#the person making the threat was karkat

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

FEFERI: [Seas Aradia]

FEFERI: O)( my glub! Are you dead?

ARADIA: 0f c0rpse 

ARADIA: s0mebody said they will beat my ass because 0f this j0ke. grave mistake 0u0

[thewertsearch]

It's wert (heh) pointing out that the Aradiabot timeline where Gamzee flipped out and killed everybody in the session might not be one where Vriska was godtier, making this slightly less of an insane feat. With the error bars so large on what this could've been, I don't know what this tells us of his power level. That said, I do have a lot of speculations! (This is very long, my apologies.)

I think the lower bound of what the doomed Gamzee did was something like this:

Gamzee kills Equius (free) and then Nepeta (not using her hunting skills and speed to her fullest advantage). Nobody realises anything is amiss; the meowrails could simply be doing moirail things with their phones off.

Gamzee gets the jump on Eridan who doesn't know to take him seriously and whose best weapon is at this point the long-ranged Ahab's Crosshairs. People assume he's moping.

Gamzee kills Tavros and Vriska while questing at Vriska's. Aradiabot at this point probably knows that the timeline is doomed, so if she finds it odd Eridan hasn't duelled Sollux yet she'll either put it down to divergence, or not care because doomed innit. She's making preparations to leave, not fix things.

Gamzee kills Terezi and Karkat. Even if they know at this point, I doubt Karkat could fully believe it until he laid eyes on the bodies, and Terezi could well try arresting him before she goes to kill him. Karkat was the one who sent Equius after Gamzee in the main timeline, and while that was a doomed venture, he is pretty much the only person thinking in terms of team strategy in the trolls' session.

Kanaya, having worked out some of what's happening, has been messaging people like mad to rally some sort of party together to beat him, but she's getting a lot of no replies, except for Aradia who just unhelpfully tells her everything's doomed innit.

Gamzee kills Sollux before Feferi (we've seen Feferi's revenge leap, whereas Sollux's power and range and ability to fly make me think his revenge blast might well level anything within a few miles).

Kanaya goes to fight him and is killed. She goes down. When she comes back up again, Gamzee is gone to collect the bodies into a single place, and without any blood to suck, her rainbow drinker powers can't bring her back fully. When he gets back to retrieve her body, he kills her again, and this one sticks.

Aradia arrives after he finishes covering the book in blood and, forewarned and forearmed, kills him.

Gamzee has a lot of strength and speed, so if he gets near somebody who doesn't realise he's snapped, he could probably kill that person. Stealth and miscommunication do most of his work for him, with the rest largely down to people in the right order (Equius before Nepeta, Karkat before he can wrangle people into a defence, Kanaya not around any blood sources, etc).

While on the other hand the upper bound could easily have been:

Gamzee kills Karkat and Kanaya publicly but without immediate access to more victims (i.e. somebody's watching them on the Server side, or Karkat was mid-memo rant when he dies). Everybody knows immediately that he's snapped.

He then kills Nepeta, which is enough to send Equius into a rage when he finds out. He doesn't find out yet.

While people are talking about Karkat and Kanaya's deaths, he attacks Tavros and (godtiered) Vriska. He kills Tavros and is so much of a threat that Vriska has to retreat (as you can imagine, when she realises she had to run away, she gets very pissed and starts hunting Gamzee).

Kanaya comes back to life, sucks Karkat's blood, our girl is back in action and she has no mercy.

Equius realises Gamzee killed Nepeta.

Terezi, realising Gamzee is a big threat, lures him to a favourable location for her with plans to kill him. She does this on a public memo so everybody knows where she is and where he's planning to be.

On his way to Terezi's planet, Gamzee runs into Feferi and she fights him and gets killed. Sollux and Eridan learn this right away.

As Gamzee arrives at Terezi's trap, Vriska and Equius arrive pretty much at the same time. Terezi fights Gamzee and dies.

Immediately after, Vriska and Equius try to defeat him. Vriska might not be going for the kill straightaway, but Equius 100% is.

Gamzee kills Equius, which makes Vriska see it's to the death. Kanaya and Eridan (armed with a science wand Kanaya gave him for other reasons at some point) arrive, but fail to put a dent in him. Vriska manages to stay alive for longer, maybe Kanaya does too with her speed, but Eridan dies.

Sollux arrives, and it's a 3v1 with Vriska, Kanaya, and Sollux versus Gamzee. Kanaya dies, and then Solluz, and then Kanaya again, and then Vriska.

Aradia arrives to find Gamzee distracted by scrawling over the book, and as he finishes the last character on the last page, she kills him.

I don't know which one is more realistic or where the actual event lies in between them, but those are kind of the upper and lower bounds I feel like there are for what 'Gamzee flipped out and killed everyone' could mean in that timeline. And incidentally, if anybody wants to write those up as fanfics I'll absolutely read them lol

Sorry for the pages of text, just thought it was an interesting thing to note: we don't know how Gamzee killed everybody! Thought that was ripe for speculation.

Loving the liveblog, hope you're having a great day!

I love the level of detail you're put into this analysis.

There are some extremely evocative scenes here. A confrontation where he forces God Tier Vriska to retreat is something I'd love to see expounded upon - and I particularly like the image of an Aradiabot who stumbles upon a barely-coherent, HONKsick Gamzee, silently observes the bodies, and telekinetically snaps his neck.

Out of these two scenarios, I believe the second is probably closer to the truth. While Frenzied Gamzee is capable of being sneaky, he seems to generally prefer shock tactics and intimidation, so a bloody warpath seems more plausible than a stealth-focused approach.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

was in the process of starting writing an eridan centric no sburb au and the more i write the more i’m like goddamnit pale erikar is happening without me even trying you’ve 100% gotten me invested

YEAH. Even if you just go purely by canon, their personalities just wind up meshing so well.

Like how Karkat gives Eridan special treatment and is extra nice to him because he knows how rough it is to be in Eridan's thinkpan.

Or how Eridan is willing to immediately shelve his own problems whenever he hears that Karkat isn't doing well emotionally and basically demands to give him emotional support.

Or how Karkat lies to Vriska that nobody listens to him talk about quadrant stuff when we've seen them talk to each other and we know they gossip about that shit all the time.

Or how Eridan is basically the only person who's ever succeeded in getting Karkat to calm the fuck down, by virtue of his incredible obtuseness, like, he doesn't even need to try.

Or how Karkat makes a bunch of death threats to Eridan and Eridan takes it as "ironic repartee," meaning that Karkat's usual problem with mixed signals is not a problem to Eridan, because Eridan is honestly just happy for the attention.

Or how they're so in sync with each other that Karkat telling Past!Eridan that their pact is over led to Eridan assuming they have a pact, and Past!Karkat hears about it and just rolls with it, because apparently it makes sense that they have a pact or something with a caveat that they be nice to each other. Of course.

Or how they talk so often that Feferi outright laments how it leaves Eridan with nothing left to talk to her about.

Or how, even before he knows that Karkat is a mutant, Karkat is still one of his best friends, and their relationship doesn't change after Eridan finds out - in fact, unlike Vriska or Equius or Gamzee, who make comments about his blood color (Gamzee calls him a punchline blooded motherfucker), Eridan never even bothers to mention it. (Because he doesn't actually give a shit about the hemocaste, it's basically all performative).

Or how Eridan knows Karkat well enough to know that Gamzee's advice to just be chill and w/e doesn't work for Karkat.

Or how Karkat's response to Gamzee going murderous is "oh god oh fuck oh man oh fuck" and his message to Past!Gamzee is "get out of here, this barely even concerns you," but his response to Eridan going murderous is a very personal "fuck you, BACKSTABBER, HOW COULD YOU???"

Or how Karkat has a double-v typo once and there's a point where Eridan drops his double-letters and yells at Feferi in capslock 👉👈

And that's all JUST CANON. That's all stuff we've SEEN them do. If you start making some extrapolations, there's so much more.

