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I'M BACK IN THE FUCKING BUILDING AGAIN

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I believe I made myself clear as to what I was talking about, and it really wasn't towards you. See, somebody I can confirm to be 19 years old (you) I expect to say some shit like that. You're still basically a child. The reading comprehension at your age is too shallow to understand the concepts a more intelligent person might pick up on when it comes to feferi.

Hence why I screenshot the tags of someone's age I can't readily confirm so presumably old enough to be an adult and respond to them primarily instead. See, you can tell because I respond to vocabulary only used in the tags, and not in your own post (misogyny). I hope this clears things up, the reading comprehension should kick in any year now kiddo.

If you hate Feferi you will die and go to hell

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Yes, misogyny, the only reason to hate Her Imperial Chauvinism. Truly just glad that the analysis of Homestuck is so so sophisticated. Sophisticated as a saltine cracker dunked in tap water.

If you hate Feferi you will die and go to hell

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There's two ways to do rainbowdrinker Eridan:

1. Classic cape and all Dracula looking parody, with an even more intense flamboyance and sense of "performing evil."

2.

Bloodswappers please consider rainbow drinker Vriska and rainbow drinker feferi and rainbow drinker eridan and rainbow drinker nepeta and rainbow drinker equius please and thank you

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the forbidden transbian polycule

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Class traitor Eridan is the most beautiful thing in the world

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@mistigri0000 sry i took your eridan and feminized him to hell and back as practice drawing latex. yeah its too late. sexy latex dress + labcoat combo? couldnt tell you im just having fun. whatever. ive said Enough.

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These are popular headcanons and I've often liked both, but I think the most likely answer is that Eridan is just preoccupied above water with orphaning. Remember that Eridan, and the orphaning job is inspired by whaling.

It's an extreme lifestyle, and whaling voyages could easily last up to years. She's kept above water because that's likewise what's demanded of the orphaning trade. Eridan, while she doesn't live in the sea, she doesn't live on the land either, effectively belonging to neither camp. She lives on the sea. Imo it's why Eridan even has a performative thing against land dwellers. It's just a play on sailors' "hate" of landlubbers.

As a job, whaling is mainly just being present, watching out and waiting for whales. Stands to reason that a lot of Eridan's time is spent doing the same, just having to be present above water.

We can look at Eridan's previous weapons to see that whaling is not only her prime occupation, it's what she's been doing long before she even had Ahab's Crosshairs to replace them. And like Ahab's itself is the most whaling-coded.

Anyways this is all to say she's just busy being the orphaner (and in a more tragic sense, she never stopped being busy).

Why does Eridan avoid the ocean? Is it ever addressed? Seeking your best theories please and thank.

The first that come to mind for me are:

His gills are fucked up and he's hiding them with his scarf and projecting this superiority bravado bullshit because he's scared he'll be found out and culled.

He scared of the ocean. There's not many seadwellers and the ocean is huge and dark and full of creatures like Gl'bgolyb for fucks sake.

Whaddaya think?

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eridana

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Quick fem!Eridan I did for a friend with and without the cape. Thought I'd share here in case it would be useful to anyone.

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A page full of transfemme!Eridan. Still deciding on her design (mostly hair. I can't decide if I want it long or not ://) but I love her. Thinking about her day and night.

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I just wanna take a random stab at these, because I have a love/hate relationship with Homestuck's more "science fiction" worldbuilding and, well, how dumb, inconsistent, and irrational it can be... sometimes.

Also I should lead by saying that Alternia as a premise is just based on being an alternative earth. So a lot of questions boil down to is this or is it not one of the ways trolls and humans are designed to have similarities or stark differences.

TLDR at end. And if I misspelled anything or got something grammatical wrong no I didn't. I'm not proofreading, and I am a flawless being free of error.

Bleached hair. I would see no reason why not. Physically, bleaches are whiteners, if it whitens fabric the same way it does hair, it will whiten even biologically different alien hair. I know this is about biology, but I also feel like a grade school teacher getting anal about "can" and "may" so I want to mention there might also be a question to if bleaching hair would be socially acceptable. Somebody already answered the Eridan part (yes, she's born with it), but that might also mean that externally presenting blood color is enough of a norm that standards arise around it. If somebody bleaches their hair, what are they trying to hide? Karkat gets away with hiding his blood color, but he probably has to keep his head down to get away with that. As for damage, I don't think there's enough of a point for it to be any more damaging to their hair than ours.

Though, trolls are meant to be a lot hardier than humans, so you could make the case that one of the strange differences between our worlds is that bleach actually strengthens their hair. In that case, you could probably flip on the previous points so that despite logic, bleach is actually more like a hair darkener, and that they effectively use it like shampoo. It certainly would be in line with Alternia's more hardcore aspects. Plus, I'm also aware of at least one Homestuck inspired webcomic with a similar approach where the alien girl drinks bleach because for her it's a normal drink.

