John Hunger

[WIP]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Inkwell
Contact: mister_inkwell
Other Characters: Fiddleford McGucket | terribibble

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: John
Age: 50s-ish physically; who knows how old actually
Canon: The Adventure Zone
Canon Point: Mid-Episode 68
Character Information: John's page on the Wiki can be found here but it is vague on several points. Primarily it glosses over the events of Stolen Century when Merle and John have a series of discussions in the Parley space, not just one but many over the course of many years. Over this time they form a relationship, the first relationship John has had in quite possibly hundreds or even thousands of years. Initially John is uncertain and afraid that it's a trap, even killing Merle the first time they talk simply to make sure that he'll be able to leave when he wants to. They play chess together and they set up a game in which they take turns asking each other questions that they must answer truthfully. The questions move from practical ones like 'what are you after' to 'are you my friend?' and that's a much more difficult question for John to answer. Instead he counters by asking Merle what brings him happiness, which leads into a discussion of nature of the Hunger and John's views on existence and his goal of ascending beyond that. And this is the point where Merle makes it clear he's decided to stop coming back.

The next time they meet it's about thirty years later in the middle of the final battle against the Hunger. John pulls Merle into the Parley space not to ask him for information or gloat about finally finding Merle and his group but, by his own admission, simply to say goodbye to someone. The Hunger is out of his control now and unhappy with him and he knows he is probably going to die soon, and Merle is the only person he can talk to because Merle is the only person he has talked to at all in the past century. He even calls Merle 'old friend', indirectly answering the question he couldn't previously answer, and he gives Merle the key to defeating the Hunger even knowing the Hunger will know and punish him for it-- and it does, dragging him back into itself and taking away the last of his free will so he can serve as the final boss battle.

The wiki also leaves out the actual details of his death: after transforming into Final John, he is defeated. He and Merle meet in the Parley space one last time. It is now a beach at sunset. They sit together and watch that sunset until he fades away.

Personality:

I’m a public speaker. I was one, a successful one, too, if memory serves. And people from around the world would come to hear my speeches and my message.
Before he was the Hunger, John was a motivational speaker. His entire livelihood depended on getting people to listen to him-- on being charismatic. He's shown to be well-spoken and well-groomed, implying that the image he projects is one that's carefully maintained. And it worked for him: everyone listened. Everyone in his entire plane of existence listened to and believed his words; he was so convincing he changed the very nature of his own universe. He was even able to get Merle to genuinely like him after years of conversations that always ended in John killing him, to say nothing of the fact that the very nature of what John was meant they were enemies. Even as Merle spent decades trying to stop John-as-the-Hunger from consuming more universes, he grew to genuinely enjoy the company of the John he spoke with in Parley because that John was personable and to an extent charming.

Part of this may be in part due to his honesty and openness. In all of his dealings with Merle John tells nothing but the truth, even when asked difficult or personal questions. He has no reason not to lie or refuse to answer, and he always has an out: he could simply have asked Merle questions and then killed him when he got his answers. He had all the power in the situation and no reason not to take advantage of it. Instead he set up the understanding that they would have an equal, fair exchange of information, and he always stuck to that. The one issue is that this is a double-edged sword: being honest is all well and good, but he was also honest with his plane about the true nature of existence. He found out the truth and he shared it, because it was more important that people know the truth than it was to protect them from being hurt by it.

That truth is a major part of what shapes John's worldview and the actions he takes. The flipside to being a speaker was being a philosopher: he is a man preoccupied with the nature of existence and with a person's place in the grand scheme of things. He says himself that he's a 'big picture' kind of guy, that he thought so long and hard about the nature of existence and of time that he was able to actually visualize eternity and his place in it. And seeing it all laid out, knowing that every existence in the grand scheme of things was barely a blip on the timeline, it rendered him cynical and bitter.

To have friendship, Merle, it requires you to... love someone. And be invested in your shared happiness. And these things, Merle, friendship and love and happiness, they’re-- they’re all so… small. In the grand scheme of things, Merle, they last a second.
The Hunger's main goal and, by extension, John's main goal is to become bigger. To shed the trappings of a normal existence and ascend beyond that into something that matters to 'the big picture'. It absorbs everything in its path, pulling more and more existences into itself in an effort to become the sum total of all of them. The fact that this effectively ends those existences and corrupts them into something dark and twisted doesn't matter. John has more or less killed countless universes by folding them into his own being, and this isn't something he seems all that broken up about. To him the only thing that matters is the end goal.

See, the thing is John hasn't been John for a very long time at the point I'm taking him from. His conversations with Merle are the only time he gets to exist as himself instead of being part of the great conglomerate that is the Hunger. When he first attempts to speak he can't even manage to make words. He can barely remember the last times he felt anger or sadness or joy. Sinking so deep into the pit of dissatisfaction that his discovery of the truth of things opened up, compounded with spending god knows how many centuries as an all-consuming hivemind barely clinging to his individuality, has left John incredibly emotionally stunted. He has more or less forgotten what it's like to be human and replaced all of that with the single all-consuming focus on Expanding. Emotions are small things, not important to the big picture stuff.

And then he meets Merle. And he kills Merle, and Merle still comes back to speak with him again, and John has a chance to exist as John instead of just the driving force behind the Hunger. But of course Merle believes that simply living is something to find joy in and of course John believes existence by its very nature is a terrible thing to endure, and when Merle decides to stop talking to John it's the first time in a very long time John actually feels tangible emotion. He's actually almost surprised by it.

Merle: Well… we’ll see. John, thanks for the chess game. And, kiss my ass, you sanctimonious bastard.
John: Huh. I feel sad.
His relationship with Merle is all he has beyond his own cynicism and he's genuinely upset to lose it, despite ostensibly not caring about small things like friendship or love. To put it in incredibly corny terms, he is saved by the power of friendship.

It should be noted he doesn't stop believing the things he believed prior to meeting Merle just because of their friendship. John never did what he did out of malice by his own admission: genuinely what he wanted was something better, something greater, something more than the hopelessness that was existence as he conceived of it. When he turns on the Hunger it isn't some great change of heart. The truth of the situation at that point (and we know how much John cares about the truth of things) is that the Hunger is a mindless being of destruction and that isn't something grand or ascendant like what he envisioned. He does what he does by telling Merle how to stop the Hunger not to renounce his beliefs but because the Hunger no longer embodies them. His relationship with Merle did not make him a good or optimistic person but it did make him a person again, and once his original goal was no longer an option that relationship was all he had. The fact that he chose to spend his final moments of existence with Merle, not even talking, just being together, speaks to how profoundly having a single friend changed him. Perhaps given more time together and less time as an all-consuming hivemind he could have rethought his philosophy on a grander scale, but as things stand he was barely able to scratch the surface of that shift in character before he died.

But hey, that's what RP is for, right?

5-10 Key Character Traits: Charismatic, Truthful, Driven, Contemplative, Cynical, Pragmatic, Ruthless, Emotionally-Stunted
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? CONFLICTS
Opt-Outs: Shade, Wendigo, Goblin, Vampire, Manticore, Demon, Naga (Fiddleford)

Roleplay Sample: Ryslig TDM