Entry tags:
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paradisa
PERSONAL
NAME: Bex
PERSONAL JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
runninginheels
EMAIL: thexwoman at gmail.com
AIM: n/a
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a
CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Katherine Houghton Beckett
SERIES: Castle
CANON POINT: 5x03 "Need to Know", right after she gets fired.
LOSS: Kate will forget having read all of Richard Castle's books and, in extension, forget their significance to her. While this won't necessarily have an effect on her relationship with Castle specifically, Kate was a really big fan of Castle's books before she met him, to the point that his books helped her cope with her mother's murder. Losing that will make her lose the significance that his writing had to her in terms of her mother. The fact that Castle's Nikki Heat novels were basically love letters to Beckett will also be a factor; but since their relationship is mostly independent of his books, it should not heavily affect their romance. There will, however, be a certain dimension to her memories of how they got together that will suffer from this loss, and she will lack feeling that deeper connection she felt to him that existed prior to them working together.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER: Kate Beckett is a serious and devoted homicide detective, and she's dedicated to her job and her team. She also has a pretty harsh origin story; her freshman year of college her mother was murdered, and the killer wasn't caught. Saddled with grief, Kate put any previous plans on hold and joined the police force right out of college, desperate to find justice for her mother and closure for herself.
After her mother's death, her father's choice addiction became alcohol; Kate's addiction was the case. Kate exhibits an obsessive personality when it comes to her work and specifically her mother’s murder, and it became an all-encompassing drive for her through much her adult life, often causing her to blindly throw herself into any situation where she thought she might solve the case and causing her to endanger her own life on multiple occasions. Although she has managed to move on with her life in recent years, her tenacity continues in her work. She’s still a bull dog in the precinct, taking on the most complicating cases and touting one of the highest closing rates in the NYPD. She has a fierce sense of honor and dedication to her job, and prizes justice over all. While she is able to fiercely bring many killers to justice, it also gets her into trouble on occasion, such as causing her to lose her job in DC at the beginning of season 6. While she appreciates and system and does her best to abide by it, Beckett feels that her loyalty lies with the people she is sworn to protect.
Due to the pain of her mother’s death, Beckett learned to cope with her pain by compartmentalizing the different facets in her life. For a long time, she kept her personal life staunchly separated from her professional life, to the point that not many of the people she worked with knew much about who she really was. Because of the trauma associated with her mother’s death, Beckett made the conscious decision to change her personality; she put up a barrier against forming any serious relationships out of fear of getting hurt, and hid away the parts of herself that had once been fun loving and happy. It isn’t until Castle is introduced into her life that those walls begin to fall, and Beckett begins to realize she’s been missing out on a lot of enjoyment of life by being so closed off.
Unfortunately, due to her ability to so seamlessly compartmentalize, Beckett is also fairly good at lying. For the most part she keeps her lies simple, or confined to investigations, but there have been times when she’s lied – particularly to Castle – about more important things, such as the job she was offered in DC at the end of season 4. That seemed to have been a breaking point for them, however, when Castle resolved the issue by proposing to her and illustrating to her that she could have a life and be the person she wanted to be and he would still fully accept and support her.
When she is shot at the end of season 3, it becomes a serious turning point for Beckett. She suffers from PTSD and while she is aware her shooting makes it manifest, she is of the understanding that her mother’s death truly triggered the sadness, fear and disappointment that has ruled her life. Although she almost once again allows herself to fall back into that pit of despair, Castle’s support and staunch loyalty helps sway her, and Beckett once again makes a conscious decision to change herself – but instead of closing down, she opens herself up to him and the new life that she can pursue with him.
While Beckett is often characterized as an ice queen and fairly distant, this is shown over the course of the show to be the personality she created for herself to cope with the loss of her mother. As the show progresses and Beckett begins to open up to Castle, her personality softens over the years. She is deeply sympathetic, and often exhibits her own feelings and thoughts about things by projecting onto others. For example, cases where children lose their mothers prove to be particularly difficult for her, and she tends to relate strongly to the families of all of the victims of her cases. It is clear that because she was unable to solve her mother’s case, finding that closure for other victims helps make her own pain easier to bear.
