#deepspace:intro

also, a disclaimer that i'm not suuuuper familiar with l&ds.. lads... so if my lore is inaccurate, feel free to lmk!

inspirations: the pitt's dana evans, yolanda garcia & trinity santos, grey's anatomy's meredith grey.

half-orphaned by the chronorift catastrophe, her dad dies while helping an elderly neighbour. her mom follows soon after, unable to take the pain of a broken heart, which leaves haena and her two older siblings. they're both a fair bit older than she is, so they take on the mantle of raising her, with support from family friends.

much to the chagrin of her siblings, she drops out of law school to join the hunters academy, and joined unicorns right after, thanks to the director of unicorns, who's a close family friend and had been keeping an eye on her evol. they convinced her that a career switch was the right move (which remains to be seen...)

she spends her time in the academy working on professional projects (see: eavesdropping for higher-ups), and joins alpha after her graduation. her super hunter character is pretty popular too! really more of a face than a fighter, but don't underestimate her, though. she'll cut a bitch.

the demotion is deeply upsetting-- she takes unpaid leave and very nearly tenders her resignation. it's only with the promise of keeping her lieutenant paycheck that she returns.

kind of just a huge cunt now, but. eh. skips out a lot on patrols (sorry b04..), and seems to be perpetually have woken up on the wrong side of the bed. used to be nicer and a much warmer person, but the years of being in unicorns have worn her down, and she's very burnt out. honestly, doesn't even know what she's here for atp, besides needing to put food on the table.

stats.

dob: may 09 2017 / 30 years old skeleton: b02, wi; team bravo / vice captain

the political machine.

jiho learns what it means to socialise early. he's the third of four children; his mother is a lawyer, his father - the heir of a vast number of investment properties - teaches business studies at university. there's always a mixer to attend, even more so when jiho turns seven and his mother starts getting herself involved in local politics, joining various committees and councils and work groups jiho can't keep track of.

he's a popular kid. this is, in part, owed to his evol, but people also like jiho because he's friendly, easy-going, the kid on the playground who naturally takes a leading role in the friend group. his teachers love him, bumping up mediocre grades with personal bias.

when his mother wins her first election and steps into her duties as mayor of linkon city, jiho's fifteen years old and exactly the kind of child a public figure could wish for. in school, he gets voted class president. he graduates with more extracurriculars under his belt than most, even though he spends many of his afternoons tagging along to political garden parties and volunteering at animal shelters and orphanages. he is, admittedly, a little stretched thin, but this is easily ignorable with a teenager's energy.

jiho joins the academy right out of school, partly out of a sense of obligation, in the knowledge that it'll aid the family image to have a kid doing good, very public deeds. he's persistent. on the side, he follows his father's footsteps and earns himself a bachelor's in business administration. instructors praise his leadership skills. he makes friends easily, as he always has, and quickly gets promoted through the ranks once he starts working.

he has the skillset needed to justify his invitation to the unicorns roster - the tenacity, the skills in battle - but really, he's a dream come true for optics; media trained since childhood, the sort of sociability and leadership skills that can bring together fractured teams. jiho doesn't have a single solo kill under his belt, but he makes up for it with his demeanour at press conferences, his ability to stay calm under pressure. he's not someone you'd want to send into battle on his own, but he's the guy you'd want with you in a survival situation. his reliability is only called into question when jiho divides his time between team bravo and politics.

he steps back from his duties on the roster in spring 2047, instead putting his energy into his mother's re-election campaign. while his team hunts down wanderers, jiho puts on suits and talks to sponsors about what their funding will be put towards, should his mother win: a linkon city that'll keep striving to equal the divide between social classes, scholarships and community events and support networks for underprivileged children. he enjoys the networking, but misses his work, the colleagues and simplicity of it.

and then, a few months before he's meant to return from his sabbatical, two teams on the roster get wiped almost entirely, and jiho leaves the politicking to his siblings and throws himself back into the fold.

but is his mum, like, likeable?

it's very likely that your muse will have an opinion on park sungmi, jiho's mum - if not jiho himself - before ever meeting either of them, so here's a very quick rundown of her politics (as discussed with the main):

sungmi has built her platform on left-leaning, progressive legislation. her biggest setbacks have often been caused by a lack of funding for her causes. her partnership with ever is based on similar goals, though ever's motivations for sponsoring her so heavily have not been made clear.

jiho inherited his evol from his mum, but this isn't public knowledge. whether or not sungmi has used the ability to aid her political campaign is unknown, though jiho suspects she has, especially since he's encouraged to use his to charm sponsors. jiho is tight-lipped about this; your muse would have no reason to suspect that his mum's an evolver, beyond the logical conclusion that jiho might've inherited it from someone.

jiho doesn't involve himself much in his mother's policy, though he does sometimes serve as an advisor. he mostly helps out by being a public face: he might be present to cut a ribbon sometimes, or end up on a talk show to talk up a new development project. recently, the handling of operation pandia has caused a fairly big rift between them: jiho didn't voice any opinions ahead of it, and after the tragedy he's been having difficulties reconciling the positive intentions of the op and the human cost of it. he did give a lot of very polished, thoughtful statements to the press afterwards. while he might not agree with his mother on everything, he does think that overall her politics are a net positive in a sea of more conservative-leaning faces in congress.

