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edenfallingHomestuck is now invading my dreams.
For example, a couple weeks ago I had a dream that resulted in a Dave<>Aradia fic that I am noodling around with. The rough draft is currently 3,500 words or so. It went very fast at first, but now I've hit the stage where I need to bash it heavily around the edges so it runs on story logic instead of dream logic.
And last night, I dreamed that trolls and humans had both colonized a marginal sort of planet and then the new colonies got abandoned in the muddle of a vast interstellar interspecies war. The world they were on contained a lot of vicious psychic monsters, and the two species took different approaches to dealing with them. The humans used genetic engineering to give some people specialized powers that mimicked the native animals' abilities. The trolls, who already had some psychic powers, instead of took advantage of a quirk of the hemospectrum.
You see, it turned out that candy red blood was NOT an unknown mutation. It was just very, very rare... and trolls with that kind of blood could be bound to the biggest, scariest native predator the trolls could find, which they then set as a sort of guardian threat near their colony. The catch is that if the red-blood troll died, the predator would then turn on and eat the trolls instead of protecting them. So any tyrian-blood troll would have to use her or his powers to keep the red-blood alive until another red-blood was born.
There is a big potential for abuse of power here. And the Condesce began abusing it, setting herself up as a dictator in the shadows with the Sufferer's life as her knife at the colony's throat.
Until Karkat and Feferi were born.
And then there was a complicated plot involving organized crime, Karkat and Feferi being forced to work together to save their colony, Nepeta tracking illegal fertilizer shipments, Sollux and Aradia conspiring to break the Sufferer out of his prison and transfer the psychic bond to Karkat, Karkat getting roped into town council politics against his will (he secretly wanted to be a kindergarten teacher or the troll equivalent thereof), etc. And there was some kind of spillover from the bond, so Karkat got a bunch of the bond monster's instincts and appetites and was NOT HAPPY about that.
And then the humans and trolls, who had colonized different continents on this planet, finally bumped into each other and went, "Ack, the enemy!" and there was a giant diplomatic mess on top of the younger trolls trying to oust the Condesce from her shadowy position of power so she couldn't keep blocking everything they did democratically out in the open.
Also Nicolas Cage drove a speedboat along some canals, but I don't think that was relevant to the main plot thread. *wry*
...
And now to bed. After I take another Benadryl. *blows nose, curses early spring*
For example, a couple weeks ago I had a dream that resulted in a Dave<>Aradia fic that I am noodling around with. The rough draft is currently 3,500 words or so. It went very fast at first, but now I've hit the stage where I need to bash it heavily around the edges so it runs on story logic instead of dream logic.
And last night, I dreamed that trolls and humans had both colonized a marginal sort of planet and then the new colonies got abandoned in the muddle of a vast interstellar interspecies war. The world they were on contained a lot of vicious psychic monsters, and the two species took different approaches to dealing with them. The humans used genetic engineering to give some people specialized powers that mimicked the native animals' abilities. The trolls, who already had some psychic powers, instead of took advantage of a quirk of the hemospectrum.
You see, it turned out that candy red blood was NOT an unknown mutation. It was just very, very rare... and trolls with that kind of blood could be bound to the biggest, scariest native predator the trolls could find, which they then set as a sort of guardian threat near their colony. The catch is that if the red-blood troll died, the predator would then turn on and eat the trolls instead of protecting them. So any tyrian-blood troll would have to use her or his powers to keep the red-blood alive until another red-blood was born.
There is a big potential for abuse of power here. And the Condesce began abusing it, setting herself up as a dictator in the shadows with the Sufferer's life as her knife at the colony's throat.
Until Karkat and Feferi were born.
And then there was a complicated plot involving organized crime, Karkat and Feferi being forced to work together to save their colony, Nepeta tracking illegal fertilizer shipments, Sollux and Aradia conspiring to break the Sufferer out of his prison and transfer the psychic bond to Karkat, Karkat getting roped into town council politics against his will (he secretly wanted to be a kindergarten teacher or the troll equivalent thereof), etc. And there was some kind of spillover from the bond, so Karkat got a bunch of the bond monster's instincts and appetites and was NOT HAPPY about that.
And then the humans and trolls, who had colonized different continents on this planet, finally bumped into each other and went, "Ack, the enemy!" and there was a giant diplomatic mess on top of the younger trolls trying to oust the Condesce from her shadowy position of power so she couldn't keep blocking everything they did democratically out in the open.
Also Nicolas Cage drove a speedboat along some canals, but I don't think that was relevant to the main plot thread. *wry*
...
And now to bed. After I take another Benadryl. *blows nose, curses early spring*
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 01:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 02:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 02:17 am (UTC)So what stopped the tool-users from just wiping the animals out? Unless something's dangerous enough to kill every human at once, you'd think we'd be hard at work killing their young/snaring/poisoning or whatever could pick them off. In progress, not enough time to work and people to do it?
On a different scale, it's a bit like Cloud's Rider. Local wildlife was psychic, so to keep it from convincing humans to open their doors and walk out to be eaten, humans bonded with horse-carnivore psychics. They keep a little shoreline next to a mountain clear of the biggest predators, but trouble is always coming in from the borders. Then something with thumbs comes over the hills and bonds to get enough abstract understanding to work a latch...
