John Egbert

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 his ectobiological mother. 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 Rose, Dave and Jade over the internet. 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 arrives. He HS 2032 (also gets) an awesome Bunny from his friend Dave. He HS 2034 (sets up the first connection) with Rose as his server.

Despite his penchant for video games he initially does not have a firm grasp on the concepts of Sburb and rarely understands what is going on with some of the more technical commands. Despite that, his level of understanding the cipher-based technology. As the first player in Sburb John's peril quickly escalates as the game progresses, and he has limited understanding of what is going on or what he needed to do.

However, he later shows some more proficiency at playing by the game's rules and gets the ingenious idea of combining two punched cards to create a new weapon with the Alchemiter. He then makes other items based on the same principle.

After John HS 2086 (prototypes his kernelsprite) with the harlequin doll his father got him for his birthday the area around his house is hit by a Meteor and engulfed in flames. He HS 2146 (takes a bite of) the Cruxite Apple and enters The Medium, sparing his house from absolute destruction by suspending it on a pillar of rock in the Land of Wind and Shade, the setting Sburb had prepared for his personal quest.

His Dad is kidnapped and initially his only guide in the Medium is Nannasprite and Wayward Vagabond's voice in his head. His house is also overrun by Shale Imps. After messing around in his house fighting imps and ogres for a while John reaches the first Gate, sending him to the surface of LOWAS. He explores his land and begins talking to some trolls.

Terezi is able to trick John into attempting to fight his denizen long before he was ready, and this creates an alternate timeline where John is killed. Dave eventually travels back in time and stops him. The John who died in that timeline later meets deceased Vriska in a dream bubble and date each other for a time before breaking up. This John was eventually obliterated by.

Despite Terezi deceiving him he decides to trust her again, and flies to his second Gate which led to Rose's house. Rose is asleep at the time, so he takes her birthday gift to him, a bunny similar to the one he got from Dave. Tired of waiting for her to awaken he leaves to explore the Land of Light and Rain and finds a small island with a transportalizer, which leads to The Veil. Here he does some ectobiology, creating the kids including himself as paradox clones and giving them gifts.

Initially John's dream self has mostly been asleep, with only brief glimpses of waking up and sleepwalking. This changes when Jack Noir begins The Reckoning and attacks Prospit, causing the moon to come crashing out of orbit. Dream Jade attempts to wake John before sacrificing herself to save his certain death. Dream John wakes after the celestial collision and finds his fallen friend face down on Skaia's Battlefield. He recovers the White Queen's ring from Jade and foresees his destination in the clouds.

Meanwhile his other self, sleeping in the Veil, is saved by an Authority Regulator of Derse. On the Battlefield he receives his birthday present from Jade by a Parcel Mistress, which was the same bunny as his other presents, but this time enhanced with cybernetic upgrades. He is confronted by Jack Noir, who assumes the bunny would continue to help him, but this was a mistake. Jack flees leaving John to wander the Battlefield. Soon he encounters his Dad and Rose's Mom but before reuniting with them he is awakened by Vriska's powers, losing the Queen's ring.

He becomes friends with Vriska whom gives him advice to 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 retrieves his server copy of Sburb to connected to Jade, however he is put back to sleep by Vriska before prototyping her kernel. Later he is seen in mortal danger, as Jack Noir was using his new first guardian powers to destroy LOWAS with green fire.

With WV's help he manages to use his wind powers to do The Windy Thing, puting out the fire on LOWAS. Later on advice of Vriska he goes to sleep on his Quest Bed and is killed by Jack Noir, his dreamself ascending to god tier.

John travels through Skaia in his new form with the Wizardly Vassal and drilles the planet to retrieve The Tumor. He comes across the Courtyard Droll who had been carrying Liv Tyler with him, getting its Warhammer of Zillyhoo. He sends Liv, CD? and WV? to Derse to drop off the Tumor at the moon and gives his wallet to WV?, forgetting it carried his Crosbytop where Jade messages him later about his dad's death.

