000 - intel on Jaye
Name: Jaye Tyler
Meaning: Jaye originates from the jay bird, a brightly-colored bird known for stealing shiny objects. Tyler is an occupational surname meaning "tiler of roofs." It is also the surname of the 10th U.S. President, John Tyler, who gained office by succession rather than election, had no party affiliations, and is known only for annexing the Republic of Texas.
Nicknames/Aliases: none
Age: 24
Nationality: American (East Coast)
Family: Darrin Tyler (father), Karren Tyler (mother), Sharon Tyler (sister), Aaron Tyler (brother)
Occupation: retail clerk at Wonderfalls Gift Emporium
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Marital Status: Single. Recently in a serious relationship with Eric Gotts, but then he went and remarried his hussy bride.
Physical Appearance: Though only 5'2" and scrawny, Jaye makes her presence known wherever she goes by being loud and possibly clinically insane. She has long, straight brown hair, blue eyes, and a long, thin face. She can look quite scary when she chooses, but has also been known to be cute as a button.
Canon Puncturing? If it's reasonable that your character would have seen a TV show that only ran four episodes, yes you can canon-puncture her.
AT LAST VOYAGES
Inmate: Hayley Stark
Item: The wax lion.
Room: Level 5, Room 5
Room Description: Jaye lives in a trailer. It is divided into two "rooms" by a folding screen that ties shut with a scarf. In the front "room," the walls are lined with windowseats, on which it is possible to sit and look out the tiny windows covered in drapes. There is one table with relatively comfortable benches on which to sit. Between the two "rooms" is a kitchentte, with a sink filled with dishes, a knife rack, and a window with drapes covering it. Across from the sink is a refrigerator packed full of food and probably a couple six-packs of beer. Past the kitchenette is the bedroom, in the center of which is a queen-sized bed with red sheets and a brass headboard and footboard. It looks rather antique. There's a small bedside table with a lamp, and a tiny TV on a shelf up near the ceiling. The entire room is cluttered with small animal-shaped knickknacks: a small wax figurine of a lion, a brass monkey bookend, a stuffed toy chameleon, a real stuffed bass mounted to a plaque, a wind-up penguin toy, a lawn flamingo, a cow-shaped coffee cream jar, one of those ferrets attached to a ball. The list goes on and on. It's downright creepy, is what it is.
POWERS & ABILITIES
Ability: Hearing voices?
Details: Jaye hears voices. Normally, this would be a psychosis, not a superpower, but they’re real. They speak to her through inanimate objects with animal faces (the most important being a wax figurine of a lion with a smushed face and a brass monkey bookend). If she does what they tell her to do, things work out all for the best, seemingly through a series of random coincidences. If she doesn’t do what they tell her, they keep her up all night singing. No one else can hear the animals or see them move.
HISTORY
Jaye is the youngest daughter of the wealthy uber-Republican Tyler family. Her parents, Darren and Karen, are a doctor and a best-selling author, respectively. The eldest Tyler child, Sharon, is a high-profile immigration attorney, and the middle child, Aaron, is getting his Ph.D. in theology.
Jaye attended high school in Niagara Falls, NY, with her best friend, Mahandra McGinty and her worst enemy, the blonde and bubbly Gretchen Speck. Mahandra and Gretchen had an unspoken war, which was never satisfactorily resolved before graduation. Jaye went off to Brown University, where she earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy. She's pretty sure she still has it somewhere. Immediately upon graduating from college, she moved back to Niagara Falls, into the High & Dry Trailer Park, and got a job as a retail clerk at a souvenir shop called Wonderfalls. After two years of working there, she was forced to suck it up when a teenage boy, known only as The Mouthbreather, was promoted to Assistant Manager in her stead.
After hearing this news, Jaye went out into the courtyard to eat her lunch. She accidentally choked on a piece of pb&j sandwich, which earned her a quarter from a passing stranger that rolled too close to what she was coughing up. She chucked it into the fountain, and inadvertently made a wish.
