BOUQUETQUEST (Homestuck)

[Etch]

Hello.

I find myself at a bit of a loss. You see, my chat app of choice is down for the weekend for some routine maintenance, and seeing as it's a fine and brisk February day, I decided to branch out a little. Seek something more out of my comfort zone. I was, thanks to a number of fairly intense AskJeeves sessions, directed to this site, even though I seem to have found it through a bit of a backwards manner. Have any of the rest of you heard of Transversal Opera? Seems to be something of a beta branch of the browser, but when I backtracked to the blog where I bought it, it had all but banished itself from the internet.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

My name is ROSE LALONDE. The date is FEBRUARY 12th, 2009. In about a month, I'm planning to try out a game with a few friends of mine, though its release is a WHILE AWAY YET.

What should I do in the meantime?

---

Rose is bored. She'll take commands, as well as converse somewhat in-character. Depending on the first replies, she'll either treat this like a blog (updating on her day-to-day conversations and the like (she might include chatlogs, if that's something the forum seems interested in)) or, she'll just engage on whatever topic is at hand.

She's excited to meet everyone!

[Feengoid]

hi rose

[Etch]

Hi, Feengoid. That's probably not your real name, but Etch isn't mine, either. It's just the username the proxy service assigned me. I'd change mine on the page, but I don't think this forum software allows for it.

Interesting avatar I seem to have. Wonder what the implications are - am I conversing with a non-human species? I've been doing a little of that recently, but how much is just generic era-appropriate RP is still up for debate.

[Feengoid]

no its a radiohead icon, like one of their little mascot guys. cmon

[Etch]

In hindsight, "mascot for a band" solves Occam's Razor a lot cleaner than "alien species," though it still leaves the question of my avatar for later.

I interviewed a friend of mine for insight on this topic.

TT: And you're absolutely certain you're comfortable consenting to being mined for content?
TG: sure
TG: but like what the fuck is this forum again
TT: It's a phpBB forum.
TT: Seems to be clustered for a small group of friends and Problem Sleuth fans.
TG: aw fuck yeah problem sleuth
TG: i wonder if that guy is ever gonna update anything again
TG: ps was like what
TG: a full year
TT: Give or take.
TG: yeah
TG: it was solid while it lasted
TG: but i guess youre like immediately absconding to the first source of internet entertainment you can find once youre out of new panels
TT: I suppose.
TT: I think it's neat.
TG: oh yeah you were asking me about your avatar right
TG: bootleg barney looking ass
TG: it reminds me of like uhhh
TG: you know those chess programs
TT: Chess?
TG: yeah
TG: with like the varying levels of cpu
TG: i was godawful at it as a kid so i pretty much only played the monkey
TG: but im pretty sure the higher levels of the game got kinda wacky with it
TG: like robots and aliens and shit
TG: so who fucking knows. cute dinos
TG: the default avatar of the future
TT: (Hee hee.)
TT: Assigned dino upon arrival.
TG: dont tell me GG assigned you dinosaur
TT: She did nothing of the sort.
TT: The browser did the work for me.
TG: and you just up and left cetus without any remorse
TG: rose lalonde
TG: stone cold bitch
TT: I'm thirteen years old.
TG: so am i
TG: my vulgarities are of equal merit
TG: so youve gotta grin and bear it
TT: TG.
TG: spittin swear words like im a fucking lawyer
TT: TG.
TG: got your mom over last night so i went and plowed her
TT: Christ.
TT: I'm ending the export here.
TG: nice
TG: include me in the screenshot

He was less than helpful.

What do people do on forums nowadays, anyhow? Discuss interests? Blog about our days? I await a response eagerly.

[ghoul_house]

What do people do on forums nowadays, anyhow? Discuss interests? Blog about our days? I await a response eagerly.

Lmao, we mostly shoot the shit and blog, yeah. Idunno what everyone else plans to use this for but I've got a little interactive story on here in the user-driven format, a la problem sleuth, and a thread where I'm gonna post a good portion of my dreams.

I suppose while I'm here I should make myself an example. Very well. Since you twisted my arm over it and everything.

Back in my senior year, I had to go on frequent 2.8 mile walks. This was because my school could arrange transportation in the morning but in the evenings were woefully understaffed, and once I made it known that I was fine walking, they never let me take a bus again. So when you spend a lot of time alone with your thoughts on the sidewalk, you tend to notice when the environment changes, yeah? It was for this reason that I began to notice a worrying, alarming, caution-inducing trend...

My neighborhood was FULL of littered caution tape.

Like, it got the point that I kept a list of sun-bleached caution tape I'd encountered, which is sadly not updated much these days as I'm living the sedentary life. The list follows.

Places I've discovered aged caution tape:
+ a random driveway
+ lying on a bush outside my class
+ ripped into shreds and scattered around the sports supply shed on campus
+ equidistant slices hanging from the powerlines at a local grocery store
+ on my front lawn (twice)
+ on a fencepost during my walk home
+ at the park across the street, laid onto the grass
+ twisted around the fence of an elementary school on my route home
+ slashed in half and stuck into a crack in the pavement on my way to the bank
+ at my work, stuffed into my locker (thrice)
+ completely coating a door at the dentist's office, behind which was nothing but an arcade machine and piles of chairs.
+ tied together with a short chain and stuck to posts to make a barricade upon a driveway.

Fuck if I know where it all comes from. As far as I'm concerned, it follows me like a lost puppy.

Anyway, my real name isin fact Ghoul House. So be careful what you assume online!

[Deacon Blues]

what kinds of stuff were you asking jeeves to even find this place, anyways?

[Etch]

This is a fascinating response. Thank you, Mr. House. Or is it Ms. House? Let's settle on Doctor House, PhD., to be certain. That way you can't be confused for a different Doctor House.

I'd say I relate to the suburban exploration, but I grew up in a kind of isolated neighborhood. Not to doxx myself, but if you've ever seen the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, my house is similarly rural-in-location, despite an otherwise modern aesthetic. All the benefits of nature, like flies and gnats all summer, plus the added bonus of terrible internet.

At least I have an actual (fairly toxic, thanks to a nearby laboratory) river flowing through my house. I've been advised to not swim in it by my mother.

Doctor House, I've got a question for you. Did you ever plot out all of the caution tape on a map? If you did, what results did you get? While I don't get the feeling that this forum has a particular belief in the occult, I do think it's worth asking. Perhaps the center of all of the caution could be triangulated (dodecagulated?), putting the mystery to rest. Whatever mysterious Authority Regulator that taped your neighborhood up could be finally stopped.

I should maybe ask a friend of mine who lives in a suburb if he's experienced anything similar to you. I'll report back later on this topic.

In the meantime, please keep using this thread. I'll check out your stories, Doctor House, and write my thoughts if I have time.

[Etch]

what kinds of stuff were you asking jeeves to even find this place, anyways?

That's an easy one.

Tiring of my day-to-day banalities, I asked Jeeves for something that would blow me away. Something that would rock my world.

Something...

Excellent.

It was also the first interesting page on one of those "generate a random link" buttons.

[Deacon Blues]

did you find anything interesting from the randomly generated links besides this forum?