Katniss Everdeen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stillplaying) wrote2013-04-01 12:23 am
stillplaying) wrote2013-04-01 12:23 am
Entry tags:
Amatomnes Application
PLAYER
» Journal: stillplaying
» Birthdate/Age: October 1985 (27)
» Characters Played: N/A
CHARACTER FACTS
» Name: Katniss Everdeen
» Canon: The Hunger Games (book)
» Reference: http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Katniss_Everdeen
» Canon Point: Day of her eighteenth birthday. In my mind, I tend to consider that about two months after Peeta’s returned to District 12 at the end of Mockingjay.
» Gender: Female.
» Age: 18
CHARACTER INTERPRETATION
» Appearance: While I use Jennifer Lawrence as a PB, there are some differences between the icons used and Katniss’ appearance from the point in which I take her from. Technically, the icons used are supposed to be pictures of her at age sixteen. She’ll be eighteen when she enters the game. I describe Katniss as having the dark hair, olive skin, and grey eyes as in the book. More importantly, she’s covered in burn and skin graft scars from the neck down and her hair isn’t as long yet as it is in the icons. She’s not as underweight as she used to be, but she’s still not at a healthy weight for an 18 year old girl.
» Suitability: Katniss does suffer from PTSD and depression from the point in which I’ll be bringing her in from. She has attempted to commit suicide in the recent past – about six months prior or so, after killing Coin and then again while awaiting the sentencing of her trial. However, in the time since returning to District 12, Katniss has resumed therapy with Dr. Aurelius and instead opted to just go through the motions. Each day is taken one at a time as she learns to cope with all the trauma of the past two years. Overall, she is a fully functional human being who’ll always place her survival above anything else.
» Orientation: While canon indicates Katniss as heterosexual and interested in boys, she is also depicted as highly prudish and uncomfortable with her own sexuality and that of other’s. She tends to be oblivious to male interest, spending months unaware of her best friend, Gale’s, romantic interest in her, as well as years oblivious to Peeta’s love. She is also highly uncomfortable with nudity. Despite Peeta being injured and unconscious, she feels awkward undressing Peeta to treat his wounds. She gets flustered and blushes easily when Finnick playfully flirts with her and can barely stand it when Joanna, another fellow tribute in the Quarter Quell, purposely strips in front of her. Peeta then describes her as pure, an apt enough description. For all her violent tendencies, she remains innocent when it comes to sexual activity. She understands how it’s supposed to work and does feel the stirrings of desire when kissing Peeta at times, but has little to no idea on how to approach the subject.
» Personality: Katniss Everdeen is a survivor through and through, rarely giving up in even the most extreme of circumstances. She often thinks of herself as selfish and purely motivated by what she needs to stay alive and Katniss easily tends to delude herself into believing the worst about her. But at the same time, she’s not a static character. Her personality develops and matures into that of a young woman as the story progresses and she learns more about love and being loved.
From even before the books begin, her father’s death highlights Katniss as a highly stubborn and motivated survivor. She easily gives up the rest of her childhood at age eleven to become the head of her family. She won’t let her family starve, won’t give in to self-pity or grief, however much she misses her father. She’ll do whatever she can for them, the rest of the District and Panem be damned. But a true self-centered survivor would only fend for themselves. Instead, everything she does is for her younger sister, Prim – easily one of the most important people in Katniss’ life, if not the most important in her eyes.
If it was in Katniss’ power, she would make sure Prim would want for nothing. And while there are various examples of this in the books – allowing Prim’s ugly cat to stay despite meaning it would be an extra mouth to feed, ensuring that Prim never has to take an extra tesserae in the Hunger Games to supply their family with grain and other supplies - nothing speaks more than her willingness to take Prim’s place in the 74th Hunger Games despite knowing full well it could easily mean Katniss’ own death. Her little sister must have every opportunity to live a fulfilling life that Katniss doesn’t have herself.
