THE GAMES APP
Sep. 8th, 2013 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dividedgirlofmineOUT of CHARACTER
Name: Bii
Other characters: Karkat,not Othar anymore, Claudia
IN CHARACTER
Name: Susannah Dean (aka Oddetta Holmes and Detta Walker)
Fandom: The Dark Tower
Canon point/AU: Just as she goes through the Unfound Door
Journal:dividedgirlofmine
PB: Naomie Harris
History: Here you go!
Presentation:
So the thing about the woman who calls herself Susannah Dean is that she's not just one woman. She's three: Odetta, Detta, and finally Susannah. Susannah is the dominant personality and probably the closest to the original pre-brick personality, but she's also the last of Odetta/Detta/Susannah's personalities to show up. When Roland forces Odetta and Detta to acknowledge each other, Susannah is born from their fusion and integration. There'll be a little more on how this relates to Susannah's motivations in the next section, but this is about how Susannah presents herself and has presented herself over the course of her life.
And to do that, it's best to start with Odetta.
Odetta Susannah Holmes grew during the forties and fifties as a wealthy trust fund baby, mostly in New York City. She was born in the Deep South, but once her father got rich—which happened within a few years after the brick incident—he took the family northwards. Once there, he did his best to put the past behind him and concentrate on giving his wife and daughter the best money could buy. Odetta grew up to be amazingly unspoiled despite all this. Well-educated, but not snobbish, Odetta was polite and kind and even-tempered. If you looked up the term “model minority” in the dictionary, it would probably have the face of Odetta Holmes next to it. Moreover, she was beautiful. Odetta has been described as the kind of woman that anyone would fall in love with. She was almost too good to be true.
In a way she was too good to be true.
Because after the accident with the brick, there was always Detta.
Detta Susannah Walker was the shadow side of Odetta Holmes, whose existence was that of a series of disconnected wickedness and whose manifestation in their shared body was often brought on by stress in Odetta's life. Where Odetta was kind and gentle, Detta was mean and harsh. Odetta was educated and well-spoken, but Detta acted ignorant and talked like a refugee from a minstrel show. As part of the civil rights movement, Odetta practiced nonviolence and civil disobedience, but Detta was out to hurt any 'honky mahfah' she could get her hands on. Detta Walker was out to break anything and anyone she could. Although she shared Odetta's face, on her it became ugly.
And then Roland showed the two women to one another and gave them the chance to integrate. And that is where Susannah Dean was born.
Of the two women she was born from, Susannah is probably closer in personality and presentation to Odetta, seeing as even after her integration her Detta-self still manifests itself strongly from time to time while her Odetta-self seems to have been much more well-integrated into her new Susannah-self. And Susannah does share Odetta's kindness and ability to love and love well. But she's not exactly the same woman she was as Odetta either. Susannah, unlike the steady Odetta, can be very mercurial when it comes to her moods. Her language also shifts sometimes, from her educated Odetta tones to slangier, less 'correct' English. And she's much more of a badass.
A badass without legs. Because that's not really something you can ignore when it comes to Susannah. She's visibly disabled. And while a lot of her problems could be solved with robotic prosthesis—and she probably will use her first killmoney to get herself a pair of forspecial blue-and-white porcelain legs—it's pretty likely that that kind of thing isn't going to be going with her into the Arena—and she probably won't get her chair either. It's very likely that most of the sponsors and viewers will write her off in her first arena. Any sponsors she does get will be supporting her out of sympathy and sentimentality—something her status as a grieving widow will only encourage—and none of them will expect her to last longer than five minutes.
Boy are they gonna be surprised.
Motivations: And what's going on on the inside?
So the thing about Susannah is that she's broken—but she's functionally broken. She spent more than two decades of her life as two women—neither of whom knew the other existed and both of whom made up memories to fill in the blanks in their lives while the other was in control—and now she's a third woman and as close as she'll probably ever get to to being whole. She needs both of the women she was: Detta to fight and Odetta for the things, like love, that are worth fighting for.
And really, in one or two ways Odetta and Detta were very alike. Both women resented injustice and strove to fight against it in their own way—for Odetta it was civil disobedience, for Detta it was stealing from the white folk who'd done her people wrong and fucking with the rich whiteboys who'd no doubt grow up to fuck over blackfolk even more. Susannah also resents injustice, but her way of fighting against it is the way of the gun.
And that would be because of Roland and his quest for the Dark Tower. Like Eddie and Jake, although she started out seeing it as Roland's quest, after a while it became her own as well. Her own quest to help save it and all the worlds with it. And after Eddie and Jake died, one after the other, and the safety of the tower was assured, she ended up going onward with Roland toward the Tower because with so much of her found family, her ka-tet, gone what else was there to do?
