#wish tumblr could have like. consistent paragraph spacing. that would be cool

[pyroclastic-lorekeepers]

If this is still open, can I request Medic/ or Lifeguard?

Huge fan BTW.

-DarkTrainerEmbargo-

17.  LIFEGUARD :  for one muse to rescue the other from drowning.

DRABBLE set POST-Pyroclasm.

Working on the Sky Pillar is not a job without its perils. It positively makes Magma's old headquarters look safe and OSHA approved, in Archie's opinion; another reason to be glad he's not working there every day. In between the rickety ladders, the partially collapsed floors, and the raging currents that surround every bit of the rocky outcropping, it's an accident waiting to happen. He's not surprised when it does; he's not even that surprised that it's Maxie, honestly. He's just glad that it happens while he's visiting, because there's no one better to navigate the tempestuous waters than him.

Jumping in is second nature to him, and his sharpedo Riptide is out before he even hits the surface. The water's force is far stronger than what he's accustomed to in Lilycove, but he trusts the shark to keep him safe. Finding Maxie is another matter. Even in broad daylight, light has a hard time penetrating more than a few feet, and the rush of water past his eyes makes it even harder to see. He's reliant on his sharpedo there too, urging him in the direction where Maxie had fallen and letting him know they're looking for a drowning person with a couple of precise taps on his fins.

It feels like it takes ages. Maxie's form doesn't come into focus until Rip is almost on top of them. Archie locks one arm around their waist and grips the sharpedo's fin with the other. Rip jets back to the surface, where Tabitha and Matt are waiting to help pull them out of the water.

Once they're both on the rocks, Archie immediately reaches for their wrist for a pulse. He can't find it and moves two fingers to under their jawline, yelling for Matt to get the defibrillator from the research vessel.

It ends up being a little hasty. Seconds later he feels the faint fluttering at their jugular, and Maxie coughs up a lungful of seawater. The bedraggled redhead reaches up with one hand to loosely grasp Archie's wrist. "I'm alright," they rasp. "No need for CPR. I'm--" they pause to cough again, expelling more salt-- "rather partial to not having my ribs broken today."

Archie huffs a sigh of relief, changing his position to help Maxie sit up. "Oh, you don't even know for sure I would've broken any ribs!" His lips quirk as he thumps them on the back. "We've got a first aid kit on the ship, after all. Barring that, Ray." "I think Ray might be worse than broken ribs." Their voice is hoarse, but they chuckle even though it makes them wince. "Straight electrocution is not what I'd consider favorable either." Archie laughs boisterously, feeling some of the tension he'd acquired starting to dissipate. "Aye, well, lucky you started coughing then, huh." "Indeed." Maxie reaches up to comb some of their wet hair out of their eyes. "What is this, the third time you've saved my life? I'm starting to feel like I rather owe you." "Yeah, you do," Archie says. "Which is why yer gonna stay on the boat for the rest of the day, rest up, and not fuss about it. Cause you owe me."

[autumnblogs]

Day 9: Troll Time

Time to get trolled.

https://homestuck.com/story/1527

This is the first of the events that I’ve noticed enough to talk about in Homestuck that alludes to the Alpha Kids. While Roxy on the other side of the scratch is the one actually responsible for the disappearance of Jaspers and the Pumpkins, at this point in the story, we have some pretty good suspects for exactly who disappeared both of them.

I could see myself guessing that Jade’s penpal is one of the trolls, but it wouldn’t be my first guess. I’m going to pay close attention to all of the events on one side of the scratch that are caused by the other side of the scratch, because my theory is that a Scratched Universe, more than anything else, is really terminated rather than truly being retroactively erased. Too much doesn’t make sense from a causal perspective (not necessarily from a temporally linear one) if a scratched universe is actually erased entirely, or even if it is closed off from the rest of existence - why can information enter and leave a Scratched Universe at all from an outside perspective, for example?

Are Side A Side B teleporters, appearifiers, and so on and so on, loopholes? Maybe it has something to do with the nature of Void, the Furthest Ring, and their seeming exclusion from the rules the rest of Paradox Space is required to follow.

