Joshua Eliot Holmes

the basics

full name ♦ Joshua Eliot Holmes
nicknames ♦ Josh
age ♦ Thirty-six
birthday ♦ July 26th, 1981
occupation ♦ History teacher at Primrose Academy
school ♦ University of Pennsylvania, previously Primrose Academy
species ♦ Human
ability/power ♦ Retrocognition
how the ability works ♦
Most people wouldn’t really think of Josh’s ability as a “superpower”, if only because it’s not something that most people would find a use in. See, Josh here is gifted with the ability of retrocognition, which means he can see into past events. However, there are some limitations to his power. Despite being older and having worked with it a number of times, there are still moments when it doesn’t work, and the recall will be spotty at best, like watching something through a black and white TV with busted audio. This will often occur if he isn’t focusing hard enough, or if his knowledge about the exact event that he’s looking at isn’t specific enough. However, if he’s holding or in general physical contact with the thing whose history he’s trying to see, it very rarely fails, unless he can’t concentrate due to being under the influence. Speaking of which, if he’s drunk? The ability will rarely work, and will suffice in only giving him a headache. He also suffers from severe headaches when pushing himself to use his ability for more than fifteen minutes at a time. 

This ability does have its negative uses, however. If he’s sleeping on something that has been in a family for a long period of time, for example, the retrocognition will seep into his dreams, and he’ll get flashes of memory of events centered around that piece of furniture. Unlike when he’s awake, he cannot turn off the ability in his head which often makes for some generally uncomfortable dreams, and he wakes up feeling as though he has barely slept at all. These are days when coffee certainly comes in handy. He is, however, actively taking up things like yoga and meditation in order to help him clear his mind, so that he can attempt to sleep through the night without any unexpected trips down history lane in his sleep; as much as he loves history, he likes sleep much better.
gender ♦ Male | He, him
sexuality ♦ Heterosexual

the appearance

face claim ♦ Chris Pratt
height and weight ♦ 6’2” | 185 lbs.
identifying features ♦ Josh has no real birthmarks or piercings, but he does have a few scars: one pale line midway up his calf from where he got caught in some barbed wire, and a jagged scar on his back from where he got hit by a piece of shrapnel in his time overseas.
overall appearance ♦
Like many teachers, Josh has two distinctive styles: one for when he’s at school and one for when he’s not. At school, his attire is very much considered business casual: dress pants and a button down dress shirt that frequently features rolled up sleeves because he can’t stand things around his wrist. He will at seemingly random times wear a tie as well, usually in some random and colorful pattern that makes no real sense. His favorite tie is red, and features a bunch of different Marvel superheroes on it, though he never wears that one to class because he’s pretty sure half of the school would never look at him the same.

When not at school, Josh dresses for comfort. This means he’s very frequently seen in worn and faded jeans and t-shirts, though he will occasionally adopt that stereotypical Southern boy look and throw on a flannel shirt, or a hoodie depending on what he has on hand. The colors definitely do not have to match. His hair is always kept on the short side, as it has some curl to it and he’d like to avoid having a cluster of ramen noodles on his head at all costs. He also does have facial hair, but he keeps it short; he thinks he looks weird as hell with any kind of a beard beyond scruff.

the personality

likes ♦
-History
-Loyalty
-Fantasy movies
-American football
-His ability
-Comic books
-Woodworking
dislikes ♦
-Nightmares
-Dental pain
-Division and hatred
-Ignorance
-Lying
-Top 40 music
-Bananas
strengths ♦
-Passionate
-Loyal
-Hardworking
-People person
weaknesses ♦
-Impulsive
-Perfectionist
-Jealous
-Trusts too easily
dreams ♦
-A better educated populace—he knows the negative effects of having uneducated masses, and that’s not something he wants.
-Having a family of his own someday. As cliche as it sounds, he wants a family, his own house… all the things he never thought he’d want.
fears ♦
-Dying alone
-World War III
overall personality ♦
If you asked most people what Josh was like, they would tell you without hesitation that he’s easy going and laid back, and probably one of the least stressed out people that they’ve ever met. Josh has moved through life firmly believing that worrying about everything solves nothing, and he’s gotten fairly good at handling emotional concerns in a rational way. Usually. The one that does tend to slip through the cracks is anger, and usually only when he’s been drinking. For the most part, however, he’s the kind of guy you’ll find in a bar with some friends, laughing so hard he cries. In the classroom, he makes a point to be approachable, and often mixes serious moments with goofy ones, to make sure his students are engaged in what he’s saying. He tends to reserve sternness for when it’s truly necessary, which in his mind, is rare. However, that is not to say that he can’t be serious at all. It’s true that he does prefer to joke around and not take most things in life serious, but when it comes to his job or one of his friends needing him to be there, he’s not going to just brush it off with a joke.