Except, maybe, listen to a dream that tells her she can find Jake and Eddie again, if only she can go through the right door. Because as important as the Tower might be, when push came to shove being with the people she considers family is much more important to Susannah. If things had gone according to canon, Susannah would be getting her reunion with the Jake and Eddie of that world, would finally be allowed to rest because Lord knows she's tired.
But instead she ends up in Panem where there is no rest, no happy ending reunion.
You better believe she's angry.
Setting:
At the point at which I'm grabbing Susannah, she's just gone through the Unfound Door in the belief—stemming from some dreams of hers—that it will take her to a New York, where versions of Eddie and Jake—her dead husband and equally dead young friend—will be there to greet her. In canon, it actually does and they do have a weird reunion-ish thing. For the purpose of the Games, we'll assume the Capitol grabbed her almost immediately after she went through the door—soon enough that she'll probably assume that the New York she was briefly in was a trick—as Roland warned her it might be—and that the door really lead to the Capitol. Accordingly, she's going to feel like a right fool.
And then there's the whole part where there is a version of her husband here—but not only does he not know her, he's still a junkie. Great.
And the whole murder game thing. But you know.
Oddly enough, I don't think the experience of being a tribute will be detrimental to her mental condition. In the about-a-year that she travelled with Roland, Susannah got quite used to being at the center of violent events. As for having her agency stripped away, one would think that having your body hijacked by an ancient demon in order to bear a half-spider monster child also qualifies. She ought to be able to handle the games without fracturing her sanity any more than she already has. On the other hand, while meeting her dead husband's counterpart who doesn't know her won't hurt her sanity any worse, it will totally break her heart a little.And I will drink her tears. Her delicious, delicious tears.
(Oh yeah, almost forgot. In her former life as Odetta Holmes, Susannah was involved in the civil rights movement, so it would be pretty cool if she could end up aiding the rebellion eventually.)
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
[The black woman who stares into the eye of the camera is in her early thirties. She's very beautiful, but she also looks tired. When she speaks, her words are in a polite, polished voice and accent. Here is a woman who is used to having to make a good impression on others.]
What is there to say? I fought. I killed. I died. I lasted longer than probably any of you thought I would, but I still died.
I didn't expect to end up here. More like at the clearing at the end of the path, as an old friend might call it.
[She looks down, then, perhaps thinking of the afterlife she's seemed to have avoided. If you could read her mind you would know she is thinking of that, of a place where she could be with Eddie—her Eddie, not this District boy who doesn't know her—Eddie and Jake and everyone else she's loved and lost over the years.
When she raises her head there's an odd light in her eyes.]
I'm here still. I guess you're gonna send me in again in a while. Until it's no longer funny to watch this crippled ol' Negro lady keep herself alive. Until you're ready to let me die for good and true.
[Her beautiful face twists, becoming suddenly ugly, becoming another woman's face entirely, because for this moment she is another woman—and this other woman is as mean as a snake.
The video abruptly cuts out.]
Prose:
Roland was right. Roland was right, damn-his-eyes. No sooner had she'd roded Ho Fat III into the Central Park Winter, no sooner than she had heard the click of the Unfound Door closing behind her, had Susannah Dean blacked out and woke up here, wherever this was, though she was fairly certain it wasn't All-World. But if it was an America, it was a pretty wildly different America at that. She didn't think they drank Coca-Cola or Nozz-a-la here.
It certainly wasn't Central Park, with Jake and Eddie offering her hot cocoa mit schlag.
They'd taken Roland's gun from her before she'd awoken, dressed her in clean clothing. Told her she was here to play in a death game. Then they'd wheeled her into this room where they'd dumped her on the floor and told her to show the Gamemakers what she was capable of.
Unfortunately, all the weapons were located in easy reach of of people with legs and not stumps cut off at the knee.
She'd gotten her hands on a sharpened disc, eventually, which had reminded her a little of the oriza plates. Flew like them too, she found out, as the disk found its way into the breast of one of the man-shaped targets.
She looked up. One or two were watching still, but most of the so-called Gamemakers were more intent on helping themselves to what looked like a turkey stuffed with two smaller birds than actually watching her perform.
“Honky mahfahs,” Detta Walker muttered.
What is your character scored: Somewhere in the 7-8 range. But Bii, I can hear you say, this lady has multiple personalities and no legs. Why score her so high? To you I say that Susannah Dean is a gunslinger, trained by Roland of Gilead, and thus she is very good at the whole fighting and killing thing. She doesn't particularly need a gun, either—she and Jake did perfectly well with Orizas during the fight against the Wolves of the Calla. Also, she's a very likable women when she's not being Detta, which will help for getting sponsors.
