{{application}} {{info}} - The Games
May. 4th, 2015 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beckstitchOUT of CHARACTER
Name: Jormy
Other characters: Éowyn (shieldofrohan ), Merlyn (knittingbackwards ), Alain (atouchofka )
IN CHARACTER
Name: Beck Scordato
Alias: Beck Mattock, Vittoria Scordato
Fandom: OC
Canon point/AU: N/A.
Journal:beckstitch
PB: Mercedes Scelba-Shorte
Age: 30
History: After his victory in the 23rd Hunger Games, Husk Mattock - one of District Eleven's earlier successes - was, for a long time, the toast of Panem. He had won in spectacular fashion, and his fire and verve captured the Capitol. It particularly captured Amelia Scordato, the daughter of one of Panem's wealthiest families. The only bigger coup, for her, would have been to have her own souvenir of their liason. That's how Vittoria Scordato came into the world, an accident that wasn't an accident (and that nobody really believed was an accident, given how easy contraception is in the Capitol). Vittoria was exactly what Amelia had hoped for: she was a beautiful child, she looked enough like her father for her lineage to be unmistakeable, and she didn't cry too horribly when she was shown off. And she was shown off a lot, for the first few months of her life. Husk's star was waning, but it was still bright, and having a daughter by him was something special.
The trouble was that Husk's star didn't just wane, it plummeted. When baby Vittoria was eight months old, Husk Mattock was killed in an altercation with Peacekeepers in his District. Rumours flew, gossips gossiped, and everyone agreed on one thing: Husk Mattock wasn't just a nobody, he was an enemy.
That put Amelia, who was very image-conscious, in a rather awkward place socially. So she did what any self-respecting Capitolite would do: she put on a new face, forgot all of it ever happened, and got rid of the evidence. The evidence in this case being Vittoria, who at nine months was packed off with a couple of Avoxes to one of the smaller Scordato houses, on the very edge of the Capitol. Amelia cared enough for her daughter to make sure she was given enough money to live on, and that was about where it ended.
By most terms, Vittoria had a fairly middle-class upbringing. She didn't starve, and she was never desperate for anything. Except, that was, for company, which wasn't best provided by Avoxes. By the time she was ten or so, she'd started socialising around town. By the time she was fifteen (and lying about her age a fair amount of the time), she was dancing in the clubs. She called herself Beck Mattock, played on her mixed lineage, became a touch of erotica exotica for those Capitolites who couldn't afford to get close to the Tributes themselves. There was sex involved, but mostly, there was dancing. Beck Mattock got to be a fairly well-known name in some parts of the Capitol. That suited her just fine, since it meant she could get to know people, lots of people.
One of those people turned out to be a Stylist, Leucothea Stroud, who took particular note of Beck's outfits at one of her shows. She actually approached Beck to ask her who had made the costumes; when Beck answered that she had, they got talking seriously about fashion and design. With Leucothea's encouragement, and fuelled by her own interest in the Games (which had, after all, played a major role in her life), Beck started to apply for jobs in the Tribute Center. Her name helped -both as a Scordato and as a fairly well-known dancer, she had some street cred to work with - and, at the age of 25, she got a job in the Stylists' department in District 12. That suited her down to the ground. She'd turned down an opportunity in District Eleven the year before; it was simultaneously too close to home and too alienating to know that she'd be working with people she had a connection to, but whose lives she'd never know about. District 12, though... District 12 was full of people who needed all the help they could get, and it was help she could give. Besides, it was a challenge, and Beck loved a challenge.
She worked for three years - three Games - under various Stylists. She wouldn't mention it publicly, but Cinna was her favourite. That made it feel like something of a betrayal when, after the fateful 74th Games and Cinna's subsequent "retirement", she was tipped for the top spot. Initially, she withdrew rather, and was more than a bit relieved when she didn't initially get the placement as the official D12 Stylist. All the more relieved when the neverending Games were announced - Beck loves a challenge, yes, but there are limits.
Since then, though, there have been a couple of reshuffles. It took a couple of years longer than several bookies in the Capitol had anticipated, but as of right now, she's the official Stylist for the District. And, to her surprise, the transition isn't proving that difficult. It turns out that she was doing a lot of the work involved anyway. The only real difference is that she's the public face of it. Unfortunately, that means her mother suddenly wants something to do with her again, but for now, she's ignoring that and hoping it goes away.
