Susan Delgado (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pinkmoonrising) wrote2022-07-26 02:42 am
pinkmoonrising) wrote2022-07-26 02:42 am
Ryslig 🙣 APP
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Jormy
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
jormandugr
Age: 29
Other Characters: Hawkeye Pierce (getmeoutofthedraft), Faramir (nearamir)
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Susan Delgado
Age: 16
Canon: Dark Tower
Canon Point: After her death
Character Information: Wiki link. MAJOR CWs: sexual assault, underage sex work, underage pregnancy, abuse.
Susan is 16 when we meet her. Her father (a reputable horse-breeder and influential man in their small town) has died under mysterious circumstances, leaving Susan and her Aunt Cordelia with no means of income. As a result, they have sold off all the remaining stock and anything else they can get money for in order to pay rent to the mayor, Hart Thorin, who owns their ranch. In order to settle the debt and keep the ranch (and get a few of their horses back), Susan is persuaded to enter into a contract with Thorin to be his "shiveen" (a "side-wife" or legally-sanctioned private sex worker).
As part of this contract, she has to visit the local witch, Rhea, to prove her virginity. At this appointment, several things happen. First: she arrives early and, sneaking around, witnesses Rhea hiding a magical pink ball (the Grapefruit). Secondly, Rhea tells her that Mayor Thorin is not to consummate the deal until Reaptide, then three months away. Thirdly, right before she leaves, Susan is hypnotised by the witch, and given the command to cut off all her hair (of which she is very proud) when she loses her virginity.
On the way home from Rhea's, Susan meets a strange boy - Roland - from the Inner Baronies. The two flirt, but she warns him that if they meet again, he must not mention it to anyone. They meet again at a party at the Mayor's house a few days later, where Roland learns about the contract and treats her coldly. They part on bad terms, and remain so for some days, before meeting again on the road. He apologises for his behaviour (for the second time, having sent her a letter previously via her friend Sheemie) and they reconcile, but he seems more interested in her local knowledge about the town, asking her questions about the ranchers' stock and the lies he has been told by the men of Hambry. He places his trust in her, and they discuss the shadier goings-on of town, before kissing. This sets the tone for the next few weeks: the two exchange letters secretly, through Sheemie and other means, and meet in secret; they kiss but she is not prepared to risk her virginity; and at the same time, they investigate the strange goings-on in town, and Susan's suspicions about her father's death grow. At one point, she asks Roland to make her break her promise - "If you love me, then love me" - but he refuses.
About two weeks later, Susan is sexually assaulted (though not penetratively) by the Mayor while at his house for a dress fitting. When she returns home she fights with her aunt about it, and rides out to clear her head - only she runs into Roland, and this time, when she tells him all that happened and repeats "If you love me, then love me", he obliges. Afterwards, the hypnotic suggestion kicks in, and Roland finds her down at the water's edge with a sharp rock, cutting at her hair. He wakes her up, and then - with her permission - hypnotises her a second time to help her remember what Rhea told her. She doesn't remember the details of what she saw in the witch's house, but she does remember pink - a clue to the magic that both of them have sensed, in intimate moments, when they feel watched.
They continue to meet for another month or so, as Reaptide approaches. However, this is becoming more dangerous, as Aunt Cordelia is suspicious and Roland and his friends are making enemies in the town. It comes to a head when Rhea, who has been using the Grapefruit's magic to watch the goings-on, decides to make a move, writing a note to Aunt Cordelia to confirm that Susan is no longer a virgin. Luckily, she chooses to send this letter with Sheemie, who - although he can't read - is suspicious of its contents, and asks Roland's friend Bert to read it to him. This alerts Roland and his friends to the danger, and ultimately spurs them to action: they go to warn Rhea not to interfere with their mission, they kill her familiar in the process, and the endgame is set into motion.
