Killjoy Application
Character Information
Name: Jason McConnell
Character LJ:
Original canon: bare, formerly known as bare: a pop opera
Age: 18
Race: Human/Caucasian
Physical description: Jason was blessed by the genetic gods because he’s good looking, tall and lean like a good basketball player should be, and he’s got blue eyes to die for. His hair is more brown than blond most of the time.
Abilities: No special abilities, but he is more or less a natural at basketball, acting, and schoolwork.
Please tell us about your character's background:
Jason McConnell grew up in a small town far away from Kin City, where tolerance was still a dirty word. His parents were inattentive at worst and demanding at best, expecting the best out of Jason and his twin sister Nadia at all times. His father was an athlete in high school before he became a lawyer, and then a judge; his mother is more a socialite than anything, though she claims to be a stay-at-home mom. Jason’s father expects Jason to follow in his footsteps, every last one, and their mother pressures Nadia to lose weight constantly.
In a lot of ways, they’re happier at boarding school. Jason has been living with Peter since he got set up at St. Cecelia’s, but it wasn’t until freshmen year that they realized just what a problem they had on their hands. Jason and Peter realized in those first few months of high school that they were falling in love with each other. For Jason, being gay was unacceptable. His father would beat him up or throw him out or both; being gay wasn’t a part of being the star basketball player or the valedictorian or going to the same big name school his father went to. On top of that, they were at a Catholic high school, where gay wasn’t really an option even if Jason’s father wouldn’t have flipped out.
They can’t deny their feelings to each other anymore, so they decide to keep it a secret. For a while, Peter can handle it because he’s still figuring himself out too, still building his own confidence, but eventually he starts to get antsy to tell people because eventually Peter manages the thing that Jason can’t: he accepts himself.
Jason is too busy trying to be what everyone else wants him to be to bother with stopping and figuring himself out. He has to be the perfect basketball star-especially when Peter convinces him to quit golf his sophomore year, the sport his father played and the one he’s been pushing Jason to play his whole life; Jason hated it. He couldn’t force himself to swallow golf when he also has to be the perfect student. He has to be the perfect bachelor, playfully flirting with all the girls in school, while at the same time he has to be the perfect boyfriend behind closed doors. He can’t let anyone see his doubts or his own wavering self-confidence because it would shatter their illusions of him, and then who would he be?
Senior year is when everything starts to fall apart. Peter gets drunk and tells Matt, a classmate who’s getting sick of Jason stealing his thunder so effortlessly all the time, that he and Jason are dating. Matt is in love with Ivy, the school slut more or less who has her eyes set on Jason, who is more flustered and uncertain with her attention than anything. Ivy manages to convince Jason to kiss her at her birthday party, and he succumbs because kissing her is what he was supposed to do.
Meanwhile the school is putting on a play, Romeo and Juliet. Jason surprised everyone by showing up to auditions, at Peter’s urging, and he effortlessly stole the role of Romeo out from under Matt, who wound up with Tybalt. At rehearsal, Matt calls Jason a faggot, and they get into a fight. Jason feels the danger of his and Peter’s relationship, realizes that they can’t keep going on like this because he just can’t let himself be gay, so he breaks up with Peter before spring break.
As he packs to leave and go home for the break, Ivy comes to Jason, and they wind up having sex. Jason tries to find himself somewhere in her, and she tries to find herself somewhere in him because for the first time she’s letting herself really care for someone.
Jason regrets it almost immediately. He figures out, then, that who he needs and wants is Peter, but Peter moves in with someone else after spring break and refuses to talk to Jason anymore. Ivy tries to get Jason to commit to her by confessing her love, but Jason turns her down, focusing his efforts on getting Peter to talk to him again. Finally, after Peter steps in for an absent Ivy (who is Juliet) at rehearsal, leaving him and Jason performing the Pilgrim’s Hands scene, Peter begins to cave.
At the last rehearsal for the play, Ivy corners Jason before anyone else arrives to tell him that she’s pregnant. Jason starts to think that maybe this is what he’s supposed to do, be with Ivy, but Matt bursts in, having heard everything. Peter and Nadia show up in time for Matt to announce to Peter that “Ivy’s pregnant and your boyfriend’s the dad, so what does that make you?” The truth about Jason and Peter comes out, and about Jason and Ivy, and it turns out that the whole cast of the play heard it.
Jason tries to turn to God by going to confession and the priest to ask for help, but the priest can only give him the answers he’s allowed to give, so Jason goes away feeling damned and rejected by God because he can’t turn off these feelings. During opening night of the play, he makes one last plea, begging Peter to run away with him, but Peter is too ready to move forward with his life to keep on hiding with Jason.
So Jason takes a lethal dose of GHB. He and Peter share one last tearful song in which Jason assures Peter that he’s always loved him, and then Jason hallucinates and collapses into Peter’s arms onstage.
It’s close; he almost dies, but after being rushed to the hospital, he slowly recovers. His parents by now have heard about Ivy, but no one can bring themselves to tell them about Jason and Peter. They find out when they nearly walk in on Peter kissing Jason in his hospital bed. They could’ve forgiven him for Ivy-they had nearly convinced themselves that the baby wasn’t Jason’s anyway because Ivy is a slut-but they couldn’t forgive him for what they saw with their own eyes.
