Name: Jacob Cunningham
Age: 40
Birthday: January 29
Gender: Male
Category: Faculty
Class: N/A
Appearance Description:Jacob's body is where one of his "flaws" is most evident. Though not quite as out-and-about it as he was when he was younger, he is something of a vain man that, even in the wake of personal loss, somehow finds time to keep himself looking good. Not just clean and well-kept, but attractive and easy on the eyes, despite having been out of the dating scene for quite awhile.
Years on the farm taught him work ethic and built up his body for exertion. When he left the farm, he took to working out and it has been paying off since. Jacob has a model's body, not simply toned, but muscular and very well-defined. His torso and arms are noticeable even under his clothes if they're tight enough.
There are two tattoos on Jacob. On his left shoulder is a flaming serpent skeleton, the result of one of his first encounters with alcohol, and the white half of the Yin-Yang on his left waist line just above the pants top, the result of another drunken night but with his ex-wife.
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(Credit to Artistic Masochist and poppulchritude for original Jacob art.)
Hair Color: Light Brown
Length: To his shoulders in the back, Past his ears on the sides, Slightly shorter in the front.
Jacob likes to wear his hair long enough that his bangs droop over and bounce against his forehead a bit. Over the years, he just came to prefer keeping his bangs over his forehead, or just generally keeping his hair longer. Styling it is another thing entirely, a thing he usually skips over besides just brushing or combing it. He once heard that "messy" was a style unto itself and he sticks by that, leaving his hair a little ruffled but not enough to make him look like he just got out of bed. Some have compared it to the sight of a bird with ruffled feathers, still pretty just a little out of order.
Body Hair Color: Brown
Jacob prefers to keep his face clean-shaven as much as possible. It's a very rare case that someone would find so much as stubble on him, unless you're in a relationship with him and living with him.
In terms of body hair, it follows the same theme as facial hair. Except he keeps himself waxed instead of shaved. It's a little expensive but it's one of the few indulgences he has yet to get rid of or outgrow.
Outfit Style Preferences:
Favorite Colors: Jacob likes the look of darker reds and neutral colors like black and white. Boring? Maybe. But Jacob likes simplicity and contrast.
Colors to wear: Despite liking reds, Jacob finds that there's a lot of muted earth-tone greens in his wardrobe. In fact, a lot of his clothes have more muted colors instead of more ostentatious colors. The exception, of course, is his casual around-the-house clothing which consists of t-shirt and the like which could be any color.
Decoration: Accessories have never been his strong suit aside from his wedding ring and the occasional bracelet. Though the pair of glasses that he rarely, if ever, wears are the rimless sort.
For the most part, Jacob has an affinity for semi-formal wear regardless of where he is going. That means collared shirts, possibly with cuffs, pants that aren't jeans, belts, and clean but comfortable shoes. While he never concerns himself too much with fashion, he has a basic enough understanding to know what goes with what and why some thing look good on the right people. For his own part, his shirts tend to be a little tight and he doesn't mind rolling the sleeves up on occasion. Also, it's worth noting that Jacob has a thing for vests. He owns a lot of them, and he likes to wear them. Casual wear would be nothing special to any other male his age, t-shirts and jeans and whatnot. He wants to find a good hat, but can't find one that he likes or one that looks good on him.
Personality Description: Jacob is a kind, optimistic man who prefers to take life a little slow. Influenced heavily by his home life and recent-ish events in his life, he knows that life can be hard at time but he never lets himself lose sight of the good in life as well. More often than not, life's little enjoyments come in the form of other people and interactions with said people. While humor and smiles make up most of his persona, it belies a somewhat lonely and often sad man.
Temperament: Jacob is not an easy man to anger. A combination of patience, a desire to understand before acting, and a sense of humor means that one would have to work very hard in order to get him to lose his temper. Sure, he might become upset or irritated occasionally, but it's not often that he becomes angry enough to yell or lash out. There are a few shortcuts to getting there however. Speaking ill of his family, or his students, or putting them in harm is one.
