Karkat Vantas, also known by his Trollian handle carcinoGeneticist, is one of the Trolls and is one of the main characters in Homestuck. His associated zodiac sign is Cancer and he has horns that are rounded instead of pointed (constantly referred to as “nubby horns” or “Candy corn.”) He types in gray with all caps and near-perfect syntax. One of his future selves (soon his present self), however, types in red- his true blood color- for a short period of time (under ten minutes).
Karkat comes from “Karkata,” the Hindu astrological equivalent of Cancer, minus one letter. Additionally, his name may be drawn from “Karkinos,” a giant crab who fought Hercules of myth, also the origin of the Cancer astrological sign. Vantas, on the other hand, is a prostate cancer treatment drug.
His Trollian handle is a play on the medical term “carcinogenesis” which is the development of cancer in the body (or carcinogens, cancer-causing substances), and “carcinology,” the study of crustaceans.
His online handle is particularly nefarious sounding, implying genetic engineering and carcinogenic factors. This is proven to be the case later on, as he had genetically bred cancer into Bilious Slick by undermining the importance of the completion of its genetic sequence, thus ultimately dooming the kids’ universe. Later Karkat tries to think of a title more befitting of him considering the apparently doomed life he created via Ectobiology. Ironically, he can’t think of the obvious choice present in his trollian handle.
His weapon of choice is a sickle. This is most likely to contrast or even complement John’s hammerkind, as the hammer and sickle are the symbols of communism and the Soviet Union. It may also be a reference to sickle cell disease, or anemia, a sickness of the blood caused by a genetic mutation.
Karkat is a very CRABBY troll, which is a pun on his sign. In fact, most people under the Cancer sign are said to be moody and crabby like he is.
Karkat was the leader of the Red Team, and leader of the joined teams.
Karkat was introduced in ACT 3 as an INCREDIBLYRUDEINDIVIDUAL who trolls JADE, which earns him a place in her Trollslum. He is aware of what the KIDS do during their adventure via TROLLIAN. He is convinced that Jade will fuck everything up and seems to want a different outcome, asking Jade “IS THERENOTHING I CAN DO TO CHANGEYOURMIND?” and later providing information on Sburb and giving advice to JOHN on how he should go through his adventure. It becomes clear that he had hoped to deter Jade from sending a package to John, which would lead to disastrous results for both the kids and the trolls. She ignores his warnings and sends the package that JACKNOIR later uses to kill the BLACKQUEEN.
In Act 4, Karkat later contacts John, and tells him that they will be friends in the future. He mentions that he is TROLLINGLINEARLYBACKWARDS along the kids’ timeline, unlike the forward motion of TEREZIPYROPE and the random pathways of the other trolls. Later on, he and John have a discussion on movie titles, and it is implied that Karkat’s civilization is much older than John’s since they ran out of good movie titles over the course of thousands of years. John also reminds Karkat that he wants to talk to Jade and to calm down if he contacts him any earlier in the timeline so as to prevent any time paradoxes from occurring. He also finds out that John is in “CAHOOTS” with Terezi and gets pissed and asks John to send along a nasty message to her. Later, Karkat gives John information on the geography of the INCIPISPHERE and the purpose of Sburb.
When John arrives in the ECTOBIOLOGYLAB and creates the PARADOXCLONES, Karkat explains that every player who plays Sburb will, without exception, be their own clone. Through the actions of one player, all players in that Sburb session will have been created as clones of themselves, with the originals being clones; essentially, the information used to create the clones comes from the clones themselves. Karkat was the trolls’ ectobiologist, and created all twelve of them. Apparently, he was quite unsettled by all of this. In addition to creating the twelve current trolls, he created each troll’s ANCESTOR. However, he believed them to be “random extra wigglers serving no purpose.”
At the end of the Intermission, SPADESSLICK finds a monitor with 12 screens. The one illuminated screen shows Karkat in his respiteblock engaged in SGRUB, standing idly next to his KERNELSPRITE, a CRUXITEDOWEL, and some SYLLADEXCARDS. Slick begins to communicate with Karkat in the same way that the EXILES had with the kids. His respiteblock at the end of the Intermission does not resemble his respiteblock in Hivebent, probably because it was before the trolls were further conceptualized.
