application for 
ilpromenade
PLAYER
✧ NAME: Nic
✧ LJ USERNAME:
bangafewgongs
✧ CONTACT (EMAIL, AIM, MSN, PLURK, ETC.): I can never type my AIM out and type it correctly but it's trolololololings and my plurk is here.
✧ CURRENT MUSE LIST:
•Dean Winchester
•Max Guevara
CHARACTER
✧ NAME: Dr. Jacob Glaser
✧ SERIES: Stonehenge Apocalypse
✧ HISTORY: THE WIKI IS HERE.
*** Being that there's not much in the way of information for the movie's canon I've written out my own summarization below. ***
With what little canon I have to go off of for the movie and with no will to apply my own head canon, I'll be listing in-depth what happened within the film as Jacob’s history and circumstance in the events mentioned and summarized on wiki.
The movie starts with Jacob speaking to his listeners on his disparaged underground radio show about the fact that he’s picked up on an Electromagnetic burst that courses from Maine to where Stonehenge resides in the United Kingdom. His viewers call in and comment and it’s after two supporting theories that he signs off and studies into the subject at hand. Jacob is then able to use intelligence and his own scientific mind and abilities to create a map of this Electromagnetic (EM) energy and where it’s connected and headed from point to point. He even goes so far as to fly over to the sight of Stonehenge and get a hands on view of what’s happening. He witnesses another burst sees the government workers vaporized and is only further adamant about figuring out what is truly going on and what the government is trying to keep concealed. In this quest for the truth Jacob and his hypotheses are considered to be “pseudo-science,” and irrelevant. It is only when the more routine scientific research hits a brick wall do they even consider Jacob and his theories and assumptions.
At the sight of study the scientists and Jacob discover the structured radio waves that are roped between the stones and oscillating underground. Jacob attests that Stonehenge is a machine left by earth’s former occupants and that based around the Pyrodictium cells turning the soil a discoloration of purple and red that it’s meant to terraform the planet. Its goal is to purify the earth to make it inhabitable but because it’s a machine it's unaware of the already preexisting life upon it. When Stonehenge moves once more and makes its second blast it channels a seismic volcanic eruption where the Yucatan Pyramids are in Mexico, a place that was also mapped in Jacob’s visual studies only further predicating that he’s the only person on the study sight that has any idea what is going on. Meanwhile he’s locked up with several other trespassers that seem to be a mix of freedom fighters, and governmental protestors.
The third blast draws a protest and assumption by the Russians that a nuclear weapon was tested and it exacerbates an already steadily declining situation. They try to demolish it with explosives, which Jacob is immediate to address as a stupid idea and is subsequently immediately silenced for. The explosive blast only triggers another burst the likes of which causes two more eruptions and a scare and warning for tsunamis and active floods. By terraforming the planet the machine, as Jacob refers to it, is also exterminating the human race. It’s only when Dr. Kaycee Leeds takes trust in Jacob and carries him with a soldier to the site where the Antikythera Mechanism is being held, the item in question Jacob has announced is the key to turn Stonehenge's movements off. (Its whereabouts discovered roughly in the 1900s at the bottom of the Aegean sea.) In their journey to sequester it Jacob is faced with his friend, and also mocked scientist, Joseph who isn’t against the terraforming at all and has decided that it’s a prophetic calling for a new cult of humanity to rise. He invites Jacob to join he and his crew at the Primordial hill; a ghost of a pyramid that has never been found but is assumed to sustain life while the earth incubates and rebirths itself. Jacob is able to put his selfishness aside for the whole of the people he’s with and the rest of humanity and disregards the offer, after being pistol whipped he’s forced to chase Joseph down and at gun point it’s an act of self defense that has him forced to take his friend’s life. It’s a hollow feeling for Jacob, one that he doesn’t let himself dwell on long.
As Stonehenge's 100 gigahert blasts slowly reduce themselves as it recycles in a short sequential pattern, their time frame narrows and narrows and Jacob is forced to leave Kaycee with his award and the knowledge that her trust and faith in him has renewed his own sense of worth in people as a whole and that it, too, has validated his work and how he feels about himself simultaneously. He takes a military jeep to the study site where he’s met with the researcher holding Dr. John Trousdale at gun point. He’s unable to act and has to drive away, but he doesn’t get too far ahead before the double agent that had been working for Joseph catches up with him and crucially wounds his leg. Despite his injury he follows him onto the terrain of Stonehenge. The debate of hitting the ‘machine,’ with a nuclear bomb has been finalized and the jets are flying, Jacob is caught up in a fight with one of his friend’s men bent on the so-called renewal of the world and only narrowly manages to knock the Antikythera mechanism onto the alter stone where it belongs. A blast happens so huge from the radio waves that are previously mentioned to be carbon dating into the thousands and machined in advanced technology that can only be the work of the predecessors of the planet, that it strips the nuclear bomb entirely and vaporizes both Jacob and his friend’s researcher along with it. There ends Jacob’s story, even as Kaycee continues to verbally speak of it through, “The Real Story,” adopting his underground radio network.
✧ TIMELINE: Just before the Antikythera mechanism reaches the alterstone and before Jacob and assailant presumably die. If it's okay with the moderators, because his canons end with death I'd like his mirror to show Dr. Kaycee Leads continuing on his radio network.
✧ PERSONALITY: Dr. Jacob Glaser appears to the naked eye as a cynical and despondent failed scholar that toils his time openly mocking and scorning those that have done the same to him but that’s only part of the picture. He has depth that isn’t given much recognition to by those around him and being someone that looks at the whole picture and what is outside of it as opposed to what’s immediately relevant there are underlying aspects to his personality that are often unseen upon interaction with him. He keeps himself concealed, shrouded in a final attempt to maintain some sense of nobility and superiority with those that he interacts with but he’s also very up front and forward about his beliefs and his suspicions. His voice is one that cannot be silenced and he has no problem announcing that over his apparent short comings even when they are pointed out like large blemishes on the title he used to hold and the academia he always flaunts.
