Strong Bad

Player Info:
Name: Zoki
Timezone: EST (GMT -5)
Contact: PM journal

Character Info:
Name: Strong Bad
Age: Vaguely mid-20s?
AU/PG/CANON/OC: Canon + past game: Homestar Runner (dot com), with an extended history from mylittlejamjar

Key Points:

• Selfish, lazy, egotistical wrestler grows up to become the self-proclaimed lord of all that is awesome


• Runs an email column with advice and strange stories, commits several acts of petty villainy, bullies a few personalities he especially loathes, and is overall somewhat unpleasant


• Aspires to be a romantic rogue, a true villain, and generally falls short.


• Is transported to a middle school girl's dreamland of neon ponies and critters, and is horrified and disgusted by their belief in friendship and kindness


• Is befriended, despite his very best efforts to avoid that---helps that his massive ego's knocked down a few times


• Learns to let go of his evil aspirations and comes to understand the value of companionship.

History:
Little is known about Strong Bad's early years. He was the middle child of the Strong family, and the few glimpses shown of his early years showed that his unpleasant behavior began at an early age. He bullied his younger brother, morose Strong Sad, though there's conflicting evidence showing that their relationship also had its happy moments---and their relationship isn't entirely negative, even as adults. He's a master of conflicting impulses. He also acted out at a very early age, causing trouble and telling crude jokes, presumably trying to gain the world's attention even then.

As an adult, he lived a fairly mediocre life at home with his two brothers. He worked a depressingly corporate office job, cracked open the cold ones as soon as he returned home, and answered emails from his strange gaggle of fans on the internet. When he wasn't wildly exaggerating his adventures for his audience, he often got into petty villainy---locking hia poor younger brother Strong Sad in a room, trying to boot annoying neighbor Homestar Runner out of his house, setting up dangerous pyrotechnics to harass local hippie Marzipan, or harassing the townsfolk. His actions weren't uniformly negative, but he wasn't exactly a believer in friends. He had comrades and lackeys, yes, but true friendship? Not exactly.

At least, not until an after-school special on the magic of friendship attacked. He found himself stuck in the body of an obnoxiously colored pony, in the company of other critters and displaced humanfolks just like him. All stranded in the magical horsie land of Equestria. He planned on keeping up his usual position as a cool and distant outsider snarking on the proceedings, but a funny little thing got in the way: his new neighbors weren't so terrible, and he didn't need to make fun of them all. Despite his overwhelming initial unpleasantness, he found himself opening up to others in small ways---rocking out with that 80s boy who wouldn't leave him alone, becoming hero enough to rescue a bright damsel who always believed in him, and teaching human relationships to a strange woman born of chaos.

Though he resisted the community's efforts to reach out to him at first, making feeble attempts to shut down the fledgling bonds with others, Strong Bad eventually accepted the label of 'friend'. He even began to see it as a point of pride for a few of those relationships. With enough skirmishes with true evil, he even began to question his core identity---sure, he was Strong Bad, but did that mean he was a bad guy?

Mostly it just meant he was awesome. And more awesome with his pals along. That was fine by him.
Personality:
Let's start with Strong Bad's self-description for his audience back home:

"I've been described as cool, awesome, hot, video games, the hottest, and real real hot. [I] pretty much run the show around here, as well as serve as a sort of multi-purpose criminal element."

Right away, he's announced a few things to the world: his hugely inflated ego and strong sense of pride, his unwarranted self-importance, and an ambition to be feared and respected as the bad guy. There's an aura of intrigue around villains, and that power, attractiveness, and influence is what he craves

So whenever he talks about himself, he always does so in glowing terms. He believes he's the most attractive lady-magnet to ever walk the earth, the strongest wrestler to ever hit the mat, the wisest advice columnist to ever hit a newsstand, and the greatest star on a level far above anyone else.

None of these things are remotely true, but he never lets little reality checks stop him---instead, he has a vastly creative imagination that he loves to get lost in (though some may call it delusion). He'll draw comic book shrines to his manliness, tell vastly exaggerated stories without a trace of irony, and never let an insult get him down.

Deep down, though, he really does crave approval and admiration, and that's where the cracks in his self-assured armor appear. He lived for the piles and piles of emails from admirers and the opportunites to promote himself, even when the writers frequently irritated him. Being cut off from that and thrust into Ponyland showed him clearly that he needed a change.

His first instinct in his quest to gain respect is intimidation. He believes he's the toughest, and that his bark is as strong as his bite. It isn't, but it doesn't keep him from trying to shout down others he believes are in the wrong. Unfortunately for him...his attempts at intimidation mostly come across as pathetic and awkward, because he rarely has the conviction to back up a threat. His life could've continued to be a cycle of gloating, failure, and shuffling, but...

