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[chainsawspistice]

Player Name: Boba
Player Journal: chainsawspistice
E-mail and/or AIM, Plurk, etc: riposterboba [AIM], chipsnfish [plurk]
Timezone: Pacific Standard Time (PST), -8:00 GMT
Current Characters: n/a
Have you participated in any of our 4th wall events with this character? Nope.

Character: Kanaya Maryam
Fandom/Series: Homestuck
Original or Alternate Universe: Original

Canon Used: Webcomic

Age: 13 earth years, 6 solar sweeps
Gender: Female
Species: Troll (Alternian)

Appearance: Voila!

Personality:

SPOILERS AHEAD!!! If you plan on reading Homestuck, turning around and not reading the rest of this app might be a good idea!! Fair warning, bro!!!

Kanaya is a somewhat reserved but well-meaning troll with an instinct to help others (or meddle, as some might say) and do what's best for the greater good of her group. This can range anywhere from nice, reasonable advice to chainsawing off an unconscious paraplegic friend's lower body so that he can be fitted with robo-legs. That isn't to say that Kanaya makes a habit of being violent; she is simply willing to get her hands dirty when necessary.

This trait goes well in hand with her status as an "young Prospit waker," which in short allowed her to glimpse the future in her sleep from an early age and safeguard her group accordingly. She takes her responsibilities and obligations very seriously -- most notably her role as the keeper of the matriorb (an egg that will hatch a new mother grub, which in turn will give birth to more trolls). When the matriorb is destroyed by another troll, she flies into a rage for the first time in the series and (eventually) exacts a bloody revenge on the perpetrator by chainsawing him in two. Later, when her group resolves to ride a meteor to a new universe, she contemplates staying behind not only because she dreads the darkness the new path holds, but also because she sees herself as useless to the group without a matriorb to hatch. Only when presented with the possibility of producing another matriorb does she hesitantly agree to come along with the hope that she'll "not be a total failure" this time.

Speaking of warmth and brightness, Kanaya is very fond of these things. She is a rarity amongst trolls in this regard, the great majority of which cannot withstand the intense Alternian sun and instead live nocturnally. Kanaya doesn't just like sunlight -- she basks in it. When she was smaller, she had trouble sleeping during the day because the light invigorated her so. This, coupled with a love for bright, vivid colors and designs might lead some to call her a "troll goth," which would essentially be the exact opposite of a human goth. Her hive/house is decorated with huge cloth banners and sails of many cheerful colors, and the bushes around it are carefully cut into the shapes of fluffy clouds. She has a love for the aesthetic and makes fashion and design a hobby in her spare time, being one of the few trolls to eschew practicality for purely fashion-minded reasons. To compare, the rest of her peers only ever wear the same black t-shirts and tanktops, paired with black or gray bottoms (with the exception of the seadwellers Feferi and Eridan). Meanwhile, Kanaya has multiple dresses in bright blue, green, and red, and even when she dresses down in her black shirt, she pairs it with a vivid red skirt.

Kanaya also has a liking for trashy troll romance novels. She is something of a closeted romantic, sometimes imagining what it's like to be a rainbow drinker (troll vampire) and engage in romances liker her stories. She gives the blood of her lusus (the guardian-type creature who raised her) a little taste out of curiosity only to learn that it tastes predictably bad and breaks down when she sees that Vriska, her longtime crush, asked her for a dress only so that she could kiss Tavros, a boy troll, in it. She also idolizes the human Rose Lalonde before they ever meet, picturing her as an intelligent BAMF troll who surely led her friends to victory. The extreme disappointment she shows when Rose appears not to fit this descriptor speaks for the weight of her fantasies.

But when she's not bisecting people or fantasizing, Kanaya is a level-headed troll content to listen to others speak until she feels it's her turn to speak. She can be quiet in a group, but it shouldn't be mistaken for shyness. On the contrary, she tends to speak clearly and with punctuated poise, careful to leave no bit of her message ambiguous. Sometimes, this causes her to be verbose; when she is grasping for the best way to describe something difficult, she begins to ramble in search of a way to make the subject ever clearer to her listener. Furthermore, she almost always speaks in earnest. Insincerity for any reason other than to be a jerk doesn't come naturally to her, and so outlandish metaphors and friendly sarcasm often fly over her head as she takes them straight.

