state of fics -- bolded for your convenience~

[askerian]

Look at me spamming people with random babble. You guys know why? NO ONE IS ONLINE TO SIT ON ME AND MAKE ME WRITE IS WHY.

° One week before the end of the month and I still haven't written any teamwork. One of these days (NOT TODAY) I'mma just gonna make a LJ post and... idk, every time someone comments I have to post them what I wrote since the last comment, or something. Maybe that'll motivate me (or maybe i'll be too busy answering comments to actually write XD)

° On the other hand today I wrote a bit of Lone Wolf and Pilot, the GW thing with bonded telepathic wolves, which is boring as fuck and mostly setup for the INCOMING CLUSTERFUCK bwahaha go killer go, but still, I have two complete scenes before that and maybe I could post them here or something. I remember when I used to spam you guys with all my scenes fresh from my bleeding and battered fingers. Maybe I should get back to that. >__>

° I also worked a lot on an illustration for the fic! I... pretty much traced an official pic of heero and duo and then added wolves in it. *cackles* I'm really not taking it as ~art~, it's more like an edit, but wow my fingers. Also I wish I knew how to make fake screencaps because it'd look really fun if I could copy the anime style, but every time I've tried to learn I was just... yawn lasso tool oh hey a butterfly, and the skill stayed unlearned.

I also started a pic with Heero and Duo and their merlin and crow daemons for that OTHER alternate universe with GW people having speshul soul pets. Self, what are you trying to tell me here... oh right! i should totes be illustrating the Gundams as Dragons verse. Yup, that must be it. Augh, illustration ADD. I think I just want Gboys and ANIMALS. >_>;

° In Homestuck news I'm a bit scared of the popularity of that Big Robots AU to be honest. XD; I was only planning to do their meeting at first, a sort of This One Gundam Episode Where Two Enemies Are Stuck On An Island At Night trope, and then the bunnies wanted to know what next and now, crap, I have to figure out more badass stuff to shove in that plot (AN ACTUAL STRUCTURED PLOT WOULD ALSO BE NICE), but so far I mostly have random telepathic shenanigans and Gamzee being terrifying and also John and Karkay using contrived nanomachines-related excuses to suck face. Which is always fun, I admit, but hmm. And now a ton of people like it, and they're all "i can't wait to see where you're going!!!" and uh okay, self, it's cool, most of your fics are done with that seat of the pants approach to storytelling ANYWAY! *makes self breathe*

° Re: Back to the Garden, so far I have two scenes. One of them is ten FIFTEEN pages of Karkat Is Nosy And A Mother Hen And Pale For Everyone Ever, and the other one is about eight of Gamzee Is So In Pity With Tav And Karkat Awwsocute And Also A Really Creepy Motherfucker. No trace of action or politics or adventures, apart from some silly forest wanderings.

So i'm like "That's a lot of pages! I should post them as a preview!" and then I'm like "that's a lot of pages where NOTHING HAPPENS BUT LOTS OF TALK" and the next scenes are going to be actionny and reveal more plot stuff so I'm thinking if I want the chapter to feel balanced I should just wait to have the complete thing or else chapter 2A will feel REALLY slowboring...?????

but aaaaaaaaaaawannapostsomething. ;^;

° wanna post somethiing

° but nothing is complete why

° because i haven't completed anything is why aaaaa

° aaaAAaAAAAAAAaaaaa

° and in conclusion, aaaaaaaa.

Comments

[flourite_roses]

Bwahaha I think you're amazing for even writing anything out, really. I'm the kind of idiot that can never last for longer than a scene's worth of writing. If I don't plot anything in a planning page then aaaaaaaaah where is my direction! And if I plot everything I just go meh I already know the story and writing it would make it suck more.

Ok not helping haha.

Start a very short new scene? I follow a writer who occasionally sets herself a word limit. Aka if she says she wants 1154 words, she will write only 1154 words.

[askerian]

XD Aww hon. I definitely know the feeling of "it's too outlined now, I know everything that happens, BORING!!" It's like okay what's the point now. I think it helps a bit if you also like to craft fun sentences but even then, yeah. >__> there's a balance to strike between not enough outline and too much and personally I have a real hard time finding it already. *eyes all fics still lacking an ending* >__>

aaa nooo cannot start new scene when old scene is not complete aaaa D: *flails* also my issue is mostly that I can't write *enough*, never that I need to write too much. Okay yes it is because verbal diarrhea and pacing issues, but.

