Age: Jack tips the scales of age at a comfortable twenty seven years old. It's not too hard to guess him to be somewhere in the range of twenty six to thirty, so there's not much more to say there.
Gender: Jack's quite male. No really, you can check.
Hair: Jack wears his wavy dark brown hair long and proud, has done so for much of his life. It started out as 'sure, I look kinda dorky with long hair like a girl, but I look straight-up ridiculous with short hair', but eventually he started to ...well, no better word for it, adore the way he looks with longer hair, and at this point the prospect of getting his chest-length hair cut, or even the mere thought of approaching a barber shop, is enough to put a scare in Jack like nothing else. He will also sometimes put his hair in a low ponytail, whenever he needs to focus, when he's drumming, or just when he isn't too lazy to actually go and put the ponytail on.
Eyes: Not much to say about Jack's eyes. They're a rather plain dark brown, rather heavy-lidded and sunken, giving Jack the appearance of being perpetually bored--or, perhaps, a look of arrogance, though he never actually strives for that impression.
Height: At 6'1, Jack isn't especially tall, but he's tall enough to feel secure in that respect.
Weight: Jack weighs in at 176 pounds--nothing too much, nothing too little.
Physical Description-
Jack tries not to be too eye-catching in his appearance, and as a result, he doesn't stand out a whole lot in a crowd. At 6'1, sure, he can say he's tall, but not tall enough to draw attention to the fact, which is more than okay with him. Body-wise, Jack has a fairly muscular build--as a drummer, especially of his calibre, it's rather necessary to work out to a degree, because at the speed he drums, if he didn't work out he wouldn't be able to get through half a song without his arms feeling like he just ran them through a wood grinder. He's no bodybuilder by any means, though it does lend a degree of attractiveness to him, and it's mostly in his upper arms.
Indeed, one could say Jack is a handsome man, though he'd immediately deflect the compliment, or worse...assume they're just saying it out of pity for his hideousness. He has an attractive structure to his face, with low-set, smooth cheekbones outlining a very defined, traditionally masculine face complete with strong, sloping jawline, high forehead, and straight, rigid nose. The expression on his face often implies he's constantly deep in thought (which he is), but the main problem is his eyes: they're quite heavy-lidded, and seem slightly sunken, and in concert with his masculine facial features and unconsciously aloof tendencies, give the impression that he's arrogant, or at least constantly bored out of his mind, though neither's the case. They're a rather plain brown in colour, which doesn't sound particularly appealing, especially considering they always seem half-closed as though he's on the verge of dozing off--but when Jack is focused on something, fully focuses his attention on something or someone, they can be seen to take on a surprisingly intense aura to them.
His hair deserves a paragraph in and of itself (or at least, he'd insist upon it), for it's Jack's veritable pride and joy, the one thing he will 'admit' looks good about him. And indeed, while he's not one to boast about it (hell, he isn't even aware of it half the time) it's made a fair number of girls swoon (so to speak). Of course, that didn't help him make any friends in high school--not even 'sexy hair' is gonna make a social recluse suddenly become popular and accepted by the community. However, the lustrous sheen accompanying its dark brown hue, the perfect level of waviness to its texture, and just the way he wears it proudly, it cannot be denied that his pride is well-placed. Doesn't look any worse when he puts it up in a ponytail either; he's not always too keen on doing it ("Don't want people to get an even better look at my ugly mug") but it looks just as good pulled back--even gives him something of a roguish charm about him.
As I re-iterate, he doesn't like to stand out in a crowd, so needless to say, this is not a guy you're gonna find wearing extravagant colours or outlandish accessories. As far as clothing goes, Jack is a man of simple taste, much as he is with nearly everything. Hand him a t-shirt, typically with the name of some drum company, a pair of regular-fit jeans, and your everyday converse or Nike sneakers, and he's pretty much set for the day. In fact, this is one thing most people notice about Jack--he's always wearing a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a pair of sneakers. Not even the most frigid of winter landscapes can compel him to don a jacket, nor can the most hellish of summer days entice him to cast aside the jeans in favour of a pair of shorts. Nope--t-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and Jack's a happy man.
