[detailed summary of donnatella duvall voss]
Character: Donnatella M. Voss, née Duvall.
Abilities: Well experienced with firearms + knives; cheerleading (former squad captain); baking; bossing folks around; kicking ass + breaking faces; strangely creative swearing; being an ex-loli;
Flaws/weaknesses: Creative approach to morality; got pregnant young; single widowed mother; mommy issues; daddy issues; bad judgement; irrationality; often self-absorbed; repression; shameless liar; clingy; neurotic;
Notable possessions: A floating stroller/car seat for her daughter made by Tony Stark. Silver protective charms (again, for her daughter) made by Severus Snape.
History/background: Donnatella Marie Duvall was born to Richard and Nancy Duvall in September of 1987, in a town in Texas where the well-to-do couple had settled to enjoy the modest success of Richard's first sci-fi trilogy while he worked on the follow up, hoping to make the Best Sellers list again when the next book came out.
Donna was the youngest of three children - her older siblings were Elise Jeanette, the eldest, and her own twin brother Richard Aaron (generally known as 'Aaron' to prevent confusion). She grew up closest to her brother until his untimely death early before their thirteenth birthday of leukaemia. Seeing how badly his family had taken the loss, Mr Duvall made the decision to pack them up and move elsewhere - away from the memories. It seemed to Donna that they were leaving aforementioned memories behind entirely; after her family relocated to Seymour, Aaron was rarely mentioned and most of their new neighbours and friends were unaware there'd ever been a son in the Duvall family.
Elise coped by turning to God; Richard coped by turning to long-time 'family friend' Michael Kirkpatrick; Nancy coped by focusing on appearances and drinking earlier and earlier in the afternoons (it's afternoon somewhere, sweetheart!)...and Donna, who felt like she'd lost an entire half of herself, didn't really cope at all. After a childhood spent mostly devoted to science fiction movies, fantasy stories and being close only to her brother, as highschool loomed she made the decision to remake herself. She was missing too much, and, to put not too fine a point on it, she proceeded to wildly overcompensate.
Donna wanted to be that girl. You know the one; her skirt is too short, but her hair is perfect and you wish you knew where she was buying her tops. Her shoes look like they could kill a man. Half the student body wants to kick her off a cliff. Half of them would sleep with her anyway and if you listen to the rumours, half of them have. With a child's casual cruelty, Donna reworked herself into an image she'd messily constructed out of magazines and movie screens - nothing like anybody's reality, in other words, but effective. She was the loudest, the friendliest; she knew everybody's name and most of their business. She'd dated him, she knew her secrets, and when she laughed it was like she was screaming.
Thoughtlessly callous, immature and undirected.
Understandably, this is not sustainable. Eventually, something gives. For Donna, it was her junior English teacher (Gideon Reid). Her social standing nosedived and she was, briefly, kicked out of home. The thirtysomething teacher who'd been carrying on with a girl roughly the same age as his own daughter quietly moved after the painfully obvious evidence of their affair fell apart with an untimely miscarriage. Donna struggled through her junior and senior years of highschool and relied heavily on her father's "best friend", Michael Kirkpatrick, whose daughter was her best friend (relax - no airquotes). The Kirkpatricks gave Donna much-needed stability, and if it came with a thorough education in firearms and what Michael liked to call 'proactive self-defence' - well, girls like Donna, you can't let 'em get bored. Look what happens when they do. Michael (who'd spent some time in and out of prison for relatively minor offences, and had a fondness for weapons that he instilled in his family over delicious pie and lemonade) probably should not have been teaching tiny angry teenage girls the quickest ways to break somebody's nose or cut off their air supply, but the world's an ugly place, Michael and Richard had pretty daughters, and that's about how that went.
Throughout her adolescence, Donna had grown closer to her father - Daddy's doted on princess, blatantly favoured wherever it could be gotten away with. Richard wasn't much of a parent (Michael picking up the slack there made it easier all around, if probably not any better), but he was Donna's daddy, and moreover: he needed her. Richard needed somebody reminding him about appointments with the therapist and telling him to take his pills, and someone to be there through the crash periods. Nancy having largely retreated after Aaron's death and the subsequent relocation, and Elise getting out of the house as quickly as possible as soon as she was old enough, these things mostly fell to Donna.
So no one could really blame her for being bitterly disappointed in her father when she needed him and he failed to come through for her; Richard didn't say anything when Nancy threw her out, and while she was clambering out of the wreckage of her life, his carefully constructed marriage and stability were beginning to crumble, too.
Michael and Isobel were who Donna relied on through her parents' messy separation and divorce; when her father stopped taking his medication and nobody else wanted to deal with his mental illness; when after a string of ill-advised relationships, male and female, she finally met who she'd like to hope was the one, Taylor Voss, and found herself frighteningly in love and, as she half-laughed with not a lot of humour later, "what the hell kind of dumbass gets pregnant twice before she's twenty?"
