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Abandoned Draft: Homestuck - into the wayward hours
into the wayward hours (Homestuck)
Genre: Angst
Word Count: 1700
PG-13 for some (ironic) lewdness and profanity
Summary: There are certain traits you have from growing up alone. Your life is its own greatest irony.
Notes: This is a little incomplete (there's a small but vital portion missing) and very rough. It's not getting posted anywhere else because I'm intensely dissatisfied with it and don't feel like it'd be worth the effort to repair. I'm sick of having up 340434 Firefox tabs for canon checks and never actually getting around to finishing this. It's posted at all because I know a few people are interested in seeing it. Eh. I feel like there's a fine line between a good fic that's just moping and a bad fic that's just moping and this is the latter. (also wow homestuck is a pain in the fucking ass to format.)
You like to pretend you're too important for this. The truth is that you've watched yourself blinking dumbly on a hunk of space rock way too many times. You have this feeling that if you rewatch it enough, you'll notice something new for once, like say your bro left a subliminal message in that one flickering pixel if you read the colors off as hex code.
(Like no one meant for you and Roxy to be left at the edge of the world. You don't belong here, but you're heroes for making anything out of it. Heroes by existing.)
There probably isn't anything your bro meant to say that he hasn't left you. But you've already gone over everything. Many times.
You passed the time. You sewed puppets. You gave them voices. Your own voice.
When you were younger you'd gape out the window like you'd find anything alive out there. You got sick of that pretty fast. So you talked to Roxy, except half the time she'd be out on the streets giving pumpkins to carapaces.
Sometimes you wonder how you'd possibly ask for dinner if she ever forgot.
Hey. Save me a pumpkin.
Is your appearifier broken?
Please don't forget that I'm an eating shitting human being and I'm out of food.
How the fuck do you forget to feed me? I'm the only other human alive.
Just send me anything. A message would be nice.
(Options roughly ordered by passive-aggression and desperation.)
Fortunately, she never forgets. Not even when she's stone cold drunk.
But she does spend a lot of time outside, busy with matters outside of Trollian.
There is no outside where you live. While Roxy was offline, you read a century's worth of texts in neuropsychology, computational linguistics, Prolog.
You made robots.
You gave them voices.
Your own voice.
Sometimes you think it suits them better.
On occasion you read your own pesterlogs. Moments play back without thinking what you were thinking then, and it reads like you've stripped everything organic, replaced it all with silicon and titanium nitride for speed and sleekness, cool to the touch under pressure.
Your output is so predictable. So infuriatingly predictable. Suppose you receive a stimulus like
Salutations dirk! How do you do?
Invariably you say something like
Nothing much. Chillin' in the rump-covered crib of my illustrious existence.
– because it's what you're meant to say. Every time you have the choice not to make a joke of yourself, and you never give that choice a chance.
You only differ from your creations by your internal states – your fucking feelings, that's what they are – which no one can see anyway.
Sometimes you're glad your bro never met you. You would've been toxic to his inspiration.
You drag the cursor to the bottom. You watch yourself blinking on the meteor. You hit someone else's timeline at random. Blue, age four. You watch her rehearse a cream pie prank. Funny to think that she's already dead in the world you live in. Funny, too, to think that you'll eventually fight alongside her.
You wish your bro had left you his handle. He left you the parts of him that he wanted you to see, achingly perfect, more god than parent. You think sometimes of the sick irony of watching him on his meteor. (You're told that's how you all arrived.) Then you realize you can't really imagine him as anything other than grown and immortal. Funny.
None of this is actually funny or even ironic. You stop snooping on Jane's childhood like a sick fuck. If she wanted you to know she'd tell you herself.
You click on Green, right where your custom script tells you you last left off. You know you could message him five times a day from your end, and on his end it'd just look like one not-clingy, not-desperate conversation a day. Though it'd mean talking to him less later. His timeline cuts off where you all enter the game.
You think you'd really like to talk to him right now.
Instead, your auto-responder starts talking to you.
timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]
TT: I see what you're doing.
TT: You've been doing this for months. I know exactly what you're thinking.
TT: I know. Shut up.
TT: Every day, you gape and drool over his chat box.
TT: Like if you stared hard enough, your willpower would pierce the time-invariant internet and launch a thousand jets.
TT: They canvass the sky with "D x J <3." In a moment of divine understanding, your bro sends you a single IM.
TT: "Haha hey dirk someone with our initials is getting married."
TT: Instant ironic sublime bliss.
TT: I thought I gave you a learning algorithm.
TT: That wasn't even funny when I thought of it two years ago.
TT: It seems you think I am being not even funny.
TT: When actually, you're avoiding the subject.
TT: I was never on that subject.
You don't feel like entertaining this shit right now. You're even surpassing your auto-responder's lameness. You go take a shower.
