the names.
Player Name: Jack
AIM name: Jack Ichijouji
Character Name: Jason Todd
Original Canon: Batman, DC Comics
PB: Kevin Zegers, Virginie Ledoyen
Journal name:![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
redhero
the backstory.
Character Type: Student
Age: 18
Power(s): Jason uses the term "shapeshifting," because he's classy, but a less enlightened person might refer to it as "superpowered transgenderism." In short, Jason has a superpowered alter ego, and his alter ego happens to be female. She (Jason refer to himself as a "he" while male and "she" while female, which makes little sense to anyone who isn't Jason Todd) has only one superpower: infinite stamina. Which means that she can operate at peak efficiency pretty much forever; a human, pushing themselves to the limit, can lift hundreds of pounds and run at over twenty miles per hour. While other people would pretty much kill themselves if they tried it, Jason maintains that kind of speed and strength as long as she's female. Jason keeps this aspect of her abilities under wraps: as far as anyone knows, Jason's only power is to shapeshift into a girl.
Weakness(es): Jason's male half is in good shape, but it's good shape for a human. He has limits, which he often strains; it's not usual to see him limp because he tried to do too much in the wrong body. Both bodies are as fragile as any human; those Jason's female form heals a little faster than most (due to her aforementioned physiology), she's still only meat and bone, and she's completely mortal. Finally, Jason's active lifestyle and superpowers require a tremendous amount of energy; he has to eat about six thousand calories a day, more if he's exceptionally active.
What sort of family life did they have? For the first thirteen years of Jason's life, he was a circus acrobat. His family were those who shared the tent with him; Gary the clown taught him to juggle, the animal trainer paid him a few bucks here and there to shovel out the pens, and, of course, it's very hard not to have a good relationship with your parents when they literally snatch you out of thin air on a regular basis. Every second of his life was informed by the absolute certainty that his mother and father would be there when they were needed, to catch him when he fell.
And then they weren't.
It was an accident, the authorities eventually declared. One of the ropes was worn through in just the wrong way, and when Jason's mother landed in her father's arms, the rope snapped, and they both fell to the ground. It was a blessing that Jason himself wasn't on the trapeze, or so he was told.
He spent the next few years bouncing through foster homes. For the most part, they served only as a place to sleep, and even then, only occasionally; Jason spent most of his time finding new and creative ways to get into trouble. It wasn't surprising, or shouldn't have been. Jason was already a thrillseeker by heritage and by inclination, and having his family taken away from him didn't exactly lend to stability. He got into fights, tagged buildings and statues, and was generally an annoyance to his caretakers, if there had been anyone to care. The best that could be said about him was that he didn't actually set out to hurt anyone, at least not seriously. He might have knocked a few teeth out, but mostly from thugs and wannabe gangsters.
One of his foster parents thought that he needed discipline, and threatened to ship him off to military school if he didn't straighten up and fly right, but the fact of the matter was that Jason didn't need discipline, he needed excitement. And he would find it in a most unusual place.
What, aside from their powers, made them who they are? Losing his parents and having little support structure to fall back on left him bitter and angry, and though he does well enough when he has an outlet, there's still something dark inside Jason that he's not comfortable with.
The person most responsible for keeping that darkness from overwhelming him was a woman named Hippolyta Nasich. A former Israeli soldier, she now led a comparatively peaceful life in New York, instructing people in Krav Maga and running a small community center. Jason met her while he and a handful of fellow delinquents he was running with at the time were adorning her building with their spray-painted assurances that various musicians popular at the time were "the shit."
He, an older boy of about eighteen, and a violent girl in a ski mask were standing back and admiring their handiwork when they heard an older female voice say, "'The shit?' Is this a compliment in your language?"
The girl, whoever she was, had a lot more sense than Jason and the other boy did, because she ran away as soon as she heard the voice. Jason and his remaining companion turned to find a woman had sneaked up behind them without making a sound, and only then started to run. Unfortunately for them, they ran straight into the dead end of an alleyway, with the woman following leisurely behind them.
