A Hand in Holding Hands - The long plod to the finale

[SkaianRedeemer]

.

> Begin again

An Ashen fanfic reborn.

No friendships. Ever. That's what Kanaya told her weeks prior, but Rose never really grasped the full of it until she found herself at the end of an Ashen crush. Now the Trolls are growing and the culture gap widening, the demon pounding on the door and the horrors whispering in ears. At the centre of it all: Rose, trying to stand on both sides of the shore: without magic, without guidance and without one of her closest friends thanks to the very gap she is trying to bridge. This fic is dedicated to the Alternian third wheel.

And with the fic ended for real life reasons, we carry on through commentary to the end, starting in Chapter 10.


Rating: Teen


Act 1
Chapter 1: Thunderhead (FFn)
Chapter 2: Eridan Ampora Happened (FFn)
Chapter 3: Autolevel 91 (FFn)
Chapter 4: The Tale of the Lone Soldier (FFn)
Chapter 5: Act 1 Recap (FFn)

Act 2
Chapter 6: Kiss You With Doom (FFn)
Chapter 7: Never Be Sad Again (FFn)
Chapter 8: The Black and White Turnabout (FFn)
Chapter 9: Gradeschool Mono-Poly Quarter-Fuck (FFn)
Chapter 10: My Favourite Loose End [Commentary only begins here]
Chapter 11: Act 2 Recap


The second draft begins! If you've never read A Hand in Holding Hands, this is a great time to start!


Because AO3's "Download as Mobile" is apparently a bit wonky, digitalCalibrator has cleaned up some of the chapters for anyone wanting to read on the go!

Updated through Chapter 7:
B/W Epub format (Nook)
B/W MOBI format (Kindle)
Color Epub format (Nook Color)
Color MOBI (Kindle Fire)

[SkaianRedeemer]

[The original poll request:]

So perhaps you have heard of A Hand in Holding Hands. It is this thing I write. Ostensibly. It's an incomplete Homestuck fic that I put together from late October 2010 and last updated on its anniversary, October 2011. The story is about the pre-Scratch Kids being trapped in the lab with the Trolls and focuses on their day-to-day lives as they try to work out a way to kill Jack Noir. While the hook purports that the story is Trolls literally not having friends like Karkat once said, that's not the point. In truth, the fic is about culture clash and serves as an expose on the four quadrants and their interplay: namely poor, forgotten auspistice. It stars Rose as the unlikely auspistice of Eridan and Vriska, and also features a number of other relationships. At the centre of it all is a lingering Horrorterror who has a beef with Rose that is starting to turn aggressive.

And it is full of fucking holes.

When I started writing the fic in 2010, I used to update more than once a week, as hard as it may seem nowadays when I have gone without an update for a month and a half. And as a result, there was a distinct lack of what we'll call "quality control." I had and have no beta (my betas either don't read Homestuck or don't read Homestuck fic), I changed the upcoming story as I went and made one critical mistake early on that I have been dusting under the rug ever since. Somewhere back in January or so, I warned readers that there would be a delay while I worked on an upcoming chapter. That delay, sadly, remains ongoing. The primary reason for that delay is tied to real life. But there's also another problem: it appears that I fouled the very foundation of the upcoming chapter. The End of Act. The most important part of the fic, in fact. I botched it. The seeds planted throughout the entire fic were fouled. I've been trying to build a house without properly preparing the foundation. I have screwed up this series of unrelated metaphors, even. It's a disaster. No wonder I've been having so much trouble making the next chapter work.

A month or so ago, I told another fanfic author that when a problem is this big, and you care enough to fix it, sometimes you have to be ready to do the serious heavy lifting. So that brings me to the issue: I would like to Scratch the fic. In common parlance, I want to give A Hand in Holding Hands a second draft.

Now before someone starts talking, I want to say that when I do fanfic, I approach it as an entertainer. I do enjoy writing, but I more enjoy entertaining the readers. That's why this is as much your call as mine. If no one cares to re-read the fic with edits, or no one cares to sit around waiting for the second draft to catch up to present, I don't see any sense in doing it. If my long delays have decayed my readership to virtually nothing, I don't see much point in doing it either. And if I do have a readership, and you'd rather just keep swallowing my jagged pills, stubbornly holding the course, well I respect your tenacity and we can do that too. The point is, while I'd like A Hand in Holding Hands to be the best it can be, reader enjoyment is a critical part of "best it can be." Sometimes spit polish only goes so far.

