hs_olympics | BONUS ROUND 3

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bonus round

BONUS ROUND 3

Bonus Round 3

Retro Gaming

Hi shippers! Welcome to Bonus Round 3.
In this round, you'll be creating fanworks based on video and computer games from before 2000!

Rules

Choose a game that was released before 2000, and post a fanwork based on the game in some way. Make sure to use the appropriate title format (see below). Examples include: character inserts, rewritten dialogue, costume redesigns, alternate soundtracks, theme song covers, photoshopped promo art, etc.

Your fill should not be focused on Homestuck characters playing the game--the point of this round is to make a crossover.

For this challenge, you are allowed to submit fills based on your team ship. You don't have to, of course!

For this challenge, there is no minimum wordcount. We are trusting you not to abuse that fact!

This challenge will run until 11:59PM EDT July 21. After that time, even if it's just by a minute according to the timestamp, no submissions will be accepted for points.

Title Format
Please use this format in your title.

Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team YOU belong to; please use the characters and quadrant, not whatever portmanteau or nickname you've come up with.
If your team name is not in this format and in the title we cannot guarantee that it will be counted.
Replace [GAME TITLE] and [YEAR RELEASED] as appropriate.

Posts not using this format in the title will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, no matter what they contain. They, like all comments on the comm, are subject to the Wank Policy.

Scoring
(as stated here)
First 5 entries per team: 30 (per entry)
Entries 6-10: 20 (per entry)
Entries 11-15: 10 (per entry)
Entries 16+: 5 (per entry)

All content must be created new for this round.

We would prefer that any questions about this challenge or anything else in the HSO be emailed to us at homestuck.shipping AT gmail!

Threaded | Flat

"No, but seriously," Agent Redglare called up from the safe distance of the rooftop access platform. "What would you do with the Eiffel Tower? The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? The pyramids of Giza? The artefacts themselves are treasures, but the difficulty in resale would render them gigantically valueless."

Mindfang adjusted the sweep of her enormous blue hat, making a shadow of it that she know would leave only the gleam of her smile showing. "So like a sluggish tealblood, and an agent of Interpol. To know nothing of real value... The chase, the excitement, the trickery. You simply plod along after me based on a trail of dry old facts and clues and guesses."

The wind whipped her coat as she stepped back along the main curve of the Sydney Opera House ceiling. She could see the helicopter approaching - any minute now, she'd make her escape...

Something flashed behind her. Something huge, a sky-filling cascade of light and energy.

"I'm not proud of it," said Agent Redglare, as the pitiless vacuum began to pull harder on Mindfang and she gripped tight to her signature hat and coat. "But I can also steal, should the need arise. This new captchalogue technology you've been using really is marvellous, isn't it?"

Two days later, safely deposited in an Interpol holding facility, Mindfang decaptchalogued with the same gleaming smile she'd held on the roof of the Opera House, and searched for Redglare.

"My gracious apologies for underestimating you," she said. "Please never forgive me."

Mindfang escaped within two years, and took a chunk of Alcatraz with her. Redglare remembered that night precisely enough that she could almost hear the cadence of that voice promising trickery, excitement, the chase. She pressed her fingertips to her mouth and thought that she'd first glimpsed this smile on the other woman's face.

Edited 2012-07-08 09:26 (UTC)

For a blind girl, she is positively amazing with her walking cane. It's surely not that difficult, though, to locate and pinpoint noisy aliens that are running around the facility and teleporting at very random moments.

You wipe the blood from your face onto your lab-coat, once upon a time clean and white, and observe your companion's handiwork on what you have come to affectionately call Head-crabs. They aren't to your tastes, really, but that doesn't make them any less fascinating.

"I believe that's the last of them, for now. Unless another chooses to appear right above our heads and turn us into the mindless zombies that our co-workers have apparently become."

"Or inside of us. Now wouldn't that be freaky?" She lets out a mad cackle and takes a nice, long sniff. "Kinda glad they're showing up. Spicing up the smells of this dull, sour milk place a whole lot!"

"Perhaps a Resonance Cascade was indeed necessary to fulfill your entertainment status quo. What a shocker."

"Hehehehe."

You walk on, reloading your gun and ears open for anything.

