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OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Len
Other characters: n/a
IN CHARACTER
Name: Nepeta Leijon
Fandom: Homestuck
Canon point/AU: just after fleeing to the Veil | AU
Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faker
PB: n/a
History: Homestuck wiki | troll and Alternia wikis | canon Nepeta wiki | bloodswap order and small blurbs on the other trolls
This AU is a basic bloodswap - the blood colors of the canon trolls have been switched around. Most of the core events of Homestuck remain unchanged, although there are of course still many differences owing to the different relationships and actions of the characters.
Nepeta was hatched as an anomaly - not only was she one of two tyrian trolls hatched at the same time, but she managed to survive the brooding cave trials and arrive at the cavern housing Gl'bgolyb alongside Equius. Because there was only supposed to be one heir, and thus one lusus, a fight broke out between the two young trolls. Nepeta lost this fight badly and would have also lost her life as well if Gl'bgolyb hadn't become agitated by the chaos beneath her and caused the cave to collapse.
In the chaos the gravely wounded Nepeta managed to escape to the surface, where she was discovered by a low-blooded lusus who had recently suffered the loss of his own charge. Emotionally bereft by the other troll's death, the lusus took in Nepeta to fill the hole and ultimately saved her life. The pair quickly bonded and Nepeta grew up in relative seclusion, rarely leaving her house or the company of her lusus.
She did, however, make quite a number of friends online. Several of these friends, guided by the voices of the dead and predestination, begin to collect pieces of the code to a video game that they dub Sgrub. Work on the game is slow until Terezi puts out Sollux's eyes in a near-fatal FLARP encounter; spurred on by an intense wave of self-loathing brought about by his sudden blindness, Sollux finishes the game and ultimately sets into motion the destruction of Alternia and everyone on it who is not playing the game.
Nepeta and her eleven friends spend a month progressing through Sgrub under the belligerent leadership of Karkat (who took the role without conferring with anyone else). During the game Eridan was killed due to a combination of his overconfidence and inability to properly utilize his time powers; he does not return to the session as his dreamself is trapped inside the Derse crypt, where he remains trapped for the remainder of the trolls' session. Vriska, the hero of Space, has no interest in her mythological duty to breed frogs and forge the new planet and completely forsakes them in favor of hunting monsters. No one realizes the task's importance until the very end of the game, leaving Karkat and Aradia to frantically scramble to produce some sort of universe frog; they fail to acquire the ultimate frog, the importance of which none of them realizes during the events of the game.
Nepeta herself spent most of her time accompanying Equius on his planet, completing quests and fighting monsters. As the Reckoning began she joined her friends in facing down the Black King, throwing everything she had at him in order to defeat him. Upon killing the King, the trolls prepared to access their reward and entire the new universe as its gods - however, events unfolding in another game session caused an omnipotent demon to be unleashed in the troll's session at this critical moment. The demon destroyed the door to the new universe and attacked the trolls, forcing them to flee into the safety of the Veil.
Now directionless and trapped in the meteor belt, the trolls are faced with waiting for their inevitable discovery and slaughter by the being which cut them off from their prize, which eventually evolves into the human's universe in their absence.
Presentation:
Nepeta is an incredibly cheerful and friendly girl, willing to go the extra mile to coax even the most reticent or disagreeable person out of their shell. She cares deeply for her friends and is willing to do anything for them, as they mean the world to her. However, aside from incredibly intimate relationships, she is rarely pushy - in fact, Nepeta is an incredibly passive girl in conversations. She rarely gives her opinion on controversial topics and willingly drops conversations that appear to be heading in the direction that could cause a fight. Nepeta rarely leaves her house, so socializing online is incredibly important to her; so important that she's willing to avoid confrontations for the sake of having positive talks.
Despite being willing to let a lot of things go for the sake of peace, when Nepeta makes a decision there are very few things that can sway her from it. One of these choices is typing anonymously, which is tied into her vehement belief that blood should have no bearing on people's relationships; blood equality is one of the few topics that Nepeta is willing to get into an argument over, although she still tries to avoid it if she can. The anonymity extends to other areas of her life as well - although Nepeta enjoys talking and befriending people, she gives surprisingly few details about her own life. There's a certain reservedness to her demeanor that keeps her from sharing any more than the barest bones of her life, although her upbeat demeanor keeps it from being noticeable in daily life.
