Application for Save the Earth
Oct. 24th, 2013 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
parkourbotOOC Information:
Name: Surge
Are you over 15? 21
Contact: HPlus Future (AIM)
IC Information:
Name: S13 "Robot" => Robert Trenton Holloway
Canon: Gunnerkrigg Court
Age: ?? => 18
Preincarnation Appearance: Here and here. Getting a full on detailed picture of his body is a bit difficult.
Any differences: I'm just making his played by Donald Glover. Okay? Okay.
Preincarnated History: No one actually knows the details of what happened to Robot before Annie found him. Later in the series, we are told that he was charged with spreading misinformation and rumors, so they had him dismantled and locked away in a closet. Other robots of his model address him as S13, and Antimony found him in a box marked 'Spare #13', but she just calls him "Robot" and so does everyone else.
Antimony Carver found him in a box and put him back together so he could escort Shadow 2 across the bridge between the Court and Gillitie Woods. After having done that, he decided to explore the woods and ran afoul of Ysengrin, who implanted a seed that gave him a wooden arm to replace his missing one. This sort of put him under sway of the Wood and allowed another Shadow Person to manipulate him into crossing the bridge between the Court and Gillitie Woods. While mind-controlled, he tried to kidnap Reynardine and pushed Annie off the bridge before being stabbed by Eglamore.
His body was turned into paperclips, and his CPU was sent to a robot processing center so they could examine what exactly caused his unique behavior. It stayed there for quite some time, and it’s implied that he was running over his own thoughts in his head. Most of them were regrets over having hurt Annie. After dealing with whatever consequences her actions caused for others, Annie decided she would find out what happened to Robot in the forest. After following a few blatantly obvious signs telling her not to go to the places she was looking for, as well as tricking two other Court robots, she found his CPU. That was being kept for study, since glitches like his are interesting to other robots of the Court. Annie and Reynard broke him out and escaped, meeting up with Kat and installing his CPU in a platform that had a mic and a camera so he could see, hear and speak. This is where he starts becoming friends with Shadow and Kat, the latter of which he begins to consider an angel due to her appearance.
As the story moves on, he and Shadow become nearly inseparable in a very literal way. When he is given a more mobile mouse-bot body, Shadow tags along with him everywhere he goes. Eventually, when Kat’s mom gives her access to a lab that she used use down near XYZ, Kat and Annie discover a bunch of strange robots. Kat takes Robot’s computer chip and places it into a model similar to his old body, and he springs to life and acts out an entire puppet show before fleeing into a chamber with a picture of a woman on it. The woman is named Jeanne. She died and they did nothing.
After this is when shit starts getting weird.
The next chapter Robot plays a significant role in is one where he has a humanoid body given to him by Kat. It’s revealed that he has actually been spreading the word about her and the tomb for some time, and that robots often come by to see it. Eventually, he fetches a meteorology robot and tells him about Kat, as well as Jeanne’s tomb. During this event, it is revealed that the creator of the Court robots, Diego, was actually a huge dick. Because a woman named Jeanne spurned his affections, he basically arranged for her death. Robot sees how and why it happened, as well as Annie and Kat crying about it, and it’s something of the true start of his obsession with understanding human emotions and how they work.
Later in the story, Kat begins to research more into the way Diego worked, and she eventually decodes his method enough to bring one of the first court robots back to life. He explains to her that they essentially killed themselves after creating a new generation of court robots, and clarifies why the robots serve the court, as well as the significance of movement and their definition of life. Then he asks her to kill him, and she does so reluctantly. This is when he starts to act less as a missionary about Kat, and more like a preacher for the other robots. A a result, they slowly come to think of Kat as even more of an angel and probably something of a messiah. It’s later revealed that he follows her to make sure she is safe, presumably because a lot is on her shoulders and he doesn’t want her to suddenly be lost to them all.
Time passes until he and Shadow are enlisted to help Parley get better at fighting so that she can combat Jeanne’s ghost while Annie tries to force her to move on. While he initially holds back, at Kat’s prompting, he soundly trounces her at sword fighting and feels terrible about it. Eventually Parley starts to teleport around, and then he’s unable to stop her from kicking his ass in close quarters. When discussing weapons to use against Jeanne, the possibility of Coyote’s tooth is brought up, and Parley underestimate it’s sharpness and cuts him in half. It doesn’t kill him, but then she drops the sword and it cuts Shadow off the floor.
Shadow and Robot express a great deal of concern for each other before being spirited away to separate places for their respective repairs. While he’s being shut down so that Kat can fix him, Robot realizes that he is in love with Shadow. When they see each other again, Shadow has a 3D body, and Robot takes full advantage of that by hugging the shit out of him. They also hold hands and Shadow gives him a new hoodie. It’s super cute.
Robot begins following Shadow like he does with Kat, and seems to be very keen on watching over him. It’s slightly less creepy because Shadow always knows he’s there. They continue to be super cute the next time they are seen, which is when Shadow is talking to Robot about his classes. Suddenly, they’re ambushed and Shadow escapes while Robot is taken into custody by his former brethren, other S13 models. When they find him again, he’s being held captive for telling lies and slander about Kat being an angel and basically super fucking awesome about robots. Annie, Kat and Shadow are having absolutely none of that shit, and force them to let Robot go. Eventually, Kat proves that she is indeed the hot shit and Robot is granted parole after they doodle a symbol of protection into her walls.
THE END.
