John Egbert


 * For the post-Scratch version of this character, see Poppop.

John Egbert is one of the main characters in Homestuck. He is a boy who, according to HS 1901 (this page), has not been given a name until his thirteenth birthday; however, this is just a framing mechanism. In the past, he has ended letters with "-ghostyTrickster (john)". While originally given the name HS 1902 ("Zoosmell Pooplord"), the game rejected it and settled for John.

John uses an online application known as Pesterchum to communicate with his other tech-savvy friends. His chumhandle is. It used to be, but he changed it to avoid the trolls. Oddly, he chose the name ectoBiologist based on a comment by one of the trolls.

His title may be a pun on his associated classical element, because interchanging the first and last words produces "breath of air".

His web browser of choice is Typheus, who coincidentally is the mate of Echidna, the namesake of Jade's web browser.

John's associated Classical element is air, and his Associated Item is oil.

Childhood
John, travelling by meteor, arrived on Earth as an infant, which HS 3783 (resulted in) the death of the woman who he believed to be his grandmother, who was in actuality his mother, HS 3789 (due to) ectobiology. He was adopted and raised by his half-brother who took the role of his Dad. At some point during his childhood, Gamzee Makara HS 5929 (used his chucklevoodoos) on John, causing a doll resembling 3 x prototyped Jack Noir to appear in his dream room on Prospit. This caused John to write self-depreciating remarks and draw pictures of harlequins on his walls while sleeping, however he was not cognizant of these while awake. His dad, who was generally supportive of his interests, began showing an interest in harlequins too, in an attempt to bond with John, but failed to realize John's distaste for them.

At some point John became friends with kids his age over the internet; Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider and Jade Harley. Little is known about this other than Jade HS 4526 (first contacted) John on one of his birthdays. All four would go on to play Sburb together. On HS 3425 (Jade's birthday), after being HS 3428 (harassed) by trolls, John changed his Pesterchum handle from to.

Sburb
The story begins on his birthday, when his copy of Sburb arrived. He HS 2032 (also got) an awesome Bunny from his friend Dave. He HS 2034 (set up the first connection) with Rose as his server.

Despite his penchant for video games, he initially did not have a firm grasp on the concepts of Sburb and rarely understood what was going on with some of the more technical commands, he lacked any sense of understanding game play rules, nor could he fathom the abstract nature of Captchaloguing. Despite that, his level of understanding the cipher-based technology behind Punched cards is remarkable. As he is one of the players in Sburb, John's peril quickly escalated as the game progressed, and he had limited understanding of what was going on or what he needed to do.

However, he later showed some more proficiency at playing by the game's rules, and he has even come up with some ingenious ideas, such as combining two punched cards to create a new weapon with the Alchemiter. He later made a whole bunch of possibly useful stuff based on the same principle.

After John HS 2077 (initiated the countdown) on the Cruxtruder and HS 2086 (prototyped his kernelsprite) with the harlequin doll his father got him for his birthday, the area around his house was hit by a Meteor and engulfed in flames. However, he HS 2146 (took a bite of) the Cruxite Apple and entered The Medium, sparing his house from absolute destruction by suspending it on a pillar of rock in the Land of Wind and Shade.

His Dad was kidnapped, and initially his only guide in the Medium was Nannasprite. Wayward Vagabond began communicating with John from the future, giving him rude commands in ALL CAPS (that is, until he found the caps lock key and learned how to be polite) that manifested as a voice in his head. John often felt compelled to do what the Wayward Vagabond asked of him but refused if the request was too ridiculous. His house became overrun by Shale Imps, which left black trails of sludge and first appeared as ominous pairs of eyes.

Ever since the game started, Rose had seen John's posters as being defaced. John had thought that Imps had created the graffiti, but it turned out that John did it himself long ago. It's also the reason Dad thought John had a love of clowns harlequins. John used Alchemization to remove the graffiti from his Ghost Dad poster and create the Clean Cosby Poster. He later combined that with his computer to create the Cosbytop Computer.

After messing around in his house fighting imps and ogres for a while, he managed to reach the first Gate. This sent him to the surface of LOWAS. He explored his land and began talking to two trolls, carcinoGeneticist and gallowsCalibrator.

