Karkat: Don't Swear [Text]

[pasthole]

[ Someone makes a post. It's deleted again too quickly to read, but it was definitely riddled with redactions courtesy of the network's filter (which seems to be working today.) A few minutes pass. It happens again, the post is longer and strangely grey, but it's similarly mangled and it's already gone. A third attempt is made, much the same, then... nothing.

Several more minutes tick by. Measured. Thoughtful. Ominous. Will the OP try one more time?

Then it appears: a monstrosity of grey capslock lurches onto the network and this one sticks. The poster's name is apparently Karkat Vantas, and his profile picture fails to yield a face, only a symbol. ]

A lot of unbelievable garbage has happened to me in the last twelve hours, but this? This is it. That anguished sound you hear is the cry of the long-suffering humpbeast that is my patience, its back brutally broken at last by the weight of this final desiccated plant stalk!

I am no stranger to completely stupid communication tools, but this one? This one is truly something special. I am in awe! Do you know how long it took me to get some semblance of control over my text? Do you? I assure you from the bottom of my inflamed bile sponge that you do not!

I was lulled into a sense of false security, naively believing this could not possibly get any worse. I went to post a message! Wow what a moron I must be to have ever supposed that would be easy! Gather round everyone, time to initiate the latest rube to join the idiot carnival! He thinks he can speak his mind without a snotty line of code ripping out his teeth one by one and shoving them right back down his ignorance shaft, what fun we shall have!

Thank you, Jorgmund! Thank you so much for this useless trash, and for this insult to injury! I am so glad that not only have I been kidnapped by aliens, but now I can't even make contact with my fellow captives without first assuming the most deferential posture of insipidity so as not to *dare* offend the grub-soft gander bulbs of an audience of *presumably* fully-moulted adults! I am ecstatic to know that this is the priority here when this entire world is apparently in shambles!

There's no need to take any time out of your jam packed schedules of huffing each other's nooks just to punish my earlier misgivings! My confidence is so inspired I could just choke myself right here and now!

(( OOC: Feel free to use or not use the network's filter as you please, its wild inconsistency can be convenient and a way to drive Karkat up a wall!
Warnings (mostly that Karkat is a loud jerk) and a link to opt out of his capslock nonsense are in his permissions. ))

Comments

[heterochrocatic]

yeah the filter is a pain in the ███

welcome to the fresh level of nonsense that is jorgmund

are you new? i didn't realize we got new-new hires.

[pasthole]

If by new-new you mean is my body still stinging from the nanochain? Then yes, it doesn't get any newer than me.

Let's cut the preliminaries: who the ████ are you?
[ A pause. ]
For the love of god not this ████ again!
[ Another. ]
Oh my ████ ███████ ████!

[heterochrocatic]

Catra, one of the other kidnap victims along for the ride.

Who the ████ are you?

[turntex]

[Well, shit. He'd know that ornery grey text anywhere.

Relief mingles with guilt over said relief. This isn't exactly a situation he'd wish on anyone, let alone people he actually cares about, but...fuck. He's still happy to see a familiar face – font, whatever.

He plays it way cooler than he actually looks, hunched over his comm device randomly stopped in the middle of a hallway typing rapidly.]

man i am so disappointed i missed out on watching you fight the filter in real time
bet that was a showdown of epic proportions
teeth gnashing mouth shouting claws furiously stabbing at the keys like they personally wronged you
gonna take those keys to small claims court and sue for emotional distress
and all the while the network remains unphased
honestly im shocked i didnt hear you in the distance
my ears must be going bad
anyway
hey

[pasthole]

[ It seems like most of this world prefers to write in weirdly anonymous black. It feels sterile and wrong somehow, and that makes familiar red stand out all the more. Karkat's heart leaps before he even starts reading it.

Dave's here, and it's the happiest he's ever been about somebody correctly describing a shitfit.

But he, of course, cannot say that. ]

Well holy ████.
I trip flap over horns into some kind of hideous alternate dimension and not even that is enough to deliver me from baseless strider speculation.
Is there anyone else unhelpful I should know about here, or is it just you?

[ Translation: Hi Dave it's nice to see you too. ]

[turntex]

[Message received. The actual direct contact does seem to ease some bit of tension out of his shoulders, and he finally shuffles somewhat out of the way to the side of the hall.]

there are definitely some unhelpful idiots wandering around but no one youd know
congrats you got me all to yourself
relatively speaking anyway
i am very popular with this new crowd so you still might have to wait in line for a fistbump
my gentle bro touch is in high demand these days

[wheyoftheadept]

Having a bad day, chummer?

