Gamzee: Rage

The black king wasn't going down easy. He took hit after hit (really how could anyone not hit him? He was the size of a mountain), but he just kept coming. Aradia had the thing surrounded, Vriska threw head shots, Feferi flitted about healing people...everyone gave it their all.

At least, almost everyone. Gamzee didn't really see why he should join the fight. The others had it covered. He liked it better sitting back and watching. Sure, they were having a tough time of it, but some miracle or other would get them through it.

Gamzee was admiring a particularly fierce blow from his angry bro Karkat when a streak of black caught his eye. One of the king's tentacles had whipped out of the blue and swatted Tavros out of the sky, knocking him from his rocket car. As his airless coughs spluttered chocolate blood onto the ground, something started moving in Gamzee, jerking, halting, burning, freezing.

"die."

In a matter of seconds, Gamzee closed the gab between himself and the king. One leap, and he was soaring up to eye level with one of the monstrosity's heads.

 "MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!"

Zillihoo crashed into the carapace, crumpling half of the head in on itself. The king stumbled, shock and pain in its gurgles. Gamzee fell back to the ground, strolling away from the beast. The two-faced beast inside him had gone back to sleep, and Gamzee wanted to do the same.

[All characters come from Andrew Hussie's web comic Homestuck.]

Dream Log 18: Homestuck (Here there be spoilers)

I was just casually walking across campus, when a cool dude on a skateboard drifted by. He had the body of an athlete, attractively pale skin, and Anime shades as spiky as his hair. Dirk Strider had come to town.

Naturally, I ran after him. A fictional character living in an alternate universe 400 years into the future doesn't show up every day, you know. Sadly, I couldn't keep up, and as I watched, he rolled right into traffic, hands not even leaving his pockets, and reached the other side without a scratch. Part of me wanted to keep trying to follow him, but a passing friend deterred me. When the walk light finally came on, I had completely lost sight of Dirk.

Not having anything better to do, I decided to take a nap. I don't even remember falling asleep or dreaming. Nevertheless, I remember waking up, comfortably wrapped in my blankets, dressed in my favorite pajamas, and looking straight at Dirk who was sitting on the bed by my feet.

I could feel that he was cocking an eyebrow at me behind those shades of his.

"I saw you cross the street om your skateboard earlier. Did you time that or were you just leaving it to chance?"

Yes, I'm blunt and ignore social niceties. What of it?

My roommate, realizing I had woken up, made the official introductions. Don't you hate that awkward moment when you're introduced to a guy you already know from hours of what seems now like internet stalking and you're in your pajamas to boot? Strangely, something about the way he shook my hand made me think he knew me too. I decided not to dwell on that.


"I'm not an idiot, if that's what you're asking," he said with a smirk.

My roommate picked up the conversation about music they had been having before I woke up. When they got to one artist, Dirk's face lit up with a melancholy joy.

"His music is the only sound  I can't bring myself to mix when I'm DJing. I get chills from blending music around itself, but his work...any alterations I try sounds like profanity."

He recomposed his face into its usual facade and glanced down at me.

"So, want to learn how to ride a skateboard?"
........................................
"This wouldn't be so awkward if I wasn't in a nightgown!" I grumbled after the umpteenth fall from my training board, which consisted of roof shingles glued together. The plastic backings slipped easily against the carpet of the sloped hallway Dirk had me practicing on, while the grit on top kept my from losing my footing, in theory at least.

"Yeah, it's kind of hilarious. Now, this time, try to make it to the rolled up mat at the bottom." He pointed, and then slid off on his own, proper board. When he reached the mat, he hopped over it and landed with the board in his hand on the other side.

My turn. Miraculously, I made it to the mat. In retrospect, it was obvious he intended me to use it as a break, but arrogant little me decided to try the jump for myself. It ended in my lying flat on my back, staring up at yet another Dirk Smirk.

"Better, but jumps don't really work with roof shingles." He offered me a hand up.

At that moment, Roxy Lalonde appeared, accompanied by what I can only describe as an octopus-squid-type-hoozamawhatsit, or Jeff as she called it.

"Dirk, come on. We were going to work on getting Jeff home, rememb- oh! Who's this?"

"This is a girl I'm teaching to skateboard."

"Hi!" I chimed in. Jeff crawled towards me and lifted a single purple tentacle. Not knowing what to do, I decided not to leave him hanging. The moment my palm touched his limb, light shot from the tip and projected a round, golden mark above my head.

Dirk glanced at Roxy. Roxy shook her head. "No! No way are we bringing her into this. She shouldn't be involved!"

"He accepted her sigil. She's part of it regardless."

"Um, what are you two talking about?" I asked as the sigil faded from view.

