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diff --git a/chapter1.html b/chapter1.html index 21a59e1..9462d51 100644 --- a/chapter1.html +++ b/chapter1.html @@ -14,30 +14,30 @@ </nav> <article> <h1>CHAPTER 1. Ghostflusters</h1> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/33.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/33.gif"> <p>The void resounds. Space seizes and warps as the bounds of relevance erode away to nothing but the wishful nostalgia of times passed. There is a hole in the middle of the universe, and it is hungry.</p> <p>But the denizens of this particular iteration of Earth C don’t know it. All of this is just business as fucking usual for a planet plagued by war, continuous inclement ghost weather, and the general malaise of being absolutely severed from canon. They spend their days absorbed in the petty and pointless pursuits of “having jobs” and “raising families” and “falling in love”.</p> <p>In the midst of this, a middle-aged man kneels in a garden. It isn’t his garden, and he already has a name, but we will begin our story with him regardless.</p> <p>Plants, Jake has decided, are really the best sort of chums. They are quiet, friendly, and easy to please. All they need is a little water and fresh earth, and they are perfectly happy to lie there all day in the sun. And they don’t make increasingly inhumane arms deals and appear on talk shows expounding on the dangers of interspecies marriage. They have never, as far as Jake knows, fucked a clown.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/34.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/34.gif"> <p>John has been an incredible pal, opening up his home to Jake and his son on such short notice, and even offering him a pair of pants, as well as a shirt that he has so far neglected to put on. John’s house doesn’t have air conditioning. It’s a charming little cottage, but it could sure as aces use some airing out. And dusting. And just general upkeep. The old place really has gone to seed since John’s been away. Jake shudders to think what sort of state his own mansion is in. Jane will probably have it demolished now, he imagines. It, like the rest of his assets, is in her name. She’d seen to that as soon as they were married.</p> <p>Back at chez Crocker, there had been a legion of hired help to take care of the ins-and-outs of running a household. Jane’s far too busy to bother with such things, and Jake... well, he just never bothered. Why should he, when there were other people to take care of it for him? But the decades of easy living don’t change the fact that he spent the first 16 years of his life in the deep, lush bush of the south pacific jungle. There certainly had been no one to cook and clean and bring down the big game then! Besides his grandma, but she had him shooting as soon as he could hold a pistol.</p> <p>No pistols are shot today, but Jake is determined to have the place in tip-top shape by the time John gets back from...wherever he is. He hasn’t seen much of Tavros today either, but that’s not unusual. He’s probably out with his kismesis, the one he thinks Jake doesn’t know about. He washes the floors and windows, cleans a toilet or three, and chases a family of squirrels out from the inside of the attic wall. They chitter angrily at him but he doesn’t back down.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/35.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/35.gif"> <p>As the day wears on and the shadows grow longer, Jake washes the dirt out from under his fingernails, and his eyes fall on the bottle still sitting on the counter. John had opened it, but together they’d barely touched the stuff. Jake had promised him and Tavvy he’d dry up his act and all, but... well.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/36.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/36.gif"> <p>One thing at a time.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/37.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/38.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/37.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/38.gif"> <p>The jungle air is heavy, humid, and familiar. Twenty years on and the thick drag into his lungs settles on him in a blanket of nostalgia, reassuring in its discomfort. A pistol is strapped to his leg, and all around him the shadows move in slow, threatening sweeps. He is deeper in the jungle than he’d ever venture in his waking hours. There were places on his island that not even his Gran would tred, and she’d been the bravest person he’d ever known. <p>Here there be monsters.</p> <p>Jake doesn’t recognize anything. The jungle of his dreams is wild and unknown, and there are things moving in the dense undergrowth. He slaps at a mosquito on his neck. Sweat drips into his eyes. He drops a hand to his gun, the tension prickling hot and tight at the base of his neck.</p> <p>A sudden wind thrashes the canopy. There are pine needles in his mouth. There aren’t any pine needles in the jungle.</p> <p>The only warning Jake gets is a resonate growl that seems to come from every direction at once, before the monster is on him. A lithe creature of darkness and fury, with more legs than anything mammalian has a right to. He hits the ground hard enough to drive the breath out of him, but he doesn’t have time to catch it. He has to run. He knows, in the deep, prophetic way of dreams, that he is no match for this monster.</p> <p>It is right behind him, its hot, damp breath wuffling at his hair. What does it feel like to be eaten? He’s about to find out.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/39.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/40.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/41.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/39.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/40.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/41.gif"> <div class="chat"> <p class="jake">JAKE: I...</p> <p class="jake">JAKE: Who…</p> @@ -77,18 +77,18 @@ <p class="dirk">DIRK: Don’t worry about it right now, it’s not important. I’m here, and that’s what matters.