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Apr. 30th, 2013 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
okayokayP L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Stacey
OOC Journal:thepenguinred
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: No
Email + IM: littlegeekpenguin@gmail.com
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Scotty | Star Trek XI
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Mathilda Lando
Canon: Leon: The Professional
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Just before putting the potted plant in the ground, so about 5 minutes before the end of the movie.
Number: RGN me
Setting: 1994 Little Italy in New York City. That’s it. No superheroes or aliens or anything, just normal America at that time period, cheesy pop culture included.
History:
Mathilda is the middle child of three half-siblings, her older sister somewhere in her midteens and her younger brother four years old. The only parent all three kids share is their father, who apparently skips from woman to woman every few years and then keeps the kid when the relationship is done. Her dad is a low level gangster, acting a drug ‘holder’ for bigger operations, storing the drugs in his apartment until they’re ready for wholesale. He’s also a cheat, skimming off the top of orders and mixing in crap to cover for it in order to use/sell the stolen portion on his own. He does a poor job of keeping this away from his kids, as demonstrated by the fact Mathilda knows exactly where to look in the apartment to find the money under the floorboards. The father, mother, and older sister are all abusive to one degree or another, with Mathilda’s father beating her the most, but her mother standing idly by as Mathilda’s older sister slaps her for changing the TV channel. The only member of her family Mathilda likes is her younger brother, which she acts as a mother for in replacement of his own self-centered mother.
This happy family lives in a rundown New York apartment building. Just next door, it so happens, to one of the Italian mob’s most proficient hitmen, Leon. Mathilda and Leon have a few small conversations, one day leading to Mathilda offering to pick Leon up some milk at the grocery store while she runs errands. While she’s out, corrupt cops from the DEA that her father had skimmed drugs off of come to hunt him down and get their product back, in the process murdering Mathilda’s entire family. Mathilda returns from shopping towards the end of the shoot up, but notices the sentry standing at her door with a gun and, rather than going home or running, calmly walks forward and knocks on Leon’s door. Luckily for her, he lets her in.
Mathilda spends several weeks to months with Leon after that, cleaning,cooking, and generally helping around the house in exchange for him teaching her some of the basics of being a ‘cleaner’ for the mob (i.e a hitman). They have a rather complicated relationship, with the pre-teen Mathilda claiming she is in love with him and the emotionally stunted 40-something Leon having no idea how to handle this. More on this in her personality section. Leon tries several times to throw her out, one of these times nearly ending in Mathilda nearly killing herself in Russian Roulette, but she manages to convince him to keep her each time.
After a while with Leon, Mathilda returns to her old apartment (sneaking past watching cops) to retrieve her father’s hidden money stores and the stuffed toy rabbit that had been her little brother’s favorite toy. She sees the chalk outline on the floor of her brother’s body and, in a twist of luck, also overhears the location of the office of the corrupt DEA officer that killed her family. Eventually, Mathilda offers Leon the $20,000 she took from her father’s place to pay him to kill the men that killed her family. He refuses, but secretly has been won over into helping her take revenge against the corrupt cops that killed her family- and most importantly, her brother.
Mathilda is unsure Leon is willing to help her, however, and tries to enact revenge on her own, going down to the DEA’s office with a grocery bag full of guns and posing as a food delivery girl. She is caught by the officer that killed her father, and is nearly killed herself save that Leon found the note she left behind and rushes to rescue her. They return home, but the DEA officer is not willing to let things alone. He recruits a rather obscene number of police officers and raids the hotel Leon and Mathilda are staying at. Mathilda escapes thanks to Leon’s quick thinking, taking with her his prized house plant. Leon manages to nearly escape, but ends up being shot by the corrupt DEA officer. He takes his revenge by pulling the pin on a grenade, killing the DEA officer and fulfilling his goal to help Mathilda have revenge.
Mathilda, alone now, attempts to get hired by Leon’s old boss as his new hitman. The man chases Mathilda off, but promises to keep his word to Leon and give Mathilda the money Leon had earned over the years....with this rather obviously being a lie, as he gives her only $100 out of the tens of thousands owed to Leon and states she won’t get any more money until the next month. Mathilda ends up returning to a school for delinquent children that she had run away from just before the start of the movie, deciding that, now, after everything, she may do okay there.
Personality:
I've finished growing up, Léon. I just get oIder.
