APPLICATION

[fortes]

player.
NAME/HANDLE: Shay
PERSONAL JOURNAL: bullfinches
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Definitely.
CONTACT: evasuit @ aim | dollsome @ plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS: Rick Grimes kentuckys

character.
CHARACTER NAME: Yancy Becket

SERIES: Pacific Rim (It is important to note that my interpretation of Yancy leans heavily upon the script of the movie, supplemented by officiated comments made by the script writer. That said, I will also draw a lot of information from the comic book prequel Tales from Year Zero, which provides a thorough backstory predating the events of the central canon. The novelization – which shares the same namesake as the film – attributes to earlier drafts of the movie (and therefore, at several times, dissents with what was presented on screen), will not be used for characterization. Instead, I will only be addressing the novel when absolutely necessary (for instance, as it verifies or specifies specific dates or facts about Yancy's history). For more clarification, please see The Official Timeline, The Movie Plot.) Here is the character page as well which contains a brief historical overview.

CANON POINT: The few precious moments leading up to his death in the fight against the Kaiju known as “Knifehead” (right when he says "Raleigh, Listen to me --" and before the conn-pod is ripped in half). Therefore, he will not come into the game having died yet (technically).

AGE: 25 (he was born on November 7th, 1995 and dies on February 29, 2020)

APPEARANCE: His eyes are chilled, friendly, and exceptionally clear, taking after the shape of gems and everything about him seems at least mildly chiseled: movie-idol face and cut-glass architecture. He has the kind of look to him that is simultaneously severe and genteel, framed by an impossible yellow twist of hair along with fair skin and china-blue eyes that had too, too much light in them. The high slant of his cheekbones gives off a watchful, wolfish air as if he is constantly steeling himself against attack. He isn't, ultimately, an unattractive man, though for some reason one could never quite guess his age, his sentimental eyebrows making the shape of two separated sides of a steeple, always gently perplexed or apparently amused. Tall and built wide, Yancy always appears sharp as a flash of lightning, like something you didn't quite expect. His smile is a disobedient child that graces his face in a brief flutter, lighting up every corner of his eyes and cheeks, but it is a winter thing, steeped in cold songs, climbing and willful, sincere. He is portrayed by Diego Klattenhoff.

PERSONALITY:

Aggressively friendly, Yancy jokes and he ribs in a sly way, making it incredibly difficult not to like him. This impossibly ineffable charm is augmented by his inflated sense of self-confidence (discretion is not exactly his hallmark, though at times he can play at being diffident). As a result, everything seems to come alive in his company; he is able to cast a charmed, theatrical light about him so that to see anything through his eyes was to see it in brighter colors than ordinary. His charisma has a kind of carefree intoxication to it that makes him utterly irresistible; it echoes through the way that he laughs too, easily, like rolling down a hill: inevitable as gravity, slow but quick to gather speed, joyous but simultaneously eerie like an animal howling to the skyline. It is such a startling, florescent sound that it spreads nimbly, as if it took him by surprise, infectious and surging with tremulous crescendos, the broken arpeggios coasting his body, rifling over his bones. He laughs like he's under attack, taut as a bowstring, opening with the semblance of music but ending, ultimately, engulfed in incoherent sound and fury.

❝Don't get cocky.❞
Yancy's learned to make light of many things. He's had to. To diminish something to a joke is to abate it, to control it - and suddenly, anything (the rising sea, the collapse of cities, his brother's scattered nightmares) can be conquered. Patient and (more or less) permissive, Yancy has a lazy saunter in his step, a slightly exaggerated swagger, but solid and sure. As in most things that he does, Yancy moves slowly, in a measured manner, nearly pensive. Even the way Yancy talks is absurdly patient and overly rich. He chews his words languidly so that they have a tincture of some jaunty accent that is difficult to place, making everything he says sound as if it’s been chunked up, nonchalantly, in a smoothie blender. Unsurprisingly, he has considerable trouble waking up in the morning (and his perpetually somnolent moods have quickly become something of a silly trademark). During the attack on Anchorage in 2020, he fumbled in bed, words and motions slurred before he could even be bothered to open his eyes. If not for his brother's persistence, Yancy might have fallen back asleep on his way to the bathroom.