Reincarnated History:
Robert doesn’t actually remember much about his parents, which is understandable considering he’s nineteen and they’ve been dead due to a hit-and-run since he was two. While he remembers vague details about his parents, he doesn’t really dwell on it too much, and as far as he’s concerned, his first parental figures were at a foster home. He only ever went to one before his aunt was found, but he considers it one of the better parts of his life, and is actually extremely nostalgic about it.
When he was in foster care, the people running the home he was in had other kids his age to play with, plenty of things he could draw and color with, and was generally stable. Mr. and Mrs. O’connell taught him how to read and do math, and well as more conceptual things like what was right and what was wrong. While he was a naturally quiet sort of kid, he learned the benefits of having people around to make him socialize. He learned how to talk to others, how to be polite, how to basically be a human being.
As he grew older and went to school, he learned that whoops, not all kids are nice. In fact, kids are probably the people with the greatest potential to be dicks, but after a few lessons in this, Robert learned how to ignore it when it was verbal, and how to haul ass whenever it got physical. The few times he had to fight, he did it with tenacity and endurance more than ferocity and strength, and he always came out the worse for it.
But school wasn’t all bad, because he discovered maths and science, both of which he was very good at. It didn’t keep him from being picked on, but it made him happy and he was good at it. He won science fairs and got good grades in those particular subjects, though he was pretty hopeless in art and was mediocre at best in English. Elementary and middle school were fun times for him, and there are a lot of times he looks back on it and wishes that he had noticed more about how good it was.
High school changed him not because of hormones and puberty and the general feeling of growing into himself. He shot up to 6’1” and his voice dropped a few octaves while he lost all his baby fat, but that wasn’t a big deal. Urges that he was told he would have never actually came, and he failed with two girlfriends and one boyfriend as a result, but that wasn’t a big deal. He got shit for being nerdy and dating a guy, and that still wasn't a big deal to him. What was a big deal was that they found a relative he could actually live with, but he sort of had to go, as she was considered a fit guardian and somewhat willing to take him, though it felt like something of a mistake after he’d met his aunt. She wasn’t vicious or cruel, but saw raising him as a duty, which he hesitated to blame her for. She gave him the bare minimum of attention and mostly told him to keep out of the way and not make a nuisance of himself.
While he liked actually going to high school, stress at home made him more prone to reservation. He didn’t want to be more of a burden on his aunt than he felt he was already, so avoided doing things that would cause her to take notice of him. He joined clubs that didn’t require him to ask her for money, and whenever there was a field trip he didn’t go. The only extra curricular he got into was parkour, and that was because it didn’t cost him any money and was more of a hands-on sort of learning that the school wasn't involved in. He got a job, used the money to buy a few things that he wanted; a laptop, an iPod, clothes and so on, generally not exhibiting much foresight with saving.
So eventually senior year came, and with that came talk of the ACT and SAT and college, which Robert had tried to avoid thinking about because he wasn’t exactly sure he was going to go. While he did drop money on both of those tests to get his scores, there was no way he was going to be able to pay for college on a minimum wage salary. His aunt was unwilling to fill out financial aid forms, and he didn’t actually know how to go about getting grants or scholarships. His advice counselor wasn't inept so much as busy. There wasn’t anyone really willing to teach him what to do, and as a result, he got stuck with a minimum wage job and a heaping pile of resentment for old friends who were accomplishing things. He lasted exactly one semester of this before he decided that this was straight up bullshit and he was done with it.
Robert sold most of his stuff on craigslist, donated his books to the library and his excess clothes to charity and got the fuck out of dodge. His aunt did not miss him. Nor did she actually look for him, because whatever, he was old enough to make his own poorly thought out decisions. And poorly thought out they were, because as soon as he made it to Locke City by train, desperately wanting to get as far from his old life as possible, he realized things were going to be a lot harder than he thought. Learning how to steal and be okay with it was an awkward and guilt-ridden process for him until he came to see it as necessary, and he’s been brought low by what he needs to do to survive, but he doesn’t let it get to him, because it’s still making him happier than when he was with his aunt and filled with bitterness and resentment, which is why he keeps up with it.
Currently, he runs around with a bunch of parkour kids, hanging out with homeless youth when he isn’t. Sometimes the groups overlap. He pays for a cheap gym membership with stolen money, and he showers there and keeps most of his stuff in a locker. His possessions amount to a laptop, an MP3 player, some clothes and an old I.D. bracelet, and he has a shitty phone with minutes that he uses a few times a week to either call Mateo or his other friends for about 5 seconds at a time. His living conditions amount to sleeping on the couches of people he knows, and in whatever warm corner of the Dead District he can find, and his manner of getting money involves stealing it, working odd jobs no one asks questions about, or just straight up taking whatever he needs instead of buying it.
First Echo: Robbie’s first Echo happened when he was on a sort-of date with a parkour buddy of his in Locke City. They were awkwardly cuddling on a roof, and he sort of flashed into when he first did the same thing with someone else. The relationship ended about a week later.
Preincarnation Personality:
Robots in the court are unfailingly polite to humans, willing to go out of their way to keep them safe and happy. For the most part they are programmed to do certain tasks according to their model. Robot, also called S13 by his brethren, was apparently part of a secret service sort of thing that monitored the actions of the court citizens to ensure compliance with the rules. He apparently wasn’t very good at his job, because they caught him spreading lies and slander and dismantled him. Then they stuck him in a closet where Antimony later found him.
