Deerington Application

[pathofthewrong]

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Ellie
Canon: The Last of Us
Canon Point: After treating Joel with penicillin and going to sleep.

In-Game Tattoo Placement: Left shoulder
Current Health/Status: On the malnourished side.
Age: 14-15
Species: Human

Content Warnings: child endangerment, child death, suicide, general violence, murder, gore, fungal zombie infection, cannibalism, implied pedophilia and sexual assault

History: here

Personality:
Ellie is a resourceful survivor in the zombie apocalypse, she's sharp both in mind and in wit and she doesn't take shit from anyone. Most of her life is centered around just surviving to the next day, and that makes for a tough as nails young lady, but also a rather damaged one. A lot of her mere fifteen years on earth has been defined by loss and violence. Her mother died shortly after her birth, and it wasn't until she was thirteen that she even learned her name or read the letter that her mother left for her, and growing up without any parents under the protection of the military's dystopian version of the foster system gave Ellie a lot of anger, abandonment and trust issues.

Before she met her best friend Riley in the Boston Quarantine Zone's Military Preparatory School -- or as Ellie sarcastically calls it: "a nice way of saying orphanage" -- Ellie was known for constantly starting fights with other kids, stealing and trying to run away from the school. To be precise: over a dozen counts of assault, including stabbing another kid in the knee with a compass and seven attempts to run away. And the first scene in the prequel comic is of thirteen year old Ellie asking a nameless soldier to take her with him after he drops her off at the school she was just transferred to. He tells her he can't because he has a family of his own and she immediately tells him "you mean you won't", clearly showing that this isn't the first time that she has tried to make a connection and been left behind.

Ellie was filled with rage and likely had never made a real friend before Riley elbowed her way into her life. Riley's first observation of Ellie was that she has trust issues, but regardless she found her rather intriguing. Both girls had a clear problem with authority and were never content with the bird cages they're forced to live in both literally and figuratively. Riley was arguably the first person that Ellie fully let into her heart. They were wild together, they shared jokes and bent rules, snuck out and danced to old music in forbidden places, and with vivd imaginations, they managed to make the broken and violent world they lived in drop away for a few stolen moments at a time. They also had ambitions, despite how bleak the future was. Riley wanted to change the world, to save it and make a better future for herself and kids like her, and Ellie cautiously tagged along in that vision. Of the two, Ellie was more of a follower to Riley's revolutionary ambitions but never tried to discourage her, in fact Ellie admired her deeply and eventually developed romantic feelings for her. Riley was her first kiss and arguably her first love, and then all too soon she lost her too.

As Ellie says at the end of the game: "Her name was Riley and she was the first to die. And then it was Tess. And then Sam." Over and over Ellie loses the people she comes to admire and care about to the cordyceps infection that she's immune to, or to some other injustice of that violent world. And despite all of it, she continued to try and find pinpricks of light through all the darkness. After Riley showed her how to make the world fall away with the sheer force of their imaginations and hopes for the future, Ellie never stopped even after she lost her. In quiet moments with Joel, she's always finding ways to try and "lighten the mood" as she puts it to him, either with her pun books given to her by Riley, trying to teach herself how to whistle or talking about music, picture books of gnomes and laughing and marveling at the sight of actual fireflies, Ellie's strength is no longer just in how well she can fight a kid in the schoolyard or shut everyone out, it's being the light in the dark.

Throughout the story, she is both a literal light in that she holds the key to curing mankind with her immunity to the cordyceps fungus, and a figurative light in where hse manages to find joy and become an important person in Joel's life. After Riley, Joel and Tess were then the ones to show her other ways of seeing the world, they took her out of the Quarantine Zone for the first time, and immediately Tess took the time to teach Ellie things where she could, how to watch her back, encouraging her and looking out for her. Ellie came to see Tess as an older sister, and in their short time together, she learned a lot from her and came to value her, and she even started picking up her behavioral and verbal ticks later in the game, mirroring many of Tess's poses and ways of speaking. This is something Ellie did with Riley in the prequel comic as well, as she is still discovering her identity, she imitates people she respects and admires.

