Follow TV Tropes

Following

Characters / Homestuck Trolls One

Go To

Main Cast: Kids, Pre-Scratch; Kids, Post-Scratch; Trolls (Lowbloods, Midbloods, Highbloods, Pre-Scratch); Cherubs
Supporting Cast: Guardians & Ancestors; Sprites; Exiles & the Midnight Crew; Agents & Monarchs; The Felt (Leaders); Others
Expanded Universe: Post-Canon; Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff; Hiveswap (Troll Call)

Elsewhere in paradox space, we examine another planet, forgotten by time. But we will strive to remember. What was this planet's name?

Long before the formation of planet Earth, there was a world called Alternia. Alternia was a world ruled by the trolls, a species who, at least externally, look like humans with grey skin, fangs, yellow eyes, and striped horns. The trolls, too, have found Sburb (or rather, Sgrub), and over the course of the adventure we meet twelve troll children who play it together, split into two sessions of six. However, sometime during the course of their quest, something goes very wrong, and they begin a campaign of petty internet harassment against the kids, who they blame for the incident. Despite their monstrous looks, sinister screennames, and character profiles composed of mixes and inversions of traits from one or more of the kids, the trolls mostly aren't that bad; they were introduced properly in their own sub-adventure arc in Act 5 Act 1, also known as Hivebent, before essentially becoming part of the main cast on par with the kids in Act 5 Act 2.


    open/close all folders 

    Aradia 

♈ Aradia Megido ♈

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aradiamegidoalive.png
Excavator

Paradox Space Appearances: "A Friend In Need" | "Secret Sufferer" | "Star of the Ocean" | "Spritecon" | "Relation Shipping" | "Summerteen Romance"

You once had a number of INTERESTS, which in time you have LOST INTEREST IN. You seem to recollect once having a fondness for ARCHEOLOGY, though now have trouble recalling this passion. It nonetheless has led you to find your PRESENT CALLING, which came through the discovery of these MYSTIC RUINS on which you presently stand, and which you recently DESECRATED OUT OF BOREDOM.

A rather spooky female troll who organized the Troll session. Before the beginning of the story, she was murdered by Vriska, by means of a mind-controlled Sollux. However, prototyping her Kernelsprite with the head of a frog statue and her own ghost brought her back to life.

In Sburb, she is the Maid of Time. Her trolltag is "apocalypseArisen".

In life, she allocated her STRIFE SPECIBUS to WHIPKIND, quite like the human Indiana Jones. In death, she mostly relies on telekinesis to fight enemies.

When God Tier Aradia and a memory Aradiabot were in the same log, the Aradiabot used her old typing quirk and Equius' color to distinguish herself. The Aradiabot quickly abandoned the typing quirk, but kept the color.

types with0ut punctuati0n 0r capitalizati0n (th0ugh she s0metimes uses exclamati0n p0ints!) and replaces the letter "O" with "0"
she 0ccasi0nally uses a blank em0tic0n 0_0 though she's als0 dabbled in trying t0 make it l00k happy but it kind 0f l00ks stupid t00 0u0
upon ascension to god tier her "0"s become "o"s and she uses regular emoticons like :)
and she has a more cheerful disposition in general

Universal Tropes

  • Action Girl: Has strong Psychic Powers, beats Vriska to death, and eventually grows so strong that she can selectively stop time.
  • Animal Motifs: Rams, due to being an Aries. Her lusus was a ram-headed kangaroo, and her horns resemble a ram's as well.
  • Because Destiny Says So: Most of what she does is because the voices of the dead tell her to do it. Later this ties into Timey-Wimey Ball, as it's implied Aradia herself is the voices of the dead guiding her. Or, more accurately, her time duplicates.
  • Expendable Clone: Justified. Duplicates created by time travel not resulting in a Stable Time Loop are doomed to die anyways and treated as expendable.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: From a short-lived, rustblooded peasant girl to a god-tiered, immortal Time Master.
  • Hearing Voices: Explicitly one of her powers.
  • "I Am" Song: Got one about all of her iterations in "Temporal Shenanigans".
  • I Hate Past Me: The thousands of Aradiabots from doomed timelines. In the Dreambubbles, she considers them "separate agents" and as such do not follow her orders. She's also creeped out by Equius being in charge of a group of bloodthirsty death-craving robots who are identical to her.
  • Irony: When we first see her, she's basically the token dead girl of the Trolls. As of [S] GAME OVER, she's the only troll who's fully alive until John retcons the timeline.
  • Ironic Death: She has the shortest lifespan of all the trolls, being a rust blood. She's one of the two trolls to gain Immortality by ascending to God Tier, and pre-retcon, is the only troll who didn't die, even though she has died several times.
  • Leitmotif: "psych0ruins"note  and "Arisen Anew".
  • Love Triangle: Close to Sollux (and was all but stated to have been his girlfriend before Vriska made him kill her); lusted after by Equius.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Her discovering Sburb set the End of the World as We Know It in motion. (If linear causality has any meaning with all the Weird Time Shit going on.)
    • apocalypseArisen — Aradia died, and later returned to life. The "Arise" is also an anagram of "Aries," her zodiac sign.
  • Me's a Crowd: Her time powers can be used to create an army of alternate future selves. And unlike Dave (who could theoretically do the same thing, but doesn't because doing so dooms the version of himself making the decision to copy themselves to death), robot-Aradia doesn't care about dying, so she can abuse it relentlessly.
  • Messy Hair: Ghost, robot or God Tier, her hair is a constant tangled mess.
  • Mind over Matter: To spectacular levels. As the lowest on the hemospectrum, she has the strongest Psychic Powers of all the trolls, though she doesn't rely on them nearly as much as Sollux.
  • Necromancer: Her psychic powers allow her to communicate with, call upon and control the spirits of the dead. This is most notable seen in a flashback where she summons the spirits of Vriska's many victims to haunt her.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: She's a ram-looking psychic alien ghost time traveler archaeologist merged with a frog-statue-prototyped sprite who's haunting a robot body fueled by blood which eventually exploded because her soul turned into an immortal fairy goddess of time who is the descendant of a forced apprentice to an mob boss/eldritch demon of time/personification of death and now acts as a dream guide/psychopomp. Yeah.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Delivers one to Vriska at the end of [S] Make Her Pay
  • Out of Focus: Zigzagged; she takes center stage a few times but ends up being not one of the main trolls.
  • Perpetual Frowner: Played straight at first—she's never seen smiling as a ghost, and as a robot, she smiles once.
  • Perpetual Smiler: When alive, she falls under this trope.
  • Psychic Powers: Levitation, telekinesis, hearing the voices of the dead, summoning their spirits, and putting people to sleep.
  • Power Floats: Although being dead helps a bit...and just plain being psychic period once she's not so dead and actually not dead at all.
  • Religious and Mythological Theme Naming:
    • Aradia is, according to the American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, a goddess worshipped by Tuscan witches, portrayed as the messianic daughter of the goddess Diana and the god Lucifernote . Lucifer is a Latin word (from the words lucem ferre), literally meaning "light-bearer", which, in that language, is used as a name for the dawn appearance of the planet Venus, heralding daylight. Venus in Aries is in its detriment, because Aries is the opposite sign to Libra, which Venus rules.
    • "Megido" is a shortened form of "Megiddo", which is what we get the word "Armageddon" from. It's also a place that a number of religions believe the final battle will take place.
  • Shout-Out: She eventually becomes an immortal master of time. Her second leitmotif, "Arisen Anew", even contains the top quote on Timey-Wimey Ball!
  • Stable Time Loop: In a nutshell, how she gains her Crosbytop and discovers Sgrub to begin with. Given that she is the Maid of Time, a lot of her actions revolve around this.
  • Time Master: She is the Maid of Time.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: Aradia uses her time powers rather infrequently but still has them, especially now that she's ascended to god tier. The trope-naming line gets directly quoted in one of her later themes.
  • Uncatty Resemblance: Her lusus, seen in flashback, has curly ram horns like hers.
  • Western Zodiac: Aries. The "arise" part of her handle is an anagram of this.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: Easily the most fatalistic character before her revival, both due to her vantage point as the Maid of Time and due to having lived with voices telling her the future much of her "life". From a memo addressed to her past, future, and alternate selves:
    PAA: and here i was thinking we were finished taking 0rders fr0m v0ices!
    PAA: weve 0nly swapped the imperatives 0f the dead with th0se 0f 0ur future selves
    PAA: wh0 are als0 dead
    FAA: yes it seems that way
    PAA: 0h well it was an enj0yable reprieve fr0m fatalism while it lasted
    PAA: id nearly managed t0 sav0r it
    FAA: an err0r narr0wly av0ided then

Pre-Death Aradia

Ghost Aradia

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ghost_aradia.png

  • Creepy Child: Somewhat. Compared to herself when she was alive, she's much creepier, though it never becomes a problem.
  • Dead All Along: Ghost Aradia is the first iteration introduced.
  • The Eeyore: She is very gloomy.
  • Emotionless Girl: Consistently shows no emotion in this state.
  • Ghost Amnesia: Not only can she no longer remember what it was like to feel anger, she more or less can't remember ever having felt it at all. Bear in mind that the angriest moment in her life was directly prior to her death. She doesn't seem to have forgotten how she died, but her own emotions regarding what happened that day are a rather shocking thing for her to have forgotten.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Clearly has her own agenda while playing the game, although most of what she does is guided by the voices in her head.
  • Prophet Eyes: Like all dead characters.
  • Single-Issue Wonk: The apocalypse. Justified, as it's her job to set it in motion.

