Kanaya Maryam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
speakveryclearly) wrote2012-08-06 10:07 pm
speakveryclearly) wrote2012-08-06 10:07 pm
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exsilium application
>≫ PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Lenga
Current AGE: Seventeen!
Personal JOURNAL:crabg1rl
IM & SERVICE: Lengachan @ AIM
Player PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
lengachan
Current CHARACTERS: N/A
≫ CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Kanaya Maryam
Canon & MEDIUM: Homestuck @ MS Paint Adventures, which is the last time I checked a webcomic.
Canon PULL-POINT: Approximately four hours and thirteen minutes before the CRITICAL MOMENT. After this conversation and before this panel.
Character AGE: "6 solar sweeps" is how she'll give her age, which will be clarified as 13 human years; however, due to a combination of her status as the Virgo troll and the time she's spent somewhere else before coming here, she is now in fact at least 14.Though now she's kind of also immortal.
Character ABILITIES: First let me just get out of the way, for anyone who will vaguely recognize that the sheer Homestuck special snowflake gradient seems off here, that Kanaya was the Sylph of Space and had a Prospit dreamself, but these aspects are both entirely irrelevant in the setting so I will make no further mention of them. Second, she's a troll character and so once suffered from certain species-related symptoms, but she's a little more supernatural on top of that so I'm going to take my snowflake souffle in two heaping slices.
Kanaya Maryam has become a rainbow drinker. This is essentially Homestuck's funhouse take on Twilight's sparklepires. Though canon is pretty vague, here are my conclusions:
Independently of all that, Kanaya has a sylladex, with both a Captchalogue Deck (typified by fetch modus) and a Strife Deck (typified by strife specibus). Her strife specibus, makeupkind, means she can store anything makeup-shaped in hyperspace because it's her weapon. This includes her personal lipsticks that transform into... chainsaws. With which she's quite skilled. Her fetch modus, Chastity, means that she can store items in hyperspace and retrieve them at will... if she finds a certain kind of key.
Character HISTORY: There is her article on the Homestuck wiki if you choose to read it, but it's a rather terse reference with scattered information, especially where conveying what the work's universe is like is concerned. It's hard to blame them. The universe of Homestuck is incredibly complex. In fact, scratch that, the universes of Homestuck are incredibly complex.
The planet of Alternia with its warlike race of "trolls" dominated the universe this character comes from for, at bare minimum, thousands of years. Their approach to life is suspiciously resemblant of a particularly violent video game, sometimes even flying in the face of evolutionary logic: Rejection of the weak without a second thought, forcible training for the strong, all creatures predator and prey at once, a rigid system of blood castes with entirely objective scaling of strengths and weaknesses, ridiculous walks required between locations prompting digitally dominated communication, immutable identity designations, murder as a common occurrence. Thus it should come as no surprise that their universe was in fact carefully engineered by a certain "gentleman", who went by the name Doc Scratch, such that its residents would be ideal to play a certain video game. Not a mere session of Mario Karts Double Dash or even Super Smash Bros. Melee; no, this game was literally cosmic in its scale, using meteors as its pawns, planets as squares, and all of paradox space as its board. Even its adolescent players were carefully created by destiny since before their births, comprising every single socioeconomic position Alternia had to offer and granted powers and handicaps appropriate to the titles they would later bear in the game.
This game was "Sgrub". The game starts innocently enough allowing a "server player" to view and manipulate the surroundings of their "client player" as if they were playing The Sims. The group of servers and clients make their way into the Medium, where an epic RPG in the tradition of Earthbound unfolds. Eventually it became clear that the Ultimate Reward for which they were fighting was the Spore-style creation of a new universe, which they would rule as gods.
However, when the trolls played Sgrub, something went horribly wrong. Just as they were going to claim the Ultimate Reward, a demon burning with the flames of a sun twice as powerful as the entire universe appeared from thin air and they were thrust into the Veil, a cramped computer lab at the Medium's furthest ring. Here they discovered that this demon came from the universe they had created, as a byproduct of another group of adolescents playing Sgrub - or as it was called in the squishy vague words their pathethic human civilization preferred, "Sburb". These pale bright-eyed alien children had everything the trolls didn't: A comfortable upbringing largely free of personal tragedy, loving guardians doing their best to protect them despite the game's machinations, and hope before them of the ultimate reward. All their species had left was an internet connection. Thus, urged by their leader's rousing speech, they resolved to...
Troll them.
Kanaya Maryam was born the exact genetic descendant of the Dolorosa: Our troll Lady of Sorrow. Her blood was the rare jade kind that endowed such unique privileges as tolerance of harsh Alternian sunlight. It also dictated that she work in the brooding caverns of the Mother Grub, a creature like the trolls' queen (though only biologically -- their civilization is ruled by an empress). Due to this reproductive structure, trolls didn't form autonomous familial units. Instead those who survived to pupation and endured the trials in the brooding caverns were selected by a lusus naturae, a great and terrible beast often akin to their charge in strength, temperament, and other traits. There was no room in the caverns, however, for the Sufferer -- better known in the future as Jegus -- and so the Dolorosa adopted him as her own, becoming a virgin mother.
Kanaya herself lived ignorant of her ancestor, but nevertheless had an equally exceptional destiny in store for her. This began to manifest soon after her pupation, when a virgin mother grub left her position in the caverns to be her lusus, an unprecedented event. They made their home in a white tower built off of ruins in the sunny desert. This region was populated by heinous broods of the undead, and so in her early years the mother grub devoutly protected Kanaya from them. Before long she would wield a chainsaw to do it herself.
Her ivory tower isolated her from other trolls and prepared her for her Sgrub-given role as the Sylph of Space. This granted her outside knowledge from three sources. The first and foremost was her dream self, a second Kanaya, princess on the planet of Prospit, whose consciousness she adopted when she slept. On Prospit clouds commonly eclipsed the celestial body of Skaia, showing images of the past and future, thus providing the dreamer the appearance of clairvoyance. The second was Doc Scratch himself, who seemed to provide some kind of fatherly elderly male guidance in her life. The third was actually a brief walkthrough of Sgrub written by an alien of some kind known to Kanaya only as "tentacleTherapist". All this information and isolation gave her a unique level-headed perspective, focused on aesthetic things like "rainbow drinkers" (the rainbow meaning blood, what else) and "wearing more than one outfit from day to day" (or as we call it, "fashion").
