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Folkmore App
Content Warning: Javert is a heavy character from a heavy canon. This app will include references and depictions of suicide by drowning, as well as the character's mindset leading up to his choice to destroy himself. Please proceed with caution.
Skills:
Canon Abilities: Nothing beyond the capabilities of a shrewd human. He has excellent deductive capabilities, an extremely good memory, and a sharp eye for details.
Role: Familiar
Role Qualities/Attributes: When he first enters Folkmore, he will have trouble maintaining a stable shape. Fraught with emotion and doubt, he will manifest bestial 'parts' upon his person, and may give another the mistaken impression that he could be a Myth: he'll have long claws, the ears of a lynx cat, whiskers vaguely patterned after a wolf or a tiger's, eyes like an eagle. These changes will be subtle until he springs into action and shifts into an animal that suits his goals (or emotional state). When he gets some control over himself, he will keep his eagle eyes and lupine canines and whiskers, but only shift when he consciously chooses.
Role Reasoning: Javert has too much blood on his hands to be a Legend, and he's got too much of a conscience, too much desire to learn how to become 'right' and 'better' to fall into Myth-hood. He has spent his life in public service, and he thrives best when he is given a role that will allow him to select a 'superior' to serve. As a Familiar, I will have him seek out someone who reminds him (preferably a Legend, though he is vulnerable to manipulation in his confused post-canon state) of Jean Valjean's saintliness to attempt to serve, and to use his newfound abilities to protect the people of Folkmore.
❥ Character Information
Character Name: Javert
Character Age: 52
Character Species: Human
Current Health: Dead, left his old body when he followed the Fox downriver. He will appear in full health, apart from the bruising and old battle-scars sustained from his decades in police work.
Outfit: Period appropriate to an 1830s Paris working class man. He wears an iron gray frock coat buttoned from chin down to his shins and a well-worn top hat. Beneath his coat he has a cravat, a leather stock to stiffen his collar, white shirtsleeves, an earthen-toned waistcoat and matching trousers. On his feet are a pair of riding boots, smudged, though ordinarily he keeps them well-shined in spite of their years of wear.
Character Canon: Les Misérables (Novel)
Link to History: Link to Wikipedia Entry
Canon Point: End of canon, at the point of his death
Canon Iteration: Original canon
Canon Iteration Explanation: N/A
Character Age: 52
Character Species: Human
Current Health: Dead, left his old body when he followed the Fox downriver. He will appear in full health, apart from the bruising and old battle-scars sustained from his decades in police work.
Outfit: Period appropriate to an 1830s Paris working class man. He wears an iron gray frock coat buttoned from chin down to his shins and a well-worn top hat. Beneath his coat he has a cravat, a leather stock to stiffen his collar, white shirtsleeves, an earthen-toned waistcoat and matching trousers. On his feet are a pair of riding boots, smudged, though ordinarily he keeps them well-shined in spite of their years of wear.
Character Canon: Les Misérables (Novel)
Link to History: Link to Wikipedia Entry
Canon Point: End of canon, at the point of his death
Canon Iteration: Original canon
Canon Iteration Explanation: N/A
❥ Folkmore Roles & Attributes
Skills:
- Investigative work
- Hunting (people, criminals, etc.)
- Deductive reasoning
- Decent defensive and hand-to-hand fighting abilities to survive the streets
- Pistol competency
- Meticulous organizational and planning skills
- Excellent at listening and observing, detecting and annotating even the smallest details
- Tarot reading (knowledge learned from his Romani Mother who was a fortune teller and card reader by trade, though this is a secret he resents and keeps close to the breast)
Canon Abilities: Nothing beyond the capabilities of a shrewd human. He has excellent deductive capabilities, an extremely good memory, and a sharp eye for details.
Role: Familiar
Role Qualities/Attributes: When he first enters Folkmore, he will have trouble maintaining a stable shape. Fraught with emotion and doubt, he will manifest bestial 'parts' upon his person, and may give another the mistaken impression that he could be a Myth: he'll have long claws, the ears of a lynx cat, whiskers vaguely patterned after a wolf or a tiger's, eyes like an eagle. These changes will be subtle until he springs into action and shifts into an animal that suits his goals (or emotional state). When he gets some control over himself, he will keep his eagle eyes and lupine canines and whiskers, but only shift when he consciously chooses.
Role Reasoning: Javert has too much blood on his hands to be a Legend, and he's got too much of a conscience, too much desire to learn how to become 'right' and 'better' to fall into Myth-hood. He has spent his life in public service, and he thrives best when he is given a role that will allow him to select a 'superior' to serve. As a Familiar, I will have him seek out someone who reminds him (preferably a Legend, though he is vulnerable to manipulation in his confused post-canon state) of Jean Valjean's saintliness to attempt to serve, and to use his newfound abilities to protect the people of Folkmore.