As generally even-tempered as she is, Kanaya isn't a pushover. She readily responds to any aggravation with her own heavy doses of snark. When getting to know the human Rose Lalonde, who is heavily snarky and sarcastic in her own special way, she begins to view their conversations as clashes of wit and readily accepts the challenge. Outbursts from Vriska don't even phase her, and Eridan's pesterings of bad taste turn her dismissive. However, Kanaya is willing to admit the faults in her own logic and give credit where it's due even if she finds her conversation partner less than savory.

On the flip side, when interacting with people she finds agreeable, she is modest, patient, and earnest. Always willing to dispense gentle and perfectly rational advice, she has been referred to by one of the trolls as "the village two wheel device when it comes to auspisticing". That is, she's the village bicycle when it comes to mediation (in approximate human terms), as she can't help but fuss and meddle when trouble stirs up amongst her friends. She only wants to be helpful and keep her friends from doing regrettable things, though it isn't uncommon for frustration to be the only reward for her troubles.

Finally, Kanaya has a problem with avoiding butting heads when she can avoid it. For example, Vriska constantly causes trouble for their group, and Kanaya is in the best position to try and prevent her from getting out of hand. However, Kanaya believes that going beyond advice and actively attempting to stop Vriska's actions will make them enemies, so she contents herself with standing on the sidelines while Vriska wreaks havoc. This type of inactivity extends into the realm of romance as well; her inability to tell Vriska that she actually did not want moiraillegiance (a relationship of romantic troll BFFs) with her and instead desired matespritship (a more traditionally human kind of love) left Vriska completely clueless regarding Kanaya's feelings. Vriska would never find out, and the callousness with which she confessed to Tavros probably broke Kanaya's heart that much harder. She was trapped in a relationship she did not want because of her lack of action, and even then, that relationship crumbled as well because of the bitterness that stayed with her following the Tavros incident. She would never tell Vriska how she truly felt -- in fact, she would virtually ignore her and refuse to explain why -- and Vriska would die without Kanaya finding closure.

Strengths/Abilities: As mentioned, Kanaya is able to withstand if not outright enjoy intense brightness and, to a degree, heat. She grew up in the desert and spent large amounts of time outside. It's worth mentioning that the Alternian sun is strong enough to blind a troll looking at it for a second or two. Also, due to the nocturnal nature of the troll race, she has good night vision.

Her proficiency with the chainsaw (which can also turn into a convenient little tube of lipstick) is handy in a fight, as well as when trimming the bushes. She can wield it without any trouble, charging around with it overhead or anywhere else she needs it in a flash. In addition, trolls as a whole are stronger and hardier than the average human, so she can physically hold her own in a fight.

Her strife specibus (a.k.a. weapon category) is "makeupkind" and her fetch modus (a.k.a. hammerspace system) is the chastity modus, which locks a captchalogued item away until she happens upon the key to it "when and only when [she is] ready to use this item, and not a moment before!"

She is skilled at designing and sewing clothes, having made most if not all of her clothes herself.

Weaknesses: She can be killed in any variety of ways; a troll body is tough, but still extremely killable via stabbings, burnings, shootings, and other methods that might also find a human dead.

She's also slim and not particularly tall?? About the height of your average 13-year-old. Sure that's a weakness now.

History: MS Paint Adventures Wiki

Kanaya was hatched from an egg like any other troll and raised by her lusus, a virgin mother grub who abstained from her egg-laying duties to raise Kanaya -- an event never before recorded in Alternian history. Part of this is attributed to the fact that only jade blooded trolls can be selected by a mother grub lusus, and the other part is attributed to the very rarity of jade blooded trolls themselves.

