#ooc. lore

[estacado]

in a lot of ways jackie will never be able to have nice romances cause a large part of him actively regrets it when he does. not in the sense he regrets the relationship but rather regrets what he has to do for the relationship to work. his whole thing with jenny within the video games at times holds a very secluded and separated from the rest of what is going on feeling within them, the first being cause he almost has to think of his life as a hitman as being something far removed from him being jackie, jenny's gruff yet loving boyfriend, and the second cause...well....he's literally being haunted by her ghost lol. he keeps his 'day work' vague when speaking of it with her, keeps the things that happen come his succession to the darkness a secret from her, he acts only as one half of who he is for her. it's things like that that make me not a huge fan of jenny/jackie cause she is firm in her stance of never being able to love him as himself within the comics, while in the video games it's more toned down and they are treated as what they always will be: a tragedy of first love.

jackie can lament the way he lives all he likes and claims he isn't the man he clearly is (cold, emotionally distant, isolating & cruel by a nature he can not deny), but it's not a healthy thing and it only gets exacerbated when he tries to make it work with jenny in mind. he knows he's keeping secrets from her, he knows he's doing things she doesn't like or agree with on a fundamental level, he knows he's only being one forth of who he is with her just so he can give her the illusion of a nice, healthy and happy relationship. it's due to that forced conditioning and thinking that i don't think romance is easy with him nor a thing he really desires. one of the few positive traits jackie has is that he's a very honest man both with those around him and who he is as a person. but when in romantic scenarios he falls into a kind of trap of trying to be someone better than who he is and it eats at him from inside as he puts the other's wants before his own.

[estacado]

something that goes unsaid and even overlooked in regards to jackie's character is that, for all his generally bad & condescending personality traits + the occasional womanizing, he actually arguably has a soft spot for women when they are otherwise in obvious need of help or when he simply just sees them as people vs Above. it has a lot to do with how he spent his childhood years watching after jenny during their shared time at the orphanage + his later encounter with the 'ghost' (it's complicated) of his mother and her wishing for him to do some good in his life. a sentiment that is also echoed by jenny at one point. he's a foul man at points don't get me wrong, he has no moral compass cause the fates arguably did not make him with one in mind and he'll always be inclined to doing questionable to genuinely harmful acts, but there's a worm in his brain that echoes the one wish of his mother and first love and it makes him at least attempt to be an empathetic person with women.

[estacado]

there are powers on this earth that have been with us forever. no one knows if they come from other worlds, or were perhaps handed down by gods - but each requires a human wielder. that their might may be exploited. greatest of all is the almighty darkness, glorious entity of chaos and wild abandon. / the darkness issue 2.

the darkness is something of an ancient blessing. unlike the sister powers of the angelus (light) or the witchblade (balance), it does not manifest in the world via a weapon but rather via a person. at some undisclosed point in human history the darkness began inhabiting the very blood of those belonging to what is presently known as the estacado family line. perhaps it was a pact brokered between mortal and cosmic entity, perhaps the darkness itself created the mortals of the estacado bloodline. no one really knows and jackie frankly does not care. all he knows is that this power has been apart of every firstborn's life from every generation of his family.

the power has brought about a storied history to his name. before the days of mob killings that began with his father there were noteworthy pirates known to use the name. nobles from an age when his paternal family still resided in italy and even further back in spain. one such man traveled to the americas when that was a thing to do and found himself as the idol to a brotherhood that sought to have him anoint them kings of the underworld. or something like that. much like his family history, jackie also doesn't bother himself with the weird cult that keeps knocking on his door to be their puppet idol and do things he had no say in promising. he tries to, anyways.

ya see, the darkness has a bad habit of attracting a lot more trouble than it's probably really worth. but since the only way to get rid of it would pretty much end in him dying, he doesn't have options to choose from. weird cult following aside, he's hunted down frequently by the light bearing warriors of the angelus, the darkness' polar opposite and equal. unlike the darkness which allows it's holder's some leeway in a sense of control and maintaining identity, the angelus overtakes it's holder's and turns them into overzealous harpies of blinding light and fire. the only thing on their mind being the total annihilation of the darkness and death of it's vessel. even if that's a big no-no as both powers are required to exist least the world fizzle out into fates know what.

aside from some sword and sorcery novel schlock he has to deal with every now and then, jackie makes fine use of his cursed blessing in his occupation as a hitman. employed exclusively to the franchetti family, he's been treated as an honorary son by the don of the family since he picked up a young twelve year old jackie from the orphanage he'd known all his life. jackie was always a deviously smart boy since a young age and at just sixteen his prolific career in killing jump starts the mob family from small time goons to one of the biggest names in the city. the catastrophic might and limitless potential of the darkness and it's ways of mauling any mortal only enhances that devil's wit of jackie's.

but each time he uses unholy gifts to save his own skin or the skin of family, an itch keeps agitating him. an echo keeps nagging him in his sleep. you'll pay the price, jackie boy. like most things in his life though, he opts to ignore it. people like him don't get to live long anyways, cursed cosmic powers or no.