Hello, my lovely dears! I apologize for the lack of activity on this blog, but I’ve decided to get my arse in gear and really pick this back up! I’ve taken the time to completely redesign things. I’ll start up a prompt queue very soon, and will be working on some prose-based character analyses along the way! As always, feel free to submit things, send in requests for playlists, or just ask a question! We’re here to help!
–Mod D
PROMPT #1
Punk-rock band AU: While on a global tour, the group is stranded in a foreign country by mistake. Shenanigans, of course, ensue.
PROMPT #3:
Hollywood AU: Dave is a famous screenwriter. John is an up-and-coming composer/lyricist “ironically” hired to work on the musical adaptation of SBaHJ.
First off, congratulations! If you’re reading this for help, you’ve likely already finished the hard part–that is, you’ve fleshed out your idea, started writing, and finished at least one chapter. You’re on a roll! If not, keep up the good work, ‘cause I know you’ll be there soon.
Now, down to business:
The Homestuck comic consists mainly of three parts: images, narration, and–of course–Pester/Dialoglogs. As a fanfiction writer, though, you’re going to be mostly concerned with the last two bits to support your works. Narration will make up the majority of your story, but, more often than not, you’ll also find yourself writing Pesterlogs to break up the longs blocks of text and keep your story as much inline with the Homestuck universe as possible. This is fanfiction, after all!
While fanfiction.net doesn’t offer much by way of formatting, you may have seen stories on Archive of Our Own brimming with pretty, colorful, canon-grade chats. It has to be magic, right? That’s the trick to it all? Or maybe Hussie, himself, has bestowed his graces on those particular works?
Not so, my friends! In reality, it’s actually pretty easy to fancy things up, so don’t worry your pretty little heads at all! Here’s how:
First, when you’re creating your story, you’ll see a box below the language option that will ask you about stylesheets. Click the little drop-down button and select Homestuck, as shown here:
This is very important, and nothing will work if you don’t change your sheet!
Got it? Good. Okay, moving on.
When you scroll down, the box at the bottom where you add your text will automatically default to a Rich Text Format editor. This means you’ll be pasting/writing in a white box with that lovely little format bar at the top–you know, the one with the bold, italic, etc. buttons? I recommend doing what you need to here, first. Get your chapter in there and fix all of the details you want; work out your spacing, add your heading breaks, etc.
Once your done, scroll to the bottom, where you’ll see three buttons:
Hit preview, double check that things look the way you want them to, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom again and click the Edit button again. This is a step you’ll repeat several times throughout the process–or, at least, I’ll tell you to–because I’ve had instances in the past where my formatting hasn’t saved at various stages and I’ve lost my work. Protip: previewing your chapter automatically saves things.
Anyway, once you’ve clicked the Edit button:
You’ll end up back where you started, here:
What you want to do now is click that little button on the right that says HTML. Your text should immediately change to something that looks like this:
At first, things will look really crowded and jumbled, so I recommend repeating the “preview; edit” step again, just so your browser will automatically adjust itself to the new formatting. You don’t have to do this, of course, but it just makes reading your text easier. When you get back to the edit page, your text editor should still be in HTML format, but things should look much nicer.
Now, down to the real business.
Scroll down within your chapter/story to the Pesterlog you want to format. You’ll see that the code will look something like this:
<p>– carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 23:47 –</p>
<p>CG: HEY, DUMBASS.</p>
<p>CG: HEY.</p>
(note: I’m using text from one of my fics, simply because I can easily get screenshots of the editing process this way).
So you see those awkward “p"s? Those are HTML paragraph tags. They tell your browser to break a line after whatever is between the opening and closing markers. They’re pretty cool, because you can do all kinds of stuff with them! But in this case, we’ll only need to do one thing, because the rest will be covered using spans (I’ll get to those in a minute).
