app for betenoire_rp
1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Sarah
Current characters in Bete Noire:
cerealboxbadge ❧ ( white collar )
arraigado ❧ ( fast and the furious )
Past characters in Bete Noire: N/A
2. Character Information
Name: Jenna Sommers
Livejournal Username: unparental
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Image: Icon here!
Reserve: Reserve here.
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance:
Jenna is about average height for a woman, and on the slender side, more from good genes than any sort of serious effort on her part. She has strawberry blonde hair and honestly, she's what you might call Hollywood Average. Pretty beyond a doubt, but not stunning. Other than a scar high up on her midsection from where Katherine compelled her to stab herself, she has no identifying marks like large, noticeable scars or tattoos.
And a picture reference, too.
Age is a little harder: this one requires some legwork. Since TVD doesn't give Jenna a birthdate or year, it's all context clues. In the first season of TVD, she's working on her Masters thesis, which would most likely put her as six or seven years into her education. Assuming she started college at eighteen, she's around twenty six when the series begins; which would mean by the time of her canon point, she's twenty seven. Additionally, Logan Fell mentions meeting Elena when she was "about nine". Assuming he means they met before Jenna left town, that would make Jenna nine when Elena was born. Given that Elena is seventeen at the beginning of the series and a year passes from the beginning of season one and the end of season two, twenty seven is a fair guess for her age.
History:
Check out my my mad wiki-linking skillz.
Personality:
Jenna is, at her core, a well-adjusted individual. She's dealt with the usual bumps and bruises of life (bad days, heartbreaks, break-ups) as well as more serious trauma (the loss of her sister-- and their parents, at an earlier, unspecified point) and come out the other side with her sense of humor intact. When the series starts she's out of her depth and worried that she's not going to be enough, but she's able to look on her own shortcomings with a balanced and largely non-self pitying eye. Jenna is, as a character, a work in progress; she knows it and she works her hardest to speed things along wherever possible, and adapt on the fly. (Even while being forced to deal with a teacher hellbent on insulting her and her discounting her burgeoning parenting abilities, she's able to meet his eyes and stand her ground, and give him some frostily polite hell right back. She's realistic and worried, not masochistic or looking for outside confirmation-- and thus an excuse to bail-- that in fact, she can't do it and she should give up.)
That adaptability is another key part of what makes Jenna tick. Some people are just better at rolling with the punches than others, and Jenna is among the best. She has her emotional breakdowns and isn't so zen as to be unaffected by the things happening around her, and just like everyone else sometimes she can't adapt in the first moment of knowing there's something to adapt to at all. However, Jenna is resilient to a fault and it never takes her long to Weeble her way back to an upright position. The clearest example of this in canon-- other than her ongoing attempts at parenting-- is the way Jenna responds to the Isobel/vampire bombs being dropped. It only takes her three days to deal with the fact that her boyfriend has a wife and lied to her about it; at the end of those three days, she's ready to have lunch with him and try to understand it all. With the vampire reveal, she goes from terrified crying and confusion the night she finds out, to being stalwart enough to threaten someone she thinks is a vampire with a crossbow by the next morning. Jenna's ability to grow and change with each moment is one of her greatest strengths.
With that adaptability comes open mindedness: Jenna is about as far from a traditionalist as you can get on network tv and not be a mustache twirling villain. She turns a blind eye-- and sometimes not so blind, as she instead teases her two charges about their love lives-- to Elena and Jeremy hooking up in the house: sex isn't something Jenna sees as shameful or dangerous, just another part of life. While she makes stabs at what she thinks a parent should do-- in one episode, she informs Stefan he's most definitely not spending the night, and to leave Elena's door open while he's in there-- those are more playacting than her real convictions. Jenna is free and unabashed herself, and as long as her niece and nephew are safe she doesn't seem to object to them being sexually active. (So long as it's with age-appropriate partners, Damon.) This permissiveness spreads to her treatment of drugs and alcohol-- she knows both teens drink underage, but as long as they're safe she doesn't really care. Her issue with Jeremy's pot use is more about the fact that he's escaping into drugs to deal with his feelings instead of healing the hurt losing his parents caused, and not the actual drugs themselves.
