Karkat Vantas

## Characteristics

### Aliases

Knight of BloodcarcinoGeneticistCarpcatfis)(, Crabcatc)(, karcat, Karcrab, KRABKRAB., nubbyshouts, nubs mcshouty, shoutkat, shouty

### Age

Wriggling Day:12th bilunar perigee of the 6th dark season's equinox, on an unknown Alternian cycleintroduction:6 Alternian solar sweeps/ 13 Earth yearscredits:9(.69) Alternian solar sweeps/ 21 Earth years

## Professional Information

### Family

The Signless/The Sufferer - AncestorKankri Vantas - DancestorCrabdad - Lusus

## Relationships

### Family

The Signless/The Sufferer - AncestorKankri Vantas - DancestorCrabdad - Lusus

## Credit Thanks To

### Source

https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Karkat\_Vantas

## Do I Claim Ownership?

### Do I own said character?

No

**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"). His emotes display these nubby horns as the capital letter B. For example, a frowning face is depicted as ):B.

In addition, both components of his handle serve as a form of foreshadowing, as he is a geneticist of sorts (being the creator of the pre-scratch and post-scratch trolls) and genetically breeding cancer into Bilious Slick.

According to the extended zodiac test, his blood is a mutation of the lime caste and his sign is called the Sign of the Signless, referring to his ancestor's legacy and the method of his demise.

## Etymology

Karkat was a name suggested by beesmygod and Vantas was suggested by hr.morgaes. Karkat comes from "Karkata," the Sanskrit astrological equivalent of Cancer, minus one letter. Additionally, his name may be drawn from "Karkinos," a giant crab from Greek mythology who fought Hercules, also the origin of the Cancer astrological sign. This may mirror his relationship with Gamzee, since, in the myth, Hercules was known to enter great fits of rage and ended up killing his family, similar to how sober Gamzee apparently gains incredible strength and kills his friends. On the other hand, his last name, Vantas, is a prostate cancer treatment drug.

Similarly, the Dutch word for cancer is "kanker", and so most Dutch citizens use "KK" as a shorthand for it. This may be a reason why Sollux has given Karkat the nickname **kk**.

Also, when translated from Hindi, "Karkat" means litter or waste, which may be a reference to him being an outcast because of his blood color.

His Trollian handle is a play on the medical term "carcinogenesis" which is the development of cancer in the body, and "carcinology," the study of crustaceans. The first part of his handle might be related to "Karkino" or "Karkata" which are names for the cancer constellation, like how his first name is possibly related to them. Another plausible explanation is that his chumhandle is a combination of 'carcinogen' (a cancer-inducing substance) and 'geneticist'. "Cancer" can also be defined as "irregular" and "mutated,". Karkat's mutation is likely an allusion to this. Karkat uses the strife specibus sicklekind which is possibly a reference to the ruling planet of Cancer, his associated zodiac sign, the moon, which takes the form of a sickle when crescent. This could also be an allusion to sickle cell anemia, a relatively common genetic disorder that causes blood cells to take a form similar in shape to a sickle. It also ties in with his title as the Knight of Blood.

Vantas can be considered like the anagram of the french word "Savant", which can mean "scholar" or "scientist".

## Biography

### Hivebent

Karkat Vantas is introduced at the opening of Act 5, in his respiteblock. He was not given a name before his sixth Wriggling Day, mirroring John Egbert. He is initially named Bulgereek Nookstain but chops the name entry box in half—much like Dave, Karkat doesn't put up with that bullshit.

Karkat is messaged by Sollux, who tells him about Sgrub and appoints him to the Red Team . Angry that he's not the Red Team leader, Karkat messages Terezi and makes himself leader, appointing her second in command. She doesn't really care who leads, having only taken on the role because she didn't think Karkat cared about playing.

Karkat begins the game with Terezi as his server player, ignoring Sollux when he (now having realized its devastating implications) asks him to abort. Out of a desire to spite Sollux, Karkat mocks him for his programming skills and runs the Mobius Double Reacharound Virus, which explodes his computer, blows a hole in the side of his hive, and kills his lusus.

Karkat prototypes his sprite kernel with his lusus, creating Crabsprite. He enters the Medium, arriving in the Land of Pulse and Haze. Once Terezi, Gamzee, and Tavros have begun the game (in that order), Karkat looks for a server player for Tavros, attempting to recruit Nepeta. However, her moirail does not permit her to associate with lowbloods, and she declines.

Sometime later, Karkat meets Jack Noir on LOPAH, who stabs him in a failed attempt to shut him up. Karkat continues talking, now worried about the unusual color of his mutant blood. Jack reveals that he, too, has candy red blood, and he and Karkat form a bond of sorts, becoming in cahoots and formulating a plan together to exile the Black Queen. Jack Noir reveals a weakness of the Black Queen to the Red Team: once a frog is prototyped, vanity will make her refuse to wear her ring out of refusal to bear its face. With this information, the Red Team carries out Operation Regisurp, successfully exiling the Black Queen and leading her to ultimately become Snowman. To carry out this plan Karkat needs a team member with psychic abilities, so he is forced to recruit Vriska. Later, Kanaya also joins the Red Team.