It’s with the 74th Hunger Games that Katniss learns that she’s so much more than a provider. She really is a survivor at heart. She doesn’t care what others think of her. She’s brash and self-centered, rude, rebellious, difficult to relate to. All Katniss wants is to do whatever she needs to in order to survive and make it back to Prim. And if it means killing all those in the arena with her, she will not think twice. Cold and calculating, maybe even scary in her ability to be a predator and not prey.
But at the same time, while Katniss keeps reminding herself of this, focusing on her own negative attributes, Peeta sees something different. The girl on fire, the girl who has no idea of the effect she can have on people. She’s proud and true to herself, noble in the way she fights for Prim and then to keep Peeta live, however selfish she claims her own actions are. And although Katniss never sees it, she’s far less heartless than she thinks. The nightmares she has after the Hunger Games attest to that. If she truly didn’t care about anyone but herself, then Katniss’ subconscious wouldn’t prey so easily on her guilt.
Katniss’ stunt with the poisoned berries in the arena of the 74th Hunger Games, her last ditch attempt to ensure both she and Peeta leave alive, is seen by most of Panem as the spark needed to ignite rebellion. Katniss is introspective enough to give thought to that, to see how easily others would see it as such. But she does it out of a selfish need to keep them alive. Because in the end of the games, she can’t bring herself to sacrifice this boy who would easily sacrifice himself for her. She has a selfish desire to keep alive his adoration – he doesn’t have to love her, but he does, and it’s something that Katniss doesn’t fully comprehend but does realize she needs. And in the end, she’s tired of being a pawn. Yet, she’s still cold enough to tell Peeta that she played up her love for him then as an act and a trick for the Games. It’s the lie she needs to survive at that point in her life, where she wants her best friend Gale (also in love with her) to be easy in her company. She wants her life to be simple.
For the Quarter Quell and the 75th Hunger Games, former victors are selected to return to the arena and once again fight to the death. This time, Katniss actually stops being a survivor in favor to a different mantra that she can never breaks: keep Peeta alive. It’s easy to dismiss as a result of her love for him, or her selfish desire to keep alive someone who cares so much for her, but in many ways, it’s also her way of clinging to morals and humanity. Time and time again, she points out that Peeta’s almost too good, shouldn’t be in the Hunger Games, is nothing like her when it comes to how easily she’ll take a life. It’s something knows she can never be like but, perhaps, in keeping Peeta alive, she can be good, too.
Like in the Games itself, she becomes a pawn in a much bigger game when the Districts rebel against the Capitol. The rebels use her as a sympathetic spokesperson to garner support and she knowingly lets herself be used, especially after Prim points out she can bargain for the other victors’ amnesty. But even then, she can’t stick to the rules and, although not necessarily on purpose, finds herself breaking them left and right. To do what’s right by her instead of others. It’s why she uses her position as a spokesperson to gain amnesty for the other victors or to allow Prim to keep Buttercup even though life in District 13 is a life of strict rations. And the way she runs into the heat of the attack during District 8 to help protect the hospital rather than hiding in safety as Haymitch wants her to do.
During these rebellions, she also finally does learn how to break. She falls into a deep depression a number of times due to various events and her inability to cope with them– Peeta’s kidnapping by President Snow, Prim’s death, etc. But these depressions also show that she’s become a far more empathetic character than she once was, even though she still can’t see it. She’s a young girl put into impossible events that would reduce any less stronger individual to pieces. But most importantly, though she survives as she always has, she learns that there are more important things to survival. That there could be political causes, that there could even be people that you must put ahead of her own self. It is this lesson in itself that motivates Katniss towards President Coin’s assassination. She will not let all her struggles and loses be in vain, allowing another power-hungry leader with little regard to human life to assume control. Katniss must be the one to do this because, by this point, she will not put anyone else she remotely cares about at risk.
