by marathemara

By the beginning of Act 5 Act 2, the reader is pretty well acquainted with both John and Karkat. We’ve seen how they’re different, but we’ve also been barraged with thematic similarities. Hussie seems determined to present Karkat as “Troll John,” from their introduction pages, in which they both love bad movies and are bad at programming, to their combative relationships with their guardians, to descriptions of them as “our human hero” and “our troll hero”. And before they finally meet for the first time from Karkat’s perspective, you’ve spent ages reading only about Karkat and not at all about John. So you’d be forgiven for thinking they were similar people.

But Karkat comes into that conversation keenly aware of some of the differences between them. John grew up in a peaceful household with a loving guardian. Karkat, who grew up as the adopted child and caretaker of an angry giant crustacean, envies John the tranquility of his childhood. Because of this, and because John is the leader of the session whose Scratch took away Karkat’s own victory, Karkat hates John. Karkat, who keeps himself constantly angry at everyone around him, finds himself hating John more than he has ever hated anyone, and he decides it’s the true hate he’s been looking for all his life and that John should be his kismesis.



Karkat, however, has identified only the superficial differences between himself and John. The real differences show up during their first conversation, after Karkat officially declares how much he hates John.



[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004528]

Karkat enters the conversation angry and trying to impress John with the intensity of his anger–even though the page title suggests that Karkat considers John “this worthless human.” There’s no contradiction though; this is how Karkat behaves toward everybody: constantly angry and trying to make people take him seriously. John, on the other hand, doesn’t care who takes him seriously, and responds cheerfully to Karkat, throwing him off his stride. Karkat, flustered and embarrassed, tries to cover up his mistake by working backward through John’s timeline so that he would never have to interact with another version of John who knew about his hatecrush.

Meanwhile, John doesn’t let assholes like Karkat bother him, and is just a little bit oblivious to their ill intentions and possible romantic advances. He’s never hated Karkat, finding him really annoying at worst and amusing at best, and by the time he reaches Karkat’s first conversation with him, he’s been through the process of getting to know Karkat (albeit in reverse) and considers them friends. His responses to Karkat’s ire and confusion, and even his rejection of Karkat’s hate-flirting, are so persistently cheerful that it eventually wears Karkat down. After that, he starts cooperating with the human kids.



Karkat gives up on his hatecrush, but he never stops being embarrassed about it, showing another important difference between John and Karkat. While he dwells on his mistake, feeling the need to apologize yet again the first time they meet in person in the New Alpha, John has forgiven all Karkat’s trolling by the first time they meet in person from John’s perspective, and begins his misson of retconning by giving Karkat a hug.



Karkat’s hatecrush on John is a beautiful thing because it, and his and John’s reactions to it, show us the major differences between them in spite of all the work Hussie put into giving us identical first impressions of them. From their introductions alone, they could be the same people from different species. But let them react to each other just that little bit, and it’s not hard to see how they’ve ended up where they are, with John looking forward and moving forward, taking responsibility for his team and literally changing the universe, while Karkat stays full of regret, dwelling on his mistakes and not going anywhere.