Samuel Årud

OUT of CHARACTER

Name: Hanna
Other characters: Lady Sif

IN CHARACTER

Name: Samuel Årud
Alias: Probably Asshole if you ask Jolie
Fandom: Original
Canon point/AU: Automatically set to just after the 74th Annual Hunger Games.

Journal: broken_gospel 
PB: Logan McCree
Age: 34
History: Samuel grew up in the 8th district with his parents, and his older sister. For a long while they somehow managed to beat the odds, and none of them were sent as tributes. Agnes reached the magical age of 19 and was past the age of having to worry about being sent into the arena, but there was still Sam. Would there be enough luck for him too?

Well, not quite. When he was 15 his name was drawn, and he went to the Capitol to fight for his life… and somehow, through some miracle, that scrawny little boy managed to cling to life and come out as the last kid standing. He was covered in injuries, his voice would forever be a hoarse and broken thing because of a particularly nasty blow to his throat, and there was hardly a part of him that didn’t have some sort of scar, but he was alive.

He took up cooking and baking as his talent, since he had to do something as a victor. He’d always liked it, really, trying to turn what little they had into something more. There wasn’t any particular motivation behind the choice apart from that, he just liked feeding people and didn’t particularly mind coming up with new and sometimes ridiculous ways of doing it even if he wasn’t too amused by putting on big feasts for wealthy capitolites who just thought it was the most darling thing to have an angry teenage boy in their kitchen making their dinner for them.
Still, it brightened their home a little that he could bring in exotic things to practice with, and then he could invite others from the district to enjoy the fruits of his labour.

When he got a bit older he had to start being a mentor for other kids going into the arena. At that point he had started covering his scars with tattoos, something that started out as a way to deal with the trauma that clung to him and in the end became an addiction of sorts. Some victors turned to drugs or alcohol to cope, Samuel turned to pain and charity. Most of the money he earned as a victor was given to other people because he simply couldn’t stand spending them on himself.

When he was 30, the name of one of his sister’s twin boys was drawn. The kid was 12, and Sam was forced to be his mentor. It was all thought to be rather marvelously entertaining, and so very dramatic, the nephew of a former victor, now desperately trying to see his sister’s son safely through the arena the same way he himself had once conquered.

It completely broke him that he couldn’t, so much so that not even the Capitol could make him play the part they had tried to give him, and so Samuel was sent home. An act of mercy, to show how kind the government is because yes, we must all understand that it is not an easy thing to see beloved relatives die, even if it is for the good of society.

But now, four years or so later, now his district needs a mentor, and the Capitol needs to show that they are in control. Rebellion is brewing and it has not gone unnoticed, and someone like Samuel… well, it’s better to have him where you can see him, is it not? Better to put him where there are plenty of peacekeepers to make sure that he plays nicely, with a little reminder that yes we do indeed take tributes from other worlds now but remember that you have a nephew left, wouldn’t want that to change, eh?

Presentation: Samuel is a big, muscular man and the first impression he gives off is probably rather intimidating. He is tall and broad, and as has previously been mentioned he is quite covered in tattoos, most of them abstract patterns though here and there more specific designs can be seen woven into the maze covering his skin. His voice is deep and cracked, never smooth but very often warm because here’s the thing… he’s a bit scary-looking, but as soon as he starts talking to you, you will find that he is just about the sweetest man on earth. In spite of everything he’s been through, Samuel still tries to treat the people around him with kindness and compassion, even those who live in the capitol though admittedly that is often a bit more forced than the kindness he will extend to tributes or people living out in the districts.

His sense of humor is dry and somewhat sarcastic, but never mean-spirited. He never tries to hurt anyone though he also doesn’t back down from confrontations. He has been thoroughly broken, yes, but he has come out on the other side and now it is in fact incredibly difficult to get him off balance. He will face just about everything with calm acceptance, just sort of taking the world for what it is while tirelessly working to make it a better place.

He is always willing to lend a listening ear to those who need it, and will do his best to offer advice. He doesn’t hold back from voicing his opinions, apart from those he knows will get him or his family in serious trouble of course. He’s not the type to play games, but he’s still not stupid, and he knows well enough what you can and cannot say and do in the Capitol.

For all that he is more or less kindness personified, he is not a pushover and he won’t give people what they want so much as he will strive to give them what they need. He is a nice guy, but underneath that is an incredibly stubborn will and if he has made his mind up about something you are going to have a hard time changing it unless you can argue your case very well indeed.

There is a sadness that never quite leaves him, a sense of carrying a great weight on his shoulders, but in spite of that it is still not difficult to make him smile, and more than that he will always try to make other people smile. When he was younger he was a much angrier man, fuelled by a simmering rage that now has given way to something different, if still springing from his great desire to change things. That is still what he is trying to do, but at least for the moment he is seemingly trying to do it through love.

He can sometimes be observed talking to himself, which is something he often does when he is on his own. It is not something he’ll do around people, but since he doesn’t always know that he is being watched it is definitely not an impossibility that you might catch him doing it. Most of the time he appears to be arguing with whoever it is that he is addressing his mumbled monologues to.

