app for singularity_rpg
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Mat
OOC Journal: thatrainbow
Under 18? nyet
Email/IM: email: thatlovingrainbow [at] gmail.com // AIM: thisrainbowrose
Characters Played at Singularity: Buffy Meissonier, Toby Daye
Character Information ;
Name: John Egbert
Name of Canon: Homestuck
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: AU
Reference: MSPA wiki page
Canon Point: This page, when he finds the Tumor.
Setting:
So. Uh. Homestuck. Where do I even start.
Well first should be mentioned, for some reason this universe has things called Sylladexes. It comprises of two parts. The first is an item storage system - the captchalogue - wherein items are stored on a limited number of cards and retrievable based on the modus the user employs. A stack modus only allows you to use the top card, for example. A Memory modus splits the item between 2 cards and requires you to select the two cards before retrieving the item, like the game Memory. The other part of the sylladex is the strife specibus - you assign the strife specibus to a certain kind (hammer-kind, needle-kind, bunny-kind), and then the weapons you employ during combat must fit that -kind. Why this exists outside of the game is a mystery, but who the fuck cares. It’s probably simply to facilitate the game.
The game is called Sburb. It came out in beta and four kids decided to play it together. Instead of being a normal game, however, it had honest-to-goodness real world effects. Two players would connect, one as a client player, one as a server. The server player would be able to see the client player in their actual location, manipulate the world around them, and deploy game items in their location. They would need to employ a certain chain of events that involved punching sylladex cards and carving totems and fabricating specific items. And this had to be done before a countdown finished, because when it finished, their location would be hit by a meteorite. A large one. Once they finished the chain of events successfully, they would be transported to someplace called The Medium. Then someone would connect to their server player as THEIR server player, until eventually the first person into the medium connected to the last server player as their server player, finishing the circle and bringing all the players into the Medium. We’ll come back to the Medium in a moment.
Another thing that happened before entry into the Medium is the creation of the kernel sprite. It starts as simply a floating, glowing orb-like thing. It then needs to be “prototyped”. Prototyping occurs when something is placed directly into the kernel sprite - the sprite then takes on the appearance of whatever was placed into it - a dead cat would cause the kernel sprite to appear like a floating, ghostly cat. Any prototyping that occurs before entering the Medium will directly influence the appearance and abilities of the enemies you face within the Medium. Prototyping after entry into the Medium will not effect the enemies, only the sprite itself. When it is prototyped the second time, it then merges the attributes of both prototyped objects/beings. After this, it acts as a sort of hero quest guide for the player it belongs to, explaining things a bit, and providing hints to the next course of action through vague and riddle-like statements. The sprite can also assist their player in combat.
The Incipisphere is the name for the contained bubble of reality the majority of the game takes place in. It’s important to note that there’s a different manifestation of it for every game session. It begins identically for each session, somewhat chess-themed. The inner and largest part of the Incipisphere is called The Medium. There is the “chess board”, or battleground, in the middle of the Medium - Skaia. With each prototyped sprite entering the Medium, it grows from a simple board to a full planet. The clouds above Skaia contain images from the past, present, and future, and if one is on Skaia, one can see these things, and sometimes prepare for the future because of them, or know things about the past that clarify things in the present. Orbiting Skaia is the planet Prospit, home of the Light Kingdom. There are as many tall towers on Prospit as there are Prospit dreamers (Dreamers and Dream Selves will be touched on later), which is to say half of the players in a given session. Prospit’s moon, attached to the planet by a heavy chain, also has a tower for each dreamer, in which their dream self lives. During parts of its orbit, Prospit’s moon will dip into the clouds of Skaia, allowing anyone on the moon to see the visions the clouds present. Further out is the Veil, which separates the Medium from the Dark Kingdom, Derse, and the Furthest Ring. Derse is similar to Prospit - it has towers and a chained moon, and is home to half the dreamers of the session. Instead of the prophetic clouds of Skaia, however, Derse dreamers have access to the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors, who whisper to them if they choose to listen. The Horrorterrors exist in the Furthest Ring, at the far edge of the Incipisphere and spilling into the Paradox Space between all sessions.
Dream Selves are separate parts of each player that exist on the moons of Prospit or Derse, apparently from the beginning of their existence, given that it is possible (though rare) for a Dream Self to awaken before the game is played, one of many ways in which Sburb employs paradox loops in the lives and existence of the players. While the Dream Self remains asleep, the player dreams normally when they sleep. However, once the Dream Self awakens, whenever the player falls asleep they awaken as their Dream Self. The Dream Self is tied to the survival of the players as well - if their waking self is killed, as long as one of the other players kissses them, their Dream Self will survive, and become the sole incarnation of them. Alternatively, a dreamer’s Dream Self could could die, leaving the waking self as the only incarnation of the player. In this case, when sleeping, the player will (it seems) dream of the Horrorterrors - this can be quite frightening, especially for Prospit dreamers.
Dream Selves are also integral to reaching God Tier. God Tier is the highest power level attainable (at least to current knowledge). There are apparently a couple of ways to reach God Tier, but the only one John knows of is when a player’s waking self dies on a location of their planet called their Quest Bed. Their full essence is then fused to their Dream Self (requiring the Dream Self to be alive, presumably), and they ascend to God Tier. It gives them powers over their associated element, a really cool new outfit, and makes them all but immortal - they can only be killed if the death is truly heroic or truly just.
Each player has an associated element (Witch of Space, Knight of Time, Seer of Light, Heir of Breath - these are the four kids from John’s session, Jade, Dave, Rose, and John himself) and their own planet, where their house is placed initially upon entrance to the Medium. These planets exist between Prospit and the Veil. The planets reflect both the element the person is associated with in their mythological role, and their personality (presumably to a lesser degree, but not always so). There are a series of gates each player has to go through. The server player must build the client player’s house up using various sorts of grist (a sort of currency collected from defeated enemies, used in building and fabricating items), until the player can reach the first Gate. This gate will transport them to the surface of their planet (or elsewhere on their planet, if their home was already on the surface at the start). From there they must reach the second gate, which apparently transports them to their server player’s planet, and so forth.
