F24: HUNTINGDON, CLARISSE [DECEASED]

#1

DECEASED

Name: Clarisse Huntingdon
Gender: Female
Age: 17
School: Alderbrook High School
Hobbies and Interests: Pool, Video games, Horror movies, (previously cheerleading, fashion and modelling)

Appearance: Standing at 5'5", Clarisse weighs in at a somewhat chubby 142 lbs, giving her a fairly rounded appearance overall. Her weight is spread fairly evenly across her body, lending itself to a pudgy stomach, prominent rear, wide hips, obvious chest and slightly rounded cheeks - something Clarisse absolutely hates any attention being drawn to. Her hair is dark brown, straight, and falls down around her shoulders, matching her eyes in colouration. But for one egregious flaw, Clarisse's face is very pretty, with a light scattering of freckles across a smooth and healthily pale complexion, full lips (which express themselves in a surprisingly shy smile), doe-eyes, and naturally thin eyebrows. However, her beauty is ruined by her nose, which has been badly broken before setting poorly, leaving it both crooked and with a noticeable bump in the bridge. Needless to say, Clarisse is very self-conscious about this. She wears little make-up, feeling that there is no point attempting to 'repair' the damage done to her face, which is probably a little melodramatic.

Although it is not nearly as much of an interest as it used to be, Clarisse is still pretty fashion-aware, and endeavours to dress nicely and apply a tasteful amount of make-up. She tends towards slightly looser clothes, and as Virtua commenced, she wore a cream and white blouse, light brown pants and sandals.

Biography: The Huntingdon family originally hailed from opposite ends of Canada, with her father Jean being from Quebec, whilst her mother Lucy lived in British Columbia. They met whilst studying in the University of British Columbia, falling for each other within weeks. What seemed initially like a whirlwind romance and destined only to last for a very short time somehow by sheer fluke chance turned into an enduring relationship, much to the surprise of their friends who believed them far too volatile to actually settle down. However, in defiance of these predictions, Jean and Lucy married the day after graduation, before returning to Clarisse's hometown of Alderbrook.

Ten years and two children later, the relationship was under considerable strain. Jean, who had always had his reservations about moving to such a sleepy town, was beginning to feel that Alderbrook was hurting his career prospects, the pickings for a lawyer being rather slender there. Although they still cared about each other, both felt pulled in different directions, as Lucy wanted to focus on making sure their children had a stable upbringing and would not hear of moving elsewhere. Frantic attempts at rekindling the relationship came to nothing, and with neither of them willing to compromise Lucy and Jean eventually split, though not without one last bedroom romp the night they agreed to separate.

Unexpectedly, this resulted in a third pregnancy, and nine months later, Clarisse was born, taking Lucy's maiden name of Huntingdon. Upon finding out the news that Lucy was pregnant, Jean immediately assured her that he would not leave her without support, and continued to visit occasionally and send gifts to the children. In fact, despite the distance, their relationship remained very amicable, and neither of them seem much inclined to officially bring the marriage to an end. Through his sporadic appearances in her life, Clarisse and her father have become fairly close, and although she quickly became aware that Jean didn't exactly do all the things that a dad was supposed to, she never resented him for it.

This was something of a contrast to Clarisse's older brother and sister, Mark and Marie, nine and five years senior to her respectively. Mark could never quite forgive Jean for leaving, given his age at the time of the separation, and eventually grew to outright hate his father, stomping out of the house whenever he showed up. This even extended to becoming a sticking point between him and Clarisse, as Mark began to see her friendly terms with Jean as some kind of betrayal. For her part Clarisse has made little to no effort to repair this rift between her and her brother, regarding him as pig-headed and stubborn, and treating the entire falling out with the attitude that it is Mark's problem, not hers. Marie, on the other hand, simply treats Jean with nothing more than apathy, having lost interest in him as a father figure whilst she was still quite young. In spite of this Clarisse has always had a good relationship with her sister, tempered occasionally by some sibling rivalry.