As you can tell, he's a big fan of the crossed arms pose. :v
Likes
â Jack likes anything that makes him think. Literally, that's as simple as it gets. Anything that makes him think. For example, he likes the kind of music that's complex and many-layered--give him something simple and one-directional, and he quickly gets bored, but give him something that contains fifteen different time signatures in four minutes, something you have to actively think on to understand, and Jack immediately sets to figuring it out. He pays very little attention to vocals (which enables him to partake of genres like technical death metal--he hates the vocals, but the sheer complexity and drive of the music is enough for him to ignore the horrible growling), and tends to zero in on the drums, being his instrument of choice. A surefire way to tell that Jack is actually bored is that he'll be drumming with his fingers inattentively on the nearest surface--a clear indication that he's got some undoubtedly ridiculously complex rhythm in his head that he's trying to get together.
â In addition to that, Jack loves movies and books that make him think. Your given action flick with lots of gunfire and CGI effects will not impress or hold his attention in the slightest, nor will some pointless, overdone romance novel. On the other hand, he's fascinated with books that actually have something behind the words for the reader to access and learn from, just as he loves a film that actually has something for the viewer to take away from behind the screen. Above all, he loves non-fiction books related to science, because....
â Jack's greatest passion in life, rivalling drumming, is physics. Yes, physics, that one subject everyone thinks is boring as hell. Well, Jack was always just about obsessed with it--as a kid, he was deeply curious about what made the universe work. How did stars shine? How did planets form? What is everything made of? Such questions taunted Jack constantly as a child, because no one could really give him an answer, so he went in search of the answer himself, and that led him straight to physics, which he has studied fervently ever since. Obviously, being a total physics geek....didn't help Jack's popularity as a high school student, but he takes solace in the fact that at this point, he's kind of a walking encyclopaedia--ask him exactly how black holes work, or what electrons are made of, or how light works, and he'll immediately fire off a comprehensive answer with such energy and eagerness that you start wondering where that absent-minded, quiet guy from just a second ago went.
â Drumming, of course, deserves mention as one of his great joys in life. Jack loves to drum. Just the feeling of banging out all these different percussions that come together to form a comprehensive, beautiful rhythm (well, to him, it's beautiful) is, as far as he's concerned, one of the most addicting sensations you can come across in life. It keeps him in shape, it's fun as hell for him, he can run through entire hours with just him going at it with his drumset--what's not to love about drumming? Except that it makes a hell of a racket, much to the malaise of his neighbours, but hey, they just don't appreciate good drumming. Jack can't help that.
Dislikes
â Jack is not a guy with many dislikes in life, but he's certainly not free of all ire. Jack for one does not like simple, one-dimensional, drab. That applies to everything--books, movies, music, people. He cannot possibly get along with a person who just doesn't change and doesn't turn out to be anything other than exactly what they seem to be at first. He loves it when a person he knows is constantly showing new facets of themselves, displaying unexpected traits or joys in life--put simply, Jack likes it when people take him by surprise. For example, when the popular 'queen bee' in high school is supposed to be a total bitch...and yet turns out to be a genuinely kind and likeable person. And admittedly, he has a certain person in mind when he says this, and he might not be speaking...entirely without bias, but it still applies. He likes it when someone who professes to hating reading turns out to be intelligent enough that Jack can hold a decent conversation with them, when a shy, cautious type turns out to have a passion for sky-diving, when the quiet, unobtrusive kid in thick-framed glasses and a striped sweater hand-knit by his mother turns out to be a fan of insanely brutal death metal. Sadly, doesn't happen a whole lot, but he loves it when it does.
â Jack has a strong aversion to judgemental people, mostly because he suffered at their hands for quite some time in high school--people who hate anything different from the norm, Jack reserves only contempt for them. He's long since learnt never to presume that he knows anything at all about a person no matter how long he's known them, much less by their appearance--after all, the weird absent-minded guy who keeps to himself and never seems to want to talk might turn out to have a hell of a lot stored up in his head to talk about, and the pissed off chick in the leather and spikes might actually have a whole lot more to her than just being a violent delinquent. People who judge others at first glance...Jack just has no respect for them.
