[ota]

[69problems]

WHO| Karkat, the Signless and YOU!
WHAT| Mutant camping, and food sharing if anyone's hungry
WHEN| All through week one
WHERE| Various less-shitty houses around the residential area
WARNINGS| Nothing as of yet; will be updated or marked in-thread

For the first week, Karkat and the Signless wander the rows of houses. Many of them are empty of anything useful, but occasionally they find a can or two to add to their small stock of rations. In a few of them they find bugs hiding somewhere dark like they found in the first one, and on those nights they have to worry at least a little less about running out of food. Once they even manage to trap and take down one of the dogs -- it isn't exactly appetizing, but cooking it as thoroughly as Signless insists on to make sure it's safe to eat masks at least some of the taste.

Mostly, they use the (less dilapidated) houses with fireplaces as overnight camps. The faint glow of their fire can be seen through the grimy windows, especially when it gets dark.

[As a note, the mods have said humans probably shouldn't eat bugs as they'll suffer pretty bad side-effects. If your non-troll character shows up and wants some of their food, it's probably best to have it happen on dog night.]

Comments

[69problems]

Signless leans his shoulder comfortably against hers -- he feels she might need some comforting gestures, after being (he assumes) all alone since the beginning.

"The Cornucopia was terrible, between the fog and it being so scattered," he agrees. "I couldn't find anything at all. And we've found some food in the hives on occasion, but they're already starting to get picked over, so thank goodness there's reliable food to hunt."

He pushes the plate of bug toward her. It's cooked fairly on the well-done side, but he understandably doesn't quite trust it to be clean otherwise.

"Here. It's not half bad."

[sleeplessinalternia]

"It's not exactly gourmet either," Karkat points out. "But these are the biggest land bugs I've ever seen on Panem, so I suppose there's that. Turns out there's some water bugs in the Capitol nutrition commerce hives, though. Expensive as fuck, though, which I suppose is natural, since they're seadweller fare. It sort of makes sense, though? That they have water bugs and not anything else. Land bugs are probably not fancy enough for Capitol tastes and where the fuck would they get nonviables?"

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

"I do miss the easier pickings on Alternia. At least I didn't have to worry about that being poisoned--Ah I think we are all past the point of caring how 'gourmet' or well-prepared our food is."

She takes up a piece, eating it in quick bites that betray her hunger "Water bugs? Huh. I didn't think humans cared about that sort of thing really. Fancy sure, but I don't notice more waterbeasts than landbeasts. Maybe they're just the ones they like best?"

[69problems]

"I've eaten them a few times, when I was still learning all the human food." He'd abused the ability to order food right to his room a bit when he'd first arrived, but in his defense being able to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted had been an extremely exciting luxury.

"They're not bad, though I don't think they're much better than land bugs personally. It may very well just be a matter of them being seen as more high-caste, given the focus on what's often arbitrary levels of worth here."

He watches her eat, a little concerned with how clearly hungry she is. It's a strange reversal of their usual roles: him fussing over her to make sure she's eating enough, giving her part of something he hunted.

[sleeplessinalternia]

"Yeah, I've had the smaller, cheaper waterbugs," Karkat says. "I think the humans call them 'prawns' or whatever. They do this thing where they saute them in, like, butter and serve them over noodles. I think they use the butter on the big, really expensive ones too. Me and Terezi tried using them for grubloaf and it wasn't bad but it wasn't exactly right either. But it was better than some of the other stuff we tried."