extemely beth and incredibly greene (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
littlemissfutility) wrote2018-08-04 03:38 pm
littlemissfutility) wrote2018-08-04 03:38 pm
app.
PLAYER
» HANDLE: dove
» CONTACT: PM this journal or![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
littlemissfutility
» AGE: over 18
» CHARACTER(S) IN-GAME: n/a
CHARACTER
» NAME: Beth Greene
» CANON: The Walking Dead
» CANON POINT: Post-05x08 "Coda"
» AGE: 18
» SETTING: Here
» SHORT DESCRIPTION: Creative, pragmatic, stubborn, daring, sorrowful, hopeful
» INFLUENTIAL EVENTS:
HER MOTHER'S DEATH / HER SUICIDE ATTEMPT
Before the zombie apocalypse, Beth was an average teenage girl; for some time after, she was able to keep living in basically the same way. The world changed--no more school, her boyfriend taking shelter on her farm with her family and neighbors--but in small ways, and she trusted that her mother and older brother, both now walkers living in the barn, could be cured. That naive life crashes down around her when she and her family learn that there's nothing in those walkers left to save. The corpses of her mother and brother are shot in front of her, and Beth goes catatonic with grief, eventually attempting suicide.
As soon as she cuts her wrist, she realizes she doesn't actually want to die--and, thanks to the people around her, she doesn't. The moment reveals the problem that becomes the central theme of Beth's character arc: While she doesn't want to die, living is a struggle for her. What it means to continue to exist in a dangerous, cruel world--without succumbing to its cruelty--is something she has to discover over the course of the series.
JUDITH
Traumatic and heart-wrenching though Judith Grimes' birth might be--her mother undergoes a C-section without anesthesia and is ultimately shot by her son--she's loved by the group surrounding her, most especially Beth. Declaring to another character that she's "always wanted a child," Beth spends most of Judith's first months of life caring for her; while other characters are occasionally shown holding or playing with the baby, it's Beth who carries her most frequently.
The viewer doesn't get a lot of insight into what it's like for a seventeen-year-old to raise a newborn, whether there are times when she struggles with the responsibilities that she's come into. However, given how frequently other characters are busy with other matters, and how frequently Beth is pictured caring for Judith even when other characters are present, it's evident that this is a role Beth has claimed for herself. It gives her purpose--"a job to do," as she puts it--and indulges her enormous capacity for affection.
THE PRISON'S FALL / HER FATHER'S DEATH / GETTING DRUNK
Beth loses her father and her home in one fell swoop, and for all she knows, she's lost her older sister and Judith as well. (Maggie and Judith both live through the destruction of the prison, but Beth never sees them again or learns of their survival.) Her father's death is particularly cruel: he's decapitated in front of her, and it's neither a clean nor painless process for him. Beth's cast into as deep a hole as she was when her mother died, perhaps deeper, but she's in the middle of the woods with a rough-edged man named Daryl Dixon. She can't respond the way she did before, and she knows it.
So she burns her diary and strongarms Daryl into helping her find alcohol, gets drunk, and eventually burns down a house on purpose. Beth's never had a drink in her life--her father was a recovering alcoholic--but she's decided that she needs to know for herself what booze is like. It's forbidden, and it's self-destructive, but it's her stupid choice to make. Beth's discovering that, as tenuously as she manages her sadness (sure would be nice if the apocalypse came with therapists), she can sort of keep on top of it, with great effort.
"You got to stay who you are, not who you were," she tells Daryl near the end of their night of moonshine. Look forward, she's saying, instead of dwelling on the ugliness of the past. She can't be the person she was when the corpses of her family were shot in front of her. That girl, and her responses to the world, have to remain buried inside the stronger, more capable person she's become.
GRADY / HER FIRST MURDER
Shortly after her day of drunken debauchery, Beth's kidnapped into Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, a community that ostensibly helps the injured but really uses them as indentured labor. She's there to clean and follow orders, however ugly. She accidentally kills her first person--first living person, first non-walker--there, manipulated into it by the resident doctor, and keeps killing after that point. The most notable death is that of a serial rapist who assaults her soon after her arrival. He is much of the reason she's present in the hospital in the first place--his last victim ran--and he's the first person she murders.
