#hecate bafmet

[fantroll-purgatory]

So this sad sod was my 11 year old self’s “attempt” at a fantroll, and oh boy oh boy is he ever edgy-mcedge-lord. I kinda liked what his theme was and deiced it was revamp time…and so here he is.

I love this child with my entire heart and would risk jail time for him.

Let’s get this freakshow on the road.

FIRST: Alternia.

Name: The only semi-redeemable thing I did for this poor lad was his name. It was Hecate which was from the Goddess Hecate who was associated with magic, ghosts, and necromancy. More or less what he was based off.

I think let’s run with the fact that you made this dude when you were 11! In addition to being about dark magic and ghosts and stuff, let’s actually include the childish element of it and a desire to be seen as dangerous. This actually tracks with the later backstory you provide that he’s sheltered and has little experience interacting with others.

For the last name, how about Bafmet like Baphomet, especially given that the Goat of Mendes is often depicted with the two crescent moons of Hecate. It also dovetails nicely with the symbol you already gave him!

Age: 7.4 Alternian Solar Sweeps

Strife Specibus: Bookind???

Jkdfkjslf does this mean boo-kind like ghostkind or book-kind like tomekind. Because either technically works.

Since I’ve added Baphomet and have also decided to be a little bit bullshit about this, maybe glaivekind based on Heartcleaver, Baphomet’s glaive in D&D.

With that said, I later agreed with your assessment of him as a Void player, which means you can do fistkind/hornkind, which is to say, a specibus that just requires using the weapons you have on hand. Hornkind will be especially effective once I give him the goat horns he deserves.

Fetch Modus: ???.

I kinda like a Gravestone Modus, if we’re going for necromancy! Captcha cards can be “dug up,” but inevitably in increasingly degraded conditions depending on how long they’ve been left to “rot.” Means you need to think twice before taking something.

Blood color: Rust, since it would allow him to have physical abilities and there usually best known with powers relating to the dead(?)

(I was kinda of thinking to changing him to a Jade blood since for all the dying-dark-undead theme I was kinda going for???)

I agree, actually! Male jadebloods are considered rare, and I especially like a troll whose caste is known for raising new life being associated with necromancy.

Symbol and meaning: Pentagram, dude was meant to be based around black magic, sorcery and necromancy(?) Or some kind of edgy and dark magic based theme.

Trolltag: ghastlyGhoul??? Don’t know man.

Yeah let’s punch that up a little. How about astraNomicon, using the inverted star in his symbol (astronomy) and common endings for pop culture occult-y books (i.e. Necronomicon).

Quirk: Still clueless, sorry.

I have one that might be funny: how about he swears a lot but “censors” it using his symbol. He may not see it as censoring (and may rather see it as posturing by aggressively reminding others of his symbol), but it’s certainly how it comes off. Example: I don’t have f⛧cking time for this sh⛧t. Burn in h⛧ll you weak ⛧ss m⛧th⛧rf⛧ck⛧r.

Special Abilities (if any): All I got from the vaguely written and horrid fanfic my 11 year old self wrote and never finished was he had some kind of uncontrollable marysueish black magic that made “insane” and messed his eyes up. (Also it had something to with the horrorterrors?)

Hm. If we let his jadeblooded status ride, maybe his eyes never adjusted to the light due to living in a cave for most of his life? So contrary to what we know about undead jadebloods in Alternia, Hecate would be unable to see well in the Alternian sun (though he’d still be able to survive it where other trolls couldn’t), but would be able to see devastatingly well at night. It lets him be “weird” without being Mary Sue-ish.

Lusus: It was some kind of mix between a cat, a owl and a snake. I think it’s based off a a mix of common familiars witches had?

Tbh that all sounds really solid!

Personality: Here's what I tried to come with based on his older and messier one;

Hecate is a shy, soft spoken troll who would rather very much keep to himself. Being raised basically in the middle of nowhere, he’s useless at speaking to people and awkward leading him to distance himself from other people. He also has a very fragile ego which can be broken, being on the bottom of the hemospectrum only adds to this.

If we make him a jadeblood, we can still make this work since practically all of his company would be grubs. Necromancy may also be something to which he’s drawn because of the loneliness and steadily growing pile of grub corpses as the cave trials continue. This also gives you a very interesting story hook: what gets him out of the cave?

Interests: Shitty Horror Movies, magic tricks, reading, astronomy, magic, necromancy

Title: Some kind of void player???

Given that he’s grown up away from others, yeah I think Void stands. And as a character whose actions claw him out of obscurity, you may want to go with Witch of Void (think: grimdark Rose)? Works thematically, and his inverse is Seer of Light, which works with all that book learnin’ he must be doing.

