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homespork-review · 4 years

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HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 1

CHEL: Yes, Act 5 Act 1; here begin the “act acts”. Just go with it.

FAILURE ARTIST: Welcome to Act 5 a.k.a. The Act Everyone Skipped To So They Could Get To Those Grey Demons. While I was a reader before Act 5, I wasn’t a huge fan until this part. The trolls are a great species. Different enough to be fascinating, but not different enough humans can’t relate. And what exactly is in their pants? That’s for the fandom to figure out.

BRIGHT: And fandom accepted the challenge with enthusiasm.

CHEL: Also, they’re fuggin’ adorable. It took me a while to get used to nonhumans in the sprite style and I thought they were creepy-looking at first, but we also see them in the more noodly style used in the dramatic moments with the kids, like the fall of Prospit, and that helped them grow on me a lot.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Act starts off with a grey planet with a green moon and a pink moon. A prompt box like the one for the Kids’ introductions is above it. In the box are letters in a script blatantly stolen borrowed from The Elder Scrolls games and turned 180 degrees. (Later on, when Hussie made a game that people paid money for, he couldn’t exactly use a stolen font so the team made an all-new font. But the old font is probably in the print books). Anyway, in case you’re curious, the letters spell out “Turdodor Fuckball”. This is the wrong name, and the right name is…Trollplanet. Though it’s called Alternia in the flavor text below and everywhere else.

So starts the arc called Hivebent. We cut to CG in a very grey room flapping his mouth occasionally at nothing. He’s introduced much the way John was.

This young troll stands in his respiteblock. It just so happens that today, the 12th bilunar perigee of the 6th dark season's equinox, is the day of this young troll's larval awakening, also known as his wriggling day. Though it was six solar sweeps ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name! Six Alternian solar sweeps, for convenient reference, is equivalent to thirteen Earth years. Earth, also for convenient reference, is a planet that does not yet exist. What will the name of this young troll be?

However, like Dave, he attacks the prompt box. He doesn’t want to do all the little gags and patterns.

CHEL: Thank God!

FAILURE ARTIST: This Hivebent arc will go much faster than the four acts before it. No dawdling along for this species. There’s twelve characters to be introduced and characterized before this is done.

CHEL: That said, it’s still going to be much, much longer than the others.

FAILURE ARTIST: So, CG’s name is Karkat Vantas. All of the troll names have a 6-6 pattern and are usually named after astrological and mythological motifs. Karkata is the Sanskrit name for the constellation Cancer and Vantas...is a prostate cancer treatment drug. Don’t look at me, I didn’t name him.

CHEL: It’s also possibly connected to “vanitas”, relating to Karkat’s simultaneous arrogance and lack of self-worth.

FAILURE ARTIST: Today is Karkat’s wriggling day. Let’s meet the birthday boy. He loves movies, though the narrator says he has terrible taste. In his room, there’s edited posters of “50 First Dates”, “Serendipity”, and “Hitch” that makes them look like troll movies, including lots of small type for the title. Like John, he likes to program but he’s not good at it. In fact, he’s so bad his programs are basically computer viruses. He wants to join a military organization called the THRESHECUTIONERS when he grows up. His weapon of choice is the sickle, possibly as a counterpart to John’s hammer.

He chats with his friends on a new program called Trollian, which is a reference to the real-life chat program Trillian. Fans forget that Trollian was a new program, except for Nepetaquest where the plot revolves around the making of that improbable software.

CHEL: Which begs the question of how they communicated before. Most of them don’t seem to have met each other in real life yet. Obvious answer is a different chat program, but in that case, why draw attention to Trollian being new instead of just having it be how they communicated from the start? It doesn’t really add anything IMO.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, talking with his friends drives him BATSHIT UP THE FUCKING BELFRY, which is a very human phrase.

The first prompt Karkat gets is to examine the slimy pod in his room. This pod is a recuperacoon and serves as a bed. Trolls need that slime to help assuage the terrible visions of blood and carnage that plague the dark subconscious of your species. Why do they have these species-wide bad dreams and how does slime help? It’s never said.

CHEL: The slime appears to be a form of drug, possibly a sedative. In Hiveswap we see it also has minor healing properties. Why trolls would have evolved to consistently suffer nightmares isn’t brought up here, but there are possible explanations later.

FAILURE ARTIST: Actually, after Act 6, recuperacoons aren’t mentioned. Also, oddly enough, the narration says sleeping is done nightly but we later learn trolls are nocturnal. The terms night and day aren’t used consistently in Hivebent.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 20

Karkat gets into the pod, but immediately regrets it. He changes his clothes (off-screen of course) into clothes that look exactly the same. This is because Trolls think fashion is stupid.

Next, he examines his movie posters. Turns out trolls have their own version of John Cusack, among other celebrities. Troll Adam Sandler is his favorite actor and one person he doesn’t want to do violence against. In his narration, he thinks Sweet Baby Jegus though Jegus isn’t actually a thing in troll culture.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 21

Karkat tries to captchalogue his sickle and we get some more sylladex hijinx! His modus becomes too heavy and literally falls through the floor. I thought picking up weapons was different from captchaloging stuff? We’re told these hijinx won’t last long and eventually Karkat trades his modus with his hacker friend. Good. For now, he just picks up the big black book on his dresser.

The big black book is about a programming language called ~ATH and for some reason is in Roman script. It’s a morbid little language and there’s a cartoon figure of the Grim Reaper and a fake (or real?) quote from Troll Will Smith. Karkat finds this language incredibly hard. There’s probably some sick programmer jokes I’m missing here.

CHEL: There’s one I’ve been informed of; ~ is called a tilde, so the name of the program is “tilde-ath”, or “till death”. I can’t say I recognise any others though.

FAILURE ARTIST: Karkat steps outside. He lives in a huge grey and red house (or hive) in a suburb as sterile as John’s. Trolls create their own homes as toddlers after beating the trials in the brooding caverns. First hint of how harsh Alternia is, yet everyone has their own housing which is sweet.

It's almost as if your people have placed great cultural importance on teaching children to become architecturally adept while very young. It has been this way since ancient times. No one seems to know why that is.

Hmmm…

Karkat almost has a poetic moment while looking out at the moons, but he rejects poetry. He also rejects mailboxes, which trolls don’t have because they have no mail.

CHEL: Do they mean no paper letters because they all have internet? I recall that they do receive packages.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think they have courier service but no dedicated government postal system.

So instead of poetry, Karkat talks about AMBITION. He wants to be something great but he doesn’t know what exactly. We’ll see where this character arc takes him.

We get a little detail about the Alternian calendar and it concludes with “You have a feeling it's going to be a long night.”

Karkat goes back inside. He checks out a Game Grub magazine with a disgusting image of a leaking grub and a DVD for his favorite television show. The show is THE THRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR, which is a take-off on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air but is about a green threshecutioner cadet who sasses up the bluebloods in his flaysquad pretty good. The “green” and “blueblood” parts aren’t turns of phrases but literal. Given the strict hierarchy we find out trolls are under, it’s amazing there’s a series about a sassy subordinate. Maybe he’s only sassy in Karkat’s mind.

CHEL: Actually, that’s not too unbelievable.

FAILURE ARTIST: The title of the show doesn’t follow the convention of troll movie titles and that’s because 1) television is a newer medium and 2) it would ruin the joke.

Finally, Karkat gets down to business on his computer. His first friend to “troll” him has a purple Capricorn sign. Now, this friend is a character that though I’m now quite attached to, I didn’t much care about them in the beginning. I’ll try to be objective though.

terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] TC: wHaT iS uUuUuP mY iNvErTeBrOtHeR? CG: WHAT IN THE SWEET ALMIGHTY TAINTCHAFING FUCK DO YOU WANT. TC: NoT a MoThErFuCkInG tHiNg BrO. TC: oThEr ThAn I bE cHeCkIn OuT hOw My BeSt MoThErFuCkIn FrIeNd Is At Yo.

Yes, my first thought too was “that’s a really annoying typing style”. Karkat agrees and complains about TC’s typing style. TC temporarily goes all lowercase but says it feels uncomfortable. Karkat complains more about how awful TC is and wonders what he did to deserve such a terrible friend. Instead of being offended, TC says friendship is beautiful and confusingly calls it a TrOlL dIsEaSe. We’ll see some stuff that suggests trolls don’t have friendship or at least don’t consider it in high regard but mostly trolls have friends like humans do.

BRIGHT: Despite his protests, Karkat has eleven friends, in a society that is not set up to facilitate this. I’m pretty sure that when I was his age I had maybe three.

FAILURE ARTIST: TC waxes on miracles like the carbonation in a bottle of Faygo. Yeah, trolls have Faygo.

CHEL: That’s a gag, though, so no WSP point.

FAILURE ARTIST: Karkat tells him that’s just carbonation but TC rejects science as just stealing the magic from miracles.

CHEL: It comes up more clearly later, but we’ll tell you now that TC’s entire character at this point, especially that line, is basically a shoutout to the Insane Clown Posse song “Miracles”.

Watch on YouTube

FAILURE ARTIST: After some more bantering, TC gets down to business: TA is going to play a game. Karkat says he’s not interested but TC says TA is Karkat’s best friend, which is sad when you consider TC calls Karkat “best friend”.

CHEL: TA, if you don’t remember, is twinArmageddons, the computer programmer.

FAILURE ARTIST: TC gets distracted by a horn going off and even types out a surprised yell. Karkat tell TC to get rid of the horns and TC says “MaN yOu KnOw YoU wAnNa GiVe My HoRnS a GoOd SqUeEzE. :o)” which sounds really flirty. Karkat says if he meets a kid as annoying as TC, he’ll convert to TC’s religion. TC is happy about this. With that, the conversation ends.

We cut to TC and he’s a motherfucking clown, baby! But I’ve already re-capped so much and need to give someone else a turn.

CHEL: Okay, I shall step up! TC’s actual name proves to be GAMZEE MAKARA, and he’s wearing a purple Capricorn sign. The name Gamzee was picked by a forumite as a reference to another user who went by Gammy, but it may also be a reference to “Gämse”, the German name for the chamois goat. Makara is the Sanskrit name for Capricorn, and also the name for a type of creature from Hindu folklore which would include the Capricorn sea-goat. There are several other layers of possible and probably-coincidental meaning listed on the Wiki, which we’d have to bring up spoilers to discuss, so we’ll save that for later.

Beyond his name and sign, Gamzee has clown makeup, explosively curly hair, long spiral horns, and a slightly glazed expression. Nightmarish pictures of evil clowns plaster his walls, his floor is piled with bicycle horns, juggling clubs, and Faygo bottles, and an oversized unicycle is propped against the wall. When he picks up a Faygo bottle and his “husktop” computer, his MIRACLE MODUS is seen, a hideously complicated mishmash of various styles which flickers and spins obnoxiously. Even Gamzee doesn’t know how it works, he just likes to watch the colours.

FAILURE ARTIST: Gamzee belongs to a RATHER OBSCURE CULT that believes in a BAND OF ROWDY AND CAPRICIOUS MINSTRELS who are CLOWNS OF A GRIM PERSUASION WHICH MAY NOT BE IN FULL POSSESSION OF THEIR MENTAL FACULTIES. Basically, he’s a Juggalo who worships the troll equivalent of Insane Clown Posse. Though the cult is called obscure and said to be looked down upon, later it is shown to be a state-sponsored religion. I guess maybe it’s just Gamzee’s particular denomination that’s looked down upon.

CHEL: “Obscure” also means “hidden”, so the retcon could be justified in the sense of it being mysterious? Or it might be related to spoilery Hiveswap theories. We can get into those if we ever get round to Hiveswap.

Gamzee attempts to ride the unicycle, but fails - unsurprisingly, since it’s taller than he is and he attempts to ride it by standing on the saddle. He falls off into a pile of horns, and decides instead to sample the luridly green pie on the counter, which turns out to in fact be made of the same SOPOR SLIME that trolls sleep in.

You aren't supposed to eat that slime. It does funny things to a troll's head. But you were never taught that on account of a lousy upbringing. Your custodian was always out to sea.

Gamzee arms himself with a juggling club to use against the alleged hostile SEA DWELLERS and heads out to wait for his missing guardian.

FAILURE ARTIST: His hive appears to not have a front door so I don’t know what’s keeping the hostile sea dwellers out.

CHEL: Someone contacts him online and he intends to settle down with a Faygo and answer, but he doesn’t know how to retrieve things from his miracle modus. Gamzee performs a short prayer to your beloved MIRTHFUL MESSIAHS, the faces of the two members of Insane Clown Posse superimposed over the background, and throws a pinch of SPECIAL STARDUST in his face. We never find out what exactly “special stardust” is; it appears to just be glitter, but it comes up much later. His attempts fail, however, as the modus instead launches his Faygo miles out to sea.

You wonder if you can just... Just sort of reach over... And...

Apparently the sylladex modus can be physically reached, so there was no need for the endless pages of shenanigans in the first place. *quiet rage* But anyway, gallowsCalibrator is trolling him.

