carriero application
Mun information
Name: Angelica
LJ: 1angelette
Contact: lengachan @ gtalk, AIM, plurk (Skype available by PM)
Age/Birthdate: 16
Characters already played here: Miku Hatsune Anne Simon N/A
Character information
Character's Name: Kanaya Maryam
Series: MS Paint Adventures (Homestuck)
Age: 13. Note that she will describe her age as "6" solar sweeps, but it has been stated that this is equivalent to 13 human years.
Timeline: Approximately 4 hours and 13 minutes before the CRITICAL MOMENT. Aradiabot and Eridan's computer are both intact.
Canon Resource Link: Her article on the Homestuck wiki, a rather terse reference with scattered information, especially where conveying what the work's universe is like is concerned. It's hard to blame them. The universe of Homestuck is incredibly complex. In fact, scratch that, the universes of Homestuck are incredibly complex.
The planet of Alternia with its warlike race of "trolls" dominated the universe this character comes from for, at bare minimum, thousands of years. Their approach to life is suspiciously resemblant of a particularly violent video game, sometimes even flying in the face of evolutionary logic: Rejection of the weak without a second thought, forcible training for the strong, all creatures predator and prey at once, a rigid system of chastes with entirely objective scaling of strengths and weaknesses, ridiculous walks required between locations prompting digitally dominated communication, immutable identity designations, murder as a common occurrence. Thus it should come as no surprise that their universe was in fact carefully engineered by a certain "gentleman", who went by the name Doc Scratch, such that its residents would be ideal to play a certain video game. Not a mere session of Mario Karts Double Dash or even Super Smash Bros. Melee; no, this game was literally cosmic in its scale, using meteors as its pawns, planets as squares, and all of paradox space as its board. Even its adolescent players were carefully created by destiny since before their births, containing every single socioeconomic position Alternia had to offer, granted powers and handicaps appropriate to the titles they would later bear in the game.
This game was "Sgrub". The game starts innocently enough allowing a "server player" to manipulate the surroundings of their "client player" as if they were playing The Sims. The group of servers and clients make their way into the Medium, where an epic RPG in the tradition of Earthbound unfolds. Eventually it became clear that the Ultimate Reward for which they were fighting was the Spore-style creation of a new universe, which they would rule as gods.
However, when the trolls played Sgrub, something went horribly wrong. Just as they were going to claim the Ultimate Reward, a demon burning with the flames of a sun twice as powerful as the entire universe appeared from thin air and they were thrust into the Veil, a cramped computer lab at the Medium's furthest ring. Here they discovered that this demon came from the universe they had created, as a byproduct of another group of adolescents playing Sgrub - or as it was called in the squishy vague words their pathethic human civilization preferred, "Sburb". These pale bright-eyed alien children had everything the trolls didn't: A comfortable upbringing largely free of personal tragedy, loving guardians doing their best to protect them despite the game's machinations, hope before them of the ultimate reward. All their species had left was an internet connection. Thus they resolved to...
Troll them.
Kanaya Maryam was born the exact genetic descendant of the Dolorosa: Our troll Lady of Sorrow. Her blood was the rare jade kind that endowed such unique privileges as tolerance of harsh Alternian sunlight. It also dictated that she work in the brooding caverns of the Mother Grub, a creature like the trolls' queen (though only biologically -- their civilization is ruled by an empress). Due to this reproductive structure, trolls didn't form autonomous familial units. Instead those who survived to pupation and endured the trials in the brooding caverns were selected by a lusus naturae, a great and terrible beast often akin to their charge in strength, temperament, and other traits. There was no room in the caverns, however, for the SUfferer -- better known in the future as Jegus -- and so the Dolorosa adopted him as her own, becoming a virgin mother.
Kanaya herself lived ignorant of her ancestor, but nevertheless had an equally exceptional destiny in store for her. This began to manifest soon after her pupation, when a virgin mother grub left her position in the caverns to be her lusus, an unprecedented event. They made their home in a white tower built off of ruins in the sunny desert. This region was populated by heinous broods of the undead, and so in her early years the mother grub devoutly protected Kanaya from them. Before long she would wield a chainsaw to do it herself.
Her ivory tower isolated her from other trolls and prepared her for her Sgrub-given role as the Sylph of Space. This granted her outside knowledge from three sources. The first and foremost was her dream self, a second Kanaya, princess on the planet of Prospit, whose consciousness she adopted when she slept. On Prospit clouds commonly eclipsed the celestial body of Skaia, showing images of the past and future, thus providing the dreamer the appearance of clairvoyance. The second was Doc Scratch himself, who seemed to provide some kind of fatherly elderly male guidance in her life. The third was actually a brief walkthrough of Sgrub written by an alien of some kind known to Kanaya only as "tentacleTherapist". All this information and isolation gave her a unique level-headed perspective, focused on aesthetic things like "rainbow drinkers" and "fashion".
Her uncannily conciliatory nature would aid her when she entered the game, considering that asking twelve trolls to work together as a team is like pulling out twelve teeth at once. However, over time all twelve trolls to some degree caught "the troll disease called friendship". The nearest and dearest to Kanaya was one Vriska Serket, a manipulative misunderstood blueblood as beautiful as a black widow and eight times as dangerous, who fed her lusus trolls by the octet by means of a live action roleplaying game. They fell head over heals into moirallegiance, a kind of more official best friendship dedicated to the complement of the hothearted and coolheaded. Deep in her cardiovascular system, though, Kanaya loved this mad girl madly. She suppressed this from her friends' knowledge as best she could. The only one who figured it out on his own was Eridan Ampora, who knew them both fairly well; he and Vriska were on-again off-again hate-dating, sometimes with Kanaya mediating. The two were somewhat close despite the dissolution of that whole relationship and his status as a seadweller dedicated to the destruction of the landdwelling part of the troll race--in fact, he even promised not to kill her no matter how far his genocidal plans progressed. Because "that wwould be fuckin unconscionable". Sic.