Philosophy
Violence: Despite once working in a shady business and formally being a bit of a bad boy himself, Jacob is a practical pacifist. He fully understands that violence exists in the world and that sometimes violence is necessary, but only rarely. He himself would always prefer not to resort to violence nor let anyone else resort to it. To him, there are just so many option before violence, and it's worth trying every single one if the time allows it.
Sexuality: Jacob's live-and-let-live attitude means he doesn't really care about a person's sexual preferences. Though he would happily rally for gay rights, he would have to be asked to do so because he would rather stay out of that conflict. More important to him is something akin to a Sexual Philosophy. Jacob believes sex to be both important and special, for more than just reproduction. It's a means of intimate emotional connection and something people just need to be more open and okay about. He feels that a lot of young women and men are missing out on one of the greatest joys in life both because of shame and not knowing the right partner. Despite the "free love" vibe this philosophy carries, he still believes in protection and waiting for the right one.
Crime and Punishment: Mr. Cunningham is of the opinion that crime will always exist in some way or another, and that the best that people like him can do is minimize it to the best of their ability. He also believes that no Justice system is ever perfect. At best a system tries to give punishments of equal weight while also providing chances for rehabilitation. At worst, it's legalized revenge.
Developed Personality:
Optimism: Jacob is a man who does not let life get him too down, most of the time, and he attempts to brighten the lives of other people around him. He feels that he has seen enough in his lifetime to know that things will work out in due time, or if you put in the right amount of work with a good attitude. This also extends to his belief in people. He's hesitant to say that all people are born good, but he finds it difficult to believe that someone can just be evil. He likes to believe that they were just a person who made a mistake or a bad decision, or that something is possibly wrong with them. Whatever the reason, everyone should be given a chance or two.
Humor: He feels that humor is almost a necessary part of life and dealing with the world. Sure, sadness and anger come, but humor allows us a method to confront that darkness without fear. Besides, not many things feel better than a hearty laugh or making other people laugh. However, Jacob's own humor is kind of how he covers up his own sadness and loneliness.
Romantic: Jacob is a bit of a hopeless romantic. Downgraded from "playboy", which was previously downgraded from "horny bad boy". A remnant of his playboy days in his youth, he finds it difficult to not at least kinda fall for a woman and to not flirt. The former is more of a product of his empathy for people, the latter is just an ground-in habit from when he used to pick-up girls. Most of the time, he doesn't mean to flirt or even realizes that he's flirting, it just happens. Of course, this all goes hand-in-hand with Jacob's still alive-and-well libido. He just has better control over it. However, he's always a sucker for girls with sad eyes or puppy eyes.
Grief: It's a big of an unspoken fact that the loss of his family is why he chose to remain single for the longest time. Beneath all the humor and sunny-ness, is a very lonely man. He misses his wife and daughter to no end. He doesn't touch on it much, preferring to ignore it while he can. But in the right situation, he'll talk about it, believing that holding it all in wouldn't be healthy.
Powers: Gifted Blood - While Jacob himself has no powers, his bloodline carries the seed of the supernatural. Though kept secret, many in his ancestry were supernatually gifted, though they were all female. His mother should've had powers... as should his daughter...
Biography: The influences of Jacob's life begin before he can even properly remember his past. Only a few years after he was born, his mother left the family She did not pass away, nor was there some kind of less-fatal foul play. It was as simple as it was shocking. One day, his father woke up one day to find his bed bereft of his wife and a simple note: Do not come looking for me. I didn't take anything and I hope you can forgive me. This just isn't the life for me. That was it. From that day forth, Jacob was raised only by his father, whom tried to find a balance between protecting his son from his own mother's abandonment and allowing his son to know the other half of where he came from. However, he never really showed much interest in finding or reconnecting with his mother. Perhaps it was fortunate, in a sense, that she left before he could remember her.
As a child, Jacob was raised as best a single father could. It was fortunate that his father, Issac, was a hard-working man more focused on raising a good kid more than anything else. While "good" has many connotations, Issac mostly tried to make sure Jacob didn't grow up to be a bad person more than he tried to make Jacob a model child. He instilled values like hard work and honesty, but also encouraged Jacob to explore and just be himself. In a way, he tried to be Jacob's friend as well as his father. The result was a wild yet good-hearted kid.
