That does make me wonder how their population is distributed among the castes, given that you could hypothetically go a generation without any new Jadebloods being hatched or surviving their trials. Like, do they just naturally have enough to replace their losses? Is there some way of stimulating population growth in a certain caste ala heating certain species eggs to change the gender of the organism?
troll biology is such a towering pile of bullshit and i never felt like i could headcanon a satisfactory way to make it make sense
I kind of headcanon that blood color is determined by which blood color is the dominant one, although I've never considered exactly how that would work super deeply. but within that headcanon, I like to imagine highbloods are rarer, like their blood colors are less dominant, so there's fewer of them and while I can't imagine they're excessively coddled in the caverns or anything, I do think highblood grubs are more likely to be let live if mutated because there are just fewer to go around, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were also treated with a bit more care than like, rust or bronze grubs, who I headcanon as being extremely dominant blood colors and so there's just a lot of them. I guess that also means I tend to view the dominance of blood color genes on a sliding scale, but. shrug. in regards to that re: jadebloods, though, I guess I'd probably go with "maybe jadebloods are inherently more likely to show up in grub batches than other midbloods, and the jadeblood 'gene' or whatever is more dominant than other midblood genes", so they just have more jadebloods than they would other midbloods? they're more abundant, the same way I have to imagine lowbloods to be seeing as how lowbloods seem to be viewed as pretty expendable. ....I do think there's probably just a lot of grubs overall, though, regardless of blood color. but also it could be kinda neat to consider like, if other non-genetic factors play into it. like maybe certain eggs are set as lowbloods or midbloods or highbloods from the beginning and those are the genetic sets, but from there certain environmental factors will dictate what caste they'll end up in? maybe environmental factors would even play a role in making grubs with mutant blood colors. could also explain variation in troll blood colors--like, maybe you got a lowblood who is technically rust but is more brownish than most rusts are, and maybe it could be because the grub started determined as a lowblood and then multiple involved environmental factors caused them to be a little more cusp-ish than proper rust? but then you would also have to consider, like, highblood/midblood cusps and midblood/lowblood cusps, which would make it less likely for genetics to be at all a determining factor in blood color... and honestly it all kinda falls apart if you think about it too hard, but I like to come up with ideas anyway.
I don't think there's any risk of there being NO jadebloods at any time, given that all adult trolls, presumably including jades, are obliged by law to provide a whole bucket's worth of gametes at least once, probably on a regular schedule, and I don't remember if this is a canon quote but I remember someone saying there are enough trolls to "outnumber the stars". I don't think they're at any risk of running short, it's the bottleneck of having just one big egg producer that's the problem. This is also why I'm pretty sure they're cannibals. Even with natural predation from other creatures they'd need to cull the grub population for fear the things would strip the planet bare.
This is changing the topic, but I desperately want Alternian folk songs. Based on human ones or not; most of theirs are probably about war and death but I reckon there's a great version of "Billy Taylor" or "Jackaroe" to be made where the girl conceals her blood colour instead of her gender.
Have I ever mentioned here that Scarborough Fair is a perfect pitch hate duet that I may or may not have a metal cover version sung between Sollux and Karkat in my AU idea where them and Aradia are in a metal folk band.
I mean, even if there are enough jadeblooded offspring in a generation, there's no guarantee that those jadebloods will survive to adulthood. Like, if human society depended on there being a certain amount of people with red hair for society to work, it'd be possible for there not to be enough red haired adults to continue that system, even if certain families were guaranteed to have red haired offspring.
Which actually reminds me of another thought I had - hypothetically, jadebloods could totally unionize and pretty much hold the empire ransom Like, what are you gonna do, kill them? Uh oh you tried to storm the caverns and there goes the mother grub. Somehow manage to kill them without letting them kill the mother grub? Oops now there's no one manning the caverns.
According to Bronya's route, at least some jade kids are raised in the caverns, where they'd be protected.
Like, I'm not saying its likely, but it is a thing that could hypothetically happen, which I think would be kind of interesting, because if you had no one manning the brooding caverns there'd need to be some kind of serious societal upheaval.
My first thought for the regime's response would probably be "block off all the cavern exits, find a Virgin Mother Grub to replace the old one" (Kanaya's the only troll known to be raised by one but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be more of them around) "and force lowbloods to fill in until more jade genes arise".
This is a thing I've written about at times! In like RP and the idea of jadeblood rebellion was at least brought up in a fic before I wrote. It's a fun concept that I wish saw played with more.
Not to mention I can't imagine Doc Scratch wouldn't have plans for such a thing. We know he talks to non-players from Hiveswap, where he is the hint system and sends protection to Xefros; I'm betting if such a thing did happen, he'd draw in enough jadeblood traitors to break the strike.
I suppose so, but even then you'd have to deal with both waiting for a virgin mother grub to mature, the massive loss of potential trolls that such an act would entail, and the lack of training/quality standards those lowbloods would bring to it.
I mean, potentially, but it only takes a handful of jadebloods to hold the mother grub hostage. That said, were I to write a story on this, I'd probably write out the ostensibly SGRUB-related elements like First Guardians, otherwise you'd be pretty limited by what happens in canon
And it only takes a handful of traitors to pretend to join them long enough to get close enough to stop them. But yeah.
Okay, I don't know if this has been brought up before and it covers Hiveswap too, but... According to the Extended Zodiac, the castes each have a True Sign; fan examination has guessed that the aspect of those signs is meant to be the most strongly linked to the caste. Xefros has repeated Time motifs; he's a musician, and he constantly talks about how he doesn't have enough Time or Time is running out. Notice that most of them are negative in association; even his music is linked to his toxic relationship with Dammek. Kanaya the jadeblood is Space, an aspect associated with creation, and Gamzee the purpleblood is Rage, which would fit with the empire's enforcers. Many of the Friendsim trolls have similar shout-outs to their Homestuck caste member's aspect; apart from all of these, Ardata has a lot of Light imagery going on with her extra eye and cameras/spotlights but that is apparently a front she's putting on and she's miserable. Considering everything else about Alternia, it really looks like the trolls are being forced to aspire to the traits associated with their caste's True Sign aspect, thus controlled even more closely than it appears on the surface. There are also possible hints they're also being forced into aspect roles, here and here.
Back on the folk songs, "Billy Taylor" kind of makes me think of Joey in a troll disguise. "Snow-white fingers long and slender, covered o'er with pitch and tar" - in order to turn them grey? I doubt she's going to shoot Xefros though. Sort of want to do something with that but I can't rhyme "Claire" with "tar".
I mean the extended zodiac is p clearly not canon - if Karkat's sign was listed as definitely belonging to a lime then it would defeat the entire point - that it was made up as a secret symbol for the sufferists.
