META
Look, I like bandwagons and I'm ~inspired now by intuitivelyapt!mun and... I guess whoever inspired her. And I figure I might as well write up all that canon and head!canon meta for Elle filling up my brains before my temples explode. :(
LAST UPDATED: 6.1.10
✒ I'M A BITCH, I'M A TEASE, I'M A GODDESS ON MY KNEES | personality and psychoanalysis
Yeah... I did just use that song.
If I could describe Elle Bishop in one word... so many come to mind, but the only one I can settle on is "contradictory." It's not that she's a hypocrite (although she very well can be and is at times) -- she's just quite literally sugar and spice and everything nice and everything not so nice ... and all at the same time.
Elle has layers. Rather, more accurately, Elle puts on acts. The next thing I say will be completely contradictory, but... that's her nature, so really it's supposed to be. Most of the world sees her honest face. She's sharp and biting and nothing phases her, and this all is in place to hide the mushy, soft vulnerability underneath. Because Elle? Is vulnerable. More than many people know (or at least that's what she'd like to think), and definitely more than she knows. It's why she's so temperamental, so quick to a fight, and so quick to assume the worst intentions of people (besides experience), and yet so willing and eager to believe the best under certain circumstances. What Elle wants more than anything is love (and by extension acceptance and approval). Cliche, but true. She's in love with the idea of it (her albeit skewed, unhealthy, and slightly dangerous idea of it), and when someone comes along that she might feel an attachment to, she latches on at the first sign they feel the same way--or a similar way. Just like with Gabriel and with Peter and with Gabriel again. (And with Adam... but hello, head!canon land.)
I don't believe Elle is a sociopath. She exhibits sociopathic tendencies. She devalues human life. She has trouble empathizing with other people's pain or joy if she even bothers to try--and this is all in large part due to the circumstances of her upbringing; maybe because of the experiments, too. She didn't go to school, she didn't have friends. She had no role model that taught her right from wrong; in fact her father encouraged her to maim and kill (as long as she did so because he told her to--this is venturing into head!canon land again). She just doesn't think the way normally functioning people do. X isn't hooked up to Y maybe, or she's missing Z, or something. Her thought process is a little off. If someone lied to you, would you kill them? Probably not. Would Elle? Sure. He was being mean.
But she feels emotion. She feels it strongly and passionately and like a child having a temper tantrum. She sees the world simultaneously as a cold, dark place and her own sandbox to play in. And that's fine, because the games she plays aren't innocent, and she wouldn't want them to be. Innocent games aren't fun.
She can lie like a rug and she will. She's manipulative. She's selfish. She wants and wants and wants everything everybody else has and is never happy. But she's not a sociopath. She has feelings for others, not just herself. Genuine ones. She has the ability to care and the ability to love, even if not entirely purely or conventionally. But she cared about her dad and loved Sylar without a doubt.
Paranoid delusions. She has them. To the point that they are clinically diagnosable? I'm no doctor, but I'll say no. The thing about Elle is she was raised not to trust people -- whether as a lesson or through experience or both. And as said, she has trouble empathizing with people -- she can't follow the logic or reason in their thoughts in a completely straight path, and very often will come to a different conclusion even if she does. She assumes that other people think the way she does -- and if she doesn't, she doesn't understand why they don't. So she "deludes" herself sometimes -- assuming certain things, letting her imagination get away with her because she is in many ways insecure and afraid of that mushy center being hurt.
I know a lot of people view and play Elle as a realist but I can't believe she is. She wants a fairy tale. She'll say it doesn't exist, but that doesn't stop her from wanting one, even if she doesn't get all emotional or dreamy about it. She'd like to think she knows it'll never happen. But she has hope. That's why she always gets hurt, because she places this hope in the wrong people. And because no matter what, people disappoint her, or she does them.
✒ VOLTAGE RUNNING THROUGH HER VEINS | electricity
Elle's ability defines her, comforts her, hurts her, and is every bit a part of her as her left arm. Obviously this is true for a lot of Heroes characters--each one has a particular connection to and experience with their powers, but what makes Elle's so goddamn special besides me being biased towards her is it's everything to her. Other kids had teddy bears and blankies and shit. Elle had electricity to keep her warm at night and chase away whatever monsters were hiding under the bed. As much as she wants and wanted to be normal, free of parents and powers ... her powers (and her daddy) were the only things she ever had.
In a lot of ways, I see Elle's electricity as its own entity. It shaped Elle just as much as her father did. Just as much as the absence of her mother did. And not just because daddy dearest went all white room on her with it, either (although that was definitely part of it). It was her... only friend, okay. Even though it hurt her, time and time again. The prisoners were just playthings, not friends. The therapists were out to get her, never to help her. Daddy was her whole world, some larger-than-life figure to make proud, and he never gave her love or approval. All she had--for herself--was her spark.