> But Skaian, (you say) if your update schedule's been so awful lately, how will this help us see any new chapters at all?

Two reasons. One is simple: the winter break is coming up and I'm not going to be able to work on my real life project, giving me time to write new stuff. The other is that my real life project has been groaning on me. I need not just a break, but a regularly scheduled break. I need my fic back. I either need to cave and write an awful End of Act built on a foundation that is not there (probably while doing slapdash edits throughout the fic), or I need to start over. I need to break the deadlock, and those are the options. That's where you all come in.

Here are the larger changes I'd be going with if I did Scratch the fic:

• Adjust the primary relationship to be more of a typical auspistice instead of an atypical one, to better represent the relationship as Andrew intended. EDIT: That is to say, the way people expect. It feels weird to be writing about auspistice and not portraying a proper auspistice.
• Restructuring the Horrorterror's plan of assault, making him/her/it/them less opaque where it was not supposed to be opaque.
• Fixing the build-up to Terezi's little breakdown in Chapter 5, which was a common early criticism, albeit before T's actual little breakdown in canon.
• Actually including the early parts of Feferi and Sollux's storyline instead of acting like they were still there in the first place. What the hell was wrong with me that's the dumbest thing I've ever done in writing.
• Integrating the revised The Dargon Arc intermission into the actual body of the fic.
• Clarifying the difference between canon and fic-canon; removing certain since-decanonized elements that did not contribute to the fic. Aradia's still going to be a robot, though.

And if I don't Scratch the fic, you get:

• An update as soon as my RL project is done, whenever the hell that is, but presumably sooner than when my project is done plus when the second draft is complete.

(Either, way, I'm going to set up some way to tell if I updated. Tumblr, LJ, or re-purpose this very thread. One, two or all of those. I think it's just silly AO3 is knocking itself out to make new layouts when it doesn't even have story alerts.)

So here's where you come in! Speak your voice, either by voting in the poll above, or in reply below. If anyone still cares, I look forward to hearing from them.


> _

[OrangeAipom]

I thought this would be a fanfic about Doc Scratch from the title.

What's the atypical auspistice like?

[The Phoenixian]

I generally lurk on these forums but I'd like to pipe in to say that, as one who has read and very much enjoyed A Hand in Holding Hands, if you feel you it would be best for the work to start again from scratch then yes, I would enjoy the second round as much as the first.

Although, If one might be so bold, I'm not sure about changing the nature of the Rose/Eridan/Vriska auspistice relationship to be "As Andrew Intended". If you feel it would better fit the characters or [Error: Concept not found] that's one thing but simply or primarily to make it more typical or representative of what Auspisticism normally should be seems --- to be more nebulous than I would like --- Off.

[SkaianRedeemer]

@OrangeAipom: Nope. The title's a reference to auspistice itself. "To have a hand in another couple's relationship [them holding hands]."

The atypical auspistice: Instead of trying to keep a petty rivalry between Vriska and Eridan from becoming a kismesis, the two become kismeses first, and Eridan drafts Rose to keep them from from murdering each other outright. It made more sense to me at the time to go with atypical (I can't say why without spoiling the End of Act) and I was helped along by an unfortunate moment of reading comprehension some old fanfic thread-dwellers might remember. I am happy with the scenes it's produced (like the entire second half of this chapter), but I've since worked out a way to make it fit into its proper slot. Unfortunately, seeing as how it's the central relationship, I can't easily do it without redoing the whole shebang.

@The Phoenixian: I understand your concern about that, and I realize it does seem like a flimsy reason. But there's new readers to consider. Has anyone ever read the fic and said "That's not right, this author doesn't know what they're talking about!" I don't know. Only one person ever bothered to speak up about the reading comprehension issue I mentioned to OrangeAipom above, and was countered by one person who said they didn't care. But if it might turn people off, I care. It also feels like the fic lacks its purpose: if the point of the fic is an auspistice, shouldn't it, you know, represent auspistice, and not some weird nearby analogue I made up (above)? I don't know. It's been a niggling point with me as well, I admit. Also, I appreciate you de-lurking to speak up!