Electricity dances above your head, you freeze, and look up in time to see another of the nasty creatures fall from the heavens in an attempt to cuddle with your head.

Terezi swings her cane out, knocks the thing out of the air, and you follow up with a gunshot and the damn thing dies with a pained shriek.

"Thank you for that."

"Any time Rose!"

Up ahead, near a river of toxic waste that Black Mesa is absolutely notorious for, the head-crabs are being eaten by a strange, bipedal creature with tentacles for a mouth.

Your interest piques in fascination with it's shape, as much as you know you have to shoot that thing. Perhaps extensive research is in order when this is all over.

Edited 2012-07-08 08:45 (UTC)

Note: death, violence ... creepy Tetris wangst...

GHB: And so now you know the meaning of what it would be to follow this angel among trolls, and to have ALL CASTES AND COLOURS FIT TOGETHER.
GHB: GOOD MOTHERFUCKING LUCK TO YOU for the having of this knowledge, by the most gracious face of the for realest of gods.

Gamzee stared at the new message that the Grand Highblood broadcast to the contestants - for a lot longer than it actually took to read, but everybody on board this ship thought he couldn't string two consecutive syllables together without actually factually sweating blood, and he could get away with it. But he had to look back at the viewscreen eventually.

"So, um," said Gamzee, watching a freshly-judged loser - this one all the way dead already, thankfully - get shot up into the air by the psychic trigger, contorting and cracking and spraying green on the way. "I'm guessing this is all up and, like, motherfucking supposed to be, fucking hilarious. And shit. Right?"

"It is meant to be a parable," said the Grand Highblood, who hardly looked to the viewscreen at all. But that was better than the times when he did look, though. "These little lost woolbeast cultists do so motherfucking love their parables. Should they wish to set themselves against the laws of blood and the mirthful messiahs - they get, as the oldest of the scriptures say, to play. a. game." He dropped his preacher's voice and flipped more casual. "And to learn the cost of what it would mean to change all things."

The body of the troll who'd lost dropped back down, slow and steady now, a whole new shape for the contestants below to try and make a space for. It was probably going to take a long time before they built something stable and high enough to climb out of the arena. Or colourful enough. The Grand Highblood had said he sometimes let the contestants out if they had a really good eye for composition.

Gamzee traced in his mind his best friend's symbol, his would-be pale brother's sign, the bright red sacrilege stamped on the walls of the arena. Karkat had never shown much on an inclination for painting and shit like that.

He thought about the message Karkat had received, a sweep and a couple of seasons ago, to move somewhere he wasn't known and change his sign before the time of Ascension, and he thought how he'd told Karkat it was a miracle to get such a caring message from right the fuck out of nowhere. There had been a lot of arguing and research and fear among some of his friends that Gamzee still hadn't caught the track of, but Karkat had after all decided to hide his true sign, long ago, and by now he was all settled aboard his own ship.

It felt more like a miracle than ever, knowing he was safe. But if the gods turned their laughter away from this sign, then where could that miracle truly have come from?

(( Made more than the movie release, even. ))

This isn't so bad, he thinks, once he's won a few rounds and isn't dead, derezzed somewhere in the middle of the cycle grid. A program could get used to this. And sometimes he feels like maybe he's part of a machine -- his hands leave the bars of the light cycle because it moves without his touch, a User operating his controls for him it's almost like magic. But sometimes it's only Dave, alone with his light cycle in the middle of a darkened world that fills so quickly with bursts of orange. The deadly kind, too. Get trapped and you're dead, run into one and you're dead, look away and fall, you're dead. Every time the game starts up he tries again to win, and sometimes he does. But just as easily he falls to the man with orange circuitry coursing through his body, leaving walls of orange in his wake.

It's one of these days when he's not riding so well - nine out of ten and he's already sore from disappearing and then being brought back to reality - when he stops to consider if this is what he actually wants to be doing with his life. Not stops, exactly. It comes to him when he's fighting, riding side by side with the same man in orange.

"Did you ever think about what you'd wanna do if you busted this joint?" He's yelling over the whir of the light cycles, and the orange man looks at him through his tinted helmet. "We could bust a wall! They'd never find us. Hey -- isn't it tough to be the bad guy all the time? Must get a lot of shit for that when you're on your days off, right?"

