SAMWISE TOSKA, DISTRICT THIRTEEN

SAMWISE
TOSKA .

Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.

“HOW FICKLE MY HEART AND HOW WOOZY MY EYES”
I struggle to find any truth in your lies.

AGE . Reason to believe I'm eighteen.
GENDER . Dude, I'm a dude.
DISTRICT . District Sev-...uh....Thirteen.
OCCUPATION . Student.
SEXUALITY . Straight. Duh.....
TALKING . You Are My Army
DOING . Into
SINGING . Dirty Underwear
IMPRESSIONS . Over Time



APPEARANCE .

“AND NOW MY HEART STUMBLES ON THINGS I DON'T KNOW”
My weakness I feel I must finally show.

He almost didn't mean for it to happen at first.

But when you're spending a year of your life in absolute terror of the Capitol, just trying to make it to a place that probably doesn't exist, it's difficult to not become like he did. The muscles already built up from years of chopping wood and running logs suddenly become even more defined when combined with exhausting days of running, and sometimes barely walking at a snail's pace with one kid on your back, and another in your arms. Abs are defined against his stomach which is so small, but so thick at the same time. He's never been a small person, but the last year has taken a lot. But luckily for him there was still a lot of wood to chop in the forests, (go figure) and he has kept his arm strength. Biceps not too big, but bulging enough to make it look like he spends some time on them. A healthy amount of time, added to another healthy amount of time tends to make working out unhealthy however.

Sam's body is carefully kept at the perfect balance to make himself look good. If he feels like he has eaten too much, he'll go for a run around the district. His six foot five inches frame has the weight of one hundred and seventy pounds. Not underweight, but not very good seeing as a lot of that weight is muscle. He likes to keep it there though, might even skip a meal like he used to, when on the run to keep his siblings well fed. His hands, feet, and lips are still things that he has to grow into, and are big in retrospect of the rest of his body. One hand is large enough to wrap around his sister's arm easily, with the fingers meeting, and how it's weird to see them without a guitar, or something in them. There is a long, ridged scar that never healed correctly on his left lower back, snaking down to the front of his hip gained from a run in with a mutt from a previous game left to patrol the area around District Twelve.

After noticing Sam's tall stature, and nicely chiseled body, the next them that that the viewer might be drawn to are his eyes. They rest under a forehead that is usually smooth, yet eyebrows knit together in concern, to create almost a overhang that the viewer needs to climb into to maybe see what's really there. Eyes that are blue in colour, yet marble gray in depth, easily knocking back those that would venture in with their laced greeting, intended to invite but only succeeding in hiding the boy behind the entrance. Often they stare vacantly into the distance as if trying to recollect some piece of lost information, or maybe crinkling up with a sold and packaged smile, or shut tightly to the world in pain so deep that just to hear the distant echo of the rock hitting the bottom you'd have to climb down fifty miles.

Under the eyes rests a gently sloping nose, appearing to be one of those that Capitolites bought out of magazines, completely wasted on a boy chopping wood for a living. Not to mention the fact that it had been broken a couple times, defending those too weak or small to defend themselves. So although the nose has a nice slope, it rests slightly to the right side. When he smiles, which is often, it scrunches up into a grin of it's own. Matches the mouth, a plump lower lip, matching a softer upper lip, always curved up into a half smile, sometimes melancholy. The way that his smile can react such a return in those around him. The white teeth hidden underneath the stretched lips, slightly crooked from the time he thought he could fly with a bed sheet when he was six, and was surprised to find himself flat on his face, on the ground with a bleeding mouth and a broken rib.

A chiseled chin rolling out in a soft V shape to create the mold of his looks. The way the ears attach seamlessly giving him confidence in them. How his hair that used to be bleached by the sun is slowly returning to it's golden spun locks. Darkness lodged underneath the gold and the skull so that his dark thinking cap hides beneath his light one. The way when he wakes up in the morning it's sticking all over the place, but by the time he leaves it's carefully patted back down into something half presentable. How it's carefully parted to the side, on the left so that when he goes out it can get all unruly again like it just seems to love doing.