Raised in an abusive household and the only surviving member of a family brutally gunned down by a gang of corrupt cops, Mathilda wasn’t exactly a normal, well adjusted child even before she became a hitman-in-training. Mathilda faces the world with a level of pragmatism and maturity that, at times, borders on sociopathic (such as when she declares that getting fatally shot probably meant her sister finally lost the weight she’d been trying to drop). This maturity is partially real. Mathilda did act as the mother figure for a small child and essentially acts like a wife for Leon when she’s with him, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and teaching him to read. She’s good at picking up cues on when it’s time to lie and con people- though her delivery still needs work. In truth, most of her ability to con people relies on the fact she’s a cute looking scrap of a girl and, therefore, not really someone to consider a threat. Her actual lies fall apart pretty fast under scrutiny. If nothing else, Mathilda is very obviously more mentally mature than other kids her age, easily running circles around them verbally. She handles herself well in situations where a level head is absolutely needed for survival, able to slip past people who are trying to kill her by playing it cool.
While all of the above is true, Mathilda is in no way near done maturing. She considers herself a full adult, claiming to be 18 and even requesting to be hired as a fulltime, professional hitman at the end of the movie. The truth is, however, that Mathilda is still in many ways a child. She is incredibly melodramatic in the way that only teenagers can truly manage. She unironically makes claims such as ‘I want love... or death. That's it. Love or death’, followed by pointing a gun at her head to play Russian Roulette in order to get Leon to do what she wants. This habit of putting herself and others in extreme physical danger during these fits of drama is not uncommon, it should be noted. Mathilda got herself and Leon thrown out of at least two hotels in such dramatic fits, once by firing her gun randomly out the window of the apartment and another by telling the manager of the hotel that Leon (clearly at least three times her age) was her lover and not her father as he’d been posing as. These incidents, as well, happened because Mathilda wasn’t getting her way with Leon, and were performed in a dramatic act of- more or less- sulking rebellion. She can also have less dangerous fits of drama, though these, too, are usually aimed at getting Leon to do what she wants or as a direct reaction of her not getting her own way. Essentially, Mathilda is, in this respect, exactly what you would expect from a pre-teen: incredibly self-centered. This typical teenage behavior is just combined with a delinquent side that places a low value on human lives of people she doesn’t love and that has a rather large rage streak as a result of all the wrongs that have happened to her over the years.
Léon, I think I'm kind of falling in love with you. It's the first time for me, you know? In my stomach... It's all warm. I always had a knot there... and now it's gone.
As this is a major theme in the movie, it’s only fitting I cover Mathilda’s views on love and sex. This ties back into her maturity, where while she is far more mature than other kids her age she is nowhere near the level of maturity she believes herself to be. Mathilda’s only exposure to love and affection growing up was, sadly enough, from her baby brother that she took care of. Her father disliked and beat her, her half-sister and she didn’t get along, and her step-mothers hardly even noticed her. It was only her four year old brother that would cuddle with her and show love, meaning that Mathilda is only really familiar with the emotions that come with being the caretaker. When she is taken care of for the first time in her life, therefore, Mathilda doesn’t know how to interpret the sudden lack of constant stress and fear that came with living as part of the family of an abusive drug dealer. As she comes from a neighborhood where most girls her age were already having sex, and as she sees herself as a full blown adult, she thus interprets this feeling as pure romantic love. As a result she essentially propositions Leon outright during the movie, telling him she loves him and she wants her first time to be with someone she loves. Essentially, Mathilda doesn’t know how to handle people being affectionate to her unless she’s acting in a maternal role for them, and tends to follow her dramatic nature to take any crush or warm feelings she has and dial them up to eleven in response.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Twelve year old girl. She has training in being an assassin, but has never actually killed anyone. Still, she can fire a handgun and rifle like a pro, and is relatively hard to fully rattle. Otherwise she’s a normal preteen girl.
Inventory: 1 pack of cigarettes, Leon’s potted plant, her street clothes with choker and hat, sunglasses, her brother’s stuffed bunny, and the gun and bullets Leon gave her as a gift.
Appearance: Mathilda is played by a young Natalie Portman. She is pale and scrawny as anything, with dark hair and eyes. Sample image here
Age: 12
AU Clarification: N/A
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
She couldn’t hear it yet. One, two, three, four bullets into the chamber. Had to leave some empty ones to compare the sound against. Click the chamber shut, base of the palm, she hadn’t fired it yet so no worries about it being hot. Spin and-
Nope. She couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t tell if the chamber was loaded or empty. Leon had heard it, though. Had heard it from a whole foot away. Neat trick. Important one, too. Why just play the game when you could cheat at it?
Her feet didn’t even touch the ground from her seat on the table, alone and forgotten in some deep corner of the ship. Bare feet dangling in the stale air- not that it tasted stale, or smelled stale, but it had to be anyway, right? It was trapped in here, too. The same old air. From person to person to plant to people again. Round and round, like the bullets in the chamber. She snapped it open again, checked the bullets. Still four. No ghosts had gotten them yet. Shut again and spin-
Still the same. She couldn’t tell. So maybe she should just put it against her temple and find out anyway. There was no where to put roots down here. Why bother to keep growing inside a pot? That was no way to live.
Home or death. Simple as that.
