Cosmographia Application
Jan. 18th, 2016 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabbunctiousPlayer:
Name: Asher, he/him
Contact Details:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
asherdashery, AIM: asherdashery
Other Characters?: N/A
Character
Character Name: Li'l Sebastian
Canon: Homestuck
Canon Point: A while after he sinks to the bottom of the ocean during the Alpha kids' entrance to SBURB.
Type: Canon character
Age: Oh god I don't know. He was a stuffed animal in a museum for over four hundred years, and then Dirk Strider built him into a robot rabbit for Jane Crocker's thirteenth birthday, which would make his robotic existence about two and a half years old. His AI appears to be bordering on independent sentience, but he doesn't have the self-awareness of Li'l Hal, so I generally rank his intelligence on, like, the elementary school child level. So Seb's age is honestly just a big fat series of question marks.
History/Key Points: In the movie Con Air, Cameron Poe, a street-tough maverick with nothing to lose, fights his way through a menagerie of bad guys and vehicular wrecks in order to reunite with his loving wife and child and give the little girl a stuffed bunny.
Li'l Seb is that bunny.
In the Alpha instantiation of Earth in the Homestuck universe (it's a long story with a lot of weird timeline shenanigans), celebrity figure and media mogul Dave Strider received the bunny as a gift, presumably from his Hollywood friends. He put the bunny in a museum where, preserved for about four hundred years against the apocalyptic horrors waged upon the planet by the alien Empress who took over management, it remained until Dirk Strider, the last human boy alive, obtained it with help from his friend Roxy Lalonde.
Dirk then built the bunny into a small robot as a thirteenth birthday present for his friend Jane Crocker, who happened to live four hundred years in the past--so a contemporary of Dave's rather than Dirk's. Dirk sent the bunny back in time to her, where it served, as most stuffed animals are meant to, as a gesture of affection, an object of comfort, and a really badass combat-ready bodyguard who just happened to be totally adorable.
Dirk is kind of a weird kid.
The bunny spent the next two and a half years with Jane and caused her no end of trouble, as small, mobile things tend to, but his most important period of life was a single day in the fall of 2011. Jane reactivated him to help her dodge her dad, move obstacles, and help her start playing a game that transported her and her friends from one universe to another.
After entering the Medium, where the game, SBURB, is played, Seb took orders both from Jane and Dirk's AI Auto-responder to help ensure that all the players got safely into the game. In so doing, he followed Jane to Derse, where he watched her get skewered by a final-boss attack called the Red Miles. Dirk then ordered him to save Jake, which Seb did by grabbing him and rocketing back to Jake's monster-infested island. He'd almost made it when a dragon knocked Seb into the ocean where he sank to the bottom and was lost forever until some unknown point in the far future when a group of temporally dislocated badguys picked his rusted, battered, but still-functional bunny body up. He is now assisting them in their quest for world anime domination.
The MSPA wiki has an abridged bio of Seb here as well as a chronology of the different bunnies further down the page. There are a lot of time loops, but mostly Seb isn't actually part of them.
Personality:
So Seb is, first and foremost, meant to belong to someone. Even if he weren't a robot programmed to protect and assist his master, the very core of what he is under all the steel and wiring is a ragged stuffed animal, a symbol of a fictional father's undaunted and enduring love for his family. This makes Li'l Seb aggressively and exclusively loyal, willing to put in whatever it takes to ensure that his person gets what they need to be successful and happy. He'll help other people should the need arise, but his lookout is always pretty explicitly That One Person.
Because he's been designed by a guy who likes to solve his problems through rigorous application of swords, that devotion often manifests in literally hack-and-slashing his way through obstacles. Unlike some of Dirk's other creations, though, Seb isn't violent by nature. His destructive tendencies never come from malevolent intent. He's just single-minded, equipped with a uranium heart that won't quit and too much restless energy for his tiny body to contain. He doesn't always understand that his actions may turn out to be problematic, and some of his instincts are...interesting. He's part killer robot, part rabbit; he'll burrow into a dead body for warmth and safety. He's the Energizer Bunny reimagined for the apocalypse.
