A WORM HOLDING A PENCIL: harvey's writing thread

Discussion in 'Make It So' started by artistformerlyknownasdave, Jan 5, 2018.

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  1. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    because even my iron resolve couldn't handle having to search through pages of my bs to find the writing-related bs.

    i am circumlocute on ao3, which is where my finished, polished-up work goes. i'll probably link to chapter updates and new fics here? really though i would mostly expect brainstorming, rambling about ideas, spoilers to ongoing fics, and unpolished ficlets i liked enough to share.

    questions/commentary about any of the shit in here is welcome, at the end of the day i'm a huge fucking chatterbox and i love talking to people about my writing! there will be nsfw, but it will be spoilered, so please keep replies to nsfw fic spoilered as well.

    gonna quote some stuff over now.
     
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  2. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    ficlet, rose and dave are goth and emo solidarity, ~500 words.
    Dave drapes himself dramatically across Rose’s lap, because she doesn’t have her knitting needles out so therefore she is welcoming his presence; if she didn’t want him to snuggle up in her lap like a big Texan cat she’d take preemptive measures and arm herself against clingy blood relations, QED.

    She sighs and glances away from her book. “Yes?”

    “Yes what, I didn’t say anything.”

    “You were nearly vibrating with the barely-restrained urge to talk, I was providing you with the barest hint of social interaction, to stimulate conversation.”

    “Don’t ever say ‘stimulate’ when you’re talking about me ever again. Or to me. I forbid it.”

    Rose raises an eyebrow. “Forgive me for upsetting your delicate constitution. What did you want?”

    “Well, I was thinking.” Haha no he wasn’t, Dave’s plan started and ended with ‘I should go bother Rose,’ but he’s never let that stop him before. Time to pull a conversation topic out of his ass, it is his one and only skill.

    “I was thinking, we have got to rep edgelord counter culture harder. The prospit gang has chipper conformity down to a T, except for Jade’s furry thing, but that’s not the kind of counter culture I mean. Like, you’re goth and shit, so you’ve already kind of got a handle on scaring the shit out of soccer moms. But I want to do my civic duty.”

    Rose snickers. “And you find yourself tiring of your reputation as Earth’s last hipster? It must be so hard to build up one’s ego on enjoying older things when the entire culture is gone, I suppose. Or maybe the past has lost its shine now that you can simply visit it, should you so choose.”

    Dave blows a raspberry up at her, and gravity renders it entirely ineffective. Thanks gravity, you fucking bastard, now there’s spit on his shades. “The hipster thing was never sincere anyway, my interests just happened to line up with a few tools and it’s easier to pretend liking photography is some...sick jab at those pretentious fucks, than to say ‘oh yeah I actually do this in my spare time, please give me a wedgie and also take my lunch money.’”

    Rose takes mercy and ignores that prime opportunity to dig into Dave’s psyche, and merely hums acknowledgement.

    “So anyway. I could be punk, or grunge, or whatever. Get some guyliner. Mope with you about how everything is terrible and paradox space is a bitch, which we already do, so we don’t have to pencil anything extra into our schedules to meet an edgy quota. I can get a face tattoo. It’ll be sick.”

    “Oh, Dave.” Rose pets his hair indulgently. “There’s already a counter culture that suits you perfectly, although a little eyeliner might not hurt. You’re clearly emo. There was never anything else you could be.”

    Rose’s smile only widens at Dave’s indignant gasp.
     
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  3. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    ficlet, dave and karkat are as horny as they are dumb, ~150 words.
    "Why are we rutting in the dirt in front of the soulless copper eyes of your latest Liberty find, again?" Karkat grumbles into the skin of Dave's neck, warm hands sliding up under Dave's shirt. They're both sweaty and covered in a fine layer of dust from digging up a statue all day. It would be gross if Dave wasn't so horny.