Cynicism is a large part of the person that Jacob is, it’s tied into how sardonically he behaves, his flagrant use of words, and the way in which he quite dramatically assesses a situation and chooses a debate point side within it. He’s vulgar and crass but in an eloquent way that distracts from it and makes you wonder if he’s inherently that suave or if it’s a lesser point of his nature coming into play in an odd distracting way that deters you from how vulnerable he is, or how much your comments or judgments might hurt him. Online with his Radio Show, “The Real Story,” his viewers are appreciated and taken into consideration but treated no less and no more than anyone else in his life. He’s able to step back and look at things rationally and has been able to reign a very liberal outlook on those that he comes into contact with; taking them for their worth at any given time and paying no one favors because he may know them or be attracted to who they are as people. One scene in which this is displayed is when he’s taking calls from his listeners and a vapid sounding young man starts talking about Stonehenge. “Yo! Jacob, man, Stonehenge moved,” based on his initial reaction to the comment it’s very clear that Jacob is disbelieving and somewhat put off by the statement. He replies in an airy sarcastic tone with gesticulation that goes unseen but is force of habit by him, “Really? Where’d it go? Pittsburgh? …It’s gonna be one of those nights, isn’t it?” It’s clear to see, there, that Jacob doesn’t play any favoritism to anyone’s opinions whether for his attempts at dismantling what he believes to be conspiracy theories or against them. It’s only when another caller from a different region, based upon accent, dials in and starts speaking off the same thing that he signs off the air to take it into any form of consideration. It shows an almost mathematical and nonbiased way of looking at situations, and people, and it just ties into how withdrawn he is as a person and how his apparent paranoia has resolved him into an almost hermitic and isolate personality.
Brazen with his beliefs, his opinions, and what he thinks of any given situation at any given time at first glance you might think Jacob was an eccentric; a person with a complete excess of personality. He gesticulates, he plays with words, and the veracity in his snide and often blatant facetiousness gives you little room to respond or react evasively or otherwise to whatever he’s said. His dry wit and potent disregard for anything he deems irrelevant to what he’s dealing with speaks measures about his opinions of himself and his prevalent need for validation. In the movie you find him frequently speaking about his goals, his aspirations, with such vindication that you might find his standing there and in the topic to be vain and grudging; it’s not. Despite the thoughts of everyone else, the belief they hold that his “mind has gone pear shaped,” because of the quirky and off kilter ways that he’s chosen to entertain his intelligence he’s still an incredibly bright man. For every bigoted comment or biased remark there’s other people, too, that consider him a celebrity for his achievement and being the youngest recipient of the privileged award for astrophysics. The open mocking of where his life took him after that, with brief mentions of a UFO radio show, and ghost chasing, is put aside by Jacob in the respect for a greater cause. It’s clear, with his exasperation, that he doesn’t enjoy being played for a fool but his ambition and his drive to carry on despite all odds being against him and whoever he’s with speaks measures of how impassioned he is despite his shortcomings as a person and the lengths in which he’ll take to prove himself and his work. His entire task, with the radio show, and his life which he knows as much as everyone else took a pit fall into the gutter was in proving himself, his work, and finding the reckoning in that. When they find the Antikythera mechanism and are able to keep it successfully in their grasp Jacob bids Dr. Kaycee Leeds a farewell by giving her his award, which he keeps on a metal chain around his neck. In his words, the trust that she’s placed in him has validated his work, and his life. It only further supports how isolated and paranoid he’s become since his descending from the prodigious title he once held. He’s able to step back from it rationally, and assess the problem with scientific means but that doesn’t make it an any less prominent factor in his life and it doesn’t dissuade it from being a problematic part of the person that he is.
A clever shield to this paranoia and distrust of heavy socialization is a very aloof, humorous, and affluent usage of words and the aforementioned sarcasm. In the movie he’s often seen saying things like, “Top of the morning, fellas,’ and “Tally ho,” to make light of a more tense situation and play off the vulnerability he may or may not be feeling. Speaking with his hands, visual feedback, the eccentricities and anomalous ways in which he gets his points across are all pieces of how cryptic and withholding he can be at any given time with how he’s truly feeling. Outwardly he may appear head strong, stoic, and tenacious (as mentioned by the double agent working within their attempts to stop the terraforming of the planet.) but his true feelings and resolve inwardly are another thing entirely and something he’s spent a very long time keeping well hidden.
With so few trusted in his life, the only social contact you hear of his outside of frequent radio listeners is a fellow scientist and mocked comrade Joseph Leshem. It’s clear by the erratic and frequent calling that he’s someone that Jacob entrusts very much and can relate to through aforementioned shame and dissension from public grace. An air of dependence is there as well, and evident in the tone in which he addresses him in their initial phone call (if not the several calls one following the other) it shows that when Jacob trusts someone it’s to his core and he’s quick to fall into codependent habits with people he deems to be that close. His first conversation with the fellow researcher is pleading, he wants his involvement in cracking the case, he wants him to join him there and drink in their long awaited validation. His altruism, and loyalty, is evident there and though it’s shown insipidly at best and although Joseph pokes fun at the endeavors he’s been entertaining himself with Jacob seems to be truly interested in having him come along with him to prove himself, themselves, in the midst of what he feels is a true crisis and enough to wipe their slates clean. Joseph, despite denying the offer, does it gently and tells Jacob to chase the trail. It’s there that you see their similarities, the very evident way in which they interact that hides nothing of their eccentricities and the lengths they’re willing to go to, to remove the stains on their person. It’s clear what united them was the mutual attempt in unearthing their true talents, but like roads diverged in wood, they had very different ideals and assessments in the lengths they believed in for said validation.
When they reunite at the site of Antikythera mechanism Jacob is dumbfounded at the unveiling of Joseph’s actual plan. It’s something he doesn’t agree with, but he can rationalize how far his friend has been pushed and tries desperately to reason with the human piece of him he hopes is still there. He wants to see good in Joseph because Joseph truly saw good in him, and perhaps it’s that which spared him and earned him only a pistol whip for standing in his way. Waking up from the head injury he’s greeted with not only another marked failure but the betrayal of a friend. He returns to Kaycee looking downtrodden and sounding bitter. When he chases Joseph down in the woods, he’s aware of the desperation and determination in his friend. He knows that the same thing lives inside of him. He can relate to his standing in the purging and extermination of an entire race and it’s that more than anything else that has him pulling the trigger, the fact that by relation the very same thing could’ve been living within him. He doesn’t enjoy doing it, ending a life, and for it being his first real encounter with it Jacob is drawn to steely silence leaning over his partner, former comrade, previously mentioned best friend. It’s a silence of respect, melancholy in its affect and he seems genuinely disheartened as he walks away. For more reasons than merely the let down. Pieces of Jacob that are very familiar to Joseph can relate to his friends breakdown. He can see himself in the same position. He knows it could have very well been him, had he chosen realistic pursuits and something other than isolation and it’s this knowledge that further disenchants him with his own life and presses the drive to find and fix the world he knows is soon to collapse onto itself.
