app ⇢ betenoire_rp
1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Sam
Current characters in Bete Noire: Candy, Sabriel, Hope
Past characters in Bete Noire: Mindy
2. Character Information
Name: Katniss Everdeen
Livejournal Username: tributed
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Image: http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/104759221/19252104
Reserve: http://magistrated.livejournal.com/10038.html?thread=1878070#t1878070
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance:
Katniss is 19-years-old at this point. She’s fairly short for her age, probably around 5’3”-5’4”, with gray eyes, olive skin, and dark brown hair common for Seam kids. Her hair is normally pulled back into a long braid for ease. She’s fairly lean and muscular from years of hunting, games, training, and fighting. She has an abundance of scars on her body, the most notable ones being the way her skin seems like it’s patched together. There is burned scarred skin, skin that looks light in some area, and then her untouched skin. This is on most of her torso, arms, neck, and upper thighs. It’s been two years since the burns but her skin still shows the scars. The lighter skin is starting to match her normal skin in color, but it’s still not quite there.
History:
http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Katniss_Everdeen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katniss_Everdeen
Personality:
Katniss lost her father at age eleven, and from there was forced into the role of provider for her family. This heavily impacted her mentality for the rest of her life.
Before losing her father Katniss was a normal little girl, a bit of a daddy’s girl but normal otherwise. She worshipped what her father did and did everything he did. Even when he sang songs her mother told her to never sing again, she never forgot them and holds them dear to her heart even years later. She never hated her mother in those years, she just connected better with her strong, woodsy, compassionate father.
When Katniss lost her father it was literally sink or swim for her family. Her family consisted of her mother and her seven-year-old sister then, and they barely survived that time period. Katniss’ mother slipped into a depression so deep she didn’t wake from it for years to come. Katniss was lost and confused and scared from that time, and nearly starving to death when the boy with the bread entered her life. He gave her her second chance at life, and Katniss made the most of it.
Rather than starve to death, Katniss took on the role of provider and protector for the family. She took the lessons her father taught her and applied them to her life. For the next five years Katniss supported her family and cared for her little sister while her mother recovered from her depression, and was generally of little help. These five years built a resentment towards her mother that Katniss never really quite gets over. One day the bond does start to heal, but she still never sees her as her mother again. Instead Katniss’ life became devoted to protecting her family, primarily her little sister.
Prim was this source of innocence Katniss felt the need to guard from the moment she was born. And as provider, Katniss gave Prim everything she wanted that she could give her. Including a cat Katniss hated more than anything in the world. She would do anything for Prim. Including die for her.
This is why Katniss volunteers for the Hunger Games. Katniss is driven by this ‘protector’ role she’s fallen into that her life becomes meaningless after a point and is instead given freely to others. At first she feels a stab of guilt at having to possibly kill Peeta in the Games, having never known him outside the incident, but with time she comes to view him as an ally. Even a friend in the Games in the same way that Gale is her friend. Someone she can trust and confide in and someone she has to protect. Another important life to her.
It is because of how completely this protector role controls her life that Katniss banishes the thought of anything romantic with anyone. Romance doesn’t play into survival. The act of it eventually does in the Games, but the reality of it is always far from her mind. Its why she’s confused to learn that Peeta really does love her. And eventually that Gale really loves her too. She’s never felt these pressures on her heart that they do. She’s felt some pressures, just not in the same way.
This leads to a source of tension in Katniss’ life she’s never able to resolve. The reason she hurts Gale and Peeta with her constant affections to both is because she can’t draw out those romantic feelings and is instead only protective of them. In fact, romance never plays a role until they bring it to the board. It’s the only way to make her see it, but not to make her understand it. So instead she goes back and forth trying to find this love and romance and bliss with one but she can’t get beyond the role she’s become so fit to playing to ever make the decision because making the decision would hurt one, and she can’t bear to hurt either.
Because of Katniss’ devotion to this role, she finds it hard to make connection with people at all. While she gained a lot of her father’s qualities, and possibly possesses his compassion, it’s lost after the betrayal of her mother. From then on Katniss becomes suspicious of all people and keeps them at arm’s length. It take specific types of personality to break through her armor and get her to relax her guard, even if no one can ever make her fully relax and be charming and affable. People who are outspoken and genuinely kind in their hearts are more likely to get a reaction than someone who plays games. Its part of why she doesn’t connect with Finnick and Johanna until after the Quarter Quell, she can’t see the people they really are and therefore keeps them at distances emotionally. It’s when she sees the truth behind their masks that she can finally begin to relax and open up to him.
