♥♦ Application: Oregon Trail ♠♣
PLAYER
NAME/NICKNAME: Kim
AGE: 21
PERSONAL LJ: kura_kimber
TIMEZONE: Central Standard Time!
EMAIL ADDRESS: pocketoftheheart@gmail.com
IM SCREENNAME AND SERVICE: Aim - pocketoftheheart
CHARACTER
NAME: Karkat Vantas
AGE: 6 Alternian solar sweeps (equivalent to 13 Earth years)
FANDOM/MEDIUM: Homestuck; webcomic
CANON PULL-POINT: After the end of act 5. Basically, after Karkat and Gamzee become moirails and the plan they've all worked towards is hopefully about to unfold.
ABILITIES: Karkat can wield sickles well enough to be a threat with them. He likes to dabble with coding and hacking, but he's not very good at it. In fact, most of the time he manages to destroy the machine he's working on, leading him to believe he's instead an expert in computer viruses. Really, this is probably another unfortunate relation to his Trollian handle, carcinoGenetist. When you think about it, viruses are like cancer for computers.
That's about it for him, though it's worth mentioning that trolls have thicker skin than a human, and their teeth tend to grow back when knocked out, most of the time.
Also, not an ability, but he has bright candy apple red blood, which is a mutant blood color for trolls. Were his blood color discovered by imperial drones or even other malicious trolls, he would have been exterminated on sight. He's determined to keep this part of himself a secret out of habit and he's been careful about it all of his life.
CHARACTER BACKGROUND: Homestuck - [Karkat Vantas]
CHARACTER PERSONALITY:
Karkat is almost constantly angry and judgmental. He even insults the people he is closest to, probably more than he would a stranger. A lot of his personality can be summed up as ‘crabby’, because of this. From his first appearance in the comic, it’s obvious that he makes a big deal out of everything and has a short temper on top of an already ornery disposition. He only smiles once throughout the entire comic so far, and that was only after a poignant scene that could have ended in his own death, but instead ended in a new relationship. It’s safe to say he reserves his smiles only for critical moments like this. As far as explaining why he’s such an angry kid, just take a look at the race he’s a part of. Trolls are a violent, bloodthirsty species who believe in survival of the fittest to the extreme. The weak are killed off; the strong live to fight another day. Karkat’s anger is likely conditioned to step away from that ‘weak’ label, because the louder you are, the more people fear you, right? And because of his mutant blood color, he has all the more reason to appear threatening and strong. It’s self-defense, carrying over to his every day interaction with everyone he knows. He also hates seeing other people having fun, probably because he has little interest in what other people consider fun, and has to antagonize them for it.
Karkat likes to compete and come out on top. At the start of the trolls' session of the SGRUB game, he usurps the role of Red Team leader from Terezi Pyrope, pitting him against Sollux Captor, who at first led the Blue Team. He and Sollux have a history of competition, particularly with insult wars and hacking (Sollux is the superior hacker, hands down). Through all their bickering, the two are somehow still friends. A pair of friendly rivals is probably a better description, because they still fight and Karkat still wants to rub a win in his face. When Sollux tells him to stop playing the game, Karkat takes his warning as an attempt to cheat a win, and this only eggs Karkat to keep playing the game with gusto. Like he’s wearing blinders, all he sees ahead of him is the eventual win to hold over Sollux’s head. He’s stupid in the sense that he views advice as a trick, and he believes everyone to be as into the competition as he is. Later in the game, he is seen as ruthless and ambitious, quickly developing a plan to take down the King and Queen with the help of a new ally, the troll session’s incarnation of Jack Noir. He also killed the Denizen of his medium without any hesitation (we later discover this was probably a bad idea, as these giant creatures had an important part in each character’s own quest within the game. For example, Jade spoke with hers and was given important choices to make.) Being reckless, stubborn, and competitive makes him a somewhat successful leader in the end. All of the trolls managed to survive their session, anyway. He does have trouble with subtlety, though, so his strengths lie in creating a plan and yelling at everyone until they follow it.