Land: ???

How about Land of Snow and Circles? I like the idea of this half-blind f⛧ck⛧r stumbling around a bright tundra. He encounters glyphs set into massive stone slabs of increasing size which he must arrange to create a planetwide circle to summon his denizen.

Dream Planet: Derse?

Ehhh tbh I can see a convincing argument for either. I always like putting edgy characters on Prospit since its bright aesthetic contrasts theirs AND the whole talk of destiny can make them get a big head.

I’m really sorry for giving you such pisspoor info to work with but I hope you can get something out of it.

Nah, I like it! If I’m being honest I would’ve probably been harsher if I’d gotten this troll like 4 years ago, but I’ve softened over the years and in my old, ancient age of 25 I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that fantrolls are just about having fun at the end of the day.

I’d say we’re doing a redesign but tbh except for the sign we’re building this guy from the ground UP.

Sorry about the picture quality for the first guy; tumblr kinda deep-fries images if they go beyond a certain width and I can’t click through to a clearer picture until it’s published so…here you go.

So I think your character forced me to look at what people are trying to do when they build an Edgy Character. From reading your bio, it looks lie you want a character who is immediately readable as a threat, but also comes off as cool and gothy? Which is how we get the dude on the right. Let me go through the details top to bottom.

Horns – Like I said, Hecate deserves some goat horns! They’re great for goring, they make him look taller, *and* Baphomet is sort of a goat.

Hair – The length comes from a chirp-trolls template, while the bangs are from one of fan-troll’s hairstyles. If we wanted to keep going with the sheltered aspect, I feel that long and unkempt hair is a quick and easy way to convey that as a creepy fact without sacrificing the cool factor.

Eyes – I used a tarsier’s eyes to make the original base. You’ve definitely seen a picture of a tarsier before even if you didn’t know it was called that. Mainly I went hunting for an animal with spectacular low-light vision. This way you can have your cake and eat it too; at night Hecate has big, round eyes to allow him to see in the dark (which kinda verges on adorably creepy), and during the daytime he has pinpoint pupils that look incredibly threatening despite the fact that he can’t see a thing.

Mouth – now that we have all these delicious new trolls in Troll Call, we can really start to see trends among specific blood colors. For jadebloods, it looks like they all have emphasized lips and two fangs, so I added those in for him. It definitely made him look more unsettling than when I just gave him a normal mouth full of teeth.

Outfit – all of this is courtesy of fan-troll, as usual. Once again, I wanted to go back to both the concept of edginess and to the trends we see among jadebloods. Despite covering a wide array of aesthetics, we still see that jadebloods trend toward the fashionable. With that said, a suit on its own risks just looking dapper, but a suit with practical boots? That’s terrifying. Why does he need practical boots. What is he going to do?

Anyway, that concludes my review of your troll. Thanks for submitting this dude; I’m real fond of him!

-TR

[fantroll-purgatory]

Phomet Burzum Review

Alternia

They’re they/them and where one of my original struggles was deciding whether they’re boy or girl, I think I’d rather keep it ambiguous. Not sure if the sprite helpfully evokes that. This is mainly playing into the idea that the Sabbatic goat possesses all sexual characteristics to be ‘both’ at once, and with how Norse Seidhrs (magic practitioners) were generally woman with magic being seen as a womanly thing. Despite this, Odin himself is shown to study and use Seidhr magic, so that’s fun.

I love that they’re nonbinary and tbh you don’t need justification for them to be nonbinary any more than you’d need justification for them to be a boy or girl. (Everyone please send us more nb trolls we have so few and I love them all dearly). I would…caution you about creating a nonbinary character using the reasoning that Baphomet has intersex characteristics, since those two things are neither synonymous nor even really related at all? I mean I love this androgynous kid and will die for them and will pour my heart and soul into the redesign in which I maintain their gender ambiguity but just. Y’know? And there’s still enough reasoning for them to be nb on the basis that subverting gender norms is very much a part of punk culture and that Seidhr does indeed have a murky history in terms of which gender “should” use it so it still holds if you need a narrative reason.

Name: Phomet Burzum

‘Phomet' is from a shortening of ‘Baphomet’ which is the goat-headed figure that has come to represent the Sabbatic Goat, tying to their symbol and minor Satanic themes.

Burzum is the word for ‘darkness’ in Black Speech from The Lord of the Rings series.

