1/25-2/3

==> Stare (Slick (DD, HB, CD, Dad Egbert))

Hm. Well, it is an interesting idea, but it seems like one better suited for a picture than a story. As it is, it feels like the first few paragraphs of something longer.

Close Encounters (DD (SS, Aradiacester))

The two of them make for a very interesting pairing, and I love how you write both.

==> PS: Interrogate DD (PS (DD))

PS is quite amusing and unsettling here, and it’s interesting to see a more muted DD.

“He’s getting his life back out on track, keeping clear of the law. You just want to drag him back down to your level, because you can’t stomach the thought of someone who messed up recovering from it and moving on.”

This part of the dynamic, though, I really don’t get. It’s not impossible for the characters involved, but it’s not a preexisting part of them either. There’s nothing in PS that connects to the idea or even anything I can think of that could be flipped into it. The closest connection I can think of is that PS’s ultimate powerup has angel wings/angels can fall from grace and that’s beyond tenuous as an actual reason here, and I can’t think of anything at all to support SS’s side of it.

I’m going to guess that the bit about SS turning good and PS being stuck gained life in some tumblr headcanon post, was chatted back and forth a couple times explaining why it’s so fitting, and then ended up in fanfic without realizing that all the explanatory chatter needed to be in the fic as well.

It’s one of the many irritating things about the current state of fanfic. A story actually developing all this stuff wouldn’t be a problem, it’s that all that ever pops up are a bunch of side stories set in the never-written fic’s continuity.

Nightmares (DD (SS))

“Good,” Droog encouraged patiently, and stroked it again. Slick shuddered violently and abruptly relaxed bonelessly on the bed. He woozily managed to hiss “You said you wouldn’t do that!”

Different speakers, so this should really be different paragraphs. Also, comma after hiss

Droog continued petting that peculiar spot on carapace abdomens that induced a heavy flow of endorphins.

This is really jarring, and feels like you paused the story to turn to the reader and explain what’s going on, and worse, it’s not really explaining the actual issue. If you were saying it’s a spot between carapace plates or just where the carapace is a lot softer and more delicate, for example, that would be explaining why it’s sensitive in a way “it’s a spot that does a thing” doesn’t.

That brings us to the end of January already! And with a week left of December here in the present!

…which I guess will be used up commenting on holiday fic. Oh well.

The Visitor in the Long Days (Aradiacester (Death, Doc Scratch))

Trip the Line (SS (PS))

The bar is dead silent as you stand over some poor sap who managed to make some smart comments you didn’t want to hear only to smash his face into your favorite knife, and all you can think is, Detective is going to shit bricks, fucking hell.

This seems like a poor setup. If he doesn’t normally stab people in the face in barfights, what’s different this time should really be on the forefront of his thoughts, while the way it’s laid out here makes it seem like this is how he always thinks about things. It’s also not being set up as accidental either. So it ends up seeming like it’s purely by amazing luck he’s just never managed to successfully stab someone to death like this before.

“’Lo, scout!” he’d said cheerily.
“No hard feelings, eh, scout?”

Scout is his name and everyone else’s looks to be capitalized, so why isn’t it here?

stuck horribly fearing the man youmight probably love also really, really wanted to have sex with

Is there supposed to be a strikethrough here? As it is, it’s a mess.

It’s not like you haven’t killed anyone before. Pretty much everyone around was involved in the war one way or another. You scrapped around on the streets while the city was getting was getting built and you fought for bread just the same as the rest of the displaced veterans of senseless war, grinding those so-called morals that were instilled in your clone upbringing to dust and leaving you a lot more grey than white. It was the impending doom of being locked in a cell that had you scared

What you have him talking about here is killing for a reason – either because of the war or over resources in the city. That should still be very different from killing someone in a bar over some stupid thing they said – and someone who doesn’t see any difference between killing for a reason and killing for no reason is not even close to being morally grey.

It also doesn’t make all that much sense to be presenting him as ever being particularly moral, regardless of this being a palette swap.

The other cities are thousands of miles away, if there are any.

If he doesn’t know they exist, he shouldn’t start off saying they’re a long way away. If there are any other cities, they’re thousands of miles away is how this should be written.

It’ll be hard to blend in anywhere once the police start hunting for you, but you really don’t see any other option right now.

…well, do the police have any evidence besides those witnesses, and how well is he known? How much do witnesses count for? Denying he did it is an option if he can get the blood off and hide the knife. He’s being stalked by magic-using criminals, he could blame those for impersonating him. If he knows other stuff about crimes, he could also try bargaining with that. The situation he’s in relies on how the police work, which isn’t really clear from this story – all that’s been said so far is that there’s superpowered criminals doing whatever they feel like, which doesn’t go well with the idea the police are a supremely powerful force and one free of any corruption or greed.

because with your amount of priors the cops’d lock you away and conveniently misplace the key until you offed yourself or got someone else to kill you.

This is one of the problems with the crossoververse at large.

The Intermission is not really swimming in female characters. The one it does have is important, though. The crossoververse removes the Felt, either entirely or for all practical purposes, in favor of focusing on the Sleuth vs Crew stuff, which means removing Snowman. Mobsterswitch makes the Felt the police, and it would make sense with much of how mobsterswitch functions if Slick was avoiding prison because Snowman didn’t think he’d be any fun locked up. But no, she’s just not a factor.

