Sweetheart
Rita Farr grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Her father, Don, was a professional boxer, fighting under the name of "Drop 'em" Don Farr, while her mother, Jolene, his high school sweetheart, was a piano teacher and housewife. Her parents were conservative, protective and firm, but undeniably loving. They raised their daughter to be respectful and well-mannered, always a lady. Rita was a good girl by all accounts, pretty, sweet and eager to please. She did break the mold in a few ways: her Daddy taught her to fight, figuring the best way for her to keep grabby boys at bay was a good left hook. She pursued athletics, and became a champion swimmer. She won state and, by her junior year, national championships in the freestyle and butterfly. In 2004, she won a gold and two silvers at the Olympics. Her pretty face and gentle manner made her a national sensation, getting her on cereal boxes and talk shows. It also allowed her to pursue her dream: since she'd been a little girl, she'd nursed a secret hope of becoming a movie star. With a new agent and Hollywood opening its doors, eighteen year old Rita had her chance.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_2 Changes
Rita's pretty face and publicity got her a good start, but her actual talent did the rest. Guest appearances on sitcoms and commercial spots eventually lead to supporting roles in romantic comedies, then starring roles. By 23, she was a legitimate star. Shy by nature, Rita often felt overwhelmed by fame, but she tried to stay humble, protecting her privacy and visiting home often. She never hit the party scene or gave much grist for the gossip mill. Her few boyfriends were stable, straightforward and rather boring, at least by Hollywood standards. Was Rita more worldly than her image? Of course. She's an intelligent, grown woman, well-read and discerning. But her shyness, her sensitivity, they were real and she was happy to hide behind the old fashioned image a bit, to let them idealize her. Four years ago, in 2010, she went to shoot a movie called "Wild Love" in Africa. Getting to see the world was a dream, and Rita took advantage to tour the countryside. A tour of a mountainous volcano, however, proved dangerous when it spontaneously erupted. Though the party tried to escape, the road in front of them cracked. From beneath the broken crust of the earth, a cloud of strange fumes arose, washing over Rita and the rest of her tour. Everyone else died. Rita, somehow, survived. But when she came to in the hospital, she quickly discovered she'd never be the same again.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_3 Standing Tall
Rita's powers emerged quickly, as she didn't have full control at first. After shrinking, growing and stretching at different intervals, she realized that the gases had somehow transformed, mutated her. Quickly, word of her transformation leaked to the press, a nosy orderly taking a bundle for the scoop. In a week, headlines declaring her a 'freak', a 'monster', her career 'in ruins' quickly spread across the media. Shy and hurt by the scandal, she did the wrong thing and hid herself at first, refusing to answer questions and becoming a recluse as she tried to make sense of what had happened to her. So she might've remained if a criminal mastermind hadn't built a massive war machine, threatening her Hollywood neighborhood in an attempt to kidnap a starlet he'd been stalking. Before she'd even thought, Rita was fifty feet tall and pummelling her frustrations out on the robot until it was in itty, bitty pieces. She discovered, at last, that maybe there was a good reason for her powers…and that using them to do good felt even better than acting! After designing a costume and taking the name Elasti-Girl, Rita emerged back onto the public scene. She didn't wear a mask or hide her face, instead standing up for herself. While still often the subject of gossip, she's found her acting career starting slowly back up. She's down a few Lifetime movies, a talk show or two. Recently, she's decided to try and work the stage. Resettling in Metropolis, she's pursuing her heroic career mostly full-time, with acting as a sideline. However big she gets, though, in fame or stature, she remains the same small town girl at heart!
Gentle
By her nature, Rita tends to be quiet, shy and, in general, a very kind person. She's not violent by nature in the least, even if she knows how to handle herself, although she's found the occasional catharsis that way. She often seems younger than she actually is. She's soft-hearted, has difficulty watching bloodshed, and is genuinely touched by people in need. She has a good heart and it shows in her actions.
APPROVED: PSY2 Mannered
Rita's parents were very much of the old school, aspiring to a life that would've fit better in the 50's than the modern era. She's always perfectly mannered and polite, rarely shows being disagreeable and tries to make life pleasant for those aroudn herr. She understands that others aren't as well-raised as her, and excuses them their faults, but she can be very precise about her own behavior, just short of compulsive, and she's mortified if anyone calls her rude or ill-mannered. She blushes quite a bit in the modern world.
APPROVED: PSY3 Spunky
Rita has spunk! She's eager, chipper and doesn't let other people discourage her or get her down. When someone's negative or mean to her, she tends to fight back, although she rarely resorts to sinking as low as they do. She's a bit indefatigable and can even annoy people with her attempts to keep up morale or simply keeping going in the face of adversity. But she feels like she can't give up, becausee, if she does, she'll (literally) shrink back to the depression that once ruled her.