No matter the situation, Nepeta is aggressively optimistic about life; she sincerely believes that no matter what happens things will work out for the best. This belief can make her appear overly innocent and naive, but she's willing to fight to preserve anything she sees as a way to secure a good future for herself and her friends.
Motivations:
Although most of Nepeta's positivity is genuine, there are a host of issues and insecurities beneath the surface that she never shares. One of the largest is her constant fear and paranoia of being discovered as an extraneous heiress; this fear colors her entire life and looms large over nearly every decision she makes. Although she is naturally social, the possibility of being uncovered causes her to withdraw from face to face interaction wherever possible and maintain zero physical contact when in-person interaction is unavoidable. Although she's naturally a very tactile person, Nepeta rarely even shakes hands for fear of jostling her hood.
This fear also feeds into another insecurity of hers: that her friends aren't as close as she wants to believe that they are. Despite having several good friends and a solid (if somewhat lopsided) pale relationship, Nepeta can't completely bring herself to believe that her sessionmates would accept her if her secret was revealed no matter how much she wants to. She longs to be completely accepted for who she is, but experience has taught her that the likelihood of this is incredibly slim. This competes with her natural optimism and causes her to reach out to people as much as she possibly can in the hopes of being proven wrong, even as she retain almost all personal information from the people she befriends. She becomes highly emotionally attached to people who respond to her affections, and losing those people is a huge blow to her; because of their unique relationship Nepeta was closer than usual to her adoptive lusus, and his death was a blow that she still hasn't completely recovered from.
With all of these very real problems and worries constantly hanging over her head, Nepeta is much more realistic than her dogged positivity initially lets on. Her optimism is the things that she wants to believe and is struggling to make a reality, but deep down she's perfectly aware of how things will likely play out. Her quiet nature and self-imposed detachment gives her plenty of time to observe people, something which she's very good at; Nepeta can easily pick up on people's emotional states and their relationships with others, which she keeps to herself. While she never uses it for manipulative purposes, it is something which colors her interactions with others.
Despite having no interest in making a bid for the throne beyond influencing Equius to more humane policies, there are still many urges inherent in tyrian trolls that Nepeta possesses and does her best to repress. There's a natural aggression and desire to dominate that she hates; instead of giving in to it she ignores it entirely and channels the urges into surviving, although they still rear their head when she's backed into a corner and forced to fight for her life.
Setting: Nepeta is going to have a very tough time adjusting to the Games, as she's spent her entire life avoiding being culled and death is the entire point of competing in the Arena. There will probably be intense panic and desperate attempts to simply avoid everyone for some time, especially after the first Arena costume appears that doesn't allow her to cover up her fins. There's going to be a lot of confusion when she meets her green-blooded doppelganger and ancestor as well, especially if it's during an Arena rather than beforehand.
Nepeta is adaptable and naturally stubborn, however, so eventually she'll begin to find her stride and look for ways to help dismantle the Games. No one's ever too young for a little rebellion, right?
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
[Nepeta barely registers the voice echoing above her at first - her mind is still in chaos, attempting to process the events which had unfolded what felt like only moments before. she'd died. after sweeps of hiding and clawing at every opportunity to have just one more day alive, she'd died in this horrible unfamiliar world. every trace of her struggle had been erased - even the blood beneath her fingernails was gone.
for some reason this revelation is the one which brings her to the edge of tears.
she's in no mood to be divulging her feelings to her moirail, let alone making a recording for the monsters who forced her into this situation. Nepeta gives the device at her a side a single disdainful look before pulling her knees up to her chest, gently resting her head atop them. instinct keeps her arms pulled in tight to obscure her gills as she stares at nothing in particular, lost in thought as she stubbornly ignores the instructions.
twenty minutes pass in sterile silence; it's obvious by now that neither side is willing to give up. Nepeta is completely prepared to continue waiting her captors out into the foreseeable future when a thought strikes her: the others were still out there. perhaps they'd met her fate, perhaps they were still playing, but regardless they were still somewhere in the Capitol. what good could she do trapped here?
she might not be able to help herself, but she could still help her friends. so Nepeta unfurls slowly and fixes the recorder with a flat look]
I was a mistake, I think. I was never supposed to be alive in the first place, so it shouldn't matter when I die since every day was one more than I should have had.
