Elizabeth Brooks

* illustration
* face claim
* Doodle Face

> "I was the first to watch you leave"
>
> --Neulore, Shadow of a Man

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Brooks is the main protagonist of *The Apartment on 3rd Street*. She is a farmgirl on the search for independence. As a child, she was taken in by her aunt and uncle in the Oregon countryside. After high school, she escaped from her rural community for a fresh start at [university] in Chicago. After her brief yet disastrous time with Sadie Hawthorne and her groupies, Lizzie was accepted by her roommate Carson Mackenzie and her friends. She grew close with the group and fell in love with Carson.

## History

Born to Gabriel and Louise Brooks on June 28, 1995, Lizzie was raised in Queens, NYC for the first ten years of her life.
Following her father’s death in 2003, her mother experienced acute and debilitating depression and was unable to care for her then eight-year-old daughter. This went on for a period of four to six months, during which their elderly neighbors noticed. They set things in motion to help Lousie get help and became Lizzie's emotional providers for a time.
Lizzie was put in temporary foster care for six months, then moved to the outskirts of Cloverdale, Oregon, to be cared for by her aunt and uncle, Hannah and Keith Miller. She helped her uncle <with the horses and cows> on his ranch.

She went through a period in her preteens (from ages 11-12) cataloguing the events of the ongoing war, as well as the one that her father was involved in.

She went to Westside Elementary School. Following her move to Oregon, Lizzie attended Cloverdale Elementary and Cloverdale High School. High school was an unpleasant experience for Lizzie. She was the target of bullying, especially by the football team. To exacerbate matters, she went home only to be ignored by her mother (where is her mother at this period? Queens? Cloverdale?)

After graduation from high school, Lizzie took a gap year while she worked up the courage to tell her aunt and uncle that she wanted to move out and go to college out of state. Hannah Miller argued against it, but ultimately Lizzie won the argument.

In 2014, she was accepted into the Literary & Research Institute of Chicago (LRIC) with a four-year scholarship.

Upon moving to Chicago, Lizzie met Carson Mackenzie, her roommate at [apartment building name].

In her first year, Lizzie met classmate Sadie Hawthorne, on whom she develops a crush. Lizzie's social life was spent mostly with Sadie and Sadie's friends, until a devastating falling out in (? 2014-2015).

After her falling out with Sadie's group, she met and became friends with Carson's group of friends: Sasha Rodriguez, Luke Phillips, Ethan and Mia Lazzari-Qian, and Blair Moore.

## Behavior

```
"she just needs someone to love her alkdj;ldkd" - Cas, chat log 2015/12/05

"a precious cinnamon roll who has a lot of feelings that she has no idea how to share and secretly a huge sappy romantic but shhh tell no one" - Cas, chat log 2015/12/05

"wistful is her middle name" - Cas, chat log 2015/12/13

```

### Personality

Lizzie is withdrawn and intensely shy, which many interpret as cold. She is easily flustered. She is a passive individual, some would say a "doormat." Her gentleness comes from her soft voice and fragile heart.

### Motivation

What she most desires is to love and be loved in return, by someone who accepts her, imperfections and all. She longs to have friends, having never had any true friends growing up. Though she desires love, she feels undeserving and believes that it is inevitable that she will lose whatever love she does manage to find eventually.

Beneath her fragile exterior is a great reservoir of emotional strength and resilience.

### Greatest Fear

Lizzie most fears abandonment, due to her father's death and her mother's disappearance from her life. Lizzie is a dreamer and does not have great ambitions in life. In fact, she feels directionless. Having been sheltered by her aunt and uncle in rural Oregon, she wishes to gain independence and find her place in the world. The first step of this is moving to Chicago.

### Weaknesses/Flaws

Lizzie's greatest flaw, from her own perspective, is inability to stand up for herself and make her own decisions, and to stand by those decisions. She is unable to recognize her positive qualities for herself, but her friends recognize that her greatest strength is her endurance and willfulness, plus her tender heart. "she came out of her childhood tragedy wanting something better in comparison to some of the other folks witness to it, like her aunt, whose resentment and grief overtook her, and her mother, who pretty much became consumed in her depression." <Cas, chat lof 2017/03/31>

## Appearance

Lizzie is small: exactly 5 feet, slim, her shoulders oddly narrow and constantly hunched. Her skin is medium in tone. The baby fat in her face lends her a youthful appearance. She has large, gentle chocolate brown eyes, a small mouth, and a narrow chin. She usually wears her straight dark brown hair down, though she occasionally pulls it up into a messy bun while at home.

