Fanfiction Fridays: how… did you tell your friends by sburbanite

“Do you honestly think he hasn’t figured it out by now?”

Karkat looks pointedly at Egbert, who’s talking animatedly to Roxy on the other side of the clearing. With the light filtering prettily through the leaves, they look a picture of heterosexual bliss. It’s the final shot of dozens of Karkat’s terrible Rom-coms, a textbook “happily ever after” pose with the couple giggling contentedly at each other’s jokes. Knowing those two they’re probably dirty jokes, shit you’d never say in polite company, but somehow that’s even more perfect. You want that. You want to sit with Karkat’s head in your lap and talk about bullshit until the sun sets, but you can’t because you’re a fucking coward.

It’s been a week since the dust of creation finally settled over your new paradise, and you still haven’t had ‘the talk’ with John. The ‘I like dudes as well as ladies, and that information is kinda pretty relevant since I’ve been dating Karkat over a year’ talk. A part of you wishes Egbert had the social skills to put two and two together and come up with the bright-red number four that’s been under his nose this whole time, but he obviously hasn’t. Even though you practically haven’t let Karkat out of your sight for the whole time you’ve been here, he just. Doesn’t. Get it.

“Are you kidding me?” You reply, flopping backward in a show of frustration. “Unless we start making out right in front of him, he’s not gonna notice a damn thing. He honest to God gave me a noogie yesterday and was all:

‘Jimeny jillikers, Dave! It’s great that you and Karkat are such awesome pals! I’m sorry I’ve been spending so much time with Roxy, but I’ll come hang out with you guys soon and we can have a bropalfriendfest and build a pillow fort’ or some equally dumb charming bullshit.”

You sigh, brushing your fringe out of your eyes and wondering how long the stupid victory message is going to be branded onto the sky.

“I have no idea how he’d feel if he knew what kind of shenanigans usually go down in one of our pillow forts, but I sincerely doubt he’d want to join in.”

When I went looking for a Homestuck fic to write about this week, I was just hoping to find something good. I wasn’t expecting to find one that hit me quite as personally as this one did.

Fanfiction Fridays: The Ace Thing by NoBrandHero

GT: if i marry him won’t that make me your stepdad??
TG: …….
TG: youre planning on marrying my bro
GT: i don’t fucking know!!
GT: we’re dating, so it’s kind of a possibility????
TG: is he aware youre already thinking about marriage
GT: dude, shut up!
TG: nah man i think we need to get our calendars out and see about booking a minister
TG: ill draw up the invitations
TG: sweet bro and hella jeff cordially invite you to the unholy union of egbert and strider
GT: auuuugh no i don’t want to be my best friend’s stepdad!!!!!!
TG: think the word youre really lookin for here is stepbro
GT: you’re in so much denial holy shit. no wonder rose psychologically dissects you all the time.

—The Ace Thing, Chapter Six

It’s been 84 years…

After a year-long hiatus, the unorthodox webcomic Homestuck has resumed to its semi-erratic updating schedule. Although I’m definitely not as into the series as I used to be, I’m super excited to see how the series ends—ie: hopefully without all the characters dying—and more than willing to celebrate its triumphant site-breaking return with a fic recommendation. In light of this and in light of Asexual Awareness Week, today’s fic delves not only back into the Homestuck universe, but also focuses solely on a perfectly healthy relationship between a character that is asexual and a character who is, self-admittedly, not asexual at all.

Fanfiction Fridays: The Complex Art Of Playing House

When an author takes a prolonged break from their series, It’s not really surprising that their audience tends to fade away and find different fandoms to occupy their time. This might be more true with webcomics than with any other form of media, or at least it didn’t take me long to flounce from Homestuck to the numerous other things that were just a click away. But now that the comic has returned to its irregularly scheduled updates from its months-long hiatus, I felt it only fitting that I recommend a fic that reminded me why I loved the series in the first place. Or at least what attracted me to the fandom so strongly.

One of the most endearing things about the original comic was John’s protective instinct over the strange creatures that inhabited his planet when he entered Sburb (Don’t know what that is? Lady Saika did a fantastic post summing up the beginning of Homestuck here). Actually, just one. One lucky yellow salamander was chosen by John to be his surrogate ‘daughter’, named Casey after the daughter in his favorite movie Con Air. If you think that fandom didn’t jump all over this, you’re wrong. So incredibly wrong. In fact, that’s where today’s story starts.

Never underestimate a man’s love for his daughter

Let Saika Tell You About Homestuck: Act 4

So you made it through the Intermission, eh? I guess that means you’re ready to get all Act 4 up in here.

Let Saika Tell You About Homestuck: Act 3

It’s been a while since my Act 2 post, for which I apologize—I got too sucked into actually catching up to write about catching up, I guess. Anyway, if you’re here I’m guessing you’ve read all of Act 2, and you’re ready to start Act 3. That means spoilers for Act 2 are fair game after the jump. Shall we?

Let Saika Tell You About Homestuck: Act 2

If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you’re still with me, and have read both my post about Act 1 and Act 1 itself. So although I’ll do my best to not spoil Act 2 below, Act 1 is gonna be fair game. If you’re ready to jump in, join me after the break.