The point of the game is twofold. The first thing the game does is creates the players themselves, and their ancestors or guardians, through paradox cloning. In the kids’ universe, it was John who did this. He found a selection of four screens, all targeted on a different person - his Nanna, Dave’s Bro, Rose’s Mom, and Jade’s Grandpa. He used the machine to try to appearify them, but as they could not be appearified without causing a paradox, only paradox slime was produced. A separate part of the machine sucked each appearified paradox slime into a tube. After all four were filled, infant versions of the four guardians/ancestors were cloned. Then the slimes mixed - Bro and Mom’s, Nanny and Grandpa’s. From these mixed paradox slimes were cloned the infant versions of the kids playing the game, thus forcing them to play the game in the future, as if they did NOT play the game, they wouldn’t even exist. The second point of the game is to create a brand new universe, through a strange and mostly unexplained (and unknown to John) frog breeding program.
Which brings us to the Trolls.
The Trolls were the 12 kids from a different universe, from a planet called Alternia, who played the game (called Sgrub for them), created the kids’ universe, and were prevented from claiming their prize of life in the new universe and basically godhood by a being from the kids’ session. Bec Noir will be touched on in a moment. Angry and bitter, the Trolls’ leader ordered the trolls to, well, TROLL the kids in retaliation, using their client Trollian, which not only allows them to troll the kids at any point in time that they’re at a computer, but allows them to SEE the kids at any point in their timeline… up until the viewports suddenly go blank towards the end of the kids’ session. Though John was not friends with the other three and had no idea what the trolls who pestered him were on about, he was trolled just as much as the others in the time leading up to the start of their session of Sburb. Eventually the trolls and the kids end up pretty much friends, if slightly awkward ones. Additionally, each kid had one Troll who pretty much became their “patron”. John’s was a manipulative, creative, somewhat psychopathic troll named Vriska - John and Vriska actually ended up developing romantic feelings for each other, in addition to a pretty tight friendship.
BEC NOIR is… well, insane. He was a black subject called Jack Noir who killed the black queen and stole her ring, which was what gave her the appearance and powers of the prototyping, much more so than your average pawn. He was a formidable adversary before Jade’s entrance into the Medium - unfortunately, he became all but untouchable after, as in an effort to save Jade’s life, her dog Becquerel prototyped himself with her kernel sprite just before her entrance into the Medium. Becquerel was Earth’s First Guardian - a being that was pretty much undefeatable, meant to protect Earth. Upon Jade’s (and thus, Becquerelsprite’s) entrance into the Medium, Jack Noir became Bec Noir and pretty much unbeatable. Through a series of events that John isn’t yet aware of, he would find a way into the Trolls’ session and start attacking them, keeping them from travelling to the kids’ universe.
John is the Heir of Breath, with power over wind. His planet was the Land of Wind and Shade - a dark planet covered with lots of oil, salamanders, and with lightning bugs trapped in the clouds. He was elevated to God Tier when Vriska had him sleep on his quest bed, where he was killed by Bec Noir. His dream self had not been awake for long, only waking up after Noir attacked Prospit and sent the moon plummeting towards Skaia. Jade, whose Dream Self had been awake for years, had been watching John’s sleep and had long wondered who this boy was and when she would get to make friends with him - it was because of her visions in the clouds of Skaia that John was brought into the game, ultimately (she knew there was a fourth player, and insisted they find someone else to be Rose’s server player - Dave mentioned this to Terezi, who mentioned that they had indeed been trolling a fourth kid, and gave him John’s pesterchum handle, which led to John getting invited to join the session). She saved him when Prospit’s moon crashed, throwing his sleeping dream self clear of the crash, and sacrificing her own in the process.
Rose has come up with a plan to deal with Bec Noir, however - it involves removing something called The Tumor from the center of Skaia (this is John’s task, and he has to deliver it to her dream self on Derse, somehow) and instigating something called The Scratch, that will reset the session. John really doesn’t know how any of this will help, or even what it entails really, but he doesn’t have any better ideas, and he trusts that these people who are probably smarter than him know what they’re doing.
There’s a lot more involved in the world of Homestuck, but most of it is unknown to John, unknown to any of the kids, or just not applicable to John’s session. Hopefully this 2k word ramble has done more than confuse you beyond belief. :D
Personality: John is a generally upbeat and friendly guy - always glass half full, ready to be friends with anyone he meets. He’s a real dork, and he has a ridiculous, eyeroll-worthy sense of humor and considers himself a great prankster, even though he’s… really not. He loves Con Air, Armageddon, Little Monsters, and basically anything with Matthew McConaughey - basically, he doesn’t have the best taste in movies, but when he loves something he LOVES it.
Unfortunately, a lot of these things led to him being kind of unpopular with his local peer group, and while he’s hung out on forums and in chats online, he never really found anyone that he clicked with. He doesn’t really have any friends, other than the newly-discovered friends he’s made through his session of Sburb, both human and Troll.
As a result, he’s grown more quiet and withdrawn. He’s not silent, he’s not totally withdrawn, but he tends towards not saying anything if there’s a chance he might say something exceedingly stupid. He doesn’t want people to think he’s “just” a dork, or to get irritated with him and stop talking to him. He’s very insecure about himself with regards to other people, when he makes a new friend, he second-guesses everything he says or does, trying to make sure he doesn’t drive them away somehow.
John is also a very loyal friend. When he has a friend, he wants to keep them, and stand up for them, and protect them however he can. He’s especially protective of Jade ever since she sacrificed her Dream Self to save his. But John honestly doesn’t think he’s good for much of anything. He seems to bumble around and mess things up whenever he tries to help, so he figures he’s kind of useless. Still, he’ll do his best to help his friends if they need him.