FAILURE ARTIST: GC asks G4MZ33Z if he’d like to play G4M3Z3Z with her. He replies "hEy YeAh ThAt SoUnDs LiKe ThE mOtHeRfUcKiN sHiT's BiTcHtItS!" She says something very tsundere in reply:

GC: 1T SUR3 1S H4RD TO 1GNOR3 TH3 W31RD TH1NGS YOU S4Y SOM3T1M3S! GC: BUT 1M GONN4 GC: TH3 ONLY R34SON 1M 4SK1NG YOU 1S B3C4US3 YOUR N4M3 1S L1K3 G4M3 GC: 4ND NO OTH3R R34SON GC: G3T 1T??? >:]

Gamzee isn’t offended she said this and GC gets annoyed he’s always rolling with the punches. She says that’s why Karkat can’t stand him. Harsh in hindsight. GC gets down to business and tells Gamzee they are going to H4V3 SOM3 MOTH3RFUCK1NG SH1TTY B1TCH3S PL4Y1NG TOG3TH3R. He asks if they could play later because he’s waiting for tHe OlD gOaT (which happens to also be a nickname for Satan).

TC: yOu KnOw HoW iT iS wItH fAmIlY. GC: NO, NOT R34LLY! GC: 4DURRRR DURR DURP TC: Oh YeAh... GC: DURRRRRRRRRRRRR GC: W4Y TO GO, HOW DO3S TH4T STUP1D BOTTL3D SYRUP OF YOURS T4ST3 W1TH YOUR HOOF SO F4R UP YOUR MOUTH??? GC: >:] TC: sOoOoOoOrY.

This is the first time we find out GC has an unusual homelife. Yet it isn’t true that she has no family.

BRIGHT: And given how rarely Gamzee’s guardian is around, it’s not like he has much of a family either. Or a standard homelife.

CHEL: That’s also an... excessive response to a slip-up, but from what we see later, that’s how almost all the trolls talk to each other all the time.

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s also problematic, because she’s doing an ableist imitation of the speech of people with mental disabilities. Though I suppose trolls aren’t meant to be PC.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

Gamzee suggests GC play with Karkat instead. She rejects this idea and says she used to play with him but he got too annoying. Gamzee then agrees to play and says give him a minute. She says he’ll just space out and that’s what he does. When he gets back into the conversation, he makes a second faux pas.

TC: hAvE yOu EvEr EvEn SeEn ThE oCeAn? TC: oR i MeAn SmElLeD iT... TC: SoRrY. GC: >:[

People really get on this but it’s just the regular type of mistake people make while talking to blind or sight-impaired friends and he did apologize. Other characters say worse and never apologize. Some readers who know what happens later might attribute malice but right now he’s just a guy who does a lot of troll pot and makes mistakes.

CHEL: I know when I was eleven the blind kid in my class and I had a sort of running gag of “see you later”. It also isn’t very clear whether either of them is actually hurt by anything the other is saying. They don’t seem to be.

This is also probably a time to bring up certain things about Gamzee’s cultural coding. Even though we later find out he’s one of the highest-ranking trolls, certain cues about him would make people think of a lower-class human, namely his syntax, his eating semi-inedible substances (lack of access to other food?) and his love for cheap gross soda. (I’ve drunk Faygo. It’s weird.) This could just be a troll thing not being exactly the same as human things and also down to his guardian not being there, but there’s more.

Gamzee’s word usage involves a lot of quirks which are usually associated with African American Vernacular English, e.g. addressing others as “brother” or “sister” and using “be” instead of “am” or “are” or just leaving them out completely. His hair is probably supposed to look unbrushed, but it can also be interpreted as textured. His religious behaviours get described with the word “voodoo” a lot, and while this is a bit of a stretch I personally interpreted his typing and syntax as a Southern drawl plus he lives close to water, thus cementing an association with actual Vodoun in my head even though his actual practices aren’t anything like it. While the members of Insane Clown Posse, the band which inspired a lot of Gamzee’s behaviours, are both white, rap is a strongly black-associated musical style, and Gamzee is later shown to be interested in rapping. Stereotypical juggalos are white, but culture considers them to be worthy of mockery because they’re white people behaving in ways associated with black people. Add in his absent male guardian, drug use, and acting “trashy” when he’s one of the richest trolls, and this all adds up to a very clear mental image of him as a not-very-flattering portrayal of a black person. Coding a nonhuman character strongly with a human racial group isn’t a problem in itself, but when it comes off as supposed to be funny, it’s not exactly SU Garnet levels of good representation, is it? The fact that Hussie, prior to Homestuck, was known for drawing some incredibly racist comics (also including rape, abortion, and drug jokes, so be warned) doesn’t help; we won’t add points for those because we’re judging HS on its own merits and it’s possible for people to change and regret prior prejudices, but it sheds new light on things that’ll come up.

Individual CP points for his language, his hair, his voodoo association, his rapping, his Disappeared Dad, his drug use, and his being coded as poor despite not being so, I think. None of these would be bad on their own or portrayed as less “look at how funny/creepy this guy is”, but...

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 26

BRIGHT: The first time I read Homestuck, I didn’t realise that Gamzee was meant to be disliked until somewhere in the middle of Act 6. I thought his situation was sad, but Gamzee himself seemed pretty nice, if dopey and not terribly motivated. I still quite like him. Did anyone else find something similar?

CHEL: Yeah, me. I thought he was pretty adorable.

FAILURE ARTIST: Gamzee suffers from abuse in the form of neglect. Though his guardian is arguably not quite responsible, it’s still abuse. As a result, Gamzee eats a dangerous substance and it’s probably why he lets people walk all over him. This is more obviously bad than Dave’s homelife. Yet it’s not ever dealt with and is even mocked. Hussie says in the annotation for this scene that there weren’t actually hostile seadwellers and Gamzee’s guardian just said that to keep Gamzee inside because he was ashamed of him. We find out later that seadwellers ARE hostile. This bit about Gamzee being gaslit is probably a joke then about how embarrassing Gamzee is. Yet isn’t it abusive to make up threats to your children to keep them isolated? Lots of fans consider Gamzee embarrassing too and so don’t see anything in this.

BRIGHT: Not to mention that it’s pretty fucked up to say Gamzee deserves abuse for being embarrassing, when that neglect and abuse is the reason he acts the way he does in the first place!

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 19 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 30

CHEL: One CP for the “humorous” drug use and another each for the “joke” gaslighting and neglect, and another for the illogical justification. Wow, that count’s really starting to spike already! And I think now might be a good time to introduce another count…

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 1

This will be used whenever the author is clearly showing a lack of respect to the characters or situations that he himself created, in this case by setting up an abusive situation and mocking it when we’re supposed to have sympathy for another abuse sufferer.

BRIGHT: Depressingly, it gets worse later. Significantly worse.

CHEL: Not to mention, if Gamzee’s supposed to stay inside and his guardian’s absent all the time, and trolls “don’t get mail”, how does he feed himself? Even with the sopor, where does that come from? Is it just secreted by the pod or what? Does the pod need to eat? We’re never told. In Hiveswap, the sequel game, we do see that trolls can receive packages, but I would class packages under “mail”, so saying trolls don’t have it is needlessly confusing.

We cut back to Karkat, doing some coding which I’m sure would be very amusing if I knew the first thing about coding. Apparently the biggest problem with ~ATH is the near-impossibility of terminating its infinite loops.

What many ~ATH coders do is import finite constructs and bind the loops to their lifespan. For instance the main loop here will terminate on the death of the universe, labeled U. That way you only have to wait billions of years for it to end instead of forever. You have bound a subloop to the lifespan of the code's author, which is you. Any routine at the end will execute when you die.

So apparently coding is literally magic in this ‘verse? This is backed up by a code sent by TA:

This code, when executed, immediately causes the user's computer to explode, and places a curse on the user forever, along with everyone he knows, and everyone he'll ever meet. Not surprisingly, later on you would run this code in a fit of stupidity.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Internet is magic, why not programming?

BRIGHT: I think the coding is a pretty nifty thematic fit with the whole concept of SBURB! If you’ve got a video game that can affect reality, it’s reasonable to extrapolate that coding can do something similar, even if only by piggybacking off the Game’s infrastructure. And once they get into the Medium, it makes even more sense.

CHEL: True! In the meantime, TA trolls Karkat. Karkat’s speech pattern is remarkably similar to Dave’s, except infinitesimally less wordy and much angrier.

TA: KK dont fliip your 2hiit about thii2 but iim 2ettiing you up two play a game wiith 2ome people. CG: WHY WOULD I FLIP MY SHIT ABOUT THAT. TA: becau2e you fliip your 2hiit about everythiing. CG: WELL WILL YOU LOOK AT THIS. CG: HERE IS MY SHIT, AND YET IT REMAINS UNFLIPPED.

*snerk*

CG: JUST SITTING THERE ON THE SKILLET, GETTING BURNED ON ONE SIDE. CG: IT'S A MIRACLE. TA: oh no are you iinto miiracle2 now two becau2e iif you are youre fiired preemptiively from the game. CG: FUCK NO. TA: ok niice. CG: MIRACLES ARE LIKE POOP STAINS ON GOD'S UNDERWEAR. TA: eheheh makiing fun of people2 reliigiion2 i2 the be2t thiing two do. CG: THAT'S WHY HE HIDES THEM, THEY'RE FUCKING EMBARRASSING. CG: GOD LAUNDERS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS.

Very Judeo-Christian concept of God for an alien species.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 22

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s seemingly no other troll religion but Gamzee’s cult and that has dual gods, not monotheism.

CHEL: Anyway, TA is setting up a game of SBurb, or SGRUB as the trolls call it, which he made from 2ome crazy technology AA dug out of 2ome ruiin2. Karkat hasn’t been told about this by AA, whom he deems “SO SPOOKY”, and whose full handle seen in the chat roll is apocalypseArisen - spooky indeed and thematically appropriate. Mention is made of TA’s WEIRD MUTANT BRAIN; exactly what this means isn’t described yet except that it doesn’t mean he can read Karkat’s mind. TA refuses to elaborate on what he’s discussing with AA on the grounds that it’s private, and this leads into an insult-exchanging session.

TA: nobody hate2 hiim2elf more than you iidiiot. CG: YEAH WELL I HATE YOU WAY MORE THAN I HATE MYSELF, AND THAT'S FUCKING SAYING SOMETHING. CG: IN FACT I HATE YOU MORE THAN I HATE MYSELF AND YOU HATE YOURSELF AND YOU HATE ME COMBINED.

Karkat calls a timeout long enough for TA to explain how they’re playing the game; he intends there to be two teams, Red and Blue, 2o that there2 a better chance of at lea2t one group wiinniing. Karkat agrees this sounds sensible, but flies off the handle on finding out that TA and GC are the team leaders, not him. Karkat spews insults and accusations of cheating, while TA snipes back. This is presumably the moment depicted in this page’s art, in which Karkat yells angrily and flails wildly at his keyboard.

CG: HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF YOUR COCOON IN THE MORNING KNOWING YOU'RE THE WORST THING A UNIVERSE WAS EVER RESPONSIBLE FOR? CG: ALSO IT MUST BE HARD WITH YOUR HANDS TO PERSISTENTLY BOTHERING EVERY MUTATED SET OF GENITALS PEPPERING THAT GHASTLY HUSK YOU PAWN OFF AS A BODY. CG: HAS A FEMALE EVER LOOKED AT YOU WITHOUT AT ONCE TURNING SKYWARD AND ERUPTING LIKE A VOMIT VOLCANO, ANSWER ME THAT.

As later pointed out, trolls reproduce bisexually, so why he specified females here is odd. There is a fan theory I’ve seen that TA is straight, as he’s only seen with female partners and rejects a possible male one, but Karkat demonstrates in a later conversation that he has no concept of gender preference, so if TA is, Karkat doesn’t know that. I guess he could mean that he himself has looked at TA without becoming a vomit volcano, but I doubt that was what Hussie was thinking since it isn’t clear if they’ve ever actually met face to face.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 23

Anyway, TA tells Karkat that he’s laughing at Karkat’s immaturity, and that if he really wants to be Red Team leader, he should talk to GC.

CG: I GUESS THESE CONVERSATIONS WE HAVE DO GET KIND OF EMBARRASSING IN RETROSPECT. CG: ARE WE NOT FRIENDS ANYMORE BECAUSE OF STUFF I SAID. TA: eheheheh you LIITERALLY a2k me that every tiime are you jokiing. TA: ii cant even tell anymore.

Okay, that’s adorable. But anyway, after seeing their conversations, you can see what we mean when we say it’s apparently normal for trolls to say horrible things to each other, so why fans and Hussie himself single out some instances and not others is stupid.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 20

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s another example that trolls do have friendship, though possibly not the same way humans do.

Also, though he’s not doing it to her face, Karkat is insulting GC’s blindness. Which is not just problematic but also silly given that her blindness is a super-power.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 31

After a quick panel where Karkat worries about an encounter with a “CRABBY” someone downstairs, we cut to GC. She is in a very colorful room, unlike Karkat’s grey one, and surrounded by stuffed dragon toys. On her wall is graffiti of a dragon and disturbingly a noose. Photorealistic books are piled on her desk. She’s introduced and we finally get her name: TEREZI PYROPE.

Terezi is the word for “Libra” in multiple languages, but it also might be a reference to the gender-bending blind prophet Tiresias. Pyrope is a type of red garnet and she does love red a lot.

Terezi lives alone deep in the woods (which does raise the question of how she gets all her stuff in a mail-free planet). She loves dragons, including the plushie series called SCALEMATES.

CHEL: Her walls are also decorated in the scales of dragons, which actually do exist on Alternia. Libra. Scales. Geddit?

