Riley Paradigm

Name: Riley Paradigm

Age: 14

Member of: District 3

What profession are you (optional): Student, at the moment.

Appearance: Riley has light blonde hair that very slightly waves at the bottom. Her eyes are a hazel color with lots of green and blue mixed in. She's very pale, with cheeks that have a permanent pink tinge to them. Riley often has a smile on her face, and an expression that's a cross between curious and surprised. Her face doesn't have a single mark visible to the naked eye, but around the back of her neck is a pink, puckered scar from when she got wire wrapped around her neck. Fortunately, the scar only shows on the back.

Personality: In a word, Riley is friendly. While slightly distant when you first meet her, she soon becomes a trustworthy friend. She's always somewhat quiet, but she does like to talk to her friends. The only time she really gets talking is when she stands up for something she believes in. Riley will not sit down and take being shouted down in an argument. Riley also has a great sense of humor, and does not get offended easily. While not so great at cracking the jokes herself, she makes obscurely funny jokes and is always up for a laugh. She's also exceptionally smart and, truly, a nerd. She is obsessed with anything one can get obsessed with in these times-books that are out, TV shows that aren't Capitol related. That's one thing Riley someday wants to do-she wants to shoot down the Hunger Games. While scared to death of them, and having the great fortune of never having lost someone in them, she is sickened by them, by the fact that these children actually comply with the Capitol. Yes, in a way, she is angrier at the children in the Games, especially the victors, although they aren't all bad people, Riley is convinced they are all murderers. Riley also has a knack for attracting trouble. She's very, very mischievous. Riley also enjoys music. She loves to sing to the mockingjays, although they don't always sing back because Riley's so quiet.

History: Riley comes from a great, supportive family. She has her father and her mother both alive, although her mother accidentally electrocuted herself once and has been slightly...er, off since then. Riley has an older brother, Caleb, 19, an older sister, Carin, 17, then her, twin younger sisters Allison and Taylor, 12, and one last younger brother, Jacob, 9. As you can see, she comes from a very large family. However, Caleb no longer lives with the family, as he is 19 and now lives on his own, although he visits often. Her father works in the technology factories, and after the accident, her mother now goes and helps at the bakery. Riley also took up the practive Caleb left behind, hunting the animals on the very edge of the woods, not going so far that she cannot hear if someone is coming into the woods. However, living in the technology district, the fence is always on. Riley, being Riley, solved this problem and cut a hole in the fence, large enough for her to slide under it without electrocuting herself, stratigically placed behind some bushes and various rocks so that no lurking Peacekeeper becomes suspicious.

Well here I go, I hope you have fun answering this. And sorry if my questions are sucky.

1. Does her family knows Riley hunts?

2. Does she have any friend in particular she's close to?

3. What is Riley's relationship with her family in general?

4. How does Riley feel about her mom's condition?

5. Has Riley ever argued with her family or friends? If so, why?

wow... 5 questions, sorry about that o.o

Oooh...questions! Yay!

1. Does her family knows Riley hunts?
Yes, she is the main provider of meat for the family. Strangly enough, no one really has a problem with her hunting, what with all the eighty thousand laws she's probably breaking, all punishable by death.

2. Does she have any friend in particular she's close to?
While Riley has lots of friends, she only has two really close friends. One is a girl named Gwendolyn and the other a boy named Luke. They are really the only people she trusts, although a lot of people trust her. However, her family really is the one things she relies on.

3. What is Riley's relationship with her family in general?
Riley is very close to everyone in her family, especially her siblings. She's definately closest to Caleb and Allison, though she will tell you that she loves them all equally. Frankly, to her, Carin is the pantomime of the annoying older sister that loves to gossip. Taylor, the other half of Allison, is very distant, as she has...erm, well, she's played with one too many electrical circuits. And Jacob doesn't talk. He can't, like an Avox. Their mother was pregnant with him when she was electrocuted, so Jacob doesn't have the ability to talk. Riley's also very close to her father, and while this she won't admit, she's slightly scared of her mother, because she's so breakable and while she's not really the same person, she's afraid that she'll mess something up.

4. How does Riley feel about her mom's condition?
Riley's scared of it, frankly. She's afraid of the insanity, of the inability to focus and remember. Riley doesn't daydream, or dream, anymore, because now she's afraid that she'll never come back if she does. While she's a fairly happy person, her mother's condition haunts her waking thoughts, in passing. The whole situation made her very paranoid. However, she trys to keep her relationship with her mother very friendly, and her mother tries to keep a motherly attitude around her, because a lot of times she loses that caring aspect a mother should have.

