/5397

Tavros’ explanation of what Vriska does suggests that storytelling has become kind of a ritual for her - a means by which she is attempting to connect with her Ancestor, by performing the same actions she is, miming her - still the same old Vriska.

That’ll be all for now. Cam signing off for now - join me for the thrilling conclusion to Openbound tomorrow, Same Cam Time, Same Cam Channel.

[flannel-kind-2-0]

Hopeful Friends, Ch. 1, A Day

(I’ve posted this to different platforms, don’t worry)

Eridan/Reader fanfic

The soft chirping of birds combined with the rays of sunlight practically shining directly onto your face made you stir, face scrunching up into a snarl as it ripped you from your dream. One eye cracked open only for you to wince, blinding white light flooding your senses. Hissing, you rolled over, facing away from the window and towards the door. Faintly, you could hear your upstairs neighbours already living, making their day. The ones just beyond the wall near your feet were already arguing in a playful way. With soft, shallow breaths you attempted to lull yourself back into the realm of unconsciousness which you yearned for. However the warmth of the sun against your back prodded you in an annoying way, attempting to awaken you. Muttering a curse, you made your own attempt in pleading with the sun, wishing for five more minutes. Which surprisingly worked as you suddenly felt the heat retreat, you were now in the clear for a little more time for sleeping. 

Until your alarm clock went off.

Your eyes flew open, eyebrows knitted together as you promptly slapped the device on your nightstand. The world just isn’t on your side today, is it? Pushing yourself up in bed, pulling the warm covers off your body but remaining seated. And you stretched, raising your arms above your head hearing the satisfying ‘pop’ of your stiff joints thanks to your deep slumber you were so rudely roused from by mother nature. 

Swinging your legs out from the covers, placing your feet against the cold, wood flooring which you hissed once more at. Extending your legs a little farther you made contact with the circular rug and brought yourself to stand. Why haven’t you brought the rug closer to the bed before? 

Quickly you found your socks from yesterday and slipped them on. This was only temporary, you wouldn’t wear them all day! That would be disgusting! Day two of sweaty feet and other junk collecting on it!? Yuck! But they would allow you to travel to your dresser which was surrounded by cold flooring. And that's what you’re going to use them for! 

Moving through the pale colored room you made it to the pale colored, sandal wood dresser that was actually rather large, meeting the middle of your chest in height. You pulled out your new outfit and quickly changed, exchanging old socks with new ones. When you were finished you scooped up the old clothing from yesterday and brought them to your hamper, noting that it was already half way full as you then exited the room, making your way for your bathroom. Sighing at the mop of (H/C) hair which you were greeted with almost immediately after entering the cramped space. You brought your (Brush/comb/pick?) to your hair, taming the mane one tangle and snarl at a time. 

After you were done with that endeavor you pulled yourself out of the bathroom, passing the empty bedroom, noting that you still needed a new roommate, and making your way to the main room. The single large window with pulled black and white curtains was to your right, along with the whole ‘living room’ area. To your right was the kitchen and entrance to your apartment. You noted how messy the living room was, all of your art supplies everywhere across a thick, paint smeared canvas tarp. 

You brought your ass into the kitchen, pulling open your fridge only to view a -almost- empty box which you sighed at. Another chore to add to your list. There was one thing that caught your eye however. A pack of vanilla yogurt which you snatched immediately, shutting the fridge and pulling a spoon out of the drawer. Leaning against the counter as you opened the container, you began to eat.

[10 minute time skip]

You were sitting in front of your easel, sketching a fern onto the paper of your sketchbook along with other types of plants. You found this part of your day peaceful, and the pile of sketchbooks behind you would say the exact same thing. However the paintings that leaned against the wall would tell you that you deserved more than the recognition of this small town even if you were lucky for it. All for sale, even this piece. A pack for a man in town that had commissioned you. You believe his name is Samuel. He asked for all of these nature paintings which he offered to pay you nearly triple your usual rates, and you didn’t pass that up. 

Turning your head at the sketch with narrowed eyes, you began to wonder if this was even how a fern looked. With a swift movement you looked out your window, viewing the ferns that sat just beyond the glass and then back at the white sheet. It looks off, but you’re not sure where it looks off at. How the hell do other artists do this shit? Saying ‘Help me, I can’t draw the other eye’. Fuck the other eye. Help me draw this stupid plant! The unneeded groan that passed your lips as you leaned back after finishing the last segment of the leaf was enough to tell the plants outside that you are done with their over simplicity mixed with complications. 

Carefully pulling the paper from the book you transported it to your binder for the ride into town. Standing up, binder in hand you went to pick up the other three canvases. Passing your kitchenette and exiting through the hall. 

When you made it to the parking lot, you immediately began to make your way to the pre-owned blue 1998 Ford Ranger. Your head turned to the beach which laid only a couple hundred feet away. Eyes scanning the expanse of yellow and blue until they landed on what you were looking for. The high-blood troll that seemed to patrol the expanse of beach almost everyday. You clicked your tongue, setting the paintings into the bed of your truck, before putting the binder into the front passenger seat only to resume looking out at this highblood. It seemed almost like he was watching you too, but you weren’t sure, but you looked away in case. Staring is rude after all. Even if you’re watching someone who’s kind of being creepy in their own way. 

You’ve had your run-ins with this guy before. Eridan Ampora is his name and you’ve learned that he was a little bit of a-eh- asshole. A pompous one at that. But he does look lonely out there. You’ve never seen him with another person, Troll or human- not even his own kin. Looking at your phone you checked the time, thirty minutes was what you had left. 

Pocketing the device once more you started down the sidewalk, approaching the beach. A soft tug pulling at the rational part of your mind saying that this probably wasn’t a good idea, approaching the cape clad troll. However you treaded onward. (F/C) converse colliding with the grey cement until they met grass littered with pebbles and sand. From this distance you could see that he was actually watching you. However you couldn’t really see his face. 

As soon as your foot met the border of sand he seemed to puff up, attempting to seem more intimidating. “Oi! Landdwweller!” He yelled as he began his own approach, feet moving much faster than your own were only moments prior. You stopped yourself at the border, allowing him to approach, and when he was only ten feet away he stopped and you could see him again. 

Narrowed eyes behind thick rimmed glasses, Angled eyebrows furrowed together with pursed lips, high cheekbones with hollow cheeks. He looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie, minus the huge eyes and skinny neck. 

“Wwhat are you doin here, landdwweller?” He spoke lowly, obviously angry that you had even attempted to step onto the sand even after your previous encounter. Faintly you twitched, wondering for a moment why you even came over her only to remember that he looked lonely. So that’s what you replied with, telling him your observation short handedly. 

And you watched his face contort the slightest into more of a shocked feature rather than the angry one you had been used to now. His lips pulled apart before shutting again, hesitant, “Is that all '' was all he said and you nodded, quirked an eyebrow at this new behavior. Without a word he raised a ringed hand, waving you off which you just looked at for a moment before turning around, going to return to your vehicle. 

Well that was an adventure, now onto the clientele. 

---

After a five or so minute drive through town you found yourself at your destination, ‘The Lazy Bean’ Café. You quickly found your parking spot and pulled into it, putting the blue beast into park. It had become second nature for people to steer clear of this spot, after all, who would want to take the infamous (L/N)’s parking spot?! Nobody would, dummy. Leaning over you grabbed the binder before hopping out of the truck, your converse hitting the asphalt with a soft ‘thud’. You made your way into the store and were instantly greeted with the friendly and welcoming smell of fresh coffee and baked goods. You found yourself smiling softly at familiar faces of trolls and humans who were talking to one another, or ones who were just sitting there taking up the wi-fi. 

You stepped forward to the register, looking at one of your familiars, Kankri Vantas.He was currently facing away from you, talking to the taller barista “sup Kankri, How’re you doing?” You watched him jump, turning around quickly with wide eyes. “Goodness!- Oh, it’s only you (Y/N).” He had placed a hand over his chest, “Although I find your actions highly triggering, I do hope you learn that sneaking up on oneself can be a highly disturbing thing to experience!” he huffed, closing his eyes for a moment as you chuckled. A small lecture by Kankri, “Sorry Kankri, It’s a bit difficult to make yourself known when you just, well, want to enjoy the atmosphere” you smiled at the older troll who seemed to take your words into account. Nodding with a ‘note taken’ before stopping, waiting for your input. “Have you seen someone by the name of- um- Samuel? I believe that was his name, it’s somethi-” “Sammy? You vwanna talk to Sam?” The other Barista, another Ampora, this one going by Cronus, interrupted you. Peering around Kankri, smiling at you with shark like teeth. “Cronus!” Kankri turned to the taller troll, “How many times must we go over this? Interrupting people could either trigger or offend people!” The shorter troll popped a hip out, arms folding over his chest as he scolded the violet blood. 

“Sorry Kan, I’ll try harder to- uh- recognize triggers?” He raised his hand in an oath style, eyebrows pulled together as a smile rested on his lips. “That’s Kankri, Cronus” He continued to scold the taller male who was chuckling lowly. You sucked a breath in, “Yo, guys.” the two looked at you, “Still looking for Samuel here” you added. Cronus lowered his arms, looking at you, “vwell, Chief. I sawv him earlier in a booth in the back, not sure if he’s here or not nowv but, eh, he might” he smiled, shrugging his shoulders. You gave your goodbyes and then made your way to the back, listening to Kankri’s ramblings to Cronus.

---

As you pulled back up to your apartment building the sun was beginning its descent on the horizon. You rested your head against the steering wheel, eyes peering over to the binder which held four more full sized commissions from Samuel. 

Hopping out of the vehicle you couldn’t help but look out past the lined up cars, viewing the sun against the waters. It looked fucking radical, the red-orange-yellow hue that eventually mixed with blue creating a brilliant shade of purple. Soon you’d be able to see the stars from your living room window. 

You leaned up against the metal frame of the cab, not even noticing the troll from earlier shout at you from the border. You were mesmerized, eyes fixated on it like a moth with a lamp. How the fuck did mother nature do it? You certainly could mix paints together but this was different, providing light and warmth unlike a painting. Fuck you nature, you may be beautiful but you’re an asshole. “Landdwweller!” pinks and purples are so hard to grasp not to mention blend together without one overpowering the other. How can it be so easy for nature. I know it’s our atmosphere-oh.

You froze as you realized that Eridan was at the hood of your truck, only two or three feet away from you. The same expression from earlier was written along his face and you blinked at it. “Um, hi?” You smiled lightly. “Wwhy do you care if I’m lonely.” his eyes seemed to narrow further, and you could’ve sworn that he leaned in a little. You felt your body react in its own way by taking a step back which you played off as moving to the bed of your truck to pull out the paper bags full of groceries. “Excuse me?” was all you could find yourself saying as he showed himself at the other side of the bed. 

“You heard me, I knoww you did” he scoffed which you chose to ignore as you let out a low hum. “I’m not sure,” You grabbed both of the bags, holding them against your sides, “I suppose it’s because I don’t think anybody should be lonely.” you gave him a look which made his features soften once more into something different. 

The ‘really’ that left him sounded snarky. He practically followed you up to the door of the hall, watching as you fiddled with your keys. You had sighed, “Yes, really” You jammed the key into the lock, “No one deserves to be alone” turning the key you pulled it open, stopping it with your foot. “Now,” you huffed, looking at him, “I’m sorry but I’ve gotta put these away and then sleep. Could we continue this tomorrow?” You watched as he crossed his arms, eyebrows raising over the frames a little bit. 

“Fin” he muttered as you turned your attention back to the door, shuffling through it. And you looked back to him, smiling softly, “thanks dude” and with that you turned, hearing the door click shut behind you. 

[chekovs-fuckup]

100 Homestuck Headcanons Of Mine

Both Meulin and Nepeta say “hewwo” unironically. They can also replicate the OwO and UwU faces near perfectly.

Roxy loves Five Nights At Freddie’s, Undertale, and Minecraft.

The Striders and Lalondes have a group Minecraft server.

One time Roxy convinced Rose to play Halo with her, Dirk, and Dave. That was when they found out Rose was surprisingly good at it, and Fortnite.

The trolls all love Animal Crossing

Actually, everyone loves Animal Crossing.

The Mayor is the only one who had Raymond. That is because Dave gave him Raymond.

Everyone else wants Raymond.

Vriska stabbed someone for Raymond. She didn’t get Raymond.

The Harley-English-Egbert-Crocker family have a group Minecraft server, and that’s it.

They tend to spend their free time seeing what whacky things they can alchemize.

At one point they managed to alchemize Captain America’s shield. No one is sure how, but it works.

Roxy and Dirk can both eat whole ghost peppers. Rose and Dave both hate spicy food.

Jane doesn’t mind spicy things but prefers sweet stuff instead. John and Jake are fine with a little spice but not as much as Roxy and Dirk. Jade can’t have anything spicy or she will get extremely sick.

Spicy peppers, and peppers in general, are lethal to trolls, due to the capsicum in them. The first time Karkat and Kanaya saw Dirk and Roxy eating peppers they freaked out.

Dirk and Roxy have occasional competitions to see who can eat the most peppers in a minute. It’s hilarious.

Karkat learned the Alternia equivalent of an Earth ukulele before the game. He remembers one song from it and occasionally borrows Jake’s ukulele to play it when he’s sad.

Jake, Jade, Jane, and John have every musical instrument you could name, and some you couldn’t.

Jake can play the ukulele and bagpipes. Jane can play piano and keytar. Alongside bass, Jade can play the trumpet and otamatone. John can play guitar and saxophone.

Dirk can play the otamatone. That’s it.

Roxy keeps requesting that Jade alchemize cats. She has about 30 by now.

Roxy gave Dave a cat. He named him Skittles, and claims it’s completely ironic.

Dirk also has a cat, named Twilight Sparkle

Rose has a cat named Cthulhu.

Jake has a parrot named Indiana Jones

Jade now has a corgi named Thor.

John managed to get Jade to help him alchemize a dragon. It’s name is Fluffernutter.

Jane is a master at anything kitchen-y. Jake and John both burn water. Jade can cook stuff but prefers take out.

Roxy knows how to make grilled cheese and soup really well, and Dirk is good with a grill but that’s it.

Rose makes the best hot chocolate, tea, and coffee. Any drink you want, she can make. She can’t cook anything though.

Alternatively, Kanaya is an excellent cook but thinks that mixing Dr. Pepper, Sprite, and Faygo together is good.

Kanaya has mixed every soda the kids could find together before. Dirk paid John $30 to drink it. John did.

“If you open a banana from the bottom you are a disgrace to the world and we all know you’re a top who can’t find a bottom.”- Rose, Kanaya, Jade, Vriska

“Opening a banana from the bottom lets you have the most banana without eating the weird thing at the end of it”- Dirk, John, Jane, Karkat

“Why bother peeling bananas when you can just eat them whole?”- Jake, Dave, Terezi

One time John used the Mayor’s cuteness to get Jane to bake him a cake. Dave found out and was pissed.

Dave convinced Rose to knit the mayor a sweater.

The mayor loves Doritos. He always gets the last one in the bag.

Kanaya loves mixing different types of one kind of food or drink. She has mixed all the candy in the house, much to the delight of most everyone, has mixed all the soda (it now lives in the back of the fridge for when they play truth or dare) and has mixed all the cereal in the house, much to the irritation of Roxy and Rose.

Dave ate a handful of Kanaya’s cereal mix because Dirk said he wouldn’t.

Has read Twilight: Rose, Roxy

Hasn’t read Twilight: Jade, Jane, John

Doesn’t know what Twilight is: Mayor, Calliope, Karkat, Jake

Hates Twilight: Dave

Vocally anti-twilight but secretly wrote and published a 100k fanfic: Dirk

Can swim: Rose, Roxy, Dirk, Jake, Jade

Can’t swim: John, Calliope, Jane

Hates bodies of water: Dave

Trolls don’t have grey skin, they have grey fur.

Said fur poofs up when the trolls are scared as a defense mechanism, like a cat. But instead of being fluffy, it’s spiky and sharp. Trying to punch a fluffed up troll ends badly.

If you mix Faygo and sopor slime you get the troll equivalent of weed.

Calliope found archery and axe-throwing, and is wonderful at both.

Dave convinced Rose to knit a sweater for the Mayor.

Cereal before milk: Rose, Roxy, Jane

Milk before cereal: Jake, John, Jade

“Just eat the cereal dry, cowards”: Dave, Dirk

Dave had a popular Vine account

Karkat does not understand the term Yeet.

Instead of saying “Yeet” Rose says “defenestrate”

Roxy has a Tumblr account filled with things their group has said.

Kanaya has designed outfits based around pride flags for everyone.

Dave likes Mindless Self Indulgence and My Chemical Romance

Calliope likes Fall Out Boy

John listens to twenty one pilots a lot

Dave also likes cavetown

Kanaya loves girl in red

The beta trolls ancestors can change their size.

The Grand Highblood and the Condesce shifted to a larger size permanently to intimidate other trolls.

Some don’t use it as much, or at all, like the Dolorosa, the Signless, or Neophyte Redglare.

Dualscar uses it to ease travel or to win fights, and will grow to extreme sizes so he can get through the water faster. It’s also ten times easier to sink ships.

The Psiionic couldn’t use the power once he became the Helmsman.

Darkleer uses it to grow smaller, so he can work on the small, delicate parts of his inventions.