So, in summary - sweet, silly, doofy kid who cares deeply for his friends, but has trouble making them, and has a lot of self-esteem issues.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
ABILITIES:
While in canon The Windy Thing had enough power to drill into a planet with a tornado, in Sing it will not have that much destructive capability. He’ll still be able to use it to fly himself and perhaps one other full-grown person (or something of similar weight), or to kick up a strong breeze, but he wouldn’t be able to, say, drill into the wall of the space station or anything.
Inventory:
Appearance: John is about 5’2”, skinny and not athletic, with a mop of black hair, blue eyes, and black square-framed glasses. He tends towards t-shirts with geeky logos on them (his favourite is a Green Slime Ghost shirt that he got not long ago) and shorts or jeans. He’s a little bit buck-toothed.
Age: 13
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
As far as basic story and personality go, John is different from canon in a couple of important ways. First off, he’s more withdrawn, not wanting to drive away these new friends by being too much of a dork or criticizing him. He tends to lean towards not saying anything if he might possibly say the wrong thing. And secondly, he was not the first to enter the Medium. He was Rose’s server player, and Jade was his, leaving Dave to be Jade’s.
We’re not entirely sure how the kids met in canon, though we do know that Jade was the one to introduce herself to John first. It seems to have probably been, like most online friendships, a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Jade perhaps had seen his pesterchum handle in the clouds of Skaia while she was sleeping. In this universe, John wasn’t in the right place at the right time, and never came across the other three. Jade, if she had originally dreamed of his handle, never saw it. John pursued pranking websites and forums, and some gaming sites, but not any of the sites that would’ve led him to Dave or Jade or Rose. He briefly spent some time on a McConaughey message board until he realised everyone else was a girl and assumed he was gay with a Big Gay Crush on the RomCom heartthrob. He fled pretty quickly.
His relationships with the trolls are pretty much the same, except for Karkat, and he mostly speaks to Vriska. He has a little bit of a crush on her, though it’s tinged with a determination to prove to her that he’s not as stupid as she keeps saying he is (he can’t tell whether she means it or is just trying to antagonize him into being better). Despite her harshness, he does like her, and trusts her not to steer him wrong as far as the game goes. He has alluded to his feelings of not being as cool or interesting as the other kids, and Vriska’s response was that she’d MAKE him cooler and more interesting than them by making him the most powerful. Vriska’s hard on him, in a lot of ways - pushing him to be better, to be the best in the session, to be a hero, to take initiative and not be such a pushover. She was initially pretty disdainful of him, but since she was a troll he wasn’t as afraid of standing up to her, and though his comebacks leave much to be desired, he showed enough spark that she decided he had potential and really set out to make him the most powerful player in the session. Of course, a large part of this was a desire to beat Terezi and her “pet” human, Dave, but John generally appreciated her help (even if he didn’t always like her methods), and that was, of course, nice for her ego. They’ve grown pretty close, as far as these things go - she still taunts him and needles him sometimes, but not as cruelly, and generally to get him moving or fired up. Their most recent conversation was mostly about the morality of killing and Vriska’s regret for killing Tavros even though on Alternia it would have been perfectly justified. While John is horrified that she’s killed so many people, he isn’t horrified of HER, realising that their cultures are just so different that he probably couldn’t possibly fully understand what it means to her to have killed. He does recognize, however, the trust that she placed in him by opening up like that, and that meant a lot to him. She’s definitely harsher with him, but there’s been enough hidden encouragement (or what John reads as hidden encouragement, anyway) and legitimate help (if given with insults on his competency and intelligence) that he considers her a good friend.
His relationship with Karkat is less warm than it became in canon (if any relationship with Karkat can ever be described as “warm”), mostly because he’s more of a pushover, which pisses Karkat off to no end. Also, Dave was the recipient of the majority of Karkat’s trolling, having been Jade’s server player and thus, the “cause” of Jack’s transformation and subsequent terrorization of the trolls’ session. Dave, unfortunately, doesn’t really give a shit, which led to him trolling John from time to time in frustration. Karkat and Dave are not as... close John and Karkat theoretically are in canon, though they’ve come to a bit of an understanding in the name of dealing with this damn session.
He admires Dave quite a lot, though he doesn’t always get his “irony”. Dave is cool, collected, and everything John wishes he could be. John’s also deeply intimidated by Dave, and tends to not speak to him much out of a fear of making an idiot of himself. Dave probably wouldn’t care, but John doesn’t know that. Dave was the one to get his pesterchum handle from Terezi after Jade told him they needed a fourth player - he mentioned it offhandedly and Terezi asked if that “ghosty guy” was playing. Dave asked “what ghosty guy”, Terezi gave him the handle, and Dave sent him a message asking if he had the Sburb beta. Because Dave was already in the medium at this point and a bit distracted, and in a rush to get someone to be Rose’s server player so she didn’t die from forest fire or anything, their conversation was short and rather abrupt, leading John to believe erroneously that Dave didn’t like him when Dave, in fact, had no opinion on him whatsoever. They spoke more later on when John first entered the Medium, during some down time in one of Dave’s time loops, and Dave showed signs of warming up to John, though they never had the chance to really become friends. Dave honestly didn’t have much of an opinion on John initially, other than “seems kind of shy”. As he got into his stable time loops and plans began to be hatched and so forth, he took downtime to (initially) make sure that John knew what was up so that he could help, and then (eventually) to just get to know him a little better. Dave thinks John’s a pretty cool kid (though not a coolkid), in a non-ironic way, though he wouldn’t admit as much to anyone. John’s optimism has started shining through, in his belief that the plan will work, even if he thinks that a suicide bombing out in paradox space is a bad plan, and to be honest Dave is a little jealous of that. Again, not that he’d admit as much to anyone. While John is under the impression that Dave probably thinks he’s a loser, Dave actually thinks that he could be friends with John, even if he’s sickeningly sincere and unironic all the time. Still, their potential friendship hasn’t really had a chance to go anywhere, thanks to the newness of it and the fact that John thinks Dave doesn’t like him much.
