I can't remember if this has been asked already, but do the troll religions play a part in sovstuck?
If you mean things like Worship of The Sufferer and Belief in Ancestors? Yeah.
If you mean the Juggalo Cult? No.
Religion is pretty... I want to say, decentralized? On Sovereignstuck's Earth C. It's not segregated by species or location or anything.
Focusing on Sufferer Worship here: Tejuri is (Texican) Troll Catholic, with a particular interest in The Psiioniic, the Forgotten Saint of Prolonged Suffering and Aviation. She dragged Retris into gaining an academic fixation on this as well, even though he was raised in a country almost entirely populated by Carapacians.
Dynama, however, intensely believes in Human Christianity. She doesn't particularly believe other forms of religion are as valid as hers. Kind of a dick move, but not fully unexpected.
Kurloz isn't in the Clown Cult because that whole thing was kinda fucking lame and we don't really want to do anything with it. He is goth now, though. Hopefully this makes up for it.
You're in luck!! I'd quite like to talk about Canadia and Neo Japan!! Thank you very much for asking about that!!
I really cant think of a smooth transition into talking about this, so we're just going to dive right in...
Content Warning: Long, Discussions of Late Stage Capitalism and Orientalism.
CANADIA:
Canadia is, put bluntly, an icy cyberpunk hellscape. It's known for being just about the only country in the world to very strictly follow Capitalism... And it's not in a very good state because of it. It's in an extreme form of the Late Stages, to the point of it being beyond parody. Corporations run the country, monopolies are rampant and unchecked, you can't even look up at the sky without being advertised to. It's miserable there, whether you live in a major city or not.
Surveillance is rampant. Everything is a commodity. God forbid you want to go to a doctor for something. It's the perfect breeding grounds for either extreme paranoia or complete desensitization.
None of this is to say everyone's subservient in it. Not everyone's been broken into allowing themselves to be cogs of the machine- there are fighters out there who want to take the system down, one battle at a time. Maybe their revolution will work one day...
This is where Mituna is from. It explains a lot.
It's largely populated by Trolls. A startling amount of the population has started to partake in a political movement called Alternian Traditionalism as a means to cope with their oppressive environment. This isn't a healthy or effective way dealing with the problem, though, because it actually doesn't address any of the real issues, and wouldn't solve a damn thing. If the Alternian Traditionalists have their way, the country will get much, much worse...
NEO JAPAN:
Neo Japan is... Incredibly normal. In fact, one could even say that it's literally just regular Japan, except everyone acts like it's this strange, mystical place 25 years ahead of the technological curve, yet 2,500 years behind the cultural curve. Many people who aren't from Neo Japan practically worship the place blindly, not realizing that what they're praising is a heavily fictionalized version of a real place that real people live in. To many, it's a pure spectacle. An exotic experience to be had. A tourist location, full of fake people with perfect lives. It's as if the entire nation is defined by what can be put in advertisements and postcards.
So... Again, one could even say that it's literally just regular Japan.
This is where Retris is from. Specifically Old Capital, which you may know as Kyoto. He lives in Kyoto City. This has given him an immense disdain for tourists/foreigners. He doesn't mind if you're respectful, though. He's just had his home treated as a circus enough times to get weary and wary.
Damara, meanwhile, is from New Capital, which you may know as Tokyo. Though she has the same experience as Retris does regarding people treating her home as a circus, she hasn't had nearly as long of an exposure to that behavior, so she doesn't hold much opinion of it all. She ran away into the woods too soon to start really caring about it.
It's largely populated by Carapacians. I'd say the only "strange" thing they partake in is Traditional Battleground LARPing, which are entirely normal, save for the fact that a good majority of them involve real weapons, real battles, and real life-or-death stakes. Some of them are "Death-Free", though that's usually a fact that is remarked upon... Meaning, it's not the average set up. It's a cultural difference. Some people find it barbaric, but their attitude towards death just is not the same as it is in other societies. And that's fine.
I am curious, will Canadia have some riffs on Canadian culture in its horrid neo-capitalist landscape? Or are they entirely separate beasts?
It'll have riffs on Canadian culture in the most (intentionally, I swear) surface-level sense imaginable, in a way where you just know all of it was gleaned from pop media and stereotypes. This is because this is a country very based in worship of the Knight of Time, and I think that that's literally the only fitting route to take with it.
By god, it is required to suck and have its irony be surface-level. Tim Hortons is the new Betty Crocker, I guess. Lol. It's like a parody of itself.
I think the least surface level thing about its riffing on Canada is how, despite the fact that it's practically hell there, people see it as the nice, nigh-utopian country that hasn't done anything wrong. Its image is somehow pristine. No one acknowledges the horrors.
It's very Beforan, in that sense... Just with more Dave influence. Which is a bad thing.
Would you mind giving an example of the worldbuilding that you're doing for Earth C?
The Earth C equivalent of Germany is named Wolftopia, in honor of Jade Harley, and the whole country's Customs and Traditions are just Furry Culture. At age 13 you get your first fursuit, similar to the naming ceremony of Old Earth. Government mandated. It's tradition.
There are tax funded furry conventions that count as national holidays. They are the biggest in the world. The turnout is insane- people from all over the globe travel to it, and legal, tax paying citizens of Wolftopia get a pass to it by default delivered right to their mailbox.
The fursuit makers are unionized. There is currently a renaissance happening there. Times are good.
Not sure if this is a hot take or not, but I’m not a huge fan of the idea that Earth C is this… Paradisal utopia with no trace of bigotry to be seen. It just ignores the fact that with diverse minds comes diverse opinions, and that some of those opinions are going to be bad.
Utopias also just… Aren’t a thing, whether we’re speaking on literary terms or not. They’re impossible to achieve in a way that isn’t inherently severely dystopic. If your society is picture perfect in every way, it’s probably some level of authoritarian. Every utopia is a dystopia. Not a single one is nondystopic.
Flawed society is a good thing. Facing culturally defined conflicts is a part of human experience. Conflicts make a story be a story. Earth C probably has 17 whole new breeds of bigotry going on, considering the coexistence of several sapient species, and I think it’s more interesting to acknowledge that that’s probably a thing than to pretend that everything is perfect.
This might be a little controversial but what is Sovereignstuck's take on fruit gushers
Earth C’s Fruit Gushers are made of entirely separate ingredients than Homestuck proper’s Fruit Gushers, as the whole Grub Blood method was deemed both Barbaric and Unethical. At the very least, they’ll get a mention or two. I think clarifying that they’re made with artificial ingredients now is a pretty decently important piece of worldbuilding, even if it’s small and more than a little silly.
Putting bigotry on Earth C for Sovereignstuck, not for the purpose of being edgy and grimdark, but to show that while diversity of people and opinion is objectively a good thing, that does not mean every single person or opinion will be good. Because that’s not how diversity works.
Also because being faced with individual bigotry and/or a bigoted society is a fantastic method of simultaneously exercising character and world building- it informs a lot of how a person operates and presents themselves. Cultural stigmas are unavoidable! It’s so much more fun to study or construct/deconstruct those than it is to plug your ears and pretend like everything is ok.
If a character masks their mental illness/neurodivergency, there’s a reason for it. If a character feels the need to obsessively defensively validate a part of their identity- be it womanhood, transness, etc.- there’s a reason for it. If one character is ableist, or classist, or homophobic, or whatever, there’s absolutely more people out there that are either just like that and people who are worse. Traits don’t exist in a vacuum!