ACT 5 opens with the beginning of a new adventure, with Karkat in his RESPITEBLOCK. Karkat was not given a name before his sixth WRIGGLINGDAY (his thirteenth birthday), just like John Egbert. He is initially named Bulgereek Nookstain using the inverted DAEDRICALPHABET, but chops the name entry box in half—much like DAVE, Karkat doesn’t put up with that bullshit.
Karkat is the leader of the Red Team with Terezi Pyrope as his server player. Sburb has designated him the KNIGHT OF BLOOD, his planet the LAND OF PULSEANDHAZE. Karkat wields an alchemised sickle: HOMESSMELL YA LATER, in keeping with his SICKLEKINDSTRIFESPECIBUS. LATER he’s shown using a sickle that appears similar to a regisword. Karkat, during the course of the game, runs across and forms an alliance with Jack Noir to exile the Black Queen. Beforehand, his sharp tongue gets him stabbed by Jack, revealing his candy red blood color and helping him form a bond of sorts with his assailant, both of whom have the same color blood.
Karkat starts distributing memos through Trollian’s time-travel memo feature to try to order people around, but these memos end up hopelessly muddled by various interjections from the other trolls (and even Karkat himself in other points of the timeline). He witnesses the last moments of SOLLUXCAPTOR this way, as he was gruesomely killed by a psychic shockwave emitted from FEFERI’S LUSUS, but thinks he’s joking. He becomes very distraught once he sees his friend’s lifeless body, and then disgusted as Feferi kisses him.
After many unseen shenanigans over the Sgrub session, Karkat seems to have developed a MATESPRITSHIP with TEREZI, and became at least somewhat respected by the others. He is the one who attempts to claim the “ultimate reward,” before being INTERRUPTED. VRISKA claims that Karkat only awoke on PROSPIT after “winning” the game in this fashion.
In the UNLINKEDPAGE, past Karkat speculates that he GAVE JADE’S UNIVERSECANCER, by skipping the last frog required for his genetic sequence to be able to fight the black king in time. Past Karkat apologizes for his hasty mistake, and although it is nothing but a single “sorry” it is one of the few times where Karkat apologises at all. Amusingly, the position he put the universes in fits with his username carcinoGeneticist (creator of cancer).
John, living in the universe that was supposed to be the Trolls’ reward, reflects what Karkat’s life may have been like had it not been so horrible. This may have been the reason he singled out John as his trolling target in the first place. Karkat believes John to be his KISMESIS, and begins trolling him, but as we’ve already seen he becomes friends with him instead.
Karkat believes Jade to have prototyped BEC intentionally, leading to a series of events that set off THESCRATCH, and extends this blame to John for falling asleep and not preventing it from happening. However, as John was actually put to sleep by Vriska, and Jade was attempting to break her CRUXITEARTIFACT at the time, only Bec himself was to blame for the prototyping.
After developing plans with Jade, he witnessed ERIDAN killing FEFERI and KANAYA. He attempted to revive Kanaya with a kiss afterwards, which may have contributed to her later vampirism (as he is the Knight of Blood). He was also contacted by GAMZEE, who had run out of pies and became sober (and homicidal by extension).
Upon arriving in the Veil, Karkat watches John’s life unfold linearly, and refrains from trolling him. He becomes angrier at him, in part because he had a role in causing the rift, but also possibly gone crazy. Freaked out by this, he took Sollux (who was KO’d in the fight with Eridan) with him to hide from Gamzee. Soon after he woke up, however, they were separated. At this point he began believing that he was in a doomed timeline, since Kanaya was supposedly dead, yet he had talked to her in the future. Some time later he continued a memo to talk to Jade, explaining to her that he gave their universe “cancer” (which is revealed to be Jack Noir) and is sorry for it. He was then contacted again by future Kanaya.
