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c9rp9realn9rmativePlayer Information
Name: Ri
Timezone: EST
Personal Journal:resplendentri
Players Contact/AIM/MSN/YAHOO:AIM: JoyBringer5002
Email Address: cheetah1090@yahoo.com
Former/Other Characters in the RP:Touya Hikari, Gilbert Beilschmidt, Feferi Peixes Dave Strider, Billy Harris
How did you hear about us?: C:
Character Information
Name: Kankri Vantas
Canon Origin/Series: Homestuck
Teaching Position and why it suits them: Ghost
Suitability: he’s dead. c:
Gender: Male
Age: 33 (looks 15)
Out of school living location: Hogwarts
Blood status: muggleborn
Personality:
Kankri Vantas is a very independent boy. He feels the need to take care of himself and not accept help from anyone. In canon, this is a holdover from the Beforan ideal of “culling.” On Beforus, being off-spectrum would have meant that he was taken in by a troll of a higher caste and practically infantilized. His independence, therefore, comes from a need to individualize his identity, to make himself known. In SH, this comes from a need to separate his identity from that of his twin brother, Salvador.
In a similar vein, Kankri cannot stand being babied. In canon on Beforus, being coddled would have been indicative of his adherence to the problematic nature of the hemospectrum. He reacts almost violently, in canon, when Porrim does something as seemingly innocuous as move to wipe grubsauce from his face. In SH, he never disdained authority figures, but he wasn’t the blank slate most professors expected students to be. In fact, he debated with his professors as intensely if not moreso than he did with his peers. He, while he was alive, was disdainful of being tended to. He wouldn’t let anyone take care of him, not even the woman that Salvador adopted as a foster mother. He was eager to differentiate himself from his peers and from his brother, and he expressed this by trying to act more “grown up.”
In many ways, Kankri could easily have ended up being Sorted into Ravenclaw. He is certainly clever, and also quite heavily invested in his studies. His vocabulary and general attitude are almost snobbishly intelligent. He is quite smart, although he lacks anything resembling common sense. He wrote long-winded diatribes for fun, and shared them with anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. As a ghost, now, he has matured somewhat over the past 17 years. It was less of a maturation, however, and more of a necessity brought on by his prolonged silence and hiding. Now that he is once more free to go among the living and interact with them, you can bet that he will have plenty to say.
Part and parcel with his intelligence and independence is a haughtiness or self-righteousness that comes with such teenage hubris. He believes that he is the be-all end-all of any debate, and that anyone who argues with or disagrees with him needs to be debated until they relent and admit that they’re wrong. This self-righteous behaviour comes from the type of Tumblr user that he in canon is meant to make fun of, the Social Justice Warrior. On his pet subjects, he believes that he is simply the best there is. Not only is there a way to win an argument, but Kankri will find it by any means necessary. Usually, what actually happens is that his partner gets sick of his circuitous, rambling tl;dr and just walks away. This kind of behavior is what earned him the nickname “The Insufferable” in both canon and in SH.
While he was alive, his pet topics included blood purity, rights and equality for all Beings, and the recognition of the service of house elves. After his death, blood purity remained a touchy subject, but instead of the others he is obsessed with the acknowledgment and respect of ghosts as sentient beings. They are the remnants of the consciousness of once-living witches and wizards, damned to a half-life without hope of moving on, and as such deserve the respect that they would have been afforded were they still in possession of living bodies.
Going along with the Social Justice Warrior stereotype, Kankri is ultimately well-intentioned in his essays and diatribes. He wants to educate others on his own enlightened opinion, he is just oblivious as to how much he can come across as a sanctimonious asshole at times. He means well enough. It’s important to note that he is not a satire of the “die cis scum” SJW. His language and tone come across as ultimately respectful, overall, and indeed most of the reason why he is so long-winded and exhausting to talk to is because he goes so far not to step on anyone’s toes with his rambling. Another sign of his good intentions (and also a trademark of the type of SJW that he is meant to parody) are the trigger warnings that he uses and abuses. He warns not only for all potential triggers, but also many things that wouldn’t normally be considered triggering in the slightest. He makes up new, politically-correct terms to replace words he considers “pr96lematic,” which in SH takes the form of terms like “living-impaired,” “anat9mically disp9ssessed,” “c9rp9really limited,” “afterlife challenged,” or “transc9rp9real.”
