[Fic] "Trollstuck," part 25 (end of ch. 6) - Homestuck

[edenfalling]

back to part 24

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Trollstuck, part 25
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====>Answer your friend

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling ghastlyTrickster [GT] --

CG: HEY ASSFACE, WHERE ARE YOU?
GT: ~~ hi karkat, how are you? i am fine.
GT: ~~ wow, it's good to know you're fine too!
GT: ~~ isn't it great that we both know how to start conversations like normal trolls?
CG: I'M NOT FINE AND YOU'RE NOT EITHER, NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK.
CG: NOW WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU
CG: AND HOW SOON CAN YOU GET TO VRISKA'S HIVE.
GT: ~~ a lot sooner if you hadn't bothered me!
GT: ~~ i am just about to break out of equius's basement.
CG: WHAT IN THE NAME OF FESTERING SHIT ARE YOU DOING THERE?
GT: ~~ being passed out, mostly. :)
GT: ~~ he locked me in after i crashed my rocket bike in a doomsday device and jumped through one of his windows to save myself from falling down into spidermom's web.
GT: ~~ i kind of hit a wall and knocked myself out. oops!
GT: ~~ but now i'm all better so i'm hurrying over to vriska's hive to make sure she's ok.
GT: ~~ she sounded really stressed when i talked to her, because of this conspiracy nonsense.
GT: ~~ speaking of which, do you know if equius did anything to jarlia's dreambot?
GT: ~~ because if aradia's out to torture vriska, that would be an easy way to turn everyone against her, and equius goes all funny and 'please order me around' when she comes over, so he definitely has opportunity and motive!
GT: ~~ ...
GT: ~~ karkat are you even paying attention to me?
CG: NO.
CG: NO I AM NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO YOU
CG: BECAUSE I CAN'T READ MY HUSKTOP SCREEN THROUGH THE SKIN OF MY HANDS,
CG: WHICH I HAVE SLAPPED OVER MY GANDERBULBS IN UTTER DISBELIEF AT THE DEPTH OF YOUR IMBECILITY.
CG: ALSO MY NOSE IS FUCKING KILLING ME NOW. THANKS FOR THAT YOU SHITPANNED WASTE OF AIR.
GT: ~~ ????????
CG: LISTEN, YOU SACK OF CULLING LEFTOVERS.
CG: THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY.
CG: JARLIA SAW THE FUTURE, BUT BECAUSE HER ROBOT IS CURRENTLY BROKEN
CG: (FOR REASONS THAT ARE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT AND NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS ANYWAY)
CG: SHE DIDN'T REMEMBER ALL THE DETAILS AND ACCIDENTALLY SET OFF THE CHAIN OF EVENTS SHE WAS TRYING TO PREVENT.
CG: WANT TO GUESS HOW SHE DID THAT?
CG: BY TROLLING YOU, GENIUS! THEN YOU TROLLED VRISKA.
CG: AND SUDDENLY A PERFECTLY JUSTIFIABLE LESSON ABOUT TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR HER OWN MASSIVE FAILINGS TURNED INTO A STARSHIP WITH A DEAD HELMSMAN LOCKED INTO A COLLISION COURSE WITH ARADIA'S HIVE.
CG: ALMOST LITERALLY, SINCE SHE'S GOING TO USE SOLLUX AS THE MURDER WEAPON.
CG: I KNOW YOU DON'T BELIEVE VRISKA WOULD DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT, BUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE, GO SIT ON HER OR SOMETHING.
CG: I DON'T CARE IF YOU GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT ARADIA OR NOT.
CG: DO IT FOR VRISKA.
CG: YOU ALWAYS SAY SHE FEELS BAD FOR THE SHIT SHE PULLS.
CG: HOW ABOUT NOT LETTING HER PULL SHIT IN THE FIRST PLACE INSTEAD OF TELLING HER AFTERWARD THAT IT WASN'T REALLY HER FAULT?
CG: THAT WOULD BE A LOT MORE EFFICIENT, YOU DUMBFUCK.
GT: ~~ oh my god, karkat, vriska IS NOT A BAD PERSON!!!!!!!!
GT: ~~ she has every right to make aradia pay.
GT: ~~ yeah breaking tavros was dumb and overboard but he's still alive. and we can fix him! we have the science!
GT: ~~ and i don't know why everyone is so fast to jump to the worst conclusions about vriska!
GT: ~~ why not jump to conclusions about aradia?
CG: HMM, WHAT AN UNEXPECTED QUESTION!
CG: LET ME THINK
CG: OH WAIT I DON'T HAVE TO BECAUSE THE ANSWER IS OBVIOUS.
CG: VRISKA'S A BITCH AND ARADIA'S NOT.
CG: YOU IDIOT.
GT: ~~ you're just prejudiced!
GT: ~~ aradia's not harmless!
GT: ~~ tavros let the flarp thing drop so that's that. it's not aradia's place to do stuff FOR him just because she's mad.
GT: ~~ torturing people with ghosts is way beyond an equal retaliation!
GT: ~~ vriska sounded REALLY upset when i trolled her, not like herself at all.
GT: ~~ maybe i will break out of here and go help with whatever revenge she's planning.
GT: ~~ you can join jarlia in the "tried to turn jothan against vriska but actually did the opposite" club, like the whiney tool you are.
GT: ~~ and when this is all over and aradia's still alive but feels sorry for what she's done,
GT: ~~ i will point and laugh and YOU can be the one wondering why your friends don't like you anymore!
GT: ~~ so there.

