#no? nobody else? just me and Dave strider? cool.

[trinketbug]

I joke and I jest about Dave “my guardian traumatized me my entire childhood as a joke” strider like I haven’t gone through the same shit as him verbatim

[littlecourse]

im gonna be real with yall theres no inherent difference between being a fictive and being fictionkin in a system. im not saying that there is no difference at all between fictionkin and fictive, because the subcultures (fictionkin spaces+ fictive-centered system spaces) have their own trends and folks without community overlap,

but the only reasons i see people separating them as concepts so strongly is to avoid the “trading card culture” common in kin-for-fun circles and to try and get people to understand that their identity is important to them or is static/their only source of identity (or vice versa, that they would be reduced if seen as only their source)

but you know. bookending is common in fictive spaces too. otherkin can also have important and/or static identities or a fictionkin identity that’s their only source of self, and fictives can have unimportant and/or fluid sources and identity outside of their source(s)

the overlap is fine imo, it’s the lack of respect for normal divergent evolution associated with no longer being in your source’s situations and the dehumanization of “you are nothing more than a fictional character to me” in bookending/“trading card culture”

…as well as the lack of acknowledgement that static and important connections to fictionhood exist and that it’s not necessarily good to force separation on someone who’s often like that for a reason and needs to grow/change at a healthy pace

like. to get “i am in a system with a dissociative disorder that has goals around healing from that” for a moment, i think people so often assume the identity-shared-with-a-fictional-character part of being a fictive is the dissociative part targeted by healthy source separation, and not the mental separation from your current life and body, and the pressure to stay static and “perform” your source’s identity

im a dave strider fictive/kin and i got into rap music because it was something i enjoyed in my source. when i tried it in my current life, i realized that i still love rap actually and half my playlist is rap based. i still use a lot of post-irony and apathy to get by in life. i still think vulture culture is cool as fuck. i still call myself dave despite (de)transitioning. i love and seek out homestuck related material/media

but shit man. im in a completely different situation from my source and ive changed as a result of it. i use a lot more punctuation now because im not “dave strider from homestuck” anymore and its hard sometimes but i gotta remind myself that i dont have to stay like that. i dont have to try and “out-dave” other daves like i did when i first formed because we’re just different people all (originally) named dave with similar issues and interests, instead of one “real dave” with a bunch of fakes

that and also i can see myself as both the white haired, red eyed girl i am in-system while also seeing my body (and it is my body now, not “the” body, and not even “our” body^), a brown haired, brown eyed white man as me. i would recognize myself in the mirror in either forms. im working on loving and connecting to my body as it is and not as it “should” be

^ (im not saying my body is mine and belongs to nobody else in my system, im saying that for us, everyone in my system (including me) using “my” for my body, my life, and my system, is the next step to getting closer to each other and the life we fought so hard to live)

[pesterloglog]

Dave Strider, Jade Harley

Act 5, page 3024-3032

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --

TG: hey

TG: welcome to the medium finally i guess

GG: hey!!!!!

GG: last time i talked to you i was asking for help and you were just nakking at me

GG: what was up with that bro???

TG: ok i dont know what youre talking about it was probably just some horrorterror chirping at you during one of your nap bubble mindfucks

TG: its not the point i just wanted to say

TG: i just saw you

GG: you did?

TG: yeah

TG: you appeared for a second

TG: shooting at an imp

TG: then you disappeared

GG: ohhhhhhh

GG: yes, i did get around during that battle didnt i?

GG: it was really intense!!!

GG: those stupid things are impossible to kill :(

TG: no you can kill them

TG: youll get better dont worry

GG: in the heat of the fray i didnt notice you!

GG: where were you?

TG: three places

TG: i remember seeing you twice before in different locations

TG: but at the moment im standing in the middle of this snowy goddamn field freezing my shit off

TG: just wanted to see if you were cool

GG: yeah im fine, thanks for asking!

GG: what do you mean you remember seeing me?

GG: was i jumping through time or something?

TG: no i was

TG: this is future me

TG: one of the future mes that is

GG: youre from the future?

TG: yeah jade thats what future me means

GG: :p

GG: john told me you have been doing some time traveling

TG: yeah

GG: that is.....

GG: really really awesome!

TG: its ok

TG: hey its pretty fucking cold

GG: i knoooooow

GG: it is a really neat place but its freeeeezing :o

TG: so im gonna go some place warm be back in a while later

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --

GG: wait!

GG: dave!!

GG: uuugh stupid lousy cool dudes

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --

TG: ok im back

TG: an hour later

GG: an hour?

TG: an hour for me

TG: a second for you

TG: i ran around for an hour got my ass some place warm

TG: went back in time

TG: picked up where we left off

GG: :O

GG: i can not believe how cool that is

GG: this is me believing neither that, nor its coolness :O

TG: yeah

TG: i guess im sorta used to it by now i dont think of hours going by the same way anymore

TG: i mean

TG: they are my hours but not everyone elses theyre kind of like private hours all to myself

TG: while everyone else is sort of in slow motion stuck in the thick of the alpha

GG: hmmmm...

GG: i dont know if i get that but ok!

TG: well yeah

TG: my thing is time yours is space

TG: pretty different things

TG: you GET things about space i dont

TG: or you will

GG: i will?

TG: yup

GG: ok........

GG: but anyway youre right, its coooold!!!!!!

GG: i have to go back inside

GG: i wish i had winter clothes

GG: and if i did, i ALSO wish that my wardrobifier didnt blow up with all of my beautiful clothes inside it :C

GG: im so horribly unprepared for this.... i have never even seen snow before, can you believe that!!!

TG: pretty believable since you lived on guam or wherever the fuck

TG: and also inside an active volcano

GG: derp yes dave that is so where i lived

GG: that is as biographically accurate as it gets about me!

TG: well ive never seen it either now that i think about it

GG: no???

TG: no

GG: isnt it great?????

TG: nah

TG: lavas better

GG: lava is NOT better than snow :|

TG: yeah it is lava and skeletal skyscrapers all melting and shit how is that not way cooler than

TG: snow and

TG: like

TG: more snow

GG: you cant play in lava, its no fun

GG: you can only die in lava

TG: snows a big chilly carpet of nobody gives a shit

TG: like old man winter spread around his nasty mayonnaise and turned the landscape into his personal asshole sandwich

GG: eww dave no

TG: when i look around all i see is the miles of unharnessed snowmen im just too damn cool to build

GG: no this is so lame

GG: i am hearing an insane and stupid guy say stupid idiot things while wearing dumb sunglasses for lame morons!

TG: whoa jade with the fucking haymaker

TG: i need to go look for my teeth on the canvas as soon as shit stops spinning and there stops being like ten of you

GG: heheheh

GG: why dont we play in the snow later

GG: as soon as you get some....................................

TG: time

GG: ..............................

TG: time

GG: ...................

TG: time then shades

GG: ..........

TG: time

GG: ...............

TG: time/shades lets go

GG: .......

GG: ....

GG: ...

TG: oh my fucking god

GG: ..

GG: .

GG: time 8)

TG: im not gonna play in the snow

TG: maybe you missed those credentials i flashed which clearly stated me being too cool for that

TG: like federally too cool

TG: my coolness is named after a dead president plus his middle initial to make it sound extra legit

GG: i know youre joking around, you are not too cool at all, you dont even think that

TG: ok

GG: brrrrrr

TG: i thought you were going inside

GG: i forgot :\

TG: well at least make some damn clothes

TG: something warmer why dont you alchemize some shit

GG: i cant!!!

GG: all that stuff blew up

TG: blew up

GG: its a long story that involves a pinata and a gun and a very naughty doggie

TG: i completely understand everything about that practically entirely

GG: so anyway, that reminds me ive got to talk to john!

GG: ive got to get him to make me some new gizmos...

GG: assuming thats even possible

TG: no dont bother john

TG: hes on like his fuckin

TG: wind mission or whatever

TG: getting all his ridiculous magic cyclone powers on and realizing his huge blowy destiny

TG: as the chump of shoosh

GG: john has magic cyclone powers?

TG: almost

GG: whoa....

GG: you guys are all so much better than me, i feel sooooo lame

TG: we all start out somewhere

TG: remember how i was scrambling up that tower to get that egg like an idiot

TG: what the hell was i doing

TG: i was like goddamn pooh bear in a tree reaching up his fat fuckin pooh paw for some mother fuckin honey

GG: heehee

TG: so even though im awesome now at one point i was plausibly likened to an autistic stuffed animal

TG: and you even knew what to do

TG: you told me how it worked all christopher robinning my ignorant ass about that egg

TG: but i was all like IM A LITTLE BLACK RAIN CLOUD BITCH WATCH ME CLIMB

TG: so maybe youre startin out with more sense than me

GG: maaaybe

GG: :)

TG: in any case egbert lost his computer and game disc

TG: so he cant do anything for you anyways

GG: oh no

GG: did he lose it in a magic cyclone?

TG: probably some shit like thats what happened

TG: but youre not completely screwed

TG: we just have to think outside the box here

GG: we do?

TG: yeah honestly i figured wed have to do something like this

TG: so i guess here we are doing it

GG: doing what??

TG: well youre my server player remember

GG: yes

TG: i need you to deploy something first

TG: in my apartment

TG: in a few hours ill go back there and we can continue this

GG: oh jeez, a few hours????

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --

TG: yeah

TG: as in a few seconds

TG: im back at my place now

GG: fastest hours :o

TG: yeah

TG: now

TG: deploy the intellibeam laserstation

GG: but that costs so much grist!!!

TG: no it costs practically nothing

TG: check out how much ive got

GG: omg...

GG: what does this thing do?

TG: its mostly pretty stupid and useless

TG: but itll come in handy here

TG: it reads captcha codes

GG: on the back of cards?

TG: yeah

GG: but

GG: we can already read those!

TG: some are too garbled and complicated

TG: the human eye cant decipher them

TG: needs sophisticated scanning technology

TG: and artificial intelligence to figure it out

GG: hmm

GG: but isnt the whole point of captchas that only humans can read them?

GG: and not robots???

TG: yeah well

TG: thats why this is so dumb

TG: i guess some captchas are so incomprehensible cause the game thinks it would be too cheap to let you duplicate them

TG: like an anti piracy measure

TG: so the solution to the anti piracy measure is to override the anti spam measure

GG: anti spam?

TG: well yeah thats what captchas are for

TG: and theyre on the back of cards for a really good reason

TG: cause god knows the last thing youd want was some web bot being able to figure out the code for like

TG: a potted plant

TG: that would be fucking mayhem

GG: yeah obviously!

TG: but in order to effectively cheat here weve got to open pandoras spam box

TG: and release the laserstation into the world with its leering intellibeam

TG: now no captcha is safe youll have bots signing up for email accounts and duplicating potted plants and shit

GG: oh nooo

TG: basically robots are in control now

TG: which is good news and bad news

TG: the bad news is theyre all pornbots and theyve got LOADS of provocative material theyre just dying to share with us

GG: whats the good news?

TG: thats also the good news

GG: dave i still dont know what youre actually doing here

TG: whats it look like

TG: im duplicating my server disc

GG: oh....

GG: to give it to john?

TG: nah i told you were not bothering john

TG: hes got shit to do

TG: ill just install it

GG: but...

GG: you are already roses server player!

GG: and john is mine!

GG: not to mention im yours!!!

GG: can you really be a server player to your own server player?

TG: dont see why not

TG: we have to get creative here

TG: this games already so far off the rails what else is there to do but improvise

GG: but i guess

GG: i thought that john sort of.....

GG: HAD to be my server? you know?

TG: well he was

TG: he got you in didnt he

TG: but now hes not

TG: been a change of plans

TG: time to roll with it

GG: well youre from the future right?

GG: dont you know already if itll work?

TG: yeah more or less

TG: i never really studied how it went down all that closely

TG: i just figured when the time came to sort it out the right thing to do would be obvious

TG: like it is now

TG: managing the loops is a balance of careful planning and just rolling with your in the moment decisions

TG: and trusting they were the ones you were always supposed to make

TG: by now im pretty used to having my intuition woven into the fabric of the alpha timeline

GG: pretty smooth dave

TG: yeah i know

GG: shades for everybody

GG: 8) 8)

TG: thisll be the disc i use for your connection

TG: while the original will stay bound to roses connection

GG: so you will be the server for BOTH us ladies???

GG: you just keep getting smoother, i cant handle all this smoothness

TG: well technically

TG: i will be your server

TG: and past me will stay as roses server

TG: which is to say present me will

TG: the one in the black suit

GG: ohh...

GG: i guess that makes sense

TG: he can keep managing her for a while

TG: until she sorta checks out soon and becomes totally useless

TG: then he can start hopping around time like i did

TG: make a ton of money and stuff

TG: eventually become me

TG: and become your server player

GG: ok i think i understand that!

TG: yeah see its not hard to get the hang of

TG: in the meantime ill kind of loiter around this timeframe to help you out for a while

GG: yessss thanks dave <3

GG: um

GG: what do you mean rose will check out? :\

TG: dont worry about it just some more future stuff

TG: now i need you to go downstairs

GG: uhhhh ok

TG: im just going to cut right to the chase and upgrade your alchemiter so you can avoid a lot of bullshit

TG: ill give you some codes and you can punch cards and slip em into jumper blocks

TG: which are really the exact same codes you first gave me when we upgraded my alchemiter

TG: which seems like a hella long time ago

GG: it does doesnt it

TG: yeah but it kind of literally is for me

GG: how long?

