Homestuck Shipping Olympics 2012
Sep. 14th, 2012 12:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anordinarythingIt's been a while since I've posted here, and since the last time that I posted, a lot has changed. When last I posted here, I was on Team Alchemiter. As the start of HSO approached, I decided to jump ship (pun intended) to Team Dolorosa<3Mindfang, a team that needed two more people to qualify. At the very last possible hour, we got just enough people to qualify for HSO. We didn't win or anything, but as a team we submitted an entry for every main round and made quite a few entries for the bonus rounds, and we also had a great time. I really enjoyed talking with everyone on IRC. I'm really looking forward to next year.
Personally, I made a few pieces of fanart (which I may or may not post in a seperate post), and five pieces of fanfiction, as well as helping with the writing and doing a tiny bit of voice acting for the collaboration round. Two of the fanfics I wrote were full pieces of fanfiction written for the main rounds, the other three were short pieces for one of the bonus rounds.
The pieces that I wrote for the main rounds were for round 1: Gambling, and round 2: Monsters.
The Unluckiest (Dolorosa<3Mindfang, Rated R for Sex and Language) - The first thing that I wanted to do with this fic was to get into my headcannon about the Dolorosa's state of mind. I basically think of her as shutting down completely after the Sufferer died, and pushing the part of her that was involved in those events somewhere so deep that not even Mindfang could find it. With the gambling prompt, I wanted to do something slightly unexpected. I wanted Mindfang to lose a bet. The reason for her loss also served as a MacGuffin for the story: a set of dice so unlucky that they defeated even her powers. By setting up a bit of a heist story, I could play with both Mindfang's powers of manipulation and the Dolorosa's inner strength. In this story, I wanted to show them working together as a team, because in the next story, I wanted to have those strengths play against each other.
Defoler (Dolorosa<3Mindfang, Rated NC-17 for Extreme Violence and Sex, Noncon, Gore, Body Horror, Character Death) - In this story, I really wanted to bring out the darkest parts of the relationship. While the Dolorosa was alive, she was under Mindfang's control; I decided that her death would free her from it. When thinking about monsters, the obvious choice was to make Dolorosa a rainbow drinker, but I wanted to avoid that because it was too obvious, while still keeping the element of luminescent undead. A conversation with Jack-of-None around that time provided the answer: to make the Dolorosa a zombie. The rest of the scene flowed from the characters' motivations: Mindfang's wish to continue possessing the Dolorosa, even when she's dead, and the Dolorosa's dual motivations of revenge and hunger, played against her caring nature. I'm not sure I entirely succeeded at this, since the word limitation of 3000 words left me doing a lot of telling and not enough showing. Still, I'm fairly happy with the way this turned out. I also really like the idea of the Library: a martial order on Alternia that collects and preserves books, and occasionally clashes with the ruling classes. I'll probably bring it back in a later story.
The shorter pieces that I wrote were for the first bonus round, where people were asked to post a pairing and two genres, and then you could fill those prompts.
A Manatee Game (Dirk<3Caliborn, Rated R for Adult Situations, Body Horror, Guro) - I'm actually pretty proud of how this one turned out. It was written for the prompt "Dirk<3uu: Domesticity + Bizarro Fiction". It's pretty deeply weird, but that's sort of expected for the genre. The thing that I'm proud of with this one is that even though it's a relatively short story, it's one of the most thematically dense things that I've written. It's on a similar level to B*gger, but I didn't have Pratchett's brilliance of style to fall back on. I think that's something I like about Bizarro fiction: it's tends to be very reliant on themes and ideas, so when writing Bizarro you have to push yourself when it comes to the themes. While I didn't really draw from it, I was pretty inspired in writing this fic by The Baby Jesus Butt Plug by Carlton Mellick III, which I had read recently before I wrote this.
Roxy: Transform (Roxy<>Dirk, Rated PG-13 for Language) - A very short (268 words) scene between Roxy and Dirk, for the prompt "Roxy<>Dirk: Dark Fantasy + Psychological Horror". Originally I was thinking more toward body horror for this scene, where Roxy's transformation was described in detail, but because that didn't fit the prompt I pulled back into Dirk's mind a bit more and had him close his eyes during the transformation. I'm already in danger of going longer in the fic for this description, so I'm going to cut off here.
I Understand (Jake<3Dirk, Rated PG-13 for Language) - I actually feel sort of guilty about this fic. The prompt was "Dirk<3Jake: Genderbend + Coffeeshop AU", and honestly I don't know that I explored the genderbending aspect. While there is crossdressing and some gender confusion, in this story both Jake and Dirk are cis, and other than crossdressing the fic doesn't really challenge gender norms. The instant I read the prompt, though, my mind went to Coffee Prince and Painter of the Wind, and I just couldn't get it out of my head until I wrote it.
Finally, there was the Collaboration Round project.
Aberration in Color (NSFW, abuse, character death) - This was our team collaboration. Originally, we wanted to make some sort of animation, possibly using cloth cutouts for the characters. Unfortunately, time wasn't on our side, and we had to pull back a little bit. The audio came out a little bit awkward, because we didn't record any kind of scene transitions. We were working on the assumption that people would be able to see what was going on. Still, I think there were some parts of this that ended up working out pretty well, and I think that the other members of my team did an excellent job on the voice acting. If there's anything I would want to keep in mind for next year, it's to not be quite so ambitious.