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This was life as Kanaya knew it when the game began. Given her sources, she could well anticipate the exact time, as the night was marked by the death of every single troll's lusus. When Kanaya's died peacefully within the naturally unstable lifespan of a virgin mother grub (her wings still intact, after all!) it was time for Kanaya to do her a final favor: Retrieve from her the Matriorb (yes, a matriorb), and hatch it when the time is right, thus becoming a virgin mother herself. From the clouds she also knew that she had to enter the Medium nearly last, and arranged for herself a position as Vriska's server player. Unfortunately, Vriska was serving Tavros Nitram, a lowblood with low self esteem whom she had personally crippled. Letting Vriska literally control his world was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. Kanaya thus found herself having to mediate for the pair constantly. It was such a shame the girl she cherished so closely had gotten wrapped up in this hateful relationship. When she could have been turbo-levelling herself further instead of exhorting the reluctant boy to do so, when she was one of the only trolls who actually had a tasteful, snazzy sense of fashion, having gone so far as to actually solicit a lovely fairy dress from her to-- To-- To dress up as troll Tinkerbell and seduce the most pathetic possible version of troll Peter Pan, who couldn't even claim a kiss from her for himself?!?!
Kanaya's distress in the wake of this was so severe that it prompted the story's explanation of trolls' complicated romantic mores. She completely cut off communications with both Vriska and Tavros, unable to face either. Now that her affairs with her server were over with, it was time for her to in turn become a client. Equius Zahhak became her server. He was a highblood neighbor of Vriska's, better at holding himself in check... in some ways. The whole thing was fairly uneventful, and Equius had his own complicated troll social problems to deal with, leaving Kanaya largely to her own devices. And she certainly had devices. The ivory tower in the ruins she had found, waking up on Prospit, years of poring over the clouds, all ultimately found purpose when Sgrub bestowed her with the title "Sylph of Space". In the lab of her tower she was to breed the Genesis Frog, which would represent the entire new universe.
Fortunately she wasn't alone. Karkat Vantas had the title of Knight of Blood, which made the genetics of this Genesis Frog part of his domain too. He was the trolls' nominal leader, and Kanaya was one of the very few trolls who respected him enough to actually heed his orders. This would come to haunt them later, as Karkat urged the players to complete the game and defeat the final boss quickly, leading him and Kanaya to abandon frog breeding before they could get the final genetic sequence. Karkat later beleived this led to the entire universe he created having cancer, which may have even itself caused the demon to enter their session.
Either way, the demon did enter their session and the trolls were thrust into the Veil, with ten hours and twenty-five minutes to go until the critical moment. Kanaya was one of the first trolls to recognize they could view the actions of four particular aliens in the universe they had created. Every aspect of their bizarre civilization was open to their observation. More interesting, for the four specific children, every moment of their lives was open to their instant messaging clients. Here Kanaya discovered that one of the children, Rose Lalonde, was none other than tentacleTherapist, the author of that walkthrough. After several stops and starts, they began to explore this human emotion called friendship and forge it between themselves themselves, albeit a kind fraught with overanalysis and sarcasm and concern. Kanaya found herself falling into a dynamic with Rose dangerously similar to that she'd had with Vriska: Frantically meddling to keep the object of her interest on the right side of the line between "Munchkin gaming" and "grimdark madness".
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She did little else with her time while in the veil, excepting a few conferences with other trolls, such as consulting Karkat before taking major actions. Six hours and twelve minutes before the critical moment, she got to saw off Tavros' legs... I mean, had to saw off Tavros' legs in collaboration with Equius' project to give him new ones. Of course. She took no pleasure whatsoever in maiming the inept rival for Vriska's affections as he slept avoiding productive contribution just as he had the entire game. She would never adopt such a crude paradigm, especially when she had already sworn to abandon the preposterous infatuation that would be its underlying cause. The very idea would be absurd. And so hardly anything else eventful happened up to the beginning of the thirteenth minute before the fourth hour before the critical moment.
This is where Kanaya's history ends for the purposes of this game. However, as future events set a key precedent for a certain part of this application, they're summmarized below less formally:
Much to Kanaya's distress, Rose chooses the path towards darkness, and at some point her timeline turns entirely dark, invisible to Kanaya. She even turns her needles into "needlewands" capable of casting distinctly black magic. Furthermore when Eridan antagonizes the witch, she actually blows up his computer. From another universe. Kanaya is understandably distressed for both her friends' sakes, and tries to even the scales a little by making Eridan a wand operated by "wwhite science". At first this seems to successfully lighten the mood and put him onto the path of "Goodness And Purity". At first.
She also befriends Jade Harley, the other human girl; this one is the Witch of Space, just like she was the Sylph. Thereby they share a lot about their fates such as childhoods in ivory towers and dreaming on Prospit. She gives Jade the best help she can on how to breed her own Genesis Frog. Then Kanaya confides a new development in her own breeding duties: She has auspiciously discovers the key she needs to unlock the Matriorb. She sees this as her signal from the fates to embed it in the core of the Veil and thereby restore the species. She asks Karkat for permission, of course, because he's their leader and what would things come to if people didn't ask permission before going strange places. He's somewhat worried about how all the trolls have been finding their ways of disappearing lately and putting things into various places, but reluctantly says she can. She approaches the teleporter, but Eridan comes out of it instead and insists she wait to go until he can accompany her. He'll need to take care of some business first. She assents and waits there because that sounds reasonable enou--
A chorus of honks signals that his "business" was with two specific trolls, mixed with pleasure, and consisted of blinding his rival Sollux and blasting his former love Feferi. With the white science wand Kanaya gave him herself. She gets her lipstick and--he blows up the Matriorb. Alright, it's time to take off the highly fashionable hand-embroidered gloves and take out the chainsaw and--Oh. He. He blasts her.
She's dead. Entirely dead. Bright green letters like her blood spelling out "DEAD." This is the obvious consequence of being killed. It's not as if her character has any association whatsoever with, say, beings that are undead... Oh.
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In a dream Jade tells her that she's going to become a "vampire", but Kanaya doesn't recognize the strange human word, and doesn't associate it at all with the troll concept of "rainbow drinkers", fanged beings with glowing pale skin who're awake when others sleep and feed off their blood. She wakes up knowing how to glow in the dark and with a burning knowledge of what's fucking unconscionable. She goes to the roof, feeding off of a few of her friends on the way, and finds that a three-way showdown is about to begin between Eridan, Vriska, and Gamzee, a previously unimportant troll who's gone crazy while nobody was looking and managed to kill Equius and stole his awesome broken computer shades as a trophy. It turns out that these trolls have killed almost half the cast by now between them. Well, Kanaya won't have that. She kicks Gamzee off the cliff, punches Vriska in the nose, and chainsaws Eridan in half. Equius' shades were knocked up into the air during the kick and land right on her face now that all the violence is done. She then reapplies her lipstick, which is by now covered in two different people's blood. Delicious. Vriska's the only one left on the roof now and she finds this whole new bloodthirsty attitude of Kanaya's fascinating to say the least. But...