But yesterday I managed to complete a homestuck...IN SPACE!! chapter thing so I am le happy. u.u~

[flourite_roses]

I thought I'm the only one that had that feeling! Glad to know there are others with that problem too haha.

But the word limit can work both ways too, in the sense that if you don't think you wrote enough for a scene just set a word limit and try to hit it? If you don't write enough then start adding sentences and plot points and stuff to the scene!

Haha grats on your chapter! NowgodoTeamworkandeverythingelse :x

[tanukyle.livejournal.com]

I will be online and make you write.
You know.
Somehow.
With a magical hammer? oAo;
Maybe John will lend me his.

And you should stop worrying about what people think of your writing. We all enjoy it if we didn't we wouldn't read it. c:

And on that note no post things post things who cares if they are FINISHED, finished is for losers. u3u

And talk is the fun bit. Character interaction ee<3

[askerian]

AAAAA fine. XD you choose, Garden or the robot thing, quick quick!

[tanukyle.livejournal.com]

Aaaaagh why do you do this to me!

GARDEN all the way though haha.

[askerian]

I was planning to post stuff in the comments but I just realized I showed you a lot last time I had a word count post! sneeeakyyyyy. Um okay how to handle this...

OKAY FINE. just reposting from the start. also i am so hard to convince. So hard guys.

[askerian]

==> Be the swoony Friendleader Knight of Blood.

"I still say we should have kept that sweet wagon. Tricked it out with steel caps, chrome bumpers, some pimpdaddy-purple velvet pillows on that front bench, my spare stereo..."

Strider's voice is an irritating toneless drawl; it isn't especially loud, but still manages to be like the buzz of an insect in the dark, just right next to your ear as it looks for the best spot to sting you; no matter where you go or how much you swat at it it's still right here, tuning it out is impossible.

It's not like you can turn around and tell the cluster of humans to control the constant flow of word-bile that spews forth from their ever-flapping facegashes, either, not when others are talking as well. You tried to enforce silence for maybe ten minutes at the very start of the walk; it was of course doomed to failure, you don't know what possessed you to hope it wouldn't be.

You speed up a little, to go check on... urgh, who is there to check on that you actually want to talk to, not Eridan or Vriska, that's for sure. Tavros maybe? Bet he'd just grin and bounce on his fleshy toes and take ten minutes to say how, uh, how very happy he, um, is, that, er, they're home and, um, not besieged by imperial drones and a couple battleships and maybe a nest of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.

Maybe Terezi...?

"The sleepy lioness wonders how much farther the brave hunting party must journey to reach its cozy den."

Flop. Suddenly, a Nepeta handbag. You trip a little, glower down at her from where she's hanging all her weight on your elbow. She's... not that much smaller, but apparently in that third-of-a-perigee you now have on her you had a bit of a growth spurt and -- obviously, being dead at the time -- she didn't, so she stayed a compact bundle of nothing but hard muscles and sinews. Heavier than she looks, and much tinier than she weighs.

Being younger doesn't make her face look any less lined with exhaustion. A prickle of guilt makes you swallow the 'when did you turn into a blood flow-hampering anterior limb accessory' you were about to let out. She's been on point ever since you guys started walking, alone and covering three times as much ground as everyone else, and it'll only be another two hours at most before dawn.

"... The mighty pride leader knows what he's doing, okay?"

Nepeta tilts her head and makes one of her retarded kitty mouth-noises that she thinks are cute. You sigh. You're too tired to find it annoying.

(Not so tired you actually find it cute, you'd have to cull yourself, but enough to feel a little twinge of a pale desire to pat her head and tell her all about how ridiculous she is, in the nicest way possible. You get random shooshpapping twinges around just about everyone you know, though -- and instead of getting territorial over the mere mention Gamzee finds it adorable as all fuck, so you just try to ignore it and only guilt about it the barest minimum.)

"I've been counting those stone markers by the road. We've now seen three roadside shelters at about the same intervals, so if I'm not missing my guess there'll be a fourth soon and then we can stop for the day."

Those shelters are so weird. Not the make itself -- dug right into the embankment so the back wall and half the sides are cool, packed earth and the front is all thick, whitewashed rocks to reflect daylight away, living tree branches bent and tied together to add a layer of shadows over the roof; makes sense against the daylight heat if you have to do without materials of carpenter drone make -- but the fact that they exist at all, and that obviously it's a standardized habit.