For all her dedicated professionalism and often prickly personality, Beckett also has a fun side; she is playful with Castle, especially when they are alone, and enjoys verbally sparring with him as well as the people she works with. Although she is very put together and proper in her work sphere, she has a number of hobbies, and we learn she enjoys cooking, motorcycles, reading, and even used to cosplay at science fiction conventions in college. Beckett has a sweet tooth and is totally addicted to coffee. She also tends to be sentimental, particularly about objects she owns that remind of her of her mother, and admits to having boxes and boxes of items that she’s never let go of.
For as closed off as Beckett has been most of her adult life, she has managed to form some deep and meaningful friendships. Her teammates, Ryan and Esposito, are two men she deeply respects and always trusts to have her back. Her relationship with them is almost of that of siblings, and she teases them but also tries to be there when they need her, as they are for her. Castle is her partner, both in the work and personal spheres, and the first person she seems to have allowed to cross between her staunch compartmentalizing. She trusts him implicitly. Although they started out on rocky ground when he decided - against her will - to shadow her, she grew to respect him as an investigator and as they grew closer, fell in love with him. Castle’s daughter, Alexis, was someone that Beckett essentially watched grow up; on occasion, Alexis would come to her for advice, and although they drifted apart for a while, they were able to reconnect and Kate is learning to find a new place in Alexis’ life now that she is going to marry her father. Castle’s mother, Martha, is someone that both amuses and surprises Beckett, and they have developed a unique and affectionate bond over the years. Finally, there is Beckett’s father. After her mother’s death, Beckett helped him overcome his alcoholism, and it seems to have brought them closer. Jim was one of the first people to realize how Beckett felt about Castle, and he often challenges her to truly think about the choices in her life and make sure she is not making decisions based on the fear surrounding her mother’s death.
Beckett still struggles with being closed off, although she is reaching a point in her life where she is learning to not let her fear determine her choices. She still harbors anger for her mother's death and a desire to solve it, but she now values her own life over her mother's death and has become more cautious in her actions concerning that investigation. She is finally allowing herself to think about the future, rather than being locked into the past, and with that has come the opportunity for her to truly develop as a person independently of her devastating loss. While she still struggles on occasion with being honest and open with Castle, she’s learning to trust, and in turn, be more honest with herself and what she wants out of her life. Although she is still developing after many years of being trapped in her own pain, she has found a loving family who continue to challenge her and help her move past her previous misfortune and towards a future where she can finally embrace the person she truly is.
ABILITIES: Beckett is a homicide detective through and through. Tenacious, intelligent, stubborn, and with an obsessive attention to detail, she's a staple in the force, having even gone as far to be the youngest woman in the NYPD to make detective, because she's awesome like that. And she's way more awesome than Castle. She can also shoot guns better than Castle, beat up suspects better than Castle, get confessions better than Castle, and she looks better in a dress than Castle. Did I mention she's better than Castle? At everything? Well, everything except making up insane stories about murders based on no evidence, but that's why she's the cop and he's the writer.
Also, she's really good at running in heels.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:
Castle's apartment was eerily silent once McCord left. Beckett had managed to keep her composure, but once she was shut safely back into the confines of the familiar loft, she wasn't sure what to do next.
"Beckett..." She could tell he was ready to say something, probably to try to be comforting or encouraging but she didn't want to hear it.
"Excuse me."
Beckett moved quickly towards his office, slipping through the bedroom and straight into the bathroom. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as she secured the door shut, turning to lean against it before she buried her head in her hands.
She knew she'd done the right thing. She saved someone's life, essentially, but at a cost. Her job, her new life in DC with Castle. The life she'd nearly lost him for and now she had nothing to show for it. Nothing.
