Gretel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
haventkilledusyet) wrote2013-02-18 11:53 pm
haventkilledusyet) wrote2013-02-18 11:53 pm
Application ( ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
luceti ) - [ ooc ]
CHARACTER
Name:
Gretel
Canon:
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Gender:
Female
Age:
mid twenties (assuming 26)
Wing Color:
dark brown
Canon Point:
post-movie
Canon Point Explanation:
This is the end of Gretel's known canon, and it allows her to be a little less anti-magic, at least past the "kill at the first signs of magic" point. She knows there are good witches in the world and won't, therefore, think it's appropriate to burn anyone who uses magic.
History:
Wiki
Personality:
As a child, Gretel and her older brother Hansel were taken by their father into the woods and left. They were given no explanation, and, when they tried to follow him back, he blew out the lantern to hide his progress. While it is never discussed among them, the siblings seemingly came to the (logical) explanation that they were simply unwanted. When their father did not come back for them, they eventually went deeper into the woods. Likely, they were trying to get back home or to the town of their childhood, but they got lost. They found themselves at a house made of candy. Too hungry to go on, they ate from the house until the door opened. They went in, only to be attacked by the witch who lived there. Hansel was caged, forced for a long time to eat candy after candy to fatten him up. Gretel, meanwhile, was made to perform manual labor around te house and treated viciously, struck for every mistake. The witch even required her to prepare and heat the oven when she decided the time was right to eat Hansel. Gretel freed herself from her bonds, attacked the witch, and, after freeing Hansel, killed her with her brother.
From there, the two children (who had learned from the witch's attack against Gretel that they could not be harmed by black magic) wandered until they found a town. While we do not know the entire proceedings, we know they found their way across the land, going wherever witches were sighted and killing them, rescuing those held captive or the towns terrorized by them. Eventually, this became a profitable business. Having no home, as they had been abandoned by their parents, and finding something they were so good at, as there were no others with such immunities, Hansel and Gretel committed themselves to the life. Her early experiences with a witch bred a deep hatred in them for Gretel, as well as a strong will to fight and protect those they would hurt, especially children.
Gretel takes charge. From the time that Gretel is (estimated to be) ten, she is the one who leads. Having been alone in the forest by their father, Hansel and Gretel wait for some time before Gretel rises and leads her brother away. She doesn't know where they're going, but she knows they can't just stay there any longer. As an adult, she leads the interruption of the sheriff's presentation of Mina to the town as a witch. Hansel later tells Mina that interferring at all was Gretel's idea, as he would have been fine letting them burn Mina. Most of the decisions that Hansel and Gretel make as a pair are announced by Gretel, indicating that she makes the majority of the decision.
Gretel is reckless. When young, her first attack on a witch was against the one who had captured her and her brother. At the time, she had no way of knowing about her invulnerability to magic, but she doesn't even consider the risk. She just takes up the fire poker and attacks. The first time the audience meets Gretel after she's grown up, she is holding a gun to the back of the sheriff's head as he addresses the entire population of Augsburg. When the sheriff insults her (and Hansel) and bends down to tower over her, she does not respond verbally. Instead, she slams her head forward to headbutt him and likely breaks his nose, despite three of his cronies standing by. After learning of a witch's cottage near Augsburg, Gretel leads the assault by going to the place alone. The witch attacks, and Gretel holds her own until the witch gets by her, at which time she runs into Hansel, and the two siblings battle together. When Gretel is attacked outside of Augsburg after the fire by the sheriff's cronies, she continues fighting until they knock her down. One grabs her by each arm, and the third holds her by the hair. The sheriff, with another man, approaches. Rather than submit to whatever punishment they might have in store, Gretel attacks by biting the sheriff's nose and taking part with her, which she spits out. The attack against her increases until the troll Edward intervenes, killing Gretel's attackers.
