You are Nepeta Leijon.It is twilight on your fifth wriggling day, a time trolls are intended to set aside to reflect on their FAILURES. You were NEVER GOOD at reflecting, or thinking in general, but you imagine your life could be a LOT MORE EXCITING! You live in a yawnring—you mean LAWNRING—precariously perched over the ocean. Your seaside community is close knit, and all of your friends live nearby. The sound of the ocean coming in against the cliffs is so soothing your recuperacoon seems redundant!Occasionally from your window you see a group of FLARPers sailing for adventure on the HIGH SEAS. Someday you plan to join them! For now you continue to feel an unnerving sense of restlessness.What will you do?The Violetescence to Cordless's Red Dead Virgo, Nepetaquest 2011 is a Homestuck fanfic by username aceofspudz that manages to be a decent tale in its own right. Abounding with OCs and characters from canon, it expands upon the Trolls' already complex society and also devotes attention to a much-loved but oft-ignored green-blooded player. The story is considered by a significant portion of the fandom to be the basis of the (theoretical) Homestuck expanded universe; it is well-written and well illustrated, and pays very close attention to what goes on in the source material. Truly worth checking out, whether you're a Homestuck fan or not. Much like its sister fic, Cordless, it has become a Dead Fic, with the author revealing how the future would have panned out at the end of the last forum thread.
Absurdly High Stakes Game: Nezumi managed to rig Colony Raiders so that if you die, you die for real. Literally the only reason Zander and Scoria are still alive is the fan outrage over this revelation.
Let's not forget the the fandom's outrage alone was not enough to keep them alive: It also took a great deal of ingenuity on their part to make the best of an Unwinnable Training Simulation.
Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Aradia. Excellent at archeology, both in the discovery process and the more scientific aspects of constructing hypotheses, but she plays out imaginary debates against a Straw Critic with sock puppets. And then they devolve into romantic fantasies where she has the puppets make out.
You have to face that you might be going a little crazy.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: Nepeta refers to the satellite dish she has been 'hanging out in front of for so many pages.'
Censor Box: Vriska's vision eightfold allows her to see through things. The subsequent appearance of censor boxes when she uses it on Scoria is justified.
Child Soldiers: Omega Cell has official military duties on Alternia besides harassing the protagonists.
Cleavage Window: The Alternian female Captain uniform has this, although neither character shown wearing it is well endowed enough to take advantage.
Deal with the Devil: The author gave the readers the choice of turning to Vriska or Scoria for help in a dangerous situation; Vriska's ability to help was clearly much greater but she is, well, evil. Vriska got the call.
Falling into the Cockpit: Zander, once the ALF goes into manual control. Somewhat justified as he receives a lot of support to do something very simple.
Fan Disillusionment: The author has clearly become disillusioned with Homestuck due to thedirection it has taken, and this may have contributed to the cancellation.
Fantastic Caste System: Naturally, and given a twist with two elements we never saw in canon: the presence of an openly mutant character who was made that way and a supposedly controversial and revolutionary new process to swap blood colours.
It is very hard not to view every single event in the story through this lens. There are apparently a lot of differences between the world one sweep ago and the present day.
Nepeta will be murdered by Gamzee. He hasn't shown up in the story yet, but we at least know that she won't be murdered by Nezumi.
Actually, see Wham Episode for why this may not be the case.
For Science!: Scoria's rationale for the development of the Trollian timeline feature.
For the Evulz: Pretty much the only reason Nezumi is antagonizing Nepeta and tried to force Zander to kill either Scoria or himself is because she's just that much of a bitch.
Well, it seems she also sees Scoria as her kismesis. When Vokken orders her to stop obsessing over her, she answers that she simply can't.
Plus Nepeta was on the hitlist her handlers supplied her with, which is supposed to be a list of potentially dangerous people. Why she was on there, we just don't know yet.
Ghibli Hills: The Bright Coast, where Nepeta starts.
The Ghost: Eridan, Karkat, Equius, and Doc Scratch have all been either just barely off screen or only seen talking on chat clients. (Well, and in Karkat's case, as an internet personality, a symbol, and a sock puppet.) Decima, too, until The Reveal that she wasn't a troll.
Ironic Echo: Colony Raiders 2 is won by a Terronian (Decima) sneaking onto and hijacking the enemy command ship. Later, the exact same thing happens to Decima thanks to the NZ Mine. Heck, the plan was concocted by the same person both times.
Power Perversion Potential: Nezumi's controls include an option to change her personality to "Servile and Submissive", with the added option of changing her fashion sense to "Risque Maid". One commenter pointed out how creepy that was.
It's established that Vriska can use Vision Eightfold to see through people's clothes, and apparently she's done that many times before.
Powers That Be: SETC (Security Education and Training Command), which is responsible for training and culling children on Alternia.
Precursors: Aradia's investigating them in true Adventurer Archaeologist style. It seems that the author subscribes to the popular "the kids create the trolls' universe as well as the other way around" theory, judging by the true nature of the ancient prophecies.
Trollian is still in its development stages, so the trolls use Alternian IM. Colony Raiders is all the rage on Alternia and doing excellently in that game decreases the chances of getting culled. Terezi is still able to see, Sollux hasn't gotten the glasses we'd know him by (Scoria probably helped), Aradia is still alive, and Nepeta hasn't moved into her cave hive or gotten her cat cap yet, nor is she involved in a moirallegiance with Equius. Overall, things were different one solar sweep ago.
Reality Ensues: The result of Decima's decision to take on Tezumi.
Entirely Overt Test Of Character: An incredibly cruel one is forced upon Zander, and by extension, the audience, during the second Colony Raiders match. Luckily he manages to weasel out of it via blatant cheating.
Nezumi seems to absolutely love these, since another copy of her gave a secret test of character to Decima and, by extension, the audience. Outcome: Utter Failure.
Sliding Scale Of Free Will VS Fate: The fact that time travel and communication down timelines effectively forces people to create Stable Time LoopS and keeps them from really making their own decisions is a major contentious issue with the characters here. Of course, it's a Foregone Conclusion that Trollian will be released with the timeline features,
Take a Third Option: Colony Raiders 2, to the entire audience's extreme relief. The people in charge of the test decide that him finding a way to win an impossible scenario is more important than him blatantly cheating and just congratulate him, although it's not completely without cost.
The rest of us scrabble and bite and fight to stay alive. All you had to do was make a simple decision.
Viewers Are Geniuses: Scoria makes a pun involving the unit of viscosity, the poise.
Wham Episode: Vriska broke her horn off. Not so much the act itself, but the fact that it means the adventure is taking place in an alternate universe. Worse, it could indicate it's a doomed timeline.
Ironically, though, this is also the last page before the story was abandoned.
Word of Dante: Several aspects of troll society detailed in the adventure, such as trolls opening shops in "waystations" or the use of caegars as currency *
Caegars do appear in Homestuck, but since they're based on ancient Roman coins, they may well be inteded to be obsolete
have been adopted by other fanfiction set on Alternia.
of the same name, riffing on the same Hussie quote and also starring Nepeta.
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