GC was able to trick John into attempting to fight his denizen, Typheus, long before he was ready. This created an alternate timeline where John was killed by the Denizen of his land. Since John died, he was unable to get Jade into the Medium, so her fate was unknown. Dave eventually travelled back, stopped John, and prototyped himself, becoming Davesprite, and gave John the code for Fear No Anvil. The John who died in this timeline later met the recently deceased Vriska in a dream bubble, of whom he had no memory other than one conversation which she had out of order on his timeline. They were in relationship for a time, then broke up, and John was eventually obliterated by.

Despite GC deceiving him, he decided to trust her again, and used his rocket to go straight to his second Gate, which led to Rose's house. Rose was asleep at the time, and so he was able to take her birthday gift to him, a bunny similar to the one he got from Dave. Tired of waiting for Rose to awaken, he left to explore the Land of Light and Rain. He found a small island with a transportalizer, which led to The Veil. Here he did some ectobiology, creating Grandpa, Nanna, Dave's Bro, Rose's Mom, Rose, Dave, Jade, and himself as paradox clones. He also had a number of conversations with CG, who explained to him what ectobiology was.

Like Jade, John had a dream self on Prospit's moon. Initially, Dream John had mostly been asleep, with only brief glimpses of waking up and sleepwalking. This changed when Jack Noir began The Reckoning and attacked Prospit, causing the moon to come crashing out of orbit. Dream Jade attempted to wake John before sacrificing herself to save him from certain death. Dream John woke after the celestial collision and soon found his fallen friend face down on The Battlefield of Skaia. He recovered the ring of the White Queen from Jade and foresaw his destination in the clouds.

Meanwhile, his other self, sleeping in the Veil, was saved by an Authority Regulator of Derse. On the Battlefield, he received his birthday present from Jade from a Parcel Mistress, which was the same bunny as his other presents, but this time enhanced with cybernetic upgrades (he later named the bunny Liv Tyler). According to recent updates; it is possible that these upgrades were applied by Jake English, as Jane states that it was a family heirloom that used to belong to his grandma, HS 6029 (here). He was confronted by Jack Noir, who assumed the bunny would continue to help him, but this was a mistake. Jack fled, leaving John to wander the Battlefield. Soon, he encountered his Dad and Rose's Mom. Before he was able to reunite with them, he was awakened by Vriska's psychic powers, thus losing the Queen's ring.

He then became friends with Vriska, who gave him advice so that he would do what he was going to do anyway; all part of her paradoxical efforts to be the guiding hand behind Jack Noir's ascension and eventual (at least in her mind) defeat. He retrieved his server copy of Sburb and returned to his house. Here he connected to Jade. However, before he was able to prototype her kernel, he was put back to sleep by Vriska.

While asleep, he saw the Battlefield undergoing its fourth prototyping, and saw that a Wizardly Vassal had recovered the Queen's ring. He soon woke again, and got up to date by talking to Rose, Karkat, and Vriska. However, he was in mortal danger, as Jack Noir was using his new First Guardian powers from Becquerel's prototyping to destroy LOWAS with green fire.

With WV's help, he managed to use his wind powers to summon The Windy Thing. This simultaneously put out the fire on LOWAS and skyrocketed John to the top of his echeladder. After that, he went to a Salamander Village. On advice of Vriska, he went to sleep on his Quest Bed and was killed by Jack Noir. However, he was HS 4987 (resurrected shortly afterwards) as his dream self, ascended to god tier, and gained the Heir of Breath outfit as a result of dying on his quest bed.

Ascension
After dying on his quest bed, he gained immense control over wind. Vriska claimed that he would surpass her, implying John will become the most powerful of the 16 players. Vriska, however, did not know that the other kids and Aradia would eventually ascend to the god tiers.

John traveled through Skaia in his new form with the Wizardly Vassal, and drilled into the planet to retrieve The Tumor, which he stored in Dad's wallet. He came across the Courtyard Droll, who had been carrying Liv Tyler with him. Liv handed him a note left by Jade's penpal, and John immediately guessed correctly that his grandmother was Jade. After being bonked on the head by a tiny Warhammer Of Zillyhoo, John had Liv hugify the weapon. He decided to be the leader and sent Liv Tyler, CD? and WV? to Derse to drop off the Tumor at the moon. John gave his wallet to WV?, forgetting that it carried his Crosbytop Computer. Jade happened to message him about his dad's fate with Jack Noir as the group departed.

