#umoora

[fantroll-purgatory]

@kyuremus

FIRST: Alternia (slight au- she’s not only a sgrub player, but the age for troll banishment has risen.)

Name: Astium Umoora! As she’s a fairly new troll of mine, I actually remember her name reasoning! Astium comes from astigmatism, as her eyes are a main theme. Her smaller 4 suffer from a severe case of this. 

Umoora is pretty basic- Umora means fatigue in bulgarian. She’s pretty angry-tired thanks to a large mess of bullshit she deals with frequently.

I think this all works pretty well!

Age:7 sweeps.

Strife Specibus: Umbrellakind. Truth be told, she’s kind of scared of incredibly sharp objects. However, she needs some sweet, sweet long-distance, as an able-bodied Tavros might stand a chance in a fistfight. Umbrella kinda sounds like Umoora, but that’s something I only noticed right now. The second I’m typing this. The tip of it is rather sharp (because fear aside, she needs stabbing ability), but keeping it open usually protects her from accidentally stabbing an eye or three out. 

Oof… I’m almost tempted to recommend bbgunkind just to make a “you’ll shoot your eye out kid” joke. But given her fearful nature she might not be particularly fond of the idea of using that. 

Maybe a jaws of life/claw grabber instead? A not especially destructive jaws of life. It’s something that isn’t particularly sharp, has some range on it, and that she could use to restrict an enemy in order to give herself a much-needed advantage. It’s also a nice nod to her scorpion relation.

Fetch Modus: 

This is a weird one so bear with me, but Lotus Seed Modus. Basically a little grid that looks a bit like a Lotus Seed Head (Don’t look it up if you have trypophobia, because it’s basically the very common plant pattern that activates that response). She has to fill up the entire pod before she’s allowed to retrieve any items, basically. Pretty simple, but it ties into her interest!

Blood color: Teal

Okay… I do have to say that I might want to change her to Cobalt. If only because eye mutations are sooo common among that caste. I don’t see why it Couldn’t happen with a teal, but. Nothing in her personality Particularly sells me on teal, since she doesn’t have a particularly strong moral position. She at least has a little touchstone with the Cobalt bitterness towards people who are better positioned than her. Also the scorpion association. 

Symbol and meaning: Limini- Derse+Doom

You seem to be riding a lot on her doom power for her theme, so I feel bad about this, but… her personality honestly fits Rage just a little better for me? I usually wait until getting to the title section to address this, but I do want to talk about it here just to get it out of the way ASAP. 

Her anger, fear, paranoia, aggression towards others, dissatisfaction with the current reality… I do agree with her being a dersite, though. 

So depending on blood type, I might change her symbol to either… 

Trolltag: destinedTrypophiliac. Destined is a hint at three things: Her eventual playing of Sgrub, her doom aspect, and some of her specific lil doom powers that’ll be below! She truthfully enjoys trypo-things, due to the nature of her face, she’s both intrigued and comforted by the patterns of small holes.

I think this could still work out even with my change because of her fatalistic nature. She has this perceived terminality that goes along well with the aspect. I also like that it kind of implies she was destined to be super into small hole patterns.  

Quirk: I’m that anon from before- her quirk is a pain in the ass, and she knows this. That’s actually the reason for a good chunk of it, however, she chose things that both kinda looked like holes+eyes. U=☋, N= ☊ and a=∴. She’s got hella vision, so reading this shitshow is a breeze. She talks in all lowercase unless HEATED, and uses punctuation. She also substitutes the word ‘eye’ into anything that rhymes, even if the end result is kind of silly. (reyeght, meyene, etc.) “yo☋ ∴ll f☋cki☊g s☋ck. ”

Haha I love it. It’s definitely a pain in the ass, but I’ve seen way worse. Honestly if you wanted to make it worse, you could replace o’s with ö‘s. Just litter that fuckin quirk with dots.

Special Abilities (if any): I’m sure I mentioned something about eyes. She doesn’t have vision Xfold, but rather, 20/20 eyesight to the highest power. While each small eye on its own is pretty awful, when every single one is open and working, she can make out crisp details as far as she can see.

I do kind of like this, because it reminds me of the nature of various insect eyes. Their smaller eyes tend to be less detailed and focus on things like light/dark, heat, or movement, but when used in combination with more complex eyes they help create a thorough image. Scorpions in particular have really light sensitive eyes. 