Motivations: On the inside Samuel was always, and still is, a rebel. He’s managed to be good enough at hiding it that it hasn’t gotten the people he loves into too much trouble (though he can’t help but wonder if little Zachary’s name was drawn because of him somehow…) but he wants things to change so, so badly.

He was always one to ask (too many) questions and while he has now seemingly adopted a more serene attitude his mind still works in much the same way, just with a calmer surface to it.

Those times when he talks to himself? He is addressing the Other One, which is a name his thirteen year old self gave to the supreme being he came to the conclusion must be out there somewhere running the universe (sometimes your mind goes wandering pretty far when it just cannot take contemplating the fact that you just murdered someone, or that someone just very nearly murdered you). He’s not exactly a religious man per se, he is just of the firm opinion that a world this shit must have been created by someone with a profoundly sadistic sense of humor, so there’s probably some giggling entity out there just having the best time right about now. He spends a lot of time telling that creator of all what a gigantic cock it is.

He has a lot of nightmares and can never seem to sleep through the night without waking up at least once with panic having his system on high alert. He’s better at dealing with it now than he used to be, but it still happens.

Basically he is an incredibly burdened man trying his best to stay sane in a world that is really trying very hard to make that impossible. He is all about helping other people and at the end of the day… doesn’t really care much about himself. Deep down he thinks it would have been better if someone else won. Deep down he doesn’t think getting out alive was actually worth everything that came after.

He lives for his family now, and for the hope that maybe somehow, something can be done to make things right. He hasn’t given up, far from it, he’s just not sure if there should be a place for him in the new world that he wants to build.

Setting: Samuel hates the system, hates it from the bottom of his very big and loving heart. He is playing by the rules because he has to, but if there is any way he can aid the rebellion without it leading to his family getting harmed then he will bloody well do it. He doesn’t really care much about his own safety so it’s all about them.

SAMPLES
First Person Thread:

[ Samuel sighs a little, but manages to smile a little. Whoever it was that namedropped him is going to get a severe talking to for this but for the moment he’ll play along. ]

Well, it’ll certainly be very interesting to mentor people from so many exotic places.

[ At least some of them aren’t children, if there is any sort of silver lining to find in this great big mess. ]

Can’t wait to get to know them all. We’ll see how much I’ll even have to teach them, huh? Some of them seem to be quite remarkable individuals.

[ That’s right, add a bit of self-deprecating humor, a bit of charm. Fuck this whole big, ugly charade. ]

They’ll make the games more exciting, for sure.

[ Perhaps they’ll break this twisted system. Now that would be exciting. ]

Prose: It didn’t take very long for Sam to realise that while they had told him that he was going back to be a mentor, that wasn’t what was going to happen. Someone had come up with a different plan, and now he finds himself in a quite different kind of spotlight.

He isn’t a trembling boy this time, and he feels an odd sort of calm as he wanders around, inspecting the various weapons on offer. So it is to be the arena then. It’ll be over quickly, undoubtedly, he’s seen the tributes they’ve got now and some of them are… well, way out of his league. He’ll never beat them in any sort of fight, and this won’t even be a fair one.

Will they revive him, he wonders, or is this just a nasty way of getting him out of the picture with one last show of force?
He gives it a good enough go, no use in being a disappointment. He shows what little he knows about using weapons, proves that he is strong and fit and agile. He’ll probably be relatively entertaining to watch before he goes down, right? He hopes to be entertaining enough to spare his family. That’s all that matters, really. Will they be safe?

Please, please let them be safe.

He offers a lazy salute and wanders out of the room, feeling dread twist his guts though he’ll be damned if he lets them see that. The Other One is probably laughing it up like crazy, he thinks bitterly to himself.

“Yeah, you keep laughing,” he mutters, hands opening and closing over and over again, clenching into tight fists.

“I hope you choke on it, you bastard.”

What is your character scored: Well when he was a kid and went into the arena he would probably have scored something like a 3, since he had no particular skills as such but he was clever and crafty and a very sweet and likeable kid. Nowadays he has made sure to teach himself a lot of the survival skills that might come in handy in an arena, and he’s big and strong and did get through a few fights as a kid and he certainly hasn’t forgotten. He’d probably get something like a 7 now. He’s not a particularly flashy guy even if he is likeable, so I’m not sure how much his personality would help his score even if he can be a charmer when he wants to.

Token: A small wooden dog that his father made for him.

Additional information: Questions specifically for certain character types. Feel free to delete if it does not apply to your character type. Please answer all that do (For example, a past victor AU would answer both their question, and the past victory question)

Past victor: Sam’s arena was a marsh/swamp with a big temple-like structure in the center that was actually more like a labyrinth full of death traps. His relationship with the capitol has been one of him doing his job as a mentor to the best of his ability while silently hating the system with every fiber of his being. Then he had his mental breakdown and has sort of been forgotten about for a while, but now he’s back in the spotlight and back to being the district 8 mentor.

Hunger Games AU and OC: It is highly unlikely for there to be facetwin shenanigans, but if so I imagine it might be because the capitol wants him to see someone who looks like himself go through an arena, just as a reminder of what could happen to him if they feel like it. Sam is from district 8, and he is pretty fond of the place in the sense that it contains the people that mean the most to him.