Costigan, Jack

[Jack Costigan]

JACK COSTIGAN


i'm the owner, i go by MIKE.
you know you love me, don't deny it.
my hook-up's at MIKE@GREYMATTER.ME, so stay in touch
my little family consists of N/A
i came across this dandy little place at WORD OF MOUTH
am i under fourteen? NO sir!



I M A G I N E D . I D E N T I T Y



...EVERY STORY HAS A START...

FULL NAME: John David Costigan
NICKNAMES: Jack
AGE: 45
DATE OF BIRTH: 05/01/67
OCCUPATION: Unemployed
LOCATION: East (Homeless)

...JUST A MAP OF THE WORLD...

EYES: Cold steel circles that stare from under his brows.
HAIR: Black, medium length, often hidden under a Raptors’ ballcap or hood.
HEIGHT: 6’1”
BUILD: Big and athletic for his age. 210 lbs.
ANYTHING ELSE: Bullet wound scars: Two on his right thigh, one on his abdomen.
PB: Jeffrey Dean Morgan

...WITH THE POWER TO BE...

GENERAL PERSONALITY:
Costigan has been diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. For years, he was crippled by mental illness, with little to no relief gained from medication and therapy. His irritability and irrational fits of anger made it impossible for him to hold gainful employment. Night terrors haunted his dreams with flashbacks of blood and carnage. Images of his dead wife and daughter were always waiting for him when he closed his eyes.

He blamed the killer, the police, the District Attorney—but most of all, he blamed himself for not being there to protect them.

For ten years he drowned himself in guilt, misery, and whiskey.

And then he woke up.

It was August 2nd. Ten years since his wife and daughter were murdered. Costigan was returning from the cemetery. There was a Silver Snake beating a prostitute. The old Jack would have kept driving. None of my business, he would have said. But that day, he decided to act.

His mental condition has dramatically shifted. He no longer blames himself for the past. In fact he refuses to focus on the man he once was. Jack Costigan, husband and father, died ten years ago with his family.

The flashbacks, the night terrors, the guilt—all gone. Jack Costigan now is a well-motivated, well-planned machine. He views the world in black and white. There is no middle ground. No compromise. He sees everyone who disagrees with him as wrong and only sees his point of view, similar to a child who only believes that his/her perspective is right. He displays little to no empathy, and what true feelings he has are are so deeply repressed that he rarely, if ever, is able to access them.

He is a soldier again—emotionally numb, socially regressed, callous, calculating, intolerant and incapable of feeling guilt. His mission: to close the cracks in a system that allows scum like his family’s killer to breathe free air. To punish those that go unpunished. There can be no justice in an unjust world. But there can be retribution.

To accomplish his mission, he will disregard and violate the rights of those who live in the shadows, those who prey upon the weak. He will lie and deceive. He will murder the condemned without remorse. And he will never stop.


LIKES:

- Wild Turkey
- Cleaning his guns
- Soldier of Fortune magazine
- Calisthenics
- Isometrics
- Baseball
- Black coffee
- Nighttime
- Johnny Cash
- John Wayne movies
- Retribution

DISLIKES:

- God
- People who have faith in God
- Organized crime
- Gangs
- Democrats
- Republicans
- Remorse
- Interacting with people.
- Drug Dealers
- Dirty cops

STRENGTHS/TALENTS:

- Intelligent
- Driven
- Intimidation
- Gun proficiency
- Knife proficiency
- Lack of remorse
- Unshakable
- Close-quarters combat
- Hypervigilance

WEAKNESSES/BAD-ATS:

- Impulsive
- Irrational
- Narrow minded
- No concern for his own life
- Difficulty in forming relationships with others
- Recovering Alcoholic
- Disregard for the law
- Prone to fits of rage
- Insomnia
- Hallucinations
- Intolerant
- Callous

...BORN IN BLACK AND WHITE...

PARENTS: John William Costigan, Mary Costigan
SIBLINGS: None
OTHER SIGNIFICANT FAMILY: None
PLACE OF BIRTH: Bishop City
HISTORY:

Jack Costigan, an only child, was born and raised in the south end of Bishop City. His father, John William Costigan, was a former Marine and police officer. His mother died from breast cancer in 1970. Costigan was raised Irish Catholic, and had planned to attend Seminary college and become a priest.