Shortly after Vriska’s death at Terezi’s hands, he also arrives on the roof with a letter written in Gamzee’s blood using a combination of Terezi’s QU1RK and his own, then is seen with Terezi hugging or kissing. Afterward, when Gamzee arrives to confront the other four survivors, he successfully shooshpaps Gamzee out of his bloodthirsty rage, becoming his moirail and smiling for the first time seen in-comic; he later mentions to John that for whatever reason he doesn’t want to talk about what he did to Gamzee. After this, the five trolls departed for the GREENSUN when the path to it became visible from their session; Sollux propelled their meteor there at incredible speed, the strain killing him. Once there, they were met by Dave, Rose, Aradia and the half-dead Sollux.
Karkat is currently travelling to the alpha kids’ session through the Furthest Ring, with Kanaya, Gamzee, Terezi, Rose and Dave; being that Sollux and Aradia’s propulsion is not as powerful as it was previously, the journey will take them three years. 1 year into this journey, he opens a memo, where he has a discussion with a future self about his feelings, in which it is revealed that everyone else on the meteor is aware of his blood colour and that he is uncomfortable travelling through the Furthest Ring that he had previously only seen in dreams. He also admits that he misses all of the dead trolls, and that he is upset at the fact that he and Terezi are no longer on good terms. He expresses jealousy of Dave, and his Future Self berates him for “WANT[ing] HER IN EVERYQUADRANTLIKE A DESPERATEFOOL.”
One of his future selves from beyond the mysterious countdown appears in a memo HERE. Afterwards, he confronts Dave about his personal revelations and suggests that they set up a schedule in order to “share” Terezi’s affections. Dave’s outright refusal prompts him to (nearly?) begin a kismesis with Dave.
As the Trolls’ session had many DOOMEDTIMELINES, Karkat had many alternate selves, only a few of which have been seen.
In an alternate timeline in which Karkat does not trigger the Mobius Double Reacharound virus, Gamzee sobers up much earlier than he is supposed to and kills all the other trolls in the session save ARADIA. He uses the blood of Karkat and the others to scribble the “honk HONK” part of DOC SCRATCH’s genetic code in Karkat’s ~ATH book, which Aradia takes with her back to the alpha timeline.
In an alternate timeline in which Vriska does depart to challenge Jack Noir, she inadvertently leads him to the trolls’ hideout and Karkat is killed along with TEREZI by Noir directly, who then destroys the meteor and takes Karkat and Terezi as trophies to show to Vriska. Observing this outcome with her Mind powers and knowing it to be unacceptable, in the alpha timeline, Terezi kills Vriska before she can depart. Since it was only predicted with Seer powers it is unknown if this timeline actually existed or only existed as a potential outcome.
A dead Karkat wearing Knight of Blood GODTIER clothing appears in a lengthy dream bubble sequence in [S] ROXY: SLEEPWALK. He is accompanied by a dead NEPETA. It is interesting to note that his God Tier form has no wings, unlike those of the other God Tier trolls, although it is unknown if this is something that affects certain trolls or if it has something to do with WEIRDPLOTSHIT, although UU suggested (when talking about her fanart) that God-Tier trolls can hide their wings inside their cloaks.
Karkat is a crab in more ways than one. He constantly insults others in the style of a stereotypical internet troll, supporting his arguments with what seems to be empty logic. Jade has even gone to the point of FLIPPINGOUT AT KARKAT. In keeping with the crab apple asshole theme of his personality, he rarely smiles.
One of the only times Karkat smiles
Added by CHEZRUSH
He is also often seen screaming, pounding his fists against his keyboard, or generally raging when talking to anyone. He is not particularly patient when explaining himself, making even his most sound advice appear to be random insults. He also becomes visibly aggravated when other people are having fun.
Somewhat similar to Jack Noir, Karkat is ruthlessly ambitious and will grasp at any opportunity for power, but he just doesn’t have the subtlety of his troll compatriots and ends with the sharp end of the stick more than once. His real strength is to shepherd his boneheaded troll friends into following a plan, which just gives him another excuse to go off the handle when something does not go according to it. Despite his arrogant and volatile behavior, he proves to be a somewhat effective leader of the twelve trolls.