Rose kind of creeps him out, to be perfectly honest, and her rather verbose and formal mode of speech almost scared him off being part of their Sburb session. He did change his mind when Rose told him that he was “needed” for their session, but he was very cautious with his actions as her server player, nearly getting her killed because he asked her before he did ANYTHING. Once she was in the Medium and had snarked at him a little for not taking the lead, he went ahead and built her house up without any input from her, but he’s tried to avoid talking to her since if it’s not necessary, partially because he doesn’t want to look (more) like an idiot in front of her after she and Dave invited him to play with them, and partially because... Well, she just creeps him out, dude! Rose is continually frustrated by John - because she creeps him out, though he hasn’t ever told her that, he’s more hesitant than even usual, and she thinks he’s pretty much a brainless pushover. She has no appreciation for people who seem to have no opinion of their own, and generally ignores him. Dave and Jade have both told her he’s not that bad, but she has had no drive to learn whether or not her initial opinions will hold under further interaction. She’s spoken to him recently only to inform him that she needs him to remove The Tumor from Skaia so they can hopefully defeat Bec Noir, and the conversation was brief and impersonal. (It, of course, doesn’t help that she’s been distracted anyway, by her conversations with Doc Scratch mostly.)
Jade is the session-mate he’s closest to, and ironically the one he’s known for the least amount of time. He didn’t speak to her until she contacted him to introduce herself and let him know she’d be his server player. He thinks she’s kind of weird, but very nice, and they had some very friendly chats while setting everything up and shortly after his entry to the Medium. Not long after he entered the Medium is when Prospit was attacked and Prospit’s moon destroyed. Jade saved his dreamself as in canon, and this has engendered a sort of protective streak in him towards her, and he feels like it’s his duty to protect her since she died for him (even only as her dream self) when she hardly knew him. Jade, for her part, thinks John is a nice, fun person that she very much has looked forward to being friends with. She’s watched his Dream Self sleep, and seen him in the clouds of Skaia, and long waited to actually meet him. Ever since they started talking she’s been friendly and cheerful, like she usually is, but it’s been somewhat of a revelation for John, being used mostly to the harsher trolling on forums and such. She laughs at his tentative jokes (after he finally gets into the medium and shyly opens up enough TO joke) and encourages him. She gets a little frustrated with him sometimes because he is pretty self-deprecating, and she thinks he shouldn’t be so hard on himself, and should just be who he is, not try to be someone he thinks people will want to be friends with. But for the most part he’s been most comfortable with Jade out of the three other kids, and it’s her he goes to hoping for a bit of encouragement when Vriska is being too harsh for him to even pretend that there’s encouragement hidden in there. He checks in with her pretty regularly, to make sure she’s okay, and he does start to get a little panicky if she doesn’t answer within a few minutes. He has admitted to her, recently, that he’s pretty sure Dave and Rose think he’s an idiot, and while Jade insisted that wasn’t true, she wasn’t able to convince him that she wasn’t just being nice to him. Their last check-in was a little strained because of it - Jade basically lost her patience with him and yelled at him a little, and while she did apologise for losing her patience, John still wouldn’t believe her, and they ended on a tense and still mildly argumentative note, something John will regret a lot in retrospect when he realises that his Jade isn’t here.
BASICALLY, all of this will basically manifest as John being (at least initially) quieter, less prone to dumb jokes and derpiness (at least out LOUD), and extremely attached/loyal to Jade, while avoiding Rose and not actively seeking any Daves out and being surprised if either Rose or the Daves seek HIM out.
Samples ;
Log Sample:
To be honest, John wasn’t really sure if Rose’s plan was going to work. She hadn’t been very forthcoming with information when telling him what she needed him to do - he wouldn’t even know the Tumor was a bomb if Vriska hadn’t told him. A suicide mission to the middle of paradox space to hopefully blow something up so that Jack wouldn’t be able to kill them all...
John hesitated, staring down the huge pit that he’d drilled into Skaia, and de-captchalogged his Crosbytop, floating it in front of him with the Breeze. He pulled up Pesterchum and had already opened a chat window to pester Vriska when he realised how clingy and incompetent that would seem. What could he say, “hey, vriska, i'm just floating here scared to go down in the big pit i made because i think rose’s plan is bad”? She’d just tell him he needed to be a hero and t8ke initi8ive or something like that, and then tease him for being scared. He didn’t want her to see him scared.
He sighed, closed and re-captchalogged the Crosbytop, and peered down into the pit again. Even this was a bad plan, it was the only plan they had, and he didn’t have any better ideas. Maybe while he was busy doing this, Rose or Dave or Jade were busy coming up with a better plan, and they could let him know later what he should do with the Tumor. He took a deep breath, and dove down into the pit.
Network Sample:
um, hello?
my name’s john, i'm... well, not supposed to be here.
i need to get back, there’s sort of maybe a couple of universes depending on me not totally ruining this plan.
and, um, being here instead of there would kind of count as ruining.
Your Nickname: Mat
OOC Journal: thatrainbow
Under 18? nyet
Email/IM: email: thatlovingrainbow [at] gmail.com // AIM: thisrainbowrose
Characters Played at Singularity: Buffy Meissonier, Toby Daye
Character Information ;
Name: John Egbert
Name of Canon: Homestuck
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: AU
Reference: MSPA wiki page
Canon Point: This page, when he finds the Tumor.
Setting:
So. Uh. Homestuck. Where do I even start.
Well first should be mentioned, for some reason this universe has things called Sylladexes. It comprises of two parts. The first is an item storage system - the captchalogue - wherein items are stored on a limited number of cards and retrievable based on the modus the user employs. A stack modus only allows you to use the top card, for example. A Memory modus splits the item between 2 cards and requires you to select the two cards before retrieving the item, like the game Memory. The other part of the sylladex is the strife specibus - you assign the strife specibus to a certain kind (hammer-kind, needle-kind, bunny-kind), and then the weapons you employ during combat must fit that -kind. Why this exists outside of the game is a mystery, but who the fuck cares. It’s probably simply to facilitate the game.