Now, you want that first part to be centered, right? If you didn’t already center it while you had the Rich Text Editor open, now is your chance! Simply add align="center” to the first opening paragraph tag, so your line now looks like this:
<p align=“center”>– carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 23:47 –</p>
Voila!
(note: Alternatively, you can add <center> </center> tags between or around your opening and closing p tags.)
Alright, the next step is to make everything pretty and colorful. That’s what you came for, right? Down to business.
First, let’s take a look at an actual Pesterlog. Here’s one of my favorites, from page 4637.
Notice how the first part is black, and the whole thing is in a basic HTML monospace font? (I think the Microsoft Word equivalent is Courier or Courier New.)
The lovely creators of the Homestuck Ao3 Stylesheet took this into account, so in addition to the character classes you also have something called the “black” class. Lost? Don’t worry! We’ll take this step by step.
In the Plain Text HTML editor, we’ll be using these special things called “span” tags, as I mentioned before. Like the p tags (and the i/em, b/strong tags you might see floating around your chapter while it’s in HTML-mode), span tags are used to apply certain formatting to specific sections of text. Whereas p tags designate line breaks (b/strong bolded text, and i/em italics), though, span tags are completely blank! If you don't tell them what to do, they won’t do anything at all!
So let’s stick one in our first line and tell it to make the text black and monospaced. Both of these commands are applied in the black class within your Homestuck CSS stylesheet (it’s like special magic that happens offscreen), so we just have to apply the keyword to make things happen.
<p align=“center”><span class=“black”>– carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 23:47 –</span></p>
See how I’ve added the class=“black” to the span tag, much in the same way I added the align=“center” to the p tag? If you want, you can click the Preview button to see what happened to your text. Or you can just take my word for it! Either way is fine.
Once you figure out how to manipulate span tags like that, things become a lot easier! You can add them anywhere you want, as long as you remember to add a closing span tag where you want a particular style to stop.
(Protip: if you’re just making whole lines of text formatted, like Pesterlog lines, you only have to add the opening span tag within your opening p tag. All formatting ends at a closing p tag, so you don’t have to worry about closing the span tag because your browser will automatically do it for you when it hits a closing p tag! If you’re ending before the end of a line, though, you’ll need to add the closing span tag in by hand.)
In addition to the “black” CSS class, there are also formatting options for all four beta kids, all four alpha kids, and all twelve trolls. Let’s finish up the Pesterlog above so you can see a full example. I’ll be using John and Karkat for this one, because that’s who will be participating in the chat:
<p align=“center”><span class=“black”>– carcinoGeneticist <span class=“karkat”>[CG]</span> began pestering ectoBiologist <span class=“john”[EB]</span> at 23:47 –</span></p>
<p><span class=“karkat”>CG: HEY, DUMBASS.</span></p>
<p><span class=“karkat”>CG: HEY.</span></p>
Here’s what it should look like in your edit window:
You’ll notice I’ve circled all of the important bits, because they are very important.
If you want, you can do a few lines and then click your Preview button to check your progress:
Ooh, ahh–pretty colors. (note: the top part is actually centered, mind you, not aligned to the right. I’m just really bad at screen-cropping, apparently.)
Anyway, That’s pretty much all you need to know! You can do this for all kinds of stuff, too, and mix and match the code for whatever you need! Another thing that people use the codes for is text messaging, because those are pretty popular in AU fics but don’t appear in canon. I’ve seen them done a few different ways: everything colored the same way Pesterlogs are, all black, colored names with black text (I use this particular way), or black names with colored text. It’s really all up to you! Which is pretty cool.
Okay, I think this has probably gone on long enough. I’ll close out this tutorial with a list of all possible HTML classes you can use! Keep in mind that they will change the color of the text to the color the character types in! If you’re wondering about dancestor trolls, their text will be the same as their beta troll equivalent (for instance, if you’re writing a Pesterlog between Meulin and Cronus, use the Nepeta and Eridan classes, respectively), and that Kankri’s text is the same color as Dave’s, so you can use the Dave class for him!
