John Egbert | ectoBiologist (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cakesaretheenemy) wrote2012-05-08 04:10 pm
cakesaretheenemy) wrote2012-05-08 04:10 pm
Entry tags:
please take me away from here
Player Information
Your Nickname: Poptart
OOC Journal: poppulchritude
Under 18? No, 18.
Email/IM: kuroupouri@yahoo.com
Characters Played at Singularity: I used to play Joan Egbert (AU) a year ago
Character Information
Name: John Egbert
Name of Canon: Homestuck
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: OU
Reference: here.
Canon Point: Act VI, the yellow yard - one year in the battleship
Setting:
Earth
The four kids that play Sburb come from the Planet Earth, our own homeplanet with a few minor alterations. Basically, you take Earth from 2009 with its Ironman, Con Air, Snoop Dogg and H.P. Lovecraft, and you tweak it a little bit so real life could be just like a video game.
Here, everyone has a Sylladex, which is a card-based inventory. In order to put (or, “captchalogue”) items in one’s Sylladex, that would require a Fetch Modus. A Fetch Modus is the setting a person uses to retrieve their items; for example, John uses the Queustack Array that helps him pick out any item he wants as long as they’re on the bottom or top cards. If a person happens to put an item over a card that’s already containing a different one, i.e. captchalogueing a bunny on a card that already has a book in it, the book would fling off the inventory. There’s usually a size limit to what you can put in a Sylladex (you can’t captchalogue a doll bigger than you) with the exemption of Dad’s wallet.
A Strife Specibus is a special card that a person uses for battle. People can have as many weapons as they want as long as they have a decent Strife Portfolio and the right cards. Before anyone can use a weapon, however, they have to allocate it into the –kind Abastrus; for example, Strider wants to use a shitty sword as his weapon, so he allocates it a sword to swordkind.
Sburb Beta
Every story has its premise. Homestuck is about a kid and his friends and they play a game, and this game is Sburb. Sburb is a sandbox-type of game resembling the Sims in the sense you can control the environment with a cursor, except it takes place in the real world.
Players
Upon receiving the game, the player would notice there are two discs to use: The Server and The Client discs. Judging from this kind of set-up, the minimum number of players that could join the game is two.
The Server Player
The Server Player is the one with the cursor that manipulates the environment. His goal is to assist The Client to enter The Medium (more on that later). The Server is given a default menu of controls to do this; he can copy items, delete them, and set up things The Client has to use as long as he has enough building grist, which is the compensation for building things. While The Server has access to view the Client’s environment, his span of control is limited. He can’t control anything past The Client’s lawn or anything where The Client has never been i.e. The Client has never been to his dad’s room, so the view to that room is obscured.
The Client Player
The Client Player is the receiving player with the objective to get into The Medium.
To enter the game, they need to prototype the kernelsprite with one or two items to complete their assigned task. Each player gets a task to overcome a certain area they’re personally having difficulty in, to ensure they’re worthy of their titles and make room for personal growth. For John, he had to bite the Cruxite Apple to symbolize loss of innocence to prep him up for responsibilities to come. He succeeds, and enters the Medium.
Which brings us to…
The Incipisphere
This is the universe where the real game takes place. It’s in a dimension completely different from ours, meant only to house the players of the game.
Skaia
Skaia is the realm of unlimited imagination and where dreams come true. The armies of Light and Darkness duel here, where they’re stuck in a perpetual, perfect stalemate which Light is always destined to lose. With each prototyping of the kernelsprite, the battle only grows more intense, and Skaia evolves into something more elaborate. In this battle, Prospit is always destined to lose, so the goal of the players isn't to help Prospit, but rather, defeat Derse. Skaia has to reach its last transformation for the players to create a new universe and claim the prize.
Prospit and Derse
Prospit is The Kingdom of Light; it’s the closest planet the orbits around Skaia, and its goal is to protect it from Derse. Derse is The Kingdom of Darkness; it’s the planet furthest from Skaia, tucked behind an asteroid belt called The Veil, and its goal is to defeat Prospit. Their architectures are similar but Prospit is light-themed whereas Derse is dark themed.
