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why do people get into the Homestuck trolls so much?


Sophie

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I mean, I understand the appeal of My Little Pony. I haven't watched all the episodes, and I do not now, nor will I ever own a single item of MLP merchandise. But, you know, it's as fun as any children's animated series, once you get past this fear of everything girly that Americans seem to have.

 

But Homestuck is different. I mean Homestuck was awesome at first, but that awesome pretty much ends the instant the trolls take center stage. All of the animation and interactivity and action and everything that had been a part of Homestuck up to that point just stops. Instead, we have a bunch of chat logs. Like fifty thousand words of chat logs. Then somebody does something, and then we're back to another fifty thousand words of everyone else talking about how stupid they were for doing something.

 

They don't really seem like interesting personalities to me. I mean there are maybe one or two out of the twelve that are halfway interesting characters.

 

I keep reading, hoping that at some point it gets better. (Actually, my first time reading, I completely lost interest with the trolls, but now, like a year or two later, I'm forcing myself through this.) I'm hoping that once Jade enters the medium, things will actually start happening again. But I haven't even seen Jade for like two acts now, and I'm having doubts about this ever going anywhere, and I'm wondering why on earth anyone would find these trolls so damned appealing.

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Yeah, ok. About half of them look kinda cool or cute in some way. As far as personality though, I find the humans more appealing. Plus there was actually stuff happening when the story was about them.

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Judging by the fact that Jade hasn't entered the Medium yet in your reading, you must still be in Act 5 Part 1; the first appearance of the Trolls. A5A1 really just serves to add some story to the Trolls and their session; things will center back on the kids very soon with Act 5 Act 2. It's the developments after this point that really show the charm and quirks of the trolls. Personally, I like the contrast between them and the kids; they show a truly alien, extraterrestrial, out-of-this-world version of ourselves that makes us think about humankind a bit.

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Personally, I like the contrast between them and the kids; they show a truly alien, extraterrestrial, out-of-this-world version of ourselves that makes us think about humankind a bit.

 

Not really. I mean maybe I've been spoiled by reading science fiction, but The Gods Themselves, or Stranger in a Strange Land are alien, extraterrestrial, and out-of-this-world. Trolls are pretty much just humans with horns, who put "troll" or "grub" in front of the names of, or otherwise just rename human concepts to look different.

 

The quadrants are kinda cool. I mean reproductive differences are an easy way to make a race look alien. But then they kinda fall short. Why would they have all these pair-bonding emotions if they don't reproduce sexually?

 

For that matter, why do they have genders if they don't reproduce sexually?

 

Physically, the differences between the genders in humans exist for birth and child rearing. Human women have wider hips so that a infant's head can pass through them. They have breasts so that they can feed their young. Trolls, by contrast, neither give live birth, nor do they raise their own children -- and yet the females still have wider hips and breasts.

 

Psychologically, we have lots and lots of human beings who don't identify as male or female. It's extremely common among humans, and we actually have a reason to have different genders. Yet trolls, with no sexual reproduction, and thus no reason to have gender at all, still identify as either male or female, to the extent of females wearing dresses and makeup, while males do not.

 

Linguistically, in English, we have words for male, female, and neuter: he, she, it; him, her, it; his, hers, its, and so on. This is not universal, even among human languages. I could list all the languages that don't have masculine and feminine, but I won't, because it's a whole freaking buttload. Why then, do trolls, while having their own word for refrigerator, use words like he and she, which have no value whatsoever to them?

 

Trolls are alien in the way that Pig Latin is a language -- they're both thinly veiled versions of something familiar.

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For that matter, why do they have genders if they don't reproduce sexually?...

Doesn't each troll correspond to a human? I think I read that the author made one of the ships spirit(?)-twins to sink it.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. <3

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I don't know why I like Homestuck myself, I think it's fun to see a character die and then die again later.

"Try to get a better understanding of things before making your judgement." -Khan, Metro 2033

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest Anonymous

Because there are at least 36 (original, future and past, I think, its been a while since I read parts) trolls, all with different personalities there is more room for self insertion than an onahole store. And since a large portion of the HS community uses tumblr, cosplays, role-plays and write fanfics, that self insertion and the ease of pretending you're really Terezi, you'll get people who love it.

 

I tried reading it and gave up. In time I could have been forcing, I was reading the exchanges between fictional teenage aliens who can never write in proper English.

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