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Jason Waterson by thecharacterconsultancy

JASON MELBROOK WATERSON

  • Species: Human
  • Sex: ♂
  • Age: 17
  • Height: 6ft 1in
  • Weight: Heavy-set prior to trigger event, 170lbs after it
  • Siblings: 1 sister named Jenna, 1 year older
  • Meta name: MechaBreed
  • Home: Coast City, USA

Setting Notes

The tales of extraordinary human beings have been around for millennia. In myths and stories and legends, their adventures stood like titans, facing down the impossible and completing quests that tested them in body and mind. From storyteller to storyteller, from the written word to the internet, such human beings were seen as the pinnacle of humanity’s strength and knowledge or their arrogance and hubris. Through them, humanity explained what the stars were and how the crops grew lessons, taught and wisdom spread so that each generation, no matter if they were farmer or emperor, had someone they could look up to.

Only... there is always a grain of truth to every story. The narrative may change to fit the teller’s intent but the very foundations of myth were founded in reality. It was one day on Earth, 9th of August 1945 in the sky over Nagasaki, Japan that the world became aware of just how real those stories were.

Oppenheimer and his colleagues had once thought that these bombs could’ve lit the entire planet’s atmosphere like a match to gunpowder. Instead, the world was set aflame in an entirely different way.

It was the plutonium that did it. While the Uranium had simply done its deadly work in Hiroshima with nothing more notable than the fact the bomb worked, Fat Man’s payload set off a chain reaction to long dormant forces, the explosion jump starting human evolutionary progress and taking a sledgehammer and busting down the door to the long thought unbreakable Laws of Physics and Reality.

In that moment, what had been thought to be imagination, flights of fancy contained within the pages of comics and novels and historical myths became real. The Unknown marched into the house of the Known like it owned the place and began rearranging the furniture and stealing the silverware.

he world was forever changed that day…

People with super powers (routinely called Metas (or Metahumans), supers, or mutants) have been around since 1945. Powers can range from super-strength to inter-dimensional hopping.

Politics between the Metas has led to periodic fights which can be highly destructive and dangerous to non-Metas. There is a colour-coded warning system in place for non-Metas, however it is not foolproof. Clean-up crews of Metas exist but they are sometimes limited in terms of what they can do.

The government has tried interacting with the Metas in a handful of ways, including sponsorship and introducing legislation, however the legislation did not have the desired effect. Heroic Metas stated that the legislation discouraged them from using their powers at all, and villains used the heroic Metas' lack of motivation to pursue their goals.

A note should be made here about the existence of a league of Meta heroes called the Corp of Champions, which is based in America.

The Corp Of Champions is a centralized heroic enforcement group that is officially endorsed by the United States government and works in a capacity not unlike local branches of the FBI. Those who wish to use their powers without risking arrest for vigilantism, which isn’t illegal but highly discouraged, and can get training as well as the ability to testify in court with their masks on among other privileges.

Jason is an original character from [i]Universe 216[/i]. He is an anxious figure and a nerdy perfectionist who prefers to have time to himself. He also has a super-power that allows him to make advanced technology. In the present day Jason is 17 and is still discovering his self-confidence enough to follow his dreams.

Trust & Confidence

Baby

Jason’s mother has always been a kind and loving woman. She already had a 1 year old daughter by the time Jason came along, so she had enough experience in looking after an infant to be well prepared for Jason.

Overall, Jason was a quiet baby. However, he very much liked being held and would wail loudly in protest sometimes, when she would put him down, to try and stay in her arms. His mum responded to this by encouraging Jason’s father to hold him, but at this early stage at least, Jason preferred his mum and wanted hugs only from her.

He did not give his mother any unpleasant surprises – again, she had already raised a baby by the time she had Jason – but she did switch him from the breast to formula early on so that he did not bite her.

Overall, Jason moved on to toddlerhood with a vague sense that he wanted mum to stay around just a bit longer. He may have felt the separation from her due to the change from breast to bottle, and his mother also had to focus on a more active 1 year old at this time, so her attention was inevitably divided to an extent despite her best efforts.

Freedom & Self-Determination

Toddler

Jason became a tad clingy as a toddler. It wasn’t extreme by any means, but he preferred to be around them and only turned his attention away for long enough to explore a room or other new environment if he was sure his mum and older sister were still there.

