heartatsunder. Entries tagged with *ooc

Helga Pataki

☾ CHARACTER NAME: Helga Geraldine Pataki
CANON: Hey Arnold!
CANON POINT: Almost immediately after The Jungle Movie
JOINED: November 5, 2023
AGE: 11
DOB: March 26, 1987
GENDER: F
SPECIES: Human

PLAYER: Lil Cosgrove
PLURK:

LilCosgrove

☾ APPEARANCE HEIGHT: Estimated to be around 4'8"
VISUAL: Here as she appeared in The Jungle Movie
HAIR: Blonde
EYES: Blue
FEATURES: Long pigtails with a pink bow on the top of her head, plus a distinctively thick unibrow
DRESS: Outside of her default outfit above, she has been known to wear adventuring garb, obscuring trenchcoats, and sometimes even dresses if the opportunity calls for it
VOICE: Francesca Marie Smith is, and has continued to be, Helga's VA. This is a solid documentation of her voice during the series, and this is how she sounds now, 20 years later

☾ PERMISSIONS BACKTAGGING: ✔ Please do! I can be sometimes slow so I do this myself
THREADHOPPING: ✔ I'm cool with it if the other tagger is
FOURTHWALLING: ✘ You can imply knowledge, but I don't want Craig Bartlett reveals about her future or anything
ROMANCE: ✔ If you're Arnold, it's canon; if you're not Arnold, this requires a very long buildup
MINDREADING: ✘ She is super sensitive about this one unless she trusts you and is warned in advance
MANIPULATION: ✘ She's not only resistant to it, but can see it coming under most circumstances
INJURY: ✔ With discussion, but she's used to broken bones and scuffs
FIGHTING: ✔ She asks for them on a near-regular basis
KILLING: ✘ I would only consider this for long-term plotting

For more details, please see her full Permissions page.

☾ BACKGROUND ORIGINS: Hillwood, Washington, USA
FAMILY: "Big" Bob Pataki (father), Miriam Pataki (mother), Olga Pataki (big sister)
OCCUPATION: Sixth-grade public school student
IN-DEPTH: Her Wiki page
BLURB: Tough-as-nails 11-year-old girl with a surprisingly soft, poetic side

☾ PERSONALITY ATTITUDE: Bossy, sarcastic, and spiteful, but also caring, ambitious, and romantic
QUIRKS: Emotionally extreme, highly obsessive of her football-headed boyfriend
LIKES: ARNOLD also sports, wrestling, poetry, literature, history, acting
DISLIKES: Her family, "girliness", polka music, superficiality, people being stupid, and anything that gets between her and Arnold and/or makes him unhappy
HOBBIES: Sports, needlepoint, poetry, watching wrestling, and building "Arnold shrines" (don't ask. Or do so she'll freak out)
IN-DEPTH: Again, her Wiki details most of this, particularly the Trivia section
BLURB: She is arguably the greatest Western Animated example of a token Tsundere

☾ ABILITIES CLASS: Uhhhh student?
WEAPONS: Her fists "Old Betsy" and "The Five Avengers"
INVENTORY: A couple of pencils, some chewing gum, one of Big Bob's Beepers (a pager), her diary, and, of course, her precious Arnold locket
SKILLS: Sports proficiency, hand-to-hand combat, sewing clothes, tool improvisation, a single class of Jiu Jitsu, monkey-like nimbleness, natural leadership, passion for the arts, keen observation skills/impersonations, acting, quick thinking, cunning schemes, courage, stubbornness, brutal honesty, surprising compassion, and high intelligence

DREAM FORM: None yet
DREAMOTION: None yet!