I think that’s something you should maybe play with with her. Scorpions can travel by starlight at night, so maybe she’s Really good at tracing light. But also make her really, really hate harsh light. She can still be great with Detail, though. 

She’s got underdeveloped doom abilities. As Terezi was able to use her mind abilities pretty well w/o god-tiering, I’m applying this here. It’s pretty basic, but she’s pretty good on picking up vibes. That’s about it. She has a dislike for a lot of trolls, but she’s only truly scared of some. She doesn’t understand how she makes this difference. 

I think you could still work this with my change- If you wanted to keep it for doom I might adjust it to her being able to sense impending threats in general? Not being able to note the danger surrounding particular trolls, just particular Moments where she or someone else is About To Experience Danger. 

If you go with my Rage change, though, you could have her be able to sense the threat inherent to each individual. Though her perceived threat might be slightly skewed by how much she was Already scared of them.

Lusus: Scorpionmom! Small, angry, the obligatory eye thing- but you can squish em if you’re fast. Astium is vulnerable behind all her yelling.

Personality: She seems like the kind of troll with anger issues. Moreso than most. She’s violently aggressive towards those above her in hemospectrum, but only when guaranteed protection behind a screen. All of this stems from a crippling fear she lives with, however- she is a mutant. It’s not the worst mutation in the world, her blood is teal, and she’s more than functional. Her four smaller eyes developed AFTER her lusus adopted her. They kind of.. burst through the surface of her face, and scorpionmom noticed those bumps. Otherwise, she probably would’ve been culled. (It also changed the pattern of her horn. This was initially just me forgetting which way the red-orange-yellow went, but I rolled with it.) She can’t compensate her mutation with physical strength or cool calculations, and her fear is at fault. There’d be no reason to spare her at the time of drafting. She’s aware that the wrong highblood could end her life in a second, so she tries to compensate this by coming across as impressively scary enough to ward them off. This is also just a side-effect of fear. She’s kind of a coward face-to-face, and she’s disgusted with herself for this. As a mid/highblood, she expects herself to have the natural anger and strength of somebody her caste, but is as weak as the rust spectrum, minus the cool psychic powers. 

Now here’s my least favorite part of having to step in- I think you have some misconceptions about Alternian culture. Since it’s an AU, you could definitely adjust things to suit your needs across the universe… But since you haven’t specified a particular change in this regard, I’m going to discuss this as we know it in canon:

Eye mutations are pretty normal on Alternia, it would seem. Her having extra eyes isn’t enough to have her immediately culled. It might even be common enough to not be particularly notable. In fact, most ‘mutations’ or even disabilities might not even be instantly cullable offenses- the only things we really know for sure result in culling is blood mutations and a failure to provide genetic material for the filial pails. 

Alternia definitely has a “the strongest survive” mentality, but it Also has an “adapt and live” mentality. Tavros’ paraplegia didn’t put him on the chopping block and he implied he still had hope of becoming a member of the cavalreapers. Terezi was completely blind and she was still gunning for the job of legislacerator without having to worry about being culled for her disability. 

Now, I DO… still want to work this for you. So I think you can definitely argue that if she’s particularly frail on top of her eye mutations she might be culled? 

I have two slightly more interesting options for you, though: 

1. She could survive drafting, and would get shipped off planet, but because of her various issues she probably wouldn’t get a high ranking position and would probably just be tossed out as cannon fodder. She’d be a low-ground grunt and her likelihood of survival wouldn’t be particularly high. So she’s still terrified of this fate- she doesn’t want to be some first wave scouting grunt that gets killed in the first fight. This still justifies her fear and anxiety around the whole thing. 

2. She BELIEVES that she’ll be culled at drafting time despite it being untrue. She really, really, genuinely is convinced of this being the case, and is terrified of it. People try to reassure her that this won’t happen and provide examples, but she is just REALLY, STUBBORNLY sure that it’s absolutely the case and that all of their examples are just Government Lies meant to placate the masses. 

When it comes to quadrants, she has the maturity of a grub. Astium hasn’t a CLUE how to healthily establish one- dealing with her feelings is confusing and absolutely terrifying. She’ll also go ham if she gets her “veyebes” from a friend’s quadrantmate, which can really hurt Astium’s relationship with the original troll. However, this isn’t too much of a focus. She’d rather be single for as long as possible. 

