Characters / Homestuck Trolls General

Main Cast: Kids, Pre-Scratch; Kids, Post-Scratch; Trolls (Lowbloods, Midbloods, Highbloods, Pre-Scratch); Cherubs Supporting Cast: Guardians & Ancestors; Sprites; Exiles & the Midnight Crew; Agents & Monarchs; The Felt (Leaders); Others Expanded Universe: Post-Canon; Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff; Hiveswap (Troll Call)

Elsewhere in paradox space, we examine another planet, forgotten by time. But we will strive to remember. What was this planet's name?

Long before the formation of planet Earth, there was a world called Alternia. Alternia was a world ruled by the trolls, a species who, at least externally, look like humans with grey skin, fangs, yellow eyes, and striped horns. The trolls, too, have found Sburb (or rather, Sgrub), and over the course of the adventure we meet twelve troll children who play it together, split into two sessions of six. However, sometime during the course of their quest, something goes very wrong, and they begin a campaign of petty internet harassment against the kids, who they blame for the incident. Despite their monstrous looks, sinister screennames, and character profiles composed of mixes and inversions of traits from one or more of the kids, the trolls mostly aren't that bad; they were introduced properly in their own sub-adventure arc in Act 5 Act 1, also known as Hivebent, before essentially becoming part of the main cast on par with the kids in Act 5 Act 2.

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Troll species in general

• Alien Blood: The troll hemospectrum contains a full rainbow of colors, but they are all dull and muted. Karkat's bright red blood is an anomaly. They have an entire caste system based on it, from burgundy-blooded peasants to the tyrian-blooded empress. Three of the storyline trolls have special blood: Karkat's mutant candy-red isn't even on the hemospectrum. Feferi has the most highly-ranked shade of purple of any living troll, making her the future Empress. Kanaya's blood is pretty rare as well, and she comes with a number of exceptions to general troll rules. It's possible they and their ancestors are the only trolls of their blood colors on account of being created with ectobiology rather than being born the usual way.
• All Trolls Are Different: Homestuck plays with the dual meaning by having internet trolls turn out to be actual grey-skinned creatures with horns. Further reveals have shown that they're Humanoid Aliens, with Bizarre Alien Biology implying that they're closer to insects than humans, divided into varieties with different blood colors that to some extent determine traits, abilities, and lifespan. They're a Higher-Tech Species whose society runs on Blue-and-Orange Morality and lots of violence. They're almost all bisexual (because gender is vestigial) and have weird forms of romance(troll reproduction requires this), and many are either psychic, psychotic, or both. Most of the less-savory aspects of their culture are not natural, but were engineered by malevolent outside forces. Prior to the pressing of an in-universe Reset Button, trolls were a peaceful species. Personality-wise, there's a great deal of variation within the 12 trolls in the cast (and their ancestors): from Anti Heroes to Anti Villains, Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains to Smug Snakes, monsters to Messianic Archetypes. However, they are similar to mythological trolls in that they are nocturnal and sensitive to sunlight. As in, sunlight can blind them. Permanently.
• Alternative Calendar: Alternians measure time in "solar sweeps" rather than years; one solar sweep, at least as far as age is concerned, is equal to two and one-sixth years. (And two solar sweeps equals four and one-third years!)
• Amazing Technicolor Population: When trolls are grubs their eyes and bodies are their blood colors. Once they pupate, their skin and eye colors become the same between all trolls, however they fill in with blood pigment as the trolls get older. The twelve main trolls are still young enough for their eyes to be gray.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Sums up what one of their forms of romance: kismesitude.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Trolls reproduce by donating two samples of genetic material to the Mother Grub, with one sample coming from a loving pair and the other coming from arch-enemies. This works just as well between same-gender couples as it does between mixed-gender couples, rendering sexual preference meaningless to the entire species. They also have 4 types of romance and all of them must be fulfilled, or they will be killed. Among other things, this also means buckets are sex toys to trolls. Exactly how bizarre is unclear due to Rule of Funny, Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp" and Teasing Creator.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Troll society takes killing relatively easily. Childhood on Alternia begins with a series of dangerous trials designed to off the weakest of them; once the survivors pass, they're introduced to an essentially lawless society where everyone has to fend for themselves, compassion is weakness and your frenemies are likely to stab you in the back. Arbitrary cullings are commonplace. They don't seem to have a huge problem with murder in its own right, just when it happens to someone they actually like, in which case it's okay to get bloody revenge on their fallen friend's behalf. Trolls who would qualify as dangerous sociopaths and serial killers on Earth are just thought of as huge tools, except for Terezi, who is well-liked (possibly because unlike Vriska, who kills indiscriminately, Terezi has a set of rules she follows). The actions of Vriska are more understandable given the culture she grew up in—and it's implied she isn't nearly the worst out there, just the worst given characterization. Trolls are so inherently violent that being someone's Morality Pet is an integral part of their culture.
  
