Post by leigh on Dec 14, 2011 22:59:46 GMT -6
:: Kimura Claire ::
Type: Original
Age: Fifteen
Year and Class: 1-C
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Crushes: Not currently interested in romance
Face Claim: Not sure if the image is of a character from a show or just an original work someone did, but here’s the link to where I found it, so credit can go to whoever it belongs to (and if anyone knows what show she’s from, if any, then I’d be really grateful if you told me): media.photobucket.com/image/music%20anime%20curly/panama_girl/Anime/23st284.jpg
Description:
Claire has light hair, the kind that changes with the season. In the fall and winter, it’s a dirty blond that could nearly be called light brown, but by midsummer it becomes a pale, golden color. It’s also very curly, although she’s constantly trying to make it lie flat, usually without much success, since she can’t afford to buy a flat iron or straightening products. Because of her hair, she tends to stick out, which makes her uncomfortable.
Her eyes are honey-colored and doe-like, with long thick eyelashes, and she considers her eyes to be her only redeeming physical feature. It’s easy not to notice how pretty they are, though, because her this, pale eyebrows are almost always knit together, as though she’s trying to work something out. This causes her entire face to wrinkle up, giving her an unapproachable appearance and making her look older then what she really is.
She’s is very tall for a girl in Japan, at 5’8”, and unpleasantly skinny at only 115 pounds. Because of this, she has very long, thin limbs, which she’s always trying to draw into herself, because they make her feel awkward and clumsy. In fact, she really is clumsy, and often knocks things over or runs into people, even though she is very careful not to. Her self-consciousness and clumsiness cause her to concentrate very hard on each movement she makes, adding to her constant worried expression.
Her height also means she’s taller then most boys, which she secretly minds, even though she claims not to care, saying that she has no time for boys anyway. But really she wants to be cared for as much as any other girl, although she feels that it’s an impossible dream for someone who looks like she does.
Because she’s so skinny, she has a very straight figure, and her hips are nonexistent. She’s lacking in the chest area as well, and she wears a training bra, more because it makes her feel better to wear one then because she actually needs it.
She only has one uniform, which she wears to school every day. Because of this, she has to go to the Laundromat every day after school to wash it, which uses up a good part of her funds. Since she can’t afford to have it dry cleaned, it tends to be wrinkled, and is also too large for her, causing it to hang awkwardly on her body, making her figure look much more bony unsightly then it actually is. When she isn’t in her uniform, such as when it’s in the Laundromat, she normally wears grey skinny jeans, of which she has two identical pairs, and different colored t-shirts, nearly always with a thin red scarf around her neck, even when it completely clashes with her other clothing. She also has a grey pea coat that she wears when it’s cold. Sometime she even wears it with her uniform, although it doesn’t really match very well. One of her favorite belongings is a pair of red rain boots with little black buckles that her parents bought her for her thirteenth birthday. They’re very special to her, because she knows how long they had to save to afford them, so she tends to wear them as often as possible, even when the sky is perfectly clear. She also has a small collection of sparkly hair barrettes that her old boyfriend gave her before they broke up, and she often uses them to try and keep her unruly hair back from her face.
She never wears makeup, because she doesn’t think she’s pretty enough for it, and because she sees it as a waste of time. She does care about how she looks, though, and often wishes that she looked more like the ordinary girls, with dark straight hair that was willing to lie flat and behave. Her least favorite thing about her appearance by far, however, is her height.
Personality:
Because Claire is very poor, she often feels bitterness towards those who have more than she does, especially the ones that “don’t deserve it”. She works very hard at everything she does, because she is determined to be successful. She often daydreams about being incredibly wealthy, and fantasizes about rubbing it in the faces of the wealthier girls who mock her for her poverty. While she does not directly blame her parents for her situation, she sometimes feels that, if they had only worked harder and been more determined, she would not have had to suffer as much as she did. But it’s hard for her to stay bitter with them for long when she thinks about how much they do in order to provide her with the few things she does have, especially her mother, who works in a sweaty laundry every day from two in the morning to four in the afternoon.
