App For NeoSapian

[ayoungman]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Cat
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Indeed!
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A
CONTACT: Plurk = chohakkaifan, Discord = Chohakkaifan#5971, OOC journal = chohakkaifan
CHARACTERS PLAYED:N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: John Egbert
CANON: Homestuck
CANON REFERENCE: Wiki Page (official canon)
Wiki Pages (Pseudo canon appearances)

AGE:12 (Almost 13!)
GENDER: Male (I know there's some word of god muckery out there stating MtF-John to be canon, but knowing how the creator of the series tends to pull "everything is canon" out of his butt like a stage magician does with a rabbit and a top hat, I'm just going to state things as he directly portrays himself in canon.)
CHARACTER TYPE: Meta-human / Artificial Human
APPEARANCE:

John is a fairly generic looking young man with short messy black hair and blue eyes. With his signature buck-toothed overbite and square-framed glasses, he has just enough signature traits to his physical appearance to make him unmistakable.

PERSONALITY: How does one start the personality section for the central protagonist of one of media-histories longest and most hyped about pieces of modern fiction? Do we start with the fact that he's a wise-cracking goofball that loves to pull cheesy pranks where ever he goes? Or should we bring up his odd petulance when he starts fixating on small issues? Or perhaps we should start instead with his hobbies, of which he has so many for a kid his age. It's no wonder that he's not really that good with many of them! No, I think we'll start with something simpler, something that gets more down to the core of his personality.

John Egbert is a good kid.

Not good in the sense of some puritanical saint; although in some far off alternate universe it would not be surprising if people were to say that he ascended to a state far beyond any mortal reach. Nor is he good in that he's a perfect prodigy student with extracurricular activities and a ton of friends. No, John is good in the sense that he just genuinely seems to care and support all those he cares for. This is perhaps the driving force for his character throughout Homestuck as he circles through the in's and out's of The Medium of SBURB (and in later extents, between various universes throughout time-and-space itself) both causing positive and negative consequences for him throughout the series.

John is the type of kid who takes all of his relationships to heart. He's the friend who knows everyone's birthdays and somehow always knows exactly the perfect gift to get, even when his own friends don't yet know it. John's strong sense of personal camaraderie shows multiple times throughout the canon how he has time and again provided help for his friends in SBURB to the fullest extent he could muster. He humors Dave's sarcastic wit, he cracks jokes with Rose to lighten her mood, and he knows just when to act a little more serious for Jade when times get tough. The same could be said with even those he didn't meet until later in canon. He was willing to tolerate and amuse Karkat's communications with him backward in time. He provided emotional support for Vriska when she felt no one else was on her side. And when he found out that his father was living a fake-life to cover his real career as a regular businessperson, just to make John proud of him, John understood it for what it was and turned his exasperation for his father's antics into an even greater reason to love and respect him.

Of course, despite how it sounds, that doesn't mean there aren't flaws in his almost boundless compassion for those he cares about. It is, in fact, because of it that he tends to be a bit of a pushover willingly throughout the canon, often getting himself into trouble simply because he did whatever his friends tell him to do. This was especially prevalent at the beginning of the series when he first enters 'The Medium'. Whether it was his friends from earth or even the Trolls, who just the day before he entered SBURB he thought were his enemies, he would unquestioningly follow their advice on the game he was playing. This came to bite him in the ass many times throughout the series, but perhaps one of the most prominent examples was when Terezi, a troll who was actively using him as an experiment, sent him off-mission to go and fight the denizen of his world earlier than the game had meant him to. This inadvertently leads up to what would be the first of many moments where he would face his own premature death within an alternate timeline.

Another thing that tends to define John is the many things he has an interest in. When the comic first opens you get a glimpse of his bedroom and see that he is a kid with a plethora of things that he likes to do. The most prominent of these is his almost obsessive interest in comedy and pranks. From his perspective, he believes he comes from a long line of tricksters and comedians. His great-great-grandfather, Colonel Sassacre, was one of the greatest humorists who ever lived in his world and was the author of the infamous book "Colonel Sander's Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery", so it was only natural that every member of the family-owned and cherished a copy of the book. And John sticks to that family tradition almost religiously. In fact, within yet another alternate universe John grows up to become one of the best comedians of his era.