She was raised in the desert, where she had difficulty sleeping because she found the sunlight so energizing. Eventually, when she was still very young, she was visited by Doc Scratch, who was Alternia's First Guardian -- an entity nearly omniscient and charged with the protection of a planet and the facilitation of the planet's "ultimate purpose". He put her to sleep and activated her ability to wake up on a small planet called Prospit in her dreams. There, she could look into the clouds and see flashes of the future.

She grew up without much incident until her group of friends started playing an immersive game called Sgrub, which would destroy their home planet Alternia with meteors. Kanaya's specific role in the game was to breed the genesis frog, which grew to literally become the human universe. The trolls defeated the Black King, the "final boss" of the game, and were to live in the new universe they had created. However, something went awry, and the trolls were instead forced to flee to a meteor and hide from Bec Noir, who sabotaged their game session. Here, the trolls trolled a group of four humans from the universe they were meant to live in over the internet. Eventually, the trolls Gamzee Makara and Eridan Ampora would go on separate rampages. Eridan's in particular destroyed Kanaya's matriorb, thus dooming the resurrection of the troll race. When Kanaya moved in to attack, Eridan shot and killed her with his magic wand (which she happened to make for him). Later, Kanaya would wake up a "rainbow drinker", a.k.a. a troll vampire, and get her revenge.

But we don't need to go that far because...

Canon Point: [S] Kanaya: Return to the core. After picking up the matriorb, about to (fail to) transportalize away.

First Person Sample:

I Dont Know This Just Seems So Callous
The Gifts Were A Nice Gesture
But Allow Me The Delusion That A Basket Of Inoffensive Food Items And Paraphernalia Might Be An Insufficient Catalyst To Heartfelt Gratitude
Even If The Basket Appears Very Well Made
And The Two Wheel Device Was Unexpectedly Generous
Still Id Like To Return Home As Soon As Possible
No Offense I Think This Town Could Be Agreeably Habitable
In Fact Its Pleasantness Far Outstrips Where I Was Before I Was Here
Maybe Because That Place Was A Large Rock Drifting Through Space
But There Is Simply Something I Must Do
If Anyone Can Direct Me To The Mayors Office I Would Appreciate It Thanks

Third Person Sample:

Living in the desert suited Kanaya just fine. There were very few trolls around who could live in a place so thoroughly anti-troll, and fewer still who would willingly build their hives there. As a result, she didn't have to endure many questions about why she'd bothered to hang up all of the huge, colorfully patterned cloth outside of her hive, some tied to the ground so they could pillow up when the breeze was nice and others left to fly freely in the wind. Nor were there any questions about the point of trimming bushes into vague shapes or keeping the grass in her lawn ring perfectly maintained -- which was a good thing, because she didn't have much of an answer aside from "It looks nice." It just didn't pay much to stick out in a troll crowd, so she didn't mind avoiding the crowd altogether.

So being on the meteor was a whole other bag of chips. It was all gray walls with metallic flooring, uniform architecture and mysterious piping. There was really nothing cheerful about it, she thought, but the decor was secondary to feeling of inevitability that they would hunted down and killed sometime soon. In the meantime, Kanaya spent her time sitting in a room with her 11 (then 10) co-players, clacking away at her keyboard in a misguided attempt to annoy a group of pink aliens over the internet. Karkat's plan, not hers.

If you asked her how she might like to spend her final moments, she might say that it would be nice to see her lusus again. But if reality had to have a place in the answer, then she'd say she didn't really know. The thought of dying on that meteor after everything they'd survived through was just a little depressing, really, and she didn't see much point in thinking much more about it.

She wouldn't mind, though, being someplace where the light wasn't always powered by machines and a bit of green could find the space to grow. While looking through Rose's history, Kanaya had seen here and there what the human planet was like and vaguely thought that it might be an interesting place to visit. It was bright and pleasant to the eye in the short glimpses she'd seen, like nothing she'd witnessed on Alternia.
Really, though, it was a silly notion. The humans were in an entirely universe, and the only way Kanaya would ever reach their planet was through text. She would have to content herself with metal and gray and her fellow troll survivors. Every troll had a path in life, and if this was hers, then she had no option but to make the best of it and wait for the next opportunity to expand its boundaries.

Did you read the rules? Yes!