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Character Name :: Jude Knight.
Your Gaian Name :: Moire Frost.
Talent :: Singer/Guitarist/Musician.
Your Gaian Name :: Moire Frost.
Talent :: Singer/Guitarist/Musician.
Character first created in June, 2008.
Height:: 6'0"Weight:: 160 lbs.
Ethnicity :: Ultra-pale white, born and raised in Liverpool, England.
Eye Color :: Dark chocolate brown.
Hair Style/Color :: Dark brown [almost black] hair, a few inches in length. Very shaggy. Also, as in the references, there is a slight dusting of stubble on his chin. Not much, but a little. Ref. 1, ref. 2.
Attire :: Faded black band shirt, where it has been washed so many times that the band name is illegible, with a black jacket. Slightly loose blue jeans, but still considered pretty tight. [ ref ]. Black high-top Converse. He has a bunch of hand-made bracelets [ you know the kind, girls always brought in string in elementary school and made them and braided and knotted and such at recess ] in a rainbow of colors on each wrist, and has multiple rings on his fingers [ right hand: bands on his ring, middle, and index fingers. left hand: bands on his index, ring, and pinkie fingers. Plain bands, nothing fancy, except for the left ring finger, which is a hand-made ring made of pink string. ] He has the words TRUTH and BEAUTY tattooed on the inside of his left arm, FREEDOM and LOVE written on his right, going from elbow to wrist. He has the name CHARLOTTE tattooed on the back of his neck, in Charlotte’s curvy, wispy handwriting. When he’s onstage, he’s known to throw on a bit of eyeliner, but only if he’s feeling especially daring.
<-- Image to the left of this block of text is also a drawing of his stage attire.
Personality :: Jude is a very mature man for his age, and considers himself to be a polite gentleman when the situation calls for it, though he does occasionally sink low enough to crack a dirty joke and giggle at lewd humor. When he was younger, he had a knack for mischief, but his personality has mellowed out extremely in the most recent years, though he is prone to bouts of jokes on his bandmates to keep life interesting.
Jude keeps mostly to himself, being mysterious and trying to pass off as the dark and brooding type so as not to give away too much information about himself. The fun part is that he's not dark and brooding; most of the time he's a perfectly happy young man with an ear for good music, unless he's thinking about Charlotte, in which case he gets more than just a tad emotional. He doesn’t do well with women throwing themselves at him, as he only has eyes for Charlotte, but finds the most comfort in female friends.
When he sings most songs during a gig, all of the mysteriousness that usually envelops him disappears, and he becomes the charismatic front man every band looks for. When he sings “Hey Jude,” he gets quiet and sits alone on the stage, but his voice is so full of emotion that it all works for him.
He is a Beatles fanatic, which is ironic because his name is Jude, but gets most of his inspiration from their old albums, and has reworked several of their songs to be more punk-rock or softer.
Being the charismatic frontman that he is, Jude has a terrible habit of getting too "into" his performances, and shows real talent for bringing the excitement level up in the audience.
In meeting new people, Jude is soft-spoken, but has a confident air about him that tends to draw people in. He is by no means cocky or arrogant, but he's proud of how far he's come in so little time, and he's enjoyed a good amount of it.
History :: Born twenty years ago to a CEO of a small-time business, Edward Knight, and "author" Elizabeth Knight, Jude had a fascination with music from a young age. Around the age of ten, since his father was rarely ever home, and his mother was shut up in her study for hours on end, Jude spent most of his time with their young neighbor, Charlotte, a girl that was around his age. She brought her acoustic guitar over on regular occasions and tried to teach Jude how to play Stairway to Heaven, which was a long and painful process. After a few years, Jude finally was able to make it sound like Stairway to Heaven instead of a jumble of random strumming, and experienced a major connection to the instrument -- and Charlotte. He realized that he wouldn’t want to live any part of his life without both of those things, and promised Charlotte that he was going to be famous one day, no matter what.
By the age of fifteen, he and Charlotte spent all of their time together, and even started dating. Jude’s parents had no clue, as they were so wrapped up in their own careers, but Charlotte’s parents strongly discouraged it; “No way is any daughter of mine dating that Knight terror!” Charlotte and Jude were forced to be kept apart, and were even forbidden to see each other during school, as Charlotte’s mother, Mrs. Wilkins, taught them both in class.
Though her parents were against it, Charlotte continued seeing Jude behind her mother’s back for years, and when she turned seventeen, often spent her nights tucked into the crook of his arm in his bed instead of sleeping at home. They shared their first kiss, their first date, every milestone together. They made each other promise rings out of pink string, tied around their left ring fingers. Charlotte even sang “Hey Jude” by The Beatles when he was down, when he needed a pick-me-up, because it always reminded him of her, and her of him. It was their song.
Then one night, a week before Jude’s eighteenth birthday and a month after he had gotten Charlotte’s lips tattooed on his neck, he was staying at his aunt’s home on the other side of London when he received a phone call. A very distraught Mrs. Wilkins was screeching into the phone and asking what he did to her to make her so upset. Confused, Jude asked what was wrong, to find out that Charlotte’s mother had found her in her room, an empty bottle of pills by her side and a single note by her hand that read simply, “I’m sorry.”
