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Karkat Vantas (AU) | Homestuck | Reserved | 1/3?
Player Name: Tricks
Preferred Contact Methods: AIM @ fail hero |
Other Characters: Jane Crocker (OU) | Homestuck
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Karkat Vantas (AU)
Series: Homestuck
Canon Point: At the end of Lost Teeth Like White Jewels
History Link: Canon history for Karkat. References for Hemostuck, the AU I am taking him from, are here and here.
Karkat Vantas (AU) | Homestuck | Reserved | 2/3?
As Hemostuck basically takes all of Alternian society and changes it from the ground up, this is going to get long. In Homestuck, aliens known as trolls live on Alternia, and are ranked on a hemospectrum according to blood color. Purple-blooded sea trolls are at the top of the heap, ruled by a fuschia-blooded empress, with long natural lives and a greater capacity for violence; from there blood colors run down the visible spectrum of light to dark red, which is the lowest color possible. "Rustbloods" are short-lived and generally calmer than those higher on the spectrum, but they are more numerous than highbloods and tend to have a lot of supernatural abilities. They also have four kinds of romance. It's very complicated, but it basically boils down to a platonic and sexual kind of romance each for both love and hate. Karkat, with his cherry-red blood like a human's, is so low he's off the spectrum entirely, a mutant slated for culling; his ancestor the Sufferer led a failed revolution against the current system and was tortured and killed for it.
Hemostuck's Alternia exists in a world without SBurb/SGrub, where trolls originally lived in tribal nation-states. Eventually the planet was united by a war between seadwellers and landdwellers; the Summoner turned the sea creatures on Dualscar the Genocide and forced his people's surrender, eventually leading to the current imperial system, which set up a hemospectrum that is the opposite of canon: red at the top and purple at the bottom, with fuschia as an outlier whose existence is not even thought possible. The four main human kids from Homestuck appear instead as four of the five Godheads in troll religion, with the God of Pulse and Haze as the fifth. Their blood is cherry-red, and lusii - animal custodians that raise trolls - with that color of blood often pick out trolls to raise who will go on to perform heroic deeds or have exemplary careers. However, cherry-red blood in trolls is still an aberration, putting Karkat in a quite awkward position.
We'll come back to that in a moment. On Alternia, the gods are visible in many of the main characters' lives as they grow up. (An important note - trolls in Hemostuck are born in a mass hatching every ten sweeps, a sweep being equivalent to about 2.17 years, and the children grow until their first mating season at their tenth sweep, after which they go off-planet to live as adults working and conquering for the Alternian Empire. This is referred to as Ascension.) Devotees to a Godhead usually court that god's favor by offering prayer and meditation and sometimes, ritual sacrifice. The gods will not always accept a dedicated death, but if (and only if) the death is done in the proper manner they often will; in special cases they'll even reciprocate the dedication with a raising, by which I mean zombies are part of Alternian religion. Seadwellers generally only accept the two female Godheads of the quinity as canonical, worshiping them as the Sisters instead. Many indigobloods do not worship the quinity at all, but instead their Mirthful Messiahs that represent chaos, destruction and anarchy, but this sect is considered a heretical cult, and devotion to the Messiahs is severely punished. In the current cohort of troll children many of the most politically prominent trolls and their inclade, or romantically partnered “family,” are favorites of the Godheads, which in turn has encouraged a wave of zealotry and religious devotion among the rest of the cohort that has the adults of the imperial machine very, very concerned. Such devotion has not been common for a long time and is considered dangerous to the war machine necessary to an expansionist empire like Alternia.
Obviously, then, this puts Karkat in a risky position if news of his mutation gets out to the adults running the empire; another risk, in a cohort so dedicated to religion, is that people would regard him as an object of worship rather than just another person, which he very much does not want. Adding stress to the mix is that Karkat’s fondest wish, just like in canon, is to be a Threshecutioner - in Hemostuck, this is a branch of social enforcement whose job it is to ease relations between trolls and occasionally bring down the undead or particularly troublesome Alternian fauna. Threshecutioner training requires blood tests and training in space. The way Karkat and his quadrantmates Sollux and Terezi found around this was to mix Sollux’s yellow and Terezi’s teal into lime, and then pipe that mixture into Karkat, along with all manner of drugs to keep his body from rejecting it; unfortunately, this also means Karkat is constantly ill, and as time goes on there is less and less physical exertion he can take.