As a young child, he was just energetic and a bit of troublemaker. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary for a boy at that age. It only really started to manifest when Jacob got into his teenage years. When the hormones kicked-in, things really got out of hand. Jacob was... a "playboy" to put it in more polite terms. In more crass terms, he was a trouble-making bad boy who couldn't keep it in his pants.
It was a mixed bag and his father would tell you the same, in more colorful words. On one hand, Jacob was consistent in his chores and helping out around the house and generally being a good son. On the other, Jacob went through girlfriends almost on a weekly basis and he had developed a reputation as the boy that other families' daughters should stay away from. On several, SEVERAL occasions, Issac had to go pick up his son from being strangled by another father when he had been caught in the bedroom of their daughter. Now Jacob was not an actual bad kid, he never forced a girl, he just got around. A lot. Some of it could be attributed to a band that he had and his friends tried starting up, of which he was the lead man. It didn't last, but that's where his first tattoo came from. To this day, Jacob feels a mix of shame and pride at his teenage antics.
In a move that made his father facepalm, and later nod in quiet understanding, one of Jacob's first careers was as a host, at a host club. To pay for college. His younger self would say that he was leveraging his existing good looks and girl experience to something more lucrative, and then go off on a little diatribe about he was helping women by giving them someone nice to look at and giving them they attention they want. His older self would just say he was trying to legitimize his philandering ways and not grow up.
His playboy lifestyle came (mostly) to an end when he met a young woman named Yumi. At first, she was like any other girl he had been with, he did his thing and stuff happened (He was her first). However, he surprisingly found himself unable to just up and leave her like many others. He actually wanted to stick around with her. It was an almost overnight change in Jacob. He had fallen in love and he didn't even know it. (This was also the origin of his second tattoo, of which his ex-wife has the other half to in a similar place.)
It wasn't a fairy tale romance. Jacob couldn't simply go from playboy to loving partner overnight. Sure, he devoted a lot of his time and affection to Yumi, and she returned it heartily, but flirting with other young women was a habit that was not so easily broken. It was a constant issue for their relationship, no matter how much gradually abated, even when the big day came for Jacob to be wed to a woman he honestly loved. Before it could ruin their relationship, Jacob forced himself to stop the habit once and for all. The final nail in the coffin was the birth of his daughter Chiru. Knowing that he was now a father, and that he was now fully responsible for another life, changed Jacob. Remnants of his old habits remain however...
Perhaps it was too ingrained his being. Jacob just couldn't turn his flirty ways completely off. He was faithful to Yumi and loved Chiru with all his heart, but... Well, he would say circumstances conspired against him. Long story short, he got very close to several women at his job, 95% unintentionally. Lynn. Uzume. Shaeris. Shiren. Yeah... He didn't SLEEP with any of them. Well, he did. Uzume. But it was LITERALLY sleeping with her. As in falling asleep and not doing anything. Lynn was certainly unsubtle about her attemps to bed him, and Shiren was just strangely possessive/stalkerish about him. Shaeris was the biggest problem because her and Jacob actually had something going. Unsurprisingly, this wasn't good for a marriage.
So, in a mostly quiet and somber series of events, they divorced, with Yumi gaining custody of Chiru. Jacob had seen this coming, but failed to acknowledge it. So while it wasn't an amiable experience, it was a quiet and subdued one.
Jacob continued his career as a teacher, and even landed a position at Starlight Academy. He stays in contact with his now teenage daughter but it's a difficult relationship. Especially considering that he wasn't entirely sure why he was approached to fill the faculty position. (Jacob might not know it, but he is part of a blood line that's been known to create the supernatually gift. However, it only manifests in the females of his blood...)
Additional Information:
Fun Fact: Jacob is a character I've been playing for over a decade, aging and growing along the way. Everything in his history is something that's actually been RP-ed out, albeit with changes or alterations to fit a more cohesive whole.
