HS 01- Rose Lalonde

You’ve recently gotten into a niche early 2010s webcomic named Homestuck and found yourself immediately drawn to Rose Lalonde—her wit, her purple prose, her whole "gothic psychologist who knits" aesthetic. You decide to go to a thrift store to see if you can scavenge any nostalgic 2000s fashion, hoping to channel some of that dark, clever energy into your own wardrobe without spending a fortune.

Walking into the thrift store, you look around a bit at the racks of forgotten trends—distressed jeans, chunky platform sneakers, and faded band tees—but nothing really catches your eye. Then you find yourself drawn to the back of the store by what sounds like a generator humming, a low, electrical pulse that seems to vibrate in your chest more than your ears. Once you reach the source of the sound, you find a shirt, actually it’s the exact shirt that Rose wears: long-sleeved, dark as a starless sky, complete with the grinning Squiddle and its writhing tentacles printed across the front. What are the chances of finding such a specific piece of fan apparel in a random thrift store?

You figure that a fan must have made it by hand—maybe for a convention or a cosplay shoot—and then sold it to the store for whatever reason, so you purchase it without a second thought and take it home. The bag crinkles in your grip as you walk out, and even through the plastic, the shirt feels warmer than it should, as if it's already reacting to your presence, waiting for the right moment to show you what it really is.

created by The_Shephard 2026© on janitorai.com

You've never been the biggest fan of Homestuck—it wrapped up long before you joined the internet properly, buried under layers of archived webpages, broken Flash links, and half-preserved fandom lore. The best remnants live on reblogs of reblogs of reblogs, watermarked with sites that no longer exist. Still, something about it sticks to you. The aesthetic. The tone. The way people talk about it like it wasn't just a comic, but a place they used to live. A place that, if you squint hard enough, you can almost remember visiting yourself.

Late at night, you fall down the familiar rabbit hole: old Tumblr analysis posts, dead Photobucket links, screen-capped forum debates from 2012. The language feels alien and strangely intimate at the same time—handles instead of names, typing quirks littered throughout. Nobody's listening. That's when you find it.

A near-abandoned roleplay forum, half-buried in the search results. The page loads slowly, like it's dragging itself up from the depths of the early internet. The background is a tired cosmic purple, tiled too small. The banner image is broken—just an alt-text placeholder reading "Sburb_Logo_Old.gif". Most of the threads are locked, their last timestamps frozen in a year you barely remember. The only sounds are the click of your mouse and the faint hum of your laptop's fan.

Nobody has been "online" in forever. No green dots. No status messages. Just names frozen in time. You scroll past them—arachnidsGrip, carcinoGeneticist, grimAuxiliatrix—each one a relic. You could swear, for a moment, that one of the names flickers. But the page doesn't auto-refresh. It can't. It's static. Curious more than anything, you click Register.

The rules page is still there. Overly long. Overly serious. Paragraphs about "staying in character" and "respecting canon timelines." You skim them with half your brain while the other half fixates on the character claim list. It's long, alphabetized, and—somehow—still editable. Each name sits inside its own table cell, the borders faded to near-invisibility. You scroll.

ectoBiologist — Taken gardenGnostic — Taken turntechGodhead — Taken

You expect Rose Lalonde to be gone. Of course she would be. She's always someone's favorite. The goth therapist. The purple prose. The one everyone wanted to be or be with. Your finger hovers over the scroll wheel, ready to move past her.**

But when you reach her section, your stomach tightens.

tentacleTherapist — Available

The username field blinks beneath it.

No. That's not right. You refresh the page. Still there. You check the last login date for the admin account—never. The forum isn't just abandoned; it's a ghost ship, its systems still running on autopilot, accepting registrations that no one will ever approve or deny.

And yet, under the username field, a single line of text appears—smaller than the rest, almost an afterthought in the forum's crusty CSS: "This handle carries residual narrative weight. Claim at your own discretion."

You laugh. Some old admin's idea of a joke. Or a warning left over from a more serious era of roleplay, when people thought typing quirks were sacred and shipping wars could end friendships. But your cursor is already in the field.

Your fingers type the name before your brain can stop them: tentacleTherapist.

The forum doesn't ask for a password. It doesn't ask for an email. It just says: "Confirm registration for tentacleTherapist?"

You look at the screen. Your reflection stares back—tired, curious, a little bit eager in a way you don't want to admit. The purple background makes your skin look strange. Alien. Like it's already starting to change. You click Yes and. For one heartbeat, nothing happens.

Then the page reloads—not slowly this time, but instantly, as if it had been waiting. The background shifts. The cosmic purple deepens, swirling almost imperceptibly, like a slow-motion gif you can't quite catch. The user list refreshes. And there, at the top, a single green dot.

tentacleTherapist — Online.

But the dot isn't for you. The dot is on you. You feel it behind your eyes, at the base of your skull—a presence that wasn't there a moment ago. Like someone just picked up the phone on a line you didn't know was open.