APPROVED: PSY4 Sensitive
After she gained her powers, Rita went into seclusion, overwhelmed by the negative attention and namecalling that came with her empowerment. She tries not to take things personally, but she does and she tends to react by shutting down or growing depressed (her body tends to react, too, literally shrinking). She can be overwhelmed by too much strong emotion or just life itself at times. That isn't to say she's weak - she'll often manage to fight through and not crumple under the pressure, but that isn't the same thing as the pressure not being there.
APPROVED: PSY5 Motivation
Rita's primary motivation has been to make something good come out of what's happened to her. She tends to believe in things like fate and kismet, but she's only just begun to come to grips with the idea that she's been given these powers for a reason. She wants to prove her worth and show that she has something to contribute to the world.
APPROVED: PSY6 Goals
Rita wants to gain respect as a superheroine, to safeguard the world and to feel at peace with her transformed self. Along the way, putting her career back together and starting a family all seem like worthwhile goals.
APPROVED: POW1 Growth
Rita's signature power is the ability to increase her size and mass at an exponential rate, growing to vast and giant sizes in a matter of moments. Where the new mass comes from isn't really understood, but she definitely adds weight along with size. Her strength and resistance to injury also increase, going from normal human strength at her original size up to being able to push over skyscrapers or throw cars for miles with relative ease, growing into a serious powerhouse. While she hasn't found necessarily a limit on her size growth, practicality and space matters (not to mention breathing) requires her to stop at some point and, thus far, the largest she's really gone is a thousand feet in height, but she could definitely go bigger than that. Getting too big, however, presents logistical problems in terms of interacting with others (since her enemies and allies are generally regular height, she can lose track of them entirely once they become practically ants). For general fighting purposes, she usually goes to about fifty or a hundred feet, a more modest but still gargantuan state that allows her to punch through concrete streets or uproot trees with ease - not to mention scare the crap out of people.
APPROVED: POW2 Shrinking
Rita possesses the ability to shrink her body down, condensing her mass together so that her essential weight remains the same as she grows tiny, allowing her to retain her normal strength and become increasingly durable, hyperdense and hard to hurt as she goes. She can shrink down to molecular size, enabling her to examine and climb amidst atomic structures, experiencing strange perceptions and dimensions that few humans can. Generally, she doesn't go quite that small, more like a tiny doll, enabling her to sneak around with great stealth. With her strength retained, she can make excessive jumps and move around with a great deal of ease and speed, not to mention still kick and punch hard enough to hurt. Going to molecular size, though, does make her functionally invisible, allowing her to disappear, although her perceptions, again, can be distorted by massive size difference and it can become hard to navigate.
APPROVED: POW3 Elasticity
Rita's developed significant control over her body's molecular structure and, as a result, has learned to stretch her body in elastic ways, as if she were made of taffy or rubber. She can elongate her limbs, stretch her torso to massive lengths, flatten herself out to fit under doors, even snarl around someone like a snake to bind them in place. She can also enlarge or shrink different parts of her body independently, making just her hand big or extending her tongue out to massive lengths. Some of it can be relatively silly, but it's surprisingly useful at times.
APPROVED: POW4 Durability
The unstable nature of Rita's molecular structure actually serves as a strength, dispersing impacts and making her body tougher and more resistent to injury. Things like bullets and blades will simply dent into her elastically, doing no real harm, while massive blows and impacts will be distributed, perhaps temporarily flattening or misshapening her like a cartoon but doing no real harm. Like rubber, her body appears to be a bad conductor of electricity and she seems largely immune to such attacks. Heat, cold and other forms of energy, such as cosmic, can still do her harm, however. Fire will burn her, cold make her hurt, and she still needs to breathe and eat like she always did. In addition, immunity from harm isn't the same as immunity from pain, and hard blows and damage to her can still hurt quite a bit, even to the point of making her lose consciousness.
APPROVED: POW5 Duplication
While many forms of metamorphing are beyond her, Rita has learned how to duplicate the appearance of other people. She has to become deeply familiar with a person's appearance, either by observation or staring at a picture (or, better, video). Once she can imagine them fully in her mind's eye, with concentration, she can flex and remold her features to match their appearance. This change is purely cosmetic and isn't in any way a genetic or full duplication. She won't even have their fingerprints or eye patterns, it's nothing so subtle as that, merely enough to fool the naked eye or a conventional camera. She can't create clothes and even something as simple as changing her hair color is a no go. So, basically, she can make herself look like other people who look kind of like her already. Still, it can be a useful disguise tool or infiltration method, especially in combination with her acting talents.
APPROVED: ADV1 Fame
Rita Farr is a fairly well known actress of both the big and small screens. She's made quite a few movies, mostly romantic comedies (although she also got a niche as the damsel in distress/love interest in action pictures). She has a fairly recognizable face and, despite some vicious rumors and painful gossip, is still generally well liked by the public. This can cause people to react more positively to her on sight. In addition, the privileges of celebrity can get her access and open doors that others can't.