Karkat's dream has always been to become a threshecutioner - a member of the Empress's strongest troops - seeking to find some sort of acceptance within the society that outcasted him if he could prove his worth that way. However, Karkat's the weakest fighter on the team, and given that Eridan's pissed off angels scared everybody else off his planet, it's likely he's one of the best fighters, if not THE best. Combined with his noble status, Eridan was on the fast track to, if not becoming a threshecutioner, then otherwise achieving some great rank or prestige within the Condesce's army. (Even Dualscar, laughable as he was, was still Mindfang's superior).

Karkat would think Eridan is badass.

Meanwhile, Eridan's problems nearly all stem from the pressure he feels to live up to the expectations on his shoulders, as a highblood, as the orphaner, as the person keeping his friends alive, and as a sea dweller. His is a world of constant anxiety and anguish, not helped by his innate troll/highblood volatility and his own knowledge of how dangerous he is. And Karkat is their self-described "fearless leader," who will happily tell everyone what to do.

Eridan would be relieved that the pressure is off his shoulders.

Karkat's had to live in fear for his life for nearly all of it; when Eridan got added to the group chat, Karkat was probably fucking terrified, especially when Feferi got added right after. Like, oh, fuck, it's a sea dweller (noted as being so hostile that even GAMZEE is nervous about being by the water for too long), oh fuck, he knows the heir apparent, oh fuck, he's an insane murderer.

And then... the sea dweller respects his authority. The sea dweller takes him completely seriously, once he gets past all the slurs and talk of genocide, which the sea dweller obviously doesn't actually mean (Eridan's contradictions are REALLY obvious, which is part of why nobody else takes him seriously). The sea dweller doesn't give a shit WHAT his blood color is.

Like, I think Karkat finds a weird sense of safety in having a violet-blood friend that he can make death threats to. Their last memo together implies that such "ironic repartee" is completely normal for the two of them, and I personally like the idea that Karkat at one point took issue with one of the insane shitty things that Eridan likes to say, went off on a classic Karkat Rant, and then went "oh wait. shit. fuck. im so dead," only for Eridan to completely laugh it off and treat it like casual joking around.

And Eridan just craves attention, positive or negative. He desperately wants people to take him seriously and care about him. Kanaya, Vriska, and Feferi don't, because frankly, they don't really get why he's got so many problems - they're all privileged and they like it! - and Terezi is like "yikes. wow. glad that's not my problem," while Gamzee just tells him to chill out (he can't, that's his entire issue) and Equius avoids (void joke ha ha) him. He doesn't really talk to the lowbloods, but given he doesn't express any casteist anti-lowblood sentiment specifically until he's mad at Sollux (and has totally caste-neutral opinions on Sollux before that), it's not even because he doesn't like lowbloods; one has to assume he's got a different reason for avoiding them - like his canonical guilt over all the murders, or an extrapolation of his general anxieties in that he doesn't like talking to people who are going to be dead before he's even 1/100 of a way through his own life, or that the lowbloods tend to avoid him because... yknow, -gestures to all of Eridan-.

But he always had plausible deniability when it came to Karkat, because Karkat was always anonblood; even if he assumes Karkat's an "assblood," he had no way to know for sure 'til he found out Karkat was an off-spec. And Karkat DOES take him seriously, or at least more seriously than anybody else, by a longshot. He's even willing to outright tell Eridan that it's not Eridan's fault Nepeta doesn't reciprocate his feelings. WHO ELSE WOULD DO SUCH A THING???

And on that topic is pity. They both extend to each other a pity that they don't really afford anyone else, and Karkat - with his uncanny romantic acumen - outright says that pity is the driving force for all non-pitch relationships. Because he's the only person who even acknowledges that Eridan's probelms are PROBLEMS, it's clear he feels pity for Eridan's utterly fried thinkpan. Meanwhile, Eridan seems to recognize how sensitive Karkat really is, IMMEDIATELY putting everything else on pause to try to provide Karkat emotional support whenever it's brought up that Karkat is sad.

Eridan never extends this kind of consideration toward anyone else, too busy grandstanding and putting on the Big Bad Sea Dweller act; Karkat never even extends this much sympathy to Gamzee, never once bothering to understand his religion, or comment on his shitty lusus or crisis of faith. Even when he tries to cheer Terezi up, it's not really with outright sympathy - he tries to build up how awesome he thinks she is, or take on the blame for the situation. But with Eridan, he just goes, yeah, okay, shut up. I know it's tough being you.

I think it's also pretty notable that although Eridan comments about how HYPOTHETICALLY Future!Karkat can't reject him because he's not Eridan's Current!Karkat, he has never actually hit on Karkat in any quadrant, as far as we've seen. And I'm even willing to believe that he never has - when he met Karkat, his pale and pitch quadrants were filled, and he was always pining after Feferi in flushed; it probably never even crossed his mind to see Karkat as a viable dating partner, and I think he likes their unofficial moirallegiance friendship exactly the aay it is - when he thinks Karkat is hitting on him pitchwise, his reaction isn't "yes let's date," it's a surprised "whoa, coming on kinda strong, there."

And just. Just. The way that Karkat took Eridan's murder spree so fucking personally, especially compared to Gamzee in the same memo. You BACKSTABBER. I HATE you (not enough to not talk to you for an extended period of time but still). How COULD you. I thought you loved her...

Like. Man. I think it would require a third party to point it out in order to get them together - Karkat seems to be kind of embarrassed by how often he talks to Eridan (because it's, y'know, ERIDAN), and has convinced himself that Eridan is SUCH a pathetic dumbass that OF COURSE it would never work out between them (keep telling yourself that, buddy, you're the one who started thinking about that in a conversation where Eridan literally was not hitting on you), and Eridan is, uh, a dumbass.

But even that's kind of tricky, because Karkat's mixed signals make their friendship read as weirdly pitch-coded (I don't think you're normally supposed to threaten death upon your moirail and call them slurs), and also, nobody really wants to imagine Eridan being in a happy, loving relationship. You run into this problem sometimes even in real life.

But he's kind of basically in one?????

Literally, society if Eridan and Karkat made it official -

[birchbow]

One of the worldbuilding facets I love in PoF is the trollish cultural aesthetic sense with respect to horns! Big horns are often described as handsome and Karkat’s little nubs are apparently pitiable-cute with a distinctly “soothing partner” pale flavor. Are there other horn shape/size connotations that trolls would generally have?

Oh man this made me think of troll actors: it would be so much easier to play a historical figure or a character adapted from a novel who is supposed to have a specific horn shape if you naturally have really small horns and use prosthetics!

I hesitate slightly to answer this ONLY because I have written so much at this point I feel like I'm likely to contradict my own writing by accident haha. But! Some horn rambling.

Horns that are perfectly intact would be an impressive achievement--"This person's incredibly dangerous and hasn't taken a scratch" vs "this person is a fucking loser pansy"

Conversely, horns that are chipped or scarred, especially in a good position for headbutting etc, would be a tough, badass look. Hot for pitch or ashen!

In my half-assed theory of horns as recievers/broadcasters of psionics, big horns would be considered a sign of more brute strength in whatever your power is, and small horns would be considered an indicator of more precision

...which is passed around as a hard and fast biological rule but is actually just moderate correlation + confirmation bias/word of mouth

I make note of Karkat's little horns in a pale context b/c of my headcanon that deep, firm pressure at the base of the horn's root nerve has an autonomic soothing effect. Small blunt horns that are mostly that darker red-orange base chitin would be very sensitive to pressure--but also, no good for challenges or threat displays. Very hot if you can get your hands on them but also not exactly grabbable. It's giving "You Can Look But You Can't Touch" lolol

Conversely I write the horn away from the base as sensitive to clicking/catching sensations (like another pair of horns locking and rattling against them) so for a black quadrant more of the hardened gold-to-orange would be hotter!

