APPLICATION for PARADISA

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PERSONAL
NAME: Mal
PERSONAL JOURNAL: mustakrakish
EMAIL: deanpants@gmail.com
AIM: cognitiverecalibration
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A


CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Jesse Pinkman
SERIES: Breaking Bad
CANON POINT: Post 4.07, 'Problem Dog'
LOSS: Jesse will no longer retain the memories of Gale Boetticher, including the existence and essentially cold-blooded murder of the man, an act that Jesse committed and was very thoroughly shaped by, wracked with guilt and a whole new existential crisis about the effects that actions can have on other people. More information on the fallout of this is discussed in the personality.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER: It all starts in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It starts with a nice, mild, Presbyterian, upper middle class family with too big of dreams for their first son, high grades and college this and schooling that, not good enough, apply yourself. It starts with too-high mounted pressure on an adolescent who falls into some awfully nasty habits and a thrill for self-destructiveness. Jesse Pinkman, as a kid, was an aspiring artist with a love for working with his hands, bright-eyed and with all the naivety he could manage in a world like he fell into. In a way, he's still that boy, he still works with his hands, but the entire definition's gone and gotten itself bastardized.

At first glance, you've got a deadbeat. Jesse rejected (or possibly and merely crumbled under the pressure of) his parents' ideals and flocked to the darker side of ABQ and he acts a hell of a lot tougher than he is. To most of the people in his life, Jesse's just the drug addict fuck-up who's made more bad choices than good ones along the road. A lost cause, good for nothing useful. Enough people cram that sort of assessment and someone might start buying it themselves. Jesse's a troubled guy, and he's seen a lot more shit at his age than somebody probably should. He's one giant contradiction, someone with a lot of walls up around him - to keep out the bad shit, to keep hidden the other bad shit - and can simultaneously wear his heart on his sleeve. A cocky ego on top of a whole mountain of self-doubt.

Jesse has an arrogance about him that's a sort of necessity in the kind of world that he's lived in. He starts off a guy whose biggest concerns are slinging teenths of meth, "sitting around, smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos and masturbating". He wears his pants low and his shirts too big, spends his time playing video games until a near-bust of his previous business goes awry, and consequentially, in his close-call escape, an old school teacher of his from high school blackmails him into partnering up to cook meth together.

The rest is history. Jesse's graduated from small time drug dealing to working with the largest meth distributor in the southwest, from slinging an ounce a week to making more than two-hundred pounds a week. None of it's anything that he's proud of, but it's certainly toughened him up over the months. Jesse's seen some shit, and he's found a new rock bottom for nearly every one that he's thought he's hit. He's been beaten, he's been kidnapped, he's had a gun pointed to his head more times than he'd like to count. In one case, he was even forced through a series of circumstances to murder somebody, Gale Boetticher, a potential other cook for Gus Fring's meth superlab - without doing so, he would have gotten both himself and his partner killed through some newfound irrelevance.

It's a big moment for Jesse, possibly one of the most life-changing in his entire life thus far, the cold-blooded murder of someone who didn't even necessarily deserve it. It starts a decay within him, and then a transformation, from all that posturing, that scumbag, meth-peddling, tough guy punk who, sure, quietly functions as a caretaker and cares so deeply for those who are important to him in his life, to a boy who's turning into a man, who's really beginning to question his own moral compass and reevaluate his stance on his position in the world and in his business. He tail slides completely after the murder of Gale, but here's the thing: He doesn't remember it in Paradisa.

It's his loss, a memory that was taken away, and it shapes him thusly - he's still the same old Jesse Pinkman he was at the beginning of the show, because he has no real reason to have changed and grown as a person like he has throughout his canon. He's shaved his head, he's thrown wild house parties, he's having heartfelt confessions about killing dogs, he's gone off the deep end in his life and he doesn't even remember the 'who's or 'why's. He doesn't even remember Gale having existed. None of it makes sense to him. It means Jesse has amounted to just the same shard-slinging, defensive, bit of a scumbag that he starts out as, some of a temper and more than enough sarcasm to arm himself with. He still maintains that much of him. He's no murderer, but he's still a self-confessed junkie and a meth cook - and a damn good one at that.

Despite everything he's done, Jesse feels like this world is the one where he belongs, his self-esteem (and, honestly, some real laziness and questionable morals) keeping him from approaching any cleaner potential that he might think he has. So far as Jesse's concerned, making meth is the one thing he's good at - hell, he's one of the best cooks in the country, depending on who you ask - and there's a big part of him that needs that importance in his life to keep from backsliding into territories he might have in the past, particularly his intermittent drug use. Jesse's not a stupid guy, has the potential for knowledge but lacks the wisdom, but he is a perfectionist who's constantly falling so incredibly short of what he thinks he could be.

ABILITIES: Jesse is a normal human being and as such is pretty limited as to what he can do, power-wise. But he does know how to make some pretty damn good skante. Hobbies also include art and spouting various information he's picked up from the Discovery Channel. Knowledge.

THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: It's just some thoughts that come out sometimes, when it gets to be three in the morning, when Badger's faceplanted down not even into the sofa but just the cushion itself, strewn across the room, his own personal island. Jesse remembers having nights like this all the time, back in high school, hell, back before Mr. White was even a fixation in his mind, back before all the shit hit the fan. Nights where it's just him and Skinny Pete, where they're passing a bong between them and speaking in tight breaths filled with smoke, chuckling occasionally. Quiet, in that kinda dangerous sort of way, so far as Jesse's have been lately, his quiet moments.

"Thinkin'-" He has his head turned away and down from Skinny as the guy takes another hit. Jesse can already feel a buzzing sensation start to creep in from the edges, and it's nice, it's comforting. "Think I want a dog. I wish I could get a dog."

"Hell yeah, man, a dog, you could get a dog," Skinny's immediately jeering, and of course he is, they're always the picture of encouragement, never really thinking through consequences and, God, there's so many consequences lately, so many things impinging on other things. Jesse's hand mops messily over his face.

"Used to have one when I was younger, Lucy. She got hair all over the couches, the parents kinda up and," 'psh' is about the noise he makes, jerks a thumb to the side to mime her getting kicked out. "Liked her though. I just-"

He's handed the bong, the torch is passed, before he can really finish formulating that idea, whatever it was about dogs that he really wanted to have. He keeps his head down, leaning forward a little and heavily onto his forearms without taking his own hit yet. "I forget a lot, ya know? Like bills." And it's here he finally looks at Skinny, swallows tightly before he speaks up again. "Like my aunt, she used to have ta take these meds, every day, every day," and he picks up a hand and snaps his fingers with it for emphasis, "every day, and I'd try to remind her but, every day? Hell no. I'd forget all the time. How do I know I ain't gonna forget to, like, feed a damn dog? Like, every day?"

Jesse's not even sure Skinny's getting the short of it, the kind of furrowed, mildly concerned, glassy look of someone who's really stoned and doesn't know how to properly respond to someone's strangely specific woes. His eyes fall on the bong briefly and Jesse shakes his head, takes a long hit and holds onto it.

"Dogs're-" His voice croaks a little again around the smoke, and he lets it spew after a moment. "They're, like, quiet sometimes, right? They're tough, it's like takin' care of a kid. Gotta play with 'em, gotta take 'em on walks or they'll shit all over your floor. Lotta work. Ain't even sure I could keep like a fuckin' house fern without it kickin' it."

"So don't get a dog, yo," Pete offers in reply, a shrug of his shoulders as Jesse hands back the bong. "Hell, I wouldn't trust me with a kid. Or a dog. That's all this, like- It's responsibility and shit, man, it's tough. You don't gotta have nothin' holdin' you back like that." He lights the lighter, nose wrinkled. "Why you gettin' all worked up about a dog anyway, hombre?"

Jesse's hands pinch around his neck as Skinny smokes up, fingers gripping tight at the back of it, foot tapping impatiently where he sits on the floor. He doesn't get it. He didn't really expect him to get it, not really anyone who would get it and why he needs it right now. And so he just shrugs right back, eyes turned off and away as sweet-smelling smoke wafts in his direction.

"Just a thought, I guess."

FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: [ link ]

INTENT: Oh, boy, come here to the fire, let me draw you up a whiskey and tell you my feelings about Jesse Pinkman.

Breaking Bad is a television show that is in itself a piece of art, but the real message of the story lies within the chemistry - the entire show's run could be described in a single sentence as Walter White does in the pilot episode. "It's growth, then decay, then transformation; it's fascinating, really."

Watching Jesse's growth as a character (and consequential decay and transformation) is a fascinating venture alone. This is a boy, emphasis on boy, who was introduced falling off a rooftop with his pants half on. His story is about how choices shape him, how the world he's in is shaping him, and what will be left of that person when everything and everyone is said and done with him. Jesse's more often than not used as a tool by those around him, a catalyst and a means to a hopefully greater end.

As such a multi-faceted and, quite frankly, tragic character on the show, it's of such interest to me to really dig deep under his skin and see what makes him tick, what led him to where and how he could get to such a dark place within the span of less than a year. He's raunchy, he's loud, he's obnoxious, he's impatient, he's got a temper, and he hates the idea that he has to pay taxes. He's awful at conforming to the societal hole he's meant to fit in, rises and rebels above that idea so earnestly, and yet still manages to be the loving guy that we've come to know him as, the 25-year-old who makes marshmallow sandwiches for and fist-bumps six year olds. The guy who, in a world where hurting people and KILLING people is something rather commonplace, can still have a moral code strong enough to completely shut him down after taking his first life.

Jesse's a contradiction. I like contradictions. I see a lot of myself in him and it makes for a great ride when it comes to roleplaying as him.