#413 ac

[the-mspfa-200-favourites-project]

413 AC

This one’s interesting, because I think it’s the first “Earth C” focused Sburbventure (besides Nightfall, but. Nightfall seems to be an outlier in a lot of things). It makes sense that we’re getting Earth C Sburbventures now in 2017, because the Fandom is now realizing “oh yeah, there’s more to the story after they go through the door” thanks to those Homestuck Snaps I was talking about. Also this one has survived to the present day, so that’s neat to notice. I always like opening up the “Recent Posts” portion of the site and being greeted by a “2024” post that’s fairly recently, because it makes me feel like, wow. The fandom *can* survive, and people from that age of Fandom CAN in fact make stuff in the current post post-canon environment that we find ourselves in. I don’t know, it’s neat.

Oh, that’s a cool technique. The vines on the ruins getting more and more overgrown as the years tick up, and then it gets to the title drop of the fanadventure itself. It’s kind of hard to explain without seeing it, so just look at Page 8 and bask in the glorious narrative technique that is the montage. Ah…montages…In fact, the entire opening section is a very good and concise way of showcasing that, yes. This is Earth C.

The reason why I don’t really include Nightfall in the assestment of “Earth C Sburbventures” is that…while it does take place on Earth C, the first year atleast is unconcerned with the actual mechanics of like. What that really means, for the world. It just takes it for granted that the Earth that comes after the SBURB Session will be just like our earths, despite that not being the case. Probably this fanadventure has the luxury of coming after those Snapchats, but still, I like how it has like. Kind of this history behind it. People had to rediscover Ballet! It’s not just something that the people invented, they had to like, dig out the ballet and opera theatres on Earth C and go “what is this?” It’s those kinds of details that make this world feel real and alive, just a tiny bit.

Also yes the Ballet is Swan Lake because of course it’s swan lake. I haven’t even *seen* swan lake but I know that if any Homestucks are going to like Ballet and want to reference Ballet. It’s probably going to be Swan Lake.

I like this opening bit of like, this one troll wanting to message our protagonist but our protagonist is clearly not wanting to deal with them. Having this overarching bit that’s clearly setting up these two characters talking to each other builds up towards their eventual conversation, and makes me wonder at least “why does one troll want to talk to the other so badly, but our main character doesn’t want to talk to them?” It’s subtle, but it’s nice storytelling.

Overall, this one’s a very nice little Sburbventure! It seems to have a good grasp on storytelling and making characters that you want to spend time with. It’s competent, and enjoyable beyond that competency. Check it out if you’re interested.

[pi-romantic-artdump]

7/17/17

i feel like this is way too busy? but it’s at least a semi-final version of cygnia’s hive

[pi-romantic-artdump]

6/26/17

ok ok ok i think i designed everyone. idk how. still don’t have names for most of them but i’m working on it..... im working on it

edit: i cant believe i didn’t make any of them memelords. kate is ur character a memelord if not i will make it one of the kids i think

edit 2: fixed caphag’s symbol

edit 3: ACTUALLY fixed caphag’s symbol i chose the wrong picture ugh

ummmm yeah the blue guy kinda looks like a mishmash of the striders and er*dan, i know, i think part of his character arc is that he has a lot more self-esteem issues than he lets on and mimics the qualities of the strider bros that he finds ‘cool’ because he doesn’t know how to just be himself (the irony, given how they really were....). hence the alt hairstyle. later on he starts putting his hair in a ponytail zuko style, when he’s trying to figure out who he is. im thinking that he could be the constellation corvus (raven), partially because idk ravens are cool, and partially as a reference to poe’s story, because this guy wants to write deep stuff. he kinda sucks tho

he will correct your grammar, even though he doesn’t always have flawless grammar himself and/or it’s part of your typing quirk. everyone lowkey hates him for it but know he’s taking out frustrations on pointless stuff so they don’t get too mad

if i go with the raven constellation i’ll probably make him and cygnia foils? brainstorming here:

