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ᴀᴘᴘʟɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏx
Player Information
Player name: Flurry
Contact: plurk: @tahdis
Are you over 18: Yep!
Characters in The Box Already: N/A
Character Information
Character Name: Fun Ghoul
Canon: True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
Canon Point: Post Sing, Pre-Comics
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Dead
History:
Danger Days is actually a concept CD by the band My Chemical Romance. There are two music videos that fit into the lore of the world (NA NA NA and SING) along with a few Twitter accounts (for Party Poison and a few other of the Killjoys all listed in this handy sort of lexicon) and a behind the scenes video that actually gives a bit more insight into the world than the music video itself.
There are also some videos of news reports (Fact News Weather, Surveillance Flies, Thought Adjustment Test, Medication ad), and one Mousekat cartoon showing off the 'miracle pill', that offer a closer look at the kind of world these characters are living in. The way Battery City and Better Living Industries works is fairly established in canon.
Na Na Na introduces the four main characters of the story: Party Poison, Kobra Kid, Fun Ghoul and Jet Star, as well as Show Pony (the dude in polka dot tights) and Dr. Death Defying, the DJ who serves as a sort of narrator throughout the album, and the Girl, who the whole story revolves around. The general idea is that these four men are a sort of band of outlaws on the run from a man named Korse, who works for BLI. At the end of Na Na Na, the Girl is kidnapped by Korse and taken back to the BL/I HQ.
Sing picks up after Na Na Na, and shows the four Killjoys storming the HQ to get the Girl back. They infiltrate the building, shooting anyone who gets in the way, and once they find the Girl, they go to leave, but are ambushed by Dracs and Korse. They only seem to be concerned about getting the Girl out, and they succeed in doing so, though at the cost of their lives. Each of them fall in the battle, and the Girl manages to get away, thanks to Dr. D, Show Pony and a few other unnamed 'joys that show up in a van outside the HQ.
The ongoing comic series, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, tells the tale of the Girl. While it's not relevant so much to Fun Ghoul, seeing as the comics take place twelve years after his death, it does give added insights into the killjoy world and what the desert has become in the aftermath. As for Ghoul, his backstory is largely something that is mysterious and mostly headcanon based on the world he grew up in.
Jesse was born to Mister and Missus Jones in the year 2009, in the middle of California. His mother died in childbirth, and left Jesse's father, Samuel, alone to raise his son. Samuel was broken up over losing his wife, and though he never said it, he blamed Jesse for her death. Still, he kept Jesse, though he was distant and threw himself into his work. He wasn't a particularly affectionate father, and Jesse grew up in the care of a nanny for most of the first five years of his life. Jesse doesn't remember her very well, but she had a big part in making him who he was as a child, respectful and meek. She was also the one who took him to the hospital more than half the time, when his health problems started to crop up when he turned four. His father was largely absent, but he did sit with his son through the extensive tests -- though he didn't stay long after the doctors said that Jesse wouldn't die from the illness. Jesse spent most of the fourth year of his life in a hospital.
Outside in the rest of the world, tensions between countries were high. The world was slowly digging itself into a hole, and it didn't get better. Samuel was well off enough in a government position that he could afford to fund his son's hospital bills, but he was among the few who could. Eventually, the tension broke, and ran full tilt into a war.
The Analog Wars of 2014 were a disaster on a large scale for the entire world. The United States took a large brunt of the damage; nuclear weapons took out a good part of California and quite a few other states, leaving the States in shambles, trying to pick itself back up again. In the middle of it all, a company calling itself Better Living Industries emerged, and began to rebuild the ruined country.
Samuel had a big part in helping build up certain parts of Better Living Industries. He believed that the world could be fixed, and influenced by his son's poor health, he helped fund the cure-all medication that BL/I eventually became famous for. Jesse was a test subject for it; he responded well to the pills in all areas, from keeping his lung problems at bay to evening out his emotions. BL/I released this drug en mass about a month after they barged their way into the market. The goal was to smooth out the human experience, taking ideas like emotions and colors and individuals and suppressing them. Everyone was the same. Everybody was cheerful and on their way to a healthy existence. Nobody would ever want to start a war again.
The pills were optional, but Jesse didn't have much of a choice, being Samuel's son. The pills did help him live a normal life, though he was still unable to do much as a child, as the medication was still working out the kinks. He never learned how to swim, wasn't allowed to do a lot of strenuous physical activity, and was pretty sheltered. He was an obedient child, just like his father wanted, and he lived his life as an almost mindless drone, until he turned sixteen. At sixteen, he decided to join an internship with the police force that BL/I ran, which was highly encouraged by his father.
For two years, he was a grunt. But he was good at what he did, and he worked hard. He joined the engineer branch of the company at eighteen, and spent a good portion of his time monitoring the radio feeds and analyzing data that came in. His father was incredibly pleased with his son's progress, the right people started to take notice, and Jesse was approached by a man in all white, offered a job working for the police unit inside BL/I. Excited (or as much as he could be, considering the drugs in his system), Jesse accepted, and he was well on his way up in the ranks, proving himself over and over until he reached the coveted position of Exterminator at a relatively young age.
People who didn't agree with BL/I's policies had started to crop up. They didn't like the suppression of emotions, they didn't like that everybody was content to live life in black and white, day in and day out. Battery City, where BL/I's headquarters resided and where Jesse and his father lived, was surrounded by what was known as the Zones. Battery City was safe, but the further you went from the outskirts, the more radiation, sand, and acid rain you found. These people who didn't agree with BL/I escaped from the city, packed up in the middle of the night and took their chances in the desert. They called themselves Killjoys, and they tried to do everything they could to live free.