Karkat Vantas, also known by his Trollian handle carcinoGeneticist, is one of the Trolls and is one of the main characters in Homestuck. His associated zodiac sign is Cancer and he has horns that are rounded instead of pointed (constantly referred to as “nubby horns” or “Candy corn.”) He types in gray with all caps and near-perfect syntax. One of his future selves (soon his present self), however, types in red- his true blood color- for a short period of time (under ten minutes).
Karkat comes from “Karkata,” the Hindu astrological equivalent of Cancer, minus one letter. Additionally, his name may be drawn from “Karkinos,” a giant crab who fought Hercules of myth, also the origin of the Cancer astrological sign. Vantas, on the other hand, is a prostate cancer treatment drug.
His Trollian handle is a play on the medical term “carcinogenesis” which is the development of cancer in the body (or carcinogens, cancer-causing substances), and “carcinology,” the study of crustaceans.
His online handle is particularly nefarious sounding, implying genetic engineering and carcinogenic factors. This is proven to be the case later on, as he had genetically bred cancer into Bilious Slick by undermining the importance of the completion of its genetic sequence, thus ultimately dooming the kids’ universe. Later Karkat tries to think of a title more befitting of him considering the apparently doomed life he created via Ectobiology. Ironically, he can’t think of the obvious choice present in his trollian handle.
His weapon of choice is a sickle. This is most likely to contrast or even complement John’s hammerkind, as the hammer and sickle are the symbols of communism and the Soviet Union. It may also be a reference to sickle cell disease, or anemia, a sickness of the blood caused by a genetic mutation.
Karkat is a very CRABBY troll, which is a pun on his sign. In fact, most people under the Cancer sign are said to be moody and crabby like he is.
Karkat was the leader of the Red Team, and leader of the joined teams.
Karkat was introduced in ACT 3 as an INCREDIBLYRUDEINDIVIDUAL who trolls JADE, which earns him a place in her Trollslum. He is aware of what the KIDS do during their adventure via TROLLIAN. He is convinced that Jade will fuck everything up and seems to want a different outcome, asking Jade “IS THERENOTHING I CAN DO TO CHANGEYOURMIND?” and later providing information on Sburb and giving advice to JOHN on how he should go through his adventure. It becomes clear that he had hoped to deter Jade from sending a package to John, which would lead to disastrous results for both the kids and the trolls. She ignores his warnings and sends the package that JACKNOIR later uses to kill the BLACKQUEEN.
In Act 4, Karkat later contacts John, and tells him that they will be friends in the future. He mentions that he is TROLLINGLINEARLYBACKWARDS along the kids’ timeline, unlike the forward motion of TEREZIPYROPE and the random pathways of the other trolls. Later on, he and John have a discussion on movie titles, and it is implied that Karkat’s civilization is much older than John’s since they ran out of good movie titles over the course of thousands of years. John also reminds Karkat that he wants to talk to Jade and to calm down if he contacts him any earlier in the timeline so as to prevent any time paradoxes from occurring. He also finds out that John is in “CAHOOTS” with Terezi and gets pissed and asks John to send along a nasty message to her. Later, Karkat gives John information on the geography of the INCIPISPHERE and the purpose of Sburb.
When John arrives in the ECTOBIOLOGYLAB and creates the PARADOXCLONES, Karkat explains that every player who plays Sburb will, without exception, be their own clone. Through the actions of one player, all players in that Sburb session will have been created as clones of themselves, with the originals being clones; essentially, the information used to create the clones comes from the clones themselves. Karkat was the trolls’ ectobiologist, and created all twelve of them. Apparently, he was quite unsettled by all of this. In addition to creating the twelve current trolls, he created each troll’s ANCESTOR. However, he believed them to be “random extra wigglers serving no purpose.”
At the end of the Intermission, SPADESSLICK finds a monitor with 12 screens. The one illuminated screen shows Karkat in his respiteblock engaged in SGRUB, standing idly next to his KERNELSPRITE, a CRUXITEDOWEL, and some SYLLADEXCARDS. Slick begins to communicate with Karkat in the same way that the EXILES had with the kids. His respiteblock at the end of the Intermission does not resemble his respiteblock in Hivebent, probably because it was before the trolls were further conceptualized.
