Creative De-Stuck-Tion

Currently just brainstorming for a cosmic horror Kingdomstuck. Thanks to @deliverusfromsburb for inspo on the name. Dead Dove content likely. Can't stop anyone from interacting, but behave.

[drowningcomicart]

hi i have opinions on the topic of outward signs of aging in trolls that are half-justified by canon and half by self-indulgence, lms if you enjoy bodily functions with like .02% basis in real biology. Transcript/better explained notes in case my handwriting hurts your eyes as much as it hurts mine: HATCHLING: pale gray skin, no pupil or pigmentation (basically blind, uses touch and smell to move about the caverns). WIGGLER/YOUNG: after pupating, skin is ‘standard’ gray (will vary slightly from troll to troll), sclera have pigmentation that offers some protection from harsh light (obviously won’t save you if you stare directly at the sun), but limits vision somewhat. PUBESCENT: Pigmentation begins to break down around the pupil, letting in more light and allowing for better vision. When this occurs will vary from troll to troll. TEEN to YOUNG ADULT: pigment has broken down to make a clearly defined iris (roughly 20% of the eye), blood color shows through the now transparent tissue. ADULT to MIDDLE AGE: pigmentation continues to gradually break down, widening the visible iris (now anywhere from 40-60% of the eye depending on age). skin will also gradually darken/harden. OLD: skin is now very dark gray or black and hard (relative to young skin, tougher to damage but not impossible). pigmentation in eye is almost, if not entirely, broken down, leading to extreme light sensitivity (a boon in the dark reaches of space!). This makes the eye appear uniform in color, though the true iris itself only takes up a portion of the eye (the distinction between the iris’s edge and sclera is visible only up close).

do with this what you will, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[asukaskerian]

Did you ever have a xenobiology headcanon for trolls, at least for funsies? I'm thinking like imagining them furry or with tails. I once read someone talking about them swallowing food whole with no gag reflex, which seems mighty creepy but interesting.

hmmm. *chinscratch* i’m not extremely xeno that way. echolocating/electricity/psi-sensing horns, mostly, plus jaws that unhinge but they still can’t swallow anything their throat won’t fit over and they’re not as elastic as a snake there. they also don’t suck as much (when kissing or going down on someone or just at all) because they never nursed from their parent as a newborn so the reflex isn’t there, it’s more of a deliberate, learned-later gesture.

also all trolls have venom gland buds, just hormones make them develop or not. It’s actually not that rare for a female troll to be totally flat or for a male to have breasts, though most of the time they stay relatively small. “male” and “female” trolls actually function as what we’d see as breeding males biologically speaking, since they bring in the gametes, and the Mother Grub as female. (not quite the same tho, it doesn’t map exactly on our stuff.)

they also breathe a lot through their skin and sopor has a high oxygen content, so a human might get a little dizzy but comparatively we don’t breathe much from our skin. Trolls are way harder to drown, even the non-sea ones. (it’s still not advisable to breathe the sopor in! DX too thick to play nice with the fiddly little things in there.) but considering their bodies slow down a lot in sopor and they have automatic “don’t let wet stuff down the windpipe” reactions (separate swallowing and breathing tubes if that’s doable maybe?) so they might sleep well enough that they stay submerged and don’t visibly breathe more than the couple of times they need to resurface per night. (if they’re having bad nightmares they need to surface more — once per hour or more) and it might wake them up in full. usually they’re so used to repositioning themselves to breathe in case they’ve slipped under that it barely registers.)

[thepioden]

I am hijacking this post for xenochat and I am not actually sorry.

So first to answer your question, Asuka, separate throat/food tubes and trachea/breathing tubes is a really much more sensible way to design things because it makes it really difficult to choke. The reason we don’t have that set up you can blame on our evolutionary history; there is no good reason why trolls wouldn’t have a totally separate trachea that is not at all connected to the mouth. 