In the end of the trilogy, what can be said most about Katniss is that she lives through. She goes through the motions, finds ways to distract herself, plays games to remind her that there is good in people. Even in herself. She’s not the monster that caused all these deaths. And she learns how to really love and let herself be loved.
Strengths and weaknesses:
Katniss is a strong individual with so much backbone and determination within her. She’s the girl on fire, and not just because of the outfit she wears in her introduction to the Games. She literally has an unquenchable thirst to live her life – for herself and, by the end of her canon, for all those who died. And she will do whatever it takes to honor this promise.
Although slow to trust, she does make a steadfast and loyal friend once this trust is gained. She’s resourceful and skilled and self-reliant, a quick thinker on her feet. And in many ways, her own selfishness makes for her strength in keeping those she cares about alive. It’s easier for Katniss to see all the negatives in her personality, but at the same time, she adheres to them. She reacts without thinking and is next to impossible to mold – as both Haymitch and Coin find out during their time with her. Without a doubt, Katniss is first and foremost true to herself.
In many ways, a lot of Katniss’ strengths are balanced by her weaknesses. She can be very socially inept: keeping to herself as a child, unaware of the friendships she’s made. Even Gale, her best friend, is someone she sees as a resource after their initial meeting and does not become a friend until much later on. Madge, the Mayor’s daughter, is another example of someone she’d spend time with without truly understanding the impact of that time. Prior to the Hunger Games, she considers Madge as the other lonely girl to sit with at lunch, not realizing that somehow, a friendship had developed. And with both Peeta and Gale, their romantic intentions towards her go unnoticed until the boys act upon them.
When Katniss does allow herself to feel, it often overwhelms her – a source of many of the breakdowns she eventually has after the 74th Hunger Games. It’s easier to be logical and to push aside feelings than to acknowledge them. But when she does, she feels everything - every single death that she’s caused, however indirectly, she takes responsibility for. And a lot of the times it’s too much. She would rather avoid than face problems of emotions, as seen when she initially ignores required phone sessions with her therapist at the end of Mockingjay.
Even then, she’s not very book smart and does not have a very good education. It’s not something she considers much of a fault, though she does acknowledge it, but it is pointed out again and again. Katniss has survival skills, but Katniss would never have won the Hunger Games based on wit alone. And while she comes across as very mature, at times she can be moody and prickly – a true teenager in many ways. Someone still learning much about the world she lives in, and how to be a part of it.
SAMPLES
» First Person Sample Prompt One:
[It’s alarming, more than alarming, when she wakes up in a bed perhaps more luxurious than even those in the Capitol. Though limbs ache in unfamiliar sensation and every nerve of her body screams that she ought to stay hidden in the sheets for hours longer, instinct takes over. Her heart pounds in her chest and she bolts up in the bed, ignoring the way a familiar pendant bangs against her chest as she does.
There. There, on the nearby stool, lies her father’s leather hunting coat. Her bow and quiver rest on adjacent wall. Despite protest from her body, she scrambles out of the bed and towards the clothing, for once not giving in to her modesty. There’s no one around. No one here to see the scars that cover her from chin to toe. At least, there’s no one that she can see.
In her haste to dress, she doesn’t notice that she nocks a small rectangular device to the floor. Doesn’t notice the way it turns on, recording her actions as she tugs her well-worn brown pants up over her hips. But as she pulls her plain white shirt over her head, she stills. There might not be anyone in the room with her. But she doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know how she even arrived here. The last thing she can remember is leaving her house for the woods, wanting nothing more than to lose herself in the hunt and have nothing to do with her day lest it become another lost day.
Her eighteenth birthday.
Is she back in an arena? Did the new government of Panem decide that she was too much of a threat after all? Locked her up somewhere where she really couldn’t harm others? Her mind reels with possibilities. She pulls her shirt down as she looks around the room for hidden cameras. For some evidence that she’s being spied upon. Finally, her attention falls to the device that she previously ignored.]