While he doesn’t intend to offend anyone, he ultimately has an ego himself, and it blinds him to how his Social Justice whiteknighting can be at least as problematic, if not moreso, than the behaviour of those he is trying to educate. This comes out in how he will ask his debate partner about their triggers in advance and make it clear that if they become triggered, he will stop and make every effort to accommodate them, but if the trigger in question is related to an important point of his debate, he won’t drop it entirely but will just make an effort to tiptoe around the subject and help them through the discussion. He has less empathy than he believes he does, which doesn’t, of course, make him a bad person. If anything, it just makes him a normal, flawed teenage boy. The problems arise because he believes himself to be much more than that. He is incredibly self-absorbed (again, like most teenagers, let alone teenage boys), and he believes that what he has to say is what is in everyone’s best interest.
In SH, he will be younger than his canon counterpart by about 4 years. This doesn’t necessarily mean much for his SH portrayal vs. canon, because in SH he has also been a ghost for the past 17 years, and in that time has done a lot of observing and interacting with his fellow ghosts. He’s also had plenty of time to develop new opinions and become even more insufferable than before.
It’s also important to bring attention to the fact that although they are biologically the same person, Kankri is not the same person as the Signless. Kankri is a socially impotent armchair crusader, essentially, which is excusable given that he is approximately 19 years old, 6 of which the players spent in an unwinnable session chasing their own tails. He tried to be the spiritual leader of his friends, but the major thing that he really lacks is genuine conviction. He could stand around pointing out all of the problems inherent in the system, but other than telling people what not to do or say, there was no real change he could affect. Signless, on the other hand, preserved some of his Seer powers post-Scratch, and he remembered slices of Beforus, which seemed like utopia in comparison to Alternia.
Canon Background:
Like literally every other Sburb/Sgrub player in Homestuck, Kankri was a meteor baby. He was one of the first group of players of Sgrub, the pre-Scratch troll session. Very little is known about Beforus, the planet that was known in the post-Scratch universe as Alternia, but they had an interesting take on the idea of “culling”. On Alternia, as well as Beforus, those who were off-spectrum as well as lowbloods were culled. However, on Beforus, to be culled meant that you were taken under the guardianship of a highblood and tended to until the end of your shorter lifespan.
Kankri, being a mutantblood and making no real secret of it (he types in #FF0000, and wears a bright red sweater), would have also been taken in by this culture, which is one idea of where his prohibitively verbose social justice loquaciousness comes from. Being “culled” on Beforus, he would have been infantilized and looked down on as little more than a senseless child, no matter how old he really was. His social justice whiteknighting, therefore, can be read as a cry for attention.
Kankri was the Seer of Blood for his session of Sgrub, although it is implied that he never realized his full potential and, thus, never went god tier during the game. Seers, however, are a passive class, good at strategizing, and it has been speculated that the aspect of Blood could represent people or the populace, therefore making the realization of his power to be the ability to foresee how individuals would act in each of different opportunities, and guide situations to suit the best possible outcome.
He appointed himself the “spiritual leader” of the game, and attempted to spread his social justice doctrines among his fellow players and unite them under his philosophies. He also may have had an unrequited crush on the Pyrope of his session, Latula.
Eventually, the pre-Scratch trolls realized that theirs was a dead-end session, but they sat around and did nothing for three sweeps before making the decision to Scratch the session and start over. Since, they have been floating around in dreambubbles and watching the post-Scratch Alternia and its session unfold as it would. Kankri in particular appreciated the message of his post-Scratch incarnation, the Signless, but he found the means by which the Signless spread his message to be “pr96lematic” at best.
His typing quirk is to replace all “o”s with 9s and all “b”s with 6s, in obvious reference to the manacles that bound the Signless to the flogging jut, and also to the cancer symbol which was supposedly derived from said manacles by the devout followers of the Sufferer (much like Christians adopting the cross as their symbol). However, it’s unknown why this is his quirk. Perhaps there was more that he admired about his Post-Scratch incarnation than he lets on, or perhaps the Cancer symbol existed in the pre-Scratch universe in some form as well (although that is less likely, given that Aranea wears a Sufferer pendant and it is implicitly stated that she wears it out of admiration for the Signless’ teachings).