The game is called Sburb. It came out in beta and four kids decided to play it together. Instead of being a normal game, however, it had honest-to-goodness real world effects. Two players would connect, one as a client player, one as a server. The server player would be able to see the client player in their actual location, manipulate the world around them, and deploy game items in their location. They would need to employ a certain chain of events that involved punching sylladex cards and carving totems and fabricating specific items. And this had to be done before a countdown finished, because when it finished, their location would be hit by a meteorite. A large one. Once they finished the chain of events successfully, they would be transported to someplace called The Medium. Then someone would connect to their server player as THEIR server player, until eventually the first person into the medium connected to the last server player as their server player, finishing the circle and bringing all the players into the Medium. We’ll come back to the Medium in a moment.
Another thing that happened before entry into the Medium is the creation of the kernel sprite. It starts as simply a floating, glowing orb-like thing. It then needs to be “prototyped”. Prototyping occurs when something is placed directly into the kernel sprite - the sprite then takes on the appearance of whatever was placed into it - a dead cat would cause the kernel sprite to appear like a floating, ghostly cat. Any prototyping that occurs before entering the Medium will directly influence the appearance and abilities of the enemies you face within the Medium. Prototyping after entry into the Medium will not effect the enemies, only the sprite itself. When it is prototyped the second time, it then merges the attributes of both prototyped objects/beings. After this, it acts as a sort of hero quest guide for the player it belongs to, explaining things a bit, and providing hints to the next course of action through vague and riddle-like statements. The sprite can also assist their player in combat.
The Incipisphere is the name for the contained bubble of reality the majority of the game takes place in. It’s important to note that there’s a different manifestation of it for every game session. It begins identically for each session, somewhat chess-themed. The inner and largest part of the Incipisphere is called The Medium. There is the “chess board”, or battleground, in the middle of the Medium - Skaia. With each prototyped sprite entering the Medium, it grows from a simple board to a full planet. The clouds above Skaia contain images from the past, present, and future, and if one is on Skaia, one can see these things, and sometimes prepare for the future because of them, or know things about the past that clarify things in the present. Orbiting Skaia is the planet Prospit, home of the Light Kingdom. There are as many tall towers on Prospit as there are Prospit dreamers (Dreamers and Dream Selves will be touched on later), which is to say half of the players in a given session. Prospit’s moon, attached to the planet by a heavy chain, also has a tower for each dreamer, in which their dream self lives. During parts of its orbit, Prospit’s moon will dip into the clouds of Skaia, allowing anyone on the moon to see the visions the clouds present. Further out is the Veil, which separates the Medium from the Dark Kingdom, Derse, and the Furthest Ring. Derse is similar to Prospit - it has towers and a chained moon, and is home to half the dreamers of the session. Instead of the prophetic clouds of Skaia, however, Derse dreamers have access to the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors, who whisper to them if they choose to listen. The Horrorterrors exist in the Furthest Ring, at the far edge of the Incipisphere and spilling into the Paradox Space between all sessions.
Dream Selves are separate parts of each player that exist on the moons of Prospit or Derse, apparently from the beginning of their existence, given that it is possible (though rare) for a Dream Self to awaken before the game is played, one of many ways in which Sburb employs paradox loops in the lives and existence of the players. While the Dream Self remains asleep, the player dreams normally when they sleep. However, once the Dream Self awakens, whenever the player falls asleep they awaken as their Dream Self. The Dream Self is tied to the survival of the players as well - if their waking self is killed, as long as one of the other players kissses them, their Dream Self will survive, and become the sole incarnation of them. Alternatively, a dreamer’s Dream Self could could die, leaving the waking self as the only incarnation of the player. In this case, when sleeping, the player will (it seems) dream of the Horrorterrors - this can be quite frightening, especially for Prospit dreamers.
Dream Selves are also integral to reaching God Tier. God Tier is the highest power level attainable (at least to current knowledge). There are apparently a couple of ways to reach God Tier, but the only one John knows of is when a player’s waking self dies on a location of their planet called their Quest Bed. Their full essence is then fused to their Dream Self (requiring the Dream Self to be alive, presumably), and they ascend to God Tier. It gives them powers over their associated element, a really cool new outfit, and makes them all but immortal - they can only be killed if the death is truly heroic or truly just.
Each player has an associated element (Witch of Space, Knight of Time, Seer of Light, Heir of Breath - these are the four kids from John’s session, Jade, Dave, Rose, and John himself) and their own planet, where their house is placed initially upon entrance to the Medium. These planets exist between Prospit and the Veil. The planets reflect both the element the person is associated with in their mythological role, and their personality (presumably to a lesser degree, but not always so). There are a series of gates each player has to go through. The server player must build the client player’s house up using various sorts of grist (a sort of currency collected from defeated enemies, used in building and fabricating items), until the player can reach the first Gate. This gate will transport them to the surface of their planet (or elsewhere on their planet, if their home was already on the surface at the start). From there they must reach the second gate, which apparently transports them to their server player’s planet, and so forth.
The point of the game is twofold. The first thing the game does is creates the players themselves, and their ancestors or guardians, through paradox cloning. In the kids’ universe, it was John who did this. He found a selection of four screens, all targeted on a different person - his Nanna, Dave’s Bro, Rose’s Mom, and Jade’s Grandpa. He used the machine to try to appearify them, but as they could not be appearified without causing a paradox, only paradox slime was produced. A separate part of the machine sucked each appearified paradox slime into a tube. After all four were filled, infant versions of the four guardians/ancestors were cloned. Then the slimes mixed - Bro and Mom’s, Nanny and Grandpa’s. From these mixed paradox slimes were cloned the infant versions of the kids playing the game, thus forcing them to play the game in the future, as if they did NOT play the game, they wouldn’t even exist. The second point of the game is to create a brand new universe, through a strange and mostly unexplained (and unknown to John) frog breeding program.