TG: few days i guess

GG: ok thats not THAT long :p

TG: whatever

GG: yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

[saintclay]

Anyway not to homestuck post on main but in hindsight yeah it was obvious I would end up relating to Dave more than any of the other characters. I too veil all my interests in a thick veil of irony and feigned apathy because I fear people using my vulnerabilities against me and I was taught from a fairly early age that having interests and things that I cared about just meant that I had weak spots that people could attack to the point where I developed a habit of tearing down anything I liked so that nobody else could say anything I hadn't already said about it, and so they either defended my interests or they agreed with me and either way I felt that temporary vindication that eventually became hollow because I felt alienated from my peers and actively pushed away the people who could have been a proper support system for me. Of course I loved him, because it was a lot of self love that I wasn't ready to give myself projected onto a character who was 'just like me frfr', and to see people in his cannon love him, not in spite of everything, but with an understanding of how he was and how he acted was just. I think my 14 year old self needed to see that.

this is where I'd add some joke to take away from this and be like 'also the cool shades' cause I do collect cool shades but no. I can just post homestuck on the homestuck website untagged on my tiny little blog. I don't need to make a joke here.

anyway the entire context of this for people who care (me) is that I just typed out the most dave strider syntax sentence that wasn't written for HS or HS-associated media and I was like. oh ok its time to have a minor revelation about myself.

[itsbenedict]

ooooh! general thoughts on gideon the ninth?

it tends to take two people i know recommending something for me to give it a shot, and easily the main reason i upgraded it from "i should check that out sometime" to "okay, lemme go to barnes and noble" was nightpool's tags on this post. i had to know just who the heck this guy was who i was second-most-likely to secretly be after scott

anyway we barely meet the guy in this one so i guess i'll have to read Harrow the Ninth too

nonspoilery thoughts: i feel like i've seen someone make this joke before, but it's an entirely accurate analysis: this is absolutely a deep AU davekat fic. Dave Strider Gideon is one of my favorite protagonists ever, with her narration constantly butting in on the very serious necromantic purple prose. it's a shame she was forbidden from speaking for so much of the book, because every word out of her mouth is gold. i particularly cracked up at “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”

speaking of Sex Pal, Sex Pal was my second-favorite after gideon, because in a spooky haunted ruin full of egotists and lunatics, he was just relentlessly reasonable. this representative of the secret reclusive temple of hoarded knowledge on the planet fucking mercury could've easily been such a huge basketcase- he'd have been well within his rights to be a basketcase- but instead he just kept being perfectly civil and making good decisions time after time after time.

i also quite liked- well, spoiler thoughts:

Dulcinea was a lot of fun, with the "yeah, I'm super dead anyway, so I'm just gonna go hard" energy she had going on- but, y'know, that wasn't Dulcinea. And... I kind of knew she had to be the big bad. Not because I'd seen through her disguise or anything, but...

...I mean, people have been talking about Gideon the Ninth on my dash for ages, and I've osmosed some things, but... I had never heard the name Dulcinea Septimus before. The way she was making constant goo-goo-eyes at Gideon, I knew there was no way in hell she wasn't either the main villain, or dead by the end, or more realistically both... and not be like, a major ship everyone was constantly talking about. Obvious Gideon and Harrow were endgame, but I know I'd have heard out of context Daverezi Dulcideon shipping discourse before if there wasn't some horrible reason nobody was shipping that. Something was going to happen by the end to make sure nobody thought that was cute, because it was so cute. Hell, I'd ship it if it weren't all a horrible ruse by someone who was trying to kill everyone and also (potentially, if nightpool's evaluation is reliable) me.

What I was not spoiled on by dashboard osmosis somehow, was the ending. Like, what? Gideon dies at the end?!? Harrow's Lyctor ascension scene was like, very well done, and super cool, but I can't believe that Gideon's just, straight-up gone now, modulo whatever part of her has sort of been absorbed by Harrow for Lyctory purposes. Harrow's a good character, sure, but is the next book really not going to have Gideon interrupting the narration with blunt observations and dirty jokes constantly?? How the fuck!

also :( sex pal bit it too. i mean cool sacrifice with the turbocancer and all, good move, not pointless at all, A+ way to go out- but maaaaan, i wanted more of him

speaking of character deaths, oof baboof with Jeannemary. we get Isaac's tragic death versus the ultraskeleton murderconstruct, and she cries her eyes out and has to deal with loss, a cav without her necro, that character arc gets teased- and then the one-two punch, holy shit. really took advantage of my expectations there; i was not expecting her to die after surviving round 1.

and magnuuuuuuuuuuuus!!!! nooooooo!!!!! if dulcinea had killed anyone else first, i'm sure there would be shippers and apologists, but she had to open by kicking the dog as hard as possible. if she'd killed off, like, fuckin Silas or Judith or some shit, people would like her still, but noooo, she had to go for Mister Dad Guy, who did nothing wrong!

...oh, i said i totally called Dulcinea being the big bad, but i can't give myself that much credit- while i knew for meta reasons she couldn't be as innocent as she seemed, my main suspects for most of the story were actually Ianthe and Coronabeth. my reasoning went... they killed Magnus and Abigail, right? and all they had on them was the initial Teacher key. and... presumably there's only one key per House, right? and if the two have some kind of rivalry going on, if they're competing against each other, then one of them would be without that key. If one controlled Naberius and the other needed to skulk around solo, they'd need a key, and they couldn't get it from Teacher- hence needing to kill someone who already had one. and who would be a more attractive target than the Fifth, whose cavalier was demonstrably incompetent in combat, and whose necro was a spirit-talker who could potentially out her by calling up her victim if left alive?

what i missed was that Coronabeth wasn't a necromancer, and so the idea of one of them going it alone and trying to compete the necromantic trials separately made zero sense. poor Corona!

another reason they were main suspects was- i'd also never heard the name Coronabeth, but I'd heard about Ianthe a lot. she's a Vriska, apparently! she's missing the arm and everything! she has to be up to no good somehow! and since i hear about Ianthe all the time, but never once heard about her hot twin sister she's always with, I assumed Coronabeth also was bound to be a villain or dead, because no one talks about her and she's apparently such a big deal in the life of someone so prominent in fandom. i... did not predict the exact manner in which she would be sidelined. "she could've taken me!" is... pretty brutal!

anyway, definitely ordering Harrow the Ninth immediately, because the dangling plot threads left after this thing have got me by throat and i gotta know what the deal is with gideon's mysterious ancestors and the chilly weirdo in a coffin and this Emperor Undying dude i might secretly be.

[bro-strider-hate-blog]

YOUR TAGS ON MY SIS POST??? IMMACULATE

I will include my tags again but only because i cant get enough of myself and not to sound like im tooting my own kazoo but this is the one time in my entire life that ive been objectively correct in every way

Lengthy and unrelated thing under the cut: 

Let me talk about canon bro for a second 😌 even though its barely and tangentially related to this and you dont have to read it <3, in fact i would encourage you not to read it i just wanna run my mouth. People love to use him as a cheap villain in their dave angst fics which is like... hilarious to me. Like i get it, since hes abusive he must also be misogynistic and homophobic and transphobic and also genuinely hates dave and revels in his suffering right? Lmeow no, hes just some guy and despite everything he is in fact trying his best. Hes naturally intense and aggressive and this doesnt translate well to child rearing, especially since his one goal is to make dave strong enough (physically and mentally) to Survive whats coming. The random sneak attacks ? The traps littered around the house ? To keep dave on his toes and buff his spatial awareness. The cameras ? To monitor his progress (if hes not up to standard then we’ll just up the “training”) and / or film some puppet snuff (puff ? Snupp?) so he can keep running his dumb website and like provide for them or some shit , or ig to buy random crap and throw it around the house. Who cares if the kid sees the porn anyway its just puppets, plus hes seen way worse at that age and turned out fine (no he didnt). Dave has to be resourceful , he has to be creative and think on his feet , lets have impromptu rap battles and scrabble games. He has to know numbers like the back of his hand (idk why this is even a phrase do any of you memorise what the back of your hands looks like) to effectively utilise his sylladex.... actually nobody even uses that shit idk why bro was so insistent on it. Dave is his protege, his charge, dave is NOT his friend and hes not gonna let him forget that. He teaches him all he knows, in the way he knows. Making comics, mixing music, ironic jokes, being cool and getting shit done. Actually its GOOD that the kid is terrified of him, if hes the scariest thing in the room then dave wont fear anything else. Lets spar then, if dave wins then hes trained him well. If dave loses then hell become resilient. Either way he has to be strong or else hell die, training is necessary. Its either this or failure and failure equals death. Do your own laundry, ration your own food, become independent as fast as possible because i wont be around to take care of you forever

Nothing bro does is without reason, neither is it “sadism”, its all very logical to him despite being horrific to any sane person because his only friend is the mansplain-manipulate-manspread puppet that raised him and he has awful coping mechanisms that barely stretch past beating himself 1. up 2. off. Like he kept his baby alive to the point where it could keep itself alive (kind of alive) and thats a win to him.

That was my thesis on why bro is not a bigot like ,, he makes porn of fucking smuppets, that gives him zero chance to fetishize The Ladies. I doubt he has porno mags littered around the house its just endless plushie dicks and asses (and the two puppets handcuffed together were legit kinda funny like Why). So why would dave have internalised homophobia if it did not stem from his brother ??? Acting as if his only friends werent exuding anti gay vibes, like christ, john “im not a homosexual” egbert, him and rose’s competitive flirting gag (before they found out they were related >.>), just generally the three of them accusing each other of being gay, yknow, as kids do (jade is exempt from the argument we love jade here). Things were just more homophobic back then and its not like bro and dave had a sincere talk about gender and sexuality in the 13 or so years they lived in the same house like why would you even come out to your younger sibling if you could just not !!! Lol !!! I could be getting all this info wrong lol so correct me if im wrong but bro has this cute comic artstyle and it was about someones charge (? Sibling?) straight up dying and the saw guy makes an appearance the end , like there was no sex or gore or whatever but if you look at sbahj the second page literally has an incest sex joke like where does dave even get his material from , which online sites has he been trawling , well haha its not bros job to monitor his kids search history lets ignore it and move on if the kid wants to be gross and make dumb jokes who is he to judge , spread your problematic wings and soar into the cancel clouds little guy

Anyway heres a disclaimer: if youre gonna clown on this post and tell me im an abuse apologist or some shit just understand that i have a lot of free time and love being a huge asshole when provoked but like youre so welcome to add to the discussion i love bullying my favourite character bro strider by steamrolling him we’ve talked about trans rights for too long now is the time for trans wrongs

[luminescentlyricist]

⚙️ Whirlwinds ༄

( Meat timeline w/ Candy elements )

( CW: Depression )

John was feeling lonely. Ever since the the session had begun, he had steadily become quieter and quieter. It was nothing out of the ordinary, really, but he wasn't talking to any of his friends as much, and found himself taking comfort in any silence he could. Not even Casey was cheering him up, regardless of how many bright blue bubbles she blew or adorable noises she teased him with. So, strangely, he sought comfort in Dave.

His keyboard had begun gathering dust, as he'd returned to his old house with the intent to actually talk to people face-to-face and maybe invite them over. But now, after what felt like years of isolation, he blew off the grey motes. Coughing, John placed his fingers on the keys as it began to boot up. This bought a soft sort of half-smile to his face. Pesterchum seemed like ancient technology, but they - all of his friends from both sessions, as well as the trolls with Trollian - insisted on keeping the chat clients alive.

There were a few moments of inescapable lag as his desktop exploded with notifications. His friends loved him that much. Scrolling through his contact list, he noted that 'CarcinoGeneticist' had been the source of a lot of the notifications. Karkat and Dave shared one thing in common: they never shut up, and that was exactly what John liked about them.

Well, he normally did.

Due to their mostly well-meaning spam of messages, the two collectively succeeded in causing his screen to freeze for a solid ten minutes, during which time John lamented not having the grist at hand to alchemise a new one. Regardless, he sat in front of it, mostly unmoving apart from the habitual tapping of his feet against the floor. The wind moved against him so tightly it felt as if it were trying to crush him into an anxious mess.

Everything became a few shades brighter when the screen finally decided to work, and the Heir himself seemed to brighten, if only for a moment. He sat up a little straighter, fixing his glasses that had been knocked askew. The wind also began to disperse, leaving a gentle breeze that helped to melt the ever-mounting tension in his shoulders. Dave had messaged him a moment earlier.

The message - of a picture - was also attached to a link, an audio clip. John missed Dave and his voice. He hadn't left the house in a long time, not since he came back to it. His friends used to try and visit, but they stopped trying three months ago when he didn't respond. Perplexed, John fumbled for his earbuds and plugged them into his laptop. The cool kid's warm tone graced his ears, bringing with it a sense of comfort.

"Hey, John. I know you probably won't hear this, but I just wanted to let you know that you're the coolest kid I've ever met. We're talking smuppet levels of cool."

John paused the video. Was that supposed to be a compliment? He couldn't tell.

"You're so cool you put arctic freezes to shame. Anyway, I know you're all down in the dumps right now, and that's a completely valid response. We've been through some mad shit lately. But you can come and talk to me whenever you need me, okay? Point is, I want you to come and hang when you're finished being a hermit. Come outta your shell, dude. Find a new home, 'cause this one's all up in the clouds."

When the clip ended, John's smile fell and the giddy warmth faded from his body. It was suddenly very cold in the house. As much as he liked Dave, his energy had begun to wane. Soon, though, another ping sounded from his laptop. There was the photo that he'd forgotten. Clicking on that file, he realised it was akin to a new face reveal. He'd not seen Dave in so long. Too long. He could barely remember the faces of his friends.

Even though Rose was a Seer of Light, dealing with knowledge and such, John couldn't help but feel that she wasn't the one to help him with his terrible memory. There were some problems that even God Tier couldn't fix, which was one of the things he realised when he returned home after so long. Sometimes, John didn't even get out of bed in the morning.

Usually, Casey would meet him at his bedside at nine in the morning - though she often got the simplistic schedule confused, and John had to get her instead - so that they could go check on the Salamander Village in the Consort Kingdom together. But, that morning, she went alone. John enjoyed the little task that he did with his daughter above all else, and it had simply become *draining*. He never wanted it to be.

His eyelids drooped as he stared at the screen in front of him, the display having dimmed in preparation to go to sleep. John dragged his finger across the trackpad, squinting against the bright lights. There he was: Dave, in all his coolness. The teen was lying on his back, faking sleep, and his crocodile consorts had laid a blanket over him, photo-bombing the picture he had attempted to take due to the unusually endearing scene.