  It is first implied then later outright stated to be due to Doc Scratch's meddling. The pre-Scratch version of Troll culture was too soft and the players failed hard at the game (because they were too weak and unprepared), so Doc Scratch (on Lord English's orders) manipulated their culture to bring about a brutal, violent, prepared group of teens the second time around. Another big part of it was the Condesce's insane ruling; it would seem that a murderous, bigoted sociopath who believes in a bastardized form of social Darwinism and apparently thinks that wild animals are better at child-rearing than adult trolls doesn't exactly make a civilized society.
• But What About the Astronauts?: While a wave of meteors can explain the extinction of the human species pretty well, it's hard to believe the same thing would kill the trolls, since they managed to develop technologies that could save them, like spaceships, time machines, and the alien delicacy "cotton candy." To cover this, Act 5 establishing GL'BGOLYB, a sea monster maintained by the Troll Empress that could release a telepathic scream the would kill all kills except those with the blood of the Empress. When the meteors hit, Gl'bgolyb screamed as she died, killing every single troll in the galaxy except for the Empress, who was stranded 612 lightyears from her capital planet.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The zodiac signs that trolls wear on their shirts, along with their text colors, match the color of their blood, with the exception of individuals who seek to disguise themselves.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: The trolls live in a brutally Social Darwinist Crapsack World where, had SGRUB not taken place and destroyed the planet, most of them would've probably been culled for being disabled (Terezi and Tavros) or low-blooded mutants (Karkat). Daylight brings rainbow (blood)-drinkers, the undead, while they sleep in a tub of tranquilizers to make sure they don't get intensely brutal nightmares of blood and carnage. And this was all directly caused by a devil figure living on an unnatural moon.
• Crapsack World: Alternia was not a nice place to live before Sgrub. A galaxy with Alternia in it could not have been much better. After Sgrub, the world is mostly dead and populated with monsters, time-traveling ruffians, and generally unpleasant universe-consuming demons. But hey, at least the trolls are gone.
• Cute Monster Girl: They have pointier teeth and horns (which are fairly large when they reach adulthood) but aside from that they're pretty much human. Subverted for some of the Ancestors; few would define the Grand Highblood as cute.
• Discount Lesbians: For Trolls, sex is unimportant when it comes to romance. It manages to sidestep most of the unfortunate implications from this trope. Troll romance is much more complicated in so many other ways. This is just one area in which it is simpler.
• Dysfunction Junction: Even without their individual issues, the insane pressures of their oppressive, brutal society combined with the 4-way mess of romantic entanglements, some of which feed off of hatred, means that there was no way they could be anything but this.

