about | a character study with notes on headcanon
Personality:
✧ On the surface seems to be either simple and almost childish or withdrawn and standoffish (it depends on his mood), but there is a lot of depth to him that most people don't see, either because they never get close enough or they don't want to see it
✧ Energetic, intense, restless, rebellious, straight-forward
✧ Honest... for the most part. He generally tells it as he sees it
✧ Not above being manipulative, but it's never out of meanness. Doesn't make him any less of an asshole for it, though, especially since he doesn't always feel bad for it. He's willing to do whatever it takes to reach his goal
✧ In this way, he has the potential to be ruthless, so it's a really good thing he's a good guy at heart. He tries not to screw people over if he can help it
✧ Action-oriented; indeed, action-driven
✧ Very smart; always needs something to do or he gets bored... and that's when he gets himself into trouble
✧ Promiscuous and flirty
✧ Not known for having lasting romantic relationships
✧ A charmer
✧ As cliché as it is, part of the reason why Jim likes sex so much and will pull stupid, reckless, life-threatening stunts is that it makes him feel alive and free and not weighed down by any limitations or trapped by anything. It isn't the act of defying death itself that he gets a kick out of; it's the aftermath, that surge of relief and being so aware that he is still alive that he thrives on.
✧ Once something catches his interest, he'll sit down and research the heck out of it... and then he'll want to go play with whatever he's looked up, one way or another
✧ Pretty damn tech-savvy, considering he hacked Spock's own programming
✧ Once he sets his mind on something, he DOES IT. It doesn't matter how much preparation and work and research he'll need to put into it -- He'll do it. There is no stopping him. He is very headstrong and stubborn
✧ Aims to make people laugh, so he'll say and do stupid stuff just for the lulz
✧ Confident and, for the most part, self-assured. Known for his ego. It gets him into trouble
✧ Speaking of trouble, he is a trouble magnet
✧ Has a tendency to toss the rulebook out the window if he thinks it'll get in the way of doing what he believes to be right
✧ "Leaps before looking," although in many cases, it seems he leaps before looking. It's more that he'll look and consider and think about it -- Just faster than other people can follow. And just because he looks, that doesn't mean he makes the smart decision; the choices he makes during these times are almost always based on emotion and intuition
✧ Refuses to accept defeat; "I don't believe in no-win scenarios." It is honestly impossible for him to give up.
✧ A social person, but, in a way, he's a selectively social one; there are certain people, his closest people, that he relies on for validation and he needs to have them around constantly. Even if they're not constantly together, he wants -- needs -- to know what they're doing and where they're doing it and who they're doing it with, just so he knows what they're up to and knows that they're safe and happy
✧ Is also a social person in the way that in order to recharge and really feel better about himself when he's feeling down, he needs to be surrounded by people he likes and trusts
✧ Failing that, he needs to be surrounded by people period. He always needs people to talk to, people to interact with, although if they drive him nuts in a way he doesn't actually like... B| fuck that noise
✧ Has a knack for connecting with the people he meets without really trying; his confident nature and Kirk charm have something to do with this
✧ He's also accepting of people as they are and doesn't have a habit of judging people ... unless he has a bad first impression of them, but even then...
✧ He doesn't really hold grudges. When talking to old!Spock, he tells him that he thinks that young!Spock hates him -- he has the opportunity to say "We hate each other," but he doesn't. He says "You hate me." He didn't hold anything against Spock except extreme frustration because they clashed so badly. He also offers to save Nero and his crew at the end of the movie, even though Nero was responsible for his father's death and the destruction of Vulcan and most of its people.
✧ Secret sweetheart; he wants people -- especially his favorite people -- to be happy and he'll do everything in his power to make sure they are
✧ Needs to be needed, needs to be important. Even for all his confidence, if he feels he doesn't have a purpose in his setting, he tends to go stir-crazy and that's when he starts acting more rebellious and starts getting in unnecessary fights
✧ Adaptable, bounces back from any difficulty, thinks quick on his feet, impulsive
✧ For all his happy bouncy "hey hey guys let's go we can do ANYTHING" attitude, his inner monologue tends to be more serious than most people would think
✧ Does a lot of thinking when left on his own. This, coupled with his social must-have-his-favorite-people-nearby-always mindset, can lead to brooding
✧ For all his ego, there is ooone little hitch in his confidence: he has abandonment issues, as addressed in the Headcanon section below
✧ For all his ego and confidence, it needs to be refilled -- This is another time when he turns to his closest people for support. He not only needs people to believe in him, he needs to know they believe in him, and occasionally he needs to be reminded
✧ For all his social nature, it can be hard to get close. He has a surprisingly small inner circle. These are his dearest, most precious people in the world, and he wouldn't know what he'd do without them. He would be able to function and be himself and be successful, yes; he is independent. But he wouldn't be as truly happy as he could be, and he knows it.
