Can has profile
CHARACTER
THE BASICS
NAME: Amanda Hayes
CANON & TIMELINE: Anaconda III and IV, post-IV
CHARACTER TYPE: Canon-based AU? Basically, canon makes more sense if she's lying about who she is throughout the movie. Her actions are worlds away from her words.
AGE: Well, she claims to have had four years of med school plus biology and advanced animal handling experience... wait, she's lying. 24-26ish.
THE CHARACTER
APPEARANCE: See icons. Amanda is small, white, blonde, and pretty. She's got a strong chin and blue-gray eyes. She's 5'6". She tends towards tank tops and rugged, drab shorts and jackets.
PERSONALITY: We first see Amanda on her own, running. Shortly after in the movie, we see her showing more concern for a snake than she does the human it's killed. Amanda is not as callous as she would like to be, but she's accustomed to having to break eggs to make her omelettes. Fiery and reckless in her personality, she's not terribly afraid to have mercenaries running around after her, or to forge around a powerless facility looking for a giant maneating snake. She probably does not expect to live past 50, and is ready to go out in a blaze.
She's gifted enough as a con artist to make people believe she's a herpetologist who's also gone through four years of med school. She's also quite good at bluffing when it comes to scaring people about giant snakes on the loose, and she's good at operating on the fly. She has enough empathy and humanity to consider everyday people as uninvolved casualties she needs to protect, but she is on the side of Mother Nature, and mercenaries and mad scientists alike need to die.
After the giant anaconda that threatens the cast in every movie returns in 4, Amanda sees it as her duty to track down the last of the scientific measures to create these creatures and destroy them, thereby eradicating the abuse of nature and freeing anacondas to be their anaconda-ish selves.
HISTORY & WORLD-BUILDING:
THE DETAILS
Amanda undoubtedly has had some education--probably two years of college, science-based, before she dropped out. One of those people who quickly learns the lingo and can appear cool and competent, she was a natural fit when a small organization wanted to put her in a facility they suspected of hilarious amounts of animal abuse. And how right they were.
The first and second movies are about how blood orchids make anacondas bigger, faster, meaner, smarter, and incredibly long-lived and regenerative. So humans take them and dose them up and experiment on them, trying to figure out how to harness their powers for profit.
Amanda's role in the third movie is protagonist-ish and action-y. She watches the snake grow and worries for its comfort. When it gets loose, she goes and helps look for it.
I am not joking about her carelessness with the lives of the company's mercenaries. Supposedly, she is on their side, and they show a certain amount of trust in her--even arming her. Amanda is following one with her pistol held pointing left. She sweeps the room to aim right. She never lifts the gun muzzle. Even someone who's never held a pistol in their lives knows better. She also sees their leader impaled through the chest... and she gives him CPR. Apparently he wasn't dying fast enough for her. What shock and grief she does show throughout the movie can just be taken for her not being completely inhumane.
Also, the herpetologist who's been watching the anaconda grow to enormous sizes for years, and who knows about its incredibly rapid growth, has put the tracking chip only through the topmost layer of scales. That's the layer which will fall off in the next molt, which, as she have must have noticed, is due at about any hour.
(Seriously: this movie only makes sense if she is trying to kill everyone.)
The third movie's monster basis is "Amanda & Co. mutated a giant snake for humanity." I think she joined with the project after the snake's mutations had begun, and realized how big an attack she'd need to shut the whole thing down. She stayed with the company, working her way up as she gained experience, in an attempt to watch over their experimental snake and keep tabs on any others. She was forced to experiment on it and tamper with its genes--given the callous ways she treats the mercenaries later and helps them die, she held a grudge for that. She was probably close to making her move when the beast broke loose.
At the end, she blows up the snake and all its hatchlings, which makes sense for a humanitarian or an... ecotarian? After all, there's nothing like an exotic superpredator to wreck an ecosystem. Her part in the movie closes as she burns the project notes.
