Paper John: Sticker Star
Chapter 3: The Redemption Arc
Beginning AN:
So uh. I'm very sorry. About everything with this.
Jesus Christ did a lot of shit with both Paper Mario and Homestuck happen in-between this and Chapter 2, which is an easy feat when that's so much time. I haven't played Origami King and don't really plan to but the writing in it looks genuinely good, a step up above even Color Splash, which looked to be a step up above Sticker Star already, "New Paper Mario" is actually kind of kicking ass and that's scary (no more "old-fashioned" OCs again and no more female Toads except Toadette or other Toads with big variations to them if Nintendo's like "Yeah we don't have to abandon these mandates" and stuff) and wonderful (it's actually impressive seeing what's there in spite of the limitations). Very weird.
Meanwhile I tried giving Homestuck a legit second chance and while I liked the Epilogues, it's shitting the bed pretty damn hard now. Large year gaps between Hiveswap Act releases (although Act 2 still came out in-between this and the last chapter and Act 1 in-between the first two chapters so really I don't have much of a leg to stand on, especially since writing text-only stories is way easier than video game development), some drama stuff going on with the writers, and Homestuck 2 just like... being outright terrible. Uh... yeah. I'm still calling myself a Homestuck fan but like in the way I'm a Simpsons fan that doesn't really like the current episodes? But uh... overall, I think this may be the last Homestuck-related fanwork I cough out for a while, what with Bl:oodswap being on hold until we learn about the limeblooded trolls (if we ever do) and all of SBIG being put in limbo. I'll still probably update this, but just don't expect too much else from me that's Homestuck related, at the absolute least not until I finish this massive story backlog I have.
So uh, enjoy... whatever the hell this is going to be.
(Shoot if I had taken note that the tenth anniversary of Sticker Star was recent I could have gone full turbo on this in the days leading up to it and probably have it done and out by then.)
Okay, with the clown guy taken care of, time to over on now to World 2.
It was about time to revisit that giant door that was in the way with all the Grist types. So, by that point, John had enough Stickers and the right kind of Stickers to actually Paperize the big door on the cliffside. He did that, the symbols glowing and the seemingly hundred year door opening.
After that was a short hike through a cave. Imps had been hastling him, but he pulled through. Mostly by avoiding any and all fights. Out on the other side...
Oh, the sun suddenly felt much more intense out in the desert. And yes, it was a desert. A nasty one... that pyramid way in the distance looked like it could house some 'shelter' of sorts. Barely.
The heat seemed to especially have gotten to Karkat. Coated in sweat, flushing a bright red, panting with every pained attempted step of his...
"WHY DID THE ROYAL STICKER HAVE TO LAND HERE?!" He screamed to the heavens.
John just shrugged.
"URGH! It feels like it's... 'folded away,' too?"
Of course, they weren't alone for long.
They heard shifting in the sands below them. John stood his ground.
"Your hammer." Said Karkat.
He nodded back at him, making sure to throw a good eyeroll in on there.
Anyway, whatever was in the sand, it was fast. Big, too, judging from the bumps in the ground it was making.
John lept to the air right as he almost felt the shakes right below him. And then, it emerged.
A basilisk. Long, had a giant tongue, and was nasty overall. A real fiend of the desert. Apparently... it was a desert monster.
Alright, new foe, new battle. John really wanted to avoid fighting but he had no other choice by that point.
So he looked at the stickers he had on hand-
Actually I'm skipping this fight and all others, except for major ones or ones where something noteworthy happen.
John won. Nothing noteworthy happened.
Anyway, he and Karkat approached a pyramid. Which looked like a nice way to at least shade up... if the sun wasn't completely overhead, and it seemed to be at that moment. Oh wait- there was a tiny patch. Should be okay to rest there...?
Karkat, thankfully, seemed to agree with that. He looked... a little more relaxed than he was during the journey.
"If only the Royal Sticker was up here..."
It wasn't?! ARGH!
"There's a bigger building somewhere around here... or there SHOULD be one."
Hrm. There was a place that looked like a massive clearing in the distance, where there should be something... but all John could make out was a faint purple patch on the floor?
...Shoot, he was going to have to go there. Meaning another long trek out in the heat. Well it looked like there was at least some oasis around the middle of the vast desert?! Oh yeah, John was familiar enough with the general map of Drybake to know about some kind of oasis there...
Right, Drybake. The name of the location.
Well, at least they stopped by something much larger and more shady. A giant 'sphinx' statue, but instead of a sphinx it showed... some eyeless dog? Its look unsettled John. And Karkat, too.