John took notice of grimdarkness occurring nearby, which was Rose descending to the castle where her mother and John's father were slain. They reunited and Rose tried to explain the situation but could not as being grimdark made her speak in eldritch tongues. Rose led John to the top of the castle where their slain parents laid. They encountered Jack Noir, but as their strife began, Jack immediately stabbed John. John died in what is clearly the most cowardly death ever. Due to the fact that his death was neither just nor heroic, he came back to life after Jack left, only to discover a dead Rose. Following Vriska's advice, he kissed Rose, allowing her dream self to survive. Then, following Karkat's orders, John went to the Land of Heat and Clockwork. It is here that Karkat first trolled John from his perspective.

Meanwhile, future Karkat explained how to initiate the Scratch, which John successfully did. He remained atop the Beat Mesa in order to prevent any interference from minions. After easily dispatching them with his Heir of Breath powers and a Pop-a-matic Vrillyhoo hammer, he was transported to Jade, who had just acquired god tier. From here on, he observed as Jade fulfilled Echidna's request and prepared the journey to a new session via the Fourth wall.

Crossing the Yellow Yard
As HS 6195 (they begin) to cross the Yellow Yard on a Prospitian battleship, Jade reveals that the journey to the post-scratch session will take three years. She HS 6237 (gives John the option) of letting her send him to the trolls' meteor, so he can spend the next three years with Dave, Rose, and the trolls, but he declines, since Jade can't accompany him and he doesn't want to abandon her. Instead, he uses her powers to send HS 6272 (a letter) to the meteor crew.

Throughout the first year of the voyage, the inhabitants of the battleship - John, Jade, the three remaining B1 sprites, and several consorts, carapacians, and underlings - pass the time by playing some of John's video games, but by HS 6629 (the end of Year 1) they have exhausted his library and are forced to play his Ghostbusters II MMORPG. While John and Jade play, Jaspersprite arrives with a birthday cake for John, causing Jade's dog instincts to kick in. She chases the sprite across the ship, and John's attempt to stop her results in his being knocked unconscious. In the dream bubbles, he encounters Roxy's sleepwalking dream self and the ghost of Meenah. Meenah throws her trident at Roxy with the intent of killing her, but John saves Roxy by jumping into the trident's path and getting stabbed in her place, which forces him to wake up.

One year later, on his fifteenth birthday, John celebrates by HS 7181 (watching Con Air) at his house with Jade, Jaspersprite, and some salamanders and imps, only to discover that he no longer likes the movie. His frustration is further increased when he learns that Davesprite has broken up with Jade, and he explains that being trapped on the battleship for so long with few people to talk to is beginning to take its toll on him. When he finds a prank note from Davesprite parodying Dad's encouraging notes, John's irritation turns into anger, and he runs outside and screams at a not-present Davesprite before abruptly falling asleep in the middle of the driveway.

HS 7231 (In the dream bubbles), he encounters Bec Noir and initiates a duel with him. After a brief fight - during which John demonstrates a new ability to turn into wind and scores a hit on Jack when the latter is distracted by Rose briefly entering and exiting the bubble - Noir flees when PM catches up to him, leaving John to explore the bubble by himself. Wandering through a desert, he eventually comes across a sleeping Tavros and a gold ring in the sand, which he picks up. Tavros awakens and claims that the ring is his, but their ownership dispute is broken up by Vriska's arrival.

Vriska informs John that she died two years earlier and reveals the existence of to him, along with the various plans being proposed to try and stop  from destroying reality. She explains her own plan (embark on a treasure hunt to locate a legendary weapon rumored to be 's one weakness) and John expresses interest in it, but he is forced awake when HS 7327 (Meenah arrives) and, remembering her previous encounter with John, throws her trident at him again. HS 7333 (Upon awakening), he realizes that the ring somehow left the dream bubbles with him and is still in his hand.

