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fantroll-purgatory · 5 years

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Technically these trolls fled from alternia to get away from the violence, when Condy was ruling.

mostly notes about this planet !

CD: Don’t worry, I like having a lot of info to work with. *Cracks knuckles* Mostly, when you’re building a new planet, you want to ask yourself- What makes this so different from Alternia that it’s worth writing a story on a different planet instead of a different region? I think you’ve got a lot of interesting stuff to work with in that regard, but it still needs a little work.

(SA Incoming! Plant biology (with a focus in Mycology and Fungal Like Organisms) is literally my bachelor’s. Coming in for the science references.)

“Comantem- blooming in Latin. Represents a new peaceful age for the Trolls species.”

-planet is covered in plant life !!

CD: Plant life is a really vague term. You talk later about the moss and fungus(not plants but bear with me), but that’s about as specific as you get. What kind of plant life? Is it aggressive and hostile? Is it why the planet is so dangerous at night? Or do other creatures cause that? Is it plant life the trolls can EAT and thrive with, or does it represent an agricultural problem for them? Do trolls have to try to beat back the natural plant life on the planet to farm their own food to survive? (Actually, do trolls even eat plants or are they carnivorous?) (I know not all planets that exist aren’t covered in plant life but… liveable planets are. Earth is. Alternia isn’t exactly liveable and it does. Check out where Terezi and Aradia live. You don’t really have terrestrial life without terrestrial plants. Who’s making the oxygen otherwise?)

-Rainbow drinkers are seen as great soldiers for the fleet and other things. RD can live off the blood of their enemies so its good on the planet’s economy.

CD: Jades are rare and Rainbow Drinkers are RARE. Relying on the possibility that a small subset of your already uncommon population for your military is a good way to get blasted to hell immediately. A more likely approach is to rely on golds and bluebloods. Golds tend to have psionic abilities and using them for fighting forces instead of living batteries could be a major advantage. Have them act as long range fighters while the naturally strong bluebloods take the forefront. Jades can still be considered an important part of a team/good to have on a team, but they shouldn’t be central. (I will admit that weaponizing Rainbowdrinkers in a “secret monastery of elite battle ladies” way does appeal to me, though. Given that they don’t need to do AS much of the work given that they don’t need to tame lusii or anything, maybe they can retire to military service?)

- adults stay on planet.

CD: This leads to my next question- how is the planet sustaining its population? Did they steal a mother grub? Mother GRUBS, multiple? Who takes care of these mother grubs and how does the grub-raising system differ? Do they still do the cave thing or does the gov’t regulate grub care to prevent massive death and help the population thrive?

Also, re: stealing grubs and running away: How’d they slip that one under the radar? Does Condy know where they are and is she a threat or are they hiding for now? If they’re hiding, the Sky Hives might be a little riskier. Hell, if they’re KNOWN about the sky hives might be risky. Think of the motivation for this. If they want hives off the ground, then that must mean the risk on the ground is worse than the risk of getting caught. Work with that. What threat on planet is worse than getting caught by Condy? Must be pretty scary.

-there is a government. Government still believes in blood color discrimination. If a lowbloods is elected to be in said so gov, they are respected but risk assassination attempts.

CD: If the government believes in blood color discrimination, why did it leave Alternia? Highbloods certainly don’t suffer as much oppression under Condy’s rule and get more cushy positions even in the Space War than the lowbloods who get treated like cannon fodder. This is like imagining an alternate version of history where rich nobles and religious majorities fled Europe for no reason. Give us a motive. Who is in charge? Is it seadwellers still, who are on the highest end? If so, why did they leave? Or are we playing Landdweller Government. We know that landdwellers and seadwellers are at odds and their nobility has a contentious relationship, so while purples (who are seemingly decently loyal to the crown, even if chaotically) might not be as tempted to leave, blues certainly would have some motive. That can change up the scheme of the hemospectrum, creating a shape that peaks at blue and descends on either side.

Like that.

- the sun is not harmful. But at night it is more dangerous.

CD: What makes it dangerous? I kind of went into this above, but elaborate. Where’s the danger? Is it local fauna? Local flora? Something even more insidious?