Dr. Kaycee Leads is a strong English woman with an established and founded scholarly career. Upon first speaking with her Jacob addresses her with abysmal and ironic tone and disdain. To him, at first, she’s only another person opposing his beliefs and treating him like human trash. It’s only when she comes out right with her knowledge that his standing is true and takes the first apprehensive step toward trusting him that he gives her any sort of acknowledgment and that in and of itself is wary and cautious. He agrees to take her to the site of the mechanism and the entire way has a guard up while communicating, assessing her from a scientific perspective instead of something more human and personal. It’s only when there’s inherent danger around that he plays the protective pit bull and carts her somewhere to be hidden. When he comes to after Jacob’s betrayal he’s more open to her attempts at socialization because not only is physically injured but his pride is wounded as well. It’s there that he gives her more wholesome attention and insight into who he is, her reactions draw interest from him and it’s visible in his expressive reactions but with little time to lose they have not much time to connect before they’re making an effort to chase his former friend down. Jacob knows in their drive down how it’s going to end between them and she’s able to pick up on that and console him, after years spent avoiding being emotionally vulnerable her attempts serve only to flatter and shock him. Jacob opens up little by little and it’s this quick paced trust that makes him protective of her, because unlike Joseph she’s someone from the outside that truly believes in him, in his work, and the devotion to that and the recognition of it renews a little bit of his faith in humanity and his own social interaction. He starts slowly regarding her as a colleague on the mission and then someone much closer as he’s forced again to take care of her in the face of new odds and further physical damage. Her unyielding faith in him against obviously insurmountable odds makes Jacob believe in himself and it’s this knowledge that it was all he ever needed to continue his life allows for him to recognize that he wasn’t the failure he’d been trying to break away from. When he leaves Kaycee, his parting gift his more emotional than his words. Her trust, her loyalty, the quick and undoubted way she clung to and followed him has built up the damage that his past failures had inflicted on his person and made him believe in himself a little more. He knows, by that point, how much time has dwindled and the successions laboring their way through the stones and it’s the parting gift from him that means all the more. By putting faith into him, he’s had faith in himself, and faith in people again too. He leaves her the last follower of his true intellect and the products of it and the only living friend that had his appreciation and loyalty. By validating his thoughts in himself, his thoughts on people as a whole she gives him the strength to make the final stand at Stonehenge knowing that it’s the right thing to do, and it’s her passion in the face of adversity that fuels his own and his last moments in Salisbury to save the world and the people he knows deserve to continue on. He knows he’s right in what he’s doing, and he knows now that the assessment of that shouldn’t be based on the opinions of anyone but himself. This is further proven by his reaction to the intern and his snide comments, in his final moments and the vigor in which he takes that plummet to save a world in which his own belief has been renewed.
✧ ABILITIES/POWERS: Outside of being a neurotic and erratic genius Jacob is in line with most other normal people in that he has no skill sets aside of those that he was born with. He could, however, win the olympic gold in being pious.
✧ TIME OF ARRIVAL: Night.
✧ MASK DESIGN: This mask, but with forest green accents instead of blue.
✧ PLACE OF SOLACE: Jacob's place of solace will be his house that contains his basement where he hosts his radio show, his jeep still in the driveway. In many ways it'll all seem like a bad dream to the scientist, until he steps outside.
SAMPLES
✧ FIRST PERSON: [When the camera feed flickers on it displays Jacob looking tired, his hair jutting out at angles that are far more awkward than it usually lays, which isn't well at all, to the say least. His eyelids are a little heavy, his face dead pan, and when he speaks it's with a clearly controlled lilt and a very cut and dry tone.] What do we really know about the world? Mass bird and fish deaths, shootings, the whole nine yards swept under the rug like a feeble attempt at dusting before your in-laws come over. [Every so often a hand raises to punctuate a word. Deaths, shootings, nine, it's the inflection he gives his words- even being as despondent as he is, that makes them matter; or so he thinks.]
[After a moment you can see the wheels turning in his brain, he leans forward, bunches his shoulders, and that insipid look and tone he had before ends up a little more biting and expressive.] You don’t want them to stay there, but the missus has another plan. Forgive the second rate metaphor but... [He trails here for a moment.] it's really the same thing. Unwanted terrestrial company that have their noses in everything but keeps this… strong wall of judgment there to seal you out from getting anywhere with anything- or anyone; [Jacob has a cocky little shit eating grin for half a second, if you blinked you'd miss it.] if we’re putting this simile to the test.
[It's another moment between words and now he's leaning back, trying with all of his might to calm himself as he goes on and you visibly see the coping mechanisms, the way that he's still straightening out his shirt over his chest, trying to mask the confusion.] Sure, you hear about that, you mourn for a while- and then there’s something new and egregiously exciting to distract you! [His gesticulation piques, eyebrows raise, and the tone in which he delivers the last sentence is anything but calm for a small fraction of a moment. He realizes it after it's already too late, grasping for composure again he glances away from the screen, inhales, exhales and returns the blue eyed glance. This time his tone is breathy, a little pleading, but resolved to a much calmer less bitingly sarcastic state.]
Conspiracy theories aside, what has the government ever done for us outside of tax laws and a pretty biased law system? [If he had a pen he'd be tapping it in thought, instead the camera maneuvers in his hands and the angle changes as he gets himself situated in a different position. This one hides no tells of the inner anxiety he's trying to suffocate.]
A sense of structure, yes, but why the lies and secrecy? [His brows knit, he's trying to rationalize it in his head. He'd been playing off the apparent confusion with waking up in Atia by carrying on a daily and consistent task of his own life. Something that usually calms him down, only this time the niggle of paranoia and confusion is enough to hinder his intellectual capacity to reason with a more instinctual part of him. In the four minutes his feed has been streaming you've seen three key points of his personality, it's very clear he's at the very least trying to go about handling this with some tact, or what he knows of it.] We don't need to be spoon fed. These baby gates and plot holes... they aren't appreciated.