While this isn’t really elaborated on, it’s implied that he can occasionally exaggerate the reality of things to the point where they’re pretty much lies. Throughout the comic, he addresses Kat as an angel and pretty much exaggerates her importance and her actions to the point of elevating her to near legendary status among the robot populous. He even does it for himself on occasion, putting himself up in the place of a sort of preacher of her words and actions, which is a side he hides from Kat and Annie, though not from Shadow, who finds it a bit creepy.
Speaking of creepy, Robot’s understanding of personal boundaries is sketchy at best, but this is a common thing with Court robots, who occasionally fall in love with humans and need to be told to stop. He seems to be constantly concerned about Annie and Kat, and is both implied and outright shown to be watching them without their knowledge. When Shadow points out how weird that is, he claims to be trying to keep them safe, particularly Kat. Keeping her safe might be part of an obsession he has with learning about himself and robots in general, where they came from and why they are the way they are now. There seems to be a distinct lack of knowledge about robots by robots, as well as a general lack of understanding of human emotion, and figuring out why they are here and what it means to feel is somewhat central to his character. Learning about the past robots and how they were made and what the general meaning of their existence is, is one of the things he seems to be trying to figure out throughout various points in the comic.
Robots of the Court consider movement to be the entire point of living. In the words of the comic,“[Their] limbs do not tire. [Their] minds do not lull. [They] yearn to feel the movement of [their] joints and the firing of [their] senses”. They don’t even have something akin to sleep, so much as they die when they are shut down and are brought back to life when restarted. Robot is the same as the other Court robots in this respect, and it explains some of his behavior towards the people he knows and cares about. He's loyal to Annie and Kat because the former is the one who rebuilt him and gifted him with life again, and the latter is constantly improving his state of being. He's loyal to Shadow and becomes excellent friends with him because Shadow is familiar to him and sort of the reason for his existence.
He is polite to other denizens of the Court because all robots do this, doubly so if they are in any way related to Antimony or Katerina. He’s seen being nice to Parley, even going easy on her in a fight because he doesn’t want to crush her completely and hurt her feelings. When he does beat her, he shows a bit of guilt and sheepishness as well. When Kat brings a robot from Diego’s era back to life, Robot restrains it before it goes berserk, but still thanks it when it compliments his skills. He comes off as very kind and mild-mannered when given the opportunity, albeit a bit awkward in social situations. He even helps Annie with her attempts to get Kat to talk to her again after she returns from the forest, though he is clumsy about it and sorry for inconveniencing Kat. He is generally a nice sort of guy aside from a few creepy factors he exhibits, and his niceness isn’t part of a mask that hides his true, creepy motives, so much as it is just another part of who he is.
Annie and Kat are the main ladies in his life and two of the most important people to him. While he considered Annie something like his mother and is willing to help her and dote on her, Kat is something of a religious figure to him, as well as the person he trusts to fix him. Both of them are extremely important to him in different ways, and while he feels affection for them, he doesn’t actually know what ‘love’ is until Shadow. The relationship between them runs deep because Robot was literally put together again to help Shadow get back to the Wood. When they were reunited, they spent most of their time together, with Shadow tagging along with Robot via the shadows of his hoodie. After Shadow gains a solid body and Robot gets cut in half, Robot comes to realize that he actually loves Shadow and begins treating him with a great deal more affection, holding hands and hugging him whenever the other is receptive to it. When Shadow starts going to school, he also follows him there initially, though Shadow is fully aware of his presence.
Any differences: Robert differentiates from Robot in quite a few ways, since he isn’t a member of the Court and has actually experienced life in a different place. He’s also not a robot.
As far as morality goes, Holloway isn’t actually better than Robot. If anything, he’s actually worse. He’s stayed as good and nice as he’s able to on the streets, but there isn’t much of a competition when the choice is between saintly behavior and going hungry. He’ll steal from supermarkets and nick wallets on occasion, but he typically draws the line at actively mugging people or any kind of violence. He also doesn’t mess around with credit cards and shit like that, usually tossing a wallet somewhere either the person, a police officer, or no one will find it. He doesn’t take shit from people who look like they can’t afford to lose, but at the same time, he’s still taking things and he doesn’t really have a problem with it anymore.
He doesn’t have the same sort of cheery obedience that comes with being a robot of the court either. Robert doesn’t blindly follow directions, and sometimes he will go against them just to be contrary, so long as no one will get hurt in the process. He doesn’t have any religious hang-ups, and there isn’t anything in his life he feels particularly reverent of. Though he’s loyal to his friends and will exhibit basic human courtesy, he is also a straight up thief, so the fact that he’s being kind to a stranger doesn’t really mean much, especially if they look like they can afford to lose something. Just because he’s holding the door for you now, doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t rifle through your bag for money when you’re not looking. Maybe not right away, because there is a line, but sometime in the future? Probably, yeah.
However, he isn’t without guilt for most of his crimes, partially because he’s just a good person, and partially because he’s been raised to know better. He usually does his best to make sure that he doesn’t steal anything except cash, and he’s not likely to burgle houses or steal your great-great-aunt Ada’s engagement ring that she kept with her throughout the Armenian Genocide. He doesn't mug people because he isn't prone to violence, and he only really fights in self-defense. When it comes to fight of flight, he's more likely to choose the latter, seeing as fighting usually gets you caught and locked up.
