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fudgesicles) wrote2012-01-15 02:27 am
Mostly Harmless App
Name: Indy
Are you over 16?: Yep! (Turning 20 this month)
Personal DW:
butcherpete Email: juiceboxhero@inbox.com
Timezone: GMT -5
Other contact: indigodagger @ Plurk and Twitter
Characters already in the game: Will (
twotwoed ) and Ryouta (nestfriend )How did you find us?: Got enabled over at LJ a few months ago! As to why I decided to app Equius... I NOTICED YOU GUYS HAVE A NEPETA
IC:
Character name: Equius Zahhak
Fandom: Homestuck
Timeline: After the events of Seek the Highblood and being murdered by Gamzee.
Age: 6 Alternian solar sweeps, which is roughly equivalent to 13 in Earth years. There's some hinting that trolls might mature faster than humans, but he's definitely still a teenager in terms of development.
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: Equius is STRONG. Like, super Incredible-Hulk-level STRONG. While most other characters in Homestuck fight with some kind of weapon of choice, or otherwise use magic/psychic powers, this guy prefers to pummel down threats with his bare hands. Most of the time. Sometimes, he clubs the shit out of enemies with broken bow halves or blunt objects. As you'd expect, Equius is very good at beating the shit out of things.
He doesn't have much, but what Equius DOES have--that is, brute strength--should not be taken lightly.
Equius is also pretty handy at building robots! In the comic, he built a pair of robot legs for a paraplegic troll so they could walk again, a robotic arm for another troll, and built a robot body for the spirit of his dead sort-of girlfriend to possess. Also, if he builds robot prosthetics for a person it's possible for him to control the body part to some degree, if he chooses. This is what he did with Vriska's robot arm.
How would they use their abilities?: He can't exactly turn his abilities off, and a lot of the time it's more of a hindrance than a help. Every time he tries to drink milk, he breaks the glass, and he can't hug or initiate any kind of physical contact with his friends lest he accidentally hurt them.
As for building robots, he might use it to help people if he likes you, but mostly he'd do what he does in canon--build robots, set them to kill mode, and then fight them in cage matches to let off some steam. I seriously wish I was making this up.
Appearance: Equius definitely isn't attractive by most people's standards. First of all, he's a troll--a race of humanoid aliens with gray skin, black hair and lips, yellow eyes, and orange horns (that kind of look like candy corn) on their heads. Equius in particular has his long black hair slicked back, as well as horns that resemble arrows (though his left one is broken).
Okay, even if he was human, he probably wouldn't be considered very pretty. While he's very buff for a young teen due to his constant robot cage fighting and training, he also sweats constantly, his hair is rather stringy and oily, and he's often seen with a mouth full of broken teeth from sparring matches that got too rough. The teeth grow back. Usually.
Equius' preferred manner of dress is in sturdy shorts or cargo pants, as well as dark-colored T-shirts/muscle shirts. Currently, he's wearing a black muscle shirt with a blue Sagittarius symbol. (♐) Also, Equius usually prefers to wear his favorite pair of oversized black DEAL WITH IT shades...which are usually broken and taped back together because of his rough handling.
There's two possible reasons Equius wears shades. One is that trolls, being a nocturnal species, have eyes that are very sensitive to light. The other is because of the blue spots under his eye--also known as petechia--that may or may not have come from his killer robots going for the neck. Given that when he's strangled to death he has a huge grin on his face, it's heavily implied he wouldn't mind.
His blood is deep royal blue. I'll be getting to just what that means later.
Background/Personality:
This is going to be one hell of a doozy. You're probably going to want to get a snack or take a bathroom break because Homestuck is not unknown for being ridiculously convoluted.
Years in the past, but not many, there existed a planet in an alternate dimension in paradox space. A planet appropriately known as...
ALTERNIA!
Which was actually a pretty shitty place to live. Every life-form on the planet was considered delicious prey by everything else, the sun was bright and hot and would burn anything that came out during the day, and the entire planet was populated by trolls. Or, to be exact, by children and teenaged trolls; all the adult trolls were off in space, fighting wars of conquest.
