#ooc: I wanted include part of thread we did with these two that you wrote to make it more special

[oathofpromises]

♫

                          Ap·pe·ten·cy

                                     A longing or desire

He’s swift, plucking the cigarette free from her to spin it between his fingers, holding it away before he leans in, pressing a light kiss along the skin below her eye. He doesn’t stop there, lightly stamping a trail of kisses from his formed mark down, down, up until he reaches her lips, where yet another is placed teasingly along the edge of her mouth.

It was, in that instant, Jill knew it was Chris. He was the love that came without warning, her shelter in the storm. She felt so many complex emotions around him, and with just one single smile he had her wrapped around his finger. Love truly wasn’t fate, it was a choice they made and in the end they had picked each other. 

1. Beautiful Crime by Tamer

We fight every night for something When the sun sets, we're both the same Half in the shadows Half burned in flames We can't look back for nothin' Take what you need, say your goodbyes I gave you everything And it's a beautiful crime

2.The Good in Me by Jon Bellion

Your heart's a vine that I've bled trying to climb Yeah, you're making a ruin of me Try to survive, keep my spirit alive But like a knife in the woods Yeah, you hunt down the good in me

3.Bloodsport by Raleigh Ritchie

Nothing is perfect but your imperfections are quaint And your love is worth it and for that I will wait And though you hate me, when you have a turn I drive you crazy but you always return

4.Forest Fire by Brighton 

And how was I to know I'm not strong I should have saved you and Oh, I hope you know That you're my home But now I'm lost, So lost

5. Almost to the Moon by Daisy Gray

I was just falling in love with you Why did it have to be like this Why did it have to be like this When we were almost to the moon Why did we have to be comets Crashing and burning like comets When I was just falling in love with you

6.The Beach by The Neighbourhood

If I told you that I loved you Tell me, what would you say? If I told you that I hated you Would you go away? Now I need your help with everything that I do I don't want to lie, I've been relying on you

7.You by Keaton Henson 

If you must leave, Leave as though fire burns under your feet If you must speak, Speak every word as though it were unique If you must die, sweetheart Die knowing your life was my life's best part If you must die, Remember your life

8. Mimicry by Kerli

I braved the sea of ice Cut to the bone I was frozen and blue Just to see you I followed all your signs Pressed through the snow I was battered and bruised Just to see you

9.My Arms by LEDGER

The light inside your eyes is fadin' out But I'm not gonna give up on ya now

Don't be afraid I know you think you're on your own But you'll be okay You don't have to go through it alone

10. Small Doses by Bebe Rexha

I can only take you in small doses, small doses Loving you, it's explosive, you know this I can only take you in small doses, small doses Loving you, it's explosive, you know this I can only take you in small doses

[thaumatological]

im gonnaaaa revise and post my very dirk centric analysis of the epilogues here as well

also in case it needs stating, spoilers abound!

i read through both of the epilogues simultaneously yesterday, consuming both at the same time rather than one and then the other, and i feel like while it may not have been the most “satisfying” approach from a character-centric perspective, i have a more complete understanding of the stories than those who read them separately. if you’ve read through both and have the stomach to do it again for some reason, i suggest doing it in parallel, m1 c1 m2 c2 etc.

i will warn you though, i ended up having two nightmares at the same time in my dreams last night. like, simultaneously, two separate threads of terror unraveling in my subconscious. i woke up this morning already knee deep into an analysis of the homestuck epilogues, and it was less like “waking up” and more “becoming aware that i was conscious”

anyway, without further ado!

dirk killing himself in candy 14 is the scene that resonates with us as being “dirk” because it is. that’s all dirk, our dirk, the one from homestuck. he Has to do that in order for candy to continue being candy, and part of me believes that he knew that on a conscious level—hence his death being just. he knew he wouldn’t get a nice fluffy outcome in the candy timeline because him, all of him, not just this one instance, was fated to be meat dirk.

