HOW'S MY DRIVING
Aug. 1st, 2015 07:06 pmI know, I know, he's an AU/reincarnation of an extremely minor character, but still. This is here if you need it.
THREAD TRACKER
Aug. 16th, 2013 06:16 pmAugust
8/2 - Reunite with Di | 27 | 20+10+5 (35)
8/2 - Meeting the Iron Giant | 15 | 20+10 (30)
8/4 - Meeting Jay Again | 14 | 20+10 (30)
8/5 - Meeting Sasha | 6 |20 (20) USED
8/5 - Meeting Eddie | 10 | 20 (20)
8/7 - Meeting Ammond | 10 | 20 (20)
8/7 - Meeting Ienzo | 9 |20 (20) USED
8/14 - Reunite with Bertie (sort of) | 12 |20+10 (30) USED
8/15 - Wishing Pond | 6 | 0 (0)
8/16 - Splashed by Eddie's Car | 2 | 0 (0)
8/17 - Wish for his ma's scarf back (-40)
8/19 - Talking with Berri | 7 |20 (20) USED
8/19 - Comparing Answers with Eddie | 5 | 0 (0)
8/22 - Reunite with Gamzee | 4 | 20 (20)
September
9/21 - Fall Arrives | 3, 5, 5, 3 | 0 (0)
9/22 - Kitten | 2 | 0 (0)
October
10/5 - ACTIVITY CHECK (-50)
10/16 - Meeting Lilli | 5 | 20 (20)
10/16 - Meeting Aeleus | 1 | 20 (20)
10/16 - The Disciple's Hot Old Body | 11 | 10 (10)
TOTAL: 205
-Interacting with someone new: 20 points.
-Making new post: 30 points.
-Continuing a new or old thread past 10 comments: 10 more points.
-Every ten after the original ten comments: 5 points.
8/2 - Reunite with Di | 27 | 20+10+5 (35)
8/2 - Meeting the Iron Giant | 15 | 20+10 (30)
8/4 - Meeting Jay Again | 14 | 20+10 (30)
8/5 - Meeting Sasha | 6 |
8/5 - Meeting Eddie | 10 | 20 (20)
8/7 - Meeting Ammond | 10 | 20 (20)
8/7 - Meeting Ienzo | 9 |
8/14 - Reunite with Bertie (sort of) | 12 |
8/15 - Wishing Pond | 6 | 0 (0)
8/16 - Splashed by Eddie's Car | 2 | 0 (0)
8/17 - Wish for his ma's scarf back (-40)
8/19 - Talking with Berri | 7 |
8/19 - Comparing Answers with Eddie | 5 | 0 (0)
8/22 - Reunite with Gamzee | 4 | 20 (20)
September
9/21 - Fall Arrives | 3, 5, 5, 3 | 0 (0)
9/22 - Kitten | 2 | 0 (0)
October
10/5 - ACTIVITY CHECK (-50)
10/16 - Meeting Lilli | 5 | 20 (20)
10/16 - Meeting Aeleus | 1 | 20 (20)
10/16 - The Disciple's Hot Old Body | 11 | 10 (10)
TOTAL: 205
-Interacting with someone new: 20 points.
-Making new post: 30 points.
-Continuing a new or old thread past 10 comments: 10 more points.
-Every ten after the original ten comments: 5 points.
WE THE LOST APP
Aug. 1st, 2013 12:47 amPlayer Name: Bii
Player Contact: AIM: grandhighbiichama, Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
obiisama
Character Name: Nemo K. Vantas
Canon: Homestuck AU (based on the fanfic >Connect)
Game Transplant: My Little Jamjar
Original App: Here you go!
Game Summary: Weird rainbows kidnap people from all kinds of different worlds and dimensions and bring them to Equestria where they end up relying on the folk of Ponyville to take them in. These weird rainbows may either be the work of a mysterious legendary figure known as the Pale Pony or possibly the work of Star Swirl the Bearded who was going kind of senile in his remaining months. Anyway, there is a hidden lost library to dungeon crawl through, full of yoghurt-craving pony zombies and also Bertha the Donut Witch and ersatz Cthulhu.