Of his mother and sister, it was his sister who was less prepared for Jason to cling to her. She was only one year old so did not understand at first that she was his big sister and what that would mean for their relationship, but as he followed her around more and more, she started to resent it.

While growing up, he preferred ‘exploration’ in the form of taking things apart to see how they worked. He also enjoyed playing with Lego.

Jason's father, Ryan, mostly ignored him during his toddler years. Part of this was due to Ryan's long working hours. The other part of the reason would become apparent in the years to come: Ryan could be a very demanding father, and perhaps he did not feel that Jason, as a toddler, had the capacity to impress him.

As a teenager in the current day, he still prefers to spend time with his mum and sister to going out.

Ambition

Young childhood

When Jason grew old and stable enough on his feet, he used his new stability! He was an energetic child and on top of that, kept having to be reminded to use his indoor voice.

He felt proud of his achievements - anything he did or made - and showed them off. However, his dad had a way of being discouraging towards Jason, enough so that over time, Jason became less keen to show off the fruits of his efforts to his dad. He still liked showing things off to other people, though, and his mother was more supportive. Jason learned to approach her first if he wanted a positive reaction to something he had made, and if his father was around when his mother reacted positively towards something, he would be more positive too. With that said, Ryan often did so in a more grudging way, to humour his wife. Jason was too young to pick up on sarcasm but he did recognise something of his father's reluctance to support his efforts.

As Ryan's negativity towards Jason became more apparent, Jenna became more protective towards Jason. She noticed their father's reaction to Jason's achievements, and protected her little brother as best she could by deflecting the worst of their dad's deprecating comments, covering for both, teasing Jason until he felt passionate again about the things he had shown signs of enjoying, and talking him out of his self-defeating moods.

All of this had a positive and lasting effect, and Jason moved on from this life stage with the desire to form ambitions to strive for. In fact, he decided that when he grew up, he would like to work with metahumans.

Productivity

Older childhood

Jason's schooling was such that he got a whole cast of new schoolmates when he was around 7 years old. At first he felt excited at the idea of having lots of new friends with whom he could share his interests. Then the weight of the difficulty of his schoolwork began to weigh on him.

As his schoolwork began to get more demanding, Jason started to feel more anxious about his ability to meet his teachers’ expectations. It wasn’t that he found the tasks themselves difficult, it was more that he wanted to complete them perfectly, with no flaws and nothing left incomplete or undone. Even if he worked on a task himself, and made sure he had dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, he would still worry that it was incomplete. As his teachers became more demanding, the spectre of the 'demanding other' had reared its head again.

Jason's approach was rather different however, when it came to group work. He didn't want to be the weak link, so he would work hard to contribute his share. He was not competitive by nature and only ever wanted to do his best. He found it easier to contribute to a group than to work alone as he tended to stall when working alone under the pressure he put himself under to do a perfect job, but he didn't find it that much easier working in groups, where he would harshly compare his own efforts to those of others, even if he was told his efforts were good enough.

As a result of this, he expected others in the group to do their share of the work too, and slackers became a pet hate of his.

He took up writing, but perhaps because writing is an inexact science beyond grammatical correctness and similar technical issues, he became discouraged and gave it up again. He would continue to take it up, only to give it up again, a few times throughout the rest of his childhood.

Jason’s father, as ever, was not supportive of his schoolwork efforts. Whenever Jason would get involved in a project or achieve something he would bring it – or his own portion of it – home, his dad would invariably find fault, either with the project itself or something unrelated. On one such occasion, Jason brought home a set of history notes he had written with the intention of turning them into a cliff notes history book to help with a school project, and showed his dad. His dad asked, “why are you messing around with history when your math is so bad?”

This, and other, similar responses from his father left its mark on a boy already prone to anxiety about his readiness to take on tasks. Jason responded to his dad’s criticism by trying to think of everything, to prepare for everything, and to execute it perfectly. The ultimate problem was, that no matter how thoroughly he prepared, he never felt as if it was enough, that there was always something he had failed to account for.

Jason did not get feedback from his mother about this so he assumed that she felt the same way. He never raised the issue with her, so never dispelled this notion.

He was so good at English that he could get straight As every time, but found math particularly difficult. He would study for weeks before a math test but despite his best efforts, would still only get Cs at best, and even these were rare.

His father kept on being critical. In time Jason became discouraged about math and stopped putting in as much effort as he previously had, to excel.