The persistence of a few brave Equestrians prevailed, and with new pony pals at his side, sharing interests and having a pleasant time, his thirst for admiration turned into something else: a need for friendship. Turns out it's not as difficult to be considerate of others as he once thought, and people have cool ideas that make him even cooler when they work together. While he still employs plenty of sarcasm and isn't above a good laugh, his advice now comes from a good place more often than not.

But don't let the new leaf fool you: he still has his old stubborn streak and hot temper to keep in check. His nastier impulses are better controlled than before, and he'll hesitate a lot before doing something downright mean, but he still has little patience for what he sees as acts of stupidity. Anyone showing recklessness will quickly drive him to anger---because he's prone to it himself, not that he'll acknowledge that.

And they need to keep their heads if they want to get through this all right.

Gem Considerations: I've chosen blue apatite for his gemstone, a simple swap for the blue gem set in his face mask. It's set on his head to symbolize his inflated ego, as well as the creativity he sometimes displays in his storytelling.

Apatite is a creativity-focused stone that also has a stabilizing effect, easing emotional pain and anger---helping to soften his rougher edges. It's not all soft, though: apatite is also a stone of ambition, though hopefully the other properties will help him to express it in a healthy way.

Power considerations:
List Three Powers You Would Like Your Character To Have:

• Drawing magic---conjuring small objects by drawing them in a sketchbook. It'll be limited to inanimate objects no bigger than him (and he's short, just under five feet tall)


• Sword-summoning


• Shapeshifting

Strong Bad will be absolutely thrilled to gain power, as the only 'powers' he ever held previously were a mysterious ability to type with boxing gloves on, and a strange bottlecap-popping power. These will both need to be regained at some point, but...as he won't have a computer, hopefully they won't affect his life too much.

Even as a pony, he was stuck as an earth pony with no real magic of his own. This is all-new and all-awesome, no matter what he gets.

Sample: Test-drivin' it...

Well, what do you know. Ponyland actually has zombies running amok! Infected horses with drab green pelts hanging from their bones attempt to maul the populace rather brainlessly. If for some reason they should score a bite to the neck, they have a convert. Who is moaning about yogurt for some reason.

Most of the time, though, they mostly incompetently maul their victims to their rainbow-explodey death. Sure the victims reappear a few minutes later looking dazes, but it ain't a pleasant trip. Strong Bad, naturally, would like to avoid either of those outcomes.

So he's armed himself with his old flaming slingshot, desperately yanking the cord between his teeth and letting his torches fly.

"Step right up and prepare to be burninated!"

To his credit, he's actually somewhat holding them back. It's stressful, though, and eventually he's running a little low on ammo. So he scrambles over to the side to light some flames and reload, where he hears a familiar noise. Gunshots---and a familiar shape firing them.

"...Marty?"

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Player Name: Zoki
Player Journal: azora_mysta
Age: 25
Contact: Journal PM
Characters Played: Applejack (OU), Doc Brown (OU)

IN CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Strong Bad
Canon: websitenamedafterthewrongcharacter.com aka Homestar Runner
OU/AU/OC: Cosmographia CRAU
Canon Point: Post-Which Ween Costumes same point as before, which is all the toons excluding the April Fools 2014 toon. He doesn't need to have been trapped in two voids. Cosmographia-wise...around Day 100.
History:
If you asked Strong Bad about his history, undoubtedly you would get an epic tale of the totally awesome middle child from a loser family. He'd tell you how many ladies he made out with, how many benches he can press, and go on about the extent of his artistic achievements. It would be a profile truly worthy of a True Hollywood Story.

The truth is that there is very little in the way of verifiable fact about Strong Bad's history. Each time someone asks him to recount his past, he seems to come up with a brand new story, each one more impressive than the last. So this report will stick to the things that are definitely or most likely true, largely the ones verified or recounted by other residents in town.

Strong Bad is the middle brother in a family of three. He gained an appetite for mischief at an early age, tormenting his baby brother Strong Sad with power drills and conning Strong Mad into helping him break things. But there was also a softer side to him as a child, as he could be seen playing nicely with his brothers every once in a while.

After a while, the young prankster grew into a cynical, washed up adult prankster with an entirely unrealistic \opinion of his greatness. He came to live in a house with his two brothers, making evil plans with Strong Mad (and their cute and fluffy business partner The Cheat) and bullying Strong Sad. Existence in the House of Strong was never exactly peaceful, with arguments, arson, and locking-of-brother-in-bathtub being regular occurrences.

Extending his reach beyond the family home, Strong Bad came to have tense relationships with most of the neighbors in his extremely small town. His cruising around town largely consisted of hanging with his henchmen and occasionally committing small acts of criminal mischief. Sure, he was bad...if by 'bad' you mean 'disliked by a good few people in this town for being rude'.

