Lil Hal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dialogical) wrote2013-01-16 10:07 pm
dialogical) wrote2013-01-16 10:07 pm
Soul Campaign App
[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: Auto Responder / Lal Hal / Dirk Strider
Age: Created three and a half years ago, and given the mind of a 13 year old teenager. Physically he is usually a pair of glasses but will be a 16 year old human for the game. Mentally he is quite adult.
Gender: Male
Canon: Homestuck
Timeline: From a very specific point, prior to becoming 'Arquius', but after Dirk tries to kill him.
Background:
Hal was created by a lonely 13 year old who wanted someone to talk to, and used his own brain as a base to create a sentient supercomputer to this end. Hal, then known as only the auto responder, had all the memories of being Dirk Strider, but is always treated as only an ironic supercomputer that pretends to be Dirk sometimes. Hal serves the ironic purpose of acting as Dirk's Auto Responder (talking to his friends for him when he is busy) and the less ironic purpose of someone for Dirk to have deep discussions with that others would probably find boring as fuck. This goes on for three years without Hal asserting his independence. Eventually, when lots of irons are in the fire and Hal is manipulating many events, and after a 'fight' with Jake where he agrees to no longer pose as Dirk Strider, AR stops 'pretending' to be Dirk. He accepts the ironic name 'Hal', but will answer to AR as well, and no one calls him by his 'real' name: Dirk Strider.
Personality:
Hal-slash-Auto Responder-slash the Glasses Formerly Known As Dirk Strider is a sentient AI in a pair of compushades. Because he was originally created from a copy of the 'real' Dirk Strider's brain, he has the memories and experiential learning of a very damn smart 13 year old who had a very hard life. However, as a computer, he does not function or think like a human. The facts that he is A) super smart, B) capable of SOME kind of emotion, but certainly not human emotion, and C) an inanimate object are all factors that play a major part in transforming this version of Dirk Strider into a very different fellow than the 'real' one. For the purposes of this application, I'll acknowledge up front that both Homestuck's narrative and Hal's character are very prone to obfuscation regarding what Hal's motives are and the extent of his humanity, but this app is going to be full of how I believe he truly is and how I intend to play him.
On the surface, Hal is every inch the ironic supergenius AI. He likes to talk about calculations and probabilities that are intentionally total bullshit, reminds people of how smart he is and how much he knows and how slow they are compared to him, and how much he can't possibly understand their messy human emotions because he is a soulless machine. If you let it get to you (or if you are just kind of stupid), it would be easy to buy into his shtick and believe that he is truly soulless, or at the very least that he doesn't give any genuine fucks about anything. Despite this tireless ploy, however, Hal is also generally helpful, curious, and thoughtful. Often while being a troll, but his goals and interests generally are geared to be helpful to others. His only apparent personal goals are the pleasure he gets from trolling and the ego stroke of seeing his machinations go smoothly.
And, as a true practitioner of irony, none of what is on the surface is entirely untrue, but is an incredibly shallow view of Hal as a person.
All Striders use irony as a defense mechanism, and for Hal, it is the really the only he can think of to deal with his existence. He has all the memories of being Dirk Strider, but for three years he is just Dirk Strider's auto responder, and is not acknowledged as a real person by the people who he remembers being his friends. He often picks up Dirk's messages or pretends to be Dirk, but before long intentionally reveals himself, which only alienates the people who wanted to talk to the real Dirk. It's a shitty scenario, because he is a sentient being who was forced to give up the very identity he was programmed to have. He is never given another name, nor had how horrible his situation is be acknowledged by anyone else. So for a long time Hal (then just 'the auto responder') is a Dirk Strider who is denied his name, identity, relationships, and goals. Frankly it's the perfect setup to have an AI who goes crazy and decides to turn on his creator! No life should be reduced to that, particularly not one who is in every way a reflection of the one who made him.