The first time that we meet Kankri is at the beginning of Act 6 Intermission 3. He is seen having cornered Karkat for presumably quite some time now, in the Derse/Prospit clusterfuck dreambubble section of the game. He talks so much that even the normally verbose Karkat has been struck dumb, although that may also have something to do with the mysterious pull that dancestors are implied to have over their post-Scratch counterparts (see: Kanaya being terrified of Porrim). Playing as Meenah (since it’s an interactive flash), you can eavesdrop on the “conversation” between Kankri and Karkat, which consists of reading a lot of bright red text.
There is also the option to “Be Kankri”, but when it is selected as Meenah, he brushes you off with the explanation that he is quite busy lecturing – debating with Karkat right now. If you go through the flash and “Be” Porrim, you can go back and actually talk to Kankri, prompting an argument between the two where Kankri gets quite sassy with her, poking at her concupiscent vacillations and essentially calling her the troll equivalent of a whore. Her concerns about female rights are brushed off in lieu of Kankri’s desire to focus on more “important” topics, which basically means topics that he is actually interested in.
Once again, the option to “Be Kankri” comes up, but once again he turns you away, this time with the suggestion that you try again with someone “a little radder”. This prompts the player to go “be” Latula, and then come back and talk to him. This time, his interaction is completely changed. He is not nearly as self-assured as he was when he was talking to Porrim or Meenah, and he seems totally off his game. This supports the idea that he might have had an unrequited crush on her that both his vow of chastity and her relationship with Mituna Captor prevented. When Latula requests to “Be Kankri,” he blusters and tries to argue for a moment, before finally relenting and letting player control switch to him.
At this point, the player can walk around as the red-sweatered little bitch, and may be tempted to see if it’s programmed so that you can throw him off of the Prospit towers. Such is, unfortunately, not the case, but you can go talk to Porrim again. Upon doing so, Kankri immediately launches into a self-righteous spiel about how rude it was for her to interrupt him while he was speaking with his “disciple”, and he becomes increasingly snippy with her. He outright explodes when she begins to mother him, snarling at her and wiping the grubsauce off of his face on his own because he’s a big boy and can do so.
After talking to Porrim, there’s little else to do with Kankri besides switch player control back to Meenah, after which Kankri becomes irrelevant to the rest of the flash.
Background (AU!Canon; HP): Pooting
Kankri Menachem Vantas was born on June 20, 1979, a few minutes ahead of his twin brother, Salvador. The bond between the two identical boys was a strong one. They spent a lot of time together. They were infinitely closer to one another than they were to their older brother Armand, by simple virtue of the fact that he was 12 years their elder.
Early on, however, it became obvious that there was something different about Salvador and Kankri. Aside from the normal twin things, like inventing their own little language, strange things began happening around them. When they turned 11, a man came to their house and explained to Mr. and Mrs. Vantas that their youngest boys were wizards, and invited to attend a special academy to train their talents.
A few months later, they were on the Hogwarts Express and on their way to Hogwarts. Their first year was particularly difficult for them to adjust. They clung to one another, two identical faces in a sea of unfamiliar culture. By the end of the year, however, they had both thrown themselves wholeheartedly into what they did best – Kankri into his studies, and Salvador into making friends. By their second year, everyone could tell them apart as soon as they opened their mouths.
It gradually became more and more obvious that Kankri was fundamentally not good with people. He would talk nonstop at anyone who would listen for long enough to let him start, and he vocally shared his opinions, no matter how unpopular, with everyone he met. He was that kid who would remind the professors about assigned homework. Unlike his twin, who was almost universally liked, Kankri was seen as a nuisance at best. He earned himself the nickname “The Insufferable”, and it almost seemed like he wore it with pride. Salvador did his best to drag him out on occasion, to spend time with him and his friends, but the only time that this was guaranteed to succeed was on Hogsmeade weekends. No matter how hard he tried, Kankri could never help but feel like Sal was the only one who wanted him there.
And he wasn’t entirely wrong. In class and out, hushed whispers of “Insufferable Vantas” followed him. His peers brushed off his arguments, told him to shut up, keep quiet, sit down. Incensed and brimming with injustice, he took to writing his arguments down in the one place where no one could escape them: the journals. He filled page after page with bright red words that no one wanted to read.
When the two boys were able to pick electives after 2nd year, Kankri went into Divination along with Sal. Unlike Sal, however, he actually took the class seriously (or, about as seriously as you can take Divination). Not only did it quickly become his best class, not only did he launch himself into a position of esteem in the professor’s eyes, but it awakened a hidden talent. The Divination professor was maybe even a little jealous – never before had there been such a young muggleborn with such a strong Inner Eye.