Carapacians grow weed as a crop. For them, it’s their main source of food. For humans, it’s weed. It’s poisonous to trolls.

Sea dwellers’ lusii die more frequently (possibly due to the eldritch being at the bottom of the ocean), so they started letting older sea dwellers adopt sea dwellers that aren’t really old enough to survive without a lusus.

How many sweeps a troll is can be equated to human years, but when compared to other blood castes it becomes very skewed. A sweep equals roughly two human years, but different blood castes view this differently. Rust bloods, bronze bloods, and gold bloods all live fairly short lives, so 7 sweeps is roughly half their life span. Lime bloods and jade bloods all view 7 sweeps as being a bit like their early twenties. Teal and cerulean bloods would consider 7 sweeps to be roughly 13 or 14. Cobalt and purple bloods would see 7 sweeps as maybe being 6 or 7. Violet and fuschia bloods live for thousands of years, so legally and when comparing life experience to other fuschia/violet bloods, 7 sweeps is basically a very young toddler. This is just how each caste views age internally, given that they have different lifespans. 7 sweeps is roughly 13 or 14 in human years. This is explained badly but it’s also an alien concept put into English.

Teal and cerulean bloods have the closest lifespan to humans.

Dealing with eldritch beings shortens your lifespan because of the toll it takes on your body. This means that if Rose never reached godtier she would have died earlier than she was supposed to. This also means that if Eridan wasn’t chainsawed in half he probably would have had the lifespan of a purple blood or blueblood.

An ahab crosshairs or whatever can be really deadly in certain situations, but outside of that it’s basically useless.

The one time Dave met Kankri, he decided to put all of Mindless Self Indulgence’s songs on shuffle and play whatever came on first to Kankri. It was ‘Stupid MF’. Kankri flipped his shit and Dave is no longer allowed near him.

Meenah turned it into a game to see who could get the loudest reaction from Kankri by playing an MSI song. So far the winners have been 1. Vriska with ‘Faggot’, 2. Cronus with ‘Bitches’, and 3. Meenah with “Fuck Machine’. Honorable mentions include ‘Get It Up’, ‘Big Poppa’, and ‘Dickface’.

The honorable mentions change constantly

The game is ridiculously easy to win, given that most MSI songs are A) about sex, B) have slurs in them, C) are just really offensive in general, or D) all of the above.

To win the game you record Kankri’s reaction to the song and upload it to a forum on pesterchum.

Kankri is unaware there is a game.

Cronus repeatedly hits on everyone he meets. There are two people who he’s stopped flirting with, though.

The first one is Vriska. The first time he flirted with her she kicked him in the balls. The next time she stabbed him. He stopped trying after that.

The other one is John. He kept comparing Cronus to people from late 20th century movies with greasers in them.

Roxy loves riot grrrl bands.

Roxy, Sollux, John, and Karkat started a coding club. Roxy and Sollux help Karkat and John get better at coding, and also challenge each other to break into more and more ridiculous places.

At one point, using the codes that let Roxy and Dirk talk to Jake and Jane, Roxy and Sollux were able to hack into different government websites in different universes.

This includes the Pentagon, the FBI, and the CIA. They figured out how to get news live from the other universes, so occasionally they invite their friends over and watch a different world panic.

They end up doing internet troll stuff once in the websites. They’ll leave things equating to “aliens from another universe were here” and shit. They’ll make it so every time the website is open the screen turns pink or red and blue.

One time they left a picture of a message in Alternian. When the feds decoded the message, it just said “2ollux and Roxy were here. 2ucker2.”

One time they replaced all the photos of people with badly photoshopped versions of the photos where all the faces had been replaced by either Nic Cage’s face or Danny Devito’s face.

When they aren’t breaking into government websites, Roxy and Sollux will set up firewalls for the other to try and get past.

Aradia and Federico bleached Eridan’s hair while he slept, and cut it short. They also put pink bows on his horns. Just because.

Because Sollux can hear voices of the imminently deceased/is basically half dead, and Aradia has a strong connection to death, they were able to manipulate this so they could communicate telepathically. It takes focus, but they can do it.

Dirk knows Japanese, and can understand Damara. He is the only one who can.

They have inside jokes about everyone they know

Vriska found 5 or 6 doomed versions of herself and brought them back to life. They live in a shared hive and use the fact that they are all various Vriskas to prank people to an extreme. The only one who know whats happening outside of them is Terezi, because A) seer, and B) the one who gave John the list of things to do was brought back as well and told her.

[busterofbeing]

Aspect Analysis: Life

Greetings! I’d like to first apologize for the long delay in content; things have been crazy lately. Don’t worry, however! I’ve got plenty of ideas already in the works! As I mentioned in my class analysis of the Mage, I’ve decided to first analyze singular classes and aspects. This way when analyzing Classpects I don’t have to give the lengthy explanations of all the implications of the Class and Aspect; I can just provide a quick and to the point summary and provide links to these singular analyses. Alrighty! Here’s an analysis on the aspect of Life!

Summary

Life is the aspect of health, growth, nature, vitality, nourishment, and kindness. The challenge of the Life-bound is knowing how to balance helping themselves and helping others. The Life-bound tend to make great healers, helpers, cultivators, cooks, and therapists.

Extended Zodiac Definition and Analysis

“Those bound to the aspect of Life are the universe’s healers. They are concerned with the betterment of themselves and those around them, as well as the onward march of positive progress. Deeply empathetic, they have an intuitive understanding of others suffering and the best way of righting those wrongs. If you’re poisoned, chances are the Life-bound have something for what ails ya. This applies to both physical and mental suffering, though it might not be a cure you’ll like. They also have the tendency to put others needs before their own, which never ends well for anyone, because the Life-bound can grow bitter if they feel their own self-care has had to be shunted aside. At their best, they are great listeners, caretakers, and nurturers. At their worst, the Life-bound are passive-aggressive, and pushy-they’re certain they know best.”

In summary, the Extended Zodiac states that the Life-bound are healers (obviously), and that they care deeply about helping others, and/or growth (onward march of positive progress). However, they tend to put others before themselves (Jane with Jake, anyone?), which is what the Life-bound struggle most with. They can also be pushy, as they believe they know best. An extreme example of this point would be someone who would try to help others, even though they really don’t need to want help. However, the Life-bound are still generally good-natured, they just want to help others, kindness and growth are very important to them.

Analysis + Character Breakdown & Evidence

Life is the aspect of health, growth, nature, vitality, nourishment, and kindness.

JANE CROCKER, the Maid of Life. Jane is a maid, one who creates their aspect or creates through their aspect for themselves. Jane is at her happiest or full potential when she is creating life. Over the course of her narrative, her desire for “making babies” is very prominent. Heck, she even creates life (Nature!) on her planet when she initiates trickster mode, and has an affinity for baking, particularly as her pre-scratch iteration, Nanna. Jane really is a Nanna though; she wants children, and she’ll create more life; whether that’s making children, or making food and growing the existing ones. (I hope using two semicolons in one sentence doesn’t come off as too pretentious.) Overall, Jane is a kind character. She wants the best for her friends.

FEFERI PEIXES, the Witch of Life. Feferi is a witch, one who changes/manipulates their aspect or changes/manipulates through their aspect for themselves. Witches also tend to “break a rule” of their aspect. In this case, Feferi’s rule-breaking is the creation of the dream bubbles. These allow players to keep existing as ghosts after all of their selves die, which is basically cheating death to a degree. I’d argue the ending of her moriallegience with Eridan was effectively “changing” life for herself. By breaking up with Eridan, she changed her outflow of positive growth and emotional health for herself. Additionally, she wants to redefine culling as care for misfit trolls, not a death sentence. This belief would break the rules of the Alternian society Doc Scratch had established.

MEENAH PEIXES, the Thief of Life. A Thief steals their aspect or steals through their aspect for themselves. Meenah best demonstrates this when she uses the tumor to kill all of her friends at the end of their session so they may live on in dream bubbles. She’s “stealing” the lives of her friends, but in a typical, active “I’m going to mess some stuff up, just accept it.” thief way. Meenah is still nice (if she likes you), and she wants the best for her team.

Additionally, Meenah’s post-scratch iteration, the Condesce, “steals” the lives of the Alternian trolls in order to expand her own empire.

The Life-bound value kindness and/or growth.

Like I said, Jane Crocker is still a nice person. She’s kind to everyone unless they’re not kind to her. She helps Jake with his relationship issues because she wants him to be happy. Does it go over well? Of course not, because it’s compromising her own feelings. More on that later.

Feferi wants to be kind to everyone and does what she can to help Eridan and Sollux. She’s very good in redrom quadrants, with a particular knack for moirallegiance. Even in her assumed flushed relationship with Sollux, she gives him guidance, ghosting the pale quadrant. Maybe their relationship vacillates between flushed and pale…?

Meenah made some questionable decisions in her session. She pitted her friends against each other in an attempt to improve them. Keyword: improve. While the morality of her actions was questionable, she really just wanted to see them grow. It’s stated in the comic that challenges create growth and character development; Meenah wants that for her friends, but she tries to force it.

The main challenge of the Life-bound is learning how to balance the needs of others and themselves.

Jane really is the best example of this point. Jane is kind, and her helpful nature just ends up causing conflict. We see this first when Jake tells Jane about his feelings regarding Dirk. Of course, Jane likes Jake. But instead of telling Jake this, she instead bottles up her feelings and instead tries to be a supportive friend for Jake. She doesn’t want to cause conflict and hurt his feelings. This mess climaxes on Jane’s sweet 16, in which she can’t stand listening to and providing advice for Jake any longer. Jane putting Jake’s feelings above her own was bad for everyone; it made Jane unhappy, it allowed Jake to pursue a very destructive relationship, and it allowed Dirk (and his Auto-Responder) to carry out his manipulative plans and get into that destructive relationship. If anyone ever asks about the main challenges and flaws of the Life-bound, I’ll personally print them a picture of Jane Crocker’s bucktoothed face along with transcripts of her pesterlogs with Jake on the back.

Feferi demonstrates this point in a very simple way; in fact, I’d say she’s the only Life-bound player we see in Homestuck to effectively balance her needs with the needs of others. Prior to Hivebent, Feferi had been in a moirallegiance with Eridan. This relationship proved to be far too one-sided, however, and it was emotionally draining for Feferi. So, she rightfully ended her moirallegiance with him. We see afterward that she is still happy and nice, and she managed to have a quaint relationship with Sollux for a little while. Here’s where one could argue Feferi was a bit too selfish; Eridan became more and more emotionally unhealthy, and murders both Feferi and Sollux. Hussie even stated Eridan could be considered one of the villains of Homestuck. Maybe if Feferi had kept looking out a bit, she might have been able to keep Eridan under control? Or, the more likely, favorable and concise explanation- Eridan bad.

Meenah is the Life-bound in the story that demonstrates the opposite problem; she isn’t nearly kind enough to others. Sure, she wants them to be the best they can be, but she disregards their feelings and promotes growth in a very destructive and unkind way. Her methods of pitting her friends against each other just caused all sorts of chaos. If she had been more considerate and gentle, Kankri would’ve been able to lead better and Damara might not have gone off the rails. Much later in her narrative, she dates pre-retcon Vriska. We see Meenah actually gets really bored of the relationship, and she isn’t comfortable with handling all of Vriska’s emotional baggage. She eventually leaves her to fight Lord English, which is tragic for pre-retcon Vriska at first. However, both Meenah and Vriska find themselves much happier afterward. Meenah gets to be in some action and helps defeat Lord English, and pre-retcon Vriska finds pre-retcon Terezi. Meenah sticking up for her own self and feelings turned out to have a great outcome for everyone.

Alternatively, the Condesce is much more selfish. She uses the lives of the Alternian race to grow her vast empire and doesn’t care at all about the suffering that she’s put her people through. You could say she’s doing this to create a larger world for more trolls...but it’s made clear she just wants to rule it.

The Life-bound tend to make great cultivators.

Jane creates life and nature on her planet when she enters trickster mode, she is called to propagate and bring up a new civilization in the Condesce new hypothetical empire, and she (as well as Nanna) have a knack for cooking.

Nanna is also very supportive of John, more so than any other guide. She also gives him plenty of food and makes cookies for everyone. After all, John is a GROWING boy!

As stated before, Feferi wants a world where the unfit trolls are cared for. In place of this, she spends her time pre-Hivebent taking in various sea creatures and caring for them.

On pre-scratch Beforus, Feferi implements this system successfully, caring for the Beforan trolls and helping them grow up.

You could possibly say Meenah “grows” pre-retcon Vriska in the dream bubbles, by making her open to new experiences and fashion…? Eh, it’s a stretch. She also tries to “cultivate” her team in SGRUB, however, her execution is not exactly the best. Generally pitting people against each other isn’t a healthy way to make them grow!

The Condesce also “cultivated” the Alternian trolls in the same fashion by encouraging violence and culling weak trolls, cultivating stronger trolls through a twisted version of natural selection.

The Life-bound make great listeners; when they offer advice.

Jane struggles with this one a lot. She clearly wants to help her friends, but when it comes to Jake things go off the rails before the train goes 10 meters. Frankly, it’s because she gives bad advice. When Jake goes on a mega-rant to Jane later on, she holds in all of her thoughts, only replying with fake “Mhm!”’s and “Yes.”’s. Eventually, this builds and she has to let all of her feelings out. Jake naturally turned to Jane for relationship advice; I’m sure this hasn’t been the first time Jane was in such a situation. But we see that when Jane doesn’t consider herself and gives bad advice, things go south. When Jane doesn’t give advice and just listens, whoops, we’ve gone past South America and straight into Antarctica. I’ll expand upon this point in the general analysis.

Feferi was apparently a good moirail to Eridan. However, he kept complaining and wallowing in his problems, which exhausted Feferi. She doesn’t like him constantly complaining; she wants him to not kill everyfin, and wants to provide advice and guidance. Later, when she and Sollux are glubbing in the horn pile, we see her listen to Sollux while being kind and offering advice and encouragement. This is Feferi and in my opinion a Life-bound in general, at their best.

Meenah can’t stand idly listening. Aranea has to pay her to listen to her exposition, and Meenah isn’t happy when she is constantly listening to Vriska’s problems, and she wasn’t inclined to giver Vriska guidance and growth because she herself had her own problems.

The Life-bound tend to be in and/or want leadership positions.

Jane is declared the “leader” of the alpha session, which she is okay with. On Earth C, Jane becomes the CEO of CrockerCorp, which goes hand-in-hand with her Maid of Life classpect. (Creating food/life)

Feferi, as an heiress, is naturally in line to (potentially) become the new empress. Interestingly, the true aspect of the Fuschia-sign is Life, and if the Life-bound have this thing for leadership, and Life is even slightly present in all fuschia-bloods...well, that’s a topic for another time…

Meenah is in the same position as Feferi, only she is much more adamant to be a great(?) leader, a desire that is fulfilled by the Condesce. In her session, Meenah tried to “lead” and cause conflict between her friends to make them “grow”. Her attempts at “leading” the session undermined what Kankri could possibly have done to keep the session together, and was what led to making Damara snap.

The Life-bound have a unique or at times overbearing energy.

Jane has a personality like that of a cute and fun grandma...I wonder why. She has an enjoyment for her pranks and is a fun person, but as we see in her meltdown she’s got some intense emotions. Even then, the pranking system is very impactful on her!

Feferi is almost always full of Life and energy. Quite a character.

Meenah has a very powerful presence (due in some part to her thief class) and is a very chaotic force in general.

The main power of the Life-bound is healing.

God-tiered Jane has the power to revive any player once. 

Nanna, as a sprite, possesses healing powers. Hussie even suggests that Nannasprite had her healing powers because Jane is a Maid of Life.

A dead god-tiered Feferi revives the Mayor in the post-retcon timeline.

Meenah’s post-scratch self, the Condesce, is stated to have used powers to extend the life of the Ψiioniic, something no troll has been shown to naturally do.

Other Comments and Analysis

At their core, the Life-bound have good intentions. They are kind, value growth, and want to help. If you know a Life-bound, I’m sure this is fairly obvious.

Now, let’s wrap up their challenge. I feel the Life-bound typically fall in one of two categories; they help others so much they exhaust themselves, or they don’t help others enough. I’d say the former would be the more common challenge. The Life-bound do want to help, they just need to learn how to properly balance the needs of others and themselves. Learning this balance would make a Life-bound very effective, and they’d find themselves to be much more emotionally secure and happy. (As a Life-bound, I can attest to this).

Ooh! Leadership positions! As I’ve mentioned, the life-bound tend to be in or want leadership positions- they just might not be the BEST at it. Breath and Blood are the two primary leadership aspects. Players of other aspects can still be leaders, but typically a Blood or Breath player will lead unless there isn’t one in a session. Their helpful attitude and knack for growth would make them a decent leader, however. They just might be a bit too pushy about it. I’d say this is one the better aspects for a leader to possess, besides Breath or Blood.

Hobbies and talents! As I’ve said before, I’d imagine the Life-bound would have an interest or proficiency in cooking, gardening, and counseling. This is not a rule, keep that in mind. I’d say that their helpful nature would manifest itself in whatever their interests may be, though. For example: if a Life-bound loved to do a sport, they’d be the ones to encourage their fellow teammates; they might even bring snacks or water!

Parting Words and Thanks

Whew! One aspect down, 11 more (and 13 more classes) to go! Whoop.

