((OOC post: Jake Marshall's profile for GSRP 2.5))
GENERAL
[Name:] Jake Marshall
[Age:] 41 (turning 42 on May 14th, making him a Taurus with Scorpio Moon)
[Gender:] Male and teeming with raw masculinity.
[Marital Status:] Single, but has a complicated relationship with Lana Skye with a long romantic history attached to it.
[Sexuality:] Heterosexual.
[Occupation:] Temporarily unemployed. In the past he's been a police officer, detective, patrolman, bartender, restaurant owner, and dude ranch worker.
[Family:]
Neil Marshall: Deceased brother who was four years younger and 27 years old when he was murdered by Damon Gant. The 10th anniversary of his death is coming up in February. Neil was Jake's best friend and meant the world to him, so he didn't cope with his brother's death well. It took time and lots of support from Lana Skye to come to terms with it. The execution of Damon Gant helped put his mind at ease. He may never fully get over such an incident, but he's doing much better than before, and is no longer so sensitive to the topic.
[Friends:]
Lana Skye: Lana and Jake have a long, complex history together. When they were both detectives ten years ago, they were in a serious relationship for a couple of years before it was ruined by SL-9. After they both got out of jail, unable to put their feelings for each other aside, they reconciled and gave their relationship another go. When he could no longer afford to pay for his apartment, he moved in with her and Ema, where he stayed for three years. Though things were good at first, they became lukewarm over time. With his lack of direction and her budding career, he decided to move to Wyoming to be a real cowboy -- but not without putting their relationship on hold so as to not over-complicate matters. Though he still cares for her, he had doubts as to whether it's best for them to be together.
Ema Skye: He's known Ema for as long as he's known Lana and has always been friendly towards her -- not just because she's Lana's younger sister, either. He finds her endearing and sees a bright future in her. Like he was with his younger brother, as protective as he is, he's very lenient towards her and acknowledges her maturity by allowing her more freedom than Lana gives.
Angel Starr: Angel and Jake grew closer after SL-9 when they worked together to uncover the truth, using each other for gratification. Even after the case was finally solved, they continued their physical relationship until she chose monogamy with Miles Edgeworth. They're still friends, their playful personalities and fancy metaphors working well off each other -- but like with everyone else, he's lost touch with her since moving away.
[Enemies:]
They're all dead.
[Other:]
Phoenix Wright: Jake will always be grateful towards Phoenix for solving the mysteries behind SL-9 and saving Lana. He was supportive of Phoenix after the disbarment and is the only one who saw just how badly the former attorney took the downfall. When Phoenix needed a job, Jake gave him one as a (lousy) pianist at the Rusty Gust Saloon despite the bar's grave financial troubles. Though the two got along well, they haven't been in contact much since Phoenix switched to the Borscht Bowl Club and started behaving oddly aloof. Jake figures the man has simply fell into a depression. The two have no clue what the other is up to right now, especially since Lana chooses not to talk to Phoenix.
Dick Gumshoe: Despite Gumshoe having seniority, Jake taught him a lot about being a detective. Jake even gave him a mini cactus the first day they began working together as a friendly gesture.
Maggey Byrde: She was his trusty waitress at the Rusty Gust for a few years. She liked him and they got along well, but they didn't keep in touch after his move.
Mike Meekins: Cutting him and knocking him out years ago was strictly a non-personal thing. Jake finds Meekins to be a pitiable and odd but friendly sort and doesn't mind his company.
CHARACTER
[General personality:] Anyone who knows Jake can describe him with one word: cowboy. Though he's been living in Los Angeles all his life, he has a love for cowboys, the wild west, and Texas that borders on obsessive. He's a colourful character -- eccentric in a charming way with a friendly down-to-earth demeanor and magnetic personality, especially around women. His cowboy act goes so far that he'll use obsolete old timey lingo and wild west allusions, which makes him hard to understand sometimes. As he used to be a bartender, he's a good, non-judgmental listener who can give sound advice. Towards the less intelligent types, he's tolerant and kind as long as they're good and honest; he finds them amusing and fun to converse with. Stuck-up, pretentious intellectual types get to him, though he finds them amusing as well as it's easy to get a reaction from them.
Stubborn to a fault and secretive too, the two traits put together can lead to frustration for others; he can come up with some wild ideas and never tell anyone about them. Once he's convinced of something, it's hard to get him to budge, and he'll often trust his own intuition over logic -- on top of that, he's a bit superstitious -- which can make him act in seemingly irrational ways. He can be impatient and quick to anger, but his temper burns low (he never snaps at people unless he's really miffed, but it's not easy to get him that worked up). Snarkiness and passive-aggressive words emerge when he's dealing with people he dislikes.
He avoids showing any emotional vulnerabilities, which his laid-back cowboy persona covers up effectively. Labeling himself as a "lone wolf," he's been solitary with large trust issues since the SL-9 incident, and chooses to deal with his problems through various distractions (his main distraction used to be intoxication, but he's been sober for five years now). As he doesn't talk about his feelings -- the occasional melodramatic, cryptic lines asides -- only those closest to him know of his troubles, though even they have a hard time dragging them out of him. Also carefully shut away are his feelings of love, though they do show through in subtle ways sometimes. All in all, he's more introverted than people think, and it's hard to get to know him personally.
Being just a few months away from being well over 40, he's no longer as wild and passionate as he once was, but some things never change: he's still terrible with any sort of machinery, content with having no knowledge of how the most basic things work. He continues to personify his most valued possessions by naming them (such as his cacti and his car).
Though he's grown more jaded and cynical over the years, Jake will always be a charismatic and deeply caring desperado with a cool smirk and spurs on his heels. His whole worldview can be summed up with "que sera, sera."
[Appearance:] Still a cowboy, and he's aged danged well. You can barely tell he's middle aged now, especially with his new haircut. Long hair just wasn't practical for working on a ranch (and having to tie it back all the time was a hassle), so he finally got it cut very short for the first time in decades, proving that he does have a set of ears.
[Background:] After losing his job and being in jail for a year for perjury, theft, and other minor offenses he committed during Rise from the Ashes, Jake drowned his problems with alcohol and sex (the latter generously provided by Angel). Managing and bartending at the Rusty Gust Saloon prevented him from shutting himself off from the world, but it definitely didn't help his dependency to alcohol. He was hooked on it for three years until he reunited with Lana, who vowed to stay by his side and help him beat his addiction. The two rekindled their romantic relationship, and he moved in with her shortly in what was originally meant to be a temporary stay while he got his finances together. He beat his alcoholism with rehab and the Gust was saved from being shut down when he made it a restaurant. His greatest enemy, Gant, was finally executed. He and Lana were to remain living together. Things were looking up for him.
However, Lana became busy with her new successful job as private investigator and started her own agency. She and Jake hardly got to see each other anymore and the romance fizzled out after three years. Like many former alcoholics, when he stopped filling his void with the bottle, he found himself stuck in a rut. Growing older with no direction in life and unhappy with the way things were, he felt a strong urge to get away from it all and try something different. He passed the Gust onto someone else, sold his laptop, and drove away with Billy the Cactus to fulfill his dream of being a real cowboy a couple of states away. He and Lana went on a "break" at his insistence -- he didn't want her to feel forced to choose him over her career in case the move became permanent (and he hates long distance relationships).
He began a new life in Wyoming working at a dude ranch near the town of Dubois (pronounced "Due-boys"). He wrote to Lana frequently at first, but he gradually became more vague and then stopped writing entirely. For whatever reason, things didn't work out. After a year and a half in the Cowboy State, Jake makes a mysterious return to L.A. in January of 2025.