-- ghastlyTrickster [GT] blocked carcinoGeneticist [CG] --

CG: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, JOTHAN.
CG: OH WELL, AT LEAST YOU'RE GOING OVER THERE.
CG: MAYBE SEEING SPIDERBITCH IN THE MIDDLE OF CULLING SOMEONE YOU KNOW WILL MAKE YOU WAKE UP AND JOIN WHAT THE REST OF US FONDLY LIKE TO REFER TO AS REALITY.
CG: OR MAYBE NOT.
CG: DOUCHEWAFFLE.
CG: ...MAYBE NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO OPEN THAT MEMO.

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling ghastlyTrickster [GT] --

====>Jothan: Break out of here

Karkat is still trying to type even after you blocked him, but you don't care what he has to say. You shove Casey into your sylladex, pick up your hammer, and smash it into the door.

It crumples, tears free from the bolts and hinges, and flies across the hallway to rebound off the wall with a clank and clatter so loud you're briefly worried Equius might have heard the noise all the way down at the bottom of the canyon.

You didn't mean to hit quite that hard, but anger is a powerful thing!

Equius's hive is a lot more logically organized than Vriska's. Hers is like a maze full of blind corridors, wrong turns, pit traps, secret tunnels, and hidden treasure rooms. Equius's is basically a three-dimensional grid with stairways and elevators at regular intervals. He is such a stick-in-the-mud! The only interesting parts are his horrible art posters and the heaps of broken stuff lying all over the place where his STRENGTH or his temper got away from him. You easily leap over those as you run up toward the surface, glancing into rooms as you pass in search of a quick way to cross the canyon. It's a little too wide to jump, so you need an engine or a rope or something. Luckily Equius has a lot of useful somethings lying around.

You find a spool of ridiculously thin rope lying next to rows of titanium poles with notches in the ends -- looks like Equius is still trying to build a bow than can stand up to him. If he thinks the rope might work for his archery fetish, it should hold your weight with no problem. You tie it onto the end of a crowbar (very useful for opening treasure chests and also breaking into empty hives after their residents have been culled), hurry over to a window, and hurl the makeshift grappling hook across the gap.

It takes eight tries, but you finally get the crowbar to break through one of Vriska's upper windows and catch firmly on the edge. It may not hold forever, but you only need a few seconds, just long enough to break through a lower window. Preferably feet first this time! Passing out twice in the same night is not recommended.

Then you can find Vriska and see for yourself that Jarlia's and Karkat's scaremongering is stupid nonsense. Vriska is a good person! There is no way she'd kill Aradia (or use Sollux to do it, that's just icky). You will prove that to your friends, you will persuade Aradia to call off her ghosts, and this night's mess will be nothing more than a stupid mistake you all look back on and laugh about.

You are completely sure of this.

You take a deep breath and jump into the void.

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End Chapter Six

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continue to part 26

And now onward to chapter 7, aka Vriska and the climax of this plot arc! (Though not the climax of the story itself, obviously -- there would have been no point whatsoever to chapters 2 and 3 in that case.) Hmm. So.

I would like to add another illustration to this chapter, beyond Jothan's character portrait. What would you like to see? (And no, I am not doing another comic. Single images only!)

