''[[http://archiveofourown.org/works/293686/chapters/469808 Cultstuck!]]'' by elanor_pam is a Homestuck fanfic in which the Cult of the Signless survives to the present day on Alternia, and is a major influence (and irritant) in Karkat’s early life.

Not long after his sixth wriggling day, Karkat’s mutant status is discovered. He must flee from his hive, while his friends plot to save him and preserve themselves, and the Cult plots to move him to a planet that has never heard of the Empire.

The plot so far alternates between Karkat’s escape from his hive (headed towards the cult’s stronghold) and his friends’ conversations and attempts to take matters into their own hands.

There are two shorter side stories: ''[[http://archiveofourown.org/works/728530 Bringing down the moons]]'', about Karkat as a young child, and the in-progress ''[[http://archiveofourown.org/works/696375 > Karkat: half-heartedly attend your own wriggling day celebrations]]'', which tells the story of what Karkat did on his sixth wriggling day in this universe.

There's also a (sadly inactive) FourthWallMailSlot [[http://ask-blade-dancer.tumblr.com/ here]], where Karkat's combat teacher Blade Dancer answers questions about the day to day life of the cult, but not the plot of the story. Like the story itself, it is illustrated.
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!! Tropes in ''Cultstuck!''

* ActionSurvivor: Tavros.
* AlternateUniverseFic: Of the "No Sburb/Sgrub session" variety. Also, the Cult of the Signless lasting to the present, and whatever happened differently so that Aradia survived.
* AmbiguousGender: Tavros can’t tell if the cloaked cultists are male or female. He finds this very awkward, as he worries that he could offend someone through not knowing.
* ArrowCatch: The Grand Elder effortlessly catches [[spoiler: Tavros's]] thrown daggerlance.
* ArtShift: The illustrations are in different styles for different characters and moods- blocky and simple for the Cultist Greenblood chapter, sketchlike with animations for the early part of Karkat’s escape, psychedelic for sobering-up Gamzee, and so on. The murals [[spoiler: that Aradia found in her explorations]] also reveal that the cultists' religious art has undergone a lot of change over the years, becoming more complex and abstract over time.
* BecomingTheMask: Aradia speculates that this must have happened to any spies who tried to infiltrate the cult.
* BerserkButton: Do not threaten Karkat. Gamzee will go off sopor and kill you.
* TheBlank: "The Faceless", an urban legend of beings with gray blood and no faces, based on the Cult of the Signless. Who definitely do have faces, but wear hoods (shadowing their faces) and dark glasses to hide all signs of their blood color.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: The cultists have some traits of this. They’re spacey and fanatical, but they are also extremely competent, and probably have the most advanced medicine in the empire. Blade Dancer, Karkat’s combat instructor, is the best example so far- he waxes poetic about the founder of his style and can apparently be driven to tears by a bad stance, but is really good at his job.
* CharacterBlog: The "Ask Blade Dancer" tumblr, a handy source of WordOfGod about the cult.
* CharacterDevelopment: Eridan has gone through some since the game would have begun (and didn’t). It’s lampshaded by the others, although they also remind him how insufferable he used to be.
* CensorBox: Used to hide uncovered eyes and symbols in the Ask Blade Dancer tumblr (the cultists take hemoanonymity ''very seriously'').
* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: Whenever one of the modern troll kids (besides Karkat) sees a mural, they automatically think, "How many people died to make that paint?" (Answer: none. The cultists use vegetable dyes.)
* CoolOldGuy: The Grand Elder. If Karkat’s opinion is anything to go by, he’s the most reasonable adult on Alternia (not that this is saying much, since adults are banned from the planet and the ones there illegally... well). He’s certainly a lot more together than the rest of the cult.
* CoolOldLady: Elder Plucker.
* {{Cult}}: The Cult of the Signless. They’re sympathetic, in that the rest of their species is a whole lot worse- but Karkat’s discomfort with them is entirely reasonable.
* CrapsackWorld: It says a lot about a culture when they have interplanetary travel, but such medical advances as stitching wounds closed and the use of antibiotics are apparently known only to a persecuted, highly illegal cult.
* DanceBattler: Karkat, his teacher Blade Dancer, and the founder of their style, Troll Nijinsky (Karkat suspects that the latter two are in fact the same person) use a style that is basically ballet plus scythes.
* TheFaceless: The illustrations of the Grand Elder avoid showing his face or the tips of his horns, although there’s a brief description of his face in chapter 13.
* FamousAncestor: The examples from canon are further explored. Many of the canon Ancestors hold significance to the cult; when the cultists meet their Descendants, they have expectations.
--> Tavros POV: It's just... it's too much like the setting introduction for a rulebook-standard FLARP campaign. ''Your Ancestor was Overwhelmingly Awesome! Go find his Stuff and be Awesome too.''
* FirstNameBasis: The Grand Elder calls Karkat by his first name, appalling some of the cultists who insist on using formal ( not to mention bizarre) titles such as "The Grubloaf of Life", which Karkat finds embarrassing.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Karkat specifically has to avoid the sea, and a cultist begins to address him as "Higher than the highest, lower than the lowest..." [[spoiler: In this AU, Karkat’s mutation also gives him gills. He’s a seadweller, and his blood color is directly between the highest and lowest on the hemospectrum.]]
