[OOC]

 All content from this point forward is separate from The City Never Sleeps RPG. 

[APPLICATION for FASTI]

PLAYER INFORMATION

Player Name: Kaitlyn
Are you 18+?: Yes, I'm 24.
Preferred Contact: Discord – kaitmaree#8077
Current Characters: None.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

Character Name: Kathy H.
Canon: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Canonpoint: Kathy will arrive at the end of her canon following the love of her life, Tommy's, final donation and completion.
Character Age: 31.

Background/History: On appearance alone, Kathy looks to be an ordinary 31 year old woman. However she attended Hailsham, a school where pupils were born and prepared for their lifelong fate as a donor – a genetically engineered clone created for the purpose of prolonging the human lifespan.

This medical revolution came about in the 1950s and meant that doctors could cure the previously incurable – as a result in 1967 the average life expectancy surpassed 100 years. It came at a cost – the clones like Kathy were born into a life that would end abruptly before middle age with a series of organ donations.

Despite this gritty ultimatum, Kathy's early life was very similar to that of a British boarder. With health of paramount importance, Hailsham children were treated very well. Later this would prove to be a rarity, schools like Hailsham a thing of the past and the future of donors looking a lot more like battery farming.

Hailsham students learned much of the same as their “regular” human counterparts: English, Biology, Geography, Art, Music, and even skills that would prepare them for the short time they spent in mainstream society before their donations via roleplaying.

Growing up Kathy's best friend was Ruth, a girl that she was very different from but reliant on nonetheless. She was also very close to Tommy, a boy with a lot of rage inside him. Her relationship with both of them was tested when, not long before they all graduated Hailsham and moved to The Cottages, Tommy and Ruth started dating. Kathy never revealed it at the time, but she held romantic feelings for Tommy and struggled with the idea of Ruth and Tommy dating.

Ruth would later admit that she knew she was doing the wrong thing by keeping them apart.

It was during their time at The Cottages that rumours of deferrals arose. These alleged that if two donors could prove they had genuine love for one another, they might be able to delay their donations and spend more time together. While these were discussed at length between Kathy and Tommy re: his relationship with Ruth, it wasn't until after Kathy had been working as a carer for almost ten years and reunited with Tommy and Ruth that Ruth would apologise for keeping them apart and suggest they apply for a deferral.

It would be her last wish as she was due for what would be her final donation.  After dismissing it as too late, Kathy and Tommy did eventually go on to enquire about the deferral only to find out that it was just a rumour.

The two had commenced a romantic relationship all the same with the little time they had together and Kathy cared for him until he decided he didn’t want her to be his carer anymore.

He completed after his fourth donation.

Kathy enters Darrow two weeks after Tommy’s passing, at the end of the film’s canon in the late 1990s. She has received her notice and is one month away from her first donation.

Strengths: 

PATIENCE: Kathy's first sign of patience is shown in her equivalent of primary school, both with Tommy and with Ruth. With Ruth, she was forced to be patient with a strong personality that refused to fade or relent for even a moment. It wasn't easy being Ruth's friend, or so Kathy later reflects, but it did mean that she accomplished things at Hailsham she wouldn't otherwise. Regarding Tommy, she was first faced with the purest form of anger she'd ever seen. She was one of the only students willing to give him a chance and befriend him. Later on, patience reveals itself in its strongest form as she becomes a carer for donors who she sees at their very worst and until their deaths. 

EMPATHY: As above, Kathy has shown signs of empathy in her youth and later in her career. Without empathy, she would not have been able to help Tommy work through his rage as a child and then as an adult. She also wouldn't have been able to be a decent carer for her donors. She describes some carers as wastes of space and is certainly not one of them: her empathy extends as far as spending hours explaining what life was like at Hailsham so her donors die with pleasant thoughts instead of painful ones.

SENSE OF HUMOUR: Without her sense of humour, Kathy simply wouldn't survive. It's quite dry and sometimes might make others roll their eyes, but it's gotten her through thirty-one years that might have otherwise crushed her. In particular, it got her through the pain of two of her best friends romancing one another while she stood alone on the sidelines. Without the ability to laugh, Kathy would only have the option to cry and for her that's only ever been something that's happened without her realising it until it's too late.

Weaknesses: 

PRIDE: On the very first page of her canon, Kathy insists that she isn't proud and then goes on to emphasise all the ways in which she is. Kathy is proud of a lot of things, really – almost as many as she's ashamed of. Most of all, she's proud of her ability as a carer, the fact that she can look after donors like her and help make their transition to completion easier in small ways. Bringing carers biscuits, asking them about their childhoods (even if most donors would rather hear about hers). Her pride separates her from other carers who might perceive her as arrogant but Kathy feels that she has earned her pride at least with regard to her career. In terms of a weakness, it does alienate her from time to time though, and she's always aware of it within her own introspection.