Gretel is fair. Gretel, as we hear from Hansel, does not like to see women burned as witches without evidence present. She is also polite to Ben, an overzealous fan of her and her brother, when he introduces himself, though part of her indulgence might be revenge for a slightly intoxicated Hansel making fun of her oddities of recent witch attacks. She forgives (in the sense of not doing him physical harm) Ben for an attempt at feeling her up while unconcious for the fact that he saved her from the witch that attacked Augsburg and Gretel personally during the night. When Gretel is attacked again by the sheriff and his henchmen, unarmed and alone in the woods, she is saved by Edward, a troll. Rather than attempting, once awake after a vicious head wound, to harm him or run from him, Gretel asks his name and thanks him. Even when he is in league with the witches who capture her, she asks Edward for his help in escaping with the children. After Edward helps save her from Muriel, he is her primary concern. Leaving Hansel to save get the children away, Gretel finds Edward. When he has no pulse, she uses what is essentially a hand-cranked taser to restart his heart. After Augsburg, both Ben and Edward are allowed to join Hansel and Gretel in their witch hunting.
Gretel is fierce. Ruthles in her attacks, Gretel enjoys causing pain to witches or anyone who would harm her. She shows no remorse for the times she attacks the sheriff or for any of the witches she and her brother have killed. Even after learning of her heritage, Gretel suffers from no uncertainty that she may have hurt white witches. They bore signs of the rot, and that's all she needs to know to feel entirely vindicated in killing them. When the first first they fight outside Augsburg is caught in a trap, Gretel does nothing less than grin as she and Hansel prepare to interrogate her, which will no doubt involve a lot of pain on the part of the witch. When Hansel interrogates a witch later, using brass knuckls when she won't speak, Gretel looks on, seemingly enjoying herself and what she's watching.
Gretel is intelligent. As a child, held in the witch's lair, Gretel takes advantage of a blow strong enough to make her fall in order to pry a nail from a floorboard. Using this, she picks the lock of the manacle around her wrist, allowing her to free herself. It is Gretel who understands the symbols on the paper she and Hansel find after killing a witch outside Augsburg and warns of the approaching Blood Moon, three days away. She makes the decision, too, not to have the tracker lead them into the forest, as it is nearly sunset. When a witch is captured and she and Hansel interrogate her, Gretel stands back and listens while Hansel applies brass knuckles. He gets frustrated with the woman's mutterings, ready to just burn her, but Gretel realizes she has, actually, told them what they want to know. By understanding that the witches need six girls and six boys, Hansel realizes each child was born a different month, and the two figure out the final target.
Gretel is difficult to phase. When a man comes from the woods of Augsburg and, while trying to deliver a witch's message, explodes when a curse laid on him, Gretel only wipes herself off and remarks on what curse it was and that she hates that one. She is neither disgusted nor upset nor angry. Upon hearing from Muriel that Adrianna, her mother, was a Grand White Witch and that she is one by blood as well, Gretel shows no panic or revulsion. Even as Muriel details how she is responsible for Adrianna's death, the death of their father, and even their abandonment in the woods, neither Hansel or Gretel shows any great emotion. Most likely, due to the situation of the moment, any feelings regarding these revelations are considered secondary to the matter at hand and are pushed away to be considered later. At the very least, in the moment, Gretel is instantly ready to fight again. Even afer the gathering of witches tries to cut out her heart, Gretel does not panic once free. Instead, she uses the very chain she was bound with to act as a gauntlet to allow her to hit harder.
Gretel is strongly attached to Hansel. Once free as a child, Gretel does not just run. She frees her brother, and they both shove the witch into the fire together. After the fire in Augsburg forces the siblings apart, Gretel's first action after taking a meal is to head into the forest in search of Hansel. She takes shelter in an old house after attacked and helped recover by Edward, and she attacks the first person to walk into the house. It is Hansel, and she is overjoyed to see him, hugging him several times. When Hansel nearly faints in the battle with Muriel, having gone too long without important medication, Gretel, badly wounded herself, manages to get to the injections and give Hansel one. Together, they manage to remove Muriel's head with a shovel.
