(no subject)

[victory_laps]

1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Christina
Current characters in Bete Noire: I am applying for Winona and Jo Harvelle.

2. Character Information
Name: Winona Hawkins
Livejournal Username: victory_laps
Fandom: Justified
Image: http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/107702234/33975608 - Once I start making her more icons, if I can change this I'd like to.

3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Winona is in her late 30s. She’s a slender blonde, who is almost always put together. She takes pride in her appearance, usually favoring a skirt and blouse to a pair of jeans. She has blonde hair, that’s a darker golden tone, long to just below the shoulders. She’ll wear it straight; loose up in a knot/hair-clip and on occasion she lets it out in loose curls. She never wears stockings, and has the time and care to make sure her toenail polish matches to her fingernails. Being a Court Reporter, she’s professional in her manner of dress and that tends to be only changed at home with her untucking her shirt, or possibly putting a cardigan/sweater on over her shirt. She wears heels over flats, or anything else. I highly doubt the woman owns a pair of tennis shoes. Her entire appearance gives her an air of control and confidence. It’s not about the cost of the clothing, but how she feels in them. There’s also the fact that it’s Kentucky and it’s hot in the summer so most of her blouses are light fabric and on occasion she has been known to skip the bra when she’s not at the office.


History: Please note that the book canon for her is drastically different from the TV show canon and there isn’t much back-story information provided for her within the series. This is mostly me piecing things together based on comments from Winona, Gary and Raylan, and then adding in any plot points that revolved around her during Season 1.

Winona was born in Kentucky, but eventually moved out to Salt Lake City in Utah where she was a Court Reporter. She met Raylan at a bar, after he’d finished a Prison Transport Pick-Up. After some time, the two marry and vow never to return to Kentucky, since neither of them actually had good memories of the place.

In 2004 Winona leaves Raylan for Gary Hawkins, a Realtor and in 2008 she marries Gary. The couple eventually end up back in Kentucky, in Lexington, where she’s once more a Court Reporter. Six years after Raylan and Winona parted ways, Raylan’s back in Lexington and back in her life. Quite literally, he shows up to meet her in the living room of her own house. It immediately puts a strain on her marriage, one that Winona has no clue already has a lot of pressure on it.

Despite thinking that she picked the right man, that Gary, the man that “wanted things” and had ambitions, he has instead lead himself into a situation that is way over his pay grade. Edging toward distrusting her husband, she asks a favor of Raylan and gets him to run a few names that she found in her husbands emails. Gary’s situation puts Winona herself in danger and at risk for being hurt. From this point on, Raylan becomes her source of trust and who she turns to when things go wrong. When Gary turns up missing, she calls Raylan and insists that he help him. Even when things are “reconciled” so to speak, and Gary is returned home, there is still a large gap in their marriage where trust and honesty once easily fit. With Gary keeping secrets from her and putting himself and her in danger so easily, she slowly starts to push him away.

She sleeps with Raylan one night, slipping into his motel room, slipping her wedding band off and without so much as a word kisses him. The two make love and then she’s out of there as if she wasn’t there to begin with. After that point, she tells Gary to move out, forcing her once happy marriage into a period of separation. Season one ends with her telling Raylan that she’d like to talk to him. He presumes it’s about the other night and she informs him that she’s made Gary move out, and that maybe they can talk about that.

Note: I am a member of the press and as that may be I have access to interviews and screeners for upcoming episodes that have not aired. As of this date, the return for Season 2 of Justified is on February 9th, however I have already seen the first three episodes. There is a lot of information for her character that is given as far as her relationship with Raylan, and how their dynamic works, that I’d be remiss not to include that in her characteristics. However, if I was to wait until these episodes aired - I’d end up waiting to write her until March. I have shared these episodes with the current Justified cast members and I will not reveal any spoiler points to any other member of the game. For the most part, things that involve Winona herself, rarely have very much to do with the progression of the plot itself. It is more the relationship and building of something with Raylan that is the focus for Winona. I know that there is no spot on here for a canon point, but with the mods permission I’d like to be able to bring her into the game -- with the knowledge that I have of her from those first three episodes and make her canon point be after the second episode. I’m just extremely eager to play and I don’t think I’ll be able to hold off until the episodes air.



Personality: Winona is the HBIC. She’s a strong, confident, Southern woman that can command the attention of a room as well as put a bit of fear into the eyes of men around her. She’s decisive and knows what she wants. Once she has an idea about what is important to her, no matter how trivial or small, she’ll stick to her guns until she gets that end result. She left her husband because she needed stability and more trust/openness than what she was being given and when that pattern repeated itself with her new husband, she was quick to learn from her prior mistakes and guarded herself easily.