Comms Sample:
Sample comm post in the test drive meme
Your Name: Stacey
OOC Journal:
thepenguinredUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?: No
Email + IM: littlegeekpenguin@gmail.com
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Scotty | Star Trek XI
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Mathilda Lando
Canon: Leon: The Professional
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Just before putting the potted plant in the ground, so about 5 minutes before the end of the movie.
Number: RGN me
Setting: 1994 Little Italy in New York City. That’s it. No superheroes or aliens or anything, just normal America at that time period, cheesy pop culture included.
History:
Mathilda is the middle child of three half-siblings, her older sister somewhere in her midteens and her younger brother four years old. The only parent all three kids share is their father, who apparently skips from woman to woman every few years and then keeps the kid when the relationship is done. Her dad is a low level gangster, acting a drug ‘holder’ for bigger operations, storing the drugs in his apartment until they’re ready for wholesale. He’s also a cheat, skimming off the top of orders and mixing in crap to cover for it in order to use/sell the stolen portion on his own. He does a poor job of keeping this away from his kids, as demonstrated by the fact Mathilda knows exactly where to look in the apartment to find the money under the floorboards. The father, mother, and older sister are all abusive to one degree or another, with Mathilda’s father beating her the most, but her mother standing idly by as Mathilda’s older sister slaps her for changing the TV channel. The only member of her family Mathilda likes is her younger brother, which she acts as a mother for in replacement of his own self-centered mother.
This happy family lives in a rundown New York apartment building. Just next door, it so happens, to one of the Italian mob’s most proficient hitmen, Leon. Mathilda and Leon have a few small conversations, one day leading to Mathilda offering to pick Leon up some milk at the grocery store while she runs errands. While she’s out, corrupt cops from the DEA that her father had skimmed drugs off of come to hunt him down and get their product back, in the process murdering Mathilda’s entire family. Mathilda returns from shopping towards the end of the shoot up, but notices the sentry standing at her door with a gun and, rather than going home or running, calmly walks forward and knocks on Leon’s door. Luckily for her, he lets her in.
Mathilda spends several weeks to months with Leon after that, cleaning,cooking, and generally helping around the house in exchange for him teaching her some of the basics of being a ‘cleaner’ for the mob (i.e a hitman). They have a rather complicated relationship, with the pre-teen Mathilda claiming she is in love with him and the emotionally stunted 40-something Leon having no idea how to handle this. More on this in her personality section. Leon tries several times to throw her out, one of these times nearly ending in Mathilda nearly killing herself in Russian Roulette, but she manages to convince him to keep her each time.
After a while with Leon, Mathilda returns to her old apartment (sneaking past watching cops) to retrieve her father’s hidden money stores and the stuffed toy rabbit that had been her little brother’s favorite toy. She sees the chalk outline on the floor of her brother’s body and, in a twist of luck, also overhears the location of the office of the corrupt DEA officer that killed her family. Eventually, Mathilda offers Leon the $20,000 she took from her father’s place to pay him to kill the men that killed her family. He refuses, but secretly has been won over into helping her take revenge against the corrupt cops that killed her family- and most importantly, her brother.
Mathilda is unsure Leon is willing to help her, however, and tries to enact revenge on her own, going down to the DEA’s office with a grocery bag full of guns and posing as a food delivery girl. She is caught by the officer that killed her father, and is nearly killed herself save that Leon found the note she left behind and rushes to rescue her. They return home, but the DEA officer is not willing to let things alone. He recruits a rather obscene number of police officers and raids the hotel Leon and Mathilda are staying at. Mathilda escapes thanks to Leon’s quick thinking, taking with her his prized house plant. Leon manages to nearly escape, but ends up being shot by the corrupt DEA officer. He takes his revenge by pulling the pin on a grenade, killing the DEA officer and fulfilling his goal to help Mathilda have revenge.
Mathilda, alone now, attempts to get hired by Leon’s old boss as his new hitman. The man chases Mathilda off, but promises to keep his word to Leon and give Mathilda the money Leon had earned over the years....with this rather obviously being a lie, as he gives her only $100 out of the tens of thousands owed to Leon and states she won’t get any more money until the next month. Mathilda ends up returning to a school for delinquent children that she had run away from just before the start of the movie, deciding that, now, after everything, she may do okay there.
Personality:
I've finished growing up, Léon. I just get oIder.
Raised in an abusive household and the only surviving member of a family brutally gunned down by a gang of corrupt cops, Mathilda wasn’t exactly a normal, well adjusted child even before she became a hitman-in-training. Mathilda faces the world with a level of pragmatism and maturity that, at times, borders on sociopathic (such as when she declares that getting fatally shot probably meant her sister finally lost the weight she’d been trying to drop). This maturity is partially real. Mathilda did act as the mother figure for a small child and essentially acts like a wife for Leon when she’s with him, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and teaching him to read. She’s good at picking up cues on when it’s time to lie and con people- though her delivery still needs work. In truth, most of her ability to con people relies on the fact she’s a cute looking scrap of a girl and, therefore, not really someone to consider a threat. Her actual lies fall apart pretty fast under scrutiny. If nothing else, Mathilda is very obviously more mentally mature than other kids her age, easily running circles around them verbally. She handles herself well in situations where a level head is absolutely needed for survival, able to slip past people who are trying to kill her by playing it cool.
