#31 days of fanstuck

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck/HS11th Pallia: Open The Gate

“Okay. Come on Pallia. You’re a ssscientisst. A biologissst. This issssssn’t difficult.”

She crossed her arms, stunted claws drumming in irritation against her forearm as she stared at the switches on the circuit board in front of her. She’d been here for thirty minutes, at least, fumbling around with this stupid board. All the lights underneath them needed to switch off the red light and onto the green blinking light. After too many attempts, though she hadn’t figured out how many yet for this one, the circuit board would reset itself. Without all the switches on, she was unable to get into the temple. The temple that her consorts had been unable to enter for who knows how long. Temples that could be better homes to these magpies flying about everywhere and prevented her from getting the power plants started back up. The power plants that she would like to get started again so she could navigate The Land of Night and Sparks without vision-blinding flashes. Ideally speaking, it might also stop some of the gates unconnected to faulty circuit boards from opening up.

Sensory issues aside, Pallia largely liked the whole place. Electricity wasn’t her specialty, but it made for a better aesthetic than what she actually worked with; which is to say, blood and organs, if it was on a macroscopic level at all. Metal walls with neon-lit borders made up a whole maze of a planet, weaving her through every type of consort village and problem alike. The only sections she hadn’t seen much of yet were the power plants, due to being overrun by magpies, and the temples. Which were shut off. 

The worst of it was her inability to sidestep through the maze or have any real fun with it. The walls were impenetrable to explosives. The ceiling was covered in glass. As if whatever kind of denizen knew she’d be showing up also knew exactly what Pallia would do instead of attempting to actually solve a maze. That’s what led to her current problem.

She flipped the top left switch in the corner. It switched two other switches off, shutting off the middle one she already had turned on.

Damn it.

First the problems on Derse, and now this. Not that there’s likely any necessity to all of their allies being awake on their respective moons, but it didn’t help matters. The mechanic existed, which meant chances of it being important were good. Simple cause and effect. 

Of course, exploring the darkened streets of Derse for the first time and catching one of her best friends trembling in his sleep and trapped in an aura of darkness didn’t help matters.

“Having trouble?” Glacin asked pleasantly. It was through voice chat, as usual, but something sounded different than lately. Certainly quieter. Less mechanical interference on the back end. 

“Unlesssss you have an immediate answer, no. I’m doing fine.”

“If you insist. I’ll go ahead and let Dontoc know you’re doing fine and ease his--”

“Wait hold on, you’re on Dersssse? And he’ssss awake? Is he safe?”

“Easy!” Glacin hissed. “Microphones are not kind to your voice. But yes. I am. Believe I fell asleep on a particularly boring swan boat ride and my sleeping body is currently sitting in a cheap plastic boat in the dark admiring the scenery. Meanwhile, my waking body is on an orbiting Derse at the furthest point from the horrorterrors. So yes. Our Void player is awake here for once.”

“Well...good.” She let out a sigh of relief, feeling tension she didn’t realize she held in her shoulders loosening up. “I was getting worried.” 

“I know. You haven’t done a great job hiding it,” Glacin said. “But he’s safe. I’m keeping an eye on him. We can talk later. And for the love of somebody, please get to work getting over here or getting me out. I absolutely cannot stand my hellish land.”

Pallia groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. Melodramatic as always. “Glacin? It’s an amusement park.”

“You hardly need to remind me. Talk to you soon.”

The mic clicked on the other end, forcing her attention back to the puzzle at hand.

Fourteen switches. Each one connected to another, if not a few, other switches. Each light needed to be green. 

This didn’t look right.

Pallia pressed the reset button at the bottom, forcing the circuit to short itself and switch all the lights back to red. Everything was off.

From there, it all seemed to click. She still remembered which switch affected what area, but now everything was clear. First the switch adjacent to the top right corner. Then the switch underneath the top left corner, the switch just above the bottom right, and the switch next to the bottom left. The last of the green lights lit up, gifting her with a loud hum as electricity flowed from the circuit board and into the gate.

Simple.

Neon blue and green light flowed like water through the gate as electricity poured in. It gave a distinct shape to the gate, letting her see for the first time the jagged, uneven ends at the center where they connected. Once they were fully lit up, both ends opened up to the temple with loud, mechanical creaking only metal-on-metal could supply. The jagged ends meshed into the wall, making sharp, triangular patterns with light.

Pallia grinned, fangs front and center. “Now we’re in business.”

#31 days of fanstuck #hs11th #homestuck #my writing #i figured this could count for hs11th's prompt of land discussion #and i realize its an original land #....and also the 3rd time in a row i wrote about a land #but hey the main reason i'm not doing most of hsartkind's prompts is a lack of interest in canon characters so i'll chip in where i can #and this felt appropriate to the prompt #also yes i borrowed this specific puzzle from ND staple handbook #but i know i've listed DED's discovery theme for LONAS so....yeah #(oh yeah there's also some other stuff not regarding her land #but tbh i was not going to fire up DED and describe every switch from that puzzle #in frightening detail #not gonna happen #that's boring as fuck)

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 18: Carica: Approach Your Quest Cocoon

“So this is it.”

Carica towered over the stone beige slab marked out in the vine of Life. Her Quest Cocoon. Though it didn’t look much like a recuperacoon. Recuperacoons looked hospitable. This was a stone slab, surrounded with thorny vines all around it, far out on a deserted island away from all of the rest of her Land.

Inaeissprite hovered next to her, looking as contemptuous as ever. “You are correct. To finish unlocking your true potential within the context of the game, you’ll have to die here. Something you wouldn’t need to worry about if you were the correct age as them.”

“Nonsense. We are Alternian. Growth never ceases for us.” She whipped out an elegant silver sword from her strife deck. In a few short, clean motions, she cut out a pathway long enough for herself through to the slab. The cut remains disintegrated into the air to become part of something new. But what? Carica didn’t know. She didn’t care to discover the unique intricacies of her Land. “Or death, in this instance.”

“Are you still under the belief returning me to life was performing some great favor?” Inaeissprite muttered.

She set the sword on the slab for Inaeis to take. “I am giving you the chance now to perform the one action I know you desperately wanted in our time together. Certainly now you will be grateful.” 

“If you actually believed my sole desire was your demise, your sense of self-importance is even higher than I thought.” His lips curled up into a sneer. “You’re lucky I’m even here.”

“Not lucky. Fated.”

Her hand drifted toward the sprite pendant resting on her collar as she stepped onto the Quest Cocoon. It was a prize obtained for defeating the final minion to her denizen, however long ago. The fight was pathetically simple, but the prize of forcing Inaeis’ submission? That was more than worth it.

Perhaps after this excursion she would trap him inside the thing. If he wasn’t going to be gracious, he would at least finally be silent. Inaeissprite spoke far longer than any Void player should, in her mind. 

Inaeissprite rolled his eyes. “Is that what we’re calling it now? Fated?”

“Well, unlike you, I don’t believe in luck.” 

“You’re thinking of Aluala. Again.”

“Hm. You adopted so much of her personality once you met her I suppose I just forgot.” She laid down on her back, spreading herself out across the stone. “Now hurry and cull me before I change my mind. Quickly, preferably.”

Inaeissprite glided over to the sword, picking it up. “I still have my own weapon, you know. I don’t need a sword.”

“It felt symbolic.” She chuckled. “You may as well cull your matesprit with the same blade you culled your kismesis.”

The pause that hung in the air was so heavy she practically felt it on top of her. Fospha had been one of the first he culled during his time as her Head Inquisitor. This would make herself the last. 

If he went through with it.

Finally, Inaessprite sighed heavily, his whole body heaving. “Fine. But close your eyes. I see enough horrified faces when I drift off and I don’t want to add another.”

“Even mine?” she asked innocently.

“Yes,” Inaeissprite said flatly. “Even yours.”

“Hm. Okay.” She smirked. “For you, I will.”

Carica closed her eyes and took a deep breath. For the first time, she was about to die. And at the hands of a former quadrantmate, no less. She would leave this existence and return, arisen as the Witch of Life. Stronger and better than she was now.

Would it hurt? Quite possibly. But she needed to experience everything once. Even death.

A gentle, warm hand pressed down on her collarbone, pulling lightly on the pendant for support. “I’m ready.”

Pain shot up across her neck, and everything went black.

#my writing #31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #long post #i have animal crossing now so expect these boys to get shorter

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 14 Zanchi: Enter The Gate

All was calm in the Land of Mushrooms and Phosphorescence. The consorts slept peacefully in their little homes carved out of the mushrooms while the lamps burning red phosphorus shut off to stimulate night time and a regular sleep cycle. The few consorts that remained marched outside toward the lamps, focusing on repairing any damage the underlings may have caused as well as replicate the phosphorus inside to prepare for a new “day”. The eternal cycle was unique to LOMAP to prevent its untimely decay. All the consorts did their part in the eternal repair and replication of the phosphorus to keep the planet stable. It was a perfectly uniform system, one no one needed to influence much. Not even the hero of this land, the fabled Doomed Hero to arrive, needed to help keep it going.

Which is good for LOMAP, as their Doomed Hero was currently hurtling at roughly 45.87 mph up a sheer cliff face toward a gray spirograph in the sky.

