#Ironically SST!Jasper rode in an airplane before he ever rode in a car

[jessicanjpa]

Twilight Advent Calendar 2022 event

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Dec. 2 prompt: What human skills/hobbies has Jasper learned since becoming a Cullen?

-driving. Jasper hadn't ever had a reason to get inside a horseless carriage automobile before 1950. He found it very unnerving. When he was first learning to drive, he was one of those drivers that go 20 miles under the speed limit, at least until he saw someone bleeding on the other side of the highway and nearly caused an accident. Years later, he still doesn't enjoy being in cars. He's a bit claustrophic and other people's emotions are way too close, and the noise/smell/vibration is nothing like riding a horse. Motorcycles > cars > > > airplanes.

-experimenting with electricity. Jasper was almost completely absent from human society for a long time. When he left the wars and began hunting in cities, he was really intrigued by the invention of "electric" long after everyone else was used to it. Once he got comfortable in his new home he started dissecting all kinds of electrical gadgets to figure out what made them tick. This led to his and Rosalie's shared robotics hobby in later years.

-identity management. When Jasper first joined the family, he was amused by the Cullens' insistence on playing human... and a bit uncomfortable with the risks they took to do so. His concern with safety/security, his willingness to get his hands dirty, his need for real work, and his talent for strategic thinking eventually drove him to take an active role in managing the Cullens' identities (and past identities, and ongoing identities, etc.). Ironically, the workload and complexity of this task drove him to take an unprecedented risk: letting a human in on a fair amount of their secrets. This is stretching the secrecy law, and he knows it, but he's come to love this strange new family of his and to care about their happiness. Since playing human is a necessary part of that happiness, he's going to make sure it's done as safely as possible. Ironically enough, he's found a great deal of satisfaction in this role and it's led him to keep up with the human world more than he would have done otherwise. (Here's a one-shot about his starting up with Jenks's father in 1974: FFN / AO3)

-reading. Jasper never read for leisure as a human; no time and no books. He dropped out of school at age 13 to work full time on the family ranch. As a vampire in the Southern Wars there were always books on hand (some newborns could be kept quiet that way) but he rarely read then either. Once he joined the Cullens, though, that vampire obsessiveness really got a chance to shine and he devoured books like they were blood. (This actually helped with his withdrawal—he'd already gone through the worst of it when he was alone with Alice, but now he was trying to stretch out the time between hunts and be around humans again.) His interests shift as the years ago on, but history, anthropology, psychology, true crime, and philosophy are his favorite subjects in general. He's the only Cullen besides Carlisle who has his own study.

-whittling. To be fair, Jasper whittled as a human, but it was just passing time and mostly shaving pieces of wood down to nothing or quickly shaping a scrap of lumber for a particular purpose, like a clothespin or a fence post. He didn't really focus on artistry. But as a Cullen he really began to study the art of whittling. He loves to craft things like chess pieces, Christmas tree ornaments, little knickknacks, and even jewelry. Keeping his hands busy helps his thirst, and it means a lot to him to use his hands to create something beautiful and lasting after so many years of destroying everything he touched.

-helping Esme with renovations for that same reason. Sometimes he gets to design cool circuits/tech for their houses. The system of automatic steel shutters in their Forks home was his contribution. (Being overprotective is the mother of invention.)

You can find all the #twilightadvent22 prompts here!

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