Canon:
History
✧ Son to George and Winona Kirk.
✧ Named after his grandfathers.
✧ His dad was an officer in Starfleet, and the first officer of the USS Kelvin.
✧ His dad was known for leaping without looking, something Jim inherited.
✧ On the day he was born, his parents were on board the USS Kelvin. However, the ship was attacked by the Romulan mining vessel the Narada, which was actually a ship from the next century sent back in time via a black hole. The captain, Robeau, was ordered to board the enemy ship for negotiations, where he was there killed. The Kelvin was evacuated, but George had to stay behind in order to sail the ship into the Narada in order to buy time for the escape shuttles to get away. Jim was born on board the medical shuttle. The last thing his father did was help his mother name him and tell her he loved her.
✧ Raised in Iowa.
✧ His mother remarried.
✧ As a kid, he stole the family's 1965 Chevy Corvette while his mother was off-planet and drove it off a cliff into a quarry. He jumped out of the car in time to be cheeky to the police officer who was chasing him.
✧ When he was 22, he got in a barfight with some Starfleet cadets. He was rescued by Captain Pike, who then talked to him about his dad and suggested he enlist in Starfleet.
✧ After some consideration, Jim enlisted in Starfleet. On the shuttle to the Academy, he meets the freshly divorced Leonard H. McCoy, who he befriends and gives the nickname "Bones" after some of the first words Jim hears from his mouth. "I got nowhere else to go, the ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I got left is my bones."
✧ Three years later, Jim (now age twenty-five) takes the impossible-to-win test called the Kobayashi Maru, a simulation based on a no-win scenario ... for the third time. This time, he cheats, using a subroutine (virus? lol) to change the program to make it winnable.
✧ An academic hearing takes place. Jim gets called on his bull.
✧ The hearing is interrupted by a distress call from the planet Vulcan. Starfleet sends out their ships. Jim is on academic probation so he should be grounded, but Bones smuggles him in anyway.
✧ The Narada is back, and this time they're planning on blowing up Vulcan with black hole-creating technology. Most of the starships sent to help Vulcan are destroyed, save the Enterprise. Captain Pike is taken hostage by the Narada. Vulcan is destroyed. Spock's mother is among those killed. Spock becomes the acting captain and, though Jim was promoted to first officer, he has an argument with Spock about the next course of action and gets marooned on the ice planet Delta Vega for insubordination.
✧ There, Jim meets an older Spock from an alternate reality. He explains via mindmeld to Jim the story. In the alternate reality, Romulus was destroyed by a supernova though Spock promised to save it with black hole-creating technology. The black hole sucked in both Spock and the Narada and they were sent "back in time," but they emerged in Jim's reality at different times. Nero, the captain of the Narada, stranded Spock on Delta Vega to make him helplessly watch the destruction of his home planet. All of Nero's actions, starting with the attack on the USS Kelvin and continuing on with that day's events, were about getting revenge on Spock and the Federation. Now, Nero is headed for Earth to destroy it, too.
✧ Old!Spock and Jim head to the Starfleet outpost on the planet. There, they meet engineer Montgomery Scott. Old!Spock uses future technology to beam Jim and Scotty to the Enterprise after telling Jim to get control of the ship by proving that the younger Spock was emotionally compromised. Jim manages to trigger Spock's emotions and gets the crap beat out of him. Spock nearly chokes him to death before he is stopped. Spock resigns captainship and Jim takes over.
✧ The Enterprise sneaks up on the Narada. Spock and Jim beam aboard the mining vessel to locate the black hole-creating technology and Captain Pike. With their efforts and those of the crew of the Enterprise, Nero is stopped before the Earth can be destroyed. Jim offers to save Nero and the crew of the Narada, but Nero refuses and the ship is destroyed.