John finds a grimdarkened Rose descending to the castle where her mother and John's father were slain. They reunite and Rose tries to explain the situation but could only speak in eldritch tongues. Rose leads John to the top of the castle where their parents laid and they encounter Jack Noir, but as their strife began Jack immediately stabbed John. Due to his death being neither just nor heroic, he comes back to life later only to discover a dead Rose. Following Vriska's advice he kisses Rose, allowing her dream self to survive. Then following Karkat's orders John goes to the Land of Heat and Clockwork. It is here that Karkat first trolled John from his perspective HS 4528

Future Karkat explains how to initiate the scratch which John successfully does. Later he is transported to Jade, who had just acquired god tier, and observes as Jade fulfilles Echidna's request traveling to a new session trought the Fourth wall.

Crossing the Yellow Yard
As they begin to cross the Yellow Yard on a Prospitian battleship Jade reveals the journey to the post-scratch session will take three years. She HS 6237 (gives John the option) of sending him to the trolls' meteor so he can spend the next 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, they send HS 6272 (a letter) to the meteor crew.

Later HS 7231 (in the dream bubbles) he encounters Bec Noir and initiate a brief fight where John scores a hit on a distraught Jack before he flees. Wandering through a desert he finds a gold ring in the sand, which he picks up. Tavros claims that the ring is his, but their ownership dispute is broken up by Vriska's arrival.

Vriska informs John about the existence of along with the various plans being proposed to try and stop him from destroying reality. John expresses interest in helping her but is forced awake by another troll. The ring somehow leaves the dream bubbles with him and is still in his hand.

While the ship makes it to the new session John is asleep and encounters Vriska and Tavros again along with other dead trolls. After they enter a skull cave (which looks surprisingly similar to a cherub skull) and find 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 on LOMAX and wanders around, later with the meteor crew (but Gamzee) teleporting in front of him.

Jade then appears, brainwashed by the Condesce, and begins to beat him up, at which point he once again disappears. He realizes that he'd become unstuck in existence from sticking his hand in the treasure and using a combination of wind powers and his new random teleportations he begins to elude Jade. He appears on LOHAC, LOFAF and LOLAR and has a conversation with Rose and Terezi. After telling them what happened before they were separated, he says to believe he may now be able to change established events on the alpha timeline. He eventually ends up in the middle of Dave and Jade's conversations and Dave tells John he can feel he's changing the alpha timeline, due to his instincts as a Hero of Time. This conversation is averted when John's future self appears and takes John away before Dave notices him, sending him away to find Roxy.

In Derse Roxy mentions Calliope and how she's a ghost in danger of being destroyed by. John suggests using his ring to bring her back, but upon returning to the Prospitian ship finds that the ring is missing. He once again zaps away and finds himself in Caliborn's drawing of Homosuck which he is disturbed by. He goes through a series of misadventures in the story and eventually is zapped out to Caliborn's room, where he quickly pieces together that he is behind the horrific comic. The two fight each other, John promptly giving Caliborn a thorough beating before he is zapped away once more, leaving a horrified, bloodied Caliborn behind.

Back to the B2 session he finds himself in the aftermath of a catastrophic massacre. While searching for answers as to what exactly happened he stumbles across a Dirk Strider being consumed by disordered glitches and later a still-alive Roxy cradling the body of Rose. He catches up with them on LOPAN and stands by as Rose speaks her final words before dying. The two discuss how terrible their current circumstances are and get interrupted when a wounded Terezi crash lands into the planet, walks over to John and headbutts him, demanding that he.

The three decide the best chance they have at fixing the current situation is for John to get a handle on his canon-altering powers and seek the aid of Typheus. John encourages Roxy to also go see her denizen. In Typheus's palace John finds him at the planet's core and is accepts the Choice, with Typheus opening the pipes leading to the core causing the oil start flooding the chamber, submerging John and thus preventing him from turning into the breeze to escape. John comes up with a smart option for the quest: zapping away the oil and spread it throughout reality.

He plays the pipe organ in Typheus's palace, thereby completing his quest to free the fireflies and knocking the A6A6 cartridge out. LOWAS is teleported somewhere which appears to be outside of the story. Exploring his land he comes across Roxy, and they discuss the similar Choices they were given. John uses his now-controllable powers to go back to the time when he, Terezi, and Roxy were talking on LOPAN.

John tells his past alternative self to go see Typheus while he and Terezi work out a plan. She writes instructions on her scarf in her own blood, giving John key terms from her memory to zap to those points in her timeline and make subtle changes that would ultimately result in a better outcome. Along other things he retrieves the ring of life before Gamzee could find it and knocks out Vriska before Terezi could kill her. After a short conversation with the trolls John decides he has "messed enough of this timeline" and zaps away.

