#ertaro

[fantroll-purgatory]

@cheyj05

I’m redoing my old Homestuck oc’s, sorry if he’s bad.

Hey now, I notice that this comment is the beginning of a fair amount of putting your own profile down! We trust that you like Theato because you made him and liked him enough to ask us to help you improve him rather than throw him out altogether, so I’m gonna remove a few of the comments where you’re beating yourself up and proceed as usual, okay?

World: Alternia

Name: Theato Ertaro (I don’t remember how I got this name)

It sounds a little like the word “theater” stretched out to 12 letters, which would make sense given his theming around ballet. Let’s see if we can make him more specific. I like Theato since we can link it back etymologically to all sorts of word roots to mean both spectators and spectacle, which I think works great for someone who idealizes forbidden love.

For the last name, perhaps Elsler, for Fanny Elssler, the ballerina who declined to participate in the famous Grand Pas de Quatre, which featured 4 of the other premiere ballerinas of the era performing on a stage together. I feel that this works on many levels to enhance Theato’s theme: Theato is very much capital-r Romantic himself, the quadrant system makes a pas de quatre more appropriate than a pas de deux to represent romantic woes, Elssler voluntarily bowed out so her exclusion was very much self-inflicted, and the most famous pas de quatre is the pas de cygnets involving the four swans in Swan Lake! Age: 6.92 sweeps (15 years old)

Theme/Story: He’s someone who idealizes “ forbidden love”. He falls in “love” constantly w/ people he knows he can’t have specifically b/e he can’t have them(usually lowbloods and people already in a matespritship and he doesn’t consciously choose people he can’t have). He is in a perpetual state of pining. He’s somewhat based on Swan Lake since that’s, like, the de facto tragic love story. As a result he has somewhat of ballet theme. His hive is next to a lake. His ancestor was probably Troll! Odette or Troll! Romeo or something.

Review Goals: General Overview. His classpect is set in stone though.

Noted! I’ll see what I can retrofit to it then.

Strife Specibus: No clue

Huh. We know that Joey from Hiveswap can use balletkind to kick and dance around her enemies, but I worry about pushing Theato too far into that niche. What about trumpetkind, as a reference to The Trumpet of the Swan? He can whack people with it or even blast ‘em with notes to deafen them! Not to mention it gives a really nice opening for a beatdown song titled “Swan Song.”

Fetch Modus: Also no clue

What about a modus that only accepts items in a “quadrant” with one another? For example, peanut butter (<3 jelly <3< mustard <> sea salt). You cannot captchalogue items by themselves, nor can you remove them without extricating the others in their quadrant.

Blood Color: Cerulean

Lunar Sway: Prospit

Title: Page of Heart

Symbol and Meaning: Scorlo, sign of the devious

Handle: passionateReservoir (also don’t remember where I got this from, it sounds like some innuendo I don’t get)

It doesn’t sound like an innuendo necessarily, but it *does* sound like a nonspecific “I’m a passionate person” handle. What about etoileCroise, both ballet terms but literally translating to “star crossed,” which is how he sees himself?

Quirk: no clue.

Special Abilities: Other than blueblood toughness and super not-getting-mindcontrolled powers, nothing much. He can stand en pointe for longer than 5 seconds which is tough.

Lusus/Guardian: A swan who taught him ballet by aggressively yet gracefully squawking at him and taught him to swim by pushing him in the lake. She’s in the aforementioned lake most of the time and if you try to take her inside she’ll try to peck your eyes out.

Dope. Love her. Huge fan.

Interests: He likes to dance ballet and probably knows how to swim

That tracks! How is he when it comes to media consumption? Since he idealizes forbidden love so much, what novels does he read? What television shows does he watch? Does he have a troll Ao3 account? 

Appearance: His hair is in a wavy short bob most of the time, he only ties it back when he’s practicing. He’s pretty tall and his horns are tilted to the front. He wears a white shirt w/ his symbol on it and a black leotard w/ matching black ballet slippers.

Nice! I’m always here for troll boys with longer hair.

Personality: He’s very overdramatic and chews on the scenery in every word. He’s constantly talking about his latest crush to anyone who’ll listen (and even those who don’t want to). You don’t remember bringing it up yet he’s still talking about them. He’s actually really innocent and nice which makes people less likely to be mad at him b/c they know he’s not trying to railroad the conversation but he still ends up doing it. Basically nice but really self-centered and idealized unhealthy ideas of romance.

So you mentioned that his classpect is set in stone, and I want to expand on what that would mean for his character. We’ve seen that Heart relates both to the self and to romantic woes, and that Pages tend to start their journey by not having a lot of their aspect, while having the potential to grow into someone who can wield it to devastating effect. (Potential being the key word here, since some Pages will never reach this stage.)

So this means that Theato most likely doesn’t have a very stable sense of self when this story begins! He doesn’t have a clear idea of who he is, and pining for others to come sweep him away from his life is likely a manifestation of a desire to have someone else tell him who to be. How do you see that developing over the course of his arc?

Land: Land of Lakes and Emotion

I think it tracks that his land would have lakes, but Emotion is a difficult word to convert to a quest, so how about Land o’ Lakes (haha butter) and Silver, covering the land in places he truly needs to “reflect” on himself to advance?

Anyway that’s about it! Thanks for bringing Theato to us, and I hope my suggestions helped!

-TR