Robert also has a pretty big pre-occupation with being free from his burdens. He knows that being homeless isn't ideal and that for plenty of people it isn't a choice, but aside from going back to his aunt (which is just never an option), he doesn't really see any other ideas he could go for in his position, lacking an address and so on with which to get a job and other stable-people things. While he has a strong sense of community for his fellow homeless people and his friends, he's not keen on doing things he doesn't want to do. Peer pressure doesn't work on him because he doesn't like pressure, and he's more likely to wheedle out of it than cave to it. He doesn't like owing people favors, and so he usually tried his best to keep from asking for help. This stems from the harsh attitude his aunt had for him whenever he had something to ask her.
In fact, he’s not really overly cheery at all. He doesn't see the point in smiling and acting contented or happy unless he has a genuine reason for doing so, but he usually has a low sense of contentment and general feelings of total chill, making him an easy person to pal around with. Feeling good emotionally is important to him, enough for him to run away from his aunt and leave to a different coast. He sees the opportunity not to be trapped in a bitter and hateful sort of cycle as something worth his current hardships. While he feels exhilarated when he’s parkouring it around with his homeless buddies and reading the occasional book he can get his hands on, for the most part he is so quiet he could almost be considered sullen or stoic, if it weren't for his tendency to get flustered when someone figures out the right buttons to push.
As far as Robot’s creepy stalker tendencies go, Robert doesn’t have them at all. He’s well aware of the boundaries people have, and watching someone without their knowledge is a level of weird and invasive that he never wants to attain. If he’s concerned, he’ll try reasoning with someone, but he isn’t the sort to follow someone around just to make sure they’re safe. The most he will do is wait for someone outside a building, but only after telling them first.
Abilities: Robot’s main ability is, duh, being a robot.
He is stronger and faster than a normal human, doesn’t tire or sleep, and apparently doesn’t run out of battery or whatever he uses for power either. He has a natural affinity for technology, repairs and so on, because the robots of the court are said to be entirely self-sufficient, relying only on themselves for repairs and maintenance. He is difficult to actually hurt unless significant force is used, and even then, considering that Parley cut him in half, he doesn't even feel the pain from it. He can't be killed unless his motherboard is destroyed.
Outside of the realm of robotics, Robot is an expert fencer, having learned from his time implanted in the S1 model, first of his kind. He is also quite a dab hand with martial arts, though it’s unknown where he picked them up, and he’s perfectly capable of taking down a larger opponent. He’s also exceedingly good at parkour, partially due to being a robot, and can easily execute moves most humans couldn’t even attempt due to a lack of strength, flexibility, and the possibility of a fatal landing. Due to the fact that robots of his model apparently act as a sort of secret police, and that Robot has been seen tracking Shadow, Kat and Annie, as well as finding other robots around the Court, it can be assumed that he also knows how to find people, sort of like a robot detective.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Robert wakes up in a hospital feeling weak, like he’s gotten the shit kicked out of him and he doesn’t have the pride or position to say you should see the other guy. His mind is fuzzy and his mouth feels dry, but nothing hurts too much. Mostly it’s a dull, all over ache radiating from his arm, his upper body, and his face.”What,” he says, and then remembers.
There was an explosion. There were snakes, huge ones made of rock. Some people were screaming and he took a chunk of rubble to the face and blacked out.
Shit, he thinks, then says it out loud for good measure. “Shit.”
He pulls himself up from the bed and looks around, but it’s dark and he’s got a curtain pulled around his bed, thank god. He sits up and looks at his arm and can’t see shit because it’s dark, duh, but feels around instead. There’s a bandage and a lump underneath it that feels like stitches. He feels his head and of course that’s bandaged too. He looks down his hospital gown and part of him thinks Yo, did they really need to strip me? But there’s only the beginnings of a what is going to end up a nasty bruise under there.
“Okay,” he whispers to himself, “I need to get out of here.”
Before they find out who he is and that he is technically not the police’s favorite person, though considering he’s homeless, he’s probably not anyone’s favorite person except for a few of his friends and maybe Mateo.
Clothes are his main problem right now, and he’s almost thankful when he sees a small folded pile of them at the foot of his bed. They’re his clothes, but washed and dried and smelling sterilized. He’s happy about this, smells his clothes for a bit before putting them on. It’s nice to know that he won’t be stuck with a towel wrapped around around his hips in Mattie’s house while the other boy mixes their clothes together for laundry.
He’s careful when he sneaks out, though he nicks some codeine just in case. He feels bad about it, sure, but chances are he’ll get about halfway to where he needs to be before everything starts to ache again.
Roleplay Sample - Network: Handwriting;
[For a while, there’s just a dot on one page that is getting bigger as time goes on. Then there comes the actual writing. It’s actually extremely neat, though a little awkward. All the letters are sharp and made of straight lines only. Nary a curve in sight.]
sup
I'm Holloway
and yo if someone could tell me what’s going on that’d be awesome
cuz I don’t know if y’all took a look out there but the DD looks seriously jacked up in a few places and I’m not totally sure if I’m going crazy but I think I saw a giant ass snake before I got clocked one in the face with a rock
and seeing as all y’all are talking about the whole thing and no one seems to be mentioning that kinda shit on the news
the giant snakes I mean
I’m hoping someone’ll help me out here
mostly with something about how I’m not crazy
but that'd also means things like that exist and I'm not sure I wanna deal with a world like that
Any Questions? I AM NOT GOOD AT MATH OR NON-BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. DO NOT EXPECT MUCH FROM ME IN THESE AREAS.