His current situation was a myriad of factors. Glacin sarcastically told Zanchi if he couldn’t climb up the sheer cliff face, he may as well alchemize a catapult to shoot him up. Zanchi, having run out of ideas to get up to the second gate, figured he may as well. No one understood the alchemization process better than him, after all, and word was Nivell and Icasui were hopping through them already. Zanchi had to catch up. 

He ended up spending days (at least, LOMAP’s days, which he had yet to time the actual hour total on them) working on a good catapult with enough strength to propel him up to the top of the cliff. At that point, all he’d need to worry about is getting high enough into the sky to actually go through the gate and see where it’d take him. By the time it was finished? Volcor sent him a message with the exact punches necessary to make a copy of his newest jetpack. Zanchi, in a bout of boyish desire for the fun he barely got back in his formative sweeps, decided to combine the two for maximum launch speed.

He forgot the first rule of Volcor’s engineering: if it’s not big and cool, it’s not even worth it. 

Consorts and underlings both looked up to the sky to see a bright light dart through the sky, leaving a trail of dust in its wake. The fluorescent imps of the planet, much like standard imps but glowing underneath the moonlight of unnatural light of the land, observed with revulsion and fear. The consorts themselves -- those that were awake anyway -- took a momentary break in their repair to bow their heads in silent reverence toward the rare shooting star. A prophesied moment in LOMAP: the first shooting star. At least what they thought was a shooting star. No reason to break the belief.

Thank God for these sunglasses, or else the whole land would be raining with his tears, too.

Zanchi’s instant messenger pinged frantically with different messages but at his current velocity he couldn’t check a single one. He was going too fast, no way to slow down or stop until the acceleration from the catapult finally puttered out. 

ELEPHANTSPRITE: Your friends need you

Zanchi opened his mouth to yell I know! at his sprite, but only ended up screaming and catching a lung full of air. To the underlings and consorts above, it sounded little more than the whistle of the wind through the deep canyon air. 

The cliff face was approaching now, with increasing speed. The messenger pinged again, more frenzied than before. Zanchi’s arm struggled to grab the palmhusk attached to his waist, but failed to even get his arm up to it. The rest of his focus pushed instead toward keeping him going in a direct line upward and not hurtling toward a cliff, leg mere feet from grazing the edge of the cliff. 

He fumbled around some more with the controls on the jet pack, ticking the speed all the way down to the lowest setting possible. That, combined with the additional work of going directly vertical, finally slowed down to an acceptable amount. He snatched his palmhusk on his waist, seeing a couple messages from Glacin and several incoming messages from Volcor. Every single message was about the jet pack.

Whatever. Too late now.

He angled inwards, just enough to set directly above the cliff top and into the portal.

ZANCHI: will it hurt?

ELEPHANTSPRITE: I dunno! Never went through one before.

Zanchi sighed in frustration. Everyone else got useful sprites and Elephantsprite remained as pointless as ever. He may as well not have a lusus, adopted or otherwise. He ended up bracing for the worst as he went through, ready for the worst.

He was greeted with a harsh sunlight and the hot, dry air of some new place. Zanchi opened his eyes back up to find himself floating overtop a mass expanse of sand and palm trees as far as the eye can see, dotted off with the occasional vague statue.

ELEPHANTSPRITE: Welcome to your server player’s land! I hear it’s called The Land of Drought and Frogs.

Zanchi’s gaze swooped over the whole of it. “Drought indeed,” he muttered, body already beginning to sweat. He’d grown way too used to the cool canyon air of his own land. “Drought indeed.”

#homestuck #31 days of fanstuck #long post #cannot fucking believe i got this done before the next day #working 39.5 hours this week #my writing

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 4 Mayola: Enter

“Alright. We’re good. I’m in. Man that was fucking weird.”

Mayola spoke into the voice-enabled chat service to her server player, but the quick ping she gave meant it immediately went to received. She let out a long, irritated breath through her nose. Okay. So Pallia was busy. Big deal. She’d get to it eventually. Right now she had to focus on more important things.

Like, was it freezing fucking cold here all of a sudden, or was she just shivering for no reason?

Mayola walked over to the nearest window, the one that looked out from her kitchen into the rest of the world. Back on Alternia, it was one of the best looks out onto the very ocean where her hive precariously sat above. Every step of her bare feet against the wood of her floor sent another rack of shivers through her body. Her shoes, her favorite pink pumps with the knives hidden away in one of Aisral’s mechanisms, still sat inside her strife specibus. At some point after knocking out a bunch of pink gremlins, she accidentally unequipped them and never had the chance to put them back on. 

Something she should ideally do. After she figured out where the hell she was.

She heaved herself up onto the countertop, sitting on her knees just so to cover them up with the thick fabric of her dress as opposed to exposed to the open air and looked out with despair.

Her hive still sat over water. It sat over the white ice of what looked to be some sort of massive frozen lake. Out in the distance she could just make out the barest hint of snow drifts, complete with the powdery bullshit falling gently onto the ground.

A growl grew in the back of Mayola’s throat. Snow. Cold. Hell. 

There was a reason she lived in the south. Not like Sandyhorn’s bizarre weather patterns ever fixed that particular problem.

She took her shoes out of her specibus and slid them back onto her cold feet before getting back onto the floor. It wasn’t much, but even the small comfort was enough to get her from the kitchen into her bedroom and switch out her clothes to something warm. It took some time, but she managed to whip together an outfit to keep her warm from an old cloak she alchemized with a scarf to make a fur-lined black coat, as well as a relatively plain long-sleeved dress that Aisral made her once out of cold-resistant, waterproof material. Just to be safe, she alchemized her heels with a pair of snow boots to make a pair of fuzzy pink boots with retractable knife-heels. 

Finally warm, Mayola tramped out onto ice, coat bundled tightly around her to stop the wind biting through it. Abaiasprite, previously meandering somewhere in the hive with her newfound ability to explore land, flew up to her the second the door opened and followed closeby. 

“Are you sure you’re warm enough, my child?” she asked.

Mayola smirked. “Warm as I can be,” she said.

The great ghostly eel nodded. She might have the ability to verbalize, at the end of the night it was still her lusus. Abaia never questioned her more aberrant qualities. 

To both of their benefit, the ice covering the water was thicker than she envisioned earlier. Thick enough it did not crack as she shuffled onward through the wind. It also, for whatever reason, wasn’t accumulating much snow. Which was good for her. If she had to suffer through the “one step forward, half a step back” experience of walking through the snow, she’d have to turn back now just to make some trail mix.

She tapped the mic to turn it back on for a second. “Hey Shorty, how cold does it have to be for a whole goddamn lake to freeze over?”

MESSAGE RECEIVED: ??:?? STATUS: Unread

Goddamn it. 

“A lake freezes at less than 32 degrees, with layers of ice adding for every fifteen days it stays below frozen temperatures. A world like this has probably been frozen a long time,” Abaiasprite noted. “That said, I do not believe this is a lake.”

Mayola laughed. The chilly wind hurt the inside of her mouth. And were her nostrils freezing? That’s what it felt like. “If this ain’t a lake, what is it?”

“We will find out when we reach land.”

For both of their sakes, when was less time than imagined. The surprising flatness of the land threw off her ability to judge distance, and the snow banks collecting on portions of the ice made the first true island of actual land filled with real snow virtually impossible. So when she stumbled upon an igloo that only came up to her waist off to the side, sitting atop a mass of brighter white than the off-white of the ice she’d been walking on, Mayola nearly missed it. It had only been thanks to Abaiasprite poking her with that ghostly tail and pointing toward it that alerted her to its presence.

(Remind me to combine her with something that has fucking arms.)

She didn’t need to announce her presence to any residents. The loud crunch of the snow managed to be heard even over the whistle of the wind against the lake. It alerted the owner of the tiny little igloo, and an equally tiny bright blue basilisk hobbled out onto the snow. He held a curious looking cane, one with a pink-looking serpent twisting around from the base for the beast’s head to form as the handle.

“Uh...hello?”

The basilisk looked up to the heiress with a friendly smile. “Greetings, maiden. We’ve been waiting for you. How do you fare on our beautiful planet?”

Mayola couldn’t help herself. “I’m fucking cold is what I--ow!”

Abaiasprite smacked her with her tail and, despite the limited facial expressions she could have, managed to shoot her a glare that could kill. 

“I ain’t used to this fuckin’ weather’s all. Which, where the hell’m I?”

The little basilisk chuckled, cane tapping into the snow for emphasis. So at least he had a sense of humor. “Ah, maiden of the winds, servant to the breeze, you have finally landed where you should be. You are the Land of Frost and Chimes, the planet eternally in winter.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #my writing #long post #cw: heavy swearing #alternate title: i bitch about northern US winters under the veneer of mayola #i kid but seriously her hatred of winter is inspired by days when i get to walk up 20 minutes in bitter cold #i don't hate winter until those specific moments #anyway i like to imagine her land with yume nikki's snow world music #or LOZ: TP snowpeak #maybe even BOTW's snow theme

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 3 Pallia: Enter

“A...mirror?” Pallia blinked in confusion as she stared at the oddly familiar, circular teal mirror in front of her. At least, she thought it was a mirror. It looked smooth and opaque, with a rather plain circular border vaguely in the shape of a snake. And mirrors generally weren’t opaque. Generally. Exceptions likely existed. Like this, for example. “I don’t understand. What am I supposed to do with a mirror where you can’t see through it?”