For the sopor bit, for trolls to breathe through their skin, it has to be pretty thin (at least in some spots); human skin is too thick, amphibians do it really really well, and bats actually exchange a large amount of gas (mostly expelling CO2) through their wings. So either trolls have large patches of thin skin for breathing somewhere, they keep their noses above the surface for breathing like sleepy crocodiles, they go into really deep torpor and can hold their breath for 8ish hours/they regularly surface to breathe, or they take the side-necked turtle route. 

[asukaskerian]

eeeee. *rolls in info*

i think i’ll go with some spots down the sides and really deep torpor route. XD but they still have to surface at least once a sleeping cycle.

[freudianity]

What if the spots down the sides are the same basic thing as the seadweller gills? Just that the seadwellers adapted them for use underwater.

[asukaskerian]

huh! possible. i don’t usually try to headcanon the seadwellers because thhey make no sense, but it having a common origin with normal skin breathing spots… hrrm no, they’d need something other than fishlike gills then, skin spots that exchange oxygen wouldn’t evilve spontaneous new organs UNDERNEATH…. unless the normal trolls also AAAAAAAAAAAAAA not enough biology to make it make sense.

anyway i like the headcanon that troll precursors used to be amphibious and living in swamps.

[fattyskeleton]

What if for the fish trolls, it’s more of an age sorta thing? Like, lets say that all trolls have some sorta gill things as grubs, but the lower spectrum trolls mature faster as grubs and pupate to the crawling on land part of the cycle a whole lot faster, only having used the gills for about a few months or something, and the higher you are on the spectrum the longer you stay a gilled grub, making the gills stronger. So fish trolls who stay gilled longest have gills that are too big and strong to just sorta shrivel up and fall off or something.  This could also be a way to say why trolls who are higher on the spectrum have worse nightmares? Because the gills might absorb sopor differently then skin and the bigger the gills left on the troll are the less skin is available to actually take in the calming drugs. And that’s why the high spectrum trolls are crazy, they can’t get enough drugs?

[creative-de-stuck-tion]

Partway-evolved gills would be awesome - I think Fozzer says troll predecessors evolved in swamps, which makes sense since they can handle both water and land!

[xeno-bio-sociology]

'Nother question; could sopor slime realistically work? Not in terms of drugging, I mean it's implied that trolls need to submerge their heads in it to sleep. Some of the cocoons don't look deep enough for that, but Karkat comes out of his with slime in his hair and Tavros complains he can't sleep because his horns won't fit in his. How do they not drown? I know perfluorocarbon can be breathed but it's very far from comfortable to do so, and sopor slime looks too thick for that.

Absolutely! One just needs to adjust from a mammal-focused view of trolls and there are many animals that can breathe in liquids. This is especially relevant to seadwellers, since they can breathe in seawater proper. Perhaps all trolls have gills but only seadwellers have ones that are well developed enough to survive prolonged activity using them alone. Trolls could undergo torpor to lower their oxygen (or whatever) needs while asleep, allowing even weaker gills to sustain them. Especially if sopor is specifically very high in oxygen. Their metabolic processes could lower enough that they only need to surface to breathe say, once an hour or something even without gills. Dolphins keep one lobe of their brain awake while sleeping so that it can continue to periodically breach the surface to breathe and watch for threats, and with only the breathing being necessary I’m sure that that’s a far less than half-awake-brain adaptation for trolls to make. Turtles practice an underwater oxygen exchange technique with their anuses, while amphibians often breathe through all their skin so long as it’s wet above water. Trolls could similarly have patches of skin inside or outside of their body that are packed with blood vessels and primed to diffuse oxygen. And depending on how long sopor has been around, they may have evolved with use of it specifically! Perhaps as the method that Trolls were able to escape the seas in the first place, they packed themselves into mud during the day or in dry season to stay moist. If they switch to this breathing method exclusively during the day, shutting down the lungs to preserve energy, then that keeps the need for a wet sleeping spot at day. Meanwhile there would be an evolutionary pressure on landdwellers especially to lower the amount of surface area through which to dehydrate when walking around at night. This could be accomplished by retracting or reducing gills if they have them, covering patches of breathable skin when awake - perhaps a pouch that inverts when asleep, or internalizing the process like the turtles. Breathing the sopor in the lungs is possible, but especially before sopor proper was a thing probably a bit risky. If they evolved for it it wouldn’t be uncomfortable like perfluorocarbon is with humans though.