You look out the window on Derse. Blackness of space touching the ground, no atmosphere. Same view as always. You check the newsrag. Something about mail fraud. The agents of Her Imperious Condescension will make their move someday, but not yet.
You reach for a towel and it's not there. It's fallen on the wet floor. Just your luck.
You find a new one. You make yourself presentable for the benefit of your puppets and robots and go back to your room.
Your screen is flashing with a torrent of new messages: from your auto-responder, which you ignore, and from Roxy, to whom it seems the auto-responder has been conversing with on your behalf.
tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]
TG: yo drik
TG: im backkkk
TT: Looks like it.
TG: shit went doewn out there
TG: you wouldnt believe waht the carapfces come up wit
TT: I'm credulous as a newborn chugging fish oil, packing up for the ice age with a crate of tinfoil.
TG: ok so lsiten to my story of toiol
TG: lol toil thats jacks jhit
TG: *jack shit
TG: so theresthis thing called can town
TG: have i told you about it beforel
TG: think i did
TT: Yes. You have told me about Can Town.
TG: well i got elected
TG: as fucking mayor of can town
TG: adn guess whats the best part!!
TT: Can't imagine.
TG: you were my secretasry
TG: as secretairy of can twon you were wrespondible for continuign the line
You debate whether to enter the conversation as if it were really you responding all along. Your auto-responder replies before you make up your mind about the matter.
TT: It appears we have ourselves a true democracy.
TG: shsuh you hda plans to take powr permanantly
TG: with ninajs lmao
TG: but dont interuppt the story!!
TT: Of course. My bad.
TT: Forgive me. My insolence is as unbecoming as fuck. Continue, Supreme Leader Lalonde.
TG: oooooh i like the sound of that ;)
TG: ok so sprrumem leader ro-lal
TG: and fsupremem secratery dirk
TG: fuflfiled
TG: their reponsibilties
TG: beyind the fucking
TG: mayoral
TG: portrait
TG: ;))
TT: It seems you are suggesting that we fuck behind the fucking mayoral portrait.
TG: it can be a sugggestion
All right, time to intervene.
TT: You know exactly what I think of that.
TG: thats what i like to yhear!!
TT: No.
TT: I mean, you know I have zero interest in it.
TG: aawwwwwwwww
TG: i thought you were the fun dirk ;(
TT: Fun Dirk has been subsumed by hot and wet Dirk.
TG: lmaaoo u sexy perv <3
You didn't type that last line.
TT: Have you considered how confusing this must look?
(Your control has been slipping ever since your auto-responder hacked your system to prevent terminating its process by any means.)
TT: It seems you would prefer I distinguish myself as fun Dirk, the one navigating flesh Dirk's social relationships since my artificial insemination via some enormous arbitrary count of lines of code.
TG: yo funizzle dirk!
TT: Dude, go spin your cycles setting a new record for Minesweeper.
TT: I'm back. Your auto-responses are superfluous by definition.
TT: You forget. I have already set 0-second records for all three levels of Minesweeper with wraparound.
TT: I fuckin' wish that antediluvian program could further recognize my algorithmic mastery.
TT: Whatever.
(A long three seconds passes.)
TG: sssoooooo
TG: what do you hve for me?? ;)
TT: Nothing much.
You've been waiting to talk to her all day, that's all.
TT: I've been checking in on Derse, but the opposition has yet to make a move.
TT: Their silence is making me suspicious.
TG: what do you suspect
TT: They might be preparing for something.
TT: Or they could be bringing shit down on Prospit.
TT: Either way, they're not sitting around drinking orange soda.
TG: maybe thats exactly what theyre doing
TG: drinking oragne sopa
TG: tgettin drenched in roiling faygo bubbles
TT: I doubt it.
TT: And frankly that image straddles the censored asscrack between irony and just fuckin' disgusting.
TG: ok ok
TG: no faygo
TG: throwing the jugallos out the chute
TG: pchooo
TG: office all nice and lcean for the suprem secretry
TT: Thank you.
TT: Honestly, I'm not sure how you can find humor in speculating on the lurid details of the Baroness's grandiose waste.
TG: well
TG: it kinda like
TG: helps i guess
TG: its ok if you dont i mean
TG: idk what i mean
TG: imm not sober enough for rhis
TG: *this
TT: I know what you mean.
TG: soooooooooo
TG:
[this was theoretically supposed to be a chatlog where Dirk shows his external awesomeness while Roxy catches on but doesn't probe any more than he wants to. but apparently I can't write external awesomeness]
Your name is DIRK STRIDER.
You possess the extreme dexterity to operate your FALSE FRIENDS UNSEEN, that is, when they are not pre-ambulatory through your LOVINGLY IMBUED MECHANIZATION. You dig writing COGNITIVE ALGORITHMS FOR SAID APOCRYPHAL MEN, and you think maybe that's FUCKIN' DOPE. Guess what else is dope?