Glacin’s deep voice, her server player, rang loud and clear over her earpiece. “I’m not sure you’re supposed to.” She heard his distinct frown when he added, “I certainly don’t think anyone else understood what they were doing, or it is so personal that no one could possibly begin to guess what you must do. Perhaps this is a question for your sprite.”

She hummed in annoyance, running her finger down what would-have been glass. If it were a real mirror and not a strange parody of one. “Monty’s hasn’t given me a straight answer since I started,” she muttered. She glanced up at the sprite. What was once a giant snake who slithered through the walls hollow of her hive was now a small sprite, gleefully flying around the alchemiter instead of actually helping her. Nice that she could finally speak to him, if he actually chose to say anything instead of hiss out every word for emphasis.

“Again, I believe that’s the point.” This time there was amusement in his voice, to her chagrin. “Besides, I myself should probably enter the game. Those meteors aren’t going to stop themselves.”

Pallia sighed. He had a point, much as she didn’t want to admit it. All of them only had so much time, and with the sheer quantity of people thanks to Zanchi mucking around with the backend code who knew how much time they had. “You’re right. Fine. Go do what you need to. I’ll see you on the other side.”

There was a distinct click in her earpiece as he ended the conversation. Glacin likely wouldn’t be watching for a while. And she didn’t have any idea what was going on presently with her own client player, Mayola, though she knew the disregarded heiress well enough to know probably nothing good. 

The thought briefly crossed her mind to ask Mayola for advice, but she shook it away. Glacin was probably right. This was something between her and Montysprite.

“Um….Montyssssssprite?” 

The new name for him still felt weird on her tongue, but he recognized it instantly. Montysprite flew back over to her, tongue flicking curiously in the air.

“Do you know what I do with um…” she gestured at the mirror in her hands, voice trailing off with uncertainty. 

Monty stared at it blankly for what felt like hours before he finally hissed, “Don’t we own one like that?”

Well yes, she did. A bit obvious, and not terribly useful, but it was good to confirm her suspicions this mirror was familiar.

But as she looked back down, everything started to come together. Mirrors generally had a use. For someone like Aisral, mirrors were useful to reflect back the parts of an outfit not normally visible, at least when she was alone. For someone like herself or Glacin, they were used in their microscopes to better investigate microscopic creatures and objects. A mirror could have plenty of uses, but only as much as the person using it could imagine.

And this one was familiar. Familiar, yet opaque. It carried absolutely none of those uses to anyone. The only useful piece was the exterior, that plain border protecting it.

Only one thing she could do.

Setting the mirror down on the floor, she bolted upstairs to grab to the upstairs bathroom, the one next to her own bedroom. Sure enough, the mirror hanging above the sink was the exact same as the one alchemized, albeit with an apparent teal aura pulsating around it. She carefully took it off the wall and carried it back down the stairs. From there it was quick work to copy it with her alchemiter, giving her a perfect copy.

Pallia set the copy of her bathroom mirror next to the fake one, giving the both of them a quick once over to affirm their equivalent size. Once that was affirmed, she grabbed the teal one and threw it onto the tile floor.

It somehow broke exactly as she’d expected and yet completely unexpectedly. After all, it wasn’t really a mirror. Mirrors reflected surfaces and were made of glass, and this couldn’t do that. So when it didn’t so much shatter, as much as it did crack perfectly down the center, she expected that. She didn’t expect the mirror’s surface to fall smoothly out of the border, face first without a single shard anywhere on her floor. Though with no real time to properly think about how that could’ve happened, she merely made a mental note to contemplate it later.

With the fake one out, she was able to slide the actual mirror into the border effortlessly. It fit like a glove, as if the border was always meant to be for the mirror that had been in her hive for sweeps and not for an item pre-generated by a game.

The teal aura around the mirror faded into the border, but the whole thing remained stagnant. Pallia’s whole body sagged in disappointment. Did she do something wrong?

The, right as she was about to go to the drawing board, the aura turned into pure teal light. It enveloped the whole room, yet it didn’t blind her as she kept her eyes open. Still, be it the effect of the light or her own brief panic, she froze in place until it finally disappeared, leaving a curious darkness in its place.

Pallia opened up the voice chat with Glacin. It didn’t sound like he was on the other end yet, but this would leave a message for him when he returned.

“I’m here.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #long post #my writing

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 13 Nivell: Examine

“Excuse me, you need me to what?”

Nivell stopped tramping through the snow of Mayola’s land to stare incredulously at her. She ended up being one of the first to jump through the gates and end up traversing through three of the gates. Not much of a surprise when anyone puts their nose to the grindstone the way she does. Her and Icasui combined managed to get more than enough build grist to supply the rest of the group just through grinding through hordes of enemies. Hers in particular, the Land of Myths and Monsters, was absolutely crawling with underlings. That time in LOMAM had been an absolute treat for the both of them, fighting side-by-side like back in their duel strifer days. 

Did that mean she solved whatever puzzle was to be solved on her own? Not exactly. More pressing matters needed taken care of first. Like now. Apparently.

Mayola rolled her eyes, a gust of wind wracking her body with shivers. “You heard me. I need to you translate some fuckin’ hell script and turn it into not-hell script. Simple.”

“Mayola I don’t speak hell script, you know that.” Nivell sighed. “Eastern Alternian, yes. Ancient Alternian, yes. Manx Alternian, yes. Hell script? No.”

“Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

Mayola huffed and pulled out her palmhusk, finger furiously sliding before whipping it in front of Nivell. “Yes, you do,” she repeated.

Nivell’s whole face scrunched up while she examined the black writing in the Dersian bedroom. Whoever wrote it had an absolutely elegant script, that was for sure. Elegant, and yet appropriate for what looked like, at first glance, ancient Alternian. Many of the root words looked to be exactly the same as Ancient Alternian. Or well, not exactly the same. That was wrong. But close enough the words looked somewhat familiar.

She didn’t know the language. But she knew enough about language to know it well enough.

Mayola clapped her on the back hard enough to make her stumble forward. “Told you ya knew it!” she exclaimed excitedly. 

She sighed. Normally Mayola’s enthusiasm toward her knowledge worked as fantastic encouragement. Right now it was just tiring. 

“I don’t. Knowing a similar language doesn’t mean I know it!” She snapped. Nivell stopped and shook her head furiously.  “Sorry, Mayola! I didn’t mean it like that.” 

Mayola’s face fell. “You sure? Cause it sounded like you did.” 

“No I--” she stopped again, another breeze wracking through the both of them. There was no point lying. If she knew Mayola -- and this was a troll she’d known for sweeps at this point, whether either of them wanted to know each other or not -- she knew Mayola hated it as much as she did when someone else treated her like she couldn’t take the answer.  “Okay, yes I did. But I’m also sorry for snapping. It was immature.”

“Eh, we’re stressed. I’m expectin’ it.” Mayola gave her a supportive grin. “Still though, if you ain’t thinkin’ you can do it--”

“Oh no!” Nivell hopped up in the air brightly, kicking snow around her feet. “I can definitely translate this. And it’s going to take some time. I can dig around, do some research on LOCAW and see if someone happens to know. You’ll need someone else to fight Typheus’ minions, unfortunately.”

Mayola answered with a thumbs up. “Nah, you do what you gotta. I’ll grab Eeks. I’ll see ya whenever?”

Nivell mirrored her grin with one of her own. “Whenever sounds right.”

#31 days of fanstuck #long post #homestuck #i wish it were longer but i am exhausted rn #i'm taking as much overtime as it can so i can have more money #but it's making getting these out more difficult #so this is one of the weaker ones but seeing as i'm writing it in between 3 or 4 overtime shifts in a row i'll take it

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 9: Dontoc: Sleep

Dontoc looked out among the sweeping fields of red poppies. Not a single soul, not consort nor honeybee nor troll, appeared anywhere within the flowers. It all remained still in the eternal dusk of his land, The Land of Magic and Ink, void of any sort of wind or breeze. 

He still hadn’t gotten used to it, really. The lack of….anything. Yes, there might be crumbling towers and inky black lakes criss-crossing the landscape, but it lacked echo. There were trees and forests throughout the land, but not a single leaf so much as twitched in the open air. There were plants, but the only real smell was the constant ozone-like smell in the air. He found plenty of consort villages like every other troll, but they avoided him like the plague. Those that didn’t, seemed to think he was a stain on the whole planet and treated him as such. For many parts of LOMAI already, it made understanding and navigation difficult. 

At least the various underlings, strangely shaped like a hybrid of imps and his moirail they may be, were simple enough with his tome. 

Not to mention, being ignored wasn’t anything too terribly different from his formative sweeps. He already managed to piece together the basics of the land, how their economy worked and the various differences between each consort and their colored poppy preferences based on the color scheme of the village itself. Overall? It was simple: the consorts farmed poppies and traded among the other villages. Different colors all meant different things to each village, but they weren’t all the same.