Perhaps because of that--and because he was built by someone who lived post-apocalypse with no actual socialization--Seb has little respect for human niceties. He'll sleep inside your taxidermied grandfather's fluff-filled tummy and cost your father a fortune in corpse repairs. He'll toss a refrigerator through a wall because he's too antsy to hold still beneath its weight. He'll do what's best for his people, but according to his own mental calculus, not theirs. (In this, he takes a bit after his creator.)
Seb's a fidgety, childlike, simple soul with only two settings: Give him something to do now now now, or let him sleep. He gets bored easily and doesn't pay any mind to others' exasperation. He listens to those who are strong-willed and collected under pressure--which probably says more about the boy who programmed him than Seb himself--but otherwise just does his own thing until he's needed.
And these little bits of personality are proof of his burgeoning personhood--a companion 'bot without self-awareness would just follow orders, while Seb analyzes the sense of them and follows their heart rather than their letters, as long as they align with his prime directives to protect and enable his people to do their best. And as long as he's not being a rascally asshole.
He does, however, still require those prime directives in order to function. Without purpose, he doesn't know what to do. He's even willing to serve Homestuck's most powerful villain just so that he has someone he can help. Without something to do, he might as well just shut down and sleep for a thousand years. He is nothing without people. And that's one of the things I want to explore with him at Cosmographia: What was once a doll and then a shield can have the ability to become a person in his own right.
Gem: Banded Agate (info)
The main reason I chose agate is that it can contain the signature colors of both of the most important people in Seb's life: orange for his creator, Dirk, and blue for Jane, his owner. Seb is not just a homemade present from Dirk to his dear friend, nor is he a fun toy and support for Jane. He's the literal embodiment of the protectiveness, respect, in-jokes, and love between the two, and his gem has to reflect that.
Agate is "a stabilizing and strengthening influence," but not really a protection stone. It promotes creativity, balance, and communication. While one of Seb's intended purposes is protection, it's neither his main function in design nor practice. Instead, he assists in cooperative tasks and makes sure everyone else's jobs go more smoothly.
The communication aspect is particularly important in light of what he represents to Dirk and Jane: an unstated expression of fondness between two people who are not all that good at getting their feelings out into the open.
The blue bands provide "clarity of thought and unwavering intent in regards to what matters most," while the orange bands represent "a steady, vibrant energy that stimulates a zest for living." The combination of the two colors suggest Seb's muddled and transforming position between pure purpose and his new existence as an independent, living entity.
His gem will have a V-like shape and sit above where his heart would be.
Power Considerations:
(1) Super strength/speed
Seb is a robot, and while he's small, he still packs a wallop. He's quick as a whistle and powerful enough to lift a refrigerator over his head and hold it there for a while before hurling it through a wall. Getting this kind of combat power could come in little bursts--a speed boost here such that he can keep up with a bike, enough strength to carry a person, et cetera.
Or, if having both super strength and speed is two powers instead of one, I can keep it just to boosts to his robo legs so he gets faster/can jump higher with each upgrade.
(2) Rocket-propulsion flight
PCHOOOOOOOOOooo
So he's got thrusters in his legs. If he's being powered by gem magic instead of rocket fuel, I'd just change the fire that comes out to being a paler, glittery sort of flame in orange and blue, the colors of his gem.
Getting this one back would be a matter of increasing his speed/the duration of possible flight incrementally: at first he can only go a couple yards before it sputters out, like a one-use burst jump, and then gradually he builds back up to true flight.
(3) Bionic ears
Seb's mechanical ears are large sensors that can swivel and rise or droop; their length and flexibility allows them to catch sound from any direction, like a real rabbit's. What I'd like in upgrades to this power is the ability to pick up sounds from ridiculous, inhuman distances, and eventually even things like radio broadcasts or wireless signals. Maybe even far-off psychic cries from telepathic gems in need.
Extra: I intend to poof Seb at some point down the road so he can reform himself, not as fully robot, but as more of a humanoid child-size cyborg--something like this, but more noticeably mechanical in certain areas. It'll both make it easier for him to talk to others and also push him further on his path to full self-awareness and freedom from his former limitations. Also, it means he'll be able to eat cake, which is a very important consideration, believe you me.
