Aurelia Monroe - Capitol

n a m e : Aurelia Monroe
a g e : twenty
g e n d e r : female
a r e a : Capitol

a p p e a r a n c e

Aurelia is all warmth and soft curves and barely-contained energy, standing at 5'3'' but walking like she's much taller. Her hazel eyes and sharp mouth move quickly to map out her emotions on her square face; she likes to practice in front of the mirror sometimes so that she knows just what people see when she arches a wickedly curved brow or slides into a crooked smile like she's laughing at a joke you didn't hear (and wouldn't understand anyway). Her skin is deep and golden (not literally, of course--in the Capitol, you do have to specify) and it tends to stay that way, give or take the occasional dye job (once she tried out leopard spots all over her face and ever since it faded, she swears her skin is littered with moles and freckles that weren't there before). Her hair is a tumult of soft whiskey-colored curls, and she takes great pride in being able to achieve naturally a look that would otherwise take careful styling. Aurelia prefers the versatility of wigs to frequent dying and sculpting, and she has amassed quite the impressive collection. Between her wild cloud of hair and her love of the-higher-the-better heels, Aurelia tries to compensate for the way her small frame makes her hourglass curves look squat. On looks alone she is stunningly adequate but nothing special (oh but it's all about how you carry yourself, and darling I move like a queen through her palace so kindly bow down or get out of the way).

Aurelia doesn't wear clothes; she wears costumes. Each outfit creates a role that she inhabits for the day, making her style difficult to pin down. Undoubtedly, she gravitates toward rich, saturated colors, striking patterns, and gaudy gold jewelry. She likes to wear vibrantly colored contacts that make her eyes look like gems embedded in her skull. Makeup is a mask must when facing the public. Animal prints and an overabundance of rhinestones are her guilty pleasures (yes it's tacky but I don't recall asking for your opinion). Her appetite for fashion surpasses her available funds and her wardrobe has a strong bent of cheap flash masquerading as class (what can I say; I won't apologize when I wear it so well). She carries herself like it's a known fact that she looks good, and it's very convincing.

She draws the line at the more drastic forms of body modification; surgical alteration meant to pass as natural is an inexcusable lie, a form of cheating that ranks low in the internal logic of her hierarchy of forgivable offenses. Parading around aesthetic enhancements that aren't obviously fake is like lying to yourself and discloses a remarkable lack of confidence in your ability to work with what you have (and when has that ever been a problem for me?). The underlying reason, however, is partly that she has to cut costs somewhere, and her overactive imagination largely puts her off the idea (of cutting deep into flesh, filing breaking reshaping bones, drilling alien objects into skin that was never intended to host them), but she would rather people not know she was frightened of procedures girls younger than herself readily undergo. To be perfectly honest, she (might admit after a few drinks that she) has had her skin cleared up and her teeth straightened and whitened. Oh alright, and a bit of work done on her nose (but we're all hypocrites, right, so who's to judge). She kept the freckles and moles that decorate her face; they add character and if there's one thing she can never have enough of, it's attention character.

p e r s o n a l i t y

She is a performer and a storyteller and a whirlwind with a flair for the dramatic and a wandering mind; she will throw herself into a new pursuit with an infectious enthusiasm, only to lose interest once it becomes a commitment. She has an intensity about her that she focuses on a current project but discards all too easily. You can see it in her hungry smile and steady, pointed gaze. With creativity in spades and emanating confidence like she has a point to prove, Aurelia talks about herself a lot. To anyone who will listen, and sometimes to people who rather wouldn't. Usually this involves a certain deal of alcohol. Naturally gregarious, she readily seeks out other people to reflect back to her the energy she radiates. The problem isn't so much that she loves the sound of her own voice, but that once you get her talking, she likes to embellish (not lie, of course; there is simply no excuse for a dull story when you can make it more interesting) and tends to stretch out sentences into stories. Nevertheless, she means well and any lying embellishing stems from good intentions (and if I can talk my way into an exclusive party or a steady stream of free drinks, I really only have the generosity of others to thank). She strives to avoid dullness in her life and that extends to protecting others from it as well.

An avid reader, Aurelia easily gets heavily invested in a good story, whether it is printed on paper or unfolding in the lives of the people around her. Aurelia doesn't give advice, she gives orders (because I know what's best; I know what to do, trust me). But she does it because she cares. Really. She is smart but she thinks she is smarter. Perceptive and quick-thinking, she likes to believe she is an expert at getting inside people's heads. This is part naiveté, part determined optimism, and part truth.

