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edenfalling · 5 years

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[Fic] “Frog Hunt” -- Homestuck

Summary: SBURB is not turning out anything like you'd hoped, and your game session may be broken. Which is a problem, because you can't go back to Earth -- last you checked, it's busy being an apocalyptic wasteland -- and judging by your most recent dreams, the rest of the Medium beyond your little Incipisphere is an equally apocalyptic wasteland of ghosts and horrorterrors. The only way out is through. You have to win the game.

Winning SBURB requires frogs.

Note: I started this fic way back in 2012, hit Jade's horrorterror dreams, and had no idea where to go from there. Last week it occurred to me that actually the horrorterror dreams made a perfectly reasonable ending, provided I filled in a missing middle scene, established an emotional/thematic through-line, and tweaked stuff until the new parts played nice with the old ones. So I did. :) [2,325 words]

--------------------------------------------- Frog Hunt ---------------------------------------------

SBURB is not turning out anything like you'd hoped. You wanted to see your friends in person, go on cool adventures, and save the world. You guess technically the cool adventure part is happening? But it turns out that being in the middle of an adventure is mostly very upsetting and dangerous.

Also your game session may be broken. Which is a problem, because you can't go back to Earth -- last you checked, it's busy being an apocalyptic wasteland -- and judging by your most recent dreams, the rest of the Medium beyond your little Incipisphere is an equally apocalyptic wasteland of ghosts and horrorterrors. The only way out is through. You have to win the game.

Winning SBURB requires frogs.

You have a lot of pointed questions to ask whoever designed the symbolism behind this process.

You also have no idea what you're doing. Zoology is not your thing! Botany and rocket science are your things!

But you've done crazier things in the name of friendship than breed magic universe-creating frogs. And this time you'll have Dave by your side, even if all he can help you can do is win the Olympic gold medal for synchronized flipping out, which might as well be a thing now since Earth is gone and if anyone ever reestablishes the Olympics it will be you and you can stick in any sports you feel like.

That analogy may have gotten away from you a little. You decide to preemptively consider it Dave's fault, and send him another message asking for an ETA.

"Kanaya says we won't have enough time to collect all the frogs, let alone raise them and do the breeding and mutation stuff. Not even if we yank Rose and John into the project, and especially not with just you and me," you tell him when he shows up in person, popping out of nowhere with two discs floating at his side. They look a little like Grandpa's old vinyl records, but with red gears turning underneath them. "Not that you aren't helpful! But there's only so many seconds until disaster."

Dave arches the backs of his hands, fingertips still ghosting over the ridges of his floating record thingies. "Harley, c'mon, work with me here. What's my aspect?"

You blink. Oh. Time travel, durr. Okay, possibly your flipping out was a little premature. "Whoops, forgot that! Potentially infinite seconds, yay recycling. So how are we doing this?"

Dave shrugs, letting the records vanish back into his sylladex. "We have limited absolute time, basically from when I got your house up to reasonable height to, let's say, an hour before whatever runs us off the rails goes critical. So we have to maximize our use of space -- duplicate this ectobiowhatthefuck setup and run an assload of slime zapper tadpole tanks at once. I'm thinking one on each of the top ten floors of your house. We'll do one floor on each master loop so we don't keep running into each other. Mark the space and time coordinates for each croaker we target, then head out to poke them or whatever literally the second after we zap them, take notes on any other frogs that look useful, and move down a floor and back in time to start again."

"What about breeding?" you ask.

You think Dave frowns. It's hard to read his expression behind his shades, but he doesn't guard his posture as much as his face. "Whoops, forgot that. Uh, let's say every third floor and third loop is for breeding and mutation games. Shouldn't be too hard, especially if we whip up a regular appearifier. They don't have these bullshit temporal lock restrictions."

"Sounds like a plan," you say. "Let's get everything set up and start breeding!"

Dave's discombobulated expression is so faint and brief that if you'd blinked, you would have missed it. Hmmm, you think to yourself. Maybe...? But no, you probably just reminded him of something one of the trolls said. They can be so bizarre sometimes.

"Time to rock and roll," Dave says, and you shake off your daydream and get to work.

