OOC: Singularity App

[hamburellakind]

Player Information
Your Nickname: Kelsey
OOC Journal: eise
Under 18? Nope
Email/IM: rpdina@gmail.com | AIM: dinachan321
Characters Played at Singularity: None

Character Information
Name: John Egbert
Name of Canon: Homestuck
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/John_Egbert
Canon Point: Waking up after meeting Meenah

Setting: John Egbert is, perhaps, not a typical 13-year-old, but today is probably still his birthday and he is making the best of it. He’d normally be reading webcomics or watching terrible movies all day, but seeing as it’s his birthday it’s important that he die at least once.

Uh, let’s go back a little bit, though.

Homestuck starts with John in his bedroom, wherein he establishes the basics of how the comic will work-- namely, it is presented like a video game which the readers are playing. Within the video game, John himself plays a video game called Sburb with his three best internet friends: Dave, Rose, and Jade. it should be noted that John and his friends only begin meeting in person once they enter the game. Otherwise, they have been living across the United States and have only communicated over a chat client called Pesterchum.

Sburb doesn’t work in the typical manner (like on a computer) and instead involves John running around in his house as the client player while Rose acts as his server player. Essentially it’s like they’re playing The Sims and John is the sim. With Rose’s help, John starts working through the first game mechanics: prototyping. Each player gets a kernel sprite, and they must prototype this sprite with an object and a dead creature. In John’s case, his sprite is prototyped with a harlequin doll. Before he is able to do the second prototyping, he is transported into the Medium by taking a bite of an apple sprouted from one of the game’s machines.

This is lucky, as it means John avoids annihilation by meteor thanks to his entire house being transported to a place called the Medium. Not so luckily this comes at the price of having to fight a bunch of annoying imps, but at least it allows him to level up a whole bunch. Somewhere in here, John prototypes his Nanna’s ashes and learns a bit more about the game thanks to Nannasprite. Predictably the sprite isn’t exactly straightforward and the mysteries of the game are still awfully mysterious in a lot of ways. Like how he can kind of sort of hear a voice telling him what to do? John isn’t too concerned with it once it starts being more polite, though.

After fighting some imps to get grist, John finally realizes that the movie posters in his room have been defaced-- by him, in his sleep. His dream self has apparently been trying to emerge through drawings of harlequins. All this disturbing shit is ignored for a moment as John creates a shitload of shit by combining shit he already has. In the meantime, Rose has built enough levels onto John’s house and he can finally enter the glowy gate thingy up in the sky.

John arrives in the Land of Wind and Shade, where he meets a whole lot of salamanders and discovers that his house is on a huge spire far above the planet. The Salamanders call him the Heir and tell him about some guy called The Slumbering One who he apparently has to wake up or something. John explores a little, and is informed via pesterchum that one of the annoying trolls (CG) he’s been trying to avoid is going to be his friend in the future. John ignores this for the time being, assuming CG is just an internet troll, and goes about searching for his dad’s car, as it contains his server disk and a birthday present. He does eventually find it, but unfortunately the server disk and package he was hoping to find have both disappeared.

Another troll (GC) messages, claiming she wants to help him finish the game more quickly. John follows the map GC sends him until he reaches a broken bridge and must return to his house. Once home, GC provides him with a code that allows him to make a totally awesome (and functional) rocket pack. John pchooos off, planning to follow through on GC’s instructions, although an alternate future and present Dave are both telling him to stay on the ground. Thankfully, John reconsiders upon remembering the note Dave included with his birthday present and heads back to land.

GC apologizes for trying to kill John and provides him with a much less murdery map that leads him to the next gate. John flies into it and crashes directly into Rose’s house. He heads into some ruins and transportalizes to a mysterious laboratory. The lab contains a device that allows him to look into the past of Rose’s Mom, Dave’s Bro, Nanna, and Jade’s Grandpa. John makes ecto-sludge clones of all of them, which allows the machine to make paradox baby clones of the four of them. John’s newly adopted cat friend hits a button that causes the sludges to combine-- Nanna and Grandpa’s combine to create baby John and Jade, and Mom and Bro’s combine to create baby Dave and Rose. Yes, this means Jade is John’s sister and Dad adopted him. CG explains that these babies are not just clones but literally the same people and must all be sent back to the appropriate points in time. John takes care of this (after tearfully giving his bunnies away to baby Rose and baby Jade).

It is at this point that the comic reveals the nature of these mysterious trolls. For one, they are literally trolls-- that is their species. The humans take a while to believe that this is true, much to the troll’s annoyance.

In the trolls’ session, they managed to fulfill at least one of their goals. Their planet, Alternia, was also destroyed in the same way that Earth was, and the ultimate goal of their session was to create a new universe for their twelve survivors to live in. That universe just happens to be the one Earth resides in-- hence the trolls’ ability to communicate with the humans at any point in their existence.