[Layra]

I am a reader and very much enjoyed the fic as is. I had reconciled myself to the misinterpretation of auspitice in the fic, as it seems to be the dominant interpretation in fanfic anyway.
But if you think that you can improve the story significantly with a second draft, then I encourage you to do so. So I'm casting my vote for redrafting.

[Aldaris]

I am a reader and very much enjoyed the fic as is. I had reconciled myself to the misinterpretation of auspitice in the fic, as it seems to be the dominant interpretation in fanfic anyway.
But if you think that you can improve the story significantly with a second draft, then I encourage you to do so. So I'm casting my vote for redrafting.

Basically my opinion as well. It occasionally did bother me that the interpretation went so clearly against canon, but it was written well enough to get away with it. However, a regular auspistice is probably easier to imagine as the "EVERYBODY SHUT UP OR I'M TURNING THIS CAR AROUND RIGHT NOW" quadrant, allowing at least the general concept to be easily understood by the humans.

[Megafire]

Having read HiHH for a long time as well, I was also somewhat bothered by the interpretation of auspistice in this one, although, as Layra pointed out, it was more of an overall issue with the way most fanfics interpret it.

I would like to see a second draft, since the improvements you're suggesting seem like they would make for a better story.

I reread shit all the time anyway, so it being almost the same story otherwise wouldn't really bother me.

[Firebird766]

I'll cast my vote for a redraft. It's a darned good fic now, so imagine how good it will be afterwards!

Also, the Dargon Arc is an awesome fic and everyone here should go read it.

[felicitousArtisan]

I'm in favour of a redraft. This is one of my favourite all time Homestuck fics, and I'd like to see a more polished version with some tighter editing.

[TikiTDO]

I am a very recent inductee of the this fandom, and I have only been reading Homestuck fan fiction for a couple of weeks, but as a very avid lover of the art of fan fiction I wanted to throw in my two cents on the topic. That said, I will not throw in my lot for or against the rewrite, simply because I do not feel that I am qualified to help make this sort of decision as a reader.

You seem to very focused on selectively applying new cannon to your story, but the very fundamental basis of our plot precludes that. You have already stated that you have no intention of following the events of half of Act 5, which all but guarantees that any new reader that gets past the first few chapters is sufficiently open-minded to accept your own interpretation of future events and previously unexplained plot elements. As long as you do justice to the personalities of most of the characters involved I believe that almost all of your readers will accept your interpretation of the Ashen romance as your right under the artistic license.

That said, I can not claim to know where you intended to take the story. You mentioned that you have made some mistakes in the narrative which have led to fundamental issues with the conclusion of a story act, however none of the larger changes you mentioned, save the changes Ashen quadrant, seem like they will make a very major difference on the overall direction of the story. Certainly they will clarify certain elements, and improve the flow of the story, but I do not see how the changes you have outlined will lead to the sort of foundation you are interested it. This leads me to believe the full extent of the changes required are far too deep rooted to be easily conveyed to your readers.

That in turn brings me to the core of my post: While I certainly respect your dedication to your readers, I do wonder whether they are really qualified to help you make this sort of decision. We simply do not have enough information to understand the extend of the changes that will be necessary. Whatever your decision will not change the fact that you are a very good writer, and I have no doubt that most of us will continue to enjoy your work whichever decision you come to.

[OrangeAipom]

I meant the part of the title that said "Scratch the Fic."

How about you have the troll characters acknowledge that the auspistice is unusual?

[SkaianRedeemer]

That in turn brings me to the core of my post: While I certainly respect your dedication to your readers, I do wonder whether they are really qualified to help you make this sort of decision.

That's certainly one way of putting it, but not quite the focus of the call for feedback. It's true, there isn't enough information for the readers to gauge the flaws - at least not now. Maybe once it's all over we can hum and haw about it. But for now, readers certainly can gauge their own level of entertainment, which is what's really important. If re-writes and the time it takes to do them would put off the average reader, that's a lot of what I'm looking to hear. I don't want to discourage people with more delays that produce more polish than content (though there will be more content)! For what it's worth, a lot of people do seem to have been put off by the auspistice issue, and I appreciate them having put up with it for so long.


