Dec 25th-31st! Last year is done at last.
I Was Made To Believe There’s Something Wrong With Me (PI (DD, PS, AD, SS))

Yet another fic that doesn’t have much interest in explaining why Droog always jumps him.

I really don’t see why this is so impossible. Like, maybe Droog really likes having the ego boost of some easily messed with guy around him, the way sometimes you want fancy food and sometimes you want something cheap and easy. Or maybe he’s not actually a sack of patheticness in the first place. Because, you know, he isn’t.

You prefer light teas, white and soft and no shock to your taste buds. You have to dilute black with milk to be able to drink it comfortably, and so much of the flavour is lost that you tend not to bother. Instead you brew your gentle flowery silver needles, your peonies, pale green-yellow and lovely.

But god, is it so much to ask that people pay attention to canon? Hot sauce and moonshine are not exactly for the delicate.

His Game (Droog (Snowman))

Like so many other things in a dangerous, capable, genius man’s life

The adjective pileup feels forced and makes him seem like he’s actually not any of these things but just rather insecure.

In general, though, I like the wording of this. You have a lot of clever turns of phrase, Droog sounds convincing, and I like the details, from red felt on the pool table to how he describes Snowman. The reserve they both have is balanced very well – they aren’t overly expressive, but not tipping into disinterest either.

And the vicious little ending is perfect.

Reasons Why Diamonds Droog Hates Christmas (Droog (Boxcars, Slick, PS, PI))

You know that it is only a matter of time before Slick breaks out his collection of Scottie dog sweaters.

While I agree Slick’s taste in fashion is terrible, what we know about his interest in dogs is that he’s hideously embarrassed by it.

Droog’s misery is amusing, though.

God though, so so so so so so so so sick of the crossoververse crackpairings being everywhere. This shouldn’t even have had that problem. There was perfectly good space for them to be there except it’s written assuming the crossoververse crackpairings are just how things go instead of setting any of it up.

I don’t care for sugar if I can’t have you (Rose (Jade, John, Dave, Bro, Mom, Doc Scratch, Jack Noir))

This is cute but the conflict seems rushed – I don’t really understand how the conversation jumps from Rose asking if they’d like to all become a serious band to Jade hating her forever for considering abandoning them, followed by Rose realizing she is a terrible person for putting music over her friends.

“Go away, mom,” she calls

Also, words like mom, when used in place of a name, are capitalized like you would a name.

“Forty-five minutes,” snaps Vice Principal Noir as the talent show participants group together behind the stage. “Now, I don’t give a shit who wins or who does what, but if any of you even thinks about saying the word ‘fuck’ in front of those parents and kids or makes any sort of motion resembling a boob-grab, I will personally dismember you with the broken sword I keep behind my desk.”

Jack is hilarious.

Knotty (Eridan (Bec Noir))

Hm. This seems kind of empty. Eridan’s getting raped but he seems only intermittently concerned by that, and there could be more on his thought processes and whether any of this is making him reconsider things.

I Triple Dog Dare You (PS, Karkat (SS, DD, Snowman, Crowbar, Die, Kanaya))

This seems too long. The first section, with the bet and ending with Slick helpfully mugging him so no one else will, is a lot stronger than the rest in both character and hilarity respects – Snowman and company’s amusement is somewhat funny, but rehashing the joke, which would be okay if it were leading up to a strong ending, but instead it peters out from there. The final bit with Karkat doesn’t even have any connection to the setup.

Mismatched to Perfection (Grand Highblood, Handmaid)

Looking at her petite form, all soft curves capped in tiny feet and slender hands, one would never expect her to be the more dangerous of the two.

And yet the rest of the story is all him calling the shots. You say that sex used to be extremely painful for her, but she kept doing it anyway and luckily now it isn’t. She’s grateful he’s cut his claws this time so he doesn’t cut her up. He sets the pace during sex and all she can do is complain and hope he listens, and half the time he does the opposite just because he can. He bites her and draws blood, she doesn’t do anything, And so on, finally culminating in:

The Handmaid squirmed out from beneath him, awkwardly hopping to crouch over the bucket and release their genes. From behind her, the Highblood laughed.