Which brings us to the Trolls.
The Trolls were the 12 kids from a different universe, from a planet called Alternia, who played the game (called Sgrub for them), created the kids’ universe, and were prevented from claiming their prize of life in the new universe and basically godhood by a being from the kids’ session. Bec Noir will be touched on in a moment. Angry and bitter, the Trolls’ leader ordered the trolls to, well, TROLL the kids in retaliation, using their client Trollian, which not only allows them to troll the kids at any point in time that they’re at a computer, but allows them to SEE the kids at any point in their timeline… up until the viewports suddenly go blank towards the end of the kids’ session. Though John was not friends with the other three and had no idea what the trolls who pestered him were on about, he was trolled just as much as the others in the time leading up to the start of their session of Sburb. Eventually the trolls and the kids end up pretty much friends, if slightly awkward ones. Additionally, each kid had one Troll who pretty much became their “patron”. John’s was a manipulative, creative, somewhat psychopathic troll named Vriska - John and Vriska actually ended up developing romantic feelings for each other, in addition to a pretty tight friendship.
BEC NOIR is… well, insane. He was a black subject called Jack Noir who killed the black queen and stole her ring, which was what gave her the appearance and powers of the prototyping, much more so than your average pawn. He was a formidable adversary before Jade’s entrance into the Medium - unfortunately, he became all but untouchable after, as in an effort to save Jade’s life, her dog Becquerel prototyped himself with her kernel sprite just before her entrance into the Medium. Becquerel was Earth’s First Guardian - a being that was pretty much undefeatable, meant to protect Earth. Upon Jade’s (and thus, Becquerelsprite’s) entrance into the Medium, Jack Noir became Bec Noir and pretty much unbeatable. Through a series of events that John isn’t yet aware of, he would find a way into the Trolls’ session and start attacking them, keeping them from travelling to the kids’ universe.
John is the Heir of Breath, with power over wind. His planet was the Land of Wind and Shade - a dark planet covered with lots of oil, salamanders, and with lightning bugs trapped in the clouds. He was elevated to God Tier when Vriska had him sleep on his quest bed, where he was killed by Bec Noir. His dream self had not been awake for long, only waking up after Noir attacked Prospit and sent the moon plummeting towards Skaia. Jade, whose Dream Self had been awake for years, had been watching John’s sleep and had long wondered who this boy was and when she would get to make friends with him - it was because of her visions in the clouds of Skaia that John was brought into the game, ultimately (she knew there was a fourth player, and insisted they find someone else to be Rose’s server player - Dave mentioned this to Terezi, who mentioned that they had indeed been trolling a fourth kid, and gave him John’s pesterchum handle, which led to John getting invited to join the session). She saved him when Prospit’s moon crashed, throwing his sleeping dream self clear of the crash, and sacrificing her own in the process.
Rose has come up with a plan to deal with Bec Noir, however - it involves removing something called The Tumor from the center of Skaia (this is John’s task, and he has to deliver it to her dream self on Derse, somehow) and instigating something called The Scratch, that will reset the session. John really doesn’t know how any of this will help, or even what it entails really, but he doesn’t have any better ideas, and he trusts that these people who are probably smarter than him know what they’re doing.
There’s a lot more involved in the world of Homestuck, but most of it is unknown to John, unknown to any of the kids, or just not applicable to John’s session. Hopefully this 2k word ramble has done more than confuse you beyond belief. :D
Personality: John is a generally upbeat and friendly guy - always glass half full, ready to be friends with anyone he meets. He’s a real dork, and he has a ridiculous, eyeroll-worthy sense of humor and considers himself a great prankster, even though he’s… really not. He loves Con Air, Armageddon, Little Monsters, and basically anything with Matthew McConaughey - basically, he doesn’t have the best taste in movies, but when he loves something he LOVES it.
Unfortunately, a lot of these things led to him being kind of unpopular with his local peer group, and while he’s hung out on forums and in chats online, he never really found anyone that he clicked with. He doesn’t really have any friends, other than the newly-discovered friends he’s made through his session of Sburb, both human and Troll.
As a result, he’s grown more quiet and withdrawn. He’s not silent, he’s not totally withdrawn, but he tends towards not saying anything if there’s a chance he might say something exceedingly stupid. He doesn’t want people to think he’s “just” a dork, or to get irritated with him and stop talking to him. He’s very insecure about himself with regards to other people, when he makes a new friend, he second-guesses everything he says or does, trying to make sure he doesn’t drive them away somehow.
John is also a very loyal friend. When he has a friend, he wants to keep them, and stand up for them, and protect them however he can. He’s especially protective of Jade ever since she sacrificed her Dream Self to save his. But John honestly doesn’t think he’s good for much of anything. He seems to bumble around and mess things up whenever he tries to help, so he figures he’s kind of useless. Still, he’ll do his best to help his friends if they need him.
So, in summary - sweet, silly, doofy kid who cares deeply for his friends, but has trouble making them, and has a lot of self-esteem issues.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
ABILITIES:
- Sylladex! He can store as many things as he has sylladex cards, and he currently has quite a few. Also if he overloads it, he can use it as a weapon, because something will be thrown rather violently out of the sylladex.
- General Nice Dudeitude: John’s a nice guy, pretty friendly, and likes getting along with people.
- The Windy Thing: John can control The Breeze, which basically gives him WIND POWERS, that let him fly, make other objects fly, create tornadoes, and just basically have the wind blow really hard.
- John is generally a pretty trusting guy (except when it comes to the trolls, then he’s SLIGHTLY more dubious. Only slightly.), and is often very passive, waiting for orders before doing anything.
- He’s not exceptionally strong physically. Though he has the Warhammer of Zillyhoo, which is an awesome weapon, if he got into a fistfight, he would probably lose. He’s skinny and on the small side and not trained in any fighting style - even with his hammerkind strife specibus, he tends to flail around with it until things die instead of using them with any particular skill.