Thanks again to optimisticDuelist for the life aspect card as well as his analysis of Jane Crocker. It helped a lot to better understand Jane and the aspect of Life!

Thank you for reading!

[gal-liveblogs]

So let’s just start with the beginning.

So it’s not just Homestuck 2, it’s Homestuck². That’s fun. Also it has a subtitle of “Beyond Canon”. Makes sense, given what went down in the Homestuck Epilogues. Kinda wish I had liveblogged those now, but I had been too excited. Legitimately spent an entire day reading. I was too focused to even think to liveblog those.

The ^2 looks handwritten and is orange, also makes sense given what happened in the Epilogues. Dirk has his fingers all over this. How much influence will he have, I wonder?

Now that I’ve spent so long staring at the title perhaps I should get to reading the actual comic? Perish the thought! There appears to be a link to an FAQ! Let’s check that out first.

Oh man, this is bringing back some nostalgia. Putting the questions in the exile command boxes is a nice touch.

It is actual Homestuck. That is, an extension to the "canonical" Homestuck storyline,

Those are some big quotation marks around canonical, after the mess the Epilogues were. Not to say the Epilogues were bad, they just flipped and twisted everything around and made you really question what was “real” in a story.

It was designed to include the writing and art contributions from fans of the series. Many writers will be involved, and collectively they will be allowed significant latitude in shaping the direction of the story and the way it's told.

Interesting. Homestuck itself was no stranger to having art done by someone other than Andrew Hussie and the Epilogues were written with the help of someone other than Hussie. Even Homestuck was not solely written by Hussie, in the beginning fans wrote the commands that propelled the story forward. Plus we have Hiveswap, Friendsim, and Pesterquest all belonging to the Homestuck mythos but made by a team only overseen by Hussie. Homestuck 2 seems to be falling in line with the games. Different people make it and bring their own ideas to it, all while Hussie occasionally peeks in to give his nod of approval.

An "official fanonization" of the ongoing epic, if you will.

I can’t wait to see what happens. This is such a weird idea and I love it.

Oh my god. The Epilogues started off with a spoof as if they were written on Archive of Our Own, and now the recap of them is spoofing SparkNotes. Glorious.

Reading through said recap just so all the important bits are fresh in my mind (never skipped the Homestuck recaps, so I’m not skipping the Epilogue recap) and come across this:

In the heat of the moment, the two embrace passionately.

That’s an understatement. John and Terezi boned n the back of a car. Stiiiiill don’t know how to feel about that. Like, Terezi was flying around in Paradox Sapce for who knows how long from her perspective. Everyone else, including John, grew up and became adults. Was Terezi also an adult by this time, or did John just have sex with a minor?

They then fuck in the back of the car and there's really all there is to say on the matter.

Oh. So the previous sentence wasn’t an understatement. I just hadn’t read far enough yet.

But when they arrive, our hero finally succumbs to LE's venom, which has the effect of corroding a person's canonical existence beyond any hope of revival.

AKA, we really needed John to die but also didn’t want to deal with godtier revival rules.

Jade, who is now somehow aware of Dirk's influence, declares that he must be stopped. Dirk agrees with her, claiming his role as the villain of the story outright. He accepts the intrinsic antagonism of his narrative power, and has decided to carry that antagonism to its natural conclusion. He states that his eventual death will be Just.

Dirk is such a fascinating character. He has always been painfully aware of his faults. Yet he doesn’t try to stop himself. He has just accepted that he is not a good person and even encourages everyone else to give up on him. He is full of so much self-loathing and yet he does it all without any self-pity. It is truly something I have never seen in a character before.

Calliope distracts him with one final task: he must rescue Gamzee, who she insists deserves to begin his redemption arc immediately.

Gamzee used to be a fascinating character to me. I had so many questions about him. How much of his fall was out of his control? Was he to blame for everything? Outside forces? Mental instability? Then the Epilogues happened and I finally had to give up on him. I couldn’t hold out the hope that Gamzee could be a good character (if not a good person). Everyone who hated him were right all along. Gamzee is just a trash clown and should have stayed in the fridge.

As Jane joins in with Jake's day drinking, she attempts to seduce him but is ignored. Not to be denied, she resorts to using the terrible power of the trickster lollipop. The two sleep together. When they come to, Jake is alarmed by his lack of consent in the matter--Jane manages to talk him into a committed relationship.

Speaking of characters I gave up on: Jane. I never really had any strong feelings about Jane in Homestuck. She wasn’t interesting, but I didn’t dislike her. She was just... there. Had a few moments that really hit me in the feels, but overall kind of forgettable. Then in the Epilogue he not only turns into a xenophobic fascist, but she also pulls stuff like this. For all her pining over Jake she never actually did care about him it would seem. He wasn’t a person, he was a prize.

I didn’t care about Jake either, and he often annoyed me, but he deserved better than always ending up as Jane’s sex toy without any autonomy.

Gamzee has started performing public redemptions featuring sloppy makeouts and baby bottles full of Jane's breastmilk.

Seriously, Gamzee is just the worst. I hate him. Before the Epilogues the only character I hated was Kankri, but I hate Gamzee now too. This is also a reason why Jane has sunk so low in my standing with her.

They're interrupted by Gamzee, who tries to manipulate Vriska into a sexual relationship in the name of "redemption".

Now here is a sexual encounter that is without question involving a minor. Another reason to hate Gamzee.

She no longer cares if this reality is true, relevant or essential, and is enjoying the simple happiness of loving her wife and daughter.

This was a really sweet moment. Rose always did have a hard time just letting herself be happy.

Phew, O.K., done with the recap. Back to the FAQ!

Oh sweet, optimisticDuelist is part of the writing team for Homestuck 2! I’ve seen some of their stuff. It’s good stuff. Keep meaning to do a deep dive into all their analysis of Homestuck. Also Xamag is the art lead. Nice.

Homestuck has a Patreon now. Neat. Need to pay they people at What Pumpkin after all!

> Is this canon?

It's being pulled further away from direct control by the original author, and allowed to expand into spaces governed by fandom desire - a fanontinuum, you might say.

I’ve always liked the literary lens of Death of the Author. Homestuck 2 is diving head first into it. Yes, there is still an author (or authors, as the case may be), but The Author of Hussie is having less and less control (which makes sense from a narrative standpoint as Hussie, The Author, died in the story to really cement Death of the Author) and the fans are encouraged to take things into their own hands more and more. Homestuck is built by the fans and as such fan-created stories should have the same amount of importance as “canon” does.

> I just can't get enough Homestuck. I want to shove more and more of it into my slavering maw. Please help me.

Did they just plagiarize my diary?

Alright. Now I can start the dang comic!

In the next post. This one is getting a little long.

> Get on with it.

[hivedent]

on “operation blow us all the fuck up”

sources:

ARANEA: Ok then!  ARANEA: Has everyone settled down? Do I have everyone's attention?  MEENAH: attention huh  MEENAH: whoda thought  MEENAH: you would want any of THAT  ARANEA: Just stop. Please?  ARANEA: I know it's only 8een minutes since you died, and you pro8a8ly aren't thrilled to see me for any num8er of reasons.  ARANEA: 8ut for me it has 8een millenia! I have 8een waiting a long time to see you again, and orient you to the afterlife. 

ARANEA: However, I don't think much of it will make sense without some major contextualization.  ARANEA: There's really quite an amazing amount of nuance to the full sequence of events. Many different players, personalities, conflicting agendas, all interwoven together.  ARANEA: I'll need a little time to set the stage for everything to 8e comprehensi8le, if you all don't mind indulging me for a while.  ARANEA: You could say it all started during our darkest hour, when it 8ecame clear our failure was inevita8le. I took it upon myself to venture into the palace of my denizUMPH.

    please be aware that these were MY PERSONAL NOTES. theyre full of me deciding things and arguing with myself and putting ideas out there to see what sticks so i can come back and refine it when i can

 Aranea and Meenah meet up upon a large floating lily pad over what used to be their Battlefield before it was destroyed prematurely by the Reckoning. The time has come. It was made clear long ago that their session was bleak. There would be no winning for them. Aranea Serket headed directly to her denizen, Echidna, to ask what route should be taken. Echidna of course informs the Scorpio girl of a method called The Scratch, initiated only once a game has become unwinnable. Echidna continues to explain that the kids will cease to exist and will reincarnate as average people on a different planet. You know. The basic deal behind The Scratch.

Meanwhile, out in the Void, Meenah is communing with the Horrorterrors who are very adamant that Meenah use the Tumor to kill everyone just before the Scratch so that they will continue to live on in the dream bubbles (this is in part mostly to carry Horuss who is carrying Calliope over into continued existence). As one would expect, Meenah is thrilled with the idea of staying around and being immortal and in charge forever.

Now the logistics and details behind this are a bit shady, but it boils down to this. Aranea and Meenah have only just recently had a fight with each other that really shook their friendship. Aranea is skeptical that the Horrorterrors’ plan even works. Why should you trust a bunch of octogods anyway? Aside from that, an eternity of death doesn’t sound exceedingly pleasing, nor does the idea of a mass suicide to accomplish that.

The two set off to accomplish their goals. Aranea accompanies Damara to transport the Cardinal Movement to the Battlefield for their final goodbyes. During this time, Meenah has retrieved the Tumor and is ready to begin her part. Aranea and Meenah continue to have conflicted opinions on how to go about this. Aranea is excited for her new potential life!

Each of the girls have acquired half of their crew to debate what they should do. Aranea has accumulated Rufioh who claims that he couldn’t even manage to face death to reach god tier and the idea is just too gruesome for him and Horuss who says he would not want to keep on existing forever without his beloved. Cronus joins in as well, claiming that he finds it sexier when women aren’t trying to kill him. He also makes a passing comment that Aranea would give him favors for siding with her (which she did not. And if she did they were not sexual). Latula thinks that conceptually it’s not really a solid plan and there is nothing suggesting it is a good idea. The entire idea just sounds grody. Mituna joins her because DOOM.

On Meenah’s side she is accompanied by Kurloz who simply stares vacantly at everyone with a wide smile on his face and Damara who is only siding with her because she refused to be with “the cheaters” and who just wants to start the damn Scratch already and get it over with finally. Both are also interested in Lord English’s propagation. Kankri believes that he will be able to help spread social justice in the afterlife. Porrim claims she is obliged to go with him, not daring subject an afterlife to Kankri without her intervention. This is mostly joking as she also admits it might be fun to get to keep living so to speak and that SOMEONE has to protect the little guy too. There were a lot of things in her life she never felt were complete. Similarly, Meulin believes in the optimistic concept that there is much to do- even if all she gets to do is talk to Kurloz forever, it is something to do. Kurloz may have also convinced her to join him because Lord English.

The two begin to face off in whose plan should work, and who should be allowed to be Scratched if that is what they want. If nothing else even just half of them can blow up while the others leave to be Scratched. Either way, the numbers are tied and no conclusion can be reached.

Flashback time for explanations!

[calliopes soul is involved with this somehow, i mentioned this in a previous post]

(Meenah’s oven, Porrim’s mannequins, Latula’s coins, Rufioh/Damara’s egg timer, etc . Die’s voodoo doll does not count. He has had the doll since he joined. Then again so did Biscuits and Eggs. This is not important. Stop riding me.)

There is also the matter of a First Guardian. This Guardian is cool. And unlike Scratch they are neither creepy nor do they fuck up the entire planet. Though they do claim to have a great interest in watching and observing the story. This is mostly because the Guardian is stuck in a dimensional pocket. Something like the Void. They are incapable of acquiring power from the Green Sun. As such, they’re black. Fizzled out in the Void, powerless. Unlike Scratch’s lit-up white. This is in part because Horuss/Calliope’s soul was used to ectobiologically birth them. And because I fucking said so. This is similar to how Lil Cal embodying Caliborn’s soul created Doc Scratch. A puppet linked to Caliborn. Whereas this Guardian is enveloped in the Void housing an antithesis of Scratch, one who embodies Calliope. But she’s not going to explode from their head or anything like Athena or Lord English. They’re just. The antithesis. They will only acquire their First Guardian powers once they have been summoned into their universe proper.

For some reason or the other Aranea has Quarters’ quarters. Maybe from during her fling with Latula or maybe Latula gave them to team members for whom the numbers/colors fit. Also I’m not sure on the specifics of this but BASICALLY she is intent on flipping them. Specifically Snowman’s. Because it’s a double sided 8 coin. What more of this decision could I POSSIBLY answer. Now it could be a few things. Perhaps she knows what it does. And she intends on flipping it to summon-kill herself so that she may be Scratched and avoid the afterlife. With… her teammates somehow? Maybe she somehow wants to flip it to decide what they do. I do not know. Like I said. They were shaky and hazy. THE POINT IS: Aranea flips the stupid Eight Ball Snowman Coin. She uses her Luck powers to make a favorable outcome… whatever that might be considering both sides are the fucking same. Maybe she bet that the coin would land on its side and if it did Meenah wouldn’t blow everyone the fuck up.

Anyway, Damara’s sick of this. Probably Damara. Someone has to shoot. But Cronus doing it wouldn’t make much sense. So Damara shoots the coin midair. Presumably Aranea’s Luck only ends up affecting how Damara hits the coin. Because it goes straight through the center. It is now just a black circle with a hole through it. But do you know who else is associated with just a black empty circle? THE FIRST GUARDIANNNNN. So it lands and they appear in a flash, all green and white and flickerin and makin people pass out because that’s just too much.

Now their influence is only right then. They can’t just go back in history and have always BEEN ALREADY THERE. They just can’t. They don’t even really HAVE that time stuff. I guess. ITS’ NOT IMPORTANT. POINT IS. FIRST GUARDIAN SNATCHES UP ALL OF THE JUJU AND ON THE SCRATCH THROWS THEM INTO PARADOX SPACE WHERE THEY APPEARIFY WITH DOC SCRATCH. Doc Scratch then distributes them to the leprechauns before Caliborn even meets them. There. Now they have their stupid Juju. Idk, they probably do some other capricious plot-altering GARBAGE too.

Anyway, for some godforsaken reason Aranea and the crew agree to not get Scratched and Meenah’s like yessssssssssssssssssssssss. Maybe because of the First Guardian being summoned being taken as a sign. Maybe Meenah does it without consulting them. I don’t know. So Damara starts the Scratch, and Meenah gets the Tumor at the ready for just the prime moment. I don’t really get what’s going on. Basically everyone agrees with Meenah but Meenah and Aranea are still kind of bitter and feuding. However Aranea gets scared and like what if this is the last time they ever even see each other? So she begins to apologize to Meenah and

SYSTEM ERROR: MEENAH PEIXES BLEW YOUR SESSION THE FUCK UP

SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED. SCRATCH COMMENCING.

[stormpainter]

==>Tuesday

Last Tuesday at 1:43 PM

pleapseletmequiirkriight Hey uh. II waψ beIIng a fuckhead on purpoψe, and you were juψt there,  IIt waψn't. About you. At all. Ψo. Ψorry.

wickedpainter oh uh hey i dont ...theres a lot of things wrong with how highbloods is, and i am one

pleapseletmequiirkriight II mean, you weren't any of mIIne. You weren't 1 of the clownψ who trIIed 2 kIIll CarmIIn. II wouldn't be ψorry 4 beIIng cautIIouψ around you or ψnIIde but that waψ. WIIld, of me.

wickedpainter i coulda been though, i was raised to be a laughsassin,i aint that now, but i was. thanks for apologizin for what its worth

pleapseletmequiirkriight Yeah of courψe, II'm not lIIke. The AC2AL worψt. II apologIIze 4 ψtuff.

wickedpainter did your rail yell at you

pleapseletmequiirkriight Lol. Yeah, a lIIttle.

wickedpainter 'm sorry

pleapseletmequiirkriight >You're the worst person who's ever existed, holy shit. Dude no, what?? No. Not your fault.

wickedpainter Mm. people is allowed to get mad about highbloods doin shit highbloods do

wickedpainter you dont gotta know me and my story it aint required

pleapseletmequiirkriight II DON'T know you and your ψtory but II ψtIIll thIInk II waψ a dIIck.

wickedpainter most trolls is dicks really thats just how we get on

wickedpainter but yeah uh, if you need me to say the pology is accepted it is i didnt expect one

pleapseletmequiirkriight Why would you, II waψ WAY obnoxIIouψ.

wickedpainter you were but you werent wrong

pleapseletmequiirkriight Truth IIψ not good. IIt'ψ value neutral.

wickedpainter you sure?

pleapseletmequiirkriight Not about anythIIng, no.

wickedpainter me neither

pleapseletmequiirkriight TwIInψIIeψ.

wickedpainter hahaha

pleapseletmequiirkriight Your moIIraIIl IIψ wIIld.

wickedpainter he need to be told off?

pleapseletmequiirkriight Lol, no no. He'ψ juψt weIIrd.

wickedpainter ha yeah

wickedpainter whats he doin now

pleapseletmequiirkriight TryIIng 2 get 2 know me.

wickedpainter hows that weird?

pleapseletmequiirkriight II'm an aψψhole, aψ we've eψtablIIψhed.

wickedpainter hes an asshole to its a perfect match

pleapseletmequiirkriight Yeah, ψo IIt would ψeem.

wickedpainter ..I'm Antony but I go by Wicked

pleapseletmequiirkriight Oh rIIght. Hey dude, II'm Puldex. Or Ψ.

wickedpainter the Psionic, right?