Now, that in particular is really annoying to me, but it also shows a broader problem. If someone wants to focus on the Sleuth vs Crew of the donation comics, rather than trying to balance three competing factions, okay, that makes sense. But the writers of the crossoververse just as consistently remove the the two female characters of Problem Sleuth. They often don’t exist and when they do it’s as a barely there afterthought. It’s all the problems with traditional slash.

Trip the Line Ch2 (DD (SS, HB))

There’s no shaking his testimony. Since Scout lost that eye and got that freaky robot arm, he’s been less able to blend in with everybody else—there’s no chance it could’ve been another angry knife-happy guy.

Well, that addresses why he’s so sure he can’t just claim innocence, although blaming magic still seems viable.

Scout’s not going to get off for this unless every witness in the bar mysteriously kicks it.

As does this. It doesn’t even need to be every witness, just enough of them that the rest of the witnesses suddenly decide they don’t remember what happened that well. It’s not clear here whether or not DD has morals, but SS doesn’t seem to from last chapter so why doesn’t this occur to him?

Worst of all is Scout’s record—burglary, grand larceny, manslaughter and a few cases where he was acquitted of arson.

Wait, in that case, how is he not currently in jail? I mean, it’s one thing if he’s done those things and gotten away with it, but specifying he was acquitted for arson means he was convicted for the rest.

Any jury’d take one look at a rap sheet like that and wouldn’t take the time to check out the evidence of this case before sentencing him 20 to life.

These guys have human lifespans? Because if they do it doesn’t make much sense they could have built up a whole city without everyone involved at the time being at best elderly by now, and if they don’t then it makes very little sense they’d use sentence lengths calibrated to humans.

Trip the Line Ch3 (PS, SS (Itchy, DD, Doc Scratch))

some blood from the vic in Scout’s apartment

Wow he’s really dumb.

it’s not a crazy enough case to merit constant media attention and it looks like Deadeyed Detective and Commissioner Scratch are trying to keep it that way

While it’s obvious DD would want that, why would Scratch?

Scofflaw holds out a hand. “Excellent,” he purrs as you take it, and then the goddamn shadow magic comes out and it burns. He gets his mouth over yours before you can scream at the shock of it and he forces it open in a loving kiss. You can feel the magic sinking roots into your veins and burning paths to your heart

So…if this is what PS wants, and also if apparently part of it involves a forced conversion anyway, why didn’t he just do this before now instead of waiting until SS screwed up?

And assuming that he couldn’t just do this whenever, why didn’t he try to cause this before now? Aside from making sense for him to do, it’d give this an actual storyline. What you have now is “SS kills some guy for no real reason” “DD is sad that he’s definitely in trouble” “PS asks SS to join because he’s a criminal”. There isn’t any real sense of plot. Having this be the story of how PS made SS switch allegiances would have had that. If you spent more time developing SS’s character – showed the murder to be an actual tipping point where before he wouldn’t have acted like that and why – it’d also have worked by making the plot be about how SS is changing. This doesn’t seem like it’s a story so much as you wanting to get SS to join forces with PS and then giving an explanation for it to happen.

Seriously, the structure of the story makes my brain bleed if I think about it too directly. It has all the components to be a story and yet isn’t.

Out of The District and into The Inferno (Karkat (John, Aradia, DD, SS))

Additional Tags:
Homestuck – Freeform, Hungerstuck, The greatest, sucky story ever, A.U.

You can really tell this is going to be some quality stuff.

You are finally on your way back to The Capital

Don’t capitalize “the”.

just to be a form of entertainment for fatten, over-grown pigs who pride themselves in being genetically grotesque. Who alter their appearances with surgeries and needles, who die their skin, and pierce their cartilage in extreme fashions

This is a mess. “Fatten” is a verb referring to making something fatter, over-grown should be a single word, and genetically refers to the genes you’re born with, not the weird fashions you stick on top. Also, “die” is the thing the kids chosen for the games do, “dye” is the thing where you make something a new color.

A few of them you find tolerable, the escorts, all four of them are the only ones who you’ll stand.

So the people who actively take part in helping make the murder of children for entertainment are tolerable, whereas the average person who happens to like piercings is a piece of shit.

John Egbert, your escort as well at the escort for districts 10 and 11

Why would three districts share a single escort?

and He was more than willing to learn how to hunt (which you find an extremely comforting pastime even though you’re rich and don’t need the meat).

You shouldn’t capitalize “he” either and also what sort of self-centered fucker is Karkat to say he’s hunting because it’s fun when 12 is full of starving people?

Most of the things he tried on you didn’t stick, but you guess all 6’1′ of him is filled with determination, because he did not give up until he fitted you with a tall sting instrument called a Harp. The thing is taller then you are, and you kinda enjoy playing it.

Don’t capitalize “harp” either. The only time you capitalize a word is when it’s a proper noun, which is the individual name of a person, place or thing. Also, harp is an utterly random skill to be giving Karkat, try harder.

