#i love paisley piper so much. her voice is SO!! PRETTY!!!

[steampunk-raven]

love will find and love will prey and lock you in its gilded cage

[parabellum-rpg-archive]

Congratulations, Joss! You’ve been accepted to play Jackson Sinclair. Please make your page and send it in within 24 hours.

Admin Note: Your writing was so fun to read, but when I got to the part about Jack and his nieces/nephews I WAS READY TO SOB. (ALSO HIS CATS, IM GOING TO LITERALLY DIE) Thank you for applying and we very much look forward to writing with you! -Admin J

CHARACTER DESIRED

Jackson Sinclair

DESCRIBE THE CHARACTER IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Jackson is a good guy, which is odd, considering his line of business. His moral compass is perhaps slightly skewed, but he definitely has a code. Don’t hurt women or children, don’t enjoy violence, stay away from drugs, humiliation and cruelty aren’t good motivators, peace is better than war. He might have lived a totally normal life and just been that nice guy on your block who’d fix your car for free if you watched his kids once in a while if he’d been dealt different cards. As it is, he’s a large man with a lot of tattoos, an intimidating presence, and a scary voice, and that means most of the time, he doesn’t have to do anything to maintain the peace. And that’s really how he views his job. Sure, he’s the guy you go to when violence must occur, but perhaps because of his reticence, he’s managed to develop a good reputation. He’ll talk shit out first, and if he decides bad things have to happen, well, you must have done something really wrong. If Jack really doesn’t like you, you might as well just leave, because everyone else will assume you must be pretty fucked up. He’ll still fix your car for free, though the return favour might be something a lot more illegal than babysitting. Of course, given the Sinclair family, it could just be babysitting one of his nieces, aka making sure Paityn doesn’t die and Paisley doesn’t lose her shit on someone. He loves his nieces and nephews, they’re the closest thing he has to kids himself, and his home is always available for anyone who needs to crash there, no questions asked. Despite having a fairly safe and law-abiding youth, he’s surprisingly non-judgmental about what they get up to, as long as they’re not hurting anyone. Paityn is his baby and he frets about her constantly, Priya is the only niece he trusts with anything really important, Paisley reminds him of Piper and thus he’s easily won over by her, Sebastian reminds him of himself and he’s quietly encouraging and supportive, and Shiloh is … well, Shiloh, but Jack will follow that boy to Hell just to drag him out if necessary. The subject of Piper Moreau is forever closed as far as he’s concerned. If Morgan brings it up, he’ll pretend he’s over it, but anyone else better shut the fuck up or they’ll find out what the little-seen but much-feared Jackson Sinclair temper looks like.

WRITING SAMPLE

The day was muggy and overcast, which suited Jack’s mood. He needed to take a jog or something, but getting out of bed felt like too much work. The other side of the bed (he still couldn’t sleep in the middle even now) was empty, but he reached over to it anyway. There was no warm spot left, because no one was there, or had been there for quite some time, but he liked to pretend when it was still too early for him to register the ugly truth. Fuck, he was a drama queen. Never could get over the women who left him. His therapist would probably chalk it up to the abandonment of his mother, but Jack distrusted anything that blamed her when she’d only been doing her best. He still went to every session, and tried to talk things out, because walking around with unresolved shit was just a way to take it out on the wrong person, but part of him balked at the whole process. Irish macho bullshit, of course, but hey, hard to shake your roots, right? At least he wasn’t a drunk, or worse, though he never looked down on anyone who was. Well, guys who ditched their families to fuck around and bitch about their problems, yes (thinking of Kieran O'Connell, he made a mental note to have a word with him), but otherwise, he had a lot of sympathy. Life was hard, and not everyone got to grow up loved and cared for like he had. If you didn’t learn coping mechanisms, you just took the first thing that made life easier, and then that became your coping mechanism. Christ, if anyone heard his thoughts, they’d call him a pussy. It was hard being self-aware surrounded by the Irish. Even Freud said they were immune to therapy.

