Karkat Vantas

Karkat Vantas is more commonly known by his Pesterchum chumhandle, CarcinoGeneticist, or CG for short. He is represented by the symbol ♋ in illustrations types in light gray with all caps and near-perfect syntax. His chumhandle is particularly nefarious sounding, implying genetic engineering and carcinogenic factors. This could suggest that one of his interests is intentionally causing cancer. Like others in Jade's Trollslum, his name has a zodiac symbol implied - in this case, Cancer the crab.

Biography
Karkat was introduced in Act 3 as an incredibly rude individual who trolls Jade, which earns him a place in her Trollslum. He is aware of what the kids do during their adventure via Trollian. He is convinced that Jade will fuck everything up and seems to want a different outcome, asking Jade "IS THERE NOTHING I CAN DO TO CHANGE YOUR MIND?" and by later providing information on Sburb and giving advice to John on how he should go through his adventure. Karkat's motivations become clear, in that he hoped to deter Jade from sending a package to John, which would lead to disastrous results for both the kids and the trolls. She ignored his warnings and sent the package that Jack Noir later used to become an Ace.

In Act 4, Karkat later contacts John, and tells him that they will be friends in the future. He mentions that he is trolling linearly backwards along the kids' timeline, unlike the forward motion of GallowsCalibrator and the random pathways of the other trolls. Later on, he and John have a discussion on movie titles, and it is implied that Karkat's civilization is much older than John's since they ran out of good movie titles over thousands of years. John also reminds Karkat that he wants to talk to Jade and to tell him to calm down if he contacts him any earlier in the timeline so as to prevent any time paradoxes from occurring. He also finds out that John is in "cahoots" with GallowsCalibrator and gets pissed and asks John to send along a nasty message to her. Later, Karkat gives John information on the geography of the incipisphere and the purpose of Sburb.

When John arrives in the Ectobiology lab and creates the paradox clones, he is the troll who explains that every player who plays Sburb will, without exception, be their own clones. Through the actions of one player (in the troll's case, Karkat), all players in that Sburb session will have been created as clones of themselves, with the originals being clones; essentially, the matter used to create the clones comes from the clones themselves. Kartkat was the troll's player who created the trolls and their guardians. With 6 trolls on his team, and at least one guardian per troll, that means he had to take care of 12 clone babies. Apparently, he was quite unsettled by all of this.

Alternia (Act 5)
Act 5 opens with Karkat, where he is in his room, with a poster of Trollian (the same program which allows the trolls to troll the kids by selecting points of time to troll them in), as well as a sickle-kind weaponry on his table, suggesting that his strife specibus is indeed sickleKind.

Karkat was not given a name before his sixth wriggling Day (his thirteenth birthday), just as John Egbert wasn't. He was initially named Bulgereek Nookstain using the inverted Daedric Alphabet, however he cut the name entry box in half, much like Dave Strider did.

Personality
Karkat constantly insults others in the style of a stereotypical internet troll, supporting his arguments with what seems to be empty logic. He is not particularly patient as when explaining himself, he makes even his most sound advice appear to be random insults and he becomes visibly aggravated both times John re-enacts a scene from Con Air. Following this, he also gets in an argument with GallowsCalibrator; they don't seem to get on well as Karkat gets annoyed when he finds that she and John are in 'cahoots' and they seem to be trolling each other through the kids.



Despite his rudeness, he seems to be broadly on the same "team" as the kids, giving advice to John which helps him advance instead of acting as one of Homestuck's villains. Karkat and John seem to have a strained kind of friendship; John describes them as being "reverse anti-mutual friends". They have a mutual interest in movies (even if they are staggeringly different in their own dimensions), and Karkat's chumhandle, CarcinoGeneticist is quite similar to John's-- EctoBiologist. This may indicate Karkat is a foil to John. His officicial introduction revealed that he is actually very similar to John, at least in interests and basic role in the story. He has a passion for ridiculously terrible romantic movies and romcoms, and likes to program computers but is notoriously pretty awful at it. Act 5 begins on his "Wriggling Day" much as John's story also began on his birthday.

Midnight Crew Intermission
The kid Spades Slick messages is Karkat, judging by his shirt, which has the cancer symbol on it, what is apparently his sprite, which appears to have crab-like features, and the fact he looks EXACTLY THE SAME. He appears to be engaged in a game of Sburb, as he has a Kernelsprite, a Cruxite Dowel, and some sylladex cards in his room. His weapon of choice appears to be a sickle—presumably his Strife Specibus reflects this as either scytheKind or a previously-unseen sickleKind. This is most likely to contrast or even complement John's hammerKind, as the hammer and sickle are the symbols of communism, and thus linked. It should be noted that he strongly resembles a classical troll.