lydia martin. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
afieldsmedal) wrote2012-12-16 03:01 am
afieldsmedal) wrote2012-12-16 03:01 am
Entry tags:
( APPLICATION )
Name: Demi
Age: 18
Personal DW:demisms
email/msn/aim/plurk/etc:
email | hprendevoursxbathroom@gmail.com
plurk | inb4circlejerk
Currently played characters: n/a
Canon Source: Teen Wolf
Canon Format: TV Show
Character's Name: Lydia Martin
Character's Age: 16
Sex: Female
Species: Human
Character Suitability: Lydia is freshly sixteen, but comes from a canon where enough shit happens to sixteen year olds that they are old beyond their years. Lydia personally has already experienced various traumas, including several near death experiences, being possessed by a dead spirit, hallucinating about dead bodies and various other gory things, and she manages to cope with her PTSD very well without getting the appropriate help. She's smart, like freakily so, which allows her continue functioning in hard times when she is not the most powerful piece on the playing board.
Character History: @ Teen Wolf Wiki
Point in Canon: Lydia is coming from the end of season 2, which means we get a whole cluster-fuck of emotional traumas to hurtle through: she has just witnessed (while technically her ex-boyfriend) the supposed love of her life turn into a giant snake beast, turn back to mostly human again because she reestablished their bond, be run through by two werewolves, and reanimated to become one himself. She was also recently mentally hijacked to incapacitate a full grown man and drag him through the woods in order to reanimate the body of the man who has been terrorizing her in her own head for a few months. Whether she is still under the control of Peter Hale or not has not been clarified because MTV sucks at wrapping up everyone's character arc in a single season, but I guess that's what keeps us interested in our favorites.
Previous CR: n/a
Character Personality:
First and foremost, Lydia Martin is comprised of two components: "Lydia Martin" and Lydia Martin - one being the girl who doesn't know the difference between a cougar and a mountain lion, and the other being the girl who can make a self-igniting molotov cocktail from scratch using the ingredients found in a high school chemistry lab, and the real Lydia Martin being a perfectly blended mess of the former two identities.
Yes, that's right. Lydia Martin wears a mask of stupidity, easily falling into the trope of "obsfucating stupidity", also known as playing dumb, or as "a tactic whose effectiveness is predicated on characters convincing others they are complete oafs and therefore harmless". Lydia in particular dumbs herself down in the company of her love interest, presumably to make him feel smarter ("I heard it was a mountain lion," says Danny. "Well, I heard it was a cougar," says Jackson "A cougar is a mountain lion," says Lydia - and upon receiving a bit of a look from Jackson; a where did that come from look, she adds, "Isn't it?") or better at something (she rolls gutter balls when they go bowling so as to entice him to offer her assistance, but the second they start losing she proves herself to be perfectly capable of hitting strikes and throwing with perfect form). Allison addresses this very early in the series, suggesting Lydia "stop sucking for his benefit", to which Lydia easily rebuffs "Trust me, I do plenty of sucking for his benefit."
Makeup plays a crucial role in Lydia's mask, at least in The Tell, because after being an emotional wreck and strung out of her mind for a day or two, she showers and makes a pretty big deal about putting on foundation to hide the bags under her eyes, glossing her lips, doing her hair, and kissing at the mirror because, hello, I'm done having my first mental breakdown and am ready to be top dog. Again.
Even whilst playing dumb there is no real question of who is in charge in her and Jackson's relationship. As a whole, Lydia fakes stupidity to fit right in and obtain/maintain her position as queen bee atop the social pyramid that is high school. And, yes, she solves math equations brutally fast in front of the whole class - and, yes, her science experiment sugar crystals always come out perfect - and, yes, she's taking college prep and AP classes, but she hides the fact that her GPA is over a 4.0 because being that smart would alienate her from people. "It is sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity," said Cato The Elder; "A certain combination of skill and ignorance is very effective, you not suspect it, and you accede to it." And indeed, lots of people seem to accept her semi-air headed facade: Allison, Scott and Stiles waste their time trying to translate a bestiary written in Archaic Latin, and even get a mistranslated chunk of misleading information, before discovering that Lydia reads Archaic Latin fluently because she "got bored of regular Latin."
Every so often, Lydia seems to get tired of playing dumb, and does things like offering to go up to the blackboard instead of being picked; she raises her hand. The general rule goes that she seems to become more comfortable displaying her intelligence around people the less pressure she feels from them to adhere to the social expectation that you can only have two out of the Intelligent, Emotionally Stable, Good Looking Triangle and will be classified as a nerd if she shows her smarts: Allison is chill; Allison thinks she should stop playing dumb; Allison doesn't play, and doesn't want Lydia to play - so Allison is the person she tells that she can read Archaic Latin. There is arguably two other people who attest to how smart she is: Stiles Stilinski who claims that she's going to win a Nobel Prize some day for mathematical theorems ("A Fields Medal," she corrects him, because Nobel doesn't have a category for mathematics), and Peter Hale, who lives in her head for some time and thus has pretty easy access to her thought process.
Ms. Morrell probably just thinks she's aspecial butterfly smart ass.
Which she is. But when it comes down to pulling her smarts from her ass, she's pretty quick on the life saving things. Hence the homemade molotov cocktails made from chemistry lab left overs. That doesn't mean her survival instincts are always great, because while she can keep a calm head in some situations, she doesn't always run away when she's supposed to.
But, you know. Who needs to run in those three inch heels she wears so she doesn't look so short all the time and to retain her social status - because with that status comes pure, unadulterated power!
...Okay, not exactly power, but it'd be putting it lightly to say that Lydia likes to manipulate and control.