    "Because nothing gets me rock fucking hard like gravel in my asscrack?" Dave rolls his hips against Karkat's and is rewarded with a groan. "Get it? Rock hard?"

    Karkat's next groan is not one of arousal. "We're going to be even grittier than we are now and you're going to have rocks digging into your back. It'll be like mud wrestling in grimy slurry, you nasty fuck." For someone complaining so much, Karkat's pretty enthusiastic about the whole endeavor. He pinches one nipple and sets to work sucking a mark onto Dave's neck.

    "You're gonna fuck me anyway."

    "...Yeah, I'm gonna fuck you anyway."
     
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  4. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    iasfts is my big plotty AU series, which...hear me out...is set around a support group for supernatural creatures. i'm having a lot of fun with it! below are some planning rambles yoinked out of my thread, which aren't super spoilery
    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 3:45 PM
    but i am in hell trying to figure out what the fuck is going on with the harlinglishcrockerberts
    i THINK i have it down but it's so fucking confusing

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 3:46 PM
    i'm gonna make another diagram honestly because it's confusing me
    because i had to accomplish multiple goals and doing so hurt
    (i had to make sure jane and jake weren't related, make sure that john and jade shared the werewolf parent, and come up with a reason to explain why dadbert didn't raise jade)

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 10:00 PM
    jade and john are half siblings, john’s like two years older than jade
    they share a mom, who’s john’s werewolf parent
    she was breaking werewolf tradition and more specifically pissing off her pack, which was notoriously kind of paranoid, by dating dad “the most normal man alive” egbert
    so when she got pregnant and john didn’t seem to present as werewolf once he was born, she realized how bad things could have gone (having to explain a werewolf child and raise one without a pack), and absconded after giving dadbert custody

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 10:04 PM
    (john technically IS a werewolf, but he just gets really hairy and cranky on full moons)

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 10:05 PM
    so jade was born into the pack a couple years later, although her mom died in a hunting accident and she was left with her grandpa

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 10:06 PM
    as by this point the pack was dwindling and split up between a few isolated islands
    and HE died when jade was 14 maybe, and wasn’t around often besides, so jade is pretty much feral
    she ends up in new york because jake is her cousin, from the same pack—
    —he grew up isolated but not quite as bad, socialized p much exclusively with like 5 people, and cut and ran as soon as the opportunity presented itself
    he thought jade’s island was abandoned, went exploring, and found secret new cousin
    so jade went with him to civilization and not handling it super great

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 10:35 PM
    rose is like...
    dave’s banshee weirdness kind of fucked with her in utero?
    she sees the future in general, in snippets
    but she doesn’t get the specificity or clarity that a banshee does, or any of the other things
    and she has a lot of insecurity about being dave’s leftovers, not fitting in any place or being properly human or banshee
    she also gets visions of like, things she needs to do
    on her twelfth birthday she had a vision specifically of dave and ended up knowing his pesterchum handle and what to say to make sure he didn’t block her because of that

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 10:42 PM
    (rose has also seen some shit with bro, thru dave’s eyes, and is lowkey terrified of him because of that)

    baloneyfuck-Yesterday at 10:48 PM
    i think the strongest thing i can say about iasfts!rose as a person is like
    she doesn’t fear many things, but she’s terrified of bro. but if push came to shove, she’d get between him and dave without hesitation
    that’s! my! girl!

    the idea for sort of changeling hal came from an friend, lmk if ur okay with me saying whomst you are etc! [ETA: thenks @Makizushi for my life] i'm just only pasting my part of these convos by default
    (also just in general ideas and suggestions and spitballing are totally welcome, every time someone does my heart grows three sizes)

