Jane choices in the epilogue and Jane in general

[thorondraco]

The trolls certainly don't overrepresent Earth C yet but that's why Jane was concerned about it as soon as the Mother Grub was ready, as she was thinking about what could happening. Even if there's not any violence, it still wouldn't be particularly great for the humans on the planet to slowly be drowned out more and more as their species fails to keep up. The human gods wouldn't even do anything to stop it since, as most of them have made their point, doing anything is without question xenophobic when it really can't be considered in objective terms like that.

ok im going to approach this as delicately as i can because i am aware that Homestuck Isnt Real but please be aware that jane's ideology in the epilogue is essentially a reskin of real life white supremacy, right down to the reproduction rates. the 14 word slogan of white supremacy is "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

not accusing you of anything but i think the real world context of candy jane needs to be considered here?

I'm seeing a lot of people compare this to real-world issues and that's not it at all. White supremacy is absolutely wrong because there's no harm in having diversity of races. This, however, is a completely different species with a reproduction rate and lifespan incomparable to humans. Jane does not deserve to be called "Hitler" because Hitler's actions were unjust while justification is easy to find for Jane's actions because it is an entirely separate issue.

Well here is the thing.

What about bring on her troll friends, one of them who is biologically predisposed to be The Mom, and talk to her face to face about how to deal with this issue rather than making presumptions? We don't know how the process works ourselves. Far as we know the slurry has an upper limit and produces eggs equivalent to the troll pairings.

Back on Alternia the slurry buckets were a constant never ceasing thing. Trolls was constantly being born and materials was constantly taken from mating pairs. Unending reproduction for cannon-fodder for the Empress's war machine.

Reproduction control may be needed but it should be in the hands of the Trolls, not the humans. Kanaya and Karkat are trustworthy. They just want the existence of their kind through natural reproduction secured.

Of course Dirk was conducting Jane's thought the entire time and smothering thoughts of compromise.

[Deageon]

I don't understand how fucking, like, the human / troll / carapacian / whatever population problem hasn't come up before in the 5k odd years the kids let the civilization kinda just chill? Why is it only an issue now? What happened to the rest of the planets?

[Royaute]

Jane was absolutely correct, and assassinating her character just to turn her into a shitty Donald Trump analogue doesn't make her wrong.

What a huge disservice.

[Sahxyel]

I don't understand how fucking, like, the human / troll / carapacian / whatever population problem hasn't come up before in the 5k odd years the kids let the civilization kinda just chill? Why is it only an issue now? What happened to the rest of the planets?

It doesn't look like Trolls and Carapacians can actually reproduce naturally while Humans and Consorts can. We know humans and consorts similarly can die though the lifespans of the consorts don't have a concrete lifespan given. Trolls and Carapacians I imagine were replaced and eventually set to pace in population growth with the other two as time passed, though the history of Earth C alone is a big question given there is an UNIRONIC species segregation sorted into Kingdoms which goes against WV's whole dreams of democracy in the first place.

My question is: after all the time how many trolls really would want the Mother Grub back? With an ecto machine you can quite literally make offspring related to you and your partner! Donating your genetic material to the Mother Grub means you can't begin to track who you and your partner(s) produced, and as well, runs into the issue of incest where your genetic material and your genetic sibling sharing close genetic markers could scandalously create an incest grub within the undulating abdomen that doesn't give much care to whether you and your sister are related because you both just happened to donate slurry at the same time from different partners. In a society that has developed reliant on the ecto machine and surrounded by cultures that host strong family structures, just who would want to go back to this method where these grubs have parents that aren't even the partners that donated the slurries? Who raises them? WHAT raises them? How many are produced? It's a fascinating bit of worldbuilding but one I wish was delved into more than just 'Jane xenophobe, Kanaya and Rose right' and went more into the social aspects and taboos involving the Mother Grub outside the overpopulation question.

[JakeMorph]

not really following exactly what you're trying to say. was she right or was she a shitty donald trump analogue

I don't understand how fucking, like, the human / troll / carapacian / whatever population problem hasn't come up before in the 5k odd years the kids let the civilization kinda just chill? Why is it only an issue now? What happened to the rest of the planets?

i wasnt even thinking about this but yeah it is kind of absurd that the consorts are literally prey animals (except for the crocodiles i guess? but theyre very small crocodiles) and would therefore have similar if not greater reproductive efficiency to the trolls and carapacians cannot breed at all without ectobiology and jane doesn't even give them a passing reference in the whole debate.