Aradiasprite/Aradiabot

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aradiabot.png

  • Battle Couple: With Equius.
  • Casual Kink: Her and Equius's relationship is pretty evocative of BDSM. That and she kisses him passionately after beating the crap out of him.
  • Doomed by Canon: The Aradiabot was shown to explode several months before it happened. Ended up being a Meta Twist however, as Aradia was revived into her God Tiers and the robot exploding was simply a symptom of that.
  • Emotionless Girl: Most of the time, but, unlike Ghost Aradia, she can feel anger.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Prototyping her sprite with a frog was critical to the trolls' success. Why? The Black Queen hates frogs note , and refused to wear her prototyping ring because of it.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: How her doomed temporal duplicates become doomed temporal duplicates.
  • Mood-Swinger:
    • Her emotions tend to be level unless she gets enraged, whereupon she simply goes nuts. At least Sollux simply alternates between "be2t damn hacker ever" and "everythiing 2uck2 god why even try".
    • The ones who show up during Meenah and Vriska's showdown want to "destr0y everything", which Equius thinks is just a malfunction.
  • Not So Stoic:
    • GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT
    • And again later:
      AA: just st0p
      AA: st0p st0p st0p st0p st0p st0p
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: To Vriska.
  • Robot Girl: For a time, she was "resurrected" by possessing a machine that Equius built for her.
  • Snark Knight: She was a lot more cynical and harsh when she was robotic.
    [to Karkat] its n0t like a decisi0n y0u are ab0ut t0 make will invariably lead t0 every problem we have and will ever face as well as the great und0ing itself
    just keep listening to y0ur angry impulses it will all be fine
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: Literally, with Equius.
  • Stealth Pun: Aradiabot is a literal iron maiden, which also fits with her class and aspect, Maid of Time.
  • Twitchy Eye: Her emoticon (0_0) is accompanied with an eye tic in Alterniabound.
  • Unstoppable Rage: Aradiabot, with her restored emotions, finally meets Vriska in the Medium and beats her, both physically and telekinetically, to near death. Eventually it seems like she's just laying into Vriska's unconscious body.
  • Verbal Tic: After prototyping her Kernelsprite with a segment of the Frog Temple and her own spirit, she occasionally lets a "ribbit" slip in her Trollian conversations.

God Tier Aradia

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aradia_godtier.png

  • Above Good and Evil: She doesn't like to think of herself in those terms; however, unlike many examples of this trope, she falls pretty firmly into the category of Good.
  • Badass Boast: "You're done with dying."
  • Bring It: Her grin when facing Bec Noir just screams this.
  • The Bus Came Back: Eventually returns in Act 6 Intermission 3, having become a self-appointed caretaker of the dead.
  • The Chessmaster: One of the better examples among the Trolls. She organizes much of the events of Cascade and, together with Feferi, is the mastermind behind the dreambubbles; however, she willingly steps down afterwards to hold Jack off.
  • Deadpan Snarker: She has a tendency to do this after her revival, though still good-naturedly.
    TA: h0ly shit, i can't see!
    AA: yes thats what being blind means
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
    • Did she just hold a First Guardian in place for hours? Yes she did.
    • In [S] Collide, she was able to timestop Lord English.
  • Dissonant Serenity:
    ARADIA: so please believe that i would never take joy from the destruction of any soul
    ARADIA: however you must realize that it is only by the grace of the horrorterrors that so many have been allowed to continue existing for so long
    ARADIA: they have persisted for ages beyond their time just as he has
    ARADIA: as such it seems to me his rampage is just another kind of housekeeping
    ARADIA: while he rounds the ring undoing the work of the gods we must prepare for his undoing as well
    ARADIA: to ready the manor for the lords arrival so to speak :)
  • Flanderization: Of her unusual attitude towards death - by Act 6 Intermission 5, this has changed from a single quirk to almost the main thing about her.
  • He's Back!: After spending the narrative as an emotionless tool of fate, Aradia emerges from the exploding moon of Derse as a God Tier and immediately faces off with an omnipotent serial killer.
  • Letters 2 Numbers: Averted. She drops the quirk once she is brought back to life for real and opts to talk like this!
  • Ms. Exposition: On a couple of occasions, starting here and here.
  • Nice Girl: Probably the nicest of the trolls, despite her obsession with death.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Ever since her god-tier revival, she has displayed a fascination with death after spending so much time in the dream bubbles, to the point of getting excited over having a "corpse party" for Sollux's dead body. Sollux calls her out on this, and Terezi thinks it's charming and funny she's become such a "D34TH F4NG1RL". As time passes, she just gets even weirder about it.
  • Only Sane Man: Subverted; generally, the more insane a troll, the more unusual their quirk is, and Aradia post-revival has no quirk at all beyond not capitalizing anything and speaks perfectly normally. Then it turns out that she's also crazy, she's just polite about it.
  • Perky Goth: Despite an ongoing (and seemingly escalating) obsession with death, Aradia is much cheerier than her previous selves.
  • Power Gives You Wings: Like all God Tier trolls, Aradia now has fairy wings.
  • Put on a Bus: She stayed behind at the Green Sun to delay Jack Noir.
  • Slasher Smile:
    • Upon Jack Noir accidentally waking up her dreamself and causing her to God Tier, her smile can only be defined as this.
    • She pulls another one much later.
    • Later, it's pretty much her default expression.
  • Take a Third Option: Aradia has a choice: she can either let Jack go and die now, or hold him in place as long as she can and die when she eventually runs out of power. Her solution? Dodge into Jack and teleport to the Green Sun.
  • When She Smiles: As both a ghost and a robot, Aradia is a Perpetual Frowner, but post-resurrection, she's rarely not seen smiling—and it's usually adorable (with the exceptions of the rather creepy grins she sports in parts of Act 6).
  • While Rome Burns: Aradia seems quite amused by the Green Sun's collapse into a black hole, even as the Furthest Ring is being shredded around her.

    Tavros 

♉ Tavros Nitram ♉

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/adiosToreador_7176.gif
Unfledged
With his robotic legs: 

Paradox Space Appearances: "Headed for Stardom" | "Secret Sufferer" | "Relation Shipping" | "Summerteen Romance"

You are known to be heavily arrested by FAIRY TALES AND FANTASY STORIES. You have an acute ability to COMMUNE WITH THE MANY CREATURES OF ALTERNIA, a skill you have utilized to CAPTURE AND TRAIN a great many. They are all your friends, as well as your warriors, which you pit in battle through a variety of related CARD AND ROLE PLAYING GAMES. You used to engage in various forms of MORE EXTREME ROLEPLAYING with some of your other friends before you had an accident.

A rather awkward troll with huge horns who is paralyzed from the waist down; he has a childish disposition and upbeat personality regardless.

In Sburb, he is the Page of Breath. His trolltag is "adiosToreador".

He has allocated his STRIFE SPECIBUS with the LANCEKIND ABSTRATUS.

For a brief period of time later in the story he became Jane's sprite, along with Vriska. Came Back Wrong applies heavily here. See that character's section for tropes applying to it.

tYPES WITH INVERSE CAPITALIZATION, uSES COMMAS AS PERIODS, aND, uHHH,,,,,,
uSES SMILIES WITH CURLY BRACKETS FOR HORNS, }:)

