[APP] Exsilium.

[algorhythms]

» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Ash
Current AGE: 19
Personal JOURNAL: wrathtub
IM & SERVICE: aim: icarus tripped
Player PLURK:
Current CHARACTERS: n/a

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Dirk Strider
Canon & MEDIUM: Homestuck; Webcomic
Canon PULL-POINT: >Dirk: Exit
Character AGE: 15 in canon, though 16 in Exsilium if the game’s timeline follows real time as his birthday is on December 1st.
Character ABILITIES:

The only ‘superhuman-esque’ of Dirk’s abilities would be his flashstepping, which allows him to dart around at speeds that make him a blur to the eye. Dirk possesses some extraordinary and wholly human abilities too, especially for someone his age. On the edge of sixteen Dirk is a excellent swordsman, mathematician, and wunderkind mechanist.

Character HISTORY: Three paragraphs exactly, yo. If it’s not long enough I’ll gladly type something up.

Character PERSONALITY:

TG: betcha ur responder would agree w me
TG: why cant your be more like him
TT: I am more like him.
TG: i mean MOAAAR like him
TT: You just mispelled "more", causing me to suddenly understand jack everything.
TG: hes more in touch with his feelins
TG: which just makes me L my FA off since hes a bobot
TG: *robob
TG: **bobob
TG: and he can actually loosen up sometimes
TG: kinda like u used to could

When it comes to Dirk Strider, everything is a question mark wrapped in an enigma. Even his closest friends feel he can be mysterious and inaccessible at times. Roxy, in pink, just referred to his cold, thoughtful way of going about things as being more emotionless than his robotic counterpart. Though his way of speaking does have a distinct cadence to it, so far he’s never reacted with strong emotion to anything, be it the multiple assassination attempts on his friend Jane or the murder of his older brother by a Fortune 500 alien space witch. The boy is unflusterable. This is not to say he lacks feeling -- Dirk is merely a private, stoic person who prefers to keep his plans and romantic emotions tucked away where no one else can meddle in them.

That being said, he’s not impossible to carry on conversation with. He’s witty and inquisitive and prone to ridiculous many-layered metaphors (these are also handy for deflecting the flow of conversation away from himself -- fancy that!). His set of interests are broad as they as strange, from dabbling in philosophy and ancient myth, engineering robots and solving sick mathematical quandries, writing rap and reading poetry, and collecting questionably kinky porn. And puppets, jesus christ does he love puppets. He even cuddles with one when he sleeps sometimes. Dirk is a modern Renaissance man.

There’s an unshakable calm about him that remains intact during even the most stressful moments. For example, being a lucid dreamer fighting off assassins in his sleep while assisting a friend through a computer that brings about the end of the world without a moment of anxiety. The kid has got more aplomb than the Queen of England crossbred with a silent ninjutsu master.

This immeasurable amount of chill and these borderline inhuman skills don't come without an ego to match. Dirk is almost unsettlingly confident. He speaks reassuringly and formulates plans with no worry for their possible failure (outwardly, at least). He performs ridiculous physical feats and mathematical-technical wonders but calls them childsplay. Upon entering a video game that with both destroy the universe and birth a new one, he says with utmost elegance: “I will be the unseen hand whose nimble digits are behind every subtle twitch in our session's bulbous foam ass.” When confronted with a flaw in his logic or actions he accepts it gracefully, a mark of someone truly comfortable in how awesome he is. A Kanye West caliber ego doesn’t always has its hindrances, though. Dirk’s desire to control the world around him leads to some unhealthy implications, regarding his friends as well as himself. He’s convinced he’s great at multitasking, though having to split his awareness between a Dreamself and waking self leads to him being absent-minded and spacing out, not to mention the how tiring keeping a hundred irons in the fire at all times can be.

This mad egocentricism feeds into him thinking he knows best for every goddamn person on the planet. He often criticizes his friends personalities and levels of credulity, telling them how they should act and feel -- with no concern for how they want to feel. To Dirk, that shit is irrelevant and there’s a 97.5% chance that they’ll thank him for his guidance later anyway.