Ever since she was a child, Clarisse had always been a strikingly pretty girl. Friends of Lucy would comment on how adorable she was, and Clarisse grew up being almost always the centre of attention. This planted the seeds of future vanity, although at this stage she was simply delighted to be getting pampered so much. This was only compounded when Clarisse was about seven years old, an employee of a local modelling agency noticing the young girl and approaching her mother with the offer to appear in a few adverts for a store the agency was associated with. Mark rapidly approaching college age and currently without the means to send him there, Lucy agreed to the offer, and Clarisse embarked on her new career.

Clarisse took to it with massive enthusiasm, quite possibly because it involved so many people concentrating on her. As the years went by, consistent offers came through from the agency, who then began to feed through work from other, larger agencies, often involving trips of several days to other parts of Canada. she was an excellent child and pre-teen model, and clearly loved it so much that nobody in the family, not even Mark begrudged her it. The confidence that posing in front of cameras gave her allowed Clarisse to be very outgoing at school, making a lot of friends and impressing them with her growing knowledge of fashion and developing career. Most of Clarisse's earnings over the years made their way into savings accounts, accessible to her only after she turns eighteen, something that she occasionally complained about but eventually accepted. Interestingly enough, the original reason Lucy accepted the modelling offer on Clarisse's behalf ended up being immaterial, as Mark decided that he did not want to go to college, instead choosing to continue working in Alderbrook's larger grocery stores.

Coached on the importance of keeping in shape, Clarisse joined the cheer-leading squad, although in truth she wasn't particularly good at it, getting by more on looks than anything else. Even so, with the state of Alderbrook's sporting affairs, nobody really minded all that much. At around this time, Clarisse also began to get involved with the game of pool, which she was introduced to during a visit to her father's place in Montreal. Her dad taught her the game and she rapidly got the hang of it, becoming a pretty good player. She still plays today, terrorising challengers at the tables of the local youth club, but has never shown much interest in taking it beyond a hobby.

With success going to her head a little, Clarisse was never a diligent student, preferring instead to ensure that her make-up was just so or inform her friends of the latest fashion trends. This led to her grades being fairly poor - passable, but little more than that. Teachers would constantly tell them that she needed to try harder, but Clarisse's gradually increasing ego caused her to simply brush off the criticism. Who needed school when you had a ready-made job waiting for you outside of it?

As Clarisse grew still older though, the contracts began to get fewer and further between. She was a teenager now, and the agencies weren't as interested in her now that others her age were coming into their own. Clarisse was still remarkably pretty, but what she didn't have was height, and more and more, that was what a lot of people were looking out to find. Good-looking girls were relatively easy to find, good-looking girls of a striking height? That was a different ball game altogether, and Clarisse grew slowly. This was a source of immense frustration for a now-rather-vain Clarisse, who made some serious melodrama out of the entire situation (much to the distaste of her family). With her mystique around school mostly gone, Clarisse's circle of friends began to largely dissipate as fewer and fewer of them showed the inclination to put up with her flaws.

The loss of a large section of her social group was a hell of a shock to the system for Clarisse, who had previously considered herself largely infallible, and it eventually came to have a positive effect on her. She didn't lose all of her arrogance, and certainly none of her vanity, but Clarisse's natural, friendlier personality reasserted itself. She began to befriend people through her own confident and enthusiastic outlook rather than her 'connections', and was all the happier for it, especially when some of her new buddies introduced her to the world of video games and later, scary movies. Clarisse's competitive streak found a great outlet in games (particularly shooters), and she also found she loved the thrill that came with watching horror. Her friends certainly didn't mind her screaming and clinging to them during said films, either...