"If you paid as much attention to the race as you did to inane things like that, we might actually have a fair match." The orange man speaks for the first time and he realizes that it's a girl -- a rather pretty program too, now that he notices the curves hidden away under her light cycle uniform. She takes the moment while he's ogling to cut in front of him, leaving a streak of orange that's too wide to navigate. Dave lets out a strangled fuck you-- before he's just a pile of blue dust on the floor, ready to be picked up, put back together, and played once more.

The next time, he doesn't do as much ogling -- "Sup? The name's Dave--" and she doesn't cut him off quite so quickly.

"I'm Rose. You're going to lose."

"Like hell I am, I'm the grand master of this ceremony and we haven't even gotten the party hats out yet. Better strap yourself to the seat of your cycle, because I've got a show for you."

Five seconds later, he ran into a wall, completely oblivious to the trap she had set up for him. And then three minutes after that they were back in action, side by side, swerving away only to come back together. Fated to fight like this. "To answer your question, I do get tired of being the 'bad guy' sometimes," she tells him as they ride. "But it's never any less enjoyable to watch your face when you lose."

"Maybe I like watching you lose too. Ever think of that?"

"Barely. You aren't very good." But this time he wins -- the magic takes over, the controls are out of his hand and he rides her into a maze with no possible escape. The look on her face is one of pure contempt right as she flashes to the ground, and Dave decides that no, he doesn't actually like it when Rose dies. He likes it better when she smiles, which she does sometimes (usually when he's about to die, he'll admit). But those are the best times.

"Do you want to break free of this prison, Dave?" It's a few hundred cycles after their last conversation -- she's kept eerily to herself and it's started to freak him out -- but this is a new turn for her. Dave almost stops his cycle in shock, not that he actually could. "Ever wonder what might lay out there, just beyond the wall of this infernal box? What might happen if we allowed ourselves to escape once and awhile?"

"...Yeah." Immediately, they looked at each other and nodded. No more words were needed; they had been playing this game for what felt like forever, and they knew the ways to communicate without. Their light cycles sped side by side, headed for the wall, breaking through, light cycles completely off their standardized grid--

( Meanwhile, in English's Gaming Shop, a boy and a girl stood side by side, jamming the joysticks back and forth as far as they could go. Still, no figures reappeared on the screen, and the light walls left behind by the cycles that had been on the screen a minute ago flickered out of existence.

"You broke it!" The boy complained, poking his sister in the shoulder. She responded with a flick of her tongue and a pout.

"No way! John, you're the one that breaks everything."

"Wait until I tell Dad! Da-ad, Jade broke Tron! She really did!" John ran off towards the front of the store, Jade trailing in his wake. Just once, she looked back at the console, figures inexplicably missing from the screen, refusing to return.

And she wondered, wherever they went - if computer people could go places - they were having fun. )

Edited 2012-07-08 10:29 (UTC)

Super Terezi World

"You're Jake, right? Dirk told me about you." Jake's brow and the tuck of his lips quirk up in curiosity at you. "Is it true that you're a thief?"

And with that his amused expression falls with an exasperated sigh. You squeak involuntarily and clasp your hands to your chest as Jake grasps your shoulders and says - firm, but not unkind - "That's TREA-SURE HUN-TER."

You get a good look at his fingers. Dirty and calloused on your bare shoulder. The type of hands that look like they'll never be clean - but you're not sure where that knowledge comes from. You can hardly remember anything.

Jake sighs and mutters a short apology, turning away from you and crossing the room to stand over the railing of the stairway at the entrance. He leans against it, his arms outstretched and his spine curved.

"On the surface, Dirk pretends to support the Batterwitch Empire," he began, "but the truth is, he's collaborating with the Returners, an organization opposed to the empire." Jake's sweet smile returns as he cocks his head slightly to the left. "I happen to be his contact with that group." Jake pauses a moment to scratch the back of his leg with his left foot, and turns to look at you through the corner of his eye. "The old man you met in Narshe is one of us."

A chill runs through you and your heart sinks. These people are opposed to the Empire. "But... I'm a soldier of the Empire!"

"That's not true!" Jake says, turning to you as you stare at your fingers. "They were using you! Things are different now. We'll keep their grubby hands off you from hereon out!"