“You look absolutely fucking ridiculous, running like that.” She scowled at him.

“Why don’t you try holding a bucketful of genetic material in your seedflap and tell me how easy it is.”

So, sex started off being really painful, even now often harms her accidentally and deliberately, she doesn’t have any control over it while it’s happening and he doesn’t listen to her requests, and it always ends with her uncomfortable and ridiculous. Why are things so completely unbalanced?

Presumably the answer is “because kink” but still.

>PM: Deliver gift. (Roxy, Jane, PM (Mutie))

This is adorable, especially Jane holding the kitten, and I love how Roxy’s idea of the perfect gift is to mutate cats until she has one that’s Jane’s favorite color.

cave paintings (art) (PM, MP)

It’s art.

Crowned by Circumstance (PM (WQ, WV))

Wonderful buildup and perfect ending.

Power, Balance and Certitude (And the Mail Will Continue) (PM (WQ, WV))

The Queen’s last order to her bubbles forth in her mind. She’d foreseen each of their moves already, and had positioned her for her final purpose

That seems odd – WQ said a lot of things to her about what would happen that didn’t actually come to pass.

No Queen should have given up her ring so easily, and yet she had relinquished it at the sight of the sword. Not out of cowardice, but out of certitude, sensing its tactical importance immediately. Where one may have seen regicide, her Queen saw the advantage the mission would grant their side.

And this is pretty odd as well, when PM came there to say what happened and ask advice. She was never threatening regicide in the first place, so of course that wasn’t WQ’s motive.

It added a certain confidence and even a sense of predestination to her actions, knowing that they were a part of the Queen’s maneuverings and strategy. It kept her safe, and it kept her from questioning, even as the pure white of her her hands grew dirty and stained with blood.

This is nicely put. And your description of the ring’s effect on her is disturbing.

The Awkward Reminders of Warmongering Qualities Wanting Revenge.

If this is meant to be echoing the initials, shouldn’t that last word be Vengeance?

Gothamstuck: Year One (Dave (Bro, Rose))

However it was certainly not a bad security system, yet even before the boy had decided to dawn the cowl there had never come a time where Dave could see its true functionality.

Your sentence structure here and elsewhere is awful. What’s that “however” even doing there? By the time you get to Rose your sentences are turning into word salad. You desperately need a beta reader, it’s a chore to make sense of what you’re trying to say.

Likely they’re not a native speaker, but still, that’s what betas are for.

Insanitystuck(AU abandoned, may look into reviving it in a different way) (Sollux (Eridan, Feferi, more characters but fuck if I’m going through this mess to count them))

-note: this au has been abandoned, I may revive it in a different way but this version is old and dumb and badly executed

I’ll assume that this means you’ve realized what a terrible idea it is to make a story about how evil bitch Feferi tricks Sollux into murdering his sweet and wonderful matesprit Eridan and skip the rant.

What the fuck.

Pokestuck (Aradia, Karkat, Tavros (Feferi, Vriska, Eridan, Sollux, Gamzee, Doc Scratch))

Aradia rubbed her jaded blue eyes

Why would Aradia’s eyes be jaded when she seems otherwise to be her perky pre-death self, and why is she a human? It’s not as if the pokemon setting is deeply wedded to the people involved being humans. All you’re doing is moving this AU an extra few unnecessary steps from the canon characters by doing this.

Proffesor Scratch

Spellcheck!

other girls pester chum

Should be girl’s pesterchum account. Also, the kids use Pesterchum, the trolls use Trollian.

Why doesn’t Aradia have a quirk? Even before her death she did the o/0 substitution, and she’s even still apocolypseArisen here.

AA: id like a fire type for when i go exploring in caves
AA: most fire types have some sort of visible fire on them I think

That’s a really basic understanding of pokemon. Fire types are going to be struggling in most caves, which tend to be populated by rock, ground, and occasionally water pokemon. It’d make more sense for her to want a pokemon that was at home in those areas, or good at digging.

There was literarily nothing but grass, bushes, ponds and houses. Cars were not spoken of. They were either extinct or had never actually made their way to the isolated town.

