❞Katniss Everdeen ][ polychromatic
[nick / name]: Haku
[personal LJ name]: whisperedtones
[other characters currently played]: Alice Kingsleigh // Alice in Wonderland (2010) // the_alice
Rukia // Bleach // wingstock
Conrad // Chronicles of Chrestomanci // iseemore
Peter // Chronicles of Narnia // oshutup
Lightning // FFXIII // overreached
Emma // Glee // peopletalktome
Peter // Heroes // justdoingmyjob
Yvaine // Stardust // shiningdown
[e-mail]: loveinmypocket@gmail.com
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[series]: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
[character]: Katniss Everdeen
[character history / background]: Born a citizen of a nation called Panem (once what the world knew as North America), Katniss is a member of District 12, which as indicated by its number is indeed the twelfth and last district since the reported eradication of District 13. In a world where said thirteenth district was wiped off the map for rebelling against the government in power, everything in Katniss' life has been greatly skewed by a combination of bitterness and paranoia--bitterness which was only exacerbated when she lost her father in a coal mine explosion at the age of eleven. She refers to District 12 as the place where many people can starve to death safely, and this is generally true except for the officials who make enough money to live otherwise and various other families supported by particular vocations not involved with coal--District 12's product, specific to it just as every other district has its own industry as well (i.e. District 11 covers agriculture, District 4 covers fishing/sea-oriented stuffs, etc.) Those who are most often in danger of going without enough food--without enough anything really--are typically from a place in 12 called the Seam. When her father died, he left behind not only Katniss but Prim, Katniss' younger sister, and their mother who seemed to barely retain the will to exist after the incident. It was during this time--the time when she first knew how much worse things could be than they already had been, how terrible nightmares were and how blessed her sleep without them had been before, the time when it seemed all three of them would waste away despite Prim's soft pleas and aught else--that she made her first distinct memory of Peeta Mellark; the boy with the bread.
On the brink of her family's almost certain starvation, unable to come up with a solution, she resorted one night to rummaging through the trash of the bakery where the baker's wife promptly found her and screamed at her to get gone, which she did. Sort of. More like, she found her way to a nearby tree and slumped down against it, exhausted and empty-handed, suddenly without the will to do anything when faced with the reality of not being able to bring anything home for her sister and their mother. Behind the baker's wife, their son, Peeta stood and when the two went back inside, leaving Katniss seemingly alone, she thought they had gone for good, being under the impression that she too was gone. Not so. Muddled by fatigue, hunger, and hopelessness, eleven year-old Katniss then witnessed what was to become the source of one of her most nagging feelings, ever. There was the sound of someone being hit and more yelling before young Peeta came out into the rain with two full loaves of bread, burnt on the crust, ordered to toss it to the pigs. Instead, he tossed them to Katniss before quickly going back inside, all the while not looking at her. Taking the bread home, she could not figure out why he did it, and even more confusing was the feeling that he had dropped the loaves in the oven fire on purpose, as if to have an excuse to 'throw them out', which would explain his mother's anger (sort of). Still, as she could think of no reason he would do this, especially as he was hit for it judging by the weal on his face, she eventually concluded that it had to have been an accident, however fortunate of one for her. The next day at school when she spotted him, he did not look at her the whole time through until dismissal. When she went to pick up Prim she found him watching her and, though only for a moment, their gazes locked only to end just as abruptly, but when her eyes left Peeta Mellark, they found something else: a dandelion. "To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed."
It brings to her attention the fact that when her father was alive she spent much time in the woods with him, and in that time, learned the very things that might work to keep what was left of them alive.
