[nick / name]: KaOS
[personal LJ/DW name]: N/A
[other characters currently played]: Evil Ed :: Fright Night (2011) :: socoolbrewster
[e-mail]: promotedtocondiments [at] gmail [dot] com
[AIM / messenger]: orderfromka0s

[series]: Pulp Fiction
[character]: Jimmie Dimmick
[character history / background]:

// A note: Most of the following background information is pure conjecture, headcanon extrapolated from what the movie implied. It's not ACTUAL canon aside from the link to wikipedia about the movie itself, but it's my personal take on what came prior based on what we DO know. //


Jimmie grew up, as most gangster types do, in the inner city, amongst the worst of the worst. His childhood wasn't much to write home about; it wasn't the best but it was certainly a far cry from some of the sob stories you read about in the papers. He managed.

Not long out of high school, he started looking for a job. Something. Anything. A few dead end careers but nothing permanent, and the right ear at the right time and he was hooked up with Marsellus Wallace, an up-and-comer with designs on greatness who needed a few good guys to carry out a few things for him. Jimmie signed up; it was good money, interesting work (if not entirely legal), his partner Jules was a hell of a lot better than some of the guys that hung around, and for a while it was great. Exciting. Every day something new.

Except it was a dangerous job, too. One that tended to get people killed sooner or later if you stuck in it long enough, and soon enough Jimmie found himself in a situation with his back to the wall and a slug in his side. Not exactly something you want out of a rewarding career.

He met Bonnie before he even got out of the hospital, of all places. A happy coincidence of shifts, and they hit it off right away. Dates followed, then more firm commitments, and a couple years later he took a knee.

She said no.

At least, not unless he promised to quit his job. Cold turkey, no more than a week to wrap everything up; she didn't want to see him come through again, didn't want to even have it as a possibility. If he wanted this, for real, he couldn't run around like some tough shit cowboy in a suit with a hand cannon shoved down his pants anymore, he had to legitimize at best, get out of it completely at the very least.

So he did. And she's been lording it over him ever since. Sure, he takes a job every now and then because Marsellus wasn't quite as...accepting of the arrangement as he could have been, but they're always low-risk, and so far Bonnie's never found out.

Until the MOVIE happened, anyway, and practically gave him a heart attack. She didn't find out, which he was extremely grateful for, but the new bed? Kind of aroused some significant suspicion, so he's been back on thin ice since then.

[character abilities]: Thanks to a recently-abandoned stint in the criminal sector under Marsellus Wallace (not that his employer and co-workers seem to be aware of the change), he's pretty damn good with a gun and most forms of violence, thank you very much. Not the best, maybe, but he can hold his own in a gunfight and he's well-versed in general intimidation tactics.
[character personality]:
Jimmie is what happens when you go from a fast, exciting life to an early retirement with zero transitional period.

A stone-cold killer and errand boy by trade until the better half put a stop to it by way of threats to withhold or worse, Jimmie was left to scramble for something to do with himself in light of an eternity of free time, and seems to have settled for the domestic life, out of necessity at first and more recently out of a real appreciation for the pace. The routine. He has an almost obsessive preoccupation with maintaining it, with keeping his old life and his current one completely, 100% separate, even as they collide; before he had mostly a nomadic existence, living day to day without much thought for the future, but now that he's settled down he's determined to keep this newer, more Normal life.

His sun, currently, rises and sets at the whims of the aforementioned Better Half, Bonnie, a nurse who works the night shift and is well-known for her short temper and low tolerance for the kind of tomfoolery he used to get up to. He left the life for her, and since then he's slowly descended into the stereotypical henpecked husband; he doesn't dare do anything that may upset her, terrified of the prospect that she might leave if he puts so much as a single toe out of line.

It's not an entirely unwarranted concern; once Bonnie figured out he was actually committed enough to things to be swayed by those kinds of threats she started throwing them around whenever she so much as suspected he was slipping, and as a result he's a little...touchy about it. A little overreactive to things that might upset the balance. With that kind of normalcy out of reach for so long, he's more than a little overprotective of what he's got because it's been made known on no uncertain terms that it's so tenuous.

So he lazes about the house instead, picking up all the jobs that would ordinarily be marked as "wife-ish"; he cooks, he cleans, he does the laundry and generally keeps the household running. He'd take care of the kids too, if Bonnie thought they were ready for it.

...She doesn't. But he doesn't mind; he wants what she wants (since it won't happen unless she wants it anyway), and it's fine. He doesn't even miss the gangster life either, not really.

Or so he'd tell you. Loudly. While protesting all the while that Bonnie would divorce him in a heartbeat if she so much as smelled he was thinking about it.

But don't let the ratty bathrobe and juvenile lounge pants fool you, or buy too deeply into the domestic exterior. He may have left the life behind but the instincts are still there, the outlook's still there. He still does the jobs from time to time (when he can't get out of them and he thinks he can get away with it at home), and while they may not end in violence as often as they used to, he's still just as much a guy not to be fucked with as Jules and Vincent. He has zero tolerance for bullshit, for compliments given for the soul purpose of putting a guy at ease or buttering him up for future unpleasantness. He's direct, upfront, with a distaste for liars and dishonesty and the utmost respect for order and precision. For things running smoothly.