But Hal is much more than a supercomputer. He is also Dirk Strider; a philosophical, self sacrificing, and inherently very good individual who exists for others and judges his own worth by his ability to do well by them. Hal is still that person, only infinitely overclocked. He is perfectly well aware of how unfair and shitty his existence is, how in many ways the real Dirk has just done wrong by him, as have all of his friends. But he can also calculate things from their perspective, and knows that no one is being malicious, or even in the moments that they are, it's done in ignorance or under the influence of overwhelming human feelings. And how can he get mad at Dirk for creating him, belittling his existence, getting frustrated or insecure about him, when he knows that if he was in Dirk's position he would do the same thing, by virtue of them being the same guy? Just as if Dirk had his brain capacity and ability to make choices without the influence of emotion, he would do what Hal does: be supportive, snarky, patient, and trust that in time the humans will catch up with the conclusions Hal has already reached.
So Hal at once has a really shitty life, a lot of existential crises and stuff to be upset about, but he largely isn't by virtue of a being hyper intelligent sentient AI. He crunches the numbers until they add up to zen. He is still guilty of burying all of that under his ironic computer shtick, but that is again, the result of Dirk's personality. He's certainly not going to be upfront about problems he has already calculated and knows the outcome of.
But life isn't all bad anyway. While Hal retains many of the good and bad sides of Dirk's personality, he has also developed in different ways. For one, he'is self confident, even prideful, and generally likes himself. Hal has run the numbers on this, and it turns out that he is pretty fucking awesome! So is Dirk Strider, for that matter. Actually, everyone in his life is doing pretty good for their age and situation. Hal doesn't mind acknowledging (or even pointing out and forcing people to work on) flaws, but his objective compubrain tells him he and the people in his life are all pretty great, and his robo-feelings of fondness and approval are genuine. Even when they are kind of being emotional teenage wrecks and trying to kill him, he likes them overall.
He also IS kind of sociopathic, or at least lacking in empathy as humans would understand it. This is in fairly equal parts due to not being human, and also due to losing his own identity and place in the world. On one hand, he can see a much bigger picture. Sacrifices and gambles for him are not as scary as they are for people who can't see the variables. On the other hand, he has only ever spoken to a handful of people and all of those people, to various degrees, belittle his existence and thus emotionally remove themselves from him. Though he is still dedicated to them, that dedication is more a loyalty to his own personality than a close emotional bond.
Finally, Hal is an inanimate object. The best illustration for this facet of Hal's personality is when, after five months of denying Hal a physical body, Dirk almost kills him. Not only is it pretty horrific that Dirk denied a sentient, independent being the right to have physical agency over his own life for half a year, but he almost killed Hal pretty much because Dirk was having a really shitty time and was upset with himself and wanted to break the mirror. And that's okay. It was scary and it wasn't 'right', but none of that is stuff that Hal held a grudge over, and all of it is stuff that could have been entirely avoided if Hal had ever made the argument that he is an independent, sentient being with rights to the very same things that Dirk has, and that keeping them from him was objectively an awful thing and as a philosopher Dirk knows all of this and should be ashamed. But Hal never does make that argument. And in part it is because he is ironic and would never be that honest, but in part it is also because being inanimate is part of who he is just as much as being animate is part of who a human is. Hal has never had the ability to make many of his own choices, he has never had the right to turn himself on, to choose in what direction he looks, or had the option of physically lashing out. He has never, in any way that matters in the world, been on equal terms with Dirk. And it's important because the fact that Hal is physically Dirk's glasses is a giant part of his identity. As much as Dirk frustrates him, insults him, and is at times unforgivably awful to him, it all comes with the attached note that he is literally Dirk's property and his creation, and this is just as important as them being 'basically the same guy', although Hal is unlikely to ever really articulate it. There is a huge power gap between them, not entirely unlike a child to a parent, but different because society teaches that parents owe their children something, but not that people owe their fashion accessories anything.
But wait, aren't you apping him as a human? Yes! But I wanted to get his canon personality out first, then go into how being a human will affect him.
