Homesuck: Vriska Rising

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Twenty-four tubes?
...I'm sorry, but that barely constitutes any foreshadowing at all. The rational assumption is simply that it takes two tubes to make a troll. Or that the additional tubes were to make their own "parents." The lus-whatever-they're-called.

Except that we already saw the ectobiology process when John did it, so we know how many tubes would have been involved to make 12 trolls. It's foreshadowing, but it's not his usual beat-you-over-the-head-with-it foreshadowing. By which I mean it's actually good foreshadowing that doesn't telegraph the whole damn plot for once.

[Kim]

The delivery of this information was lacking, I felt, so if you want to argue it wasn't written well go for it, but like I said if you're asking for more foreshadowing you're asking Hussie to have just flat-out shown or told us this info before now. Basically what POS said, but whatevs.

[Art of Hilt]

The rational assumption is simply that it takes two tubes to make a troll.

Except we've already seen how paradox cloning works with John and have no reason to assume otherwise.
It takes a ghost slime and puts it in one tube per person.

Or that the additional tubes were to make their own "parents." The lus-whatever-they're-called.

To be fair, the lussuses/lussii/lususjdsijds are just random animals of no genetic relation to the trolls.

..Also I'm rather worried about the implications regarding the potential creation of twelve more characters to follow around. Enough's enough, already.

I know that feel, man.
I know that feel.
Hoping they stay sort of distant, like I'm also hoping Jade's grandson stays sort of distant.

e- they're probably responsible for all those human items ending up in Alternia I bet

[Locke cole]

Originally Posted by NonCon

Why would that be the rational assumption when it was shown clearly to not be the case with the human children?

I almost typed clone shearly.

Whelp.

Look, the ectobiology thing had 4 vats in John's session.

It took the four guardians, and mixed them, human-style, to create the kids who were genetic offspring of them, as well as making babby clones of the guardians themselves.

Karkat's lab has 24 tubes. Presumably, since Troll Biology Sure Is Weird, he needed twice as many vats (two trollmance pairs) for each wiggler.

That still leaves us with another set of wigglers unaccounted for.

Because Trolls ain't related to the lusii, remember?

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by NonCon

The delivery of this information was lacking, I felt, so if you want to argue it wasn't written well go for it, but like I said if you're asking for more foreshadowing you're asking Hussie to have just flat-out shown or told us this info before now. Basically what POS said, but whatevs.

I think the problem isn't that the foreshadowing was insufficient, but that realistically this should have been dropped on us sooner. We've known Karkat and the trolls for a long time, and this is the first time in all that time he's so much as thought about the twelve babies he made and teleported off somewhere without knowing anything about them?

Dropping it this late in the game makes it feel like it came out of nowhere even WITH the foreshadowing that was present. Had we seen his lab way earlier, and then heard about this like a month or so ago? Then yeah, it would be like "Oh- HO!" but as it is? Not so much.

THIS COULD however be one of those serial readers/update readers issues, though. It might not seem like such a long wait if you're archive binging.

It's kind of obvious Hussie is writing this for the 'read the whole thing at once' crowd, which, in itself, I feel is a weakness in his writing, to be honest. You can't pace a periodical the same way you pace a novel, which is what he's been doing.

And it causes weirdness like this amongst the periodical readers.

[Premmy]

Originally Posted by Art of Hilt

I know that feel, man.
I know that feel.
Hoping they stay sort of distant, like I'm also hoping Jade's grandson stays sort of distant.

Jade's Grandson is one of the wigglers

[Locke cole]

Originally Posted by Art of Hilt

Except we've already seen how paradox cloning works with John and have no reason to assume otherwise.
It takes a ghost slime and puts it in one tube per person.

Because that's how it works for humans. We take two people and... mix things to get one new person.

Trolls need two sets of... genetics per wiggler.

[Arcanum]

The 12 additional Trolls that Karkat made, whoever the hell they may be, were sent to Alternia along with the 12 Trolls we know and love via meteors and the reckoning. In other words there is no way they are in the Troll's game session.

The only exception to this would be if the meteors these 12 New Trolls were placed on were never fired off towards Skaia before the Old Trolls beat the Black King and stopped the reckoning. In which case they are in the session but still Wrigglers.

Personally I think these 12 new trolls are either A) a Red Herring with no real relation to the plot, or B) Something that we will learn about WAY later on with minimal importance to the story as we currently know it.

Edit-- Plus with the whole jab at how everything Karkat makes dies, it's entirely plausible these 12 New Trolls are dead and of no importance at all.

Edit2 -- About the whole 24 tubes thing, it makes sense for a single set of 12 trolls because you have 6 Matesprit pairs, and 6 Kismesis pairs, all of which will then be mixed into an incestuous slurry to create the 12 trolls. It's possible Karkat did this procedure twice, but who knows at this point.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Locke cole

Because that's how it works for humans. We take two people and... mix things to get one new person.

Trolls need two sets of... genetics per wiggler.

But they're getting them from the same genetic pool. It'd just be combinations of different trolls from the large group of trolls.

@Krylo I don't disagree.

[Art of Hilt]

Originally Posted by Locke cole

Because that's how it works for humans. We take two people and... mix things to get one new person.

Trolls need two sets of... genetics per wiggler.

Or we could run with the earlier line of thought that you illustrated

It took the four guardians, and mixed them, human-style, to create the kids who were genetic offspring of them, as well as making babby clones of the guardians themselves.

And conclude that, since the kids' session only had four vats and used them to mix one set of paradox clones to make a second set of paradox clone babies, the 24 vats only create one set of 24 paradox clones and, since no mixing was involved*, there is only that one set of 24 paradox clones, 12 of which Karkat recognized, and 12 which he does not.

*- unless he decides to do that RIGHT NOW and ends up somehow with 48 trolls total
ie the theorized creators of the trolls' universe