Ellie is also very empathetic to others' feelings. When Tess became infected, Ellie had the insight and emotional intuition to realize quickly that is what had happened. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to pick up exactly what was bothering Sam when he was infected, but she knew something was bothering him and opened up to him in order to try to help him feel better. And throughout the time that she and Joel travelled with Sam and Henry, Ellie was always in tuned with Sam's feelings. When he tried to pretend like he was fourteen when he was really younger, she didn't say anything and continued to talk to him as an equal, and when he was scared and trying to hide it, she immediately noticed and tried to distract him with some humor. However, Joel was always someone that Ellie had a harder time cracking and seeing through to his core. And when she can't break through to him and he dismisses her killing a man to save him, she draws the line, gives him a piece of her mind and then gives him attitude and sarcasm until he finally talks. When he doesn't initiate a talk she gives him even more attitude until he finally comes around and opens up to her, little by little.

Ellie and Joel both have lost more than any person in one lifetime should have to, and with each horror he witnessed, Joel had lost a piece of himself. Ellie slowly became his reason for surviving, a girl with almost nobody else in the whole world who was not about to let him shut her out. Her greatest fear is ending up alone, as more and more people she became attached to dropped like flies around her. She came into this world mostly alone and refused to let anyone in, then Riley showed her a better way, a light in the dark, and fearfully, stubbornly, she refuses to be alone ever again. But through the course of their journey across the country, Ellie was faced more and more with the harsh reality that this world she lives in is more chaotic and cruel than she ever realized when living in the walls of the Quarantine Zone. That even if she refuses to be alone again, in an instant that could change more easily than she realized.

Everyone in her life has either died or left her, except for Joel. Not only does Joel look out for her and never abandon her when taking her across the country, he's survived every peril they faced. Slowly, Ellie begins to believe that perhaps if they stick together and look out for each other, they can make it through and she won't have to be alone, that she has found her family. And when Joel tries to hand her off to his brother Tommy for the rest of the journey, Ellie does something that any teenage girl of any era would, she runs away in a hurt and angry cry for help. She is not stupid enough to run off on her own in such a dangerous world, like any teenager with abandonment and anger issues, she tests him to see if he'll follow. To see if he really cares. And though he passed the test, she still gave him a piece of her mind because Ellie doesn't go down without a fight.

From the moment that Joel realized that he couldn't leave her, it solidified their bond and her unwavering belief and trust that they can get through this together if they just stick together and fight like hell. When he's impaled, Ellie drags him out of there and has to figure out how to save him without him there to guide her through it for the first time. Using everything that she's learned from him and from Tess about how to survive, and all she learned from Riley on how to find the light, she fought to stay alive so she can keep him alive. And by the skin of their teeth, they survived like every time before. But despite that, Ellie is still grimly aware of how quickly that can change from day to day. It's a perilous tight rope of hope and despair that she walks, but she has not fallen yet.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Ellie is a normal teenage girl with no special powers. Her skills include: all around survival, enough emergency medical training from the military prep school to save Joel after he was impaled, horseback riding, driving, decent marksmanship and stabbing. Her biggest weakness is being unable to swim.
Inventory:
- Outfit One
- Outfit Two
- Her Mother's Switchblade
- Her backpack, which contains: A letter from her mother, 3 Pun books, Riley's pendant, Sam's toy Robot, A SONY Walkman with tapes, 9 comic books, and a photo of Joel and Sarah

Writing Samples: December 2018 TDM Top Level with multiple and December 2018 TDM Thread with Heather Mason

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Charley
Player Age: 32
Player Contact: spypigeon

Other Characters In Game: None
In-Game Tag If Accepted: ellie: charley
Permissions for Character: here
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yes!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: I enjoy anything that pushes characters' psychological limits and forces them to have to question their ideals and themselves to survive and protect those they care about. Zombies, monsters, ghosts, demons, I'm all in for all of it.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Certain kinds of body horror are hard for me. Alien chest bursters are ok, for example, but 'Cannibal Holocaust', 'Human Centipede' and 'Tusk' type horror is too much for me, particularly if there are visuals. If it is written out semi-graphically I can usually handle it. Otherwise, I'm okay with most other things.