Every day is a new story to narrate, a new character to play, a new setting to navigate. Aurelia likes to have a degree of control and certainty over her environment, and she exercises this through organizing the world into narratives she borrows or invents (I want to live in a fairy tale but only if I am the one telling it). She lives for themed parties and any other excuse to wear a costume. An aspiring interior decorator, she loves to play with the aesthetics of a given space--the location sets the scene, and it has to look right, to feel right. Every year, she watches the Games in envy of the Gamemakers who get to design the arena--both the picturesque landscapes and the deadly traps hold her in macabre fascination as much as the rest of the show does.

She hates feeling lost in any situation, and takes it as a personal insult when things don't go her way. She doesn't like unexpected change or being told no, and lashes out at people don't behave in accordance with her expectations. A little too loud and a little too much, she gets far just off sheer confidence and vivacious force of will. She laughs easily and often, belying a seriousness and sharp intelligence that comes out occasionally in her work and in her speech. Even though she is an idealistic romantic, she is no lightheaded ingenue. She walks along the streets of the Capitol with a smirk and her best interpretation of a regal air, occasionally smoking a cigarette because she decided it made her look wistful and untouchably blasé. Hyper-conscious of her appearance, movements, voice, just everything, Aurelia tries to hide just how much she cares about the impression she makes on people. She's good at what she does, because she tries so very hard.

h i s t o r y

"I don't remember much about the early years of my life. There was only the eternal expanse of plains and forests and hills all around me and the wandering, the endless wandering. One day, I found my way to the Capitol gates, bruised and broken and, oh, so tired. I was brought in by Peacekeepers and they took pity on me, assigning me a home with these two kind souls who took me in as their own, rescuing me from a life of wretched poverty."

When Aurelia was much younger, this is what she would tell people, and even later the story would emerge at parties after a certain point. It is of course completely untrue and entirely implausible. Aurelia was born within the Capitol to Felix and Lucia Monroe 20 years ago. Her father is a history teacher, her mother is a freelance artist, and Aurelia herself is a little of both, turning stories into works of art. Her brother is Marcus Monroe, a 23 year old aspiring fashion designer, set to get his big break any day now (he says, because he has far more ambition than experience). The two are inseparable and a joint force to be reckoned with. She plans to design his first boutique. They are secretly the best of friends, though they don't tell anyone because that just sounds tragic. Aurelia has a sizable number of friends, and she is the type to warm up to anyone if the situation so requires. She flirts like it's a competitive sport, but is somewhat disappointed by how quickly she loses interest in people when they fail to live up to the expectations she establishes in her mind within the first moments of meeting them.

The family lives comfortably and they are able to enjoy many luxuries that life in the Capitol affords, but they are nowhere near the level of wealth required to live the idealized Capitol lifestyle of excess and leisure. Lucia inherited a great deal of money from her father, but she is frighteningly good at spending it. Between her shopping habits and the money Marcus borrowed in risky pursuit of his fashion career, their financial position might be more precarious than it appears. The tension is slowly sprouting, but Aurelia has always gotten along rather well with both her parents, though as she's grown older she's become more and more frustrated with her mother's irresponsible ways. Lucia and Felix were both fairly hands-off in their parenting style--more so now that the kids have grown up, but even before, they were big on granting freedom for experimentation.

Aurelia was a loud and bossy little kid who relished in her reputation as a rule-breaker with a hearty disdain for authority. She tried to do the beauty pageant circuit once as a kid but her parents decided it wasn't for her when she lost and decided to bite the winner in the ear. She was actually quite decent at school, for all the trouble she got into; she liked the idea of being someone people expected wit and quick thinking from because those kinds of people got respect, so she worked hard. The result was that she ended up being good at everything but not really deeply passionate or knowledgeable about anything.

After high school, she went on to study interior decorating, something she is somewhat ambivalent about--she feels it is in some ways a waste of her intellect, but she wouldn't want to be doing anything else. She takes the matter of pretty things of all sorts very seriously. Currently, Aurelia works at a local theater, creating and designing sets. It's not in the strictest sense the same sort of work as interior decorating, but in the Capitol it basically often is. People like their homes to be as flashy as their appearances. Incidentally, the reverse connection can also be made--people's homes say a lot about their owners. Aurelia (is a bit of a voyeur and) finds people's private lives fascinating. She likes to think of decorating peoples' homes as establishing a setting against which these intimate stories will be played out and she delights in imagining what those stories might be.

c o m m e n t s

f a c e c l a i m : Antonia Thomas
c o d e w o r d : oDair
t e x t : #95274E
s p e a k i n g :#C3324E
t h i n k i n g : #8F407A
o t h e r : #C55C8C
a l s o : apologies to all users whose formats
I am ripping off; I am out of ideas