When she went back into the store, a woman demanded a refund on a wax figurine of a lion, as the lion's face was terribly deformed. The lion, in no uncertain terms, told Jaye not to give the woman her money back. Jaye ignored it, watched as the woman exited the store and promptly had her purse stolen, and fainted.
The wax lion didn't stop talking to her. Nor did a brass monkey bookend on her therapist's desk, or the wide variety of stuffed animals carried in the Wonderfalls store. In fact, if it had an animal face, it was likely to talk to Jaye. At first, she was convinced she was going crazy, but the lion led her directly to the woman's stolen purse in the trash can. And, reluctantly, she started to believe.
She tried to tell Mahandra, who thought it was merely a manifestation of her subconscious hatred of the world around her. So she turned to her brother, Aaron, who became obsessed with her "Joan of Arc" complex and went into an existential tailspin.
Meanwhile, Jaye developed a serious crush on the new bartender at her favorite local bar, the Barrel. His name was Eric Gotts, and he had recently come from New Jersey on his honeymoon, only to discover his wife, Heidi, giving the bellman "room service." He walked out on her, into the Barrel, and drank until they gave him a job. Over time, the crush became a lot more. When Heidi came back to town hoping to remarry Eric, he was perfectly happy to ignore her and stay with Jaye, but the animals told Jaye she had to let Eric go. So she pushed him away and he wound up remarrying Heidi.
A drawing of a bunny on a crate of cocktail cherries warned Jaye to "save him from her," without elaborating on who "him" or "her" actually were. Jaye's first assumption was that Heidi was planning on poisoning Eric. To make matters worse, her therapist, Dr. Ron, phoned in a complaint about her and she was arrested. She busted out of jail and stormed off to Eric and Heidi's hotel, but only wound up embarrassing everyone and alienating Eric even further.
Furious, she went to confront the monkey bookend, demanding to know why they spoke to her, convinced that this last clue was futile and that she wasn’t saving anybody from anybody. The monkey told her to lick the lightswitch. She did, causing a power outage. Then the monkey explained why they spoke to her: because she listened.
That's when it offered the job from the Admiral. Believing her life really was going nowhere, and wanting to escape all her failed relationships (not to mention the cops) and the general futility of her existence, Jaye took the job.
PERSONALITY
A prototypical 20-something “winner who hasn’t won anything yet” pretty much sums Jaye up. She goes against the grain not because she’s really different, but just for the sake of annoying people. Her family is wealthy; she lives in a trailer park. They make her go to Brown; she gets a job working retail. She has grown up watching her parents and siblings work hard, become prestigious and wealthy, and be completely miserable. Her life philosophy: she can be completely miserable without doing any work at all. All she wants is a small, boring, insignificant life where no one ever expects her to do anything.
Unfortunately, she has Great Purpose. She does not react well to this. Once she’s accepted the fact that she probably isn’t going mad and inanimate objects really are talking to her, she screams at them, melts them over hot plates, and throws them out the window in an effort to get them to shut up. They don’t. So she tries doing what they tell her, and by doing that manages to help a lot of people - family, friends, and strangers alike. Of course, none of this makes her any more popular, especially as she happens to have an unlucky streak a mile wide and is talented at accidentally getting people nearly killed. Because of the way she reacts to the animals and what they tell her - often loudly and indignantly with a touch of histrionics - she can come across as insane to outsiders. But at this point, she's almost completely positive that she's in her right mind and the rest of the world just isn't listening.
In spite of her outward spitefulness, she’s a good person at heart. She herself would deny it - she likes to keep a cold, mysterious, slightly evil aura about herself. Of course she fails miserably, not only because she is in no way mysterious, but also because she is in no way evil. Sarcastic, snippy, lazy, and often bitter, yes. But also selfless. She goes out of her way to help people, even when there’s nothing in it for her, or even if it might be against her best interests.
As for how she’ll react to being a warden, I imagine that she’ll moan and bitch about all the work she’s having to do, but it’s saving souls and she will do it. Her moral compass is completely intact, even if she hides it under the couch cushions when company comes.