silph_co | open up now (don't you think it's time?)

Who: Steven Durante + the other Rockets
Where: Goldenrod Rocket Base in the starter + Tyler's thread, Handsome Jack's place otherwise
When: Late February, immediately after the fossil heist + 10
Summary: Someone is having a quiet crisis following their very first heist! Also, fall-out from some personal revelations + meeting a new Rocket.
Rating: PG-13, with some threads going up to R in terms of language and conversational subjects. ~~Anything too wicked goes to an inbox.~~

Steven Durante's quieter than usual on their way back from Dirk's Fossil Heist. He keeps looking at his hands. And when it comes to turning in the bag of fossils and collecting their rewards, he doesn't even bother asking if he, Connie, and the other Steve will get promotions from this.

Sure, when the time has come for them to claim their weird abomination fossils, he immediately jumps to claiming one the Pokedex claims is called a 'Dracozolt'--but otherwise, he seems unusually subdued. Something is definitely on his mind and has been since... well, even before Steve P and Connie caught up with him and Dirk.

Dirk might be able to hazard a guess as to what's bothering him. Anyone else probably has to ask.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"God, I don't know," Steven says. "I told you, I quit at Act 5. Um. Shit. No hat?"

He's pretty sure that's not the right answer, but in his defense, it's been the better part of a decade since he read any Homestuck.

This is not, admittedly, anywhere near where Dirk expected this conversation to be, five minutes earlier. It's a welcome distraction, actually; the more Steven talked about him and Jack, and the more detail he used--

Well. Dirk doesn't wear anything tight in the crotch and there's a damn good reason for it.

But this? This is... exciting? It's exciting, in a very different way. (Though it's not like he hasn't given himself a narrative boner or two before, just between him and whoever is listening to this. He knows it's someone. Suck that, then. And next time, you can suck it for real.)

He can't deny that he is Bro Strider, that notorious, disreputable man. Stalwart Guardian, the cruel swordsmith and coldhearted mentor forging a hero out of soft flesh. Just as much as he ever was brokenhearted would-be hero Dirk Strider, splintering and splintering again, ad infintum--as he was anything or anyone called Hal, or a Sprite, or old Scratch, or anyone, everyone he could and would ever be, until he was reclaimed into one Self, and there is just no way in hell he can explain that to Steven in a timely manner.

"Like I JUST said. You got to flip it. Turn ways."

Okay, the SBAHJ memes are good. Fantastic, actually. God, but they just never get old, do they?

"I know I rattled off an abbreviated roster, but let's focus on that Scratch. You have four kids, four guardians. Now take the obverse, and you have again four kids and four Guardians. But the obverse is now the reverse, and the wards have become themselves the Wardens."

"Yes, yes, you warned me about the stairs, bro," Steven says with a little roll of his eyes. "So what, you're saying that the whole Scratch thing that was supposed to reboot everything made you the little brother and Dave the big brother." He considers this. "Okay, fine, that makes... as much sense as anything from Homestuck ever did. God, I cannot believe that whole Heinlein thing... god, what was it even called? Number of the Beast? No, wait, that's the book it was in. I cannot believe that whole bullshit where everyone's world is a fiction written by someone in another fictional world is actually correct. My God."

"No, I'm God," Dirk replies 'humourously.' Which is to say, it doesn't sound like humour at all, and if one were to inspect the remark even the slightest bit past the superficial surface, they would find that its purpose is not joking at all.

"And.... yeah that's a largely incorrect but textually recognisable summary of what happened. The truth in spirit, if not in fact."

Pedantic to the end, every single piece of him.

"So, you know about Homestuck. What about the Ghostbusters?
Voltron? My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? We're just one big crossover, moving parts unwillingly displaced by some demented narrator's hamfisted, crayon-scrawled attempt at the so-called transformative work."

It's just as well that Steven can get just as pedantic when it comes to his own interests. He can forgive that in other people more easily that way.

"Yes, yes, and yes?" Steven says, blinking a little. "Though I barely remember Voltron. It went off the air when I was five."

"Yeah, full disclosure: I don't remember the characters we got from that one at all. But I did get an invite to their wedding. Still not clear on the 'why' for that one."

The corners of his mouth turn down and he lifts his hands, see-sawing them to imply a set of scales on which a wedding invite is being measured against the mystery of the happy couple's canonical existence.

Steven shrugs. "Maybe they spammed invitations to all the transplants?"

Dirk shakes his head.

"Don't matter. What matters is, my point is that death of the author? Is very real. The canon is dead, long live the canon. For me, this is only a distraction. And speaking of distractions--" He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, towards... how long has Jack been in the kitchen? Was he really cooking all that time?

Dirk's not a chef; he is in fact the absolute opposite of one. He has fairly refined tastes, contrary to popular belief... but cooking? Is not and never has been anything but a huge waste of time, time he could be spending doing something, anything else.

So, how long has Jack been pretending to cook while actually listening?

"I didn't say anything what's a secret, which is great because I don't know how much listening he was doing? That's your problem now."

Edited 2020-03-12 02:06 (UTC)

Steven rolls his eyes, finally standing up from the couch. "You say that as if I haven't been proceeding as if he's listening in the entire time. Goodbye, Dirk. I'll see you to the door."

open up now (don't you think it's time?)

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Me: how tf do I wrap a thread

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