[she trails off, gaze flickering. it's difficult enough to put this into words, but the task is made doubly onerous with the fact that this would be heard and replayed by strangers likely for their own amusement.]
Still...I didn't want it to be from you.
[her voice cracks now, the trauma of the experience too much for Nepeta to completely hold in. she rises suddenly and strides to the door, waiting expectantly and tensely. she'd done her duty; now it was time for them to hold up their end of the bargain before she burst into tears]
Prose:
Nepeta couldn't help but look back in bewilderment at the door closing behind her; things had moved so quickly that her mind was still attempting to reconcile all of the information that had been thrown at it. Her thoughts were still with the trolls in the Veil, even as she turned to regard the gamemakers stoically waiting for her to display her prowess.
There was something intensely ironic about someone like her being forced into a fight to the death, and she couldn't help but wonder if these people were aware of that when they stole her away. A stubborn part of her mind whispered that she ought to simply take a seat and see how long they would tolerate inaction before giving up in disgust, but Nepeta had spent far too long struggling to survive to listen - she knew that if she wanted to return to where she was truly needed, she was going to have to play their game for now.
With an almost imperceptible swallow she strode forward and, after a brief brush against the forcefield to determine that it really did exist (perhaps she was still more stubborn than she ought to be), gave the people sitting behind it a low bow. Her hands moved to pull her hood more closely around her face automatically as she rose, eyes already moving towards the targets and weapons beside her.
After a moment of careful consideration she wrapped a tiny hand around an equally slim dagger, the edge glinting sinisterly in the dull light. Her gazed moved briefly back to the gamemakers to ensure that they were watching, and then she was off. With practiced motions she dashed forward towards a mannequin; within a matter of seconds it was on the floor with the dagger embedded in its throat deep enough to leave nothing but the hilt visible. Nepeta spun to a halt several feet behind it, body hunched into a defensive crouch meant to give her protection and mobility should her target somehow manage to rise from such a decisive blow.
In the space of a breath Nepeta was upright again, watching the gamemakers with half-lidded eyes for any sort of reaction. She strode back to the forcefield, pausing only to pull the dagger from the mannequin with a jerk far too forceful for her small frame.
"It's better to know where you're aiming because it makes your size irrelevant," she explained quietly, the folds of her cloak hiding the way that she gripped the dagger until her knuckles turned white around it. Suddenly she grinned at the gamemakers, fangs on display in a disconcerting clash of danger and amusement. "Everyone dies the same way, even if their killer's small."
What is your character scored:
Likely a 7 or 8. Although she's relatively frail for a troll, when compared to regular humans she's still able to take significantly more damage; she is also a seadweller, which gives her more inherent strength, although her lifetime of solitude has made this more of a latent skill than anything else. Being a seadweller has also equipped her body to exist underwater and withstand the massive pressure of deep seas, although Nepeta herself has never actually swum in her life.
She is incredibly fast and has a healthy knowledge of the vital points on a body and where she needs to hit for quick kills. Her area of expertise lies in blades - she typically fights with clawed gloves whose blades are hooked to mimic a crab's claw. In addition she has access to a sylladex (basically a real-life game inventory which allows her to store and retrieve items in hammerspace) and a strife specibus (similar to a sylladex, except exclusively for weapons) as well as the powers granted to her through her title as Rogue of Blood. Her Rogue powers, at their peak, allow her to literally 'steal' a person's blood and take control of their body. She has no idea of what these powers entail, however, and currently cannot use them; to do so would require her to become more in tune with her abilities.
She's spent her entire life always looking over her shoulder with death hanging above her, so with enough determination she should adapt to the paranoid atmosphere of the Arena quite well. However, she's also incredibly sensitive and prone to becoming quickly attached to people. This is bad for her chances at surviving, as she will flatly refuse to fight anyone she considers a friend, but good for her crowd appeal as it easily sets up emotionally charged confrontations.
Her canon self (as well as her canon self's ancestor) is already present in the game, which means that there will be more charged confrontations should the two ever end up facing each other in the Arena.
