cest_what | Entries tagged with hso

Voting results for Round 1 of the HSO are up! So, I get to link this one, finally. The word limit was a bit of a bind, and avoiding using the words eyes, see and look turned out to be a bigger technical challenge than I'd anticipated, but on balance I'm really happy with this one. This ship is such a good ship. It placed 17/109, which I'm comfortable with.

With thanks to

blottingtheink, who not only beta'd this but also talked through every idea about blackrom dynamics I've ever had.

Homestuck | Terezi♠Vriska | 3000 words | PG

Summary: They have a conflicted and difficult friendship again now, but Terezi wouldn't be preparing to be in the same room as Vriska, for the first time in nearly two sweeps, if they hadn't been paired up for a trainee examination. (A non-Sgrub AU.)

Read at: AO3 | DW

So I ended up dropping out of my HSO team just after Round 2 submissions, and transferring to Team English (the voting-only team). I wrote and submitted fic which, actually, I really like - and will link to when the Round 1 voting results are up, I guess, although I think the anonymous period is over now that voting is closed? And I participated a bunch in one of the bonus rounds and read all the Round 1 fics and commented and voted on them and posted a rec set, and have been reading the Round 2 fics and commenting. So I don't really feel like I failed out - that's a lot more participation than any other fanworks fest that I've taken part in has asked for.

Everyone on the team was talented and nice, but we never really came together and clicked, and we had a lot of admin and communication problems and leadership uncertainty, and it just got too hard to maintain the energy to contribute to keeping the team functioning as well as to work on what I'd promised to do for the collaborative round. I was getting ridiculously stressed and the whole fest was starting to feel not fun, so! It would have been cool to keep my team and get to be properly excited about our points rankings and such (although I'll still be cheering for them), and I feel bad about dropping out on the collab round plans, but I feel a whole lot lighter.

Anyway once out of the team I got much more excited about reading the Round 2 entries, and oh my god it's all ghostbusters and cannibalistic mermaids and zombie apocalypses and wow, I love this round's theme \o/ And I'm all kindsa excited about the voting results - even apart from my own fic in this first round. I'm terribly invested in people voting for the right things, "right" in this case obviously meaning "my favourites" but that probably goes without saying.

Would anyone be interested in an HSO recs post over here?

I have had 'Luck Be a Lady' stuck in my head on a solid rotation since the HSO Round 1 prompt went up. This is producing more ideas about Vriska being unladylike than it is ideas involving actual gambling, unfortunately.

I am starting to pull together a story idea, but at the moment it's mostly about the emotional payoff at the end, and the constrictions that puts on what the premise and setting can be. Basically I have just one insight about blackrom that I like, and I've worked out how to turn it into an emotional resolution. I'm still tossing around ways to use the prompt, though. Using a Vriska prompt to write a Vriska story is almost too neat a fit: Vriska's entire life fits the gambling theme, so how do you actually make the theme stand out in an interesting way?

( Some recent update chatter )

I thought I would practice Scourge Sisters voices for the HSO by rewriting some pesterlogs as direct dialogue.

It turns out Terezi and Vriska's voices are actually much easier to translate to the real world than I'd thought they would be! Writing Kanaya and Rose was really challenging, partly because Kanaya's voice looks so wrong with commas in it, even if you're as sparing with them as you can be, but mostly because both she and Rose are so careful and wordy that when you add in all the extra bits around dialogue, the speech tags and real world fidgets and above all the internal POV, it slows the pacing down almost unworkably. Roxy was unexpectedly really hard too, partly because so much of her voice depends on typoes but mostly because she breaks her sentences up in really appealing and effective ways that you can't mimic in spoken dialogue.

I thought Terezi would be just as hard, because she doesn't punctuate. Only it turns out that she does use exclamation marks when she wants them, and she breaks up her lines really neatly into clauses, these short sharp sentences, so unlike with Kanaya, there's usually no need to add commas that aren't there in the pesterlog. And there's so much energy in her dynamic with Vriska that slowing it down a little doesn't hurt it at all.

Anyway, here is Terezi and Vriska's immediately-pre-SGRUB conversation rewritten for real life, if that's a thing anybody else would find interesting ♥

( Terezi was tapping away at her husktop and cackling when Vriska flopped down beside her )

Sign-ups opened yesterday for the second annual Homestuck Shipping Olympics! And have been freaking amazing to watch, I have a whole lot of awe for how the mods have handled the flood. I'm still hanging on the sign-up list page, watching new ships get confirmed.

(Also, how darling is that banner?)

I signed up for Team Terezi♠Vriska! Which I am excited and not a little terrified about. Honestly I ship Scourge Sisters in every quadrant, requited and unrequited and vascillating. But I ship them black most of all, and I think this is going to be awesome.