Susan, Roland, and his friends Bert and Alain meet three days later. They confirm that their enemies plan to move on Reap Night, the same night that Susan's contract is to be fulfilled. They discuss plans for the three boys to ambush the opposing force, and then the issue of Rhea is raised. It is at this point that Susan once again remembers pink, and between them, they piece together what Rhea has - a mythical artefact that Roland has heard of before. They part ways on the agreement that they will meet on Reap and, when everything is over, Susan will go back to the Inner Baronies with them - especially crucial since, by now, she is fairly sure she's pregnant. Around this time, Susan also realises the truth about her father's death: that he was killed by his friends in town because he opposed their plans, and that his own sister Cordelia was a co-conspirator in his death and the subsequent cover-up.
The day before Reaping, Mayor Thorin is brutally killed by his co-conspirators, and Roland, Bert, and Alain are framed for the crime. They are jailed, with the intention of burning them on the traditional Reaping bonfires - a fact which Susan learns from her maid when she wakes up. She rides out at once to where the boys were staying, where Roland showed her the guns he had hidden. Disguising herself in men's clothing, she takes the guns and makes for the jail, breaking the boys out and killing the sheriff and deputy in the process. Sheemie helps, stealing a mule so that they can put their plan into motion.
They part ways at the hut where the boys were staying. Susan and Sheemie stay behind; Roland, Bert, and Alain ride off to fight an army, and out of the rest of her narrative. Susan is sleeping when she is found by the posse looking for Roland and his friends. They demand to know where they boys are, but she refuses and spits in the leader's face. She is hauled off to be locked up in the mayor's house, since the jail is in a bit of a state.
She is saved from her imprisonment by an unlikely rescuer - Olive Thorin, the mayor's wife, who has every reason to hate her. Along with Sheemie and Susan's maid, Maria, Olive manages to get Susan out of town and on the road towards Seafront, the next town. However, they run into men from the town on the road, and while defending Susan, Olive is shot dead. Susan is dragged back to town by an unfriendly mob (with Rhea at the head of it) and burned as a traitor on the Reaping-fire.
Personality:
Susan is a rancher's daughter to the bone - hard-working, down-to-earth, and self-reliant. Since her father's death, she has had to support herself and her aunt without much help, and she prides herself on being able to do so. She can do ranch work every bit as a boy, at least by her own estimation, and when she has to use Hart Thorin's name to get respect from Rhea, she thinks ruefully that it is the first (and, throughout the book, almost only) time she has used her relationship with a man to protect herself. She likes to ride out alone, and scorns any suggestion that this is improper or dangerous. Throughout the book, she often reflects on how unfair it is that, as a girl, people don't trust her to do things - she resents the intrusion of other people into her affairs, and generally keeps herself to herself. Of course, this is only partly by choice, since even before her involvement with Roland, most of the people of Hambry want nothing to do with someone seen as a whore.
She asserts her independence not only in how she acts and speaks, but in how she dresses, too. To her aunt's disgust, she shows a strong preference for wearing her father's old clothes rather than "proper" skirts and dresses, a habit which doesn't help her reputation in town. She is an excellent horse-rider and knows as much about stock-keeping as any of the ranchers in Hambry, and she doesn't see why she should have to rely on her looks and the kindness of the people around her. If anything, she can be overconfident in her own abilities - for example, demanding to go along with Roland and his friends on what seems at the time to be an impossible mission, despite the fact that she has only fired a gun on one occasion, and it didn't go well. (That is, she killed the people she was trying to kill, but she also set her serape on fire and nearly got strangled)
In fact, her pride is very often her downfall. She is too proud to capitulate and be conciliatory with Rhea at their first meeting (although she does eventually swallow that pride and try to make amends), and she is too proud to accept Roland's first apology for... well, wounding her pride. Susan has spent much of her adolescence with nothing to fall back on except pride, and it shows - but, put in a situation where her pride and sense of self are balanced against the need to make ends meet, that pride backfires considerably. Even at the end, when she has the chance to perhaps survive if she does as Eldred Jonas wants, she chooses to spit in his face instead, and goes to her pyre with her head held high. Her pride is often what causes her the most hurt and anger.