Some just wanted away from the city, but there were those who wanted to fight. And they did; they terrorized the city -- or at least, that was how BLI saw it. The Killjoys played loud music, spun crazily through the city with spray paint and graffiti, tried their best to wake everybody up and get them off the medication. The Dracs, BL/I's main police force, were not enough to catch the vigilantes, and so S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W was formed. Jesse belonged to this unit as an Exterminator, and he had experience with these people in a distant way, having monitored their actions for the two years he'd spent as a grunt. Because of the heavy influence from both his father (who was still mostly absent but a very important figure to impress in Jesse's life) and the people he worked for, he hated the Killjoys. It was propaganda in it's purest form.
He followed orders with a sort of muted glee, getting to leave the city for long periods of time to destroy the rebel outlaws; Jesse was protecting his city, and his city's liberty, and he felt like he belonged to something bigger than himself. He killed a lot of people in the name of BL/I and thought absolutely nothing of it. These Killjoys ceased being people once they left the city. They were terrorists.
For the most part, Jesse picked off Killjoys from a distance, from a safe and secure car. He worked in teams of four, and he was usually the team leader -- he rarely had to get too close, never saw faces or saw people. But this time, a group of Killjoys managed to destroy the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W car, and Jesse found himself face to face with one of the masked vigilantes. He hesitated in shooting the woman, she did as well-- and then one of Jesse's teammates took the shot and killed the woman right in front of him.
It affected him much more than he ever thought it would, watching the life leave someone's eyes.
He went home, and took work off. For the next week, he had nightmares of the woman and her mask, and her eyes. He upped his dosage to get rid of the nightmares, something he'd never done before, and ended up making himself incredibly sick. The drug dazed him, gave him intense emotions and hallucinations -- and it only added to his confusion. What was he doing? His life was a blur, following orders blindly, never thinking for himself. When he came off the drugs, he couldn't take them again. He couldn't force himself to, not after the woman who died in front of him.
He went back to work. Things were different now, and he couldn't help but look at the Industry as if it was something poisonous, toxic. He didn't take any missions; he instead spent the day looking through reports with a new eye. The Killjoys weren't in the wrong here, he was slowly starting to think. They were right. This wasn't the way to live.
By the time he arrived home that night, he had made his decision.
Jesse didn't tell his father; he just packed all of the stuff he thought he needed, and left in the dead of the night, effectively branding himself as a criminal in the eyes of BL/I. Most of that stuff was left behind as he made his way out into the desert, because it was too hot, because he only really could afford to hold onto things that protected him from the heat. He made it to Zone Two after two days of just walking, and it was absolutely miserable -- he was still coming off the drugs, and he had to stop every so often and throw up bile, lay down in the sand and shiver for a while. He doesn't like to think about it even now, and it's a miracle he survived at all. He wouldn't have, if it weren't for the group of Killjoys that found him.
They didn't ever name themselves, but they dragged him to one of the Killjoy bases, an abandoned gas station, and took care of him. This was where he was introduced to Show Pony, who was also staying there, and Show Pony was among the first Killjoys to ever learn that Jesse was an Exterminator. While Pony didn't judge, the other Killjoys immediately stiffened, and left soon thereafter, distrustful of what they percieved as the enemy. It took a few days for Jesse to recover enough to be able to function, and by then, he'd sufficiently charmed Show Pony enough that the two were fast friends. Pony told him to think about coming up with a codename, like many Killjoys already had, and they made their way further into the Zones to meet up with Dr. Death Defying, who liked to meet the new recruits.
When they arrived at the diner Death Defying liked to stay at, Jesse had decided. He introduced himself as Fun Ghoul, a play on words: fangool, a slang phrase in Italian, meaning 'go fuck yourself'. It seemed perfect to him, a fuck you to the company that had owned him, a brand new identity.
Though Jesse liked Show Pony, he wanted to try things for himself, stubbornly enough. So he parted ways with Pony, and took his time acclimating to the Killjoy lifestyle. Jesse became a different person off the BLI-prescribed drugs, loud and angry and unafraid, reckless and pissed off at the world. He drifted from group to group, clashing with everybody he came across, finding that the Killjoys were reluctant to make friends with an ex-exterminator. And because he couldn't find people to support him, because he ran into group after groups of people who hated him before even knowing him, he fell into a rut, trying to comfort himself the only way he knew how -- with drugs.
These were different drugs, though, which was how he justified it to himself. The Waveheads were too high off the sun to judge him for anything that he might've done in the past. Ghoul spent his time with that group for a while - moved on to the pill popping rave types soon after, and lived his life in club after club. This lasted for a long time. He probably would've died doing this, but thankfully, he met Party Poison and Kobra Kid (affectionately known as the "Danger Brothers") before he could.
To this day, Ghoul has no idea why they took him in. Party Poison and Fun Ghoul mixed about as well oil and water -- their first conversation ended up in a fist fight -- and Kobra Kid wasn't ever known for his patience. But for whatever reason, they did. Or Kobra did, more like -- Kobra was weirdly patient with Ghoul, didn't take his bullshit, and figured out how to help Ghoul without making Ghoul feel stupid. That happened in the form of art. Kobra could draw, and he dragged Ghoul right into it. All of the negative emotion in Ghoul came out in his art, came out in the graffiti he tagged the walls with, and slowly, he healed. He came off the drugs again, and Party and Ghoul became more like oil and vinegar -- when shaken together they mixed, but left alone to settle...