Classes:
I hope this helps! If y'all have any questions about this (or anything else!) feel free to drop by my inbox! I’m always happy to hear from you guys!
{ see also: the Karkat Vantas guide to insults (and slander) }
TG: that shits hella weird man
TG: rare like some kind of nasty endangered frog
TG: something jade and her freaky grandpa would get wet over the chance to hold
TG: all spitting and slimy as fuck and cyber-goth green
TG: it knows its special
TG: it flaunts its snowflake-grade quality by sticking its goddamn tongue in your face
TG: and then going all valentine’s day massacre on a bunch of flies or some shit right before your eyes
TG: acting all adorable as fuck and freaky as hell the whole time
TG: shits odd bro
TG: odd like you wouldnt fucking believe
Second in the “Guide to…” series!
{ see also: the Dave Strider guide to metaphor (and simile) }
CG: HOLY FUCKING TROLL JESUS CHRIST
CG: HAS YOUR THINKPAN BEEN SUBJECTED TO THE DISEASE YOU CALL FRENZIED HOOFBEAST AND MELTED SLOWLY INTO A USELESS SLOSH OF UGLY GREY SLIME?
CG:THE SHITBLOATED SENSELESSNESS-LADEN CARBON DIOXIDE YOU HAVE BEEN VOMITING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE FOR THE PAST FIVE EARTH MINUTES HAS DONE NOTHING BUT SUCK EVERY OUNCE OF MEANING FROM MY GODLY EXISTENCE THROUGH SUBJECTIVE METHODS OF SHEER BOREDOM-INDUCING BULLFUCK.
CG: I CAN FEEL THE TINGLE OF MY OWN SPONGECELLS PAINFULLY TAKING THEIR OWN LIVES.
CG: THEY HAVE BEEN PUSHED TOWARD THE PRECIPICE OF HOPELESSNESS BY THE THREAT OF TRANSMOGRIFYING INTO THE STUPIDITY-INCARNATE EVERYTHING CURSED TO PROCESS YOUR WORDS INEVITABLY BECOMES.
CG: DOES THE LOAD CAPER CONTENT CRAWLING ITS WAY UP YOUR USELESS PROTEIN CHUTE EVEN REGISTER INSIDE THAT THICK SKULL ON YOUR SHOULDERS?
CG: OR DO YOU JUST STRING LETTERS TOGETHER AND HOPE SOMETHING PRETTY COMES OUT, YOU UNDERDEVELOPED CLIMBBEAST INFANT?
Are you a writer in need of an extra opinion on your work? A reader with good eyes and the desire to help out your fellow Homestucks? A creeper who enjoys reading the bios of random people on the internet?
Well, look no further, friends! HomestuckFanFictionHelp is proud to cut the purple ribbon on a brand-spankin’-new beta reader masterlist page! Inspired by thewritingcafe, the HSFFH Beta Help Page features an overview of each willing participant, so that, when the time comes, you can choose the best fit for you and your fic! Neat!
Currently, there is only one person (me) on the list, but by quickly filling out this hella wicked application and popping it into the submit box, you too can become a part of this wonderful circle we call literary friendship!
Spread the word, folks! And I hope everyone is having a really great evening!
It looks like…
Okay–so I heard you want to write ROXY LALONDE, yeah? Well, you’ve come to the right place! Before we start getting into the finer details of this FOXY MAMA, I think it’s important that you understand just how FLIPPIN’ BADASS she really is. You may be totally aware of her finer qualities, but, for the sake of being ABSURDLY THOROUGH in this not so little character analysis, we’re going to break things down into a few parts:
Hold onto your hats, gents, because you’re about to score a first class seat on the Roxy-Lalonde-Is-Awesome Express.
