John Egbert

John Egbert is the main character in Homestuck. He is a young boy who, according to HS 001901 (the first page), has not been given a name until his thirteenth birthday; however, this is just a framing mechanism. While originally given the name HS 001902 ("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 ectoBiologist, but it used to be ghostyTrickster. He changed it to avoid the Trolls. Oddly, he chose the name ectoBiologist based on a comment by one of the trolls.

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 wind, and his Associated Item is oil.

Biography
John's physical appearance could be described as a short stumpy 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 (though the shirt modeled after John's you can buy in the store is light blue) 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 &quot;Wise Guy&quot; 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 Serket later outfitted him in an ensemble reminiscent of her own.

John's interests are bad movies, 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 time nemesis with 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 more with the color blue.

He has three friends that he plays Sburb with. They are known as Rose Lalonde - "tentacleTherapist", an intelligent and secretive girl with an interest in the Lovecraftian, Dave Strider - "turntechGodhead", a cool bro dedicated to the pursuit of irony, and Jade Harley - "gardenGnostic", an excitable narcoleptic girl who can see the future in her dreams.

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 Kind Abstrata of hammerkind, 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.

After John initiated the countdown on the Cruxtruder, the area around his house was hit by a Meteor and engulfed in flames. However, he 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 his initially only guide in the Medium is Nannasprite. Wayward Vagabond has begun 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 manifest as a voice in his head. John often feels compelled to do what the Wayward Vagabond asks of him but will refuse if the request is too ridiculous. His house is now overrun by Shale Imps which leave black trails of sludge and first appeared as ominous pairs of eyes.

In the future of an alternate timeline, John was killed by the Denizen of his land. Since John was unable to get Jade in the medium, she died as well. Dave eventually traveled back, stopped John, and prototyped himself, becoming Davesprite.

For a long time, John's preferred weapons were his trusty Pogo Hammer and Wrinklefucker, which he would occasionally dual-wield. Later on, Davesprite told John the code for Fear No Anvil. He then becomes friends with Vriska and she gives him a new outfit.

Shortly after Jade's entry, 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 resurrected shortly afterwards as his dream self with help from the fireflies, gaining a special wind garb as a result.

After dying on his quest bed, he gains immense control over wind. Vriska claims he will surpass her (or has already), implying John will become the most powerful of the 16 players, with the possible exception of Aradia.

John travels through Skaia in his new form alongside the Wizardly Vassal, and drills into the planet to retrieve The Tumor, which he stores in Dad's wallet. He comes across Courtyard Droll? who has been carrying Bunny with him. John notices Liv Tyler carrying the kid's ultimate weapons and hugifies the Warhammer Of Zillyhoo. Liv hands him a note left by Jade's Penpal, and John immediately correctly guesses that his grandmother is Jade. He decides to be the leader and sends Liv Tyler, CD? and WV to Derse to drop off the Tumor at the moon. John idiotically gives his wallet to WV, which carries his Cosbytop Computer. Jade happens to message him about his dad's fate with Jack Noir as the group departs.

John takes notice of grimdarkness occuring nearby, which is Rose descending to the castle where her mother and John's father were slain. They reunite and Rose tries to explain the situation but cannot as being grimdark made her speak in eldritch tongues. Rose leads John to the top of the castle where their slain parents lie. They encounter Jack Noir, but as their STRIFE begins, Jack immediately stabs John. John dies in what is clearly the most cowardly death ever. He returns to life to be trolled by Karkat on the Land of Heat and Clockwork, likely because his death didn't count as heroic.

Personality
John tends to be a bit of a goof, making bad jokes and using off-beat and subtle irony to make humor. 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 with his chats to them through Pesterchum. John's inner nature drifts toward an overall good guy, more out of necessity to avoid his father than because of 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 taking shits 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.

Also, in a conversation with Karkat, it is revealed that John is not homosexual, thus in theory sinking a hundred ships and in practice sinking none.

Sburb
John does not have a grasp on the concepts of Sburb and rarely understands what is going on with some of the more technical commands. Despite his penchant for video games, he lacks any sense of understanding game play rules, nor can he fathom the abstract nature of Captchaloging. Despite that, his level of understanding the cipher-based technology behind Punched cards is remarkable. Being that he is one of the players in Sburb, John's peril quickly escalates as the game progresses, and he has no understanding of what is going on or what he needs to do.

However, he later shows 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 makes a whole bunch of possibly useful stuff based on the same principle.

John will fulfill the role of "Heir of Breath" mentioned in Nanna's Note to him at the end of Act 2, since not only is he the "heir" of his father (a role unshared by any of the other kids) but he is also associated with Air/Wind elementally, which logically connects to breath. John's role is later confirmed by Nanna in the opening of Act 4.

It has also been shown that, like Jade, he has a Dream Self on Prospit's moon. Dream John has 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 choosing 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.&nbsp

Ever since the game started, Rose has seen John's posters as being defaced. This, plus a flashback showing John's calendar defaced in a similar manner, may be another sinister facet of Sburb. It appears that the changes made in the present are retroactive, which is rather disturbing. John thought that Imps had created the graffiti, but it turned out that John did it himself long ago. The writing is somehow related to his Dream Self trying to express itself. It's also the reason Dad thinks John has 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.

Relationships
Rose, Dave 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. He is a little uncomfortable with Karkat's idea of him marrying Rose.

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. However recently, Karkat's feelings toward John have been far less antagonistic, and has even apologized for all his bad behavior to him and his friends.

His talks with Terezi have been strained at best. The first time they talked, Terezi threatened to kill him as a prank. 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.

John's relationship with Vriska is a very complex one. At first, Vriska decides to use John as a means of competing with Terezi, and her guiding him and Dave on their quest. Vriska is 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 sort of develop deeper, as John uses more of her typing quirk to please her, Vriska making an outfit for John that she says makes him totally hot, and John showing her Nicholas Cage, which has now become her fangirl crush. However, after Vriska kills Tavros, Vriska opens up more of her feelings then she has on anybody else, now holding John's opinion of her in highest respect, outright fearing him abandoning her. She has told him on not only his remorse for killing, but her views of killing compared to troll society, how much she admires humans for being weak but nicer, and her entire background. Even after hearing that Vriska has murdered twice and killed thousands to feed her Lusus, he does not think any less of her after receiving the shock. John seems to care about Vriska's wellbeing, no matter what kind of person she has been, and Vriska also reciprocates those feelings, hoping that John gets strong enough to stop Jack and protect their friends in case she dies trying to fight Bec Noir.

Trivia


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.

Birthday-wise, his astrological sign is Aries.