At fourteen, Jason hadn't yet had his growth spurt, and even then was still taller than the woman before him. At this point in his life, his fights had all been with other boys, usually older, and only when they were asking for it. Still, cornered as he felt, he raised his fists into a half-hearted fighting posture.
The woman laughed. She focused her attention on Jason, completely ignoring the older boy to the left of him. "Boy," she said, "you don't want to do that."
"I don't want to hurt you," said Jason, with the sincerity borne of terror.
"You won't," she said with absolute certainty, "but you may try."
The older boy, who Jason now realized smelled faintly of urine, screamed, pulled a knife, and ran at the woman. Without apparently shifting her gaze, she struck him in the solar plexus, kicked him hard enough in the knee that Jason heard a very disturbing crack, and kicked the knife away when it fell out of his hand. This took less than a second to accomplish. By the time Jason had accounted for everything that had happened, she already had her hand on his wrist, and was by that point putting him into a position that, while not immediately painful, promised him a wide variety of agonies should he move in any way that offended her.
"So. What should I do with you?"
"Uh. Let me go with a stern warning?" said Jason, hopefully.
"That does not sound like it benefits me, young man."
The older boy--Derrick, was that his name?--sobbed quietly, clutching his knee. "Deliver us to the cops? Cops sound good. I like cops right about now," Jason added.
"I don't see much benefit in that, either. There's quite a lot of paint on my walls that needs addressing. Your attempts to avoid random acts of violence in the showers of the local juvenile hall does not address the repainting that this place now needs because of you."
"I'll clean it!" he promised. "Let go of my hand and give me a brush and a bucket and let go of my hand and I'll do anything you want, just let go of my hand, and please don't break it."
"Should I? You threatened me, a defenseless woman." She paused for a moment, as if waiting for the universe to laugh at the outrageousness of that statement. "Perhaps a broken arm will make you think twice."
"But it'll make it harder to clean."
"Hmm. You may have a point." She loosened, but did not release, her grip. "Perhaps there is some hope for you, boy. I trust that, if I release you, you will return bright and early and ready to make amends for your crime?"
Jason gave this some thought. Would she have the cops waiting for him? It wasn't likely. She could probably knock him out and call the cops right now. Could he get away with running? Maybe. And maybe she wouldn't even come for him.
But maybe she would.
"Of course," he said, and never before did he speak with as much conviction as he did now.
For what seemed like an eternity, she considered his response. When Jason felt his body start to cramp up and his sanity start to slide away from him, she finally released him and said, "Fine. Tomorrow morning. Do not be late."
Jason, still terrified, showed up before sunrise and found, to his lack of surprise, that a pail of water and a stiff brush were waiting for him. He started right away, not even bothering to report in. Not all of the graffiti was from the night before, but he doubted that she would be satisfied with that excuse, and suspected that he would have had an easier time of it if he'd just gone to the police station and confessed.
While he was cleaning, he half-watched the community center events through the window. Most of them were dull, like Square Dancing for the Elderly or rehearsals for the neighborhood production of Oklahoma! However, on his twentieth day, he happened to be cleaning a window at the same time that the woman who ran the place was teaching a class.
He'd heard of Krav Maga before, but only off-handedly, in the same way that one might hear of kung fu and tae kwon do and karate but be unable to tell the difference between them. Actually watching the class was a different experience. At one point he all but stopped scrubbed all together just to watch, before the woman caught his eye and he hurriedly resumed his cleaning.
It would be another three days and the near completion of his task before he would have the courage to approach her about the class. "So that was the same stuff you used on Derrick, huh?" he said in what he thought was a casual tone.
"Hm."
"How old do you have to be to learn that stuff?"
"Old enough to know better than to deface my building."
"I think it looks like fun," Jason pressed on.
The woman bristled. "Fun? In my country, this is taught to every soldier and every police officer. It has saved my life on more than one occasion. It is not a sport. It is not a game. You potentially hold your life in your very hands when you practice Krav Maga."
"Yeah," said Jason, as if he were doing nothing more than providing a more succinct synonym for her rant. "Fun."
"You are a strange boy."