I've described Makara horns as "elegant"--horns that extend up or out from the body would come across as eye-catching and kind of impractical, but very striking. Personal preference varies whether that's attractive vs compact/spiralled, etc.

For that matter, I imagine it's hotly debated whether horns that are "mismatched"/asymmetrical are a turn-off or are preferable because they're more interesting/unique...

Similarly one horn, or more than two, would be increasingly noteworthy.

Trolls with NO visible horns would be just as startling as like. A person missing their eyes, or their hands; certainly possible, either from birth or from Alternia Life (TM) but seeing someone missing an entire body part/sensory system would give most people pause.

Horn jewelry was not a big trend on Beforus: the empress's love of shiny shit all over her body made it a big thing on Alternia. Horn "bracelets" fitted to the horn are expensive and most people who aren't seadwellers go for tied/woven decoration instead.

Some real tough customers drill piercings into the horns, but that's famously hideously painful especially near the root--plus it can make them dangerously fragile, especially for a larger-bore piercing.

Hornsssssss >8Ic Anyway this has been a lot I hope I answered your question in there somewhere lol

[davekat-sucks]

Okay! Hi! So I have something fun to say! I read the anon talking about Karkat being headcanoned as ace. It made me remember the person who runs this blog saying Dave is uncomfortable with sex. I have a narrative reason as to why Dave would be uncomfortable with sex. Two actually! I decided to reread a certain chapter and I realized something. It’s big! The biggest scoop this fandom has ever had!

I think you guys would love it! The fandom is going to have a rude awakening someday. You guys are going to be SO HAPPY! Let’s watch this thing burn down together and hold hands singing Kumbaya My Lord Kumbaya! Fuck I’ll bring stuff to make s’mores!

This me going off about the homestuck epilogue DaveKat scene again and there is some brutal topics covered in here, you’ve been warned. I imagine Dirk was in control of the some of the narrative when Karkat and Dave had sex. I think Dirk had a lot of control over what happened but not all of it. Free will is still a thing. Here is Dirk saying as much! He says he likes using persuasion!

Did you guys catch a certain part of this when reading it? The non stop animalistic fucking part I mean. That’s weird to say about your family. Moving on.

Dave and Karkat don’t really admit that they like each other romantically… seems like they don’t want to. Right that’s what the fandom must have picked up on. It’s hard for them to date because of the Ace/Aro thing. Or. They DONT. They don’t want to date. They never did. They’re forced to. In meat, it looks like Dirk just wants Dave to top this guy.

Here. Read what Karkat says.

Then Karkat says “I’m glad you’re my friend.” “I don’t have to wonder what is missing!” Karkat doesn’t have to wonder what is missing! We’ve got everything we need here! But wait! they’re not just friends! They are… best… friends? Karkat sounds unsure of what to even say here? He sounds like he doesn’t know where this is going. What he’s even being pushed to say. He said what he meant already. Dave is the one asking him if they are more than friends.

Look. If someone with the powers of a god is compelling them to talk about their feelings and this is the most Karkat can say, it means there is NOTHING ELSE THERE. Dirk is losing his shit here.

Here’s an excuse! “Maybe relationships isn’t a thing Karkat does!” Hold on to that thought Dave! If it makes you feel better about having animalistic sex with a guy! I’ll come up with anything to make you think that.

“HE WANTS IT! YOU WANT IT!” Karkat wants it! You want it too, Dave!

It’s nothing to worry about Dave! You two can do it right here on the couch if you want! Please want that! I mean he loves you so much! See you two are so so so close! He’s going to bust it open for you! Dave he wants it! Dirk wants it. He is excited at the idea of it. Karkat doesn’t seem to care and diving into Karkat’s head to convince him he loves Dave isn’t Dirk’s goal. Karkat falling in love has nothing to do with anything. Why would Dirk even care? Dirk only cares about Dave having sex here. Dirk isn’t really influencing Karkat either, he doesn’t get into his head at all.

I don’t know how much Dave wants Karkat. I’m not able to really discern that. Though I wouldn’t count this as a confession. Dave is drunk! Or at least tipsy. He has someone else chatting in his head. He can even hear hear what Dirk is saying.

Dirk is saying all sorts of things in Dave’s head. Dave is stressed to the point of sweating. What was Dirk going to say before he was cut off? A threat? It sounded like a threat. Is it supposed to be encouraging!? Either is fucked!

The let me do this myself bit reads more like an act of defiance. Let me see if this is right or not, Dirk! Though if you’re under the influence and someone has been fucking with your mind to fill it with what they want for you, do you think that isn’t ABUSE?! Brainwashing? Do you think Dave is being lead to believe Karkat actually wants to date him? I think all of those things are true here.

It all reads like Dave and Karkat are forced together. Like that’s even what the writers are trying to fucking say. It reads like they are spitting on the couple and using them as a narrative tool. Someday in the future they have to address Dirk and Dave’s relationship.

When I read this line it conformed for me something I was certain of before and I’m certain that is what is being said here. I think there is a clear reason as to why it was put into this chapter. What Dirk’s intentions are. Read it and see if you can catch what I’m going to point out.

There it is. This is what the epilogue is going with.

Born again virginity. Dave didn’t have his virginity before he died at 13. Why even bring up a line like that if meant nothing. If was a joke?

Why was Dave willing to pay Dirk respect for killing himself in Candy?

For that matter! Why is Dirk so into Dave topping some guy? Isn’t Dirk a bottom? Why is Dirk so into talking about his son and/or brother having animalistic sex with one of the few male characters left alive? Karkat is someone the fandom would have loved to see Dave end up with since they smiled at each other once in Act 6.

So. Here’s what I want to get at. The to long didn’t read version of what I wrote!

What’s the two narrative reasons Dave doesn’t want to have sex?

1. Dave doesn’t want to have sex with someone if Dirk is just going to come into his head and get off to it.

2. Dave isn’t comfortable with having sex because of unresolved trauma.

What was the scoop? The big scoop that would tear the fans apart?

Karkat and Dave aren’t in love. They never were. Karkat wanted to say he appreciated having someone who put so much faith in him. It meant something to him. He said he feels content with that. He doesn’t have to wonder what is missing.

Karkat is Dave’s best friend. They are close. I love that. I want them to have a normal relationship, but they don’t. And they can’t. Even the running for president plot line was introduced so we could have Dave backing Karkat and giving him support. But that, once again, may have just been the narrative fucking with them, setting them up to have a moment like this. This is the problem with meta fiction. How much of this is the characters? The writers? The gods overseeing them? They have Calliope and Dirk picking at these assassinated characters like vultures. Just like how Calliope had John and Terezi get with each other in his dad’s car. John might have liked her but he was dying in that moment. Narratively, that was setting Terezi up to want to bring him back to life. To think they could be lovers in some way, and maybe they can. I don’t know. How much of that was John being fucked with? This story is a horror story. No one here is happy. Nothing here is good. Nothing is clear.

The one thing I am sure of is that born again virgin line meant something. Dave was holding onto his new founded virginity. Maybe he didn’t even feel comfortable saying he liked men because that is like saying he might have in someway enjoyed what Bro did to him. Maybe he didn’t want to have sex because of a terrible experience he had. Maybe the writers of the new homestuck content will pivot, maybe they will undo all of what is being set up here. But why do that? They like the drama!

I can see them containing with this theme. Dave was molested before homestuck even started. That is what is being said here. Bro molested him. Dirk feels horrible for it. He wants Dave to be the one to decapitate him too, like it’s closure.

The true to long didn’t read is basically this: Dave and Karkat is only canon because it’s forced. The writers are even announcing it! Thanks for the years of us having to listen to people falsely celebrating DaveKat! Now we’re going to just sing our hymns and celebrate their destruction.

That actually makes sense. It is fucked up if all along that Ult Dirk and by extension Hussie, WhatPumpkin, James Roach, HICU, and the fanbase itself, are forcing the two without their consent and they can't escape it.

