App for Den

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Player Information
Player name: Rynn
Contact:
email: chaneystarr@gmail.com
plurk: chaneystarr
AIM: rynnling
Are you over 18: yes
Characters in the game already: n/a
Proof of Reserve: [here]

Character Information
Character Name: Jason Schuyler
Canon: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter
Canon Point: Just after Blood Noir, the 16th book in the series. Jason will have had time to have returned home with Anita and healed up again from the events of the book, as stated in the epilogue.
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive
History: Jason @ Wiki
[This gives some general information on the character himself, but the links along the right hand side link to each specific book he appears in and the events that unfold, and several of them give Jason’s specific involvement in the plot, if notable. I’m also willing to type out a more detailed history if necessary, but I’ve also included some important points in his personality and abilities sections below to explain certain aspects of him, if that helps.]

Personality:
Almost from the moment we see Jason in the series, he develops himself as a tease and a flirt. He’s not overly tall, standing at about 5’3 which puts him as barely taller than Anita and he’s stated as being slim but muscular. He’s got an innocent and almost angelic face, apparently, but his smile and the look in his eyes is often much more devilish than that. Jason works for Jean-Claude in the series as one of his dancers and strippers, working at his clubs as entertainment and he loves what he does, has no shame or hesitation in using his body to tease and attract.

Everything about him is laid-back and good-natured and he takes most things that happen around him in stride without fighting it much. Early on in the series he shows up primarily as Jean-Claude’s pet wolf, who has an affinity with that flavor of beast and can call them to serve him. He’s kept close as both pet and food supply for the vampire Master and doesn’t show any hesitance or resentment over his role at all. In general, he seems fairly content with his lot in life, both with his position in the pack and his role as Jean-Claude’s wolf. He was taking college courses for a business degree early on in the series as well as stripping for the clubs, but when he became a werewolf and later the vampire’s pet, he dropped out of the classes to move into the Circus, the vampire’s secret lair, to enjoy himself and what he was needed for.

Unlike some of the other wolves and shifters in the series, Jason doesn’t show a lot of regrets over what he is. Many other shifters hate what they’ve become, believe themselves to be monsters and loathe their fate. Like everything else though, Jason seems to accept it and even embrace it, reveling in who and what he is. Then again, Anita notes that he has 'a fascination with danger, pain, and simply being an all-around pain in the ass' which, while a little biased, still rings fairly close to the truth. While he might have the innocent look down pat, it covers a mischievous and often inappropriate sense of humor. He has a quick wit and an occasionally sharp tongue that get him into trouble more often than not, although not enough to curb the instinct to keep his comments to himself.

He seems to not take much of anything seriously, although that doesn’t mean he’s not aware of what goes on around him. He’s observant and a quick study and a good judge of character, which is good since he’s overly fond at pushing people’s buttons and testing the limits they’ll allow him, all with an indolent grin and a cheeky unrepentant manner. Even at the start of the series, Anita notes a sense of cynicism under the surface that he rarely lets people see and an understanding of people that hints that the shallow flirt he portrays himself to be isn’t the whole of who he is. A ‘world-weary sorrow that peeks out’ now and again but rarely noticed, or at least not by people who know him well.

He’s keenly in tune to the moods of the people around him and when he’s not running his mouth and getting himself into trouble, he’s subtly observing the people he’s surrounded by. Many of the characters in the series have troubled pasts or deep-seated issues and Jason seems more aware of these than most, whether its vampire, human or shifter. Several times in the series he shows a surprising understanding for the cause of sorrow, fear or anger in a person’s reaction, as well as an understanding of who might best be able to help with it. In his own case, it’s stated several times in the series that he’s the only one who can bluntly confront Anita with some of her own volatile reactions, able to give her blunt truths about herself or her feelings that she doesn’t get angry at him over. Instead, she listens and reasons her way through it and there have been several occasions where a simple conversation between them has revealed more to her about a situation or herself than anything else could manage, startling pretty much everyone else who knows her.

Despite his generally laid-back attitude, Jason also has another side to him, one that is fiercely protective of the people important to him – sometimes as simple a connection as his fellow packmates, but there are others he’s forged deep bonds with that he would do anything for, such as Anita or his best friend Nathaniel. When the family members of one of his friends – a family that he’s also grown close to – are hurt and being held captive, Jason lets nothing hold him back in the hunt to find where they are and free them, and shows no remorse over the steps they have to take to get that information, even when it crosses into torture. Even afterwards, he is the one who talks Anita through her own breakdown over it, showing no regrets for what they did to keep family and innocents safe. This might make him seem more of a monster in some people’s eyes, but he seems to not waste a lot of time thinking about that, or worrying about people’s opinions of him in general.

While most people only see the surface layers of him – the flirt, the attractive eye-candy, since that is what he shows, always performing for the people around him, it hides a good mind and a deep thinker. It’s mentioned that he enjoys reading and there’s few details that slip past him when he’s on his game. When he lets the boyish charm drops, it reveals that his maturity is a lot older than what his age would account for and the explanation for this isn’t given until much later in the series when we discover his backstory and the childhood that shaped him into the person he is.