Age: 40
Birthday: January 29
Gender: Male
Category: Faculty
Class: N/A
Appearance Description:Jacob's body is where one of his "flaws" is most evident. Though not quite as out-and-about it as he was when he was younger, he is something of a vain man that, even in the wake of personal loss, somehow finds time to keep himself looking good. Not just clean and well-kept, but attractive and easy on the eyes, despite having been out of the dating scene for quite awhile.
Years on the farm taught him work ethic and built up his body for exertion. When he left the farm, he took to working out and it has been paying off since. Jacob has a model's body, not simply toned, but muscular and very well-defined. His torso and arms are noticeable even under his clothes if they're tight enough.
There are two tattoos on Jacob. On his left shoulder is a flaming serpent skeleton, the result of one of his first encounters with alcohol, and the white half of the Yin-Yang on his left waist line just above the pants top, the result of another drunken night but with his ex-wife.
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Click to enlarge
(Credit to Artistic Masochist and poppulchritude for original Jacob art.)
Hair Color: Light Brown
Length: To his shoulders in the back, Past his ears on the sides, Slightly shorter in the front.
Jacob likes to wear his hair long enough that his bangs droop over and bounce against his forehead a bit. Over the years, he just came to prefer keeping his bangs over his forehead, or just generally keeping his hair longer. Styling it is another thing entirely, a thing he usually skips over besides just brushing or combing it. He once heard that "messy" was a style unto itself and he sticks by that, leaving his hair a little ruffled but not enough to make him look like he just got out of bed. Some have compared it to the sight of a bird with ruffled feathers, still pretty just a little out of order.
Body Hair Color: Brown
Jacob prefers to keep his face clean-shaven as much as possible. It's a very rare case that someone would find so much as stubble on him, unless you're in a relationship with him and living with him.
In terms of body hair, it follows the same theme as facial hair. Except he keeps himself waxed instead of shaved. It's a little expensive but it's one of the few indulgences he has yet to get rid of or outgrow.
Outfit Style Preferences:
Favorite Colors: Jacob likes the look of darker reds and neutral colors like black and white. Boring? Maybe. But Jacob likes simplicity and contrast.
Colors to wear: Despite liking reds, Jacob finds that there's a lot of muted earth-tone greens in his wardrobe. In fact, a lot of his clothes have more muted colors instead of more ostentatious colors. The exception, of course, is his casual around-the-house clothing which consists of t-shirt and the like which could be any color.
Decoration: Accessories have never been his strong suit aside from his wedding ring and the occasional bracelet. Though the pair of glasses that he rarely, if ever, wears are the rimless sort.
For the most part, Jacob has an affinity for semi-formal wear regardless of where he is going. That means collared shirts, possibly with cuffs, pants that aren't jeans, belts, and clean but comfortable shoes. While he never concerns himself too much with fashion, he has a basic enough understanding to know what goes with what and why some thing look good on the right people. For his own part, his shirts tend to be a little tight and he doesn't mind rolling the sleeves up on occasion. Also, it's worth noting that Jacob has a thing for vests. He owns a lot of them, and he likes to wear them. Casual wear would be nothing special to any other male his age, t-shirts and jeans and whatnot. He wants to find a good hat, but can't find one that he likes or one that looks good on him.
Personality Description: Jacob is a kind, optimistic man who prefers to take life a little slow. Influenced heavily by his home life and recent-ish events in his life, he knows that life can be hard at time but he never lets himself lose sight of the good in life as well. More often than not, life's little enjoyments come in the form of other people and interactions with said people. While humor and smiles make up most of his persona, it belies a somewhat lonely and often sad man.
Temperament: Jacob is not an easy man to anger. A combination of patience, a desire to understand before acting, and a sense of humor means that one would have to work very hard in order to get him to lose his temper. Sure, he might become upset or irritated occasionally, but it's not often that he becomes angry enough to yell or lash out. There are a few shortcuts to getting there however. Speaking ill of his family, or his students, or putting them in harm is one.
