ancient-trolls:

Okay! This musing is my first writings on one of these more critical Homestuck theories I’ve written that doesn’t have to do with professional wrestling or OCs. Let’s make it a good one.

If you’re even a casual Homestuck fan, you’ve likely heard about the Trollcall. It is part of arguably the most significant paradigm shift in Homestuck’s history, the Extended Zodiac, and by extension Hiveswap as a whole. For the first time in AGES since the small crumbs given to us by Hussie or concept art of the game; we’re finally getting a look at the world of Alternia beyond the 12 central trolls. Fantroll fuel is in effect; theories have been jossed, created, enforced, everything we knew about the aspects shifted and we’re still accommodating these changes.

Naturally, this has brought about some resistance. As is the case whenever there’s a significant change to a field, there are those hesitant, if not outright hostile, to the ideas presented. An example of this can be the people who still don’t think that Karkat’s connection to the Limeblood caste is in some way not explicit. Like, god damn people, get your head out of the dirt. It’s right there with the other Lime signs.

I went off-topic there previously, but my general point here is that there are aspects to this paradigm shift that people have taken issues with. A particular area is the Trollcall; this being WhatPumpkin’s way to tide over the wait for Act 2 by drip-feeding us more and more nuggets of lore for Alternia in the fashion of introducing the background caste of the game. The issues people have taken with it is that most of the trolls are just facets of the 12 Beta trolls just exaggerated. The Tealbloods are a common caste to point fingers at where most if not all seem to have some connection to law and (in)justice in some way. Or we could look at the Goldbloods who seem to be bee-focused psionic machines with weird eyes and duality throughout them. This apparent lasseiz-faire attitude towards the castes goes on and on: feral/rural olives, artistic and verbose Indigos, yes, INDIGOS you plebs, fashionable Jadebloods, etc.

You hear it, “This troll is just X but Y!”, “This [motif] was meant to be for [beta troll], it doesn’t make SENSE that it’s applied to them all!”. Continually hearing this over and over and over, it’s maddening. Is WhatPumpkin lazy? Is this bad design? Were things better before Hussie ‘gave up’ and hired all these god damn SJWs? (This is me being facetious, naturally).

My goal with this likely-to-be large mass of writing is to dissuade, or at least explain why I don’t hold these views that the TrollCall trolls are a terrible thing or lazy design. Man, it’s easy to say these things when I’m in control of writing the complaints. Minus one point to this essay I guess. The way I’ll hopefully present my view on this ‘issue’ is by talking about an unexpected development of the Extended Zodiac, the ‘True Signs’, and how they can be used to explain away the issues that some may take with the apparent path WhatPumpkin is steering Alternian society and trolls as we know them down.

Taz has written about the influence of the True Signs before. They write mainly in the context of how the True Signs explain what some may see as inconsistencies with Xefros having so many elements of a Time player despite actually being a Rage player. The general ethos is the same, the True Signs are subconscious ‘ideals’ for each caste, and each caste is under enough pressure to act to these ideals despite it not being their natural calling. 

When people like Taz, Wak, or other theory blogs, prominent (them) or obscure (me), talk about the influence of the True Signs, they mainly approach it from a classpect perspective. That doesn’t quite help me in explaining the aesthetic similarities of the Troll calls to the beta trolls. What I’m going to focus on are the genetic and social ramifications of the True Sign’s influences. My main, and likely only point as my mind buzzes writing this, is that the True Signs play a far more considerable impact on their respective castes than we think.

The end goal of an SBURB-created universe, that is, a universe, is to create the next group of players for the following game. The trolls of Alternia were the race fated to play SBURB. Therefore it can be said that the ultimate end goal of Alternian society was to create the beta trolls and raise them to game-playing age.

With this in mind, along with the substantial influence of Doc Scratch on Alternia, it can be said that the True Signs, aspect and moon at least, are the ultimate archetypes of each caste to slowly evolve to create a player who fulfils all the requirements to play. The way I see it work is akin to a mould, or a filter.

We’ll look at the Goldbloods for this example. Sollux was the True Sign Goldblood fated to play the game for Alternia. Therefore every single Goldblood before him can be seen as various attempts to create him, or as evolutionary steps to eventually reach him. I’m not saying that there’s an overt effort to create Sollux Captor with every Goldblood, at least on Alternia’s part. To Alternia, the Gemini sign holds no actual significance. It’s a Goldblood sign for regular ass Goldbloods. Who cares?

