But I'm gonna bet they never really feel at home

Name: Zita
Over 18? Y
Contact: zitasaurusrex @ plurk, Zita#2651 on discord
Current Character: NA


Name: John-117 (The Master Chief)
Canon: Halo
Canon Point: End of Halo Infinite
Age: Chronologically 48, he's spent a lot of time added up in cryogenic suspension (once for 5 straight years, space is bad don't go there) so probably like... late 30s if you're counting only the uptime.

Heba or Tian? Tian, because I think it's a less natural fit and I think the conflict there is kind of interesting.
Acquired Ability:


Personality Traits:
THE GOOD
Heroic - The Chief genuinely wants to protect other people from harm, and it's his highest calling. There's no job too big, no danger too scary, and "impossible" is just a word when you're a Spartan. He doesn't expect or even particularly want accolades for it, it's just the right thing to do if you're a person who can. His intentions are good, and if he gives you his word he intends to keep it.
Steady - The Chief is used to having other people look to him for calm in a crisis. While he can be a very intimidating presence, he's not actually a very aggressive or reactive person in general. Even when emotions are running high, he's very stable and it takes a lot to actually set off his temper. You can count on John when the chips are down, and if you're genuinely working with him, caring, and giving it your best, he'll swallow frustration and forgive human error.
Kind of a Little Shit - He's not all dire seriousness. John has a sense of humor and likes to make jokes, most often deadpan ones. (A bonus of this is it turns out making deadpan oneliners in the face of death is often pretty good for supporting your allies' morale.) He's also competitive, likes it when he can do something impressive, and believes there's no kill like overkill. When he's in a good place he cracks wise with and will tease friends. ...It's just been a long time since he was in a good place, and he's become painfully isolated over the years.
THE BAD
Stubborn - Once John's heels are in the ground he's very difficult to move. It's good that he's unflagging in pursuit of goals and promises, but when he makes a bad call he's just as committed and it can be very frustrating to get through to him about it. He's very good at convincing himself he's right/that he has to shut down his doubts and do what he has to do, even if it's going to alienate someone he cares about or hurt him a lot inside. Even worse, the life he's led has trained a nasty instinct into him that if an answer hurts him, it's probably the right/responsible answer.
Self-Sacrificing - A noble trait, but also an unhealthy one that can be distressing to others. John knows he can endure more than your average person, his self-control is great, and he considers himself an acceptable loss if the trade is good enough. John will often push himself to extremes because his safety, comfort, and health are not important to him unless they stop him from doing his job. The more stressed he is/the more dire the situation, the more likely he is to start making these sacrifices. He worries a lot, and responds to bad outcomes by first searching for where he went wrong and whether he could have fixed it by trying harder (even if he knows he couldn't have.)
Awkward - John-117 is just a relentlessly weird guy. He is not actually cool and unemotional, he has a lot of feelings all the time. He's just used to locking them down, lying about it, and having no actual time to work through any of them. While he's seldom intentionally rude, unstructured social situations are difficult and he doesn't know what to do with people. Don't get him wrong, he likes having other people around and bonds with them. It's just... he has never lived a normal life, he has to lie about that all the time, and sometimes things happen so he's going to leave this conversation immediately before more of them happen, this is a Very Normal Thing To Do, do not question him, goodbye.

History: Wiki link, I'm so sorry it's 20 years of gamer nerd lore.

The extreme tl;dr is: It's the space future. Earth was having political problems with its colonies, some of which were turning to terrorism. Some wildly unethical people decided to create super soldiers by kidnapping children to train into it. John is one of them. The kids got old enough to start fighting wars just in time for a xenocidal alien empire to start trying to kill all humanity, which derailed a lot of that. This went on for roughly 30 years and was very desperate and grim, then the aliens accidentally unleashed some space zombies and the apocalypse had to be averted. Luckily, this series of events also gutted the alien leadership and shattered its multi-species alliance, so the day was kind of saved, but then went back to hell again in more fighting after the end of the war.

Chief had an AI best friend for a little while. She died. It was really sad. Then she came back as a supervillain who tried to take over the galaxy and enforce peace at gunpoint using ancient alien super guns, and that was bad and they had to stop her. ...He still kind of has an emotions backlog about that.

Canon Abilities/Skills:
- Leadership
- Tactics
- Wilderness survival
- First aid
- Hand-to-hand fighting
- Firearms
- Explosives
- Driving/Piloting
- Breaking into and out of wildly dangerous places
- Working with people in high stress situations
- Lying by omission
- Self-control
Oh, and Spartan-II augmentations. Tl;dr:
- Enhanced strength, reflexes, and vision (including in low light conditions)
- Chief has a thin layer of carbide ceramic supporting his bones in key places, making them difficult to break.
- Requires less sleep than normal to function, is good at ignoring pain, and heals noticeably faster than a normal person. (He absolutely does need downtime to rest and heal when injured, though. Don't let him lie to you.)

Suitability: John's a working breed who hates being idle, and the game looks like it has plenty to keep him busy while also requiring him to have actual emotionally open human bonds with other people. He will hate the second part. It will be good for him.
(I also think that having him chipped and working with Tian powers will be an interesting jaunt outside his comfort zone.)

Inventory:
- MA40 Assault Rifle
- MK50 Sidekick Pistol
- A couple grenades
- Knife
- Grappleshot
- The big kicker: A suit of MJOLNIR GEN3 powered assault armor. It's very #aesthetic but I'm not gunning to get this back fast. It's in need of some TLC after what he's been through, and getting in and out of it without specialized equipment is not a fast or easy process. The young AI that was onboard is absolutely an appable character, so she's not along for the ride.