And there's a lot of hurt and anger to go around. Susan is, after all, a teenaged girl, and a passionate one at that. She isn't a brawler (although she's more than prepared to put the boot in if it's necessary), but she often snaps at people, and can be positively cruel when her temper flares up. She can also take offence very easily - in her first meeting with Roland, they almost fall out straight away because he calls her "sai" (a formal term of address), and when he is cruel to her at the dance, she holds a grudge against him until well into their next conversation. And yet, she falls for him just as quickly as she falls out with him, and much more strongly. Throughout the book, she often acts on impulse and emotion - good and bad. Even when her better judgement tells her not to be cruel to Rhea, not to kiss Roland, not to start a fight with her aunt - even then, and even after thinking that, she often does it anyway, because she simply can't bear not to. There's a strong dramatic streak in her (again, she is sixteen) and while she isn't an idealist by any stretch, she does have a strong reaction to injustice and unfairness. Especially when it's aimed at her.
That passion, and that dramatic streak, can often lead her to be judgemental, jumping to (often unkind) conclusions about people on first sight. Some of these judgements are justified, like thinking that Rhea is a bitch or that Hart Thorin is disgusting and rather stupid. However, not all her snap judgements are fair or accurate, and she often holds to them even when they are proved wrong. She can be disparaging of people around her without any real reason - for example, she thinks of her maid Maria, who has done nothing but be helpful and do her job, as stupid and rather dull. This is especially ironic, considering that Susan herself is so ready to rail against the injustice of people thinking that she's stupid because of how she appears.
She is quite willing to write off people who have wronged her - such as the sheriff, who she does not regret killing, saying that she never trusted him. She also assumes people's motivations without real evidence, which leads to a lot more conflict than is really necessary. When she meets Roland on the road (bearing in mind that she lives in a small town and doesn't meet new people that much) we see how she approaches a stranger, and it isn't particularly flattering: she spends the whole conversation looking for a way to categorise him, and part of the appeal of him is that she struggles to jump to a judgement of him. She is most comfortable when she knows where she stands with people, and if she doesn't know, she'll make it up.
Despite this, and despite the fact that she is often petty and does things with the intent of making people uncomfortable (such as more or less flashing Roland when they first meet, explicitly to throw him off-balance and make him blush), Susan isn't an inherently cruel person. In fact, if pride and passion are her downfall, then compassion is her saving grace at several points. She has an affinity for people who are in a rough place in their lives, and is one of very few people in Hambry who considers Sheemie Ruiz (a developmentally-disabled youth who works at the saloon) not only worthy of full personhood, but a friend - a friendship that is crucial in allowing her secret relationship to continue as long as it does, and in helping her to cope with the struggles of her life. She is also kind to Maria, even while being catty in her head, and sympathetic to Olive Thorin's plight as an unloved, barren wife - compassion which is rewarded when Maria and Olive band together to help her escape the mayor's house.
Perhaps the height of Susan's compassion (and, paradoxically, maybe also her judgement) is that she is, in the end, able to forgive Aunt Cordelia for her part in the murder of Susan's father. Susan confronts Cordelia with the facts - the destruction of Pat Delgado's records, the conspiracy among the men of Hambry, and her suspicion of her aunt's affair with one of the murderers - but ultimately tells her aunt that she forgives her for that, and for everything else. This is because of pity, seeing how empty her aunt's life is, but also heavily loaded with judgements of her aunt's character: weak, frightened, easily-led. She smears ashes on Cordelia's cheek and tells her that although she's forgiven, it doesn't take away what she did - a pretty clear sign that, while this was a compassionate act, it was also a self-serving one, freeing Susan of the weight of her relationship with her aunt and her own anger and hatred. (This compassion does not come back to help her later - when her pyre is lit, Aunt Cordelia is quite literally the one holding the torch.)