"Jeff here is a mediator," Dirk clarified, "He can intervene between Prospit and Derse, Trolls and Humans, feuding Horror Terrors. However, he was somehow sent to earth. Without him, dark and light in the Incipisphere are slaughtering each other, even without players making it into the game. We're trying to get him back before the entirety of everything rips itself apart."

"So, what was that with the glowy symbol thing?"

"It's how he communicates, sort of," said Roxy, "It's like, he can't talk normally. He can only communicate with people he decides to auspistize for, which he can only do if he prototypes an arm with their soul, represented by the sigil. He's kind of picky about this usually. I mean, he only has so many arms. I guess he thinks you'll be useful."

"Well then, Jeff, anything you want to add?" I looked down at the cartoonish, wiggling thing beside me.

Then, messages flashed through my head. He showed me the trolls on their various planets in the game, Jane in her helium filled wasteland, horror terrors doing some unspeakable thing or another. Everything started to go wrong and change when Jane entered the field and released one of the balloons, which Jeff happened to be trapped in. He drifted off into a a meteor field and kept drifting, into another universe even, where the reckoning took him down to earth and left him there, unable to serve existence like he was meant to.

When the images stopped, at least one question had been settled in my mind. I knew for certain that Jeff was not to be trusted.

Dream Log 17: The Guardians

My friends are always poking me to watch or read this that and the other thing. For once, I had enough time to actually comply with their pokes. Their latest obsession was a supernatural drama named The Guardians. As I sat down to watch it with them, they started interrupting each other in their attempts to introduce characters when they came on screen during the opening sequence.

"That's Malique, that guy with the baby face. He's Sarah's guardian -"
"Which is funny because -"
"because he's such a sweetie pie, but she's - "
"a bi-"
"Mmmh! Anyway, but - "
"Ooh! Gentleman! He's great. You'll like him -"
"He's an angel!"
"Aren't they all?"
"Technically? but..."

While they argued, I tried to keep my attention on the show. The premise seemed to be that people in desperate straights would be visited and assisted by their guardians. A guardian is an angelic being that takes of the form of the closest thing to an angel in the culture of their ward. However, each guardian is specific to their ward, and the ward's personality can overpower their cultural identity when it comes to the sort of guardian they get.

"So guys, who's your favorite guardian?" I asked the still bickering duo. They broke off their discussion immediately.

"Kyo," they said in unison.

"Who's he?"

"See that guy with the knife?" one of them asked

"I thought he was a villain."

"No! Also, he doesn't take one ward at a time. He's got, like, 5. He's just that awesome."

Finally, the show actually began, cutting to an image of a rundown house at night, the lights off. Next image: Kyo, grilling up bacon. Next: three white theater masks resting on the arm of a chair, Kyo's back visible in the background. One mask is tragedy, one mask is comedy, the third looks warped, as though someone had squished it.

Another man, this one fat and wearing a grease stained undershirt, stumbled into the room, saw Kyo and turned beet red.

"Whah bloody'ell dyo think yer doin' in 'ere?!" slurred the man, doing his best to stumble threateningly towards Kyo. The guardian simply turned around, sticking a slice of bacon in his mouth like a cigar.

"I got hungry" he retorted through the meat, "Have a seat."

Confused, the man acquiesced and in doing so noticed the masks on the chair.

"Like 'em?" Kyo asked, making his way over to the chair. He picked up the squished one, flipped it once in the air, and held it over his own face.

"My model wouldn't stay still. Kind of pissed me off. It's hard to take off a face when they don't stay still. Maybe you recognize it. No?"  He tosses the mask into the man's lap. "I'm not surprised. It's been a good 20 years since you saw your dad."

"Whaddaya dooda 'im!" the man shouted, leaping from his seat.

"What I needed to," Kyo replied. Almost lazily, he whipped out his knife. "Now let's get your face off."

"What the heck!" I yelled at my friends.

"Shoosh! Only guardians now."

Unsurprisingly, the man had bolted out of the room. Kyo was in pursuit, muttering to himself about how they always run. After a time, the man found himself cornered. He didn't try to fight Kyo or the tears.

"Relax. It won't hurt." Kyo ran his knife in a clear oval around the man's face, severing it.

However, instead of agony, surprise flashed in the man's eyes. Kyo lifted the face away, which hardened almost instantly into a mask. The man's new face was pinker and a bit smaller than the first one, but he didn't appear skinned.

"It, it didn't hurt!"

"Told you." Kyo put his knife hand back in his pocket, withdrawing another piece of bacon.

"I feel so much better! It's like, it's like I'm free!" the man exclaimed

"And apparently sober again. Funny how that works," Kyo commented, mouth full of bacon once more.

The show then moved on to other Guardians, like Gentleman, who spoke with a British accent and whose ward was 16 and believed she was a toddler.

Final verdict. Would dream again.