JEALOUSY: Kathy's jealousy more or less rubbed off her from Ruth. Without their constant competition, she would probably be a less jealous character – but the fact of the matter is that Kathy's best friend pursued a relationship with someone she knew that she was in love with (or at least had feelings for). Later in her canon, Ruth was cruel enough to kiss her and then tell her that Tommy wouldn't ever see her that way, prompting greater feelings of jealousy and even a strange sense of relief when Ruth eventually completed – even though they had more or less made up for their issues in childhood and their early 20s.

PASSIVE: Kathy's passiveness is the result of the fact that she doesn't really know any better. She was born into Hailsham and eventually, if a little early, prepared for the fact that she was a clone who was created solely for the purpose of harvesting her organs. She was never one to lash out about this fact; that was Tommy's thing. There was never really a moment throughout her canon where Kathy expressed discontent outwardly about the donation process – she'd spent too many years being told all the things that could happen if she tried to. Kathy's passiveness also extended to her relationships. Though, as aforementioned, she did butt heads with Ruth regarding her relationship with Tommy (and relationships in general), she never really acted on anything. For her whole life, Kathy has been a passenger. 

Fatal Flaw: Kathy's fatal flaw is that she is self-sacrificing. She always puts herself second and others first. For instance, she was willing to set aside (but never really let go of) her love for Tommy for over twenty years in order to a appease her best friend, Ruth. More literally, her canon explores the idea of organ donors as essential warehouses and Kathy's willingness to partake in this would – without the intervention of a new setting – have meant her death. There's little she wouldn't do for others (even perfect strangers) and so much she's still learning to do for herself.

Driving Force: Kathy's driving force in her canon is primarily necessity. As much as she'd love to believe it's her work ethic, love or compassion for the donors she cares for, this is not the path she would have chosen for herself. She was born into a programme that decided her fate. She's spent her whole life preparing for the end of it while watching the people she loves perish too early. She keeps going because she has to, because she's told that there are repercussions if she doesn't. 

Patron: I feel that Apollo best aligns with Kathy's history and personality traits. Her (unpaid) career was associated with the medical field and, although she generally didn't give her donors their medication (nurses were in charge of that), she dealt heavily with palliative care in caring for people as they prepared for and recovered from their surgeries. 

Not yet discussed in her app, Kathy was once an artistic character. Art is a theme heavily explored in Never Let Me Go. As children, the students (eventually donors) were encouraged to paint and draw and submit their work to what was called the Gallery.

They were never told exactly what the artworks were for but later learned it was to assess whether they had souls. Kathy didn't pursue art into adulthood but encouraged others in order to express themselves and was always quite talented herself. She was also always ahead of the curve in school and one of the few to put up her hand to pursue caring, a truly multi-talented character.

Similarly, she has a great love for music and her most fond memories are of purchasing a Judy Bridgewater tape which she would listen to over and over again. Although not much of a singer, this speaks to her appreciation of the arts all throughout her life. 

Kathy can, another Apollo trait, also be quite honest when she wants to be. There is much that she keeps below the surface but she is not above a good argument and doesn't like to be proven wrong. Perhaps it is because she has been lied to so often that Kathy values honesty so strongly.

All that said, Kathy is far from perfect and possesses negative traits that would make Apollo a suitable patron for her. She harbours a lot of anger that she didn't properly realise until she was an adult, rage she shared with Tommy and fellow donors but didn't dare herself speak aloud – nobody knew what, exactly, would happen if they did after all.

Tommy and Ruth's relationship brought out Kathy's vindictive and vengeful side. It could be argued, too, that she's been co-dependent her own life. Though once a carer she was largely on her own, as soon as she found herself with Tommy or Ruth it was next to impossible to let go. If circumstances hadn't forced them to, she wouldn't have.

Lastly and perhaps most significantly, Kathy is proud. The very first page of her canon deals with this idea. She insists at first that she's not bragging but, really, Kathy couldn't be more confident in her abilities as a carer and is unafraid to talk down others while talking up herself with regard to her skills and the fact that her donors are seldom agitated. 

A character as complex as Kathy is difficult to fit in with just one patron, but I do believe Apollo suits her well.

GAME INFORMATION

Setting Suitability: Though Kathy H no doubt learned about Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire while growing up, its mythology was a thing of fairytales for her. To believe otherwise would to believe in a higher order and that simply wasn't how she was raised. I believe it will blow her mind to be forced into such setting but also open her eyes after spending so many years wearing blinders. I think she'll love it. I think she deserves it.

I also think she'll be an asset to the community primarily because of her experience in hospitals and hospice. Developing actual skills to heal – not just through her presence and her words – would be an interesting change for her and perhaps help her sense the sense of helplessness she sometimes finds arise within her while caring for donors that share the same, awful fate.

She might not know how to fight but she knows how to care and would do whatever it took to make it known here. She's always been a student and had a willingness to learn and a want to change the world; she simply hasn't been given the chance yet and I believe perhaps this is it.

Sample: TD Sample with Queenie Goldstein. Please disregard the patron she references.