See what I said about how things boil down to is this a way Earth and Alternia are alike or different. You can make the reasonable case for either, using different approaches to the argument.

Do trolls get cancer. Presumably yes. Since genetics and mutation especially exist as a concept to trolls, cancer is basically a must. They have cells, growth, and mutation. The combination of these things will inevitably lead to cancer. Plus Karkat knows what it is besides the name of his sign, so he's probably familiar with the concept from his planet.

Do they need water? Short answer yes. Long answer is that while there is the concept of non water based life in science fiction and scientific studies of potential extraterrestrial life, it has many unique challenges, and would be probably be utterly alien to too much of our biology, even for Homestuck. They're carbon based life on a planet with water. Their form of life better use water, so they need it. How often? Probably the same as humans, with a little variation depending on caste. The way that a dedicated sea dwelling sea dweller is hydrated is completely different to that of a land dweller it would be useless to compare the two in terms of quantity. How does a dedicated land dwelling sea dweller like Eridan stay hydrated? Well, through drinking beverages. There's a panel to prove she does drink beverages normally. Now, that becomes a little strange because for normal sea dwellers, you can't really drink a targeted beverage underwater. Feferi has a panel to prove this. Saltwater fish are basically "drinking" all the time to replace the non salty water in their body that they need that's perpetually becoming saltier because their environment. How do sea dweller biologies adapt on land? Idk. Dragons as cool as they are basically can't exist because flight would be near impossible. But Redglare has a motherfuckin dragon anyways. Scientific reasoning will only get you so far. The best I can give you here is that their bottled and canned beverages are the same size as ours, and so are probably designed for the same levels of thirst.

For food. They have similar body shapes as humans. Humanoid if you will, and despite occasional biological oddities like bladder based vascular systems for sea dwellers, we can assume they have similar sized stomachs, which means they can only fill it up as much as we do in a given meal. However, trolls have a lot a extra stuff to their biology, stuff that would imply a higher metabolism to fuel all their stuff. The strength and durability of trolls compared to humans have to come at some kind of metabolic cost, after all. So, they need more calories, but due to limitations of their stomach size, can only eat meals about the same size as ours, which means they eat more frequently. Simple answer, right?

Haha no.

If you thought scientific reasoning fell apart for the last one, just wait.

Because if you follow the logic that energy for trolls come from food, that makes sense most of the time, but when it comes to psychic powers, it all falls apart.

I've often thought this before: Sollux Captor is basically a living god. Before he becomes a dead god. Then a half dead god, and also simultaneously a half alive god. Because, psionic powers in homestuck are powerful enough to gO FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

Every science fiction story that features faster than light travel must include some degree of bullshit. Each has their special way they get to break this universal law of physics. But homestuck does not say it does space time warping shit. It does not say it enters the hyperspace dimension with different distances between space. It says they push it really hard with telekinetic powers and makes it go faster than light. The energy it would take to get any object with any, even infinitesimally small amount of mass to travel at the speed of light would exceed the amount of total energy in the entire universe. So, to answer how trolls get their energy requirements, the answer is that for some, it might as well come from a higher plane of existence that can only be accessed by psionic powers and that with sufficient exertion, the energy from that plane can be more than literal infinity. And that is just for a single atom of mass. To go the speed of light. When actually they push entire spaceships worth of atoms. Faster than light.

Anyways

Troll grubs, their equivalent of babies, are shown with teeth already. Not only do they skip baby teeth, they skip teething in general. Equius seems to regrow teeth whenever required, so while they do experience teeth growth, it'd almost be useless to suggest that any set are specifically baby teeth.

Medicine. The most clear answer I can give is that they react to most mentioned drugs differently than we do. If you want a less clear answer, this is basically another question of what they metabolize and how. All foods are drugs in that they are chemicals we metabolize for the purpose of energy. Drugs as we know drugs, are chemicals we metabolize for miscellaneous purposes. Trolls eat meat so they metabolize protein for presumably the same purposes we do. But it's also frequently implied that they metabolize soda the way we do alcohol. Is alcohol a drug? Technically yes, socially it's kind iffy.

Alright that's it. A lot of these answers are, I know, less than useful. The simple truth is that you won't be able to get a straight answer about the biology of a species whose biology are a series of jokes. Homestuck is meant to entertain, usually through absurdities, not to inform on realities. Biologically, some characters reconfigure entire parts of their biology between flash games. Every answer must also be asterisked with the fact that troll biology itself is highly variable. Their potential for mutation plays a core role in their society. Some of these mutations become socially acceptable (sea dwellers), some are used (the psiionic), some are the marks of pariahs (candy red blood). The best way to describe troll biology and the general worldbuilding of Alternia is mercurial. Arbitrary and changing on a whim to make jokes rather than consistent sense.