You shake your head, one hand winds into your hair. "I don't understand," you say. Your mind constantly reaches for answers, but you can find nothing. You were a soldier of the Empire, but you're not? You'll be kept from the Empire, in spite of how you belong with them? Was everything always so confusing and foggy? "What should I do?" You sigh to yourself.

Jake crosses the few feet between you and you glance up to meet his eyes. He lifts his hands up like he wants to touch you. Reassure you. But he doesn't. You're not sure if you'd like him to or not.

"I can't tell you what to do," he says, his eyes bright and face full of determination. "But you don't have to decide right now! You'll find your way soon enough."

His hands hover once more and he settles on giving you a handshake, pulling your hand into his and giving it a firm pump. "Find me if you need anything at all." And he pats your shoulder and departs down the stairs and through the door you came in through moments ago. The exit is so sudden you wonder if he was embarrassed somehow, but there's no way to tell. Understanding people is about as puzzling as anything else.

"But how will I know which way is right...?"

Edited 2012-07-08 12:58 (UTC)

Note: The release dates refer to both Pokemon Red/Blue and Pokemon Yellow, which were released at different times. This sort of incorporates both, though? So I put both to be safe.

---

The door of the Egbert household slammed open and then shut again, releasing a wide-eyed, panicking brunette into the bright morning sunlight. John was off like a rocket, running for the familiar white domed building just down the street, berating himself the whole way.

He couldn't believe that he had actually slept in on the most important day of his life. After all, it was his 13th birthday. He was supposed to get his very first Pokémon and start on an adventure with his three best friends.

"But not if I'm late!" He cried out and put on an extra burst of speed.

When he finally reached the lab, he was a little dismayed. There, waiting outside, were two bikes—one purple, and one red with a playing card in the spokes of the wheel. Dave and Rose were already here, and Jade had undoubtedly met them. His heart fell, but he pushed on inside.

"Uncle Hass!" He yelled before the door had even had a chance to close behind him. "Uncle Hass, is there a Pokémon left?" The old man in question turned to him, his moustache twitching in what John recognized as irritation. Uncle Hass was actually his great uncle (and his second cousin and friend Jade's grandfather) as well as a professor of Pokémon who had decided to settle down in the little town of Pallet.

"That's 'Professor' in these walls, John, and you'd best remember it," Professor Hass replied, his tone brooking no argument.

"Sorry, Professor," John said sheepishly, but his previous vigor came back quickly. "But are there any more Pokémon?" Before Professor Hass could respond, John finally noticed his three friends. Dave, Rose, and Jade all watched him with varying levels of amusement, and each held a pokeball in one hand. John's heart sank then. Dave had boasted about how his Charmander (which he had been positive he'd get) was going to be the best and coolest Pokémon ever. Rose had once confided to him that she quite liked Squirtle. And Jade had always gushed about how cute Bulbasaur was. He'd always been happy for them, and honestly didn't know which Pokémon he wanted to choose, since he really liked them all, but the fact that they were all there meant that all the starters were gone. He had a feeling he knew Professor Hass's answer before it had even been given.

"Actually, my boy, I have one left," the professor replied.

"Really?" John leaped in excitement. "Yes! What is it? Bulbasaur? Charmander? Squirtle? I really don't care, I'm just excited to get a Pokémon!"

"None of the above, actually," Hass said. He retrieved a fourth pokeball, this one emblazoned with a yellow lightning bolt. "It's a Pikachu, an electric type. It was found making havoc in Viridian City recently, until it was caught and brought to me." He smiled sheepishly. "I haven't quite gotten around to taming it, but you've always had a knack with Pokémon, John. I think you can handle it." He held out his hand, and John gingerly took the pokeball in it. For a moment, he lamented over the fact that Uncle Hass was getting him to do his dirty work (that seemed to happen a lot, whenever Jade and John had helped him care for Pokémon over the summer), but that feeling was quickly replaced with joy. A Pokémon! A real Pokémon! Without even thinking, he let it out of the pokeball.

Pikachu was a small, yellow mouse-like thing, with bright red cheeks. It blinked soft brown eyes at him, looking a little surprised by its new surroundings.

"Aw, it's so cute!" John heard Jade exclaim as he bent down in front of it.

