xover: Elliot Graham-Smithe / MR. FANTASTIC
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OOC

GAME: Crossover
DESCRIPTION: Reincarnated comic book characters.
DATE: July 2009
PB: Matthew Macfadyen
JOURNAL: yielding

IC

Comic Character.
Name/Alias: Reed Richards (MR. FANTASTIC)
Publisher/Universe: Marvel.
Powers: Elasticity and heightened intelligence, taking Elliot's garden-variety knowledge of physics into an unreal affinity for engineering. He's finding himself tinkering with robotics during his breaks now. He has all the capability of Reed's elastic body — including its durability against bullets and projectiles — but has no idea how to use the skills which require more finesse, such as magnifying his sight, making his fist into a mace, or mimicking others' appearances.

Status: Not known, as he's a new arrival.

Character.
Name: Elliot Graham-Smithe.
Age/Birthdate: 34 / July 12th, 1975 (CANCER)
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Occupation: High school science teacher, with specialisations in physics and chemistry.

Location: A detached house in Bellerose Manor, Queens. He's on teacher's salary, but is actually relatively well off, thanks to his parents.

Appearance: UGH I WILL FILL THIS OUT LATER. CLOSE YOUR EYES AND THINK OF A SAD-FACED MR. DARCY.
PB: Matthew Macfadyen

Personality: Having gone through so many incarnations in such a short span of time, the third Reed Richards is not, understandably, as neat of a fit. Elliot Graham-Smithe doesn't fit the shoe quite as nicely. On his third incarnation, and with so many violent deaths behind him, Reed's reincarnation cycle is having to settle for personalities further and further from his ideal; accordingly, Elliot is a quiet man, certainly bookish, but he lacks that defining courage and bravery which characterises the Fantastic Four. Since his incarnation manifested, some sudden soars of intelligence have kicked in, but Elliot isn't a proper intellectual by any means.

If anything, Elliot is reminiscent of Reed's depressive periods, wherein the scientist would go sulking off despondent and alone, accidentally estranging himself from his family and loved ones. Elliot's withdrawn and antisocial side may even be part of what did draw Reed Richards to him — the character recognising some sort of resonant sorrow between the two of them. Elliot is efficient and independent, yes, but he is ultimately spineless; he might be able to stand alone, but it's because he's never learnt to connect to others to the same extent that Reed did. It's a lonely existence, without friendly or familial crutches. It's resulted in a quiet and melancholic demeanour, and an introverted man who reflects on himself far more often than he ever extends himself to others.

The linking of Elliot and Reed may even be a type of atonement on the latter's part; a withdrawal, a stepping back from circumstances. The incarnation was traumatic — the shock of two violent deaths isn't a very pleasant burden, and Reed doesn't give a damn that he's inflicted some poor high school teacher with it. The incarnation itself is getting tired, downtrodden, and possibly even depressed; on the best of days, having Reed Richards riding shotgun means preternatural intelligence and courage, and the speedy growth of a heroic backbone. On the worst of days, the superhero is indulgent, short-sighted, and self-pitying.

And indeed, there's more of the latter in Elliot than he'd like to admit.

Unlike his better half, he can't stand unpleasantry and conflict. At his very least flattering, a few people have described Elliot as possessing the personality of a limp fish. The man doesn't develop enemies — no, people don't feel strongly enough about him for that. (A safe and strategic move on Reed's part, to take up lodgings with the most inoffensive and least hostile of men? You tell us.)

Rather than enemies, he's merely cultivated a network of people who are very unimpressed with him, coworkers and former romantic interests and friends-of-friends all. Elliot can be weak-willled and nervous, almost stuttery in his shyness. Hesitant. Insecure. It seems a lot of neuroses to saddle one man with, but there you have it. He's an underwhelmingly comfortable and amiable friend and a dependable boyfriend, but not one that you'd trust to have on your side in times of duress — yet.

