MSPA Fanfiction VII: End of Thread 6 Flash

[ArcFour]

So, here's the Intern. Bonus points for Paosheep for having the same thought I did; that there was no way this wouldn't be hilarious. Sorry to the folks who voted for the Outlaw of Oath, there was just no way I wasn't doing this one. Maybe on the next one, aye?

Also, if anyone has any special requests or awesome Title ideas, go ahead and post them; I won't promise that I'll write them, but I'll see what I can do, especially if its interesting. I did do the Mage of Chaos for Derm, after all.

Classes of Heart Bonus: The Intern of Umbrage

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You are the Intern of Umbrage, and that TICKS YOU OFF.

It is just SO DAMN STUPID but you can’t really complain about it because then you’re just PROVING IT RIGHT. It’s like, what the hell?

Titles are all about power and destiny and responsibility and yours is basically telling you that you’re supposed to be some sort of supervised trainee in being annoyed.

That, or somehow you’re supposed to be a Prisoner of some sort. You don’t exactly know which definition of Intern it’s going with.

You’d like to say THAT MAKES YOU MAD but once again you’re stopped because you’re in this damn passive-aggressive battle with Sburb to prove it wrong and you’ll be DAMNED if you’re going to lose it.

It’s like, Sburb is already hard enough without dumbass Titles, and you’ve got this absurd one that doesn’t even give you anything, and it’s like what the hell Sburb you suck.

You’re so mad you punch through an Ogre and don’t even notice.

The only way you can figure that you’ll win your battle of wits against the Game is to not be annoyed, something that might be physically impossible for you. It’s always been kind of a thing with you, but Sburb pointing it out like it did sure didn’t help much. It’s like, telling you that not only is this a cliché of yours, but it’s also telling you that you don’t do it well enough!

Or, as you said before, that somehow it’s imprisoning you, but that doesn’t make much sense to you so you’re going to pretend that it’s not that. The idea that it might do such an underhanded thing as to use the uncommon meaning of the word just makes you SO MADwait you’re trying to be calm goddammit you’re so bad at this.

Even your Land mocks you. The Land of Paper and Annoyances is full of these damn gigantic piles of paper listing all of the things that annoy you, every single goddamn thing, and somehow each paper manages to be unique because you’ve never read the same thing twice.

WHY.

WHYYYYYYY.

WWWWHHHHYYYYYYYY.

You find yourself blinded so much by your impotent rage that you keep forgetting where you are. One moment you’re kicking around an imp, the next you’ve pulled yourself out of a rant to find Grist piling up like snow.

Having to run around and pick it up doesn’t help your mood much.

Then, suddenly, you’re holding some sort of weapon called, you kid you not, the Office Worker’s Lament, and that annoys you so much that you kind of overlook the fact that it appears to be more powerful than any other weapon your team has and probably cost thousands of Grist.

The next moment you’re surrounded by consorts cheering something inane about how you saved their world from the Denizen or something, and they’re so annoying it makes you want to KICK SOMETHING.

Suddenly you’re on a platform in front of a door and your friends are all cheering and crying and hugging, and one of them is opening the door, and you’re in some place with grass and trees and you get the strangest feeling that you missed something during your internal monologues.

You are the Intern of Umbrage, and somehow you ranted yourself through the Game, and into your new world.

And all you can think of is how annoying it is that you don’t remember a goddamn thing.

DAMN IT.

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So he's like a caricature of Karkat, who is already kind of a caricature so this guy a caricature of a caricature.

HOMECEPTION.

WE HAVE TO GO DEEPER.

[Grand Mal]

Slashback: Chapter one

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The two young trolls meandered down the depressing hallway. Kanaya was too busy dancing around Karkat’s persistent cries of what-the-fuck-is-up-with-your-place-of-work, to notice the muscular torso she was steadily approaching.

“Sorry- Oh, hello, Agent Snake,” She exclaimed.

Agent Snake, an over-muscled human male in a grey and black jumpsuit, impassively stared ahead, growling to himself. “Bastard won’t stop talking about his face. Let me tell you- I mean me- gah, where was I?”