• Everyone Is Bi: Trolls lack words to describe monosexuality, and don't seem to take gender in to account when it comes to any of the 4 quadrants. According to Word of God, gender is largely completely irrelevant in their society. Monosexuality does exist among trolls, but it's rare and isn't considered a big deal, and carries about as much significance as having a preference for a certain hair color does in humans.
• Famous Ancestor: Much like how John created the kids' genetic parents, Karkat made infant paradox clones of these ancestors in an ectobiology lab, who then traveled back in time to become themselves.
• Fantastic Caste System: The trolls' caste system is based on blood color, with the cool colors (purple, blue, and green, known as "highbloods") at the top and the warm colors (yellow, orange/brown, red, known as "lowbloods", or "rust bloods") at the bottom. Trolls can use the color gray (their skin color) as a form of blood-anonymity, but it raises a few eyebrows. Trolls in the low blood castes tend to have psychic powers, but are also far more susceptible to psychic attacks. The high blood castes tend to be almost completely immune to psychic attacks, but far more prone to mental instability and abject insanity. In terms of mental stability, only the three green bloods (Terezi squeaking by as teal) are shown to be more or less normal in terms of mental problems.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: They have quite a bit in common with the Spartans from what we know about their civilisation.
• Generation Xerox: Each troll has an "ancestor" — a troll from the past with the same zodiacal symbol and blood color as them, whose appearance, favored weapon and role in Alternian society mirrors theirs. The trolls don't have to follow in their ancestors footsteps, but having someone to live up to gives their life structure, and the trope definitely applies to the ancestors we've seen so far (Marquise Mindfang for Vriska, Orphaner Dualscar for Eridan, Neophyte Redglare for Terezi and the Grand Highblood for Gamzee). Also applies in the direction you wouldn't expect; the Ancestors are the genetic children of the trolls, not the other way around.
• Gone Horribly Right: The pre-Scratch trolls were too peaceful to play SGRUB and had to reboot their session. Doc Scratch and the Handmaid warped their world into something suitably aggressive, causing "our" trolls to speed through the game and ignore small but important things like listening to the Denizens and catching all the frogs to make the new universe's DNA, causing "our" universe to be so fatally flawed it needs to be scratched too.
• Griefer: A Stealth Pun — their analogue for Strife is Grief.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Trolls in general tend to be very aggressive, but highbloods fall into fits of rage constantly. Feferi is the only exception to this, as Gamzee goes insane later on. Even the lower-blooded trolls are not beyond this, as the fits of rage from Kanaya showcase. Aradia also rages occasionally, but these occurred while she was in a robot fueled by blue blood.
• Horned Humanoid: Each troll has a pair of horns. They're all colored the same (a yellow-to-orange gradient which is often compared to candy corn), but the exact shape of the horns is different for every troll.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: In spite of looking like horned, gray-skinned humans, they share a lot of traits with insects rather than mammals, practice Bizarre Alien Reproduction, and can have blood of nearly any color of the rainbow.
• I Am a Humanitarian: While most of the grubs that they eat or use as biotechnology are depicted as simply random insects, Nepeta's paint set is explicitly stated to by made using pigments from culled wigglers — i.e., larval trolls.
• Insectoid Aliens: Externally, they simply resemble grey-skinned, horned humans, but outside of that they're much more akin to insects than to vertebrates in biology. They hatch from eggs laid by a giant, fully insect-like Mother Grub, and when newly born resemble large grubs with humanoid heads; they eventually pupate and emerge as humanoid adolescents. Some of the Expo Speak relating to their body parts, such as "chitinous windholes", suggests arthropod body parts more than mammalian ones. Additionally, trolls who reach the God Tiers, and occasionally some regular ones, grow colorful butterfly-like wings.
• Long-Lived: High-caste trolls live for quite a long time. Mindfang, a cerulean-blood (the lowest caste of true nobility) mentions in her journals that she has a far longer lifespan than that of low-caste bronze-bloods, as she was already an adult centuries before her eventual bronze-blooded lover was even born. The troll empress, at the very top of the pecking order, is fully ageless. While that's about it insofar as hard numbers are given in the comic, Q&A sessions with the author mention that green-bloods are the first to hit a century-long lifespan.
• Love Dodecahedron: Almost inevitable thanks to the extremely complicated, polygamous, four-part system of the troll species' romantic interaction, which covers everything from conventional romantic love to arch-rivalry, close friendship, and mediation between two parties.
• Mate or Die: When the imperial drone comes to the door of an adult troll, they'd better be able to fill both filial pails or else. As if teenage romantic angst isn't bad enough without all that pressure!
• Metamorphosis: They start out as very non-humanoid larval grubs known as wigglers (though they still have humanoid heads), then early in their life go from that stage to their more familiar humanoid stage. Under certain circumstances, they also gain wings.
• Morality Pet: Mix this with Platonic Life-Partners and you get the troll romance "moirallegiance", otherwise known as "moirails": particularly unstable trolls naturally gravitate towards nicer trolls that can keep their worst behaviour in check: examples include Equius and Nepeta, Eridan and Feferi, Vriska and Kanaya, and rather surprisingly, Gamzee and Karkat. Can be awkward if one member of the moirallegiance would rather it was matespritship (e.g. Eridan, Kanaya)
• Multicultural Alien Planet: Alternia. Not surprising, since the trolls are very human.
