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[grumpygills]

C H A R A C T E R

☓ Name: Eridan Ampora
☓ Series: Homestuck
☓ Reference: Homestuck Wiki — Character @ Wiki
☓ Canon point: Post-death.
☓ Age: ~6 sweeps (approximately 13 years) + several months from his previous stay in-game.


☓ Previous TDS memories?
Yep (but his memories will not be super clear because wow it's been too long for me to remember everything perfectly). He'll be returning to the island, because he left before Dec 2011. His old journal on LJ was glubbin. And — here — are — five — threads.

☓ Personality:
Eridan was born into royalty, which on their world doesn't mean having royal family so much as them having blood that is literally royal. He is a purple-blood, a highblood, who had the fortune of being born hatched a sea dweller. With his position in life came a huge ego, overbearing nature, a gross sense of entitlement and belief that he is better than most everyone, those who live on land especially. Eridan constantly talks down to people, even his friends, not seeming to care much if he says something hurtful or thoughtless. It's a wonder he manages to keep friends at all, when he goes spewing things like ordinarily id call bullshit on terrible stinkin bs like that but i knoww you don't really lie about stuff unless its to yourself. It's not the worst of things he's said, but it's hardly a nice way for a friend to say I believe you.

Like most trolls, he's got a very specific way of typing/speaking, where his w's and v's are doubled (making them more 'wwavvy', thus more closely resembling the Aquarius symbol that he wears on his chest), words that end in '-ing' lose their g, and words like 'of/an' are replaced with a. Sometimes, he makes nautically-themed puns, though he thinks they make it sound like he's someone trying to push the whole fishtroll theme too hard. Eridan addresses most everyone with a shortened version of their name, like calling Karkat Kar or Feferi Fef (the joke on him him, though; he chops everyones name into two parts, but is the one to eventually get cut in half). He avoids punctuation and tends to be vulgar when he talks, constantly interjecting the word fuck and the many forms of it that follow, though he doesn't drop the f-bomb the most out of any of the trolls. His cursing, atrocious manners, and overall behaviour go against how a highblood such as himself is typically expected to act (which is mostly cruel and composed), but Eridan doesn't necessarily care about that. He works hard to seem pretty meh about a lot of things, and that is why he is the hipster character of Homestuck. Well, that and his clothes; Eridan's attire has a lot to do with his hipster image. It wouldn't be wrong at all to call him a giant tool, and he has been called as much before.

Eridan is incredibly thick-headed, and sometimes downright stupid. He's so convinced that he's better than everyone else that he doesn't care to listen to other people, no matter how right they are. For a large portion of his time playing Sgrub, he took to killing the angels that were located on his planet despite that being a Really Dumb Idea. He'd been told multiple times that they weren't who he was supposed to target, because they didn't even dispense any prize for killing them, but nothing could drag him from that planet, Eridan refusing to leave because no one was agreeing to pick up the angel-killing duty while he was out. It wasn't until he was challenged for a duel by Sollux that he finally left the planet, and that was to go fight a team member instead of really working as a part of the team. Another idea of his that was Really Dumb was his plan to join Jack - not fight, but join and just hope that his life would be spared in doing so. He'd decided that this was the thing to do, and announced that as the Prince of Hope he had come to realise that their situation was hopeless, and thought this was the proper way to get out of it.

In many ways, Eridan is contradictory to his own word. He constantly talks as if he's this super mature troll who doesn't have time for senseless shenanigans, but he does enjoy them more than he lets on. In fact, Eridan's a fan of FLARP-ing (a dangerous form of Alternian role-playing). Another example would be how he will continually make it clear that he doesn't believe in sorcery or anything related, but has asked Rose about magic despite that. Eridan even eventually acquired and wielded a wand as his main weapon, but insists on saying that what he is using is "wwhite science".

Despite snooting and general holier-than-thou attitude, Eridan has many, many insecurities and personality points that go against his usual confidence. He's prone to whining, likely to grouse about how he was just so lonely and no one understands or seems to care. At first, he doesn't like to go into complaining, but will hint at it like mad until the other person tells him to confess what's wrong, and then there is no closing the dam. It's all very dramatic and pathetic, but he's very needlessly dramatic — which is to be expected, probably, because he does wear a cape.

Even with all his faults, Eridan would like to think that he is a pretty tough dude who is capable of all kinds of things. Like genocide! Yes, he'd love to be genocidal, and has all sorts of plans for destroying everyone who isn't a sea dweller, none of which have ever come to fruit. That's because, historically, there has always been a big divide between land and sea trolls, and he wants nothing more than to honour it. Eridan's really big on military history and conquerers, and has expressed that he finds the tragedy of war beautiful and heroic. (He'd even modelled his FLARP character after someone he read about and admired.)

Despite his insistence that he's all for the defeat of land dweller, he lives on land. So, no one really believed that he is actually much of a threat to the whole land dwelling species, and rightfully so. Even though he hired Vriska to build him doomsday devices, he'd told Kanaya that he wouldn't very well kill her (lets disregard that he had, from his current point in his timeline), though he's been saying all along that in order to understand how to better kill land dwellers he's got to friend a few. The eventual casualties of his friends, he'd believed, were something inevitable that he'd just learn to live with.