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 03:19 am (UTC)Rider at the Gate is almost certainly a strong influence here. I read that book in the mid-90s and was kind 'meh' about it as a book, but as world-building? Awesome!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-20 02:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-18 05:35 am (UTC)wow.
this is pinging me SO HARD you have no idea. It's like you took all my story kinks and made a delicious cocktail with it and then put in a clasy little umbrella. Are you writing it? Please say you are. I'll make sadfaces at you otherwise! ))))))':
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 02:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 02:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-20 12:23 am (UTC)---------------
There are worse fates, you tell yourself. There have to be worse fates. At least this way your friends are alive. (Except they're too brave to keep their heads down and escape her notice.) At least this way your people are safe. (Except she's as dangerous as any of the native monsters.) At least this way you can take all the horror on yourself and never need to worry what she might do to another troll born with your oh-so-useful blood.
The gate to your cell opens, and the monster stirs sleepily in the back of your skull. =Fresh meat?= A questing tendril of thought flicks toward the figure.
A needle-fine whip of light parries it neatly. "Heh. Time to toth another dithenter to your appetite, I gueth," he says.
You growl deep in your chest and lunge, your hatred and the monster's hunger nearly dislocating your shoulders against the pull of the chains. Just two extra inches, please merciful world please...
But no. Your teeth snap fruitlessly shut in empty air, and with him awake and paying attention, there's no way to slide a subtle compulsion into his thinkpan.
"Behave," he says. "I know there'th thtill a thivilithed troll in there. Her Grathe wouldn't bother coming to watch you otherwithe. Animalth don't fight againtht their inthtinctth."
He sets a pail on the floor.
"Thpeaking of inthtinctth," he says, and gives you a horrible parody of the smile you used to trust more than almost anything on this twisted death trap of a planet.
You find your voice. "No. Even she wouldn't sink this low. If there was ever anything between us, if even one second of that wasn't a lie, please, don't do this." He pins you to the wall with a crackle of red and blue light, walks forward and runs his hands down the nakedness you suddenly feel with all the shame you thought you'd set aside sweeps ago.
"Fuck you," you growl. "Traitor, coward, back-stabbing liar. I hate you so much, I could rip you apart a thousand times and bathe in your blood and viscera and it still wouldn't be enough. You swore you were my friend, you said you might be pale for me, and all the time you were working for her. Fuck you!"
"That'th the idea," he says.
Humiliatingly, it works. He slips out of your cell with a full pail and a smirk, leaving you stained candy red with the evidence of your failure.
You guess she's decided to breed a backup. Or maybe she just wants the fun of breaking in a new toy.
=Happy with you= the monster croons, an intangible vibration in the back of your skull. =Good nest, rich prey, pretty colors=
You try desperately to sink into dreamless sleep, but the taste of blood and the splinter of bones in your teeth follows you even into unconsciousness.
Nobody comes for another three days. When the cell door finally opens, you smash your way into the already bleeding thinkpan of the body shoved through the door, and call it toward you on its broken limbs. It flops limply forward, dragging itself inch by painful inch, until it's within your grasp and you seize its arms and reel it in. The meat and blood are delicious.
It's only after, when what passes for your sanity returns in the wake of satiation, that you realize the blood was yellow and the ruined face was one you knew.
The monster won't let you vomit.
You look up to see her standing outside your prison, a delighted smirk on her lips. "A suitable fate for a traitor twice over. Don't you agree, pet? But don't worry. Even if his ruse manages to breed another freak with your enemy blood, I promise I'll never neglect you. You're mine forever, no matter what other pets I acquire."
It hurts too much to work through the implications of her words. So you don't. You pull the monster forward, let its thoughts cascade over your own, and lose yourself in simple hunger and territorial rage until you almost make yourself forget what you fled from.
When you remember, you tell yourself there are worse fates. There must be. There have to. (And you will kill yourself and the whole colony before you let her get her claws into your maybe-someday child.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-20 03:01 am (UTC)Urgh, how unimaginably awful for the Sufferer -- at least the Psiioniic got to check out early, if only in the most painful way. The Sufferer would earn his name in spades in this AU.
I guess despite everything the Psiioniic was trying to help? Or was he just trying to build a separate power base to challenge the Condesce from?
Really, good show making life more of a horror than Alternia!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-20 03:29 am (UTC)I am not sure whether anyone else will ever learn the truth. They may write him off as a pathological traitor, which probably gives Sollux a lot of scope for angst, wondering if there's something lurking in his genetic makeup that will make him betray Karkat. Or maybe he wrote a coded journal and somebody will find it; I don't know.
Really, good show making life more of a horror than Alternia!
Things can always get worse. But this is pretty much the nadir of the AU. It's mostly about how to make things better, but that has little impact unless you know what the trolls are moving away from.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-20 06:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-20 03:03 am (UTC)the monster was fun in a creepy way. not too smart, is it. XD now aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa SOMEONE SAVE HIM ;___;
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-20 03:22 am (UTC)Yeah, this whole backstory is nothing but ouch, ouch, and more ouch. But someone does save him eventually! (...I kind of want to write that now, since the 'someones' in question are Sollux and Aradia, and given this whole mess with the Psiioniic, that's not going to go down without complications. *angelic smile*)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-08 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 02:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-18 02:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 02:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 10:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-19 04:38 pm (UTC)