Her first – and only, so far – real friend was a boy who went to her old high school. She was completely devoted to him, and cared for him more then she had ever realized she could care about someone, but after they had been dating for eight months he dumped her for one of the girls that always teased Claire. Claire knew that the girl didn’t even care about her boyfriend; the girl was only doing it to hurt Claire. In fact, she dumped him after they had been dating only a month and a half. Since then, Claire has stayed away from boys, and has decided to become asexual, or at least to act like it. This is her resort to a lot of things: acting like she doesn’t care in order to save herself from the shame and disappointment that comes from not succeeding or getting what she wanted. This is how she acts about nearly everything except school, in which she openly strives for excellence, occasionally to the point of bragging.
She is extremely self conscious about her appearance, and tends to feel awkward because of her hair and height, but she can normally get past her nervousness by thinking about how respected she will be once she proves herself in the world. She doesn’t know what she wants to do yet, but she wants it to be spectacular. And lucrative.
Vain, “silly” girls annoy her more than anything else, especially if they are the kind of girls that waste globs of money on fancy hair products, clothing, or makeup. To Claire, practicality is everything, and money should never be wasted. Except for when she becomes rich, of course, because then she intends to buy every frivolous novelty known to humankind. Maybe even some that aren’t known yet.
To Claire, getting accepted into Hikarizaka is just a step on her way towards achieving her dream of becoming wealthy and revered. And, even though she tells herself it’s silly, she also hopes to make some friends, for once. Or even just one. But that’s silly. No one would want to be friends with Claire, and she knows it.
History:
Claire’s father Ichiro Kimura was a poor, lazy boy who quit highschool when he was still fairly young. Her mother was a middle class student. She met and eventually fell in love with Ichiro, and the two began dating. Eventually, she became pregnant with Claire. When her parents found out what had happened, they ordered her to abort the child and move to another town with them, to save her – and them – from the shame of what she had done. But she refused and moved in with Ichiro, while continuing to go to school. Near the end of her pregnancy, she became too ill to continue school and dropped out, and was never able to complete it. After Claire was born, Ichiro and Claire’s mother got married and did the best they could to care for their daughter, but they were always very short on money, since Claire’s maternal grandparents had cut of their support of their daughter after she married Ichiro. They did the best they could, though, and were a close, loving family.
Claire grew up without many friends, because she was always being teased for being different. Even as a child, she was taller than most all of her classmates, even the boys, although that evened out a little bit more as she got older. Besides her height, she was also set apart by her hair, as she was the only one in her school with blond, or curly, hair. And then there was her strange sounding, foreign name. Claire minded these things a lot at first, and in elementary school she cut her hair very short and wore a hat every day, so that no one could see it. But she was teased even more for this, and the other children were always taking her hat and refusing to give it back to her. By middle school her hair had grown back to a normal length, and she had stopped caring quite so much what the other kids thought, although their comments still hurt. Because she still didn’t have any friends, she spent her time focusing very hard on her studies. Soon, she had the highest spot in her class, and all her teachers talked about her bright she was. Claire wasn’t particularly proud of this, it was just something for her to do, since she didn’t have any friends to spend time with.
She continued like this for several years, until she was fifteen and her school had a competition for a scholarship to Hikarizaka Private High School, in a nearby town. Claire’s parents were very excited, because they knew how smart she was and hoped that she would have a chance to get a better education – and a better life – then either of them had. Claire worked very hard and won the competition, and was excited about the new life she hoped she would have at the school.
Although the scholarship paid for boarding at the dorms and for the class fees, Claire had to purchase her own uniform. She couldn’t afford to buy a new one, but she was able to find a used uniform from a previous graduate that was in her budget – although it was still difficult to get enough money to purchase it. It didn’t fit her right, and hung in a funny way that embarrassed her, and Claire was bitter for a while over her parents inability to afford even to buy her a decent uniform, but she soon forgot about that in the excitement of getting ready to go to the new school. Maybe her life would finally be better. Maybe she would even make a few friends.Controller's Information
Nickname: Leigh
Age: Private
Gender: Female
Seen the Anime/Played the Game?: I watched most of the first half of the anime, but didn’t finish it because the cursing got to be worse and more frequent then I could deal with, so I read the summaries of the episodes so I would know what had happened. I went on to read the summaries of most of the after-story as well. I have never played the game.