  • Accidental Murder:
    • He runs over his lusus while talking to Nepeta.
    • Also of Grandpa Harley, though, due to cultural differences, he doesn't realize that this is a bad thing.
  • Actual Pacifist:
  • Animal Motifs: Bulls, due to being a Taurus. His Trollian handle is adiosToreador, his lusus is a small fairy-winged bull, his horns are huge steer-like ones, and his name is a light modification of "taurus".
  • Apologizes a Lot: Tends to apologize often for things like bEING BORING, though, notably, he refuses to apologize to Vriska for having a disability.
  • Artificial Limbs: Equius builds him some robot legs.
  • Back from the Dead: Gets resurrected via prototyping twice. The first has him combine with Vriska briefly, while the second sees him prototyped individually, at least until he's tricked into grabbing GCAT.
  • The Beastmaster: He can control any animal. This extends to imps and ogres. This extends to Bec.
  • Beige Prose:
    • He's a very nervous speaker which, ignoring his faltering "uhs", results in his words manifesting as innocuously and concisely as possible. When he's not indulging in god-awful rapping, anyway.
    • Although his later chat logs with Jade seem to indicate that he becomes more verbose when he's feeling confident with himself. Or at least constantly assuring himself that he's confident.
  • Blood from the Mouth: After facing Vriska, Terezi finds him sporting this trope.
  • Blow You Away: Although his powers are not nearly as strong as John's, they have the same Aspect. Tavros isn't shown making use of the windy side of the Breath aspect very often, but after an eternity of being Vriska's plaything he's managed to master the bond side of it.
  • Break the Cutie: It started with his paralysis and Vriska's constant abuse, but what really broke him was when Vriska demanded that he Mercy Kill her and he couldn't bring himself to do it.
  • Butt-Monkey: Quite the Butt Monkey. He isn't good at rapping, trolling, or even being confident in himself. He also undergoes a disproportionate amount of psychological and physical abuse.
  • Characterization Marches On:
    • Compare his smug first appearance to his more optimistic personality seen later on.
    • Parodied when he shows back up Post-Retcon with his own army he amassed through friendship rather than mind control, wherein Vriska finally admits he did something genuinely useful and helpful with no reservations, and he proceeds to rub it in her face for several panels while doing multiple corny dances. It is pretty much an effective reversal of their traditional character relationship.
  • Cheerful Child: Stays pretty upbeat despite a lot of things. Later eventually starts emoting more at the end of the Troll's session as it gets worse.
  • Chew Toy: The poor guy gets forced to walk off a cliff, paralyzed from the waist down, gets his legs chainsawed off, has a Tsundere Manipulative Bitch frenemy, and gets run through with his own spear.
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: After he and Vriska die and become matesprits, it becomes clear that he doesn't like having John around and tends to act distastefully towards him. John, however, is oblivious to this.
  • Cool Chair: It's a Flying Car!
  • Cyborg: After their session of Sburb, Equius makes him some robot legs that allow him to walk...once Kanaya chainsawed off his old ones.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: His first attempt at Communing with Bec show the differences between the two cultures. The way he saw things, he was protecting Jade and her lusus from an intruder. Too bad the "intruder" he was saving Jade from was her grandfather.
  • The Dog Bites Back: After quite some time of being pushed around by Vriska (though she does loosen up on him a little), he up and quits helping her.
  • Duel to the Death: Embarked to have one with Vriska. When it finally happens, since he's facing a God Tier opponent, it goes about as well as you'd expect.
  • Entitled to Have You: Initially towards Jade, and lately towards Vriska. This backfires spectacularly with Jade (as his saving her life turns out to give him a lot less leverage over her given that he killed her grandfather in the same stroke); Vriska, being Vriska, steamrollers right over Tavros the way she pretty much always has.
  • Extreme Doormat: Vriska paralyzes him and he still lets her boss him around. At one point she blames him for not being able to walk. (Actually, that particular instance is less Tavros being a doormat as it is Vriska being mean, considering she makes similar remarks to Terezi.) He is incredibly shy, and the trope is even mentioned in canon when Terezi finds his body and says "Adios, sweet Toreadoormat." Once he and Vriska start dating in Act 6, it's played a bit looser, but still in effect.
  • Famous Ancestor: He is a descendant of the Summoner, who was the one who ended up slaying Mindfang (and was her matesprit), and led the rebellion that resulted in an order to exile all troll adults off Alternia. A far cry from then and now.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Although he's allergic to cats.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: His trolltag is Spanish for "goodbye, Bullfighter".
  • Green-Eyed Monster: He does not take the fact that John used to date Vriska well.
  • Grew a Spine:
    • He finally stands up to Vriska and goes to fight her after he discovers she created Bec Noir. It doesn't go too well for him.
    • Later in the dream bubbles, he stands up to Vriska and flies off in the middle of their treasure hunt while flipping her off with both hands, ironicly using the "fly, pupa, fly" line that Vriska used to mock him so many times with as he flies off. And it sticks, as he later shows up with an even larger ghost army than the one Vriska and Aranea made with their mind control powers that he gathered all on his own and rightfully tells her to suck it as she breaks down in disbelief that he actually did something useful.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: How his dreamself dies. Kanaya does this to him as well to allow his legs to be replaced with robotic prosthetics.
  • Happy Dance: After finally scoring a major success of his own and forcing Vriska to admit that he did so, Tavros launches into four pages of silly, awesome and extremely happy dancing.
  • Handicapped Badass: Implied by the fact that he went from living on Alternia to reaching the top of his echeladder while unable to use his legs the entire time.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: His initially weaksauce ability to commune with Alternian fauna also applies to the hordes of imps, ogres, basilisks, cyclopses and so forth. You think about that for a second. It turns out his ability also affects the lusus naturae, the guardian creatures that look after each young troll. Think about THAT for a second. Unlike Vriska, his powers can be used on different species, so he can control Bec. Think about that for a second. He can possibly control any creature that is part animal, such as Jack. Tavros could have prevented his and the other trolls' deaths quite easily if he put his mind to it.
  • Henpecked Husband: Towards Vriska in the Dreambubbles, at least until he decides to leave her.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold:
    • The facade is rather transparent, though. He ran out of mean things to say after his seventh line of dialogue. He seems to be a lot more friendly when he's talking to Jade.
    • He's a straight up Jerkass to John, though, especially since John's making a bad first impression by putting on the engagement ring meant for Vriska and acting like total Jerkass back to him.
  • Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Oh how the list runs on.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard:
    • He attempts to troll Dave. It does not go well.
    • Later, he gets stabbed by his own lance after charging right into Vriska's hands.
  • Hope Spot: Shared with Kanaya. It doesn't work.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Vriska kills him, with his own lance.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He's really bad at trolling, to the point where Dave countertrolled him without as much as a huff. He eventually ends up dropping all of the pretense entirely.
  • Innocent Innuendo: All throughout his conversation with Gamzee and in some lines when he trolls Dave.
  • Interspecies Romance: He had a one-sided redrom crush on Jade.
  • Informed Attribute: He tells Jade that the only time that he really enjoyed Sgrub was when he was asleep, but he seems to be having fun in the Land of Sand and Zephyr. Of course then Vriska was yelling at him and then it got awkward.
  • Ironic Echo:
  • Jive Turkey:
  • Leitmotif: dESPERADO ROCKET CHAIRS,
  • Love Martyr: Towards Vriska, after they die and become matesprits.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: How he informs Karkat that he just became paralyzed.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The Feminine Boy to Vriska's Masculine Girl. Admittedly they're something of a deconstruction.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Tavros is Greek for bull.
    • Alternatively, a reference to Tarvos Trigaranus, a bull god.
    • He named his self-esteem Rufio, which fits into his fascination with Pupa Pan.
    • "Nitram" is "Martin" written backwards, and was suggested after a fan's name in real life, similar to Gamzee's.
    • Toreador is an alternate way of saying torero, or bullfighter...but the more commonly-used term for them in America is matador. His trolltag, adiosToreador, sounds like final words from a dying bull.
  • Mercy Kill: Vriska was, at one point, trying to encourage him to pull one on herself, after Aradia was done with her, so her real self wouldn't bleed to death on her Quest Bed.
  • Magikarp Power: Sadly unrealized while he was still alive. As a Page, Tavros had the potential to become unimaginably strong, but Vriska's bullying and his meek personality helped prevent this. However, his pre-retcon instance finally manages to overcome this by mastering The Power of Friendship to the point that he is able to form an enormous army through words alone, something even Vriska couldn't achieve.
  • Mythical Motifs: He's associated with fairies, in addition to a bull motif. His lusus is a small fairy-winged bull, and his hive is decorated with fairy posters.
  • Nice Guy: As a Hero of Breath, this is to be expected. He's timid, but that doesn't stop him from being polite... or eventually realising his title in a way that allows him to gather a massive army through friendliness and words with little, if not any psychic intervention. Karkat notes that he actually seems to be incapable of hate.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Tavros killed Jade's Grandpa when he "communed" with Bec to save Jade when she accidentally shot herself as a toddler. In his defense, he didn't/doesn't know what a grandpa is and thought the old guy was an intruder. On the other hand he did save Jade's life and she forgave him pretty quickly.
  • No Indoor Voice: His whispers are loud enough that he can be heard from long distances.
  • Not Disabled In VR: When characters are warped into the videogame Sgrub, there's a mechanic where any time a player sleeps, they assume control of a "dream body"—a completely healthy version of themselves that can also fly. Tavros is paraplegic (and has dreamed of flying even before he lost the use of his legs) so when he enters Sgrub, he spends as much time flying around in his dream body as possible.
  • Oblivious to Love:
  • Phrase Catcher: "Adios, Torea(word starting with the syllable 'dor')." From Vriska mostly.
  • Playing with Fire: After his death, he seems to have this power as a Brick Joke.
  • The Pollyanna: Read a little more, and you'll see why he's The Woobie. But despite all those things, he's usually smiling.
  • The Power of Friendship: While the Breath aspect mainly manifests in aerokinesis, friendliness, bonding and teamwork play important roles as well and Tavros is no exception. He's one of the nicest trolls seen and his pre-retcon self manages to amass a ghost army of proportions Vriska couldn't dare to reach simply by convincing trolls to join.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The role-playing and card games he uses animals in are based on Pokémon, and the animals he uses are based on the famous monsters from Alien.
    • Tavros' strife specibus, his hive (and his Land) having windmills, his Spanish trolltag, and his over-idealistic way of thinking all point towards Tavros being the series' Don Quixote. Hell, his battle with Vriska could be described as tilting at windmills!
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Has a lot more confidence in his trolling abilities than actual talent. Subverted it's not even funny. Literally.
  • Smug Snake:
    • Fans instantly pegged him as this when they first got a look at his amazingly-punchable face, only to discover in late Act 4 that he wasn't actually such a bad guy...and then to learn in the Hivebent arc that he's—well, just see The Woobie below.
    • It's later zigzagged. He can be a possessive jerkass (re: his interactions with John and Jade), but he can also be genuinely nice (re: his interactions with Dave, Aradia and Gamzee) and so he sometimes fits the trope.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • Why is he such a Woobie? Because he's being bullied.
    • Tavros has his legs replaced with robotic ones. He becomes a mechanical bull.
  • Take That!:
    • The Author has indicated that his perpetually-victimized woobie status is partly a Take That! at some of the early criticism by the Fan Dumb (with Vriska playing the part of the critics.)
    • Although he did also say he might have done it anyway, because fans are either sympathetic to him or amused, and it's important that a story invokes an "emotional response" in its readers.
  • The Roleplayer: Tavros' character in FLARP was based around his personality and interests rather than being particularly effective in combat. This did not end well when he was pitted against Killer Game Master Vriska. However, it seems as though his class of choice only becomes formidable at very high levels...
  • Throw the Dog a Bone:
    • In the afterlife, he gets to meet an alternate Dave Strider, whom he apparently thinks is a cool guy, and engages in a one-sided slam-poetry battle whilst bringing incendiaries which require a licensed physician. While Dave is less than enthused about the whole thing, Tavros seems happy.
    • Tavros' afterlife in general ends up being pretty much better than the Trauma Conga Line that was his life.
    • As the crowning example, after a lifetime plus more of abuse from (pre-retcon) Vriska, he finally manages to best her when he gathers the ghost army of her dreams on his own simply by convincing people to join. (Post-retcon) Vriska is unable to comprehend that the Page of Breath has finally unlocked his hidden potential.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: He acts pretty dickish to Jade just after she enters the Medium, mainly because he thinks that's what being confident is all about. And when John shows up, he's pretty much a complete ass to him. Slightly justified in that he's dating Vriska, but he's still pretty negative about it.
  • Victory Dance: After Vriska's shock at him assembling a huge ghost army, he does a variety of these, such as a Charleston and a Shuffle.
  • Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: His typing quirk uses a lot of commas, often several in a row.
  • Western Zodiac: Taurus.
  • Willfully Weak: Tavros refuses to use his powers of communion to force the imps to carry him up to his gate. He does later use his powers, probably because his only other option is killing the imps.
  • Word-Salad Humor: His attempts to troll Dave are filled with this. In fact, his very first lines are:
    AT: hEYYY,
    AT: fIRST, oK, i THINK YOU'RE AWFUL,
    AT: lET'S PUT THAT FACT ON THE TABLE WHERE WE CAN BOTH SEE IT,
    AT: nOW YOU HAVE BEEN PRIMED FOR THE DIGESTIVE RUINATION THAT'S ABOUT TO TAKE PLACE, aND THE COMPREHENSIVE SOILING OF THE LAUNDRY ENVELOPING YOUR PERSON,

