Nepeta Leijon

**Nepeta Leijon**, also known by her Trollian handle, **arsenicCatnip**, is one of the trolls. Her associated zodiac sign is Leo (♌) and she has horns shaped like cat ears.Her typing quirk consists of preceding every line with **:33 <**. **:3** is generally used as a smiley reminiscent of a cat face, while **33** is the atomic number of arsenic. Arsenic is also used as rat poison, which is funny because of the stereotype that cats hate rodents. It can also be used as green wallpaint, and it is linked with cancer which could be a reference to her crush on Karkat. **:33** also represents the face of her two-mouthed feline Lusus. She occasionally changes these to form different facial expressions. She replaces syllables of words with feline-related homophones, such as **purrmission**, **refurring** or **pawses** rather than "permission," "referring" and "pauses", respectively. Instances of doubled-e in a word, such as "sleepy", are replaced by doubled-3 (**sl33py**) but she otherwise does not use letter substitution. She often types in actions between asterisks, a result of her constant roleplaying with other trolls.

## Biography

### Hivebent

File:Nepeta computer.gif|thumb|left|Nepeta leaning against Pounce de Leon

She is Aradia Megido|Aradia's server player and one of the few to know she is a ghost. Nepeta is seen around with Equius in Land of Little Cubes and Tea|LOLCAT and does not get much exposure of her session. After the battle with the Black King, the trolls lead to their Ultimate Reward before being suddenly The Rift|interrupted.

Nepeta enjoys a hobby of guessing and tracking different relationships with her shipping walls. Her shipping wall on Alternia lists all possible redrom combinations, while her shipping wall in The Veil includes only contemporaneous known and suspected relationships (both red and black).

### Post-Hiveben

Upon Jack Noir|Jack's arrival Aradiabot transports the trolls to the Trolls' meteor|same meteor Karkat had created them, where they find a computer lab.

File:Nepeta-pounce.gif|thumb|Nepeta pouncing at Gamzee.
Her dream self is killed in Derse by Jack Noir. Since then she spends most of her time with Equius, until the events of . After witnessing the death of her moirail, she promptly executes a pounceavenge on Gamzee Makara|Gamzee who catches her hand mid-attack. He uses her claws to inflict three long across his face before dropping her on the ground and proceeding to walk towards her, honks in the background. She is beaten to death off screen, temporarily turning her into Wikipedia:Schrödinger's cat|Schrödinger's Nepeta in which for several pages the story focuses on other characters until Terezi finds her body. Later Nepeta's severed head is seen lying on the jury table next to Gamzee, accompanied by Feferi's, Eridan's, and Equius's heads.

File:Terezi finds Nepeta's corpse.gif|thumb|Nepeta's body as smelled by Terezi.
Her body, along with the corpses of the other trolls, is preserved by Gamzee, and she is later revived as half of Fefetasprite, along with Feferi. After the sprite's , she returns to the afterlife with Feferi, on Vriska Serket's pirate ship until she departs from the crew with with Feferi and Sollux. When Vriska tries to protest, Meenah Peixes|Meenah and Aranea Serket|Aranea remind her that she gave Nepeta a higher authority in the ranking on the ship, and has no power over Nepeta *or* Feferi. Vriska is distraught and not used to everyone defying her, and tries to oppose them, to no avail, as Nepeta continues to abscond.

In the post-Retcon mechanics|retcon timeline Jasprosesprite^2 prototypes her head into Jake's kernelsprite, creating Nepetasprite. Jasprose briefly takes her on a date before Davesprite shows up. The two greet each other with a handshake, and this causes him to tier 2 prototype her, creating Davepetasprite^2.

## Personality and Traits

File:Nepeta tackling Equius.png|thumb|POUNCE! :33|left
Nepeta seems to have a lot of similarities with Kanaya Maryam|Kanaya, which may or may not be significant. Both of them are - despite Andrew's noted lack of perfect analogues - the most similar to Jade of the trolls. Both of them are also green-blooded middle-caste trolls with friends on either side of the blood spectrum whose relationships are observed and moderated to some degree (Kanaya is the meddler, and Nepeta keeps a shipping wall while being generally agreeable to everyone). Nepeta was the one to see Aradia and Equius's kiss, and Kanaya was the one to see Vriska kiss a helpless Tavros. Although Kanaya reacted with shock (due to her mating fondness for Vriska), Nepeta just updated her shipping wall.

