Karkat Vantas

Name; Remi

Personal Journal; flammability_x2

Contact; http://www.plurk.com/reminyao <-plurk | AIM: pyromanticizing | e-mail: anana.chan@gmail.com

Other Characters; N/A

Character Name; Karkat Vantas

Canon; http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/MS_Paint_Adventures_Wiki Homestuck

Canon Point; Post-Shooshpap

Age; ~13

House; Hel

Power; Body Control

Karkat isn't exactly a difficult person to describe to others. If you wanted to be able to pick him out from a crowd, all you would have to do is look for the angriest, loudest, most vulgar troll in the lot, and it's pretty much guaranteed that you would pick our dear Mr. Vantas. From the outside, and even a few conversations in, Karkat is very obviously hard to get along with. He's a crab--in as many senses of the word as possible. His immediate assumption about newcomers (and usually his friends) is that whoever's on the receiving end of his conversation is an idiot, and he isn't afraid to show that. In fact, he almost seems to find a sick sort of entertainment in it; he's in his element when he's ranting and raving and berating people with the most colorful language known to man (and troll). It's probably something he would miss were he ever given a break to relax for too long. He's not much of one for goofing off and having fun, so it's pretty much the closest thing he gets to it outside of his hobbies of terrible coding and watching romantic comedies.

This isn't to say he's not a valuable person to speak with. Karkat is by no means dumb. He may be loud and vulgar, but he's extremely intelligent, and has a rather large amount of common sense to back him up. This, he uses for many things, one of which being advice-giving. He's actually pretty insightful, and after watching so many romcoms, he's also pretty knowledgeable on romance (when it comes to other people's romance, anyway). His advice is generally pretty solid, if you can find it underneath all the insults. On another front, Karkat's street smarts help him to be more careful with himself. His mutant blood color is something he's ashamed of, and has to hide on his planet. Alternia is a dangerous place, and trolls are a dangerous people. If he had been found out back home before the planet was destroyed, he would have been put down mercilessly. That said, it's safe to say that a good amount of his mannerisms are both covering up and caused by a relentless fear. His self-loathing, probably the biggest part of him, can arguably be caused by that fear, and if so, it has a hand in his rage, as well.

Yes, the vast majority of what is seen on the surface with Karkat is a social front. Not a positive one, mind you, but a front nonetheless. If he's angry, people will focus on that. If he acts like he doesn't care when he's called out, his attackers will second-guess themselves. If he involves himself with the problems of others and with taking care of people, his own problems get pushed to the back of his mind. That means that, despite all of his bitching and insulting and making other people's lives hell, Karkat still cares. In fact, he cares more than almost anyone else, to the point of it being a fault. He stresses himself out over making sure things turn out right, and making sure his teammates survive. He took the position of leader in his group, not only because he enjoys power and thinks himself the best-suited to lead out of his friends, but because he was ready to take on the responsibility of their well-being, and he knew that he had to try to keep the people he cared about safe and alive. He's a wonderful leader, deemed "too good" by Vriska, because he unified the two opposing teams in his session successfully and led them to a flawless victory. He's also the only one who could pacify the anger in his comrades, including Gamzee when he was beyond angry, and just flat-out homicidal and batshit. When his friends are hurt, he worries, and when they die, he grieves harder than trolls are expected to, outright crying on more than one occasion over the death of a teammate. He values friendship over romance, makes decisions for the better of the group rather than for himself, and has an innate ability to lead even the most unruly people using reason and logic instead of intimidation or violence. This, alone, constitutes the fact that he was told he would make a better human than a troll.

Now, this isn't to say he's all compassion and love underneath that rage. He has glaring faults that lead him to blindly make bad decisions, leading to many problems that he and the others have to face. He still enjoys power, and that's a driving force in his want to be the leader, as well. On top of that, once he has power, he's very quick to get into a working mindset, where he gets impatient easily and gets fed up with horseplay at the drop of a hat. He's very no-nonsense when things need to get done, and any mistakes on his friends' parts are met with an explosion of temper, which apparently they respond to well enough, because they royally owned their session of the game. Unfortunately, in his need to get things done, his patience dwindles at the wrong times, now and then. Due to this, his session's Genesis Frog was missing its final DNA sequence, which caused the humans' session's Jack Noir to do what he did and endanger them all.

