App for Fate/Conflation
Jan. 16th, 2013 10:51 pmPlayer} Tricks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pantsu)
Age} 23
Other Characters} N/A
Character Name} Karkat Vantas
Series} Homestuck
Canon Point} [S] [A6I3] ==> [third Meenah walkaround]
Age} 7 sweeps, or about 15
History} here
Personality}
On first meeting, you’d probably call Karkat Vantas an asshole, and you’d be completely justified in doing so. He’s the most ornery one out of his group of trolls, a crabby little guy to match his Cancer sign and crustacean guardian. His quirk is simpler than the other trolls, using capslock alone to portray his intensity and constant grouchy mood. He acts like a megalomaniac, insisting everyone has to listen to him and follow his lead, and even the people he calls friends are often on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing if they disagree with him. He’s so consistently angry that simple untempered rage isn’t enough for him; when he’s chewing people out he gets into long-winded rants and disturbingly creative insults. Even he thinks he’s an asshole, and often past or future versions of him will pipe up in his IM and memo logs to tell him as much.
Despite this, once you get past his cantankerous demeanor, Karkat is also probably one of the nicest and most caring trolls you’ll ever meet. He might be obnoxiously insistent on being the leader in any undertaking, but he seems to take that responsibility seriously and does his best to look after everyone he considers part of his “team.” If something goes wrong or hurts one of his friends, he’s inclined to blame himself - just look at his reaction to his friend Sollux’s two deaths, both of which made him cry like a baby with no regard to the fact that other people were present at the time. Though he, like all Alternian trolls, isn’t afraid to solve problems with violence, his first instinct is to mediate and keep situations calm. He usually tries to talk his friends through their personal problems and can have the patience of a saint when he sets his mind to it - he talks to Eridan throughout his excessive drama even after his ex-moirail Feferi has given up on him, for instance, and even after his crush Terezi hooks up with another guy he thinks of her as a friend and tries to help her sort out her feelings of inadequacy around her ancestor. Even when shit hits the fan and his friends start killing each other, Karkat uses the first big confrontation he can to calm everyone down and keep them from attacking each other further, even though he’s said before that he’s scared shitless by everything that’s been happening. He not only forgives Gamzee (who is the last original perpetrator of the intra-team violence left alive at that point) for the deaths and creepy stuff, but even takes him as a non-sexual romantic partner to keep him calmed down and away from indiscriminate murder frenzy.
So if he’s such a nice guy underneath, why the constant grumpy act? In fact, to some degree Karkat is probably overcompensating. He was born an off-spectrum mutant, an instant death sentence in the blood-caste Alternian Empire, and his survival before SGRUB destroyed the planet was likely a matter of perfecting being a “good troll” - that being a troll who is ruthless, able to defend themselves and gain respect through force. To make up for the setback of his unnatural blood color, he tried to make himself the best troll he could possibly be to try and accomplish his dreams, and he even tells Meenah as much when they meet; he had a small hope that maybe if he managed to be awesome enough or hide his blood cleverly enough he could still be an illustrious and respected soldier among his people, maybe even a leader. So he acts like a hardass at least in part to make himself seem like a cool and tough guy worth listening to and following. (A lot of it is still probably just that he’s a crabby customer.) It should be noted, though, that he never seems to dislike the role he has to play or resent the society that’s made him a pariah - he tells Meenah that it’s worth it to be an outcast because he grew up on a badass planet, and he even respects the Empress she turned into for shaping things up for their people and conquering the galaxy.
With all this in mind, it’s not exactly surprising that Karkat’s interests are in either things he considers badass or things on more of a soft side. He’s mentioned that he loves the Alternian TV show The Thresh Prince of Bel-Air, about a young troll recruit in the illustrious military division of the Threshecutioners that Karkat dreamed of joining. He also has a passing interest in hacking, possibly because he thinks he has something to prove to his hacker friend Sollux, though his viruses are terribly shitty and don’t really work. One of his biggest interests, though, is in romance. Part of this is tied up in being a good troll, since every troll was required to fill their romantic and filial duties for the survival of the species or be culled, but another part of it is likely wishful dreaming on his part much like his dreams of being a military leader. As an offspectrum anathema to his people, he couldn’t risk romantic or sexual closeness with another troll on Alternia without also risking discovery, since a troll’s bodily fluids such as tears or sexual fluids are the same color as their blood, just a lighter shade. Romantic comedy movies and the like are probably part of Karkat’s way of escaping that reality. It should come as little surprise, then, that Karkat also tends to butt himself into everyone’s emotional business, helping them sort out their romantic quadrants and other feelings, even if they’re not a member of his species. It’s sort of a Frankenstein jumble of his desire to lead, his fondness of romance and how much he cares about and wants to help people who are part of his group.