These are both dream worlds, where players wake up as their dream selves to complete certain game objectives.
The Furthest Ring / Dream Bubbles
Beyond the Veil and Derse is the realm of the horrorterrors. These horrorterrors are the Homestuck equivalent of Eldritch Abominations (see: H.P. Lovecraft). They are neither good nor evil. Time and space get more and more distorted when one enters this realm, and unless they are guided by the horrerterrors themselves or they have a map, it's possible to get lost in the void forever.
When a player's dreamself dies, they wake up not on Prospit or Derse, but in the dream bubbles. God tiers that die also end up in this place. Dream bubbles are recollections of the memories they've had but distorted, so kind of like a real dream. They're not limited in their own bubble, however; they can also merge dream bubbles with other dead/dreaming/dreaming dead people. It's a very merciful afterlife.
On the other side of the Veil and the Furthest Ring, is the Green Sun. Universes revolve around the Green Sun.
The Medium
These are the planets that each player would end up in. This is where most of the adventuring goes. Each player has their own, unique planet design, mythological roles, consorts and denizen. For a player to reach Skaia, they must enter through all The Seven Gates, defeat their denizens, rescue their consorts and defeat The Black King and Black Queen. The planets in this session would be:
Egbert = The Land of Wind and Shade
Lalonde = The Land of Light and Rain
Strider = The Land of Heat and Clockwork
Harley = The Land of Frost and Frogs
Consorts are the assigned citizens of each planet. They’re usually very stupid, but they drop hints about the player’s quest, kind of like villager NPC's in RPG's. This is rendered moot because one can simple converse with their respective -sprite instead.
Purpose
At the beginning of the game, no one really knows the point of Sburb but during the course of it, they’ll find out why it exists. It exists just to CREATE A NEW UNIVERSE, but in order to do that, the players must SACRIFICE THEIR OLD WORLD.
The prize for winning the game is a universe made for them to rule in whatever way they please. Or at least, that's what it said.
Remember when I said the game’s purpose is to create a new universe at the expense of the old one? To create Earth’s universe, players from the previous session had to sacrifice their planet for it, and that planet was Alternia. Alternia is inhabited by trolls and they have their own unique alien culture and everything. Usually, players from the previous session can't communicate with the players in the new ones, but something went terribly wrong.
> SCRATCH
See, Karkat fucked up their session. He gave John's universe cancer so it was destined to fail even before it started. What happens in the Scratch? Well, instead of everything blowing up in fire and smoke, the players could choose to reset their game. Resets are usually random. Alternia was an example of a resetted universe; the first set of players that played it were Karkat's ancestors.
John and crew chose to reset their game, because they couldn't win and they could die if they forced it. Usually, resetted players are erased, much like everything else in the game. That didn't happen with John and the others. All of them escaped; John and Jade by going through the fourth wall (hilarious, I know) and Rose and Dave (and a handful of trolls) by being near the Green Sun which is outside space/time so the Scratch couldn't possibly reach them.
Personality:
At first glance, John is unremarkable. He’s your average, run-of-the-mill nerd and for the most part of Act 1, there is absolutely nothing that contradicts that; if anything, it merely amplifies it -- he has a closet full of Programming books and a severe peanut allergy, traits commonly associated with “nerds”. He’s just this weird guy that wants to play this game with his friends and thinks about pooping way more than is appropriate.
It’s when they start the game that we find out more about him.
The first thing we learn about him is that he is really… nice. He is, in fact, the emotional center of their group; surprisingly, because Jade has always been the one that was sweet with her words, not John. But, no. John is sincere and charming, and he is patient with people. He knows what is good for them and he tells them; he knows when they are distraught, and he helps them through. He likes making friends, and lots of them; if you stand passively next to him, you’re good in his book.