[pasthole]

It's more like I'm having a bad life?
I thought that it was a fluke for a while but no.
Life is not done with Karkat Vantas!
Only an idiot would think life would ever be done with Karkat Vantas!
Just when I finally get to think I can hang up my sickle, kick up my nubs and settle the ████ down, here comes a brand new freightroller full of horse████!

[thewholeofthemoon]

[Remus has been mostly avoiding these things, because he doesn't understand them. But...well, this one catches his eye.]

[Possibly the caps lock.]

They do seem rather intent on policing the way that we speak. Or, at least, the way that we present ourselves in writing. Then again, they also consider us to be employees, even if we didn't precisely agree to it. Or weren't given much of a choice in the matter.

[pasthole]

I don't know how they expect me to help them make the world a less ████y place or whatever it is if I can't ████ing communicate.

[ He sends it and immediately regrets it. ]

████ it! I don't care anymore!
I'm not going to try to talk around perfectly good words for the sake of this horse████.
You, I, and everyone's ugly slaver-jawed lusus are gonna have to put up with big grey boxes of my obstructed frustration and I refuse to hold them back any longer!

[ Aaaaand he seems to be thoroughly distracted again. ]

video

[googledox]

[The alien that shows up on the screen is very green, a clue that he isn't human even if he has a humanoid appearance. He has an accent, due to having learned English as a second language, so that the language magic left his understanding of it alone.]

Here, you may find these useful.

[There is an attached file along with Brainy's video message: sprockingvocab.txt]

[To avoid the filter, each Interlac curse word has its English equivalent described in creative terms that don't actually say the word.]

The filter only filters English curses because Jorgmund doesn't have easy access to alien languages nor the imagination to take anything other than English into consideration.

If Interlac curses eventually start getting flagged from repeated use, I know a multitude of alien languages and how to curse in all of them. My team back home considers having a large body of diversified swear words a point of professional pride. I'd release them all at once but we may need other languages to eventually rotate to.

Video

[kingofneworleans]

[This is probably the best way to get around the whole 'pink text' thing. Video is fine.]

Well. Dat's good to know. Cursin' in other languages, I can definitely do.

Text

[pasthole]

[ It takes Karkat a moment to peruse this. After he's done, Karkat stays off the video feed. He's not sure how he feels about broadcasting his face. Even broadcasting his voice used to feel weird.]

This is actually helpful.
Wait let me retype that to get my tone across better:
This is actually... helpful?
I need a minute here. This never happens to me.

[princesspower]

Don't actually choke yourself!

This place is awful, but I don't think you need to do that.

[pasthole]

Okay I'm a lot calmer now than I was when I wrote that.
So for now I won't.
Probably.

[gempathizing]

On the bright side, at least you did a really good job working with the filter?

Because I mean, you definitely got your point across. With creativity to spare.

[pasthole]

Here we go.
A being of culture finally appreciates my craft on display.
I excreted bodily coolant for long minutes over this post.

[partiallysquirrelblood]

I'm with Steven. That was actually pretty impressive.

Also, ho. I'm Doreen. Or Squirrel Girl, either's fine.

[pasthole]

I'm starting to wonder if I'm in rare form today on the white hot bilefury spewing.
Was I being held back by certain four-letter words for so long?
Were they a tool or were they a crutch?

[credit_not_blame]

I want half the shit you say printed on a t-shirt, and I don't even wear t-shirts.

[Stacia knows quite a few people who would wear "wildlife is kind of a hassle" shirts, most of whom qualify as 'wildlife' themselves.]

What were you planning on saying before the filter had its way with your posts? Also, what's with the symbol?

[pasthole]

Good.
I'm so grateful that my expressions of genuine emotion seem to be entertaining.
That was sarcasm, by the way.
If you actually do give a ████ I had some extremely incisive comparisons to make between the people I've met, hideous wild creatures, and generally unacceptable anatomical functions. Really cut things right to the bone and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't kind of proud of some of it.
But if I started being the kind of person that drafts his harangues in a file and saves them for posterity I would be obligated to stop talking and start kicking my own ███ immediately.
The symbol is my sign.

[passifloraincarnata]

I am still not great at grasping the nuances of typing in English, are you actually angry or is your keyboard possibly broken?

[pasthole]

On a scale of one to ten, you could put me in at a solid volcanic upsurge.

[monkey_wrench]

here for less than a day and you've already got the spirit!

gotta get real "creative" with how we voice frustration in this place but it seems like you've got a knack for that. nice job getting 'humpbeast' past the censors by the way, i'm shocked they allowed that one.

[pasthole]

Okay I don't want to give you the wrong idea here.
Normally I would turn this conversation into an absolute ████show. It's one of my many useful talents.
But right now I'm just ████ing tired, and I want to know what's so bad about the Earth Humpbeast that it would merit such a brutal redaction.
Is it the spitting?
I haven't actually seen one in person before but I know they spit.