Grady is a test of all the truths she spoke to Daryl. It becomes her opportunity to find out if the beliefs that sustained her in the woods could stand up to the cruelty of a society--one in which nobody has any reason to care for Beth in particular. The answer, it turns out, is yes, they can--though they can't help but be transformed by her experiences. She can retain who she is at heart, but she can't do it without becoming hard-edged in other places. She can try to have hope, but it doesn't mean she won't have to do terrible things in order to protect it. Beth begins to develop a moral code she likely never would have held if not for the world's end, one in which protecting those who can't protect themselves takes precedence over the lessons of her childhood. What good is Thou shalt not kill if you only end up dead, leaving bad people to do worse things?
HER DEATH
Beth never leaves Grady. She's given the opportunity when she's rescued by her people. All she has to do is turn her back on everyone left in the hospital, ignore the fact that she's leaving them to suffer under what remains of the current regime, and walk away with her group. But earlier in that episode, Beth essentially states her raison d'être, and it doesn't leave much space for ignoring the problems that others face: "You keep telling yourself you have to do whatever it takes, just until this is all over, but it isn't over. This is it. This is who you are and what this place is until the end."
If she doesn't stop the woman in charge of the hospital, nobody ever will. And that woman will keep letting the people under her do whatever they want, turning a blind eye to the cruelties occurring under her watch, and Beth will have to live with the knowledge that she did nothing about it. She can't do that--she's grown into somebody who sees problems and tries to fix them, even if it means getting her hands dirty. It's not enough for her to keep her head down and try to survive, because there's no promise that anything else is coming to make up for what happens in the present. Nothing is left in the world but what she makes of it.
She stabs the woman in charge and is shot in the head for it. At one point, she would have feared that end, but in the time since the world ended, she's finally learned how to live in the apocalypse: with intent.
» FIT: Beth is a survivor who's used to horrific settings in a far lower-tech world. I'd like to explore the ways the relative comforts of the station are balanced for her by the difficulties characters face, as well as any potentially Grady-comparable aspects of the premise. And I always love having characters explore. ♥
» POWERS: n/a
» NOTES: n/a
» SAMPLES:
Log
Network
» HANDLE: dove
» CONTACT: PM this journal or
» AGE: over 18
» CHARACTER(S) IN-GAME: n/a
CHARACTER
» NAME: Beth Greene
» CANON: The Walking Dead
» CANON POINT: Post-05x08 "Coda"
» AGE: 18
» SETTING: Here
» SHORT DESCRIPTION: Creative, pragmatic, stubborn, daring, sorrowful, hopeful
» INFLUENTIAL EVENTS:
HER MOTHER'S DEATH / HER SUICIDE ATTEMPT
Before the zombie apocalypse, Beth was an average teenage girl; for some time after, she was able to keep living in basically the same way. The world changed--no more school, her boyfriend taking shelter on her farm with her family and neighbors--but in small ways, and she trusted that her mother and older brother, both now walkers living in the barn, could be cured. That naive life crashes down around her when she and her family learn that there's nothing in those walkers left to save. The corpses of her mother and brother are shot in front of her, and Beth goes catatonic with grief, eventually attempting suicide.
As soon as she cuts her wrist, she realizes she doesn't actually want to die--and, thanks to the people around her, she doesn't. The moment reveals the problem that becomes the central theme of Beth's character arc: While she doesn't want to die, living is a struggle for her. What it means to continue to exist in a dangerous, cruel world--without succumbing to its cruelty--is something she has to discover over the course of the series.
JUDITH
Traumatic and heart-wrenching though Judith Grimes' birth might be--her mother undergoes a C-section without anesthesia and is ultimately shot by her son--she's loved by the group surrounding her, most especially Beth. Declaring to another character that she's "always wanted a child," Beth spends most of Judith's first months of life caring for her; while other characters are occasionally shown holding or playing with the baby, it's Beth who carries her most frequently.
The viewer doesn't get a lot of insight into what it's like for a seventeen-year-old to raise a newborn, whether there are times when she struggles with the responsibilities that she's come into. However, given how frequently other characters are busy with other matters, and how frequently Beth is pictured caring for Judith even when other characters are present, it's evident that this is a role Beth has claimed for herself. It gives her purpose--"a job to do," as she puts it--and indulges her enormous capacity for affection.
