Scales and Tales

Happy 4/13 to my fellow Homestucks and ex-Homestucks. :D

I wanted to commit fic of some kind, but alas, RL things stole my time today. There's always 6/12, I suppose...

Suddenly it's Throwback Fandom Feelings time! I found out about Wwicked: An Eridan Ampora Zine, and wanted to share in case anyone else has flare-ups of affection for Homestuck fandom and its original vviolet Prince. :D I'm still working my way through the content, but there's some lovely fanart and I adore Cryogenia's Eridan: Find a Betta fic!

The zine is free to download, but if you're able, the creators suggest making a donation to Project AWARE, a nonprofit that protects and restores marine habitat.

Ever have one of those moments where fandom invades your regular life unexpectedly?



Me, a Homestuck, at the store: What kind of olive oil should I buy? There are so many choices!
Me, thirty seconds later: Oh.

( Photo under the cut. )

This prompt came from seerofbread: "Titles/categories from fandoms that you apply to yourself. (For example, what Hogwarts house would you be in, or do you even think/care about those things?)"

( Read more... )

It's not something I don't think about, because an instinctive part of me wants to be involved in any canon I'm serious about, and that includes "where do I fit in"-type assessments like this, not to mention that it's hard to avoid as a side-thought when doing related types of meta (character analysis, or contrasting the different categories, etc.)! However, it's not something I get deathly serious about, either; I generally prefer to lavish the lion's share of my fannish brain capacity on other forms of meta. But everybody has that thinly veiled self insert OC deep inside them.

What about you, readers? What categories from fandom have you considered, applied, or rejected?

Looping back today to cover my prompt for the 1st, which I forgot about. (It's oddly appropriate, considering the topic! This is a fandom that delights in screwing with the temporal dimensions of any number of realities!)

( Prompt by Edenfalling: How did you get into Homestuck? )

Tell me how you got into Homestuck, if you are! Or talk to me about backwards fandoms: have you ever entered a fandom backwards? How long did it take, and how hard was it?

Well, my last word count post was in July (*wince*) but anyway! Here it is, back again. I went a long time where I just had zero energy or inspiration to write, but in the last week or two I've had two or three bursts of sudden WORDS ARE HAPPENING excitement. (As usual: not necessarily on anything I should be prioritising, but at least it's something!)

Document 1
last wordcount: 90,267.
current wordcount: 99,121!

Document 2
last wordcount: 10,694.
current wordcount: 12,837!

Document 2 is even more impressive because I've actually split the largest of its pieces off into a separate GoogleDoc, so that means most of its new words are divided between just two fic starts. For purposes of word counting, the GoogleDoc version shall be known as "Document 2.1" henceforth.

Document 2.1
last word count: ??
current word count: 5434.

I hit a roadblock in this one for a long time due to POV issues, but I've been slowly hammering away on them (it boils down to having to rewrite everything after a certain point), and was able to post another snippet to AO3! Next bit is giving me grief because it's hideously infodump-y, and I really really hate "we now interrupt your hawt pr0nz to bring you All The Background Info" -- so I'm having a hard time convincing myself that it's okay to post it as-is and clean it up later. (I think the lesson this story is teaching me is: No, posting works in progress is Not For Me.)

My second prompt was from blnchflr: "light".

( Sonnet again! Terezi-centric this time. )



Soooo, I was going to do a sonnet for Rose; somehow, it ended up being a sonnet for my favourite troll, instead! Not surprising, really -- both of them have a complex and somewhat inimical association with light, which is interesting in view (ha!) of their shared title (one cannot see in darkness). Rose is more actively opposed to it; Scratch describes her as "enamored by what dwelt in shadow" and at one point literally becomes "grimdark." Terezi, on the other hand, isn't opposed to it so much as it appears to be opposed to her. :D

I was cruising past some Homestuck blogs on Tumblr, and apparently there's a meme (or maybe it was just an ask; I don't do Tumblr) about "common Homestuck headcanons you don't subscribe to" and the person discussed 'grubloaf/grubsauce is made from troll grubs' fanon. According to her, it felt too anvilicious; like being beaten over the head with how troll culture is WRONG and HORRIBLE, and also as though someone's trying too hard to gross people out.

This made me double-take and then giggle because it's a fanon I've encountered a lot and, while it's not my personal headcanon either, it never gave me the feeling that it was supposed to be a squick attempt or a commentary on troll culture! It's always weird to re-remember that my reactions to cannibalism aren't the norm.

Maybe it's my biology geek showing through (plenty of species eat their offspring/siblings!) or maybe it's just my pragmatic attitude to food (if it's tasty, eat it), but when I encounter the troll-grubs-as-food fanon I just sort of... accept it? It's not horrific to me, so it never felt like "let me show you how BAD trolls are!"; likewise, it's not gross to me, so it never struck me as "are you making gagging noises yet?" either. More or less I treat it the same as any other popular bit of fanon I don't personally subscribe to, e.g. neck gills on seadwellers. If asked, I'll explain why it's not my headcanon, but otherwise? So long as the author isn't egregiously fail!splaining it in-story and forcing me to remember why I don't believe it, I can fit it into my mental framework for the duration of the fic and not think about it.

In sum: "Grubloaf is made from grubs!" doesn't ping me in any moral spectrum or in my gastroesophageal reflexes, and sometimes I get reminded how weird that makes me. :D


(For non-Homestuck people: trolls are an alien species that hatch out as insect-like grubs, which later pupate into more humanoid shape to continue development. They seem to be a r-strategist species, at least insofar as requiring little parental care and reproducing - one infers - in large numbers, many of which never make it to their first pupation.)

AKA "fabulous meta on the Alternian language, with some elements I had already considered", AKA "Headcanon: Accepted" AKA "YES THIS!!"

I love all of these people. (Okay, I'm only distantly familiar with Ashkatom, and not at all with Daemoninwhite, but everyone else is somebody whose blog I pay regular attention to, and now you know why!)

( Transcript of Tumblr conversation under the cut: )

Sort of, anyway.

Baseline/starting point word counts seemed like a good idea.

Document 1 - this is the larger one by far, with way more words and way more fic starts (and fic middles, and random scenes going nowhere, and meta/underlying headcanons for the aforementioned, copy-pasted prompts I like, and pure self-indulgent fic that will never see the light of day). Starting word count: 84,630.

Document 2 - this one's a lot smaller, because it contains only a handful of fic attempts (or, rather, three fic attempts and four prompts I haven't done anything with, yet). Starting word count: 7,078.

Document 3 - this holds one specific fic attempt, started back in the early days when I thought that writing Homestuck fic would be a one-time thing (hahaHAHA, good thing I'm not a fortuneteller). Starting word count: 4,550.

Hopefully, Monday Night Word Count Updates will become a thing! Snippets may be involved; griping about the bits I'm stuck on almost certainly will. :D