Another facet of that open-minded philosophy on life is Jenna's history of giving second chances. It stretches all the way back in her history; from Logan to Alaric to Damon, Jenna is almost always willing to give someone a chance to prove her wrong about them. Not at the drop of a hat, because she's no push-over-- however, if you can prove you've changed whatever caused the rift-- or even that you're trying to-- Jenna is willing to let bygones be bygones. This leads into another defining trait, her empathy. Jenna is an understanding person who isn't stingy with her second (and third, and fourth) chances, provided the person can show her they're trying. Jenna believes firmly in the thought counting, and she will always be willing to hear out a person claiming to have changed. She may not believe them, or forgive them right away: but she'll always listen. On the flip side of that willingness to listen and believe people can change is that with people who never seem to even try to change, Jenna can hold an unholy grudge. She did it with Logan to a certain degree, and she really does it with John Gilbert. For Jenna, actions speak louder than words: she's never seen John act in a way that didn't remind her exactly why she doesn't like him, and so she gives him as good as she's got back. If he ever gave any indication he wanted to try and patch things up, she would be willing to try; but he doesn't even come close to that, and so it's John more than anyone else who regularly gets the sharp side of her tongue and not much else.
Which leads into the next important thing about Jenna: she is absolutely no one's doormat. Despite her wanting to believe people can change and the second chances-- then sometimes the ensuing disappointments that leads to-- she hands out like candy, Jenna doesn't suffer fools lightly. She can be polite and professional when she needs to be and would seemingly just rather avoid the people she dislikes on a day to day, personal basis. However, when avoiding is impossible on a personal level if Jenna isn't fond of you, you'll damn well know it. She's a smart woman who knows how to speak her mind, and she won't shy away from doing so if provoked.
Another great way to provoke Jenna is to threaten (or even insult) the people she loves. She's fiercely loyal and protective to a fault. When John attacks her as being lax and negligent in parenting Jeremy and Elena she's visibly upset, but controls her response and starts to walk away; it's only when John implies Alaric's a jerk and then flat-out calls him a liar that Jenna turns back, to warn him away from saying things about the man she loves. She ends up in Klaus' hands because Katherine poses as a terrified, in need of help Elena and lures her outside, where she's not safe. She knows about Katherine by that point, but the idea that one of her family needs her is too much to ignore in the favor of more certain safety. Even her death scene rings with how much she cares for others; even as she craves blood and fears for her life, Jenna assures Elena she'll never regret the two years she was her guardian, even if she feels like she failed. She tries to comfort and protect Elena up to the very last: instead of running away like she promised, she tries to kill Greta and save Elena's life ahead of her own.
Jenna's ultimately most important character trait-- which is in some ways, a combination of all of her other personality facets-- is how much (and how deeply) she feels. Everything is real for her, important. Not in a melodramatic, over the top way, but with the kind of vigor you only find in people who really, really enjoy life. She's a passionate person, dedicated to the people and things she cares about whole-heartedly: no matter what the feeling or person is, Jenna's not much for half measures. That intensity of feeling is carried out up until the moment of her death, where instead of switching off her humanity she dies with the full weight of fear, because that fear comes with still being able to feel. And that's Jenna's true core: her real defining characteristic, her ability, is to feels and then keep feeling even after being smacked down. In the face of adversity, pain, and various setbacks, Jenna always comes back for more and tries again, staying open to possibility even when that openness costs her. It defined her in life and it defines her up until the moment of her death.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation:
Jenna has what you might call free-wheeling attitude towards sex. As long as it's all consensual and no one gets hurt, she doesn't see an issue with anyone (provided it's legal they bone, get away from her niece Damon) getting freaky in their free time. 'If it feels good, do it' was her life philosophy for a long, long time, and habits like those don't just go away because you focus more on raising two teenagers than getting laid.
She doesn't have any real shame about her past, or the many sexual experiences it contains: sex isn't something to hide or feel bad about for Jenna. There's a time and a place (she's embarrassed when Elena finds her and an equally half naked Alaric coming back from a post-coital hunt for ice cream) but acknowledgement of sex itself isn't anything to hide, in her world.