Donna hung on through an unexpected second pregnancy and new relationship, doing what she'd always done: getting up and going on. Richard's illness gave her, again, something to focus on and as they all regained an even keel, she worked on rebuilding a father/daughter bond with the newer, stabler Richard Duvall. Meanwhile, she was moving in with Taylor and planning a wedding around her expanding waistline. She'd never really planned to go to college, but appeased those not really impressed with the idea of a nineteen year old girl playing house with the thought that when the baby was old enough, then she'd go. She talked about studying theatre, maybe, or English.
Michael and Richard set their little princess up with a nest egg of sorts and with baby (Sirja Tabitha Duvall Voss, b. 28 Nov 2007) under her arm and big damn dreams under the other, she set off to New York with her new husband, Taylor Voss, who was not quite so extroverted as his tiny, psychotic wife - but loved her in a way significantly less damaging than most of the other relationships in her life had been.
Taylor was hit by a drunk driver five months after they settled into their new apartment. The man who'd been behind the wheel paid for the medical bills mostly out of guilt, which was not all that comforting when Donna found herself not yet twenty-one and planning her husband's funeral. It was nice of him to hold her hand and let her scream; she didn't really mean to break it, and he was pretty understanding about that, too.
Donna figures at this point she shouldn't talk too much about how much worse it can't get, because there's nothing God likes better than proving you wrong. (She was, after all, raised Catholic - like her sister, Elise, who she hasn't spoken to in a couple years after loudly and repeatedly voicing her violent opposition to Elise's born-again husband, George Ryder and a particularly vicious spat over who Mommy loved best.)
Her career path has been as confusing as the rest of her life; she entertained every pretty teenage girl's dream of being a model when she was fifteen, and then discovered that short girls do not get far in the modelling world and exactly how many supermodels are American these days, anyway? She ended up mostly doing temp work between pregnancy and taking care of her father while he got back on his feet. In NYC she made a game attempt at a career as a stage actress, but wasn't getting all that far when Taylor died and sent all her plans into a tailspin. Single parents can't really afford to be starving artists, so at present Donna is, as she would charmingly put it, 'between lives'.
Personality: Donna is misleading, first of all. She's friendly, affectionate, bold as brass. She tells you exactly what she's thinking, at all times, unless she doesn't feel like talking to you. She's always up, never down, loves everything so hard. She feels deeply, whether it's rational or not.
She's also incredibly secretive, given to brushing past and glossing over problems or worries, lonely, riddled with insecurities she's only half aware of, given to obsessive fixations. She was the pretty girl of the family; she was the princess. She was never expected to be clever, so she never expected herself to be and, generally, defaults to assuming she isn't, really. She gets to know people, and then she knows where to twist the knife if she needs to. She's protective of her family and friends to an absurd degree and it's incredibly easy to win her over in the first place - Donna wants to be loved. Nothing is better than people who love her and tell her how good she is.
Basically, the girl is a fucking trainwreck, but she's clever and sweet-natured and you might not ever realize she doesn't really give a damn about anybody if they're not directly connected to her. Donna knows it's not very nice to be able to think of other people as collateral damage; nobody likes people who think like that. People like that are empty, and Donna doesn't want to be empty. She's selectively moral, let's say.
She's ambitious, but it's tempered ambition - "I'd love to do that, but I could never!" - and she finds it easier to direct ambition at other people; she wants the people she cares about to succeed and she'll feel good. She wants people to let her help them, guide them, take care of them - between her mother and her father, Donna never really had people taking care of her until Michael Kirkpatrick stepped in, and half of her desire to mother people is to prove that she's worthy of being cared for in return.
She will love you unconditionally, just as long as you love her back. And try not to hurt her, because she might be small, but bitch is vicious backed into a corner. Donna's easily-won affection comes with more loyalty than is sane, and an unfortunate tendency to react horrifically when she feels betrayed. (Donna forgives, but like the saying goes, never forgets. And never lets anyone else forget, either.)
This tendency toward fierce protectiveness extends to her family; her father is a lunatic and her sister is such a bitch, but they are her lunatic and her bitch sister.
Kinsey Scale Sexuality: On the scale, Donna is a 2 to a 2.5.
Significant parts of Donna's "issues" involve or relate to her sexuality, one way or the other. Hooray! That in mind:
Donna is basically bisexual, which is in fact how she identifies. She's had more relationships (sexual and/or emotional) with men than women for the following reasons: convenience, what she believes is expected of her, what she believes she can get out of them, and the fact she believes she values women more than men and generally speaking, they can and should do better than her. (A man looking at her and seeing a slut is Tuesday afternoon; a woman looking at her and seeing a slut is wrist-slittingly painful. Why yes, she does have mommy issues! How could you tell.)
