#insurrectionbent

[mtjester]

I kind of...wanna read Insurrectionbent again.  I haven’t looked at in probably a year?  Or more?  I don’t remember.  But it was my first big Homestuck AU and I was so proud of it when I finished it.  I really think I wouldn’t have started on the path to writing if it weren’t for Homestuck and the fanfics it inspired me to write.  And it all started with Insurrectionbent.

[mtjester]

*whispers* I'm here for the Newkon

I honestly never thought I’d get an ask to raise this guy from the dead haha

[mtjester]

Hay there are you still taking prompts, because that dream bubble thing I mentioned this morning is a thing I kinda wanna see 8O

I had a random thought about Insurrectionbent Tavros running into GHB in the bubbles and gloating a little. Like "ok, but do you remember when I murdered you, with my horns?" " what's the matter, is there maybe, a hole in your chest, that I used to be in? Specifically, with my horns? }B)"

Ah shit, okay, I gotta dredge up my insurrectionbent voice.  Insurrectionbent is here.  Spoilers below.

For those of the dead who came from distant doomed timelines, understanding the dreambubbles involved a complicated network of rumors and gossip.  Tavros couldn’t remember how long it took him to learn all the details about the game, Sgrub, and the alpha timeline versions of himself and his friends who played it.  Time passed differently in the bubbles.  Even so, it didn’t take him much time at all to realize how horribly wrong his own timeline had been, which, for him, was more of a relief than a regret.  He was glad things weren’t supposed to be the way they were for him in his own lifetime.

Unfortunately, even in the dreambubbles, he still couldn’t escape his past.  He wished the dreambubbles weren’t constructed around his memories.  Some of them were good, especially those from his wigglerhood, but too many weren’t.  He preferred to visit others in their own dreambubbles as often as possible, even when he didn’t know them.  He met some weird pink aliens that were mostly agreeable, and they usually didn’t mind too much when he hovered around, trying to understand what was happening in their memories.  But dreambubbles had a way of shifting into other memories without warning.  He couldn’t always anticipate when he would open a door and find himself in a bleak cell with familiar paintings on the walls.  And he couldn’t always leave before he found himself alone.

He did what he always used to do.  He paced, thinking of slam verses to recite to no one and imagining various fantasy scenarios that made him somewhat happier.  He tried to conjure up happy thoughts.  When he was alive, that didn’t do much to help him, but now the dreambubbles sometimes shifted when he concentrated hard enough.  With that in mind, he focused stubbornly on a different thought and tested the door every time he looped back around the cell.  It took him three tries, but finally the door gave.  He breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped out into an open field.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, he slowly recognized the battlefield on which he died.  It wasn’t the happy thought he had in mind, but he tried to convince himself that it was better than the cell.  Most anything was better than the cell in his opinion.  The battlefield was empty, devoid of the trolls that had fought on it when he was alive, but it wasn’t the scarred wasteland it was when he died.  This memory was set before the Execution,.  Tavros didn’t know what that meant, but he did know he didn’t want to stay.  He lifted off the ground and flew towards the hills, hoping some other dreambubble would collide with his soon.

He scanned the forested inclines below him.  He knew what he was looking for, but he didn’t really want to see it.  When he came upon a wrecked patch of forest, clawed and broken by a fierce fight he didn’t want to recall, he paused.  The memory was still vivid for him, even after all this time.  A pair of scarlet eyes filled with intense hatred, blood, a kiss.  He felt a sharp stab of pain shoot through his horn, and his torso burst with agony.  When he looked down at himself, he saw his body in the same condition it was in at the end of the fight, reliving the memories his mind was playing out for him through the bubble.  With no better ideas in mind, he inhaled and descended to the ground.

He didn’t see the dark figure shift in the shadows of the moonlit canopy until his feet brushed the ground.  

“What the mother fuck do we have here?”  The voice made his blood run cold, a feeling his mind remembered even in death.  He turned wide-eyed as the Highblood stepped into the open, his gaze cool and level.  Tavros’s conditioning reactivated, and he stared up into the indigo irises, hardly daring to blink.  “What’s this?  Dead now, too?”

“You--you’re only a memory,” Tavros said.  He didn’t believe it, but saying it made it feel more true.  The Highblood released a low chuckle and stepped closer.  

“I was getting all my mother fucking hopes up that I would be gifted the sweet mother fucking opportunity to find you,” he said.  “It’s like what all you said, isn’t it, pet?  The harder a mother fucker hopes, the more likely his hopes are to be granted.”

