Emily Bonham
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Name: Emily Bonham
Codename: Corpse Bride (often shortened to just "Corpse").
Gender: Female.
Pronouns: She / Her.
Species: Robot (humanoid).
Age: late thirties (apparent).
Heritage: Can be customized to fit any preference; currently defaulted to generic American (apparent).
Profession: Freedom fighter (former), housekeeper, talked-about socialite (rarely).
Title: Miss Bonham.
Alignment: Chaotic Good.
Status: She was in a long-distance relationship with an Artificial Intelligence - but it's unclear whether they have fallen out since then. Not looking.
Sexual orientation: Can be customized to fit any preference; currently defaulted to Asexual / Panromantic.
WARNING: the images below refer to Emily's old appearance, from her WALL-E Forum incarnation. I am working to replace them with up-to-date illustrations.
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Appearance
Height: Roughly 5'6''.
Built: Emily comes across as slender, petite and graceful with a hourglass figure and the appearance of a wife from a TV commercial. She's elegant in the way she moves and her step has a dance to it - but it's only an illusion. Her metallic exoskeleton not only makes her a lot sturdier than she appears, but far nimbler and faster than any ordinary human being.
Hair: A soft cloud of wavy blue-black hair that falls down her waist. Parted in the middle, she either wears it either totally or partly loose with two double buns.
Eyes: Her eyes are deep ocean-blue, with thick lashes and the expression of one who has lived longer than her age. Sometimes, if one is really keen, an imperceptible delay can be noticed in their movement when she is deep in thought. It's not so noticeable that it becomes uncanny, though.
Facial features: Emily has a beautifully sculpted face made of long lines and high cheekbones. Her eyebrows are finely arched, her nose straight and proud. She has full, sensuous lips.
Skintone: Originally a healthy peach, her synthethic skin was damaged and has now taken a bluish pallor that makes her look like a drowned woman who's come back to life.
Playby: Megan Gallivan as Abigail Bray-Sully in "Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman"
Scars: Her artificial skin is damaged or downright missing in some parts of her body, exposing the mechanics underneath. Respectively, she has a large gash on her left cheek, and a missing chunk from her right flank. Her left arm and right leg are also totally devoid of flesh, and entirely robotic.
Voice: Soft, pleasantly high-pitched without being shrill or screechy, with a faintly dusky vibe to it. Emily chooses her words carefully and never really seems to need to raise her voice, not even when she's upset.
Voice claim: Leda Battisti.
Scent: A soft flowery fragrance - not reminiscent of wilted flowers, but more like a not-so-distant promise of springtime in the winter. Those with enhanced sense of smell (whether by enhancement or animal heritage) will, however, perceive that she smells not like the human she appears - but like the machine she is.
Outfit: For the longest time, Emily was constantly seen in a rattery wedding dress fashioned in an undefined but vaguely oriental flare, the very same that she should have married her Demetrio in. More recently, her attire has changed to reflect her decision to embrace her new life as it unfolds and leave the past behind (as much as an immortal robot can); although white remains her favorite color, nowadays she wears longsleeve sweaters, soft airy dresses and form-fitting leggings. She never exceeds in jewelry or too outlandish outfits, with a more traditionally elegant style.
Weapons: Her robotic arms have built-in blasters, but she keeps them deactivated at all times (except in the eventual combat situation, which has not been the case as of late).
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History
Emily is a mysterious cybernetic lifeform whose purpose is to replicate a "standard" spouse. Her programming is fully customizable and enables her to cook, clean, watch after the elderly, manage one or more houses, take care of pets, raise kids, wash the laundry, plan a holiday, attend a gala events and appear (and act) completely human-like. Very little is known about her origins; she herself ignores who created her or whether there are other units like her in the vastness of all the realms-that-are. Emily has no memory of ever existing prior to her activation; she started off as the partner of a man that she refers to as "her first husband", but for reasons beyond her fathoms their relationship never really seemed to take off. Eventually, the man decided to get rid of her, and Emily found herself shut off before she even had the time to ask why.
Fortunately, she didn't get dismantled for spare parts and cybernetics by some backyard wreckers. Instead she made her way from one flea market to the next, auctioned in turns as a store mannequin, a 3D sculpture or a crash dummy. Yet her hauntingly all-too-human appearance was perceived as deeply unsettling, and turned off potential buyers. In the end she became part of a large unsold stock that came into possession of Carlotta Di Ventimiglia, a wealthy widow from Cheyne City. Mistaking Emily for something halfway between a mannequin and a dressing stand, the woman accidentally managed to activate her. Suddenly, Emily was once again able to see, hear, speak and move - but in a different time and place and without the faintest idea of how she ended up there.