</p> <p class="jake">JAKE: I suppose ill just have to trust you!</p> </div> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/42.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/42.gif"> <div class="chat"> <p class="dirk">DIRK: Yeah.</p> <p class="dirk">DIRK: Good luck with that.</p> </div> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/43.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/43.gif"> <p>Consciousness hits Jake like a bottle to the back of the head. In fact, the bottle is on the table, tipped over and sluggishly dripping from the mouth. The kitchen reeks of whisky and his head pounds. At least he’d been home alone, and nobody had seen him slip back into old habits.</p> <p>Strange days, Jake thinks to himself. And strange dreams! That was a real humdinger of a nightmare. He hasn’t dreamed of Dirk in years. And it had felt so real, almost like he could have reached out and touched him--</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/44.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/45.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/46.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/47.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/44.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/45.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/46.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/47.gif"> <div class="chat"> <p class="jake">JAKE: What in the flibergating fuck!</p> <p class="dirk">DIRK: That’s not a word.</p> @@ -133,9 +133,9 @@ <p class="dirk">DIRK: Better you than me, honestly. Sounds exhausting.</p> <p class="dirk">DIRK: You’re going to do this, and we both know it. So why are we even still arguing?</p> </div> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/48.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/49.gif"> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/50.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/48.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/49.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/50.gif"> <div class="chat"> <p class="jane">JANE: Boo hoo hoo! Oh, Jake! Something awful has happened!</p> <p class="jake">JAKE: It--it has? You mean more awful than usual?</p> @@ -144,16 +144,16 @@ </div> <p>It’s then that Jake realizes that Jane isn’t mad because she’d never realized he was gone. It makes sense. There’s been plenty of times when the two of them didn’t cross paths for days at a time. The perils of living in a mansion, he supposes. She seems to have forgotten that she’d been cross with him the last time they met, because now that Gamzee is gone, there’s no one left to talk to.</p> <p>She recovers from her crying jag with grace, straightening up and wiping at her eyes. Miraculously, her mascara remains unstreaked. Even in moments of vulnerability she is bulletproof.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/51.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/51.gif"> <p>Jake stands there and listens as she lays out her plans, plans of vengeance and violence, and he makes himself smile and he makes himself nod. Honestly, it’s not unlike any other night he’s spent with Janey lately, right down to the pit of misery gnawing somewhere below his belly button. All of it is made worse by the occasional wry glint in her eye, or moment of self-deprecation in the slant of her mouth. It reminds him of the Jane he used to know. Or the Jane he thought he used to know.</p> <p>Then there’s the ghostly presence of his former beau and best bro. That’s different.</p> <p>At first Dirk stands at Jake’s elbow, a one-ghost support staff, before he appears to lose interest in Jane’s rant and wanders off across the office, reading the spines of books and spending way too long staring at a startlingly phallic piece of installation art, the provenance of which Jake doesn’t know, but could hazard a guess it wore a codpiece. Then he settles on Jane’s desk, propping his ghost butt there and sort of just...well.</p> <p>Here’s a picture of what he does.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/52.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/52.gif"> <p>Okay. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s more like...this.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/53.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/53.gif"> <p>Whatever the case, it’s distracting. And by the time Jane loses steam and dismisses Jake from her presence, he’s thoroughly exhausted from attempting to pay attention to his supervillain wife while trying not to look at the crotch of a ghost man from his brain.</p> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/54.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/54.gif"> <div class="chat"> <p class="jake">JAKE: Dirk i dont think i can do this.</p> <p class="dirk">DIRK: What do you mean? You just did it. You kicked ass back there.</p> @@ -174,7 +174,7 @@ <p class="dirk">DIRK: The world comes first, even at the expense of all your relationships and personal happiness. That’s what being a hero means.</p> <p class="jake">JAKE: I guess...i never really thought about it like that.</p> </div> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/55.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/55.gif"> <div class="chat"> <p class="dirk">DIRK: Think what you want about Jane, but at least she realizes that none of you can ever be normal, and she never bothered to try. Can it really be a god-complex if you’re actually a god?</p> <p class="dirk">DIRK: People like us don’t get happy endings.</p> @@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ <p class="jake">JAKE: Is...is that really how dirk felt the whole gosh darned time?</p> <p class="dirk">DIRK: It doesn’t matter.</p> </div> - <img class="panel" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/56.gif"> + <img class="panel" width="650" height="450" src="https://cdn.beyondcanon.com/assets/story/homestuck-beyond-canon/panels/56.gif"> <p class="command-line">> <a href="chapter2.html">CHAPTER 2. Clown Logistics</a></p> </article> </body> |