Character based off a song
Song
Blackbird - The Beatles
Name
Jasper "Jaz" Fair
Gender
Male
Age
23
Job/Position
Barista, bouncer, bodyguard waiter, delivery guy, a lot of other odd jobs to scrape by with.
Likes
Bars , ambient music, jazz ; likely why he gravitates to odd jobs around the food and beverage field. Jasper also enjoys cooking , but more scrappy, visibly improvised food rather than gourmet, and he's not exactly stellar at it. More of a kitchen wrecking type, but there's a bit of fun in that too.
Books . Something he hides as it isn't exactly his image, and he doesn't have an especially strong grasp on the intricacies of language, but there's something calming to words on paper, even if he doesn't know enough to understand the subject matter.
Parks are wonderful. Jasper likes running , skipping pebbles, or straying to a less crowded spot and climbing trees until he's yelled at to come down.
Dislikes
Eye contact ? Always makes him nervous, like someone was ready to yell at him.
Large crowds : he finds it stifling.
Jewellery . He'd rather stab himself in the foot than let anyone put an earring or necklace on him.
Personality
The most prominent characteristic is his unwillingness to be prominent. He's a quieter type, and surprisingly polite, defying the thuggish outlook.
With friends he's slightly more open. Quite likes stealing friends' food and bullying, but doesn't really mean harm in either (perhaps).
Painfully introverted but enjoys talking. That part's hard to juggle.
To wind down, Jasper is a hang-by-the-road type, be it smoking, kicking bottles and cans onto the road, chatting, playing music, watching people (and commenting/ making occasionally mean remarks on them).
A smaller part of him is vindictive, and he remembers deeds like a hoarding landlord; remembers acts done like a theatre critic. He's not violent but can be quick to spark a fight, and in the neighbourhood he grew up in, streets are always fit for a one.
Reputation
Has a bit of a street brawler reputation, due to his sketchy neighbourhood: and that he's been known to get involved in shadow business or hit jobs for certain amounts of money. Although he's recently turned and put that behind him, it's not exactly a mark that can wash away in a day.
Looks
Matted, curly hair shaved close to the scalp, though it's grown out a bit. Not especially tall around 173cm, but Jasper is solid, though lacking the bulldog stockiness (probably because he can't afford to eat as much as he'd like). He looks good only like a piece of rock looks good.
Outfits are street style, generic greys or whites or blues with a pop of colour around the collar, socks, shoes. He owns a (single) leather jacket he wears all the time, shredded jeans and sneakers. On a warmer day he loses the jacket and goes for a shirt and knee shorts. Never anything special or particularly eye-catching.
His jaw, he carved it in with a razor. Jasper's skin is close to ebony; his eyes a pitch-brown and are narrow and a smidge slanted, giving him a bit of a fox face, despite a softer nose and round, wide mouth. He has rough hands and wide feet.
When standing, he has a shy slouch, and likes to stuff his hands in jacket pockets, hoodie pockets, cargo pockets. Any pocket. He likes pockets. Has been stopped by policemen while exiting stores and asked to turn out his pockets before (he doesn't take offence though. He knows what he looks like. The city's just like that).
Mannerisms
Jasper often has a half-suppressed throaty laugh, something like a rapid cough. When more relaxed, his laugh is breezy though always slightly embarrassed.
He walks with a strong stride but lowered posture, more evident when he's in a crowd of people, as if he could want nothing more but to get away quickly. In more comfortable places he quite likes walking or running; he walks with a subtle bob, every step a pulse of energy. Running feels like the world rolls under the push of his feet.
Jasper taps, shakes, shifts, crosses his legs and feet a lot. Keeps his eyes on the ground when he's nervous.
Backstory
If he's poor as shit now, he grew up even poorer. A church mouse is richer (they get all those donations, for Christ's sake). He didn't exactly leave school, but did stop schooling at twelve, as his mother had been going through a wave of depression and his father was off wherever he was and no one bothered enrolling him into a high school. Jasper didn't much care for it himself. The rest of the time he had been bounced around different correctional facilities after being plucked from a fight in the street, and a day before he turned eighteen, threatened to be put in a real prison by a police officer, he got a job as a bouncer in with a bar run by morally ambiguous shareholders (but ey, beggars can't be choosers). It's not an event-filled life; sure, there was some close calls with infamously violent people no one wanted to get involved with; red and blue and sirens flashing on walls behind and beside him as he wove through home streets; picking the lock on his own door because his father locked anyone out after 12 or washing up in a friend's bathroom because he didn't want to go home bloodied.
Family
Jasper is of West African ethnicity, but names and culture had long been scraped away by the city that hadn't exactly taken them in warm arms.His father was a war veteran turned to a criminal syndicate, his mother, an expatriate nurse. Jasper's father was a self indulgent adulterer; only god knows how many half-siblings Jasper had by now. He took his mother's name at eleven, all respect for his father evaporated when he nearly tore down the house in a gunfight with a colleague; Jasper, two sisters and their mother shivering themselves stupid in the basement.
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