That is part of why she is so attached to her Queen Bee status - it means she gets to be a complete bitch to people, snark and dictate what they wear, dictate what they do because she has the ability to destroy their social life, which is everything in high school. An example of this is threatening to introduce Allison to "all the hot lacrosse guys" if Scott didn't play the big game in the beginning of the school year, but Lydia doesn't just threaten, she means business and not much later, we see her doing just what she said she would: introducing Allison to a pretty attractive lacrosse guy.
Her verbal quips are unparalleled in this series (okay, Derek's dry wit and Stiles' jittery one-liners come pretty close) and she uses them on the level of insults in order to cow people (let's talk about how easily she cows Allison and Scott into shutting up by bringing up her sex life - "I prefer my boyfriend at peak performance" "Trust me, I do plenty of sucking for his benefit" - that's not accidental; that's I know exactly how to get people out of my business/confuse them/make them uncomfortable/awkward and I'll do it) and assert her superiority. It's where the brains and the superficial clash and leave her coming off as too smart when she's being mean, but everyone's focused on the intangible injury, and not the fact she just wrote off their love for their boyfriend as hormons flooding their system.
But beyond that, Lydia has a bit of a thing for always being in control. She likes controlling situations and people. Let's look at Jackson and half of the crap between them and what it means to both of them. More than half of her pratty social status comes from her relationship with him - "I don't date losers," she stresses, which makes one wonder just how readily she'd be with him if he were not the big man on campus - and half the method she uses to keep him is to systematically dumb herself down so he can outshine her and pushing him to be better - to be the best that he possibly can (and accepting any of his shortcomings in the long run, and that probably has to do with how deep their bond went and how it somehow managed to "bring him back from the brink of identity issues", and runs parallel to Jackson's perfection, overachieving complex; let's look at the scene in the hospital in the second episode, where he gets a cortisone shot in his arm and she tells him he should get another one before the game, and when he looks like he's about to start fussing, she asks if he wants to "...be a little high school amateur? Or do you want to go pro?" before giving him a kiss).
On the other end of the spectrum, she doesn't let him pick the movie they watch. Like, no matter how much he complains (yells) at her about not wanting to watch The Notebook again, she just gives him a look. And he goes in to rent the movie.
On another - another - end of the spectrum, when he breaks up with her, she doesn't believe him because, uh, she's Lydia fucking Martin. Who breaks up with Lydia fucking Martin? And when he acts like it's no big deal and pretty much dismisses her, she has to have the last word and snaps pointedly, "Dumped. By the co-captain of the lacrosse team. I wonder just how many minutes it'll take me to get over that." And when he continues to walk away: "Seconds, actually - seconds!" They're broken up, but it's obvious Lydia is still clinging to him in the form of the house key that, when asked for, she outright refuses to give back and denies having. Why? Because giving it back means, yes, they're truly broken up. And not on her terms.
Of course, in some cases, her manipulative and controlling meanness goes hand-in-hand with her smarts, and she ends up being described as a real leader in her Parent-Teacher interview. Though Lydia could honestly be a leader in any sort of situation: be it leading the cheering section in the stands or telling everyone to shut up and give her the ingredients to make a self-igniting molotov cocktail. A part of Lydia undoubtedly thinks because she is smart, she should be in a position of power all the time, even when hiding it; even when that power comes entirely from within the rickety social system that is high school. She is no doubt a bit hurt when she learns her friends are keeping things from her, and even more hurt when it looks like no one is coming to her Sweet Sixteen birthday party (and would still likely twinge if she learned - or let herself believe, because it was kind of obvious - that people only showed up because Stiles, Scott and Allison used their own social graces to get them there).
One of the big reasons Peter Hale left such a deep emotional scar on her is because, in the process of semi-possessing her and using her to resurrect his burned body, he stole a lot of her power from her, right along with her ability to trust what she was seeing and the reality (or denial) that she'd been clinging to since she saw his alpha form outside the video store in knowing that the supernatural things that couldn't be explained by science or reasoning were real. As a result of this, Lydia had a bit of a mental breakdown.
Let's talk about Peter Hale.
So Peter Hale is a douche. The douche of all douches. Yes, there's Kate and Gerard Argent, but their story lines and trespasses don't directly effect Lydia like Peter does. After shaking off his invalid burn victim state, he shows up at the high school winter formal and bites Lydia on the lacrosse field. She does not die, and she does not turn into a werewolf either, which leads to the question of her immunity that no one has fully answered yet. But what seems to happen is that, by biting her and dying shortly after, a bit of him managed to live through her. He managed to project images of himself as a teenager into her head and the two had a smattering of witty conversations and seductive encounters until she eventually walks to his house and kisses him, only to discover the house (which was nice, if not run down) is actually the burnt remains of the Hale household. And she isn't kissing the attractive Jr., but rather the disgustingly freshly burned Peter Hale. Really, if that doesn't fuck you over, what will. In fact, Lydia has a bit of a panic attack and screams.
He apologizes for everything being confusing, and comforts her by assuring her that she's not really crazy. He then goes on to tell her about his plan - presumably the one that involved him being alpha and having a great big pack - all the while touching her hair and not doing much to cease the "rape-y talk" she had admonished him for when he was in his teenager form. In all his burned, rape-y glory, Peter tells her that she is his backup plan and tells her that her immunity makes her perfect because she didn't die, and didn't turn, but could bring him back. Lydia has a series of flashbacks about how, all the times she thought she was talking to Jr., there was actually no one there, and that really doesn't help the whole "not crazy thing". Even after being assured as such, she very likely comes out of this whole thing assured she's still insane, with a decent amount of post traumatic stress, and many - many - nightmares.