Over the years, she provides for herself and Prim and their mother in this way, though at first her takings are quite meager as her snares do not work so well. This is where and when she meets Gale--her best friend and something more that there may not be an adequate word for just yet. Finding one of his traps with an actual kill in it, he lets her know that stealing is punishable by death, though this is a bit of a laugh as they are both already breaking the law by being in the woods---the beginning of the area beyond the fence that locks in District 12. Oddly enough, Gale is after the initial run-in, much faster to befriend Katniss than the other way around, but by the time the book actively starts, they are fast, fast friends and their regular meetings to hunt and gather are precious to both of them, if tinged by differing reasons. At this point, however, when the story takes off, their comfort is stolen out from under them by The Reaping, an annual drawing of slots for two children--one boy and one girl--for a thing named The Hunger Games, an all-out fight between the youth of every district arranged to remind everyone that the Capitol's power is absolute. It equates to the government saying 'look, we can send your children to the slaughter, remember that and just how much worse it could be if you should ever think of insubordination' or something like that. As it happens, Katniss is not called but her sister, Prim who is only twelve, does get her name drawn and it is this which sets things rolling. Katniss, who loves Prim Everdeen more than anything, more than anyone, more than she herself likely would ever think herself capable of without her, volunteers in her place. This, it must be noted, is typically unheard of. Girl tribute chosen, the boy is then called and lo, it is someone familiar to her: Peeta Mellark. Their mentor is Haymitch Abernathy the only still living tribute of District 12. Haymitch--victor of the 50th Hunger Games--at first is nothing but a drunk laughing stock. Only once they make it abundantly clear that they are determined to survive does he sharpen up, and though he does not say it at the time, he makes the decision to favor Katniss. He does this (we later discover) because he knows that Peeta wants to keep Katniss alive and, thinking that only one person can win as has been the custom, he believes this is the most realistic way to make their fighting chance worthwhile.
The following is a link that summarizes The 74th Hunger Games without subjecting you to a paraphrase of the entire novel.
Coming out as victors both, one wold think Katniss and Peeta have beat both the odds and the circumstances in general, but this is not so. Katniss' way of tricking the Capitol into their joint livelihood at the last second was seen as an act of rebellion--as we learn in Catching Fire, and President Snow himself details to her the specific contract to which she is bound---that being that her only chance to put things right is to convince everyone that she did what she did out of utter love for Peeta. Their one opportunity to really let the public have it is on the Victory Tour, which consists of exactly what it sounds like. Katniss and Peeta visit every district and give a speech. However, on their first stop--District 11--they do not so much fail at proving their love but succeed more at an unintentional ignition of the general people uniting under what they view as an act of solidarity on Peeta's part when he offers a month of their winnings every year to the families of each of the district's tributes. It worsens when Katniss steps forward to speak of Rue, to praise all that she was for the short time she knew her, eliciting Rue's four-note song to ring clear across the throng of faces and a salute to Katniss herself, likely not only for what she said but what she did for Rue when she was able. This, as one might imagine, is the exact opposite of what President Snow wants to see, and though Peeta and Katniss stick to the template-thank-you in every other district, it seems to make no difference. Sure enough, President Snow himself lets Katniss know this is true and after she catches a news bulletin of an uprising on the television, this spurs Katniss' instinct from fight to flight. Her plan is painfully simple: run. But after an argument with Gale---Gale who points out that this could be an opportunity for change and not a condemnation back into what they have been held under for so long and that on top of that they ought to think of those who can't run, will never be able to 'run' even given the chance---this plan is first paused and then completely derailed when she later returns to town only to find Gale himself suffering the direct repercussions of what it is to not be able to run. Change is on the rise but not the kind they would want, and flight turns staunchly to fight as she tells him she will not be going anywhere after all---that she's going to stick around and cause "all kinds of trouble". No amount of play-acting or even truly being in love with Peeta could have stopped what has been started from the moment she pulled out the berries at the end of the 74th Hunger Games, not because they were not convincing but because people had gone on so long without the match to light the fire, always with the want but never the first strike. When Katniss decides not to run she recognizes that her action served as that, whether she meant it or not, because enough people wanted it to be that, were just waiting for something that was enough, that symbol of someone who not only defied the Capitol but won out over it. It was not her intention then to cause any of this, only her intention that the both of them could live and her own personal knowledge that she could not leave Peeta to die, much less kill him, and go back home alone to nightmares spent trying forever to think her way out of the games. That said, at the end of the eighth chapter she has made the contrastingly conscious decision to make the stand she accidentally made before.