How Did You Find Us?: From my friend, "Legend".
Sample RP: Claire sat on her cot, staring at the shiny black suitcase her mother had given her. It was the same one her mother had brought with her when she moved in with her father, and Claire couldn’t help but feel a connection to her mother as she re-folded her uniform for the third time, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. She was about to go on a trip, to a place where she had never been, to attend a school she had never even heard of until recently. And while she wasn’t starting a new life in quite the same way that her mother had, she somehow felt like she was leaving one world behind in favor of another one, a new one. Would it be better, she wondered? Or was she naïve for imagining that she could ever have a better life? Everything about her was strange, from her hair, to her name, to the “new” uniform that would never look right now matter how so tucked and pinned it. But she couldn’t worry about those things. This wasn’t about making new friends, even if Claire did hope to make some, this was about getting an education. About making a better life for herself and for her parents. Her mind wandered to her favorite fantasy, where she was a famous scientist, or maybe a doctor, or the architect of huge, intricate skyscrapers. She would be revered, respected. She would never again have to wear ill-fitting clothing given to her by sympathetic neighbors, or watch her parents go without food to buy her a new pair of shoes when her old ones got holes. She would buy a huge, extravagant house, and have a dozen maids to wait on her, and she would take care of her parents as they grew old. She would buy the most expensive clothes she could find, and only wear each outfit once before she threw it out, because, of course, Rich Claire would never stoop to wearing the same shirt more than once! And she would buy the local movie theatre, and all of the snooty girls that teased her because she couldn’t afford to see any of the latest movies would be banned, and she would laugh and laugh, and—
“Claire? Are you nearly finished packing? You’ll miss the train if you don’t hurry.”
Claire looked up and saw her mother looking down at her with her crystal blue eyes. She was trying to look stern, but somehow the expression didn’t quite work on her sweet, oval face.
“Here, I’ll help you.” Claire’s mother sad down besides Clair on the cot, and began neatly folding the clothes laying haphazardly on the bed, placing each garment carefully in the suitcase. Even though Claire was too old to need help, she sat and watched her mother’s thin, graceful hands at work. Her mother’s hands had probably been very beautiful once, but now they were worn and rough from years of manual labor. And yet, they still had a feminine grace, a tender gentleness to them that Claire’s clumsy fingers would never learn.
“There, is that everything?”
The suitcase was so empty that everything would tumble into a pile at the slightest jolt, undoing all of her mother’s work. Claire somehow felt like a fake, carrying such a nice suitcase when she hardly had any belongings.
But her mother was still looking around the empty room, as if the expected to find something her daughter had forgotten. Then a smile appeared on her face and her blue eyes sparkled, as though she had thought of something.
“Stay that, I’ll be right back,” she said, kissing Claire on the head before hurrying out of the room, excited.
A few moments later she hurried back into the room, holding something behind her back.
“Here, close your eyes,” she said, a childish excitement in her voice.
Wondering what her mother was up to, Claire did as she was told. A moment later, she felt a soft, glossy material enveloping her neck. Unconsciously, her hand went up to her neck to gently feel the silky material.
“Alright, open your eyes.”
Claire did, and looked down to see the beautiful red scarf that was wrapped artfully around her neck. It was obviously silk, a material that the girl had only felt a few times, and for a moment she was speechless. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
“Are you…Giving this to me?” she asked, afraid of sounding greedy, thinking her mother might have merely been showing it to her. She realized that both of her hands were at her neck, tightly clutching the precious piece of cloth. She didn’t want to take it off. She wanted to wear it forever.
“Of course I am,” said her mother, obviously pleased by her reaction.
“But…It’s so beautiful,” Claire said. It seemed almost wrong, for such a plain girl to wear something so lovely.
“Then it’s perfect for you,” Claire’s mother kissed her forehead again, then hugged her daughter close. “I’ll miss you, sweet heart.”