Name: Eliza Anne Herring
Appearance: (note: I'm linking to the images because they're big and I can't nest hiders in hiders)
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m98vguO6Yl1r36j8go1_1280.jpghttp://data1.whicdn.com/images/93060669/large.jpghttp://data3.whicdn.com/images/96249554/large.jpghttp://data2.whicdn.com/images/94175270/large.jpgNatural beauty runs in the Herring family. With her slim build, height (about 5' 9'') and long, wavy brown hair, Eliza's no exception. She knows it, too, and she knows how to carry herself to attract attention - or avoid it, as the situation demands. Usually, she's quiet and graceful, with a calm affect, a steady gaze, and a neutral expression or half-smile. Her voice is a quiet alto, and she's prone to speaking formally, making her sound cold and distant. If she's really happy, though, she'll get louder and give a real smile, a big one that reaches her eyes. She doesn't laugh often, but might allow herself a polite giggle. When she's out of uniform, she dresses very fashionably, but with less extravagance than many of her classmates. While she might be more willing to dress up than Acacia, she has a firm grasp on line between flattering and slutty, and she sticks to it.
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
Social Class: Wealthy (technically)
Social Class Explanation: The Herring family are heirs to a massive business conglomerate headed by Eliza's father, Christopher Herring. Herring Global is worth untold billions of dollars, much of which is still held by the family directly. Eliza is the middle child of (currently) six siblings, with more likely on the way. Though her family has exceptional wealth, and she herself has nearly unlimited financial resources, she doesn't parade that fact. She uses her wealth to accomplish her goals, certainly, and it isn't a secret - but she considers it to hold absolutely no intrinsic value. For this, Eliza might be more appropriately categorized as "wealthy," but her close relationship with Acacia places her firmly in the upper echelons of the school's social structure. Eliza protests to herself that she doesn't care about that sort of thing, anyway - an easy position to take about any game when you're the winner.
Personality: It's easy to mistake Eliza for just another follower, capitalizing on her family's wealth and Acacia Hawthorne's popularity to give her whatever she needs, academically or otherwise. She's quiet, she's polite yet cold, she's pretty and she knows it, so it's not as though she needs anything significant in terms of creativity, intellect, or identity. Her life is comfortable just as it is.
Eliza is fully aware of this perception, and in fact, she actively cultivates it. Much of her life is devoted to maintaining this false face - as a Herring, doing so comes quite naturally to her. And, to be fair, much of it is true: She
is gorgeous, she
is extremely close to Acacia, and she isn't very interested in most anyone else at Caelbury. All of that's absolutely correct. What people tend to misunderstand (mostly because she wants them to) are the reasons why she acts the way she does. Eliza's peaceful, perfect exterior is an immaculate veneer, hiding a woman filled with immense passion and intellect.
Eliza realized long ago that she was born into a world of extreme privilege, but that privilege carries its own price. She's watched friends and family - people she cared about, people better and smarter than she was - fall victim to their own wealth, never creating anything, never
meaning anything, and it terrifies her. And she's seen people like Acacia build themselves up, working incessantly to be as perfect as possible, only to come crumbling down again. Eliza lives in fear that she might lose herself in the good fortune life has given her, and never resurface. She's determined to become something more than another Herring child.
Luckily for her, she has all the tools she needs to do so: Money, time, and access to the best education those two things can buy. In the short term, Eliza's goal is simple: Get through school, graduate at or near the top of her class, and go to college. Everything else is optional. She doesn't know quite yet what she's going to do with her life after that, but whatever it is, it'll be significant somehow.
When confronted with a challenge, Eliza may make a strategic retreat, but she will never back down. She trusts her own instinct and intellect absolutely; people have failed her, but her mind hasn't. In fact, she makes a habit of distrusting nearly everybody and everything else, unless her assumptions are proven wrong repeatedly. She works fervently at her goals, whatever they might be, and will go to whatever lengths are necessary to achieve them (not that very extreme lengths are generally necessary in high school).
