Troll Theory 2: Electric Boogaloo

Man, it has been a while since my last post. I’ve been keeping things mostly up to date on the cool and new wiki, so you can go there for plot summaries for now on. I may still make the occasional post for plot dense updates like coalle[s]ce S[FRESH JIMMY.

With the end of the Intermishin’, many new things have been revealed about the trolls that reopens a few questions and raises some others. This post is a follow-up to my previous Troll Theory post, which was posted slightly before [S) bunnie time. I will be covering all information gained since then on the trolls.

New Information

Bunnie Time - I covered the details of this video here, but the most important points involve Kanaya. Apparently after her conversation with Rose, Kanaya used her Trolian program to look through Rose’s life and witnesses the ectobiological birth of Roze. Finally noticing the corruption, she throws her keyboard away in shock and disgust.

Kanaya experienced a “slow reveal” of the corruption. Things were shitty long before she took notice, longer than what should have been possible, especially with Rose pointing it out explicitly.



Trolian is Introduced.

Trolls are confirmed for harassing non-players like Dabe according to the “Chump Roll”. Jhon also apparently changed his handle like in Homestuck due to the harassement.

coalle[s]ce - Nothing directly about the trolls here, but the Wreckining began extremely early, indicating that the trolls still screwed up making the human’s universe. The humans may still be doomed to failure and need to scratch their session.



Intermishin’ - Like the original Intermission from Homestuck, we treated to the story of the Midight Crewd. While most of the attention is on the Felt, who all appear to be normal, this updates gives us some of our first real look at the troll session itself. There is a lot of information here, so I will take it point by point.

Trolls are confirmed to have a session, complete with their own version of Jagk Nore.



A corrupted Eridan exists and is locked up in Sleck’s CHEST OF CONTINENTS for punishment.

Trolls cry blue tears instead of matching their blood color. Possibly an error or something retconned by corruption.

Spdaes Sleck has a “frendship bracelit” from his “best friendo” covered in diamonds. Possibly from Kraket.

Jagk and Kraket had a moirallegiance called “Jagket”, but this ship apparently sank.

Vrasky is now Snoman, the eighth member of the Felt and Sleck’s hatedaddy. Killing her destroys the universe.

The trolls Ultimate Reward doorway exists in Lord English’s vault. It has only ten windows.

I asked four questions in my original troll post: (1) Why are the trolls harassing the humans, (2) Where are the trolls, (3) What happened to Vrasky, and (4) Why hasn’t Kanaya noticed anything?

This new information reopens the first three questions and settles the fourth, which I am happy to have had accurately predicted. It also raises entirely new questions though. If there are only ten windows on the trolls SGRUB logo, then there should only be ten players, leaving at least two trolls out of the loop. So who counts? And why is the doorway in Lord English’s vault in the first place?

Which trolls are players?

Let’s assume that all ten players will be members of the ten originals A2 trolls. That is by no means guaranteed of course, but it’ll keep things simpler.

In that case, there are two pairs of trolls that stand out as exceptional: Vrasky and Eridan, and Nepeta and Feferi.

Vrasky and Eridan are both notable for not being in their hives. As I demonstrated in my original post, all of the trolls should be in the respective hives. With bunnie time, this was only further confirmed as we can clearly see around Kanaya’s room.

Eridan however has been imprisoned by Spdaes Sleck, and Vrasky is a fully fledged member of the Green Guys / Felt. They are both still on Alternia, albeit hundreds of years in the future. Now Vrasky appears to be in her hive when she talks to Jhon, so either (1) she still has access to it, possibly through the Ultimate Reward door, (2) there are some serious time discrepancy between Act 3 and the Intermishin, or (3) she outfitted her room in the Felt Manor like her original room.

If Eridan and Vrasky are the trolls that have been left out, then that would help explain why they are seen separated from the rest of the group. It would also help explain why Vrasky has not achieved god tier.

Nepeta and Feferi are notable for being entirely absent from CaNWC so far. As of now, we have directly seen Karkat, Terezi, Equius, Gamzee, Kanaya, Vriska, and Eridan, and we have also seen the trolian handles for Tavros, Sollux, and Aradia, which is ten trolls total. We have not seen anything from either of these two yet.

Now this can and perhaps will be easily overturn in the future if they ever do decide to show up. Trolls have not had a major presence in the story yet, so this is understandable. It also seems unlikely that o would just inexplicably drop two characters.

Still, we can note their absence, and them not being players might make sense. In the original troll post I asked how the trolls were able to beat the Blapck Kink without a god-tier Vriska. If Feferi never prototyped Gl’bgolyb though it would have been a much easier fight.

Alternatively, she could have just prototyped something else, or another player could have risen to god tier. Excluding both of these characters would also mess with the male/female ratio of their session, but Dadd already cloned a disproportionate number of males, so that might not be a hard rule in CaNWC.

We likely won’t be able to tell who is truly a player until the comic makes it explicit, or have more information on why this change was made in the first place. It really could be any two players at this point, or even more than two if they have some troll equivalent of Swet Bro and Hecka Jef.

Why is the door there?

The Ultimate Reward is meant to be given on the Victory Platform, orbiting around Skaya. It is now in Lord English’s vault.

That… is very odd.

Off the top of my head, I would like to present two possibilities for why this might be the case.

Firstly, since the Felt Manor is on Alternia, it could be that this is one of the “exit” doors. Perhaps the Ultimate Reward doesn’t just provide passage into the new universe, but also back to your original planet should you wish to return. This fact was just rendered moot in canon since Jade brought Earth with them. This explanation could help explain how Eridan and Vrasky got there to begin with and seems like a reasonable fanon rule.

Alternatively, Lord English might have stolen the door itself. In Bec Noir’s absence, the trolls need some new excuse for why they have failed to claim the reward for their success. But it’s also clear that whatever stopped them doesn’t seem to be the constant threat that Bec Noir was since they seem to be living in relative peace in their hives. If the door was simply taken from them though, and they somehow blamed the humans for this, that would settle the matter.

Granted, in CaNWC Hecka Jef prototyped Rose’s Grimoire, apparently giving people horrorterror powers. I’m sure there are plenty of ways that could cause problems on the multiverse scale, and we are only beginning to see the ramifications of that with AR turning grimdark. But given how peaceful things seem to be with the trolls, I feel it’s safe to say they are facing a much different threat than they did in Homestuck if they face a threat at all.

Snoman

The ever important Vrasky is now the eighth member of the Felt. Somehow it seems that she was exiled to Alternia instead of the Blapck Quen.

Originally the Blapck Quen was exiled because she refused to wear her Ring of Orbs Twelvefold because Aradia prototyped a frog. Jack took this as an opportunity to team up with the trolls, dethrone, and exile her. She was then recruited by Doc Scratch while wandering Alternia.

If the trolls never prototype a frog, possibly due to Aradia being a non-player, then this could explain why the Felt needed to look for another member.

Her inclusion as a member also makes sense seeing as how this Vriska seems much more willing to work with Doc Scratch. While she actively competed against him in Homestuck (and presumably did here as well considering her destroyed eye), she directed Jhon to start up his game of Roller Coaster Tycoon, establishing communication between him and Doc Scratch.

Conclusion

Information on the trolls is still fairly scarce, but a lot of new possibilities have opened up. By all rights the troll session seems to have gone just as different in CaNWC as the human session is going, and I only expect things to diverge more from here on.