History:

  • An Afrikaans native speaker, Elliot learnt English as a second-language at school, and also picked up Dutch and German. When writing for himself or under considerable stress, he tends to pepper his language with Afrikaans.
  • Father: William Graham-Smithe. Government bureaucrat working on apartheid legislation, along with half a million others. A severe sort of man with little patience for anything, least of all incompetence. He had sparing experience with children, and seemed only interested in Elliot once he grew old enough to carry coherent intellectual conversations. It's little wonder that he only had the one son.
  • Mother: Claudine van Kerland. Secretary at a relatively large business. Softer and a better parent than her husband, certainly, but she wasn't home enough for Elliot's liking. Their young son was primarily raised by a black maidservant named Louise.
  • Like a majority of white South Africans, Elliot's parents supported apartheid on the basis of seeing it as the best available option at the time. If there was an undercurrent of racism in their household, they tried not to overtly acknowledge it; careful avoidance seemed their policy in most of their problems, and they were content to raise their son in the nice safe isolated bubble that was his segregated childhood. The Graham-Smithes and van Kerlands had been here for generations. This was, generally, the way it had always been — so what was the problem? As long as their family had a good life — and got along well with their neighbours and coworkers, and all coloureds and blacks that they encountered — it seemed hard to challenge this status quo. This must be better than the likely-anarchic alternative, they reasoned.
  • While growing up, Elliot encountered a few liberal friends in school who taught him otherwise; their parents were getting in trouble for voicing anti-apartheid sentiments, getting arrested and being forced to leave the country. Eventually, Elliot finally started hearding his very first inklings of the world's disapproval, sifted to him through rumour and underhanded newspapers. He was mollified. This was the first time he was being exposed to something other than South Africa's highly censored, regimented news.
  • But even as the boy was exposed to more progressive views, he saw the inevitable fallout of such controversial opinions; his best friend had to leave the country after her father criticised and attempted to change the Bantu Education Act. Elliot's social circle fluctuated wildly with people coming and going. Was this where opposition brought you?
  • Into his teens, he was experiencing the definite sense that This Was Wrong, but he'd get into all sorts of political arguments with his parents about it. In the end, he never stood up to do anything. He was still young anyway — just a teen. It was easier to fall into complacency in their conservative culture and safe gated communities.
  • As with most of his peers, the beautiful African outdoors played a strong and integral role in Elliot's childhood. He's padded out and put on a little weight since moving to the United States, but thinking back to the past, his memory is awash with distant mountains, flat plains, grass, and sports. Soccer, cricket, and track and field were par for the course. And if that memory happens to be coated in a considerable layer of rose-tinted nostalgia, well, so be it.
  • An idyll never lasts forever, however. There was increasing violence and political turbulence in Elliot's later teens — riots and protests and shootings — and so the family promptly moved away once the signs of trouble passed William and Claudine's personal threshold. They let Louise go. William packed up his family and packed them off to Australia, where he had an older brother waiting for them.
  • South Africa had their first democratic election when Elliot was nineteen. Even from across the ocean, he felt an overwhelming wave of pride.
  • He did his undergraduate in physics at the University of Sydney, then moved to New York to continue his masters in both chemistry and physics. He had vague plans of becoming a professor, but it seemed it wasn't meant to be; Elliot never finished his Ph.D, and instead netted a certificate in education. He followed his longterm American girlfriend back to her home of NYC, and went into teaching at a high school in NYC. Throughout this time, his parents stayed in Australia; his mother visits him occasionally.
  • During these first few years as a teacher — finally turning his attention outwards and projecting his knowledge onto others — Elliot endured some personal awakenings and some gruelling examinations of his home country. He went through, and still experiences, fleeting moments of severe guilt and consequent atonement. His twenties have been characterised by retrospectively realising the dissonance between the happy years of his childhood and the reality of the situation: that those same idyllic years were ten-plus years of pain and suffering for others in the population.
  • His then-wife Sandra helped him through these periods, but eventually Elliot was to become a young widower at age twenty-six, as her long battle with leukemia came to a close. Having had years to see it coming, and subsequent years to recover, Elliot is largely over the tragedy by now; he's moved onto new girlfriends and even another comfortable, long-term significant other. But to an extent, he's never been permanently over her — he's not in grief, but there's just this unconscious sense that Elliot has used up all his Passion [[small]](TM)[[/small]] allotted for one lifetime. And now he's just looking for a comfortable (there's that word again) easy existence, with none of the heartache and trouble.
  • Reed really latched onto that widower aspect — the alter ego dug his fingernails into that sorrow and isn't letting go. Mr. Fantastic's sense of ego is taking a concrete beating — he hasn't saved his family, he hasn't done enough, the villains are still winning, Sue and Johnny have gone through so much heartache — that the character is practically on the verge of self-flagellation. Every influence on Elliot is another calculated opportunity to wallow and punish himself further. This grates on Elliot, to say the least; their existence isn't a very harmonious one.
  • At first, in the months after the earthquake and his introduction from the new council, Elliot was beyond excited to be a reincarnate. It was a chance to stir from the ailing rut of his life; it was an opportunity for new thrills and new powers! And indeed, his sporadic and unpredictable merging with Reed Richards' identity first brought on powers and abilities: Mr. Fantastic's elasticity in all its forms. Accordingly, Elliot had a couple weeks of sheer exultant excitement. He was like a superhero. What could be bad about this?!
  • …But then the honeymoon phase ended. After the powers came the memories, and then the personality. These stages of the manifestation were more traumatic than anything else; not only did Elliot receive Reed's turbulent past and questionable decisions and guilt complexes, but he could also remember (in faint, lurching nightmares) two violent deaths and the extinguishing of both Bryan Hickman and Elijah Evans' lives.
  • His intelligence has experienced a sudden, unprecedented surge far beyond what's required to teach grade-12 science (Elliot's rocketed up approximately thirty IQ points, though he hasn't officially tested himself to discover this), but the jury's still out on whether the pros outweigh the cons. He has a depressive scientist jostling for space in his head and looking for atonement, and it's only exacerbating Elliot's pre-existing problems.

