Player InformationPlayer name: Jen
Contact: PM this journal
Are you over 18: Yes
Characters in The Box Already: N/A
Character InformationCharacter Name: Captain Jack Harkness
Canon: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Canon Point: Post Torchwood: Children of Earth and Doctor Who: End of Time.
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive (Jack is a fixed point in time)
History: Quite an extensive read.Personality: Jack is an enigma, purposefully cloaking himself in mystery, and is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. He rarely lets anything important about himself slip out (or anything at all, in fact, until his past comes back to bite him). Given his previous career paths as Time Agent and con man, the credibility of anything he does mention ought to be taken with a grain of salt and assumed to be an exaggeration or a spruced up lie. Prior to meeting the Doctor, Jack was a flippant adventurer that flirted, slept, bribed and conned his way across the galaxy. Despite his somewhat loose morals by 21st century standards, and losing at least two years of time while occupying the role of interrogator in the Time Agency, Jack has always tried to be a good man at heart. Even so, Jack is convinced that he did some terrible things in his life and though he has more or less given up the quest to find out what those things are (while adding even more sins to his conscience), he tries to atone for his mistakes even now.
Despite Jack’s troubled past, he is usually smiling, telling jokes, being crude and acting happy-go-lucky. A reluctant hero and sometimes villain, Jack nonetheless remains outwardly cheerful. No one gets passed Jack’s mask. Not even Jack anymore.
Jack is a natural leader despite often coming off as silly and carefree. He is charismatic and smart, an excellent tactician, and he knows how to handle people. He is patient, understanding, and non-discriminatory. He is unusually open with others in outward appearance and this makes him as many friends as it does enemies. He is a voracious flirt and claims to have taken countless lovers during his lifetime. He is onmisexual, willing to bed all genders, races and species. While this might be the norm in the 51st century, and Jack hints that human beings during the time he was born no longer have qualms about their sexuality, it is likely that Jack is exaggerating. He has shown, at least since meeting the Doctor, to be monogamous in his relationships while they last.
Because Jack can not stay dead, though he does feel pain and so doesn't run towards death with open arms, his motivations are generally other-person oriented. He sees people for who they are and tries to see the good in them. He is very protective over the people he loves and is not shy about making more friends or giving past enemies a second (or third) chance based on his emotional attachment to them.
Though he knows that he will eventually lose everyone he loves, Jack doesn't hold himself back from making emotional connections with people and suffers terribly when he either must move on (no one likes seeing the person they care about stay young while they themselves grow old), or they die. He is capable of making hard, sometimes morally questionable decisions and will do what must be done for the greater good. This can include sacrificing himself, or more commonly, the people he loves, to save the world.
Though he is fond of 20th and 21st century Earth, he finds their customs and cultural limitations quaint.
Abilities/Strengths and Weaknesses:Thanks to Rose Tyler, one of his very good friends who had only had the best of intentions, and the Time Vortex from the heart of the TARDIS, Jack was brought back to life and subequently discovered that while he can still die, he can't remain dead. As a fixed point in time, Jack is forced to revert back to this point of initial resurrection whenever something adverse occurs to him physically (be it an injury or death). This may take anywhere from several moments to a few hours, depending on the amount of trauma he’s suffered. Jack has been shown to do this even after being blown apart to nothing but mist. It is often extremely painful for Jack to regenerate.
Jack can also pass on some of his life energy to others, healing them or reviving the unconscious. Generally, this is performed through a kiss and may even occur on a smaller scale every time Jack kisses someone else. His partner usually becomes invigorated afterward and Jack often teases that kissing him is better than a strong cup of coffee.
Like most men from the 51st century, Jack possesses evolved human pheromones which can cause people to become susceptible to his suggestion. It only works, however, if the person he is trying to influence happens to find him attractive already. He has used this skill most often when pulling cons.
Jack is at least partially telepathic (though it is hinted that he may one day become the Face of Boe, the oldest and most telepathic being in the universe). He is able to direct his thoughts to telepathic beings, know when his mind is being read, and possibly block his own thoughts from reaching others (though this latter point may simple be because Jack is both alive and dead at the same time and it is impossible to reach a dead man's thoughts). It is unclear if he can read anyone else's thoughts, but if he can, he doesn't make a habit of it or purposefully does not use this skill.