Dream Log 16: Never Land, Murder, and How the Great Gatsby Should Have Ended

[This is actually a mash up of the most interesting parts of my last three dreams, since I've been too lazy to submit them individually]

Part the First: Never Land

I was trying to make my way to a hotel room I was planning on staying in. Essentially, the only way to get anywhere was by climbing on scaffolding on the outside of the hotel. As I climbed, I noticed a sad looking man wearing a crown. He could not negotiate the scaffolding, so I decided to help him. I began to fly and "magicked" up a set of stairs for him. He did not trust them. I insisted that he try, he still refused.

"Why won't you trust me? I just want to help you get to happiness!" I cried.

"You don't even know where happiness is!" he lamented.

"Yes I do! I have a compass to help me." I pulled out a compass hanging around my neck, but instead of the needle staying flat, it lifted up out of the plain and tugged me towards a star in the sky.

At this point, I realized for the first time that I was flying.

"HOLY CRAP I'M PETER PAN!"

"Took you long enough," grumbled the king.


Part the Second: Murder

Killing out of self defense is acceptable. Killing out of rage or greed is comprehensible. Killing out of apathy...that is something I cannot understand.

The world was going to pieces and  I didn't know why. All I knew was that good people like batman (yes, batman) were doing horrible things like releasing swarms of killer bees on people. Those who weren't participating in the cruelty just lay uselessly on their beds. Everyone had a blanket of apathy a mile thick pulled over them, everyone besides me that is. While trying to rouse my mother from her depressed stupor, my sister came into the room.

"You need to die," she whispered dispassionately. The knife in her hand swung up towards my face, but I ducked it and ran out of the room. I sneaked around the house, looking for anything that might help me make sense of what was going on.

I was on the verge of giving up and heading outside to keep searching when I ran into my sister again. She wasn't even looking at me. She couldn't be bothered to lift her glassy gaze from the ground. She looked so limp I thought the knife would slip right out of her fingers. No such luck.

"Why do you want to live?"

"Do you even care?" I screamed at her. I was done with fear. The world was crashing around me and I was the only one left to deal with it. It made me pissed.

"Not really. I just figured maybe I should ask before you stopped living." She swung with her knife, arms so lax they may as well have been boneless. I stepped back easily.

"Why do you want to kill me!? It's pointless and stupid, and you should be better than that!"

"I don't really want to. It's just, we're all going to die anyway, so I feel like I should help. It's a pain."

"Then how about this? I'll take over killing for now. You can lie down and wait for death. Like you said, it'll come eventually. Let's just procrastinate on this for a little while, okay?"

"Sure," her shrug seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

I turned to go, white hot rage propelling me onward, when I felt the white hot pain of a knife slashing across my back. Then I felt nothing.

Part the Third: How The Great Gatsby Should Have Ended

[I hate The Great Gatsby. Of all the books I ever had to read for school, Gatsby is the only novel I really could not stand. It's not just that the writing style grinds my gears. The characters, except for the sporty girl, Jordan Baker, are utterly pathetic. So, what did my subconscious decide to do last night? It decided to rewrite the whole thing.]

Gatsby pines for Daisy. Gatsby sees Jordan hanging out in a tree. Gatsby realizes she is way cooler. Jordan ignores Gatsby. Gatsby seduces her with elaborate tree dance. Jordan decides what the heck. Jordan and Gatsby fall in love and spend all their time golfing and hanging out in the trees around Gatsby's mansion instead of throwing parties for drunks and dignitaries. Daisy and Tom die in a hole or something.  The End.

[okay, so maybe it isn't as believable as the original, but it makes me infinitely happier.]

Dream Log 15: Natural Beings

 Another breakfast, another day. So the food is a bit odd (really, who makes a stuff your own squash buffet?), but that's not so special in and of itself. No, what made this day different was that my friend wasn't there stuffing squash with me. I looked around for her a bit, and noticed her sitting in a corner, clutching a dark leather journal.

"Sup?"
...
"You okay?"
...
"What's that journal? I haven't seen you with it before."
...
That's when I noticed him, an impish little green man beckoning me. I tried to ignore him, but he was quite persistent. Finally, without moving, I asked him what he wanted.

"I know what your friend has there," he grinned.

"Do tell."

"You'll have to catch me first!" he cried, already bounding away from me. I chased and eventually found him bent down on his hands and knees in front of two statues of deer. When I tried to lift him up, he refused to budge.

"Bow to their majesties," he hissed.

Before I could ask him what that meant, a laugh like creaking wood came from one of the statues. Of course, they weren't statues anymore, but an elfin lord and lady. The lord smirked at my surprise, but I didn't back away.

"I take it you two are rulers of nature in Pittsburgh?"

"What is Pittsburgh to us?" replied the lord, "we reign over nature and everything beyond, which man dare not comprehend."