At some point sopor may have been invented or discovered specifically to increase the oxygen content of one’s bedstuffs. There is mention of it preventing horrorterrors, but that might be a recent addition or else the brain’s reaction to not getting enough air at night. The meteor trolls might be suffering in this way, unable to get into a deep enough sleep since that would necessitate their lungs turning off completely, or their brain freaking out with not quite enough air to function properly when sleeping dry, recycling what little it has.

Alternately, one could go all out there and ignore the seadwelling history to make the horns absorb air or function as breathing tubes. Thus, a troll would submerge only enough to leave the tips of their horns out in the air. The shape diversity makes this possibility unlikely though, unless they function this way  only when completely underwater. Else someone with, say, Chahat’s horns, would have trouble getting their head under enough to sleep while still breathing.

With this breathing method (or with surfacing to breathe), sopor could instead serve a cooling function. We know Alternia gets hot and bright enough to blind, and there is no reason to think that even a cave or an early hive would necessarily provide enough shelter to be safe by itself, let alone comfortable. Before houses especially, a troll might find themselves exposed come dawn. To prevent their tissues from being baked and dessicated, we go back to the mud burrow method. And then perhaps sopor as cleaner and less likely to dry out.

One could further theorize about whether seadwellers and landdwellers have differing needs here after who knows how long evolving in such different environments heat-wise, but I think I’m done for the day. There’s lots of possibilities for sopor to work as advertised, and these are just a few I’m sure!

[creative-de-stuck-tion]

Now you mention it, I don't think we see a 'cupe in Feferi's hive...

[astrohussy]

I keep fantasizing about how cool it would be if humans were supernatural creatures and their powers and physical features were based on their sun, moon, and rising sign.

Hear me out: sun signs determine the basic physical features like nails that are strong like claws or goat horns or gills that can be activated and deactivated. Moon signs determine what powers you have; Aries moon can have pyrokinesis, Gemini moon can multiply, Leo moon can manipulate heat and fire solar beams, etc. And the ascendant can determine your color scheme, physique, and secondary characteristics like hair and eyes. Hehe sorry, excuse my brain fart

[dragonsongdreams-deactivated201]

If that were the case, I’d be a psychic centaur with water and empath powers with a gryffindor color scheme. ….Write a book about this. Now. I want to read it.

[motherofmoonthread]

okay no maybe not a book but like make a chart!!!!! with all the stuff!!!! please!!!!!!!

[astrohussy]

Alrighty as promised I’ll make a chart of this

Aries

Sun: Ram horns regardless of gender, strong foreheads, and bones are stronger than average since they’re prone to injury

Moon: Pyrokinesis, quick self healing factor, or precognition 

Rising: Red and orange color scheme, hair often curly but can be any “natural” color, eyes are either a warm red or a bright orange, most are average height or smaller

Taurus

Sun: Bull horns regardless of gender, large hands in proportion to their bodies, and stomachs and immune system allow them to eat anything without harm

Moon: Super strength, stone manipulation, or can communicate with any mammal 

Rising: Brown and green color scheme, eyes could be either color, hair often thick and usually black, green, or brown, often either chubby or beefy physique (some more or less thick than others)

Gemini

Sun: Second set of arms, eyes can zoom in and out of long distant range, and have a much easier time learning other languages than others

Moon: Super speed, can shapeshift into any human form, or physical duplication

Rising: Color scheme is light blue and yellow, eyes can be either color, hair can be any “unnatural” color, physique varies but they have long legs proportionate to their height

Cancer

Sun: Hands can morph into crab claws (color determined by rising), skin glitters when exposed to moonlight, all of them are empaths