wickedpainter my best friend is a captor

pleapseletmequiirkriight The ΨIIonIIc, yeah.

wickedpainter I caint make that symbol I'm sorry

pleapseletmequiirkriight Oh, no bIIg deal, lol. IIt'ψ not common anymore.

wickedpainter I seen some of the older ones talkin bout all the missin and added letters sometimes here on tumblr i mean

pleapseletmequiirkriight IIt waψ old when II pIIcked IIt, but ψtIIll around.

wickedpainter i'm headin back hive in a minute, been chattin from schoolin

wickedpainter ..hey i'm glad your an asshole

pleapseletmequiirkriight Hey.

wickedpainter riggin ruins some trolls so yeah

pleapseletmequiirkriight Oh, wIIld. Well. II would never claIIm 2 not be ruIIned.

wickedpainter that private stuff?

pleapseletmequiirkriight Nah, II mean, II don't have handψ. Alψo II can't handle tyrIIanψ, but who can.

wickedpainter cybernetics?

pleapseletmequiirkriight Yeah!

wickedpainter I know some guys if shit aint advanced enough out there hahaha most've my digestive system is cybernetics, and my eyes

pleapseletmequiirkriight II mean, II can't ψIIgn anymore but II don't really need 2. II have handψ ψo II can't complaIIn.

wickedpainter you can always complain, make'em give you the good stuff

pleapseletmequiirkriight II thIInk II have the good ψtuff.

wickedpainter you sure? cause motherfuckers will pass off shit if they think its for a lowblood

pleapseletmequiirkriight Mm. II'm not ψure.

wickedpainter if you caint sign they aint done the best they can do probably. Not what you could get with good money

pleapseletmequiirkriight God IIt'ψ gonna be ψo annoyIIng 2 fIIx thIIψ. Thankψ, dude.

wickedpainter no problem, I just seen good work before

wickedpainter highbloods dont tend to settle for 'this is the best we can do' you get even one highbloods ever lost a hand or arm then they can do better

pleapseletmequiirkriight Lol, true.

pleapseletmequiirkriight When II waψ a kIId 1 of my ownerψ had a hand about lIIke mIIne but that waψ hundredψ of ψweepψ ago. There haψ 2 be better,  II'm juψt a rube.

wickedpainter if equius zahhak exists over thataway his alts do *real* fine cybernetics work course they've got Opinions but yeah

wickedpainter his alt over Prosperty way replaced my old gut cybernetics for me when they got too small real good guy was makin arms and hands round five sweeps old

wickedpainter my matesprit did my eyes, he specializes in eyes in particular

wickedpainter ...sorry I'm babblin bout cybernetics you probably dont care much Last Tuesday at 9:31 PM

pleapseletmequiirkriight The archer'ψ kIId?? Hard paψψ. He waψ there after II got unIInψtalled and clearly dIIdn't want hIIψ tIIme waψted by the lIIkeψ of me. You're not babblIIng.

wickedpainter thats a shame, not unexpected, but a shame i dont uh, usually talk to much, todays been more talkin than usual

pleapseletmequiirkriight Lol, a blueblood beIIng a dIIck 2 a helmψman? No, not a ψhock.

pleapseletmequiirkriight Man. II can't belIIeve II made you MORE talkatIIve.

wickedpainter I been in a more talkie mood for a bit, it was a lil touchy though this mornin you wanna see somethin funny try orderin him to do somethin just any random ass thing

wickedpainter if he doesnt turn blue in the face and sputter I owe you a fish

pleapseletmequiirkriight Oh my god. Really? Lol.

wickedpainter he deserves it for bein a dick

pleapseletmequiirkriight He abψolutely doeψ.

wickedpainter lemme know how bitchin someone out bout your hands goes, cause if they wont fix it I'll hook you up

pleapseletmequiirkriight Thankψ, dude.

wickedpainter just fuckin hate them gettin away with that shit

pleapseletmequiirkriight Hey, II'm not the bIIggeψt fan eIIther.

wickedpainter yeah but you're the one havin to put up with low grade cybernetics

pleapseletmequiirkriight They're not TERRIIBLE.

wickedpainter your standards are low

pleapseletmequiirkriight Yeah.

wickedpainter anythin is better than not havin hands I put up with insides that were causin me pain for over a sweep because my mechanic died, that doesnt mean that was a good fuckin idea or necessary

pleapseletmequiirkriight ]:

pleapseletmequiirkriight That muψt have ψucked.

wickedpainter not as much as gettin shot in the gut in the first place which is pert much where I base whether or not pain is bad from

pleapseletmequiirkriight Lol. Relatable and faIIr.

wickedpainter probably a bad way to figure it

pleapseletmequiirkriight Maybe but bIIg ψame.

wickedpainter you you um wanna know anything bout me

pleapseletmequiirkriight What are you doIIng IIn ψchool??

wickedpainter learnin to control my powers i'm what they call godtier

wickedpainter and it didnt come with an instruction manual sos i found a place that'd teach me or really my kismesis found a place that'd teach him and i followed him there

pleapseletmequiirkriight Huh. That'ψ 1 of the doom game thIIngψ, yeah? GodtIIer.

wickedpainter yeah, your timeline skipped that so i didnt figure you knew much about it my aspect is actually doom- that'd be your aspect too if you had played

pleapseletmequiirkriight Not a ton, but CarmIIn played IIt when he waψ KankrII.

wickedpainter huh

pleapseletmequiirkriight Oh. Lol of courψe.

wickedpainter ..shit i hope that doesnt mean you're in a doomed timeline )o: now i'm all worried about you

pleapseletmequiirkriight EverythIIng IIψ doomed, lol.

wickedpainter do you know what an irreprible paradox is?

pleapseletmequiirkriight No.

wickedpainter okay it works somethin like this carmin was kankri right, he lived a life, even if it was short, as that person, then time restarted itself and he was hatched into a new timeloop ..well except not, not hatched, game players are created and then sent into the world by the game

wickedpainter so if the game doesnt get played in the new loop the people in it were never created an it tears itself apart at the seams

pleapseletmequiirkriight That ψeemψ lIIke an eaψy fIIx. Plan 2 play and then poψtpone conψtantly. The verψe won't come apart becauψe the game wIIll be played.

wickedpainter i dont think it works like that n the game bombards whatever world its initialized on with meteors so thats like fuckin a thing

pleapseletmequiirkriight WaIIt, IIt'ψ confIIned 2 1 planet???? II thought IIt waψ a bIIg deal.

wickedpainter yeah, just in the case of most of them its the hive planet, an makes the royal lusus do the vast glub

wickedpainter everyone dies

pleapseletmequiirkriight Oh yIIkeψ.

wickedpainter well everyone except Her n the players who arent there theres some other bullshit but that doesnt always happen where they blow up the entire universe

pleapseletmequiirkriight Ugh.

wickedpainter now i'm gonna worry bout this shit

pleapseletmequiirkriight The IIdea of Her beIIng 1 of the only lIIvIIng trollψ ψuckψ.

wickedpainter yeah its kinna awful

pleapseletmequiirkriight Not a fan.

wickedpainter ..hey maybe if we're lucky you're in a post game world where the game was already played and they got reincarnated again, that happens sometimes

pleapseletmequiirkriight FIIngerψ croψψed.

wickedpainter i don know how to tell even though doom is my aspect i'm supposed to be able to destroy doom but i aint never done such a big thing just took out natural desasters that shit

pleapseletmequiirkriight DeψtroyIIng doom.... huh.

wickedpainter yeah! i'm a bard, i can invite the destruction of my aspect, or destruction through my aspect

pleapseletmequiirkriight Rad.

wickedpainter mm. maybe sometime down the road when we know each other better n i know my powers better i could see if i can tell

pleapseletmequiirkriight II'm ψure we're fIIne. >All this game stuff is so distant to you.

wickedpainter ..i should prolly talk to carmin bout it..

pleapseletmequiirkriight He knowψ more than II do. II waψ gonna be more ψpecIIfIIc but lol, true.

wickedpainter :o?

pleapseletmequiirkriight He knowψ more than II do about game and fate bullψhIIt.

wickedpainter was wonderin about the be more specific thing

pleapseletmequiirkriight Yeah that waψ the more ψpecIIfIIc.

wickedpainter :o! okay

[carmineclock]

Trace 7:23 PM

[pvt @ Kankri @♠ Leo ♠ (CA/AD/KV/PSI/ARQ) ] 03: I may need some advice. Are you free?

Kankri 7:26 PM

KV: As a matter of fact yes. Although if you want emotional advice there are far better superior people in this house with the capabilities you need, however I can help. What is it you need Trace?

Trace 7:30 PM

03: Not so much emotional. But rather professional, preferably discreet and urgent. 03: Where are you at?

Kankri 7:33 PM

KV: I'm eating at the kitchen right now, if you want something professional and urgent meet me in the library in 3 minutes. I'll wrap this up.

Trace 8:23 PM

03: Sounds good. > You head into the library right away, because you're aware none of this should wait any longer than possible. The time until Kankri arrives you spend making sure no one is nearby to listen in, then sit down and try not to let anxiety overcome you.

Kankri 8:31 PM

> You enter the library, annoyed that he so much dared to interrupt your food hours but it's Trace and you like Trace. You won't even let him know you are irritated. > You spot him and sit down in front of him. "I'm here. So... Illustrate me, what is it? How can I help you."

Trace 8:33 PM

> Take a deep breath. "So. You may or may not have seen some news about a fire. And Snowman asking me to investigate. Thing is, I don't need to go investigate, because I, uh, have been involved." > Not with the fire, to be fair.. But it's not hard for you to put 2 and 2 together.

Kankri 8:43 PM

"Arson is too small for that sort of thing. Can't be traced back if you are smart you could cover yourself and say you found nothing so .How bad is it the real thing that you don't want to tell her directly? What did you do?" > Pause. "Why would you need my advice." > The question comes out curious rather than aggressive, you take no time on pulling out a notepad and a pencil. But you don't write anything yet, you just have it on the table.

Trace 9:05 PM

> Shake your head. "Not the arson. That must've been Droog himself. After I, well, killed his baby girl." > You purse your lips for a moment to let that sink in. "I'm less worried about the cops, all things considered. There should be no evidence. But the crew won't need irrefutable evidence to draw their conclusions. I'm aware that may, well, cause issues. Not just for me. If the crew decide to go after Felt, the others should be warned, I suppose." > Sigh. "And the bosses too." > The risk was calculated and, well, you know.

Kankri 9:35 PM

> It takes you by surprise and you stare at him blank for a moment. "Trace..." > He killed Megido. Your brain starts thinking of all issues, litigations. Legal and not legal. And then he thinks of what Scratch is going to fucking do once he figured out. Snowman alone could rip him a new one. "Trace pardon my language but 'what the fuck'. This makes all of us targets. It doesn't matter who did it, everyone but Snowman has their head on the platter now." >  Deep breath. Okay, advice. "You want advice? Lie to Snowman and tell everyone individually. She is safe for obvious reasons. Or just do the correct thing and confess. But I don't expect to remain secret for long regardless of what happens. You are in borrowed time, Trace.  I think we all might be."

Trace 9:49 PM

"Honestly? My only regret is that I couldn't see Droog's face." > That and. Well. Nepeta, admittedly.. > You lean back and think for a bit. What the fuck sure is fitting. You've been aware that there may be grave consequences, you've just gladly ignored all of them. "If I confess, what do you think will await me?"

Kankri 10:02 PM

> You shake your head. "Whatever Crowbar or Snowman can't do isn't too bad. It's terrible but I wouldn't think it would be as bad as..." > Dammit. This is a legit question. One that even you is scared of. "How many strikes do you have?"

Trace 10:38 PM

"I mean, if they don't do anything, it's only because they leave the choice up to Scratch, right?" > You flash a wry smirk. Oh yeah. You're aware of the shit you're in. "Two, if I remember correctly."

Kankri 10:57 PM

"That would be the worst case scenario." > You look at Trace and you wish you could hold him. "The thing about broken bones or even a broken mind is that it can be healed, and with our little help even faster. It will never be the same but it would have healed to a certain degree. Pain can be forgotten, things can be mended. But what my father does... Those are the things that never heal. Much like the other cases it can't be forgotten, but when he does something he makes sure there isn't even an inch for recovery. No wiggle room for better. We've both have seen it and I don't want to see that on you." > You try to slowly take his hand because that is as good as a hug as he is going to get. "Well if you are going to tell the truth you have two options. Tell everyone under your own rules or tell the bosses first and let them dictate how it's going to be perceived, I figure you would want to talk to the others first in private. I don't know how they are going to react but it's better than an angry mob." > Pause "I'll help you as I can because right now nothing has happened. I'm not entirely certain what can be done yet. Professionally speaking I can try and speak with you when the news drop but I'm afraid how unpredictable the scenarios might get."

January 3, 2019

Trace 1:00 AM

> You nod quietly and direct your eyes to the ground. Your nerves got more frayed by the minute and you can feel tears welling up, but your pride doesn't allow them to roll. Hope for the best, expect the worst or so, right? It's kind of hard to not think about the worst though, considering Stitch and all that. > You don't feel like you deserve any comfort, all things considered, but honestly, the gesture felt nice. "This is quite a round to make."

Kankri 1:57 AM

> You cut contact short after. > You could use for lots of coffee right now. "What else is there to do? I don't think of you as someone who will hide away until everything comes to light by other people. Either you take it in your hands or it will find you anyway. If it becomes all too overwhelming and you need a place to calm down or suffer you can use my room since I'm localized in Cronus' now. " > You  already start thinking what legal action to follow just in case the law does come in knocking. You can pretend deniability until the last second but prepare the file anyway. You didn't hear of it, you had no idea, it was on the news but who could have done it. > You get up. "All I can say now professional and as a friend is, good luck.I'm a message away if you want me to act as a muffler for the bigger fishes."

Trace 10:53 AM

> Oh same. "Yeah, I'm.. aware this isn't something I can just sweep under a rug. And I certainly don't want the situation to get any worse than it needs to be.. for myself and others." > Sigh. "Thank you, Kankri. I appreciate it. Really." > Not getting up yet. This seems like a nice and quiet place to think about the next steps some more. You give Kankri another appreciating nod though.

Kankri 2:26 PM

"I'll try to get us ahead." > Smile  with a corner of your mouth "Don't die now. Trace. Your living privileges aren't to be taken away  yet." >Exit. You got a few calls to make.

Trace 2:27 PM

> Cackle drily. "Yet." > Then Kankri leaves and you're left with no one but yourself. Only the best company.

[rhythmic-idealist]

Something I think about a lot, and may have posted already, but there’s no harm in rewriting:

Beforus as the metaphorical Garden of Eden in the creation story of Homestuck.

On the one hand: Beforus is upheld by the Signless in his teachings - whether intentionally skewed, or (more likely) looking at it from the outside and only able to lament what’s lost, as a paradise. I’m not going to pull a Kankri here. Beforus was better. People weren’t regularly killed for being hatched the way they were, at least not to our knowledge under this empress. No matter what else is happening, the lack of genocide is a clear step up. But it’s romanticized, idealized, Paradise couched in the strong Biblical allusions of the Signless.

And on the other hand - Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden because they ate from the Tree of Knowledge.

Beforus was stifling. It doesn’t appear so, at first! It appears to be a pretty fantastic place with some troubling minor complaints that Kankri harps on too much, or Porrim cares about but aren’t urgent, or Rufioh was involved in but not, like, in a WEIRD way, that’s weird.

In the story of Eden, essentially, there was exactly one rule in Paradise: you can eat the fruit of any tree but that one.

But at the end of the story, when they’ve left and eaten the fruit: they have free will. That says a lot about what that one rule was doing.

(Humans existing with free will is one of the major things we, often, consider to make us human, especially in the contexts of (some) Christianity. I say that as a Catholic, with my whole Sunday School background in these ideas. Free will and causality, too, are major themes in Homestuck: timelines, character agency, Doom and Time, the ability to be Unstuck, how can you stop him when he’s already here, how can you prevent this when it’s already done.)

So free will, the tree of knowledge, and Beforus. Right.

I don’t know if the Beforan kids knew, when they started the game, that they were going to be leaving the planet, or if they even had the vaguest, most abstract notion that they would be given the opportunity to “leave here” or “create something better” (purposes, ultimately, of the game, at least as presented to the players once they know about universe creation).

But whether they knew or not, whether the way the game’s goal of creating a new universe coincides with their character motivations or not, there’s one theme in common, one reason these kids are the kids who - whether choosing to themselves or chosen by causality believing it would be poetic - ate our Apple from the Tree of Knowledge, opened our Pandora’s Box.

They’re all running away from something.

Meenah -  leadership. Meenah doesn’t want to be the Empress, she’s running away from Beforan ideas about her need to nurture and “mother” (/guide in that fashion) and rule in a way she’s never wanted to, from rules and responsibility, and she physically runs away all the way to the moon.

Porrim - the caverns. Porrim refuses to tend to the Mother Grub or to the grubs and eggs in the caverns, and makes it her loud, proud activism to announce that no one, by virtue of her caste or gender, should have to.

Rufioh - mainstream West Beforan society, and, though never referenced directly, culling. This, likely, is why he wound up with the Lost Weaboos to begin with - he ran away from mainstream society to lead a society of outcasts and (presumably) children, spending life pulling pranks and hijinks on highbloods. It’s very, very easily presumable that he would have been culled, or even that he at some point was, if he didn’t run away quickly enough after his wings showed themselves - which happened, if Mindfang was correct in the way she predicted his post-Scratch life, with his pupation.