    Sollux 

♊ Sollux Captor ♊

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/twinArmageddons_7509.gif
Cynic

Paradox Space Appearances: "Killswitch ENGAGED" | "Secret Sufferer" | "Spritecon" | "Summerteen Romance"

You are apeshit bananas at computers, and you know ALL THE CODES. All of them. You are the unchallenged authority on APICULTURE NETWORKING. And though all your friends recognize your unparalleled achievements as a TOTALLY SICK HACKER, you feel like you could be better. It's one of a number of things you SORT OF BEAT YOURSELF UP ABOUT for NO VERY GOOD REASON during sporadic and debilitating BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS. You have a penchant for BIFURCATION, in logic and in life. Your mutant mind is hounded by the psychic screams of the IMMINENTLY DECEASED.

A moody troll afflicted with bipolar mood swings with an incredible knack for hacking.

In Sburb, he is the Mage of Doom. His trolltag is "twinArmageddons".

He has not allocated his STRIFE SPECIBUS with any KIND ABSTRATUS as, after all, a high-level psionic has no need for weapons.

type2 wiith no cap2 but u2e2 punctuatiion. replace2 the letter "S" wiith "2", double2 the letter "I" whenever iit2 u2ed, liike2 two replace the word2 "to" and "too" with "two".
refer2 two friiend2 wiith repetiitiive letter2 iin theiir name2 by tho2e letters.
(kk for karkat, ff for feferii, etc.)
for a brief peri0d after l0sing his visi0n-tw0f0ld and his fangs he als0 l0ses his lisp and replaces hi o's with 0's like Aradia did.
when half-dead, he types 0 and O in alternating 0rder in a co0l but c0nfusing way O_0.

  • Ace Pilot: Shows Improbable Piloting Skills using his Psychic Powers to steer himself and the other trolls toward the Green Sun. While blind, taking direction from Terezi and Karkat, and possibly bleeding to death under the strain using said powers.
  • Achievements in Ignorance: While he isn't stupid in any sense of the word, he ended up leaving his Dream Bubble, which is essentially the afterlife, because he didn't know he couldn't.
    Aradia: Hey! Why are you out of your dream bubble?
    Sollux: am ii not 2uppo2ed two do that?
  • Animal Motifs: Bees, probably due to his blood color. His Organic Technology computers are giant beehives swarming with insects.
  • Back from the Dead:
    • Sort of. Thanks to his unique brain, he ended up with two dream selves, one for Derse and one for Prospit; the current Sollux is actually the Derse dream self.
    • And then again, when prototyped with Eridan to form Jake's sprite, Erisolsprite.
    • It's averted once the retcons begin. Vriska doesn't want to prototype his corpse under the assumption that it would take him away from travelling dream bubbles with Aradia, a fate she knows he enjoys. Of course, she doesn't actually know that his bifurcated nature would simply revive the corpse as a sprite and leave his half-ghost fully alive (and blind), as what happened originally with Erisolsprite.
  • Berserk Button: Voices of the imminently deceased. He goes nuclear when he suspects Clubs Deuce of being a spirit trying to bug him.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Subverted—he's by no means evil, and, girlfriend(s) killings aside, he's actually considerably more relaxed now that he doesn't have visions, voices, a lisp, and a bifurcated brain to deal with.
  • Black Magic: In essence, Sollux's ~ATH codes are curses that center around doom and destruction. Of the two ~ATH codes presented, one causes the death of all the trolls' guardians while also dooming anyone Karkat will ever meet while the other was created to summon Lord English.
  • Blessed with Suck: He can hear the voices of those doomed to die. It's just that THEY. WON'T. SHUT. UP!!!
  • Blind Mistake: While oscillating between Kismesis and Matesprit for Gamzee he's actually looking at the Lil Cal puppet, which confuses the hell out of Karkat.
  • Blind Seer: Inverted. "...unlike the typical sightless prophet of doom, you are gifted with VISION TWOFOLD." However, he predicts that eventually the universe will make him one so that he can see visions of the future properly. Furthermore, when he goes blind, he loses his ability to hear the voices of the doomed, which he takes to mean nobody else is in danger.
  • Blood from the Mouth:
    • Shown here, after getting KO'd by Eridan.
    • Also shows up in [S] CASCADE when he's "piloting" the asteroid to the Green Sun.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: In the past, Vriska used her mind control abilities to make him murder Aradia.
  • Cartwright Curse:
    • Aradia blows up right before his eyes, and then Feferi gets killed.
    • And of course, Vriska used him to kill Aradia in the first place.
  • Cassandra Truth:
    • Sollux is the one who initially learned of the game's true implications. Few believed him until it was too late. He's a little bit tweaked at this.
    • He even manages to pull this on himself. In a future memo and sees that he's acting like he's in trouble and assumes in the future he'll just mess with Karkat. In the future, this is actually Sollux moments before dying.
  • Chick Magnet and Dude Magnet: Manages to be both due to Trolls being inherently bisexual; he's been in two actual relationships (Aradia and Feferi), Terezi has flirted with him and Eridan once attempted to get into a kismissisitude with him (although it's possible that he was only doing that because he was desperate).
  • Cool Shades: 3D Glasses, specifically.
  • The Cracker: Serial Escalation style mixed with Rule of Funny. His hacks make computers explode and place curses on the victims and he's good enough to adapt alien technology and software into warping reality. Also, he makes a program that allows Terezi to troll Doc Scratch, who doesn't even have an account. And uses a typewriter. And lives on the moon.
  • Death is Cheap: Sollux has died 3 times and his latest revival was basically him walking out of the afterlife because he didn't know he couldn't.
  • Determinator: He managed to get Feferi into the game while he and the rest of Alternia were being Mind Raped to death by the cry of an Eldritch Abomination.
  • Doomed Protagonist:
    • Sollux has forseen his blindness and subsequent death since his first appearances in the comic, and his recent interaction with Aradia in the afterlife confirms that he will die.
    • Subverted in that he keeps hanging around after prophesying his own death twice. On the other hand, it's possible only one of those deaths actually "counted".
  • Duality Motif: Being the Gemini troll, he has this in heaps. He has mismatched eyes (one red, one blue; later one black, one white), vision twofold (normal eyesight and psychic prophecy), two dreamselves (one Prospit, one Derse), bipolar mood swings, mismatched shoes, and bicolored eyewear. He dies twice and becomes a half-ghost.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Gets two: first when he withstands the Vast Glub in order to get Feferi into the medium, and again in [S] Cascade, when he strains himself to the absolute limit to psychically hurl the troll's meteor to the Green Sun. Apparently, it gained so much momentum, it keeps going even after he dies. And the guy is still alive in a sense.
  • Eye Beams: Uncontrolled when he eats mind honey, but possibly under his control at other times. It doubles as a Wave-Motion Gun.
  • Eyeless Face: After his duel with Eridan. They aren't gone, just black, but the effect is similar. Later, he gets a white one, too.
  • Eyepatch of Power: Currently wears one over each eye (due to blindness), their colors matching those of his old glasses.
  • Fang Thpeak:
    • Cause of that lisp mentioned in his intro.
    • He loses his lisp after getting his fangs knocked out, and appears to be much happier for it.
      TA: lips, lips, lipsssss. w0w, it feels s0 great t0 say that w0rd!
  • Fashionable Asymmetry: One shoe is black, the other white. His sunglasses are mismatched too, although that's probably just to match his eyes.
  • Foreshadow: The Ψiioniic died getting the Empress's ship back to Alternia and it looks like Sollux is going to die getting the asteroid to the Green Sun.
  • Glasses Pull:
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual:He starts wearing Feferi's goggles after he goes blind. Odd though that may seem, he's never before needed extra protection so much for that part of his face. Probably for sentimental value over anything else, as Feferi is killed by Eridan shortly before he is blinded by the latter.
  • Got Me Doing It: After dying and being revived as a dreamself by Feferi, he's sort of taken on Feferi's penchant for fish puns and glubbing, though not as often as her.
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • Does it by sending the Trolls and their meteor to the Green Sun faster than the speed of light. But see Unexplained Recovery.
    • And ultimately averted as he decides to stay behind at the Green Sun and move on, staying dead for real.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: Very much so, as pointed out by Terezi:
    GC: SORT OF TH3 W4Y YOU 4R3 4BOUT YOURS3LF
    TA: what do you mean.
    GC: HOW YOU G3T MOP3Y 4ND YOUR3 4LW4YS TH3 V1CT1M OF SOM3TH1NG 4ND HOW SOM3T1M3S YOU TH1NK YOU SUCK WH3N YOU R34LLY DONT
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Pretty grumpy and rude most of the time. Gets fussed at by Feferi & Aradia a lot for it, but he's not really that bad in the end, much like Karkat.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: The universe is playing him for the biggest chump, he's totally aware of it, and every time he tries to get out of it Aradia's there to remind him that he can't. He only adapted the game in the first place because he was under the impression it would save the Crapsack World he lives in. He's justifiably bitter about everything that's happened and thinks that they will die no matter what. Also sets up the network for the other trolls' trolling attempts on the kids, even though he says he only did that to get everyone to stop bothering him.
  • Leitmotif: The La2t Frontiier, a fast-paced, hyperactive track that incorporates electric guitar, drum, and (what sounds like) pipa.
  • Mad Oracle: Bipolar Prophet
  • Meaningful Name:
    • He made a computer code that may depend on two universes ending.
    • His actual name is based on Castor and Pollux, twins in Roman/Greek mythology that were transformed into the constellation Gemini.
    • Also, "Sol" and "Lux" mean "sun" and "light" in Latin.
  • Mind over Matter: His psionic powers, which are apparently a natural power of his blood caste.
  • Mood-Swinger: Between complete apathy and rage to rival Karkat's. Though once he loses the lisp and dying voices in his head he stabilizes.
  • Mortality Grey Area: As part of his Duality Motif, when he sacrifices himself, he doesn't become a ghost like the rest of the cast would; he becomes a "half-ghost", separate from his dead body with the powers of a ghost and a blank white eye in addition to an empty black eye from being struck blind shortly before his death. When Gamzee chucks his corpse into a Kernelsprite, Sollux's ghost parts are stripped, rendering him fully alive again.
  • Nerds Are Sexy: Aradia and Feferi certainly think so (though Feferi's more attracted to him for his grouchiness).
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • He gave a computer code that would curse everyone he knew to the one guy most likely to execute it in a fit of blind, stupid rage.
    • He adapted Sgrub after being led to believe that it would kill its players but save the world, intending to make a Heroic Sacrifice. Of course, it actually does the exact opposite.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: His relationships thus far have been Aradia (loves ghosts and death, and was actually dead when introduced) and Feferi (was raised by an Eldritch Abomination) and he's hinted to be attracted to Gamzee, of all people.
  • Only Sane Man: Sollux is the only troll that is disturbed by the omens surrounding Sgrub and is also the first person to call out (Vriska) for letting thousands of ghosts be killed by Lord English.
  • Opt Out: Decides to do one after he returns as a half-ghost to the asteroid with the surviving trolls, Dave and Rose. He could stick around, but he's tired of the adventure and would prefer to run around with Aradia through dream bubbles.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different:
    • He can be considered this after leaving his dream bubble. Karkat calls him a "half ghost", but he's not the most reliable source.
    • And when the ghost/dead half of his soul became part of Erisolsprite, the other half of his soul became fully alive (and completely blind) again.
  • Power Incontinence: This is why it is NOT a good idea for powerful psionics like Sollux to consume mind honey. Both times he ends up eating it somehow, people he is close with die.
  • Prophecy Twist:
    • For the reader. Early on, Sollux predicts he'll die twice, and that he'll go blind before he dies. At first it looks like the prophecy was fufilled with Sollux's death by the Vast Glub (where he was replaced with his Dersite Dream Self) and the death of his Propitian Dream Self by Jack Noir. Future events would then suggest that neither of those deaths actually counted. When Sollux was blinded by Eridan, several readers interpreted it as the first "death" in his prophecy and that he would be killed later on. While he did die from a Heroic Sacrifice, he had already left the afterlife (due to Achievements in Ignorance and Timey-Wimey Ball).
    • It seems that Sollux's prophecy doesn't include Dream Self deaths or God-Tier ascensions. As such, it's hard to say if he died once or twice for the purposes of the prophecy - the Sollux that piloted the meteor to the Green Sun was technically his Dersite Dream Self.
  • Psychic Powers: In terms of raw offensive potential, Sollux is by far the strongest of the trolls gifted with psionics. However, he isn't capable of mind control.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni:
    • Thanks to his eyes and BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS, Sollux plays this trope by himself.
    • After losing the lisp and no longer having the voices of the dead in his head, he becomes very calm and collected, essentially becoming the blue to Karkat's red.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ditches Vriska and her crew when Tavros does, as he can't stand what they are doing. Then he leaves with both Feferi and Nepeta.
  • Stealth Pun: Sollux's eyes after becoming half-dead are white and black, matching his shoes, as he has one foot in the grave.
  • The Stoic: He reacts surprisingly well to getting blinded and getting his teeth knocked out.
  • Technicolor Eyes: Alone among the trolls aside from Terezi's damaged eyes, Sollux's eyes are solid blue and red, with no pupils. Each eye can alternate between colors too. Later when Eridan injures him, they turn black and he goes blind. When his dreambubble self shows up at the Green Sun, his right eye is white and the left is still black, and he regains part of his vision.
  • Uncatty Resemblance: His BICYCLOPS has one red eye and one blue eye like he does.
  • Unexplained Recovery: He somehow still exists outside of the afterlife even with his real body dead (although technically that was the body of his Dersite Dream Self). Possibly explained by his Doom powers (which are still ambiguously unknown), and, regardless, he still plans to stay at the Green Sun and move on, in essence staying dead.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Gets manipulated by Aradia into making Sburb. When he finds out the truth he tries to call it off, but it's just too late.
  • Western Zodiac: Gemini.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: He is the Mage of Doom.

