InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "It's not my club. Not my rules"

Eli Beth Prince // {Fanny Price} (bibliophobia) wrote,
@ 2010-02-12 12:30:00

Entry tags:

bio

the oc;
Name: Sulli
Age: Over 18
Email: shadowsick@gmail.com
AIM: sulliqat
Timezone: Eastern, US
Played-By: Zooey Deschanel (One | Two | Three)
Past Experience: First Person | Third Person

the ic;
Name: Eli Beth Prince
Age/Birthdate: 22 (12/31/1987)
Sexuality: Straight
Hometown: Eli was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to factory worker parents (the fifth of seven children). She moved to San Fransisco when she awakened.
Residence: 1 bedroom studio off off Ellis Street, which she shares with a roommate. Location: The Tenderloin
Occupation: Transit worker - MUNI

Fiction: Fanny Price; Mansfield Park
Attributes: Defiant, opinionated, moralistic, a reader.
Status: Eli is not out at all. (She would never admit to reading Austen, much less being an Austen character.)

Personality: Eli is outwardly tough. She's uncharacteristically intelligent for the world she grew up in, though she does her best to hide this fact. She's also uncharacteristically fragile, which she smothers in layers and layers of words and walls. She believes in happily ever after, even against her own better judgment. She feels quite certain that relationships are simply society's way of dealing with their repressed feelings about sexuality, though she hopes to be proven wrong. She doesn't back down from a fight, be it verbal or physical, and she hides her fear so far inside herself that even she can't find it.

She's past the impulses of youth, and she's practical, yet hedonistic. She knows herself well enough not to be easily embarrassed, and she's confident in a way only a woman who is sure of herself can be. She doesn't like the stuffiness of books and learning. She'd much rather live life than read about it. She likes visceral things, things she can touch and feel and hold. She's not prone to fear or uncertainty; it's one of her biggest flaws.

She isn't particularly friendly, nor is she particularly cruel. She pursues things that are advantageous to her, and what she considers advantageous changes as often as the weather. She can be fickle, and she can be selfish, and she's always mindful of the finish line. She's always blunt, and she never demurs.

When it comes to friendships, Eli is scathingly direct and utterly loyal. To her family, she's a problem solver. To her lovers, she's the girl that plays as hard as they do, the girl who never cries when they walk out the door.

She's resourceful. She does what it takes to survive, and she doesn't pity herself for having to do it. It is what it is, and she doesn't dwell on anything too much. Life, for Eli, is day-to-day. It isn't about tomorrow, next month or next year. She lives in the now, and she solves problems in the now, and she takes her pleasure in the now.

History: Eli was born in Elizabeth New Jersey to a family that could hardly afford another mouth to feed. Her mother had some wealth in her youth, but she'd run away during high school with a local mechanic, and she'd never finished even the most basic education. Her father liked to drink away what little money he earned at the local factory, and her mother seldom worked by the time there were seven children in the home.

For her part, Eli learned how to fight from her older brothers, and she learned about tumbles behind the alley from their friends. She worked alongside her sisters and mother to tend house, do laundry and cook dinners purchased with food stamps. She stole when she had to, begged when that wasn't an option, and she had earned her first shoplifting collar at the age of thirteen. She earned money doing anything and everything imaginable, and she always brought every last penny home to her disillusioned mother and her wastrel father.

High school was little more than a technicality for Eli, and she stopped attending at the age of sixteen. In this, she was encouraged by her father, who wanted to see her married off to the building superintendent, in order to get a reduced rate on the rent for the one-bedroom apartment the family shared.

The Christmas of Eli's 20th year, however, everything changed.

She had been standing at the corner of a busy intersection, when a boy stopped beside her with a book. She'd never heard of it, which wasn't surprising, but the title - Mansfield Park - stayed with her all day. It played over and over in her mind ceaselessly, and on the way home from work, she ducked into a bookstore and asked for help finding the novel. As soon as her fingers closed on the shiny smoothness of the book's cover, she felt a jolt of something undefinable. She'd slid down to the floor, forehead against the wooden bookshelves of the store, and she'd closed her eyes. Flashes of images glimmered behind her closed eyes, images of people. She didn't know them, but she knew things about them, and the entire ordeal made her wonder if she was losing her mind. She'd run out of the store, and she'd run home, and she hadn't looked back.

The Librarian contacted her the following day.

Eli thought the man was insane. Even though she'd spent the entire previous night looking for something to read in a house that didn't house a single book, and even though she'd begged off from an outing with friends because she was bothered by their promiscuous behavior, and even though she'd had to clamp a hand over her mouth (more than once) to keep from saying something utterly moralistic. Even with all of that, she thought the man, the Librarian, was insane.

Still, he offered Eli an option: Philadelphia. It was just a mention, just a passing thing, but Eli could not get it out of her mind in the days that followed.

Two weeks and one bus ticket later, Eli found herself in Philadelphia. One week later, she found herself in the Tenderloin, a newspaper advertisement for a shared studio in her hand. The advertisement was posted by a woman in her 40s, someone looking for a female companion. Eli found the wording strange, but not so strange that she hadn't called the woman to set up an appointment.

Clarissa, the woman, had more than a roommate in mind, and Eli had no interest in women. Still, she'd promised a warm bed and a job with the transit authority, and Eli told herself it would only be temporary. She'd accepted, and the woman had given her a laptop as a gift, and Eli had spent the night in her bed.

A month passed, and Eli spent most of her time reading on the Internet, talking to people on forums and in RPGs, hiding in abandoned churches, and taking pictures of everything she could find. It was a new world for her, something she'd never even known existed when she lived at home. Clarissa was possessive and dominating, and Eli had a tendency to fight back and step out of line, which resulted in arguments that were no louder (or quieter) than others in their apartment building, in an impressive coterie of broken furniture and bruises.

Clarissa worked on the streets, and Eli had the nights mostly to herself (unless Clarissa brought a client home). Under the cover of Internet anonymity, she let all the attributes of her fiction shine through the screen on blogs and forums, while keeping her outward self wholly her. The struggle, however, was growing daily, and it was threatening to erupt and shatter into a million shards.

the hard question; (borrowed, with permission, from the brilliant minds at Fairly Tales)
What is the relationship between your character and their fiction? Eli was born in a poor neighborhood in New Jersey, and her moral code was very much created by the world she grew up in. She's always been a closet dreamer, but since her awakening, her moral code has shifted to try and align itself more with Fanny's - for someone like Eli, whose own moral code is lenient at best, this is a struggle. Eli is also accustomed to hiding her penchant of wishing for happy endings, but since her awakening, she's been more and more obvious in displaying desires she would have previously striven to hide. Fanny and Eli are both defiant and opinionated, so in this area the two are a perfect match. However, Eli has never had the time or money (or the desire) to read a book for pleasure. Since the awakening, she has become a reader (something that is not normal in her neighborhood).

the fun/development questions;
What are 3-5 things you never leave home without? 1) A poem (she blames her fiction) 2) A pair of strong boots 3) iPhone 4) A camera 5) An opinion

What are your hobbies? Photography, online RPGs, her DS, visiting churches and abandoned places, quiet, debating anything and everything, learning.

What habits do others have that annoy you the most? Closed-mindedness, self-pity, better-than-me attitudes, people who interrupt, people who are mean to lesser things, judgmental people (including her fiction).