Raking her fingers through her hair, Beckett stared up at the ceiling and tried to slow down her mind. Her thoughts were racing as fast as her heart and she had to calm down, think it through step by step. So, she didn't have a job anymore. That was... fixable. Castle would be supportive - he wasn't thrilled about moving to DC and, anyway, when wasn't he supportive? Her hand moved to her chest, fishing out the chain that held her engagement ring and she wrapped it in her palm, holding it so tight that the diamond dug into her hand. The chain held her mother's ring too; a constant remind of her past, and her future. Who she was and who she was ready to become.
And she knew she had two choices. She could do what was easy for her, natural; be angry, be obsessed, find a way to fix it, beg for her job back, fight for what she had lost. Or she could do the one thing she had never been any good at.
She could move on.
Dropping the rings back down her shirt, Beckett jumped when she heard a knock on the bathroom door. "Kate? You okay?"
Beckett opened her mouth to respond, but paused for a moment instead, staring down at her feet. Her past had made her who she was, for better or worse. It had brought her here, to this moment, and she didn't regret it. But the past was also gone. She couldn't mend it, couldn't change it, it was out of her control. But the future, well, that was a different story.
"Yeah," she finally replied. "Yeah, Castle, I'll be fine." And for the first time in a long time, she knew she would.
FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: A sample thread from a current game.
INTENT: I've been playing Beckett for a number of years, and I really enjoy her complexity as a character; she is both vulnerable and kick-ass, and her changes over the years in the show are very dramatic and serve to make her incredibly deep. I really like discovering more about her through the canon as well as RP, and she serves to be a surprising character and a lot of fun to play with in pan-fandom RPs. I'm interested in playing her at Paradisa specifically because I like the idea of losses, especially for a character like Kate who is very defined by her memories, experiences and abilities. I feel that having the opportunity to deny her those factors, even for a short period of time, will be a good opportunity to delve more deeply into aspects of her character that I don't always get the chance to explore in other games.
NAME: Bex
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
runninginheelsEMAIL: thexwoman at gmail.com
AIM: n/a
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a
CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Katherine Houghton Beckett
SERIES: Castle
CANON POINT: 5x03 "Need to Know", right after she gets fired.
LOSS: Kate will forget having read all of Richard Castle's books and, in extension, forget their significance to her. While this won't necessarily have an effect on her relationship with Castle specifically, Kate was a really big fan of Castle's books before she met him, to the point that his books helped her cope with her mother's murder. Losing that will make her lose the significance that his writing had to her in terms of her mother. The fact that Castle's Nikki Heat novels were basically love letters to Beckett will also be a factor; but since their relationship is mostly independent of his books, it should not heavily affect their romance. There will, however, be a certain dimension to her memories of how they got together that will suffer from this loss, and she will lack feeling that deeper connection she felt to him that existed prior to them working together.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER: Kate Beckett is a serious and devoted homicide detective, and she's dedicated to her job and her team. She also has a pretty harsh origin story; her freshman year of college her mother was murdered, and the killer wasn't caught. Saddled with grief, Kate put any previous plans on hold and joined the police force right out of college, desperate to find justice for her mother and closure for herself.
After her mother's death, her father's choice addiction became alcohol; Kate's addiction was the case. Kate exhibits an obsessive personality when it comes to her work and specifically her mother’s murder, and it became an all-encompassing drive for her through much her adult life, often causing her to blindly throw herself into any situation where she thought she might solve the case and causing her to endanger her own life on multiple occasions. Although she has managed to move on with her life in recent years, her tenacity continues in her work. She’s still a bull dog in the precinct, taking on the most complicating cases and touting one of the highest closing rates in the NYPD. She has a fierce sense of honor and dedication to her job, and prizes justice over all. While she is able to fiercely bring many killers to justice, it also gets her into trouble on occasion, such as causing her to lose her job in DC at the beginning of season 6. While she appreciates and system and does her best to abide by it, Beckett feels that her loyalty lies with the people she is sworn to protect.