It was a soft moment, perfectly captured in time.

Things like those were exactly what John missed about hanging out with his friends. Shutting the lid to his laptop with a small sigh, the heir wondered if he'd ever go out to see them all. He hadn't even responded to any of Karkat's messages.

"Gee, John. You're really slipping today."

He murmured this to the empty house, voice seeming too quiet compared to the otherwise vast space that was his. John was so tired. He had no energy whatsoever, but the sun remained high in the sky. The day was certainly dragging on regardless of the fact that he'd only been awake for a few hours. Taking off the iconic blue-rimmed glasses that he wore and setting them on the desk, John waited for something - anything - to rouse him.

Around him, the naturally warm breezes that he seemed to generate had stilled, causing a gentle shudder to ripple down his spine. John stood, picking up his glasses and perching them on the end of his nose. It wasn't that he needed the lenses to see; he was fairly sure going God Tier had given him 20-20 vision, but they were as important to him as Dave's shades were to the other.

Glancing towards a dusty photograph on the mantle, he directed a swift breeze to wipe the dust away. It was an old picture of he and his dad, with John himself only about five. Walking to pick it up, he studied it in a silence that had since become comfortable. Sure, he missed his dad, but memories were more than enough, even though his vision blurred with tears. Unlike a Strider, he had never been good at masking his emotions.

As a droplet ran down the glass, the boy traced around his face in the picture. As far back as he could remember,  he'd always had the same style of glasses. The first time his dad let him pick the rims he wanted, he'd simply chosen the same ones as his dad had picked for him. Dark blue and obnoxiously rectangular, just as he'd worn before and since.

They helped him remember how much he was loved, in a way,  so he didn't want to forget them. That was why it had hurt so much the time they were sucked mercilessly into the void. Just as soon as the first had transpired, another shudder ran through him. Bad memories were threatening to resurface, memories of what had happened before. He groaned aloud, trying to block them out with the noise.

He had been tempted to talk to Rose for another reason: despite the fact that there weren't exactly any functioning universities in Earth C to give her the appropriate qualifications, everyone considered her a good therapist. She'd seen and experienced her fair share of horrors since her stint in Grimdarkness. Maybe she would understand how... depressed he felt. John felt awful for always burdening Dave with the information, even though the group's resident coolkid always seemed so open to it all, even in the times he was sure no one would listen.

After so long in the house, alone, John had acquired a lot of time to think. Some of it was a negative thing, but he'd recently come to terms with a big part of himself that he'd buried around everyone. Since Kanaya and Rose had established that they were together, he'd been ruminating about his own sexuality. It felt a little safer.

There was a more inclusive crowd in Earth C than he and his friends had ever anticipated, so that nobody felt left out. Alienated. There were so many different choices he was able to make, and no legislations in place would exclude him. Being a god had its perks, though that hardly mattered. He had a truth to consider.

He was a homosexual, and he'd caught feelings for his best friend.  

Even though it was a lot to process, he was working through it slowly. Dave had once felt like someone so above him, to put on a pedestal and almost glorify. But through the session, and their chilling times on Earth C together, that had dissolved. They had a lot more in common than he had previously thought, but that did nothing to calm the jitters enveloping his entire body at the mere prospect of meeting with the other boy after so long.

At that moment, the doorbell rang out with a discordant attempt at a tune. John mentally reminded himself to fix that later. He was jolted away from his thoughts, and called out to his visitor tiredly.

"Hold on a minute..."

Dragging his feet, the boy headed to his old room. He'd since relocated some of his dad's ties to the cupboard there, unwilling to part with that aspect of himself and move into the other, bigger space. He discovered that his fingers were shaking despite his prior lethargy, which meant he couldn't tie the knot on the one he'd picked out properly. He was still only 23, but wearing them made him feel a little more mature.

Draping it over one of his shoulders like a dish-towel, the boy headed out to open the door. He was relieved to see that his daughter hadn't completely abandoned him, but the small yellow salamander had someone else in tow, dragging them inside the house while bubbling excitedly.

"Sup?"

Dave's greeting was relaxed, almost to the point of nonchalance, but the other knew him well enough that he wasn't offended by it. The cooler of the two's lips twitched up into a smile upon seeing his friend's shocked expression, and he laughed quietly.

"What's up, Egbert? Have you been rendered speechless by the Strider Charm emanating from my every pore?"

The man noted, clearly recognising that he needed to stay something familiar to relax John.

Still silent, John nodded sheepishly before posing his own greeting.

"Hi, Dave! I haven't seen you in ages. Whatcha been up to?"

He asked only when he'd cleared his head, but it didn't do much to prevent his voice from squeaking. He wasn't sure how to answer his buddy's question, so he'd swung it back to Dave, whose brows crinkled thoughtfully beneath his shades.

"Not much, really. Chillin', helpin' my bro with his projects. He told me he wanted to dismantle Sawtooth and Squarewave to do something new."

John's face brightened slightly to match the Strider's smile, but it was all he could do to ignore the lethargy that had crept back into his body.

"Woah... That must be hard work. I'm glad you're getting along with him, though!"

Instead of rising in tandem with his excited statement, the young man's voice fell flat. It wasn't that he meant to sound unenthusiastic, he'd just completely zoned out. Standing in dazed silence for a moment, he was only snapped back to reality by Dave's worried questioning.

"Hey, bro, you alright?"

John had no idea how to reply, instead shrugging dumbly. Sure, he wasn't going to die because he hadn't slept for the past few nights, but his limbs felt weighed down by lead. He stared blankly towards the wall behind his friend,  whole body beginning to lightly tremble.

"I think I'm fine, yeah... Don't worry about me, 'kay?"

The man's words slurred, and he laughed shakily. He braced himself against the near doorframe, exhaling as the world spun and lurched around his head. Thanks to the ever-increasing list of God Tier benefits, there was no need for him to sleep. Evidently, he should have. He'd not let himself have any relief from his steadily darkening thoughts for weeks.

Dave's hand lightly brushed John's shoulder, causing him to flinch and nearly fall over. He'd retrieved the tie, and was going to ask about whether or not John wanted help tying it, but did something else entirely when he felt the young man sway beneath his touch. While Casey freaked out a little, scampering away from the two to hide, Dave wrapped his arms securely around John's torso to steady him.

"I hate to tell you this, John, but what you're feeling right now is the exact opposite of fine. C'mon, dude. I can take care of you for a bit. Think of it as bro-to-bro bonding."

Dave held his position there, not speaking, until he felt the other's shaking slow down. He kept a hand on John's shoulder to steady him after the awkward embrace, slowly walking with the trembling man beside him until they reached a little further into the house. Gently, Dave guided his friend to sit down, and then called for Casey.

"C'mere, Case. Your dad needs some serious salamander love."

He never called the yellow salamander 'Casey', preferring 'Case'. She still responded to it, so he didn't see the point in changing his ways. John's adopted daughter peeked her head out from where she was hidden, blowing a bright blue bubble towards the coolkid. She made her way towards him, although she was obviously more concerned about reaching her dad.

Dave lifted Casey up into his arms and carried her to where John was on the couch. Before placing her down, he whistled and made an explosion noise upon 'impact'. She immediately hugged John's chest, walking across his legs and torso to get to that part of him. He smiled tiredly down at her.

John's eyes were drooping again, and that caused Dave - who was watching over the scene carefully - to frown.

"I can take Casey out of the room if you need some privacy, dude. You seem pretty tired."

His voice was softer than usual, but still held that certain suave that the other regarded as oddly calming. Casey bubbled in protest - or so Dave thought, since salamanders were pretty dim most of the time - and made an indignant noise.

"I think I just... I need to sleep, 'cause I've been awake for a while. But it's nice having you two here."

The man wearily smiled a little more, as if to reassure the two that nothing was wrong. It never reached his eyes.

Nodding, Dave walked to the kitchen. He retrieved a glass of water for his best friend, making sure it was cold to the touch but not icy enough to cause a headache. He returned to the living room to find John softly humming a familiar tune to Casey. It was 'Pipeorgankind', the same dramatic melody that he had once used to clear the skies of his land. A grin split Dave's features moments after.

"Aw, man... Didn't you invite me to the party? Cold."

As always, the Strider's voice held a lilt, nuanced enough that those who knew him well enough could tell whether or not he was joking around. He set the water down, clearing his throat.

"If you need a DJ, I can assure you that my beats are fresher than a cake straight outta the oven."

John stopped humming for a minute, looking towards Dave, who had fallen otherwise silent. He wasn't sure how to respond, but Dave never really expected a response in the first place.

He sat on the couch next to the other, hoisting Casey into his lap with a lop-sided grin. The salamander bubbled again, and he reached out a tentative finger. Ever since he started visiting LOWAS, Dave had never been sure whether or not the large blue objects in the salamander's mouths were their tongues. To his surprise, Casey stayed there. As soon as Dave's finger made contact, however,  the salamander licked him, bright blue liquid coating his entire hand.

This pulled a soft laugh from the boy next to him, due to the fact that the Strider's otherwise perfect hair was sticking up at the front, and he never seemed to notice. Reaching out with his powers, John directed his natural drafts - weaker than usual - to dry and swiftly redirect his hairdo.

Even though he was still incredibly tired, the blue boy was glad for the company. It didn't matter as much that Dave was obnoxious sometimes; he'd always had a keen sense of how others were feeling regardless of his own emotional confusion. As such, the Strider kept his arm around John, the small gesture providing a modicum of comfort more than his natural presence could.

The simple action was enough for the first tear to spill down John's cheek. He had adjusted himself to the feeling of crying alone, and there was a degree of embarrassment associated with anyone seeing him. But the Knight had always made him feel safer, and made it known that he'd always have a shoulder to cry on if he needed one.

Casey had situated herself on the other cushion, having moved from Dave's lap. She was keeping herself as close to her dad as possible.

Sometimes, John felt.... numb. In a way, he was jealous of the Striders' unique ability to lock away emotions, to not feel at all. He was shaken away from this mindset when Dave began gently wiping his tears away with a tissue. This particular Strider was one of the most empathetic people he knew.

Although doubts were racing through the man's mind, he was doing his best to make John feel safer.

"Let it out, man. It's... It's good for you to cry. You've bottled up so much shit I'm glad you're finding release. Just keep fighting, 'kay? I'm proud of you, John. You're one of the strongest people I know, but..."

Dave broke off as his normally suave, constrained tone wobbled, taking a deep breath before continuing.

"It's okay to break sometimes."

Dave's voice was barely more than a whisper, but it was all he could do not to start crying himself. Feeling John's panicked, shaking gasps slowing down gradually - With the other man pressed firmly against his chest in an awkward embrace - was a relief. It allowed him to let out the breath he had no idea he was holding.

He knew that his friend was sleeping, the soft breezes he emanated having tightened to curl almost protectively around his body. Gently, he eased his way out of John's lax arms. He stood, walking to the man's old bedroom and retrieving a blanket. He frowned when he saw how thin it was, though.

Taking off his thick hoodie, he draped it over John's body and scrawled something onto a sticky note: "Keep it. ~D." After attaching the note to the jacket, he bent over and pressed a soft - clearly hesitant - kiss on the other's forehead. Taking off his shades to look at John properly, his expression lifted into a smile.

Even though he knew John wouldn't hear him, Dave spoke as he left.

"I love you, dude. Good luck."

[architectofyourdream]

Dave Strider Yandere Headcanons

-Let it be known that Dave Strider does not believe in love at first sight, he wants to get to a know a person just beyond their looks, you can be sexy as shit, but you can also quite literally be shit. 

-He doesn't think of you as anything special, but as time went on, things became different. Nobody was perfect, but he was starting to think that maybe just this one person was. 

-Dave knows you're special when he sends you his SB&HJ comics and you genuinely enjoy them. You're different, you don't think he's weird like everyone else. 

-Dave knows what a crush is, but this is different. He can't stand the thought of you talking to other people, he knows its wrong, you should be able to talk to whomever you please, but fuck he can't stand it. Every cell in his body telling him that you're his and only his, but he wants to still maintain a facade of normalcy. 

- Becomes increasingly persistent, hitting up your Pesterchum with messages asking about your day, who you talked to, what you were doing, etc but nothing immediately worrisome. 

- Eventually starts to flirt with you, but it's hard to notice, he dances around the subject, one second complimenting you and the next talking about Obama. It's half-hearted, if he were to tell you how he really felt, you would not want to continue being his friend. 

-Things don't become any easier once he becomes the Knight Of Time, there's nothing stopping him from getting to you, before the only way he could communicate with you was through text and photos sent to each other, but now, he could see you in real life. (Speaking of photos, he has every single photo you ever sent of yourself on his wall)

-When he meets you, his cool kid facade almost drops, almost. He's calm, you don't notice how his palms are sweaty and how loud his heartbeat is. He uses all his restraint from kissing you when you go for a hug. 

- It's when he feels you against him that he realizes how much shit he's in, because he wants this to happen again and again. And he'll make it happen. 

- It's after you part ways with him that you start feeling unnerved. It feels like someone is watching you but when you turn and look, there's nothing just a gust of wind.

-  Your friends start to go missing one by one. You learn about some of their fates, some you don't. All accidents, some suspiciously linked to stairs that Dave ominously warns about. 

- It was no coincidence, and by the time you realize, it's too late. He binds you in rope and are whisked away, far from prying eyes and from everyone who ever knew you. It's too late. 

-"I love you, I love you so much, all of me would die for just one of you. Every version of myself would die for you." He repeats the words like a mantra. You're his and he's yours. He holds you tightly, whispering the words. 

- He doesn't want to hurt you, he's gentle but persistent. You'll get used to it eventually, right? He kisses you softly, afraid to harm you, he knows it's wrong. So, he doesn't pursue any further. You'll give in at some point and he'll wait. He has all the time in the world. 

(If you liked that, feel free to send me requests. I'm always open.)

[adam-is-suffering]

What I know about the "Beta Kids”

JOHN EGBERT 

- He kins blue, or basically has a theme of blue as I can see from his tracksuit

- He doesnt like his dad?? I don’t think??? So he has daddy issues??

