Be the Sea Dweller Lowblood
A Homestuck MS Paint Fan Adventure created by ckret2. Currently updating once more after a long hiatus.
In which a sea dwelling lowblood troll who would be considered a highblood in an Alternate Universe where the Sufferer's revolution had not succeeded engages in shenanigans in order to fill his non-pale quadrants; has various redrom tension with a ship-happy highblood Archeradicator who shares his love of Troll Disney sing-a-longs but may want to replace the sea-dweller's witch of a moirail; and engages in lopsided blackrom tension with the Imperious Grand Advisier, who may or may not develop black feelings to match the main character's.
Also features: a gold blood hacker who attempts suicide and haunts the royal hive of Her Imperious Condecension, bringing back into the open red feelings between the two of them; a lowblood junkyard worker with sweat issues explores but mostly denies his caliginous feelings for a sopor-addicted subjugglator who is the friend of a First Guardian and a robo-legged gold blood; a turgid backstory is hinted at which involves several previously mentioned characters in addition to another lowblood with sinister motives; the aforementioned nefarious lowblood is revealed to be in cahoots with a coalition of sea dwellers hoping to create a class uprising; the love between lusii is explored and interspersed for comedic effect; and the periodic love affairs of a jade-blooded Luxplorer are thrown in for romantic intrigue.
- Accidental Kiss: Karkat delivers a forceful hatesnog to Rhosyn while under the impression that she is someone else.
- Adorkable: Eridan
- Affectionate Pickpocket
- And I Must Scream: The Ψiioniic.
- Angst Coma: The Ψiioniic seems to be in one.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Eridan gives one to Nepeta while being dragged away at the end of the musical number.
- Arc Words: "Carefully tamed chaos."
- Art Shift:
- Badass Boast: Suweet Broski's "I am the Duke of Dreams" speech to Karkat. Listen to it here, voice acting performed by Sam G, and try not to shiver when he gets to "That puts you IN MY TERRORTORY".
- Bait and Switch Comparison: Terezi talking about her lusus and Vriska:
You wish you could stay long enough to get a song in, but you have to get back to your fire-breathing cold-blooded murderous monster. And your dragon.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Being an Interactive Comic, this happens to the commenters from time to time. For instance, when Sollux crossed the Despair Event Horizon, majority rule was for him to jump, but land on a troll to cushion his fall. This is exactly what happened. And it was that random troll's horns that killed him.
- Better as Moirails: This is what Eridan and Feferi have settled upon, as she didn't return his childhood crush.
- This is also what Nepeta seems to have decided about Eridan.
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- Aradia is terrifying when angry.
- As is Feferi.
- Big Bad: Suweet Broski seems to be becoming this.
- Bilingual Bonus: Jadzia Harley's symbol is the Mandarin character for jade.
- The name "Cherna Shapka" is Russian for "black hat".
- The Blank: Troll Britain's First Guardian...sort of.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Waydie Wilson. What did you expect?
- Brick Joke: The Dating Sim mentioned in Last Lousy Point is played by Karkat, whereupon he recognizes Eridan's screenname as having the top score. It's also used for an Art Shift gag when Nepeta dons her Shipping Goggles over Karkat/Eridan.
- Remember that little girl that was supposed to be Spidermom's new troll? Well here she is again! 700 pages later.
- Call Back: The fifth thread opens almost exactly like the first one.
- Captain Ersatz: Waydie Wilson, Troll Deadpool.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Equius is in denial about his black feelings for Gamzee.
- And recently, Equius with his flushed feelings for Tavros. The trope is mutual.
- Canon Immigrant: Terrin Cogita, a history-professor fantroll from BtSDLb's own fanfic Be the Seadweller Highblood, was later mentioned in the source material.
- The Chew Toy: Eridan. Thanks to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, he is arrested for doing absolutely nothing (except maybe dating a high blood)
- Children Are Innocent: Vriska and Equius as children. They're absolutely adorable. And throwing rocks at each other while arguing about "thingies".
- Altari is also very innocent, and incredibly cute.
- Conflicting Loyalty: Vriska is associated with many rebel groups, IRIS being the big one, but she tips off Karkat about Eridan's location and his Strife Specibus against their wishes, anyway.