Don’t. [Her voice is rough, angry. Extremely angry. It’s the easier of two emotions warring inside of her. So much easier than giving in to fear. She doesn’t know who she’s addressing. Doesn’t even stop to think . If there are Gamemakers out there, Gamemakers or politicians or whoever it is that brought her here.] Don’t do this. Just let me go back to District 12 and I promise, I won’t do anything. You won’t even know I’m still alive. I swear.
[She takes a deep breath, trying her best not to scowl at the camera. To be a compliant game piece just for this moment. But it doesn’t really work and she finds herself glowering regardless when there’s no initial response. She knows that she’s teetering on edge. That any moment, the anger might give way to pained tears. That rather than fighting, she might try to find a closet to hole up in, someplace to hide.]
Damn it! Why won’t you just leave me alone? If you’re going to play games, you should’ve just let me die. You should’ve executed me when you had the chance. I won’t be a playing piece for any of you anymore.
» Third Person Sample Prompt Three:
How long had it been since she last felt the constricting feel of something tightening around her neck? Months, at least. Since that wonderful and horrible day that Peeta awoke in the hospital room of District 13. She had been careless, headless of any consequence that might have resulted from Snow’s torture and manipulation. She so clearly remembers the way it felt to have hands tighten around her neck, squeezing the very life out of her. How could she ever forget? Especially when the memory still very much haunts her dreams at night.
It feels a lot like that now. But rather than warm fingers, it’s the cold chain of Peeta’s mockingjay locket constricting her airways. And it hurts in an entirely different way than his fingers had. The chain has a sharp bite to it that consistently reminds her of why she’s in this predicament in the first place. Maybe Finnick had been right. Maybe she should have gotten it taken care of sooner. Maybe she shouldn’t have waited until day 10 to awkwardly stare at the network device as she tugged on the pendant.
But doing so any time sooner would have felt like giving in. Would have felt too much like showing an interest, bowing to the whims of her newest Gamemaker. What was it Peeta had called her that day after the Quarter Quell interviews? Pure? Certainly it had seemed a fitting description since her arrival to Atia. Since the morning she had awoken naked in a strange bed with on the locket on her neck. It had felt as if almost every other thing had made her body flush in embarrassment. Had made her look away or want to be anywhere but where she was.
Pure. She was really starting to hate the word.
With a quiet sigh, she collapsed against the pillows and left the device forgotten at the foot of her bed. She didn’t want to die. Not anymore. It had been at last two months since her last suicidal thought. All she wanted to do was live. To live a quiet life outside of the spotlight. A lonely life where she wouldn’t be responsible for any further death or destruction. How could she live that life here? Here when physical – and, she thought, emotional – intimacy was practically a necessity for her own longevity.
It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair that some sort of magical, imaginary being deemed it necessary to interfere with her life. To deny her the peace she so desperately wanted but didn’t deserve. Wasn’t fair that the consummation of the hunger she had once felt on the beach of a clock-shaped arena wouldn’t be with Peeta Mellak. She might not possess the same romantic notions as some of the other girls she grew up with in District 12, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be, well, the Finnick Odair Panem’s public eye had once thought to know so well.
Maybe, maybe if she closed her eyes and pretended it was Peeta, maybe then… How could she ever forget that night on the beach? The way she hadn’t even considered their audience after their lips had met. How right it had felt to be in his arms. And that completely alien hunger she thought she might never sate. The warmth in her belly, the fluttering in her heart as he had wrapped his arms around her to hold her close as their mouths explored each other. Sometimes, on good nights, she got to dream about that.
Rarely. But still, it was better than never.
Peeta wouldn’t want her to die. She didn’t want to die. Though she doubted that she’d ever get to live out that fantasy with him, even back home in District 12, she wouldn’t find out if she gave in. She might despise herself even more than normal in the morning, might compare herself to one of the poor Seam women that would visit Head Peacekeeper Cray at night. But at least she’d be alive, no longer choking, capable of rebelling and maybe, just maybe, finding her way home.
