After three years out of contact, John and Karkat can finally talk again. The conversation doesn't go quite the way they were expecting. Now the three weeks it will take the golden ship to match velocities with the asteroid seem like three million. Why are the laws of physics so unkind to desperate teenaged boys? [an antidote to sadstuck! if this is not the fluffiest, most sentimental xenoporn ever written, i will eat my writekind specibus.]

Your moirail is something of a shambling disaster -- his hair is a tangled, frizzy mess, his clothes are tattered at the hems and grimy, and he could stand a wash or five himself. But it isn't, you've realized, that Gamzee doesn't want to care for himself, it's more that he doesn't know how to take care of himself well. You're not sure why, since he had access to the same schoolfeeding as everyone else, but maybe it was because he was alone too much for so long. Maybe it's hard to care, or know to care, when there's no one to fuss over you.

There are certain expectations in troll society about taking in a freeloader with no place to go, as Dad Egbert finds out when he offers to host two of his son's stranded friends post-game.

Karkat's first experience with human biology leaves him quite interested and a tad bit more obsessed with humans and their weird, creepy body than he would like. He also has no qualms in showing that. Dave will never be safe again. Karkat/Dave, written for the kink meme.

In which a mutant too famous to cull is dropped like a grenade into the midst of the peace process, a foolish monarch proves himself secretly shrewd, the power of friendship functions as a force multiplier, and it is discovered that in the Great Game of espionage, the dealer does not always win.

The halls of the Gods are empty, echoing with unheard prayers. The forces of corruption and decay are growing in power. Soon they shall sweep across the world like an unholy plague. From the deep caverns beneath the majestic Dragonshard Mountains, across the mighty Greenweald Forest, to the fair city of Porthaven on the storm-wracked coast, there are fourteen people with the mark of a divine ruler on their skin. They do not know it, but they and only they can save the world from apocalypse and ruin. So naturally, they're going to spend as long as possible arsing about slaying monsters and looting ancient temples. 'Cos, you know, adventurers.

More than two sweeps after being returned to a restored Alternia, the trolls face impending adulthood and banishment from the planet. Gamzee Makara fully expects to be culled on conscription for poor health and sopor addiction - what he doesn't count on is the personal attention and protection of the Grand Highblood.

Terezi Pyrope is a Neophyte Legislacerator looking to lease an administrative assistant. She was not expecting to find Dave Strider, a secretarial asset with a sense of integrity as strong as her own. Dave Strider is a secretarial asset with "personality problems" that would have gotten him culled if not for his otherwise exemplary administrative abilities. He finds himself drawn into the quadrants of the would-be social reformer who leased him. He finds he is surprisingly Okay with this. Both their lives become interesting (in the curse sense) when the Heiress retains Pyrope and her team.

Your wriggling day is in three days, and while you normally celebrate this event with the apathy it deserves, this particular sweep is different. That’s because it will be your eighth sweep, and it happens to coincide with the arrival of the imperial drones. This is a milestone that every troll looks forward to with a heady combination of excitement and terror. For most trolls, when they reach their eighth sweep, they become adults. Not you. When you reach your eighth sweep, you will die.

"And then I saw a new Alternia, for the old Alternia had passed away." -- St. Troll John Cusack How the Empire knelt to a clown, a mutant and a lawyer.

On the list of "Things Karkat Needs to Remember To Pack for Surviving This Fucking Game, In Order of Priority," hair styling utensils fell somewhere between "rubble that crushed my lusus" and "last sweep's decomposable trash, recently unburied from the back lawnring, along with all those bodies of the undead I had to kill." In other words, somebody needs to give that boy a brush.

Wherein, Having Beaten A Game, All Players Are Taken Back To The Same, Worst Available Universe, With Species Changes To Match For Those Who Did Not Match Beforehand. In short: You're all trolls now, welcome to Alternia.