FAILURE ARTIST: She likes roleplaying and once did a more extreme type until she had an accident that’s not explained at the time. Her big interest and motivation is JUSTICE and she wants to be a LEGISLACERATOR when she grows up. She doesn’t need TROLLBRAILLE (does such a thing exist?)...

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 24

... since as we know she has special powers. Alternian law is called BRUTAL and indeed it’s so terrible I have to side-eye Terezi for loving it.

CHEL: She claims to love JUSTICE, but Alternian law has very little to do with justice of any kind, as we see when she decides to start roleplaying it with her toys.

On Alternia, there is no such thing as a defense attorney, or a defense. In a courtblock, the word defense itself is offensive.

Not to mention the judge, a chalk depiction of whom adorns her wall, is known as HIS HONORABLE TYRANNY.

Also, do thirteen-year-olds regularly roleplay with their plush toys? I guess ones who are isolated from all actual life forms they could play with instead might.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi’s scenario this time is the trial of SENATOR LEMONSNOUT, played by a yellow scalemate. Given that Alternia seems to be an absolute monarchy, I wonder where she gets the concept of senators.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 25

Terezi stares down the yellow plush toy before she starts slapping it. She fantasizes about the toy crying tears. The yellow plush toy’s crime is embezzlement, using a currency called imperial beetles. Whether this is a real currency or something Terezi made up we don’t know.

CHEL: As we see later, she’s using a bag of literal beetles in the game. Not sure if they are currency, if she went and caught them, or if trolls can buy them in bags.

FAILURE ARTIST: If you are reading this comic sometime post-2015, there’s two choices. One of them is [???????] Ignore that choice. It becomes relevant only much later. For now, we go to Terezi calling a witness.

Unfortunately, said-witness is a green plush who has been stabbed by a photo-realistic dagger. Apparently, defense attorneys are verboten but murdering witnesses is expected. Alternian justice, everyone.

BRIGHT: It might be moderately less batshit if we assume that Terezi’s obtained all her legal knowledge from TV, movies, and books, and this is a dramatic embellishment rather than the way Alternian trials actually function. She does live on her own in the middle of a forest, after all.

On the other hand, this planet is inhabited solely by children, the over-the-top cruelty is entirely in keeping with Alternia so far, and I don’t think we ever see any of it contradicted.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi finds a bag of beetles and that’s all that’s needed to sentence the “criminal”. Her method is to flip a coin called a caegar that has two-heads on it, one of them with a cut on it. The narration says this is like Two-Face from the Batman comics and the villain of the movie No Country for Old Men, though those media don’t exist in the troll universe. Still, trolls have the same trope. She flips the coin and though the result is favorable to Lemonsnout, Terezi declares she can’t see the coin because

SHE'S BLIND, REMEMBER?

She “kills” the stuffed toy by hanging it, like she’s done with many of her stuffed toys. We see now she lives in a tree house (or hive) in a blue and purple forest.

CHEL: In most media, a character being set up like this would be a villain or set up for a heel-face turn, or at least a massive source of conflict over the differing moralities of the different societies. We’ll see if anything ever comes of that.

FAILURE ARTIST: She finishes up by licking her chalk portrait of His Honorable Tyranny. Weird kid.

She gets her weapon (a photo-realistic cane as used by real-life people with vision impairment) and gets down to recruiting members for her team. Her first target is AC, short for arsenicCatnip, who appears as a speech bubble with the Leo sign in olive. The narration says Terezi likes to roleplay with AC, but only facetiously. Terezi and AC roleplay as a DRAGONYY'YYD and some type of big cat. Terezi tries to eat AC’s cub but AC bribes her with an animal called a BULL CHOL3RB34R.

CHEL: AC types with a symbol like this at the front :33 < and with a heavy spurrinkling of cat puns. From what she says about her character, the type of cat in question has two mouths, and it’s later stated that :33 is in fact supposed to be a cat face, one mouth atop the other. The evolutionary or indeed anatomical usefulness of this feature is unclear. Perhaps it’s so they can bite down on prey and vocalise to communicate at the same time? That would be more useful for a pack hunter… Anyway.

FAILURE ARTIST: That done, Terezi asks AC to play a game and has to clarify she means outside of the game they are already playing. AC is interested but she says she has to get purrmission from a certain guy. Terezi thinks it’s ridiculous AC is scared of him because she kills big animals with her bare hands and lives far away from him. AC knows it’s ridiculous but she still wants to get permission. The relationship looks bad now but we later find out it’s part of troll society and it’s odd that Terezi thinks AC is motivated by fear. Anyway, AC says she’ll ask the guy and the conversation ends on that.

CHEL: I don’t know if Hussie either had come up with the relationship system or even decided if those two were going to have a relationship at this point. If he did, he might not have meant them to be in that relationship yet at this point, they could have started it later. It’s not really clear. Not a problem, though, serial writing develops that way sometimes.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi trolls Gamzee but thankfully it cuts off before we have to re-read the entire conversation. Next, Terezi has to deal with Karkat. She doesn’t want to ask him to play except as a last resort.

However, Karkat trolls Terezi to tell her he’s the leader of the Red Team now. Terezi doesn’t care though since she just wants to play the game. Karkat says she’ll be second-in-command but Terezi’s sarcastic reply turns him off the idea. The two insult each other and Terezi mock-flirts with Karkat.

GC: 4NYTH1NG TO G3T YOU TO STOP B31NG SUCH 4 B4BY CG: WHAT'S A BABY. GC: OH GC: 1TS L1K3 4 MYTH1C4L L1TTL3 P1NK MONK3Y

CHEL: Once again, babies only come in Caucasian, apparently. Also, doesn't the word "baby" apply as an adjective to non-human species all the time?

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 26

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out that Terezi is not supposed to have a LUSUS and if she did, the world would come to an end. Karkat is also confused by this statement. Karkat blames the trees for her weirdness and offers to move her into one of his neighbor’s hives. One of his neighbors has been CULLED (killed) and Karkat is blase about this. Terezi turns down his offer. Karkat excuses himself to DEAL WITH THIS GRUMPY CUSTOMER.

We cut to a little later. Karkat’s hive is covered in colorful paint and in the middle of a lake of red. This is the LAND OF PULSE AND HAZE and Karkat is the KNIGHT OF BLOOD. Karkat now has the weapon HOMES SMELL YOU LATER, a sickle in 90s colors. He trolls Terezi and complains about how she wrecked his home. Another running gag: girls ruining boy’s homes. He says she messed with his LOAD GAPER. Terezi (and us) call that a toilet. Toilet is blue blooded vernacular. Later on, highbloods use the term load gaper so I guess Hussie forgot this interesting world-building. Karkat is also upset by the paint job that wasted lots of grist. Terezi calls his fighting adorable and Karkat says it’s ADORABLOODTHIRSTY. He wants to be the next one to connect to a client and she says it doesn’t work that way. It’s only at the end he brings someone in. The priority now is to save her from the meteors by getting her in the game. Karkat hadn’t heard of the meteors until now and is very alarmed. Terezi tells Karkat to talk to apocalypseArisen, twinArmageddons, AG, or CT. There’s a conspiracy going on with those four people. With that, Terezi says she’s got to go.

CHEL: Also, an important point comes up in that conversation; Terezi demands to know what colour Karkat’s blood is, and he refuses to tell her. In case you haven’t picked it up by now, troll society is in fact supposed to be stratified by the colour of their blood. Literal blue blood is towards the higher end of the rankings; Terezi’s on the greener end of blue, so securely middle class. Karkat types in and wears grey, which is not a natural troll blood colour, and the other trolls consider this weird and suspicious. Looking at the list of names on Trollian, we see they range through the rainbow, except for some reason the greens, blues, and purples are split into several layers. I was confused by this at first; I knew he needed twelve colours instead of seven, but it seemed weird that they weren’t more spread out. Then again, social stratification does get a lot stricter up at the top. I thought perhaps the reds, browns, and yellows also come in other shades but just get lumped together because they’re peasants and no one cares? It’s not discussed in canon, but someone actually does have an explanation for it; it’s what you get when the RGB and CMYK colour wheels overlap.

A little while ago, a spooky-looking young troll lady with glowing white eyes and a maroon Aries shirt sign - this being the colour of apocalypseArisen, so this is presumably her - hovers over a frog-topped temple extremely similar to the one on Jade’s island. With a wave of her hand, the frog’s head breaks off and crashes to the ground.

You're not sure why you did that, really. There'll probably turn out to be a reason. There's a reason for everything. Understanding this lets you be reckless.

Somewhere else, Gamzee’s Faygo bottle, now photorealistic, lands at the feet of a mysterious someone who is wearing striped pants and what appear to be blue and purple bowling shoes, of all things. This person complains about Rubbish from the LAND DWELLERS and picks up the bottle with a hand wearing a purple ring emblazoned with an Aquarius symbol; the name in that colour text in the chat, should the reader go back to check, is caligulasAquarium.

FAILURE ARTIST: How fucked up was troll Caligula? Maybe he just broke troll taboos.

CHEL: The implication of him having an aquarium is making me picture Troy McClure.

We go back to Karkat’s hive and rewind a little, to see him deal with the earlier-mentioned crabby customer…

And we need to provide the text from this page in its entirety so we can discuss it.

FAILURE ARTIST: If you want to know why Homestucks go so crazy over buckets, read this and weep!

You go downstairs and confront your custodian, which is another term for a frightening beast known as a LUSUS NATURAE. Your lusus has looked after you since you were very young in lieu of any biological parents, whom you have never known. No young troll ever knows his or her blood parents, nor could such lineage ever be accurately traced. Adult trolls supply their genetic material to the FILIAL PAILS carried by imperial drones and offered to the monstrous MOTHER GRUB deep underground in the brooding caverns. She then combines all the genetic material into one diabolical incestuous slurry, and lays hundreds of thousands of eggs at once. The eggs hatch into young larval trolls which wriggle about to locate a cozy stalactite from which to spin their cocoons. After they pupate, the young troll with his or her newfound limbs undergoes a series of dangerous trials. If they survive, they are chosen by a member of the diverse and terrifying subterranean monster population native to Alternia. This creature becomes the troll's lusus, and together they surface and choose a location to build a hive. The building process is facilitated by CARPENTER DROIDS left on the planet to cater to the young. But only for building. They're on their own otherwise. The vast majority of adult trolls are off-planet, serving some role in the forces of ongoing imperial conquest, besieging other star systems in the name of Alternian glory. The culture and civilization on the homeworld is maintained almost entirely by the young. Trolls sure are weird!

CHEL: “Lusus naturae”, to start with, is Latin for “freak of nature”. Probably it means something else in Alternian.

FAILURE ARTIST: The lusus system is so bizarre. How long have they been using it? When we see what could be called a Bizarro Alternia, they also have lusus, so it’s not just because adults can’t raise children.

CHEL: Naturally-evolved symbiosis and parasitism are hardly unknown among animals on Earth, though no real ones really work like this. The closest I can think of among vertebrates are cuckoos and similar birds, where the egg is laid in another species’ nest and the hatchling kills or starves out the original offspring. This isn’t what’s happening here, as the lusus doesn’t have offspring of its own and wouldn’t appear to have any particular reason to let a young troll latch onto it, not to mention young trolls presumably look nothing like the offspring of a creature like that, and lususes/lusi (I don’t think there’s an officially accepted plural? The fandom latched onto the very non-Latin but suitably alien “lusii”) come in wildly varying species, so it’s not a case of a specific two-species symbiotic bond like clownfish and anemones. However, trolls do have psychic powers, so it could always be handwaved with a form of mental link.

BRIGHT: Bizarre as it is, the lusus system is nicely alien! I think that in this case, the lack of explanation actually works in its favour -- there’s nothing to point to and say ‘but that explanation doesn’t make sense’. I do like a good explanation, but in the case of background worldbuilding I think it’s fine to chuck something in and move on.

Also, we now discover that Jade had a perfectly normal childhood by troll standards. (Er, minus the murderous neighbours.)

FAILURE ARTIST: The narration says the “vast majority” of adult trolls are off-planet. This implies some small percentage of adults are on-planet. In the spin-off series Hiveswap Friendsim, there are characters on Alternia who get into, well, adult situations. The writers on Twitter clarified that there are trolls who are over eighteen Earth years but under the age of expulsion on Alternia. In one game, there’s adults who should be off-planet but aren’t, though how many trolls risk that is unknown.

CHEL: The age of majority in numerous Earth cultures is or has been twenty or twenty-one, so that’s probably what the writers were going for. Or, of course, just trying to avoid backlash from the Tumblr anti-shipping population. There are also cases where adults really should be on-planet but don’t appear to be, but we’ll get to that in the Friendsims.

I have to say I’m rather concerned by what appears to be a serious bottleneck in the reproduction system. According to everything we see, there is only one Mother Grub for the whole planet. What happens if something happens to her? Replacements are bred in the same way as queen bees or ants, but destroying the cavern where she resides would put a major crimp in troll society for a long time even if there was a replacement around. With ants and bees, there is generally more than one hive per species.

BRIGHT: We do meet one Virgin Mother Grub later on, and she’s acting as a lusus. I always assumed that there were at least a few around, otherwise having one potential backup breeder taken out of the pool should have raised a lot more fuss than it apparently did.

