Jessie Drake

PHASE 2

Jessie Drake
Portrayed by Hunter Schafer
Codename:	Chameleon
Affiliations:
Birthdate:	January 1, 2004
Journal:	Celebrate The Rejects
Player:	Sam

"Yes! I was actually wondering if people could volunteer here. Well, if I could. If that's a thing. I'm sure they want to do background checks and stuff because I'm just a random person off the streets who could secretly be anti mutant and trying to infiltrate the place although I'm telling you that so it would be a terrible plan, honestly." Jessie stopped to take a breath. "But that's the gist of it. I'd like to volunteer here."

Jessie Drake is here, she's queer, and she's ready to take on the world.

Details

Character Journal: Celebrate The Rejects

Real Name: Jessie Drake

Codename: Chameleon if she needs one

Aliases: Cammy (short for Chameleon Girl)

First Appearance: November 13, 2023

Date of Birth: January 1, 2004

Place of Birth: New York, New York

Citizenship: America

Relatives: Sherri Drake, mother; Richard Drake, father (alive but dead to Jessie); maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles

Education: Graduated from Holden High School in 2022, Freshman at NYU as of 2023

Relationship Status: Forever Single

Occupation: Student, Volunteer

Team Affiliation:

Biography

A Series Of Let’s Say Undesirable Events

Jessie always knew she was a girl. She had a boy name and was raised as a boy, but she knew that wasn’t right. She didn’t have the words for it — she just knew. Jessie’s childhood wasn’t troubled, per se, but it was… difficult. Her lack of ability to express herself was channeled into acting out. She was disruptive in class, rude to teachers, talked back to her parents, and seemed to always be in trouble. M-Day definitely had An Effect on her. She was morbidly curious about all the people exploding and didn’t believe it could possibly be all mutants — there had to be some regular people who went up in flames, right? Driven by curiosity and mischief, she stole a lighter from her father and brought it to school with the intention of trying to light people on fire, just to see if it would take. She didn’t manage to get any people, but she did burn up a carpet, and no one was impressed by her insistence that it was for Science. She was expelled from public schools in April 2015. Her flustered, overwhelmed parents took the advice of the counselor they made her see and sent her to boarding school to finish out her school career. Worse, it was an all boys’ school. She lived on campus for the week, attending her classes and being reminded over and over that her next stop would be military school if she didn’t shape up. She was allowed to go home on the weekends, but often refused because she was angry at her parents for sending her there.

Finding Herself

Jessie was twelve when things started to look up a little. She was home for winter break in 2016, and roped into watching some stupid TLC show her mother liked. The show, which followed the life of a trans girl, lit up something in Jessie’s mind, and she spent the rest of the break furiously researching everything about the girl and being trans. By the time she went back to school after New Year’s, she’d finally figured out how to express that she was, in fact, a trans girl. Which made going back to school painful. Living on campus five days a week, surrounded by boys (including her roommate) drove Jessie online to escape. She went through a variety of names while trying to settle on one she liked. Was her name inspired by Jessica Rabbit? Maybe. Will she ever admit it? No. She officially came out to her parents while she was home for summer vacation in 2017. Their reactions were… mixed. While Richard was skeptic-bordering-on-unaccepting, Sherri was motivated to learn how she could be more supportive of her trans child, and, with a little trial and error, began using Jessie’s chosen name.

Manifesting

The manifestation of Jessie’s mutation was uneventful, almost boring. She was at Target with her mother, and had fallen behind to admire hair dye while her mother was looking at linens. Another person in the aisle had bright blue hair, and Jessie started asking her a bunch of questions. When Sherri returned to collect Jessie, her formerly blonde daughter now had blue hair of her own. They left Target without buying anything. Richard was furious when he saw Jessie’s hair, convinced that she had somehow gone behind her mother’s back and gotten her hair dyed, or maybe stole some dye and colored her hair in the Target bathroom (which was, of course, absolutely ridiculous). It took two days for her hair to change, but instead of going back to normal, it changed into the same soft brown that her mother had. Actually, after a few days alone with her mother while her father was at work, her entire face had changed just a little to make her look more like Sherri, whereas she’d looked like Richard her entire life. Richard blamed the “transgender drugs” Jessie had gotten (spoiler alert, there were no drugs, Jessie had gone in for an annual physical and had asked her doctor about the process of getting on puberty blockers, with her mother in the room). Her mother took to asking around, eventually determining that Jessie might be a mutant. A test later confirmed she had an active X gene.