As Ghoul healed, the group got bigger. They picked up Jet Star, who essentially became the mommy figure for the group of mostly emotionally immature boys, and the Girl, a nine year old girl who they adopted as their own after her mother died. She quickly became their most valuable person, to the point of sacrificing themselves for her. And they did -- the Girl was kidnapped by BLI (or taken in for reassignment, rather) -- and the four boys, Party Poison, Kobra Kid, Fun Ghoul and Jet Star, broke into BL/I HQ and got her out, back into the desert.
It cost them their lives, but they did it.
Personality:
It's not uncommon for a Killjoy to have strong emotional reactions to things; it comes with the stipulations that make a Killjoy a Killjoy. Ghoul is absolutely no different. He spent years having his emotions pushed down, buried under the drugs BLI made him take, and so now, being out and free means nothing is held back. Intensity is a good word for it. Playing it safe isn't allowed when it comes to him.
He is most often a contradiction, and it can make him hard to be around; he's impulsive, quick to anger and violence. He doesn't like being told no. He doesn't like feeling inferior or weak in any way, and when he does, he lashes out. He's intense in how he feels, everything from jealous, possessive and controlling to loving, kind and gentle.
It's hard for him to admit personal things. Love is a big one -- he doesn't say it freely. He will admit that he likes a person, sure, that maybe eventually he trusts them, but love is a completely different story. The words won't come unless he absolutely, 100% means it. And even when he knows that he loves someone and cares deeply for them, it's still hard to say -- the words get stuck in his throat. He's just not good at expressing himself verbally, and it makes him feel stupid to even try, or to admit emotions that might make him appear weak, which is why he prefers being close, showing that affection through holding hands or wrists or hugging or even just leaning on people. He's definitely big on physical affection, as well as using personalized nicknames for people he likes. If he calls you baby, babe, or anything similar, it might not be because he's flirting with you (though that would not be unheard of) -- he's just not aware of personal space.
Not only does he have a hard time expressing emotions (which is a shame since he feels them so intensely) but his past as well. In the Zones you have to be careful. You have to keep your identity secret, and you can't trust anybody save for a few. Anybody could be an agent in disguise, anybody could be trying to use you for their own gain, and after years of being in the desert, you start to withhold everything, just in case. All you need to present yourself is a codename and your colors - nobody needs to know where you came from, what you used to do, who you are. The colors do your talking for you.
Ghoul is like this to a point. While he is protective of his past and of where he came from, he isn't afraid to make friends. He is generally laid back as far as casual aquaintances go. He'll talk to people and make fast friends, or at least, not completely antagonize them, and he attaches pretty easily to people as well, something that he's constantly told not to do by his crew. He's always wary about people, always thinks there could be a dagger in his back at the slightest turn, but it doesn't change the fact that he loves people. He loves listening to people, which works out in his favor - people are always more willing to talk about themselves in his experience, which means more time learning things about others and less time having to tell people about himself. He prefers giving people his surface persona.
But despite his general love for people, there are always exceptions. There's always those types for everybody, the ones that just press his buttons, trigger angry responses. There's plenty that can make him angry and there's plenty that will get him to say something about it. He's stubborn and entirely confident that what he thinks is best, and is the correct answer. And he doesn't like being told he's wrong -- he'll argue to the last breath. On top of that, Ghoul has an excellent memory and an inability to let things go. He can and will hold grudges forever. He has no problem with revenge if the person did him serious enough harm. He believes that people have to earn his trust (another side-effect of the zones), and while he won't go out of his way to be a jerk to someone that has no relation to how much trust he's putting into them. This also applies to grudges and first impressions; while he won't seek to antagonize people for saying things he doesn't agree with, he'll store the information away for later, just in case he needs to use it against them. Jealousy is a real issue with him as well; it doesn't take much to make him jealous, and he refuses to deal with it like an adult when he is. Instead he gets quiet, angry, resentful, until someone finally asks him what the fuck is wrong with him. His replies are usually just a level under hostile.
Along with that inability to let things go, Ghoul has a fierce need to be in control. Not necessarily the boss of anything, or the leader, just in control of himself and the situation. His tech knowledge is a good example of this; tech is his way of gaining control because it makes sense. He can build something from scratch and have a say in everything that the end product will be. He can take things apart and figure out how they work. It's comforting, and his determination and focus leaks into his affinity for all tech-based things.
However, taking him out of his element, putting him in a new situation? It fucks up his nerves something awful. Not knowing what's going on in a situation sets him on edge. Combine that with his strong undercurrent fear of failure and you've got yourself a paranoid mess of a Killjoy. That undercurrent is kept that as hidden as possible, and on the occasions that he does mess up or fail completely, he doesn't speak a word of it. If someone is there to witness it and they keep bringing it up, he'll most likely lose his temper; he doesn't like to be reminded that he has the capability to be weak.
Art is the Weapon, Imagination is the Ammunition is his philosophy. He loves art of any kind, from drawing (he's not particularly awesome at it, but he tries) to tagging to even just telling stories. And his own personal favorite part of art is evident on his skin: his tattoos. His tattoos are his stories; they all have significant meaning to him in one way or another. They're the only part of him that isn't secret - they're bared for everybody to see, if anybody can make sense of them.