Name: Surge
Are you over 15? 21
Contact: HPlus Future (AIM)
IC Information:
Name: S13 "Robot" => Robert Trenton Holloway
Canon: Gunnerkrigg Court
Age: ?? => 18
Preincarnation Appearance: Here and here. Getting a full on detailed picture of his body is a bit difficult.
Any differences: I'm just making his played by Donald Glover. Okay? Okay.
Preincarnated History: No one actually knows the details of what happened to Robot before Annie found him. Later in the series, we are told that he was charged with spreading misinformation and rumors, so they had him dismantled and locked away in a closet. Other robots of his model address him as S13, and Antimony found him in a box marked 'Spare #13', but she just calls him "Robot" and so does everyone else.
Antimony Carver found him in a box and put him back together so he could escort Shadow 2 across the bridge between the Court and Gillitie Woods. After having done that, he decided to explore the woods and ran afoul of Ysengrin, who implanted a seed that gave him a wooden arm to replace his missing one. This sort of put him under sway of the Wood and allowed another Shadow Person to manipulate him into crossing the bridge between the Court and Gillitie Woods. While mind-controlled, he tried to kidnap Reynardine and pushed Annie off the bridge before being stabbed by Eglamore.
His body was turned into paperclips, and his CPU was sent to a robot processing center so they could examine what exactly caused his unique behavior. It stayed there for quite some time, and it’s implied that he was running over his own thoughts in his head. Most of them were regrets over having hurt Annie. After dealing with whatever consequences her actions caused for others, Annie decided she would find out what happened to Robot in the forest. After following a few blatantly obvious signs telling her not to go to the places she was looking for, as well as tricking two other Court robots, she found his CPU. That was being kept for study, since glitches like his are interesting to other robots of the Court. Annie and Reynard broke him out and escaped, meeting up with Kat and installing his CPU in a platform that had a mic and a camera so he could see, hear and speak. This is where he starts becoming friends with Shadow and Kat, the latter of which he begins to consider an angel due to her appearance.
As the story moves on, he and Shadow become nearly inseparable in a very literal way. When he is given a more mobile mouse-bot body, Shadow tags along with him everywhere he goes. Eventually, when Kat’s mom gives her access to a lab that she used use down near XYZ, Kat and Annie discover a bunch of strange robots. Kat takes Robot’s computer chip and places it into a model similar to his old body, and he springs to life and acts out an entire puppet show before fleeing into a chamber with a picture of a woman on it. The woman is named Jeanne. She died and they did nothing.
After this is when shit starts getting weird.
The next chapter Robot plays a significant role in is one where he has a humanoid body given to him by Kat. It’s revealed that he has actually been spreading the word about her and the tomb for some time, and that robots often come by to see it. Eventually, he fetches a meteorology robot and tells him about Kat, as well as Jeanne’s tomb. During this event, it is revealed that the creator of the Court robots, Diego, was actually a huge dick. Because a woman named Jeanne spurned his affections, he basically arranged for her death. Robot sees how and why it happened, as well as Annie and Kat crying about it, and it’s something of the true start of his obsession with understanding human emotions and how they work.
Later in the story, Kat begins to research more into the way Diego worked, and she eventually decodes his method enough to bring one of the first court robots back to life. He explains to her that they essentially killed themselves after creating a new generation of court robots, and clarifies why the robots serve the court, as well as the significance of movement and their definition of life. Then he asks her to kill him, and she does so reluctantly. This is when he starts to act less as a missionary about Kat, and more like a preacher for the other robots. A a result, they slowly come to think of Kat as even more of an angel and probably something of a messiah. It’s later revealed that he follows her to make sure she is safe, presumably because a lot is on her shoulders and he doesn’t want her to suddenly be lost to them all.
Time passes until he and Shadow are enlisted to help Parley get better at fighting so that she can combat Jeanne’s ghost while Annie tries to force her to move on. While he initially holds back, at Kat’s prompting, he soundly trounces her at sword fighting and feels terrible about it. Eventually Parley starts to teleport around, and then he’s unable to stop her from kicking his ass in close quarters. When discussing weapons to use against Jeanne, the possibility of Coyote’s tooth is brought up, and Parley underestimate it’s sharpness and cuts him in half. It doesn’t kill him, but then she drops the sword and it cuts Shadow off the floor.
Shadow and Robot express a great deal of concern for each other before being spirited away to separate places for their respective repairs. While he’s being shut down so that Kat can fix him, Robot realizes that he is in love with Shadow. When they see each other again, Shadow has a 3D body, and Robot takes full advantage of that by hugging the shit out of him. They also hold hands and Shadow gives him a new hoodie. It’s super cute.
Robot begins following Shadow like he does with Kat, and seems to be very keen on watching over him. It’s slightly less creepy because Shadow always knows he’s there. They continue to be super cute the next time they are seen, which is when Shadow is talking to Robot about his classes. Suddenly, they’re ambushed and Shadow escapes while Robot is taken into custody by his former brethren, other S13 models. When they find him again, he’s being held captive for telling lies and slander about Kat being an angel and basically super fucking awesome about robots. Annie, Kat and Shadow are having absolutely none of that shit, and force them to let Robot go. Eventually, Kat proves that she is indeed the hot shit and Robot is granted parole after they doodle a symbol of protection into her walls.
THE END.