Gretel's main faults lie in her greatest strengths. She is seemingly fearless, which leads her into dangerous situations she hasn't entirely thought through. Her recklessness means that she doesn't always think before she dives into a situation. She's intelligent, but she doesn't always think first. Her lack of remorse and certainty in her beliefs means that she holds to her dogma almost without a question. To her, any witch who seems dangerous to people is better off dead. In fifteen years of witch hunting, she has only ever met one white witch, making her sure of how rare they are, so a white witch is not something she considers much of a possibility. While it is a strength for her in battle that she can take shocking revelations and keep going, it also means that those issues are pushed aside to be dealt with later, possibly creating a tinderbox that only needs a small spark to send her into a highly emotional state -- one that, given her general disposition, is likely to express itself as anger and destruction before anything else. Gretel's long history hunting witches has made her one of the best in the business, and there is a certain ego that has come along with that. She knows what she's doing, and she expects everyone to immediately regard her as the expert and do things her way, even if they might have an equally valid or even better plan. She will protect someone from an undue accusation of witchcraft, and she will help people (especially children) take by witches, but her primary concern will always be Hansel. If she ever has to choose between helping him and anything else, he will invariably win.
Strengths
Physical:
"Their spells don't work on us."
Gretel is immune to dark magic. Spells thrown at her pass right through, the result of a spell cast by her mother when Hansel and Gretel were both very young.
Well, she's a one.
Gretel is physically very strong, having spent years fighting witches, which gets very physical very often. She doesn't seem to have a particular style, rather more of a brawler. When she is attacked by humans, it takes three men to subdue and keep hold of her.
"Are you a good shot?"
Gretel is a very good shot with her crossbow. She can hit a fleeing witch in the ankle with a bolt. She isn't always dead on, as hitting a target moving side to side requires several bolts.
"And they haven't killed us. Yet."
Gretel is proficient with several kinds of weapons. She weilds a short sword in the movie as well as her crossbow and a gun. The range of weapons in the cart she and Hansel take from town to town suggests she is also good with explosives, and she shows the ability to use a whip (actually a chain, but she employs it as a whip) at one point.
Mental:
"I need the posters. How many do they have?"
Gretel is smart enough to know when to listen. While interrogating a witch about the coming Blood Moon, Hansel is set to burn her for being unhelpful, but Gretel stops to consider what the witch said and realizes it's about the missing children.
They died trying to save you, and you've hated them all this time.
Gretel is hard to rattle. Even when she learns the truth about her parents, there is no mental shutting down. She is ready almost instantly to fight, and she is not provoked into a blind rage either. She has the clarity to know that she needs to focus just on the here and now.
"That is the Blood Moon, mayor."
Gretel knows her stuff. She knows about the rituals of witches, and she is willing to explain it to someone less knowledgeable. She's impressed when someone else knows, but she doesn't assume that just because she does, everyone else does too.
"Not at night. It's too dangerous."
Gretel knows when to be cautious. She won't go into the forest at night unless she has to, as she knows there is at least one more witch in the woods. It's safer to go in when she can see properly and no fire is needed for light or for warmth, as that gives away a position.
Emotional:
My sister requires a bit more evidence before someone gets roasted.
"This isn't the life we chose."
Gretel protects the innocent. Whether it's saving children from a witch's lair or intervening to save a woman from a mob, Gretel believes in protecting someone who hasn't done harm. Even though she's ruthless against witches, she won't let someone be burned as a witch until she has solid evidence. She also attempts to dissauade Ben from becoming a witch hunter, when he tells her of his plans to be one once he's older.
"It's very nice to meet you, Benjamin."
With Hansel around, Gretel is the politician. She lets him speak his mind, which usually includes rash judgements, while she provides the calm, cool, and collected (and even friendlier) version. It's Gretel who indulges Ben, a fan, when he approaches them in a tavern and who prompts Hansel to answer his questions.