- I think there’s a trans thing about him which is real dope, saw something on Twitter about it

- The game makes him have wind powers so he’s essentially Aang

- Big Nerd, likes games, computers and mullets since I think he grows one in the future or smth

- His uncle is Obama

ROSE LALONDE

- She has the most fanart from what I’ve seen so I am guessing she is a favourite to either draw or in general and I support

- Ah yes, kins the colour purple

- H.P Lovecraft enthusiast, I am just waiting for her to summon some demons in Homestuck and every one of her friends goes through the trials and defeats of their own inner minds that they cannot escape nor control. And yes I am referring to Inception. Because wouldnt that be dope?

- She’s either preppy or goth and everything is pointing to both at the same time

- A probable lesbian with the other lesbian character

- Also mommy issues, I’m pretty sure

- Alcoholism? oh shit is that alcohol? Isn’t she supposed to be like 12?

- In conclusion, she’s Stella from Winx Club, idk same vibes not that I’m suggesting Stella from Winx Club is an alcoholic lesbian with mommy issues tho

DAVE STRIDER

- Oh god its him, its the one everyone fucking loves

- I feel if I don’t end up liking him, I’ll be shunned by the fandom and sacrificed for fun

- Man, I just tried looking up some images of ONLY dave but apparently his page differs from everybody else because he’s made into fanart with…. wait let me count

- 5 people, Jesus christ, he’s shipped with 5 people? He gets around, ig

- If he’s not at least bisexual, I’m not sure what the author is doing with themselves

- Giving me douche vibes but I’m pretty sure he’s just chill

- So he also kins a colour since I don’t see one image where he DOESNT have some sort of red on him which is valid, red is cool

- I’m pretty sure I ironically bought a shirt with that symbol on it without realizing it could have most certainly been a Homestuck shirt

JADE HARLEY

- She’s a furry

- She’s like a ray of sunshine, I don’t think I’ve seen one picture in which she is either frowning or angry…. this is concerning, is she okay? Or is she genuinely happy 24/7? Because let me tell you, nobody is and this is Homestuck which I heard has death at some point I think, so RIP Jade Harley I bet you she just snaps and becomes this badass who doesn’t think anything is funny anymore whilst being a furry.

- Wait, scratch that, I found one frown and she’s talking to a 69 now that’s also an issue who wants to willingly choose 69 as a symbol on their shirt, I say, as I scribble my first fan-kid into typing only using 69′s in place of binary.

- She likes to wield guns and overall fight people, you know what I respect this furry, she is cool

- Okay so while looking at pics I found an MLP Homestuck character and I’m not too sure I’m in the right section anymore

- So she’s also a witch, wow, she has a lot of hobbies, oh god thats a lot are those puppets?

- Okay so her infobox has Big game trophies, mummies, rude trolls for things she hates and that is.. such an odd thing out of context. Like I’m sure I’ll understand it one day but goddamn. Mummies? Honestly hun, same tho.

[spartalabouche]

adhd brain hyperfixated on albino cant stop wont stop gonna go crazy

love love love love albino dave, its one of my favourite strider headcanons. especially as an albino myself!! my dads black, but im paler than my mom, and shes irish. it just fills me with so much joy when i see albino dave and i cant explain why, especially when people include lesser details about it i dont remember how i ended the last ask, i got distracted by reading again, oops. but anyways!! albino dave! i love it, and i recently read a fic that included the *eye problems* that come with it!! it wasnt obvious yknow but for me it was and i honestly think i cried a little cuz i dont see that a lot. despite having it, im not *extremely* well read up on albinism, so im sorry if i ever get anything wrong :( if i remember correctly from what i read, there are 2 major types of albinism, oculocutaneous albinism (OCA), which affects the skin, hair, and eyes, and ocular albinism, which affects just the eyes. so you can be dark skinned and have albinism too, itll just be in your eyes. i think i remember there being different types of OCA, but i haven’t read too much on that, and its not that important right now. i just want to ramble about the visual aspects of albinism! so anyways, visual aspects, due to there being not enough pigment in our eyes, which is essential for them to work properly, we have a bunch of eye problems to deal with. someone with albinism is going to be visually impaired, and will probably have troubles with their eyes judging depth perception properly, but there are other things they can have too, like nystagmus, strabismus, and photophobia! nystagmus is uncontrollable rapid eye movement, like the eyes are constantly shaking. my mom says it gets more noticeable when im tired, but ive hardly noticed it. strabismus is when your eyes look in different directions, but my glasses correct that. photophobia is just an extreme sensitivity to light, and my glasses tint when im outside to help with that. (had to rewrite this cuz i hit the ask limit, idk if the others sending so sorry if you get two of the same thing.) scared to hit the ask limit again oh boy. anyways, eye stuff!! my vision is 20/200, meaning what someone with 20/20 vision can see 200 metres away, i have to be 20 metres away from it to see it. of course im assuming it varies for everyone but thats just me to use as a reference. back to dave being albino... dave would definitely have some eye problems, but his shades could totally be prescription shades!! of course, that means nobody else can wear them unless they want to hurt their eyes or get a headache, but still! or maybe he could have contacts, i dunno. ive heard theres some kind of laser eye surgery, but i thiiink it only corrects the nystagmus and strabismus, not the bad vision itself. uh, hmm... i think that concludes my infodump. sorry for bombarding your inbox with asks, i really really needed to ramble about this. if you have any questions just let me know and ill try to answer them the best i can!

WOW anon this a lot @__@ NOT REALLY SURE WHAT PROMPTED THIS? but its very cool ive read up a little on albinism before just for interest and also for getting details right in a thing that nobody else is ever gonna even read but why not make it accurate u know but its very interesting! i pasted it all in case anyone is interested i guess?! and side note i also really like albino dave as a headcanon i really gotta draw it more cuz i think its so fun. i feel like i know a fanfic with albino dave in it as well but i cant remember what it was but if i do ill tack it onto this post 

[comicsnas]

showtime

WARNING: eye gore!!, violence Disclaimer: this is..... an au where guy fieri isnt a cool and chill dude that just likes food. i am very sorry for what i do to him in this. i dont mean it and if the cops knock at my door i will blame it on hussie word count: about 3.7k. i am so sorry

context john gets kidnapped by his mom dave doesnt panic

Los Angeles, CA, Wednesday

“No matter what happens, nobody cancels the premiere,” you say. “Okay? No matter what’s in the news. No matter how bad it gets. The movie drops on Thursday, and people are gonna watch it. Got it? This is a scare tactic and we’re not falling for it. Even if the world is ending, we are premiering this movie and going through with the promo. With or without me.”

Catalena, your manager, has been with you for too long to think that you’re joking. She was who flew you in from Houston to LA back when you were twenty, who let you sleep on your couch until you made enough money to get an apartment, who thought that the message you had for the world was one worthy of her help. She knows that all of this is real, and that she can’t stop you.

Her face says, Dave, you’re scaring me. Her mouth says, “You got it. Could you at least tell me… what you think is going to be in the news that would make us not premiere it?”

“Something bad,” you say. “Hopefully, anyway.”

She tilts her head. “Are you faking your death?”

“Lalonde and I are gonna disappear for a sec,” you say. “How people interpret that is gonna be up to them.”

“Not like you to leave things up to chance,” Catalena says. “Some will think it’s elaborate PR.”

“That’s why I’m only telling you. Lalonde and I are gonna frame this to look serious, and no one else is gonna know what’s going on. You keep your cool, but don’t let anyone know that you’re in on it.”

“I mean, I barely am.” She gives you a Look, a capital L Look, then sighs and nods. “Fine. So if I hear about your presumed death tomorrow, I won’t freak out. At what point am I allowed to assume you are actually dead, and freak out a little bit?”

“If you don’t hear from me in a week,” you say, “then Lalonde and I have been killed by Betty Crocker.”

Houston, TX, twelve years ago

You’re blind.

That’s not true. You’re not blind. You don’t think you are going to be blind. There is no way that you’re fully blind, because the assassin only got your right eye, so it doesn’t make sense for you to be blind, but you’re blind.

The pain might originate from your right eye, but it’s engulfing your entire head by now, and there is something sticky in your left eye and you can’t open it anymore and it burns, and you’re going to go blind, and then you’re going to die in a ditch, in a pool of your own blood, and this is it. It’s over. You and your half sister fucked around on the internet a bunch, got really deep into some conspiracy theories, and barely two weeks after you made the discovery that Betty Crocker definitely, undoubtedly, literally is an actual alien, someone was sent to kill you.

They didn’t manage, so far. They got your eye, and they broke your glasses, leaving a cut on your nose, and a bunch of cuts everywhere else, and you think you cracked your head open when you fell. But you cut their knife hand off, good and clean off, watched it fall to the ground right in front of you. By the time it hit the pavement, the assassin had already turned around and ran away, leaving you to crumple and suffer here by yourself.

This is it.

“Strider?” Rose says. Before the blood trickling into your good eye ruined your vision, you managed to dial her number and call her up, and now you’re lying on your side with your phone pressed to your ear, imagining her in her college dorm room in New York. You were going to visit her there, years ago, after you ran away from your parents. It never worked out. Neither of you has the money. You really wish you could have seen her at least once.

“Yeah,” you croak. “You at home?”

“At the dorm, yes. What’s going on?”

“You gotta go. She sent someone after me, she’s gonna come for you too. If she knows that I know, she’ll know that you know.”

One of the most comfortable parts of friendship with Rose, you’ve found, is that she never asks you to clarify what the fuck you’re talking about. Either she just lets you ramble, or she knows exactly what you mean. “Shit,” she hisses, and you can hear rustling on her side of the line, hopefully from her getting ready. She probably has a getaway bag somewhere, you think. You have one, but not on you right now. It’s too late for that.

“They’ve already hit me, so whoever she sent to you can’t be far,” you say. You try to blink your eye open, but then it hurts the other more, and it burns. You can’t even tell where exactly. It just burns. “Hurry up, Lalonde.”

“They’ve hit you?” she echoes, still rustling, breathing into the phone. On the move. Good. “Are you okay?”

“No,” you say. “Gonna call an ambulance after this. Just get the fuck out and text me later, yeah?”

Rose pauses. You can hear her pause, you can hear everything go very silent for a second. She says, “You called me before you called for help?”

“Yeah,” you say. She told you, once, that there is a quick and easy way out the window of her second-storey dorm room, that lets her balance over to her girlfriend’s room only a few windows ahead. She can’t hide there, it’s too close, but it’s a start. She’ll figure it out, she always will. She was the first person to ever have your back. “Of course I did.”

On a plane, Thursday morning

“What’s on your mind?” Rose asks.

You’re leaned back, staring out the window, listening to the clicking of her knitting needles next to you. The pilot here doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, just that he is flying two rich people and their car to Washington, DC. Your Mustang is in the cargo part of the plane, a vital part of the plan. You’ll torch it later. It was the first car you bought with your own money, after SBaHJ had become big and you had finally paid off your hospital debt.

Rose’s apartment isn’t that old, she got it after Roxy was born and she decided to move to Los Angeles, so you could help each other babysit. Trashing it still felt wrong. A home is a home, but you wanted it to look broken into, to make sure that people put two and two together. This isn’t a Dave Strider marketing scheme, you both got hit. After all the work that you’ve done, at least some of the public should understand what that means.

“Us,” you say.

“That’s very sentimental,” she says. “Are you sure you aren’t mourning your car again?”

“Shut up,” you say, and blindly swat at her, hitting her elbow. She hits you back, hand slapping your shoulder. “It’s a good car.”

Rose hums. When you look at her, she’s already back to knitting. You have no idea what she’s making, but it looks like a onesie for an octopus. “We will be fine,” she says. “We have to.”

You nod, and go back to staring out the window, thinking about what Alma said. “It’s just,” you say quietly. “We gotta start thinking about the endgame, here, don’t we.”

“Start?” Rose echoes. “Dave, we know the endgame to this. We’ve known for a while. The second you landed in the hospital with a cut inside your eyeball, you and I both knew that this would end in death.”

You don’t say anything. She’s right, of course she is. You knew then, and she knew, as soon as you texted her from your hospital bed, and she texted you back from a Greyhound bus. And you tried to forget, you both did, for a very long time. You almost managed, for a whole decade, until last year, someone made you scared and angry enough to ram a sword through his throat. Until Rose came and disassembled the body on your rooftop, and then helped you burn it. Reality has caught up with you, and someone is going to die.

The clicking of her needles has stopped again. You turn your head to look at her, and she’s looking back at you, and her face seems younger than it should be. She is just as scared as you are. Neither of you ever wanted it to go this far. Neither of you wanted to kill.

“I don’t like it either,” Rose says. “But someone is going to wind up dead, and it sure as shit isn’t gonna be us.”

Washington, DC, now

)(IC: u comin or what TG: yeah about that

You’re on the hood of your car. The children -- and Sally, John’s pet hedgehog -- are with the one sitter you still trust. Rose is in position, which means she is at a remote location outside the city holding Guy Fieri hostage. She has sent you a picture of him tied to a chair and gagged, which means that it’s go time.

All according to plan.

TG: how about you come kill me somewhere else instead of home sweet home )(IC: why would i do that TG: dying mans last request? )(IC: stfu lol this is so obviously a trap TG: wow ok so is yours )(IC: fair TG: just thought that you know TG: john means something to both of us and dont try to tell me no because i know he does TG: so like can we maybe duke it out somewhere where i wont accidentally blow him to smithereens TG: innuendo intended )(IC: UG)( )(IC: gross TG: lmao TG: anyway bethany you know me and you know im comin with c4 in my backpack if im comin TG: do you really want that around your son or can you just get off your ass and meet me here so john stays safe )(IC: u reely think ya have a fighting chance to even get that far )(IC: buoy you set one foot in my house and ya get spearfished TG: yeah not really making a great point for me to come there rn TG: just thought maybe youd wanna be with your guy guy )(IC: who TG: you know TG: guy the guy )(IC: tf

You text her the picture that Rose sent, just Guy Fieri looking miserable, no indication of whether or not you or Rose are with him.

