Jake Chambers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waystation) wrote2018-01-17 03:30 am
waystation) wrote2018-01-17 03:30 am
application (quiet place)
OOC:
Player Name: Shira
Age: 29
Contact:
• Plurk:
• Discord: bubblebear#4826
IC:
Name: Jake Chambers
Canon: The Dark Tower (2017)
Canon Point: Post-movie
Age: 11
Spoken language(s): English
Username: touched
To the Mods: No special items or health conditions to speak of!
History:
- | "Oh Christ," Eddie said. "I left the world I knew to watch a kid try to put booties on a fucked-up weasel. Shoot me, Roland, before I breed."
There are wikis floating around for the original book series, as well as the movie adaptation I'm taking Jake from, but TBH they skimp on details so I'm combining the best of both worlds here!
Long story short, Jake Chambers is a central character in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, an 11-year-old boy compelled to leave his home on Earth to join a quest in a strange other world called Mid-World. The 2017 film is technically a sequel to the series' novels, but not... chronologically? And book Jake is a bit different from movie Jake? If you're confused, never fear, you're not alone.
To give some background, The Dark Tower is about the trials of Roland Deschain, a gunslinger travelling across a broken land in search of the Dark Tower, a place sitting at the center of creation. The Tower acts as a linchpin holding together space, time, and the multiverse. (Most of Stephen King's canons fall under the Dark Tower's umbrella and connect through it, thus you get a lot of cross-over references.) Dark forces comprised of the Crimson King and his henchman, the man in black (shortened to MiB for simplicity's sake), conspire against Roland and the Tower, seeking to destroy it. If it falls, demons and darkness will overrun all worlds everywhere. Roland takes on the arduous task of trying to stop this with help from people from our world, who join him over time as fellow gunslingers.
Thing is, Roland's already been on this quest many times, but he doesn't remember it. He searches, he gathers companions like Jake, and he eventually succeeds--and once he reaches the Tower he's sent right back to the beginning of his journey with no memory of the one before it. You know that saying "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"? Roland is the literal embodiment of this. Without knowing it, he's stuck in an endless loop as punishment for past crimes. Yikes.jpg, am I right? However, it's not all biblical doom and gloom! People and events alter slightly with each iteration, and it's implied that in each new cycle Roland learns new lessons and carries forward more humanity, progressing slowly toward redemption.
The books follow Roland on a journey, concluding with him coming full circle to the beginning. The movie picks up where the story leaves off to explore this next new cycle, with the hope this may be the one where he finally ends things for good.
In the life prior, Jake was one of the last companions to properly join Roland's quest. Living in New York in 1977, he was a boy with strong psychic potential from a loveless home eventually killed on Earth by the MiB and revived in Mid-World. Upon meeting Roland at a waystation in the desert, he became something of a pseudo-son to the man until circumstances forced Roland to make a decision--either save Jake from falling to his death, or pursue the MiB for information. Stephen King puts it best in a quote: "Given a choice between the Tower and child, possibly between damnation and salvation, Roland chooses the Tower." Later on while in the process of recruiting two others--a drug addict named Eddie Dean and a wheelchair-bound woman named Susannah--Roland got the chance to ease his guilty conscience by going back in time and saving Jake from ever being murdered on Earth.
His intervention created a new timeline where Jake never went to Mid-World and never met Roland. However, Roland and Jake still remembered both sets of events and the discrepancy drove them to the point of insanity until Roland, with the help of Eddie and Susannah, brought Jake back to Mid-World and healed the rift in their minds. Jake travelled with them from that point on, progressing his skills as a gunslinger, until he was killed a third and final time in the act of helping Roland attain the Tower.
Why is all this important? Well, it's a long-winded way of saying that Jake has lived through many cycles like this that have informed his character in the present day. When he encounters people, places, or things from prior timelines, he sometimes goes through moments of intense deja vu and feels as though he's done these things before... because in essence, he has. This is especially apparent in re-learning skills like gun fighting--right away Jake exhibits great skill and natural talent, in both the books and film, arguably in part because it's been hardwired into his DNA by this point.
That brings us to Jake's latest incarnation.
Jake still lives in New York, but it's now the year 2017. His psychic powers appear to have grown exponentially, so much so that they allow him to unintentionally pierce the divide between worlds--and one world in particular. Every time he tries to sleep he's plagued by dreams about Mid-World, the Tower's destruction, and the catastrophic results therein. These unshakable visions begin to preoccupy his waking life, and as they increase in urgency, he's convinced they hold meaning. Unfortunately... he's about the only one.
