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Jeff Calhoun
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Basics
name. Jeffrey David Calhoun age. 44 date of birth. June 6, 1974 canon. Original (Gifted & Talented) username. j.calhoun housing. A sweet pad for cool musicians occupation. Teacher (of non-magical subjects) at Gramarye Magic ResearchFirst Impressions
height. 6'0" build. Lean, fit hair. Brown, graying eyes. Hazel sexuality. Bisexual, but also hasn't dated in a million years, so good luck with that!! marital status. Divorced place of birth. Santa Monica, CA career. High school teacher (History), former musician demeanor. Painfully Californian fashion. Casual fashion dad voice. Also painfully Californian scent. Some kind of subtle woodsy smokey cologne idk mental. Vacillates between a total state of CHILL and overwhelming anxiety magical. He's basically his world's equivalent of a bard, so I guess if anyone can get a feel or sense of his magic, it'd be ~musical~
Background Info
Quick World Overview For more information than you could ever want, here's an extended World Info post.Jeff's from a modern fantasy universe, set in the present day, where magic is:
Real. It exists, and it's been practiced by small communities of magic users (witches, wizards, sorcerers, mages...) throughout human history.For centuries, magic users existed amongst the rest of humanity, hidden in plain sight, their "society" (such as it was) existing as a secret, underground subculture. All that changed in the wake of World War II, when they kicked the metaphorical broom closet wide open. Sure, there were some rough decades, and a lot of places are still rife with tension and conflict. But nowadays, in many countries, the magical is practically mundane.
Hereditary. It's in your genes, baby. Approximately 12% of the population is born with the ability to use magic at all.
Out in the open. Everybody knows about it. Magic, and the people who practice it, have been a regular part of everyday life for decades.
Officially, "magical" abilities are known as Gifts, and those who possess them are Gifted. While Gifted people are generally understood as part of modern American society, that doesn't mean they're universally welcomed or accepted. Stigma and prejudices still run deep, especially in more conservative communities.
Though the decades since the big 'coming out' were full of societal upheaval and tension, things took a major (positive) shift in the 90s. It's not perfect, but these days, being Gifted isn't nearly as controversial as it used to be. Magical Goddamn Powers Jeff is Gifted, which means he has the potential to make magic work through self-directed Ritual. Magic, in this universe, isn't some all-powerful superpower, nor is it something that's as simple as picking a spell out of a magic book. Its applications can be versatile, running the pretty typical fantasy gamut (elements, clairvoyance, illusions/glamours, telekinesis, dreamwalking, vague curses, vague blessings, etc), with the potential for a lot of mixing and matching, customization, and so on. The principles of magic are universal, but the actual spellwork is a different story.
Every spell is unique to the caster, just as their Rituals are. Rituals are tied into some aspect of who they are, what they're interested in, and what they're skilled at. As for spells, those have to be worked into creation by the caster. Think of spells like a song that can only be played by one person. First, they have to compose a song (creating a spell), and then they can play that song (casting a spell). They can play the same song over and over again, or remix it into something old with something new, or compose a new song entirely. And the bigger the effect you wish to have, the more difficult and complex the Ritual spellwork must be.
In Jeff's case, his Ritual is music. Singing, humming, whistling, playing the guitar, and so on. Any spell he works has to be built on music. He's basically a bard. He's also pretty rusty when it comes to casting anything big, and he'd rather keep his spells to little, petty things, anyway. Anything too big might attract the sort of attention he doesn't want. Not only is he a bard; he's a bard who's seen some shit.
History
The Early Years For more information than you could ever want, here's an extended Character Info post.Jeff was born at a time when being Gifted wasn't this totally normal, mainstream thing. They were out in the open already, but that didn't mean they were universally welcomed or accepted as a part of mainstream American society by the 1970s. Hell, the social strife surrounding the Gifted community was what brought his parents, a pair of hippie Boomer activists, together in the first place.
The Calhoun kids were born and raised in Santa Monica, CA. With his parents being open and outspoken about Gifted issues, they weren't exactly well loved by all their neighbors, but they weren't openly hassled, either. Usually, it was nothing worse than some parents giving him and his brothers the stink eye and refusing to let their precious children hang out with them.
Jeff was a friendly, outgoing kid, who made friends easily. He had a love of music, which was encouraged and nurtured by the adults in his life. When he reached adolescence, his parents (finally!) started to tutor him in the Gift: the principles behind it, how to put them into action through Ritual. Headstrong and independent (two qualities you need to excel at magic), he took the lessons and ran with them, cultivating (like all Gifted folks must do) his own personal Ritual to work magic. In his case, his Ritual was music.
In high school, he got way more into his Gifted identity, which he'd previously treated as an afterthought. He'd developed a more rebellious, counterculture attitude, which fit with the Gifted youth culture of the 80s. He befriended the few other Gifted students at his school, and they started cutting class to trade tips and practice together under the bleachers or wherever. Adolescence had given them all chips on their shoulders, and they reveled in living up to the stereotypes of Gifted youths, as a 'fuck you' to conventional society.
The more he fucked around, the more his grades started to plummet. And eventually, he and his bff got it in their heads to start a rock band. All-Gifted, with magic weaved into their shows to create an experience unlike any other act out there! He'd be the lead guitarist and vocalist, she'd be the drummer, and they'd find some other Gifted musicians to fill in the rest. VH1 Behind the Music Thus, the Nervous Tix were born. At first, the band was complete shit. Incompetently cacophonous. But, for all their failings, they at least cared about the music. They tried. They practiced. And in time, they found a sound that worked for them, and they improved.