---------------

It turns out that ectobiology is actually very simple! You don't need to know genetics or metaphysical zoology, which you were a little worried about. You just need to zap frogs and run their ghost slime through the game-provided machines until you hit a gene combination that pings a little automated reward mechanism. Scanning for useful frogs is a little trickier, since you get the reward ping for any potentially useful gene sequence even if it's one you already have on file -- you have to weed out the duplicates manually, which is time-consuming and a total pain.

Creating hundreds of potential paradoxes to make sure the appearifier grabs slime instead of actual frogs is also time-consuming and a total pain.

It would be simplest to just shoot the frogs, but first of all, that's mean, and second of all, it would probably screw up LOFAF's ecology to storm around wiping out its native fauna less than an hour after thawing them out in the first place. If you had a dart gun you could trust not to mangle the frogs on impact, maybe you could stun them for a few minutes. Unfortunately, all of Grandpa's guns (and by extension, all of your guns) are designed to shoot projectiles straight through solid objects and totally fuck up their day. Which means that instead of perching in a tree like a cool and sexy sniper, you are galumphing around on the ground, hot and sticky and covered in a gross combination of mud and panicked frog secretions. Ugh.

"I look like a swamp zombie, don't I?" you say before you can think better of the words.

"Yeah, but in a cute monster-girl way," Dave says. "I'm just a scarecrow that got left out in the rain and turned into a mold sculpture."

You look over at him just as a clump of mud and moss slides down the left lens of his shades. "Um. No comment." You are determinedly not noticing that he said you're cute. Nope. Completely thought-free zone over here, nothing but genetics and logistics, which everyone knows require no brain power at all.

Dave shakes his head in faux solemnity. "Tragic. Faced with the death and destruction of my awesome good looks and you can't even dredge up a "That's sad"? I am betrayed. I am devastated. I am--"

"--still cute underneath the glop, stop fishing for compliments," you interrupt, and are furiously grateful for the mud hiding your blush. Stupid Dave and his stupid... everything. Why do you even like him? He's such a butt.

Of course, all your friends are kind of jerks. Possibly there's something miscalibrated about your friend-finding radar. Or possibly you're also a jerk? Hmm. That's something to ask Rose about, whenever you finally get to see in her person.

You will get to see her in person. You refuse to acknowledge any other possibility.

"Ouch," Dave says, but the corner of his mouth quirks up just a degree. "Damned by faint praise. I guess I'd better step up my frog-napping skills, can't let my dashing good looks outweigh my knightly swag. Speaking of which, have we been standing still long enough for that little orange fucker to stick his head out?"

You glance around, then down, then up. There's a tiny flash of color just over-- you shift slightly-- yep, right there on the tree by Dave's shoulder. "Um. Yeah. Just... keep standing still. Really still."

"Making like a tree, yes ma'am Sergeant Harley ma'am," Dave says as you inch slowly toward him through the muck between the tree roots. "It's right behind me, isn't it? Getting all ready for a jump scare, gonna leap out and poison me to death with its slimy frog toes, alas, Horatio, here dies a fellow of infinite memes, taken from us too--"

You lunge.

You catch the frog.

You also knock yourself and Dave flat into the muck. His shades knock into your forehead. Your own glasses skew against his nose. Your left knee is jammed between his shins and his belt buckle is digging into your stomach.

Your mouth is right up against his chin. If you moved just an inch or two...

"Ooh, Miz Harley," Dave says, somewhat breathless.

"Oh, shut up," you say, and shove the frog into your sylladex as you scramble back to your feet. "Look who's talking, Mister Swamp Thing."

Then you bend down to yank Dave up, too, because fair is fair.

---------------

By the fourth loop you're ready to drop from exhaustion and the weird, indefinable tension of actually being around one of your friends in person instead of getting to mediate your interactions through computers. "I don't care how tight the schedule is. I'm starting to see double and I'm taking a goddamn nap," you tell Dave as you drop to the floor and lean back against the wall. You lay your rifle across your lap and keep your hands carefully away from the trigger. You know your temper sharpens when you're tired, and Grandpa taught you never to take chances with guns.