Plot ideas: F4 FANTASTIC TIMES. :[

Matthew Macfadyen

I used to think I only liked him as Mr. Darcy, but he has so grown on me (the eyes!). He almost looks like a businessman, or a newspaper editor. An efficient, self-sufficient dude, but soulful too. Iceberg-like—you know, you only see a very small percentage of what's going on under the surface with him. I think, overall, he's my fav of your candidates.

JULIE: I almost wrote a stock investment manager PBed by Macfadyen once. Could scavenge bits and pieces off that concept and change him a bit. Macfadyen could also be an opportunity to make my long-dreamed-of tired, downtrodden businessman concept — someone who is utterly sick and tired of their normal life, but something like ~reincarnation~ spurs them into something new and fresh and exciting.

GENERAL CONCEPT THOUGHTS

Will not be very similar to Reed Richards himself, since I finally want to explore some more of that ~conflict~ with one's identity rather than being so eerily alike — plus, it makes sense! Having gone through so many incarnations in such a short span of time, the third one understandably isn't as neat of a fit. Doesn't fit the shoe quite as nicely. On his third incarnation and with so many violent deaths behind him, Reed's reincarnation cycle is is having to settle for personalities further and further from his ideal.

Incarnation will make some sudden surprising intelligence kick in, but this guy isn't an intellectual — Moira already fulfils my quota of driven scientists who will do anything for The Greater Good.

I FEEL LIKE I AM RUNNING OUT OF JULIE CHARACTER ARCHETYPES. His personality needs to stand out from Morgan/Jack/Tom(/Moira) — so, not brusque and lower-class, not an immature spaz, not down-to-earth and friendly, not an intellectual workaholic. I think my main remaining niche here is someone who is not confident, since all of my Crossover men are all very very confident and self-assured? So I'm thinking shy and withdrawn. Possibly even hesitant and stuttery and insecure, if I'm to push the envelope.

Reed's incarnation would be traumatic — not a very pleasant burden to inherit, what with so much shock behind him. The incarnation itself is getting tired, downtrodden, depressed. Possibly Reed's existence would actually give this guy a bit more of a backbone (Reed is a Hero, after all!), but with hefty dollops of wangst and woe on the side.

SOUTH AFRICA

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