He grew up with a bully for a father, one who bordered on abusive – both physically and emotionally – a man who wanted a son, a chip off the old block, and got Jason instead, who was small and pretty and had a passion for reading and theater and dance instead of sports and other ‘masculine’ pursuits. It put them constantly at odds until Jason stopped trying, accepted the fact that he was never going to be what his family wanted, and set out to make most of his decisions as a giant fuck-you instead. Hence the running as far from his hometown as he could get, sleeping with just about anyone who caught his eye and ultimately falling in with first the werewolves and then the vampires and the rest of the supernatural community. Despite his original reasons for doing so, he’s found a place for himself there and a family, among the pack and the others that he surrounds himself with, including Nathaniel, Anita and Jean-Claude.

His rebellions are responsible for him being who and what he is now. He was a college student when he first met Raina, the lupa of the werewolf pack at the time, the mate to the alpha, the Ulfric. It was she who changed him into a werewolf, but it was not a pleasant change. It was during sex and she shifted in the middle of it and if the infection hadn’t taken, he wouldn’t have survived the encounter, as she’d carved him up so badly with her claws that a normal human would have died. It left him with a healthy dose of fear of her and was in part the reason he allowed himself to be given to Jean-Claude as pet, to get him away from her, even if it was as a snack for the vampires.

The most recent book I’ll be bringing him from, Blood Noir, also adds one more change to him in that during the span of the plot, he becomes Anita’s wolf to call. What this means is he has a metaphysical connection to her that few others do. Sometimes it’s the ability to share thoughts or strong emotions between them, something enhanced by when they are touching or when that link is fully open to them. Often, it also means that something is shared between the two of them, some prominent trait that sort of rubs off on the other. It’s not specifically stated yet what Anita gained from the connection, but Jason believes he gains a little of her certainty, her determination. He’s not sure how this will change his own thinking over time, but he is –they both are – aware of the fact that he feels a little different.

Items on your character at canon point:
Jason isn’t in the habit of wandering around armed or with anything in particular carried on his person. He’d just be dressed normally, as being a werewolf is often protection enough from a good many threats. As outfits in this series can get a little strange at times depending on who’s doing what, I’d probably draw him from a normal day and drop him in jeans and a tshirt, something he wouldn’t mind ruining if he shifted in it. Werewolves are really hard on clothes.

Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
Jason is a werewolf.

In the Anita Blake canon, that parallels and keeps a lot of typical lore, but not all, as it does have its own individual twists, both in bonuses and drawbacks. The pack, or Lukoi as it’s called to reference specifically the werewolves, is a fluid but carefully balanced hierarchy among the wolves that make up the group. It’s a constant dance of dominance and submission between the members that make up the pack with the Alpha (or Ulfric, as he’s called) at the top. Wolves move up or down the pecking order through challenges that can be either fought or conceded, depending on the dominance of the two participating wolves.

Jason himself is not an overly dominant wolf and would therefore fall pretty low on the totem pole of the pack. But again, since he’s not in the play of dominance, this isn’t as much an urge for him as it would be for some of the stronger, more aggressive wolves.

As a werewolf, he has two forms, his usual human appearance and that of his shifted form, a wolf that’s described as roughly the size of a pony but much more muscular and strong. The transformation between human and wolf is often painful as their body changes and reshapes itself from one shape to the other and the process of shifting itself can often take a lot of energy from them. They’re usually trapped in that form for several hours afterwards until they can shift back and often need to feed or feel the increased urge to feed to restore some of that strength.

When we first meet Jason in the books, he’s very young, barely in his twenties, and he hasn’t been a wolf long. His control is very shaky, meaning that extreme emotions or blood or even his own instincts can occasionally overwhelm him and force a change if he cannot get control. Wolves are predators and react to people and things around them as such – fear and pain in particular draw them in, make it hard for them to retain their human ability for logic when the wolf’s instinct for the hunt grows too strong. Where Jason’s being brought in from, however, he’s had a few more years of practice under his belt and he’s much better at control than he once was, more confident and more comfortable in his own skin. His control isn’t perfect – I’m not sure anyone in the series could claim to have perfect control over their beast – but he has a much easier time of it than he did at the start.

The change, when the shifter is in control, is typically voluntary, although the wolves do hold a link with the full moon, their instincts and wilder sides drawn to the forefront once a month. It doesn’t so much force the change itself but as the moon grows in power, so does the wolf’s influence. On the night of the full moon, the pack often gathers in their Lupanar, their place of power, where they all change and spend the night hunting together. The pack is all metaphysically linked together under their Ulfric and can sense one another, can feel what each other feels. While they can’t talk to one another in their wolf forms, communication can still be carried out through emotions they can sense and motions and body language that instincts can interpret for them.

Lycanthropy seems highly transmittable in the series, as it can be passed on from anything like a scratch or a bite or having an open wound exposed to it. The Ulfric of Jason’s pack was actually infected by a bad batch of immunizations intended to protect against lycanthropy in the first place.