Naturally, his well-intentioned naiveté makes him kind of a pushover. This usually ends up the downfall of many hero archetypes, but not John; his blind trust actually ends up helping him more than hurting him most of the time. If he hadn’t listened to Vriska, he wouldn’t have reached god tier. It’s the sweetness of his character and his relentless optimism that ties their group together, and he is thus considered their “leader”. He charges on, trusting and unafraid, and it inspires people rather than suggest he's an easy target for manipulation. He does not lead through dictating commands like a Field Marshall, but through example.
But contrary to what people might imply, he doesn’t trust everything blindly. He actually has a bad case of arbitrary scepticism. You could tell him anything you want, but if it happens to be something he’s interested in, he will not hesitate to start an argument with you, even if the argument is just about movies and is essentially really fucking stupid. He's also a bit self-destructive. According to Davesprite, “he will do what you say unless it happens to be for his own good then all a sudden hes a tough nut to crack go figure ”
Sometimes his brain just shuts down so he gawks at things a lot. He’s kind of a weirdo and everybody just silently accepts that. Even before the game, he already does random shit like stuff fake arms into a cake for the hilarity factor. This at least makes him creative and innovative in the childish "the floor is lava" way. Creativity often weakens practicality, though, and this applies to John as well. His world view is malleable at best and this plays a part in his arbitrary skepticism. (A proper gentleman MUST have a monocle, but a spider alien sounds pretty legit.)
Honesty is the best policy, and he lives by this. Unless he is pranking somebody, he is completely, unabashedly honest. This is exemplified in the way that he even talks the way he types. Rose acknowledges his sincerity in her birthday letter for him: “Yes, maybe some would take your suggested alternative to my gloomy preoccupations as a passive-aggressive jab. But I know you didn't mean it that way. In fact, I'm sure reading about it now is the first time the notion has occurred to you. John, please stop rolling your eyes.” He’s completely outspoken in his opinions, to the point of being tactless. He will not hesitate to tell you he thinks your idea is dumb! He has absolutely no head to mouth filter and he often says the first thing on his mind. It makes him sound stupid. (“what’s a quadrant? how many do you have?” “john god dammit stop embarrassing us”)
He’s not stupid, though. He may come off as stupid a lot of times, but none of the kids are dull. John is as sharp as a nail when he actually thinks. He managed to figure out punch cards when Rose the brainiac couldn’t. He made this really smart GameFAQs post about the alchemization codes. He is a brilliant prankster, and he’s confident in his craft; in an alternate universe, he ends up a legendary comedian. Most of all, he’s particularly good with judging people; he nailed all of the kids’ problems in his birthday letters to them, and it turned out that trusting Karkat was a pretty wise move. He’s really bright but in an ultimately really useless sort of way.
His innocence is his biggest character problem. A character's land reflects their own personal quest, and his land is called the Land of Wind and Shade. He had to “clear out the skies”, because you know what, a lot of his ignorance is his fault! He chooses not to believe in all that is bad in the world. Everything is good, everything is black and white, he’s having fun, and he’s not going to turn around and lament his father’s corpse, haha! Screw that, let’s talk about the fun times. He babbles on and on when he’s nervous, and he usually tries to get rid of the tension through humor. He represses a lot of bad feelings, basically. It is, thus far, the unhealthiest coping method among the kids, but it’s not his fault; his Dad spoiled him silly, and he’s never known sadness or hardship because of it.
By the end of Act 5, John actually starts to recognize the severity of the situation. They’re knee-deep in trouble, and it’s finally time for him to act as a leader and he is damn good at it, son. He basically got a thousand badass points. After a one year time skip, however, we see him… in a really sad state, really. The repression thing really took its toll on him. He turned a lot more aggressive and is prone to swearing more; it’s like watching a Catholic school girl enter college.
To sum it all up, John is what would happen if you mix up King Arthur and Peter Pan, and threw the combination at a game that fucked up your mind.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
In-Game Powers and Physical Strengths
Okay, right on the table where everybody could see it, John is the recognized Heir of Breath a.k.a. a wind-based demi god. He could do anything with the wind, presumably. He is capable of dishing out some serious damage with hurricanes. Along with wind powers, he is conditionally immortal. He can only really die if the cause for it is just (he is abusing his powers) or heroic (self-explanatory). Morality is a sliding scale, but John is probably incapable of dying a just death.