Speaking of dogs, however, John was panting like one. It was drawing some attention from the local wildlife.
Particularly some hungry, hungry Basilisks.
John whipped his hammer out.
"Ahem."
Oh. There was a Salamander standing by the base of the dog statue thing.
"Hi there!" He said. Actually made John jump a little. "I notice you are looking for a Royal Sticker?!"
"YES!" Karkat bemoaned.
"Well, I think I saw one in Drybake Stadium!"
Karkat almost looked like he was about to clap in excitement. Almost. "Great! Where is that?"
"Well there's the thing... Drybake was... torn apart."
"Define 'torn apart.'" Karkat rolled his eyes. "In this world, that can mean anything."
"Oh it's been de-Paperized. There's just a flat, giant purple square where it used to be."
"...So we need to find it in Scrap form first?"
"Three scraps, actually."
...
Good God.
Alright, it's time to finally go over all of this in brief.
So, there was in fact an interesting sphynx thing of note out in the desert. Much bigger than the pyramid from before.
It also looked... odd. Tacky, almost. As it appeared from the front, it was a big dog. Upright ears. Nose sticking out, but no eyes or mouth.
"So there's a Scrap in here?" Asked Karkat. To nobody in particular, the Salamander did not follow them, and John- well yeah. Not much of a talker.
Karkat just examined the Bec Sphinx - not that they knew that it was called that. "Yes! I sense it! It's on the tongue!"
The tongue was pretty damn high up. But it had what they needed, a Scrap. The right Scrap. Part 1 of 3...
Exploring the Sphinx by the way wasn't too much trouble. Again, it was shelter from the desert heat. Nice, cool breezes were abound.
The same ol' desert enemies did harass the pair as usual. Same ol' fights happened. Nothing to really say.
They made it to the top of the Sphinx. And-
"HUMAN! ANON-LANDWELLER!"
Oh, that Eridan guy again. He flew up to them.
"Well well well!" He continued.
"What now?" Karkat asked him.
"I have a new spell I've been dyin' to throw at you."
"That is...?" Karkat asked.
He shot something out of his magic wand at John.
It... turned his Stickers in to flip-flops. Well, Flip-Flop Stickers, actually.
John screamed in horror. A relatively loud vocalization from him, all things considered.
"What did you do to his Sticker collection...?" Karkat asked. He was looking at the inventory in awe.
"I improved it!"
...
The flip-flops also had Jack's insignia on them. Yep, the black spade. So... John would be using the symbol of his enemy on top of everything else. Salt on the wound.
Well whatever. He just needed to remember what was where so that he wasn't wasting any of his good Stickers.
Thankfully, he remembered where all his bad ones were sorted at. It was just a matter of picking them, slapping Eridan a bit with them, and... eventually, he won. The flip-flops turned back in to his usual arsenal.
"YOU... ARGH!" Eridan shouted. "I will be back!"
"Are you going to ruin John's stickers and make the next fight an eternity? Because that's the best way you can torture us." Karkat said.
"That's a good idea I'll look in to that."
"WAIT! THAT WAS SARCASTIC YOU-"
And Eridan rode off on his broom. Karkat checked the inventory, then sighed. Unchanged.
"I hope I never see him again." He muttered.
Anyway, the next scrap. Over by some oasis. It seemed simple-
Oh no. In-between the oasis and where they were was a certain set of ruins.
"...Sandshifter Ruins?" Karkat seemed to have passing knowledge of the place.
John turn to him and raised a brow in curiosity.
"This place is a labyrinth." Karkat sighed. Eyes shut, turned to the sky. "It could take us two weeks to get through it."
Two weeks?!
Thankfully, Karkat was able to read John's expression. Yeah it was a pretty sour expression.
"I can try to remember where we did and didn't go through... it might be hard if there aren't any landmarks."
Well, they went in to the pit.
...It didn't look that bad at first. At least it was a nice break from the hot sun. In contrast to the surface, the underground desert felt downright cool and refreshing, and was the closest thing to the fabled oasis admist it.
Well no. Soon enough, the pain settled in. Plenty of turns that just lead to dead-ends, sand blasts that shot the pair all the way back to the beginning.
At the end of it, he finally, finally got a Comet Piece. Which looked like it... showed him the path leading to the oasis! Or, no. To a sandstorm. A sandstorm in the oasis?
Yeah... considering everything else, of course there was a roaring sandstorm going on over in the oasis.
Or, more of a tornado.