I was right about them, about it- all along.
I know that I should be dead, with no cause for an open casket funeral- maybe an obituary in the paper remarking blandly on the fact that I’m a failed scholar. A crock. People talk. No one knows what was really going on there, as it always is- I got my moment in the sun- those 15 minutes of self incited vindication and fame. [The words are all a little hard to hear with the way that his face is now turned away from the camera, distracted by some other things in the area he's in. It sounds distant and far off, to those that had stopped listening because of the monologuing nature he's been using to reason with himself, you just missed vital information.
After a moment he looks back again, clears his throat, gives the camera a vacuous dip of his chin and a deep sigh.]
Was it worth it?
... Yeah.
Would I do it again?
Yeah.
As long as things panned out the way they did the second go round. I wouldn’t enjoy reliving all of that, I’m not that masochistic- but if it meant saving what really mattered, the real tangibility here- ...there. I wouldn’t even need to ask myself.
And here I am…. trying to feel a connection between what was and what has ceased to be. I don’t think I’ll ever get it back. [A disgruntled sort of sound leaves him, the sort of sound you hear when you move a sleeping cat. Jacob raises a hand and smears the line of two fingers across and down the sinus point in the bridge of his nose. It's starting to swell and he's feeling the oncomings of a stress induced migraine. His tone is jilted now and far less confident. He sounds like an average guy being greeted with impossible circumstances, his yellow is showing.]
Did all of that even happen??
...Sorry for the monologue. I teal deer when I'm stressed. It’ll happen here and there and it’s best that if you do have issue with it to just ignore it or move on. [Jacob frowns, his brows are in a line now, eyes looking weary with even having spoken for this long. For a moment the screen flickers like he's going to turn off the feed, but he changes his mind and his tactic turning it into one of respectful appraisal toward people he's not sure of but knows at the given moment he has to be inclined to trust. The wariness is there, so is the precaution, but it's evident that he's trying to be somewhat open-minded and humble now.]
After the excess commentary I’ve just got one question to ask.
Where the hell am I? [His voice breaks a little around the swear. His fingers find his temple and rub tiny circles down there.]
I don’t believe in what I can’t rightfully see- so- purgatory, hell, heaven… well, that’s all out of the question. [Jacob is indignant in mentioning religion but no more than your average Atheist. He just drawls over the vowels sarcastically. His head is turned away again by the ending of the sentence, words muffled until he gives the camera another concerned stare.]
The architecture seems to differ whenever you hit a street corner, a connective conglomerate of different cultures and structures... and this is my house, among all of it, and after driving for an entire half hour and getting nowhere the place itself seems to never end. [A pause, he licks his lips, his brows knit... and he decidedly shakes his head after a moment.] If I'm correct. Sounds like a bad cocaine trip.
[Jacob breathes the next sentence in a complete sigh, everything coming out in a slow succession.] ...At least they left my clothes.
[It's clear he's agitated, that much is visible in his posture, but the snap reflex in which he goes rigid is all too clear in what he addresses next. He seems exasperated, confused, and all of the anxiety and being greeted with this situation is now bright as day.]
Y'know, but what I'd really like to know is how???
The EM was so strong in that blast I could feel it through the soil and the soles of my boots. The likelihood of my survival was impossible!! [Jacob swallows down an irate and incredibly childlike sound and it skews up his face in an unattractive way.]
I know the method of time lapses, and vortexual holes, but this isn’t String Theory it was the equivalent of an atom bomb. [Jacob blocks the visuals for a moment, takes a few audible breaths. He just happened out of an impossible and incredibly terrifying situation to be greeted with this. His reaction, he assumes, is pretty normal- and he considers this to be coping well. When he unveils the camera, he looks winded and fed up. His tone is back to cut and dry again and he has worry lines in his forehead.]
Yeah- so..... help would be nice. Maybe a pin pointer on what’s going on.
I don't like admitting it, but I'm lost.
This certainly isn't Kansas.
✧ THIRD PERSON: His leg throbbed with a dull pulsating pain that made it crippling to walk let alone hop like he was across the plain. Every time his heel touched down into the soil it sent a sharp stab up to the injury and caused another grated breath to leave his lips. He hadn’t been in pain like this since he fractured his knee in little league when he was eight. It was a long time coming, but living an isolated life spent mostly in his basement he wasn’t expecting to be chased with a gun in the turn of two days after investigation. Every step he took was accompanied with more visible and deliberate self control. His jaw was clenched so tightly as he staved through the pain he was sure if he made it habitual he’d be the next victim of TMJ. Throb, throb, stab, Jacob could feel the blood rushing in his ears and he could hear nothing outside of the air coming in and out of his chest.
It was a forceful hit to the back that hurtled him face first toward the ground. He would’ve cried out in agony, his hurt leg bending the way it did, but thankfully and by a lost shot at saving himself he’d managed to twist his body in away that his stomach took most of the blow and all that was lost was a whooping breath of air. He panted against the discolored soil, eyes ahead of him at the steadily reacting boulders that built up Stonehenge. That was his goal. They were so close. The alter stone was right there. For a moment he’d been so lost in focus that he hadn’t heard the researcher approach. He was bleeding too, and Jacob couldn’t help but be vindicated that he did him some equal damage, but when the mocking came he screwed his eyes shut with a prolonged and dramatic roll of them under furrowed brows and fisted the torn apart grass.
He’d played with him with niceties. Complimented him, and his work, only to take it back in favor of his ego and regardless of how far he’d gotten that stung. It was the same damn assumptions too. There wasn’t enough words in the world to accurately explain how tired he was of hearing that. He never claimed provocation to aliens; he didn’t say that he had any feasible proof. What he said was, “It… was… a Robot Head!” He was speaking without much will to thought, adrenaline coursing through his veins furiously enough that he was able to force off the ground with his good hand and collapse over his assailant in such a way that the key could hit the right place of the stone. There was blinding light, his chest flush against the double agent that had chased him down to Stonehenge and in a millisecond the machine deterred both a steadily approaching Nuclear bomb and more of the greenery around them. Jacob didn’t have time to react, he knew he wouldn’t make it very far if he did, before everything just stopped. There was nothingness. Just an empty void and a sound similar to those made when you put your ear beside a conch shell.