5. Has Riley ever argued with her family or friends? If so, why?
She really tries not to, but she remembers once when she had a big fight with her whole family.
She was twelve years old, standing in her house right after the reaping. She was shouting at her dad, about how unfair it was, about all the unpleasant things she wanted to do to the Capitol and Gamemakers. She wasn't really arguing, but she is undyingly loyal and stands up for things she believes in. Her father and Caleb, then 17, tried to calm her down, but she didn't settle. "What if that was me?" she had screamed. "What if it was Caleb, or Carin?"
The arguement isn't spoken of anymore. Allison and Taylor are scared of the memory, Carin went upstairs when it started to really blow-up, Jacob doesn't really remember, and the memory makes Caleb and her father mad. However, her mother remembers, and had she been able to, she makes it clear to Riley that she would've fought for her side in little gestures.

Those were great questions! They were really obvious things that I wouldn't have thought about, but a lot of people would'be wondered about. And I don't care that there were five. It's fine, gives me something to think about. By the way, this is really off-topic, but your avatar is really cute!

Yay, more questions!!

1. What is the story behind the wire being wrapped around her neck?
When Riley was maybe three years old, Riley was messing around in her parents' workshop. This was before her mother's incident, so both parental figures were at the factories. She found the copper wire dangling from the side of the table just enough for her to reach and she pulled it down. The edges were very sharp, and that made her curious. She ran her fingers up and down it, gingerly so as not to cut herself. Suddenly, a noise caused her to trip, and the wire got caught in the back of her hair, Dancing around trying to pull it out, the wire began to wrap around her neck. It dug into her skin, and she desperately pulled at the front, but making that looser had hade the back tighter. She started to choke and turn blue.
Caleb came down to get something and found his dying sister. He cut the wire and found himself home alone with a girl with an inch deep cut on the back of her neck, two one year olds that needed feeding, and a six year old who would be traumatized by this sight. They bandaged Riley's neck, and resolved to tell everyone that the family cat Sekhmet had scratched her up. No one questions the scar a simple cat scratch left behind.

2. What sort of things does Riley believe in? What is something she is willing to stand up for?
Riley believes in animal rights, other than the ones she has to kill to survive, loyalty, unicorns, and actually fighting for what you believe in, instead of just sitting back and letting things happen like people do. She would stand up to the Capitol, if she could be heard, but she would stand up for all the children and families that go uncompensated for their child and sibling's death, and she would also stand up for an animal, as in if you're kicking a puppy, she'll come over and kick you where it hurts.

3. What is Riley's greatest strength? Greatest Weakness?
Riley's greatest strength is her mind. She's very smart, clever, and she catches on. She knows what hurts people, and she also knows how to confuse them. She's resourceful. Her greatest weakness would have to be how stubborn she is. She would never leave a dying person behind, no matter how much you told her it was hopeless, she would find a way to make you think she could save them. In a way, her loyalty is her weakness.

4. What something Riley fears?
Riley is deathly afraid of thunderstorms. She just hates them and how unpredictable, ruthless, and violent they are. For one, they just freak her out, but the other reason she's afraid of them is that her mother always panics and loses any sanity when they strikes, and it really frightens her to see her mom like that. She also isn't fond of blood; even when she's hunting, she tries to keep her shots clean and as bloodless as possible.

1. Why did Riley and Caleb decide to lie about the cause of her scar?
Being young and immature, neither of them knew how their parents would react to the deeply etched scar in Riley's neck. They had been left home alone, but they worried that if they told someone the real cause, people from the Capitol would punish their parents for leaving them home alone for such an extended period of time. It was much simpler to say that it was the cat-and the cat was very violent, so it wasn't hard to pass off as true,

2. Riley believes in unicorns? What made her believe in them? Who told her about their existence?
Yes, Riley believes in unicorns! She believes in them because of their beauty and grace, and the magic in them. If their's one thing that this world lacks, it's magic, and Riley, while old enough to know far better, is desperate, after all she's seen happen. She'll cling to anything that shows the slightest sign of light and goodness. Her mother actually told her of their existance, weaving stories that she heard as a child living in a bakery, where everything was magic, and even creating her own. She never believed in unicorns, for she grew up in a good home, with a strong family, and had no need to, but she recognized that her daughter, 3 at the time she was told of them, needed some magic to hold onto. Nowadays, Riley's mother often can't sort out fiction and reality, so while occasionaly she tries to tell Riley a story about unicorns and magic, usually a few sentences in she furrows her brow and trails off...

3. How does Riley feel about hunting, since she likes animals so much? Who taught her to hunt? Was it difficult for her to come to terms with the idea of hunting?
She hasn't come to terms with it, and that's really the problem; it sickens her when she kills, but she knows that she must keep her family alive, because Carin would never hunt and Caleb no longer can. While it really makes her very sick every time she shoots something, she knows this world well enough to know that it's hunt or die, although if she's caught she will die. Someday she'll probably come to terms with it; she's definately becoming more okay with it, and can brings home a larger supply of food, with more meat, but she has a hard time swallowing what she must do to survive.