✧ After the Enterprise is repaired, it sets off again, this time with Jim as its proper captain and Spock as its first officer. Other commanding officers include Bones as commanding medical officer and Scotty as chief engineer. Other key players in the plot include Nyota Uhura, communications officer; Hikaru Sulu, helmsman; and Pavel Chekov, navigator.
Headcanon:
History
✧ Since there are like four versions of Jim's background (Original Series, finalized movie version, original script version, and novelization), I decided to just kind of... splice them.
✧ As such, Jim has his older brother George Samuel, also known as Sam. I'm going with that name even though I'm pretty sure in the deleted scene he's called Johnny because... that's the name of TOS Kirk's brother. Nero didn't mess up the timeline until Jim was born, so his older brother should still be the same.
✧ Family: George Kirk, deceased father. Winona Kirk, mother. Nameless stepfather. George Samuel, older brother. Frank, uncle on his mother's side.
✧ After his mother remarried, she was off-planet a lot (because she and her new husband were a part of Starfleet, too??). She left Jim and his brother in the care of her brother Frank, who was abusive to the boys though she never knew this.
✧ Deleted Scene: The day Jim drove the car off a cliff, Frank kicked his brother out of the house. Or, well. Sam ran away from home. Or both. He kept telling Jim to wash the car (so he could sell it, according to the novelization), and Sam told Jim that it wasn't even Frank's car, it was their dad's. While Jim was cleaning the inside of the car, he found the keys, and the plan formed in his head.
✧ It's also discovered in the deleted scene that Jim used to be a good kid, always following the rules and getting good marks in school... unlike his older brother.
✧ Headcanon: Jim didn't really have any intentions of jumping out of the car when it went over the cliff. It was a last-minute decision, an impulse thing, which is why he almost didn't make it out. The reasoning in his nine/ten-year-old mind was that anything was better than staying in that house alone with Frank.
✧ Tarsus IV didn't happen for Jim. I considered incorporating it, but it just didn't fall in line with his characterization.
✧ Jim secretly has abandonment issues because of his mother. He doesn't hold anything against her or his stepfather, though part of him feels frustrated and hurt by his mother never realizing that her brother was abusive to the boys. All the same, he... really can't handle being left. This is one reason why he kept people at arm's length as a teenager, and why he subconsciously still does. He may be social and he may get along and connect with a lot of people, but there's still a barrier there and not a lot of people are really close to him.
✧ His brother running away from home also cemented his abandonment issues. Sam and Jim were really close, and Sam always stuck up for and protected him. But after he left... Well. Sam said Jim would be fine. So of course he was fine. Right? He's always fine. Why wouldn't he be?
✧ Oh, look, heyyyyy Jim is a ladies' man and sleeps around and isn't stated to have had any serious/steady relationships. Abandonment issues with his mom? Was abused as a kid, at least verbally (and it wouldn't be a stretch to say physically as well)? HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
✧ Bones is one of the few people that close to him. If there's anything Jim wouldn't trade, it's his relationship with Bones. Bones grounds him and patches him up after he gets hurt after pulling stupid stunts. He never had a true best friend before Bones; before that, all he really had was his brother, who was older and somewhat distant anyway.
✧ Deleted Scenes: Jim talks Gaila into opening an email at a certain time on a certain day ... And that's how the subroutine gets into the Kobayashi Maru programming. He later tries to apologize, but he confused another Orion girl for her instead. He does feel really bad. :c
✧ He really likes Gaila. They understand each other and get along really well. She's just... one of the people he holds at a distance because she has the chance of getting really close to him, of getting under his skin (and she's under his skin more than he realizes anyway). It's that distance that allowed him to use her like that, because he normally doesn't use people he's attached to.
Quirks and Habits:
✧ Jim likes to play with hair. Yes, really. It actually started when he was a kid when his mom would let him play with her hair, and from there it became a gesture that he uses to express affection and closeness.
✧ He's a very physical person. His face and body language are expressive -- It's not really that he wears his heart on his sleeve, it's just how he expresses himself. He's not always so good with words because he's better at just feeling things and acting on them.
✧ It can be predicted that physical contact is important to Jim -- and it is. But because he's not an insecure person, and actually quite the opposite, normally he doesn't need other people to express themselves physically in order to get their point across. He, however, does. It's kind of a one-sided thing.
✧ He likes making people laugh. When he goes out to pick up girls, it doesn't matter if his lines are good or not -- It's about whether or not they can make them laugh. Make them laugh and it puts them in a good mood, and they're more likely to choose to go back with you instead of some other guy.
