[OOC] Reference - Tracking Elle's AU

[ellectrical]

This is just a short explanation for why I'm taking Elle so AU from canon. It's really only for anyone who cares, and isn't something I'm going to argue over. The reasoning pretty much comes down to four points:

1. Elle's characterization in season 3 was, in my opinion, completely inconsistent with her characterization in season 2, as well as how I've portrayed her in the game, to the point that I could not reconcile the two.

2. This characterization in part depended on retconning on the part of the show that I won't also retcon (and that had already been explicitly contradicted in the game), as well as inconsistent characterization in other characters that I could not ask the muns of those characters to follow.

3. In my own opinion, Elle's storyline in season 3 contained hugely misogynistic themes and elements that I don't feel comfortable repeating. What other people do with their characters is their decision and I really have no judgment on it, but for my own purposes, I feel that engaging in that storyline would make me complicit in purporting those themes. I haven't found any way to modify it to make it acceptable and, frankly, I haven't felt much obligation to do so. I don't really feel the need to justify or rationalize misogyny.

4. Because I feel like it, and I think I can tell a better story than they did.







Last Updated August 2010

This post is mainly for tracking Elle's AU progress, essentially in everything I do or that is done that relates to Elle that explicitly deviates from television canon. (It can be assumed that nothing from the online graphic novels is considered canon unless otherwise stated.) This will only include what she does and what happens to her in her own universe, not the obvious deviations that result simply from being in the game and therefore having access to a Magical Bar.


Elle was brought into the Company in March of 1989, when she was six years old, not four. She didn't really begin any formal training as an agent until she was thirteen, and the Company's testing continued until she was seventeen.

There was never any assignment that involved Elle and Noah Bennet inducing Gabriel Gray/Sylar to kill someone. Sylar gained telekinesis independent of any Company interference and without remorse, and Elle never met him or saw him herself before their encounter in Milliways.

For the relevancy of this, Sylar did not have telekinesis upon recovering from the Shanti Virus. He gained it again by means that have not yet been established.

Sylar's attack on the Compay went like this. In terms of what happens overall, there are no major changes, but there are significant departures in how it happened.

After the attack, Elle, with the help of X-23, escaped from the Company. It's my vague sort of working that had Elle stayed, she would have suffered the same fate Bridget Bailey did.

Upon leaving the Company, Elle traveled to New York City, where she tracked down a certain Company agent. She left New York soon after visiting him.

From New York, Elle made a stop outside Newark, New Jersey, tracking down an old Company prisoner and also running into a new Company agent in the process. She moved from there to London, where she tracked down and eventually caught up with Claude Rains, with the help of Jamie Hamilton.

Elle continued from London to Tokyo, making a stop in Bucharest along the way. In Tokyo, she visited the Meiji Shrine with X-23 and asked Bela to case a bank where her father had kept a safe deposit box, as well as to help her counterfeit a death certificate in order to access the box. She ultimately retrieved the contents of the safe deposit box, encountering a Company agent as she left and using a gift from X-23 to escape.

Though it does not occur in her universe, the contents of her father's safe deposit box are explained here.

After escaping Japan, Elle returned to the United States, visiting her childhood home of Ithaca, Michigan.