Her uncannily conciliatory nature would aid her when she entered the game, considering that asking twelve trolls to work together as a team is like pulling out twelve teeth at once. However, over time all the players would to some degree catch "the troll disease called friendship". The nearest and dearest to Kanaya was always one Vriska Serket, a manipulative misunderstood blueblood as beautiful as a black widow and eight times as dangerous, who fed her lusus trolls by the octet by means of a live action roleplaying game. They fell head over heals into moirallegiance, a kind of more official best friendship dedicated to the complement of the hothearted and coolheaded. Deep in her cardiovascular system, though, Kanaya loved this mad girl madly. She suppressed this from her friends' knowledge as best she could. The only one who ever confronted her about it was Eridan Ampora, who knew them both fairly well; he and Vriska were on-again off-again hate-dating, sometimes with Kanaya mediating. The two were somewhat close despite the dissolution of that whole relationship and his status as a seadweller dedicated to the destruction of the landdwelling part of the troll race--in fact, he even promised not to kill her no matter how far his genocidal plans progressed. Because "that wwould be fuckin unconscionable". Sic.
This was life as Kanaya knew it when the game began. Given her sources, she could well anticipate the exact time, as the night was marked by the death of every single troll's lusus. When Kanaya's died peacefully within the naturally unstable lifespan of a virgin mother grub (her wings still intact, after all!) it was time for Kanaya to do her a final favor: Retrieve from her the Matriorb, and hatch the new mother grub from it when the time is right, thus becoming a virgin mother herself. From the clouds she also knew that she had to enter the Medium nearly last, and arranged for herself a position as Vriska's server player. Unfortunately, Vriska was serving Tavros Nitram, a lowblood with low self esteem whom she had personally crippled. Letting Vriska literally control his world was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. Kanaya thus found herself having to mediate for the pair constantly. It was such a shame the girl she cherished so closely had gotten wrapped up in this hateful relationship. When she could have been turbo-levelling herself further instead of exhorting the reluctant boy to do so, when she was one of the only trolls who actually had a tasteful, snazzy sense of fashion, having gone so far as to actually solicit a lovely fairy dress from her to--
Actually, we don't know what she told Kanaya it was for, but we do know she was lying--she was having a rendezvous with Tavros instead in a combined attempt at seduction and paralysis curing. She achieved neither, and her mind-control aided attempts at making him want to kiss her only got him to drag her weakly onto the floor. As Vriska's server player, Kanaya saw it all happen. Her distress in the wake of this was so severe that it prompted the story's explanation of trolls' complex romantic mores. She completely cut off communications with both Vriska and Tavros, unable to face either. While she had been getting her affairs as a server over with, it was time for her to in turn become a client. Her server was Equius Zahhak, a neighbor of Vriska's, bluer-blooded and better at holding himself in check... in some ways.
Equius had his own complicated troll social problems to deal with, and though they're established as having at least some degree of companionship, their server/client relationship wasn't eventful enough to merit anything more than a mention, leaving Kanaya largely to her own devices. And she certainly had devices. The ivory tower in the ruins she had found, waking up on Prospit, and years of poring over the clouds all ultimately found purpose when Sgrub bestowed her with the title "Sylph of Space". In the lab of her tower she was to breed the Genesis Frog, which would represent the entire new universe.
Fortunately she wasn't alone. Karkat Vantas had the title of Knight of Blood, which made the genetics of this Genesis Frog part of his domain too. He was the trolls' nominal leader, and Kanaya was one of the very few trolls who didn't throw his mask of insults back at him, and she obeyed his orders eagerly. This would come to haunt them later, as Karkat urged the players to complete the game and defeat the final boss as quickly as possible, leading him and Kanaya to abandon frog breeding before they could get the final genetic sequence. Karkat later believed this led to the entire universe he created having cancer, which may have even itself caused the demon to enter their session.
Either way, the demon did enter their session and the trolls were thrust into the Veil, with ten hours and twenty-five minutes to go until the critical moment, though nobody was sure what that was or even if the countdown was going on at all. It was awkward. Six hours and twelve minutes before the critical moment, she got to saw off Tavros' legs... I mean, had to saw off Tavros' legs in collaboration with Equius' project to give him new ones. Of course. She took no pleasure whatsoever in maiming the inept rival for Vriska's affections as he slept avoiding productive contribution just as he had the entire game. She would never adopt such a crude paradigm, especially when she had already sworn to abandon the preposterous infatuation that would be its underlying cause. The very idea would be absurd.
Around that time, one troll (Terezi Pyrope) learned that they could view the actions of four particular aliens in the universe they had created. Every aspect of their bizarre civilization was open to their observation. More interesting, for the four specific children, every moment of their lives was open to their instant messaging clients. Here Kanaya discovered that tentacleTherapist, the author of that walkthrough, was in fact also one of these humans: Rose Lalonde. She conferred with Karkat about the situation--after he had given his rousing speech that they needed to troll the humans. Somewhat hesitantly, Kanaya began to attempt exactly that.
After several stops and starts fraught with human sarcasm (which is entirely different from the troll variety, let me assure you), Rose and Kanaya began to explore this human emotion called friendship and forge it between themselves, albeit a kind fraught with overanalysis and concern. Kanaya found herself falling into a dynamic with Rose dangerously similar to that she'd had with Vriska: Frantically meddling to keep the object of her interest on the right side of the line between "Munchkin gaming" and "grimdark madness". She did little with her time, once she started talking to Rose, that wasn't directly related to her - other trolls usually had to come to her. And so hardly anything else eventful happened up to the beginning of the thirteenth minute before the fourth hour before the critical moment.
Character PERSONALITY: Kanaya values harmony and appearance more than many other trolls do. This largely comes from being able to tolerate the daytime, where bright colors and sharp clothing and light suddenly become more appealing than they are in the nighttime that constitutes ordinary Alternian life. Also, since the desert immediately surrounding her ivory tower was so dry, she learned landscaping to shape the area into an oasis, which further cultivated her sensibilities. Exterior design led to gardening and interior design and that lead to fashion, her greatest passion. Although some trolls are capable of appreaciating attractive clothing and will choose out an outfit based on its snazziness, every other troll we know still possesses an outfit. If it's good enough for today, why not tomorrow? And the day after that and so on forever. They reject any further investment in clothing as impractical. Not Kanaya. She diligently sews herself dozens of dresses, both for her own pleasure in their beauty and as a general form of self-expression. This also extends to other kinds of personal aesthetics: Her hair certainly didn't style itself into those distinctive peaks, and she is a devout connoisseur of lipstick. Interestingly enough, the lipstick that she carries constantly also does double duty by transforming into the chainsaw she uses for her landscaping, bringing her aesthetic concerns full circle. All this is really a form of storytelling shorthand for how she actually will do things for their own sake, for the greater good, and out of altruism. She'll chainsaw through her mother's corpse and plunge her hands into that bloody mess, she'll put bandages onto wounds that weren't even felt, she'll straighten up piles of broken eight-balls unsolicited.
