Elise Carrillo She / they
"If God didn't want me eating frat boys, their pants wouldn't have flies."
SPECIES: Arachne OCCUPATION: Grad student / Freelance artist AGE: 33 Years Old PLAYED BY: Jam FC: Aimee Carrero
BIOGRAPHY:
Elise Carrillo was the youngest of three children born to Dominican and Puerto Rican parents and the first to be born in the family’s new home of Miami, Florida. With a margin of eight years between herself and her next eldest sister, a sense of disconnect shaped her upbringing in ways she didn’t fully comprehend.
Her family owned a bakery, and while her sister and brother hefted large, heavy buckets of ingredients through the kitchen, she was sitting in the dining room drawing on baking paper – first with whatever crayons she had rolling around in the bottom of her bag, and eventually in icing, sweet and sticky and staining. Its sugary nature soured on her, though, and Elise learned that some art was only for the eyes. (And some was better off staying in her head in the first place.)
She didn’t dislike her family by any stretch, though. She loved them, even if they didn’t always understand each other, whether because Elise mostly spoke English with her friends at school or because her art began to take strange, introspective turns into darker subjects. As she began to grow and change through her teenage years, her art reflected themes of shifting bodies, the unfamiliarity of her own skin, and the constant commodification she saw in media directed at women.
Elise also learned that as she got older, partying at clubs was a great way to take her mind off of the dark thoughts in her head – drinking, recreational drugs, and staying up until the morning hours lost in the vibrations of electronic music became a part of her artistic process, or so she said. Even in the darkness and the pulsing lights, it was a place to study humanity. It was a place to truly experiment with the body, in ways that inspired even more of her macabre paintings.
She did her undergraduate studies in Florida but moved to New York after falling in love with an artist named Callum, several years her senior, who promised to show her how to really make a name for herself. Theirs was a strange relationship, highly charged with passion and ego, often intimate but rarely vulnerable. He drew her into his web both literally and figuratively, slowly introducing her to the nature of the world’s supernature. In this time, Elise developed her pseudonym, Elysium, an identity upon which she staked all of her darkest impulses. From the classical Greek, it was a name that meant eternal rest and peace for the dead – not quite heaven, not quite hell, but a place where death existed and was centered in thought and deed. Elysium was neither man nor woman, but a neutral space where Elise could further experiment with gender and physicality. There was a difference between Elise the woman and Elysium the artist.
But eventually, Elise learned she was not Callum’s muse, nor was he her mentor – not in the way she’d first believed. He came from a family of hunters, slayers of the supernatural, and he had been disgraced with a curse. Artists were fastidious – she’d easily excused his refusal to ever eat with her as a quirk of his ego or other idiosyncrasies. They feasted with their eyes primarily when they were together. But Callum had eight eyes and other appetites to feed. All he’d asked that night when she was bound and blindfolded in the studio was if she was ready to have her entire perception of the world transformed. Of course she was.
First, it was deathly quiet. Then it was excruciating and electric. Elise didn’t know what was happening until it was too late, her mind and body and worldview warping with the kiss of Arachne venom. Though the cure weakened Callum, his hunter upbringing kept him canny enough to outwit the newborn monster and he fled into the night, presumably to make peace with his estranged family. Why he hadn’t transformed her the night they first met, she wasn’t sure – did she make him miss his humanity more than he expected? Or did Elysium deserve this monstrosity more than he had?
After several dizzying days locked in his studio as a giant spider, Elise came back to herself. And found the world had changed around her, or rather that she’d changed so much she no longer recognized her place in the world. It completely altered her perception, so much that it left her completely disconnected from her own art. In an effort to relearn herself and better understand her newfound blessing-in-disguise, she applied to a graduate art program at the University of Maine, Wicked’s Rest – and got a good scholarship too. Room for one more in Spindle Hall?
PERSONALITY:
Devoted · Observant · Obsessive · Creative · Egotistical · Energetic
OTHER INFO:
Elise's spider form is a noble false widow (those have badass skull markings on their abdomen). It's been 5 years since Callum transformed her and freed himself.
Elise always has a Stanley cup on hand. Don't ask what's in the Stanley cup. She's on a liquid diet. (It's also very important not to mix your drinks up with paint water.)
She's most traditionally disciplined in painting and sketching, but is capable of doing digital graphic design, mostly for clients whose opinions are stupid and she's the smart one here. Watch your kerning. (Also, having many legs is soooo great for productivity!)
Even before becoming an arachne, Elise's calling card in her art was drawing hidden eyes, using a stylized EC for the upper eyelashes.
While she doesn't mind her, erm, new diet, Elise really misses eating her mother's quesitos. Since she can no longer stomach solid foods, sometimes the thought of the bakery she grew up in makes her want to give someone else the curse and go home.
Elise has two pet poison dart frogs of the "dyeing dart frog" (yellow, black, and blue) variety. Their names are Deckle and Gesso, and yes, she is working on giving them a diet that makes them actually poisonous.