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 Sollux Captor this way, as he was gruesomely killed by the Vast Glub, but thinks he's joking. He becomes very distraught once he sees his close friend's lifeless body, and then disgusted as Feferi kisses him.

He is the trolls' ectobiologist, referencing the fact that the sign Cancer is heavily associated with motherhood. Karkat paradoxically creates all twelve of them in the The Veil as well their ancestors. Eventually he kills his denizen in the planet.

Karkat also assists Kanaya with frog breeding. However, in a rush to fight the Black King, they skip the final frog required for Bilious Slick's genetic sequence. Later he speculates that, by doing so, he gave our universe cancer, fearing that its missing line of genetic code accounted Jack Noir's actions, and led to the failure of the kids' session.

Over the Sgrub session, the majority of which is unseen, Karkat genuinely becomes the leader of the trolls, gaining at least some of their respect. After the battle with the Black King, he is the one to reach for the door leading to the Ultimate Reward, before being interrupted.

### Post-Hivebent

Upon Jack's arrival the army of doomed Aradiabots bought the trolls time by taking on Jack, and all end destroyed. As this happens, Aradiabot transports the trolls to the same meteor upon which Karkat had created them, where they find a computer lab.

Later Dream Karkat recognizes the demon to be Jack Noir on Prospit, but is soon killed along with the other Prospit dreamers. He remains asleep for an hour, but now he dreams of the Horrorterrors in the Furthest Ring. Upon waking Karkat forbids the trolls to sleep. He finds out the trolls have come into contact with the humans while he was asleep, but dismisses them as irrelevant.

At some point later Karkat finally realizes that their misfortune was caused by a Jack Noir from the kids' session and blames them for the trolls' current predicament. He decides to get payback by trolling the kids, and gives an inspirational speech about this plan.

He first trolls John at the very end of his trollian timeline, when he is ready to initiate the Scratch. Karkat is perplexed when he responds to his diatribe with friendly excitement (as John had already been trolled by Karkat throughout the duration of his session). When he expresses black feelings, however, John cannot reciprocate, as he is **not a homosexual**. Karkat is so mortified that he decides to troll John backwards through his timeline, so as to avoid talking to a version of John that knows how he feels.

In Karkat's second conversation with John he explains that by prototyping Becquerel Jade created an unbeatable boss, making their session unwinnable. The scratch in their session created a rift in paradox space that allowed Jack Noir in. He continues to troll John backwards through his timeline, becoming more and more friendly towards him and explaining aspects of the game, such as ectobiology, as well as discussing some of their shared interests.

At some point, Karkat harasses John and Jade at numerous points in their lives pre-Sburb, heavily antagonizing himself to them. They work together to develop a plan for the kids to initiate the Scratch.

Later, Karkat witnesses Eridan killing Feferi and Kanaya and KO'ing Sollux. He attempts to revive Kanaya with a kiss afterwards, which may have contributed to her later vampirism (as he is the Knight of **Blood**). He is contacted by Gamzee, who had run out of pies and becomes sober (and homicidal by extension).

Freaked out by this, he takes an unconscious Sollux with him to hide from Gamzee. Soon after he wakes, however, they are separated. He starts believing he is in a doomed timeline, since Kanaya was supposedly dead, yet he had talked to her in the future. Some time later he continues a memo to talk to Jade, explaining to her that he gave their universe "cancer" and is sorry for it. He is 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 embracing Terezi. 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.

### The Three-Year Journey

The five trolls depart for the Green Sun when the path to it became visible from their session; Sollux propells their meteor there at incredible speed, the strain half-killing him. Once there, they are met by Dave, Rose, Aradia and the half-dead Sollux.

They travel to the post-scratch session with WV for three years, leaving Aradia and Sollux behind. 1 year into the journey he has a discussion with a future self where it's revealed everyone else on the meteor is aware of his blood colour. While passing trought dream bubbles he eventually meets his dancestor.

Upon finally arriving the new session, Jade, who is under control of the Condesce, takes Karkat and Kanaya to LOFAF. She and Jane request them to retrieve the Genesis Frog from Echidna, as said denizen refuses to speak to Jade. When Karkat refuses, he is impaled by Jane to demonstrate her ability to bring people back to life, followed by a page noting his deceased state.

When Aranea's plan to change the alpha timeline is moved to LOFAF, Karkat informs the other players of what is happening there. He and Kanaya witness Gamzee beating Terezi near to death, followed by Karkat charging in an attempt to stop him, but instead is stabbed in the chest twice and pushed into the surrounding lava by Gamzee where he burns to death.