I actually meant to sign up for a smaller ship, since I've never written Scourge Sisters before, but blottingtheink and I were sitting there watching the sign-ups and Terezi♠Vriska kept not being confirmed yet and Kanaya♦Vriska, which had been our probably-big-enough-to-make-six-but-small-enough-that-we'll-get-on-it OTP choice, kept not even being nominated, and eventually we spooked ourselves into jumping on. The team's full to capacity now, but then, so are 41 other ships, plus 26 confirmed.

Some of them are amazingly weird. Dave♥Feferi is a confirmed ship, despite the fact that there are literally no Feferi/Dave fics on AO3. Jake♥John was one of the earliest ships to overfill, and that pairing has only 8 tag uses on AO3. Aradia♦Sollux also overfilled in a flash, which I am beyond delighted about, because I have combed AO3 trying to find good Aradia/Sollux in any quadrant, and it is distressingly light on.

Teams I am particularly excited exist: Aradia♦Sollux & Aradia♥Sollux, for the reason above; Jade♥Karkat, because I need so many more Jade/Karkat fics in my life; Jake♥John, because I am intrigued by the rush of interest, and I think they'd be a blast together; Kanaya♥Vriska, because fandom has been really slow to use those heart-eyes Kanaya punched into Vriska; Karkat♥Terezi, because they delight me down to a molecular level, and given what a big pairing they feel like there isn't nearly enough fic; alpha!Rose/alpha!Dave, because hell. fucking. yes.; Rose♥Kanaya♥Dave, because I am so intrigued about what this team plans to do with their dynamic, and I love the small amount of Kanaya/Dave that canon gives us; Davesprite♥Jade, because there's already been some excellent Jade/Davesprite fic since that update gave it canon, and I want so much more.

Unconfirmed teams I particularly hope make it: Aranea♥Meenah, because there is hardly any canon for them so far but by the time writing starts, with any luck there will be much more!; Condesce♥Handmaid, because they have so much and so little in common, the empress and the slave, the queen and the demon, the only two who saw it all, and also I'm sad that there's only one Ancestor ship confirmed so far; Dave♦Rose, because I will take all of the Derse twins, please, in as many quadrants as you can squeeze them into and also in none; Dave♥Rose♥Terezi, because look at those names, those are some great names; Davesprite♥Nepeta because wtf that is so random and awesome bring it; Auto-Responder♥Roxy because hell to the yes; Feferi♠Eridan because holy shit I could adore that; Jade♥Kanaya, I don't know, this one seems obvious, why would you not want this; Jade♥John♥Karkat because even better than Karkat developing independent crushes on both the derp twins is Karkat developing interdependent and requited crushes on both the derp twins; John♠Karkat and John♦Karkat, I'm a little confused that these aren't confirmed honestly; Kanaya♠Vriska because I will take any and all Kanaya/Vriska; Karkat♠Karkat because HOW AMAZING WOULD IT BE IF THIS FEST ACTUALLY PRODUCED THREE NEW KARKAT/KARKAT BLACKROMS?; Terezi♦Vriska because did I mention that I ship them in every quadrant? Pale Terezi/Vriska would be amazing.

Teams that do not exist that are making me feel tragic: 1) WHERE ARE THE ASHEN SIGNUPS? /o\ This is me speaking directly from my hypocrisy, because I listed my ashen choice third, but goddamn I would love to see an ashen ship competing in this fest so much. I actually spent a good part of today emailing blottingtheink plot for my Terezi♣Karkat♣Vriska regency AU, which was ... possibly not the most useful thing ever given that it is kind of diametrically opposed to the goals of our team. (See: ship them in every quadrant.) 2) where is the Kanaya♦Vriska? Yessssss in canon they were a disaster, but they wouldn't have to be, if things were just a little different, if they were older and knew themselves better, if Kanaya already had a flushed quadrant, if they hadn't broken up in those particular circumstances while they were surrounded by the end of the world. Kanaya is the only one who has ever looked at Vriska and said "I want to save you". Ever. 3) There are twelve Ancestor ships nominated and not one of them is Redglare/Mindfang or Summoner/Mindfang. Oh fandom, why do you not exactly mirror my tastes in every way. 4) ... but mostly the ashen thing.

FINALLY: I am so ridiculously delighted to be in a fandom that can put on a fest with nearly 70 ships and counting.

NO WAIT, FINALLY THE SECOND: If anyone from my team is reading this, hi! Come talk to me :)

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
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23	24	25	26	27	28	29
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c'est what

Entries tagged with hso

Fic: A 1-in-8 Chance (Terezi♠Vriska)

HSO things

But you never were a lady to begin with

Scourge Sisters rewrite for voice practice

HSO

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January 2022

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