Not to mention being a little kid with dangerous and painful powers and an undeveloped sense of right and wrong? Yeah.
✒ SOMEONE PLUGGED YOU IN AND SADLY THEY CLIPPED YOUR WINGS | her childhood & daddy (& mommy)
Yeah this section is going to be 85% head!canon. It's meta, okay, so filling in the blanks is allowed.
Eleanor Zoe Bishop was born April 14, 1983. (But don't call her Eleanor or you'll get zapped. She's worked hard not introducing herself as that stuffy name.) Not much is known about Elle's mother--or her early life, as a matter of fact. But it's not difficult to deduce. Her powers manifested early, and most fanon sources will claim it was when she was six, and she burned down her grandmother's house. (Her grandmother on her mother's side.) At eight she caused a blackout in four counties in Ohio. (She was in Athens, Ohio at the time.) Her ninth birthday was spent with an IV of lithium in her arm, and she lived at the Company for approximately 16-7 years before being fired. Do the math--she was locked up in that hellhole since the blackout, at 8.
And she was bitter about it. She's bitter she can't swim, and she's never been on a roller coaster, and etc., etc. The most we know about her mother is that she died--not who she was, how she treated Elle, or how her death occurred. Heroes people will tell you they had planned for some reason Meredith Gordon was Elle's mom but... as it's not canon and it makes no sense I discount it. Noah tells Elle she was a normal girl before the testing -- and while I doubt how normal she was after burning her grandmother's house down and blacking out four counties, I believe in many respects he was right. She could have still gone down a better path. But she didn't.
Due to a certain webcomic, all of my previous meta that went here is... null and void. :( But I shall not fret. Elle's mother apparently was fed up with Elle by the age of 8 -- when she blacked out those counties. From the looks of it, Bob and her mother were separated at the time, and the stress of answering questions about her daughter wasn't "pleasant" enough for her. She sent the little girl with a full Slush-o cup and all to New York so Bob could "deal with her." And Bob did. By testing her powers and loading her with more electricity than she could stand, with the help of some douche named Dr. J. Zimmerman who claimed Elle could be a source of clean energy. Nice guy.
Elle as a small child was quiet. She obviously had a temper, since the reason for the blackout happened to be a tantrum over Super Mario Brothers, her birthday present from Bob. She was quick to cry like any eight-year-old, and often did during the experiments. She also often asked for them to stop, but Bob thought his little girl was stronger than that. I think it's obvious why Elle was quiet -- she was a burden. Her parents made her feel like one. She knew she was a freak. So she stayed quiet and kept to herself. I think this is where her resentment began or at the very least was given room to keep manifesting. Her resentment towards being a freak and her desire to be "normal." Despite her love/hate relationship with her powers (and with nearly everyone and everything in her life), Elle became the person she is today primarily because her parents made her this way -- through their treatment of her and the effects of the experiments -- just as Sylar told her.
So this is where Elle finds herself. And I think with all the testing and all of Bob's molding she became... what Elle became. She was a difficult teenager, no doubt about it. She maimed and killed her therapists and sometimes the prisoners. She snuck out. She was lazy with her duties. She wasn't a perfect little soldier by any means, and that made Bob come down harder on her. It was for attention, obviously. And eventually she realizes it's not making daddy love her so she locks it down as she "grows up," although she can't help her nature every now and then (i.e. Ireland).
✒ YOU'RE VICIOUS AND ROMANTIC; THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS | gabriel/sylar
✒ DO YOU THINK I'M SEXY? DO YOU THINK I REALLY CARE? | other boys & sexuality
It's not that all the "other boys" aren't important or significant to Elle and her life -- they were. Some of them. But they don't get their own section because it's just a fact that none of them counted as much as Sylar (not that Elle would admit that everrr).