The first time that he actually made a prophecy was in the middle of class one day, when he seemingly dozed off in class and then began speaking in an altered voice. The prophecy itself was nothing earth-shaking, but the testament to the power of Kankri’s Inner Eye was more than enough to make up for it. When he came to afterward, he didn’t remember what had happened, but from that day on he was the Divination professor’s protégé. He spent about a year and a half under her wing. In that time, he didn’t have any other visions, but when he was at home he took to carrying a tape recorder around with him, so that if he did then he or Sal or someone else could press record before he slipped under.
In the summer of 1994, while Sal was visiting Art and Di, Kankri slipped into a second vision. When the unnatural, lightheaded sleepiness came over him, too strong to fight, he pressed record on the tape recorder, just in case.
When he woke up afterward, he rewound the tape and played it back. He heard a voice that was barely recognizable as his own, saying words he didn’t remember saying.
Flowers of summer from the same stem sprung
friend becomes foe, one must fall upon the wand
that the other may flourish and grow
a brother's sacrifice to keep him safe
He owled his Divination professor immediately, but she was about as helpful as you could imagine. When Sal returned Kankri decided that Sal didn’t need to know about the prophecy. At least, not until he had a better idea of what it meant. Not until he’d ruled out everything but the worst possible solution.
When they returned to school in the fall, there was something different about Kankri. It was as if he was going through the motions. It was hard to be excited about anything when he knew with almost certainty that either he or Salvador would be dead by the end of the year.
Still, the moment didn’t come until April. He and Sal were in duelling club together. When he was called to partner up, he was paired with the only other student aside from his brother who he really considered a friend. Sal grabbed Kankri by the sleeve and begged him not to do it. He admitted that he had had a dream. Kankri knew then that this was the final moment. He smiled, and reassured his twin that he would be fine. And then he stood up against his friend and prepared to duel.
He gave it his all, fought as hard as he could, but then a spell slipped past his guard and knocked him out. At first, no one believed that he was really hurt. As the seconds ticked by and he still lay there deathly still, the first one to realize that something was wrong was Salvador. He ran to his twin’s side, but by then it was practically too late. None of the efforts to revive him worked. For three days, he lay in the hospital wing in a coma. Physically, he was fine. Had he woken up, he would have been well enough to go to class the next day. But his mind and spirit drifted free of his body, no matter how hard he fought to return. Finally, on the third day, Kankri died.
On the fourth day, he woke up again, cold and alone. Not entirely alone. The headmaster was there, smiling benignly, a sad twinkle in his blue eyes. It didn’t take a genius to realize what had happened: Kankri was a ghost. The old wizard returned his journal to him and explained Kankri’s options. He could either reveal himself to his brother, or he could hide from him.
For Salvador’s own good, Kankri decided to hide. It hurt him, as close to physically as he could still hurt, to watch his brother grow up without him. He shadowed him faithfully, a part of him hoping that maybe he could lessen the hurt, that maybe Sal would know that he was watching over him. On his brother’s wedding day, it was all he could do not to go forward and stand in the space among the groomsmen that he knew was meant for him.
But as the years passed, the silence became easier and easier to maintain. He idled his hours with the other ghosts, but there were a few years where he wasn’t afraid to be seen by the students, either, when everyone who saw him die, who knew his name had graduated. Those years slipped away all too fast. Before he knew it, it had been 14 years since his death, and he was shocked to see two painfully familiar-looking young little kids among the first years. Vantas, Karkat! was called out to be Sorted, and Kankri hid himself immediately, straining his ears to hear what house his flesh and blood was sorted into. The pride he felt when he heard the Sorting Hat cry out Gryffindor! was the warmest that he’d felt since he died. Vantas-Leijon, Nepeta! came next, and into Hufflepuff she went, like her mother before her.
From that moment on, Kankri went into the same diligent hiding that he had fallen into while Salvador was still at school. He watched his nephew and niece from the shadows, but he could not allow them to see him. Not when word could get back to Salvador. Even though Salvador had moved on, even though he was a grown man with children, Kankri was afraid of the reaction should his twin find out that he had hidden from him for 17 years. So he hid. And he waited.
And then Salvador himself came to the school to teach, and he was appointed Head of Gryffindor House. It was no use hiding anymore. With patient reassurance from Dumbledore, and from his fellow ghosts (Sir Nicholas in particular encouraged him to reveal himself), he made the decision to come forward of his own accord, and reveal himself to his brother before Salvador found out from someone else.
