John Egbert

John Egbert is the main character in Homestuck. In the Incipisphere, his planet is the Land of Wind and Shade.

Biography
John is a young boy who has not been given a name until his thirteenth birthday. While originally given the name "Zoosmell Pooplord", the game rejected it and settled for John. Although Andrew asserts that John did not previously have a name, a scene that occurs "months in the past" sees two other characters referring to him as "John."

His 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 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 is currently 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.

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.

John uses an online application known as Pesterchum to communicate with his other tech-savvy friends. His Chumhandle is "ectoBiologist" now; 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 three friends 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. His web browser of choice is Typheus, who coincidentally is the mate of Echidna, the namesake of Jade's web browser. (See Homestuck Kids.)

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.

John's Associated Item is oil.

His Dad has been kidnapped, and his only guide in the Medium is the 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 said to have been killed by the Denizen of his land. At this point only Dave and Rose appear to have survived. Dave eventually traveled back, stopped John, and prototyped himself.

For a long time, John's preferred weapons were his trusty Pogo Hammer and Wrinklefucker, which he would occasionally dual-wield. Later on, Alternate Future Dave told John the code for Fear No Anvil.

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.

John's Associated Classical Element is wind, judging by his web browser and the calm, breezy weather outside his house. The fact that he is now in the Land of Wind and Shade further accredits this.

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.

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.

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 & Dragons (D&D). Though, you'd have to ask Cuttlefish, the user who originally named him on the MSPA fora here.

Birthday-wise, his astrological sign is Aries.