Peter later uses her to drug Scott and Stiles (yeah, it wasn't really about anyone else) and effectively take them out of commission so he can fuck with Derek undisturbed. He uses her to drug him and Lydia must have some insane upper body strength, because she drags him through the woods to the Hale house and uses him to help resurrect Peter, who grins at her like a freak because as I said before -
Peter Hale is a douche!!!
Lydia walks away from her encounter with him physically unscathed except for the scars on her torso, but - "You're a strong girl. Personally, I think you're going to pull through with a minimal amount of post traumatic stress and maybe a few years of profoundly disturbing nightmares", and just as he said, she has a fair few hurdles to jump over before she is anything pertaining to normal again. He invades her privacy, the sanctuary of her mind. "
But - indeed, she is a strong girl. Sometimes being smart is giving up - realizing you can't fight Peter Hale on this whole "plan B" thing, and subsequently giving up the battle with him/helping - but I doubt she ever really gave up hopes of winning the war. And, yes, it is a war for herself and for her sanity, but if anything that makes her stronger, because while everything else is going on, she still finds time to play white knight to Jackson's damsal in distress.
"I can help him," she says. And help him she does. Save him, she does.
So let us revisit Jackson.
There was a time when they were at peace enough to lay in his bed, snuggling and laughing about marriage and sex; there was a time when he gave her a key to his house and she wore it on a necklace around her neck. She gives him the key back, and if that's somehow enough to bring Jackson back from losing himself, you better believe that there is more to their relationship than what MTV capitalized on, more than "I do still love you". They are more than your average high-power-bitch couple, more than just "beautiful people who flock together", and more than just "boyfriend/girlfriend" it would seem if he can't stop protecting her when they're broken up and he's under the control of someone else, nor when she is clinging so desperately to whatever she has of him left (the key). She cries over him, and Peter Hale - who has been in her head - knows they've a "very special bond" that neither kanima-hood nor werewolf-ship can tear apart. So yes, she may push him, may control their relationship, and she may dumb herself down for him, but in the end she does love him and is willing to risk her life to save him. And, you know teenaged girls in love - even the smartest will do stupid things for those they care for. Lydia's just happened to work out just fine - given, he died (again), and that hurt. But he came back, and she ran to him; she hugged him.
And he dropped the key.
And while we're talking about people, let's talk about Lydia's best friend: Allison Argent. We don't get to see Lydia interacting with any of her other friends, really. She seems popular, but except for the first day of school and the time Scott approaches her to ask for relationship advice, we don't see her hanging out with any other girl friends. She hangs out with Jackson, and Jackson's friends, and so Allison plays a pretty big role in her life (yes, even when Jackson starts going after her because that's Jackson being a dick, not Allison). When Lydia starts getting fed up with playing dumb, it's Allison she confesses knowing Archaic Latin to. At first in their relationship, Lydia's a fair bit of a bitch to her - she goes through Allison's closet and dismisses every article of clothing, claiming her taste is "...dwindling by the second".
But as the series continues, Allison seems to learn to trade blows with Lydia: Lydia comes back to school after her fugue state, makes a jape about Allison's "psycho aunt", and when everyone is looking at her like she's crazy a few seconds later, Allison leans over and whispers, "Maybe it's the seven pounds", which Lydia had been bragging about earlier. Season two puts them more on even playing ground, seems to elevate Allison over Lydia in importance to the story, and when she learns that Allison is keeping her in the dark, she seems genuinely hurt that she's being lied to, just as she seems genuinely hurt when Allison doesn't have time for her. When she isn't hurt? When Allison goes with Jackson to the formal (okay, she's hurt, but not by Allison), which hints that she values Allison's friendship beyond the typically shallow depth which she values everything else.
They kind of suck at being friends, though. Lydia doesn't comfort Allison when Allison's mom dies, and Allison (nor anyone else) doesn't seem to notice when Lydia has been possessed by Peter Hale. But that's in the past; if Lydia can forgive her trespassing on the girl code, they can get over this too. And bond over it, too. Now they even have the added bonding potential over the fact that both of them are dating werewolves.
Guess we should also talk about Stiles Stilinski, the boy who has had a borderline obsessive and disturbing crush on her since they were little; the boy she has determinedly ignored until the year all of this werewolf crap went down and now they (along with Allison, too, but she's a little more predisposed to this supernatural stuff compared to them) are left being the only humans in tow with half a dozen werewolves and lizards and even a few shifty humans.
Now, Stiles is a bit of a dick: he hasn't given up, sometimes he follows her around the school when she'd obviously rather have nothing to do with him, and sometimes he yells at her. But a part of Lydia may be oblivious to the gross dick-overtures, and another part of her may like the attention. Another part of her may be willing to ignore them purposefully so long as she can focus on the few times he's been nice to her; he tells her she's beautiful when she cries, offers to listen to her problems (never mind he then gets sidetracked and needs to run away and never comes back so thus Lydia doesn't have anyone to tell Peter about - ugh this could have all been avoided if only Stiles had stayed a little while longer), takes her to the winter formal and compliments her when Jackson ignores her, has confidence in her smarts, and puts aside his problems - being kidnapped and punched in the face problems - for her problems - my boyfriend is dead problems.
