Jean

Jean is a character in Journal of Sociology.

Backstory:
The curtains open up. The scene is desolation, marred only by the debris of various brightly-colored storefronts, all advertising the ethnic diversity of the city. A cold sun barely manages to peek out past the foreboding layer of dark clouds. It shines a ray of light upon one very tiny pocket of the once-city, and briefly illuminates one hideously gaudy sign. "THE CITY'S FINEST THRIFT SHOP! INSANE LOW PRICES!" the sign declares, begging for attention amidst the other signs. An observer might have been able to see the hidden meaning behind the ray of light, calling it a ray of hope. That observer could not have been more wrong, as there is no meaning to a cold sun. None at all. It was by pure chance that the pile of clothes behind the sign became animated. It was by pure chance that the poltergeist inhabiting this place became bonded to this ordinary pile of clothing. It was by pure chance that it saw the picture of a beautiful woman inside the once-store.

The bright pink picture frame gently nestled the form of an outstandingly gorgeous woman. This perfect artifact of nature was posing ever so slightly, gazing at the camera with a light, cheerful air, sporting a twinkle in her eyes, and wearing a smile on her face that said "Laugh with me, my love! Embrace this wonderful day, my dear!" Hastily scrawled into the upper-right corner was the message - To the love of my life, the sun of my clouds - Jean. The poltergeist stared at this picture. It gave her life meaning. She felt an affinity with this woman, something unnatural yet so perfect. Could this be her? With a startling jolt, she became aware of her own body. Look at this squalor! This was not beautiful at all! She was nothing but a formless pile of clothing. Yet ... this was her body. She longed to be beautiful. Slowly, she learned to give clothing life, to allow it to rise up and assume the form of a beautiful woman, exactly like the one in the picture. Just then, she felt strangely at peace. Everything made sense now - She was that woman, Jean! She was just as beautiful as Jean, there is no reason why she couldn't simply be Jean. And so it was that she adopted that name, and her body changed to fit her name.

Day and night holds no bearing to her, as she has no concept of wasted time. With all the time in the world, what could she do? Through her various wanderings, she became obsessed with searching through ruins for the form of a woman just like herself. She amassed a wide collection of vanity magazines within her body, ranging from lofty makeup magazines to sultry pornographic magazines. Some magazines she looked upon with disdain, such as that trucker magazine with a butch woman on the front. She threw that one on the dusty ground, furious that a woman would be allowed to let her beauty become tarnished. Over time, though, her mind kept going back to this example of un-beauty, and she saw that even this woman was beautiful in her own way. With regret, she went back and picked up this magazine. She promised herself that, if she ever saw this woman, she would help her bring out her inner potential.

Two years passed, and with every passing month, Jean's clothes got more and more frayed and dirty. She tried her best to take care of them, but when you're alone, it's hard to care. It wasn't until a year after she was born that the throes of loneliness really set in. Her magazines of high fashion and glamour no longer served as adequate company. She let her shape sag, not really caring about her appearance. Now, all she wanted to do was to find somebody, and be with that person forever. To know that she would never have to be alone again. She would serve to make that woman as beautiful as she could, to make her into Jean, because she just couldn't be Jean anymore. She wasn't beautiful enough. She finally collapsed, her clothes settling in an untidy pile. Three months later, she was chosen for a Grand Battle.

Description:
Jean is a laundry golem, a poltergeist possessing a pile of clothes. In her case, her clothes come from the only clothes found in the ruins of a demolished thrift store, after a badly-handled war resulted into a post-apocalyptic world, and she herself was formed from the spirit of the owner of the store, a kindly old woman who loved every article of clothing no matter how ugly or gaudy it was. Ever since the attack, she's been wandering the city. Her first sight upon being "born", so to speak, was a picture of a very beautiful woman, leading her to shape herself in the image of beauty.