- He REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to be liked and accepted. This can sometimes lead to him going along with something he doesn’t really agree with or want to do, or to stay quiet when he has an opinion or idea that he thinks won’t be liked.
While in canon The Windy Thing had enough power to drill into a planet with a tornado, in Sing it will not have that much destructive capability. He’ll still be able to use it to fly himself and perhaps one other full-grown person (or something of similar weight), or to kick up a strong breeze, but he wouldn’t be able to, say, drill into the wall of the space station or anything.
Inventory:
- 1 pair soft blue pants
- 1 soft blue t-shirt with a windy symbol
- 1 cowl/hood with a ridiculously long tail, also blue, and soft
- 1 pair yellow sneakers
- 1 pair black square-framed glasses
- 1 Sylladex (wallet fetch modus) containing:
- 1 Crosbytop portable computing device
- 1 inviting pile of pipes
- 1 less-inviting pile of razors
- Several issues of The Serious Jester
- 1 pair ticket stubs to Cirque de Soleil
- assortment of adult-sized shoes, hats, and ties
- assortment of photos (of younger John or various comedians) with jokes or cake recipes on the back
- 1 briefcase full of Fatherly Documents
- 10 tonnes pipe tobacco
- 1 lighter
- 1 totaled car (white 4-door sedan)
- 1 Crosbytop portable computing device
Appearance: John is about 5’2”, skinny and not athletic, with a mop of black hair, blue eyes, and black square-framed glasses. He tends towards t-shirts with geeky logos on them (his favourite is a Green Slime Ghost shirt that he got not long ago) and shorts or jeans. He’s a little bit buck-toothed.
Age: 13
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
As far as basic story and personality go, John is different from canon in a couple of important ways. First off, he’s more withdrawn, not wanting to drive away these new friends by being too much of a dork or criticizing him. He tends to lean towards not saying anything if he might possibly say the wrong thing. And secondly, he was not the first to enter the Medium. He was Rose’s server player, and Jade was his, leaving Dave to be Jade’s.
We’re not entirely sure how the kids met in canon, though we do know that Jade was the one to introduce herself to John first. It seems to have probably been, like most online friendships, a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Jade perhaps had seen his pesterchum handle in the clouds of Skaia while she was sleeping. In this universe, John wasn’t in the right place at the right time, and never came across the other three. Jade, if she had originally dreamed of his handle, never saw it. John pursued pranking websites and forums, and some gaming sites, but not any of the sites that would’ve led him to Dave or Jade or Rose. He briefly spent some time on a McConaughey message board until he realised everyone else was a girl and assumed he was gay with a Big Gay Crush on the RomCom heartthrob. He fled pretty quickly.
His relationships with the trolls are pretty much the same, except for Karkat, and he mostly speaks to Vriska. He has a little bit of a crush on her, though it’s tinged with a determination to prove to her that he’s not as stupid as she keeps saying he is (he can’t tell whether she means it or is just trying to antagonize him into being better). Despite her harshness, he does like her, and trusts her not to steer him wrong as far as the game goes. He has alluded to his feelings of not being as cool or interesting as the other kids, and Vriska’s response was that she’d MAKE him cooler and more interesting than them by making him the most powerful. Vriska’s hard on him, in a lot of ways - pushing him to be better, to be the best in the session, to be a hero, to take initiative and not be such a pushover. She was initially pretty disdainful of him, but since she was a troll he wasn’t as afraid of standing up to her, and though his comebacks leave much to be desired, he showed enough spark that she decided he had potential and really set out to make him the most powerful player in the session. Of course, a large part of this was a desire to beat Terezi and her “pet” human, Dave, but John generally appreciated her help (even if he didn’t always like her methods), and that was, of course, nice for her ego. They’ve grown pretty close, as far as these things go - she still taunts him and needles him sometimes, but not as cruelly, and generally to get him moving or fired up. Their most recent conversation was mostly about the morality of killing and Vriska’s regret for killing Tavros even though on Alternia it would have been perfectly justified. While John is horrified that she’s killed so many people, he isn’t horrified of HER, realising that their cultures are just so different that he probably couldn’t possibly fully understand what it means to her to have killed. He does recognize, however, the trust that she placed in him by opening up like that, and that meant a lot to him. She’s definitely harsher with him, but there’s been enough hidden encouragement (or what John reads as hidden encouragement, anyway) and legitimate help (if given with insults on his competency and intelligence) that he considers her a good friend.
His relationship with Karkat is less warm than it became in canon (if any relationship with Karkat can ever be described as “warm”), mostly because he’s more of a pushover, which pisses Karkat off to no end. Also, Dave was the recipient of the majority of Karkat’s trolling, having been Jade’s server player and thus, the “cause” of Jack’s transformation and subsequent terrorization of the trolls’ session. Dave, unfortunately, doesn’t really give a shit, which led to him trolling John from time to time in frustration. Karkat and Dave are not as... close John and Karkat theoretically are in canon, though they’ve come to a bit of an understanding in the name of dealing with this damn session.