Moreover, while the Brooding Caverns aren’t described in Homestuck, they are described in Friendsim, and it is literally a single giant cave with the Mother Grub in the middle, surrounded by grubs, young trolls, and lusii. In one of the game routes, the Mother Grub is in fact injured by a distressed lusus, which would be easily prevented by having her in a separate room. There are apparently no barriers to an outsider just wandering in, and given that this is Alternia, said outsider could probably do quite a lot of damage if they so chose.

CHEL: Particularly since most lusii are extremely dangerous, and there are a hell of a lot of them there. It’s also been brought up in the Tumblr parts of fandom that it would be incredibly easy to rebel against the dystopian regime by taking the Mother Grub hostage or destroying/damaging the caverns.

FAILURE ARTIST: Karkat fights his lusus like the human kids fought theirs, but without a cool animation. It’s just a gif and a link to a 38 second tune. You’ll notice in the background on the fridge there’s a crude drawing of the crabby creature: a callback to John’s drawing.

We cut to TA, the troll we saw earlier get bonked by a key. TA has his glasses off and under them are a red eye and a blue eye. He puts them on dramatically in a reference to the CSI: Miami meme everyone has forgotten. After a long Dave-like block of text describing how this dude is cool but not cool, it turns out we won’t be introduced to him.

Cut to a troll with a green Leo sign on her shirt and horns that look a lot like cat ears. She looks cute but there’s blood on her walls. The narration is unnerved by her so we go back to TA.

TA’s name is SOLLUX CAPTOR.

CHEL: The name is taken from the mythological twins of the Gemini constellation, Pollux and Castor. The combination of sol-lux could also be read to mean “sunlight”.

FAILURE ARTIST: Behind him is what looks like a computer mainframe but covered in a yellow substance. On the wall, there’s red-and-blue writing. His recuperacoon has two openings, though it’s never even brought up why.

You are apeshit bananas at computers, and you know ALL THE CODES. All of them. You are the unchallenged authority on APICULTURE NETWORKING. And though all your friends recognize your unparalleled achievements as a TOTALLY SICK HACKER, you feel like you could be better. It's one of a number of things you SORT OF BEAT YOURSELF UP ABOUT for NO VERY GOOD REASON during sporadic and debilitating BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS. You have a penchant for BIFURCATION, in logic and in life. Your mutant mind is hounded by the psychic screams of the IMMINENTLY DECEASED. Your visions foretell of the planet's looming annihilation, and yet unlike the typical sightless prophet of doom, you are gifted with VISION TWOFOLD.

I used to think “imminently deceased” meant “recently deceased” and not “going to be deceased”. Either way, it’s really a Blessed With Suck power.

Lots has been made of Sollux’s BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS but I don’t think Hussie was seriously thinking of bipolar depression. Still makes for good fanfiction.

CHEL: Please don't use "bipolar" to just mean moody, Hussie.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 32 You have developed a new game, adapted via CODE PARSED FROM THE RUNES AND GLYPHS IN AN ANCIENT UNDERGROUND TEMPLE. You believe this game to be THE SALVATION OF YOUR RACE, though you are not sure how yet. To ensure success, you will distribute the game to two teams of friends, a RED TEAM and a BLUE TEAM. You will lead the latter group.

One guess what this game is. We also see “friends” being used in the normal human sense.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 27

The prompter tells Sollux to equip ninja stars, but it turns out he has psionic powers that allow him to move objects with a purple aura. However, in moving the ninja stars, he messes up and slices the BEEHOUSE MAINFRAMES. Little purple bees buzz around him and send him messages in beenary code. The prompter tells Sollux to taste the honey but he refuses.

You do not under any circumstance eat the MIND HONEY. The consequences are highly unpleasant.

Remember that. The mind honey is only supposed to be a soporific for his lusus.

Sollux snaps his fingers (spelling out 2NAP in his quirk) and the bees fall asleep.

CHEL: I only just noticed the “2nap” = “to nap” pun.

BRIGHT: Also, while Sollux does have psychic powers, those powers are not related to animal control. So this is a little strange.

FAILURE ARTIST: Sollux goes to his computer while stepping over video games, which in this world are colorful grubs. He first talks with Terezi. She knows about his game to save the world and immediately picks the Red Team. He wonders how she knew there would be a red team but she says it’s easy to guess he would make a red team and a blue team. This observation annoys him and he goes on a rant.

TA: maybe iim more of an aubergiine guy plu2 whatever that putriid color is you type wiith, what ii2 that, turqoii2e?

I have a headcanon he can only see red and blue and that’s why he doesn’t know what color Terezi types in. Considering his society is based on color this would be quite a disability.

CHEL: I’ve also seen headcanons he’s colourblind and struggles to remember which colours go where on the hemospectrum, as at one point he complains about how yellow is the lowest on the totem pole apart from something he can’t remember, while talking to someone who’s lower. (It’s actually third from the bottom.)

FAILURE ARTIST: They then talk about how this game will save the world. He isn’t sure how but he says AA can back him up on this. Terezi thinks he’s right...mostly. He says before this is done he will die twice and go blind, but he figures that’s what happens to a prophet of doom. He compares this to an angel getting its wings and we find out trolls consider angels to be feathery demons. Terezi wonders if this doom-and-gloom isn’t just part of his brain problems. He is offended by this reasoning and compares it to clown pieing, which in retrospect is scarier on Alternia than on Earth. He tells her to talk to AA and Terezi says AA hasn’t been the same lately. Sollux and Terezi say they’ll take the game seriously but they also goof around about it.

We cut back to the spooky troll from before. She kicks the frog statue so hard it all breaks off.

The prompter tells Sollux to deal with apocalypseArisen, the spooky troll we just saw. AA asks Sollux if he set up the teams, but without a question mark. He says he’s working on it. He asks if she’ll be happy to get out and leave the voiice2 behind. He says it would suck to have them stay until death, a statement which will become very ironic. AA says she’s 0k with a l0t 0f things...including their failure masquerading as victory. Sollux is angry at her pessimism. He gets more angry when he finds out the game will actually wipe out their people. He says he refuses to be team leader, but she says he was never going to be that. He threatens her with psionics and says he could do things that would make [her] head 2piin liike dervii2h iin a fuckiing blender which makes me wonder how trolls have Sufism.

CHEL: How many humans know where the term comes from? I could buy it as Translation Convention regarding, say, a clown cult thing, although everything seems to imply the trolls are speaking “English”. Still, the idiom comes from human Western culture, so...

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 28

FAILURE ARTIST: She says she’s coming up, which only confuses Sollux.

He goes and tells Terezi and then Karkat that the Game has been aborted. Terezi is confused but doesn’t say much. Karkat accuses Sollux of trying to kick him out. Karkat declares the friendship cancelled, showing again trolls have friends. Karkat insults Sollux’s programming skills and threatens to run ~ATH. Sollux tells him not to be Karkat doesn’t listen.

TA: KK DO NOT RUN THAT CODE. TA: hello?????????????? carcinoGeneticist's [CG'S] computer exploded. TA: oh my god.

That is some amazing chat program.

The explosion kills Crabdad. Turns out that code causes the death of ALL of Karkat’s friend’s lusii. Each lusus gets prototyped, which seems heartwarming but turns out very bad for their session. We see Gamzee mourning his Goatdad’s death by harpooning in a moment that’s very sad, even considering how terrible a parent Goatdad is.

CHEL: And here I want to go back to Gamzee for a bit. The commentary, as we mentioned, says that Goatdad “told” him to stay indoors and was ashamed of him. However, in the actual comic, everything is set up to show the lusii as being non-sapient, i.e. not able to talk to their charges and not in possession of a concept of shame. They behave like regular animals, Sollux says his is dumb enough to walk right off the roof if not tethered, and the trolls go on repeatedly about how happy they are to have prototyped their lusii because now they can actually communicate verbally with them for the first time, as Rose did with Jaspers. This is similarly inconsistent in the later-written Pesterquest games, which we’ll get to eventually. So either Hussie forgot that lusii aren’t the same as parents…

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 29

… or he claimed they were sapient when they weren’t before, solely to use them to bash Gamzee.

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 2

FAILURE ARTIST: Back to Sollux. He tries deleting all his computer viruses, but there’s one he can’t delete. It has a flashing billiard ball next to execute. It’s set to go off after the universe ends and even Sollux doesn’t know what it does. The narrator does know.

When executed, the subprogram will summon an indestructible demon into the recently voided universe. This monstrous being with the power to travel through time is inconvenienced very little by his arrival upon THE GREAT UNDOING. He has the entire cadaver of the expired universe to pick apart at his whim. From its birth through its swelling maturity and tapering decay. In a reality he is known to have marked for predation, he will go about assembling followers through various epochs, even going as far as personally establishing the parameters for his future summoning. Sollux couldn't know that the virus is essentially a formality. The demon is already here.

Sollux hears grumbling noises coming from the ceiling. His lusus, a BICYCLOPS, is kept chained to the roof of his COMMUNAL HIVE STEM and regularly fed and fought.

CHEL: A bicyclops, later also referred to as a biclops, is a roughly humanoid being with two heads, each with one big eyeball. A hivestem is basically a block of flats, made out of a giant hexagonal tube-like structure with small grey hive-homes built into the sides. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be the literal stem of some kind of gigantic plant or not. Pretty cool if it is.

FAILURE ARTIST: In the night sky, there’s a few meteors. Turns out AA is floating outside.

We cut to GA wielding a chainsaw while riding a moth-like lusus against a colorful background. She lives in the middle of the desert in a home like Jade’s. However, we aren’t introduced to her.

BRIGHT: There are giant colourful sails attached to the towers. I’m not sure how practical that is, but it has definite flair.

FAILURE ARTIST: Instead, we are introduced to AT. His name is TAVROS NITRAM. He turns out to be a wheelchair user. I think this was ascended fanon based on his love of flying. How well Homestuck treats this disabled character we’ll see. His lusus is a little bull with wings. He’s surrounded by playing cards, stuffed animals, and posters of fairies. A lance is leaned against his wall.

CHEL: “Tavros” obviously derives from Taurus, and might also be from Davros, a wheelchair-using Doctor Who villain. Nitram is “Martin” backwards, which according to the wiki might be connected to Mary Martin, an actress who played Peter Pan, or Martin McGuinness, an Irish politician whose planned prosecution was codenamed Operation Taurus. It might also derive from nitrate, which causes “brown blood disease” in fish.

You are known to be heavily arrested by FAIRY TALES AND FANTASY STORIES. You have an acute ability to COMMUNE WITH THE MANY CREATURES OF ALTERNIA, a skill you have utilized to CAPTURE AND TRAIN a great many. They are all your friends, as well as your warriors, which you pit in battle through a variety of related CARD AND ROLE PLAYING GAMES. You used to engage in various forms of MORE EXTREME ROLEPLAYING with some of your other friends before you had an accident. You like to engage in the noble practice of ALTERNIAN SLAM POETRY, possibly the oldest, most revered, and certainly freshest artform in your planet's rich history. You have a profound fascination with the concept of FLIGHT, and all lore surrounding the topic. You believe in FAIRIES, even though they AREN'T REAL.

The name of his lusus may be ascended fanon too, if I’m remembering correctly. Its name, mentioned later, is Tinkerbull, and it’s the cutest thing ever I want a million of them.

Tavros is prompted to Cut to the chase and play card games immediately, and picks a Pokemon ripoff called FIDUSPAWN. He deals himself a favourable hand and lobs an OOGONIBOMB, a jelly-looking blob, at the HOST PLUSH. The Oogonibomb hatches into a terrifying face-hugger-like monster, which latches onto the plush, then scuttles out of the way in time for a larger monster to explode out of said plush.

BRIGHT: Alternian card games sure are something!

HORSARONI, I CHOOSE YOU!!!!!!

CHEL: Horsaroni devours the fidusucker face-hugger in preparation for battle, and Tavros uses his awesome bestial communion abilities [to] bend the ferocious stallion to [his] whim while Tinkerbull looks on nervously. Tavros succeeds in getting the beast under control, and… gets it and Tinkerbull to take a nap together. Everybody wins.

FAILURE ARTIST: He plans on making Horsaroni have sex in the future. Whoa boy.

CHEL: The prompt tells Tavros to roll up the ramp which leads to the top of his rather high recuperacoon, and to hop in, which he does, followed by much reasonable complaining about how it’ll take an hour for him to change his clothes, plus the four-wheel device rolls back down the ramp without him. Also, it’s noted that his horns make it impossible to get fully inside the cocoon, which makes it hard to get any solid shuteye. So, wait, trolls can breathe while fully submerged in the slime? There’s no elaboration as of yet, but it’s possible Hiveswap will discuss that.

FAILURE ARTIST: This slapstick with a disabled character is unfortunate. Terezi never had to deal with this bullshit.

CHEL: Not to this extent, anyway.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 33

After much cleanup which we thankfully don’t have to read through, he gets back in his chair and picks up his JOUSTING LANCE.

FAILURE ARTIST: We get a look outside of Tavros’ hive as he thinks about his future plans. He lives in a windmill by a cliff and in his yard he has a practice dummy with...is that a pail???

CHEL: Considering trolls’ opinions of pails, I hope it’s a trashcan, but the bucket thing might be a retcon for the sake of humour.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, he hopes to be a CAVALREAPER when he grows up, if he isn’t culled (aka murdered) for his disability. Rather optimistic of him to think there’s a chance he won’t be culled. I think this is when we first find out about Alternian eugenics. Odd that it didn’t come up when we were introduced to Terezi.

