-(shaking and crying)(because we +he 1os+)

[geometry]

Player Name: Archer
Preferred Pronouns?: I am genderfluid, so he/she/they… whatever you want, really!
Player Contact: startropics @ plurk, magiradyne@gmail.com
Other characters in play? None, this is my first.

Character Name: Equius Zahhak
Canon: Homestuck, AU: Red Dead Virgo
Game Transplant: Tower of Animus
Original App: Here.
Game Summary: Characters wake up quite abruptly in a four-person bedroom within a mysterious Tower. A provided letter explains that their worlds have been destroyed, and that they were ‘rescued’ before they were wiped out with the rest of the world. The letter encourages them to “be happy here”, but since the Tower of Animus is pretty much a horrortower where monsters lurk the halls, administrators perform cruel experiments on residents, and one can die infinite gruesome deaths and wake up in their bed the next morning… well, being happy there is kind of hard.

Animus’ plot is full of intricacies and secrets that can’t really be done justice in this section. Read a plot guide penned by the game’s administrators here.

How long was your character in Game: Feb 5 2012-Jun 8 2013.

History of Character in their Game: This is abridged for all the app-relevant information; if you're interested, you can read the full version here.

Equius Zahhak woke up in an unfamiliar bed late at night on February 5, 2012. He didn't actually leave that bed until the next day, compelled by an empty stomach and a growing sense that people were watching him. (It was true; he was occupying one of four beds, and his three roommates were regarding him uncomfortably.) After finally coming out, Equius discovered that the Tower had a kitchen, and promptly engaged in some good old therapeutic cooking, which lasted for the rest of the day. He discovers that there are other people from his world who were taken to the tower -- David Lalonde, Kanaya Maryam, Nepeta Leijon, and Eridan Ampora.

On the same day, Equius wanders into the media room -- which would later become, undoubtedly, his favourite room in the entire Tower. Here, he met the jadeblood Eridan again, and the two of them sat around watching bad/amazing movies. The two of them soon began hosting the "movie nights" on a regular basis, usually with just the two of them in attendance, and these meetings deepened their relationship considerably. From here on in, assume that there are movie nights with Eridan (and sometimes other people) strewn liberally throughout.

Later, a certain event called Hitori Kakurenbo happened. It literally consisted of characters hiding in apartments while killer teddy bears roamed the halls, and would murder any character they saw in horrible ways. Equius died in this event, in a closet with the mutantblood Kanaya Maryam.

Equius was on edge for several days after Kakurenbo. As he always does when he's on edge, Equius went down to the kitchen to bake more delicious goods, and in the process met Shion. They were two antsy, paranoid, socially maladjusted boys who happened to meet in a kitchen, but Shion would later become another one of Equius' closest friends, mostly without him noticing. Because of their similar dispositions, Shion and Equius often wound up sticking together when times got tough, because they knew that the other would understand what they were going through. Even when the situation wasn't that bad, they still liked to stick around and talk to one another -- both were just reasonably nice kids, so there was no factor of danger or affectionate insults in talking to the other.

In March, Equius had the incredible bad fortune to run across the Grand Highblood in a chipper mood. Because when the Grand Highblood is in a chipper mood, people die. A lot. Equius put up absolutely no resistance when the Highblood grabbed him, since he was still of the mindset that it was a purpleblood's job to kill lowly yellowbloods, but it seriously upset him anyway. After he was revived the next morning (because that's a thing that happens in Animus), Equius had a horrible idea: if the Highblood's in his dorm room, he would sleep in places that weren't his dorm room! Unfortunately, Equius found out the hard way that not sleeping in their dorms causes side effects. It was in this state that he met Rose Strider.

Equius was sleep-deprived and therefore unable to put up the usual 'classy lowblood' act, so the conversation he had with Rose was unusually sincere for the time. Although he initially rejected everything she said (and was utterly confused as to why she cared about him being pushed around), Rose Strider and her "pep talks" became one of the strongest influences on Equius as he gradually started to grow a backbone. Although she always tried to act cool and distant, the two of them eventually struck up a peculiar but long-lasting friendship. She eventually became one of the very few people he actually smiled at on a constant basis.