This is in character for Susan, who - passion, pride, judgement, and kindness all notwithstanding - is most of all ruthlessly pragmatic. While she is sometimes viewed by others as romantic or flighty (most notably by Aunt Cordelia), and while she sometimes considers herself as such, it isn't borne out by her actions. Throughout the novel, she is brutally practical, if not downright cynical, and prepared to do whatever is necessary. This is proved even before the story starts, with her agreement to a contract she finds utterly repulsive, and continues throughout - she does her best to fight her attraction to Roland and is extremely secretive in how she handles it; she forces herself to tolerate Thorin's advances without fighting back; and ultimately, when she sees no choice, she cuts all ties with the life she gave up so much to maintain, kills two men (one of whom was a friend), and loses remarkably little sleep over it. It was what she had to do, so she did it.
She is often right about what she has to do, as well, and that's because Susan Delgado is much more intelligent than many people give her credit for. She doesn't always spot things first, but throughout the story, she is often the first to notice connections, and she rarely needs things to be explained in full, as she quickly cottons on to what is being said. She is also clever enough to continually find ways to pass massages in secret, even in a small town full of gossip and prying eyes - and clever enough, in the end, to know before Roland does that it is all going to end in tragedy. Intelligence is a double-edged sword, sometimes. As Jonas says to her, right before she's hauled off to her imprisonment: clever girls go to Hell.
The other edge to that sword is curiosity. Her curiosity about what she catches glimpses of at Rhea's sends her to spy on the witch when she is sent out to gather firewood - even down to taking off her dress so the witch won't see mud on her skirt from grubbing around under the window. She's curious about Roland and his friends, riding into town; she's curious about the conspiracy they start to unearth; she's curious about a lot of things that she would probably be safer ignoring. Instead, she's drawn to investigate them, putting her in danger over and over again.
That curiosity is made more dangerous by her undeniable bravery, which isn't always tempered by her pragmatism. She is prepared to fight for the things she holds dear, and ultimately, she faces even her own painful death with relative grace - her grief is for the baby she carries, and for Roland, more than for herself. Throughout the novel, she consistently shows great (and sometimes suicidal) courage, perhaps most of all in the jailbreak, which could just as easily have ended up with them all dead. This bravery is a natural extension of her pragmatism: once she's decided that there's only one way forwards, she'll take it, and there's no sense in crying over it. As she quotes her father saying: "When there's no choice, hesitation was ever a sin."
She quotes her father to herself a lot, actually, and there's a reason for that. Above all else - above pragmatism, passion, pride, or courage - Susan is loyal. She doesn't hold a whole lot of high and lofty ideals, but she will go to the ends of the earth for the people she cares for. Even after her father's death, her loyalty to his memory is the strongest guide to her character. Her fight with Rhea is spurred by the witch speaking unkindly of Pat Delgado, her political loyalty to the Inner Baronies is solely motivated by her father's commitment to its cause, and we find out later that even the contract with Thorin was linked to that loyalty - Aunt Cordelia having ultimately talked her into it by asserting that it was what Pat would have wanted her to do, and loyalty to her father's honour and memory being a large part of Susan's rationale for not breaking off the contract sooner. But Susan's loyalty isn't only to her father's memory. It takes a special kind of loyalty to look a killer in the eye and tell him that yes, you know where the boy he's hunting is, but you won't tell him - and then to spit in his face and actually not tell him, even when things get really bad. That's the kind of loyalty Susan has. She might not be a perfect person: she might be petty and judgemental, sometimes vain, often bitter, ruthless and pragmatic and harsh, but at the end of the day, she won't quit on you. Not even if it gets her killed.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs: Faerie, lich, troll.
Roleplay Sample: TDM (it's mostly on her old account with a different PB, but it's me, I promise!)