—and speaking of, the concept of Ultimate Selves pretty much squares away meat dirk. he doesn’t read like our dirk, the one from homestuck canon, because the narrative explicitly states he’s Not anymore. he’s become all of him, all of him from across paradox space, including notable players bro, doc scratch, and lord english. dirk’s Ultimate Self is a culmination of every possible him taken to the highest intensity. it reads like one of his personal nightmares because it WAS his personal nightmare—the personal nightmare of our dirk. he’s a prince of heart. the ascension to his Ultimate Self resulted in the complete destruction of the barriers between his splinters. the more i think about it, the more brilliant it is. he seems out of character as the dirk we know and love because he isn’t.

i feel like i finally Get it, but i’m still not looking forward to seeing people who dislike dirk using this to discredit the progress he made on his personal journey (ie “see he was evil the whole time!”) nor am i looking forward to all of the “dirk would never do this! it’s ooc writing!” from people who seem to have missed the part of homestuck where what scared dirk about himself most was the undeniable truth in it. there’s more than one example of “bad dirk and/or dirk byproducts” out there in paradox space. it’s more than feeling like you “might” be bad, it’s… being afraid of what you would be if you weren’t so afraid of being it, it’s seeing things that were a result of You-but-not-you and having to stare down the fact that even if you weren’t bad, even if you didn’t, you could have, would have, did. dirk’s Ultimate Self being a nightmare scenario is ..almost a recursive throwback to his fears about his ultimate self (note capitals)

him taking control of the narrative was epic though. it honestly did not catch me off guard? it makes sense. it is a 100% dirk strider move. if you haven’t read it by now for some reason, go read detective pony. i am diagnosing you with read detective pony by sonnetstuck. it’s terminal.

the only two people aside from hussie to have controlled the narrative in homestuck canon are the cherubs. and i did make the point somewhere up there that dirk absorbed lord english, and by extension, caliborn. that’s WHY he got that ability. not because he’s a prince of heart. dirk controlling the narrative makes sense from the perspective of dirk controlling the external narrative as well, ie, the whole thing is on a piece of paper that he wrote as some form of bizarre cathartic self punishment for his existence, but in the grander scheme of things and truth of homestuck dirk controlling the narrative makes sense as the puppetmaster-turned-puppet we see him become in several of his iterations, because caliborn literally becomes part of him.

everything is so skewed by the narrators. yes, both of them, because the whole point of the epilogues is that both of them suck and muse calliope is just as shitty as “impartial” “narrator” as Ultimate Self dirk is. it actually makes the whole thing a lot greyer in morality than it comes across at first. US dirk does a lot of Bad Shit as narrator, yeah, but even as passive as she is, calliope’s narration has its flaws (see: everything relating to trickster mode)

the epilogues are less about the characters themselves and more about a grander conflict between the two cherubs, using dirk and jade as their puppets—and yes, muse calliope is using jade as a puppet LITERALLY, which upsets me on so many levels i can’t even get into it here. let jade be fucking relevant and happy hussie or so help me i will write myself into your narrative and do some renovation of my own. but dirk is equally deprived of his agency in this scenario. i’m not going to debate with anyone about the inherent goodness/badness of dirk strider because that’s an entirely different essay, but in canon, dirk’s entire arc is about NOT becoming exactly what he becomes in the epilogues. the dirk we know didn’t choose to become his “Ultimate Self,” the dirk we know doesn’t get a choice between meat and candy, the dirk we know is at the mercy of the narrative even as he pretends to control it.

and that’s not something new to dirk strider, in any variation of himself. i’m specifically going back to thinking about the term “puppetmaster-turned-puppet” here, because i like it. in canon, we see dirk get out-puppeted by hal. it’s implied that bro is being controlled at least in part by lil cal, who is in turn.. a splinter of dirk indirectly via hal via arquiussprite. i’m getting a little lost in all the splinters. why is dirk’s worst enemy consistently himself? don’t answer that. uhh also it should be mentioned that makes lil cal a puppetmaster-turned-puppet-turned-puppetmaster, both literally and metaphorically. i fucking hate andrew hussie.

anyway, both of the epilogues do all that shit to to drive home the point that both of them (and i mean muse calliope and LE here when i say both, because this has officially stopped being about the dirk we know) are removed from human concepts like “good” and “evil” and represent duality in an alien manner that to a casual observer could be mistaken for some objective statement about morality, but they’re both wrong to us from our perspective as humans with human morals. the choice of candy and meat from the beginning was a cherub one. that’s not a balanced meal! that’s not even a reasonable dichotomy for humans! meat is not more real or “canon” than candy was, both of them are very flawed stories being manned at the helm by omnipotent green aliens.