The Doylist answer, which in Homestuck is also allowed to be the Watsonian answer, might be that while a Scratched Universe is *materially* erased, information about it is still permitted to propagate through narrative contrivances such as the author. Fenestrated planes can easily be considered narrative contrivances, but if we use this as our theory, it seems like Appearifiers and Sendificators would also have to be Narrative Contrivances (which I’m going to spell with a capital NC from here on out.) I... actually don’t have a problem with this hypothesis, so it’s what I’m going with. Also, since a friend of mine who’s reading this liveblog asked, I’m going to post a link to the tvtropes article on those two terms at the start of this paragraph for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

Perhaps, given the proclivity for the Void to preserve lost information in the form of dreams and memories, and given the nature of Space as the medium through which events normally propagate (as well as the fundamental medium of storytelling from which all other storytelling mediums derive their medium-ness), and their proximity on the Aspect Wheel, Narrative Contrivances are objects which have are shared between these two domains - as objects associated with the Void, Narrative Contrivances are permitted to follow their own set of rules which to someone outside of the universe are obvious, but to anyone inside the universe are a complete black box, and as objects associated with Space, Narrative Contrivances function as a means by which to propagate information in such a way as to preserve causality, the logical topology of Paradox Space, and with them, the self-fulfilling nature of Paradox Space. They allow the world-line of objects travelling through the narrative to remain consistent, even when they would violate material geographical conventions.

This description of Narrative Contrivances makes me think a lot of things could be Narrative Contrivances, like First Guardians, for example, who can violate the speed of light.

This is all a lot of silly bullshit, but it’s fun to come up with theories to describe and predict Homestuck (and future Homestuck works, even though I’m not terribly invested in them.)

This has been a long Cold Open. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/1529

John gets cyberbullied!

Man. Cyberbullying has really gone from being an individual concern to being an apocalyptic issue. Who knew? Maybe in writing the trolls and their cyberbullying as being inextricable from the apocalypse, Andrew Hussie predicted this.

I’m not trying to understate John’s issues by comparing them to stuff like massive social media disinformation campaigns - receiving Death Threats as a thirteen year old is terrifying, and on a general level, the fact that this kind of horrible shit was commonplace in the earliest days of social media should have been a big indicator that what was yet to come was going to be so, so much worse.

I’m also not trying to jocularly exaggerate the threat that almost completely lawless social media has on society. If you haven’t already, check out the excellent documentary The Social Dilemma, and then delete your Facebook account if you haven’t already (and since you’re reading my extremely anti-capitalist anti-patriarchy liveblog on tumblr, you’ve probably already done that. If you have, good for you!) And your twitter for good measure, come on, you know who you are. Mabe your tumblr too while you’re at it.

Cyberbullying is part of a larger theme in Homestuck, another one of those things that it’s Capital A About. As a work that is not only about growing up, but specifically about growing up in the information age, Homestuck is repeatedly about the ways that Social Media don’t just bring us together, but keep us apart from one another. Cyberbullying is one of the effects of Social Media pushing people apart - it’s so, so much easier to threaten to kill someone when you don’t have to look them in the eye while you’re doing it, and when you have the anonymity of a string of alphanumeric characters as a name to hide behind.

https://homestuck.com/story/1537

The Black Queen is a very bad woman. It’s always intrigued me that the Queens allow their counterparts’ agents free movement through their territory like this even on the eve (or the advent?) of full-scale war between their kingdoms. PM is just allowed to wander around Derse unsupervised.

I suppose that if even God and Satan can afford each other a bit of token civility while discussing the fates of sinners, so can Prospitians and Dersites.

https://homestuck.com/story/1542

@zeetheus​ John’s definitely proceeds Rose’s bluh.

Rose sips her Mom’s martini for the same reason that she later falls prey to alcoholism. Trying to grow up without help, Rose interprets the martini as a symbol of parental authority, the same way that she interprets the partaking of beverages in general as being a ritual of intimacy with her Mother. Empty signifiers.

https://homestuck.com/story/1549

Jack Noir’s grating voice is so outrageously distracting that it prevents itself as an intrusive thought in the Narrative for PM.

Actually, come to think of it, *all* of the Carapacians talk pretty much exclusively via narration. I wonder if that’s representative of an altered relationship with their narrative reality, which is the first time ever I’ve had that thought pretty much at all.