"THAT TORNADO IS CARRYING A CAR!" Shouted a Crocodile.
It... wasn't. Well, it was a stone structure that was shaped like a car, but still.
"WE NEED TO FIND SHELTER!" Karkat cried out.
Well... it looked like... there was a...
Oh, there was some kind of Paperizing spot. Karkat was staring at it curiously.
"DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO PLACE HERE TO STOP THE SANDSTORM?!"
...He didn't.
Alright he searched and finally found a good object over by the harbor. Get the vacuum there, Paperize it, stop the sandstorm - apparently the tornado was really just caused by a piece of paper spinning around really fast? And head to the middle.
There was an Iguana in the center, looking absolutely crushed.
Long story short, they needed to drain some water out of a container, refreshing up the oasis and bringing it back to its relaxing glory. Also making the oasis an actual place worth stopping by... but since they had to take a journey all the way back to the town anyway, well... it sorta ruined the whole promise of the oasis as a mid-location stop.
It was a long story at that. Also took a bit of backtracking to that place with the windmill. Aaaaand... two scraps. Two pieces of some big temple thing. One more was all that was needed.
Time to head back in to Sandshifter Ruins. Ick...
Rather than a relaxing trip at the oasis, the final step before the big central tower thingy was another nightmare to navigate in the worst spot of the desert.
Yet again, John got lost completely in slides of sand going left and right and through all those hidden passages he was forced to go through a second time. Well, counting all the times he was shot back to the surface, it was well over the second time. He wasn't sure what he was doing any more. Just that he wanted it to end. But he eventually ended up with some stuff:
The last piece of the tablet, most importantly. Behind that, some other 'Things' were gathered. And a secret other exit. Some kind of shenanigans that involved emptying tombs, not important.
Uhm... everything was assembled? John Paperized, putting together the gigantic Scraps at the huge sand pit at the end of Drybake.
What followed was pretty neat. A gigantic temple... thing unfolded from the giant square of the three scraps put together. It was a nice-looking skyscraper. About five floors tall. Had what looked like a big stadium on top of it?
"Finally." Said Karkat. "That's where the next Royal Sticker is."
...
Drybake Stadium. Time to enter it.
On their way in, John and Karkat heard some odd laughter. It sounded like someone who... well, hasn't quite 'found his voice' so to speak?
So there were uncanny murals of tall, more human-shaped Consorts. John would be happy to never see those again.
Oh- yeah, and murals showing off Underlings too. Again, super tall and awkward-looking.
"Just don't make eye contact." Was Karkat's advice. He knew. He was feeling the same way.
Right, there were more puzzles inside. The original point of the story was that details weren't spared, but I got bored with this and I'm just kind of getting to 'the good part' out of obligation mostly, so I will be sparing details. (Think of this as the 'audience winning,' sort of. But more of a pyrrhic victory.)
John did in fact have to fight some mural imps and mural ogres. It wasn't very pleasant. At least the mural consorts did not attack him...?
And, for the big finale, he made it to the top.
...
The second Royal Sticker was right there in the center, out in the open. An orange crown.
"That's a trap." Karkat bluntly said. "After everything we've been through, I can still feel the sandstorm in my teeth, there's a trap on top of everything else."
John slowly approached it, scanning the ground, mostly for any wire. His footsteps were also light, carefully brushing ahead. For any sort of landmines.
The ground rumbled before he could get that close though.
"UUHHHHH... UMMM..." A voice echoed from below the top of the sandy arena. Various Mural Underlings all rushed to the 'seats,' gathering there to watch the 'game.'
That's when the next Royal Sticker Holder popped out. Emerging from below, he was another troll, one that was utterly MASSIVE in size. About as large as a bus. He had an orange Taurus symbol on his shirt, and a pair of wide (even compared to his body) horns that stuck out flat from the sides before curling up at the tips, like those of a bull. And he was sparkly all over. His feet also appeared to be attached to something metal, but whatever it was, it was burried in the sand atop the stadium at that moment. Finally, atop his head was the orange Royal Sticker.
"THERE!" Karkat shouted. "The next Royal Sticker!"
John had to take a long look through his own Sticker collection.
Yeah... just from the sheer size of that... guy. It looked like nothing could pierce him.
"...What Things do you have with you?" Karkat asked John.
John pulled up his Thing list.
"...Well this looks like a human baseball stadium..." Karkat's eyes were already hovering on the Baseball Bat. He found it in that godawful ruin from earlier that gave him painful memories. "Hit him with that until he surrenders."