Presentation: If Beck was described in one word, that word would probably be nice. Possibly as a result of being pretty starved for attention for a large proportion of her life, Beck is a very caring, very protective person. She wants to be liked, yes, but she'll also go to great lengths to make other people feel liked. She has a very strong maternal instinct, and even if she can't always help, she's always willing to listen to people's problems. She tends not to talk so much about her own, particularly around Tributes and Districtors, because to her, they sound remarkably trivial. Also, she really doesn't want to think about them. Other people's problems are safe; they're distant enough that she can keep them at arm's length, and close enough that she can feel like she's helping.
And that's how she sees her job. Helping. She can't do anything about the Games, and she can't make the whole world better, but she can at least give her Tributes some kind of edge, get them sponsors and attention, make them feel at home. She can usually be found in the District 12 rooms, ready with a cup of tea and a listening ear. If you need a dress mended, or an outfit for the surprise interview this afternoon, she's there - but she's also there if you need a shoulder to cry on after a long night, or if you need to rant at someone, or if you need someone to go dancing with. She wouldn't put it this way, but the truth is, Beck has an incredibly strong maternal instinct, and although several of her Tributes are older than her, she takes them all under her wing by default.
That doesn't just extend to the nice stuff, though. Beck isn't just maternal in the soft, gentle way; she can be one hell of a mama bear. It's a mistake to think that just because she's nice, she's a pushover. If you start in on someone she's decided is family, she will hunt you down. She has to keep these instincts forced down when it comes to Tributes, of course, but Tributes who've killed one of hers may find themselves on the sharp end of her tongue. And believe me, there is a sharp end. Beck can be sarcastic, harsh, and downright catty. She's also not above getting physical if she has to. She doesn't care if she breaks a nail; they're all polymer anyway.
Speaking of getting physical... Beck is, as you might expect given her history, very comfortable in her own body. She's also a hell of a flirt. She's quite definitely gay, and uncomfortable with the idea of any sex involving penises, but if you're an attractive woman and you've met Beck, chances are she's hit on you. She tries not to push it too far - flirting, like sex, is only fun in her book if everyone's into it - but it does make for a real difference in how she interacts with women as opposed to men. She can flirt with men as well, of course - that was half her audience when she was dancing, and she was selling that heavily on sex appeal - but it doesn't come as naturally.
She's never had a real romantic relationship. Part of her is sure she doesn't want one; another part of her is equally sure she does. What she does get, quite strongly, is crushes, and she can be very jealous about them. She can also be jealous, although differently so, about her friends and "family"; she likes to be important in people's lives, and can get quite grumpy if she's superseded.
Because of her unusual upbringing, Beck has some slightly off-kilter political ideas. For instance, maybe we shouldn't pick on the Avoxes, because they're already being punished? Maybe Districters aren't actually subhuman? You know. Wild, crazy ideas like that. On the whole, she keeps them to herself, because she kind of likes not being disappeared. But she gets very on-edge about the treatment of Avoxes. After all, for most of her formative years, Avoxes were the only people she knew.
Beck takes quite a lot of people by surprise by actually being, once you get past the public Capitolite face of things, remarkably down-to-earth. When she's working in the suites, rather than out in public, she dresses down; hoodies and jeans are the norm for her when she's not performing, and she still sees public appearances as performing. Those clothes are, of course, a statement of their own; they're as much a comment on her otherness as the excessively District-themed costumes she used to wear for dancing. They're also just practical for her lifestyle; when she's not working, she practices her dancing, spends as much time in the gym as some of the Tributes, and goes running every morning. After all, as she'll explain to anyone who asks, the best clothes in the world are no good if you don't have a good body to hang them off. And she certainly has that.
