:33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter!
– Nepeta Leijon

Nepeta Leijon is an olive-blooded troll from Homestuck associated with the astrological sign, Leo (♌), and her handle name in the webcomic is arsenicCatnip (AC). She isn't really that important in terms of Homestuck, but some fans have an odd fascination with her.

In her original introduction, she's described as a friendly roleplayer whose daily routine is almost similar to a big cat and she likes to paint little comics with blood, soot, and ashes.¹⁾ Her lusus is a two-mouthed cat named Pounce de Leon.²⁾ For most of the story, she's very playful and acts all innocent since she tries to be carefree, but she also has a habit of shipping her friends together.

Her full name was suggested by the music team member, Steve “Tenebrais” Everson, in the MSPA Forums.³⁾ Nepeta references the biological name for catnip, but Leijon is debated upon. Some linguists believe it stems from the Finnish word “leijona”, derived from the Swedish “lejon” and further stems from the Latin “leo”. Alternatively, there was this social democrat politician in the 1970s and who cares.

In Act 5 Act 1, Terezi roleplays with Nepeta and invites her to play Sgrub.⁴⁾ Her first appearance was actually a joke,⁵⁾ but she later gets a proper introduction.⁶⁾ In her cave, she scratches her lusus's ears⁷⁾ and does respond to Karkat's invitation to join the Red Team,⁸⁾ but asks Equius who demands her to join the Blue Team with him instead⁹⁾ so she relayed to Tavros that she couldn't join the Red Team.¹⁰⁾

There was eventually a cave-in which kills her lusus,¹¹⁾ but Nepeta is safely outside the cave where she acts as Aradia's server player and watches Aradia's kernelsprite being prototyped.¹²⁾ However, Nepeta couldn't actually see Aradia since she was a ghost,¹³⁾ but messages her once she becomes visible as Aradiasprite. It looks like she didn't know why Aradia was dead, but didn't ask and promises to keep it a secret.¹⁴⁾

Later, Equius creates a physical body for Aradia called Aradiabot, but Aradia freaks out since he installed a heart and ends up kissing him. Nepeta watched¹⁵⁾ and updates her shipping wall.¹⁶⁾ Further into the game, Nepeta attacks an imp while exploring the Land of Little Cubes and Tea.¹⁷⁾ She spots Equius and pounces on him,¹⁸⁾ then asks about Aradia.¹⁹⁾ The two also notice that the imps were changing.²⁰⁾

In Act 5 Act 2, Nepeta joins a memo where Karkat and Terezi are fighting and pulls in Past Karkat.²¹⁾ Later in the memo, a Future Nepeta confirms that Derse was destroyed.²²⁾ In the “Alterniabound” walkaround, she mostly talks about the humans and plays with Terezi.²³⁾ Shortly after, she's messages Rose about wanting to speak with Jaspersprite, but we're never shown this part of the conversation until much, much later.²⁴⁾

As foretold, Derse is destroyed and her dreamself is killed.²⁵⁾ In the “Triterniabound” walkaround, she chats with Equius about Aradia and Gamzee then hides as instructed, then watches him being strangled.²⁶⁾ She attempts to retaliate,²⁷⁾ was too slow and it's later shown that she died off-screen.²⁸⁾ We eventually get to see Nepeta's conversation with Jaspersprite and it's mostly him offering hope to her about Karkat.²⁹⁾

As Jaspersprite foretold, a Dead Nepeta happily ended up with a Dead Karkat in a dream bubble,³⁰⁾ then we see a Dead Nepeta meeting Meulin and commenting Equius's relationship with Aradia³¹⁾ but after this, she becomes mute. Nepeta becomes Fefetasprite³²⁾ who later explodes,³³⁾ then a Dead Nepeta got dragged into Serket's army³⁴⁾ as “Commodore Nepeta”³⁵⁾ but shortly leaves her army with Sollux and Feferi.³⁶⁾

The story retcons Vriska's death, but Nepeta remains dead in the new timeline and this time, Jasprosesprite² forces Nepeta back into the story as Nepetasprite³⁷⁾ and temporarily gets a voice back,³⁸⁾ but it's mostly dating shenanigans³⁹⁾ made awkward by Nepetasprite and Davesprite becoming Davepetasprite²,⁴⁰⁾ and this arguably kills Nepeta's voice for someone with enough screen time and flanderization.⁴¹⁾

Davepetasprite² meet Arquiusprite⁴²⁾ and hug,⁴³⁾ then Davepetasprite² talks with Jade about understanding aspects⁴⁴⁾ and forces her to wake back up.⁴⁵⁾ For the closing animation of Act 6, it features the ghost army throwing themselves at Lord English and Davepetasprite² fighting Lord English in an Undertale reference, but doesn't seem to accomplish anything as they remain absent for the rest of the canonical story.⁴⁶⁾⁴⁷⁾

She's absent in Act 7, but there is a Dead Nepeta being sucked into a black hole in the credits.⁴⁸⁾ It's implied that nobody dead escaped to the new universe, so she hasn't appeared in the MSPA Snapchat either.

In the “Meat” epilogue where John returns to canon to fight Lord English, Davepetasprite² shows up to give Dave and the older John a motivational speech before they tackle Lord English in the final round. John is mortally wounded, Dave dies, but Davepetasprite² drags Lord English into the black hole, which kills both of them.⁴⁹⁾ John acknowledges their effort⁵⁰⁾ and they never get mentioned again.