He's really strong physically. It runs in the Egbert family; the family rite of passage into adulthood is being able to lift a vault. Dad Egbert could punch ogres in the face. John is younger so he can't do that yet, but he could wield two gigantic warhammers efficiently.
Mental Capabilities and Talents
John has a number of talents. He could sing and play the piano really well. He's a "pranking master" and nobody really argues with that; only an Egbert could successfully outprank another Egbert. He's good at Math and he's actually really interested in the subject judging by the advanced Programming and Math books in his closet. (He sucks at Programming though.)
Most of his talents lie in the Interpersonal; he is a leader, not by choice, but because he's the emotional center of the group. John Egbert is the kind of dude people lose limbs for. He's also fairly adaptive, and that's a more useful skill than you'd think.
Weaknesses
He is allergic to peanuts. It's stupid. If he eats a can of peanuts, he would probably die.
He has the worst coping methods thus far, too. He represses everything horrible inside and it manifests in other ways, like in aggressive behavior. The mental wounds SBURB inflicted are still fresh.
Power Limitation Suggestions
The only real problem here is the god powers. I noticed the immortality thing could still work. Limiting him to only being able to make two tornadoes at a time, is that okay?
Inventory:
one (1) God Tier outfit
one (1) Pop-o-matic Vrillyhoo
one (1) Holographic Cosbytop
one (1) whole vanilla cake, probably
Appearance: Here is his sprite in-comic. Here is how he'd look normally.
Age: 14
Samples
Log Sample:
After John had showered to wash every trace of Nanna Egbert’s World-Famous Vanilla Cake ™ out of his hair and scolded his salamander and turtle friends about the difference between their trampoline and his bed, he laid down on said bed. It’s only when his muscles started easing up against the soft mattress that his exhaustion started catching up with him, and now he just wanted to sleep for a week, maybe.
His fourteenth birthday was radically different from his thirteenth one, but if he were going to be completely and utterly honest with himself, it was a ton better. By all intents and purposes, it felt like a normal birthday party. John had a lot of birthdays, but never parties. All his friends were online, so he never bothered. But this time, even without red Dave and Rose, he had a lot of fun! They played Ghostbusters MMORPG like useless pieces of shit all day, Jade chased Jaspers around a lot, he dreamed about this really pretty girl and a fish lady, orange Dave made him a really sweet but lame rap and Nanna dropped cakes on everybody’s heads.
His thirteenth one was – it was fun, he guessed. He explored a planet in another dimension and turned into a god. He met a crazy spider girl. He never thought about the other things anymore, especially not in silence, but they haunted him when his eyes are closed all the same. His dad’s body at his feet drenched in oil, Rose’s lifeless corpse, the feeling of a sword pushing through his heart in such vividness – bluh, screw that shit. Everything was going to be okay. Right?
The question died in the air. John covered his body angrily with his blanket, and he began to drift off. He wondered what dream bubble he was going to go tonight.
Except no dream bubble came.
He fell. No, he broke. He dissolved. Something twisted under his skin, and then he had no skin, it peeled off, and every little particle of him broke and scattered and he wanted it to stop please stop stop stop – and it stopped, finally, and he was able to breathe again. His body felt like it fell from somewhere really high. He felt nauseous. He was lying on shards of glass and paper and other junk.
“Welcome to Sacrosanct. Please watch your step.”
Network Sample:
hey.
my name is john.
i am new here in sacroissant-french word or whatever.
this computer AI thing told me i couldn't leave!
but i have to. :(
there are a lot of plot-relevant things going on back home and my friends really need me.
my sister jade is going to be all alone in the battleship!
i mean not exactly alone because she has nanna and dave and all our silly consort friends.
you know what i mean.
what is this place anyway? what am i supposed to do here?
i am getting the feeling that this isn't part of the game anymore.
it looks like a gigantic space station but that can't be right because our universe sort of exploded.
oh man, if this is a space station, are there any aliens on board?
are there any trolls?
and um those weird boopie gray persons with the giant eyes and flying saucers.