Being the domineering control freak previously discussed, a part of her may like the ease with which she could bend him to her whims if she tried. By the time she actually starts trying, however, it's pretty much her just bullying him into driving her to the action in order to give Jackson back his key and hopefully save him from Peter and Derek. In fact, by the time she starts paying attention to Stiles, she isn't really even paying attention past Jackson's death (yes, she cheers for Stiles in the stands when he starts scoring, and that's really pretty sweet and mature of her, but, eeeeeh...) - she doesn't press for information about where he got the bruise on his face, she doesn't even really listen to him when he's yelling at her to value her life. Lydia is on The Jackson Channel, and Stiles is encountering static in trying to get through to her, but if they can have conversations like that, chances are they will continue to be able to in the future, and maybe even get through to each other.
And...okay, Scott can have a mini paragraph too. Lydia likes to be better than Scott, likes to assert her superiority over him, and every so often likes to make out with him. Er, wait, that was just once and it had to do with some weird, creepy wolf powers that she was somehow seduced by. Scott doesn't matter on anywhere near a level to her as Allison and Jackson do. He interested her at first, and she stared, and was ultimately impressed by what she saw, but Stiles probably even means more to her by the end of season two than Scott. Lydia doesn't seem to matter much to Scott either; he even thinks she deserves that no one came to her party because she's a bitch. Blah blah, no love spared between them, but no real animosity, too. A+, would suck face with again.
Last, but not least - wait a minute; let's break from the traditional personality recitation with concrete details to talk a little bit further about tropes. The Obfuscating Stupidity one has been covered, but let's talk about some others that Lydia fits into. Specifically, the Pawn trope, which goes:
"Pawn - the expendable, powerless, nameless foot soldier who may, ifhis her actions are brave and his her heart is true, become a Queen."
Well, for one, Lydia began as the Queen, just the Queen of a normal world. Once the supernatural element is introduced, she's less a Queen and more a Pawn. Her immunity to werewolf bites hasn't proven to do any good; she doesn't heal super fast (speculated on, but I'm disregarding that meta), she can't run super fast, can't hear any better, doesn't grow fangs, and doesn't lose her shit on the full moon. But that's not to say something more interesting than her weird connection with Peter Hale won't come from it, so depending on how MTV finishes her character arc, she may indeed be Queen again one day.
Less of a trope and more of a piece of meta, let's look at Lydia's outfits in season 2. Barefooted and nude (Omega, Frenemy, Restraint) and wandering in the woods are picturesque images of innocence and, more applicable in this sense I think, vulnerability because - as mentioned before - Lydia is at a significant physical disadvantage (mental, too, once Peter got his hooks into her) compared to just about everyone else. She may not get wailed on like Stiles does, but she takes a few poundings in the PTSD area.
Let's also talk about crimson and white lace and how often Lydia wears them. The white lace is the pure garment we dress babies in after their christenings, and brides in on their wedding days; it is a symbol of purity (usually sexually), meanwhile the crimson is a reference to violence, courage, and martyrdom. Given how often crimson stains the lace, or is matched with the lace, it is as if the MTV costume department is telling it's own story of Lydia's development, and it is entirely revolved around how her innocence has been sullied. But we're not talking sexually, right? Because that's stupid and this is on a much less strict level; this is more like, she was a normal human girl, she was oblivious to the extra, non-human things in the world. And then in one fell swoop, that innocence and normality was sullied with blood. And that's going to take a long time to get over; like Peter Hale says, at least several years.
Appearance/PB:
( holland roden from mtv's teen wolf )
5'3, green eyes, fair skin, and actually her hair is strawberry blond.
First Person Sample:
( I have two dear_mun samples: 1 & 2, as well as a comprehensive threadtracking post if you'd like to see my style at length! )
Third Person Sample:
Shock, she decides to call it. Shock and awe that have her rooted in place while what she swears could have been her life flashes before her eyes. High school, that is - high school life, more specifically her sophomore year, like some twisted television show that sends a crew around your house to plant secret cameras. Though while she'd like to believe this, some of the shots of her are far too close up and full frontal for there to have been any sort of recording device there and for her not to have seen. The feeling is not so much "faint" as nauseated: nauseated by just how ugly she looks when she cries, by just how much blood there is on the lacrosse field, just how much of a mess she is when she's naked and wandering through the woods, and just how much Scott and Allison are shown sucking face. And even then, it might just be lurch in her stomach at finding out she is a side character
Once it becomes apparent that theirs is the romance that takes up a majority of the screen time, and she has been dubbed a minor character, Lydia seeks out the remote, and alternates between skipping forward to watch herself be pretty and flawless and breaking down. By the end of the second season, she's forgotten what her own face looked like.
There are windows in this room - small windows, windows that seem like they might be reinforced, and through it she can see what looks like the very dramatic rendering of a post apocalyptic landscape. Yes, maybe it's just a dramatic rendering, and maybe this is all just a very elaborate joke, or a dream, or -
Or maybe all of this just wasn't settling in very well. She feels so real that the idea of being fictional leaves a sour taste in her mouth. Of course, this setting could be fictional - she'd be fine with that. But everything is so empty and dead, so abnormal and unnatural, and there is a silence that is beginning to be smothering that Lydia's the urge to walk, even if only to hear the sound of her heels clicking against the tiled floors of this institute...place...world. Building? Hallway - beyond her room is a hallway, and when she tries the door, it gives with the sliding click of a lock being turned. She ventures out a few steps before her breath catches and the security offered by the phone, pack, even the pamphlets, urge her back in to collect them. They were the only things she had in this world - "world", it would seem, air quotations in place - and that made them her closest friends, so really, why would she leave them behind?
And what teenaged girl could live without a cell phone?
And, no, even at the prospect of leaving this room for whatever Zombieland, 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead sort of world there was out there, she's not nauseated. Nor faint.
But she stops; grabs the crackers, anyway, and shoves them in her bag.