Dave frowns, and you know he's tired too because this time you can see his mouth curve downward to match the annoyed set of his shoulders and the fuck-you shove of his hands into his pockets. "The more loops we run, the harder it is to keep shit from falling apart," he says. "You that eager to trip into a doomed timeline? I can go back and hit reset anytime, easy as cake and pie and banana splits, but every screwup costs one dead Dave and one Jade abandoned in a dead-end universe. I don't even know if that you would get erased or keep on living until you go shithive maggots."

He's been talking to the trolls too, you remember, especially the teal one who uses l33tsp34k. He says her name is Terezi. She's been running time loops with him too. He likes her a lot.

You are not jealous. That would be stupid. You are not stupid; therefore you are not jealous. QED.

"The more tired we are, the harder it is to keep from screwing up," you say. "We're creating a whole new universe and we'll have to live there after we win the game. It's kind of important, Dave!"

Dave presses his back against the wall and slides down to join you on the hard tile floor. "We're not gonna win the game, you know. There is literally no way to do that. The game was borked from before the word go was a twinkle in its druggie teen mom's eye."

"Maybe this session's broken," you agree. "But that doesn't mean we can't find a way to cheat, and even if we lose, I'd rather lose trying my hardest instead of half-assing shit because I was so tired I fell asleep while operating complicated machines."

Dave sighs. "Yeah, okay. Naptime. But not here. This is a work floor; we've gotta keep it clear for work loops. We'll go crash further down." He taps your shoe with his own. "Up and at 'em, Harley, let's go hit that transportalizer."

You groan and haul yourself to your feet.

The obvious place for a nap would be your bedroom, but then where would you sleep on the next loop? Anyway, you only have one bed and it'd feel... presumptuous? pushy? maybe just go with awkward. Yeah. It would be awkward to share it with Dave, especially without John and Rose there as well to clarify that it's strictly a friend thing.

So you alchemize an armful of blankets and pillows and make a little nest in one of the hundreds of blank, identical stories Dave copied from the real-world part of your house. It's still a little weird sharing the space -- Dave is so close you can feel him breathe, every exhale stirring stray wisps of hair over your ears -- but you think you could get used to this.

You think maybe you want to get used to this.

"Sweet dreams, Jade," Dave mutters as he flops over onto his side, one hand curled loosely around the hilt of his sword.

"You too," you tell him, before you remember he's just going to wake up on Derse as his dreamself, still stuck in this stupid, lying, Möbius tangle of a game. And you're going back to those weird bubbles in the monster-filled void. Neither of you can get free until you finish Frankensteining your magic frog and beat an unwinnable game.

"Heroes always beat million to one odds in stories," you say to nobody in particular. "Why not us?"

Dave mumbles something unintelligible in response, already mostly asleep.

You wiggle sideways until your shoulder brushes up against his, so the warmth of his body radiates through the thin blanket onto you and your warmth feeds back into him. He's alive. You're both alive. Somewhere else in the Incipisphere, John and Rose are (you hope) also still alive.

You would do anything to make sure your friends make it out of SBURB, to a new world safe from meteors and monsters and predestination. Anything.

You dream of bloody, mangled ghosts, groping desperately toward you for salvation while you stand frozen under the horrorterrors' incomprehensible regard.

In the dream, you imagine yourself reaching for Dave's hand. You imagine him weaving his fingers between yours. You imagine Rose and John standing beside you. You imagine all four of you stepping through a door into a new universe.

If you imagine something with all your heart, that makes it a tiny bit less fake, and being less fake means it's at least a little bit real.

The pressure of the horrorterrors' attention attenuates, just that vital fraction.

You turn away from the ghosts and think of frogs.

---------------------------------------------

End of Fic

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If anyone has constructive commentary, I am all ears! Also I am going to bed soon, because being awake is overrated and also I took a Benadryl in order to eat a BLT for dinner, so, you know, probably better to lie down than to slowly drift off in front of my computer. *wry*

#liz writes stuff #homestuck #jade harley #dave strider #generalized content warning #to about the same level as canon anyway #does homestuck count as its own warning by now?