Writing Sample: Test Drive!
Name: Asher, he/him
Contact Details:
Other Characters?: N/A
Character
Character Name: Li'l Sebastian
Canon: Homestuck
Canon Point: A while after he sinks to the bottom of the ocean during the Alpha kids' entrance to SBURB.
Type: Canon character
Age: Oh god I don't know. He was a stuffed animal in a museum for over four hundred years, and then Dirk Strider built him into a robot rabbit for Jane Crocker's thirteenth birthday, which would make his robotic existence about two and a half years old. His AI appears to be bordering on independent sentience, but he doesn't have the self-awareness of Li'l Hal, so I generally rank his intelligence on, like, the elementary school child level. So Seb's age is honestly just a big fat series of question marks.
History/Key Points: In the movie Con Air, Cameron Poe, a street-tough maverick with nothing to lose, fights his way through a menagerie of bad guys and vehicular wrecks in order to reunite with his loving wife and child and give the little girl a stuffed bunny.
Li'l Seb is that bunny.
In the Alpha instantiation of Earth in the Homestuck universe (it's a long story with a lot of weird timeline shenanigans), celebrity figure and media mogul Dave Strider received the bunny as a gift, presumably from his Hollywood friends. He put the bunny in a museum where, preserved for about four hundred years against the apocalyptic horrors waged upon the planet by the alien Empress who took over management, it remained until Dirk Strider, the last human boy alive, obtained it with help from his friend Roxy Lalonde.
Dirk then built the bunny into a small robot as a thirteenth birthday present for his friend Jane Crocker, who happened to live four hundred years in the past--so a contemporary of Dave's rather than Dirk's. Dirk sent the bunny back in time to her, where it served, as most stuffed animals are meant to, as a gesture of affection, an object of comfort, and a really badass combat-ready bodyguard who just happened to be totally adorable.
Dirk is kind of a weird kid.
The bunny spent the next two and a half years with Jane and caused her no end of trouble, as small, mobile things tend to, but his most important period of life was a single day in the fall of 2011. Jane reactivated him to help her dodge her dad, move obstacles, and help her start playing a game that transported her and her friends from one universe to another.
After entering the Medium, where the game, SBURB, is played, Seb took orders both from Jane and Dirk's AI Auto-responder to help ensure that all the players got safely into the game. In so doing, he followed Jane to Derse, where he watched her get skewered by a final-boss attack called the Red Miles. Dirk then ordered him to save Jake, which Seb did by grabbing him and rocketing back to Jake's monster-infested island. He'd almost made it when a dragon knocked Seb into the ocean where he sank to the bottom and was lost forever until some unknown point in the far future when a group of temporally dislocated badguys picked his rusted, battered, but still-functional bunny body up. He is now assisting them in their quest for world anime domination.
The MSPA wiki has an abridged bio of Seb here as well as a chronology of the different bunnies further down the page. There are a lot of time loops, but mostly Seb isn't actually part of them.
Personality:
So Seb is, first and foremost, meant to belong to someone. Even if he weren't a robot programmed to protect and assist his master, the very core of what he is under all the steel and wiring is a ragged stuffed animal, a symbol of a fictional father's undaunted and enduring love for his family. This makes Li'l Seb aggressively and exclusively loyal, willing to put in whatever it takes to ensure that his person gets what they need to be successful and happy. He'll help other people should the need arise, but his lookout is always pretty explicitly That One Person.
Because he's been designed by a guy who likes to solve his problems through rigorous application of swords, that devotion often manifests in literally hack-and-slashing his way through obstacles. Unlike some of Dirk's other creations, though, Seb isn't violent by nature. His destructive tendencies never come from malevolent intent. He's just single-minded, equipped with a uranium heart that won't quit and too much restless energy for his tiny body to contain. He doesn't always understand that his actions may turn out to be problematic, and some of his instincts are...interesting. He's part killer robot, part rabbit; he'll burrow into a dead body for warmth and safety. He's the Energizer Bunny reimagined for the apocalypse.
