Share your worldbuilding headcanons for trolls/Alternia!

i think it's already a pretty common one, but i have my own twist on it, at the risk of sounding a little weird:

with the headcanon that trolls (especially seadwellers, given differences between landdwelling & seadwelling anatomies) can adopt traits from animals, seadwellers and mutants (or even just anyone particularly lucky/unlucky on the hemospectrum) can not only be born with gills & fins, but not be born with them but develop them later on, or even be born with them but lose them as they develop.

you know, nature vs. nurture + some physical characteristics seem to be based on a wide variety of animals so i wanted to lean into that. also believe that gills & fins vary widely in size, shape, amount, etc. this is depending on birth circumstances (headcanon that seadwellers when born often head for water pools early, though landdwellers can also end up in pools w/o drowning), type/species of aquatic animal that the troll's body is more closely mimicing, as well as the lusus of the troll (shark lusus = higher likelihood of more shark-like gills/fins). though, it is to a certain extent. again, nature vs. nurture.

a lot of times, a mish-mash of different aquatic animals' characteristics happen, and a large amount of seadwelling trolls have a mixture of characteristics, though usually contained to order/family of animal (in rarer cases as specific as genus/species or even as broad as class).

this is basically the reason (excuse) why one of my troll ocs w/ mutant blood & physical characteristics has 3 pairs of gills on their neck and none on their torso, which is also the reason (again, excuse) for them wearing not only a bandana but also a goddamn neckwarmer on alternia. they also have fins short but somewhat tall fins, which they hide with either magnet earrings & headband (the magnets on the headband pull back the earrings and fins, which they can then hide under messy hair) or just a normal cloth headband (which often is in all likelihood just their bandana repurposed for their head instead).

i love making worldbuilding excuses for cool character design :]

Ooh, I was thinking about this recently!! I love building off of the idea that some highblood/lowblood pairs become moirails to get sent off to the same ship - I can't help but wonder, would a highblood set up their lowblood friends with someone they trust, like an arranged marriage? To make sure they're safe? I can imagine a plotline where highblood thinks theyre doing lowblood a favor, but lowblood thinks it's demeaning.

As for cities, we know Drones exist and that these societies are super highly regulated around laws of blood castes. I think a concept could be secret communities in rural areas that exist solely to escape 24/7 watch rather than join the resistance. But then what? Are all trolls under an automatic digital registry system when they're hatched? If that's the case, I'd imagine that the jades would work pretty hand in hand with whoever is helping run these systems, whether it's goldbloods or indigos, both maybe.

I can't remember if I imagined this somewhere, but aren't their names decided by like the first sound their lusus makes? The Jades are in charge of taking care of grubs, but how would that first sound be documented? Is there some poor fool out there named Xdfghk, or raawrr? That would he a fun OC idea, someone who picked their name because the original name was stupid. Trolls don't have ID cards, i think they're all on a technology and scanning system, like how the UK and AU are coming up with a digital twin system as a way to verify identification, or how Youtube is now going to use AI to identify age.

Oops, this was a lot. I have a lot on my mind about this. Probably even more. Is there an alternian sign language or are Deaf trolls just killed for being as "weak" despite being completely able bodied except their hearing? Imagine a Deaf troll with like, a bat lusus.

Big horns HAVE to cause some kind of body impairment if they're big eniugh. Do most clothes of Bronze bloods zip up (or velcro, like dolls) because it cant fit over their heads? Or do they have really big neck holes to slide on the other way like pants? Would that apply to most trolls with some kind of a point on their horns? Bronze bloods also probably have really strong necks, or really bad backs. Same with the purple bloods that have huge horns. Does Marvus have to tilt his head to one side a lot? I've thought about Rust bloods, too, with their horns curling in. Would they grow to a damaging point? Imagine there was one sign with a history of horns curling into their skull, or over their ears, and the system stating that grub and all grubs of that sign should be exterminated. Man, I love world building.

My borrowed headcanon from kita-ysabell is that trolls are born in equal proportions - any ideas of caste rarity are purely artificial results of culling programs.