Mostly Sam can be seen wearing a simple pair of jeans with a t-shirt. Not to mention the fact that he has been told that his butt looks rather nice in jeans. He probably doesn't even know the meaning of the word accessorize, or maybe he's too afraid to even try. The only thing around his wrist is a faded friendship bracelet that has made a not so tight that it is impossible to untie even if he wanted to. He doesn't even remember exactly who the faded red and blue strands are from. The only clue is a scratched bead with the letter 'T' on it, next to a scratched bead with the letter 'S' on it. Which Sam assumes stands for Sam. Mostly for him it's simply a reminder of things that used to be back home. Around his neck is a long leather cord with a small leather bag at the end, holding a small pile of pine needles, and his parent's wedding bands.

PERSONALITY .

“LEND ME YOUR HAND AND WE'LL CONQUER THEM ALL”
But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall.

Samwise was always a pretty carefree guy. There was the occasional fistfight of course, but they were fights that ended in smiles and pats on the back. Back home, all the logger boys were a family. Everyone dropped out of school by eleven, and was chopping and logging trees by fifteen. He never knew much about math or history, but he knew how to read a tree, and all the routes to take through the pine trees. His science was the science of making the perfect cut, or calculating where the tree would land. English was when he carved an 'S' into a tree and then took his sister and brother back to it with a picnic and told them stories under it. Sam's classroom was the woods, and that's where he is most comfortable as well.

He's always got to have something in his hands. Whether it's the old banged up beauty of a guitar he brought with him all the way from District Seven, or a piece of wood stolen from the kitchen fires and a carving knife. He likes to make little things to leave on the street corners of the district. Small carvings of trees or figurines of people he sees going by mixed with people he remembers to create someone totally new. He makes little wooden dolls for Stacy to play with, and has made little figurines of their parents that sit above the door, so Sam can kiss his fingers and reach up to touch them every morning. He writes songs about their conquests so that Stacy can stop having nightmares about the Mutts that they avoided, and he tells Stevie stories so that he'll remember to brush his teeth and learn how to tie his shoes.

Sam was born with Dyslexia, really bad Dyslexia. So bad that him took him months just to be able to spell his own name. Like a lot of things, he doesn't really let it bother him. The only times it gets annoying is in class when all he can do is play with his pen and wait for Stacy to be done with her work so she can help him with his. At his old school, teachers assigned him more physical things, until he dropped out, so he's never dealt with this fresh embarrassment before, but like so many things that get thrown at him, he's learned to run with it.

If someone bothered to diagnose him, they might also notice the way he views his body. how he likes to count calories, and thinks he's far too chubby even though he has a perfect body. How he stands in front of the mirror and hates what he sees and wonders if other people hate what they see as well. Or maybe they should see the way that he gives extra rations to Stevie and Stacy because he's so used to giving them his breakfast that even the thought of eating in the morning makes him feel sick. Or how he feels guilty if he eats too much, knowing the food could go to his siblings, his mind still thinking that they're out in the words and his brother and sister are wasting away before his eyes.

Although Sam has been through a lot, he's a pretty happy go lucky guy. He doesn't make his life into a drama and dwell on things that don't need dwelling, although he easily could. He's pretty simple minded in the fact that when people step all over him he doesn't get to bothered by it either. It's only when people bother people he cares about that he gets angry. It's nigh impossible to catch him frowning or truly upset. His most natural state is an easygoing smile, or forehead creased concentration. He hates bad attention, but loves good attention. But he collects it naturally. People just sort of seem to be drawn to his soft smile, and find themselves hard put to not smile right back.

Sam believes that Stacy and Stevie are on him. he thinks that everything that happened to them and their family is on him as well. He can't just understand that what happened to his parents was a logging accident and nothing could have been done for it by him. But he feels like he failed his siblings and he feels like he's failing every single day when they come home from school and they're feeling down, or they want to go outside. He told them that life in District Thirteen would be better for them, and it is. But are they just as oppressed here as they were out there? At least out there they always had the sun. He's able to rest easy knowing he can't be chosen for the games and neither will Stevie and Stacy, but at the same time it's all too much. Sam is only seventeen but he acts like a parent, and after so much of that, things can build up until it gets to be far too much to deal with.

