"No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for."
-Joel, The Last of Us
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Adopt - wher / Retire - Joel
NAME: Joel, don't call him Joe
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Definite preference for women but still a little on the bi side, essentially he'll take what he can get but he really isn't taking at all
BIRTHDATE: Fall 2710
AGE: 65 as of 2775
LOCATION: High Reaches
OCCUPATION: Wherhandler, sad dad
WING: Sunburst
APPEARANCE
EYES: Hazel
HAIR: Black but very much greying, short
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 6'3, broad-shouldered and strong, too old for this shit
PLAY-BY: Joel (The Last of Us)
EXPY SOURCE: Joel Miller (The Last of Us)
FULL APPEARANCE:
This is a man who could carry the weight of the world on his shoulders and still be alright physically. Old yet still strong, Joel is broad-shouldered and could probably lift someone over his shoulder and carry them around for hours if need be. He's getting old, you can see it in his face and hair, wrinkles forming and previously black hair definitely greying. Even his beard is greying. He looks unapproachable, gruff, partially because of the way he holds himself and the scowl that's next to always on his face.
He wears collared shirts and dark pants, boots too, nothing that would make him stand out in a crowd. When it gets cold, he stacks on the layers, no sense on getting cold. He always wears a bracelet that Sarah made for him for his 33rd birthday, he won't take it off. Hasn't taken it off for 25 turns.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Joel is... sad. He's tired. He's been around long enough to know that people can die at the drop of a hat and sometimes it's just better to detach from the world than to deal with the pain that comes with loss. He will only complain about his age once in a blue moon because the more complaints he makes, the less he thinks that people younger than him will take him seriously. At this point, he's less driven by his morals and more by what he needs to get done to keep functioning in society and to keep society functioning efficiently.
Joel got this sense of detached-ness after the death of his daughter, Sarah, and while it has progressively gotten better after bonding to Joesk and pretty much adopting Ellie, it's still quite evident that it won't really leave him. He's got a very broody, apathetic and cynical vibe to him. He's very protective and completely dedicated to his family and seeing them hurt destroys him. His dedication extends to the people he trusts greatly. However, for those he dislikes, he treats them with a brutality that is fiercer that one would like. He still has some emotional trauma from the war but has shoved that so deep down inside himself it would take a miracle worker to drag it out.
Joel is smart, he's resourceful, he's crafty and he's nothing if not a hard worker. He may be selfish sometimes, but he feels like he is allowed to be so at this point. Sometimes you have to sacrifice something that would be for the greater good to keep yourself alive and kicking even though he knows that the good of many is better than the good of one. He has a darker sense of humor that comes off once in a while, and he can sing very well. He even wanted to be a harper when he was a kid.
Don't ask about his past. He won't talk about it.
HISTORY
FAMILY: Anne (mother, deceased), Nicholas (father, deceased), Sarah (daughter, deceased), Thomas (younger brother, alive), Maria (sister-in-law, alive), Ellie of Green Ellsk (pretty much wordlessly adopted daughter, alive)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: ha ha ha no
BIRTHPLACE: Telgar
HISTORY:
tw: death and mentions of trauma
Joel wasn't always so cold. At one point he was just a kid, a kind older brother with his own dreams that pushed him forward. He was born to a kind set of parents who tried to be involved in his life, both of his parents were cooks. Joel himself had great dreams of being a harper, got a few singing lessons from a nice harper lady who was friends with his mother, but his dreams never came to fruition. His little brother, Thomas, had dreams of being a dragonrider, and Joel always encouraged him to follow his dreams when he became of age.
Teen years came with Joel picking up odd-jobs around the Weyr and Thomas becoming a candidate. There was no doubt for Joel to actually cheer when his brother Impressed to his dragon. It was nice to know that his baby brother's dreams were coming true. As he got older, he met a nice girl and fell in love with her. They dated for a while and became weyrmates and all was well. Not long after did she become pregnant, Joel was ecstatic to become a dad.
When his daughter, Sarah, was born, there was a whole new light in his life. Joel was happier than he'd ever been. He knew that he was too old to even apprentice as a harper, so he just fell in with the other weyrfolk. Odd jobs here and there around the Weyr. Life was fine until Joel and his wife realized that their teenage relationship should have ended during their teenage years. They began arguing often until the two parents kept fighting every other night and his wife couldn't handle the pressure of being a mother. She left, and Joel was full well prepared to be a single father. For twelve years, Joel did anything he could to make sure that Sarah was living a good life. He wanted to be there for her, and so he was.
Then Sarah got sick.
She got really, really sick, the kind of sick that's really hard to cure. Bedridden for weeks, she faced little chance of survival. Joel was with her the whole time, right up until the end. Her death broke something inside of Joel, he started to almost float around. Sarah left a hole in his heart that would never fully heal. He didn't work as much as he mourned, and really only left his weyr to eat or bathe or check in with his brother per Tommy's request.
During one of Tommy's 'please leave your weyr more often you're getting so pale that it's beginning to scare me' moments, he made Joel go to a wher Hatching with him. Joel sat in the stands, leaning his head on his hand, and watched the unfolding Hatching. Watching the candidates Impress, and how intrigued Joel was, made Tommy realize something. Within the week, Tommy had shown up at Joel's with a wher egg in his arms and gave it to Joel. Joel didn't exactly know what to do with it, but when the green wher to popped out and Impress to him, he had some idea. He had some explaining to do about Jeosk the next time he saw his brother.
Graduation came sooner than he expected, seemed like time was just flying past him. With the Interval War trugging along, Joel expected that they wouldn't send some new wherhandler off to fight, only the more experienced handler and riders. But, he was wrong. It took almost another ten years for the war to end, and during that time he did his best for his Weyr. Sometimes that meant doing things that he would never ever speak of again. When the war was over, he took every ounce of pain and trauma and buried it so deep within himself that you'd need someone very well willing to dig forever to get it out.
Leaving was never in the question for Joel, he never thought he'd think about leaving his home behind. But really, the only thing keeping him around was Tommy, and Tommy was telling him to leave with Joesk and get away from it all. He listened for once, and set out for High Reaches after the fall of Golre.
Less fighting resulted in more time for him to heal, but it was never better right away. He'd have periods of time where things seemed bleaker than usual, but Joesk was always there for him. When she heard of it, it was immediately Joesk's idea to join the wherling mentor program, much to Joel's dismay. He partnered up with a very stubborn seventeen year old girl named Ellie and her wher, Ellsk.
Their partnership was very rocky at first, with Ellie's inquisitive nature leading her to try and dig into Joel's past and to arguments between the two (of which Joel was very surprised to find out Ellie could hold her own in one). Eventually, Ellie started thinking about switching mentors to a friend of her late mother's, Marlene. But, per Joesk's request, he opened up a bit. Ellie eased off on trying to dig into his past, Joel found out about Ellie's, the two found common ground. She reminded him of Sarah, she never had any parental figure to look up to, they ended up wordlessly adopting one another as family.
Five years later, Joel is the best he's ever been since Sarah's passing, but that doesn't mean that he's fully healed. Sometimes things can get a little rocky, but he has something stable to help him when he needs it.
