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tearfulpartingsOut-of-Character Information
Name: Burt
Are you over 15?: Ye
Time Zone: PST
Personal Journal:
nameofflowers Reliable Method of Contact: You know where I am +_+
Other characters in the game: Bulba, Blue, Vianca.
Anything Else?: Kisses. Musical Accompaniment.
In-Character Information
Name: Elizabeth
Game/Series: Bioshock Infinite
Teacher/Student/Other: Student.
Canon Point: Mid-game, partway through obtaining weapons for Daisy.
Age: 20
Grade Level: Highschool Freshman
Dorm or Living Arrangement: A dorm, please.
Personality:
Elizabeth was the Girl in the Tower. For the majority of her life, all she knew were the walls of her home, the pages of her books, the call of her only friend, and the shapes of the clouds. When she was a child and her imagination was free to roam, they were all she needed. As she aged, however, so did her thoughts. The clouds outside her window were a tease of something more. Her only companion became nothing more than her warden, and her books mere fantasies. The girl in the tower was not at home. She was in prison.
Then one day a man came tumbling through her ceiling with a key. He was her first hope, and with it she was allowed to thrive just as brightly as she did as a child.
Because essentially, when you get right down to it, that is what Elizabeth is. She's a child that never had a chance to grow up, but not just that. She's also a child that never had a chance to be one, so she retains the innocent curiosity and enthusiasm of one. The chance to actually step out into the world and see everything she's missed for herself is huge, and she hardly has any idea where to start since… well, she's missed a pretty huge deal. There is just so much happening all the time everywhere around her, and it makes her absolutely giddy, so at times her attention can be a bit… fickle. A dog distracted by squirrels, if you will.
Maybe you don't, because you know exactly who you are. Elizabeth is someone that doesn't entirely know who she is just yet. She doesn't know what kind of woman she'll become, and she has every potential to become any kind. It is entirely possible that she could be led to become cruel, or harsh, or to rise up to be what her captors wanted her to be. With enough time and effort, Elizabeth is ultimately shapable. As it stands right here and right now, she is walking down the path of the Kind.
Her lack of social interaction might make her a bit awkward and brazen, as reading about social cues is not quite the same as experiencing them. She speaks her mind, and won't hesitate to point out a mistake or sass it up if she deems it necessary. Her flitting attention might also make her seem careless about whatever matter is at hand. She is not as careless as she might come across at first, however. Once she settles, it's quite apparent that Elizabeth actually cares very deeply and very quickly. Loss of life horrifies her. Inequality baffles her. If she could give each of the poor a better life, she would, but as it is she can only encourage them to reach for it themselves. Her saviour might be a liar and a thug, but Elizabeth would do whatever it took to keep him on this side of the abyss with her.
Elizabeth is a very classic example of being very intelligent in academia and somewhat lacking in the street smarts, but what else could really be expected? She had a library of books and all the time in the world to read them and learn their contents. Her knowledge is now a bit instantly out of date, but she'll catch back up given the chance, being a quick study. That applies to the street smarts as well, though it'll take her longer if let at her own pace. Elizabeth is still a bit quick to trust people, even if she's had a few instances telling her she shouldn't, and she's a bit reckless in her behaviour. She has a vague sense of what is probably the wrong thing to do when it comes to things like lock picking a door or something like that, but in the right company she'll just go ahead and do it anyway. Gaining passage isn't really wrong, is it? IS IT??? (Maybe it is.)
While she generally bright and happy and on the road to good things, she is incredibly capable of her own negative emotions. Being so unused to the sorts of problems she might be facing, her first instinct is for flight. Run away from the guy that killed the guys. Run away from the guy that tried to take you. Run away and try to forget. She is entirely capable of hate, and can do so deeply if given the chance and the reason to. She has an incredible sense of will and determination, and her hope might seem boundless… But it is finite. Given enough time or betrayal, in the end she is just a person. It is possible to break Elizabeth, but the world would not be better for it.