Kankri - culling, and I would argue, silence/irrelevance. This is getting into personal headcanon now, but without the game, and without some kind of revolution, I find it very difficult to believe Kankri would have been allowed to become much of anything on Beforus, because the way he talks about culling, it sounds incredibly unlikely he ever would have been given much agency if he wasn’t supernaturally good at fighting for it, and even then, lucky. Personally, in all of my headcanoned no-game AUs and some of my pre-game timeline headcanons, he winds up running away. But to give you something more concretely provable: Kankri is running away from what he is supposed to be, and that is obedient, unintelligent, and quiet.

Latula - forgettably enough, culling. According to Aranea, Latula would have had to hide her lack of smell on Beforus, or else risk being culled, and the way she talked about it made it fairly apparent/implicit, if admittedly not outright stated, that the injury happened while they were on Beforus.

Horuss - the Void inside him. Horuss’s entire character motivation is that he is characterized by the feeling, as well as tangible and real presence, of a massive Void inside himself. Instead of doing any soul-searching or learning to be comfortable to himself, he takes this as a motivation to fill it in, cover it up, and find external things to define him. Becoming a player in this game gives him something, anything, that is outside himself and extra and extraordinary. I wish I could explain this in a way that did justice to the character.

And this is the point where we get less clear. I’m going to start filling in with headcanon, instead:

Mituna - Doom. The game is the way the timeline needed to go, and like the Helmsman racing to prevent the Vast Glub, he knows when to give for a force he doesn’t like for the sake of something grander.

Aranea - Aranea’s an outlier. She didn’t express the remote notion of wanting to run away or having anything to run away from during the entirety of her life. Instead, her status as a runaway comes post death, to complete her part in the theme: running away from death, sure, but mostly running away from the role of NPC and guide to that of the hero/protagonist. 

Damara - I think she was minimalized a lot, on Beforus. She was a sweet, innocent girl, and that’s…. all anyone, ever, has to say about her, before she snapped. I think even before she was angry, something in her needed to have something more than that. It’s more the universe and the story running away for her than her conscious effort to run away from the things confining her.

Cronus - we…. don’t know enough about him pre-game.

Meulin - we…. don’t know enough about her pre-game.

Kurloz - irrelevant. His motivations are separate, and he is aware, to some extent, that this game will eventually be crucial to bringing about the twin messiahs.

….So maybe I lied, and only about ¾ of them are provably running away from something. But that still marks a damn strong theme. Like the alpha kids’ theme is isolation, the alpha trolls’ theme is that they are running away from something.

In the story of Adam and Eve, Eve is often ridiculed for being tempted by the snake and eating the fruit because of the pain it caused. Humans must go out into a world with evil now, humans have free will and can hurt each other now, humans are painfully aware of social rules and boundary lines and things that make life so much more complicated.

But on the other hand…. Eve couldn’t possibly have stayed there. Even God wasn’t angry, in the story I’m told, when she ate the apple: they weren’t allowed to eat it because they couldn’t have this Paradise once they had touched Knowledge. He lamented for them.

Kankri, too, couldn’t have stayed there, that planet would have suffocated him. It would have tolerated Porrim until she wasn’t funny anymore, it would have let Meenah be a successful runaway and live out, what, millennia on the moon alone, it would have suffocated Latula, and Rufioh, and Damara. It would have made strict, rule-bound personalities or total nothings out of them, and it would have crushed them, and ultimately, they were runaways.

Homestuck is a story about people who need revolutions, and the game, deletion of Beforus… it was ill advised, it had all kinds of fallout, they could have stayed and maybe fixed something, but that was the revolution that the timeline would give them- and ultimately the one it mandated. And they made the choice to get into it, however much they knew, whether causality wanted it or not. Maybe they would have been allowed to stay on Beforus if it wasn’t suffocating. It would have been better than Alternia. They couldn’t.

Beforus required compromise, and if that compromise wasn't met- Beforus was impermanent.

The Signless can lament it, Karkat can resent his dancestor ever leaving, but really, the game designed it that way.

[crimsongenetics]

M!A let's being your brother back okay?

==> Kankri: Call your brother.

You’re packing up from another day of pushing classical romance literature at undergrad freshman when it happens. Your phone rings, vibrating against the wood of your desk without a tune to accompany it, and you pick it up without much thought. You were expecting some sort of contact from your boyfriend at an unknown point within the hour, and the fact he was calling wasn’t that unusual.

The number on the screen stops you before you answer it; it’s your uncle’s number, and Seb never called you out of the blue. Immediately, your heart stutters over a beat, and the worst thoughts start ricocheting around your skull.

Was Dad sick? Was he hurt? Did something happen at the Marina? Was it so bad that he couldn’t call you himself? Was he unconscious?

Was he – ?

“Hello? Seb?” you answer in a single breath, the phone now pressed so close to your ear that you could feel the screen smudging beneath your skin. You didn’t give Seb any time to speak before rushing to the point you needed answered: “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Karkat?”

Your breath suddenly leaves your chest and a ringing starts up in the back of your head, and your mind goes utterly blank. It was like someone had reached in and flipped your off switch – absolutely nothing was computing.

Because it wasn’t Seb that had answered your panic. It wasn’t Seb that had said your name in reply, and you couldn’t think beyond that fact. You didn’t know how to handle this development.

“Karkat?” he says again when you don’t say anything in return to the first time. “Are you there?”

Still nothing. You still couldn’t get your brain to kick into action. Words tried to click, but you couldn’t will anything into manifestation.

Because it wasn’t Seb speaking to you, and it wasn’t Dad.

“Kankri?” you finally manage to whisper into the phone, your eyes starting to water from how long you’d had them open and staring at some dot on the wall that you didn’t really see. You can feel the edge of your desk digging into your thigh, but, beyond the notion, you can barely register it.

“Yeah,” Kankri breathes back in a manner identical to your own, like he was relieved it was actually you. But who else could it have been? “Yeah, it’s me.”

Your mouth works, all the words you wanted to say – to yell, to scream, to cry at him – bubbling up your throat in a rush but failing to filter out in any sort of form. You can hear him on the other end, breathing. Waiting. For you to speak first.

The brother you knew never waited for anything, not when it came to filling the void with words. He always had something to say, no matter the circumstance. It was one of his greatest faults when you had been younger.

But he’s waiting now, and you aren’t sure how to handle it. You aren’t sure how to handle any of it.

“What are you –” you finally choke out, the palm of your hand slipping against the desk beneath it and startling you enough to cut off. You hadn’t realized you’d started leaning on it for support. You hadn’t realized you’d moved at all. “Where are you?” you try again.

“Home,” Kankri replies quietly. “I got home yesterday. My term ended and I didn’t renew it. I wanted to come home for a little while.”

“But…” Think, Karkat, you tell yourself. Stop acting like this in front of him. You can’t do this anymore; it’s been too many years. “But – why?” is all you can manage, because it’s all you can think. Why?

Why?

“I wanted to come home again,” he repeats softly and, god, he sounds so different from the last time you’d spoken but so much the same to who he’s always been, and you can so irrevocably tell that this is your big brother on the other side, talking to you for the first time since you’d stepped on that plane and left for the final straw that would ultimately break his back.

That this is your big brother that you’d loved and hated and looked up to your entire damn life, no matter what you’d tried to tell yourself in the days when you couldn’t bear to admit what you’d done to your family and to him. Because she had been his world as much as she’d been yours, and he’d lost her, too, and you had forgotten that in the beginning, but hadn’t been allowed to forget in the end. Because you’d been a spoiled, broken brat and your line had snapped and leaving to try and be better just hadn’t worked. Because you weren’t better, because –

Because this is your big brother that you’d grown up alongside and laughed with and fought with and screamed for when people called him a freak and a ghost and crossed themselves when he got too close, the lilt to their cruel smiles telling the both of you that the fear really was there beneath the layers of mockery and taunting. The big brother that you would defend with you life and argue with until you both lost your voice.

That you loved and hated and missed, and missed, and missed.

This is your big brother, and he’s calling you now for the first time in years you’d forgotten how to count, and yet now you realize that you’d never actually forgotten the sound of his voice.

“Karkat?” Kankri’s voice is startled, soothing, and scared in your ear, and you realize without any real surprise that you’ve started crying. “Hey, Karkat. Kar, hey. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s okay. Kar, Kar. I’m sorry I did this. Don’t cry. I’m sorry, Karkat.”

He sounds like he used to when you were barely a teenager and you’d done something that you’d thought had been the end of the world, and you’d shut yourself up in your room to cry it out and he’d gotten home too early and caught you in the act, and neither of you wanted Mom to see you like this, because you both knew it broke her heart to see you upset.

He sounds like Dad, when Dad was too far away to help you when you were alone and depressed and too damn stubborn to go back to Maine and make your problems anyone else’s. When you just wanted a parent to hold you like they did when you were small and tell you it would all be okay, because even a lie sounded true when it came in their voice.

He sounds like Mom, when you were little and when you were big and when you were saying goodbye through a voice thick with anger and you couldn’t believe any of it was happening, because life wasn’t fair and she was everything to you and now she was gone and you were never ever going to get her back, and you were angry, so angry, at everything happening that you’d forgotten that other people were hurting too.

He sounds like your world when it had been stable and when it had been broken, but not when it had been so lost you didn’t try to find your center again. Because Kankri hadn’t been there for that, and he could only be remnants of your past, even when he could sound like the figures who had tried to be there for you when you didn’t want them to.

You cry harder, curling over and sitting down on the floor behind your desk, hoping no one thinks to come in and see why the lights are still on with no one inside, and Kankri’s voice filters through the phone into your ear, embodying all the comforts of your childhood that you couldn’t believe you still needed.

“I thought you’d yell at me,” he says quietly between the shooshes and the whispered nicknames, and you’re crying too hard to tell him that you thought you’d have yelled at him, too. That you’d imagined this dozens of times, hundreds even, and each time had featured you screaming at the top of your lungs and telling him everything you wish you hadn’t done wrong and how you’d just been a stupid kid and you thought you’d be able to change their minds and make a difference that had never actually ever been possible for someone like you.

You’d thought you’d make him feel bad, feel horrible, feel every regret you’ve ever felt, yelling obscenities and fueling it the rage you’d learn to suppress and control. You thought you’d be strong through this, but instead, here you were: on the floor of your classroom, sobbing into the phone and letting him comfort you.

It’s not at all how you’d thought it would go … but, somewhere along the line, you understand that it was never meant to go any other way. Because you missed him, you missed him more than you could tell him, and all you’d wanted this whole time was for him to forgive you and talk to you again.

“Can you come to New York?” you ask him once you’d calmed enough, still seated on the floor, face wet but eyes slowly drying. You just wanted to see him at this point, just to make sure he was still the same person he’d always been. You don’t know where the stupid want comes from, but it’s there, and you ache for it in ways you had forgotten could exist.

“No, not for a while,” Kankri replies. You hear shuffling on the other end, like papers rustling together. “I’ve got a lot of paperwork to figure out and Sebastian wants me on the boat for a few weeks. Something about being understaffed.” Kankri chuckles, and it almost sets you to tears again, but you reign yourself in. “I think he’s just afraid I’ll run back off to South America.”

“Keep calling him Sebastian and he’ll throw you off the boat yourself and make you swim back,” you pipe in, scrubbing the heel of your hand across your mouth before moving to stand up again. You make a mental note to splash water on your face before Dave sees you, because this one was going to be a doozy to explain. “You know he hates it when you do that.”

Kankri makes a scoffing noise, one he’d made all his life, and it’s in that moment that you fully accept it’s him, talking to you now, willingly, even asking for your forgiveness, and a choke starts up in your throat again. You try your best to push it back down, but you’d always been a pansy, and now was no exception. You somehow hear Kankri sober up immediately in response, like it was palpable in the air you didn’t share.

“Karkat, I’m sorry this happened,” he says after a beat has passed. “I’m sorry about all of it.”

You absorb that, let it sink in and settle in your gut, warm and almost bitter, if bitter could be a feeling, and then you sigh into the mic of your phone. “I am, too,” you tell him, and he sighs back at you. “I’m sorry, too.”

And with that, you realize your life is changing again, repairing itself and fixing the mistakes you didn’t mean to make, and you hoped it was only the beginning. Because you had made a lot of mistakes, and you’d do almost anything to undo them.

[kayforpay]

Penance

The propaganda around the church is almost as old as it is. Killers. Pan-melters. Spies. Liars. Deserving of deaths that wouldn’t send them to whatever beyond their creepy cult would allow them. Their rages, constant in some, like unruly animals attacking anything around them unbidden. Monsters. Pan-touchers.

)(IC is, of course, the leading source of propaganda. It’s her way of staying on top without having to tire herself out. She chases down hopeful, flushcrushing shitbloods and hopeful highbloods, and talks to them putting on a voice the heretic – the Signless’ own guardian would be proud to use. Or, something mimicking the kind tone she supposedly had, at the very least.

“You don’t wanna get with one of those fishes, guppy.” Her eyes aren’t as obvious when they glow. Of course, she wouldn’t see a power and leave it out. She had a clown compatible to her needs within a week of mentioning it, and GHB had handed them over with the same grim face he did anything involving her with; aware. Too aware. “They change ya pan up. Make you think whatever they want. Don’t let you out when you wanna leave.”

The shitbloods always believe her, because she has plenty of practice making slaves she stops liking into gibbering masses of flesh, plenty of experience in changing someone’s pan to fit her needs, even before she took on the mutations, the powers. The clowns stay to themselves, stooping, eyes down, trying to be both smaller and less-less purple, really. Less obvious with their paint. Less obviously examples of what the rumors say.

Kurloz sees it. The Highblood is no grub, not yet so old that he needs glasses. He sees the trend in paint, once glittery, or sharp, predatory and outstated, sees it become muted. Rounded edges around the eyes, dots here and there. Careful, as always, to not be noticed. For not the first nor the last time, he contemplates the deal he was given, his predecessor was given sweeps before him, wonders if now, now they could fight. Wonders it every time a fresh fleet of recruits comes back, their first concern changing their paint to be softer to look at.

But, again, trolls would die. Trolls would know that the church did kill en-masse. Does. Now, it would do nothing but prove the rumors right to attack. The cost would be lives, safety in their compounds, the far-reaching ones now too far for him to keep in his mind’s eye. Spread too thin, they would be destroyed by even a smattering of petty uprisings. Too much to risk, now.

And when he thinks this, the clouding indigo-pink he knows from her fills his pan. Even light-sweeps away. Even when he’s underground. She must have found more clowns, and had them sent to her without his knowledge. She must have taken more powers. He feels the cloud fill his pan, too much even for him to fight against. As ancient as he is, she’s moreso, thousands of sweeps even before she found his church a threat, ever found his power a threat.

Her mastery makes him sick, but only for an instant. Then, it’s gone, everything tinted indigo and cold and distant. Orders in his pan leave his lips with the exact cadence he would use anyway, he goes about his routines, and eventually he stops fighting the fog, the indigo, the cold weight of it settled heavily in his pan, because it’s easier, it’s better. They only kill shitbloods. The wars are fewer. He doesn’t have to remember the faces of the trolls who die. It’s better.

Waking up on the other side of reality, in an in-between space that isn’t supposed to exist, where he’s dead but not gone, where he sees trolls who died or were banished ages ago. The heretic (Kankri, he calls himself, somehow chipper and friendly), the deserter (Horuss, mumbled and stuttered until his name sounds like horse instead), the aberrant jade (she glares from some space away, eyes wary for the fish he’d seen with her once, the fish he’d sold her to, when she was branded, not wearing delicate silks like now), so many others. Children. Thousands of children.

Waking there is the worst part of it. Because she can’t reach him, can’t blanket fog over his pan to block out the memories he has; the heretic with a warm smile now, as he was, bleeding and charred, screaming at his mate to stay back, to please, please, Meulin, don’t. The mate, Meulin, leaping at him, to help, being left alive for then as the deserter was stripped of his title, sent away, ever obedient. Of olive blood on his pants legs and even more pained screaming than when they’d put the irons on.

It’s too much, all at once, and the strange kinship even the jade mother offers him, in the silent, distant way she sends along things he, logically, doesn’t need, after all of it, after they’d all died for no reason. The clowns who mill around and greet him with bright eyes and excited salutes make him nearly break down. Why them, why all of them? How much tragedy can one troll bring before he’s reprimanded by those in power?

His penance would have to be here. Not allowed to die, not allowed any more to float ignorant of his actions, of the stench of murder on his skin, under his nails. Here where he couldn’t keep the mutant, the heretic, the Kankri from visiting, from rambling about memories or his own boring night for an hour at a time, then leaving. His penance was remembering, would be remembering.

Each evening, or what substituted it, every amount of time that would, on Alternia, be a day, he comes, settling himself into a seat after walking in without knocking. Death no longer scares the dead, and the Highblood is no longer a threat. He lays, prone and shaking, on a pile of his own making, in the hive he built with his own hands and abandoned as he suddenly had responsibilities, had a block at the compound.

“Highblood, how are you?” Kankri asks, every time, his voice crisp and warm. Too kind. He doesn’t wait for a response. “I was thinking as I walked here about the time we were in a cave near a compound. We actually sneaked in for a carnival, it was so fun. Meulin won most of the games.”