She occupies a unique position in the middle of the social order with her jade blood, not blue at all but certainly rare and cool in hue, and as such serves as a sort of bridge between those higher and lower than her. Though before the game she spends more of her time in highblood circles and is accepted as something of an equal to them, she's not in any way at all biased against those of lower blood, and is in fact just as close to many of them. In addition, she uses the lowblood vernacular (such as "ablution trap" and "thermal hull") due to valuing its clarity and precision, instead of the obtuse highblood vocabulary ("bathtub", "refrigerator"). This makes her perfect for mediating between the two groups. And mediate she does love to do. Her friends call her a meddler; she insists she's just being helpful. To be fair, in the brutal troll culture, most significant forms of emotional attachment are codified into romances--and actually caring about anyone else outside of these exclusive relationships is the "troll disease called friendship". So these tendencies are genuinely viewed as a form of emotional promiscuity, even though her reputation as the community "two-wheel device" for such matters is greatly exaggerated.
There's something of a conflict in her between the more passive attitudes of lowbloods and the violent urges of highbloods. (Every single highblood in the story ends up on one side or the other of a murder at some point.) Though she values harmony to a higher degree than most, she still has a passionate, romantic heart. She's also fairly willing to look the other way where actual misdeeds are concerned - in many cases, she is the only troll who'll stand by her friends in spite of their indiscretions. This in combination with her environment likely is what caused her fascination with rainbow drinkers: Their feeding is shown to have no consequences on its victims, yet they are still allowed to be violent and bloody and beautiful. This interest is also something her friends mock her for.
Short hair, lumberjacking, eagerly allowing her hands and mouth to get dirty, association with lipstick, unusually artistic taste in fashion, forms of romanticization viewed by her peers with some skepticism--all these things might be putting you in mind of a certain earth demographic group. "Is this girl some kind of alien lesbian or something?" you might ask. And the answer would be yes -- but it's important to keep in mind the word alien lesbian. The funny thing about troll culture is that due to their reproductive system, the view of gender as being a standard criteron in the partner selection process has completely vanished. For many members of the troll cast, even distinguishing a same-sex or opposite-sex relationship by terminology is an entirely foreign idea. Kanaya thus occupies the same slightly awkward position as might, say, a human attracted only to brunettes. It's fairly likely that by her age, she has realized her personal lack of attraction to men. But she never explicitly discusses it in canon with anyone. It's just not a relevant issue: If by bad chance she happens to receive an unwelcome solicitation from a male, she simply should tell him she isn't attracted to him and leave it at that. There's no reason to bring his sex into it, because by the cultural standard that's no reason to reject someone. Furthermore, given the complicated system of troll romance where sufficient emotional investment in a person of almost any kind qualifies a relationship, this doesn't actually preclude all opposite-sex romantic relationships - only sexual ones.
Or rather, theoretically sexual ones. Because in spite of her maturity and her many hardships in life, she is six (thirteen) - she may not be a little girl in the sense of Cindy Lou Who, but she certainly is a young girl in the sense of Anne Frank. She flips out when exposed to explicit material, actually. She gets kicks out of trolling people, and she's not very good at it, and other cultures are obscure to her, and she thinks impromptutations is an amusing word. But she also actually performs impromptutation on the boy who stole her crush's cardiovascular system without knowing how he did it. That's pretty much all Kanaya is: A thirteen-year old... alien chainsaw/lipstick lesbian.
≫ EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Kanaya canonically wields a chainsaw: As it is, that thing cuts people in half, and can conveniently turn into hyperspace lipstick. There's not much room for improvement there, so I'd like to give her another makeupkind weapon, based on another cosmetic item that became important to her in Carriero: An eyeshadow/shotgun. (A sawed-off shotgun, to be precise. Get it?) She would immediately go for makeupkind over anything else offered to her, and be willing to wield a new weapon in conjunction with her old one.
Right off the bat Kanaya will be able to switch this weapon between makeup and firearm forms at will, and put it away into hyperspace. Its ammo level is also dependent only on the amount of eyeshadow left, rather than anything silly like an actual number of bullets. This is compensated for by the fact that Kanaya knows absolutely nothing about how to wield a firearm. It'll take time for her weapon to learn to actually accommodate her, in time with the development of her skills as a gunwoman. After she manages to somewhat master marksmanship, her bullets will find vital targets more often, pass through armor, infect the blood, and so on. Here's my working draft:
Eyeshadow Transformation
Turns from a shotgun into eyeshadow and vice versa at Kanaya's will.
Marksmanship I
Recognizing how incredibly shitty Kanaya is at marksmanship, the gun increases her accuracy to one in six. Even though that "one" is probably in the foot.
Marksmanship II
Application of rainbow drinker senses to selecting the desired target on her victim. Not that it means she has the skill to reach said target, but at least she knows where her shot should have gone!
Jade/Black Bifurcation
Eyeshadow now has two shades: Green and black. Black bullets are ordinary bullets, and she has to switch to eyeshadow form and back to reload. Green bullets are still infinite, but each one used increases her bloodthirst.
Marksmanship III
Application of rainbow drinker reflexes to changing the form and color of her weapon, now able to do so almost instantaneously.
Marksmanship IV
Application of rainbow drinker speed to firing the gun. Now she can fire as quickly as possible! ...
Pale Hemisphere
On the black side: Slate gray! On the jade side: Ivory green! The colors don't seem to actually do anything, except gray bullets have twice the clip size of black ones and pale green ones have half the bloodthirst cost.
Marksmanship V
...or do they? Yes. Non-black bullets are drawn towards key parts of the cardiovascular system and pass through armor!!!!!! FINALLY SOMETHING USEFUL.
Marksmanship VI
What if you just... combined Marksmanship II with Marksmanship IV in recognition of Kanaya's development into a notably skilled shot in her own right? Is that something I can do? Yeah, Edward Cullen would have matriculated about five times by now, I think that's something I can do.
Significant Need
At the cost of a quarter-clip of gray bullets, one enemy will fall into the sleep of the dead until sunrise. It's like being a corpse. Except you get back up when the sun rises.
Social Purpose
At the cost of a half-clip of ivory bullets, one enemy will be subdued into a state of combat neutrality and not caring that they just took three shot through the chest. Lasts until sunset if they haven't died by then.
Kiss of Death
Requires a bullet matching the blood color of the target -- best attained by transferring blood onto the eyeshadow applicator from another source. Victim dies.
Kiss of Life
Requires pale bullet tainted with the blood color of the target. Reanimates allied corpse as a sparkling vampire, rainbow drinker, or otherwise species-appropriate bloodsucking demon. They go back to being dead at sunset.
Sunset
Execute chainsaw kill, then shoot up to half a dozen enemies with jade bullets. They go through the heart, killing all enemies involved! Too bad Kanaya ends up losing all control over her bloodlust that may have remained up until that point.