You figure it's got to be a human thing, something else they changed, because no troll you've ever heard of would have bothered making things easy for other travelers they don't know from their quadrant-corner's lusus, and if they didn't know where the hell they were going, or couldn't manage to find their own shelter, well, too bad for them and plan better next time you crotchstains whoops too late.

[askerian]

Humans are ridiculously community-oriented, though, there's only to look at the way that village back there was built all squeezed in together, houses almost climbing on top of each other, wall to wall, you'd have fit maybe three rustblood lawnrings there, tops. Even communal hive stems like where Sollux used to live put some actual space between apartments.

... Something else they changed.

It's Alternia. It's definitely Alternia.

You recognize everything. The night-blooming scents in the air, and the beasts slithering just out of sight, testing your awareness and whether they could cull one of the sixteen of you from the herd, and the dappled patterns of light and shadows on the face of the amethyst moon.

The emerald moon has apparently fucked off at some point and been replaced with the most boring celestial body imaginable. It's half the size the emerald moon used to be and pale-grayish -- silvery if you felt like being generous, but you don't, so instead you dub it the pasty moon, which is sort of very lame but it's that or the rainbow-drinker moon for the way it glows white and like fuck you are calling it the rainbow-drinker moon, Rose would blather on and on about you hitting on her matesprit and what that means about your subconscious desire to grow up to be your lusus. Makes the light weird, kind of pink, but the paleness reflects a greater amount of light, compensates for the smaller size so you're not actually having to walk around blind.

"Ow!"

Apart from the humans, that is. But you are not paying attention to the humans, you're paying attention to... hm. Sollux and Aradia and Feferi, and gogdamnit why are Aradia and Feferi holding hands with each other, they're not in a quadrant are they? Gaaah, pisses you off, it's like they all take turns being various shades of red for each other, and every time you hint at Sollux about it he just smirks like the proverbial purrbeast with a bowl-full of delicious cream-covered featherbeasts and he refuses to say anything. And he smirks some more until you want to fix his lispy problem with one well-placed angry fist. Even more than you usually do, that is.

Okay, no, you're paying attention to, let's go with Kanaya, yeah, why the fuck not. Who's been as always useful and easy to work with, even now she's making herself useful illuminating the path with her glowy face so that her snarky matesprit won't trip and fall flat on her pugbeast nose and argh, you were not paying attention to any humans!

"...but do you know how to handle a draft not-quite-ox?" Lalonde is asking Strider, all silky and amused, and he shrugs in that irritating, barely-there way of his.

"Fuck no, but I figured we could harness John and Jade, they're filled with so much bounce-happies they could pull a whole house."

... They are, too. Even now. Hearing their names, they look over their shoulders at the same time, arm in arm like a pair of adorable childhood moirails straight from one of those idyllic movies that you love mostly because they never happen in real life seriously how can that be an ideal if those derpy clutchclones somehow manage to be it, and they beam with all their teeth (somehow those plate-sized meatcutters never do look threatening.)

"Karkitty is really happy we can keep our humans, hmm?" Nepeta chirps in your ear, and you flinch and try to shake her off, but she has somehow become a horrorterror-lioness while you weren't paying attention and all her suckers are glued onto you.

It's too late, you will never escape. You keep trying anyway. "What the hell are you on about? No, wait, I don't want to know, it won't make sense anyway, it never does, your thinkpan is rotted through with cat puns--"

"The purrocious lioness didn't really want to give them back either. Jade gives the best scritches! And John will play with me for hours, and, and Rose is sort of scary-looking but she knitted me a new hat that one time I lost my old one, and..."

[askerian]

"--tell you, this was an advance war party, why else would they be so far from all troll territories, I know they roam but never in such big packs, there were over thirty of them!--"

"--hell, there was a reason we settled so far inland--"

"--they had humans with them, fucking pieces of shit trollsucking traitors, serve as guides no doubt--"

"... and I'm glad we're keeping them."

Nepeta's arm goes tight, claws pricking your biceps. For a second you almost expect her fucking purrbeast-ear-shaped horns to droop, that's how down she looks like.

That's how down you feel.

"Yeah," you mutter, and you look away. "I suppose I'm. It's. Probably better that way."

Nepeta's frown melts away and she smiles at you all crinkle-eyed and dimple-cheeked, it's disgusting. You put your free hand on her forehead and shove her off.