Karkat finishes his training and returns planetside, only to find things rapidly changing. Sollux has taken over as Master of Information and found himself a kismesis in one Eridan Ampora, a seatroll with an abiding passion for fashion and a rather dangerous level of favor from the God of Light and Rain. Eridan rapidly develops a crush on Karkat, complicating the situation further even as his relationship with his moirail Sollux sours and his matespritship with Terezi becomes a clusterfuck of red and black quadrant-flipping. Still, Karkat becomes abidingly fond of Eridan even as he becomes more and more isolated from his family.
Eventually the situation comes to a head when Karkat embarks on a mission to make the harbor safer for seadwellers with Eridan, and ends up spending a week at his hive and meeting his family. His meeting with Eridan’s moirail’s matesprit, Gamzee, is pretty much pale love at first sight, and eventually Karkat is forced to own up to the fact that his moirallegiance with Sollux simply won’t work anymore. Eridan, meanwhile, makes a play for Karkat’s red quadrant at last, culminating in a kiss the night before Karkat leaves again. Unfortunately the stress of this and the lack of medical attention while he’s been at sea provokes a heart attack, forcing Gamzee and Eridan to leave for the mainland right away.
When Karkat comes to things only get more complicated. Sollux and Terezi have hooked up in the pale quadrant in his absence, but Sollux is unwilling to give Karkat up - he and Gamzee get along like a house on fire and his relationship with Eridan is extremely strained since they’re now in competition for Karkat’s red quadrant, with Terezi finally making their flip to blackrom official. Things finally build to a head when Karkat finally goes to sort things out with Sollux, and take a turn for the sinister as it’s revealed that Karkat’s erratic behavior, general assholery in relation to Alternian social order, obstinate insistence on atheism despite all proof that he’s beloved of the gods, and isolation from the people he loves is due to being controlled by a worm put in his brain when he was in Threshecutioner training, as a way to check the sudden liberal leanings of much of the ruling class in his cohort. Karkat snaps after this revelation and gives Sollux a concussion, preparing to deliver him and Terezi to the adult officials for treason and trying to execute Eridan as a “merciful” death. Still, the three of them manage to snap him out of the mental coercion of the brainworm long enough to make him realize how messed up things are and ask Sollux to get it out of him.
That done, Karkat finally returns to the fold of his clade and manages to sort things out for good with all parties. He agrees at last that the system cannot hold as it is and is in desperate need of reform, and owns up to his own prophetic visions concerning the gods. And, in a surprisingly happy twist, he ends up taking on both Eridan and Sollux in his red quadrant, though they all end up agreeing that one of the two will have to be kept a secret - Eridan insists it be him. For once, it seems, Karkat Vantas has a life that doesn’t entirely suck.
Karkat Vantas (AU) | Homestuck | Reserved | 3/3 and a journal switcheroo
Game Import:N/APersonality:
Karkat Vantas is a force of will, first and foremost. Remember the brainworm mentioned in his history? A careful reading of Lost Teeth with that knowledge makes it obvious that he was actively resisting its influence to keep his loved ones safe - burning Sollux’s mainframes so he wouldn’t have to turn him in, staying away from Feferi during her brief feral episode so he wouldn’t have to cull her as the law demands, making Eridan change the subject when talking about fabrications in Alternian history so he wouldn’t have to bring him in on charges of sedition. The effort that must have taken, on top of the will it has to take for him to simply keep going every day due to his blood condition - he once tells Eridan he doesn’t know how much of him is making it to Ascension, his physical condition is so bad - has to be massive.
Obviously, then, Karkat also loves his clade a whole hell of a lot, for them to be worth that kind of herculean effort. This is actually not much of a surprise, considering canon Karkat’s soft side and protective, nurturing behavior towards his friends when he’s not yelling at them. He describes Sollux as the “gunwale of [his] existence” and is so fond of Terezi that he is both resigned to and distressed by how easily she can take advantage of that and shamelessly tease him. But it’s not just his close friends he loves, though they certainly get a lot of his heart to themselves; according to Roachpatrol and Taz he has an abiding fondness for the entire world, and the entire world pretty much loves him back. After all, this is the boy who wanted to be part of a group of social enforcers dedicated to mediation and relationship therapy so much that he was willing to wear himself down to the bone physically with less-than-legal blood treatments. Karkat is so inclined to just give himself away to any kid that comes along needing him that it actually causes some tension in his other relationships; Sollux in particular gets huffy about how many flings Karkat has had, how many kids have asked him for approval to seek Karkat’s hand while they were moirails.