### New Timeline

In the new timeline made by John's retcons Karkat is shown travelling in the meteor with his previous companions as well as with Vriska this time. Unlike the original trip, he develops a much closer relationship with Dave as they no longer compete over Terezi (who seems to have spent most of her time with Vriska). They were known to be in some sort of relationship as implied by Rachel Whatpumpkin, and later in Terezi and Vriska's conversation.

Karkat is seen on the kids' victory platform with everyone else, and after John and Roxy arrive he talks to most people there. As Vriska explains to everyone the main threats in the session, she assigns Karkat and Kanaya instead to retrieve the genesis frog by talking to Echidna. After Kanaya talks to the denizen and they have a conversation she knocks him unconscious, to protect him from the threats.

In Karkat's dream he runs into Meenah, whom enlists him into her ghost army to defeat Lrd English. When the battle begins, Karkat charges first only to awake from the dream before he can land a blow. He later joins Jake in battling the Felt, attacking Clover with his sickle. After some difficulty, he manages to counter Clover's luck by tying the small leprechaun up and spiking him into the ground, defeating him.

In Earth C he, Jade, Terezi, and Dave appear to live together as rulers of the Troll Kingdom.

### Alternate Selves

As the trolls' session had many doomed timelines, Karkat had many alternate selves, only a few of which have been seen.

* In an alternate timeline where the Mobius Double Reacharound virus was not triggered, 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 genetic code in Karkat's ~ATH book, which Aradia takes with her back to the alpha timeline.
* In an alternate timeline in which Vriska departed 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 them as trophies to show to Vriska. Observing this outcome with her Mind powers and knowing it to be unacceptable, 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 god tiered Karkat is seen in Roxy: Sleepwalk accompanied by a dead Nepeta and also in Caliborn: Enter.

## Personality and TraitsEdit

Karkat is a very crabby troll, in more ways than one. He spends a lot of time insulting and ranting about both his friends and the kids. This demeanor maybe inspired from the stereotype that people under the Cancer sign are said to be moody and crabby. 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 flipping out at Karkat. In keeping with the cantankerous theme of his personality, he rarely smiles. 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.

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 short end of the stick more than once. His real strength is to shepherd his dysfunctional 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. This is acknowledged by some of the trolls including Vriska.

Perhaps in relevance to his blood aspect, Karkat "studies" relationships as an avid admirer of troll romance novels and rom-coms. He considers himself an expert in the quadrants and takes it upon himself to educate the ignorant on the topic as well as dole out advice.

Despite his flippant demeanor, he also seems to care quite deeply for his friends' well being, judging from his tearful reaction to Sollux's apparent death, his seemingly genuine desire to help Eridan and Tavros with their relationship issues with Feferi and Vriska respectively, and his willingness to revive Kanaya. Towards the end, Karkat seems to show a softer side that hasn't really been shown before; in his final memo, future Karkat leaves a rather emotional story shortly before Kanaya responds to it. At this point he treats her in a friendly and polite manner, something that he's done only with a select few before. He also shows concern that his friendship with Dave will not persist after they meet with the other humans, and later he shows great concern for Terezi when it is discovered she is no longer blind.

Unlike other trolls, Karkat doesn't "wear his blood color on his sleeve," in either the figurative OR literal sense, and is very defensive when asked about it. When he is stabbed by Jack Noir, it turns out his blood is bright red, a nearly unique mutation among trolls, one that he is extremely ashamed of. He and Jack Noir form an alliance when it is revealed that they have the same color of blood, a revelation that shocks Karkat. It is believed that this insecurity is what spurs Karkat to be so crabby all the time.

As such, Karkat types with hex code #626262, a grey, instead of an approximation of his blood color as other trolls do. 62 is the atomic number of samarium, a volatile but durable silvery-grey metal used in various applications including permanent magnets and cancer treatment. 26 is the atomic number of iron, and an iron ion is contained in every molecule of hemoglobin, which is the molecule that transports oxygen in the blood of many animals, including humans. The numbers could be a minor reference to 612.

Karkat uses rich and imaginative language in his particular fashion (e.g. **YOU ARE SUCH AN IGNORAMUS I COULD SHIT MILES OF RAGE SNAKE TO CHOKE YOU TO DEATH**), but not to the extent of a typing quirk beyond his usage of all-capital letters.

Karkat is not nearly as violent as some of the other trolls (like Vriska or even Kanaya), and has trouble jumping to action when shit hits the whirling device. An example of this would be how he faints at the sight of Kanaya sawing Tavros's legs off. If things go off plan and he's not nearby, he gets pissed off and starts yelling at the related parties. If he *is* nearby he either tries to devise a working plan or stands there in shock.