Philosophy
Violence: Despite once working in a shady business and formally being a bit of a bad boy himself, Jacob is a practical pacifist. He fully understands that violence exists in the world and that sometimes violence is necessary, but only rarely. He himself would always prefer not to resort to violence nor let anyone else resort to it. To him, there are just so many option before violence, and it's worth trying every single one if the time allows it.
Sexuality: Jacob's live-and-let-live attitude means he doesn't really care about a person's sexual preferences. Though he would happily rally for gay rights, he would have to be asked to do so because he would rather stay out of that conflict. More important to him is something akin to a Sexual Philosophy. Jacob believes sex to be both important and special, for more than just reproduction. It's a means of intimate emotional connection and something people just need to be more open and okay about. He feels that a lot of young women and men are missing out on one of the greatest joys in life both because of shame and not knowing the right partner. Despite the "free love" vibe this philosophy carries, he still believes in protection and waiting for the right one.
Crime and Punishment: Mr. Cunningham is of the opinion that crime will always exist in some way or another, and that the best that people like him can do is minimize it to the best of their ability. He also believes that no Justice system is ever perfect. At best a system tries to give punishments of equal weight while also providing chances for rehabilitation. At worst, it's legalized revenge.
Developed Personality:
Optimism: Jacob is a man who does not let life get him too down, most of the time, and he attempts to brighten the lives of other people around him. He feels that he has seen enough in his lifetime to know that things will work out in due time, or if you put in the right amount of work with a good attitude. This also extends to his belief in people. He's hesitant to say that all people are born good, but he finds it difficult to believe that someone can just be evil. He likes to believe that they were just a person who made a mistake or a bad decision, or that something is possibly wrong with them. Whatever the reason, everyone should be given a chance or two.
Humor: He feels that humor is almost a necessary part of life and dealing with the world. Sure, sadness and anger come, but humor allows us a method to confront that darkness without fear. Besides, not many things feel better than a hearty laugh or making other people laugh. However, Jacob's own humor is kind of how he covers up his own sadness and loneliness.
Romantic: Jacob is a bit of a hopeless romantic. Downgraded from "playboy", which was previously downgraded from "horny bad boy". A remnant of his playboy days in his youth, he finds it difficult to not at least kinda fall for a woman and to not flirt. The former is more of a product of his empathy for people, the latter is just an ground-in habit from when he used to pick-up girls. Most of the time, he doesn't mean to flirt or even realizes that he's flirting, it just happens. Of course, this all goes hand-in-hand with Jacob's still alive-and-well libido. He just has better control over it. However, he's always a sucker for girls with sad eyes or puppy eyes.
Grief: It's a big of an unspoken fact that the loss of his family is why he chose to remain single for the longest time. Beneath all the humor and sunny-ness, is a very lonely man. He misses his wife and daughter to no end. He doesn't touch on it much, preferring to ignore it while he can. But in the right situation, he'll talk about it, believing that holding it all in wouldn't be healthy.
Powers: Gifted Blood - While Jacob himself has no powers, his bloodline carries the seed of the supernatural. Though kept secret, many in his ancestry were supernatually gifted, though they were all female. His mother should've had powers... as should his daughter...
Biography: The influences of Jacob's life begin before he can even properly remember his past. Only a few years after he was born, his mother left the family She did not pass away, nor was there some kind of less-fatal foul play. It was as simple as it was shocking. One day, his father woke up one day to find his bed bereft of his wife and a simple note: Do not come looking for me. I didn't take anything and I hope you can forgive me. This just isn't the life for me. That was it. From that day forth, Jacob was raised only by his father, whom tried to find a balance between protecting his son from his own mother's abandonment and allowing his son to know the other half of where he came from. However, he never really showed much interest in finding or reconnecting with his mother. Perhaps it was fortunate, in a sense, that she left before he could remember her.
As a child, Jacob was raised as best a single father could. It was fortunate that his father, Issac, was a hard-working man more focused on raising a good kid more than anything else. While "good" has many connotations, Issac mostly tried to make sure Jacob didn't grow up to be a bad person more than he tried to make Jacob a model child. He instilled values like hard work and honesty, but also encouraged Jacob to explore and just be himself. In a way, he tried to be Jacob's friend as well as his father. The result was a wild yet good-hearted kid.