He goes to his own timeline to zap Roxy and his planet into the new timeline and they arrive on the victory platform where everyone else stands. After some chatting Vriska lets everyone decide who will take on which villain and he goes with Rose and Roxy to fight the Condesce. The Condesce eventually overpowered the kids, however Roxy is able to stealth impale her ending the fight.

John is seen exploring the new world created after Act 7, and notably celebrating his birthdays with his friends, who grow more and more distant with time. John eventually gets a challenge from Caliborn which he accepts. It is implied this leads to the events shown in Caliborn's Masterpiece.

Caliborn's Masterpiece
Years in the future but not many he and the Beta kids confront Caliborn but are sucked into the House-shaped Juju, supposedly trapped forever. It is implied that they are released when Vriska unleashes the Juju at during the events of Act 7.

New Timeline
The John native to the post-retcon timeline was on their version of LOWAS when it exploded in the three-year trip due to pre-retcon John's Choice, and presumably died a heroic death.

Personality and Traits
John's physical appearance could be described as a kid with black messy hair, though it has been revealed that he gels it to look that way. He has an obvious nerdy look about him, a trait inherited from his ectobiological mother. His outfit has a picture of what appears to be Slimer from Ghostbusters but is in fact a Japanese knock-off.

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 also has a long-standing hatred of the brand Betty Crocker and can 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 tends to be a bit of a goofball, making bad jokes and using off-beat humour and subtle irony. He has a typical nerd nature in that he is very passive and follows commands more easily than the others, complying with commands not because of their logical sense but because he was told to. His causes his friends think of him as the leader while he prefers just being their friend.

He is more prone to bad ideas than his friends and is made out to be the butt of a lot of jokes when he chats with them through Pesterchum. He also celebrates the birthdays of his friends, sending them gifts. 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 against his better judgement.

John is by far one of the most inventive of the main characters; 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. He is the most grounded of the main characters, contrasting Rose's bookish, logical demeanor, Dave's unceasing pursuit of transcendent irony and Jade's air-headed, scatterbrained antics. He is also the kindest - Rose is generally very cold emotionally, Dave is quite willing to put the pursuit of irony before consideration for others, and Jade's ideas of kindness tend to be a bit odd, although not out of actual malice.

John proves to be quite generous and spends more time than the others helping his Consorts. This is in special contrast to Rose who actively antagonizes them and intentionally sets about destroying her own planet once she learns their session is null and Dave, who appears to have disregarded them entirely when he wasn't stealing all of their money through the LOHAC Stock Exchange. His post-scratch self is described by Dirk as being and that.

He also has a strong propensity for self-described 'HILARIOUS ANTICS,' and has all of the points on his Prankster's Gambit. All of them. Although Rose and Dave both frequently take potshots at the quality of his jokes and pranks he appears to have a genuine talent for comedy, as his post-scratch self became a world-famous comedian.

Beta Kids
Dave, 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 is seen to have a close sibling relationship with Jade, as he had refused to leave her alone and stayed back with her for 3 years straight. John does think that Dave is cool, but only says this between him and Dave as seen in the birthday note he sent him. On multiple occasions, Dave has described them as "best bros."

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. Additionally, around the time of Seer: Descend John began to show multiple signs of having a romantic crush on Rose. His reactions to Jade asking him if he is "in love with Rose" on HS 5319 (this page) also suggest this. However, after meeting her again three years later John no longer behaves this way around her.

Roxy Lalonde
Mirroring the aforementioned romantic crush John may have had on Rose as well as the relationship between Rose's Mom and Dad Egbert, Roxy's crush on Jake, and even Roxy's crush on Jane's Dad, John and Roxy hit it off upon meeting - John attempts to keep her entertained, and Roxy makes a mental note to mack on John, considering him "possible boyfriend material." When they met again on Roxy's planet after the events of [S] GAME OVER, he attempted to comfort her. Terezi insisted that their awkward goodbyes displayed. They meet again after John finishes his quest and discuss what to do next in terms of the main plot. After several timeline related shenanigans, Roxy is visibly happy to see John return to LOWAS. John hands the ring of life over to an especially happy Roxy, and she in turn grabs John's hand as they venture onward into what can only be assumed to be even more timeline related shenanigans. He describes Roxy to Dave as and. He also stated he felt worse for her after the catastrophic events that they witnessed than he felt for himself. After John tells Dave about his experiences with Roxy, Dave notes these highly probable romantic feelings, telling John that, to which he responds "".