Isolated towns rely on things being driven in. If they’ve got stuff like TVs, they certainly have cars. Also, “extinct” is the wrong word regardless.

“Tavrooos!” grinned Vriska as she appeared from nowhere and spun the startled boy around.
“Uh, hi Vriska,” stammered Tavros, relaxing slightly at his friend’s somewhat wicked smile.

Why would Tavros relax at that? Even the people on good terms with Vriska don’t relax when they see she’s excited.

Tavros smiled welcomingly to his best friend and, upon spotting him, Gamzee’s grin became even bigger

Tavros isn’t actually that close with Gamzee (or any of the kids, he’s pretty isolated), and Gamzee is consistent about calling Karkat his best friend.

The picking of pokemon is pretty dull. If ever there was a time to do something different with the starters, it’d be now. Why does Vriska want a fire monkey? What do fire monkeys have to do with her various themes and personality? Why does Tavros want a torchic when his interests are fairies, horselike animals, and picking things that aren’t optimal because he just likes them? Why would Nepeta want a tepig?

Vriska is interested in luck, spiders, and overpowering force. Spinerak is an obvious one, and something that knows metronome would also be good. She’s also a blueblood with an interest in pirates, so seafaring pokemon would work. Chimchar is a flaming monkey. She’d also more likely already have some overpowered pokemon, in the same way she and Eridan had their ultimate weapons already. Tavros would love a togepi or clefairy, maybe a ponyta or similar pokemon he could ride, and probably love stories about Celebi. Feferi would inherit/be given due to her station a fully evolved octillery. And so on. There’s interesting stuff you could be doing here, and handing out the set starters with little reason behind the choices isn’t it.

See, the highbloods would obviously have better access to pokemon than lowbloods! Oh, the interesting things you could do here. Maybe Vriska inherits a vicious ariados from her mother she can barely control. Octillery might be royal pokemon. Eridan has a levitating kingdra but avoids any other water types, though he claims water pokemon are superior.

Chapter 2: In which everyone is sorted into a group (Sollux, Dave, Equius (all the kids))

Gripped firmly in his hand was his own pokeball, which contained a Treecko. Treecko was obviously the best starter. The Sburban region actually had no set starter Pokemon, mainly because there were no unique, native Pokemon there. It was just a jumble of all the Pokemon from other regions. But Prof. Scratch also wanted to keep people guessing, apparently. Last year’s trainers had either a Feebas or a Magikarp.

Stop capitalizing words like pokemon, they’re not proper nouns.

Why on earth would Sollux want a treecko? That’s even more random than the rest.

No, no one would give out magikarp as starters because the point of a starting pokemon is to manage the bare minimum competency for a trainer to travel on their own. Giving out magikarp is as productive as handing them an empty pokeball and sending them off like that.

“So,” Sollux stared at his Treecko who eyed him back, summing up his new trainer. Like Dean, the Treecko had strange colours. In his case, his usually dark green tail was murky yellow. “You’re good with just Treecko?”
In response, the lizard-like Pokemon looked quite disgusted and muttered something which made Dean look offended.

It’s really forced how, in every pokemon fic, the pokemon just happen to hold strong opinions on how fine they are with what their trainer already felt like doing. If all they do is agree, there’s no point in wasting scenes asking them. It’s not like they’re actually getting characterization here, they’re just extensions of the trainer.

“Hey, fuckass, you got beat by a girl!” came a horribly smug voice which could only come from one person.

Karkat is not actually that sexist.

As usual for OT fic, it’s quickly degraded into utterly boring and is full of people making decisions for no reason but that the author wants it to happen.

It’s interesting in a different way, though – the story opens with Aradia and the first conversation is between here and Feferi, but she’s quickly crowded out by the boy’s viewpoints. If you’ve been following my tallies, you may notice that while male characters regularly share space with other male characters, female characters generally share with male characters. And in stories with a lot of characters, things often trend toward the male characters.

One issue might be that people are more likely to write redundant scenes with male characters. Here, there’s an utterly pointless bit in the first chapter where it switches to Karkat to repeat the same scene we see from Aradia’s viewpoint, then goes on about stuff that can easily be assumed. Perhaps on some level people feel there needs to be a reason for a female character to be appearing in a way they don’t with the male ones.