)(IC: )(-EY )(IC: motherglubber what do u think yoar doin TG: yoar??? TG: thats literally not a word. wym you oar?? what TG: anyway im gonna dismember this asshole if you dont agree to keep john safe and come here and im gonna start with the frosted tips )(IC: FIN--E )(IC: cant effin wait to be done with you )(IC: ill come krill ya if its so shrimportant just gimme the location TG: ok shrimportant is actually pretty funny TG: [coordinates] TG: see you soon

She drives a fuchsia Jaguar that looks like Xzibit threw up all over it, because of course she does. You watch it leave from your perch on your Mustang, then slide off the hood. shes gone, you text Rose. get ready to bounce

Before you leave, you turn back toward you car, and gently pat the roof. “See you soon,” you repeat, “for one last ride.”

Look, it’s a good car, alright.

Later on in the plan, once you’ve convinced John to come with you, and Rose has joined you in the no doubt brutal course out of the house littered with security guards, the three of you will pack into this car, and you will drive. You will be tailed, you know you will. Rose and you estimate two to three SUVs with more security personnel that will follow you, and sooner or later, you won’t stand a chance against them.

So, you’ll call the cops. You don’t usually do this -- even during all these years, neither you nor Crocker ever called the police on each other, and technically, you still won’t, today. You will just anonymously call authorities, and tell them about a burning car by the side of the road. Then you will hang up, and you and Rose and John will hop out of a moving vehicle as you crash your beloved Mustang and have it go up in flames. Authorities will come and find Dave Strider’s infamous car, and hopefully that’ll get people talking.

Crocker’s guys will hopefully exit their cars and go looking for you, or at least for John. It’s an easy con from there -- while they look, you will steal their SUVs and drive off toward your safehouses. Simple. No sweat.

“This better work,” you mutter to yourself, then leave your car behind and start climbing the fence around Crocker manor.

You’ve been here once before, while she was out and John was showing you around. You weren’t actively trying to case the place back then, just spending time with your boyfriend and checking out where he grew up, but you couldn’t help how curious you were. You still remember the most important spots, and you did your best to paint a proper picture of them to Rose (you drew a map in MS Paint), so now you have a pretty good idea of where you need to go.

The guard posts, of course, are randomized. You’ll have to take these as they come, and you feel prepared enough, with just your sword and a handful of knives. You’re wearing the kevlar you wore to the Oscars. You’re gonna be fine.

It’s a race against time now, knowing that there is no guarantee when Crocker will be catching on and returning to her house, and knowing that you stand no chance actually fighting her face to face. You climbed in toward the side of the house, because it’s the shortest distance between fence and wall. The front and back yards are ridiculously huge and opulent, and while you would have plenty of gaudy statues to hide behind, you’re not looking to make your way through there.

The first guard spots you right as you hop down off the fence, and your knife is in his shoulder before he even finishes drawing his gun on you. He’s also wearing a vest, but those don’t stop blades, and you take offense in knowing that she made them dress up like that. As if either you or Rose were going to show up with guns. She really doesn’t know you at all. You knock out the guard with a hit of the knife grip against his temple. Maybe you can get through this without deaths.

One of them you comfortably take out from behind a useless fountain placed in this part of the garden for some reason, appreciating how quiet and low-key you can be about it so far. The bigger the ruckus, the sooner she’ll return, so having them all go down in silence is your best case scenario.

It’s the third guard that ruins your track record. You’re almost at the house wall, and you know you’re under the right window, which means all you have to do is scale it and climb right into John’s room, but for that to work you need to have a clean path behind you. Which you don’t, you realize the second a bullet hits your back.

Your vest catches it, but the momentum still knocks you down, and you scrape both of your palms open on the weird break between lawn and pavement. You hate this fucking garden. Who lives like this? You’re gasping for breath and trying not to inhale any grass, dealing with the reality that this is the first time someone has shot at you and actually hit you, and the bullet might not have penetrated skin at all, but Jesus Fucking Christ it still feels awful. Like someone kicked you in the spine, only with a bullet instead of a foot.

Onward. You hear footsteps behind you, and now it’s your turn to kick, hitting them in the face with your boot in the same motion that you’re pushing yourself up from the ground. As they curse and stumble, you draw your sword, but they catch their footing quickly, and you know you only have a split second to act. That gun is pointing at you, again, or still, and they’re going for your head this time, and if you don’t fight now, the journey ends for you here. Someone is going to die, and it sure as shit can’t be you. Your arm darts forward.

The sword goes through their vest, their ribs, and their heart -- you wouldn’t call it smoothly, you really wouldn’t. You can feel resistance with every inch, you feel it right up to your shoulder, and you hate it, and it makes you want to throw up, but you can’t, now. You shove them off your blade and watch them crumple to the ground, and turn right back toward the wall. They are not getting up again. That’s on you, and you can deal with that later. You have to get moving.

Your phone vibrates.

You manage to pull yourself up on a balcony and crouch there, hiding from whatever is going on in the yard now. Other guards must have heard the shot being fired, so you really need to get the fuck out of sight, but this has to do, for now. If Crocker is messaging you, you have to respond, so she doesn’t think you’re in her goddamn garden.

)(IC: yo )(IC: send me proof yoar still with him )(IC: almost there this betta be worth it TG: one sec

As expected. All according to plan, so far. You hope the blood on your sword won’t make the sheath sticky. You’ll have to clean it, later. You don’t want to.

TG: shes asking for proof TG: go ahead. sorry TT: No worries. TT: I know we don’t endorse violence, but honestly, Dawon, after being in a room with him for this long, I am quite happy to do this.

She sends you a picture, and you grimace at your phone. It takes a lot to make you grimace, as a Strider born and raised -- at the same time, you’re not easily shocked or grossed out, but this isn’t great to look at. Fieri’s eye has been pulled from its socket, dangling down his cheek suspended from the nerve, a hole in the eyeball. You hope Crocker won’t be able to tell that this was done with a knitting needle, and forward the photo to her.

TG: hows this )(IC: )(--EY FUCK OFF )(IC: stop i reely like guy 38( TG: yeah well i really like john TG: eye for an eye TG: hurry it up im waiting and theres a second eye to gauge out )(IC: ten minutes )(IC: ur gonna be so sorry buoy

TG: 10 mins TT: On my way.

Okay. Crocker is on her way to a location where there will only be Guy Fieri and a set of elaborate boobytraps which you know won’t kill her, but hopefully slow her down. Rose is on her way here, to help you and John get out of here. That’s plenty of time you still have. Things are going suspiciously well, you think, before you remember the ache in your back and the fact that you killed someone.

You have to get to John.

He’s another two floors up, but you are right in front of a balcony door. For a second, you wonder if you could get into the house from here and do the rest from inside, so you don’t present yourself to the mob of people with guns in the garden. Unfortunately, before you can do that, another person with a gun appears on the other side of that door, mouths an angry what the fuck at you, and draws an assault rifle. Alright, well.

The thing that has mostly kept you from becoming too violent in the past is the fact that you’re fast, and you’re a great climber, so when you hop backward onto the banister of the balcony and pull yourself up to the next one above you, it happens so fast that nobody in the garden reacts. It’s after you’re already crouching behind the balcony, thankfully made of robust concrete, that the shots start hitting it. You do nothing, count the bullets, wait for them to get rid of half of their magazines down there. Then you pull a knife, peek over the balcony, and throw it right into someone’s bicep.

More shots. More ducking and counting. You have two more knives to throw, and you do, rinse and repeat. The people down there are very angry with you now, and very much still able to shoot, but you figure at least their aim will be off, and they’ll be slower. You hope. You haven’t held a gun yourself in fucking forever.

You take a breath, and jump up to grab the balcony you know belongs to John.

As soon as you’re in the open, another bullet hits your back, further toward your side this time, and you almost let go. You let out an undignified noise instead, and hold on harder, focusing all you have into your arms to pull yourself up. Shots are ringing in your ears, and one hits the concrete right next to your head at almost the same time that another one grazes your leg. You hiss in pain, grunt in exertion, pull, pull, and roll yourself onto John’s balcony.

Someone in the garden yells, “Motherfucker!”

You sit, curled up, and pull apart the tear in your pants with your aching fingers to check the wound. It’s not deep, certainly not as bad as the chunk of missing flesh you have in your arm from being shot at last year. It’s fine. You’ll forget about it in a second, when your newest problem will be telling your amnesiac boyfriend that he needs to come with you.

You pull yourself up into a crouch, not more. You don’t want to risk getting shot in the head as you finally face him, so you just do it like this. Hunkered down, disheveled and bloody, you lean forward and knock on John’s window.

[heystuckstuck]

doll parts part one

eridan ampora x reader

part one ==> HERE

part two ==> coming soon!!! <3

YOU ==> WAKE UP

You do. You are sprawled out on your own bed, which is soft, softer than anything you’ve slept on in awhile. You are lying on your stomach, your arms crooked under your pillow to support your head. This is the way you almost always sleep. Your phone dings to the left side of your head, and you blearily shift to your side to check it. It would appear that someone is trying to get ahold of you.

cuttlefishCuller [CC] began trollling chumHandle [CH]

CC: )(-Ey t)(-Er-E, Y/N!

CC: )(ow ar-E you f-E-Eling today?

CH: im feeling fairly pleasant atm

CH: just woke up

CH: you?

CC: I’m FINTASTIC!!!

CC: )(-E-E )(-E-E

CH: cute

CH: glad to see youre still doing the fish pun thing

CH: why exactly do you do it?

CC: I lik-E fish

CC: SO!!!

CH: :?

CC: ar-E you coming to my party tonight?

CC: I r-E-Elly hope so!

CH: shore

CH: ;)

CC: Aww )(-E-E )( -E-E!

CC: You us-Ed a fish pun

CC: )(ow glubbing cut-E!

CH: thank you, fef

CC: And don’t fr-Et!

CC: W-E’ll have som-Ebody watch out for you!

CC: So what )(app-En-Ed last tim-E won’t )(app-En again!

CH: …

CC: I’m sorry!

CC: I shouldn’t )(av-E brought it up

CC: 38(

CH: no, that’s ok

CH: it happened

CH: it’s okay to talk about it

CC: )(ow was it?

CH: how was what?

CC: T)(-E )(ospital?

CH: it was ok

CH: im totally better

CC: I’m sure as s)(-Ell glad to )(-Ear it!

CC: Sollux and the cr-Ew will b-E t)(-Er-E to pick you up

CH: the crew?

CC: I’m not shor-E who it’ll b-E but Sollux is driving a bunch of our fri-Ends ov-Er

CC: I asked )(im to pick you up too!

CC: 38)

CH: thanks feferi

CH: youre the best

CC: I c-Ertainly try

CC: T)(-Er-E’s no way to wink at you wit)( my -Emoticon

CC: So just picture t)(at in your )(-Ead

CH: ;)

chumHandle [CH] ceased trolling cuttlefishCuller [CC]

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling chumHandle [CH]

TA: y/n

CH: sollux

TA: thii2 ii2 gonna be a really weiird que2tiion

TA: plea2e don’t get mad

TA: but

TA: would you fuck ed

CH: what why

TA: becau2e seniior year is almo2t here and iif he doe2nt lo2e hii2 viirgiiniity before hii2 biirthday ii can’t be hii2 friiend anymore

CH: what makes you so sure he’s a virgin

TA: y/n

CH: fair point

TA: ii ju2t know that you have 2ome pretty lax 2tandard2

CH: are you calling me a “2lut”

CH: is that what’s happening right now

TA: god no

TA: ii ju2t wanna get the ba2tard laiid

CH: fine, i’ll do it

TA: y/n you are a 2aiint

TA: 2eriiou2ly

TA: nobody el2e would touch that ugly fucker with a ten foot pole

CH: you and i both know that eridan isn’t ugly

CH: he’s actually quite handsome

TA: god gro22

TA: ju2t thank you

TA: you’re doiing u2 all a favor really

TA: ed fuck2 you and then he’ll 2hut hiis fuckiing iidiiot mouth about not fuckiing anythiing

CH: how many times are you gonna say fuck

TA: fuck

CH: that’s fair

CH: yeah i’ll do it

TA: cool

TA: fiinger gun2

TA: ii’ll piick you up at 6

twinArmageddons [TA] ceased trolling chumHandle [CH]

Sollux is there for you promptly at six o’clock. You’re standing on the curb, waiting for him, when his familiarly tiny rusty red car pulls up alongside you. The music is so loud you can hear it through the closed doors and when you glance in the passenger’s side window, Aradia gestures her thumb back behind her. She must’ve called shotgun, or maybe Sollux got her first. You open the door to the backseat and clamber inside.

Karkat is on the far end, smushed into the door. He looks as disagreeable as always but he offers you a softer-than-usual smile as he adjusts his traditional black t-shirt. Eridan, in between the two of you, looks far more uncomfortable. You notice the way he is desperately trying not to look at you and in retaliation, you put a soft hand on his thigh. He looks as though he might faint, cheeks flushed and forehead beaded with sweat. He doesn’t say anything to you, but Karkat does.

“Alright, Y/N?”

Yes. Why wouldn’t you be?

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”

Karkat shrugs although from the hunch of his shoulders, you can tell he wants to argue. Everyone knows that he’s lying. You know he’s lying. You know why everybody wants to know if you’re alright. And frankly, it’s nobody’s fucking business.

Not even if they stroked your hair and whispered soft little nothings to you all the way to the emergency room. Not even then.

As you walk into the party, you notice a tall, slim figure posed at the front of the grand entrance hall. He’s smoking a cigarette and he has sunglasses on indoors. Dave Strider. He greets your friends casually but when he gets to you he falters and peers at you over the top of his shades.

“All better, Y/N?”

“Yes, I’m totally better. I eat almonds and yogurt and soup.” He nods curtly, but you can see the tension in his face. It would be difficult to miss, as difficult to miss as those reddish brown eyes of his. You remember the last time you saw them.