Spoiler

Show

if you want to take the snapchat updates seriously it would seem the sburb planets are still out there in orbit of the genesis frog but like. yeah. again. weird that planet space is apparently an issue and yet jane doesn't bring up those planets at all

My question is: after all the time how many trolls really would want the Mother Grub back? With an ecto machine you can quite literally make offspring related to you and your partner! Donating your genetic material to the Mother Grub means you can't begin to track who you and your partner(s) produced, and as well, runs into the issue of incest where your genetic material and your genetic sibling sharing close genetic markers could scandalously create an incest grub within the undulating abdomen that doesn't give much care to whether you and your sister are related because you both just happened to donate slurry at the same time from different partners. In a society that has developed reliant on the ecto machine and surrounded by cultures that host strong family structures, just who would want to go back to this method where these grubs have parents that aren't even the partners that donated the slurries? Who raises them? WHAT raises them? How many are produced? It's a fascinating bit of worldbuilding but one I wish was delved into more than just 'Jane xenophobe, Kanaya and Rose right' and went more into the social aspects and taboos involving the Mother Grub outside the overpopulation question.

i think an argument could be made that a lot of the value humans place on siblingry or parental relationships is biological, because they're social, family-bonding mammals, whereas trolls aren't and are therefore just biologically less inclined to bond with "family" / more inclined to bond with friends/quadrants/comrades/strangers/whathaveyou. there's definitely the impression that the mother grub has a sort of sacred position in alternian society, and part of that could just be a natural attraction to that way of life. but that's all speculation, and you're totally right! in a world where we could get an epilogues story that wasn't focused solely on the kids and trolls from homestuck this would be a really fascinating angle to take.

[Sahxyel]

i think an argument could be made that a lot of the value humans place on siblingry or parental relationships is biological, because they're social, family-bonding mammals, whereas trolls aren't and are therefore just biologically less inclined to bond with "family" / more inclined to bond with friends/quadrants/comrades/strangers/whathaveyou.

Mmmm I don't think I agree with that, the Dolorosa raises the Signless like a son and proves a troll can take on a parental role. Though I will concede that maybe this kind of lean to be parental lay mostly in the Jades who are usually tasked to care for the Mother Grub. Maybe they are just more likely to be nurturing biologically, but then that puts stock in the idea that biological essentialism exists which I don't think is the case with the Trolls, they seem like they've been engineered (or at least Alternians) thanks to Doc Scratch's meddling and HIC's Extreme Darwin's Gladiator Games: The World Edition.

5000 years is a very long time for the trolls and we can see from Swifer that they seem to borrow heavily from human influences, so why wouldn't family rearing be on the table for cultural cross pollination? We can see the quadrant system persists (despite it being god-awful) that humans will use alongside the trolls, so it doesn't feel as rigid as one would expect. Earth C society really needed better fleshing out, it feels very incomplete right now.

[JakeMorph]

i wouldnt say the fact that the dolorosa Could raise the signless as a son necessarily says anything about whether trolls Do form relationships with each other as family units, but then how can one say which traits of the homestuck trolls are Weird and which traits are Actually How Trolls Are Supposed To Be! possibly the moral of this story is that we might be able to understand trolls on earth c if we understood trolls on alternia more and maybe if we understood trolls on beforus more... i wish we knew more about trolls!

[Dream Muttman]

Honestly, the epilogues never explain what's wrong with just using ectobiology instead. Troll reproduction canonically creates a lot of mutations and disabilities, and the reason hundreds of thousands of eggs are made at one time is presumably because the hatchlings are expected to compete and cull each other. We never heard anything about how Beforus handled these problems.

Just miniaturize ectobio machines and make them free so people who want can reproduce whenever. Trolls, with their impersonal reproduction scheme using a surrogate don't know how much they're reproducing by design, which might make the mother grub fall out of fashion pretty fast if genetic slurry collection isn't forced.

On cultural grounds: It's not like any of the trolls on Earth C have anything to do with a mother grub. They're the ectobiological offspring of paradox clones.

[RoyalFiddle]

I always figured Ectobiology vs. Mother Grub was a pretty decent analogue for artificial insemination and uh... mating

[rookie1978]

Ruined character. Nothing new, honestly.