At her most relaxed points, Katniss is calm and patient. Maybe a little conversational, though she finds it difficult to keep up small talk with strangers. With people she’s close to she can talk comfortably enough, even banter with them. She can be witty and sharp-tongued, though that tongue can turn cruel when she gets angry at people.
Katniss has this sort of strength to her that’s undeniable. Her strength derives from the need to protect others, and it can drive her to do amazing and bold things people are often too afraid to do (volunteering for her sister at the Reaping, nearly eating the nightlock berries, the speech she gives at a bombed hospital). Katniss makes these gestures more for herself than anything, but seeing her strength gives others their strength. It’s why she is sought after as the Mockingjay. Because when Katniss has something to protect, you’ll never find a fiercer and brave girl.
Katniss is a sensitive sort of person. Due to the betrayal of her mother, she takes things personally even if they’re not meant so. And when she takes things personally she bites back. She usually gets sharp-tongued and cruel in response. Post-Mockingjay she’s still like this, but more often than not if she’s unhappy she’ll drop the conversation and leave more hurt than angry.
After the trauma of losing her sister and realizing that even with all she’s done there are still few people in the world she trusts, Katniss has become more closed off than usual. There’s a constant sadness to her voice she never really loses. Even when happy and with Peeta, her voice takes that tinge of pain that’s hard to miss. Losing the guiding force of her life for the past seven years nearly destroyed Katniss. She was suicidal and unresponsive for months after. It’s been two years since the incident, and Katniss has made a lot of progress thanks to Peeta, but she’s never quite the same.
Now Katniss doesn’t always seem all there. Like she’s only half listening to what’s going on around her. Peeta keeps her grounded and gets her back to sensible most of the time, but the rest of the time she almost zones out and can’t seem to focus unless spoken to. Writing helps her organize her thoughts. It’s not really that she can’t think straight anymore, she just finds it a little hard to. And it hurts if she gets to thinking too much about things. So she prefers to live moment to moment instead only takes interest in the pertinent things. It helps keep her grounded and from slipping too much.
Sometimes she still feels close to losing her mind. She’s witnessed so many things and been through so much head trauma and come back from all of it but that last trauma. That last one nearly pushed her over the edge, and when she feels like she’s close to losing it she does an exercise they gave her for when she was diagnosed as ‘mentally disoriented’, where she starts with the things she knows for facts and builds out from there:
"My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am nineteen-years-old. I am married to Peeta Mellark. We have been married for two years. We live in Victor’s Village in District Twelve. Haymitch is our neighbor. I am happy.”
Eventually she takes this task and morphs it into ‘making a list of every good thing she’s ever witnessed’, but personal headcanon doesn’t have her at that point yet.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation:
Relationships have always been the furthest thing from Katniss’ mind. Even before her participation in the Hunger Games she could never really imagine herself marrying anyone. The only person she had possibly considered seeing a viable future with was with her best friend Gale, and even then it wasn’t so much the romance as the fact that they just got along together.
Katniss doesn’t feel romance like a normal person might. In fact, she’s not so much driven by passion and love in the romantic sense as she is in a more familial sense. However that does not mean she can’t feel passion, though it tends to be a more bodily thing than a heartfelt thing. As with Gale and Peeta, Katniss responds physically to both, but she can never settle between the two because her heart doesn’t experience love outright and she can’t really tell who she loves more. In fact, Gale makes a statement that she only ever kisses him when he’s hurting, and that he can never beat Peeta because he’ll always be way worse off than Gale is. This implies that she’s more motivated by a need to protect that even gets warped into a strange sense of love that’s not entirely wrong about her at all.
Being the selfish creature that Katniss is, Gale makes another statement to Peeta when he thinks Katniss can’t hear about how she’ll choose the person ‘she can’t survive without’. Not the person her heart can’t bear to give up or even the person she can’t live without, but the one she can’t survive without. The lack of argument from Peeta shows that this may be true. And in the end it turns out to be very true. Katniss realizes she can survive without Gale, especially after the doubts surrounding whether it was his bomb that killed Prim or not, and that she can’t survive without Peeta.
This is not all to say that Katniss doesn’t love at all, just that romantic love has never been on the table for her and is still a force driven by selfish desires.