Dragon
RP Samples: here
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Name: Ri
Timezone: EST
Personal Journal:
resplendentriPlayers Contact/AIM/MSN/YAHOO:AIM: JoyBringer5002
Email Address: cheetah1090@yahoo.com
Former/Other Characters in the RP:
How did you hear about us?: C:
Character Information
Name: Kankri Vantas
Canon Origin/Series: Homestuck
Teaching Position and why it suits them: Ghost
Suitability: he’s dead. c:
Gender: Male
Age: 33 (looks 15)
Out of school living location: Hogwarts
Blood status: muggleborn
Personality:
Kankri Vantas is a very independent boy. He feels the need to take care of himself and not accept help from anyone. In canon, this is a holdover from the Beforan ideal of “culling.” On Beforus, being off-spectrum would have meant that he was taken in by a troll of a higher caste and practically infantilized. His independence, therefore, comes from a need to individualize his identity, to make himself known. In SH, this comes from a need to separate his identity from that of his twin brother, Salvador.
In a similar vein, Kankri cannot stand being babied. In canon on Beforus, being coddled would have been indicative of his adherence to the problematic nature of the hemospectrum. He reacts almost violently, in canon, when Porrim does something as seemingly innocuous as move to wipe grubsauce from his face. In SH, he never disdained authority figures, but he wasn’t the blank slate most professors expected students to be. In fact, he debated with his professors as intensely if not moreso than he did with his peers. He, while he was alive, was disdainful of being tended to. He wouldn’t let anyone take care of him, not even the woman that Salvador adopted as a foster mother. He was eager to differentiate himself from his peers and from his brother, and he expressed this by trying to act more “grown up.”
In many ways, Kankri could easily have ended up being Sorted into Ravenclaw. He is certainly clever, and also quite heavily invested in his studies. His vocabulary and general attitude are almost snobbishly intelligent. He is quite smart, although he lacks anything resembling common sense. He wrote long-winded diatribes for fun, and shared them with anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. As a ghost, now, he has matured somewhat over the past 17 years. It was less of a maturation, however, and more of a necessity brought on by his prolonged silence and hiding. Now that he is once more free to go among the living and interact with them, you can bet that he will have plenty to say.
Part and parcel with his intelligence and independence is a haughtiness or self-righteousness that comes with such teenage hubris. He believes that he is the be-all end-all of any debate, and that anyone who argues with or disagrees with him needs to be debated until they relent and admit that they’re wrong. This self-righteous behaviour comes from the type of Tumblr user that he in canon is meant to make fun of, the Social Justice Warrior. On his pet subjects, he believes that he is simply the best there is. Not only is there a way to win an argument, but Kankri will find it by any means necessary. Usually, what actually happens is that his partner gets sick of his circuitous, rambling tl;dr and just walks away. This kind of behavior is what earned him the nickname “The Insufferable” in both canon and in SH.
While he was alive, his pet topics included blood purity, rights and equality for all Beings, and the recognition of the service of house elves. After his death, blood purity remained a touchy subject, but instead of the others he is obsessed with the acknowledgment and respect of ghosts as sentient beings. They are the remnants of the consciousness of once-living witches and wizards, damned to a half-life without hope of moving on, and as such deserve the respect that they would have been afforded were they still in possession of living bodies.
Going along with the Social Justice Warrior stereotype, Kankri is ultimately well-intentioned in his essays and diatribes. He wants to educate others on his own enlightened opinion, he is just oblivious as to how much he can come across as a sanctimonious asshole at times. He means well enough. It’s important to note that he is not a satire of the “die cis scum” SJW. His language and tone come across as ultimately respectful, overall, and indeed most of the reason why he is so long-winded and exhausting to talk to is because he goes so far not to step on anyone’s toes with his rambling. Another sign of his good intentions (and also a trademark of the type of SJW that he is meant to parody) are the trigger warnings that he uses and abuses. He warns not only for all potential triggers, but also many things that wouldn’t normally be considered triggering in the slightest. He makes up new, politically-correct terms to replace words he considers “pr96lematic,” which in SH takes the form of terms like “living-impaired,” “anat9mically disp9ssessed,” “c9rp9really limited,” “afterlife challenged,” or “transc9rp9real.”