He looked down, revealing a badly-cut shock of neon-red hair and an eye patch. “Agent Bella,” said Snake, his voice like gravel in a blender, “What did I tell you about bringing your little Ogre friends out onto the field?” He pointed dramatically at Karkat.

“We aren’t in the field,” said Kanaya.

“Out onto the base,” Snake corrected himself, unflinching.

“Whoah, back up, I am a TROLL,” Karkat hissed, “Say it with me now: TROOOOLLLLL. You’d think these nooksucking humans you know by now, we’ve been popping up all over the fucking news like a coffee chain, for what, a whole earth-sweep?”

“I’m not much into current events,” Said the male agent, unflinching.

“Current events? From what I’ve seen, your goddamn coworker is a troll! How could you possibly be so hornbarfing ignorant?!” yelled his opponent.

Kanaya sighed, and, in a desperate attempt to change the subject, asked the other troll,”How did you get past security?”

Karkat looked sheepish. “Oh, that. Well… it would appear I bribed Jade to let me use her good ol’ freak-of-nature-companion-for-life to teleport me in here… the dumb as fuck dog missed you by several yards it turned out… wait, is that a chainsaw?

Snake looked down at his left foot, which did indeed resemble an instrument for sawing wood. “Oh, that,” he casually informed. “Got that in Yugoslavia. I was tracking down an enclave of Yeti a remote swamp, when suddenly, out of the blue, comes this six-foot dwarf I had thrown into a time–and-space portal the previous Labor Day. He was chewing a scone while he said in thic gaelic: ‘Hoss, ya bastard, you’ll wish you had been born without a gall-bladder for me to devour’. Mind you, he had the absolute Gaul not to chew before swallowing-“

He cut himself off at the furiously dumbstruck look on Karkat’s face. Kanaya, busy texting away on her phone, looked up, and said ashamedly, “Sorry, but I’ve kind of heard that one before…”

“Agent Bella,” Snake said, abruptly. “I think you and Agent Dunwitch are more than ready to enter on-the-field training.”

The rainbow drinker’s face lit up (haha terrible pun). “Really?” she asked, pleasently surprised.

“Of course. If you two can put up with an oaf like as a companion, consider that ability to be the tipping point of weather or not to erase your memories,” Said the imposing man.

“And just what the fuck does “Oaf” entail, you little-“

“I have to go now. The idiot chip is burning a sizable hole in my cranium,” Snake cut Karkat off. “Come the the council at the regestered time, Agent Bella. Bring the dickhole as a guest.”

The agent walked off, leaving the object of his insult to scream much better retorts that this author could ever come up with after him.

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Eh... I've heard of worse crossover ideas. Virtual cupcakes to those who can guess the agent's true identity!

[SilverKunama]

Pfftahahahah the Intern of Umbrage XD
"WWWWHHHHYYYYYYYY"
Hahahaha XD

[Blaperile]

@Blaperile: Oh, there's no easy way to do it, you just get used to it. To a degree. Namely, you get used to the frustration.

One of the tricks I use for my pesterlogs is to put them in blockquotes, which sticks a vertical line on the left side that looks... well, nice enough. I had intended to use a left margin but AO3 didn't support it at the time. Beyond that I encase the entire block in a Courier New span, though AO3 usually spits at that and I have to save it once just so it can make its mistakes and I can correct them (namely, by putting in the <p> tags it strangely does not). It might work out better if I tried setting the spans to work specifically with blockquotes, but when the tower is this rickety I don't like to shove it.

Oh, okay. Seriously, for maybe 20 lines of text I did take 20 minutes to get the lay - out right.

But now that I know this, I want to do one thing.

Give all my applause, all of them, to all people who often use pesterlogs or even memo's in their fanfictions on AO3. Seriously, that's AWESOME. You guys are awesome.

[Paosheep]

@Graven - I had not read any of 36, so I went ahead and did that. It is wonderful. Thank you. Also, funny story time: for some reason, right from the very start I pictured the DJ as female, and didn't realize my error until sh- er, he ascended.