Survival instincts had to kick in some time. And maybe when she's convinced this isn't just a bad imitation of a SAW film, she will knock on some of the other doors along the walls.
Age: 18
Personal DW:
demismsemail/msn/aim/plurk/etc:
email | hprendevoursxbathroom@gmail.com
plurk | inb4circlejerk
Currently played characters: n/a
Canon Source: Teen Wolf
Canon Format: TV Show
Character's Name: Lydia Martin
Character's Age: 16
Sex: Female
Species: Human
Character Suitability: Lydia is freshly sixteen, but comes from a canon where enough shit happens to sixteen year olds that they are old beyond their years. Lydia personally has already experienced various traumas, including several near death experiences, being possessed by a dead spirit, hallucinating about dead bodies and various other gory things, and she manages to cope with her PTSD very well without getting the appropriate help. She's smart, like freakily so, which allows her continue functioning in hard times when she is not the most powerful piece on the playing board.
Character History: @ Teen Wolf Wiki
Point in Canon: Lydia is coming from the end of season 2, which means we get a whole cluster-fuck of emotional traumas to hurtle through: she has just witnessed (while technically her ex-boyfriend) the supposed love of her life turn into a giant snake beast, turn back to mostly human again because she reestablished their bond, be run through by two werewolves, and reanimated to become one himself. She was also recently mentally hijacked to incapacitate a full grown man and drag him through the woods in order to reanimate the body of the man who has been terrorizing her in her own head for a few months. Whether she is still under the control of Peter Hale or not has not been clarified because MTV sucks at wrapping up everyone's character arc in a single season, but I guess that's what keeps us interested in our favorites.
Previous CR: n/a
Character Personality:
First and foremost, Lydia Martin is comprised of two components: "Lydia Martin" and Lydia Martin - one being the girl who doesn't know the difference between a cougar and a mountain lion, and the other being the girl who can make a self-igniting molotov cocktail from scratch using the ingredients found in a high school chemistry lab, and the real Lydia Martin being a perfectly blended mess of the former two identities.
Yes, that's right. Lydia Martin wears a mask of stupidity, easily falling into the trope of "obsfucating stupidity", also known as playing dumb, or as "a tactic whose effectiveness is predicated on characters convincing others they are complete oafs and therefore harmless". Lydia in particular dumbs herself down in the company of her love interest, presumably to make him feel smarter ("I heard it was a mountain lion," says Danny. "Well, I heard it was a cougar," says Jackson "A cougar is a mountain lion," says Lydia - and upon receiving a bit of a look from Jackson; a where did that come from look, she adds, "Isn't it?") or better at something (she rolls gutter balls when they go bowling so as to entice him to offer her assistance, but the second they start losing she proves herself to be perfectly capable of hitting strikes and throwing with perfect form). Allison addresses this very early in the series, suggesting Lydia "stop sucking for his benefit", to which Lydia easily rebuffs "Trust me, I do plenty of sucking for his benefit."
Makeup plays a crucial role in Lydia's mask, at least in The Tell, because after being an emotional wreck and strung out of her mind for a day or two, she showers and makes a pretty big deal about putting on foundation to hide the bags under her eyes, glossing her lips, doing her hair, and kissing at the mirror because, hello, I'm done having my first mental breakdown and am ready to be top dog. Again.
Even whilst playing dumb there is no real question of who is in charge in her and Jackson's relationship. As a whole, Lydia fakes stupidity to fit right in and obtain/maintain her position as queen bee atop the social pyramid that is high school. And, yes, she solves math equations brutally fast in front of the whole class - and, yes, her science experiment sugar crystals always come out perfect - and, yes, she's taking college prep and AP classes, but she hides the fact that her GPA is over a 4.0 because being that smart would alienate her from people. "It is sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity," said Cato The Elder; "A certain combination of skill and ignorance is very effective, you not suspect it, and you accede to it." And indeed, lots of people seem to accept her semi-air headed facade: Allison, Scott and Stiles waste their time trying to translate a bestiary written in Archaic Latin, and even get a mistranslated chunk of misleading information, before discovering that Lydia reads Archaic Latin fluently because she "got bored of regular Latin."
Every so often, Lydia seems to get tired of playing dumb, and does things like offering to go up to the blackboard instead of being picked; she raises her hand. The general rule goes that she seems to become more comfortable displaying her intelligence around people the less pressure she feels from them to adhere to the social expectation that you can only have two out of the Intelligent, Emotionally Stable, Good Looking Triangle and will be classified as a nerd if she shows her smarts: Allison is chill; Allison thinks she should stop playing dumb; Allison doesn't play, and doesn't want Lydia to play - so Allison is the person she tells that she can read Archaic Latin. There is arguably two other people who attest to how smart she is: Stiles Stilinski who claims that she's going to win a Nobel Prize some day for mathematical theorems ("A Fields Medal," she corrects him, because Nobel doesn't have a category for mathematics), and Peter Hale, who lives in her head for some time and thus has pretty easy access to her thought process.
Ms. Morrell probably just thinks she's a
Which she is. But when it comes down to pulling her smarts from her ass, she's pretty quick on the life saving things. Hence the homemade molotov cocktails made from chemistry lab left overs. That doesn't mean her survival instincts are always great, because while she can keep a calm head in some situations, she doesn't always run away when she's supposed to.
But, you know. Who needs to run in those three inch heels she wears so she doesn't look so short all the time and to retain her social status - because with that status comes pure, unadulterated power!
...Okay, not exactly power, but it'd be putting it lightly to say that Lydia likes to manipulate and control.
"Lydia gets what Lydia wants."
- Jackson, Night School.