“No,” Tavros said with a small shake of his head.  Pain shot through his injured horn.  “I said, um, that believing in things makes them less false, which...has no bearing on what actually happens, so...”

“Regardless,” the Highblood said, and his eyes flashed strobing shades of violet.  His gigantic hand flashed forward and closed itself around Tavros’s throat.  “I’m so mother fucking glad that you finally came.”

Tavros’s hands flew up to the Highblood’s wrist as he squeezed.  It wasn’t enough to suffocate him, but it hurt nonetheless.  He remembered the solid feeling of a tree against his back as the Highblood loomed over him, trying to choke the life from him with the little strength he had left before he succumbed to his wounds.  His wounds.  Tavros remember his wounds.

“I killed you,” he said.  He tightened his grip on the Highblood’s wrist and closed his eyes to lessen the curse of his chucklevoodoos.  “With my horn.  The one who killed you was me.”

“That’s mother fucking right you did,” the Highblood hissed.  He pulled up, and Tavros’s feet left the ground.  “And look at where the FUCK it got you, mother fucker.  What are you gonna do now?  No annoying fucking animals to help you now, my stupid little bitch.  Open your eyes, pet.  Mother fucking look at me when I’m talking at you.”

Tavros kept his eyes squeezed shut.  He repeated to himself in his mind the memory.  He killed the Grand Highblood.  He killed him with his horn.  He gored him.  He repeated it until it became a fire in his torso and a beacon of light in his mind.  He turned it into a happy thought, forcing the exhilaration of the thought against the force of the Highblood’s chucklevoodoos until their nightmares fell flat.  He sucked in air and, before he could doubt himself, kicked out as hard as he could.

His metal leg collided with the Highblood’s side with a loud thud, and the bigger troll released him with a hiss.  Tavros flitted away and opened his eyes, looking down at the Highblood.  He was holding his side with a scowl of pain on his face.  Tavros darted farther away when he saw the red of the Highblood’s eyes turn up towards him.

“You mother fucking shit,” the Highblood growled.  Tavros looked up at the moons and the stars.  He wasn’t in his little cell.  And he had killed the troll below him.  He had that power.  It was his.

“What’s the matter?” he said.  “You’re looking like maybe I hurt you just then.  Kind of like I did when I killed you.  Do you remember that?”

He could hear the rage rise in the back of the Highblood’s throat, and he flew a little higher.  “Come here, pet,” the Highblood said, low and quiet.  This was not a tone Tavros heard often, but it stirred up ghost horror in him anyway.  But he replayed his happy thought until everything but a foreign sense of confidence was in his mind.

“I’m not your pet,” he said.  “And I won’t be ever again.”

"You’re mother fucking right you won’t be,” the Highblood responded.  Tavros frowned and risked a glance down.  The Highblood had a menacing grin on his maniacal, painted face.  “I’m gonna give you up to the Angel of Double Death.  A good mother fucking servant I am to him, righteous and loyal in death as I ever was in mother fucking life.  More things your stupid, impious lowblood mind can’t get itself wrapped around.”

“Oh, I certainly agree that you’re most definitely holey,” Tavros said, looking away again, “but, uh, I don’t mean in the religious sense necessarily, but rather in the sense that I, as your murderer, put a hole through you, with my horn.”

Tavros expected a roar of fury to met his impudence, but the Highblood did not respond immediately.  “Was that a mother fucking pun?” he asked.

“Uh, yes?”

“Fuck.”  Tavros looked down and was surprised to see the Highblood’s eyes shift back to orange.  They weren’t completely devoid of malice, but they weren’t full of pure wrath either.  Tavros was so unused to this development that his sense of dread skyrocketed.  They stared at each other for a second in silence.  “Go,” the Highblood finally said.

“What?” Tavros asked, eyes widening.

“I said mother fucking leave.  Your dismal attempt at humor has earned you some time.  There’s no mother fucking thing I value more than lame fucking jokes told by hideous excuses for trolls what’s time left in this plane is in my own mother fucking hands.”

Tavros’s jaw dropped.  “Are you...no, that’s...that’s literally just stupid.”