None of that was important though. Because the poppy fields were dying.

This one though, this one seemed okay. This field of poppies, for whatever reason, retained its deep red color despite the others turning brown. On one hand, Dontoc knew he needed to find out why this one field, so far away from the castle yet still perfectly safe from whatever destruction wreaked havoc on them, was fine. On the other, he had so many other things to do. Goodness knows how long it had been since he’d even opened up his husktop to check on the status of the game’s grist hoard and his client player, Ardeen. 

He took a few cautious steps through the twisting stepping stone path through the poppies with a yawn. 

When did he sleep last? He can’t even remember. His day terrors got so bad some mornings he simply tired himself out to sleep, and sleeping in the Medium only made them worse. Glacin and Pallia were both insistent he should awaken on a planet called Derse. It hadn’t happened.

Spritelog chat opened with ALUALASPRITE ALUALASPRITE: Did you know that poppies represent death and sleep? DONTOC: I αm No+ Sure I Needed +o Know +hα+, βu+ +hαnk You. I Suppose.

ALUALASPRITE: That was a hint. You need to go to sleep. Can’t keep avoiding this eventually. DONTOC: I αm Well Awαre. ALUALASPRITE: Aware you need to sleep or aware I was hinting? Because you do. Trust me. I’ve been there. You need sleep.

She really is Valeba’s ancestor.

Dontoc started to type up a pleading response to stop worrying about him on his palmhusk, but all that came about was another yawn. Alualasprite had a point, unfortunately. He did need to sleep. He just didn’t want to.

The longer the path twisted and turned through the field, the more he noticed that no, this field was also slowly dying. Hidden among the bright red poppies, others stood weakly, wilted and withered. Some other patches looked completely barren, stripped wholly of any type of flora whatsoever.

Slowly, he stopped paying attention to where his feet were going next and only on the flowers. He didn’t even notice the sleeping violet salamander laying on the ground until Dontoc full-on kicked the poor farmer. The violetblood recoiled instantly, shrinking down to the consort’s smaller height as the consort himself groggily woke up.

“Oh! My deepest apologies!” he said. “My own tiredness has gotten the better of me, I am afraid, however sleeping at this moment is not exactly conducive to my mental health and--”

“Ah, screw your trap shut. I don’t care about any of that.” The salamander stretched his arms high into the sky and yawned. Even with Dontoc shrinking himself, he only looked to be a fraction of Dontoc’s height. “I’m awake now. That’s what’s important.”

“You…” he blinked owlishly, running a hand through his hair. “You are not upset? Like the other consorts?”

“Nah. Been asleep there for who knows how long! Had to be the best sleep of my life! Plus I’m too tired to care.” The salamander chuckled, the action blowing a water bubble out into the air that popped onto the closest poppies. “I’m gonna go back to the village. Wake up and take care of the big stuff. See ya round, kid.”

He stood, dumbfounded at the salamander’s complete nonchalance as he stumbled through the path. Yet, despite being half drunk on sleep, the salamander didn’t step on a single flower. It gave his erratic walking pattern an almost hypnotic quality, one that following it alone immediately brought the sleepiness from before back to full force. Tired eyes made his vision fade faster and faster and before he knew it, it went to black.

Just a quick eye rest...then back...

Back...to the missions at hand….

Need to….need to…

“Dontoc?”

That was Alualasprite’s voice. He recognized it distinctly. Recognized it in that it sounded exactly like Valeba’s, but with a twinge of strange motherly concern. Unlike Valeba’s general concern. Totally different. 

Or maybe it was Valeba’s. His earpiece was still firmly lodged in his ear, after all. And he wasn’t currently one for noticing vocal nuances at this stage.

He felt something soft underneath him. The poppies, he thought distantly, it must be the poppies. Not like he was going to open his eyes and find out. Not when his eyelids felt like lead.

Something draped on top of him. Something pleasant and warm. And soft. How nice. It made it so easy to just drift...drift off into sleep...

“...Dontoc?”

The new voice jolted him awake with a start. He wasn’t quite sure where he was, but it certainly wasn’t LOMAI. Not unless LOMAI was purple and black now. With some horrific eldritch scribbled all over the walls. And Glacin’s damned beak mask’s empty eyes staring straight into his soul.

“Glacin,” he muttered. He shook his head, forcing the immediate disdain out of his brain. Glacin had a reason for being here. A good reason, likely. Neither cared enough for the other enough for a casual stroll through their dreams. 

“Why are you ah, well….” he trailed off, hand going into his hair absently, “why are you here?”

“Someone had to chase off those nasty little horrorterrors so you can finally join the rest of us here.” Dontoc caught the amused chuckle from underneath the mask. Normally such would irritate him, but for whatever reason he got the idea Glacin had every right to be smug. “It’s just a pity for the both of us it had to be me.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #my writing #man this was 2 over 1000 words in a row #why did i do this to myself

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck: Day 7 ????: Discuss With Your Sprite

“Sprite, please tell me the status of the other players.”

The sprite, a pink outline of a tall seadweller in wire-framed glasses dressed to the nine and topped with impossibly messy black hair, frowned. “I can’t do that. I’m a sprite imbued with knowledge of Sgrub. Not an omnipotent god.” He rolled his eyes as he dryly added, “That’s reserved for one such as yourself. Apparently.”

The troll in front of him sighed, tutting at the ghost-like body in front of her. Her graceful, lithe figure stood tall next to his own, and her advanced age in comparison to his put them both about the same height. She still remembered back when he loomed over her, and she needed stilettos just to compare. A reminder of just how long it had been since the two were together.

A pity, the longer she thought about it. She had been so kind to give him life once more after centuries of death, and this was the thanks he gave. Insubordination and sarcasm.

“Then explain to me the definition of your purpose.”

“I am here to guide you through the Medium and assist you through your growth,” he said flatly. “What I am not is some sort of cheat code to deliver you a swift fast track to safety. You’re a fuchsia. An old one, at that. That’s good enough.”

“Hm. I suppose you have a point.”

She trotted over to the side door of her elegant hive, drumming her long, manicured claws on the doorknob. Ahead of her was her land. She had no idea what sort of perils laid ahead, but he was correct about one thing: with her advanced age and experience, chances of any sort of true struggle was low. Should she exist right here, right now? No. But coding is a finnickey process, and easy to exploit the inevitable bugs and glitches that appear in the system. 

More importantly, she was better than all of her ancestors before her, and descendants after. If she wanted to rule, she would. End of story. Potential universe-ending game be damned. 

“You know, if you want to make progress I can’t do that for you.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t remember you behaving in such a manner back when we were living. Back when you served me willingly as the head of my Inquisition and glorious matesprit to the Empire.”

Her sprite laughed bitterly. “Oh, the only difference between then and now is our pailing life. You know that.”

She scowled. “Sprite, if you have nothing polite to say, I implore you to shut up.”

“Sprites don’t work that way, either.”

“Did that rustblooded kismesis choke you one too many times? Or did she merely overtake whatever space your empty thinkpan had left before you died?”

“Actually call me by my name and perhaps I’ll answer.”

Her scowl deepend, turning into a full-on sneer. Traitors already didn’t deserve their names, nor their symbols. But a mouthy, ungrateful traitor like himself deserved less. He was lucky to have this much.

“I should prototype you with a doll. Stitch the mouth up. Keep you from speaking,” she growled.

“And yet, the glory of the Medium is that I will speak anyway.” He grinned, the pointy teeth in his mouth almost glistening under the soft lighting of her hive. She can’t remember him smiling like that since he was a young adult, early on in their relationship. Back when the worst she had to deal with was a tealblood digging too deep into their personal lives. “You might have your wish of my total servitude, but even then you can’t stop my complaining.”

She sighed again, slower than before. It was true. While she simultaneously held more control on him than ever before, so many sweeps of death made him unusually bold. 

“The Valkyrie did ruin you, sprite,” she said.

He crossed his arms, eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “Again, I have a name. Until you choose to use it I see no reason to stay here. Now, if you’ll excuse me I--”

“Inaeis.” She dropped into the same voice she used when ruling: stern, but cool. It was enough to interrupt his concentration, making his unusually cheery expression drop back into his usual stoic stare. His glare did not disappear, but she didn’t care. His obedience, if even temporary, was good enough now.

“Inaeissprite,” he drawled, “but close enough.” 

“No matter.” Her long fingers twisted around the doorknob and she pulled it open. She was ready to start. “You are here to serve your Empress, are you not?”

“Until my dying breath is what I said. Back when I had faith you weren’t filled with ill intent. Before the rebellion,” he remarked. 

“Oh, Inaeis. You fool. You always had too much faith in people. I remember telling you back then it would be your downfall.” Carica Elsker, Empress to the whole of Alternia and hidden player to the game of Sgrub through a backdoor letting her serve her own game, turned back to smirk at him. “How fortuitous for you I am a graceful and forgiving Empress.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #long post

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 5: Glacin: Ride

If Glacin had to boil down everything he despised, they generally boiled down to his experiences with the Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs. Glacin hated other subjuggalators, as well as their laughassassin counterparts. He hated their brainwashed attitudes, their ridiculous faith to such a flawed religious structure to the detriment of other relationships. Any other troll who possibly bought into it similarly gained his ire. He hated the food and drink they served at the carnival, from the egregious amounts of Faygo to the copious amount of cotton candy for everyone to eat. The bright colors, the dirty surroundings, everything about it made Glacin’s insides crawl.