So now to briefly explain dream selves. Dream selves essentially function as a second life in the game, but they also allow people to spend time on their respective dream worlds. John’s is Prospit, or at least it is until it explodes. When attention returns to the humans, we learn that Jade’s dream self has died while saving John’s dream self from this explosion. This sucks for her, but it means that John is finally able to wake as his dream self and see his dad for the first time since he entered the medium, but then some bitchy spidertroll uses her psychic powers to wake him up, which ruins everything. Vriska, said spidertroll, convinces him to help Jade instead of reuniting with his dad, and the two of them become fast friends.

John learns of Rose’s plan to break the game rather than win it, and reunited with Nannasprite in order to get this going. Nannasprite gives him a necklace he can use to get in contact with her as she cannot leave the house. He starts working as Jade’s server player. Jade tells him he has to get the White Queen’s ring the next time he goes to sleep. They then work on getting her into the Medium. He asks Rose for advice on what they should use to prototype Jade’s kernelsprite, but Rose, fearing a paradox, instead tells him of an object he must retrieve from the battlefield next time he sleeps.

And then suddenly John wakes up on a bed in the middle of a bunch of oil for some reason? And his computer and necklace (from Nannasprite) are sinking into the oil so the obvious thing to do is throw his PDA into the oil too, right?

Goddamnit, John.

Luckily he still has some computerized glasses, which allow Rose to inform him that the planet he is on is totally on fire. Having fled safely, John asks Rose what the object he’s meant to get from the battlefield actually is, and she tells him it is The Tumor. Vriska finally admits that she put John to sleep intentionally so as to allow their shared enemy, Jack Noir, to gain his final power, in the hopes that this would lead to their victory over him. The voice from way back when returns and tells him to DO THE WINDY THING, which John eventually does, causing a hurricane that puts out the flames on the planet. This causes him to gain a ton of levels. Like, all of them. All the levels. Vriska, helpful as ever, tells him he needs to find his Quest Bed in order to continue. He does so, and falls asleep on it once again.

And Jack stabs him. Oops.

But it’s okay, because now his dream self is all up in here and that means he has achieved Godhood. He makes friends with a Wizardly Vassal. He then lucks upon his Dad’s wallet. Having apparently grown old enough to be worthy of owning the wallet, John dumps all of the shit it holds on the ground and enjoys his new loot. As he gathers everything up again, the WV guy starts honking the horn of a car that was apparently in his Dad’s...wallet.

Okay, fine, we’ll totally make this into a flying car with the windy thing. WV apparently has the queen’s ring, and John figures it is safe with him. Jade, using some special goggles, tells him that his Dad is in a castle having a tea party with Rose’s Mom.

The car crashes into a tree. Thankfully he’s right outside a castle so it all works out-- except Vriska tells him it’s the wrong castle. She then asks if he’s angry at her for how she got him killed and all, and he instead thanks her for helping him achieve Godhood. She then tells him how she killed one of her friends and, unlike typical trolls, actually feels kind of bad about it. John assumes she hasn’t killed before, but she then tells him how she had to kill trolls all the time to feed her giant spider. Vriska then goes on to wonder if perhaps the point of the game is to allow children to mature according to their various societies’ rules.

Vriska leaves to fight Jack, but not before suggesting John use his windy powers to find The Tumor. He creates a cyclone that he uses to drill to the center of the planet. John flies down to the center and captchalogues The Tumor successfully.

Returning to the planet’s surface, John reunites with Liv Tyler, the robot bunny Jade sent him. Liv gives him a letter from Jade’s penpal. The letter explains that Liv is outfitted with the power to change the sizes of objects, and also clues John in to the fact that Jade is the penpal’s grandmother. Using Liv’s power, he makes The Hammer of Zillyhoo an appropriate size.

John raises a battleship with his windy power and, leaving the wallet to WV, sends WV, Liv, and CD to deliver The Tumor to Dream Rose. John then notices a grimdark aura on the horizon and goes off to investigate it. He finds a castle, and inside he finds a bizarrely grey Rose, who leads him to the patio on which his Dad and Rose’s Mom lie dead at Jack’s hand.

The two prepare to fight the douche who killed their parents, and just as we get geared up for a totally awesome fight scene...when Jack just up and stabs John once again. John falls to the ground, apparently dead.

As John goes about reviving from this death-- God tier players can only die for real if their death is just or heroic --Rose and Jack fight. When he finally comes back, Rose is dead, and John has to kiss her to get her dream self to take over.

John goes on to listen to Karkat (CG’s) advice. He goes to Dave’s planet, the Land of Heat and Clockwork, and protects the Beat Mesa from imp interference to help initiate the scratch that will reset the game. Once it’s complete, Jade uses her new god tier powers to transport him onto the ship that will transport them into the new session, wherein the adults and kids switch places-- that is, the kids become the guardians and the adults become the players. The trip should take three years, and they have no contact with Dave, Rose, or the trolls during this time, but at least John and Jade have Davesprite, Nannasprite, Jaspersprite, and a bunch of animal consorts and NPCs to keep them company.