While he doesn’t intend to offend anyone, he ultimately has an ego himself, and it blinds him to how his Social Justice whiteknighting can be at least as problematic, if not moreso, than the behaviour of those he is trying to educate. This comes out in how he will ask his debate partner about their triggers in advance and make it clear that if they become triggered, he will stop and make every effort to accommodate them, but if the trigger in question is related to an important point of his debate, he won’t drop it entirely but will just make an effort to tiptoe around the subject and help them through the discussion. He has less empathy than he believes he does, which doesn’t, of course, make him a bad person. If anything, it just makes him a normal, flawed teenage boy. The problems arise because he believes himself to be much more than that. He is incredibly self-absorbed (again, like most teenagers, let alone teenage boys), and he believes that what he has to say is what is in everyone’s best interest.
In SH, he will be younger than his canon counterpart by about 4 years. This doesn’t necessarily mean much for his SH portrayal vs. canon, because in SH he has also been a ghost for the past 17 years, and in that time has done a lot of observing and interacting with his fellow ghosts. He’s also had plenty of time to develop new opinions and become even more insufferable than before.
It’s also important to bring attention to the fact that although they are biologically the same person, Kankri is not the same person as the Signless. Kankri is a socially impotent armchair crusader, essentially, which is excusable given that he is approximately 19 years old, 6 of which the players spent in an unwinnable session chasing their own tails. He tried to be the spiritual leader of his friends, but the major thing that he really lacks is genuine conviction. He could stand around pointing out all of the problems inherent in the system, but other than telling people what not to do or say, there was no real change he could affect. Signless, on the other hand, preserved some of his Seer powers post-Scratch, and he remembered slices of Beforus, which seemed like utopia in comparison to Alternia.
Canon Background:
Like literally every other Sburb/Sgrub player in Homestuck, Kankri was a meteor baby. He was one of the first group of players of Sgrub, the pre-Scratch troll session. Very little is known about Beforus, the planet that was known in the post-Scratch universe as Alternia, but they had an interesting take on the idea of “culling”. On Alternia, as well as Beforus, those who were off-spectrum as well as lowbloods were culled. However, on Beforus, to be culled meant that you were taken under the guardianship of a highblood and tended to until the end of your shorter lifespan.
Kankri, being a mutantblood and making no real secret of it (he types in #FF0000, and wears a bright red sweater), would have also been taken in by this culture, which is one idea of where his prohibitively verbose social justice loquaciousness comes from. Being “culled” on Beforus, he would have been infantilized and looked down on as little more than a senseless child, no matter how old he really was. His social justice whiteknighting, therefore, can be read as a cry for attention.
Kankri was the Seer of Blood for his session of Sgrub, although it is implied that he never realized his full potential and, thus, never went god tier during the game. Seers, however, are a passive class, good at strategizing, and it has been speculated that the aspect of Blood could represent people or the populace, therefore making the realization of his power to be the ability to foresee how individuals would act in each of different opportunities, and guide situations to suit the best possible outcome.
He appointed himself the “spiritual leader” of the game, and attempted to spread his social justice doctrines among his fellow players and unite them under his philosophies. He also may have had an unrequited crush on the Pyrope of his session, Latula.
Eventually, the pre-Scratch trolls realized that theirs was a dead-end session, but they sat around and did nothing for three sweeps before making the decision to Scratch the session and start over. Since, they have been floating around in dreambubbles and watching the post-Scratch Alternia and its session unfold as it would. Kankri in particular appreciated the message of his post-Scratch incarnation, the Signless, but he found the means by which the Signless spread his message to be “pr96lematic” at best.
His typing quirk is to replace all “o”s with 9s and all “b”s with 6s, in obvious reference to the manacles that bound the Signless to the flogging jut, and also to the cancer symbol which was supposedly derived from said manacles by the devout followers of the Sufferer (much like Christians adopting the cross as their symbol). However, it’s unknown why this is his quirk. Perhaps there was more that he admired about his Post-Scratch incarnation than he lets on, or perhaps the Cancer symbol existed in the pre-Scratch universe in some form as well (although that is less likely, given that Aranea wears a Sufferer pendant and it is implicitly stated that she wears it out of admiration for the Signless’ teachings).
The first time that we meet Kankri is at the beginning of Act 6 Intermission 3. He is seen having cornered Karkat for presumably quite some time now, in the Derse/Prospit clusterfuck dreambubble section of the game. He talks so much that even the normally verbose Karkat has been struck dumb, although that may also have something to do with the mysterious pull that dancestors are implied to have over their post-Scratch counterparts (see: Kanaya being terrified of Porrim). Playing as Meenah (since it’s an interactive flash), you can eavesdrop on the “conversation” between Kankri and Karkat, which consists of reading a lot of bright red text.