ACT 5 opens with the beginning of a new adventure, with Karkat in his RESPITEBLOCK. Karkat was not given a name before his sixth WRIGGLINGDAY (his thirteenth birthday), just like John Egbert. He is initially named Bulgereek Nookstain using the inverted DAEDRICALPHABET, but chops the name entry box in half—much like DAVE, Karkat doesn’t put up with that bullshit.
Karkat is the leader of the Red Team with Terezi Pyrope as his server player. Sburb has designated him the KNIGHT OF BLOOD, his planet the LAND OF PULSEANDHAZE. Karkat wields an alchemised sickle: HOMESSMELL YA LATER, in keeping with his SICKLEKINDSTRIFESPECIBUS. LATER he’s shown using a sickle that appears similar to a regisword. Karkat, during the course of the game, runs across and forms an alliance with Jack Noir to exile the Black Queen. Beforehand, his sharp tongue gets him stabbed by Jack, revealing his candy red blood color and helping him form a bond of sorts with his assailant, both of whom have the same color blood.
Karkat starts distributing memos through Trollian’s time-travel memo feature to try to order people around, but these memos end up hopelessly muddled by various interjections from the other trolls (and even Karkat himself in other points of the timeline). He witnesses the last moments of SOLLUXCAPTOR this way, as he was gruesomely killed by a psychic shockwave emitted from FEFERI’S LUSUS, but thinks he’s joking. He becomes very distraught once he sees his friend’s lifeless body, and then disgusted as Feferi kisses him.
After many unseen shenanigans over the Sgrub session, Karkat seems to have developed a MATESPRITSHIP with TEREZI, and became at least somewhat respected by the others. He is the one who attempts to claim the “ultimate reward,” before being INTERRUPTED. VRISKA claims that Karkat only awoke on PROSPIT after “winning” the game in this fashion.
In the UNLINKEDPAGE, past Karkat speculates that he GAVE JADE’S UNIVERSECANCER, by skipping the last frog required for his genetic sequence to be able to fight the black king in time. Past Karkat apologizes for his hasty mistake, and although it is nothing but a single “sorry” it is one of the few times where Karkat apologises at all. Amusingly, the position he put the universes in fits with his username carcinoGeneticist (creator of cancer).
John, living in the universe that was supposed to be the Trolls’ reward, reflects what Karkat’s life may have been like had it not been so horrible. This may have been the reason he singled out John as his trolling target in the first place. Karkat believes John to be his KISMESIS, and begins trolling him, but as we’ve already seen he becomes friends with him instead.
Karkat believes Jade to have prototyped BEC intentionally, leading to a series of events that set off THESCRATCH, and extends this blame to John for falling asleep and not preventing it from happening. However, as John was actually put to sleep by Vriska, and Jade was attempting to break her CRUXITEARTIFACT at the time, only Bec himself was to blame for the prototyping.
After developing plans with Jade, he witnessed ERIDAN killing FEFERI and KANAYA. He attempted to revive Kanaya with a kiss afterwards, which may have contributed to her later vampirism (as he is the Knight of Blood). He was also contacted by GAMZEE, who had run out of pies and became sober (and homicidal by extension).
Upon arriving in the Veil, Karkat watches John’s life unfold linearly, and refrains from trolling him. He becomes angrier at him, in part because he had a role in causing the rift, but also possibly gone crazy. Freaked out by this, he took Sollux (who was KO’d in the fight with Eridan) with him to hide from Gamzee. Soon after he woke up, however, they were separated. At this point he began believing that he was in a doomed timeline, since Kanaya was supposedly dead, yet he had talked to her in the future. Some time later he continued a memo to talk to Jade, explaining to her that he gave their universe “cancer” (which is revealed to be Jack Noir) and is sorry for it. He was then contacted again by future Kanaya.