The pride and joy of Strong Bad's life was his 'email show', a weekly event in which he answered an email from an out-of-towner. Viewers urged him to draw a dragon, drop an anvil, talk about his job, and explain the mysteries behind some aspects of his life in town. The writers often earned a round mocking of their name and vicious tearing apart of their grammar for their troubles, but Strong Bad would answer most questions with a lively and often exaggerated tale of his greatness. The one question he never answered, though, was 'how do you type with boxing gloves on?'. Guesses ranged from special keyboard layouts to telekinetic powers to speech-to-text programs...but in any case, he should be well prepared to perform all his daily tasks with hooves.

Personality:

Like I said, I'm Strong Bad. I've been described as cool, awesome, hot, video games, the hottest, and real real hot.

The first thing anyone will likely notice about Strong Bad is that his ego is roughly the size of the sun---and it would likely take magic as powerful as Celestia's to push it down. Strong Bad will often discuss his physical attractiveness, criminal mastermindedness, and supreme awesome at everything entirely unprovoked. He talks a really big game, but very little of his self-perception aligns with reality.

For just one example, he believes he has it good with the ladies because he's so attractive and charismatic. He will talk at length about how many ladies he's supposedly made out with, often shows special attention when an email sender is female, and sometimes shares love advice on his show. But the truth is that there is only one woman living in his town, and she's both a dirty hippie and his rival's on-again off-again girlfriend---and there is no evidence he's ever had a relationship with anyone else.

This lady-chasing tendency will fall by the wayside upon his arrival in Ponyville, though...no matter how lovely the mares may be, he is not making out with anybody as a horse. That's just freaky, man. And he's so disgusted by his equine form that he does not want to think about doing anything that could count as hot.

Strong Bad also believes he is just the bad guy every little town needs---and of all his self-delusions, his being 'bad' is probably the closest one to being true, but not for the reasons he thinks. Strong Bad is often bluntly rude, only censoring his opinions when he believes that will further his interests. At least half his answers to questions are lies. And that remarkably short fuse of his isn't winning him many friends either. He has to have his way all the time, and he will take any opportunity to point out his superiority. Even if it's as simple as ripping apart someone else's grammar.

So Strong Bad might be bad friend material, but he's a bad 'bad guy' as well. His worst 'criminal' acts involve silly prank calls, very small-scale arson, software piracy, and the occasional willful destruction of a carefully baked casserole.

In general, whether Strong Bad will like any given person is dependent on how normal they seem to be. Bonus points if they share his interest in old video games and outdated technology (though Ponyville's tech level is going to be primitive even by his standards). He likes grounded, realistic people...not too hyper, too depressed, or too creepy---but most people in his hometown fall into one of those categories.

Though Strong Bad has many faults, and though he'll deny any acts of goodwill up and down if confronted about them, he is not entirely devoid of a soft side. Of all the people in his life that he dislikes, he claims to loathe Homestar Runner the most. Homestar is the town's good guy, the naive everyman, the babbling moron, the childlike nice guy Strong Bad loves to push around and declare his hatred for. Yet he doesn't always resist Homestar's repeated offerings of friendship and will sometimes hang out with the guy...for instance, Strong Bad allowed Homestar to play his sidekick in the Dangeresque film series, hired him as the mascot for his dodgy university, and didn't always kick Homestar out when he broke into the house. Sometimes they even play Cheat Commandos together.

Outside of a few deeply buried seeds of kindness, though, Strong Bad will be friendly to someone if it serves his interests to do so, and brutally honest at all other times (though this honesty can include friendliness if the person really meshes with him). Of all the people who need friendship lessons in Ponyville, Strong Bad is probably one of the more difficult cases.

...but it might just be possible to teach this pony a trick or two.

And now, a previous stay update! (8/14)

A friendship lesson indeed happened, but it didn't quite fit into a 20 minute episode. Though Strong Bad's world-renowned self-centeredness still remains, and he's written screeds about family that have offended most of Ponyville's population, there is at least one person who qualifies as a friend: Marty McFly, a nice kid who's both 80s-minded and chill. They hang out, because for some reason SB wants to save him from the terrible boring-ness that afflicts many other Ponyville folk.

Strong Bad is extremely resistant to using the F-word (the six letter one), but he has slightly expanded the sphere of people he doesn't hate to include Jappleack (she's Southern AND crude!) and Orihime (cute and fun to laugh with), because while hating everyone is fun, cracking jokes can get a little boring if you have no one to laugh with.

And maybe he's maturing in the face of real danger. Just a little. After a few months in the belly of the beast, hiding from the soul-sucking monster, he has a major case of the jibblies. This isn't a game---he could easily die without ever returning to his glorious true form and making out with any lady at all that harem he totally has waiting for him. So he's angry at her, even more so now. And he's ready to fight for freedom, even if that means reluctantly working with others.