✧ ORIGINAL CHARACTER QUESTION:
✧ NAME: Nic
✧ LJ USERNAME:
bangafewgongs✧ CONTACT (EMAIL, AIM, MSN, PLURK, ETC.): I can never type my AIM out and type it correctly but it's trolololololings and my plurk is here.
✧ CURRENT MUSE LIST:
•
Dean Winchester•
Max GuevaraCHARACTER
✧ NAME: Dr. Jacob Glaser
✧ SERIES: Stonehenge Apocalypse
✧ HISTORY: THE WIKI IS HERE.
*** Being that there's not much in the way of information for the movie's canon I've written out my own summarization below. ***
With what little canon I have to go off of for the movie and with no will to apply my own head canon, I'll be listing in-depth what happened within the film as Jacob’s history and circumstance in the events mentioned and summarized on wiki.
The movie starts with Jacob speaking to his listeners on his disparaged underground radio show about the fact that he’s picked up on an Electromagnetic burst that courses from Maine to where Stonehenge resides in the United Kingdom. His viewers call in and comment and it’s after two supporting theories that he signs off and studies into the subject at hand. Jacob is then able to use intelligence and his own scientific mind and abilities to create a map of this Electromagnetic (EM) energy and where it’s connected and headed from point to point. He even goes so far as to fly over to the sight of Stonehenge and get a hands on view of what’s happening. He witnesses another burst sees the government workers vaporized and is only further adamant about figuring out what is truly going on and what the government is trying to keep concealed. In this quest for the truth Jacob and his hypotheses are considered to be “pseudo-science,” and irrelevant. It is only when the more routine scientific research hits a brick wall do they even consider Jacob and his theories and assumptions.
At the sight of study the scientists and Jacob discover the structured radio waves that are roped between the stones and oscillating underground. Jacob attests that Stonehenge is a machine left by earth’s former occupants and that based around the Pyrodictium cells turning the soil a discoloration of purple and red that it’s meant to terraform the planet. Its goal is to purify the earth to make it inhabitable but because it’s a machine it's unaware of the already preexisting life upon it. When Stonehenge moves once more and makes its second blast it channels a seismic volcanic eruption where the Yucatan Pyramids are in Mexico, a place that was also mapped in Jacob’s visual studies only further predicating that he’s the only person on the study sight that has any idea what is going on. Meanwhile he’s locked up with several other trespassers that seem to be a mix of freedom fighters, and governmental protestors.
The third blast draws a protest and assumption by the Russians that a nuclear weapon was tested and it exacerbates an already steadily declining situation. They try to demolish it with explosives, which Jacob is immediate to address as a stupid idea and is subsequently immediately silenced for. The explosive blast only triggers another burst the likes of which causes two more eruptions and a scare and warning for tsunamis and active floods. By terraforming the planet the machine, as Jacob refers to it, is also exterminating the human race. It’s only when Dr. Kaycee Leeds takes trust in Jacob and carries him with a soldier to the site where the Antikythera Mechanism is being held, the item in question Jacob has announced is the key to turn Stonehenge's movements off. (Its whereabouts discovered roughly in the 1900s at the bottom of the Aegean sea.) In their journey to sequester it Jacob is faced with his friend, and also mocked scientist, Joseph who isn’t against the terraforming at all and has decided that it’s a prophetic calling for a new cult of humanity to rise. He invites Jacob to join he and his crew at the Primordial hill; a ghost of a pyramid that has never been found but is assumed to sustain life while the earth incubates and rebirths itself. Jacob is able to put his selfishness aside for the whole of the people he’s with and the rest of humanity and disregards the offer, after being pistol whipped he’s forced to chase Joseph down and at gun point it’s an act of self defense that has him forced to take his friend’s life. It’s a hollow feeling for Jacob, one that he doesn’t let himself dwell on long.
As Stonehenge's 100 gigahert blasts slowly reduce themselves as it recycles in a short sequential pattern, their time frame narrows and narrows and Jacob is forced to leave Kaycee with his award and the knowledge that her trust and faith in him has renewed his own sense of worth in people as a whole and that it, too, has validated his work and how he feels about himself simultaneously. He takes a military jeep to the study site where he’s met with the researcher holding Dr. John Trousdale at gun point. He’s unable to act and has to drive away, but he doesn’t get too far ahead before the double agent that had been working for Joseph catches up with him and crucially wounds his leg. Despite his injury he follows him onto the terrain of Stonehenge. The debate of hitting the ‘machine,’ with a nuclear bomb has been finalized and the jets are flying, Jacob is caught up in a fight with one of his friend’s men bent on the so-called renewal of the world and only narrowly manages to knock the Antikythera mechanism onto the alter stone where it belongs. A blast happens so huge from the radio waves that are previously mentioned to be carbon dating into the thousands and machined in advanced technology that can only be the work of the predecessors of the planet, that it strips the nuclear bomb entirely and vaporizes both Jacob and his friend’s researcher along with it. There ends Jacob’s story, even as Kaycee continues to verbally speak of it through, “The Real Story,” adopting his underground radio network.
✧ TIMELINE: Just before the Antikythera mechanism reaches the alterstone and before Jacob and assailant presumably die. If it's okay with the moderators, because his canons end with death I'd like his mirror to show Dr. Kaycee Leads continuing on his radio network.
✧ PERSONALITY: Dr. Jacob Glaser appears to the naked eye as a cynical and despondent failed scholar that toils his time openly mocking and scorning those that have done the same to him but that’s only part of the picture. He has depth that isn’t given much recognition to by those around him and being someone that looks at the whole picture and what is outside of it as opposed to what’s immediately relevant there are underlying aspects to his personality that are often unseen upon interaction with him. He keeps himself concealed, shrouded in a final attempt to maintain some sense of nobility and superiority with those that he interacts with but he’s also very up front and forward about his beliefs and his suspicions. His voice is one that cannot be silenced and he has no problem announcing that over his apparent short comings even when they are pointed out like large blemishes on the title he used to hold and the academia he always flaunts.
