(no subject)

[windykind]

Characters: John Egbert and YOU
Setting: Floor Eighteen
Format: Either or
Summary: John gets his creative juices flowing in preparation for the HELLA SWEET tabletop session that might be starting soon. (Backdated to before the Hitori Kakurenbo event.)
Warnings: None

[In the study hall today, you may find one little John huddled over a table. He appears to be scribbling something on a paper in front of him; there's a large stack of clean white sheets sitting next to him, and the surrounding walls and floor are covered in pieces of crumpled-up paper. There's also one other one, sitting nearby, that he keeps looking back at -- like it's a reference. Should you happen to uncrumple one of the papers and look at what's on it, you will notice that there's only one thing on it: a drawing, in some state of development, of a strange-looking character with glasses and an outfit typical for the main character of a shounen anime -- from warrior to mage to thief, this character of his apparently has one foot in everything. And the 'reference' is one of these as well, though it's clearly several years old; even though John still draws in a not-very-good manga style, there's some visible improvement.]

[Look, ma, little Johnny's learning to draw. And he's not exactly looking where he throws the papers that he scraps, so passers-by could have paper based, roughly circular missiles falling upon them at any time -- or they could just be stopped by the giant mess.]

Comments

[ocariness]

[ Noticing the drawings! Link is not the best artist in the world, but the Hero of Time does happen to notice as they're passing John all the paper canonballs, so... ]

... These are not bad.

[ Link was more a creative sculpting and wood worker; drawing wasn't their strong suit unless stick figures battling dragons counted.

But hm, some of these designs do feel vaguely familiar. ]

[windykind]

--Huh, what?

[John looks up suddenly, as if he had been snapped out of a trance, and chuckles at himself.] Oh! Thanks. I'm trying to design a character but I can't get him to look right...

[ocariness]

A character? Hm...

[ Link has never heard the term used, but if they had to guess, it's meant for fiction. ]

I am not a particular expert on the subject, but what sort of things do you have in mind?

[windykind]

Oh, well, I don't know exactly what job he's going to have, but right now I'm leaning towards giving him a sword or something, even though I don't know what setting I'm going to put him into yet. You know, like the Legend of Zelda?

[It's worth noting that he still hasn't looked over enough to get a good look at you, Link.]

[ocariness]

[ Eh...? ]

You're... referring to the Princess?

[ Staring... Link is a little. Confused. ]

[knightime]

Woah Egbert, you done assaulting me with paper yet? You don't understand how lethal papercuts are. I could be dying from your dangerous fluttery projectiles.

[Dave is casually floating over to you. Guess who's sporting his God Tier threads? Yeah, this cool kid.] So what are you drawing exactly? Or are you just casually making the world's largest pile of crumpled papers?

[windykind]

Gee, sorry Dave. I didn't realize that your almighty god-like powers didn't work on paper cuts. [But he looks up and gives Dave a big grin anyway.] Me and some friends were thinking of starting up a Dungeons and Dragons campaign in the Tower here, so I thought now would be a great time to start redesigning my old character!

[knightime]

I'm offended. You should be more sensitive about my weakness to those stinging cuts. I thought my best bro would understand, but apparently not.

[He sits next to John.] Isn't that a game for nerds? [He grabs the current piece of paper John is drawing on. What, you wanted him to ask? Oops.]

[windykind]

I dunno, I tried it a few years ago and that didn't work out, but it always looked like fun. [He pretty much expected Dave to grab something away from him, so it didn't come as a surprise.] And there are a group of people here who made a custom campaign that went just like our Sburb session, so I got to talking to them and now I think it's a thing that's gonna happen!

[princeofjunes]

[Seeing John hard at work, Yosuke would have come over to check things out either way. Getting bonked on the head by a paper ball is only further incentive! And so, John's roomie takes to hovering over his shoulder, looking down at his work]

Huh, I never had you figured for an artist.

[windykind]

I'm not, really. But I'm designing a character so I need to draw him out, right? [John sits back and shows Yosuke his latest completed sketch. It's a teenager with spiked black hair, dressed in an outfit that looks suspiciously like a male Magical Girl.] ...I... dunno if I want to use this one, but I like the boots.

[princeofjunes]

[Yosuke looks! And... wow, sure is a magical girl with a penis]

Uh... yeah, I'd probably scrap everything that's not the boots.

But! I worked in retail for a while, and I know a bit about clothes and fashion. Maybe I can help brainstorm! Why don't you tell me a little about this guy?

[windykind]

Wow, really? That would be great! [John gets up, kicking through the slush pile, and drags over another chair for Yosuke to sit in.] Well, he's probably going to be for a sword-and-sorcery-type setting, so I was trying to design him like he came out of Dungeons and Dragons -- or, uh, Final Fantasy, I guess. [Do the Japanese have Dungeons and Dragons?] But I kinda got away from that, I guess... [He laughs nervously at the magical-boy outfit, and casually slides it over to one side.]