In the next movie, she's tracking an evil researcher through the jungle, looking for his lair (which makes much more sense for an ecoterrorist with connections to do well at than a med student/herpetologist.) She comes across a group of Unspecified Science-y Sorts hanging around in the jungle. They're threatened by the mercenaries hunting her, and by the snake. She does what she can to help them. In the end of the movie, she has shot someone while he's straddling someone and leaning in to hurt them (she was standing far behind the attacker--that's a dangerous angle for the person you're trying to rescue!) She has also blown up a greenhouse full of orchids and helped blow up a giant snake.
Amanda does a lot of exploding things for a cute little herpetologist, have you noticed?
STRENGTHS/SKILLS/ABILITIES:
Amanda's strengths and abilities center around being really fit and knowing how to work around people. She's probably used to moving in a lot of environments--I can see her having done field work and learned how to navigate jungles. She's probably done a lot of outdoor sports, like rock climbing and rafting. I can see her knowing a little about electronics, a little about housebreaking, a lot about outdoor survival, and pretending to know a lot about everything else.
She also is somehow very good at martial arts, and in the fourth movie can shoot pistols dual-wielded like Lara Croft. (That is rather over-the-top even for her, and I will probably not be using it much.)
LIMITATIONS: Amanda's only human! She overestimates her competence, and she's actually not as experienced or gifted as she may claim to be. Although she's had some weapons training, she's still rather rough and raw when it comes to picking her targets--she is the sort of person who would accidentally shoot a friendly for jumping out of a door--and needs training.
She's also a con artist, and she may threaten or damage her own relationships by trying to hold lies past the breaking point.
EQUIPMENT/PETS: ...expect Amanda to adopt whatever snakes she runs across. She carries two pistols which she knows how to use. However, they run out of ammo and don't fire mushrooms.
THE WRITING
SAMPLE - LOGS:
Amanda knew there were people here somewhere. There were tracks in the sand, scuffled there by careless feet; here and there, growths of mushrooms were disturbed, and a broken stalactite lay in shattered pieces over the floor. Amanda stopped in the archway, looking up, to see where it had fit. How long had it been growing there before someone forgot to watch their head?
There was something... artificial-feeling about this place, in a way, despite the majesty of the caves and the natural, easy shapes of the ceiling and walls. Perhaps it was the perfumes in the air, perhaps it was the echoes and voices that Amanda swore came from that little side cave... but it was empty but for a silver pool, when she looked, and she hovered in silence before passing on.
There had to be an open cave mouth somewhere. There was too much life for there not to be. Deep caves were so stark because there was so little food, but this place... teemed with life. Amanda paused at a rather soft-grounded cave, peering up. Bats. She went back. Sometimes, you had to know when to take the long way.
She was just about to climb down into a tunnel when her hand touched something that moved. She peered down. Oh, poor little thing... some kind of tiny constrictor was coiled up, probably chilled. She lifted it carefully, examining its body. It didn't look like any species she knew of. Just like the glowing mushrooms back there had been improbably huge, she should have seen pictures...
She cradled the snake gently, climbing down tiny step by tiny step, giving it the warmth of her hands. She'd let it go under another sunny spot. Right now it was something to focus on, despite too many questions and a steadily rising fear.
The Other Sample
People reclining gently in their caves would first hear Amanda scuffling about climbing the wall--the rasp of her sneakers catching rock, the faint, guilty "--ooh!" as she realized she'd just knocked over a delicate clump of mushrooms, and finally the scrabbling sound of her stopping on the edge of the mercury pool.
They would then be extremely annoyed by boomingly loud PLOONK! noises as she dropped a few pebbles in to check the depth.
If they stayed after that, they would hear her voice. "Hola? Bonjour? Uh, hello, hello? Is someone on the other side? Does this move? Helloooo? I knew I heard voices. And I haven't eaten any mushrooms."