Motivations: Fundamentally, Beck is a very lonely person, trying extremely hard not to be. She has a lot of self-confidence, but she's also been alone for a lot of her life, and she doesn't like it. As a result, it's very important to her to have people around her, to be liked, to be needed, to be the centre of something. She hates to be alone, which is part of the reason she spends so much time hooking up or flirting, but she also never really learnt how to open up. She's kind, of course, and frequently quite incisive, but there's this... space between her and other people which she never quite seems able to close. It isn't as simple as mistrust. She trusts people. She just... isn't entirely sure how to express that trust. For someone who's always listening to other people's problems, it never seems to occur to her that she's allowed to talk about her own - or that it would even help.
A big part of Beck's motivation comes from that loneliness, and from having seen first-hand the suffering which a lot of Capitolites are so well-insulated from. She knows full well she can't save everyone, but when she gets to know somebody, she makes it her priority that they, at least, should be kept safe from that kind of feeling as much as possible. She's very protective, very patient, and very kind to anyone who she's decided is one of hers. That might be a Tribute in her District, it might be someone who she talks to on the street, or it might just be someone she knows has a problem, even if she's never met them before. Either way, once she decides that she's going to care for someone, they're under her wing more or less for life. Whether they want to be or not.
The Games have been a prominent part of Beck's life literally since her conception, so it's a little surprising just how ambivalent she is towards them. She follows them, of course, and has done since long before she was directly involved. But the way she sees it, they're a big enough part of life, and an immutable enough part, that it's hardly worth having an opinion on them - it isn't as though they're going to stop any time soon. At the same time, she's aware on at least some level that being a Tribute sucks; she's especially aware of this since enough Tributes started coming back to tell the tale. That's why she wanted to get involved with the Games; if people are going to fight and die for the Capitol, then she feels like the best thing she can do is help to give them the best chance possible.
What she wants out of life is small and simple. She wants stability. She wants peace. She wants the people she cares about to be happy and healthy, and she wants to be helpful. She doesn't want much. But those ambitions drove her this far, and continue to drive her, because they aren't really about her. Most of all, what she wants is to help people. And there are always ways she can be better-placed to do that, more people she can be there for. More people who can know her.
Setting: Given her history with the Games, Beck is well aware that being a Victor isn't easy, and has a lot of sympathy for the Tributes. She'll be very invested in making people feel comfortable at home, especially those assigned to her District. At the same time, her loyalty is definitely to the Capitol, where she grew up and knows everyone, so I'd like to play with that. She doesn't like the government of Panem particularly, but her view of the Capitol in particular is a much more grounded one than a lot of people in-game, so it could be interesting to see how that plays out. On the whole, though, she'll keep her head down and do things on a small scale; she's certainly not going to try and change the world any time soon.
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
The new format?
[There's only one right answer, of course. Any Capitolite knows that instinctively. Beck smiles a bright, winning smile, twisting her hair around her finger]
I love it! I mean, just look at the potential! All these new faces, new people to get to know and root for... I can't wait. And they'll all have something unique to bring to the show. Different cultures, different fashions, different stories...
[...a level of fighting ability that might make some of the slaughter just a little less sickening and sad...]
Of course, it's a big challenge. All those outfits to design, for all those people who might not even be the species we're used to? I'm telling you, my head's hurting just thinking about it. But what's life without a little challenge, am I right? And just think of it! All the new ideas they'll bring, and we can make them our own, wrap them up in that special Panem charm, make them really shine.
And I think it's genius to bring them in from so many different places, don't you? I mean, don't lie. I know you love other cultures, darling, I've seen you at my shows. [She winks, just this side of lewd, and laughs] I think it's going to be great. Just great. Television at its finest. What more could we possibly ask for?
Prose: She's had this nightmare before. Standing up in front of the Gamemakers, feeling naked and afraid, knowing she's got nothing to show them. Knowing that she's been found out; she doesn't belong here, never has. She's a Districter somewhere down deep, and a traitor's daughter. And what happens to traitor Districters?
She hopes that's all this is, just another of those nightmares. The ones she's sure everyone's had. Because it can't be real, can it? They don't use Panem citizens as Tributes any more. They certainly don't use Capitolites. So this can't be real.
But the Gamemakers are still there, staring down at her. She can feel the sweat beading on her skin, slick against her polymer tracksuit. In dreams, sometimes, she finds herself dancing for them, but this nightmare feels too real for that. This nightmare doesn't feel like it's going to end with vaguely-recognised faces laughing at her or Avoxes talking or the floor falling out from under her, and then with waking up sweaty and dishevelled in her own bed. This nightmare feels like it's going to keep on going, right to the bitter end.
