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[thedifferencebetween]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Faye
Contact: crossthesky at Plurk, red.headed.rapunzel at gmail
Other Characters: Lust, Korra, Cuthbert Allgood

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Handsome Jack
Age: 50
Canon: Borderlands the Series
Canon Point: End of Borderlands 2
Character Information: Wiki Link

Personality:The first word that comes to mind when beginning to delve into Jack's personality is 'ego'. Jack believes he is the hero. Not of his own story, of every story. He's the smartest, the coolest, the most cunning, the best looking... It's something he's consciously worked hard for, creating a persona for himself that even he fully believes at this point. He's the epitome of the self made man, in that regard. He knew what he wanted and he let nothing stop him from achieving it. Even himself. He's taken great strides to leave his origins - squalid and abusive and unpleasant - far behind him and show the universe a cultured aristocrat that will unite and bring peace to the universe. Or at least Pandora.

Everything in his life reflects this. He surrounds himself with expensive things, just for the sake of having expensive things he can show off. He demands all product names for Hyperion-designed weapons and tech have elitist sounding names, so they sound classy and impressive and expensive. His personal vanity is so strong that when his face was scarred, he chose a synthetic replica mask grafted to his face rather than to be seen as anything less than perfect. (A mask of his own face, at that. Because he needs no improvement.)

The culture of Hyperion, which is as much an empire as it is a company, only encouraged this. Back-stabbing and clawing your way to the top is the accepted behavior, and those who don't are considered weak and expendable. It's all about having the most money, the most power, the shiniest toys, the most advanced projects. After killing the president of Hyperion and just announcing himelf as the new president, he's loved and adored by large numbers of Hyperions. He's looked up to and admired and considered someone to strive to be like. Which only feeds his already massive ego.

Nothing he does is wrong. He justifies all of his actions - the murder, the genocide, the sacrifices of innocent people and AIs, what he did to his daughter - as necessary and anyone who argues just doesn't understand. His first major noteworthy action being 'saving the moon' only furthered these beliefs. He rose to power in Hyperion by saving the company through insane and on-the-cuff methods, and was hailed as a hero for it. This fed into his already dangerous ego and belief that he is some chosen savior who can do the things no one else can. (Even though he does these things with a great deal of help, which he conveniently leaves out of the history reports.)

He's the only one who can see the big picture. He's the only one who understands what has to be done and how to do it. No one has better ideas than him. If they do, history finds itself immediately re-written. Even events as little as five years ago. He took credit for saving the planet he immediately named himself sole dictator of, and credits the discovery of its use to his amazing brain, claims the saving of Elpis as his own doing. None of these things, except discovering the Eridium deposits on Pandora, came down to him. Jack's powers of propaganda know no bounds. He sees himself as a savior, an anointed hero with a great destiny and lives that every minute of his life. Even the information stations around the Hyperion capital on Pandora offer such messages as 'remember kids! Love your parents, but love me more' and 'always remember, I'm the only thing that keeps you safe'.

But this is something he DOES take pride in. He's proud of this delusion he lives, that he's a great hero who cares about his empire and the state of the galactic frontier. In many ways, it's like a security blanket. It's his 'proof' that yes, he's in the right, and he won't let anything sway him from that idea.

And he does have his own warped moral code. He'll murder and torture people, has admitted without shame to having killed children, and he'll lie and rob anyone blind, but he has lines. He won't commit any sort of sexual based crimes or assaults, he won't physically discipline his own daughter, and he's disgusted by cannibalism and other acts that go above and beyond your average personal villainy. Those are things that barbarians do because they don't know any better. He's a civilized, culutered human being - he'd never stoop to such animalistic brutality.

It should go without saying that he's fiercely determined. He is ruthless. He will kill, bribe, or lie his way out of and into anything. He learned from a very young age that how to get what you wanted was through violence and fear. He was abandoned by his mother after the death of his father, and left in the care of a tyrannical and extremely physically abusive grandmother who allowed nothing but the most perfect of behavior. And while some part of Jack does know this was wrong - he'll proudly explain how he never physically disciplined his daughter, as though it makes up for confining her to a chair and isolating her from all other human beings to experiment on her and use her for his own gain - it's so buried beneath everything else that in regards to his daughter is the only time it ever comes through in any way.

He IS capable of loving and caring for another living thing, just in a twisted sort of way. He loves his daughter, despite what he does to her, and is legitimately heartbroken and grief stricken when she dies. But even his grief is shaded with the lens of his own ego - his daughter begged to be mercy killed, to escape him and the torment he'd subjected her to for almost her entire life. Jack, despite being there when it happened, considers her death to have been cold blooded murder and simply will not acknowledge the reality of the situation. He will not take responsibility. It's not a lie he tells other people to make himself look better, its how he sees reality.

