» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Roppie
Current AGE: 22
Player TIME ZONE: GMT -5; EST
Personal JOURNAL: slaphappy
IM & SERVICE: AIM— wiltytitties
Player PLURK: themongers
Current CHARACTERS: Asami Sato (Legend of Korra)

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Juno
Canon & MEDIUM: The Descent, film
Canon PULL-POINT: The end of the first film, during her final struggle
Character AGE: approx. 28
Character ABILITIES: Juno's abilities are not supernatural to any extent. In other words, she might be what one would call a "badass normal." And badass truly is a good word for it; as an outdoorsman, she's strong for her stature, and she knows how to navigate unknown, difficult terrain swiftly and safely. Her ferocious willpower enables her to take on the unforeseen challenges, including combat with cannibalistic crawlers, throughout her time in the Appalachia until the end.
Character HISTORY: Juno hails from the world as we know it, circa 2005. As viewers, we know that she has a background in outdoor adventuring beyond white water rafting and climbing as we see in the film; if you name it, she has probably done it. Furthermore, Juno has a group of girlfriends with whom she typically shares these experiences. She holds herself to a high standard of execution, knowledge, and safety when it comes to her outdoorsy escapades, which results in her becoming the designated leader for any given trip. Her friends historically look up to and count on her.

Unfortunately, her biggest mistake as a leader brings her friends right to their deaths. A year prior to the incident, her best friend, Sarah, was involved in a fatal car accident that took the lives of her husband and her daughter. Juno quickly removed herself from the situation, however she assumes leadership once again when she and five of her friends, Sarah included, round up at a cabin for a night before a caving trip. Although Sarah is filled with apprehension, Juno's plan is that a trip "like old times" will be good for her, and off they go early the next morning.

Spelunking goes smoothly at first. When Sarah points out where oddities occur, Juno insists that nothing is wrong, that everything will be okay. Only after the cave collapses through a narrow corridor behind them does she admit that she left the cave's map in the car, only because taking it along would have been pointless; she had led them to an unknown cave system. Her idea was to make out a meaningful experience for the girls, especially for Sarah, and possibly to name the cave after Sarah once they had come out through the other end. Although her companions call out Juno for having more selfish intentions than otherwise, they nevertheless count on her to find a way out for them. It's a responsibility Juno takes on with a cool head.

The sequence of events continue to delve further south (ha!) for the group. Sam tears up her gloves and her hands with rope burn; Holly, who is Juno's protege, breaks her leg on a nasty fall; and inevitably, they come across a room littered with the bones of wild animals. This is where they directly encounter crawlers for the first time, and Holly is the obvious victim with her bum leg. Although she did not have a chance of surviving the attack, Juno goes as far as to play tug-o'-war for her body, and then subsequently fend off two crawlers.

In a moment of paranoia, she whirls around with her pickaxe and inadvertently stabs Beth in the neck. Beth tears off Juno's pendant as she falls to the ground. She looks on, expecting Juno to save her, but Juno only backs away.

With the girls separated, Juno spends much of her time running about the cavern and screaming Sarah's name, because lo' and behold she is the last one to catch on to the fact that the crawlers navigate by sound. Out of sheer luck, bravery, and importance to the story, she not only finds a way towards the exit, but also avoids becoming a meal on her journey to finding Sam and Becca. Instead she watches as they become dinner to those "fuckers" (her words), all because she had insisted on going backwards to find Sarah.

When Juno finds Sarah, that formerly meek friend of hers is a bloody mess. Literally, H-to-T bloody, and none of that blood is hers. It makes Sarah's stern blue eyes look all the crazier when she interrogates Juno about the other girls. Juno can confidently nod to the fact that Holly, Sam, and Becca are dead. Beth? Well, probably, Juno thinks, so she nods. Sarah presses, "Did you watch her?" and Juno, at this moment revealing what a terrible liar she is, nods very slowly. Sarah, who still looks pissed and disbelieving of a word Juno says, continues on the trek for the exit.

The last stop of their journey brings them to what might be a bunker for the crawlers, because there are a ton of them, and they are all mighty hungry. Sarah and Juno take them on, mostly without incident, but Sarah isn't satisfied to see only a handful of crawler carcasses around her feet. When Juno is finished killing and re-killing the last one, she glances up to Sarah standing before her, pickaxe in hand. Her fingers release the pendant Beth had ripped off of Juno's neck, and finally the two of them are on the same page:

Juno left Beth to die, and Juno had an affair with Sarah's husband. "Love each day," inscribed on her pendant, was kind of his thing.

Sarah sticks her pickaxe in Juno's leg and runs away. The echoes of Juno's warrior cries reverberate through the cavern walls as she takes on another set of crawlers.

As for a little more information about the crawlers, they are an evolved "peoples," if you will, who roam naked within the caves of the Appalachia and venture out into the fresh air to hunt wild animals. They are blind, and they only navigate by sound. It seems they are not above cannibalism.

Character PERSONALITY:
"This is exactly what we believe in! We always said if there's no risk, what's the point?"