encanto

evol is able to charm individuals through direct eye contact and can increase persuasive effects via speech.

there isn't a time in his life jiho can recall not being able to use his evol, and in fact his parents would claim he had it even as a baby, charming the household staff and family friends with just a few moments of eye contact. it could just be that jiho was an unreasonably cute baby (he wasn't), but the precedent shows otherwise.

jiho himself doesn't realise he's using it until he's a tween. it's just part of him, the same way his looks and personality are: he knows what tone to use when he's asking for a favour or a toy, and most of the time he'll get it. it seems pretty harmless to him, and for the longest time he doesn't think twice about using it.

but then, as a teenager, he starts realising that he can be manipulative without meaning to be. like when he asks friends for things he knows they don't really want to indulge him in, adds just a little bit of persuasion into his voice, and gets what he wants. over time, he starts feeling guilt over it; especially later on, as a young adult, he mulls over the ethics of using his evol at all, tries to figure out ways to use it that aren't inherently harmful. it doesn't help that often, when he uses it, he does it without thinking, so second-nature is it to him. and then, after he's recovered from that first emotional car crash, another realisation hits: if people like him because he's charming them when he introduces himself with eye contact, does anyone really like him for himself, or is his entire social network just a huge, manipulative web?

in an idealised world, where everyone is equal, jiho would just stop using it. but the world isn't fair, and jiho's been given a gift. so if you're wondering whether your muse has been charmed by jiho - the answer is probably yes, though they're unlikely to have noticed. because, with colleagues and friends and people jiho respects, he doesn't go further than a bit of eye contact to smooth over an awkward conversation, or a suggestion played as a joke with people whom he knows are able to take said joke. or, in situation when his rank demands it, he keeps a teammate pushing themselves through injury until they can evacuate and settles petty disagreements. sometimes he uses it when he's advocating for his colleagues in front of the higher-ups, as a protective measure. and if your muse needs a hype man in the gym... but that's off-label usage.

it's reasonable to worry about jiho's ability to be manipulative, but i want to be very clear on this: he's aware of the concerns around it, he'll have brought it up with each of his teammates and have invited conversations with people on the roster outside team bravo, and he's responsible about his usage. he's never once used it while discussing strategy. if anything, think of his charm the way you might of a smile and a friendly demeanour on an attractive person: it gets him a leg up when he's meeting new people, but he's not pulling a kevin thompson.

(his evol use outside of these professional boundaries - like when working on his mother's campaign, or hammering out promo deals when a company wants his face on their product - is a different matter. he's the right guy to call if you're about to negotiate the cost the car you're buying used, or if your landlord is being difficult.)

your work wife's work husband

jiho's an easy man to get along with, as long as you do your job. he has high standards, both for himself and others, and he can be strict if they aren't met; he's not afraid to play bad cop if needed. but when he's pleased, or off-duty, he's an easy-going, social creature. jiho's protective of his team, and is happy to step in when someone's struggling to articulate themselves in front of a camera, the sort of professional social buffer that's useful to have around for people who don't like dealing with press. his loyalty is firmly with his team over the organisation, and he's willing to overlook small lapses in conduct as long as they aren't overly harmful. he's an emotionally intelligent -though not nurturing - guy who jumps to think strategy over comfort; if you approach him to talk about your shitty boyfriend, he's the kinda guy who, instead of buying you ice cream to wallow, will rent a u-haul.

jiho's a pistol user and decent with a shortsword, but (as mentioned above) not the kinda guy you'd want to send out into battle on his own. against wanderers, his evol is essentially useless; he works better as the glue of a team under pressure. he keeps a very calm head and isn't prone to panic. his promotion to vice-captaincy (and possibly to captaincy on a new team charlie) was rooted in that ability to push his teammates, his strategic capabilities and ability to handle clashing personalities, and not in his fighting prowess (though he can definitely hold his own! he's not on team bravo as a mascot). he can be prone to overworking himself, but he's a well-adjusted person with a life outside the job and tries to be mindful of the hours he's clocking in.

the chronorift catastrophe is the single worst day in his life, but he's hardly known any better ones since. born and raised in linkon city, his whole family is buried under the rubble of wanderer attacks — his father, mother, and little sister gone in an instant. both his evol and lumiere himself save him from getting killed, and from then on, he's only had a single goal: to get rid of the wanderers once and for all.

sixteen years old at the time of the hunters association's formation, he was technically still too young to attend the academy. he wouldn't stop bothering them until they accepted him a year ahead of his peers, on the condition that he also graduate high school on time. eunho will let nothing get in the way of his goals, so he goes above and beyond. he's the top-ranked student of his school. he goes on to be the top-ranked recruit of the hunters academy.

unicorns is chomping at the bit to have him, and because he knows they deal with the worst of the worst ( as the best of the best ), he welcomes the assignment with open arms. what he does not expect is to be put in charge of people — and if anybody bothered to ask eunho, he'd tell them he shouldn't be.