Equius was "conceived" as a paradox clone of himself through ectobiology. This means that his ghost genetic sample was taken from him, cloned, and then sent back in time to become himself, creating a stable time loop of cloning. Late in the comic, it's revealed that all twelve of the troll protagonists were created this way. This sure is weird, but the way trolls "normally" reproduce isn't exactly similar to humans either--they do the nasty with their lover (called a matesprit in troll language) and their archenemy (their kismesis), collect the genetic material in buckets, and then send the resulting gloop to an imperial drone. The drone takes it to a fat, insectoid...thing known as the Mother Grub, who combines the resulting incestuous slurry into a genetic grab bag. She then lays eggs to see what she gets.
But who cares about that.
Like all trolls, once Equius was hatched he was in a larval form known as a grub, or a wiggler. After completing many trials and tribulations to prove he was worthy of surviving, and after emerging out of his cocoon as a more humanoid creature, he was assigned a lusus. Instead of parents, young trolls are assigned a creature called a lusus to help raise and protect them, in return for the young troll keeping it fed. This is for three reasons. First of all, the trolls' usual means of reproduction means no one knows who their parents are; secondly, all the adults are off fighting interstellar wars. Finally, an adult's first instinct is to kill a juvenile troll, since it might be a threat to them someday. Because Equius was insanely STRONG from an early age, his lusus was a muscular centaur named Arthuor. It was the only type of creature on the planet strong enough to raise him.
On Alternia, each troll is born into a certain caste, based on their blood color. Red-blooded trolls are the lowest of the low, while trolls with warm-colored blood are still working class. The caste system works its way all across the rainbow, with purple-blooded trolls as the highest nobility and royalty. Purple-blooded trolls are also amphibious and live underwater, so indigo is the highest blood color a land-dwelling troll can have. This entire system is called the "hemospectrum".
You've probably heard the human expression "blue-blooded' to mean an aristocratic person. Well, Equius is a noble--because due to how his species works, he literally has blue blood. This has left him with something of a superiority complex. Equius grew up believing fully in the blood caste system and didn't dare disrupt the flow of society. He was, to be politically incorrect, a young man who "knew his place". Therefore, he saw the lowest blood colors as disgusting and always tried to defer to those of higher blood than him. In fact, he considered it an obligation of high-blooded trolls to boss around those of lower caste. As you could expect, Equius is extremely bossy as a result. He even tries ordering higher-bloods to order him around sometimes, not really understanding how hypocritical this is.
To some degree, Equius also got off on class differences. The most telling of this is his fondness of domination and submission; he takes some kind of twisted pleasure out of ordering around lowbloods and submitting to highbloods. He also becomes aroused by "depravity"--that is, high-class trolls acting crass and low-class trolls acting elegant.
Equius' classism led to him becoming incredibly frustrated with an indigo-blooded boy named Gamzee Makara. Not only did Gamzee not give a rat's behind about the hemospectrum, he was also a drug addict, had the filthiest mouth in the entire cast, and far too relaxed with other trolls for Equius' comfort. Gamzee also may or may not have been a juggalo. I should probably also mention that Equius dislikes unhealthy things such as drugs, alcohol, and junk food--he really does lament how Gamzee pollutes his body with "fizzy bottled sugar and soporific toxins". Equius also dislikes uncouth language. Instead of swearing every other sentence like half the trolls in the cast, he makes use of cutesy euphemisms such as "fudgesicles" and "fiddlesticks". He's also very verbose and has a stilted, formal way of speaking quite a lot of the time. He comes off as a little pretentious, mostly because he is.
Still, he was able to put up with Gamzee enough to talk to him on a regular basis. Their relationship is a bit unclear, though, since on Alternia the word for friend is the same for enemy.
