profile.
[Player information]
Player Name: Ashe.
Age: 25.
E-mail: such.melodrama[at]gmail[dot]com.
Other characters played at Cape Kore: Jo Harvelle (knivesandreo).
[Character information]
Name: Natalia Alianovna Romanova. She has anglicized it to Natasha Romanoff. She occasionally uses aliases, such as Natalie Rushman, Nancy Rushman, and Nadine Roman.
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Canon Point: Post-The Avengers.
Age: 28.
Appearance: Petite with red hair and green eyes, though she sometimes dyes her hair or wears contacts for missions. Perpetual murder face.
Inventory:
History: Natalia Alianovna Romanova was born in Volgograd, Russia. Even she does not remember much of her childhood before she was given to the Red Room. In the Red Room, a covert facility that turned girls into weapons, Natalia was unmade. Under their tutelage she became on of the most dangerous killers in the world, the Black Widow. Her perception of reality was skewed by her time with the organization, and she learned not to trust anyone, to treat sex as a weapon, and to kill dispassionately and without remorse. During that time with the Red Room, she became acquainted with another Russian agent, known only as Winter Soldier. The two formed a strong connection, and he was one of the only people to whom she possessed any real loyalty. She had no care for her own life or that of anyone else, her sole purpose to achieve her objectives. But this life weighed heavily on her and, when she ended up facing a SHIELD agent named Clint Barton, she was ready to die. But that wasn't what happened. He made a different call, giving her a second chance with SHIELD. There, she was unmade again, but this time the organization did their best to build her back up into a person, gaining her allegiance and her loyalty.
( Later History )
Personality: If there's one word that describes Natasha, it's guarded. As a consequence of the life she's lived, she has a hard time trusting people and an even harder time letting them in. The walls she's built up around herself are high and thick and very few manage to get through to see the real her. Natasha just isn't someone capable of being emotionally available, having spent too long protecting herself. Natasha learned at an early age that emotions and trust were weaknesses, and those lessons have stuck with her. She's not the kind of person who has an easy time making herself vulnerable, and because of that the face she presents to the world is a stark contrast with her actual personality. She has always had to protect herself, and she has a hard time letting go of that instinct, even with the people closest to her in her life. However, once she lets people in, Natasha is fiercely loyal. She cares deeply about the people she lets in, as if stifling her emotions for so long has made them that much more intense, and she would go through hell and back for someone she cares about.
On the surfact, Natasha comes off as completely professional, calm, cool and collected. In fact, she often errs toward coldness, frequently seeming dispassionate and solely concerned with getting the job done. In reality, that is far from the case. Natasha cares, more than she would ever like to admit. She carries a lot of guilt for her actions as an agent of the Red Room and as a freelance assassin before she was brought in to SHIELD, and she is constantly aware of her past. She says that she has red in her ledger, and considers everything she does a means of atoning for her past while simultaneously believing that nothing she ever does will be enough to make up for the things she's done. Still, she is grateful for the opportunity she has been given and her loyalty to Clint and SHIELD stems from the fact that they gave her a chance she doesn't feel she really deserves. She holds both the man and the organisation up as an example of how she should be, often blinding herself to their respective faults because she views them as better than her for showing her mercy. Beyond that though, Natasha genuinely wants to do good, to make the world safer and to keep others from ending up like her. Her experience with Sofia was painful because she saw so much of herself in the other woman and she wanted to save her too. The fact that SHIELD was so willing to write Sofia off after the fact hit something in Natasha because she knew they could have just as easily done the same with her.
While Natasha is frequently referred to as a master assassin, focusing on her skill in the realm of violence, it is more appropriate to call her a master spy. The fact is, her skills in that vein define her far more than her ability to take a man's life. Natasha is a brilliant actress, so much so that one might wonder if she really has an identity of her own. When she plays a part she commits fully, slipping into the skin of another person and virtually becomes them. She describes it as everything around her changing. She thinks of the personas she creates as real people, embracing the opportunity to become someone less complicated than herself. However, Natasha never loses herself completely, always able to spring back to who she is when she needs to. She also doesn't want to give up who she is, calling returning to herself as both being awakened from a deep sleep and coming home. Beyond her ability to adapt her personality to a situation as she needs to, Natasha has always been quite good at manipulating people. She has wiles and she uses them. She knows the appeal she has and she's not afraid to use that to her advantage. She's made an art of using her own vulnerability to put someone else in a weaker position. Some people wouldn't consider this a positive quality, but she sees it as one that's necessary in her life. This goes right back to her trust issues and guarded nature, and she rarely lets people see her.