Backstory:
NOTE: In order to minimize the chances of accidental spoiling of the game, only the relevant plot details up to the point Elizabeth is taken from canon have been provided below with mod permission. The full link is also provided, but I would strongly recommend not clicking and experiencing the story for yourself somehow! It's worth it I promise.
After arriving in Columbia, Booker finds Elizabeth in the large angel-shaped tower on Monument Island, where she has been kept her entire life. Her apartment in the tower is surrounded by a vast observation deck, preceded by a large laboratory where experiments are conducted on samples obtained from her, including hair, fingernails, and menstrual blood. The lab contains the main Siphon, which Booker finds pulsating with the sound of her singing when he first enters the tower. The lab also contains a chart noting power levels against "subject age," showing them increasing to dangerous heights as she aged.
Elizabeth seems unaware that she is being observed, but is still tired of her prison and wishes to escape—she is unable to do so through the tears because of the Siphon, though she is not aware of that at the time.
Entering the observation deck, Booker views Elizabeth in her apartment from a series of one-way mirrors, and even witnesses her open a tear to 1980s Paris. Booker accidentally crashes into Elizabeth's library, and while she at first pummels him with several books, she quickly realizes the significance of another human presence, and reacts with awe.
Unfortunately, Booker's intrusion alerts Songbird, and Elizabeth frantically instructs him to leave. However, when he offers her a key out of the apartment, she readily accepts it, fleeing the tower with her liberator and escaping via the Sky-Lines. Songbird's attempts to recapture Elizabeth end up destroying Monument Island, sending Booker and Elizabeth plummeting from the structure.
The two land in the artificial ocean on Battleship Bay, where Elizabeth gleefully observes her new setting, joining in a dance and interacting with others on the beach. She agrees to follow Booker outright when he promises to take her to Paris upon escape.
As Elizabeth and Booker travel to the aerodrome, Esther Mailer (an agent of Comstock) calls Elizabeth "Annabelle," which Elizabeth corrects—this interaction allows Mailer to identify her. At the ticket booth, Booker and Elizabeth are then ambushed by police agents, whom Booker fights and kills. Elizabeth, horrified by his act, tries to run away, calling him a "monster." Booker justifies himself by saying that Elizabeth is a target, and that he has no choice but to draw first if they want to survive. Reluctantly capitulating to his logic, Elizabeth agrees to continue her journey with Booker.
The two set their sights on The First Lady, an airship dedicated to the late Lady Comstock, to help them escape the city. However, the path to it in the Soldier's Field amusement park requires the use of an electric rail line which has been shut down. Elizabeth and Booker venture to the Hall of Heroes to retrieve the Shock Jockey vigor and power up the rail line themselves.
Along the way, Elizabeth tries to acquaint herself more with Booker, telling him about her life in the tower (for instance, reacting with glee to the Duke & Dimwit show playing at the park, and telling him she loved their stories as a child), and asking about his own. She notes that when she was trying to resuscitate him after nearly drowning at Battleship Bay, he kept repeating the name Anna; Booker claims that it was his wife's name, and that she died during childbirth. When Elizabeth happily remarks that Booker has children, he says he does not, implying that the child died as well.
While trying to access the Hall of Heroes via an elevator, Elizabeth opens a tear to get rid of a bee in the compartment. When Booker reacts with terror and awe, Elizabeth explains that she is able to see small breaks in the fabric of the universe which she can widen, opening up a path to new realities. While she says most aren't very interesting, some have much more dramatic changes present. She also claims that when she was young, she was able to "create" tears between universes rather than simply open them, but that ability was lost to her as she grew up.
After Elizabeth and Booker confront Booker's old war comrade Cornelius Slate in the Hall of Heroes (during which Elizabeth learns about Booker's involvement with the Wounded Knee Massacre), the two enter the memorial to Lady Comstock. There Elizabeth finds an inscription about the "Seed of the Prophet;" Booker informs her that the Comstocks are her parents, and Zachary Comstock wishes to turn her into a new prophet. Having no knowledge of this information previously, Elizabeth reacts with anger, saying she wants nothing to do with the man who trapped her in a tower for twenty years.