So if it's real, if it's going to keep being real, what does she do? How do you win? She manages to find enough self-control to force one foot forward, then the other, stepping away from the Peacekeepers and into the middle of the room. You've still just got to dance for them, she reminds herself. It's just a different dance. Find the one they're looking for.
She rolls her shoulders back, loosens up her body like she would before a performance, and lets the Gamemakers fade into the background. Squaring off against one of the dummies, she takes a deep, grounding breath and puts on her performing face; the bright eyes, the slight, enticing half-smile. Just another dance. Kicks and punches and twists and ducks. All just another dance, another show.
And if the show's good enough, maybe the nightmare will end.
What is your character scored: She's not a Tribute, but if she was, she would probably be scored a 5 or 6. For a Capitolite, she's quite well-versed in hand-to-hand fighting; she lived in one of the less nice areas of the city for a lot of her life, and while she tends not to acknowledge it, there have been times when she's had to fight, especially as a traitor's daughter. She's also very fit and flexible; she still dances, although mostly for her own enjoyment these days, and she keeps in good shape. But she's not a fighter, and she's got no training with weapons.
Token: Again, not a Tribute, but if she was put into the Games, her token would probably be one of the necklaces she habitually wore while performing.
Additional information: It's unlikely that there'll be a doppelganger for Beck, since her PB is a model rather than an actress, but if someone did show up looking like her... well, honestly she'd think it was kind of cool. And that Tribute would get a lot of style tips from her.
Beck is from the Capitol, and both loves and hates it in the way that a lot of people both love and hate their homes. She's never lived anywhere else - hell, she's never even visited anywhere else - so she doesn't have much to compare it to. But she's seen the sordid underbelly of the city (and been part of it for a while) as well as the glittering socialites and high towers, and at this point, both are just so familiar to her that they're a part of her. She has no loyalty to the regime to speak of, considering it to have done very little for her, but she's fiercely loyal to the city and its people, and by extension to Panem as a whole. It isn't perfect, but then, where is?
Name: Jormy
Other characters: Éowyn (
shieldofrohan ), Merlyn (knittingbackwards ), Alain (atouchofka )IN CHARACTER
Name: Beck Scordato
Alias: Beck Mattock, Vittoria Scordato
Fandom: OC
Canon point/AU: N/A.
Journal:
beckstitch PB: Mercedes Scelba-Shorte
Age: 30
History: After his victory in the 23rd Hunger Games, Husk Mattock - one of District Eleven's earlier successes - was, for a long time, the toast of Panem. He had won in spectacular fashion, and his fire and verve captured the Capitol. It particularly captured Amelia Scordato, the daughter of one of Panem's wealthiest families. The only bigger coup, for her, would have been to have her own souvenir of their liason. That's how Vittoria Scordato came into the world, an accident that wasn't an accident (and that nobody really believed was an accident, given how easy contraception is in the Capitol). Vittoria was exactly what Amelia had hoped for: she was a beautiful child, she looked enough like her father for her lineage to be unmistakeable, and she didn't cry too horribly when she was shown off. And she was shown off a lot, for the first few months of her life. Husk's star was waning, but it was still bright, and having a daughter by him was something special.
The trouble was that Husk's star didn't just wane, it plummeted. When baby Vittoria was eight months old, Husk Mattock was killed in an altercation with Peacekeepers in his District. Rumours flew, gossips gossiped, and everyone agreed on one thing: Husk Mattock wasn't just a nobody, he was an enemy.
That put Amelia, who was very image-conscious, in a rather awkward place socially. So she did what any self-respecting Capitolite would do: she put on a new face, forgot all of it ever happened, and got rid of the evidence. The evidence in this case being Vittoria, who at nine months was packed off with a couple of Avoxes to one of the smaller Scordato houses, on the very edge of the Capitol. Amelia cared enough for her daughter to make sure she was given enough money to live on, and that was about where it ended.
