Also it’s gotta be a weird thing to control. He’s a body controller, but Shatterbird’s flight is controlled via her telekinesis (which full body control gives him access to for reasons), which controls the glass that in turn pulls on the body. It’s quite roundabout, a true mobius double reacharound.
“Not the easiest power to use,” he muttered. “It’s not a physical power, so I’m learning to use it from scratch.
No muscle memory to learn from.
Doesn’t help that she’s really, really, really pissed off. I think she’s a serious control freak. My control’s slipping a bit.”
“Sheesh, she’s such a control freak. She wants to have total control of her own body, can you believe that!”
“How much is it slipping?” I asked. “Is there a chance you’ll lose control of her?”
“Always a chance. But I think I’m okay, so long as she and I remain pretty close to each other.”
This went places I didn’t expect. Instead of jumping straight to trying to rescue Grue, we got so much good stuff. Cherish trying to out-Tattle Tattle, her read on Karkat Trickster and Taylor’s musings on that, the idea of Cherish being tied to a fucking bouy in the middle of the bay, Trickster and Tattle awkwardly being like “Coil totally isn’t just using us all, we all believe that, right guys”, Taylor being awesomely dramatic with her swarmophone, Legend and Taylor waxing philosophical about good and evil and identity…
Yeah, it’s safe to say I like this one.
Next time: Trickster has an idea and I have no clue what it might be. All I know is it’s something he could be inspired to come up with by Taylor’s conversation with the heroes. I’m pretty sleepy right now, though, so maybe some theories will occur to me by the time I start the next chapter. I’ll keep you posted if they do.
Finally, before I go off to snooze in my food and eat my bed, I want to officially predict that we’re getting less vague details about the Travelers’ backstory soon. Hell, maybe even next chapter, but I’m thinking next Arc at the latest. We might have a Traveler POV Interlude at the end of this Arc, even. It’d be cool if it were Noelle’s.
So yeah! That’s it from me tonight. See you next time!
Trickster accompanied me. We didn’t get the benefit of Bitch’s dogs. She’d wanted to check on her territory and take care of her dogs. I’d grudgingly agreed that she should take care of that, and Trickster and I had set off alone.
Hm, seems like we might learn some things about Trickster on the way. This seems set up for some interesting one-on-one interactions between Skitter and Trickster.
I gave him a sidelong glance as we ascended the stairs of the empty apartment building. What had Cherish said? Scared little boy?
I didn’t really comment on that part of it, because that’s honestly the least interesting part of what she said to me. Leaders being more scared and insecure than they appear is a Thing that I’m not really surprised to see pop up.
Though it is an interesting tidbit that informs some of Trickster’s behavior. He does a pretty decent job at hiding his fear when in the company of other teams, but he may be overcompensating, possibly lashing out, acting crabby and angry instead of letting his true feelings show.
My choice of the word “crabby” was not a coincidence, in case any Homestucks were wondering. This trait reminds me a lot of a certain other K-named leader of a dysfunctional team.
She blames you. They all do. I could remember Sundancer’s remarks on the drama in the group and how lonely it was to be around them. I recalled Genesis seeming less than thrilled when her team arrived last night. Was Trickster at the center of it? He was more ruthless than his comrades, which was interesting because his power was the least lethal.
Said other leader is also one of the least capable fighters on his team.
Also yeah, I’ve been pretty much assuming Trickster was fairly central to the Traveler troubles ever since 6.8. But Noelle’s situation (which is what I believe the “blame” bits refer to, although that could also have to do with their shared backstory) certainly doesn’t help.
It might have been a point of contention. But what would he have done that the others would blame him for?
Oops, I just answered what I think that’s all about before it came up.
Although I guess I didn’t give specifics. There are so many unknowns about Noelle’s situation, and there are so many things people might feel someone did wrong in handling it, or causing it. And that’s if it’s even that situation and not their backstory, which is shrouded in even more mystery.
If we pull in my somewhat weak “Travelers are in trouble with Cauldron” theory, maybe Cherish was saying that the Travelers saw Trickster as responsible for that trouble, or for getting them involved with Cauldron in the first place.
Yeah, how do you deal with her? I mentioned a cell earlier, but they didn’t know they’d be bringing her, so they wouldn’t be able to set one up customized for her, unless they set up for each member who might get captured (which would be a lot of overnight work).
Regent hadn’t yet escaped earshot. He turned back to us. “She’ll have a trap on her. Small explosive looped around her neck with a lock and a deadman’s switch.”
Oh, right! That might be an issue.
“Thank you,” Coil said. “Tattletale? See to it at the first opportunity.”
“Not a problem.”
At least if they didn’t have miss all-knowing over here to solve it for them. 🙂
Bitch glanced at Bastard. He was growling, barely audible, low and steady, and his hackles were raised. Were they still hackles if they were mostly fragments of calcified muscle and bone spikes?
Fuck if I know.
“Kill them,” Burnscar said. She pointed at Grue and I.
Yeeeah.
As unsympathetic as she can be, she’s a lonely girl who needs her friends even if she won’t admit it. The Element of Loyalty, here being asked to kill the closest people she has to true friends, murdering her connections before someone can use them against her and facing the fear of not having them.