How long was your character in Game: Three and a half months.
History of Character in their Game: Nemo showed up the first day of the game in the crowd of “new ponies.” Not long after he arrived he ran into a young man named Bertie Wooster, who Nemo immediately took under his wing perhaps anticipating how terribly clueless that young man was. He also made friends with Klaus Wulfenbach. Princess Celestia contacted everyone and urged them to find things to do and people to stay with until the could be restored to their homes. Nemo had a short talk with her about what he'd be doing while that happened and decided he was going to grow artichokes. He'd had some experience with this, having spent the last fourteen years helping out on the working farm and former commune his sister ran, artichokes being one of the two cash crops on the farm.The other being marijuana which they sold to the medical dispensary in Monterey but that's neither here nor there.
Anyhow, Princess Celestia gave him a small plot of land for him to farm. He decided to establish said farm as a commune because communes are awesome. He informed Bertie of these plans and that was when he ran into the Disciple.
So you know how Nemo's the human reincarnation of the Signless Sufferer? Well, Nemo's (adopted) sister is the reincarnation of the Disciple and part of the reason he spent so much of his twenties, thirties, and early forties nomading it up, because even without consciously remembering it, the echoes of what they'd been to each other created some really weird vibes between the two.
And now he got to meet the real Disciple.
The two of them hit it off right off the bat and soon they were rolling around in the grass, nuzzling each other and generally acting like a pair of giant sillies. Nemo invited her and Klaus to join the commune with him and Bertie and together they erected a shack on the edge of the land. Nemo and Bertie soon after went to Applejack to learn how ponies farmed, because ponies don't exactly have tractors.
(Nemo named the commune Satyagraha Farm, after one of the principles of Gandhi's civil disobedience. Unfortunately, almost no one else could pronounce the name and so in the middle of the night one night a certain somepony snuck in and repainted the sign to read Something Farm. Eventually the place was dubbed 'Pony Commune.')
With help and equipment from Applejack, Nemo and company soon began the planting of the artichokes. Meanwhile, other new ponies fell in with them, joining the commune as Nemo had declared it open to all as long as the residents were willing to assist with the chores and help with the eventual harvest. People came and went, as new “new ponies” materialized in Equestria and some of the older “new ponies” disappeared the way that people usually do in jamjars. One of the earlier ones to leave was Klaus, who'd been the Disciple's friend. Another who drifted in and then drifted out was the Signless who'd been in Mayfield with the Disciple. Watching him and Di, Nemo got an idea of what might have been if not for family ties. When the Signless disappeared and Di found out she was a computer program, Nemo helped console her.
While all this was going on and Nemo and Disciple's relationship got deeper and stronger, if no less quantifiable, Nemo had also become something of an adopted father to Bertie Wooster. Bertie was, after all, young enough to be his son and Nemo respected Bertie's kind heart, even if some of Bertie's 1920s attitudes were not quite Nemo's cup of tea. They had a love of music to share, even if their tastes—Nemo's folksongs and Bertie's jazzy 20s popular music—weren't quite the same.
And too, Nemo missed his own son and daughter (and was secretly very worried about his son Karkat especially, having been informed by a unicorn named Jay Zimin that the boy was stuck playing Sburb to fix a fuck-up made by a bunnygirl named Poppy. Jay, you see, had previously been in Jarjammed where the Karkat of Nemo's universe was being played by yours truly.)
So the months passed in pleasant domesticity. At least, until Donatello got canon updated.
You see, there was a “new pony” among the other ponies who been in previous interdimensional incidents, including being stuck as a Hunger Games tribute in Panem. In other words, he was a CR AU who'd been in Kon Ran and The Games. In the time since he'd come to Equestria, Donatello had snapped quite thoroughly back in Panem and so in the wake of his canon update, Don was very crazy and very murderous—at least toward the ponies he recognized as his fellow tributes from Panem. Unfortunately for everyone, he thought he was hallucinating, that he still hadn't left the arena. And since there was a Signless stuck as a tribute back in Panem, Don—who before that had been rather friendly with Nemo—attacked Nemo, stabbing him in the gut with the horn he'd snapped off the Grand Highblood.