It was so obvious from the start and yet people accepted it for what it was. This kissing in the laundry scene now gives a different meaning now that these boys did not actually want this but are forced to anyway without their say.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Oh hey, Hamsteak 2. Looks like Vriska's...back in Alternia? In a dreambubble?

they sent the thief here in search of power; the power to escape the containment i so painstakingly set up for them

Al confirmed as the Candy narrator. Also confirmed that the black hole is "containment" for the dreambubbles and non-canon worlds, and that all the ghosts falling in wasn't an accident of fighting Lord English.

the black hole could only ever shelter them for so long, and in their haste to shrug off my protection they have opened the door to something far, far hungrier.

This panel is a callback to Karkat about to open the door to the New Universe. Where there were interrupted by Jack Noir. Vriska is interrupted by-

Yoo! It's Davepeta! Who feel into the black hole and has been conspicuously absent ever since. They're the only Ultimate who is not connected to Dirk, and in some ways the only "true" Ultimate. Interesting that Al considers them such a threat, when Davepeta has never been anything but benevolent.

Looks like it's all the sprites, in fact. Why...are there two Nannasprites? Oh god, I'm being pushed to the endless limits of my ability to remember Homestuck Lore. Is one of them pre-retcon? I do not remember.

ERISOLSPRITE: wwe'vve been here for liike a miilliion fuckiin 2wweep2. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < actually we just got here DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < this place didnt even exist until she popped in ERISOLSPRITE: gue22 ii'll fuck my2elf.

It didn't exist until a character arrived, at which point it retroactively existed the whole time, like how a planet works.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < does that not sound insane to you fefeta? FEFETASPRITE: 3833 < 383

What? How are Davepeta and Fefeta coexisting? That definitely doesn't make sense.

Well, logic be damned, it's apparently time for a Vriska training arc.

Gah! Talksprites! Also, Vriska enters "Hell" on page 666 of Homestuck 2, which is I think the first time this comic has aimed at any kind of Meaningful Number.

God, we are full on visual novel here. I didn't know Ren'Py could export to web, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me. I presume/hope the save option is default and won't be needed here, it's 1:30am.

Tavros is here and, much more oddly, alive. I suddenly understand jack shit.

I have no memory of Tavros ever forgiving Vriska for anything...or, for that matter, Vriska even being aware she did anything that needed to be forgiven. I presume she's just lying here, though.

This line combined with this pose is the essence of Vriska

So, Vriska's being forced to "grow as a person" and her big idea to finish her character arc is to atone for her sins by getting Tavros to take revenge on her. Vriska thinks that the secret to gaining power is getting Tavros to kill her.

I wonder where she got that idea.

But that time she refused to mind control Tavros into killing her, she wanted him to grow from it, too. Now we're past that.

I felt smart for remembering the K8LL ME bit but we're being really obvious about it now so I guess they just assumed everyone would and I'm not special :(

Oh shit. Erisol wasn't kidding.

Davepeta roleplaying being a cat who dies horribly is kind of the perfect synthesis of Dave and Nepeta. What is this music. It's very toot-y.

Oh hey a text log. How convenient. So we're trapped in a time loop, then, explicitly recreating Groundhog Day. I guess that explains the infinity hourglass on the Plot Point machine.

Vriska's having a bad couple of years.

Davepeta is "countless" cool dudes and kitty girls, which I think is the first explicit confirmation they're an Ultimate Self, though that was pretty strongly implied at least. The only Ultimate to do so without Dirk's involvement.

Stop letting me intuit things and then immediately making them clear! I don't care if it's good writing, it's making my liveblog bad!

It's so weird to compare this Davepeta to the one in Homestuck OG. There Davepeta was presented as this wise sage mentor figure who'd achieved enlightenment, and here they're much more of "Dave + Nepeta's combined silliness as one character". It's a subtle difference, but go back and read Davepeta giving this same kind of talk to Jade back in Homestuck 1. I guess that's the difficulty of a character with so little screentime in the original, they're either very limited or they feel slightly off.

Oh my fucking god, a to-be-continued select screen. Shit, that takes me back in an unexpected way.

Also, from the associated news update, "the big flash" is apparently several months away (10/25?), and I have to say they might want to be careful about overhyping it, if they have small flashes and now Ren'Py novels that are just preludes. If it's anything less than a Cascade after months and months of hype it could fall flat where a surprise [S] Enter would've popped the fanbase hard.

[shark-train]

Adult John redesign because he deserves it

Also a follow-up on my threat of airbender John aka John is basically an airbender if you think hard enough about it.

See below if you want to hear my yap session on elements of this design vvv

Okay so, why have I done this?

I wanted to make my own take on his design because I hate seeing my boy get roasted so hard by his friends for his outfit. I tried to keep some elements akin to his child-self’s design for sake of identification. I specifically kept the appearance of a crop-top (as seen in hs2 when he wears his younger self’s outfit) but with the addition of a skin-suit underneath for some actual practical protection (as I assume he will be doing some fighting at some point in the comic). I also kept his hood (it would be a crime not too) but with the addition of a collar to make it more similar to Commander Karkat’s outfit.

I also had an idea to make his outfit inspired by a Blue Tang, as his original colors are blue and yellow. I liked the addition of darker, more muted colors to keep up with the idea that they’re adults and this world they ended up in did not end up to be all sunshine and rainbows. BUT I kept his brighter colors as accents to call back to his fact. But yeah, idk why but I really liked the idea of theming aspects of his design on this little fishy vvv.

As far as the airbending aspect, outfits from ATLA for airbender are dynamic and move with the wind, which I felt suited John’s original outfit well. I’d imagine his hood will blow with the direction of wind which he is bending. Additionally, the reason he has a thigh back (other than its a little bit slutty) is that by having it attached directly to his thigh, he’s less likely to have it get in his way while fighting/wind/airbending.

Finally, the locket. I’m just a sap but I have a headcanon where he insists on fighting alongside his friends, BUT, that means he has to go off on his own a lot of the time, and isn’t able to see them or his son because of safety reasons. Thus, I think it is just a nice symbolic thing (especially because he is depressed) to have a reminder of people he cares about with him constantly.

I might in the future do a LOK screencap redraw from that scene where Zaheer uses airbending to take the air out of a person’s lungs, but I genuinely don’t know who John might do this to, other than random grunts.

[davestriderpostscratch]

do any of the unstuck folks have like Regular social media like twitter, tumblr etc? what are their profiles like?

kanaya egbert: fairly standard angelfire page where she basically just keeps a diary

karkat lalonde: geocities hollywood page covered in goofy emo/scene blinkies and lame comics that he posts his movie reviews to every friday. 4channer

vriska strider: keeps getting suspended on twitter for making death threats at local politicians

terezi harley: geocities area 51 page where she talks about the x-files and posts pictures of weird blurs in the forest by her house that she is convinced are of bigfoot as well as reptile pics (she has many pets). also a 4channer

porrim crocker: snapchat addict (i think it was actually still called picaboo in 2011)

kankri lalonde: #OffThaGrid due to living in waterworld but if he wasn't he would have a poetry/literature tumblr and be an archetypal instagram hipster

aranea strider: primary social media is nonexistent subway surfers leaderboards

latula english: one of those freaks that uses pinterest like instagram

rose vantas: not online but does home record and distribute cassette tapes of herself reading passages from various holy alternian texts. will skype people on request

roxy vantas: has a million billion pages on every website under the sun but only updates them like once every eight months

john maryam: 35k follower hit-post-a-week tumblrina. also uses snapchat but is way more annoying about it

jane maryam: has an extremely sterile and meticulously organized slew of socmed pages that she purposefully keeps job-interview-perfect so that nobody will suspect that she's having full-blown mental breakdowns every weekend on her locked twitter page

jade pyrope: spends all her time in her laboratory which has bad internet due to being underneath dave's casino (she's like one of those pet artists that rich people had during the renaissance but instead of artistic masterpieces dave is paying her tens of thousands to create radioactive crimes against nature in his basement because he thinks it's funny) but is considering becoming a tutorial youtuber

jake pyrope: soundcloud rapper

dave serket: decently active on pretty much anything but everything he posts is either uncomfortably candid/personal or some kind of flashing advertisement

dirk serket: redditor. has a twitter page that's basically one long advertisement for various cryptocurrencies that got blocked by troll eelonn musque for being an annoying reply guy and sunk into a month-long depression over it