Despite having a vastly more loving relationship with his parents in this cycle compared to the last, his mother is equally convinced the nature of his dreams--death, fire, destruction--is tied to the way he lost his father a year earlier, a fireman killed in the line of duty saving people from a burning building. It's hinted Jake's abilities manifested around the same time, and she worries the changes in Jake are due to the trauma of losing his father. To compound the problem, she remarried and Jake's new step-father is resentful of the close bond mother and son share. He has no patience for baggage in the form of a troubled step-son and seeks to medicate the problem away. It's a time of increasing isolation for Jake; he's distracted at school, his parents doubt the state of his mental health, and the child psychologist he's sent to buys into the narrative that Jake is only projecting his grief into these fantastical visions--a reasonable theory, but largely unhelpful. Already on the quiet side, he goes from your average happy-go-lucky kid to solemn and withdrawn, stuck with one foot in either world, seeing monsters wherever he goes (and they see him, too, as a matter of course).
Meanwhile,
Disguised as intake officers for a facility for troubled children, some of MiB's/Walter's cronies convince Jake's parents to send him to their "institution." However, his peculiarly strong shine allows him to see they're monsters wearing human skin and he flees before they can take him, temporarily evading them on the streets of New York. Seeing no other avenue of escape except to try and piece together his visions, Jake tracks down an old street address that appeared to him in a dream. It brings him to an abandoned house--one that in actuality hides a portal used for travelling between worlds.
The portal is heavily guarded by a house demon, but Jake is able to overpower it and travel to Mid-World, finally able to embrace that everything he's dreamed about is real.
It's there he encounters a familiar face: Roland, the last of the gunslingers.
This Roland, embittered toward the Tower and its salvation, wants only to find and kill Walter out of revenge for past injustices. He has no interest in humoring a child from another world until he discovers Jake has been dreaming about Walter as well as himself--more importantly, the location of Walter's hidden stronghold. Thinking there is more valuable information to unlock in these visions if they could just translate them, he decides to take Jake to a more experienced Mid-World seer who can hopefully read his mind and find what they need.
Getting to the village involves a long, dangerous hike on foot, but if anything Jake feels more at peace in the wilds of Mid-World than he has in a long while. It's as beautiful as it is strange and dangerous, and in many ways a home away from home. One night while sheltering in a forest, a demon lures Jake away from camp by showing him an illusion of what he desires most to see: his deceased father. Although Roland must fight the demon off and ends up poisoned because of it, Jake's courage during the skirmish sparks the father-son bond that has characterized their relationship in times past.
While Roland's condition slowly worsens, they make it to the seer's village in time to conclude the fastest way to get to Walter's base is to return to New York and use a specific portal there. However, before they can act on this more of Walter's minions attack the village in search of Jake. They would have undoubtedly succeeded in taking him this time if not for Roland's help in fighting them off.
During the time Roland and Jake were hunting for Walter, Walter was doubling down on his hunt for Jake, having realized that the boy's shine is powerful enough to bring down the Dark Tower single-handedly. This discovery comes by way of a fatal encounter with Jake's mother and step-father--Walter interrogates and kills them before turning his attention on tracking Jake's psychic signature in Mid-World. When Roland and Jake eventually make the crossing back to Earth and treat Roland's blood poisoning at the hospital, they find the remains of Jake's family in his apartment, his mother burnt to ashes. Jake nearly undoes their progress by exposing himself as he begins to have a vision of her last moments; knowing Walter can track Jake each time he taps into his powers, Roland intervenes and gets him to calm his mind before he loses control, promising to kill the MiB for the both of them.
Petty vengeance doesn't appeal to Jake like it does the more cynical Roland, though; it means nothing with the Tower and countless worlds still in danger. It's through Jake's wish to look beyond revenge and see things put right that Roland re-kindles his own desire to carry on... this time to save the boy and the Tower. He gets his chance to when Jake is eventually separated from him and taken to become a Breaker--the last Breaker, should Walter's plan succeed. Despite his best efforts to resist Walter's influence, his anger toward the man who killed his mother provokes him into activating the machine. But Roland pursues them in time to confront Walter, and though the odds are stacked against him, with Jake's help and encouragement Roland is able to gain the upper hand. Walter is presumably killed, his machine destroyed, and the attacks on the Tower halted (at least for now).