Bertie flew Nemo up to the roof to keep him from getting hurt further as the commune collapsed into chaos. But it was too late. Nemo lay dying. After calling Bertie 'kiddo'--a nickname previously reserved for his own children—he closed his eyes for what he thought would be the final time.
And THAT would be when the Being would grab Nemo and hopefully fix his fatal wound because he's a nice baby god like that.
How did they change from their canon personality wise (Please explain what caused it to happen?) Honestly, Nemo didn't change all that much in the three months he was in Equestria. He got to take a leadership position as head of the commune, but he'd been in positions of leadership before, although not in decades. He did gain a little more perspective on his awkward feelings toward his sister through his relationship with the Disciple, however. And he came to care for Bertie as a second son. He's perhaps more inclined to use Equestrian minced oaths than he was previously. (Thanks, MLJ.)
How did they change from their canon physically (Please explain what caused it to happen?): He's a pony now.
We don't know why people who get rainbow kidnapped to Equestria all turn into ponies or other kinds of sentient beasts, but they do.
Powers: Since he's an earth pony, he's suddenly really good at growing things and working the land. He really ought to start dreaming of his past lives sooner or later but I haven't had him yet because ~eh~.
Possessions: From his previous game comes one pony-sized red sweater and one accoustic guitar with a picture of his kids (human versions of Karkat and Kanaya) taped inside and the words THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS stencil-painted in red on the back. Also, a small pile of artichokes and the horn Donatello stabbed him with.
From his own home, he's two boxes worth of books: one fiction and the other nonfiction. The nonfiction box has stuff on communism, civil disobedience, and other such heady subjects. The fiction box has stuff like Lord of the Rings, Siddharta, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and a bunch of random high fantasy paperbacks. There's also a box of vinyl records, a phonograph, a smaller box with video tapes, a couple framed pictures of family, a couple of human-sized tee shirts and jeans, a long drapey poncho, a pipe, and some weed. Also the human version of the red sweater. His ma made it for him.
Please provide three samples from your previous game, at least one will have to be third person with context:
Sample One: Meeting the Disciple
Sample Two: Playing music with Bertie
Sample Three: Getting brutally murdered by Donatello
Notes: Nemo should wake up in the same hobbit hole as Di! I've discussed it with the Disciple's mun.
Player Contact: AIM: grandhighbiichama, Plurk:
Character Name: Nemo K. Vantas
Canon: Homestuck AU (based on the fanfic >Connect)
Game Transplant: My Little Jamjar
Original App: Here you go!
Game Summary: Weird rainbows kidnap people from all kinds of different worlds and dimensions and bring them to Equestria where they end up relying on the folk of Ponyville to take them in. These weird rainbows may either be the work of a mysterious legendary figure known as the Pale Pony or possibly the work of Star Swirl the Bearded who was going kind of senile in his remaining months. Anyway, there is a hidden lost library to dungeon crawl through, full of yoghurt-craving pony zombies and also Bertha the Donut Witch and ersatz Cthulhu.
How long was your character in Game: Three and a half months.
History of Character in their Game: Nemo showed up the first day of the game in the crowd of “new ponies.” Not long after he arrived he ran into a young man named Bertie Wooster, who Nemo immediately took under his wing perhaps anticipating how terribly clueless that young man was. He also made friends with Klaus Wulfenbach. Princess Celestia contacted everyone and urged them to find things to do and people to stay with until the could be restored to their homes. Nemo had a short talk with her about what he'd be doing while that happened and decided he was going to grow artichokes. He'd had some experience with this, having spent the last fourteen years helping out on the working farm and former commune his sister ran, artichokes being one of the two cash crops on the farm.