He isn't a very religious person, not in the conventional way. The Killjoy lifestyle is different than typical daily life, and he's not really even sure he believes in God at all. Or anything. He doesn't scoff at people who find comfort in it, he just. Doesn't think about it. He's too involved in himself, really, to think about anything higher; he is very much a here and now person, don't think about tomorrow, just keep running. But just because he doesn't have a typical religious faith doesn't mean he doesn't have a faith at all -- no, Art is the Weapon is his personal life code. BLI took the color and music and emotion out of the world, and he is very much everything anti-BLI, anti everything they stand for. In his own words:
"Whatever we can get our hands on, we tag. S'too white, too dull. We got the colors and we got the noise, and we're spreading it everywhere."
And he's fervent about it. For Ghoul, this philosophy is deeply personal. It's what makes him who he is now, what makes him different from the mindless drone he was under BLI. Take away his metaphorical (and literal, really) colors, and he's nothing -- and he can't go back to that. It's what he looks for in friends and people he can trust, those colors -- he talks a lot about finding the spark in people. He means life, the individuality and personality that only Killjoys have back home. There's no life in the people who take the pills in Battery City. No spark.
Art is his contrast to his control. It's his "fuck this, fuck you" to the world. It's what he does when he hurts too intensely. His feelings come out all over his work (thanks to Kobra Kid's art therapy when they first met). And when he doesn't have that outlet, when he can't use art (or even his tech strategy) he can get destructive. Sometimes on outside forces, but mostly in on himself -- too much and he'll attach to something to make it go away. Ghoul has an addictive personality and it never ends up working out well for him; alcohol, drugs, abusive relationships (not necessarily romantic ones, just abrasive), fighting, anything self-destructive -- he can very easily run himself into a rut because he isn't good at getting his emotions out in words.
Sometimes his self-destruction just needs to happen and he snaps himself out of it (for instance, fist fights with Kobra, shouting matches with Party, goading Jet into punching him), but other times, when he doesn't have the people to support him, he falls into a ditch he can't pull himself back out of without help. That's what he was in when he met Party Poison and Kobra Kid -- and with Kobra's help, he's healed slowly. As long as he has something to hold onto, he can recover and pull himself back.
Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
- Ghoul is very skilled with technology. His job at BLI before he was promoted to field work was basically all tech based. He coded plenty of programs, hacked into encryptions, built and rebuilt all sorts of electronics from scratch (including a few androids), and was a general top level IT guy. Once he got into field tech, he was taught how to take apart and repair laser guns, build bombs, hotwire cars, hack his way into systems that required a passcode - and how to basically work with tech in general. Give him an electronic device and a few days, and he'll have it figured out.
- Ghoul knows his way around a gun, though mostly just the laser types. He can probably figure out how to mess with a gunpowder gun if he tries, but he’ll probably be less effective and a little confused, since he has to account for kickback and bullets.
- He has some basic fighting skills - just your street-learned hand to hand combat. Most ‘joys have them in case their guns get smacked out of their hands.
- His addictive personality is definitely a weakness; he can very easily latch onto using alcohol or drugs as a coping strategy if he doesn't have the means available to get it out anywhere else. And if he doesn't have those, he gets into fighting.
- Ghoul’s always had problems with his health. He has crappy lungs and a shitty immune system, which means he gets sick constantly. The medicine that BLI distributes in the city does a great job of suppressing it and keeping him as healthy as possible, but when he’s off it, he’s much more susceptible to colds etc and, occasionally, much more sinister illnesses. He also has issues with bad air quality and running for extended periods of time; almost like asthma.
Samples
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Prose Log Sample:
It isn't like somebody else couldn't have taken the job. They could've. Someone could've taken the opportunity, someone other than Ghoul.
But those somebodies don't have the same knowledge as he does, and they don't know the layout, either. Ghoul knows the layout of the main headquarters of BL/industries like the back of his hand. He can walk through the building blindfolded and still get to where he needs to go in minutes flat. Ghoul's the one with the memories, the access codes, the passwords and the frequencies. Every morning for years (he can't even remember how many, everything from then is so hazy) he woke up at the crack of dawn and ignored the sunset rising over the desert to walk to work. That's why they need him to go.
Death Defying gives him a bundle of clothes, a date, and a warning. Jet Star gives him a worried look. He takes both with a flat expression.
The morning of, he can barely force himself to touch the fucking things. They're bland and white, pristine and dry cleaned. Recycled, like the air Battery City breathes, like the thoughts the citizens think. There's no indication of sweat or blood or tears in the fabric, no signs of life, unnatural and processed and Ghoul takes a long minute to just stare, to look over the outfit lying on his mattress. This is a life he left behind a long time ago and the fact that it's sitting here, staring him in the face, is like being hit by a car.
It shouldn't fuck him over this badly, because it's not like he's taking up the gun anymore; it's not his actual job, he's still a Killjoy and there's nothing in the fucking world that can take that from him, not Korse, not the Dracs, not the little blue mind-wipe pills. Nothing. He'll always find his way home.
But it does. It does screw with him, because he reaches to grab the shirt so he can pull it on and the flash of the woman's face behind the mask hits him so hard that he drops the garment like it's on fire. This is fucking stupid, Ghoul growls to himself, he's killed people since then, it's not a big deal.
He tries again, slowly, and this time, the woman's face stays out of his thoughts. Good. On goes the jacket, the pants; he holsters the gun, grabs the mask.
He's always wondered what her name was.
He leaves before the rest of the family is awake, and wipes the slate clean.
