Jasper Kaylock

"I thought if I came to London I could meet other people like me, but... It's mostly been just torches and pitchforks."

## Basics

### Eye Color

Brown

> *"...But 'til then, every time the moon comes out, I turn into this half-transformed..."*
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> *"...Fluff-ball?"*
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> *"Sure."*
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> -Jasper talking to Rachel (ch. 4 pg. 1)
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Jasper Kaylock is a young cryptobiologist or cryptozoologist, and the most recent addition to the Society of Arcane Sciences taken in by Dr. Jekyll. Before the events of the comic, while Jasper was out in the woods, he encountered a werewolf while searching for magical creatures to study. He attempted to brew his own wolfsbane potion to treat himself using what he could in his flat in London, but the potion made him unstable. He now transforms into a half-werewolf whenever the moon is out.

## Physical Appearance

When he is not a werewolf, Jasper has shaggy chestnut hair and brown eyes. He usually wears a loose-fitting, off-tan button-up shirt, brown pants with suspenders, and a light-brown paperboy-style cap.

When he has transformed, he appears as a bipedal werewolf, with bushy brown fur, and yellowish glowing eyes. His clothes generally still fit following his transformation.

## Personality

Jasper is rather shy and anxious, but can also be friendly and excitable. He thinks somewhat lowly of his scientific expertise, and is very self-conscious about his abilities compared to everyone else at the Society. In the past, he was ostracized and belittled for his interest in rogue science by his family, peers, and teachers at the academy. As such, he is often nervous around other people and hesitant to connect with other scientists before they make an effort to connect with him.

Over the course of the comic, Jasper proves himself observant, understanding, intuitive, and a talented mediator despite at first understanding people very little and having little confidence in his ability to connect with others.

## Biography

A written full length summary of Jasper's known life up until the beginning of The Glass Scientists.

Jasper grew up on a farm next to a large forest by the Cotswold. Jasper was raised as a girl and wore dresses throughout his childhood. When he was younger, he had long flowing hair that his mother loved to play with. He said his mother would “braid [his hair] all up with white ribbons and make [him] white dresses to match”, much to his displeasure. Jasper would often run through and play in the woods and found the skirts and ribbons got in the way.

Because of this, his mother eventually let him wear masculine clothing after seeing how dirty he got. However, his mother wouldn’t let him cut his hair, as the family were pretty poor and braiding his hair was the only luxury his mother could allow herself. It’s implied that if Jasper had ever asked why he couldn’t have his hair cut short like his brothers, his mother would cry and beg him not to cut it, convincing Jasper not to for fear of upsetting his mother.

As a child, Jasper didn’t really understand terms like “girl” and “boy” and was confused by how some things belonged to girls and some belonged to boys. This is shown on Ch. 11, pg. 4 where it was revealed Jasper's name was inspired by a piglet he had given the same name to. This confused his brother, who declared that 'Jasper' was a boy's name, and it was a girl pig. Jasper didn't really understand That pig was later killed and eaten.

While living on the farm, every now and again, posh rich people from the city (Romantics, as they were called) would come to the countryside from the city. These people would stop by their farm and go on about they were living such a better life than the rich, saying they weren’t “tainted by things like money or big houses.” These people would go on about the beauty of nature and purity of the wilderness, but none actually knew how to survive out there. On Chapter 8, page 10, Jasper mentions he saw many people die out in the country and even had to pull some of them out of trees and streams they'd gotten themselves stuck in himself.

At home on the farm, everyone thought Jasper was weird for his interest in werewolves and his pursuits in cryptobiology. However, he held onto hope that he would find likeminded people in London's academic scene. Jasper kept his hair long until he left for London, where just before leaving he cut it short since his mother wouldn’t be with him to braid it. Since he felt he looked like a boy, he decided to have a boy’s name too, naming himself Jasper after the pig from his childhood. At first, cutting his hair was for convenience, but he quickly found that because he looked like a boy, people started treating him like one. Jasper found he rather liked that.