Like for the teeth thing, it's possible that Equius regrowing teeth is a mutation unique to him just to make a joke. Maybe Eridan and Feferi regrow teeth like sharks because sea dweller. Hell, maybe Equius is just mistaken and those broken teeth do only grow back once.

The question of will trolls react the same way to medicine is basically on what will be the funniest. Karkat gets a headache and takes a ibuprofen. Maybe this makes his headache better, maybe it makes it worse. Maybe he did this because Dave suggested it, maybe he did it because on alternia the culture is that you make your headaches worse so you become stronger. One second it's funny that for trolls faygo is alcohol. The next it's funny it isn't. The next it's funny that catnip is like weed. The next, and so on.

Oh and some other troll biology trivia I can think of:

The color of troll blood is due to a pigment that can be separate from the blood. Stated by author

Tears are pigmented, not blood tainted. Terezi's reaction to Dave's death is the most memorable evidence, there's probably more. Karkat too I think.

I'm pretty sure pee is not pigmented, and is yellow for all castes. Pissblood is unique as a slur to goldbloods.

Exoskeleton or skeletons? Skeletons. Can be seen with Damara/young Handmaid

Trolls skin doesn't darken with age. It's purely stylistic that the older trolls look like that. You can see the Handmaid's regular grey skin in the foreground of one panel

In between blood colors? For trolls, either no or not anymore. Earlier panels of Alternia had at the very least lusii with different blood colors than the standard. As these were orphanings, and lusii choose based on blood, they possibly choose the closest fit. Crabdad's existence shows that non standard blood color lusii get by and can be bred.

TLDR Version:

Bleach. Probably, yes, probably.

Eridan's hair. No, no, yes.

Cancer. Yes.

Hydration. Yes. Similar to humans mostly.

Food. More than humans.

Baby teeth. Yes, but more constantly.

Medicine. Differently.

questions about troll biology

can trolls bleach their hair? do they know what bleach is? would it damage their hair if they tried?

did eridan use blood to color his hair? plants? was he born like that?

can trolls get cancer?

can they get dehydrated? how often to they need water?

how often do they need food?

do trolls loose baby teeth and grow new ones, like humans?

how would trolls bodies react to human medicine?

answers or theories welcome! gotta give at least a bit of evidence for theories though

this shit keeps me up at night gang

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Not me seeing a single person calling F*feri progressive and immediately having to resist with all my willpower from exploding.

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★ DAY 100

Thank you for sticking around for this long! It means a lot to me ★

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EriVris is so underrated. *Romantic sigh,* oh to be one of two wannabes modeling themselves after somebody else, knowing enough about how they model their own make believe facade to see through it and just seeing them for the dork that they are.

And oh to not be sure if you hate the fact that they're a wannabe or they're a broken little dork behind the curtain of their own stupid little charade or that they know the broken little dork behind your own.

GOD. Learn to love yourself as you are you morons, if not by actually loving yourself first, then by loving them for their own truth and realizing how horrible it is that their truth is so close to your own. Learn to hate what you wanted to be by hating what they wanted to become because you want to keep this scratched and fractured mirror reflection of yourself to study yourself through. Fuckin dork-ass losers.

Am I even talking red or black anymore or some fucked up mystery third thing. Like it's not hate or love exactly but simultaneous repulsion and attraction to their personality's dipoles, this compass to yourself. I love that they break up. I need them to date again so they can break up more. Over and over

Okaaaaay and like I get Terezi fulfills a lot of the same roles..............

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

..............................................................but she's also kinda a cop So

I could go on and on about more serious stuff like how disillusionment is so vital to both, for almost entirely opposite and yet identical reasons, how they relate to villainy and heroism, but also I just wanna imagine my dumb dweebslash and clack them into each other like making two sapphic hand-me-down barbie dolls kiss.

Your honor I'm not fucking normal about them. I'm going become the joker

me when I meet up with my rival after a solid perigee of not hearing from her and she’s missing half her face and her eyes (eye?) lacks the same mischievous gleam

(wwhats been happenin in your wworld

heard that you fell in lovve or near enough)

(Bonus doodle and like. Pinterest quote dump under the cut sorreyyyyy)

Goofy textposts

and the more serious ones that live in my pinboard

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whoops accidentally hoarded this one.