He goes on, but the Highblood can’t listen. His head is heavy. Kankri’s voice is soothing, and he finds soon enough that he can’t sleep until he hears it. Hears the calm, patient way he talks. Unhurried. No gasping, final speeches to try and fix things. Like it’s better, now. Death fixes most ills. His pusher flips, his throat too tight. He doesn’t deserve the comfort of it, but he can’t tell him to leave. It never worked, anyway, when he still had fight in him. When he still tried.

A hand rests on his cheek, hot skin, sliding slickly over his paint. “Highblood, why are you crying?” He’s kneeling on the edge of the pile, unthreatening, but he shrinks anyway.

“Don’t.” He gasps, sobbing. Lurching back, like he’s been slapped. Burned. “Don’t. Please.”

His face softens more, somehow. The warm hand is back, too gentle, too soft, too kind, too much. “What’s your name?” The question is so out of his realm of thought that he actually blinks, the usual retribution on the back of his tongue as his body remembers before his pan.

“Kurloz.” He manages, breathing it against the searing fingers on his lips, his cheek, petting, papping all over his face. “Makara.” The word wrung out of him, sounding wretched and tight. It hurts to speak. It hurts more to be heard.

Kankri smiles, that blinding warm smile that makes his pusher beat too fast and makes him feel sick at himself, thinking about the warm body under his clothes, the soft skin and curve of his throat, of his body at all. The memories of the torture he was part of come back, the hosing, the way he was housed. He feels sicker, with how he desperately wants to touch him, not pail him,  not take him, just hold him. Just be near a body that’s all warmth and giving and not half-fear like it had been until he stopped trying to have flings.

The hand brushes his hair back, rests over his temple. “Kurloz. I like that better than Highblood.” He sits in the pile, the first step forward he’d taken since he started the bizarre visits. His warmth radiates from him and Kurloz forces himself to back away. “Can I call you that?” Respectful in the way a friend would be.

It hurts. He feels sick, curls in tighter on his abdomen; he can’t starve, but he remembers what being hungry is. He remembers eating meals regularly, and that remembering makes him feel like he’s starving now. His stomach hurts, but he can’t tell what it is. Another penance.

Kankri leaves his sight and he tamps down his disappointment, turns his face against clothes that hadn’t fit him since he was a wriggler and pillows piled on a dirt floor. They smell like the sea and like being alone. Alone, for so long, and he realizes now it was pre-payment for his weakness later, for letting himself be dominated like he was, divine retribution before he’d even fucked it up that badly.

He doesn’t realize he’s asleep until he wakes up, warmth again radiating from a smaller, softer body next to him. “Kurloz, your stomach is growling.” Two fingers pull his mouth open like an impatient lusus, and a spoonful of something hot and liquid spills past his lips. “Come on. Swallow.”

Orders are easier. He does as told, over and over, the warmth within and without lulling him nearly to sleep, lulling him back into crying as Kankri steps around his execution, around watching his mate’s blood splatter over Kurloz’s front and cold, emotionless eyes meet his. He sobs, his chest tight, his pusher too fast, clutching pillows, remembering the days he was plagued with terrors and woke alone, remembering the tricks he knew to make himself calm.

None of them work, Kankri is there, running fingers through his hair, soothing, too soothing, like he’s with a friend he’s known since grubhood and not the reason he was killed. The dreams Kurloz has had of him, the heretic, echo in his pan, the screaming, the sobbing, the broken troll hanging by his wrists from a post while everyone he loved was destroyed in front of him. His guardian forced to her knees, a burning iron collar placed around her throat, set to bond to the skin. His mate, murdered. His friend, collared and unable to spark, to fight back.

The other dreams, he didn’t think about as a rule. The dreams of what he assumed it was like for them all. The dreams that made him jealous, that made him want. That made him want everything of them, their minds, their bodies, the way he imagined them talking to each other. He coveted his imaginings of them, clinging to the dreams he had as though he were drowning and they would keep him afloat.

He sobs harder, tears only still coming in because he never remembers crying himself out, and Kankri accepts it. Accepts him, sobbing, pulls at him when he refuses to pull himself, moves to make him cry into the warm give of his abdomen, the soft part, the part that would hurt worst. Breathes soothing nothings. Too much. He strokes a hand down his nearly nonexistent part, the back of his neck, gentle, and Kurloz finally speaks.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He sputters, clings harder, needy, the warmth unbearably right. “Should-should hate me.” He presses closer, curling around Kankri. “You should hate me.”

The hand in his hair never slows, but Kankri takes a long time to respond. “I did. For a long time. But I’m dead, Kurloz. I’ve been dead so long. It isn’t going to help me. It only made me bitter.” He allows his face to be lifted, looking into clear red eyes. “I forgave you a long time ago. I saw you, sometimes, in dreams. I know you deserve it. I know you’re sorry.”

“Didn’t apologize.” He doesn’t meet Kankri’s eyes. “Never, motherfucker, never apologized.”

His claws scrape the bases of his horns and he hates how much he wants it, how easily he relaxes into the touch, pressing his face again to the delicate space under Kankri’s ribs. “Death puts things in perspective. I don’t hate you.” He tries to say ‘you should’ but he’s silenced, pressed again to his thorax. “I never hated you. I hated what happened. I hated being dead. I hated what they did. What you did. But you weren’t you.” Like he would know, Kurloz can’t accept that. They had met only when Kankri was being tortured. “I don’t know how I knew, but I didn’t see you in yourself. And you’re not hurting me now. I’m not going to punish you.”

Kurloz shudders, tears finally stopping. It’s too much. He makes himself release Kankri, asks for him to please leave. Leave him to his thoughts and to shamefully curling into the pile deeper, into sleeping peacefully now that he can focus on Kankri’s soothing voice without missing anything he said. His personal purgatory, trying to be forgiven faster than he accrues misdeeds, like this one, like every time Kankri has come in and spoken at him, selfishly taking the calm tone and warm voice and the patience, the gentle eyes on him and using them to sleep easier.

He only wonders why Kankri was banished to limbo with him, or if he’s imagining Kankri’s presence entirely. He doesn’t know which would be more fitting for his own punishment, though he knows any punishment Kankri deserves should not be so severe as forgiving the troll who let him die. Who preferred to stay floating and somnambulant than face a threat he might lose to.

A threat he, in the end, in the giving in, in the floating, lost to anyway.

He drifts, in sleep, comfortably. Almost as though he weren’t a monster.

When he wakes, it’s to rough hands, hands that washed too many clothes, too many decks to be soft, dragging him from the pile with more strength in them than there should have been. He nearly flips the chair she throws him into.

But then, women were always stronger. He stares dumbly at the cold glare of the jade mother, who hasn’t given a name, who stays near but not close, watching. Her eyes flick to the doors, the windows, like she expects the fish (what was his name?) to break down a wall and take her back. As far as he knew, with the rivalry between the fish and that cerulean, it may have happened. The collar didn’t follow her into this unlife, at least.

She taps a foot. “Your hive is a mess.” She glares at the pile, misshapen and sad to look at, like a grub’s doing. “You’re a mess. I’m not as nice as Kankri, though. My son doesn’t know when people deserve what they get. I won’t forgive you for him. For Meulin, and Mituna, and for myself. You stood by and let it happen. A few tears won’t change that.”

Is he crying? It feels like relief, to finally have the response he deserves. She kicks the meager pile, scattering clothes, and he sees the twitch in her hands, the urge to clean it up. He wonders if it’s training or motherly instinct. Or both.

“Kankri can forgive you a million times over. You haven’t earned it. You didn’t change anything on Alternia.” He leans back as she stalks closer, disturbingly tall for a lowblood; not for a jade, though. Her breath hits his face as she speaks, lower, eyes burning into his. “I will never forgive you, you monster. If you even think of laying a finger on my son again, I will find a way to kill you again.” She steps back, still severe, still hateful in looking him over. “Do you understand, motherfucker?”

He does. He says so, meek, and nods when she leaves with another word to clean up. Himself, his hive, whatever. Just to do something. Kankri was telling her about him, and she was tired of hearing him upset over the disrepair his hive and self had fallen to. Her tone, though cold, is still edged with that same matronly concern she had when she had turned herself in, hoping to somehow sway the decisions about her son that had been made when he had hatched.

Just at the door, she pauses, calling over her shoulder with a softer voice. “Kurloz?” She turns, her face so tired, eyes full of a sadness he can’t even begin to fathom. “It’s too late to change it now.” She nods, as though that were some kind of comfort, and leaves with a soft swishing of silk on silk.

Kurloz sinks to the floor again, too exhausted to gather the pile back together, to move from that spot. The ceiling was never this tall when he was actually in this hive, looking up at the bare rafters and cobwebs is almost dizzying, but he realizes that laying on the floor can have that effect.

The pile, now destroyed, is just a mess on the floor, old shirts and pillows with patches sewn on. A cloth bag with wriggler mementos of his lusus, before his lusus vanished into the yawning sea where he knew Kurloz would never be able to follow. He stands, slowly, feeling older than he is, feeling his age the same way lowbloods would, and stoops to pick up the mementos, to stuff the shirts into a basket, to put the pillows back in their proper places, and sits, for the first time, on his sofa.

His pan aches, but he focuses, pulling up the powers he so rarely used after the fog had covered him, pulling up his voodoos and reaching out, into the unlife-space he and all the others are in, as far as he can. His face feels grimy, and he wonders how much he has to just remember and how much is up to personal grooming. In the edge of his mind, the farthest part where he can reach, he feels the searing warmth of Kankri, walking calmly but decidedly towards him. His pan is--

Kurloz stops, pulling himself back into his body. Kankri’s thoughts are, at the very least, the thing he wouldn’t disturb. It was too late to change the rest now. He would accept the attentions and the forgiveness, even though he doesn’t deserve it, because he’s selfish and needy and it has been so long since he could feel, actually feel the relief a pale partner could give him. But he won’t intrude on his pan.

He hates himself, but he hates being alone more; after all, isn’t that what lead to investigating the “church” he heard about, the being alone? Being left to himself in a hive too big for a wriggler and too small for an adult, being left to himself when he could barely feed himself? It’s a wonder he didn’t start his own cult, though it wouldn’t have been real.

He can’t think about that now.

Lurching, he makes his way to the strange, sizeless abulationsblock. He doesn’t remember enough of it to make it work in his eyes, but he can shower and apply his paint properly and sit on the couch again and even look up as Kankri walks in. He’s holding a loaf of peasant bread, and Kurloz’s mouth waters. He doesn’t know if smiling is the right thing to do, here.

“Oh! You’re up.” He smiles. Kurloz tries to smile back. “Are you feeling better? I used to get sick all the time when I was alive.”

He sits in the kitchen again, keeping his distance. Kurloz wonders if he should cry again, but stuffs it down, reminding himself that he should absolutely not be hoping for affection. That he doesn’t have that right, the right to want or ask. Not even if Kankri gave him permission, he wouldn’t initiate, wouldn’t ask. Couldn’t. How would he ask for more from someone he took everything from, after all? How could he be that selfish?

Even as he thinks this, he finds himself pressing to one side of the sofa, making space for Kankri, should he choose to join him. Feels himself compressing, trying to be smaller, less intimidating. Hope boils in his chest, hot and selfish, as Kankri stands again, leaving the basket on the table and settling at his own end of the couch. He’s still talking, and Kurloz feels worse knowing he hasn’t listened to more than his even tone.

“--Wasn’t as bad when I was an adult, but I still got colds a lot, and my voice was almost always shot.” He laughs, turned to face him with one leg to the side. A disgusting part of Kurloz’s pan wonders what he looks like under his clothes, but it’s silenced before it gets farther than that; curiosity is more than enough, more than it should be. “The colder parts of the sweep were annoying, my mother would always wrap me in scarves, even when I wasn’t cold. I guess highbloods get cold easier?”

And now that a question is directed at him, he has to force his pan to process what he hears. “Yes.” At length. “Blood ours is not heated.” He waves a hand tiredly, having exhausted his vocabulary in actually conversing.

“Oh.” Kankri looks concerned. No, interested. No, curious. “You don’t have a stove or heater here, though.” He looks around the room, aware that Kurloz likely cannot fit into the respiteblock of his wrigglerhood. “I wanted to ask, why here?”

Another long pause of thought. Words trip over themselves in his pan. “Compound never my home was.” Even after sweeps and sweeps there, he dreamed of a cold cabin, close to the sea and filled with memories.

Even now, in death, this is home. He meets Kankri’s eyes tentatively, waiting for him to expect more, trying to find a reason that he can word with his too-dry throat and the memories overlapping, tripping around each other. He doesn’t know if he can answer, if asked.

“Fair.” He just nods, looking around again, with more scrutiny. The silk bag on the end table is noted, but not touched. “It’s nice, though. Homey. Reminds me of my hive when I was a wriggler, before I had to go on the run with my mother, but we had a lot more green. You probably guessed that.”

He hadn’t, but he nods. Kankri continues, and Kurloz lets himself be lulled, watching him with half-lidded eyes. He’s nearly on top of Kankri before he realizes that he’s moving, but Kankri is, well, not unaware. Aware, turning and opening his stance (his sit?) to give him space, the column of his throat bared but not submissive, just showing that he won’t attack. It’s so near-feral that Kurloz almost laughs, almost.

His hindbrain pushes him forward, curls his arms around Kankri’s waist, his face against his stomach. Heat rolls off Kankri in waves, the calm heat of a lowblood, just near him. It’s better than being cold, being apart. He never realized how cold he was, and now he’s freezing, clinging to Kankri and feeling the vibrations of his voice, calm and deep like a riptide, through his sternum.

He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be taking warmth, comfort even, from this lowblood, but even as he considers pulling away Kankri seems to ease into the couch. He becomes a pliant pillow more than a troll proper, still talking slow and soft, more soothing than the waves had been since the last time his lusus had left. His fingers rest tentative on Kurloz’s skull, then ease through the mess of his hair, down to his scalp, and he can’t focus anymore, can’t think past the bright spots of warmth on his scalp and the spreading calm that comes with them.

Kurloz moves himself to the floor, still pressing himself needy against Kankri’s abdomen, but he doesn’t stumble, just keeps talking, having started on what sounded like a recipe before Kurloz had returned to himself, decided to listen. This position, kneeling, reminds him of prayer, of the nights they remembered tragedy, begging forgiveness, begging retribution, begging anything that wasn’t nothing at all. He breathes in a ragged breath. Forgiveness.

“Are you still here, Kurloz?” He asks, voice low, fingers pausing long enough for his pan to reconstitute. “Are you with me?”

He blinks against the soft, washed wool of his cloak. “Yes.” He feels like he’s here, anyway.

“Okay. Keep listening to me.” He resumes the petting, the soothing motions that make Kurloz feel sick and calm at once. “I won’t leave when you aren’t here.”

His phrasing is hard to parse, but Kurloz pushes through the warm fog (better than the pinkish, the indigo that made everything feel distant and inconsequential, better than anything) to make his pan work. To stay present. Here. Wherever here was, he would stay. Would breathe in the warm wool smell of Kankri’s cloak and take soothing he shouldn’t have, let himself take this miniscule time to increase his punishment by needing of the troll he’d taken everything from.

Like prayer, he presses his forehead against Kankri, almost missing the hardness of the floor. Almost wanting to move back. He should recognize every night here as a tragedy, but he couldn’t move away, even now, upon his realizing of it. Couldn’t stop himself from wanting. There was a kind of divine punishment in losing against his body even now, in death, though that’s little comfort now. Even as he tries, he presses closer, breathing slower as he lets himself relax against this strange troll in his hive.

Kurloz never remembers being so tired. Like his bones themselves are in need of rest, like he’s been awake so long he’d have forgotten sleep. Even having been spending as much time as he had sleeping or near-sleeping hasn’t changed it, and now, even with his knees complaining about the floor and his pan buzzing with too many thoughts, he feels he could fall asleep, if he let himself.

In another time, he might be ashamed at it. Now, he’s just tired, dead and tired and pressing his forehead to the lap of a troll who forgave him without even asking if he deserved it. And, for at least right now, he can accept it. Kankri is soothing. For right now, he won’t fight it. Maybe guilt on guilt is a good enough penance to leave this in-between limbo, eventually.

Some small part of him wonders if he’d want to go, at that point. He already feels tight in the chest when he thinks about it. Nerves, probably. It’s been long enough that he might remember anxiety, or other previously forgotten emotions, maybe. The small part of him that dreads the eventual going wonders about the other emotions, the anger that simmered below his skin so long he feels scalded from the inside. The pull of intimacy, like now.

Selfish, even when not asking for it, he’s selfish.Leaning on Kankri now, and even before, taking on the numbness he was allowed without question, with almost no fight.

“.. But then again,” He sighs, seemingly at the end of his story. “I guess it worked out alright either way. We ended up on the coast for a little while, but I got to learn how to swim, so it was pretty nice. Even if we had to eat so much fish.”

He laughs, fingers twisting a knot out of Kurloz’s hair, eyes half-lidded and distant. Maybe, Kurloz thinks, maybe he’s remembering the night he died. Or wondering if he’d ever come across this hive. He doesn’t move, like a spell would be broken, but Kankri sighs again and pushes him away anyway.