Speaking of Colonel Sassacre, notice the word "Magical Frivolity"? Yep, he likes parlor-trick magic as well. Not to say he's all that good at that aspect of great-great-grandpappy's legacy. In fact, he's not very good at many of his interests. Take coding as an example. He has shown a fair bit of interest in basic programming and coding and spends a bit of his personal time coming up with a plethora of different algorithms. But, even according to his own opinion, the programs he creates are quite bad. Nonetheless, he is the curious and persevering sort who will still manage to use his knowledge on the subject to figure out new ways to solve problems.

Other interests he has are in video games (something which dragged his and his friends into what started the entire plot of Homestuck), webcomics, paranormal lore, and ultimately movies. His obsession with specifically cheesy over-the-top comedy and action movies knows no bounds. Certain favorites of his are Armageddon, Ghost Dad, Little Monsters, and, his utmost favorite, ConAir. Oh, how he will do everything in his power to stop what he is doing to talk about and fight for these movies should the subject come up.

As for dislikes, there really aren't many, although what he does tend to hate he clings to with absolute passion. Clowns and especially Harlequins always had a tendency to freak him out. And he avoids peanuts at all costs due to a deathly allergy he holds towards the small legume. But worst of all, he absolutely loathes Betty Crocker. Yep. You heard me. The large American-run baking corporation Betty Crocker? John just knows they're pulling the strings behind something bigger and doesn't trust anything branded with the large red spoon of that evil batterwitch.

And you better believe that this innate fear of corporate conspiracy theories is something that will hold over within this game.

That's the thing about John. With bigger issues, he tends to just blow them off and simply accept them and move on without really taking much time to dwell on it. When he woke up to the corpse of his father in front of him, where rose completely lost her shit and "jumped off the metaphorical handle", John simply stood there for a moment, mourned what had happened briefly and then moved on. And yet when he first found out his father was a regular businessman instead of a free-roaming curbside funnyman, he completely freaked out. He also lost it when he found out that Gushers, the sweet liquid sugar-filled treat, was owned by Betty Crocker. And yet when he was told his entire planet and everyone on it was dead forever he pushed on with the game without so much as a second thought.

I suppose the best way to put it is that John has a hard time handling his emotions. Even stupidest things will cause him to overreact while major catastrophic events just seem to emotionally shut him down. Because of that, his lack of response bottles up more and more while the series continues. It isn't until he's in his twenties, far into the epilogues of Homestuck that John finally realizes the true emotional toll it takes on him.

"You’d probably never tell anyone that. Not even her.

Another arbitrary thought hits your brain, completely unrelated to the subject of Terezi, or what you would or wouldn’t tell a bunch of incarcerated teens, or so you think.



JOHN: am i... depressed??



You ask aloud, quietly enough that your friends cannot possibly hear it. All the question does is crawl back down your throat and burrow into your gut like it lives there. And it does live there, because as it turns out, you are really fucking depressed. "



That is one of the other major cores of his personality. He drives himself forward over and over, always willing to simply agree and do what others tell him without really trying to think too much about the toll it has on him. He works stupidly hard for the appeasement of his friends, and family, and some people he doesn't even truly know, but he never does anything for himself. But then again, it was his impulse to start playing the game. The most he could do was what everyone else wanted after that.


John Egbert is a good kid. He's a kid that works hard, cares a lot, has a cheesy sense of humor and a sharp sense of wit. But even kids like John, who does his damned hardest to do good, have aspects to them that aren't all rainbows and flashy windy powers.


It's what in my opinion makes John an amazing character.


My goal in the game is to take all these core aspects of his development and personality and see how they could be used within this world. NeoSapian is a world that is actually surprisingly similar to his own in many ways, but with just enough difference to make it interesting. I want to pretty much take all of Johns character arc in Homestuck and see how it can develop differently within the realms of NeoSapian. I think it would be fun to see what changes and what remains completely the same.

POWERS & ABILITIES: I'm starting John off with no powers what-so-ever. But I'm going to have it that, like in Homestuck, he's something super-human midway through playing him. I want him to learn and grow and develop with his powers just as he had in the bulk of his own canon.

