"The dreams of youth are the regrets of maturity." ~Darkness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZTdi36oVZ8

THE BASICS

Name: John Francis
Nickname: Jon, Jay (as in the letter), JF (written as a single letter mashed together)
Age: 22
Birthplace: Little Falls, NY
Sexuality: Uncertainly Straight
Play-By: Iwan Rheon
Year: First Year
Discipline: Psychic
Specialty: TBD

THE PHYSICAL

Physical Description: At 5’10” and 160lbs wet John isn’t the most physically intimidating figure though he doesn’t really have to be since he has a way about him that avoids most conflict either by easily talking his way out of it or simply ‘disappearing’.  In fact, he’s often easily overlooked and forgotten even when he’s supposed to be the center of attention like he’s hard to look at or perhaps just hard to see.  Maybe that’s why he’s taken to certain flamboyances like wearing patterned suits or brightly colored pocket squares, something, anything to catch the eye and leave an impression.

He’s taken to wearing a growth of beard since he thinks he looks too young without it though he can’t quite grow a full one and it gets a little scraggly if he lets it go for too long.

Distinguishing Features: If anything, John has a tendency to NOT have any distinguishing features.  He’s easily lost in a crowd and hard to describe by anyone who hasn’t known him for a very long time.  However, he does have a small birthmark on his left shoulder that looks vaguely like the face of a dog or wolf or maybe a raccoon.

THE PERSONAL

Personality Description: Jon’s not sure he knows what he wants in life.  He knows what everyone else wants,  they scream their dreams to him when he’s awake and share their fantasies when he sleeps.  He often finds himself living out both whether they are stupid and sweet or dark and dangerous.  Some part of him knows they aren’t his dreams and desires or if they are he’s schizophrenic, bipolar or whatever mental illness causes someone to have split personalities and seemingly random and chaotic thoughts that often conflict with each other and bounce him off walls unable to ever settle in and focus on just one thing.

He tends to be the sort of person ‘you can trust’, at least when he’s in someone’s presence.  Partly that’s due to a level of attention he pays to people, as though everyone and everything about them is interesting and important and worth his time.  While that attention is mostly genuine and real, any moderately skilled Magician will recognize a wave of influence coming off of him to cement that sense of trust, as though he’s a childhood friend you’ve told and can tell all your secrets, someone you used to pass notes in the back of class, someone you’ve played Doctor and Spun the Bottle within the basement.  Any first-year student who has practiced their mental defenses would be able to resist it easily though if they’re anything like him and honest with themselves they might also admit it sort of feels good to have that sense of connection to someone, anyone, in a world where they otherwise feel so apart.

Similarly, he tends to be the sort of person you can easily forget, at least when he’s gone, like someone you met when very very drunk or more than a little high.  Again any moderately skilled Magician would feel the pull of memory, like fingers pulling at their hair and whispers in their ear saying nothing more than ‘shhhh’.

As such he tends to engage and disengage from people abruptly, interrupting as though he was always part of the conversation, leaving in the middle before things end naturally.  He haunts parties and crowds, bouncing from clique to clique, cluster to cluster until he connects with someone and then likes to ride it out until he can start to see the end approach, leaving things unfinished so he can keep them in his dreams rather than lose them in a jumble of memories, better imagined than known.

It should be noted his lack of restraint work just as well in reverse and he's easily influenced often inadvertently but a clever Magician in good control of their thoughts and emotions could virtually script a reaction in John if approached carefully.

Goals: To make his own memories and dream his own dreams.  To be noticed, seen and remembered.

Likes and Dislikes:  He’s absorbed a laundry list of fetishes from his brief time in the city.  Similarly, he’s picked up most of the common phobias, fears, and dislikes.  For instance, he doesn’t like spiders or snakes, heights or flying and of course needles but really, does anyone like needles?  If so he hadn't met them yet.

He likes nice clothes and good food, he often drinks to excess, smokes on occasion and isn’t afraid to take drugs when offered though he dislikes waking up in strange places without knowing how he had gotten there or what he had done (something generally independent of the amount of drinking or drugs he’s done).