The shades indicate that Rose has finally fallen irretrievably into the undulating tentacles of the powers of darkness, to Kanaya's deep disappointment. She won't hear anything from Vriska and goes back downstairs to tend to Sollux... and get a hot outfit change, because she has priorities. When she gets back up, all the living trolls have gathered there. And, well, there's no more delicate way to put this than "Vriska is there too". Oh.
And then Sollux drives the entire Veil to a sun twice the mass of the universe. Yes, at this point even Kanaya has trouble suspending her disbelief.
Personality: Kanaya values harmony and appearance more than many other trolls do. This largely comes from being able to tolerate the daytime, where bright colors and sharp clothing and light suddenly become more appealing than they are in the nighttime that constitutes ordinary Alternian life. Also, since the desert immediately surrounding her ivory tower was so dry, she learned landscaping to shape the area into an oasis, which further cultivated her sensibilities. Exterior design led to gardening and interior design and that lead to fashion, her greatest passion. Although some trolls are capable of appreaciating attractive clothing and will choose out an outfit based on its snazziness, every other troll we know still possesses an outfit. If it's good enough for today, why not tomorrow? And the day after that and so on forever. They reject any further investment in clothing as impractical. Not Kanaya. She diligently sews herself dozens of dresses, both for her own pleasure in their beauty and as a general form of self-expression. This also extends to other kinds of personal aesthetics: Her hair certainly didn't style itself into those distinctive peaks, and she is a devout connoisseur of lipstick. Interestingly enough, the lipstick that she carries constantly also does double duty by transforming into the chainsaw she uses for her landscaping, bringing her aesthetic concerns full circle. All this is really a form of storytelling shorthand for how she actually will do things for their own sake, which helps her maintain an altruistic nature. She'll chainsaw through her mother's corpse and plunge her hands into that bloody mess, she'll put bandages onto wounds that weren't even felt, she'll straighten up piles of broken eight-balls unsolicited.
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She occupies a unique position in the middle of the social order with her jade blood, not blue at all but certainly rare and cool in hue, and as such serves as a sort of bridge between those higher and lower than her. Though before the game she spends more of her time in highblood circles and is accepted as something of an equal to them, she's not in any way at all biased against those of lower blood. In addition, she uses the lowblood terms for things (such as "ablution trap" and "thermal hull") due to valuing their clarity and precision, instead of the obtuse highblood words ("bathtub", "refrigerator"). This makes her perfect for mediating between the two groups. And mediate she does love to do. Her friends call her a meddler; she insists she's just being helpful. To be fair, in the brutal troll culture, most significant forms of emotional attachment are codified into romances--and actually caring about anyone else outside of these exclusive relationships is the "troll disease called friendship". So these tendencies are genuinely viewed as a form of emotional promiscuity, even though her reputation as the community "two-wheel device" for such matters is greatly exaggerated.
There's something of a conflict in her between the more passive attitudes of lowbloods and the violent urges of highbloods. (Every single highblood in the story is involved on one side or the other of a murder at some point.) Though she values harmony to a higher degree than most, she still has a passionate, romantic heart. She's also fairly willing to look the other way where actual misdeeds are concerned - in many cases, she is the only troll who'll stand by her friends in spite of her indiscretions. This in combination with her environment likely is what caused her fascination with rainbow drinkers: Their feeding is shown to have no consequences on its victims, yet they are still allowed to be violent and bloody and beautiful. This is also something her friends mock her for.
Short hair, lumberjacking, eagerly allowing her hands and mouth to get dirty, association with lipstick, unusually artistic taste in fashion, forms of romanticization viewed by her peers with some skepticism--all these things might be putting you in mind of a certain earth demographic group. "Is this girl some kind of alien lesbian or something?" you might ask. And the answer would be yes -- but it's important to keep in mind the word alien lesbian. The funny thing about troll culture is that due to their reproductive system, gender as being a standard criteron in the partner selection process has completely vanished. For many members of the troll cast, even distinguishing a same-sex or opposite-sex relationship by terminology is an entirely foreign idea. Kanaya thus occupies the same slightly awkward position as might, say, a human attracted only to brunettes. It's fairly likely that by her age, she has realized her personal lack of attraction to men. But she never explicitly discusses it in canon with anyone. It's just not a relevant issue: If by bad chance she happens to receive an unwelcome solicitation from a male, she simply should tell him she isn't attracted to him and leave it at that. There's no reason to bring his sex into it, because by the cultural standard that's no reason to reject someone. Furthermore, given the complicated system of troll romance where sufficient emotional investment in a person of almost any kind qualifies a relationship, this doesn't actually preclude all opposite-sex romantic relationships - only sexual ones.
Or rather, potentially sexual ones. Because in spite of her maturity and her many hardships in life, she is six (thirteen) - she may not be a little girl in the sense of Cindy Lou Who, but she certainly is a young girl in the sense of Anne Frank. She flips out when exposed to explicit material, actually. She gets kicks out of trolling people, and she's not very good at it, and other cultures are obscure to her, and she thinks impromptutations is an amusing word. But she also actually performs impromptutation on the boy who stole her crush's cardiovascular system without knowing how he did it. That's pretty much all Kanaya is: A thirteen-year old... alien chainsaw/lipstick lesbian.
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Powers: In her native universe Kanaya Maryam has several powers and enviable devices. The majority of these are dependent on the setting, and so will be lost in the context of the asylum. Firstly, as the others who were destined to play this game, she has a "dream self" living on the celestial body of Prospit, whose consciousness she experiences when asleep. Often while dreaming on this planet clouds are visible that provide knowledge of the future or past not known to her. However, Prospit is not present in Carriero's universe, and even if it were it would break the game pretty thoroughly. So this won't happen.
She is in possession of a "Sylladex", a two-part in-universe inventory system. Her "Captchalogue Deck" is operated by the "Chastity Modus" such that she can select any item and place it onto a card in hyperspace. The card then becomes locked up like a chastity belt, and to retrieve the item she will need to uncover an "Auxiliatrix Key" to unlock it. Her "Strife Deck" on the other hand is equipped with the "Strife Specibus" card, in hyperspace like her captchalogue cards, of "makeupkind". This card contains all the "makeup" weapons in her possession, and she can switch between and wield them all at will. (Before dismissing the utility of this Strife Specibus, recall the reference to her as a "chainsaw/lipstick lesbian".) None of this will be coming with her, though unlike Prospitan dreaming it is fairly open for her to get back.