â Jack dislikes disrespectful and rude people. They grate on his nerves. He does his best not to judge them at face value, accepting that they must surely have reasons for being...the way they are. However, all things said and done, Jack prefers not to hang around abrasive and brash people: he's just too gentle and easygoing to really get along with such people without being frustrated and irked by them. That's not to say that he doesn't try to get along with and come to terms with any given such person if they approach him first (because he never actually goes out of his way to socialise)--but if it turns out they really are just going to be abrasive and rude, then he just won't bother.
â
Personality-
Most people will confess that at first glance Jack looks like a rather aloof person, a very confident type--too confident. In fact, they'll say he looks outright arrogant the way his eyelids hang heavy over his eyes as though he's bored to shit by everything and everyone around him, the way he hangs away from everyone else, the way he never seems to have any desire to talk to anyone. In fact, they might even say he seems a bit intimidating with his aloof tendencies and 'condescending sneer' (yes, apparently Jack has a condescending sneer. He never even realised it himself and is constantly trying to eliminate this expression even though he has no idea what it looks like).
This could not be further from the truth--to say Jack is confident at all would be akin to off-handedly commenting that the universe is 'kind of a small place, when you think about it'. Quite simply, Jack has terrible self-esteem. He perceives himself to be ugly in appearance, constantly zeroing in on everything that's wrong with his face from his nose ("It's just too damn straight") to the stubble that never seems to vanish from his jaw ("Makes me look like I'm too damn lazy to get up and shave every now and then"). Not only that, but he is always questioning his intelligence, believing that all the knowledge he has stored in his head, all those immeasurably complex and confusing physics concepts and equations, are derived solely from rote memorisation--he genuinely thinks he isn't all that smart and the only reason he seems smart is because he's 'cheating'. Even his drumming, his greatest skill and pride--Jack just won't let himself accept that he's good at it. He's convinced that he straight-up sucks. If he successfully plays some ridiculously contorted and insanely fast rhythm, it was luck. If he does it again, it was luck. If he does it another time again, well clearly, he's having a lucky day. No matter what Jack accomplishes, it wasn't due to any skill or particular talent on his part. He got lucky, or he cheated.
And that's pretty much why Jack never was popular as a kid, or as an adult, because he never thought he could be. He never even tried just going up and talking to anybody--he became immediately convinced that he'd bore them, or they'd think he was weird for talking to them, or that he really was weird for talking to them. So he never tried in the first place, and in doing so doomed himself, because everyone saw him as an aloof, cocky asshole who had no desire to talk to anyone--probably thought they were all beneath him from the way he was always sneering and leering around. And the way he was seen as an outcast as a result only further cemented his belief that he was the lesser one, so lesser he couldn't even bring himself to say a word to any of the other kids. His own insecurity and unconfidence fuelled a cycle that made everyone else see him as overconfident, which in turn made him even more unconfident.
Furthermore, Jack is pretty much constantly lost in thought--he's one of those people who pretty much perpetually has his head shoved up in the clouds. He's constantly thinking--about everything. About quantum physics principles and equations, about some convoluted, rapid-fire drum beat he recently heard, about the concepts and ideas conveyed in a book he just read, about how exactly it is that the throat produces voice--he's always thinking. Jack is possessed of a naturally curious mindset, so even a passing observation or comment will cause him to tackle an entirely new subject with unrivalled intensity and gusto. Which means that yes, if he passes by two different birds sitting on a fence twittering happily in their unique ways, Jack will immediately go to the local library and grab five or so different books about bird calls to learn about what makes each different bird call unique--and before you know it, he pretty much knows ten thousand different fun facts about birds. This is a pattern that repeats itself quite often, to the point that Jack has a vast legion of little facts stored in his head applying to an immense variety of subjects, and his zest for knowledge and curiosity about the world can be downright infectious.