• No Blood Ties: Trolls do not form families in the same way that humans do, as grubs are born from a giant mixed slurry of genetic material and raised by lusii. The only exception is Barzum and Baizli, a pair of twins who hatched from the same egg.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Despite the fact that Troll reproduction and life cycle has more seemingly in common with insects than primates, including a very insectoid larval stage, female trolls have breasts. Andrew has confirmed this is mostly so readers can identify with them. Arquiusprite starts to explain that female trolls' breasts do have some important biological function, but Dirk tells him to shut up because he thinks the topic's gross.
• One-Gender Race: Played with. The trolls' reproductive cycle simply involves the mixing of two individuals' genetic material in a bucket, then dumping the resulting slurry into the womb of the Mother Grub to be amalgamated with countless other couples' DNA. This means that reproductive couples need not be of the opposite gender (see Everyone Is Bi). So, theoretically, all trolls could very well have the exact same reproductive organs. However, they still have genders and physical sexes, which according to Word of God are simply vestigial.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: All trolls have High-Pressure Blood and can bleed for frankly ridiculous amounts of time and come out okay.
• Perfect Pacifist People: What trolls used to be like in their original reality, before Doc Scratch made the Axe Crazies we know and love today.
• Power Gives You Wings: Trolls grow wings if they hit their god tiers.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: It's not evident until they get off of Alternia, though. John even compares them to Klingons.
• Psychic Powers: Lower castes trolls (Maroon to Gold bloods) are noted to have various members with these, though the occasional cerulean mutant can also have this, as well as some purple bloods.
• Psychic Block Defense: As a troll is higher up in the caste, the more resistant they are to the above psychic powers, with Fuschia bloods being completely immune.
• Purple Is Powerful: Purple-blooded trolls are the most powerful of the highblood aristocracy and Fuchsia-blood Empresses are the most powerful of all: they (or at least Her Imperious Condescension) are incredibly long-lived and can possess powers from the whole hemospectrum.
• Rainbow Motif: The hemospectrum runs in a rainbow motif from red and orange up through yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple and tyrian. In-universe, the kids' trollslum lists them in this order as well.
• Raised by Wolves: Instead of parents, they have monsters known as Lusus Naturae. Adult trolls are all mostly elsewhere being busy with universal conquest. Judging by Terezi's thoughts as she observes Dave and Bro, the ones who stick around on Alternia range between parasitic mooches at best and murderous home-invaders at worst, so either way adult trolls don't have their best interests in mind.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Vriska states that killing each other is normal by troll standards and speculates that working together was what doomed them (for instance, if they were more bloodthirsty more of them might have ascended to god-tier instead of just Vriska and Aradia). On Alternia, murder is pretty routine and not punished in the slightest. It makes sense in context, because the trolls are being raised for a life of galactic conquest.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Grey skin, candy-corn-colored horns, pointy teeth. Very humanoid otherwise.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Of the Conquistadors variety — adult trolls spend their life offworld, as part of armadas going on an endless rampage through their galaxy and subjugating every species that they encounter.
• Short-Lived Organism: A troll's lifespan is dependent on their place on the hemospectrum, and, while higher castes are very long-lived, low-caste trolls have shorter lifespans than humans do. Burgundy-bloods are mentioned by Doc Scratch to only live to a dozen or two sweeps of age (about 26 to 52 Earth years), and Mindfang's journals mention that she, as a cerulean-blood, was already an adult centuries before her eventual bronze-blooded lover was even born.
• The Spartan Way: Post-Scratch troll society, due to Doc Scratch's influence, is intended to put trolls through a vicious gauntlet from the first day of their lives, ensuring that any who survive to adolescence will be able to easily tear through the Game's trials.
• Superior Species: Played with and subverted. Karkat in particular lords over the kids claiming the trolls are innately better than them in every way possible. Act 5 reveals that, although their level is technology is much higher than Earth, the younger trolls on Alternia get almost none of it. Their society also seems to be rather behind where people's rights are concerned. Even Karkat hates troll society, until he decides that humans are worse because of something the four protagonists have done.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: They have gold scleras with gray irises. In certain lights, they can almost appear greenish
• Tears of Blood: Troll tears appear to be a diluted version of their blood color. Andrew stated on his Formspring that the tears don't contain blood, it's just that both are full of the same pigment.
• Technicolor Eyes: Trolls have yellow sclera and dark gray irises as juveniles and eyes the same color as their blood as adults, meaning that every one of the trolls would have a different adult eye color — except Terezi, whose irises are permanently red after being damaged by the Alternian sun, and Sollux, because of his unusual red and blue eyes.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: While all trolls have black lips (as stated in Kanaya's introduction), the boys and Nepeta are depicted with lips the same color as their skin, i.e. grey. This is because all the other girls apparently do care about fashion enough to wear lipstick. Also, only the female trolls are drawn with eyelashes, and many of them wear eye makeup.
• Troll: Since these trolls have developed the internet, they are bestial, hateful, and violent off-line and on.