he and cygnia are the two trolls who most look up to some of the creators of their universe (dave and rose, respectively), but don’t really know much about who they really are (since they disappeared centuries ago). they’re both kinda pretentious and think they know better than others

girl on the far left is a gamer, she acts laid-back but is competitive as fuck she is in this game to win it, despite it not even having a real prize. practiced with both strategy and actual fighting, but will default to the latter in a crisis. yeah i could see her being a player of rage or doom tbh, but i need to think about it more

cygnia loves puzzles, history, and the intersection of those things is what the fuck happened during the game session which created this universe?? so of course when she hears there’s a version of flarp which mimics it she drags everyone into this game with her. there’s a lot of info on human/troll society on this earth because of the batterwitch’s presence and remaining documents, but since the creators didn’t stick around long there’s only bits and pieces of what actually happened with them. she thinks for certain she’ll be a player of light, but gets something else (breath maybe, since she thinks it’s useless) and is super pissed

(since she’s obsessed with solving puzzles, when things don’t go the way she thought they would she gets really upset/unsure of what to do next)

she plans to be a diplomat between different realms (later to become kingdoms) when she gets older, so she puts aside her issues to help others out, even when it hurts her

the snek dude is cheerful, but has a very... morbid sense of humor. colorblind, hunts stuff (similar to nepeta), either olive or lime blood, likes collecting sparkly/shiny things in his caves, also keeps trying to convince caphag to combine certain chemicals together ‘to see what would happen’, even though both of them know it would create poison.

yellow dude is.... ugh idk yet. i keep accidentally making him a knockoff of luci0 (and by extension, the pink person on the top right similar in personality to tracer, and the third human i had to steer away from making a dva copy... dammit 0verwatch). i think he’s a pretty dynamic and energetic person, not necessarily working to motivate people, but his presence just tends to inspire people. confident in himself, confident in others. not sure about hobbies yet, as with pink person. he might lean towards artistic stuff

caphag is kate’s, and she has a description of her somewhere. from what i remember she likes animals!! and chemistry stuff!!! and is a mess lol. i got nothing else to add except kate if u see this is it ok if i make her moirails with cygnia, i think they’d balance each other out well

triangle person is named almiza, she/they (interchangeable) like to create gadgets and mechanical contraptions that are mostly pointless. her ability to move metal around with her mind (thanks to blood color) helps with delicate operations for this stuff. probably uses this to make booby traps and such later on, discovers how much they like architecture while spending time with carapacians. she is pretty strong bc she lifts heavy tools and materials by herself a lot. she also lost part of a leg at one point during an accident with her contraptions, and built herself her own leg (not robotic) which she now stores tools n shit in. does not get along with cygnia at a personality level, though i’m not exactly sure what hers is yet. cygnia starts out with a one-sided caliginous crush on her, but idk where it goes from there. ∆_∆

and again, pink person idk much about but their design felt right. so yeah. with her hairstyle.... im trying to not make her either a tracer rip-off or a stereotypical Tumblr User™ so. yeah. ideas would be great for both her and yellow guy. i think their name is gonna be sage

[pi-romantic-artdump]

7/1/17

i love them so much?????

[piromantic]

i feel like everyone that i used to know on hstwt is now over here so.... i wanna talk about tess my oc tess. and some scenes i really wanted to show. now that its obvious that im never gonna finish that comic

sooo she's the only character with troll & human parents. her father is a goldblood and she deliberately takes after him because she's also. a genetic clone of her mother thanks to ectobio. and really wants to distance herself from her mom

her family lives close to an area where a lot of dangerous (uncontrolled) lusii/megafauna roam, and her parents specialize in going to dangerous areas and retrieving valuable stuff or killing creatures that cause trouble. mind you this isn't like. what i condone. there's a lot of undercurrents in this world of 'trolls are dangerous/do things wrong' that aren't true but shape a lot of characters in small ways. e.g. neil dismissing troll relationship dynamics, cygnia and zifias feeling a lot of guilt over small infractions, the line in zifias' section about how most lusii allowed to exist nowadays are herbivores, etc.