Being a court reporter, she sees a lot of darker things about human beings and the acts they are capable of. If you add-in the fact that she was married to a US Deputy Marshal, you have a very strong woman that can handle most anything if she’s told. She’s also capable of compartmentalizing these things and not letting them sink too far into her skin. She can keep her home life and her work life - very separate, and makes extra efforts to ensure that she’s not put into situations that might jeopardize her non-bias position. When she’s asked to sit in on the Ava Crowder case for a day, she does her job, but requests to be removed from the case due to her ex-husband being involved in the details of the case. Even with this request though, she takes the moment to work up a reason that doesn’t make Ava feel like it was something personal.

She’s kind-hearted and compassionate. She opens her home up to Ava when she’s been drinking too much and keeps an eye on her even though she’s certain that Ava can handle herself. She worries far too much and when she gets a feeling about something, she’ll search for the answers - even if she knows she probably won’t like what she finds. When her husband, Gary, was starting to act oddly around the house, she looked into his emails to find out what he was up to.

She knows who she can trust and depends on those she knows she can rely on. It’s never exactly black and white with Winona, because she knows that there are circumstances when you can’t avoid how things are going to turn out.

Winona is a very loving woman, capable of holding a relationship that’s more than just a casual fling. When she finally commits to someone, she’ll give everything she has to offer. In the same light, though, once that love isn’t reciprocated - be it in trust or action - she’ll pull hers away just as easily.

She’s got a good sense of humor and a bit of snarky wit to go along with it. She’s able to take a joke, even if it’s at her own expense, but she’ll likely take the moment in private to ‘discuss’ how it made her feel. She’s very open with her words and doesn’t tend to mince them with anything other than what she’s looking for.


Sexual Preferences/Orientation: Winona is a heterosexual female. I’m sure somewhere in her history there’s a drunken college story, but I highly doubt it ever went beyond a kiss. She’s a confident woman who knows what she wants when it comes to her sexual partners and while she is one that leads, she doesn’t mind being led, either. For her, sex is probably the easiest part of her relationships. The rest of it, conversations - compromises - that’s the difficult part, so it’s just easier to start off with the easy part.

She was married, then divorced, then re-married. While she is currently married, she has strayed from that and slept with her ex-husband. There is an obvious acknowledgment that she associates this choice with something that is wrong. She removes her wedding ring, there’s hardly anything said between the two, and once the act is completed, she buttons up and leaves with just as few words.

Later on, she does leave her husband, but she has problems actually cutting those legal ties, because she doesn’t feel like there is a future with her ex-husband that would be worth committing to a divorce. So, she’s not exactly a cheater per-say, but she is definitely not someone that looks at monogamy as something that she needs to worry about. It’s possible that her ex-husband and current husband were the only two men she’d ever really felt committed to.

Powers: Aside from being able to tell if someone’s bullshitting her, she’s a pretty average woman. She’s able to shoot a gun and knows most of the survival things that come from living in the South.

Reason for playing:
I watched Justified when it aired and fell in love with the story and the characters. It’s an amazing show that has such well-defined and well-written characters. They have not only their strengths, but so many subtle flaws that come through in the most natural ways that you can’t help but want to take part in that world. Winona, as the ex-wife who still loves the man that she had to leave, is one of the most interesting characters. Usually, in a series the ex-wife is someone that is the thorn in the main character’s side. The one that knows too much and hassles too easily, but in Justified she is far from the annoyance. She’s this woman that can easily draw her ex-husband in, even though she doesn’t want to. There’s this spark that they still have and she’s able to take all those things that she knows about him and use it to guide herself not to fall for him again. However, even she’s not strong - she has that flaw and she still needs him. She trusts him to do the right thing, and then she turns around and does the wrong thing. It’s that dynamic - that twist that she puts to her own instincts that draws me to her.

As far as the setting, there are a handful of Raylan Givens out there in LJRP, but there are not many Boyd Crowders, at all. The chance to have two canon cast-mates, that are so well-written - instantly lured me in. I think that the city itself, pushing on her darker urges will make her own growth along side a man that she knows is going to make things difficult for her at some point -- can give their relationship something that they won’t get in canon.



5. Samples
First-Person:

I’m not saying that I don’t believe what’s going on, ‘cause it’s likely that it’s all real. However, in the event that this does turn out to be some sort’v wild hallucination brought on by some head trauma... I just wanted it to be known that I had my doubts.

[she sighs, her fingers pressing to her forehead for a moment as she tries to reel in the sheer insanity of the situation she’s found herself in]

Regardless, if anyone has anything useful about this place to relay? I’d appreciate an opinion that isn’t coming from my ex-husband.


Third-Person:

Gary was supposed to show the house the night before. Giving him whatever level of privacy he needed she hadn’t been there. Instead she’d been waiting for Raylan, where she’d spend another night in a motel, and now she was trying to piece herself together out of a suitcase. Pursing her lips, she glanced in the rear-view mirror, cursing softly to herself about Gary and just turning a wide U in the middle of the street.

Gary and his prep; his ridiculous rules about staging the house to be ready to sell were trying her patience. The pair of heels she wanted to wear were still in the closet in the master bedroom. It was still her house and she had every right to be in there as he did. Her hands crossed over the wheel as she made the turn, glancing to her side mirror just for a moment before slamming on her brakes as a wall was suddenly in front of her.

A wall, which from what she recalled, hadn’t been a recent development in their subdivision. In fact, she was fairly certain one such development would’ve gone noticed by a neighbor with too much time on their hand. Quite possibly the one that kept asking her to trim back her hedges, saying they were ‘unseemly’.

Yet, there it was -- a wall. The wall had an entire row of buildings attached to it and it was almost as if she’d pulled into a parking space unaware. Her hand ran over her features, trying to sort out if she had just lost time in some way or another. Most of her morning commute was slightly auto-pilot in nature, but this was just unsettling.

Winona reached for her purse, slinging it over her shoulder before she exited her car. At the very least she could find a street sign, or someone to give her an idea of where she’d turned wrong. Lexington wasn’t a big city, but there were enough streets that she could imagine herself getting turned around - even with all her years growing up in the area. The lack of street signs didn’t exactly ease her mind, either. Reaching into her purse she fumbled around for her phone, calling the first number she thought might actually be of some help.

The second he answered, she started her usual non-stop talking, “I’m not quite sure where I turned wrong, but I have to say that I have never been to this area of Lexington. Tell me if this sounds familiar at all, then just give me directions back to the main strip.”



Third-Person #2:

The air in the courthouse was especially warm. The sound of papers rustling had a near snap to them as people used them as makeshift fans. The bailiff had told her that the AC was on the fritz, but she wasn’t quite sure if that meant they all had to suffer, but the windows being open was the only relief they had.

Exhaling, she could feel the softest bit of perspiration stating to build above her upper lip and against the nape of her neck. All her hair had been swept up that morning, but the climate in the courthouse wasn’t exactly helping her level of comfort.

That and she could feel Raylan’s eyes on her. It wasn’t a leering look at her, nothing quite of the sort, but it was that gaze of his. He had a simple way of making her feel as if she’d been put on the pedestal, even from across a room.

Exhaling, she let her fingers pucker her blouse forward, the buttons clacking against the gold of her bracelet as she tried to cool herself off while the prosecution filed some paperwork with the Judge. Despite her best intentions to let Raylan just sit in the back of the courtroom without her acknowledgment, he was still just watching her and the heat did things to her sense of reasoning. Turning around, just slightly, she caught sight of him. Her timing couldn’t have been more unlikely -- catching him just as his tongue dragged back in from running over his bottom lip. Steeling her expression, she shifted back in her seat, attention to the front of the jury box, trying not to think about the way he tasted.

Her focus must have shifted a bit too far away from her surroundings, because the next thing she felt was the press of a hand to her shoulder. She’d completely missed the Judge excusing everyone for a brief recess, one that was desperately needed given the humidity in the room. Standing up from her chair, she could feel the warmth at the back of her thighs, the spot where the polished wood had made her skirt cling a bit heavier than it was meant to. Winona pushed through the aisle of the courtroom, moving toward the hall, startled to find Raylan standing there waiting for her. Shark grin and kind eyes.

Quite a deceptive image and one that she knew all too well. She could be in the conference room in four minutes and have her skirt up around her hips in another two. His hands strong against her waist, ne sliding up her spine, brushing along the light layer of sweat just beneath her blouse. She could be pressed firm to him, the heat just another obstacle in their complicated reunion. A thirty minute recess could be filled with soft murmurs of her name just beneath his breath as her hands wandered over dark jeans and pressed against his firm arousal.

Winona could easily cleave to him, her body rising to meet his, climbing quickly to that peak of something neither of them could ever say wasn’t good. A patent black heel could drop to the floor, a soft clatter of sound that was hardly half of the power her stride usually echoed with. The sole of her foot arching against his calf, pressing her thigh up higher against his. She could have twenty minutes of Raylan and the way he tasted and felt. There’d be the quickest clean-up this side of Lexington, but the heat would excuse most of the disarray.

Instead, there was just Raylan. Moving out of her way and offering her a smile and a polite pleasantry. He’d relay something about Art asking him to keep an eye on the courtroom; a mention about the heat making people think of doing crazy things. A simple nod would come from Winona, agreeing that it certainly made things uncomfortable. He would take notice of the flush that rose to her cheeks, the quick glance she did of his torso and to the glint of his badge shining on his hip. Of course, he was kind enough not to mention where her gaze wandered from that point, but she knew she was more than easy enough to read after all these years.

An exchanged glance, complete with a knowing wink from Raylan and Winona excused herself, returning to the stifling heat of the courtroom. Their pleasant exchange of conversation had been one minute too many, and any time she could’ve fancied against him had long since passed. Seated once again, she exhaled. The hardness of her chair was a welcome rigidity, something to keep her in line, no matter how her thoughts might weave. The day would drag on and by the end of it she’d need a cold shower, possibly for more than just the usual reason.



----- Second 2nd 3rd Person Sample, since I wasn't sure if that was "erotic" enough?


His hat never fit on her head quite right. A comfortable weight that would shift against blonde hair as her body rocked against his. There was still something about the way it looked on her and the way he looked at her when she wore it. That heavy gaze that came from him not just seeing her, but wanting her. It would always pull at her, just a bit, and in the all the right spots. Tonight, she'd just had a long day - though compared to his, it was probably less of a burden. She'd settled onto his lap, feeling the rise and fall of each breath as she leaned back against him. His fingertips traced lines down her arms and her body just eased into a state of loose-limbed with a foot lazily teasing against his calf. However, his hand let the touch stray and her own desires made her body shift slightly in his lap. Positions didn't exactly change, she favored the ability to not kneel over him, and the brush of his scruff wasn't quite so distracting against her back and shoulders as it would've been pressed against supple breasts. For now it was an extra moment of contact, something else to draw her attention from elsewhere.

Her gaze would wander, dropping to the ground; she'd be glancing at the way his jeans pooled at his ankles, boxers trapped in with denim as his hands worked along with her hips. A steady motion came from his guidance, met with deliberate arching of her lower back to allow a deeper press of him to her. The tips of her toes found purchase against the rough carpet, pressing slightly, just enough to give her calf a bit of tension as she pressed up for leverage. It wasn't as if she didn't know how to make this last, but part of her nearly craved it to take on a new edge of need and desperation.

Raylan never ceased to surprise her. A hand brushed up and away from her hip, sliding against sweat-slick skin until his palm could rest comfortably against the swell of her breast. His body started to shift, slouching further back in the chair they'd been sharing, until his hand had to release her curve to reposition against the small of her back. Her thighs parted more, allowing the strength of his legs to support her weight, as his touch urged her to quicken her pace over him.

As her movements continued, she could feel that burn of arousal start to build low in her. It wasn’t just the warmth of the room, the thin film of perspiration on her skin, or the soft groans she could hear from Raylan that was pushing her forward. Instead she was just focused on herself, on her own pleasure as it built up. Her body climbed, motions quickening the longer she continued their dance. His fingers bit into her skin, pulling against her nearly claiming her as if he still thought he had to. The possessiveness, that tight hold to her gave her a spot to focus on as her line of sight became blocked by the brim of his hat tipping down on her head. Her hand moved from his knee to the top of the hat, keeping it in place as she felt her body grow taut. Winona felt his body shift behind her, sitting up to press close to her back as their breathing grew more shallow. His mouth dragged against her shoulder a moment before she felt his body tense, that soft strain of sound, as her head tipped back.

The hat fell off of her head and his own instincts took over to catch it, but stopping once his reflexes caught up with him, realizing that he should really pay mind to the woman coming undone against him. His arms wound around her, kisses being plied to her neck as her breathing struggled to steady out. Deep breaths pulled into her lungs as he leaned back in against him. His hand rubbed her back lightly, shifting away from her just enough to set his cheek against her shoulder, easing them both down to something a bit more calm and relaxed. She could feel every breath he exhaled against her skin, not caring to move from that spot, not minding the dull ache that was there in her hips, or the chill that was slowly creeping over her skin.

Eventually, they’d move and settle to the bed, but for now she was content just to stay.