Jack Fuckin' Twist

Your name or online alias: Laura

Your email: aria.marier@gmail.com

Another preferred means of contact: AIM: lornadooneii

Character's Full Name: Jack Twist

Character's Canon: Brokeback Mountain

Character's Journal Name: jack_f_twist 

What would you like your character's tag to be?: Jack Twist

In 300-500 words total, tell us your... Character's background (their past and present):

"You know, friend, this is one goddam bitch of a unsatisfactory situation."

Jack Twist has a talent for understatement.

Just another good old boy raised in Lightning Flat, Wyoming, on hard knocks and ranch work, he managed somehow to hang onto dreams of a better life: making it big in the rodeos, having a ranch all his own, getting the hell out of Lightning Flat. Jack rolls with the punches, getting back up again and again with that same shit-eating grin on his face, observing life's realities and hardships with a philosophical cigarette in his mouth, bitching and moaning without any real malice. Jack clings to some wordless impossible hope, and it keeps him going when sometimes it seems like nothing else will. And though that has always been part of his character, none of it really seemed to make much difference until after Brokeback Mountain and Ennis Del Mar.

Jack, at the time of his entrance, is not yet twenty-four, riding the rodeo circuit and with a few loose ideas of what he's doing, where he's going, and what his general purpose in life seems to be. He is a flirt and a charmer, but behind almost everything he says and does is a barely tangible disdain, a smirk lying just behind his ready smile. There's a core of steel in Jack, and it shows sometimes in the way he raises his head to meet a steady gaze, or in the carelessly graceful way he sprawls against the side of his beat-up old truck. As Stephen King writes about Larry Underwood, there's something in Jack that is like biting on tinfoil. Not that he's the strong silent type--hell no, Jack has a temper and he uses it, lightning-fast and mean. He's mercurial, is Jack, a quicksilver soul bottled up inside holed-through boots, broken-in old jeans and cowboy mentalities.

When the mood comes on him he can go for hours on ranching, horses, rodeoing or whatever topic strikes his fancy. At times of particular abandon, he might burst into song in a cigarette-roughened voice, or pull out a battered old harmonica, which he plays with minimal skill and much enjoyment. He drinks only beer and neat whiskey, and the one thing you ain't never gonna get him to talk about is what really happened that summer up on Brokeback.

Character's personality: Garrulous.

Character's skills/abilities/powers: He can stay on a bull for a full eight seconds...sometimes.

Any special equipment your character is bringing along? This includes weaponry, magic items, etc.: Nope. Not unless you count his harmonica. Which might be considered a weapon.

Are you bringing your character to [Bad username or unknown identity: ten_fwd from another game? Yes. If you are, which game?: Milliways If you answered yes above, briefly summarize how they were changed by and what challenges they faced in the climate of their previous game(s):]

The barn ain't so bad, as far as barns go, and Jack's bedded down in worse.

(That goddam cat piss-soaked pup tent up on Brokeback springs to mind.)

It smells of homey things: hay, leather, oil, oats and alfalfa, manure.   Nope, not bad, whether there's a cot to bed down in or not, and once William's gone, he goes ahead and sees to the horses, making sure they've got feed and water, checking over their tack with nimble, practiced fingers under the light of a swinging, flickering lamp.

That done, he settles down against a bale of hay and makes himself comfortable, the heel of his worn boot scraping across the floor as his leg relaxes.  From a pocket, he produces a flask, unscrews the top while those lazy blue eyes of his watch his new acquaintance with more interest than his relaxed posture might let on.

Before he takes a swig, he holds the flask up, eyebrows lifted questioningly, offering.

Sallie'd have his head if she caught him napping during chores--

or, anyway, that's what Jack supposes, even if it ain't, strictly, true.

He'd sure like a nap, though. He's been chopping wood for going on half an hour now and his arms are burning, his back is burning, and the sun that had been just warm enough when he'd started out now feels like a blaze along the back of his neck.

Rise, and fall. Chop.

Nothing better to do, no better place to go. And it's quiet: the only sound is that off the axe chopping through wood.

His company isn't much in the way for words, after all.

The clump of his boots is a lot louder in here, and the ceilings a lot lower, and Jack'd feel pretty damn claustrophobic if they weren't only gonna be on the damn thing for a little while.



...Well, hell, he feels sorta that way anyhow.

Things about Jack Twist:

1. He accumulates stuff. Just things--hats, belts, books (read or otherwise), and other varities of knick-knack. He's the sort of dad who'll keep a newspaper mention of his son, even if it's kept in a box somewhere in a closet. He isn't materialistic, though he does enjoy nice clothes, a good home, and maybe the latest in camping equipment--he's more of a pack rat.

2. On a similar but not entirely related note, Jack never stops talking. If he's silent, he's communicationg something through body language; through touching, smiling, looking away or down, slouching, etc.