@ArcFour - I am rather impressed with the Heir of Heart. It was... well, let's just say it was very good. In writing it, you have definitely done her a service; I will remember her.

And as for your Intern of Umbrage? He's hilarious. XD I loved him.

I think my favorite part of the piece, though, is imagining his teammates. He'd start getting worked up, and they'd say, exasperated, "Oh my God Mitch, really?" and then he'd just keep going and they'd roll their eyes and give each other knowing glances and sigh and point him in the direction of the fight. Some of them find it annoying, but a few actually think it's kind of endearing, so when he comes out of it they're like, "Good job Mitch!"and they give him a big smile, and then he gets this dumbfounded expression on his face and maybe they giggle a little and just give him a big hug. (This annoys him, obviously.)

...um, wow. Dunno where that even came from. That is probably a little more headcanon than necessary, but... I still kind of like it.

[unrepentantCreeper]

The Intern of Umbrage seems like he belongs in a buddy cop movie. His best friend would be the Tyrant of Reasonableness. They'd hate each other and solve crimes.

"Suddenly you’re on a platform in front of a door and your friends are all cheering and crying and hugging, and one of them is opening the door, and you’re in some place with grass and trees and you get the strangest feeling that you missed something during your internal monologues." I sort of expected him to kick someone on principle around here *grins*

[ArcFour]

Hahaha, thanks, guys. What I really like (and what I find hilarious about it, even now) is the idea that it isn't rage or anger or insanity or anything dark (you know, like the Rage classes I'm going to start today). It's just that he gets really really annoyed at everything. Sburb basically turned that into a superpower. So his friends think he's weird, in kind of an eyerolly way, but like him well enough. And I find the idea that Derse and all of the enemies find him completely, absolutely terrifying to be just hilarious.

And uC, Pao, I want to thank you. Now his name is Mitch and he grows up to be a Cop. He's not entirely sure how he became a Cop, though; most of his training (and even his selection of his job in the New World) went by in sort of a blur after he got annoyed at the lack of luxuries in the New World. HE HATES CRIME DAMMIT.

And the Tyrant of Reasonableness is an awesome Title name. ^_^

[ArcFour]

Okay guys, here's the Seer of Rage! Enjoy; I sure did!

1 – Seer

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To See, and in Seeing, Know. That is your Quest.

As a boy, you were well remembered for being annoying. This is, although true, rather a simplified statement. It doesn’t really explain the subtleties of what you knew how to do.

You weren’t annoying by accident. You were the sort who knew exactly how to get under people’s skin, to ferret out those words and phrases and actions that would make people twitch. You got a certain satisfaction out of leaving people red-faced with impotent rage.

You might say that you don’t know why you enjoy it so much, but that would be lying. You do it because you enjoy control, and there is a sense of control in being able to overcome people with their own anger.

Had you grown up normally, this trait might have been trained out of you. Someone, eventually, wouldn’t stop at merely being angry, and would take their anger out on you directly. Had this happened, you may well have let go of this strange compulsion.

But Sburb came, and that changed things.

With Sburb came a Title, and with your Title came Power. The Power to See.

And oh, how wonderful it was. To See the exact things that could drive anything, Imp, Consort, Carapace, even Player into blind rages was intoxicating. This was a dream come true.

You used your power well; as one of the first players in, you tore through the battlefield, through enemies who were too angry to use strategy or tactics, who were too angry to notice trickery and cleverness, and so were easily defeated by you.

But your last player entered something deadly into her own kernelsprite, and in doing so, the nature of the Game changed.

Now, where most creatures were dogs or squids or hard-boiled gangsters, there were now a select few who wore a dark cloak, with reaching, skeletal hands, and a terrible face obscured by a tattered hood. And with these Cloaked Ones came a draining, terrifying aura, an aura that brought their deepest, darkest fears into their minds.

The Cloaked Ones nearly defeated them.

Even you might have succumbed to these monstrous minions, had they not made a critical mistake.