You were lying on your back with the left side of your face caked in vomit. Your limbs were seizing up and you wanted to scream but it was like your voice was invisible. Dave knelt over you, eyes as wide as saucers as he begged you to stay awake, please stay awake, oh god, what did you do, why did you do this, god no, please no, no no no no no nonononononononononono.

And you put your hand on his face and said, “Hello David.” Or tried to. You’re sure that what came out was a flubbed version.

“What did you take?” He’s begging you please tell him, tell him so he can get you to the hospital and they can pump your stomach, god please.

“13 valiums and a bottle of gin.” You try to tell him that you were just trying to float and stop your misery and stop the not eating and stop stop stop stop stop. But he can’t hear you. He screams out a feeble and watery Karkat and then you’re in a car with Karkat petting you and his mouth was moving but all you could hear were sirens. You wanted to sleep more than anything but Karkat kept shoving you awake and talking to you and telling you stories and begging you don’t go to sleep, no.

So you suppose if anyone has the right to ask you if you’re okay, it’s Dave, and you’d better tell him too. So you do, but you can tell that he doesn’t fully believe you, but to your relief, he leaves it.

The music is loud. It makes your ears numb. You see Feferi but you don’t go and say hi because she’s kissing Sollux on his mouth and tracing her fingers up his arm and you know you shouldn’t interrupt, so you don’t and push your way further through Feferi’s house. The lights are all pink and blue and hazy and you can’t see through the smoke in the air and you can taste the acrid tang of cigarettes in the back of your mouth, which makes it feel like cotton. You stumble and trip over something-someone lying on a beanbag on the floor, who doesn’t try to catch you when you fall into his bony chest.

“Well hey there, little sis, how’s it motherfuckin’ hangin’?” It’s Gamzee, with his dark, splotchy face and lazy looking eyes and dopey grin. He doesn’t help you up, the idea doesn’t even seem to occur to him. His eyes are bloodshot and his left hand’s slender fingers grip a short, lit blunt, which he offers to you.

“You want a hit?” Nobody except him in your friend group smokes pot. They drink and snort crushed up pills but they don’t smoke weed. You’ve tried it before, but only a few times. You didn’t like how it stung your throat and made you cough.

“Nah, that stuff makes you hungry.” That was your least favorite thing about it. The last time you smoked pot, you’d woken up naked on John’s couch with your hands and chest smeared in food goop and no memory of how it got there. You didn’t need that again. Gamzee doesn’t seem to mind, and just takes another drag.

“It’s no problem sis, more for me.” You watch him as he puffs on it again, noting the way the slight orange glow offsets the neon lights in the room.

“Anyway, chica, long time no see. How’s it been?” You shrug and Gamzee laughs.

“That’s so motherfuckin’ righteous, sister. Seriously, be all up and motherfuckin’ careful. Don’t want anything bad happening to you or anything.” You’re dumbstruck by the fact that Gamzee of all people, slow-witted, slow-reacting, oblivious, with a brain half-ruined y marijuana knows. God, how does Gamzee know?

“I saw you, all up and covered in that puke. Shit, y’know, it fuckin’ scared me. I love you and I don’t want you to die or anything. You were shaking and crying and everyone was all just sitting there, not knowing what to up and do. It was the opposite of a miracle. But maybe the fact that you’re not dead is a miracle and whatever god exists kept you alive for us. I’m motherfuckin’ happy about that. I’d miss you if you were dead. I think everybody would, even if they pretend they wouldn’t.”

Gamzee then punctuates his profound statement with a soft belch and he gives you a watery, peaceful smile, close-lipped, with his eyes shut. You return the smile, though yours is more strained than his because god just stop fucking talking about it.You get it. You don’t really want to be dead anymore but you wish everyone would stop reminding you of it. You want to forget as much as anybody else. You never wanted everyone to see you, shaking on the floor, eyes rolled up into the back of your head with foam oozing from between your lips all over your white tanktop, staining it pink. You want to forget. You want to forget Feferi screaming and and Sollux saying, hush, hush, FF, it’s okay, and Dave’s tears dribbling onto your face and getting into your mouth. They were salty on your numb tongue.

Gamzee’s hand begins to snake down the front of his sweatpants and you decide to leave before this gets awkward. You abandon Gamzee and trip on your way to the stairs, which you clamber up, on your way to Feferi’s second story bathroom. You don’t have to go, you just want to inspect Feferi’s mom’s medicine cabinet, see if she’s gotten anything new since the last time you were here, before. Before. Before you took John’s grandmother’s pills out of the kitchen and fell on the floor and Feferi screamed and Dave cried and Karkat crooned in your ear and you felt more loved than you ever had before, which was bullshit because of course everyone loves you when you try to die.

She doesn’t have anything new, you note with mild disappointment, pocketing some old pills that haven’t been touched since the last time you were here. You read the label before hiding them. Oxytocin. Pain pills. You shove it, along with your hands into your oversized maroon jacket, and just in time too, because the door you were certain you locked opens to your right. You turn and meet an abashed-looking Tavros, his face alcohol and embarrassment-flushed.

“Oh, I didn’t realize that anybody would be in here. I just needed to, um, well, yeah, you know.” He stumbles over his words and looks flustered, so you smile at him.

“Oh, that’s alright, I was just leaving.” You grab a tiny white paper cup, designed for mouthwash and fill it with water before exiting the bathroom, brushing past Tavros’s shoulder. He closes the door and you pull out the pills and take two with the shot of water you have. You aren’t addicted to popping pills, but it is an outstanding interest of yours. You wait a few minutes and then you feel fuzzy and it’s a bit like you’re walking on the ceiling as you trample down the hallway. You walk back down the stairs on watery legs, trying admirably not to fall on your face, which you don’t.

You walk to the kitchen, where Vriska is leaning with her back and elbows resting against the counter. Terezi and John are with her and you notice them eye you suspiciously as you open up all of the cabinets and count the cans inside.

“Hungry?” John asks, voice shaking a little bit. You remember seeing him, driving the car, speeding down the freeway, pedal to the metal. He kept frantically glancing back at you, blue eyes enormous, even more so than usual. Hs too-large front teeth were worrying his bottom lip and his knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel. You know why his voice is shaking. You’re starting to get tired of this.

“No.”

“What’re you doing then?”

“Counting.”

“Okay,” he says, sounding uneasy. God, why can’t people just stop being fucking worried about you? Why does John have to quirk his perfectly arched and adorable eyebrows at you like that? Why does he have to bite his lip and why does goddamn Vriska of all people look worried about you? You know perfectly well the reason why, but you don’t care. You don’t care that they all saw you. That everyone knows. You couldn’t care less.

You exist through the backdoor in the kitchen because you need some air, jesus. You can’t stand the way they all look at you, with such pity and fear. It was a mistake and you’ll never live it down because you scared everybody shitless. You take a deep breath of untainted air and somebody sighs right after you exhale. What the hell?

“What the hell?” You glance around and huddled at your feet is Eridan, his floral short-sleeve button down too tight in the arms. He’s wearing slacks too, which is such an Eridan thing to do and you are filled with an overwhelming surge of affection toward your friend. This is all he is, your friend. Your friend that might fuck you later, according to Sollux.

You flop down next to him. He doesn’t react, just takes a long sip from his red plastic cup. It’s probably beer, which you’re sure upsets his sensitive palette but he’s actively not complaining in dramatic, emotional theatrics for once so you don’t question it.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“What’re you doing out here, ‘Dan?”

“Everywhere else was full.” It’s true. All of your friends are rambunctiously partying in every corner of Feferi’s party. Except the bedrooms, you suppose. But maybe Feferi and Sollux have already made their way there, you know they will eventually and Feferi will call you tomorrow and tell you all about it. You know every detail of her sex life. She knows every detail of yours and while you are always supportive, sometimes she frowns at you and shakes her head.

“Ah.”

You’re both silent for awhile, the only sounds being of your breath and Eridan sipping his beer solemnly and yet, delicately. Feferi has a trampoline in her backyard and you haven’t jumped around and just had fun in god knows how long so you get up and offer your hand to Eridan. He accepts, although with a cocked eyebrow, and his hand still firmly in yours, you guide him to the trampoline.

“Really, Y/N? You wanna play on the goddamn trampoline? That’s fairly, just, it’s juvenile, don’t you think?”

“Yes, absolutely.” And you take off your shoes and fling your body onto the black netting and bounce a few times. Eridan hesitantly follows you.

“What if someone sees us?”

“Let them. We’re young and you’re drunk and I want to fly,” you say, leaping into the air and coming down with a spring. Eridan doesn’t jump at first, not until you grab his sleeve and tug on it and oh, Danny, I’m having so much fun, I’m flying, this is like the fucking Notebook, I’m a fucking bird, tell me I’m a bird like the Notebook. You’re laughing hysterically at yourself and Eridan is fucking giggling at you and then he starts jumping too and you dance in circles with only the soundtrack of summer cicadas to keep a melody. You grab his hands and his fingers twine with yours and suddenly he’s falling and you’re bouncing your back against the trampoline, narrowly avoiding hitting your head as Eridan lands on top of you and bounces off but only after squishing the life out of you.

You’re laughing so hard no sound is coming out and you’re gasping and so is he and you grab his hand from where he’s laying beside you.

You look up at the stars. You haven’t seen the stars in over six weeks. You missed them.

“So, how are you, Y/N? I’m sure sorry that I couldn’t come an’ visit you.” You do the best shrug you can while lying down.

“Nobody was allowed to visit me, except in the ER.”

“Still, I should’ve come. Fef went. John went.”

“They’re the only ones that did.”

“Really?” His voice is incredulous.

“Everyone texted. Until I had to go to the psych ward. Then I wasn’t allowed texts anymore.”

“Yeah, I know.”

You don’t want to be sad anymore so you change the subject.

“Eridan?”

“Hm?”

“Are you going to fuck me later?” He chokes, a loud spluttering cough, and jerks up to lay on his arm, staring down at you.

“What?!”

“Sollux told me that you were going to.”

“God, oh fuck, he told me-he-he said-he told me you didn’t know!”

“I know.”

“Well, I know that now!”

“It’s okay. If you want to, I’m okay with it.”

“Okay with what?”

“You fucking me.”

His face flared red, which was a feat in and of itself because his skin was soft brown. He looked beautiful in the starlight: his eyes, a gorgeous golden-hazel with long, dark lashes, his nose sturdy and strong, his lips fairly thick and soft and most especially the freckle he had, on the left corner of his bottom lip. His hair fell in his face, dark brown and highlighted by a thick bleached streak in the front. He wasn’t just pretty, not just beautiful, he was gorgeous. You wouldn’t mind snagging his virginity. Not one bit.

“I don’t think-I mean-well-I-I-I want to but I just think that maybe we should wait on that.”

“Okay,” you say, staring into his eyes, fighting down a pang of disappointment, “But if Sollux asks, you can say you did.”

His eyes narrow a bit and then he’s nervously looking at anything but you.

“But I wanted to know. Could you, maybe-I don’t-just-kiss me?” You smile, a full grin with teeth showing an everything.

“Yes, Eridan.”

And then you get up to your knees and pull him up to meet you and your lips are together and his lips are soft, a bit firmer than you imagined, and they’re clumsy and he accidentally clips your teeth together. You wrap an arm over his shoulder and he puts his hands at your small waist, pressing on your hips with his fingertips. You reach your other hand down and take his. You guide it over your breast and his whole body stiffens. His fingers begin to itch around and grope at the soft flesh under his hand and you slip your lips down to his neck. He makes a noise that is a cross between a purr and a croon and you push him down beneath you. The two of you break apart and he stares up at you, fingers touching his swollen bottom lip like he can’t believe what just happened. You realize suddenly that you just bagged his first kiss. You gently kiss his cheek and roll off of his abdomen.

When you wake up in the morning, you’re inside on the couch with Eridan spooned up behind you. A shirtless Equius lays across the floor with Nepeta’s head on his belly. Terezi’s legs are sprawled across her chest. Everyone else is still asleep but you can feel Eridan start to stir behind you. He nuzzles into the crook of your neck and mumbles a quiet good morning into the skin.

“Morning.”

“Mm.”

“Eridan?”

“Hm?”

“Your stiffy’s digging into my back.”

“M’sorry.”

“S’okay.”

[lettersofsky]

GamTav Week Day Seven: Free Day

OK LISTEN I really like this asethetic for these two. It’s my favourite. And this one’s actually shippy right now, even if only pre-dating it’s the best one.

~

It takes them a while, more than a while, to drift back into each other’s spheres of existence.

They’d both been doing different things with their lives; becoming trolls that they could be happy with without the attachment of flushed or pitched quadrants. That didn’t mean that they didn’t date though, Gamzee knew that he’d dated a number of individuals, troll and human alike, just to get the taste of what he’d wanted in a partner down, to learn to enjoy sharing himself without someone that wanted to know him for however long they lasted.

And he knew from the grapevine that Tavros had been doing the same.

There’s nothing really special that draws them back towards each other in the matter of quadrants.

Karkat had been convinced into throwing a party by his boyfriend Dave and Dave’s girlfriend Jade for some event or another and they’d all been invited, Gamzee had spent most of the night making small talk with those that weren’t outwardly hostile towards him and avoiding near everyone else. All and all it’d been a fun night.

He didn’t know who approached who first, if either of them had or if they’d just gravitated together like magnets that recognized the other’s charge as opposing to their own.

That hardly mattered in the end though, not when Tavros was standing in front of him, looking like he’d finally grown into the proud, imposing length of his horns, not to mention into the size of them, towering over Gamzee in both height and the breadth of his shoulders, a feat only one other troll had a claim to.

“Yo,” Gamzee decided to be the first to speak, ending their silent inspection of each other; instinct to check out the competition left over from their days on Alternia he was sure.

“Hey,” there wasn’t even a beat of hesitation to the answer, to Tavros’ willingness to talk to him. It reminded Gamzee keenly of their younger sweeps, back when they’d both been innocent and largely unmarred by the world around them. It was nice in the way that old memories were once they stopped hurting you. “I didn’t know you uh, you were drinking.”