She held conversations with Terezi in which the two of them roleplayed. Nepeta roleplays as a two-mouthed feline anthropomorph (similar to Jade Harley|Jade's fascination with furry fandom). Her feline hunting roleplays are linked to her real-life routine.

Nepeta also has an interest in drawing comics on her walls depicting tales from her hunts, as well as stories involving her and her friends. One wall is her Shipping wall, where she keeps track of potential and confirmed Quadrants|relationships between her friends (including herself). Once in the veil, she recreates her shipping wall to a , but doesn't want to update it to accommodate the grisly developments of late.

According to Jasprosesprite^2, Nepeta's interest in shipping stems from her own loneliness as it makes her feel less alone. Shipping might have been her coping mechanism, since she lived isolated from other trolls and had an unrequited flushed crush. It's unknown how Jasprosesprite^2 knows about Nepeta's feelings, however Nepeta and Jaspersprite openly talked quite a few times and it is possible that Nepeta confessed it during these conversations.

In her first conversation with Karkat, he called her autistic. Nepeta carries many traits which are both stereotypically and genuinely linked to autism, such as doodling a cat avatar next to her Pesterchum messages, biting her hat in frustration (stimming), living in social isolation, adoring cats altogether, her shipping wall as a "special interest," and generally being seen as unusual by her peers, Equius once having described her as for the role the Mother planned for her which perhaps referenced neuroatypicality. However, whether or not Karkat's statement is accurate or just him being his usual abrasive self is unknown.

## Relationships

### Karkat Vantas

Nepeta has a strong interest in Quadrants|various relationships. Her shipping wall hints strongly at red feelings toward Karkat Vantas, as the ship between the two has a "oh yessssss!" scrawled under it, but their relationship ends there, as there are no signs of reciprocity and the ship between Karkat and Vriska Serket is underscored by an "oh noooooo". A large portrait of Karkat and Nepeta making out is seen on her revised shipping wall followed by a large "OTP" (One True Pairing, a term often used in fanfiction to refer to a pairing of characters preferred by the writer/reader). Upon inspecting this, Nepeta says . Karkat, however, seems to be aware of these unrequited feelings, and has apparently been trying to avoid them for some time. He also seems to respect Nepeta and her red feelings. Nepeta's feelings for Karkat parallel those of her ancestor The Disciple, a troll who had a relationship with The Signless, Karkat's ancestor. The relationship between them []. When she was spared by the E%ecutor, the Disciple hid in caves and used the blood of animals to write the scripture of the Sufferer from memory on the walls (which is possibly the origin of Nepeta's shipping wall).

In , a version of her is seen with a god tier Karkat, and it seems she has finally found happiness with (a version of) Karkat. This is an allusion to her  with Jaspersprite, where she surmises that she'll have to die in order to be happy with him.

### Equius Zahhak

File:FlusteredNepeta.gif|thumb|Nepeta expressing frustration with Equius
Nepeta is Equius Zahhak's moirail; she considers herself his pacifier and likes to calm him down. All of her conversations depict a sense of playfulness, and when interacting with Terezi she tries to pacify her rather than fight back. She insists on consulting Equius before joining the red team; her procrastination in doing so leads one to believe she was well aware that he would refuse and insist on her joining the blue team. Regardless of their 'fighting' it is clear that they have a deep understanding of each other, that they care for each other quite a lot, and that they both truly believe that the other is "lucky to have me keep an eye on you". In with Tavros Nitram, it is hinted that Equius actually kept her from joining the Flarp session that caused several players severe injuries. In Land of Little Cubes and Tea|LOLCAT, Nepeta seems very happy to see Equius and greets him with a friendly pouncegr33ting! Nepeta's moirallegiance with Equius may be based on the good compatibility between Leo and Sagittarius.