Reincarnated History:
Robert doesn’t actually remember much about his parents, which is understandable considering he’s nineteen and they’ve been dead due to a hit-and-run since he was two. While he remembers vague details about his parents, he doesn’t really dwell on it too much, and as far as he’s concerned, his first parental figures were at a foster home. He only ever went to one before his aunt was found, but he considers it one of the better parts of his life, and is actually extremely nostalgic about it.
When he was in foster care, the people running the home he was in had other kids his age to play with, plenty of things he could draw and color with, and was generally stable. Mr. and Mrs. O’connell taught him how to read and do math, and well as more conceptual things like what was right and what was wrong. While he was a naturally quiet sort of kid, he learned the benefits of having people around to make him socialize. He learned how to talk to others, how to be polite, how to basically be a human being.
As he grew older and went to school, he learned that whoops, not all kids are nice. In fact, kids are probably the people with the greatest potential to be dicks, but after a few lessons in this, Robert learned how to ignore it when it was verbal, and how to haul ass whenever it got physical. The few times he had to fight, he did it with tenacity and endurance more than ferocity and strength, and he always came out the worse for it.
But school wasn’t all bad, because he discovered maths and science, both of which he was very good at. It didn’t keep him from being picked on, but it made him happy and he was good at it. He won science fairs and got good grades in those particular subjects, though he was pretty hopeless in art and was mediocre at best in English. Elementary and middle school were fun times for him, and there are a lot of times he looks back on it and wishes that he had noticed more about how good it was.
High school changed him not because of hormones and puberty and the general feeling of growing into himself. He shot up to 6’1” and his voice dropped a few octaves while he lost all his baby fat, but that wasn’t a big deal. Urges that he was told he would have never actually came, and he failed with two girlfriends and one boyfriend as a result, but that wasn’t a big deal. He got shit for being nerdy and dating a guy, and that still wasn't a big deal to him. What was a big deal was that they found a relative he could actually live with, but he sort of had to go, as she was considered a fit guardian and somewhat willing to take him, though it felt like something of a mistake after he’d met his aunt. She wasn’t vicious or cruel, but saw raising him as a duty, which he hesitated to blame her for. She gave him the bare minimum of attention and mostly told him to keep out of the way and not make a nuisance of himself.
While he liked actually going to high school, stress at home made him more prone to reservation. He didn’t want to be more of a burden on his aunt than he felt he was already, so avoided doing things that would cause her to take notice of him. He joined clubs that didn’t require him to ask her for money, and whenever there was a field trip he didn’t go. The only extra curricular he got into was parkour, and that was because it didn’t cost him any money and was more of a hands-on sort of learning that the school wasn't involved in. He got a job, used the money to buy a few things that he wanted; a laptop, an iPod, clothes and so on, generally not exhibiting much foresight with saving.
So eventually senior year came, and with that came talk of the ACT and SAT and college, which Robert had tried to avoid thinking about because he wasn’t exactly sure he was going to go. While he did drop money on both of those tests to get his scores, there was no way he was going to be able to pay for college on a minimum wage salary. His aunt was unwilling to fill out financial aid forms, and he didn’t actually know how to go about getting grants or scholarships. His advice counselor wasn't inept so much as busy. There wasn’t anyone really willing to teach him what to do, and as a result, he got stuck with a minimum wage job and a heaping pile of resentment for old friends who were accomplishing things. He lasted exactly one semester of this before he decided that this was straight up bullshit and he was done with it.
Robert sold most of his stuff on craigslist, donated his books to the library and his excess clothes to charity and got the fuck out of dodge. His aunt did not miss him. Nor did she actually look for him, because whatever, he was old enough to make his own poorly thought out decisions. And poorly thought out they were, because as soon as he made it to Locke City by train, desperately wanting to get as far from his old life as possible, he realized things were going to be a lot harder than he thought. Learning how to steal and be okay with it was an awkward and guilt-ridden process for him until he came to see it as necessary, and he’s been brought low by what he needs to do to survive, but he doesn’t let it get to him, because it’s still making him happier than when he was with his aunt and filled with bitterness and resentment, which is why he keeps up with it.
Currently, he runs around with a bunch of parkour kids, hanging out with homeless youth when he isn’t. Sometimes the groups overlap. He pays for a cheap gym membership with stolen money, and he showers there and keeps most of his stuff in a locker. His possessions amount to a laptop, an MP3 player, some clothes and an old I.D. bracelet, and he has a shitty phone with minutes that he uses a few times a week to either call Mateo or his other friends for about 5 seconds at a time. His living conditions amount to sleeping on the couches of people he knows, and in whatever warm corner of the Dead District he can find, and his manner of getting money involves stealing it, working odd jobs no one asks questions about, or just straight up taking whatever he needs instead of buying it.
First Echo: Robbie’s first Echo happened when he was on a sort-of date with a parkour buddy of his in Locke City. They were awkwardly cuddling on a roof, and he sort of flashed into when he first did the same thing with someone else. The relationship ended about a week later.
Preincarnation Personality:
Robots in the court are unfailingly polite to humans, willing to go out of their way to keep them safe and happy. For the most part they are programmed to do certain tasks according to their model. Robot, also called S13 by his brethren, was apparently part of a secret service sort of thing that monitored the actions of the court citizens to ensure compliance with the rules. He apparently wasn’t very good at his job, because they caught him spreading lies and slander and dismantled him. Then they stuck him in a closet where Antimony later found him.