ADAM MONROE
Adam, Adam, Adam. If anyone ever hoped to measure up to Sylar in terms of importance in Elle's life, it's Adam. He's more important than even Elle knows or acknowledges. (Get ready for more head!canon.) He might not have been her first love, or even her first crush, but he was the one that counted. Elle was all over him for... years, without even realizing the depth of her devotion. This was for a lot of reasons -- he had that same aloof, nasty attitude her father had, that attitude that just made her so eager to please, especially as a young girl. He was the one prisoner her dad would flip a real shit over if she was with him, and Elle was a rebel, remember? Plus she genuinely liked him. He wasn't like the other prisoners. He didn't cower from her. Or be creepy and hit on her. Or just want to hurt her or kill her to get out. Or... any number of those things. He was just Adam: clever and witty and never a big baby about being shocked. I imagine as a teenager Elle was very territorial of Adam, and I do believe once Adam decided she was old enough, they had a sexual relationship. There's no doubt in my mind that this relationship was anything but romantic. Elle might have thought she owned him, and maybe she mistook that possessiveness for feelings, but there was nothing precious or beautiful about their interactions. Adam used her and Elle let him. I imagine a part of her wished he returned her feelings, but she knew he didn't. The terms of their relationship's end were messy. I believe he ended it because it started to bore him in general Adam-fashion and Elle probably took that very personally.
PETER PETRELLI/EVERYONE EVER
Mmm Peter. Peter was honestly just another let-down on a long list of let-downs. (Or people that Elle just... screwed over. Like poor Matt Neuenberg, who she sort of liked, okay. Even if he was just a means to an end -- a cruel end Elle wasn't aware of while she was playing babysitter to him.) But Peter, right. Back on track. Peter, I think, is the perfect example of Elle's interactions with and perceptions of men who aren't her father. Elle's a flirt -- nearly a compulsive one. But Peter hit it on the nail when he told Elle she just likes to be in control, and to be in control means sharing time is a no-no. Elle lures men -- people --- in with her sexuality. And her sexuality is a powerful thing. She just radiates it because aside from being gorgeous, Elle's best act is this one. Being a tease -- being wanted -- and never letting anyone close enough to give them anything other than a fantasy. That's not saying that the fantasy is anyone's but Elle's, because it isn't. It's quite evident that the control theme is a permeated one. Take for instance when she told Peter he'd "learn to like" her shocks. It gets her off. Not even particularly in a sexual way. It makes her feel secure. Untouchable. Safe. And then if she divulges anything? (Something that takes a long time and a lot of effort, mind you. Months passed before she told Peter anything about herself, and even then it was because he manipulated and challenged her into it.) Well. Say goodbye, cruel world. Because she takes that kind of crap personally.
✒ THE DECAY OF A FORMER STONE HEART: DISTRIBUTED INTO SMALL PARTS | claire, molly, and could have beens
Noah tells Elle that the reason he protected Claire from The Company was because he didn't want Claire to end up like Elle. (Ouch, Noah. Rub it in much?) He's right -- Elle is Claire's foil and Claire is Elle's.
LAST UPDATED: 6.1.10
✒ I'M A BITCH, I'M A TEASE, I'M A GODDESS ON MY KNEES | personality and psychoanalysis
Yeah... I did just use that song.
If I could describe Elle Bishop in one word... so many come to mind, but the only one I can settle on is "contradictory." It's not that she's a hypocrite (although she very well can be and is at times) -- she's just quite literally sugar and spice and everything nice and everything not so nice ... and all at the same time.
Elle has layers. Rather, more accurately, Elle puts on acts. The next thing I say will be completely contradictory, but... that's her nature, so really it's supposed to be. Most of the world sees her honest face. She's sharp and biting and nothing phases her, and this all is in place to hide the mushy, soft vulnerability underneath. Because Elle? Is vulnerable. More than many people know (or at least that's what she'd like to think), and definitely more than she knows. It's why she's so temperamental, so quick to a fight, and so quick to assume the worst intentions of people (besides experience), and yet so willing and eager to believe the best under certain circumstances. What Elle wants more than anything is love (and by extension acceptance and approval). Cliche, but true. She's in love with the idea of it (her albeit skewed, unhealthy, and slightly dangerous idea of it), and when someone comes along that she might feel an attachment to, she latches on at the first sign they feel the same way--or a similar way. Just like with Gabriel and with Peter and with Gabriel again. (And with Adam... but hello, head!canon land.)
I don't believe Elle is a sociopath. She exhibits sociopathic tendencies. She devalues human life. She has trouble empathizing with other people's pain or joy if she even bothers to try--and this is all in large part due to the circumstances of her upbringing; maybe because of the experiments, too. She didn't go to school, she didn't have friends. She had no role model that taught her right from wrong; in fact her father encouraged her to maim and kill (as long as she did so because he told her to--this is venturing into head!canon land again). She just doesn't think the way normally functioning people do. X isn't hooked up to Y maybe, or she's missing Z, or something. Her thought process is a little off. If someone lied to you, would you kill them? Probably not. Would Elle? Sure. He was being mean.
But she feels emotion. She feels it strongly and passionately and like a child having a temper tantrum. She sees the world simultaneously as a cold, dark place and her own sandbox to play in. And that's fine, because the games she plays aren't innocent, and she wouldn't want them to be. Innocent games aren't fun.