In the New Session
One year later John's ship makes it to the new session, with the ship emerging on LOMAX. However, John was asleep, causing him to appear floating above the cracks of 's rage in the Furthest Ring. There he encounters Vriska and Tavros again, along with several other dead trolls (and the living Aradia and Sollux), sailing in a naval fleet on the cracks. Vriska reveals to John that the legendary weapon had been located where they started searching the entire time. After they enter a skull cave (which looks surprisingly similar in appearance to a Cherub Skull) and finding the treasure, John sticks his arm in it. Throughout past panels of Homestuck, John's arm appears many times. Eventually his dream projection disappears, and his waking self begins teleporting wildly throughout many other panels. Eventually he ends up back on LOMAX and wanders around, but finds no one. After a long series of events, WV, Kanaya, Dave, Karkat, Rose and Terezi teleport in front of him.

Jade then appeared, brainwashed by the Condesce, and began to beat him up, at which point he once again disappeared. He then realized that he'd become unstuck in existence, from sticking his hand in the treasure. Using a combination of his wind powers and his new random teleportations, he begins to evade Jade. He appears later by Dave while running from Jade, catching him laughing. When asked by Dave, he reveals that he knows what's been going on, despite everyone else suffering from short-term memory loss. Before he can say anything though, Jade appears and he has to move again to prevent capture.

He also appears in front of Kanaya, Karkat, Jade, and Jane on LOFAF, where he witnesses Jane kill Karkat. John begins screaming and Jade tackles John. However, John is relieved when he witnesses Jane bring Karkat back to life, at which point John disappears again.

He finally appears in front of Rose and Terezi on LOLAR. He manages to clear away much of the stardust around the planet, and has a conversation with Rose and Terezi. After calling Terezi a nutjob and telling them what happened before they were separated, he explains his belief that he is 'unstuck in existence' as well as the implications of this; he believes he may now be able to change established events on the alpha timeline. Just after this, Jade turns up again and John is forced to flee, but not before promising Rose that he would find Roxy.

He eventually disappears backwards through time, ending up in the middle of one of Dave and Jade's conversations. Dave tells John that he can feel he's changing the alpha timeline, due to his instincts as a Hero of Time. They then talk about John's new abilities and how they relate to time travel. However, this conversation is averted when John's future self appears and takes John away before Dave notices him. John's future self seems annoyed with him, and sends him away to find Roxy.

John appears in Jake's jail cell, where he turns into breath and blows away all the glitches before finding Roxy and telling her about his adventure thus far, at her request. While talking to her, he wonders if he's boring her, while unbeknownst to him she wonders if he'd be a good boyfriend. After Roxy mentions Calliope and the fact that she's a ghost in danger of being destroyed by, John suggests using the Ring of Life to bring her back to life, saying he'll get it to her eventually. John then leaves. Upon returning to the Prospitian ship, John finds that the ring is missing. He once again zaps away, and finds himself in Caliborn's drawing of Homosuck Act 2, which he is disturbed by.

Personality and Traits
John's physical appearance could be described as a kid with black messy hair. He has an obvious nerdy look about him, a trait he may have inherited from his bucktoothed grandmother (Who actually turns out to be genetically his mother, while his adoptive father is actually his half-brother). His outfit usually consists of a white shirt with a picture of what appears to be Slimer from Ghostbusters but is in fact a Japanese knock-off, shorts and a belt, and black sneakers.

He wears a pair of rectangular glasses. He has briefly worn other items, such as an attempted disguise, and for some time he wore a teal suit with the green slime ghost on it, a tie, and long pants. This was a combination of the suit (a birthday present from his Dad), his normal shirt, and the "Wise Guy" book created during John's HS 2955 (last alchemization session). He then began wearing the Junior Ectobiologist's Lab Suit, a light green lab coat over dark green shirt and pants, with yellow shoes and a green slime ghost belt. Vriska later outfitted him in an ensemble reminiscent of her own. After achieving the level of god tier, he wears an all blue ensemble featuring a hoodie with an abnormally long hood.

John's interests are movies (especially Con Air), web comics, and video games. He enjoys paranormal lore and magic tricks, the latter of which he also performs. He owns a computer and likes to make programs, no matter how bad they may be. He is left handed (when not spriteflipped), allergic to peanuts, and has a long-standing hatred of the brand Betty Crocker. He can also play the piano quite well.

His room has various items to support his hobbies, such as a Magic Chest filled with trick objects. His walls are littered with posters of movies, web comics, and video games. Notably, his collection of items when colored are typically green, but John associates himself with the color blue.