"Like the leather journal? What is it?" I pressed. He treated me to his creaking laugh again and shifted form into a deer. I followed him as he led me through corridors that I've walked a thousand times on campus. This time, they looked different. There were spiderwebs where there hadn't been any before. People were living in the cracks, and I had to watch out for things scurrying under foot. By the time we arrived back to where the lady and the imp were waiting, I had seen enough.

"I don't want to know what the journal is, do I?" The lady froze my heart with a smile.

"If I were you," cautioned the lord, as he and his lady reverted to stone, "I would return that journal to us as soon as possible."

I ran back to the cafeteria, but my friend was nowhere to be found, probably because an hour had passed and she had class. Then I recalled that I had class, but quickly disregarded that thought as irrelevant. I made my way to her math lecture, wrapped my hand in my jacket, and pulled the journal from her grip. She started to thaw from her trance. The imp appeared, grabbed the journal almost faster than I could hand it to him, and disappeared once more.

I thought that was the end of it. Unfortunately, once a Natural Being reveals itself to you, you are marked. It wasn't until a few days later that  I discovered this fact. I was in class when visitors walked by, a female surgeon and an old man. My skin crawled, and even through the wall,  I could feel them. I knew they had encountered the Natural Beings as well, and I knew they sensed the same of me. As soon as class ended, the surgeon's companion came up to me.

"My good doctor friend would like to speak with you." Well crap. I didn't really want to go with this strange old man, but I got the sense that no was not an option.

"My dear child. How nice to meet you," the surgeon gushed, "I'm Dr. Jen Cooper, and what's your name?"

"How did you meet them?" I asked flatly. Her smile shifted from falsely friendly to genuinely devious.

"I found a journal. It told me lovely things, until a slut of a doe and this idiot came to take it from me," she gestured to her companion. "She couldn't take it without my consent, but he could." Her grin widened. "He's my lackey now. And I got enough out of the journal to find my true calling."

I didn't like where this was going. "And that would be?"

"I find people, cut them up while their conscious and watch them try to put their organs back." Her eyes dug eagerly into me while she spoke.

"Why are you telling me this?" I tried to back away slightly, but the old man moved to block me. With nowhere to go, I slipped into a better stance. I wasn't going down without a fight.

"I'm telling you, because I want you to try to stop me."

"...what?"

"I love what I do, but human police just aren't enough fun. You've seen things they haven't. You know why I do it. You could make it fun again."

She and her lackey headed off, but she paused before going around a corner and out of sight. "By the way, I will be trying to kill you too, so watch out for that."

Crap.

[I could have sworn I posted this earlier. I had this dream a while ago. Oh well.]

Dream Log 14: Wonder Children of Dubious Parentage

Pro-bowlers can be quite the rancorous lot. If they don't get all of the pins down, they will blame everything from the unevenness of the lane to the smell of someone's cologne distracting them. They'll even go so far as to perform an elaborate musical number involving guest appearances by Bugs Bunny to pin the blame on a maniacal deaf child hiding in the back and forcing the pins to stay up.

After his part in the show was over and everyone was captivated by this impressive display, Bugs headed off on his own to wander the empty section of the bowling alley. There, he ran into Babs, whom he had not seen in years and who was more than a little discomforted to see him here so unexpectedly. They tried to stick to niceties, but it just wasn't working.

"Why did you leave me?" Bugs demanded.

"Me? You're the one who was always running off to play pranks. What was I supposed to do, just wait for you to get back, hoping you were still in one piece?"

"Well...yes? I mean, I thought you loved that part of me. Besides, you know I always come out on top."

"Not with that gremlin. Remember the gremlin?"

"How could I forget...but that isn't the point. I never knew you were so upset. You could have said something earlier."

"You were never ready to listen when I tried to bring it up, and when I got pregnant, I just knew I didn't want to raise my -"

"Wait, PREGNANT?!"

Babs froze Bugs with a glare. "We're rabbits. What did you think would happen?"

"Right, well...still! I have kids? I've never even gotten to meet them. What are they like?"

"Hmm, a few are a lot like you, actually."

Their conversation proceeded in this fashion until they decided to give it another go. My mind, however, decided it would be much more amusing to consider what the children of the black hat guy and his girlfriend in xkcd would be like. It decided that they would have superpowers, one of which being that they have the effect of a rainbow disco ball mixed with sparkles when they entered a room. This provided endless fun for their elementary school classes.

Switch gears again, and I ran into an anthropomorphized version of Fluttershy from My Little Pony, whose five children all had different abilities. Two boys had flame based powers, the girl had telekinesis, another boy was either super strong or part bull, and the final boy...he was strange. His power seemed to be a combination of wisdom beyond years and hyper-awareness of people and his surroundings. He was calm, collected, and had a knowing twinkle to his eye that made me slightly uncomfortable when he looked at me.