Mind made up, she reaches for the device and turns it on. Better to get this done now before she changes her mind.
» Journal: stillplaying
» Birthdate/Age: October 1985 (27)
» Characters Played: N/A
CHARACTER FACTS
» Name: Katniss Everdeen
» Canon: The Hunger Games (book)
» Reference: http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Katniss_Everdeen
» Canon Point: Day of her eighteenth birthday. In my mind, I tend to consider that about two months after Peeta’s returned to District 12 at the end of Mockingjay.
» Gender: Female.
» Age: 18
CHARACTER INTERPRETATION
» Appearance: While I use Jennifer Lawrence as a PB, there are some differences between the icons used and Katniss’ appearance from the point in which I take her from. Technically, the icons used are supposed to be pictures of her at age sixteen. She’ll be eighteen when she enters the game. I describe Katniss as having the dark hair, olive skin, and grey eyes as in the book. More importantly, she’s covered in burn and skin graft scars from the neck down and her hair isn’t as long yet as it is in the icons. She’s not as underweight as she used to be, but she’s still not at a healthy weight for an 18 year old girl.
» Suitability: Katniss does suffer from PTSD and depression from the point in which I’ll be bringing her in from. She has attempted to commit suicide in the recent past – about six months prior or so, after killing Coin and then again while awaiting the sentencing of her trial. However, in the time since returning to District 12, Katniss has resumed therapy with Dr. Aurelius and instead opted to just go through the motions. Each day is taken one at a time as she learns to cope with all the trauma of the past two years. Overall, she is a fully functional human being who’ll always place her survival above anything else.
» Orientation: While canon indicates Katniss as heterosexual and interested in boys, she is also depicted as highly prudish and uncomfortable with her own sexuality and that of other’s. She tends to be oblivious to male interest, spending months unaware of her best friend, Gale’s, romantic interest in her, as well as years oblivious to Peeta’s love. She is also highly uncomfortable with nudity. Despite Peeta being injured and unconscious, she feels awkward undressing Peeta to treat his wounds. She gets flustered and blushes easily when Finnick playfully flirts with her and can barely stand it when Joanna, another fellow tribute in the Quarter Quell, purposely strips in front of her. Peeta then describes her as pure, an apt enough description. For all her violent tendencies, she remains innocent when it comes to sexual activity. She understands how it’s supposed to work and does feel the stirrings of desire when kissing Peeta at times, but has little to no idea on how to approach the subject.
» Personality: Katniss Everdeen is a survivor through and through, rarely giving up in even the most extreme of circumstances. She often thinks of herself as selfish and purely motivated by what she needs to stay alive and Katniss easily tends to delude herself into believing the worst about her. But at the same time, she’s not a static character. Her personality develops and matures into that of a young woman as the story progresses and she learns more about love and being loved.
From even before the books begin, her father’s death highlights Katniss as a highly stubborn and motivated survivor. She easily gives up the rest of her childhood at age eleven to become the head of her family. She won’t let her family starve, won’t give in to self-pity or grief, however much she misses her father. She’ll do whatever she can for them, the rest of the District and Panem be damned. But a true self-centered survivor would only fend for themselves. Instead, everything she does is for her younger sister, Prim – easily one of the most important people in Katniss’ life, if not the most important in her eyes.
If it was in Katniss’ power, she would make sure Prim would want for nothing. And while there are various examples of this in the books – allowing Prim’s ugly cat to stay despite meaning it would be an extra mouth to feed, ensuring that Prim never has to take an extra tesserae in the Hunger Games to supply their family with grain and other supplies - nothing speaks more than her willingness to take Prim’s place in the 74th Hunger Games despite knowing full well it could easily mean Katniss’ own death. Her little sister must have every opportunity to live a fulfilling life that Katniss doesn’t have herself.