God I love that’s he’s a little bit similar to a troll I recently reviewed. Hecate Bafmet and Phomet Burzum: BFFs 4 LYFE (however short Phomet’s may be)! Skulking around in the dark! You’d better watch out, you’d better watch out, *you’d better watch out,* *YOU’D BETTER WATCH OUT*! These two unsavory characters are comiiiing to tooown.

Strife Specibus:Axekind for now mainly as a joke on an ‘axe’ as a guitar slang term. Could instead do ‘guitarkind’ and have it go into axes later a la Rose’s knitting needle kind acting as wands.

Fetch Modus: Cryptogram - Has to spell out words with musical notes. Probably gonna use the French method for simplicity.

Blood color: Rustblood - Blooooood. But no, they’re a rustblood kinda based off a concept I had. With the True Sign of Aries being a Time one, with the social pressures kinda forcing Time as a concept over the rust caste, I’m making a cult based off Death Metal aesthetics rather than juggalos. Some sort of redblood solidarity where they wear corpsepaint. It’s meant to be a kind of mirror to the Juggalo cult, who are mirthful and the highest land caste, whereas this Metalhead cult is more stoic, macabre and comprised of the lowest ladndwelling caste. Dunno.

I do know!!! That’s metal as FUCK. Also I’m DEF adding corpse paint to their sprite!!!

Symbol and meaning:It’s a goat head, referencing the Sabbatic goat.

As with the previous troll I reviewed, it reads well and matches Aries “sign language,” and I’ll see what I assign them after looking at their aspect and moon.

With that said, since I’ve now made a similar comment twice in a row I think it’s worth going back and establishing what exactly does make a sign fit its caste’s language in case anyone wants to do a fan sign beyond the extended zodiac that could still plausibly fit within canon…

Trolltag: Nothing yet, used to be ‘cantankerousGrendel’ but I’m not sure it’d fit them these days.

Given that you’ve worked them into a death cult, how about culminateGeneration? It also works with their Void aspect.

Quirk:They talk lyke thys tü be as BRÜTAL as possyble - They replace ‘I’ and the matching sounds with ‘y’ and replace ‘u’ and matching sounds with ü. This is meant to mimic the trends a lot of metal bands to to their names in order to look cooler.

hjfsdk;l when I said that with the umlauts it honest to god sounds like someone trying to do a goat imitation so PERF. Also brings to mind associations with Brütal Legend so I figure we’re gonna take this WAY over the top.

Special Abilities (if any):They’re a magic practitioner, and regularly communes with mysterious dark entites (Horroterrors) for song advice and inspiration. In return, their resulting music often carries a lot of eldritch effects to it, which Phomet doesn’t mind because it looks so BRUTAL.

Lusus: (I’m proud of this) Pentaram - It’s… a goat head with five spider legs. It’s species doesn’t live long, they can barely move around because they have five fucking legs to support a whole goat head. Not even big ones, they’re just about average. Phomet hates their lusus and thinks it’s completely lame. When it gets sprites and is this not bound to the cruel mistress of gravity, it looks WAY cooler. Mainly based on the Sabbatic goat again, this time with the goat-headed pentagram.

dhgsljk;lafjha;jeg I love them so much. They’re a Parentaram.

Personality: Honestly, this is kinda where I struggle the most. The most I can think of is Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse. Their voice is a similar growly type.

The character you seem to have created with Phomet is one who is very attracted to the lük of things and not to the substance. I like that for a Void player! Their interests in stuff is initially superficial, ‘empty.’ This sets them up for a very interesting arc in which they will need to actually face up to what they’re doing, the good the bad and the ugly. Dig a little deeper into this theme! You can do a lot with it.

Interests: Magic, music (playing guitar, listening to bands, composing their own stuff, singing), occult studies, looking up brutal and gruesome things online (basically an average troll google), haircare.

Title: Knight of Void - Off the bat, I’m in the 'Knights are passive’ camp and that their class verb is 'Serve’. I often try and approach my Knight characters from different perspectives but they all more or less come to the same thing, so it’s cool.

(ʘ‿ʘ ) You have come to…a blog that does not actually subscribe to that verbiage so my advice from here on out may not apply…

Anyways, their interest and dabbling with dark, esoteric magic is a good link to Void in my opinion. Forbidden, unknowable things that are best left obfuscated. The Horrorterrors are very Void-coded, such as how people can interpret Rose’s Grimdark status as her acting as a Void player, as well as residing in the Furthest ring, furthest from the Light of prospit.

Phomet regularly communes and 'serves’ Horroterrors in the way similar to a Warlock from Dungeons and Dragons serves their patron. What Phomet gets out of this is some kickass riffs and lyrics whilst the HTs just get another emissary or plaything.