His obvious aggressive character traits aside, he also actually cares deeply for those close to him. Karkat sheds actual tears when Sollux dies for the first time, in front of Jack Noir and a distracted Gamzee, even. He even goes so far as to attempt to revive Kanaya Maryam with a kiss after her apparent death, also while crying. It takes something as drastic as the death of a friend to make him cry, but obviously it’s not entirely beyond him to do so. This is a big deal, because trolls cry the same color as their blood, which means if someone were to see his tears, they would instantly know that he’s a weird mutant. So, yes, he will try to force back these tears unless he absolutely cannot handle it anymore. On the topic of his blood color, it’s not something he’s proud of. He won’t talk about it and he definitely doesn’t wear the color in his everyday wardrobe like the rest of the trolls are fond of doing. Even his gray text is (what he thinks is) a clever disguise to throw people off of his case, making him the only troll who doesn’t type in his blood color. When Terezi hounds him about it, he clams up and changes the subject quickly. Later, after a private off-screen meeting the two have, Terezi seems to have learned Karkat’s blood color, but he makes her promise not to tell the others. He says he will tell them eventually, but only when he knows they respect him as a leader. Thus far, he still hasn’t told anyone. When he and Jack Noir first met, the carapace stabbed Karkat (in a way Karkat describes as his way of saying “hello”, a little naively perhaps) and the troll instinctively tried to hide the blood that was drawn. The two bonded when Jack revealed that his blood was the same color. Karkat can easily sympathize with those who share his blood color, and finding out humans all have this same mutant color still surprises him.
Possibly another way Karkat relates to humans is that he is not at all as bloodthirsty as the rest of the troll race. He talks a big game, threatens violent murder with the best of them, but that’s all behind those CAPITAL LETTERS and his shroud of intelligent vulgarity. When he’s behind a computer screen, he’s big and bad, a hatched leader made out to become a threshecutioner one day. This all changes when he’s right in the middle of the action, when his friends start killing each other and he is too dumbstruck to do anything about it but stare like a dumbass. When Kanaya cuts off Tavros’ legs, Karkat literally faints at the sight of the gore. He doesn’t handle intense situations well in person and will often lock up or panic. This goes back to him caring too much, tacked on with the reason he cries when his friends die. He hates this weakness, along with other attributes of himself he loathes and despises. His failures are things he is very aware of and will openly admit to when they aren’t a point of pride. Some things take longer for him to admit than others, like a majority of the problems they've had within the game being his fault, but in general he is very open about finding reasons to hate himself.
As much as he’d loathe admitting it, Karkat relates well to people and is a font of personal advice for some of his awkward needier friends. He loves horrible romance movies and isn’t ashamed of it, so naturally he’s picked up a few things from watching the movies he favors. This doesn’t necessarily make his outlook on romance a healthy or correct one because movies only emulate so much of a relationship before they are considered superficial and fake, but thanks to his surprisingly stable mental condition he has a decent understanding of emotions and how one should balance them. He believes showing many kinds of pity is the best way to have the capacity to hate. Pity and hate, by the way, happen to be the strongest two emotions trolls experience, and thus are the basis for the ideology of troll romance. If he feels another person’s problems are within his power to help, he’ll even cease with the insults and try to understand the problem on the level of the other person. He can’t make people follow his advice, but he can sure as hell thrust it at them until they get the picture and either (a) try it out, or (b) leave him alone. As soon as he’s done trying to be Troll Dr. Phil, he’s quick to switch back to being prickly and insulting. With as much as he understands the delicate balance of pity and hate and how romance is technically supposed to work, he sucks spectacularly at it. Redrom (pity-based romance) is just a plain awkward topic for him, but Blackrom (hate-based) is a problem because he sets his standards too high and will likely never find someone who hates him as much as he hates himself. He may be the equivalent of a thirteen year old kid, but trolls have to find mates early or risk being culled. Romance is definitely a big deal to him.