Weaknesses
Physical:
Gretel's invulnerability to black magic protects her only so far. It does not defend against enchanted objects that attack, such as trees or animals. Spells themselves cannot hurt her, but things effected by the spells can.
This time: I'll do the talking, you do the bleeding.
Gretel is fully human. She has a high pain threshold, but she can suffer from all the same injuries and illnesses any other person can.
Mental:
"I need to find my brother so we can save your shitty--"
Without Hansel around, Gretel is rash and impulsive. Not only does she viciously talk back to the sheriff while restrained by his cronies, she bites his nose hard enough to take out a piece of skin, despite being in no condition to fight back at the time. She had previously threatened his life and broken his nose, which means she had to know he'd show her no mercy.
"Your mayor's done a very smart thing. He hired us."
Fifteen years of hunting witches and her immunity to black magic means Gretel is one of the best at her chosen profession. She knows it, too, which leads her to arrogance when talking about doing her job. She knows what to do, how to do it, and she doesn't hesitate to do it. However, this also means that she is set in her ways and unlikely to listen to a new idea.
Emotional:
"But the best way is to burn them."
When it comes to witches, Gretel is a sadist. She talks easily about skinning them, beheading them, and burning them. She has no sympathy and no hesitation to not only kill them but to make the deaths painful and as long as she has time for. When she and Hansel prepare to interrogate a captured witch in the forest, she is grinning with delight. At a second interrogation, she watches as Hansel uses brass knuckles, her approval obvious.
"Do you ever wonder what happened to our parents?"
Gretel thinks often about her past, particularly being abandoned by her parents. Even though she and Hansel have made a promise to never speak about it, she tries to broach the subject several times. She talks about other witches easily enough, but she shuts down conversation with Ben whenever he brings up the subject.
"The curse of hunger for crawling things. I fucking hate that one."
Gretel has little sympathy for those who die by magical means. She will fight to save the victims of a witch's magic, especially children, but if the individual is an adult who made stupid decisions, like the hunters who went after a witch in the darkest parts of the forest at night, she treats the deaths callously.
"Where's my brother?"
Gretel is never without Hansel. When they're separated after a battle with witches, she immediately sets out to find him. She willingly leaves his side once, to find the injured Edward. As soon as the troll is revived, however, she seeks Hansel out. She is extremely attached to her brother, as he has been the only companion she's had for most of her life. If she had to choose between any (or probably even several) life and saving Hansel, she would almost certainly choose to save Hansel.
Anything else?:
Gretel is never shown to use magic, but her mother's powers as a witch and the fact that Muriel's wand glows when Gretel picks it up show that she has the potential to learn and use magic.
SAMPLES
First Person:
Test drive thread!
Third Person:
Gretel learned long ago that the sounds of life in a forest meant it was safe. As long as birds twittered and squirrels dashed about in the leaves, there was no dark magic at work. Pawprints of predators and the rustling of prey meant that only nature was to be feared within the boundaries. Not that she ever ventured too deeply in.
The woods might still belong to a witch, somewhere deep in the heart of the trees. If children went missing or animal sacrifices were found, then Gretel would push further, would root out any villain lurking there, hang her, then set her on fire. Let anyone who dared try and stop her, it wouldn't help. She tolerated the white witches here, but she watched them. At the first sign of turning that magic against a human or that the rot was setting in, and she would put flames to a pyre. She was still a witch hunter, and this place could not take that away.
A stag glided into her sight, picking leaves off branches as he went, chewing them. He didn't smell the woman crouched upwind, and he did not see her raise her crossbow. These animals spoke. They might, any one of them or all of them, be enchanted. Yet, that was no more disturbing than a place where food reappeared without anyone seeming to hunt or gather to restock it. No matter what she ate, Gretel feared she was adding magic to her system. Besides, hunting gave her meat and bone and pelts that served as trades for those who produced other things or supplied services. She watched the stag pause at a berry bush. She drew in a deep breath, aimed, and pulled the trigger of her weapon.