"Hey, buddy," John said. "You and me are partners now. So, how about it? Wanna be friends?" He held a hand out to the Pikachu. It looked from the hand to his face and back again before reaching out a paw. John grinned. It wasn't so much of a trouble—

And that was when the shock of electricity hit him.

Even after he had jerked away from the contact, his muscles still twitched from the stimulation. It wouldn't kill him, but fuck, that hurt! He heard Dave's sniggering and stood up, only then realizing he'd fallen over after the shock. He glared at his friend.

"Looks like you've got a winner there, Egbert," Dave said, and John sighed.

This was going to be a long adventure.

Edited 2012-07-08 14:24 (UTC)

Whoever designed LOHAC can eat a dick. They can eat a whole bunch of ripe dicks, all served up on a silver dick platter. Dave will pull out their chair for them, place a fancy fuckin' napkin on their lap, and hand them the correct dick fork and the correct dick knife to let them dig right in to the heaped serving of dicks that they should so clearly be helping themselves to.

Shut up, he thinks at Rose. He's more or less 100% pretty sure that she can't actually read his mind, but it can't hurt. In any event, Rose isn't here: Rose is in the magical land of rainbows and beaches, not the sweaty asshole land of lava and cockwork. Clockwork. What?

Anyway.

There's a gigantic crappy pyramid between Dave and where he needs to go. It's plonked down square in the middle of the platform, hanging over the edges in a way that's probably meant to look X-TREEM but just looks like God got trashed and left his shit everywhere. According to the nakkadiles' map, the sidequest gate is just behind it and over some sort of giant chasm. That's cool. By this stage in the LOHAC game, Dave Strider and Giant Chasms are like this, and this totally means two crossed fingers not one poor motherfucker Terminator 2-ing it into some lava.

The problem is that the way that it juts out over the edges of the platform means that going around it is out of the question. No biggie, though: if you can't go around something, go through it. That's probably some Mister Miyagi shit right there. Hiyaa hoohah motherfuckers, it's all Strider Style up in this dojo.

Do pyramids even have doors? As far as he can tell from his rich historical learnings, the proper way to enter a pyramid is to lean accidentally on a statue or innocent-looking carving or some shit. The gigantic crappy pyramid is lacking in both, which is rude as hell.

Dave stabs it, just a little. Whatever the fuck it's made of cracks and crumbles away like nasty polystyrene.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid that this fakeass pyramid bullshit is not OSHA approved," Dave says. "I'm going to have to take this building downtown, get the boys in the lab to check it out."

He winds up dramatically and hits it again. A tiny chunk of it flakes away and falls anticlimactically into the lava below. He comes to the conclusion that he is not spending his whole afternoon stabbing his way inch-by-inch through a pyramid. He doesn't know what sort of person would be dumb enough to do something like that, but it's not him.

Well, okay, that's a lie, but it's the sort of lie that needs serious discussion of the metaphysics of time-travel before someone can call him out on it, and he's fine with that because that shit leaves him plenty of time to escape.

"'Sup," he says.

"Not much," says an offshoot Dave. "What're we doing?"

Dave hitches a thumb at the pyramid. "Carving our way through this motherfucker."

"Cool," says the other Dave, and pulls out his sword.

"Awesome," says the first Dave, and then: "'Sup."

"Not much," says an offshoot Dave. "What're we doing?"

Dave hitches a thumb at the pyramid. "Carving our way through this motherfucker."

"Cool," says the other Dave, and pulls out his sword.

"Awesome," says the first Dave, and then: "'Sup."

You should always rely on yourself, and relying on yourself is like a hundred times better when it involves a well-dressed army of time clones doing your bidding. That shit should be in fortune cookies.

Dave Primus, Ur-Dave, Dave And You Shall Have No Other Daves Before Me is in the middle of chalking the final score to Daves: 1, Shitty Pyramid: 0 when the screaming starts. Then stops. And starts. Then stops. He bolts through the sword-cut tunnel running through the pyramid, then finds himself pinwheeling madly on the edge of the platform. Below him, the scene from Terminator 2 is being acted out a dozen times over, a metric shit-ton of thumbs-ups sinking solemnly into the lava. It is horrific. It is a tragedy. It is fucking stupid.

Whoever designed LOHAC can eat a dick.