Jimmy Hollis

Jimmy Matthew Hollis is a Fragment and permanent refugee from Nestea, now residing in Adreiil at a certain cafe with his boyfriend and other friends.

Childhood (8848-8859)
Æsa Onartok, a barren water witch living in Cyenev's southern archipelago, had been walking home after finishing a spell for a customer and suddenly heard the giggles of a child. She followed it to find a toddler playing in the Verician Sea with no parents or family to be found. He was clearly of Water Elementalist blood, further compounded by the strong response the sea was having to the little boy. Believing he had been abandoned, Æsa took him home with her to her husband, George Hollis, and they adopted the child.

Jimmy lived a lonely life with his parents. His father was a poor fisherman and often spent days, weeks at sea catching fish to sell at the market. His mother was a Sukori water witch, selling potions, charms, spells, boons, curses, and the like in the neighboring isles. However, since the popular belief was that a Sukori brought bad luck and evil magic, Æsa was employed irregularly. Jimmy has aspirations to be friendly and sociable and have many friends -- but because of the racism of the isle dwellers, the neighboring kids would refuse to play with him, believing he would spread his mother's ill fortune. To occupy himself, Jimmy instead spent most of his time roaming the island, playing with imaginary friends of his concoction, helping his mother, and swimming.

It was after the second afternoon of the little Jimmy (aged 5 or 6 at the time) bringing home a purple-eyed cat with little explanation beyond an "I just found her/him/them!" that Æsa began to realize that her little boy was not quite normal. In the afternoons that followed, she subtly monitored her son and his aptitudes and watched in silent awe as he used magic as seamlessly and mindlessly as he breathed. The rapid stream of purple-eyed cats entering their home was simply a testament to his powerful, natural use of magic.

Jimmy, initially oblivious to his own abilities, had been telling his mother that he had stumbled across the cats; but as time passed he began to recognize that they were products of his own creation, even if he told his mother what he had before. When later some of his cats began to have health issues (malfunctioning organs, brittle bones, impossible births), he took full responsibility for the products of his magic, and in secret spent most of his time remaking and repairing his botched creations. From that he also came to notice the other ways he used magic and didn't notice it; this observation of his own, subtle power scared him, and he taught himself to stop using magic whenever possible. He reserved what he could from then on only for healing his cats, and feigned inability to his parents.

This doesn't fly very well with his mother, however. His mother is hard-working and determined to give him a better life than what he could get by staying on the archipelago. As a magician herself, she tries to teach him everything she knows. Despite his attempts to hide it, his mother catches on to the fact that Jimmy is a magical prodigy. He never struggles to use magic, and spells are often completed by him without his even knowing that he was doing it. Also notable is his ability to control water. As a Water Elementalist, it's his natural inclination to be able to manipulate and use water to his own advantage -- but Jimmy has attained another level beyond that. Water reacts to all his emotions and, often of its own will, will protect and sustain him wherever he goes. Whereas normally, water acts with about a quarter of sentience, with Jimmy it starts to act like a person. Jimmy is more or less oblivious. To him, water is just something he loves more than he knows how to express.

Jimmy’s mother makes him prep excessively for the SMAT (Standardized Magical Aptitude Test). Jimmy is nervous and anxious to the point of hysteria. But they make it to the correct testing site, and after a panic attack, Jimmy takes the tests. His knowledge of how magic works, technically and otherwise, is rudimentary and limited, but his ability to create and complete spells is instinctive and fluent. A few months later, the offers pour in.

Famous, prestigious schools are highly impressed and want Jimmy. Jimmy doesn’t make the decision -- he doesn’t understand enough -- but his mother does, and his mother chooses the most elite school she can find amongst the offers. It’s a full scholarship. They would have been far too poor to accept any kind of offer that had fees attached. Within a few months, Jimmy is enrolled and going to school.

His social ineptitude is frankly crippling. This child cannot adequately interact socially with people, even though he desperately wants to. He’s constantly nervous, has some very high social anxiety, and settles into a rhythm of panic attacks within a few days. It doesn’t help that his normal physical reaction to stress is to burst into tears. He quickly becomes “the kid that cries,” and it becomes harder to make friends.

Academically, his dyslexia makes him almost incapable of reading simply a textbook. Verbal commands or teaching are understood, but he has no notes to hand in, even when they're required, and his attempts to do the readings elicit no progress. But when challenged to do seemingly impossible magics, he pulls through, and the teachers quickly figure out that despite his illiteracy, he can do the work. His magic also comes to him with an ease that his classmates can’t match, which gives him an advantage.