BRIGHT: Terezi’s disability doesn’t really impact her ability to function, though. Her smellovision is accurate enough to let her read and she doesn’t have any trouble moving around. Tavros’s disability is clearly an actual disability that hinders him in a lot of ways. Given Alternian society as we’ve seen it so far, Terezi might be fine. Tavros would need assistive measures and that makes him a write-off.

There’s also the matter of personality. Terezi tends to be confident; Tavros generally isn’t. Add in Terezi’s midblood status to Tavros’s lowblood position, and it makes sense for it to come up now.

FAILURE ARTIST: Tavros admires his fairy posters, including one saying “ Pupa Pan” with a silhouette of a winged troll. This is the troll version of Peter Pan and their one also includes “indians”, just they are “weird aliens”.

CHEL: Can’t say I’m too pleased about that, personally.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 33

FAILURE ARTIST: I don’t know if Andrew Hussie read Peter Pan but when I read it it felt very Hussie. Anyway, Tavros keeps his bedroom window open for Pupa Pan and splashes SPECIAL STARDUST on his face. The same substance Gamzee uses? Hmmm.

Andrew Hussie takes a jab at the fanon he decided to ascend:

You have had this interest [in flying] far prior to your accident. Being paralyzed isn't what made you want to be able to fly. That would be dumb and would make no sense. Being paralyzed does sort of make you want to be able to walk, though.

CHEL: Uh… haha? Are we supposed to laugh here, or feel bad, or what?

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?:21

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out in Friendsim that terrestrial flight is verboten, though Hussie probably didn’t think of that until much later.

We cut to the future briefly to see Tavros has robot legs. Because it would be terrible to have a disabled character just remain disabled! /s

CHEL: To be fair, they’re in a world which has the technology to make near-perfect robotic limbs and he wants to be able to walk again. One could argue that having that technology is problematic in terms of it being an easy handwave, but since they have intergalactic spaceships it might seem somewhat weird if they didn’t have robot parts. The existence of prosthetics in a society which kills its disabled as standard is a bit odd, but not impossible if they have whole robots. Though it begs the question where he got the wheelchair.

BRIGHT: Well, it could be that prosthetics aren’t standard, this is just a special situation. He doesn’t get them until after he’s entered the Game, after all.

CHEL: Disturbingly, and perhaps more fittingly for troll society, the legs were fitted after his real ones were removed via chainsaw, apparently sans anaesthetic.

GORE GALORE: 11

BRIGHT: It kind of looks like he got chainsawed through the waist. If that is the case, then a lot of important organs would have been mangled and would need replacing — at least if he was human. We don’t know anything about how troll guts are laid out, but there’s no reason to believe they’re radically different to the human setup.

CHEL: None of the troll gang appear to be medics, either. How is he not dead?

FAILURE ARTIST: The legs were built by an unnamed male character who likes to break as well as make robots.

Occasionally though, he will allow philanthropy to override misanthrobopy.

Misanthrobopy. I didn’t notice that until now.

GA was the one to chainsaw Tavros, with the male character watching in the shadows. That character has the Sagittarius sign and a broken horn. We learn his name later but never how he broke that horn.

BRIGHT: Which is also a point in favour of getting prosthetic limbs being somewhat unusual — Tavros only gets his because an acquaintance with specialised knowledge takes an interest.

FAILURE ARTIST: So, back to the present...of the past. Tavros is being trolled by both Gamzee and someone known as AG. He deals with AG first. With this, we get our first dialogue from Homestuck’s most Homestuck character. AG, or arachnidsGrip, brags about being on the Blue Team and mocks Tavros for being on the team full of 8lind girls and lame 8oys and cranky iiiiiiiim8eciles. Tavros says they’re probably right, but then says he promised someone not to talk to them. This person turns out to be Tavros’ imaginary friend Rufio, the personification of his self-esteem. GA was the one who gave him the advice. While that’s not a bad coping mechanism, he really shouldn’t be telling AG about it. AG complains about GA’s meddling and says GA was just making fun of Tavros with that advice. AG complains about how long it’s taking for the Blue Team to get going. In the end, AG says it will be like old tiiiiiiiimes and gives a winking emoticon.

After that conversation with a frienemy, Tavros raps with his friend-friend Gamzee. Gamzee apologizes for zoning out, but unlike everyone else who talks to him Tavros isn’t angry. Awww…

Tavros shares the good news that they are both on the Red Team, though Tavros says it came from someone he doesn’t want to talk about. Gamzee had already heard and he’s very excited. Tavros does an }:o) emoticon and Gamzee is tickled pink that Tavros “stole his nose”. That might be flirting among trolls. They make plans to “slam” but first Gamzee explains the Game plan. Terezi has connected to Karkat and now Gamzee has to connect to Terezi. However, she’s off in the woods doing something. For now, Gamzee has to get Tavros connected to him. He says something that I’ve seen people point to as a sign he’s bad to the bone.

TC: sO jUsT dOwNlOaD tHiS mOtHeRfUcKeR i'M sEnDiNg YoU sO wE cAn KiCk ThIs BiTcH dOwN tHe StAiRs.

This is probably a callback to Dave getting kicked down the stairs and not a conscious callback on Gamzee’s part. Really, usually when Gamzee says “bitch” it’s just another way of saying “thing”. He’s not kicking anyone down the stairs. Not yet.

Then again, he later says:

TC: JuSt LeT mE sNeAk Up On ThIs BoTtLe Of FaYgO aNd SnAp ItS nEcK lIkE iM a FuCkIn LaUgHsSaSsIn.

So he is a little sinister.

CHEL: Hardly any more so than Terezi the hanging fetishist, though!

BRIGHT: Or the guy who codes viruses that blow up his friends’ computers.

FAILURE ARTIST: After all the foreplay for their rap session, the dialogue ends with:

You both then proceed to have one of the worst rap-offs in the history of paradox space.

Only much later do we see this rap-off. We also find out Gamzee’s feelings towards Tavros. Yet this conversation alone was enough to sail that ship.

We cut to Terezi in a burning woods. This is where we find out what the deal with Terezi’s “family” is. Her lusus is a giant teal egg on an even larger DOOMSDAY SCALE. Inside the egg is a blind dragon. The dragon can communicate telepathically via dreams. It was how Terezi learned to “see” after the accident. This answers some questions while leaving so many unanswered. Like why does Terezi sleep in her street clothes?

CHEL: Balanced on the other side of the scale is a gargantuan skull with troll-like horns and a sort of goat-y shape. We’ll see the kind of creature it comes from later.

FAILURE ARTIST: Terezi dreams of Prospit, and we see it as she “sees” it: gauzy and throbbing.

Her lusus hatches from the heat, but is immediately killed by a meteor. A sympathetic ally puts it in the kernelsprite and that sympathetic ally is clown boy. So put that on his scorecard.

With the egg hatched, the doomsday device displays 6:12. The arc number for this arc.

CHEL: Karkat’s “wriggling day” is 6/12, which actually makes him a Gemini rather than a Cancer. Guess it’s different for trolls.

FAILURE ARTIST: Finally, we are introduced properly to AA. The one with the inconsistent horns.

Your name is ARADIA MEGIDO.

CHEL: “Aradia” is the name of a “messiah” of witchcraft in Charles Godfrey Leland’s “Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches”, effectively a piece of paganism fanon. “Megido” is derived from Mount Meggido, the place from which the word Armageddon is derived and where the final battle of said event will supposedly occur, and a powerful spell in the video game Shin Megami Tensei. It might also be related to “Meido”, 冥途めいど, the Japanese equivalent of Purgatory, and “meido”, メイド, meaning maidservant, relevant to her low blood status and later her game class.

You once had a number of INTERESTS, which in time you have LOST INTEREST IN. You seem to recollect once having a fondness for ARCHEOLOGY, though now have trouble recalling this passion. It nonetheless has led you to find your PRESENT CALLING, which came through the discovery of these MYSTIC RUINS on which you presently stand, and which you recently DESECRATED OUT OF BOREDOM. Guiding you to this calling were the VOICES OF THE DEAD, which you have been able to hear since you were young. The voices have become louder as THE GREAT UNDOING approaches. This trend in escalation began after an ACCIDENT involving a CERTAIN KIND OF ROLE PLAYING, which might have been another of your interests once upon a time. It doesn't matter much anymore. The accident resulted in the DEATH OF YOUR LUSUS, which prompted you to leave your home and take up these ruins as residence. On the instruction of your ANCESTORS, you have recovered MYSTERIOUS TECHNOLOGY from the ruins, and convinced a friend to adapt it into a GAME THAT WILL BRING ABOUT THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR CIVILIZATION. And by convinced, you suppose you mean tricked.

CHEL: She chooses to try to take something from her sylladex, but it works on the OUIJA modus, which means she can only take what the spirits allow her to take.

BRIGHT: This has to be the weirdest, most senseless modus yet.

CHEL: They produce a card with the Crosbytop, which she found on a dig a while ago. GA’s trying to contact her.

She's always bugging you. Bugging and fussing and meddling. What's her deal! You guess it's flattering that she wants to talk to you so much though. You're ok with it. You're ok with a lot of things.

She answers, with an “0h n0000000” on seeing GA, who asks if this is “The Night You Blow Everything Up”.

GA: Is There Nothing I Can Do To Change Your Mind AA: n0 AA: 0r yes AA: yes theres n0thing AA: and n0 y0u cant AA: but y0u sh0uldnt pretend as if y0u believe this has anything t0 d0 with the state 0f my mind AA: 0r the decisi0ns it will make 0r has already made GA: Yeah I Guess Not GA: I Thought Id Be Friendly Though GA: And Remind You That You Do In Fact Have A Hand In All The Terrible Things That Are About To Happen GA: Because Thats What Friends Are For GA: And The Fact That What Ensues Will Be Terrible GA: Is An Immutable Fact I Am Stating For The Record GA: And The Fact That We Will Not Be On The Same Team Is Similarly Immutable GA: It Does Not Mean That Teamwork Is What Isnt Taking Place Here AA: s0rry i didnt f0ll0w that GA: Ill Be Here To Help GA: If You Need Me AA: 0k AA: thanks

Honestly, this is giving me shipping ideas which will only make sense once more about trolls has been explained. Pin in that.

BRIGHT: How does GA know it will be terrible?

CHEL: Stay tuned. We’ll find out.

Aradia checks on Sollux and has the conversation we already have seen, which is linked back to instead of copied, thank goodness. Huss seems to have mastered that part of the timeline. Aradia arrives at his hivestem and levitates the Bicyclops, while meteors begin to fall, and AG trolls her. AG is revealed to be female and seen in silhouette; she has a blue Scorpio symbol, one pointed horn, one forked one, and long hair. Remember this character for later.

AG: Do you have Mr. Two Eyes all 8efuddled and flustered in your we8 of lies? AG: Or Mr. Four Eyes? AG: Hmmmmmmmmm. AG: I don't know. Which nickname do you think would 8e suita8ly derogatory in this case Aradia? AA: h0w ab0ut AA: eight eyes AA: minus seven AG: ::::P

FAILURE ARTIST: God, I love Aradia. Though I guess if you’re reading this for the first time you won’t get her jab here until later.

CHEL: Aradia protests that she didn’t trick him. AG says it doesn’t matter, and declares that once the game starts she and Aradia will be the Blue Team co-leaders, only asking afterwards if this is okay with Aradia, who doesn’t care. She tells Aradia she has a present for her, “Just from me. From me alone and no8ody else”, and wants a special team name for just the two of them, which Aradia doesn’t want to bother with.

AG: I just thought it would 8e really fitting. AG: Kind of like a fresh start, you know? AG: I don't know, what are our shared interests? I guess I never really thought a8out this! I guess I'm used to thinking of you as the enemy. There must 8e some overlap in profiles. AG: Come oooooooon, let's 8rainstorm! AA: 0_0 AG: Man, it'll 8e great. We'll 8e unstoppa8le. Surely you must admit it will 8e nice to re8ound from the Team Charge de8acle! AA: i never think ab0ut that anym0re AG: Oh maaaaaaaan, I'm so dum8! Here I am running my mouth and opening up old wounds, while at the very same time trying to make amends! What an idiot.

I hope AG’s fans are not stupid enough to assume she was sincere on that last line, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think that AG thinks she’s being sincere.

CHEL: She asks if Aradia’s “loser” male friend will be on the Blue Team, which Aradia says he isn’t, calls him dead weight (messing up her own quirk in the process, which would usually be “dead w8”), ignores Aradia’s declaration that she didn’t exclude him, and heads off to “give him a hard time” despite Aradia’s protest. From this we can presume said friend is Tavros.

We see AG’s face in the next page; she has blue makeup, one blackened lens in her spectacles, a cyborg arm, and a nasty grin.

FAILURE ARTIST: It kills me that we can’t just say who she is now. I’m sure she’s broken through cultural osmosis. However, instead of an introduction, we go to Sollux and Aradia.

Sollux apologizes for flying off the handle. He says even though he quit as leader, he’ll still play and do his best. In his self-degradation, he says something very odd.

TA: liike 2ome low cla22 guy wiith... whatever color blood ii2 lower on the hiierarchy than miine. TA: what2 wor2e than yellow? TA: fuck thii2 confu2iing ca2te 2y2tem.