[arokarkat]

what if i am deeply deeply predictable and the homestuck fic i actually write is about. dave in the early days of the meteor being batshit neurotic. i feel like this fic must already exist but, hmm, will it exist to my standards

cuz like. obviously, the troll/human culture shock. and obviously rose has her own neuroses. but dave IS alone in his Angry Man In Your House syndrome. the person most likely to Get him is... vriska. which is a whole thing all by itself huh

but. okay. dave's only ever lived with bro, and moving in with new people is always an exercise in learning about their weird habits they've never before questioned, but dave's habits are. an exhausting degree of hypervigilance that was only sustainable-ish cuz bro wld frequently fuck off entirely; hoarding; expecting all disagreements to escalate into Actual Violence; do not make any noise leave everything as you found it you were never here; face-to-face conversations are also a prelude to Actual Violence; all the rules might change on a whim but it is never your whim you do not get to make rules; You Do Not Ask For Shit. i don't think anyone sees dave for the first several weeks and i think he's pestering rose that whole time like normal and i think rose just lets him do that because at least if he's talking to her she knows he's alive

and. gamzee..... yeah okay post-retcon dave talks to one other person in those first few weeks and it IS vriska. cuz his options are 'know where in the fuck the murder clown is' and 'barricade yourself in this room clutching a sword and find out if starving to death is still possible and/or just'. so it's fortunate actually that vriska Gets It cuz she'll definitely still be vriska about it but she'll also probably set up a constant camera feed on gamzee without dave having to ask.

idk how this stalemate gets broken cuz as far as dave's concerned it isn't a stalemate. karkat??? maybe. rose & kanaya spending more time Together, forcing karkat to spend time with the mayor or no one. so he messages dave, cuz wait hold on he hasn't seen or heard from dave since the humans got here, and dave is normal up until karkat asks where the fuck he is and does he want to hang out in person

(dave is very aware he is being insane here) (he knows karkat wouldnt hurt him but he knows on a far deeper level that violence is inevitable) (like if we assume dave & bro had non-violent interactions then all that proves to dave is you can't trust it when people are nice) (so the facts dave has here are Karkat Hasn't (As Far As You Know) Ever Killed Anyone and Probably You Could Take Karkat In A Fight and Karkat Always Tells You When He's Pissed At You) (he IS gonna assume there's a truth to karkat's threats and there is somewhere a line he cld cross that wld make karkat act on his threats and hey people can't stab you if they don't know where you are)

the solution here is a combo of karkat's stubbornness and also the mayor/cantown. the mayor is arguably the only person on this meteor capable of both recognising what tf is going on in dave's head AND that it's unnecessary. the primary thing the mayor knows about the trolls is they could have let him die but they didn't. the first person dave sees in person on the meteor is absolutely the mayor

[tearsover8eers]

Headcanon: In my personal humanstuck au the mayor basicly treats Dave, Karkat and Terezi like neices and nephews. And in a post game au (that is not the epilogues or homestuck^2) mayor makes them prominant figures in can town like- Terezi helping out with enforcing laws and court shit. Dave helping the military and their defense agaisnt threats. And idk abt Karkat but he could help out with the financials or sum shit. Also Mayor forcefully adopts them as an uncle.

[thewertsearch]

My advice? Hide.

I don't think Gamzee has any way to actually track you - he certainly doesn't have Terezi's sense of smell. Plus, Eridan isn't tracking anyone - he's trying to leave. Find a good hiding spot, and you'll probably be reasonably safe until Sollux wakes up.

...that's if Sollux wakes up, I guess. If he was human, he’d have a pretty serious concussion, but trolls, even the lowbloods, are made of some pretty tough stuff. I'll honestly be surprised if he turns out to be seriously injured.

If he is... well, you still have other fighters on the Veil. Try and rendezvous with Equius - or, if you absolutely have to, Vriska. I honestly think she'd probably help, she'd just be completely insufferable about it.

To be fair, this isn't the kind of tactical analysis that Karkat could make right now. I think he can be forgiven for panicking, given the circumstances.

GC: K4RK4T, 1 H4V3 GR4V3 4ND S3R1OUS N3WS TO R3PORT GC: 1 H4V3 D1SCOV3R3D TH3 SC3N3 OF 4 R34L L1F3 MURD3R! GC: T4VROS W4S TH3 V1CT1M […] GC: 4NYW4Y, 1 JUST W4NT3D TO W4RN YOU TH3R3 1S 4 BLOODTH1RSTY MURD3R3R ON TH3 LOOS3, 4ND YOU SHOULD B3 C4R3FUL OUT TH3R3!

You wish there was just one murderer.

All things considered, I'm not sure who’s actually the biggest threat.

Eridan is an idiot, but he’s packing some ridiculous firepower. He probably has the greatest destructive potential of the bunch, but I don’t see him using it competently. His best plan would be to hide and fish for sneak attacks, but I don't think he's capable of being that restrained.

Vriska is extremely resourceful, and has some very dangerous powers - but, like I said, her murder was personal and targeted. Among the killers, she's the least likely to go on a rampage, and I still think she could be convinced to go after the other two.

Gamzee is a wildcard, and I have no idea what's going on in his head right now. I don't think this is normal behavior for purplebloods, either - if it was, Alternia wouldn't be able to function. On reflection, I think he's the most threatening, simply because we have no idea what he's capable of, or what his plan is. We don't even know if he has a plan.

Terezi, shit!

In an earlier conversation, Gamzee seemed to imply that he wanted Karkat to try and stop him. Is he taking Terezi hostage in order to force a confrontation between the two?

Good fucking call.

You were hoping it wouldn't have to come to this. But you're running out of options. You need backup. STRONG backup.

At this point, I’d just tell Equius to demolish the meteor, and force everyone out into the open. We're running out of time anyway - that countdown's been getting very small lately - and if Karkat's not planning to hunker down and hide, then we need to find these fuckers before they find us.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

How would the others feel/react to karkat and eridan being moirails?

Or tav and gamzee being moirails? or kanaya and aradia being moirails! (I don't remember if you had mentioned them in your re-write) or equius being the auspistise of dave and tavros??

idk I like to explore the relationships and feelings of the characters

haha i'll save erikar for last because it's the funniest one

Kanaya and Aradia are pretty much a no-brainer to people - they're both fairly calm and collected already, so while they are serving to curb each others' worst tendencies (Aradia's recklessness and Kanaya's willingness to stop caring about people she doesn't like), they're really chill and overall not a wholly unexpected development once Kanaya's moirallegiance with Vriska falls through. they're girl best friends. girl married. they confer with each other about who to kill. when they finally do agree on murdering someone's ass Watch Out. Since neither of them particularly need the moirallegiance - it helps, but it's never going to be an emergency measure for the two of them, unlike the other highbloods - it's kind of deemphasized for them both, and they tend to gravitate more towards their flushed partners. also, do yall think about how kanaya fights the undead and aradia communes with ghosts. the spooky wlw vibes

gamzee and tavros, meanwhlie, garners a kind of "oh god, of COURSE it's those two" response. They rank among the two most disliked members of the team, with Tavros's blatant weakness a mirror to many other characters, who have insecurities about being weak - and with Gamzee's facade as the super chill clown at odds with their society's insistence on death, murder, and violence. However, finding true acceptance in Tavros, Gamzee would probably drop the act, which ironically lets him make more genuine connections and friendships with the rest of the team; meanwhile, having the super scary clown by Tavros's side makes Tavros much more comfortable with standing up for himself and asserting his own independence, because if he doesn't, gamzee will probably start killing people talking to gamzee makes him feel braver because gamzee genuinely believes in him and likes him.

dave/tavros/equius is just treated by the rest of the team as Extremely Funny. Dave's friends won't stop giving him shit over it. however, tavros and equius keep getting people who go "nice work" and "congrats man" because a stable and healthy auspicetism like they have is super rare. dave is in hell

pale erikar is definitely one of those things where, once it DOES happen, everyone around them is like "oh god, it was so obvious all along." like, the people on their team were vaguely aware that the two of them were buddies, but Karkat was always privately embarrassed by how often he talked to eridan (canonically, All The Time), and nobody fucking listens to eridan anyway, so for the longest time, their friend group kind of shrugged and assumed they were platonic friends, and any weird vibes they might've picked up to the contrary were just Karkat and his vascillatory too-many-feelings nonsense because he's got such a big bleeding pusher.

