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#karkat woke up too early on his kindergarten
chrisrin · 11 months
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GEMSTUCK DOODLES!
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chrisrin · 11 months
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Is karkat going to go through a similar arc as peridot?
Karkat's arc is a bit of a mix between Amethyst and Peridot, but both sorts of flipped on their heads!
The idea with Karkat is that he's a Jasper who woke up too early. Unlike Amethyst who woke up too late, Karkat emerges from his hole some hundred years before he's supposed to. The planet is incubating and not being super closely monitored because everything's all set and they're just waiting for the gems to grow. This leaves Karkat pretty much alone on a desolate, dark, dying planet.
He wishes for nothing more than to go back to sleep, he tries to crawl back into his hole multiple times waiting for consciousness to slip, but he can't go back to "keep growing" after he's emerged.
The longer you wait, the more your mind fills. It’d be wrong to call them memories, you didn���t exist before, so they can’t be memories. 
Purpose. What your purpose should be. You’re a Jasper, you’re a Quartz, made for war. You’re a soldier, you’re a warrior for Homeworld. You’re supposed to be big and strong, ready to fight for your creators, for your Diamond.
You’re supposed to fit your hole. You can’t.
So he makes a life of wandering the planet. It's cold and boring, so fucking boring, and he thinks a lot about what he could do. He thinks about how he's a failure to the Diamonds, swapping between fear of being discovered here and wanting nothing more than to interact and talk with another sentient being.
Unbeknownst to Karkat, another group of gems nears the Kindergarten. The Alpha Kids are a small group of rebel gems who stole a ship off Homeworld. Upon needing to stock up on supplies, Roxy locates an incubating Kindergarten that is long enough in its cycle for no gems to inhabit the planet, but early enough that they can still retrieve what they need. They land on the Kindergarten and Karkat eavesdrops, stunned to be witnessing actual living real people.
But Karkat realizes what they are, when he listens in and realizes that they're traitors.
He sees this as an opportunity. If he can turn these rebels in, then the Diamonds won't shatter him! He won't be a failure!
So he boards the ship, sneaking on as a stowaway. Roxy almost immediately finds him and it turns into that little scene.
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Jane and Roxy convince Dirk to let Karkat live and stay aboard, and Karkat stays locked up in one of the rooms. He's like a little hissy cat, but he's also completely overwhelmed and overstimulated just being around things that aren't the Kindergarten.
With a lot of time and a lot of slowly building trust, Karkat starts to warm up to the Alpha Kids and eventually becomes a proper part of their squad.
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