you make a good point that a majority of the troll chaos happens post session, but at the same time i dont think they would have worked so cohesively and efficiently without karkat being "so loud and annoying and o8sessed with leadership" (005368). actually that whole dialogue between vriska and john is eye opening to me about the specific issues the trolls session had vis a vis blood (1 of 2)

vriska says of karkat’s leadership abilities “It wasn’t natural! Pretty fitting, really, since he’s kind of a freak himself. He’s not even on the hemospectrum, the weirdo” (005368), which links both to aggressive nature of trolls and karkats literal blood. i read this as vriska saying trolls arent supposed to have strong bonds (blood aspect) with each other, so karkat was weird for both being so good at making those bonds (blood aspect) and his literal blood color (i lied this is 2 of 3 sorry)

i do agree w you though, the idea that having a knight will determine a large part of the session seems like it places a little too much importance on the knight as a hero, though i think the same thing happens with the space aspect? your comment about dave got me thinking though. dave certainly had more literal time than anyone else cause of his loops, but the reason he made so many was to get $ quick enough to boost everyone else up. could the knights role be to fill in what the group lacks? 

I mean, the Knight’s role literally is to give their Aspect, so of course the Knight of Blood would strengthen the bonds, and the Knight of Time would boost everyone and get things done quicker. Of course if there was already an overabundance of their Aspect, their role would become sort of… Useless, but given even in Sessions where there’s an average amount of whatever they provide, they’d give more, it feels like you could make a case for that at any point.

Also one of Vriska’s main points of character development before dying, was starting to feel the guilt for killing Tavros, much like Terezi’s guilt for killing Vriska later on. She does have the socially indoctrinated idea they’re supposed to be ruthless and violent, but truth is they do care.