#werewolf logic with me and homestuck

[lint-beetle4]

Are you guys ready for the another Homestuck document? Because I have another Homestuck document.

Coming soon to a tumblr right here:

A Comprehensive Summary of Homestuck

You fuckers ain't ready for the hellhole that this document brings

[unseconds]

I don't really know how to get people to care about my games, it's kinda fascinating actually how one goes about getting their games noticed. When you have a little game you're making and you want ppl to follow along its kinda a logical step to make like devlogs or screenshotsaturdays but i worry only other gamedevs ever keep track of these things, which is a small group of people and decidedly not who I really want to see my games.

My demo rn is of 4 fun little trans characters in a weird got sucked into a game plot where the twist is the game is hidden role game like mafia or werewolf and the second twist is they never really turn against each other, the game takes a lot of tonal cues from like homestuck and undertale so i like Know who will want to see this and one part of my brain is aware i should lead stuff with that but i cant bring myself to??? or i dont know how to go about it

so even people who would want to engage with it are going to struggle to because there's no thread to follow but at the same time making that thread seems almost naive when my games dont get that many ppl seeing them. uhh basically anyone wanna talk about my game? or tell me what theyd like to see about it? i feel like theres something i should do here but for the life of me i cannot figure it out

[crowstan]

Sanders Sides post except I haven't seen it before

Ok this post is inspired by an absolute flood of Patton and Logan in a skirt, on my Instagram, which was not anything related to any of the dnd or homestuck tags but whatever. That whole mess that happened yesterday inspired this, because as y'all know: I love analyzing things weirdly and what is blogging but analyzing your own thoughts in an odd way? Anyway, spoilers ahead because this is what I've unfortunately been leaked, which means I got this stuff via spoilers.

What is Sanders Sides? So, I actually have no idea and I want to go in bare bones because. I never get to go in with little info. All i know is that it's by Thomas Sanders (he apparently does have a tumblr, I did not look up what it was because, once again, trying to get the barest and best experience I can and I worry that may taint it in some way). All I know about Thomas is that he did vines that I really like and that he has his pronouns in all of his bio's, which so far makes him very ok in my books because I have not met one person who is in any way harmful to others who has their pronouns in their bio. Then again i don't see it often anyway but regardless. And that's literally all I know about him and Sanders Sides, so. Stuff that I have worked together with the unhealthy amount of spoilers I didn't willing get that made me want to make this. -They are all symbolic or are humanoid versions of like, different parts of someone? They're also color coded which my little color coding heart loves sm! There's morality, creativity, creativity #2: electric boogaloo, logic, anxiety, and deciet which may also be denial? not sure about the last bit. -Morality's (moralities?) name is Patton, and his color is light blue. He is the dad character and is bad with any "negative" feelings, which, mood. He is one of the sides i saw in a skirt and may be my favorite possibly, simply bc I Do Not Have Good Male Figures and he's a dad character. Name a better duo than good dad characters and my lack of any positive guys in my life that aren't my age. He's part of the "core four", whatever that means. Really likes animals? I mean that does make sense bc, morality, but also that's different for each person. overall conclusion: now my dad. (/j) -Next up: Anxiety. Name is Virgil (?), color is a shade of purple. Don't know what one bc purple is one of those colors i can't remember too well. Seems like how I imagine my anxiety but a little less focused on death. I would befriend him were in not for the fact I Cannot approach people unless I'm actually dying and even then I can't. Apparently was a "dark side" at some point but now isn't? Redemption ark ig, idk what a dark side is or if it would be equivalent enough with "evil" to have that be a redemption ark. Final conclusion: wait, is that me but cis and let loose in a hot topic? -Creativity #1. Name is Roman, color is red I think. A prince character, and I'm not sure what else to add. I think he is a theatre fan, amd also I would avoid him at all costs because as friendly as he is, we don't have the same vibes and i would panic. Definitely drinks his "respect women" juice, and it's actually "respect women" juice n not whatever the hecc it is that people who /say/ the drink "respect women" juice drinks. he'd go out of his way to make sure your drink doesn't get spiked. this man is hella good, 10/10, would trust but not talk to. -Creativity #2, apparently the brother of Roman? His name is Remus, color is green, and i say this with my full heart: I love him. he seems like the kind of person who barked at people in middle school bc he thought he was a werewolf. who drank an entire bottle of glue in kindergarten at had to go to the hospital and did it again. he's the kind of person who would offer you up a worm and tell you disturbing facts about animals and then go off and play his little games he made up with twisted scenarios. and you know what? that's amazing and i absolutely love that so much. I know nothing about him except he eats deodorant and is the embodiment of intrusive thoughts and "oh god /why/" scenarios you thought of for some reason. -Logic. Name is Logan, ah, really similar to what he represents but I mean, still a very good name. His color is dark blue, aka my favorite color besides dark grey. Really likes jam? I feel like this man has read the dictionary and has "different vocabularies" he uses for different events and people, which may be a self projection but. Def Ravenclaw vibes bc!! hear me out!! not stereotypes!! I feel this man, the literal *embodiment* of logic, would value learning and knowledge which is part of what makes a ravenclaw! so it is not self projection, it is *knowledge* (/hj). that's it, i would absolutely love to debate him sm but i feel like that would be similar to that time i talked about Quadrants with a friend for an hour and they had no idea what was going on at all.