A single bolt shot through the air and buried itself in his neck.
Name:
Gretel
Canon:
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Gender:
Female
Age:
mid twenties (assuming 26)
Wing Color:
dark brown
Canon Point:
post-movie
Canon Point Explanation:
This is the end of Gretel's known canon, and it allows her to be a little less anti-magic, at least past the "kill at the first signs of magic" point. She knows there are good witches in the world and won't, therefore, think it's appropriate to burn anyone who uses magic.
History:
Wiki
Personality:
As a child, Gretel and her older brother Hansel were taken by their father into the woods and left. They were given no explanation, and, when they tried to follow him back, he blew out the lantern to hide his progress. While it is never discussed among them, the siblings seemingly came to the (logical) explanation that they were simply unwanted. When their father did not come back for them, they eventually went deeper into the woods. Likely, they were trying to get back home or to the town of their childhood, but they got lost. They found themselves at a house made of candy. Too hungry to go on, they ate from the house until the door opened. They went in, only to be attacked by the witch who lived there. Hansel was caged, forced for a long time to eat candy after candy to fatten him up. Gretel, meanwhile, was made to perform manual labor around te house and treated viciously, struck for every mistake. The witch even required her to prepare and heat the oven when she decided the time was right to eat Hansel. Gretel freed herself from her bonds, attacked the witch, and, after freeing Hansel, killed her with her brother.
From there, the two children (who had learned from the witch's attack against Gretel that they could not be harmed by black magic) wandered until they found a town. While we do not know the entire proceedings, we know they found their way across the land, going wherever witches were sighted and killing them, rescuing those held captive or the towns terrorized by them. Eventually, this became a profitable business. Having no home, as they had been abandoned by their parents, and finding something they were so good at, as there were no others with such immunities, Hansel and Gretel committed themselves to the life. Her early experiences with a witch bred a deep hatred in them for Gretel, as well as a strong will to fight and protect those they would hurt, especially children.
Gretel takes charge. From the time that Gretel is (estimated to be) ten, she is the one who leads. Having been alone in the forest by their father, Hansel and Gretel wait for some time before Gretel rises and leads her brother away. She doesn't know where they're going, but she knows they can't just stay there any longer. As an adult, she leads the interruption of the sheriff's presentation of Mina to the town as a witch. Hansel later tells Mina that interferring at all was Gretel's idea, as he would have been fine letting them burn Mina. Most of the decisions that Hansel and Gretel make as a pair are announced by Gretel, indicating that she makes the majority of the decision.
Gretel is reckless. When young, her first attack on a witch was against the one who had captured her and her brother. At the time, she had no way of knowing about her invulnerability to magic, but she doesn't even consider the risk. She just takes up the fire poker and attacks. The first time the audience meets Gretel after she's grown up, she is holding a gun to the back of the sheriff's head as he addresses the entire population of Augsburg. When the sheriff insults her (and Hansel) and bends down to tower over her, she does not respond verbally. Instead, she slams her head forward to headbutt him and likely breaks his nose, despite three of his cronies standing by. After learning of a witch's cottage near Augsburg, Gretel leads the assault by going to the place alone. The witch attacks, and Gretel holds her own until the witch gets by her, at which time she runs into Hansel, and the two siblings battle together. When Gretel is attacked outside of Augsburg after the fire by the sheriff's cronies, she continues fighting until they knock her down. One grabs her by each arm, and the third holds her by the hair. The sheriff, with another man, approaches. Rather than submit to whatever punishment they might have in store, Gretel attacks by biting the sheriff's nose and taking part with her, which she spits out. The attack against her increases until the troll Edward intervenes, killing Gretel's attackers.