THE BIOGRAPHICAL

Characters History:  He had been a pawn all of his life, an unused and forgotten pawn but a pawn all the same.  He’d been born to a prominent family, though no one would recall that now.  His mother had forgotten him the moment John was born, though she always knew something was wrong whenever she had placed a hand on her belly.  His father had only remembered him, moments before his death.  His grandmother had forgotten him, moments before her own.

He didn’t remember any of them as anything other than phantoms, like half-remembered dreams that you weren’t sure you actually had.  They were feelings more than anything else, fitting since it was his shadow and shade that recalled, his waking heart had moved on to the six Pence, the family he was raised with like a cuckoo’s chick in another’s nest.

Without much thought, he inserted himself into their family and their memories, taking bits and pieces from each to better adapt the ruse.  The middle of five children he was both favored and forgotten, given whatever he asked for but left to his own devices, unlike the elder son and daughter who were expected to get the best grades and go to the best schools or the youngest who were expected to live up to the same.

In time he began to forget older memories to make room for new ones though there were always a few things he recalled, including the need to hide.

~O~

It was probably the drinking and the drugs.  That probably explained why he often woke up in strange places with no memory of how he got there.  That had to be it, it was the only thing that made sense.  Of course, if he thought about it that didn’t explain his youth.  He’d always had problems with forgetfulness and missing time.  Somewhere in his school records there had been a note about a possible ADD/ADHD diagnosis though no one could recall actually testing him and it hadn’t seemed to affect his grades which were a straight 4.0.

“It’s probably drugs,” his older brother had tried to insist once upon a time when he hadn’t come home for several days.  There had been talk of sending him to rehab and a special school but he hadn’t gone to either, he’d stayed in the small town with the Pences until he was almost 18 and then one day he was just gone.



~O~

Of course, gone was a relative term.  He still saw his sister who lived in the city as well, sometimes he texted the twins and occasionally he hit his ‘parents’ up for a loan though that was getting to be rare even though they had more money then they knew how to spend so really, when you looked at it that way he was doing them a favor when he asked for their help.

~O~

“If you just applied yourself,” his sister said.  She’d always believed in him.  He wasn’t sure that was such a good idea.  Sure, he was always good with people, could tell what they really wanted or could tell them what they should want.  He’d have made a great therapist, an even better salesman, instead he was just sort of drifting, painting (though he was starting to get a name) and partying (though he was starting to get a reputation).

It was in fact advice he’d heard throughout his life.  Was it ironic that it was one of the few things he could remember clearly?  Even the phantoms had told him.  It seems he’d always been told that and had always ignored it.

~O~

“You were very difficult to find,” the woman said, sounding both impressed and annoyed.  His presence had been nagging at her like a bit of food stuck in her teeth, something she could feel but not get out with her tongue or her well manicured and perfectly painted nails.

“Really?” he replied.  It wasn’t as though he was hiding, hell, he even had an agent who had an office and an address and a real phone that plugged into a wall.

“Yes,” she said, looking at him in a way that made him feel uncomfortable.  Normally people didn’t look at him, at least not so intently or for so long.  Normally... wait... when had things ever been normal, he wondered.  Things had never been normal, not growing up, not now that he was ‘grown up’.  He’d always felt out of place, or more accurately, in between.  Even talking to people, he always felt like he wasn’t talking to the person in front of him but instead, someone just behind that person, some shadow tugging on a marionette’s strings or stoking Plato’s fire.

Why was he getting philosophical?  He looked at the woman warily as she began to pull out a set of papers that looked like one of those art tests kids got off the back of comic books in the generations before the internet... draw a cartoon turtle and gain entrance to a prestigious art school... all from the comfort of your living room and with the help of your friendly neighborhood postal carrier.  He glanced at the brochure on the top for some university with an emblem of a gold key and... what was that... a bee?  What was that about, he wondered.  He glanced back at her as she started to speak and his world began to change.