Moon: Lunar abilities ( produce and shoot lunar beams, control tides; however this can only be accessed at night), psychic absorption (can absorb and use one power at a time, this only tires the victim) , or producing force fields

Rising: Silver and shades of blue color scheme, eyes can be either color and are very glossy, hair is either blue or black, tend to be short

Leo

Sun: Feline like canines, nails are long and strong like claws, skin glitters when exposed to sunlight

Moon: Solar abilities (produce and shoot solar beams and control heat; this can only be accessed during the day), laser eyes, or sonic boom roar (explosive, can physically push away anything in its close range)

Rising: Gold and red color scheme, eyes are often gold, hair almost always big no mater the length, can be any “natural” color, either really tall or really short

Virgo

Sun: Large feathered wings (color determined by rising), they look human otherwise 

Moon: Portal creation, telekinesis, or poison manipulation

Rising: color scheme is green and yellow, eyes can be either color, hair is either brown or black base with any second color, physique varies but all have longer than average fingers

Libra

Sun: Skin on the hands and forearms are metallic gold or silver, have glowing eyes (color determined by rising), can always tell if you’re lying

Moon: Plant manipulation, siren song, or sonic scream (not explosive but can stun any living being in its range and break close enough objects)

Rising: Green and pink color scheme, eyes are either pink or yellow, hair is either white, brown, or pink, are often tall with wide hips regardless of gender

Scorpio

Sun: Fully functional scorpion tail (proportionate to their body), can easily see in the dark, very silent walkers who can sneak up on anyone

Moon: Shadow manipulation, mediumship (includes the dead and powerful spirits), or selective mind reading (can’t communicate mentally)

Rising: Black and red color scheme, eyes are either dark blue or bright red, hair can be any dark color, can easily blend in with their surrounding 

Sagittarius 

Sun: Can switch from biped to centaur and back, keeps their tail in any form, hair grows long and fast

Moon: Can shoot energy arrows or spears, light manipulation, or power jump (can leap as high as 50ft off the ground)

Rising: Orange and brown color scheme, eyes can be either color, hair is red or dirty blond, often tall but short ones are faster runners

Capricorn

Sun: Goat horns legs and hooves, pretty much satyrs 

Moon: Ice manipulation, telepathy, or temporarily slow time

Rising: Brown and black color scheme, eyes are any shade of brown, hair is black but can have any secondary color, often average height and have a very fit physique but that varies, they throw some of the hardest punches

Aquarius

Sun: Are the most human looking of the signs but they always have at least one robotic body enhancement, can retain more information than the others

Moon: Electric manipulation, technopathy, or wind manipulation

Rising:  Electric blue and black, eyes are any shade of blue, hair can be any bright “unnatural” color, often tall but body type varies

Pisces

Sun: Can switch from biped to mermaid and back (scale colors determined by rising), have a set of gills that closes on land, often have scales grown on stray parts of their body that shows even on land

Moon: Water manipulation, aura manipulation, or invisibility 

Rising: Sea green and lavender color scheme, eyes can be either color, hair can be any shade of blue or purple, physique varies but they have large glossy eyes

[chelonianmobile]

@littledarkfairywitch I feel there should be something in there about the Chinese zodiac. I know it well enough to put something together, but what features should it control? The year, hour, and month are affected by it…

[fear-aesthetic-tourney]

1d

desolation Vs corruption

desolation

corruption

Voting ended onNov 16, 2023

Desolation synopsis

Fire. Burning wax, boiling water, melting flesh. Singed paper. Singed hair. A fire you can't see, that destroys you anyway. A burning desire, engulfing you like flame. Smoke, ash, charcoal. Something you can never get back.

Propaganda

The desolation is so underrated. fire is so beautiful, its so much more than just chaos and destruction

Corruption synopsis

Rot. Insects. Disease. It lives under your skin. Mycelium burrowing in, eggs laid underneath, plague spreading through the blood. Fungi, mold, slime. Wasps, maggots, flies. Boils, pus, rashes. But it loves you. And it consumes you. Isn't that love?

