first impression tells me mister Noname ((lol six letters) might live out of the system and maybe he's not in governments files? or the next hive swap game spoilers but if we had a guy who'd gotten out of the system or maybe came from one of the Heiress's shelled (lawl) hive clusters (what do we call neighborhoods? hive rings? and he appears purple and i think she sticks to lowbloods) and was presumed dead in the aftermath, that would be kinda interesting
now I have a headcanon that he was visiting his lowblood moirail or matesprit or kismesis or something and she bombed the fuckign neighborhood (? not sure what we call them either) and he survived but was presumed dead after they learned he'd been visiting there
closer look at Lanque, and he comes off as very masculine once you look at him. Something about the hair is different than Kanaya's, though he does look like her a lot. The texture might be a bit scruffier or softer? Something. Also the way the eyeliner+eyes look reminds me a lot of how anime boys eyes are drawn. And the suit, omg kill me. First person I've seen make that 'my jackets hanging off my shoulders but I'm too cool for a cape' look look decent. I have...strong opinions on certain very particular things. why do they do that? fashion photography? aesthetic? ugh its so silly @chaoticArbiter how dare you make me feel feelings D: now i have to adopt him I'm running out of room for all my troll children
the reason it's a slur for humans is at least in part it being objectively incorrect for intersex humans. hermaphrodites produce both big non-motile ('female') gametes and small motile ('male') gametes at some point across their life, or at least can if conditions allow (like, in clownfish, they start off male, and the biggest fish in the group becomes female, so they are sequential hermaphrodites even though some of them remain male all their lives). if there were humans that actually did produce both forms of gametes, 'hermaphrodite' could full well be the correct and polite term for them.
Spoiler: anatomy Chromosomally speaking, trolls all appear to be male, then, since the slurry appears to be analogous to sperm? I always figured they were all "male" by Earth standards and the Mother Grub was the only "female".
Depending on your headcanon, I guess that means hermaphrodite would be an inaccurate term for trolls as well. I think the mother grub is the only one who produces eggs, right? And the troll species kind of collectively fertilizes them by lottery. So they would only produce the one kind of gamete. Unless of course you headcanon that the mother grub is just an incubator for troll eggs and not actively involved in the process. I personally think that she makes “blank” eggs, and two separate troll gametes are required to fertilize each one.
Oooh, so a three-sex system then, with the Mother Grub providing eggs and 'mitochondrial' genetic material, and two trolls each providing half the nuclear genetic material?
If the mother grub is actually some kind of troll, and not a separate species like the lusii, I think that could work.
She could be another type of troll, or it could be an originally parasitic relationship (like cuckoo birds but much more... involved) that eventually evolved into a mutualistic one - going by what happened to Kanaya's lusus, it seems like maybe mother grubs also can't reproduce without the help of trolls, so if she is another species it would be mutualistic. If that was the case, I'm guessing trolls with abilities like Tavros's would have been pretty crucial to early troll breeding. The mother grub does look an awful lot like a giant unpupated troll grub plus wings, though. It could be that she is indeed a kind of troll. Maybe a matriorb is a different type of egg a mother grub makes if never gets fed slurry. I'm not sure why slurry would prevent her from making a "queen" egg - maybe regular troll eggs take too many resources from her body? It doesn't make much evolutionary sense why she wouldn't be able to brood a mother grub and regular trolls at the same time. Matriorbs are implied to take a long time to finish growing if I remember right, so the troll population would have to take the risk of either not breeding at all for several sweeps or, if she were to die, potentially losing their only method of reproduction without a backup. But then again it's possible that before the Condesce consolidated things under her control and created the bucket laws, early trolls didn't contribute nearly so much slurry at once, and there could have been multiple mother grubs as well to share the burden instead of one for the whole species. I'm not sure which scenario I prefer, each one is wonderfully xeno and slightly nightmarish in a different way
Kind of disappointed the game wasn't released on 3/14 as the opposite of 4/13, but I guess the actual 4/13's still open. I want it nooowwww...
There's an idea going round Tumblr that the Troll Call pairs are moirails, but I want some of them as kismeses. Veggie Skylla versus enthusiastic carnivore Diemen? Charun and Amisia clashing over art styles? Kuprum angry at Folykyl for draining the psionics he needs to impress the Empire?
Hot messes make the best pairs. Also, Joey's accepted fanon classpect seems to be Light but I prefer the theory that Joey's Doom and Jude is Mind. -Fills in the aspect wheel; Homestuck player humans, these two humans, Dammek and Xefros. -"Fate's chosen sufferers"; shitty home life and now stuck on a hostile alien planet. -Her convo with Xefros near the end; she shows empathy and reassures him. -Being opposing aspects with her Hope-bound father would continue the clash there.
I think the only Troll Call pair I would suspect as being implied moirails, or implied SOMETHING, are the two whose cards were blended together.