So basically, Karkat is primarily a grouchy douchebag who likes to fling obscenities at suspecting and unsuspecting faces. He’s headstrong and ambitious, but kind of a fuckup when it boils down to it. In blind rage or desire to beat someone, he can do really reckless things. It’s easy to get his blood boiling and he hates being teased, that will set him off quicker than anything. Still, he’s a good guy with a lot of heart and a desire to safely corral all of his idiot friends for their own good. His demands might be stupid or harsh at times, but he really does mean well. The last thing he wants is for his friends to die or kill each other. He can’t keep up his façade of giving no shits all the time, especially when he lets his emotions shine through his jerk exterior like a beacon of how much he cares.
WORLD:
Karkat's home world is a planet called Alternia, which existed long before Earth's little galaxy. The land of Alternia is dreary and very much alien, and the sun is such an intense threat that most inhabitants are nocturnal. On Alternia, the weak are often killed simply for being weak, and if a wriggler (young troll) is hatched with any abnormalities, they are also destroyed on sight. This instills a need for each troll to be as strong and fearsome as they can, to avoid certain death. It's not all completely survival of the fittest, though, as trolls seem to have some of the same interests humans do, like television, fashion, video games, card games, even roleplaying. Another thing interesting to note: trolls do not have parents or siblings, due to the nature of their, er, reproductive process. They're all hatched from the same mother grub, deep inside a cave system dubbed the "brooding caverns", where they undergo trials to be noticed and adopted by a lusus, who serves as that young troll's guardian. Lusii are usually giant monsters, for reference, Karkat's being a tall bipedal crab-like creature.
Then there's the hemospectrum, a caste system based on the color of a troll's blood. At the top of the spectrum are the purple bloods, at the bottom, reds and browns. Karkat is the lowest of the low, with his rare mutant blood color. Being near the bottom opens you up to being treated like dirt simply for the color of your blood, and being near the top usually means you're treated with respect or fear.
During SGRUB, after their planet has been destroyed, most of the troll kids seemed to have stopped caring about things like that. Despite Karkat's "gutterblood", he is accepted and somewhat respected as their leader.
After their session ends in disheartening failure, the trolls find themselves stranded on a meteor fitted with a laboratory of sorts. Inside the lab, there are warp panels, failed experiments, previously: monsters but they've mostly eliminated them, and simple computers with access to an instant messaging program called Trollian. Other than the computers and the random rooms of the lab, there isn't much to say about this meteor.
OCCUPATION: Wainwright
SAMPLES
THIRD PERSON:
The first month on the trail had been the opposite of a cakewalk for Karkat and his ragtag crew of would be settlers. On top of the others whining about being hungry or breaking a leg or some other stupid thing, the troll’s patience was wearing thinner than usual. Seriously, without his impeccable leadership, none of these assholes would be alive. Not only that, but their wagon broke down almost every single time they weren’t in the vicinity of a town that might have parts to fix the damn thing. No, they had to hoof it most of the way because the fucking thing wouldn’t hold all of their weight combined without a wheel snapping completely off.
If one more person came to Karkat to complain about something, he was likely to throw them in the next river they passed. At least when they stopped to camp or hunt things became quieter, mostly because all of the whiners kept themselves busy with something. Karkat himself would be tracing over a map he’d picked up in the previous town, making sure the path they were taking would be the quickest to the next little insignificant town. He still didn’t understand the point of going to this place called Oregon, but being stuck here left him with little choice. Besides, there were a lot of people going there, so maybe there was something worthwhile at the end of the line. If nothing else, he’d treat it like a race and be the first group there. Games had rewards, and this might as well be another fucking game to him.
The fire was welcome warmth in the increasingly cold weather that they were stuck in. Of course, he didn’t need that much light to see the map, since being nocturnal came with the perks of night vision. The trolls in his party would probably stay awake for a while longer, while the humans were already asleep. Either way, Karkat would stay up even after the humans woke up again. He had no time to sleep, not with all the shit he had to do to keep everything going smoothly. That meant trying to bargain with the next traveler they passed for spare parts, yelling at his friends for slacking off or making needless piles of things, and most importantly not dying.