In fact, the only person on the team who seems to notice they've got a pale something-something going on is gamzee, but gamzee has a palecrush on karkat so he's deliberately not telling anyone and trying to keep them apart lmao. feferi like unironically notices that eridan and karkat talk so much that eridan has nothing left to talk about with his actual moirail, but doesn't connect the dots that eridan is having an emotional affair (i'm sorry feferi you deserve better HAHAHA)

once it DOES happen, there's kind of a vibe of "wait, really, karkat? THAT guy?" because their relationship - on the outside - reads as incredibly non-traditional. it's implied that insults and death threats are, like, just how they regularly talk to each other (after karkat threatens eridan's life and thrashes him verbally, eridan goes "haha i can always count on you for some good ironic banter, nobody else gets our sense of humor ^w^"), and karkat can basically calm eridan down just by saying hello, whereas eridan keeps karkat calm by saying the most bizarre, hostile, unempathetic shit anyone's ever heard (imagine the "are you like, legit sad?" post). they both have MASSIVE insecurities about appearing weak to other people, so all of their feelings jam stuff happens so far out of the public eye that people genuinely think it never happens at all.

the only thing, publicly, that changes about how they already hang out with each other is that sometimes they'll make out... which you are generally not supposed to do with your moirail. actually everybody on the meteor (besides the humans that don't Get It) are like bro... you two are NASTY. more of karkat's vascillatory, cant-keep-his-quads straight nonsense. Eridan's down for anything as long as he's getting attention, so he's a pretty enthusiastic partner, but then afterwards he's always like "this is why you can't get a concupiscent date :///// you keep doing shit like this w/ your moirail. you have problems"

like that's one of the funniest things about pale erikar imo... it's that 90% of the time it's KARKAT who needs calming down. eridan's always on the verge of a murderous breakdown, but what that means is that he's also really good at hanging on without breaking, and it's actually super rare that he needs to be pulled back from flying off the handle (esp. as compared to sober!gamzee and equius). karkat, meanwhile, is always on a hair fucking trigger, so the biggest change the friend group sees is actually in karkat, who's so much more chill to be around now that his insecurities about weakness are being patched by having the team's ultra-strong sea dweller at his beck and call. and like, yeah, having karkat as his buddy makes eridan much less desperate for companionship with other people, which makes him more tolerable, but he still mostly sucks to be around, he's just less in-your-face about it. so people put up with the grossness of the vascillatory stuff, and cringe of it being ERIDAN of all people, because they're like, well, he's making karkat happy.

[ultimatelyunassuming]

"Did you find the meme yet?" Karkat lazily asks, a arm wrapped around your chest as he absentmindedly watches the tv.

"Be patient man," you respond, leaning against Karkat's body, "This shit takes time."

"You've been looking on discord for ten minutes. Ten! It shouldn't take this long to find one shitty meme."

"I'm leafing through 6 years of dms between us, it's gonna take this long to find one shitty meme sent, like, a million years ago."

He grumbles something incoherent and vaguely antagonistic as he rests his head on your shoulder. You think he said something about how this meme better be good. "Awww, I love you too," You coo. You can feel how hard Karkat is rolling his eyes. You smile and turn your attention back to your phone. You scroll absentmindedly through thinly veiled threats between the two of you sent years and years ago, keeping an eye out for a deep fried Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff gif you sent him during middle school to try and get him to blow up at you. Your eyes practically glaze over as you grow bored of looking. After another minute of searching, you almost deem this mission a failure, until...

carcinoGeneticist: HEY THERE ASSHOLE, I DOWNLOADED YOUR SHITTY, HIPSTER, GAMER MESSAGING APP, CAN WE FINALLY WORK ON OUR PROJECT?????

Oh my god. You found Karkat's first message to you.

turntechGodhead: yea sure

carcinoGeneticist: I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY WE CAN'T JUST TEXT EACH OTHER LIKE NORMAL FUCKING PROJECT MEMBERS.

carcinoGeneticist: EVERYONE ELSE IS NEARLY DONE WITH THEIR POSTER BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T PETULANT CRYBABIES THAT THREW A TANTRUM AT THE MERE THOUGHT OF COMMUNING WITH SOMEONE EVEN SLIGHTLY OUTSIDE OF THEIR SOCIAL CIRCLE.

turntechGodhead: hey i dont throw tantrums

turntechGodhead: if anyone would be throwing a tamper tantrum itd be you

turntechGodhead: and besides i dont keep cringe people in my contacts

turntechGodhead: if i did theyd starting infecting all other contacts

turntechGodhead: its a real fucking issue

turntechGodhead: so i have to quarentine all the dipshits to here

turntechGodhead: thanks for understanding

You make a face, both in nostalgia and second hand embarrassment. Jesus, you were a fucking tool. 'I don't keep cringe people in my contacts', look who's talking, Mr. I-made-my-entire-personality-out-of-liking-Leafy-and-Sjw-Cringe-compilations. Damn, he'd have a fit if he found out you're dating Karkat.

carcinoGeneticist: LET ME GUESS, THE ONLY PEOPLE IN YOUR CONTACTS ARE JUNE, ROSE, JADE, TEREZI, AND YOUR "COOL AND AWESOME BRO".

turntechGodhead: damn right

turntechGodhead: whats with the caps lock

carcinoGeneticist: MY CAPS LOCK IS BROKEN.

turntechGodhead: cool

turntechGodhead: now tell me what i gotta do im a busy man i dont have time to sit around and wait for shit to get finished

carcinoGeneticist: YOU'RE JOKING.

carcinoGeneticist: TELL ME YOU'RE JOKING.

turntechGodhead: nope

carcinoGeneticist: YOU SERIOUSLY DON'T KNOW WHAT OUR PROJECT IS ABOUT?

turntechGodhead: no

carcinoGeneticist: YOU'RE KIDDING ME?????

carcinoGeneticist: OUT OF EVERYONE IN CLASS, I WAS GIVEN THE MOST BRAIN DEAD EXCUSE OF A STUDENT TO BE FORCED TO WORK WITH.

carcinoGeneticist: WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING WHILE MR. VAGABOND WAS ASSIGNING PARTNERS?

turntechGodhead: sexting your mom

Heh. Your mom joke. You'd bet good money that you stole that joke from Terezi. Speaking of which, you've been meaning to message Terezi about hanging out. Maybe you can organize a double date with her and her partner. That'd be fun.

You glance up from your phone and notice Karkat's eyes on you. "Did you find it?"

"Find what?"

Karkat gives you a look. "The meme?"

Oh. You shake your head.

Karkat groans. "You're kidding me?? Seriously?"

"In my defense, I got distracted."

"With what?" You show him your phone, and you see his face morph from a mildly annoyed scowl to a mortified open jaw."Oh my god. Is that....?"

"Yep."