You HATED losing control.

With the fear soon came a boundless, deep rage that scoured the terror from your mind so completely that it seemed never to have existed. And with this Rage came a realization, and you knew you could succeed.

You contacted your players, who hid, stricken with fear, and began to speak. You Saw into their minds, and where the Cloaked Ones pulled every despairing thought to the forefront, you dragged, by force, the thoughts that would make them Angry. Dark shames and forgotten promises, embarrassing failures and hidden weaknesses, you ferreted out and brought to the light.

And in response, one by one, your team began to feel the fires of Rage.

Soon they came out of hiding, like a storm, like a wave, and they Fought. The Cloaked Ones tried to bring them down once more, but the freezing pull of Despair was nothing, nothing at all, to the infinite fires of Rage.

They didn’t stand a chance.

And now you stand, with the Black King in front of you, and his presence hits your team like a hurricane, but you are Fury, and you are not so easily defeated.

You are the Seer, and your Quest is to See, and in Seeing, Know.

And you have always been good at Seeing.

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So yeah, bonus points if you know what movie they prototyped. ^_^ Not that it isn't fairly obvious, hehe

[Blaperile]

@Blaperile: Oh, there's no easy way to do it, you just get used to it. To a degree. Namely, you get used to the frustration.

One of the tricks I use for my pesterlogs is to put them in blockquotes, which sticks a vertical line on the left side that looks... well, nice enough. I had intended to use a left margin but AO3 didn't support it at the time. Beyond that I encase the entire block in a Courier New span, though AO3 usually spits at that and I have to save it once just so it can make its mistakes and I can correct them (namely, by putting in the <p> tags it strangely does not). It might work out better if I tried setting the spans to work specifically with blockquotes, but when the tower is this rickety I don't like to shove it.

Oh, okay. Seriously, for maybe 20 lines of text I did take 20 minutes to get the lay - out right.

But now that I know this, I want to do one thing.

Give all my applause, all of them, to all people who often use pesterlogs or even memo's in their fanfictions on AO3. Seriously, that's AWESOME. You guys are awesome.

Okay, phew, I just found a guide out there which would seriously help me a lot if I'm going to do more pesterlogs in the future.

[mutecebu]

HOMECEPTION.

WE HAVE TO GO DEEPER.

Yoink! I’ll steal that.

Homeception – "Best Of" Quotes

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“Cobb said you'd be back.”
“I tried not to come, but...”
“But there's nothing quite like it.”
“It's just... unlimited creative potential.”

“This session is barren. WE NEED TO GO DEEPER. Everybody meet up on Skaia. We’ll get the prize, and ride the reckoning out. We'll play a game... within a game... within a parody... within a fanfiction forum... within an online comic...”

“Oh gog, why did you have to prototype a TRAIN!?”

MALSPRITE: We're not gonna die. We can't die. You know why? Because we are so...very...pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die.
“You’re not my Mal! Who prototyped a Firefly DVD?”

Ariadne: You might have the rest of the team convinced to carry on with this job, but they don't know the truth.
Nick Cage: Truth? What truth?
Ariadne: The truth that at any minute, you might bring a semi truck onto a boat.

It was too good not to do. Major points if you get the last reference.


Also, I loved the Intern, and the associated headcanons.

[ArcFour]

Oh dear God I just spit coffee up everywhere.

YOU OWE ME A NEW KEYBOARD.

Hehe, Firefly DVD. xD

@Blaperile: Can you link that guide? I don't have an AO3 account right now, but I'd like to have one eventually, and it'd be nice to know a bit about it before I got one.

[Graven_Image]

@Graven - I had not read any of 36, so I went ahead and did that. It is wonderful. Thank you.

Not, thank you. 36 is probably the best thing Past Graven has ever written, and I am glad to ride on his coattails.

Also, funny story time: for some reason, right from the very start I pictured the DJ as female, and didn't realize my error until sh- er, he ascended.

...Really?

Huh.

If that were true, would that make her and the Bard "really close friends"?

