
Color and animation by
ashdenej on a sketch done by Andrew Hussie (yes really XD)
And then Jesse reblogged mentioning he wanted to see that AU.
I would never have seen this glorious thing without him, so. I was like okay that should be a simple little drabble and the pic is hilarious and it’s really fun spending three hours hashing out who's who for background that'll never even show up in the story anyway.
Seven thousand words later...! :X
Oneshot, complete, Dave?Karkat?John, woo quadrant confusion.
--
Karkat blamed it all on Missus Jane.
He had a lot of time to review it in his mind, and while most of his attention was taken up by rage and mortal terror the rest of his brain could still follow a chain of causality to the source, thank you very much. The logic was flawless.
Jane English worked at the bakery. Jane made amazing bread, amazing cakes, and amazing food in general. So amazing that the nearby saloon had given up trying to compete, and gone into business with the bakery -- which resulted in the saloon owner's younger son, David Burt Strider, doing deliveries.
To, among other places, Karkat's ranch. (Well, Missus Peixes' ranch, at which he worked. But.)
"
Faster, damn you, faster, we'll lose him in the canyons!"
So Karkat could already blame meeting that lusus-haired, stone-faced varmint in the first place on Missus Jane. And meeting him ... again, and again, and again, for the daily deliveries, because somehow it had become his job to receive them and his coworkers refused to let him foist it off on them, not even if he offered to trade for stable mucking seriously what in tarnation.
Hell. On. Earth.
"
Faster, huh? Got me an idea that'll help with that. Jump off and run!"
"
Fuck you sideways with a rusty spur."
"
Not on my poor innocent horse, Vantas, for shame."
Jane English, née Crocker, was also the young and lovely wife of one Jake English, grandson of sheriff English. That only mattered insofar as linking him to the existence of Jade Harley, Sheriff English's other grandchild. (Small-town bingo; every single human was somehow linked to someone else in some strange nonsensical way. Karkat couldn't blame Jane for Jade. Jade was okay, and not only because she'd put some steel in Tavros' spine by some arcane means none of the trolls understood but which made them all quite envious of the results of having a human for a palemate.)
(Then again, for a human, Jade Harley made a pretty good troll.)
(End digression.)
"
Oh shit oh shit oh shit not over the trunk Strider do not go over the trunk I will fall I will take you with me --"
Jane English, née Crocker, also happened to be related somehow by ways Karkat did not give half a fuck about to a preacher man in want of a parish.
Who had a son.
Who had a son who had by ways of Jade Harley gotten introduced to Dave Strider, who had then decided to introduce him to Karkat.
Well, actually, "don't flatter yourself, nubbly, any troll would do. Can you believe in those so-called Civilized Territories they don't really believe you good fellows
exist."
( Read more... )