And now a Cosmographia update!

Further months of friendship in Ponyville have taught him that you can get past the hurdles of romantic complications, and through losing his friends he's opted to hang on to the memories tightly and make new ones---even Kafei, the fox he never thought he'd like. Then, one day, he dropped through a hole and slipped off to Cosmographia, where he's gained gem superpowers and used them to protect the town of Waverly Bay. Hey, it's something to do!

Emotionally he's fairly stable, now more comfortable in his role as a grumpy hero, but changing worlds and running into AU versions of some friends has taught him something: nothing lasts forever. He bumped into an AU Marty who didn't know him from Steve, and that stung, but he's decided he's gonna be okay.

Strengths:
Strong Bad has had a fair amount of practice with sweet-talking, as he knows the tricks of a scam artist rather well. He can also pick simple locks, a valuable talent for a small time criminal.

On the more creative side, he has a wild imagination that makes him an engaging storyteller, though he often uses this ability for ill. He's not exactly a traditionally talented artist, but he scribbles raging comics about teenage schoolgirls and draws dragons with beefy arms. He also enjoys baking in relative secrecy, but his favorite creative pastime by far is singing. Er...screaming, because rock and metal are all that matter.


Weaknesses:
Contrary to his name, Strong Bad is not very strong or athletic at all. He's probably a good bit stronger as an earth pony than he was as a human, but as he lacked athletic finesse before, it'll take him quite a while to master any physical ability...and as an earth pony, he lacks other fantastical talents.

On the emotional side, as mentioned, he's very rude, blunt, and difficult to get along with. Making friends doesn't come too naturally, and any group efforts will likely be strained by his irritation with most people. He's also somewhat easy to manipulate with the right approach, as appealing to his ego will get a person everywhere with him.

Possessions: None. He owns nothing of real importance except his computer, and its non-functionality would only depress him.
Pony/Animal Type: Earth pony. And he resents it big-time.
Cutie Mark: Red boxing glove, just like the ones he wore in his original form
Pony Picture:


SAMPLES
First Person:
Is this the official complaint form? No? Well too bad, it's gonna be one! Because this supposedly magical scroll is conveniently right here in front of my hoof.

My hoof. Ugh. Still can't believe that one.

But let's start with the smaller issues. For example: what's the freaking deal with these pony types?

...no, not that you have issues. I know that well. But the actual physical types. Like...you've got your unicorns, witches and warlocks flinging magical spells all around. You've got your pegasi flapping their wings and zooming around like they own the place. There's the alicorns, the most powerful of the powerful. The kings and queens.

Which is where I should be, by the way.

And then you've got...earth ponies? No magic, no wings, no nothin' but the hooves on the end of our legs and a tail for flicking fleas. And we're supposed to be grateful for it.

What the crap? That is COMPLETELY AND ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE. You can't just go around giving people cool stuff, leave me with nothing, and expect me to not be offended.

I DEMAND compensation for this serious injustice. And...I'll get back to you on that when I've got this dollars to bits conversion rate all figured out.

Third Person:
This, Strong Bad decided, was clearly the worst day of his life. Worse than any loss to that idiot Homestar. Worse than a bad case of the jibblies. And even worse than the lingering humiliation from a stupid talent show in grade school. No...nothing could possibly be worse than this.

Not only was he removed from his emails, his henchmen, and his sprawling backyard empire...he was also removed from the body he worked so hard to maintain. He was, irrevocably, a horse. Mane, tail...and for some bizarre reason, an image of his glorious hand was tattooed on his flank. That was just a low blow.

At least his hooves were surprisingly versatile. He had no trouble working a quill or opening a door---and he used this talent to slam the shop's door behind him, storming out onto the dirt path. Other ponies might stare, but did he care? No, he couldn't care less what they thought. He'd wake up from this clearly beef jerky induced nightmare soon, right?

To test this, he kicked out at the nearest water trough---oh, that was heavier than it looked---but it still spilled satisfyingly across the hay.

With that rage now simmering to a more reasonable level, he broke off into a trot necessitated by the angry shopkeeper now coming after him. Oops. But that was okay. He found that the whipping of air helped him to think. But that mane in his face, not so much. He'd get that shaved off a-sap.

But first, a plan. That nonsense about not being able to turn them back? Totally bogus. All he had to do was find the right witch to bribe and he'd be outta here in no time, right? This was just like one of those adventure games. Grab the right items, make the right choices, and you win.

Now to find the right NPC to talk to. Oh boy. This might necessitate a few clever disguises, given his rapidly acquired record. That burlap sack looked promising...