In the “Candy” epilogue where John stays in Universe C, the characters do mention Davepetasprite²⁵¹⁾ and Nepeta,⁵²⁾ but the characters never explicitly appear. However, Meenah's ghost army that gets sucked into the black hole during the events of Act 7 eventually fall down from the sky,⁵³⁾ so there could theoretically be ghost Nepetas in the timeline, but their presence is probably not important enough to mention.

• Hunting Lesson - Nepeta gives Equius a hunting lesson on the Land of Little Cubes and Tea, but Equius manages to punch the prey far away and cause an explosion.
• Secret Sufferer (2) - Karkat is in charge of Secret Sufferer (Secret Santa) but the presents get all mixed up. Nepeta gets some cuddlefish by mistake, but she ends up eating them.
• Relation Shipping - Nepeta offers a service called the Mewnited Purrsonal Express which aims to fill in every troll's quadrant for them. Equius and Aradiabot is used as an example.
• Summerteen Romance - In Karkat's fanfic, she's among the trolls attending Camp Sgrub. Vriska gets mad at Nepeta having bunk beds with Terezi, but she moves under Feferi's bunk instead. She doesn't actually get to say much in the story, due to Dave omitting most of Karkat's story, but she does get to kill a bear in the story giving her the “Apex Predator” title.

In Book 4, Hussie shoots down Nepeta and Terezi's relationship potential,⁵⁴⁾ then brings up the catnip joke in her handle name.⁵⁵⁾ He proceeds to explain that Nepeta was mostly a joke character whose irrelevance becomes a running gag⁵⁶⁾ and the story initially avoids her for being “embarrassing”,⁵⁷⁾ mostly because she's an enthusiastic fandom avatar, a trait that gets hijacked by Calliope later on in the story.⁵⁸⁾

For her introduction, her quirk is said to be tied to arsenic's atomic number,⁵⁹⁾ then we get a comparison to Jade as well as a somewhat negative remark about Davepetasprite².⁶⁰⁾ When Karkat calls Nepeta autistic, Hussie tries to justify its use before distracting us with Nepeta and Karkat's unfated relationship.⁶¹⁾ After this, he suggests that Nepeta and Equius' relationship is akin to a comedy duo.⁶²⁾

It's later explained that Equius likely demanded Nepeta to be Aradia's server player since she wouldn't make her death a big deal.⁶³⁾⁶⁴⁾ Hussie notes that Equius essentially roleplays with Gamzee despite reprimanding Nepeta for it,⁶⁵⁾ then he further propagates Nepeta and Equius' relationship claiming that all their interactions with each other are good.⁶⁶⁾ When Equius visits Aradia, Hussie notes that Nepeta fixed Aradia's house.⁶⁷⁾

We then get to the first shipping wall, but Hussie mostly leaves filler commentary.⁶⁸⁾ When Eridan enters the story, Hussie notes how Nepeta and Eridan were prototype cherubs and he even used “Tumblr fangirl” and “4chan nastyboy” to describe their personalities.⁶⁹⁾⁷⁰⁾ Nepeta's land is pointed out to be LOLCAT which is called dumb,⁷¹⁾⁷²⁾ then we get her “hero mode” panel that's sorta glossed over.⁷³⁾

In Book 5, Hussie notes that she foreshadows Derse's destruction,⁷⁴⁾ then there's the “Alterniabound” flash. The only things of note is an implication that she might've had plenty of pointless, off-screen conversations with the humans, Hussie using Nepeta's dislike of Vriska's Mindfang RP to justify her limited screen time, and Nepeta showing Terezi a secret room with Eridan's stash of wands.⁷⁵⁾

Her upcoming conversation with Rose is said to contain “cute BS”,⁷⁶⁾ then we go back to the idea of Nepeta having unseen conversations and it's implied that she's chatty despite her limited on-screen dialogue.⁷⁷⁾ Nepeta's name is dropped a few more times after this,⁷⁸⁾ mainly to outline Gamzee's importance that nobody at the time really expected until later on,⁷⁹⁾⁸⁰⁾ and the book sorta just progresses on as is.

• Some fans find Nepeta cute because of the cat association, which pushes this whole cute, innocent stereotype attributed to her. Some fans tried to counter this with a dominating, badass stereotype.
• It's fairly obvious that Hussie never wanted Nepeta to be a prominent character and general neglect of her character has actually contributed to her mysterious popularity in the fanbase.
  • Due to the questionable writing direction in Act 6, some fans began appreciating Nepeta since she hadn't been contaminated by the story's new writing direction for the longest time.
• Davepetasprite² was mostly an experiment to combine fan favorites that Hussie didn't know how to use. It's also clear that Hussie didn't know how to write Nepeta when he forced her back into the story.
• In non-Latin languages, Nepeta's name has been unofficially translated to:
  • Russian: Непета Лейжон (Nepeta Leyzhon), Непета Лейон (Nepeta Leyon).
  • Korean: 네페타 레이온 (Nepeta Leion).
  • Japanese: ネペタ・レイヨン (Nepeta Reiyon).
• Due to general time constraints, there will not be a section on her relationships with other characters.

• Nepeta Leijon on the MS Paint Adventures Wiki [EN]
• Nepeta Leijon on Namu Wiki [KO]