After dealing with Slate and obtaining the Shock Jockey, Elizabeth and Booker travel to the aerodrome to retrieve The First Lady. Boarding the aircraft, Booker sets a course, but Elizabeth immediately recognizes the coordinates as being for New York rather than Paris. Not willing to be Booker's prisoner, Elizabeth knocks him out with a wrench and tries to fly the airship herself. However, while Booker is unconscious the ship is surrounded by Vox Populi vessels near Finkton. Landing The First Lady on the Finkton docks, Elizabeth runs away, leaving Booker to his own devices.
Booker later finds Elizabeth at Finkton, but the girl flees, using her ability to open tears to hamper his pursuit. During her effort to escape him, she is captured by Founder agents, but quickly gets away as Booker arrives and opens fire on them. In the ensuing chaos, Booker is thrown from a building deck by a Handyman and nearly falls from Columbia; despite her feelings of anger and betrayal, Elizabeth opens a tear beneath Booker, bringing a small blimp into existence to catch him. After a quick and unfriendly discussion, Elizabeth begrudgingly agrees to accompany Booker in an effort to reclaim The First Lady, on the condition that he take her to Paris.
To get the ship back from Daisy Fitzroy, leader of the Vox Populi, Booker and Elizabeth must retrieve munitions for the resistance from a gunsmith named Chen Lin. While Booker takes on the task out of necessity, Elizabeth comes to admire the Vox Populi, believing them to be freedom fighters akin to those who ignited the French Revolution. She also becomes more trusting toward Booker as the mission progresses, noting that he protected her from the Founders at his own peril.
While sneaking into the depths of Fink's Factory, Elizabeth finds a locker with Slate's name on it, and searches through its contents. Inside, she finds Lady Comstock's diary, and in reading it discovers that Lady Comstock is not actually her mother—Lady Comstock writes that she will not allow her husband's "bastard" to live under their roof, and Elizabeth realizes with astonishment and rage that it was Lady Comstock that had her locked in the tower.
After fighting their way through Fink's Factory, the two find Chen Lin dead, but also discover a tear near his body. Understanding that Elizabeth's powers are not strong enough to allow them reverse passage, they enter a reality where Chen Lin is still alive and married to the sister of Fink's Head of Security, which saved him from the fate he experienced in the other reality. They find this Chen Lin to be disoriented, a side effect of his death in the opposite reality, and decide that retrieving his tools might help.
Booker and Elizabeth travel to a Shantytown beneath the factory, where the tools have been taken. While there, Elizabeth notes the suffering Fink's greed has caused his workers (many of whom cannot eat, and are sleeping on the streets), and begins to more vocally support the Vox Populi, believing they can change things for the better.
After fighting their way to the police station and finding the tools, the two realize that there are too many supplies to carry them back to Lin's shop.Source: Bioshock Wikia
And so Elizabeth opened a second tear for them to venture through. Presumably it would have been one where the guns were no longer in the police station. In another timeline in another universe, this was exactly what happened. But here and now, things did not work out that way. Something went wrong, though she wouldn't be able to tell you just what it was. It was a mystery of Convenient Plot Devicing. How utterly confusing and convenient. She opened the tear and they stepped in without another thought.
She knew this wasn't quite the tear they had wanted when Booker was no longer by her side. This wasn't the police station. This wasn't Columbia- at least, this wasn't where Columbia was anymore. There was nothing.
For the second time since leaving her tower, she was free falling through the sky, and this time there wasn't an artificial pool of water to keep her from plummeting to the Earth below. Needless to say, this really wasn't the most ideal situation to be in. Reaching out for anything she might have been able to hold on to and desperately wishing to find something safe, she tore straight through another window. Anywhere was better than falling.
Except she was still falling, right on top of…. Well. Whomever this was. Right on top of them. Sorry, them*++@.
* Undetermined what a mystery.