Your Nickname: Poptart
OOC Journal: poppulchritude
Under 18? No, 18.
Email/IM: kuroupouri@yahoo.com
Characters Played at Singularity: I used to play Joan Egbert (AU) a year ago
Character Information
Name: John Egbert
Name of Canon: Homestuck
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: OU
Reference: here.
Canon Point: Act VI, the yellow yard - one year in the battleship
Setting:
The four kids that play Sburb come from the Planet Earth, our own homeplanet with a few minor alterations. Basically, you take Earth from 2009 with its Ironman, Con Air, Snoop Dogg and H.P. Lovecraft, and you tweak it a little bit so real life could be just like a video game.
Here, everyone has a Sylladex, which is a card-based inventory. In order to put (or, “captchalogue”) items in one’s Sylladex, that would require a Fetch Modus. A Fetch Modus is the setting a person uses to retrieve their items; for example, John uses the Queustack Array that helps him pick out any item he wants as long as they’re on the bottom or top cards. If a person happens to put an item over a card that’s already containing a different one, i.e. captchalogueing a bunny on a card that already has a book in it, the book would fling off the inventory. There’s usually a size limit to what you can put in a Sylladex (you can’t captchalogue a doll bigger than you) with the exemption of Dad’s wallet.
A Strife Specibus is a special card that a person uses for battle. People can have as many weapons as they want as long as they have a decent Strife Portfolio and the right cards. Before anyone can use a weapon, however, they have to allocate it into the –kind Abastrus; for example, Strider wants to use a shitty sword as his weapon, so he allocates it a sword to swordkind.
Sburb Beta
Every story has its premise. Homestuck is about a kid and his friends and they play a game, and this game is Sburb. Sburb is a sandbox-type of game resembling the Sims in the sense you can control the environment with a cursor, except it takes place in the real world.
Players
Upon receiving the game, the player would notice there are two discs to use: The Server and The Client discs. Judging from this kind of set-up, the minimum number of players that could join the game is two.
The Server Player
The Server Player is the one with the cursor that manipulates the environment. His goal is to assist The Client to enter The Medium (more on that later). The Server is given a default menu of controls to do this; he can copy items, delete them, and set up things The Client has to use as long as he has enough building grist, which is the compensation for building things. While The Server has access to view the Client’s environment, his span of control is limited. He can’t control anything past The Client’s lawn or anything where The Client has never been i.e. The Client has never been to his dad’s room, so the view to that room is obscured.
The Client Player
The Client Player is the receiving player with the objective to get into The Medium.
To enter the game, they need to prototype the kernelsprite with one or two items to complete their assigned task. Each player gets a task to overcome a certain area they’re personally having difficulty in, to ensure they’re worthy of their titles and make room for personal growth. For John, he had to bite the Cruxite Apple to symbolize loss of innocence to prep him up for responsibilities to come. He succeeds, and enters the Medium.
Which brings us to…
The Incipisphere
This is the universe where the real game takes place. It’s in a dimension completely different from ours, meant only to house the players of the game.
Skaia
Skaia is the realm of unlimited imagination and where dreams come true. The armies of Light and Darkness duel here, where they’re stuck in a perpetual, perfect stalemate which Light is always destined to lose. With each prototyping of the kernelsprite, the battle only grows more intense, and Skaia evolves into something more elaborate. In this battle, Prospit is always destined to lose, so the goal of the players isn't to help Prospit, but rather, defeat Derse. Skaia has to reach its last transformation for the players to create a new universe and claim the prize.
Prospit and Derse
Prospit is The Kingdom of Light; it’s the closest planet the orbits around Skaia, and its goal is to protect it from Derse. Derse is The Kingdom of Darkness; it’s the planet furthest from Skaia, tucked behind an asteroid belt called The Veil, and its goal is to defeat Prospit. Their architectures are similar but Prospit is light-themed whereas Derse is dark themed.
These are both dream worlds, where players wake up as their dream selves to complete certain game objectives.