    Karkat 

♋ Karkat Vantas ♋

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/carcinoGeneticist_5875.gif
Signless

Paradox Space Appearances: "John's Birthday" | "Con Faire" | "Her Pale Passions" | "Night at the 100dseum" | "Soul-Fraying Games" | "Garbage Day" | "The Mortician" | "Secret Sufferer" | "Three out of Five Hats" | "Spritecon" | "Summerteen Romance"

You have a passion for RIDICULOUSLY TERRIBLE ROMANTIC MOVIES AND ROMCOMS. You should really be EMBARRASSED for liking this DREADFUL CINEMA, but for some reason you are not. You like to program computers, but you are NOTORIOUSLY PRETTY AWFUL AT IT. Your programs invariably damage the machines on which they are executed, which is just as well, since you like to believe you specialize in COMPUTER VIRUSES. When you mature, you aspire to join the ranks of the most lethal members of your society, the THRESHECUTIONERS.

An ambitious, misanthropic young troll who is almost always angry at everyone, most especially at himself.

He is the Knight of Blood and is the leader of the Troll Session. His trolltag is "carcinoGeneticist".

He has allocated his STRIFE SPECIBUS with the SICKLEKIND ABSTRATUS. He was the first troll to be introduced, both visually and over Pesterchum, and is the "main" Troll protagonist.

TYPES WITH PUNCTUATION AND ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME, AND PAYS METICULOUS ATTENTION TO SPELLING AND GRAMMAR.
ABUSES PEOPLE IN OVERLY ELABORATE WAYS, AND OCCASIONALLY USES NUBBY HORNED EMOTES D:B
LATER USES HIS OWN BLOOD COLOR WHEN TALKING TO HIMSELF THROUGH MEMOS.
(on rare occasions he has, surprisingly, been capable of whispering in lower case.)