She can lie like a rug and she will. She's manipulative. She's selfish. She wants and wants and wants everything everybody else has and is never happy. But she's not a sociopath. She has feelings for others, not just herself. Genuine ones. She has the ability to care and the ability to love, even if not entirely purely or conventionally. But she cared about her dad and loved Sylar without a doubt.
Paranoid delusions. She has them. To the point that they are clinically diagnosable? I'm no doctor, but I'll say no. The thing about Elle is she was raised not to trust people -- whether as a lesson or through experience or both. And as said, she has trouble empathizing with people -- she can't follow the logic or reason in their thoughts in a completely straight path, and very often will come to a different conclusion even if she does. She assumes that other people think the way she does -- and if she doesn't, she doesn't understand why they don't. So she "deludes" herself sometimes -- assuming certain things, letting her imagination get away with her because she is in many ways insecure and afraid of that mushy center being hurt.
I know a lot of people view and play Elle as a realist but I can't believe she is. She wants a fairy tale. She'll say it doesn't exist, but that doesn't stop her from wanting one, even if she doesn't get all emotional or dreamy about it. She'd like to think she knows it'll never happen. But she has hope. That's why she always gets hurt, because she places this hope in the wrong people. And because no matter what, people disappoint her, or she does them.
✒ VOLTAGE RUNNING THROUGH HER VEINS | electricity
Elle's ability defines her, comforts her, hurts her, and is every bit a part of her as her left arm. Obviously this is true for a lot of Heroes characters--each one has a particular connection to and experience with their powers, but what makes Elle's so goddamn special besides me being biased towards her is it's everything to her. Other kids had teddy bears and blankies and shit. Elle had electricity to keep her warm at night and chase away whatever monsters were hiding under the bed. As much as she wants and wanted to be normal, free of parents and powers ... her powers (and her daddy) were the only things she ever had.
In a lot of ways, I see Elle's electricity as its own entity. It shaped Elle just as much as her father did. Just as much as the absence of her mother did. And not just because daddy dearest went all white room on her with it, either (although that was definitely part of it). It was her... only friend, okay. Even though it hurt her, time and time again. The prisoners were just playthings, not friends. The therapists were out to get her, never to help her. Daddy was her whole world, some larger-than-life figure to make proud, and he never gave her love or approval. All she had--for herself--was her spark.
Not to mention being a little kid with dangerous and painful powers and an undeveloped sense of right and wrong? Yeah.
✒ SOMEONE PLUGGED YOU IN AND SADLY THEY CLIPPED YOUR WINGS | her childhood & daddy (& mommy)
Yeah this section is going to be 85% head!canon. It's meta, okay, so filling in the blanks is allowed.
Eleanor Zoe Bishop was born April 14, 1983. (But don't call her Eleanor or you'll get zapped. She's worked hard not introducing herself as that stuffy name.) Not much is known about Elle's mother--or her early life, as a matter of fact. But it's not difficult to deduce. Her powers manifested early, and most fanon sources will claim it was when she was six, and she burned down her grandmother's house. (Her grandmother on her mother's side.) At eight she caused a blackout in four counties in Ohio. (She was in Athens, Ohio at the time.) Her ninth birthday was spent with an IV of lithium in her arm, and she lived at the Company for approximately 16-7 years before being fired. Do the math--she was locked up in that hellhole since the blackout, at 8.
And she was bitter about it. She's bitter she can't swim, and she's never been on a roller coaster, and etc., etc. The most we know about her mother is that she died--not who she was, how she treated Elle, or how her death occurred. Heroes people will tell you they had planned for some reason Meredith Gordon was Elle's mom but... as it's not canon and it makes no sense I discount it. Noah tells Elle she was a normal girl before the testing -- and while I doubt how normal she was after burning her grandmother's house down and blacking out four counties, I believe in many respects he was right. She could have still gone down a better path. But she didn't.
Due to a certain webcomic, all of my previous meta that went here is... null and void. :( But I shall not fret. Elle's mother apparently was fed up with Elle by the age of 8 -- when she blacked out those counties. From the looks of it, Bob and her mother were separated at the time, and the stress of answering questions about her daughter wasn't "pleasant" enough for her. She sent the little girl with a full Slush-o cup and all to New York so Bob could "deal with her." And Bob did. By testing her powers and loading her with more electricity than she could stand, with the help of some douche named Dr. J. Zimmerman who claimed Elle could be a source of clean energy. Nice guy.