Of course, John Egbert's overpowered as all hell in his original series so I'm limiting that a bit. No, he is not a god. No, he is not nearly incapable of dying. No, he cannot warp through different times and places and universes and alter them at will without repercussion. That's just silly.

What I will give him are his windy abilities. Much like his original role as "Heir of Breath" in Homestuck, John will be able to control and manipulate the forces of wind at will. He will be able to at first be able to call out small gusts and be capable of flight by manipulating the breeze around him. And as his powers develop and grow I would like him to call out zephyrs and storms much as he can later in the series. Somewhat like a Storm from the X-Men type deal. And, if allowed, I would ultimately be able to allow him to "become breath" much as his title allows him in his own canon. Being able to physically turn himself into a gaseous state and control and reform himself back into a solid mass.

But that's about it I think.

As I said above, he does have a mild interest in programming and can make some fairly rudimentary code blocks, but he's in the beginning stages of understanding that. I would like to see how that develops in the future though. As for combat, he's pretty much can do just about anything a 13-year-old boy can. But he is very intuitive and is able to pick things up quickly if his canon is anything to go by.

AU HISTORY:John Egbert (formally Meta-Human Project Number: 413) was not so much born as he was "created". Formed from the collected DNA of earlier captured top-level meta-humans and registered into an alternate government lab facility under the top-secrecy of The Douman Zaibatsu ( a few years before the research lab founded by Dr.Ezekiel), John was a living experiment; a true study into the meta-human condition.

Of course, if things worked out as planned he would still be stuck within that small dark lab barely cognoscente of the world outside. No one knew who exactly the leak was, but the Yakashiba (still in its barely budding stages) had managed to hit just as the facility was undergoing its bi-annual security inspection. John was barely an infant, not even able to stand on his own two feet. So it was simple for the anti-government rebels to swipe him up into their arms along with a few other "living samples" within the facility.

The ride was a turbulent one though and things never go as smoothly as they would be planned. Caught mid-escape, the small group of terrorists had barely managed to leave the facility alive, and it was near impossible to safely transport most of the test subjects. It wasn't long before drastic measures were made and special task forces had managed to use their resources to take down the utility vehicle which had carried "highly classified" Douman Zaibatsu Intel.

Almost all the rebels and samples alike died with the explosive impact that mangled and practically melted their vehicle, and corpses of what few of the little experiments that remained had been collected. The area closed off and advertised as what it was: a terrorist threat upon New Gate City. The entire scene was immediately dealt with. An absolute explosion of any trace of the conflict was made, a slate perfectly wiped clean to barely be mentioned in passing news the next day.

It was that next morning a young man was leaving his favorite joke shop and heading home when he had found his mother, Mrs. Jane Crocker, an ex-worker for the Douman Zaibatsu, beaten up and close to death on his home doorstep. In her arms, a small baby coo'd, barely a scratch on him. Seeing his mother risk her life to save this child, the young man took it on himself to adopt this baby, taking him into his life as if he were biologically his own.

From that point on John grew up like a normal boy in New Gate City. The black wild hair on his head covering the serial number that was tattooed upon him at "birth". No longer Project Number 413, but instead John Egbert. His father taking him in once he felt safe enough and registering John as his biological son. Of course, things weren't completely easy. John's father had to work hard as a single-parent to keep the middle-class lifestyle they had. And for some reason John had a habit of sleepwalking, drawing and writing on his walls odd messages and scribbles of self-depreciation. Scribbles that John would take notice of and treat as if they were a normal part of his room upon awakening. And so his dad played it off as if it were something normal.

But otherwise, John was a normal kid. And surely nothing about his mysterious past would ever catch up with him... Right?

SAMPLES

• John Is The Ultimate Prankster and Toi Has No Idea What's Coming.


• John Shows Lapis His Mad Magic Skillz


• Magnus Discusses Meta-Human Politics With A 12 Year Old.


• A Yes, The Old Fake Arm Double Reach Around Prank.


• John Has To Stop Starting Random Conversations With Much Older People Just Because He Thinks They Look Cool.