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allmymisters · 4 years

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For the Love of China

I just woke up. That’s a lie. I woke up around 2 hours ago. I awoke from a dream I can’t remember and a peacefully sleeping Mister who does that snoring that sounds like he’s whispering “poo”. I used to do this thing in my head, when I was about to go to sleep. It was to calm me and clear my thoughts, but I would imagine this little Iggy like character in my head, climbing through my brain to the top of the stairs. He had a little room there and he would turn on the light and there would be a very large blackboard full of doodles and writing and he would literally erase my thoughts. When he cleared the board, he would turn the light off and I would go to sleep. When I was a child, I never sucked my thumb, nor did I sleep with my parents. Across the hall I slept in my crib and then that crib turned into a bed eventually, but I was not the type of child who was uncomfortable being alone and my parents were not the kind that would coddle me. When I was a kid, I’d play with my hangnails to get to sleep. Strange I know, but I’d start at a quick pace and as I would slow the pace down to go to sleep. Some people count sheep, I played with my hangnails.

I wasn’t a nervous child. I was shy, but not nervous. Anxiety was something that occurred the night before a trip or the night before the first day of school. I never was affected by it the way my friends say they are crippled by it. Something has happened to me recently and I don’t like it, actually I hate it. The older I’ve gotten the more stressful my life has become. Job stress, money stress, relationship stress, health stress…what was invisible before has now ravaged my nervous system like a freight train. Why has this happened? What did I do that my mind and my body have decided to betray how I compute.

When you scroll down Facebook posts you’ll notice a pattern with people. It goes from “My kid said/did this” to “I have an opinion about the current state of the world” to “My (insert family member) died” to “Look how much fun I’m having on said vacation”. We know every anniversary, birthday, death, birth, new job, new partner, etc etc. Look, I’ve read and listened to a lot of psychologists and experts talk about how social media affects us and I think it affects us in different ways. For me, it’s more of a strange place where you can’t disagree with anyone or I’m reading about some pretty personal stuff for the world to see or I’m realizing how sad I am that I don’t have a cute baby to show everyone or a cute dog for that matter. As of two days ago, it was acknowledging that the two guys I dated in high school were arrested for some pretty serious sexual misconducts.

I have emotional OCD. I can’t help it and noticed my mom is the same way. We lash out in two different ways. We get angry and tell the world to fuck off and then we cry in the shower at how hurt we are. My family was always big on the “suck it up and move on” or “don’t ever let anyone see you’re weak, be smarter”. I think I’ve lived a majority of my life like this. I care way too much about things. Being a natural empath can be rewarding, but can also turn on you in a most wretched way. I fixate on things bothering me. I will go through scenarios, the why, the what, the how. I will talk to that person in my head and say exactly what I want to to them and then see them as though I have no complaints. Please don’t misunderstand, I’m bold enough, I just don’t see what it would really do but become my problem.

I’m trying not to care. I’m actually trying not to notice what’s happening to me. My body is falling apart. I thought I’d be one of those cool ladies you see memes and documentaries about. The ones that are growing old gracefully with designer bifocals and purple hair. My mind has grown and continues to do so, but my body is being an asshole. When you start to see the transition it gets scary. The grey hairs, the aches and pains, the weight gain (for some), the lethargy and most of all the crushing anxiety. I’m having serious issues with anxiety recently and the only thing that has helped are my new acupuncture appointments. But as with all things I experience, I don’t want to have to be helped or ask for it for that matter. It’s challenging, but I’ve always seen myself as someone who can handle her shit. So, I thought.

“Iggy where are you!?”

My mind races in the middle of the night. I go to bed fine, but if I awaken, it’s a nightmare. I try to get Iggy to come out and he’s there but he either erases the board and it refills instantly, or he just stands there looking at it, as though he’s stuck in some video game prompting me for his next direction.

What do I have to work on tomorrow? Can I sell this woman’s house? Am I doing the right thing with my life? Why does he have to work tomorrow? Am I going to lose my hair? I need to go to the gym. What should I get my parents for Christmas? I’m so angry about my camera! Why haven’t I heard from her, do they just not like me anymore? I want to go somewhere. I miss my dad. I hope my dad is ok. I wish my brother would come visit me. I wish I could afford to go see them, i hope those fires aren’t too close to him. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. Ok, relax, deep breaths. Why is my heart beating like this, am I dying…fuck…fuck…am i ever going to lose this weight. I need to just go to the gym. Oh my god, stop snoring! I need new glasses, shit I need to reschedule the dentist because I don’t have money right now, how am I going to pay for the window…..

