better run, better run

dramadramaduck is a small, slow sandbox-style game (no overarching mod plot, but very open to player plots) where characters are not forcibly pulled into the same setting, but rather remain on their own worlds and interact via a magical internet community. Many people choose to play through their character's canon events, but the game also allows for players to take their characters in AU directions if they so choose. I've played Clove here in DDD for about a year now, picking her up before her Games and playing through leading up to them. So far, she's been completely canon (or, well, pre-canon), but recently there's been plotting underway to heavily change things. Mir from Ar Tonelico is going to be launching a heavy weapons strike against Panem, hitting three major locations: the Capitol, the mountain military base in District 2 that Katniss nicknames "The Nut" in Mockingjay, and the force field around the 74th Hunger Games arena. After that, any further plotting is up in the air and open-ended. If this sounds like something you might be interested in joining in on, read on!

( the OOC side of things )

( the IC side of things )

ONE LAST THING

if you're interested in playing a Hunger Games character at DDD and don't want to participate in this altered timeline, that is 100% okay! Multiple alternate versions of canon universes are very possible in DDD. Characters can always be apped straight from canon, from which point you can either continue along with canon, or develop an AU of your own-- though remember that unless you're apping into an AU timeline that has already been developed in-game, you do need to at least start from a canon timepoint.

This is a test. Let's see if it works.

Anon commenting is ON, and I'm not going to take your crit any less seriously if you decide to take advantage of this (or if you're just a lurker or something)- unless, of course, your purpose for remaining anonymous is to simply bash and offer no advice on how to improve. Concrit isn't trolling in my mind; "LOL GTFO U SUXX0R" is.

Player nickname: Iddy
Player DW: corknut
Way to contact you:
Email: ZieglerFan719@gmail.com
AIM: hellooo darlink
Plurk: ihdreniel
Other: n/a
Are you at least 15?: Y
Current Characters:
Azula: embersandashes

Character: Clove
Fandom: The Hunger Games Trilogy

History:
Clove is a young girl from District 2 of Panem. Very little is known about her own personal history, though based on what we know about her home world and her district, some things can be inferred. The higher-numbered districts are far more well-off than the lower-numbered ones; therefore, while their citizens are still oppressed by the Capitol, they live generally comfortable lives. District 2 in particular is noted as being very battle-minded-- as well as loyal to the Capitol-- and along with most of the other children in her district, Clove was likely trained in fighting from a very young age, with the expectation that she would make a go of volunteering for the Hunger Games when she was older. Her age is never mentioned in the books, though in the films, she appears to be quite young (the movie tie-in book The Hunger Games: Tribute Guide gives her age as 15). It's not known how she ended up competing when she was relatively young-- the cut-off age for tributes is 18, and most "Career tributes" volunteer when they're closer to that age-- but it's possible that her cockiness led her to not want to wait, or that her name was drawn and she chose not to allow an older Career to take her place and steal the glory. Districts 1, 2, and 4 especially see competing in the Hunger Games to be a great honor, and so Clove was almost definitely raised to anticipate and look forward to this "opportunity" to bring honor and recognition to herself, her family, and her district. Her actions reflect this: while she's barely mentioned in the book until the characters enter the arena, in the film she always appears calm, confident, and collected-- and often excited!-- during her preparation for the Games.

Speaking of the Games! As mentioned, Clove is reaped as the District 2 female tribute for the 74th annual Hunger Games. After (presumably) saying goodbye to her friends and family, she's whisked away on a train to a place that she'd previously only ever seen on television: the ultra-modern and super-impressive Capitol. Being from a richer district, the contrast between the Capitol and her home wouldn't be as stark as it would for, say, tributes from 11 and 12, but it's still made clear that all citizens-- no matter where they're from-- view it with some level of fascination and awe. The level of attention and goods (clothes, food, gizmos and gadgets) lavished on her, while expected, would also be new. And it would all be hers-- at least, for a few days, until she entered the arena.

For the most part, the tributes' lives are very structured prior to the start of the games. They don't get a lot of free time to themselves, outside of the evenings-- which is fine for most (Clove included), as they would prefer to spend as much time as possible training and preparing for what lies ahead. Immediately after arriving in the Capitol, they're all taken to be made up by their individual stylists and prep teams, who create costumes for them to wear in the Tribute Parade and Opening Ceremonies later that night. Clove is dressed up in a golden gladiator-style outfit, but the show is completely stolen by District 12's Peeta and Katniss, whose costumes are literally on fire. As catching attention and making a lasting impression is extremely important for all the tributes, this is where Clove's intense hatred of Katniss (more shown in the book than in the movie) likely starts.