This leads into her sexuality. The physical aspects of love seem to almost come easy to her. She has no trouble kissing Gale and Peeta and getting lost in those touches. She may not talk about sexual things, but she can definitely feel those needs. However, she can only share such intimate moments with the people she trusts with her life. Primarily, this ends up being Gale and Peeta. Though this isn’t to say these are the only two people she can feel for. Anyone could come in and feel this hole she can’t live without and sway her into the physical. It just has to be someone she trusts.
I would say she’s ultimately heterosexual in whatever romantic depths she might possess (though again, those romantic depths are more based on survival whims) and that she’d only consider monogamous relationships with men, but that she could go into a physical relationship with a little push and persuasion from the right woman. It’d have to be someone she’s really close to emotionally, though.
REVISIONS
The books never allowed Katniss to explore the idea of romance, thus why it took a backseat to her protector role and why she was constantly torn between Gale and Peeta and never able to decide between them. She loved them, but she could never explore that depth of that love for them and what it really meant to love. With the bomb that killed Prim, and being unsure as to whether it was Gale's creation that killed Prim or not, the decision was almost made for Katniss. While at first she was willing to let both boys go, Peeta did come back for her. However Gale was an option she could never resist. She could never erase that doubt and could not depend on him. She couldn't survive with Gale.
It turned out she couldn't survive without Peeta either.
Without Peeta Katniss had slipped into a depression she couldn't pull out of, but his presence was enough to wake her up. Her survival depended on him. For the longest time it was this factor that the love was built on, if only on an unconscious level. However it's been two years in a time of peace. No war, no Gale, no family really either. It was just her, Peeta, and Haymitch technically who they tried to care for. It was during this time Katniss was able to explore love and romance. Initially the decision to love came from the survival need, but the love did build to be a true love rooted in so much else that was Peeta.
Katniss couldn't love anyone else the way she loves Peeta. Because that love had to build over time, even if the initial decision stemmed from her survival instincts. That doesn't make her closed off to being close to others, or entirely negate the physical aspect of relationships with others she's never fully understood. She could easily get swept away in the physical but only on pure mistake. But she could never love anyone else, and would never want to love anyone but Peeta. Were she to ever be without Peeta now she would need to find another to keep her rooted in reality in order to survive, but she could never love them the way she does Peeta just from how much time she's had to realize that Peeta is perfect for her and all the things she knows she needs and no one else could be Peeta for her.
Powers:
None. She is a skilled archer and sniper, having been put on a team with other sharp shooters. She has some vague military training (read three weeks of it that she’s put out of her mind sense) and has fought on a few other occasions. Mostly just for her life. She’s also a very good singer, having even made the birds stop their singing to listen to hers.
Reason for playing:
I’m drawn to people with emotional complexities and Katniss has this and so much more. She’s definitely not the same person from book to book, not even the same person from the start of Mockingjay to the end of it. She goes through so many things that effect her emotionally, and even mentally, that it makes her mindset after the fact something really unique I’d love to explore, as I’ve only ever played her pre-trauma.
Secondly, I’m love characters with huge flaws and Katniss has many of them. I love her for her flaws, though, and I want to explore them in a setting like Bete Noire where it plays on her flaws and draws them out. I want to see how she handles her flaws when they’re not masked with games and war.
4. Original Character Supplement
World History: What kind of world is your character from? This part can be short, but it must focus on the particular character's context. What was their world like, from their point of view?
Character History: Let us have a summary of the highlights, the turning points of your character's history. What was it that made them who they are?
5. Samples
First-Person:
Tick-tock.
There was a time when the mere sound of a clock could send me into some sort of PTSD attack. Where I would shut down and lose all function as my mind flashed back to that horrible Game where every hour was another torture in disguise. Now I feel like the phrase and the meaning accurately describes my life.
Every hour just keeps on ticking away. Day by day. Week by week. Etc by etc. Each one of them feels like a torture too. I can almost feel the seconds creep away over my skin as I try to piece this world together-
If I talk like that again Dr. Aurelius is going to think I’ve slipped backwards. Honestly, this is forward for me. If I had thought like this before I would have rolled over and let myself succumb to the hours until I was gone. Now I’m managing them. Standing against the tide of time and trying to survive it all. It didn’t used to be this hard, but at least I’m trying.
Back to my metaphor.
It’s like before too. Each hour was torture, and then there was Peeta. Peeta to break it all up, to give my life reason again. It’s the same thing now as it was then. If there was no Peeta, there’d be no Katniss. So it’s Peeta and Katniss now. I’m okay with this. I can be part of an ‘and’. But only if it’s part of his ‘and’.
I think I’m getting better.
Tick-tock.