Sunrise
Execute chainsaw kill, then shoot up to a dozen allied corpses with ivory bullets. They will all be reanimated as sparkling vampires, rainbow drinkers, et cetera! This lasts until the end of their natural waking cycle or sunset, whichever comes first, at which point they will return to being dead and beginning their wait to be respawned. (This attack cannot be executed at all in the first place if the sun has actually set already.) Meanwhile Kanaya will immediately fall into the sleep of the dead until the sun rises again.
Chosen SKILLSET: Kanaya is going to be fighting; though she wishes her negotiation skills were worthy of diplomatic consideration, in all realism they're really, really not, though she'd be open to training them up. Being a vampire is a pretty fucking huge combat advantage at that, one I doubt the intiative could ignore.
≫ SAMPLES
First PERSON:
[The communicator has been set up rather attractively on the dresser, providing a good waist-up view of your new friendly neighboorhood rainbow drinker. She resembles in many ways the trolls you may already know: Candy corn horns, fangs, and black hair. But she's got glowing white skin and even brighter yellow eyes, along with jade green lipstick and eye makeup, so she's clearly a new specimen. Not to mention her black-and-white dress, unusually fashionable for a troll.]
Hello, everyone in the... uh, Initiative. I'm happy to be working with you -- I understand many are upset about being brought here without their consent, but this happens to be a great improvement of my own circumstances. So I'm happy to be here.
That said, I'd be grateful if you divulged to me the location of a clown-themed troll by the name of Gamzee Makara. [A very brief beat as she turns her head and looks into the distance.] I'm tempted to ask after the fates of the nautical members of my race as well; but that'd be too much to hope for, wouldn't it. [It's a really beautiful Byronic heroine moment, gloomily glowing with a Troll Mona Lisa non-smile, for about thirty seconds until she awkwardly realizes the feed needs to be cut and scrambles to do so.]
Third PERSON:
The Initiative was the moniker emblazoned above the shooting range. That was a clean, promising name for the organization with which Kanaya had found herself affiliated. And she did consider herself to be willingly working for them. What else was she going to do? In the asylum she'd made enough dresses for the time being; "enough dresses" was a tragic phrase, but she knew well by now that hers was a tragic life. It came with the territory... of being from Alternia, apparently, and not as much from her rainbow drinkerhood as she would like. The loss of everyone she had ever loved was a consequence of circumstance much more than choice on any side. But that didn't make things any less tragic, let alone less real. Nor did it change her future in any of the essentials (after all, nobody had been able to despoil her captchalogue deck of the card containing the matriorb). That was something she'd simply had to learn.
And according to the Initiative, marksmanship was something else she would simply have to learn. She could think of worse subjects, though it took a little effort. Long-range weaponry did have potential uses. And if nothing else, there were the aesthetic benefits of evolving eyeshadow. Perhaps it'd even be able to give her different colors eventually.
But it wouldn't evolve if she didn't train. So here she was, at the shooting range, with nothing better to do than assault innocent circular pieces of wood with lead. How hard could it be? Undo the safety... aim... fire...
Ah. By the sounds of things, that had been somebody's foot. Oh, well. Better luck next time. "Sorry," she called out without turning her head from her target.
≫ ADDITIONAL NOTES
Kanaya is coming in with memories and changes she has experienced during a period of ten months in Carriero, a very small asylum jamjar. For this reason, she is going to have distinct memories of most everyone who was ever there during her stay; I will contact the players of anyone Kanaya knew and if they say the word Kanaya will not recognize their character as identical to the one she knew. Either way, she's got a rather firm grasp on the concept of alternate realities, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Except for Eridan but Kiva's okay with that.
Her first six months were in the company of Eridan Ampora, her canonical friend with whom in Carriero she eventually approached true moirallegiance -- but never quite reached it. He accidentally killed this really awful human goth girl Andrea Norton and she passionately professed her hate for him and he almost started trying to hate-date her but then Kanaya intervened and it was just like Kanaya's mediation for Eridan and Vriska all over again, except with Kanaya having a moirail crush on Eridan and a hate crush on Andrea in the end. IT WAS A TOTAL TRAINWRECK, and not only did they eventually break up, but Eridan was dropped the night they did.
Obviously she has very tender memories of Eridan -- still feelings for him, really -- but she'll also approach Vriska more positively since she really got her needed dose of "heartbreak by a manipulative bitch" catharsis from Andrea. The girl broke her heart and is both the strongest and most negative impression of humanity Kanaya has ever received. There were others in Carriero who made more positive impressions - Yume Nikki's Monoko, Samus Aran, and Willow Rosenberg -- but all of them were dropped.
So that's one of the interpersonal constants in Carriero: Everyone Kanaya has ever loved will turn on her or drop. The other constant is Gamzee. He arrived only a month or so after Kanaya and, unlike Eridan, never disappeared. They formed a relationship simultaneously close and dark: They teamed up to kill a character when an event demanded it, then died together trying to kill the same guy again to cater to Andrea's whims, then killed each other to realize their respective true destinies as high subjugglator and rainbow drinker. Nobody but them really understands their deep, extremely Alternian hatefriendship, and even they're pretty confused.
Carriero was just in general as bad a place as Alternia, with roughly equal amounts of bloodshed and backstabbing. Kanaya's initial canonical alien complacency towards the primitive, trivial human species has blossomed into a pulsating black contempt for the flaws of their society -- the differences between Alternian norms and Earth ones, she's come to believe, cause all the dysfunction and unhappiness that humanity has ever experienced. She owns her identity as a lesbian (a label she has reluctantly adopted when circumstance demands it, though contemptuously), a rainbow drinker, god of humanity, and hater of insincerity.
Basically combine the hilarious interspecies dysfunction of this log and the innocent, slightly sarcastic hope of this (multipage) log with the bloody sexiness of this entire (multipage) sequence and the Byronic bitterness of this log, and you have a good reference for what traits CRAU Kanaya has kept and lost. If you'd like to read a more detailed synopsis of her experiences and development, check out this; alternate formats are her CR chart and thread tracker.
Player NAME: Lenga
Current AGE: Seventeen!
Personal JOURNAL:
crabg1rlIM & SERVICE: Lengachan @ AIM
Player PLURK:
Current CHARACTERS: N/A
≫ CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Kanaya Maryam
Canon & MEDIUM: Homestuck @ MS Paint Adventures, which is the last time I checked a webcomic.
Canon PULL-POINT: Approximately four hours and thirteen minutes before the CRITICAL MOMENT. After this conversation and before this panel.
Character AGE: "6 solar sweeps" is how she'll give her age, which will be clarified as 13 human years; however, due to a combination of her status as the Virgo troll and the time she's spent somewhere else before coming here, she is now in fact at least 14.