✧ ... so he says. But he really does thrive on making people laugh and smile. This comes from his childhood, where he'd want to make his mother, you guessed it, laugh and smile. He fell in love with that feeling, because cheering her up like that was the best one in the world, and it stuck.
✧ He can do household chores, but he is a fail cook. It's not that eating what he makes will make you sick. He just tends to overcook everything probably because he gets distracted and doesn't pay attention.
✧ His tension point is in his neck and shoulders. This is because when he gets stressed, he hunches up. Also his jaw, because he clenches it.
✧ Allergic to almost everything. Okay, so that's an exaggeration. But he is allergic to a ridiculous amount of stuff. I'm not certain on specifics yet, but I'm pretty sure he's allergic to both peanuts and pet dandruff, as a start. Medicines are also included in this. You can imagine the living hell Bones's life must be as his doctor.
✧ I think as a general rule I'm going to go with "if it's a common allergy, Jim has it." Pet dandruff, peanuts, etc. But, uh. I dunno. I'm having trouble being consistent with things, sooo. >> << >>;
✧ Doesn't believe in God or anything like that, but he does believe things happen for a reason and he's rather fond of old folksy church songs. They're associated with good memories in his mind.
✧ Jim is ticklish. His weak points are the (both) sides of his ribs, the bottoms of his feet, and a few other places he's not willing to divulge in case anyone decides to use this information against him.
✧ Tickle at your own risk, though. He flails while he's being tickled and even he doesn't know where he'll be kicking until it's all ready happened.
✧ Dislikes the concept of fate/destiny being a fixed thing. He's in charge of his own life, he's going to make his own future, it's his and he can change it and make it into whatever he wants.
✧ A big baby when it comes to the doctor's office. You don't even want to know how he is at the dentist's.
✧ Hates feeling trapped in any way, shape, or form.
✧ Horrible at remembering lists and things like that. He's much better with more practical things that he can get his hands on and/or experience for himself. For example, he's really good at remembering terrain and maps and such.
✧ When he gets intense and focused, he tends to set and tuck his jaw closer to his body, and his eyes become centered and aimed directly at whatever or whoever he's focusing on. See: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 . I SWEAR I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP.
Triggers and Issues
✧ His top trigger: His father. Whenever his father comes up in conversation, he has a set process of reactions. First, something in him stills, usually only notable in his eyes. There is often an underlying note of panic; when Spock brings up his father's death at the academic hearing, Jim glances back at the audience -- likely, back at Bones, as if silently pleading for support. However, he continued to avoid eye contact with Spock and tried to act off-hand, as if he didn't know what he was talking about, as if there was nothing wrong. After Spock kept pushing the topic, Jim's jaw set and he became defensive, attempting to deflect the topic. After Spock continued to push it, Jim fell silent.
✧ At an earlier time, when Pike was talking to Jim at the bar and kept bringing up his father, Jim stayed in the first few stages. He stayed off-handish, sarcastic, and defensive, always trying to change the topic or make it seem like a big deal, even going so far as to be skeptic and bitter of his father's heroic action. (Granted, he was also drunk and just had the shit beat out of him. He pretty much hated life at that point in time.)
✧ When the Enterprise first came upon the Narada, Jim took on very specific body language. His shoulders hunched, his jaw set and angled in slightly towards his chest, and his eyes centered and angled forward (see this icon, and this one, too). The emotions burning in his eyes (and inside him) were... intense, and bordering on hate, but never quite reached that point. His blood ran hot and cold at once, his throat constricted, it was like he only had eyes for that ship, the one that killed his father. It's an indescribable thing because of all the layers to it, but that moment cemented the fact that his father's death is his trigger.
✧ Jim also has strong issues with abuse of any kind. He will not stand for it, he will not sit by and let it happen, he will get passionately involved and will not back down until it is resolved. This is all connected to growing up under Frank's roof. Concepts and behavior that Jim will react strongly to in this way include people following orders or living their lives the way someone else tells them to seemingly without inputting their own will or making their own decision about it; someone trying to Control another person's life; any insinuation that any person is useless or worthless or unwanted; and... more that I haven't discovered yet. Jim won't tell me a lot about this, either, so it's kind of a "find out as we go" thing.
✧ As mentioned before, Jim has abandonment issues due to his experiences with his mother and his brother (and also, on a deeper level, his father). These have compounded and led into commitment issues, which has also been discussed above.