The same way he honestly believes that everything he does is for the betterment of mankind. While most sane people see his actions as a genocidal invasion by an ego-maniacal madman, he sees himself as bringing order and peace to a lawless wasteland. The people of Pandora don't count as people. He constantly refers to them as 'bandits' and 'barbarians'. They're a scourge that needs to be destroyed to allow the good and righteous people of Hyperion to inherit the planet. And he's the one that can do it.

All of this also combines to make Jack more or less fearless, in a grand sense. He just does not believe he could ever lose or be bested by anyone else. While he takes great pains to protect himself physically - he has five different dopplegangers he uses in public and tends to stay safely in his highly secure moon base - he also is fully secure that that's all he has to do, and no one could possibly get to him or remove him from power. After his daughter's death, he teleports directly into the heat of the action to take immediate revenge, without a single thought that maybe teleporting alone into the middle of a group of people committed to destroying you could turn out badly.

Despite being a cold blooded killer who will murder anyone who pisses him off at the drop of a hat, he's a very jovial guy, for the most part. He's very vocal, enjoying to chatter and ramble on at allies and enemies alike. He has a habit of layering serious threats with humor and joviality. He taunts his enemies regularly, mocking them and goading them over the phone, or just sharing stories to remind them how awesome he is. He can be exceptionally charming, and flirts indiscriminately. He's been married twice, and has numerous girlfriends and lovers on the side. It probably goes without saying that he considers himself god's gift to women. And men. And particularly self aware robots. Everyone and everything, really. It's partially his natural personality, partially a defense mechanism. In The Pre-Sequel, he shows a rare self-aware moment when he claims 'there's never any excuse for being an asshole....unless you're funny and friendly! Then it's cool!' indicating some acknowledgement that he knows he's a jerk, but is at least a cool, funny, likabale jerk. (In his opinion.)

And the jovial veneer drops entirely when he suffers serious setbacks - after his daughter dies, he stops the jokes and taunting and simply repeats dire threats. There's little charm or humor left and when those are stripped away, Jack is a petty, greedy, vengeful man at his core.

He can't be fixed because he never broke.

5-10 Key Character Traits: Ambitious, egotistical, emotional, fearless, vengeful, petty, flamboyant, resourseful, hedonistic, delusional.

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? FITS!
Opt-Outs: Naga, Vampire, Werebear because I already play those, demon and slime for general opt-outs.

Roleplay Sample:

What the shit was this?

The fact that he wasn't dead didn't exactly come as a surprise to Jack. He'd known that wasn't how his story ended, not cut down by a handful of assholes at the peak of his triumphs, that just wasn't in his cards. But this? This was...weirder than he was used to.

And he was used to pretty weird crap at this point.

"What kinda late night B-movie Vault bullshit is this?"

It wasn't anywhere Jack had ever seen before, and this sure as hell wasn't Pandora. He knew every friggin festering inch of that vomit-flavored hell hole and this wasn't it. So how the flying frick had he gotten here? 'Vault bullshit' seems the reasonable explanation - siren powers going off, active Vault, he can piece together some sort of narrative out of that. But why isn't he in some ancient Eridian place or something? Where's the alien tech, the marvels the likes of which humans have never seen before? This is just a foggy forest with trees he's never seen before.

"So am I just waiting here for the guided tour here, or what?"

Jack's voice echoes among the trees and okay, that's...that's kinda creepy, actually. So's the fact that his clothes are definitely bloodstained as though he had been shot down in that cavern under Hero's Pass. And that he's unarmed. Sure, cool, that's not alarming. Totally not something to be worried about.

Whatever, it's fine. He's alive, it's just a forest, and he's been in worse situations. He'd made it through the Elpis mess. Nobody's even shooting at him right now! Nobody shooting already put this little trip pretty far down on the list of 'dangerous situations Handsome Jack has been stuck in'. Obviously he just had to get to something that passed for civilization and then everything'll be fine.

"Here's hoping there's a summer camp full of busty teens to distract any inbred serial killers lurking around!" He's talking just to talk. Ha, he almost hopes someone tries to give him trouble. It had looked like the end there, it really had. So he's bloody, he's also perfectly alive. Nothing's changed. He just needs to get out of here and back to Helios and he can go back to his research and find another Vault...it's all good. And he was denied his satisfaction. He'd planned on killing those piss-for-brains bandits once and for all. Right now, pretty much anyone will do for a substitute.

But this place seems empty save for him and the thickening fog.

"Holy dickbags, for real now, am I...am I being punked?" Highly unlikely, but at least his own voice filled some of the eerie emptiness of these spooky woods. Seriously, it's like he just stepped into a horror movie or something...