Player name: Flurry
Contact: plurk: @tahdis
Are you over 18: Yep!
Characters in The Box Already: N/A
Character Information
Character Name: Fun Ghoul
Canon: True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
Canon Point: Post Sing, Pre-Comics
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Dead
History:
Danger Days is actually a concept CD by the band My Chemical Romance. There are two music videos that fit into the lore of the world (NA NA NA and SING) along with a few Twitter accounts (for Party Poison and a few other of the Killjoys all listed in this handy sort of lexicon) and a behind the scenes video that actually gives a bit more insight into the world than the music video itself.
There are also some videos of news reports (Fact News Weather, Surveillance Flies, Thought Adjustment Test, Medication ad), and one Mousekat cartoon showing off the 'miracle pill', that offer a closer look at the kind of world these characters are living in. The way Battery City and Better Living Industries works is fairly established in canon.
Na Na Na introduces the four main characters of the story: Party Poison, Kobra Kid, Fun Ghoul and Jet Star, as well as Show Pony (the dude in polka dot tights) and Dr. Death Defying, the DJ who serves as a sort of narrator throughout the album, and the Girl, who the whole story revolves around. The general idea is that these four men are a sort of band of outlaws on the run from a man named Korse, who works for BLI. At the end of Na Na Na, the Girl is kidnapped by Korse and taken back to the BL/I HQ.
Sing picks up after Na Na Na, and shows the four Killjoys storming the HQ to get the Girl back. They infiltrate the building, shooting anyone who gets in the way, and once they find the Girl, they go to leave, but are ambushed by Dracs and Korse. They only seem to be concerned about getting the Girl out, and they succeed in doing so, though at the cost of their lives. Each of them fall in the battle, and the Girl manages to get away, thanks to Dr. D, Show Pony and a few other unnamed 'joys that show up in a van outside the HQ.
The ongoing comic series, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, tells the tale of the Girl. While it's not relevant so much to Fun Ghoul, seeing as the comics take place twelve years after his death, it does give added insights into the killjoy world and what the desert has become in the aftermath. As for Ghoul, his backstory is largely something that is mysterious and mostly headcanon based on the world he grew up in.
Jesse was born to Mister and Missus Jones in the year 2009, in the middle of California. His mother died in childbirth, and left Jesse's father, Samuel, alone to raise his son. Samuel was broken up over losing his wife, and though he never said it, he blamed Jesse for her death. Still, he kept Jesse, though he was distant and threw himself into his work. He wasn't a particularly affectionate father, and Jesse grew up in the care of a nanny for most of the first five years of his life. Jesse doesn't remember her very well, but she had a big part in making him who he was as a child, respectful and meek. She was also the one who took him to the hospital more than half the time, when his health problems started to crop up when he turned four. His father was largely absent, but he did sit with his son through the extensive tests -- though he didn't stay long after the doctors said that Jesse wouldn't die from the illness. Jesse spent most of the fourth year of his life in a hospital.
Outside in the rest of the world, tensions between countries were high. The world was slowly digging itself into a hole, and it didn't get better. Samuel was well off enough in a government position that he could afford to fund his son's hospital bills, but he was among the few who could. Eventually, the tension broke, and ran full tilt into a war.
The Analog Wars of 2014 were a disaster on a large scale for the entire world. The United States took a large brunt of the damage; nuclear weapons took out a good part of California and quite a few other states, leaving the States in shambles, trying to pick itself back up again. In the middle of it all, a company calling itself Better Living Industries emerged, and began to rebuild the ruined country.
Samuel had a big part in helping build up certain parts of Better Living Industries. He believed that the world could be fixed, and influenced by his son's poor health, he helped fund the cure-all medication that BL/I eventually became famous for. Jesse was a test subject for it; he responded well to the pills in all areas, from keeping his lung problems at bay to evening out his emotions. BL/I released this drug en mass about a month after they barged their way into the market. The goal was to smooth out the human experience, taking ideas like emotions and colors and individuals and suppressing them. Everyone was the same. Everybody was cheerful and on their way to a healthy existence. Nobody would ever want to start a war again.
The pills were optional, but Jesse didn't have much of a choice, being Samuel's son. The pills did help him live a normal life, though he was still unable to do much as a child, as the medication was still working out the kinks. He never learned how to swim, wasn't allowed to do a lot of strenuous physical activity, and was pretty sheltered. He was an obedient child, just like his father wanted, and he lived his life as an almost mindless drone, until he turned sixteen. At sixteen, he decided to join an internship with the police force that BL/I ran, which was highly encouraged by his father.
For two years, he was a grunt. But he was good at what he did, and he worked hard. He joined the engineer branch of the company at eighteen, and spent a good portion of his time monitoring the radio feeds and analyzing data that came in. His father was incredibly pleased with his son's progress, the right people started to take notice, and Jesse was approached by a man in all white, offered a job working for the police unit inside BL/I. Excited (or as much as he could be, considering the drugs in his system), Jesse accepted, and he was well on his way up in the ranks, proving himself over and over until he reached the coveted position of Exterminator at a relatively young age.
People who didn't agree with BL/I's policies had started to crop up. They didn't like the suppression of emotions, they didn't like that everybody was content to live life in black and white, day in and day out. Battery City, where BL/I's headquarters resided and where Jesse and his father lived, was surrounded by what was known as the Zones. Battery City was safe, but the further you went from the outskirts, the more radiation, sand, and acid rain you found. These people who didn't agree with BL/I escaped from the city, packed up in the middle of the night and took their chances in the desert. They called themselves Killjoys, and they tried to do everything they could to live free.