FIRST PERSON:
HEY GUYS, YOU KNOW WHAT'S A BAD IDEA?
TRYING TO FLOAT YOUR FUCKING WAGON ACROSS A RIVER DEEPER THAN YOUR DAMN WAGON.
KNOW WHAT'S WORSE THAN THAT?
LOSING HALF YOUR GOD DAMNED SUPPLIES IN SAID RIVER.
ANYWAY, DO ANY OF YOU ASSHOLES HAVE A SPARE HORNBEAST?
I'M PRETTY SURE OURS DROWNED.
IF BY SOME MIRACLE THEY SURVIVED AND YOU FIND THEM, SEND ME A TEXT PRONTO.
NO KEEPING THEM FOR YOURSELVES YOU STINGY BASTARDS.
FOR CLARIFICATION THEY PROBABLY ANSWER TO SOME FUCKING GODAWFUL NICKNAMES THANKS TO THIS IDIOT WHO APPARENTLY SOULBONDED WITH THEM.
VIOLENT SOMETHING OR SHAGGY SOMETHING
I STOPPED PAYING ATTENTION WHEN I REALIZED THEY WERE STUPID NAMES AND A WASTE OF MY TIME.
NOT ONLY ARE THEY NEEDED FOR PULLING THIS FUCKING SCUTTLEBUGGY ALL ACROSS THIS LANDMASS FOR WHATEVER FUCKING REASON,
THEIR PRESENCE OR LACK THEREOF DETERMINES HOW MANY SAD LOOKS I HAVE TO TAKE EVERY SINGLE DAY FROM A TRIPPING CLOWN WHO I WOULD PREFER DIDN'T DRAG HIS FACEPAINT THROUGH MUD.
SO.
YOU SEE THESE FUCKING ANIMALS
YOU SEND ME A TEXT.
OR, YOU SEE DECENT REPLACEMENT ANIMALS
A TEXT IS ALSO APPRECIATED.
NOTES: Can't think of anything specific, but if the troll quirk will be a problem I have an opt-out post in his journal for those who'd prefer that.
NAME/NICKNAME: Kim
AGE: 21
PERSONAL LJ: kura_kimber
TIMEZONE: Central Standard Time!
EMAIL ADDRESS: pocketoftheheart@gmail.com
IM SCREENNAME AND SERVICE: Aim - pocketoftheheart
CHARACTER
NAME: Karkat Vantas
AGE: 6 Alternian solar sweeps (equivalent to 13 Earth years)
FANDOM/MEDIUM: Homestuck; webcomic
CANON PULL-POINT: After the end of act 5. Basically, after Karkat and Gamzee become moirails and the plan they've all worked towards is hopefully about to unfold.
ABILITIES: Karkat can wield sickles well enough to be a threat with them. He likes to dabble with coding and hacking, but he's not very good at it. In fact, most of the time he manages to destroy the machine he's working on, leading him to believe he's instead an expert in computer viruses. Really, this is probably another unfortunate relation to his Trollian handle, carcinoGenetist. When you think about it, viruses are like cancer for computers.
That's about it for him, though it's worth mentioning that trolls have thicker skin than a human, and their teeth tend to grow back when knocked out, most of the time.
Also, not an ability, but he has bright candy apple red blood, which is a mutant blood color for trolls. Were his blood color discovered by imperial drones or even other malicious trolls, he would have been exterminated on sight. He's determined to keep this part of himself a secret out of habit and he's been careful about it all of his life.