### Style of Dress

Lizzie pays a fair amount of attention to her appearance, though she prioritizes comfort over aesthetic. Her fashion consists mainly of soft garments: wool sweaters and scarves, jeans and leggings, and weather permitting, long coats. She prefers colors that don't stand out: beige, gray, and white. She is always seen wearing a large knitted beanie. The beanie has a large wooden button on the hem. She also gets a beanie with a turtle shell pattern that she wears around the house <?>. She dresses up most in autumn.

### Mannerisms or Gestures

Lizzie holds herself tensely and curled inward. She has many anxious tics: her shoulders are often pulled up to her ears, hands either fidgeting by her sides or holding her elbows. She plays the with sleeves of her wool sweaters. Sometimes, she undoes a lace or two, picks lint off her jeans, clutches tightly at the strap of her bag. She likes to tug her beanie down and hide from people. Lizzie often can't stop fidgeting, shifting from foot to foot, always looking at the ground, can't meet a person's eyes. Lizzie wants to hide herself in her sweater, like it were a turtle shell. She often goes red in the face.

She can be observed to move in jerky, quick movements, like a mouse: darting in to do what she needs to do, then darting back out, like she was never there. When she is more comfortable, her movements are slower and more relaxed, more turtle-like.

## Speech

Her voice, though high and clear, is often lowered to a breathy whisper. She uses a gentle tone of voice and speaks with a standard American accent (or maybe it's hard to place due to her relocating as a child?). She speaks English and no other languages (?).

[any favorite phrases, speech pattern...]

## Background

### Interests and Hobbies

*"sure of course i can just hand it over i'll - THIS THING WEIGHS LIKE A TON, ARE THERE BRICKS STASHED IN HERE???" --Sasha, after being asked by Lizzie to watch her book bag*

Lizzie is a huge literature nerd and has many books with titles and authors Carson has never heard of.

Lizzie adores cute things, children, and all kinds of animals, especially turtles and tortoises. She fills Carson's room with cute bunny paraphernalia, much to Carson's chagrin.

"i think Lizzie would be the type of person who likes patches. she likes to put patches and pins on her book bag. i like the idea of her wearing some PNW patches, since she did come from Oregon and while she has mixed feelings about having lived there, the scenery was already pretty. i also think she'd be into cute patches, particularly of baby animals. she'd love all those cute lil woodsy creatures: squirrels, dears, rabbits, birds. of course, she has her own special collection of turtle patches and pins."

### Skills

Lizzie enjoys writing and journaling.

She also enjoys crafting, particularly knitting and crochet. She adds a rabbit patch to her bag because it reminds her of Carson.

Lizzie bakes, or tries to. She likes to try tackling pastries and sweet rolls especially.

Lizzie has a way with animals, due to having been a ranch hand from the age of eight. [description of her duties?]

### Family

Lizzie is not comfortable with her father's side of the family and doesn't know her mother's side. [why? what was it like for her growing up? how were things before Gabriel's death?]

### Current Home

Lizzie currently resides in The Apartment with Carson Mackenzie. They are accompanied by Carson's pet iguana, Princess Spikyback and her own per turtle, Speedy. They began cohabiting since Fall of 2014 as university undergrads.
[Lizzie's feelings about it?]

### Education

[about her major here. was it English lit?]

## Relationships

### Louise Brooks

Louse is the closest person in Lizzie's life, but that is not to say that they have a positive relationship. Lizzie holds feelings of resentment, abandonment, and sorrow regarding her mother. In turn, Louise feels substantial guilt for not being a better parent, as she essentially abandoned Lizzie after Gabriel's death. They are somewhat estranged, as Lizzie is not inclined to reach for her mother for support, and Louise is not inclined to reach out to Lizzie.
Lizzie spent her preteen years wishing her mother were different. Her relationship with her mother brings her feelings of helpless isolation. This causes her similar feelings about her personal relationships in general.