Unfortunately, just as soon as things had picked up, they came crashing down again, hard. Clarisse and a group of her newer friends, having got a little drunk off the liquor supply of the parents of one of said group, decided it would be an awesome idea to take a joyride in another parent's car. Given none of them were much over sixteen, the drive went about as well as could be expected, culminating in the inebriated driver crashing the vehicle straight into a concrete wall. Clarisse was the only one wearing a seatbelt, and all four of the others in the car were killed during the crash. Clarisse escaped with relatively minor injuries - a stress fracture of one shin, some whiplash and a badly broken nose. After the accident, Clarisse had a relatively minor punishment - no charges were pressed given the tragedy involved and the fact that Clarisse was clearly not to blame for the crash. The police gave her a reprimand, but she was otherwise largely treated with sympathy thanks to her considerable trauma.

Clarisse recovered well from the accident, but her life was once again badly shaken up. Not only were most of her friends dead, which racked her with grief, but Clarisse had lost one of the things dearest to her in life - her looks. The broken nose set badly, marring her otherwise beautiful face, and causing the modelling contracts to dry up once and for all. Clarisse made much more of her nose than it really was, declaring herself 'hideous' and 'ugly'. She was utterly inconsolable, and in spite of a great deal of sympathy from the Alderbrook community for the accident, Clarisse gradually drove away many of her remaining friends thanks to her fixation on her appearance. Indeed, a number of people commented that Clarisse really deserved to be taken down a peg or two, although of course they hardly wished the accident on her. This combined blow meant that Clarisse took a lot longer to overcome her feelings about the crash than she otherwise might have done, and the loss of her friends is still very much a healing wound.

The car wreck robbed Clarisse of most of her trademark confidence and swagger, quitting the cheer team as soon as she returned to school. The loss of what she had felt would be her career was another blow to Clarisse, as she saw the one thing she'd been aiming for disintegrate before her eyes. Clarisse grew despondent and solitary - all but directionless. Her mother insisted on her attending therapy, but her moods were assumed to be entirely part of the grieving process, as opposed to a combination. Whilst these meetings have helped Clarisse move on a little from the death of her friends, they have done little to alleviate her other problems, meaning she is still far from a happy person.

Clarisse also lost the motivation to keep trim and in shape, deciding that since her face was never going to allow her to model, there was no point in exercising meticulously. Over the year and a half or so since the accident, Clarisse has put on a fair bit of weight, to the point which looking at her today, thinking her a model is almost ridiculous. Currently, Clarisse's grades remain pretty bad, her social links are even worse and although her mother and father do their best to be supportive, Lucy is working a full time job and Jean lives on the opposite side of the country. Clarisse is aimlessly drifting, and really has no idea what to do with herself, clinging to her hobbies of gaming, movies and pool... but now doing them almost invariably alone.

Advantages: Regardless of her lack of popularity, Clarisse is pretty well known around Alderbrook for both her former career and the accident, which may lead people to be more trusting of her purely because they know her better or at least know of her. Additionally, thanks to her love of horror movies, shooters and of course the car wreck, Clarisse is slightly more acclimatised to the sight of blood and violence than the average person, making her a bit less likely to freak out over it.
Disadvantages: It is debatable whether Clarisse even has the drive and desire to put herself in danger and actively attempt to win the game - she might simply give in and die. However, even if she doesn't, Clarisse is notorious as much as famous, and just as people knowing her might be an advantage, so too could it be a disadvantage; Clarisse's attitude has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way over time, both pre and post accident, and it's possible that her classmates could still retain grudges towards her. Finally, Clarisse has a distinct lack of conditioning and hence has pretty poor stamina, which could definitely prove costly in a game where endurance is so essential.

Designated Number: Female Student #24

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Designated Weapon: Cattle Branding Iron
Conclusion: This one's tough. Really, though, this ain't a cattle brandin' contest, and it takes a lot more'n just bein' familiar with a little personal sufferin' t' give you what it takes. She'll be better off just avoidin' the people who don't like her 'til they've all wiped each other out. 'course, that still don't do much for her. Probably ain't nothin' will.

DECEASED