John initially starts with the Stack Fetch Modus for his Sylladex and has little knowledge of other Modi available. After retrieving a free Queue Modus from his Data Structures textbook, he found he was unable to switch back to the Stack Modus until he found the physical modus card underneath his magic chest. Later, he found an Array modus card in a present from Dad, and then combined all three and made an Array of Queuestacks with the Modus Control Deck. You might call them John's Queuestacks.

His first Strife Specibus was specified with the Hammerkind Abstratus, meaning he was able to wield only hammers during Strife for the rest of the game. After breaking his sledgehammer during a fight with a Shale Imp, John grabbed the handle and used it during his attack.

This caused the Abstratus to temporarily reset to handlekind, which had a side-effect of removing the head of his claw hammer and leaving the handle. Repairing the sledgehammer caused the Abstratus to return to hammerkind, at which point the claw hammer handle was ejected from the Specibus. John also gained a second Strife Specibus of bunnykind, used by the Shale Imp and dropped after its defeat, which he placed along with his hammerkind Specibus into his Strife Portfolio.

John tends to be a bit of a goofball, making bad jokes and using off-beat humour and subtle irony. John has a typical nerd nature in that he is very passive, and he follows commands more easily than the others, complying with commands not because of their logical sense but because the command told him to.

He is more prone to stupid ideas than his friends and is made out to be the butt of a lot of jokes when he chats with them through Pesterchum. John's inner nature drifts toward an overall good guy, more out of necessity to avoid his father than moral obligations. He even celebrates the birthdays of his friends, Rose, Dave, and Jade. (Naturally, he sent them gifts: some knitting needles, Ben Stiller's sunglasses, and pumpkin seeds, respectively.) John has a tendency to be given commands about making noises and shitting on things. Fortunately, he hasn't complied with any of these, though he often seems to consider them.

While not the most intelligent or imaginative of the main characters, John is by far the most inventive; from the beginning, he shows more innovative prowess in combining items than any of the others, even before the introduction of the alchemiter; he demonstrates this with his poster-nailing and harlequin-funniness-amplifying abilities.

Beta Kids
Rose and Jade are his best friends, and have been for quite some time. None of their feelings for each other has changed since the session has started, although he does think Rose has gotten crazier, and has half-jokingly sworn to rescue her from the clutches of evil caused by her commune with the deep ones. John does think that Dave is cool between him and Dave as seen in the birthday note he sent him. Dave appears to be his favorite friend out of them and John tends to talk to him more and get along better with him than the girls. This may be due to the fact he is the only other human male out of the four kids. He and Dave are still simply platonic canonically. He appears to be nervous about Karkat's idea of him marrying Rose; although, John has brought up the shipping grid and marrying Rose on quite a few occasions, despite his supposed hesitance.

Karkat Vantas
His relationship with Karkat has sort of become a duo of hate and friendship. John now enjoys all of Karkat's hate filled rants because of the sheer 'insane trolling' Karkat is capable of. While not his patron troll, Karkat has trolled him backwards through almost every step of his journey. After he finished his backwards trolling, Karkat's feelings toward John became far less antagonistic, and he has even apologized for all his bad behavior to him and his friends.

Terezi Pyrope
His talks with Terezi have been strained at best. The first time they talked, Terezi threatened to kill him as a prank, which caused him to change his Pesterchum handle. Later on, he gets involved in Terezi's plot to mess up the timeline, although they constantly antagonized each other. Since Dave has started working together with Terezi, she has stopped talking to John for the most part, as Vriska became his new patron troll. Since it has been a while since they talked, it is unclear whether they are on good terms or bad terms.

Kanaya Maryam
John has talked to Kanaya twice: first (from his perspective) months in the past, and second during Sburb through Rose's account. John said she was "kinda cool" after their first conversation.

Vriska Serket
John's relationship with Vriska is a very complex one. At first, Vriska decided to help John on his quest as a means of competing with Terezi, who was helping Dave. Vriska was very bossy and a control freak towards John at first, which he found kind of annoying, but he still enjoyed talking with her. Vriska and John's feelings developed deeper: John used more of her typing quirk to please her, Vriska made an outfit for John that she said makes him totally hot, and John showed her Nicolas Cage, who became her fangirl crush. However, after Vriska killed Tavros, Vriska opened up more of her feelings than she had with anybody else. She held John's opinion of her in highest respect, fearing that he would be angry with her. She has told him about not only her remorse for killing, but how her views of killing compared to those of troll society, how much she admired humans for being weaker but nicer, and her entire background. Though he was a bit freaked out after hearing that Vriska had murdered twice and killed thousands to feed her Lusus, he didn't seem to think less of her after receiving the shock.