At some point between his death and the conversation with Rose, Equius was dropped into an event known as Labyrinth. The gist of this event was pretty simple: characters from the Tower were relocated to a maze, and told to fight to the death. Equius moved through the labyrinth with Karkat Vantas (cerulean) and Kanaya Maryam (mutant red). Unfortunately, they ran into Gamzee Makara in the Labyrinth. Gamzee had run out of sopor (a pacifying drug) a little while before the event started, so he was beginning to wax murderous. Gamzee attacked them about halfway through the event; Kanaya and Karkat died, but Equius fled. His relationship with all three of the involved trolls went straight down the toilet after that, and it never quite recovered. He later died in the event.

Equius, like several other residents, dropped off the face of the Tower again during the month of June; they were being held captive for yet another game by the newly-revealed head administrator, Ruana. This one was titled 'Infighting', primarily because that's what it was; each admin of the tower had a group of residents representing them, and these groups were to compete in almost game-show-like challenges to see which admin was superior. For Equius, this event basically translated to "month-long migraine", because of the impossible geometry he was forced to live in. This drove everyone a little bit crazy, but it made Equius' Spacey-sense utterly insane. During this event, he met Wriggle Nightbug when she crash-landed into him while trying to fly through the broken geometry. Wriggle and Equius were as different as night and day -- she had the body and mind of a preteen girl, she was a firefly demon so all her friends were bugs, and she was judgmental and quick to criticise. Somehow, though, the two of them developed an odd comraderie, and eventually started to regard one another as trusted friends.

After a particularly ill-advised attempt to make amends with Gamzee goes haywire, Equius finds himself being hunted by an indigo, again. This time he flees to the space floor, hoping that the exploding galaxies all over the place will do something to calm his nerves; they kind of do, but at the end of the day, Gamzee finds and kills him again anyway. He submitted to Gamzee's culling once again -- but the murder was over and done with, Equius started to feel the beginnings of resentment within him. He wouldn't act on this resentment until much later, but nonetheless, this death marked the first time that Equius began to seriously wonder whether the hemospectrum was really a healthy system that ought to be followed.

In the middle of August, Eridan Ampora returned to the Tower after a month-long disappearance. Both of them were in very bad mental states. What happened next was a horrible experience for everyone involved: it consisted mostly of Eridan making aggressive and demeaning romantic passes at Equius and watching him squirm. (Eridan was trying and failing to deal with the fact that he did have a thing for Equius, and ended up taking it out on him like a boy pulling his crush's hair.) This put a huge wedge in their relationship, and it stayed wedged for a good long time.

And then, whale.

No, I mean it -- there was a giant space whale, and it crashed into the Tower, destroying 90% of the floors -- and most of Equius' personal belongings. A search party consisting of Jade Strider, Gamzee, and Wriggle found Equius and Tavros huddling together under a tree in one of the few remaining floors. Eventually, they wrangled the duo down to the cafeteria floor, where they had set up a little refugee camp. He spent the rest of the day wandering around the bottom floor.

Later, Equius was stalking around the Network when he noticed that Eridan had a little conversation with Karkat Vantas (cerulean). This conversation should have been private, but the Network was broken, so everyone got to see. Karkat, being the absolute master of romance, was hassling Eridan about the frankly embarrassing state of his quadrants. Equius read the log with a dawning sense of horror, and redoubled his efforts to not talk to Eridan. That didn't stop Eridan, though; he knew that if he didn't confront Equius about it, Karkat would, and that would be a real catastrophe. They ended up having this conversation from opposite sides of a door.

And then the Shadows happened. Basically, a certain deity from the Persona series got really bored and decided to create 'evil twin' versions of lots of characters, created from magic fog. These evil twins were designed to take everything that the characters tried to hide or repress about their personalities (which was usually all the bad parts), and brought them out in full force. In the four days Eridan's Shadow was active, it trolled Equius some more with deeply uncomfortable conversations, and refused to let him go, to the point where he was essentially held captive as Jade Strider had to kill the bastard herself.