Which, I suppose, is one good argument for why it’s good to have something like Ladystuck.

Long Live the Queen (WQ (AR, PM, WV))

A wonderful job of filling in the details – Jack’s myriad cruelties, PM trying to staunch a fatal wound, WQ’s concern for the future and who PM will need to be.

Desertion

Hey, it’s this fic again!

A Reasonable Sacrifice (Aradiacester (Doc Scratch, Deuce, Droog, Slick, Snowman, Condesce))

You have a lot of lovely imagery in this.

Finally, she forced her feet to move again, and picked up speed as the Doctor’s body began to glow. Logically, the Doctor should be able to heal himself, as damaged as his body was. He had patched her up from much worse, after all.

A bit disappointed she doesn’t take advantage of his weakness to just blow him to pieces – I spent the fic curious if there’d be an explanation for why no one comes to get her again, if he’s still around and capable.

“But we helped the ones on the computers, didn’t we? Why can’t we help this one?”
“Deuce, were you paying attention at all? These things are vicious.”

Perfect.

You do a great job of explaining how they’d come to work together – it makes sense for them to be willing to try her out, and without the degree of investment that’d lead to them wanting to control her.

Sad it has to conclude, but regardless of how badly it goes for her, it’s still a better ending than she gets otherwise.

She’s Dead (Slick (PS, HD))

This seems completely disconnected from canon. The story revolves around the backstory the characters have with each other, which is not only wholly invented for the story, but it’s an invention that actively contradicts the setup they have in canon. They’re OCs sharing initials with the characters they’re supposed to be in a setting that has only superficial resemblance to the original.

United Front (AD (PS, PI))

…this story is basically AD pointing out that sleeping with the Midnight Crew is a terrible idea for them as well as somewhat out of character, PI apologizing because he’s right, then crying and AD suddenly converts to being fine with PI sleeping with a torture-happy sociopath because helping out torturers is okay but making people cry is wrong.

Why do authors in the crossoververse keep doing this? I mean, I can understand people not thinking it’s a problem, but I can’t fathom what motivates people to write fic devoted to pointing out the fic’s problems.

A Problematic College Experience (PS, SS (PI, AD, DD))

This really reads more like “inspired by” than “actually is”. You throw in a lot of surface similarities that don’t actually mean anything, and it’s really worst this last chapter – Slick actually did build the city, you know? Making it so it’s some family way back that did it removes that, because being related doesn’t mean anything. Derse was where Jack was in an an important post by birth, Midnight City was where he actually did something of his own on his own merit. Without the claim he made the place, what stake does he have in any of it?

This has come to really bug me about humanstuck Jacks. I realize it’s the obvious solution, but it’s the wrong one, dammit. If Jack is the privileged kid of someone, it’s somewhere way far away from where Slick is now, possibly still on fire.

Precious Messiah (WQ (PM, AR, WV))

She retrieves the crown from the king on the battlefield. Prospitian troops are defenseless. Derse succeeds.
She’s done so well.

I love how you’ve written the queen here – she’s working with the inevitable, and her attempt at a solution is somewhere between mad and pragmatic, and you can actually see how it makes sense, it might actually work and at the least, is a gamble where the loss is going to be the same loss it would be if she didn’t try.

Obedience Training (PS (SS))

Hm. I find it really hard to believe Slick would actually admit he wants to be collared and bossed around to anyone, even himself, but I suppose I can’t see any other way Sleuth would know to do it, and everything after that point is perfectly characterized.

Also I want to whine that this is yet another box checked off by the crack pairing before the canon one. And by before, I as usual mean at all.

Code Purple, 245, 10-43 (MOCs)

Eh, this is mostly dull and rather fanboyish when it isn’t. I mean, you start off saying the MC were totally off the police’s radar until very recently, but then they know all about them so you can throw in how the MC are exceptional in this way or that way, like how they know for sure there’s only four guys in it despite them not believing such a thing could be possible, to Yeah, they respect him. And it seems like it’s genuine. We’ve got no idea how they formed, but Deuce, Boxcars, and Droog are deathly loyal to Slick. which, come on, what sort of briefing is this?