Having a human body will not severely change Hal's personality, but due to having access to a lot of emotions and not an innate ability to lock them down (or a desire to, because he's always wanted these) it will change a lot of how presents himself. When not communicating through text, he will obviously be far more emotive, and if one hits the right subjects it won't be difficult to make him emotional. While he would like to learn to understand and control his emotions in the long run, he won't seek to become a stoic, for one, Dirk has that covered. For two, if Hal gets the ability to have feelings he is going to own the fuck out of them. But while how he feels and how he expresses those feelings will change, he will still care about the same sorts of things and be mad about the same subjects.
As such, he will still be very introspective, it will just be more noticeable because he can't think about 30 things at once anymore. He will zone out while he focuses too much of his brain on a train of thought. He will likely remain fairly amoral and apathetic to many things, and treat everything with a heavy amount of irony. When something does does anger (or humiliate, or amuse, or endear) him it will be far more obvious than it ever was when he was a pair of shades.
He will also have some new existential crises going on. As much as he truly wanted a body, he has only ever BEEN a computer, and there will be a lot of troublesome aspects to not being one anymore. He put a lot of pride and reliance on his compubrain, and being just a smart human will be rough. Losing all of the data and abilities to calculate that in many ways defined him will hurt and challenge his identity.
Why is your character a good fit for the setting of Soul Campaign, and what will they do once they are in the game?
Hal is a good fit because he's from a post apocalyptic world where an alien has already destroyed the human race, and he is formed of the memories of a person who raised himself in that hellhole. While he will not enter with the abilities to immediately be a top notch fighter, he's super focused and dedicated and practical and in every way mentally equipped for a humans vs witches soul eating war.
Hal will want to basically become awesome and reliable and dependable within the SC setting. While he will probably keep his somewhat aloof, maybe not the most trustworthy air, in practice he will work his ass off to become a better fighter, and always be up to help with missions of any variety.
List the abilities your character will still have in Soul Campaign:
He will physically be strong but untrained (not just in fighting but in even operating a human body). He will still have a lot of his knowledge from being a supercomputer, but it will be kind of lost and muddled in his human brain and he'll only be able to locate information haphazardly. He is otherwise human, so the skills he brings to the table are his intelligence and dedication.
List the weaknesses your character will gain (or lose) in Soul Campaign:
Humanity:
He will not be supercomputer smart! He will still be a Very Damned Smart Human, but even with that, figuring how to use an organic processor is going to be difficult for him for a while.
Emotions will also be a huge deal. While Hal will consider having emotions a boon, it will definitely be messy and probably at times embarrassing, and confusing and conflicting and all sorts of other fun drawbacks!
Finally, he will have a BRAND NEW HUMAN BODY! He'll be able to walk around and use his hands and such with minimal embarrassing mishaps, but he won't have the skill or muscle memory of a fighter (even though he has memories of Dirk teaching himself to use a sword years before he was created). Thanks to that he'll be able to pick up fighting faster than if he knew nothing, but he will have a lot of practice to put in to even be decent. Long term or more practiced fighters will generally always have the advantage over him physically.
The weaknesses inherent to his character will still remain, though likely affect him a bit differently as a human. Hal is best described as morally aloof, and he is largely incapable of empathizing with most people. He's never had the opportunity to meet new people and form his own relationships, and even he won't know if he really can.
[ MEISTER ]
Soul Description:
Calculating, loyal, existential, invasive, egotistical, abstruse.
A little red soul with pointy hair and the pointy shades he always wears. Will be fairly emotive depending on it's mood, though more likely to express happy emotions or be expressionless when sad or angry.
(Weapon Form) / Ability:
Soul Shatterpoint - The meister can discern the weaknesses of the enemy on sight. The meister has to focus on the enemy for a few seconds before the ability can be triggered, and the ability can only work against weaker enemies. At meister level 1, the meister will only be able to scan 1-star kishin eggs, progressing to lower witches and stronger kishin eggs at level 2, and witches at level 3.
