OOC
GAME: Neopolis
DESCRIPTION: Freeze-rays and monsters and magic and superpowers, oh my!
DATE: February 2009
PB: Eva Green
JOURNAL: islayyou
IC
NAME: Ekaterina Brunhilde Edgarda Sigrid van Helsing
NICKNAME: For the love of god, just call her "Kate".
AGE/BIRTHDATE: 19 / June 20, 1989
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual
ALIAS/CODENAME: The Dark Lady #2. The sisters have always envisioned their hellspawn-fighting career as a dynamic duo, but now that they're nearing graduation, both of them are (secretly) starting to ponder individual aliases.
CONCEPT: Being a badass-but-beautiful B-movie heroine is hard. It's really, really hard. Which is why this one Valley Girl slayerette is having so much trouble in school; she might be one of the bright young things of the van Helsing clan, but at the end of the day, Kate van Helsing would rather watch campy movies in her PJs than force herself into a creaking corset, practice debonair and flirtatious dialogue, and get splattered in blood. But destiny beckons — and she has to make the family proud.
FACULTY: Gothic
YEAR: Third
SKILLS: Her primary skills lie in handling rapiers, crossbows, and stakes, and Kate's actually been pretty good at her technique and finesse over the years. She's an extremely talented weaponmaster, and in a pinch, can hold her own during unarmed combat. She can't ride a horse worth shit, though, and is deeply afraid of guns.
ALLIANCE: Staunchly the Band of Heroic Heroes, though her ultimate goal is to create an off-shoot superteam for specifically gothic/paranormal-focused heroes. It'd probably be called "The Freaky Five" or something.
PERSONALITY: Kate is histrionic, temperamental, and passionate; she approaches most things in life with the utmost of her attention and energy, whether it's reviewing a trashy monster flick, being a scathing bitch to her rivals, tackling her classes, or being mysterious and alluring in that awfully attractive science boy's general direction. Given too much parental slack as a child, and raised on a diet of competition and rivalry with her twin sister, she adoooores attention — and thrives on it. She particularly basks in focus from the male species, which usually has her strutting and making the most of it, though she rarely follows through and actually dates anyone. It's resulted in a bit of a cutthroat personality; Kate loves getting her way, and isn't above throwing hissy fits or public rants if she's not happy with something.
The overarching commitment to her family comes first (and this includes her sister and BFF, Ellie, but right after that, the priority is all Kate, Kate, Kate. And while she might seem like a headstrong, self-centred shrew, she's also surprisingly introspective and insecure once you pry past that outer layer of confidence and feminine mystique; the hard truth is that Ekaterina doesn't really know who she is. American or Dutch-Russian? New wave of modern hunter, or old-school represent? Neopolitan or normal? Hardcore damsel or couch potato? The constant battle of identity with her twin — and the rapid changes in her life and career prospects within the past two years — have resulted in a bit of an overwhelmed young woman. Whatever she does, she does heartily, because she doesn't want to fade into the background and end up forgotten, some footnote in the sidekick roster, a dead end in the long road of van Helsing fame.
In the meantime, her entire academic career consists of trying to train herself how to be a Mary Sue. It's hard work! How do you run in heels, breathe in a corset, and stake things while keeping your hair perfectly coiffed and looking sexy? Damned if she knows. Kate usually maintains a fake foreign accent (it slips when she's not paying attention), and attempts to smoke cigarettes but hates them, and spends her spare time practicing the mystique of the ~gothic femme fatale~. When it comes to ideas, she's decidedly the more creative and dynamic van Helsing girl, but also the more scatterbrained and less responsible one. Kate tells her sister when to chill and relax; her sister tells her when to wise up.
And some wising up she must do, because Kate is failing her classes. Has been ever since starting trade school, really. She's therefore quite desperate to catch up in any way possible, including but not limited to: a) bribing people, b) flirting with people, c) bullying people, d) straight-out begging people. Kate's been surviving mainly thanks to Ellie's (more responsible) influence, but the academic prospects don't look good; she's deathly frightened of ending up as a sidekick rather than an all-out hero. She's letting down the family legacy!
HISTORY: Despite being the newest and latest branch of the van Helsing dynasty, Kate and Ellie's parents are actually dreadfully normal. A trained hunter and immigrant from the Netherlands, Robert van Helsing came seeking the new world and ended up embroiled in the hero-by-day routine of Neopolis: getting hired to exorcise spirits, subdue out-of-control werewolves, and salt and burn cursed graves. After meeting his wife-to-be while foiling an attempted bank robbery — hey, there's a lot to be said for being in the right place at the right time — the hunter soon started having second thoughts. He had a long-term girlfriend, an engagement ring in his pocket, and he was spending his nights sitting in cold, clammy cemeteries. Was this seriously how he wanted to lead his life?
