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“They locked me under the floor for sixteen years just for being born.”
INFORMATION
Shipping and gen are both totally okay, as are canon and cross-canon! For ships, I'm OTA (F/M & F/F equally loved) and you can see some of the canon ships I like here.
I like playing Octavia against other "outcast" characters who lived their lives in relative isolation, as she has never been able to relate to someone like her before. I also love playing her against warrior types, as she herself is one and warms up to that kind quickly! Anyone who thinks with their heart before their head will be in her good books. On the flip side, nerdy scientist types, head-over-heart types, etc. are great for odd couple CR.
I'd enjoy playing her against characters from fellow post-apocalyptic canons especially as they're easiest to merge. I'm happy to put her in a zombie apocalypse, etc. However, if your character is from a different type of canon, no worries -- AUs are our best friend!
Desperately looking for a solution, the ark's leaders send 100 juvenile prisoners back to the planet to test its habitability. Having always lived in space, the exiles find the planet fascinating and terrifying, but with the fate of the human race in their hands, they must forge a path into the unknown.
Octavia was a criminal the moment she was born. A second child under the one child law on the Ark, she had to be kept hidden for her entire life for her and her mother's safety. She lived her life in their room; her few activities were being read mythology by her brother and helping her mother with her seamstress work. During routine inspections, Octavia was forced to hide under the floorboards.
When she was sixteen and her brother had become a cadet on the Guard, he snuck her out to go to a masquerade party, confident she wouldn't be caught. However, the party was interrupted by a solar flare alert and the guards asked everyone present to show their IDs — Octavia didn't have one. Although she tried to escape, she was caught by the guard and imprisoned. Her brother lost his position on the guard and her mother was executed, as was the punishment for all crimes committed by an adult on the Ark.
A year later, the oxygen system in the Ark has a critical flaw that will render it uninhabitable. To see if Earth is survivable, the Council sends down the most expendable of their citizens — one hundred juvenile delinquents, those who are slated to be reviewed for execution on their eighteenth birthdays. Octavia is one of them, and thus begins the first day of the rest of her life.
Personality;
Octavia's issues can be traced back to her childhood. Born on a space station where having a second child was a crime punishable by death, she lived hidden away from the world for sixteen years. The extent of her social interaction was her mother and older brother; this socially deficient upbringing has left her with poor emotional intelligence and bad coping skills when faced with negative feelings. Much of her childhood was spent angry at the government of the Ark (the space station she was raised on) and its guards, who were an ever-present threat to her and her family. Now, she has a tendency to anger quickly and disguise other negative emotions under the veil of anger.
After being freed from her confinement, Octavia is not timid to explore her surroundings. (In fact, the reason she's first discovered is because her brother and her devise a plan for her to sneak out and attend a masquerade dance.) If there's one word to describe Octavia, it's bold — to the point of being rash, at times. Octavia absolutely does not want to be told what to do anymore, so good luck telling her she can't do something. She's brave and incredibly persistent. She first gains respect as a combatant not because she's a good fighter, but because she keeps getting back up every time she's knocked down. If Octavia sets her mind to something, she won't give up on it.
Her bravery extends to helping others as well. Despite her lack of social contact during her formative years, Octavia is actually extremely compassionate, perhaps because of the compassion shown to her by her family all that time. She plays the hero often. In fact, hero might be the best word for it; Octavia struggles at times to see the world beyond heroes and villains, black and white.
She draws a very thick line between what is right and what is wrong, and tends to be harsh on those who cross or straddle the line. Moral ambiguity is difficult for her to handle. Octavia spent her childhood reading books of mythological heroes and epic legends rather than dealing with real life situations, so it's possible that has colored her view on morality. This makes her an incredibly poor leader, as she dislikes making difficult decisions. When she does have to do something that goes against her morals, it weighs on her significantly.
This is not to say that she lives her life as a pure pacifistic tree-hugging friend to all. Octavia's code of morals is her own personal code. It's been heavily influenced by the Grounders, a somewhat tribalistic society of warriors she met upon coming to Earth. Octavia has never felt like she belonged on the Ark, so when she met Lincoln, a Grounder with whom she became romantically involved, and later Indra, a Grounder who took her under her wing and began teaching her swordplay, she finally belonged somewhere for the first time. These two people would quickly become some of the most important people in her life, along with her brother, Bellamy.
She embraced Trikru culture, taking Indra's words as a mentor to heart. This means that she places emphasis on valor and ferocity. The Grounder clans regularly carry out capital punishment, and Octavia doesn't hesitate to take violent vengeance on those she believes deserve it, such as Pike, the man who executed Lincoln and traumatized her in the process. Grounder culture disparages those who show weakness, and Octavia doesn't if she can help it. However, the Grounders also value those who are unemotional entirely, something Octavia is not.
In fact, Octavia is ruled by her emotions. She's fierce and compassionate and fun, but she also lacks the skills to healthily deal with unpleasant emotions on her own. Her emotions can make her irrational — she simply refuses to see things the purely pragmatic way. Her heart wins out over her head every time. This is a double-edged sword, and in many ways, Octavia herself is.
She has a lot of wonderful qualities, and a lot of terrible ones. She feels everything strongly: she loves passionately and she hates hard. Everything Octavia is, she's 100% of it. And that's the most important thing to know about her, really: Octavia Blake doesn't half-ass anything.