She operates with a lot of internalized misogyny, at the same time as this; she's forced herself into an image that she believes is what people expect or want from her, and it is, in fact, significantly based on the perceived sexual preferences of men - often older than she is, inevitably considered by her to be "more intelligent". Donna uses sexuality like she uses anything else, to draw people to her and make them trust/want/need her when she doesn't trust them but needs somebody to validate her and tell her she's pretty and desirable. This is often mostly how she defines her self-worth, which she is aware is fucked up and unhealthy, but she hated therapy and after years of learning to adapt herself to whatever she thinks suits a situation, she's afraid there's nothing left under that and that if someone asked her to drop the act she would have nothing to give them.
She's at the same time deferential and defiant with men; she insists loudly and at length what she doesn't need and makes downright misandrist comments to prove she doesn't need them, not a little bit, not even at all...and then she has no idea what to do without one to bounce off.
She likes sex; she genuinely likes to be touched, be it for platonic or sexual reasons. She also likes the idea of being in control of an encounter - of someone else. Donna gets off on seducing men she perceives to be more intelligent and more powerful than she is, and if she can get them to keep coming back - even better.
Women are fascinating to her; she doesn't believe she has the same worth as most women she knows, but she wants to, and wants to impress them and please them. They're attractive and she can easily fall in love with them - the reason she doesn't as often 'go for it' is that for her sex has become so often a power trip or a contest (with herself, with the world), and she rejects applying that to other women. She doesn't want to treat them the same way and she doesn't know how else to relate sexually; she's pretty young, frankly, and she has time to learn and work through this stuff, but she might not ever.
Physical description: Donna is 5'1", brunette, with hazel-green eyes and...let's not mince words, she has quite a rack. She's athletic, wears her hair roughly shoulder-length, and dresses to flatter her figure (putting it politely). Her notable physical features include a tattoo in the small of her back (yes indeed, Princess Trainwreck has a tramp stamp) of a shotgun with the words LOVE IS MY SIN emblazoned across it. (Classy, I know.) It's a little distorted from the weight gain and weight loss involved in pregnancy. In February of 2009 she acquired a second set of tattoos; tornadoes on the back of her neck and down her right shoulderblade. It is universally agreed that these were an appropriate choice.
She wears a wedding ring, still; sterling silver, pretty but affordable. She also usually wears contact lenses, but has black-rimmed glasses for the days when she'd rather not wear them.
Witness: Donna. Moar Donna. Return of Donna. Revenge of the Donna.
Related: Donna's baby daughter Sirja, who will come with her strictly as a NPC, is roughly a year old and is mixed race (white & georgian/chinese). This was Donna's late lamented husband and Sirja's daddy, Taylor Voss.
Sample RP: It had been months. Not that Donna was counting, or comparing, or feeling at all like grief was some kind of fucking...some kind of competition...but it had been months, and she couldn't decide whether she could be doing better or if maybe she was too okay. Was she too okay? Grieving was a process. That's what the damn book said, and she was starting to get really - really - tired of the damn book and the things it said.
She was okay. She was okay from the guest bedroom and sofa of her best friend's house, with babysitters and people petting her hair and holding her hand. Her left hand, usually; they'd cover the ring when they touched her and once, once when she said she had to go and check on the baby - instead she sat in the bathroom and stared at that damn ring until she burst into tears. Cara found her there and that was visiting hours over for the day, but it was months and Donna had a baby to think of, a baby who couldn't understand that Mommy needed just five minutes more, a baby who needed her and God but she was not ready for this on her own.
The sensation of weakness was the most frightening thing; the awareness that mourning was like slipping into some kind of madness. When a girl grew up watching her daddy spiral in and out of control like he was marionette on a yo-yo string - well, maybe sometimes she thought about how she could never be like that, about how she couldn't afford to not be okay.
And maybe she thought about that a little harder when there was a baby in the next room, and maybe she thought about grip-shaped bruises on her arms, because people who aren't thinking clearly aren't thinking about how strong they were compared to twig-sized fourteen year old girls when they just wanted everybody to get the hell out of their way. When what you knew of hurting was disease and psychiatrists and things you don't tell the neighbours in case they're the Joneses you're supposed to be keeping up with - you stop hurting.
Donna went to sleep that night with her head on Cara's shoulder and with the discreet aid of sleeping pills dreamt about nothing at all. In the morning, nothing changed but her; blue jeans and black sweater, wearing a splash of candy-pink as a coat down to sit on the church steps and remember what faith felt like before she stopped praying without obscenities.
Good girls go to heaven; bad girls go everywhere but home again.