Some time before the events of Hivebent (the troll chapter of Homestuck), Equius met a girl named Nepeta Leijon. She was a ferocious and absolutely adorable cat-lover, and her green blood placed her in the troll middle class--what Equius described as "okay, but not great". Despite their differences, the two became friends, and they eventually entered a partnership together known as moiraillegiance. A moirail serves as their troll partner's platonic soulmate, but they also serve a more important social function: namely, it's an even-tempered troll's job to keep a more unstable troll in line to make sure things don't get too crazy. Now, Equius may seem like a prickly, brutish young man, but he does have a softer side. He's VERY fond of Nepeta to the extent of being overprotective. He doesn't like the idea of her getting hurt or killed, and he doesn't like that she associates with lower-class trolls, believing them to be a bad influence on her.
When we're first introduced to Equius proper, we see him in his hive (the troll equivalent of a house). We're shown his variety of interests, which include collecting "fine art" (Alternia has a noble tradition of painting naked musclebound centaurs with huge...well, you know, apparently) and robotics. Like all the other trolls, he is preparing to play a game called Sgrub. Sgrub is a Sims/Spore-type game with RPG elements and real-life consequences. It was developed by a troll boy named Sollux Captor, based on some old technology found in ruins uncovered by a girl named Aradia Megido. Copies of the game had also been distributed to two other trolls, a boy named Karkat Vantas and a girl named Terezi Pyrope.
Before their session of Sgrub began, the trolls, twelve in all, decided to divide themselves into two teams of six. Nepeta expressed a desire to play on the Red Team, but Equius, believing that red was a horrible color because of its association with lowbloods, goaded her into playing on the Blue Team with him. Equius and Aradia were co-leaders of the Blue team, with Karkat and Terezi co-leaders of the Red team.
As part of a plan to gain absolute control of the Blue team, Equius made a robot body for Aradia (who was actually dead all this time, and played as a spirit) . The body was somehow delivered to the hive of Vriska Serket, a girl who lived in Equius' neighborhood. Vriska also has a robot prosthetic arm that Equius built for her, since she lost her real one in a LARPing accident.
Equius revealed his plans to deliver the body himself, and also that he had a sort-of crush on Aradia. Aaaaand after learning Aradia had some control over him as his server player, he was pretty incensed. Aradia was a filthy lowblood.
Despite Aradia's blood being rust-red and near the bottom of the social ladder, Equius found himself captivated with the young lady, and confused as to how she conducted herself with such poise and grace for a peasant girl. This was not the first time the nuances of blood color would make him confused.
Then Equius felt one of his robots was judging him hard, and punched it out of a window. The robot landed on a doomsday device, triggering an accident that killed both his and Vriska's lusii and blew up his hive.
Now, one of the goals of Sgrub is to pass through seven gates to reach the realm of Skaia. Once a player reaches Skaia, they can arguably be said to have "won" Sgrub. Each player has as a starting point a personalized planet. Once Equius started playing Sgrub, he awoke on his planet-the Land of Caves and Silence-and received his game title: the Heir of Void.
Also, instead of building up to his gates as is intended, Equius decided to STRONGjump through the first two gates instead. After this amazing feat of STRONGness and sequence-breaking, he delivered Aradia's robot body to her door. Little did Aradia know, Equius had built a robot heart into the body that not only pumped blue blood instead of putrid red, but also made Aradia fall in love with him. He probably didn't deliberately cross this line, but instead made the dick move because as a blue-blood, he felt he could do whatever he pleased to the lower classes. Yeah, he's...kind of a jerk a lot of the time.
Aradia caught wise to this and ripped the heart out. Then she punched Equius in the face.
And then she made out with him while in her heartless robot body.
Some time after this event (Equius simply vanishes from the story for a while after that, but it can be assumed he was making his way towards crossing more gates) Equius reached Nepeta's planet, the Land of Little Cubes and Tea. Nepeta was more than happy to see her moirail, and greeting him with tacklehugs. Then Nepeta asks where Aradia went, but Equius has no idea; she just disappeared. The two spend their days battling together on Nepeta's planet LOLCAT for some time.
Equius then vanishes from the main plot yet again (he's a minor character, really) , but long story short, the twelve trolls defeat their game's boss, known as the Black King, and very nearly won their session. However, some human kids in an alternate universe were also playing a session of Sgrub (known as Sburb for the human equivalent) and it caused some disturbances.