Name: Bii
Other characters: Karkat,
IN CHARACTER
Name: Susannah Dean (aka Oddetta Holmes and Detta Walker)
Fandom: The Dark Tower
Canon point/AU: Just as she goes through the Unfound Door
Journal:
dividedgirlofminePB: Naomie Harris
History: Here you go!
Presentation:
So the thing about the woman who calls herself Susannah Dean is that she's not just one woman. She's three: Odetta, Detta, and finally Susannah. Susannah is the dominant personality and probably the closest to the original pre-brick personality, but she's also the last of Odetta/Detta/Susannah's personalities to show up. When Roland forces Odetta and Detta to acknowledge each other, Susannah is born from their fusion and integration. There'll be a little more on how this relates to Susannah's motivations in the next section, but this is about how Susannah presents herself and has presented herself over the course of her life.
And to do that, it's best to start with Odetta.
Odetta Susannah Holmes grew during the forties and fifties as a wealthy trust fund baby, mostly in New York City. She was born in the Deep South, but once her father got rich—which happened within a few years after the brick incident—he took the family northwards. Once there, he did his best to put the past behind him and concentrate on giving his wife and daughter the best money could buy. Odetta grew up to be amazingly unspoiled despite all this. Well-educated, but not snobbish, Odetta was polite and kind and even-tempered. If you looked up the term “model minority” in the dictionary, it would probably have the face of Odetta Holmes next to it. Moreover, she was beautiful. Odetta has been described as the kind of woman that anyone would fall in love with. She was almost too good to be true.
In a way she was too good to be true.
Because after the accident with the brick, there was always Detta.
Detta Susannah Walker was the shadow side of Odetta Holmes, whose existence was that of a series of disconnected wickedness and whose manifestation in their shared body was often brought on by stress in Odetta's life. Where Odetta was kind and gentle, Detta was mean and harsh. Odetta was educated and well-spoken, but Detta acted ignorant and talked like a refugee from a minstrel show. As part of the civil rights movement, Odetta practiced nonviolence and civil disobedience, but Detta was out to hurt any 'honky mahfah' she could get her hands on. Detta Walker was out to break anything and anyone she could. Although she shared Odetta's face, on her it became ugly.
And then Roland showed the two women to one another and gave them the chance to integrate. And that is where Susannah Dean was born.
Of the two women she was born from, Susannah is probably closer in personality and presentation to Odetta, seeing as even after her integration her Detta-self still manifests itself strongly from time to time while her Odetta-self seems to have been much more well-integrated into her new Susannah-self. And Susannah does share Odetta's kindness and ability to love and love well. But she's not exactly the same woman she was as Odetta either. Susannah, unlike the steady Odetta, can be very mercurial when it comes to her moods. Her language also shifts sometimes, from her educated Odetta tones to slangier, less 'correct' English. And she's much more of a badass.
A badass without legs. Because that's not really something you can ignore when it comes to Susannah. She's visibly disabled. And while a lot of her problems could be solved with robotic prosthesis—and she probably will use her first killmoney to get herself a pair of forspecial blue-and-white porcelain legs—it's pretty likely that that kind of thing isn't going to be going with her into the Arena—and she probably won't get her chair either. It's very likely that most of the sponsors and viewers will write her off in her first arena. Any sponsors she does get will be supporting her out of sympathy and sentimentality—something her status as a grieving widow will only encourage—and none of them will expect her to last longer than five minutes.
Boy are they gonna be surprised.
Motivations: And what's going on on the inside?
So the thing about Susannah is that she's broken—but she's functionally broken. She spent more than two decades of her life as two women—neither of whom knew the other existed and both of whom made up memories to fill in the blanks in their lives while the other was in control—and now she's a third woman and as close as she'll probably ever get to to being whole. She needs both of the women she was: Detta to fight and Odetta for the things, like love, that are worth fighting for.
And really, in one or two ways Odetta and Detta were very alike. Both women resented injustice and strove to fight against it in their own way—for Odetta it was civil disobedience, for Detta it was stealing from the white folk who'd done her people wrong and fucking with the rich whiteboys who'd no doubt grow up to fuck over blackfolk even more. Susannah also resents injustice, but her way of fighting against it is the way of the gun.
And that would be because of Roland and his quest for the Dark Tower. Like Eddie and Jake, although she started out seeing it as Roland's quest, after a while it became her own as well. Her own quest to help save it and all the worlds with it. And after Eddie and Jake died, one after the other, and the safety of the tower was assured, she ended up going onward with Roland toward the Tower because with so much of her found family, her ka-tet, gone what else was there to do?