"I used to be an acrobat before my parents--" Jason paused. It hadn't been long enough that he could say the phrase casually. "I used to be an acrobat. On the trapeze. I like that feeling. I miss that feeling."
If she caught what Jason had almost said, the woman's face didn't betray it. She said, "What would you do with it? Take it back to the streets and assault other innocent old women like myself?" Again, the world failed to burst into laughter at her phrasing.
"No!"
"Then would you use it to help that same old woman?"
Jason's first reaction was to say that yes, of course he would. But then he wondered if lying to the woman was a safe thing to do, and paused to think about it. If presented with someone he didn't know in danger, would he risk his own life to help? It was troubling that he wasn't sure, but after a moment, he said, "Yes, I think so. I hope I would, ma'am."
"Hn," she said. After a few moments, she added, "We'll see. And my name is Hippolyta Nasich. Remember it, because you will be cursing it soon."
Jason didn't get free lessons, but instead paid for them by working in the community center. He taught an acrobatics class for younger children, cleaned, painted, and, of course, cleaned the inevitable graffiti from the walls. But since the moment where she gave him a brief moment of trust for no other reason than because he honestly said that he hoped he would have the courage to do the right thing, Jason did the best he could not to let her down. He did whatever Hippolyta asked of him, and in exchange was taught anything she could throw at him. It was fun. It was a rush. And he had a mentor and a friend who made life a little more bearable.
What sort of personality do they have? Jason has been accused of using humor to hide his feelings, and that may be accurate, though it isn't precise. It's not that Jason wants to hide his feelings, it's that Jason liked the person he was at twelve a lot better. At twelve, he had a happy life, was the center of attention, lived in a world of wonder and saw a new city every week. At thirteen, he was half living on the streets, getting into fights, and burying his misery with adrenaline. Confronted once with the question of who he wanted to be, he decided he wanted to be himself, and the person he thinks of as himself is happy. It may not be a healthy attitude, but casual sarcasm is probably better, at least from a community standpoint, than defacing public property.
How and when did they find out they had powers? Jason's powers kicked in almost a year ago, at the age of seventeen. A young man is still coming to terms with his masculinity at seventeen, and throwing femininity into the mix did not help matters. As with all things, he went to Hippolyta about it, to whom he demonstrated his abilities, including his girl half's unlimited stamina. She was the first to observe that, when Jason was a girl, she didn't hold back; she didn't immediately have the ability to walk at a normal pace or throw a punch without shattering bones. For the next year, until Jason was sent off to AU, Hippolyta mentored her in normalcy, a much different training regimen from the occasionally brutal Krav Maga training.
How do they feel about going to AU? He's not in favor of it, but nor is he so against it that he's willing to flee the government. He would have preferred finding his own path, but when his guardian revealed that he had powers, he was approached by university agents and informed that he would be attending the university in no uncertain terms.
For reasons of his/her own, Jason keeps under wraps that his female half has her own set of superpowers.
How does this character differ from the canon version? Jason is wanting for an established world of superheroes and vigilantes. Taken into the care of an eccentric billionaire who'd suffered a similar loss as he, Jason might have prospered, especially with an outlet for his rage and thrillseeking easily available to him. As it is, he tries to balance the light and darkness inside him.
How are they similar to the canon version? As an amalgam of two different origin stories (Silver Age and Post-Crisis Jason Todd), he carries traits of both. He has the latter Jason's darkness, but the previous Jason's hope, as at least he has memories of a loving family and a support structure. Additionally, Jason maintains a heritage as a talented acrobat; however, like his Post-Crisis comicbook counterpart, he's absolutely brutal in a fight.
Anything we haven't covered? Yes. Jason's skillset extends beyond his powers: his only real mentor figure after his parents died being a martial artist, he's acquired a number of skills in that vein, largely in the hopes of impressing her (though, of course, he wouldn't consciously acknowledge that.) Jason is also a talented acrobat, owing to a childhood spent on the trapeze. On the other hand, he's lacking in general world information; the first couple of terms at university is likely to be remedial, as he is only knowledgeable in things that interest him.
