Application for thegames

[hangingaround]

OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Lynny
Other characters: N/A
IN CHARACTER
Name: Neophyte Redglare
Fandom: Homestuck
Canon point/AU: After capturing Mindfang but before the trial.
Journal: hangingaround
PB: Art, primarily fanart because she has only a few panels and one flash in canon. This is one of her panels.
History: Wiki link. There’s not a lot to it and it would require a lot of searching around on the dear mods’ part so I’ll do my best to condense/explain some things here.

Before she was Neophyte Redglare on the planet Alternia, in a different universe on a planet called Beforus, she was Latula Pyrope. Latula was a radical skater girl who spent her time grinding rails and dishing out enthusiastic, borderline painful high-fives that she had a great dislike of being left hanging on. Like her descendant, Terezi Pyrope, Latula had a disability (an inability to smell) that would have had her slated for culling if it was found out. This means she would have been adopted by trolls of a higher caste and aggressively coddled, a fate that would have been worse than death for a radical free spirit like Latula.

Then she and eleven of her friends decided to play a computer game called Sgrub. The game was designed to end the world and pull players into it to create a new universe. Unfortunately for the Beforan trolls they were incredibly unprepared for it because of their peaceful upbringing and the interpersonal issues among them. Eventually, after a whopping 3 sweeps (the equivalent of 6 ½ Earth years) in the game they decided to “scratch” their game. This means their game and universe would be reset to give a new set of players the chance to play and win.

The result was Alternia, the planet the twelve main trolls in Homestuck come from. Redglare’s story begins many, many sweeps before then.

Because of her character only being expanded upon in the journal of another character at the end of her life, we don’t know anything really about Redglare’s life growing up. What we do know is that her lusus (a non-troll guardian appointed to trolls as grubs after they complete their cavern trials) was a dragon called Pyralspite and that she was a highly talented neophyte legislacerator (Alternia’s version of a prosecutor). She was sent to capture the pirate Marquise Spinneret Mindfang and succeeded, mainly thanks to Mindfang’s underestimation of her and lack of knowledge about her massive dragon lusus. Redglare severed her arm before taking her into custody.

Unfortunately for her, at the trial Mindfang psychically manipulated the gallery of lowbloods to gang up on Redglare and hang her from the gallows that were meant for Mindfang. At the canon point I’m bringing her from the trial has yet to happen so she has no idea of her impending demise.
Presentation: Since in canon we learn very little about Redglare herself much of her personality needs to be inferred by the limited knowledge we have of her and by the personalities of her descendant and her pre-Scratch self.

Redglare was a legislacerator, so it’s understandable that she presents herself as a strict professional in the presence of her peers and superiors. In public she keeps herself closely guarded, even her eyes are shielded from view behind red-tinted glasses. She speaks up when she has something to say but isn’t afraid to verbally snap or crank up the sass when she deems necessary. She doesn’t take stupidity from anyone; no matter where they sat in relation to her on the hemospectrum.

Then there’s Redglare on the hunt for a criminal and in the courtroom. From the limited amount we see of her in canon, she carries herself differently in each of these settings. At Mindfang’s trial she stands with perfect posture, her cane sword held behind her back and eyes focused straight ahead. But we see in [S] Seer: Descend that her body language and facial expressions differ completely as she descends upon Mindfang after Redglare’s enormous dragon lusus destroys her fleet. She’s grinning and clearly getting a thrill out of catching Mindfang off guard. Her real personality as a badass, highly talented legislacerator with a passion for justice shines through when she literally disarms Mindfang and bring her to justice.

In her day-to-day life as a legislacerator, Redglare is a workaholic. When she’s brought a case she will spend days just going over the details over and over until she has them memorized and fully understood. When she begins her investigations she is nothing if not thorough about gathering evidence, chasing down leads and interrogating suspects until she has what she wants.

She refuses to use torture as an interrogation method even though it’s quite common. Intimidation and threats are fine for the most part but she feels torture can too easily lead to a false confession. She’s more interested in the truth and punishing the guilty than getting a quick confession. When she believes someone’s innocence or guilt and has the evidence to back it up, she will work tirelessly to prove it in a court of law. Whether His Honorable Tyranny (the giant crustacean beasts trolls use as their court judges) that decides to side with her or not is completely out of her control.