After being formally presented to the rest of the world, the tributes' preparation and training begins. Clove obviously makes much use of her knives, and as her training preparation score of 10 (out of 12) shows, the Gamemakers are impressed. However, Katniss shows her up yet again by outscoring her with an 11, which fuels her jealousy even more (again, this is only in the book, though I'll still be incorporating it into my characterization because the movie does nothing to contradict it).

The last major event Clove goes through before the Games begin is a televised one-on-one interview. Unfortunately, neither the film nor the book shows any of it, but The Hunger Games: Tribute Guide describes her interview style as "sarcastic mixed with sweetness". (This is interesting, because we don't really see much sweetness from her at all anywhere else.)

The day after the interviews-- several days after arriving in the Capitol-- all the tributes are flown to the arena via hovercraft. As expected, Clove does well initially; she's able to grab some supplies, several knives, and a jacket with straps on the inside that she uses to hide and secure said knives. For the rest of the story, we mostly see her traveling around with the group that she joins up with: an allied pack made up mostly of Career tributes. They storm around dominating the place, killing other kids, mocking their deaths, and generally being assholes (even knowing-- or maybe even especially knowing-- that they were brought up to consider this normal, it's pretty creepy to watch/read this behavior juxtaposed with shots of them chatting, goofing off, and having fun, which they seem to do a lot of in their downtime). They hoard a whole mess of supplies for themselves, allowing a boy from District 3 to join their pack under the condition that he help them booby-trap their stockpile with mines. Unfortunately for them, other tributes are able to figure out their trick; the girl from District 5 regularly hops around the mines and steals from them, and Rue and Katniss end up purposefully blowing it all up.

All in all, Clove ends up being one of the last tributes alive... but she does die, in the end. After nearly all the other tributes are dead, it's announced that two winners can be crowned, as long as they come from the same district. After hearing this, Clove and her district partner Cato likely decide to stick together in the same way that Peeta and Katniss do-- though for whatever reason, Clove ends up back at the Cornucopia (where the games all started, and where a supply drop-off had just occurred) alone. Seeing Katniss there, also alone, she viciously attacks her-- pinning her down, taunting her, and threatening to torture her. After bringing up the name of Rue, the District 11 girl who had been Katniss's friend and ally, the District 11 boy (who had apparently been hiding nearby) appears out of nowhere and grabs Clove, angrily asking if she had been the one to kill Rue. She says that she didn't, but he still kills her. This is where the book's version of events slightly differs from the movie; in the film, he smacks her head against the side of the Cornucopia several times until her neck is snapped and she's killed instantly; in the book, he dents her temple with a small rock, and she stays alive long enough for Cato to come and stay with her as she dies. Because I'm taking her from the movie, I'll go with the former version of events just for consistency's sake.

Personality:
The war-like mentality of Career tributes is extremely evident in Clove. While training and being mentored, she's 100% serious and focused, not allowing anything to faze or distract her. She's incredibly desensitized to death and pain in general-- during group training she laughs at tributes who are struggling (probably mentally marking them as easy pickings), and during the Games themselves, she strikes her fellow competitors down with neither hesitation nor remorse. She has a jealous streak, as is obvious by her reaction of hatred when Katniss, the female District 12 tribute, receives a training score of 11 in comparison to Clove's own 10. She's also big into taunting the opposition: she (along with the other Careers) jeers at Katniss as she climbs a tree to escape, and makes fun of the way other tributes die. In what is probably her worst moment, she pins Katniss to the ground and teases her about the death of her ally (a little girl only a few years younger than Clove herself), and expresses her intent to give everyone watching "a good show" by killing her slowly and painfully. When she's in this sort of environment, she can be absolutely terrifying; there's a reason that there are portions of the fanbase that despise her and see her as a wholly unsympathetic character.

It's true that most, if not all, of Clove's mentality and behavior can be explained by her upbringing and the general mindset of her district, but she's still a ruthless killer who would laugh in the face of anyone who tried to woobify her. If she had grown up in a more "normal" setting, she might very well have been a playground bully who eventually grew up and grew out of it. Unfortunately, she's in this setting, and so instead of these behaviors being discouraged and punished, they were encouraged and praised, leading to the Clove we see today. She genuinely sees the Games as an exciting chance to prove herself, and is proud to have been chosen as a tribute. Is she a completely batshit psycho who's going to be running around trying to kill everybody for shits and giggles? I personally don't think so (not unless she's put in an arena and told that she has to do so to win, anyway). But is she vicious, cruel and often sadistic towards her enemies, and both mentally and emotionally prepared to hurt and/or kill if she deems it necessary? Hell yes.

