Troll Theory

Something clearly important but untouched on in CaNWC are the trolls. Although we’ve seen very little of them so far, we do know that they are active in the world just like early Homestuck, but under entirely different circumstances.

The Facts



The trolls have been set on a campaign of harassment against Jhon, Rose, and Hecka Jef, presumably ordered by Kraket, although he seems to be the only one who has proactively taken this role. Vrasky also seems fairly involved, but it’s not clear whether this is harassment or assistance.

The existence of nine trolls has been confirmed so far.

Kraket (Karkat) = carcatGenetics

(Terezi) = gelloCAlibater

Vrasky (Vriska) = acranidGrid

(Sollux) = tenArmegaddens

(Aradia) = alpacalipsArise

(Tavros) = adoisTrader

Gametez (Gamzee) = turniplyCabbagous

(Equius) = centurionsTest

Kanaya = grinAudacious.

The state of Nepeta, Eridan, and Feferi is unconfirmed.

Corruption

Whatever the corruption is, it seems to be something affecting all of Paradox Space, and not merely the kids universe and session. But also like Rose, some seem to have been inexplicably spared.

Normal: Kanaya

Corrupt: Kraket, Vrasky, Gametez, (Terezi), (Equius)

Unknown: (Sollux), (Aradia), (Tavros), (Nepeta), (Eridan), (Feferi)

Additionally, “white wordes guy,” the troll’s first guardian, has also proven to be normal. Betty crocker also exists, so HIC may exist as well.

Like other corrupted characters, they are essentially parodies of their Homestuck counterparts.

Kraket simply shouts insults and immediately brags about it.

(Terezi) constantly spams the numbers 413.

Gametez says “honk,” “miracles,” and “motherfucker” a lot.



(Equius) likes “hornses” and sweats a lot.

Vrasky is obsessed with being relevant and important.

Presumably (Terezi) trolled Roze before the start of CaNWC since Rose contacted her first and she knew “Roze’s” name while Gametez, (Equius), and Kanaya did not.

CaNWC obviously deviates wildly from Homestuck canon, but this necessarily applies to the trolls session as well. Although we’ve seen little from them, we can infer a few major changes.

Bec Noir Doesn’t Exist

The entire reason the trolls hated, or even contacted, the humans in Homestuck was because they blamed them for Bec Noir’s existence (which was ultimately Vriska’s fault).

But in CaNWC, Bec, or rather “Beq,” was never prototyped, so Bec Noir cannot exist anymore.

In spite of that, the trolls clearly are still contacting and harassing the humans. They blame them for something, something that presumably kept them from claiming the Ultimate Reward, but it’s not clear what.

Now, it’s possible that the prototyping might still mess up the troll session somehow. The humans must now deal with the combined strength of the Head of the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors and Germy, quite the force to be reckoned with.

They Are Not On the Meteor

Originally, the trolls escaped to the meteor to hide from the rampage of Bec Noir, but as we established, he’s not a thing anymore, so they did no such thing.

This explains part of Kanaya’s conversation with Rose. According to her, she had not spoken to any of the other trolls that day, but had the day prior, and when Rose asked her to check again she said she might later. If Kanaya had been with the rest of the trolls on the meteor, talking to them should have been as simple a matter as looking at them. But she didn’t.

This also explains the environments we see the trolls in. Compare the locations of the trolls in CaNWC to their hives in Homestuck and the color of their computers.

As should be abundantly clear at this point, the trolls all appear to be in their hives. The only exceptions seem to be Gamzee, who we can only confirm is on his husktop, and Kanaya, who we can’t really see anything around at all, but is likely on her lunchtop since we cannot see her screen.



If all the trolls have the leeway to simply return to their hives, this also tells us that whatever threat they faced is not something they need to cower in fear from, which may explain why most of the trolls seem less interested in harassing anyone.

Vrasky Never Died

We can also see that when Vrasky spoke to Jhon, she still had the left lens tinted black. This has huge implications for Vrasky and the rest of the troll session.

For a refresher, Vriska was a bitch to Tavros and one day broke his legs by mind-controlling him off a cliff. Terezi and Aradia were pissed and cut contact with her because of this. Aradia was still pissed though, so she retaliated by sending the ghosts of all the trolls Vriska has murdered to haunt her. At the behest of Doc Scratch, Vriska mind-controlled Sollux into killing Aradia to end it. In retaliation to that, Terezi contacted “WH1T3 T3XT GUY” and informed him about how Vriska was using the magic cue ball. Doc Scratch then blew up the magic cue ball in her face, robbing her of her vision eightfold and her left arm.

Vriska then mind-controlled Tavros into mind-controlling Terezi’s lusus into mind-controlling Terezi in a psychic double reach-around into staring into the sun/skaia, robbing her of her vision. Vriska later got an eyepatch and a robot arm from her neighbor Equius to accommodate her loss.

Aradia’s ghost was later given a new body by Equius, which restored her emotions, driving her to seek revenge against Vriska. She killed Vriska, allowing Vriska’s rise up as god tier, restoring her left arm and eye.

As the only god tier troll, Vriska was instrumental to defeating the Black King (although Gamzee’s attack did more damage), which was especially difficult due to Feferi’s lusus Gl’bgolyb (which was created by Doc Scratch) and the many different doomed Aradiabots were similarly needed to keep him from releasing the Vast Glub, which would kill all the trolls instantly.

Goddamn, this webcomic is complicated.

Anyways, if Vriska still is still missing an eye and Terezi is blind, obviously something like this all went down, but did not end up in Aradia killing Vriska. This proves that things went differently in the troll session beyond changes caused by Bec Noir not existing, as well as raise questions about Doc Scratch and how the trolls were able to beat the Black King.

Why Doesn’t Kanaya Notice the Corruption?

The big question we’re all waiting for an answer on is why Kanaya was oblivious to the corruption. When they spoke, Kanaya dismissed Rose as a paranoid schizophrenic, having noticed no “deterioration of reality itself.” Since she had not spoken to anyone that day she has an excuse for not seeing how they’ve been affected. However, she did notice that her trolltag had changed when Rose pointed it out to her, so by all rights she should simply be able to look around her room and see it.

So the area that Kanaya is in has obviously been affected, but for whatever reason, she’s oblivious to it.The only explanation I can come up with is that either the corruption settles in slowly, or following my enhancement theory, people transition from corrupted to normal slowly instead of instantly.

That actually fits how we’ve seen things happen for Rose and Jack as well. Rose didn’t see the corruption first. Instead, when she spoke to Jhon, she was completely baffled as to his “sudden excess of typos and nonsensical comments” and excused it as him being drunk. Similarly, Jack initially excused why everything seemed so terrible as being caused by the new outfits.

It is not the new outfits.

Back on point, this probably means that Rose would have spoken to Kanaya just as she was beginning to transform into her higher-quality self. If Jack is any indication, it should be a relatively short process, since he went from dismissing it to being damn certain in the time between ordering AR to fire and AR reporting back to him. Speaking with corrupted people might make it stand out more quickly though, or could even be necessary.

ha ha ha, okay, thats’ enough trols for tooday.