- Cool Shades: Karkat's Hate Playa shades. Cuvier's shades have also attracted quite a lot of attention.
- Crashing Dreams: BANG BANG BANG.
- Deadpan Snarker: Rhosyn
- Despair Event Horizon: Sollux crosses this which leads to...
- Driven to Suicide: ...him jumping off a balcony.
- Dream Weaver: Suweet Broski. He uses this power to easily collect information from his fellow royalbloods, and even some lowbloods as long as they aren't protected by sopor, which he uses to fuel his schemes.
- Epic Fail: Be the quadrant-obsessed sea dweller lowblood with the two big gashes across your face which you recently acquired during a duel with the Imperious Grand Advisier at the conclusion of which you insisted on taking your budding kismesissitude a little more slowly before absconding in a most impressive and gamblignant-worthy manner in order to reunite with your highblood flushed crush only to discover that she has put you in the moirail zone and by the way you are also carrying a bottle of Moon Mist Faygo.
- Everything's Better with Princesses: Especially crossdressing princesses.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: Sollux's body, after being taken over by Troll Britain's First Guardian.
- Expy: Puppetman for Bro Strider, Rhosyn Lalond for Rose, Jadzia Harley for Jade, Jhonen Egbert for John, Daivat Stride for Dave, Hellza Jeffan for Hella Jeff, and Suweet Broski for Sweet Bro.
- Fandom Nickname: The insane gold blood outside SUBjugglatorWAY was nicknamed Travos by a commenter poking fun at a command ordering (the misspelled) Tavros to "cull this birdbrain this instant." It stuck, and is now the character's only recognizable name.
- Similarly, Cuvier and Eridan on their drunken shenanigans received the nickname Team Saltwater Grape Taffy, or TSWaGT.
- Fanfic: Be The Sea Dweller Highblood, a fanventure by Lucus Casius.
- Fantastic Caste System: The goldbloods (red, orange, yellow) rule at the top, the jadebloods in the middle, and the bluebloods and violet bloods rest at the bottom somewhere between "nuisance" and "beneath contempt". Then the sea dwellers are even lower than that..
- Fantastic Racism: The tension between the land dwellers and the sea dwellers has shades of this.
- Foe Yay: Several: Eridan/Karkat, Karkat/Vriska, Terezi/Vriska, Equius/Gamzee, Rhosyn/Cuvier...
- For Want of a Nail: Since the Sufferer's revolution succeeded, the hemospectrum is flipped on its head. The royals in canon are now at the bottom rung, whist the former lowbloods have stepped in as the new royalty.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite their different places in the hierarchy, many characters remain mostly unchanged. Tavros is still a woobie, Gamzee is still insane, Karkat is still a jerk, Vriska is still a manipulative bitch with irons in the fire, etc.
- A Friend in Need / I Will Find You: Both Nepeta and Feferi go out and potentially place themselves in harm's way to help Eridan.
- The Golden Rule: Subverted. "Do unto others as they have done unto you." (i.e. get revenge)
- Gosh Dang It to Heck: Equius: Yes. Heck yes. Heck flipping yes.
- Government Drug Enforcement: "Violentbloods" are required to take sopor pills daily, lest they get culled for failing a random street drug test. The tests aren't particularly precise, though, and some lowbloods like Eridan don't bother with them, while some like Gamzee are too happy to oblige.
- Guilty Pleasures: Eridan loves the Troll version of "The Little Mermaid" even though it is horrifyingly racist. He'll pan it if someone else brings up the subject, though.
- Heroic Blue Screen of Death: Tavros has one in reaction to Equius revealing his black feelings for Gamzee.
- And then Equius has one himself when Gamzee hate-snogs him.
- Heel Realization: Nepeta combines this with My God, What Have I Done? upon realizing that despite her belief they were better as Moirails, she wasn't actually aware of how to support Eridan -- and he already had a Moirail in Feferi. Something she hadn't fully registered despite talking to Feferi, as she was too focused on getting them together.
- Keep in mind that, if she got with Eridan before successfully getting Eridan and Feferi together as matesprits--which is where she was heading--she would have been a moirail homewrecker.
- Hope Spot: Following the Wham Musical Episode, Karkat being trolled by Sollux.