One of the problems that people have with Eridan, because they usually tend to disregard his urge to kill things (since it isn't that unheard of in troll society, anyway), is that he is a relationship pusher. He solicits his fellow trolls in many other quadrants, and is known for making advances that are always somewhat awkward or reading into feelings where there aren't any. He started out the series in an actual relationship, having a moirallegience with Feferi, but it eventually broke off because she could no longer deal with his relationshit. He confessed his flushed feelings for her and was turned down, just as he was turned down when he confessed flushed feelings for Nepeta and Jade — he clearly didn't even think much of Nepeta, calling her the 'kittycat shipper girl' even while discussing how upset he was over the rejection of his advances. He used to have a hatething with Vriska, which ended because she was bored of him. They spent most of their time indulging in their mutual interest of extreme roleplaying, acquiring weapons and treasure, and killing people and lusii for their independent needs. In a way, it was one of his more functional relationships, because he was not hiding other feelings for her like he'd done when he was pale with Feferi. He had unrequited caliginous feelings for Sollux and Rose, which is why Eridan had actually left his angel-killing duties to battle Solllux.

As for actual friendships, Eridan hasn't maintained many, and those he does have are rocky at best. After Feferi and Eridan broke up, she wanted to remain friends with him, but they spent a great bit of time arguing, Feferi believing that Eridan wanted her to get back into a quadrant with him — even if it was as a mediator between him and Sollux. He used to talk to Kanaya about his problems with Vriska, and while he acted like they were friends, he was constantly rude to her, talking about how she was the village bicycle for the ashen quadrant. He also talked to Karkat about his relationship problems, though he never really listened to Karkat when he didn't need advice from him. He made jokes, acting like they were best pals even when Karkat was freaking out at him for killing Kanaya and Feferi. Eridan thinks the two of them have a pact of sorts, which is probably why he didn't kill Karkat despite him being present at the time that he finally acted upon his urges to blind everyone with science (though in truth, he only blinded Sollux with science; Kanaya and Feferi just got holes through their chests).

His previous stay in this game did not mend many of his friendships. He'd never had the chance to meet Feferi in-game, but Kanaya and he had few but tense encounters. Karkat refused to include him in most anything the trolls did as a group, and Eridan thought Gamzee was just kind of mental and came to avoid him. Sollux and he fought (predictably). Aradia and Nepeta talked with him on normal terms, and when they started to disagree, they'd change the conversation to keep it more amicable. He and Terezi came to live together and bargained with one another constantly to get what they wanted out of their roommate-ship. Out of the trolls, he found himself most at ease with her, even if they were not overly close.


☓ Abilities:
Being a sea dweller, Eridan has the ability to breathe under water. How exactly this is possible is not clear, because the readers have never seen gills or anything besides his facial-fins, but there is meant to be a difference between the sea and land dwellers that allows them to reside underwater. It should be noted again that his blood is purple, which is different from most individuals, though it may not be an ability.

He was given the title Prince of Hope by the game Sgrub, and with Prince being a destructive class, it means that he is the destroyer of hope. His "white science" powers were fuelled by hope, meaning that simply believing he was capable of winning in a situation gave him the strength to do so. This is why, when Kanaya returned from the dead, she "debunked" his beliefs that he was a lean mean destruction machine, and was able to disarm him. It didn't seem he was entirely aware of just how his powers worked.

Eridan has a strife specibus of riflekind, meaning he is able to fight with rifles. He's got Ahab's Crosshairs, which is an extremely powerful rifle that he acquired during a session of extreme roleplaying. He presumably also has wandkind, since he can fight quite well with the wand Kanaya makes for him. He'd been in possession of wands before the start of Sgrub, making them a weapon he's probably had available to him all along, though he thought he couldn't use them until he had the right one.

Those who have played Sgrub all have something called a dream self, Eridan is no exception. They are something most easily thought of as a body that can be controlled when the person is asleep and dreaming. Whether or not Eridan ever took control of his dream self is unclear, but he will no longer expect to, as his dream self (much like Eridan, now) is dead.


☓ Weaknesses:
Eridan is, as previously mentioned, a bit thick. If told not to go somewhere because it is too dangerous, he'd do it anyway without any concern for what others have to say. It will, most likely, get him into some pretty unfortunate situations that could have been avoided.

While skilled with his wand, there is the problem of debunking. If he's not entirely confident in his own abilities to destroy someone with his hope, he can be overpowered. While he still has riflekind, he's too stubborn to use it, having practically given Ahab's Crosshairs away (practically, because he only had someone make a copy of it) because he was so certain that his white science was going to be unbeatable.

Another weakness is his feelings. Falling for every other person you come across takes a lot out of a person, okay; there is only so much rejection a troll can take. Being objectively pathetic like Eridan is, is a weakness in itself.


☓ Strengths:
Eridan is a good fighter. When push comes to shove, he's ready to kill anyone that gets in his way, which is what keeps him alive. It might not be good, morally, considering killing ones friends is never good, but Eridan's got what it takes to push past friendship and focus on himself. It probably helps that the weapons that he uses are exceptionally strong — Ahab's Crosshairs is believed to be the strongest weapon that riflekind can take.

His ability to swim exceptionally well and breathe underwater is something that will undoubtedly benefit him, on an island. Even with monsters threatening him in the sea, being dragged under won't be much of a problem for him, where it might be the death of another.