Cursed: Jacinda Johnson

CHARACTER NAME: Jason Todd (currently Jacinda Johnson)
CHARACTER SERIES: an alternate universe branching off from preboot (1985-2011) DC Comics

[OOC]
This is the permissions list for OOC (out of character), activity.

Backtagging: Yes - any time you want to pick up an old thread, either leave a new comment or send a PM :)
Threadhopping: Yes - willing to follow to overflow threads or off-comm posts as needed
Offensive subjects: Yes. As long as we make it clear what's in-character versus out, I'm pretty sure I can handle most subjects.
Fourthwalling: I mean... Jacinda isn't recognizable as Jason Todd just by looking at zir. I don't think it would make sense even if your character has knowledge of the Batfam, so no.

[IC]
This is the permissions list for IC (in-character), activity.
What other players can expect from your character if they choose to do any of the following:

Hugging this character: Not recommended, do so at your own risk.
Kissing this character: Not recommended, as Jacinda will only have a good reaction to it if zie knows you well.
Flirting with this character: Sure, but in most cases it won't be treated as sincere. (Jacinda has a hard time believing anyone would be sincere, so zie treats flirting as a joke.)
Fighting with this character: Yes, though Jacinda is still getting used to zir cursed form.
Injuring this character: Yes, any kind of injury is fine with me (direct message me at the time to touch base, please). Sexual violence is off limits.
Killing this character: No.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: It's gonna be a hell of a trip if you do, but there's nothing Jacinda can do to shield zirself from mind-reading.

Warnings: Gender is weird sometimes, and Jacinda is my muse who expresses that the most? Period-typical (mid to late 1990s) transphobia may be mentioned. As a version of Jason Todd, Jacinda's backstory contains violence and child death. Character is also dealing with effects of brain damage (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Get your own copy of the IC/OOC Permissions meme!

[[OOC: Mun is very fond of this muse, as playing around with this character also helped solidify some things about zir own identity. It wasn't perfect, because nothing ever really is, but it meant something. Means something.

These are thoughts I've had in the years since the days of active play. Rather than things I came up with in "the heat of the moment", as it were, I'm pulling together some threads that I notice when looking back.]]

The people around "Jacinda" were a little more reactionary and close-minded, on the topic of gender presentation especially, than would have been ideal. Add to that a general reluctance from the magic user community to intercede with a curse placed by a goddess, and the cards were pretty well stacked against Jason Todd.

Thinking about it, if I picked up the storyline again, I'd want to make it clear that Jacinda's "present day" is in our past. Jason is about age 23 when he gets cursed. Taking the year of his debut in comics (1987) and his canonical age at the time (12), he'd have been born in 1975 -- so his "present day" with those dates and numbers would be 1998.

I'm sure that there were some elements of play that didn't quite match up with that date. Participation in the texting memes comes to mind, but I'll excuse it because the Hub's generalized "present day" was further along and maybe Jason grabbed himself a smartphone in the Hub.

Speaking as someone who remembers living through the mid to late nineties, being not straight and not cis was just... not discussed. And if it was brought up, trans and other queer folk were an object of ridicule. Or worse, targets of violence. (Not to say that such things don't still go on twenty or even thirty years later, but... there's been some social progress since.) So I'm explaining the external hostility and the internal struggle faced by "Jacinda" as a product of that time.

Tim Drake from their world being really insistent on using female pronouns and referring to Jacinda as a girl is based more in presenting a "normal" facade to the world -- being trans is unusual and will attract attention, don't attract attention when we have so much to hide (the vigilante secret). Dick Grayson from their world is like... attracted to this Jacinda version of Jason and kinda weirded out by it (more for the fact that it's "my little brother Jason, who is in a Situation and I shouldn't fetishize this transformation" than anything).

And while Jason initially describes himself as "a straight male"... it becomes a label that doesn't quite fit. The explorations of gender presentation and the interaction of gender and sexuality have definitely affirmed the "male" part of his identity... the "straight" part not so much.

The goddess Aine refuses to lift Her curse, and warns that there's a chance that Jason will get stuck in this female form as Jacinda, a state that not even the gods will be able to change. The god Miach, who is a god of healing, feels that Aine isn't being fair and does try to take the curse off of Jason... though Aine will just put it right back on. (Miach does stop trying to lift the curse just by brute-forcing it, because the constant switching between male and female forms is physically painful for Jason.)

At some point, Miach figures out the condition that will make the curse permanent -- though He communicates it in a ballad (gotta stay on-brand). If Jacinda engages in sexual intercourse, the female body becomes a permanent feature. (And by "sexual intercourse", the gods mean "penis in vagina" penetrative sex... because that would be Jacinda/Jason "losing himself to the curse". I know it kinda sucks, but the goddess is vengeful and also ancient.)

And that's where things got left off, because the roleplay comm fell out of use and I'm really really bad at staying in contact with people. There have been plenty of times I idly thought of reaching out to get the storyline played out, but... I always put it aside. I was out of the fandom for a long time, and upon coming back, I found that most people had moved on as well.

ETA (10-August): The entries in this journal which have to deal with filling in the events of the plot are going to be backdated, so that they fall behind this post in the top view of the journal. Tracking posts for action on Dreamwidth will have a more current date and come above this post in the top view.

I'm always kind of testing how to tag with Jacinda-Jason. Aside from a slip-up (or two) where I used female pronouns -- one learns the coping method of identifying with the body and not the gender, and one sometimes cannot shake old habits -- I tried avoiding use of pronouns at all.

Then I tried avoiding pronouns until Jacinda flat-out stated "I'm Jason Todd" (or some equivalent), whereupon I would start using male pronouns, since Jacinda considers himself male despite the curse.

I'm testing out the use of gender neutral pronouns: ze and hir. We'll see how it goes. Gotta love the learning process.

April 8 2011
EDIT: I keep slipping up and typing "her" instead of "hir". Further research into gender-neutral pronouns gave me this option --

subject: zie; object: zir; possessive adjective: zir; possessive pronoun: zirs; reflexive: zirself

and we'll see how things go with this. Jacinda is changing, in my head. Zie is less rigidly male than zie started out as.