✧ On the surface seems to be either simple and almost childish or withdrawn and standoffish (it depends on his mood), but there is a lot of depth to him that most people don't see, either because they never get close enough or they don't want to see it
✧ Energetic, intense, restless, rebellious, straight-forward
✧ Honest... for the most part. He generally tells it as he sees it
✧ Not above being manipulative, but it's never out of meanness. Doesn't make him any less of an asshole for it, though, especially since he doesn't always feel bad for it. He's willing to do whatever it takes to reach his goal
✧ In this way, he has the potential to be ruthless, so it's a really good thing he's a good guy at heart. He tries not to screw people over if he can help it
✧ Action-oriented; indeed, action-driven
✧ Very smart; always needs something to do or he gets bored... and that's when he gets himself into trouble
✧ Promiscuous and flirty
✧ Not known for having lasting romantic relationships
✧ A charmer
✧ As cliché as it is, part of the reason why Jim likes sex so much and will pull stupid, reckless, life-threatening stunts is that it makes him feel alive and free and not weighed down by any limitations or trapped by anything. It isn't the act of defying death itself that he gets a kick out of; it's the aftermath, that surge of relief and being so aware that he is still alive that he thrives on.
✧ Once something catches his interest, he'll sit down and research the heck out of it... and then he'll want to go play with whatever he's looked up, one way or another
✧ Pretty damn tech-savvy, considering he hacked Spock's own programming
✧ Once he sets his mind on something, he DOES IT. It doesn't matter how much preparation and work and research he'll need to put into it -- He'll do it. There is no stopping him. He is very headstrong and stubborn
✧ Aims to make people laugh, so he'll say and do stupid stuff just for the lulz
✧ Confident and, for the most part, self-assured. Known for his ego. It gets him into trouble
✧ Speaking of trouble, he is a trouble magnet
✧ Has a tendency to toss the rulebook out the window if he thinks it'll get in the way of doing what he believes to be right
✧ "Leaps before looking," although in many cases, it seems he leaps before looking. It's more that he'll look and consider and think about it -- Just faster than other people can follow. And just because he looks, that doesn't mean he makes the smart decision; the choices he makes during these times are almost always based on emotion and intuition
✧ Refuses to accept defeat; "I don't believe in no-win scenarios." It is honestly impossible for him to give up.
✧ A social person, but, in a way, he's a selectively social one; there are certain people, his closest people, that he relies on for validation and he needs to have them around constantly. Even if they're not constantly together, he wants -- needs -- to know what they're doing and where they're doing it and who they're doing it with, just so he knows what they're up to and knows that they're safe and happy
✧ Is also a social person in the way that in order to recharge and really feel better about himself when he's feeling down, he needs to be surrounded by people he likes and trusts
✧ Failing that, he needs to be surrounded by people period. He always needs people to talk to, people to interact with, although if they drive him nuts in a way he doesn't actually like... B| fuck that noise
✧ Has a knack for connecting with the people he meets without really trying; his confident nature and Kirk charm have something to do with this
✧ He's also accepting of people as they are and doesn't have a habit of judging people ... unless he has a bad first impression of them, but even then...
✧ He doesn't really hold grudges. When talking to old!Spock, he tells him that he thinks that young!Spock hates him -- he has the opportunity to say "We hate each other," but he doesn't. He says "You hate me." He didn't hold anything against Spock except extreme frustration because they clashed so badly. He also offers to save Nero and his crew at the end of the movie, even though Nero was responsible for his father's death and the destruction of Vulcan and most of its people.
✧ Secret sweetheart; he wants people -- especially his favorite people -- to be happy and he'll do everything in his power to make sure they are
✧ Needs to be needed, needs to be important. Even for all his confidence, if he feels he doesn't have a purpose in his setting, he tends to go stir-crazy and that's when he starts acting more rebellious and starts getting in unnecessary fights
✧ Adaptable, bounces back from any difficulty, thinks quick on his feet, impulsive
✧ For all his happy bouncy "hey hey guys let's go we can do ANYTHING" attitude, his inner monologue tends to be more serious than most people would think
✧ Does a lot of thinking when left on his own. This, coupled with his social must-have-his-favorite-people-nearby-always mindset, can lead to brooding
✧ For all his ego, there is ooone little hitch in his confidence: he has abandonment issues, as addressed in the Headcanon section below
✧ For all his ego and confidence, it needs to be refilled -- This is another time when he turns to his closest people for support. He not only needs people to believe in him, he needs to know they believe in him, and occasionally he needs to be reminded
✧ For all his social nature, it can be hard to get close. He has a surprisingly small inner circle. These are his dearest, most precious people in the world, and he wouldn't know what he'd do without them. He would be able to function and be himself and be successful, yes; he is independent. But he wouldn't be as truly happy as he could be, and he knows it.
