Character Changes: Jack
I actually don’t have a lot to say here. Jack’s a pretty well-rounded character. Given the amount of attention he’s given, among other factors, he makes a decent main character.
Because, well, come on. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Jack was the REAL main character of ZP.
But this isn’t about what I want (mostly) so our lead will still be Cameron.
This is him:
(And there’s also a more recent one but most of this is still accurate)
Right away you can see that there’s a lot of detail. And! Almost all of it is consistent to how his character is portrayed!
A couple things here are slightly outdated. I think Jack’s most recent iteration is pansexual. Also, it seems like in canon his earliest friend was Zill, and he met Jillian later, and in therapy he claims that he does get crushes easily.
I don’t think his sexuality particularly matters, especially because he’s not good at forming close relationships. Pan works, but I’m not yet sure how I’d show that about his character. Zill being his first friend makes more sense. And I think it’s in-character for him to get crushes easily, because he might feel starved for affection because of how isolated he is by his curse.
Here are some more ideas about him that I’d like to add:
He openly has generalized anxiety disorder
His very specific love language is feeding people (he keeps giving his friends food, especially foods he makes that are easy to package)
He doesn’t like music, theater, or films much, except for romantic or scary movies
He likes being scratched behind the ears (and most of the characters share similarities with the animals that they are) and he’s ticklish
In times of need, he might use his immortality and healing abilities to his advantage by intentionally removing his limbs or head (to make himself smaller, gain a farther reach, or some other reason)
That’s pretty much all I have to say about him as an individual, but there are a few things I’d like to touch on concerning his relationships with other characters. Since he’s pretty well established as a character, his relationships mostly are too, but I’d like to add a bit to them.
Cameron
Jack will be Cameron’s closest ally at the start of the story. He will be among the first people to find out about her zoophobia and helps her acclimate to Safe Haven.
Zill
In my rewrite, Jack’s mom officially adopted him and they grew up together, but Zill moved out as soon as he turned eighteen so he could have some privacy. This has contributed to Jack feeling more alone lately, being separated from him. And, more broadly, Jack is the only one out of his friends who prefers science to theater.
Also, one thing that probably won’t be important but I like to think is true is that, out of all of Jack’s friends, he’s the only one who’s any good at homemaking skills. So yeah, his friends can beat up the monster that was going to eat him, but none of them know how to cook.
Jack and Zill’s relationship is/has been generally reciprocal. Zill protects Jack from physical danger, and Jack makes sure Zill takes care of himself and drags him away from bad decisions. They both act as each other’s emotional support. They’re symbiotic.
Idk if I’m going to use the part about Jack feeling distant from Zill since he got a girlfriend, especially since that happened three years ago and that’s a long time to just be living with that feeling and not do anything to resolve it. If I do keep anything like that plot point, the distance will come from him moving out, and will be kinda in the background of their relationship before coming to relevance later.
Kayla
The two of them are good friends by this point. I like to imagine that they do yoga together at Kayla’s recommendation, because it’s meant to be relaxing. She takes an active role in helping Jack manage his anxiety.
Their relationship is a little awkward though, because thanks to him being close with both her and Zill, Jack has ended up finding out more about their relationship than he would have ever wanted to know.
Kayla is also 100% on board with Zill’s mission to protect him. She thinks Jack is a sweetie and she would definitely break her moral code for him (Zill wouldn’t, technically, but that’s because his moral code is already shaped with Jack as the exception to most of its rules).
She also likes to watch movies with him and considers his “pop culture education” very important (she feels that Zill has failed him on that front). Jack doesn’t usually like movies but he does like bonding with Kayla in this way.
These are just details, they may not be mentioned, but I might use them to add some characterization to their relationship, should their friendship become relevant.
Damian
In canon, Jack doesn’t like Damian. He has hurt him, and often. More than that, he does so just for fun. When he tells his backstory, it sounds like Damian has been like this since they were young, so their relationship has always been like this. Any time he spends with Damian is more out of familial obligation than anything else. Damian, however, likes Jack for how easy it is to trick, manipulate, or otherwise walk all over him.
The rewrite version of this relationship is pretty similar, except that Damian doesn’t enjoy seeing Jack’s pain (but only when it isn’t caused by him). When that happens, Damian likes to try and cheer him up by making him laugh. So in the rewrite, Jack does have good experiences with Damian on the books… they’re just rare. Also, Damian was a kinder person as a child, so Jack kinda resents how he’s grown up to be the person he is now.
Jillian
Ooh. This relationship is one that I’m pretty much building from the ground up.
In canon, we only find anything out about her in Jack’s backstory, so let’s start with that. They met when she saved Jack from a wild demon, she was homeless as a child and had to fend for herself, she became a member of the royal guard at Jack’s suggestion (and then later its head), she and Jack have been friends since meeting, and she has a boyfriend in the present who takes up more of her time than Jack does. Also, she’s described as a daemon (which is actually something different from a demon) but that may have been a typo. Also, if she were a daemon it wouldn’t make much sense of her to be in Hell.
First of all, in this version, her boyfriend doesn’t exist. He’s just a meaningless obstacle, who doesn’t even appear on-page or even in outside art. He’s not a character in the first place, really.
The backstory in this version has one other significant change: when she saved Jack’s life when they were kids, he took her back to the palace immediately and convinced his uncle to take her in. It also took Jillian some convincing to trust him, but she ended up being a good companion for Damian, growing up with him as friends. She, like Jack, doesn’t much like his present personality, though. As soon as she became old enough, she took the test to join the royal guard (the job was exciting to her and it had been her dream growing up) and passed easily. By now, she has ascended to general of Hell’s armies.
At first, her and Jack’s friendship has been kind of an informal teacher-student relationship, that they’ve grown out of over time. He’s been teaching her all about Earth and the ways it’s different from Hell, and Jill has wanted to see it for herself. Usually, she doesn’t have the time.
Jill has been traumatized by the instability of her youth and it affects her relationship with Jack. Even though she’s lived there a long time, she’s felt like a guest in the palace until she joined the royal guard and felt she was “earning” her place there. And even then, she still had a concern that if she were fired from her job, she’d be forced onto the streets again. Jack was the person who first gave her any amount of safety (and possibly saved her life indirectly) so she’s deeply attached to him. In fact, she would ask him out directly if she weren’t worried about ruining their relationship.
So she’s been gently hinting at her feelings, hoping to get a sense of how Jack feels, but he’s been too shy and clueless to be of any help.
The conflict between them is that Jill needs to figure some stuff out in her life so that she can love Jack as a person and not just as a safe space. Basically, she needs to take care of herself to know if she’d still feel this way about him if she didn’t have PTSD.
At some point, she’s going to start talking with Cameron about her problems. I already have some ideas for how this might happen even though she doesn’t attend ZPA (she has access to the same private tutors as Damian and has lessons with them during her off-hours).
Outside her relationship with Jack, Jill and Tentadora are girlfriends and Tenta gives her lots of love life advice. Jill also cares a lot about her job, especially because she wants to use her position to make Hell a safer place for everyone (difficult as that is) so that other demon children won’t have the same experience as her. She can be rough around the edges because of her determination to achieve this.
Jack admires her for this goal, he thinks of her as a kind person for it. And that does describe Jillian pretty well — kind if not outwardly nice, much of the time.
Jill also loves horror movies.
That’s all for now. I realize that last part was pretty much a whole character profile of Jill instead of just focusing on her and Jack’s relationship, but I don’t think I’m going to give her her own profile anyway. She may be appearing in my rewrite, but she’s still not that prominent a character until I get to the extension.