Due to the pain of her mother’s death, Beckett learned to cope with her pain by compartmentalizing the different facets in her life. For a long time, she kept her personal life staunchly separated from her professional life, to the point that not many of the people she worked with knew much about who she really was. Because of the trauma associated with her mother’s death, Beckett made the conscious decision to change her personality; she put up a barrier against forming any serious relationships out of fear of getting hurt, and hid away the parts of herself that had once been fun loving and happy. It isn’t until Castle is introduced into her life that those walls begin to fall, and Beckett begins to realize she’s been missing out on a lot of enjoyment of life by being so closed off.
Unfortunately, due to her ability to so seamlessly compartmentalize, Beckett is also fairly good at lying. For the most part she keeps her lies simple, or confined to investigations, but there have been times when she’s lied – particularly to Castle – about more important things, such as the job she was offered in DC at the end of season 4. That seemed to have been a breaking point for them, however, when Castle resolved the issue by proposing to her and illustrating to her that she could have a life and be the person she wanted to be and he would still fully accept and support her.
When she is shot at the end of season 3, it becomes a serious turning point for Beckett. She suffers from PTSD and while she is aware her shooting makes it manifest, she is of the understanding that her mother’s death truly triggered the sadness, fear and disappointment that has ruled her life. Although she almost once again allows herself to fall back into that pit of despair, Castle’s support and staunch loyalty helps sway her, and Beckett once again makes a conscious decision to change herself – but instead of closing down, she opens herself up to him and the new life that she can pursue with him.
While Beckett is often characterized as an ice queen and fairly distant, this is shown over the course of the show to be the personality she created for herself to cope with the loss of her mother. As the show progresses and Beckett begins to open up to Castle, her personality softens over the years. She is deeply sympathetic, and often exhibits her own feelings and thoughts about things by projecting onto others. For example, cases where children lose their mothers prove to be particularly difficult for her, and she tends to relate strongly to the families of all of the victims of her cases. It is clear that because she was unable to solve her mother’s case, finding that closure for other victims helps make her own pain easier to bear.
For all her dedicated professionalism and often prickly personality, Beckett also has a fun side; she is playful with Castle, especially when they are alone, and enjoys verbally sparring with him as well as the people she works with. Although she is very put together and proper in her work sphere, she has a number of hobbies, and we learn she enjoys cooking, motorcycles, reading, and even used to cosplay at science fiction conventions in college. Beckett has a sweet tooth and is totally addicted to coffee. She also tends to be sentimental, particularly about objects she owns that remind of her of her mother, and admits to having boxes and boxes of items that she’s never let go of.
For as closed off as Beckett has been most of her adult life, she has managed to form some deep and meaningful friendships. Her teammates, Ryan and Esposito, are two men she deeply respects and always trusts to have her back. Her relationship with them is almost of that of siblings, and she teases them but also tries to be there when they need her, as they are for her. Castle is her partner, both in the work and personal spheres, and the first person she seems to have allowed to cross between her staunch compartmentalizing. She trusts him implicitly. Although they started out on rocky ground when he decided - against her will - to shadow her, she grew to respect him as an investigator and as they grew closer, fell in love with him. Castle’s daughter, Alexis, was someone that Beckett essentially watched grow up; on occasion, Alexis would come to her for advice, and although they drifted apart for a while, they were able to reconnect and Kate is learning to find a new place in Alexis’ life now that she is going to marry her father. Castle’s mother, Martha, is someone that both amuses and surprises Beckett, and they have developed a unique and affectionate bond over the years. Finally, there is Beckett’s father. After her mother’s death, Beckett helped him overcome his alcoholism, and it seems to have brought them closer. Jim was one of the first people to realize how Beckett felt about Castle, and he often challenges her to truly think about the choices in her life and make sure she is not making decisions based on the fear surrounding her mother’s death.