Canon:
History
✧ Son to George and Winona Kirk.
✧ Named after his grandfathers.
✧ His dad was an officer in Starfleet, and the first officer of the USS Kelvin.
✧ His dad was known for leaping without looking, something Jim inherited.
✧ On the day he was born, his parents were on board the USS Kelvin. However, the ship was attacked by the Romulan mining vessel the Narada, which was actually a ship from the next century sent back in time via a black hole. The captain, Robeau, was ordered to board the enemy ship for negotiations, where he was there killed. The Kelvin was evacuated, but George had to stay behind in order to sail the ship into the Narada in order to buy time for the escape shuttles to get away. Jim was born on board the medical shuttle. The last thing his father did was help his mother name him and tell her he loved her.
✧ Raised in Iowa.
✧ His mother remarried.
✧ As a kid, he stole the family's 1965 Chevy Corvette while his mother was off-planet and drove it off a cliff into a quarry. He jumped out of the car in time to be cheeky to the police officer who was chasing him.
✧ When he was 22, he got in a barfight with some Starfleet cadets. He was rescued by Captain Pike, who then talked to him about his dad and suggested he enlist in Starfleet.
✧ After some consideration, Jim enlisted in Starfleet. On the shuttle to the Academy, he meets the freshly divorced Leonard H. McCoy, who he befriends and gives the nickname "Bones" after some of the first words Jim hears from his mouth. "I got nowhere else to go, the ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I got left is my bones."
✧ Three years later, Jim (now age twenty-five) takes the impossible-to-win test called the Kobayashi Maru, a simulation based on a no-win scenario ... for the third time. This time, he cheats, using a subroutine (virus? lol) to change the program to make it winnable.
✧ An academic hearing takes place. Jim gets called on his bull.
✧ The hearing is interrupted by a distress call from the planet Vulcan. Starfleet sends out their ships. Jim is on academic probation so he should be grounded, but Bones smuggles him in anyway.
✧ The Narada is back, and this time they're planning on blowing up Vulcan with black hole-creating technology. Most of the starships sent to help Vulcan are destroyed, save the Enterprise. Captain Pike is taken hostage by the Narada. Vulcan is destroyed. Spock's mother is among those killed. Spock becomes the acting captain and, though Jim was promoted to first officer, he has an argument with Spock about the next course of action and gets marooned on the ice planet Delta Vega for insubordination.
✧ There, Jim meets an older Spock from an alternate reality. He explains via mindmeld to Jim the story. In the alternate reality, Romulus was destroyed by a supernova though Spock promised to save it with black hole-creating technology. The black hole sucked in both Spock and the Narada and they were sent "back in time," but they emerged in Jim's reality at different times. Nero, the captain of the Narada, stranded Spock on Delta Vega to make him helplessly watch the destruction of his home planet. All of Nero's actions, starting with the attack on the USS Kelvin and continuing on with that day's events, were about getting revenge on Spock and the Federation. Now, Nero is headed for Earth to destroy it, too.
✧ Old!Spock and Jim head to the Starfleet outpost on the planet. There, they meet engineer Montgomery Scott. Old!Spock uses future technology to beam Jim and Scotty to the Enterprise after telling Jim to get control of the ship by proving that the younger Spock was emotionally compromised. Jim manages to trigger Spock's emotions and gets the crap beat out of him. Spock nearly chokes him to death before he is stopped. Spock resigns captainship and Jim takes over.
✧ The Enterprise sneaks up on the Narada. Spock and Jim beam aboard the mining vessel to locate the black hole-creating technology and Captain Pike. With their efforts and those of the crew of the Enterprise, Nero is stopped before the Earth can be destroyed. Jim offers to save Nero and the crew of the Narada, but Nero refuses and the ship is destroyed.
✧ After the Enterprise is repaired, it sets off again, this time with Jim as its proper captain and Spock as its first officer. Other commanding officers include Bones as commanding medical officer and Scotty as chief engineer. Other key players in the plot include Nyota Uhura, communications officer; Hikaru Sulu, helmsman; and Pavel Chekov, navigator.
