by ohthewhomanity

So, say you’re scrolling down Tumblr and you see an unlabeled audio post. You click on the link and hear a cheerful melody of meowing cats. “Aww!” you think. “This is an adorable song! I wonder what it’s called.” Fortunately for you, the original poster has provided a link to the Homestuck Bandcamp page for this song. You click the link; you can’t wait to find out the name of this adorable happy kitty song–Walls Covered in Blood???

That’s not adorable. Depending on how you think about it, it’s either morbid or badass, which, according to human thought, are, like, the opposite of adorable.

But the split between cuteness and violence is a human concept. Even most trolls believe in this dichotomy, as shown when Karkat made up the portmanteau “adorabloodthirsty” while complaining about Terezi calling him “adorable”. Nepeta Leijon, the troll behind the song, thinks otherwise.

For Nepeta, it’s not a dichotomy. She can be both. She can put a cat emoticons and puns in her texts and razor-sharp claws on her wrists. She can search for the Fountain of Cute and kill big animals with her bare hands along the way. She can doodle tales of romance on the walls using blood from a beast she’s just slain. In her roleplay games, she can lick the blood off her paws with one mouth and use the other to blow her dragon friend a kiss.

Heart players are supposed to have a “fragmented” personality. However, I don’t believe that Nepeta is any more fractured than a normal person is. People tend to choose one part of their personality to be, and reject parts that don’t line up with what they’ve decided they are. Nepeta is unique in that she’s accepted the different parts of her personality–the cute and the badass, the adorable and the bloodthirsty–as who she was. She knows that it’s okay to be both, that it’s okay to not fit into one category, thus displaying a wisdom beyond her years.

Yes, I said wisdom. Despite Karkat’s obnoxious “autistic girl in a cave” comment and Equius’s insistence that she doesn’t know what’s best for her, Nepeta is no simpleton. She knows how to take care of herself and has little trouble with the game. But she also knows how to take care of others. Nepeta is very empathetic, fixated on the emotions and desires of her friends, which she always puts above her own. Upon Aradiabot’s explosion, although Nepeta had just woken up after having her dreamself stabbed by Jack and watching Derse burn, instead of pitying herself or demanding attention, she immediately turns to comfort Equius instead. (Equius describes it afterwards: “We e%amined my emotional state until we were both b100 in the face.”)

Nepeta may be an avid shipper of her friends, but she never pushes anyone into a relationship. She understands that some ships sink, no matter how much she might want them to sail, and respects the feelings of others involved. “its just not that simple,” she tells Jaspersprite. “i could make someone else jealous i think, and what if he doesnt f33l the same way, and, urrgh, its so complickated”. Nepeta is able to analyze her own feelings and always considers how her actions will affect other people before she thinks of herself. Sadly, this lack of self-interest is what led to her death, since she didn’t consider the pawsible furrtal consequences of sneaking out of her hiding purrlace.

Yep, I just used cat puns while talking about character death. My girl Nepeta doesn’t think adorable and morbid are opposites, and neither do I! :33