    karkata-Yesterday at 9:24 AM
    i'm trying to figure out how i want to work hal into ia:sfts and the wiki page on fairies is full of some juicy nugs
    "Any form of sudden death might stem from a fairy kidnapping, with the apparent corpse being a wooden stand-in with the appearance of the kidnapped person."
    i'm thinking dave gets up and that's on the couch instead of dirk, and it's glamored up to look like the real deal, but dave can tell, thanks to banshee spider-sense that it's not really dirk, and gets people together to find him after the panic attack
    this is 100% going to have to be its own side fic that happens concurrently with the main thing, now i'm INVESTED
    if jane does shit with life magic, and she's on the rescue team because of course she is, and they bring the wooden thing to like trade back for dirk (the fairies don't want it, they want something else i think).....and residual magics + the glamour + dirk's own lingering heart weirdness that no one's ever noticed because it's subtle + the weirdness of the like in-between Fairy and earth = hal

    karkata-Yesterday at 12:33 PM
    i think what we’re gonna see in the main fic is just, dave’s end of it—he’s deffo not allowed to come because dirk would kill anyone who let dave put himself in danger

    karkata-Yesterday at 12:34 PM
    so because time dilation Between both places is weird but not as weird as “i danced for a night and it’s actually been a hundred years” he’s probably gone for a week or two? along with everyone who goes to get him (all the alphas for sure, idk who else)

    and now for some non-chat rambling: i think i'm going to give hal a slight aversion to iron, and while it's not a like.... COMPLETE inability to lie, he doesn't like doing it because (something something tie in to programming) the fairy part of him is just. revolted by the idea of just SAYING THINGS that AREN'T TRUE
    so he talks around stuff and will maybe say half-truths instead of outright lying

    dirk takes to wearing a bell on his clothes at some point in order to keep from more abductions and even though it wasn't the intent, being able to hear where dirk is in the apartment at all times is one of the most relieving things that has ever happened to dave. hal picks up on this and takes to making extra noise around the apartment, especially because he's not so great at the humaning thing and tends to move too quietly/quickly/sit completely still for really long periods of time

    [​IMG]
     
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  5. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    jade's installment of iasfts is live! it's the longest of the backstory fics and also the one i'm most insecure about, but she had a LOT of stuff to establish
     
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  6. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

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  7. Acey

    Acey hand extended, waiting for a shake

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  8. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

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  9. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    The results gain approval from someone with it.
     
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  10. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

  11. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    You were particularly good at the why's behind it. Which is the important part of it, I feel. Not just the roles but the why.
     
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  12. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

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  13. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    i promise i am working on my other projects, and i have 3 or 4 WIPs that are very fucking close to being done, but they all need finished up ;;
    in the meantime, have this!
    I Infodump About Wet Specimens Via Fanfic Instead Of Working On My Projects With Deadlines, davekat, 750 words
    listen writing dave and loving dead things means i should use this to write about dead things and i haven't taken advantage of this opportunity yet, i had to

    "What are you doing?" Karkat asked, voice raising sharply with alarm.

    Dave turned around from what he was doing--pouring mystery fluid into his jar of sheep eyes--and gave a little wave with one gloved hand.

    "It's top-up day for the peeper crew, my dude." He gestured to the bottle of liquid and screwed the cap back onto the jar. Karkat shuddered.

    "Why can't you just let it sit and stew in its current juices instead of letting out all the organ fumes. I don't want essence of woolbeast ocular in my fucking lungs."

    "Because," Dave said, spreading his hands as if to indicate the other jars around the room, "these puppies slowly evaporate, and if I leave them alone like some people suggest, they'll eventually shrivel up and turn into the saddest, nastiest raisins you have ever seen. You don't wanna bear witness to that, man. Soooo sit back, relax, and let the magic happen."

    He made finger pistols at Karkat and moved on to a jar containing some small Earth mammal. Karkat couldn't smell anything, not from across the room at least, but he didn't trust that not to mean he wasn't inhaling some sort of airborne neurotoxin.

    "What are you even putting in there?"