Once you get to know Jack, however, he's no longer the shy, aloof kid. Once he starts to realise you genuinely, actually want to get to know him....well, he can pretty much talk your ear right off, especially if you get anywhere near the subjects he's passionate about, the sciences, books, or music he loves. Once you get him started, it'll be nigh eternity before he finally shuts the hell up. He also proves to be much more friendly and affable than his exterior shyness would suggest--once he feels secure enough with another person that he doesn't think he'll weird them out by being friendly, he's much more open and fun-loving, sometimes even zany to a point. And the time he spent in a relationship with Shauna proves that Jack, for all his social awkwardness in day to day life, can be surprisingly 'good' at romance when he applies to it the same intensity and passion he bears for, say, drumming, or physics, or memorising fun facts. He was the kind of guy who never forgets an important date like a birthday or an anniversary, he was much too laid-back to really get into an actual quarrel with Shauna, always smoothing over the rough patches with a well-placed bit of amiable humour, and he always did his best to make sure she never had any reason to be mad at him in the first place. And maybe that was why, in the end, the relationship faltered...a failure Jack still regrets bitterly.
Family/Pets:
Jack's father is a businessman by the name of Nikolas Kollias; his mother is a businesswoman by the name of Aoide Kollias (nee Papadopoulos). He has no siblings, and briefly owned a cat named Furball (being clever with pet names as he is)--which ran away soon after he got it.
History-
[i]What is there really to say about James Kollias' life? It really hasn't been anything special. He was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts, to two middle-class businesspeople who constantly had to rush off to business meetings all around the country, necessitating that the young Jack be cared for by a variety of nannies and caretakers that rarely stayed for long. From time to time his parents would stay at home for slightly more extended periods, spent just a little bit of time with their son, but up until the age of six Jack had gotten used to life without many people around him besides nannies who, Jack could tell, didn't really care about him--they just wanted their paycheck. He was a quick-minded child, he figured that out early, and it gave him the impression that for whatever reason, people saw him as insignificant...his parents never seemed to want to be around him, his nannies didn't really seem to care about him beyond being a source of money, and because he had few opportunities to actually leave the house, he made very few friends, if any, as a child.
By the time Jack had entered elementary school, his mother had lost her job, and thus spent most of her time staying at home--but by then, he already had the basis of non-existent self-esteem that would characterise him later in life. Aoide Kollias never shook the feeling that her son seemed to regard her, consciously or unconsciously, as distant, almost a stranger. She was right. Jack had never had a chance to grow attached to anyone as a child--not his parents, too preoccupied with vital business trips to stay long enough for Jack to gain a familial bond with them, not his nannies, who passed one by one before his eyes without ever really bonding with him, not any of the other children, for by the time Jack was able to go out into the world and meet other people, he had already become quiet and reclusive.
Not to say he had absolutely zero friends in his childhood. Those few whom Jack did have, maybe two or three over the course of his elementary and junior high years, found that once Jack was coerced from his shell of privacy and semi-intentional social withdrawal, he became what seemed to be a completely different person. Out of nowhere came a friendly, fun-loving boy, with a zest for life and curiosity that, once you became one of very few people permitted to see it, became veritably infectious. It was hard not to get carried away once Jack started gushing about...well, anything--even the dullest of subjects could be made strangely interesting and fun to listen to once Jack started babbling about them. The problem, then, was that just about no one ever saw him like this. They saw the arrogant, silent kid with the malicious sneer and long hair, and decided that they weren't gonna have anything to do with him.
It was around this time that he first came upon his two greatest passions. The first came about, it seemed, rather simply--one day, eating dinner alone with his mother (his father, of course, away on one of his all-important business trips), Jack began to absent-mindedly drum a little pattern on the edge of the dinner table. And though his mother told him to stop, it was strangely appealing to Jack, and he stubbornly kept on doing it until he managed to perfect the basic little beat. Then, out of nowhere, it came upon him--and he turned, looked at his mother, and said "I wanna play the drums."