Roxy’s Personality:
In her first appearance, Roxy tries to sabotage her friends’ entrance into SBURB Alpha by rigging Jane’s computer to blow up–something that could have seriously harmed her best friend if it had worked out. A lot of people take this as some kind of malicious action, when, in reality, she was just trying to protect everyone in her own way. Granted, it was misguided and a really terrible idea, but done with good intentions, nonetheless. At only fifteen, Roxy is one of the last humans on earth, forced to live alone and fend for herself. This is a particularly low point for her character; she has essentially hit rock bottom, inebriated more often than not, and, as a result, is prone to irrational decisions and bad judgement calls.
But Roxy is strong as hell, and manages to almost pull out of her alcoholism completely in the sixth months she and her friends spend trapped in the Medium. If that isn’t a great example of just how much inner gumption she has, I don’t know what is.
When writing Roxy, fanfiction authors tend to portray her as a party-happy, romance-crazy, drunken teenage floozy. Either written off as the town bicycle or pushed to the side as an example of Everything You Shouldn’t Be, this lovely Lalonde might (in some extenuating circumstances) be considered one of the most underrated characters in Homestuck. Why? Because people tend to lose sight of the fact that she is party-happy and romance-crazy, but that she is also exceptionally mature about it.
Roxy Lalonde is the type of person who, in a modern day setting, would go to large parties. She would go to have fun, to loosen up, and to meet new people–but she would also leave in a heartbeat if something happened to one of her friends. She might beg them to stay longer if they wanted to leave early, but she would never force or fight them to do anything they don’t want to. She would never spike drinks, she would never pressure someone into a romantic situation they didn’t want to be a part of (note: she felt so immensely guitly about kissing Dirk while she was in Trickster!mode that we can assume this was something that wouldn’t happen outside of extenuating circumstances), she would never blame someone else for something bad that happened at the hypothetical house party.
The point of her life you’re writing is important, too. Young, alcoholic Roxy might get drunk enough to get herself photographed shirtless and dancing on tables, but Roxy rarely gets to the point where she can’t remember what happened while sloshed. She might pass out, sure–but she is just as likely to act more drunk than she really is in a given situation.
Roxy isn’t a weepy drunk. She is a girl who has been put in a bad situation and tries to make the best of it. Her “core” personality is fun and carefree–but, most importantly, compassionate. Mature beyond her years, she not only understands the importance of holding yourself accountable for your actions but also that taking life too seriously will just make you sad, angry, and lonely in the end.
As such, Roxy doesn’t ever get really angry. Frustrated and upset and annoyed? Yeah–but never furious. She’s more likely to internalize her negative feelings than lash out at her friends. When Jake and Jane forced her into Trickster Mode, she wasn’t mad at them. Instead, she blamed herself. When Jane didn’t believe the stories about her life, Roxy didn’t yell at her or try to force her to believe–instead, it made her sad.
This doesn’t, however, mean that she has low self-esteem! Roxy knows she’s a hot, badass mofo with elite haxxor cred, but she understands that she isn’t perfect! She is one of the few characters in Homestuck to actually recognize her problems, come to terms with them, and then fix them all on her own!! THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT AND BASICALLY THE BEST PART OF HER CHARACTER!
Four Things People Forget About Roxy Motherfuckin’ Lalonde:
One common misconception about the Alphas is that Dirk is the brilliant, genius mastermind. He gets all the credit in the brain department because of his robotics, but Roxy is just as capable a scientist in her own right. Proficient in ectobiology, quantum physics, and programming, we can infer that Roxy is a walking calculator. But! Our dear Lady Lalonde also has the mind of a writer and artist, seen in her writing/drawing of Wizardy Herbert. Roxy is a Jack of All Trades! A regular Renaissance (wo)Man! (Also note that her chumhandle includes the word “gnostalgic”, a play on “gnostic”, which means “pertaining to or possessing of vast knowledge”.)