Both during and outside of work Redglare isn’t the most social troll. She was raised in a forest, far away from more populated areas, so she never quite got the hang of causal interactions. She’s cooperative with other legislacerators, but ask her to go out for a drink afterwards and she becomes a tall, pointy pile of awkward. One of the few she does actively seek to spend time with is her indigo partner, the Grand Highblood. From a professional perspective, the two of them are an ideal team-up for a legislacerator and subjugglator. He brings his size and brute strength, she brings her speed and wits. Together they’ve brought in hundreds of criminals and have succeeded in not horribly maiming one another. That in itself is an accomplishment.

Alone, Redglare is much more relaxed. She laughs more easily and not the kind of laugh that makes grown trolls cry for their lusii. Where Latula would spend her time shredding on a skateboard, Redglare is more content to curl up against her giant lusus’s scaly stomach and read aloud to him. She and Pyralspite are incredibly close and she does her best spend as much time with him as she can manage with her work schedule the way it is.

Motivations: Like the majority of the troll species, Redglare’s biggest motivation is survival. Alternia is not an easy planet to survive on, what with the undead rising during the day and troll culture being what it is. Even as grubs trolls have to go through trials to make it through the brooding caverns just so they can be selected by a lusus of their blood color to raise them.

Another of her major motivations is her strong belief in justice. She chose to become a legislacerator because she honestly believed in the concept of pure, unbiased law and order and punishing the guilty. This also feeds into her beliefs as a Sufferist. The Alternian judicial system, handled by highbloods and large, semi-sentient lobster monsters, is very bias against lowbloods.

Redglare is a firm believer that blood should not matter in the eyes of the law, only evidence of guilt or innocence. Her ultimate goal as both a legislacerator and a secret member of the Sufferist cult was to work her way through the ranks and gradually change things from the inside to make the laws less imbalanced. Of course by the time she became a Sufferist the majority of the Signless’s ideals on pacifism and non-violent forms of protest had eroded over time so most killing or culling in the name of the greater good would not be condemnable in her mind.

On the subject of the Sufferer (and in keeping up with the universals constants of Pyropes and Vantases always having some form of unrequited romance), Redglare is pretty firmly infatuated with the idea of him perpetuated by the Sufferist movement. A mutant troll who defied logic just by existing and surviving to an adult age, who spoke heretical ideas of equality and a world where blood color didn’t matter. What’s not to fall in love with? Of course, he was executed a very long time before she was even hatched so her idea of the Sufferer and the Signless himself are two very different trolls entirely.

In the previous Sgrub session, back when she was just Latula Pyrope of Beforus, she was the Knight of Mind. In ‘Homestuck’ the title of Knight carries with it a common personality trait: putting up a front of some kind to hide deep seated self-doubt. We see this with Dave Strider and his cool kid act, Karkat Vantas with his loudness and self-hatred and it’s implied that Latula overdoes her radical game girl attitude on purpose. Being that Latula and Redglare are the same person raised under different circumstances, it’s not a stretch to believe that Redglare hides her insecurities and worries behind a mask of professionalism and only lets her real personality shine through when she’s comfortable enough to let go.

As mentioned previously, Redglare is a Sufferist. On Alternia, because the Signless and his teachings were supposed to be erased from history completely, this is something that is punishable by death. Simply by wearing his sign, even under her clothes, Redglare takes an enormous risk because she believes in the cause that much.

This risk is doubled due to her close relationship with the Alternian government and her Subjugglator partner being the leader of the Subjuggulators himself, the Grand Highblood. While Redglare isn’t particularly fond of a lot of the laws the government makes, she nonetheless enforces them because it’s her job. There are times when she’ll bend things in her favor when she’s particularly sure about guilt or innocence but only when she’s absolutely positive.

On the note of her relationship with the Highblood, there is more to it than meets the eye. To everyone else they were simply well-matched partners who worked extraordinarily well together. But behind closed doors they are undoubtedly matesprits (the troll equivalent to human romance).

When they were first assigned to work together, she wasn’t at all pleased. He was much older than her, had done much more. In training she’d heard horror stories about the terrifying Grand Highblood and when she found out she was going to be his first neophyte legislacerator partner since the uniting of his church and the judicial system, Redglare was understandably terrified. Then she started to get to know him and discovered there was more to him than loudness and hair. He was much more intelligent and well-read than she gave him credit for. After a few weeks of working together she realized they had a similar black sense of humor (not all that surprising considering he’s a giant murder clown) and had similar taste in literature.