I always just chalked it up to one of the quirks of Andrew’s writing style, but especially when we take into account the fact that Homestuck is as metanarrative as it is, and that Carapacians are the only characters in Homestuck Proper who interface with the narrative prompt except for the audience, Andrew, and Caliborn himself, I can’t help but wonder. Maybe as living gaming abstractions, in spite of their limited intelligence and abilities, Carapacians have a unique relationship with the narrative laws of Paradox Space (perhaps in the same way that Narrative Contrivances do?)

https://homestuck.com/story/1569

Riffing a little more on the “Fetch Modus as analogous to thought processes” motif previously introduced, Jade’s excellent visualization abilities and vivid imagination serve her well as a Space Player, but tend to misfire, running wild, and seeing patterns where they don’t exist (intrusive thoughts make her see Johnny 5 in her Eclectic Bass and whatever the fuck mecha she’s about to accidentally imagine, I don’t know, I’m not a weeb.) Jade sure does think about robots a lot.

https://homestuck.com/story/1579

I have to say, I consider Terezi’s manipulative abilities to be genuinely pretty strong. I have never known a better way to strongarm me than by pointing out traits that I don’t know whether I feel good or bad about - it just terminates my thought processes.

Although in John’s case, it helps that he is, in fact, a weenie, a stooge, and most importantly, a nice guy. All these facts make him extra manipulatable.

https://homestuck.com/story/1584

<3

I have no reason to believe everyone in Homestuck’s universe isn’t stupidly badass, but I choose to believe that no one is as stupidly badass as the leads because it makes me happy to imagine that these kids are just ridiculously OP superhumans.

(That said, it’s kind of fucked up the level of violence that these literal children are involved in, maybe I shouldn’t get so excited about it. Should we be enthusiastic about the kids’ triumph over their dangerous enemies? Horrified by the travails they are being put through? Probably both motherfuckin’ things.

https://homestuck.com/story/1588

I think about this page a lot.

Rose Lalonde is a very dangerous young lady. She is ruthless, pragmatic, calculating, and cool. She’s even a killer, and literally just killed two imps before fighting this Ogre!

Why is she choosing to show mercy to it now? Is she just trying to get Dave’s goat? Maybe the answer is, deep down, she doesn’t really want to hurt anyone or anything.

https://homestuck.com/story/1589

Kanaya and Dave have a great relationship and I love them as friends very much. I wish dearly that there was more of them in the webcomic. They have approximately the same relationship with authenticity, which is to say that they don’t have an insincere bone in their respective bodies, but practice insincerity nonetheless to impress someone they care about.

For Kanaya relating to Rose, I think it’s a lot more innocent.

https://homestuck.com/story/1590

The least eloquent character in Homestuck has his brief, and I’m pretty sure only encounter with the most eloquent character in Homestuck.

Poor, poor Tavros. While Rose is pretty much always on this level, it seems a lot more innocuous when she’s talking to her friends, or the more mean-spirited and (relatively) competent trolls, the way she treats Tavros almost feels like bullying because of how obviously pathetic he is.

That said, he turns right around, and invokes exactly what’s coming to him. Y’know as much as Tavros is an authentic abuse victim and Vriska gaslights him into thinking a lot of the bad things that happen to him are his fault, there are a lot of times where he does stupid shit that invokes the justifiable wrath of the people around him.

https://homestuck.com/story/1592

While I could pontificate about the fact that Kanaya and Rose are my favorite couple, and squee enthusiastically, instead I will call attention to the fact that, by way of mixing her metaphors, Kanaya has been the victim of an authorial pun - she’s a Fruit Ninja. (Unless Fruit Ninja didn’t exist at the time of writing? It may very well not have.)

https://homestuck.com/story/1596

As the Page of Breath, Tavros sucks at communicating. Here, he sucks at communicating because in spite of his objectively pretty sick rhymes... he is talking to someone who just can’t be arsed.

https://homestuck.com/story/1602

This is one of those absurd moments that at first blush seems meaningless, but I think helps to decipher the kinds of things that John Egbert cares about. It’s one of the moments where he ritualizes an action that one of his heroes takes - John Egbert thinks that Nic Cage is cool, and wants to be like him, so he roleplays Nic Cage for a little while.

https://homestuck.com/story/1603

We’ve barely met the trolls, and they are *already* using the humans as a convenient method to troll each other instead of staying on task.

