app for exitvoid

[antifungal]

player.
NAME/HANDLE: Varis
PERSONAL JOURNAL: zombieproof
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: oh god yes.
CONTACT: unknowngoddess[at]gmail.com, harder to kill @ aim, humanspectre
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a


character.
CHARACTER NAME: Ellie
SERIES: The Last of Us (Ellie's personal page is here)
CANON POINT: After jumping in the water in the Salt Lake City tunnel in an attempt to help Joel.
AGE: 14
APPEARANCE: http://images.wikia.com/thelastofus/images/e/e9/Ellie12.png
PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY: n/a

PERSONALITY: Ellie is a child of the apocalypse. She grew up knowing of the past, and everything we have now, but experiencing very little of it, because after the world’s end maintaining video games and fashion trends became significantly less important than survival. More importantly, Ellie grew up knowing far too much of loss. She lost her parents early, and spent a great deal of her time in the group homes set up for children like her, but the surviving government.

She’s resentful of her situation, and can be bitter and standoffish against people she doesn’t know, because most of the time she expects anyone who tries to be kind to just end up deciding they’ve got somewhere else to be, or worse, getting themselves killed. She’s quick tempered, and has a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush, but that’s what growing up in a society where keeping a child sheltered stops being the same thing as keeping them alive. She grew up never seeing far beyond the walls of the Quarantine Zones set up for civilian survival, but she was exposed to a great deal. She learned how to fight, to protect herself, to keep what little she had safe from the world of people who were selfish and wanted everything. She got in trouble with the soldiers running the children’s homes often, usually for fighting or insubordination, but she rarely was the one who started it. Everything in Ellie is defensive. She’s a survivor, because that is what she was born to be.

Not to say that every ounce of Ellie is sharp barbs and antisocial. Certain people will crack that shell, and get more than the sarcasm or blatant disregard for authority. She’s a sweet girl once you get past the potty mouth and the trust issues. She likes bad jokes and comic books, and despite the desolate place she lives in, she can find joy in tiny things like walking through the woods for the first time, or finding a new comic book.

She’s very smart, and it’s that intelligence and persistent behavior that keeps her alive, even when Joel is out of the picture. She can hunt, she can listen when she needs to, and she can think on her feet, making snap decisions that save her life. She’s grown up in a reality where hesitating can get you killed, and she knows that. When she struggles, she struggles for her life.

Despite trying not to, she grows to care for the people in her life. Too much, really. In the past, people have left her, from one QZ to another, causing much of her prickly exterior to form itself, but also the hurt from watching loved ones die. She will do anything she can to protect the people around her, regardless of her own safety. She has literally thrown herself onto the back of an assailant to keep Joel from coming to harm throughout their journey together, and the journey itself is a testament to what Ellie will do, as far as helping people goes.

Because as bitter as she is towards some aspects of her life, she loves humanity, and people, and she wants an end to the cordyceps. Which after being bitten, her mother’s old friend Marlene believes lies in her. Ellie is for all intents and purposes immune to whatever it is that changes people into the mindless creatures that nearly destroyed humanity. Her driving purpose, is that all the pain she’s been through, all the people she’s lost, it is all ultimately leading her to the Fireflies, and a cure for everyone, an end to the constant death and terror that people live with on a daily basis, that she’s never known anything but.

Another thing that drives her, maybe more than that purpose to keep going, is how guilty she feels about the people who have died to get her where she is. When she was bitten, she was with her best friend, who succumbed to the infection, but Ellie never turned. And then, in trying to smuggle her from the city, Tess was bitten, and then gunned down trying to buy time for Joel and Ellie to escape. She carries those deaths with her like a weight, and despite the occasional very teenage outburst, their lives weigh heavy on her, and if she can’t make something of her life, she’ll feel like their deaths were meaningless, and like she’s let them down.

It does say something about her strength of character, that after nearly being killed by a man in Colorado who had turned his group to cannibalism to survive, she’s still determined to see the journey through to the end. Because though she has looked into the absolute blackest of hearts, and was driven to do horrible things, she believes in what she and Joel are heading towards, and clinging to that is just about all that keeps her going, some days.

Beyond that, there is of course Joel, who is simultaneously her strength and weakness, in so many ways. She grows to care for him more than she’s cared for anyone in her life, because he doesn’t just look after her, he trusts in her to be his partner. She has his back, he has hers, and their relationship develops into a symbiosis that is more than just a type of father and daughter relationship. It’s two survivors who have seen terrible things, pain and loss, and only have each other left. He’s the only person who could tell her it’s okay to stop and be selfish, that she doesn’t have to be the one to save the world. But at the same time, he’s the one who will kill every person and break down every wall to save her, the world be damned. That relationship can be a difficult one, because the two are very different people, but it is of course the most significant thing in Ellie’s life.

ABILITIES: Ellie is your normal average 14-year-old, physically. She’s a little on the skinny side, short as hell, and has an ugly bite mark on her right arm, but otherwise, she can be stabbed, kicked, bled, killed. She is uniquely immune to the cordyceps plague, but this likely doesn’t extend to other viruses, because it’s a mutation in her brain, not so much a general magical immunity of the blood.
She is very good with several different firearms, though her small stature makes bigger guns hard to handle, she’s adept with rifles, handguns, and bow and arrows. She also always has a switchblade on her which she is very good at stabbing people with.
She’s also picked up a few things from Joel along the way, staying very still and listening for people and creatures moving, how to jimmy a door open, and how to stand really efficiently on a floating pallet (because she can’t swim)

POSSESSIONS:
- what she was wearing
1 long-sleeve black undershirt,
1 white long-sleeve shirt
1 tatty red short-sleeved button-up shirt
1 pair khaki cargo pants
1 pair black canvas shoes
1 switch-blade knife, blade is about 4 inches long.
9mm compact handgun, holds 10 rounds, keeps a whole mess of extra bullets in her pants pockets.
1 flashlight, usually kept in her pocket. The kind that has a rotating head so she can put it in a shirt pocket and keep her hands free
- Backpack contents
Several comic books, an old cassette walkman, some extra odds-n’-ends for clothing (change of undies, extra shirt for layering, nothing extravagant), a few cans of miscellaneous expired food, a robot toy she’s been carrying since forgetting to leave it on Sam’s grave.


samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: [When the video clicks on, it shows a very wide-eyed fourteen-year-old face, which promptly lets out a small laugh, a grin forming on her lips.]

Ha, it works! Holy shit! I’ve never seen something like this actually working. So cool. [the smile on her lips fades as she remembers what is going on, and where she is… or where it seems like she is. Whatever. The look of unbridled excitement fades from her face, and she’s serious now, a light frown creasing her brow]

Hey so um, this place is pretty fucked up, huh? I’m sure people have better things to do than look for random people for some kid, but has anyone seen a big guy with dark hair and a scruffy beard? Perpetual grumpy face, answers to Joel. I’m…

Well, the last thing I remember before waking up here just makes me nervous. So, Joel if you’re watching, lemme know you’re okay.

THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: here