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 001901 (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 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. It used to be ghostyTrickster, but he changed it to avoid the Trolls. Oddly, he chose the name ectoBiologist based on a comment by one of the trolls.

His God tier 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.

Biography
John was raised by his Dad, who was genetically his half-brother through ectobiology shenanigans. His dad was generally supportive of his interests, but also had an unhealthy obsession with Harlequins (or so John thought). John made three friends his age over the internet, who would go on to play Sburb with him. The story begins on his birthday, when his copy of Sburb arrived. He also got an awesome Bunny from his friend Dave Strider. He set up the first connection with Rose Lalonde 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 initiated the countdown on the Cruxtruder and 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 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.

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.

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 god-tier.

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.

Due to not having enough time to interfere with the Prospitian ship as it crossed the Yellow Yard, not even with his super-fast author avatar, Hussie decided to just level John and Jade up to the next God Tier, with John rising from Galesmate to HS 6192 (Revenge of Doctor Ragnarok).

During the first year of their ride to the new session, John, Jade, and everyone else on the battleship played through all the games John could think of, finally having to settle on a Ghostbusters MMORPG. While Jaspersprite and Nannasprite celebrated John's birthday, he and Jade talked about her relationship with Davesprite. Jade deflected his questions and asked John about his feelings, whereupon he reveals that he no longer cares about romance, and is now focused on completing their quest. This becomes apparent when he refers to Vriska as "that troll girl who was sort of into [him]".

When Jaspersprite brings in another cake for John, Jade begins to show her dog side by growling at him. John tries to calm Jade down, but he ends up hanging onto her as she chases Jasper across the ship. When Jasper and Jade phase through a wall, John hits it full force, knocking him out. He awakens in the same void that Roxy was in before, where her dream self kicks and steps on his face. Confused about the situation, he is called out by Meenah, who declares that she wants to kill Roxy's dream self. She tosses her 2x3dent at Roxy, but John pushes her away in time. At that moment, The meteor with Dave, Rose, and the rest of the trolls intersect with John's dream, and Karkat and Dave try to warn him to get out of the way. The trident stabs John, causing him to wake up and consequently vanish from the void.

Another year later, John is seen watching Con Air with Jade, Jaspersprite, several salamanders, and some imps, when he suddenly (and shockingly) exclaims to Jade that it sucks. He proceeds to have an arguement with Jade explaining his reasons why, when Jade tells him Davesprite broke up with her. He flips out and explains to Jade that he's been bored shitless on the boat before she finds a note taped to his back, written in glowing orange print indicating it was from Davesprite, mocking the loving notes from his deceased father he would leave around the house. John storms outside pissed and yells at Davesprite, who he was convinced he could see in the sky, then stops caring and falls asleep in his driveway.

Inside a blue dream bubble (at the edge of the devastated and cracked area), a fleeing Jack Noir opens a chest, finding the Pop-o-matic Warhammer of Vrillyhoo near a memory of dead John, dead Rose, dead B1 Dad, and dead B1 Mom. As John falls asleep, he enters the bubble, and the dead John revives and wakes up. He is visibly furious and begins to use his Heir of Breath powers to propel a huge gust of wind towards Jack Noir, causing the hammer to flail about in midair. He swiftly snatches the hammer and clashes weapons with Jack, smashing his sword repeatedly. They exchage a few blows until John finally manages to disarm Jack. Jack however retrieves his sword and ensnares John's neck with his tentacles. Jack, now armed again, pulls John in, stabbing him in the process. Fortunately enough, John was able to avoid the attack by tranforming his entire body into air and materializes behind Jack. About to land the final blow, John gets distracted when he sees Rose watching from the sidelines. She may have accessed the bubble the same way John did: by merging with a dream projection of herself. Her prescence and John's confuses Jack, who remembers killing them both. She reveals herself as a "distaction" (to Jack) when she disappears, and John strikes Jack's head with a 8ONK, causing the Fluorite Octet inside to give Jack a funny hat. The "Ridiculous Hat" is the Bunny Sassace Fedora, which John finds amusing. The two then notice PM hovering above, and Jack facepaws and absconds. (It is not known if John recognized PM here, since she was fully prototyped although still taller than him.) She and Jack fly out of the bubble and into the fractured sky as a confused John watches the hat descend, having blown off Jack's head from the sudden acceleration. Dejected, John wanders the bubble alone until he sees a golden glow on the horizon. Leaving the hammer beside a memory projection of the car, John walks towards the golden glow, which is revealed to be the sky of the Land of Sand and Zephyr. A compass rose from the Land of Maps and Treasure floats in the sky. This implies that the blue dreambubble is the one that was occupied by Tavros and Vriska during the events of DOTA (the Flash at the end of Act 6 Intermission 2) and both before and immediately after they became Tavrisprite. The combination of features also implies that they are still there.

As John wanders further into the memory planet, HS 7273 (three) HS 7274 (flash) HS 7275 (pages) in succession reveal that white horses like the ones Vriska encountered in are present in the bubble. In fact, other than the fact that John is seen in Vriska's place and is walking the opposite direction, the pages mirror DOTA, reinforcing the possibility that this is Tavros and Vriska's bubble. (Hussie did mention in Openbound the phrase "DOTA, uh, again") When approached by one of the horse, John expresses puzzlement. He continues walking, and comes across Tavros, confirming the trolls' prescence. Tavros is lying facedown near the iguana statues as Hussie did. John finds an orbless ring in the sand in front of him, and puts it on his left index finger. Tavros wakes offscreen, having been asleep, and claims he saw the ring first. John disagrees and decides to keep it, even after Tavros explains his plans to use it for proposal, before Vriska comes and the two meet for the first time. She explains the threat of and her plan for using his reality-shattering rampage to lead her through the Furthest Ring to a legendary weapon that can stop him. John shows interest in her idea right before Meenah comes along and begins a HS 7327 (MINISTRIFE) with Vriska, leading up to John getting stabbed yet again and waking up with the ring in hand.

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 (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 "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 Serket 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, 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 did not think any less of her after receiving the shock.

John cares about Vriska's wellbeing, no matter what kind of person she had been, and Vriska also reciprocated those 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 their affection was mutual—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 claims to no longer care about romance, and has now even forgotten everything that he and Vriska talked about.

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 005596 (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 001972 (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 002286 (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.
 * It is interesting that John's title the Heir of Breath is pronounced "Air Of Breath". This is probably a coincidence, but you never know.
 * 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.
 * On the cover of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords manga, John resembles Blue Link with the blue hat/hood and hammer.