And a few days later, Equius' own Shadow confronted him. It too manifested into a monster. There were more people to fight Equius' Shadow than there was Eridan's: Wriggle, Gandalf, a human version of Gamzee, and Eridan himself. Eventually the thing was defeated, and Equius... well, suffice to say he was put out of commission for a while.

After taking some time off to calm his pounding kokoro, Equius wandered into the media room again and discovered Eridan again. Animus was in the middle of a body-swap event at the time, and Eridan had the body of a certain jadeblooded lady. Despite this, they ended up having a nice heart-to-heart... and, while Eridan was still in a girl's body, finally agreed to try out this "boyfriend" thing.

On December 1st, Equius ran into Gamzee Makara once again. Predictably, Gamzee had fucked something up and was expecting Equius to fix it like a compliant yellowblood... but thanks to the magic of character development, Equius didn't really feel like dealing with Gamzee's bullshit anymore, so the whole thing turned into a loud argument. Loud arguments were basically the extent of their interactions for the rest of the game; a few people tried to make jokes that they were blackflirting with one another, but they were completely off-base. They were more like two guys who needed an auspitice, bad.

From December 15 onward to the end of the game, things gradually settled into a routine. But because it was the Tower, the routines included freakouts in public places and unattractive arguments of many kinds. One particular January highlight: a really awkward age-up event in which Eridan had wild, kinky sex with just about everyone. Equius flipped his shit, again. And that is all that will be said on the matter.

And finally, on February 3rd (the last date where he did anything of particular merit), Equius went to explore the machine floor that had opened up. He had some nice talks with people, and also got both Shion and himself killed. He still feels really bad about that one.


How did they change from their canon personality wise (Please explain what caused it to happen?) Equius has seen a lot of changes in his year-and-then-some stint in the Tower. Most of them center around his transformation from “a weak attempt at what society wants him to be” into a person of his own. He has suppressed many of his base character traits in trying to conform to this ill-fitting mold, and when he was put in a place like the Tower – where blood hierarchy doesn’t matter at all – the façade crumbled as artifacts of his real personality began to take their place. Will he ever be completely fixed from everything done to him by himself and others? No. But he’ll make a damn good effort.

Equius no longer attempts to be something that he is clearly not. Early-game Equius tried to speak like a civilized highblood, as if trying to make up for the fact that he was yellow – but constantly put others ahead of himself, again because he was yellow. He tried very hard to be the model citizen in troll society, even though it was going against… pretty much everything in his base nature. Now, though, he puts up no pretenses, and gets an uncomfortable taste in his mouth when he thinks about how he once did. He speaks the commoner’s language that most other trolls from his area do, only using SAT words when they’re absolutely necessary, and curses a lot more than he once did (due to the influence of people like Eridan and Rose). The model lowblood knows nothing but how to modify their desires to conform to the hemospectrum’s; Equius has now come to realize that the hemospectrum is a steaming pile of bullshit, and feels absolutely no lingering discomfort when he argues with someone above him or helps someone below him.

At heart, Equius is a genuinely good person; he is quick to take pity on someone, and always tries to be helpful in any way he can. He is the one who helps old women with their groceries, rescues cats from trees, all that good stuff. All he wants, at the end of the day, is for people to be happy; if they become happier at the expense of his own happiness, well, nothing to be done about that.

Try as he might to undo all the damage that he’s done to himself, though, some things may never change. One of these things is his extremely low self-esteem. Equius still tends to put himself at a much lower priority than others, as a result of being an extremely weak yellowblood who allowed himself to be pushed around by anyone stronger, older, louder, or more aggressive than he was – and considering he lived in the slums of a large lowblood city, most other people he saw fit that description. He tended to get shoved around a lot back on Alternia, but of course, he wouldn’t let himself fight back – instead, he got good at running away and patching up his own injuries. He took up archery because bows and arrows were long-range and simpler to make than guns. Equius is always going to carry the lingering feeling that he is meant to be a punching bag, for everyone else to unload their frustrations on.

One important thing to note: Equius is unstable by nature, and knows this. He needs something to tether to so that he can feel a bit more secure in himself and where he belongs. For much of his life, that was the Alternian government and hemospectrum – he had no concept of becoming his own tether (a concept often called ‘self-confidence’), and even now, he is extremely murky on what it is and how to do it. Equius also has a tendency to go through powerful mood swings – countless conversations have been turned on their head as Equius suddenly realized something horrible and began to freak out, or abruptly started crying in the middle of an argument.