Headcanon:
History
✧ Since there are like four versions of Jim's background (Original Series, finalized movie version, original script version, and novelization), I decided to just kind of... splice them.
✧ As such, Jim has his older brother George Samuel, also known as Sam. I'm going with that name even though I'm pretty sure in the deleted scene he's called Johnny because... that's the name of TOS Kirk's brother. Nero didn't mess up the timeline until Jim was born, so his older brother should still be the same.
✧ Family: George Kirk, deceased father. Winona Kirk, mother. Nameless stepfather. George Samuel, older brother. Frank, uncle on his mother's side.
✧ After his mother remarried, she was off-planet a lot (because she and her new husband were a part of Starfleet, too??). She left Jim and his brother in the care of her brother Frank, who was abusive to the boys though she never knew this.
✧ Deleted Scene: The day Jim drove the car off a cliff, Frank kicked his brother out of the house. Or, well. Sam ran away from home. Or both. He kept telling Jim to wash the car (so he could sell it, according to the novelization), and Sam told Jim that it wasn't even Frank's car, it was their dad's. While Jim was cleaning the inside of the car, he found the keys, and the plan formed in his head.
✧ It's also discovered in the deleted scene that Jim used to be a good kid, always following the rules and getting good marks in school... unlike his older brother.
✧ Headcanon: Jim didn't really have any intentions of jumping out of the car when it went over the cliff. It was a last-minute decision, an impulse thing, which is why he almost didn't make it out. The reasoning in his nine/ten-year-old mind was that anything was better than staying in that house alone with Frank.
✧ Tarsus IV didn't happen for Jim. I considered incorporating it, but it just didn't fall in line with his characterization.
✧ Jim secretly has abandonment issues because of his mother. He doesn't hold anything against her or his stepfather, though part of him feels frustrated and hurt by his mother never realizing that her brother was abusive to the boys. All the same, he... really can't handle being left. This is one reason why he kept people at arm's length as a teenager, and why he subconsciously still does. He may be social and he may get along and connect with a lot of people, but there's still a barrier there and not a lot of people are really close to him.
✧ His brother running away from home also cemented his abandonment issues. Sam and Jim were really close, and Sam always stuck up for and protected him. But after he left... Well. Sam said Jim would be fine. So of course he was fine. Right? He's always fine. Why wouldn't he be?
✧ Oh, look, heyyyyy Jim is a ladies' man and sleeps around and isn't stated to have had any serious/steady relationships. Abandonment issues with his mom? Was abused as a kid, at least verbally (and it wouldn't be a stretch to say physically as well)? HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
✧ Bones is one of the few people that close to him. If there's anything Jim wouldn't trade, it's his relationship with Bones. Bones grounds him and patches him up after he gets hurt after pulling stupid stunts. He never had a true best friend before Bones; before that, all he really had was his brother, who was older and somewhat distant anyway.
✧ Deleted Scenes: Jim talks Gaila into opening an email at a certain time on a certain day ... And that's how the subroutine gets into the Kobayashi Maru programming. He later tries to apologize, but he confused another Orion girl for her instead. He does feel really bad. :c
✧ He really likes Gaila. They understand each other and get along really well. She's just... one of the people he holds at a distance because she has the chance of getting really close to him, of getting under his skin (and she's under his skin more than he realizes anyway). It's that distance that allowed him to use her like that, because he normally doesn't use people he's attached to.
Quirks and Habits:
✧ Jim likes to play with hair. Yes, really. It actually started when he was a kid when his mom would let him play with her hair, and from there it became a gesture that he uses to express affection and closeness.
✧ He's a very physical person. His face and body language are expressive -- It's not really that he wears his heart on his sleeve, it's just how he expresses himself. He's not always so good with words because he's better at just feeling things and acting on them.
✧ It can be predicted that physical contact is important to Jim -- and it is. But because he's not an insecure person, and actually quite the opposite, normally he doesn't need other people to express themselves physically in order to get their point across. He, however, does. It's kind of a one-sided thing.
✧ He likes making people laugh. When he goes out to pick up girls, it doesn't matter if his lines are good or not -- It's about whether or not they can make them laugh. Make them laugh and it puts them in a good mood, and they're more likely to choose to go back with you instead of some other guy.