the history

father ♦ Arthur Holmes, 72, Retired Sergeant Major
mother ♦ Mary Holmes (nee Doyle), 68, fashion designer (mostly retired)
siblings ♦
______ _____ Holmes, 38, Brother
______ _____ Holmes, 30, Sister
______ _____ Holmes, 29, Brother
important people ♦
Ashley Peterson, 32, ex-fiance
Eddie Masters, deceased, best friend
hometown ♦ Manhattan, New York City, New York
overall history ♦
TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of war and injury

Josh was born on the Upper East side of Manhattan to Mary and Arthur, one of whom was away on deployment at the time. From the time that he was born, Josh was very well acquainted with the idea of luxury, and truth be told he wasn’t really aware of it until later on in life. As a child, he was exposed to the finest things in life, which means that the fact that he found a love of comic books was left almost entirely up to chance. From the time he was a kid, comics had been some of his best friends, and he immersed himself in the rich and intriguing world that they offered. Did his parents, and his dad in particular, think it was a little weird? Sure, but they had other things to worry about, so his passion for them went on unspoiled. Really, they should have been glad that he was reading at all. As a child, he attended a small private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the same way that his brother did before him, and the same way his siblings would after. However, when he was fourteen years old, he had been in a history class where artifacts from the civil war were being passed around as part of a unit on slavery. The moment that his hand touched a rusted piece of equipment that was being passed around, every single bit of information that surrounded it spilled out of his mouth, and try as he might, he couldn’t stop it.

It was in that moment that Josh knew something was different about him, the way that his whole family seemed to be just a bit on the different side. See, both of his parents had been gifted with mental abilities, which had made getting away with anything when he was younger nearly impossible, and his other brother’s gift had already reared its horrible head. He had just figured that he was a defective kid, or that his ability was something lame and not immediately obvious. However, he and his parents quickly realized that he had the gift of retrocognition, and the reason behind his stellar history grades suddenly made a lot more sense.

After that moment, Josh was off to Primrose Academy, joining his older brother there. It was at the school that his true passion for history was ignited, and he pushed the extent of his ability much further than objects. After substantial practice, he could experience parts of events just by reading about them, and thinking about them very, very hard. There were still slip ups, occasionally, where he was in a very talkative trance state, but the moments were fewer and further between the older he got. When he was 19, Josh graduated and left Primrose for other things, grander things. Growing up in a military family had meant that he felt very strong emotional ties to it, and he wanted to honor those, which meant that as soon as he left Primrose Academy, Josh went to the University of Pennsylvania—which had an amazing history program—and joined up with the Navy ROTC Marine Corps. Four years passed, and he graduated with a double major in History and Education, and from there, shipped out to Afghanistan with the United States Marine Corps.

For the next five years, Josh worked in Afghanistan with the Marine Corps. He thought he knew what he was getting into when he enlisted, he really did, but nothing could have prepared him for the reality of an active war zone. It was hard for him to adjust, in the beginning, but over time he became used to the reality of it all, and kept reminding himself that he was there to do good. He was there to protect and serve.

Everything changed in 2009. He had been riding in a jeep at the head of a group, moving towards Temez per their orders, when they were ambushed via a detonated IED a few centimeters to the left of their vehicle. A firefight ensued, with Josh and his driver, Eddie, trapped inside the vehicle. Despite his best efforts, by the time that he got himself untangled and out of the vehicle, the firefight was over, resulting in the deaths of a good majority of their platoon, and permanent damage to the rest. For Josh, this meant hospitalization and an eventual disability discharge from the Corps due to both the damage to his spine from getting hit in the back with shrapnel from his jeep and significant hearing impairment due to the closeness of the IED. Eddie, the driver, had died.

Upon his return to Pennsylvania, where he and his fiance had settled down, he arrived to more bad situations. Namely, a very pregnant Ashley answering the door of the home that they were meant to share. He hadn’t even waited to hear her excuse before turning his back on her and making his way back to New York, determined to at least see his family before trying to pick up the broken pieces of his life. He left everything of his that might have been in the house there, he wanted nothing that would remind him of her in his life. After a few months of paging through schools with job openings, he heard about a job opening at Primrose Academy, his own alma mater. While he didn’t expect to get in, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to apply, and much to his surprise, he had landed an interview. A few short weeks after, he had been offered a position, which he happily accepted, packing up the few things he owned and making his way down to Louisiana once more. Once there, he got to work rebuilding his life, which meant dealing with the nightmares surrounding his time in Afghanistan and his injury, and moving on from the woman that he had loved who hadn’t cared enough about him to avoid cheating on him. He’s been there ever since, and quite frankly, he can’t picture himself anywhere else now.

the role player

alias ♦ Sara
age ♦ 24
pronouns ♦ She/her(s)
code ♦ ADMIN EDIT
other characters ♦ Cora Elaine Marshall , Sophie de la Cruz