Your paragraphing is a mess. You should start a new paragraph with each new topic, including when a new person speaks.

Everyone and their mentors are already there, well except the girl from your district, but she’s been a teary eyed mess since she found out about the quarter quell.

Mentors are just surviving tributes who then mentor the next one. Also, the reason the quarter quell in the books involved using victors was because of Katniss in particular, it isn’t like it’s an actual rule.

Toward the end of the third course John breaks the silence by asking you the only question that you could know less about the answer. “So Karkat what do you think your stylist will put you in this year???”

Why does he insist the escorts are the only okay people when his is a fashion-obsessed callous idiot?

After a moment he says, “I’m sorry.”
“What?” It slips from your mouth before you can stop it.
“I’m sorry you have to go through this again,” you’re taken back, you didn’t expect that. “It’s…..it’s not your…fault. It’s….” You stumble through your words, not able to say what you really want to say.
“Its societies fault”

That should be “It’s society’s fault.” and also bullshit like John isn’t part of the society doing this, like John isn’t personally helping it happen by working specifically as part of the games. Like John isn’t showing how he’s exactly the problem by saying he’s sorry Karkat in particular got picked again, because of course it’d have been fine to take all new kids to be murdered.

More generally, everyone in this story is either OOC or else just showing up with no sign of any characterization, good or bad. This is just a Hunger Games fanfic of OCs with names pasted on top so you can call it a johnkat story.

That was the start of February! Off to a great start.

Tea and Other Things (DD (PI, SS, CD, HB, PS))

He frowns slightly, and waves a hand at you.

“I would not serve you a cup of good tea and then let it go to waste,” he says reasonably.

So is this a threat or not? It’s followed by You nod in acceptance and carefully reach out with one hand as it’s meant to be reassuring and as if DD wasn’t drinking because of concerns about poison. But if DD’s been there a while then this presumably isn’t the first offer of tea, and the way she’s being described as “unfond” and making a point of not moving make this sound like DD’s rejecting it due to anger about the whole kidnapping thing. But then she starts talking about how good it is to have the tea. I really can’t tell what’s meant to be going on.

(You are quite certain that Innovator is well aware that the pins do nothing, but you rather suspect that he finds the sway and shine of your hair to be fascinating. This adds evidence to your theory that he is part cat. Other pieces of evidence include his preference for high spots that are warm and comfy, his marked detachment until he decides he want company, and his unfortunate tendency to not eat at all because he finds the food ‘icky’.)

The tone of this story is really inconsistent. This is not really the sort of aside that follows naturally from being kidnapped, chained up, and having your hair messed with, however funny you found making the comparison.

It doesn’t help that none of this description actually has anything to do with PI’s character in the comic, ranging instead from unmentioned (liking high warm spots) to blatantly contradicted (being picky about food).

Anyway, the jazz metaphor is an interesting one, but rather too long, and I’m also not sure it makes much sense for DD to be explaining why her group functions in such detail to her enemy, especially not with a focus on why it’s not safe to ignore them – that seems to be inviting him to maim or kill the rest of them the next time he decides to abduct her without trouble.

To Know Terror (Doc Scratch (Gl’bgolyb))

Children are born by it and they die by it.

This doesn’t seem right, Gl’bgolyb isn’t the same thing as the mother grub.

Anyway, interestingly written and a good explanation for the general viciousness of the scratched troll race.

Why to Not Accept Drabble Prompts Chapter 6: Snowman & Damon Gant – “Sexy Flirtatious Gun Tango or Something”

A drabble is the word for a writing exercise of exactly 100 words. It doesn’t mean a short or quickly written story, and it means the opposite of something you threw together without much thought or editing involved.

Anyway, Snowman seems to be appearing here only in several steps removed appearance. No idea why she’d be letting the guy go just because he asked her to dance.

Tall though she was, he was still taller. Clever though she was, he was still, in his humble opinion, just a mite more clever. When he moved his hand to her shoulder, the one going to her waist was digging his own gun into the dip of her curves.

She’s one of the tallest characters in the comic, she’s apparently quite smart and canonically has the ability to see into the future. I am admittedly not familiar with if the other character is some sort of twenty foot tall robotic superintelligence, but anyone who wasn’t braindead should be able to guess that putting your gun away and untying your apparently still armed enemy will lead to them drawing their own gun, so it’s less a matter of her not being clever enough and more of her being a complete idiot here.

I would be less irritated if the story didn’t boil down to her being feisty eyecandy.

Old Growth (Condesce (Aradiacester))

Adorable and so bitterly depressing. I love the look into the pre-scratch world, and the ending denial of it being any more than some bad dream is perfect.

Slick (DD, HB, CD, Dad Egbert)
DD (SS, Aradiacester)
PS (DD)
Aradiacester (Death, Doc Scratch)
DD (SS)
SS, DD (PS, HB)
Karkat (John, Aradia, DD, SS)
DDf (PI, SS, CD, HB, PS)
Doc Scratch (Gl’bgolyb)
Some guy (Snowman)
Condesce (Aradiacester)

Two and a half of eleven.

Page 380 again. Feferi continues to be shocked at how far back I am.