APPROVED: ADV2 Wealth
Between endorsements and acting, Rita's managed to establish a fair nest egg, having hired trustworthy agents and accountants early in her career. She owns large houses in Los Angeles and her hometown in South Carolina and a penthouse apartment in a secure building in Metropolis. In cash and investments, her total net worth is somewhere around forty million dollars. Not a vast sum in comparison to say, a Lex Luthor or Bruce Wayne, but plenty secure.
APPROVED: ADV3 Costume
Rita has commissioned several costumes and undergarments made of advanced unstable molecules to allow her to remain clothed while shrinking and growing in size. It's been suggested that, if she tried hard enough, she could learn how to shapeshift her body to make clothes, but…ew, no, thank you. She always wears something modesty preserving of this underneath regular clothes, in case she's caught off guard.
APPROVED: SKILL Boxing
Rita's father was a champion boxer and he taught Rita some of his moves as she was growing up (to 'fight off the boys' he said). Since becoming a superheroine, she's taken up the old lessons again, visiting her Dad regularly for tips and does boxing workouts regularly. She's no expert, but she's adept with her fists, at least, capable of dodging, blocking and especially throwing punches effectively. Against a true martial artist, however, she'd have little comparison.
APPROVED: SKILL1 Acting
Rita's a naturally gifted actress, those gifts honed over years of experience on stage and screen. She's adept at feigning behavior and emotions believably, taking on different identities, and memorizing lines and plots with great accuracy. She wasn't just a pretty face on screen, often getting critical regard for adding depth to often flimsy material with her presence alone. She has vocal training that enables her to take on a variety of different accents.
APPROVED: SKILL2 Swimming
Rita was an Olympic swimming champion in her teenage years and still swims regularly for recreation, even having a pool on the roof of her apartment building. She swims almost daily and can still put up quite a fierce pace. This not only serves as a method of relaxation, but keeps her in remarkable shape and fighting trim.
APPROVED: SKILL4 Etiquette
Rita is extremely well-mannered, charming and diplomatic by nature. She's an excellent hostess, able to run parties effectively and set up entertainment for guests. She's learned how to interact with a diverse array of people, is excellent at making small talk and is, in fact, genuinely interested in other people than herself. She's good at making friends and making a good impression. And, of course, she has impeccable manners, as any true Southern girl should.
APPROVED: FLAW1 Vulnerabilities
While she's immune to most forms of impact or cutting harm (as well as electricity), she still can be harmed by fire, cold, drowning or gas. She needs food and water to survive like anyone else and could not survive in the vacuum of space (and at the bottom of the ocean only if she could find a way to grow large enough to reach the surface in time). In addition, she can still feel pain from many forms of harm, even pain significant enough to knock her unconscious, even if it doesn't do lasting damage.
APPROVED: FLAW2 Mind Manipulation
Naive and trusting to begin with, Rita's issues with depression and her mental breakdown have given her an overall weak psyche and sense of self worth. As a result, she's extremely vulnerable to telepathic and psychic intrusions, manipulation, even brainwashing and full on mind control. She simply doesn't have much in the way of defense against such and will likely succumb quickly to any attack of this sort.
APPROVED: FLAW3 Size Differences
While being able to control your size has advantages, they each have disadvantages, too. Being gigantic makes it harder to see small details and, eventually, makes the people and things around you small enough that it can be difficult to even discern what they're doing. This can make teamwork difficult, not to mention give enemies advantages against her when she can't see precisely what they're up to (hence why she rarely goes full supergiant to start). When she's tiny, it's the same problems in reverse, with everything so large that you can't see the big picture, only tiny details. Not to mention that you yourself are easy to miss, resulting in kicking and stepping on. Plus, cats. Cats can be a problem, especially if you don't want to hurt them. Microscopic shrinking can be almost dangerous, as you can entirely lose your sense of place and direction at those hypertiny sizes. Since she doesn't have much of a science background, Rita rarely goes to such extremes unless truly required.
APPROVED: FLAW4 Collateral Damage
At large sizes, it's relatively easy to accidentally break things, kick things or, in general, be clumsy and do some damage. Shifting sizes often can increase clumsiness by making it difficult to adjust to the dimensions of your body as they constantly change, so it isn't as easy to instinctively know when you're close to something. Collateral damage can be dangerous and expensive, not to mention making people mad.
APPROVED: FLAW5 Reflexive Shifting
Extreme emotional responses can trigger Rita's powers unconsciously, causing her body to shift and change even against her will. Deep depression or fear can make her begin to shrink down or flatten. Anger or indignance can make her grow and swell. She usually can't undo these effects until she's gotten a handle on the emotions in question.
APPROVED: FLAW6 Fame's Downside
Rita Farr is a famous person and superhero. She has no secret identity, wears no mask and is easily recognizable by a large number of people. Even before she had superpowers, she got stalkers, death threats, weird love notes and obscene fanfic. That's all tripled since she became a superheroine, especially given her powerset. She can sometimes get mobbed in public or chased by paparazzi. Rita is, by nature, shy and somewhat private, and, while she tries to be gracious, it can be overwhelming. Plus, any enemies she makes can find her pretty easily.
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