You’d think he’d know by now, especially given how important the hierarchy is supposed to be.

CHEL: Especially since the person he’s talking to is not only lower on the hierarchy than him, but also one of his closest friends and (minor spoiler) possibly his love interest. This is where the “colourblind” theory for him comes from.

FAILURE ARTIST: Aradia tells Sollux to come to the window because she’s outside. He complains that he can’t see her and she tells him to look closer. He does so while grumbling about psychics. Aradia snaps her fingers and he falls asleep...in the dangerous mind honey.

CHEL: How does she do that? I don’t think she has mind control abilities, does she? All I remember is her throwing boulders around… did she Force-choke him into unconsciousness?

BRIGHT: Maybe she did it the same way Sollux knocked his bees out.

FAILURE ARTIST: Cut to much later. Meteors are falling furiously and all the teammates except Sollux are in the Medium. Sollux wakes up but with mind honey in his mouth. We find out what mind honey does to trolls like Sollux: it causes him to do an OPTIC BLAST , destroying the roof of his apartment and killing yet another lusus. Which just raises the question of why he let the mind honey flow on his floor.

Now, we are introduced to my Zodiac troll.

Your name is NEPETA LEIJON.

CHEL: Nepeta is the Latin genus name for catnip, and Leijon is the archaic spelling of “lejon”, the Swedish word for lion. It should be pronounced “lay-on”, but Hussie said “pronounce everything in the least affected manner possible, from an American perspective”, so I’ve always mentally heard it as “lee-jon” or possibly “lay-shawn”.

You live in a CAVE that is also a HIVE, but still mostly just a CAVE. You like to engage in FRIENDLY ROLE PLAYING, but not the DANGEROUS KIND. Never the DANGEROUS KIND. It's TOO DANGEROUS! Too many of your good friends have gotten hurt that way. Your daily routine is dangerous enough as it is. You prowl the wilderness for GREAT BEASTS, and stalk them and take them down with nothing but your SHARP CLAWS AND TEETH! You take them back to your cave and EAT THEM, and from time to time, WEAR THEIR PELTS FOR FUN. You like to paint WALL COMICS using blood and soot and ash, depicting EXCITING TALES FROM THE HUNT! And other goofy stories about you and your numerous pals. Your best pal of all is A LITTLE BOSSY, and people wonder why you even bother with him. But someone has to keep him pacified. If not you, then who? Everyone has an important job to do.

So the dangerous kind of roleplaying is more dangerous than taking down wild beasts.

CHEL: Which is already pretty damn dangerous!

You never know when you might encounter some unsuspecting prey. Or when some prey might encounter an unsuspecting you! On Alternia, everything is considered unsuspecting prey by everything else.

FAILURE ARTIST: Also just noticed her “hive” has windows even though it’s a cave and the windows don’t actually seem to open to anything? We never get to see any of her cave outside of this so who knows how it works.

CHEL: Maybe she painted them on?

Her lusus is a big cat, with the double mouths already mentioned in her roleplaying. I still don’t know what evolutionary purpose this serves. However, her trolltag is arsenicCatnip, and the double mouths are depicted as two threes; arsenic’s atomic number is 33. It’s little references and in-jokes like this that keep me loving HS despite its worst parts. I can’t get enough of these things.

Said cat is named POUNCE DE LEON, a reference to the explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, seeker of the Fountain of Youth.

You and she go on adventures together in search of the FOUNTAIN OF CUTE. You ride your sure-pawed mount into the rugged frontier. And sometimes she rides you when she gets tired, which is frequently. It sure will be sad when she dies. But who knows when or how that will happen. We might not even really have the time to find out! Later there was a cave-in.

Note the cave paintings on her walls, which are in red, black, and pale grey, and large black animal corpses in the foreground. It’s not clear if the animals themselves are black or they’re just in silhouette, but they contrast with the lusii, which are all white. These beasts also bleed mammalian red, which Nepeta uses for paint, while the lusii bleed the same colour as their respective troll charges. What precisely the lusii are and how they’re different from a regular animal is never really made clear. They could be separate species, or they could be regular animals psychically or biologically bonded to a troll and metamorphosing because of that. Or Hussie might not have thought it out that far.

Karkat’s trolling Nepeta on her DRAWING TABLET COMPUTER. She wishes she could adapt it to a fetch modus because her own one is frustrating, and answers him. She has to handwrite what she says on Trollian, and surrounds it with doodles of cats.

AC: :33 < *ac perks up curiously* AC: :33 < *she wiggles her rear end a bit and then chases something she s33s bounce into one of karkats shoes* CG: KARKAT CAN'T BELIEVE HE HAS TO SINK THIS LOW. CG: KARKAT CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S ASKING AN AUTISTIC GIRL IN A CAVE TO JOIN HIS TEAM. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 34

Thanks, asshole. I’ve seen fans assume this means Nepeta is literally autistic, and she could be, but either way Karkat is clearly using it as an insult here, not a literal description.

Anyway, Karkat explains to Nepeta what’s going on. He, Terezi, Gamzee, and Tavros are already playing; Tavros needs a server player. GA is lined up for the Red Team, but doesn’t want to connect yet for mysterious reasons, so Nepeta’s the best candidate. Nepeta agrees, but wants to talk to someone else first.

CG: HOW CAN YOU BE BEST FRIENDS WITH THE ONLY GUY ON THE PLANET WHO'S A BIGGER ASSHOLE THAN ME. AC: :33 < hes not so bad! CG: HE'S SCUM. CG: BUT DO WHATEVER YOU'VE GOT TO DO I GUESS. CG: TAVROS IS WAITING.

This seems quite a distance from Nepeta declaring that the guy she needs to talk to “scares her” earlier on. May be a retcon.

Said friend proves to be the blue Sagittarius boy, still in shadow. I think here it’s time to add on a point we brought up but did not count when observing the Pesterchum Trollslum: his handle is centaursTesticle. I remind everyone the trolls are supposed to be thirteen. What a charming child. I guess maybe it’s excusable because he’s not a mammal himself, but still.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 9

He says hi, but becomes frustrated when Nepeta roleplays at him. He types in dark b100, is e%cessively formal, and precedes each line with a D→ emoticon, the significance of which will be explained in a moment.

CT: D --> This is f001ishness upon one hundred thousand prior, equally unsolicited f001ishnesses

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s weird that his first word is “hi”, considering how formal he usually is.

CHEL: Could be because he knows Nepeta well? A concession to her mannerisms?

He expects Nepeta to follow his orders; she stops roleplaying, but complains about him being “so lame!” and never roleplaying with her, even though he will go out of his way to find words with “x” or “loo” in them so he can use his quirk. He tells her off for using foul language at things as mild as “what the hell?” and she apologises.

CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else! CT: D --> Well, green b100d is ok, but it's not great CT: D --> But that's why you're lucky to have me to 100k out for you CT: D --> Because you don't know better, and you can't fight the role the mother had in store for you

This relationship looks rather worrying from a human perspective, I must say. Still, Nepeta seems to be holding her own in the argument, and he’s not physically present so there’s little he can do to actually harm her if things go south.

FAILURE ARTIST: Yeah, early on this relationship looks bad, but this relationship is one of the more popular ones in Homestuck.

CHEL: Did he plan their relationship, or ascend the fanon? Do we know?

FAILURE ARTIST: I would say there wasn’t enough time for Equius/Nepeta to be fanon, giving the quick update rate for this arc, but fandom does work fast.

Nepeta doesn’t seem to be just against the hemospectrum but rather ignorant of it, which is odd considering how important it’s supposed to be. Then again, she does live in a cave.

BRIGHT: Considering how important the hemospectrum is supposed to be, a surprising number of characters don’t understand it or care about it. That’s two out of nine so far. And while the hemospectrum does add a layer of complication, it’s not that complicated. There are only (spoiler) eleven colours in official use, and most readers pick them up pretty quickly. Characters living in a society which violently enforces it should have a working grasp of it, even if they think it’s stupid as all get-out.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 26

CHEL: Nepeta points out he always puts his bow and arrow symbol at the start of lines, which she considers a sign of playfulness and he considers “highly dignified symbols”. Nepeta asks if he’s ever successfully fired a bow, and he refuses to talk about it.

CT: D --> The topic is making me CT: D --> Sweat

He does this a lot. Here it seems to be a sign of feeling awkward and embarrassed, but later on it will be the source of CALL CPA PLEASE points.

They argue; Nepeta calls him a “weirdo and a cr33p!” and says it’s good she’s there to watch out for him in turn because no one else likes him, and he tells her off for eating animals. So trolls aren’t fully carnivorous? Their teeth suggest they should at least lean more strongly that way than humans do, but I guess eating vegetation wouldn’t be impossible for them.

CT: D --> You're wrong about me, Nepeta CT: D --> I do like to play games CT: D --> But they must be e%tremely important games with very high stakes CT: D --> Not the kind played by trans100cent green wigglers who let 100se an e%cremental surge hard in their wiggler-bottom diaperstubs

Nice callback, though I’m kind of surprised he said “bottom” since he draws the line at “hell”. Also, why the hell would trolls have diapers? They’re raised by literal animals, most of which don’t have hands to change them with!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 27

FAILURE ARTIST: What we see later of troll infants, they don’t have bottoms to diaper.

CHEL: Equius informs Nepeta he’s leading the Blue Team; she’s already on the Red Team, but he forbids her to join it and says she must join him.

AC: :33 < *ac rolls her eyes almost as hard as she is rolling around in this really interesting smell* CT: D --> The thought of you fraternizing with and abetting those stink-b100ded h001igans strikes me as scandal beyond measure CT: D --> I'm afraid you're too delicate to withstand that sort of corruption

Didn’t he also forbid her from associating with the people on the Blue Team on the grounds of them being too dangerous to hang out with? There’s no pleasing this guy.

Nepeta tells Tavros she can’t join him. She’s angry at her friend, though she’s still obeying him, but Tavros thinks it’s for the best.

AC: :33 < *ac curls up in tavroses lap* AT: oKAY, *i, AT: fOR THE TIME BEING, aND, AT: fOR THE SAKE OF THIS FANTASY SCENARIO, i PRETEND, AT: tHAT MY CAT ALLERGIES AREN'T THAT BAD,* [...] AT: wELL, AT: iF YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM BEFORE, AT: yOU MIGHT HAVE PLAYED GAMES WITH US BEFORE, AT: aND SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU,

All very well, but notice what’s wrong with this picture?

I am… not particularly happy about more wheelchair slapstick going as far as to cause what I guess could be called either pet death or parent death. Most people in wheelchairs are able to not do that. Wouldn’t he at least notice it going over the bump? The “lol the weak wimpy kid has allergies” thing isn’t marvellous either; Tavros’ supposed wimpiness isn’t a huge deal yet, but it will be.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 35

BRIGHT: Uh...okay, wow. I somehow didn’t notice Tinkerbull dying like that the first time I read this, and WTF, Hussie?

Tavros reminisces about his role-playing days. We get a flashback to him standing in his room pre-paralysis, dressed in a green Peter Pan outfit and wielding a very short lance he calls a ‘daggerlance’. He is preparing to play FLARP, an EXTREME ROLE PLAYING game which can have serious real-world consequences if played without caution. Tavros is part of Team Charge, and they will be playing against Team Scourge.

The other member of Team Charge is Aradia. Tavros starts a chat with her, and Aradia sounds a lot more animated in this one. She actually seems pretty cheerful and enthusiastic! They talk a bit about Tavros’s choice of class, the Boy-Skylark; apparently it’s not very strong early on, but picks up some powerful abilities once you reach a high level. Put a pin in that, it’s not directly relevant but it does echo some Class traits later on.

Tavros’s FLARP grub lays some eggs ...

CHEL: Troll technology is disgusting.

BRIGHT: … which hatch into neon pixellated bats called GAMING FLAPSTRACTIONS. These contain the data used to provide the roleplaying scenario, and will also follow live instructions provided by the ‘clouder’. One member of Team Scourge will act as Tavros’s clouder, creating a challenging scenario for him to adventure through. Aradia will be the clouder for Terezi, the other member of Team Scourge. The flapstractions are tied to the player’s vital attributes, which is what makes this sort of role playing so dangerous. It’s interesting that apart from SGRUB, trolls have video games which physically affect the real world, or at least some of the players.

CHEL: Which brings up a comment we made on an earlier Act; does everyone in John’s version of Earth have sylladexes, and do all their videogames affect reality? We never see.

BRIGHT: A little way into the game, and Tavros has been backed up to the edge of a cliff by a couple of FLARP monsters. His clouder contacts him to ask why he’s not moving; turns out it’s AG. Tavros tells her that the monsters are too strong for the level he’s at. AG responds by mocking him, calling him weak, and urging him to either advance or abscond. Tavros asks her to hold on, and tries to contact Aradia for help, then Terezi.

We get another glimpse of AG! She has a blue sign, has one hooked horn and one with a crescent tip, messy hair, and here is wearing an eyepatch with seven red dots over one eye. She appears to be standing in the field with Tavros, which clearly isn’t possible.

CHEL: Holograms, presumably.

BRIGHT: Tavros can’t get through to either Aradia or Terezi. AG starts messaging him again, telling him to roll the dice. Tavros, entirely sensibly, declines to do so, as he’s run the numbers and the monsters are too strong to beat no matter how well he rolls. AG says that if he won’t move, she’ll make him move.