okay we’re ALMOST done here, i just want to touch on the actual authors of the narrative rather than the ones the narrative insists are its narrators. by which i mean the actual real life human beings who wrote the epilogue. the point i was making above about how dirk doesn’t have any agency? the point of these epilogues were that none of the characters have any agency in their stories. every work is a reflection of its author, even when aforementioned authors are hiding behind pseudoauthors on a narrative level.

the homestuck epilogues feel very meanspirited to me. they punish their readers for not understanding their intentionally heavyhanded meta. homestuck was always very meta, but it was also fun. this, on the other hand, wasn’t fun. i haven’t seen anyone claim that the epilogues were a “fun” read, even those who enjoyed them enjoy them on the basis that “tragedy is a valid form of art,” and,,, ........and their opinions are. valid. and they can have them. sure.

but for those of us who read stories in order to enjoy them, which i am safely assuming makes up the majority of those who read homestuck, the homestuck epilogues are like a final kick in the teeth as a send off to a fandom with barely any teeth left to lose. we’re already having people who refuse to read them, and god i wish that were me, but it’s also.,, you can’t criticize something properly if you haven’t read it. we’re going to see a lot of very bad takes in the coming days about all kinds of things from information proliferating through the grapevine, and personally, i am not looking forward to it. i really hope this is the end, that homestuck is finally fucking over, and the epilogues are done with and we can all live our lives unmarred by strange orange men with typewriters. i’m going to hole up with my cool and new webcomic music albums and all of the good novel-length dirk-centric fic i’ve bookmarked over the years and wait this one out. i invite you to do the same.

cool and new webcomic bandcamp | cool and new greatest hits | my personal favorite album by them

detective pony by sonnetstuck (seriously please read this it watered my crops and cured my lead poisoning)

literally anything by callmearcturus but this is my personal favorite (chamomile, rosewater, and other unlikely intoxicants)

this long winded discworld joke by oxfordroulette that inflicted me with a terminal case of loving jake english despite it being a dirkjohn fic (vanitas vanitatum) also if you finish reading this one and also succumbed to loving jake english, i’m not going to link it but they have another fic that’ll scratch that itch for you. that’s all i’ll say on that matter.

this fic said nonverbal autistic dirk rights and thank god (we were made for another world by princex_n)

thanks for reading

[violyntfemme]

2018 Fic Year in Review

@perpetuallyvex tagged me. Thanks, sweetie. I love this!

1. Number of stories (including drabbles) posted to AO3: 4

2. Word count posted for the year: 220,834 (although, to be fair, you’ve become all that i’ve lost was mostly written in 2017, but this asks for fics posted in 2018 so I’ll include it)

3. List of works published this year (in order of posting):

1. you’ve become all that i’ve lost (Harry Hart/Eggsy Unwin, Explicit, Word Count: 106,457) - Being a handler does not have the same sense of pride that being the darling of Kingsman, Agent Galahad, did. Harry feels useless with his shaking hands and missing eye, a feeling that threatens to send him chasing a bottle of pain pills with a goodly amount of whiskey. He is thrilled when he finds a new sense of purpose in taking care of Eggsy, the man he loves, when he comes home hurt after a mission. Harry, finally feeling like he is someone of worth again, becomes determined to hold on to it, and Eggsy, anyway that he can.

2. i’ve found the one whom my soul loves (Merlin/Harry Hart, Explicit, Word Count:  108,630) - Although it's been a year, Ian still grieves like it was yesterday. Part 3 of the kiss me series. 

3. Blanker Permission (Harry Hart/Eggsy Unwin, Mature, Word Count: 4226) - 

“Oh yeah? Who’s coming over then?”

“Merlin has graciously accepted my request for a temporary care-giver.”

“Merlin.”

“Yes.”

“The man who drops people out of airplanes so he can laugh while they scream.”

“He is a very good caretaker, Eggsy.”

“The man who drowns rooms full of people for kicks. The man who, after I had a full body bruise from being thrown into a wall, gave me a bear hug. Him?”