Let's back up for a bit. One of the side effects of playing Sburb/Sgrub is that it destroys the universe you live in to create a new one, should you reach Skaia. In the meantime, all players enter the Medium, which consist of Skaia, their own personalized starter planets, and Skaia's two moons of Prosprit and Derse.
Whenever someone falls asleep or gets knocked out while playing Sburb/Sgrub, they awaken on one of two of Skaia's moons as their dreamselves. There is Prosprit, the Kingdom of Light, and Derse, the Kingdom of Darkness, but ultimately both types of dreamselves have one thing in common-if you get killed in the real world while your dreamself is awoken, you can be revived by using your dreamself as an "extra life". If your dreamself is killed while your real body is alive, you're okay, though falling asleep is a bad idea now. And if both your dreamself AND your real self die, you're dead for good.
Now, the trolls' session created our own Earth. However, the disturbances caused by the humans also playing Sburb led to the humans reaping the rewards, while the trolls could never enter the dimension they created.
Instead, the trolls all have to live in The Veil, which is a huge laboratory in a ring of comets orbiting Skaia. While trolling the human characters, Equius lives in a room here with Nepeta. After fleeing to the Veil, Equius built a pair of robot legs for Tavros, a wheelchair-bound troll. It is unclear exactly why he did this, as Tavros has brown blood that puts him at the bottom of the social ladder, but it's most likely that he was goaded into it. Tavros was a good friend of Nepeta before all the unnecessary drama that was Sgrub, and Equius probably helped Tavros out to make Nepeta happy.
As revenge for messing up their session, Karkat has the other trolls troll (the verb) the kids, while his teammate Terezi supports the idea. Yeah, I didn't think that made much sense either.
This goes on for some time as the trolls troll the kids throughout various points in their timeline, as troll chat clients have a mild time-travel element that allows users to message others in the past and future.
Along with Gamzee and Terezi, Equius trolls Dave, one of the human players, while the human boy is busy adventuring in a crocodile temple. While Dave attempts to pull a legendary sword out of a stone, the two of them eventually have a rap battle, which Equius arguably wins.
Not long after this, Aradia, after being reunited with Equius for a short while and having completed her own quest objectives, had her dreamself killed after Derse, her "dream moon", was put under siege. Because she died on a pedestal known as a Questing Bed, and because she had gained all the levels she could in the game, she leveled up to god-tier status. Unfortunately, this led to her robot body blowing up. Equius, believing her to be dead for good, was understandably very upset about this.
And then Gamzee snapped, partly because Dave showed him an Insane Clown Posse music video he considered BlAsPhEmOuS. Either way, Gamzee cut the drugs out of his diet not long after, which...proved to not be a good thing at all. You see, Gamzee the lovable stoner was pretty much useless, but also harmless and one of the more chill trolls. Gamzee the sober troll, however, was a terrible, terrible person who referred to anyone with lower blood than him as a "peasant", and then expressed a rather strong desire to murder everyone so he could paint pictures on the walls with their multicolored blood.
Equius doesn't dislike disturbing the status quo. He's even classist when it comes to bite him in the ass and doesn't benefit him in any way, and the day Gamzee went into murder mode was no different. Soon after Karkat found out Gamzee had gone sober he warned Equius of the danger. Equius, while understandably VERY worried, was also impressed that Gamzee had finally started acting his blood color. And despite his concerns about himself or Nepeta being victims, he doubted he could ever raise a hand to a highblood.
During "Seek the Highblood", Equius heeded Karkat's warning and said goodbye to Nepeta before ordering her to safety. After Nepeta had taken his advice and hid herself in one of the air vents, Equius braced himself for a confrontation with his murderous former friend. It didn't go so well. Gamzee had armed himself with a bow and arrow, and forced Equius to kneel by shooting him in the kneecaps. Then, in a supreme act of irony, Gamzee broke the bow in half and strangled Equius with the bowstring. Even as Gamzee choked him, Equius refused to fight back, believing that he was in no position to defy the wishes of someone higher than him. Because of his great strength, defying his beliefs just this once could have saved his life. But no. He died with a huge, goofy smile on his face, probably due to some form of erotic asphyxiation.