  • Achievements in Ignorance: Vriska muses at one point that Karkat might have actually been exactly the leader the trolls needed - so whiny and obsessed with being respected that he got two teams of antagonistic, feud-prone trolls to work together in the interest of shutting him up.
  • Afraid of Blood: In large quantities. He fainted when he saw Kanaya cut off Tavros's legs.
  • A God Am I:
    • Karkat tries to give John one of these speeches. It doesn't go the way he expects.
    • Later on he tries it out on Jade and gets told off by his own future self.
  • Animal Motifs: Crabs, due to being a Cancer. His Trollian handle is carcinoGeneticist, his lusus is a huge bipedal crab monster, and he eventually takes to using a sickle shaped like a crab claw.
  • Anime Hair: Less so than Gamzee and Eridan, but still a good example. It somehow makes a right angle.
  • Alien Blood: Inverted. Of all the trolls on his planet, he is the only one with human-like "candy-red" blood. This mutation actually takes him off the blood scale entirely. To avoid complications, he makes his blood color a mystery and favors an anonymous gray instead.
  • Angrish: A couple of times, but in A6A6I5, a conversation with him and Vriska culminates in "LJSDLKFJASDLALKJASDKLSHDKLAHSFKLASHB".
  • Battle Couple: With Terezi (for a loose interpretation of "couple", since they may or may not have ever been officially together), displayed in full during [S]: Make Her Pay.
  • Berserk Button:
  • Big "NO!": With Karkat, it's hard to tell, but when Gamzee lost it...
    CG: OH MY GOD
    CG: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
  • Blessed with Suck: Lampshaded by Karkat himself near the end of the comic. Being called Knight of Blood sounds cool, but Karkat never discovers any useful powers or benefits.
  • Break the Cutie: The events from when Eridan kills Feferi and Kanaya onwards have not been taken well by Karkat.
  • Broken Pedestal: Possibly with Bec Noir - he recognizes Jack (assuming him to be his Jack), and looks absolutely devastated. It makes sense considering that's one of the few people that he really connected with.
  • Can't Catch Up: By the time his group enters the B2 session, every single human character has become a God Tier, all the other trolls have at least some sort of noticeable special ability, and the antagonists are all either god tiers themselves or empowered by the omnipotence-granting green sun or both. Karkat is... good at shouting, and that's about it. Karkat himself complains that he and Kanaya are nearly the only characters left who can't fly.
  • Cannot Spit It Out:
    • Early in the story, Karkat refuses to elaborate on anything he tells John, since from his perspective he's already told everything and is sick of repeating himself. Even though telling those things at that early (late for Karkat) point would mean he wouldn't have to repeat himself. Ironically, midway through he points out that John gave him the very same treatment when he started trolling, in John's future...
    • He also clearly has a problem talking about recent tragedies or emotional events. Even when people are simply worried about him and want to know what happened or is happening, he is frequently in too much pain to even let them know, let alone talk about anything in depth. Seen unable to tell past Feferi about her own future death, unable to tell past Eridan about his own future murders, at least beyond "HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO THEM" and "I THOUGHT YOU LOVED HER", and unable to tell John about Vriska's death and what happened to Gamzee.
  • Cassandra Truth: Winds up on the wrong end of these constantly, due to him being the only troll who bothers to keep up with events with his time-traveling memos. Takes a heartbreaking turn when he's being playfully teased by friends in the past who have presently gone insane or gotten killed.
  • Clone Jesus: Well, not quite, he was cloned with half of his species' Christ analog, but hey, close enough.
  • Closet Key: To Dave in the post-retcon timeline, who discovers that he's not straight through his feelings for Karkat.
  • Control Freak: He's frequently this, best shown when he usurps Terezi's position as sole leader and convinces her to let them be co-leaders (only because she didn't care about the leadership in the first place). He then completely takes over everyone's session by electing himself leader and constantly yells at them to do what he says. Which, to his credit, allows them to work together to win the session.
  • Contemplate Our Navels: Gets pretty introspective when he's traveling through the Furthest Ring, mostly because of meeting dead trolls and dead Alternate Timeline trolls.
  • Cosmic Plaything: ...and how! He's got a laundry list of misfortunes and failures with only two successes to his name: creating himself, his friends, and their ancestors as grubs (several of which have strange mutations, including himself) and beating Clover. He's been killed twice in the doomed-alpha timeline and countless more times in other doomed timelines, has a mutant blood color that could've gotten him killed before Sgrub, lives in the shadow of Alternia's equivalent to Jesus, had to deal with a bunch of dysfunctional teenagers for quite a while, fails as a leader at every attempt, got woken up before he could get the chance for a hit on Lord English, and gave an entire universe cancer.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: He is the descendant of one: the Sufferer.
  • Dark Messiah: Sort of, in that it's not conscious on Karkat's part: The Sufferer's last prophecy was about his successor who will signal the end of the world.
  • Deer in the Headlights:
  • Demon Head:
  • Drama Queen: Karkat cannot enter a conversation without ranting about something.
  • Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Many of the trolls have sunken eyes in their sprite forms, but Karkat's are particularly prominent in both sprite form and in hero mode. Justified in that he's probably one of the least happy members of a generally unhappy group of people. In particular, check the link in Deer in the Headlights; notice the bags under his eyes and looking lifeless with fear.
  • Establishing Character Moment: "HI AGAIN, IDIOT."
  • Everyone Can See It:
  • Failure Hero: Literally everything Karkat has done, he has done wrong; even his largely positive actions in the short-term like calming Gamzee down have backfired horribly in the long run. It begins to weigh down on him heavily in Act 6.
  • Famous Ancestor: Karkat's ancestor was mentioned in passing over the span of about two sentences in Mindfang's journal. Why? Well, leading a revolt on such a scale that not only did the Highbloods have to work to put it down, but then forbade any mention of both it or the Cancer symbol, public or private, may have been a factor.
  • Fatal Flaw:
    • His immense self-loathing and relentless antagonism even towards people he likes hinders his ability to communicate, and probably delayed his awakening on Prospit.
    • Jade points out that he has a lot a flaws, but a notable one is that he's too impatient to do things correctly. His impatience gave an entire universe cancer.
    • His temper proves to be a literal fatal flaw, as he gets himself killed by charging at Gamzee in a blind rage in "[S] Game Over".
  • Flowery Insults: Has a knack for these. Especially to himself. He says 3x5 inches worth of insults about himself instead of the single insulting sentence he's supposed to. It even provides a former page quote!
  • Foil: Primarily to John but also fits neatly with Dave, Kanaya, Jade, and almost every other character.
  • Fragile Speedster: He's faster than Kanaya when truly enraged, who's already noted to be incredibly fast with her rainbow drinker speed. However, he's not terribly durable or as dangerous as the other trolls.
  • Freudian Slip:
    • After he pictures Jade making out with Jadesprite:
      CG: I'M NOT AS MUCH OF A SCUMBAG AS I WAS SO DETERMINED TO MAKE OUT WITH MYSELF TO BE.
      CG: FUCK I MEAN
      CG: MAKE MYSELF OUT TO BE
    • Literally a couple sentences later, when talking to John about Jade:
      CG: SHE'D BE DOING ME A MAJOR PERSONAL SOLID BY MAKING AT LEAST SOME ATTEMPT TO GET HERSELF OFF.
      CG: WAIT
      CG: FUCK
      CG: WHAT DID I JUST SAY
      EB: wow
  • Freudian Slippery Slope: "was that another weird erotic slip of the tongue?"
  • Foreshadowing: Vriska says Karkat would probably would have been a better human than Troll. Later it's shown that due to the oddities of his blood colour, his God Tier does not have wings.
  • Guilty Pleasures: Guy loves his romcoms.
  • Gloomy Gray: Karkat's color (used in his text color and clothing) is gray, fitting with his cynical and self-loathing nature.
  • Grotesque Cute:
    GC: DONT PR3T3ND YOU D1DNT 3NJOY GO1NG 4ROUND K1LL1NG TH1NGS
    GC: 4ND TH4T YOU WOULDNT 3NJOY K1LL1NG 4 WHOL3 LOT MOR3
    GC: PR4NC1NG 4ROUND W1TH YOUR L1TTL3 S1CKL3 B31NG 4LL 4DOR4BL3
    CG: YEAH RIGHT.
    CG: MORE LIKE...
    CG: ADORABLOODTHIRSTY.
    CG: I'M PRANCING AROUND BEING THAT, OK?
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: He's perpetually pissed off at everything and anything, even himself.
  • Hate at First Sight: The first time he sees John on his computer screen, kismesis develops.
  • Hates Everyone Equally: Though he sincerely likes everyone equally as well, beneath the hate. Once Eridan undergoes his Face–Heel Turn however, Karkat sincerely hates him.
  • Heroic BSoD:
    • When Sollux dies.
    • Later on he sits in completely stunned silence after seeing Eridan murder Feferi and Kanaya.
    • Suffers a third one right after the previous when he finds out Gamzee is sober and Ax-Crazy.
    • Suffers his fourth briefly after witnessing Gamzee mortally wounding Terezi and pushing her into the lava of LOFAF's (erupted) volcano, though the latter catches her before she falls in and this quickly gives way to rage on Karkat's part.
  • Hidden Depths: The first time Karkat appeared he was a random asshole being mean to Jade. He's gone on to become the most emotionally complex character in the story.
  • Hopeless with Tech: Karkat has godawful luck when it comes to messing around with programming, a trait shared with fellow session leaders John and Jane. Unlike the two however, he executed a deadly and cursed program he was told not to do mere moments before by its creator.
  • Hot-Blooded: Most of the time, this translates to him yelling at people more than typical heroics.
  • Hypocrite: As expertly pointed out by Dave - Karkat yells at John and and Dave to stop flirting with Vriska and Terezi, respectively... and then his future self trolls his past self for insulting Jade.
    ?TG: ahahahahah oh god
    ?TG: dude i cant believe you were just getting on our case about hitting on the troll girls
    ?TG: and then literally the very next memo you are slobbering all over jade
    ?TG: thats just perfect hahahaha
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
    • Says something along these lines to Terezi.
      CG: I KNOW I COMPLETELY FUCKED UP WITH YOU. THIS ISN'T, UH... OK, I'M NOT LIKE TRYING TO REDEEM MYSELF HERE. I MADE MY RECUPERACOON AND NOW I HAVE TO WRIGGLE AROUND IN ITS SLIME. I TOTALLY ACCEPT THAT. BUT AS YOUR FRIEND, I REALLY DON'T WANT YOU TO START FEELING BAD ABOUT YOURSELF BECAUSE OF ONE OF THESE SHALLOW, TWO-DIMENSIONAL DIPSHITS. BUT I TOTALLY CONCEDE THAT YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE ABOUT ME, AND I RESPECT YOUR DECISION. I JUST WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY IS ALL.
    • In an inverted case, somewhat, he also wants Nepeta, who loves him, to be happy, even if he doesn't reciprocate, which is currently ambiguous since Nepeta's death.
  • I Just Want to Have Friends: In the end, Karkat comes down to this. He's the common element in every troll's social circle and genuinely cares for all of them.
  • In-Series Nickname: Sollux calls him "KK," while Eridan calls him "Kar."
  • Irony:
    • Karkat used to drone on about worthless humans were compared to trolls and how little he valued their existance, but by Act 6 Intermission 5, he's ended his moiraillegience with Gamzee, been deserted by Aradia and Sollux, cannot stand to be around Kanaya because of her relationship with Rose and can barely recognize Terezi ever since she started hate dating Gamzee. The humans are the only ones he still fully regards as friends, at least until John retcons the timeline (in which everybody gets along a lot better).