I've written a number of fanfictions since HSO ended, but I'll cover those in other posts.
Personally, I made a few pieces of fanart (which I may or may not post in a seperate post), and five pieces of fanfiction, as well as helping with the writing and doing a tiny bit of voice acting for the collaboration round. Two of the fanfics I wrote were full pieces of fanfiction written for the main rounds, the other three were short pieces for one of the bonus rounds.
The pieces that I wrote for the main rounds were for round 1: Gambling, and round 2: Monsters.
The Unluckiest (Dolorosa<3Mindfang, Rated R for Sex and Language) - The first thing that I wanted to do with this fic was to get into my headcannon about the Dolorosa's state of mind. I basically think of her as shutting down completely after the Sufferer died, and pushing the part of her that was involved in those events somewhere so deep that not even Mindfang could find it. With the gambling prompt, I wanted to do something slightly unexpected. I wanted Mindfang to lose a bet. The reason for her loss also served as a MacGuffin for the story: a set of dice so unlucky that they defeated even her powers. By setting up a bit of a heist story, I could play with both Mindfang's powers of manipulation and the Dolorosa's inner strength. In this story, I wanted to show them working together as a team, because in the next story, I wanted to have those strengths play against each other.
Defoler (Dolorosa<3Mindfang, Rated NC-17 for Extreme Violence and Sex, Noncon, Gore, Body Horror, Character Death) - In this story, I really wanted to bring out the darkest parts of the relationship. While the Dolorosa was alive, she was under Mindfang's control; I decided that her death would free her from it. When thinking about monsters, the obvious choice was to make Dolorosa a rainbow drinker, but I wanted to avoid that because it was too obvious, while still keeping the element of luminescent undead. A conversation with Jack-of-None around that time provided the answer: to make the Dolorosa a zombie. The rest of the scene flowed from the characters' motivations: Mindfang's wish to continue possessing the Dolorosa, even when she's dead, and the Dolorosa's dual motivations of revenge and hunger, played against her caring nature. I'm not sure I entirely succeeded at this, since the word limitation of 3000 words left me doing a lot of telling and not enough showing. Still, I'm fairly happy with the way this turned out. I also really like the idea of the Library: a martial order on Alternia that collects and preserves books, and occasionally clashes with the ruling classes. I'll probably bring it back in a later story.
The shorter pieces that I wrote were for the first bonus round, where people were asked to post a pairing and two genres, and then you could fill those prompts.
A Manatee Game (Dirk<3Caliborn, Rated R for Adult Situations, Body Horror, Guro) - I'm actually pretty proud of how this one turned out. It was written for the prompt "Dirk<3uu: Domesticity + Bizarro Fiction". It's pretty deeply weird, but that's sort of expected for the genre. The thing that I'm proud of with this one is that even though it's a relatively short story, it's one of the most thematically dense things that I've written. It's on a similar level to B*gger, but I didn't have Pratchett's brilliance of style to fall back on. I think that's something I like about Bizarro fiction: it's tends to be very reliant on themes and ideas, so when writing Bizarro you have to push yourself when it comes to the themes. While I didn't really draw from it, I was pretty inspired in writing this fic by The Baby Jesus Butt Plug by Carlton Mellick III, which I had read recently before I wrote this.
Roxy: Transform (Roxy<>Dirk, Rated PG-13 for Language) - A very short (268 words) scene between Roxy and Dirk, for the prompt "Roxy<>Dirk: Dark Fantasy + Psychological Horror". Originally I was thinking more toward body horror for this scene, where Roxy's transformation was described in detail, but because that didn't fit the prompt I pulled back into Dirk's mind a bit more and had him close his eyes during the transformation. I'm already in danger of going longer in the fic for this description, so I'm going to cut off here.
I Understand (Jake<3Dirk, Rated PG-13 for Language) - I actually feel sort of guilty about this fic. The prompt was "Dirk<3Jake: Genderbend + Coffeeshop AU", and honestly I don't know that I explored the genderbending aspect. While there is crossdressing and some gender confusion, in this story both Jake and Dirk are cis, and other than crossdressing the fic doesn't really challenge gender norms. The instant I read the prompt, though, my mind went to Coffee Prince and Painter of the Wind, and I just couldn't get it out of my head until I wrote it.
Finally, there was the Collaboration Round project.
Aberration in Color (NSFW, abuse, character death) - This was our team collaboration. Originally, we wanted to make some sort of animation, possibly using cloth cutouts for the characters. Unfortunately, time wasn't on our side, and we had to pull back a little bit. The audio came out a little bit awkward, because we didn't record any kind of scene transitions. We were working on the assumption that people would be able to see what was going on. Still, I think there were some parts of this that ended up working out pretty well, and I think that the other members of my team did an excellent job on the voice acting. If there's anything I would want to keep in mind for next year, it's to not be quite so ambitious.
I've written a number of fanfictions since HSO ended, but I'll cover those in other posts.