John was shown to still care about Vriska's wellbeing afterwards, and Vriska reciprocated these feelings, hoping that John would get strong enough to stop Jack and protect their friends in case she died trying to fight him. Before her death, Vriska asked John out on a date, confirming that Vriska's feelings for John were red after all. John accepted, but Vriska was killed by Terezi, leaving a visibly shaken Karkat to look through their last pesterlog and respond through her account. After switching to his own account, he asked John if he genuinely liked Vriska, upon which John confirmed he did—prompting Karkat to withhold the information of Vriska's death and the specifics of Gamzee's rampage for now to avoid distracting John from the important tasks at hand. During the ride to the new session, John claimed to no longer care much about romance. When Jade asked what this meant about Vriska, he said HS 6636 (he barely remembered) what he and Vriska talked about, and that is was a bit silly to base a romance on just a days worth of conversations. He later met Vriska's ghost in dream bubbles twice, and after seeing she was using the other dead trolls' ghosts as bait to defeat, he began to be somewhat disturbed by her, considering her to be dangerous. He confessed to Roxy that he was beginning to think he might actually "".

Trivia

 * John's god tier hood heavily resembles a wind sock.
 * John's ghost slime shirt is a reference to an Asian knock-off of the ghost slime from Ghostbusters. More info on that here
 * John may be named for James Dallas Egbert III, a student at Michigan State University who was incorrectly alleged to have disappeared into the school's steam tunnels for reasons related to the role-playing game Dungeons &amp; Dragons (D&amp;D). Though, you'd have to ask Cuttlefish, the user who originally named him on the MSPA forum here.
 * John's eyes are HS 5596 (blue), matching his Pesterchum text. He was the third kid to have his eye colour shown.
 * Birthday-wise, his astrological sign is Aries. All of the other Kids other than Jane are Sagittarius.
 * John has a severe allergy to peanuts, shown HS 1972 (here). Jake shares this allergy.
 * John's current screen name, ectoBiologist, has the initials EB. EB may also refer to EarthBound, one of the video games that inspired Andrew Hussie to do Homestuck. This may or may not be a coincidence.
 * John's address (21605 Fir Dr, Maple Valley, Washington) is a real place.
 * In one of HS 2286 (his pesterlogs) with Dave, the word "white" was changed to "Íæûë€Å" (part of it was removed; it tripped the spam filter with a particular character), until being changed back.
 * John's hair was different from HS 1901 (the first page) until HS 2790 (==>), when he is next seen with his current hair from HS 2808 (John: Resist great urge to take the wedged shale) onwards.
 * John's title "Heir of Breath" may be a play on "Inherit the Wind"
 * HS 6638 (This page) and HS 6639 (this page) are reference to Ghostbusters, where a cart chases a slimer down a hall when provoked by Stantz, where in the panel shows John (Cart) crashing into the wall when holding onto Jade (Stantz), who was following Jaspers (Slimer). When the slimer hit the wall, it revealed a green slime covering it, similar to the pink slime left by Jaspers.
 * The name "Zoosmell" may be a reference to one of Andrew Hussie's older blurbs, also named, Zoo Smell.
 * Along with Karkat's Sicklekind specibus, John's Hammerkind specibus is symbolic of communism.
 * They were the leaders of their respective sessions.
 * Furthermore, this was later HS 7919 (directly referenced) by Dave.
 * HS 7843 (This page) confirms that John has a cowlick.
 * On the HS 1893 (first page) of Homestuck Beta, it says John was born on April 10th and was 10 years old. In the final version of Homestuck, he was born on April 13th, and was 13 years old.
 * John is depicted on the "XII: the Hanged Man" card, the "XVII:The Star" card with Rose, the "XIX: The Sun" card with WV, and on the "XXI: The World" card with all four B1 kids in the Homestuck Tarot card deck.