    • Adding to the above, despite Karkat's initial disdain for humans, Vriska tells John that she thinks Karkat would have fit in better with humans instead of trolls. Tellingly, by the end of the series, most of the people he's closest to are humans, and he's shown living with two of them (Dave and Jade).
  • Ironic Hell: He views the Land of Pulse and Haze as this, because of his own mutant blood color which is considered an aberration on Alternia and would get him executed in a bloodpusher-beat if anyone ever saw it.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • The Insomniac: He's gotten maybe one solid night's sleep over the last several months.
  • Interspecies Romance:
    • As of the beginning of the second half of Act 5, it has been revealed that he once harbored blackrom feelings for John, as well as potential redrom for Jade. At least enough that he trolled himself over it.
    • Post-John's time travel shenanigans, he's implied to be in a redrom relationship with Dave, and at the end of the series, has Threesome Subtext with him and Jade.
  • It's All My Fault:
    • During the first Heroic BSoD.
    • Somewhat about Sollux's ~ATH curse as well.
  • Jaw Drop:
    • This panel after seeing a bunch of shocking revelations. It's become a fandom meme. His exact pose is replicated later when John throws a bucket at him.
    • This is also his reaction to Kankri. Even though the sprites are different, you just know he is making that pose.
  • Jerkass: Karkat easily fits this. He spends a majority of his time demeaning or insulting his friend's actions and being overly controlling, essentially throwing a profanity laden rant whenever something irritates him in the slightest of ways.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The guy's one of the biggest jerks you'll ever see, even when he's being amicable and helping people through their emotional problems, but he is actually a relatively nice guy and he does care for his teammates and, eventually, the kids.
  • Jive Turkey: With anyone else, this might have been obnoxious, but with Karkat, it's just plain hilarious.
  • Jumped at the Call: Because he wanted to be a leader and prove himself as somebody important.
  • Large Ham: He tends to be overly dramatic when he's angry.
  • Leitmotif: "Crustacean", which is later remixed for his walkaround theme.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again:
    • Goes a step further even than this, deciding that he has to troll John backwards through the timeline so they will never even be able to speak of their first conversation in which Karkat accidentally revealed his hatecrush.
    • He also doesn't want to remember that he created all the trolls in an ectobiology lab, just like John did.
    • And, yet again, he doesn't want to tell John about what he did to Gamzee, because John wouldn't understand the Blue and Orange Moirality behind it.
    • Also the time when he and Sollux mutually agreed to delete an entire conversation because it was too embarrassing for either of them to handle having in their computer memory.
  • Little "No": Averted for the most part, considering Karkat almost always speaks in capital letters. There are a few cases where context indicates a Little No, particularly this page, especially because of its lack of punctuation.
  • Locked Out of the Loop:
    • In Hivebent, none of the other trolls really care about him enough to tell him about any of this end of the world business, and again as everything falls apart at the end of their session. He just goes along with Jade's plans because there's nothing else to do. To top it off, Jade won't tell him what's going on either, as she is trying to avoid an Information-based Ontological Paradox.
    • He blocks Terezi after believing she's been killed by Gamzee (he only found her glasses), and doesn't know she's going to confront Vriska until he runs into her right after she does it.
  • Loving a Shadow: Inverted; Karkat watched John grow up and immediately hated him, but he never interacted with him until Sburb/Sgrub.
  • Mad Libs Catch Phrase: ...YOUR HUMAN _____... Shared with Terezi. Dropped to a large extent later as he actually develops as a character and stops antagonizing the kids.
  • Man on Fire:
    • Seen for a brief moment in [S] Jade:Enter, before the demon engulfs Prospit and Karkat's dreamself in green fire, after he heartbreakingly recognizes Jack Noir as the demon.
    • After being stabbed by Gamzee and shoved into the lava spilling out of LOFAF's forge, Karkat catches on fire as he sinks to his death.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: His relationship with Terezi. Admittedly, he's loud and crass, but unlike Terezi he's more emotional and prone to showing interests and emotions that are often viewed as feminine (the romcoms, his interest in relationships, etc.)
  • Master of the Mixed Message: Towards Terezi. By his own admission, this is why nothing ever came of their Ship Tease. Though being a Troll, instead of flipping between romance and indifference, he was flipping between redrom and blackrom.
  • Maybe Ever After: With Dave of all people. Maybe with Jade too.
  • Meaningful Name:
  • A Molten Date with Death: In [S] GAME OVER, Gamzee kills him by stabbing him through the holes of his symbol and then throwing him into LOFAF's volcano.
  • Motor Mouth: At one point during Act 6 Intermission 1, he makes a point of shutting up when told to. A page later he gasps for air because he apparently wasn't aware that you don't have to hold your breath not to talk.
    KARKAT: LOOK I'M JUST A LITTLE OUT OF PRACTICE AT STAYING QUIET FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME, OK?
    TEREZI: H3 R34LLY 1S >:|
  • The Movie Buff: as part of his Foil nature to John - although Karkat specialises in Troll Romantic Comedies, making him an expert at deciphering issues of Troll Romance.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Apparently he always apologizes profusely and asks if they're still friends whenever he blows up at Sollux. Which is often.
    • A serious use when he runs Sollux's code, and again when Sollux dies.
    • Later, he realizes that his hurry to beat the Black King instead of finding the penultimate frog led to the Cancer in John's universe and all the post-game problems in his.
  • Named Weapons: After entering the Medium, Karkat makes himself a sickle called Homes Smell You Later, and later replaces it with the Clawsickle.
  • The Napoleon:
    • His overweening ambition, short temper, and nubby little horns qualify him as a Napoleon. His overcompensation is about his position as a hemospectrum outcast and not height, though the principle is the same.
    • Equius once called him a "tactical midget", although it's not clear whether that's referring to his height or otherwise. If that does mean he's short, then he matches the trope even better.
  • Narcissist: Inverted. Karkat practically is his own kismesis with his future & past selves, whom he loathes intensely, something that unsettles him when he thinks about it and provides fodder for mockery by Terezi and others.
  • Never My Fault: Zig-zagged. Karkat is less likely to accept responsibility for his actions and more likely to blame his past or future selves. Even though they're him. But when really bad things happen, he blames himself for it if he had even the slightest involvement in it.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • He executes Sollux's code. You know, the one that curses everyone the user knows. The result is not pretty. However, he really didn't have a choice in it; Aradia went back and corrected the timeline so he had to. If she hadn't Gamzee would have gone crazy much earlier and killed all the Trolls.
    • His haste in beating the game without properly understanding the frog breeding process gave the kids' entire universe cancer.
  • No Indoor Voice: Almost all of his dialogue is written in all caps, and the narration implies that it's shouted.
  • Not Now, Kiddo: HEY ASSHOLE. STOP PLAYING GAMES FOR GIRLS.
  • Only Sane Man: Plays this role to the rest of the trolls; compared to all the others, he really is shockingly normal, he comments on this, specifying that the only troll in the group who is more sane tends to be Kanaya.
  • Other Me Annoys Me:
    • Future Karkat and Past Karkat argue between each other at every opportunity, Future Karkat because Past Karkat hasn't wised up to the situation, and Past Karkat because he feels Future Karkat has gone soft. His feelings about Present Karkat aren't much better.
    • He hates Past Karkat even when he's just gotten done being Past Karkat. There's at least one memo where Current Karkat is arguing with a Future Karkat; towards the end of the memo Current Karkat starts arguing with Past Karkat. Yeah, the one that was Current Karkat when he started the memo. They're literally ten minutes apart.
  • Pair the Suitors: With Dave, eventually. After spending ages competing for Terezi's attention, with the subtext between them played for laughs, they are strongly implied to be an item by the end of the comic.
  • Pet the Dog:
  • Platonic Life-Partners: With Kanaya, whom he even calls his "other best friend" (Gamzee being the first) at one point.
  • Please Wake Up:
  • Poor Communication Kills: He trolls a past version of Eridan after the present Eridan blinds Sollux and kills Feferi and Kanaya, but Karkat's so distraught when doing so that past Eridan can't make out what he's trying to tell him and ignores him.
  • Power Limiter: Since a player's powers are unlocked through self-actualisation and Karkat's primary character trait is his unresolvable self-loathing, he never explicitly awakens any unique powers he may have.
  • The Power of Blood:
    • Officially speaking as far as Sburb goes, this is still a mystery, with the Blood aspect being one of the few that hasn't been explained. (Word of God is that the Blood aspect represents things like unity, and bonds between family and friends.)
    • He befriends (pre-Spades Slick) Jack after he finds out they have the same blood color.
    • The only person we know Karkat tried to kiss back to life is Kanaya. It couldn't work due to her dead dream self, but she awoke as a troll vampire anyway.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Has a fascination with romantic comedies.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gave a particularly excellent one to Vriska. And a smaller one to himself.
  • Red Herring: At one point, it appears that Karkat is about to get murdered by Gamzee. This happened in the doomed alternate timeline where Karkat never ran the Mobius Double Reacharound virus, which somehow led to Gamzee going crazy a lot earlier and killing all of the trolls except Aradia.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: With John. To put it in perspective: John's battle theme is titled "Showtime", whereas Karkat's is "Showdown". Also literal in that Karkat's "theme" color is red, while John's is blue.
  • The Resenter:
    • Towards John, to the point where he develops a crush on him. Kismesis crush anyways. Eventually, he becomes friends with John. He ends up resenting his past self as well, unable to believe the way he acted mere hours ago.
    • He is not fond of Dave either, thanks to complicating his relationship with Terezi, although that changes later, with Karkat going so far as to call Dave his bro. Post-retcon, this is completely gone, and the two are even implied to be together.
  • Revealing Injury: His blood color was revealed when Jack stabbed him - but only to Jack (who didn't particularly care) and the readers, as most of the other trolls still aren't aware of his blood color at that time.
  • Sanity Ball: He pretty much has the ball any time he's not going ballistic, such as when he points out Jade's hypocrisy in going apeshit on Jadesprite after the conversation she had with Past and Future Karkats simultaneously.
  • Sanity Slippage: Over time, due to a combination of insomnia and mortal terror of Gamzee.
  • Screw Yourself: A running theme (and possible fetish). There's also this:
    GG IF I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH, THEN WHY DON'T I HATEMARRY MYSELF? [Chiding past-Karkat for deliberately misremembering this password.]