Her jade blood conveys the ability to tolerate and even enjoy the sun's beams, unlike ordinary nocturnal trolls. In addition, her future history implies that even this will be taken to greater heights. When she is killed -- in a death that would otherwise be permanent, not a death where she's revived by the respawn or such -- she will transform into a pale, fanged creature who lives off of others' blood, awake when ordinary people would sleep. Exactly how a "rainbow drinker", as these funhouse vampires are called, can be killed has yet to be seen in the canon, as well as lots of details about long-term feeding implications; this is an overall clusterheck that will gently be placed onto the shelf for now because an actual in-game vampirization, though inevitable if she stays here long enough, is months and months down the road, and there's likely to be much more canon information revealed in future, considering it's still in progress.
These passive powers are significant enough that she will not be granted any others by the asylum.
Non-powers information requested in this section: One of the main physiological differences between humans and trolls not discussed anywhere above is that trolls are not independently capable of restful sleep, and uninterrupted will experience very stressful dreams invoking ancestral memories of hunting and bloodshed. To alleviate this condition, trolls sleep in "recuperacoons" filled with "sopor slime", which has a mild medicinal effect when taken in by the skin. (When consumed orally its dissociative effects are intensified to the point of becoming psychedelic.) If at all possible, I would prefer for her room in the asylum to have one of these. If a description by the mods is necessary, her own is in the lower right corner of this image.
Appearance: Be the other girl.
As Homestuck's art is thoroughly stylized, a brief summary of her appearance should be helpful for those who find it hard to parse. Anatomically Kanaya strongly resembles a 13-year-old human girl - head, arms, legs, torso, etc. Her divergent features are suspiciously easy to cosplay: A set of horns (with yellow peaks, orange middles, and red bottoms, much like candy corn), pitch black hair, gray skin, and black eyes with yellow sclera ("whites", in humans). Her blood is a jade color, but the pigmentation of her skin is deep enough that it cannot be seen unless she is flushed, and likewise it's not visible in eye veins. Later art shows her with a developing figure, but it seems that she just learned how to not be flat when she learned how to glow in the dark.
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Whatever clothing she is wearing will have the Virgo symbol (♍) on it somewhere at all times. She won't be comfortable wearing any clothing that does not feature her symbol and will embroider it on herself if the situation persists long enough.
Suitability/eligibility: As discussed above in the age section, Kanaya is 6 or rather 13. She grew to this age in a desert populated by heinous broods of the undead, armed solely by the protection of a moth and lipstick, albeit lipstick that transforms into a chainsaw with which she is quite skilled. This in a society where amputation is one of the less unconscionable deeds imaginable. The actual plot of the story features considerable risk of life, limb, and sanity to its young heroes, including to her personally just an hour or two after her canon point; and she comes out of it all fairly intact. In all likelihood she'll fare comparably in Carriero.
The three magic words are: youth, fountain, eternal
Third-Person Sample: "But, oh, darkest darling, I find your suffering... delicious."
Kanaya turned her page with a thrill on her fingers. This was what made the literary medium so much like a double edged sword: There was that moment of suspense between the end of one page and the beginning of the next, but at the same time it was tactile excitement. Also papercuts took place on occassion, but getting just a hint of blood on the pages was more of an unambiguous bonus in her opinion, considering the subject matter. Some editions would even liberally stain their pages, though that was much harder to pull off tastefully. But when it was, well, she certainly didn't object.
So there was no desire on her part to switch to viewing these stories digitally. Oh, the library was larger, there was no disputing that. She had to obtain books one by one, after all, and if she captchalogued them incorrectly she might not have any new reading material for weeks. But nothing could really replace holding a physical well-loved copy in her hands, sitting in a pile of lush throw pillows with genuine late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows.
Though today she had chosen to indulge her habit closer to noon. Later in the day it would be time to play the game, and even if she was going in last on her team, she had to make herself available for the others. They'd likely be getting themselves into all kinds of conflicts already, and she couldn't let Karkat try to handle all of them. He had his own issues about which to worry, poor boy.
"So in other words... you want to treat me as if I were a basket of sweets with limbs? God, I hate you more than the sun and sea and death itself. I'm yours until the stars aren't bright anymore."
And there the masterful tale of the brightest, blackest kind of forbidden passion ended, leaving Kanaya with nothing better to do than close the book and put it back onto the shelf with her other favorites. There were a few more chapters left, but this was the break between Part II: From The Viewpoint Of The Deuteragonist and Part III: Again From The Viewpoint Of The Protagonist. She knew that at any moment now she was likely to start getting trolled, and when she went into the medium, her hive would be kept intact anyway, making it perfectly possible for her to resume later, if there were even an idle moment to entertain these grim fascinations of hers once the game began.
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First-Person Sample: [Hello, asylum! Kanaya is looking brighter than usual today. You're probably figuring she's just happy that they passed a test, but then you'll notice the sewing machine on the desk, upon which her hands are lovingly rested.]
Salutations. I just wanted to let you know that I've reacquired a textile stitching device. Or, as I've heard you are inclined to call it, a sewing machine. This gift is much more generous than I had been led to expect. I would thank Linda. But that would imply a general level of approval of her actions much higher than my current one. Which, just in case anyone is still unclear, is none. Well, perhaps this gift raises it to, say, one percent. Just possibly. [She is just so terribly fond of it. Oh, textile stitching device, how she has missed you.]
Anyway. I'm sorry for rambling again. Now that I possess this: It would be perfectly acceptable for you to come to me soliciting clothing assistance of any sort. Though I still don't have any entirely secure sources of fabric or thread... I do think supplies will need to be hijacked from the arts and crafts room, or scavenged from other clothing. But, yes, please come to me if you'd like anything at all. It'd be a pleasure to actually make something again. Not any kind of burden by any means whatsoever.
That's all. [And with a moment's hesitation - ah, does she have to take her hand off of the thing! why! - she reaches for the button to end her submission and await responses.]
Anything else? FEELINGS I HAVE that will probably be a helpful reference to future readers of this app. Also, are the trolls' IDs going to feature 413 or 612 in any capacity? Please say yes.
