#nuclearstuck

[mulattafury]

Hey! If it's not any trouble, could you maybe tell us more about what happens to Sollux in upliink?

A little! I actually have that whole fic sketched out and I want to revisit it. I’ll probably rewrite what little I have done. Since Carla (nuclearstuck’s creator) isn’t really in the fandom anymore, and is working on creating an original concept out of what they’ve already finished of nuclearstuck, the main fic probably won’t be finished and the little things we’ve planned of having the two fics sync up have kind of fizzled out.

Basically, nuclearstuck came out of what I think was supposed to be a one-off Gamzee<3

The whole reason I developed Sollux in the AU was because he wasn’t part of the main story and Carla and I wanted to do some RPs in the AU. So I asked them how psionics would fit into the boundaries of nukestuck, and they had some ideas about the bureau of troll affairs, an organization that exists in the AU kinda-sorta masquerading as an advocacy organization but p transparently having their own gotdang agenda as a superpowered police force, using them to reverse-engineer alternian spaceflight technology

Which was a brilliant idea, but then we got to thinkin ok, the bureau is great as a scary fictional organization with unlimited resources and no accountability, but do you know what is an even scarier organization with unlimited resources and no accountability that exists in real life??

So that is where I got the idea (that and, at the time, binging my ass off on some X-Files) to create a military conspiracy story about stolen alien technology being harvested, studied, and tested in the total absence of ethics, seeing’s how trolls have little in the way of human rights, especially trolls who have signed their lives away to service.

Upliink is about how, with the gap between human technology and troll technology rapidly closing, modern science is approaching the point of fabricating new technology based off the alternian stuff. The problem is they weren’t really prepared for how much of the tech is organic, so they still have to use psionics to power it, and they still have to harvest a lot of components from alternian spacecraft to make everything work. This causes Problems.

The military is also trying to keep a lid on this research, because if the bureau sniffs it out there’s the whole shitstorm of who gets to have ownership of any technology that comes out of this research. This also causes Problems.

Soooo Upliink is about Roxy, a tactical networks engineer, and Sollux, a test pilot, and their respective roles in these developments. Neither of them know the full extent of what’s going on, they just do what they’re told, but when testing a new flight system that seems to be light years ahead of anything the military has developed before leaves Sollux with nightmares and flashbacks that aren’t his, they start to piece together that there’s a lot more going on than they’ve been told.

So yeah, I don’t want to dump a lot more detail in this particular ask since it’s something I definitely want to revisit as a fic. I’m trying to work more canon characters in there who don’t appear/aren’t mentioned in the main nukestuck series (which is amazing and everyone should read it).

Sooo yeah! I don’t wanna spoil anything but if anyone has any questions I would be super excited to answer them :D

[mulattafury]

tA: why do you alway2 go for garru2 anyway tg: idk maybe i got a thing for ugly gray aliens w/ no booty who think they’re good at stuff

nerds playin mass effect something something reach and flexibility

there is no way to make a perspective guide in Sai so they live in an acid trip

[mulattafury]

this is dumb

a nice TA saves sollux captor's butt

later she might touch it

the fanfiction

Sollux holds no illusions about why he’s allowed to attend the academy.

Trolls flying military aircraft keeps human airmen out of combat. Those aircraft need to be tested by trolls, and the trolls testing them have to know enough about what they’re doing for that testing to be effective. He knows he hasn’t been awarded this luxury due to his intelligence or skill, but is being groomed for a specific purpose because of the unique nature of his psionic abilities.

It certainly helps that he happens to be immensely fascinated with the field he’s been railroaded into, but it doesn’t make it less humiliating when his grades suffer, or less infuriating when it isn’t his fault.

Intro to Aeronautical Engineering could have been an awesome class -- the students, at least, warmed up to him more quickly than in any of his others, but the professor certainly did not. Sollux had learned pretty quickly not to speak up much in class, too afraid of blowing his chances of being a test pilot to risk rocking the boat, but his exam scores disappearing from Blackboard were starting to become a problem.

The first time, the professor had insisted that Sollux hadn’t attended the exam. For this one, he’d promised to look into it, but now it showed as a missing grade online, bringing his overall average dangerously close to failing. What’s worse is that, after going over the exam in class, Sollux is sure he had the highest score. The TA who grades them has a weird routine of drawing a cat on the highest-scoring exam.

This time, none of his classmates had the cat.

So now he’s here, knocking twice at the slightly-ajar door of the professor’s office, determined to a least stand his ground this time around.

“Come in,” drones a voice from inside, though the man doesn’t look up from the papers he’s grading to acknowledge Sollux’s presence.