CHARACTER BACKGROUND: Homestuck - [Karkat Vantas]
CHARACTER PERSONALITY:
Karkat is almost constantly angry and judgmental. He even insults the people he is closest to, probably more than he would a stranger. A lot of his personality can be summed up as ‘crabby’, because of this. From his first appearance in the comic, it’s obvious that he makes a big deal out of everything and has a short temper on top of an already ornery disposition. He only smiles once throughout the entire comic so far, and that was only after a poignant scene that could have ended in his own death, but instead ended in a new relationship. It’s safe to say he reserves his smiles only for critical moments like this. As far as explaining why he’s such an angry kid, just take a look at the race he’s a part of. Trolls are a violent, bloodthirsty species who believe in survival of the fittest to the extreme. The weak are killed off; the strong live to fight another day. Karkat’s anger is likely conditioned to step away from that ‘weak’ label, because the louder you are, the more people fear you, right? And because of his mutant blood color, he has all the more reason to appear threatening and strong. It’s self-defense, carrying over to his every day interaction with everyone he knows. He also hates seeing other people having fun, probably because he has little interest in what other people consider fun, and has to antagonize them for it.
Karkat likes to compete and come out on top. At the start of the trolls' session of the SGRUB game, he usurps the role of Red Team leader from Terezi Pyrope, pitting him against Sollux Captor, who at first led the Blue Team. He and Sollux have a history of competition, particularly with insult wars and hacking (Sollux is the superior hacker, hands down). Through all their bickering, the two are somehow still friends. A pair of friendly rivals is probably a better description, because they still fight and Karkat still wants to rub a win in his face. When Sollux tells him to stop playing the game, Karkat takes his warning as an attempt to cheat a win, and this only eggs Karkat to keep playing the game with gusto. Like he’s wearing blinders, all he sees ahead of him is the eventual win to hold over Sollux’s head. He’s stupid in the sense that he views advice as a trick, and he believes everyone to be as into the competition as he is. Later in the game, he is seen as ruthless and ambitious, quickly developing a plan to take down the King and Queen with the help of a new ally, the troll session’s incarnation of Jack Noir. He also killed the Denizen of his medium without any hesitation (we later discover this was probably a bad idea, as these giant creatures had an important part in each character’s own quest within the game. For example, Jade spoke with hers and was given important choices to make.) Being reckless, stubborn, and competitive makes him a somewhat successful leader in the end. All of the trolls managed to survive their session, anyway. He does have trouble with subtlety, though, so his strengths lie in creating a plan and yelling at everyone until they follow it.
His obvious aggressive character traits aside, he also actually cares deeply for those close to him. Karkat sheds actual tears when Sollux dies for the first time, in front of Jack Noir and a distracted Gamzee, even. He even goes so far as to attempt to revive Kanaya Maryam with a kiss after her apparent death, also while crying. It takes something as drastic as the death of a friend to make him cry, but obviously it’s not entirely beyond him to do so. This is a big deal, because trolls cry the same color as their blood, which means if someone were to see his tears, they would instantly know that he’s a weird mutant. So, yes, he will try to force back these tears unless he absolutely cannot handle it anymore. On the topic of his blood color, it’s not something he’s proud of. He won’t talk about it and he definitely doesn’t wear the color in his everyday wardrobe like the rest of the trolls are fond of doing. Even his gray text is (what he thinks is) a clever disguise to throw people off of his case, making him the only troll who doesn’t type in his blood color. When Terezi hounds him about it, he clams up and changes the subject quickly. Later, after a private off-screen meeting the two have, Terezi seems to have learned Karkat’s blood color, but he makes her promise not to tell the others. He says he will tell them eventually, but only when he knows they respect him as a leader. Thus far, he still hasn’t told anyone. When he and Jack Noir first met, the carapace stabbed Karkat (in a way Karkat describes as his way of saying “hello”, a little naively perhaps) and the troll instinctively tried to hide the blood that was drawn. The two bonded when Jack revealed that his blood was the same color. Karkat can easily sympathize with those who share his blood color, and finding out humans all have this same mutant color still surprises him.
Possibly another way Karkat relates to humans is that he is not at all as bloodthirsty as the rest of the troll race. He talks a big game, threatens violent murder with the best of them, but that’s all behind those CAPITAL LETTERS and his shroud of intelligent vulgarity. When he’s behind a computer screen, he’s big and bad, a hatched leader made out to become a threshecutioner one day. This all changes when he’s right in the middle of the action, when his friends start killing each other and he is too dumbstruck to do anything about it but stare like a dumbass. When Kanaya cuts off Tavros’ legs, Karkat literally faints at the sight of the gore. He doesn’t handle intense situations well in person and will often lock up or panic. This goes back to him caring too much, tacked on with the reason he cries when his friends die. He hates this weakness, along with other attributes of himself he loathes and despises. His failures are things he is very aware of and will openly admit to when they aren’t a point of pride. Some things take longer for him to admit than others, like a majority of the problems they've had within the game being his fault, but in general he is very open about finding reasons to hate himself.