Unfortunately, as he said in Ch. 2 pg. 5, upon coming to London, he was greeted primarily by “torches and pitchforks”. He went to the Academy to help pursue science, but his professors called him mad for his niche views and unorthodox passions. Fed up with being deprecated, Jasper decided to leave the academy and pursue his own line of research.

He collected any creature he could get his hands on from anywhere he could find them, whether that be from the forest or the streets, to keep them in his flat for study. On one such trip out of the city, having taken the train out to the woods to find bigger creatures to research, he was bitten by a werewolf. He initially believed he could treat himself, but ended up giving himself wolfsbane poisoning. His recipe had been based on a formula he had found in ancient Celtic scrolls, which he modified to brew on his gas stovetop. As a result of the poisoning, his form became unstable, turning into a half-werewolf whenever the moon is out.

Jasper’s first appearance takes place before dawn following an unsuccessful attempt at treating his lycanthropy, leaving him transformed into a fully quadrupedal werewolf. He's presumably chased from his flat to the East End, where he wrecks an impoverished street by accident. A mob quickly forms behind him and chases him into an alleyway. From above, Mr. Hyde watches from the rooftops, having caught sight of the commotion. Quickly after the mob has Jasper cornered, the police arrive to arrest Jasper. He fervently insists that they should get away from him as he’s unstable, and still has his experiments waiting for him at home.

Fortunately, Dr. Jekyll soon arrives and talks the police out of arresting Jasper, promising to take care and rehabilitate him in a month’s time. After the police leave and the crowd disperses, Jekyll introduces himself, and Jasper follows him into his rented carriage to be taken to the Society for Arcane Sciences.
## Relationships

* Rachel Pidgley (love interest)
	+ When the two first met, Rachel was covered in blood and holding a knife and after Jasper said hello, Rachel ran away in embarassment. Over time, the two got closer and more amicable, Rachel quickly forming a crush. The two clearly trust each other, talking about subjects they don't with others, such as how Rachel met Hyde and Jasper's past.
* Henry Jekyll (friend and mentor)
	+ Jekyll was one of, if not the first, friendly people Jasper met when he came to London. Jekyll saw potential in Jasper and wanted him to help with the Society, and Jasper was glad someone was finally taking interest in his research. After the arrival of Frankenstein, Jasper was the only lodger who wasn't instantly entranced by her and stayed by Jekyll's side. Though, the two seem to now have a more unfriendly relationship after Jekyll told Jasper he could never have a happy relationship with Rachel due to him being transgender, stemming from his own experience in an LGBT relationship.
* Mrs. Kaylock (mother)
	+ Jasper loved his mother a lot, even enough to put her wants for the tiniest bit of luxury over his own gender expression and feeling at home in his body. While Mrs. Kaylock may not have had the most malign intentions, her actions did have an effect on how Jasper viewed himself as when he wondered why his brothers got to have their hair short, she cried and begged him not to cut his hair, as shown on Ch. 11, pg. 4.
* Unnamed older brother
	+ Jasper seemed to have a typical sibling relationship with him, as shown by how they gleefully played in the woods together as children but also how they weren't always friendly, particularly shown when Jasper's brother called him stupid for calling a female pig a male name.

## Trivia

* On the first page of chapter 2, it is stated that Jasper attended an Academy in London, presumably a similar one to the one Henry Jekyll attended 15 years prior if not the same.
	+ However, he left when his professors declared he was "mad" for wanting to study magical creatures.
* He grew up on a farm near the Cotswold, an area in South-central England, about 102 miles (164 km) to the west of London.
* He has a mud phoenix named "Christopher".

## Quotes

> *"So, it's like a club for mad scientists?"* (Ch. 2 pg. 6)
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> *"It's... Fancy! Everything here is **too fancy!**...It's like a sacred shrine of science magic! I am not worthy!"* (Ch. 2 pg. 9)
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> *"I'm not a real scientist! I'm not even a real human anymore! I'm... just a monster."* (Ch. 2 pg. 27)
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> *"I can't even imagine. I mean, my family was poor too, but we were **farmers**. At least we always had food on the table. And here I was dreaming of living it up in London! I had no idea how good I had it."* (Ch. 4 pg. 2)
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