It’s with the 74th Hunger Games that Katniss learns that she’s so much more than a provider. She really is a survivor at heart. She doesn’t care what others think of her. She’s brash and self-centered, rude, rebellious, difficult to relate to. All Katniss wants is to do whatever she needs to in order to survive and make it back to Prim. And if it means killing all those in the arena with her, she will not think twice. Cold and calculating, maybe even scary in her ability to be a predator and not prey.
But at the same time, while Katniss keeps reminding herself of this, focusing on her own negative attributes, Peeta sees something different. The girl on fire, the girl who has no idea of the effect she can have on people. She’s proud and true to herself, noble in the way she fights for Prim and then to keep Peeta live, however selfish she claims her own actions are. And although Katniss never sees it, she’s far less heartless than she thinks. The nightmares she has after the Hunger Games attest to that. If she truly didn’t care about anyone but herself, then Katniss’ subconscious wouldn’t prey so easily on her guilt.
Katniss’ stunt with the poisoned berries in the arena of the 74th Hunger Games, her last ditch attempt to ensure both she and Peeta leave alive, is seen by most of Panem as the spark needed to ignite rebellion. Katniss is introspective enough to give thought to that, to see how easily others would see it as such. But she does it out of a selfish need to keep them alive. Because in the end of the games, she can’t bring herself to sacrifice this boy who would easily sacrifice himself for her. She has a selfish desire to keep alive his adoration – he doesn’t have to love her, but he does, and it’s something that Katniss doesn’t fully comprehend but does realize she needs. And in the end, she’s tired of being a pawn. Yet, she’s still cold enough to tell Peeta that she played up her love for him then as an act and a trick for the Games. It’s the lie she needs to survive at that point in her life, where she wants her best friend Gale (also in love with her) to be easy in her company. She wants her life to be simple.
For the Quarter Quell and the 75th Hunger Games, former victors are selected to return to the arena and once again fight to the death. This time, Katniss actually stops being a survivor in favor to a different mantra that she can never breaks: keep Peeta alive. It’s easy to dismiss as a result of her love for him, or her selfish desire to keep alive someone who cares so much for her, but in many ways, it’s also her way of clinging to morals and humanity. Time and time again, she points out that Peeta’s almost too good, shouldn’t be in the Hunger Games, is nothing like her when it comes to how easily she’ll take a life. It’s something knows she can never be like but, perhaps, in keeping Peeta alive, she can be good, too.
Like in the Games itself, she becomes a pawn in a much bigger game when the Districts rebel against the Capitol. The rebels use her as a sympathetic spokesperson to garner support and she knowingly lets herself be used, especially after Prim points out she can bargain for the other victors’ amnesty. But even then, she can’t stick to the rules and, although not necessarily on purpose, finds herself breaking them left and right. To do what’s right by her instead of others. It’s why she uses her position as a spokesperson to gain amnesty for the other victors or to allow Prim to keep Buttercup even though life in District 13 is a life of strict rations. And the way she runs into the heat of the attack during District 8 to help protect the hospital rather than hiding in safety as Haymitch wants her to do.
During these rebellions, she also finally does learn how to break. She falls into a deep depression a number of times due to various events and her inability to cope with them– Peeta’s kidnapping by President Snow, Prim’s death, etc. But these depressions also show that she’s become a far more empathetic character than she once was, even though she still can’t see it. She’s a young girl put into impossible events that would reduce any less stronger individual to pieces. But most importantly, though she survives as she always has, she learns that there are more important things to survival. That there could be political causes, that there could even be people that you must put ahead of her own self. It is this lesson in itself that motivates Katniss towards President Coin’s assassination. She will not let all her struggles and loses be in vain, allowing another power-hungry leader with little regard to human life to assume control. Katniss must be the one to do this because, by this point, she will not put anyone else she remotely cares about at risk.
In the end of the trilogy, what can be said most about Katniss is that she lives through. She goes through the motions, finds ways to distract herself, plays games to remind her that there is good in people. Even in herself. She’s not the monster that caused all these deaths. And she learns how to really love and let herself be loved.