Gretel is fair. Gretel, as we hear from Hansel, does not like to see women burned as witches without evidence present. She is also polite to Ben, an overzealous fan of her and her brother, when he introduces himself, though part of her indulgence might be revenge for a slightly intoxicated Hansel making fun of her oddities of recent witch attacks. She forgives (in the sense of not doing him physical harm) Ben for an attempt at feeling her up while unconcious for the fact that he saved her from the witch that attacked Augsburg and Gretel personally during the night. When Gretel is attacked again by the sheriff and his henchmen, unarmed and alone in the woods, she is saved by Edward, a troll. Rather than attempting, once awake after a vicious head wound, to harm him or run from him, Gretel asks his name and thanks him. Even when he is in league with the witches who capture her, she asks Edward for his help in escaping with the children. After Edward helps save her from Muriel, he is her primary concern. Leaving Hansel to save get the children away, Gretel finds Edward. When he has no pulse, she uses what is essentially a hand-cranked taser to restart his heart. After Augsburg, both Ben and Edward are allowed to join Hansel and Gretel in their witch hunting.
Gretel is fierce. Ruthles in her attacks, Gretel enjoys causing pain to witches or anyone who would harm her. She shows no remorse for the times she attacks the sheriff or for any of the witches she and her brother have killed. Even after learning of her heritage, Gretel suffers from no uncertainty that she may have hurt white witches. They bore signs of the rot, and that's all she needs to know to feel entirely vindicated in killing them. When the first first they fight outside Augsburg is caught in a trap, Gretel does nothing less than grin as she and Hansel prepare to interrogate her, which will no doubt involve a lot of pain on the part of the witch. When Hansel interrogates a witch later, using brass knuckls when she won't speak, Gretel looks on, seemingly enjoying herself and what she's watching.
Gretel is intelligent. As a child, held in the witch's lair, Gretel takes advantage of a blow strong enough to make her fall in order to pry a nail from a floorboard. Using this, she picks the lock of the manacle around her wrist, allowing her to free herself. It is Gretel who understands the symbols on the paper she and Hansel find after killing a witch outside Augsburg and warns of the approaching Blood Moon, three days away. She makes the decision, too, not to have the tracker lead them into the forest, as it is nearly sunset. When a witch is captured and she and Hansel interrogate her, Gretel stands back and listens while Hansel applies brass knuckles. He gets frustrated with the woman's mutterings, ready to just burn her, but Gretel realizes she has, actually, told them what they want to know. By understanding that the witches need six girls and six boys, Hansel realizes each child was born a different month, and the two figure out the final target.
Gretel is difficult to phase. When a man comes from the woods of Augsburg and, while trying to deliver a witch's message, explodes when a curse laid on him, Gretel only wipes herself off and remarks on what curse it was and that she hates that one. She is neither disgusted nor upset nor angry. Upon hearing from Muriel that Adrianna, her mother, was a Grand White Witch and that she is one by blood as well, Gretel shows no panic or revulsion. Even as Muriel details how she is responsible for Adrianna's death, the death of their father, and even their abandonment in the woods, neither Hansel or Gretel shows any great emotion. Most likely, due to the situation of the moment, any feelings regarding these revelations are considered secondary to the matter at hand and are pushed away to be considered later. At the very least, in the moment, Gretel is instantly ready to fight again. Even afer the gathering of witches tries to cut out her heart, Gretel does not panic once free. Instead, she uses the very chain she was bound with to act as a gauntlet to allow her to hit harder.
Gretel is strongly attached to Hansel. Once free as a child, Gretel does not just run. She frees her brother, and they both shove the witch into the fire together. After the fire in Augsburg forces the siblings apart, Gretel's first action after taking a meal is to head into the forest in search of Hansel. She takes shelter in an old house after attacked and helped recover by Edward, and she attacks the first person to walk into the house. It is Hansel, and she is overjoyed to see him, hugging him several times. When Hansel nearly faints in the battle with Muriel, having gone too long without important medication, Gretel, badly wounded herself, manages to get to the injections and give Hansel one. Together, they manage to remove Muriel's head with a shovel.