✧ ... so he says. But he really does thrive on making people laugh and smile. This comes from his childhood, where he'd want to make his mother, you guessed it, laugh and smile. He fell in love with that feeling, because cheering her up like that was the best one in the world, and it stuck.
✧ He can do household chores, but he is a fail cook. It's not that eating what he makes will make you sick. He just tends to overcook everything probably because he gets distracted and doesn't pay attention.
✧ His tension point is in his neck and shoulders. This is because when he gets stressed, he hunches up. Also his jaw, because he clenches it.
✧ Allergic to almost everything. Okay, so that's an exaggeration. But he is allergic to a ridiculous amount of stuff. I'm not certain on specifics yet, but I'm pretty sure he's allergic to both peanuts and pet dandruff, as a start. Medicines are also included in this. You can imagine the living hell Bones's life must be as his doctor.
✧ I think as a general rule I'm going to go with "if it's a common allergy, Jim has it." Pet dandruff, peanuts, etc. But, uh. I dunno. I'm having trouble being consistent with things, sooo. >> << >>;
✧ Doesn't believe in God or anything like that, but he does believe things happen for a reason and he's rather fond of old folksy church songs. They're associated with good memories in his mind.
✧ Jim is ticklish. His weak points are the (both) sides of his ribs, the bottoms of his feet, and a few other places he's not willing to divulge in case anyone decides to use this information against him.
✧ Tickle at your own risk, though. He flails while he's being tickled and even he doesn't know where he'll be kicking until it's all ready happened.
✧ Dislikes the concept of fate/destiny being a fixed thing. He's in charge of his own life, he's going to make his own future, it's his and he can change it and make it into whatever he wants.
✧ A big baby when it comes to the doctor's office. You don't even want to know how he is at the dentist's.
✧ Hates feeling trapped in any way, shape, or form.
✧ Horrible at remembering lists and things like that. He's much better with more practical things that he can get his hands on and/or experience for himself. For example, he's really good at remembering terrain and maps and such.
✧ When he gets intense and focused, he tends to set and tuck his jaw closer to his body, and his eyes become centered and aimed directly at whatever or whoever he's focusing on. See: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 . I SWEAR I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP.
Triggers and Issues
✧ His top trigger: His father. Whenever his father comes up in conversation, he has a set process of reactions. First, something in him stills, usually only notable in his eyes. There is often an underlying note of panic; when Spock brings up his father's death at the academic hearing, Jim glances back at the audience -- likely, back at Bones, as if silently pleading for support. However, he continued to avoid eye contact with Spock and tried to act off-hand, as if he didn't know what he was talking about, as if there was nothing wrong. After Spock kept pushing the topic, Jim's jaw set and he became defensive, attempting to deflect the topic. After Spock continued to push it, Jim fell silent.
✧ At an earlier time, when Pike was talking to Jim at the bar and kept bringing up his father, Jim stayed in the first few stages. He stayed off-handish, sarcastic, and defensive, always trying to change the topic or make it seem like a big deal, even going so far as to be skeptic and bitter of his father's heroic action. (Granted, he was also drunk and just had the shit beat out of him. He pretty much hated life at that point in time.)
✧ When the Enterprise first came upon the Narada, Jim took on very specific body language. His shoulders hunched, his jaw set and angled in slightly towards his chest, and his eyes centered and angled forward (see this icon, and this one, too). The emotions burning in his eyes (and inside him) were... intense, and bordering on hate, but never quite reached that point. His blood ran hot and cold at once, his throat constricted, it was like he only had eyes for that ship, the one that killed his father. It's an indescribable thing because of all the layers to it, but that moment cemented the fact that his father's death is his trigger.
✧ Jim also has strong issues with abuse of any kind. He will not stand for it, he will not sit by and let it happen, he will get passionately involved and will not back down until it is resolved. This is all connected to growing up under Frank's roof. Concepts and behavior that Jim will react strongly to in this way include people following orders or living their lives the way someone else tells them to seemingly without inputting their own will or making their own decision about it; someone trying to Control another person's life; any insinuation that any person is useless or worthless or unwanted; and... more that I haven't discovered yet. Jim won't tell me a lot about this, either, so it's kind of a "find out as we go" thing.
✧ As mentioned before, Jim has abandonment issues due to his experiences with his mother and his brother (and also, on a deeper level, his father). These have compounded and led into commitment issues, which has also been discussed above.