In-universe more than two years have passed for Karkat since we first met him, and it should be noted that in that time he has actually developed and matured a bit. He doesn’t have as much of the bluster as he used to a lot of the time, and he doesn’t instantly jump down people’s throats if they disagree with him. This isn’t to say he isn’t still a shouty dick, because he definitely is, but he doesn’t seem to need to do it just to prove something to the people around him now. He’s more willing to own his mistakes in a productive way rather than just spiraling down into mixed self-pity and self-hatred of his past actions, if him getting past his disappointment over Terezi and Dave getting together in order to still be a good friend to her is any indication. On the other hand, Karkat doesn’t really seem to recognize that he’s getting to be more mature and likable; he laments to himself and to Meenah about how childish he’s been, and he doesn’t think that his friends would think of him as a leader anymore, even though he doesn’t know much else about what to be. Even though we see in Meenah’s third walkaround flash game that all his friends are still very fond and protective of him, he seems to feel extraneous to them, to the point that he’s willing to abandon his team, the friends he hasn’t seen or heard from in two years, and the new world they’re all going to in order to go haring off on a suicide mission with Meenah. Still, feelings and emotions are dumb when you’re a teenager, and Karkat’s been stuck on a meteor doing nothing for two years with the same five people, all of whom are getting romantically entangled with each other and leaving him as the really awkward sixth wheel, so he can certainly be excused for having his problems.
Abilities} Trolls are generally supposed to be tougher & more durable than humans, on the whole. Karkat doesn’t have any supernatural abilities - we don’t even know what his Knight of Blood abilities should do, since the Blood aspect isn’t very clearly elucidated and he never uses or even possibly unlocks those powers. However, he is extremely physically fit, both from a lifetime on Alternia in competition with other kids (and the need to keep his blood secret so he wouldn’t be culled as a mutant) and his time leveling up in SGRUB. His strifekind makes it likely that he’s quite agile on his feet. He wouldn’t be as strong as Equius or as fast as Dave, but more of a balance between the two.
Baggage} Karkat will have his sickles (normal, Homes Smell Ya Later, Clawsickle & Regisickle) and the clothes on his back; a truly absurd number of troll romance novels and romcoms; also his sylladex, a kind of hammerspace. That’s really about it.
Notes} N/A
Sample} Karkat’s thread in the Test Drive Meme
pantsu)Age} 23
Other Characters} N/A
Character Name} Karkat Vantas
Series} Homestuck
Canon Point} [S] [A6I3] ==> [third Meenah walkaround]
Age} 7 sweeps, or about 15
History} here
Personality}
On first meeting, you’d probably call Karkat Vantas an asshole, and you’d be completely justified in doing so. He’s the most ornery one out of his group of trolls, a crabby little guy to match his Cancer sign and crustacean guardian. His quirk is simpler than the other trolls, using capslock alone to portray his intensity and constant grouchy mood. He acts like a megalomaniac, insisting everyone has to listen to him and follow his lead, and even the people he calls friends are often on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing if they disagree with him. He’s so consistently angry that simple untempered rage isn’t enough for him; when he’s chewing people out he gets into long-winded rants and disturbingly creative insults. Even he thinks he’s an asshole, and often past or future versions of him will pipe up in his IM and memo logs to tell him as much.
Despite this, once you get past his cantankerous demeanor, Karkat is also probably one of the nicest and most caring trolls you’ll ever meet. He might be obnoxiously insistent on being the leader in any undertaking, but he seems to take that responsibility seriously and does his best to look after everyone he considers part of his “team.” If something goes wrong or hurts one of his friends, he’s inclined to blame himself - just look at his reaction to his friend Sollux’s two deaths, both of which made him cry like a baby with no regard to the fact that other people were present at the time. Though he, like all Alternian trolls, isn’t afraid to solve problems with violence, his first instinct is to mediate and keep situations calm. He usually tries to talk his friends through their personal problems and can have the patience of a saint when he sets his mind to it - he talks to Eridan throughout his excessive drama even after his ex-moirail Feferi has given up on him, for instance, and even after his crush Terezi hooks up with another guy he thinks of her as a friend and tries to help her sort out her feelings of inadequacy around her ancestor. Even when shit hits the fan and his friends start killing each other, Karkat uses the first big confrontation he can to calm everyone down and keep them from attacking each other further, even though he’s said before that he’s scared shitless by everything that’s been happening. He not only forgives Gamzee (who is the last original perpetrator of the intra-team violence left alive at that point) for the deaths and creepy stuff, but even takes him as a non-sexual romantic partner to keep him calmed down and away from indiscriminate murder frenzy.