❥ Personality
Option 1. (797 words)
Javert is a walking paradox. There exists in him several facets: the man on the surface, described by Victor Hugo in prose; the man shown to us, described by his actions and speech; and finally, the man he becomes the night he takes his own life.
Prior to his suicide, Javert was devoted to the Law. His only joy was to uphold and enforce law and order. He hated crime – each criminal was just as bad as any other criminal in his eyes, and the severity of the crime committed or its extenuating circumstances mattered little. He had extreme respect for authority and a blind faith in his superiors. He was hardworking and brutally honest to the point of rudeness. He possessed an eagle eye and always took care to tie his cases in a neat little bow; he left not a single question unanswered, not a single detail unexplained. He was just as harsh to himself as he was to everyone else; his integrity and perseverance pulled him out of the streets, and he knew that one slip in his behavior, one blight in his record would throw him off his pedestal. That made him a fair man, at least, if not a kind one.
Javert didn't have close friends, and he had no family. He did not indulge in vices and outright denied himself human intimacy. He read in his rare free time strictly to educate himself. Every now and then, when he felt particularly proud of himself, he would take a pinch of snuff, thereby proving his humanity.
This was the man described to us. The man shown to us hinted at something more… feisty.
For enjoying the work of a lowly police inspector did not mean he was simply another mindless robot to the government. In fact, he had a rather dark and wry sense of humor that extended its claws in the most dire of situations. He was flamboyant in how he executed his arrests, exhibiting artistry that he strove to perfect. He gleefully bantered with his quarry and the worst of his enemies, his tongue just as sharp as his unyielding nature. He behaved as if he was orchestrating his own personal theatre of criminal captures.
Yet one night, a convict named Jean Valjean -- a man whom he doggedly hunted across decades -- spared Javert's life from certain death, and something inside of him snapped.
All his life, Javert was unyielding and above reproach. He did not doubt. But his black and white, very simple world crumbled in an instant, and he no longer understood the universe in which he lived. A part of him realized that Valjean, a criminal, a man who he always believed deserved a prison cell, was a man worthy of veneration and respect for his mercy and the genuine good he had given the world. He was a criminal who was also a saint; a thief who was also a good man. A new shade of gray colored every single interaction he ever had with a criminal, and opened up to him the possibility that criminals may have —dare he say—just and kind motivations.
This horrified Javert, who could not integrate this new information with his world view. He could not arrest Valjean and deliver him to the law, his conscience would not allow it. He could not return to work without arresting Valjean, that made him unworthy of his badge. So what order should he bow to? The supreme being, God's authority, whom he never before considered very deeply?
Javert's two paths were irreconcilable. He rejected his options and selected a third out: resignation from work, resignation from the world, resignation to God. He killed himself.
Or, rather, he escaped from that world, followed the Fox beneath the river, and transformed into a Familiar in Folkmore.
Thus will begin Javert's journey in Folkmore with a single narrowed eye open to the gray 'middle ground' between good and bad, right and wrong. He no longer knows where he fits in this world. His first big struggle will be to work through his cognitive dissonance over his shattered world view, discover a new purpose, and channel his actions productively.
Moving past his initial shock and post-traumatic stress, Javert will become a deeply emotional and highly disturbed individual encased in iron-clad self control. On the outside, he will be cold, calm, disarmingly self-assured, and always ready with a sassy quip. Yet inside he is doubt incarnate, constantly second-guessing himself, constantly displeased, constantly confused. He must learn to accept uncertainty, kindness, and love for the sake of it, to form intimate relationships (and at least one Familiar bond) with other people, and exercise his own matured moral judgment before condemning another's actions to reach his full potential.
❥ Player Information
Player Name: Larissa
Pronouns: She/Her
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact(s): PM,![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
chickenfriend, or discord @ chiknfriend
Who Invited You?: Corie, Link to invitation here
Current Characters: N/A
Permissions: Here
Writing Samples: TDM thread with Luz, Ariadne, Henry, Kate, Rue. Long threads here. If you need more, I also have plenty of samples from Ryslig, and another here. However, these samples depict a Javert that has been corrupted by monstrous influences. It can illustrate range, but not the direction that I intend to write him in Folkmore.
Pronouns: She/Her
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact(s): PM,
Who Invited You?: Corie, Link to invitation here
Current Characters: N/A
Permissions: Here
Writing Samples: TDM thread with Luz, Ariadne, Henry, Kate, Rue. Long threads here. If you need more, I also have plenty of samples from Ryslig, and another here. However, these samples depict a Javert that has been corrupted by monstrous influences. It can illustrate range, but not the direction that I intend to write him in Folkmore.