Seeing that the boy no longer has a home to call his own, Roland invites Jake to return to Mid-World with him, which he readily accepts. As a result, Jake becomes the first of Roland's companions to join him in this iteration. Jake will be in the process of heading back to Mid-World when he enters the game.
Personality:
- | "I just can't stand to see him like this. He was such a happy kid."
To put it simply, you don't go through the kinds of things Jake's gone through and stay a normal, naive pre-teen. Combined with the fact he leans toward a sober maturity in general, Jake is a boy who tends to come off older than his age.
Sensitive and mild-mannered, he's the sort of kid moms like to brag about, the good kid who says "please" and "thank you," does his homework, and keeps his head down and nose out of trouble. To his Mid-World companions, he's more: someone with a survivor's spirit, dependable, resourceful, able to contribute to the group rather than slow it down. For the most part, he's a calm and even-tempered individual, usually slow to outbursts (usually because let's be honest, he's almost a teen and teens = mood swings). Mistaking Jake's youth or reserved nature for weakness is a mistake antagonists of the series often regret--they hide a strength of character hardened into steel by circumstances that forced Jake to grow up faster than most kids should. He's capable of great acts of self-sacrifice, as well as violence when shit hits the fan and he has to kill in self-defense. Where some see him as the sum total of his years, Roland sees him for what he really is: a child who's lost his innocence and been propelled too far into adulthood to turn back, stuck in a tug-of-war somewhere in the middle. His response to insistence Jake is only a child and should be sheltered from heavy subjects is "not anymore."
One of Jake's greatest strengths is adaptability in the face of hardship. It's on account of this quality Roland comes to not only care for him over the course of their travels, but respect him and his fortitude. In the novels, still fresh from experiencing his own death and being transported to another world, when Roland comes across Jake in a desert, Jake nonetheless follows him without complaint, managing the difficult trek with what Roland describes as "a calm reservoir of will that the gunslinger appreciated and admired." Rarely does Jake give in to fits of crying or helplessness; when he does, it's usually short-lived, and he quickly tries to get himself together and push on. Roland goes so far as to call it "unnatural self-possession" for a child.
This self-contained demeanor of his has to do with a long time feeling like a misfit who doesn't belong anywhere. To lose someone you love, develop a connection to another world, and then have your remaining friends and family pity you for the former and not believe the latter would be rough on anyone, let alone an 11-year-old. He develops thick skin and self-sufficiency in response, living in his head and keeping his own counsel. When he realizes monsters have showed up at his apartment to kidnap him, he does his best to hold it together until he can get his parents alone, trying one last time to warn his mother. In so doing, he reveals to his step-father he's well aware of the man's less than noble intentions toward him--a hell of a lot more than the man gives him credit for. When his gambit still isn't enough to sway them, he takes matters into his own hands, putting on the obedient son act long enough to pack a bag, escape out a window, and find a way to Mid-World on his own.
Loneliness is consequently a defining feature of his character whether in one timeline or another; Jake is stifled on Earth with no one who really gets him. His mother does her best, but she doesn't understand what he needs, and most others trying to help him get back to "normal" don't see they're putting him in a box he's already outgrown. It isn't until he meets Roland and his band of travellers, a ragtag group of misfits in their own right, that he finds the companionship and acceptance he's looking for.
This is not to say Jake can't be impetuous and childish and everything else in between. For every moment of surprising maturity or quiet thoughtfulness, there's another where he impulsively kicks the crap out of a classmate for taking something of his, or flusters at a vulgar joke. In the end, he's still a kid, still learning, and there remains a large part of him that often just wants to set aside adult-sized burdens in favor of laughing, playing, and letting his guard down. He's still a WIP.
Abilities/Skills:
- | "The full package, as advertised."
↪ The shine
The big ticket item to note is that similar to other kid characters from Stephen King works like The Shining and Firestarter, Jake has psychic abilities/the shine/the touch/spooky spoon-bending talents, whatever you want to call it. I'll go with the movie and stick with "shine." Having the shine is a way of saying one has psychic powers that manifest in myriad ways from doing the equivalent of a Vulcan mind meld, to telepathy, to having visions of the future, to moving objects and starting fires, to creating holes in time space... you name it.