Tags:

Helga hey arnold! \| post-jungle movie

Age: 11	Gender: female	Sexuality: ~~Arnold~~heterosexual

OOC Permissions ▐ Backtagging: Yes please! I'm a medium-to-slow tagger, so I backtag into the sun so long as I'm not overloaded. ▐ Fourthwalling: Let's keep this to a minimum, if only because I don't trust Helga to not ask about her future/inflate her ego because she's the most popular character. ▐ Offlimits: She's a literal child, so no smut or anything else of a sexual nature. (The one single exception is discussions about puberty, since she is already experiencing some of this.) I am A-OK with shippy stuff, but unless you're Arnold Shortman, it's going to be unrequited outside of event-influencing situations or veeeery slow CR buildup. Lastly, I'm haemophobic, so I'll allow violence and gore so long as it's not too graphically-detailed. ▐ Other: When in doubt, ask and/or include warnings.

IC Permissions ▐ Physical Contact: "Who said you could touch me?" In other words, you can, but she's not going to be cool with it 80% of the time. You might get a better response if you're ~~Arnold~~ a friend, though - might. ▐ Mental Contact: It'd freak her out at first, but she'd probably relax over the idea so long as the other person can't read her thoughts. ▐ Flirting & Affection: You can try, but she'll only reciprocate if it's Arnold, and even then she hasn't yet mastered "being openly receptive to affection". ▐ Fighting: She asks for fights, constantly. There's a reason her fists have nicknames. Heck, she might challenge you first, even if it means she doesn't win... so in other words, yeah, go for it. ▐ Injury & Death: While she can put up a good fight, she is still just an 11-year-old girl, so it's likely she can't withstand more fantastical stuff. As in the show, I'm fine with scuffs, broken bones, and the like with advanced discussion; I'd rather avoid killing her unless long-term plotting calls for it. ▐ Other: Please be gentle with her; she's been through quite a bit, but she is still a child. Feel free to reach out if you want to explain character behaviour and/or have any long-term ideas.

Powers & Abilities ▐ Dreamotion Energy in songerein: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque hendrerit mattis lobortis. ▐ Physical Abilities: Sports proficiency (i.e. baseball, football, soccer, kickball, bowling, hockey), hand-to-hand combat, sewing clothes, tool improvisation, a single class of Jiu Jitsu, and the typical monkey-like nimbleness every cartoon child seems to have for scaling trees and sneaking into boarding houses. ▐ Mental Abilities: Natural leadership, passion for the arts including history, eloquence (particularly for poetry), keen observation skills/impersonations, acting, quick thinking, cunning schemes, courage, stubbornness, brutal honesty, surprising compassion, and high enough intelligence to top trivia competitions, spelling bees, and an aptitude test.

Shipping ▐ Canon OTP: Arnold/Helga, or "Shortaki" as it's known these days. This is more her demand than mine; it's very unlikely she's ever going to fall out of love with this guy. ▐ Canon NoTP: The only ones I actively don't endorse are family, Helga/Arnie, and Helga/Brainy. (Helga's NoTP is "anything involving her and Arnold not being together".) ▐ Preferences: Arnold LBR. I am, however, not strictly opposed to shipping her with other guys, but this isn't going to happen without some certainty that she isn't with Arnold anymore. So any non-Arnold potentials are guys close to her age who are kind, patient, unconditional, and non-superficial. (Any traits that remind her of Arnold would be responded to favourably, but this is also liable to produce a Strained Relationship.) ▐ Availability: She is from right after The Jungle Movie, which means she's technically in a committed relationship with Arnold. This has, however, just started, and with Helga's heavy baggage it's very much a work-in-progress for them, so that fragility both makes her easier and harder to ship with other people.