That is part of why she is so attached to her Queen Bee status - it means she gets to be a complete bitch to people, snark and dictate what they wear, dictate what they do because she has the ability to destroy their social life, which is everything in high school. An example of this is threatening to introduce Allison to "all the hot lacrosse guys" if Scott didn't play the big game in the beginning of the school year, but Lydia doesn't just threaten, she means business and not much later, we see her doing just what she said she would: introducing Allison to a pretty attractive lacrosse guy.
Her verbal quips are unparalleled in this series (okay, Derek's dry wit and Stiles' jittery one-liners come pretty close) and she uses them on the level of insults in order to cow people (let's talk about how easily she cows Allison and Scott into shutting up by bringing up her sex life - "I prefer my boyfriend at peak performance" "Trust me, I do plenty of sucking for his benefit" - that's not accidental; that's I know exactly how to get people out of my business/confuse them/make them uncomfortable/awkward and I'll do it) and assert her superiority. It's where the brains and the superficial clash and leave her coming off as too smart when she's being mean, but everyone's focused on the intangible injury, and not the fact she just wrote off their love for their boyfriend as hormons flooding their system.
But beyond that, Lydia has a bit of a thing for always being in control. She likes controlling situations and people. Let's look at Jackson and half of the crap between them and what it means to both of them. More than half of her pratty social status comes from her relationship with him - "I don't date losers," she stresses, which makes one wonder just how readily she'd be with him if he were not the big man on campus - and half the method she uses to keep him is to systematically dumb herself down so he can outshine her and pushing him to be better - to be the best that he possibly can (and accepting any of his shortcomings in the long run, and that probably has to do with how deep their bond went and how it somehow managed to "bring him back from the brink of identity issues", and runs parallel to Jackson's perfection, overachieving complex; let's look at the scene in the hospital in the second episode, where he gets a cortisone shot in his arm and she tells him he should get another one before the game, and when he looks like he's about to start fussing, she asks if he wants to "...be a little high school amateur? Or do you want to go pro?" before giving him a kiss).
On the other end of the spectrum, she doesn't let him pick the movie they watch. Like, no matter how much he complains (yells) at her about not wanting to watch The Notebook again, she just gives him a look. And he goes in to rent the movie.
On another - another - end of the spectrum, when he breaks up with her, she doesn't believe him because, uh, she's Lydia fucking Martin. Who breaks up with Lydia fucking Martin? And when he acts like it's no big deal and pretty much dismisses her, she has to have the last word and snaps pointedly, "Dumped. By the co-captain of the lacrosse team. I wonder just how many minutes it'll take me to get over that." And when he continues to walk away: "Seconds, actually - seconds!" They're broken up, but it's obvious Lydia is still clinging to him in the form of the house key that, when asked for, she outright refuses to give back and denies having. Why? Because giving it back means, yes, they're truly broken up. And not on her terms.
Of course, in some cases, her manipulative and controlling meanness goes hand-in-hand with her smarts, and she ends up being described as a real leader in her Parent-Teacher interview. Though Lydia could honestly be a leader in any sort of situation: be it leading the cheering section in the stands or telling everyone to shut up and give her the ingredients to make a self-igniting molotov cocktail. A part of Lydia undoubtedly thinks because she is smart, she should be in a position of power all the time, even when hiding it; even when that power comes entirely from within the rickety social system that is high school. She is no doubt a bit hurt when she learns her friends are keeping things from her, and even more hurt when it looks like no one is coming to her Sweet Sixteen birthday party (and would still likely twinge if she learned - or let herself believe, because it was kind of obvious - that people only showed up because Stiles, Scott and Allison used their own social graces to get them there).
One of the big reasons Peter Hale left such a deep emotional scar on her is because, in the process of semi-possessing her and using her to resurrect his burned body, he stole a lot of her power from her, right along with her ability to trust what she was seeing and the reality (or denial) that she'd been clinging to since she saw his alpha form outside the video store in knowing that the supernatural things that couldn't be explained by science or reasoning were real. As a result of this, Lydia had a bit of a mental breakdown.
Let's talk about Peter Hale.
So Peter Hale is a douche. The douche of all douches. Yes, there's Kate and Gerard Argent, but their story lines and trespasses don't directly effect Lydia like Peter does. After shaking off his invalid burn victim state, he shows up at the high school winter formal and bites Lydia on the lacrosse field. She does not die, and she does not turn into a werewolf either, which leads to the question of her immunity that no one has fully answered yet. But what seems to happen is that, by biting her and dying shortly after, a bit of him managed to live through her. He managed to project images of himself as a teenager into her head and the two had a smattering of witty conversations and seductive encounters until she eventually walks to his house and kisses him, only to discover the house (which was nice, if not run down) is actually the burnt remains of the Hale household. And she isn't kissing the attractive Jr., but rather the disgustingly freshly burned Peter Hale. Really, if that doesn't fuck you over, what will. In fact, Lydia has a bit of a panic attack and screams.
He apologizes for everything being confusing, and comforts her by assuring her that she's not really crazy. He then goes on to tell her about his plan - presumably the one that involved him being alpha and having a great big pack - all the while touching her hair and not doing much to cease the "rape-y talk" she had admonished him for when he was in his teenager form. In all his burned, rape-y glory, Peter tells her that she is his backup plan and tells her that her immunity makes her perfect because she didn't die, and didn't turn, but could bring him back. Lydia has a series of flashbacks about how, all the times she thought she was talking to Jr., there was actually no one there, and that really doesn't help the whole "not crazy thing". Even after being assured as such, she very likely comes out of this whole thing assured she's still insane, with a decent amount of post traumatic stress, and many - many - nightmares.