The unique thing about Jake in particular is that he has enough psychic potential stuffed in that prepubescent body of his to be a mini Death Star and blow up the universe if it were used the wrong way... Luckily for the universe, potential doesn't mean he can just snap his fingers and do it, though. As things stand, Jake's immense power is largely untapped. He can inadvertently have a clairvoyant dream about that time your dog died ten years ago, but he doesn't know how to bend a single spoon. Visions and extrasensory perception were the first of his abilities to manifest--i.e. dreams of the past and possible future, being able to sense things beyond the norm--but they're mostly a product of instinct and not conscious effort, as shown by some of these descriptions in the books:
As soon as Jake saw the place, he understood two things: first, that he had seen it before, in dreams so terrible his conscious mind would not let him remember them; second, that it was a place of death and murder and madness... (The Waste Lands 270)
"How do you know these things?"
"I don't know!" Jake said, almost angrily. "I just do." (The Waste Lands 404)
However, with time and practice it's likely he could gain more control. He recently tried telepathy and extracting information from someone's mind for the first time. He also demonstrated offensive capabilities by immobilizing a house demon about to kill him in the heat of the moment, and later forcibly holding open a portal between worlds. The novels suggest he could be capable of even more, Roland intimating he could learn to project defensive shields, with Jake also figuring out how to put his mind into the body of an animal by switching places with his pet. But he just got his training wheels and it's all very new for the time being.
↪ Gunslinger skills
On the physical end of the spectrum, Jake has the winning combo of a good eye, a steady hand, and fearlessness to make him a formidable gunslinger-in-training like all of Roland's companions.
What's a gunslinger, you may ask? In Mid-World they're the equivalent of knights and lawmakers, and Jake continually shows the aptitude to apprentice as one, up to and including carrying his own gun and participating in fights to support his comrades throughout the series. In the film, the circumstances of his training are different, but he similarly displays a talent for it, able to go into a state of disciplined calm and land a perfect shot during his first lesson. This also applies to throwing discs--Jake exhibits impressive aim with projectiles. Whether you chalk it up his past lives or in-born talent, he's a tiny tot who's quite capable of gunning down a bitch if need be.
↪ Art
After a lot of time spent sketching his freaky psychic dreams and papering his walls with them, Jake has some fair artistic skill, 'nuff said.
Samples:
Network
[Like most children born after the year 2000, Jake's practically grown up with a phone surgically attached to his hand. He has other ways of communicating if need be--other, more private mind-to-mind ways that to this day he's still careful about attempting, and only with people he knows won't wig out about it--but texting is familiar and his thumbs fly over the keys as he shoots off an inquiry to the network.]
Hey, so it's almost Sunday. Does anyone want to do something after the perimeter check's over?
I was thinking a group of us could get together for a game. Like play catch or a board game or something. I dunno, it could be anything. Just something to do when we have a chance to make a little noise.
[Like most children, he's also prone to boredom. He doesn't want to say he's starving for a bit of normalcy--itching to do something that isn't creep around and wait for a Sound Eater to sweep him away like some horrible boogeyman story come to life--but it's there in the hesitant way he taps the 'enter' key a few times, just shy of enough force to depress the button all the way. Does that sound too desperate?]
Let me know if you're interested.
Log
[It's been a steep learning curve, figuring out how to fit in with this community, this world, when tasks he'd preformed mindlessly at home now take the utmost caution and focus. Letting his heel scuff a step or a glass to clink could be the difference between life or death--and not just for him. The people who live in this world have been nice enough to feed, shelter, and clothe him when every day outsiders like him are putting their lives at risk with their inexperience. Learning the natives' ways to make sure they stay safe is the least he can do...
But some days it's hard. Really hard.
And some hard and fast rules honestly just don't a lot of sense to him. Having to stay on sand everywhere you go? How do people get anything done like that? For a boy light on his feet who doesn't think he makes that much more noise walking on dirt or paving stones, it's a rule Jake struggles to follow when day after day he sees unsanded areas just begging to be explored.
He waits a while. Then he waits a while alonger. And when he just can't stand not knowing what's out there any longer, Jake makes a point of disappearing down a back street one day, following a sand path to its end in an abandoned part of the city.
... What the villagers don't know can't hurt them, right?
Carefully, he removes his shoes one at a time and sets them aside, looking around to make sure he's still alone. With a strange sense of anticipation hanging over his small act of rebellion, he takes in a breath. Holds it. One... two... On the mental count of three, he hops off the path onto a cracked stretch of asphalt in socked feet, mindful of grass he might brush against or pebbles he could disturb. His feet touch solid, unsanded ground.
He's squeezing his eyes shut before he realizes it, half waiting to be struck down by lightning--or a Sound Eater--on the spot.]