But the school is violently competitive, by rule. He becomes a target, firstly, because he's awkward, cries a lot, and suffers from an inability to make friends. Secondly, he's outdoing them in class even though he can't read like they can. Thirdly, they've caught him staring a little too much at the boys, and the doodles of boys on what are supposed to be his notes are incriminating. Away on an archipelago, he had never seen so many boys, nor had he experienced homophobia. But Cyenev of the day was homophobic, something his peers knew and agreed with.

He develops a crush on a boy. A little too sincere, it's his crush that gets bullied first. Terrified at the idea of him getting hurt, Jimmy scares the bullies off. His crush is silent and resentful, disgusted by Jimmy's feelings and Jimmy as a whole, and walks off. There is gossip of what is supposed to be tomorrow's murder. The next day, one of the especially homophobic bullies corners Jimmy and Curses him.

Seeing as how his mind is literally being crippled and broken, Jimmy’s reaction is violent and uncontrollable. There’s magic spells flying, screaming, possibly a seizure … Jimmy is restrained asap and then sent to the medic.

When Jimmy resurfaces from heavy sedatives, his attempts to ask questions and understand what’s going on is garbled and fails badly. He cannot coherently put sentences together; the grammar is all messed up and all the words are in the wrong places. He sounds demented. To an extent, Jimmy cannot even emotionally process what has happened to him -- but he can observe and register the disgust and horror on the faces and in the voices of the people around him. He sobs loudly until someone puts him under again.

He’s tested and tested and tested again when he wakes up. The school is trying to figure out just how far his mental crippling goes -- and what they find is disturbing. The magical prodigy cannot perform any of the spells he had been previously been taught in class, not even the ones he had been acing examinations with. He does not understand or register most of their requests to practice certain techniques or exercises with magic. When given a magic theory test, with the nice, straightforward, textbook problem, Jimmy can barely understand what it’s asking from him, and after staring at his proctor in utter confusion and despair for several minutes, starts crying again. His ability to hold conversation is also severely limited. If asked to do too much over a set period of time, he’ll start crying and shaking, holding himself and, when pressed to explain what’s wrong, just shake his head over and over again and cry harder.

He’s sent home.

When he gets back to his island, he is accompanied by a school official. Jimmy has cried himself out over the past week or so and is in a state of shell shock. He has to be led from place to place because he isn’t registering his surroundings, instead being lost in his own head. He walks right past his mother, brushes off her fervent kisses and hugs and walks into his home without realizing the person he loved the most was right there.

The official is somewhat unapologetic. “We’re very sorry, m’am. But the environment of the school is meant to be challenging and engaging … and we’re afraid your son didn’t … he couldn't handle the rigors of the school.”

Later that night, when Jimmy is alone in his room by himself and he starting to recognize this place as his own home, he overhears a hushed, angry conversation over in another room. His parents don’t believe he can understand what they’re saying, that he’s too dumb to understand or know what other people think and say about him. They liked their prodigy, their chance at better lives and higher self-esteem. Jimmy wrecked it for all of them and neither they or he know how or why.

Jimmy accompanies his mother on her typical trip around the island as she looks for useful things. He tries to please and help her every chance he gets, but his Curse keeps tripping him up in multiple ways and his attempts usually fail miserably. Eventually his mother gently tells him just to stop coming and play in the ocean instead. Swimming quickly becomes his source of comfort and okay-ness. So long as he can just go out and swim for a couple hours every day, he can handle not understanding or being functional with the rest of the world.

Unexpectedly, an offer from a school comes one day. It’s a military program. It went on public record that Jimmy was deemed mentally disabled -- but no, they’re still interested in taking and teaching him. It’s free and he’ll be taught to be a functional, complete member of society again. He’s off to school again rapidly.

The program tries to make itself look neat, tidy, and benign for only a few days. Then it gets very real. Jimmy can’t comprehend this -- he just thinks they’re mean and maybe even “bad” -- but the endgame of this military program is to harness Jimmy’s powers. They know Jimmy isn’t intelligent enough to outwit them, and magic is restrainable. Really, it’s perfect.

