Balk Babulus Capitol [fin]

Name:
Balk Babulus
Age:
39
Gender:
Male
District/Area:
The Capitol

Appearance:

Balk Babulus has a bulky, strong build appropriate for a former boxer who has tried desperately to remain in shape, in a vain hope that his career would one day return. He possesses the very same brown hair he had since his birth, the same head of hair with just two bunches sticking out from the rest. For a long time, he has been using contact lenses in place of glasses for vision correction, since he has gotten used to the lens's feeling. His once energetic- now drained- brown eyes take on a grey dullness as they constantly look down, and seem to always look backwards. The remnant of a scar and the stitches that run over it cross his lip on the right side of his face. This reminder of his past serves the two-fold purpose of keeping him yearning for the boxing ring and beholden to the Capitol.

Balk carries injuries from his boxing career all over his upper body, not just on his face. He more than anyone else could take a hit as well as he could deliver one. Cosmetic surgery was never a part of his life, as a natural body was, more or less, required for his chosen profession. Even after the Second Quarter Quell, which marked the end of his career path, he refused to partake in the gross excess of Capitol life in the form of altering his appearance. It helps that, on the whole, he is more physically fit than many other citizens. Perhaps, had it been demanded of him, he could have won the games he has come to despise.

Personality:

Whereas the Hunger Games are a widely beloved (where he lives, anyway) form of entertainment, boxing is considered a more crude display of violence. Balk, however, cannot comprehend why such depravity would be appreciated above such finesse as he and his competitors had to demonstrate. The morbid revelation that the Capitol at large cares only for the deaths of the District citizens comes directly from his curiosity of why the more brutal show is considered superior among his fellow Capitol citizens. In an immature response to the respect given to the Games, Balk chooses to remain bitter about everything the Hunger Games did to him. He has much less cause to complain than the more directly affected, but as his lifestyle was ruined by a particular event that would endure the full eternity of Panem, his contempt is not entirely without merit. Of course, any ill will aimed at the Hunger Games is a step in the right direction for Panem's future.

In addition to his self-centered contempt for the Hunger Games, Balk is, in large part, defined by his rejection of the Capitol lifestyle and worldview that has let his life become a complete waste. Ironically like a victor in a sense, he feels like something was robbed from him. For Balk, it was not his humanity, but his pride that was stripped away. The loss of boxing struck a blow to his ego from which he can never truly recover. He has since submitted himself to the country, while trying to maintain his notion that he is better than the Capitol-- that he's too good for the Capitol. He illustrates an important point in the conflict between hope and fear. Fear can be realized. Once fear becomes truth, it can conquer hope, the way it conquered him.

Balk Babulus has a strange tendency with his speech, to either say too much or too little. Of course this behavioral tic would reflect itself in his name: "Balk" meaning to be at a loss for words, and "Babulus" coming from "babble," which means to talk meaninglessly. People either ignore him or forget he's there, which has happened far more often than is really fair for him. The binary nature of his speaking habits tend to make people want to avoid him, so as not to deal with his "droning" mode. He doesn't blame those people. He wouldn't want to listen to him speak either.

History:

Here is a man whose life has been impacted, by now, the 1609th most radically of anyone in Panem by the Hunger Games. (Give the tributes their due. Their lives have pretty much irrevocably ruined.) Here is a man who used to be important; who used to be a fighter. But then a girl from district 1 took an ax in the head in the most controversial ending of any Hunger Games to date. After that, it may as well have been Balk who took the ax. Any dreams he had before had to be canceled, because he always dreamed too big. Any plans for the future had to be indefinitely postponed until things would fall back into place, and they never did after the 50th Games. Nothing was the same anymore after the districts symbolically exploited the Capitol's resources.

Balk had been born to loving parents with a sense of humor. He knew they had it because he inherited it, and there's no inheriting something one's parents didn't have. He was one of two children, the older of two, and the rebellious one who didn't want to be the same as everyone else. The more compassionate one who didn't enjoy seeing bloody murder on screen every year. The one who took his life to try to do something about it, because the way he understood it, the Hunger Games would persist until the Capitol tired of it. And they would never tire of it until they had a replacement.

Thus did Balk Babulus found an alternative. It was violent and safe. It was controlled and brutal. It was everything the Capitol actually wanted out of the Hunger Games, without the deaths and emotional damage suffered even by the survivors. Without the turmoil caused on 1608 families, and counting. It never caught on. It was written off as unrefined, by Capitol citizens unaware of the years of training and years of experience involved. All they saw was death. Death wasn't violence. Death wasn't control. Death was a primal thing that a more refined art couldn't provide.

Codeword: Odair

Other: Also, he used to be, like, a boxer or something.