Lately, however, she has become disillusioned from the pursuit of self-beautification. With nobody to gaze upon her beautiful form, she let her clothes sag. Currently, she has the appearance of a filthy old pile of clothes, haphazardly formed to barely resemble a human. She has been alone for 2 long years, long enough to make her yearn for contact with others. She still prefers women, but not exclusively so. She has a desire to spread her wonderful fashion awareness with the world, and make sure that every person is as beautiful as they can be, even if she no longer cares about her own beauty.

She is very lofty and cheerful, seemingly without a care in the world. One would not expect her to have been a lone wanderer in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, yet that's exactly what she was. She is a little lacking in the social department, but she still loves people, so she might throw herself at everybody, frittering over their appearances, yet still caring for them because just being around others would make her the happiest ghost ever to exist! To others, this might come across as rather impolite, but of course, she wouldn't know that. She has no grasp on social etiquette. The only thing she knows is what she has learned from various fashion magazines, and that is how to make a person beautiful. But, as one gets to know her better, they'll notice that her cheerful exterior is nothing but a fragile facade, put on so she can still pretend to care. The reality is that 2 long years of loneliness has cracked her, making her extremely sensitive. While she still maintains hope that others can be kind and charming, much like the woman in the picture, sometimes her idealist views don't match up with the world. When this happens, she completely falls apart, her already weak hope shattering in pieces. Being built from beauty and vanity magazines has given her an abnormally high standard of life, so everything else seems dirty and gritty to her. She continues to seek out the true beauty that can be found in others, no matter how hard it is for her.

Because she doesn't really care about her own survival anymore, she doesn't see her clothes as her own anymore. She sees them as everybody else's clothes, to be worn and given away. She will try to get people to wear her clothes, because she earnestly believes that it will make them beautiful. Naturally, they are filthy from two years of apocalypse-wandering, so others might not want to take them. But she will insist, for she wants nothing more than to help others realize their true beauty, more so for herself than for others, because she wants the whole world to be beautiful.

Items/Abilities:
Jean's body is currently made up of old abandoned thrift clothing that was tucked into the back of the store, dust piling on it from years of nobody being interested in it. Many wildly various articles of clothing dot her exterior, such as a pair of jeans down her chest, mittens stuffed with panties to form the hands, and tons of jackets haphazardly resembling the form of legs, all wrapped up in pantyhose. She does not actually have to maintain a humanoid form, but this is the form she is most affined to, ever since her first sight, a beautiful woman wearing the most gorgeous apparel. She desires to emulate this form in others, and to help all women become just as beautiful as they can be.

As Jean is a poltergeist possessing a pile of clothes, she does not become physically harmed at all, but she cannot swap bodies, and if any article of clothing is damaged beyond the point of being recognized as such, it becomes no longer connected to her. This is very hard for her, however, owing to the fact that she is the spirit of an unpopular thrift store's owner, whose motto is that every article of clothing has value. So, if an article just gets left behind, without an owner, that is the cruelest thing that she has ever seen. She likes to believe that each jacket, blouse, and even bra has an unique story to tell, and an unique home for them to be worn, and shown off to the world.

Within her body, she has safely tucked away her most favorite fashion magazines. She lives her life through these fashion magazines, so they are her most precious treasures. She will not allow harm to come to these magazines, so they tend to never leave her body. She does not read them anymore, because, at this point, she has completely memorized every word in the magazines. She only ever takes them out to look at the pictures, and to lose herself in the false reality of high fashion and runway models whenever things in the real world get ugly.

She can't actually disown her clothes, so when others wear her clothes, she is still possessing those clothes, and she is still in control of the clothing's motions. This means that, theoretically, she can control the movements of the people wearing her clothes. She can even squeeze the clothing, hypothetically suffocating the people inside. But this is all theoretical, as she wouldn't ever dare kill another. That would be depriving the world of people, and she needs people to be beautiful for her. If she ever got angry, she would only take it out on herself, pathetically collapsing in a pile of self-pity.