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elizabethxhartford-blog · 6 years

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Sunnybrooke Task 003 - Q&As

What is their greatest weakness?

She lacks an inner strength and determination. Or rather, while she has physical strength and speed in spades, Elizabeth has infinitely less mental and emotional resilience. Some people make the mistake of thinking that it must take an enormous amount of grit and tenacity to survive for as long as she has---even as a vampire. But there is a big difference between strength and imperviousness. Substances that are impervious to damage don’t need to be strong.

People with real resilience get through life because they can take a beating. Because it doesn’t matter how many times they are hurt, or betrayed, or get smacked down---without fail, they always get back up and carry the fuck on. Liz, on the other hand, has largely gotten through life by avoiding getting smacked down altogether. It’s clever, but it flies in the face of everything that is integrity and great strength of character. And it means that when she does get hurt, which she has, it changes her. And usually not for the better.

What is their greatest strength?

She is intelligent and adaptable, and when it comes to manipulating people and events in her favour, she is somewhere between a highly skilled chess master and a natural talent. On one hand, she has proven herself to be a great strategist and regularly displays the ability to think several steps ahead of the people around her. On the other hand, there is an aspect to the ease and the flair with which she does what she does that simply can’t be taught. You have to be born with it. And Elizabeth was born with it.

It was more apparent back when she was running big, elaborate cons and having the time of her life, not wrangling a coven of vampires and convincing border guards to share files on incoming residents with her; but once upon a time, the brunette truly put the art in con artist. Her crimes were enjoyable, delightful and a little tongue-in-cheek, and they always focused on solving a problem with wit rather than bulldozing her way through it. The crime itself was never the point. The challenge of accomplishing the impossible was.

However, in Sunnybrooke, and particularly in her role as second, she has leaned more on her tactical side to stay ahead. But that doesn’t mean that the woman who successfully replaced dozens of paintings in the Louvre with forgeries is completely gone. She’s simply dormant.

What is their best quality?

She is a charismatic leader. Much less so now than she used to be, but Elizabeth has never been a leader in the traditional interpretation of the word. Her vampirism, along with her chosen profession, meant that there was always a need for her to remain anonymous. Yes, on occasion, her actions achieved a level of fame and notoriety. But she never did.

In a sense, she has always been more of the woman behind the curtain---not the face or the figurehead of rebellions, but the whisper in the wings that helped inspire those who were. Her effervescent charm has dulled dramatically as a result of being betrayed and subsequently captured, but perhaps somewhere, deep down, that whirlwind of a woman who really was something to behold is still there. Perhaps she is still the match that can spark a revolution.

What is their worst quality?

She is ultimately self-serving. Which isn’t to say that she can’t be kind, and empathetic, and helpful to the people around her while genuinely wanting what’s best for them---because she is, and she does. She can be incredibly compassionate when she feels like it. And she does care about others. She might be an undead, parasitic creature who used to lie to people for a living, but she’s not heartless.

What it does mean is that Elizabeth will first and foremost help herself. It’s not that she only bothers helping other people when it’s convenient to her, but rather that she avoids helping others when it’s inconvenient to her, or in direct conflict with her own best interests. At the end of the day, if it’s a choice between her and someone else, she will always choose herself. Because that is the only way that she knows how to live.

What is their biggest fear?

It used to be getting caught. Now it’s getting hurt. She always heard that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and while Elizabeth was never thrilled at the prospect of having her heart broken, she was at least comforted by the notion that if it ever did happen, she would not take it lying down. And she would certainly not let it keep her down.

As it turned out, when she eventually did get her heart broken, not only did she take it lying down and then stayed down (or rather in captivity), but it didn’t make her nearly as angry as she thought it would. Oh, it made her angry all right. It made her angry that she could be so stupid that she didn’t see it coming. But mostly, it just made her sad.

There’s a reason that she’s determined to never fall in love again.

What makes them happy?