What are your character's feelings on freedom? How would they define freedom? How important is it to them? Would they fight for it, or have they fought for it in the past? If they have, how did they go about it?

It's Complicated™.

Chief has an idea that freedom is a Nominal Good Thing, but let's not play makebelieve games here: he was raised from childhood to be, first and foremost, a weapon against Earth's enemies. At the time, Earth's enemies were its colony worlds that wanted to be free of Earth's control. He's seen people commit atrocities in the name of freedom. He's also seen people sacrifice freedoms for raw survival, with disastrous results.

After decades of war with the Covenant, he's developed strong feelings about humanity overall instead of just specific groups his superiors tell him are on the "right" side. We've seen him privately doubt if he could still bring himself to do the work he was put to in his teens, and this has gotten really messy for John. Autonomy is important, peace enforced at gunpoint is not true peace, but when someone says they're fighting for "freedom" they might just mean freedom to not care who their actions hurt. You gotta be careful.

Describe a formative moment in your character's life, something that changed them and defined who they are as a person.
While the Chief, what was left of his team, and several other survivors of the fall of Reach/the first Halo conflict were working to slow down the Covenant's oncoming attack on Earth, Dr. Halsey gave John a decision he would need to make when they eventually returned to Earth and reported on what had happened. She gave him two data crystals, and the choice of which one he would hand over to the Office of Naval Intelligence.

One of their number, Sgt. Avery Johnson, had mysteriously survived contact with the Flood parasite on Halo without succumbing to infection. One crystal contained a full report that included this fact, and speculation on a rare neurological condition Johnson had possibly protecting him from infection. If the Chief turned in the full report, it might allow ONI to develop countermeasures to the Flood parasite. ...But it would doom Johnson, who they would have no hesitations about killing in order to study. The second crystal contained a version of the report that did not mention this detail. This would save the sergeant's life, but eliminate the chance of ONI learning something that might help fight the new threat.

John's training was clear: Obviously, he should hand in the whole report because one life mattered less than potential millions. This was in perfect step with the justification ONI used to kidnap children to create the Spartan-IIs. If he'd been asked then and there what he would do, that was the choice.

...But this was also Halsey's last ditch attempt to finally do something right by John, to teach him something important and undo at least one piece of the damage she regretted doing to him as a person. By the end of the mission, John managed to absorb what he was supposed to understand here: Every human life matters. The lives right here and right now are more important than all the theoretical numbers. It would have been wrong to doom a man to die like that. John destroyed the crystal that contained the full report and turned in the redacted report instead.

He hasn't actually managed to break down the wall between "it would be unjustifiable to sacrifice an innocent man's life" and "it was unjustifiable that others sacrificed your life when you were an innocent, and maybe you should figure out how you feel about that," but like. There's an extremely important corner John has turned about other people while not quite being able to treat himself as a person too.

Does your character have a favorite person? If so, how would they describe that person? What do they like about that person? What do they dislike? If they don't have a favorite person, what would they look for in a favorite person? What traits would draw them to another person? What traits could they tolerate that others might not be able to?
The Chief bonded with Cortana incredibly quickly and she was his favorite person. I don't read it as romantic love between them, but he loved Cortana so much. She was so smart and resourceful and funny and, most importantly, his first friend in a very long time. She knew everything about what John was, and trusted him and cared about him and treated him like a person. Before her death she told him she wasn't doing all this for mankind anymore (which meant she was doing it for him, because it's what was important to him.) All of that kicked him right in the ribs and, though he's starting to accept that maybe the loss of her wasn't entirely his fault, he's still grieving.

Cortana also kept a lot of secrets from him and would sometimes just do things without communicating about it, but those are things he can tolerate in a friend because he knows that glass house pretty well himself.

What has your character's arc been like so far? How have they developed from their first appearance to their canon point?
Lol I think I've hit into some of it here but: Despite some inconsistent writing choices on Halo's part, John's belief he makes a better weapon than a man has started to falter. We've seen him come to see an AI as a person and friend instead of a piece of equipment you shouldn't get sentimental about. He's even fought alongside aliens that were once his enemies, and started to have to re-evaluate his view on aliens as people. We've seen him exhausted and hurt after the loss of Cortana, we've seen his ability to trust broken by her betrayal after, and most recently we've seen him starting tentatively to rebuild it with the pilot that recovered him and the young AI that has fallen into his care. He's been getting more and more desperately tired the whole time, but he's finally starting to swing back around to being less horribly alone again.

It's kind of quiet, but there's an increased emphasis on John as a human being with feelings and with the capacity to meaningfully be kind to others. I think it's important.

How would you like to continue your character's arc in the game? How would you like them to develop? What would you like to have them accomplish?
Let John heal a little. I know, kind of an insane thing to say while throwing him into A Buckwild Situation, but it's fine. Buckwild Situations are his natural habitat. Let him have to be a person first and a Spartan second to other people and find out it doesn't always have to be super painful and full of loss.

I want to see if I can let him figure out/embrace more of his own capacity to support other people and to have the gentleness he's capable of matter, I think it's a cool and interesting thing to do with a character whose life has mostly been defined by his capacity for violence.

John's enjoyable to play in panfandom because other characters don't know him from Adam, have no reason to be intimidated or impressed by his history/fame back home, and it means his interactions with them can be a lot more based on who he is instead of what he usually is a symbol of. It's fresh and fun.


It's all fun and games until you self-deprecate in front of him and he's like no, fuck that.
John-117 never met a suspicious robot he wouldn't follow on a harebrained scheme and he's not gonna start now.

How's my driving?
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