Anyhow, Princess Celestia gave him a small plot of land for him to farm. He decided to establish said farm as a commune because communes are awesome. He informed Bertie of these plans and that was when he ran into the Disciple.
So you know how Nemo's the human reincarnation of the Signless Sufferer? Well, Nemo's (adopted) sister is the reincarnation of the Disciple and part of the reason he spent so much of his twenties, thirties, and early forties nomading it up, because even without consciously remembering it, the echoes of what they'd been to each other created some really weird vibes between the two.
And now he got to meet the real Disciple.
The two of them hit it off right off the bat and soon they were rolling around in the grass, nuzzling each other and generally acting like a pair of giant sillies. Nemo invited her and Klaus to join the commune with him and Bertie and together they erected a shack on the edge of the land. Nemo and Bertie soon after went to Applejack to learn how ponies farmed, because ponies don't exactly have tractors.
(Nemo named the commune Satyagraha Farm, after one of the principles of Gandhi's civil disobedience. Unfortunately, almost no one else could pronounce the name and so in the middle of the night one night a certain somepony snuck in and repainted the sign to read Something Farm. Eventually the place was dubbed 'Pony Commune.')
With help and equipment from Applejack, Nemo and company soon began the planting of the artichokes. Meanwhile, other new ponies fell in with them, joining the commune as Nemo had declared it open to all as long as the residents were willing to assist with the chores and help with the eventual harvest. People came and went, as new “new ponies” materialized in Equestria and some of the older “new ponies” disappeared the way that people usually do in jamjars. One of the earlier ones to leave was Klaus, who'd been the Disciple's friend. Another who drifted in and then drifted out was the Signless who'd been in Mayfield with the Disciple. Watching him and Di, Nemo got an idea of what might have been if not for family ties. When the Signless disappeared and Di found out she was a computer program, Nemo helped console her.
While all this was going on and Nemo and Disciple's relationship got deeper and stronger, if no less quantifiable, Nemo had also become something of an adopted father to Bertie Wooster. Bertie was, after all, young enough to be his son and Nemo respected Bertie's kind heart, even if some of Bertie's 1920s attitudes were not quite Nemo's cup of tea. They had a love of music to share, even if their tastes—Nemo's folksongs and Bertie's jazzy 20s popular music—weren't quite the same.
And too, Nemo missed his own son and daughter (and was secretly very worried about his son Karkat especially, having been informed by a unicorn named Jay Zimin that the boy was stuck playing Sburb to fix a fuck-up made by a bunnygirl named Poppy. Jay, you see, had previously been in Jarjammed where the Karkat of Nemo's universe was being played by yours truly.)
So the months passed in pleasant domesticity. At least, until Donatello got canon updated.
You see, there was a “new pony” among the other ponies who been in previous interdimensional incidents, including being stuck as a Hunger Games tribute in Panem. In other words, he was a CR AU who'd been in Kon Ran and The Games. In the time since he'd come to Equestria, Donatello had snapped quite thoroughly back in Panem and so in the wake of his canon update, Don was very crazy and very murderous—at least toward the ponies he recognized as his fellow tributes from Panem. Unfortunately for everyone, he thought he was hallucinating, that he still hadn't left the arena. And since there was a Signless stuck as a tribute back in Panem, Don—who before that had been rather friendly with Nemo—attacked Nemo, stabbing him in the gut with the horn he'd snapped off the Grand Highblood.
Bertie flew Nemo up to the roof to keep him from getting hurt further as the commune collapsed into chaos. But it was too late. Nemo lay dying. After calling Bertie 'kiddo'--a nickname previously reserved for his own children—he closed his eyes for what he thought would be the final time.
And THAT would be when the Being would grab Nemo and hopefully fix his fatal wound because he's a nice baby god like that.
How did they change from their canon personality wise (Please explain what caused it to happen?) Honestly, Nemo didn't change all that much in the three months he was in Equestria. He got to take a leadership position as head of the commune, but he'd been in positions of leadership before, although not in decades. He did gain a little more perspective on his awkward feelings toward his sister through his relationship with the Disciple, however. And he came to care for Bertie as a second son. He's perhaps more inclined to use Equestrian minced oaths than he was previously. (Thanks, MLJ.)