Elle as a small child was quiet. She obviously had a temper, since the reason for the blackout happened to be a tantrum over Super Mario Brothers, her birthday present from Bob. She was quick to cry like any eight-year-old, and often did during the experiments. She also often asked for them to stop, but Bob thought his little girl was stronger than that. I think it's obvious why Elle was quiet -- she was a burden. Her parents made her feel like one. She knew she was a freak. So she stayed quiet and kept to herself. I think this is where her resentment began or at the very least was given room to keep manifesting. Her resentment towards being a freak and her desire to be "normal." Despite her love/hate relationship with her powers (and with nearly everyone and everything in her life), Elle became the person she is today primarily because her parents made her this way -- through their treatment of her and the effects of the experiments -- just as Sylar told her.
So this is where Elle finds herself. And I think with all the testing and all of Bob's molding she became... what Elle became. She was a difficult teenager, no doubt about it. She maimed and killed her therapists and sometimes the prisoners. She snuck out. She was lazy with her duties. She wasn't a perfect little soldier by any means, and that made Bob come down harder on her. It was for attention, obviously. And eventually she realizes it's not making daddy love her so she locks it down as she "grows up," although she can't help her nature every now and then (i.e. Ireland).
✒ YOU'RE VICIOUS AND ROMANTIC; THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS | gabriel/sylar
✒ DO YOU THINK I'M SEXY? DO YOU THINK I REALLY CARE? | other boys & sexuality
It's not that all the "other boys" aren't important or significant to Elle and her life -- they were. Some of them. But they don't get their own section because it's just a fact that none of them counted as much as Sylar (not that Elle would admit that everrr).
ADAM MONROE
Adam, Adam, Adam. If anyone ever hoped to measure up to Sylar in terms of importance in Elle's life, it's Adam. He's more important than even Elle knows or acknowledges. (Get ready for more head!canon.) He might not have been her first love, or even her first crush, but he was the one that counted. Elle was all over him for... years, without even realizing the depth of her devotion. This was for a lot of reasons -- he had that same aloof, nasty attitude her father had, that attitude that just made her so eager to please, especially as a young girl. He was the one prisoner her dad would flip a real shit over if she was with him, and Elle was a rebel, remember? Plus she genuinely liked him. He wasn't like the other prisoners. He didn't cower from her. Or be creepy and hit on her. Or just want to hurt her or kill her to get out. Or... any number of those things. He was just Adam: clever and witty and never a big baby about being shocked. I imagine as a teenager Elle was very territorial of Adam, and I do believe once Adam decided she was old enough, they had a sexual relationship. There's no doubt in my mind that this relationship was anything but romantic. Elle might have thought she owned him, and maybe she mistook that possessiveness for feelings, but there was nothing precious or beautiful about their interactions. Adam used her and Elle let him. I imagine a part of her wished he returned her feelings, but she knew he didn't. The terms of their relationship's end were messy. I believe he ended it because it started to bore him in general Adam-fashion and Elle probably took that very personally.
PETER PETRELLI/EVERYONE EVER
Mmm Peter. Peter was honestly just another let-down on a long list of let-downs. (Or people that Elle just... screwed over. Like poor Matt Neuenberg, who she sort of liked, okay. Even if he was just a means to an end -- a cruel end Elle wasn't aware of while she was playing babysitter to him.) But Peter, right. Back on track. Peter, I think, is the perfect example of Elle's interactions with and perceptions of men who aren't her father. Elle's a flirt -- nearly a compulsive one. But Peter hit it on the nail when he told Elle she just likes to be in control, and to be in control means sharing time is a no-no. Elle lures men -- people --- in with her sexuality. And her sexuality is a powerful thing. She just radiates it because aside from being gorgeous, Elle's best act is this one. Being a tease -- being wanted -- and never letting anyone close enough to give them anything other than a fantasy. That's not saying that the fantasy is anyone's but Elle's, because it isn't. It's quite evident that the control theme is a permeated one. Take for instance when she told Peter he'd "learn to like" her shocks. It gets her off. Not even particularly in a sexual way. It makes her feel secure. Untouchable. Safe. And then if she divulges anything? (Something that takes a long time and a lot of effort, mind you. Months passed before she told Peter anything about herself, and even then it was because he manipulated and challenged her into it.) Well. Say goodbye, cruel world. Because she takes that kind of crap personally.
✒ THE DECAY OF A FORMER STONE HEART: DISTRIBUTED INTO SMALL PARTS | claire, molly, and could have beens
Noah tells Elle that the reason he protected Claire from The Company was because he didn't want Claire to end up like Elle. (Ouch, Noah. Rub it in much?) He's right -- Elle is Claire's foil and Claire is Elle's.