    Dave spun the bottle around so the label was pointing towards Karkat. "Just rubbing alcohol, yo. That's what these were all made with and ethanol can be a little harder to get? So, uh. Isopropyl alcohol does the trick." He shook the bottle for emphasis before adding another small amount to the mystery mammal.

    Rubbing alcohol definitely had fumes, but--it was an antiseptic, how did that even work?

    "And you just...leave them in alcohol, and suddenly they're preserved for all eternity?"

    "Ehhhh." Dave made a shaky gesture with one hand and started inspecting the rest of the shelf. "Some people do? But just dunkin' them in a jar is asking for some nasty sludge. You gotta inject it with alcohol or whatever, or you can fix them with formalin, and you have to use formalin for big stuff. But it's, uh, a pretty dangerous chemical if you're not really fuckin' careful, hence the gloves." He wiggled his fingers for emphasis.

    "...Dangerous."

    "Yeah, but don't worry, I'm super careful. Just don't go out there trying to preserve a whateverbeast heart for me next Valentine's, babe."

    Karkat crossed his arms and gave him a flat look. "I wasn't going to, I can promise you that."

    "You should totally buy me one, tho. Hint hint." Dave turned around, waggling his eyebrows, and tossed his gloves into the trash. "I'm thrilled to pieces you're taking an interest in this fine, fine craft. My tender maiden's heart is going to burst. And then you can put me in a jar."

    "I'm not taking an interest in your macabre bullshit, beyond my general level of interest in most of your hobbies, which begins and ends with the fact that it's you who's doing it." He did add the heart jar thing to his mental list of Valentine's ideas, though. It was kind of romantic, in a disgusting way.

    "Wow, swoon. You are so interested." Dave grinned, waggling his eyebrows even more furiously. It was a miracle they didn't fly off his face.

    "I'm not."

    "Oh, but you are." Dave pointed two fingers at his eyes, and then at Karkat's. "I can smell it on you."

    "After you've been huffing corpse fumes for fuck only knows how long? I sincerely doubt that. Go get cleaned up and then I'm taking you to dinner somewhere where the only bones or alcohol in sight is safe for consumption." Karkat looked him over. Stained t-shirt, ripped jeans, messy hair...all up to Karkat's bedrock-level grooming standards, and cute as ever, but he knew Dave would pitch a fit if he took him out like this. And even with gloves, eating right after fucking with his specimens seemed like a uniquely terrible idea.

    "Oh, eugh, don't bone-crunch at dinner, man, it's so nasty. I'm not gonna go if you're gonna eat the bones." Despite his complaining, Dave was practically bouncing in place now, and rushed off to the ablutionblock to wash up.

    Karkat couldn't help the tiny smile on his face as he headed to his own room. He was going to put on some pants that weren't sweats, and a shirt with actual buttons, if only because Dave liked it when he dressed up.

    Before shutting the door, he glanced back at the shelves of dead things lining Dave's respiteblock and shook his head. Nope. Definitely not interested.
     
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  14. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    godstuck, ~700 words, davekat because of course it is.
    i'll scoot it over to my writing thread later a fuck of a lot later apparently, i only just now remembered
    (iirc it was salt who suggested the mirrors-for-eyes thing way back when, so thaaaank)

    You don’t know why you ask for the gods to help you. It’s just. Everything’s falling apart, and you’re quite frankly convinced that it’s not going to do anything, but--when everything’s gone to shit, what’ll a little desperate begging hurt?

    You don’t expect an answer. You don’t even expect the things some people talk about, a ~*~feeling~*~ of being heard, or whatever.

    You most certainly don’t expect the room to go dark and fill--then overflow--with a sudden presence. Two presences, something that definitely isn’t your own thoughts informs you. You think it’s smug.

    The presences coalesce in front of you, forming substance and shape from smoke. The first one is...a troll, almost. His eyes are lurid red, overflowing and trailing unnaturally bright streaks of what you know instantly is blood, despite the impossible color. There’s a gash across his chest, too clean and perfect in shape to be real, blood flowing in a constant motion and dripping onto the floor. The ground beneath him is pulsing with red light whenever a drop lands, throbbing and wet and alive. When he opens his mouth, more bubbles forth, but his speech is perfectly clear. And loud.