Jenna also has kind of awful taste in men: her past romantic interests all seem to be cocky bastards who know how to turn on the charm to get what they want. (Logan Fell, an ex who's known her all her life, says Jenna was always an easy shove from no to maybe, and an even easier shove from maybe to yes.) Her attraction to-- and relationship with-- Alaric is a new step for her: he's a steadier, more adult relationship than Jenna's ever had before.
Her views on relationships is very modern: until you agree to exclusivity, casual is the default. She's not the kind of woman who would cheat on a partner without serious, extreme guilt-- having been a victim of the other side of the equation more than once, herself-- but she also doesn't immediately assume any relationship will be exclusive without talking it over first. She's kind of an epic flirt-- and flirtation without serious intent is fun for Jenna, not a waste of time-- which continues to a certain degree regardless of how monogamous she is in any current romantic entanglement.
As per what we've seen in canon, Jenna has only ever had relationships with men: I would peg her as maybe a one on the Kinsey scale. Odds are she made out with another woman or several in college, during her hard partying days, but she's almost exclusively interested in men sexually speaking. Jenna is the kind of character who could roll with it if she somehow found herself attracted to a woman-- she's openminded, and probably attended her share of Pride parties in college-- but it's not on her current radar.
Powers:
First, a note on this whole section: as a baby vamp who had less than an entire day between turning and her actual, forever death, Jenna will have the ability to do all of the usual vamp things, but won't know quite how to control it all perfectly without training. Being young also means that while she's stronger than a baseline human, any TVD vamp older than her can kick her ass, along with just about any other character who is her equal-- or near to her-- in strength or speed but knows what their bodies can and can't do.
That said: bear with me, this is about to get tl;dr. In The Vampire Diaries mythos, vampires have some interesting powers. the ones that would apply to Jenna are:
→ Fast healing (wounds heal at least superficially within a matter of minutes. In addition to her own accelerated healing, Jenna's blood can heal humans, as well; giving vampire blood to a human near death would heal them rather than turning them into a vampire, without additional steps.)
→ Immortality (Barring a stake through the heart, decapitation or being exposed to sunlight for an extended period of time, vampires can't die, even through starvation. Jenna now needs blood to survive: a vampire deprived of such for too long will become a sort of living corpse, in the literal. Their skin will dessicate until the vampire resembles... a mummy, almost, and they'll be unable to talk or move, trapped that way forever unless someone feeds them blood. Vampires are also immune to diseases and poison, as well; the one exception to this is vervain, an herb that acts as a poison to vampires. As far as we know it won't kill them even in huge doses, but it will make them ill to the point of incapacitation and paralysis, depending on how huge said dose turns out to be.)
→ Enhanced senses (Vampires can hear about a million times better than humans; for example, conversations held a room away are clearly audible, and in a quiet house a vampire upstairs could hear someone rooting around the fridge downstairs. However, other sources of noise seem to interfere with this ability; turning on a blender or a sink full blast or even just turning up music can screw with a vampire's ~bionic hearing~.)
→ Mind control (Vampires have the ability to control humans' minds. In the TVD canon, this is referred to as 'compulsion'. A vampire can influence people to do or feel things they'd rather not-- up to and including commit suicide or allow themselves to be fed on without fear-- as well as remove and alter memories. The strength and reliability of any given compulsion depends on the vampire behind the wheel; a weaker or younger vampire won't be as practiced or as powerful as an older, experienced vampire. There's also hints dropped that some vampires take to compulsion naturally, and are just better at it from the word go. Luckily, the way around this power is simple; if someone ingests vervain through food or drink, or has it on their person-- forms in canon include vervain hidden in jewelry, sprigs of the plant kept in a pocket, or even perfumes made with the herb-- they cannot be controlled by a vampire. Ingesting vervain apparently has a time limit on how long that one dose will protect a person, but the exact timeline isn't known and depends on the dose, regardless.)