SBURB cares is who. It’s said in the description of every True Sign that those who are a True Sign have a more significant connection to the caste than others. With this information in mind, it can be inferred that the True Signs are SBURB’s ‘model’ for the respective players. With sweeps and sweeps, generations and generations of this cosmic pressure on the caste, it makes sense that the caste as a whole would begin to exhibit traits and qualities of the last bearer of SBURB’s burden for his kind.

We can see in this in how Zebede is an ‘aspiring beekeeper, how Kuprum has a form of vision two-fold and acts as a battery-in-training, how Folykl… Well, Sollux isn’t born blind but considering that Kuprum embodies a role that Sollux takes up later in the story, it’s possible Folykl does as well with Sollux’ eventually blindness, another quirk of the True Sign influence. To loop back to genetics, we can easily see the influence of Sollux’s duality with the presence of two sets of horns on Goldbloods. The dual horns are a basic facet of Sollux and are an easily shown effect of True Sign influence. The fact that Zebede and presumably other goldbloods out there lack vision Two-Fold suggests that it’s not quite become a caste standard that dual horns have so far. You can carry on this pattern with every member of the Trollcall. This explanation may not satisfy you; you may even say “Well it’s still bad design on WP’s part!”

To respond to that, I merely have to point out that this is Alternia for chrissakes. The place has a genetically distinct caste system, which is grounds for stating that the Alternian government plays it’s part in enforcing this Darwinist approach to the True Signs, albeit unintentionally. If you really want to get a sense of overt manipulation, look no further than Doc Scratch. The 12 beta trolls are part of the long cycle of the creation of Lord English, who Doc Scratch is also the host of. Furthermore, two of the fragments of Lord English are the Alternian trolls themselves. Well, one-and-a-half of the fragments, Equius and half of Gamzee. Any deviation from these two designs wouldn’t lead to LE’s creation, and we can’t have that now, can we?

Scratch’s influence trickling down through Alternian powers can even be seen in how the Alternian government plays a part. By valuing beneficial mutations where they’d fit such as Vriska’s MC powers, Sollux’s vision two-fold and Equius’ STRONGNESS. They are unknowingly playing a part in their eventual demise by breeding and nurturing the right conditions to form the players who will wreck everything in the process of doing so, and that’s too perfectly poetic for me to not see as grounds for this stance.

If you have any responses, additions, or other such valuable contributions, feel free to reblog or message me! I can only promise that the responses will be at least sub-par.

I hadn’t realized these design similarities had people complaining.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, haha. I like this post a lot! I agree pretty much completely, and it kinda makes me really happy to see other people picking up the same thread. So I’ve just got a few things to say:

1) It’s true that I’ve written about it a lot, but credit for starting the True Sign Caste-Influence theory rightfully goes to @wakraya. She’s the one who made the connections in the Extended Zodiac proper! I don’t think you implied otherwise or anything, I’ve just been meaning to say so because I’ve seen some people attribute the theory itself to me, when I just happen to think Wak nailed it.

2) You got into this later in the post, but personally, I put the emphasis much more on Lord English/Scratch caring about/being behind this particular means of producing the players than on Sburb having any particular agency/will behind it.

It’s worth mentioning that making this batch of players is what Scratch is on Alternia to do–LE arranged for this by glitching the Alpha Troll’s session and forcing them to Scratch in the first place.

LE has always been themed as a mob boss–Put another way, a crony capitalist with no regard for others’ lives. Conscripting all of Troll-kind into what is essentially a millenia-spanning, empire-wide factory line meant to produce a specific set of Correct™ trolls sounds about right, from that perspective.

By putting each troll Caste through whatever combination of genetic alteration and/or socioeconomic pressure is necessary to eventually produce the Players, Scratch can ensure their creation while minimizing his personal labor.

If that leads most trolls in history to be unhappier and less able to understand themselves, their true natures, and that of those around them–then that’s a nice bonus to LE, who would be cruel for fun even if he didn’t particularly have it out for trolls out of spite for Calliope.

3) Speaking of which, if this is true, it might go some ways to explaining why some trolls have more psychic power than others. Impossible to say for sure at this point, obviously, but when Act 2 drops I’ll be interested in seeing how trolls with different Aspects relate to their troll powers.