Strengths and weaknesses:
Katniss is a strong individual with so much backbone and determination within her. She’s the girl on fire, and not just because of the outfit she wears in her introduction to the Games. She literally has an unquenchable thirst to live her life – for herself and, by the end of her canon, for all those who died. And she will do whatever it takes to honor this promise.
Although slow to trust, she does make a steadfast and loyal friend once this trust is gained. She’s resourceful and skilled and self-reliant, a quick thinker on her feet. And in many ways, her own selfishness makes for her strength in keeping those she cares about alive. It’s easier for Katniss to see all the negatives in her personality, but at the same time, she adheres to them. She reacts without thinking and is next to impossible to mold – as both Haymitch and Coin find out during their time with her. Without a doubt, Katniss is first and foremost true to herself.
In many ways, a lot of Katniss’ strengths are balanced by her weaknesses. She can be very socially inept: keeping to herself as a child, unaware of the friendships she’s made. Even Gale, her best friend, is someone she sees as a resource after their initial meeting and does not become a friend until much later on. Madge, the Mayor’s daughter, is another example of someone she’d spend time with without truly understanding the impact of that time. Prior to the Hunger Games, she considers Madge as the other lonely girl to sit with at lunch, not realizing that somehow, a friendship had developed. And with both Peeta and Gale, their romantic intentions towards her go unnoticed until the boys act upon them.
When Katniss does allow herself to feel, it often overwhelms her – a source of many of the breakdowns she eventually has after the 74th Hunger Games. It’s easier to be logical and to push aside feelings than to acknowledge them. But when she does, she feels everything - every single death that she’s caused, however indirectly, she takes responsibility for. And a lot of the times it’s too much. She would rather avoid than face problems of emotions, as seen when she initially ignores required phone sessions with her therapist at the end of Mockingjay.
Even then, she’s not very book smart and does not have a very good education. It’s not something she considers much of a fault, though she does acknowledge it, but it is pointed out again and again. Katniss has survival skills, but Katniss would never have won the Hunger Games based on wit alone. And while she comes across as very mature, at times she can be moody and prickly – a true teenager in many ways. Someone still learning much about the world she lives in, and how to be a part of it.
SAMPLES
» First Person Sample Prompt One:
[It’s alarming, more than alarming, when she wakes up in a bed perhaps more luxurious than even those in the Capitol. Though limbs ache in unfamiliar sensation and every nerve of her body screams that she ought to stay hidden in the sheets for hours longer, instinct takes over. Her heart pounds in her chest and she bolts up in the bed, ignoring the way a familiar pendant bangs against her chest as she does.
There. There, on the nearby stool, lies her father’s leather hunting coat. Her bow and quiver rest on adjacent wall. Despite protest from her body, she scrambles out of the bed and towards the clothing, for once not giving in to her modesty. There’s no one around. No one here to see the scars that cover her from chin to toe. At least, there’s no one that she can see.
In her haste to dress, she doesn’t notice that she nocks a small rectangular device to the floor. Doesn’t notice the way it turns on, recording her actions as she tugs her well-worn brown pants up over her hips. But as she pulls her plain white shirt over her head, she stills. There might not be anyone in the room with her. But she doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know how she even arrived here. The last thing she can remember is leaving her house for the woods, wanting nothing more than to lose herself in the hunt and have nothing to do with her day lest it become another lost day.
Her eighteenth birthday.
Is she back in an arena? Did the new government of Panem decide that she was too much of a threat after all? Locked her up somewhere where she really couldn’t harm others? Her mind reels with possibilities. She pulls her shirt down as she looks around the room for hidden cameras. For some evidence that she’s being spied upon. Finally, her attention falls to the device that she previously ignored.]