Karkat also establishes his love of RomComs before his introduction even rolls around.

https://homestuck.com/story/1618

Conceding ground to implacable enemies is generally the correct means to win in Homestuck, usually by getting them to destroy themselves or each other purely by their own unsustainably wicked or stupid conduct. Only a being as powerful as Lord English is sufficient to destroy the Significance-hoarding antagonist that is Vriska, as she threatens to overshadow everyone else in the universe by her own inflated self-importance. Only Vriska, so arbitrarily lucky, could possibly get into position to destroy Lord English. They were made for each other. They deserve each other.

One of my favorite dialogues in the whole comic. Man, I sure love Act 4. There’s something indescribable about the dialogue Andrew writes for this part of the comic. Homestuck at its best whiplashes from silly to scary to heartbreaking to heartwarming, and back to silly again, from beautiful to ugly, and I don’t think that even Act 5, as it piles up layers upon layers, well past the number of parts needed to make a whole, captures the essence of Homestuck as well as does Act 4.

Homestuck is different in every part, of course, and for everyone who says that Act 4 is peak Homestuck you will meet someone who says that Acts 1 through 3 were peak Homestuck, or who says that Act 5 was Peak Homestuck, or that Act 6 was Peak Homestuck. I do not mean to demean any portion of the work by saying that Act 4 is my favorite. The things I like in Homestuck the most are just the most themselves in this portion of the story.

https://homestuck.com/story/1627

I’m feeling less and less intelligent as I read more and more of Homestuck, because honestly, my theories read less like honest-to-god insights, and more like somebody who just wasn’t paying any fucking attention. Here, Jade spells out basically what I’ve been saying.

https://homestuck.com/story/1640

We’ll pause here for the evening. Reading was a little sparse today, but it’s a good place to leave off, especially since for some of these I wrote just stacks of theorizing.

Until tomorrow, Cam signing off, Mostly alive except for a bit of a cough, and not alone.

[fireolin]

Just saw that post u rb'ed called: 'so. FUN FACT', & man Tumblr why? I ended rb'ed that thing. Im mainly a writer, & I was getting used to posting stuff on Tumblr, so that sucks. Wanted to ask u, if u become unable to post the Tumblr 'The Wishing Hunt' v. w/ all the images, cool formatting, & stuff, do u have any other places where u can post that version besides Tumblr? I like the AO3 v. alot, but I like the Tumblr v too. I guess u could post images w/ the AO3 v, but Ik that can be hard to do.

Yes, it does suck, especially when we can use ‘Read More’ to make sure the posts aren’t long and annoying. I also like to tag mine so people who aren’t interested can block them completely. The longest posts I see without ‘read more’ are usually discourse with multiple replies added, not fiction from writers on this site.

Anyway, if I find I can’t post ‘The Wishing Hunt’ on tumblr, it will still be on AO3. The text is identical. I’m glad you like the little images and formatting though. That’s my way of attempting to break up a wall of text. Tumblr doesn’t really let me control the format very well though. It looks different on my laptop, my phone, and depending on whether I'm seeing on the tumblr dash or on my actual blog. That’s frustrating as I can’t control the visual spacing between paragraphs and headings consistently. (I do like to control my formatting.)

There is a way to post images on Ao3, and where people have been kind and generous to illustrate some of my fics, I’ve posted them there when possible. Often links break as artists move on or close their blogs. The images I’ve used in the tumblr posts and forms are officially available for free online, chosen to convey the mood. I’ll switch them up as the quest continues. 

The only way I could really post and control the look elsewhere would be on my own website built for that purpose. Although I’d enjoy that, I don’t have the time on top of writing the actual story. I’m also hopeless at most social media for that reason :D 

Thanks for asking! I think the main thing is to contact tumblr and share our views on how this change affects us. And also, as a courtesy to others on this site, remembering to use ‘read more’ and tags so posts don’t get annoying and people can control their feeds.