But still, all Sam wants to do in this world is make a difference. He wants to change the whole entire world so no one can ever feel the same pain that he has felt ever again, or has to go through another hunger games. He wants a revolution, maybe a small one that starts in a music club and goes onto become something bigger. He wants people to just be happy, and all the pain in the world to go away. He thought things might be better at District Thirteen, but he can see that maybe the people here feel the exact same way that he does. Maybe the reason they walk around in gray outfits is because that's the colour of how they feel about the outside world. He can see that they haven't given up on weapons building at least, although if Sam could choose, he wouldn't fight violence with violence.

HISTORY .

“LEND ME YOUR EYES I CAN CHANGE WHAT YOU SEE”
But your soul you must keep, totally free.

Samwise was born to Gamgee and Roselyn Toska after a sex-crazed celebration of turning nineteen and not being reaped. Needless to say they were both very joyful that they could let their love flourish and neither of them would have to live in misery for the rest of their lives because the other had died. As you can maybe tell, Sam's parents were rather good at being over dramatic. Having Sam, they decided to enjoy having him and did not have another child very soon after. In fact, Sam had them to himself right up until he was ten and his sister Stacy was born, his little brother following four years later.Life was nondescript and regular before everything changed.

Sam took after his parents. They had both left school at a young age like most people in his district to start logging and cutting trees. Young people were important for the business because they had so much strength. So Sam dropped out early. He never really learned to read anyway, and his teachers stopped bothering him about homework when they realized that it wouldn't do any good. Sometimes his mother would teach him sums out loud, and his father would teach him through stories. But he never felt more at home than in those words, marking trees, or laying a hand on them to ask for their forgiveness even as he hacked them down. So that's why it came as such a shock when the forest betrayed him and knocked his own parents down.

He had been fifteen. They parted ways at the Pining lovers (the trees so old and entwined that no one even had the heart to try and cut them down, and incidentally, the tree where he had received his first kiss.) It had been a good day of marking. They would mark today and then tomorrow they would go through and cut their section. It was how it always worked. But that day, when Sam, Stevie, and Stacy had gotten back to the Pining Lovers and his parents still had not returned after an hour, is when he began to worry. He bid them stay, and ran down the trail they had gone down hand in hand only hours earlier. It took him only twenty minutes to find the old tree that used to be there. The way that it was rotten right through, and had cracked in two.

It didn't take him very long to realize what had happened to his parents. But it did take him a moment to stop leaning over to throw up when he actually saw what happened to them. Their bodies all wrapped and mushed together just like the Pining Lovers, but just a little bit less naturally. But maybe if he had gotten there sooner, he could have saved them. After that, things just went further and further downhill. Stevie was only three and too young to understand what was happening, and Stacy was a capable seven year old, already well versed in plant life and cutting methods, the family genius. But just because you're super smart, it doesn't stop a girl from wanting her family. Of course it wasn't his fault that she had followed along behind him, but it was his fault that he was too busy with his own grief to notice her see the bodies and scream.

With their parent's death, the Toska family was suddenly two fucked up orphans with a toddler, and so they were put in an orphanage. It was a long year. Stacy wouldn't stop screaming in her sleep, and Stevie wouldn't stop asking for his mommy. Sam did what he could. He still went out and chopped wood, and did what he was supposed to for the District, but things weren't the same anymore because instead of leaving the beloved woods for a beloved home, he returned to an orphanage full of people he didn't even know. Coming on to Sam's sixteenth birthday, adults were starting to look at Stevie, interested in adopting, and with rising terror, Sam knew that one day Stacy would be taken too, and it was only a matter of time until he was old enough to leave.

So he did the only sensible thing. He wrapped the three of them up in all of their coats, and left one week before his birthday, which was only three days before the next reaping. He was smart enough to bring his best ax, and knife, and a few essentials such as smoked meat, but he didn't take anything that would become too heavy overtime because he knew that he had a long way to go. He was told of a place, while working in the woods, called District Thirteen. Of course he had seen it on the T.V before, when the Capitol was trying to scare them, but people said that it was still very much alive, just hidden. So he would take his siblings there, and hope to find some solace where all of them might be safe.