As much as he’d loathe admitting it, Karkat relates well to people and is a font of personal advice for some of his awkward needier friends. He loves horrible romance movies and isn’t ashamed of it, so naturally he’s picked up a few things from watching the movies he favors. This doesn’t necessarily make his outlook on romance a healthy or correct one because movies only emulate so much of a relationship before they are considered superficial and fake, but thanks to his surprisingly stable mental condition he has a decent understanding of emotions and how one should balance them. He believes showing many kinds of pity is the best way to have the capacity to hate. Pity and hate, by the way, happen to be the strongest two emotions trolls experience, and thus are the basis for the ideology of troll romance. If he feels another person’s problems are within his power to help, he’ll even cease with the insults and try to understand the problem on the level of the other person. He can’t make people follow his advice, but he can sure as hell thrust it at them until they get the picture and either (a) try it out, or (b) leave him alone. As soon as he’s done trying to be Troll Dr. Phil, he’s quick to switch back to being prickly and insulting. With as much as he understands the delicate balance of pity and hate and how romance is technically supposed to work, he sucks spectacularly at it. Redrom (pity-based romance) is just a plain awkward topic for him, but Blackrom (hate-based) is a problem because he sets his standards too high and will likely never find someone who hates him as much as he hates himself. He may be the equivalent of a thirteen year old kid, but trolls have to find mates early or risk being culled. Romance is definitely a big deal to him.
So basically, Karkat is primarily a grouchy douchebag who likes to fling obscenities at suspecting and unsuspecting faces. He’s headstrong and ambitious, but kind of a fuckup when it boils down to it. In blind rage or desire to beat someone, he can do really reckless things. It’s easy to get his blood boiling and he hates being teased, that will set him off quicker than anything. Still, he’s a good guy with a lot of heart and a desire to safely corral all of his idiot friends for their own good. His demands might be stupid or harsh at times, but he really does mean well. The last thing he wants is for his friends to die or kill each other. He can’t keep up his façade of giving no shits all the time, especially when he lets his emotions shine through his jerk exterior like a beacon of how much he cares.
WORLD:
Karkat's home world is a planet called Alternia, which existed long before Earth's little galaxy. The land of Alternia is dreary and very much alien, and the sun is such an intense threat that most inhabitants are nocturnal. On Alternia, the weak are often killed simply for being weak, and if a wriggler (young troll) is hatched with any abnormalities, they are also destroyed on sight. This instills a need for each troll to be as strong and fearsome as they can, to avoid certain death. It's not all completely survival of the fittest, though, as trolls seem to have some of the same interests humans do, like television, fashion, video games, card games, even roleplaying. Another thing interesting to note: trolls do not have parents or siblings, due to the nature of their, er, reproductive process. They're all hatched from the same mother grub, deep inside a cave system dubbed the "brooding caverns", where they undergo trials to be noticed and adopted by a lusus, who serves as that young troll's guardian. Lusii are usually giant monsters, for reference, Karkat's being a tall bipedal crab-like creature.
Then there's the hemospectrum, a caste system based on the color of a troll's blood. At the top of the spectrum are the purple bloods, at the bottom, reds and browns. Karkat is the lowest of the low, with his rare mutant blood color. Being near the bottom opens you up to being treated like dirt simply for the color of your blood, and being near the top usually means you're treated with respect or fear.
During SGRUB, after their planet has been destroyed, most of the troll kids seemed to have stopped caring about things like that. Despite Karkat's "gutterblood", he is accepted and somewhat respected as their leader.