“I make the mother fucking rules, fucker, and I say you get to exist a little longer,” the Highblood said.  “But mark me.  I will find you, and you will get no other chances.  I will paint the very fabric of these dreams with your mirthless, heathen blood, and the elixir I pour out for you will be in honor of the Angel of Double Death, the destroyer of souls, the one true messiah.  Your head will be my ultimate offering.  A-motherfucking-men.”

“We’ll see about that,” Tavros said, trying to sound as bold as he could while diverting his eyes from the Highblood’s unnerving gaze.  He turned to float away before the other troll could chance his mind, but before he went, he held up two hesitant but defiant middle fingers.

[mtjester]

Insurrection for Desperate Dreamers/ 4

I had to dig the post up to figure out what this was haha

“What part of the fic was the hardest for me to write?”

Shit, I wrote it so long ago...starting it was pretty hard, which is why I started writing the mini fics for the series in the first place.  I needed to frame what was happening on paper instead of keeping it all in my head.  And I actually only had half of it planned when I started writing?  So once I got to the chapter where Equius comes for Gamzee and Tavros, I was like ahaha better start getting my shit together

[mtjester]

lamonstruo reblogged your post and added:

this is so cute! I have to draw you something from...

I WOULD LOVE THAT SO MUCH

[mtjester]

I have a prompt. what if the tavros that was in vriska's ship went to a dream bubble and found the gamzee from insurrectionbent? its ok if you dont want to write about that AU anymore its just I really liked it

I am not taking any more prompts!

(This fic is set after Insurrection for Desperate Dreamers, meeting with the canon period after Tavros leaves Vriska's crew in the dreambubbles)

Tavros flew through the shattering void from one dreambubble to another, trying to discern the best path away from the rampaging demon breaking reality around him.  He was beginning to regret his decision to abandon Vriska.  He meant every word he had said and never felt as liberated as the moment he had floated away with his middle fingers up, but at least Vriska had had a plan.  He was at a complete loss.  Now, he was nothing more than a lost boy in a silly pirate costume, drifting aimlessly through paradox space, and he was starting to think he might actually end up dead.  Or deader.

He felt the pull of surface tension as he passed from one dreambubble into another, and the scene shifted to a moonlit Alternian beach at the edge of the ocean.  Below him, he recognized a solitary hive, dark against the sand.  His pump biscuit leapt into his throat.  A figure stood on the beach, watching the waves drift into shore.

Tavros had never been in a dreambubble populated by Gamzee's memories.  In fact, he hadn't talked to Gamzee since his death.  The prospect of seeing an old friend after so long soothed his fears, and he descended.

"Gamzee, hey!" he said as he landed.  He took a few steps forward and paused.  The man looked over his shoulder, his eyes dim and somber.  The paint of his face was the same as Gamzee's, his scars were the same, and even his hair and clothes were the same, but he was older than Gamzee should've been and held a severity in his eyes that Tavros could not ever remember seeing in Gamzee's.  Surprise passed across his face as he locked eyes with Tavros.

"Motherfuck..." he breathed, turning towards him.  "You're...motherfuckin' Tavros."

Tavros lifted his hand in a sheepish greeting.  "Uh, hi...yeah, I'm Tavros, but, uh, I think I might have made a mistake, in thinking that you were the same Gamzee that was in my timeline, since you're apparently...not..."

Gamzee's eyes flit over Tavros, taking in his youth and apparel.  "You ain't among the living," he commented after examining Tavros's face.

"Oh, yeah, I'm not, but that's old news now, so it doesn't really bother me," Tavros responded.  He took a step closer and looked at Gamzee more carefully.  "Are you not dead?"

Gamzee's mouth twisted into a wry smile.  "Didn't the motherfuckers up and tell you all about how the shit gets kicked?  Clowns don't die.  We got some righteous motherfuckin' work to be about getting accomplished."

Tavros furrowed his brow in confusion.  "But, I thought that only the people from the alpha timeline got to live, and everyone else from the doomed timelines needed to die, according to paradox space laws," he said.  "And since our Gamzee is in the alpha timeline, doesn't that mean, by that logic, you would have to be a dead Gamzee?"

Gamzee's eyes widened with surprise and grew narrow, darkening to a deep red.  "What all are you telling at me that your Gamzee is the motherfuckin' main one of us?"

An unpleasant shiver crawled up Tavros spine and his mouth grew dry.  The darkness in Gamzee's eyes seemed to produce a shadow that surrounded him.  "Uh," Tavros said, "that wasn't meant as an insult to your uniqueness, or to your right to existence as a doomed Gamzee, so...sorry, if that's how it sounded..."