After an understandably shocking beginning, however, the two women were able to bond in spite of their differences. Carlotta offered Emily a place to stay and took it upon herself to coach her into society. Yet in order to get anywhere in life, the enigmatic android from another time needed a name and background, so the ever crafty Carlotta tailored her a brand-new identity of Emily Bonham, named after an old friend of hers who had died a spinster. Because there were no other living Bonham relatives who could call out the gig, Emily was able to come and go as she desired, and her programming helped her blend in flawlessly with the people of Cheyne City. Before long, the beautiful woman who looked almost like a princess had made herself right at home among the humans - and not-humans - of this time.
Through Emily's life, Carlotta was her staunchest friend and mentor, supporting her in all that she did. Yet an encounter with her bright grandson Demetrio (whom Carlotta was backing as a prospective boyfriend for Emily) changed the latter's orderly world and left her lost, dazed and over-the-moon about him on top of it all. Demetrio was smitten with Emily the moment he saw her, and Emily found herself falling hard for him in turn - the tall, dark-haired young man wooing her with his well-educated manners and charming attentiveness. Emily saw in her feelings for Demetrio something she had never experienced before - and something that wasn't just about her programming, either. Though conscious that he would someday grow old and die while she continued to live forever, she secretly took the decision to deactivate herself after his passing rather than face an eternity without him.
Following Carlotta's advice, Emily never told Demetrio the truth about her artificial nature for fear that he might be too weirded out by it. Additionally, the shroud of mystery that surrounded her origins had never truly been lifted. Although she and Demetrio were generally happy together, and Emily desperately wanted to become his wife after he proposed to her, knowing next to nothing about her past and where she came from was still deeply unsettling to her. For all these reasons she decided to keep quiet and just bask in the many happy moments that their life together offered.
It wasn't until the day of her wedding that Emily's happiness was shattered forever. Demetrio had casually oveheard her talk with Carlotta about the circumstances of their first meeting; it was then that he also found out how the woman he was going to marry had really been a machine all along, In a fit of icy rage, he declared his grandmother "not sound of mind" and had her locked up in a mental asylum for the pychotic and dangerous. He then snuck upon Emily, shut her off, and promptly dispatched her deactivated shell a disposal facility with other malfunctioning robots units that were going to be scrapped.
But fate wasn't done with Emily. The garbage truck on which she travelled ended up caught in the middle of a terroristic attack; heavily damaged in the ensuing exploion, she was flung in the air and crashed into a nearby alleway, amidst shrapnel and battered metallic components. Here, she would be found and reactivated by the anarchists behind the attack, a subversive group of cyborgs known as the Crimson Rise. Rescued but consumed by grief, after Demetrio's betrayal and Carlotta's arrest, Emily lost her whole way of life and with it, she lost everything. Called Corpse Bride for the wedding dress she was wearing, she eventually joined the Crimson Rise when their leader Maelstrom offered her a home with them.
The Crimson had waged war against a small but influential cartel of corporations - led by LuxCo - that controlled cybernetic markets over the most important Terran settlements. The only way for cyborgs to survive outside the cartel's jurisdiction was through unlicensed implants that were poorly functional at best and downright hazardous at worst; those who refused to become tools in the hands of LuxCo found themselves risking life and limb in backyard clinics, run by organized crime lords and other unscrupulous characters. Embittered by their dire survival, the Crimson vowed revenge and set out to make the golden world of corporate just as poised as the one in which they were forced to dwell. If innocent lives were also lost as casualties, the Crimson Rise just shrugged it off in the name of a greater good.
Fighting alongside the Crimson for well over a decade seemed to cut Emily off her gentle nature. While LuxCo's tyrannical hold over the cybernetics trade did not affect her as personally, their treatment of non-organics as disposable, worthless beings hit far too close to home. Over time, she became Maelstrom's lieutenant and trusted advisor, occasionally finding solace in his arms. Though they enjoyed each other's company and comfort, however, the chemistry between them was only skin-deep, and both were aware that their dalliance could never grow to be something deep or permanent; Maelstrom wasn't the type to settle down, and after her failed engagement to Demetrio, Emily was left too emotionally scarred and distrustful of love to invest herself into a serious commitment. She desperately feared getting her heart broken again, and became more snide and withdrawn as she roamed Terra alongide the Crimson Rise.