So, when his icy hive got displaced from its location to be dispatched at the edge of an amusement park, monorail passing only yards away from the hive itself before dipping back inside the mountainside, it took all of his willpower not to adhere to purpleblooded stereotypes and rage. 

For what was an amusement park, but a miserable pile of carnival rides?

Without a real entrance in sight, the only way to get on was the monorail. Thankfully, whoever was running it knew exactly when he would leave the comfort of his home. Right as he entered the blissfully short queue, the train entered its station and its doors opened. A curious, hyperactive red crocodile wearing a blue hat and ribbon ran the ticket station. A ticket station so short, Glacin had to crouch down to talk to him. 

“Do I purchase the ticket from you?” he asked as he watched the crocodile bluster about, pressing all sorts of colored buttons that did absolutely nothing to either of their surroundings.

“Naknaknaknaknaknaknaknak.”

“Hm. I see.” He stood back up, pulling his strife specibus out to double as a walking stick. Thank God for his mask hiding the scowl he held. “I shall take my leave then.”

“Naknaknaknaknaknak!!”

At least, for as incompetent as the ticketmaster was, the ride was clean. The interior of the monorail looked identical to the magnet trains from back home, complete with red pleather seating, metal floors, and neon purple lights running alongside the top. The sign above the seats read “Welcome to The Land of Blinking Lights and Amusement, Skaia’s Most Thrilling Coaster Park!” with an image of a wooden roller coaster ascending to the top of a mountain and zipping around its peak. There weren’t any other guests on the ride. He just wanted to obtain enough grist so Zanchi can build up to the first gate and let him get out of here.

Once he took his seat, the ride lurched forward. A gabled voice over the intercom rapidly listed off the standard safety precautions that came standard: keep your arms and legs inside the car, keep movement to a minimum while the car is moving, the standard fare. When the voice died off, the sign of the screen changed every few minutes to advertise the specific coasters. Each one had a vague title written in fancy script attached to picturesque images of the rides. 

“Well those look fun,” he heard Zanchi say mildly. 

Glacin grunted. Zanchi hadn’t been online for the past few hours. To finally hear his voice after so long was a pleasant surprise. “Welcome back. Have you enjoyed yourself?”

The monorail turned a corner, tunneling through the mountainside and toward the greater park. A few lights alongside the floor turned on, but the purple neons provided the majority of light inside at this point.

“Eh, it kinda sucks. Could be worse. The mushrooms are cool but that’s about it.” There was a long pause over the mic, followed by Zanchi adding, “Oh hell. You lucked out.”

“Oh?”

“Whole thing looks like some grub’s dream. It’s gonna take you some time to get outta this ride, but once you do? This has gotta be the best theme--”

Glacin’s hand went up to his earpiece and swiftly shut it off. Until the point came where he was somewhere doable, he should make use of the quiet downtime. As such, he didn’t want to listen to Zanchi discuss how much better Glacin had it than himself today. 

No, instead he pulled out his laptop and maximized the tab for the client side of Sgrub. It gave him a clear view of Pallia, already discussing some sort of plan with the reptilians of her dark planet. Ideally, that should mean she’s already collected up some usable grist. Almost everyone else had fought some variant of the imps at this point, herself included. The closer he got her to the First Gate, the sooner he might not have to suffer alone.

But yet, she had hardly any. Nor did he have a convenient way to speak with her, since she was busy. Glacin sent her a message asking where it went and left it at that. She’d answer it when she saw it.

He put his laptop back away with a sigh, closing his eyes. Music, if he could call the cacophonous noise of bagpipes music, played quietly through the speakers as natural light streamed once more through the tinted windows.

“Next up, Renaissance Valley!” the garbled voice announced. The sign flipped to feature what looked like a medieval city out of a cartoon, or pictures from a FLARP game. 

At least he would fit in. Best make the most of it.

“Hm. Fuck.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #the land of blinking lights and amusement #i've went back and forth with how i want his land exactly quest-wise #but i think i've finally solidified it in my mind #my writing #long post

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 2: Ektome: Strife!

“What are those?” Icasui rasped through the voice chat. She saw the same thing he did right now, small bipedal creatures covered in short green fur with thick claws and sharp, mangled teeth. Horns, long and curved like his own, protruded from the tops of their dog shaped head. They blocked Ektome off from the entrance to his hive and, more importantly, from getting to all the pieces necessary to enter the game proper that Icasui placed while he grabbed The Valkyrie’s body. Among a few other things from that tomb. “They look like--”

“Furry goblins!” Ektome finished brightly. “Come on, they’re kind of cute.”

Icasui’s face palm on the other side of the microphone was distinctly audible, but it only made Ektome break out in a goofy smile. “Right. Cute. Not potentially dangerous in the--”

Icasui kept talking, but Ektome wasn’t listening. Wooden flute in hand, he bounded up to them curiously. After all, they were guarding the door to his own hive. The little green monsters didn’t notice him in the slightest. They seemed more intent on guarding the door from any sort of imaginary threat from leaving than anyone actually entering.

Such as himself, it seemed.

“Do you think they’re a threat?” he asked through the earpiece.

“They’re blocking your door,” Icasui said flatly. “That’s sufficient enough to say they’re at least an obstacle and worthy of removal.”

“Oh! Okay, yeah that makes sense.”

That’ll make this easy, he thought pleasantly. They certainly looked animalistic enough. Coyote-like, in fact. If he’s lucky, this’ll necessitate the bare minimum of effort and he can continue on, unabated. Maybe he won’t even need to break out his actual psionic.

He started with a shrill note, one so high it vibrated rapid fire against his body. Just like his own lusus, both goblins looked instantly toward the source of the noise, snouts wrinkled in annoyance. Good. Now he had his attention. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Icasui said. “These aren’t other rustbloods with a propensity to react against your psionic. Exhibit caution.”

Ektome didn’t respond. How could he when he was busy playing music?

He swapped fingerings, moving just a half step up to trill the note. That was it. The two goblins charged after him, yipping and barking after him.  But they were messy. The first one that attacked him lunged forward, falling straight into the dirt next to him. The other one aimed straight for his face, but Ektome successfully pirouetted away, flute never ceasing its incessant trill. 

The second one was the first to recover. It landed easily back on its legs, albeit skidding along the ground. It swung back around, claws first and right toward Ektome’s legs. He whipped away, but still the goblin’s claw raked down the bottom of his leg. He blew a loud, sharp note in pain as he staggered back, silence swiftly following in its wake.

Okay, maybe a little worse than he thought.

“Ektome. Focus.”

Ektome nodded as he adjusted his posture. “Right.”

The one in the ground lunged at him again, and he dodged it, albeit just barely. Ektome scrambled back toward the door, putting space in between him and the two goblins. “Can you stop them for a minute? I’ve got a plan.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I can do that.”

The flute went back up to his lips. This time though, instead of a singular note, it was a melody: simple enough, a jaunty tune with a distinct heave-ho feeling. Mayola taught him this one, during FLARP. A pirate song, she said. As his fingers danced upon the wood, he enhanced the sound wave with his psionic. Not much, just a short coax. The heave-ho rhythm pulsed in and out, in and out, thrumming in the ears of the green goblins bolting toward him.

Stop, it said. Listen to me. Listen to my song.

Both of the goblins stopped in their tracks. They looked enraptured, unable to do anything as the music gripped their whole thought process tightly. No matter what happened in this process, they were stuck.

Neither of the two monsters heard the loud crashing, or Icasui swearing loudly through the microphone from behind the both of them. How could they, when they were enraptured by song?

They didn’t even notice when Ektome’s bathtub blotted out the sky, dropping dramatically down on the both monsters. Neither of them had a chance. It crushed them, wholly and completely, leaving strange, blue pyramidal hexagons instead of a corpse.

Ektome’s flute went right back into his strife specibus so he could better investigate the new substance. With only the briefest touch, it disappeared. 

Weird.

“Did you really have to use the ablutiontub?” Ektome asked.

“When all you have is your simplistic hive.” She sighed heavily, seemingly annoyed at something, but Ektome wasn’t sure what. “Now hurry up, we need to get you inside the game and we’re losing time.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #my writing #long post #please remember as you read this i imagined ektome sounding exactly like demyx #thank you for your time

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 17: Valeba: Alchemize Bow

Valeba stared down at her bow. It was a fine bow: black and smooth, with ornately carved metal. One of the quietest she’s ever had, too. Before she alchemized her previous bow with ink bottled in LOMAI, she would have never thought of a bow being significantly more quiet than another. The alchemiter wanted to call it some sort of ridiculous name, maybe some kind of pun. Valeba couldn’t remember. It wasn’t important. She called it Silencer. No bow sliced through even the toughest, strongest underlings like it did. Imps, basilisks, ogres, even liches all fell in only one or two good shots. 

Did it help Valeba was an excellent shot? Yes. But hitting higher level enemies at the same location with her original bow didn’t have the same feel.