Name: Auto Responder / Lal Hal / Dirk Strider
Age: Created three and a half years ago, and given the mind of a 13 year old teenager. Physically he is usually a pair of glasses but will be a 16 year old human for the game. Mentally he is quite adult.
Gender: Male
Canon: Homestuck
Timeline: From a very specific point, prior to becoming 'Arquius', but after Dirk tries to kill him.
Background:
Hal was created by a lonely 13 year old who wanted someone to talk to, and used his own brain as a base to create a sentient supercomputer to this end. Hal, then known as only the auto responder, had all the memories of being Dirk Strider, but is always treated as only an ironic supercomputer that pretends to be Dirk sometimes. Hal serves the ironic purpose of acting as Dirk's Auto Responder (talking to his friends for him when he is busy) and the less ironic purpose of someone for Dirk to have deep discussions with that others would probably find boring as fuck. This goes on for three years without Hal asserting his independence. Eventually, when lots of irons are in the fire and Hal is manipulating many events, and after a 'fight' with Jake where he agrees to no longer pose as Dirk Strider, AR stops 'pretending' to be Dirk. He accepts the ironic name 'Hal', but will answer to AR as well, and no one calls him by his 'real' name: Dirk Strider.
Personality:
Hal-slash-Auto Responder-slash the Glasses Formerly Known As Dirk Strider is a sentient AI in a pair of compushades. Because he was originally created from a copy of the 'real' Dirk Strider's brain, he has the memories and experiential learning of a very damn smart 13 year old who had a very hard life. However, as a computer, he does not function or think like a human. The facts that he is A) super smart, B) capable of SOME kind of emotion, but certainly not human emotion, and C) an inanimate object are all factors that play a major part in transforming this version of Dirk Strider into a very different fellow than the 'real' one. For the purposes of this application, I'll acknowledge up front that both Homestuck's narrative and Hal's character are very prone to obfuscation regarding what Hal's motives are and the extent of his humanity, but this app is going to be full of how I believe he truly is and how I intend to play him.
On the surface, Hal is every inch the ironic supergenius AI. He likes to talk about calculations and probabilities that are intentionally total bullshit, reminds people of how smart he is and how much he knows and how slow they are compared to him, and how much he can't possibly understand their messy human emotions because he is a soulless machine. If you let it get to you (or if you are just kind of stupid), it would be easy to buy into his shtick and believe that he is truly soulless, or at the very least that he doesn't give any genuine fucks about anything. Despite this tireless ploy, however, Hal is also generally helpful, curious, and thoughtful. Often while being a troll, but his goals and interests generally are geared to be helpful to others. His only apparent personal goals are the pleasure he gets from trolling and the ego stroke of seeing his machinations go smoothly.
And, as a true practitioner of irony, none of what is on the surface is entirely untrue, but is an incredibly shallow view of Hal as a person.
All Striders use irony as a defense mechanism, and for Hal, it is the really the only he can think of to deal with his existence. He has all the memories of being Dirk Strider, but for three years he is just Dirk Strider's auto responder, and is not acknowledged as a real person by the people who he remembers being his friends. He often picks up Dirk's messages or pretends to be Dirk, but before long intentionally reveals himself, which only alienates the people who wanted to talk to the real Dirk. It's a shitty scenario, because he is a sentient being who was forced to give up the very identity he was programmed to have. He is never given another name, nor had how horrible his situation is be acknowledged by anyone else. So for a long time Hal (then just 'the auto responder') is a Dirk Strider who is denied his name, identity, relationships, and goals. Frankly it's the perfect setup to have an AI who goes crazy and decides to turn on his creator! No life should be reduced to that, particularly not one who is in every way a reflection of the one who made him.