Fanfiction Fridays: The Irony of Bubblemates by Brodad

We all have them, those stories that we visit the pages of each day in hopes that its author updates with a pace that matches our voracious need of their works. This is one of mine. This is another Homestuck story, so I’ll try to explain the confusing parts as best I can but to do so will involve some MILD SPOILERS, so I’ll just warn you of that now.

All in all, once you get the basics the physics behind The Irony of Bubblemates by Brodad, it’s incredibly simple and the possibilities keep the audience coming back for more. The general premise is that cool kid Dave Strider (who I mentioned in my previous Homestuck fic review) and the incredibly dorky alien troll kid, Tavros Nitram, have taken up rooming together in Dave’s dreambubble apartment. By the mention of dream, you may think that this is some terrible fic where a bunch of heartwarming moments happen and then they wake up and don’t remember anything. You would only be half-right. In the series, dreambubbles act as a way for a being to work through a previously stressful moment of their lives by re-living it, only “waking up” in the bubble once they fully realize their massive amounts of déjà vu. However, these bubbles are not confined to the living, the hundreds upon hundreds of dead, offshoot timeline beings have dreambubbles too and they can control where they go (since they don’t have to worry about waking up). That is where we find our two protagonists: dead and chilling out playing some video games.

Aside from sick-nasty rap-offs and humorous banter, this story not only explores the feelings of someone that has to come to terms with their alive self still living the life that they no longer can have, but also further fleshes out the troll romance system. Even though webcomic author Andrew Hussie goes over it more than enough times, it’s still pretty confusing, so this fic was really helpful. Besides that, it explores Tavros’ insecurities, Dave’s fear of commitment, and how an inter-species relationship can work when it seems like a wrong move will land you in the hospital (yes, you can still get hurt even though you’re dead. What a raw deal, eh?). Although their relationship is adorable, this fic quickly becomes highly smutty and NSFW. Luckily, you can tell which chapters are going to have sexual content because Brodad is a total sweetie and put ratings and a short description of the part at the beginning of each chapter.

Even if you don’t really understand Homestuck, I would recommend giving it a read anyway. Especially if you like slightly dramatic relationship fics where the characters don’t get into a relationship right away. You can find the story here on Brodad’s tumblr. She also put it up on AO3, but it’s going through a massive re-hauling right now so it may not be up in its entirety.

 

Fanfiction Fridays: PTSD by raequiem

For the first time in, well, ever, I’m a member in a fandom before it completely dies out. In fact, I’m lucky that I’m a part of this fandom during its creative zenith. So welcome to my obsession, dear readers, and allow me to tell you about Homestuck. To try and explain this story is a joke in the fandom because it’s so fucking complicated that even a short explanation ends up being pages in MS word but I’ll do the series no justice what so ever and leave it at “four 13 year-old internet friends play a game together that destroys the universe and they have to make a new one”.

Our main characters for the majority of the story are John, Rose, Jade, and Dave. John is the resident regular kid. Rose is a psychologist in the making with a love of Lovecraft-ian lore. Jade is the sweet, but not stupid gunslinger. And Dave is the cool kid who isn’t actually all that cool (but that level of irony makes him cool despite that). Although they don’t seem like they have much in common, they’re great friends who care deeply for each other and hey, with a cast like this who wouldn’t want to make happy ending post-game fic? No one, that’s who. But with a title like PTSD, I’m sure you’re wondering what makes this happy at all. Although this fic does deal extensively with the issue of actual PTSD, in this case the author uses it to stand for Post-TimeShit Dave.

In this universe-destroying game, each character has a class that they must utilize to beat the game. Dave’s aspect was time. Whereas this means that he can travel to any timeline he wants, it also means that he has to be careful to not doom his original timeline by creating paradoxes. It also means that he has the utmost pleasure of watching his friends die over and over again in varying ways. You can see how this could be stressful.

Before I confuse you even more, I’ll just get to what I like about this fic. First off, the way the author deals with Dave’s alcoholism is not only realistic, but also very sensitive to the issue. And whereas it remains a hurdle Dave has to overcome, it doesn’t come to define him. I really appreciate how all the characters are still friends but have lives of their own. But what it comes down to is that I really love how all the characters are still in character.

Since the characters are explored only through dialogue, it can be all too easy to distill them down to a single panel. However, these characters manage to maintain their dimensions and remind the audience why we even care about them after the game. Dave is not only still obsessed with being cool, but he’s also vulnerable and defensive. Jade is still a kind, funny girl but she’s more than willing to knock some sense into her friends. The adolescent friendship is still there, but it has matured along with them.

Now, perhaps this may not seem like the “happy post-game” fic that I was talking about earlier, but in a webcomic where characters die every other page, just seeing everyone alive and adjusting is happy enough. They are together, and so the audience knows they can overcome the hardships in their lives. This is what makes this series so great as a whole: that is recognizes internet friendships as legitimate friendships and how they can impact people so deeply. Now, I have a ton more Homestuck fics for this segment, so I’ll leave this point for one that exemplifies it more.

But, if you like friendship fics with a little bit of romance and a heavy dose of reality, I would highly recommend giving this fic a shot. Click here if you’re interested.