* how were they before Gabriel's death?

### Gabriel Brooks

Gabriel was a kind and gentle man. Lizzie was close to her father before his death. He remains the sole paternal figure in her life, as her mother, Louise, never thought to date anyone else.
He used to make her alphabet soup as a kid.

### Nana (Beth?)

Lizzie's Nana isn't actually her grandmother by blood, but is an old friend of Lizzie's paternal grandmother and the closest thing that Lizzie has to a maternal figure, as Lizzie does not get along with her blood family and is closer to people outside her family tree.

### Hannah Miller

Lizzie's father's sister, Hannah, is nosy, nagging, belittling, and opinionated. She has told Lizzie all her life that she's a small, vulnerable girl who doesn't *really* know how to take care of herself. Part of her negative behavior toward Lizzie stems from her resentment towards Lizzie and her mother. Lizzie knows that Hannah blames them for Gabriel's death and thinks especially poorly of Louise for not only "taking away" her brother from the family but also deserting her own daughter.

### Keith Miller

Lizzie's uncle doesn't interact with her much beyond when she helped him around the ranch.

### Carson Mackenzie

*"wow ok you look kind of intimidating at first because you're, wow, really tall and energetic but you're.... kind of a teddybear" --Lizzie's general train of thought regarding Carson; Cas, chat log 2015/11/20*

Carson is Lizzie's roommate and, eventually, girlfriend. See Relationships page.

### Speedy

Carson gifts Lizzie a pet turtle on her birthday. Lizzie aptly names it Speedy.

## Trivia

* Her patronus is the tortoise
* Her color is green, especially drab olive
* Lizzie puts all her homework on a flash drive shaped like a turtle.
* At Carson's track meets, Lizzie wears a T-shirt with the silhouette of a bunny and the slogan, "Go Rabbit, GO!"
* Lizzie sings in the shower. (Once, Carson overhears and tells her that she has a nice voice.)
* If Lizzie played an instrument, it would be the flute: silver, pretty and delicate-looking, and sounds soothing and like freedom
* Lizzie would lose a dance battle amongst the nerds.
* If the nerds were in a band, Lizzie would play the triangle or xylophone.
* Lizzie dreams about the ranch, sometimes she dreams about her mother, rarely she dreams about her father. Lizzie dreamt about her father a lot after the news; she woke up crying every time. One night she woke up and had no tears left to cry.
* Lizzie typically gives homemade gifts: a handmade sweater for Carson, a pair of cute mittens for Mia, some adorable wool socks for Luke, a scarf for Ethan, a beanie for Sasha, a blanket for Blair
* She's half English on her mother's side.
* Lizzie's handswriting is very round and neat.

### Favorites

* Season: Winter. She enjoys hot chocolate, big blankets, and staying inside to curl up on the couch and read.
* Food: Roast beef. Her uncle made a yummy roast beef, comfort food for when she first moved to Oregon. She also loves shepherd's pie; her mother is English and it was one of her favorite dishes--one of the few remnants of her childhood that Lizzie still looks fondly back upon.
* Dessert: Cinnamon cake. Her Nana used to bake cinnamon treats for her, and cinnamon cake is her favorite.

### Likes

Rainy days, plush couches, a cup of light coffee, everything cute and small

### Dislikes

* Valentine's Day. Lizzie always spends it alone and then buys herself a 5 lb bag of chocolate the next day and never shares with anyone because screw valentine's day.
* tangled thread

* Invasions of privacy, such as not knocking before entering her room.

* People interrupting her, not paying attention to what she is saying

* Being condescended to. This makes her prickly or speak curtly in kind.

* Being treated with kiddy gloves. Her father's side of the family often did this. Because of that, Lizzie struggles with her sense of independence.

## Behind the Scenes

### Mixtape(s)

you can't fall in love alone (2015)trying to embrace it all (2016)​​​​​​

### Character Design

* "Plain Jane": brown hair & eyes, nondescript hair style
* air of innocence and youth: button nose, large droopy eyes, round face