Name: Angelica
LJ: 1angelette
Contact: lengachan @ gtalk, AIM, plurk (Skype available by PM)
Age/Birthdate: 16
Characters already played here: Miku Hatsune Anne Simon N/A
Character information
Character's Name: Kanaya Maryam
Series: MS Paint Adventures (Homestuck)
Age: 13. Note that she will describe her age as "6" solar sweeps, but it has been stated that this is equivalent to 13 human years.
Timeline: Approximately 4 hours and 13 minutes before the CRITICAL MOMENT. Aradiabot and Eridan's computer are both intact.
Canon Resource Link: Her article on the Homestuck wiki, a rather terse reference with scattered information, especially where conveying what the work's universe is like is concerned. It's hard to blame them. The universe of Homestuck is incredibly complex. In fact, scratch that, the universes of Homestuck are incredibly complex.
The planet of Alternia with its warlike race of "trolls" dominated the universe this character comes from for, at bare minimum, thousands of years. Their approach to life is suspiciously resemblant of a particularly violent video game, sometimes even flying in the face of evolutionary logic: Rejection of the weak without a second thought, forcible training for the strong, all creatures predator and prey at once, a rigid system of chastes with entirely objective scaling of strengths and weaknesses, ridiculous walks required between locations prompting digitally dominated communication, immutable identity designations, murder as a common occurrence. Thus it should come as no surprise that their universe was in fact carefully engineered by a certain "gentleman", who went by the name Doc Scratch, such that its residents would be ideal to play a certain video game. Not a mere session of Mario Karts Double Dash or even Super Smash Bros. Melee; no, this game was literally cosmic in its scale, using meteors as its pawns, planets as squares, and all of paradox space as its board. Even its adolescent players were carefully created by destiny since before their births, containing every single socioeconomic position Alternia had to offer, granted powers and handicaps appropriate to the titles they would later bear in the game.
This game was "Sgrub". The game starts innocently enough allowing a "server player" to manipulate the surroundings of their "client player" as if they were playing The Sims. The group of servers and clients make their way into the Medium, where an epic RPG in the tradition of Earthbound unfolds. Eventually it became clear that the Ultimate Reward for which they were fighting was the Spore-style creation of a new universe, which they would rule as gods.
However, when the trolls played Sgrub, something went horribly wrong. Just as they were going to claim the Ultimate Reward, a demon burning with the flames of a sun twice as powerful as the entire universe appeared from thin air and they were thrust into the Veil, a cramped computer lab at the Medium's furthest ring. Here they discovered that this demon came from the universe they had created, as a byproduct of another group of adolescents playing Sgrub - or as it was called in the squishy vague words their pathethic human civilization preferred, "Sburb". These pale bright-eyed alien children had everything the trolls didn't: A comfortable upbringing largely free of personal tragedy, loving guardians doing their best to protect them despite the game's machinations, hope before them of the ultimate reward. All their species had left was an internet connection. Thus they resolved to...
Troll them.
Kanaya Maryam was born the exact genetic descendant of the Dolorosa: Our troll Lady of Sorrow. Her blood was the rare jade kind that endowed such unique privileges as tolerance of harsh Alternian sunlight. It also dictated that she work in the brooding caverns of the Mother Grub, a creature like the trolls' queen (though only biologically -- their civilization is ruled by an empress). Due to this reproductive structure, trolls didn't form autonomous familial units. Instead those who survived to pupation and endured the trials in the brooding caverns were selected by a lusus naturae, a great and terrible beast often akin to their charge in strength, temperament, and other traits. There was no room in the caverns, however, for the SUfferer -- better known in the future as Jegus -- and so the Dolorosa adopted him as her own, becoming a virgin mother.
Kanaya herself lived ignorant of her ancestor, but nevertheless had an equally exceptional destiny in store for her. This began to manifest soon after her pupation, when a virgin mother grub left her position in the caverns to be her lusus, an unprecedented event. They made their home in a white tower built off of ruins in the sunny desert. This region was populated by heinous broods of the undead, and so in her early years the mother grub devoutly protected Kanaya from them. Before long she would wield a chainsaw to do it herself.
Her ivory tower isolated her from other trolls and prepared her for her Sgrub-given role as the Sylph of Space. This granted her outside knowledge from three sources. The first and foremost was her dream self, a second Kanaya, princess on the planet of Prospit, whose consciousness she adopted when she slept. On Prospit clouds commonly eclipsed the celestial body of Skaia, showing images of the past and future, thus providing the dreamer the appearance of clairvoyance. The second was Doc Scratch himself, who seemed to provide some kind of fatherly elderly male guidance in her life. The third was actually a brief walkthrough of Sgrub written by an alien of some kind known to Kanaya only as "tentacleTherapist". All this information and isolation gave her a unique level-headed perspective, focused on aesthetic things like "rainbow drinkers" and "fashion".
Her uncannily conciliatory nature would aid her when she entered the game, considering that asking twelve trolls to work together as a team is like pulling out twelve teeth at once. However, over time all twelve trolls to some degree caught "the troll disease called friendship". The nearest and dearest to Kanaya was one Vriska Serket, a manipulative misunderstood blueblood as beautiful as a black widow and eight times as dangerous, who fed her lusus trolls by the octet by means of a live action roleplaying game. They fell head over heals into moirallegiance, a kind of more official best friendship dedicated to the complement of the hothearted and coolheaded. Deep in her cardiovascular system, though, Kanaya loved this mad girl madly. She suppressed this from her friends' knowledge as best she could. The only one who figured it out on his own was Eridan Ampora, who knew them both fairly well; he and Vriska were on-again off-again hate-dating, sometimes with Kanaya mediating. The two were somewhat close despite the dissolution of that whole relationship and his status as a seadweller dedicated to the destruction of the landdwelling part of the troll race--in fact, he even promised not to kill her no matter how far his genocidal plans progressed. Because "that wwould be fuckin unconscionable". Sic.