Changes

With summer half over, Jessie went to her parents and begged to transfer out of the all boys’ boarding school she was currently in. She even did research on coed boarding schools so at least she wouldn’t be surrounded by boys All. The. Time. Sherri was nervous to let her go back to school at all, with her facial features and hair still changing every other day or so. Richard flat out refused to let her transfer. He had been hanging on a thread since Jessie announced she was trans, and finding out Jessie was a mutant had tipped him into a full on MAGA-esque*** frame of mind. It was amazing how little it took to completely shatter her parents’ marriage. The following days and weeks were filled with yelling about “liberals and pronouns” and “his son” being poisoned by “all the [insert trans slur]s.” He took away everything Jessie owned that could connect to the internet, and even tried to locked her in her room. Sherri yelled right back, letting Richard know she wouldn’t tolerate that bigotry. She found where Richard put Jessie’s electronics and gave them back, and even broke the lock on Jessie’s door so Richard couldn’t lock it. Divorce papers were filed, and Sherri and Jessie had moved to Massachusetts (where Sherri’s parents and siblings lived) before the end of August 2017. Richard signed away his parental rights in return for keeping the house and a bunch of other things. He didn’t pay child support, and Sherri let it go because it was better to not have connections to him. (Jessie will eventually figure out that he still had to pay because of Massachusetts laws and try to figure out if she can sue him to get the money for her mother.)

Starting Over

The move was the beginning of a lot of good things for Jessie. She was allowed to go back to public school, where she was Proudly Out as a trans girl. She didn’t mention the mutant part, and if anyone noticed her weirdly shifting facial features or various hair colors, they never said anything (aside from one teacher snottily declaring that her pink hair was against school guidelines; Jessie assured said teacher that it would be gone by tomorrow). The support of her mother, her maternal aunts and uncles, and her maternal grandparents did wonders for her confidence, and emboldened her to stand up for herself, as well as other students who were bullied. Before long she earned herself a reputation. She even didn’t mind the therapist her mother sent her to, and she was put on puberty blockers before the end of 2017. At home, Sherri was feeling the pressure of being a single parent. They had traded their house in New York for a small, one-room garage apartment one of the uncles owned. Sherri began working full time, and Jessie often spent nights with various relatives. Jessie, aware of how much more difficult her mother’s life was now, started doing whatever she could to help - she picked up a lot of the housework, learned to cook simple meals for herself and her mother, often volunteered around the neighborhood to try and make some money, and most importantly, stayed out of trouble. And that was Jessie’s life for high school. She got a job at a local grocery store when she was sixteen, got her license, and she was allowed to borrow her grandmother’s car after her grandmother gave up driving due to failing eyesight. She graduated in 2022 and took off some time before college to save money, then started applying for schools for the 2023 school year. New York University was her first choice, despite her mother’s reluctance to let her go states away (and to a place so close to her father), and at the end of August 2023, Jessie packed up the car that was now hers legally and hopped on the road back to New York.

New York, New York

New York was great. Jessie lived and worked on campus as a card scanner in the dining area, got a single room so she didn’t have to worry about a roommate, and overall had a great time. Following the floods in District X, she found her way to the community center and eagerly offered her services as an amateur volunteer.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'7"

General Build: Skinny

Eyes: Brown by default

Hair: Blonde by default

Other Features: Her hair is often Not Blonde. She prefers purple, pink, or blue, but will try any power once.

She has so many tattoos. A large butterfly in the colors of the trans flag on her shoulder blade. An owl on her upper right arm. A smaller version of this, the Failsafe symbol from She-Ra on her upper left arm. More butterflies in the colors of the ace, aro, and trans flags in the crook of her left elbow. The quote "Imperfections are beautiful" on her left wrist. A cat and dog tattoo on her right wrist. There will be more someday. Soon, probably.

Powers

Empathic Metamorph, AKA Unconscious Chameleon - Jessie has a tendency to adopt traits from the people around her. She can hold any changes for as long as she’s awake — she reverts back to her normal form (AKA what she looks like without any changes, so skinny, blonde, pale, brown eyes, long hair) when she’s asleep, if she’s fallen unconscious, or if she is otherwise depowered somehow. She has some degree of control, mostly over the things she wants, like her hair. She’s very untrained.

Equipment

N/A

Trivia

Jessie is trans, aromantic, and asexual. She does not try to hide that she's trans.

She is a true child of the Internet and a lover of cartoons, including She-Ra, Ducktales, The Owl House, Nimona, and anything queer she can find.

External Links

Links to the tags for each character in xp_communication, xp_logs and xp_journal.

[html link xp_communication posts]

[html link xp_journal posts]

[html link xp_logs posts]

Meta

Player: Sam

E-mail:

Player Icon Base: Hunter Schafer

Meta Trivia

Jessie is Sam's fourth overall character in the game, and a huge departure from their usual types.

Jessie's PB is, of course, also trans.