Don’t. [Her voice is rough, angry. Extremely angry. It’s the easier of two emotions warring inside of her. So much easier than giving in to fear. She doesn’t know who she’s addressing. Doesn’t even stop to think . If there are Gamemakers out there, Gamemakers or politicians or whoever it is that brought her here.] Don’t do this. Just let me go back to District 12 and I promise, I won’t do anything. You won’t even know I’m still alive. I swear.
[She takes a deep breath, trying her best not to scowl at the camera. To be a compliant game piece just for this moment. But it doesn’t really work and she finds herself glowering regardless when there’s no initial response. She knows that she’s teetering on edge. That any moment, the anger might give way to pained tears. That rather than fighting, she might try to find a closet to hole up in, someplace to hide.]
Damn it! Why won’t you just leave me alone? If you’re going to play games, you should’ve just let me die. You should’ve executed me when you had the chance. I won’t be a playing piece for any of you anymore.
» Third Person Sample Prompt Three:
How long had it been since she last felt the constricting feel of something tightening around her neck? Months, at least. Since that wonderful and horrible day that Peeta awoke in the hospital room of District 13. She had been careless, headless of any consequence that might have resulted from Snow’s torture and manipulation. She so clearly remembers the way it felt to have hands tighten around her neck, squeezing the very life out of her. How could she ever forget? Especially when the memory still very much haunts her dreams at night.
It feels a lot like that now. But rather than warm fingers, it’s the cold chain of Peeta’s mockingjay locket constricting her airways. And it hurts in an entirely different way than his fingers had. The chain has a sharp bite to it that consistently reminds her of why she’s in this predicament in the first place. Maybe Finnick had been right. Maybe she should have gotten it taken care of sooner. Maybe she shouldn’t have waited until day 10 to awkwardly stare at the network device as she tugged on the pendant.
But doing so any time sooner would have felt like giving in. Would have felt too much like showing an interest, bowing to the whims of her newest Gamemaker. What was it Peeta had called her that day after the Quarter Quell interviews? Pure? Certainly it had seemed a fitting description since her arrival to Atia. Since the morning she had awoken naked in a strange bed with on the locket on her neck. It had felt as if almost every other thing had made her body flush in embarrassment. Had made her look away or want to be anywhere but where she was.
Pure. She was really starting to hate the word.
With a quiet sigh, she collapsed against the pillows and left the device forgotten at the foot of her bed. She didn’t want to die. Not anymore. It had been at last two months since her last suicidal thought. All she wanted to do was live. To live a quiet life outside of the spotlight. A lonely life where she wouldn’t be responsible for any further death or destruction. How could she live that life here? Here when physical – and, she thought, emotional – intimacy was practically a necessity for her own longevity.
It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair that some sort of magical, imaginary being deemed it necessary to interfere with her life. To deny her the peace she so desperately wanted but didn’t deserve. Wasn’t fair that the consummation of the hunger she had once felt on the beach of a clock-shaped arena wouldn’t be with Peeta Mellak. She might not possess the same romantic notions as some of the other girls she grew up with in District 12, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be, well, the Finnick Odair Panem’s public eye had once thought to know so well.
Maybe, maybe if she closed her eyes and pretended it was Peeta, maybe then… How could she ever forget that night on the beach? The way she hadn’t even considered their audience after their lips had met. How right it had felt to be in his arms. And that completely alien hunger she thought she might never sate. The warmth in her belly, the fluttering in her heart as he had wrapped his arms around her to hold her close as their mouths explored each other. Sometimes, on good nights, she got to dream about that.
Rarely. But still, it was better than never.
Peeta wouldn’t want her to die. She didn’t want to die. Though she doubted that she’d ever get to live out that fantasy with him, even back home in District 12, she wouldn’t find out if she gave in. She might despise herself even more than normal in the morning, might compare herself to one of the poor Seam women that would visit Head Peacekeeper Cray at night. But at least she’d be alive, no longer choking, capable of rebelling and maybe, just maybe, finding her way home.
Mind made up, she reaches for the device and turns it on. Better to get this done now before she changes her mind.