Not long after, his mother went out and bought him a basic drumset, glad that at the very least her son had found something specific to occupy his mind with as opposed to running all over the place researching everything from particular physics to frog anatomy. And from the get-go, Jack was in love. He spent so much time banging away on that drumset that his mother half-regretted buying him the damn thing. Day in and day out Jack was practising, working away at the most complex of drum beats, gradually mastering the rhythms and nuances of the drums. It also enabled him to expand his musical taste--searching for more and more complicated and interesting drum patterns, Jack came upon music he'd never thought he'd be able to listen to, music he didn't even know existed--music that he now had a basis to enjoy and appreciate. Drumming was a drastic improvement to his life--it made him happier than ever, even happier than physics and other sciences had always made him.
Socially, however, things were less happy. By the time he was in high school, nothing had changed, except that all his friends had moved away to larger cities in Massachusetts, and those who stayed ended up going to Provincetown High School, whereas Jack's parents wanted him to go to the much larger Nauset Regional High School (and it isn't hard for a school to be bigger than Provincetown High, being that that school has thirty two students). And so Jack entered high school even more of a social outcast than ever before, now with no real friends to soothe the harsh reality that everyone here already had all their own friends from middle school and were avoiding him--but at least it was better than being publicly rejected by actually trying to reach out to those around him. He knew how that would end up--and Jack decided it was vastly preferable to just be ignored than to try to befriend anybody and end up boring them or coming off as even weirder than he thought people already looked upon him as.
And indeed, he was seen as...well, peculiar. He didn't talk to anybody. His heavy-lidded, low-sunk eyes had this arrogance about them that was off-putting. He listened to weird music, had no mind for fashion trends, had no friends. He sat alone at lunch, listening to music, reading, drumming on the cafeteria table, occasionally glancing up to 'sneer' at passersby without even intending to--he never had a girlfriend, even though truth be told for all his evident arrogance and silence Jack was pretty good-looking, given his body frame--just muscular enough without overdoing it--and his hair...which was admittedly pretty damn attractive, at least according to any number of female classmates who swore mentally never to let it be known that they thought the weird socially reclusive kid was kind of a good-looking guy.
Of course, no high school experience is complete for any true awkward kid without the obligatory unrequited, hopeless crush on the popular girl. And that popular person happened to be Shauna King. Well, Jack had never spoken to her--he'd've committed suicide before he could push himself to talk to her. But she was beautiful, she was outgoing, and Jack got the feeling that somehow she was just as adventurous a soul as he was a curious soul eager to experience and know everything there was to the world. But of course, she was never gonna have anything to do with him. She might've been outgoing, but hell, she wasn't gonna just start talking to the loner of a kid that everyone else ignored...
And yet somehow, at some point...she did. Jack still remembers crystal clear, because he was convinced at the moment in question that he was dreaming--the moment that Shauna one day just came up to him, devoid of all her friends and popular circle, and talked to him. He can't remember how he looked or what expression he had on his face (though looking back on it, he figures he probably looked like a complete dumbass) because holy shit, Shauna was talking to him, who cared about anything else? It was pretty much only after Shauna left after a brief conversation that Jack realised, holy shit, that really just happened.
From then on (and I'm keeping this vague until Shauna's profile cements what actually happened specifically :v) they spoke from time to time--but in secret. Shauna, perhaps, didn't want her friends to know she was talking to the unpopular loner kid--hell, Jack didn't care. He could care less if she thought it was embarrassing--no one had ever gone out of their way to actively talk to him and try to get to know him, much less someone he was...'into' (he'd always seen the term 'crush' as horribly juvenile). Jack convinced himself not to care. He was happy just having someone to talk to even if he still had to spent lunch breaks on his own--and needless to say, it didn't hurt, not at the time, that that person happened to be a girl he quickly fell in love with once it turned out that all his first impressions of her turned out to be true. The aloof sneering stranger disappeared--in his place came a fun-loving, ever-polite gentleman, friendlier and far more sociable and affable than anyone had ever seen him before--except that everyone wasn't seeing him this way. Only Shauna was, and only in secret.