Peter later uses her to drug Scott and Stiles (yeah, it wasn't really about anyone else) and effectively take them out of commission so he can fuck with Derek undisturbed. He uses her to drug him and Lydia must have some insane upper body strength, because she drags him through the woods to the Hale house and uses him to help resurrect Peter, who grins at her like a freak because as I said before -
Peter Hale is a douche!!!
Lydia walks away from her encounter with him physically unscathed except for the scars on her torso, but - "You're a strong girl. Personally, I think you're going to pull through with a minimal amount of post traumatic stress and maybe a few years of profoundly disturbing nightmares", and just as he said, she has a fair few hurdles to jump over before she is anything pertaining to normal again. He invades her privacy, the sanctuary of her mind. "
But - indeed, she is a strong girl. Sometimes being smart is giving up - realizing you can't fight Peter Hale on this whole "plan B" thing, and subsequently giving up the battle with him/helping - but I doubt she ever really gave up hopes of winning the war. And, yes, it is a war for herself and for her sanity, but if anything that makes her stronger, because while everything else is going on, she still finds time to play white knight to Jackson's damsal in distress.
"I can help him," she says. And help him she does. Save him, she does.
So let us revisit Jackson.
There was a time when they were at peace enough to lay in his bed, snuggling and laughing about marriage and sex; there was a time when he gave her a key to his house and she wore it on a necklace around her neck. She gives him the key back, and if that's somehow enough to bring Jackson back from losing himself, you better believe that there is more to their relationship than what MTV capitalized on, more than "I do still love you". They are more than your average high-power-bitch couple, more than just "beautiful people who flock together", and more than just "boyfriend/girlfriend" it would seem if he can't stop protecting her when they're broken up and he's under the control of someone else, nor when she is clinging so desperately to whatever she has of him left (the key). She cries over him, and Peter Hale - who has been in her head - knows they've a "very special bond" that neither kanima-hood nor werewolf-ship can tear apart. So yes, she may push him, may control their relationship, and she may dumb herself down for him, but in the end she does love him and is willing to risk her life to save him. And, you know teenaged girls in love - even the smartest will do stupid things for those they care for. Lydia's just happened to work out just fine - given, he died (again), and that hurt. But he came back, and she ran to him; she hugged him.
And he dropped the key.
And while we're talking about people, let's talk about Lydia's best friend: Allison Argent. We don't get to see Lydia interacting with any of her other friends, really. She seems popular, but except for the first day of school and the time Scott approaches her to ask for relationship advice, we don't see her hanging out with any other girl friends. She hangs out with Jackson, and Jackson's friends, and so Allison plays a pretty big role in her life (yes, even when Jackson starts going after her because that's Jackson being a dick, not Allison). When Lydia starts getting fed up with playing dumb, it's Allison she confesses knowing Archaic Latin to. At first in their relationship, Lydia's a fair bit of a bitch to her - she goes through Allison's closet and dismisses every article of clothing, claiming her taste is "...dwindling by the second".
But as the series continues, Allison seems to learn to trade blows with Lydia: Lydia comes back to school after her fugue state, makes a jape about Allison's "psycho aunt", and when everyone is looking at her like she's crazy a few seconds later, Allison leans over and whispers, "Maybe it's the seven pounds", which Lydia had been bragging about earlier. Season two puts them more on even playing ground, seems to elevate Allison over Lydia in importance to the story, and when she learns that Allison is keeping her in the dark, she seems genuinely hurt that she's being lied to, just as she seems genuinely hurt when Allison doesn't have time for her. When she isn't hurt? When Allison goes with Jackson to the formal (okay, she's hurt, but not by Allison), which hints that she values Allison's friendship beyond the typically shallow depth which she values everything else.
They kind of suck at being friends, though. Lydia doesn't comfort Allison when Allison's mom dies, and Allison (nor anyone else) doesn't seem to notice when Lydia has been possessed by Peter Hale. But that's in the past; if Lydia can forgive her trespassing on the girl code, they can get over this too. And bond over it, too. Now they even have the added bonding potential over the fact that both of them are dating werewolves.
Guess we should also talk about Stiles Stilinski, the boy who has had a borderline obsessive and disturbing crush on her since they were little; the boy she has determinedly ignored until the year all of this werewolf crap went down and now they (along with Allison, too, but she's a little more predisposed to this supernatural stuff compared to them) are left being the only humans in tow with half a dozen werewolves and lizards and even a few shifty humans.
Now, Stiles is a bit of a dick: he hasn't given up, sometimes he follows her around the school when she'd obviously rather have nothing to do with him, and sometimes he yells at her. But a part of Lydia may be oblivious to the gross dick-overtures, and another part of her may like the attention. Another part of her may be willing to ignore them purposefully so long as she can focus on the few times he's been nice to her; he tells her she's beautiful when she cries, offers to listen to her problems (never mind he then gets sidetracked and needs to run away and never comes back so thus Lydia doesn't have anyone to tell Peter about - ugh this could have all been avoided if only Stiles had stayed a little while longer), takes her to the winter formal and compliments her when Jackson ignores her, has confidence in her smarts, and puts aside his problems - being kidnapped and punched in the face problems - for her problems - my boyfriend is dead problems.
Being the domineering control freak previously discussed, a part of her may like the ease with which she could bend him to her whims if she tried. By the time she actually starts trying, however, it's pretty much her just bullying him into driving her to the action in order to give Jackson back his key and hopefully save him from Peter and Derek. In fact, by the time she starts paying attention to Stiles, she isn't really even paying attention past Jackson's death (yes, she cheers for Stiles in the stands when he starts scoring, and that's really pretty sweet and mature of her, but, eeeeeh...) - she doesn't press for information about where he got the bruise on his face, she doesn't even really listen to him when he's yelling at her to value her life. Lydia is on The Jackson Channel, and Stiles is encountering static in trying to get through to her, but if they can have conversations like that, chances are they will continue to be able to in the future, and maybe even get through to each other.