[hystericull]

[Wherever there's a pile, there's an obnoxious little devil waiting to get his zone on in it. And, well, John, you have certainly got a decent mound of paper balls going there! Hope you're not too surprised when one of your less-familiar alien pals takes a flop right into one, sending scraps and crumpled balls flying.

Oh, you mean this little wonder pile didn't come out of nowhere? Sure enough, there was a boy hastily scribbling on sheets of paper, then tossing them, discarded, onto the floor. Curious, Gamzee wraps his fingers around the edge of the desk, pulling himself up just enough to peek over the side.]

How big you be all plannin' to make this pile, motherfucker?

[windykind]

[Oh, you know it, Gamzee. He made this big pile of badly-drawn anime art just for you. He is pretty startled when paper starts crunching and flying everywhere -- it even gives him divine vengeance in the form of one paper ball hitting him smack in the head. So when he looks down and finds that a troll has made himself comfortable like a nest, he can only grin and raise his eyebrows.] As big as it needs to be before I find a design I like.

[hystericull]

[He wasn't just crumpling paper to make a pile, after all. There were things on the papers he had been discarding, and Gamzee reached a long arm across the table to paw at John's creation, for closer inspection.]

Whoaaa. Who all's this supposed to fuckin' be?

[windykind]

My roleplay character! His name is, uh... [Hey, he was made a long time ago, alright? John pulls over one of the sheets sitting nearby, and actually has trouble pronouncing the name.] Ama... deus... Ethelbert? Wow, I really sucked at naming.

[herpderphero]

Oh yeah, great minds think alike. And well...saying John thought like Ammy (or vise versa???) is kind of a given. So yeah, the older alter thing was actually on his way down to do much the same as John, lugging his game book and his dice down. He actually passed his spot check to notice John, and instead of continuing down further, he spazzed his way over.

"Hey~~"

BIG BRO TIMES. They'd been intending to do this, so no better time like the present!

"You workin' on stuff~?"

[windykind]

OH HEY BIG BRO who he apparently doesn't remember the name of hahaha. John blinks for a moment, but then remembers who it is and waves him over. "Just who I wanted to see! You need to help me redesign this guy!"

ammy you suck at drawing

[herpderphero]

Ammy giving his name is a rare occurrence It took Ammy not even a second to don his sheepish grin, dropping his stuff on the table. "Redesign? Oh geez, if you say so. I'm not really that creative, I'm better with the number crunch."

It took him a moment to decide if that would be insinuated as 'I make boring characters and since you are some strange version of my D&D character that must make you dull', but in the end he just pulled over a chair and plopped down. "The only contribution I ever really made waaaaaaaassssssssssssss..." Ammy rifted through his sheets, before pulling out a doodle of his own. "...the hood idea. I'm still so bummed the scarves got vetoed..."

[windykind]

John looked over at the hoodie design, and nearly laughed out loud; it did look a lot like him, if he were an unfortunate bum in that old cartoon Chalkzone, the one he hasn't seen in years. "Dude, the scarves looked good! They should have kept that, it would have been so badass." He grabbed his own approved papers, including the old one (it shows), and set them up so that Ammy could see them. "These were the ones that I made and kinda liked, so I wanted to take something from them to put on his final design. And, uh, here's the old sheet." John pointed to it.

Sure enough, the character looked like an older version of him (in a 'badass' hooded jacket ensemble), and the name listed was Amadeus Ethelbert.

oh god i am so late sorry;;

[fabricates]

[Vriska catches one of those flying projectiles, un-crumpling it to figure out what the hell was thrown at her. Huh. Looks like a FLARP character or something. She looks for the culprit and finds John. She slides up behind him and leans over his shoulder.]

What are you doing, Egbert? Wasting time, like usual?

It's okay, Johnmuse is being an evasive brat anyway u_u

[windykind]

No, I'm actually being productive! [John looks up at her, grinning as soon as he realizes it's Vriska -- and his Vriska, not some other one who doesn't know his name.] I'm designing a character so I can join a roleplay with him.

john stop being a brat >:T

[fabricates]

[Oh this might be relevant to her interests. She takes the seat next to him, propping her chin up on her hand.]

Roleplay? Are you talking about that bullshit that Nepeta does, or do you mean FLARPing?

[windykind]

I... don't know what bullshit Nepeta does, but it's not FLARPing. It's like, everyone sits around a table and basically talks out what their characters do in every situation, using dice sometimes to figure out things like damage calculation. I haven't done it in a while, but a friend is going to re-teach me, and we're going to start a session together! I bet you'd be really good at it, do you want to join? [He sure is pitching the campaign to everyone he sees.]