Some just wanted away from the city, but there were those who wanted to fight. And they did; they terrorized the city -- or at least, that was how BLI saw it. The Killjoys played loud music, spun crazily through the city with spray paint and graffiti, tried their best to wake everybody up and get them off the medication. The Dracs, BL/I's main police force, were not enough to catch the vigilantes, and so S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W was formed. Jesse belonged to this unit as an Exterminator, and he had experience with these people in a distant way, having monitored their actions for the two years he'd spent as a grunt. Because of the heavy influence from both his father (who was still mostly absent but a very important figure to impress in Jesse's life) and the people he worked for, he hated the Killjoys. It was propaganda in it's purest form.
He followed orders with a sort of muted glee, getting to leave the city for long periods of time to destroy the rebel outlaws; Jesse was protecting his city, and his city's liberty, and he felt like he belonged to something bigger than himself. He killed a lot of people in the name of BL/I and thought absolutely nothing of it. These Killjoys ceased being people once they left the city. They were terrorists.
For the most part, Jesse picked off Killjoys from a distance, from a safe and secure car. He worked in teams of four, and he was usually the team leader -- he rarely had to get too close, never saw faces or saw people. But this time, a group of Killjoys managed to destroy the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W car, and Jesse found himself face to face with one of the masked vigilantes. He hesitated in shooting the woman, she did as well-- and then one of Jesse's teammates took the shot and killed the woman right in front of him.
It affected him much more than he ever thought it would, watching the life leave someone's eyes.
He went home, and took work off. For the next week, he had nightmares of the woman and her mask, and her eyes. He upped his dosage to get rid of the nightmares, something he'd never done before, and ended up making himself incredibly sick. The drug dazed him, gave him intense emotions and hallucinations -- and it only added to his confusion. What was he doing? His life was a blur, following orders blindly, never thinking for himself. When he came off the drugs, he couldn't take them again. He couldn't force himself to, not after the woman who died in front of him.
He went back to work. Things were different now, and he couldn't help but look at the Industry as if it was something poisonous, toxic. He didn't take any missions; he instead spent the day looking through reports with a new eye. The Killjoys weren't in the wrong here, he was slowly starting to think. They were right. This wasn't the way to live.
By the time he arrived home that night, he had made his decision.
Jesse didn't tell his father; he just packed all of the stuff he thought he needed, and left in the dead of the night, effectively branding himself as a criminal in the eyes of BL/I. Most of that stuff was left behind as he made his way out into the desert, because it was too hot, because he only really could afford to hold onto things that protected him from the heat. He made it to Zone Two after two days of just walking, and it was absolutely miserable -- he was still coming off the drugs, and he had to stop every so often and throw up bile, lay down in the sand and shiver for a while. He doesn't like to think about it even now, and it's a miracle he survived at all. He wouldn't have, if it weren't for the group of Killjoys that found him.
They didn't ever name themselves, but they dragged him to one of the Killjoy bases, an abandoned gas station, and took care of him. This was where he was introduced to Show Pony, who was also staying there, and Show Pony was among the first Killjoys to ever learn that Jesse was an Exterminator. While Pony didn't judge, the other Killjoys immediately stiffened, and left soon thereafter, distrustful of what they percieved as the enemy. It took a few days for Jesse to recover enough to be able to function, and by then, he'd sufficiently charmed Show Pony enough that the two were fast friends. Pony told him to think about coming up with a codename, like many Killjoys already had, and they made their way further into the Zones to meet up with Dr. Death Defying, who liked to meet the new recruits.
When they arrived at the diner Death Defying liked to stay at, Jesse had decided. He introduced himself as Fun Ghoul, a play on words: fangool, a slang phrase in Italian, meaning 'go fuck yourself'. It seemed perfect to him, a fuck you to the company that had owned him, a brand new identity.
Though Jesse liked Show Pony, he wanted to try things for himself, stubbornly enough. So he parted ways with Pony, and took his time acclimating to the Killjoy lifestyle. Jesse became a different person off the BLI-prescribed drugs, loud and angry and unafraid, reckless and pissed off at the world. He drifted from group to group, clashing with everybody he came across, finding that the Killjoys were reluctant to make friends with an ex-exterminator. And because he couldn't find people to support him, because he ran into group after groups of people who hated him before even knowing him, he fell into a rut, trying to comfort himself the only way he knew how -- with drugs.
These were different drugs, though, which was how he justified it to himself. The Waveheads were too high off the sun to judge him for anything that he might've done in the past. Ghoul spent his time with that group for a while - moved on to the pill popping rave types soon after, and lived his life in club after club. This lasted for a long time. He probably would've died doing this, but thankfully, he met Party Poison and Kobra Kid (affectionately known as the "Danger Brothers") before he could.
To this day, Ghoul has no idea why they took him in. Party Poison and Fun Ghoul mixed about as well oil and water -- their first conversation ended up in a fist fight -- and Kobra Kid wasn't ever known for his patience. But for whatever reason, they did. Or Kobra did, more like -- Kobra was weirdly patient with Ghoul, didn't take his bullshit, and figured out how to help Ghoul without making Ghoul feel stupid. That happened in the form of art. Kobra could draw, and he dragged Ghoul right into it. All of the negative emotion in Ghoul came out in his art, came out in the graffiti he tagged the walls with, and slowly, he healed. He came off the drugs again, and Party and Ghoul became more like oil and vinegar -- when shaken together they mixed, but left alone to settle...