Name: Len
Other characters: n/a
IN CHARACTER
Name: Nepeta Leijon
Fandom: Homestuck
Canon point/AU: just after fleeing to the Veil | AU
Journal:
fakerPB: n/a
History: Homestuck wiki | troll and Alternia wikis | canon Nepeta wiki | bloodswap order and small blurbs on the other trolls
This AU is a basic bloodswap - the blood colors of the canon trolls have been switched around. Most of the core events of Homestuck remain unchanged, although there are of course still many differences owing to the different relationships and actions of the characters.
Nepeta was hatched as an anomaly - not only was she one of two tyrian trolls hatched at the same time, but she managed to survive the brooding cave trials and arrive at the cavern housing Gl'bgolyb alongside Equius. Because there was only supposed to be one heir, and thus one lusus, a fight broke out between the two young trolls. Nepeta lost this fight badly and would have also lost her life as well if Gl'bgolyb hadn't become agitated by the chaos beneath her and caused the cave to collapse.
In the chaos the gravely wounded Nepeta managed to escape to the surface, where she was discovered by a low-blooded lusus who had recently suffered the loss of his own charge. Emotionally bereft by the other troll's death, the lusus took in Nepeta to fill the hole and ultimately saved her life. The pair quickly bonded and Nepeta grew up in relative seclusion, rarely leaving her house or the company of her lusus.
She did, however, make quite a number of friends online. Several of these friends, guided by the voices of the dead and predestination, begin to collect pieces of the code to a video game that they dub Sgrub. Work on the game is slow until Terezi puts out Sollux's eyes in a near-fatal FLARP encounter; spurred on by an intense wave of self-loathing brought about by his sudden blindness, Sollux finishes the game and ultimately sets into motion the destruction of Alternia and everyone on it who is not playing the game.
Nepeta and her eleven friends spend a month progressing through Sgrub under the belligerent leadership of Karkat (who took the role without conferring with anyone else). During the game Eridan was killed due to a combination of his overconfidence and inability to properly utilize his time powers; he does not return to the session as his dreamself is trapped inside the Derse crypt, where he remains trapped for the remainder of the trolls' session. Vriska, the hero of Space, has no interest in her mythological duty to breed frogs and forge the new planet and completely forsakes them in favor of hunting monsters. No one realizes the task's importance until the very end of the game, leaving Karkat and Aradia to frantically scramble to produce some sort of universe frog; they fail to acquire the ultimate frog, the importance of which none of them realizes during the events of the game.
Nepeta herself spent most of her time accompanying Equius on his planet, completing quests and fighting monsters. As the Reckoning began she joined her friends in facing down the Black King, throwing everything she had at him in order to defeat him. Upon killing the King, the trolls prepared to access their reward and entire the new universe as its gods - however, events unfolding in another game session caused an omnipotent demon to be unleashed in the troll's session at this critical moment. The demon destroyed the door to the new universe and attacked the trolls, forcing them to flee into the safety of the Veil.
Now directionless and trapped in the meteor belt, the trolls are faced with waiting for their inevitable discovery and slaughter by the being which cut them off from their prize, which eventually evolves into the human's universe in their absence.
Presentation:
Nepeta is an incredibly cheerful and friendly girl, willing to go the extra mile to coax even the most reticent or disagreeable person out of their shell. She cares deeply for her friends and is willing to do anything for them, as they mean the world to her. However, aside from incredibly intimate relationships, she is rarely pushy - in fact, Nepeta is an incredibly passive girl in conversations. She rarely gives her opinion on controversial topics and willingly drops conversations that appear to be heading in the direction that could cause a fight. Nepeta rarely leaves her house, so socializing online is incredibly important to her; so important that she's willing to avoid confrontations for the sake of having positive talks.
Despite being willing to let a lot of things go for the sake of peace, when Nepeta makes a decision there are very few things that can sway her from it. One of these choices is typing anonymously, which is tied into her vehement belief that blood should have no bearing on people's relationships; blood equality is one of the few topics that Nepeta is willing to get into an argument over, although she still tries to avoid it if she can. The anonymity extends to other areas of her life as well - although Nepeta enjoys talking and befriending people, she gives surprisingly few details about her own life. There's a certain reservedness to her demeanor that keeps her from sharing any more than the barest bones of her life, although her upbeat demeanor keeps it from being noticeable in daily life.