"For now! They might still choose to leave later. That'll be fine. Whatever."

You really should have kept the wagon, instead of leading it back to the village after the three humans on it had absconded at high speed, shouldn't have bothered trying to be good neighbors to those diarrhea-speckled ass-wipes. You admit the sixteen of you make for a pretty impressive strike force, but who'd ever believe Egbert's barkbeast friendliness hides murderous intent?

(Come to think of it he'd make a terrifying laughssassin.)

Anyway.

John was the most hurt. Jade was pained for a minute, you think, but you know she was raised alone by her lusus, so even if she has a human's social instincts, in short order she was cursing up and down their ancestor forest or bush or something like that (human reproduction is disgusting) and then she was over it. Rose and Strider are cynical, wary, pessimistic assholes who'd almost deserve to be trolls; you're sure they weren't even that surprised.

Anyway so John was the most hurt, at first, but Terezi and Spiderbitch stayed back to eavesdrop some more and apparently the towns farther to the west dealt with more trolls and were less hostile (that's apparently how you translate "trollsucker" from the native Speciesist Asswipe) and that was where you all wanted to be, and from that point on he was filled with ridiculous enthusiasm for those mythical places of equality and harmony.

"The lioness wonders why her crab friend looks so crabby. She says, he will have wrinkles before he's even ten sweeps old!"

And then she licks the pad of her thumb and tries to rub the spot between your brows like it's a smudge of dirt she can actually erase. You flail in protest and try to dodge, but while you were deep in thought Nepeta has reclaimed your arm. Again. How did you not notice, it is simply ridiculous. You are trapped, there is nowhere to go, and now you have catgirl spit on your face!

You flail your free hand in her direction a bit, though you don't get it too close in case she captures that one as well. "Stop slobbering all over me! That's disgusting, holy grubmunching fuck."

"Karkitty, why are you frowning." She scowls at you. It looks like a caricature of John's Serious Face, which already looks like a caricature in the first place.

"I'm not frowning, my face is just that way. It's a birth defect, okay, now shut up and go back to the despair pit of nerd hell you came from."

"Nyaa?" she says, and tilts her head like a dizzy, horn-shaken wiggler.

"No, seriously. There's nothing to frown about, everything's been going really well since --" You feel your frown deepening this time; you turn your face away; "--since then, no blisters, no food gone bad, we keep finding fresh streams to drink from, hopbeasts throw themselves in our path..."

"Yes! It's grrrreat, isn't it!"

"No it's not. It's suspicious as fuck! Shit happens. Shit happening is a constant in all of our lives. When shit is not happening it's because shit is happening in areas we have not come across yet and it's in the process of piling up high enough for a shit tsunami, which will conveniently start whenever we happen to walk by that lovely and insufficient shit dam. Welcome to MiddleOfExcrementLakeVille, Population: You."

[askerian]

Nepeta is giggling against your shoulder, since both her hands are clamped onto your arm. You consider shrugging her off, it feels weird, but at least she's smart enough to muffle her voice while the lot of you are walking in an unknown forest a couple hours before dawn like a bunch of ambush-bait idiots.

"... Honestly it's come to a point where I'm pretty sure Vriska sucked out all of that asshole village's luck as revenge for making John sadface."

(As much of a selfish, grandstanding bitch as Vriska is, you find you're almost ready to like her just for how furiously she will defend him. Thankfully the impulse to do so only lasts as long as it takes for her to open her wordhole.)

You glance around for said Vriska, since her babysitter is busy flirting with someone else at the moment. (Goddamn you get that romance is great as fuck but honestly! You thought you could depend on Aradia and Kanaya, but apparently making moobeast eyes at their matesprit -- or what ever the fuck Feferi is to Aradia, seriously Sollux can see them flirt he is right here -- won against making sure their respective threats-to-keep-at-heel didn't fuck off into the night or otherwise provoke some kind of calamity.)

(Your own threat-to-keep-at-heel is currently ambling beside Tavros and making him blush brown to the tip of his ears, and looking remarkably casual about it. You Do Not Want To Know. Most likely Gamzee is oversharing and doesn't realize. Or thinks it's cute to fuck with people and watch them fluster themselves into an aneurysm. You're his moirail and you can never tell which.)

Nepeta has progressed from giggles to laugh-snorting, for some arcane reason you are quite happy never to unravel. Your shoulder is going to be covered in forest green snot.