“I’m not,” Gamzee couldn’t help but snort, remembering the support meetings and life coaching sessions he still attended on a regular basis to stop himself from sliding back into the addiction that had been ingrained in his very image of himself since before he could remember. “S’apple juice. Strider specialty.”

“Oh, that uh, that explains it.” Tavros looked a little flustered at that, a soft bloom of bronze on his cheeks, but easily laughed off as conversation continued. “What have you been doing since we uh, since we last…”

“Since we was speakin last?” The offered words were taken with a small self-conscious smile, acknowledged without needing to be said as such. “Been good, workin’, makin a routine for myself and bein all productive like ya’know?”

“Yeah I uh, heard from Equius that you opened your own place?”

A painted brow rose. “You two been talkin ‘bout me, have ya? S’a weird topic a pillowtalk.”

“What?!” That has him, colour spreading deep and bright over Tavros’ nose and the top of his cheeks, the spread of it to his ears obvious with the way the other troll cut his hair. “N-no! No not like that at all! I, I mean—”

“Chill bro, s’all good,” he chuckled, Tavros deflating from his flurry of justification and explaining with a sigh. “I ain’t real carin how and what other motherfuckers say ‘bout me, s’all cool.”

They lapse into quiet, Tavros focusing down on the glass of something definitely alcoholic in his own hand while Gamzee turned his head to inspect one of the nearby food platters, debating if he was hungry enough to try one of the oddly coloured creations.

“It wasn’t that though,” Tavros broke the quiet as Gamzee decided to just go for it, a piece of cracker with something on it in his claw.

“Hmm?”

“It wasn’t uh, wasn’t pillowtalk. He and I were just catching up the other day and he uh… told me about when he ran into you.”

“He does that a lot,” Gamzee hummed, playing at being more focused on what was in his hand than the troll in front of him. “Ya think for a troll that big he’d been more cautious a where he’s going but nah. Trolls fallin all over under his motherfuckin hooves, yeah?”

“He said you were seeing someone.”

“I’m always seeing some motherfucker,” he pointed one, returning his gaze to Tavros as he tilted his head just so the pretty pale pink diamond stud in his ear could be seen, the violet gem inlaid in it glinting in the light of the room. “Believe you me everyone else is gonna know when Eribro’s tired a me ‘fore I do.”

“No,” the word was accompanied by a rough shake of Tavros’ head, brow furrowing deep. There’s frustration in his voice now, not too uncommon an occurrence for anyone talking with Gamzee for more than a few minutes. “You know for someone that doesn’t like being lied to you sure do a lot of it.”

“You’re the motherfucker beatin’ ‘round the bush like it all up and kicked ya lusus,” Gamzee shot back, surprising Tavros enough for his face to go slack with it. “Iffin ya wanna ask me ‘bout the motherfuckers I was seein, quad or nah, just come out and motherfuckin say it. We’re bein adults now, yeah?”

A pause. A beat. Gamzee’s ready to call this experiment a failure when Tavros spoke up again.

“…Are you seeing anyone now? Flushed-wise I mean?”

“Solbro and I vacillate on an’ off but ain’t got nobody permanent in there nah..”

Tavros nods and Gamzee goes back to inspecting the morsel in his claws, stepping forward into the other troll’s face as he opens his mouth to speak again, lifting it until it was resting just before the other’s mouth, claws near brushing warm lips as they parted.

“Try this for me?” Gamzee offered, cocking his head and staring up at Tavros, watching and waiting to see exactly what the bronze would do with the offering.

Tavros reacted exactly as he should have, colour on his cheeks as he leaned forward ever so slightly to take the piece of food into his mouth between his teeth, lips brushing over Gamzee’s fingers as he took the bite.

“How’s it tastin?” Gamzee asked after watching Tavros chew the morsel he’d bitten off, blinking as the other troll nodded down at him.

“It’s uh… it’s good.” He said, all the answer Gamzee needed, humming and popping the rest of the piece into his mouth, more than aware of Tavros staring at him in return.

“It is,” he agreed, dragging his tongue purposefully over his own claws, fully aware of Tavros watching him. “Mayhaps ya should try some more for me yeah? There’s supposed ta be some new restaurant openin near my hive, ya should come and try it out with me yeah?”

“… Ye… yeah!” Tavros nodded, wide smile back on his face, bronze spreading across his cheeks. “Yeah I’d uh… I’d really like that.”

“Cool,” he purred. “We can be chattin at each other later ta be deciding times, yeah?”

[emperor-of-blood]

Aight so I guess I’m doing a session review?/Prediction?/Analysis of how I think @neonwolfeh session might go.

So starting this off with the premise:

It’s a normal session with no specific prototyping fuckery or trolls or whatever. and I got some brief character summaries:

Ross, Heir of Doom: Ross is a jaded, angry guy who just wants to have -One Good Daytm-.

Luca, Rogue of Life: Pretty upbeat, tries to make the best of every situation (and does not succeed). 

Kase, Seer of Rage: Fuckin edgelord, thats p much it. Full of hate and will say slurs. 

Abby, Witch of Hope: Basically a shoujo anime protagonist, awkward and peppy and sweet. 

Odin, Prince of Time: Embodiment of nervousness and jumpiness. This guy needs a nap and a hug.

Niko, Knight of Space: Like Dave Strider if he was as suave as 2012 fanon interpretations said he is.

And now for my takes on them:

So starting off my initial impressions of the session are complete failure, mostly based on one thing. Odin, the Time player. While he sounds decent enough of a guy you have to understand the reason that every session requires a Space and Time player to succeed. Technically speaking, only a Space player is needed to overcome the wall of creating a new universe. The Time player is needed because the game is just that hard. The image I get of Odin is that he won’t be actually doing much Time traveling, likely too weak-minded to believe that he could pull things off. A lot of pressure would be resting on his shoulders and he needs to answer. As I said in my Patrick Star analysis, I believe that he’s going to be wasting a lot of Time. For different reasons here though, he’s still destined to procrastinate. That is likely going to get people in his session killed. Sburb is hard and everyone involved needs to be doing their part to beat the game. 

My analysis doesn’t end with that though. We still have 5 other players to throw into the mix! Moving onto I’d like to talk about the cool cat Niko, the Knight of Space. So inherently here we have a contradictory classpect. The Knight is a protector, in their session they are supposed to cooperate with their Space player to breed The Frogtm. They are meant to be a companion. The Space class is one of solitude, barring their frog breeding partner. Space is a vast domain and both Jade and Kanaya spent most of their time alone. It’s one of their themes. They spend time worried about the bigger picture that with the smaller problems that their teammates deal with. Likely, they are very alone. And that makes me wonder, how much of the “Cool Guy” is real and how much of it is, well, him being lonely? Or a defense mechanism because of that? Keep yourself distant and aloof because that’s where you’re going to end up anyways. No reason for people to get hurt, sort of deal. 

Next I wanna talk about Luca, the Rogue of Life. I imagine her as the kind of person who is peppy to the point that it makes people uncomfortable. Trying to bring Life happiness to all of her friends by being a never ending source of sunshine. Which is all well and good, these types of people are well liked and a party falling into the traps of depression is likely to fail. That being said, I can’t help but believe that her failures come from her unending sunshine. Sometimes people just need to be sad. Life has it’s ups and down and that’s natural. People probably feel exhausted around her, much to her dismay. You must go down to rise back up. I feel like she’s probably Odin’s self proclaimed best friend and also a main source of stress for him. “You can do it!” is encouragement (He probably sees it as empty/naive), not useful advice. Her being unable to see that has got to be one of her personal challenges. She’s not responsible for rewriting everyone’s lives or fixing their problems. Those are not hurdles for her to overcome. I feel like every Rogue has some weird interaction with their aspect. As one who steals Life/steals from Life I don’t think it’s meant to be taken literally. She ain’t sucking out peoples souls. I’d say she maybe has an aura of demoralization for her enemies, kind of like a mental attack? Or it could be something more direct like absorbing Life essence through contact or something. Like a magic drain attack similar to the androids from DBZ or some equivalent. The stealing from Life is maybe... just a literal item teleportation ability? Like an actual Thief Rogue. Beyond that, she can probably bring people back to life once just like every other Life player ever.

Ross the Heir of Doom is, well, kind of a loser. but he doesn’t have to be. His main challenge is going to be realizing that his “One good daytm” isn’t just going to randomly show up. It’s something you have to work for. Once he does, he’ll probably be fine. Weirdly enough the fucking Doom player is likely the most competent out of everyone, which is really funny imo. His powers are uh. Well. One who inherits Doom/is protected by Doom. I’m shooting in the dark here despite there being a canon Heir of Doom. I’d say he maybe influences enemies to fight each other? At least early on during the passive protection phase. Later on once he awakens his powers he might be able to suck “Bad vibes” into himself, weakening his enemies and strengthening himself. That might be leeching into Thief territory but I wouldn’t know what else to say here honestly. Maybe he can fix things? Inheriting the Doom of something and taking the damage into himself? It’s up for debate.

Moving on to Kase, Seer of Rage. The dude’s probably a complete asshole. The kind that you question why you’re even friends with them. Probably racist but also hates people in general and claims that it’s OK because of that. Probably gets along really well with animals because of that too. He’s probably feeding into Odin’s insecurities, which, might actually be helping him stay until he’s really ready to time travel. But that’s not Kase’s intention (Ask him about it afterwards and he’ll claim otherwise forever.). He just want’s to be a dick and thinks being edgy or ironic is cool. As on who understands Rage he’s likely well aware that it can be useful in the right scenarios. Maybe he lets himself get taken by the berserker Rage at just the right moment and come back down afterwards. But he hasn’t really come down. You can’t just have a heart filled with Rage and hate and be a normal person the rest of the time. He can probably tell when it’s time for others to let loose as well. But likely has trouble convincing them. 

Kase and Ross probably get along really well.

Finally, we have Abby, the Witch of Hope. Honestly? She sounds really basic. She’s gotta be the most “Normal” person out of the bunch. Which, when your surrounded by weirdos, is a good thing. Everyone needs someone sane to fall back on and that’s definitely her. I imagine that’s how she manipulates Hope, just giving people some reference, some piece of mind, that they haven’t gone off the deep end. Or maybe that the have and need to rethink things. She’s probably the one that’ll help Odin figure his shit out. Maybe she drafts up a plan of events he should change. Then in the new timeline he seeks out her help again and repeats this until he can do things himself. While I don’t see her as the leader of the party, she is likely the anchor. She also probably will play a bog role in everyone else figuring out their shit too. Telling Ross to shut the fuck up, Kase to man up and do something, Luca to do something productive, Niko to call her when he the loneliness starts getting to him, just to talk. Her challenges likely revolve around realizing how important she is. After all, she’s just a shoujo protag, what can she do? Everyone is out there killing monsters or solving puzzles or hacking their alchemists. Ans she’s just a plain Jane. But that’s what makes her special. Her powers are probably basic hope lasers and maybe being good at giving speeches. 

So with that out of the way how would the actual session go? Well, I think there’s a lot of fighting. I imagine Kase wants to be the leader being the “Only one capable of it” and he’s not exactly wrong. But he’s also insufferable. So it doesn’t matter that he’s competent because nobody wants to listen to him. The only other options are Luca who everyone also likely can’t deal with for extended periods of time for previously stated reasons; or Niko, who is likely to busy with their own shit to also manage the party. So I think everyone has to meet up and decide that it’s probably best for Kase to be leader and that everyone should just agree to follow him and give him some advice where they can. Kase is probably actually competent. He’s likely a bad leader but an even worse follower. I can imagine him just ignoring anyone else as the leader and going off to do his own thing and fucking shit up. With him as the leader, not causing trouble and everyone else in a kind of, secret alliance I guess, the key players are going to be Odin and Abby. Odin needs to be able to fill his role or everyone dies. Simple as that. Abby needs to a) help him figure his shit out if he can’t on his own. And b) help ground everyone else (So they can solve their problems) and keep some semblance of sanity. If they can, there’s a solid shot at victory. If Odin dies before he can Time travel, well, I guess that’s that. There’s a lot of personal challenges to overcome based on a character’s classpect and I think it really comes down to, are these people/characters capable of growth? 

Hopefully the way I viewed the characters was how you wanted but with so little to go on I might have misinterpreted somethings. Either way this was fun!

[microsoftedgy69]

11/11: Headstone

[this time last year]

“He doesn’t have a grave, does he?” your therapist says, head tilted as she consults the notes on the clipboard she keeps on her lap. That thing is the most disconcerting thing in the room, if anyone were to ask you, but you haven’t told her that. You’re still getting used to this whole idea. The idea of therapy. “What with the sea burial.”

“Yeah,” you say. “We just chucked him out there, not really the place for a headstone or whatever.”

“Do you think that would help?” she asks, and looks up at you again. “Having a headstone for Dirk?”

You act surprised. “How am I gonna do that? I can’t exactly get his decomposed ocean corpse back from a destroyed timeline to make a proper grave—”

“A symbolic one, Alan,” she says. She’s giving you that smile that says, I look right through you, but it’s okay. You’ve learned not to hate her for it. “I know you’ve read up on many modern human practices, have you looked into graveyards? After Dirk’s death, maybe?”

“Not really,” you admit. The “modern” human thing you were looking into the most after Dirk’s death was crime and punishment, obsessed with trying to figure out what punishment you would have gotten in a different century than the 25th. You don’t say that. She knows, anyway. You mentioned it during the first couple of sessions, when you were giving her a rough overview of your life so far (what a stomach-twisting, miserable three hours that was), and you both agreed to put it on the backburner.

She nods. “Of course one purpose of them is to give the deceased a place to rest. You did that, by reuniting Dirk with the sea. But they’re also places that we, the ones left behind, can come to, to grieve. I think it’s important to have a place that allows you to mourn outside of your home, so you can leave it there, you know? So you don’t have to carry this anniversary around with you everywhere. You get him a headstone, and it waits for you there, wherever you put it, and then you can do your grieving there, and your happy things at home.”

