Stars of the Nashira OOC

OOC
Player Name: Raile
Preferred Pronouns: It/Its or He/Him (PLEASE do not they/them me!)
Over 18? Yes
Contact: railerat
Invite Link: Here
Time Zone: EST

IC: Mundane (By Daylight)
Name: Dirk Strider
Canon: Homestuck (Post Canon)
Age: 19
Appearance: 6'1" Korean (or equivalent) twunk with a strong nose, orange irises, and anime hair. "The sculpted cheekbones, the warrior's eyebrows, the deadly serious yet exquisitely kissable mouth" is a self-description from the Homestuck Epilogue. What he did not self describe is the way he's got several visible scars on his face and arms, lightly browned skin, and no ass.
Background Questions:
1) What does your character do by daylight? Technically he's a trust fund baby, but he divides his time between running puppet and animatronic themed websites, designing and building. He also photographs, streams, and records his puppets and animatronics for the web. It's a whole thing. He's also a tattoo artist, and works out of a shop in the Pleasure District. If you want a tattoo from Dirk Strider, though, you have to submit himself to his design sense--he may or may not even show you what he plans to put on your body before he does it. You have to agree to his terms. He can get away with this because he has a famous surname and he is objectively good at what he does, and also because he doesn't need the income. The rest of his time he spends tracking every thread or discussion or post about his missing Bro, training himself for combat and ridiculous survival scenarios, and teaching himself all kinds of insane skills or studying politics and philosophy or maths, whatever he's really into at the time. He also watches a LOT of reruns of puppet shows meant for kids.
2) What are they fighting for? At his core, Dirk wants to do the right thing. This, obviously, is the right thing. And he's the one who can and MUST do it. Obligation implies he has no personal investment in this battle, but it does imply an external/internal pressure that's accurate to his drive. Dirk fights because the stakes, to him, are all-encompassing. There is nothing else to do BUT fight for this cause. If his existence has one purpose, it's this. If his life has a justification, it's this. If his means have any end, it's this. All his hobbies and interests are vehicles by which he gained skill, ability, experience, or knowledge that will one day serve this at best, and set dressing at worst. Again, this is presumably also the MORAL right thing--and intellectually, Dirk commits to this. But this man is also unwell, so you know.
3) Who matters most to them? Dirk has no one in his life except Lil Cal, whose personhood is up for serious debate. His selfishness was a matter of necessity growing up, and with no one there but Lil Cal, his brain development suffered accordingly. A lack of empathy (due to mental illness or developmental neglect) does not necessarily make someone a bad person or incapable of investment, so he intellectually has a desire for higher morality and the right answers and right causes. But he fundamentally lacks any human connection to even try to train that motivation on, and his instincts in that regard are poor.
4) How did they get to now? When Dirk was about 3 years old, his celebrity personality filmmaker artist Bro, Dave Strider... uh, he fucking vanished. It's not important whether Dave was actually his brother, or maybe his dad, or maybe a secret third thing. He wasn't a terribly present Guardian to begin with, although Dirk was materially supplied. Not that this was especially helpful when he was a literal infant, but what's a backstory without a little child neglect?

Don't answer that, because there's a lot more of that coming. Dave was last sighted either at a red carpet event, or dramatically backlit on a rooftop, depending on who you believe. It took a few days before people started to realise he wasn't just flakey and would turn up. It took a bit longer for anyone to remember there was a small child involved.

In their defence, not a lot of people KNEW there was a small child at the start of this. But Dave Strider's disappearance was a BIG DEAL. One of the great unsolved mysteries of modern history. Like if Stephen King left an afterparty strangely sober and was last seen scaling scaling a water tower across town. No body has ever been found.

My intention here is that Dave Strider sightings are the ELVIS LIVES!! of this setting, and present-day Dirk tracks these obsessively.

But back to the past: since Dave was legally missing, not dead, little Dirk had no access to his money--not that a toddler can really be held responsible for paying a power bill. Or groceries. Fortunately, someone else stepped in. With rent money and grocery delivery, anyway. An old acquaintance of Dave's, Grandpa Harley, was happy to cover for Dave's missing... well, Dave being missing. Although he didn't actually stop by to check on Dirk or anything for a few months, and then only showed up sporadically. Dirk had to teach himself to read, which he did by watching the setting-equivalent of Sesame Street. As Dirk got a bit older, Harley would take him on ill-advised, manly "wilderness adventures," during which Harley would often "forage" for food and poison himself with toxic plants, etc. But he always dropped Dirk back off at home with more cash afterwards, and Dirk got used to being... uh, abandoned repeatedly? He didn't even think to try to keep Harley there.

