So, I have a friend who has Celiac disease, but that isn’t the point of this post.

And before it was identified as Celiac disease, she felt really crummy all the time and also got really depressed, which is also not the point of this post.

My point is, feeling crummy makes people upset.  Snappy.  Crabby, even.

Who do we know who’s crabby?

Now let’s talk about the hemospectrum, which I promise actually is the point of this post.  Sort of.  This is a fan-theory I’ve had for a long time and I like it a lot, okay?

Karkat is a little ball of hate pretty much all the time before the post-SGRUB adventure on the asteroid.  He is always cranky and says things like, “I hate you more than I hate myself” to insult Sollux.  He’s a little bitch.  But I think there’s a reason for that.  After all, Nepeta likes people and is open about it.  Feferi likes people and is open about it.  Yeah, he doesn’t want people to see his blood, but then he just has to not get cut.

You know who else is a little bitch for reasons other than simple teen angst (coughcoughEridancough)?  Sollux.  Sollux, who has migraines probably half the time (if everything else in his life being in twos is any indication).  Migraines.  Ouch.

Blood color indicates lifespan.  Red-blooded trolls live for a few decades and fuschia-bloods live for thousands of years.  The hemospectrum is also a lifespan-spectrum.  A lot of people put Karkat between Sollux and Nepeta in their lineups because I guess that’s where Cancer goes, but as far as rank goes, he’s below even Aradia.  She would be culled by a particularly rude highblood, but he would be culled by any highblood who wasn’t like Feferi.  And I think the same is true of his blood: it ranks below Aradia’s.  It will keep him alive for a shorter period of time than a red-blood’s lifespan.

I think the reason Karkat’s so angry all the time is that he feels crappy all the time.  I think he’s in physical pain, but doesn’t talk about it because he doesn’t want to appear weak for fear of being culled.  I think he has a whole slough of genetic illnesses and susceptibilities that keep him from being as lively as everyone from Nepeta on up.  I think he’s also very aware that he’s going to die young; I saw a chart that predicted red-bloods would have a lifespan of about 40 or so, so I can easily imagine a candy-blood dying in his 30s or even, since his blood is a mutation that isn’t supposed to exist, in his 20s or even his teens.  As he matures, he faces death and realizes that living in a way that helps others is all he can do and he gets a lot more selfless when there’s less threat of being culled, but that doesn’t change the fact that he really does have a disability that will shorten his lifespan and lower his quality of life.

Thanks for reading; I know it was a lot of words, but I really like this fan-theory and it makes a lot of sense to me.