So they set out trying to turn Jimmy into a military weapon. The Dwyrllo military is under orders to devastate the Warpobl in some way. One of the operations is to send Jimmy and other tools into Tevashae with the hope that they’ll cause all kinds of chaos. They try to force him to torture POWs, use his abilities for fighting but realize he's too pacifistic and confused to do that on his own. But they do realize that panic and anxiety is a surefire way to make him unleash hell. There was even speculation that if Jimmy was placed within a certain distance of the oceans to the east or west of Tevashae, that he could pull the ocean in during a panic attack and swamp the whole country.

It doesn’t work out that way, but they do send Jimmy out with the rest to be set loose in Tevashae. Eventually they reach a point where they hit their first fight. This puts Jimmy into full-fledged panic mode. He's chased by a Warpob with an axe. Jimmy Fragments out in his terror.

Twilight Zone
At 11, having just exited the year of 8859, Jimmy is the second Fragment to arrive to the Twilight Zone. Prior to his arrival was that of Rhys Crewyrmab, who is 28, depressed, and exhausted.

There's an immediate tension between Jimmy and Rhys, Jimmy having been taught that men with that dark of skin and red of hair were evil monsters that would come to hurt you in the night; Rhys has become accustomed to killing Jimmy's kind, and is a little disturbed to see the child version of his waking nightmares. But Rhys is mature and experienced and sees the mental handicap and knows that Jimmy is completely harmless. They dwell peacefully with each other after Rhys assures him that he isn't going to be harmed.

Some time later, in crashes Elis, a sprightly, obnoxious 15 year-old. He's clearly in great pain, and there's some frazzlement as Elis sees Rhys and assumes danger, much like Jimmy did. Elis refuses to get along with Rhys initially, but after some talking things out and explanations, Elis comes to understand that much like him, neither Rhys nor Jimmy know how or why they're there. Rhys explains that he's supposed to be dead; Elis says that he doesn't know if he is or not.

Rhys tries to console Elis to be sensitive about Jimmy's condition, but the friendship of those two is immediate and whatever advice was given was disregarded. Jimmy and Elis become brothers almost upon sight, and are inseparable. Elis understood that something was very wrong with him, but decided to look past it and focus on having fun instead. They spend all their time exploring the boundaries of the Twilight Zone, while Rhys keeps to the house that has strangely appeared amidst the open grassy fields.

It's those three for quite some time, and then in pops another person: Zana Grayeye, 31 years old and not expecting to be there. At first she is perplexed and intrigued by the nature of the Twilight Zone and all the beings living within it. Upon hearing their names, she realizes that her theories were correct and that she already knows these people -- she'd published at least one thesis upon the existence of supernatural beings responsible for central key historical events, and here they were.

Hiatus in the Twilight Zone
j goes to z and rs for a while because hes being a butt

Personality
PERSONALITY TYPE:  ISTP

Mental Health
While not sustaining any severe trauma symptoms (despite having been in traumatic situations), Jimmy is something of a disheveled, nervous wreck. Social anxiety is something that has plagued him ever since he was little, not helped by his few occasions to socialize prior to his schooling and his stutter, which he is self conscious of and embarrassed by. Selective mutism is also something that strikes him occasionally, beginning especially in high stress situations and lasting hours, days, weeks till he can find himself speaking again. He has a touch of depression in him, a sense of bitter despair and occasional apathy that trails him. While mentally hardy, he's also a sort of broody, moody individual that, once caught up in an existential dilemma, is not freed from it until he's found a precise, logical answer. As a result, it's easy for him to get hung up over a central issue for months at a time until he's pieced it together.

He's not completely untouched by trauma symptoms, however: his primary (possibly only) side-effect is his panic disorder and the panic attacks that come with them. There's regular panic attack cycle of about 1-2 per week, with more in a given week when he gets scared of them. His panic attacks can be triggered by being cornered, close, tight spaces, fighting, and heated argument. Elis is also something of a trigger for him.

Jimmy is fairly mentally healthy, but his insecurities tend to fuel his anxieties, which in turn fuel everything else.