Nah, forget it. If the DJ was a girl, she and the Bard would probably be cousins or something. There, weirdness averted.

[Dermonster]

Cloaked ones = Dementors?

[ArcFour]

@Derm: DING DING DING, a winnar is you! Yeah, they prototyped the Prisoner of Azkaban dvd. Funny note, originally it was Lord of the Rings and the imps were part Ring Wraith, but when I described them I realized NOPE DEMENTORS.

Maid is next, by the way!

[Shinji Shazaki]

Arc, the Seer of Rage gave me goddamn chills.

I love this series.

[ArcFour]

Thanks, Shinji! I enjoy just about every one of the shorts I've written, though there's a few I plan on rewriting eventually, but a handful of them make me shiver when I read them. I honestly find myself a little shocked that I actually wrote them xD

The Seer of Rage is on that list, now. As well as the Heir of Mind, the Rogue of Time, the Mage of Chaos, and the Page of Heart.

As for the ones I intend to rewrite, eventually, I'd like to rewrite the Bard and Mage of Time (the very first two I wrote, so it's no surprise), and the Witch of Time (who I want to revamp and refigure out completely; her plot is kind of fail), the Knight of Mind (who was the first one I wrote when I decided to do all 144 classes), and perhaps a little bit of expansion of the Heir of Time. And something bugs me about the end of the Heir of Heart; it doesn't quite have the impact I was hoping it would (at least to me, maybe I'm crazy). *shrugs*

Anyway yes the Seer is awesome. ^_^

Oh, yeah, and I find Dave's to be great, each time I read it. XD

[Katrika]

Just a short poem about a specific Homestuck character.

Lullabys

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Hungry horrors skitter through the caves
Singing lullabys to those who hear
Tales of warriors, clever, strong and brave
Tales of blood and gore, tainted with fear

Whistling as she weaves a funeral veil
Gossamer, it glitters without flaw
Billowing in breezes like a sail
Guiding hapless souls into her maw

Gross and bloated, she moves through the caves
Singing lullabys to one who hears
Tales of those who fell, though strong and brave
Tales of clever foes breaking with fear

Weaving stories like a mad nightmare
There’s a warning hidden in her call
Darling, never think that life is fair
Be the best or take that final fall

Hungry horrors skitter through the caves
Singing lullabys to those who hear
Tales of warriors, clever, strong and brave
Tales of blood and gore, tainted with fear

[mythmonster2]

I'll be honest about that poem. I have an... interesting variety of characters who came to mind. In order of how strong my hunch is from most to least: Handmaiden, Vriska, Spidermom, Feferi, Gl'bgolyb, Kanaya.

EDIT: Never mind, I now know who it was about!

[Katrika]

Spidermom, yeah.

[unrepentantCreeper]

Bleeee, Seer of rage was EXACTLY as awesome as I'd hoped. You, Arc, win a dozen internets.

[Katrika]

I couldn't sleep, so I wrote another story.

Witch and Mage, A Poem in Five Parts

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I.
They run together, under the moons
Waves crash and foam sprays, and
Their faces are painted twotone in the moonlight
Pink and green
Blue and red
Pink
And
Yellow
They are young, and they are happy
That is enough

II.
The deal is sealed

III.
They race together, through the stars
Blood drips and silence falls
Save for the whisper of her hand in his hair
He screamed his voice away long ago
A broken toy
But she finds him handsome and
Above all
A good listener
And so she gives him the kiss of life
While inside he begs for death

IV.
Their fates are sealed.

V.
These are not the same
Pale echos of what once was
Living in the ruins of what could be
But
Their faces are painted twotone by his eyes
Blue and red
Pink and yellow
Lacking moonlight, they lay and stare
And the worlds hidden on each others faces
They are young, and they are happy
And that is enough.

[ArcFour]

@uC: Holy Carp, a DOZEN? I don't even know what I'd do with that!

Probably buy an Internet Tube. It's always nice to have extras for when the main ones clog, you know? Better safe than sorry!