So if he’s such a nice guy underneath, why the constant grumpy act? In fact, to some degree Karkat is probably overcompensating. He was born an off-spectrum mutant, an instant death sentence in the blood-caste Alternian Empire, and his survival before SGRUB destroyed the planet was likely a matter of perfecting being a “good troll” - that being a troll who is ruthless, able to defend themselves and gain respect through force. To make up for the setback of his unnatural blood color, he tried to make himself the best troll he could possibly be to try and accomplish his dreams, and he even tells Meenah as much when they meet; he had a small hope that maybe if he managed to be awesome enough or hide his blood cleverly enough he could still be an illustrious and respected soldier among his people, maybe even a leader. So he acts like a hardass at least in part to make himself seem like a cool and tough guy worth listening to and following. (A lot of it is still probably just that he’s a crabby customer.) It should be noted, though, that he never seems to dislike the role he has to play or resent the society that’s made him a pariah - he tells Meenah that it’s worth it to be an outcast because he grew up on a badass planet, and he even respects the Empress she turned into for shaping things up for their people and conquering the galaxy.
With all this in mind, it’s not exactly surprising that Karkat’s interests are in either things he considers badass or things on more of a soft side. He’s mentioned that he loves the Alternian TV show The Thresh Prince of Bel-Air, about a young troll recruit in the illustrious military division of the Threshecutioners that Karkat dreamed of joining. He also has a passing interest in hacking, possibly because he thinks he has something to prove to his hacker friend Sollux, though his viruses are terribly shitty and don’t really work. One of his biggest interests, though, is in romance. Part of this is tied up in being a good troll, since every troll was required to fill their romantic and filial duties for the survival of the species or be culled, but another part of it is likely wishful dreaming on his part much like his dreams of being a military leader. As an offspectrum anathema to his people, he couldn’t risk romantic or sexual closeness with another troll on Alternia without also risking discovery, since a troll’s bodily fluids such as tears or sexual fluids are the same color as their blood, just a lighter shade. Romantic comedy movies and the like are probably part of Karkat’s way of escaping that reality. It should come as little surprise, then, that Karkat also tends to butt himself into everyone’s emotional business, helping them sort out their romantic quadrants and other feelings, even if they’re not a member of his species. It’s sort of a Frankenstein jumble of his desire to lead, his fondness of romance and how much he cares about and wants to help people who are part of his group.
In-universe more than two years have passed for Karkat since we first met him, and it should be noted that in that time he has actually developed and matured a bit. He doesn’t have as much of the bluster as he used to a lot of the time, and he doesn’t instantly jump down people’s throats if they disagree with him. This isn’t to say he isn’t still a shouty dick, because he definitely is, but he doesn’t seem to need to do it just to prove something to the people around him now. He’s more willing to own his mistakes in a productive way rather than just spiraling down into mixed self-pity and self-hatred of his past actions, if him getting past his disappointment over Terezi and Dave getting together in order to still be a good friend to her is any indication. On the other hand, Karkat doesn’t really seem to recognize that he’s getting to be more mature and likable; he laments to himself and to Meenah about how childish he’s been, and he doesn’t think that his friends would think of him as a leader anymore, even though he doesn’t know much else about what to be. Even though we see in Meenah’s third walkaround flash game that all his friends are still very fond and protective of him, he seems to feel extraneous to them, to the point that he’s willing to abandon his team, the friends he hasn’t seen or heard from in two years, and the new world they’re all going to in order to go haring off on a suicide mission with Meenah. Still, feelings and emotions are dumb when you’re a teenager, and Karkat’s been stuck on a meteor doing nothing for two years with the same five people, all of whom are getting romantically entangled with each other and leaving him as the really awkward sixth wheel, so he can certainly be excused for having his problems.
Abilities} Trolls are generally supposed to be tougher & more durable than humans, on the whole. Karkat doesn’t have any supernatural abilities - we don’t even know what his Knight of Blood abilities should do, since the Blood aspect isn’t very clearly elucidated and he never uses or even possibly unlocks those powers. However, he is extremely physically fit, both from a lifetime on Alternia in competition with other kids (and the need to keep his blood secret so he wouldn’t be culled as a mutant) and his time leveling up in SGRUB. His strifekind makes it likely that he’s quite agile on his feet. He wouldn’t be as strong as Equius or as fast as Dave, but more of a balance between the two.
Baggage} Karkat will have his sickles (normal, Homes Smell Ya Later, Clawsickle & Regisickle) and the clothes on his back; a truly absurd number of troll romance novels and romcoms; also his sylladex, a kind of hammerspace. That’s really about it.
Notes} N/A
Sample} Karkat’s thread in the Test Drive Meme