- How Dare You Die on Me!: All things considered, Aradia takes Sollux's death rather well, only crying a little bit, but she's clearly less than pleased, and refuses to let him pass on.
- Ho Yay: Pretty much a given since troll romance is gender-blind.
- If I Can't Have You: Rare protagonist example. Eridan attempts to kill Nepeta when she says she wants to be his moirail. He fails.
- In a Single Bound: Equius STRONG jumps about a quarter of the way across the planet.
- Ironic Echo: After Feferi's What the Hell, Hero? speech to Nepeta, we have Nepeta: Be knight. Watch witch rescue princess.
- I See Dead People: Aradia, which leads to...
- Dead Person Conversation: ...with Sollux
- Kiss of Distraction: Vriska attempts this on Terezi; Terezi responds by ramping it up to a French Kiss.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Thus far Eridan has stolen Karkat's belt, keys, and looted the other's room for all it's worth.
- La Résistance: IRIS
- Lady and Knight: A recurring theme during Eridan and Nepeta's date, leading to the repeated command of "Be knight. Rescue princess."
- Last Lousy Point: Eridan almost has a perfect score in Surrogia's most popular Dating Sim, but he can't bring himself to get the last couple of points by being caliginous with the witch character because she reminds him too much of Feferi.
- Leotard of Power: Sharpeye Sharklaw. See Stripperiffic below.
- Lethal Joke Character: In their first appearance, Suweet Broski and Hellza Jeffan were considered, well, idiots without any significance to them at all other than being Daivat's friends. Until we learn that Suweet is an evil mastermind and Hellza Jeffan is The Berserker. And the tropes are played completely straight.
- Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places: Eridan.
- In Love with Love: Seems to be a case of this, as he freaks out when Karkat actually tries something on him. For all Eridan likes the idea of love, he wasn't ready to actually commit to anything.
- Madness Mantra: PICKAXE TO BONE. MAKE HIM SCREAM.
- Making a Spectacle of Yourself: Karkat's HATE PLAYA shades.
- Manly Tears: Gender-flipped. Aradia is the one crying a single manly tear while Sollux is sobbing inconsolably.
- The Matchmaker: Nepeta wants to get Eridan and Feferi to go flushed for each other, mainly because she herself is pale for him, but now that he's confessed his feelings for her this may be veering into a Matchmaker Crush.
- Or not. She has decided they are Better as Friends, much to his dismay.
- Method Typing: Whenever a character's typing is impaired in some fashion, ckret2 writes their dialogue with various... unusual methods, in order to properly mimic the effect.
- Similarly, when Vriska is called to roll her dice, ckret2 actually rolls dice rather than picking an outcome herself.
- Moment Killer: Karkat's lusus does this. Although only Karkat is truly upset about it, as Eridan wasn't ready for what was about to happen, anyway.
- Mood Swinger: Sollux
- Mood Whiplash: Used very effectively in Everybody: DO THE SUPER AWESOME SINGY THING.
- Really, used very effectively with considerable frequency. In-universe, one of the best moments of Karkat's life involved him going through extreme Mood Whiplash.
- Eridan v. Nepeta
You know you cannot do it. You cannot kill Nepeta. You cannot even hurt her.
Because your CODDAMN FUCKING STUPID STRIFE DECK IS STILL BROKEN.
- The Psiioniic's desperate pleading with the Sufferer to come back and save him becomes, in the space of two panels, IM A SHIIIIIIIIP
- Near-Death Experience: Karkat
- No Medication for Me: Since society believes sopor pills are necessary for lowbloods to be mentally stable, those who go without fall into this category. The most prominent examples are Eridan, Vriska, and Cuvier.
- Noodle Incident: Although the readers have been given hints about what went down, we still don't know what exactly happened during this world's version of "Make her pay."
- Word of God says it may be part of a hypothetical upcoming [S] page.
- Not a Date: Eridan and Nepeta go on one, with him thinking it's a date and her not realizing it.
- Overdrawn At the Blood Bank: The author's stance is that all trolls have this and most injuries and deaths leave a horrid mess, but the cake has to go to Gamzee, who basically paints the whole room purple before passing out.
Narrator: There is blood on the floor. Blood on the walls. Blood on HIM, oh, God, there is more blood outside Karkat than you [Sollux] knew he had inside him.