Cynicism is a large part of the person that Jacob is, it’s tied into how sardonically he behaves, his flagrant use of words, and the way in which he quite dramatically assesses a situation and chooses a debate point side within it. He’s vulgar and crass but in an eloquent way that distracts from it and makes you wonder if he’s inherently that suave or if it’s a lesser point of his nature coming into play in an odd distracting way that deters you from how vulnerable he is, or how much your comments or judgments might hurt him. Online with his Radio Show, “The Real Story,” his viewers are appreciated and taken into consideration but treated no less and no more than anyone else in his life. He’s able to step back and look at things rationally and has been able to reign a very liberal outlook on those that he comes into contact with; taking them for their worth at any given time and paying no one favors because he may know them or be attracted to who they are as people. One scene in which this is displayed is when he’s taking calls from his listeners and a vapid sounding young man starts talking about Stonehenge. “Yo! Jacob, man, Stonehenge moved,” based on his initial reaction to the comment it’s very clear that Jacob is disbelieving and somewhat put off by the statement. He replies in an airy sarcastic tone with gesticulation that goes unseen but is force of habit by him, “Really? Where’d it go? Pittsburgh? …It’s gonna be one of those nights, isn’t it?” It’s clear to see, there, that Jacob doesn’t play any favoritism to anyone’s opinions whether for his attempts at dismantling what he believes to be conspiracy theories or against them. It’s only when another caller from a different region, based upon accent, dials in and starts speaking off the same thing that he signs off the air to take it into any form of consideration. It shows an almost mathematical and nonbiased way of looking at situations, and people, and it just ties into how withdrawn he is as a person and how his apparent paranoia has resolved him into an almost hermitic and isolate personality.
Brazen with his beliefs, his opinions, and what he thinks of any given situation at any given time at first glance you might think Jacob was an eccentric; a person with a complete excess of personality. He gesticulates, he plays with words, and the veracity in his snide and often blatant facetiousness gives you little room to respond or react evasively or otherwise to whatever he’s said. His dry wit and potent disregard for anything he deems irrelevant to what he’s dealing with speaks measures about his opinions of himself and his prevalent need for validation. In the movie you find him frequently speaking about his goals, his aspirations, with such vindication that you might find his standing there and in the topic to be vain and grudging; it’s not. Despite the thoughts of everyone else, the belief they hold that his “mind has gone pear shaped,” because of the quirky and off kilter ways that he’s chosen to entertain his intelligence he’s still an incredibly bright man. For every bigoted comment or biased remark there’s other people, too, that consider him a celebrity for his achievement and being the youngest recipient of the privileged award for astrophysics. The open mocking of where his life took him after that, with brief mentions of a UFO radio show, and ghost chasing, is put aside by Jacob in the respect for a greater cause. It’s clear, with his exasperation, that he doesn’t enjoy being played for a fool but his ambition and his drive to carry on despite all odds being against him and whoever he’s with speaks measures of how impassioned he is despite his shortcomings as a person and the lengths in which he’ll take to prove himself and his work. His entire task, with the radio show, and his life which he knows as much as everyone else took a pit fall into the gutter was in proving himself, his work, and finding the reckoning in that. When they find the Antikythera mechanism and are able to keep it successfully in their grasp Jacob bids Dr. Kaycee Leeds a farewell by giving her his award, which he keeps on a metal chain around his neck. In his words, the trust that she’s placed in him has validated his work, and his life. It only further supports how isolated and paranoid he’s become since his descending from the prodigious title he once held. He’s able to step back from it rationally, and assess the problem with scientific means but that doesn’t make it an any less prominent factor in his life and it doesn’t dissuade it from being a problematic part of the person that he is.
A clever shield to this paranoia and distrust of heavy socialization is a very aloof, humorous, and affluent usage of words and the aforementioned sarcasm. In the movie he’s often seen saying things like, “Top of the morning, fellas,’ and “Tally ho,” to make light of a more tense situation and play off the vulnerability he may or may not be feeling. Speaking with his hands, visual feedback, the eccentricities and anomalous ways in which he gets his points across are all pieces of how cryptic and withholding he can be at any given time with how he’s truly feeling. Outwardly he may appear head strong, stoic, and tenacious (as mentioned by the double agent working within their attempts to stop the terraforming of the planet.) but his true feelings and resolve inwardly are another thing entirely and something he’s spent a very long time keeping well hidden.
With so few trusted in his life, the only social contact you hear of his outside of frequent radio listeners is a fellow scientist and mocked comrade Joseph Leshem. It’s clear by the erratic and frequent calling that he’s someone that Jacob entrusts very much and can relate to through aforementioned shame and dissension from public grace. An air of dependence is there as well, and evident in the tone in which he addresses him in their initial phone call (if not the several calls one following the other) it shows that when Jacob trusts someone it’s to his core and he’s quick to fall into codependent habits with people he deems to be that close. His first conversation with the fellow researcher is pleading, he wants his involvement in cracking the case, he wants him to join him there and drink in their long awaited validation. His altruism, and loyalty, is evident there and though it’s shown insipidly at best and although Joseph pokes fun at the endeavors he’s been entertaining himself with Jacob seems to be truly interested in having him come along with him to prove himself, themselves, in the midst of what he feels is a true crisis and enough to wipe their slates clean. Joseph, despite denying the offer, does it gently and tells Jacob to chase the trail. It’s there that you see their similarities, the very evident way in which they interact that hides nothing of their eccentricities and the lengths they’re willing to go to, to remove the stains on their person. It’s clear what united them was the mutual attempt in unearthing their true talents, but like roads diverged in wood, they had very different ideals and assessments in the lengths they believed in for said validation.
When they reunite at the site of Antikythera mechanism Jacob is dumbfounded at the unveiling of Joseph’s actual plan. It’s something he doesn’t agree with, but he can rationalize how far his friend has been pushed and tries desperately to reason with the human piece of him he hopes is still there. He wants to see good in Joseph because Joseph truly saw good in him, and perhaps it’s that which spared him and earned him only a pistol whip for standing in his way. Waking up from the head injury he’s greeted with not only another marked failure but the betrayal of a friend. He returns to Kaycee looking downtrodden and sounding bitter. When he chases Joseph down in the woods, he’s aware of the desperation and determination in his friend. He knows that the same thing lives inside of him. He can relate to his standing in the purging and extermination of an entire race and it’s that more than anything else that has him pulling the trigger, the fact that by relation the very same thing could’ve been living within him. He doesn’t enjoy doing it, ending a life, and for it being his first real encounter with it Jacob is drawn to steely silence leaning over his partner, former comrade, previously mentioned best friend. It’s a silence of respect, melancholy in its affect and he seems genuinely disheartened as he walks away. For more reasons than merely the let down. Pieces of Jacob that are very familiar to Joseph can relate to his friends breakdown. He can see himself in the same position. He knows it could have very well been him, had he chosen realistic pursuits and something other than isolation and it’s this knowledge that further disenchants him with his own life and presses the drive to find and fix the world he knows is soon to collapse onto itself.