How did they change from their canon physically (Please explain what caused it to happen?): He's a pony now.
We don't know why people who get rainbow kidnapped to Equestria all turn into ponies or other kinds of sentient beasts, but they do.
Powers: Since he's an earth pony, he's suddenly really good at growing things and working the land. He really ought to start dreaming of his past lives sooner or later but I haven't had him yet because ~eh~.
Possessions: From his previous game comes one pony-sized red sweater and one accoustic guitar with a picture of his kids (human versions of Karkat and Kanaya) taped inside and the words THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS stencil-painted in red on the back. Also, a small pile of artichokes and the horn Donatello stabbed him with.
From his own home, he's two boxes worth of books: one fiction and the other nonfiction. The nonfiction box has stuff on communism, civil disobedience, and other such heady subjects. The fiction box has stuff like Lord of the Rings, Siddharta, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and a bunch of random high fantasy paperbacks. There's also a box of vinyl records, a phonograph, a smaller box with video tapes, a couple framed pictures of family, a couple of human-sized tee shirts and jeans, a long drapey poncho, a pipe, and some weed. Also the human version of the red sweater. His ma made it for him.
Please provide three samples from your previous game, at least one will have to be third person with context:
Sample One: Meeting the Disciple
Sample Two: Playing music with Bertie
Sample Three: Getting brutally murdered by Donatello
Notes: Nemo should wake up in the same hobbit hole as Di! I've discussed it with the Disciple's mun.
MY LITTLE JAMJAR APP (WIP)
Mar. 31st, 2013 02:46 pmOUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Player Name: Bii
Player Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
biichan
Age: too old (30)
Contact: AIM: grandhighbiichama
Characters Played: none yet
IN CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Nemo Kankri Vantas (AU Signless Sufferer)
Canon: Homestuck
OU/AU/OC: Humanstuck Alternate Universe (based on the fanfic >Connect)
Canon Point: April 12, 2009, the night before the fanfic he comes from properly “starts.”
History: Once upon a time there was a mutant-blooded troll who rose up against the Alternian Empire in the name of equality between the castes. But this isn't his story. This is the story of the guy he got reincarnated into when the universe gets retroactively rebooted.
Let's start over.
(I'll supply people's identities in the hover text for help in keeping track of who's who in this AU, with underlines so you know when to mousover.)
Once upon a time there was a baby who grew up to be a hippie. That baby's name was Nemo and boy did he get teased about it—although since this was the fifties and sixties it was just Captain jokes and not fish jokes—but since his middle name was even stupider he was stuck with it. His mother had ditched what she'd seen as a stifling future ahead of her under her older sister's thumb in order to run away to the other side of the country. (As Nemo's aunt was Betty Crocker, this was perhaps not far enough, but it's the thought that counts.) One ill-advised short-lived marriage later, Dolores Porrim Vantas was the single mother of one.
Since the year was 1950, this was not exactly a desirable thing to be—especially if you or your kid weren't white and thanks to his long-gone father Nemo wasn't (and neither were any of the other kids Dolores Vantas went on to adopt later)—and so Nemo grew up with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Once he got to be a teenager, he got really into the whole civil rights movement thing that was going on, although initially he only manifested this interest in long-winded lectures to his increasingly bored friends and adopted younger sister until his exasperated mother dragged him to his first sit-in.
To mix one's metaphors: Nemo Vantas got his first taste of actual civil disobedience and it was love at first sight. He spent most of his high school and early college career participating in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. He grew his hair out, grew himself a rather shitty beard, and pretty much became the hippie's hippie. His first arrest came the summer after he graduated high school when he headed up to Chicago to join the protests at the Democratic National Convention of 1968, but it certainly wasn't his last. He ended up pissing off enough people to get the draft board to ignore his college deferment and so had to run off to Canada for a while in order to keep from getting sent to Vietnam. He never did finish college although he always meant to.