While this isn’t really elaborated on, it’s implied that he can occasionally exaggerate the reality of things to the point where they’re pretty much lies. Throughout the comic, he addresses Kat as an angel and pretty much exaggerates her importance and her actions to the point of elevating her to near legendary status among the robot populous. He even does it for himself on occasion, putting himself up in the place of a sort of preacher of her words and actions, which is a side he hides from Kat and Annie, though not from Shadow, who finds it a bit creepy.
Speaking of creepy, Robot’s understanding of personal boundaries is sketchy at best, but this is a common thing with Court robots, who occasionally fall in love with humans and need to be told to stop. He seems to be constantly concerned about Annie and Kat, and is both implied and outright shown to be watching them without their knowledge. When Shadow points out how weird that is, he claims to be trying to keep them safe, particularly Kat. Keeping her safe might be part of an obsession he has with learning about himself and robots in general, where they came from and why they are the way they are now. There seems to be a distinct lack of knowledge about robots by robots, as well as a general lack of understanding of human emotion, and figuring out why they are here and what it means to feel is somewhat central to his character. Learning about the past robots and how they were made and what the general meaning of their existence is, is one of the things he seems to be trying to figure out throughout various points in the comic.
Robots of the Court consider movement to be the entire point of living. In the words of the comic,“[Their] limbs do not tire. [Their] minds do not lull. [They] yearn to feel the movement of [their] joints and the firing of [their] senses”. They don’t even have something akin to sleep, so much as they die when they are shut down and are brought back to life when restarted. Robot is the same as the other Court robots in this respect, and it explains some of his behavior towards the people he knows and cares about. He's loyal to Annie and Kat because the former is the one who rebuilt him and gifted him with life again, and the latter is constantly improving his state of being. He's loyal to Shadow and becomes excellent friends with him because Shadow is familiar to him and sort of the reason for his existence.
He is polite to other denizens of the Court because all robots do this, doubly so if they are in any way related to Antimony or Katerina. He’s seen being nice to Parley, even going easy on her in a fight because he doesn’t want to crush her completely and hurt her feelings. When he does beat her, he shows a bit of guilt and sheepishness as well. When Kat brings a robot from Diego’s era back to life, Robot restrains it before it goes berserk, but still thanks it when it compliments his skills. He comes off as very kind and mild-mannered when given the opportunity, albeit a bit awkward in social situations. He even helps Annie with her attempts to get Kat to talk to her again after she returns from the forest, though he is clumsy about it and sorry for inconveniencing Kat. He is generally a nice sort of guy aside from a few creepy factors he exhibits, and his niceness isn’t part of a mask that hides his true, creepy motives, so much as it is just another part of who he is.
Annie and Kat are the main ladies in his life and two of the most important people to him. While he considered Annie something like his mother and is willing to help her and dote on her, Kat is something of a religious figure to him, as well as the person he trusts to fix him. Both of them are extremely important to him in different ways, and while he feels affection for them, he doesn’t actually know what ‘love’ is until Shadow. The relationship between them runs deep because Robot was literally put together again to help Shadow get back to the Wood. When they were reunited, they spent most of their time together, with Shadow tagging along with Robot via the shadows of his hoodie. After Shadow gains a solid body and Robot gets cut in half, Robot comes to realize that he actually loves Shadow and begins treating him with a great deal more affection, holding hands and hugging him whenever the other is receptive to it. When Shadow starts going to school, he also follows him there initially, though Shadow is fully aware of his presence.
Any differences: Robert differentiates from Robot in quite a few ways, since he isn’t a member of the Court and has actually experienced life in a different place. He’s also not a robot.
As far as morality goes, Holloway isn’t actually better than Robot. If anything, he’s actually worse. He’s stayed as good and nice as he’s able to on the streets, but there isn’t much of a competition when the choice is between saintly behavior and going hungry. He’ll steal from supermarkets and nick wallets on occasion, but he typically draws the line at actively mugging people or any kind of violence. He also doesn’t mess around with credit cards and shit like that, usually tossing a wallet somewhere either the person, a police officer, or no one will find it. He doesn’t take shit from people who look like they can’t afford to lose, but at the same time, he’s still taking things and he doesn’t really have a problem with it anymore.
He doesn’t have the same sort of cheery obedience that comes with being a robot of the court either. Robert doesn’t blindly follow directions, and sometimes he will go against them just to be contrary, so long as no one will get hurt in the process. He doesn’t have any religious hang-ups, and there isn’t anything in his life he feels particularly reverent of. Though he’s loyal to his friends and will exhibit basic human courtesy, he is also a straight up thief, so the fact that he’s being kind to a stranger doesn’t really mean much, especially if they look like they can afford to lose something. Just because he’s holding the door for you now, doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t rifle through your bag for money when you’re not looking. Maybe not right away, because there is a line, but sometime in the future? Probably, yeah.
However, he isn’t without guilt for most of his crimes, partially because he’s just a good person, and partially because he’s been raised to know better. He usually does his best to make sure that he doesn’t steal anything except cash, and he’s not likely to burgle houses or steal your great-great-aunt Ada’s engagement ring that she kept with her throughout the Armenian Genocide. He doesn't mug people because he isn't prone to violence, and he only really fights in self-defense. When it comes to fight of flight, he's more likely to choose the latter, seeing as fighting usually gets you caught and locked up.