But behind the masks and the rest of it, Natasha is a clever, witty young woman with a dry sense of humor and a low tolerance for bullshit. She is confident and driven, a force of nature with a take no prisoners attitude. She's comfortable with herself, at ease in her skin in a way many her age aren't. It's easy to forget she's a few years off thirty. She's a self-possessed young woman who knows what she wants and goes for it. She isn't afraid to tease her friends, like with Coulson and his Captain America cards or her banter with Clint in the heat of battle. She's a lot younger than one would expect someone who has lived the life she has, and it is terribly obvious at times. Her emotions, as much as she tries to deny them, are a part of her. She's compromised, as she puts it, because she does care. Clint matters to her. Coulson matters to her. The Winter Soldier mattered to her. And as much as she's lived her life being told that emotions and caring are weaknesses, she can't help but see them as strengths because they give her something to fight for and a reason not to give up and turn back to the life she once lived. But it's not just the softer emotions that Natasha feels. She gets angry just like everyone else, and like others, it leads her to make stupid decisions. She has things that terrify her, like the Hulk, and she is not always able to keep up her stoic mask. She is the first person to admit when she feels like she's in over her head, though she'll only do so when she feels secure in her company. Apart from that, she fakes it well enough to fool most people, and maybe even herself.
Natasha never really had a childhood, forced to grow up too fast and prevented from having anything approaching a normal life. She can't always connect with people, because she doesn't understand how, and certain facets of normal life are foreign concepts to her. Violence is intrinsically a part of her, a defining factor of who she is as a person, and as much as she would sometimes like to leave that behind, she can't. She will always be Chernaya vdova, it isn't a costume she can take off at the end of a mission. So much of Natasha is just faking it just enough to get by, and only letting the façade drop when she feels absolutely secure. But at the end of the day, even though her past weighs heavily and she doesn't always know how to live in a world that isn't built on violence, Natasha trusts. She trusts that she's doing all she can to make up for her past and be a better person than she was. She trusts her skills to get her through any situation and trusts that she's the best at what she does. And, most importantly, she trusts her team and her friends to have her back. That ability to trust even that much, in spite of everything, is what helps her to get through everything.
[Samples]
First Person: Here.
Third Person:
Sometimes Natasha felt as though she was the only one capable of acknowledging how insane their lives had become in such a short time. Was it really just a few short years ago that they had been worried about the still very real but comparatively simple human threats of the world? Now there were gods and monsters and she couldn't help but wonder when this would all come crashing down on their heads. It had certainly come close in New York. So close. This was nothing they were prepared for, and sooner or later something was going to come along that was bigger than all of them. Something teamwork and bravery and insanity and luck couldn't counter. And she couldn't help but feel like that day would come sooner rather than later.
Natasha didn't like to think of herself as a fatalist so much as a realist. They had been lucky in New York. They had. They'd been brilliant, but mostly they'd been lucky. And everyone's luck had to run out some day. A god had ripped apart her partner's mind and murdered her handler, and they'd run off to fight his alien army anyway. It was insane. It was pure insanity. There was no other word for it. The world was changing around them, and she couldn't seem to find her footing. Not that anyone would see that. If there was one thing she could do, it was hide the damage. Never let them see her falter. It had carried her through years in the Red Room and beyond, helped her get by on the days when the weight of her guilt felt like too much to bear. The days when she wondered if it might have been better if Clint had just put an arrow through her eye. Whatever she felt, she was in control. Even if the situation seemed to be spiralling out of hers.