Player Name: Jack
AIM name: Jack Ichijouji
Character Name: Jason Todd
Original Canon: Batman, DC Comics
PB: Kevin Zegers, Virginie Ledoyen
Journal name:
redherothe backstory.
Character Type: Student
Age: 18
Power(s): Jason uses the term "shapeshifting," because he's classy, but a less enlightened person might refer to it as "superpowered transgenderism." In short, Jason has a superpowered alter ego, and his alter ego happens to be female. She (Jason refer to himself as a "he" while male and "she" while female, which makes little sense to anyone who isn't Jason Todd) has only one superpower: infinite stamina. Which means that she can operate at peak efficiency pretty much forever; a human, pushing themselves to the limit, can lift hundreds of pounds and run at over twenty miles per hour. While other people would pretty much kill themselves if they tried it, Jason maintains that kind of speed and strength as long as she's female. Jason keeps this aspect of her abilities under wraps: as far as anyone knows, Jason's only power is to shapeshift into a girl.
Weakness(es): Jason's male half is in good shape, but it's good shape for a human. He has limits, which he often strains; it's not usual to see him limp because he tried to do too much in the wrong body. Both bodies are as fragile as any human; those Jason's female form heals a little faster than most (due to her aforementioned physiology), she's still only meat and bone, and she's completely mortal. Finally, Jason's active lifestyle and superpowers require a tremendous amount of energy; he has to eat about six thousand calories a day, more if he's exceptionally active.
What sort of family life did they have? For the first thirteen years of Jason's life, he was a circus acrobat. His family were those who shared the tent with him; Gary the clown taught him to juggle, the animal trainer paid him a few bucks here and there to shovel out the pens, and, of course, it's very hard not to have a good relationship with your parents when they literally snatch you out of thin air on a regular basis. Every second of his life was informed by the absolute certainty that his mother and father would be there when they were needed, to catch him when he fell.
And then they weren't.
It was an accident, the authorities eventually declared. One of the ropes was worn through in just the wrong way, and when Jason's mother landed in her father's arms, the rope snapped, and they both fell to the ground. It was a blessing that Jason himself wasn't on the trapeze, or so he was told.
He spent the next few years bouncing through foster homes. For the most part, they served only as a place to sleep, and even then, only occasionally; Jason spent most of his time finding new and creative ways to get into trouble. It wasn't surprising, or shouldn't have been. Jason was already a thrillseeker by heritage and by inclination, and having his family taken away from him didn't exactly lend to stability. He got into fights, tagged buildings and statues, and was generally an annoyance to his caretakers, if there had been anyone to care. The best that could be said about him was that he didn't actually set out to hurt anyone, at least not seriously. He might have knocked a few teeth out, but mostly from thugs and wannabe gangsters.
One of his foster parents thought that he needed discipline, and threatened to ship him off to military school if he didn't straighten up and fly right, but the fact of the matter was that Jason didn't need discipline, he needed excitement. And he would find it in a most unusual place.
What, aside from their powers, made them who they are? Losing his parents and having little support structure to fall back on left him bitter and angry, and though he does well enough when he has an outlet, there's still something dark inside Jason that he's not comfortable with.
The person most responsible for keeping that darkness from overwhelming him was a woman named Hippolyta Nasich. A former Israeli soldier, she now led a comparatively peaceful life in New York, instructing people in Krav Maga and running a small community center. Jason met her while he and a handful of fellow delinquents he was running with at the time were adorning her building with their spray-painted assurances that various musicians popular at the time were "the shit."
He, an older boy of about eighteen, and a violent girl in a ski mask were standing back and admiring their handiwork when they heard an older female voice say, "'The shit?' Is this a compliment in your language?"
The girl, whoever she was, had a lot more sense than Jason and the other boy did, because she ran away as soon as she heard the voice. Jason and his remaining companion turned to find a woman had sneaked up behind them without making a sound, and only then started to run. Unfortunately for them, they ran straight into the dead end of an alleyway, with the woman following leisurely behind them.