If wigglers are tested in the caverns for fitness, early intelligence, beauty, then it stands to reason that the conditions would be more strict for blues. Thus the great lie of the hemospectrum is that there is little fundamental difference between a rust-blooded urchin and a blue-blooded noble, only that there is less room to fail for the higher castes.

Personally I think all of the trolls "get bigger" when they become adults much more than humans do, and that they're physically a lot stronger than they appear as kids. I think the comic already showcased this a lot with Kanaya being able to lift that ginormous chainsaw with ease, and Nepeta hunting things for sport. I think they, like humans, will have a second growth spurt and just get "bigger" physically lol.

In the Friendsim they describe the adult trolls as way larger than the kids, and one of the kids is literally super huge so how big is the adult troll she was talking with yk? I also think this is why Karkat just got buffer as an adult, not just because of the whole war thing but you can tell that him and Kanaya physically got way taller or bigger than the humans around them. Bro just had a growthspurt and all that war really does wonders for working out I guess.

I always imagined they're similar to ants then any other bug, and ants are also a lot stronger than they appear to be.

I've also thought about the economic structure of Alternia and I think Alternia is a anarcho-capitalist hellscape where people are allowed to pretty much do whatever they want in terms of business, no property taxes is needing to be paid, but the world revolves around money and coins anyways so you have to make something that people deem worthy of buying.

A lot of the trolls seemed to not have any jobs or go to school, which makes me think that, because Alternia was a planet of children that the only thing they really focused on was popularity and survival. And the Friendsim and Hiveswap kind of showed that pretty well IMO, as a lot of the priorities of the Trolls in those games were to just survive until they were to be called to the Military or whatever.

I'm guessing schooling and other things are handled by the Lusus, so this makes me think they're all homeschooled in some way. But this has varying degrees of success depending on how well the Troll can even protect their Lusus from other people. We know that the hives the trolls live in were made by that Troll, I imagine it started off very small, but as the troll gets bigger, they advance their home-building skills. Or some of them get lucky and live in what is already a pretty cavernous space. Nepeta literally lived in a cave, and Terezi lived in a tree in the forest. I imagine they both chose places that were secluded and hidden away from others for safety. (Als,o those places just seem like fun places to live.)

My personal headcanons (pretty much every single one I can remember lmao, prepare for a long-ass post (GOD I hope I don't come across as an asshole for this):

- A troll's horns keep growing for as long as they live. I think this is implied in canon, because exceptionally old trolls like the Handmaid and the Condesce have absolutely massive horns.

- Very basic and common ik, but I think that grubsauce is made from culled wigglers. I used to NOT think this, but Xefros's "you don't ask questions about grubsauce" and the conversation between Dave and Karkat in meat about trolls eating babies but "only the defective ones" made me change my mind (despite neither Hiveswap or the epilogues being strictly "canon," I personally tend to take anything new about trolls from them as basically canon, while regarding the EVENTS of their stories as dubious at best).

- Limeblooded lusii still exist (the way I see it, they're wild animals, so there's no reason for them all to just stop existing the moment the limes did), and limes are still occasionally born but are almost always culled shortly after birth like mutants are, unless some miracle happens or a Jade decides to take pity on them. I do believe that Karkat wasn't the only secret non-hemospectrum troll out there.

- Amphibious limebloods (I am a FIRM believer that Fiamet is a secret lime)

- Trolls generally either file their claws down or let them grow out into points. They're much harder and thicker than human nails, and are made of chitin. Some trolls habitually bite theirs.

- Troll hair, teeth and horns are also made of chitin.

- The one piece of troll lore established in Friendsim that I refuse to acknowledge as canon is them having nipples. It makes no sense for a species that can't lactate to have nipples. I will die on this hill.

- When a wiggler pupates, the two rearmost sets of grub legs are reabsorbed into the body, forming grubscars. The ones in front become arms, and the humanoid legs are formed new, because they jutt out from the bottom of the body vertically instead of coming out of the side like grub legs (this is just my flimsy justification for why trolls have two sets of grubscars. A friend of mine suggests that, instead, they're from the three-segmented body of a grub being "mashed together" into a singular torso, and I'm sticking to my interpretation but putting this out there because I think it's a good and valid theory).