AT: i THOUGHT, AT: yOU COULDN'T USE POWERS, AT: i MEAN, rEAL LIFE POWERS, nOT GAME ONES, AT: iT'S AGAINST THE RULES, AG: 8ut if you are going to 8reak the rules and refuse to roll, what choice do I have!

Using her psychic powers, she then takes control of his body.

And walks him off the cliff.

AG: Fly, Pupa!!!!!!!! AG: Flyyyyyyyy!

CHEL: This is our introduction to the most controversial character in the whole fandom, and quite possibly one of the most controversial in any fandom. So much as mentioning this girl can start huge flamewars, and there was an entire section of the official Homestuck forum set off for talking about her so it didn’t taint the experience on the other boards. We’ll see more of this behaviour from her later, and discuss the fandom’s opinion of it as we go.

AG types out a long string of mocking laughter, with eight exclamation marks. I believe five is the point Pratchett deemed to be a sign of insanity, what does eight signify? Anyway, Tavros takes out his phone and texts the first person he thinks of; Karkat.

adiosToreador [AT] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] AT: aG JUST JUMPED ME OFF A CLIFF, AT: wITH MY BRAIN, AT: aND, uHH AT: mY LEGS, aLSO, AT: aND NOW, tHEY FEEL, AT: iNVISIBLE, AT: wOW, i'M SURE THERE WAS A BETTER WAY TO SAY THAT, AT: aNYWAY, AT: tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS, AT: tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT, AT: oF ME GETTING HURT, CG: HEY ASSHOLE, STOP PLAYING GAMES FOR GIRLS. carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling adiosToreador [AT]

It’s times like these I wonder if we should have stolen the RP1 spork’s “Why Are We Meant To Like You, Again?” count. Let’s tally up the ones we have…

First off, Karkat, you’re a sexist dick and a bully, and the narrative never calls you out on it, nor do the other characters.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 36

Second, two SLAMMER points, one for the sexism, and one for hanging up on a clearly injured person, when Karkat is supposed to be portrayed as “prickly but caring”, which is not consistent with this even if he doesn’t much like Tavros or know him well at this point.

SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 3

And third, what the hell is the point of the “GAMES FOR GIRLS” comment? Karkat’s phrasing implies that this is a contemptible, weak thing to do. Considering the incredibly dangerous nature of the game, that makes no sense at all. Fandom likes to charitably interpret it as meaning that female trolls are expected to be more violent than the male ones and Karkat’s telling Tavros not to get himself hurt, but that doesn’t work either because in every other situation Tavros is socially punished for not being violent, forthright, and traditionally masculine, and as I said, Karkat’s phrasing and immediate hanging-up on Tavros implies contempt, not concern. If it was meant the way a human boy would put it, what the hell are games for troll boys like?!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 28

One way I’ve played it in fanfic is that female trolls are expected to be the strategisers, while male ones just barge on through, but that’s just my personal idea, not canon.

BRIGHT: Really the only way this could be read as not completely awful is if Karkat thought Tavros was role-playing the injury. But there’s no reason for him to think that; Karkat’s made his lack of interest in it abundantly clear, and we never see Tavros initiate a role-playing chatlog with anyone, even one of the other FLARPers. In fact, all the FLARPers seem to confine their role-playing to the game itself; the only person who role-plays in chatlogs is Nepeta. (And after this, it’s easy to see why CT didn’t want her FLARPing.) So Karkat’s being a real dick here.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s not really any charitable explanation for this. The fandom is just content to prove Karkat wasn’t sexist on human terms.

BRIGHT: Also, this is an impressively coherent summary of events from Tavros. If I’d just walked off a cliff and broken my back, I’m not sure I’d be up to texting anybody, let alone explaining things that clearly. Tavros gets short shrift for being weak, but he’s really pretty tough.

We jump back to Karkat in the Medium, having just finished the conversation with Terezi we saw earlier. AG starts messaging him, and Karkat is really not impressed.

AG: Hey 8rave leader. CG: OH MY GOD, WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME. AG: Can I join your team? CG: YES I'M GLAD YOU ASKED, BECAUSE THERE IS A WIDE OPEN SLOT FOR THE MOST VILE BACKSTABBING SOCIOPATH WHO EVER LIVED. CG: YOU REALLY HELPED ME OUT OF A JAM BY STEPPING FORWARD. AG: Vile 8acksta88ing sociopath? Karkat, did you copy and p8ste that phrase directly from your personal ad descri8ing what you are looking for in a lady? CG: HA HA HA! CG: MORE CAGEY CUTESY BULLSHIT. CG: LIKE I'M NOT UP TO MY LOBE STEM WITH THAT ALREADY HAVING TO DEAL WITH TEREZI. CG: YOU BOTH MUST HAVE BEEN INSUFFERABLE WHEN YOU WERE A TEAM. CG: YOUR OPPONENTS PROBABLY ALL JUST TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE AFTER A FEW MINUTES OF PUTTING UP WITH YOUR FANGY GRINNED DRIVEL. CG: THAT'S PROBABLY HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN WHEN THE SHIT HIT THE THRESHER.

AG continues to mess around and Karkat continues to be adamant about not wanting to be friends with her. He warns her not to use her mind control abilities on his teammates, and finishes up with something that actually seems to hit home.

CG: I'VE GOT THE BETTER SCOURGE SISTER ON MY TEAM AND IF YOU BREAK YOUR TRUCE YOU'LL HAVE TO ANSWER TO HER. CG: THE FUNNY THING IS SHE WAS ALWAYS WAY BETTER THAN YOU EVEN WITHOUT ANY POWERS. CG: YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, I KNOW YOUR WHOLE STORY. CG: YOU WERE ALWAYS JEALOUS SHE COULD MANIPULATE PEOPLE SO WELL WITHOUT RESORTING TO CHEAP MIND TRICKS. CG: HAHA, I CAN TELL THIS BURNS YOU AND I CAN'T EVEN PAW THROUGH YOUR DUMPSTER! CG: CHALK IT UP AS ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY.

It’s interesting that although Karkat is extremely cagey about his blood colour, he identifies himself here as a lowblood. Granted, that’s the most logical conclusion to make -- a highblood would have no reason to conceal their blood caste -- but blood colour wasn’t even being discussed until he brought it up.

Karkat ends the chatlog, and then immediately starts messaging AG again.

AG: Oh, 8ack so soon! Did your thum8 slip on the 8utton???????? AG: I guess you can't get enough of me. AG: ::::) CG: YOU MADE ME DO THAT. CG: AND YOU KNOW IT. AG: You 8n't got nothing on me and you can't prove shit!!!!!!!! AG: Anyway, Karkat, I just wanted to say. AG: <3

...okay, I assume she’s using that in a mocking way, because we never get any other indication that she’s romantically interested in Karkat, but man, that threw me for a moment.

FAILURE ARTIST: AG says she can read Karkat’s mind and it’s implied she made Karkat slip up, but you’d think even with Karkat’s mind being a dumpster she’d still find it impossible to resist finding out his blood color.

CHEL: Impossible to not find it, in fact! It must be pretty prominent in his thoughts if it’s important enough to hide.

BRIGHT: The narration then hops to the blue Sagittarius boy, and...uh.

Wow, those sure are a lot of weirdly sexual posters and dismantled robots.

Let’s not beat about the bush here: Teens are (generally) interested in sex and very good at getting hold of depictions of it. On the other hand...thirteen is kind of on the young end for that. Also, most people don’t display their pornography proudly on their walls, although as I type this I remember that cheesecake pin-ups used to be a thing. Heck, maybe they still are. Either way, this is kind of disturbing.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 10

CHEL: Then again, I was never very close to any teenage boys when I was that age; for all I know, maybe they would stick their porn on their walls if they didn’t have parents to stop them.

I’d like to point out the unfortunate implications in having the narrator sound as disturbed as they do in conjunction with all his posters being of male characters. There are plenty of other reasons to be disturbed, plus his interactions with girls are even more disturbing, but as we proceed we’ll see hints that that possibly was meant to be part of the disturbance. Hussie has a real discomfort with m/m attraction, and it shows more than he meant it to.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 37

Since the trolls aren’t mammals and their anatomy isn’t necessarily anything a mammal would recognise, fandom’s occasionally had some fun with interpreting this as him not realising the posters are so explicit and just having them because he thinks they look cool, but that’s obviously not the intended meaning.

BRIGHT: I think the reader is also meant to be bothered by the posters being furry art. Honestly that part doesn’t bother me, but furries were the butt of a lot of jokes back in 2009 -- and possibly still are, although I haven’t seen any for years.

FAILURE ARTIST: Personally, when I saw this panel, I was peeved that he wasn’t introduced yet. I liked the cut of his jib for displaying such “art”. Of course, there’s also the shiner his lusus sports which may play a part in the narrator’s discomfort.

BRIGHT: The narration is as disturbed as I am, although possibly for different reasons, and promptly switches to a brief glimpse of the last troll we have to meet, who has dark pink goggles, a Pisces sign, and is prodding a cuttlefish with a trident. Before we can learn anything more about her, off we go again!

This time we return to Aradia, who is flying across the countryside atop the severed head of the frog statue. Her hive, when she reaches it, is in ruins and overgrown by vegetation.

You haven't been here since the night of the accident. On that night you found your CALLING. The voices of the dead grew louder, urging you to return to the ruins you discovered not long before. You left so abruptly, you didn't even have time to bury your lusus. But that's fine, because trolls don't typically bury their dead. Leaving bodies to be consumed by wild animals is more customary.

We’ve already seen that role-playing accidents on Alternia can be pretty damn extreme, and given that Aradia has telekinesis it’s not a stretch that property damage could get involved, but this is still very effective build-up to the reveal of What’s Up With Aradia. On my first read-through I was really curious about what had happened, and I still think it holds up well.

Aradia starts up the game and allows her co-leader to enter first, since she always intended to enter second. She then has Nepeta connect to her as her server player, and starts setting up the equipment. Since she doesn’t have a dead lusus to prototype the kernelsprite with, she uses the head of the frog statue instead. The dead have assured her that this is critical for later success.

Compelling your nonplussed server player to perform this task might have proven difficult. Luckily your telekinesis, an ability greatly magnified through your CALLING, would be sufficient to move the massive object, whereas the game cursor likely would not. Your server player simply watched in mystification.

Sprite sorted out, Aradia enters the Medium. Her classpect is MAID OF TIME, and her planet is the LAND OF QUARTZ AND MELODY, which is very pretty. It was important for her to enter second because her client player, presumably AG, has a present for her which can’t be replicated with grist, so they’re going to have to travel through the Gate above their house to get it to her.

Nepeta, meanwhile, is watching in befuddlement, because she can’t see Aradia on the screen...up until Aradia merges with the Frogsprite.

She couldn't see you up until the moment after the sprite's second prototyping. Because you were dead all along.

HOLY SHIT.

The first time I read Homestuck, this reveal blew me away. (Granted, I was a bit confused by all the hopping around between characters and time points. It makes much more sense on the second read.) It probably wasn’t intended as much of a surprise, given the next page…

We are all completely blown away by this stunning revelation.

Fair enough.

#Homespork #homestuck #homestuck meta #review #reread #sporking

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imaginetonyandbucky · 6 years

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The next weeks Bucky and Tony met regularly and played games together, in private, off their youtube channels. It was a nice change to recording games. There was no pressure to do everything right and be funny at the same time. It was care-free and they could talk about a lot of things besides games as well. Both Tony and Bucky had outed themselves on their youtube channels and that exposed both of them to some hatred online. They talked about their experience with past boyfriends and what they had done before they had started on youtube. Tony had been an engineer before and he still was to some point. He told Bucky about his plans to start a new series testing out gadgets and tech devices, most likely involving explosions in one way or another. It all sounded very interesting.

Eventually Tony brought up the subject of doing a series together.

"I don't want you to think that I wouldn't want to do a series with you, I really do, but I don't want to pressure you into that kind of exposure because I know it's not just all hunky-dory, so I want you to make the call." Tony had said one day and Bucky really had to think about that.

He wasn't sure if he really wanted to be put on the spot and exposed to potentially 7 million viewers. Bucky was very happy with the way his little community was growing and you really needed a thick skin if you did a collab with Tony because Tony's hardcore fans rarely liked a newcomer and were not afraid to show it. He would like to see his channel grow but was it worth the risk that someone found out his secret.

His secret, that was a whole different story, because he hadn't even told Tony about his missing arm.

"I'll think about it. I like what we got going right now, Tones." Bucky didn't say that he feared their relationship would change if they started doing videos together.

"Yeah, no problem. I know my fans can be difficult."

(More after the break!)

---

It was a few weeks later when Tony was preparing to leave for PAX. The gaming convention was a regular thing for Tony and he always had large meet-ups with fans and was invited to speak on several panels for new games.

Bucky, on the other hand, had only ever seen a convention via the live feed and he didn't want to change that any time soon.

"You could come with me, you know? You could stay backstage if the exposure is not your thing, I'm sure I can get you a pass, they always give me some."

"Nah, It's too far away for my taste and too many people."

"Okay, I can understand." Tony had sounded disappointed at Bucky's refusal to come, had even offered to pay for the flight to Boston and accommodations, but Bucky had made up excuses that he couldn't come. Tony's desire to meet him had become clear to Bucky for some time now. Their friendship had evolved over the months, seeing as their relationship had started with both of them admitting they thought the other was cute there had been a certain vibe of something more since the beginning but it had become clear now. They were talking more and more outside of playing games, leaving each other messages on discord for when the other was offline.