THE PRISON'S FALL / HER FATHER'S DEATH / GETTING DRUNK
Beth loses her father and her home in one fell swoop, and for all she knows, she's lost her older sister and Judith as well. (Maggie and Judith both live through the destruction of the prison, but Beth never sees them again or learns of their survival.) Her father's death is particularly cruel: he's decapitated in front of her, and it's neither a clean nor painless process for him. Beth's cast into as deep a hole as she was when her mother died, perhaps deeper, but she's in the middle of the woods with a rough-edged man named Daryl Dixon. She can't respond the way she did before, and she knows it.
So she burns her diary and strongarms Daryl into helping her find alcohol, gets drunk, and eventually burns down a house on purpose. Beth's never had a drink in her life--her father was a recovering alcoholic--but she's decided that she needs to know for herself what booze is like. It's forbidden, and it's self-destructive, but it's her stupid choice to make. Beth's discovering that, as tenuously as she manages her sadness (sure would be nice if the apocalypse came with therapists), she can sort of keep on top of it, with great effort.
"You got to stay who you are, not who you were," she tells Daryl near the end of their night of moonshine. Look forward, she's saying, instead of dwelling on the ugliness of the past. She can't be the person she was when the corpses of her family were shot in front of her. That girl, and her responses to the world, have to remain buried inside the stronger, more capable person she's become.
GRADY / HER FIRST MURDER
Shortly after her day of drunken debauchery, Beth's kidnapped into Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, a community that ostensibly helps the injured but really uses them as indentured labor. She's there to clean and follow orders, however ugly. She accidentally kills her first person--first living person, first non-walker--there, manipulated into it by the resident doctor, and keeps killing after that point. The most notable death is that of a serial rapist who assaults her soon after her arrival. He is much of the reason she's present in the hospital in the first place--his last victim ran--and he's the first person she murders.
Grady is a test of all the truths she spoke to Daryl. It becomes her opportunity to find out if the beliefs that sustained her in the woods could stand up to the cruelty of a society--one in which nobody has any reason to care for Beth in particular. The answer, it turns out, is yes, they can--though they can't help but be transformed by her experiences. She can retain who she is at heart, but she can't do it without becoming hard-edged in other places. She can try to have hope, but it doesn't mean she won't have to do terrible things in order to protect it. Beth begins to develop a moral code she likely never would have held if not for the world's end, one in which protecting those who can't protect themselves takes precedence over the lessons of her childhood. What good is Thou shalt not kill if you only end up dead, leaving bad people to do worse things?
HER DEATH
Beth never leaves Grady. She's given the opportunity when she's rescued by her people. All she has to do is turn her back on everyone left in the hospital, ignore the fact that she's leaving them to suffer under what remains of the current regime, and walk away with her group. But earlier in that episode, Beth essentially states her raison d'être, and it doesn't leave much space for ignoring the problems that others face: "You keep telling yourself you have to do whatever it takes, just until this is all over, but it isn't over. This is it. This is who you are and what this place is until the end."
If she doesn't stop the woman in charge of the hospital, nobody ever will. And that woman will keep letting the people under her do whatever they want, turning a blind eye to the cruelties occurring under her watch, and Beth will have to live with the knowledge that she did nothing about it. She can't do that--she's grown into somebody who sees problems and tries to fix them, even if it means getting her hands dirty. It's not enough for her to keep her head down and try to survive, because there's no promise that anything else is coming to make up for what happens in the present. Nothing is left in the world but what she makes of it.
She stabs the woman in charge and is shot in the head for it. At one point, she would have feared that end, but in the time since the world ended, she's finally learned how to live in the apocalypse: with intent.
» FIT: Beth is a survivor who's used to horrific settings in a far lower-tech world. I'd like to explore the ways the relative comforts of the station are balanced for her by the difficulties characters face, as well as any potentially Grady-comparable aspects of the premise. And I always love having characters explore. ♥
» POWERS: n/a
» NOTES: n/a
» SAMPLES:
Log
Network