But Silencer wasn’t going to get her through her next fights. The newt consorts that dominated LOCAR insisted on the necessity of elemental attacks for the last two minions of the horrible Cetus, as well as the giant whale herself. She would need something to suffice all of the basic magical elements, be it from the arrows or the bow itself. Her and Dontoc together, during her visit to LOMAI, reasoned to alchemize a combination of the two: plenty of elemental arrows, pulling from elements from as many different Lands as they could, but also one or two bows infused with elemental energy. Which is to say, they didn’t reach a full agreement in either direction.

Thankfully, since the arrows were his idea, Dontoc was the one stuck with the tedious job of alchemizing them. Valeba just had to focus on making the two bows.

She just had to figure out how best to do that.

She started by pulling out any obvious memorabilia she’d acquired from other lands. Wire from LONAS. Mushrooms from LOMAP. A white feather from LOMAM. A few of the brown windchimes from LOFAC.

Valeba stopped at the windchime. According to Mayola, the brown windchimes were found exclusively in heavily wooded areas, nestled high in the pine trees. She had to climb the trees to even reach them. And yet, she did, just so Valeba could have something to think of her by since, in Mayola’s words, it would be a cold fucking day in Hell before I sleep in a buncha fucking dank caves.

Of all of the items she had, it was the only one that hadn’t been alchemized with anything yet. She had no idea what it would even affect. Couldn’t hurt to try.

It takes a couple short minutes through the alchemization process, and then the combination of Silencer and the windchime made a frail looking glass bow that the machine decided to Glassblower. No elemental bonus.

Hm.

Maybe it needed something else? Something to reinforce it?

She dug around through her inventory modus again for anything she might’ve collected that could function as reinforcement. Something metal, without too much interesting itself. Something with too much of a unique property on its own, she’d found out through messing with it, would pass on those additional traits to the new item. For example, when she tried out of curiosity to combine a few poppies from LOMAI with her leather jacket, it gave her a bright red dress that, with a bit of focus, made her invisible. Since she desired potential secondary effects from the windchime, not a primary effect, she needed something that would only give a base effect.

Unfortunately, all she had was a space heater. She pulled it out of her inventory modus and sent a prayer to whoever was listening that this would work.

She plugged the information into the alchemiter. A Bow of Ice and Fire, it read, for the small cost of 1 million build grist, 500,000 glass grist, 200,000 crystal grist, 69,306 silver grist and 694 diamonds. (Oh thank fuck for all that fighting or else this would be impossible, Valeba thought.) One space heater, one frosted windchime, and a copy of Silencer. Easy.

The resources auto-depleted, and in the blink of an eye it created the bow. The middle portion of the bow looked identical to Silencer, all sleek, black and practical. Where it differed were the limbs. The black of the upper limb was covered in creeping frost. The bottom, covered in flames. 

Now to test it. 

She shot an arrow toward a stalagmite in the distance. She physically felt the bow pulse in her hands during the shot, pushing the energy from the bow toward the stalagmite. The arrow itself cut cleanly through the air, blasting the rock with a burst of fire, followed by encasing it in ice.

“Oh well, this will do just nicely.”

#homestuck #31 days of fanstuck #my writing #long post #i've had this idea for a bow for years now #but it really doesn't make feasible sense except in sburb context #so here it is

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 16: Volcor: Frog Hunt

“Ooh look! There’s another one!”

Volcor looked up from the whirring device held in his good hand to point his hook toward the watering hole in the distance. The device itself, aptly named Paradox Frog Detector, was created in equal parts by him and Zanchi. It used specific signals that not just frogs, but only the frogs necessary for the Genesis Frog would be recognized in a radius up to 15 meters. Thanks to a unique type of radiation they seemed to give off at all stages in their timeline -- paradox radiation they dubbed it -- it made seeking shockingly easy for the both of them. The instrument detected temporal or spatial paradoxes, and it dinged if they were close to it. The struggle came with the absolute vastness of Volcor’s desert. Lighting the Forge threw enough debris into the sky it blotted out the harsh sun and brought much needed rain back into the desert, turning it back into the savannah it was supposed to be.

Zanchi nodded, shrugging his falling backpack back on. “I’m not moving faster to get these frogs. I’m sure we’ve got plenty of time to take care of this….what was it?”

“Genesis Frog.”

“This Genesis Frog.” He shook his head. “Because that makes sense.”

“It does if you don’t think about it too much,” Volcor said. 

The device vibrated loudly in Volcor’s hand, whirring and beeping frantically. Volcor twisted around in every direction, seeing if one path in particular intensified it further. It didn’t. The instrument whirred no matter where he looked.

“Shouldn’t that mean there’s a frog here? Like,” Zanchi pointed down at the soft ground between them, “right here?”

Volcor looked down with a frown. “Yeah. It should. Or wait…” He trailed off, looking back up into Zanchi’s sunglasses. “Did we ever specify this to detect the frogs? Or just paradox radiation in general?”

Zanchi snorted. “Okay, but even if we were detecting general paradox radiation what would it pick up on here? The ground?”

“I dunno. Maybe?” Volcor tapped the curve of his hook on his hand. “Or wait, does it detect paradox radiation from all points in time or just the present time? Did we account for that?”

“I don’t fucking know.” Zanchi scowled. He turned sharply on his heel, marching back toward the watering hole. “Let’s get this frog over here and figure out what’s going on.”

Volcor didn’t move from his spot. “But what if it’s something cool! You’ll never know!” He set down the Paradox Frog Detector in exchange for a shovel to dig. “What if there’s a frog down here?”

“There’s not.” Zanchi’s voice was distant now, as he walked further toward the pond. “I’ll see you over there.”

Volcor huffed and rolled his eyes. Fine. If Zanchi wanted to be Zanchi about it, that wouldn’t bother him. 

At the same time, he had a point. Their instrument hadn’t received much testing before practical application out into the real world. The two of them did some brief calibration against the first frog they found, but nothing else. However, what kind of issues would appear? He’d never know unless he figured out why it currently dinged back and forth. 

In the end, Volcor figured if it felt like it’d been 30 minutes of digging, or if Zanchi grabbed him again, he’d continue on. But until then? May as well investigate.

So while the instrument dinged and whirred and vibrated, Volcor remained. He dug through the earth, pulling anything out that looked potentially interesting and testing it. But nothing matched. Nothing made the bells go off. With each minute that passed, Volcor’s hope slowly dwindled that there would be much of anything. The Paradox Frog Detector might just be bugged.

Then, right there, the detector’s bells rattled alongside the vibrations. Volcor’s whole body perked up and he glanced over to the instrument.

“Whaddya need?” he asked.

“I think,” a familiar voice chirped behind him, “I think it’s responding to me.”

Volcor stopped everything. He swiftly turned around with a grin, matching the smiling face of Fioira. But, at the same time, a different Fioria. The one he expected to run into was the Fioria in a long, pleated skirt and loose fitting blouse. This one wore a bright red summer dress and soft looking moccasins. 

A doomed variant of her, maybe? Volcor didn’t know enough about timelines to try to guess what exactly she was, only that she was picked up by his Paradox Frog Detector.

“We can fix that,” Volcor said. “Though uh...why’re you here?”

“Fixing some things.” Her fingers made a couple quick movements and in her hand was a small, white frog. “You’ll need this moment later on to pull him from. Okay?”

Volcor took the frog out of her hands, holding it curiously in front of the device. It whirred and vibrated and dinged and shook. 

Well, it still detected frogs. Just not maybe at the right time. All the better he ended up waiting.

“Okay.”

#homestuck #long post #31 days of fanstuck #my writing

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 15 Fioria: Strife!

Thwack!

The giant tail of the dark red monster slammed against the side of the stone wall, breaking a couple pillars she’d been using for protection. Sheet music from her Time Book flew everywhere as Fioria rewound her own timeline, placing her safely past the tip of the tail. The force still propelled her backward, but she scraped by without injury. 

“Focus!” Aisral hissed. “We can’t lose our only time player.” 

Fioria scrambled back to the center of the room. The beast wasn’t going to split them up like this. Fighting in tandem served better than separate. “I’m doing my best. This just isn’t the fight I’m cut out for.”

The minion of Hephestus’ mouth unhinged, releasing out waves of red hot fire. Fioria whipped out her glass baton. Her arms moved in a quick, jerky 1,2 motion, separating out the flames from her and Aisral. 

“I need you to find a way. Unless you would rather we die here?” Aisral released her own batch of flames from her flamethrower to combat the minion’s, but the fire on fire did nothing. Aisral let out a strangled noise of frustration. “Bah! This is the first time I can’t burn anything? What a joke.”

“Are you joking? Now?!”

Two ghostly red arms around the minion’s snake-like torso, reaching toward Fioria. Aisral disintegrated it with her flamethrower. 

“I think it’s better to ask if you’d like to actually help!” she snapped. The minion’s arms swooped toward them both, but Aisral burned it away as quickly as the first.

“I can if we just get back on the plan,” she pointed out. “If we reveal its weak spot--”

The minion roared, arms disappearing while it shook loose rock from the ceiling down onto them. Fioria made short work of the rock through her baton.

“The plan’s been off schedule the minute we walked in and had to fight off a horde of monstrous little bird imps,” Aisral said. “Can’t you use your time powers?”