→ Enhanced speed/strength (Vampires can lift... say, a two hundred pound man and fling him against a wall like they're tossing a softball. Stefan-- who is older than Jenna but feeds on animal blood, which removes some of his own power afforded by age-- is able to lift a section of a float largely on his own after it crushes someone's arm. TVD vamps can essentially zoom about, moving so fast they blur; in some cases, they move so fast it's not even a blur, they just are suddenly somewhere else. When combined with their ability to jump onto things high enough to make a cat weep with envy, it can appear like they're flying.)
→ A sincere aversion to UV rays. While a witch from the TVD canon could hypothetically make Jenna a ring to walk in the daylight, as it stands any hint of sunlight would burn her.
→ As a vampire, Jenna can't enter homes owned by humans uninvited: however, once she's been invited that's that, she'll always have access to the home until it passes ownership to a new human owner who hasn't invited her.
One other note on TVD vamps; the level of their powers depends on age, and blood. An older vampire will almost always taken down a younger one, and a vampire who feeds on humans will be able to beat one who feeds on animals. Vampires can sustain themselves on animal blood and remain strong, but human blood alone confers their full strength.
For a less tl;dr version of her powers and weaknesses, here is a handy link.
Reason for playing:
Jenna is that rare unicorn in rp: a healthy, well-adjusted, happy person. She's adaptable and resilient, which really does make her a dream match for the jamjar environment, where characters constantly have to deal with Weird Shit. (A lot of which can be new to them.)
She's also from a canonpoint I wish desperately hadn't been cut short on the show itself; Jenna as a vampire presents a wealth of new character development and a new place in her canon to explore, and Bete Noire provides a chance to explore that now that the show is a forever bust when it comes to Jenna.
5. Samples
First-Person:
Thread with Damon on a dear mun entry.
Third-Person:
When they first tell her that Miranda is dead, all Jenna can think is it's a mistake. One of those stories you read about on the internet where they don't identify the bodies correctly and in the end, the hospital gets sued and the family uses the money to pay for some now very needed therapy.
Her older sister is and has always been perfect. She can't be dead, because a car accident doesn't figure into Miranda Gilbert's life plan-- gorgeous wedding to the man she's been dating forever, house, kids, career-- and Jenna has never, never, met something that could stand in Miranda's way when she makes her mind up she wants something. If she wasn't such an amazing sister, they probably would never have gotten along. Jenna's smart and she got into more than one good school after senior year, but the teachers at Mystic Falls still probably think of her as the Sommers Sister Most Likely To Get Caught Playing Strip Poker While Skipping Class (she and Mason are sophomores, Logan is currently "dating" that perky blonde cheerleader who might as well be a Founding Family groupie, it's a pep rally day and Jenna has always suffered a congenital lack of rally related pep even when she's not moping, and Mason snagged a bottle of the really good stuff from his dad's liquor cabinet) rather than the Sommers sister everyone remembers as going to do whatever she wants with her life. If Miranda had been smug or boastful at all, the resentment Jenna sometimes feels might have blossomed into a rift; instead, Miranda is an ally and confidant, always has been.
But car accidents don't care if you're focused or the best sister in the world, and beyond not wanting to believe it's true, Jenna knows that. She's always been bad at listening to her head instead of following her heart, but this time there's nothing to follow to stem off the end for a little bit longer-- all that's left is accepting what she already knows is true.
Then the lawyers call, and the emptiness in her world where Miranda has always been becomes a black hole. Instead of asking John, they've left Elena and Jeremy to her. For a brief, selfish moment, Jenna runs down the list of family (and almost-family) that might take them in-- she can barely keep herself happy, healthy, and fed; why would anyone give her two kids, it's insane-- before a flush of shame knocks her back on her ass, and she misses the lawyer's next question as her ears ring. These kids are her family, they're all that's left of Miranda. Of course she'll take them, of course. She says it out loud the second time, and sets a meeting to sign the papers without really hearing anything else said. Then she has a panic attack, gets rip roaring drunk and sobs for hours, in that order.
