FadeRift Application

[hattergonnahat]

RIFTER APPLICATION

PLAYER

Name: Tempest
Age: 30+
Contact: isadiya
Other Characters: The Iron Bull, Mia Rutherford
Interests: I'm looking to stretch out into the idea of a character unused to the Thedas setting learning about it, exploring it, perhaps offering some otherworld experience. I hope for it all to go terribly, or at least hilariously, because we all know how well 'different' goes over in Thedas.

CHARACTER

Name: Jefferson. That's it. Like 'Cher'. Just 'Jefferson'.
Canon/OC: Once Upon a Time.
Canon Point: Just after S2E3, Lady of the Lake
Journal: hattergonnahat
Age: 29

Canon World
The world of Once Upon a Time covers a lot of different worlds, but the two main ones are The Enchanted Forest, where all the fairy tales you know and love are real, and not always as you remember them, and Storybrooke, the 'real world' where all these fairy tale characters you know and love are trapped by an evil queen's curse. Except she's not quite so evil anymore. She's getting better? I stopped watching the show, I don't know what the Hell's going on currently in canon, BUT

The Enchanted Forest is more or less a mishmash of kingdoms that house everyone Disney/ABC could claim rights to. So you have Snow White, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood alongside Robin Hood, King Arthur, and the Mad Hatter. It's a realm where magic exists, but always with a price. Travel between other worlds (Wonderland, The World Without Color, Neverland, etc.) is known of but uncommon and dangerous enough that most folks choose to stay where they originated, with few exceptions.

Storybrooke, meanwhile, is an isolated little town in Maine that was created as a sort of prison by a powerful curse from the Evil Queen. All your modern conveniences exist, and nobody gets a happy ending. For almost thirty years everyone existed in a sort of stasis state, not aging and not remembering their true identity from the Enchanted Forest, save for the Queen herself and a select few others. A prophecy stated that the curse could be broken when the Savior, the child of Snow White and Prince Charming who escaped the spell just before it was cast, would return and break and the curse. She does. Eventually. After a LOT of convincing. But everyone is still stuck in Storybrooke. Until they aren't. It gets complicated after that, but that's the general gist of it.

History
Jefferson in the Enchanted Forest
Jefferson in Storybrooke

Jefferson started out as a world-hopping thief for hire, until he fell in love with a fellow thief, settled down, and had a kid. One last job together cost him his wife, and he resolved never to world-hop again, devoting himself to the care of his daughter. The abrupt change in lifestyle resulted in a plummet into poverty, making life as a single dad in the Enchanted Forest pretty damn difficult, until Regina, the Evil Queen and an acquaintance from his youth, offers him a means to provide for his daughter if he does one last world-hopping job for her. Instead, she traps him in Wonderland, where he's captured by the Red Queen and forced to try and conjure up a way to once again travel between worlds in exchange for his freedom. Without magic, he can't do it, and he's pretty much stuck until the Queen's curse in the Enchanted Forest whisks him away with everyone else to Storybrooke, Maine.

In Storybrooke, no one remembers who they are. No one save the Queen...and for some unknown reason, Jefferson. He remembers everything, the life he had and the one he's now trapped in, alone. His daughter has a new set of parents and remembers nothing of their life together, and he's forced to watch her from afar in a comically large mansion with every material good he could ever want. It all means nothing without his daughter, however, and he grows bitter and enraged by the Queen's betrayal. Eventually he meets the supposed Savior who can break the curse and tries, unsuccessfully, to convince her of her role and get her to get magic to work again. He does this by kidnapping her mother/best friend and forcing her to try and make a magical hat.

Not his best plan.

In the end she thwarts him and the two women escape. The Queen calls on him once again, promising to reunite him with his daughter if he assists her in ridding the town of the savior with the use of his magical hat, which is still in her possession. Though Jefferson agrees, the Queen goes back on her word yet again, and Jefferson retaliates by freeing one of Regina's prisoners, the love interest of the one man in Storybrooke who he knows could and would end Regina for good, and then pretty much resigning himself to a life of lonely, bitter victory.

But then the curse IS lifted, and Jefferson is at long last reunited with his daughter. He displays some hesitance in going to see her, knowing she might hate him for leaving in the first place, but his fears are for naught. His daughter embraces him, and the last we see of the Mad Hatter is him carrying his daughter away, tears in his eyes.

Personality
In flashbacks to his youth, Jefferson is shown to be confident and smooth-talking, with highly animated expressions and a restless energy. He embodies a devil-may-care attitude, more daring than sense, likely out of lack of anything or anyone to come back to and therefore very little to lose. He's on the move too often to be tied down to any one place, and with his odd jobs procuring a good amount of gold he can live comfortably wherever he chooses. Though he consorts with more nefarious sorts he's more a flight-than-fight individual, and not malicious unless the job calls for it. He shows an overt level of disregard for personal boundaries, and it's hard to tell if this is for shock value, him being cheeky on principle, or just not understanding the concept of 'personal space'.

The Jefferson we see as a single parent is much more subdued, as well as utterly devoted to his daughter Grace and her well-being. He's shown to be resourceful in his poverty, selling mushrooms from the forest for coin and crafting toys for his daughter when he can't afford the real thing, though it obviously pains him not to provide for her in the way she wants. He also seems to have sacrificed his world-jumping habits, claiming that doing so cost them Grace's mother and he doesn't want her to lose her father as well. He's matured quite a bit in his willingness to settle and care for someone else's needs above his own, though he is still obviously very impulsive and emotional, seen in the way he offers a vendor at market every copper in his pocket to get Grace a white rabbit toy.

