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full essay. karkat is known in fanon to be the 'friendship troll,' and hes particularly good at socializing for trolls. hes a descendant of a stigmatized icon that was murdered brutally, and hes heavily dismissive towards the reverence people have for the sacrifice his ancestor made. that sacrifice left him with a heated hatred and rage for the injustice and cruelty of society, and complete exclusion from said system to the point his own existence breaks it fundamentally. his generational trauma gives him a hair-trigger anger response and extremely hostile and demeaning language to put anyone at arms length. despite this, trolls can tell that karkat's aggression is meaningless because he never follows through on threats and works himself past exhaustion and keeps the full group in mind, even people he doesn't like. dude refers to FIVE PEOPLE as his best friends.

to be friends with karkat is to ignore half the things he says because he's so jumped up on defensive hostility all. the. time. people fire back jokingly, dont take him seriously, think hes funny as hell, or just ignore him. at 13, karkats language is for keeping him safe in a very dangerous place, its supposed to make him appear as a dangerous and cruel person he is not. now, i think karkat views what really are coping mechanisms: his rage and mean vocab: as a permanent and intrinsic failure. this only depresses him further as he doesn't have the tools to understand why he's so angry and defensive.

steven on the other hand really cares about what people say and listens to them carefully. he's kind and deeply empathetic, and i think he'd recognize that karkats from a bad situation. they'd both be unsettled by how their places in the world overlap: steven and karkat are both heirs of complicated legacies and symbols of connection between their respective alien species and the human race. even more, they both resent the weight of their responsibility, as they struggle to bear it as best they can.

i think karkat would see steven's success as a peacebroker and like that. he wants that for his own people, he wants to BE that, but the icon he represents doesn't have such an easy claim to authority. karkat would see stevens response to his duty and think its admirable, and appreciate how steven helps his family. of course he wouldnt tell any of this to steven, and would probably be super mean to him.

steven deeply believes in his ability to heal and fix people and NEEDS the validation of doing so. he's vulnerable to insecurity and frustration when people don't need him or he fails to help them. he'd see karkat as someone in a situation uncomfortably close to his own. additionally, steven listens to people very carefully and takes them seriously. i think karkat's barbs and verbal attacks would really hurt him, especially when he respects karkat.

steven would see progress as karkat being acting more outwardly 'nice' when thats neither what karkat or alternia needs. karkat's truth and anger at cruelty and its results are motivating to make change as every troll suffers from the caste system. furthermore, i dont think karkat can change how gruff he is: its kept him alive for sweeps.

frustrated and insecure about not fixing everything, i think steven would believe that karkat is someone who refuses to become a better person. karkat hates himself so he wouldn't deny that, even though its not true. steven might cut off karkat as someone he feels empathy for and instead just feel... cold. furthermore, steven might extrapolate this to be the reason karkat may fail to 'save' trolls and resent that. having grown up with insane pressures and responsibility, steven would fail to see karkat also deserved to get to be a normal kid too. steven survived and fixed HIS world, why shouldn't karkat?