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This was life as Kanaya knew it when the game began. Given her sources, she could well anticipate the exact time, as the night was marked by the death of every single troll's lusus. When Kanaya's died peacefully within the naturally unstable lifespan of a virgin mother grub (her wings still intact, after all!) it was time for Kanaya to do her a final favor: Retrieve from her the Matriorb (yes, a matriorb), and hatch it when the time is right, thus becoming a virgin mother herself. From the clouds she also knew that she had to enter the Medium nearly last, and arranged for herself a position as Vriska's server player. Unfortunately, Vriska was serving Tavros Nitram, a lowblood with low self esteem whom she had personally crippled. Letting Vriska literally control his world was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. Kanaya thus found herself having to mediate for the pair constantly. It was such a shame the girl she cherished so closely had gotten wrapped up in this hateful relationship. When she could have been turbo-levelling herself further instead of exhorting the reluctant boy to do so, when she was one of the only trolls who actually had a tasteful, snazzy sense of fashion, having gone so far as to actually solicit a lovely fairy dress from her to-- To-- To dress up as troll Tinkerbell and seduce the most pathetic possible version of troll Peter Pan, who couldn't even claim a kiss from her for himself?!?!
Kanaya's distress in the wake of this was so severe that it prompted the story's explanation of trolls' complicated romantic mores. She completely cut off communications with both Vriska and Tavros, unable to face either. Now that her affairs with her server were over with, it was time for her to in turn become a client. Equius Zahhak became her server. He was a highblood neighbor of Vriska's, better at holding himself in check... in some ways. The whole thing was fairly uneventful, and Equius had his own complicated troll social problems to deal with, leaving Kanaya largely to her own devices. And she certainly had devices. The ivory tower in the ruins she had found, waking up on Prospit, years of poring over the clouds, all ultimately found purpose when Sgrub bestowed her with the title "Sylph of Space". In the lab of her tower she was to breed the Genesis Frog, which would represent the entire new universe.
Fortunately she wasn't alone. Karkat Vantas had the title of Knight of Blood, which made the genetics of this Genesis Frog part of his domain too. He was the trolls' nominal leader, and Kanaya was one of the very few trolls who respected him enough to actually heed his orders. This would come to haunt them later, as Karkat urged the players to complete the game and defeat the final boss quickly, leading him and Kanaya to abandon frog breeding before they could get the final genetic sequence. Karkat later beleived this led to the entire universe he created having cancer, which may have even itself caused the demon to enter their session.
Either way, the demon did enter their session and the trolls were thrust into the Veil, with ten hours and twenty-five minutes to go until the critical moment. Kanaya was one of the first trolls to recognize they could view the actions of four particular aliens in the universe they had created. Every aspect of their bizarre civilization was open to their observation. More interesting, for the four specific children, every moment of their lives was open to their instant messaging clients. Here Kanaya discovered that one of the children, Rose Lalonde, was none other than tentacleTherapist, the author of that walkthrough. After several stops and starts, they began to explore this human emotion called friendship and forge it between themselves themselves, albeit a kind fraught with overanalysis and sarcasm and concern. Kanaya found herself falling into a dynamic with Rose dangerously similar to that she'd had with Vriska: Frantically meddling to keep the object of her interest on the right side of the line between "Munchkin gaming" and "grimdark madness".
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She did little else with her time while in the veil, excepting a few conferences with other trolls, such as consulting Karkat before taking major actions. Six hours and twelve minutes before the critical moment, she got to saw off Tavros' legs... I mean, had to saw off Tavros' legs in collaboration with Equius' project to give him new ones. Of course. She took no pleasure whatsoever in maiming the inept rival for Vriska's affections as he slept avoiding productive contribution just as he had the entire game. She would never adopt such a crude paradigm, especially when she had already sworn to abandon the preposterous infatuation that would be its underlying cause. The very idea would be absurd. And so hardly anything else eventful happened up to the beginning of the thirteenth minute before the fourth hour before the critical moment.
This is where Kanaya's history ends for the purposes of this game. However, as future events set a key precedent for a certain part of this application, they're summmarized below less formally:
Much to Kanaya's distress, Rose chooses the path towards darkness, and at some point her timeline turns entirely dark, invisible to Kanaya. She even turns her needles into "needlewands" capable of casting distinctly black magic. Furthermore when Eridan antagonizes the witch, she actually blows up his computer. From another universe. Kanaya is understandably distressed for both her friends' sakes, and tries to even the scales a little by making Eridan a wand operated by "wwhite science". At first this seems to successfully lighten the mood and put him onto the path of "Goodness And Purity". At first.
She also befriends Jade Harley, the other human girl; this one is the Witch of Space, just like she was the Sylph. Thereby they share a lot about their fates such as childhoods in ivory towers and dreaming on Prospit. She gives Jade the best help she can on how to breed her own Genesis Frog. Then Kanaya confides a new development in her own breeding duties: She has auspiciously discovers the key she needs to unlock the Matriorb. She sees this as her signal from the fates to embed it in the core of the Veil and thereby restore the species. She asks Karkat for permission, of course, because he's their leader and what would things come to if people didn't ask permission before going strange places. He's somewhat worried about how all the trolls have been finding their ways of disappearing lately and putting things into various places, but reluctantly says she can. She approaches the teleporter, but Eridan comes out of it instead and insists she wait to go until he can accompany her. He'll need to take care of some business first. She assents and waits there because that sounds reasonable enou--
A chorus of honks signals that his "business" was with two specific trolls, mixed with pleasure, and consisted of blinding his rival Sollux and blasting his former love Feferi. With the white science wand Kanaya gave him herself. She gets her lipstick and--he blows up the Matriorb. Alright, it's time to take off the highly fashionable hand-embroidered gloves and take out the chainsaw and--Oh. He. He blasts her.
She's dead. Entirely dead. Bright green letters like her blood spelling out "DEAD." This is the obvious consequence of being killed. It's not as if her character has any association whatsoever with, say, beings that are undead... Oh.
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In a dream Jade tells her that she's going to become a "vampire", but Kanaya doesn't recognize the strange human word, and doesn't associate it at all with the troll concept of "rainbow drinkers", fanged beings with glowing pale skin who're awake when others sleep and feed off their blood. She wakes up knowing how to glow in the dark and with a burning knowledge of what's fucking unconscionable. She goes to the roof, feeding off of a few of her friends on the way, and finds that a three-way showdown is about to begin between Eridan, Vriska, and Gamzee, a previously unimportant troll who's gone crazy while nobody was looking and managed to kill Equius and stole his awesome broken computer shades as a trophy. It turns out that these trolls have killed almost half the cast by now between them. Well, Kanaya won't have that. She kicks Gamzee off the cliff, punches Vriska in the nose, and chainsaws Eridan in half. Equius' shades were knocked up into the air during the kick and land right on her face now that all the violence is done. She then reapplies her lipstick, which is by now covered in two different people's blood. Delicious. Vriska's the only one left on the roof now and she finds this whole new bloodthirsty attitude of Kanaya's fascinating to say the least. But...
