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❥ Character Information

Character Name: Natasha Alianovna Romanoff
Character Age: 39
Character Species: Human
Current Health: Dead
Outfit: Fully equipped avengers uniform

Character Canon:
Link to History: MCU wiki link
Canon Point: 2019
Canon Iteration: Canon
Canon Iteration Explanation: N/A

❥ Folkmore Roles & Attributes

Skills:
Lying
Reading people
Martial Artist (bo staff, batons preferred)
Marksmen (she’ll shoot your eye out)
Acrobatics, dancing (ballet)
Spy, Assassin - top of her field
Tactics/taction
Hacker - top of her field
Pilot
Multilingual
Hyper!competent and adaptable
Survival/wilderness skills
Canon Abilities: She’s highly resilient, but possesses no super powers.
Role: Legend
Role Qualities/Attributes: Emotions will alter the color of her eyes. The more she embraces traditional ‘Legend’ characteristics, the more subtle those changes will become.
Role Reasoning: She’ll hate it, but while she has functioned as a Myth and certainly as a Familiar, her character arc ends with her in clear Legend territory. Even at her lowest and most brutal, Natasha’s actions are survival based and as a result of conditioning. After devoting herself to the Avengers, Natasha still thought of herself as the facilitator - not a leader, but someone who could see what others didn’t, do what others wouldn’t, and work toward the good with the group, together. Post Snap, she might have been catapulted into a leadership position, but it was still - in her view - just doing what was necessary. Even her sacrifice at the end was for a purpose: saving her friend, saving the world. But at that point you have to wonder - was she still facilitating others’ lives and choices, or was she making her own? Finding out how to live with the consequence of that, as a hero, seems the best way to continue her trajectory.

❥ Personality

Please choose one of the follow options for your personality section. Please clarify which option you have picked and, if option 2, which questions you are answering: Option 2

OPTION 2 QUESTIONS (PICK 4-5) 100-300 WORD LIMIT EACH:

What is the most important and defining relationship(s) in your character's life and why?
Clint Barton Met her when she got on SHIELD’s radar in all the wrong ways and decided not to kill her. For most people, that would have been a deadly mistake that would have been revealed as soon as his back was turned. Something resonated between them, however, and they decided to give each other a chance. They worked together to (they thought) destroy the Red Room. He is one of only three people she trusts completely; he knows her fears, he knows her past, he knows most of her secrets - and she knew his most precious one: Laura and the kids. He’s her partner and her best friend and her family.
Steve Rogers and Nick Fury: I’m linking these two together because the contrast is an absolute watershed moment in her character. Fury gave her a chance. He held a good amount of her trust and respect; he was instrumental in letting her be who she is the ‘right way.’ She did everything he asked, to the point where he honestly believed she was comfortable with everything. And then he didn’t trust her. Steve, on the other hand, is an objectively good person. If he wasn’t, the serum would have distorted him. And Natasha worked beside him for long enough to be concerned with him getting a life and was able to observe that he was not a stupid person; he was highly effective, snarky and jagged and worthy of admiration. And he was clear about the fact that he didn’t trust her. But when he had a chance to ask her for anything, he asked her to be a friend - and believed she could give that to him. That drew a line for her; she no longer wanted to be what Nick Fury saw her as, she wanted to be what Steve believed she could be.

What is a headcanon (or two) you feel strongly about and that you prefer playing your character with? How is this supported in canon and why do you think it benefits the character's story?
My big headcanon number one is that Natasha’s the only surviving widow of her class. When she went out in survival training, she was the only one who came back. She’s not the only one who killed off her class, but she killed most of them - even when, out in survival training, they ganged up on her. She had a reputation within the program as particularly effective and efficient, so much so that even when she deliberately failed her final test, they graduated her anyway. This adds to her character as it creates distinction and reason for her being the Black Widow, as well as setting her apart in her skill and training.
My big headcanon number two is that the conditioning never completely took hold of her. I play her as someone who is very, very angry at what happened to her and who uses that anger as fuel for her further actions; she had to bury her anger for the sake of her survival, and she keeps it locked down and (almost) completely controlled and uses it as a tool when a situation calls for extra strength and ferocity. If her conditioning had fully taken hold, she never would have attempted to fail her final exam and risk death as the sort of penalty the Red Room handed out as it willed. The lack of conditioning fully taking over explains why Clint Barton was able to reach her and in keeping with what (she thought) were Melina’s final words to her: Don’t let them take your heart. I’d say there was a time after the trauma of Graduation where she was a good little assassin, but the first real chance to get out, she took, and I put that down to there still being enough of who she is inside her to want to get out.

What does your character feel like they struggle with still? Where could they improve? This could be physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise.
Natasha struggles with doing and being good. She wants to be good and do better, but her thoughts and habits are deeply entrenched in expediency. She feels most comfortable latching herself to a person she’s vetted and decided is worth supporting than making the moral calls herself. This is tied in to her biggest struggle; who is she as a person? She knows what she wants, to make a difference, to put some good back in the world, to do better – but what about having a life? How do you have relationships with others when you’re constantly seeing all the angles? How do you refrain from pulling on the strings and still function? And what is life outside of work? She has no idea.

Is your character capable of forgiveness or will they hold a grudge until they die? Would anything ever make them change their mind?
Grudges are useless things and get in the way of doing business. That said, you’d better believe that Natasha Romanoff keeps meticulous receipts. Every action gets weighed in the balance for future plans and how she can count on (use) a person in various situations. She doesn’t take a lot personally, but what she does take personally usually demands retribution - hopefully immediate, but she can wait if she has to. There are some people she can never forgive; Dreykov is one of them. Nothing will change her mind. But she was betrayed and let down by Melina and Alexei at various points, and while I do not think she has forgiven either of them, she has moved on. I do think that there are some offenses she can forgive, even extreme ones against her, if that person not only is sincerely sorry but takes sincere and repeated efforts to make amends.

If your character could change one thing about their past, what would it be and why? Or why not?
Natasha would go back for Yelena after her first attempt at killing Dreykov. It was this horrible choice, viewing Antonia as disposable as she had been taught to view herself, when she was attempting to leave the Red Room all behind, when she’d latched on to Barton and had the hope of becoming better. If she had two choices, it would be to go make sure Dreykov was actually dead the first time, and then go back for Yelena, but if she only had one… it would be to get Yelena out. It was real to her too; Yelena was her baby sister. And Natasha turned her back on her, cut ties, and never looked back until she was forced to. She told herself it wasn’t real, holding on to the fact of the matter, in order to try to erase her shame. But really, it was the act of an animal gnawing their leg off to get out of a trap, except her leg was her baby sister. It was an act of a traumatized person seeking survival, but Natasha views it as something cowardly and selfish. She hadn’t been able to protect Yelena, and when she had the chance to do something about it, she didn’t even try.