"Um... uh... hey." He said. He didn't really... sound as screwed up from the Sticker as Gamzee did. But it still mucked with him, John could guess. Karkat, being the sticker expert, knew already. "I'm holding this sticker crown, okay? Vriska wanted me to keep a hold on it, even if someone tried to take it away..."
"No." Karkat shot him down. "We're taking it, whoever you are."
"My name is um, Tavros..."
"Doesn't matter. Give up the crown or John over here will knock it off your head."
"Er eh um... no. I'd rather keep this. If you'd let me. That Eridan guy... he told me I should have this. He was, what you'd call, threatening. And I knew Vriska. She too told me to keep this."
"Threatening you?!" Karkat asked. "You're the size of a tower!"
"No. What we're standing on. That's the size of a tower."
"John." Karkat sighed. "You know what to do. I've had enough of all this sand."
He felt that he somehow shouldn't just yet. After all, after turning giant, Tavros was connected to something burried in the stadium.
...Somehow. John didn't come across the burried thing while ascending through the place for some reason.
So it turned out said 'burried thing' was a colossal pair of mechanical legs. Well, okay, they weren't attached attached to him, but their paper sparkled and there seemed to be some kind of thin threads linking them to the rest of his body...
"Again..." Karkat said. "Baseball..."
John showed Tavros his new Baseball Bat Thing.
"Oh. That? ...What is that? I'm, uh, confused."
"Get your titanic mecha legs all the way out of the sand." Karkat told him.
He did.
John got the bat ready.
CREEING!
(...The Super Smash Bros. Home Run Bat hit sound. That's what that was supposed to be.)
John took off Tavros' mechanical legs, leaving him just falling over on his face.
Yeah... it took a bit of thought trying to translate Power Tower Pokey on to a humanoid and have that still work. Thankfully, Tavros canonically had mechanical legs. There was that at least?
"We'll be taking this." Karkat said, completely exhausted from the desert journey, walking over to his crown.
John kind of smiled at the fact that he managed to solve the fight without outright killing him-
"Garrggh..." Tavros groaned. "No... those legs... the Crown made them stronger, yes, it did, but they... had... a machine that kept me alive."
Wait what and how?
"A breathing... machine... WHEEZE!"
Oh.
Um, either way, Tavros died. And the Orange Royal Sticker was there for the taking.
"...So." Karkat said. "That's good. Two down, three to go!"
Ah, right.
The troll that was blocking the path out in the forest.
Well, thankfully, along their ways, John and Karkat picked up a Trumpet thing, the same one making the noise they heard a while back. So... just Paperize it on a tree stump and-
FWEWWWWW!
"AAAAAHHHHHH!"
She jolted awake, and clutched on her chest in surprise. "DON'T SCARE ME LIKE THAT! PLEASE!" The troll shouted.
"...Okay?" Karkat answered flatly. Then he remembered something crucial about that particular troll: "Who are you?! You've been BLOCKING OUR PATH for-"
"Hi there! I'm Nepeta!"
...
"Hi." Karkat said. "We're-" He looked like he was going back and forth on what volume to handle the situation with. He settled for 'Not so loud.' "We're John and Karkat. Have you seen any shiny crown stickers?"
"Um, no... hey, you're looking fur something! I'm looking fur something too! My forest is poisoned!"
"...Poisoned?"
"Yeah! A lot of thick purple goop is everywhere! I can show you right now, look!"
She pointed. It was a small patch, but there was definitely some dark purple stuff along the ground. She pointed around in the spots behind her that the duo couldn't access before - more poison, all around.
Also it suddenly got really foggy, really quick.
"I CAN'T SEE A DAMN THING!" Karkat shouted.
"Yes! Exactly!" Nepeta told the two of them. "It's dark! Foggy! Hit with poison!"
And more Underlings still roamed around the toxic woods. It was hard to see, but with a close-enough eye, one could make out what they were. A few Giclopses were in the far distance, John stayed far away from those. Some Devils, too- oh I'm creating new ones now. Well... out of necessity, yeah. Devils, they looked like Imps but were only slightly larger.
EVENTUALLY, they made it to Nepeta's cave house. Tree... house... cave... house...
Okay, that will take some time to explain.
Nepeta lived in a tree, just like Wiggler. Unlike Wiggler, for... some reason, she had dug out a large hole close by it. And the tree itself was... not used. Her little cave-home there is apparently this story's 'substitute' for the tree home.
Also, Eridan was there, pacing around back and forth oddly.
"Jack's orders make no sense!" He complained. "He said she would be... no... that doesn't..."
And then he noticed John, Karkat, and Nepeta.
"Nepeta! You're back home."
"Who are you?" Nepeta asked.
"Who am I?! You should know! I am the Wizard Eridan! Minion of Jack Noir, and sorceror superior. All shall fall beneath me like scraps in the wind! Or, water!"
"We've fought this guy before." Karkat groaned. "Twice."
"Was he bad?" Asked Nepeta.
"Very bad." Said Karkat. "He turned John's Stickers in to shoes the second time!"
"...What do you mean 'Stickers?'"
It was then that Karkat realized that neither he nor John actually explained the latter's new form of combat. Well, of course John couldn't. Heroic mime now and all.
"Okay, you see-"
"EVERYONE! IGNORE HER!" Eridan shouted. "Or not, because look at what I'm about to do!"
He took his wand up and fired some glowing white aura thing at Nepeta.
John almost gasped, because her limbs straight-up popped off. It wasn't anything violent, there were solid... 'bits?' of flesh at the end, little nub things of sorts. But yeah. Eridan turned Nepeta in to a quadruple amputee.
Nepeta screamed.
Karkat screamed louder.
John screamed, not as loud as Karkat but still pretty damn loud.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!" John asked.
And then everyone went silent as they stared at him.
"WHAT IS GOING ON?!" He continued.
"Well..." Eridan tried to explain. "I... used magic to make your girlfriend... I thought you didn't talk! Jack said you didn't talk! You can't talk!"
"I'm talking now because that looks fucked up." John said. "You tore her limbs off!"
"Really?" Asked Nepeta. "I still feel just fine!"
John was definitely more shaken than she was. Eridan, for some reason, looked the most shaken of them all.
"We... need to fix this?" He asked, confused.
"And you need to stop talking! You're breaking the... flow... thing... I don't know!" Eridan said, stumbling over his words. "The only thing I know is that something went wrong! Something went horribly, horribly wrong!"
He began pacing around, muttering something to himself about if only it was a dream, that would solve all problems, before he lept away from the large tree and disappeared from sight alltogether.
"Okay!" Nepeta said. "So, finding my limbs!"
Yeah. That was a thing.
...
A fairly long, annoying thing.
I'll also cut this pretty short because World 2 was already a bit to go through and it was only five levels. World 3 has twelve. Screw that. John and Karkat ventured the woods while Nepeta stayed at her cave house, getting through lakes of poison, rivers of poison, some game show ran by Underlings... that had poison gas abound. Yep, poison, poison, poison.
Each time they found a limb after the first, it would fight them. Even the right leg, which was doused heavily in poison.
"Here." John said. "That should be the last of them. So, do we Paperize her back together?"
Karkat nodded.
"Wait, you can fix this?" Asked Nepeta. "Why didn't you say so! If you told my limbs that, maybe they wouldn't have fought you!"
Both John and Karkat were giving her the exact same stare in disbelief.
"H... how would you even know that?" Karkat asked. "Forget it! John, Paperize."
"Okay!"
Well he did. He just had to... lay out the paper of Nepeta's limbs first, to make sure they were facing the right way.
...
Okay, and stuck together! There we go! The nightmare of seeing a girl basically get her limbs severed was now something he could try forgetting about!
"Hey, you needed to cross the poison lake in the ocean to get a Royal Sticker?" Asked Nepeta. "I can help with reaching that!"
"...How?" Asked Karkat.
"Just follow me to Whitecap Beach and I'll show you!"
At the beach, before actually seeing Nepeta, Karkat and John met up with another troll that was there. Red skirt, jade symbol, asymmetrical horns. She was looking out to a series of rocks with poison around it.
"You missed speaking to me." She said flatly. "Hello, I am Kanaya. I've been told by someo/ne to give some helpful information."
Karkat was about to say something, but John interrupted with a "Speak away." Karkat instantly clamped his mouth shut.
Kanaya gave John a fairly intense stare, as if she thought he was a spy or something, before she continued:
"Something destroyed a ship over there. I would say the ship was sunk, but it is still afloat. By all means, it should be sunk."
"...We figured that out while we were looking for a girl's severed limbs." Karkat told her.
"I'm sorry what."
"Yeah!" John said. "And this is the gi- WHAT?!"
Well... Nepeta finally made it there with them. There was one catch...
...Her um, 'style' as she got there.