This is neither responsible for nor separate from the fact that during the 15 years of extremely unhealthy isolation, Dirk's brain... well, obviously he failed to develop normally, but the inherent stress and trauma of the experience also cracked open a latent genetic predisposition towards schizophrenia. He spent years slow-cooking a feeling that he could understand everything--all of it, all of reality, all human knowledge and beyond human knowledge, if he could just breach one imperceptible barrier he could all but feel wrapped around his mind. His grasp of reality as something that he perceives with his mind, and which his mind could perceive in a way that supercedes reality, or perhaps define it, is a constant for him, and combined with the deep, restless belief that he has a purpose...

Well, once he awakened to his past life and "true" purpose as Nova [????], it all just made sense. An all-too-important, urgent cause that demanded him and no one else but him.

Still, he... tried, at one point, to make human connection. He met a young man his age online--Jake English--and they did hit it off, in a very... "two maladapted young men who want attention and approval" way. Unfortunately, Dirk was invasive and overwhelming, Jake was conflict-averse and self-deceiving, it blew up. They got back together. It went on-again, off-again, for a bit. They've been "off" for a couple years now. Dirk currently pretends he doesn't need Jake's attention or ANYONE'S love, it's not great. Presumably Jake lives somewhere in this city. Hopefully he doesn't get caught up in all this! Maybe now Dirk can move on! He does have so much else going on, suddenly.

Personality Questions:
1) What would make your character happiest or fulfilled? This man. Is so lonely. He is desperate, touch-starved, craves validation, and craves companionship. Even a CRUMB of your attention. Please. He is basically experiencing a nonstop mental breakdown fuelled by his own terminal isolation and he's barely aware of it. Unfortunately, what eclipses that in his brain's actual function is the need for control. In some sense, control is his opium, but to him, it's also the key to existence. In fairness, survival as a child did really mean self-control and control of everything around him, because he was living alone and unsupervised in an apartment. The things out of his control were the things that caused him the most risk. Like food supply. And he's USED to having control of basically everything around him. ('Everyone,' too, but everyone is a lot of inanimate or animatronic objects...)
2) What does your character fear the most? Irrelevance. Being unneeded and unwanted, and unnoticed. If he can have ANY of the three, he'll take it with both hands and not look back. This also means he handles rejection and abandonment Poorly. He NEEDS to exist, in some way that's tangible. So, you know.
3) What does your character think their greatest strength is? What is their actual greatest strength? Dirk obviously thinks his strength lies in his intellect and his capacity to understand and control himself and the situation around him. He believes, wholeheartedly, that he has what it takes to be and do anything and everything he'll need to, or else figure it out and learn. This is not... wholly incorrect. Truthfully, his greatest strength IS hypercompetence, which is compensatory for everything else about him. The problem is that while Dirk values the things other people have, that he lacks, in THEORY....... in practise he blames himself for failing to correct or overcome any shortcomings but otherwise regards the entire range of human qualities he's deficit or maladapted in as negligible in the grand scheme. He just has to be Better and it will be fine.

IC: Supernova (By Starlight)
Code Name: Nova Pastos
Appearance: I have a commission for this but it hasn't been started,
Signature Colors: Hot pink/Magenta?
Domain: Strings/Puppets
Combat Type: Attack
Starting Power: Self-Marionette/Auto-Marionettist. Manipulates his own body via strings he can pull. This is great for moving fast or in physically implausible ways! It is also great for taking hits or ignoring that! It is not great for self-preservation!
Weapon: Katana
Awakening:
Past Life Questions:
1) What was their past life’s role on The Nashira? What kind of life did they lead on Hassaleh before their exodus? Dirk's past life was a Constellation with an obsession. This is probably the least surprising revelation I could have led with. Also unsurprising is that this man was obsessed with Fate, and who controls what Fate is. He believed that the Ocean Temple and the Oracle should once again become one, with the Oracle folded back into the Ocean Temple, and worked tirelessly, painstakingly, and obviously secretly to politically manipulate this heresy into existence. He was no cleric, but invested himself heavily in the individual movements of Fate through single persons as well as the greater matter of society, with an eye on Fate itself.

This was, of course, a massively unhinged way to be, nevermind how cataclysmically heretical every part of this was.

Interestingly, he believed that his motive was as much about the good that could and should be wrought throuugh Fate, and the weight scale of power that comes with controlling it, as it was anything else. Not so much that Fate was unfair, but that Fate's weight should be a responsibility undivided. (These sentences may not make sense, let me know if I need to clarify.)
2) What, if anything, about their past life has echoes in their current life? Do I. Do I really need to lay that out. Considering.
3) What was their past life’s dying wish? For his individual existence to have mattered. (Dirk now believes that his own existence is meant to see that through.)

Sample: Victory Road a few years ago??? Does this count? Another, even. He's so angry in these. He was very angry for a lot of early Victory Road.