Broken Troll Worldbuilding discussion

[epimetheusEmrys]

What’s the deal with nooks and bulges? Like sometimes nook is used to mean like belly button, sometimes it seems to mean ass, and sometimes it’s used to mean something else. The use of the word bulge is equally arbitrary. It’s just confusing

[calamityCons]

What’s the deal with nooks and bulges? Like sometimes nook is used to mean like belly button, sometimes it seems to mean ass, and sometimes it’s used to mean something else. The use of the word bulge is equally arbitrary. It’s just confusing

You're absolutely right, and the idea that Bulge was supposed to be the Troll equivalent of a phallus also makes statements such as Kanaya's claim of being "Bulge Cursed" by Vriska more confusing than it's worth. Does this mean trolls are hermaphroditic like in popular Fanon, or does it mean Kanaya is trans, or that the female is the one with the bulge in troll physiology, or WHAT???

[thorondraco]

What’s the deal with nooks and bulges? Like sometimes nook is used to mean like belly button, sometimes it seems to mean ass, and sometimes it’s used to mean something else. The use of the word bulge is equally arbitrary. It’s just confusing

You're absolutely right, and the idea that Bulge was supposed to be the Troll equivalent of a phallus also makes statements such as Kanaya's claim of being "Bulge Cursed" by Vriska more confusing than it's worth. Does this mean trolls are hermaphroditic like in popular Fanon, or does it mean Kanaya is trans, or that the female is the one with the bulge in troll physiology, or WHAT???

Obviously bulge are used as a general term for genetilia albeit leaning more towards a phallus object. The knook is actually the ass crack. As terezi once said that karkat's head was up his knook.

I imagine ultimately that trolls don't entirely differentiate between because for trolls both a vag and a dick serve the same purpose when it comes to a bucket cause both, same as humans accomplish a similar feat.

[Dream Muttman]

Back in the day it was pretty widely believed that trolls were hermaphroditic. I'm not sure why that perception changed.

[calamityCons]

As far as I know the hermaphrodite Fanon is the most popular in erotic fanfiction, but there's no canon coherence over what a Nook is specifically, and what a Bulge is. I'm pretty sure discussion of my taste for/against the hermaphrodite erotica isn't welcome on this forum tho.

[thorondraco]

Back in the day it was pretty widely believed that trolls were hermaphroditic. I'm not sure why that perception changed.

The theories vary. Personally i think that there was a point where trolls reproduced in a more traditional way, and then transitioned into reproduction via the Mothergrub. It would explain their sexual dimorphism. Human females are shaped as they are because of child birth and all that.

Becuase its basically cloning it would kinda explain why they still have these features. Especially as reproduction is not based on biology but more on some empathic thing. Emotional connection creates the best examples. its why they seem to tolerate things like a purpleblood having a burgundy matesprit. Strong offspring come into being from strong emotional connections rather than 'strong genes'.

[JakeMorph]

Back in the day it was pretty widely believed that trolls were hermaphroditic. I'm not sure why that perception changed.

largely because it's inconsistent with what the comic actually says, which is that trolls are "biologically bisexual", which dictates that they have at LEAST two biological sexes. i think hermaphroditic trolls is still the MOST widespread headcanon, it just falls apart under further scrutiny of the text.

What’s the deal with nooks and bulges? Like sometimes nook is used to mean like belly button, sometimes it seems to mean ass, and sometimes it’s used to mean something else. The use of the word bulge is equally arbitrary. It’s just confusing

is it possibly because bulge is just an english word referring to a protrusion, and trolls just use the word to refer to anything that is a protrusion?

[thorondraco]

Back in the day it was pretty widely believed that trolls were hermaphroditic. I'm not sure why that perception changed.

largely because it's inconsistent with what the comic actually says, which is that trolls are "biologically bisexual", which dictates that they have at LEAST two biological sexes. i think hermaphroditic trolls is still the MOST widespread headcanon, it just falls apart under further scrutiny of the text.

What’s the deal with nooks and bulges? Like sometimes nook is used to mean like belly button, sometimes it seems to mean ass, and sometimes it’s used to mean something else. The use of the word bulge is equally arbitrary. It’s just confusing

is it possibly because bulge is just an english word referring to a protrusion, and trolls just use the word to refer to anything that is a protrusion?

That oddly still works for either form really. Its weird but they are both kinda built the same way, our reproductive system. Like someone took very similar parts and modified them towards related but opposite goals.

It honestly wouldn't take much finagling to make a female based reproductive system function like the male one, without entirely converting them. Ovaries and testicles are effectively the same, they just one produces the sperm and the other the eggs.
Biology is weird and fun at the same time.

Course far as we know troll jizz has more relation to Ectoslime than it does to our reproductive material. The mother grub stuff remind me a lot of paradox cloning. Material of two peeps and put together to create a third peep.

Much like how cherub maturation reminds me heavily of godtiering.