Bitch laughed, if you could call it that. It was more of a snort, with zero humor to it. “That’s supposed to be my biggest fear? I don’t give two shits about them.”
I’m not sure how much of this is an unwillingness to admit it to herself and how much is an unwillingness to admit it to anyone else.
I doubt it’s Cherish being wrong. Unless of course this is Cherish attempting to sabotage the testing by lying.
“You do. They’re the closest thing to a human connection you’ve had your entire life. Maybe you haven’t thought it out loud to yourself, but you’re terrified at the idea of losing them.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s specifically Skitter and Grue that are here. Throughout the time we’ve known Bitch, she’s had much more to do with those two than with Tattletale and Regent.
Hell, I even suggested, early on, that Grue and Bitch had a moirallegiance, a kind of relationship where one party pacifies a more hot-tempered partner. In Homestuck, that’s considered downright romantic. I’ve since abandoned this idea because it turned out Grue was kind of bad at it, but they’ve still had a fair bit to do with each other.
You know as well as anyone else that this relationship with your team, it’s like winning the lottery for you.”
You do realize you’re pointing out that Bitch has reasons to not want to join the Nine, right? Unless you follow it up with the idea that the Nine could give her the same sense of human connection, but that’s more Bonesaw’s deal.
Taylor is very concerned about bathrooms all of a sudden. Wait, what do you mean this story isn’t written in Norwegian?
Jokes aside, Burnscar doing this really is terrible news.
Burnscar stood with Mannequin just behind her, sporting a red shirt and black jeans, cigarette burns running down her cheeks, and a dead look in her eyes.
Hm. Looks like Taylor is noticing more of Burnscar’s lack of true happiness among the Nine. If she can put things together, she might be able to tattletale this situation.
Bitch, Grue, Sirius, Bastard and I stood a dozen feet away, walls of flame like bonfires barring our escape routes to the rear or sides.
The arena has been defined.
Droplets of rain fell all around us, making ripples on the inch-high water that flooded the street. The air was thick with the smell of smoke.
Man, even when they’re up against a fire-based enemy, there’s just no avoiding the water. Although maybe that’s a good thing here.
We’d at least had time to mentally prepare for the idea of facing Mannequin. My strategy had been last-minute, but I’d been in the right frame of mind to fight a tinker, to anticipate ambush and tackle someone with decent offensive abilities, strong defenses and a crapton of tricks up his sleeve.
But now, she’s in the frame of mind to fight a tinker but up against a blaster/mover, all while hurt from the fight against Mannequin.
Burnscar had flipped things on us; she was in a totally different ballpark from Mannequin.
A ballpark is also known as a court, and
If I had to guess, her offensive capabilities were top-notch, even if they didn’t break the scales like some other members of the Nine.
Sounds about right based on what we saw in her introduction.
I couldn’t even guess where she fit on the spectrum of defensive ability, but she’d been with the Nine for a little while and she was still alive, so that was some indication.
Imp might have something to say about that. Her own power doesn’t seem to defend her much except against fire, but Bonesaw’s can.
And utility? She had every trick a pyrokinetic like Lung had at his disposal and she could teleport through flames as well, opening up a mess of tricks and avenues of attack.
I really liked the fireball teleport she did in Jack’s Interlude, that was a cool trick.
A little bit of context: Homestuck has at least four main arc numbers, but 4/13 is by far the most important one. So 11.1 (111) and 12.6 (a variant on 6/12) both count as Homestucky numbers, but 13.4 (a variant on 4/13) is a much bigger deal.
A young man sits in his living room. It just so happens that today, the 24th of June, 2018, is the day this young man intends to begin reading the chapter or Worm with the most Homestucky chapter number so far. Though it was 17 months ago he started reading Worm, it is only today he will be given a chapter with this distinction. Well, unless you count 11.1 and 12.6.
What will the chapter of this young man’s day be about?
> Young man: Speculate.
Your name is KRIXWELL JACE. You are a LIVEBLOGGER, and for almost a year and a half now, you have been slowly reading through the work of SUPERHERO FICTION known as WORM, all the while RECORDING YOUR THOUGHTS FOR ALL TO SEE.
Today, you don’t have many SPECULATIONS to talk about before you begin. When you last left off, the PROTAGONISTS were already BADLY HURT before BURNSCAR showed up to challenge them, and you find it FAIRLY OBVIOUS that the conflict with BURNSCAR is going to be the main focus of the chapter.
Exactly how the PROTAGONISTS are going to get out of this situation alive is HARD TO FATHOM. Perhaps it would’ve been easier if only TATTLETALE had been present to exploit BURNSCAR’S BACKGROUND and LACK OF DESIRE to remain part of her team when lucid from her ADDICTIVE POWER. At least SKITTER appears to have noticed the EMPTINESS IN BURNSCAR’S VOICE, which might eventually tip her off to it.
SKITTER’S POWER OF BUG CONTROL may be of limited assistance, due to BURNSCAR’S ability to BURN NEARBY BUGS WITH EASE. However, it did work out against LUNG in the past, as SKITTER IS QUITE CREATIVE.
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