4. painting the roses red (Harry Hart/Eggsy Unwin, Mature, Word Count: 1521) -  “I was just looking out the window and I must say your garden is looking lovelier than ever.”

“Yeah, it’s cause of all the blood,” Eggsy says, grinning again, far too many teeth showing for it to be friendly.

“Pardon?”

4. Fandoms I wrote for: Kingsman

5. Pairings: Main Parings - Merlin/Harry Hart, Harry Hart/Eggsy Unwin. Secondary - Merlin/Percival, Harry Hart/Tequila, Eggsy Unwin/Tilde

6. Story with the most hits: you’ve become all that i’ve lost with 2839 hits. 

7. Story with the most kudos: you’ve become all that i’ve lost with 120. 

8. Story with the most comments: you’ve become all that i’ve lost with 89 comment threads.

9. Work I’m most proud of (and why): I am most proud of i’ve found the one whom my soul loves. It’s not my most popular but I love Harry and Ian (Merlin) and the universe they exist in. It was so enjoyable to bend that story to fit around canon, especially since the canon from K2 was so woefully horrible. 

10. Work I’m least proud of (and why): As Vex said, I love all my babies. They were all exactly what I needed them to be when I needed them to be it.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

“Ian,” Harry calls, “come over here and tell me what you think of this lamp.”

Ian does as he is bid. He looks at the lamp. He finds that he cannot tell Harry what he thinks about it because if he does, Harry will beat him with it. Drinking himself to death seems a good option again.

“It’s very you.”

Harry smiles, pleased. “I thought so as well. I think it has a matching sister. I should ask the owner.”

“Two of them. A blessing from the heavens.”

“You hate it.”

“With the burning passion of a thousand suns.”

“I suppose you would be happy if we decorated the house with items purchased at Best Buy.”

“It would be a marked improvement on dusty relics that were ugly even when Lizzie the Virgin was on the throne.”

12. Share or describe a favorite review you received: I’m not going to share the actual review because I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but a mutual left me a review on i’ve found the one whom my soul loves while they were inebriated and it makes me laugh to this day. It was so cute and pure and I look at it whenever I need a good laugh. 

13. A time when writing was really, really hard: I have a neurological condition that gives me terrible cognitive issues and a lot of pain. There were times I was typing with a brain that was mush and hands that hurt so bad I could barely move them but the characters would not STFU so it had to come out or risk losing the scene into the mushy recesses of my brain forever.

14. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: I LOVED writing Tequila and Whiskey in i’ve found the one whom my soul loves. LOVED them, especially Tequila. I specifically left their storyline open ended so I could come back to them later if I wanted to. I also love writing Percival because he’s such a sweetheart and deserves more love.

15. How did you grow as a writer this year: I grew in confidence in my won abilities and learned that the number of kudos or comments does not equal the value my writing has.

16. How do you hope to grow next year: I am working on original fiction and hope to have a the novel, the first in a series of three, well underway by the end of the year. I am currently world building and character developing right now, but it’s really coming together and has some scenes written already.

17. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): The people who read, comment and leave kudos really don’t understand how each and every one warms a writer’s heart. We pour so much into those fics, to have someone share something they loved or click that kudos button is such a mood booster. You guys don’t even know.

18. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: There is a lot of my real personality quirks, good and bad, in my characters. Considering the traits most of my characters have, I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.

19. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: Your first draft is always crap. Nothing makes sense, people are OOC, there is spelling errors, crap dialogue, and plot holes big enough to drive a truck into. Don’t worry about it. Write it. Get it all out so everyone will stop talking in your head. Then, once they shut the fuck up, go back and edit it. That’s when it really comes together.

20. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: I am working on Part 4 of kiss me, which will be much shorter than the previous installments. I am about 3K words in and I am thinking it will be 10K maybe? I hope to have it up by the end of the month or the middle of next if it gets longer than I think it will be. I am also working on my original fiction, see question 16.

21. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read: I don’t know who is writing any more, but I will tag:

@fitzawkwarddarcy, @opalescentgold, @thegaypumpingthroughyourveins, @elrhiarhodan

because I am pretty sure you all put out some fics this year :)

Best tag game ever!