Part 1: Understanding
Getting better and realizing: your parents are dead! Your parents sold you out to a military organization that was trying to weaponize you via abuse and trauma tactics! You almost got Dirk'd! (Head cut off) Elis tried to kill you multiple times! Zana and Rhys aren't actually your second pair of parents, they're just regular people! Lez is Slez who is creepy! You're a Fragment, which means your chances of having a normal, fulfilling life are almost nill! You don't have a culture to call your own! When the apocalypse hits, you will be the last of your race! There's no one else of your race! You've been mentally handicapped for about a year now so you drooled all over the place and acted like a 4 year old and everybody saw it! You're gay and everybody's hot! Zana isn't as nice as you thought she was and she's very emotionally distant! PB is still trying to be your dad but now this hurts because you're reminded of your own dad and how he wouldn't give you the time of day, wow father figures hurt! You have left all your cats behind! You have crippling social anxiety! Your stutter is horrendous! You go mute when you're too nervous! You have panic attacks! You can't read because you're dyslexic as fuck! You've never had any friends! People don't like you! Ah!

Part 2: Who Am I?
This is post baptism moment when Esher pulls him out of the water and drags him back to the cafe and he has to face all the people he's been running away from forever. He has to own up to the fact that he's not at his old archipelago home by the seashore anymore, swimming away the end of his days -- no, he's on a different planet now and he has to grow up, suck it up, and stop playing pretend. Moody and anxiety ridden, the arc ends when his training with Lez finishes and Lez leaves him. He's grown up as a result of Lez's influence (and by extension, Zana's influence, seeing as how she was his teacher and the one who strongly emphasized personal responsibility, capability, independence, and critical thinking), become more confident, taken responsibility for himself, his beliefs, and his actions, owned up to what remains his own racial legacy (magic and elemeni abilities/quirks), and owned up to his own sexuality and feelings, even if he still feels anxious and avoidant about it. When Lez leaves that's really the cue for part 3 to start, because his emotional and psychological crutch is leaving him -- and even though he was strongly tempted to join Lez and leave rather than face the scarier, harder, more emotionally strenuous challenge of getting along with everyone at the Café, he ultimately decides he needs to stay.

Part 3: Angry Liberal Blogger
This is the one I don't know as well, but it's where presumably he and Esher start dating, should they mutually like each other enough to want to try, and the Justice Squad begins (my hypothesis of a group of Café crew members trying to change the negative/dangerous/restricting/painful parts of Adreiilian society). What happens from there, I dunno. This is also the part of the arc where I get the sense that Jim could lose Esh, if he's not careful. Not like in a "Esh dies" sense, of course not, but more like a "Jim's convictions about what needs to change about Adreiil are different than what Esher believes should be done" and they break up (goodbye Jimmy's heart) over it. This would also be around the time or after the time I get the sense that Jim would get himself in trouble.

Abilities and Skills

 * Magic (The ability to use, conduct, perform, and manipulate magic.)
 * Mindless Magic (A magical aptitude that allows a magician to use magic without conscious effort, intention, or awareness. The spells Mindless Magic is capable of are very simple, very low-cost but practical in nature -- ex. lifting an object, opening a door, extinguishing a light, moving furniture, etc. They often are cast almost as an extension of the magician, and are often a product of a busy, humming mind.)
 * Breath of Life (The ability to create new creatures with magic.)


 * Waterbender (The ability of a Water Elementalist to manipulate water in any form whenever it is available to the user.)
 * It should be noted that the most powerful Elementalist to ever live ... is Jimmy.


 * Just One Piece of the Puzzle (Having the abilities and qualities of a Fragment.)
 * Fragmenting (the ability to pass through the universal boundaries of Nestea and into the multiverse beyond)
 * Power Augmentation (dramatically increased potency and strength in other, non-physical abilities)
 * Inherently Liminal (the ability to travel to and through liminal planes, universes, and other such normally inaccessible places)
 * Liminal Permission (the ability to take those who cannot pass into or through liminal spaces into or through liminal spaces)
 * The Sixth Sense (the ability to sense and find the boundaries or openings into liminal spaces)
 * Unnatural Magical Awareness (the ability to sense magic through one or multiple of the original five senses)
 * Jimmy senses magic via touch, sight, and hearing. He recognizes certain noises as being indicative of specific spells or types of spells; he can feel large expanses of magic, magical barriers, charms, curses, and the like by touch alone; he can see spells being cast and the threads of what they are being aimed at: they are not color-coded, but instead appear as shimmers and distortions.
 * technically elis' extreme reaction to negative/black/"evil" magic and/or curses is really just a kind of touch/proximity awareness to spells, even if it has a negative effect on him