There were actually a couple things wrong with it. First, she overpacked. She had huge sacks of various items with her. Sadly for John, none of them were stickers, so he was incapable of arming himself with her wares, even if she wanted to put a price tag on them.
Second, she was armed. With really sharp claw-glove things, made of solid gold, that looked like they could tear bone just by brushing up against it. Wait... do paper people even have bones? Best not to really think too hard about anything. That was probably what happened with Eridan...
Third...
Paper people apparently had blood, because she was utterly covered in it. It looked like a colorful mess, maybe that it'd be paint, but from the smell and the sheer amount of bright red, it was definitely blood.
Hopefully it would wash off in the swim...? Anyway, John and Karkat hopped on Nepeta's back (awkwardly), and she swam off to the sea. Somehow, she was immune to the poison-
"I've been hunting here for years! Uh, sweeps? No... years?" She said. "I'm immune to the poison! This isn't the first time some poison monster appeared, I prepared for it!"
They reached the end. The trip through the ocean only washed a little of the blood off of her, but neither John nor Karkat wanted to pay attention to that. Instead, they just kept moving through the ocean rocks. Heading over to a shipwreck.
The source of the poison, given how much of that stuff covered the place.
"This is where the next Royal Sticker is." Karkat said flatly. "It's not even a question."
"SHINE RAAAUUUGH!" A horrid voice came from the ship. Almost sounding like it was coming from under water.
What came out of that was a horriffic abomination. She looked vaguely like a troll, except with pale, sheet-white skin, a complete lack of any face, and her body was stretched out and twisted to look like some kind of eldritch mass. She had on a shiny, stretched, hole-riddled gray and black outfit that had some jacket, along with a cobalt blue symbol on her shirt that resembled an 'M' with a sharp arrow coming from the end.
"Wh... what is THAT?" John asked. "That doesn't look like either of the other two Royal Sticker trolls!"
"This is new!" Karkat shouted back.
Also, at the top of her head was a Royal Sticker. Purple, to be exact. It gave her that same shine that Gamzee and Tavros had, but aside from that, she looked considerably more alien.
"We're in for a fight." Karkat said.
Thankfully, John had a Sponge Thing with him. He picked that as a shield.
Later in to the battle, the slim, watery monstrosity took in a deep breath, and spewed a giant stream of poison. And the Sponge caught all of that. Twisting, it shot it all back at her, which seemed to... 'blind' her even though she had no eyes? Well, it made finishing her off a lot easier.
John did, by the way.
...And the Purple Royal Sticker was his!
...But the entire gauntlet through the forest... And everything else. The whole adventure had been a giant in the ass so far. And when John tried recalling to before the adventure...
"I think the universe is broken." John finally said. "I'm going to try to see how to fix it?"
Closing AN:
Let me explain. (Well not the story's actual mind-screwy bits that's for later.)
I don't like the idea of myself leaving around tons of half-finished stories and such. I consider discontinuing a work outright to be something of a nuclear option, like, if I put in way too long of a story for an idea that I really began to hate or don't think the effort's worth putting in.
This was a shitpost. It still is. Honestly, don't expect some kind of absolutely giant lore connecting every story I've ever written on here or "too deep" of a meaning to this. But it's nonetheless one that I eventually want to finish to push it behind me, so I went to this and killed the joke of scene-for-scene recreating the game just so that there was a slight chance I'd get this done. That joke mostly existed to make fun of fanworks that are supposedly "alterations" of some sort yet just word-for-word take the exact same story as the original which has always been a major fanwork pet peeve of mine. Anyway, I buckled down. At one point I made it so that I couldn't put this on my "hiatus" in any sort. That was back in September, so you could probably imagine that I really had to push myself through this, and now I'll finally put it on something of a break. There may only be one or two chapters left, I'm not sure, I just know that I want to put this on hold for a good while.
Anyway. Speaking of crap-posts that are loosely based on Mario games, the most likely next update may be Fixing a Pipe... Chapter 4, one that I'm much, much more invested in since it's not a crossover with a controversial property that's pretty much hanging on by a thread now and the video game it's based on is one I actually like. (As I said or at least implied I have not played Color Splash or Origami King so I'll take everyone else's word that those games are improvements, I have however played Sticker Star and aside from World 4 and a couple of "Yeah this is this weird idea at least executed well" moments it was pretty bad.) Expect it to be out... I dunno, maybe before 2023.
Also, Movie Day. That's still a thing, I'd estimate that I'm at least 3/4ths done with the very rough draft of Chapter 2, but I left a ton of gaps in the writing at the moment so the final edit lookover may take a while.