Name: Jormy
Contact:
Age: 29
Other Characters: Hawkeye Pierce (
getmeoutofthedraft), Faramir (nearamir)CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Susan Delgado
Age: 16
Canon: Dark Tower
Canon Point: After her death
Character Information: Wiki link. MAJOR CWs: sexual assault, underage sex work, underage pregnancy, abuse.
The wiki is pretty bare-bones, so click here for an optional, more in-depth summary:
Susan is 16 when we meet her. Her father (a reputable horse-breeder and influential man in their small town) has died under mysterious circumstances, leaving Susan and her Aunt Cordelia with no means of income. As a result, they have sold off all the remaining stock and anything else they can get money for in order to pay rent to the mayor, Hart Thorin, who owns their ranch. In order to settle the debt and keep the ranch (and get a few of their horses back), Susan is persuaded to enter into a contract with Thorin to be his "shiveen" (a "side-wife" or legally-sanctioned private sex worker).
As part of this contract, she has to visit the local witch, Rhea, to prove her virginity. At this appointment, several things happen. First: she arrives early and, sneaking around, witnesses Rhea hiding a magical pink ball (the Grapefruit). Secondly, Rhea tells her that Mayor Thorin is not to consummate the deal until Reaptide, then three months away. Thirdly, right before she leaves, Susan is hypnotised by the witch, and given the command to cut off all her hair (of which she is very proud) when she loses her virginity.
On the way home from Rhea's, Susan meets a strange boy - Roland - from the Inner Baronies. The two flirt, but she warns him that if they meet again, he must not mention it to anyone. They meet again at a party at the Mayor's house a few days later, where Roland learns about the contract and treats her coldly. They part on bad terms, and remain so for some days, before meeting again on the road. He apologises for his behaviour (for the second time, having sent her a letter previously via her friend Sheemie) and they reconcile, but he seems more interested in her local knowledge about the town, asking her questions about the ranchers' stock and the lies he has been told by the men of Hambry. He places his trust in her, and they discuss the shadier goings-on of town, before kissing. This sets the tone for the next few weeks: the two exchange letters secretly, through Sheemie and other means, and meet in secret; they kiss but she is not prepared to risk her virginity; and at the same time, they investigate the strange goings-on in town, and Susan's suspicions about her father's death grow. At one point, she asks Roland to make her break her promise - "If you love me, then love me" - but he refuses.
About two weeks later, Susan is sexually assaulted (though not penetratively) by the Mayor while at his house for a dress fitting. When she returns home she fights with her aunt about it, and rides out to clear her head - only she runs into Roland, and this time, when she tells him all that happened and repeats "If you love me, then love me", he obliges. Afterwards, the hypnotic suggestion kicks in, and Roland finds her down at the water's edge with a sharp rock, cutting at her hair. He wakes her up, and then - with her permission - hypnotises her a second time to help her remember what Rhea told her. She doesn't remember the details of what she saw in the witch's house, but she does remember pink - a clue to the magic that both of them have sensed, in intimate moments, when they feel watched.
They continue to meet for another month or so, as Reaptide approaches. However, this is becoming more dangerous, as Aunt Cordelia is suspicious and Roland and his friends are making enemies in the town. It comes to a head when Rhea, who has been using the Grapefruit's magic to watch the goings-on, decides to make a move, writing a note to Aunt Cordelia to confirm that Susan is no longer a virgin. Luckily, she chooses to send this letter with Sheemie, who - although he can't read - is suspicious of its contents, and asks Roland's friend Bert to read it to him. This alerts Roland and his friends to the danger, and ultimately spurs them to action: they go to warn Rhea not to interfere with their mission, they kill her familiar in the process, and the endgame is set into motion.