At fourteen, Jason hadn't yet had his growth spurt, and even then was still taller than the woman before him. At this point in his life, his fights had all been with other boys, usually older, and only when they were asking for it. Still, cornered as he felt, he raised his fists into a half-hearted fighting posture.
The woman laughed. She focused her attention on Jason, completely ignoring the older boy to the left of him. "Boy," she said, "you don't want to do that."
"I don't want to hurt you," said Jason, with the sincerity borne of terror.
"You won't," she said with absolute certainty, "but you may try."
The older boy, who Jason now realized smelled faintly of urine, screamed, pulled a knife, and ran at the woman. Without apparently shifting her gaze, she struck him in the solar plexus, kicked him hard enough in the knee that Jason heard a very disturbing crack, and kicked the knife away when it fell out of his hand. This took less than a second to accomplish. By the time Jason had accounted for everything that had happened, she already had her hand on his wrist, and was by that point putting him into a position that, while not immediately painful, promised him a wide variety of agonies should he move in any way that offended her.
"So. What should I do with you?"
"Uh. Let me go with a stern warning?" said Jason, hopefully.
"That does not sound like it benefits me, young man."
The older boy--Derrick, was that his name?--sobbed quietly, clutching his knee. "Deliver us to the cops? Cops sound good. I like cops right about now," Jason added.
"I don't see much benefit in that, either. There's quite a lot of paint on my walls that needs addressing. Your attempts to avoid random acts of violence in the showers of the local juvenile hall does not address the repainting that this place now needs because of you."
"I'll clean it!" he promised. "Let go of my hand and give me a brush and a bucket and let go of my hand and I'll do anything you want, just let go of my hand, and please don't break it."
"Should I? You threatened me, a defenseless woman." She paused for a moment, as if waiting for the universe to laugh at the outrageousness of that statement. "Perhaps a broken arm will make you think twice."
"But it'll make it harder to clean."
"Hmm. You may have a point." She loosened, but did not release, her grip. "Perhaps there is some hope for you, boy. I trust that, if I release you, you will return bright and early and ready to make amends for your crime?"
Jason gave this some thought. Would she have the cops waiting for him? It wasn't likely. She could probably knock him out and call the cops right now. Could he get away with running? Maybe. And maybe she wouldn't even come for him.
But maybe she would.
"Of course," he said, and never before did he speak with as much conviction as he did now.
For what seemed like an eternity, she considered his response. When Jason felt his body start to cramp up and his sanity start to slide away from him, she finally released him and said, "Fine. Tomorrow morning. Do not be late."
Jason, still terrified, showed up before sunrise and found, to his lack of surprise, that a pail of water and a stiff brush were waiting for him. He started right away, not even bothering to report in. Not all of the graffiti was from the night before, but he doubted that she would be satisfied with that excuse, and suspected that he would have had an easier time of it if he'd just gone to the police station and confessed.
While he was cleaning, he half-watched the community center events through the window. Most of them were dull, like Square Dancing for the Elderly or rehearsals for the neighborhood production of Oklahoma! However, on his twentieth day, he happened to be cleaning a window at the same time that the woman who ran the place was teaching a class.
He'd heard of Krav Maga before, but only off-handedly, in the same way that one might hear of kung fu and tae kwon do and karate but be unable to tell the difference between them. Actually watching the class was a different experience. At one point he all but stopped scrubbed all together just to watch, before the woman caught his eye and he hurriedly resumed his cleaning.
It would be another three days and the near completion of his task before he would have the courage to approach her about the class. "So that was the same stuff you used on Derrick, huh?" he said in what he thought was a casual tone.
"Hm."
"How old do you have to be to learn that stuff?"
"Old enough to know better than to deface my building."
"I think it looks like fun," Jason pressed on.
The woman bristled. "Fun? In my country, this is taught to every soldier and every police officer. It has saved my life on more than one occasion. It is not a sport. It is not a game. You potentially hold your life in your very hands when you practice Krav Maga."
"Yeah," said Jason, as if he were doing nothing more than providing a more succinct synonym for her rant. "Fun."
"You are a strange boy."
