015 -- headcanon
Because it doesn't even deserve a post of its own: I am okay with jumping! Play with me. I enjoy being touched in thread-like places. A-anyway, headcanon...
Will probably be added to as I see fit, and annotated when Jossed (wh-which I don't doubt I will be, since I inevitably always am.)
don't worry, this isn't just a big long Have Done list, I promise.
headcanon
♠ Born 5014. Jack doesn't remember the actual date, but somewhere around early February, give or take calendar discrepancies.
♠ The Boeshane Peninsula, is actually a small place on Earth. It's in whatever the United States became, after three thousand years of continent shift, planet colonization and rule change. The backwater town where he lived was a communal living place, where children were raised by their parents, their parents friends, and a variety of scholars. It was a fairly simplistic place; clean air, fresh food, out-door sports and live theatre. There weren't a lot of trees and "spring" and "fall" were very short seasons, thanks to the sun being bigger. Jack mostly remembers snatches of things; a song he learnt in school, listening to news on the communication devices, a game somewhere between cricket and baseball.
♠ After losing his brother and his father to the invading aliens, Jack signed up to go to war. He was fourteen, but he and his best friend lied and said they were older. He ended up a pilot in a squad of zippy little surface ships; his friend was a medic.
♠ The rest of the world wasn't as sweet and simple as his upbringing, and Jack discovered sex, drinking, and gained a reputation as a daredevil. Jack quickly became obsessed with ship-spotting; he could name the make and year just from the thrum of the engine. He also showed a natural talent for firearms.
♠ At nineteen, wracked with survivor's guilt and with a medal he didn't deserve, Jack joined the Time Agency to escape the war.
♠ He was a Time Agent for fourteen years. Five of those were in a two week timeloop with the man now calling himself John Hart (GROUNDHOG DAY~), another three were lost during a switch-and-bait jumping accident, and the last two were erased from his memory. The other four are where all his stories come from. It was a pretty dark period of his life, and he actually did a fair bit he was ashamed of, but talking about gambling just outside the Medusa Cascade or capsule-riding a Betelgeuse flare is easier than admitting how the last traces of his innocence and idealism were systematically destroyed.
♠ Jack was always a much better second-in-command than leader.
♠ He kept his cons mostly to the Earth, because it had a lot of opportunity, it was easy for him to blend in, and Time Agents usually only visited on routine business. He knew all the hotspots; the two major wars and a few minor ones, some large natural disasters... he made sure to give his own time a thousand-year berth in either direction. He was never that interested in the late 20th/early 21st Century, either, purely because of the frequency of visiting aliens who could rumble his schemes.
♠ Jack Harkness falls in love with everybody he meets, a little. But he was crazy for the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Ninth for his genius, his morality in the face of great inner darkness, his anger, and the fact that they could both flirt without it ever needing to mean anything. Rose because she was innocent and so clearly liked him, because she challenged the world, and because she was beautiful. It's been a very long time, but he still holds onto the memory of the three of them (and Mickey, I suppose) traveling around, and is slightly desperate about never letting it be something he looks back on with bitterness.
♠ When the creepy little fortune teller told him "the century will turn twice" Jack swiftly sat down and racked his memory for every single time and place he had visited during the 20th century.
♠ Jack was a fighter pilot in World War I, but his Captaincy and the stripes on his greatcoat are actually possessions of his namesake, the real Captain Jack. Not that he'd ever admit it; he's served in enough war elsewhere to earn them.
♠ He took leave from Torchwood around 1940 and traveled the world for about twenty years (doing field work and reporting back to them, of course.) Most of his international stories come from around this time.
♠ Towards the end of the fifties, Jack went blond. In '59 he had a minor solo role in a satirical Broadway musical called Springtime for Hitler.
♠ Marcel Proust, W. H. Auden, Noel Coward, and Wilfred Owen. Never Wilde or Capote. (& there is no way he was cool enough for the Beats.)
♠ "I love driving," Jack said. "I was beginning to go a little crazy before they got around to inventing it." (delicious theft is delicious.)
♠ He claims to have invented retcon, but it's actually something he synthesized based on traces of memory drug left in his own blood and a chemical compound which came through the Rift. New to Torchwood and Planet Earth, but certainly not to the universe.
♠ Is it really bravery if you can't die? All the recklessness he had enjoyed when mortal was now tinged with bitterness and slowly things he used to find great fun grew boring. Unpredictability and adrenaline are sweeter because they're rarer, these days.
♠ By the time NYE 1999 came around, Jack was incredibly suicidal. He spent a year going through the archives, wiping himself off all the records, stowing or destroying the kinds of alien toys he thought were too dangerous, rewriting the way Torchwood operated and, deep at the back of his mind, searching for something which would finally kill him.
♠ During the time when it was just he and Suzie, they were totally banging.
♠ ...I still have no headcanon for what, precisely, Jack did during the year tied up in the Valiant's boiler room, except be tortured by the Master, flirt with Martha's sister, and think too much.