    “I think you’re scaring her,” he says, turning those liquid eyes towards the other figure.

    I’m scaring her? Are you serious?” This one’s mouth doesn’t move at all when he speaks; it stays pressed into an expressionless line. His hair...isn’t. It’s feathers, orange and golden and black, dusting down his neck and the sides of his cheeks. His eyes are glittering black mirrors in his skull, unblinking, reflecting your own terrified face back at you in perfect stereo. The way he moves, turning to look at you, is so fast you’re not sure it counts as movement at all. He goes from one pose to the next without any frames in between; he is not looking at you and then he is, like a series of photographs. The shadow he’s casting on your wall has wings.

    “Maybe I’m scaring her a little,” the other one--Blood--admits, before looking back at you. He blinks, and there’s a feeling of...of compressing, fitting something just a little too big into a container that was not built for it but holds anyway.

    And then he’s looking at you through the same faintly luminescent yellow eyes you’ve seen on every troll you’ve ever met. His irises are still that pulsing, unnatural crimson, but otherwise, he. Looks like a troll. Looks like a kid, like you. The gash in his chest has rendered itself more symbolically, an image on a simple brown shirt. His horns are tiny. There’s a hunch to his shoulders you’d call defensive if this wasn’t the Knight of fucking Blood in your bedroom, and heavy bags under his eyes. He looks exhausted, bone-deep tired, but alert like he wouldn’t sleep if he had the best bed in the world. Do gods need sleep?

    The other one...Time, you think? Doesn’t change, and looking at him makes your head hurt, hot and cold, like you’re trying to cram too much in there at once. He cocks his head at you, birdlike, still moving too fast.

    “It’s been a long time since we were mortal,” he says, almost...apologetic? “It’s easy to forget how.”

    “Now you are scaring her,” Blood says, smug, reaching up towards Time’s face, “It’s like riding a two-wheel device, come here.”

    “You’re better at meat stuff than I am.” Time’s cheek ends up in Blood’s hand, anyway, and those unblinking black eyes close.

    There's the compressing feeling again, and then the feathers melt away into hair, orange and gold with the occasional black feather still sticking up. He’s wearing sunglasses, now, still mirrored but not reflecting you back at yourself quite so intensely. He has freckles and a beaky nose, and now that he's got a normal human face he's not doing so good at keeping it blank, lips quirking up into an amused smile. He holds himself like he's not sure he's allowed to be here. They both look very nearly like normal people, imperfect in a thousand tiny ways, and you're not sure it's solely for your benefit.

    “I don’t do meat stuff.” Blood sounds annoyed, but his hand lingers on Time’s cheek. “I do people stuff. You know this.”

    Your head doesn’t hurt quite so badly when you look at them, now. They almost seem to have forgotten you’re there, and you’re not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

    “Oh my gods,” you say.

    “Yeah.” Blood grins.
     
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  15. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    it's been a month, whoops x3
    but! i do have something to show for it! reveals are out so i can finally show y'all my polyswap fic, which was a really fun chance to do some worldbuilding.

    johndavekat, trek au (trek familiarity not necessary i don't believe? it should make sense), romcom au, ~9700 words, WIP
    check that bad boy out right here
     
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  16. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

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  17. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

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  18. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    me me REAL bad at remembering to quote things over here
     
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  19. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    ah...i am the fucking bad at updating
    have some first date davelal/pinkkat and some prompt ficlets i did
    (and for context just in case, davelal and pinkkat are dave lalonde and karkat peixes, my horrible bloodswap i’m too invested in)

    prompt: shopping for jewelry
    prompt: arguing over pizza toppings
     
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  20. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    prompt: ikea
     
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