"The lioness agrees this is furry likely! Vriskers is sooo red for John. Oh, I want my paints...!"

You grimace, but there's no refuting it.

"It's so sweet that she would do that fur him."

"Yeah, it's also just fucking damn sweet that she did it behind everyone's back and didn't mention it later apart from that really creepy smirk so we can have things ready in case they, you know, figure it out and retaliate. Planning ahead? No, not us, who needs that."

To be honest with yourself (no one will ever hear this, not Nepeta, not even Gamzee, and certainly not Vriska) you probably should scold Vriska for pissing off people who might come at you with pitchforks, no matter how unlikely it is they'll figure it out -- holy nookchafing fuck, teamwork is actually a word that exists! with official spelling and a definition, even! -- but in truth you're just upset you didn't think to order her to do it first.

"Karkitty should pounce before she does," Nepeta says, eyelashes lowered demurely and eyes gleaming underneath.

Oh, hell no. Crazy catgirl and her shipping. Fucked if you go 'pounce who' -- pounce what, and fucked if you go 'what makes you think I even want to seriously it's been three years' and fucked if... Actually if you even acknowledge that you heard her, you automatically lose.

"The mighty leader needs to do some mighty leadering on the bitchiest spider who ever webbed and the glubbiest prissy douche for a bit now. Nice kitty, get the fuck off me."

You tell yourself she's not laughing at you when she lets go, because being laughed at by the autistic chick who thinks she's a purrbeast is pretty much the last deplorable step before ascending to the glorious throne of emperor of pathetic assholes, and the population in that empire might even outnumber that of Her Imperial Condescension herself. (Granted, there's a humongous amount of overlap.) You tell yourself you're not absconding, either. You are horrifyingly bad at lying to yourself, you guess that's why you can't stand you; there's no dissimulating all those horrendous personality defects behind a layer of hazy recollections and indulgent self-flattery.

And Sollux is still grinning as Aradia giggles in Feferi's ear, what is going on there. He talked them into doing it just to torture you, you can tell.

[askerian]

If you had water powers you'd turn the tube-shaped water ejector on them right here and now. You don't, that'd be too useful, so you scan the group for your wayward woolbeasts. Last you checked they were -- aha.

You drift to the side of the group and pretend to check your shoes for pebbles, so people won't stop and ask what you're doing (if they can be assed to pay attention to anyone but the partners they're chatting up, that is) and then when almost everyone has passed you, you ghost back up.

Your targets are clustered. This is only slightly less suspicious than those times when Egbert sneaks you side glances while going hee hee hee like a panshaken yet oddly happy goat. Eridan's been sore about being dumped out of Vriska's black quadrant ever since it happened, in other words forfuckingever ago. Granted the time was probably shorter for him but even back before Kanaya cut him off his whiny mourning was edging into tedious.

(Alright, no, back in the day you liked advising him, to the point where kid-you, being a stupid little fuck as most past Karkats are wont to be, was vaguely entertaining thoughts of dragging him in the diamond quadrant it he ever managed to flip flushed with Feferi, only Eridan just never really listened to you or advised you back.)

They're not sniping right now, not even really looking at each other. They're whispering, close, but watching someone else, throwing little guarded glances. You might have been counting down the minutes until one of the two of them felt safe enough to abscond and-or otherwise fuck the whole group over, but if there's something worse than another attempt to rekindle that particular clusterfuck of a kismesissitude, it's probably the two of them in cahoots.

You sneak. You're not surprised that Eridan doesn't notice -- he has good, sharp senses but he's overconfident about them -- but that Vriska doesn't means she really must be invested in the conversation.

"... cull evveryone!" Eridan whispers. Okay yes no what the almighty fuck you need to know what they're talking about right now.

"Okay, I miiiiiiiight see your point. She's kind of... But -- Karkat! Hi. What are you doing here."

Fuck.

The flat, suspicious glare Vriska directs your way only widens your toothy grin. You wanted to listen in longer, but oh well, there are other ways! You step up between them, an arm around each neck. It almost looks friendly. If you're blind. Or socially mutilated and incapable of reading a threat.

"So! Who are we planning to cull today?" you ask brightly. You swear your fangs would sparkle if there was just a touch more moonlight.

Eridan gives you a look full of wounded innocence at the sheer, black unfairness of your question (hi Feferi, hi Kanaya) while Vriska stiffens and goes "If we were going to cull someone, we wouldn't tell you! How stupid do you think we are!"