Gretel's main faults lie in her greatest strengths. She is seemingly fearless, which leads her into dangerous situations she hasn't entirely thought through. Her recklessness means that she doesn't always think before she dives into a situation. She's intelligent, but she doesn't always think first. Her lack of remorse and certainty in her beliefs means that she holds to her dogma almost without a question. To her, any witch who seems dangerous to people is better off dead. In fifteen years of witch hunting, she has only ever met one white witch, making her sure of how rare they are, so a white witch is not something she considers much of a possibility. While it is a strength for her in battle that she can take shocking revelations and keep going, it also means that those issues are pushed aside to be dealt with later, possibly creating a tinderbox that only needs a small spark to send her into a highly emotional state -- one that, given her general disposition, is likely to express itself as anger and destruction before anything else. Gretel's long history hunting witches has made her one of the best in the business, and there is a certain ego that has come along with that. She knows what she's doing, and she expects everyone to immediately regard her as the expert and do things her way, even if they might have an equally valid or even better plan. She will protect someone from an undue accusation of witchcraft, and she will help people (especially children) take by witches, but her primary concern will always be Hansel. If she ever has to choose between helping him and anything else, he will invariably win.
Strengths
"Their spells don't work on us."
Gretel is immune to dark magic. Spells thrown at her pass right through, the result of a spell cast by her mother when Hansel and Gretel were both very young.
Well, she's a one.
Gretel is physically very strong, having spent years fighting witches, which gets very physical very often. She doesn't seem to have a particular style, rather more of a brawler. When she is attacked by humans, it takes three men to subdue and keep hold of her.
"Are you a good shot?"
Gretel is a very good shot with her crossbow. She can hit a fleeing witch in the ankle with a bolt. She isn't always dead on, as hitting a target moving side to side requires several bolts.
"And they haven't killed us. Yet."
Gretel is proficient with several kinds of weapons. She weilds a short sword in the movie as well as her crossbow and a gun. The range of weapons in the cart she and Hansel take from town to town suggests she is also good with explosives, and she shows the ability to use a whip (actually a chain, but she employs it as a whip) at one point.
Mental:
"I need the posters. How many do they have?"
Gretel is smart enough to know when to listen. While interrogating a witch about the coming Blood Moon, Hansel is set to burn her for being unhelpful, but Gretel stops to consider what the witch said and realizes it's about the missing children.
They died trying to save you, and you've hated them all this time.
Gretel is hard to rattle. Even when she learns the truth about her parents, there is no mental shutting down. She is ready almost instantly to fight, and she is not provoked into a blind rage either. She has the clarity to know that she needs to focus just on the here and now.
"That is the Blood Moon, mayor."
Gretel knows her stuff. She knows about the rituals of witches, and she is willing to explain it to someone less knowledgeable. She's impressed when someone else knows, but she doesn't assume that just because she does, everyone else does too.
"Not at night. It's too dangerous."
Gretel knows when to be cautious. She won't go into the forest at night unless she has to, as she knows there is at least one more witch in the woods. It's safer to go in when she can see properly and no fire is needed for light or for warmth, as that gives away a position.
Emotional:
My sister requires a bit more evidence before someone gets roasted.
"This isn't the life we chose."
Gretel protects the innocent. Whether it's saving children from a witch's lair or intervening to save a woman from a mob, Gretel believes in protecting someone who hasn't done harm. Even though she's ruthless against witches, she won't let someone be burned as a witch until she has solid evidence. She also attempts to dissauade Ben from becoming a witch hunter, when he tells her of his plans to be one once he's older.
"It's very nice to meet you, Benjamin."
With Hansel around, Gretel is the politician. She lets him speak his mind, which usually includes rash judgements, while she provides the calm, cool, and collected (and even friendlier) version. It's Gretel who indulges Ben, a fan, when he approaches them in a tavern and who prompts Hansel to answer his questions.