“They don’t work like that!”

“They’ll have to eventually!” 

“You don’t get to say when--” the minion lunged toward the both of them, cutting her off once more. Aisral and Fioria both jumped off to either side of the room, effectively separated off through the minion’s own giant body. 

Oh no.

They both agreed being split up in a fight like this was the worst option. Whatever happened, they stuck together. Fioria didn’t fight well enough against giant enemies on her own. This was the worst case scenario.

The minion turned toward Aisral first, circling it with its whole body. Its whole body lit up in flames, ready to release at any moment. She couldn’t see the shorter tealblood anymore, but unless she had a pocket pair of wings, she was done for.

Come on Fioria. Think on your feet. Do something. Think of something.

There wasn’t anything in this room she could manipulate. She could reverse herself and Aisral, like she’d done before to dodge the last hit, but moving that much might move the beast as well. She still hadn’t gotten used to anything more than herself, and inanimate objects like the pillars.

Wait.

The pillars!

Fioria looked up and sure enough, the ruined remains of a pillar still stood right between the beast and Aisral.

She pulled the remaining pages of her Time Book out, letting the pages flip hurriedly toward the right one. Her baton moved to match the cadence, left and right, front and back. It moved like rewinding an old film, the stone actively moving backward to reform the pillar and fix it up. Most importantly, the giant stone pillar between Aisral and the minion reformed completely, giving her a place to hide. The minion’s flames shut off instinctively, afraid to damage the pillar and deal with the debris. 

“Now, Aisral!”

The minion turned its attention toward the sound of the voice, coal blak eyes staring straight into Fioria’s core. 

She gulped, a paltry attempt to stop her heart from racing more than it already was. It’s her turn.

The pages of her Time Book turned on their own, whipping forward all the way to the back pages to compositions uniquely familiar to her, written in all sorts of bizarre time signatures. They were her own compositions, back when the jadeblood learned she was unfit for cavern life and requested to pursue other jobs. Back when she decided she was going to become the next great operatic director and composer. Back before they started this game.

Her hands moved instinctively. Her own pieces she’d practiced hundreds of thousands of times over. In her respiteblock. Out in public. Teaching Ektome over video chat, hundreds of miles away. She saw the gears of time turning in her eyes, but only in her eyes. Aisral, giant glasses askew, still stood at the ready in the event of a problem, but remained where she was. The monster, frozen, as if in time.

Everything about the room, except herself and Aisral, began to deteriorate. The pillars crumbled back down to the ground. Stone chunks fell out of the ceiling. Sections of the floor and walls cracked and chipped. And the monster, stuck in Time, decayed into little more than dust.

Fioria didn’t stop until Aisral walked up and blew the dust away. Grist of all kinds -- build grist, glass, coal, diamonds, quartz, anything and everything it seemed -- exploded from the space that once held a monster. 

Aisral reaffixed her glasses to the bridge of her nose. A small smile graced her face for a couple seconds, but by the time her arms returned to her sides, it reversed back to the taciturn expression Fioria’s seen on her while visiting LODAR.

Was it...pride? Did this tealblood even feel pride toward mostly-strangers?

“Next time, how about we use that at the beginning, yes?” she asked.

Fioria opened her mouth to respond, but the other troll was already strolling toward the back end of the grist pile. 

“Come on darling, we have better things to do than gawk,” Aisral chided gently. “Let’s get this over with so we can return to what we were doing before running into this monster and get the Forge started.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #long post #can't believe this ended up being 1000 words #i was expecting the couple i churned out right after my streak of shifts to be shorter

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 12 Gliden: Kill Your Consort

“Is everyone here?”

The crowd of iguanas gathered around the self-created town center, away from the thatch huts where his consorts lived. The unusually small indigoblood stood atop crates filled with flour, letting even someone with his frame tower over them with ease. Easily every consort from every village -- from those not caught up in the fire, anyway -- he’d found was here, ready to listen to their profound Bard speak to them.

“It’s been brought to my attention The Land of Amber and Smoke has been afflicted with horrific, tremendous fires.”

A murmur of agreement rippled throughout the crowd. It was true enough. Ever since he got here, thick clouds of smoke lingered in the air overtop vast expanses of wheat fields. Some, many even, ended up caught in huge wildfires! Thankfully nothing had actually hurt the consorts themselves, simply left themselves homeless or forced to rebuild. 

“While we can attribute these problems to everything from dry air to rogue sparks, I know one thing for sure: cutting down and replacing the wheat with something else will solve the problem permanently!” 

The crowd’s mood shifted, this time worried. Eliminate the wheat? Change our staple crop? he knew they asked each other. Does our handsome Bard know what he’s doing?

Gliden assumed these questions would come long before he called the meeting, and he prepared for the answers. 

“You might be asking yourself right now, ‘why? Why must it come to this?’ Well, just look beyond us.” He gestured toward the wheat field behind him. This particular field was still fine, but was it a ticking time bomb? Most probably. The time to nip it in the bud was yesterday. Or today. Or tomorrow. Soon.

“Wheat is a stable crop now. Maybe. But does it benefit you? Truly?” He paused, letting the words sink into the crowd before continuing. “I believe the fires are a representation of your failing health and morality through the acquisition and ingestion of gluten and gluten byproducts.”

An iguana raised its hand, but Gliden pressed on. “Now, simultaneously I understand the importance of not wishing to waste product. I have heard you! So allow me to offer a suggestion: while I cannot partake in the various gluten-based amenities supplied to me, you all can. We’ll create an economic boom while also fixing our pesky fire problem. Cull two featherbeasts with one rock, as it will. Do we have any questions?”

More hands shot up. Every question the consorts had were relatively mundane: what crop would be their new crop (quinoa, obviously), what does this mean about the sleeping denizen (not important), what are they going to do with the influx of wheat (process it into food for the consorts), who died and made him king (no one died, obviously. A denizen went to sleep. That’s not dying). Gliden took questions until all the consorts questions and demands tapered off, leaving him and the consorts on equal footing with his new ideas.

“Well, if that’s the last of the questions, allow me to introduce to you, your newest crop!” Gliden pulled out a loaf of bread from his fetch modus, holding it up above his head for everyone to see. It looked like a normal loaf of bread, complete with the light and fluffy nature all bread, gluten or gluten-free, has. “This loaf of bread is made with quinoa. A crop used by lowbloods forced to seclude themselves in the mountains. But it can be grown here too. 

“Observe!” Gliden tore off a piece of the quinoa bread and ate it. Good timing too, he was getting hungry. “I can eat it with no repercussions. And so can you! Can I have a volunteer?”

A few hands, lesser than before, rose uneasily into the air. Gliden pointed at an iguana toward the front and ushered up. The iguana walked up as uneasily as its hand rose: slowly and shakily, with worry.

“Nothing to fear,” Gliden said. “I just need you to eat off a piece of this bread and let everyone know how it tastes. Can you do that?”

“Yeah? Yeah.” The consort nodded sharply as confidence returned to him. “Yeah! I can eat bread.”

Gliden tore off another piece of bread for the consort. But this time, it felt different. Something, though what exactly Gliden had no idea, passed from him to the bread. The bread for the consort rapid-fire turned from brown to green and, when it entered the consort’s mouth, black.

The result was instantaneous. As soon as the consort swallowed the bread, it collapsed into a choking heap on the ground. No one, not Gliden staring in shock, nor the consorts looking onward blankly, bothered to help.

One of the other ones, an older iguana that looked to be growing a beard of some kind, in the front bowed its head solemnly. “The Bard has taken his first Life. Only now does his journey begin.”

#31 days of fanstuck #homestuck #long post #initially wrote it to coincide with hs11th #but looking at it i don't think it much fits the prompt of god tier day so w/e #no point adding the tag if i feel its not valid #ya know? #anyway also please keep in mind gliden isn't making fun of those with actual intolerances or celiac disease #but those people who act like going gluten free is the healthy ethical option

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 11 Valeba: Dream

Valeba knew the streets of Prospit well.

The first time she visited, she was only five sweeps. Hanging from a tree for hours by her arms thanks to two older purplebloods, eventually passing out from sheer exhaustion after struggling. The next place she awoke to was here, in a bedroom better decorated than the one in her own treehouse with tan wallpapers and corners gilded in gold. And the pajamas: the bright yellow long sleeved shirt and pants combo hiding the eventual home to her awful rope scars. She still remembered thinking she died and her spirit ascended to another plane of existence, only to be pulled back down to the harsh Alternian reality of broken bones, torn ligaments and ravenous hunger.

That night, she was lucky a pissy oliveblood by the name Coraxe found her. Supposedly. Every now and then she wished she did die and Prospit was her eternal afterlife, but at this point every night she continued to live felt like she was personally flipping whatever constituted as a god of Death. And that was suitable too. Settling for seeing Prospit in her dreams was a decent compromise. 

Valeba knew the streets better than most the other trolls sleeping here. She explored every nook and cranny possible, just to say she did. She knew what several trolls she’d end up calling her friends -- or enemies, or whatever her and Mayola were -- more intimately through seeing their various scribbles and drawings all over their walls than she’d ever expect in real life. She gazed into the future scrying clouds of Skaia, unaware that’s what they were, more than once on a slow day. 