Robert also has a pretty big pre-occupation with being free from his burdens. He knows that being homeless isn't ideal and that for plenty of people it isn't a choice, but aside from going back to his aunt (which is just never an option), he doesn't really see any other ideas he could go for in his position, lacking an address and so on with which to get a job and other stable-people things. While he has a strong sense of community for his fellow homeless people and his friends, he's not keen on doing things he doesn't want to do. Peer pressure doesn't work on him because he doesn't like pressure, and he's more likely to wheedle out of it than cave to it. He doesn't like owing people favors, and so he usually tried his best to keep from asking for help. This stems from the harsh attitude his aunt had for him whenever he had something to ask her.
In fact, he’s not really overly cheery at all. He doesn't see the point in smiling and acting contented or happy unless he has a genuine reason for doing so, but he usually has a low sense of contentment and general feelings of total chill, making him an easy person to pal around with. Feeling good emotionally is important to him, enough for him to run away from his aunt and leave to a different coast. He sees the opportunity not to be trapped in a bitter and hateful sort of cycle as something worth his current hardships. While he feels exhilarated when he’s parkouring it around with his homeless buddies and reading the occasional book he can get his hands on, for the most part he is so quiet he could almost be considered sullen or stoic, if it weren't for his tendency to get flustered when someone figures out the right buttons to push.
As far as Robot’s creepy stalker tendencies go, Robert doesn’t have them at all. He’s well aware of the boundaries people have, and watching someone without their knowledge is a level of weird and invasive that he never wants to attain. If he’s concerned, he’ll try reasoning with someone, but he isn’t the sort to follow someone around just to make sure they’re safe. The most he will do is wait for someone outside a building, but only after telling them first.
Abilities: Robot’s main ability is, duh, being a robot.
He is stronger and faster than a normal human, doesn’t tire or sleep, and apparently doesn’t run out of battery or whatever he uses for power either. He has a natural affinity for technology, repairs and so on, because the robots of the court are said to be entirely self-sufficient, relying only on themselves for repairs and maintenance. He is difficult to actually hurt unless significant force is used, and even then, considering that Parley cut him in half, he doesn't even feel the pain from it. He can't be killed unless his motherboard is destroyed.
Outside of the realm of robotics, Robot is an expert fencer, having learned from his time implanted in the S1 model, first of his kind. He is also quite a dab hand with martial arts, though it’s unknown where he picked them up, and he’s perfectly capable of taking down a larger opponent. He’s also exceedingly good at parkour, partially due to being a robot, and can easily execute moves most humans couldn’t even attempt due to a lack of strength, flexibility, and the possibility of a fatal landing. Due to the fact that robots of his model apparently act as a sort of secret police, and that Robot has been seen tracking Shadow, Kat and Annie, as well as finding other robots around the Court, it can be assumed that he also knows how to find people, sort of like a robot detective.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Robert wakes up in a hospital feeling weak, like he’s gotten the shit kicked out of him and he doesn’t have the pride or position to say you should see the other guy. His mind is fuzzy and his mouth feels dry, but nothing hurts too much. Mostly it’s a dull, all over ache radiating from his arm, his upper body, and his face.”What,” he says, and then remembers.
There was an explosion. There were snakes, huge ones made of rock. Some people were screaming and he took a chunk of rubble to the face and blacked out.
Shit, he thinks, then says it out loud for good measure. “Shit.”
He pulls himself up from the bed and looks around, but it’s dark and he’s got a curtain pulled around his bed, thank god. He sits up and looks at his arm and can’t see shit because it’s dark, duh, but feels around instead. There’s a bandage and a lump underneath it that feels like stitches. He feels his head and of course that’s bandaged too. He looks down his hospital gown and part of him thinks Yo, did they really need to strip me? But there’s only the beginnings of a what is going to end up a nasty bruise under there.
“Okay,” he whispers to himself, “I need to get out of here.”
Before they find out who he is and that he is technically not the police’s favorite person, though considering he’s homeless, he’s probably not anyone’s favorite person except for a few of his friends and maybe Mateo.
Clothes are his main problem right now, and he’s almost thankful when he sees a small folded pile of them at the foot of his bed. They’re his clothes, but washed and dried and smelling sterilized. He’s happy about this, smells his clothes for a bit before putting them on. It’s nice to know that he won’t be stuck with a towel wrapped around around his hips in Mattie’s house while the other boy mixes their clothes together for laundry.
He’s careful when he sneaks out, though he nicks some codeine just in case. He feels bad about it, sure, but chances are he’ll get about halfway to where he needs to be before everything starts to ache again.
Roleplay Sample - Network: Handwriting;
[For a while, there’s just a dot on one page that is getting bigger as time goes on. Then there comes the actual writing. It’s actually extremely neat, though a little awkward. All the letters are sharp and made of straight lines only. Nary a curve in sight.]
sup
I'm Holloway
and yo if someone could tell me what’s going on that’d be awesome
cuz I don’t know if y’all took a look out there but the DD looks seriously jacked up in a few places and I’m not totally sure if I’m going crazy but I think I saw a giant ass snake before I got clocked one in the face with a rock
and seeing as all y’all are talking about the whole thing and no one seems to be mentioning that kinda shit on the news
the giant snakes I mean
I’m hoping someone’ll help me out here
mostly with something about how I’m not crazy
but that'd also means things like that exist and I'm not sure I wanna deal with a world like that
Any Questions? I AM NOT GOOD AT MATH OR NON-BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. DO NOT EXPECT MUCH FROM ME IN THESE AREAS.