They grew friendly outside of their duties and eventually, after a lot of awkward moments and spontaneous kisses in private, they decided to give a personal relationship a go. Things were rocky at first since neither of them had a very good track record (or much of one in her case) with quadrants but soon they settled into a passionate, happy matespritship with the Highblood having no idea about her being a part of the Sufferists that he’d worked for so long to eradicate. (All of this headcanon has been thoroughly discussed with the current GHB player even though it only really directly affects Redglare).

It should be noted that Redglare does not remember the previous Sgrub session or being the Beforan Latula Pyrope and should not be classified as the same person. While they are genetically identical, their experiences made them into two very different people. Individually they display some of the same Pyrope traits, such as being aggressively protective over the people they care about and putting up a metaphorical mask of some kind to garner attention.

However between Redglare and Latula they show these traits in very different ways. Where Latula cheerfully threatens Damara Megido when she comes close to her matesprit Mituna, Redglare is more keen on whipping out her cane sword first and giving out threats later. Similarly, Latula uses her rad girl presentation and disability of having no sense of smell to gain attention where Redglare is more keen on hiding her identical disability (the result of being caught in a fire when she was young) and using her mask of professionalism to hide her real, enthusiastic personality.

SAMPLES
Thread: Musebox thread with the Helmsman.
Prose: Entertain them, she’d been told as she was ushered down the hallway. Make them remember you. Redglare snorted to herself. As if a six-foot troll wearing red and teal wouldn’t be memorable to a group of squishy pink aliens.

Her mood was still on the foul side as they shoved her into the training area. It was bad enough they’d confiscated her cane sword. When they tried to take her glasses she’d nearly broken someone’s wrist. The scanning and return of the glasses that happened after was faster than normal.

With her eyes once again concealed, Redglare strode to the center of the room with her head high and turned to lock her gaze on her captors, the “Gamemakers”. They took her from preparation for a trial, a trial whose conclusion would like gain her a promotion out of the rank of Neophyte, to watch her play a game of death matches. Her expression hardened slightly.

Fine. If they want to remember me, I’ll give them something to remember.

She said not a word as she examined the stations set-up around the room, not even when she finally selected a few lengths of rope from the knot-tying station after a critical examination. It wasn’t a type she was used to but it seemed sturdy enough to handle what she had in mind. She worked quickly, glancing briefly at the Gamemakers to make sure their attention was set on her and to take note of how many of them there were. She’d done this particular knot so many times in her life it took her virtually no time to have the proper number of nooses she needed.

Once those were finished, she gathered the other supplies deemed necessary for her demonstration: a bit more rope, the same number of target dummies to nooses, chinning bars and finally a long, thin sword. Redglare took a moment to examine the blade, touching her finger to the tip to test it’s sharpness. When a glob of teal bubbled from her fingertip she grinned, her pointy teeth finally revealed in all their sparkly white splendor.

Within the next few minutes the nooses had been tightened around each dummies’ throat, their hands tied behind their backs and each one dangled lifelessly from the chinning bar. Redglare still hadn’t said a word, barely looked at the Gamemakers.

She picked up the sword from the floor to once again admire the blade before, in one smooth motion, swinging it at the nearest dummy. Everything below it’s neck dropped to the floor with a heavy, sickening thunk. Redglare carefully set the sword down before finally raising her voice to speak.

“Please excuse my gallows sense of humor. I thought it rude to leave the illustrious Gamemakers hanging.” Her voice was simultaneously saccharine and dripping with venom. She made a final motion, a mock courtesy punctuated by not lowering her head and making sure to lock eyes with every human staring down at her. Then she straightened her posture and left without so much as another word or glance back.

What is your character scored: Between 7 and 10. Being a troll Redglare is stronger and more durable than an average human. She can take a lot of pain and lose a lot of blood before she’s down for the count. She’s also highly skilled with her cane-sword, being able to slice off a highly competent pirate’s arm with one slice, and able to craft a fine noose. On the likely possibility she had a similar upbringing to her descendant, it’s possible she’s well acquainted with snares of various kinds.

As for the personality portion of her score, Red is the Alternia equivalent to a police officer/prosecutor combination. A large part of her job is using her words to turn opinions in her favor or worm the truth out of a suspect during interrogation. She’s also dealt with highbloods in her work so she knows how to turn on the charm and schmooze or verbally wear someone down enough to get what she wants, usually information or a confession.