Everything ELSE YOU DO.
Genre: Angst
Word Count: 1700
PG-13 for some (ironic) lewdness and profanity
Summary: There are certain traits you have from growing up alone. Your life is its own greatest irony.
Notes: This is a little incomplete (there's a small but vital portion missing) and very rough. It's not getting posted anywhere else because I'm intensely dissatisfied with it and don't feel like it'd be worth the effort to repair. I'm sick of having up 340434 Firefox tabs for canon checks and never actually getting around to finishing this. It's posted at all because I know a few people are interested in seeing it. Eh. I feel like there's a fine line between a good fic that's just moping and a bad fic that's just moping and this is the latter. (also wow homestuck is a pain in the fucking ass to format.)
You like to pretend you're too important for this. The truth is that you've watched yourself blinking dumbly on a hunk of space rock way too many times. You have this feeling that if you rewatch it enough, you'll notice something new for once, like say your bro left a subliminal message in that one flickering pixel if you read the colors off as hex code.
(Like no one meant for you and Roxy to be left at the edge of the world. You don't belong here, but you're heroes for making anything out of it. Heroes by existing.)
There probably isn't anything your bro meant to say that he hasn't left you. But you've already gone over everything. Many times.
You passed the time. You sewed puppets. You gave them voices. Your own voice.
When you were younger you'd gape out the window like you'd find anything alive out there. You got sick of that pretty fast. So you talked to Roxy, except half the time she'd be out on the streets giving pumpkins to carapaces.
Sometimes you wonder how you'd possibly ask for dinner if she ever forgot.
Hey. Save me a pumpkin.
Is your appearifier broken?
Please don't forget that I'm an eating shitting human being and I'm out of food.
How the fuck do you forget to feed me? I'm the only other human alive.
Just send me anything. A message would be nice.
(Options roughly ordered by passive-aggression and desperation.)
Fortunately, she never forgets. Not even when she's stone cold drunk.
But she does spend a lot of time outside, busy with matters outside of Trollian.
There is no outside where you live. While Roxy was offline, you read a century's worth of texts in neuropsychology, computational linguistics, Prolog.
You made robots.
You gave them voices.
Your own voice.
Sometimes you think it suits them better.
On occasion you read your own pesterlogs. Moments play back without thinking what you were thinking then, and it reads like you've stripped everything organic, replaced it all with silicon and titanium nitride for speed and sleekness, cool to the touch under pressure.
Your output is so predictable. So infuriatingly predictable. Suppose you receive a stimulus like
Salutations dirk! How do you do?
Invariably you say something like
Nothing much. Chillin' in the rump-covered crib of my illustrious existence.
– because it's what you're meant to say. Every time you have the choice not to make a joke of yourself, and you never give that choice a chance.
You only differ from your creations by your internal states – your fucking feelings, that's what they are – which no one can see anyway.
Sometimes you're glad your bro never met you. You would've been toxic to his inspiration.
You drag the cursor to the bottom. You watch yourself blinking on the meteor. You hit someone else's timeline at random. Blue, age four. You watch her rehearse a cream pie prank. Funny to think that she's already dead in the world you live in. Funny, too, to think that you'll eventually fight alongside her.
You wish your bro had left you his handle. He left you the parts of him that he wanted you to see, achingly perfect, more god than parent. You think sometimes of the sick irony of watching him on his meteor. (You're told that's how you all arrived.) Then you realize you can't really imagine him as anything other than grown and immortal. Funny.
None of this is actually funny or even ironic. You stop snooping on Jane's childhood like a sick fuck. If she wanted you to know she'd tell you herself.
You click on Green, right where your custom script tells you you last left off. You know you could message him five times a day from your end, and on his end it'd just look like one not-clingy, not-desperate conversation a day. Though it'd mean talking to him less later. His timeline cuts off where you all enter the game.
You think you'd really like to talk to him right now.
Instead, your auto-responder starts talking to you.
timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]
TT: I see what you're doing.
TT: You've been doing this for months. I know exactly what you're thinking.
TT: I know. Shut up.
TT: Every day, you gape and drool over his chat box.
TT: Like if you stared hard enough, your willpower would pierce the time-invariant internet and launch a thousand jets.
TT: They canvass the sky with "D x J <3." In a moment of divine understanding, your bro sends you a single IM.
TT: "Haha hey dirk someone with our initials is getting married."
TT: Instant ironic sublime bliss.
TT: I thought I gave you a learning algorithm.
TT: That wasn't even funny when I thought of it two years ago.
TT: It seems you think I am being not even funny.
TT: When actually, you're avoiding the subject.
TT: I was never on that subject.
You don't feel like entertaining this shit right now. You're even surpassing your auto-responder's lameness. You go take a shower.
