Regarding Aranea... I think the issue for many people is that She Knew Better. Where Vriska seems trapped in a toxic stew of expectations, the trauma of providing spider mom with her victims, entitlement, and self loathing, Aranea had the appearance of understanding better, of genuinely being a harmless nerd. Aranea had a better life than Vriska but we meet her and then see her choose to go down the path of villainy, and twist her morals and beliefs to fulfill her fantasies of being the center of attention, and her choice wasn't as muddled with grey almost extenuating circumstances. Maybe it is just me, but that felt like a huge let down. Additionally we never got to sympathize with Aranea's struggle. Homestuck took us through Vriska's pain and suffering and each and every time she made things worse for herself, and it also gave us a Vriska that could move towards redemption with (Vriska). That is what makes Vriska a tragic figure, how desperately alone she was and how much she suffered, but continually fucked up in egregious ways that make you want to shake her and yell at her to stop. We never had that connection with Aranea, we didn't see her struggle with herself, and instead saw her choose to cause pain and disregard others, not for a greater good as she claims, but for her ego.
Thanks! It makes sense, I guess, that the difference is people feel Aranea let them down. For my part I don't see her as heroic or villainous so much as just... weak-willed, I guess. She doesn't seem to build her own internal model of herself. Alternian society tells her she should be awesome and selfish, so she does that, 100%. Beforan society tells her she should be helpful and a bit condescending, so she does that, 100%. Vriska comes along and tells her actually she should be an outrageous anti-hero, so she does that. 100%. Whereas Vriska may have been roleplaying Mindfang for half her life, but she chose to do that because she thought Mindfang was cool, not because she thought it was expected of her.
Yeah, i remember that being a thing, where aranea was all cute and nerdy, and she just liked to tell stories! And a lot of people were like omg it's the good serket, but then nope. Nooooooope.
Gragh. Now I want to play her more. And write her. Aranea is just so lovely. We only to see so little of her issues. But they are such juicy bits.
Hi I'm Kite and I'm 15 years late with Starbucks and thoughts about trolls and names So we don't actually know whether adult trolls completely abandon their hatchnames upon initiation into the fleet, just that every ancestor was referred to by a title. I suppose it makes a bit of sense, after all, that name symbolises the non-adult, possibly to a troll who is currently in the "icky wiggler stuff" phase. The homeworld and all fancies and freedoms and notions they might've entertained. Symbol stays because symbols are given by sanctioned personnel. It's a cut, and it starts with the name. Your name is what the fleet makes of you. Maybe they start out with getting referred to with only their symbol, if they haven't picked an initial adult name, or until they get named by someone else? Hm.
I like the idea that you earn your title. People give them to you because of something you did that was noteworthy enough that everyone is now like, "oh whaddup, it's fuckin' that guy. Yeah him." Just because it's noteable doesn't mean you want to be remembered for it though. You can try to influence it, like if you constantly refer to yourself with a title you came up with maybe it will stick, but it's just as likely some other guy is gonna be like "Ha, yeah you're Facestab now." A week later it's caught on, and there's nothing you can do.
I tend to view them as keeping the 6/6 names. However as trolls age they may gain any number of epithets, which they may or may not be aware of. Some epithets are nicknames, others are descriptions of traits that the troll has, and others are just descriptions of the jobs of the trolls in question. Given the small amount of them we have there may be a preference for epithets being 8 letter long sets of names. Cultural preference tends toward using the epithets in my headcanon, at the least in writing and things like historical accounts. Though in public and in speech trolls may go exclusively by the epithets, and it may be a social faux pas to use the personal names due to politeness rules and social status. Similar to how some Elves only go by the epesse. I like to think that it might be considered a murderable insult for a lowblood to use a highblood's personal name in public out of line.
I think also at least some of those epithets were very much intended to have a look and feel of something archetypal and mythological, something bigger than the actual person who got that epithet attached to them. The Sufferer and the Dolorosa and etc. probably weren't referred to as such to their faces, or referred to very much as those titles in their own time.
Please imagine that Marquise Spinneret Mindfang was a completely fake title (she was a pirate, why would she go by marquise??) Her actual title is completely embarrassing, and she hated it, but "Mingfang" survives as her title through her journals.
Oh definitely. Some are ones applied by historians, religious followers after the fact, and so on. I love to think that trolls just have an absurd amount of names and epithets. Some of which are rarely used outside of certain contexts. all the registers of troll speech wow Given how much lowbloods are fucking hated I doubt it would be comfortable to have such a name used even assuming they are close. That sort of thing would definitely be ammunition for gossip and mocking and the like. Though in some cases it is a social gesture of behold how big my dick is. I CAN SURVIVE SUCH TRESPASSES. WHAT CAN YOU DO ASSHOLE. Or a passive aggressive insult on the part of the lowblood in question towards the others in the room. A sort of "Yes. I am unkillable because they like me. Fuck you". Troll communication to me is a fighty and combative hellstorm. I like to imagine she was formerly a marquise prior to her leaving for a life of exciting piracy. But marquise sounds all fancy and shit so she continued to use it in her journals and to introduce herself. A sort of grandstanding.
Of course legally she was no longer a marquise and had that title ripped from her grubby little hands. That she managed to become known primarily by her former station probably pisses off some legally minded historian somewhere. He is just grumbling as he pens down that fucking word even though he'd rather call her Criminal Fakefuck Dicksuck or something. i wish i could recall better my bizarre register and politeness levels system involving highblood and lowblood words for things
silly au idea: half the Historical Records of old troll society was actually just elaborate tabletop rp logs and awkward fanfic about people they know.
there are at least 20 different descriptions of dualscars appearance floating around out there. a good ten of those are just his various self inserts
he is also notoriously always the one whose intro is him lurking in the corner of the inn or being the center of envious attention telling tales of his success, there are occasionally both happening at the same time and nobody bothered to correct him because they couldn't tell they were different characters and just thought he was confused.
mindfangs journal was erotic noncon fanfiction written by a horny 12 yr mindfang and her 'breaking up' with dualscar was when he refused to keep editing it for her
