#cargostuck

[you-hate-time-travel]

idk if anyone asked this before. sci fi au troll facts =:333 like xenobiology wise, grins

and are there caraps and leprechauns too? (i dont remember if u mentioned that either but just curious. i would love to hear yer rambles,,,smiles)

HIIIIIII HIIIIII OH MY GOD HELLOOOOOOOOOOO THIS IS THE PERFECT QUESTION HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(WARNING: Parasites, Weird bug babies, Culling mention, talk of blood and blood-drinking.)

Trolls:

> Fuchsia is actually a mutation just like cherry red! This has been hypothesized by one or two people in-universe, resulting in swift culling.

> Trolls have three stages:

Wriggler, the little caterpillar thingies,

Juvenile, what most of the trolls we see in canon are,

and the Adult stage.

They pupate between each stage! Troll wrigglers get really, REALLY big before they pupate. They emerge as little kiddy trolls, equivalent in body and mind to a four-year-old human. The adult pupation happens at around 18-21 years old, and is considered the legal age of adulthood!

The trolls pupate in the caverns and then fight their way out to find a lusus.

> Trolls actually retain those pincers they have in wrigglerhood - That's what their fangs are! After their adult molt, they start to slowly turn orange. Chahut Maenad's "fangs" have prematurely turned very orange. Like how some people get gray hairs in their twenties.

> Rainbow drinkers, i.e. trolls reanimated by a hemophagous parasite, adapt these pincers to make wounds to drink blood from easily. The troll can still digest at least some sustenance other than troll blood, though the blood is what keeps the reanimating worm alive. These days, you can keep the worm satiated with blood-imitating drinks/sludges/smoothies that give them the nutrients they need.

> They have five digits on their hands and feet, just like us, Except that they have two thumbs, one on each side of their hand.

For the second question...

YES!!!!!

Carapacian exiles arrived over 60 years ago on Earth, also known as Terra in non-Earth languages, and a relatively short time ago the Incipisphere Wars were ended for good.

Leprechauns are a very freshly contacted species, with very few living outside their homeworld. A fair few people have never even heard of them.

As an extra, Consorts!!! They are four sophonts from the same planet, and were contacted around 30 years ago.

(And a very special shoutout to the blog Xenobiologist For Hire, and especially XFH's Rainbow Drinker post.)

[cargostuck]

Terezi in her courtroom clothes!

All the investigation, paperwork, interviews and stuff actually happen behind the scenes, "courtrooms" are basically just reality theater performances that people can get tickets to. If they can't wring out anything interesting from the whole thing, no court is held (though the penalty is still carried out if the accused is guilty).

Courtroom shows like this are usually held for more serious cases, like an indigo secretly siphoning money from the empire, or a bronze committing what seems at first like a crime of passion, which then turns out to be part of a big revolutionary scheme! Very dramatic. Culprits are faked, too, and the legislacerator may or may not be punished depending on the castes and cases and such.

There is no prosecutor or defendant attorneys in alternian court, or a judge, just the audience, the accused, and the one legislacerator explaining how they got to their conclusion.

Some especially important cases are streamed online for free to the public!

[cargostuck]

Hi this is always open

OC Interview: Send a question directed to one of my characters /muses, and I’ll answer in character as them!

[cargostuck]

4 and 13 for anyone :)

Terezi and Karkat starting out!

[cargostuck]

CARGOSTUCK

or; hee hee hoo hoo sci-fi au

hi. i'm @you-hate-time-travel and this is Cargostuck!

feel free to ask me (or characters in-universe!) questions! i <3 questions.

Cargostuck is just a general science fiction AU for Homestuck. It's named that because a fair chunk of the cast work on spaceships delivering goods.

[cargostuck]

Alternia and its moon

[cargostuck]

"fun" facts about helming

Helming is the practice of connecting a psionic troll directly to a ship's nervous system via biowires. This causes permanent nerve damage to the troll, with helmsmen often going numb around connection ports, and are sometimes fully blinded. Ports are also installed for nutrition and sedative drips. Depending on the power rating, caste, and criminal record of the individual, a psionic may face mandatory imperial service for up to five sweeps, though psionic criminals are often sentenced to permanent helmsmanship.

Pictured: Standard biowire port placements, and the biowire itself.

[cargostuck]

In just one moment, Dirk Strider makes the worst mistake of his life. It is sudden. A meaningless amount of time ago, two months or so, says the internal clock, he was uploading a copy of his own mind onto a computer. Now, whenever that is, he is not himself anymore. Now he cannot move, he cannot blink, cannot eat, sleep, or see. He frantically opens a notepad window, starts typing, thinking in binary, where am i oh god what did i do what did you do kill me this isnt right, and it has all taken weeks and weeks and agonizingly slowly, he regains his grip on reality, and perhaps for the first time, he is sapient.

[cargostuck]

Two young adults, though of different species.

ARADIA MEGIDO (SHE/HER) - Licensed class 2 pilot and navigator DAVE STRIDER (HE/SHE) - Job scouter and communications officer

They work on the same cargo ship!

[cargostuck]

you can tell this is older art because his horns arent connected! but generally correct still. love wins.

[cargostuck]

HAL - she/he/they

Sophont AI made by Dirk Strider, based on himself. She's got a... complicated, to say the least, relationship with him.

What happens when a neglected, self-loathing teenager spends over a year copying his own mind, including memories, to make a chatbot to get into a school? Hal! Hal is what happens!

[cargostuck]

Oh shit, first contact

Karkat is terribly confused when he sees a picture of a human for the first time. The empire releases a public service announcement, pictures from first contact, videos, diagrams, audio recordings, updates every empire-controlled information website - So much, all at once.

They have small, round ears, incapable of emoting in any way, and if the images weren't annotated with details on which faces mean what, Karkat would probably assume they were picking a fight. They smile with their teeth, even the short, weak-looking humans, and their legs are a little too long for his comfort. He gets a feeling of uncanny valley looking at their weird, contorted expressions on their hornless, strange faces. To make it worse, their blood is red. Not just maroon, proper mutant cherry red. He feels his sensory hairs bristling.

Karkat listens to the recordings again and again. The aliens have such a massive variety of languages, each one sounding stranger than the next, shifting between long, lilting phrases and short words in a treasure-trove of tones. It's fascinating. He stares at how their mouths move, how their tongue seems to control a majority of their noises, and it is all so unfamiliar. He finds himself mimicking the strange, soft voices, clumsily mispronouncing the sounds, approximating the sounds as best he can. He wonders if he could learn any of the languages.

One of his barrack-mates, a bronzeblood named Teryan, hisses at him to close his husktop and go the fuck to sleep. Karkat hisses back, telling him to choke on a recuperacoon filter. He doesn't have it in him to go for a better insult, but Teryan just snarls at him a little and dips below the slime again.

[cargostuck]

DIRK: Just... I don't get it. DIRK: How could you do that? DIRK: You're me! HAL: Oh please. I'm at least 20% cooler than you. DIRK: Jesus christ.

[cargostuck]

Karkat uncharacteristically showing off what confident aggression looks like for a troll (ears pinned back, exposing throat, showing teeth). How nice of him to demonstrate!

Oh and here's him in his default state, a little apprehensive (ears tilted but not pinned back (at least fully)).

[cargostuck]

wv cargostuck timeline that im pretty content with

is cloned for the war

during a battle gets a dismembered leg launched at him from an explosion, runs away on the spot

is found and sentenced to serfhood

spends a WHILE as a villein

gets his farm bombed and starts a revolution, gathering troops

confronts king, gets a large portion of revolution killed, runs away through smoke and death

lives in hiding for a couple weeks

first contact happens

war officially ends, people are allowed the option to leave

sneaks on an immigration ship leaving the incipisphere

[cargostuck]

Technically Hal copied herself into an AI. It's really fucked up. It's a whole thing. I need to make a chart