Jude’s world crashed down around him. Suddenly, a week before his eighteenth birthday, he had lost the one thing in his life that mattered, that he looked forward to seeing every day. He was a shattered man, broken and torn to pieces.
He went to her funeral, made peace with her parents. When he came back home, for the first time since hearing of Charlotte’s suicide, he found her old acoustic guitar in his room, propped up by his bed as though it had been there all along. A note was taped to the neck, and he unfolded it to find the lyrics to “Hey Jude.” And suddenly, it was all clear.
Jude packed up his belongings, including Charlotte’s guitar, and headed to his friend’s flat in the northernmost region of London. He quickly got a backup band together, traveled back to the place where Charlotte was buried, and played her their song in the pouring rain.
Since then, Jude’s been traveling around Europe and the States trying to get a record deal cut out. He promised Charlotte that he was going to be famous one day, that he was going to make a name for himself away from his successful parents, and he’s not planning on breaking that promise any day soon.
During every gig that he’s played, he plays “Hey Jude” on Charlotte’s guitar, the spotlight focused solely on him. The rest of the show, he uses his own guitar, in fear of breaking or contaminating his true love’s guitar.
Prompt Response :: “Hey, Jude, don't make it bad,
Take a sad song and make it better,
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better…”
The words echoed over and over in Jude’s head, Charlotte’s soft, sweet voice beckoning him to close his eyes, the subtlety and beauty of her voice making a chill run up his spine. It was a ritual he practiced every time before he did anything involving their song; he remembered the last time she had sung to him, a brilliant, sunny morning in his room in London, her nestled into the crook of his arm and singing into his neck. She hadn’t bothered to break out the guitar, but the effect was just the same. He had still felt the familiar sensation of love between them, and he had cherished that moment since the day she died.
Jude lifted his head, stroking the neck of the guitar in his hands. It had been Charlotte’s, with the insanely well-polished body and the perfectly-maintained strings, and he played it only during his most important performances. He felt like he actually had a chance with this talent agency, so he packed Charlotte’s guitar instead of his own, kissing the neck for good luck as he stowed it away in his van.
“You nervous?” the woman a few seats down from him asked as he stood and began pacing. Jude glanced back at the woman and shook his head.
“Just preparing,” he said in his thick Scouser accent. She shrugged and returned to reading her trashy romance novel, and he picked up Charlotte’s guitar, slinging the strap over his shoulder and tuning it up. He hummed “Hey Jude” under his breath, closing his eyes and swaying as he played a few choice chords.
Once he had gone through the song twice, he started noticing the lobby he was in. There were more people than just himself and the woman that was reading the trashy romance novel. Some had instruments, some nothing but a bag. He looked down at himself as he noticed a very well-dressed man stalk past, and felt slightly under-dressed in his favorite torn jeans and his long-sleeved tee.
“Jude Knight?” a very small man with Willy Wonka-esque glasses called from the audition room door, a clipboard in hand. Jude turned to him and raised his eyebrows to show that he had heard him. “You’re up.”
“Break a leg, kid,” the woman that was reading the romance novel said, winking at Jude for good luck.
Inhaling sharply and nodding in the woman’s direction, Jude followed the man through the heavy doors, carefully dodging some well-placed fake plants so as not to hurt the guitar.
The judging room wasn’t all that scary, but it was larger than he had expected, so as he stepped to the middle of the room, he felt a little caught in the open. He faced the judges, a grin plastered across his face. This was it, this was his big moment.
“My name’s Jude Knight, from Liverpool, England,” he said cheerfully, holding the guitar in his left hand and shoving his right hand in his pocket. “And I’ll be singing ‘Hey Jude,’ by The Beatles.”
He pulled up a plain black stool in the middle of the audition space, sitting tenderly on the edge and gently pulling the guitar up to play. Jude took his pick in his right hand, kissing it and holding it up to the sky in a silent salute to Charlotte, before beginning the song that reminded him so much of her.
“Hey, Jude, don't make it bad…” Jude’s voice was in good condition today, and he didn’t even realize that he was playing guitar anymore. Instead of seeing the judges in front of him, he could see Charlotte’s face smiling back at him, her long, auburn hair framing her heart-shaped face and making her blue eyes sparkle. He could feel himself smile as he sang, making his heart swell and the emotions build up. For the climax of the song, he could see Charlotte and himself, almost an out-of-body experience, laying on his bed as Charlotte sang it to him for the last time. Then the image faded into the distance, and the judges were suddenly visible. Everything was so smooth, so automatic, that he hadn’t even noticed that the song was over until he suddenly stopped playing.
Slightly embarrassed after not immediately standing up, Jude grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you very much for the opportunity,” he said. “And, even if I don’t get in, I hope you enjoyed the performance.” He took off the strap of the guitar, nodding his head in farewell and thanks to the judges, and stepped out of the room, only breathing when he had reached the other side.
“How’d it go?” the same woman that had been reading the trashy romance novel asked. Jude shrugged.
“Won’t know for a while,” he said casually, as though he had done this millions of times before. In truth, the adrenaline and excitement threatened to boil over, and he felt a huge grin spread across his face. “Break a leg.”