### Feferi Peixes

The two seem to have bonded after they were fused into Fefetasprite, as well as mutually messing around in dream bubbles as the "joke ranks" of Vriska and Meenah's armada. They continue to behave as one person, indicating that they enjoyed being a single sprite and may want to carry on that way.

### Eridan Ampora

Nepeta is not particularly fond of Eridan Ampora|Eridan as suggested by her line In , Eridan also states that she rejected him, despite his being her server player. However, during with Jasprosesprite^2, she says in response to learning he died, which could mean that she still thought of him as a friend.

### Other Trolls

Nepeta is good friends with Terezi, and the two frequently roleplay together, although Terezi says privately that her RP'ing is meant .

She gets along with Tavros, though he has to pretend he's not allergic to cats in order to roleplay with her. She seems genuinely sorry she can't be his server player, and he seems to understand.

Nepeta seems to have been good friends with Aradia and is one of the few trolls to get along well with her after her death. As her server player, Nepeta is one of the first trolls to discover that Aradia has, in fact, been dead the whole time.

She tries to interact friendly with Vriska and attempts roleplaying with her, but is usually put off by Vriska and her Spidersona always doing . She also tells Equius that she is .

### Jade Harley

According to Alterniabound, Nepeta has stated that Jade Harley|Jade is her favorite human and has tried to make friends with her, but Jade thought Nepeta was just teasing her. She decides to keep trying.

### Dave Strider

While there aren't any interactions between Dave and Nepeta that we see, in when she talks to Terezi, she calls Dave Akwete Purrmusk. It seems she and Dave had a friendly relationship where they would RP. She says that indicating that she found him attractive, but she had no romantic inclinations towards him.

### Jaspersprite

Nepeta also enjoys talking to Jaspersprite, since he reminds Nepeta of her lusus. Jaspersprite is able to communicate with Nepeta through Rose Lalonde|Rose's old laptop.

### Lusus/Kernelsprite

File:Pounce de Leon.gif|thumb|Nepeta's Lusus, Pounce de Leon
Nepeta's lusus, Pounce de Leon, is a small feline creature with two mouths, and is . She and Nepeta often went on adventures together to search for the , taking turns riding each other.

Pounce de Leon was crushed when Nepeta's hive caved in for unknown reasons, likely related to the meteor shower. Pounce de Leon's name is a reference to Wikipedia:Juan Ponce de León|Juan Ponce de León, the Spanish explorer who discovered Florida while (supposedly) searching for the fountain of youth (though historians now dispute this).

## Trivia

* Nepeta is the only post-scratch troll to die who was never shown with a "Dead" tag. This could possibly be a reference to wikipedia:Schrödinger's cat|Schrödinger's cat.
* Her aspect, Heart, may be a reference to the fact that the Catmints in the genus Nepeta have heart-shaped leaves.
	+ It can also be a reference to Leo's key body part being the literal heart.
		- Continuing these references, the Heart chakra is green.
* Nepeta is the "Knight of Wands" in the Homestuck tarot card deck, as the Knight of Wands tends to be dedicated to their goals no matter how silly they are, and tend to be well-liked, much like Nepeta herself. Nepeta can be seen with most of the pre-act 6 cast on the "Five of Wands" card.
* Nepeta is the only character to be prototyped into two different sprites: Roxy's sprite in the pre-retcon timeline, and Jake's in the post-retcon timeline.
* Due to the Homestuck Beta claiming that John Egbert's original age and birthday was 10 and on April 10th (respectively), this would mean that Nepeta would have been John's patron troll instead of Vriska Serket.
* Nepeta's class, the Rogue, could be a reference to cat burglars.
* Nepeta wearing a cat hat that is possibly made from one of her hunted animals could be a reference to Heracles, who killed the Nemean Lion (the source of the Leo zodiac) and later wore the pelt as a trophy.
* The Leonids, a meteor shower named after the constellation of Leo, take place about every 33 years. This is worth noting because meteors play a large part in ectobiology and the session in general.