The Furthest Ring / Dream Bubbles
Beyond the Veil and Derse is the realm of the horrorterrors. These horrorterrors are the Homestuck equivalent of Eldritch Abominations (see: H.P. Lovecraft). They are neither good nor evil. Time and space get more and more distorted when one enters this realm, and unless they are guided by the horrerterrors themselves or they have a map, it's possible to get lost in the void forever.
When a player's dreamself dies, they wake up not on Prospit or Derse, but in the dream bubbles. God tiers that die also end up in this place. Dream bubbles are recollections of the memories they've had but distorted, so kind of like a real dream. They're not limited in their own bubble, however; they can also merge dream bubbles with other dead/dreaming/dreaming dead people. It's a very merciful afterlife.
On the other side of the Veil and the Furthest Ring, is the Green Sun. Universes revolve around the Green Sun.
The Medium
These are the planets that each player would end up in. This is where most of the adventuring goes. Each player has their own, unique planet design, mythological roles, consorts and denizen. For a player to reach Skaia, they must enter through all The Seven Gates, defeat their denizens, rescue their consorts and defeat The Black King and Black Queen. The planets in this session would be:
Egbert = The Land of Wind and Shade
Lalonde = The Land of Light and Rain
Strider = The Land of Heat and Clockwork
Harley = The Land of Frost and Frogs
Consorts are the assigned citizens of each planet. They’re usually very stupid, but they drop hints about the player’s quest, kind of like villager NPC's in RPG's. This is rendered moot because one can simple converse with their respective -sprite instead.
Purpose
At the beginning of the game, no one really knows the point of Sburb but during the course of it, they’ll find out why it exists. It exists just to CREATE A NEW UNIVERSE, but in order to do that, the players must SACRIFICE THEIR OLD WORLD.
The prize for winning the game is a universe made for them to rule in whatever way they please. Or at least, that's what it said.
Remember when I said the game’s purpose is to create a new universe at the expense of the old one? To create Earth’s universe, players from the previous session had to sacrifice their planet for it, and that planet was Alternia. Alternia is inhabited by trolls and they have their own unique alien culture and everything. Usually, players from the previous session can't communicate with the players in the new ones, but something went terribly wrong.
See, Karkat fucked up their session. He gave John's universe cancer so it was destined to fail even before it started. What happens in the Scratch? Well, instead of everything blowing up in fire and smoke, the players could choose to reset their game. Resets are usually random. Alternia was an example of a resetted universe; the first set of players that played it were Karkat's ancestors.
John and crew chose to reset their game, because they couldn't win and they could die if they forced it. Usually, resetted players are erased, much like everything else in the game. That didn't happen with John and the others. All of them escaped; John and Jade by going through the fourth wall (hilarious, I know) and Rose and Dave (and a handful of trolls) by being near the Green Sun which is outside space/time so the Scratch couldn't possibly reach them.
Personality:
Your name is JOHN. [...] You have a variety of INTERESTS. You have a passion for REALLY TERRIBLE MOVIES. You like to program computers but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT. You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE, and are an aspiring AMATEUR MAGICIAN. You also like to play GAMES sometimes.
At first glance, John is unremarkable. He’s your average, run-of-the-mill nerd and for the most part of Act 1, there is absolutely nothing that contradicts that; if anything, it merely amplifies it -- he has a closet full of Programming books and a severe peanut allergy, traits commonly associated with “nerds”. He’s just this weird guy that wants to play this game with his friends and thinks about pooping way more than is appropriate.
It’s when they start the game that we find out more about him.
The first thing we learn about him is that he is really… nice. He is, in fact, the emotional center of their group; surprisingly, because Jade has always been the one that was sweet with her words, not John. But, no. John is sincere and charming, and he is patient with people. He knows what is good for them and he tells them; he knows when they are distraught, and he helps them through. He likes making friends, and lots of them; if you stand passively next to him, you’re good in his book.