Perhaps because of that--and because he was built by someone who lived post-apocalypse with no actual socialization--Seb has little respect for human niceties. He'll sleep inside your taxidermied grandfather's fluff-filled tummy and cost your father a fortune in corpse repairs. He'll toss a refrigerator through a wall because he's too antsy to hold still beneath its weight. He'll do what's best for his people, but according to his own mental calculus, not theirs. (In this, he takes a bit after his creator.)
Seb's a fidgety, childlike, simple soul with only two settings: Give him something to do now now now, or let him sleep. He gets bored easily and doesn't pay any mind to others' exasperation. He listens to those who are strong-willed and collected under pressure--which probably says more about the boy who programmed him than Seb himself--but otherwise just does his own thing until he's needed.
And these little bits of personality are proof of his burgeoning personhood--a companion 'bot without self-awareness would just follow orders, while Seb analyzes the sense of them and follows their heart rather than their letters, as long as they align with his prime directives to protect and enable his people to do their best. And as long as he's not being a rascally asshole.
He does, however, still require those prime directives in order to function. Without purpose, he doesn't know what to do. He's even willing to serve Homestuck's most powerful villain just so that he has someone he can help. Without something to do, he might as well just shut down and sleep for a thousand years. He is nothing without people. And that's one of the things I want to explore with him at Cosmographia: What was once a doll and then a shield can have the ability to become a person in his own right.
Gem: Banded Agate (info)
The main reason I chose agate is that it can contain the signature colors of both of the most important people in Seb's life: orange for his creator, Dirk, and blue for Jane, his owner. Seb is not just a homemade present from Dirk to his dear friend, nor is he a fun toy and support for Jane. He's the literal embodiment of the protectiveness, respect, in-jokes, and love between the two, and his gem has to reflect that.
Agate is "a stabilizing and strengthening influence," but not really a protection stone. It promotes creativity, balance, and communication. While one of Seb's intended purposes is protection, it's neither his main function in design nor practice. Instead, he assists in cooperative tasks and makes sure everyone else's jobs go more smoothly.
The communication aspect is particularly important in light of what he represents to Dirk and Jane: an unstated expression of fondness between two people who are not all that good at getting their feelings out into the open.
The blue bands provide "clarity of thought and unwavering intent in regards to what matters most," while the orange bands represent "a steady, vibrant energy that stimulates a zest for living." The combination of the two colors suggest Seb's muddled and transforming position between pure purpose and his new existence as an independent, living entity.
His gem will have a V-like shape and sit above where his heart would be.
Power Considerations:
(1) Super strength/speed
Seb is a robot, and while he's small, he still packs a wallop. He's quick as a whistle and powerful enough to lift a refrigerator over his head and hold it there for a while before hurling it through a wall. Getting this kind of combat power could come in little bursts--a speed boost here such that he can keep up with a bike, enough strength to carry a person, et cetera.
Or, if having both super strength and speed is two powers instead of one, I can keep it just to boosts to his robo legs so he gets faster/can jump higher with each upgrade.
(2) Rocket-propulsion flight
PCHOOOOOOOOOooo
So he's got thrusters in his legs. If he's being powered by gem magic instead of rocket fuel, I'd just change the fire that comes out to being a paler, glittery sort of flame in orange and blue, the colors of his gem.
Getting this one back would be a matter of increasing his speed/the duration of possible flight incrementally: at first he can only go a couple yards before it sputters out, like a one-use burst jump, and then gradually he builds back up to true flight.
(3) Bionic ears
Seb's mechanical ears are large sensors that can swivel and rise or droop; their length and flexibility allows them to catch sound from any direction, like a real rabbit's. What I'd like in upgrades to this power is the ability to pick up sounds from ridiculous, inhuman distances, and eventually even things like radio broadcasts or wireless signals. Maybe even far-off psychic cries from telepathic gems in need.
Extra: I intend to poof Seb at some point down the road so he can reform himself, not as fully robot, but as more of a humanoid child-size cyborg--something like this, but more noticeably mechanical in certain areas. It'll both make it easier for him to talk to others and also push him further on his path to full self-awareness and freedom from his former limitations. Also, it means he'll be able to eat cake, which is a very important consideration, believe you me.
Writing Sample: Test Drive!