By most terms, Vittoria had a fairly middle-class upbringing. She didn't starve, and she was never desperate for anything. Except, that was, for company, which wasn't best provided by Avoxes. By the time she was ten or so, she'd started socialising around town. By the time she was fifteen (and lying about her age a fair amount of the time), she was dancing in the clubs. She called herself Beck Mattock, played on her mixed lineage, became a touch of erotica exotica for those Capitolites who couldn't afford to get close to the Tributes themselves. There was sex involved, but mostly, there was dancing. Beck Mattock got to be a fairly well-known name in some parts of the Capitol. That suited her just fine, since it meant she could get to know people, lots of people.
One of those people turned out to be a Stylist, Leucothea Stroud, who took particular note of Beck's outfits at one of her shows. She actually approached Beck to ask her who had made the costumes; when Beck answered that she had, they got talking seriously about fashion and design. With Leucothea's encouragement, and fuelled by her own interest in the Games (which had, after all, played a major role in her life), Beck started to apply for jobs in the Tribute Center. Her name helped -both as a Scordato and as a fairly well-known dancer, she had some street cred to work with - and, at the age of 25, she got a job in the Stylists' department in District 12. That suited her down to the ground. She'd turned down an opportunity in District Eleven the year before; it was simultaneously too close to home and too alienating to know that she'd be working with people she had a connection to, but whose lives she'd never know about. District 12, though... District 12 was full of people who needed all the help they could get, and it was help she could give. Besides, it was a challenge, and Beck loved a challenge.
She worked for three years - three Games - under various Stylists. She wouldn't mention it publicly, but Cinna was her favourite. That made it feel like something of a betrayal when, after the fateful 74th Games and Cinna's subsequent "retirement", she was tipped for the top spot. Initially, she withdrew rather, and was more than a bit relieved when she didn't initially get the placement as the official D12 Stylist. All the more relieved when the neverending Games were announced - Beck loves a challenge, yes, but there are limits.
Since then, though, there have been a couple of reshuffles. It took a couple of years longer than several bookies in the Capitol had anticipated, but as of right now, she's the official Stylist for the District. And, to her surprise, the transition isn't proving that difficult. It turns out that she was doing a lot of the work involved anyway. The only real difference is that she's the public face of it. Unfortunately, that means her mother suddenly wants something to do with her again, but for now, she's ignoring that and hoping it goes away.
Presentation: If Beck was described in one word, that word would probably be nice. Possibly as a result of being pretty starved for attention for a large proportion of her life, Beck is a very caring, very protective person. She wants to be liked, yes, but she'll also go to great lengths to make other people feel liked. She has a very strong maternal instinct, and even if she can't always help, she's always willing to listen to people's problems. She tends not to talk so much about her own, particularly around Tributes and Districtors, because to her, they sound remarkably trivial. Also, she really doesn't want to think about them. Other people's problems are safe; they're distant enough that she can keep them at arm's length, and close enough that she can feel like she's helping.
And that's how she sees her job. Helping. She can't do anything about the Games, and she can't make the whole world better, but she can at least give her Tributes some kind of edge, get them sponsors and attention, make them feel at home. She can usually be found in the District 12 rooms, ready with a cup of tea and a listening ear. If you need a dress mended, or an outfit for the surprise interview this afternoon, she's there - but she's also there if you need a shoulder to cry on after a long night, or if you need to rant at someone, or if you need someone to go dancing with. She wouldn't put it this way, but the truth is, Beck has an incredibly strong maternal instinct, and although several of her Tributes are older than her, she takes them all under her wing by default.
That doesn't just extend to the nice stuff, though. Beck isn't just maternal in the soft, gentle way; she can be one hell of a mama bear. It's a mistake to think that just because she's nice, she's a pushover. If you start in on someone she's decided is family, she will hunt you down. She has to keep these instincts forced down when it comes to Tributes, of course, but Tributes who've killed one of hers may find themselves on the sharp end of her tongue. And believe me, there is a sharp end. Beck can be sarcastic, harsh, and downright catty. She's also not above getting physical if she has to. She doesn't care if she breaks a nail; they're all polymer anyway.