- Pailing For Services: Cuvier pails with Eridan in exchange for Ahab's Crosshairs. Neither remembers the encounter after, leading to a pleasant shock for Cuvier and an unpleasant one for Eridan when they wake up.
- Parody Sue: Hakuba Dahaag. Unlike most Sue parodies, though, some of her actions are actually portrayed as creepy and annoying. She's somewhat a Deconstruction of the character type.
- Pity Epiphany: Equius and Tavros both have one, in regards to each other.
- Poor Communication Kills: "Your life seems to be fueled by stupid little misunderstandings that could be cleared up with five minutes of conversation."
- Precision F-Strike: Equius, of all people, drops one when he realizes that he pities Tavros.
- Refuge in Audacity: Invoked by Vriska: Tell the truth.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Ioudas betrayed the Sufferer to the subjugglators and was, in turn, betrayed by them.
- Right Man in the Wrong Place: A lot of stuff derives from Eridan happening to be in Karkat's room just at the right time.
- Running Gag: Be the Sea Dweller Lowblood. We always try to be the wrong sea dweller. Taken to absolutely ridiculous levels starting here. We go through almost every sea dweller we've seen before getting to the right one.
- And even after being given an extremely precise description of Eridan, we still screw it up.
- Recently, we keep trying to be a place or planet, such as Troll Mexico or Alternia. The narrator keeps reminding us that we can be on a planet or in that area, but we can't be a planet itself.
- When we try to be Troll Britain, the narrator finally just gives up and tells us that the only command Troll Britain can respond to is "rotate." It does, in fact.
- Unfortunately, Surrogia can't even respond to that.
- When we try to be Troll Britain, the narrator finally just gives up and tells us that the only command Troll Britain can respond to is "rotate." It does, in fact.
- Shadow Archetype: Eridan & Karkat. Eridan fails in redrom because he's never really pitied anyone but himself. Karkat fails in blackrom because he's never hated anyone more than himself. Then there's the whole mess of status and social isolation issues mirrored between them.
- Shipper on Deck/Love Chart: The point of Nepeta's shipping wall is to showcase this. She even ships Sollux/Aradia/Tavros as an OT3.
- In a play on this, Sollux wants to get Karkat/Eridan back together after torpedoing it in the first place. Even though he's not entirely sure that's the best thing to do, or why he keeps thinking of 'ships', for that matter...
- Ship Tease: For all of the pairings. All of them.
- Shout-Out: Several, including
- Disney's The Little Mermaid as seen here and a few other places.
- Most recently, Pirates of the Caribbean here.
- Word of God says that a Shout-Out to A Fish Called Wanda is coming up soon,.
- Hello gentlemen.
- The troll doctor Skelpi gets interrupted by Daleks.
- The dating sim uses recolored characters from Revolutionary Girl Utena.
- Jhonen sees Equius as Nicholas Cage, which is an invoked Memetic Mutation of this video, a fan edit of this Youtube Poop, and serves as a Mythology Gag for John's fanboying Cage in canon.
- Actually no. It was because Vriska's description of Nic Cage, as being "rugged," "sweaty," and having "long hair" sounded suspiciously like Equius. And then, by accident, it turned out that Nic Cage in Con Air REALLY looks like Equius. Nothing to do with the two aforementioned videos, and the author had never even seen them when the Equius-is-Nic-Cage gag started.
- So What Do We Do Now?: Terezi, after having apprehended Vriska, mentions how she was treating life like a FLARPing game about justice rather than carrying out her duty as a legislacerator, and isn't sure what to do now that she's caught her target.
- Space Romans: Played Straight with Troll Canada and Troll Britain. Subverted with Troll Mexico.
- Spurned Into Suicide: After failing to kill Nepeta, Eridan decides to do this. He seems hesitant and not quite willing to go through with it, though.
- Interrupted Suicide: His moirail stops him without breaking a sweat.
- Stalker Shrine: Admittedly, Karkat and Terezi have a very good reason for collecting as much data on Vriska as possible, but the fact that their "Vriska file" is driven as much by romantic hate as it is by a desire to arrest her makes this qualify.
- Stripperiffic: Sharpeye Sharklaw and his fabulous Leotard of Power is a hilarious male parody of this trope.