@OrangeAipom: That's the fallback plan. Although I would still have to deal with the other auspistice in the story, which is harder than it may first seem, for thematic reasons.


I'm going to leave this open until midnight EST or so, which is as close to the week I intended as I can get. I'm afraid that the day after tomorrow I start getting pelted with holiday buckshot primed with fully loaded Squiddles, so closing things tonight will be my only opportunity to reply to any feedback about the results. I'm afraid I don't have anything fancy to close it out with (I tried, my art skills remain awful). That said, I thank you all for your feedback, and any that may follow in the remaining ~5 hours.

[OrangeAipom]

What's the other auspistice?

[SkaianRedeemer]

Feferi auspisticing for Equius and Aradia, who as per the incorrect system, are kismeses.

[SkaianRedeemer]

The first run is over, the second begins in January 2012, when A Hand in Holding Hands will begin its second draft. The first draft will remain here, more-or-less untouched, for posterity. I want to thank everyone for their support during the initial run, and I hope you'll stick with me when we start anew in the new year, better than ever.

This thread will be updated with any new updates (instead of the Fanfic thread! I don't think I'm allowed to double post!) so subscribe if you care to, or otherwise keep an eye out. Thank you all again, and I hope to see you all in the next draft.

[SkaianRedeemer]

Once you've prepared the first batch, set it aside for a week or so to cool before editing. Cut into three chapter-sized pieces, serve as a bizarre baking metaphor.

(Ruminate on newfound power to triple-post in own thread. Question to use this power for good, or for awesome.)

[FeralSolaris]

Once you've prepared the first batch, set it aside for a week or so to cool before editing. Cut into three chapter-sized pieces, serve as a bizarre baking metaphor.

(Ruminate on newfound power to triple-post in own thread. Question to use this power for good, or for awesome.)

A side of author's notes or self-reference is advised, but not necessary. Serving with Thyme should be reserved for nights unless you expect the whole thing to be made of the stuff.

I'll stop before I'm ejected to the puns thread in the main comic discussion. Looking forward to version 2.0.

[OrangeAipom]

Feferi auspisticing for Equius and Aradia, who as per the incorrect system, are kismeses.

You can be kismeses and auspistices at the same time. o_O

[Aldaris]

I'm not sure, circumstantial evidence in canon seems to sugest you can only share one quadrant with a given person. Mind you, doesn't stand in the way of fanon, but it's worth mentioning.

[SkaianRedeemer]

I'm not sure, circumstantial evidence in canon seems to sugest you can only share one quadrant with a given person. Mind you, doesn't stand in the way of fanon, but it's worth mentioning.

Quite.

Moreover, there's extra trouble with this precise set of quadrants co-existing in the same realtionship. As-written, I'd say auspistice isn't entirely "the relationship that prevents kismesis," just because of other lines in the comic, but the page that introduces it goes on to make that exact comparison all the same ("preventing the feud from boiling over into a fully caliginous rivalry"). If two Trolls were going to be cross-quadrant poly with one another, it'd be hard to find two quadrants more opposed: heck even Matespritship and Kismesis don't have a giant sign nailed between them reading "<- THIS PREVENTS THIS ->". So A B while C (A + B) just seems wonky to me now, and you can imagine how stupid I feel for having run so far in the opposite direction. But... but so many other people were too! And... the wiki, and... oh, I don't even know any more! I planned the mess over a year ago and just stayed the course straight into sharp, pointy rocks I could see perfectly fine. Yeah, that's right: I'm my original Chapter 5's Karkat. I admit it. Still, I did my best to make the misunderstood version of the relationship work as best as possible for as long as I could, and I'd like to think that's worth what little anything is worth in fanfiction.

Now as far as cross-quadrant poly relationships go, if A or B were at the head of the club instead of the body (for example: A (B + C)), that's not contradictory. Maybe a little risky, but it could work. If that's what OrangeAipom meant, yeah, that's cool, but I'm with Aldaris in thinking that the Trolls would take it as non-monogamous.

[OrangeAipom]

Well, Kanaya was Vriska's auspistice and moirail at the same time.