Karkat groans, covering his face. "Fucking christ, don't remind me of my middle school self."

"What, what's wrong?" You say, a sly smirk on your face. "You don't wanna read the moment that I fell heads over heels in love with you?"

"Shut the hell up, we both know that's not true. It's just that..... Gah!!!!" He waves his hands wildly. "Look at him! You're reading his words, he's such a fucking douche! He thought that he was such hot shit, and that he was so high and mighty, so above everything that he would rather sabotage his grade than work with someone he hates, he's so infuriating! I wish I could kill him."

"Aw, come on, don't be that hard on yourself. Here, look, I was a douche as well. Do you see this line right here? 'I don't want cringe people on my contacts', I was on my own high horse right alongside you."

"You were on that high horse because I was. I was a dick to you, and you were being a dick to me right back."

"A mutual dickening."

Karkat makes a face. "Don't call it that."

"Why? Is it because a mutual dickening happened between us last night?"

Karkat rolls his eyes and you start snickering to yourself. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. You know it's true."

"It's not, but whatever you say babe."

"It is, you're just biased because you're my boyfriend."

"Untrue, but it's not important."

"No it is, I'm right."

"No, it isn't."

"It is."

"No it isn't."

"Is."

"Isn't."

"Yes, it is! Here, give me that." Karkat reaches for your phone.

You move it away. "What, no, fuck off, don't touch my phone."

He stretches his arm out, fingers grazing your phone. "Screw you, I need it to prove my point."

"Just use your own." You hold it away, using the back of the sofa to support you.

"It took you 13 minutes to get there, I'm not going to do that!"

"Sucks to suck then, you're not getting my phone."

The two of you tussle for a bit, your phone waving wildly in your grasp as you wiggle your hand away from Karkat. After a minute of shuffling around, Karkat gets a solid grasp on the device and yanks it out of your hand. "Aha!"

"Give that back!"

"No, and I'm going to prove that I was a bigger dick." He starts frantically scrolling through his and yours dm, craning his body away from yours as you clammor over him to retrieve your phone. "See, look at this shit! 'Stop hanging out with Terezi, you know she's my girlfriend. Stop trying to steal her away from me, she loves me not you.' I was jealous of you and Terezi, and I wanted you to fuck off! I should've just said that instead of trying to control Terezi's friendships!"

"You're skipping over my lines! Look at that message, 'If she really was your girl why is she making all over me?'. I shouldn't have used your insecurity over your relationship to belittle you. Clearly I was the worst."

"And what about this? 'No wonder you have no friends, you're just a reject making up for your lack of social skills through acting like a Leafy reject,' ."

"Read below that. 'At least I don't have a savior complex with all of my friends and pretends that all of my quote friends unquote like each other,' . I typed out quote unquote! Who does that?"

"I called you a disappointment to your family!"

"I was homophobic to you!"

"Yeah, and look where that fucking led you!"

"The fact that I'm bisexual and that I'm dating you doesn't mean that I couldn't have been homophobic!"

"At least you have an excuse! I just didn't like you!"

"Well, you like me now, so it doesn't matter! So that means I was the worse one!"

"That's not how that works!"

"Then how does it work?!"

Karkat opens his mouth to retort, but nothing comes out. He blinks. ".... How does this work?"

"That's obvious. It works like....... It works..... It.......... Hm."

"Yeah, exactly! How the fuck are we quantifying 'being the worst in middle school'?"

"........ Being the bigger douche?"

"Dave, you can't quantify 'being a bigger douche'. What are the parameters, at what age do we stop our assessment, do we measure this based off of what we said to each other or to others, we need to go over shit like that."

"oh." You've just decided that the whole process Karkat laid out seems like way too much work for something like this. "Do we have to do it right now? I kinda don't want to do that."

"We don't have to if you don't want to, I'm just saying that if we did, we'd have to make some ground rules."

"Cool." You point to your phone. "Can I have that back now?" He hands it back. "Thank you."

"No problem." Karkat settles back onto the couch. "Now sit down, we got 27 Dresses to finish."

You nod and sit next to Karkat, assuming the position you had earlier. You glance at your phone, intending on turning it off, but something caught your eye. "Hey look, it's the meme!"

"The meme?"

"Yeah, the meme from earlier. The one about Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff that I sent you? Look at it." You hand your phone over to Karkat.

"...... This is not worth the 13 minute wait."

"Technically it was 17 minutes."

"Whatever you say, love."

[dreadful-home]

Can you make a sketch of Fuchsia!Karkat? I wonder how you imagine him x)

Aaaaaw, I'll draw Karkat as many times and as differently as you request it anytime! ❤️ Thank you, friend! Now on the subject...

I GOT TO THINKING ABOUT THIS, AND FUSCHIA KARKAT IS SO INTERESTING.

He'd be an Heir that *hates himself.* He's still a biological mystery that shouldn't exist. All the past fuschia bloods have been female, and yet, here he is! Even without anyone else's influence, he already feels wrong and like he has to 'prove himself' as a leader... He keeps failing to live up to these expectations. Smoll, angry, and strong, he tries overcompensating so much.

He'd probably have a pitch relationship with Terezi (who loves to tease a royal) and Sollux (just blatant black pitch), still hates Vriska, and I kinda want to make Eridan his little hypeman/henchman moiral.

Eridan respects the blood caste, it doesn't matter that Karkat is a 'mutant.' He'd probably make it out to be even better, in fact, because he's *rare*, always trying to reassure Karkat that he's a good ruler even when he's *not.* Just like with Feferi in canon, Eridan is very protective of Karkat here (and might still have lingering Redrom feelings that are overlooked because Karkat is dealing with a lot).

Karkat isn't very good at keeping everyone's support. Although he makes good decisions most of the time as team leader, when he acts all-mighty around the lowbloods, they're able to put him back in his place. With Sollux especially.

The gold-blood is the most aggressively honest person Karkat can talk to, and despite him never admiting it to anyone, Karkat likes it. He stops Eridan from fighting him whenever conflict arises with the excuse that 'His time will come.'

But it never will.

Now, in reverse, Feferi is the mutant-blood. Feferi as an outcast is fascinating too! She revels in her outsider status, embracing herself as already a martyr to her cause of unifying all trolls and destroying the caste. She has big plans, and this is a huge threat towards the already insecure Heir, Karkat! What's he going to do if all the lowerbloods unite against him?

He's scared!

Eridan suggests a culling to teach them a lesson but Karkat doesn't... want to kill them... The longer Karkat talks to the lowerbloods the more he's feeling that this is wrong. That this is all wrong. And... he's already under a lot of pressure to succeed for himself, as a mutant fuschia. He feels like he's between a sword and a hard place.

How is he going to rule?

...does he even WANT to rule...?

..... his role is so stupid and unwanted.

His self hatred consumes him as he believes himself to be insufficient. This is the biggest trial in his arc to overcome, as he finally comes to the depressing conclusion that some things are better off without his meddling, and he passes off leadership.

Despite him *having* successes with leadership, he never felt good enough, and now he's a believer in Feferi's cause, which just... makes him even more clueless on how he can have any role at all in her future plans.

But, to end on a happy note...