@Katrika: Wow, I really liked those, Kat! I pretty much immediately guessed it was Spidermom, which I love, because Spidermom can be a fascinating sort of character to explore (especially since I am a Vriska fan ^_^). In addition, I love the idea of the Fef/Sol one; a stanza for each iteration of the pair, right? Precester, ancestor, and kids? Because that was cool. Sersly.

[Katrika]

Precestor, Ancestor, and kids, right.

[ArcFour]

So, here we go; the Maid!

2 – Maid

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To Serve, and in Serving, Endure. That is your Quest.

You live your life in fear.

It’s a sad life to live, but you have become used to it, over time.

The alternative, after all, is unthinkable.

You live in fear of yourself, and so you do everything you can to keep yourself from doing harm.

Your Aunt (your poor, poor Aunt, who tried so hard) raised you for years, and she loved you dearly. But your moods (your Aunt’s word, not yours) were too much for her.

Moods. Such an inconspicuous word. It brings to mind the light annoyance of getting the wrong kind of cheese on your sandwich, or the blatant disrespect shown to a man who thought himself smarter than he really was, or the sudden sadness of finding a beautiful beetle crushed on the ground. It sounded plain. It sounded normal.

Your ‘moods’ were anything but.

Anything could trigger them, and rarely did the same cause strike twice. A brush of a hand against your shoulder, the sight of a shirt on the ground, the smell of eggs slightly burnt; the causes were wide and varied, and often completely harmless.

But then your ‘mood’ kicked in.

At first it seemed simple tantrums. The tears and screams of a girl who desired to show her frustration the only way she knew how; through crying and tearing and yelling.

It quickly proved otherwise.

You had no control. You tried to hard to be sweet and nice and calm, but when it hit you, you had no ability to stop, no ability to slow down. When you were small, this mattered little, but as you grew, and became bigger, stronger, and more capable, your moods changed from annoyances to causes of anger.

The first time you set fire to the apartment, your Aunt brought in specialists.

There were words, a name for the condition your mind was in, but you have forgotten (or perhaps forced it from your mind). You live in a quiet place, now. Calm and peaceful, and when your moods kick in there’s nothing to hurt. And you’re happy, because you never wanted to hurt anything.

You thought maybe you had found peace.

Then the Game came.

With the Game came those who you might have once called friends; children who didn’t have to worry about their own destructive moods, their own anger destroying everything they loved. You hadn’t talked to them in months, but they remembered, and they trusted you still.

You doubted the wisdom of that.

With the Game came a Title. And with a Title came a responsibility. A contract, of sorts.

With the Game came a terror unlike anything you’ve ever known, because you have to submit.

Your moods come more often now, and you have so much more to destroy. So much to be angry at. So much that requires your Fury to annihilate. And in your moods you are elated, because the Game has given you an outlet, a place to empty your Rage at something that deserves it.

Out of your moods, you are terrified. Because you know it won’t be long until something undeserving gets in your way.

It happens. A girl, once a friend, needs your help. You find her. You fight at her side, and together you succeed. In gratitude, she hugs you, and it comes.

This was no mere mercurial 'mood'. This was no mere anger, impotently emptied on apartments or imps or other deserving constructs of the Game.

This was Rage. And you used it to destroy, for no reason, a girl who called you friend.

And through it all, as a part of you tried to stop, tried to slow, you knew that this was necessary.

You destroyed her, and ended her life upon a stone table.

And as she began to Rise, you knew that your Fury directed you for a reason.

You are the Maid, and your Quest is to Serve, and in Serving, Endure.

You’ve never known how to do anything else.

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O_O Well, there was no way that one wasn't going to be depressing. I mean, really; the Maid is a slave, basically, and being a Slave to Rage? Dude, dark. I'd like to extend my thanks again to both shieldman and SilverKunami, who majorly helped me figure these out. SilverKunami basically set this one up herself, actually. ^_^

And, you know, I think I should pick a happier element after this one, because most of the Rage ones are like this. xD

[SilverKunama]

Go with Life. I've been writing down my thoughts on Life for you.
Also, Kunama.