While leaving their house late at night, I saw something moving in the darkness. It seemed large and furry, but I barely saw it before it rushed into a tree. Naturally, I informed Fluttershy of this, and she decided to go out and talk with it. All the children were asleep, but of course the hypersensitive one with his crazy good hearing met us at the door and insisted he come along. Fluttershy agreed. If he wanted to come, it was probably a good idea that he did. I stayed inside to look out for the rest of the kids while they slept. After an hour or so, I heard them coming back. A creature somewhere between a horse and a fox stepped onto the porch with them. Without speaking exactly, it informed me that its name was Gabriel and that it was going to live with us for a while until he could get safe passage back to his home. The little boy seemed quite pleased with himself. Before heading out for real, I turned to Gabriel and asked.

"I'm curious, and please don't take offense. But, you're part horse right?"

Correct

"Do all horses really like carrots-"

No.

Dream Log 13: Hunger Games

So here I am, waiting for the game to start. I know it's going to be...unpleasant, but at least they've changed the rules from previous years. I won't be killing other contestants, at least, not necessarily. We just need to get to the center of the maze. That alone is going to be horrible, and if you don't get out in time, they don't let you out. However, it beats having to look over my shoulder every second to see if a crazy woman with an axe is after me.

While I wait, the events leading to my selection as tribute keep bubbling up in my head. I wasn't trying to prove anything, or was I? All I know is that I couldn't have let myself do anything else. President Snow had him. My mentor, my friend, I never even knew his name, but he was the reason I'm alive today. I saw snow standing in some sort of clear revolving door with chains hanging in each section. It kept going around and around. He couldn't get to Snow and Snow couldn't get to him, but he didn't need to. I overheard what Snow was saying from my hiding spot.

"You do not desire money, fame, women, luxury, drugs. All you want is power over your own life. You know I won't give you that, and I know you are dumb enough to try to take it. For that, you must die."

The spinning of the door ceased, and the chains sprang to life. They whipped at him, crackling with electricity that I knew was fatal. He dodge the first few, but he couldn't last long. I knew they could only hold one charge. Once they discharged, it would take minutes to load again. Without a second thought, I charged towards the revolving door and crashed into the chains. "GO!" I screamed at my mento. For a second I thought he was going to stay and try to trump my hero play with a hero play of his own, but if there was one thing he knew, it was how to recognize an empty gesture. Staying would mean the death of us both. Miraculously, I did not die from the shock. Snow told me as his minions unwrapped the chains from my smoking body that I had the ability to change the properties of my flesh. In this case, I turned to rubber for an instant. That was a stroke of luck.

Or not, I think, for now I have to go through this stupid game. Finally, the platform I'm standing on lifts me to the surface and into the maze. Strangely, it looks just like a long, hallway full of swamp. I pick my way through it, trying not to gag at the smell. At the end, a door blocks my path. It has a stick shaped hole in it, so I go picking through the swamp to find the proper stick, shove it in the hole, and tada! The door opens. I doubt the rest of the maze will be this easy.

It's now been a few days, and I cannot figure out how to get past my current section. At least the place is beautiful. It has plenty of pink stones to climb around on and hide inside of, and it looks like there's supposed to be a waterfall running through it, though it's dried up right now. That could be a problem. I don't have any water on me, and all I have to eat is...I really don't want to think about what I have to eat. The entire game, this slice of Pizza has been following me. It appears in every room, but it was always inaccessible. Today, it's finally easy to reach. It's just sitting next to the back door for goodness sake. However, it's so putrid that it actually bubbles and oozes a fowl, yellow sludge. I finally get the courage to touch it, maybe see if the crust is edible. As soon as I move the pizza, I hear a beautiful sound, rushing water. I run to the waterfall, drink my fill, wash my hands, my face, my body. Water is AMAZING.

What's even more amazing is that someone else is there with me. I don't know how she got there, and she never explains, but we click immediately. I can't believe how well we get along. I mean, I actually felt happy talking with her and singing songs from The Sound of Music. Then, she was gone. I didn't see her go. I didn't hear anything. I didn't even smell anything out of the ordinary. All I know is that the day she disappeared, the door finally opened. I want to stay and look for her. The moment I cross the threshold, the door will lock again. However, there's nothing for it. I step forward and try my hardest to turn into stone.

Dream Log 12: Am I Me?

Everything's fine. Everything is fine. I've been forgetting more frequently lately, but I've always been a bit absent minded. So what if I can't remember what happened in the past hour. I was probably just wasting my time on the internet. It's a bit of a nuisance. That's all...

And I thought black outs were an issue. Hah! People are being murdered in the area. That's way more of a concern. No one I know has died yet, but it's still something to watch out for. I'd better not travel alone any more. Who knows what could happen if I went into a black out by myself with a killer on the loose?

I wonder why they're all looking at me like that. Do I have something on my face? Did I say something wrong? Shoot, how did I get here? I'd better...is that blood on my sleeve? I don't see any cuts on me. Where did that come from?