The Heir of Void, void of air.
All in all, Equius is, very much, a bossy, stubborn, snobbish, block-headed brute. But he's willing to put caste differences aside and show a softer side to people he cares about, even if he's a bit grudging about it. He is wary of humans, and almost comically serious-he dislikes "childish" pursuits such as roleplaying, is one of the worst at trolling, and doesn't crack jokes or employ sarcasm. At the same time, Equius is awkward and bumbling, doing what he does because he feels it's mandated by society, and becoming uncomfortable whenever something steps outside his norms. He's also a bit of a pervert and a creepy dude given his unhealthy fascination with domination, submission, and musclebeasts, but hey.Why should that character be in this game: For OCs only.
Why do you want to continue their history here: For characters from other games only.
For applicants considering an alternate version of a character already in game, please use this as your chance to explain the key differences between your character and the one already in play:
Have you read up on how the game works?: Yup! The plugin used to communicate with everyone is the FlamingFerret and the Guide just got upgraded to version 4.2. Equius can earn money by doing missions, opening a business, stealing, or mooching. Except HE IS A GOSHDARNED NOBLEMAN, SERIOUSLY WHAT IS IT WITH YOU PEOPLE AND EXPECTING HIM TO TOIL.
1st person sample:
[TEXT]
D --> Where am I
D --> Oh good grief is this thing even on
[There's a bit of a pause, before the screen goes to static and the feed cuts off. After a few minutes it's on again, and the text continues]
D --> Sorry
D --> Now that I have finished the 100dicrous forms I have been asked to fill
D --> I must inquire as to the whereabouts of my moirail
D --> Her prote%ion is of utmost importance
D --> Also
D --> What f001ishness is this
D --> That I have been assigned to share a pitiful respiteblock with complete strangers
D --> It's
D --> It's FILTHY
D --> Surely the ship's crew can accommodate for more refined tastes
D --> Oh well
D --> I suppose in the meantime I should learn the functions of this device
[More static.]
D --> Oh confound it
3rd person sample:
To be alive one moment, and dead the next, was not such an unusual thing to happen.
But to be dead one moment, and alive the next? Well...not that it didn't happen before, but Equius was certainly wary of things now. There were some sights on this ship that looked familiar, such as the humans, and some that Equius...just didn't want to describe. There was also the sad lack of musclebeasts, but those were concerns that could be addressed later.
All of this paperwork and novelty was making him sweat. He'd appreciated the free towel they'd given him upon arrival, even if that wasn't something he'd said to anyone so far. And that towel, already damp, was serving its purpose well.
...whoops. That was the pen. All of this paperwork had only managed to build up a slow, quiet rage inside him, a rage that grew by the minute every time one of the Vogons provided him with a new pen (and forms to account for the lost one).
"No." he'd said, when he'd had just about enough of it. "No, I've had enough of these trivialities. A nobleman such as myself has little time for your pointless charades."
"Sir," the Vogon secretary (who he supposed was female, but really, who cared) replied, with a voice that seemed to drone on forever, "it's standard refugee procedure. You have to fill out the pink form, the three blue forms, and this green one here, and sign them in triplicate like everybody else."
"If you insist, I'll be appropriately disgusted to comply. I will have you know that I have been ripped from an inconvenient point in my timeline, and the fact that you intend to separate the last of our kind like this is nothing less than nauseating." But despite all the words, Equius dried himself off--as much as he could with a soaked towel, anyway--and continued.
Another pen broke under his fingers. Much as it was an honor to be so STRONG, it really got in the way of...just about everything.
"Fiddlesticks."
Questions?: Are there musclebeasts on the Thor? Also, just how durable is the Guide, because this guy is crazy STRONG.
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yes, I did!
Great musclebeasts tussle, buxom in heft
With thunderous muscle, buttock to spec
Connect blows to discover, how invincible pecs are
Venture low to uncover, his inimitable nectar
Should song serve to placate one
And fortune holds he lactate some
STRONG hands tugging teat make great ambrosia collectors
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jk jk go for it! I miss having a Vriska in this game in any sort of capacity. :)
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Awesome; thank you! <3