We know Roxy is mentally tough as shit, but people often forget that she’s hella strong, too. Her strife specibus is equipped with not one, but two -kinds: riflekind and fistkind. If you’ve ever shot a rifle, you’ll know that those things can be pretty hefty to lift, and that the kickbacks can be killer if you’re not solid enough to handle them. And a fistkind specibus isn’t something to be taken lightly at all. We’re not just talkin’ a few bitch-slaps and a good knee to the balls, here–because the only other character shown with a fistkind specibus was Equius fuckin’ Zahhak. (This is just one of the many connections these two characters share, by the way.)
Alternatively: Roxy is basically Robin Hood. Remember all those pumpkins Jake kept losing? Ever wonder where they went? Well, Roxy used them to feed the starving residents of her apartment complex, along with many of her ectobiologically-created cats. Yes, her beloved cats.
I’m also going to use this point to emphasize the fact that she is extremely loving and tolerant, almost to a fault–she’ll do anything to keep her friends together, doesn’t even blink when she meets Calliope for the first time despite her appearance, and doesn’t try to fight grimbark Jade because she knows she is important to Jake. In addition, she’s extremely affectionate, and addresses her friends with nicknames. At the same time, though, she will not hesitate to rip your throat out if you fuck with the people she loves.
Yeah, you read that right. It’s stated that, sometime during her five months in the Medium, Roxy straightened up and got herself sober. Do you know what that means? It means that she does not drink at all. Most alcoholics, in their early stages of sobriety, tend to avoid drinking even in the smallest amounts both out of fear that they will relapse and as a way of establishing willpower against the temptation to drink when times get tough. After her Trickster-fied binge, she feels lower than dirt, and speaks at length to Jane about aspects of her problem and how ashamed of that part of her life she is.
How Roxy Speaks:
Homestuck is, as I mentioned earlier, almost entirely chat-based. There are no enclosure talons surrounding bits of dialogue, and each character “speaks” the same way they type. This is something we generally don’t do in formal prose–fanfiction included! For a character like Roxy, though, finding the right way to portray her personality without the help of her typical typing style can be a bit tricky.
Just to start on the basics, we’ll take a look at some of her chatlogs, first. Roxy’s chats are characterized by a consistent inconsistency. Her punctuation is spotty at best, as she only uses it half the time–and, even then, it’s usually only for emphasis or ending. She uses “you” and “u” interchangeably, as well as and/+, at/@, be/b, to/2 and several other common chat abbreviations. And acronyms! Her spelling, also, fluctuates based on both her level of drunkeness and the person she’s talking to.
Overall, she types as she thinks. That is, her fingers work in time with her brain. Her responses are usually a series of average-sized lines that combine together to form one particular thought, much like Dave.
Several other things to consider: Roxy can be hella wordy when she wants to, she has an awesome vocabulary, and she is also well-versed in the ancient arts of irony and metaphor. Don’t believe me?
How All This Madness Translates into Prose:
There are two major traps you run the risk of falling into whenever you write Homestuck fanfiction, but they’re especially high with Roxy. Here are a few things to avoid:
Some writers are tempted to avoid formal dialogue altogether, forgoing it in favor of the Homestuck-esque dialoguelog format. That is, rather than writing:
“Fuck yes,” Roxy beams, throwing her fists in the air as you and Jane look on. “Yes, yes, yes! This is going to be so frickin’ great!”
They’ll write this:
ROXY: fuck yissss!!!
Roxy beams, throwing her fists in the air as you and Jane look on.
ROXY: yesyesyesyes YES!!
ROXY: this is gunna be so frickin great!!!
See the difference? Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the second version–it’s perfectly fine! If, that is, it’s a chat, not dialogue. Writing like this pulls away from the fic, putting a barrier of formatting between your reader and the story. It works in the actual webcomic because there are images to supplement the narration-less exchanges, but, in fanfiction, there oftentimes aren’t any/many images. As a writer, you have to paint the picture of what’s happening. It has to be smooth, and, when your reader has to stop and start and stop and start as he/she is reading, it makes the experience a little frustrating.