I love this. The idea of her trying to warn her pals that a quadrantmate has Threatening Auras is intriguing and the dynamic it could create w/ relationships is nice.

She can also be kind of an idiot about small things, with the stuff said above being prime examples. Covering her eye mutation is.. not her strong suit, despite her fear of being found out? Her eye-quirk is too natural, despite her multiple attempts to get out of the habit. Words feel wrong if not spelled with eye puns.

Astium pushes herself away from most, and this has wound up having her be quite needy and lonely, so she can certainly come across as overbearing and somewhat annoying to anybody who strikes her interest, platonic or romantic.

She loves the word fuck.

She’s a great character! I think if you want to keep her a teal, though, you need to give her a kind of moral touchstone… I think a fascinating one for her might be a sort of “might makes wrong” worldview as a contrast to Alternia’s usual “might makes right” way of doing things. Basically have her fundamentally distrust people who are strong and assume they’re in the wrong/always blame them.

Interests: 

COOKING SHOWS (it’s a small aspiration to become a chef.)

PLAYFUL SPARRING

TRYPO-GALLERIES

HOPEFULLY, A NONVIOLENT CAREER.

VIDEO GAMES ARE COOL SOMETIMES.

The idea of a troll having a nonviolent career aspiration is so fun. Good luck, baby girl, you live on Alternia… Maybe you could give her a theoretical interest in gardening just because of her trypointerest? Or you could make her like Mushrooms. Mushrooms are pretty easy to plant, so she could even grow them in her hive! 

You could also have her practice some escape artistry nonsense. Preparing to run away from the culling drones. Building a panic room. All kinds of fun stuff. 

She could also be interested in getting in Arguments Online. Yelly Online Personality Who Is Mad. An Internet Skeptic For Trolls.

[These are the ones I have the most trouble with?]

Title: Witch of Doom

Witch of Rage could be a fun title for her… The active changer of rage, allowing her to actively manipulate and change the negative emotions that others feel, altering the levels of pessimism, able to generate torment and worry while passively understanding optimism and figuring out how to flex her own negative feelings to the mold of reality… 

But I also think Knight of Rage might be a good possibility to consider? Starting out surrounded by and overwhelmed by all this anger and fear and paranoia. And then having to learn how to exploit and utilize those feelings effectively instead of allowing them to consume her and everything around her.

Land:Plush and Night. Plush is both her direct inverse and secret wish, and night is simply so she struggles to see- her one strength.

Trolls are nocturnal, so her having difficulty seeing in the dark doesn’t make much sense for her species! Plush and Day might make more sense, both biologically and with her having a scorpion mom and with the eye light sensitivity thing I mentioned. 

Dream Planet:Derse

Sorry if this is too wordy/comes across poorly, this is my first time ever submitting a troll for review!! 

Don’t worry, it was the prefect amount of wordy. Sorry my review got wordy in turn, haha! 

Now let’s have some design fun!:

So we have here a teal and a cobalt redesign. 

Horns: For the teal I shortened them a little just because with teals the horns never seem like the main attraction. They’re always relatively understated. I kept them the same on the cobalt, though. 

Hair: I kept it the same for the cobalt, too, but I wanted to make it messier on the teal. My concept when designing her was basically “really exhausted grad student who is a disaster mess and rarely leaves their room,” since teal designs seem to occupy a niche grad student genre. 

Eyes: They seemed just a little too small for the style. I removed the eyebrows to do away with crowding and then made the main set and the lower eyes larger. I also added eyelash definition. And, of course, the undereye bag shadows! 

Mouth: I wanted to give her some bigger, scarier fangs. Mostly so she’d fit the definition of someone looking like they have a temper more. It also makes her look a little like spidermom’s face which is fun. A nice arachnid reference. I gave her some black lipstick on the teal version and some cobalt on the cobalt. 

Shirt: I made her tanktop a little flowerier and less put together. I also adjusted the outline to be more visible. New symbol, of course. On the cobalt I just added a jacket over top of the tanktop. 

Legs: I edited one of fan-troll’s sweatpants sprites to again fit that exhausted image you wanted for her. I also turned her shoes into slippers, though I kept the blood accent on each.

Thank you for sharing! She’s pretty great!

-CD

#kyuremus #astium umoora #tealblood #cobaltblood #ceruleanblood #review #redesign #cd review #submission #astium #umoora