[JakeMorph]

Honestly, the epilogues never explain what's wrong with just using ectobiology instead. Troll reproduction canonically creates a lot of mutations and disabilities, and the reason hundreds of thousands of eggs are made at one time is presumably because the hatchlings are expected to compete and cull each other. We never heard anything about how Beforus handled these problems.

sex is probably a factor. in fact i think the text might actually point in this kind of direction; jane's enactment of breeding control on the trolls is an obvious parallel to the condesce's enactment of breeding control on humans, which she did because she found humans' usual method of procreation revolting. i think it's fair to say a lot of trolls might not be happy about the fact that they're being kept from their natural method of procreation just because some humans don't like it, regardless of whether they have any personal cultural connection to that method of breeding or not.

i don't think the comic ever really directly indicates that the troll method of reproduction "creates a lot of mutations and disabilities"? it's a fair assumption to make given that the slurry is called incestuous so often, but most of the mutations that do show up in canon are X-Men style stuff like eye beams and psychic powers that don't really pose any real threat to the gene pool in any world that isn't obsessed with reaching uniformity through eugenics. even if that weren't the case, "people being born with disabilities" isn't exactly, like... a problem, especially in a post-scarcity world. if the problem were "sometimes people are born that aren't ""perfect""" they'd have to stop humans having kids too, and then it would seem kind of fucked up, wouldn't it?

[thorondraco]

Honestly, the epilogues never explain what's wrong with just using ectobiology instead. Troll reproduction canonically creates a lot of mutations and disabilities, and the reason hundreds of thousands of eggs are made at one time is presumably because the hatchlings are expected to compete and cull each other. We never heard anything about how Beforus handled these problems.

sex is probably a factor. in fact i think the text might actually point in this kind of direction; jane's enactment of breeding control on the trolls is an obvious parallel to the condesce's enactment of breeding control on humans, which she did because she found humans' usual method of procreation revolting. i think it's fair to say a lot of trolls might not be happy about the fact that they're being kept from their natural method of procreation just because some humans don't like it, regardless of whether they have any personal cultural connection to that method of breeding or not.

i don't think the comic ever really directly indicates that the troll method of reproduction "creates a lot of mutations and disabilities"? it's a fair assumption to make given that the slurry is called incestuous so often, but most of the mutations that do show up in canon are X-Men style stuff like eye beams and psychic powers that don't really pose any real threat to the gene pool in any world that isn't obsessed with reaching uniformity through eugenics. even if that weren't the case, "people being born with disabilities" isn't exactly, like... a problem, especially in a post-scarcity world. if the problem were "sometimes people are born that aren't ""perfect""" they'd have to stop humans having kids too, and then it would seem kind of fucked up, wouldn't it?

The weird part is that the best pairings aren't from biological traits but from emotional pairings, positive or negative. Trolls produce the best offspring if they are a strong matespritship and or kismesis. So there is a supernatural element.
Also there might be a limit of how many unique forms of troll there can be? Karkat is called Signless cause he is a troll that doesn't mesh with the known signs, so it seems possible Signs have to do with biology and indicate a kind of template for a troll.

Maybe that is what the Ancestor and descendant stuff is. Trolls with the same template but have differences in Dna and personality that sets them some degrees apart, probably altered from whomever their more direct parents are. That can actually happen in reality. You get two clones and depending on the circumstances they would have differing Dna later in life.

I think a good question beyond that is how far can these templates change or be different before they are no longer the same troll? Like Tavros has no wings yet Rufio does. However we don't know if Tavros would have grown wings if he was allowed to grow up to the proper age, or maybe he would have grown them if he went over some psychological hurdle?

Is sex controlled by the Signs too? That seems very possible as we have the Jades and the Fuschias who are either near monosex or completely monosex. So would it be impossible to have a female Sollux or a male Aradia for example if it is? Or at least no one with their signs would be born their opposite sex?
Its possible we could have some signs that can have either male or female trolls but, we weirdly have an example of how seemingly much sex can affect the sign or visa versa.
Soleil twins basically have a mirrored sign. But weirdly enough the male twin's aspect has nothing to do with his sister's. His sister is Doom, but he is Breath. Their signs are mirrored but they don't even complement each other's aspects.

Trolls are really weird.

[sorbicCondition]

This thread has moved past "trolls outnumbering humans means human culture will dissolve" but I'm bringing it back up anyway just to make a point or two. For starters, Earth C has already had 5000 years to form it's own culture. To say that the individual species would still have unique cultures is already a stretch but the epilogues make some hints that it could be the case, so we'll disregard that. The bigger hit to that argument, in my opinion, is that 8 of the 12 Creators of the Fucking Universe are humans, and all of 8 them are immortal gods living on the planet. Even if Trolls make up the statistical majority of the Earth C, the actual gods of the planet probably won't lose their stranglehold on culture, no matter how inadvertent.