At 16, his father was killed in the line of duty during a botched bank robbery. Unable to forgive God, Costigan abandoned plans to join the priesthood. He was sent to Boston to live with an Aunt on his mother’s side. His future wife, Emma Kelly, lived next door.

Costigan married Emma out of highschool. She was already pregnant with their daughter when he enlisted in the United States Navy. After scoring Category I on the ASVAB test, he entered the SEAL program.

As a member of SEAL Team 4, he served during the Invasion of Panama and the Persian Gulf War, after which he was selected to join the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as SEAL Team Six. Much of his military record is classified, or redacted, due to the sensitive nature of SEAL missions.

Costigan specialized as a sniper. Together with three other SEAL Snipers, he was deployed to Somalia in August of 1993 to work alongside 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta in the search for Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. He took part in several operations in support of the CIA and Army culminating in the Battle of Mogadishu where he was part of the ground convoy raiding the Olympic Hotel.

Costigan was shot three times, twice in the leg and once in the abdomen. Despite his injuries, he continued to fight and provide cover fire. He was awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star.

The horror of Mogadishu followed him all the way back home, to his family in Bishop City. The doctors told him it was called Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. He immediately entered counseling and began seeing a psychiatrist for medication therapy. After being honorably discharged in 1995, he was hired by Blackwater USA, a private military company, as a weapons instructor for police departments on the east coast.

In 2002, Emma and their 17 year-old daughter Megan took car service home from a movie theater. The driver was Miroslav Efimov, 22, a Russian immigrant. He waited outside for an hour, then drove into the alley behind the house and broke in through the back door. A witness, the neighbor, saw his car leaving the alleyway two hours later.

Costigan came home the next morning to find his wife and daughter tied up, stripped, raped, and murdered. The medical examiner’s report stated Emma had been stabbed twenty six times, Megan forty two.

Efimov was arrested two days later after police tracked down his license plate. At the initial hearing, he pled Not Guilty to two counts of First Degree Murder, Rape,and Sexual Assault.

The lack of evidence worried the District Attorney. Efimov had used a condom, wore gloves to prevent fingerprints, and poured bleach on both bodies before leaving. The DA constructed a plea agreement with the defendant and his appointed attorney. Costigan did not find out until he watched the DA read the terms of the plea to the judge.

Voluntary Manslaughter. Six years in prison. Ten years probation.

Costigan suffered what was later described as a psychotic break. He attacked Efimov in the courtroom. By the time the bailiffs separated them, Efimov had a broken nose, jaw, orbital socket, and a concussion. Costigan was taken into custody.

At a hearing to determine his mental state, his psychiatrist successfully testified that PTSD, combined with the traumatic death of the wife and child, had fractured his mind. The judge ruled in favor of involuntary commitment to McLean Hospital.

While Costigan received inpatient treatment for PTSD, the doctors began to note changes in his personality and eventually revised his diagnosis to include Antisocial Personality Disorder, which complicated his therapy, due to a lack of accepted treatment for the condition. He was put on high doses of antipsychotics and underwent electroconvulsive therapy.

He was released in 2008 and referred to a psychiatrist in Bishop City for outpatient treatment. During his time as a ward of the state, his assets had been liquidated to pay off lenders. He was left only with a fraction of his savings and a trunk of photographs and family keepsakes—the stuff that didn’t sell at auction.

He lived in a charity home for the mentally ill until 2010 when the funding was cut and he was forced onto the street. He purchased a used van and began sleeping in it.

Unaware that Costigan was homeless, his doctor continued to provide him with medication and therapy. Costigan manipulated his doctor, telling him enough to keep the pills coming, but leaving out the details of his life that might get him sent back to McLean. In truth, Costigan’s sanity hung by a thread, threatened every day by memories of the past. That is, until August 2nd, 2012. On that day, everything changed.

...I COULD BE A TOWER...

MEMBERSHIP TITLE: There can be no compromise.
SAMPLE POST:
JUST ONE MORE DRINK, Jack told himself as he opened the bottle of Wild Turkey. Too much drink makes a man soft. He was soft, he thought, as the whiskey burned his throat. Two years he had spent living in this van, staring up at a ceiling that looked like a road map of rust, spending sleepless nights on a stained mattress with no sheets.