"But what about you, brother?" Gamzee asked.  To Tavros's surprise, he reached out and gently brushed his fingers against his cheek.  The anger in his eyes was still producing some unholy pressure, but Tavros noticed that it was sharp with distress rather than affront.  "If your Gamzee is the main motherfucker, and the main motherfucker's Tavros is you, and you're motherfuckin' dead...what about you, brother?  What happened about you?  Is that...the motherfucking end of it for you, in all of paradox space?"

Something stirred in Tavros's chest, deepening his discomfort.  "I...don't think I understand what you mean by that.  Do you mean, how did I die?"

Gamzee's fingers brushed back across Tavros's temple and down so his palm could rest against his cheek. "Is there no more alive Tavros?" he asked, so quietly Tavros almost couldn't hear him.

"Uh..." Tavros said, and the answer to the question shook up a feeling of sadness he hadn't felt for a long time.  "No, I guess there isn't anymore."

"Mother fuck..." Gamzee said, stumbling backwards onto his ass.  "But you were supposed to be about making it up for...you were supposed to be the alive one, to make it all motherfuckin' worth it."

The way he dropped his head into his hands made Tavros's sadness grow.  After a moment of fumbling with his hands and figuring out how to react, he stepped around to Gamzee's side and sat down in the sand next to him.  "Uh, I can see that you're upset, maybe because of something that has to do with your Tavros, which I can appreciate, but, uh...I still exist, even if I'm not technically alive, see?"

He waited for Gamzee to look at him and flashed him a small smile.  Gamzee examined his face for a second and, to Tavros's surprise, threw his arm over his shoulder to drag him into a heavy hug.  Tavros tensed, unsure of how to react, but Gamzee didn't seem to notice.  Their backs were to the ocean, and Gamzee's dark hive stood before them.  Tavros gradually began to relax as minutes passed with no sign of Gamzee releasing him.

Finally, Gamzee sighed.  Tavros looked up to see him eyeing his hive with something similar to grief etched into his expression.  "You know, little motherfucker, when I got my wicked self all up off this planet to be about finding up my destiny, I would've never got my realization on about how much my wigglerhood memories of this shitty little hive would make my pump biscuit hurt.  I'd give up every motherfuckin' thing what can be got up to go back and do it all better."

Tavros looked from Gamzee to the hive and around at the Alternian landscape, feeling the cool ocean breeze ruffle his hair.  The smell was familiar, similar to the same salty scent that blew over the edge of the cliff outside his own hive.  The light of the moons, the stars, the grass, the temperature of the air...it was all familiar, but he had been hopping through dreambubbles so long that he had forgotten to appreciate it.  Now, thinking back on everything that had happened--the game, dying, traveling through the dreambubbles, participating in Vriska's crusade, rebelling and winding up alone--a sharp stab of nostalgia twisted in his chest.  "I miss it, too," he said.  "I miss the way things were before, too."  He finally relaxed against Gamzee, giving into the comfort of his cool skin.

Gamzee sighed.  "I never gave up on my promise, brother," he said.  "Even if it's all fake and meaningless and worthless, I'll be putting together that shangri lol what I promised your other self I would do.  At least we can up and create our own dreams in the afterlife."

Tavros glanced up at him.  "That sounds nice," he said.  "I hope, when your Tavros finds you again, he'll appreciate it."

[mtjester]

The thing with Insurrectionbent is that, unlike my other fanfictions, it was made to fit in canon space to some degree (although I certainly took artistic liberties with a lot of things, esp. the relationships).  My other fanfictions are set in AUs or revolve around ships, but when I made Insurrectionbent, I was listening to Homestuck music and trying to capture at least some part of the deeper Homestuck experience.  I doubt I managed it, but I definitely feel more attached to that series than anything else I wrote.

[mtjester]

I just finished the alternative ending, thank you, thank you very much. I've always wanted to see more interaction (and friendship) between karkat and tavros and I loved how you made them in character, its always hard to find a fanfic like that.

You are so welcome.  I was actually scanning AO3 for a fic with decent karkat-tavros interactions not too long ago, and yeah, they are pretty rare!  Which is too bad, given the parallels that exist between their ancestry and all that.  Plus they both seem to have a thing for Jade, both seem to have/had black feelings for John, and both have fun relationships with Dave?  I mean, come on, there's so much potential for good fics.