Propaganda

A sweet living mandala of maggots and bones bleached white long ago. They feast and writhe and feast and die, what a blessed life they live. One could be consecrated into their order, although you cannot become a member. Oh the joy of being a temple for those least welcome elsewhere, to offer safety, shelter, and food with only your flesh. Join us, and become a home.

[becquerel]

i luv kingdomstuck aussss

[davestriderpostscratch]

kingdomstuck AR is either king dirk’s twin brother/corrupt “advisor” OR his cursed hand mirror

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

The divine right of kings but it's a curse

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

You will wear the crown, you have no choice, the spikes growing on your head have a metal sheen to them and coalesce into a mock halo. You will command, for your voice is a terrible thing, you are a terrible thing. You will be just, and you will be fair, for any grievances you cause to your people scar your body and leave lasting pain and false promises sizzle on your tongue like hot oil. Your god is watching and it won't forget what your ancestor did and it won't let you go

[ghostfire]

Clothing designs for when your tail won't just clip through. 🩶

[groggygrimalkin]

Also on the topic of biotechnology I think Alternians making living beings into utility, vehicles,weapons, and just everyday products is also a massive show of "Don't fuck with us because the last thing that did is now a component in a car". On the off chance that a planet being invaded by Alternian forces wins, its customary to destroy and bury any of their technology that remains to not prolonge its suffering. Hi yes I want to write Alternian society as a whole more horrifying and alien like, to anyone who's been invaded by them they are not just gray humans they're seen by many as a horrific and brutal cosmic parasite who grows and captures living things just to turn them into everyday products. If you try and download too many things on your husktop it might get sick and bile will be ejected from the disk drive, if a scuttlebuggy gets into a fenderbender it will bleed like a stuck pig, and Alternian battleships groans aren't just mechanical they're real and alive and in pain and crying out into the void

[justcuriouspolls]

Which common fanfic trope do you *dislike* most? (Assume it’s not done super amazingly or super terribly, just average)

Friends to lovers

Enemies to lovers

Coffee shop au

High school/university au

Found family

Slow burn with miscommunication

Soulmate AU

Hanahaki

Wdym? I love all of these options

I despise multiple of these with a burning passion

Not a fanfic reader/dont know what these are

Show results

Voting ended onJan 28, 2024

[friendsim-more-like-lovesim]

*cocks nerfgun* Your troll food headcanons,hand em' over.

nerf or nothing

also did i spent Way Too Much Time doing research for this ask? yes. yes i did. please appreciate my efforts hhh

ok here-a we go!!

General Troll Food “Facts”

• Trolls can mainly eat Meat and Candy, with some other less common foods.

I personally think trolls are omnivores, but heavily leaning towards carnivorous tendencies in general/on average

• Candies like cotton candy and orange creamsicles exist both on earth and alternia, so it’s likely safe to assume other candies under those categories exist as well. (It’s interesting to think about trolls and ice cream though but that’s a topic for another day)

• Other obvious inclusions are sugary soft drinks like Faygo and Tab! These exist in many flavors, and interestingly, it’s unknown wether “sugar-free” versions exists or not.

• Equius drinks milk (though not cow milk!), but we don’t know if this is just an equius-thing, a blueblood-thing, or if all trolls are able to do so. goes hand in hand with the nipple debate i guess.

• also, in the epilogues (apparently?) dave says trolls can’t eat onions so?? there’s that

Grub-Food

gets its own category just because

• some “grub-“ things that exist include things like Beefgrub, Grubsteak and Grubloaf (which apparently is ‘covered in a “sweet tangy mucus”’... ew), which makes me think they have caramelized things

• Grub Sauce of course, which is suspiciously similar to blood, although in the troll wiki it says it has the consistency of mayonnaise... again; ew.

I think Grub Sauce specifically is seen as a comfort-food, almost like a more socially acceptable baby food, or applesauce-ish. It is also confirmed that its literally made of Actual Grubs, so yes, they are cannibals.