Susan, Roland, and his friends Bert and Alain meet three days later. They confirm that their enemies plan to move on Reap Night, the same night that Susan's contract is to be fulfilled. They discuss plans for the three boys to ambush the opposing force, and then the issue of Rhea is raised. It is at this point that Susan once again remembers pink, and between them, they piece together what Rhea has - a mythical artefact that Roland has heard of before. They part ways on the agreement that they will meet on Reap and, when everything is over, Susan will go back to the Inner Baronies with them - especially crucial since, by now, she is fairly sure she's pregnant. Around this time, Susan also realises the truth about her father's death: that he was killed by his friends in town because he opposed their plans, and that his own sister Cordelia was a co-conspirator in his death and the subsequent cover-up.
The day before Reaping, Mayor Thorin is brutally killed by his co-conspirators, and Roland, Bert, and Alain are framed for the crime. They are jailed, with the intention of burning them on the traditional Reaping bonfires - a fact which Susan learns from her maid when she wakes up. She rides out at once to where the boys were staying, where Roland showed her the guns he had hidden. Disguising herself in men's clothing, she takes the guns and makes for the jail, breaking the boys out and killing the sheriff and deputy in the process. Sheemie helps, stealing a mule so that they can put their plan into motion.
They part ways at the hut where the boys were staying. Susan and Sheemie stay behind; Roland, Bert, and Alain ride off to fight an army, and out of the rest of her narrative. Susan is sleeping when she is found by the posse looking for Roland and his friends. They demand to know where they boys are, but she refuses and spits in the leader's face. She is hauled off to be locked up in the mayor's house, since the jail is in a bit of a state.
She is saved from her imprisonment by an unlikely rescuer - Olive Thorin, the mayor's wife, who has every reason to hate her. Along with Sheemie and Susan's maid, Maria, Olive manages to get Susan out of town and on the road towards Seafront, the next town. However, they run into men from the town on the road, and while defending Susan, Olive is shot dead. Susan is dragged back to town by an unfriendly mob (with Rhea at the head of it) and burned as a traitor on the Reaping-fire.
Personality:
Susan is a rancher's daughter to the bone - hard-working, down-to-earth, and self-reliant. Since her father's death, she has had to support herself and her aunt without much help, and she prides herself on being able to do so. She can do ranch work every bit as a boy, at least by her own estimation, and when she has to use Hart Thorin's name to get respect from Rhea, she thinks ruefully that it is the first (and, throughout the book, almost only) time she has used her relationship with a man to protect herself. She likes to ride out alone, and scorns any suggestion that this is improper or dangerous. Throughout the book, she often reflects on how unfair it is that, as a girl, people don't trust her to do things - she resents the intrusion of other people into her affairs, and generally keeps herself to herself. Of course, this is only partly by choice, since even before her involvement with Roland, most of the people of Hambry want nothing to do with someone seen as a whore.
She asserts her independence not only in how she acts and speaks, but in how she dresses, too. To her aunt's disgust, she shows a strong preference for wearing her father's old clothes rather than "proper" skirts and dresses, a habit which doesn't help her reputation in town. She is an excellent horse-rider and knows as much about stock-keeping as any of the ranchers in Hambry, and she doesn't see why she should have to rely on her looks and the kindness of the people around her. If anything, she can be overconfident in her own abilities - for example, demanding to go along with Roland and his friends on what seems at the time to be an impossible mission, despite the fact that she has only fired a gun on one occasion, and it didn't go well. (That is, she killed the people she was trying to kill, but she also set her serape on fire and nearly got strangled)
In fact, her pride is very often her downfall. She is too proud to capitulate and be conciliatory with Rhea at their first meeting (although she does eventually swallow that pride and try to make amends), and she is too proud to accept Roland's first apology for... well, wounding her pride. Susan has spent much of her adolescence with nothing to fall back on except pride, and it shows - but, put in a situation where her pride and sense of self are balanced against the need to make ends meet, that pride backfires considerably. Even at the end, when she has the chance to perhaps survive if she does as Eldred Jonas wants, she chooses to spit in his face instead, and goes to her pyre with her head held high. Her pride is often what causes her the most hurt and anger.