• Verbal Tic: As detailed on their individual entries, the trolls all have unique typing quirks. These also seem to reflect how they actually speak, such as Kanaya Carefully Enunciating Every Word or 2ollux 2peakiing wiith a lii2p, but it also seems like they use the tics on purpose, as evidenced by Eridan and Feferi typing normally when they have a serious conversation. These also change to reflect the troll's emotional state, as s0llux begins to type like aradia 0nce he is blinded by eridan and kn0cked t00thless by karkat, AND GAMZEE begins alternating caps WITH EVERY OTHER LINE once he runs out of sopor slime AND GOES ALL Ax-Crazy.
• Weird World, Weird Food: They're implied to make heavy use of insects in their diet as part of their being "not from this world". Elements of the troll cuisine include grub sauce, grubloaf (covered with "sweet, tangy mucus"), and tuber paste.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Alternian Trolls consider friendship a disease, and are unfamiliar enough with humans that the Kids can prank them into thinking friendship is a human emotion. Trolls also use the same word for "friend" as "enemy."
  CG: IT'S REALLY WEIRD.
  CG: THIS HUMAN EMOTION YOU CALL FRIENDSHIP.
  EB: friendship isn't an emotion fucknuts.
• Your Normal Is Our Taboo: Buckets, which is what the trolls' society used to put their genetic material in. Also, it's considered pretty bizarre for a troll to be raised by a member of his or her own species instead of a lusus. Inverted with the trolls wondering why incest and sexual orientation matter to humans.