History: The Herring family didn't come from money - everything they have was built by Eliza's father. "Competitive" doesn't even begin to describe her household; growing up there was a continuous grooming process and race to the top. Christopher Herring didn't want children, he wanted heirs and a legacy, and he made certain his kids knew it. Some of Eliza's siblings, and her mother, play his games still, working feverishly to appease him. Others have dropped their connections to the family entirely, or ventured away from the family business into some "lesser" career. Eliza has done neither, in fact, she's done a rather good job of disappearing from her father's radar entirely, a fact she's fully aware of and quite pleased by.
Young Eliza was an ungainly thing, too tall and thin for her age, yet mousy and unassuming. She was quiet, she read instead of talking, she didn't seem to have the same drive as her siblings. The Herring passion lay dormant in Eliza for many years, and that was enough to convince her parents she didn't have it all. For years, they were convinced Eliza was the anomaly, the dull one, and therefore there was no helping her. She was never harmed, or even cared for at all inadequately - she was a Herring, after all - but her life was devoid of any real affection, except sometimes from her older brothers. She always felt like she was lacking, but never understood why, and over the years, the fear and anger that knowledge created grew within her.
As she got older, she started to come into her own. She became sharper mentally and filled out physically, but her family didn't seem to notice. Her parents had already decided she was a failure, and no improvement on her part seemed to change their minds. She started to dress better and speak up more, she tried to take up an interest in the family business, but in everything, she was rebuffed. The final straw came when her mother suggested to her that she "wasn't cut out for her father's life," that she ought to try and spend her time on something less challenging ("become a model, your sister's doing it!").
In that moment, Eliza discovered that she
did have the traditional Herring motivation, if in an nontraditional way. She didn't care about money. She didn't want to follow in her father's footsteps. She didn't want power over others, either, not really - but she wanted strength for herself. She would never be ignored or passed up again by anyone, and she would do whatever it took to make that happen. This was the mentality that sent Eliza to Caelbury, rather than the California prep schools her siblings attended, and it's what's kept her going throughout her time in the school.
It seems to be working, too - at Caelbury, Eliza is certainly impossible to ignore. The moment she met Acacia Hawthorne, roughly a week into their freshman year, she was certain the two shared similar desires, and thus made up her mind that they would become friends. They did, and their social group followed suit not long afterwards, becoming more and more influential as they rose through the years. She's been incredibly successful academically, as well, much to the surprise of her family - and she has found reasons not to see them over nearly every break, avoiding any potential for regression to her earlier habits. The Eliza Herring of Caelbury Academy would be almost unrecognizable to her family now, and that's how she prefers it.
All she has to do now is make it through senior year and graduate; then college awaits. Eliza knows she's come a long way, but she knows she's got much farther still to go if before her family will come to understand how wrong they were about her.
That's alright with her: She's nothing if not patient.
Extracurricular Activities: Student Council (secretary), International Committee, Mock Trial (I will create a description if it becomes necessary), potentially others
Miscellaneous: Here's where I'm headed with Eliza: In her previous RPs, she's been significantly older (late twenties, early thirties). By that point, she's become a successful attorney, and her issues with her family have grown into a serious chip on her shoulder. She's much more capable and comfortable with who she is, but she's also vengeful and manipulative. She's a crusader. My goal is to use the events of this RP to kickstart that transformation - though of course, things could go in a direction I don't see now. So if she seems pretty similar to the other students, or pretty perfect in other ways, don't worry: She doesn't get to stay that way. I think other people who have RPed with me can attest to what I tend to do with/to my characters when their lives are going too well ;).
Thoughts on Other Characters: These are in no particular order, sorry. I have tried to expand most specifically on characters who talked about having a relationship with Eliza. If you would like to arrange something in that vein, please let me know! For some characters, I have written relatively little - please don't take offense; I read everyone's bio, but some people might not be familiar to Eliza.
JJ Doe