❝Ready to step into my head, kid?❞

Yancy prides himself in being reasonable, realistic, and forthcoming. It is a side-effect of having spent his entire life playing "big brother" and acting as a counterweight to his brother's shifty unpredictability. He gives off the impression that he is always calm and inhibited, as if he has no secrets, but ultimately, this is a guise. Yancy is merely a talented fabulist; he is very good at being able to pinpoint what someone wants to hear, see, or feel at any given moment. He can put on a square face for command, and murmur "yes sir, no sirs" with impunity even though he never really means them. He can slide on that shit-eating grin and successfully convince you that he has repressed whatever nervousness or panic is currently seizing through him. It's an impressive feat (that is only occasionally compromised by the change in cadence of his speech - "with all due respect, sir" - to indicate any sort of underlying chagrin). Almost every kind of front Yancy puts on fits like second skin; he is infuriatingly convincing in almost all that he does. Unfortunately, this also means that he frequently ends up drastically overthinking, well...everything, and tying himself up in knots, his mind spinning webs in every doubtful corner of his subconscious. Consider the sheepish way he ostracized the idea that he (along with his brother) would ever survive the PPDC's harsh training requirements upon first arriving in Kodiak Island, or the way he is constantly suspicious of "jaeger pilot groupies" (also known as "jaeger flies"). Faking honesty is a talent of his, but it's self-destructive and Yancy has yet to fully come to terms with that.

Though Yancy is no less arrogant than any other Ranger, basking in the fame bequeathed to him during the height of the PPDC's worldwide success. However, it is a subtle sort of conceit that manifests as moxie instead of sheer ego. He is the kind of person who "gets what he wants" and "when he wants it" and he has no problem being indiscreet about that, wearing his ambitions like ribbons on his sleeves, veiled only by the seductive sheen of courage his demeanor seems to give off. Where most people see risks, Yancy sees opportunity; he has learned to be a very creative problem solver. This was what happened when he took point in Los Angeles, beheading Yamarashi in 2017 with a cargo crane wire, and in San Diego whilst fighting Clawhook in 2019. Yancy is willing (and always has been willing) to take chances where others hesitate. Because of this covetous and excessively inflated sense of competition, Yancy tends to get jealous very, very easily. He sees what others have and he will try to outfox them of it; he sees what others are striving for and he will subconsciously circumvent their efforts. Though he is not mean-spirited, he has a tendency to come off as too officious because of this innately aggressive inclination. Yancy's combative obsession has always been a point of contention between him and Raleigh (who is, ultimately, even more antagonistic than he). In fact, one of their worst and most damaging arguments was over this very point and it nearly nullified their active duty status at the hands of Stacker Pentecost, who threatened to boot them from the program if they could not compromise.

❝I'm in your brain, I know.❞

Then, a full decade passes and the war trudges on; Yancy's conscience becomes chipped and his faith wrung, but his confidence remains unscathed. In fact, it has aggrandized considerably. Now, he is eager to step into unknown territory without much concern; in the confines of the Jaeger, Yancy feels that he can brave any "act of god" - extreme heat, dirty waters, thunder, snow – nothing seems to faze him anymore. In a way, he’s almost an optimist. But underneath all of that, it bears remembering that Yancy does have a temper. It flares only when absolutely necessary because he experiences anger the way most people love: privately, intensely, and without recourse. When irritated, he gets surly and acerbic. He also gets somewhat violent, easily flying into a fistfight when he realizes that words and pleasantries have failed him. At that point, every single thing he spits out will be like a well-aimed kick in the shins. Yancy knows how to hurt just as much as he knows how to placate. This oddly intemperate tendency shows blatantly in his fighting style, which is partially calculated but mostly extemporaneous. He, like his brother, has a tendency to veer from traditional tactics and forge his own path. Sometimes, he is less a man than he is a deluge in corporeal form.

❝Just worry about yourself, kiddo.❞

The way Yancy treats others is telling. He has a peculiar way of remembering tiny details about a person, for example, who's dating who (like how he remembered specifically that Tendo Choi had a date last night, and that her name was Alison, despite being barely awake at 2 a.m. and strapped into a conn-pod in the middle of a hurricane). But though he has the inherent ability to make anyone feel as if they were the center of his universe, the only true mainstay in his life is his brother, Raleigh ("Rals," he calls him, "kid"). For Yancy, there is nothing in the world that is more important than this bloodbond. There is nothing that he does not trust his brother with - his life, his memories, his insecurities, everything is laid bare - so much so that had he a thesis for a face, Raleigh would be the only one who could successfully decipher every line and reference. Together, they're the "Becket Boys", the all-American rockstars of the PPDC, the "star team" (as Stacker once called them) and they always will be, in Yancy's opinion: perfectly fit, a mirror-likeness in both face and spirit. If Raleigh is a fever-pitch of bad judgement, then Yancy is a slow burn, no less intense, just more subtle and more deceptive. If Raleigh is the storm, Yancy is the calm of the tide; if Raleigh is the surging ferocity of the beast, Yancy is the cage. Together, they are heroes, they are an icon of hope against the rise of the unknown. But more importantly, together, they are complete.