As a result of all this, Jason became prone to seeking comfort and escapism. His main interests included heroes, Lego, and good food. This didn't help him to transition to school and put him on the back foot whenever his father criticised his work and would use his interests to belittle him.

Child to Adult Transition

Adolescence

Jason’s perfectionism made presenting himself in public difficult. To him, his heavy-set physique seemed imperfect, so he felt disinclined to wear clothes that drew attention to himself or implied that he took pride in his appearance. He made the decision a handful of times to get fit, but he lacked confidence, and lost motivation when his efforts didn't show encouraging results soon enough.

The difficulties Jason had had with his studies (in particular his math studies) had discouraged him on a more ongoing basis, and whenever he found himself working in a subject that he found more difficult, he struggled to keep up with his studies. It felt to him as if he wouldn't get the result he wanted, so did not feel that the extra effort would be worthwhile.

Jason’s father took a job overseas when Jason himself was 15. Jason did not make any particular effort to stay in touch with him. Once he had adjusted to his father's absence he began to increase in confidence, and in time, started going to church again with his mum and Jenna. As more time went by, he started noticing the positivity of his family and friends more; they encouraged him to take up writing again, and he did. This led him to start working on his podcast.

At around the same time, Jason met Adrien. Adrien approached him during lunch one day to ask Jason about the Corp of Champions tshirt Jason was wearing. Both of them discovered a mutual interest in, and knowledge of, Metas, and they became fast friends.

Like most teenagers, Jason didn't care about politics, until some of the more vocal Metas voiced some unsettling opinions about people of colour that made it clear that Jason - being black - wouldn't want to run into them in a dark alley.

This was Jason's other reason, improved confidence aside, for starting the podcast with Adrien talking about Metas, which they called the HHP, or the Hero Hour Podcast. Between them, they used it to give as balanced, as unbiased a view of Metas as they could. It took them a couple of years to reach the point of deciding to plan and make the podcast, so they only started preparing to make it when Jason was 17.

It was during the preparation to make the first episode of the podcast that Jason got his superpowers. He developed a super-powered ability to build super-advanced technology.

Jason became more active in his efforts to work with Metas. He makes super technology and does some hero work, although as a natural home-bird he finds it nerve-wracking.

For a while, Jason has looked up to the world's most powerful super, Mister Impossible as a role model.

In addition to the usual physical changes that come with puberty, Jason has had to cope with changes as a result of his gaining of his super powers and the pursuit of his hero work, although so far he has managed to keep this concealed from his friends and family.

Despite his preference for staying at home and for dedicating himself to creating tech, Jason is a likeable character who has attracted a group of friends. They recognise his tendency to hide himself away and encourage him to come and spend time with them, and when they remind him, he sometimes does.

One of his group has a crush on him but so far, he is oblivious to this. So far, to him, love comes from his family, so when he wants to feel emotional closeness he gets it from his mum and sister. At the current time - the age of 17 - Jason has yet to have an intimate sexual relationship with anyone.

Jason would like to get a job. However, the economic situation where he lives makes finding work very difficult. Coast City, like many other cities, was already in economic decline in 2008 when the global recession hit, and it is still trying to recover in the present day. In addition to this, the city has been attracting large businesses (including those in the electronics sector) and these have disrupted the job industry, putting smaller, established businesses out of the market and replacing them with large chains that offer minimum-wage work.

However, not all of the difficulties Jason has experienced are outside of his control: he rarely dresses well for the interviews he has gotten.

Closeness in Relationships

Young adulthood

Jason has not reached this life stage yet but is shaping up to be a friendly, likeable man outside his father’s influence. He lives a philosophy of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you', enjoys bonds with a relatively small number of people to whom he is very loyal and whom he trusts.

Overall, however the details of his life turn out, he will be able to connect and cooperate with others well enough to work well together, and form mutually enriching friendships.

Passing on Responsibility

Middle age

Jason has not reached this stage of his life yet and has too much to do to establish his own expertise and/or career before he can start to consider passing on any attendant responsibilities to the next generation, along with helping the next generation by using his skills.

End of Life

Old age

Jason hasn't given death much thought. Part of the reason for this is that he doesn't feel as if it is likely that he will leave many people behind who will care about him, aside from his mother and sister. Both are older than him so this does not provide much of an incentive for him to consider the impact of his own mortality.

Jason Waterson

thecharacterconsultancy

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