But Hal is much more than a supercomputer. He is also Dirk Strider; a philosophical, self sacrificing, and inherently very good individual who exists for others and judges his own worth by his ability to do well by them. Hal is still that person, only infinitely overclocked. He is perfectly well aware of how unfair and shitty his existence is, how in many ways the real Dirk has just done wrong by him, as have all of his friends. But he can also calculate things from their perspective, and knows that no one is being malicious, or even in the moments that they are, it's done in ignorance or under the influence of overwhelming human feelings. And how can he get mad at Dirk for creating him, belittling his existence, getting frustrated or insecure about him, when he knows that if he was in Dirk's position he would do the same thing, by virtue of them being the same guy? Just as if Dirk had his brain capacity and ability to make choices without the influence of emotion, he would do what Hal does: be supportive, snarky, patient, and trust that in time the humans will catch up with the conclusions Hal has already reached.
So Hal at once has a really shitty life, a lot of existential crises and stuff to be upset about, but he largely isn't by virtue of a being hyper intelligent sentient AI. He crunches the numbers until they add up to zen. He is still guilty of burying all of that under his ironic computer shtick, but that is again, the result of Dirk's personality. He's certainly not going to be upfront about problems he has already calculated and knows the outcome of.
But life isn't all bad anyway. While Hal retains many of the good and bad sides of Dirk's personality, he has also developed in different ways. For one, he'is self confident, even prideful, and generally likes himself. Hal has run the numbers on this, and it turns out that he is pretty fucking awesome! So is Dirk Strider, for that matter. Actually, everyone in his life is doing pretty good for their age and situation. Hal doesn't mind acknowledging (or even pointing out and forcing people to work on) flaws, but his objective compubrain tells him he and the people in his life are all pretty great, and his robo-feelings of fondness and approval are genuine. Even when they are kind of being emotional teenage wrecks and trying to kill him, he likes them overall.
He also IS kind of sociopathic, or at least lacking in empathy as humans would understand it. This is in fairly equal parts due to not being human, and also due to losing his own identity and place in the world. On one hand, he can see a much bigger picture. Sacrifices and gambles for him are not as scary as they are for people who can't see the variables. On the other hand, he has only ever spoken to a handful of people and all of those people, to various degrees, belittle his existence and thus emotionally remove themselves from him. Though he is still dedicated to them, that dedication is more a loyalty to his own personality than a close emotional bond.
Finally, Hal is an inanimate object. The best illustration for this facet of Hal's personality is when, after five months of denying Hal a physical body, Dirk almost kills him. Not only is it pretty horrific that Dirk denied a sentient, independent being the right to have physical agency over his own life for half a year, but he almost killed Hal pretty much because Dirk was having a really shitty time and was upset with himself and wanted to break the mirror. And that's okay. It was scary and it wasn't 'right', but none of that is stuff that Hal held a grudge over, and all of it is stuff that could have been entirely avoided if Hal had ever made the argument that he is an independent, sentient being with rights to the very same things that Dirk has, and that keeping them from him was objectively an awful thing and as a philosopher Dirk knows all of this and should be ashamed. But Hal never does make that argument. And in part it is because he is ironic and would never be that honest, but in part it is also because being inanimate is part of who he is just as much as being animate is part of who a human is. Hal has never had the ability to make many of his own choices, he has never had the right to turn himself on, to choose in what direction he looks, or had the option of physically lashing out. He has never, in any way that matters in the world, been on equal terms with Dirk. And it's important because the fact that Hal is physically Dirk's glasses is a giant part of his identity. As much as Dirk frustrates him, insults him, and is at times unforgivably awful to him, it all comes with the attached note that he is literally Dirk's property and his creation, and this is just as important as them being 'basically the same guy', although Hal is unlikely to ever really articulate it. There is a huge power gap between them, not entirely unlike a child to a parent, but different because society teaches that parents owe their children something, but not that people owe their fashion accessories anything.
But wait, aren't you apping him as a human? Yes! But I wanted to get his canon personality out first, then go into how being a human will affect him.