As Ghoul healed, the group got bigger. They picked up Jet Star, who essentially became the mommy figure for the group of mostly emotionally immature boys, and the Girl, a nine year old girl who they adopted as their own after her mother died. She quickly became their most valuable person, to the point of sacrificing themselves for her. And they did -- the Girl was kidnapped by BLI (or taken in for reassignment, rather) -- and the four boys, Party Poison, Kobra Kid, Fun Ghoul and Jet Star, broke into BL/I HQ and got her out, back into the desert.
It cost them their lives, but they did it.
Personality:
It's not uncommon for a Killjoy to have strong emotional reactions to things; it comes with the stipulations that make a Killjoy a Killjoy. Ghoul is absolutely no different. He spent years having his emotions pushed down, buried under the drugs BLI made him take, and so now, being out and free means nothing is held back. Intensity is a good word for it. Playing it safe isn't allowed when it comes to him.
He is most often a contradiction, and it can make him hard to be around; he's impulsive, quick to anger and violence. He doesn't like being told no. He doesn't like feeling inferior or weak in any way, and when he does, he lashes out. He's intense in how he feels, everything from jealous, possessive and controlling to loving, kind and gentle.
It's hard for him to admit personal things. Love is a big one -- he doesn't say it freely. He will admit that he likes a person, sure, that maybe eventually he trusts them, but love is a completely different story. The words won't come unless he absolutely, 100% means it. And even when he knows that he loves someone and cares deeply for them, it's still hard to say -- the words get stuck in his throat. He's just not good at expressing himself verbally, and it makes him feel stupid to even try, or to admit emotions that might make him appear weak, which is why he prefers being close, showing that affection through holding hands or wrists or hugging or even just leaning on people. He's definitely big on physical affection, as well as using personalized nicknames for people he likes. If he calls you baby, babe, or anything similar, it might not be because he's flirting with you (though that would not be unheard of) -- he's just not aware of personal space.
Not only does he have a hard time expressing emotions (which is a shame since he feels them so intensely) but his past as well. In the Zones you have to be careful. You have to keep your identity secret, and you can't trust anybody save for a few. Anybody could be an agent in disguise, anybody could be trying to use you for their own gain, and after years of being in the desert, you start to withhold everything, just in case. All you need to present yourself is a codename and your colors - nobody needs to know where you came from, what you used to do, who you are. The colors do your talking for you.
Ghoul is like this to a point. While he is protective of his past and of where he came from, he isn't afraid to make friends. He is generally laid back as far as casual aquaintances go. He'll talk to people and make fast friends, or at least, not completely antagonize them, and he attaches pretty easily to people as well, something that he's constantly told not to do by his crew. He's always wary about people, always thinks there could be a dagger in his back at the slightest turn, but it doesn't change the fact that he loves people. He loves listening to people, which works out in his favor - people are always more willing to talk about themselves in his experience, which means more time learning things about others and less time having to tell people about himself. He prefers giving people his surface persona.
But despite his general love for people, there are always exceptions. There's always those types for everybody, the ones that just press his buttons, trigger angry responses. There's plenty that can make him angry and there's plenty that will get him to say something about it. He's stubborn and entirely confident that what he thinks is best, and is the correct answer. And he doesn't like being told he's wrong -- he'll argue to the last breath. On top of that, Ghoul has an excellent memory and an inability to let things go. He can and will hold grudges forever. He has no problem with revenge if the person did him serious enough harm. He believes that people have to earn his trust (another side-effect of the zones), and while he won't go out of his way to be a jerk to someone that has no relation to how much trust he's putting into them. This also applies to grudges and first impressions; while he won't seek to antagonize people for saying things he doesn't agree with, he'll store the information away for later, just in case he needs to use it against them. Jealousy is a real issue with him as well; it doesn't take much to make him jealous, and he refuses to deal with it like an adult when he is. Instead he gets quiet, angry, resentful, until someone finally asks him what the fuck is wrong with him. His replies are usually just a level under hostile.
Along with that inability to let things go, Ghoul has a fierce need to be in control. Not necessarily the boss of anything, or the leader, just in control of himself and the situation. His tech knowledge is a good example of this; tech is his way of gaining control because it makes sense. He can build something from scratch and have a say in everything that the end product will be. He can take things apart and figure out how they work. It's comforting, and his determination and focus leaks into his affinity for all tech-based things.
However, taking him out of his element, putting him in a new situation? It fucks up his nerves something awful. Not knowing what's going on in a situation sets him on edge. Combine that with his strong undercurrent fear of failure and you've got yourself a paranoid mess of a Killjoy. That undercurrent is kept that as hidden as possible, and on the occasions that he does mess up or fail completely, he doesn't speak a word of it. If someone is there to witness it and they keep bringing it up, he'll most likely lose his temper; he doesn't like to be reminded that he has the capability to be weak.
Art is the Weapon, Imagination is the Ammunition is his philosophy. He loves art of any kind, from drawing (he's not particularly awesome at it, but he tries) to tagging to even just telling stories. And his own personal favorite part of art is evident on his skin: his tattoos. His tattoos are his stories; they all have significant meaning to him in one way or another. They're the only part of him that isn't secret - they're bared for everybody to see, if anybody can make sense of them.
