Zach
Zach is the kind of guy that tries his best to be optimistic, but at the same time he gets scared, sad, or angry quite easily. Also always the first one who tries to lighten a gloomy mood and help other people look on the bright side. Usually with tasteful jokes and metaphors. And puns!
He has various cartoon-related abilities. He’s also a programmer who loves to spend time on the Internet, and he loves music. He’s got a huge collection of CDs and the like, and has a talent for being able to play just about any instrument.
One day long ago, he (along with his entire house) was accidentally "ejected" out of his original Storyline. The long line of wacky hijinks he took to try to get back led to him being hired as Janitor for the Janitor Menagerie.
Appearance
He is a stick figure cartoon character, with a blocky but flexible body, hands and feet at the end of his limbs, a round head, glasses, and three hairs sticking out of his head. His hairs will always stick out from under any hat he wears.
There's a running gag of sorts with Zach where most people who meet him for the first time will comment on how skinny his looks. This is despite the fact that he's literally a stick figure. He will also get comments on how pale he looks, despite being obviously paper-white. Zach is annoyed by these comments and will appreciate anyone who manages to not fall for the gags.
Personality
Overall, Zach could be described as fragile at best or pathetic at worst. Despite this, he really does try to make the most of it. Especially if other people around him are being defeatist, he’ll usually be the first one to try and lift people’s spirits. It’s one of the few things he’s always willing to take the initiative on!
With Zach being easy to scare, he has a particularly bad fear of heights. Closing his eyes and moving slowly/staying still helps mitigate the fear, but it can still be hard to deal with.
Abilities
Zach's abilities (including related things like work skills and hobbies) can be grouped into 3 major topics based on his associations: Cartoon, Music, and Computers.
Cartoon
He's a stick figure(ish) cartoon, which gives him cartoon-like abilities. These are possible even in settings where cartoon physics/logic aren't a thing, and other characters are just normal beings.
- Squash and Stretch – Can squash and stretch much more than normal people would.
- Hammerspace – Can put objects behind his back to store for later, essentially acting like the unlimited pockets of an adventure-game character. He can also pull out random object, which may or may not be useful to the current situation.
- Context Sensitivity - Whatever he can pull out from his Hammerspace, if he’s not pulling out something specific that he put there himself, is often relevant or useful to the current situation. However, how well it fits into context will often be dictated by Rule of Funny (i.e. if it’s funnier for it to be not relevant at all, then that’s what it will be)
- Hidebehind – Can hide behind objects that may be too narrow or small to normally hide someone. Zach effectively disappears behind them, even with bigger objects if he wants. This is essentially like applying his Hammerspace ability to himself. Zach does not like to describe what this feels or looks like from his perspective. Not because it’s uncomfortable or scary, but because it’s just too weird for him to properly describe.
- Durability – Much more durable than normal humans, can survive certain scenarios better than humans would.
- Super Luck (Lucky & Unlucky) – That being said, Zach tends to have very extreme luck in both directions. It depends on how funny the situation would be one way or another. If it would be funny if he survives something, then he will. Likewise, if it would be funny if he gets hurt/killed, then he will. His luck also applies to his Hammerspace ability, at least for what other objects he can pull out besides what he intends to carry.
- Unexplained Recovery - Even if Zach is outright killed, he’ll usually be revived later. How quickly he’ll respawn will depend on the severity of the death. Zach is not entirely sure why or how this works, but he’s vaguely aware that this does not apply to death by old age or disease, so he still has to take care of himself.
- Rage Mode – Think Donald Duck. Zach can become incredibly dangerous and violent when very angry. Includes increased strength and more exaggerated toon physics/warping. He doesn't like when this happens, since afterwards he's sick to his stomach and has a bad migraine.
- Rule of Funny – This pretty much oversees the effects of his other abilities. He’ll only be lucky/unlucky, squash and stretch under certain situations, and so on if it’s funny. This can be bad for him, since what’s funny can definitely change from situation to situation.
- Zach tries not to think about the fact that whether or not his abilities work in his favor will all depend on the subjective humor of an audience that is unknown to him. Seriously though, he’s very painfully aware that he’ll probably freak out badly if he thinks about it too much.
- Shoulder Advice - Has little shoulder beings that represents facets of his personality, and tend to offer advice depending on the situation. They all try to be helpful in their own ways, but can also sometimes be unhelpful in their own ways. Zach talking to them is effectively equivalent to Zach just talking to himself. Zach is aware of how awkward this seems to most people, but to him being able to talk to ‘himself’ helps him think about different angles and possibilities of his current situation.
- Lawson is the Shoulder Angel, representing Lawful Zach (not necessarily ‘good’). He tries to be logical and encourage Zach to follow the rules, but also tends to be overly-logical, or otherwise critical/judgmental of Zach’s decisions and behavior. This is especially the case if Zach is being more silly or emotional.