Funny how normal grins make your cheeks ache in short order, but when you're thinking about how happy you'd be to eat someone's face off it just feels like the most natural configuration for your facial muscles to take. Some days you're afraid Gamzee influenced you just as much as you've influenced him. Right now you bet he'd just tell you "whatever makes you happiest, best bro!" and you are nothing if not a considerate moirail who listens faithfully to the advice of his paler half.

Eridan is the weaker link, so you go full cannons on him. "Okay! Don't tell me. Maybe you'll tell Feferi."

He sneaks Feferi's back a look, all long swinging hair and swingier hips, and he shrinks.

"What was that?" You lean your hearing plate toward him. "Glub glub yes please sir, oh boy would I love to? Well, no reason to wait!" And you start to pull him so he'll walk faster.

You're expecting it when he digs in his heels, but when Vriska does the same on your other side, and digs a really sharp elbows under your ribs on top, you're a little more surprised. The glare she spears you with is soul-withering.

[askerian]

Or would be, if you had a soul. As it is, you've traded it in for a leadership. (No wonder you got saddled with such a band of nookstains, thing was shrunk too small to be worth much.)

"There an issue I should know about regarding our delightful heiress-no-more? I wouldn't want you two to think I'm not listening to your concerns in a benevolent and impartial manner. Even though I'm not." It's weird that Vriska is siding with Eridan, she has no issue with Feferi that you know of. Then again, they were sort of looking in that direction but maybe someone else... Vriska has no issue with Sollux either, but Aradia was riding herd on her earlier and maybe she doesn't want her to be reminded and get back to it. "I owe Aradia a little kick in the back flesh cushions anyway; come along."

Eridan glubs again and shrinks a little more, somehow, goes to dead weight under your arm. Vriska hisses, but you ignore her. You stop walking, stare at Eridan until he looks back at you in question.

"Aradia."

Cringe.

"Aradia."

Shudder.

"Araaadia."

"Gnn will ya fuckin stop it already! What if she hears?"

Okay, what the vast croaking fuck. "Alright! It's a joyous night full of wonders and too much healthy exercise, so I'm willing to be generous. You can talk, or you can talk. The difference between the two is you'll regret the second."

"Oh my gog!" Vriska throws her hands up in the air. "Why do you like to hear yourself talk so much!"

"Hey, Egbert! Spiderbitch is going a-culling again."

The look she gives you is so black you're uncomfortable meeting it, lest you see spades there at the bottom.

"Haha, what did you say, Karkat? Dave was--"

"Nothing, go away." You pull your double armful of prey a little farther back; John gets distracted pretty fast, but at least now Vriska is sulking because she knows you've got the bigger weapon.

"We weren't talking of culling someone, gog, we were talking of someone culling us."

"If the fourteen of us haven't culled you two yet, it's probably not in the cards just yet," you admit. You're pretty resigned to this by now, as sad as it makes you. "Now what the hell is the matter with Aradia? Jegus on a butterless toast, next you'll tell me you have a problem with Tavros."

You look at Aradia again, trying to see it. Same long hair... okay her horns are way bigger now, but those things happen with -- huh.

"She's an adult," Eridan says through a sneer. "Look at her, she's almost big enough for the fuckin armada!"

Eridan is thin under your arm. Pubescent, and tall for his age, but half-finished. Vriska is more fleshy, but she's not all that much older than he is. Not even half a sweep, perhaps barely a third. You outweigh them both, and you're not big as trolls go. Aradia is taller than you are, and curvy, and okay her horns are impressive, but that's not all it is, Feferi is even taller and as Strider would say it her imperial trunk accommodates a lot more junk. It's just... Aradia looks it. Her eight sweeps and then some.

Okay, you sort of understand. Trolls don't usually socialize outside of their age group. You've got to be particularly pathetic to look to younger trolls -- means you're too pitiful to stand your ground against people you don't have sweeps of size and experience over -- and particularly cocky -- or suicidal -- to look to older. The older trolls get and the more cull-happy, it seems; got to practice for when they join up, after all. So making friends across such an age gap just doesn't happen. (Maybe it happens up there in the Fleet, but once you're off-planet everyone is an adult and it doesn't matter anymore which batch you were hatched with.)

You sort of get it. Doesn't stop you slapping the back of their heads. "She's Aradia, you witless fucks, you've known her since forever."