Disabilities

 * A stutter
 * Dyslexia

Cafe Crew

 * Esher Siite | Boyfriend |
 * Cael Fenlii | How do I explain Cael Fenlii |
 * Riid Kisalte | Dadmom friend |
 * Kas Dorpii | Ex-senpai |
 * Misericordia | Meet me in the underground @2:30, bring a coffin |

Family

 * George Hollis [Adoptive Father] Jimmy really liked and enjoyed his dad, but felt as if his dad didn't want to spend any time with him ... by the time he was 8 he was halfway convinced that the real reason his dad was so infrequently at home was because his dad didn't like him or want him around. After coming home from school with a severe mental handicap, all he understood from his father was disgust, distaste, and disappointment, and this made him very unhappy. Even now, he misses him.
 * Æsa Onartok | Adoptive Mother |

Friends

 * Boggart | Friend & Mentor |
 * Kennel | Scary older sibling |
 * Shayr _____ | Spooky Scary Skeletons |
 * Tiike | A good kitty |

Fragments

 * Elis Kingkiller [Estranged older brother figure] Initially Jimmy's feelings for Elis were of that of a little brother, devoted and interested in everything Elis did, stumbling after him wherever he would go, afraid of being left behind or forgotten. He was concerned for Elis' safety and wellness, greatly distressed when he observed Elis hurt in any fashion. While mentally handicapped and incapable of properly understanding what was going on or what Elis had done, he upheld a blissfully ignorant ideal of Elis as the perfect guardian/hero/older brother figure. When Elis returned at 19 to the Twilight Zone, however, things had changed and Jimmy was no longer safe in Elis' presence. After a few episodes of physical abuse (or attempted), Jimmy learned to have an innate fear of him. When Elis returned healed to take Lez II and Jimmy from the Twilight Zone to Adreiil, Zana wouldn't let him and Jimmy refused to be taken anywhere by Elis. His being moved to become a permanent resident of Adreiil (and thus coexist with Elis) was met very unhappily by Jimmy, and he avoided Elis as best he could without being too obvious. Elis did eventually try to make restitutions with Jimmy, to which he was resistant and unwilling. A portion of himself hates Elis, but really this is just fear. Elis understands that Jimmy doesn't want to be near him, and tries to respect this -- though sometimes the urges of the others living there at the Cafe for Jimmy to like Elis as they do brings Elis around to be bitter at Jimmy for not liking him. This is not appreciated by Jimmy. Jimmy is very cool towards Elis, and prefers to avoid interaction when possible. Because Jimmy's immediate, instinctual reaction to him is fear, it would be very difficult for this to be undone via mere "talking things out," because that won't stop the panic or automatic negative emotional responses. However, it is suspected by the author that somehow, some way, they come to a more agreeable relationship, even if it isn't very intimate.
 * Lez II | Not a Friend, his Teacher | When Jimmy first met Lez, it was as a mentally disabled child meeting another severely disabled individual. They barely interacted on any kind of personal level, although, while Lez was Clez, Jimmy would sit in his lap or play with his hair or just generally be physically affectionate with him, since Cursed Jimmy understood that Clez enjoyed it. When Clez became Slez, Jimmy was in legitimate danger with him, because Slez had that sociopathic thing going on. But similar to how Karkat is to Gamzee, Jimmy had a sort of ... pacifying effect on Slez. When Slez was finally freed and now himself, Lez, initially he and Jimmy rarely spoke to each other, if ever. There wasn't any kind of ignoring; there was a mutual understanding of each other's presence and being, and because there wasn't a need to interact or speak with each other, they didn't. They enjoyed each other's presence in a very muted way, when around; Lez occasionally would bop into Jimmy's mind quickly for something necessary, but otherwise left him alone. When Jimmy was struggling with his magic, Lez stepped in to teach him and apprenticed him. When Jimmy was struggling with his feelings and not knowing what to do about his sexuality, Lez was the one he came to for clarification. Elis was his sex ed teacher but Lez was his teacher of ... himself. When Lez left, it was with the understanding that he was leaving his apprentice behind, and Jimmy would have to figure out things on his own from now on. Jimmy misses his teacher for that, for not knowing what to do anymore. They are not friends in any capacity; their relationship operates on the basis of teaching and being taught, giving and being given knowledge, information, and experience. Lez was his intellectual/practical/life crutch.
 * Zana Grayeye | Mom |
 * Rhys Crewyrmab | Unwanted father figure |

Trivia

 * His favorite animal is a cat.