• Other Meat Things exist as well, like the infamous oblong meat product

sidenote: Cherubs eat exclusively a lot of meat and candy, maybe that’s where they get it from? seems trolls eat some other things as well though

Insects

• some insects eat blood, in addition to human skin and other bugs

• over half of all bug species (on earth) are herbivores, but this probably differs on alternia considering everything tries to kill you.

• They also eat nectar and candies/sugar! The meat/candy parallels are going strong, once again.

Traditional/Mythological Trolls

because why not

• Traditional trolls will eat almost anything (rocks, bones, metal whatever)

• they have very strong digestive tracks, and Alternian trolls probably do as well

• will eat humans, or each other (again with the cannibalism?? cmon guys)

• Trolls also consume other livestock like farm animals and such

• probably omnivores

(they also eat porridge i guess - according to an old scandinavian fairytale)

CONCLUSION

THEY ARE OMNIVORES WHO MOSTLY EAT MEAT AND CANDY, AND THEIR DIGESTIVE TRACKS ARE LIKELY TOUGHER THAN OURS although some human food cannot be consumed by trolls

thank you for your time

[creative-de-stuck-tion]

This reminds me of Discworld's silicon-based trolls - in "Nanny Ogg's Cookbook", she warns people who might be dining with trolls that trolls have eight thousand words for rocks and one for vegetation. "If they've known humans for a while, they'll probably understand that 'oak tree' and 'cabbage' are different, and so are 'cow' and 'frog'. What I'm delicately alluding to here is that you'll get something organic and probably heated. After that you're on your own."

[calamitycons]

SS mentioned Prospitians adding veils to their hats. Is that what HD and NB got going on since carapaces don't have hair?

You are correct! Their “hair” is just fluffy veils that resemble human hair since it’s meant as insulation from the cold. Prospitians aren’t used to cool temperatures so it feels uncomfortable for them to not have some kind of shawl or fabric around your head that covers it tightly. Examples:

In contrast, right now there’s a fashion trend among Skaia’s rebuilding civilizations of wearing brimmed hats or hoods to block the sunlight from the eyes. Examples:

There have to be brims or it’s not current fashion, it’s the wartime trend of pointy, snug hats that won’t fall off easily. Such as these:

As of the modern day, it’s currently “in vogue” to have a wig-like veil underneath a smaller hat and variants like those. This way they can maintain the current fashion of “brimmed hat” as well as a more traditional wraparound/snugness that was in fashion during the war.

And that’s why Hysterical Dame and Nervous Broad have their hats that look like hair! What fashionable ladies. Tend-setters, even!

[mercurialmalcontent]

roachpatrol replied to your post: Trolls: Body/facial hair or not? Claws or just long pointed fingernails? THE WORLD WANTS TO KNOW!

this would make for some interesting h/c tho, the idea that troll claws were kind of irritatingly vestigial and something that needed a lot of care and cleaning

That’s a cool idea, I like that! I’ve been playing with writing more caretaking fic lately, so I’ll have to keep that in mind.

[roachpatrol]

I really like fic that flips the species dynamic around and makes humans a lot sturdier and tougher than trolls, too. So like, it could be really fun to have that be one more advantage humans get in a human/troll matchup.

Like say, humans have strong blunt vegetable-shearing incisors, dangerous grinding molars, and spit crammed full of bacteria and digestive enzymes. Yikes! Their species-standard body temperature and obsession with clothes means they’re ready to roll in temperatures down to 30 below freezing: they’ll be grumbling along through the snow while a troll lies down and quietly dies. Furthermore, they sweat to shed heat, not display aggression, so they’re good at obscenely hot temperatures too. They do lack any kind of hornsense, but the lack of headgear also makes their emotional tells that much harder to read, and there’s way less to grab on to or disable in a fight—their smaller eyes and also make gouging more of a challenge. 