Except, maybe, listen to a dream that tells her she can find Jake and Eddie again, if only she can go through the right door. Because as important as the Tower might be, when push came to shove being with the people she considers family is much more important to Susannah. If things had gone according to canon, Susannah would be getting her reunion with the Jake and Eddie of that world, would finally be allowed to rest because Lord knows she's tired.
But instead she ends up in Panem where there is no rest, no happy ending reunion.
You better believe she's angry.
Setting:
At the point at which I'm grabbing Susannah, she's just gone through the Unfound Door in the belief—stemming from some dreams of hers—that it will take her to a New York, where versions of Eddie and Jake—her dead husband and equally dead young friend—will be there to greet her. In canon, it actually does and they do have a weird reunion-ish thing. For the purpose of the Games, we'll assume the Capitol grabbed her almost immediately after she went through the door—soon enough that she'll probably assume that the New York she was briefly in was a trick—as Roland warned her it might be—and that the door really lead to the Capitol. Accordingly, she's going to feel like a right fool.
And then there's the whole part where there is a version of her husband here—but not only does he not know her, he's still a junkie. Great.
And the whole murder game thing. But you know.
Oddly enough, I don't think the experience of being a tribute will be detrimental to her mental condition. In the about-a-year that she travelled with Roland, Susannah got quite used to being at the center of violent events. As for having her agency stripped away, one would think that having your body hijacked by an ancient demon in order to bear a half-spider monster child also qualifies. She ought to be able to handle the games without fracturing her sanity any more than she already has. On the other hand, while meeting her dead husband's counterpart who doesn't know her won't hurt her sanity any worse, it will totally break her heart a little.
(Oh yeah, almost forgot. In her former life as Odetta Holmes, Susannah was involved in the civil rights movement, so it would be pretty cool if she could end up aiding the rebellion eventually.)
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
[The black woman who stares into the eye of the camera is in her early thirties. She's very beautiful, but she also looks tired. When she speaks, her words are in a polite, polished voice and accent. Here is a woman who is used to having to make a good impression on others.]
What is there to say? I fought. I killed. I died. I lasted longer than probably any of you thought I would, but I still died.
I didn't expect to end up here. More like at the clearing at the end of the path, as an old friend might call it.
[She looks down, then, perhaps thinking of the afterlife she's seemed to have avoided. If you could read her mind you would know she is thinking of that, of a place where she could be with Eddie—her Eddie, not this District boy who doesn't know her—Eddie and Jake and everyone else she's loved and lost over the years.
When she raises her head there's an odd light in her eyes.]
I'm here still. I guess you're gonna send me in again in a while. Until it's no longer funny to watch this crippled ol' Negro lady keep herself alive. Until you're ready to let me die for good and true.
[Her beautiful face twists, becoming suddenly ugly, becoming another woman's face entirely, because for this moment she is another woman—and this other woman is as mean as a snake.
The video abruptly cuts out.]
Prose:
Roland was right. Roland was right, damn-his-eyes. No sooner had she'd roded Ho Fat III into the Central Park Winter, no sooner than she had heard the click of the Unfound Door closing behind her, had Susannah Dean blacked out and woke up here, wherever this was, though she was fairly certain it wasn't All-World. But if it was an America, it was a pretty wildly different America at that. She didn't think they drank Coca-Cola or Nozz-a-la here.
It certainly wasn't Central Park, with Jake and Eddie offering her hot cocoa mit schlag.
They'd taken Roland's gun from her before she'd awoken, dressed her in clean clothing. Told her she was here to play in a death game. Then they'd wheeled her into this room where they'd dumped her on the floor and told her to show the Gamemakers what she was capable of.
Unfortunately, all the weapons were located in easy reach of of people with legs and not stumps cut off at the knee.
She'd gotten her hands on a sharpened disc, eventually, which had reminded her a little of the oriza plates. Flew like them too, she found out, as the disk found its way into the breast of one of the man-shaped targets.
She looked up. One or two were watching still, but most of the so-called Gamemakers were more intent on helping themselves to what looked like a turkey stuffed with two smaller birds than actually watching her perform.
“Honky mahfahs,” Detta Walker muttered.
What is your character scored: Somewhere in the 7-8 range. But Bii, I can hear you say, this lady has multiple personalities and no legs. Why score her so high? To you I say that Susannah Dean is a gunslinger, trained by Roland of Gilead, and thus she is very good at the whole fighting and killing thing. She doesn't particularly need a gun, either—she and Jake did perfectly well with Orizas during the fight against the Wolves of the Calla. Also, she's a very likable women when she's not being Detta, which will help for getting sponsors.