Oh and meanwhile, Jeff flunked his senior year and decided to drop out rather than try again. But he had a calling now. The Tix traveled from dive to dive, making music and magic, creating an insane, bacchanalian experience for the crowds. They developed a following and gained notoriety in the SoCal music scene. A couple years of this, and the Tix had real momentum. Jeff and his bandmates had never worked so hard at anything else in their lives, and it was paying off.
But when you meddle with magic the way Jeff was, amping it way up, way too many times, eventually it's going to blow up in your face. Despite knowing this, despite warnings, he kept at it, because he was young, cocky, and up his own ass. His star was rising, and he wasn't gonna stop now. With all the magic the Tix were slinging around, it was only a matter of time before he got attention from other beings who possessed an intrinsic link to the Gift. The Demon Incident (Oops) Which is to say: Demons. He got the attention of a demon. And this demon, partially-but-not-completely summoned by one of the Nervous Tix's musical Rituals, became anchored to Jeff. But, hey, anchoring beats full-on summoning. At least it couldn't possess him and use him as a meat puppet! It just meant that the demon... made a nest in his head. Invisible and inaudible to everyone else, it was his constant companion.
At first, he didn't really notice it. When its influence was small and subtle, it was easy to rationalize away anything unusual in his perception. But then, he'd catch glimpses of something, briefly, in reflections. Not just mirrors, but any reflective surface. In time, the demon began to appear more. It started speaking to him. Nightmares started, then hallucinations. As it escalated, Jeff started to mainline whichever substances (drugs, alcohol, pills) he could get his hands on, in an attempt to smother it all out. Which, naturally, was a completely ineffectual way of dealing with the problem. Soon, he was experiencing intrusive thoughts of harming himself or others. And the worst was when he started experiencing fugue blackouts, lasting hours to days. And all the while, the demon kept talking to him. It could be cruel, vicious, friendly, cajoling; it was whatever it wanted to be in the moment. Most persistently, it would implore him: "Write a new song. Play. Make beautiful music."
Likely, what the demon wanted was for Jeff to finish what he (accidentally) started and bring it all the way into the world. For that, Jeff would have to create just the right spell through his music. But whether it was because he didn't want to, or was just incapable of it after all the abuse he was putting himself through, Jeff never composed the spell to fully summon it.
All the while, he was tanking his own band by becoming an insufferable, unreliable, strung out asshole, and their shows were getting worse and worse as a result. When the band finally broke up, Jeff was at the end of his rope, losing whatever tenuous support structure he'd had. Finally, he swallowed what remained of his pride and reached out to his family for help.
Naturally, magic-related mishaps are as old as the Gifted community, itself. And one of the benefits of being out in the open was that by the 90s, there were more resources than ever available to Gifted people in need of intervention. So his parents got him admitted into an inpatient program at a hospital for "Gifted issues."
After several months of treatment, he managed to get through the demon incident in one piece. With a new lease on life and a thousand coping strategies learned through therapy, Jeff began to put his life back together. He waited tables. He got his GED. He went to college. He met a girl and fell in love. He put the ugliness of his youth behind him and... things got better. Where Are They Now? Cut to: roughly 20 years later. These days, he's divorced (amicably!), a father (and primary caregiver), and living in Virginia (just a little ways outside of DC). He teaches history at a public high school, where he's got a pretty good rapport with the kids, thanks to being one of the more easygoing teachers. Between the demands of his job, and the demands of raising a teenager (his daughter Melody, now 15), he doesn't have a whole lot of time for anything else.
Even though his life's pretty steady, stable, and happy, it doesn't mean there aren't any lingering issues from his past. He's an anxious person. Extremely anxious, especially when a new or unexpected stressor is punted into his life. But he's able to manage the anxiety with a steady weed habit. He thinks Mel doesn't know. (She does.)
Otherwise, Jeff's doing all right for himself. The self-medication even helps him relax enough that he's gotten back into using his Gift. He keeps the spells small, nothing like what he used to get up to, but it's nice to get back in practice, especially since he's been teaching Mel, as some good father-daughter bonding.
So that's where Jeff is now. A stoner teacher, entering his mid-40s, living in suburbia. His troubled past is still a part of him, and sometimes, he has regrets, sure. He wonders what life could've been like if things hadn't taken such a sharp turn in his early 20s. But when he considers his life as it is, he knows: It was all worth it.
Life in Quarantine
Welcome to Riverview! Jeff got to Riverview and almost immediately got kidnapped. Good times, man! At least he's making some positive connections with people, namely Poe Dameron, Richard Strand, Alex Reagan, Chyler, AND MORE SectionName PUT WORDS HEREExtra Tidbits
Miscellany- GENERALLY SOBER: no drugs (with the exception of weed, shhhh), no alcohol beyond the occasional social drinking, tries to be mindful of his habits.
- Like a lot of people who went through treatment and recovery, he's pretty big into directing his negative impulses into fitness/exercise and other hobbies. HENCE: why he's so into running, going to the gym, etc.
- He's honestly pretty vain lbr. He puts effort into himself! You don't look this stylishly casual by accident, especially when you're out of your 20s!
- Despite his enjoyment of some sports, he still can't throw or aim for shit. GOOD THING HIS DAUGHTER NEVER WANTS TO PLAY CATCH.
- He's also not very good in a fight.
- He's also not very good at saying 'no' to people.
- gosh what IS he good at...
- his ex father-in-law was a Colonel and he hated Jeff
- he texts like garbage because he hates touch screens and finds them annoying to type with. SO he'll just smash out his words as quickly as possible and occasionally let autocorrect take the wheel. HOWEVER, he's not an idiot, and he's perfectly capable of typing properly, and defaults to proper grammar/etc when at a regular keyboard.
- SWEET I FINALLY HAVE A SOUND REFERENCE FOR HIS SINGING VOICE