That was probably one of the biggest blows to his self esteem that he'd seen in a long while. Karkat already hates himself. It's to the point of almost being romantic, as pointed out in canon. The only person he could hate enough to be in a kismesitude with is himself. A lot of things play into this: he has a low opinion of himself, and thinks that anything he says and does in his past and future selves is stupid. Unfortunately, this means that he will be saying and doing stupid things, or already has. On top of this, his mutant blood color makes him hate his body, and his fear of bleeding and revealing himself probably lends into his weak stomach when it comes to graphic violence (he passed out when Kanaya took a chainsaw to Tavros' legs, and panicked hard when Eridan flipped out and killed people). In addition, he has a pretty big guilt complex, and tends to blame himself for things a lot more than he lets on. When he realized that his impatience cost their Genesis Frog its health, he admitted it to Jade, saying that he thought it had looked sick, and that he thought he gave her universe cancer. For this, he apologized sincerely, one of the only times he's ever seen doing so.

Still, even though his shortcomings cause him to mess up, and create a central hatred for himself that causes even more problems, Karkat manages to be the leader he knew he had to be. When it comes down to it, he really was the best to lead his friends, and he did end up commanding a certain amount of respect from them. He's a caring person, even if his methods are harsh and sometimes backfire on him. He loves his friends, he does his best for them, and in the end, that's what matters the most.

Network Sample; http://dear-mun.livejournal.com/44019980.html D_M post!

It was the sense of everything falling apart that really did him in. Within hours, the hard work they'd put into the session had crumbled. People had gone missing, found dead, and Gamzee had lost it... His best friend had lost his mind. The fact that he and Terezi had started to grow apart had started to get painfully obvious, and to top it all off, Jack hadn't even been the one to do it all. They'd done it to themselves. They had snapped, they had lashed out, they had ruined the chances of survival for their race... And Karkat hadn't been able to stop any of it. What was he thinking? He had just stood there. He'd justwatched Eridan kill Kanaya and Feferi--Feferi, the love of his life, the only person who really mattered to him. He'd just watched him knock Sollux out, and destroy the Matriorb, thus obliterating their race's chances for repopulation... and he hadn't done a damn thing to stop him.

It hadn't made much of a difference in the end. Kanaya wasn't dead, and she had taken care of Eridan. But Gamzee had killed Nepeta and Equius, and Terezi had taken out Vriska. Adding in Tavros' death, that meant half of his friends had been murdered. And when Gamzee showed himself, Karkat honestly thought that the number was going to increase one hell of a lot more. There he stood, with his remaining friends, ready to take down the rogue clown. A sick apprehension pooled in his abdomen, tightening his chest. He was going to lose his best friend for real this time, wasn't he? No dream self, no second chances... Who would bring him down? Kanaya? Terezi? Sollux? Would he himself have to take him out..? Either way, someone he cared about was going to end up dead. He had been lucky so far; the closest trolls to him had survived. But here they all were, ready to battle it out, and... how many would he lose? Could he handle that? Seriously, what kind of a leader just let this happen?! He couldn't just sit back and let this happen.

Enough was enough.

The weapons were drawn, and Karkat sprung into action. He calmed his friends, made them stop, sit back, wait a second. And then it was time to face Gamzee on his own. He was going to take care of this, and he was not going to lose control of the situation. It was high time people started to get their shit together, and if things weren't going to gently fall back into place where they belonged, Karkat was going to take them softly in his fingers and cram them in their respective receptacles with the planetary force of rage that everyone knew he was well beyond capable of conjuring. He was fed up with watching from the sidelines while these idiots destroyed what remained of the fruits of their labor. No more unnecessary deaths, no more stupid stunts, no more fucking bullshit.

Gamzee would be okay. He had to be. Approaching him was easier than he thought it would be... No attacks. He was even able to reach out and touch him without getting hurt, and he continued to do so, whispering out a consistent "shhhhh", even though his heart was pounding and his hands were shaking. If this didn't work, Gamzee would have to die. And being this close to him, Karkat knew he would probably go down, too... He didn't know if he actually had it in him to put his best friend out of his misery.

Seconds passed, and the unusual approach actually started to calm the enraged troll. At first, in his apprehension, Karkat slowed too quickly, and almost lost control. But he quickly brought Gamzee's attention back to him, and eventually, his efforts were rewarded. Gamzee visibly calmed, and Karkat could see the friend he thought he had lost returning to him. A wave of relief washed over him when he looked at the other troll, a warming sensation so uncommon that it brought out something even rarer; Gamzee curled his arms around him, and he felt that elusive smile making its way to his face. He was okay. Things were finally working out for the better, and he felt like they finally had a handle on some of the things they were faced with. He might not be totally stable, but Gamzee was no longer entirely lost... and if Karkat had anything to do with it, he wouldn't lose his moirail ever again.

After all, that's what leaders did, and Karkat was the best goddamn leader they'd ever see.