Third-Person:
It was dark outside. Late in the evening. Still not quite nighttime, but night was coming fast now. Usually the night didn’t bother Katniss so much, it was just darkness. Sleep was where her nightmares were. But tonight the darkness made Katniss nervous. Peeta should have been home hours ago, but still there was no word from him. Dinner sat cold on the kitchen table, not a bite touched. Katniss couldn’t bear to eat without him, not when he was supposed to be there for dinner.
He was at the meadow. Where he seemed to spend a lot of time these days. The only reason Katniss knew this was because that was the one place he’d told her not to go for the past few months. Something to do with a surprise that Katniss couldn’t wrap her mind around. Why would she need to avoid the entire meadow for this surprise? Still, she did as he asked because he asked it. Even if it was bound to be something big and extravagant for their upcoming anniversary.
Though the hours drug on and Katniss brushed a pearl against her lips to try to reassure herself as she watched out the window. Peeta still wasn’t home.
As much as Katniss wanted to honor Peeta’s wish to keep her surprise she decided she couldn’t after five hours had passed with no word from Peeta. Too many bad things had happened to people she loved and she thought five hours was a long enough time to wait compared to when she had wanted to leave when ten minutes had passed.
Slipping the pearl into her pocket, Katniss headed out into the darkness. She wrapped her arms around herself tight, but not because it was cold out. June was always warm here. Instead she felt like if she didn’t she might fall apart at any second.
Quietly, Katniss made her way from Victor’s Village to the meadow in about fifteen minutes or so. When she arrived there was no sign of Peeta, though. Instead she was staring at her meadow of dandelions filled with sunflowers that weren’t natural to the area. For a second she was confused, tilting her head to the side to take in the sight. Then it seemed to come at her all of a sudden.
It was a mockinjay.
This wasn’t natural. This was Peeta’s surprise. His gift to her. Her meadow decorated with months of his hard work so that she’d never forget but never hurt from the beauty of it all. Her hand touched lightly at her cheek to discover she was crying a little. Peeta always got her with these silly gestures...
But Peeta wasn’t here. She looked around now as she remembered she was searching for him but she saw no sign that he’d been here in a long while. She was starting to panic a little. Peeta wouldn’t go into town at this hour and not without telling her and not when he’d promised to be home for dinner.
Katniss turned on her heels to start making her way back to Victor’s Village. Haymitch would help her. They’d find Peeta together and this panic and paranoia was all in her head. Peeta was safe. There was no war anymore, no enemies. But that was wrong. People knew her, they knew where she was from, they knew that she’d killed some of their family. Even if it was war and she was just trying to survive, people had died by her hand. Maybe someone wanted to make her hurt? Getting Peeta would hurt her. It’d kill her.
Suddenly she was running. Twigs crushed under her feet as she tried to make her way to Haymitch as fast as she could. Then suddenly she was kicking up rocks, and then her feet hit pavement and…
This wasn’t home.
She looked around desperately for any sign of home but this wasn’t Twelve. There was nothing here that reflected Twelve. This was somewhere else entirely. And Peeta was still missing.
“Peeta!” She screamed into the city as she fell to her knees, finally losing what little grip on her sanity she had.
Third-Person #2:
Katniss would never admit it out loud, but she didn’t remember her first time.
Her first time was in the middle of the night. It was when she’d woken up from the horrors that still plagued her to this day. Peeta had been there, kissing her and comforting her and bringing her down from the shock. And then he’d been everywhere. His hands had, his lips, his body. All of it hers.
She didn’t remember it.
She was so broken still that the haze from the nightmares had clouded the night until all she could pull from it was their admission of love after. But Katniss swore she’d never forget a moment with Peeta again after that. There’d never be a moment where she was perfectly coherent enough to experience everything Peeta gave to her and to never forget it again.
Tonight she made sure to uphold that promise. With perfect focus hands pulled away the layer of clothing separating them. Once the obstruction was out of the way her hands were on his body, feeling the shifting of muscles under skin as his arms wrapped around her bare shoulders and pulled her close. She sighed as his lips wandered her neck, sucked at her collar bone, and tasted her chest. She closed her eyes and just let the feel of the physical take over everything else.
All her focus was on the man in her arms now, holding him, touching him, caressing him, tasting him. Having all of him that she possibly could until they layed in the bed, spent and exhausted and still kissing at the corners of each other’s lips.
“You seemed distracted,” Peeta murmured as she felt his body settle against hers.
Katniss shook her head and kissed him again. “The opposite,” She answered softly.