“I need to go.” He stands, and Kurloz mirrors him, but moves away, all at once too big and too close and too intimate for the space. “I, I mean. Kurloz, I know my mother spoke to you. And she’s angry. She will be. She had to fight a lot more than I ever did, and she got less. Most trolls didn’t even know her, and I became some kind of cult, I guess.” He shakes his head, lips pulled back like he wants to spit something foul out. “But I’m not angry. I’m not happy with anything. I’m just no longer angry.”

His voice feels watery, and too loud. “Would be better if you were.” He doesn’t try to look away, but Kankri isn’t looking at him.

“Why?” He finally turns, looking exhausted and sad, but not angry, not full of rage or even annoyed. Nothing he can expect to know how to handle. A thousand sweeps on a bed of coals. “So you can keep feeling sorry for yourself? I’m dead, it doesn’t matter anymore. I just want to know that at least now, you can look at me as a troll, and not a.” He pauses, getting that look again, like he’s tasted something terrible. “A mutant. Or a heretic. I just want to be a troll. I don’t want to contribute to your pity-party.”

He’s leaving before Kurloz can respond, before the impotent rage that bubbles up instinctively can shroud his vision, before he’s tearing open that bag and looking at what’s in it for the first time in, what was it? Three, four hundred sweeps? Must have been more. Before he’s blaming a small blue crab’s shell for everything that happened in the intervening sweeps. Kankri doesn’t see any of it.

That same selfish, steadily stronger part of his pan is almost disappointed. There’s something to be said about being soothed from incomprehensible emotion. Whatever mixture of rage and desperation and sadness and being left behind he feels, he wishes to himself that Kankri had stayed to help, and feels terrible.

Still alone, still desperate and angry and sobbing so hard his stomach heaves, and guilty, accepting being one thing but initiating, expecting, even hoping being another entirely. Of course, that doesn’t stop that same want from coiling under his ribs, twisting around his lungs, but the guilt feels better. Focusing on guilt, on anything at all besides Kankri, besides wanting, is easier.

The shell slips back into the bag easily, placed back in the space spared for it between dried urchins and empty conch shells, saved specifically for it, and he settles for kneeling on the floor until he stops shaking. He ignores the voice in his pan telling him that the floor is what he deserves because, if nothing else, he knows he deserves whatever is in the hive; it’s his hive. He lived in it, at least part time, for longer than many trolls he knew. Still, he doesn’t move from his spot until the sun is creeping over the horizon and he’s too stiff to stand without using the wall and the sofa for balance.

Nothing moves when he ventures into his respiteblock. Unlike the ablutionsblock, he remembers this room clearly; small, nearly a closet, with a round window and a pile of towels on the floor that he never quite remembered to wash. Whatever proportions it was suited to, he can still walk in, still have to pull himself up to the edge. Maybe because he remembers it being outsized, it is now? He doesn’t bother with his clothes; there are others. The slime covers his head and he lets himself sleep, calmly, for the first time since dying.

No broken dreams of the ocean swallowing him or of blood pouring out of every cup at the main hall’s table (back before, when it was full of a scant hundred or so trolls, when he knew every clown by name and his face was mostly white, when he was shorter than most of the trolls he knew), nothing. Empty void, free from pained screams, from imagining himself where he would never be, settled in a small, tight hive with a warmer palemate settled against his side, laughing at some terrible joke.

For at least a moment, being able to forget killing the fish for telling the same terrible joke, as though that were any kind of justice. It was so easy to pretend then, he’s sure, for the Empress. No one expected less.

He climbs out of the slime before the sun sets. Did the jade know that he was dead? Would she care?

Slime splatters to the floor as he walks through his hive, grabbing the now-stale bread from the table. Would she even care to know how he died? When he’d seen her with him, she wasn’t in her own mind. Her eyes were blank, head down, following silently as the fish had shown her off like he did any work to have her. Called her his maid. At least he clothed her.

The slime is bitter against the back of his throat. Had she been in silk when he’d pulled her aside? He remembered she was wearing something, had longer hair, was standing tall before he took her aside. She wasn’t when she was taken off, dragged by the remnants of her hair by two clowns, a passing warning not to damage her from an onlooker, someone in the crowd. Someone whistled.

He sets the bread back on the table. She wouldn’t have an excuse to forget, an ability to forget, like he had. The sun sets, and he’s nearly glued to the floor from the drying slime, trying to force his pan to remember what he’d done, exactly, besides let it happen. He must have stripped her, cut her hair, knocked her to the ground. The memory escapes him, but there was no one else that close to the heretic, not by that point. The archer wouldn’t have been as involved.

The Empress would never have touched her.

Kurloz’s stomach turns, remembering suddenly the pure, unabashed loathing in her eyes, like she was looking at an insect, at less. He doesn’t puke, manages barely to keep his stomach from turning inside out, though he does lean heavily on the table, the bitterness of the slime burning at his sinuses. Of course he had done it all. Of course.

Even as Kankri’s words echo in his head, he wonders if he’ll come over. He wants to see him, the same part of his pan offended at having his penance called self-pitying wanting to earn the right to be forgiven.

[[whats up guys I wrote this in like... may and never posted it for some reason? idk. anyway I still like it so here it is: part one of a thing that I might update later, at some point, eventually. if you liked this, consider buying me a coffee?]]

[botgalhs]

Part of a trade between myself and @queen-sarcasm15. For my part, a fic about a point in their headcanon for Kankri’s timeline where there was no game. Their version of Kankri’s culler, Tanith, took him to a party where he ended up snapping and ranting about how culling is awful and so is she.

Hope you enjoy it, friend~

On the best of days, a crowd of Trolls would have made him uncomfortable at the most. Perhaps irritated if they were a particularly ornery or loud. But tonight... tonight they were polite and soft spoken, but there were still too many and each word they spoke was too much. Even the sound of a clinking glass made him want to... Well, he didn't know what exactly, but it made him want to do something.

His whole abdomen ached under his shirt, the corset having been laced just a couple notches tighter than normal under some typically generic excuse of hers. Only serving to make everything that much more uncomfortable and him just that much more miserable.

Beside him, his culler laughed at the joke some other highblood had made. Or, he supposed that was what had happened. He wasn't paying much attention. Mostly he was just trying to wallow on through the event without doing anything to get his culler angry. How many times had she emphasized just how big this gathering was? How she had fussed over both his appearance and her own to look the absolute best for the gathering. All the growled warnings towards him from behind her too bright smile for the sake of keeping up appearances in front of all of these other Trolls.

And, of course, it didn't help that he was starving. He'd already eaten his one allotted meal for the day. All he was allowed at this entire party was water. This wasn't the first time he had ever gone without more than a few bites of food for the engagement. Even so, though, tonight just felt... Wrong. Too tense. Even the Troll talking to his culler was just getting on his nerves too much. Like he was just... waiting for something. One more thing happening. One more tiny push to his already frayed set of nerves...

“So, Tanith.” He only really heard the phrase because at that moment his culler's claw jabbed him in the shoulder through his shirt and he started to attention. He gritted his teeth because even that little poke was just only further pushing his sense of taut-ness in this whole situation. She must have noticed his attention was drifting. She didn't like him losing focus. Made him look less attentive and her less of a good culler, or so she said.

“Yes?” Her voice grated on Kankri even more. Too honey sweet tones that she only really saved for when she was talking with people.

“I have to ask. How do you keep your little one so in line? My neighbor, Arnult has a cullee and he can barely get her to keep still. She's a little wild thing who can't seem to listen to any directions. But yours seems to be a little paragon of good behavior.” “What can I say? I know how to deal with wigglers,” she smiled and stroked Kankri's shoulder. “You can't just let them run oinkbeast-wild and let them do whatever they please. Discipline is necessary. Good, solid discipline, and letting them know just who's in charge.”

“Indeed.” The strange blueblood put his big, heavy hand on Kankri's head, and the feeling of tense, withheld pressure started to spike again. Oh god, get your hand away. Just stop touching him already or he was just going to... “Aren't you such a fine little man? Get such a wonderful culler who takes such good care of you. Teaches you how to act nice and proper.” He kept ruffling Kankri's hair and the mutantblood tensed his hands at his sides into fists.

“And isn't he just,” his culler cooed, smiling as she allowed Kankri to stand there and accept the hand ruffling his hair and rubbing his head. “He's such a kind, compliant little thing. It's any culler's dream to care for such a well behaved young one.”

“Such a lucky thing he is,” the Blue smiled.

That was it. Just that one little phrase. Kankri just felt something inside him, he didn't know what, just... snap. A tiny, quiet little sound in his heart. But one that made his whole body freeze up as he clenched his teeth.

“...bullshit.” The Troll quirked an eyebrow, looking at him curiously.

“Sorry, what was that, lad? Couldn't quite hear yo-”

“I SAID IT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!” He snapped out loud, and the Troll backed off a pace, removing his hand from the boy's head and staring at him. Along with what seemed to be a good half of the whole party... And his culler.

“Kankri, what have we said about language?” She spoke as pleasantly as possible, putting a hand on his shoulder, ever so subtly digging the tips of her claws into him through his shirt. “Now why don't you just calm-”

“NO! I'm not going to just 'calm down'! Why should I?! Just to make sure you keep looking good in front of everyone!?” He turned on the strange Blue, pulling away from his culler's hand and glaring at him. A hot, angry fire burning in his eyes. “Tell me, do you think I'm lucky that I live under someone else's control my whole life? Do you think any cullee is lucky that they have to spend all of their days with little to no autonomy, either kept under lock and key or ignored until their culler needs some trophy to show off when they need to prove how noble and giving they are?!” He squared himself, positively livid and outraged and he was not going to take this! “You don't care about anything except for what you want! How people think of you! Never mind what you're really like behind that slimy, smarmy mask of being such a benevolent and kind culler!!!” He jabbed a finger at her, fangs bared and eyes blazing. “You are NOT a good culler! You're not even a good person! You're a selfish, lying, self serving person who should never have been allowed to take care of other people! Using other people, using me to get you wherever you want to go and never considering anything but looking good to people! The things you've said about cullees. The things you've said about me! The things you've done to me!!!”

“Come on, now, Kankri.” Her smile was strained, and she stepped closer to him with all the air of a predator stalking on closer to its' prey. “Let's be calm about this. We can go and find a nice, calm, quiet place where you can relax-”

“You mean someplace you can get me away from these people and stop telling them for what you are?! No! I'm not going anywhere! I'm not letting you silence me again! You can't keep controlling me like this! You can't-!” He yowled when his culler suddenly yanked him up against herself. Holding him against her body with one arm while her free hand took the syringe that was drawn from her sylladex.

“I think someone needs to calm down a bit. And have a nice, long rest,” she hissed. Kankri struggled and kicked against her, but even that couldn't stop the sudden, sharp prick he could feel as the needle was jabbed into his neck. He kept weakly hitting at her, struggling to not give in. But already he felt himself growing hazy and his mind fogged up with the effects of the contents of the syringe.

“Goodness, Tanith. Is everything alright?” Another guest approached slowly as Kankri's struggles died out, and he slumped against his culler and his eyes started to slip closed.

“Oh, yes. Don't worry about us, dear. Everything is going to be just fine. He just needed to have a little poke of something to help him relax. He'll be alright.” She managed a soft, warm sounding chuckle, stroking her charge's hair as he drifted off completely. “We'll just have to do a bit of... adjustment...”

And then he didn't hear anything but silence.

–

The first thing Kankri managed to register as he awoke was a slight sense of confusion. That, and the fact that it seemed far too bright. With a slight undercurrent of soreness and pain.

“Well, well. Look at who's awake.” The voice made him flinch, and he tried to force his eyes open a bit more. Only to find that he was face to face with his culler. The older Troll smiled decidedly wickedly down at him, showing off her too white, pointed fangs. Kankri cringed, not liking just how close she was. “And how are we feeling, little one? Better? Go on, speak up.”

Kankri squinted his eyes, and tried to murmur out a response. But nothing came out. Confused, he tried again. But nothing happened. Just a slight hiss of air and maybe some uncertain mumbling. But that was it. Something cold started brewing in the bottom of his gut, but he didn't know what. All he knew was that he was groggy and couldn't talk. And now his culler was grinning wider than ever. She leaned in closer so her mouth was near his ear and hissed cold breath against the shell as she spoke.

“That's right, you little brat. You caused quite the scene with how you were screaming your lungs out at the party, didn't you? Making me look bad, and ruining such a nice party with such important people at it just so you could be a brat,” she hissed at him. “Well guess what, you'll never be doing that again. In fact, you won't be doing any talking ever again. Because of course no one would pay any mind to a little mutant freak like you. Just another cullee throwing an immature temper tantrum in public.”

No... He was starting to realize what was going on as he got to be more awake. And what she was saying to him was chilling him to his very core. No no. This couldn't happen. This wasn't happening. She didn't really do this... did she?

“Well, don't you worry. I'm still going to take care of you. Only now, you've lost your speaking privileges. Permanently. Gave your vocal chords the snip, so no more chatty little mutant trying to be an ungrateful party spoiler. From now on. You'll be just as cullees always should be. Quiet. Obedient. Never speaking, not just when not spoken to, but EVER.”

Oh no... Oh god no, why? Why was this happening? Why were people letting this happen? Someone must have heard him speaking, right? They must have heard something he said and understood him? They couldn't just ignore him like that, leave him with her. And yet, here he was. Lying in a hospital bed, no voice, and with her grinning wickedly as she gloated over her victory.

“But hey, cheer up, little cherry,” she snickered at him with her 'nickname'. “Not like anyone would have ever listened to you anyway.”

[jelly-beanbabe-blog]

The Sweater

That was the very last straw.

Porrim was sick and tired of Kankri rejecting her sweater over and over again. Honestly, for a troll who complained about triggers and being more aware of other's feelings every second of every minute of every hour, you would think he would be at least a little bit more considerate about her gifts. In his eyes, they weren't gifts, of course. That was obvious from his oh-so-rude behavior. But to her, they were. She spent hours and days making the beautiful red garment, taking extra care to find the right material to make sure it was soft and not itchy, comfortable and adorable, and bright red. Sure, there was the fact that they were no longer on Beforus and so they had no reason to display their blood colors, but Porrim thought it went perfectly with his black pants. And as a fashion expert, she would know.

To Kankri, however, the horrendous sweater was nothing but a nuisance. He wanted nothing more than to see it at the bottom of the trash, and he'd tried too, only to have the jade blooded troll find it somehow. Throwing it in a ditch didn't work either. One time, he'd even resorted to tossing the damn thing in the ocean. That hadn't worked out so well; Porrim had been enraged and for once in his life, he'd been the one on the other side of being lectured. She had ranted on and on about her insufferable fabrics and stitching and whether he knew what it would take to replicate the blah blah blah. He honestly couldn't care less. She was bothersome and while he did understand her actions were done due to her 'caring' for him, he wished she would just quit it. The more she pushed it onto him, the more he would just fight against it. Honestly, why wouldn't the woman just let it go?

On this particular day, almost every one of the twelve trolls were outside in the dream bubble, interacting with each other and their dancestors. The air was filled with soft chatter and enjoyment from everyone, well, almost everyone. It shouldn't have been a surprise that Cronus was in the middle of harassing someone with his 'flirting' and suggestive eyebrows. Unfortunately for him, he was about to have his ear talked off for it since a certain trigger-sensitive troll was nearby, lurking in the shadows, just waiting to find someone in the act of being offensive or rude so he could give one of his infamous lectures. It normally wasn't this hard for him to find someone, but it seemed that everyone was behaving today. Should that have made him happy? Yes, and it did! He was more than gleeful at the show of consideration his friends were giving each other. The only problem was the fact that he had spent the entire night prior awake to work on a new lecture and memos for his group. Around the middle of the night, he'd been wracked with guilt over the realization that he had completely forgotten to write memos for their dancestor counterparts, and spent the rest of the time working on the equivalent of the memos for them as well. When all was written, and double checked for grammar and spelling, and then read a third time for extra measure, he typed all sixty pages up and then printed them out. It would do well to mention that it was sixty pages per person. If there were twelve trolls per session, and two groups, that made 1,440 pages in total. Why would one troll have that much paper? Because he knew how desperately his friends thirsted for the knowledge on triggers and proper behavior, and he was always prepared to give it to them.

When every last page was printed, and every stack was set up, colorfully coded and highlight of course for the most important parts, morning had settled in. It was hard to distinguish night from day when the entire sky was a dark abyss into nothingness, or rather the dark ends. Somewhere out there the horrorterrors lurked, but they went unmentioned in his papers. Of course, he wasn't so oblivious as to not realize that the younger trolls were missing a few friends from their group, but he made the amount anyway for copies. And if any doomed timeline versions decided to suddenly pop up and wanted a memo, well now they wouldn't be deprived of this knowledge. However, his entire plan had been spoiled as he walked around and picked up on the fact that, the one time he needed someone to be triggered, there was nothing of the sort going on. After an hour of searching, frustration had overcame him, and the poor troll resorted to seeking out Cronus Ampora, the only guy who could be counted as reliable when it came to harassment, a perfect excuse for the Vantas to appear like a wild pokemon and choose him to be the first receiver of the impressively (and tortuously) long speech.