♠ Jack's "fixed point in space and time" deal is essentially that his cells regenerate to the state they were when he first died and Rose Tyler revived him. However every time he dies, they're worn a little more, maybe don't regenerate quite as much, and after three thousand or so deaths, it's gotten to the point where he is actually aging - albeit very slowly.
♠ I could give you an arbitrary number of deaths Jack has had, but he's lost count. He'd lost count even before the years in the ground when all his deaths blurred together and sometimes he spent a year dead and sometimes a few minutes.
♠ These days, he's more scared of Rose Tyler than he is of the Doctor. Possibly because to some degree he understands the Doctor, now that he knows what it's like to turn people into soldiers and to watch them die.
♠ Jack does, in fact, love Gwen Cooper deeply. She reminds him a lot of his (late) wife. But he could never seduce her; not because of Ianto or work or morality but because in his mind Rhys represents her life, her connection to the outside world, and most importantly the humanity he's fairly sure he lacks.
♠ Sleep is something he needs less and less of; he usually gets it by drifting in a chair or somewhere else that... well, isn't a bed. He claims insomnia when really it's just that his body is high-functioning enough not to need it. I ficced about Jack and sleep here.
♠ On that note, Jack doesn't drink; he can flood his cells with alcohol if he binges, but it cuts it very close to alcohol poisoning, which is an unpleasant way to go, and he's not interested in that kind of public loss of control these days. On the other hand, a glass or two does nothing for him.
♠ Besides, being a military man he'd rather have water; it's important to be hydrated at all times, since you never know when your next glass is coming from.
♠ Going purely by his experiences, it'd be easy to say Jack tops. However though he does like control and is usually the more outgoing person, he's pretty flexible about that sort of thing. Given that he likes a little pain in his pleasure, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say he's had his fair share of submissive experiences - one of which was with the lovely ladies who 'recruited' him to Torchwood.
♠ Extreme breathplay. That's all I'm saying.
♠ While Jack eschews sci-fi and horror in movies, claiming their inaccuracy annoys him, Michael Moorcock is one of his favourite authors, particularly Dancers at the End of Time. He's reread his copy of To Kill A Mockingbird at least a hundred times, and he owns a first edition of Agatha Christie's Smoke and Mirrors because he loved it as a teenager. He also likes the James Bond novels and the Hitch-hiker's Guide 'trilogy'. But he never really cared for Harry Potter.
♠ Jack's knowledge of pop culture is much more focused on 1900-1990. Especially these days, when Torchwood is ridiculously busy and he doesn't get out much. He probably doesn't know your canon. Sorry.
There's probably more than this but it's hard for me to remember everything I have ever come up with. Ask questions!
Will probably be added to as I see fit, and annotated when Jossed (wh-which I don't doubt I will be, since I inevitably always am.)
don't worry, this isn't just a big long Have Done list, I promise.
headcanon
♠ Born 5014. Jack doesn't remember the actual date, but somewhere around early February, give or take calendar discrepancies.
♠ The Boeshane Peninsula, is actually a small place on Earth. It's in whatever the United States became, after three thousand years of continent shift, planet colonization and rule change. The backwater town where he lived was a communal living place, where children were raised by their parents, their parents friends, and a variety of scholars. It was a fairly simplistic place; clean air, fresh food, out-door sports and live theatre. There weren't a lot of trees and "spring" and "fall" were very short seasons, thanks to the sun being bigger. Jack mostly remembers snatches of things; a song he learnt in school, listening to news on the communication devices, a game somewhere between cricket and baseball.
♠ After losing his brother and his father to the invading aliens, Jack signed up to go to war. He was fourteen, but he and his best friend lied and said they were older. He ended up a pilot in a squad of zippy little surface ships; his friend was a medic.
♠ The rest of the world wasn't as sweet and simple as his upbringing, and Jack discovered sex, drinking, and gained a reputation as a daredevil. Jack quickly became obsessed with ship-spotting; he could name the make and year just from the thrum of the engine. He also showed a natural talent for firearms.
♠ At nineteen, wracked with survivor's guilt and with a medal he didn't deserve, Jack joined the Time Agency to escape the war.
♠ He was a Time Agent for fourteen years. Five of those were in a two week timeloop with the man now calling himself John Hart (GROUNDHOG DAY~), another three were lost during a switch-and-bait jumping accident, and the last two were erased from his memory. The other four are where all his stories come from. It was a pretty dark period of his life, and he actually did a fair bit he was ashamed of, but talking about gambling just outside the Medusa Cascade or capsule-riding a Betelgeuse flare is easier than admitting how the last traces of his innocence and idealism were systematically destroyed.
♠ Jack was always a much better second-in-command than leader.
♠ He kept his cons mostly to the Earth, because it had a lot of opportunity, it was easy for him to blend in, and Time Agents usually only visited on routine business. He knew all the hotspots; the two major wars and a few minor ones, some large natural disasters... he made sure to give his own time a thousand-year berth in either direction. He was never that interested in the late 20th/early 21st Century, either, purely because of the frequency of visiting aliens who could rumble his schemes.