He spent the next few decades getting involved in various good causes, some of which succeeded, many of which failed miserably. He spent a good amount of time as a union organizer, worked on the political campaigns of some people he felt he could believe in, and spent no little time living in communes, including the one his sister and her husband had ended up running on a farm in Monterey County, California. In fact, for twenty five years, until the mid-1990s, Nemo Vantas was basically a nomad.
Then he ended up with a pair of kids. Nemo took his son and daughter and settled down at his sister's commune, which by then was hemorrhaging members like crazy. Since the commune was a working organic farm, Nemo became a farmer and found that he actually kind of enjoyed it. He also found being a dad to be incredibly rewarding. While his interest in social justice has not waned in the least, he's had to of necessity slow down. After all, he's almost sixty now.
(In the fic Nemo comes from, he's about two months away from getting caught up in the shenanigans that ensue when his kids play Sburb, but he doesn't know that yet.)
Personality: His previous incarnation was basically a Jesus metaphor. The incarnation before that was an annoying social justice warrior that even his own friends could barely stand to hang around with. Nemo isn't really either of those things. He's a stubborn old hippie who believes that if people work hard and work together that maybe it's still possible to make a difference in this crazy world. A lot of the time he's been been proven wrong by circumstances but he's been proven right enough times that he's still got faith.
That's the thing. When Nemo believes in a cause he believes hard. He's a dedicated guy and a sucker for lost causes. He's willing to work for an outcome that most people would never in a million years think could happen. And even if the things he believes in—the essential dignity of all humans, a world without war, and an end to classism, racism, and all other forms of oppression—are things that other people think are impossible, he believes that history will vindicate him in the end.
He's tired, though. He's lived a long time and seen a lot of the movements he's dedicated his life to stall or fail altogether and that kind of stuff wears on a person. Although a lot of the reason he slowed down was because of his kids, he really did need a break. He used to spend a lot of time getting angry at the people who couldn't or wouldn't understand why his causes were worthwhile. Now those people just make him kind of sad.
He tries to keep a hold on his temper, but when he gets angry he gets really angry. He'd never try to physically hurt anyone, but yelling and screaming and emotional hand gestures are all on the table. Luckily, his anger usually blows over quickly enough and he's gotten to be pretty good at apologizing afterward.
He's fairly friendly for the most part, though if you make a bad impression on him he's liable to get pretty gruff. He's definitely willing to give people second, third, and even fourth chances. It takes a lot for Nemo to write you off completely.
Strengths: Nemo's an idealist. For the most part, he still believes that people are fundamentally good inside and that if people were properly informed of their options, no one would deliberately choose to be evil. He's a dedicated guy and willing to work very hard for the common good. He's fairly intelligent, reasonably strong for guy his age, and has a decent grasp of strategy and organization.
Weaknesses: Nemo was actually super obnoxious 24/7 when he was a teen, although the decades since then have knocked most of the annoying out of him. He still has the tendency to act like an annoying know-it-all when faced with stuff he does in fact know a lot about. He can sometimes have a blindspot regarding the relative importance of other people's causes versus his own, although again that's something he's gotten a lot better about with age. (Speaking of age, he's well into middle age and his body is definitely showing the effects. His knees get all creaky in the morning and he's not got nearly the stamina he used to have when he was younger.)
Possessions: a beat up old guitar (what kind of hippie DOESN'T have a guitar I ask you?) with a picture of his two kids taped inside, a red sweater his ma knit for him that's mysteriously gone pony-shaped
Pony/Animal Type: Earth pony, for reasons of hard work and dedication.
Cutie Mark: A peace sign. It was either that or the Cancer/Suffererist symbol, but I figure that would more properly belong to his original counterpart.
Pony Picture: here
SAMPLES
First Person:
Hey Kiddo,
I don't know why I'm writing this, since I don't think there's any way for you to get this letter. I guess it makes me feel better to do it, though, even if it means I have to hold the pencil with my mouth. Guess I might as well explain: I'm a pony now.
Yeah. A pony.