Beckett still struggles with being closed off, although she is reaching a point in her life where she is learning to not let her fear determine her choices. She still harbors anger for her mother's death and a desire to solve it, but she now values her own life over her mother's death and has become more cautious in her actions concerning that investigation. She is finally allowing herself to think about the future, rather than being locked into the past, and with that has come the opportunity for her to truly develop as a person independently of her devastating loss. While she still struggles on occasion with being honest and open with Castle, she’s learning to trust, and in turn, be more honest with herself and what she wants out of her life. Although she is still developing after many years of being trapped in her own pain, she has found a loving family who continue to challenge her and help her move past her previous misfortune and towards a future where she can finally embrace the person she truly is.
ABILITIES: Beckett is a homicide detective through and through. Tenacious, intelligent, stubborn, and with an obsessive attention to detail, she's a staple in the force, having even gone as far to be the youngest woman in the NYPD to make detective, because she's awesome like that. And she's way more awesome than Castle. She can also shoot guns better than Castle, beat up suspects better than Castle, get confessions better than Castle, and she looks better in a dress than Castle. Did I mention she's better than Castle? At everything? Well, everything except making up insane stories about murders based on no evidence, but that's why she's the cop and he's the writer.
Also, she's really good at running in heels.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:
Castle's apartment was eerily silent once McCord left. Beckett had managed to keep her composure, but once she was shut safely back into the confines of the familiar loft, she wasn't sure what to do next.
"Beckett..." She could tell he was ready to say something, probably to try to be comforting or encouraging but she didn't want to hear it.
"Excuse me."
Beckett moved quickly towards his office, slipping through the bedroom and straight into the bathroom. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as she secured the door shut, turning to lean against it before she buried her head in her hands.
She knew she'd done the right thing. She saved someone's life, essentially, but at a cost. Her job, her new life in DC with Castle. The life she'd nearly lost him for and now she had nothing to show for it. Nothing.
Raking her fingers through her hair, Beckett stared up at the ceiling and tried to slow down her mind. Her thoughts were racing as fast as her heart and she had to calm down, think it through step by step. So, she didn't have a job anymore. That was... fixable. Castle would be supportive - he wasn't thrilled about moving to DC and, anyway, when wasn't he supportive? Her hand moved to her chest, fishing out the chain that held her engagement ring and she wrapped it in her palm, holding it so tight that the diamond dug into her hand. The chain held her mother's ring too; a constant remind of her past, and her future. Who she was and who she was ready to become.
And she knew she had two choices. She could do what was easy for her, natural; be angry, be obsessed, find a way to fix it, beg for her job back, fight for what she had lost. Or she could do the one thing she had never been any good at.
She could move on.
Dropping the rings back down her shirt, Beckett jumped when she heard a knock on the bathroom door. "Kate? You okay?"
Beckett opened her mouth to respond, but paused for a moment instead, staring down at her feet. Her past had made her who she was, for better or worse. It had brought her here, to this moment, and she didn't regret it. But the past was also gone. She couldn't mend it, couldn't change it, it was out of her control. But the future, well, that was a different story.
"Yeah," she finally replied. "Yeah, Castle, I'll be fine." And for the first time in a long time, she knew she would.
FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: A sample thread from a current game.
INTENT: I've been playing Beckett for a number of years, and I really enjoy her complexity as a character; she is both vulnerable and kick-ass, and her changes over the years in the show are very dramatic and serve to make her incredibly deep. I really like discovering more about her through the canon as well as RP, and she serves to be a surprising character and a lot of fun to play with in pan-fandom RPs. I'm interested in playing her at Paradisa specifically because I like the idea of losses, especially for a character like Kate who is very defined by her memories, experiences and abilities. I feel that having the opportunity to deny her those factors, even for a short period of time, will be a good opportunity to delve more deeply into aspects of her character that I don't always get the chance to explore in other games.
