critique, criticism, and feedback go here! IP logging is off, anon is enabled, comments are screened.

if you're canon familiar, i'd love characterization critique, but chances are you're not, so things that would be useful for me to know are if my characterization is consistent, if my tags are engaging, if tiki's an interesting character, and if i'm giving you enough to work with. i'm aware of how Difficult clarisse is, so i want to make sure that even though she sucks and is mean and nasty, she's still fun to thread with!

thanks!

hold on i'm gonna make something pretty and add the actual first impressions a little later but i gotta get some shit outta the way first

BACKTAGGING: let me know ooc if there's a specific old thread you want to continue because if it's old enough and not immediately grabbing my interest i am liable to wander off
FOURTHWALLING: no thank you!
PHYSICAL AFFECTION: okay so this is the big thing—please ask me ooc before doing anything more than like, a jocular pat on the back kinda deal, because clarisse will respond very negatively! in particular, head pats are, like, mental breakdown level huge to her, so absolutely none of that without checking in. clarisse is a well-adjusted individual...........
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE: DOWN FOR IT gimme a holler ooc first maybe though because clarisse can and will fight back
RELATIONSHIPS: i meaN IF YOU INSIST BUT WHY

OOC INFO

Name: Courtney
Age: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgFeZr5ptV8
Timezone: EST
Reserve: https://cartesio.dreamwidth.org/1750.html?thread=21974#cmt21974
OOC Contact: nidorina

IC INFO

Name: Clarisse
Age: 17 (headcanon age)
Canon: Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Character History: Wiki link

Item Regains: Clarisse doesn't really have much in the way of stuff that matters to her, largely because she doesn't really have much in the way of her own things.

1. Her bow and arrows (counted as a unit because lmao whatcha gonna do with just like a couple of arrows and Nothing Else) are basically the only thing she would actively desire.

The other two are mostly just filter; if offered to her, she wouldn't consider them worth working towards, but if she received them as a bonus for doing something (after already receiving her weapon), she would be touched to have them, even if she would never admit it.
2. Reese's Tome—this is a magical item, but Clarisse wouldn't be able to use it. Some of our magic users might; it casts a relatively powerful swirling purple fire spell.
3. Legion's mask.

Personality: Clarisse, as I have bemoaned many a time on Plurk before, sucks.

She suffers from the same problem as every seventeen-year-old: knowing absolutely everything there is to know. What a terrible burden to bear—her company, that is; she carries herself with a haughty sense of superiority, and wastes no time making it clear that she thinks she's better than you. With her behavior largely existing on a spectrum from dismissive to downright cruel, the closest to any positive emotion anyone might see from Clarisse is a satisfied smirk for her own job well done.

Her confidence isn't entirely unfounded, though she doesn't bear the weight of her own infallibility like most bratty teenagers. For as long as she can remember, Clarisse has been trained as an assassin. As one of Eremiya's best, Clarisse leads Eremiya's hired hands from outside the orphanage, and doles out punishment for poor behavior as she sees fit. She takes a wretched sort of pleasure in it, laughing at the chance to bring an elderly curate to a slow and painful death. At the same time, she treats murder as a casual solution to her problems, suggesting that killing a stranger joining a mission to clear out a bandit hideout would be easier than letting her get in the way with only a mild frustration to it. Killing is all she knows, after all, all she has ever been good at and all anyone has looked for from her.

All of this work gets her full effort in hopes of receiving acknowledgement for it. She desperately craves praise, primarily from Eremiya, the sole authority figure in her life, to whom Clarisse has only ever known loyalty. Clarisse needs tangible reassurance of a job well done. Likely unsurprisingly, she hasn't nearly as much confidence as she boasts about.

Eremiya has always been quick to discard failures, and Clarisse has grown up watching anyone who falters get thrown away. Clarisse stands as one of Eremiya's best assassins, but that status only lasts as long as her performance does, so she comes to Eremiya's every beck and call, devouring every last chance to prove herself. When the boss Legion, a collective of masked assassins all with the same name raised in the orphanage together, is killed, his "brothers" are made worthless, and, despite, having been raised alongside them, Clarisse immediately volunteers to dispose of them when Reese balks at the prospect. When Eremiya calls Reese a failure, Clarisse smugly reinforces it; with or without Eremiya's provocation, Clarisse is quick to call Reese specifically useless and weak, as it ensures Eremiya is too focused on Reese's failures to take issue with Clarisse. In general, she keeps a staunch divide between her and the less impressive rabble; she delights in the priest's death but considers it beneath her because he's too easy a kill, and scornfully leaves her lackeys to take care of it with a threat to kill them herself if they flub the job. At every opportunity, Clarisse reinforces herself as a different sort than the rest, insistent of her superiority because if she falters, she'll be disposed of, too, and nothing scares her more.

Secretly, Clarisse longs for family and companionship, but cannot reconcile that longing with her insistence that such a thing makes one weak when she's so determined to separate herself as one of the strong. She even only acknowledges Reese, who has always been kind to Clarisse despite her emotional abuse fraught with an occasional act of kindness wrapped in condescension, as her sister about two seconds after calling her annoying and five seconds before literally dying. In her final moments, Clarisse first tries to send Reese away, not wanting to be seen at her most pathetic, but calls her back shortly after Reese starts to leave in her desperate fear of being alone. In an environment more full of strangers in Fire Emblem: Heroes, where she's been stolen jamjar-style from Archanea, she tells the Summoner they ought to take a break before threatening to give them a permanent nap, implying that she'll murder them if they don't take care of themselves. Outside of Eremiya's influence, Clarisse does a much poorer job at pretending she doesn't want friends; she scoffs openly at absolutely any attempt at interacting with her, but comes dangerously close to just going "It's not like I like you or anything!" at any expression of kindness with lines like "Still, the longer I'm here in the castle, I wonder if this is what having a family feels like. Hey! Get that smile off your face. I'm only wondering! Not saying it's what I want!"

While Clarisse comes from tragic origins, her shtick does kind of boil down to "cool motive, still murder." Her longing for friendship doesn't negate her sadism or otherwise homicidal tendencies—nor the fact that, as is true of anyone else who has ever been a teenager, she is absolutely insufferable to be around, with or without a weapon. But she would, of course, prefer the former, and a chance to prove her worth again.

Skills: Murder (having been trained as an assassin since she was a child), archery (especially long-distance sniping with intent to kill), above average agility, not an inhuman "night vision" power but Clarisse has been trained to carry out her work in dark and/or foggy conditions so she can function perfectly well in low-vision circumstances, if you give Clarisse an object she can figure out how to end someone's life with it.

Powers: Nothing supernatural!

How to Break Your Character: So the thing is that Clarisse is already predisposed to causing problems; all she knows is killing and criminality already. Because of her canonpoint, Clarisse is going to desperately be seeking chances to prove herself and earn praise—as an Authority Figure, the sergeant is likely to be someone she tries to win that approval from. Having to kill people or ruin towns on someone else's command was basically her whole shtick under Eremiya, too. Basically: Offer her a source of meaningful approval, and she's yours.

If you wanted to break her, you'd have to be nice to her; she doesn't know how to handle genuine kindness, never mind without anything explicitly expected in return. How this would affect her willingness to murder will vary, though!

Sample: [Please link a recent thread or write a short sample featuring your character! 200 words minimum. Try to showcase your character's personality and how they'd behave. The exact situation is up to you!]

Would you prefer that your character be a victim, a culprit, or do you have no preference? Culprit, if possible!