Natasha didn't like losing control. She supposed that was why Banner made her so uncomfortable. He would never know that their encounter in India hadn't been their first. If a shack and a conversation and the underlying threat of violence had been their introduction, it might not have been so bad. But that wasn't how it had gone. She was sure anyone would be wary, if the Hulk had all but dropped a building on them. If the Abomination had done the same later. She still hated Fury a little for that mission. And part of her hated Banner too. No. Hate wasn't quite the right word. She hated how he made her feel. He made her feel weak. Because she'd pulled her gun in India. She'd let her fear be visible, if only for a moment. She'd given in to reactions she had long since trained out of herself. It was weakness. It was a liability. It had nearly killed her on the Helicarrier because she couldn't control the visceral fear Banner's other half provoked. But it was more than that. When she saw him, she didn't think of how he could become a monster at any time. She thought about what it would be like if that happened to her. If her emotions and her history were written so plainly on her skin, spelled out for the world to see, she could only think that it would be so much worse than what he became.
This felt entirely like that and at the same time not at all. Like the world had changed suddenly in ways she hadn't been prepared for, and she was left scrambling to adapt. Emotion was clawing at her, fighting toward the surface as she stared at the file in front of her. The ground was falling out from beneath her feet and she felt as though there was nothing to hold on to. The words on the file in front of her blurred together until they made no sense. Until she had to look away just to breathe. Was this how Clint had felt, weapon drawn on her? No, she imagined it wasn't. He had been playing a hunch. Acting on instinct. There was no real personal stake. He didn't even know her then. It was more like that moment in Russia, with Coulson's voice in her ear telling her Clint had been compromised. She couldn't react, because she had a job to do even as she was dying inside. Turning her attention back to the file, she ran her fingers over the name, her eyes lingering on the grainy photograph of a man she never thought she'd see again. A man she'd known intimately at a time when she hadn't even known herself.
The Winter Soldier.
Anything Else?
Player Name: Ashe.
Age: 25.
E-mail: such.melodrama[at]gmail[dot]com.
Other characters played at Cape Kore: Jo Harvelle (knivesandreo).
[Character information]
Name: Natalia Alianovna Romanova. She has anglicized it to Natasha Romanoff. She occasionally uses aliases, such as Natalie Rushman, Nancy Rushman, and Nadine Roman.
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Canon Point: Post-The Avengers.
Age: 28.
Appearance: Petite with red hair and green eyes, though she sometimes dyes her hair or wears contacts for missions. Perpetual murder face.
Inventory:
- One black combat suit consisting of black catsuit with SHIELD insignia, black boots, black fingerless gloves, black, utility belt, black belt with black widow symbol and black thigh holsters.
- "Widow's Bite" wrist guards
- Two Glock 26 9mm pistols
- Several small knives
- Mace
- Flashbangs
- Garotte
- SHIELD identification card
History: Natalia Alianovna Romanova was born in Volgograd, Russia. Even she does not remember much of her childhood before she was given to the Red Room. In the Red Room, a covert facility that turned girls into weapons, Natalia was unmade. Under their tutelage she became on of the most dangerous killers in the world, the Black Widow. Her perception of reality was skewed by her time with the organization, and she learned not to trust anyone, to treat sex as a weapon, and to kill dispassionately and without remorse. During that time with the Red Room, she became acquainted with another Russian agent, known only as Winter Soldier. The two formed a strong connection, and he was one of the only people to whom she possessed any real loyalty. She had no care for her own life or that of anyone else, her sole purpose to achieve her objectives. But this life weighed heavily on her and, when she ended up facing a SHIELD agent named Clint Barton, she was ready to die. But that wasn't what happened. He made a different call, giving her a second chance with SHIELD. There, she was unmade again, but this time the organization did their best to build her back up into a person, gaining her allegiance and her loyalty.