There is also the option to “Be Kankri”, but when it is selected as Meenah, he brushes you off with the explanation that he is quite busy lecturing – debating with Karkat right now. If you go through the flash and “Be” Porrim, you can go back and actually talk to Kankri, prompting an argument between the two where Kankri gets quite sassy with her, poking at her concupiscent vacillations and essentially calling her the troll equivalent of a whore. Her concerns about female rights are brushed off in lieu of Kankri’s desire to focus on more “important” topics, which basically means topics that he is actually interested in.
Once again, the option to “Be Kankri” comes up, but once again he turns you away, this time with the suggestion that you try again with someone “a little radder”. This prompts the player to go “be” Latula, and then come back and talk to him. This time, his interaction is completely changed. He is not nearly as self-assured as he was when he was talking to Porrim or Meenah, and he seems totally off his game. This supports the idea that he might have had an unrequited crush on her that both his vow of chastity and her relationship with Mituna Captor prevented. When Latula requests to “Be Kankri,” he blusters and tries to argue for a moment, before finally relenting and letting player control switch to him.
At this point, the player can walk around as the red-sweatered little bitch, and may be tempted to see if it’s programmed so that you can throw him off of the Prospit towers. Such is, unfortunately, not the case, but you can go talk to Porrim again. Upon doing so, Kankri immediately launches into a self-righteous spiel about how rude it was for her to interrupt him while he was speaking with his “disciple”, and he becomes increasingly snippy with her. He outright explodes when she begins to mother him, snarling at her and wiping the grubsauce off of his face on his own because he’s a big boy and can do so.
After talking to Porrim, there’s little else to do with Kankri besides switch player control back to Meenah, after which Kankri becomes irrelevant to the rest of the flash.
Background (AU!Canon; HP): Pooting
Kankri Menachem Vantas was born on June 20, 1979, a few minutes ahead of his twin brother, Salvador. The bond between the two identical boys was a strong one. They spent a lot of time together. They were infinitely closer to one another than they were to their older brother Armand, by simple virtue of the fact that he was 12 years their elder.
Early on, however, it became obvious that there was something different about Salvador and Kankri. Aside from the normal twin things, like inventing their own little language, strange things began happening around them. When they turned 11, a man came to their house and explained to Mr. and Mrs. Vantas that their youngest boys were wizards, and invited to attend a special academy to train their talents.
A few months later, they were on the Hogwarts Express and on their way to Hogwarts. Their first year was particularly difficult for them to adjust. They clung to one another, two identical faces in a sea of unfamiliar culture. By the end of the year, however, they had both thrown themselves wholeheartedly into what they did best – Kankri into his studies, and Salvador into making friends. By their second year, everyone could tell them apart as soon as they opened their mouths.
It gradually became more and more obvious that Kankri was fundamentally not good with people. He would talk nonstop at anyone who would listen for long enough to let him start, and he vocally shared his opinions, no matter how unpopular, with everyone he met. He was that kid who would remind the professors about assigned homework. Unlike his twin, who was almost universally liked, Kankri was seen as a nuisance at best. He earned himself the nickname “The Insufferable”, and it almost seemed like he wore it with pride. Salvador did his best to drag him out on occasion, to spend time with him and his friends, but the only time that this was guaranteed to succeed was on Hogsmeade weekends. No matter how hard he tried, Kankri could never help but feel like Sal was the only one who wanted him there.
And he wasn’t entirely wrong. In class and out, hushed whispers of “Insufferable Vantas” followed him. His peers brushed off his arguments, told him to shut up, keep quiet, sit down. Incensed and brimming with injustice, he took to writing his arguments down in the one place where no one could escape them: the journals. He filled page after page with bright red words that no one wanted to read.
When the two boys were able to pick electives after 2nd year, Kankri went into Divination along with Sal. Unlike Sal, however, he actually took the class seriously (or, about as seriously as you can take Divination). Not only did it quickly become his best class, not only did he launch himself into a position of esteem in the professor’s eyes, but it awakened a hidden talent. The Divination professor was maybe even a little jealous – never before had there been such a young muggleborn with such a strong Inner Eye.
