OOC
GAME: Mutant Haven
DESCRIPTION:
DATE: October 2008
PB: Adam Brody
JOURNAL: madroxes
NOTE: An expanded version of my first take on Jamie. I'm always working out the kinks with this character and seeing what I can do with him.
IC
name: James Arthur Madrox
nickname: Jamie, Multiple Man
age: 18 (Virgo: September 7, 1990)
sexuality: Heterosexual
occupation: Junior at Santa Monica High School, and he walks dogs for extra cash. Sending ten dupes out across the neighbourhoods to walk a puppy each? Time and money efficient.
mutation: duplication: Upon being struck, body will spontaneously generate a perfect duplicate of himself. Anything the strength of a purposeful slap or stronger will do it; a simple flick to the forehead isn't enough. The dupes are complete genetic copies, and Jamie maintains a minor empathic link with all of them, which means it's quite likely that they'll follow his agenda and won't disagree with his commands. Or won't disagree too often, at least — they still retain some very Jamiesque personality traits, and aren't above arguing with themselves. The death of a dupe would also give him some serious psychic backlash. The dupes can operate independently, and can also be reabsorbed at any time. He's still learning how to create a dupe at will. His upper limit at the moment is 20, but practice will bring it to 40 — years of training will make his capacity near-limitless.
memory: The reabsorption of a dupe will give Jamie its complete memories, experiences, and skills — just as if he was the one who did it. It's also resulted in a pretty damn good memory under normal circumstances, thanks to having to exercise it constantly.
personality: Time and practice will accustom Jamie to the subtleties of society and social interaction, but right now… he's a little awkward. A sheltered existence made him ill-equipped to deal with Srs Bsns concerning other human beings; he much rather prefers being the quintessential goofball and keeping things on a light note. There's almost a childlike earnestness in how hard he tries; he's still getting used to spending time with people who aren't himself, and up until a year and a half ago, never had a friend not named Jamie. He doesn't really know how to treat you (let's not even mention the politics of flirting, good lord), so he's resorting to the only thing he knows really, really well: cracking a smile and sticking to the fun and games. He is easy-going, and his humour slightly off-beat and sardonic: Jamie will constantly poke fun at himself, because after all, who else was there to mock in the past?
The boy occasionally gets perplexed when people don't catch the joke or don't immediately know what he's thinking. He can get awfully frustrated when he's misunderstood, and impatient when people fall off his proverbial train of thought. His easy humour comes hand-in-hand with a strangely confident, relaxed nature — he grew up with people who accepted him immediately, after all. As a result, nothing much gets under his skin, and Jamie saunters through life assuming the best of people and that they will do the same for him. Maybe it's a little naïve, but that's just something he'll have to learn for himself. He's got a humble outlook on life, and has the solid, down-to-earth nature of a kid who grew up on a farm and never had any appearances or reputation to worry about. He's never been able to hide anything from himself or his parents, so he's never had any use for deception; once you get to know him, Jamie and his feelings are an absurdly open book.
Though he's quite transparent, the boy's much more introspective than he seems on first glance. He has trouble making decisions, knowing that he can do everything if he were so inclined. He has difficulty advising others for much the same reason. He has issues with responsibility. But he's a good kid, and he hasn't let the philosophical dilemma of his dupes affect him too badly. They're fun. So what?
history: Jamie is a bundle of energy who, due to circumstances beyond his control, has been forced to treat himself like fragile glass. Living in isolation with his family, it wasn't directly dangerous for him to spawn dupes out of nowhere — but public exposure would have been disastrous, so they tried to teach him self-constraint and control. The Madroxes encouraged their son to be careful, despite the fact that he'd love nothing more than to fall out of a treehouse, go rollerblading and skin his knees, or rough-house with a big friendly dog…
But if Jamie Madrox ever fell off the swing as a young child, well. You'd get five boys piled on top of each other, crying. He wasn't exactly an easy mutant to hide, but his family did it.
Dr. Daniel and Joan Madrox were both scientists, working at the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Center in New Mexico — Jamie was unusual in that his powers presented at birth, ever since the doctor slapped the newborn baby and a second boy materialised. It's possible that the radiation caused his unique mutation, but whatever the cause, the result was the same: the two researchers packing up their things and moving to their old family farm in Kansas. They carried on their work via distance correspondence, and raised their strange boy in seclusion; James Arthur got real used to talking himself, with "dupes" and a long stream of detective shows and novels as his main distractions. Reared on television, Jamie Madrox developed a penchant for noir films and detective flicks. Poirot, Columbo, Matlock, Diagnosis: Murder, Magnum P.I.… even, god forbid, Murder She Wrote. He found something alluring in this strange world of crime and mysteries where people weren't what they seemed, and savvy hard-boiled detectives had interior monologues with themselves. He kind of wants to be Columbo when he grows up. No lie.
This (admittedly strange) childhood, learning to cope with his inconvenient 'ability' led to a few unforeseen side-effects; for one, Jamie developed a fierce aversion to confrontation. He might be a bit socially askew in other aspects, but he tries to restrain his temper more than anything: confrontation leads to fighting, which leads to being struck, which he can't let happen. This instinct formed early on, as all of his significant physical arguments were with himself, and the dupes learnt very quickly that scuffling would only ever make the problem worse. Even now, fisticuffs constantly remain at the very bottom of Jamie's list of options. He'll try to think his way out of a situation before anything else.
The vague monotony of home schooling plus hard farm labour plus Columbo broke tragically when he was fifteen. A freak tornado, of all things, killed both of his parents. (Having had time to grieve since then, Jamie isn't above making a few bland Wizard of Oz jokes about it, but the memory of the accident still stings. Understandably.) Not knowing who to go to, not knowing if there was anyone out there he could trust, Jamie repaired the house, filled his home with dupes, and worked the farm. He kept life rolling as "normal", even venturing shopping trips into town.
An entire year went by, before his luck finally ran out and he was clipped by a car while crossing the street. He wasn't all that injured, but the real damage was done: multiple identical boys suddenly sprawled together in the street. He escaped safely, but it made local and tabloid headlines, and drew the attention of Paradise Hotel. He was soon picked up on their first mercy mission in April 2007, and has thus been living at the hotel since he was 16 — for about the past year and a half. His education has been a bit lacking for a while, what with the home-schooling and his year alone, so a placement test put him into the junior year at SaMo High.
Finding out that he's not alone after all has been, needless to say, a massive relief. Having gotten a taste of life at the hotel — with these things called "friends", oh gosh — Jamie doesn't really want to leave.
song lyric: "I am stuck between who I've been and who I'm thinking I could be." — know-it-all, phantom planet