but he's one of the faces of the association. handsome, tall, and strong, eunho becomes one of the youngest hunters to get a double-digit solo kill count. the fame chafes at him. he's never been very good with people, not since his family died, and now he can't even stop by a bakery without being swarmed by adoring fans who refer to him as shadow lumiere. it gets exhausting fast, just as his responsibilities do.

the one bright spot in his life since the catastrophe is his relationship. he never expected to find someone, always so sure he'd die at a wanderer's hand, but this connection is something precious, something fragile, something cherished. incongruously, he's less careful about it than he should be. if the others could see how meaningful it is to him, how it only makes him stronger, then surely they'll accept it. after an official report, though, it's not that simple or easy anymore.

he tries to protest both the demoting transfer and the promotion. the most hq acknowledges is that this is one of the only times he's spoken up about anything; usually it'd be his vice-captain doing all of the talking. he threatens to quit. unicorns counters by saying they'll revoke his license if he does. and if he continues hunting wanderers without one, he'll be considered tenebra. they'll hunt him to the ends of the earth and drag him back kicking and screaming. eunho is a weapon. they will never let him retire — and isn't that what he wanted all along ? helplessly, he lets himself sink into darkness.

an already apathetic leader drifts into an entirely absent one. he barely pays attention to mission briefings, goes off on his own when he can, and seems adamant on not connecting with another human being for as long as he lives. if the association wants to make him a thing, then a thing he will be.

pandia shakes him out of his stupor, if only for a moment. the scene he comes across, among the first to answer the distress signal, reminds him of the catastrophe. he recalls his purpose — defender of the innocent, slayer of monsters, all that good stuff that's said about the cartoon him on tv. the fallen members of charlie and echo are more souls for him to avenge. but more than that, there are people who are still here ( even if they are out of his reach, even if he pushed them there ) that he can give his life to defend. and so he will.

the revelation doesn't last very long. it's hard to stay motivated for a long time. eunho likes the sound of ideals, but in practice, he gives himself plenty of leeway — large enough gaps to fall back into bad habits like wallowing. subordinates will notice that he tries to be more present, failing more often than not, and if he starts racking in more team kills... surely that's a good thing ?

knows something unnatural, maybe even man-made, went terribly wrong with pandia, but lacks the sufficient motivation to do anything about it. eunho's focus is on the day-to-day, taking missions below his rank to hone his skill and save as many lives as possible. but it's starting to eat at him, sallow cheeks and dark-bagged eyes scored into his flesh. it won't be long before he sinks into another abyss.

hello and welcome, please come in and take a seat next to my exhausted and overworked (self-inflicted) child muse: jung haejin. my name is ash (they/them, gmt-8) and i'm excited to release him into the wild introduce him to the world.

above you'll find a link to his carrd but a quick tldr:

captain of delta team, and the oldest captain of the three

his personality at this stage in his life aligns closely with dr. robby from the pitt; for those who are unaware, this means he is competent, confident/seasoned, effective, gruffly kind, and a little sassy, but has the major downside of extreme burnout, mild but firm impatience for continued incompetence in a crisis (for those outside of his team), and a potential for rash decision-making when he has hit double over his limit

he is very hands-on with his team, especially after operation pandia; as the only analyst team left he has made himself the first line of defense for delta's members to ensure they are not being overworked during the shortage (thus overworking himself); he is both protective and loyal

his background implies that he was born and grew up in a secret section of a (potentially illegal) research base in the arctic (mt. eternal, specifically); additionally it implies he was an experiment subject

he is the eldest of three (with a younger brother and sister); unfortunately his younger brother died during the chronorift catastrophe; his younger sister is still alive (and thriving)

he has been with the hunter's association since its inception and with UNICORNS for at least a decade

it is rare to see him without black leather gloves on

he prefers warmth over cold (and thus is prone to wearing layers)

has gained a mild obsession with yancha

scarily good at the claw machine, very poor at racing games

absolutely hates eating mushrooms (however seems to enjoy seeing them in the wild)

some plot ideas include:

helping hands (make the load light): haejin helps your muse with something serious and has promised secrecy. do you trust him? why? do you not? what will you do next? (implies non-delta member, but delta members welcome)

burn it to the ground: a moment from the past that has come back; haejin and your muse were hell-raisers as teenagers/20-somethings and the world hasn't yet forgotten over a decade later. perhaps this ignites the fire in them again. (30+ muse required)

bleed it out: self-sacrifice has consequences and they've come knocking. are you ready to hit the ground when you fall? ( all welcome; malleable on who has hit their limit ) taken!

the folly of youth: a lighthearted moment wherein the captain of delta engages in some... tomfoolery instigated by your muse. ( all welcome )

specter: there's something... wrong with your muse. and out of everyone in the room haejin notices. what will you do when delta's captain checks in? (delta implied but all welcome )

like a villain: haejin is in the field investigating (off the books looking into pandia? / tracking a strange anomaly? / hunting a criminal? / tracking an elusive wanderer?); your muse (stumbles upon him? deliberately follows him? tags along?). ( delta implied, but all welcome )