And then you’ve go their sturdy fingers and flat little nails, courtesy of the same biological history that gave them those freaky ball-jointed brachiating shoulders. The clawless fingers look silly but are super low maintenance—finger sprains and dislocations are pretty much unheard of among humans— and humans don’t need any special training or grooming to throw a punch. They just pop you one and stroll off to wrestle an elk.

Basically: humans look pretty fucking dumb until they suplex you across a table. 

[ihasafandom]

Interesting. There’s a big difference between evolving to LOOK tough and dangerous, and actually BEING tough and dangerous.

It’d be hilarious if they all end up thinking that the trolls’ll need to protect the humans, since they look so weak, but then they end up in a fight and the humans are the ones who end up packing the most punch, even unassisted by weapons and such.

[creative-de-stuck-tion]

I've also headcanoned for a long time that human manual dexterity is way higher, and when I mentioned this other people pointed out that that's supported by most troll tech being grown instead of put together and sewing being a very rare hobby for trolls.

[splickedylit]

please tell me more about the stuff in the tags of your last fic, I love xenolinguistics! What if brother and sister were just correlated do to our gendernorms? What is sister in Alternian?

I mean, to be clear, that post is an excerpt, and far from the full fic which is still in process! But uhhh let's see. So in the tags you're addressing, I said

"what if 'motherfucker' and 'brother' are translated different but they're related words in alternian…. #what if 'brother' and 'sister' aren't different words theyre just translated in english based on gender but there's no distinction actually #it's all the word I tend to translate as 'kin'/'family'/'fam' but gendered by english-speakers for comprehension"

My thought wasn't that there was a word for "sister" in Alternian, any more than a word for "brother"! In keeping with the minimal amount of gendering I try to do when I write trolls, I was thinking there could be a single word that just basically means "troll who is part of my 'family'", (although "family" here is its own kettle of fish on Alternia, more on that later). To a conversational learner of Alternian, it would be fairly natural to translate it according to the gender of the person being addressed, since calling someone "brother" or "sister" has more linguistic precedent than the gender-neutral address I've used in clown-fics before, which is "kin".

(I don't think I got that from canon, as far as I remember I came up with that because I wanted more queer characters and needed a gender-neutral church term of address for them, lol).

Bear in mind my worldbuilding is also partially predicated on the way I tend to write the clown church, which is a little more based on real life juggalos than some clown churches I've seen written in fics--I like the idea that purplebloods are still violent assholes to each other, but that they have a weird kind of cohesion, a default allyship with each other via the church that isn't quadranted and isn't necessarily in cahoots, but just expects a certain amount of kinship. "Family", or "troll-closer-than-friend", something that's not quite a quadrant but is closer than the average troll gets to have with other trolls, usually. I like the thought of other blood castes finding that deeply unsettling--and I also feel like it makes a certain amount of sense; both for the sort of weird troll equivalent of an ethnoreligious group and also for a comparatively smaller ruling class that has to keep the much more numerous, psionically-gifted masses in line.

But also as individuals they will certainly still challenge, undercut, and murder each other sometimes haha. They're Alternian trolls after all. ANYWAY

Terms of address in Alternian are actually a really fun concept, especially if I was playing around with the concept I talked about a little in later tags on that same post--that you can present yourself as a superior, inferior, or intentionally give zero inflection either way, which is risky in its own way if the person you're speaking to doesn't agree that you're equals. That actually meshes nicely with one of the few bits of xenolinguistics we do get in the comic, which is that apparently the troll word for "friend" is the same as the word for "enemy"! Which you could work in a couple of ways!

the word just essentially does mean "friend"/"troll I'm close to"--if you are actually friends, then cool. If not, it becomes more like a guy in a bar calling you "pal" and stepping into your space. Humans have their own dominance and submission tone indicators, and imposing closeness or familiarity on a person you aren't familiar with to that degree can be a threat in any language, so it would feel right to me if Alternian had the same thing but much more aggressively codified.