Speaking of getting physical... Beck is, as you might expect given her history, very comfortable in her own body. She's also a hell of a flirt. She's quite definitely gay, and uncomfortable with the idea of any sex involving penises, but if you're an attractive woman and you've met Beck, chances are she's hit on you. She tries not to push it too far - flirting, like sex, is only fun in her book if everyone's into it - but it does make for a real difference in how she interacts with women as opposed to men. She can flirt with men as well, of course - that was half her audience when she was dancing, and she was selling that heavily on sex appeal - but it doesn't come as naturally.
She's never had a real romantic relationship. Part of her is sure she doesn't want one; another part of her is equally sure she does. What she does get, quite strongly, is crushes, and she can be very jealous about them. She can also be jealous, although differently so, about her friends and "family"; she likes to be important in people's lives, and can get quite grumpy if she's superseded.
Because of her unusual upbringing, Beck has some slightly off-kilter political ideas. For instance, maybe we shouldn't pick on the Avoxes, because they're already being punished? Maybe Districters aren't actually subhuman? You know. Wild, crazy ideas like that. On the whole, she keeps them to herself, because she kind of likes not being disappeared. But she gets very on-edge about the treatment of Avoxes. After all, for most of her formative years, Avoxes were the only people she knew.
Beck takes quite a lot of people by surprise by actually being, once you get past the public Capitolite face of things, remarkably down-to-earth. When she's working in the suites, rather than out in public, she dresses down; hoodies and jeans are the norm for her when she's not performing, and she still sees public appearances as performing. Those clothes are, of course, a statement of their own; they're as much a comment on her otherness as the excessively District-themed costumes she used to wear for dancing. They're also just practical for her lifestyle; when she's not working, she practices her dancing, spends as much time in the gym as some of the Tributes, and goes running every morning. After all, as she'll explain to anyone who asks, the best clothes in the world are no good if you don't have a good body to hang them off. And she certainly has that.
Motivations: Fundamentally, Beck is a very lonely person, trying extremely hard not to be. She has a lot of self-confidence, but she's also been alone for a lot of her life, and she doesn't like it. As a result, it's very important to her to have people around her, to be liked, to be needed, to be the centre of something. She hates to be alone, which is part of the reason she spends so much time hooking up or flirting, but she also never really learnt how to open up. She's kind, of course, and frequently quite incisive, but there's this... space between her and other people which she never quite seems able to close. It isn't as simple as mistrust. She trusts people. She just... isn't entirely sure how to express that trust. For someone who's always listening to other people's problems, it never seems to occur to her that she's allowed to talk about her own - or that it would even help.
A big part of Beck's motivation comes from that loneliness, and from having seen first-hand the suffering which a lot of Capitolites are so well-insulated from. She knows full well she can't save everyone, but when she gets to know somebody, she makes it her priority that they, at least, should be kept safe from that kind of feeling as much as possible. She's very protective, very patient, and very kind to anyone who she's decided is one of hers. That might be a Tribute in her District, it might be someone who she talks to on the street, or it might just be someone she knows has a problem, even if she's never met them before. Either way, once she decides that she's going to care for someone, they're under her wing more or less for life. Whether they want to be or not.
The Games have been a prominent part of Beck's life literally since her conception, so it's a little surprising just how ambivalent she is towards them. She follows them, of course, and has done since long before she was directly involved. But the way she sees it, they're a big enough part of life, and an immutable enough part, that it's hardly worth having an opinion on them - it isn't as though they're going to stop any time soon. At the same time, she's aware on at least some level that being a Tribute sucks; she's especially aware of this since enough Tributes started coming back to tell the tale. That's why she wanted to get involved with the Games; if people are going to fight and die for the Capitol, then she feels like the best thing she can do is help to give them the best chance possible.
What she wants out of life is small and simple. She wants stability. She wants peace. She wants the people she cares about to be happy and healthy, and she wants to be helpful. She doesn't want much. But those ambitions drove her this far, and continue to drive her, because they aren't really about her. Most of all, what she wants is to help people. And there are always ways she can be better-placed to do that, more people she can be there for. More people who can know her.