He had no idea of how difficult it would prove to be. How the nights would get colder and weeks would pass without seeing any signs of civilization. How hunting was rather difficult with just an ax and a knife. How Stevie and Stacy would shiver with cold and all he could do was give them his jacket because sometimes building a fire was just too risky. He didn't know that there would be old mutts just living outside the districts. He didn't know how to avoid them, and sometimes a perfect hiding spot wasn't just nearby. He stopped counting the amount of times he carried both of them on his back while they ran far from Peacekeepers, or how many times his sister saved them by identifying edible roots and plants.

One day, just past District Twelve, just on the outskirts they were resting. Trying to get some sleep from a night of endless walking. Sam was almost seventeen, although he felt like he was at least thirty by now. He joked about it with Stacey. She would call him an old man, and he would call her an old maid. Which was sadly far too accurate for the eight year old. Stevie was learning how to trundle along pretty fast by then, and he was always getting into mischief. Things were lightening up however as they were finally almost at their destination. After months of travel and getting lost, rained on, parched, and frozen, they were finally almost at a place that may or may not be there.

How reassuring.

Sam almost groaned when he heard the guttural growl coming from somewhere out of the clearing. Instantly, he was up, pushing Stacy up the tree they rested against, so chosen for the fact that it looked easy enough to climb, and quickly handing Stevie to her before grabbing his ax. He was afraid. Of course he was afraid.He hadn't had any training. He wasn't in an arena, but he had to live a life where he had to be in fear of Mutts attacking him anyway. how fair is that? As he waited, something that looked half wolf and half alligator came crawling out of the underbrush, scuttling along so fast that Sam almost wanted to climb up the tree as well. But he had to protect them. His sister and brother. He had to keep them safe. So he swung his axe high, and brought it down, making a mistake right off the bat as the thing reached up and dug one long, steely claw into his back.

It turned as it did saw, drawing a long line through him as easy as a knife cutting through butter. It hurt. A hell of a lot more than anything he had ever felt before, and it also managed to wake him up. It told him that this thing could get at his siblings too. the next time it rounded on him, he brought his ax down through his skull, killing it dead. The pain in his side was still there however, and he could tell by the worried expression in Stacy's face that it was bad when she suddenly appeared beside him. It was only then that he realized he had fallen to his knees. After that day, the rest of the trip became hazy. His sister staunched the bleeding with one of his shirts, and fed him all these weird herbs, and things.

He couldn't remember most of it because apparently he had a pretty nasty fever. What Stacy tells him though is that he didn't stop going. He'd just keep walking even when she had told him that it was time to rest. It got to the point where she had to sit on his legs because he just became a robot. Apparently they reached the thirteenth district only two weeks later, after the second reaping, and after Sam was officially seventeen. The only reason he was able to remain alive from a wound like that was from his sister's skill with healing. He could have died if it weren't for her, and in that way they are indebted to each other.

After arriving at the District, and wandering through the ruins, Sam collapsed finally, and woke up two weeks later in a clean hospital bed, and Stacy and Stevie curled up beside him. It's been three weeks since waking up in their new home, and Sam still isn't quite used to it, because there is this strange thing that Stacy has to read to him everyday on his arm and they aren't allowed to see sunlight. But its okay because he got them there, and they're together, and they're finally, really safe. So that's why when he starts attending classes and he sees a sign-up for this thing called LEGE, and someone later asks him if he's signing up for GLEE, he proudly signs his name down, because damnit. At least he can do that.

ANYTHING ELSE ?

AWAKE MY SOUL

OUT OF CHARACTER .

FACE CLAIM .
ARMIE HAMMER • SAMWISE TOSKA

OTHER CHARACTERS ?

Click.

I, ELEGANT .
AM IN LOVE WITH BRAD PITT AND HIS LONG SHINY HAIR IN INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE AND THERE WILL NEVER BE ANYTHING SEXIER TO ME THEN HIM IN THAT MOVIE. OK MAYBE BUT NOT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE GOD HAVE YOU SEEN IT, HIS ACTING IS JUST EXCELLENT AND HIS FACE AND HIS EYES AND HIS HAIR AND HIS GENTLEMANLY BADASSERY AND OMG I SHOULD JUST GO CAP THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

CODEWORD . Odair