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

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: Loophole by SaccharineSylph

Are you tired of Homestuck posts yet? If you are, too bad. I’ve had this fanfic prepped and ready for a while and considering what month it is, I don’t think there’s a better time for me to reveal it.

Art by Lazili @ tumblr

No matter what fandom you’re in, there’s bound to be roughly infinity AUs (alternate universes): high school AUs, England AUs, rock star AUs. The list is only limited by the fandom’s imagination. However, out of all the fandoms I’ve been in, Homestuck has had about the most, and the most diverse, set of AUs I’ve ever seen.

Despite that, this story doesn’t take place in a universe where everyone is a space pirate or where they’re down on their luck circus folk just trying to get by. It’s interesting in its seeming normalcy. It’s interesting because it forces the reader to reconsider how they view humanity and how social media interacts with society on a broader scope than Tumblr petitions and Harlem Shake videos. It’s interesting because it’s about the most realistic fantastical AU I’ve read (I know that’s a bit of an oxymoron, but stick with me here) and trust me when I say this: it hurts.

A lot.

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?

Oh, My Pop Culture God Tier: The Price of Godlike Powers

With great power comes great responsibility, right? Well, godlike power also tends to come at a steep price, no matter what the situation. Fiction is full of situations where characters in need have acquired phenomenal cosmic powers, but only at a tremendous cost to themselves. For this post I’m gonna focus on the good guys, but there are plenty of bad guys that fall into this scenario as well.

Spoilers for Madoka, Homestuck, Doctor Who below the cut.

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.

Let Saika Tell You About Homestuck: Act 1

So after Ohayocon, where we nearly drowned in Homestuck cosplayers, I was forced to admit it to myself. There must be something to this Homestuck thing. I haven’t really had time since Ohayocon to breathe, however, let alone to get myself mired in as complicated a fandom as Homestuck seems to be, so I was putting it off. And then I found myself laid over for several hours in Narita Airport, and decided the time had come to do the deed. I’m not finished yet (I’m only up to Act 3 as of writing this), but I figured I’d share my Homestuck findings with you, dear reader, and tell you that it’s not as scary as it seems.

So here goes. Let me tell you about Homestuck.