You have thought about this, in the past. You already played stupid when she asked, so you’re not going to admit that now, but you know that you have. You imagined putting a little place up for him, but you usually pictured it on the roof of the apartment you don’t have anymore. It’s not like there were any other places around, for the longest time.

“I don’t know,” you say slowly, looking at the floor, rubbing your left thumb over your right, “where. The fort would be big enough to get him a little niche somewhere, but you said it should be out of my home, and that makes sense to me, I think. Sometimes I see, like, crosses or wreaths at the side of the road where people had accidents, but I can’t put it where he died either, because that,” you swallow, pointlessly, around air, “whole place doesn’t exist anymore. And I could con my way into getting him an empty grave on an actual graveyard, but that feels — really inappropriate somehow. As if I’m making fun of him, both of us.”

Your therapist puts her pen down on her clipboard, then puts her clipboard onto the little table that’s next to her chair, along with a clock and a mug of tea she always forgets about until it’s cold. “Alan, I’m going to ask you something only you could possibly know the answer to,” she says and folds her hands. “Where would he want it to be?”

On top of the White House, was your first thought. Where Dave and Rose fought. Or in the Hollywood hills. Dave again. He would have understood, though, that neither are possible in this century. And if nothing else works, you thought, if it had to be something real, and feasible, then Dirk would have wanted — you would have wanted to rest at home.

When Sawtooth threw his body out of the window and into the ocean so many years ago, it was mainly because that was the only way to get rid of a corpse back then. That, or a very gorey Sendificator alternative you didn’t want to consider. Several months had passed in which he had just been lying dead on the floor of the apartment that you’d been keeping as cold as possible. Corpsefridge, as Squarewave coined it, back then. So you just had to finally let go of him, to allow yourself to try to move on.

But even back then, you thought that it felt right, returning him to the sea. You have loved the ocean as much as you have hated it, and maybe that’s what childhood homes are all about.

You live in a different timeline these days, after launching Sburb in your home timeline and thus destroying it for the greater good of getting to kill the Condesce. You live in the one your boyfriend lives in. You don’t live with him, but it seemed like a good first baby step towards something like that. In this timeline, you travel to Houston, Texas. You find the exact coordinates where your apartment would have been, and then you take the fastest route to the ocean from there. You go into the water, and you keep going, as deep as you can.

Your body can withstand a lot more pressure than a human body can, down here, and today it’s important. You don’t want anyone else to find this. You don’t want anyone to dig it up, take it home as a cool token they found on their dive. This is for you, to grieve.

It took you a bit to figure out what to even put here. You’re at a good spot, you’ve saved the coordinates so you can visit when you feel like you need to, but it was hard to pick something to actually do, here. You don’t have any old clothes or other belongings of his; you didn’t feel like they were yours, back then, so you left them in the apartment that’s gone now. For a while, you toyed with the idea of leaving another pair of shades here, but you’re growing a little tired of that, and you’d feel kind of bad for leaving plastic in the ocean, anyway.

But your therapist kept talking about headstones. So, you got one of those.

To you, personally, it looks more like a plaque, but you’re new to this. Apparently some graves have these, flat in the ground instead of the classical gravestone. You engraved one, did your best to seal it to withstand at least some years down here, and now you’ve pushed it securely into the deep sea ground.

You stand in the perfect silence of the ocean, alone for miles, and look down at it. You were telling him a lot, last year. There was a lot to say. There are plenty of updates you could give about your life these days, but you don’t feel like it, today. In movies, people return to graves all the time, lay down flowers and say things. You can’t quite recall what they say. You’re not sure. But you suppose you’ll figure it out, in time. Now that it’s here, you can come back however often you like.

Today, you stay a bit longer. You watch the water wash over the stone and think back about what happened six years ago, and it is not and will never be a good memory, but it’s more bearable, these days. You’re doing your best. You are doing your best. You’re working very hard, and you’re figuring things out.

Once the idea of getting your wifi back and talking to your friends starts sounding nicer than hanging out down here, you let yourself float towards the surface again. This was good, you think. You took care of yourself. You got help, and you reached out, and you’re meeting up with Jake later, and you did something nice. For you, and nobody else. You like this headstone. You’re proud of it.

Dirk Strider December 3, 2409 — November 11, 2423 I am not here. I did not die.

[unicorn-poop]

Troll Rose and the Rule 63 Trolls (School)

(Anyone know the source? I found this on the internet. Anyways here’s what the 12 beauties look like (Only because I like this one the best). 

THE CONDESCE: YOU ALL AR--E GOING TO GO TO SCHOOL W)(--ETH--ER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!

KARKAT: BUT MOM I DON’T WANT TO GO TO A PLACE FILLED WITH ANNOYING UGLY ASS HUMANS! EW!

SOLLUX: yeah ii don’t thiink thiis school would be a very good iidea...

THE CONDESCE: W)(AL--E YOU ALL N--E--ED FRO--ENDS! 

ARADIA: i have friends! i am friends with the spirits of the dead

THE CONDESCE: Friends that are not dead...

ARADIA: awwww....

THE CONDESCE: Anyways you all will actually end up sucessful and not losers w)(o will still live wit)( mommy....Now bye!

(Kicks the trolls out)

KARKAT: FUUUUUUUUUCK!

(The trolls end up walking. They past a McDonalds on their way to school)

TAVROS: uHH KARKAT CAN WE GET SOMETHING FROM MCDONALDS, i AM STARVING

KARKAT: I DON’T FUCKING NO! WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME? ASK ARADIA! HE IS THE LEADER HERE! HIS SIGN IS AT THE BEGINING OF THE ZODIAC FOR FUCKS SAKE!

TAVROS: aRADIA...

ARADIA: no. that place is just the saddest place on earth. burger queen is much better tavros

VRISKA: No it ain’t! They suck ass! 

TEREZI: YOU 4R3 ONLY S4Y1NG TH4T B3C4US3 TH4T WHOPP3R G4V3 YOU TH3 SH1TS!

FEFERI: HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

VRISKA: Shut up terezi! Not funny fish 8oy!

(The trolls make it to school)

NEPETA: :33 oh cool! there’s animals?!

KARKAT: THOSE ARE FREAKS! I THINK THEY’RE CALLED FURRIES! WHO KNEW THIS SCHOOL WOULD HAVE FUCKING FURRIES HERE!

NEPETA: :33 aww yesssss! time to make some furiends

TEREZI: 3V3RYONE SM3LLS!

STUDENT 1: Hey freaks

ERIDAN: excuse me? wwe aren’t the freaks here!

GAMZEE: hEy BrUh WhY yOu GoTta Be MeAn To My FrIeNdS?

Equius gets up at Student 1 face. the kid pisses himself

EQUIUS: D--> listen you disgrace you will leave me and my friends alone! we are not the freaks here! we got noble blood that is higher than yours. you should listen to us because we rule the school. now get lost (Cracks Knuckles). 

Student 1 runs away

EQUIUS: D--> a waste of our time

SOLLUX: thanks eq

KANAYA: Did He Just Soil Himself?

KARKAT: HA! YEAH EQUIUS SURE SCARED THE PISS OUT OF THAT DWEEB!

(Suddenly Jade harley walks past)

JADE: hi guys :)

(All of the trolls stare in aw. Yes Jade is still a girl And a human in this AU). 

ARADIA: oh wow she is so pretty. she makes me feel more  alive than i already am

TAVROS: wOW SHE IS SO PRETTY!

SOLLUX: ii thiink ii have a thiing for human female2 wiith long black haiir. 

KARKAT: HOLY FUCK! 

NEPETA: :33 she is so puritty!

KANAYA: My What Lovely Clothing She Has

TEREZI: HOLY SH1T! 

VRISKA: That ass ;:::)

EQUIUS: D--> Oh my! I need a towel

GAMZEE: sEe GuYs MiRaClEs Do ExIsT

ERIDAN: looks like this vviolet gal here is getting a human girl in her red quadrant today

FEFERI: GLUB GLUB!

The trolls then all look at eachother

KARKAT: FUCK ALL OF YOU! SHE IS MINE! OUT OF ALL OF YOU I DESERVE A GIRLFRIEND!

TAVROS: nO WAY MAN, i DESERVE HER, WE LITERALLY WOULD BE THE BEST COUPLE IN THIS SCHOOL, bESIDES YOU’RE TOO LOUD!

SOLLUX: ii am 2mart! ii thiink ii de2erve her more than the 2 of you.

EQUIUS: D--> no way. i have higher blood than the three of you. who wouldn’t like a lovely bl00 lady like me? she will be mine! understood lowbloods?

ERIDAN: i am prettier than the 4 of you so she’ll be in my red quadrant. it’s the truth i don’t make the rules!

GAMZEE: HONK!

NEPETA: :33 oh wow the girls are fighting ofur her. 

KANAYA: I Don’t Blame Them

VRISKA: Ha! Well she is mine. The rest of you can just find someone else. Look fussyfangs (Points at Dave) I think that man over there would be a gr8 man for you! You should go talk to him. 

KANAYA: No. He Seems Like A Asshole I Think You Should Date Him.

VRISKA: Nah. He’s uglyyyyyyy!

NEPETA: :33 i think he means black dating

VRISKA: Sure but right now that raven haired human girl is going in my red quadrant. 

KANAYA: No She Is Not Why Would She Want To date You?

VRISKA: Because I am a hot mother fucker!

FEFERI: )(a! Sea t)(ese muscles gentlemen. T)(e human is going to be mine

VRISKA: You’re a dick! Why would she want to 8e with you?!

FEFERI: My blood colour you ass! Also t)(e very fact that I )(ave )(igher blood t)(an all of you so )(A! 

TEREZI: SUCK 1T! NOBODY W4NTS SOMEBODY WHO SM3LLS L1K3 F1SH!

FEFERI: (pulls out Trident) T)(AT’S IT!

Kanaya pulls out his chainsaw.

KANAYA: WILL YOU ALL JUST STOP! Why Are You All fighting For A Girl We Don’t Even Know?

KARKAT: BECAUSE.....

(Suddenly dave strider passes)

DAVE: Sup grey humans. Nice candy corn horns. 

ARADIA:.......our horns aren’t candy buddy

DAVE: Hey there beautiful (Looking at karkat)

KARKAT: (BLUSHES)

KANAYA: Jesus He Seems Like A Asshole

VRISKA: 8ut fussyfangs he’d 8e the perfect guy for you.

EQUIUS: D--> Let’s get to class

(In Fourth Period)

TEACHER: So class today we will be learning about geometry. Now turn to page 69 in your text books

(The whole class heavily sighs)

All the trolls couldn’t stop thinking about Jade. 11 of them wanted her in their red quadrant. You can guess who doesn't. He just wanted to be her morail. 

JOHN: hi. 

KANAYA: Hello Human 

JOHN: you’re really handsome. 

KANAYA: Thank You Now Could You Tell Me About This Human That Has Green Eyes And Long Black hair

JOHN: oh, that’s my sister jade harley! have you met her yet? she’s awesome isn’t she?

KANAYA: My Friends Are Obsessed With Her

JOHN: oh really? well she is really pretty and a very friendly person so it’s understandable. 

VRISKA: Hey Fussyfangs! Why are you talking to that loser?

JOHN: I am not a loser!

VRISKA: so this jade human is related you you, huh? So 8uddy can you tell me how to get her in my red quadrant? 

JOHN: red quadrant? 

VRISKA: How can I make her my girlfriend? Jegus you humans are stupiiiiid!

JOHN: join the football team! seems something you’d be good at as well as your shirtless friend. in fact why don’t you have half of your friends join the cheerleading squad and half join the football team. 

VRISKA: Thank you weirdo

JOHN: it is john, MY NAME IS JOHN! 

(Later on at Lunch)

VRISKA: Ok guys so this John human says to get the girl of our dreams is to choin football and cheerleading. 

TEREZI: WH4T 4BOUT 4RT CLUB? 

KANAYA: Terezi You Would Just Get Kicked Out For Eating All The Crayons And Chalk

TEREZI: H3H3H3H3 TH3 ONLY R34SON 1 W4NT3D TO JO1N!

TAVROS: sO WHO IS JOINING WHICH SPORT

VRISKA: You can just join cheerleading! You’d suck and get crushed in football.

TAVROS: eXCUSE ME? 

SOLLUX: ii thiink ii’ll joiin cheerleading. that 2ound2 fun. 

KARKAT: I THINK I’LL JOIN TOO! TIME TO SHOW OFF MY AWESOME SKILLS

GAMZEE: i’M wItH yOu Sis

ERIDAN: all the girls wwill be jealous of me!

EQUIUS: D--> i will join football so i can crush all the dumb peasant males on there

FEFERI: Right! Me and you Equius! Going to crush all t)(e losers on there! 

NEPETA: :33 i’ll join ch33rleading. it s33ms fun. 

ARADIA: i’m going to use my ghost powers. 

VRISKA: You ass! That’d 8e cheating! 

ARADIA: yeah and i don;t care. stay mad blue blooded scum!

VRISKA: >::::(

TEREZI: W1SH 1 COULD JO1N 4RT CLUB! 

(Johm comes up to their table)

EQUIUS: D--> no humans aloud

VRISKA: There’s my man 

KANAYA: You Are Dating? 

VRISKA: Nah, I don;t date nerds 

JOHN: so are you guys doing the cheerleading and  football? 

KANAYA: Apparently. 

JOHN: any of you also want to join LGBT+ Club?

TEREZI: WH4T 1S TH4T?

JOHN: For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Queer, Allies and others. 

ARADIA: we wouldn’t mind joining. after all we are all bisexual since we trolls are all bisexual. 

KARKAT: PANSEXUAL!

ARADIA: whatever. 

KANAYA: I Prefer Males In My Red Quadrant. 

JOHN: cool. you’re gay and that is fine. we meet on wednesdays. oh and dave is going to be there

(John Leaves)

VRISKA: Kaaaaaaaanaaaaaaaayaaaaaaa :))))))))

KANAYA: No

(So later on the 6 try out for cheerleadong and the other 6 tryout for football. Surprisingly they all make their respective teams)

To be continued. See next time how The 11 trolls try so hard to get Jade in their quadrant.