Nepeta Leijon

Nepeta Leijon, also known by her Trollian handle, arsenicCatnip, is one of the Trolls. Her associated zodiac sign is Leo (♌) and she has horns shaped like cat ears.

Her typing quirk consists of preceding every line with ":33 <". ":3" is generally used as a smiley reminiscent of a cat face, while 33 is the atomic number of arsenic. ":33" also represents the face of her two-mouthed feline Lusus. She occasionally changes these to form different facial expressions. She replaces syllables of words with feline-related homophones, such as "purrmission," "refurring" or "pawses" rather than "permission," "referring" and "pauses", respectively. Instances of doubled-e in a word, such as "sleepy", are replaced by doubled-3 ("sl33py") but she otherwise does not use letter substitution. She also tends to type in actions between asterisks, though this is a result of her constant roleplaying rather than a quirk like the other trolls'.

Her first name is derived from the scientific genus of Catnip, and Leijon is taken from the surname of Anna-Greta Leijon, who was a Swedish Minister of Immigration in 1976 and victim of a kidnapping plot dubbed Operation Leo. The Swedish word lejon ("leijon" is the archaic spelling) means "lion", and is pronounced LAY-on. Also, the Finnish word for lion is leijona (which is most likely a Swedish loan word).

She was invited by Karkat to be on the Red Team, but her Moirail demanded she be on the Blue Team.

Hivebent
She held conversations with Terezi Pyrope in which the two of them roleplayed. Nepeta roleplays as a two-mouthed feline anthropomorph (similar to Jade's fascination with furry fandom). Her feline hunting roleplays are linked to real-life events, as her cave contains dead animals and drawings and splatters on the wall of blood and soot.

Nepeta also has an interest in drawing comics on her wall depicting tales from her hunts, as well as stories involving her and her friends. One wall is her Shipping wall, where she keeps track of potential and confirmed relationships between her friends (including herself). The wall is categorized with card suit symbols, hearts representing love (Matespritship) and diamonds representing friendship (Moirallegiance). As shown on her expanded shipping wall after entering the veil, Nepeta does seem to have at least some interest in the Blackrom quadrants (Kismesissitude and Auspisticism), though there only seem to be a few specific relationships in these quadrants that she is interested in.

She appears to be wearing a partial fursuit made from authentic animal skin. Her 'daily routine' was for her to go out in the wild and kill beasts with only her 'sharp claws and teeth'. As such, Nepeta uses the clawkind Strife Specibus. It is quite possible that Nepeta is the most experienced and skilled fighter out of all the trolls at the beginning of the game, though not nearly the most powerful due to several of the others having special weapons or powers. She often smells something about the person she is talking to. She states in her first conversation with Equius that, "I can smell a guy who likes to play games from so fur away with this nose, you have no idea X33." This is somewhat humorous in that characters in Homestuck are rarely depicted with a nose.

Nepeta brought Aradia into The Medium as her server player. She was for a time one of the few to know that Aradia had died.

Post-Hivebent
Her dream self was stabbed three times, kicked to the floor, and blown up when Jack Noir attacked Derse.

Since then she has spent most of her time with Equius, until the events HS 5338 (Seek the highb100d). After witnessing the death of her moirail, she promptly executed a pounceavenge on Gamzee who managed to catch her hand mid-attack. He used her claws to inflict three long HS 5355 (scratches) across his face before dropping her on the ground and proceeding to walk towards her, honks in the background. She is beaten to death off screen, temporarily turning her into Schrödinger's Nepeta in which for several pages the story focuses on other characters, leaving a period during which her fate was unknown (though most fans preemptively declared her dead). When Terezi is talking with Dave about bringing Vriska to justice, she discovers Nepeta's body face down in a pool of her own blood. No "DEAD" is shown, but considering her condition when Terezi finds her, it wouldn't be necessary. In HS 5660 (Flip), Nepeta's head is seen lying on the jury table next to Gamzee, accompanied by Feferi's, Eridan's, and Equius's heads. If in fact she is no longer alive, she is the first troll to die without the "DEAD" tag.

Personality


Nepeta likes friendly roleplaying (which was said quite a HS 3955 (while) ago), though not the dangerous kind that caused a certain accident to a couple of people. She has a naive view of everything. She lives in a cave and hunts and eats animals, then wears their fur and paints with their blood. In fact, she uses this blood along with soot and ash to create wall art, such as story boards for a comic and her Shipping wall.

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

Once in the veil, she recreated her shipping wall to a HS 5338 (larger scale), but doesn't want to update it to accommodate the grisly developments of late.

Relationships
Nepeta has a strong interest in Troll Relationships. Her Shipping wall hints strongly at red feelings toward Karkat Vantas, as the ship between the two has a "oh yessssss!" scrawled under it, and the ship between Karkat and Vriska Serket is underscored by an "oh noooooo". A large portrait of Karkat and Nepeta making out is seen on her revised shipping wall followed by a large "OTP" (One True Pairing, a term often used in fanfiction to refer to a pairing of characters preferred by the writer/reader). Upon inspecting this, Nepeta says "No one must ever s333333333333333!!". Karkat, however, seems to be aware of these unrequited feelings, and has apparently been trying to avoid them for some time. Nepeta's feelings for Karkat parallel those of her ancestor The Disciple, a troll who had a relationship with The Signless, Karkat's ancestor. The relationship between them "went beyond the four quadrants, transcending the grid entirely". When she was spared by the E%ecutor, the Disciple hid in caves and used the blood of animals to write the scripture of the Sufferer from memory on the walls (which is possibly the origin of Nepeta's shipping wall).

Nepeta is Equius Zahhak's Moirail, considers herself his pacifier and likes to calm him down. All of her conversations depict a sense of playfulness, and when interacting with Terezi she tries to pacify her rather than fight back. She insists on consulting Equius before joining the red team; her procrastination in doing so leads one to believe she was well aware that he would refuse and insist on her joining the blue team. Regardless of their 'fighting' it is clear that they have a deep understanding of each other, that they care for each other quite a lot, and that they both truly believe that the other is "lucky to have me keep an eye on you". In HS 4064 (a conversation) with Tavros Nitram, it is hinted that Equius actually kept her from joining the Flarp session that caused several players severe injuries. In LOLCAT, Nepeta seems very happy to see Equius and greets him with a friendly pouncegr33ting!

Nepeta is good friends with Terezi, and the two frequently roleplay together. She also gets along with Tavros, though he has to pretend he's not allergic to cats in order to roleplay with her which he states obviously.

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

Apparently she is not fond of Eridan as suggested by her line "if you are talking about mr ampurra, he has always given me the cr33ps anyway!" in Equius: Seek the highb100d.

She tries to interact friendly with Vriska and attempts roleplaying with her, but is usually put off by Vriska and her Spidersona always doing "terrible things". She is also tells Equius that she is "plenty scared of vwiskers"

According to Alterniabound, Nepeta has tried to make friends with Jade, but Jade thought Nepeta was just teasing her. She decides to keep trying. Nepeta also enjoys talking to Jaspersprite, through Rose's old laptop.

Lusus/Kernelsprite


Nepeta's lusus, Pounce de Leon, is a small feline creature with two mouths, and is "pawssibly the cutest and purrhaps the bestest kitty you have ever s33n!". She and Nepeta often went on adventures together to search for the "fountain of cute", taking turns riding each other. Pounce de Leon was crushed when Nepeta's hive caved in for unknown reasons. Pounce de Leon's name is a reference to Juan Ponce de León, the Spanish explorer who discovered Florida while (supposedly) searching for the fountain of youth (though historians now dispute this).