Naturally, his well-intentioned naiveté makes him kind of a pushover. This usually ends up the downfall of many hero archetypes, but not John; his blind trust actually ends up helping him more than hurting him most of the time. If he hadn’t listened to Vriska, he wouldn’t have reached god tier. It’s the sweetness of his character and his relentless optimism that ties their group together, and he is thus considered their “leader”. He charges on, trusting and unafraid, and it inspires people rather than suggest he's an easy target for manipulation. He does not lead through dictating commands like a Field Marshall, but through example.
But contrary to what people might imply, he doesn’t trust everything blindly. He actually has a bad case of arbitrary scepticism. You could tell him anything you want, but if it happens to be something he’s interested in, he will not hesitate to start an argument with you, even if the argument is just about movies and is essentially really fucking stupid. He's also a bit self-destructive. According to Davesprite, “he will do what you say unless it happens to be for his own good then all a sudden hes a tough nut to crack go figure ”
Sometimes his brain just shuts down so he gawks at things a lot. He’s kind of a weirdo and everybody just silently accepts that. Even before the game, he already does random shit like stuff fake arms into a cake for the hilarity factor. This at least makes him creative and innovative in the childish "the floor is lava" way. Creativity often weakens practicality, though, and this applies to John as well. His world view is malleable at best and this plays a part in his arbitrary skepticism. (A proper gentleman MUST have a monocle, but a spider alien sounds pretty legit.)
Honesty is the best policy, and he lives by this. Unless he is pranking somebody, he is completely, unabashedly honest. This is exemplified in the way that he even talks the way he types. Rose acknowledges his sincerity in her birthday letter for him: “Yes, maybe some would take your suggested alternative to my gloomy preoccupations as a passive-aggressive jab. But I know you didn't mean it that way. In fact, I'm sure reading about it now is the first time the notion has occurred to you. John, please stop rolling your eyes.” He’s completely outspoken in his opinions, to the point of being tactless. He will not hesitate to tell you he thinks your idea is dumb! He has absolutely no head to mouth filter and he often says the first thing on his mind. It makes him sound stupid. (“what’s a quadrant? how many do you have?” “john god dammit stop embarrassing us”)
He’s not stupid, though. He may come off as stupid a lot of times, but none of the kids are dull. John is as sharp as a nail when he actually thinks. He managed to figure out punch cards when Rose the brainiac couldn’t. He made this really smart GameFAQs post about the alchemization codes. He is a brilliant prankster, and he’s confident in his craft; in an alternate universe, he ends up a legendary comedian. Most of all, he’s particularly good with judging people; he nailed all of the kids’ problems in his birthday letters to them, and it turned out that trusting Karkat was a pretty wise move. He’s really bright but in an ultimately really useless sort of way.
His innocence is his biggest character problem. A character's land reflects their own personal quest, and his land is called the Land of Wind and Shade. He had to “clear out the skies”, because you know what, a lot of his ignorance is his fault! He chooses not to believe in all that is bad in the world. Everything is good, everything is black and white, he’s having fun, and he’s not going to turn around and lament his father’s corpse, haha! Screw that, let’s talk about the fun times. He babbles on and on when he’s nervous, and he usually tries to get rid of the tension through humor. He represses a lot of bad feelings, basically. It is, thus far, the unhealthiest coping method among the kids, but it’s not his fault; his Dad spoiled him silly, and he’s never known sadness or hardship because of it.
By the end of Act 5, John actually starts to recognize the severity of the situation. They’re knee-deep in trouble, and it’s finally time for him to act as a leader and he is damn good at it, son. He basically got a thousand badass points. After a one year time skip, however, we see him… in a really sad state, really. The repression thing really took its toll on him. He turned a lot more aggressive and is prone to swearing more; it’s like watching a Catholic school girl enter college.
To sum it all up, John is what would happen if you mix up King Arthur and Peter Pan, and threw the combination at a game that fucked up your mind.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
In-Game Powers and Physical Strengths
Okay, right on the table where everybody could see it, John is the recognized Heir of Breath a.k.a. a wind-based demi god. He could do anything with the wind, presumably. He is capable of dishing out some serious damage with hurricanes. Along with wind powers, he is conditionally immortal. He can only really die if the cause for it is just (he is abusing his powers) or heroic (self-explanatory). Morality is a sliding scale, but John is probably incapable of dying a just death.