He admires Dave quite a lot, though he doesn’t always get his “irony”. Dave is cool, collected, and everything John wishes he could be. John’s also deeply intimidated by Dave, and tends to not speak to him much out of a fear of making an idiot of himself. Dave probably wouldn’t care, but John doesn’t know that. Dave was the one to get his pesterchum handle from Terezi after Jade told him they needed a fourth player - he mentioned it offhandedly and Terezi asked if that “ghosty guy” was playing. Dave asked “what ghosty guy”, Terezi gave him the handle, and Dave sent him a message asking if he had the Sburb beta. Because Dave was already in the medium at this point and a bit distracted, and in a rush to get someone to be Rose’s server player so she didn’t die from forest fire or anything, their conversation was short and rather abrupt, leading John to believe erroneously that Dave didn’t like him when Dave, in fact, had no opinion on him whatsoever. They spoke more later on when John first entered the Medium, during some down time in one of Dave’s time loops, and Dave showed signs of warming up to John, though they never had the chance to really become friends. Dave honestly didn’t have much of an opinion on John initially, other than “seems kind of shy”. As he got into his stable time loops and plans began to be hatched and so forth, he took downtime to (initially) make sure that John knew what was up so that he could help, and then (eventually) to just get to know him a little better. Dave thinks John’s a pretty cool kid (though not a coolkid), in a non-ironic way, though he wouldn’t admit as much to anyone. John’s optimism has started shining through, in his belief that the plan will work, even if he thinks that a suicide bombing out in paradox space is a bad plan, and to be honest Dave is a little jealous of that. Again, not that he’d admit as much to anyone. While John is under the impression that Dave probably thinks he’s a loser, Dave actually thinks that he could be friends with John, even if he’s sickeningly sincere and unironic all the time. Still, their potential friendship hasn’t really had a chance to go anywhere, thanks to the newness of it and the fact that John thinks Dave doesn’t like him much.
Rose kind of creeps him out, to be perfectly honest, and her rather verbose and formal mode of speech almost scared him off being part of their Sburb session. He did change his mind when Rose told him that he was “needed” for their session, but he was very cautious with his actions as her server player, nearly getting her killed because he asked her before he did ANYTHING. Once she was in the Medium and had snarked at him a little for not taking the lead, he went ahead and built her house up without any input from her, but he’s tried to avoid talking to her since if it’s not necessary, partially because he doesn’t want to look (more) like an idiot in front of her after she and Dave invited him to play with them, and partially because... Well, she just creeps him out, dude! Rose is continually frustrated by John - because she creeps him out, though he hasn’t ever told her that, he’s more hesitant than even usual, and she thinks he’s pretty much a brainless pushover. She has no appreciation for people who seem to have no opinion of their own, and generally ignores him. Dave and Jade have both told her he’s not that bad, but she has had no drive to learn whether or not her initial opinions will hold under further interaction. She’s spoken to him recently only to inform him that she needs him to remove The Tumor from Skaia so they can hopefully defeat Bec Noir, and the conversation was brief and impersonal. (It, of course, doesn’t help that she’s been distracted anyway, by her conversations with Doc Scratch mostly.)
Jade is the session-mate he’s closest to, and ironically the one he’s known for the least amount of time. He didn’t speak to her until she contacted him to introduce herself and let him know she’d be his server player. He thinks she’s kind of weird, but very nice, and they had some very friendly chats while setting everything up and shortly after his entry to the Medium. Not long after he entered the Medium is when Prospit was attacked and Prospit’s moon destroyed. Jade saved his dreamself as in canon, and this has engendered a sort of protective streak in him towards her, and he feels like it’s his duty to protect her since she died for him (even only as her dream self) when she hardly knew him. Jade, for her part, thinks John is a nice, fun person that she very much has looked forward to being friends with. She’s watched his Dream Self sleep, and seen him in the clouds of Skaia, and long waited to actually meet him. Ever since they started talking she’s been friendly and cheerful, like she usually is, but it’s been somewhat of a revelation for John, being used mostly to the harsher trolling on forums and such. She laughs at his tentative jokes (after he finally gets into the medium and shyly opens up enough TO joke) and encourages him. She gets a little frustrated with him sometimes because he is pretty self-deprecating, and she thinks he shouldn’t be so hard on himself, and should just be who he is, not try to be someone he thinks people will want to be friends with. But for the most part he’s been most comfortable with Jade out of the three other kids, and it’s her he goes to hoping for a bit of encouragement when Vriska is being too harsh for him to even pretend that there’s encouragement hidden in there. He checks in with her pretty regularly, to make sure she’s okay, and he does start to get a little panicky if she doesn’t answer within a few minutes. He has admitted to her, recently, that he’s pretty sure Dave and Rose think he’s an idiot, and while Jade insisted that wasn’t true, she wasn’t able to convince him that she wasn’t just being nice to him. Their last check-in was a little strained because of it - Jade basically lost her patience with him and yelled at him a little, and while she did apologise for losing her patience, John still wouldn’t believe her, and they ended on a tense and still mildly argumentative note, something John will regret a lot in retrospect when he realises that his Jade isn’t here.
BASICALLY, all of this will basically manifest as John being (at least initially) quieter, less prone to dumb jokes and derpiness (at least out LOUD), and extremely attached/loyal to Jade, while avoiding Rose and not actively seeking any Daves out and being surprised if either Rose or the Daves seek HIM out.
Samples ;
Log Sample:
To be honest, John wasn’t really sure if Rose’s plan was going to work. She hadn’t been very forthcoming with information when telling him what she needed him to do - he wouldn’t even know the Tumor was a bomb if Vriska hadn’t told him. A suicide mission to the middle of paradox space to hopefully blow something up so that Jack wouldn’t be able to kill them all...
John hesitated, staring down the huge pit that he’d drilled into Skaia, and de-captchalogged his Crosbytop, floating it in front of him with the Breeze. He pulled up Pesterchum and had already opened a chat window to pester Vriska when he realised how clingy and incompetent that would seem. What could he say, “hey, vriska, i'm just floating here scared to go down in the big pit i made because i think rose’s plan is bad”? She’d just tell him he needed to be a hero and t8ke initi8ive or something like that, and then tease him for being scared. He didn’t want her to see him scared.
He sighed, closed and re-captchalogged the Crosbytop, and peered down into the pit again. Even this was a bad plan, it was the only plan they had, and he didn’t have any better ideas. Maybe while he was busy doing this, Rose or Dave or Jade were busy coming up with a better plan, and they could let him know later what he should do with the Tumor. He took a deep breath, and dove down into the pit.
Network Sample:
um, hello?
my name’s john, i'm... well, not supposed to be here.
i need to get back, there’s sort of maybe a couple of universes depending on me not totally ruining this plan.
and, um, being here instead of there would kind of count as ruining.