application / haven

[nowonder]

Name: Anne
Contact Info: tavrosno[at]gmail[dot]com or trustmeimthe
Other Characters Played: None currently!

Character Name: Jefferson, aka the Mad Hatter
Canon: Once Upon A Time
Canon Point: Just after 1x17, "Hat Trick".
Background/History: Most relevant history is Hatter's (although for the sake of clarity, he was Jefferson long before he was the Mad Hatter). His post-Curse history is here, but the long and short of it is he spent twenty-eight years staring through a telescope at his not-daughter next door. Good times.

Personality:

Jefferson has a lot of layers to him, some of which have grown with time and some of which have receded, but at the most basic level, he's an extremely erratic guy. In each of his very different appearances along the timeline of Once Upon a Time, one of his few consistent traits has been unpredictability in motivation, action, and even physical movement. He's also prone to distraction and attracted to the gaudy and dramatic (from silly eyeliner and dramatic cravats to sassy door-closing and long monologues about the nature of stories). Finally, he's got an awful sense of self-preservation, not to mention planning. He has good reasons for doing the things that he does, but he rarely thinks ahead to the repercussions. For example, he appears never to have considered the fact that Regina might have a grudge against him if she found out he'd tricked her back into the nasty world of magical heart-stealing, and it's heavily implied that he's at least partially at fault for the absence of Grace's mother.

Of course, while he is attracted to the gaudy and dramatic, his driving force early in life appears to have been wealth. He's shown as a thief and a con man at the earliest known point in his timeline, and he doesn't seem to want anything but gold in exchange for the goods and services he provides. This is part of the reason he works so well with Rumplestiltskin: all he wants is gold, and Rumplestiltskin can make him as much as he needs. Furthermore, Jefferson is a means-justify-the-ends kind of guy. He has no issue whatsoever lying to the naive and vulnerable - the first evidence of this being his deception of Regina, the second his kidnapping of Mary Margaret and Emma. While the latter was to further his efforts to rejoin his daughter, the former seemed to be almost all for gold.

However, Jefferson does also take some pleasure in having knowledge that other people don't and holding it over their heads. He lords his knowledge of other worlds, particularly non-magical ones, over Regina's head, even though it becomes clear that he doesn't know very much about Victor Frankenstein's world at all. He later does the same thing to Emma, mocking her for not believing what to him is blatant truth about magic and the curse.

After he meets his wife, his daughter Grace is born, and he subsequently loses his wife, he gives up what was previously most important to him, world-hopping and gathering wealth, in order to dedicate himself solely to raising Grace as best he can. He carries a tremendous amount of guilt over his wife's disappearance, so much so that he wants to redeem himself by giving Grace the best of everything. Unfortunately, even though his new tendency towards self-sacrifice is pretty noble, it's also apparent that his distractibility and poor planning have a lot to do with the poverty that he and Grace experience several years after his wife's disappearance. Even though he has clearly learned by this point to value family over money, he also still equates happiness with wealth and material goods, which is why he's willing to financially ruin himself in order to get Grace every little thing she wants. A great example of this is in the market, when he is about to give up the last of his money to buy her a stuffed rabbit. Even Grace recognizes that this is ridiculous and tells him not to, but Jefferson's wracked with guilt over it. While he definitely shows the first signs of selfless, unconditional love during this period, it's a very immature, insecure, self-conscious kind of love and one that he hangs onto like a lifeline. It seems that to some extent he doesn't believe Grace can love him unconditionally as he loves her, which is why Regina is ultimately able to convince him to take her to Wonderland.

This period is also the time that he first expresses regret for any of his actions. When he talks to Regina about his role in the loss of his wife, he's very upset by it and for a long time stands by his own conviction to stay away from the magic that led to that tragedy. However, the regret he expresses is more regret at how his troubles have affected him (and to some extent, Grace) and less remorse at having done something that could objectively be labeled "bad".

Jefferson's double-crossing by Regina was significant not just because it trapped him in Wonderland but because of how she trapped him. She simultaneously showed her own rare empathetic side in rescuing her father and hammered home to Jefferson that he was (in her opinion) an unfit father. The psychological trauma of his "death" at the hands of the Queen of Hearts and his subsequent imprisonment in Wonderland served to transform his painful need to return to his daughter into something between very severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and true psychosis, as manifested by the need to make A BILLION HATS in hopes that one of them would take him home to Grace.

The curse made his "madness" worse. Not only could he not be with Grace, but she wasn't even his Grace anymore. Her name was Paige and she didn't remember him. In the end this made him desperate and ruthless, returning once again to the mentality that the ends justify the means. He will do anything to get his daughter back, even if it endangers other people's lives or, you know, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Jefferson is occasionally able to subsume his guilt over abandoning Grace and transfer it to other people, most notably Regina for trapping him in Wonderland and Emma for not being able to GET HIS HAT TO WORK DAMNIT, but for the most part he's consumed by self-loathing. He hates himself for giving up the one thing in the world that's most important to him, and he also irrationally fears that Grace will hate and reject him just as he hates and rejects himself. Even so, his sole purpose in life at this canon point is to fix his hat and take Grace home, back to the simple life they once lived together.

Abilities/Powers: Jefferson's only extraordinary abilities come from his hat, which he didn't have at the canonpoint I'm taking him from and will definitely not have it in game.

Items/Weapons: The clothes on his back, a pair of scissors, and an entirely non-magical but extremely fancy top hat.

Sample Entry:

[He's tried to hold the device steady for video - he can see it's capable of video, he can tell, but he can't seem to keep his hands still. They tremble, fingers to wrists. And so he gives up and just uses his voice, like a phone call, or yelling into the depths of an empty forest. No echo back.]

I fell. And then I was here.

[His voice trembles too. He wishes it wouldn't. He sounds so crazy. Clears his throat.]

This is . . . not where I expected-- But I shouldn't have expected anything. I see it was too much to anticipate improvement. I'm not--

[The sound of his teeth clicking together; he doesn't laugh, although he feels the urge.]

Let me anticipate something else: there is no way out. Or if there is, it's not a way I'm likely to find out about. Or if it is, it's a trap. A maze. Something nasty or ugly or sharp in the middle.

That's fine. I certainly didn't have anything I wanted to get accomplished today.

Sample Entry Two: & fin.