In his own assbackwards way, Dirk is very protective of those he keeps close. For Jane, its the most obvious: he built her a viciously armed and intelligent android bunny for her thirteenth birthday, to act as a body guard in his stead. During Roxy’s many sleepwalking episodes on the dreamer planet Derse, Dirk tracked her semi-conscious self into the darkness outside the planet and guided her back to bed. He’s also set on keeping her safe from the Black Queen’s assassins who threaten them both. With Jake it manifests as a double-edged sword pretty literally. The robot he sent him as a gift both protects Jake from the monsters on his island and beats his ass into the ground in duels on a regular basis. The robot does the latter as well because Dirk wants to transform Jake into a hardened, deadly warrior. Not that he ever asked if Jake wanted to become a killer in the first place. If Dirk wants it so, he'll make it so.

Though he would never admit to it, Dirk comes off as bit lonely. His closest -- if not only -- friends live hundreds of miles away and his stand-in father-brother figure is constantly leaving him at home alone. Dirk made a direct AI copy of himself three years ago to keep him company and has allowed it to develop inside a pair of extra sunglasses:

TT: The more the software runs, the broader and more detailed its experiential canopy becomes. Makes for a better dialogic partner.
GG: Dialogic?
GG: Are you saying you have conversations with your own auto-responder?
TT: Of course.
TT: Why do you think I made the thing?

There are also the two rapbots, Sawtooth and Squarewave, that he built to do battle with him. It seems Dirk rather tight-lipped about the inner workings of his mind, only discussing his romantic feelings and private plans with Roxy and his own auto-responder when pressured to share. Even then, he’s a little guarded.


» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: His unbreakable katana, forged by an Otaku Master over the heat of a roaring manga fire. Sure there were other amazing swords among the weaponry, but he’s not going to forfeit his most prized and badass possession just for something with a little more flair.

Chosen SKILLSET: Dirk is well-suited for the battlefield, weaponry sciences, and training others. However, if he got to choose -- well, shit, he’d want to be the all knowing gangsta logician heading each section. So if he had to choose only one and be realistic, he’d prefer to be in the thick of combat. To challenge his skills, chop the fuck out of trifling wangstas, and see to it that no one he cares for gets their ass handed to them. He's the only one allowed to be handing out asses.


» SAMPLES
First PERSON:

[text.]

Sup Exsilium recruits, you just popped in the Dirk Strider get your ass right for the battlefield workout tape.

Translation being: Every human, pony, troll, robot, and any other taxonomy-fucking creature is formally invited to the training grounds for an old school samurai sword crossing at dawn beatdown if it tickles their fancy in all the Cosmo mag approved hotspots.

Bonus points for swords, but I can work with whatever lazer cannon Space Odyssey whackness you want to throw at me.

I'm all about expanding my horizons. Especially in regard to new methods of smacking the shit out of people.


Third PERSON:

All sources before this moment pointed to him having some sort of astral destiny ripped straight from a Naoko Takeuchi manga -- you know, universes killed and reborn through the powers of HEART and HOPE but ultimately FRIENDSHIP -- so Dirk has got to give the world mad props for fucking itself over without him and without the batterwitch’s game. The room is bright, purple, clean and cool and for a second there, he thinks he’s woken up on Derse alone for the first time, fully asleep for once in three years.

He wants to ask a thousand questions, but living through a time of alien sea queen tyrants and dreaming in alternate universes has trained Dirk damn well in suspending his disbelief. It taught him to know when to shut the hell up, put a reign on your feelings, and get schoolfed, too. So Dirk is quiet. He listens. He gives the fly dressed woman a nod at every right moment to let her know he hasn’t gone catatonic from shock on her ass.

Besides, a room filled with every weapon known to man and fucking beyond wrenches his focus away from any chance at logic and plotting. Sorry Rox, sorry Jane, sorry English. He’ll worry about you after he finishes salivating over a genuine article Osafune Nagamitsu samurai sword and --

“...is that -- Mjölnir?" he finally speaks up, voice a slow Texan drawl. "I'm going to shit my pants if that’s the Hammer of Thor. Metaphorically shit.”

» ADDITIONAL NOTES
*The dreamer planet Derse in his canon likely not existing here, Dirk is a very active sleepwalker. And sleep-fighter.
*A request to be assigned to an apartment with Equius Zahhak (musclebeast). And with Jake English (golgothasterrorific) if/when they apply.