On the one year anniversary of their adventure (and John’s birthday) Jaspersprite brings in a cake for John and irritates Jade’s newfound doggy side to the point that there is a chase scene and John gets knocked out in the fray. In the dream that he has while he’s out, he meets a weird fish troll who wants to kill this girl who’s sleeping and floating. John manages to get the sleeping girl out of the way before he wakes up, but none of that really gets explained to him.

Personality:
John is generally a pretty cheerful and optimistic guy, but this might all be an act. Given the derogatory terms his dream self scribbled on the walls (stupid kid, loser, etc.), John’s self esteem is likely not that high. But this is more or less normal for a 13 year old kid, and given everything he’s been faced with he’s coped remarkably well.

Unfortunately for him, his story involves two rather difficult obstacles-- the game itself, and puberty. In recent updates John has professed no interest in romance, which is likely given his need to focus on completing their game successfully, but his transition into young adulthood is unlikely to leave him totally uninterested forever. John seems to want to ignore such things, but given how part of his overly eventful 13th birthday dealt with relationships and crushes and he tends to like some rather mushy movies, he’s not going to forget about it given the opportunity to explore a normal life again.

Most of the time, John is a very social and friendly kid, to the point of perhaps annoying some. This is especially true when it comes to his love of pranks and jokes. He can, at times, be a bit of a dick to people for the sake of comedy, and he does not seem to know when he’s saying things that are truly hurtful. This obliviousness is probably why his fandom nickname is Egderp-- he’s just a little obtuse, sometimes.

Ultimately, however, friendship is most important to him. Where Rose claims John is their leader, John just wants to be their friend. He has no desire to be terribly important or “in charge”-- equality is really quite important to him. This is probably part of the reason why he deals with issues like Karkat’s apparent homosexual crush on him and Vriska’s history of murder with such a level head-- he wants to be open and fair whenever he can.

As far as his sexuality, I ought to mention that I do not think a 13 year old who is fending off the advances of an alien in another universe is necessarily the best source of finality when it comes to John’s sexuality. In my mind, sexuality is fluid, and John is a decent enough guy to at least consider stuff like that if he has feelings himself. He’s not going to be in denial forever, basically. I’d say he’s pansexual but John’s just not the type to want a label.


Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
Hammerkind (he can fight with hammers), Bunnykind (he can fight with...bunnies), Umbrellakind (he can fight with umbrellas), and the Windy Thing

I’m gonna say his windy thing just isn’t as powerful-- he probably won’t be able to drill into anything.

Weakness wise, he can die permanently if his death is just or heroic.


Inventory: Pop-a-matic Vrillyhoo Hammer
Appearance: John
Age: 14

Samples
Log Sample:

John was expecting a fork in his chest, not a plummet to the ground. He must’ve slept through something terrible, which sucks because it’s his BIRTHDAY and terrible things shouldn’t happen on his BIRTHDAY.

Hahahahahahaha, yeah. That was a funny thing to think.

He stops thinking it, though, and focuses instead on using the windy thing to slow his fall. He lands like a ballerina and immediately inspects the area. It’s not familiar. It’s definitely not part of Jade’s golden ship dealy.

Okay, okay. Don’t panic. Maybe he just...fell into another dream bubble? Yeah, so, this isn’t. He’s still on the ship, just. Double-unconscious. And he’s a God, so. Gods can be as unconscious as they like! Probably.

Damn, he misses Rose. Rose could explain this so easy. Well, maybe. Assuming there’s anything to explain. Which there shouldn’t be, because there’s a totally normal explanation because this is just a dream bubble. And. That right there is the explanation.

Yup.

Just a dream bubble full of...a bunch of junk. Ew, what’s he even doing here? Lame, Sburb. He just took a nice long birthday shower and then this. What’s even in there? Computer parts? Boxes...

Is.

Is that.

Is that a stuffed rabbit.

Oh God, he’s reliving it all. This is not cool, Sburb! Not! Cool! At all!

Network Sample:
[John figures out the watch dealy pretty quickly, but he’s not entirely sure what to do with it. After all, it’s a dream bubble, right? So...well, why isn’t this one of his computer-devices? Why isn’t it familiar at all? Something isn’t right and it’s making him a liiiittle anxious. He doesn’t have the best luck with birthdays, after all.]

uhhhh.
jade?
are you in here?
or sleeping girl, i guess?
or crazy fish girl ugh.
i don’t really want to talk to you but i am assuming somebody came into this dream bubble with me, maybe?
and i don’t like it.
at all.
it is dumb.
i want to go back and play ghostbusters.
like, now.
ugh, who am i kidding?
i’ll probably just get an old version of somebody.
as much as reliving my first convo with jade might be fun, i’m already aware that that is NOT GOING TO BE REAL.
so can we skip that and get to the part where i wake up and there aren’t freaking stuffed bunnies torturing me with their memories.
please?