( Later History )
Personality: If there's one word that describes Natasha, it's guarded. As a consequence of the life she's lived, she has a hard time trusting people and an even harder time letting them in. The walls she's built up around herself are high and thick and very few manage to get through to see the real her. Natasha just isn't someone capable of being emotionally available, having spent too long protecting herself. Natasha learned at an early age that emotions and trust were weaknesses, and those lessons have stuck with her. She's not the kind of person who has an easy time making herself vulnerable, and because of that the face she presents to the world is a stark contrast with her actual personality. She has always had to protect herself, and she has a hard time letting go of that instinct, even with the people closest to her in her life. However, once she lets people in, Natasha is fiercely loyal. She cares deeply about the people she lets in, as if stifling her emotions for so long has made them that much more intense, and she would go through hell and back for someone she cares about.
On the surfact, Natasha comes off as completely professional, calm, cool and collected. In fact, she often errs toward coldness, frequently seeming dispassionate and solely concerned with getting the job done. In reality, that is far from the case. Natasha cares, more than she would ever like to admit. She carries a lot of guilt for her actions as an agent of the Red Room and as a freelance assassin before she was brought in to SHIELD, and she is constantly aware of her past. She says that she has red in her ledger, and considers everything she does a means of atoning for her past while simultaneously believing that nothing she ever does will be enough to make up for the things she's done. Still, she is grateful for the opportunity she has been given and her loyalty to Clint and SHIELD stems from the fact that they gave her a chance she doesn't feel she really deserves. She holds both the man and the organisation up as an example of how she should be, often blinding herself to their respective faults because she views them as better than her for showing her mercy. Beyond that though, Natasha genuinely wants to do good, to make the world safer and to keep others from ending up like her. Her experience with Sofia was painful because she saw so much of herself in the other woman and she wanted to save her too. The fact that SHIELD was so willing to write Sofia off after the fact hit something in Natasha because she knew they could have just as easily done the same with her.
While Natasha is frequently referred to as a master assassin, focusing on her skill in the realm of violence, it is more appropriate to call her a master spy. The fact is, her skills in that vein define her far more than her ability to take a man's life. Natasha is a brilliant actress, so much so that one might wonder if she really has an identity of her own. When she plays a part she commits fully, slipping into the skin of another person and virtually becomes them. She describes it as everything around her changing. She thinks of the personas she creates as real people, embracing the opportunity to become someone less complicated than herself. However, Natasha never loses herself completely, always able to spring back to who she is when she needs to. She also doesn't want to give up who she is, calling returning to herself as both being awakened from a deep sleep and coming home. Beyond her ability to adapt her personality to a situation as she needs to, Natasha has always been quite good at manipulating people. She has wiles and she uses them. She knows the appeal she has and she's not afraid to use that to her advantage. She's made an art of using her own vulnerability to put someone else in a weaker position. Some people wouldn't consider this a positive quality, but she sees it as one that's necessary in her life. This goes right back to her trust issues and guarded nature, and she rarely lets people see her.
But behind the masks and the rest of it, Natasha is a clever, witty young woman with a dry sense of humor and a low tolerance for bullshit. She is confident and driven, a force of nature with a take no prisoners attitude. She's comfortable with herself, at ease in her skin in a way many her age aren't. It's easy to forget she's a few years off thirty. She's a self-possessed young woman who knows what she wants and goes for it. She isn't afraid to tease her friends, like with Coulson and his Captain America cards or her banter with Clint in the heat of battle. She's a lot younger than one would expect someone who has lived the life she has, and it is terribly obvious at times. Her emotions, as much as she tries to deny them, are a part of her. She's compromised, as she puts it, because she does care. Clint matters to her. Coulson matters to her. The Winter Soldier mattered to her. And as much as she's lived her life being told that emotions and caring are weaknesses, she can't help but see them as strengths because they give her something to fight for and a reason not to give up and turn back to the life she once lived. But it's not just the softer emotions that Natasha feels. She gets angry just like everyone else, and like others, it leads her to make stupid decisions. She has things that terrify her, like the Hulk, and she is not always able to keep up her stoic mask. She is the first person to admit when she feels like she's in over her head, though she'll only do so when she feels secure in her company. Apart from that, she fakes it well enough to fool most people, and maybe even herself.