Shortly after Vriska’s death at Terezi’s hands, he also arrives on the roof with a letter written in Gamzee’s blood using a combination of Terezi’s QU1RK and his own, then is seen with Terezi hugging or kissing. Afterward, when Gamzee arrives to confront the other four survivors, he successfully shooshpaps Gamzee out of his bloodthirsty rage, becoming his moirail and smiling for the first time seen in-comic; he later mentions to John that for whatever reason he doesn’t want to talk about what he did to Gamzee. After this, the five trolls departed for the GREENSUN when the path to it became visible from their session; Sollux propelled their meteor there at incredible speed, the strain killing him. Once there, they were met by Dave, Rose, Aradia and the half-dead Sollux.
Karkat is currently travelling to the alpha kids’ session through the Furthest Ring, with Kanaya, Gamzee, Terezi, Rose and Dave; being that Sollux and Aradia’s propulsion is not as powerful as it was previously, the journey will take them three years. 1 year into this journey, he opens a memo, where he has a discussion with a future self about his feelings, in which it is revealed that everyone else on the meteor is aware of his blood colour and that he is uncomfortable travelling through the Furthest Ring that he had previously only seen in dreams. He also admits that he misses all of the dead trolls, and that he is upset at the fact that he and Terezi are no longer on good terms. He expresses jealousy of Dave, and his Future Self berates him for “WANT[ing] HER IN EVERYQUADRANTLIKE A DESPERATEFOOL.”
One of his future selves from beyond the mysterious countdown appears in a memo HERE. Afterwards, he confronts Dave about his personal revelations and suggests that they set up a schedule in order to “share” Terezi’s affections. Dave’s outright refusal prompts him to (nearly?) begin a kismesis with Dave.
As the Trolls’ session had many DOOMEDTIMELINES, Karkat had many alternate selves, only a few of which have been seen.
In an alternate timeline in which Karkat does not trigger the Mobius Double Reacharound virus, Gamzee sobers up much earlier than he is supposed to and kills all the other trolls in the session save ARADIA. He uses the blood of Karkat and the others to scribble the “honk HONK” part of DOC SCRATCH’s genetic code in Karkat’s ~ATH book, which Aradia takes with her back to the alpha timeline.
In an alternate timeline in which Vriska does depart to challenge Jack Noir, she inadvertently leads him to the trolls’ hideout and Karkat is killed along with TEREZI by Noir directly, who then destroys the meteor and takes Karkat and Terezi as trophies to show to Vriska. Observing this outcome with her Mind powers and knowing it to be unacceptable, in the alpha timeline, Terezi kills Vriska before she can depart. Since it was only predicted with Seer powers it is unknown if this timeline actually existed or only existed as a potential outcome.
A dead Karkat wearing Knight of Blood GODTIER clothing appears in a lengthy dream bubble sequence in [S] ROXY: SLEEPWALK. He is accompanied by a dead NEPETA. It is interesting to note that his God Tier form has no wings, unlike those of the other God Tier trolls, although it is unknown if this is something that affects certain trolls or if it has something to do with WEIRDPLOTSHIT, although UU suggested (when talking about her fanart) that God-Tier trolls can hide their wings inside their cloaks.
Karkat is a crab in more ways than one. He constantly insults others in the style of a stereotypical internet troll, supporting his arguments with what seems to be empty logic. Jade has even gone to the point of FLIPPINGOUT AT KARKAT. In keeping with the crab apple asshole theme of his personality, he rarely smiles.
One of the only times Karkat smiles
Added by CHEZRUSH
He is also often seen screaming, pounding his fists against his keyboard, or generally raging when talking to anyone. He is not particularly patient when explaining himself, making even his most sound advice appear to be random insults. He also becomes visibly aggravated when other people are having fun.
Somewhat similar to Jack Noir, Karkat is ruthlessly ambitious and will grasp at any opportunity for power, but he just doesn’t have the subtlety of his troll compatriots and ends with the sharp end of the stick more than once. His real strength is to shepherd his boneheaded troll friends into following a plan, which just gives him another excuse to go off the handle when something does not go according to it. Despite his arrogant and volatile behavior, he proves to be a somewhat effective leader of the twelve trolls.
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