I've never liked Alternian fantrolls having guns, personally, because I don't think there would be any on the planet. Like, the Trolls have a galaxy-spanning Empire, and when Trolls mature on Alternia they get conscripted and sent to do a job somewhere else in that empire, why would anyone leave hyper powerful laser weapons or the means to produce them in the hands of children? There's gotta be a reason Eridan had to find Ahab's Crosshairs in a wreck, and none of the other Trolls use guns.

dingodad:

I’m inclined to agree with your general point, but not with everything specifically.

For starters I don’t think anyone is really in a position to say ‘why would the empire put x in the hands of children???’ because the empire left the entire homeworld and birthing ground of the kingdom in the hands of children. They basically put 50% of the entire population’s education in the hands of children, and also put a bunch of dangerous animals in the hands of children. The empire essentially put children in their own hands. Even if they didn’t leave factories or blueprints around for developing stuff, the wiggly little fuckers would figure it out eventually anyway.

An important distinction should also be made between ‘gun’ and ‘hyper powerful laser weapon’ such as Ahab’s Crosshairs. Yes, there’s a reason none of the other trolls have guns, but that reason is that Ahab’s Crosshairs is a legendary weapon. In the context of Homestuck, you can’t manufacture those, unless you’re a god, given the power or resources of a god, or an alchemist who already knows how to make one somehow. Same case as the Flourite Octet. It’s a magic superscientific gun. It’s a special case.

Guns proper (metal, shoot bullets, boom boom rattatatata) I don’t have the same problem with, for the exact reason I specified earlier; clearly they aren’t any more effective than a sword or a club or a bow, on Alternia, or else everybody would be using them. For a bunch of losers who can just take smacks to the skull, slams to the back and various cuts and limb losses like it’s fucking nothing, what do you think a bullet is going to do? Gamzee didn’t seem to think it was really anything serious.)

(”Jake, Gamzee is immune to everything!” i’ll fight you dude)

My ‘issues’ with conventional guns on Alternia are more contextual. Like, Alternia’s history is obviously vastly different. Highbloods never needed guns to oppress people; they’ve got chucklepsychics at their disposal for that exact purpose, and also they’re huge and essentially unstoppable, physically speaking. So for that reason, guns wouldn’t be mass-produced in the way they are on Earth. I see their creation as being delegated to individual gunsmiths and produced in much the same way any other weapon, like a sword or sickle, would be made.

In conclusion some trolls have guns but that doesn’t really give them any real advantage over a troll with a sword, because trolls.