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Your Nickname: Statari
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: Yes
Are you over thirteen? Yes
How did you find us and decide to write with us? Friend
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: Katy Bevans, Chaz Lawrence, and Ezra Inkwood
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

Full Character Name: Elliot Griffin
Character Birthday & Age: July 1, 1979  Age: 30
City & Country of Birth: Edinburgh, Scotland
Blood Purity: Pureblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts: Slytherin House
Job/Position: Trollhouse Publishing, Partner and Publisher

Wand: 10.5 inches Hickory, Unicorn Hair:  Pliable.  Smooth shaft

Physical Description:  Elliot is an even 6ft tall with brown hair and blue-grey eyes.  He has a medium build with faint muscles that he began to pay attention to building and maintaining after he broke up with Dolly and moved to France.   He is generally quiet and serious, although not unfriendly.  His smiles are usually small and restrained.  When he is around someone he really likes, someone who really makes him happy, he ducks his head to smile, self-conscious about it.

Elliot's personal style is quite simple and rustic, often combining simple and worn trousers with a sweater or a flannel shirt.  He understands style though and has no trouble dressing professionally for work or public appearances.  He just has simple preferences and tastes and dresses down in his spare time.

Personality Description: As a Griffin, Elliot excels in the dual nature of things.  Elliot himself is often at conflict with his desires to help himself and his desires to help others.  He has a great deal of passion and love for others but also an inherent desire to prove himself as an individual to his family. 

Elliot is compassionate and insightful when it comes to dealing with people with a calm and steady patience.  This makes him very good at dealing with sometimes flighty or insecure authors with the company.  It is the same quality which helped him work so well with Dolly.  Not only could he work with her on her novel with relative ease, but he could also live with and eventually appreciate her personal and professional eccentricities.

Unfortunately, Elliot is also a bit of a prideful elitist.  He has high opinions of his personal beliefs, such as his choice of who he'd like to publish and why.  And when he feels that his focused and meaningful attentions aren't returned, he becomes surly and petty.  With Dolly in particular, he was a tad possessive given the threat of Dom's relationship with her.  These feelings cause him to act rashly when his blood is up.  In the end, though, he is an incredibly nice guy.  He generally feels very guilty about things he does in a moment of selfish ire and will work hard to make amends. 


History: He is from a fairly well-to-do pureblood family that worked hard to build their primarily agricultural-based empire.  They are well established by now and expected Elliot, as the eldest, to take over running the family business.  However, Elliot wanted to make something of himself, by himself, and didn't once pretend that he wanted his father's life.  Elliot has two younger sisters.  The oldest of the two, Bridgette, has a very tense relationship with Elliot because, with him decidedly moving on, she has had to shoulder a lot of the responsibilities of the family business so that one day she and her husband can take over.  Melly, the youngest still worships the ground he walks on because she is shielded from those responsibilities and he loves to dote on her and make her smile.

Growing up, he developed a love for literature and wanted to enable the spread of knowledge and story through the written word.  This is how he wound up in publishing.   Here, his family name helped him probably a bit more than he would have liked, getting him a position as an actual editor long before he finished paying proper dues but his first assignment was the flighty writer of Romantic Dramas, Dolly St. James.  He found the assignment insulting because he wanted to really make a difference with the books he put out to the public.  He acquiesced because it was his job and he knew that it would be an important step in his career to prove that he could get the job done. 

However, Dolly, with her skill and passion, took him by surprise.  It took a while of working with her and getting to know her on both a personal and professional level for him to begin to fall for her.  In fact, he was a bit surprised in the end when he demanded a full and official relationship and she complied.  Elliot understood the difference between Dolly and Dolly St James and understood the necessity for both personalities to exist.  He treated that portion of their relationship with a great deal of grace.  It was, however, the stress of competing for her affections with her old flame and ever-constant concern, Dom, that he could not deal with.  He would often turn sour and petty when the issue came up, revealing a particularly unattractive side of his personality.

Because of his deep need to prove himself, the dinner announcing his promotion to partner in the company was an EXTREMELY big deal for him.  Dolly, at this point his fiancé, not only missed the dinner but missed it in order to help Dom.  Her failure to account for his needs was the last straw in a long line of stressors which caused him to call off the wedding and move to France without her and become partner.  He loves Dolly but he can't go on knowing that she is not as invested in him and his successes as he is in her and hers.  Elliot performed quite well professionally during this time period and made quite a difference by enabling struggling authors with good thoughts to have a voice.  Emotionally, it all felt a bit hollow. 

When Dolly came to him and asked for his help on her final book, he told her no at first.  The thought of being in the combined shadows of Dolly and Dom once more was too depressing to give serious thought.  It took him months of thinking about it to eventually change his mind.  (Admittedly, there was a bit of pressure from the other partners because Dolly's books are so successful and she insisted that Elliot was the only one who could help her solve the problems she was having.)  So Elliot agreed to help, but only for the sake of the series.  He would currently prefer to keep things professional and distant between the two of them.   Ultimately, this is doomed to fail because he never really stopped loving her.  He will even be willing to admit it after spending a bit more time with her again. He is, however, extremely tired of competing with her career and her ex and does not want to get involved again, convinced she will never be able to give up Dom enough to devote the kind of attention a real relationship with him deserves.


Describe your job duties and how you go about them: Elliot is an editor for Trollhouse Publishing, recently promoted to partner.  Book editors are responsible for one of the most important steps in book publishing. They take a manuscript and turn it into a polished product ready to be printed.  In Dolly's case, Elliot often added emotional support to his list of responsibilities because she often required it in order to write and complete here books.  When he was promoted, Elliot took on more managerial roles that included personal selection of which projects he and other editors would take on. 

Elliot does his job well and with enthusiasm.  He truly enjoys it.  However, when Dolly came to him and asked him to help with her final book, he flat-out refused.  The situation was complicated and he couldn't look at her without thinking of everything that happened between them.  However, the other partners pressured him in to acquiescing and he returned to England reluctantly to finish out the series.

Elaborate on your expertise in your field: Elliot is extremely intelligent and well-learned.  He was always more serious about his studies than most of his Slytherin classmates but he saw his education as the means to break free of his family's influence and expectations.  He did a lot of self-education during school by taking on extra-curricular reading.  This is where he developed a love of books.

Right out of school, Elliot got a job with Trollhouse Publishing, but it was just a menial job in the Mail and Correspondence Department sorting  and delivering the incoming mail.  It was through that job that he met one of the partners of the company.  Shortly thereafter, Elliot was promoted to editor.  He always felt it was because of his name but didn't question it because it gave him the opportunity to make a difference in his work.  Despite the fact that he was given his job unjustified, he did a lot of research about how to do his job, taking it upon himself to do it to the best of his abilities.

Working with Dolly St James not only gave him the practical experience of taking a book from manuscript to successful book, but it also helped him develop and hone his social skills.  He became very adept at dealing with and managing her moods.  These skills combined with the successes of Dolly's books earned him another promotion to full partner where he now uses his political skills to fight for a series of books that have intellectual value but trouble finding representation. 

Writing Sample: Posted with Katy Bevans.

Sum up your character in one paragraph: Elliot is a quiet, intelligent, and thoughtful man with the ability to see multiples sides to every person and situation.  He is serious and direct, although not to the point of being unfriendly because he's actually quite friendly and open.