All was going well for him, two hours later and he was on page 38. By this point, a small crowd had formed, including Aranea, the only other sensible troll he could talk to who had a hunger for education as he did, Karkat, his pupil dancestor, Cronus of course, young Kanaya with her matesprit Rose, and a bandaged mayor fellow who Kankri deemed as 'very cool'. It gave him great pleasure to be able to deliver the understanding concerning other's feelings, especially when other people were listening besides himself. As he started reading aloud the sixth article, section seven, paragraph five, he couldn't help but notice the commotion going on in front of him. The attention of the trolls (and human and mayor, he would never be as rude as to exclude Rose nor the Mayor) shifted from him to something out of his line of vision, more specifically behind him. The visible reactions were mixed, but all had one look in common: shock. Kanaya had her hand over Rose's eyes, Aranea was blushing, Karkat had his jaw practically touching the floor, and Cronus was doing a woof whistle (a direct violation of article six, paragraph three, the one he'd just read a little while ago). With a deep sigh at the interruption, Kankri placed a finger over the line he had stopped on and turned around to get a glimpse of whatever it was.

….Who, it was. It was a who, not a what, and it was…

"Porrim!" He was mortified by the sight before him, a bright red blush of utter embarrassment rising up into his cheeks. The hideous candy red sweater was back, only this time it wasn't in in her hand, it was on her body. And it was the only piece of clothing on her body. The top was designed for Kankri's smaller body specifically, so one could imagine how it wasn't supposed to fit her. And it didn't, at least not that well. Her long legs were certainly exposed, along with the black swirls wrapped around them in their patterns that only she could tell the difference between. Her front and rear were thankfully covered, but just barely. The sleeves seemed to be the only part of the sweater that actually fit her, and that was only because Porrim had created it to be long for Kankri. Even so, the entirety of it was skin tight against her, leaving very little to the imagination, which was what she wanted. It was all part of her plan.

"Something the matter, Kanny?" The jade blooded troll quirked an eyebrow at him, daring him to say what she was waiting for.

"Yes, Porrim! You are clearly triggering everyone here, including myself, with your lack of layers! I demand that you go change this instant into your usual choice of a promiscuous dress. That one, at least, covers more skin. I never thought I would ever have to convince you change into that one for the purpose of decency." He shook his head, unable to even bring himself to look up at her.

"Oh but Kanny, I have no plans of changing whatsoever."

"And why not?!" His voice rose an octave in stress.

"Because you have made every attempt at ridding yourself of my sweater. And I spent so much of my time working on it that I simply cannot allow it to be wasted. So if you refuse to wear it, then I will." She simply shrugged in response, which did bring up the hem of the sweater slightly, much to Kankri's discomfort and Cronus's delight (as well as Aranea's).

"You aren't serious about this…"

"I am extremely serious." A smirk played on her lips as she pretended to stretch her arms upward, rising the hem two more inches. If he didn't stop her now, the entire crowd would be flashed from her bits.

"G-AH PORRIM PUT DOWN YOUR ARMS!" He was in full blown panic now, striding over to her quickly to grab her arms and bring them down to her sides, glaring at her. She forced him to use physical contact, and she was blackmailing him into wearing the atrocious garment at the same time.

"…Fine. I'll wear the stupid thing."

With a triumphant smile, her fingers grabbed the hem and pulled it up and over her head to which she handed then it over to Kankri and walked back to her hive, half-naked. This had resulted in a very long lecture from him later that day as well as a nosebleed from Cronus and some awkward cute flirting from Aranea. Kanaya had managed to keep her matesprit's eyes shielded the entire time, much to her relief, and Karkat still blushed angrily every time he ran into her.

And Kankri never took off the sweater again.

[voidwizerd-archive]

BONDING EXPERIENCES?? ==>

[[ logs with @carnivalsorphans​, our muses keep bonding in very confusing ways, what the fuck are these two ]]

voidwizerd okay first off please dont bring this up w Kankri bc th last thing i can handle rn is anythin resemblin a moral talk im too pissed

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd do you ever like get a super specific urge to just beat a body senseless does this happen to you

carnivalsorphans often enough that the thought some people don't kinda baffles

voidwizerd i cant get at who i wanna get at theyre all universes away n maybe DEAD which sure would be fuckin convenient fr them huh i just

carnivalsorphans hahaha yeah fuckin relatable

voidwizerd wanna find some shitty person n whale on em until theyre only sorta recognizable

carnivalsorphans hmmm

voidwizerd teeth aint that necessary anyhow ugh

carnivalsorphans hahahaha do you actually want me ta find ya someone shitty ta fuck up or we just talkin hypotheticals and feelings?

voidwizerd i honestly dont even know i just wanted to confirm someone else experiences this too

voidwizerd i figured if anyone does itd be you

carnivalsorphans aight, just feelings yeah, you bet sib a lot. and it's hard. just kinda.... keepin that real tight inside it winds ya up a bit warps you and makes ya feel all weird til ya can do somethin ta make it stop i used ta bleed myself and then paint with it, but wicked said that's bad, so i'm tryinna figure somethin else out

carnivalsorphans i felt that way bout anyone i actually give a fuck about, where any time they talk on their old shit it just makes me tense up and start this fuckin rumble

carnivalsorphans usually stop it afore it gets loud though kankri says he don't feel that way at all, but i bet there's somethin that'd wind him up that bad somethin for everyone that just makes em wanna beat someone bloody

voidwizerd yeah it just its like wrappin your insides up tighter n tighter n tighter n it feels like itll rip n spill everythin out

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd so fuck, if its gonna tear eventually why not choose myself how that happens???

carnivalsorphans yeah and i'd think at least no one was gettin hurt but me and i like pain anyhow

carnivalsorphans and it spills out nice and slow and i get somethin pretty at the end of it but ... ya gotta pick ya poison, sometimes

voidwizerd i guess i did that last one kinda fr different reasons n a bit more extreme but ha ha ........i fuckin hate copin

carnivalsorphans yeah, it's hard i got a lot ta cope with

carnivalsorphans used ta think i was better than addiction, but i ... dunno. feel like an addict sometimes. wicked says i might be one, even. instead of the bottom of a bottle, i just got my claws

voidwizerd just bout anythin can be addicted to i used to run until my body gave out only way my mind would go quiet i miss th quiet

carnivalsorphans .... yeah

voidwizerd but Kankri would worry

carnivalsorphans fuck havin connections ta people hahaha

voidwizerd right its terrible but also i wouldnt know what happy is like either

carnivalsorphans .... yeah

voidwizerd th loneliness was killin me ha like literally lmaooooo

carnivalsorphans yeah i can feel that

voidwizerd well no okay technically i was doin that my own damn self

carnivalsorphans you wouldn't think, surrounded by church who loves me

carnivalsorphans but ya know. lonely at the top

voidwizerd fuckin pussy i was broke in less than two sweeps. whoop whoop yeah yeah i bet lonely is terrible, fuck that shit

carnivalsorphans used ta be worse but used ta be, i didn't care .... way way fuckin back when saw people bein all close to eachother and it seemed like a waste a fuckin time and energy and like they was a bit away from stabbin eachother in the back

carnivalsorphans .... fuckin ignorance was bliss

voidwizerd ha wouldnt it be so much easier just to not

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd not need that not fuckin CLING to affection like a goddamn lifeline bc its either that n bein treated like garbage or bein treated like nothin at all

carnivalsorphans yeah, fuck that

voidwizerd hurt or isolation take your pick trick question they both hurt and they both make you feel isolated

carnivalsorphans yeah hahahahaha

carnivalsorphans rather have real hurt though. makes shit hard ta focus on .... sometimes, at least

voidwizerd mmn

carnivalsorphans > Try not to think of Artemi. > Try /really hard/

voidwizerd do i like pain fr kinky reasons or do i like it bc i just want someone to beat me to shit

carnivalsorphans hahahahaha

voidwizerd these are th questions

carnivalsorphans just assume it's a little a both

carnivalsorphans nothin's ever so black and white sometimes a lil more of one, sometimes a lil more of another

voidwizerd fuckin

carnivalsorphans and sometimes it fades away so much ya almost forget it's there

voidwizerd hate that shit

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd wish it could be simple shouldnt knowin yourself be simple but nah

carnivalsorphans hahahahaha

voidwizerd other ppl know me better than me

carnivalsorphans depends on how fuckin much you want to know

voidwizerd aint that just th fuckin way

carnivalsorphans i've tried real hard not ta let anyone know me fuckin hate bein /known/ bein... able ta pin down predict

voidwizerd sure is a thing its scary

voidwizerd scarier than anythin

carnivalsorphans .... yeah and not just cuz i'm scared for my church not just cuz i'm scared a how people will take it just... 's

voidwizerd if i didnt trust Kankri so much id prolly just. go outta my fuckin mind of terror. ha

carnivalsorphans yeah every time me and wicked have a real talk, i get a bit.... tense. all tensed up for him ta fuckin recoil or use shit against me or probably ain't the best way ta feel with ya rail, but

voidwizerd no i i get that fuck dude i literally couldnt tell you how often Jane n Dirk did that to me but my stupid ass kept confidin in em anyway

carnivalsorphans hahaha i never risked it sometimes i'd tell shit to people i was

voidwizerd only reason i didnt confide w Jake at all was cause he never paid attention to anythin that wasnt bout him

carnivalsorphans hurtin. i ain't ever had enough trust in fuckers to do that sorta shit too often

voidwizerd shit dude if ur only confidantes are th ppl ur torturin you just might need to get out more

carnivalsorphans hahahahaha yeah

carnivalsorphans i kinda went a bit nuts after i fell got better though

voidwizerd good on you shoulder pat for success

carnivalsorphans there's a lotta things i miss bout that time. probably more than i should. one more addiction ta add onto the pile

voidwizerd ha careful dude dont wanna be breakin records here

carnivalsorphans hahahaha i've lived a long time, i set all the records

voidwizerd my point is to get better rather than worse knucklehead though ha tbh this is one of those lights i doubt thats really a possible thing

carnivalsorphans hahaha how bout we just try for not gettin worse tolight? wanna come over? for the sake a not bein alone

voidwizerd i .....yeah thanks

carnivalsorphans fuck knows i ain't gonna be good for bein alone tonight neither. .... but i don't really wanna worry wicked over me bein all whatever i am right now

voidwizerd "whatever" is a good word fr feelins tonight "whatever" with a side of "sad n violent"

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd apparently not a regular or good thing to feel .. is it bad fr me to be so relieved you get this way too

carnivalsorphans naw 's normal ta feel relieved that ya ain't alone in ya experiences

carnivalsorphans fuck, that's sorta why i hang around sugary and vel and wicked

voidwizerd oh huh i guess i like. well i didnt even know i was angry until well

carnivalsorphans until you was burnin

voidwizerd yeah

carnivalsorphans i think vel sorta gets like that

voidwizerd i guess i been mad a long time but

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd long as i ignored it things never happened

carnivalsorphans people tend ta forget angry is somethin they is allowed ta be

voidwizerd until that naggin suspicion got confirmed, that i was treated no better than shit on someones heel, n i just welp there goes th neighborhood

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd anger is its big

carnivalsorphans anger is born out of sorrow a lot sorrow at fuckin... lack at bein wronged

voidwizerd .....yeah

carnivalsorphans at missed opportunities and bein taken advantage of

voidwizerd at at knowin i did nothin to get hurt n did *everythin* to win approval thats just

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd seventeen goddamn years of waste right there

carnivalsorphans yeah sweeps of lack of what ya deserved

voidwizerd i didnt deserve that

carnivalsorphans yeah

voidwizerd *they* deserved my goddamn fists i wish id fought back

carnivalsorphans it's aight to be angry bout that shit. people always say it's aight to mourn, but sometimes mournin involves gettin fuckin pissed

voidwizerd i wish id listened to my instincts

carnivalsorphans you did what ya knew ta do and that's... somethin

carnivalsorphans may not always feel good

voidwizerd i loved em too much was th problem id let anythin slide cause they was my whole world

carnivalsorphans ain't nothin wrong with lovin maybe a bit wrong with bein blinded by it, but there ain't nothin to be done about that except learn from it

voidwizerd yeah took

carnivalsorphans and fuckin... bein tempered hurts, but it does make ya stronger

voidwizerd fuckin 21 years but i learned

carnivalsorphans .... cmere?

voidwizerd yeah

voidwizerd yeah ill be there

carnivalsorphans > Probably help to send coords. > And then time to snug a friend

voidwizerd > Friend will cry and rant a lot but appreciate much. > Mostly cry.

carnivalsorphans > Pet the friend. Kiss their head and wipe away tears sometimes and comfort and offer inappropriate jokes when tears seem to be letting up.

voidwizerd > Jokes get a smile and then even more crying because what the fuck is an appropriate response to people caring about them.

carnivalsorphans > More kisses because how do you deal with people crying Normally anyway?

voidwizerd > Kisses back a little because that seems to help and not kissing back was starting to feel Weird.

carnivalsorphans > Prr? Wipe away tears, focus more on wiz than your own shit.

voidwizerd > Pr... Still feeling terrible, and thinking about bad gunk, but at least not alone. And good to be with someone who kinda gets it. "We're sorta fucked up huh."

carnivalsorphans "Yeah. But we make it work."

voidwizerd "Fuck dude we sure do. By the skin of our fuckin teeth but we're doin it."

carnivalsorphans "I think we're doin better than some people."

voidwizerd "That's optimistic." > Weak laugh.

carnivalsorphans "Naw, we ain't still stuck in our old shit. I think that's better off. Some people never get that far."

voidwizerd "...That's true." > Snuggle up more after decaptchaing more blankets. Feeling more vulnerable to Ringleader's chilliness.

carnivalsorphans > Oh, good. A layer between you and the warmth. ... Give the bundled wiz a squish. "There's somethin to be said for bein proud of how far we've come, at least. Even if we ain't where we wanna be yet." > .... Where does he want to be though?

voidwizerd "Where we even tryin to get to, though?" > Squish is good. Quiet purr.

carnivalsorphans > A snort. "Ya know, I was thinkin the exact same thing." > Loud purring.

voidwizerd "Don't that just figure. Tolight we're real fulla questions that don't got proper answers, huh."

carnivalsorphans "I dunno that we gotta know where we're goin ta be glad we're not where we were."

voidwizerd > Now you snort. "That's some deep shit."

carnivalsorphans "That's me. Deep as fuck. ya know my real secret now.

voidwizerd "I'm honored!" > Quiet laugh. Moody staring at nothing for a while. "Think I'm done cryin now. Got that hollow sense settlin in nice an blegh.”

carnivalsorphans “Yeah, fuck that. I only appreciate that shit when i’m needin to think after bein pissed. And even then, it ain’t the same as true calm.”

voidwizerd "Mmh. Better than feelin I'm about to like... break into a million billion pieces. Like takin a sledgehammer to a window. Ha." > Blink slow. Slower. You're not moving so much.

carnivalsorphans > Squish. You ain't their rail, it's not your responsibility to make sure they're all... In tact. .... But still, you're a bit concerned. A tiny bit. "Anythin I can be doin ta help?"

voidwizerd "'unno. Feelin's gone for now." > Whoops, that there is a yawn. You rub your face, trying to stay awake. "What about you?"

carnivalsorphans "Feel.... Warm." Soft purring. "Probably about time ta pass out."

voidwizerd "Mmh." Sprawl out a bit. "Thanks for bein my comrade in shittiness."

carnivalsorphans "Misery demands company and all that. Plus i like hangin around you."

voidwizerd "Gay."

carnivalsorphans "Yeah." Forehead kiss.

voidwizerd > Mumble a barely comprehensible "suuuuper gay" before nodding off. > RL's a good friend.

carnivalsorphans > Pet Wiz a little longer before going to sleep yourself.

[magimerlyn]

I’ve... never seen Kanaya as trans, (and if I’m being transphobic here please alert me, I don’t think I am but I’m cis so I don’t know) and I think we have proof that she’s cis.

Her dancestor.

We see that female-coded trolls (ie those who are hatched as and considered female) tend to have some form of breast-like structure. What purpose they serve, I have no idea. We see this on the Condece, Aranea, Meenah, and most importantly to this argument, Porrim.

Porrim is Kanaya’s dancestor, the Beforan version of the troll who she is genetically closeset to. All the other dancestors have the same physical sex as their counterparts. (Karkat and Kankri, Nepeta and Meulin, Equius and Horrus)

Based on this, we can assume that the genetic similarities between an ancestor and their descendant include physical sex. Therefore, since Kanaya identifies as a girl, I think she’s cis.

I personally don’t think any of the Alpha or Beta trolls are trans. I’m not against it in any way, I just don’t think it’s true.

About the cloistered part, I think that Jades are brought into the caverns some time during their sixth sweep. This allows them to have a childhood and a lusus, and also explains something that we’re told about Kanaya and specifically her lusus, a virgin mother grub.

You are one of the few of your kind with JADE GREEN BLOOD. As such you are one of the few who could be selected and raised by a VIRGIN MOTHER GRUB, an event so rare as to elude documented precedent. She would defend you from desert threats, and though her life would be short, in time you would assure her of progeny.

If Sburb had never been played, then Kanaya would have had to eventually make her way to the brooding caverns with the matriorb, and that would allow for the birth of a new mother grub. I think it’s possible that when a Jade’s lusus dies, instead of being culled, they are taken to the caverns to begin learning their duties.

If I’m right, then cloistering is simply the head jade deciding whether or not the young one is a good fit for the caverns, a process that can take many sweeps.

If anyone has anything they’d like to add, or if you disagree with me, then I want to know!

i just wanna know how its decided if a jade is cloistered or not