- "Take That!" Kiss: Terezi kissed Karkat and started up their matespritship just to spite Vriska.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Karkat is a magnet for these. Given his own self-loathing, they frequently turn him on.
- Eridan also gets one from his seahorsedad.
- There Is Another: There are three characters with RED 6L99D. Two of them are hiding this, so the only publicly known one is Karkat.
- They Died Because of You: Karkat is extremely upset about Sollux's death, blaming it on their last conversation.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: While visiting the hospital, Karkat gets one upon discovering his blood somehow retained its candy-red color despite his recent transfusion of green blood, which should have left it temporarily muted and mixed.
- Title Drop: Used several times as a command, often correlates with a Running Gag.
- Training from Hell: Threshecutioner training. Because she is a sea dweller, Rhosyn ended up having to repeat it twelve times before she would be allowed to join their ranks.
- Triang Relations: All over the place, but the Nepeta - Erdian - Feferi triangle is probably the most significant. It's a type 4 for moirallegiance; Nepeta -> Erdian <-> Feferi. It's complicated by an overlapping matespritship triangle. Erdian feels unrequited matespritship towards Nepeta, and Nepeta wants to break up Erdian & Feferi as moirails by shifting them to being matesprits.
- Twice Shy: Equius and Tavros both have flushed feelings for each other, but neither of them can work up the nerve to tell the other. Tavros is afraid Equius will only accept his feelings because he feels that he has to since he's lower than Tavros on the hemospectrum; Equius is afraid to tell Tavros because he doesn't consider himself worthy and pursuing a matespritship with a gold blood would be inappropriate.
- Twitchy Eye: Rhosyn develops one upon receiving a totally random hatesnog from Karkat.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Many characters have plot points that interlink with each other. This means a lot of perspective switching whist times halts for characters off screen.
- In fact, due to this, Eridan has spent all of the second thread in Karkat's room. The author joked that if he was still there when the thread ends, she would rename the adventure to "Karkat's Roomstuck."
- It may be Third Line, Some Waiting, especially considering how frantically ckret2 was scrambling to resolve all plot threads and get all characters somewhere they could be expected to stay a while without doing anything interesting before the end of thread 4 and not allowing any immediate commands for other plotlines.
- The Undead: Sollux. He does at least seem happier as a ghost.
- Sollux's body is now undead on its own.
- Unfortunate Implications: In-universe, the troll verison of The Little Mermaid is quite racist to sea dwellers.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension / Will They or Won't They?: Many, but Eridan/Nepeta and Sollux/Aradia are the big ones. At this point, both are pretty much resolved. Eridan/Nepeta is sunk in both red quadrants, and Sollux/Aradia seems to be working despite Sollux being a ghost.
- Unusual Dysphemism: A therapist is also known as a "pale prostitute."
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Type 2 with Karkat and Sollux, like in canon. Tavros tries to act as their auspistice despite the fact that neither Karkat nor Sollux really hate each other.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Cordis Jocure. Killed on the page immediately following his introduction page.
- Wham! Episode: Everybody: DO THE SUPER AWESOME SINGY THING. (Not that particular page, but the scene as a whole).
- What Did I Do Last Night?: In the fifth thread, Eridan wakes up with a killer hangover and no memory of the drunken shenanigans he engaged in, who he was with, or what happened to his weapon.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Feferi is not pleased when she learns Nepeta Moirail-Zoned her Moirail.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Eridan and Nepeta (the former out of necessity, the latter for fun)
- Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: ckret2 posts a poll to determine which character is shown next. Options are tied for quite a while, then one choice suddenly takes over. ckret2 decides foul play is involved, takes neither popular option, and stops with the polls.
"There is no way that many people have voted, MUCH LESS that it stayed that perfectly tied for so long, MUCH LESS that the votes suddenly jumped up for one side that much. I KNOW there were some people who voted specifically to make it balance out, rather than vote for what they actually WANTED. Some of y'all in here admitted that. Clearly, someone else is spamming Vriska now. Fuck this shit. You're not getting Vriska or Kanaya. You're especially not getting Vriska, since it's at least confirmable that there is somebody cheating in her favor, if not that there are folks cheating in both's favor...Way to go! We're never having a vote again."