Unfortunately, we don't really see anything at all about what she's like in her downtime. She forms a quick alliance with her fellow Career tributes and is often seen laughing and having fun with them, but again, this is all during or in direct preparation for the Games, so everything is somewhat tainted by that. She had a somewhat closer relationship to Cato, the older boy who was her fellow District 2 tribute: as she was about to be killed she screamed out for him, and in the book he noticeably grieved and stayed by her side as she died. It's possible that they knew each other before the Reaping, but again, it's never actually stated. I'd argue that she's perfectly capable of relaxing, forming genuine friendships, and having positive feelings towards people, but it would take a lot of development (as in years of development, most likely) to get her out of the frame of mind in which she was raised. Self-sacrifice is out, and if push came to shove, she'd prioritize her own life over the lives of those around her-- even over the lives of those she cared about.

On the other hand, she'd never expect someone to give their life for her. So at least there's that.

Other:
If accepted, I'd take her primarily from the movie, since she gets a bit more info and dialogue/focus scenes there than she does in the book (though this won't matter much; the only major book-to-movie change for her involves her death scene). AND AS IS TYPICAL FOR ME, I'd take her from pre-series, and start moving through her canon when I was ready (I'd probably wait at least six months, because once canon gets going it doesn't take long to finish). When she died, she'd be dropped.

Additional Links:
The Hunger Games at Wikipedia
Clove at the Hunger Games wiki
District 2 at the Hunger Games wiki
A fan essay about District 2 and career training-- this is not canon (and actually filled with headcanon, not all of which I would adopt into my own personal backstory/playing), but it's awesome, and does an amazing job of explaining what the mentality behind this kind of thing might be without excusing or minimizing it; it humanizes and even sympathizes with the careers without downplaying the horrible things that they do, which is something that I'd like to strive for in playing Clove!

First Person:
You want to know how I got here? I'll tell you the story. The real story, not the one that's been edited and tweaked by media specialists and PR people. There's the version that was shown live on TV, the version that'll be and then there's my version, that no one else knows because they weren't inside my head. That's the one I'll tell you.

I was reaped. They drew my name, right there in front of everybody. I didn't have to volunteer, I was just called. That was it.

There's always chaos during the reaping in our district, because there are so many volunteers, mostly eighteen-year-olds during their last year. This one wasn't any different. I hadn't even made it up to the stage before all the jock girls started screaming at the announcer.

"I volunteer!" "I volunteer!" "Pick me; I want this!" "I'll go for you, Clove!"

But no one could take my place if I didn't let them. They all just assumed I would, because I'm not eighteen yet. They assumed I'd want to take a few more years to train before making a go for the Games.

They assumed wrong.

Think about it. Only one girl's name is drawn every year. Then tons of others scream to take their place. If you're not reaped, you maybe have a one in fifty shot to get picked. But if you are? Then you're going, simple as that. I wasn't going to just pass up that chance, even if it came when I was fifteen.

So when they said "I volunteer!", I smiled... and said, "No".

Third Person:
It was all exactly like they'd said it would be.

Every child in District 2 grew up hearing the stories of the District 2 victors, told almost like legends-- most of the focus was put on the arena and the glory they had attained, of course, but their experiences in the Capitol weren't neglected. The splendor, the state-of-the-art training equipment, the food. Every bit of it was breathtaking, but while she certainly planned to enjoy herself, she wasn't going to let herself get caught up and carried away. That happened to people sometimes, she had heard-- and it made for a very rude awakening when they entered the arena, after five days of having access to all that they could want or need, and had to fight for everything; anything.

Clove wasn't going to fall for that. She had other things on her mind.

The night before the Games, she couldn't sleep; anticipation (but not fear; never fear) kept her awake long after dark. The repetitive motion of throwing a knife at the same spot on the wall relaxed her (weapons weren't allowed outside of the designated training areas, but it hadn't been hard to smuggle a piece of cutlery from the dinner table). Every time she threw, she pictured one person's face; repeated one word in her head.

Eleven.

Eleven.

Eleven.