The mood swings and paranoia are aspects of his base personality, not a side-effect of the hemospectrum; even in canon, where he realistically should have had no reason to worry, he still showed mood swings and sudden fits of suspicion. OU Equius reacted to these fits with anger, because he felt it was his right to be angry; AU Equius responded to these fits with fear, because he felt it was his job to be afraid.

The Tower did not improve these issues at all; in fact, they probably made them worse. Equius will totally shut down if he gets too anxious, to a much greater degree than he did back home, because the structure that he was used to became obsolete in a matter of minutes. However, there is also a positive side effect of his stay in the Tower: because of it, Equius can now take much more abuse before he starts to crumble. After going through the sick experiments that Ruana and friends put on, he’s pretty much seen everything, and obstacles that were daunting before are now just peanuts.

He’s also quite a bit more assertive when need be. Before the game began, Equius made it a point to crush any feeling of anger whatsoever – in the end, all that frustration brought him was more misery. He certainly experienced his share of fury in the Tower, though. Now, though Equius would hardly ever turn to aggression as an immediate solution (unless your name is Gamzee Makara) and is much more subtle about it than his OU counterpart, he is not afraid to let his feelings be known.

How did they change from their canon physically (Please explain what caused it to happen?): When he left the Tower, Equius looked like this. There were only a few changes from when he arrived in the Tower. He arrived with healing cuts and bruises all over his body, including two black eyes; all of these healed over. He also arrived with much shorter hair (chin length), but chose to grow it out in the Tower – mostly because he always neglected to cut it.

There are, of course, parts that didn’t change in Animus. Equius Zahhak is a young troll – about fifteen Earth years old – but he’s already quite tall. His limbs are long but utterly thin and noodly; there’s no excess fat or muscle on his body. His hair, like all trolls’, is black. He rarely brushes it, but in the Tower, Eridan liked to take care of it instead; his influence will probably lead Equius to pay more attention to it now. He has two orange gradient horns sticking out of his head, shaped like the business end of an arrow. He wears a short-sleeved black shirt with his symbol on it in yellow, long grey pants with various rips and oil stains in them, and heavy work boots.

This is all glamour, though.

Equius is a soul in a wireframe jar. If the glamour were to be removed, he would look more like a skeleton made out of wire – no real distinctive features are present, except for his horns and general body shape. And, of course, there is a collar around his neck that regulates this wireframe and lets him still use the glamour even though he’s left the Tower for good.

Powers: Equius has no powers. Zero, zip, nada. Most yellowbloods do, but he was born completely without them. He had the potential to have space-manipulation powers in Sburb, but since he left Sburb without making any significant headway in his game quest, it’s unlikely that they will ever become useful now. As it is, he only has a rather unhelpful passive skill – he has a built-in radar for detecting when someone’s fucked with psychics, and this radar alerts him to the change with a splitting headache.

Possessions: 1x Sagittarius Outfit + Glasses (shirt, pants, boots), 1x mechanical bow, 1x quiver of 50 arrows, 4x yellow Sagittarius shirts (made in Tower), 1x wooden bow, 1x toolbox, 4x 50-arrow quivers, 1x mechanical Virgin Mother Grub (made by him in Tower), 1x rifle (stolen borrowed from Eridan)

Please provide three samples from your previous game, at least one will have to be third person with context:
Sample One: Here. In which Equius, just a day after arriving in the Tower, makes a lot of baked goods while he attempts to not freak out. Notice that he’s able to keep his composure pretty well when no one’s immediately threatening him.
Sample Two: Here. Equius’ shit is utterly wrecked. The Tower’s thermostat is stuck below freezing, he’s got powerful migraines because of his Space sense reacting badly to the physics-bending the Tower employs, and he’s just gotten in a horrible fight with basically the only person he trusts unconditionally at this point.
Sample Three: Here. Equius tries playing happy, calming video games, in an attempt to become happy and calm. This was his last log before dropping.

Notes: