application for thegames

[tucky]

OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Iddy
Other characters: n/a

IN CHARACTER
Name: Tiffany Doggett
Alias: Nicknamed "Pennsatucky" by her fellow prison inmates, though it's not a real alias
Fandom: Orange is the New Black
Canon point/AU: post-1x08, "Fucksgiving"

Journal: tucky
PB: Taryn Manning
Age: Never stated in canon; looks to be in her early to mid-twenties
History: She has a section on the Wikipedia page for the show's characters. I also have my own summary of her storyline written up here. A content warning for drug addiction, murder/violence, religious extremism, and homophobia applies to those links. If I'm accepted, I have an extensive permissions post that pertains to this stuff. I'm very aware that this is a highly offensive character, but the last thing I want to do is make other people uncomfortable!

Presentation:
Tiffany is an extremist in every sense of the word. A born-again Christian who was led to the Lord by her lawyer after she murdered a health clinic worker, she goes all-out in pretty much everything she does. She loves attention, and will go to great lengths to keep all eyes on her, up to and including completely re-writing her entire belief system. That's not to say she doesn't truly believe what she says she does - but she believes it because she likes the attention and validation it gives her (or rather, the attention and validation that other people who believe the same things give her). In a flashback scene where she sees her little fanclub - cheering, clapping, waving signs with her name and face on them - for the first time, it's clear by the look on her face that she's thrilled. But without people who do that kind of thing for her, her "convictions" waver incredibly quickly. A few days alone in psychiatric lock-up had her declaring that there was no God (then, after a discussion with her lawyer, she was back to being a whole-hearted believer; she's a big flip-flopper, too), and if enough time without reinforcement and validation went by she'd likely abandon religion either partially or entirely and glom onto some other cause or belief. Even now, her understanding of Christianity seems to be rather shallow, so she's probably not all that familiar with the Bible or the intricacies of Christian religion outside of what her lawyer has told her (though she does have a Bible in prison that she reads from time to time).

All that said, Tiffany is definitely not a harmless eccentric. She's clearly damaged, which is sad and sympathy-inducing, but she's done (and continues to do) terrible, inexcusable things, and she's in prison for a reason. A violent offender, she's vindictive, impulsive, and has some serious anger issues - three things that, in combination, make her pretty damn dangerous. She's perfectly capable of being calm and easy-going - even good-natured - and her default state tends to lean more towards neutral... but her emotions can and do change on a dime, which means you really never know how she's going to react to something. Hating someone and wanting to literally kill them is not necessarily a permanent state, and she's capable of coming back from it abnormally quickly. Likewise, the opposite is true: she can go from liking someone and wanting to be their friend to despising them and throwing around genuine death threats in 0.5 seconds if she believes she's been slighted somehow. Her reactions aren't really very consistent, either: she shoots and kills a clinic nurse for making a rude joke about how many abortions she's had, but there are other times when someone will make a far worse comment that she won't react violently to. The one constant is that she rarely plans her actions or thinks about the consequences, no matter how important or serious they may be. She's in prison for murdering someone who made a snide comment at her expense, she repeatedly threatened and attempted to kill someone in prison because they refused her offer to make amends by baptizing them, and she's endangered other characters more than once. In all of these situations, her actions were the result of spur-of-the-moment anger - she pretty much never acts in cold blood, but that's only because she doesn't think long-term enough to do much of anything with premeditation. She does whatever the fuck she feels like at any given moment - whether that's letting someone's comment roll off her back by reminding herself that they're is "hellbound" and she isn't, or threatening them with a filed-down toothbrush.

Motivations:
Tiffany's actress describes her as "lost and confused", and I'm inclined to agree. It seems like nothing in her mind is set in stone. She doesn't believe in or do things because she enjoys them or they give her personal fulfillment - she believes in and does things based on what will earn her a significant amount of attention, because she enjoys and gets personal fulfillment from that and that alone. She's very emotionally immature, and as a result, she's very gullible and easily manipulated. It's hinted (and stated outright in a couple interviews with the writers, if information from those can be considered canon) that she grew up in a large family and got little in the way of parental attention, which goes a long way towards explaining some of her issues.

There's a lot about Tiffany that comes off as contrary and contradictory. She does a lot of bad things (ranging anywhere from harmless pranks to full-blown murder), but she's not manipulative or a schemer. She's bossy even on a good day and likes having people listen to her, but she's not really a leader. She plays at confidence and determination, but it doesn't take much to damage her faith in herself and her beliefs. When it comes down to it, she's really not confident in anything, and even though she tries to convince herself otherwise there's a part of her that knows it. She's more than capable of being a dangerous, violent person, and that should not in any way be overlooked or excused - but her thought processes and emotions are in many ways those of a petty, immature, insecure child. Her biggest weakness is that she's mentally weak. The only reason she's the "leader" of her first-season group of friends is that she was lucky enough to find people even more lost than she is.

All that said, she has the potential to figure out that she both needs and wants to be a better person than she is right now. However, she likely wouldn't come to a realization like that on her own - it would take positive influences, complete social censure, or some combination of the two. In canon (though past the pull point I've picked for her), she's already started to do this - she drops her vendettas against a couple of the other characters and backs off on the proselytizing, though her beliefs and cause du jour continue to yo-yo around. After losing the support of her friends, she wanders aimlessly for a bit, trying to awkwardly insert herself into other people's friend groups. (Unsurprisingly, most people aren't willing to forgive and forget so easily.) She finds an unlikely ally in one of the prison guards, who gives her some help with anger management. This is a good sign, but given her track record, I'd hesitate to say that this means that she's easily "cured". It shows she's capable of beginning to learn how to control herself - but not that she won't make any backslides.

Setting:
In canon, Tiffany has been a prison inmate for 2+ years - she's already very used to not having any agency or control over her own life. She also has anger issues, and a propensity for violence when she does get angry (though some of the more gory arena deaths would still shock her, at least at first; in the right situation she could shoot or stab someone no problem, but it's very unlikely she has any experience with things like beheading, severed limbs, evisceration, etc.). If she arrived and was immediately sent into the arena, she would be confused and terrified, and she probably wouldn't survive for very long. But in contrast, she would love the Capitol. She grew up poor and didn't get much attention, so living in luxury and being fawned over would be a dream come true for her. Being surrounded by people telling her that the Games are great, that everyone loves watching them, and that she's basically a celebrity for participating in them would warp her mindset very, very quickly, and by the time the next arena came up she'd probably be raring to go. It wouldn't be impossible for rebels or other tributes to get through to her and make her realize how fucked up everything is - but if the Capitol people got their claws in her first, it would definitely be an uphill battle.

SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
Well--

[She stops; swallows. She'd arrived suddenly, been out there for less than a day, and now she's here. It's all very overwhelming. She doesn't know how to voice her thoughts, because she doesn't know what her thoughts are.]

I guess my feelings are that... I didn't like that much at all, and I don't understand what happened. I guess I got knocked out. They said there'd be one survivor. Was that me? 'Cause I know you just said I lost, but I... I'm alive.

[She pauses, wondering if that was enough - but no one comes for her, so they must want more.]

Y'all must've fixed me up real good before I woke up, because I don't hurt at all anymore. And my arm--

[Her arm had been broken before she'd blacked out, bad enough that she'd seen bone. But now her skin is smooth and unblemished, without even a single bruise. She flexes it, running her fingers down her forearm. No pain. No stiffness. Nothing. She's broken bones before, and they'd taken months to heal. There's no way she could have been unconscious for months... right?]

I don't know. This is confusing to-- to take in, you know, 'cause I don't know what's going on and I don't got a lot of answers, so I don't got much to say. I'm thinking I might have dreamed some of the stuff that happened, 'cause that's the only way that it makes sense to me. I been getting any meds? Drugs? I don't feel like I'm on anything right now, but I could've been before; I could've been hallucinating. But I would like not to anymore. I'd like to go back to the prison. And those are my feelings - all of 'em.

[She looks around the room hopefully.]

Was that good?

Prose:
There is no way that this can be real. Tiffany stares at the table of weapons, then looks up at the group of people watching her impassively.

"Um... hey? I think there's been a mistake here, 'cause I ain't signed up for nothing like this. Is this a new rec activity?" Because surely death match has to be euphemistic here - the name of a game, or something. There's no way she's going to actually be expected to fight to the death. She's an American citizen, in an American prison. She's not in Gitmo. She has rights.

Those weapons look pretty lethal, though. She picks up a knife, lightly touching the sharp blade. Then she gives it a half-hearted throw, aiming for one of the middle targets but not bothering to make any actual try at accuracy.

"That what you want me to do?"

There's no response, which makes her frown, confused and unconfident. She retrieves the knife and sets it back on the table. She'd been told she had to impress these guys, but they don't look very impressed so far. Then again, they don't look unimpressed, either. How is she supposed to know what to do if they just look blankly at her no matter what she does? With a frustrated huff, she sits down on the ground and waits. Someone will come get her eventually - either to take her out, or to tell her what's expected of her. She's in prison, after all, and prison isn't exactly known for leaving you to your own devices for very long.

When she is finally retrieved and brought out to head up to the arena, she's told that she's been given a score of 1. She doesn't care. The number means nothing to her.

What is your character scored:
3. She's been in fights of the bar room brawl variety, but nothing more than that. She can shoot a gun and is familiar with hunting (and overnight hunting trips, so she probably knows the basics of making a fire, cooking outside, etc.), but she's by no means an expert marksman or a survivalist. She's of average intelligence at best, is extremely gullible and easily manipulated (though that's something that could possibly fix itself pretty quick in the arena), and just generally not very quick on the uptake in most situations. Her biggest strength would probably be her willingness to be violent. Crowd likability is hard to say. She's prone to being brash, in-your-face, and annoying, none of which are particularly likable traits. On the other hand, she's often exuberant and goes over the top with pretty much everything she does, which could possibly be entertaining for viewers who don't actually have to deal with her in person. Another thing to consider that she absolutely loves positive attention. If she knew people were watching her and was given the impression that they liked what she was doing (no matter what she was doing), she'd happily play to their favor and continue to give them what they wanted, which could endear her to an audience.

Token: A thin chain necklace with a small gold cross on it.