The shades indicate that Rose has finally fallen irretrievably into the undulating tentacles of the powers of darkness, to Kanaya's deep disappointment. She won't hear anything from Vriska and goes back downstairs to tend to Sollux... and get a hot outfit change, because she has priorities. When she gets back up, all the living trolls have gathered there. And, well, there's no more delicate way to put this than "Vriska is there too". Oh.
And then Sollux drives the entire Veil to a sun twice the mass of the universe. Yes, at this point even Kanaya has trouble suspending her disbelief.
Personality: Kanaya values harmony and appearance more than many other trolls do. This largely comes from being able to tolerate the daytime, where bright colors and sharp clothing and light suddenly become more appealing than they are in the nighttime that constitutes ordinary Alternian life. Also, since the desert immediately surrounding her ivory tower was so dry, she learned landscaping to shape the area into an oasis, which further cultivated her sensibilities. Exterior design led to gardening and interior design and that lead to fashion, her greatest passion. Although some trolls are capable of appreaciating attractive clothing and will choose out an outfit based on its snazziness, every other troll we know still possesses an outfit. If it's good enough for today, why not tomorrow? And the day after that and so on forever. They reject any further investment in clothing as impractical. Not Kanaya. She diligently sews herself dozens of dresses, both for her own pleasure in their beauty and as a general form of self-expression. This also extends to other kinds of personal aesthetics: Her hair certainly didn't style itself into those distinctive peaks, and she is a devout connoisseur of lipstick. Interestingly enough, the lipstick that she carries constantly also does double duty by transforming into the chainsaw she uses for her landscaping, bringing her aesthetic concerns full circle. All this is really a form of storytelling shorthand for how she actually will do things for their own sake, which helps her maintain an altruistic nature. She'll chainsaw through her mother's corpse and plunge her hands into that bloody mess, she'll put bandages onto wounds that weren't even felt, she'll straighten up piles of broken eight-balls unsolicited.
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She occupies a unique position in the middle of the social order with her jade blood, not blue at all but certainly rare and cool in hue, and as such serves as a sort of bridge between those higher and lower than her. Though before the game she spends more of her time in highblood circles and is accepted as something of an equal to them, she's not in any way at all biased against those of lower blood. In addition, she uses the lowblood terms for things (such as "ablution trap" and "thermal hull") due to valuing their clarity and precision, instead of the obtuse highblood words ("bathtub", "refrigerator"). This makes her perfect for mediating between the two groups. And mediate she does love to do. Her friends call her a meddler; she insists she's just being helpful. To be fair, in the brutal troll culture, most significant forms of emotional attachment are codified into romances--and actually caring about anyone else outside of these exclusive relationships is the "troll disease called friendship". So these tendencies are genuinely viewed as a form of emotional promiscuity, even though her reputation as the community "two-wheel device" for such matters is greatly exaggerated.
There's something of a conflict in her between the more passive attitudes of lowbloods and the violent urges of highbloods. (Every single highblood in the story is involved on one side or the other of a murder at some point.) Though she values harmony to a higher degree than most, she still has a passionate, romantic heart. She's also fairly willing to look the other way where actual misdeeds are concerned - in many cases, she is the only troll who'll stand by her friends in spite of her indiscretions. This in combination with her environment likely is what caused her fascination with rainbow drinkers: Their feeding is shown to have no consequences on its victims, yet they are still allowed to be violent and bloody and beautiful. This is also something her friends mock her for.
Short hair, lumberjacking, eagerly allowing her hands and mouth to get dirty, association with lipstick, unusually artistic taste in fashion, forms of romanticization viewed by her peers with some skepticism--all these things might be putting you in mind of a certain earth demographic group. "Is this girl some kind of alien lesbian or something?" you might ask. And the answer would be yes -- but it's important to keep in mind the word alien lesbian. The funny thing about troll culture is that due to their reproductive system, gender as being a standard criteron in the partner selection process has completely vanished. For many members of the troll cast, even distinguishing a same-sex or opposite-sex relationship by terminology is an entirely foreign idea. Kanaya thus occupies the same slightly awkward position as might, say, a human attracted only to brunettes. It's fairly likely that by her age, she has realized her personal lack of attraction to men. But she never explicitly discusses it in canon with anyone. It's just not a relevant issue: If by bad chance she happens to receive an unwelcome solicitation from a male, she simply should tell him she isn't attracted to him and leave it at that. There's no reason to bring his sex into it, because by the cultural standard that's no reason to reject someone. Furthermore, given the complicated system of troll romance where sufficient emotional investment in a person of almost any kind qualifies a relationship, this doesn't actually preclude all opposite-sex romantic relationships - only sexual ones.
Or rather, potentially sexual ones. Because in spite of her maturity and her many hardships in life, she is six (thirteen) - she may not be a little girl in the sense of Cindy Lou Who, but she certainly is a young girl in the sense of Anne Frank. She flips out when exposed to explicit material, actually. She gets kicks out of trolling people, and she's not very good at it, and other cultures are obscure to her, and she thinks impromptutations is an amusing word. But she also actually performs impromptutation on the boy who stole her crush's cardiovascular system without knowing how he did it. That's pretty much all Kanaya is: A thirteen-year old... alien chainsaw/lipstick lesbian.
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Powers: In her native universe Kanaya Maryam has several powers and enviable devices. The majority of these are dependent on the setting, and so will be lost in the context of the asylum. Firstly, as the others who were destined to play this game, she has a "dream self" living on the celestial body of Prospit, whose consciousness she experiences when asleep. Often while dreaming on this planet clouds are visible that provide knowledge of the future or past not known to her. However, Prospit is not present in Carriero's universe, and even if it were it would break the game pretty thoroughly. So this won't happen.
She is in possession of a "Sylladex", a two-part in-universe inventory system. Her "Captchalogue Deck" is operated by the "Chastity Modus" such that she can select any item and place it onto a card in hyperspace. The card then becomes locked up like a chastity belt, and to retrieve the item she will need to uncover an "Auxiliatrix Key" to unlock it. Her "Strife Deck" on the other hand is equipped with the "Strife Specibus" card, in hyperspace like her captchalogue cards, of "makeupkind". This card contains all the "makeup" weapons in her possession, and she can switch between and wield them all at will. (Before dismissing the utility of this Strife Specibus, recall the reference to her as a "chainsaw/lipstick lesbian".) None of this will be coming with her, though unlike Prospitan dreaming it is fairly open for her to get back.