* FourthWallMailSlot: The "Ask Blade Dancer" tumblr account, which takes questions (when it’s active).
* GoingNative: [[spoiler: Aradia]] theorizes that any spies who tried infiltrating the cult ended up joining for real, based on the fact that it has obviously survived.
* [[spoiler: HeroicSuicide: Cultist Greenblood, even though he lied and told Karkat that he would change the original plan and escape.]]
* IKissYourFoot: One of the cultists does this to Tavros. Tavros is confused and a bit scared, since he can’t feel what they’re doing to his foot and suspects they might be trying to eat it.
* ImTakingHerHomeWithMe: Some of the children raised by the cult were picked because the adult cultists thought they were cute and couldn’t bear to let them into the harsh world. The majority are orphans or were too weak/sickly/injured to survive as little grubs, though.
* LargeAndInCharge: The Grand Elder is ''enormous'', and the other members of the cult tend to defer to him. He does not particularly want them to defer to him, but since he’s about the most level-headed cultist and is implied to have been around more or less since it started, he’s ended up with a lot of effective power.
* MeaningfulRename: The cultists choose new names that reflect their interests or jobs within the cult; it is entirely possible for them to change their name several times, or indeed as often as they like. The Grand Elder chose his name to reflect his size; on learning that people interpreted it as "the elder who is in charge", he attempted to rename himself Big Elder, but he seems to be the only person who actually uses the latter form of his name. Even Karkat calls him Grand Elder.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Equius, [[spoiler: giving Tavros a suggestion for obscuring his location that ended up informing the impostor the location of Tavros's hive.]]
* NoNameGiven: The greenblooded Threshcutioner cadet who's also a follower of the Signless.
* TheNotSecret: It turns out that many lowbloods have some knowledge of the "the gray cultists", at least enough to know that they worship "the forbidden iron messiah". Although most of Karkat’s friends didn't know about them, Sollux and Aradia have both had dealings with them, and Aradia has explored several of their former bases.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Eridan’s trolling of the Threshcutioner who was impersonating Karkat (and convincing no one). Apparently, he proposed red once, black twice, referred to himself as Lord High Snappertail, implied Tavros was his kismesis and Vriska his moirail.
* OnlySaneMan: Karkat probably feels like this, having to deal with the cultists. Among the cult, the Grand Elder is by far the most levelheaded person we’ve met.
* PoisonedWeapons: Karkat and Tavros both quickly come to the conclusion that [[spoiler: the incompetent Threshcutioner’s]] weapons are poisoned.
* RapunzelHair: The Grand Elder. It comes down just about to his feet, and he’s really, really tall.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: The Grand Elder.
* RetiredBadass: Elder Charter, by WordOfGod, used to be "a pretty damn badass action guy, and the possibility is high that he’s ''still'' a pretty damn badass action guy."
* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Karkat has gills. "Higher than the highest, lower than the lowest" indeed.]]
* TheRival: Blade Dancer defines a healthy kismesitude as a rivalry- trying to outdo the other person rather than hurt them.
* SecretKeeper: Gamzee already knew about Karkat's blood [[spoiler: and his gills]] and a little about the cult.
* SociopathicHero: Gamzee, very much so. He’s a terrifying homicidal maniac, insanely protective of the one or two people he cares about. Since he’s showing this in defense of Karkat, though...
* TheSouthpaw: Karkat (and the Sufferer) have the opposite dominant side than do the rest of their species. This gives Karkat an advantage in combat with anyone who’s used to opponents who are dominant in the other side. (It’s never specified which side is their dominant, but it works out to this trope for either them or every single other character.)
* SparedByTheAdaptation: Aradia is alive in this universe. She’s also the leader, or at least organizer, of her friends when Karkat goes missing.
* SunglassesAtNight: The cultists all wear dark glasses at all times, despite living ''underground''. Justified, as they wear the glasses to conceal their eye color (which is the same as their blood color), not to protect their eyes against excess light.
* ThrowTheBookAtThem: Tavros takes his FLARP manuals along in his flight from his hive for this very purpose (they are heavy books).
* UnderestimatingBadassery: Neither Karkat nor the Threshcutioner he was fighting expected [[spoiler: Tavros]] to be able to play any role in that fight.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: The cultists.
* WhamLine: The end of chapter 14, where Tavros finds out why Karkat's blood is indeed, higher than the highest and lower than the lowest.
--> You don't pay them much attention; most of what little you can gather is wholly transfixed by the round, crystalline pool inlaid in the floor, and by Karkat's unconscious shape floating in it — hair swaying, eyelids translucent, [[spoiler: the wide-slit gills lining his ribs gently pulsing in the current.]]
* WhatTheHellHero: Aradia, Sollux, Terezi, Kanaya, Eridan, and Feferi to Equius. Twice. First, for his reluctance to help Karkat after finding out he’s a mutant. Second, for [[spoiler: not taking Tavros’s peril seriously and giving him a suggestion for obscuring his location that ended up informing the impostor of his location]] (although the latter was unintentional, and they get him to apologize for it).