[askerian]

You get glares for your troubles, and half-hearted shoving, but neither of them yanks free of your neck-grabs. It comes to you then that maybe the reason why even Vriska hasn't retaliated for that yet is that even you seem a bit old and scary to them. This is so weird. You're too used to looking six sweeps old, same as them; apart from the clothes it's not like the game updated its graphics.

It should probably be weirder than it is to be granted a different body now, but it's not like you had time to brood about it before you were thrown ass-first in undead assholes, and then it turned out if you didn't over-think it your body moved pretty normally, and the undead assholes worked really hard at not giving you time enough for self-reflection. Still, the body might work but your self-image hasn't updated yet. Bit lacking in reflective surfaces out here in the woods.

"Shit, you FLARPed with her. You know what she's like. Death fangirl or not, she's never even violent until you push her pretty damn far." You pause to consider it. "Or unless you're Equius. Huh, okay. Maybe she gets a little violent sometimes."

Eridan grimaces. "Oh, stop fucking with us already!" growls Vriska.

"Aw, but it's the most fun I've had in perigees. Would you really take that from me? You're heartless, Serket, just heartless." You relent, though. Younger or not, Vriska won't take it much longer without preparing her revenge, and she's dangerous. And Eridan... well, he can be dangerous too but so far he's been subdued enough that you're mostly worried about epic sulking fits.

Alright, and maybe it would bug you a tiny little bit to see either of them flounce out of the group, never to be seen again. Shit, you guys have cooperated and survived together for a sweep and a half, that's unprecedented for a group that size. It just... well, you got into the habit, you guess.

Your idiot-herding endeavors would not be doomed enough without those two particular pains in your ass. Yeah.

"More seriously, she has no reason to flip out on either of you, just because you're tiny and scrawny and vulnerable." x2 twitch combo. Hah. "I'd be more worried about that happening with Gamzee. Guess you two weren't here for that one, though!"

"... Shaddap," Eridan mutters.

You flick the edge of his fins with the back of a claw, curious to see what happens; he growls under his breath and gives you a hurt, betrayed look, it's like you kicked a barkbeast. He doesn't even wriggle against your hold. Crazy. Practical, though. You are going to use the shit out of it until they get desensitized and start back up with the casual disrespect.

"Anyway even if she's not cullin anyone much, what happens when the recruitment drones come for her? 'cause I bet they'd cull us a make a way through an' take her, easy -- uh, Kar? ... Kar, you're growlin."

You are, indeed, growling. Fancy that.

"Yeah, no. Fuck the drones. Fuck them without a fucking bucket, fuck them up the bulge and out through their waste chute, no."

Vriska gives you a strangely cautious look. "Bit missing in nookmunching and butt stains," she says, airy like she doesn't care, but she's still watching you. You briefly close your eyes and breathe out.

[askerian]

"...My most insincere apologies, your great grubfucking Condesce, for failing to deliver a gog-damned epic poem of 'sick burns' for the delight of your discerning noise holes." And you look at her, and at him, and you couldn't keep your voice from dropping quiet and deadly if you tried, and so you don't. "But anyone tries to take one of the sixteen of us away, they'll have to cull me first."

There is no way in hell you can stay here anymore, not with the way they stare at you, not after what you said -- shit, what the hell was that, maybe you'd do better with a tattoo on your face, Karkat Vantas Is The Hugest Paleslut Since Troll Debbie Shooshpaps Dallas, at least people'd be warned. You drop your arms from their necks -- it's just gotten embarrassing, like it's not a threat anymore, like you actually mean it -- and you stalk away, chin held up high like you're not fucking ashamed.

Gamzee. Where the fuck is Gamzee.

You'll apologize to him later, he deserves it, because you're pretty sure Tavros had a bit of the look of a young jade debutante starting to let herself get charmed against her best judgment by the roguish yet oddly alluring rustblood the Mother Grub warned her about. But when you walk up to him he takes one look at your face and his arm lifts in invitation, and you slot under it and against his side like you're a fighter jet returning to the mothership.

His arm around your shoulders is the farthest from threatening, or mocking. It's safe and sheltering and comfortable, and this is where you belong. You don't want anyone else. You don't.

He doesn't question you. What happened, why you're growling. He just goes "okay, bro?" and you two fall into step like you should be unable to, with the ridiculous length of his legs. You nod because you don't really want to talk about it, and he drops it because he can tell.