Setting: Given her history with the Games, Beck is well aware that being a Victor isn't easy, and has a lot of sympathy for the Tributes. She'll be very invested in making people feel comfortable at home, especially those assigned to her District. At the same time, her loyalty is definitely to the Capitol, where she grew up and knows everyone, so I'd like to play with that. She doesn't like the government of Panem particularly, but her view of the Capitol in particular is a much more grounded one than a lot of people in-game, so it could be interesting to see how that plays out. On the whole, though, she'll keep her head down and do things on a small scale; she's certainly not going to try and change the world any time soon.
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
The new format?
[There's only one right answer, of course. Any Capitolite knows that instinctively. Beck smiles a bright, winning smile, twisting her hair around her finger]
I love it! I mean, just look at the potential! All these new faces, new people to get to know and root for... I can't wait. And they'll all have something unique to bring to the show. Different cultures, different fashions, different stories...
[...a level of fighting ability that might make some of the slaughter just a little less sickening and sad...]
Of course, it's a big challenge. All those outfits to design, for all those people who might not even be the species we're used to? I'm telling you, my head's hurting just thinking about it. But what's life without a little challenge, am I right? And just think of it! All the new ideas they'll bring, and we can make them our own, wrap them up in that special Panem charm, make them really shine.
And I think it's genius to bring them in from so many different places, don't you? I mean, don't lie. I know you love other cultures, darling, I've seen you at my shows. [She winks, just this side of lewd, and laughs] I think it's going to be great. Just great. Television at its finest. What more could we possibly ask for?
Prose: She's had this nightmare before. Standing up in front of the Gamemakers, feeling naked and afraid, knowing she's got nothing to show them. Knowing that she's been found out; she doesn't belong here, never has. She's a Districter somewhere down deep, and a traitor's daughter. And what happens to traitor Districters?
She hopes that's all this is, just another of those nightmares. The ones she's sure everyone's had. Because it can't be real, can it? They don't use Panem citizens as Tributes any more. They certainly don't use Capitolites. So this can't be real.
But the Gamemakers are still there, staring down at her. She can feel the sweat beading on her skin, slick against her polymer tracksuit. In dreams, sometimes, she finds herself dancing for them, but this nightmare feels too real for that. This nightmare doesn't feel like it's going to end with vaguely-recognised faces laughing at her or Avoxes talking or the floor falling out from under her, and then with waking up sweaty and dishevelled in her own bed. This nightmare feels like it's going to keep on going, right to the bitter end.
So if it's real, if it's going to keep being real, what does she do? How do you win? She manages to find enough self-control to force one foot forward, then the other, stepping away from the Peacekeepers and into the middle of the room. You've still just got to dance for them, she reminds herself. It's just a different dance. Find the one they're looking for.
She rolls her shoulders back, loosens up her body like she would before a performance, and lets the Gamemakers fade into the background. Squaring off against one of the dummies, she takes a deep, grounding breath and puts on her performing face; the bright eyes, the slight, enticing half-smile. Just another dance. Kicks and punches and twists and ducks. All just another dance, another show.
And if the show's good enough, maybe the nightmare will end.
What is your character scored: She's not a Tribute, but if she was, she would probably be scored a 5 or 6. For a Capitolite, she's quite well-versed in hand-to-hand fighting; she lived in one of the less nice areas of the city for a lot of her life, and while she tends not to acknowledge it, there have been times when she's had to fight, especially as a traitor's daughter. She's also very fit and flexible; she still dances, although mostly for her own enjoyment these days, and she keeps in good shape. But she's not a fighter, and she's got no training with weapons.
Token: Again, not a Tribute, but if she was put into the Games, her token would probably be one of the necklaces she habitually wore while performing.
Additional information: It's unlikely that there'll be a doppelganger for Beck, since her PB is a model rather than an actress, but if someone did show up looking like her... well, honestly she'd think it was kind of cool. And that Tribute would get a lot of style tips from her.
Beck is from the Capitol, and both loves and hates it in the way that a lot of people both love and hate their homes. She's never lived anywhere else - hell, she's never even visited anywhere else - so she doesn't have much to compare it to. But she's seen the sordid underbelly of the city (and been part of it for a while) as well as the glittering socialites and high towers, and at this point, both are just so familiar to her that they're a part of her. She has no loyalty to the regime to speak of, considering it to have done very little for her, but she's fiercely loyal to the city and its people, and by extension to Panem as a whole. It isn't perfect, but then, where is?