He needed to get out of this town, to leave and never look back. Maybe a change of scenery would do good for him, he thought. Maybe not drink so much. Maybe forget about all the blood on his hands that never seemed to come off no matter how hard he scrubbed.

Pointless fantasies. Society had no place for such a thing as him. But still, maybe some time outside would do him some good.

He went to the window and pulled back the curtain. Neon came through in slices that flashed on his skin, from the Booze Town liquor store sign that stood across the street, same place he bought the Wild Turkey last week. Through the window bars he saw a man in a mask with a revolver stuck straight out in the owner's face. Jack thought about calling the police. He had one of those disposable phones, but he didn’t want to use any of the minutes.

The gun went off and the robber sprinted out of the shop. Jack sat there drinking and watching it all play out. Just another day in Shop City.

[Pax Whitby]

- His personality is a little slim for a character who suffers from post traumatic stress and antisocial personality disorder. His history is rather grim, so the post traumatic stress is understandable, but these are serious issues to incorporate in a character, and we'd like it to be given the gravity it deserves. We're not saying you have to write thesis about it, but a few more details would be great.

Apart from that, I don't really feel as if I know much about your character from reading the personality, even apart from the mental illness. The last paragraph is the only one that truly says anything about what he's like, and even there it feel a little rushed. A little more elaboration would be nice.

-Nitpicky, and of no real consequence, but Closer loosely follows real time, so august 2nd, 2012 hasn't happened yet, and in any case, we'd like to know about any life changing events in the history.

VERDICT: PENDING
I can tell you've really done your research with the history, so if the personality section was elaborated on a little more, you've got a great character here. If you have any question about rewrites, feel free to contact me or Birthe.

[Jack Costigan]

I very much appreciate your reply. Perhaps if I clarify you will see why I did the things that I did.

August 2nd is, indeed, the future. That is why I did not write what happens, because technically it hasn't occurred yet. It is what I am planning to write if I am to be accepted. I felt it would be better to leave it somewhat vague, rather than post what would simply be a synopsis of my first entry.

To be a little more forthcoming, August 2nd will be the ten year anniversary of his wife and daughter's murder. Something on that day will happen to him. Instead of continuing to wallow in his misery, this thing will give him purpose, and as a result, his mental condition will improve.

I, too, suffer from mental illness. I can attest that having a "goal" or "mission" in life can do as much to relieve symptoms as medication. That is exactly what will happen to Costigan.

Let me know if this explanation suffices, or if you still need me to make any changes.

[Lanny Darling]

The personality is still a little slim for this kind of character. Mental illness is not something we like to see skated quickly over in a character, so we'd like you to go more in depth about how suffering from his conditions affect him. It also wouldn't hurt for the personality to be a little bit more fleshed out in general, because, like I said in my previous reply, beyond the mental illness there's not a lot that would help other players see what kind of character he is for plotting purposes.

[Jack Costigan]

I made quite a few additions. Please let me know if you require more, specifically to Personality, Weaknesses, and a bit in history.

[Lanny Darling]

- Not really of any consequence for the evaluation, but if you look up in the right corner of your post, there should be an edit button that you can use to make changes, so you don't have to repost the whole thing. No worries this time though, I fixed it for you.

- I still think that the personality could have been more fleshed out. The rest of the application is fine, but still don't feel like I know who this character is from reading the personality, which is part of the reason why we have applications in the first place, to show that you know your character well and so that other players can read it and suggest suitable plot ideas.

If you take a look at your last paragraph, that's the sort of stuff I'd like to see more of. In fact, if you took each of those traits and elaborated on each of them rather them sticking them all together in one paragraph, I think the personality section would be good to go, although you might want to toss in some of his more positive qualities as well.

VERDICT: PENDING
Like I said before, if you have any questions at all about rewrites, feel free to contact me or Birthe.

[Jack Costigan]

Updated!

[Lanny Darling]

VERDICT: ACCEPTED!
Welcome to Closer, Mike! Remember to do the necessary sign-ups and to post in the who's who thread!