Jimmie likes his routine. Professional time is professional time, personal time is personal, and as far as he's concerned, never the twain shall meet. He'll help out a friend in need, sure, but don't expect him to thank you for picking him over anyone else, no matter HOW good friends you are; he's got a life, thank you very much, and he'd prefer not to deal with the headache the job tends to bring around when he's having his. Work friends are NOT personal friends, he doesn't understand how anyone could blur the lines; years of the gangster life has only cemented this belief, this determination to keep the things he actually cares about separate from what pays the bills. He's heard stories about what happens if you don't, has seen it first hand, even contributed to it on more than one occasion. It's sloppy, it's stupid, and it's a rookie mistake that gets people killed, so he has exactly zero patience for those who don't live that way. 

He dislikes disruption of the routine, he dislikes surprises, and both are likely to bring out the nastier, bitchier side of him. You didn't plan your job well, so you ended up in hot water? He doesn't really want to hear it, it's not his problem, and don't be surprised if he spends every minute of lending a hand (because he WILL, if you're a co-worker, he gets the concept of loyalty, after all) doing his best impression of a sulky teenager. Unfortunately, he's even the same way over something as innocuous as departing from the usual brands, or switching the schedule at the last minute. He's a creature of habit, and something of a control freak; he likes predictability, stability, being in CONTROL of the situation rather than a slave to whatever way the wind is blowing, and consequently he doesn't take well to any kind of disruption to any of that. It's why he's taken so quickly to domestic life; it's controlled, regimented. Scheduled. Everything in its place, and nothing out of order, everything's PREDICTABLE.

Except that his instinctive reaction to the removal of it is panic. A tantrum for the little surprises, an automatic assumption that the worst will happen during the bigger ones, a belief that everything will inevitably go horribly awry on a catastrophic level if someone doesn't Do Something, and that someone is generally not him. Particularly if he wasn't part of the original situation and was thrust into the middle of chaos; when Vincent and Jules showed up at his house, his immediate response was that they needed to get the hell out of Dodge that minute because he was going to get divorced that same day if they didn't. Rationally, this probably wouldn't have been the case. Sure, she would have been pissed, and understandably so, but immediate divorce? Over something that he had nothing to do with and had no control over at all? Probably not.

The thing is, Jimmie doesn't make friends easily. He'll be pleasant enough to new people, sure; he'll shake your hand, smile, make conversation, the whole nine yards. But he doesn't LIKE it, he doesn't trust people as a whole enough to make that jump on blind faith alone. He's been burned too often by new guys, and he knows they don't last long anyway; his career was one populated by the street smart, the thugs, the cool cats in the slick suits with a violent streak the length of their rap sheet. You don't trust guys like that, and the likeable ones, the ones you WANT to trust? They're the ones that'll get you killed out of sheer incompetence and enthusiasm, not to mention bright-eyed optimism.

That or they're like Jules, too easily saddled with the trigger happy idiots, and that'll get you killed or put away just as quick.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Post-movie; things are going...carefully with the wife, tensions are high, but everything's mostly status quo and most importantly he doesn't have a dead guy in his garage.

[journal post]:

[Video]

[Have a guy in a bathrobe shuffling in front of the camera, Polychrome. He doesn't seem to notice it right away, although with the hand running through his hair and the general jitteryness he seems to be embodying, it's not all that surprising he doesn't see it. He reaches into a pocket, then, finding nothing, he glances around and -- AHA. He sees you now.

There's a Jimmie staring at you all now. He examines the device for a minute or so, then addresses it directly.]

Hello? I see the light on, I know you're on. What is this, a prototype or something? I'm pretty fucking sure I got rid of my phone, so I know this isn't it, and whatever asshole put it in my pocket to begin with either deserves a medal or a foot up their ass. I'm still trying to figure out which.

Listen, I've got no fucking clue who's on the other end, and I really don't give a shit, but if you see a dark haired broad walking around in a nurse's uniform give me a holler, okay?

[Muttered]

This is bullshit. I swear, Julie, if this has anything to do with New Years'...

[third person / log sample]:

This wasn't Taluca Lake. Fuck if he knew where it was, but that was most definitely the place he knew it was NOT. One step out his doorway, to get the paper, of all things, and suddenly it was the motherfucking Twilight Zone. New street, new buildings, not even nice and quiet suburbia. An actual city, and Jimmie could have sworn he'd left that behind but there was the reality of pavement under his feet and pollution and garbage in his nose.

Maybe he's in a coma. Or was in one and only recently came out of it. Some complication from one job or another that launched him into Bradyville and he just forgot the details. Localized amnesia or some shit. Because it made a hell of a lot more sense than that he came outside and was Shanghaied god knows where without so much as a howdy.

He'd much rather have this be the dream than the white picket fence though.

He imagines he probably looks like a mental patient, wandering down the street in a bathrobe and pajamas, and he spares a moment to at least be grateful he doesn't have bunny slippers to complete the look. He'd wonder at the inconvenience of being transported fuck knows where without the dignity of real clothes, but then that's not the way these things work. At least he's wearing clothes. He reaches into the pocket of his robe, half expecting the familiar weight of a gun or something (if it's a dream there would be, the introduction of some internal conflict, past vs present, two men enter, one man leave), but there's nothing more dangerous than what seems to be some kind of phone from the future. Sleeker and smaller than anything he's used to, but that's dreamlike too. He drops it to the ground for the moment, as if he can wake up if he separates himself from the fiction, but all it does is clatter to the ground with a crack and a disgruntled beep.

So much for dreaming.

...Fuck. Bonnie's gonna KILL him when he gets back.