dreamselves: (Default)
make her a member of the midnight crew. ([personal profile] dreamselves) wrote2012-04-06 01:13 pm

post o1.

This post is for any and all Homestuck players looking to get their wicked speak on about the characters we know and love, whether you play or not. Ask questions! Give advice! Discuss! And above all, have fun! If you see any shenanigans, please let me know here. Anonymous commenting is on and IP logging is off.



KIDS | TROLLS | EXILES | GUARDIANS | SPRITES | JACK NOIR | MIDNIGHT CREW | THE FELT | AUS/BLOODSWAPS | TROLL ROMANCE | ANCESTORS | PRE-SCRATCH ANCESTORS/POST-SCRATCH GUARDIANS | SHIPS | SEEKING | MISC.
almostexclusivelyornery: Karkat with his jaw practically hitting the floor. (IS THAT A - PLEASE TELL ME THAT'S NOT -)

KARKAT VANTAS

[personal profile] almostexclusivelyornery 2012-04-07 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
So we might as well start off the party with the quintessential troll himself, am I right? Making myself available for groggy 2/3am feelings and questioning.

First I'll contribute one of the biggest things that has helped me to characterize Karkat, and that is sticking to his canon expressions. Not that I'm vetoing fanart usage by any means! But I find using his canon range has helped me to keep him, as my username implies he is, almost exclusively ornery. In particular note the lack of smiles and smirks. This is, sadly, a canon thing. Although situationally it works well (usually romantic situations), having ornery icons as my man emotional range helps to keep me in check, I find.

I also have an essay on how to write troll movie titles, which obviously is a nice skill to have playing this guy.

Now, questions for you: how do you handle his views on violence? On black romance? On leading a team? Could he ever whisper as he did to Sollux again? Things are craaaaaaaaazy!
selfkismesis: (MY GOD WE ARE ASTRONAUTS)

[personal profile] selfkismesis 2012-04-07 10:18 am (UTC)(link)
sup dog sup sup i am so all over that troll movie titles thing, because sweet jesus those things are a bitch to write. thanks for sharing, man.

alright, so i will try to answer your questions a bit, and hopefully i won't be a huge failure at it.

1) violent -- karkat is all bark and very little bite. outwardly, he'd like to portray that he is a blood thirsty killer completely willing and able to kick butt/take names/etc. and i think that, in situations that aren't emotional but more buttkicking (say, fighting imps/Black king in SGRUB or fighting robots or whatever happens in your game), he can be pretty buttkicking. trolls are strong and know how to fight; karkat's not an exception. however, if it's something emotional-- like having to fight a friend or someone he knows, he's a wreck. can't handle that shit, bro. especially if there is blood or killing involved (remember, he passed out in the veil when kanaya chopped off tavros' legs; sure he was going off a month of no sleep, but that was still what knocked him out)

2) black romance -- as we see in canon with karkat's red romance, he takes for-fucking-ever. he still likes terezi but obviously hasn't done anything about it, even after a year on the meteor. so i think this would translate to other areas of his romance. i play him as getting black crushes pretty easily, doing something hasty and emotional about it, and then backpedaling hardcore after he's had time to think about it. he seems like the type who can easily talk himself out of any sort of romance options, regardless of compatibility.

3) in games, it's hard to play leader. people have their own plotting going on oocly, and unless you want to become a dictator oocly to keep up with that shit, it's hard. i usually save leadership stuff for big events where trolls are in danger. you've got to remember-- he's the one who really cares the most about their well-being, even trolls who are total douchebags (like vriska. in alterniabound, his request was that she go sit somewhere and not do dangerous shit for a bit). even if he isn't successful (due to IC or OOC plotting that you miss), he'd def try, at the very least.

4) whispering -- yeah, sure, why not. he's a pretty dramatic person, and i took the whisper to sollux as more of a stage whisper than anything. but uh if they situation calls for it, i am sure he can whisper till the cows come home.

maybe.

(Anonymous) 2012-04-08 10:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Do any players have any tips on how to write his dialogue? I tend to run into trouble coming up with new metaphors and creative things to say and get in a rut where I just start using 'fuck' all the time more often than I'd like to.

Any advice from Karkat rpers how to avoid that and how you construct Karkat's unique analogies, insults, etc.?
selfkismesis: (THIS IS MY LIFE)

[personal profile] selfkismesis 2012-04-10 09:09 am (UTC)(link)
geez, i feel bad being the only one answering. so just keep in mind, i am not the ultimate authority here?

basically, first of all, keep in mind he doesn't rant and crazy-metaphor all the time. he does it frequently, but not all the time. he can have normal conversations with people, and he can even have sentences without massive amounts of profanity. he's still a profane motherfucker, but it happens.

as for metaphors, my only tip is ramble. if things are tangentially connected and it makes vague sense but not really, you're doing it right. get dramatic. go all out. pick big, massive impact things to compare little shit to. for example, karkat's mild irritation to some douchebag is likened to a black hole slowly consuming the universe, leaving behind only the echoes of all the fucks he doesn't give. focus less on the fucks and more on the elaborate, ridiculous picture he builds. pick a metaphor and drag it out to its most ridiculous conclusion.

i know this is pretty vague, but there's no set formula to writing stuff like this. i hope this helps?
Edited 2012-04-10 09:14 (UTC)
hate_actually: (MORE TROLLSPLAINING)

[personal profile] hate_actually 2012-04-10 02:17 pm (UTC)(link)
^^ good advice

I also find liberal use of thesaurus.com and more time than ideal spent on Wikipedia pages about insect biology fairly helpful, although some of those pages have truly unpleasant gifs on them

There isn't a formula, though! Ultimately the long-winded self-aggrandising incoherent vitriol has to come from a special place

inside

your heart

(:B
Edited 2012-04-10 14:20 (UTC)
almostexclusivelyornery: Karkat shouting angrily as he types in very quick strokes. (I MEAN FUCK RIGHT BACK HERE AND LISTEN.)

[personal profile] almostexclusivelyornery 2012-04-11 06:37 am (UTC)(link)
I find that basically Karkat's threshold for situations that merit cursing is lower than the average person! They're not his "very", but they are his "extremely" in a sense. He caps because of his need to emphasize EVERYTHING. So then once you start feeling like saying fuck you just isn't enough, that's when a good metaphor is handiness. I just kind of say whatever about the cosmos and years and as selfkismesis said, MAKE IT BIG. My addition is make it ANGRY. You've got to ram it into the thin shell of the other person's thick pan that this rusty nail is exactly what they fucking need. Like so.