Anyway, Jane has always been this way it was just never blatant. She says outright that the things she does in Crocker Tier were just her acting out her internal thoughts. To say she's "ruined" would be to ignore what she was like in canon. She's just, you know, actually interesting now.

[JakeMorph]

This thread has moved past "trolls outnumbering humans means human culture will dissolve" but I'm bringing it back up anyway just to make a point or two. For starters, Earth C has already had 5000 years to form it's own culture. To say that the individual species would still have unique cultures is already a stretch but the epilogues make some hints that it could be the case, so we'll disregard that.

while i generally agree with your point, this particular assumption just seems historically wrong. written examples of human culture date back at least that long, and despite having been living in close proximity since then, and not only do thousands of individual cultures still coexist to this day, new ones have been popping up continuously in that time.

snip

i doubt there's anything genetic about signs given that accurately finding out a troll's genetic forebears is supposedly pretty much impossible (not to mention potentially deadly) - which would explain why a majority of the population seemingly don't believe in ancestors at all - but i think this just takes us back to the question of whether trolls' cultural fascination with fate and destiny (and indeed whether those things are real or not) is a solely cultural phenomenon, or if they're biologically engineered to find the idea of being born in the same century as their progenitors completely disgusting.

[thorondraco]

This thread has moved past "trolls outnumbering humans means human culture will dissolve" but I'm bringing it back up anyway just to make a point or two. For starters, Earth C has already had 5000 years to form it's own culture. To say that the individual species would still have unique cultures is already a stretch but the epilogues make some hints that it could be the case, so we'll disregard that.

while i generally agree with your point, this particular assumption just seems historically wrong. written examples of human culture date back at least that long, and despite having been living in close proximity since then, and not only do thousands of individual cultures still coexist to this day, new ones have been popping up continuously in that time.

snip

i doubt there's anything genetic about signs given that accurately finding out a troll's genetic forebears is supposedly pretty much impossible (not to mention potentially deadly) - which would explain why a majority of the population seemingly don't believe in ancestors at all - but i think this just takes us back to the question of whether trolls' cultural fascination with fate and destiny (and indeed whether those things are real or not) is a solely cultural phenomenon, or if they're biologically engineered to find the idea of being born in the same century as their progenitors completely disgusting.

Literally the horns they grow mimic their sign. That is a pretty strong indicator of it being biologically linked.

[JakeMorph]

you're referring to gamzee's capricorn shaped horns, right? and sollux' horns that grow exactly in the shape of the gemini sign?

jane crocker and jane egbert had exactly the same first name despite having completely different parents. damara megido didn't even grow up on the same PLANET twice and she still had the same name both times, even when troll names supposedly just come from random monster noises that would have no reason to be the same twice. fateful coincidence is kind of part of homestuck's modus operandi.

[thorondraco]

you're referring to gamzee's capricorn shaped horns, right? and sollux' horns that grow exactly in the shape of the gemini sign?

jane crocker and jane egbert had exactly the same first name despite having completely different parents. damara megido didn't even grow up on the same PLANET twice and she still had the same name both times, even when troll names supposedly just come from random monster noises that would have no reason to be the same twice. fateful coincidence is kind of part of homestuck's modus operandi.

Literally every troll has horns styled after their sign to one degree or another. Some more subtle others more blatant. They take at least one element from the Sign's shape

[JakeMorph]

and yet trizza has feferi's exact horn shape but a completely different sign. you're reading too far into it bro

[thorondraco]

and yet trizza has feferi's exact horn shape but a completely different sign. you're reading too far into it bro

https://media.giphy.com/media/hwj7MQ3XDPVAI/giphy.gif

https://external-preview.redd.it/zwhnjw ... 39f6fb3245

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/msp ... 0824023942

Admitably working with a fan sprite with Trizza there. However the horns are growing at different angles. Feferi's has more of a curve like shown from the tips of the Sign. Trizza's horns are based a similar looking part of her sign, but the horns are growing more vertically on her head implying the horns would grow closer together than what we would see with the Empress. Though troll horns might never stop growing. With the Handmaiden, who was very old before her death, her horns had basically begun curling back around on themselves in an even more ramlike manner.

[JakeMorph]

trizza's horns are exactly the same as feferi's horns because she was a pisces in the concept stage and they never bothered to change them because it says right there in the comic that the whole thing about signs and ancestors is just a superstition and has nothing to do with a troll's real genetics. i don't think this line of debate is really conducive to deciding whether jane is racist or not though