Natasha never really had a childhood, forced to grow up too fast and prevented from having anything approaching a normal life. She can't always connect with people, because she doesn't understand how, and certain facets of normal life are foreign concepts to her. Violence is intrinsically a part of her, a defining factor of who she is as a person, and as much as she would sometimes like to leave that behind, she can't. She will always be Chernaya vdova, it isn't a costume she can take off at the end of a mission. So much of Natasha is just faking it just enough to get by, and only letting the façade drop when she feels absolutely secure. But at the end of the day, even though her past weighs heavily and she doesn't always know how to live in a world that isn't built on violence, Natasha trusts. She trusts that she's doing all she can to make up for her past and be a better person than she was. She trusts her skills to get her through any situation and trusts that she's the best at what she does. And, most importantly, she trusts her team and her friends to have her back. That ability to trust even that much, in spite of everything, is what helps her to get through everything.
[Samples]
First Person: Here.
Third Person:
Sometimes Natasha felt as though she was the only one capable of acknowledging how insane their lives had become in such a short time. Was it really just a few short years ago that they had been worried about the still very real but comparatively simple human threats of the world? Now there were gods and monsters and she couldn't help but wonder when this would all come crashing down on their heads. It had certainly come close in New York. So close. This was nothing they were prepared for, and sooner or later something was going to come along that was bigger than all of them. Something teamwork and bravery and insanity and luck couldn't counter. And she couldn't help but feel like that day would come sooner rather than later.
Natasha didn't like to think of herself as a fatalist so much as a realist. They had been lucky in New York. They had. They'd been brilliant, but mostly they'd been lucky. And everyone's luck had to run out some day. A god had ripped apart her partner's mind and murdered her handler, and they'd run off to fight his alien army anyway. It was insane. It was pure insanity. There was no other word for it. The world was changing around them, and she couldn't seem to find her footing. Not that anyone would see that. If there was one thing she could do, it was hide the damage. Never let them see her falter. It had carried her through years in the Red Room and beyond, helped her get by on the days when the weight of her guilt felt like too much to bear. The days when she wondered if it might have been better if Clint had just put an arrow through her eye. Whatever she felt, she was in control. Even if the situation seemed to be spiralling out of hers.
Natasha didn't like losing control. She supposed that was why Banner made her so uncomfortable. He would never know that their encounter in India hadn't been their first. If a shack and a conversation and the underlying threat of violence had been their introduction, it might not have been so bad. But that wasn't how it had gone. She was sure anyone would be wary, if the Hulk had all but dropped a building on them. If the Abomination had done the same later. She still hated Fury a little for that mission. And part of her hated Banner too. No. Hate wasn't quite the right word. She hated how he made her feel. He made her feel weak. Because she'd pulled her gun in India. She'd let her fear be visible, if only for a moment. She'd given in to reactions she had long since trained out of herself. It was weakness. It was a liability. It had nearly killed her on the Helicarrier because she couldn't control the visceral fear Banner's other half provoked. But it was more than that. When she saw him, she didn't think of how he could become a monster at any time. She thought about what it would be like if that happened to her. If her emotions and her history were written so plainly on her skin, spelled out for the world to see, she could only think that it would be so much worse than what he became.
This felt entirely like that and at the same time not at all. Like the world had changed suddenly in ways she hadn't been prepared for, and she was left scrambling to adapt. Emotion was clawing at her, fighting toward the surface as she stared at the file in front of her. The ground was falling out from beneath her feet and she felt as though there was nothing to hold on to. The words on the file in front of her blurred together until they made no sense. Until she had to look away just to breathe. Was this how Clint had felt, weapon drawn on her? No, she imagined it wasn't. He had been playing a hunch. Acting on instinct. There was no real personal stake. He didn't even know her then. It was more like that moment in Russia, with Coulson's voice in her ear telling her Clint had been compromised. She couldn't react, because she had a job to do even as she was dying inside. Turning her attention back to the file, she ran her fingers over the name, her eyes lingering on the grainy photograph of a man she never thought she'd see again. A man she'd known intimately at a time when she hadn't even known herself.
The Winter Soldier.
Anything Else?