He's really strong physically. It runs in the Egbert family; the family rite of passage into adulthood is being able to lift a vault. Dad Egbert could punch ogres in the face. John is younger so he can't do that yet, but he could wield two gigantic warhammers efficiently.
Mental Capabilities and Talents
John has a number of talents. He could sing and play the piano really well. He's a "pranking master" and nobody really argues with that; only an Egbert could successfully outprank another Egbert. He's good at Math and he's actually really interested in the subject judging by the advanced Programming and Math books in his closet. (He sucks at Programming though.)
Most of his talents lie in the Interpersonal; he is a leader, not by choice, but because he's the emotional center of the group. John Egbert is the kind of dude people lose limbs for. He's also fairly adaptive, and that's a more useful skill than you'd think.
Weaknesses
He is allergic to peanuts. It's stupid. If he eats a can of peanuts, he would probably die.
He has the worst coping methods thus far, too. He represses everything horrible inside and it manifests in other ways, like in aggressive behavior. The mental wounds SBURB inflicted are still fresh.
Power Limitation Suggestions
The only real problem here is the god powers. I noticed the immortality thing could still work. Limiting him to only being able to make two tornadoes at a time, is that okay?
Inventory:
one (1) God Tier outfit
one (1) Pop-o-matic Vrillyhoo
one (1) Holographic Cosbytop
one (1) whole vanilla cake, probably
Appearance: Here is his sprite in-comic. Here is how he'd look normally.
Age: 14
Samples
Log Sample:
After John had showered to wash every trace of Nanna Egbert’s World-Famous Vanilla Cake ™ out of his hair and scolded his salamander and turtle friends about the difference between their trampoline and his bed, he laid down on said bed. It’s only when his muscles started easing up against the soft mattress that his exhaustion started catching up with him, and now he just wanted to sleep for a week, maybe.
His fourteenth birthday was radically different from his thirteenth one, but if he were going to be completely and utterly honest with himself, it was a ton better. By all intents and purposes, it felt like a normal birthday party. John had a lot of birthdays, but never parties. All his friends were online, so he never bothered. But this time, even without red Dave and Rose, he had a lot of fun! They played Ghostbusters MMORPG like useless pieces of shit all day, Jade chased Jaspers around a lot, he dreamed about this really pretty girl and a fish lady, orange Dave made him a really sweet but lame rap and Nanna dropped cakes on everybody’s heads.
His thirteenth one was – it was fun, he guessed. He explored a planet in another dimension and turned into a god. He met a crazy spider girl. He never thought about the other things anymore, especially not in silence, but they haunted him when his eyes are closed all the same. His dad’s body at his feet drenched in oil, Rose’s lifeless corpse, the feeling of a sword pushing through his heart in such vividness – bluh, screw that shit. Everything was going to be okay. Right?
The question died in the air. John covered his body angrily with his blanket, and he began to drift off. He wondered what dream bubble he was going to go tonight.
Except no dream bubble came.
He fell. No, he broke. He dissolved. Something twisted under his skin, and then he had no skin, it peeled off, and every little particle of him broke and scattered and he wanted it to stop please stop stop stop – and it stopped, finally, and he was able to breathe again. His body felt like it fell from somewhere really high. He felt nauseous. He was lying on shards of glass and paper and other junk.
“Welcome to Sacrosanct. Please watch your step.”
Network Sample:
hey.
my name is john.
i am new here in sacroissant-french word or whatever.
this computer AI thing told me i couldn't leave!
but i have to. :(
there are a lot of plot-relevant things going on back home and my friends really need me.
my sister jade is going to be all alone in the battleship!
i mean not exactly alone because she has nanna and dave and all our silly consort friends.
you know what i mean.
what is this place anyway? what am i supposed to do here?
i am getting the feeling that this isn't part of the game anymore.
it looks like a gigantic space station but that can't be right because our universe sort of exploded.
oh man, if this is a space station, are there any aliens on board?
are there any trolls?
and um those weird boopie gray persons with the giant eyes and flying saucers.