And it goes on and on and on and on. From me thinking I have cancer to wondering when the next tragedy in my life will occur to am I going to have a job tomorrow. I get it, I’m not alone, there are other people who have this stuff going on, I just don’t like it. It’s physically tearing me apart. I’m about to turn 47 and I’m wondering where my womanhood has gone because let’s face it, I’m 22 forever. It’s disorienting and for me, very frightening. I don’t want to have a heart attack in my fifties you know?

I used to love being an empath, recently I hate it. There’s an emptiness I’ve been carrying around with me and what used to be a simple brush off the shoulder and has now become some colossal underlying stress ball of unimaginable proportions. My doctors have told me that they are quite surprised I’ve gone this long without completely losing it. When I look at them with “tha fuuuck?” look, they explain going through that much trauma in one sitting can put most people over the edge, but two therapy sessions in, after a suicide, an excruciating end to my marriage, the death of one of my best friends, the news that my ex boyfriend and friend had died while at mentioned best friend’s funeral, the loss of my close knit circle and the loss of my job due to all of the above was good enough for me. I moved forward. Moved forward in a very zig zaggy, drunken fashion making no stops for breath while being accused of being unforgiving, angry and abandoned. Yep, seems about right. It’s been nine years and I’m afraid it’s finally all caught up with me, like a tsunami from hell.

“Take a Xany”

I don’t do pills. I will fight to self heal before having to take something for it. No offense to you who have found resolve in it, I’m just not that person. I just wanna feel better! I want to sleep. I wanna enjoy my morning instead of walking straight to my computer. I want to figure out a workout routine. I want to tell people no. I want to not feel like my heart is in the Kentucky Derby. I want my body to slow down. I want time to slow down. Slow the fuck DOWN! Why am I so apt to be that overachiever? I think because for so long I’ve been overlooked in my duties, and now, I’m finally getting recognition and to be honest it feels fantastic. My therapy comes from helping others, that’s my selfish reason for doing the things I do. So, how do I make it stop? I don’t have an answer. Right now, being in a dark room for one hour every week with pins sticking in me seems to be the only thing that’s been working. It’s sad that, it is the only place, I can breathe and not think of all the things, even though the cost gives me its own anxiety.

It’s not greek to me

A few hours ago I couldn’t finish writing this piece. I wanted to write something because writing is my catharsis and to be honest, I was upset. It helps me work it out in my head. Instead, I started talking about it while my man comforted me and asked what he could do. I broke down. Blubbering like a fool, telling him how disappointed I am in my life right now, how I don’t know why I can motivate others and not myself and how alone I feel a lot of the times. I just want to shut it off sometimes. My brain that is, not my system. I don’t want to be fearful because that’s not who I am, yet I feel like I’m fearful everyday with everything I do and say. When did that happen?

I just want to sleep like the dead again so I can feel alive. Remember in our 20’s? Bed at dawn, sleep til work, repeat. I want to eat a piece of chocolate without feeling like I’ll need to buy new jeans next month. I want to tell people to eat a dick every time they tell me what I should feel and what I should say. I’m not feeling very punk rock these days and that’s what it comes down to. All these feelings I have about the world, the non-reciprocated relationships I have, the allowance of urgency everyone needs from me, and the disrespect I’ve received in certain situations are an implosion waiting to happen, all because the one emotion I owned, anger, has become some sort of disease. Are we no longer allowed to express our discontent for anything except what has been deemed acceptable and determined by some invisible sensitivity police? I think not. It’s not just about being consumed by anger, it’s more about being able to express and release. You know, throw some plates against the wall and then have a martini after. Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but for me, I think it is part of the reason why I feel so handicapped recently. I wanna mad. I want it to run through my veins and shout it out! It doesn’t make me crazy. It doesn’t make me unable to cope (fuck anyone who says I can’t cope with shit) and it surely doesn’t make me non-confrontational. I don’t like this new, “Don’t let them hear you” mentality. It’s my right to embrace my humanity and that includes being angry and having my own perspective. So, I’m getting my plates ready, because I’m tired, so very, very tired, and there’s nothing Greek about that.

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