Fanfiction Fridays: Promstuck

by shelby

I’m… leery of high school AUs. You get that early on when you’re, say, looking for good Naruto fanfiction (a nigh-impossible task) in the early 2000s. However, when I finally finished reading Homestuck for the first time a few months ago, and I turned to the two dudes who were my Homestuck fanfic sherpas looking for a quality fix, one of the first stories they offered me was Promstuck.

Promstuck is a panel-by-panel comic accompanied by a written story, much like its canon inspiration, which was illustrated by shelby and written by urbanAnchorite and Cephied_Variable. Although it features pretty much all the Beta troll and human kids and the Beta human Guardians, the plot mostly follows Karkat as he spends his senior prom evening trying desperately to man up and admit his flushed feelings—aka his huge-ass troll crush—to his hopelessly obtuse best friend John. And, in the meantime, everyone works together (to some extent) to salvage the prom from its terribly-DJed, far-too-responsibly-chaperoned, the-punch-isn’t-even-spiked sad reality.

The first time I read Promstuck was inadvisably during class a few months ago. I say inadvisably because I found some parts so hilarious that I had to try very hard not to laugh aloud. Furthermore, although I mostly ship everyone with everyone in Homestuck, John/Karkat is one of my absolute favorite pairings, so it was an added bonus that it was the focus of the fic. Outside of Johnkat, Promstuck also has a variety of pairings pale, flushed, and caliginous, ranging from Karkat<>Kanaya (another of my faves) and John<>Vriska, to the canon pairings like Jack<3<Sn0wman and Kanaya/Rose and (canonish) Dave/Terezi, to I-guess-that-could-work crack pairings like Jade/Nepeta.

The alternate universe this fic is based in began with a separate Marchingstuck story/stories (wherein everyone is part of their high school’s marching band), but I hadn’t read any of these before reading Promstuck and I don’t think you need to. Their roles in the band are explained in the story as background, and don’t really play a huge part in the prom shenanigans.

Start reading Promstuck here on tumblr, and follow the ==>’s to proceed through the story. (Who am I kidding, y’all know how these things work.) Enjoy!

Fanfiction Fridays: Always Summer by Ghosty

[Trigger Warning: Incestual Implications]

For today, I had planned to show you guys a really cute, domestic Homestuck fic, but fate intervened. While I was perusing through tumblr, I saw someone mention this fic about a relationship that I feel should get more attention than it does. However, this story also includes two things I don’t really enjoy: incest and werewolves. As I mentioned in some earlier posts of mine, incest just isn’t really my thing, but I also find werewolves a tired plot device at this point. Especially with all the pseudo-Twilight stories coming out. So the question was “can this fic actually pull this off?” It did so. Beyond my expectations.