While all of the above is true, Mathilda is in no way near done maturing. She considers herself a full adult, claiming to be 18 and even requesting to be hired as a fulltime, professional hitman at the end of the movie. The truth is, however, that Mathilda is still in many ways a child. She is incredibly melodramatic in the way that only teenagers can truly manage. She unironically makes claims such as ‘I want love... or death. That's it. Love or death’, followed by pointing a gun at her head to play Russian Roulette in order to get Leon to do what she wants. This habit of putting herself and others in extreme physical danger during these fits of drama is not uncommon, it should be noted. Mathilda got herself and Leon thrown out of at least two hotels in such dramatic fits, once by firing her gun randomly out the window of the apartment and another by telling the manager of the hotel that Leon (clearly at least three times her age) was her lover and not her father as he’d been posing as. These incidents, as well, happened because Mathilda wasn’t getting her way with Leon, and were performed in a dramatic act of- more or less- sulking rebellion. She can also have less dangerous fits of drama, though these, too, are usually aimed at getting Leon to do what she wants or as a direct reaction of her not getting her own way. Essentially, Mathilda is, in this respect, exactly what you would expect from a pre-teen: incredibly self-centered. This typical teenage behavior is just combined with a delinquent side that places a low value on human lives of people she doesn’t love and that has a rather large rage streak as a result of all the wrongs that have happened to her over the years.
Léon, I think I'm kind of falling in love with you. It's the first time for me, you know? In my stomach... It's all warm. I always had a knot there... and now it's gone.
As this is a major theme in the movie, it’s only fitting I cover Mathilda’s views on love and sex. This ties back into her maturity, where while she is far more mature than other kids her age she is nowhere near the level of maturity she believes herself to be. Mathilda’s only exposure to love and affection growing up was, sadly enough, from her baby brother that she took care of. Her father disliked and beat her, her half-sister and she didn’t get along, and her step-mothers hardly even noticed her. It was only her four year old brother that would cuddle with her and show love, meaning that Mathilda is only really familiar with the emotions that come with being the caretaker. When she is taken care of for the first time in her life, therefore, Mathilda doesn’t know how to interpret the sudden lack of constant stress and fear that came with living as part of the family of an abusive drug dealer. As she comes from a neighborhood where most girls her age were already having sex, and as she sees herself as a full blown adult, she thus interprets this feeling as pure romantic love. As a result she essentially propositions Leon outright during the movie, telling him she loves him and she wants her first time to be with someone she loves. Essentially, Mathilda doesn’t know how to handle people being affectionate to her unless she’s acting in a maternal role for them, and tends to follow her dramatic nature to take any crush or warm feelings she has and dial them up to eleven in response.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Twelve year old girl. She has training in being an assassin, but has never actually killed anyone. Still, she can fire a handgun and rifle like a pro, and is relatively hard to fully rattle. Otherwise she’s a normal preteen girl.
Inventory: 1 pack of cigarettes, Leon’s potted plant, her street clothes with choker and hat, sunglasses, her brother’s stuffed bunny, and the gun and bullets Leon gave her as a gift.
Appearance: Mathilda is played by a young Natalie Portman. She is pale and scrawny as anything, with dark hair and eyes. Sample image here
Age: 12
AU Clarification: N/A
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
She couldn’t hear it yet. One, two, three, four bullets into the chamber. Had to leave some empty ones to compare the sound against. Click the chamber shut, base of the palm, she hadn’t fired it yet so no worries about it being hot. Spin and-
Nope. She couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t tell if the chamber was loaded or empty. Leon had heard it, though. Had heard it from a whole foot away. Neat trick. Important one, too. Why just play the game when you could cheat at it?
Her feet didn’t even touch the ground from her seat on the table, alone and forgotten in some deep corner of the ship. Bare feet dangling in the stale air- not that it tasted stale, or smelled stale, but it had to be anyway, right? It was trapped in here, too. The same old air. From person to person to plant to people again. Round and round, like the bullets in the chamber. She snapped it open again, checked the bullets. Still four. No ghosts had gotten them yet. Shut again and spin-
Still the same. She couldn’t tell. So maybe she should just put it against her temple and find out anyway. There was no where to put roots down here. Why bother to keep growing inside a pot? That was no way to live.
Home or death. Simple as that.
Comms Sample:
Sample comm post in the test drive meme