As a young child, he was just energetic and a bit of troublemaker. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary for a boy at that age. It only really started to manifest when Jacob got into his teenage years. When the hormones kicked-in, things really got out of hand. Jacob was... a "playboy" to put it in more polite terms. In more crass terms, he was a trouble-making bad boy who couldn't keep it in his pants.
It was a mixed bag and his father would tell you the same, in more colorful words. On one hand, Jacob was consistent in his chores and helping out around the house and generally being a good son. On the other, Jacob went through girlfriends almost on a weekly basis and he had developed a reputation as the boy that other families' daughters should stay away from. On several, SEVERAL occasions, Issac had to go pick up his son from being strangled by another father when he had been caught in the bedroom of their daughter. Now Jacob was not an actual bad kid, he never forced a girl, he just got around. A lot. Some of it could be attributed to a band that he had and his friends tried starting up, of which he was the lead man. It didn't last, but that's where his first tattoo came from. To this day, Jacob feels a mix of shame and pride at his teenage antics.
In a move that made his father facepalm, and later nod in quiet understanding, one of Jacob's first careers was as a host, at a host club. To pay for college. His younger self would say that he was leveraging his existing good looks and girl experience to something more lucrative, and then go off on a little diatribe about he was helping women by giving them someone nice to look at and giving them they attention they want. His older self would just say he was trying to legitimize his philandering ways and not grow up.
His playboy lifestyle came (mostly) to an end when he met a young woman named Yumi. At first, she was like any other girl he had been with, he did his thing and stuff happened (He was her first). However, he surprisingly found himself unable to just up and leave her like many others. He actually wanted to stick around with her. It was an almost overnight change in Jacob. He had fallen in love and he didn't even know it. (This was also the origin of his second tattoo, of which his ex-wife has the other half to in a similar place.)
It wasn't a fairy tale romance. Jacob couldn't simply go from playboy to loving partner overnight. Sure, he devoted a lot of his time and affection to Yumi, and she returned it heartily, but flirting with other young women was a habit that was not so easily broken. It was a constant issue for their relationship, no matter how much gradually abated, even when the big day came for Jacob to be wed to a woman he honestly loved. Before it could ruin their relationship, Jacob forced himself to stop the habit once and for all. The final nail in the coffin was the birth of his daughter Chiru. Knowing that he was now a father, and that he was now fully responsible for another life, changed Jacob. Remnants of his old habits remain however...
Perhaps it was too ingrained his being. Jacob just couldn't turn his flirty ways completely off. He was faithful to Yumi and loved Chiru with all his heart, but... Well, he would say circumstances conspired against him. Long story short, he got very close to several women at his job, 95% unintentionally. Lynn. Uzume. Shaeris. Shiren. Yeah... He didn't SLEEP with any of them. Well, he did. Uzume. But it was LITERALLY sleeping with her. As in falling asleep and not doing anything. Lynn was certainly unsubtle about her attemps to bed him, and Shiren was just strangely possessive/stalkerish about him. Shaeris was the biggest problem because her and Jacob actually had something going. Unsurprisingly, this wasn't good for a marriage.
So, in a mostly quiet and somber series of events, they divorced, with Yumi gaining custody of Chiru. Jacob had seen this coming, but failed to acknowledge it. So while it wasn't an amiable experience, it was a quiet and subdued one.
Jacob continued his career as a teacher, and even landed a position at Starlight Academy. He stays in contact with his now teenage daughter but it's a difficult relationship. Especially considering that he wasn't entirely sure why he was approached to fill the faculty position. (Jacob might not know it, but he is part of a blood line that's been known to create the supernatually gift. However, it only manifests in the females of his blood...)
Additional Information:
Fun Fact: Jacob is a character I've been playing for over a decade, aging and growing along the way. Everything in his history is something that's actually been RP-ed out, albeit with changes or alterations to fit a more cohesive whole.