They told me to talk to a doctor about the time lapses. They aren't saying what they really mean. They know the things I've done that  I can't remember. Oh God, please help me. I don't want this to be true. I don't want to have done those things. This can't be real.

The doctor is so... nice. I can't stop crying, but, somehow...he makes me feel like a human. I don't know what I've been doing, but he does. And he doesn't hate me for it. I'm just tired, so tired. I've been trying not to sleep in case a different me wakes up, but with the doctor watching, I don't think he'll let another me hurt anyone else. I'm going to go to sleep now...as soon as the crying stops. I hope I don't kill the doctor...


[I woke up not knowing if the split personality murders happened or not. Gah!!!! Also, there was a point where a girl used her skirt as a cape to bull-fight with a car, which I found rather amusing, but not at all relevant to the rest of the dream.]

Dream Log 11: Warning, Homestuck Spoilers

[If you aren't past act five of Homestuck, there may be spoilers below.]

Dream bubbles, nice cozy dream bubbles. Nothing really bad can happen while your in a dream bubble, right? I mean, you're already dead for real, so what could happen? Weird stuff, that's what.

First, I just got to watch a bunch of dead trolls run around and be cool. Gamzee rode a rocket-shaped carnival ride, Karkat and Terezi were running around killing things. Everyone's having fun. Except that somehow they get separated. I don't mean they got lost. I mean there was a barrier holding people apart. I, who was just reading the comic, not participating, suspected Hussie of this latest weirdness.

However, I quickly calmed down about that when shipping happened. According to dream logic, Hussie let his fans vote on their favorite ships, which I'm sure led to much bloodshed. However, it was time for the big reveal. We started with Karkat. Terezi, Gamzee, and Dave all stepped foreward around him, looking serious. Gamzee even cleaned off his greasepaint.  Then, Dave stepped back into the darkness as symbols formed in front of the other two. A diamond appeared in front of Terezi, which pissed me off to no end. However, then something really weird happened. A black heart appeared in front of Gamzee.

Even in dream, I was like, "wait wut?" I jumped on the IRC channel with all my fellow Homestuck geeks, and we freaked out about it for maybe an hour. Meanwhile, other strange things were afoot in the Land of Dreams and Bubbles. A mysterious pink woman (not the Condescension) appeared on the back of a dream bubble and proclaimed that their time of grace was nearly passed. They would soon move on to the true afterlife as soon as the Midgard Serpent arrived. Apparently that triggered something in Nepeta. She transformed into an enormous snake and ate the pink woman as well as her bubble. We all cheered at first, but then, the ground gave way and all the characters fell into darkness.

Slowly, the darkness lifted enough to let the characters see where they had landed. The ground consisted of spines and teeth. Chains rattled along, tugging at the dead trolls, and bones strewn among the teeth collected themselves into half formed skeletons ready to add the trolls to their ranks. Troll hell sucks.

My reaction on the IRC: "kqhhen''ioh''j aoh ' 'oiha'we'qoih2a cherrychewchew!" And yes, the cherrychewchew came from random key mashing. No one else appeared any more coherent, except of course for the resident Homestuck guru, who kept telling us that the current events made perfect sense.

To wrap up all this weirdness, I "woke up", hunted Andrew Hussie down and told him my dream. I think he would have enjoyed it more had he not been trying to go to the bathroom...

Dream Log 10: String

I seemed to be at a soiree of some sort. A number of adults that exuded importance had gathered and were celebrating their importance as humbly as possible. Discussion consisted mostly of philosophy, literature, and business. I only had one other person my age around. She kept explaining to me who everyone was, what they had done, etc. Then, a relatively young man joined the party and my companion became quite excited. "It's Thomas Denajero," she whispered excitedly to me, "He's the author of basically the best books ever!" Tentatively, she went over to him and introduced herself. The three of us chatted for a while. He was quite the literary genius, with a touch of regular guy about him.

Then, some sort of activity began. I'm not certain if it literally happened or if I had hallucinated it. However, one of the adults brought out a ball of fine silk string and held on to an end. Then, as he greeted someone else, he passed the ball off to them. The thread wound its way about the ensemble. It touched just about everyone, but I kept myself apart. Denajero even offered me the ball, but I refused it. The company grew ever more ensnared, and their half attempts at twisting themselves out of the mess while holding onto their threads only made the knot worse. However, they seemed happy, and they could still move about in the tangle. I do not recall feeling any particular emotion towards the thread. Not even when I stepped up to it, scissors in hand, and sheared through the silvery line. I was empty, and the players just stared at me, not knowing if I had done right or wrong. They had never thought of scissors as an option.