Juno is the kind of woman who has a good head on her shoulders—until she absolutely doesn't. One hour she is the shining example of what a leader should be: cool, calm, collected, confident, and every other C-word complimentary of a good trailblazer. She furthermore stresses safety first, and she goes out of her way to help her fellow adventurers out of a bind. As previously mentioned, Juno is the woman others look up to, and it is a position she takes tremendously seriously. Then there are her bad ideas, such as when she deceives her friends into spelunking in an undiscovered cave. Other bad ideas include having an affair with her best friend's husband and wearing a pendant with his life's motto on her neck.

In other words, there is a lot going on inside Juno's head. She is the smartest person one could meet in terms of survival and practicality. She will put on the boots of the Big Damn Hero and do what she needs to do flawlessly; however, she suffers morally as a character, to the point that where exactly her sense of guilt lies is incredibly fuzzy.

Perhaps the best way to break it down would be to say that Juno takes responsibility when it will make her look good, and she avoids getting her hands dirty when she knows she will look bad for it. The reason conflict arises in the film the way that it does is because Juno is secretive about her intentions. She knows the other women would not be on board for adventuring into an unknown cave system, so she deliberately leaves the guidebook in the car and figures she will reveal the surprise of their accomplishment when they are finished. Things go wrong, of course, and so she is forced to reveal the fact that no one has yet discovered the cave. First she attempts to bring Holly in on her side, and when that girl deflects, she insists that the principle of her decision is what everyone in their group had always believed in.

Juno loses that battle, but she knows as well as everyone else does that she is the group's only hope out of the cave system. After a heated argument, she makes the statement, "If we stay here, we'll die," and quietly the other women resume their path behind her.

In that sense, she does take her position of authority very well. She knows what kinds of tricks the dark plays on people, which in a way justifies the fact that she does not believe in what Sarah constantly sees in the cave; she scolds Holly for her recklessness time and again; she puts her own life at risk by bringing up the rear on suspended clips, which she collects to conserve supplies, thereby causing her to get from one platform to another on pure muscle power; she expertly uses a lighter to detect a breeze when there are forks in their paths; and finally she is the one who dives head first into combat with the crawlers.

As the film progresses, her cowardice in other aspects of her character persist. Her abandonment of Beth is interesting, because she leaves her to die right after fighting tooth and nail for Holly's life, if not her body, even though she had no chance at all of surviving. Although Juno argued with the whole group about the caving situation, her conflict with Beth is most likely the heaviest, as if there is an unspoken acknowledgement that Beth might have her suspicions about Juno's affair. If not that, then they at least both know who is Sarah's better friend. Beth's words are scathing to Juno when the truth about the caving system comes out: "What do you think you're doing? We all trusted you. You told me this was going to be good for Sarah. Have you any idea what she's been through? No, because you couldn't get away fast enough, you selfish cow." Although Juno later swings her pickaxe in Beth's neck by accident, she still makes the conscious decision to back away slowly, even as much as the guilt for doing so visibly weighs down on her.

Juno's relationship with Sarah has many unspoken elements as well, the most obvious being her affair with Sarah's husband. The strange thing about it, however, is that although the trip is meant to be a healing experience for not only Sarah but also their friendship (they hadn't spoken to each other since the accident—Juno even ran away from the hospital, and only apologized for it a year later!), she still wears her husband's pendant around her neck. Exactly how guilty she feels about the affair is unclear. Certainly, her sorrow over the death of Sarah's husband outweighs her betrayal. On the other hand, perhaps only a guilty conscience would be able to convince Juno to thrust herself back into the fray of the cave to find her.

At the end of the day, Juno truly is a friendly person. She is easy to get along with, she knows how to have a good time, and she's a good friend when she isn't cheating with your husband. She also makes bad decisions when she thinks she can get away with them, because let's face it, most of the time she knows when she's doing something right and when she's going something wrong. Juno does a whole lot of wrong, and she is one of the biggest social cowards the world will ever meet.

» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Juno's weapon is a pickaxe straight from her experience in the cave. It's a token of her experience, and it never let her down. The more she uses it, the stronger her memories from the cave, both the horrors and her own misdoings, come on back to haunt her. Gradually her weapon will have a berserker effect on her psyche during combat.
Character INVENTORY: Juno has any spelunking gear that was strapped onto her at the time of her pull-point. Towards the end of the film, it isn't much besides a few climbing clips, and of course her trusty pickaxe.

» SAMPLES
First PERSON:
VOICE
[Juno doesn't remember yesterday. She remembers going into battle and raising her pick, but the rest is a red blur. Now she knows just how effective she was, even too effective, and she can't show the network her face.

Her throat sounds tight. It is tight. She utters her words.]

This is Juno.

[How can she forgive herself? How will others forgive her? This isn't even her fault. She sighs and continues more fluidly, desperately.]

Look, I would never hurt you guys the way that I did! It just happened. I couldn't see what I was doing. If you're lying in bed and nursing an injury because of me, I'm sorry, but I didn't mean it.

I'll make it up to you.

[And she doesn't feel any better. Her hand is on the power button, ready to buzz out before one last mutter:] I have to go.

Third PERSON: Test drive link.

» ADDITIONAL NOTES
N/A