is karkat gonna be in act 1 in the show

It's probably just that we get the trolling earlier. Like "TODAY'S THE DAY! THE DAY YOU FIRST SHOW ANYTHING RESEMBLING COMPETENCE AND IMMEDIATELY USE THAT INITIAL SPARK INSIDE YOUR THINK PAN TO FUCK EVERYTHING UP FOREVER." Which John then ignores.

i mean this is just merch. i doubt theyre gonna show KK on act 1

it's a pilot episode, so it's a) not necessarily going to 100% represent the cartoon's adaptation of "Act 1" (if the show even gets picked up after the pilot, which is a big if) and b) it naturally is going to include as wide a variety of elements as possible that will get people interested in the premise. Karkat is a popular character and trolls are a huge part of the story's wider appeal so it would be kind of silly for no trolls to be in the pilot at all

can karkat be the only troll in the show and all the others never existed #idea

I don't think this is going to be a 1:1 line for line recreation of the comic and there is no reason Karkat couldn't have been in contact with the beta kids during Act 1. The trolls have been harassing the kids long before they ever started playing Sburb.

Yeah since they show the kids when they're talking to each other through the internet, I imagine that's how Karkat will show up. That, or given that this is a fairly short pilot, we'll just get a look at him and Jade at the end of the pilot, as like a teaser

Given that the karkat we saw is the one from the end of the intermission, I expect he will be foreshadowed in order to include a troll in the pilot, but I doubt he’ll play a major role.

I think Avarice and Cami's ideas make sense. He'll probably be trolling the kids and expositioning about SBURB/SGRUB. At least for an adaptation, I think it makes sense to condense some of that into act 1 because a lot of act 1 is just slapstick kooky shenanigans. It's fun, but it would probably be boring to adapt it 1 to 1 for returning fans. Act 1 is already somewhat contentious among newer readers as well, so I expect there will be some changes to make it feel fresh.

I could easily imagine an adaptation choosing to run Part 1 and Hivebent in parallel, sacrificing the shock factor of "the internet trolls that have been hassling these people are in fact actual trolls from space" in favor of making it a big reveal that "oh shit time travel" well in advance of Dave entering the medium. This would simultaneously help smooth out the pacing of the early acts in adaptation, and also would be structurally closer to how Act 6 tends to roll.

That said, it's equally plausible that Jade Karkat and AH might just not be in the pilot to begin with, and are in the trailer because they've already gotten substantially far in animating Part 1.

I agree with Ruki as well. If we imagine this actually getting spun off into a whole show with seasonal arcs, then spending an entire act focusing just on the trolls with no humans at all probably isn't gunna cut it in episodic form the way it works in the webcomic, so it makes a lot of sense to introduce the trolls as the early acts are in progress. As others have pointed out, the trolls revealing they've been fucking with the kids for YEARS already makes them a pretty easy fit into any part of the comic anyway. An adaptation shouldn't have to worry about hitting all the same twists as the source material, and treating the trolls as twist characters in 2025 out of life devotion to copying the comic 1:1 would be a little silly.

I also think if the cartoon wants to treat Jack Noir as a real arc villain it makes a lot of sense to have the trolls start talking about that earlier on than they do in the comic.

My guess is they're going to start showing us the trolls on the asteroid much earlier. Unless they want to REALLY re-write the story, in which case anything goes. Karkat falling to Earth on a meteorite? Who knows. I mean, the trolls have the best brand recognition of anything in Homestuck. They're not gonna leave them offstage until Season 4.

it could be interesting if they made a5a1 sort of a b plot and had it airing along the first 4, but it could also be horrendously fucked