He isn't a very religious person, not in the conventional way. The Killjoy lifestyle is different than typical daily life, and he's not really even sure he believes in God at all. Or anything. He doesn't scoff at people who find comfort in it, he just. Doesn't think about it. He's too involved in himself, really, to think about anything higher; he is very much a here and now person, don't think about tomorrow, just keep running. But just because he doesn't have a typical religious faith doesn't mean he doesn't have a faith at all -- no, Art is the Weapon is his personal life code. BLI took the color and music and emotion out of the world, and he is very much everything anti-BLI, anti everything they stand for. In his own words:
"Whatever we can get our hands on, we tag. S'too white, too dull. We got the colors and we got the noise, and we're spreading it everywhere."
And he's fervent about it. For Ghoul, this philosophy is deeply personal. It's what makes him who he is now, what makes him different from the mindless drone he was under BLI. Take away his metaphorical (and literal, really) colors, and he's nothing -- and he can't go back to that. It's what he looks for in friends and people he can trust, those colors -- he talks a lot about finding the spark in people. He means life, the individuality and personality that only Killjoys have back home. There's no life in the people who take the pills in Battery City. No spark.
Art is his contrast to his control. It's his "fuck this, fuck you" to the world. It's what he does when he hurts too intensely. His feelings come out all over his work (thanks to Kobra Kid's art therapy when they first met). And when he doesn't have that outlet, when he can't use art (or even his tech strategy) he can get destructive. Sometimes on outside forces, but mostly in on himself -- too much and he'll attach to something to make it go away. Ghoul has an addictive personality and it never ends up working out well for him; alcohol, drugs, abusive relationships (not necessarily romantic ones, just abrasive), fighting, anything self-destructive -- he can very easily run himself into a rut because he isn't good at getting his emotions out in words.
Sometimes his self-destruction just needs to happen and he snaps himself out of it (for instance, fist fights with Kobra, shouting matches with Party, goading Jet into punching him), but other times, when he doesn't have the people to support him, he falls into a ditch he can't pull himself back out of without help. That's what he was in when he met Party Poison and Kobra Kid -- and with Kobra's help, he's healed slowly. As long as he has something to hold onto, he can recover and pull himself back.
Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
- Ghoul is very skilled with technology. His job at BLI before he was promoted to field work was basically all tech based. He coded plenty of programs, hacked into encryptions, built and rebuilt all sorts of electronics from scratch (including a few androids), and was a general top level IT guy. Once he got into field tech, he was taught how to take apart and repair laser guns, build bombs, hotwire cars, hack his way into systems that required a passcode - and how to basically work with tech in general. Give him an electronic device and a few days, and he'll have it figured out.
- Ghoul knows his way around a gun, though mostly just the laser types. He can probably figure out how to mess with a gunpowder gun if he tries, but he’ll probably be less effective and a little confused, since he has to account for kickback and bullets.
- He has some basic fighting skills - just your street-learned hand to hand combat. Most ‘joys have them in case their guns get smacked out of their hands.
- His addictive personality is definitely a weakness; he can very easily latch onto using alcohol or drugs as a coping strategy if he doesn't have the means available to get it out anywhere else. And if he doesn't have those, he gets into fighting.
- Ghoul’s always had problems with his health. He has crappy lungs and a shitty immune system, which means he gets sick constantly. The medicine that BLI distributes in the city does a great job of suppressing it and keeping him as healthy as possible, but when he’s off it, he’s much more susceptible to colds etc and, occasionally, much more sinister illnesses. He also has issues with bad air quality and running for extended periods of time; almost like asthma.
Samples
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Prose Log Sample:
It isn't like somebody else couldn't have taken the job. They could've. Someone could've taken the opportunity, someone other than Ghoul.
But those somebodies don't have the same knowledge as he does, and they don't know the layout, either. Ghoul knows the layout of the main headquarters of BL/industries like the back of his hand. He can walk through the building blindfolded and still get to where he needs to go in minutes flat. Ghoul's the one with the memories, the access codes, the passwords and the frequencies. Every morning for years (he can't even remember how many, everything from then is so hazy) he woke up at the crack of dawn and ignored the sunset rising over the desert to walk to work. That's why they need him to go.
Death Defying gives him a bundle of clothes, a date, and a warning. Jet Star gives him a worried look. He takes both with a flat expression.
The morning of, he can barely force himself to touch the fucking things. They're bland and white, pristine and dry cleaned. Recycled, like the air Battery City breathes, like the thoughts the citizens think. There's no indication of sweat or blood or tears in the fabric, no signs of life, unnatural and processed and Ghoul takes a long minute to just stare, to look over the outfit lying on his mattress. This is a life he left behind a long time ago and the fact that it's sitting here, staring him in the face, is like being hit by a car.
It shouldn't fuck him over this badly, because it's not like he's taking up the gun anymore; it's not his actual job, he's still a Killjoy and there's nothing in the fucking world that can take that from him, not Korse, not the Dracs, not the little blue mind-wipe pills. Nothing. He'll always find his way home.
But it does. It does screw with him, because he reaches to grab the shirt so he can pull it on and the flash of the woman's face behind the mask hits him so hard that he drops the garment like it's on fire. This is fucking stupid, Ghoul growls to himself, he's killed people since then, it's not a big deal.
He tries again, slowly, and this time, the woman's face stays out of his thoughts. Good. On goes the jacket, the pants; he holsters the gun, grabs the mask.
He's always wondered what her name was.
He leaves before the rest of the family is awake, and wipes the slate clean.