Many of the benefits of lycanthropy are accessible in either form, meaning Jason has access to the enhanced strength and senses of his wolf form even when he is human. As a shifter, it’s not specified exactly how strong he is, just that he can lift impossible weights with apparent ease. His sense of scent and hearing is that of a wolf and often tell him just as much, if not more, than what sight and touch could. He can see easier at night and has enhanced endurance, agility and speed. He also has a supernatural healing ability, meaning that wounds that would be mortal to a human are something he can hear fairly quickly. Not everything, but werewolves and other shifters can survive many injuries that would kill a human instantly. The exception to this would be wounds made with silver – something that burns them on contact and can kill a shifter as fast as a mortal – or wounds made from other shifters, which tend to heal slower than they otherwise might.

While Jason is one of the characters who would probably be happy to talk his way out of most things, if it comes to violence, he won’t back away from it either. His strength and speed comes in handy in a fight in either form and he’s had some defense training, although it’s never stated specifically what. During one fight, however, Anita notes he takes a stance that hints of Tae Kwon Do or jujitsu, but he also has his instincts to fall back on when necessary. Despite not being one of the more dominant wolves, he is not a coward. He will defend the people important to him and has thrown himself in the way of danger to protect a packmate or a friend on several occasions, as well as obeyed orders from either his Ulfric or Jean-Claude, who he serves, in the same manner. Once, when two human girls were being tortured, he offered to step in and take their place when no other negotiations could be made to free them.

He’s not without his flaws, however, and there are things that make his courage falter. That one time of stepping in to be tortured in the human girls’ place landed him in the hand of a pair of vampires that could rot and reshape themselves at will. Having endured torture at their hands has left Jason with an almost petrifying fear of anything like them, the vampires that can rot or seem undead and even spreading to encompass zombies. Sometimes even the scent of rot and decay will be enough to act as a trigger and bring that terror back, as evidenced by a time when he encounters another vampire with a similar power who was to feed on him.


Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
[The town was easy enough to find. Even if he hadn’t had enhanced senses, the lights had been easy to see once he broke from the trees. It didn’t look like much – if he hadn’t seen the lights, he wouldn’t have been sure there was anyone there at all, for all that pretty much everything looked run-down and abandoned. But the closer he got, the more he picked up on scents, on sounds. There were people here. Or had been, recently.

He picked one of the buildings that looked like it was a shop, paused when he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to knock or not, then poked his head in curiously to glance around. There was a friendly smile on his face just in case, open and friendly and holding the charm that always came so easy to him. Nope, nothing threatening here at all, just some lost soul hoping for directions.

…And maybe a cheeseburger. He could really go for a cheeseburger right about now.]

Hello? Anyone in here?

Prose Log Sample:
Waking up in the middle of the forest is not altogether unusual for Jason, being what he is, but he usually has a better memory for how he ended up there. Waking up with a blank space of time where an explanation should be has his pulse speeding, tension bunching in his shoulders as he sits up and looks around.

It’s dark, but that doesn’t bother him much, doesn’t impair his sight enough to be an inconvenience. Other than his initial jerk of movement, he sits still and silent, letting his own senses orient himself. This is nowhere he’s familiar with. The scents of the woods are off. There’s nothing here that smells of home, of pack – even the trees are different. The forest is unnaturally quiet – nighttime usually brings about its own brand of activity and sounds, animals that emerge under the safety of darkness, a trait he in part shares with them, but the stillness is almost eerie at the moment, although he can’t quite put his finger on why.

Sitting there isn’t giving him many useful answers, but before he gets to his feet, he turns his attention inwards, a sort of reaching without physical hands, searching for a different feel of familiarity, a link of pack and security. What he finds is different as well, in a way he’s never felt before. Not that he’s cut-off, but… The emptiness doesn’t just feel like it’s in his grasp of time and memory, but with the pack as well.

His expression is puzzled as he pushes himself to his feet, turning towards the direction where his instincts nudge. Whatever it is out there is faint and strange and he’s got no explanation for it, but it’s better than nothing, better than just sitting here in the woods confused, so that’s as good a direction to head as any, he supposes. It’s something he can focus on, aim for, something to hold back the uneasy anxiety that’s starting to gnaw at his stomach, the growing certainty that something is wrong without knowing what. He doesn’t want to dwell on that too long, not if he doesn’t half to, not when maybe there’s a simple explanation for all of this. Being part of Jean-Claude’s entourage, being caught up in the chaos of metaphysics that often surrounds the vampires and shifters and Anita means that sometimes events go a little strange, a little sideways and this isn’t the first time he’s woken up with a chunk of time and space missing.

Although the memory of the last time, a mere few weeks ago, add perhaps a bit more urgency than usual into his pace as he moves through the forest, easy and graceful despite the thick underbrush. He hopes whoever he can feel out there can give him some answers. And that they won’t be the ones he’s dreading.