Dr. Kaycee Leads is a strong English woman with an established and founded scholarly career. Upon first speaking with her Jacob addresses her with abysmal and ironic tone and disdain. To him, at first, she’s only another person opposing his beliefs and treating him like human trash. It’s only when she comes out right with her knowledge that his standing is true and takes the first apprehensive step toward trusting him that he gives her any sort of acknowledgment and that in and of itself is wary and cautious. He agrees to take her to the site of the mechanism and the entire way has a guard up while communicating, assessing her from a scientific perspective instead of something more human and personal. It’s only when there’s inherent danger around that he plays the protective pit bull and carts her somewhere to be hidden. When he comes to after Jacob’s betrayal he’s more open to her attempts at socialization because not only is physically injured but his pride is wounded as well. It’s there that he gives her more wholesome attention and insight into who he is, her reactions draw interest from him and it’s visible in his expressive reactions but with little time to lose they have not much time to connect before they’re making an effort to chase his former friend down. Jacob knows in their drive down how it’s going to end between them and she’s able to pick up on that and console him, after years spent avoiding being emotionally vulnerable her attempts serve only to flatter and shock him. Jacob opens up little by little and it’s this quick paced trust that makes him protective of her, because unlike Joseph she’s someone from the outside that truly believes in him, in his work, and the devotion to that and the recognition of it renews a little bit of his faith in humanity and his own social interaction. He starts slowly regarding her as a colleague on the mission and then someone much closer as he’s forced again to take care of her in the face of new odds and further physical damage. Her unyielding faith in him against obviously insurmountable odds makes Jacob believe in himself and it’s this knowledge that it was all he ever needed to continue his life allows for him to recognize that he wasn’t the failure he’d been trying to break away from. When he leaves Kaycee, his parting gift his more emotional than his words. Her trust, her loyalty, the quick and undoubted way she clung to and followed him has built up the damage that his past failures had inflicted on his person and made him believe in himself a little more. He knows, by that point, how much time has dwindled and the successions laboring their way through the stones and it’s the parting gift from him that means all the more. By putting faith into him, he’s had faith in himself, and faith in people again too. He leaves her the last follower of his true intellect and the products of it and the only living friend that had his appreciation and loyalty. By validating his thoughts in himself, his thoughts on people as a whole she gives him the strength to make the final stand at Stonehenge knowing that it’s the right thing to do, and it’s her passion in the face of adversity that fuels his own and his last moments in Salisbury to save the world and the people he knows deserve to continue on. He knows he’s right in what he’s doing, and he knows now that the assessment of that shouldn’t be based on the opinions of anyone but himself. This is further proven by his reaction to the intern and his snide comments, in his final moments and the vigor in which he takes that plummet to save a world in which his own belief has been renewed.
✧ ABILITIES/POWERS: Outside of being a neurotic and erratic genius Jacob is in line with most other normal people in that he has no skill sets aside of those that he was born with. He could, however, win the olympic gold in being pious.
✧ TIME OF ARRIVAL: Night.
✧ MASK DESIGN: This mask, but with forest green accents instead of blue.
✧ PLACE OF SOLACE: Jacob's place of solace will be his house that contains his basement where he hosts his radio show, his jeep still in the driveway. In many ways it'll all seem like a bad dream to the scientist, until he steps outside.
SAMPLES
✧ FIRST PERSON: [When the camera feed flickers on it displays Jacob looking tired, his hair jutting out at angles that are far more awkward than it usually lays, which isn't well at all, to the say least. His eyelids are a little heavy, his face dead pan, and when he speaks it's with a clearly controlled lilt and a very cut and dry tone.] What do we really know about the world? Mass bird and fish deaths, shootings, the whole nine yards swept under the rug like a feeble attempt at dusting before your in-laws come over. [Every so often a hand raises to punctuate a word. Deaths, shootings, nine, it's the inflection he gives his words- even being as despondent as he is, that makes them matter; or so he thinks.]
[After a moment you can see the wheels turning in his brain, he leans forward, bunches his shoulders, and that insipid look and tone he had before ends up a little more biting and expressive.] You don’t want them to stay there, but the missus has another plan. Forgive the second rate metaphor but... [He trails here for a moment.] it's really the same thing. Unwanted terrestrial company that have their noses in everything but keeps this… strong wall of judgment there to seal you out from getting anywhere with anything- or anyone; [Jacob has a cocky little shit eating grin for half a second, if you blinked you'd miss it.] if we’re putting this simile to the test.
[It's another moment between words and now he's leaning back, trying with all of his might to calm himself as he goes on and you visibly see the coping mechanisms, the way that he's still straightening out his shirt over his chest, trying to mask the confusion.] Sure, you hear about that, you mourn for a while- and then there’s something new and egregiously exciting to distract you! [His gesticulation piques, eyebrows raise, and the tone in which he delivers the last sentence is anything but calm for a small fraction of a moment. He realizes it after it's already too late, grasping for composure again he glances away from the screen, inhales, exhales and returns the blue eyed glance. This time his tone is breathy, a little pleading, but resolved to a much calmer less bitingly sarcastic state.]
Conspiracy theories aside, what has the government ever done for us outside of tax laws and a pretty biased law system? [If he had a pen he'd be tapping it in thought, instead the camera maneuvers in his hands and the angle changes as he gets himself situated in a different position. This one hides no tells of the inner anxiety he's trying to suffocate.]
A sense of structure, yes, but why the lies and secrecy? [His brows knit, he's trying to rationalize it in his head. He'd been playing off the apparent confusion with waking up in Atia by carrying on a daily and consistent task of his own life. Something that usually calms him down, only this time the niggle of paranoia and confusion is enough to hinder his intellectual capacity to reason with a more instinctual part of him. In the four minutes his feed has been streaming you've seen three key points of his personality, it's very clear he's at the very least trying to go about handling this with some tact, or what he knows of it.] We don't need to be spoon fed. These baby gates and plot holes... they aren't appreciated.