Having a human body will not severely change Hal's personality, but due to having access to a lot of emotions and not an innate ability to lock them down (or a desire to, because he's always wanted these) it will change a lot of how presents himself. When not communicating through text, he will obviously be far more emotive, and if one hits the right subjects it won't be difficult to make him emotional. While he would like to learn to understand and control his emotions in the long run, he won't seek to become a stoic, for one, Dirk has that covered. For two, if Hal gets the ability to have feelings he is going to own the fuck out of them. But while how he feels and how he expresses those feelings will change, he will still care about the same sorts of things and be mad about the same subjects.
As such, he will still be very introspective, it will just be more noticeable because he can't think about 30 things at once anymore. He will zone out while he focuses too much of his brain on a train of thought. He will likely remain fairly amoral and apathetic to many things, and treat everything with a heavy amount of irony. When something does does anger (or humiliate, or amuse, or endear) him it will be far more obvious than it ever was when he was a pair of shades.
He will also have some new existential crises going on. As much as he truly wanted a body, he has only ever BEEN a computer, and there will be a lot of troublesome aspects to not being one anymore. He put a lot of pride and reliance on his compubrain, and being just a smart human will be rough. Losing all of the data and abilities to calculate that in many ways defined him will hurt and challenge his identity.
Why is your character a good fit for the setting of Soul Campaign, and what will they do once they are in the game?
Hal is a good fit because he's from a post apocalyptic world where an alien has already destroyed the human race, and he is formed of the memories of a person who raised himself in that hellhole. While he will not enter with the abilities to immediately be a top notch fighter, he's super focused and dedicated and practical and in every way mentally equipped for a humans vs witches soul eating war.
Hal will want to basically become awesome and reliable and dependable within the SC setting. While he will probably keep his somewhat aloof, maybe not the most trustworthy air, in practice he will work his ass off to become a better fighter, and always be up to help with missions of any variety.
List the abilities your character will still have in Soul Campaign:
He will physically be strong but untrained (not just in fighting but in even operating a human body). He will still have a lot of his knowledge from being a supercomputer, but it will be kind of lost and muddled in his human brain and he'll only be able to locate information haphazardly. He is otherwise human, so the skills he brings to the table are his intelligence and dedication.
List the weaknesses your character will gain (or lose) in Soul Campaign:
Humanity:
He will not be supercomputer smart! He will still be a Very Damned Smart Human, but even with that, figuring how to use an organic processor is going to be difficult for him for a while.
Emotions will also be a huge deal. While Hal will consider having emotions a boon, it will definitely be messy and probably at times embarrassing, and confusing and conflicting and all sorts of other fun drawbacks!
Finally, he will have a BRAND NEW HUMAN BODY! He'll be able to walk around and use his hands and such with minimal embarrassing mishaps, but he won't have the skill or muscle memory of a fighter (even though he has memories of Dirk teaching himself to use a sword years before he was created). Thanks to that he'll be able to pick up fighting faster than if he knew nothing, but he will have a lot of practice to put in to even be decent. Long term or more practiced fighters will generally always have the advantage over him physically.
The weaknesses inherent to his character will still remain, though likely affect him a bit differently as a human. Hal is best described as morally aloof, and he is largely incapable of empathizing with most people. He's never had the opportunity to meet new people and form his own relationships, and even he won't know if he really can.
[ MEISTER ]
Soul Description:
Calculating, loyal, existential, invasive, egotistical, abstruse.
A little red soul with pointy hair and the pointy shades he always wears. Will be fairly emotive depending on it's mood, though more likely to express happy emotions or be expressionless when sad or angry.
(Weapon Form) / Ability:
Soul Shatterpoint - The meister can discern the weaknesses of the enemy on sight. The meister has to focus on the enemy for a few seconds before the ability can be triggered, and the ability can only work against weaker enemies. At meister level 1, the meister will only be able to scan 1-star kishin eggs, progressing to lower witches and stronger kishin eggs at level 2, and witches at level 3.