++ Alternate version is that she fell on Crazy Hand who caught her and placed her tenderly into Wheatley and Rick's beautiful crater full of beauty and also space devastation. He stroked her hair and whispered, "shhh only orangutangs now" and flew away. Stunned and visibly shaken, she could not even scream. Welcome to Smash Academy dear Elizabeth.
@ I am sorry I am not prepared.
Anything Else?:
- Elizabeth has he ability to use and create Tears. They are essentially rips into AUs. While in Columbia, Elizabeth was always under the influence of technology that was siphoning and controlling her powers, though she was never aware of it. It was these techs that prohibited her from traveling freely through tears before: Now that she has stumbled away from it, her powers may very gradually begin strengthening once more, though she might not be aware of it still. She sees them more as windows, and tends to very casually open little ones whenever. [If I don't already have a post written about ~Tears and You~, it will be linked to you post-haste!]
- PROBABLY there are a bunch of tears in and around FDC. They might have always been there and just never been properly realized (explaining… a lot) or that might have just started emerging, but probably they are there.
- She is pretty artsy! She enjoys dancing and singing, and shows a talent for painting.
- She wants a puppy.
- She really, really wants to go to Paris.
- Someone please take her to Paris.
- Between the bird and the cage pendants, she took the bird.
- Oh god please help her what is all of this magic this was not here in 1912.
- She still has her really sweet Sky-Hook aaaand might be really tempted to use it on the Cores' rails um.
- SHE'S A REALLY GOOD LOCKPICK IF YOU GIVE HER LOCKPICKS. She is also good at deciphering codes and other such things.
- I might good up here and there RE: what was and wasn't known or possible in 1912 even with double checking, so I apologize in advance.
The scientific processes and theories used in the game weren't really solidified until the 30's and 50's anyway s…o…
In-Character 1st person sample:
So this is like a… It looks like a very small typewriter, but it also functions like a voxophone…? What a very curious device! At any rate, it seems as though it is something meant to keep a record of my thoughts. That's quite easy enough!
At least it will be, given time. I'm afraid my thoughts are still up in the clouds! It's still hard to believe I'm here… Where ever here actually is. I never thought it would be so easy to leave… It all feels like a dream.
I can't help but worry though. I will have to see what still remains when I wake up tomorrow.
In-Character 3rd person sample:
She paused in her walk, stooping to crouch on the soft, wet ground. The rock that had caught her attention was smooth, flat, and covered her hand with traces of mud and debris as she handled it. Elizabeth stood up, turning it over and over in her hands as she looked out across the water's surface. Naturally made, perhaps by the course of a glacier or the tectonics of the earth. A lake, full of fresh water. The smell was crisp and clean, not at all like the scent of clean salt the artificial ocean she had known had.
Elizabeth took a step back- noting that she was satisfied with the way the gravel of the lack bed rolled beneath her foot- and swung her arm, flicking her wrist just so. The rock flew and skidded across the surface of the water once.. twice… three times it skipped before it sank out of sight.
The "Lamb of Columbia" was skipping rocks by the lakeside. She could scarcely believe it even still.
"I'm still not quite sure how it worked," she mumbled quietly to herself as she took to walking again. "How did I get here?"
Had she willed it to happen? She supposed it might have been possible that she wanted out of Columbia so badly that she had happened to open a tear where there was no Columbia to be found without realizing it. That just raised so many more questions that she just didn't know how to answer for herself. What had happened to Booker? Was he all right? Did he simply not exist in this reality…? Did any of the things she had known exist here? Despite the worry that knotted in her stomach, she knew there wasn't a way for her to go back.
A bird startled out of a tree ahead of her and Elizabeth stopped in sudden surprise. She had been taken off guard by both the sound and the sudden realization: Even if she could go back, why would she?
The girl in the tower had escaped her cage. Her feet were on solid ground, and her captors were no where to be found. In this strange place, it was possible to make her own life for herself. It wasn't any Paris, but it was something. She could learn to be Elizabeth.
She would not go back.