“Uh, hey, Fuller. You haven’t seen my missing exam in that stack, have you?”

“No, I have not.”

He still doesn’t look up, though he reaches to push his wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. Sollux frowns.

“Oh. So… you haven’t seen it at all?”

“Nope.”

He still doesn’t look up.

“Can-- I mean, I’ll retake it, if I have to…”

“We’ve already gone over the exam in class, so I’m afraid not.”

“Well is there any extra credit I can do? I really can’t fail this --”

He’s interrupted by Fuller’s TA pushing around him, a stack of mail in one of her arms and a heavy bookbag slung over the other. Sollux has seen her around before, having noticed initially that she was remarkably tall for a human, and noticing more recently that she has a tiny Galaga tattoo on her lower back. He’s noticing it again, now, as she bends to plug in her laptop, but is brought back suddenly by the stern drone of Professor Fuller’s voice informing him that “I don’t give extra credit.”

He’s actually looking up at Sollux now, eyebrows raised and a frown turning the corners of his lips.

“Will that be all, Mr. Captor?”

“Uh, well…”

“Wait, Captor?” The TA stands up, seemingly noticing Sollux for the first time. “Are you Sollux Captor? Whoa, are you a PSII-Tactics cadet?”

“Heh, yeah. Guilty on both charges.”

“Ha! Sollux Captor -- six and six, I should have known.” She grins, and it’s brilliant, and suddenly Sollux wants to know everything about her. “Dude, what are >you< trying to get extra credit for? You’re making the rest of us look bad, overachiever…”

“Overachiever? I’m actually kind of close to failing…”

“Failing? No way, I graded your last… exam…”

Fuller is glaring quietly at her, and she returns it, brows furrowed, lips pressed in a tight line. It lasts only a moment before she laughs again, shaking her head.

“It’s funny, because I dropped the stapler under the desk when I was grading the other papers, and I saw yours by the trash. I thought it was another answer sheet, right, since all of your answers were perfect, but then I realized you were using a totally different method to solve like half of the questions. Anyway, I graded it and put it with the rest, it should be fine.” “I didn’t see it, Roxy,” Fuller insists, a hint of agitation coloring his usual monotone.

“Well. Maybe I put it in the wrong stack.” Roxy shrugs, crouching to open her bookbag and pulling out an obnoxiously glittery Hello Kitty binder labeled “AERO ENGR.”

“But, like I said, he used a really novel approach to many of the problems, so I wanted a copy for myself. Here it is…”

She places the papers on Fuller’s desk, glaring pointedly at him as his frown deepens.

“You look kinda busy, though, so I’ll put the grades in myself, don’t worry about it.”

She snatches the papers back from the professor and hands them to Sollux, the troll trying his best not to laugh or cry or both at the perfect score on the header. He thumbs through the pages, nodding as each checkmark sends a tiny thrill of victory tingling through him, but giving the tiniest, disappointed “Oh…” when he gets to the last page and still sees no cat.

Roxy notices, because of course she does, and with a snorting laugh takes one of the pages back from him.

“Roxy, right?” Sollux asks as she takes a seat at her desk, scrawling on the back of the page.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Just a regular mix-up that I just happened to catch, you know?” She gives another quick glance at Professor Fuller, who is back to pointedly ignoring them, and hands Sollux’s paper back with a smile.

“Have a good one, Captor.”

“You, too. See you in class, Professor…”

Sollux doesn’t look at the drawing until later. The cat has two sets of ears sticking out of an aviator hat, and a word balloon that says “When they try to drop you, land on your feet. Someday, you’ll soar above them all.”

It’s years later when Roxy finds it, laminated and tucked away in the inner pocket of his favorite coat.

The moment is sweet, the memories fond, and the teasing that follows extraordinarily merciless.

[mulattafury]

the gamzee was my fav part of this sketch so here's a version of him without those other nerds

[mulattafury]

geez ive gotten rusty drawing is hard

can u imagine this double hate-date to troll fight club tho coz i can

sollux thinks this is stupid he's just there to keep some good side bets goin

[mulattafury]

this was supposed to be a warmup sketch but it took me so fuckin long to do i thought it'd be wrong not to slap some colors on it

i been playing with scale a lot for nukestuck!roxy and i was thinkin at first she should be real petite like nukestuck rose but why not tall like nukestuck dave

anyway she is making fun of dave for going to troll fight club but also plotting how they could seriously clean house at troll fight club

[mulattafury]

a long-overdue commission for tumblr friend cmshaw!

i made it nukestuck roxy just cause

commission info!

[mulattafury]

a follow up to this

roxy he'll never be satisfied just stop now before the fighting starts

sorry no tattoos today