I…hm. I mean I think Knight of Void actually does apply here just not for the reasons that you do. Knights tend to be drowning in their aspect, and Phomet is definitely doing so here.  They’re surrounded by secrets and horrorterrors and have almost no understanding of the depth of the forces with which they’ve involved themselves. Ideally, a Knight would grow to eventually wield the very things under which they’re being suffocated.

I’ve not really thought about personality in regards to this classpect, that’s what I’m struggling most with them.

Yeah, if we look at someone like a Dave or a Latula, Knights tend to come off as very superficially cool specifically because they don’t understand that they should be concerned by everything they’re overwhelmed with. I think you’re fine just making Phomet a punk #aesthetic kid like many of us were in middle school and letting them come into their own from there.

Land: Nada

Does this mean you didn’t assign one or that they don’t have one??? Because the latter would be really interesting if you want to give them no choice but to consort with horrorterrors; if they, for example, die before getting in and wake up on their moon after a kiss, they might find that their planet never manifested/was destroyed before they could enter.

Or, if you do ant them to have a planet, how about Land of Metal and Mirrors? It would fit their aesthetic really well and also be a sly dig at their own vanity, with mirrors that show warped reflections or aspects of themself that they don’t like. The way to reach the denizen would be to accept all reflections as true expressions of themself, allowing them to warp between mirrors (including one located at the heart of the planet, inaccesible by any natural means).

Dream Planet: I wanna say Derse, but Prospit would be a nice ironic fate for them.

I think this is a question of what you want to do with them. It’s not as simple as Prospit = nerdy goofballs and Derse = edgy coolkids, though that may be what someone gets if they initially saw the moons to which the kids were assigned. Vriska, one of Homestuck’s most famously murderous and grey-moral characters, is a Prospit player. This is because her character’s focus is on Destiny. She relies heavily on predestination and is all about living up to be the grand hero she knows she’s meant to be. If you want Phomet’s arc to be about breaking free of forces to which they’ve dedicated themself with little understanding, you’d go with Derse (which is my pick, personally, especially because it puts the horrorterrors right in their ear before they even get into the game). If you think that they have a destiny to fulfill (even a dark one like eventually becoming the horrorterrors’ permanent plaything), then you’ll wanna go with Prospit.

So. With A Void assignation and a Derse moon, we get Arittarius, The Sign of The Astronaut. And interesting pick, especially if we go with the concept that they don’t have a personal planet! So let’s move to the redesign!

So. You may have noticed that Phomet has undergone something of a transformation. Let’s go top to bottom on this.

Horns - I gave them a new set of horns to match their new symbol. We already have a troll with this symbol, but I didn’t want to repeat her horns on them and their new pair looks like the tops of eighth notes as a nod to their musical inclinations!

Hair - So the thing about death metal fashion is that the folks in it have great hair, but it’s not necessarily as neat as Phomet’s original style. Their hair also tends to be longer, and chin-length on a Homestuck sprite sometimes translates to ear-length in Hero Mode, so I really wanted to hit the length home. I pulled this straight from a fan-troll sprite sheet, then added some definition at the top. One of the little cowlicks got lost behind their horn, but I wanted there to be five directly surrounding their face to reference the pentagram.

Corpse paint - I pulled the colors directly off Gamzee’s face to further drive home the mirrored implications. I even mirrored Phomet’s own face paint to make it look a little like a Rorschach blot. Finally, I futzed with their mouth makeup until it kind of looked like the silhouette of a goat head?

Eyes - So part of maintaining an androgynous look is to make things a Little Unsure. Did I add eyelash definition to their eyes or did I just make them more diamond shaped?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Who knows. We’ve seen undereye makeup exactly ONCE on a troll but I liked how it made their bags stand out so I applied it over the corpsepaint.

Mouth - Hey :V Did you know goats don’t actually have upper teeth? That’s all just one gum, baby. I found this out while spriting Phomet’s mouth and now I have to live with that information and you do too. They have an underbite now, and just enough lip definition to make you cock your head. Is that lipstick? Are their lips just full?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Vest - I added some pockets to make them more utilitarian

Symbol - t b h this one just looks like a totally plausible variant of the symbol you already gave me.

Belt - It is. A SPIKE BELT.

Boots - constantly use fantrollartroom’s combat boot sprite???? MOI? Yes, yes I do, they have done a better job of spriting combat boots than I ever could and I love combat boots and they’re metal as hell so they get some.

So that concludes our review! Luv this scamp please get them a comb for me.

-TR