After their session ends in disheartening failure, the trolls find themselves stranded on a meteor fitted with a laboratory of sorts. Inside the lab, there are warp panels, failed experiments, previously: monsters but they've mostly eliminated them, and simple computers with access to an instant messaging program called Trollian. Other than the computers and the random rooms of the lab, there isn't much to say about this meteor.
OCCUPATION: Wainwright
SAMPLES
THIRD PERSON:
The first month on the trail had been the opposite of a cakewalk for Karkat and his ragtag crew of would be settlers. On top of the others whining about being hungry or breaking a leg or some other stupid thing, the troll’s patience was wearing thinner than usual. Seriously, without his impeccable leadership, none of these assholes would be alive. Not only that, but their wagon broke down almost every single time they weren’t in the vicinity of a town that might have parts to fix the damn thing. No, they had to hoof it most of the way because the fucking thing wouldn’t hold all of their weight combined without a wheel snapping completely off.
If one more person came to Karkat to complain about something, he was likely to throw them in the next river they passed. At least when they stopped to camp or hunt things became quieter, mostly because all of the whiners kept themselves busy with something. Karkat himself would be tracing over a map he’d picked up in the previous town, making sure the path they were taking would be the quickest to the next little insignificant town. He still didn’t understand the point of going to this place called Oregon, but being stuck here left him with little choice. Besides, there were a lot of people going there, so maybe there was something worthwhile at the end of the line. If nothing else, he’d treat it like a race and be the first group there. Games had rewards, and this might as well be another fucking game to him.
The fire was welcome warmth in the increasingly cold weather that they were stuck in. Of course, he didn’t need that much light to see the map, since being nocturnal came with the perks of night vision. The trolls in his party would probably stay awake for a while longer, while the humans were already asleep. Either way, Karkat would stay up even after the humans woke up again. He had no time to sleep, not with all the shit he had to do to keep everything going smoothly. That meant trying to bargain with the next traveler they passed for spare parts, yelling at his friends for slacking off or making needless piles of things, and most importantly not dying.
FIRST PERSON:
HEY GUYS, YOU KNOW WHAT'S A BAD IDEA?
TRYING TO FLOAT YOUR FUCKING WAGON ACROSS A RIVER DEEPER THAN YOUR DAMN WAGON.
KNOW WHAT'S WORSE THAN THAT?
LOSING HALF YOUR GOD DAMNED SUPPLIES IN SAID RIVER.
ANYWAY, DO ANY OF YOU ASSHOLES HAVE A SPARE HORNBEAST?
I'M PRETTY SURE OURS DROWNED.
IF BY SOME MIRACLE THEY SURVIVED AND YOU FIND THEM, SEND ME A TEXT PRONTO.
NO KEEPING THEM FOR YOURSELVES YOU STINGY BASTARDS.
FOR CLARIFICATION THEY PROBABLY ANSWER TO SOME FUCKING GODAWFUL NICKNAMES THANKS TO THIS IDIOT WHO APPARENTLY SOULBONDED WITH THEM.
VIOLENT SOMETHING OR SHAGGY SOMETHING
I STOPPED PAYING ATTENTION WHEN I REALIZED THEY WERE STUPID NAMES AND A WASTE OF MY TIME.
NOT ONLY ARE THEY NEEDED FOR PULLING THIS FUCKING SCUTTLEBUGGY ALL ACROSS THIS LANDMASS FOR WHATEVER FUCKING REASON,
THEIR PRESENCE OR LACK THEREOF DETERMINES HOW MANY SAD LOOKS I HAVE TO TAKE EVERY SINGLE DAY FROM A TRIPPING CLOWN WHO I WOULD PREFER DIDN'T DRAG HIS FACEPAINT THROUGH MUD.
SO.
YOU SEE THESE FUCKING ANIMALS
YOU SEND ME A TEXT.
OR, YOU SEE DECENT REPLACEMENT ANIMALS
A TEXT IS ALSO APPRECIATED.
NOTES: Can't think of anything specific, but if the troll quirk will be a problem I have an opt-out post in his journal for those who'd prefer that.