- FLARP games are uncommon to play, but still exist.

-gov puts sopor slime mix into consumables. They use this to keep the violence rate in check and low.

CD: Okay, this leads to the question of what you believe sopor is made of. Is it squashed limes, because how’re they flying THAT under the radar?

- The trolls aren’t that much physically violent and their government psychologically messes with them

- lusii are much more aggressive than the ones on Alternia. This resorted to Com trolls to using troll caretakers. Caretakers are often seen as bodyguards than just parents.

CD: What makes the lusii more aggressive? Is there something about the planet that makes them behave that way? This also raises the question of why they would even keep breeding them in that case? Why would they want these aggressive useless animals around? Have they transitioned lusii to a food source? Why don’t they just try to rely on local fauna instead? Are the high ranking officials just being old fashioned and clinging to traditionalism despite it being futile? Or is it an idea you can scrap because it has no actual useful basis?

You also need to think about the implications of trolls who have never had parents before trying to take on a caretaking role. What does this mean for the new generations of trolls? How might their behavior differ? (Lusii are also just aggressive in general. In Friendsim, there’s an entire “battling a lusus” sequence in one of the routes. They’re not like “fun peaceful animal friends”.)

-lusii have naturally growing plants and patches of moss on them. Cordyceps fungus usually affects the lusii and rarely trolls.

(But why tho.) (No. “Aesthetic” is not a reasoning. Nor is “it’s my entire world concept!” Those don’t explain this. Like… how? Why? You make a comment about trolls also getting plant patches? (also nitpick- Moss are plants, they just aren’t vascular plants. They’re not fungus) Why? What has altered troll-lusus biology SO HEAVILY that they are gestalt organisms now? That’s not a thing that just happens.) (I don’t want to be that guy, but: do you know what Cordyceps does? I literally have a degree in this subject so I most assuredly do.)

(Given what we know about troll biology -that they’re insectoid- Cordyceps species would be much more likely to affect them and not the lusii, and would be a bane to wrigglers, who would be the primary hosts of O. sinensis. Even species that are still technically within Cordyceps (like Beauveria) affect insects almost exclusively. O. sinensis killed caterpillars are even eaten as folk medicine!)

(There’s a 99% chance you’re referring to O. unilateralis, the “zombie ant” fungus. Which, as I’ve stated before, would affect your trolls LONG before it would turn Lusii into zombies. O. unilateralis would cause your wrigglers to wander into high humidity environments at a specific height, lock themselves down, and then be mummified as the fungus works its way through their bodies, and then explode into a cloud of spores that could affect other wrigglers. Given how the troll life cycle works (and the fact that you have centralized government and caretaking) this would likely never affect older trolls, and Cordyceps species don’t affect non-insects, and would struggle to burst through in larger bodies, hence why it’s evolved to parasitize ants and not like, monkeys.) (Another point is that even in Ants, the ants can tell when something’s parasitized and will literally move infected members of the community away so they don’t wreck the colony. A thing that your trolls would be able to do with medicine.)

-sky hives !! the government is always focused on moving forward so they have advanced tech powered by plants.

CD: Again like I said, consider the ramifications of Sky Hives more closely. If they’re floating up in space, they’re more likely to be noticed. What’s down there that makes being noticed the preferred option?

-mutants stay underground or in the sky most of the time.

CD: Why is there still mutant oppression? If this is a planet that ran explicitly to flee Condy’s oppression, some more weight might be given to the lives of the mutant folks. Especially because the government doesn’t want to cull them if they wanna keep their numbers up and their people invigorated. Maybe instead of them having to hide, mutants could be the ones the highbloods elevate as political symbols? It can create a unique new sort of oppressive environment for them that isn’t exactly the same as on Alternia.

- conmantemrians have glowing neon teeth in the dark, and their bones are the same as well as their eyes! (but the glow in their eyes are faint.) (Can be any color, depending on the blood caste!) Mostly due to them having adapted to the planet’s environment.

CD: How long have they been on this planet? Because if it hasn’t been a looong time, they probably haven’t biologically adapted this much. And if the planet is dangerous at night, what is the benefit to glowing? Wouldn’t that make them stand out more and be more likely to be hurt? Does the threat hate light and avoid it at all costs or something? If so, why?