anyway she was raised in a very. chaotic household. her strife [S] was going to be her dodging between her parents fighting as she goes to get a snack for her younger brother. her father is less aggressive than her mother, but doesn't exactly discourage any of this either. she hates that she's following in her parents' footsteps by getting into FLARP but doesn't feel like she has any other choice, really. she's good at it and it's the only thing that gets her favor in her parents' eyes.

she haaaates when cygnia starts to become a genuine competitive threat in the game. partially because cygnia refuses to use weapons and impart active violence, which would mean that the violence she was raised with wasn't necessary. and partially because cygnia's powers, as the sylph of blood, are all about connections & community - which tess feels is a sign of ultimate weakness.

so one of the scenes that i really wanted to write (but it would've been at about page ~1000 so that's not happening LOL) is her and cygnia getting into an argument (because cygnia, from the part where she visits her neighbors, really craves community that feels inherent to human families), and eventually tess agreeing to try and use their combined classpect powers (seer of doom + sylph of blood) to see if they can get cygnia to remember anything about her ancestor. tess is initially rooting for cygnia to get bad memories, while cygnia has a very... idealized imagination of what her ancestor was like. she feels inadequate and lost, and hopes to see a more put together, more inspirational version of herself succeeding where she's afraid that she'll fail. and she's been putting all of her stock into this imaginary connection to her ancestor being what's going to save her from loneliness.

but what ends up happening is because of the doom aspect mixed in, the visions they both receive of are specifically the deaths of cygnia's ancestor and the ancestors of her friends. moments from their falling outs and mutual betrayals are mixed with shots of zifias wandering through a graveyard of nearly-unrecognizable spaceships, eventually being drawn to one and going inside, and then finding his ancestor's skeleton pierced through with a sword with a swan-shaped handle. (this fucks up zifias in his own way, because he's struggling a lot with the feeling that no matter how he helps people he's going to end up hurting them and being rightfully discarded by them)

cygnia's whole worldview kinda shatters a bit there, because she's placed so much stock in the idea of ancestors predicting your life's path. tess ends up finally opening up to someone about what her parents are truly like (which was causing her to pull away from her friends in the beginning of the comic), and they end up talking about fate and working through their misguided belief that escaping the path laid out for you is impossible. they also both start to re-evaluate their beliefs about community and where to find it, as they begin to find solace in the one person in the world they thought they'd never see eye-to-eye with.

god it was so nice to type this out i might do this for more plot points that i never got around to

[piromantic]

hey! i have a question about 413ac, sorry if it's in spoiler territory but ive been thinking, is there a reason why Cygnia's decisions are decided through voting by other people? is it a feature all characters will have later and it's something like in OG homestuck when people could decide/influence/interact with the story like through forums or games? or is it specific to Cygnia due to her classpect? does it have something to do with blood aspect or am i looking too deep into this? :o

hey!!! thank you for asking :D

SO. while it's something i don't intend to be specific to cygnia only, i think there's three reasons why she keeps getting those moments while other characters... don't, as much.

1. she's usually the first character that takes us through new parts of the game, so i want to give the readers a small sense of freedom/exploration before they figure out what's going on and i take the reins back & move the plot along. i let the readers have some input when neil was trying to figure out his puzzle, for example.

2. she genuinely does not know what she's doing lmao. the characters cover a wiiiide range of understanding what they have to do to accomplish goals set for them, and she's the only one who knows. nothing beyond a vague guidebook.

3. her indecision IS related to her aspect, sort of in a 'blood is the opposite of breath' way. (which - gets into personal interpretations and plans that i won't get into here.) she sucks at making decisions without other people's input/encouragement, and although i don't.... remember how consistent i was with it in the past, she tends to become more decisive when interacting with the breath player (who i will not name Yet lol).

[pi-romantic-artdump]

5/13/19

a good boi

[pi-romantic-artdump]

11/20/17

mmm silhouettes, because why draw the actual panels i need to draw to get to the rest of my ocs when i can just draw my ocs