The Hemospectrum

Rustbloods / Burgundybloods

• Fantastic Slur: According to Kankri, "rustblood" is actually a slur, and "burgundy" is the proper term.
• Fearless Fool: They love jumping into new things, but have little caution for them.
• Genki Girl: Rustbloods are adventurous, energetic and excitable, craving new experiences.
• Made of Iron: The Extended Zodiac describes them as easily able to bounce back from trouble and injury.
• Psychic Powers: As the lowest on the hemospectrum, Rustbloods have the strongest psychic powers. In addition to telekinesis, Aradia can communicate with and summon ghosts, and several iterations of Damara working together are strong enough to move planets.
• Weak-Willed: Being the lowest on the hemospectrum makes them the most vulnerable to mind control.
• We Are as Mayflies: Rustbloods are the only trolls whose typical lifespan is shorter than a human's—a dozen or two sweeps, which translates to 26-52 human years.

Bronzebloods

• Animal Lover: They have a particular affinity for animals. Tavros can talk to them, and Skylla runs her own ranch.
• Nice Guy: They are considered warm and generous.

Goldbloods

• Blessed with Suck: The goldbloods with the strongest psychic abilities are exploited by being turned into living batteries for the ships of the Alternian fleet.
• Fictional Disability: Hiveswap shows that some goldbloods suffer from a condition called "voidrot" where their body cannot retain energy normally, forcing them to stay alive by sapping the energy of another troll.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Goldbloods seem to naturally have an affinity for technology and computing.
• Insufferable Genius: According to the Extended Zodiac, "Gold Signs are the reigning geniuses of the sign class spectrum, and chances are they know it."
• Psychic Powers: They have the most potent psychic abilities of the lowbloods.