Jason’s father has one initial outburst, telling Jason that he isn’t his son anymore, and he doesn’t speak to Jason again. His mother is more vocal; she persists in asking Jason what’s wrong with him, how could he do this, and she suggests that maybe it’s the drugs.
When Jason is allowed to leave the hospital, he returns home to find his things have been packed. His father is nowhere to be seen, but his mother tells him his credit card and phone have been cut off and that he has to leave. She hands him an envelope of cash like it’s an envelope full of lottery winnings, but it’s barely enough to pay for even one month of rent, and she wishes him good luck.
It’s difficult to convince Nadia to stay behind, but Jason points out that there isn’t enough money for them to live on. Nadia promises to send him whatever money she gets her hands on, and Jason goes to the only place he can think of, Kin City.
Please tell us about their personality:
For most of his life, Jason had two personalities: the one everyone saw, and the one he had to hide even from himself, with only Nadia really getting glimpses at what he’s really like inside. To the world, Jason was put-together and confident, the picture of a smooth rich boy that’s had everything just effortlessly fall into his lap his whole life.
The truth is, he worked for it. He worked for that valedictorian title, even if the grades didn’t really mean as much to him as his father’s opinion of him; he cared more about pleasing everyone else than he did about paying attention to himself and what he wanted. He spent his high school career simultaneously indulging in Peter and denying that he was gay, and that wasn’t going to change. He pushes aside the parts of him that are unsavory and tries to adapt to the situation to fit the other person’s expectation of him; he craves acceptance and approval from outside sources when he really needs to be working on his self-acceptance.
At his best, he’s funny and smart and a little quirky. At his worst, which is what he’ll be upon arriving to the game, he’s utterly destroyed. Having just attempted suicide, lost his boyfriend, impregnated a girl he couldn’t love even though he wants to, lost the two people he’s spent his whole life trying to please, and lost the one person he can still claim a connection to, Jason’s on the breaking point… still. He feels disconnected with God-now he’s even an attempted suicide victim, so he’s probably really on bad terms by now-and he feels worthless, through and through. Everyone has seen what a true failure he is, how he really struggles to be that golden boy they so want him to be, and now he doesn’t know who or what he should be.
When he enters the game, Jason will be lost and helpless for more reasons than just his inability to come to terms with himself. He’s not stupid about money, but he’s never been quite so cut off as he is now, and he isn’t doing very well. He’s drifting, inside and out. Most days he walks around feeling as gutted as the fish he handles in his job.
What is the person's housing situation?: He sleeps where he can, trying for shelters and safe places more often than not.
Job: His first week in the city, he mostly just bounced around, adjusting to the bigness and the people and the reality of his life; he finally secured a job in the Chinatown market that pays him in cash and he’s pretty sure the stuff he’s paid to do is just a front for something illegal, but he’s not asking questions. It’s money, and he’s hungry.
Please write a short sample EP (post):
Jason smells like fish pretty much all the time, no matter how much he makes use of the YMCA’s shower, but he really doesn’t mind that much. At least it breaks through the eerie numbness that’s settled over him since he woke up puking in the hospital, with a nurse standing over him looking tired and his parents off in the lobby somewhere, on their phones, trying to cover the scandal their son has caused. Nadia was there though, being sarcastic about Jason being sick even though she was crying.
He doesn’t like to think of the hospital so mostly he just doesn’t. That’s his main strategy. Whenever he wants to think about anyone, to remember anything, he just doesn’t. He doesn’t think about his parents, about Peter, about God, about Ivy and the baby; they’re just not invited into his thoughts. He does let himself have Nadia, though, because he can still call her sometimes, though they have to be careful not to let their parents overhear.
He wishes he could go to some club and get high on whatever pill people are passing out, but whenever he ventures close enough to feel the pulse of a club and the distant hum of the music from the street, his stomach turns. Suddenly he’s back in some club with his friends, with Peter sweating and laughing and bouncing around, with Ivy dripping off whatever guy comes her way; and then, just as suddenly, he’s in the hospital again with his thoughts hazed over and his stomach lurching and he’s choking on vomit.
There’s so much of him that can’t stand to wake up in the morning and roll out of bed and move through the city, but the white walls of the hospital and the over-clean stench covering up less pleasant odors are effective in turning his thoughts away from trying that again. He isn’t sure if that’s good or bad, really. Some days he wishes he could make up his mind. Maybe it’d make things easier. Mostly though, he figures he’s better off stuck in low gear.
Jason has enough money that he decides to splurge, stopping into PD Wong for some Chinese food. Maybe it lures him in because he spends all day in the Chinese marketplace, and even though sometimes it’s almost too loud and too crowded, he finds a sense of comfort in the anonymity. No one knows who he is, and no one cares if he’s even a good fish gutter. It’s almost easier when no one cares. It’s like he doesn’t exist.
There are too many families in PD Wong, and he wishes for a second he had gotten takeout instead. He hides away as best he can, slinking down in the seat, picking at his food and trying to ignore the sounds of families laughing and talking and fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and brothers and sisters. He tries to hide, keeping his head ducked, breaking every rule of polite table manners, but he’s past that, really.
Mostly he just hopes no one stares at the kid who smells like fish. If he can’t be their golden boy, he’d rather just disappear. And golden boys don’t smell like fish.