[SkaianRedeemer]

It's been a little while, would I be mistaken in saying the only evidence for this wiki-cited relationship is this panel and the one preceding it? Because there's a lot weird with that panel. It just doesn't seem right to say the relationship actually happened. Look at the other two relationships: does it really make sense to assume that Vriska, Tavros and Kanaya were in an auspistice, when Vriska and Tavros were never actually in the matespritship or kismesis also pictured? That was my initial impression: that the panel was just demonstrative. It's one I've never had to revise, because nothing depicted in the panel ever came up again. It probably just represents the feelings going back and forth, and not a set of official relationships. Naturally, someone can feel ashen for someone even if they're in another relationship: relationships don't actually block other types of feelings. Heck, they probably don't even block the odd piece of good advice - it could represent that as well. That's always how I've read it, even before I felt certain that you couldn't have relationships in other quadrants. Because the supposed relationship is never mentioned elsewhere, it's more likely that the page is just demonstrative. There's also the possibility that Kanaya and Vriska broke up as moirails to hold the auspistice, but the biggest problem with that remains that the auspistice isn't much mentioned outside of Andrew's slide show. Unless, of course, I'm just forgetting something, especially if it was in a flash and I just can't search for it. You'll have to forgive me, I happen to be re-reading the comic right now but I'm only at Act 4. It's gonna take a while.

Now, it's entirely possible that I'm still wrong about all of that. I keep finding loads of crap I forgot in this read-through, so I'm perfectly willing to admit that. But then we cut to the present, where we have Feferi in Return to the Core saying that she can't be with Sollux if Eridan forced her to be for them (it would "pull us out of our quadrant"). The only way that sentence makes any sense without assuming cross-quadrant monogamy is if Feferi and Sollux are also , which doesn't really seem to be the case (there's no evidence to suggest it and more to suggest a matespritship). As it goes, that's pretty much decisive, even if you believe it's nothing more than a retcon. No matter what was going on with Vriska, Tavros and Kanaya, Andrew's gone and either clarified or retconned cross-quadrant monogamy, and even did it with the exact quadrant in question.

[felicitousArtisan]

On Auspistice and understanding it:
If Feferi were to auspistice between Eridan and Sollux it would not be possible for her to also be Sollux's matesprit. This is because Auspistice is a three person relationship and all three people are involved. Due to our lack of an obvious human parallel, we tend to easily fall into thinking of it as one person preventing two people from being in a relationship so it seems obvious that Fef would be able to be in love with Sollux while preventing he and Eridan from being in hate, but that's not actually how it works.

Auspistice is built around the emotion of hate. Mild hate rather than strong hate, but still hate. It is a relationship that involves three people who get into a mutally beneficial mexican standoff of simmering mild hatred for each other. For a successful auspistice, all three trolls involved need to dislike each other. The mediator troll needs to feel some degree of exasperation and scorn for the two they are keeping apart. Kanaya is a terrible auspistice for Vriska because she doesn't hate Vriska; she has flushed feelings for her. She's also a poor auspistice for Tavros because she doesn't really hate him particularly. That relationship crashed and burned and was an example of an unsuccessful auspistice. The whole point of Auspistice is to create a stable triangle, just as Moirallegience creates a stable pair. These conciliatory relationships help to prevent the violence inherent to troll society and romance from exploding out of control, by locking them into controlled quadrants and making sure each person has just one violent love and one violent hate. Feferi can't be in an auspistice with Sollux because she doesn't feel hatred towards him; she feels love, so the triangle would collapse. It has to be somebody who mildly hates a couple of trolls committing permanently to a relationship of making sure those two trolls stay on an even keel of mildly hating each other without boiling over into black romance. All three in the relationship must mildly hate each other or it becomes unbalanced.

There are so far no real in-canon examples of a good auspistice in action. The best we've seen is Jade with Past and Future Karkat. Notice how Jade is exasperated and angry with both Karkats and favours neither. In Troll terms, this locks them into a stable auspistice. That's why Nepeta ships them as such. A good auspistice needs to be somebody who wants to shout "Oh my god, STFU!!!" at both parties and is willing to commit to that role permanently because they get some kind of satisfaction from doing so or feel some kind of social obligation to.

[Aldaris]

In short, Auspisticism is the quadrant of "BOTH OF YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I AM TURNING THIS CAR AROUND /RIGHT NOW/", at least, that's the best short description of it I've found so far. The whole car thing is also a pretty good equivilant situation in human culture.