Her jade blood conveys the ability to tolerate and even enjoy the sun's beams, unlike ordinary nocturnal trolls. In addition, her future history implies that even this will be taken to greater heights. When she is killed -- in a death that would otherwise be permanent, not a death where she's revived by the respawn or such -- she will transform into a pale, fanged creature who lives off of others' blood, awake when ordinary people would sleep. Exactly how a "rainbow drinker", as these funhouse vampires are called, can be killed has yet to be seen in the canon, as well as lots of details about long-term feeding implications; this is an overall clusterheck that will gently be placed onto the shelf for now because an actual in-game vampirization, though inevitable if she stays here long enough, is months and months down the road, and there's likely to be much more canon information revealed in future, considering it's still in progress.
These passive powers are significant enough that she will not be granted any others by the asylum.
Non-powers information requested in this section: One of the main physiological differences between humans and trolls not discussed anywhere above is that trolls are not independently capable of restful sleep, and uninterrupted will experience very stressful dreams invoking ancestral memories of hunting and bloodshed. To alleviate this condition, trolls sleep in "recuperacoons" filled with "sopor slime", which has a mild medicinal effect when taken in by the skin. (When consumed orally its dissociative effects are intensified to the point of becoming psychedelic.) If at all possible, I would prefer for her room in the asylum to have one of these. If a description by the mods is necessary, her own is in the lower right corner of this image.
Appearance: Be the other girl.
As Homestuck's art is thoroughly stylized, a brief summary of her appearance should be helpful for those who find it hard to parse. Anatomically Kanaya strongly resembles a 13-year-old human girl - head, arms, legs, torso, etc. Her divergent features are suspiciously easy to cosplay: A set of horns (with yellow peaks, orange middles, and red bottoms, much like candy corn), pitch black hair, gray skin, and black eyes with yellow sclera ("whites", in humans). Her blood is a jade color, but the pigmentation of her skin is deep enough that it cannot be seen unless she is flushed, and likewise it's not visible in eye veins. Later art shows her with a developing figure, but it seems that she just learned how to not be flat when she learned how to glow in the dark.
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Whatever clothing she is wearing will have the Virgo symbol (♍) on it somewhere at all times. She won't be comfortable wearing any clothing that does not feature her symbol and will embroider it on herself if the situation persists long enough.
Suitability/eligibility: As discussed above in the age section, Kanaya is 6 or rather 13. She grew to this age in a desert populated by heinous broods of the undead, armed solely by the protection of a moth and lipstick, albeit lipstick that transforms into a chainsaw with which she is quite skilled. This in a society where amputation is one of the less unconscionable deeds imaginable. The actual plot of the story features considerable risk of life, limb, and sanity to its young heroes, including to her personally just an hour or two after her canon point; and she comes out of it all fairly intact. In all likelihood she'll fare comparably in Carriero.
The three magic words are: youth, fountain, eternal
Third-Person Sample: "But, oh, darkest darling, I find your suffering... delicious."
Kanaya turned her page with a thrill on her fingers. This was what made the literary medium so much like a double edged sword: There was that moment of suspense between the end of one page and the beginning of the next, but at the same time it was tactile excitement. Also papercuts took place on occassion, but getting just a hint of blood on the pages was more of an unambiguous bonus in her opinion, considering the subject matter. Some editions would even liberally stain their pages, though that was much harder to pull off tastefully. But when it was, well, she certainly didn't object.
So there was no desire on her part to switch to viewing these stories digitally. Oh, the library was larger, there was no disputing that. She had to obtain books one by one, after all, and if she captchalogued them incorrectly she might not have any new reading material for weeks. But nothing could really replace holding a physical well-loved copy in her hands, sitting in a pile of lush throw pillows with genuine late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows.
Though today she had chosen to indulge her habit closer to noon. Later in the day it would be time to play the game, and even if she was going in last on her team, she had to make herself available for the others. They'd likely be getting themselves into all kinds of conflicts already, and she couldn't let Karkat try to handle all of them. He had his own issues about which to worry, poor boy.
"So in other words... you want to treat me as if I were a basket of sweets with limbs? God, I hate you more than the sun and sea and death itself. I'm yours until the stars aren't bright anymore."
And there the masterful tale of the brightest, blackest kind of forbidden passion ended, leaving Kanaya with nothing better to do than close the book and put it back onto the shelf with her other favorites. There were a few more chapters left, but this was the break between Part II: From The Viewpoint Of The Deuteragonist and Part III: Again From The Viewpoint Of The Protagonist. She knew that at any moment now she was likely to start getting trolled, and when she went into the medium, her hive would be kept intact anyway, making it perfectly possible for her to resume later, if there were even an idle moment to entertain these grim fascinations of hers once the game began.
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First-Person Sample: [Hello, asylum! Kanaya is looking brighter than usual today. You're probably figuring she's just happy that they passed a test, but then you'll notice the sewing machine on the desk, upon which her hands are lovingly rested.]
Salutations. I just wanted to let you know that I've reacquired a textile stitching device. Or, as I've heard you are inclined to call it, a sewing machine. This gift is much more generous than I had been led to expect. I would thank Linda. But that would imply a general level of approval of her actions much higher than my current one. Which, just in case anyone is still unclear, is none. Well, perhaps this gift raises it to, say, one percent. Just possibly. [She is just so terribly fond of it. Oh, textile stitching device, how she has missed you.]
Anyway. I'm sorry for rambling again. Now that I possess this: It would be perfectly acceptable for you to come to me soliciting clothing assistance of any sort. Though I still don't have any entirely secure sources of fabric or thread... I do think supplies will need to be hijacked from the arts and crafts room, or scavenged from other clothing. But, yes, please come to me if you'd like anything at all. It'd be a pleasure to actually make something again. Not any kind of burden by any means whatsoever.
That's all. [And with a moment's hesitation - ah, does she have to take her hand off of the thing! why! - she reaches for the button to end her submission and await responses.]
Anything else? FEELINGS I HAVE that will probably be a helpful reference to future readers of this app. Also, are the trolls' IDs going to feature 413 or 612 in any capacity? Please say yes.