After marrying Eloise (an innovative scientist and modern gadget-maker, who took to the old van Helsing family like Q to Bond), Robert retired early from hunting and took up as a banker, trading in his stakes for pens and rocksalt for paperwork. Please, call him Bob! They raised their two daughters (twins, the more the merrier) with a surprising amount of lax freedom; aside from hustling the girls into the Mary Shelley School, where Ekaterina and Elena got to brush up on gothic history, culture, and armed combat, they were allowed to indulge in shopping and general frivolity. On some level, Bob always hoped they'd just go in for a normal life after graduation. And the girls themselves treated hunting like an idle pasttime, though they got more into it whenever hanging out with their older cousins in Europe at family reunions. They knew the theory of the life, but just didn't do the practicum — hunting was more a funny quirk of their family, rather than anything they honestly expected to do themselves.
This all changed when they graduated from Mary Shelley and their favourite dyadya (uncle), Abraham van Helsing, decided to nominate the girls as his official successors. What followed — after some intense arguments between Bob and the continental family — was an enrolment in Olympia Prep and an intense race for the girls to catch up on all the hunting arts they'd slacked off in. Suddenly, this whole graveyard-and-ghouls thing got real. It's been a hectic two years since then, with cram-studying and practicing of combat finesse, interspersed with pocket money and bizarre, twisted gifts arriving with Russian postmarks. Abraham never stops checking in with the girls from afar. They read his letters (brushing off the graveyard dust, of course) with affectionate delight for the old, eccentric man — mingled with mortification by the fact that their grades will, most likely, disappoint.
On weekends, Kate instantly sheds the corsets and creaking leather and flees into PJ pants, oversized t-shirts, and unbrushed hair. Movie nights in the gothic rec room are her and Ellie's specialty. They have a monstrous (ohoho) DVD collection, consisting of anything from Buffy, From Dusk Til Dawn, Supernatural, Nosferatu, and Army of Darkness to Rockabilly Vampire.
PLAYED-BY: Eva Green
fun questions!
Aspirations: Right now? To pass school. As simple as that.
What would be the title of the comic book starring your character? The Dark Ladies, Issue #18: What Katie Did
CLASSES (TRIMESTER ONE):
- Personal Development
- Armed Combat
- Hand to Hand Combat
- Hunters & Hunted: Understanding One Another
- Epic Arcane Literature
- Seminar: Gothic & Neo-Gothic History
- Elective: Drama
CLASSES (TRIMESTER TWO):
- Personal Development
- Armed Combat II
- Hand to Hand Combat II
- Zombies, Weres and Vampires: Monsters in Film
- Epic Arcane Literature II
- Creatures of the World: The Americas
- Elective: Drama
VOICE
PITCH: "Being a svelte femme hunter/exotic love interest/intimidating damsel is not all it's cracked up to be, because first of all, you have to learn how to be intimidating first. And practicing your sultry voice is HARD when you've already got a bunch of things on your mind, okay? And when your sister keeps stealing your makeup and you can't breathe in the corset — GOD, it is IMPOSSIBLE to look that good while getting blood splattered all over your face, I have NO IDEA how they expect us to do it. Do you have any idea how unhygienic that is?!?! Think of the GAZILLION diseases you can catch from a zombie alone OH MY GOD—"
KATE: "I want so badly just to hang out with boys like a normal girl without having to do the stupid accent and practice tossing my hair and running in heels! I'm not allowed to even date, because Uncle says childbirth complicates hunting (UGH AS IF DATING = PREGNANT), and he says if we do get married, our husbands will just get vamped or die on us or something, because Family Vengeance will always Find A Way, and the fastest way to activate old curses and zombies with a grudge is to try settling down and being happy and normal. Blah blah blah FAMILY CURSE blah blah GENEALOGY AND HEREDITY something honour of the van Helsings. Which is pretty much the reason why he's just a stupid old bachelor and will be forever.
But he sends us lots of pocketmoney, so really, I do love Uncle.
And the dresscode relaxes on the weekends, so I always wear baggy PJs then, and that's quite all right. And Elena always helps me out with my last-minute assignments — I mean, I complain a lot, but I don't want to have to join the Sidekick's Union! We've had five generations of proud hunters in our family — so as much as I hate the work, BELIEVE ME, I am not being the first one to be relegated to sidekick status! I would DIE."
SOUNDTRACK
nouvelle vague, "bela lugosi's dead"
cky, "escape from hellview" (?)
grand ole party, "look out young son"
soko, "i'll kill her" (?)
the long blondes, "giddy stratospheres"
the ditty bops, "sister kate"