Other (Content Warnings) Helga comes from a very dysfunctional family involving parental neglect, malnutrition, glossed-over alcoholism, competitiveness, and general lack of interest in her life and wellbeing. This has occasionally improved, with her still loving her parents and wishing for a better bond, but evidence of the latter is fleeting rather than a constant. The one family member most attentive to her is her older sister, Olga, but as the receiver of most of the academic pressure, her perspective of what Helga wants is limited and subjective. Vivamus id malesuada diam. In finibus congue augue eget tincidunt. Donec ipsum nulla, congue eget risus et, cursus maximus leo. Cras ac risus a justo pretium euismod eu ac tellus. Integer ut eleifend massa. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Praesent efficitur lorem non pellentesque hendrerit. Sed tristique erat ac urna porttitor euismod. Praesent tincidunt tellus in interdum malesuada. Nullam lobortis purus metus, sit amet vehicula nunc luctus sit amet. Morbi dignissim suscipit velit sed condimentum. Fusce porta pretium arcu eu pulvinar. Aliquam ut dolor tempor, semper arcu vel, sollicitudin tortor. Etiam hendrerit laoreet metus at scelerisque. Mauris id lorem id lorem varius consectetur. Pellentesque sapien nisl, imperdiet et hendrerit ut, tempus et nibh. Quisque libero ex, imperdiet nec nisl ac, sodales aliquet neque. Suspendisse feugiat pharetra ante, eu pretium eros venenatis sit amet. Cras tempus, dui ac elementum feugiat, nisi magna consectetur ex, ac congue justo felis id ex. Maecenas condimentum finibus posuere. Proin sodales mauris sem, sit amet imperdiet purus imperdiet vitae. Duis elementum lacus at interdum porta. Cras nec ligula eu felis accumsan varius. Vivamus mi tortor, fermentum in metus interdum, fermentum lobortis metus.

by killthecake

Tags:

Soooo Helga is a muse that hit me like a bus and I'm still adjusting to her... everything. Therefore, any and every genuine feedback regarding how I play her is greatly appreciated. Like that she's got Jungle Movie backstory? Wish I just aged her up? Do I make her fit in an RP setting? Let me know!

This is also the post to request an opt-out. If you prefer to not interact with me and/or an 11-year-old Nickelodeon goblin, I shan't take it personally.

For both of these purposes, comments are screened and anon-enabled.

Tags:

*hmd,
*ooc

Player: Lil Cosgrove
Age: 32
Contact:

LilCosgrove or PM this account
Current Characters: N/A

Character: Helga G. Pataki
Canon: Hey Arnold!, almost immediately after the end of The Jungle Movie
Age: 11

Background Information: Her Wiki page is very thorough, particularly the Personality, Family, and Trivia sections. For a detailed synopsis of her role in The Jungle Movie, see also its section for her profile on Wikipedia.

Personality:

Helga, what a bully; always putting down all the other kids, acting better than everyone else, and treating her nicest classmate, Arnold, with the utmost contempt even when he tries to do the right thing and turn the other cheek. How many resent her, the way she pushes away those who try to help - whether it's her best friend, Phoebe, constantly at her beck and call, or her older sister, Olga, going out of her way to assist Mr. Simmons just to be close to her "baby sister". Why does she have to be so mean anyway? Don't we wish she wouldn't be so stubborn, aggressive, and bossy to everyone around her so she could actually fester some healthy relationships?

And yet...

She's a sensitive soul. Yes, under that hard, abrasive, aggressively-sarcastic shell is a romantic, poetic, compassionate, and dare we say even affectionate creature. From a truly dysfunctional family environment where her needs are repeatedly ignored in favour of her overachiever sister, Helga practically starves for love and attention, which is largely why she latches so obsessively onto Arnold Shortman, the first boy who presented her with an act of kindness. And despite this, she struggles constantly to return such kindness out of an intense fear to expose vulnerability - instead, she spends the next seven years bullying, insulting, and brushing off Arnold to desperately conceal her true feelings, to the point of frustrating herself when she knows it's sabotaging her chance to actually win him over.