Character ABILITIES: First let me just get out of the way, for anyone who will vaguely recognize that the sheer Homestuck special snowflake gradient seems off here, that Kanaya was the Sylph of Space and had a Prospit dreamself, but these aspects are both entirely irrelevant in the setting so I will make no further mention of them. Second, she's a troll character and so once suffered from certain species-related symptoms, but she's a little more supernatural on top of that so I'm going to take my snowflake souffle in two heaping slices.
Kanaya Maryam has become a rainbow drinker. This is essentially Homestuck's funhouse take on Twilight's sparklepires. Though canon is pretty vague, here are my conclusions:
- A troll may become a rainbow drinker after they die, so they're undead.
- Rainbow drinkers have horns, fangs, and sharp nails.
- Rainbow drinker skin is significantly harder to puncture successfully than ordinary skin, and since blood does not flow through their veins carrying oxygen or whatever per se, they don't actually suffer anything but pain from blood loss.
- Rainbow drinkers emit a glow from their pale skin, because they actually prefer the light rather than being harmed by it - they're diurnal as opposed to nocturnal trolls, and in fact to an extent feed off sunlight. There are not fatal consequences to not getting light for a long time, just reduced vitality.
- Rainbow drinkers do not depend on any natural processes to continue being undead. They don't depend on oxygen intake to live, though they do need to breathe to talk and smell. They don't need to sleep. The only way to prevent them from continuing to exist is to set the better part of their bodies on fire, but this is hard to pull off due to their other abilities.
- Rainbow drinkers exclusively drink blood, though this act does not turn the victim. This is the single largest factor in their day-to-day health (aside from being set on fire). If they go for a long time without drinking blood, or if they drink blood of low quality, their other faculties will greatly suffer, and they may go on crazy frenzies seeking out blood, or even resort to sleeping in corpse boxes at night.
- Rainbow drinkers are at least three orders of magnitude speedier than ordinary. They can move fast enough to be a blur, but always a partially visible blur. Their reflexes are also enhanced.
- Rainbow drinkers are at least two orders of magnitude stronger than ordinary. The silver standard is "able to stop a speeding car".
- Rainbow drinkers' senses are at least three orders of magnitude superior to the ordinary. They can see in great detail at great distances, actually hear the difference between 360p and 1080i, and smell with ridiculous precision, especially where blood is concerned.
- Rainbow drinkers are smoking mother fucking HOT (though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, basically think of it like she got made Pretty, Scott Westerfield style... if you want, I'm not really going to force this onto anyone, it's mostly Twilight canon)
Independently of all that, Kanaya has a sylladex, with both a Captchalogue Deck (typified by fetch modus) and a Strife Deck (typified by strife specibus). Her strife specibus, makeupkind, means she can store anything makeup-shaped in hyperspace because it's her weapon. This includes her personal lipsticks that transform into... chainsaws. With which she's quite skilled. Her fetch modus, Chastity, means that she can store items in hyperspace and retrieve them at will... if she finds a certain kind of key.
Character HISTORY: There is her article on the Homestuck wiki if you choose to read it, but it's a rather terse reference with scattered information, especially where conveying what the work's universe is like is concerned. It's hard to blame them. The universe of Homestuck is incredibly complex. In fact, scratch that, the universes of Homestuck are incredibly complex.
The planet of Alternia with its warlike race of "trolls" dominated the universe this character comes from for, at bare minimum, thousands of years. Their approach to life is suspiciously resemblant of a particularly violent video game, sometimes even flying in the face of evolutionary logic: Rejection of the weak without a second thought, forcible training for the strong, all creatures predator and prey at once, a rigid system of blood castes with entirely objective scaling of strengths and weaknesses, ridiculous walks required between locations prompting digitally dominated communication, immutable identity designations, murder as a common occurrence. Thus it should come as no surprise that their universe was in fact carefully engineered by a certain "gentleman", who went by the name Doc Scratch, such that its residents would be ideal to play a certain video game. Not a mere session of Mario Karts Double Dash or even Super Smash Bros. Melee; no, this game was literally cosmic in its scale, using meteors as its pawns, planets as squares, and all of paradox space as its board. Even its adolescent players were carefully created by destiny since before their births, comprising every single socioeconomic position Alternia had to offer and granted powers and handicaps appropriate to the titles they would later bear in the game.
This game was "Sgrub". The game starts innocently enough allowing a "server player" to view and manipulate the surroundings of their "client player" as if they were playing The Sims. The group of servers and clients make their way into the Medium, where an epic RPG in the tradition of Earthbound unfolds. Eventually it became clear that the Ultimate Reward for which they were fighting was the Spore-style creation of a new universe, which they would rule as gods.
However, when the trolls played Sgrub, something went horribly wrong. Just as they were going to claim the Ultimate Reward, a demon burning with the flames of a sun twice as powerful as the entire universe appeared from thin air and they were thrust into the Veil, a cramped computer lab at the Medium's furthest ring. Here they discovered that this demon came from the universe they had created, as a byproduct of another group of adolescents playing Sgrub - or as it was called in the squishy vague words their pathethic human civilization preferred, "Sburb". These pale bright-eyed alien children had everything the trolls didn't: A comfortable upbringing largely free of personal tragedy, loving guardians doing their best to protect them despite the game's machinations, and hope before them of the ultimate reward. All their species had left was an internet connection. Thus, urged by their leader's rousing speech, they resolved to...
Troll them.
Kanaya Maryam was born the exact genetic descendant of the Dolorosa: Our troll Lady of Sorrow. Her blood was the rare jade kind that endowed such unique privileges as tolerance of harsh Alternian sunlight. It also dictated that she work in the brooding caverns of the Mother Grub, a creature like the trolls' queen (though only biologically -- their civilization is ruled by an empress). Due to this reproductive structure, trolls didn't form autonomous familial units. Instead those who survived to pupation and endured the trials in the brooding caverns were selected by a lusus naturae, a great and terrible beast often akin to their charge in strength, temperament, and other traits. There was no room in the caverns, however, for the Sufferer -- better known in the future as Jegus -- and so the Dolorosa adopted him as her own, becoming a virgin mother.
Kanaya herself lived ignorant of her ancestor, but nevertheless had an equally exceptional destiny in store for her. This began to manifest soon after her pupation, when a virgin mother grub left her position in the caverns to be her lusus, an unprecedented event. They made their home in a white tower built off of ruins in the sunny desert. This region was populated by heinous broods of the undead, and so in her early years the mother grub devoutly protected Kanaya from them. Before long she would wield a chainsaw to do it herself.
Her ivory tower isolated her from other trolls and prepared her for her Sgrub-given role as the Sylph of Space. This granted her outside knowledge from three sources. The first and foremost was her dream self, a second Kanaya, princess on the planet of Prospit, whose consciousness she adopted when she slept. On Prospit clouds commonly eclipsed the celestial body of Skaia, showing images of the past and future, thus providing the dreamer the appearance of clairvoyance. The second was Doc Scratch himself, who seemed to provide some kind of fatherly elderly male guidance in her life. The third was actually a brief walkthrough of Sgrub written by an alien of some kind known to Kanaya only as "tentacleTherapist". All this information and isolation gave her a unique level-headed perspective, focused on aesthetic things like "rainbow drinkers" (the rainbow meaning blood, what else) and "wearing more than one outfit from day to day" (or as we call it, "fashion").
Her uncannily conciliatory nature would aid her when she entered the game, considering that asking twelve trolls to work together as a team is like pulling out twelve teeth at once. However, over time all the players would to some degree catch "the troll disease called friendship". The nearest and dearest to Kanaya was always one Vriska Serket, a manipulative misunderstood blueblood as beautiful as a black widow and eight times as dangerous, who fed her lusus trolls by the octet by means of a live action roleplaying game. They fell head over heals into moirallegiance, a kind of more official best friendship dedicated to the complement of the hothearted and coolheaded. Deep in her cardiovascular system, though, Kanaya loved this mad girl madly. She suppressed this from her friends' knowledge as best she could. The only one who ever confronted her about it was Eridan Ampora, who knew them both fairly well; he and Vriska were on-again off-again hate-dating, sometimes with Kanaya mediating. The two were somewhat close despite the dissolution of that whole relationship and his status as a seadweller dedicated to the destruction of the landdwelling part of the troll race--in fact, he even promised not to kill her no matter how far his genocidal plans progressed. Because "that wwould be fuckin unconscionable". Sic.
This was life as Kanaya knew it when the game began. Given her sources, she could well anticipate the exact time, as the night was marked by the death of every single troll's lusus. When Kanaya's died peacefully within the naturally unstable lifespan of a virgin mother grub (her wings still intact, after all!) it was time for Kanaya to do her a final favor: Retrieve from her the Matriorb, and hatch the new mother grub from it when the time is right, thus becoming a virgin mother herself. From the clouds she also knew that she had to enter the Medium nearly last, and arranged for herself a position as Vriska's server player. Unfortunately, Vriska was serving Tavros Nitram, a lowblood with low self esteem whom she had personally crippled. Letting Vriska literally control his world was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. Kanaya thus found herself having to mediate for the pair constantly. It was such a shame the girl she cherished so closely had gotten wrapped up in this hateful relationship. When she could have been turbo-levelling herself further instead of exhorting the reluctant boy to do so, when she was one of the only trolls who actually had a tasteful, snazzy sense of fashion, having gone so far as to actually solicit a lovely fairy dress from her to--
Actually, we don't know what she told Kanaya it was for, but we do know she was lying--she was having a rendezvous with Tavros instead in a combined attempt at seduction and paralysis curing. She achieved neither, and her mind-control aided attempts at making him want to kiss her only got him to drag her weakly onto the floor. As Vriska's server player, Kanaya saw it all happen. Her distress in the wake of this was so severe that it prompted the story's explanation of trolls' complex romantic mores. She completely cut off communications with both Vriska and Tavros, unable to face either. While she had been getting her affairs as a server over with, it was time for her to in turn become a client. Her server was Equius Zahhak, a neighbor of Vriska's, bluer-blooded and better at holding himself in check... in some ways.
Equius had his own complicated troll social problems to deal with, and though they're established as having at least some degree of companionship, their server/client relationship wasn't eventful enough to merit anything more than a mention, leaving Kanaya largely to her own devices. And she certainly had devices. The ivory tower in the ruins she had found, waking up on Prospit, and years of poring over the clouds all ultimately found purpose when Sgrub bestowed her with the title "Sylph of Space". In the lab of her tower she was to breed the Genesis Frog, which would represent the entire new universe.
Fortunately she wasn't alone. Karkat Vantas had the title of Knight of Blood, which made the genetics of this Genesis Frog part of his domain too. He was the trolls' nominal leader, and Kanaya was one of the very few trolls who didn't throw his mask of insults back at him, and she obeyed his orders eagerly. This would come to haunt them later, as Karkat urged the players to complete the game and defeat the final boss as quickly as possible, leading him and Kanaya to abandon frog breeding before they could get the final genetic sequence. Karkat later believed this led to the entire universe he created having cancer, which may have even itself caused the demon to enter their session.
Either way, the demon did enter their session and the trolls were thrust into the Veil, with ten hours and twenty-five minutes to go until the critical moment, though nobody was sure what that was or even if the countdown was going on at all. It was awkward. Six hours and twelve minutes before the critical moment, she got to saw off Tavros' legs... I mean, had to saw off Tavros' legs in collaboration with Equius' project to give him new ones. Of course. She took no pleasure whatsoever in maiming the inept rival for Vriska's affections as he slept avoiding productive contribution just as he had the entire game. She would never adopt such a crude paradigm, especially when she had already sworn to abandon the preposterous infatuation that would be its underlying cause. The very idea would be absurd.
Around that time, one troll (Terezi Pyrope) learned that they could view the actions of four particular aliens in the universe they had created. Every aspect of their bizarre civilization was open to their observation. More interesting, for the four specific children, every moment of their lives was open to their instant messaging clients. Here Kanaya discovered that tentacleTherapist, the author of that walkthrough, was in fact also one of these humans: Rose Lalonde. She conferred with Karkat about the situation--after he had given his rousing speech that they needed to troll the humans. Somewhat hesitantly, Kanaya began to attempt exactly that.
After several stops and starts fraught with human sarcasm (which is entirely different from the troll variety, let me assure you), Rose and Kanaya began to explore this human emotion called friendship and forge it between themselves, albeit a kind fraught with overanalysis and concern. Kanaya found herself falling into a dynamic with Rose dangerously similar to that she'd had with Vriska: Frantically meddling to keep the object of her interest on the right side of the line between "Munchkin gaming" and "grimdark madness". She did little with her time, once she started talking to Rose, that wasn't directly related to her - other trolls usually had to come to her. And so hardly anything else eventful happened up to the beginning of the thirteenth minute before the fourth hour before the critical moment.
Character PERSONALITY: Kanaya values harmony and appearance more than many other trolls do. This largely comes from being able to tolerate the daytime, where bright colors and sharp clothing and light suddenly become more appealing than they are in the nighttime that constitutes ordinary Alternian life. Also, since the desert immediately surrounding her ivory tower was so dry, she learned landscaping to shape the area into an oasis, which further cultivated her sensibilities. Exterior design led to gardening and interior design and that lead to fashion, her greatest passion. Although some trolls are capable of appreaciating attractive clothing and will choose out an outfit based on its snazziness, every other troll we know still possesses an outfit. If it's good enough for today, why not tomorrow? And the day after that and so on forever. They reject any further investment in clothing as impractical. Not Kanaya. She diligently sews herself dozens of dresses, both for her own pleasure in their beauty and as a general form of self-expression. This also extends to other kinds of personal aesthetics: Her hair certainly didn't style itself into those distinctive peaks, and she is a devout connoisseur of lipstick. Interestingly enough, the lipstick that she carries constantly also does double duty by transforming into the chainsaw she uses for her landscaping, bringing her aesthetic concerns full circle. All this is really a form of storytelling shorthand for how she actually will do things for their own sake, for the greater good, and out of altruism. She'll chainsaw through her mother's corpse and plunge her hands into that bloody mess, she'll put bandages onto wounds that weren't even felt, she'll straighten up piles of broken eight-balls unsolicited.
She occupies a unique position in the middle of the social order with her jade blood, not blue at all but certainly rare and cool in hue, and as such serves as a sort of bridge between those higher and lower than her. Though before the game she spends more of her time in highblood circles and is accepted as something of an equal to them, she's not in any way at all biased against those of lower blood, and is in fact just as close to many of them. In addition, she uses the lowblood vernacular (such as "ablution trap" and "thermal hull") due to valuing its clarity and precision, instead of the obtuse highblood vocabulary ("bathtub", "refrigerator"). This makes her perfect for mediating between the two groups. And mediate she does love to do. Her friends call her a meddler; she insists she's just being helpful. To be fair, in the brutal troll culture, most significant forms of emotional attachment are codified into romances--and actually caring about anyone else outside of these exclusive relationships is the "troll disease called friendship". So these tendencies are genuinely viewed as a form of emotional promiscuity, even though her reputation as the community "two-wheel device" for such matters is greatly exaggerated.
There's something of a conflict in her between the more passive attitudes of lowbloods and the violent urges of highbloods. (Every single highblood in the story ends up on one side or the other of a murder at some point.) Though she values harmony to a higher degree than most, she still has a passionate, romantic heart. She's also fairly willing to look the other way where actual misdeeds are concerned - in many cases, she is the only troll who'll stand by her friends in spite of their indiscretions. This in combination with her environment likely is what caused her fascination with rainbow drinkers: Their feeding is shown to have no consequences on its victims, yet they are still allowed to be violent and bloody and beautiful. This interest is also something her friends mock her for.
Short hair, lumberjacking, eagerly allowing her hands and mouth to get dirty, association with lipstick, unusually artistic taste in fashion, forms of romanticization viewed by her peers with some skepticism--all these things might be putting you in mind of a certain earth demographic group. "Is this girl some kind of alien lesbian or something?" you might ask. And the answer would be yes -- but it's important to keep in mind the word alien lesbian. The funny thing about troll culture is that due to their reproductive system, the view of gender as being a standard criteron in the partner selection process has completely vanished. For many members of the troll cast, even distinguishing a same-sex or opposite-sex relationship by terminology is an entirely foreign idea. Kanaya thus occupies the same slightly awkward position as might, say, a human attracted only to brunettes. It's fairly likely that by her age, she has realized her personal lack of attraction to men. But she never explicitly discusses it in canon with anyone. It's just not a relevant issue: If by bad chance she happens to receive an unwelcome solicitation from a male, she simply should tell him she isn't attracted to him and leave it at that. There's no reason to bring his sex into it, because by the cultural standard that's no reason to reject someone. Furthermore, given the complicated system of troll romance where sufficient emotional investment in a person of almost any kind qualifies a relationship, this doesn't actually preclude all opposite-sex romantic relationships - only sexual ones.
Or rather, theoretically sexual ones. Because in spite of her maturity and her many hardships in life, she is six (thirteen) - she may not be a little girl in the sense of Cindy Lou Who, but she certainly is a young girl in the sense of Anne Frank. She flips out when exposed to explicit material, actually. She gets kicks out of trolling people, and she's not very good at it, and other cultures are obscure to her, and she thinks impromptutations is an amusing word. But she also actually performs impromptutation on the boy who stole her crush's cardiovascular system without knowing how he did it. That's pretty much all Kanaya is: A thirteen-year old... alien chainsaw/lipstick lesbian.
≫ EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Kanaya canonically wields a chainsaw: As it is, that thing cuts people in half, and can conveniently turn into hyperspace lipstick. There's not much room for improvement there, so I'd like to give her another makeupkind weapon, based on another cosmetic item that became important to her in Carriero: An eyeshadow/shotgun. (A sawed-off shotgun, to be precise. Get it?) She would immediately go for makeupkind over anything else offered to her, and be willing to wield a new weapon in conjunction with her old one.
Right off the bat Kanaya will be able to switch this weapon between makeup and firearm forms at will, and put it away into hyperspace. Its ammo level is also dependent only on the amount of eyeshadow left, rather than anything silly like an actual number of bullets. This is compensated for by the fact that Kanaya knows absolutely nothing about how to wield a firearm. It'll take time for her weapon to learn to actually accommodate her, in time with the development of her skills as a gunwoman. After she manages to somewhat master marksmanship, her bullets will find vital targets more often, pass through armor, infect the blood, and so on. Here's my working draft:
Eyeshadow Transformation
Turns from a shotgun into eyeshadow and vice versa at Kanaya's will.
Marksmanship I
Recognizing how incredibly shitty Kanaya is at marksmanship, the gun increases her accuracy to one in six. Even though that "one" is probably in the foot.
Marksmanship II
Application of rainbow drinker senses to selecting the desired target on her victim. Not that it means she has the skill to reach said target, but at least she knows where her shot should have gone!
Jade/Black Bifurcation
Eyeshadow now has two shades: Green and black. Black bullets are ordinary bullets, and she has to switch to eyeshadow form and back to reload. Green bullets are still infinite, but each one used increases her bloodthirst.
Marksmanship III
Application of rainbow drinker reflexes to changing the form and color of her weapon, now able to do so almost instantaneously.
Marksmanship IV
Application of rainbow drinker speed to firing the gun. Now she can fire as quickly as possible! ...
Pale Hemisphere
On the black side: Slate gray! On the jade side: Ivory green! The colors don't seem to actually do anything, except gray bullets have twice the clip size of black ones and pale green ones have half the bloodthirst cost.
Marksmanship V
...or do they? Yes. Non-black bullets are drawn towards key parts of the cardiovascular system and pass through armor!!!!!! FINALLY SOMETHING USEFUL.
Marksmanship VI
What if you just... combined Marksmanship II with Marksmanship IV in recognition of Kanaya's development into a notably skilled shot in her own right? Is that something I can do? Yeah, Edward Cullen would have matriculated about five times by now, I think that's something I can do.
Significant Need
At the cost of a quarter-clip of gray bullets, one enemy will fall into the sleep of the dead until sunrise. It's like being a corpse. Except you get back up when the sun rises.