It's weird for me too.
I woke up yesterday in this crazy little town called Ponyville, with a bunch of other ponies, a stupid amount of which used to be people too, and with no idea what thebuck hay—with with no idea what was going on. (Man, it's a good thing you aren't a pony. With the way these pony mouths self-censor, you'd be miserable. )
We don't know how we got here, you dig? And we don't know when or how we're going home.
I'm not sure how long it'll be until I see you or your sister again.
Well. Anyway. That's why I'm not picking you up from that school of yours today. Stupid place. I know you say you're happy there, but I can tell you're not really and you're just saying so because you don't want to admit you were wrong. And I get that, kiddo, I do, I'm the same way sometimes. But part of growing up is admitting you were wrong.
Man. I wish I could be saying this stuff to you for real.
I miss you, kiddo. I miss everyone.
Love,
Your Dad
Third Person: Making friends with Bertie Wooster in the test drive meme
Player Name: Bii
Player Journal:
biichanAge: too old (30)
Contact: AIM: grandhighbiichama
Characters Played: none yet
IN CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Nemo Kankri Vantas (AU Signless Sufferer)
Canon: Homestuck
OU/AU/OC: Humanstuck Alternate Universe (based on the fanfic >Connect)
Canon Point: April 12, 2009, the night before the fanfic he comes from properly “starts.”
History: Once upon a time there was a mutant-blooded troll who rose up against the Alternian Empire in the name of equality between the castes. But this isn't his story. This is the story of the guy he got reincarnated into when the universe gets retroactively rebooted.
Let's start over.
(I'll supply people's identities in the hover text for help in keeping track of who's who in this AU, with underlines so you know when to mousover.)
Once upon a time there was a baby who grew up to be a hippie. That baby's name was Nemo and boy did he get teased about it—although since this was the fifties and sixties it was just Captain jokes and not fish jokes—but since his middle name was even stupider he was stuck with it. His mother had ditched what she'd seen as a stifling future ahead of her under her older sister's thumb in order to run away to the other side of the country. (As Nemo's aunt was Betty Crocker, this was perhaps not far enough, but it's the thought that counts.) One ill-advised short-lived marriage later, Dolores Porrim Vantas was the single mother of one.
Since the year was 1950, this was not exactly a desirable thing to be—especially if you or your kid weren't white and thanks to his long-gone father Nemo wasn't (and neither were any of the other kids Dolores Vantas went on to adopt later)—and so Nemo grew up with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Once he got to be a teenager, he got really into the whole civil rights movement thing that was going on, although initially he only manifested this interest in long-winded lectures to his increasingly bored friends and adopted younger sister until his exasperated mother dragged him to his first sit-in.
To mix one's metaphors: Nemo Vantas got his first taste of actual civil disobedience and it was love at first sight. He spent most of his high school and early college career participating in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. He grew his hair out, grew himself a rather shitty beard, and pretty much became the hippie's hippie. His first arrest came the summer after he graduated high school when he headed up to Chicago to join the protests at the Democratic National Convention of 1968, but it certainly wasn't his last. He ended up pissing off enough people to get the draft board to ignore his college deferment and so had to run off to Canada for a while in order to keep from getting sent to Vietnam. He never did finish college although he always meant to.
He spent the next few decades getting involved in various good causes, some of which succeeded, many of which failed miserably. He spent a good amount of time as a union organizer, worked on the political campaigns of some people he felt he could believe in, and spent no little time living in communes, including the one his sister and her husband had ended up running on a farm in Monterey County, California. In fact, for twenty five years, until the mid-1990s, Nemo Vantas was basically a nomad.
Then he ended up with a pair of kids. Nemo took his son and daughter and settled down at his sister's commune, which by then was hemorrhaging members like crazy. Since the commune was a working organic farm, Nemo became a farmer and found that he actually kind of enjoyed it. He also found being a dad to be incredibly rewarding. While his interest in social justice has not waned in the least, he's had to of necessity slow down. After all, he's almost sixty now.