3. Following that note, if Jack is silent and unreadable? Something is very off.

4. He will probably be letting you know what that something is without your having to pry too awfully much.

5. He is silent and unreadable a lot around Lureen.

6. Brokeback Mountain is simeltaneously the place he loves most in the world, and the place he will never go back to (until after his death, which is why he insists that his ashes be spread up on Brokeback).

7. His son is the most important person in his life, barring only Ennis.

8. He will never hate anyone or love anyone as much as he hates and loves Ennis.

9. He will never use the word "love" to describe any part of his relationship with Ennis.

10. When he looks at Desire, he doesn't always see dirty blond hair and hazel eyes and a cowboy hat. Mostly he just sees the fact that to Desire, Jack seems to be important and wanted and liked.

11. He will never stop trying to gain his father's affection and respect.

12. He will never get it.

And that's all it is.

Just a road, stretching straight as the eye can see

(which is odd, 'cause weren't it winding like a snake trying to shed its skin just a minute ago?)

and the only thing on it is Jack's old broken-down truck, the same old piece-of-shit he'd driven to Signal, the same one what kept trying to quit on him once he got down from Brokeback

(that's if he'd ever gotten down from Brokeback, and if those mountains sitting humped and purple in the distance are any clue, he never truly did)

and he's just sitting on the hood, sweating and grease-stained and just about ready to give up on the damned thing.

"Shit," he says, softly, to himself, and squints into the sun.

He hates changing flats.

Jack measures out the passage of the years in Bobby's birthdays and in trips up north.

The year Bobby turned seven, Jack brought him to a rodeo, watched Bobby watching the riders, saw how small and neat his boy was and worried when he set Bobby on the fencetop to see the bulls pit and fight and stomp, listened with a smile how Bobby talked all the way home, avoided Lureen's eyes at dinner while Bobby told her about the man who hung on to one scrappy bull for the full eight seconds and how he still had the presence of mind to wave his hat at the crowd as he leaped off.


When Bobby was ten, he came home from school with red eyes and a face pale from humiliation and anger, and locked himself in his room, wouldn't come out for dinner, wouldn't come out when his momma cajoled or when his daddy knocked on the door, and hid his head under his pillow from his grandfather's burning comments. Jack stayed up that night, waiting in the darkened kitchen till a small shape slipped down the hallway in stocking feet, intent on gaining the skipped dinner.

Jack didn't ask questions, only poured the boy a glass of milk and gave him the plate that had been saved, sat on the couch with him later while they watched a late-night movie, and ended up watching the cheesy thing by himself with Bobby dozing against his shoulder.


At twelve, Bobby found his daddy's old harmonica, and Jack let him keep it, told Bobby he'd gotten it on a suggestion from a friend in his younger years. "A girl?" Bobby asked, laughing at the thought of his daddy--thirty-six now and far beyond the days of skirt-chasing--knowing a girl, and Jack, smiling crooked at the foggy memory of shy smiles, and long straggling hair, and a sundress like petals, said sure. A little girl he'd once known.


That was a long time ago, time that keeps getting farther and farther away. And now there are still the trips up north, few and far between though they might be.

And now Bobby is fourteen, and he brings his friends back to the house where they watch football games and play video games and Jack stays out of their way, for the most part, except when he drives Bobby to the dances at the high school or when he teases Bobby about the cute sophomore girl who comes over to tutor sometimes, which makes Bobby blush and Lureen smile, a little, and almost without his notice, time keeps dragging on.

Seems that fence and that gate get worse ever year, and when Jack finally straightens, his back cracks in protest. One hand on the gate, the other on his hip, he looks out over the empty plains, squinting and sweating, before he swings the gate back and forth, testing.

It creaks a bit, but holds, and despite the heat and the ache in his neck, Jack grins, pleased with himself, takes off the rough work gloves covering his hands and sticks them in his back pocket when he turns around to head back.

The house itself squats, gray and sullen--one more lump out here in the middle a godforsaken nowhere, and the screen door bangs behind him when he heads into the kitchen, hangs his hat up on a nail by the door and gets a glass, runs some cool tap water into it.

Home sweet home.

The problem with working with horses, mostly, is that you end up smelly and sweating and unwilling to go back inside, even though it's more comfortable there. But you get used to the open space, and the work, and somehow going in to sit by the fire just seems stifling. Not to mention people look at you kinda funny when you smell like horse and hay.

Which is a long way of saying that Jack has opted to sit on outside this evening, smoking slowly and taking a few sips from a flask of whiskey that he'd smuggled out of the bar proper, watching the gray clouds roll slowly over the lake and forest. Feels like rain.

Fuckin' damp Scottish weather.

Go on, ask Jack somethin. Be warned, though, you get him talkin', you're the one's got a listen till he stops.