Social Purpose
At the cost of a half-clip of ivory bullets, one enemy will be subdued into a state of combat neutrality and not caring that they just took three shot through the chest. Lasts until sunset if they haven't died by then.
Kiss of Death
Requires a bullet matching the blood color of the target -- best attained by transferring blood onto the eyeshadow applicator from another source. Victim dies.
Kiss of Life
Requires pale bullet tainted with the blood color of the target. Reanimates allied corpse as a sparkling vampire, rainbow drinker, or otherwise species-appropriate bloodsucking demon. They go back to being dead at sunset.
Sunset
Execute chainsaw kill, then shoot up to half a dozen enemies with jade bullets. They go through the heart, killing all enemies involved! Too bad Kanaya ends up losing all control over her bloodlust that may have remained up until that point.
Sunrise
Execute chainsaw kill, then shoot up to a dozen allied corpses with ivory bullets. They will all be reanimated as sparkling vampires, rainbow drinkers, et cetera! This lasts until the end of their natural waking cycle or sunset, whichever comes first, at which point they will return to being dead and beginning their wait to be respawned. (This attack cannot be executed at all in the first place if the sun has actually set already.) Meanwhile Kanaya will immediately fall into the sleep of the dead until the sun rises again.
Chosen SKILLSET: Kanaya is going to be fighting; though she wishes her negotiation skills were worthy of diplomatic consideration, in all realism they're really, really not, though she'd be open to training them up. Being a vampire is a pretty fucking huge combat advantage at that, one I doubt the intiative could ignore.
≫ SAMPLES
First PERSON:
[The communicator has been set up rather attractively on the dresser, providing a good waist-up view of your new friendly neighboorhood rainbow drinker. She resembles in many ways the trolls you may already know: Candy corn horns, fangs, and black hair. But she's got glowing white skin and even brighter yellow eyes, along with jade green lipstick and eye makeup, so she's clearly a new specimen. Not to mention her black-and-white dress, unusually fashionable for a troll.]
Hello, everyone in the... uh, Initiative. I'm happy to be working with you -- I understand many are upset about being brought here without their consent, but this happens to be a great improvement of my own circumstances. So I'm happy to be here.
That said, I'd be grateful if you divulged to me the location of a clown-themed troll by the name of Gamzee Makara. [A very brief beat as she turns her head and looks into the distance.] I'm tempted to ask after the fates of the nautical members of my race as well; but that'd be too much to hope for, wouldn't it. [It's a really beautiful Byronic heroine moment, gloomily glowing with a Troll Mona Lisa non-smile, for about thirty seconds until she awkwardly realizes the feed needs to be cut and scrambles to do so.]
Third PERSON:
The Initiative was the moniker emblazoned above the shooting range. That was a clean, promising name for the organization with which Kanaya had found herself affiliated. And she did consider herself to be willingly working for them. What else was she going to do? In the asylum she'd made enough dresses for the time being; "enough dresses" was a tragic phrase, but she knew well by now that hers was a tragic life. It came with the territory... of being from Alternia, apparently, and not as much from her rainbow drinkerhood as she would like. The loss of everyone she had ever loved was a consequence of circumstance much more than choice on any side. But that didn't make things any less tragic, let alone less real. Nor did it change her future in any of the essentials (after all, nobody had been able to despoil her captchalogue deck of the card containing the matriorb). That was something she'd simply had to learn.
And according to the Initiative, marksmanship was something else she would simply have to learn. She could think of worse subjects, though it took a little effort. Long-range weaponry did have potential uses. And if nothing else, there were the aesthetic benefits of evolving eyeshadow. Perhaps it'd even be able to give her different colors eventually.
But it wouldn't evolve if she didn't train. So here she was, at the shooting range, with nothing better to do than assault innocent circular pieces of wood with lead. How hard could it be? Undo the safety... aim... fire...
Ah. By the sounds of things, that had been somebody's foot. Oh, well. Better luck next time. "Sorry," she called out without turning her head from her target.
≫ ADDITIONAL NOTES
Kanaya is coming in with memories and changes she has experienced during a period of ten months in Carriero, a very small asylum jamjar. For this reason, she is going to have distinct memories of most everyone who was ever there during her stay; I will contact the players of anyone Kanaya knew and if they say the word Kanaya will not recognize their character as identical to the one she knew. Either way, she's got a rather firm grasp on the concept of alternate realities, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Except for Eridan but Kiva's okay with that.
Her first six months were in the company of Eridan Ampora, her canonical friend with whom in Carriero she eventually approached true moirallegiance -- but never quite reached it. He accidentally killed this really awful human goth girl Andrea Norton and she passionately professed her hate for him and he almost started trying to hate-date her but then Kanaya intervened and it was just like Kanaya's mediation for Eridan and Vriska all over again, except with Kanaya having a moirail crush on Eridan and a hate crush on Andrea in the end. IT WAS A TOTAL TRAINWRECK, and not only did they eventually break up, but Eridan was dropped the night they did.
Obviously she has very tender memories of Eridan -- still feelings for him, really -- but she'll also approach Vriska more positively since she really got her needed dose of "heartbreak by a manipulative bitch" catharsis from Andrea. The girl broke her heart and is both the strongest and most negative impression of humanity Kanaya has ever received. There were others in Carriero who made more positive impressions - Yume Nikki's Monoko, Samus Aran, and Willow Rosenberg -- but all of them were dropped.
So that's one of the interpersonal constants in Carriero: Everyone Kanaya has ever loved will turn on her or drop. The other constant is Gamzee. He arrived only a month or so after Kanaya and, unlike Eridan, never disappeared. They formed a relationship simultaneously close and dark: They teamed up to kill a character when an event demanded it, then died together trying to kill the same guy again to cater to Andrea's whims, then killed each other to realize their respective true destinies as high subjugglator and rainbow drinker. Nobody but them really understands their deep, extremely Alternian hatefriendship, and even they're pretty confused.
Carriero was just in general as bad a place as Alternia, with roughly equal amounts of bloodshed and backstabbing. Kanaya's initial canonical alien complacency towards the primitive, trivial human species has blossomed into a pulsating black contempt for the flaws of their society -- the differences between Alternian norms and Earth ones, she's come to believe, cause all the dysfunction and unhappiness that humanity has ever experienced. She owns her identity as a lesbian (a label she has reluctantly adopted when circumstance demands it, though contemptuously), a rainbow drinker, god of humanity, and hater of insincerity.
Basically combine the hilarious interspecies dysfunction of this log and the innocent, slightly sarcastic hope of this (multipage) log with the bloody sexiness of this entire (multipage) sequence and the Byronic bitterness of this log, and you have a good reference for what traits CRAU Kanaya has kept and lost. If you'd like to read a more detailed synopsis of her experiences and development, check out this; alternate formats are her CR chart and thread tracker.