No matter the situation, Nepeta is aggressively optimistic about life; she sincerely believes that no matter what happens things will work out for the best. This belief can make her appear overly innocent and naive, but she's willing to fight to preserve anything she sees as a way to secure a good future for herself and her friends.
Motivations:
Although most of Nepeta's positivity is genuine, there are a host of issues and insecurities beneath the surface that she never shares. One of the largest is her constant fear and paranoia of being discovered as an extraneous heiress; this fear colors her entire life and looms large over nearly every decision she makes. Although she is naturally social, the possibility of being uncovered causes her to withdraw from face to face interaction wherever possible and maintain zero physical contact when in-person interaction is unavoidable. Although she's naturally a very tactile person, Nepeta rarely even shakes hands for fear of jostling her hood.
This fear also feeds into another insecurity of hers: that her friends aren't as close as she wants to believe that they are. Despite having several good friends and a solid (if somewhat lopsided) pale relationship, Nepeta can't completely bring herself to believe that her sessionmates would accept her if her secret was revealed no matter how much she wants to. She longs to be completely accepted for who she is, but experience has taught her that the likelihood of this is incredibly slim. This competes with her natural optimism and causes her to reach out to people as much as she possibly can in the hopes of being proven wrong, even as she retain almost all personal information from the people she befriends. She becomes highly emotionally attached to people who respond to her affections, and losing those people is a huge blow to her; because of their unique relationship Nepeta was closer than usual to her adoptive lusus, and his death was a blow that she still hasn't completely recovered from.
With all of these very real problems and worries constantly hanging over her head, Nepeta is much more realistic than her dogged positivity initially lets on. Her optimism is the things that she wants to believe and is struggling to make a reality, but deep down she's perfectly aware of how things will likely play out. Her quiet nature and self-imposed detachment gives her plenty of time to observe people, something which she's very good at; Nepeta can easily pick up on people's emotional states and their relationships with others, which she keeps to herself. While she never uses it for manipulative purposes, it is something which colors her interactions with others.
Despite having no interest in making a bid for the throne beyond influencing Equius to more humane policies, there are still many urges inherent in tyrian trolls that Nepeta possesses and does her best to repress. There's a natural aggression and desire to dominate that she hates; instead of giving in to it she ignores it entirely and channels the urges into surviving, although they still rear their head when she's backed into a corner and forced to fight for her life.
Setting: Nepeta is going to have a very tough time adjusting to the Games, as she's spent her entire life avoiding being culled and death is the entire point of competing in the Arena. There will probably be intense panic and desperate attempts to simply avoid everyone for some time, especially after the first Arena costume appears that doesn't allow her to cover up her fins. There's going to be a lot of confusion when she meets her green-blooded doppelganger and ancestor as well, especially if it's during an Arena rather than beforehand.
Nepeta is adaptable and naturally stubborn, however, so eventually she'll begin to find her stride and look for ways to help dismantle the Games. No one's ever too young for a little rebellion, right?
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
[Nepeta barely registers the voice echoing above her at first - her mind is still in chaos, attempting to process the events which had unfolded what felt like only moments before. she'd died. after sweeps of hiding and clawing at every opportunity to have just one more day alive, she'd died in this horrible unfamiliar world. every trace of her struggle had been erased - even the blood beneath her fingernails was gone.
for some reason this revelation is the one which brings her to the edge of tears.
she's in no mood to be divulging her feelings to her moirail, let alone making a recording for the monsters who forced her into this situation. Nepeta gives the device at her a side a single disdainful look before pulling her knees up to her chest, gently resting her head atop them. instinct keeps her arms pulled in tight to obscure her gills as she stares at nothing in particular, lost in thought as she stubbornly ignores the instructions.
twenty minutes pass in sterile silence; it's obvious by now that neither side is willing to give up. Nepeta is completely prepared to continue waiting her captors out into the foreseeable future when a thought strikes her: the others were still out there. perhaps they'd met her fate, perhaps they were still playing, but regardless they were still somewhere in the Capitol. what good could she do trapped here?
she might not be able to help herself, but she could still help her friends. so Nepeta unfurls slowly and fixes the recorder with a flat look]
I was a mistake, I think. I was never supposed to be alive in the first place, so it shouldn't matter when I die since every day was one more than I should have had.