[character abilities]: Can name certain plants?! No, really, but only some, and she can do a number of other outdoorsy things---like moving almost silently in the woods, starting a fire though she relies rather heavily on matches, laying snares, and climbing squirrel-like through the trees. Her main ability of note, however, is with the bow and arrow, her 'typical' shot being straight through the eye of her kill---deadly fast and likewise accurate.
[character personality]: Not given over to falling in with the crowd but simultaneously endowed with a near excruciating instinct for survival, these two traits alone make for the greater inner confusion and conflict that defines Katniss Everdeen both as a girl unto herself and a girl unto the nation--her nation--as a whole. For example, while she dislikes talking about clothes and general gossip popular with most girls her age, she play-acts a love-struck girlishness in order to protect the perceived truth of her involvement with Peeta, upon which the well-being of everyone she ever has and ever will care about rests. Because the majority strategy of what is meant to keep the both of them alive in their first Hunger Games is the star-crossed lover angle, this is a lie Katniss cannot simply drop, but because it is so pervasive, she has difficulty figuring out the truth of her own feelings for Peeta. That said, this is not the sole case of her internal gray area. Even where her best friend Gale is concerned, she falters regularly with her convictions on the exact 'how' and 'what' and 'why' of her care for him beyond a deeply rooted gut feeling. She, for all her ability to sharply assess life-or-death situations in the games and come out on top (eventually), cannot plainly articulate much in the way of feelings, or rather, Feelings, but this by no means is an indication of their lack. She is, in fact, almost surprisingly brimming with emotion, but it gets bridled and tapered down in so many different ways and instances that Katniss herself can't quite identify them comfortably anymore, if she ever could. It is this reader's speculation that she partially confuses herself on purpose on a subconscious level, perhaps as a defense mechanism since the last person she felt so strongly about was her father.
Overall, she is very stubborn but this does not always serve her, sometimes outing her as cowardly when courage is called for and other times having her end up as the aggravation to a situation rather than the help one hoped she might be. Of course the ways that self-same stubbornness is a good thing are more obvious. It is a key to her surviving as long as she has so far after all. Blunt and short-tempered with a true smile about as common to her as food is to her district (not very, At All) she makes for something of an unforgiving teenager made older than her years and reasonably paranoid by the world she was born into. While no paragon to gentleness, a measure of the fighter in her translates strangely to something very caring all the same, though a great deal of her emotion over people--like Rue, a girl she fails to save in the games--stems first from the perspective of 'this isn't fair' and 'she didn't deserve this' rather than a personal tendency toward kindness, which while she is not completely without--her affection for Rue, to be clear is quite real--she is certainly no great example of the selfless type of compassion more often employed by strong female leads.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: right before chapter nine of Catching Fire
[journal post]:
][private, thoughts, off the network][ Day 3.I keep waiting to wake up and find out everything I know is wrong. In a way, I guess that already happened, but this seems like it should be different. As bad as things have been before now, there were rules I recognized even if I didn't follow them. Here there doesn't seem to be any of that.
Then again, I'm still not entirely convinced this isn't an overly elaborate trap. Who knows what last-minute tricks President Snow has up his sleeve? I can't put it past him, to go this far, to do anything to diffuse what's already been done. I don't know how much time it would take to build an arena that mimics its own world, but the Capitol lies about age so completely that for all I know such a place has been in existence for years. No level of precaution is too severe if it's to ensure the preservation of the way things are...the way they've been for too long.
Gale was right. Why does it take me so long to realize the things other people see so clearly? I'm afraid. But we're all afraid, aren't we? Or just desperate. Our common thread.
But if this place is what people keep telling me, if it's the truth...then what?
I don't know.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If they are telling the truth, that means the dead can come here just like the living. That means...
...my father, he could be---
---and Rue---
...
No, Katniss. Don't. Don't even start. Dead is dead.
...
And here I thought the games were over for me.