Contrary to popular belief, what Elizabeth carries closest to her heart are the true bohemian ideals---Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love. Not necessarily because she lives and breathes by them, seeing as her basic nature and history as a con artist means that she fails on the tenant of Truth alone, but perhaps precisely because she doesn’t. She has always loved art, and literature, and culture in all its forms; but above all, what she derives the most pleasure from is finding ecstatic beauty and true meaning in all of the things that she is not. In the ecstasy and the joy and the magnificence of life. That’s what makes her happy.

What makes someone their enemy?

Nothing irritates Elizabeth more than people who refuse to take the world as it is. She thinks that naivety is a trait that people should be expected to outgrow as adults, which is why she also believes that if someone is gullible enough to fall for a con, then it’s usually their own fault. That being said, she doesn’t really see stupid people as enemies. Marks are not enemies. They’re marks.

She might not have a lot of principles, but the ones that she does have she takes great care to follow, and the easiest way to become her enemy is to disagree with or blatantly disregard them. Her rule against violence is perhaps the most well-known, but make a victim out of anyone that she perceives to be innocent, and her respect for you will drop to the point that you can never really get it back. It might seem contradictory to Elizabeth’s world view, but to use her own words: there is a difference between innocence and foolishness. The people that she has conned have been incredibly foolish. They have never been innocent.

What do they look for in a friend?

She looks for the same thing in a friend that she looks for in a lover: common interests and a mutual respect for one another. In fact, Elizabeth has never considered attraction to be a deterrent in friendship---that two people can only be ‘just friends’ in spite of being sexually attracted to each other as opposed to because of it, that such feelings are ultimately problematic and need to be dealt with. Perhaps it is because attraction has always come easier to her than affection, but she is perfectly capable of forming deep and meaningful bonds with people on the basis of sexual chemistry rather than emotional, and she is more than happy to consider it a natural a part of any close friendship. Along with common interests and mutual respect for one another.

She takes the world for how it is---neither black nor white but in glorious shades of grey---and is actually quite puzzled by the idea that relationships should exist in a rigid dichotomy of platonic versus romantic. Or at least she used to be, back when she collected lovers like she was collecting shiny toys or Impressionist art. For obvious reasons, it’s become less relevant since coming to Sunnybrooke.

What do they look for in a lover?

Over the centuries, Elizabeth has taken many lovers from a wide range of races, genders, social classes and personality types; not only because she is open-minded and accepting, but because she is easily bored. However, as a general rule, the easier it is for her to manipulate someone into doing what she wants, the sooner her relationship with them ends. Any companions that have lasted a significant amount of time have done so because they could speak their mind and give as good as they got.

When it comes to physical relationships, she does often find herself attracted people who are exactly like her; people who share her liberal ideals and her intellect, who are charming and convivial and captivating, who definitely have an on-again-off-again relationship with the truth and the law, live for relationships with mind-blowing sexual chemistry and no strings attached, and never ask any questions she does not want to answer.

When it comes to emotional attachments, she instead has a tendency to become fascinated with people who are the exact opposite of her; who are honest, heroic, moral and selfless. She admires those traits, and she would probably be more compatible with someone who could help imbue those traits in her, but good luck getting her to fall in love again.

Are they afraid of death?

She used to be, but she’s been avoiding it for so long that she’s not sure it’s because she’s actually afraid of death, or because she’s simply lived for so long that survival has become a habit. That being said, Elizabeth has a complicated relationship to her own immortality. On one hand, it was not forced on her against her will, and she’s never regretted her decision per se. On the other hand, she knows that it is the prospect of their looming demise that makes human beings embrace life to its fullest extent; that makes them curious, creative, passionate, resilient and vibrantly in love with the brief time they have on Earth.

And to a certain extent, she does miss feeling that way. She misses the urgency that made her human self so much braver and bolder because she knew, in her heart and soul, that her time was running out and that she had to cherish each and every second she was given.

Should death come for her now, it would, on some level, be a relief to her.

#sbtask03 #headcanon ;;#[ this is ridiculously long ]#[ she's complex ok ]

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