Jack can pilot any number of ships (space or otherwise), cars, boats, airplanes, etc. He is trained in interrogation methods, he can lie like a pro, and is charismatic enough to con people into doing most things. Jack is excellent with firearms (having been military trained by various agencies) and can fix and modify all sorts of technology (including the Doctor's TARDIS). In short, he is nothing less than a Renaissance man.
Jack's weaknesses stem from his very long life and his laundry list of crimes though it is impossible to tell how much these affect him on a day to day basis. His emotional connection to people and to the twenty-first century may seem like a strength at first, though each time he cares for someone, he becomes compromised. This becomes evident when faced with his supposedly long dead brother, or with many members of his team. Jack is an expert at compartmentalizing, allowing him to push aside old pain and act as if nothing phases him. Sometimes those close to him observe this as being cold when in reality, Jack uses this technique to keep from going insane.
As far as he knows, there is absolutely no way for him to die. He has thus overcome most of his weaknesses by projected indifference and does not allow himself to suffer for too long.
Jack'a main weakness is likely his eternal loneliness. Even before becoming immortal, Jack had been touch starved and lacking company. His cons and his outward personality lend him to simultaneously letting people in and keeping them at arm's length. Because of this, Jack often falls hard and fast for people and finds himself forced to let them go just as hard and fast. Despite telling Ianto that he has no regrets, Jack must have at least one: loving other people. The very thing that allows him to have multi-faceted and interesting relationships also strains them relatively quickly to the breaking point. He has not yet learned, and may never learn at this rate, to be able to exist alone for very long.
SamplesNetwork/Action Spam Sample:Hello?
[Now that he's gotten the phone working and has pulled the network up on it, he can't help but smile. His dimples ought to be bannned or, at the very least, come with a warning label. When Jack smiles, it's very hard not to feel at ease or smile along with him.]Good, now that I have your attention, does anyone want to fill me in on what the hell is going on?
[He arches a perfect eyebrow over a much too blue eye before something off camera catches his attention. His lips lose their smile and press into a straight line instead.]Actually, hold that thought.
Prose Log Sample:This is a little ficlet I wrote that occurs after Children of Earth (Torchwood Series 3) and Doctor Who "End of Time" episode to explain what Jack may have been doing prior to his arrival back on Earth for the Miracle Day series (Torchwood Series 4). It also serves to perhaps explain the last thing he'd remember upon coming to the comm. I can come up with other samples if you need.)Jack loved his crew. It was, by far, the biggest group of people he had ever had under his command, but that was what made it exciting. Sure, they were scavengers, a bit mangy, a little bit too hyperviolent and prone to long bouts of drinking and sexual escapades, but he really couldn’t blame them. Pirates, no matter the time period or the type of vessel, always tended to be about the same.
Slipping into his navy blue RAF coat, something he had held onto fastidiously over the last few years since Ianto's death, Jack bared his teeth to the mirror. The dental care device on the wall blasted his face sonically to remove any plaque that might have collected over night. He shimmied to the left to have the usually faulty decontaminator spray kill off odorous bacteria from his clothes and headed out into the hallway. His fingers traced the hull of the ship as they have traced many, many others. He tried to remember this this, like all of the others, was a fleeting moment for him. That he couldn't get attached. That getting attached hurt too much in the end.
How long was the string of lives lost behind him now? How many times had he longed to join them all?
“Morning, Captain!” came a chorus of greetings and Jack answered each one back with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. No one ever noticed that. Jack was still, and always would be, the perfect con man. He climbed the steps towards the galley and pulled himself through the port rigging with a piece of purposefully burnt toast in his mouth on the way up to the bridge.
“Captain on the deck!”
“Thanks, Alonso,” Jack replied. “Status?”
“We’ve run into another of those sentient nebulae again,” his first officer and on again, off again lover, explained and Jack rolled his eyes.
“Standard procedure, then.” Jack rounded his chair and went to stand at the window as his crew fired an offering of chocolate milk and paper products towards the pink gas cloud. “Someone needs to stop turning everything sentient,” Jack complained. “Although that banana we ran—“ He never got the rest out. The ship pitched and rolled in the blackness of space and before Jack could even ask what the hell was going on, he lost consciousness.
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