"I used to be an acrobat before my parents--" Jason paused. It hadn't been long enough that he could say the phrase casually. "I used to be an acrobat. On the trapeze. I like that feeling. I miss that feeling."
If she caught what Jason had almost said, the woman's face didn't betray it. She said, "What would you do with it? Take it back to the streets and assault other innocent old women like myself?" Again, the world failed to burst into laughter at her phrasing.
"No!"
"Then would you use it to help that same old woman?"
Jason's first reaction was to say that yes, of course he would. But then he wondered if lying to the woman was a safe thing to do, and paused to think about it. If presented with someone he didn't know in danger, would he risk his own life to help? It was troubling that he wasn't sure, but after a moment, he said, "Yes, I think so. I hope I would, ma'am."
"Hn," she said. After a few moments, she added, "We'll see. And my name is Hippolyta Nasich. Remember it, because you will be cursing it soon."
Jason didn't get free lessons, but instead paid for them by working in the community center. He taught an acrobatics class for younger children, cleaned, painted, and, of course, cleaned the inevitable graffiti from the walls. But since the moment where she gave him a brief moment of trust for no other reason than because he honestly said that he hoped he would have the courage to do the right thing, Jason did the best he could not to let her down. He did whatever Hippolyta asked of him, and in exchange was taught anything she could throw at him. It was fun. It was a rush. And he had a mentor and a friend who made life a little more bearable.
What sort of personality do they have? Jason has been accused of using humor to hide his feelings, and that may be accurate, though it isn't precise. It's not that Jason wants to hide his feelings, it's that Jason liked the person he was at twelve a lot better. At twelve, he had a happy life, was the center of attention, lived in a world of wonder and saw a new city every week. At thirteen, he was half living on the streets, getting into fights, and burying his misery with adrenaline. Confronted once with the question of who he wanted to be, he decided he wanted to be himself, and the person he thinks of as himself is happy. It may not be a healthy attitude, but casual sarcasm is probably better, at least from a community standpoint, than defacing public property.
How and when did they find out they had powers? Jason's powers kicked in almost a year ago, at the age of seventeen. A young man is still coming to terms with his masculinity at seventeen, and throwing femininity into the mix did not help matters. As with all things, he went to Hippolyta about it, to whom he demonstrated his abilities, including his girl half's unlimited stamina. She was the first to observe that, when Jason was a girl, she didn't hold back; she didn't immediately have the ability to walk at a normal pace or throw a punch without shattering bones. For the next year, until Jason was sent off to AU, Hippolyta mentored her in normalcy, a much different training regimen from the occasionally brutal Krav Maga training.
How do they feel about going to AU? He's not in favor of it, but nor is he so against it that he's willing to flee the government. He would have preferred finding his own path, but when his guardian revealed that he had powers, he was approached by university agents and informed that he would be attending the university in no uncertain terms.
For reasons of his/her own, Jason keeps under wraps that his female half has her own set of superpowers.
How does this character differ from the canon version? Jason is wanting for an established world of superheroes and vigilantes. Taken into the care of an eccentric billionaire who'd suffered a similar loss as he, Jason might have prospered, especially with an outlet for his rage and thrillseeking easily available to him. As it is, he tries to balance the light and darkness inside him.
How are they similar to the canon version? As an amalgam of two different origin stories (Silver Age and Post-Crisis Jason Todd), he carries traits of both. He has the latter Jason's darkness, but the previous Jason's hope, as at least he has memories of a loving family and a support structure. Additionally, Jason maintains a heritage as a talented acrobat; however, like his Post-Crisis comicbook counterpart, he's absolutely brutal in a fight.
Anything we haven't covered? Yes. Jason's skillset extends beyond his powers: his only real mentor figure after his parents died being a martial artist, he's acquired a number of skills in that vein, largely in the hopes of impressing her (though, of course, he wouldn't consciously acknowledge that.) Jason is also a talented acrobat, owing to a childhood spent on the trapeze. On the other hand, he's lacking in general world information; the first couple of terms at university is likely to be remedial, as he is only knowledgeable in things that interest him.