- Some troll clothing is made from wiggler silk. If a wiggler fails to hatch from its cocoon, it is turned into silk. No canon evidence for this, it just feels in-character if we're already using dead wigglers for something ruthlessly utilitarian.

- Troll horns serve as display structures. Generally, larger is considered more attractive. They also serve to indicate sex, but in an extremely subtle and esoteric "only they can tell" kind of way that no other species can really get.

- Transgender trolls are completely accepted by Alternian society and the empire. This is not due to any moral reason, but simply because it doesn't affect reproductive capability, so there's no reason for the empire to care. All HRT and surgeries are DIY, of course, they don't have universal healthcare. Trans trolls can feel dysphoric about belonging to a caste that is predominantly a gender they're not, as well as their horn shape.

- Trolls is bugs. A lot of my headcanons are based on the assumption that they're insect people.

- Female trolls are typically larger than males, because that's how bugs tend to work. In an inverse of how human gender roles work, they're typically considered stronger and more aggressive, but there actually isn't much of a difference when you average things out, and these expectations are largely social.

- Trolls keep growing for longer than humans do, and usually wind up being taller than humans, although much like humans, adult body size varies wildly, so it's not at all hard to find a human that's taller than a troll. Trolls can hit seven or eight feet without being considered extremely tall, but can also max out at five or lower.

- The glaring exception to this are purplebloods, who continue to slowly grow throughout their lives after hitting maturity without ever stopping, like crocodiles or lobsters. While the vast majority die in battle or to battle-related health conditions due to their role as the empire's enforcers, and thus a truly ancient purpleblood is exceedingly rare, really really old ones like The Grand Highblood can become the size of buildings. Whenever I picture him, he's always like 30 feet tall.

- The hemospectrum is a construct. While trolls, allowed to reproduce freely without any culling, would generally fall into one of the 12 hues on the hemospectrum, mutantbloods aren't actually super rare, and come in far more colours than candy red. Also, very rarely, sometimes trolls with completely standard blood colours belonging to land-dwelling castes can be born with the fins and/or gills of a seadweller. These are culled because, despite having a "normal" blood colour, their traits are considered abberant for their caste (ie, their existence would call into question the validity of seadweller supremacy and the supposed rigidity and biological merit of the hemospectrum), much like how non-ceruleans would be culled for obviously deformed eyes, or a non-goldblood would be culled for having two sets of horns. Like limes, mutants generally only survive if a jade takes pity on them, which is extremely illegal.

- "Runts" are a thing, and are also almost always culled. Karako was a runt.

- While trolls, like humans, are omnivorous, the "ideal" troll diet puts far more emphasis on meat than veg. Trolls can eat raw meat without consequence, and have stronger stomach acid than humans. They can digest blood and small bones, and are able to produce their own vitamin C like most non-human animals.

- Because they are nocturnal and used to dimmer light conditions, troll eyes are larger and more sensitive than those of humans, and can see better in the dark. If you put a troll on Earth during a clear sunny day, they would find it overwhelmingly bright and be squinting constantly, but they'd probably be fine if they put on sunglasses. Their skin would actually burn less easily than that of humans, because it's evolved some resistance to the harsh Alternian sun, which is a real hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby type of situation.

- Trolls can't tan, and all have basically the same skin and hair colour barring mutations like melanism, leucism, albinism, etc (which are culled anyway). However, troll hair CAN vary in thickness and texture, and natural blood-coloured streaks are an uncommon but not rare thing to have (which I believe because, in the scene where we see him as a wiggler, Eridan has his violet streak despite just being "born." I also believed this before finding that out, because it's fun).

- Drones bleed black (which I believe because His Honorable Tyranny seems to be some sort of drone, and he bleeds black), can see in infra-red, and sound like the werewires from Deltarune. Flight is not an ability they naturally have, it's added to them alongside various other cyborg implements once they reach maturity.

Wall of text over... *GASP*

I'm hoping this prompts discussion, please feel free to reply if you disagree with anything I've said or have any thoughts!!