The next day, though, she gets up; she signs the papers and goes to explain to her landlord why she has to break lease. She says goodbye to her favorite bars, to the taco place where she almost got arrested for public indecency, and heads back to Mystic Falls: heads back to a house that isn't supposed to be hers, and two kids who are hurting as much as she is. They're not like they were when she last visited-- but then again she's not the same, either. Jeremy is sullen and withdrawn with brief forays into acting out, staying holed up in his room when he isn't out the door without a word. Elena keeps sighing and pressing her lips together in a neat line that looks just like Miranda did when she was trying to be strong and hold back tears, and Jenna-- Jenna's trying not to cherish echos of the sister she loved in the daughter she left behind, and dog-paddling madly to keep all their heads above water. Food needs to be bought, bills needs to be paid, bathrooms need to be cleaned. The world miraculously doesn't stop turning because they all want it to, and by the end of the summer the tight line of Elena's mouth curves back into a smile, Jeremy joins them for dinner once and a while, and Jenna stops letting them win Guitar Hero.
They all continue: slowly, painfully, but surely. One foot in front of the other, until it's less a struggle and more like being alive again, until the weight lessens-- never disappears, just stops pressing down quite as heavily-- and one day Jenna wakes up and they're a family, three together instead of one by one by one. She still worries occasionally she's too permissive, that they don't eat enough fiber and that she'll say or do something to mess it all up. She's not perfect-- and she's still not Miranda, which she's realized by now isn't quite the same thing-- but most days, she's enough.
Third-Person #2:
It takes two nights after she gets home from the hospital to get Ric to abandon the couch. He's nervous-- doesn't want to hurt her, he says with a wince that somehow feels guilty, even if Jenna can't figure out why; she's the klutz who walked into a knife like a complete waste of air, it's not like Ric had anything to do with it-- but Jenna's tired and she aches and she can't take one more night alone.
"Ric, it's late and unless you roll over in your sleep and rip my stitches, we're fine. When I said sleep? I meant sleep. Just sleep."
It takes repeating it another time and then threatening to get out of bed and jump up and down until it really is his fault she's hurt to convince him, and he's still stiff and too careful. He relaxes night by night until Jenna can convince him to slip an arm around her waist (carefully, avoiding her side) and then finally he unbends enough to kiss her. It's sweet, slow, perfect; other than the gentle hand laying on her abdomen, his hands stay on his side of the bed: Jenna is ready to scream. Once the doctor says she's cleared for duty-- so to speak-- it's clearly time to take a decided tactical advantage.
"Take off your pants." Or maybe it's time for bald demands. Either way, Ric is gobsmacked: it should make him look like a landed fish (and it does, a little bit, albeit a handsome fish) but instead of making her want to laugh, all it does is fill Jenna with a strange, warm feeling, her pulse fluttering a little in her throat. "The doctor says I'm okay, and you've spent the last week sleeping next to me without laying a hand on me. It's sweet and I'm so, so glad you're the kind of guy who is okay with that, but right now I need you to take your pants off so we can have sex. Lots of it."
That doesn't work right away either, but Jenna is stubborn and Alaric is clearly not as genuinely reluctant as he is afraid to hurt her side, again. It's slow-- Ric stops every five seconds to ask her if she's okay, if she's sure, until she laughs and then promises to shove a sock in his mouth if he doesn't stop-- and when Jeremy walks in to ask Alaric a question about an essay, almost over before it begins. Finally, finally they get the door locked and their clothes off, and Ric stops asking if she's all right almost entirely.
He still touches her like a boy with a bird egg-- gentle hands palming her hips, reaching up to feather a barely there touch over where her stitches were in an almost unconscious gesture, pressing kisses to the corner of her mouth, her jawline, her lips-- but it makes her feel precious, instead of smothered. They have to be quiet so Jeremy and Elena don't wake up, and Alaric buries his head in her shoulder before moving up to kiss any sounds they make away.
It's not the most athletic sex she's ever had, or the longest lasting, but it's somehow the best, and with each gentle push of his hips Alaric makes her wish she could freeze this moment and pull it out to experience again whenever she wants to feel precious-- complete.
Then he's still there in the morning, snoring lightly and smelling like a man who desperately needs a shower, and that's even better.