Dream Log 8: Madoka Africa

I had some assignment or another that I was running around trying to complete, when I stumbled across a professor giving a class in the middle of a common area. He had a projector set up and everything and was going on about western Africa. Apparently, a bunch of west African countries had decided to band together, overthrow their leaders (whom the teacher claimed were actually competent, good rulers), and rebuild their society in the image of America. After his lecture,  I continued to talk with the professor. He feared that this revolt would end in success. They would build a second "America" complete with a new culture, but their identities would waste away until their new republic rotted from the bottom up.

Then I noticed the clear, wheeled container belonging to the professor. It was filled with ice, but I could get glimpses of a cadaver through the sides of the box. When I mentioned this to the professor he became quite annoyed. "The university keeps thinking I'm a serial killer when  I show up with these! I'm not! I'm just freezing the crazy people  I find so they don't come back from the dead." Somehow, dream logic said that he was telling the absolute truth. However, I decided that the time had come to move on from the noble professor.

I headed off to a park and accidentally started doing calligraphy. When I say accidentally, I mean that I let my mind wander, and when I brought my attention back, I had a calligraphy brush in my hand and a canvas in front of me on which I had written "Ye who would pass through must pay the toll." After a few seconds of confused blinking, I decided that  I liked calligraphy. However, I didn't get much of a chance to keep going because Kyubey from the show Madoka had appeared out of nowhere, like he does.

What do you think of the magical girls? he asked. Suddenly, I could see the ghost-like freeze frames of magical girls posed around me. Some were fighting witches. Some were in the midst of transforming. Some were simply standing there, broken and alone.

"I don't know," I replied, "Magical girls aren't very happy, are they?"

They try so hard, like Sayaka-chan. But in they end, they're all just used and used up. He sounded so satisfied with this sentiment. Then, the image containing Homura began to move. The image became less transparent while the park became more so, and soon I was standing beside her. She seemed to be waiting for something.

Then, a 1950's car rushed around a corner and screeched to a halt. Out climbed gangster-like men, carrying a clear container...full of ice... and a body. They dumped it out on the ground, pushing the ice away from the corpse. Homura sprang into action, as much as she ever "springs" into anything. The men loosed their fire, never quite hitting her, but holding their ground surprisingly well. She only managed to kill a few of them before the corpse stood up and fought her one on one...and was winning. He was about to seal the deal when another car flew past and riddled him in the back with bullets. Homura turned her attention back to the gangsters, but a few seconds later, the man stood back up, weak legged but very much "alive". One of his companions pulled him back into the car and drove off, leaving Homura panting and defeated in the dust.

Do you understand now? Kyubey chimed

 "Yes. Magical girls can never win, and the poor magical men can never die."

Broken Horse

Your name is Equius Zahhak, and you are strong. You are so strong in fact that simply taking a drink generally ends in spilled milk and broken glass. Your attempts at physical affection also tend to end...unfortunately. Simply putting on your glasses leaves fractures in the black lenses. Smiling crushes them even more. You have learned not to smile.

Yet, when at your work bench, you forget that you cannot be gentle. The cool steal of the wrench, the firm warmth of the soldiering iron, biting into the flesh of your palms like a bit into your jaw. If you push too hard, the metal reigns you in. You can make such wonderful things, precise, beautiful things, as long as your tools are there to tame you. For a blessed time, you are held back.

Eventually, the work is done. Your blood and sweat, far more sweat than you care to disclose, have gone into your creation. The result of your hours of obedience to the tools? A robot nearly as powerful as you. You hesitate before flipping it on. Perhaps, you can do without this. But no, you are not strong enough for that. The switch is flipped, the eyes blaze on, and for a sweet time, you do not hold back.

[This is a fan fiction for MS Paint Adventures Homestuck by Andrew Hussie. I have no claim to the character.]

Dream Log 8: Why can't I remember more!?!

I recall very little of this dream, and for those who don't watch Once Upon a Time on ABC, it will make even less sense.

What I do remember is that Belle and Rumpelstiltskin decided to put on a Broadway production of sorts. At least, Belle decided to do so. Rumpelstiltskin just went along for Belle's sake. He kept a black cloak on at all time to hid his face while Belle bustled back and forth across the stage and the seats, fixing lights and what not. For some reason, she could not get the filters the change from blue to gold. Of course, Rumpelstiltskin magicked the problem away, and of course he became quite awkward when she thanked him for it. He even tried to behave himself when the audience came in, although he could not quite contain the urge to transform a particularly fat man into a chipmunk when Belle wasn't looking.

Apart from that, I know that some epic, world changing events involving characters from the web comic Homestuck went on. Yet, when I try to recall it, the only image that comes to mind is John Egbert disappearing gleefully into a toilet...

Dream Log 7: Lasersabers

How I love night classes in the summer. The bonfires, the stars, the picnic-table lectures. To help take notes I even took out a high strength flashlight that illuminated the ground for several yards around us. Yep, when learning about philosophy, that's the way to do it.