Just like on a day like today.

In the waking world, she slept inside a cave, on top a sleeping pad hobbled together by yellow newts excited at the prospect of helping “the rogue”. A much needed break from traversing for days through complicated cave systems and watching doomed selves die in scrying pools. But in the sleeping world, she sat on the edge of her window, watching the clouds of Skaia and letting the lack of gravity keep her up. She could -- and even as she sat, a not insignificant part of her wanted to -- but the aching muscles from the heavy amount of climbing today crossed over into the dreaming world. This dream was for relaxation. 

Underneath her, the Prospitians gathered and mingled. Talk of the ongoing war with Derse remained on everyone’s minds. Tensions had been escalating ever since she woke up -- in fact, if she had to hazard a guess they'd only gotten worse as more trolls woke up -- but nothing much ever happened. A lot of talk without much action toward war. With Derse at its furthest point away from the horrorterrors, they were docile. They would only get more aggressive as it swung back around.

Out in the distance, the clouds of Skaia darkened. Valeba pursed her lips. Last she knew, Skaia wasn’t scheduled to receive rain. Not like there was much in the way of Prospitian weather broadcasts.

Then again, there’s nothing to say she couldn’t visit Skaia and find out. Whatever allowed her to breathe the Prospitian air (if she could call it that), also benefited her to leave the Prospitian atmosphere without real repercussions to her breathing. Ergo, if she really wanted to she could just fly away and onto Skaia. 

If she were her moirail, or some of those he’s closest to, they might have explanations or inquiries as to the why or the matter of how. All she cared about is what it meant for her.

Valeba stood on her windowsill, ready to kick off and begin her flight. Wouldn’t be hard, she reasoned. Just can’t wake up until I get there.

The clouds shifted again, pushing closer together. The ones at the center of her vision brightened up to reveal a pink outline of a ghost-like figure, like a sprite -- a tall seadweller with messy hair talking to someone outside the cloud vision.

Valeba froze, narrowing her eyes to the scene playing out in the clouds. 

“Dontoc?”

But no. It wasn’t. Logically, she knew that much. Dontoc didn’t wear glasses. 

Not in this timeline anyway.

As the vision dispersed, the image in the clouds backed up to reveal a hazy, shadowed outline of the other figure. Someone tall with long, asymmetrical horns. Someone familiar, but not in a good way. Valeba kicked off toward the direction of the clouds, trying to get a clearer picture of whoever it was, but it was too late. The clouds vibrated away.

Valeba’s palmhusk vibrated harshly against her belly, jolting her awake back on The Land of Caves and Reflection. She grabbed for the palmhusk as it slid off her body and on the cave floor underneath her, pulling it up to her face.

It was a message -- several messages, in fact -- from Careen. All asking why Dontoc wasn’t responding to her messages.

Valeba’s breath caught in her throat. She knew exactly why that figure looked familiar now. She death gripped her palmhusk, claws digging sharply into her skin.

“Oh fuck.”

#homestuck #31 days of fanstuck #my writing #long post

[chuckling-chemist]

31 Days of Fanstuck Day 8: Careen: Paint The Roses

“Come on! We cannot falter in our work!”

Two columns of sepia skinks, armed with sepia buckets filled with sepia paints, marched down the sepia-checkered path and right past the sepia gazebo Careen stood inside. She was the only true splash of color in her land, The Land of Gazebos and Roses, and the whole land made sure she knew it. When she arrived, it was in her favorite pastel pink cupcake dress with a cute purple flower tucked into her hair. She -- and her hive too, as it never lost its color -- looked so vibrant and beautiful against all the browns it was almost hard to believe this was where she was destined to stay. The consorts, the very sepia skinks that passed earlier, called her their savior, the life to be breathed into the land, protector from the denizen who ruled and stalked these lands. She had apparently taken all the color away and hoarded it for herself, while still making the poor beasts who resided toil away and recolor everything.

Careen waited until they mostly passed by before walking behind them, following the skinks down the twisting path through the sepia hedges and oversized sepia mushrooms. They stopped at a pond all the way at the end of the path, dotted off with a gazebo that appeared to rest on the water. Around the pond were bushes and bushes of overgrown roses, as unkempt as they were…..sepia.

One of the skinks, the one shouting commands earlier, turned around to face the others. From seemingly out of nowhere, as it certainly didn’t come from that bucket of sepia paints, he pulled out several pairs of sepia shears. Careen hurriedly ducked behind one of the sepia hedges to avoid getting caught. She didn’t want the recognition for helping them. Not yet, anyway.

“Listen up! Hemera might be asleep right now, but that doesn’t stop our work. We have orders from her direct compatriots that our flower gardens are in disrepair and need fixed now! And you know what happens if we don’t do as she says!”

An uneasy silence fell over the skinks. It made Careen wonder what she did to them. She knew she herself never yelled at her servants. She was an heiress. She had people to do that.

If this Hemera-skink was waking up to yell at them herself, she needed someone to help her out. There’s no reason to stress herself out when you can recruit more trolls! Or, in this case, skinks.

“Alright! Let’s move out!”

All fourteen skinks set their buckets down in unison. One column whipped out similar shears as the ones the head skink pulled out. The other column pulled out paint brushes before grabbing their buckets once again to start the process of painting. The two groups split off onto opposite sides of the gazebo, painting and pruning at the same time. The head skink, meanwhile, set his shears aside to walk up to the gazebo itself and started to paint. Not that it did anything, of course. The paint was the same color as everything else.

She stood there, enraptured for who knows how long watching their futile efforts until the spritelog on her palmhusk dinged. It was her sprite, naturally, reminding her of her important and unique position as the sylph to help these people. Nay, she should. It was her duty.

Her sprite had a point. This was her land. Her destiny to bring the color back to the land.

Careen stepped out from behind the hedge, clearing her throat with as much delicacy as one could to get their attention. 

“Hello, my good consorts!”

The head consort looked up to the sound of the voice. When he caught the gaze of Careen standing upon the checkered path, he straightened up immediately to bow. “Ah! Miss Sylph. My apologies for catching us like this. What are you here for?”

She smiled kindly at him. “Well, you all looked like you needed help, and naturally it feels like a lending hand will make this job easier,” she said. “That’s my role, right? To help?”

“Your role is to bring the color back to the land,” he said plainly. 

“Well...yes.” Her smile faded. “I thought maybe you needed some help? Perhaps someone to supervise and assist? New paints with actual colors or--”

The head skink raced up with such speed, Careen stopped talking out of sheer surprise. In nearly the blink of an eye he was right next to the troll, standing tall up to her chest with a bucket and paintbrush in hand. He set the bucket down on the sepia path with a soft, muted noise. 

“Wonderful! You can get started on the painting team on the left side of the garden and help the painters,” he chirped. He held out the paintbrush for her to take, not stopping until she finally gingerly removed it from his hands.

Careen looked down doubtfully at the bucket of sepia paint. The same sepia tone as the gazebo, the grass, the path, the paintbrushes, the shears, the skinks and, most importantly, the roses. 

But then again, she was the Sylph. She had magical healing properties beyond the level of simple paints. 

Careen dipped her index finger curiously into the bucket of paint, holding it there as she waited to turn the appropriate color: red or pink or white or yellow. Rose colors.

It did nothing.

She pulled her finger up with a heavy sigh. Sepia paint dripped off her finger and onto the sepia path, ultimately changing nothing about the world around her. 

Then again, the paint was from this world. It’s only natural it wouldn’t be the correct color! Good Alternian paints were made from the blood and squashed remains of grubs. Who knows what this was made out of, but if she put in a little bit of actual blood from the outside world, it could change the color.

She pulled her Shrinkdent, a special version of her trident that could be shrunk down to minuscule size to double as a knife, albeit one mostly capable of piercing. Still, it was all she needed to prick her pinkie finger and squeeze out a single drop of blood. The pink dropped into the bucket, leaving a small drop that quickly disappeared amongst the brown and tan.

Careen scowled. This was useless!  

“Paint with this?” she asked. She pointed down at the bucket. The sepia paint on her finger dropped back in, continuing to dilute the mix. “This paint is the same as the roses!”

The skink looked down at the bucket, then over at the roses. “So they are,” he noted. His face fell for a brief second, but he perked back up when he pulled out another pair of shears for her. “That’s fine! You can help the pruning team. We’ll take care of the color.”

“No, no, no, no,” she said with a shake of her head. “Clearly what needs to happen is I need to mix you brand new paints. The way trolls do!” She clapped her hands together brightly. “You wait here, I’m going to mix you some real, lovely pink paints!”

She handed the shears back to the skink, patting his hands with a bright smile. As soon as she felt his fingers tighten around the tool, she turned back around to prance toward her hive. 

So engrossed in her new idea, she was gone before the head skink muttered, “We actually need….violet paints for these roses.”

#31 days of fanstuck #my writing #homestuck #i just used sepia 18 times in a 1250 word fic #a little less than 1.5% of this is sepia #unlike her land which is 100% sepia #i realize as i'm getting to fuck around with these lands that i never do anything #that its hard for me to pick an actual favorite