Weaknesses
Gretel's invulnerability to black magic protects her only so far. It does not defend against enchanted objects that attack, such as trees or animals. Spells themselves cannot hurt her, but things effected by the spells can.
This time: I'll do the talking, you do the bleeding.
Gretel is fully human. She has a high pain threshold, but she can suffer from all the same injuries and illnesses any other person can.
Mental:
"I need to find my brother so we can save your shitty--"
Without Hansel around, Gretel is rash and impulsive. Not only does she viciously talk back to the sheriff while restrained by his cronies, she bites his nose hard enough to take out a piece of skin, despite being in no condition to fight back at the time. She had previously threatened his life and broken his nose, which means she had to know he'd show her no mercy.
"Your mayor's done a very smart thing. He hired us."
Fifteen years of hunting witches and her immunity to black magic means Gretel is one of the best at her chosen profession. She knows it, too, which leads her to arrogance when talking about doing her job. She knows what to do, how to do it, and she doesn't hesitate to do it. However, this also means that she is set in her ways and unlikely to listen to a new idea.
Emotional:
"But the best way is to burn them."
When it comes to witches, Gretel is a sadist. She talks easily about skinning them, beheading them, and burning them. She has no sympathy and no hesitation to not only kill them but to make the deaths painful and as long as she has time for. When she and Hansel prepare to interrogate a captured witch in the forest, she is grinning with delight. At a second interrogation, she watches as Hansel uses brass knuckles, her approval obvious.
"Do you ever wonder what happened to our parents?"
Gretel thinks often about her past, particularly being abandoned by her parents. Even though she and Hansel have made a promise to never speak about it, she tries to broach the subject several times. She talks about other witches easily enough, but she shuts down conversation with Ben whenever he brings up the subject.
"The curse of hunger for crawling things. I fucking hate that one."
Gretel has little sympathy for those who die by magical means. She will fight to save the victims of a witch's magic, especially children, but if the individual is an adult who made stupid decisions, like the hunters who went after a witch in the darkest parts of the forest at night, she treats the deaths callously.
"Where's my brother?"
Gretel is never without Hansel. When they're separated after a battle with witches, she immediately sets out to find him. She willingly leaves his side once, to find the injured Edward. As soon as the troll is revived, however, she seeks Hansel out. She is extremely attached to her brother, as he has been the only companion she's had for most of her life. If she had to choose between any (or probably even several) life and saving Hansel, she would almost certainly choose to save Hansel.
Anything else?:
Gretel is never shown to use magic, but her mother's powers as a witch and the fact that Muriel's wand glows when Gretel picks it up show that she has the potential to learn and use magic.
SAMPLES
First Person:
Test drive thread!
Third Person:
Gretel learned long ago that the sounds of life in a forest meant it was safe. As long as birds twittered and squirrels dashed about in the leaves, there was no dark magic at work. Pawprints of predators and the rustling of prey meant that only nature was to be feared within the boundaries. Not that she ever ventured too deeply in.
The woods might still belong to a witch, somewhere deep in the heart of the trees. If children went missing or animal sacrifices were found, then Gretel would push further, would root out any villain lurking there, hang her, then set her on fire. Let anyone who dared try and stop her, it wouldn't help. She tolerated the white witches here, but she watched them. At the first sign of turning that magic against a human or that the rot was setting in, and she would put flames to a pyre. She was still a witch hunter, and this place could not take that away.
A stag glided into her sight, picking leaves off branches as he went, chewing them. He didn't smell the woman crouched upwind, and he did not see her raise her crossbow. These animals spoke. They might, any one of them or all of them, be enchanted. Yet, that was no more disturbing than a place where food reappeared without anyone seeming to hunt or gather to restock it. No matter what she ate, Gretel feared she was adding magic to her system. Besides, hunting gave her meat and bone and pelts that served as trades for those who produced other things or supplied services. She watched the stag pause at a berry bush. She drew in a deep breath, aimed, and pulled the trigger of her weapon.
A single bolt shot through the air and buried itself in his neck.