And there's a lot of hurt and anger to go around. Susan is, after all, a teenaged girl, and a passionate one at that. She isn't a brawler (although she's more than prepared to put the boot in if it's necessary), but she often snaps at people, and can be positively cruel when her temper flares up. She can also take offence very easily - in her first meeting with Roland, they almost fall out straight away because he calls her "sai" (a formal term of address), and when he is cruel to her at the dance, she holds a grudge against him until well into their next conversation. And yet, she falls for him just as quickly as she falls out with him, and much more strongly. Throughout the book, she often acts on impulse and emotion - good and bad. Even when her better judgement tells her not to be cruel to Rhea, not to kiss Roland, not to start a fight with her aunt - even then, and even after thinking that, she often does it anyway, because she simply can't bear not to. There's a strong dramatic streak in her (again, she is sixteen) and while she isn't an idealist by any stretch, she does have a strong reaction to injustice and unfairness. Especially when it's aimed at her.
That passion, and that dramatic streak, can often lead her to be judgemental, jumping to (often unkind) conclusions about people on first sight. Some of these judgements are justified, like thinking that Rhea is a bitch or that Hart Thorin is disgusting and rather stupid. However, not all her snap judgements are fair or accurate, and she often holds to them even when they are proved wrong. She can be disparaging of people around her without any real reason - for example, she thinks of her maid Maria, who has done nothing but be helpful and do her job, as stupid and rather dull. This is especially ironic, considering that Susan herself is so ready to rail against the injustice of people thinking that she's stupid because of how she appears.
She is quite willing to write off people who have wronged her - such as the sheriff, who she does not regret killing, saying that she never trusted him. She also assumes people's motivations without real evidence, which leads to a lot more conflict than is really necessary. When she meets Roland on the road (bearing in mind that she lives in a small town and doesn't meet new people that much) we see how she approaches a stranger, and it isn't particularly flattering: she spends the whole conversation looking for a way to categorise him, and part of the appeal of him is that she struggles to jump to a judgement of him. She is most comfortable when she knows where she stands with people, and if she doesn't know, she'll make it up.
Despite this, and despite the fact that she is often petty and does things with the intent of making people uncomfortable (such as more or less flashing Roland when they first meet, explicitly to throw him off-balance and make him blush), Susan isn't an inherently cruel person. In fact, if pride and passion are her downfall, then compassion is her saving grace at several points. She has an affinity for people who are in a rough place in their lives, and is one of very few people in Hambry who considers Sheemie Ruiz (a developmentally-disabled youth who works at the saloon) not only worthy of full personhood, but a friend - a friendship that is crucial in allowing her secret relationship to continue as long as it does, and in helping her to cope with the struggles of her life. She is also kind to Maria, even while being catty in her head, and sympathetic to Olive Thorin's plight as an unloved, barren wife - compassion which is rewarded when Maria and Olive band together to help her escape the mayor's house.
Perhaps the height of Susan's compassion (and, paradoxically, maybe also her judgement) is that she is, in the end, able to forgive Aunt Cordelia for her part in the murder of Susan's father. Susan confronts Cordelia with the facts - the destruction of Pat Delgado's records, the conspiracy among the men of Hambry, and her suspicion of her aunt's affair with one of the murderers - but ultimately tells her aunt that she forgives her for that, and for everything else. This is because of pity, seeing how empty her aunt's life is, but also heavily loaded with judgements of her aunt's character: weak, frightened, easily-led. She smears ashes on Cordelia's cheek and tells her that although she's forgiven, it doesn't take away what she did - a pretty clear sign that, while this was a compassionate act, it was also a self-serving one, freeing Susan of the weight of her relationship with her aunt and her own anger and hatred. (This compassion does not come back to help her later - when her pyre is lit, Aunt Cordelia is quite literally the one holding the torch.)
This is in character for Susan, who - passion, pride, judgement, and kindness all notwithstanding - is most of all ruthlessly pragmatic. While she is sometimes viewed by others as romantic or flighty (most notably by Aunt Cordelia), and while she sometimes considers herself as such, it isn't borne out by her actions. Throughout the novel, she is brutally practical, if not downright cynical, and prepared to do whatever is necessary. This is proved even before the story starts, with her agreement to a contract she finds utterly repulsive, and continues throughout - she does her best to fight her attraction to Roland and is extremely secretive in how she handles it; she forces herself to tolerate Thorin's advances without fighting back; and ultimately, when she sees no choice, she cuts all ties with the life she gave up so much to maintain, kills two men (one of whom was a friend), and loses remarkably little sleep over it. It was what she had to do, so she did it.
She is often right about what she has to do, as well, and that's because Susan Delgado is much more intelligent than many people give her credit for. She doesn't always spot things first, but throughout the story, she is often the first to notice connections, and she rarely needs things to be explained in full, as she quickly cottons on to what is being said. She is also clever enough to continually find ways to pass massages in secret, even in a small town full of gossip and prying eyes - and clever enough, in the end, to know before Roland does that it is all going to end in tragedy. Intelligence is a double-edged sword, sometimes. As Jonas says to her, right before she's hauled off to her imprisonment: clever girls go to Hell.
The other edge to that sword is curiosity. Her curiosity about what she catches glimpses of at Rhea's sends her to spy on the witch when she is sent out to gather firewood - even down to taking off her dress so the witch won't see mud on her skirt from grubbing around under the window. She's curious about Roland and his friends, riding into town; she's curious about the conspiracy they start to unearth; she's curious about a lot of things that she would probably be safer ignoring. Instead, she's drawn to investigate them, putting her in danger over and over again.
That curiosity is made more dangerous by her undeniable bravery, which isn't always tempered by her pragmatism. She is prepared to fight for the things she holds dear, and ultimately, she faces even her own painful death with relative grace - her grief is for the baby she carries, and for Roland, more than for herself. Throughout the novel, she consistently shows great (and sometimes suicidal) courage, perhaps most of all in the jailbreak, which could just as easily have ended up with them all dead. This bravery is a natural extension of her pragmatism: once she's decided that there's only one way forwards, she'll take it, and there's no sense in crying over it. As she quotes her father saying: "When there's no choice, hesitation was ever a sin."
She quotes her father to herself a lot, actually, and there's a reason for that. Above all else - above pragmatism, passion, pride, or courage - Susan is loyal. She doesn't hold a whole lot of high and lofty ideals, but she will go to the ends of the earth for the people she cares for. Even after her father's death, her loyalty to his memory is the strongest guide to her character. Her fight with Rhea is spurred by the witch speaking unkindly of Pat Delgado, her political loyalty to the Inner Baronies is solely motivated by her father's commitment to its cause, and we find out later that even the contract with Thorin was linked to that loyalty - Aunt Cordelia having ultimately talked her into it by asserting that it was what Pat would have wanted her to do, and loyalty to her father's honour and memory being a large part of Susan's rationale for not breaking off the contract sooner. But Susan's loyalty isn't only to her father's memory. It takes a special kind of loyalty to look a killer in the eye and tell him that yes, you know where the boy he's hunting is, but you won't tell him - and then to spit in his face and actually not tell him, even when things get really bad. That's the kind of loyalty Susan has. She might not be a perfect person: she might be petty and judgemental, sometimes vain, often bitter, ruthless and pragmatic and harsh, but at the end of the day, she won't quit on you. Not even if it gets her killed.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- Self-reliant
- Prideful
- Passionate
- Judgemental
- Compassionate
- Pragmatic
- Intelligent
- Curious
- Brave
- Loyal
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs: Faerie, lich, troll.
Roleplay Sample: TDM (it's mostly on her old account with a different PB, but it's me, I promise!)