-occasionally some trolls have small patches of glowing moss with either fungi or flowers. Usually the lower and mid castes get these. The high castes (Purple to Fuchsia) get stinging anemones (which feel like pinches, used for defense against wild lusii)

CD: My question here is Why. The aesthetic of this is cool and all, but think functionally. How does this happen? Where does it come from? Trolls are bugs, not beds of soil. How will they grow plants on them?

-there are barely any actual teals on the planet. Instead, there’s jade-leaning or olive-leaning. The government believes the teals would attempt to overthrow and take control.

CD: Teals are known for being relatively law-abiding folk thanks to their association with the legislacerators, so you need to establish where this idea would come from. During the original foundation did a group of crown-loyal teals attempt to rat them out? Is that still a story that gets told aroud the planet, causing teals to be associated with betrayal? Also: blood color isn’t a spectrum quite like that in the homestuck canon. Are you doing an AU where the blood colors can blend like that? If you’re trying to use canon hemospectrum rules, there are only 12 colors. There can’t be “jade-leaning” or “olive-leaning” anything. (Also, Mothergrubs don’t choose what color blood trolls have. If so, we’d never had mutantbloods. We don’t really know exactly how troll blood color is passed on, but it’d be strange to assume that this planet just doesn’t have the ability to make tealbloods. If it was 1-to-1 trolls, we’d never get any Fuschias ever, given that Condy geeks them all when they come of age, and a new one doesn’t like… immediately replace them, else there’d be overlap.)

-olives are the face of society. They’re somewhat favourable to the government. They’re treated nicely, given clothes that resembles the Greek gods, and such. They’re usually considered snooty to the other midbloods and lowbloods.

CD: You should probably take more inspo from Old Alternians than Greek Gods. Trolls aren’t going to know what Greek Gods are, after all. And I once again have gotta ask, why olives? What gets them revered? Give a backstory for why besides randomly saying it. Were olives goodluck charms for the original establishing trolls? Is it a Folk Belief that if you don’t revere your olives your shit will get fucked? If not, then it’s probably better to just transition this entirely over to the Objectifying Worship Of Mutant Folks.

-They have caste appreciation holidays but Olive and a couple others are the only ones that are actually celebrated by society

-Olive/Jade-leaning peeps are not well liked but are redeemed bc both olive and jade have good purposes in society

CD: What are the olive’s purposes? You call them revered, but you don’t say what they actually do? Given the history of the olive legacy w/ the Disciple, you cooould probably make them religious figures?

-Fucking freaky weather yo (except it’s good for the plants so w/e) (What does this mean though. Good for what plants? Plants aren’t a monolith. Is it a jungle planet? A grassland planet? A planet of entirely cacti?)

CD: Weather Starts in the sky, usually, so how does this impact the sky hives?

Pro/anti-plant people for the plants on the trolls (arguments on whether growth should be allowed bc not everyone gets them) (I discuss earlier how this concept makes little to no sense, but having political debates about them checks out, given that it’s like… very bizarre and strange for trolls.)

-Secret sopor farms! Sopor factories! Lots of purple-blood overseers

-Sky hives = blood rain on the rare occasion someone dies

-Government made FLARP manuals to show peeps the ‘right’ way to do it and keep them from getting violent in their games

CD: I’m combining the Blood Rain and the Nonviolent FLARP thing because I have an idea. Now… FLARP stands for Fatal Live Action Roleplay. There is NO way to avoid being violent in FLARP. FLARP is, inherently, totally, and completely, a violent game. So if the gov’t wanted to regulate it, what if they did Gladiatorial FLARP instead. Arena Combat Hours. This can make the blood rain more of an EVENT. They blood of the slain players is rained down Intentionally.

A summary; Comantem: a planet filled with lots of plant life and a government that drugs their citizens so they cannot rebel but is generally a peaceful planet compared to Alternia.

Hope this is good enough? This is a new concept that I made like a day ago so yup

CD: It’s definitely a real interesting concept! You’ve got some work to do filling things out and making the world feel living and breathing, but you’re on your way! Thank you for sharing and I hope these comments have been helpful.

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