And...okay, Scott can have a mini paragraph too. Lydia likes to be better than Scott, likes to assert her superiority over him, and every so often likes to make out with him. Er, wait, that was just once and it had to do with some weird, creepy wolf powers that she was somehow seduced by. Scott doesn't matter on anywhere near a level to her as Allison and Jackson do. He interested her at first, and she stared, and was ultimately impressed by what she saw, but Stiles probably even means more to her by the end of season two than Scott. Lydia doesn't seem to matter much to Scott either; he even thinks she deserves that no one came to her party because she's a bitch. Blah blah, no love spared between them, but no real animosity, too. A+, would suck face with again.
Last, but not least - wait a minute; let's break from the traditional personality recitation with concrete details to talk a little bit further about tropes. The Obfuscating Stupidity one has been covered, but let's talk about some others that Lydia fits into. Specifically, the Pawn trope, which goes:
"Pawn - the expendable, powerless, nameless foot soldier who may, if
Well, for one, Lydia began as the Queen, just the Queen of a normal world. Once the supernatural element is introduced, she's less a Queen and more a Pawn. Her immunity to werewolf bites hasn't proven to do any good; she doesn't heal super fast (speculated on, but I'm disregarding that meta), she can't run super fast, can't hear any better, doesn't grow fangs, and doesn't lose her shit on the full moon. But that's not to say something more interesting than her weird connection with Peter Hale won't come from it, so depending on how MTV finishes her character arc, she may indeed be Queen again one day.
Less of a trope and more of a piece of meta, let's look at Lydia's outfits in season 2. Barefooted and nude (Omega, Frenemy, Restraint) and wandering in the woods are picturesque images of innocence and, more applicable in this sense I think, vulnerability because - as mentioned before - Lydia is at a significant physical disadvantage (mental, too, once Peter got his hooks into her) compared to just about everyone else. She may not get wailed on like Stiles does, but she takes a few poundings in the PTSD area.
Let's also talk about crimson and white lace and how often Lydia wears them. The white lace is the pure garment we dress babies in after their christenings, and brides in on their wedding days; it is a symbol of purity (usually sexually), meanwhile the crimson is a reference to violence, courage, and martyrdom. Given how often crimson stains the lace, or is matched with the lace, it is as if the MTV costume department is telling it's own story of Lydia's development, and it is entirely revolved around how her innocence has been sullied. But we're not talking sexually, right? Because that's stupid and this is on a much less strict level; this is more like, she was a normal human girl, she was oblivious to the extra, non-human things in the world. And then in one fell swoop, that innocence and normality was sullied with blood. And that's going to take a long time to get over; like Peter Hale says, at least several years.
Appearance/PB:
( holland roden from mtv's teen wolf )
5'3, green eyes, fair skin, and actually her hair is strawberry blond.
First Person Sample:
( I have two dear_mun samples: 1 & 2, as well as a comprehensive threadtracking post if you'd like to see my style at length! )
Third Person Sample:
Shock, she decides to call it. Shock and awe that have her rooted in place while what she swears could have been her life flashes before her eyes. High school, that is - high school life, more specifically her sophomore year, like some twisted television show that sends a crew around your house to plant secret cameras. Though while she'd like to believe this, some of the shots of her are far too close up and full frontal for there to have been any sort of recording device there and for her not to have seen. The feeling is not so much "faint" as nauseated: nauseated by just how ugly she looks when she cries, by just how much blood there is on the lacrosse field, just how much of a mess she is when she's naked and wandering through the woods, and just how much Scott and Allison are shown sucking face. And even then, it might just be lurch in her stomach at finding out she is a side character
Once it becomes apparent that theirs is the romance that takes up a majority of the screen time, and she has been dubbed a minor character, Lydia seeks out the remote, and alternates between skipping forward to watch herself be pretty and flawless and breaking down. By the end of the second season, she's forgotten what her own face looked like.
There are windows in this room - small windows, windows that seem like they might be reinforced, and through it she can see what looks like the very dramatic rendering of a post apocalyptic landscape. Yes, maybe it's just a dramatic rendering, and maybe this is all just a very elaborate joke, or a dream, or -
Or maybe all of this just wasn't settling in very well. She feels so real that the idea of being fictional leaves a sour taste in her mouth. Of course, this setting could be fictional - she'd be fine with that. But everything is so empty and dead, so abnormal and unnatural, and there is a silence that is beginning to be smothering that Lydia's the urge to walk, even if only to hear the sound of her heels clicking against the tiled floors of this institute...place...world. Building? Hallway - beyond her room is a hallway, and when she tries the door, it gives with the sliding click of a lock being turned. She ventures out a few steps before her breath catches and the security offered by the phone, pack, even the pamphlets, urge her back in to collect them. They were the only things she had in this world - "world", it would seem, air quotations in place - and that made them her closest friends, so really, why would she leave them behind?
And what teenaged girl could live without a cell phone?
And, no, even at the prospect of leaving this room for whatever Zombieland, 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead sort of world there was out there, she's not nauseated. Nor faint.
But she stops; grabs the crackers, anyway, and shoves them in her bag.
Survival instincts had to kick in some time. And maybe when she's convinced this isn't just a bad imitation of a SAW film, she will knock on some of the other doors along the walls.