This soft side certainly doesn’t mean Karkat is just a sweet-natured vulnerable woobie, though. Much like his canon counterpart, he still has a chip on his shoulder the size of a two-by-four and an attitude to match, and he still has the same filthy mouth assisted by seemingly boundless creativity in finding new ways to express his gripes. However, even though he’s still a mutant living in fear of culling, the reversal of the hemospectrum and his differing circumstances in society has given him much more self-confidence. This means that instead of needing to boss and badger everyone and constantly prove his worth, his biting commentary tends to be far more restrained and friendly than in canon. He isn’t shouty most of the time, just endlessly sarcastic. He also has far less of a tendency to put his foot in his mouth while going on a rant, probably because it’s his job in Hemostuck to read how other people are feeling and help them calm down rather than make the situation worse as well as unbearably awkward. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, however, or Lost Teeth would not be the romantic clusterfuck that it is.
Replacing Karkat’s canon need to be a leader is an independent streak a mile long and a go-getter mentality that would be the envy of self-help gurus everywhere. In canon, the Alternian ideal is to be strong, violent and charismatic, a general who inspires his troops, but although Hemostuck’s Alternian Empire is still a war machine, it instead values honorable restraint and working towards a more communal good. (This is partly because seadwellers are held to be more violent and self-interested than warmer-blooded trolls in both versions of Alternia - at the top of the hemospectrum, such an attitude is valued and idealized, but at the bottom of the heap it’s scorned and discouraged. Karkat thus doesn’t need to be violently domineering to be a respectable troll in Hemostuck’s society, which was much of the point of his leader complex in the original canon.) This Karkat, then, is out to Do Good For The World So Help Him God. Even if everyone tells him repeatedly that he’s being stupid and there really is a more logical course of action lurking around somewhere, he’s as stubborn as ever and once he’s got an idea kicking around it’s impossible to dislodge. Hence both the times he’s appeared so far in Hemostuck, he’s pretty much blatantly ignored the sensible advice and gone haring off on absurdly dangerous missions for the public good - finding the informant in the Septics the first time, and a lovely outing to go kill a hulking seamonster terrorizing the harbor the second. He’s always stubborn for a good cause, though - despite the mental suggestion of the brainworm, Karkat’s always looking for a way to make things just a bit more fair and just in the world for the less-privileged, and he seems to relish in helping people.
Finally, Karkat retains a fair bit of internal torment and self-hatred. Instead of being rooted purely in his blood color and having to hide it, however, a lot of this is about what he was forced to do and become in his Threshecutioner training, and his self-perception of inadequacy in comparison to his friends. Karkat’s narration, as has been pointed out by Roach, is loaded with references to how lovely and perfect he finds everyone around him, and he finds their faults endearing instead of frustrating; none of that love and positivity is turned towards himself, despite the confidence he has that his canon counterpart lacks. He thinks of himself as irrevocably broken and not good enough for the people who love him, and to some degree this is reinforced by the way Sollux and Terezi often compare him to what he was like before Threshecutioner training - he doesn’t know (and is implied to have been forced to forget) about the brainworm changing his behavior. It was his one ambition in life, so it hurts him that they are apparently rejecting such an important dream of his. He himself admits that he’s fucked up, saying that Eridan doesn’t understand that being a Threshecutioner does apparently preclude a troll’s right to ever be happy, and even though he clings to the people he’s close to he also insists that he’s just not good enough for them and can’t ever make them happy. A lot of this devaluing of his own self-worth is probably rooted in his guilt over two deaths he feels responsible for: that of his lusus, who he was forced to kill when he was shipped up for training, and that of a seadweller classmate who finally committed suicide from the stress of having to prove her right to be there more than anyone else. He even goes so far as to describe himself as a “scrap of shiny trash” that Eridan clamors for. Even without the brainworm causing internal conflict, he’ll probably retain most of those feelings of guilt and self-doubt, and they might even be worse since he can’t convince himself they were for the good of the Empire anymore.
Powers: ANYTHING HE PAPS STAYS PAPPED
But no, he doesn’t actually have any powers. It’s hinted that he has an interesting relationship with God, of course, with hallucinations and so on, and in a period of great stress he burned all the lime right out of his bloodstream, but there’s nothing that would be really applicable in Darstone.
Other Details: Due to Karkat's, ahem, blood condition being very inconvenient - as in heart attack inconvenient if he isn't in constant medical care while posing as a limeblood - I'm taking him from after the last scene of Lost Teeth but before he can have the lime mixture and drugs piped back into him. So his blood will be full-on cherry cough syrup colored, and as such his physical condition will improve the longer he spends in Darstone.
SAMPLES
Thread in the Test Drive meme!
ACCEPTED
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