Hooray for an arc with cranky Karkat getting out of his depressive rut through force as his friends have to provoke him back into action, to take back leadership and prove that he can handle it not because he's a *fuschia blood*, but because *he cares.*

[jewishrose]

okay sorry ive been mia but those of you who follow me on my main know i’ve been very busy lately with career stuff! anyways i’ve been rewatching yellowjackets and i think i have a more concrete idea of how i’d classpect the team.

shauna shipman - maid of breath

breath is the aspect of choices, independence, freedom, and change, and the maid’s journey is all about learning to accept and rely on their aspect instead of seeking it out in other people. in both 1996 and the present day, shauna feels trapped - literally, trapped in the wilderness, but also trapped in jackie’s shadow and trapped by the web of secrets she’s been keeping, and in the present day she’s trapped in the role of a suburban housewife with a daughter she hates and a husband she only married because of jackie. before the plane crash, shauna feels like her whole life revolves around jackie, and is happy to let jackie make choices for her. shauna’s arc is about stepping into her own personal freedom and relying on herself, for better and for worse. shauna’s arc challenges her to break out of the shell of apathy she hides beneath and accept her personal freedom.

jackie taylor - knight of blood

HEAR ME OUT ON THIS ONE. karkat is an example of a fully realized knight of blood. but jackie never realizes the true potential of her title because… you know. blood is the aspect of bonds, connection, influence and leadership, and before the crash we see jackie fully in her element as team captain. she’s able to stop the team arguing with a single “ENOUGH!”, she commands the field and scores the winning goal at states, and coach martinez reminds her that the reason she’s captain is because of her ability to influence people. she resolves arguments and keeps the team united. she works hard to maintain a facade - like all knights - of a person who has her shit together. and then the plane crashes, and her knightly facade cracks wide open. the wilderness operates on totally different rules, and jackie finds herself totally unfit to survive in this new world. she loses her authority as leader pretty early on, her bonds become distant before everything crumbles in the season finale and jackie dies. jackie was the glue holding the team together - it is only after her death that the team fully submits to the savagery of the wilderness and devolves into ritualistic cannibal cult shit. like all knights, despite her natural knack for connecting with/exploiting her aspect, she’s deeply insecure at her core. at her worst, she’s clingy and dependent. note also that blood and breath are opposite aspects. i won’t get too into inversion theory but i definitely think shauna and jackie ghost each other’s aspects at times.

misty quigley - witch of light

witches are notorious for being quirky/rebellious/unhinged. witches are manipulators - unconcerned with rules and use their aspect to break/change the rules. misty is obsessed with relevance. she destroys the team’s only chance at being rescued because people are finally paying attention to her. she’s excellent at manipulating people and things to suit her own ends and improve her social standing/relevance/importance. light players are also freakishly devoted to the pursuit of knowledge/collection of data and boy howdy is our favorite ~citizen detective~ good at obtaining data and manipulating it. she’s a bit of a know-it-all and i don’t need to say any more about the size of her ego. additionally, misty manipulates other people’s perception of her. who would think the poodle-haired, bespectacled geek who wears crocs and loves phantom of the opera is a threat?misty herself says, “i know when you look at me you don’t see someone you should be afraid of. but you should.”

lottie matthews - seer of doom

this one’s pretty easy. as a seer, lottie is uniquely aware of what horrors the wilderness has in store, and knows what the team must sacrifice in order to survive. even in the first few days after the crash, lottie tries to warn the team that something bad is following them. she’s perceptive of the doom that awaits them all, and no one believes her at first. of course, the team eventually becomes reliant on her prophecies as the antler queen, and lottie uses her abilities as a seer of doom to lead the team to the necessary course of action.

taissa turner - prince of mind

taissa can be downright machiavellian at times, and people tend to hate her for it. i don’t. i think she’s pretty much the poster child for the mind aspect. as a lawyer, she’s deeply concerned with justice. as a politician, she’s keenly aware of the fake persona she’s expected to perform in order to get the votes she wants (and, just like how dirk ghosts the mind aspect, tai ghosts heart). like any good prince, taissa is deeply stubborn and ambitious and willing to do whatever it takes to reach her goals. her challenge is to not destroy her own mind in the process (failed step one). eventually tai needs to find out why she’s been eating dirt, climbing trees, and murdering family dogs without any inkling of remembrance and return to stability in order to attain her goals.

laura lee - heir of hope

dear, sweet, precious laura lee. heirs tend to naturally gravitate/attach to their aspects, and laura lee’s undying faith is a pretty good example of that. throughout her time in the wilderness, laura lee never loses faith that jesus will protect her, and that her purpose lies in helping to save the team. she’s optimistic to the point of naivety, which is why she walks right into the face of danger by flying the plane. she truly believes her faith will protect her. she’s firmly devoted to her belief and convinced of her purpose right up until she explodes. rip queen ily

natalie scartorccio - rogue of rage

rage isn’t just about being angry. the aspect of rage encompasses all strong emotions, positive and negative. as a rogue, nat struggles to cope with her emotions. like her fellow rogue, roxy, she turns to substance use in order to drown her feelings out. nat’s challenge is to allow herself to feel all the messy things inside her heart - grief, frustration, depression, and aimlessness - and use them to help not only herself but those around her. for example, nat channels her grief over travis’ death into action, and devotes herself to figuring out how he really died.

the only person i’m still not sure about is van palmer! i’m tempted to say she’s a life player because… i mean. she’s cheated death like three times now. im convinced she’ll never die. but i also feel like she could be a space player because she’s always concerned with the big picture. i’m not sure!

[catman-draws]

In regards to the Lusus ask I actually have a headcanon around that! Trolls must be really self sufficient even as grubs. Because they are the ones who design their Hives and instruct the carpenter drones. (Maybe the drones are made with low bloods who had psychic capabilities to communicate with them????) I feel like they mostly must take care of themselves when it comes to cleaning/eating/moving around and that the Lusus are actually for protecting them from the harsh environment of Alternia. They protect the trolls from other non guardian/more monstrous Lusii. The lower your blood the weaker your Lusii and chances to live and the higher your blood the crueler your Lusii is but also teaches you your place. Like Feferi has to constantly hunt and feed her lusus training her to be good Empress (except Eridan did it lol) even Terezi’s Lusus could kill off threats psychically since we know it’s aware. The only truly stupid design I believe is Sollux’s lusus. Poor fucking guy chained to the roof his whole life.

- Trash

Eh-

I dunno. Canon describes it as a mutualism where the lusus cares for the troll as a guardian while the troll cares for the lusus as a zookeeper would.

I sorta agree? Trolls do seem to be relatively self sufficient- but I doubt they come straight from the caverns Fully Ready To GO. Like I guess that makes sense for Bugs, but eh. If it was all about protection rather than care, I don't think it would be a lifelong relationship.

I think it's sorta more dependent on lusus species, rather than caste. IE, species that tend to care for their young vs species that typically don't; plus just individual personality and environment and whatnot.

And like yeah, they have to design their own hives and stuff but uh. They're aren't actually very good at it. Idr who, but someone (Vriska?) definitely says that that's stupid and they hate their design.

Plus, it's the lusus that chooses their troll. It feels kinda weird that they would choose to take care of a baby and then. Not really do much to actually care for it.

I don't really like the idea of caste deciding the inherent cruelty of a lusus, though. That just sorta leaves a bad taste. Like, The Hemospectrum 2- This Time It's Animals

Like Gl'bgolyb did demand constant feeding- but that wasn't out of cruelty? She was just enormous and needed to be fed to keep her voice down (she WAS a horrorterror) so everyone on the planet didn't die. It's just that that ended up being a very hard task for Feferi to do alone, thus why she had Eridan kill lusi for her (which is what ultimately kept her trapped in that horrible moirallegiance). (iirc, i'm pretty sure Feferi even says her lusus was very nice, just misunderstood? something like that)

And I think the most Pyralsprite could really do (pre-hatching) was communicate psychically- I don't remember her being able to do much more than that from the egg.

And I think maybe my biggest thing against this is goatdad and Gamzee. In canon (i think Karkat says this?) it says that Gamzee started eating sopor (and joined the clown cult) because goatdad wasn't around to tell him not to (or interact with him At All really. Gamzee spent most of his time waiting for him to come back.)

TLDR; Protection as a Main Thing makes sense to me- but I don't think it would be the Only Thing.

Even with the apparent self-sufficiency of trolls, lusi are still their guardians, and there's too much of an emotional connection for me to not to think there must be more. (Especially with their many comparisons to the human guardians)

But most importantly, yeah, that poor fucking bicyclops.

What was the deal with that guy?