  • Senseless Sacrifice: In [S] GAME OVER, Karkat gets himself killed by Gamzee in attempting to protect Terezi from his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in spite of him neither being a Godtier nor anywhere near as physically threatening as Gamzee. Justified in that his judgement is clearly clouded by anger.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Can occasionally lapse into this when worked up.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: Inevitable, considering cursing is practically ritual to Karkat.
  • Shipper with an Agenda: Ships John/Rose and Dave/Jade here because he thinks Interspecies Romance would be gross and thus wants the humans to date amongst themselves.
    • That's what he says, anyway. The memo in question presents about five reasons why he might be doing what he's doing, and none of them are any more or less likely than the others. Troll mentality sure is weird!
    • This turns out to be foreshadowing: Jack kills Rose and Dave, so John and Jade have to revive-kiss them.
  • Ship Tease:
    • With Terezi most of all. They may have even dated in the pre-retcon timeline, and at least were known to have "a thing", although the state of their relationship was nebulous, cycling between redrom, blackrom, and disinterest.
    • Had some Ship Tease with Jade (red or ashen), Gamzee (pale), and Meenah (red).
    • Subverted with John; ever since he confessed his hate for John, they've pretty much had no Ship Tease and have instead become friends.
    • Surprisingly has some serious ship tease with Dave post Vriska-retcon. Both are a lot happier without the messy Terezi/Gamzee romantic entanglement and the two of them become friends quicker.
  • Shonen Hair: Impressively spikey. There's even a right angle in there.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Karkat is worried that his high standards will stop him from ever finding that "Special Kind of Hate". Then, when he finally finds someone he deems worthy of his blackrom, it turns out their species doesn't work that way. He eventually worries that he's so screwed up that his kismesis is his own past and future selves.
  • Sinister Scythe: Well, a sickle.
  • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Distinguished from the other foulmouths by being a meticulous swearsmith; he proudly hand-crafts his obscenity for special delivery. When he's being friendly, or even contrite, he's still casual with the generic f-bombs. John eventually lampshades Karkat's Cluster F-Bomb tendencies:
    JOHN: the guy is really angry, and says fuck like in practically every sentence.
  • The Sleepless: Apparently went almost a month through the entire Troll session without sleeping once. While sleep doesn't seem to be mandatory in the Incipisphere, it's still pretty important and Karkat occasionally mentions that he's incredibly tired. In all of canon he's only been shown to be asleep for an hour or so.
  • Sour Supporter:
    • He at least appears to be trying to help out John and the other kid protagonists, but that doesn't mean that he treats them with any kind of respect whatsoever. It turns out, it's quite legitimate: His future self is simply less hostile towards them as he develops a friendship with John.
    • He is this way for all his troll friends, too; he'll yell at anyone over anything, but come to him with a real problem and he'll... well, he'll still yell at them a lot, but he will also help out immediately.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • He's always feeling rather crabby.
    • His weapon is... a claw-like sickle. Which, given his aspect, might also be a pun relating to sickle-cell anemia, which is a blood disorder.
  • Still the Leader:
    • "Officially" hands off command of the trolls and humans to Rose (who in turn acknowledges John as her leader) but in practice he keeps telling people what to do. Lampshaded in that nobody else really cares who their leader is.
    • Genuinely hands off leadership to Vriska in the post-retcon timeline. Echidna subsequently insists that Karkat is meant to be a leader in the new universe and guide the troll race to have better values. He doesn't believe her.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Karkat practically lives in this trope, particularly in the early acts during his attempt to be troll leader. Unfortunately most of his charges are either easily distracted, don't take him seriously, or are too caught up in their own agendas, all of which results in a regular stream of angry tirades from Karkat. Summed up best in some of the memo conversations, where all the other trolls blithely ignore his rules, don't pay any attention to what he's saying, and hijack the conversation for their own purposes, much to his frustrated fury.
  • Survivor Guilt: Hits him hard when the "Troll Murder" storyline kills over half of his team.
  • Tap on the Head: Ends up on the receiving end of one in A6A6I5 courtesy of Kanaya.
  • Team Dad: As The Leader, plays this to Kanaya's Team Mom, although he himself vacillates between being more like a Team Dad or Team Mom.
  • Team Mom: In spite of his permanent irascibility, he really does look out for the rest of the team, and counsels them in romance issues thanks to his familiarity with troll romance films. The sign of Cancer is associated with motherhood, and this gets even further continued when it is revealed that he did all of the ectobiology in the troll's session.
  • Threesome Subtext: In the ending credits, goes on some outings with Jade and Dave that look an awful lot like dates. He eventually ends up living with them.
  • Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Vriska is theoretically able to control him, but never does so because she finds his hate-filled mind too offensive to dip into for more than a moment.
  • Together in Death:
    • With Terezi. In an alternate timeline. Twice.
    • In a dreambubble, a dead God-Tier Karkat and dead Dream Nepeta were together.
  • Trauma Conga Line:
    • Starts with him witnessing Eridan kill Feferi, Kanaya, and the matriorb, and continues on from there. Once he's regrouped with Terezi, Kanaya and Sollux, with Vriska and Eridan dead and Gamzee is neutralized, it finally lets up.
    • It starts again during the 3 year journey, when Terezi finally loses her patience with him and he is left with only himself to argue with, and his moirallegiance with Gamzee eventually falls apart. This all culminates in [S] Game Over, where Karkat finds Gamzee brutally beating Terezi and tries to save her, only for Gamzee to kill him for his trouble.
    • Thankfully, completely averted in the new post-retcon timeline, where everyone's time on the meteor is much happier.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: While 'kindness' would definitely be stretching it for Karkat, he's certainly less hostile and more willing to work with people progressively after Hivebent.
  • Tsundere:
    • His tsuntsun obviously dominates, but beneath all that swearing he seems to have a genuine soft side.
    • The best (and most adorable) illustration of this would be on this page
      GC: BY3!
      GC: <3
      CG: BYE
      gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
      carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]
      carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]
      CG: <3
      carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]
    • This is Deconstructed at times however, as demonstrated best with Terezi, Karkat's attitude made open communication hard between them with him shifting being relatively sweet and open with her one moment to overly defensive and frequently insulting the next. Due to this, their relationship breaks down and Terezi (or Karkat depending on the timeline) enters a relationship with Dave instead. In another deconstruction, Karkat attempting to yell at Eridan over his actions comes across as ironic red flirting by him due to the former's habit of this.
  • Trust Password: With Jade, "IF I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH, THEN WHY DON'T I HATEMARRY MYSELF?" is a signal arranged by GG to ensure that she knew what point in the timeline Karkat is so as to ensure he's not just trolling her and actually has something important to say. He forgets it, but he gives a long string of lines with the same general meaning.
  • The Unreveal: Immediately after his dreamself's death at Jack's hands, Karkat entered a dreambubble. This is never depicted in comic.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Terezi in a mix of Belligerent Sexual Tension.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds:
    • With Sollux. He's vitriolic with a lot of his other friends too, like Gamzee and Nepeta, but they usually aren't angry back at him.
    • In Interspecies matters, he and John seem to have developed into this. Particularly since Karkat once saw John as a invoked Kismesis.
    • In these two conversations he basically admits that all the trolls are his best (hate)friends and he loved his lusus.
      CG: JUST CLAM YOUR SHIT UP AND FORGET YOUR STUPID GUARDIAN, LIKE I DID WITH MY DEAR CRAB MONSTER CUSTODIAN, WHO I ADORED IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER.
    • As of Act 6 Intermission 5, he considers Dave one of the last people he's close to. Doesn't stop exchanges like this;
      Dave: no dude thats not what gift of gab does
      Karkat: OK WHAT DOES IT DO THEN WISE GUY!
      Dave: its utility isnt really comprehensible to lowly mortals sorry
      Karkat: YOU SNIDE CHUTE HUFFER. WHY DON'T YOU COME UP HERE SO I CAN PUSH YOU OFF THIS BUILDING?
  • Warrior Therapist: The other Trolls come to him for relationship advice. It works in just about every single instance too, which is odd since everything he knows is from his love of romantic comedies.
  • Western Zodiac: Cancer. His usual 'crabby' behavior puns this, and is also a reference to the sign; as the people born under the Cancer sign are said to be moody.
  • We Used to Be Friends: With Gamzee after he goes crazy and starts his killing spree.
    • In the "Game Over" pre-retcon timeline, this is double-subverted: it seems as though Karkat manages to repair their friendship by calming Gamzee down and becoming moirails with him, but it's later revealed that Gamzee is still evil despite this, and the moirallegiance eventually falls apart. By the time of "[S] Game Over", this is fully back in effect after Karkat finds him beating Terezi to near-death and attacks him; Gamzee, who is fully Ax-Crazy again by this point, outright kills him with no hesitation or remorse.
    • Post-retcon, it's played straight; Terezi captures Gamzee and they keep him locked up during pretty much the whole meteor journey, with Karkat and everyone else no longer seeing him as a friend.
    • Once Eridan betrays everyone and kills Kanaya and Feferi, Karkat proclaims his actual hatred towards Eridan when he talks to him in the past, who ironically takes it as flirting.
  • When He Smiles: Karkat spends almost the entire comic looking either angry or afraid. But when he gives Gamzee a Cooldown Hug to halt his murderous rampage, he's shown making a genuine smile of relief that's actually pretty adorable.
  • Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Compliments the aforementioned Jaw Drop.
  • Which Me?: Uses "past me" and "future me" to refer to those selves.
  • You Can't Fight Fate:
    • Karkat tries to warn the past trolls about horrible things that will happen in the future. They don't believe him, even when a future Gamzee shows up and offers false reassurance.
    • His realization that this is the case is the reason the trolls focus on, well, trolling the kids, rather than making a serious effort to prevent everything from going badly. (Though he does ask Jade if there's any way he can convince her not to send the package to John, which was a key event in the chain that caused both sessions to ultimately go to hell.)
    • Karkat is bothered by this when he travels through the dream bubbles and meets deceased Alternate Timeline trolls who went God Tier.
      CCG: BUT IN SPITE OF BEING *MORE* SUCCESSFUL THAN WE WERE, BY THAT PARTICULAR OBJECTIVE MEASURE
      CCG: THEY GET PUNISHED FOR THAT, BECAUSE IT WASN'T "THE THING THAT NEEDED TO HAPPEN"??


> Go Back
> Return to main page

Top