-Last one, deceit/denial. I don't know if he's denial as i got that from a little comic that i thought was funny because it had a pun. His name is Janus (don't know how to pronounce it, been saying it like Jay-Nuhss), and his color is yellow. apparently part snake or something and!! I love snakes. Apparently was in a courtroom at one point, and we all know those are fae territory, so possibly a fae (hj). apparently has multiple arms!! which does not fit in with the snake bit, as snakes have zero arms, but regardless still cool! I know the least about him, and I'm definitely looking forward to watching him!! i love snakes sm.-

moving on from the sides slightly, apparently there's another one, who's color is orange! from someone who vaguely knows about colors but knows enough that each side more or less relates to their color, i have no idea what this side could be! best guess is it's just Thomas in a top hat. I never learned about orange because orange, yellow, some reds, and some blues are very stabby to my eyes and i will get a headache so I just. never learned it. why would i learn about a color i literally can't look at without my eyes hurting? I do know orange is a caution color, and in nature it cam be found on dangerous stuff as a "stay away!" color, and pared with black it doesn't kill my eyes and those are the Halloween colors. So maybe caution? Or some dangerous thing? It doesn't make sense, as those aren't really "sides" in the traditional sense, nor with anxiety being a sort of "caution" thing. Anyway, I would need more info on orange and, depending on how the orange color is, i may react more negatively. Like with blue Christmas lights.

-there are lots of puns!! i love puns!! i don't take the opportunity to make many, but i love them sm. just like snakes! and cats! in fact i actually know a lot about cat behavior

lmao that's literally all i have, I'll go watch the whole series and also talk about that later in smaller posts, each post being one or two episodes depending on how long it is

(ah jeez it got all messed up again, under maintenance!! sorry about that!! the tags got all mixed around too!!)

(update #2: still messed up but I'll need to not use my tablet to fix it, which i can't do rn! sorry y'all :(!! )

[hms-no-fun]

what exactly do you mean when you say "june took over the direction of the story" and things like that?

oh! ok, i get what you were asking. the answer here might be kinda complicated.

the way i tend to think about writing dialog is that i'm taking pieces of myself, dressing them up in the clothes of a character, and dropping them into a scene to see how they react to one another. this isn't something i do consciously, writing is just sorta automatic for me? but this is basically how it works. anyway, sometimes it's stiff and awkward, which is how i know that my understanding of these characters isn't quite right. but other times, they practically wrest the keyboard straight out of my hands! vriska did this in gf2.1, as i didn't originally intend for that to literally be vriska in the void and for june to be a sort of cognitive fusion of two people's lives and memories, but when it happened i thought it was too interesting and had too many weird potential implications to not go with it. same with june taking jade to the battlefield and inadvertently creating harbinger silverbark.

but really, those are superlative examples of how my writing process manifests. it's the same phenomenon as when my version of dave makes a dumb joke that i decide to run with, or when karkat invents impenetrably innovative slurs. it's not that "i" as the author have given up control of the ship, or that somehow the characters in the story are literally writing themselves (though i do often describe that state as being like they're writing themselves). in the sense that all of this is happening inside my head, "i" am still totally in control of the act of writing. i just follow where the energy is and go with what feels right!

i used to really strictly outline my stories. there was a 12 book werewolf mythology cycle that i planned back in high school, i would spend hours taking notes and planning things out so that i knew the shape of the story i wanted to tell... and, invariably, all those projects stalled out. because when it came to writing the thing, i already knew what was gonna happen. there were no surprises left anymore, and i thrive on spontaneity. my favorite moments as a writer are when my characters surprise me. writing in general is just a really impulsive act, it's like a magic trick that falls apart if you think about it too much.

so, with godfeels, i have been extremely careful to outline the story only in very broad terms, and to make sure that even the spine of the thing is at least a little bit flexible. in gf3.2 for instance, i know where june will be at the start, i know where she'll be at the end, and i know pretty much all the major beats she will need to hit to get from A to B. but there are a lot of things i deliberately don't want to know until i write them, because i want to FEEL as surprised as june IS when something shocking happens.

this facet of my process is partly why gf3 has taken so long to continue, because the transition from slice-of-life to epic space opera requires that i be way more aware of the... let's call it lore of this universe. there are a lot of balls in the air all at once and it's not easy for one person to keep track of them all! which is partially why going forward i'm bringing other people on to help me finish this thing.

this is why it's important to develop an editor's instinct (or to just have an editor). homestuck fic is obviously very indulgent by nature, but i still try to polish each chapter up to 3rd or 4th draft. you want your first draft to be flexible and impulsive, and then work overtime to fix it into something that feels like it fits into a logical whole afterwards!

so no, the characters are not co-authors.