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An Introduction to PMIO Theory

From here on out, I'm going to start tagging certain posts "PMIO Theory." I've also gone back and added it to my first post, which pretty succinctly demonstrates how critical the ideas contained within it are to this blog. So what does it mean? PMIO stands for Patron, Matron, Infant, Orphan. The theory at its most basic, posits a symbolic relationship between the characters Feferi, Kanaya, and Eridan. Controversially, it also posits that the characters of Feferi and Kanaya are flawed, and deserve correction through character development. They are in fact, not badass girlbosses, but kids that like all of the beta trolls, were uniquely traumatized by the manipulations of their abusive guardian Doc Scratch. It is this trauma that manifests in maladaptive behavior that ends up harming both themselves and others.

The four main tenets in more detail:

1. Patron

Feferi is the Patron. Her character, although not masculine in many ways, has a distinct patronizing streak that lends her to the masculine side of the "parents" in PMIO. A layer deeper, her multiple allusions to general imperialism and more specifically "The White Man's Burden" solidifies her as practicing paternalism. It is in the first PMIO tagged post that I explore that in more depth. The patron side of the "parents" is defined by being overly-assertive, or to stick to Homestuck terms, the active characteristic of Feferi's Witch class. The Witch class, witch (hehe) is of course the opposite of the Sylph.

2. Matron

Kanaya is the Matron. Her character, although so deeply identified as lesbian, is also deeply symbolically attached to motherhood. Her position as matron speaks more for itself than the patron. However, her being maternal is also bad, but less for others, and more for herself. For one, especially notable for a character who is so obviously a lesbian, her self worth is tied to the reproductive duties of the "jadeblood caste." Kanaya also suffers what I would call a chronic passivity, the same characteristic that sets her and Feferi's classes apart. Her first instinct to things that upset her is passive aggression, making her ineffective until too late at best, and enabling of others worst habits at worst, all of which hurts her.

3. Infant

Considered together, their shared aspect is their Infantilization of others, which this theory posits is something the narrative seeks to criticize about them, and the act of infantilization as harmful. It is important to remember that in the narrative as it is presented to the audience, Feferi and Kanaya are blatantly made out to be two halves of Hivebent's "bad moirallegiences," moirallegiences defined by the reversal of ever critical attraction to the pacifier clause in the troll romance exposition. The quote, for the reader's convenience:

"Trolls are a very angry and violent race. Some are more hot-tempered and dangerous than others, to the extent that if left to their own devices, they would present a serious threat to society, or even to themselves. Such trolls will have an instinctive pale attraction to a more even-tempered troll, who may become their MOIRAIL. The moirail is obliged to pacify the other, to function as the better half. The two partners in a strong pale relationship will serve to balance and complement each other's emotional profiles, and thus allow their other relationships to be more successful." (pg. 2401) [Emphasis added]

Contrast how these bad moirallegiences compare to the positive example of moirallegience in Meowrails. Nepeta neither patronizes nor fails to be direct in her criticism of Equius, ":33 < everyone knows youre a weirdo and a cr33p! / :33 < thats why youre lucky to have me to k33p an eye on you." Equius on the other hand, has a pale attraction to Nepeta and explicitly would like to pacified, "D --> As such, [Gamzee] is prone to being more violent and unpredictable than any of us / D --> Not everyone has been as lucky as I in the domain of moirallegiance."

As moirails, Feferi and Kanaya fundamentally fail because they're getting the order of how moirallegiences work wrong. For Feferi, it's a case of the exposition's example of mistaken signals, where she feels invited as moirail when in reality Eridan doesn't feel that way. For Kanaya, it's her fussiness and caring personality that gets in the way of properly expressing her own red feelings as Vriska uses her for her own gain. Both of them are attempting to interject themselves as a literal form of pacifier to their respective dangerous personalities, but aren't wanted as one in the first place. In other words, they are implicitly underestimating the maturity of their "moirail's" actual intentions and capabilities, and thus, infantilizing them.

4. Orphan

Finally, Eridan, as the Orphaner, was designed from the start to contrast with Feferi and Kanaya, and provide them character development by indicting their patronizing and matronly traits as harmful. Had things gone differently, whether you want to call it headcanon or the canon that could've been, or the true plan that was abandoned because Act 6 is a rushed mess, their character development would have been catalyzed by the Orphaner's symbolic rather than literal destruction of the patron and matron, eg. an Orphaning. This character development would allow them to effectively become their mature selves, and thus allow Homestuck to complete itself as a kind of "ensemble bildungsroman."

Using this tag

When you see me use this tag, it is because that post either primarily or tangentially relates to any one or number of these ideas. This tag is also not exclusive. If you want to contribute your thoughts to it, I am following the pmio theory tag and will hopefully notice the post. Or just tag me, I won't mind.