Victory Road App

[thedifferencebetween]

Player
Name: Faye
Personal Journal: said_scarlett
E-mail: red.headed.rapunzel@gmail.com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.: plurk - crossthesky
Timezone: Arizona
Current Characters in Route: Lust, Jimmy Darling, Korra

Character
Name: Handsome Jack
Series: Borderlands
Timeline: Directly following the end of Borderlands 2
Canon Resource Links: Jack's Wiki Page

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, what he did to his daughter - as necessary and anyone who argues just doesn't understand. 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. (It was a lucky accident that he just happened to be in the right place at the right time to draw attention to.) 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'.

And he does have his own warped moral code. He'll murder and torture people, has admitted without shame to having killed at least one child, 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.

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.

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.

Strengths/Weaknesses:

Jack is a pretty brilliant guy. He's skilled with codes and computers and engineering theory, and got pretty far in the ranks of Hyperion on his own talents and work. He designed the containment chamber for his siren daughter, to harness and amplify her abilities, and is the mind behind most of the eridium experimentation on Pandora.

He's skilled at seeing potential - in people, products, situations. And along with that, at how to make those work for him. He's always thinking ahead, always planning out the next three moves.

He knows how to invest and make money work for him.

He's cultivated a bunch of 'cultured' skills in his adult life: he plays violin, he's a skilled ballroom dancer, he's an outdoorsman, he considers himself an expert in wines and fancy food, art and literature...

His greatest fear, though it's hardly a concious one, is that he isn't at all what he believes himself and presents himself to be. Nearly everything he does is to bury that doubt, and his own ego is in many ways his greatest weakness. He's done in by his own hubris and surety that he just can't be beaten.

He doesn't allow for that possibility. Every possible way he can win, sure, but losing just isn't in his cards.

He's ridiculously quick to resort to violence when he's angry, annoyed, needs/wants something and sees nothing wrong with it. He's got Anger Issues.

Vanity, thy name is Handsome Jack.

He'll hold a grudge forever. Even minor ones. He can't get over irritation and annoyance until he's done something about it, satisfied his pride or gotten revenge in some way.

He has next to no loyalty whatsoever.

Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Rocket Grunt!
Starter: Meowth as his level 15 starter, Trubbish for his level 5 Rocket starter.
Password: Atomic Fireball

Samples
First Person Sample:

[It's a jovial voice that comes over the gear. No video, only a voice.]

Hey kids, Handsome Jack here! I know, I know. 'Who the fuck is Handsome Jack, and why haven't I heard of him before?'. Oh, you poor people. You are really living in the dark ages. It is one hell of a good story, trust me. Brave awesome hero, galaxies in peril, lots of guns and explosions, betrayal, hot chicks in tight leather.... All that good stuff. Maybe I'll tell you some time. It's...oh, it's just so good.

[Because while this is just a temporary stop-over, that doesn't mean Jack is going to waste his time here. This backwards shit-hole of a planet's covered in animals he's never seen, full of items and energy sources he's not familiar with, and legends and folklore abounds. He's hardly been here more than a couple of days and he can already see that this place offers countless opportunities for a brilliant mind like his.]

[It's all part of how it goes. The hero is seemingly beaten. Disgraced, slandered. All the best heroic tales have this bit. The bit before the hero's triumphant return, bigger and even better, to strangle the life out of the murdering bastard scum that stole everything from him.]

[Being broke is a bit of a problem, but it won't be for long. Jack knows money. He knows how to make it his.]

But right now, I've got a burning question for all you...whatever you are. Help me out here.

Who are the bigwigs, and where do I find'em?

Third Person Sample:

The hell was this?

A shitty room with a....cat? Sure. He'll call it a cat.

Jack's never been the kind of guy to believe in gods or unexplained magic or life after death - at least not the spiritual kind. And even the technological kind...it isn't great. Sure, he'd spent years allowing and nurturing the rumors that Hyperion totally has the tech to revive the dead, digistructing flesh in a perfect replica and uploading every bit of echo data back into the freshly made brain to bring you back just like you were.

But it wasn't real. You couldn't just make a body out of a bunch of organic chemicals, stick some thoughts in it and be good to go. Where did people think Lab Rats came from? Those shambling wannabe people were the best that the most advanced labs in the galaxies could manage. With immediately dead bodies.

Sure, sure, that scientist that's desperate to bang him has been working on all kinds of genetic reconstruction and everything, but not successfully. Reviving monsters that have been sewn together with other bits of monsters doesn't count.

So where the fuck is he? His memories of exactly what had just happened are fuzzy, but he's pretty sure he just got shot in the face. In an underground volcano. After....losing....everything.

But that's just the kind of thing that heroes do. They get shot in the face, they suffer, and they just keep going.

So where is he? This looks more like a tacky dorm room on some middle-class planet than a Hyperion med lab. Do these people know who he is? Of course they do. Who doesn't know the greatest legend to ever live, Handsome Jack?

So why is he in this shithole? It's not like those stupid Vault Hunters could have taken him prisoner or anything....

No, of course not. There'd be one of them sitting at the end of his bed, ready to whine and bitch and moan at him. Or that flaming slag would be taking advantage for a little turn about. Why did they think they held any sort of moral superiority? Whole damned planet of baby eaters and sisterfuckers.

If he's still on Pandora, so help him...

"Hey! I'm awake! Somebody gonna bring me some room service? I'd kill for a mimosa right now. Maybe some fancy eggs. Then I'm gonna need a gun and a ship..."

He has a filthy bandit to strangle.