- Truman is the Shoulder Fairy, representing Neutral Zach. He tries to look out for Zach and help calm him down/cheer him up. He also tries to help Zach avoid getting into unnecessary danger. However, the sense of self-preservation sometimes leads to Zach being selfish or cowardly when Truman makes him only think of himself in order to have him protect himself. He also encourages Zach to be polite to avoid trouble, and will chastise Zach if he is even a little bit too rude, even if it’s well-deserved.
- Chaco is the Shoulder Devil, representing Chaotic Zach (not necessarily ‘evil’). He very much lives by the YOLO creed (i.e. “You Only Live Once”), and encourages Zach to both live life and try out new and awesome things, as well as stand up for himself. Unfortunately, this often leads to Zach either pissing someone off or getting himself into danger.
- Eye Glasses – His glasses act like his eyeballs. They're even removable! They are thankfully also very durable, though the durability is sometimes dictated by Rule of Funny.
- Leaning on the 4th Wall - Zach is vaguely aware that he is just a fictional character in a fictional story, and will make comments on that. However, it’s not to the point of outright breaking the 4th wall. This is for the better, since Zach would probably suffer from an existential crisis from completely breaking said wall.
Music
Likes music a lot to the point of seemingly knowing most songs in existence. He also plays several instruments decently, but the acoustic guitar, trumpet, and piano are his favorite.
- Instruments that Zach is good at playing: acoustic guitar, harmonica, kazoo, flute, harpsichord, xylophone, recorder, violin, trombone, trumpet, sousaphone, French horn, tuba, clarinet, accordion, piano, electric guitar, cello, harp
- For anything that Zach hasn’t played at all or not in a while, he can learn most instruments rather easily as long as he can figure out how to play the scales (Do, Re, Mi, etc)
Computers
He's very skilled with computers and programming, and loves to surf the Internet. Before becoming a Janitor, he worked as a freelance programmer, and knows most of the more common programming languages on the market: C, C++, C#, Java, Python, and Ruby. He also knows HTML, PHP, and XML well enough to work with those. Even as a Janitor now, he will still take on programming projects more for the fun of it.
- He hates working with text-based/command-line interfaces. Especially with ones he isn’t familiar with or doesn’t have a cheat sheet for all the possible commands, since he has to keep checking what he can and can’t use as inputs.
- He dislikes working with certain languages such as Haskell, Pascal, and what are know as embedded programming languages (essentially languages used for small and limited computers built into a device and can’t normally be removed, in most cases). He finds them awkward to understand and follow compared to the languages he’s more used to.
- Zach prefers using open-source programs for things versus paid ones, especially since most paid software these days are annoyingly subscription-based.
- He is not a hardware person at all, and he hates it when people expect him to be. Also please don't treat him as an IT person, he's generally not good at that either.
- He could probably be a competent hacker if he wasn't afraid to do so. He's mainly afraid of getting caught, even if he managed to cover his tracks.
- Due to spending a lot of time online, he’s read up on a lot of trivia on random things. It’s gotten to the point where he’s committed a lot of random facts to memory.
- Also related, he loves memes and references, but doesn’t try to use them excessively, especially in real life (unless he’s trying to cheer himself or someone else up). Due to most memes involving cute/cool /weird animals, he does love animals of all shapes and sizes. Combined with reading about random animal facts online, he has respect and appreciation for just about every animal, even things like bugs and slugs.
History
Zach used to have a lisp when he was younger, and back then he also had a hard time pronouncing new words. Even as an adult, he tends to get tongue-tied while trying to pronounce longer words. As he describes it, it's like he accidentally tries to pronounce the whole word "all at once".
Zach is fluent in English and Spanish, having grown up speaking both. Sometimes when he mutters or is thinking aloud, he'll do so in Spanish. He also has the habit of saying curse words and insults in Spanish, since he feels it's more satisfying to say it in Spanish. Plus, it acts as a way to censor himself around people who won't understand him.
Gallery
The following is a gallery of major images featuring Zach.
Full image of Zach.
Zach's abilities, part 1.
Zach's abilities, part 2.
Zach's abilities, part 3.
Notes on Zach's design.
Zach's various expressions.
Zach with his girlfriend Penny.
Trivia
- Zach's design was inspired by the stick figures featured in this commercial for Xtreme Jell-O Gel Sticks.
- If Zach had his own theme music, it would sound something like the theme music for the game Plok.
- He goes by the name Zach mainly because he wanted to go by a name that was shorter than his real given name. He picked Zach because it's not only one syllable, but each part of his name has a Z in it: Lorenzo Balthazar Lopez.
- Zach's abuela (specifically his paternal grandma) calls him Lolo based on his name, sans his middle name: Lorenzo Lopez. He refuses to allow anyone else to call him by that nickname, even his own parents.