Limebloods

• Cryptic Background Reference: They were apparently hunted to extinction some time before the main events of Homestuck, though it is not known exactly when, how, or why. There is some evidence that Limebloods are still around during the era of Hiveswap (mainly in the form of lime-colored blood splatters), but no Limeblood troll has been introduced.

Olivebloods

• Love Freak: Olivebloods appear to have an affinity for romance and relationships; Nepeta and Meulin are highly invested in shipping, Polypa gives excellent relationship advice, and Konyyl is described as "a shoulder to cry on."

Jadebloods

• Mama Bear: One of their duties is to look after and protect wigglers until they leave the brooding caverns. Bronya and her cohort take this further by secretly nursing sick, weak and injured wigglers back to health, when normally they would be left to die due to Alternia being a Death World.
• One-Gender Race: All known Jadebloods are female. The only male Jadeblood, Lanque, is female-to-male transgender.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Jadebloods are the only trolls that can become rainbow drinkers, although Wanshi suggests that most Jadebloods consider it sacrilegious to do so.
• Team Mom: Enforced by the social structure of Alternia, which assigns them to serving the Mother Grub and looking after wigglers.

Tealbloods

• For Great Justice: Said to have a strong sense of right and wrong, and likely to become defenders of justice.
• Nerd Glasses: Along with being a caste of civil servants, bounty hunters and lawyers, almost every tealblood wears either these or Cool Shades, the only exception being Tagora.
• The Smart Guy: Tealbloods tend to be highly intelligent and driven.
• The Social Expert: They are said to be social and flirtatious, great at parties and public speaking events.

Bluebloods

• Exotic Eye Designs: It's common for bluebloods to have multiple pupils in one eye.
• Eye Motifs: Many Bluebloods have eye-related mutations, including additional pupils or even Extra Eyes.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: "In love, they can find themselves having to choose between their ambitions and their relationships, often with great difficulty."

Indigobloods

• Letter Motif: Every indigoblood except for Amisia has the letter "k" somewhere in their name.
• Super-Strength: Some Indigobloods are ridiculously strong, so much that they can't handle everyday objects without breaking them to pieces.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Despite lacking the psychic powers of the castes above and below, they have the advantage of being STRONG.

Purplebloods

• Ax-Crazy: A caste of alien clowns whose religion involves murdering other trolls. Even Karako, the youngest and friendliest purpleblood, carries knives around and can get murderous when his lusus is insulted.
• Gruesome Goat: They have long, curved goat-like horns.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: "They are often very funny, their wit veering toward the dryly macabre. Their fatalism can be incredibly humorous or terrible, depending who you ask."
• Messy Hair: All purplebloods seen have wild, untamed hair that sticks out in all directions.
• Monster Clown: Some of them paint their faces with juggalo-style clown makeup and regularly murder lower-blooded trolls as a religious duty.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Purplebloods have a psychic ability known as chucklevoodoos, which can psychically amplify fear inside the mind of a target.

Violetbloods

• Ear Fins: As one of the seadwelling troll castes, they have fins on the sides of their heads.
• Hipster: They have a distinct bent toward contrariness and "are the sorts to give the popular thing a pass."
• Out of Focus: Unusually, Violetbloods are the only caste to feature no significant members in Hiveswap or the Troll Call.

Fuchsiabloods

• Brown Note Being: Due to a quirk of their genetics, two Fuchsiabloods cannot be in the same room without immediately having the urge to kill each other to maintain their hold over Alternia's throne.
• Ear Fins: Fuchsiabloods are the other type of seadwelling troll, and have those.
• Long-Lived: They are capable of living for hundreds of thousands of years, or perhaps millions.
• No-Sell: Being the highest of the hemospectrum comes with immunity to mind control.
• One-Gender Race: All known Fuchsiabloods are female.
• There Can Be Only One: Only one Fuchsiablood troll is meant to rule over Alternia at a time, and the innate urge to kill all other competing Fuchsiabloods is written into her genes.