The first time that he actually made a prophecy was in the middle of class one day, when he seemingly dozed off in class and then began speaking in an altered voice. The prophecy itself was nothing earth-shaking, but the testament to the power of Kankri’s Inner Eye was more than enough to make up for it. When he came to afterward, he didn’t remember what had happened, but from that day on he was the Divination professor’s protégé. He spent about a year and a half under her wing. In that time, he didn’t have any other visions, but when he was at home he took to carrying a tape recorder around with him, so that if he did then he or Sal or someone else could press record before he slipped under.
In the summer of 1994, while Sal was visiting Art and Di, Kankri slipped into a second vision. When the unnatural, lightheaded sleepiness came over him, too strong to fight, he pressed record on the tape recorder, just in case.
When he woke up afterward, he rewound the tape and played it back. He heard a voice that was barely recognizable as his own, saying words he didn’t remember saying.
Flowers of summer from the same stem sprung
friend becomes foe, one must fall upon the wand
that the other may flourish and grow
a brother's sacrifice to keep him safe
He owled his Divination professor immediately, but she was about as helpful as you could imagine. When Sal returned Kankri decided that Sal didn’t need to know about the prophecy. At least, not until he had a better idea of what it meant. Not until he’d ruled out everything but the worst possible solution.
When they returned to school in the fall, there was something different about Kankri. It was as if he was going through the motions. It was hard to be excited about anything when he knew with almost certainty that either he or Salvador would be dead by the end of the year.
Still, the moment didn’t come until April. He and Sal were in duelling club together. When he was called to partner up, he was paired with the only other student aside from his brother who he really considered a friend. Sal grabbed Kankri by the sleeve and begged him not to do it. He admitted that he had had a dream. Kankri knew then that this was the final moment. He smiled, and reassured his twin that he would be fine. And then he stood up against his friend and prepared to duel.
He gave it his all, fought as hard as he could, but then a spell slipped past his guard and knocked him out. At first, no one believed that he was really hurt. As the seconds ticked by and he still lay there deathly still, the first one to realize that something was wrong was Salvador. He ran to his twin’s side, but by then it was practically too late. None of the efforts to revive him worked. For three days, he lay in the hospital wing in a coma. Physically, he was fine. Had he woken up, he would have been well enough to go to class the next day. But his mind and spirit drifted free of his body, no matter how hard he fought to return. Finally, on the third day, Kankri died.
On the fourth day, he woke up again, cold and alone. Not entirely alone. The headmaster was there, smiling benignly, a sad twinkle in his blue eyes. It didn’t take a genius to realize what had happened: Kankri was a ghost. The old wizard returned his journal to him and explained Kankri’s options. He could either reveal himself to his brother, or he could hide from him.
For Salvador’s own good, Kankri decided to hide. It hurt him, as close to physically as he could still hurt, to watch his brother grow up without him. He shadowed him faithfully, a part of him hoping that maybe he could lessen the hurt, that maybe Sal would know that he was watching over him. On his brother’s wedding day, it was all he could do not to go forward and stand in the space among the groomsmen that he knew was meant for him.
But as the years passed, the silence became easier and easier to maintain. He idled his hours with the other ghosts, but there were a few years where he wasn’t afraid to be seen by the students, either, when everyone who saw him die, who knew his name had graduated. Those years slipped away all too fast. Before he knew it, it had been 14 years since his death, and he was shocked to see two painfully familiar-looking young little kids among the first years. Vantas, Karkat! was called out to be Sorted, and Kankri hid himself immediately, straining his ears to hear what house his flesh and blood was sorted into. The pride he felt when he heard the Sorting Hat cry out Gryffindor! was the warmest that he’d felt since he died. Vantas-Leijon, Nepeta! came next, and into Hufflepuff she went, like her mother before her.
From that moment on, Kankri went into the same diligent hiding that he had fallen into while Salvador was still at school. He watched his nephew and niece from the shadows, but he could not allow them to see him. Not when word could get back to Salvador. Even though Salvador had moved on, even though he was a grown man with children, Kankri was afraid of the reaction should his twin find out that he had hidden from him for 17 years. So he hid. And he waited.
And then Salvador himself came to the school to teach, and he was appointed Head of Gryffindor House. It was no use hiding anymore. With patient reassurance from Dumbledore, and from his fellow ghosts (Sir Nicholas in particular encouraged him to reveal himself), he made the decision to come forward of his own accord, and reveal himself to his brother before Salvador found out from someone else.
Dragon
RP Samples: here
and
here