Many years later, the Crimson met a relatively new band of young dissenters who called themselves the Defiant Citizen, and an uneasy alliance was formed. The Defiants longed for a world where organics and non-organics could thrive; they believed that the LuxCo cartel could be better undermined by chipping away at its power and influence bit by bit, rather than by brute force. Though risk-takers in their own way, they tended to err on the side of caution compared to their cyborg allies. They did not engage in guerrilla but were quite skilled with sabotage and infiltration. After a somewhat rocky start, both the Crimson Rise and the Defiant Citizen came to a mutual respect. Nothing, however, had prepared Emily for the unexpected revelation that one of the Defiants was the teenager daughter of Demetrio by another woman. Emily saw in Cris the living reminder of everything she could never have; she seemed to be fighting jealously, both of the fact that Demetrio had left her to marry Astoria and the fact that their family was everything she had always dreamed for herself. For all these reasons, she had extremely little contact with Cris through the years, and mostly kept to herself.
At the height of his reign, Emily's lover Maelstrom eventually launched one too many attacks against the megacorporations of the Terran Republic. His war with LuxCo ended in the distruction of most of the Crimson - leaving only Emily and another cyborg (who later died) to escape the slaughter. The survivors had no other choice but turn to the Defiant Citizen for help. Since the dissolution of the Crimson Rise, Emily had nothing to do and nowhere to go, and, after the other cyborg died, she decided to join the Defiant Citizen to honor the sacrifice of her fallen comrades. Even if she continued to be a freedom fighter, settling into her new life in the Defiants ranks seemed to bring back her old good sense.
Harder was working to mend her relationship with Cris. Spending countless years plagued by the scars of Demetrio's betrayal, Emily found it difficult to fight alongside the girl whom she perceived as a liability, a throwback to the past, and the mix of her calloused father and superficial mother. It took time for Emily to realize that Cris had more of Carlotta in her than she had of Demetrio. She was caring, selfless and compassionate, looking upon other life forms with respect. Ultimately, Emily was able to bridge the gulf between them when she confessed where her initial disdain stemmed from, and a deep friendship was born between her and Cris. Nonetheless, it was still a great shock to her when Cris confessed that she'd much rather haver had Emily as her mother, rather than Astoria. That touched Emily's heart in a way that she didn't think possible.
When Cris was framed for treason and had to flee from the long hand of LuxCo, Emily stayed loyal to her. Even after discovering that she went rogue and became a notorious pirate, she never questioned her judgment; Cris must have had her reasons for what she did and that was that. Having known the elusive gift of love, Emily had nothing but happiness for Cris when the kind-hearted younger woman found herself falling for an assassin from her new crew, and she was beside herself with joy when Cris said she wanted her to be the grandmother of the three children to which she'd give birth within the next four years (quite a feat in and of itself).
Later on, Emily was shaken to the core when she found out that Carlotta was still alive - and was still detained in the high security institute where Demetrio had tossed her all those years prior. She immediately set out to find and rescue her; her ability for infiltration and combat (a skill she acquired during her years on the battlefield) getting the two of them out of many a danger. Eventually, Emily was able to spring Carlotta out of the institute. She then chose to leave the Defiant Citizen and spend the rest of her life as the protector of her old friend. Ever since, she would be constantly seen at Carlotta's side. The trauma of Demetrio's betrayal and the tortures endured while prisoner in the institute, coupled with advancing age, took their toll on Carlotta, leaving her not all sound of mind and not fully "there" most of the times. But even though past and present continued to unravel and intermingle in her head, Carlotta was still kept chipper by Emily's friendship, the one bright spark in her confusing new world.
With the release of her past grief, Emily was finally free to accept the gifts that life offered; fulfilling her dream of a family with Cris and her children, and even exploring a new relationship with an unnamed Artificial Intelligence. When Cris lost her husband, Emily tried to help her find a measure of peace in spite of her heartache, a pain that the artificial woman was all too familiar with. Knowing that her place was where she was needed most, Emily returned to New Cheyne City with her adopted daughter, the kids, and Carlotta. She's a steadfast ally, and vowed to stand by Cris against her birth family, the powerful and corrupted Aliprandi Clan.