The A2 player group in general

• Alternate Self: The troll session created a number of doomed timelines. Deceased troll players of these timelines later appear in dream bubbles, some of whom have gone God Tier.
• Animal Motifs: Quite a bit, seeing as they're partially inspired by the Western Zodiac. Most of these are represented through their horns (Tavros = Bull, Aradia = Ram etc) while others show it through their actions (Karkat = Crab = Crabby, Vriska = Spider/Scorpion = Unpleasantness etc).
• Badass on Paper: The fact that they were able to breeze through their session with relative ease compared to every other known session makes them sound like quite the badass, but in reality they're more of a Dysfunction Junction and constantly succumb to bickering about just about every topic.
• Breakout Character: They were not even mentioned until Act 3, and even then they were a written version of The Voice until Karkat was seen at the end of the Midnight Crew Intermission. A few more trolls appeared in Act 4, but the entire cast of trolls was only revealed in Act 5. Yet the way the fandom treats them, they were around from the very beginning. Which in-universe they were.
• But Not Too Bi: Trolls as a species are bisexual by nature, especially since gender plays no role in troll reproduction. They also have four different types of romance—two of which are physical/sexual, while the other two are non-physical and more like deep friendships or mediating—allowing for more pairings for each troll. Despite this, over half of the trolls only have genuine romantic feelings for characters of the opposite gender; namely, Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Nepeta, Equius, Feferi, and Terezi^note She does have a female partner in one of the non-sexual quadrants at one point, but all of her love interests for the two types of physical relationships are boys. Kanaya actually inverts it, as she's only shown having feelings for other girls.
• Character Development: All the trolls except for Nepeta go through this for better or for worse. Either they grow kinder, become more confident, or become more violent than before. In some troll's cases, it's a mix of the former two.
• Cryptic Conversation: The Trolls refusal to be helpful or coherent at all (even to past versions of themselves) tends to result in Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
• Cycle of Revenge: Many, most notably the one between Vriska and Terezi, which led to 4 of the trolls being crippled or worse by the end of it.
• Demoted to Extra: Tavros, Nepeta, Equius, Eridan, and Feferi have a fair amount of spotlight during Act 5 Part 1, and Tavros was one of the first troll characters introduced, even in Act 4, but all of them were killed off midway through Act 5 Part 2 and have been scarcely mentioned since, save for their deaths being motivation for revenge.
  • Ascended Extra: Gamzee was even more minor than the others, yet he takes a central role in Act 5 Part 2.
• Doomed Protagonist: In Act 5, Sollux prophesies that all the trolls will die. See Prophecy Twist for more details.
• Dwindling Party:
  • On the meteor, Vriska killed Tavros, Eridan killed Feferi, Gamzee killed Equius and Nepeta, Kanaya killed Eridan, Aradia's soulbot exploded when she ascended to God Tier elsewhere, and Terezi killed Vriska. Of the twelve trolls who went to the meteor, only five left it.
  • During [S] GAME OVER, all of the remaining trolls die except for Aradia, who was preoccupied in paradox space. Gamzee shoves Karkat into lava, Kanaya cuts Gamzee in half with her chainsaw, The Condesce vaporizes Kanaya, and Terezi is psychically compelled to stab herself, resulting in her bleeding out after trying to fix things with John.
  • Sollux outright stated that all of them dying would be their fate near the beginning of Act 5; everyone else thought it meant just their dreamselves.
• Dysfunction Junction: The group is made up of trolls with all sorts of issues varying from depression and self esteem to violent homicidal tendencies of their friends.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Due to there being a whopping twelve trolls in the group, there are many who don't get any onscreen interactions with one another. Then again, some of them aren't even friends.
• A House Divided: The Trolls degenerate into this. By the time they stabilize, only 4 are left among the living, and one is actively plotting to murder another (not that he doesn't deserve it.)
• Hero of Another Story: The first part of Act 5 fills us in on the characters and key moments in their session, but it's implied that there was a lot of stuff that went on that we don't get to see.
• Historical In-Joke: The 12 trolls become the creators of our universe, and their memory survives in the form of our zodiac signs.
• Last of His Kind: Besides the Empress, the 12 trolls are the last of their species left alive in the story, and then they start killing each other and bring that number even lower.
• Legacy Character: As it turns out, every single one. Their ancestors are the previous batch from an even less successful session.
• Letters 2 Numbers: Many of the trolls do this as part of their typing quirks, usually in a way that fits into some sort of Numerological Motif. Terezi, though, deserves special mention, since with as many as three letters constantly numberised, turquoise color and all-caps H3R T3XT C4N B3 N1GH UNR34D4BL3.
• Mr. Exposition: Part of the point of Hivebent was to show how a different session went. Additionally, Karkat, Kanaya, and Vriska all serve as informants to the kids (and the readers) as veteran players of the game, and Feferi and Aradia pass on info either about dream bubbles or learned from them.
• Munchkin: The trolls. In their session, they pretty much only cared about gaining levels and skills, and killing all the monsters, while ignoring side quests and game lore. This is ultimately deconstructed when they get to the end of the game, since failing to create the Genesis Frog led to the creation of Bec Noir, who prevented them from winning the game.
• My Future Self and Me: Several trolls speak with their future and past selves through Trollian, which allows for Time Travel chatting. The trolls traveling through the Furthest Ring also meet Alternate Timeline versions of themselves through dream bubbles.
• Neglectful Precursors: The Trolls created the universe where the Humans live, but they made some critical mistake while doing that because they thought frog breeding wasn't such a big deal. The resulting universe was thus doomed to fail.
• Power Gives You Wings: Trolls get butterfly wings after reaching their God Tiers, in line with their insect motif.
• Prophecy Twist: It was initially believed that Sollux's prediction that all the trolls would die was fulfilled, for the most part, by the death of their Dream Selves. It turned out that Dream Self deaths didn't count, and a real self death that led to a God-Tier ascension didn't count either; the only deaths that count are final Killed Off for Real ones. Currently there are four trolls left, and Kanaya is planning to reduce that to three.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The trolls didn't come up at all until early in Act 3 with Jade's trollslum and Karkat's one angry rant at her. Then Act 4 featured a few conversations between them and the kids. Then they got the first half of Act 5 entirely dedicated to them while becoming major players in the second half.
• Troll: Duh. Though Terezi is the only one who's any good at it.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: All the trolls. All of them. By the end of Act 5 it's pretty hard to remember that they are all 13. Yes, Vriska too. And this is the reason Terezi keeps playing with her scalemates and wears her ridiculous cosplay suit when she goes to kill Vriska to prevent her from dooming them all. She's freaking 13, and she's the only kid behaving remotely her age. To put it into perspective, in Act 6 they meet their counterparts/ancestors from the pre-scratch universe, who are 6 years older than them - as in, 13 vs 19 - and the post-scratch trolls consistently feel older and more mature.
• True Companions: Ultimately Played With. The trolls have all known each other for an undetermined amount of time before they play Sgrub, and all twelve go through similar trials and tribulations of the Pre and Post scratch kids and win within a month. However, once they don't all have something to collectively work towards, they fall apart pretty quickly. That said, Pre-Retcon Tavros is able to amass a huge army of dead ghost versions of them with nothing but the Power of Friendship, showing that this holds some water in alternate timelines.
• Western Zodiac: Every troll is assigned to one of these. Noticeable through the designs on their shirts:
  • Aradia: Aries ♈
  • Tavros: Taurus ♉
  • Sollux: Gemini ♊
  • Karkat: Cancer ♋
  • Nepeta: Leo ♌
  • Kanaya: Virgo ♍
  • Terezi: Libra ♎
  • Vriska: Scorpio ♏
  • Equius: Sagittarius ♐
  • Gamzee: Capricorn ♑
  • Eridan: Aquarius ♒
  • Feferi: Pisces ♓
• With Friends Like These...: Admittedly, not all of them even are friends with one another, but they have some connection to at least one or two other trolls in their group. That said, most butt heads with one another on a frequent basis, annoy each other with their inclinations, or end up messing with each other for the sake of it.
• Zodiac Motifs: They are each themed around a different sign of the Western zodiac. Their guardian lusii are giant animals based on their zodiac signs, and each has a prominent motif, usually an Animal Motif, based on their associated constellation.

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