In [S] ACT 7 he is seen walking together with Roxy and Calliope.

Jake English
John quickly develops a friendly relationship with Jake when they meet - they have, among other similarites, a common fondness for movies and similar personalities. John invites Jake to join him, Rose, and Roxy in making plans for dealing with the villains, likely so that he can spend more time with him. He stated that Jake strikes him as.

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. John considers him as his favorite troll.

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.

Having met up after the bloodbath on LOFAF, the two of them began scheming to use John's powers to. Although their plot was successful, Terezi and John still appear to be on bad terms, with Terezi calling him a and belittling him, and John thinking that she's been pranking him, also frequently calling her either weird or insane. After John explains to Dave his interactions with Terezi HS 9390 (here), Karkat insists that John has a caliginous crush on Terezi, although John argues that humans cannot have those kinds of relations. Dave, however, supports Karkat's claim, saying that. John later has mixed feelings about the idea, denying that he is black for her but heavily implying otherwise. It is possible that Terezi returns John's black feelings (or has some sort of other feelings for him), supported when she says to Vriska, HS 9400, and does not finish her sentence. Later, he and Terezi have a conversation which, although we don't get to see what they say, seems to be filled with black flirting and trading insults. When Terezi leaves, John says and then blushes as Roxy looks at him.

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 after their first conversation.

Aradia Megido
John has twice talked to Aradia since joining Vriska's pirate crew. The first time he was introduced to her he questioned her ghostliness to which she responded with her claim to being alive, and the second time he had asked her about her opinions on Vriska's crew's adventure. However, her response, to which he replied "", seemed to have HS 7930 (creeped him out).

Vriska Serket
John's relationship with Vriska is a very complex one. It seems to fluctuate between admiring and disliking her. 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 day's worth of conversations. He referred to her as, suggesting that he forgot about Vriska somewhat, but when he talks to Meenah a little later, he asks her if she has seen Karkat or Vriska (the only two trolls he really got to know well) around, showing that he does remember her more than his conversations with Jade suggested.

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, and went so far as to call her. However during John's retcon shenanigans, he interferes during Terezi and Vriska's standoff, and per future Terezi's directions: prevents the cerulean blooded troll's death by punching her in the face, showing no hesitation in punching her nor in preventing her death. Soon afterwards, he does apologize to the unconscious troll girl for punching her, and admits that it will be neat to meet her alive self, showing that his former hatred for her either diminished over time or was vented out in that punch. After arriving in the new timeline with Roxy, he is happy to see Vriska, saying that, and HS 9430 (compliments) her thought-out plan for taking on all the threats in the session.

Trivia

 * John is the only human kid whose death before ascending to god tier was not by an explosion.
 * John's title "Heir of Breath" may be a play on "Inherit the Wind"
 * John's god tier hood heavily resembles a wind sock.
 * Breath may be used interchangeably with air, a homophone of Heir.
 * It may also be a play on words of his favorite movie, Con Air (Con Heir).
 * 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). John's last name may also be a reference to Ebert, the movie critic, which would be connected to his love of movies.  You would have to ask Cuttlefish, the user who originally named him on the MSPA forum here to see which or if something completely different.
 * 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 which refers to EarthBound, one of the video games that inspired Andrew Hussie to do Homestuck as stated in Book 1 of Homestuck.
 * He is the only character whose screen name has changed at some point.
 * His 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.
 * HS 7843 (This page) confirms that John has a cowlick.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * John's ghost slime shirt is a fictional Asian knock-off of the ghost slime from Ghostbusters. More info on that here
 * He wears black boxers with ghost slimes in ACT 6.
 * The name "Zoosmell" is a reference to some of Andrew Hussie's older blurbs, named Zoosmells.
 * Along with Karkat's Sicklekind specibus, John's Hammerkind specibus is symbolic of communism. They were both the leaders of their respective sessions. This was later HS 7919 (directly referenced) by Dave.
 * On the 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. He can also be seen on the "Five of Wands" card with most of the pre-act 6 cast.
 * John is the only Beta kid to not have had an alternate self prototyped into a sprite at some point.
 * In the credits during Rose and Kanaya's wedding you can spot John in Trickster Mode.