By the time they were in college, however, just being friends wasn't working for Jack. It was becoming harder and harder for him to tolerate the idea that Shauna saw him only as a friend and nothing more--that she felt towards other guys the way Jack felt solely about her: the very thought was painful for him. But in opposition to these resentments was the fear that if Jack ever told Shauna how he felt about her, she'd be freaked out by it, think it was weird or creepy, hate him for it...any number of terrible things that would kill the only real friendship he'd had since junior high. Eventually, he wasn't able to just keep silent about it any longer, and one evening he just up and told Shauna that he loved her. Just out of the blue confessed that he loved her and had since high school. And then braced for impact, whether impact meant her yelling at him, or staring at him in disbelief and shock...maybe even slapping him or something like in those romantic drama movies.
She did none of those. Oh, she was taken by surprise by it, maybe, but she wasn't disgusted. In fact, once Jack had gotten over the realisation that he'd just told Shauna he loved her, she told him she felt the same way about him.
And so their relationship began. Shauna again wanted to keep it secret--and Jack again managed to convince himself not to care. He was dating the girl he'd loved since high school, which was...y'know, something he would've thought completely impossible just a few years prior. Could he really ask for any more? No, to do so would be unrealistic--it would be demanding too much of life. He'd been lucky enough as it was--to have Shauna first actually come up and talk to him, and then to discover that she reciprocated the feelings he'd had for her all that time?
So he just let it be the way it was. He loved being with Shauna even if it had to be in secret. She was boisterous and wonderful, clever enough to hold an intelligent conversation but easygoing enough to just joke around and not give a damn. And she was never boring--Jack never really knew her completely, and she was always able to surprise him, which was another thing he loved about her. The secrecy never affected the prosperity of the relationship, not at first.
At length, Jack started to fear their relationship was starting to fizzle out. And he blamed the secrecy. He believed that it was going to end up killing their relationship, feared that if this kept up eventually they'd break up, and there was nothing Jack dreaded more than that (well, very few things he dreaded more than that). The problem was that he didn't know how to tackle the issue...old fears came up--fears that if he brought the issue up with Shauna she'd refuse to end the secrecy, and perhaps the act of bringing the problem up would even cause even more issues in their relationship far beyond the secrecy. But the discontent grew within him, and ultimately, he couldn't keep quiet about it anymore. And so one day, much like he did years ago in confessing his feelings towards her, Jack confronted Shauna over the secrecy of their relationship.
He'd never known the true reason that Shauna kept their relationship under wraps so fervently. To this day, he has never found out. And that day, when he told her he couldn't keep things secret anymore, she didn't tell him. Instead, Shauna merely told him that if they couldn't keep it a secret, then perhaps it was time to put an end to things.
To say Jack was heartbroken by this would have been an understatement. His gut told him to back down and let things continue as they were--was it really worth putting an end to it? No, on an instinctive level, Jack knew things could not continue this way. The prospect that Shauna was really so embarrassed by him, so repulsed at the thought of anyone else knowing of their relationship, it was just too painful for him. So when Shauna revealed that she preferred continued secrecy to the mere possibility of making their relationship known, Jack decided it couldn't go on. And he told her if that was the case, then he couldn't do it anymore. It was hard on both of them--Jack, to think that Shauna really thought he was such an embarrassment, and to Shauna, perhaps, for other reasons that Jack never knew of. But they agreed, in an unusual way, to put an end to the relationship. And directly afterwards, Shauna left and returned to Australia--and Jack didn't see her for years afterwards.
Not much is to be said after that. Jack never moved away from Provincetown. Soon after Shauna left, he obtained a bachelor's degree in astrophysics, and then more recently switched to MIT (which is pretty much down the street from Provincetown...comparatively, Massachusetts's a small state) and completed his Ph D thesis and obtained his doctorate degree--so yes, now, technically, he is 'Dr. Kollias'. He is considering the option of actually joining the physics faculty of MIT as a career option, but at the same time, wants to also pursue, if only as a side career, his passion of drumming. Sadly, he's simply too unassertive to act on his desires and find a band to play with--used to be Shauna's energy and drive that enabled him to do such things, but since she left, he's been reduced to slaving away at degrees, to the point where even his beloved physics is starting to almost become a drag because he can't make anything of it.
Anything else?
[i]Anything you want to add, theme song or whatever you think will help us know your character better.