Dragging himself out of bed, he grabbed a pack of cigarettes and lit it by habit, not even fully conscious, or maybe still in that state between being awake and asleep when your mind is awake but your body isn’t. Or vice versa, who the fuck knew anyway. He should ask someone smarter than him about that. Those thoughts immediately led to Piper, but he shoved them extremely deep down, where they couldn’t touch him except in his dreams. The fucked up shit was even in his dreams, she treated him like shit, and he still didn’t want to wake up. More things to talk about with Dr. Brown. Cigarette clenched between his teeth, Jack padded around the apartment, noting idly that Paityn was sleeping on his couch again. He kept telling her to just use the guest room, but he supposed she liked it better in here. Stroking her hair gently, he tucked her in better and carefully adjusted her pillows so her neck wouldn’t hurt. In being so careful, he almost missed Shiloh on the floor, curled around a series of pillows, which made him grin and go looking for another blanket. The Sinclair siblings were a close-knit crew, often travelling in pairs or packs when danger lurked. Even if the only danger came from inside the mind of the baby of the family. Looked like he was skipping his jog and making waffles instead. Oh well. He was past forty, jogging was hardly gonna change that he wasn’t 25 anymore.

The kitchen was pristine, though that was more thanks to his cleaning lady than Jack himself. Still, he moved around in it with more confidence than any of the guys he was in charge of, who all seemed to live off of take out and food that only required a microwave. They hadn’t had Evelyn for a mother, or his grandparents, who’d all taught him that kitchens were fun, and food tasted better when you cooked it yourself and it had real ingredients in it. He tiptoed around the place, starting coffee and getting the ingredients for the waffles together without making anything more than a whisper of sound. He looked like the kind of man who stomped everywhere, but Jack had never cared for loud men. He found being silent had as much of an effect, and he didn’t like to startle people. Well, unless he had to, but that was work. In life, he preferred to walk softly and leave the big stick at home. There was a chorus of mews, and he looked down at Bedknob and Broomstick, the two alley cats that considered his apartment at least one of their bases of operations. He dragged them to the vet and bought them soft cat beds and even braved washing them when they got into something foul, but they were almost contrarily wild, in spite of all his efforts. He adored them anyway, and poured out the fanciest cat food they were willing to eat into two dishes while assuring them quietly that they were both garbage monsters. His fondness for stray animals was one of those things that Morgan was allowed to joke about, because he was Morgan and they were brothers before anything else, and no one else was allowed to mention. One of his guys had taken a pot shot at a stray dog once. Everyone still talked about that day, though not in Jack’s hearing.

The waffles were sizzling in the iron and the coffee was percolating in the elegant machine that Penny had bought him for his last birthday when he heard stirring from the other room. Paityn hovered in the doorway, always unsure in any space regardless of how many times Jack made her welcome. Scooping up Bedknob, the more cuddly of the two, Jack came over and kissed the top of her head, handing off the cat and nudging her back towards the couch. “Breakfast’ll be up in a bit, Scout. Go'n wake up that degenerate brother of yours. Tell'em he ain’t a dog, he can sleep on the furniture if he wants to.” He’d introduced his nieces, and Shiloh, to Sailor Moon, and had willingly watched the seemingly endless episodes with them when they were children, and they’d been the Sailor Scouts to him ever since, though Paityn was the only one who still allowed the nickname. He’d been the one to take them to their first R movie, and taken them all out for rides on his motorcycle, their little arms clutching his sides so tight it hurt, though he’d have rather eaten his tongue than told them to stop. He’d been the one they called or texted when they were too shitfaced to remember how to get home, or were at a party that had gotten a little too weird, or had made the kind of youthful mistakes that seemed world-ending and could never be confessed to their parents. Grabbing up a plate of waffles, he headed into the living room, telling Shiloh to get his ass off the floor, was he raised in a barn, all while handing the boy a mug of coffee just the way his nephew took it. From the outside, his life might appear lonely, but Jack had family, and that was all that mattered. And who knew, maybe he’d finally talk Shiloh into coming for a jog with him. Stranger things had happened.