This seems like it’s mostly you telling the reader your thoughts on the characters and how you decided things work, rather than what the character would actually know or think.

Last Tea (DD (Death, PI, HB, CD, SS))

“Yes! Well, no. Sort of? Ah, um, a part of him created this universe. Other parts of him became all the matter in the universe. So um, your planet is Pickle Inspector. The stars are Pickle Inspector. You are Pickle Inspector.” He finishes his tea and then pours himself some more before topping off your own cup. “Pickle Inspector is the one thing that everything else has in common. Thus his presence in the subconscious of everything in the universe, and thus my form.”

I feel like this could stand to be trimmed down. The whole “btw Pickle Inspector is the universe” explanation has been brought up in fic quite a lot by now, and it’s not particularly relevant to the story if Droog understands, so you only need enough explanation there to make the whole Death = Pickle Inspector bit intelligible to readers.

I like the plot of this, but Droog’s characterization is somewhat lackluster and seems like he’s mostly there as a vehicle for the story idea. I mean…

You remember Pickle Inspector. Shit. He was following you, wasn’t he? He’s always following you. He always seems to know when you and the Crew are planning your crimes. It used to amuse you, but now you wish he’d just /stayed away. You didn’t want him to see that.

I can believe it’s possible for Droog to be concerned PI saw him get killed, but you need setup for it. Being amused by PI following him around, sure, on friendlyish terms is workable, but more than that requires more explanation, or else picking a more sentimental character to tell the story with.

…Once again it occurs to me that people should just use Boxcars more often.

Hysteria (HD (PS))

“What if I’m losing my touch? What if I don’t remember how pulchritude even works anymore? Maybe I’m just a washed up old detective.”
Your hysteria meter suddenly goes up a few notches.

If talking about his problems is causing her hysteria meter to spike, it’s probably not a moirallegiance, or if it is, it’s a terrible one. It doesn’t seem like a lack of self-confidence would be a chronic problem Sleuth needed a moirail for, either. This seems like two people who are friends, one of which tells the other to stop putting himself down, not a romance of any kind.

Really, really hate this being everywhere. It’s like people think it’s extra Homestuck if you surgically remove the word “friend” from your vocabulary and crudely staple “moirail” into the hole.

Strife (Davesprite (Bro, Bec Noir))

“Where is he? He should be there by now.” He muttered

If dialogue is followed by a verb describing how it’s being said, that second half is treated as part of the same sentence and capitalized/punctuated accordingly. This should be “Where is he? He should be there by now,” he muttered

The description in this is really, really weird. You just keep calling Jack “the man”, as if the fact he’s covered in black shell is inconsequential, and the only reference to him looking unusual is gaining the dog’s head after Jade’s prototyping, despite the fact he had a cat face before then, to say nothing of the wings and tentacles.

PI (DD, PS, AD, SS)
Droog (Snowman)
Droog (Boxcars, Slick, PS, PI)
Rose (Jade, John, Dave, Bro, Mom, Doc Scratch, Jack Noir)
Eridan (Bec Noir)
PS, Karkat (SS, DD, Snowman, Crowbar, Die, Kanaya)
Grand Highblood, Handmaid
Roxy, Jane, PM (Mutie)
PM, MP
PM (WQ, WV)
PM (WQ, WV)
Dave (Bro, Rose)
Sollux (Eridan, Feferi, more characters but fuck if I’m going through this mess to count them)
Aradia, Karkat, Tavros, Sollux, Dave, Equius (all the kids)
WQ (AR, PM, WV)
Aradiacester (Doc Scratch, Deuce, Droog, Slick, Snowman, Condesce)
Slick (PS, HD)
AD (PS, PI)
PS, SS (PI, AD, DD)
WQ (PM, AR, WV)
PS (SS)
MOCs
DD (Death, PI, HB, CD, SS)
HD (PS)
Davesprite (Bro, Bec Noir)

Eleven of twenty-five, eight of which because of Ladystuck.