(In the fic Nemo comes from, he's about two months away from getting caught up in the shenanigans that ensue when his kids play Sburb, but he doesn't know that yet.)
Personality: His previous incarnation was basically a Jesus metaphor. The incarnation before that was an annoying social justice warrior that even his own friends could barely stand to hang around with. Nemo isn't really either of those things. He's a stubborn old hippie who believes that if people work hard and work together that maybe it's still possible to make a difference in this crazy world. A lot of the time he's been been proven wrong by circumstances but he's been proven right enough times that he's still got faith.
That's the thing. When Nemo believes in a cause he believes hard. He's a dedicated guy and a sucker for lost causes. He's willing to work for an outcome that most people would never in a million years think could happen. And even if the things he believes in—the essential dignity of all humans, a world without war, and an end to classism, racism, and all other forms of oppression—are things that other people think are impossible, he believes that history will vindicate him in the end.
He's tired, though. He's lived a long time and seen a lot of the movements he's dedicated his life to stall or fail altogether and that kind of stuff wears on a person. Although a lot of the reason he slowed down was because of his kids, he really did need a break. He used to spend a lot of time getting angry at the people who couldn't or wouldn't understand why his causes were worthwhile. Now those people just make him kind of sad.
He tries to keep a hold on his temper, but when he gets angry he gets really angry. He'd never try to physically hurt anyone, but yelling and screaming and emotional hand gestures are all on the table. Luckily, his anger usually blows over quickly enough and he's gotten to be pretty good at apologizing afterward.
He's fairly friendly for the most part, though if you make a bad impression on him he's liable to get pretty gruff. He's definitely willing to give people second, third, and even fourth chances. It takes a lot for Nemo to write you off completely.
Strengths: Nemo's an idealist. For the most part, he still believes that people are fundamentally good inside and that if people were properly informed of their options, no one would deliberately choose to be evil. He's a dedicated guy and willing to work very hard for the common good. He's fairly intelligent, reasonably strong for guy his age, and has a decent grasp of strategy and organization.
Weaknesses: Nemo was actually super obnoxious 24/7 when he was a teen, although the decades since then have knocked most of the annoying out of him. He still has the tendency to act like an annoying know-it-all when faced with stuff he does in fact know a lot about. He can sometimes have a blindspot regarding the relative importance of other people's causes versus his own, although again that's something he's gotten a lot better about with age. (Speaking of age, he's well into middle age and his body is definitely showing the effects. His knees get all creaky in the morning and he's not got nearly the stamina he used to have when he was younger.)
Possessions: a beat up old guitar (what kind of hippie DOESN'T have a guitar I ask you?) with a picture of his two kids taped inside, a red sweater his ma knit for him that's mysteriously gone pony-shaped
Pony/Animal Type: Earth pony, for reasons of hard work and dedication.
Cutie Mark: A peace sign. It was either that or the Cancer/Suffererist symbol, but I figure that would more properly belong to his original counterpart.
Pony Picture: here
SAMPLES
First Person:
Hey Kiddo,
I don't know why I'm writing this, since I don't think there's any way for you to get this letter. I guess it makes me feel better to do it, though, even if it means I have to hold the pencil with my mouth. Guess I might as well explain: I'm a pony now.
Yeah. A pony.
It's weird for me too.
I woke up yesterday in this crazy little town called Ponyville, with a bunch of other ponies, a stupid amount of which used to be people too, and with no idea what the
We don't know how we got here, you dig? And we don't know when or how we're going home.
I'm not sure how long it'll be until I see you or your sister again.
Well. Anyway. That's why I'm not picking you up from that school of yours today. Stupid place. I know you say you're happy there, but I can tell you're not really and you're just saying so because you don't want to admit you were wrong. And I get that, kiddo, I do, I'm the same way sometimes. But part of growing up is admitting you were wrong.
Man. I wish I could be saying this stuff to you for real.
I miss you, kiddo. I miss everyone.
Love,
Your Dad
Third Person: Making friends with Bertie Wooster in the test drive meme