Eventually you're even a little sorry about the barging in, but hopefully watching how good Gamzee is at pitying people will make Tavros less nervous about saying hell yes. Not that you really have any idea what's attractive in any flushed way in your moirail, but seriously. You guess Tavros' shyness is what Gamzee finds so pitiful about him. Or maybe how utterly blackrom-handicapped...

Nope, sorry, the only response this invokes in you is the platonic kind of pity, because honestly that's just sad. Blackrom is awesome. (Even though you've technically never had that quadrant filled.)

Yeah, romance. Romance is nice to think about. The rest of your assholes will have to sort themselves out for a bit.




-- end scene 1 HAH! (there's a bit more with karkat but it works better along with the gamzee bit. >__>)

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

:DDDDD Even though I don't, like, read tons I am SO HAPPY YOU ARE WRITING because KEBJKBEGEKJG.

[askerian]

aww hon ♥

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't let that Big Robots AU to get you down. Although now it's making me think of Big Guy and Rusty, stupid late 90s shows that only had two seasons and were wonderful. You already had something wonderful-maybe if you can't come up with anything, you should farm out the Big Robots to other interested persons? What you've got there already is quite enough. At least, for me it is.

Fair warning though, keep going and I might make up one of those factsheets for your mechs. Did you know that a Warhammer is a classic design from the Battletech universe? Sadly, it has no hammer at all. Yours is unquestionably superior.

[askerian]

no, no, I definitely want to continue it! only now I have to actually think about what I'm doing instead of going with the flow. XD;;

FACTSHEETS. I love those things! Please feel free. :D :D :D and no, I didn't know! That's neat.
(BTW, Jade's is Remington, Jake's is Flintlock (alas not using an actual flintlock), Jane's is Poseidon, Dirk's is Masamune (XD weeabo), and Roxy I have not found a good name yet. She'd probably try to name it after a drink but I think someone might have vetoed that. XD Roxy also informs me she has a really sweet railgun. some of them were formally baptized (echidna and poseidon for example) but the rest mostly kind of had a use-name from when they were in production/beta-testing and the pilots got used to those. I might change some of them if i get better ideas.)

[midget-arnold.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Big Robots AU has no real plot huh. Is there a reason it has to have one? Just write the snippets you want to write and if no plot shows itself, try not to worry about it. Stressing and trying to make everything have a plot ...doesn't always work out. XD (Besides, you give it plot and it may well harvest your soul for energy in it's bid to conquer the world. lol.)

oooh. comment-fic.

[askerian]

Big Robots does have a plot! It's just a bit scattered atm. I don't think the snippet approach would work really well for it.

:3

[zepysgirl.livejournal.com]

This is just a quick comment before I run back to read the Garden stuff you posted (bweee~!) but: you shouldn't feel under pressure! We're all just very excited. ^_^ I mean, there's the general "Woot, moar Homestuck!" feelings combined with the crossover appeal; it's natural that you'd get more fans lined up. And it is kinda different from what you normally write, so there's shineyness in that too. But, I mean, no pressure. xD

(Also who said character interaction isn't plot? Some of my favorite parts are when characters are just talking to each other.)

[askerian]

♥♥♥ ._________.

[lurker-lost.livejournal.com]

It's Karkat inna plugsuit! (http://www.zerochan.net/949945)
I love everything you write ever, apparently regardless of whether I know the fandom or not (Gundam Wing, DCMK, FF7, etc -- but at least in those series it was relatively easy to pick up what was going on? Homestuck is COMPLICATED)! I don't know anything about Homestuck (well, I guess that's not strictly true anymore...), but I am enjoying the HELL out of Garden and the Big Robots AU! I tried to put off reading Garden until I had actually read Homestuck, but NO, NOT HAPPENING. Will come back to read the above... megasnippet (?) when I have an actual solid block of time to myself. <3 <3 <3

PS: More (http://www.zerochan.net/949851) homestuck (http://www.zerochan.net/920101) plugsuit (http://www.zerochan.net/903184) things! (http://www.zerochan.net/899626)
And an Orochimaru one for the hell of it XP (http://www.zerochan.net/412406)

[askerian]

...eeeee!!! awesome, thank you for the links *__*

Homestuck is mindfucky and sometimes quite absurd, so yeah, sorry. XD

♥ good luck with garden, ahaha XD;;;;;