Karkat Vantas

Karkat Vantas, also known by his Trollian handle carcinoGeneticist, is one of the Trolls. His associated zodiac sign is Cancer (♋). He types in light gray with all caps and near-perfect syntax. Karkat is the leader of the Red Team.

His Trollian handle is a play on the medical term "carcinogenesis" which is the development of cancer in the body. Vantas is a cancer treatment pill, and Karkat is "Karkata", the Hindu astrological equivalent of Cancer, minus one letter. His online handle is particularly nefarious sounding, implying genetic engineering and carcinogenic factors. This could suggest that one of his interests is intentionally causing cancer.

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 later providing information on Sburb and giving advice to John on how he should go through his adventure. It becomes clear that he had hoped to deter Jade from sending a package to John, which would lead to disastrous results for both the kids and the trolls. She ignores his warnings and sends the package that Jack Noir later uses to kill the Black Queen.

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 Terezi Pyrope 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 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 Terezi 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, Karkat explains that every player who plays Sburb will, without exception, be their own clone. 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. Karkat 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, this means he had to take care of 12 clone babies. Apparently, he was quite unsettled by all of this.

Midnight Crew Intermission
At the end of the Intermission, Spades Slick finds a monitor with 12 screens. The one illuminated screen shows Karkat. He is shown to be engaged in what appears to be 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— his Strife Specibus reflects this as 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. Slick begins to communicate with Karkat in the same way as the exiles from the kids' session.

Hivebent
Act 5 opens with the beginning of a new adventure, with Karkat in his respiteblock. Karkat was not given a name before his sixth wriggling Day (his thirteenth birthday), just like John Egbert. He is initially named Bulgereek Nookstain using the inverted Daedric Alphabet, but chops the name entry box in half—much like Dave, Karkat doesn't put up with that bullshit.

Karkat is the leader of the Red Team with Terezi Pyrope as his server player. Sburb has designated him the Knight of Blood, his planet the Land of Pulse and Haze. Karkat wields an alchemised sickle: Homes Smell Ya Later, in keeping with his sickleKind Strife Specibus. Karkat's custodian is a scorpion-crab-monster called a Lusus Naturae who he accidentally kills by running Sollux Captor's ~ATH code, cursing himself and everyone he knows.

Personality
Karkat is a crab in more ways than one. He 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 Terezi; 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. Somewhat similar to Jack Noir, Karkat is ruthlessly ambitious and will grasp at any opportunity for power.

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 official 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. Karkat hasn't disclosed his blood color to the other trolls, as Andrew explained on Formspring. It might be fairly low in the scale, as he despises Terezi's 'BLUE BLOODED VERNACULAR' and refers to his trolling victory over Vriska Serket as 'ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY.' He may, however, have been attempting to fool her into thinking that he is a worse blood color than he actually is.

His love of "The Thresh Prince of Bel-Air" and idolization of "Troll Will Smith" may have affected his choice for blood anonymity, either because he does not want his blood being judged by the higher castes he considers snobs, or because he potentially is a very high caste and rejected it in order to associate with the lower classes to emulate his hero.

Lusus/Kernelsprite
Karkat's custodian is a towering, bipedal crab monster with a taste for chilled roe cubes. It was killed when Karkat's computer exploded as a result of running Sollux Captor's Mobius Double Reacharound Virus, thereby implementing the curse that leads to the death of the other trolls' lusii as well.

Karkat later prototyped his dead lusus into his Kernelsprite.