[she trails off, gaze flickering. it's difficult enough to put this into words, but the task is made doubly onerous with the fact that this would be heard and replayed by strangers likely for their own amusement.]
Still...I didn't want it to be from you.
[her voice cracks now, the trauma of the experience too much for Nepeta to completely hold in. she rises suddenly and strides to the door, waiting expectantly and tensely. she'd done her duty; now it was time for them to hold up their end of the bargain before she burst into tears]
Prose:
Nepeta couldn't help but look back in bewilderment at the door closing behind her; things had moved so quickly that her mind was still attempting to reconcile all of the information that had been thrown at it. Her thoughts were still with the trolls in the Veil, even as she turned to regard the gamemakers stoically waiting for her to display her prowess.
There was something intensely ironic about someone like her being forced into a fight to the death, and she couldn't help but wonder if these people were aware of that when they stole her away. A stubborn part of her mind whispered that she ought to simply take a seat and see how long they would tolerate inaction before giving up in disgust, but Nepeta had spent far too long struggling to survive to listen - she knew that if she wanted to return to where she was truly needed, she was going to have to play their game for now.
With an almost imperceptible swallow she strode forward and, after a brief brush against the forcefield to determine that it really did exist (perhaps she was still more stubborn than she ought to be), gave the people sitting behind it a low bow. Her hands moved to pull her hood more closely around her face automatically as she rose, eyes already moving towards the targets and weapons beside her.
After a moment of careful consideration she wrapped a tiny hand around an equally slim dagger, the edge glinting sinisterly in the dull light. Her gazed moved briefly back to the gamemakers to ensure that they were watching, and then she was off. With practiced motions she dashed forward towards a mannequin; within a matter of seconds it was on the floor with the dagger embedded in its throat deep enough to leave nothing but the hilt visible. Nepeta spun to a halt several feet behind it, body hunched into a defensive crouch meant to give her protection and mobility should her target somehow manage to rise from such a decisive blow.
In the space of a breath Nepeta was upright again, watching the gamemakers with half-lidded eyes for any sort of reaction. She strode back to the forcefield, pausing only to pull the dagger from the mannequin with a jerk far too forceful for her small frame.
"It's better to know where you're aiming because it makes your size irrelevant," she explained quietly, the folds of her cloak hiding the way that she gripped the dagger until her knuckles turned white around it. Suddenly she grinned at the gamemakers, fangs on display in a disconcerting clash of danger and amusement. "Everyone dies the same way, even if their killer's small."
What is your character scored:
Likely a 7 or 8. Although she's relatively frail for a troll, when compared to regular humans she's still able to take significantly more damage; she is also a seadweller, which gives her more inherent strength, although her lifetime of solitude has made this more of a latent skill than anything else. Being a seadweller has also equipped her body to exist underwater and withstand the massive pressure of deep seas, although Nepeta herself has never actually swum in her life.
She is incredibly fast and has a healthy knowledge of the vital points on a body and where she needs to hit for quick kills. Her area of expertise lies in blades - she typically fights with clawed gloves whose blades are hooked to mimic a crab's claw. In addition she has access to a sylladex (basically a real-life game inventory which allows her to store and retrieve items in hammerspace) and a strife specibus (similar to a sylladex, except exclusively for weapons) as well as the powers granted to her through her title as Rogue of Blood. Her Rogue powers, at their peak, allow her to literally 'steal' a person's blood and take control of their body. She has no idea of what these powers entail, however, and currently cannot use them; to do so would require her to become more in tune with her abilities.
She's spent her entire life always looking over her shoulder with death hanging above her, so with enough determination she should adapt to the paranoid atmosphere of the Arena quite well. However, she's also incredibly sensitive and prone to becoming quickly attached to people. This is bad for her chances at surviving, as she will flatly refuse to fight anyone she considers a friend, but good for her crowd appeal as it easily sets up emotionally charged confrontations.
Her canon self (as well as her canon self's ancestor) is already present in the game, which means that there will be more charged confrontations should the two ever end up facing each other in the Arena.