[JakeMorph]

two sexes having the same genital structure is not hermaphroditism lol

[thorondraco]

two sexes having the same genital structure is not hermaphroditism lol

I wasn't, i am saying that its a possiblity female trolls WAY back in the past when the mother grub first happened had their ovaries altered to function more like 'testicals' and that would allow them to... well... Actually i don't know how crude i can get with language on the forums XD.

[JakeMorph]

okay, yeah, i see where you're coming from now.

i still think that's heterosexual reproduction though? i think it's kind of a fruitless exercise to compare trolls to organisms from earth with two sexes when that's clearly just not how they work.

[thorondraco]

okay, yeah, i see where you're coming from now.

i still think that's heterosexual reproduction though? i think it's kind of a fruitless exercise to compare trolls to organisms from earth with two sexes when that's clearly just not how they work.

i think its a situation where we don't have a viable term as we don't have any example like this in the real world.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

maybe the bisexual reproduction is the red reproduction + the black reproduction? i don't really have a horse in this race.

I do think it sounds like a rebuke against any kind of fantasy alien biology existing in Homestuck.

bruh it's just lifespans. purple chucklevoodoos and yellow vision twofolds and cerulean empathy/mind control aren't going away. the warmth of the blood being determined by the color is still around. heck, violets and fuchsias being adapted for underwater living is already really alien! those are fine because they don't imply an inherent superiority in the same way as lifespan does. I'm not sure why negating the lifespan thing is so devastating in a story where most of the characters are adolescents and the ones that are much older have some sort of funky magic to justify their immortality.

Oh yeah! They all have the same length of time for their adolescence. That's also weird. I know that's a necessity of arc numbers and all, but it's still dumb.

[Sahxyel]

I'm not sure why negating the lifespan thing is so devastating in a story where most of the characters are adolescents and the ones that are much older have some sort of funky magic to justify their immortality.

I honestly think that the different lifespans are one of the really interesting things about trolls that is kind of unthinkable for us, it feels like a tradeoff between incredible psychic power of the warm color castes and the longevity of the cool color ones, 'problematic' suggestions of biological imperatives be damned. It'd be like humanity having someone who was literally alive during the Roman Empire as a potential leader, we certainly can conceptualize that people can live shorter than ourselves since people can die of accidents or disease before they even reach their 30's.

But what is both exciting and difficult to conceptualize is someone who can live for a long ass time. 100 years ago was the 1920's, and maybe if you talk to some old people you might hear about how that time was from a first-hand experience. The closest we really get with this sort of thing are vampire stories, which is still fiction, but those kinds of characters I always found really fascinating.

We see this kind of thing weigh on certain trolls in canon itself: Mindfang speaks about waiting to meet the Summoner, and that her long-lived nature would carry her to the point of his birth and development. His short life would not surpass hers, at least, because he would be the one to kill her. But it's rather tragic, isn't it? Highbloods have to contend with the idea that while their lives are long, many around them live for such a short blink of time.

You really can't get that by just eliminating the biological differences of lifespan longevity. It makes the trolls far less interesting to me too if it were just removed, they'd REALLY just be grey humans with horns and the occasional psychic power then.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Voidrot seems to be a condition that would only affect gold bloods. The Alternian empire, known for culling the weak, is probably not going to bothe having adults research a cure for it. What point would there be in helping Folkyl with her chronic exhaustion if either way she'll never be a battery? I don't remember what Marsti said about it but props to her.

Maybe Gamzee decapitates the cadavers because it keeps them from turning undead? I'm wondering why nobody else turned undead besides maybe sollux.

[Guy-Rocketram]

Obviously, we need more poorly done meta jokes/commentary and $1 dating sims instead of actual content or answers.

i'd take commentary over answers to troll biology any day. troll culture is supposed to be a joke. all the contradictions are just a big joke. the idea is that it's so surreal and nonsensical the fun comes from just beginning to imagine how the fuck anything works on alternia. as time went on the ancestors and shit happened which caused it to become a serious and real culture, which it never was intended to be. this is why it's so confusing and awful

EDIT: ohhhh by commentary i thought you meant like, the homestuck books, and not like "commentary on WhAT iS cAnOn????????????? :o)" yeah that kind of shit sucks

[egg]

Everything in Homestuck was a joke, until it wasn't. This is simultaneously both its biggest strength and greatest flaw.

[calamityCons]

There are legitimate and powerful ways to make something that was initially funny take on a deeper and more dramatic or tragic meaning. There are also bullshit asspull ways that make something that was innocuous and a joke into a confusing snarl of continuity errors and Cerebus Syndrome. Some of the ones in Homestuck work out pretty well (Rose’s gothic interest in horrorterrors becoming a major detriment to her mental state, for example) but others don’t work as well (troll worldbuilding)

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

So, you like it when the punchline to the joke is "It's serious and fictionally melodramatic, actually" and not a fart played over a clip of someone saying "i think oppression is bad"? yeah that's fair.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Are we accounting for how scratches lead to anachronisms, like Jane and Jake talking in faux-antiquated language? Broken Human Worldbuilding.