It’s important to remember that you should never write something that you, yourself, wouldn’t bother reading!!
In addition, more of Roxy’s personality comes out in the first example. Rather than choppy dialogue-narration-dialogue, the transitions between Roxy’s words and actions are much smoother. That is, you can immediately visualize her reaching up to the sky for a cosmic fistbump without having to read four lines in rapid succession that all start with exactly the same word.
A lot of writers who use this technique do it because Roxy’s misspellings and corrections are much easier to write out. But never fear! You can still get what you need across to your reader without explicitly writing out those things! I’ll get into how in a little bit.
The second thing you’ll want to avoid when writing dialogue is actually so common you might not even realize it’s there when you come across it. Some people don’t mind it, but it’s just a pet peeve of mine that rears its ugly head every know and then–especially when Roxy is involved. Onomatopoeia is, essentially, the literal transcription of sounds. (You know, like: clank! or plop! or pchoooo!). And there’s nothing wrong with onomatopoeia! Actually, it’s a really fun writing tool that I absolutely adore using, because it can be really helpful when you need to set up a scene and build suspense at the same time. But I’m digressing.
The problem with onomatopoeia comes when people over use it. Just like with every good thing, moderation is key–because then it’s special and fun for your reader to see. And, unless your character is describing a sound, it should never be used in dialogue. Seriously.
“Hahahaha, I know, right? I just can’t believe it! It’s just totally too absurd, us meeting here like this!”
vs.
Roxy laughs, all squinty-eyed and wide-mouthed and happy. "I know, right? I just can’t believe it! It’s totally too absurd, us meeting here like this!“
Do you see the difference? Do you really? Good. In Roxy’s case, people will sometimes misspell and correct words within dialogue like the first one on purpose, in an effort to make it seem more like she is "speaking Pesterchum”, in a way. They’ll add corrections within her dialogue, like “…rocsk–dammit, *rocks…”
I will hunt you down and smack you on the nose with a rolled up newspaper if you do this.
Now, let’s work on how to bring out Roxy’s personality while avoiding these things!
Going back to that last point I made in The Cycle of Onomatopoeia, I’ll address misspellings and corrections first.
To start, I want to think of what happens when you talk to your friends. Like, when you get excited about something and your words start rushing out so fast they hardly make sense. Or when you’re reading allowed in class and your tongue just sort of says “fuck this shit” and enunciating is, like, five thousand times more impossible. What do you do in those situations? You either break off with a classic “dammit–rocks, I meant rocks”; “dammit–rocks”; or just sort of ignore it altogether. No one in their right fuckin’ mind says “dammit–asterisk rocks”, even if you do think asterisks rock.
Mispellings are a little trickier, but they can be handled the same way. Actually, you can even treat misspellings like a kind of “accent”. Dialect writing is something of a controversial topic among writers, simply because it can, at times, be hard for readers to understand. Pretty much everyone will read Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at some point in their lives, and it’s the best possible example of this–because basically every bit of dialogue in that book is written in dialect.
When you think about it, Roxy’s speech only flies way off the handle when she’s drunk, so, if you can figure out how to write her “drunk” accent well enough, you’ll completely throw away the need for any in-dialogue misspellings. You’ll still have to misspell things when she talks, of course, but you’ll be writing the words how a smashed person would say them, instead.
If I were to go into detail on how to write a drunk character, this post would be even more crazy-insane-horribly long than it already is, so…
Five “How to Write a Drunk Character” Resources:
Yep.
In conclusion, Roxy Motherfuckin’ Lalonde is amazing. And awesome. And wonderful. And she deserves to be written well! So go forth and show the world what you can do, you kickass fanfiction author! Go!
(I hope this helps! Please let me know if I’ve missed anything or got anything wrong! Thanks for reading!)