Even more fun is making "lightsabers" out of flashlights and battling it out in the smoke of the fire. My classmates and I felt like the coolest Jedi the world had ever seen. We felt even cooler when we upgraded from flashlights to laser pointers...and then laser pointers to actual high strength lasers. You'd be amazed how hard it is to avoid maiming friends when you try to kill an enemy with a laser that doesn't just stop 3 feet from the source...

Dream Log 6: Desperation

We thought he would end the starvation. We thought he had the answer to the famines. What we didn't think, what we couldn't imagine, was that the alien aristocrat we had put our hopes in did not come to earth to save it. He came to enslave it.

My home had grown sick somehow. Plants wouldn't grow. Animals died. Little by little, the world starved, and no one knew how to stop it. Then Rafeahd arrived. He looked just like us, perhaps a bit taller, a little greyer and thinner, but no one saw him as much of a foreigner. The only reason anyone really believed he had come from space was the spaceship he flew in with. He had come on a diplomatic mission, he said. His world had long known of Earth but had never had enough to offer us to make contact until now. He could heal the planet if only we'd let him. How could we say no?

The first step, he explained, required that we all be vaccinated in case the alien terraforming proved dangerous to humans. We should have been suspicious then. We should have asked how he knew about our biology. We should have looked at his terraforming equipment. Starvation, however, makes men stupid.

A few hours after the vaccinations started, the eggs started to grow. It was amazing how fast the microscopic things turned into clots in the bloodstream, bulges in the muscle, swarms in the organs. A few friend and I were late in the vaccination line up. We saw what was happening, and for all Rafeahd's reassurances, we weren't quite that blind. We hid, collecting all the stores of canned food we could find. For a month or so, we lived in a bunker and just waited. Finally, we ran out of food and had to search for more. When we did, we could not believe our eyes.

The land had all turned into sand, and every so often, you could see the shapes of giant arachnids on the prowl. As we traveled, armed with a few tools we had thought to take with us, every so often a spider would swoop down from overhead or burst up from the sand beneath our feet and attack with razor legs and pinching, clacking mandibles. A crack to the head will kill one sure enough. However, a spider's eight eyes are quite useful at detecting sneak attacks. The apocalypse is full of useful instructions like that.

After what seemed like an eternity, we stumbled across a metal structure beneath the sand. We banged on the doors until a man came and furtively led us inside. The room seemed simple enough, a bunker just like ours. However, after the man performed a quick scan to make sure we weren't incubating spiders, he opened a secret back door that connected to a massive complex filled with people and scientific equipment. In the center of the room stood a seemingly complete rocket.

It turned out, as the man explained to us, Rafeahd only used a third of the population to create the spiders. They needed living bodies in which to grow, so he kept a stock of humans alive to serve as wombs. The harder you worked building Rafeahd's palace or tending to his whims, the longer you got to live. However, an underground still existed, in this case literally. They had discovered that Rafeahd took a medicine that kept the spiders from laying in him. He kept his stock on the spaceship orbiting Earth, so if we could get up there, we could find out how to make it and destroy the only real source of power he had over us.

Thus, three companions and myself volunteered to go up with the rocket. The day of the launch finally came. The flight went perfectly, from lift off to docking against the spaceship. However, we had not prepared for Rafeahd to greet us when we came out. One of my companions and myself had the second visor down to protect against the sun. We pushed passed Rafeahd and went along with our mission anyway. The other two, poor souls, had their visors up and could see Rafeahd straight in the face. He told them to remove their helmets, and they did. He casually drew two infant spiders from his pocket and told the men to stay still. They did, even as the creatures burrowed through their faces, they stood still. However, he had said nothing about screaming. I don't know what terrified me more, their cries, or when they stopped.

All I knew was that I only had so much time before Rafeahd found me. My companion and I had split ways to search faster. Finally, I found it, a vile of magenta liquid. I turned to run back to my shuttle, when I came face to face with a human holding a pistol. He forced me to hand over the vile and escorted me back through the ship. Another human guard appeared as we went. He started to giggle to himself about the deaths of the men that had been my friends. I wanted nothing more than to kill him, but I had a gun to my back and a hope that my final companion would get out alive. The first guard at least had the taste to make the other one shut up. At last, I was forced into a prison cell. My hopes died there, when I saw my final friend already sitting in a corner, dead.

Rafeahd hasn't killed us yet. Perhaps he's thinking of how best to get information about the rocket from me. Perhaps he just wants to experiment with psychological torture for a change. After all, sitting in a room with a corpse for days does things to you. All I can do is write this down. The nicer guard who's just trying not to die took a risk and gave me some paper and a pen when I asked him for it. He said he'd return it to someone on the surface when he goes down next. When you can't fight, and you can't flee, all that's left is to tell others what happened. Besides, knowing someone might hear this someday makes me feel a little less alone.