The Jefferson that is then seen in Storybrooke is a very broken individual. What he loves most has been taken from him, and he has spent a good deal of time in captivity, being forced over and over again to try and make a hat that will work when he knows the task is pointless. His determination to see his daughter again trumps all. The repetition of his task, his imprisonment, and his status in the town as a recluse and one of the only people to realize that they're time-locked has resulted in him becoming unhinged over the course of nearly three decades. He retains some of that twitchy energy from his youth, but is better at channeling it, and skilled at putting up a friendly face even when his intentions are anything but. He is bitter, angry, and violent when he feels he has cause, though he is told repeatedly by the woman who betrayed him that as much as he may want to kill, he does not have the capacity to kill in him. He does, however, trigger a set of events that give another character motivation to kill her instead, so it may be less nobility than a lack of stomach for doing it himself.

Strengths & Weaknesses
I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again: Jefferson is very physically resilient, getting clocked in the head with a heavy brass telescope, getting up within seconds, rushing into a melee fight, then getting whalloped by a croquet mallet and Sparta-kicked out of a second-story window, only to get up again within seconds and make his escape.
You Think Your World is the Only One?: As a portal-jumper, Jefferson is aware of the multitude of worlds that exist, and has traveled to many of them. While unable to wield magic himself, there's a great deal of knowledge that he's absorbed over the years.
A Man of Many Hats: Having spent most of his younger years as a skilled thief in many different locales, Jefferson is cunning, clever, and able to slip around in places he ought not with relative ease. For all his style and swagger, he's surprisingly good at blending in.

We're All Mad Here: Whether through a combination of despair, his time spent in Wonderland, or mercury poisoning (hey, he DID make a lot of hats), Jefferson is not the most mentally stable person in the world. Or any of them. It isn't paranoia if they ARE out to get you.
Moral Shades of Gray: Jefferson doesn't have a moral compass as such, unless you are his daughter or someone of similar importance. Good luck on that one. As such, he's ruthless in his goals and won't hesitate to put someone else in peril if it suits him.
Deals With the Devil: He never learns. For all his canniness, Jefferson is still more than a little gullible, and easily bribed, threatened, or manipulated by others, and can be talked into doing some pretty stupid things if it means he gets what he needs.



Arrival Inventory
- Gray herringbone Chesterfield coat
- Scarf, black with silver pinstripes
- Black and gray patterned waistcoat
- Black and gray paisley dress shirt
- Black slacks, w/ belt
- Dress shoes
- Handkerchief
- Silver Pocketwatch with rabbit engraving
- Silver ring
- Folded up missing poster


'Human'ization
Jefferson is human as they come.

Fit
As someone familiar with traveling from world to world, Thedas is going to be pretty easy for him to adjust to. His determination to get back to his daughter, with whom he was JUST reunited, means that if his efforts can further the goal of sending everyone back where they belong, he'll be more than cooperative. That doesn't mean he'll be nice about it. I think he'll be able to garner quite a bit of interesting and conflicting CR, based on what he wants and how he tends to go about getting it. Some conflict is good, after all, but a lot will just get you outcast as a dick. I think he'll do a good job of riding that line and making life for everyone he meets a little more interesting, if nothing else.

SAMPLES

Storybrooke, pre-curse removal:
The days pass as they ever have. Day in, day out, always the same. Jefferson dines alone, drinks alone. He sits in the hat room staring at his creations, searching for their faults, sometimes for hours. When he needs mindless distraction he turns to the piano, the manic melody that sprawls across the keys somewhat cathartic. Later that day he breaks a mirror in the bathroom in a sudden blind rush of frustration. He makes the mistake of doing it with a bare fist. The mess gives him something to do for the next few hours, at least.

Now he's taken to watching the town from his window once again. It's how he keeps up with everything despite never being seen in town, observing who talks to whom, and where, and when. He turns his gaze to his daughter, chatting happily with her new family at the dinner table. She's well cared for, happy, and oblivious to his existence entirely. Reach out to her, Emma had said, but he's not that cruel. Learning you had been eleven years old for twenty-eight years...how could a person even begin to cope? How could he take that smile of hers away?

Jaw working tightly, he turns his gaze elsewhere in the town. He's seen Emma walking the street with August, and whatever conversation they've been having, it isn't a happy one. He doesn't know for certain what's being said, but given that night at Granny's and August's quest to make Emma believe? He's reasonably sure he can guess. Drawing away from the telescope he sets his sights nearer, watching the birds in the forest outside.

He could go down into town, but what would be the point? No one knows him, no one that knows him wants him, and you can feel every bit as alone in a crowd as you can on your own. Maybe he'll go back to the piano tonight, grab a drink from the cabinet, and play until he can't feel his fingers.

Fade Rift, Sending Crystal:
[ This is all too familiar, stuck in a strange world with no way out. God knows he's tested the boundaries enough in the past hour, questioning anyone he can come across. Finally desperation has him reaching out, making use of the sending crystal to call out to the people of Skyhold as one. It's probably for the best he can't be seen. He's definitely seen better days. Weariness lines his face, shadows his eyes, his mouth set in a thin, grave line as he finally speaks up. ]

So the word is that no one really knows how we got here or how to get us back. That sound about right? Look, as entertaining as all this has been, this world has magic. Someone has to know of a way. Something that hasn't been tried yet, for whatever reason.

[ There's an urgency to his voice, as level as he tries to keep it. He's not doing very well at hiding his anxiety...but then after almost three decades, there are bound to be cracks in the facade. ]

I have to get home. Now. My daughter, she's waiting for me...

[ He almost stops there, biting the inside of his lip. Steeling himself. After a moment to compose himself he goes on, almost more to himself than to his audible audience. ]

I'm not leaving her again.

[ Silence follows. ]