Over time, she has managed to occasionally overcome this impulse and be genuinely caring to her crush - albeit almost always secretly (supplying the Christmas gift he needs to find the whereabouts of Mr. Hyunh's daughter, without his knowledge of her involvement), or under cover (providing the information he needs to retrieve a historic landmark document under the guise of "Deep Voice"). But it's not until Arnold's search for his long-lost parents that she finally openly, consistently, and honestly assists him. Her extensive stalking materials allow their class to go to San Lorenzo; she leads the group in allowing her, Gerald, and Arnold to escape Lasombra's band of pirates; she initiates the fight with Lasombra later to save Eduardo; and it's her most valuable of possessions, her heart-shaped locket of Arnold's picture, that substitutes for the lost Corazon to activate the mechanism that releases the sleeping disease cure and awakens an entire village's adult population. By finally allowing herself to be kind and vulnerable in front of Arnold and her close friends, she at last earns his respect and, ultimately, his love.

To strangers, Helga's tomboyish and delicate sides remain at odds. However, her development in her most recent adventure provides a preview into her future existence as a maturing, slightly more accommodating pre-teen girl.

Abilities & Inventory:

Helga is an ordinary 11-year-old girl from an American metropolis. However, despite her age, she has encountered some crazy situations that make her seemingly ordinary skills notably useful, so they're still worth highlighting here.

Physical Abilities: Sports proficiency (i.e. baseball, football, soccer, kickball, bowling, hockey), hand-to-hand combat, sewing clothes, tool improvisation, a single class of Jiu Jitsu, and the typical monkey-like nimbleness every cartoon child seems to have for scaling trees and sneaking into boarding houses.

Mental Abilities: Natural leadership, passion for the arts including history, eloquence (particularly for poetry), keen observation skills/impersonations, acting, quick thinking, cunning schemes, courage, stubbornness, brutal honesty, surprising compassion, and high enough intelligence to top trivia competitions, spelling bees, and an aptitude test.

Potential Future Dreamotion Abilities: As evidenced by her daydreams and soliloquies, Helga has a wild imagination and an even more wild span of emotions. Therefore, I imagine these will manifest magnificently in eventual Dreamotion energy. This could have fun with her costuming skills (for convincing disguises), reproduce items from previous dreams (like her "Golden Magic Slingshot"), and/or simulate some of the urban legends prevalent back in Hillwood (such as the Ghost Bride). Either way, some of it will inevitably implement imagery of a certain football-headed kid...

Inventory: A couple of pencils, some chewing gum, one of Big Bob's Beepers (a pager), her diary, and, most importantly, her precious Arnold locket (it helped cure a disease, you know!).

Suitability & Plans: Even though she originates from a relatively realistic, urban environment, Helga is an incredibly dynamic character who seems unfazed by more surreal situations. This is possibly due to her dramatic flair, her knack for creative schemes, or both - but it suggests that she would settle into a setting such as Songerein better than one might initially think. As previously mentioned, it is at least clear that she'll produce some fascinating Dreamotion energy.

She is also a character who everyone associates with Arnold due to her extreme fixation. Some might think this would inhibit her in a space where the object of her affections is absent, but I believe that's exactly what she needs to further her personal development. Helga just secured one of her lifelong goals back home - a committed relationship with Arnold - only to be whisked away to another world entirely before she could learn how their dating life would even work. In addition, earning that relationship doesn't mean everything is automatically resolved - she still has several years of learned misbehaviour to grow out of, including a multitude of incidents she incited throughout the series that she still needs to confess to her new boyfriend. Needless to say, she is horribly aware of her imperfections and is deep down afraid that she might now mess up this beautiful thing she has inexplicably won.

How does this play into the other characters at Songerein? Helga may be frequently unpleasant, but she's also a team player and a natural-born leader. When there's a shared goal, she's often willing to work with others to achieve it... and despite her sour attitude, her classmates still regularly consider her fun to spend time with because she's smart, sporty, and refreshingly funny. Combine this with her San Lorenzo trip mellowing her out a bit, she is sure to gradually earn some friends here who can help encourage her softer traits and perhaps even address the familial background that has made her so unapproachable in the first place.

Test Drive Sample: Sh-bam

Questions: No current questions, so long as there aren't any for me!

Tags: