#cargostuck

[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!

[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]

Alternia and its moon

[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]

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]

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]

"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]

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]

I gotta make cargostuck more unfair... No way in hell proper legislation is perfect when its across such a wide range. A fair few countries've gotten independence here on Earth because of distance and cost of war, so no wonder if the Empire is constantly squishing revolutions under its heel.

(Feferi doesn't like all that icky Force and Subjugation her predecessor's Empire did, though, and prefers more diplomatic ways of swatting away annoying little separatists and egalitarians.)

And i gotta make it clear that private corporations are quite prevalent in the galaxy, though they tend to be smaller than today. Some space stations and exoplanet colonies are owned privately, and most resource colonies are private.

[cargostuck]

since sylladices exist in cargostuck, the cargo ships aren't even That big (still not small though), because they're just delivering industrial-grade captchalogue cards across the galaxy

[cargostuck]

Midnight city/Carapacian first contact timeline that im kind of satisfied with. It's very rough but idc

~300 years ago - First exiles sent to the planet

~100-150 y/a - Slick and co. are exiled

~50 years after that - Midnight city starts looking like its current iteration

~50 y/a - Humans and trolls find Midnight City, are able to reverse engineer the FTL drives in the exile ships

~45 y/a - The incipisphere is located

[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]

[cargostuck]

troll anatomy practice, old and new...

posting here because i dunno. cargostuck troll refs i guess!