so
commentaries, book four, page 166 -
John Arm Alert: coming out of the cliff. Also, you gotta admire how the moment Vriska’s done with her funny prank, she just logs the fuck off. Karkat does just about the same thing, but one has to assume he thinks Tavros is exaggerating and not reporting on his literal paralysis. Karkat calls Flarp a game for girls, which in human culture sounds like a sexist pejorative. But knowing what we know about Flarp and trolls in general, what he probably means is, “Stop playing games for girls. They’re very dangerous, and one of these days it’s going to get you killed.”
my headcanon is thus:
trolls do not have a biological distinction between male and female (or if they do, it’s “troll” and “mother grub” as the two genders) - instead, traits that are considered “female” are just “whatever the current reigning Fuchsia has/is known for”, and traits that are considered “male” are the opposite of those. For the Alternian trolls, Her Imperious Condescension has long hair, is cruel and tyrannical, and has secondary sex characteristics that we would consider feminine, such as her general figure, and thus, for the trolls, our conception of female and male relatively lines up with the human conception of the idea, barring the whole “tyrannical despot thing”.
however, should a fuchsia be born and become empress that, say, is short, wears her hair short, and otherwise what we’d consider “masculine”, then suddenly the gender norms of troll society would flip.
EDIT: fixed some Bad Phrasing lmao
Albeit an interesting take, I think it’s a bit of a stretch. Why would short-haired, generally nice and/or calm trolls such as Nepeta or Kanaya still be considered female?
since i can’t repsond directly to the chat response things (side account) –
a: in this headcanon gender is *less* of an assigned thing and more of a self-picked choice. not none an assigned thing – if you have a figure and attitude considered male a lot of people will go like “hey you’re male”, but generally speaking this would be more self-driven, especially in modern alternia because no adults are around to give a shit.
b: just simply having short hair and being nice isn’t all that would make a troll masculine in this headcanon (see: nepeta, kanaya), since there are other secondary sex characteristics (or at least, what we call secondary sex characteristics) that affect gender conception. maybe kanaya’s got some big hobondonkeroos or somesuch. it’s definitely not out of the question that they’d be considered androgynous but its a wider array of traits considered feminine than just long hair, is mean – they’d probably pick apart every single thing the Empress does or is in terms of defining gender norms.
and also, dont forgetti, its Just a Headcanon so you’re free to ignore it if you want.
I always figured their gender is determined by what lusus cares for them.