♠ Jack Harkness falls in love with everybody he meets, a little. But he was crazy for the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Ninth for his genius, his morality in the face of great inner darkness, his anger, and the fact that they could both flirt without it ever needing to mean anything. Rose because she was innocent and so clearly liked him, because she challenged the world, and because she was beautiful. It's been a very long time, but he still holds onto the memory of the three of them (and Mickey, I suppose) traveling around, and is slightly desperate about never letting it be something he looks back on with bitterness.
♠ When the creepy little fortune teller told him "the century will turn twice" Jack swiftly sat down and racked his memory for every single time and place he had visited during the 20th century.
♠ Jack was a fighter pilot in World War I, but his Captaincy and the stripes on his greatcoat are actually possessions of his namesake, the real Captain Jack. Not that he'd ever admit it; he's served in enough war elsewhere to earn them.
♠ He took leave from Torchwood around 1940 and traveled the world for about twenty years (doing field work and reporting back to them, of course.) Most of his international stories come from around this time.
♠ Towards the end of the fifties, Jack went blond. In '59 he had a minor solo role in a satirical Broadway musical called Springtime for Hitler.
♠ Marcel Proust, W. H. Auden, Noel Coward, and Wilfred Owen. Never Wilde or Capote. (& there is no way he was cool enough for the Beats.)
♠ "I love driving," Jack said. "I was beginning to go a little crazy before they got around to inventing it." (delicious theft is delicious.)
♠ He claims to have invented retcon, but it's actually something he synthesized based on traces of memory drug left in his own blood and a chemical compound which came through the Rift. New to Torchwood and Planet Earth, but certainly not to the universe.
♠ Is it really bravery if you can't die? All the recklessness he had enjoyed when mortal was now tinged with bitterness and slowly things he used to find great fun grew boring. Unpredictability and adrenaline are sweeter because they're rarer, these days.
♠ By the time NYE 1999 came around, Jack was incredibly suicidal. He spent a year going through the archives, wiping himself off all the records, stowing or destroying the kinds of alien toys he thought were too dangerous, rewriting the way Torchwood operated and, deep at the back of his mind, searching for something which would finally kill him.
♠ During the time when it was just he and Suzie, they were totally banging.
♠ ...I still have no headcanon for what, precisely, Jack did during the year tied up in the Valiant's boiler room, except be tortured by the Master, flirt with Martha's sister, and think too much.
♠ Jack's "fixed point in space and time" deal is essentially that his cells regenerate to the state they were when he first died and Rose Tyler revived him. However every time he dies, they're worn a little more, maybe don't regenerate quite as much, and after three thousand or so deaths, it's gotten to the point where he is actually aging - albeit very slowly.
♠ I could give you an arbitrary number of deaths Jack has had, but he's lost count. He'd lost count even before the years in the ground when all his deaths blurred together and sometimes he spent a year dead and sometimes a few minutes.
♠ These days, he's more scared of Rose Tyler than he is of the Doctor. Possibly because to some degree he understands the Doctor, now that he knows what it's like to turn people into soldiers and to watch them die.
♠ Jack does, in fact, love Gwen Cooper deeply. She reminds him a lot of his (late) wife. But he could never seduce her; not because of Ianto or work or morality but because in his mind Rhys represents her life, her connection to the outside world, and most importantly the humanity he's fairly sure he lacks.
♠ Sleep is something he needs less and less of; he usually gets it by drifting in a chair or somewhere else that... well, isn't a bed. He claims insomnia when really it's just that his body is high-functioning enough not to need it. I ficced about Jack and sleep here.
♠ On that note, Jack doesn't drink; he can flood his cells with alcohol if he binges, but it cuts it very close to alcohol poisoning, which is an unpleasant way to go, and he's not interested in that kind of public loss of control these days. On the other hand, a glass or two does nothing for him.
♠ Besides, being a military man he'd rather have water; it's important to be hydrated at all times, since you never know when your next glass is coming from.
♠ Going purely by his experiences, it'd be easy to say Jack tops. However though he does like control and is usually the more outgoing person, he's pretty flexible about that sort of thing. Given that he likes a little pain in his pleasure, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say he's had his fair share of submissive experiences - one of which was with the lovely ladies who 'recruited' him to Torchwood.
♠ Extreme breathplay. That's all I'm saying.
♠ While Jack eschews sci-fi and horror in movies, claiming their inaccuracy annoys him, Michael Moorcock is one of his favourite authors, particularly Dancers at the End of Time. He's reread his copy of To Kill A Mockingbird at least a hundred times, and he owns a first edition of Agatha Christie's Smoke and Mirrors because he loved it as a teenager. He also likes the James Bond novels and the Hitch-hiker's Guide 'trilogy'. But he never really cared for Harry Potter.
♠ Jack's knowledge of pop culture is much more focused on 1900-1990. Especially these days, when Torchwood is ridiculously busy and he doesn't get out much. He probably doesn't know your canon. Sorry.
There's probably more than this but it's hard for me to remember everything I have ever come up with. Ask questions!