The word is understood as "friend" when it's said in a submissive/friendly/fawning stance, and "enemy" when it's said by a superior or dominant troll. This is actually also fun because it means that unless a highblood is explicitly lowering themself to use a less dominant tone, they're speaking to their social inferiors with pretty overt hostility.

To bring it back around to the original topic, I honestly like option two a little better--if any term of address can be dominant/hostile, submissive/fawning or neutral/equal, then Gamzee when he's introduced using the "equals" inflection of "brother/sister/etc" would carry on his canon vibe of not really acting like A Real Highblood. And then when murderstuck hit, he could drop all the way to a supposedly super friendly and harmless inflection on the "it's me :o)" sentences and an aggressive one on the "AND ALSO ME :o(" sentences.

"Motherfucker" is a fun one because carrying on the thought I was having in those tags, I was imagining "motherfucker" would be a very similar word in Alternian to "kin"--but smushed together with the Alternian for "fuck" and used in all sorts of ungrammatical ways. "Motherfucker" would make sense to me as an Anglicization of a word that in Alternian might mean something more like "(friend-closer-than-friend)fucker". After all, trolls don't have mothers--I think I've written before with the alternate headcanon that it refers to the Mother Grub, and is kind of profane/gross in that sense, but I also like the concept that part of the reason that we see so many purplebloods throwing "motherfuck(ing/er)" around is because they're also the ones who have a concept of "family" via the church, and a nonexistent translator was like "for readability I have not translated this literally but have instead used the nearest human equivalent" lol.

[alternianstuff]

Troll Diet, A brief Guide

Kicking off this blog with a good, slim read. I will try my best not to use my quirk for the following text.

Generally speaking, a Troll's main diet is mainly carnivorous of nature, as you can tell from the teeth alone.

However, thanks to industrialization and the introduction of what people would colloquially call 'junk food', the diet had also become sort of omnivorous as sweeps passed.

Vegetables, and some kinds of fruits, were introduced in the population's diet, and that opened the horizon to more exciting flavors (or making meat more flavorful).

There is a very small percentage of trolls, considerably a minority, that are voluntary vegetarians, due to personal or biological motives.

Now with that out of the way, exactly, what do trolls eat normally?

Half a portion of their diet is, to some other cultures' horror (apparently), their own young. Grubs that failed to bond with a Lusus and wandered for too long become the target of butchers, poachers, or local food companies. It's just the way it's been for sweeps.

From them you can extract small portions of meat, morsels, juice, and even soft bone for the few people that like to chew on that kind of delicacy (and have the kind of teeth for it).

The other option is, of course, lusus meat. However there is a sort of taboo: It is forbidden to hunt a bonded lusus. At least, with the purpose to harvest it for food. If your life is in danger because of one going berserk, go on and defend yourself the best you can (and get yourself a legislacerator while you're at it).

Killing a wild one is just fine, as long as it isn't poisonous or endangered. Although, I've seen some... interesting individuals try the meat of some poisonous spiked fish. Eugh.

Trolls need plenty of sugar to sustain themselves, and that's where the sugary drinks, fruits and juices come in play. Hydration wise they need it, but can survive for a while without it too, with the exception of seadwellers which need moisturized skin all the time.

Me personally, to conclude this article, I have a balanced diet of both meat and sugar, with pastries in the mix.

[creative-de-stuck-tion]

Trolls do have expected gender roles, but they’re not the same as human ones. All trolls are expected to be fighters, and have to be just to survive, but girls are held to higher standards of intelligence, cunning, and cruelty. This isn’t great for either binary gender, since girls who aren’t naturally like that struggle and guys are discouraged from showing intelligence or ambition. It’s probably worse for boys, in the same way human women are worse off socially but it’s not exactly great for men who don’t meet the standards either. Traditionally, an angered male troll will just smash your head in; a female one will make you beg to die.

Trolls also have no concept of a gendered name, and their grammatical pronouns are based on caste, not gender. Since he’s a strategic genius, most trolls assume Dirk is female until proven otherwise.