I was right about them, about it- all along.
I know that I should be dead, with no cause for an open casket funeral- maybe an obituary in the paper remarking blandly on the fact that I’m a failed scholar. A crock. People talk. No one knows what was really going on there, as it always is- I got my moment in the sun- those 15 minutes of self incited vindication and fame. [The words are all a little hard to hear with the way that his face is now turned away from the camera, distracted by some other things in the area he's in. It sounds distant and far off, to those that had stopped listening because of the monologuing nature he's been using to reason with himself, you just missed vital information.
After a moment he looks back again, clears his throat, gives the camera a vacuous dip of his chin and a deep sigh.]
Was it worth it?
... Yeah.
Would I do it again?
Yeah.
As long as things panned out the way they did the second go round. I wouldn’t enjoy reliving all of that, I’m not that masochistic- but if it meant saving what really mattered, the real tangibility here- ...there. I wouldn’t even need to ask myself.
And here I am…. trying to feel a connection between what was and what has ceased to be. I don’t think I’ll ever get it back. [A disgruntled sort of sound leaves him, the sort of sound you hear when you move a sleeping cat. Jacob raises a hand and smears the line of two fingers across and down the sinus point in the bridge of his nose. It's starting to swell and he's feeling the oncomings of a stress induced migraine. His tone is jilted now and far less confident. He sounds like an average guy being greeted with impossible circumstances, his yellow is showing.]
Did all of that even happen??
...Sorry for the monologue. I teal deer when I'm stressed. It’ll happen here and there and it’s best that if you do have issue with it to just ignore it or move on. [Jacob frowns, his brows are in a line now, eyes looking weary with even having spoken for this long. For a moment the screen flickers like he's going to turn off the feed, but he changes his mind and his tactic turning it into one of respectful appraisal toward people he's not sure of but knows at the given moment he has to be inclined to trust. The wariness is there, so is the precaution, but it's evident that he's trying to be somewhat open-minded and humble now.]
After the excess commentary I’ve just got one question to ask.
Where the hell am I? [His voice breaks a little around the swear. His fingers find his temple and rub tiny circles down there.]
I don’t believe in what I can’t rightfully see- so- purgatory, hell, heaven… well, that’s all out of the question. [Jacob is indignant in mentioning religion but no more than your average Atheist. He just drawls over the vowels sarcastically. His head is turned away again by the ending of the sentence, words muffled until he gives the camera another concerned stare.]
The architecture seems to differ whenever you hit a street corner, a connective conglomerate of different cultures and structures... and this is my house, among all of it, and after driving for an entire half hour and getting nowhere the place itself seems to never end. [A pause, he licks his lips, his brows knit... and he decidedly shakes his head after a moment.] If I'm correct. Sounds like a bad cocaine trip.
[Jacob breathes the next sentence in a complete sigh, everything coming out in a slow succession.] ...At least they left my clothes.
[It's clear he's agitated, that much is visible in his posture, but the snap reflex in which he goes rigid is all too clear in what he addresses next. He seems exasperated, confused, and all of the anxiety and being greeted with this situation is now bright as day.]
Y'know, but what I'd really like to know is how???
The EM was so strong in that blast I could feel it through the soil and the soles of my boots. The likelihood of my survival was impossible!! [Jacob swallows down an irate and incredibly childlike sound and it skews up his face in an unattractive way.]
I know the method of time lapses, and vortexual holes, but this isn’t String Theory it was the equivalent of an atom bomb. [Jacob blocks the visuals for a moment, takes a few audible breaths. He just happened out of an impossible and incredibly terrifying situation to be greeted with this. His reaction, he assumes, is pretty normal- and he considers this to be coping well. When he unveils the camera, he looks winded and fed up. His tone is back to cut and dry again and he has worry lines in his forehead.]
Yeah- so..... help would be nice. Maybe a pin pointer on what’s going on.
I don't like admitting it, but I'm lost.
This certainly isn't Kansas.
✧ THIRD PERSON: His leg throbbed with a dull pulsating pain that made it crippling to walk let alone hop like he was across the plain. Every time his heel touched down into the soil it sent a sharp stab up to the injury and caused another grated breath to leave his lips. He hadn’t been in pain like this since he fractured his knee in little league when he was eight. It was a long time coming, but living an isolated life spent mostly in his basement he wasn’t expecting to be chased with a gun in the turn of two days after investigation. Every step he took was accompanied with more visible and deliberate self control. His jaw was clenched so tightly as he staved through the pain he was sure if he made it habitual he’d be the next victim of TMJ. Throb, throb, stab, Jacob could feel the blood rushing in his ears and he could hear nothing outside of the air coming in and out of his chest.
It was a forceful hit to the back that hurtled him face first toward the ground. He would’ve cried out in agony, his hurt leg bending the way it did, but thankfully and by a lost shot at saving himself he’d managed to twist his body in away that his stomach took most of the blow and all that was lost was a whooping breath of air. He panted against the discolored soil, eyes ahead of him at the steadily reacting boulders that built up Stonehenge. That was his goal. They were so close. The alter stone was right there. For a moment he’d been so lost in focus that he hadn’t heard the researcher approach. He was bleeding too, and Jacob couldn’t help but be vindicated that he did him some equal damage, but when the mocking came he screwed his eyes shut with a prolonged and dramatic roll of them under furrowed brows and fisted the torn apart grass.
He’d played with him with niceties. Complimented him, and his work, only to take it back in favor of his ego and regardless of how far he’d gotten that stung. It was the same damn assumptions too. There wasn’t enough words in the world to accurately explain how tired he was of hearing that. He never claimed provocation to aliens; he didn’t say that he had any feasible proof. What he said was, “It… was… a Robot Head!” He was speaking without much will to thought, adrenaline coursing through his veins furiously enough that he was able to force off the ground with his good hand and collapse over his assailant in such a way that the key could hit the right place of the stone. There was blinding light, his chest flush against the double agent that had chased him down to Stonehenge and in a millisecond the machine deterred both a steadily approaching Nuclear bomb and more of the greenery around them. Jacob didn’t have time to react, he knew he wouldn’t make it very far if he did, before everything just stopped. There was nothingness. Just an empty void and a sound similar to those made when you put your ear beside a conch shell.