Also, where should we join Vriska? Do you want to see her conversation with Jothan from her POV, or shall we pick up directly after that? And who would you like to see talk to her over the course of the chapter?

Comments

[askerian]

can i slap jothan around a little plz. he's just making it all worse and also karkat has a point about helping to stop vriska BEFORE shit happens aaaaaaaa.

[askerian]

and i do want to see the vriska/john convo plz! no skipping nooooo ;___; and uhhhh maybe... kanaya? are they still pseudo-pale in this 'verse? or Feferi?aaa almost everyone would make it worse! DX

[edenfalling]

Executive decision: no, Kanaya is not pale or pseudo-pale for Vriska. Vriska made it clear that she doesn't think she needs a moirail and generally won't listen to Kanaya, so Kanaya backed off, except insofar as she likes to manage/help/mediate for all her circle of friends, which does make her more likely to TRY helping Vriska when most other people would just write her off entirely. (Her flushcrush is aimed in a different direction, so she has no reason to stick around. *grin*)

...I kind of want to throw Jarlia back into the story and have her troll Vriska directly, after she's done talking to Alonde and Nepeta. I wonder how that might work. *ponders*

(Karkat has a very valid point! He's not half bad at understanding people when he shuts up and gets out of his own way.)

[red-volpe.livejournal.com]

I love how it took eight tries. xD
I think that would be a good illustration point, actually, but like how Hussie has the "facepalm 2x combo!!" pages, but with "8 times the ch8rm!" or something. ヽ（・＿・；)ノ
And I agree with Askerian as far as where we should pick up at. As for who she should talk to...hm. It would be interesting to see how she and Jarlia would interact, but I don't want things to get worse! щ( °Д°;щ)
Hmm. Who, other than Jothan (and to a lesser extent, Equius) is on (relatively) good terms with her at this point...
...
...
Oh! Is Eridan still her kismesis at this point in time? Because he might be able to distract her

[edenfalling]

I always figured Vriska's tepid attempt at black romance with Eridan came after Terezi dumped her as a Flarp partner and was mostly a reaction to that -- like she'd settle for him (even if Dualscar's kismesissitude with Mindfang had fizzled) if she couldn't be close to the person she really admired and enjoyed hanging out with. Which is a long way of saying no, Eridan is not her kismessis now and may not ever be. He's definitely distracting, though!

So you suggest illustrating Jothan throwing the crowbar over the canyon? Hmm. Action scenes (by which I mean any picture that involves someone doing things instead of just standing or sitting portrait-style) are tricky, and I don't think I could compress eight attempts into one picture without going the sequential art route, which I don't want to do again.

[red-volpe.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see!
What I mean with the picture, was just a still shot, maybe of the crowbar catching, with a caption on it. Sorry if I wasn't clear. ^^; but I can understand if you want to do something different, I mean, it's your story!

[edenfalling]

Hmm. I'm not sure if I'll end up with that exactly, but something toward the end of the chapter does sound like a good idea -- to sort of balance out the character portrait at the beginning. :-)

[explodingfrogs.livejournal.com]

Thirding picking up during rather than after the John/Vriska confrontation.

For the second picture of the chapter, you could go with Karkat's facepalm x2 combo (complete with labelling). It has the advantage of being both easy to draw and a long-standing Homestuck tradition.

As for other Chapter 7 Vriska conversations...hmm. I'm kind of interested in Davven talking at Vriska as part of some form of........
.......
distaction, and once the plan starts seriously impeding Vriska, I can easily see Alonde making contact to offer terms of surrender. And psychoanalysis. And some polite commentary that could be very easily mistaken for passive-aggressive taunting. (Of course, just because she thinks Vriska is as good as beaten doesn't necessarily mean she really is; hubris is her major character flaw in canon, after all.)

Come to think of it, those two conversations plus the one with Jarlia that you're pondering would mean that all four of the canonically-human trolls contact Vriska during her chapter.

[edenfalling]

Okay, looks like we'll start with Vriska shortly before Jothan trolls her -- I will compress and skip the chatlog itself, the way I did the Jarlia-and-Jothan log in this chapter, but we can definitely see her state of mind before he talks to her.

Mmm, I don't really want to draw Karkat, though, since this is Jothan's chapter.

Alonde might well contact Vriska once she realizes Tavros is a dead loss on account of pie. *makes note* And Davven using Trollian as a distraction might be... oh, hey, you know, I can work with that; it gives me a way to show something I wasn't quite sure how to get across. Cool.