ABILITIES:

Ranger ➟ Academy Trained
Yancy is an incredibly talented ranger, trained in a 24-week long program (three eight-week trimesters) developed by the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, in the Jaeger Academy. It was a grueling process. As a result, however, he is incredibly fit, physically, and quite strong. His endurance is top-notch and he has a head full of military know-how and j-tech terminology. He knows battle tactics, combat skills, navigation (through land, air, and sea), and some (limited, basic) survival skills in case of emergency.

Neural Handshake ➟ Drift "Hangover"
The Drift links pilots on an atomic level and uses both a physical and emotional connection between two people to power what is essentially a giant machine. It reaches inside your head and starts tying certain atoms in certain neurons your cortex to the parallel ones in your co-pilot's. Understandably, if enough of them are looped together, everything will start firing together in unison. Consequently, not only do the bodies move together, but the combined nervous systems generate synchronized electrical output for the Jaeger's input interface.

But there are more than just bodily side-effects to Drifting with another person. Thoughts bleed. When you spend most of the day colliding your memories in a natural sync with someone else's, echoes are bound to remain. And they become a part of you. Yancy is now forever a haunted man. As a co-pilot, Yancy is deeply linked with his brother, emotionally and intimately; indeed, he is practically infected with him. It's gotten to the point that any memory that he hasn't shared with Raleigh feels hollow and incomplete, somehow. The first time they Drift, they fit together like tectonic plates that have somehow reversed their flow and reunited a stretch of land that should never have been torn apart. It was effortless and perfect, with nothing to cushion or hide, not a moment of fear, no danger, no stumbling outside the white lines that delineate their joined memories. Yancy will always remember that day and the shock of how simple he found it to step into someone else's head. Consequently, he retains a heightened sense of empathy for his brother, so much so that they can find themselves communicating without really saying anything. He will naturally fall into step with him without any urging and they often mirror their behavior without realizing. Some people call this "ghost drifting". Yancy calls it, more casually, "like leaving the lights on."

Like his brother would say, "the Drift is silence", that there is a sense of internal abandonment that is inherent in the process. There is a sort of glorious, blissful un-selfing process; a sort of un-Yancy-Becket-ing that occurs as he slips out of his own subconscious and into his brother’s. And vice versa. But the ability to Drift is a special one. The ability to let go, to expose yourself for another person is not something that can be taught. It's an art; it takes skill. And in the end, the best Jaeger pilots are truly born, not made. Not many people are capable of navigating through the Drift, or maintaining it for extended periods of time. Yancy, however, can do both of these things with relative ease.

Birthright ➟ Natural Talents
Yancy has consistently been "better" at most things than most people (in particular, Raleigh, who inevitably uses his older brother as a personal "reference point" in this regard). Unsurprisingly, he is the dominant pilot of their Jaeger, Gipsy Danger, and always operates the right hemisphere of the machine. Although he rarely lords this fact over anyone, the fact remains the same: Yancy is impressively talented (and, to an extent, he knows this). He has, in some respects, several fortes. It's little wonder how he maintains such an easy sense of independence and autonomy - Yancy has quite a bit of confidence in himself and enough of the raw talent to back it.

POSSESSIONS:
     x1 Drivesuit
     x1 PPDC issue dog tags
     x1 small, folded stack (pocket-sized) of photographs, tied together with string

samples.
INTERACTION SAMPLE:
[He felt sort of drowsy and somewhat anxious, a narcotic heaviness still clinging deliciously to his limbs. It would never wholly leave him, the vertigo of the moment he was pulled from one nightmare and promptly thrown into the next, speeding along an unfamiliar train track; it would be with him for the rest of his life, and it would always be mingled inextricably with the sound of the sea – dull, swooning blue, the smell of salt perfuming the air – and his brother’s face burning a hole in his soul. It would be a moment that stayed with him for the entire time that he was forced to reside here, he was sure of it.

…Of course, none of these nauseating worries translate through in the feed. He is all smiles, charm, and wile. The demeanor seems to come to him naturally, his face held close to the screen of his device so that the electric blue of his eyes seem to shimmer with invitation, creating a kind of immediate biography, a shared recognition of the integrity of personhood, between himself and whoever happens to be looking back. It was shocking, Yancy's gaze. Alarming. Arresting. It was tumultuous and sleepy all the same, filled with a kind of extraordinary lure that was silent, instantaneous, and moved through his face as real a phenomenon as a sudden storm.]

You know, the drivesuit is a pretty cool look, but in this heat? I feel like my insides might be liquefying.

[He watches his unseen audience as carefully as a sailor watches the fixed star. He feels unsettled, but his features were set on the scaffolding of his bone as if riveted there; they expressed a force and jocularity that seemed almost metallic.]

Trouble is, I can’t just slip out of it. So are there any technicians out there? Engineers, maybe? Anyone that might be familiar with Jaeger machinations would be best, but if you’ve got a handle for nuts and bolts, I won’t complain. My brother or I can walk you through the nasty bits.

C’mon, help a guy out?