OOC
GAME: Canonish
DESCRIPTION: Literary multi-fandom game.
DATE: May 2008
PB: Shawn Ashmore
JOURNAL: notprincejake
IC
CHARACTER'S FULL NAME: Jake Berenson. Marco calls him their "fearless leader", and Ax calls him "Prince Jake". He … kind of just prefers 'Jake'.
PREFERRED PLAYED-BY: Shawn & Aaron Ashmore
BOOKVERSE: Animorphs
AUTHOR: K.A. Applegate
CHARACTER HISTORY: There's really no way to summarise Jake's life before That Night without making it sound painfully boring — kid of unavoidable, when you're comparing it to a fight to save the human race from galactic invasion. He slacked off in school, but made up for it by being popular; his dad was a pediatrician, his mother a novelist, his older brother his hero. He shot hoops and played video games and worked on getting his driver's licence, and there wasn't really anything spectacular about him.
Jake Berenson's real life starts when he and four other kids decided to take a shortcut through a construction site, witnessed the murder of an Andalite prince, and inherited the power to morph from him. Nevermind the fact that it's kicked off a secret life that he can't tell anyone about, an underground guerilla movement headed by five hapless teenagers and one equally-hapless alien; this is the night his true life started, because that's the night the war began. The kids received the ability to acquire the DNA of any animal and morph into them (for two hours only— Tobias learnt that the hard way), and then it became their ET-given duty to fight back against the invading parasitic race known as the Yeerks.
Due to being the only common link between all of the self-named Animorphs, Jake became their de facto leader. Theirs is a team effort, but he has the make the judgement calls, and he has to keep them together.
Oh, and not to mention, they're all still trying to pass high school. Talk about complicated.
CHARACTER APPEARANCE: He's pretty much your average American teenager: not buff but not stringy either, in decent shape thanks to healthy exercise and a long history of playing sports. Brown hair, brown eyes. No scars, thanks to the healing effect of demorphing back to his original DNA — he's a little perturbed that the good old familiar marks from skinning his knees as a kid are gone, but, hey, other people have given up worse during this war. He looks friendly and affable enough if you meet him: sixteen years old, Caucasian, laid-back.
CHARACTER PERSONALITY: Let's not beat around the bush: Jake is one of those guys who naturally falls into positions of leadership. It just happens. Class president, captain of impromptu basketball games, unintentional protector of the meek and downtrodden, student pegged as 'most likely to be valedictorian'. People looked up to him, but not overwhelmingly so; he was a stabilising influence and a wry wingman to his best friend Marco's antics. He possessed his cousin Rachel's drive and determination, but not with the same blazing fire that sh edid. He wasn't competitive — he was just a terribly normal kid with dreams of joining the navy and becoming a doctor. Or maybe just kicking Marco's ass in Need for Speed next week.
That, unfortunately, changed after the night in the construction site. Now, Jake's saddled with more responsibility than he'd like, and he's finding himself having to make increasingly difficult decisions. These kids are growing up too quickly, and Jake is definitely one of them — he takes consolation in Marco's cheesy jokes, in Cassie and Tobias' steady calm, and in things as wonderfully normal as Rachel's love for shopping. These are the things that keep him grounded. In the midst of a maddening conflict (with goddamn aliens, no less), he's driven the entire time by his love for his family. If his older brother Tom — his role model and hero — hadn't been a Controller, well, he might not have been fighting this war today. He fights to protect the people he loves and to keep them safe, and in the vain hope of maybe, one day, somehow, saving his brother.
He also has some serious doubts about his capability to lead their little ragtag team of heroes (getting called 'Prince Jake' doesn't help in quelling those worries), but the guy keeps it together for the most part. Got a job to do, right?
LOGS
May 27: Jake and Tobias discuss the White Witch
???: Jake & Tobias again