[ her tone indicates that she actually is much the wiser though there is not even a sliver of smugness or anything remotely positive in that sense of knowing better ]
[third person / log sample]: Lately her dreams are so prolific with nightmare-things that her first feeling is that of relief, but this kind of grace is always temporary and even sooner, a misrepresentation. There is nothing to be relieved about because what she finds is exactly that: nothing. Where 'nothing' sits is the space where her hand should still be curled around Gale's, the space where she promised to stop running for all the good or bad it might do them, the space where rebellion could never be the last straw but might very well be the last step. Finding none of this, she thinks she holds her breath, though even this she can't be sure of. She waits a moment longer for understanding, and when that doesn't come, she decides to settle for a sliver of recognition, but that too evades her and the only thing she is certain of is the effort she is making to wake up--all to no avail--and even the lucidity of her dream is only a short respite from worse things than sheer darkness. The dark, she knows something about, more about than the veil-wearing Capitol goers, more than the game-makers; perhaps not more than President Snow, and she comprehends the mistake she has made a second too late.
To think of that man on purpose when awake, when clinging to the thread of the fight is one thing. To bring him to mind in her sleep is another, and the darkness clusters in around her with the hum of tracker jackers, thick with the unmistakable smell of blood and roses. This is her nightmare--one of many--but this makes no difference where control is concerned. It never has. She thinks of caged animals, but this only leads her back to thoughts of the arena, and suddenly she is there again: Glimmer convulsing on the ground in an unrecognizable mass of engorged flesh and bursting pustules, Rue curled on the ground with the spear through her middle that seems too large for her body, the ground heaving and ballooning in terrible imitations of the tracker jacker induced hallucinations and the impossibly loud sound of the cannon which seems to be stuck in the position of on.
It gets worse, and she can never decide if knowing that it can--that it will--is the better end of the deal or not.
Knowing she can do nothing for Glimmer, she runs to Rue, but Rue becomes the flowers Katniss remembers wreathing her in when she died, and though beautiful for the blink of an eye they too become ugly with the death they tried to honor. No longer flowers, she finds her hands running through the muck of a riverbank. Through the mud and brush and everything else her hands know what they are looking for even if her stomach turns over and her heart threatens to drop from her chest entirely; this is now how it happened, but nightmares don't care much about reality. Dirt thick under her fingernails, and the dampness soaking through her skin, the sun doesn't exist here but an impossible light shows her what she doesn't want to see with strategical ease. Her hands find him first, Peeta Mellark, Peeta the boy with the bread, Peeta who was probably the only decent person to ever make it out of the games alive.
You're alive, she thinks, wants to scream at the corpse-white construction of skin and bones. For how long, I don't know, she concedes this point even as her fingers continue on auto-pilot, brushing grime from him until--she must blink--he is inexplicably clean. Somehow the pristine quality of his dead body makes it worse, as if her sleep is telling her this could happen and it will always be your fault. There was a time when this was not true, or she could have told herself and convinced herself of it too, but she promised to stop running.
She pushes back limp strands of blond from eyes she knows better than she ever intended to.
Peeta is not dead. A slim comfort while frozen next to his corpse, even slimmer when juxtaposed to the reality that he could be, and at any moment. So could they all, of course. And that's the worst of it. Prim. She thinks of Prim and she can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything, an ironic reaction considering that Prim is the person she would do the most for. But this is the world of sleep and terror is greater here than it is even in waking life; a true testament to the downward spiral of a consciousness lacking any sort of control. She can lay claim only to her mistakes, her faults, her fears and it's a wonder she knows who she is anymore at all, but that is the one thing she never loses.
A blessing or a curse, she knows the promise she made Gale has decided it might be neither but must be made use of regardless. Katniss Everdeen, the girl who set the spark. It's not a title she wanted--wants--but as the nightmare drags her impossibly further down, she knows to reject it is to break her promise, is to let go, is to lose, and in spite of her fear and selfishness she has never been good at backing down anyway. As darkness twists its shape around her, snare-like, she is aware of her hand curling and opening over and over again; she is grasping for something...someone. She is supposed to be somewhere that is not here. She is in her house. She is in District 12. She is...
...waking up with a breath so deep and sharp that it burns.
Her eyes don't even need to focus to confirm what the nightmare wrote off for her: she is none of those things, and she returns again to the motionless wait for clarity.
When it fails her, it's a simple matter of first things first as she tries to remember to breathe.