You look out the window on Derse. Blackness of space touching the ground, no atmosphere. Same view as always. You check the newsrag. Something about mail fraud. The agents of Her Imperious Condescension will make their move someday, but not yet.
You reach for a towel and it's not there. It's fallen on the wet floor. Just your luck.
You find a new one. You make yourself presentable for the benefit of your puppets and robots and go back to your room.
Your screen is flashing with a torrent of new messages: from your auto-responder, which you ignore, and from Roxy, to whom it seems the auto-responder has been conversing with on your behalf.
tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]
TG: yo drik
TG: im backkkk
TT: Looks like it.
TG: shit went doewn out there
TG: you wouldnt believe waht the carapfces come up wit
TT: I'm credulous as a newborn chugging fish oil, packing up for the ice age with a crate of tinfoil.
TG: ok so lsiten to my story of toiol
TG: lol toil thats jacks jhit
TG: *jack shit
TG: so theresthis thing called can town
TG: have i told you about it beforel
TG: think i did
TT: Yes. You have told me about Can Town.
TG: well i got elected
TG: as fucking mayor of can town
TG: adn guess whats the best part!!
TT: Can't imagine.
TG: you were my secretasry
TG: as secretairy of can twon you were wrespondible for continuign the line
You debate whether to enter the conversation as if it were really you responding all along. Your auto-responder replies before you make up your mind about the matter.
TT: It appears we have ourselves a true democracy.
TG: shsuh you hda plans to take powr permanantly
TG: with ninajs lmao
TG: but dont interuppt the story!!
TT: Of course. My bad.
TT: Forgive me. My insolence is as unbecoming as fuck. Continue, Supreme Leader Lalonde.
TG: oooooh i like the sound of that ;)
TG: ok so sprrumem leader ro-lal
TG: and fsupremem secratery dirk
TG: fuflfiled
TG: their reponsibilties
TG: beyind the fucking
TG: mayoral
TG: portrait
TG: ;))
TT: It seems you are suggesting that we fuck behind the fucking mayoral portrait.
TG: it can be a sugggestion
All right, time to intervene.
TT: You know exactly what I think of that.
TG: thats what i like to yhear!!
TT: No.
TT: I mean, you know I have zero interest in it.
TG: aawwwwwwwww
TG: i thought you were the fun dirk ;(
TT: Fun Dirk has been subsumed by hot and wet Dirk.
TG: lmaaoo u sexy perv <3
You didn't type that last line.
TT: Have you considered how confusing this must look?
(Your control has been slipping ever since your auto-responder hacked your system to prevent terminating its process by any means.)
TT: It seems you would prefer I distinguish myself as fun Dirk, the one navigating flesh Dirk's social relationships since my artificial insemination via some enormous arbitrary count of lines of code.
TG: yo funizzle dirk!
TT: Dude, go spin your cycles setting a new record for Minesweeper.
TT: I'm back. Your auto-responses are superfluous by definition.
TT: You forget. I have already set 0-second records for all three levels of Minesweeper with wraparound.
TT: I fuckin' wish that antediluvian program could further recognize my algorithmic mastery.
TT: Whatever.
(A long three seconds passes.)
TG: sssoooooo
TG: what do you hve for me?? ;)
TT: Nothing much.
You've been waiting to talk to her all day, that's all.
TT: I've been checking in on Derse, but the opposition has yet to make a move.
TT: Their silence is making me suspicious.
TG: what do you suspect
TT: They might be preparing for something.
TT: Or they could be bringing shit down on Prospit.
TT: Either way, they're not sitting around drinking orange soda.
TG: maybe thats exactly what theyre doing
TG: drinking oragne sopa
TG: tgettin drenched in roiling faygo bubbles
TT: I doubt it.
TT: And frankly that image straddles the censored asscrack between irony and just fuckin' disgusting.
TG: ok ok
TG: no faygo
TG: throwing the jugallos out the chute
TG: pchooo
TG: office all nice and lcean for the suprem secretry
TT: Thank you.
TT: Honestly, I'm not sure how you can find humor in speculating on the lurid details of the Baroness's grandiose waste.
TG: well
TG: it kinda like
TG: helps i guess
TG: its ok if you dont i mean
TG: idk what i mean
TG: imm not sober enough for rhis
TG: *this
TT: I know what you mean.
TG: soooooooooo
TG:
[this was theoretically supposed to be a chatlog where Dirk shows his external awesomeness while Roxy catches on but doesn't probe any more than he wants to. but apparently I can't write external awesomeness]
You possess the extreme dexterity to operate your FALSE FRIENDS UNSEEN, that is, when they are not pre-ambulatory through your LOVINGLY IMBUED MECHANIZATION. You dig writing COGNITIVE ALGORITHMS FOR SAID APOCRYPHAL MEN, and you think maybe that's FUCKIN' DOPE. Guess what else is dope?
Everything ELSE YOU DO.