They exchanged phone numbers at last, so far they had always been on their computers when they talked to each other, but now that Tony would be away for a while it had become necessary. Bucky hadn't thought about it much, it was just another way to message each other, but he was soon shown otherwise when Tony started to message him pictures of himself making funny faces when he was waiting backstage and bored.

"Even mining cobblestone for 5 hours wouldn't be as boring as waiting for them to set up the stage. You'd think they knew what they were doing." Tony wrote him on the day the panel with him and a few other YouTubers with a high sub count was being held. Bucky was sitting in front of his PC watching the live stream. It was currently displaying a message about technical difficulties.

"If only they'd let me help. I could figure it out." Tony wrote and Bucky could imagine the cute pout on his face.

"I'm sure you could," Bucky answered with obvious sarcasm.

"Hey, I totally could. I've got a Ph.D. in engineering."

"You what? O_O" Bucky almost dropped his phone.

"Yeah, I studied at MIT. Did I never tell you?"

"Nooooooooo! I mean... I knew you were smart but not that you were an actual genius." Bucky couldn't believe it.

"Got the paper to prove it an all. Oh, I gotta go, they finally figured it out."

That was the last message before the panel went live and Bucky could watch Tony answer questions about games and youtube. The fact that Tony was an actual genius never left him that day.

Tony sent him more and more selfies and photos of his day and Bucky had to grin at every single one of them. Tony was hilarious and extremely handsome. Of course, Bucky knew what Tony looked like but seeing Tony so carefree and private was something different and to know that these pictures were just for him. It made Bucky's heart beat a little faster and Steve occasionally caught him staring at his phone for minutes on end grinning from ear to ear.

"You're crushing so hard, Buck," Steve said one day when Bucky was lying on the couch scrolling through all the pics Tony had sent him.

"I'm not, I just like the guy, that's all," Bucky said and when Steve didn't answer with a snarky comment again Bucky looked up.

Steve was smiling at him, not that shit-eating grin when he wanted to make fun of Bucky but a fond smile that made Bucky pause for a moment.

"I'm happy for you, you know," Steve said. "After all you've been through. I'm happy that you found someone again."

Bucky had had a few relationships in the past and none of them had been particularly bad, but after he lost his arm he had never gone back to dating or meeting people in general. He had lost his confidence, didn't see himself as attractive anymore and so he had holed up in his room most of the time. It had only been a year or so ago that he had found the courage to be more open again. He had started using a webcam for his videos and had joined Steve on outings on occasion. Still, he had never thought about dating again. The thing with Tony, however, it had grown into something more than friendship without him even realizing what was happening.

It hit Bucky like a fist in the stomach. He had fallen in love.

With Tony.

He swallowed hard and buried himself deeper into his blanket. "He found me if anything..." Bucky mumbled and then gasped and dropped his phone when Steve hugged him without warning.

---

Bucky woke up at 3 am to his phone furiously beeping. It could only mean one thing.

Tony.

Already smiling Bucky reached for his phone and found that he had several messages from the other. Excitedly he opened them up and was surprised to not only find a few messages but also a rather large video file.

"Bucky"

"Bucko"

"Buckaroooooo"

"I hav to tel u somthin"

"Fuk, why is the"

"screen so fuzzy?"

Bucky chuckled. It looked like Tony had been out partying and was now drunk messaging him. He wondered what kind of shenanigans Tony got up to this time and clicked on the video.

The video was shaky and it looked like Tony was sitting in his bed, hair a complete mess and his eyes bloodshot.

"Bucky," he slurred, definitely drunk, "Buckaroo, Buckster, Sunshine. I have to tell you something." His tone was serious unlike the other drunk messages Bucky had received and a dreaded feeling came over him.

"I hope you're not mad at me. " Tony grabbed for a pillow with his free hand and hugged it to his chest. "I did something. I am drunk, as you see, but that is not the thing I did. It is /a/ thing I did but it's not /the/ thing I did." Tony shook his head and needed a moment to focus on the camera again. "I hope I don't regret this because I really like you. Like really really like you and that...that's the problem." Tony ran his hand through his hair, disheveling it even more and Bucky started to worry even more. He had a feeling Tony was going to cut off all contact between them, that Bucky was just not good enough. Tony certainly had more important things to do than hang out with Bucky late at night.

"Bucky." Tony's stern tone of voice made Bucky focus back on the video.

Tony had brought the camera close to his face and was staring right at it.

"I love you."

Bucky threw the phone across the bed like it had just bitten him. Surely he hadn't heard that right. Bucky stared into the darkness, the phone had landed screen first on the end of the bed and he could still hear Tony's muffled voice coming from it. It had to be a joke, Tony was drunk, that had to be it.

With a racing heart, Bucky crawled to the end of the bed and picked up his phone again. The video had stopped.

Slowly Bucky sat back down again, pulling the covers around himself and then played the video again and this time he kept watching after Tony had said the words.

"I said it. I said it. Yes. Bucky, I love you. I've been crushing on you so hard ever since I saw your first video and then I contacted you and then you turn out to be this amazing person and I shouldn't have fallen in love with you. You probably don't need someone like me in your life, but I couldn't stop myself. The way you smile, the way you laugh. You're such a wonderful person and you put up with me of all people when I'm such an obnoxious douchebag. I'm an arrogant asshole. If you looked up narcissistic Youtuber on urban dictionary there'd be a reference to me." Tony had worked himself up into a full-blown rant, about himself. Bucky could hardly listen let alone watch how self-deprecating Tony was behaving. It made no sense to him.

How could Tony even think that Bucky wouldn't want him?

Eventually Tony ran out of steam and he hid his face in the pillow.

"Please don't be mad at me, Bucky. " Tony mumbled, barely audible and then the video ended. Bucky sat in silence, stunned and confused. He had never dared to hope that Tony reciprocate his feelings and now Tony had been the one to confess his feelings to him and he even felt bad about it.

Bucky was still thinking about what to write Tony back to assure him that no Bucky he wasn't mad, quite the contrary when his phone rang with the call from an unknown number. Thinking it might be Tony Bucky answered without hesitation.

"Tony?" He asked hopefully.

"Sorry to disappoint you but this is Rhodey, Tony's friend. You might know me as Warmachine."

Bucky frowned, he had never talked with Rhodey before but Tony had talked plenty about his best friend. "I know who you are. Is Tony alright? Has something happened?"

"Tony's fine. He's passed out after he sent you that video, that I only got to see the end of. Live and in color. That's why I wanted to talk to you." Rhodey sounded serious and Bucky's heart sunk.

"I'm not gonna use the video to black mail him or anything."

"Didn't see you as the type to do that but I appreciate it, but that's not what I was worried about." Rhodey paused for a moment and sighed. "Could you let him down gently? When you tell him you're not interested? Make it a bit easier for him?"

"Hold on." Bucky sat up straighter. "Why would I do that?"

Another sigh on Rhodey's end. "I didn't want to go into details but Tony's had some not so nice relationships and he doesn't take it easy when he's rejected, so maybe tell him you're seeing someone else - "

"No, I mean, why would I tell him I'm not interested?" Bucky asked thoroughly confused.

Rhodey sounded as confused as Bucky felt. "Because you're not? Or.... are you?"

"I- ", Bucky was suddenly put on the spot and didn't know how to formulate his feelings. "I think I am? I don't know. I always thought he couldn't be interested in someone like me and I never thought anything would come of it." Bucky confessed, trying not to think about that he was talking to a stranger, a stranger that was Tony's best friend. But from what he knew about Rhodey from his videos and Tony's stories he seemed like a guy you could trust and so it just came spilling out of Bucky. "I'm a fucking nobody next to Tony that he even talks to me is a miracle in my eyes and I like him. I like him a lot and I didn't want to ruin our friendship because I suddenly developed feelings. And I haven't told him a few things about me. Important things that he should know before... you know."

Rhodey suddenly chuckled, a soft laugh with no malice. "You two are something. Tony told me the exact same thing, that he didn't want to ruin your friendship, yadda yadda and that you wouldn't want him if you knew about his past relationships."

"But I know about his relationships..." Bucky said.

"Yeah, he probably told you everything was fine and mutual."

"Oh," Bucky said intelligently, suddenly realizing what that meant. A long silence followed afterward before Rhodey was the first to speak.

"And what about you, what is your secret, huh?"

"I...," Bucky hesitated, was he really going to tell Rhodey what he hadn't even dared to tell Tony?

"You don't have to tell me, but just so you know, there is very little that could make Tony turn away from someone he really cares about. He's not shallow, contrary to popular belief. So whatever it is, I think you can stop worrying." Rhodey assured him

"I'm disabled." Bucky blurted out and was surprised at himself. That was probably the first time ever he had said it out loud. He heard Rhodey laugh and Bucky felt like throwing up. It had been a mistake. His thoughts were going haywire about possible consequences, he was screwed, absolutely screwed, he'd have to break off any contact-

"Hey, don't worry about that, okay?" Rhodey said and brought Bucky's racing thoughts to an abrupt stop. "I can assure you Tony's not an abelist asshole if that's what you're scared off. He knows how to deal with it."

"Okay." Bucky managed to say after taking a deep breath.

"I'm gonna go and tuck Tony into bed now, maybe you can write him a nice message so he doesn't freak out in the morning because I'm sure he will."

"Yeah, sure. I wanted to do that anyway." Bucky leaned back in bed, suddenly feeling like a weight had lifted off his shoulders that he hadn't even known he was carrying.

"And Bucky?"

"Yes?"

"You're all he ever talks about and I haven't seen him this happy in years, so...." Rhodey trailed off, leaving Bucky to figure out the rest.

"Is this the shovel talk?" Bucky grinned, Rhodey was clearly joking.

"I used to be US Airforce, just so you know," Rhodey said in all faux seriousness.

Bucky snorted. "So what, I was in the army, I can take ya."

"Treat my boy right and you don't have to." With that Rhodey hung up and Bucky fell sideways into his pillows completely exhausted, but wide awake. He spent a long time thinking about what he wanted to write back to Tony. He finally settled on a heart smiley followed by a simple: "I love you, too, Tony." And after a few minutes, he added a few more lines explaining that he had been scared to tell him too and what two fools they were by not realizing sooner.

Bucky lied awake after that, phone clutched in his hand, thinking about what that meant for them because if they were to take it to the next level Bucky would no longer be able to hide behind his PC and weasel out of meeting Tony and he didn't really want to now anyway. If Rhodey was to be believed and Bucky trusted him because Tony trusted him then there was nothing to worry about.

He spent the next hours looking up flights to California until Tony started to send him a barrage of messages with how, what, why and a bunch of question marks. Bucky suggested they take it to Discord and talk there. Tony couldn't stop asking questions, Bucky got the feeling that he wasn't quite sober yet from the way he slurred his words but he managed to convince Tony that yes, he meant what he had said. Eventually Tony started to make all sorts of adorable noises.

"So does that mean we're boyfriend and boyfriend now?" Tony cooed into the microphone for probably the 6th time in the past 20 minutes.

Bucky laughed and wiped the wetness from his eyes. "Yes, that's what it means." He explained patiently. Tony was so adorable but that he felt that it was necessary to ask over and over again that this was real and that it was really happening, made Bucky ache for him. Rhodey had hinted at it earlier and that made Bucky not only sad but also angry. He was mad at Tony's exes for installing such a fear of abandonment in him, that he couldn't believe Bucky even after assuring him over and over again.

It also made Bucky worry, that he might not be enough for Tony, that he wasn't able to give Tony what he needed and he would end up just like his previous relationships and leave Tony. It terrified him.

A knock on Bucky's door brought him out of it. Tony was hiccuping softly into his ears.

"Bucky?" Steve asked from behind the door. "Have you been up all night?"

"Who's that?" Tony slurred.

"That's my flatmate, Steve, told you he's a pain in the ass sometimes," Bucky explained.

"I heard that!" Steve yelled. "And all I'm asking is that you keep it down! I've been hearing you chitchat all night!"

"Well, excuse me. I've been talking to my boyfriend, didn't know that was a crime!" Bucky yelled back and then the door burst open.

"Boyfriend?" Steve stared at him with wide eyes. "When did that happen?"

Bucky checked the clock. "About 22 minutes ago." He said, grinning smugly.

"Tony?" Steve asked, searching Bucky's monitors for a clue and when Bucky nodded Steve tackled him in his chair with no regards to any recording equipment still attached to Bucky. They both tumbled to the floor, Steve enveloping Bucky in a bear hug and squeezed him tightly. "I am so happy for you!"

Bucky struggled to breathe under Steve's crushing weight and tried to get his arm free. He was worried that Tony might get the wrong impression. Finally, he managed to get his hand free and hit Steve in the shoulder, who finally let go. He hurried back to the computer and put his headphones back on.

"Tony, you still there?" The line seemed dead and Bucky quickly checked if the call was still connected. It was and then after listening closely, he could hear Tony softly breathing. Tony had fallen asleep.

"I hate you." Bucky punched Steve in the shoulder a few times for good measures because the guy was grinning smugly at him.

#winteriron #tony stark #bucky barnes #tony x bucky #gamer au #no powers au #long distance relationship #getting together #steve rogers #james rhodes #prompts #jamesprince

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