Isobel Clamp (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
onlytomorrow) wrote2013-09-09 09:02 pm
onlytomorrow) wrote2013-09-09 09:02 pm
Al-A-Ga-Zam: Application & Info
Character Name: Isobel Clamp
Fandom: N/A (original character)
Age: 13
Canon Point: N/A
History:
Isobel Clamp was born to Johan Clamp (The Astonishing Mind-Reading Johannes, at the time) and a well-to-do woman with whom Johan had a torrid affair lasting approximately fifty-two hours. It was only when the Carnival returned to her hometown some three years later that he learnt he was a father - and that his progeny had some inkling of true second sight, something that he himself could only aspire to. Doing what any responsible father would do, Johan faked his lover's suicide, robbed her household blind and kidnapped his daughter for a life on the road. Having forgotten her brief life with her late mother, the Carnival is all Isobel now knows.
She largely raised and educated herself, helped by carnies of various strokes, her father indifferent to her except as a future source of income. When she reached the age of eight, however, Johan decided that her ability to see the future was developing too slowly, stymied by her ability to see the present: his solution to this was to have both her eyes removed by a crooked doctor at one of the Carnival's stops. They were replaced by plain white prostheses.
Johan turned out to be right; his daughter's visions started to come thick and fast. Isobel struggled to control her visions and maintain her perception of reality, which Johan saw as an attempt to rob him of the income she'd already begun to earn for him. He isolated her from the rest of the Carnival, and his relationship with her grew possessive and violent.
Shortly before her tenth birthday, the Carnival returned to a previous site and Isobel had a vision: her father beaten to a pulp by men who'd lost everything having followed advice given by Johan years earlier. She elected not to tell him.
Soon after her father's completely unmourned death, she inherited their previously shared trailer and his role as psychic in the Carnival, which she continues to fill to this day.
Powers/Abilities: Isobel sees the future.
What she would tell you, though, is that she very accurately sees the past - that is, everyone's past. Her vision of a client's future is a projection of what is most likely to happen, based on that person's history and the history of the people they're going to interact with. For example, if you've decided to start walking a different route home down an alleyway that's frequented by a mugger, she can tell you with certainty that you're going to get your ass beat up and robbed sometime soon. If you've just been given a clean bill of health by a doctor who's boning your wife and has a vested interest in your premature death, she can tell you to get a second opinion, and maybe stop eating your wife's cooking.
If you're going to get hit by lightning, though? No can do. Non-anthropogenic events don't register with her. She's also incapable of predicting her own future, and it's generally more difficult for her to get a read on people from different worlds and times - though the longer they stay the easier it becomes.
Personality:
Isobel is 13-going-on-40. Knowing from a young age that she was the only person who was ever really going to take care of her has made her hyper-responsible and a great deal more 'adult' than some of her colleagues at the Carnival; she's quiet, studious and serious, and has a fondness for order that doesn't gel with her often chaotic environment. There is still a little girl in her who's been deprived of her childhood, and there's one or two long-termers in the Carnival who can bring that out, but she struggles to see fun for fun's sake as being worthwhile.
This is all deeply internalised and fraught with cognitive dissonance: for other people, leisure is a valuable release but for her it's frivolous and wasteful. For other people, disorganisation is manageable but for her it's a gateway into reckless slobbery. She holds herself to impossibly high, rigid standards. Because she hates being at a loose end, when she's not running her act she does everything she can to be helpful elsewhere, and despite her blindness has learnt to do several chores around the Carnival.
Unsurprisingly, her knowledge of the future and blindness to the present has left her with a bit of a nihilistic streak, though she rarely allows herself to indulge in those sorts of thoughts.
In day-to-day behaviour she's softly spoken and introverted but not asocial. She likes to be aware of goings-on around the Carnival and getting to know newcomers - partly because she needs to compensate for not really being able to people-watch, and partly because new arrivals from other worlds are hard to read. Her nascent sense of humour runs to the sardonic.
She hates being touched unexpectedly, and it can send her into fits of violent temper. Clients are asked not to touch her on the boards advertising her act as contact with mundane persons dampens her powers.
Inventory:
Clothes - about four outfits, all of them high-quality but about thirty years out of date.
Scrying equipment - Tarot cards, a crystal ball, a set of wooden runes and an incense burner. None of it's necessary but people will like their theatre.
Braille books x 5, including the New Testament.
Slate, stylus and paper for writing in Braille.
Cash - Isobel is paid relatively well but lives a pretty frugal life.
Isobel has also inherited her father's belongings, which include a few men's outfits, a few bottles of cheap liquor and a connoisseur's collection of pornography.
Fandom: N/A (original character)
Age: 13
Canon Point: N/A
History:
Isobel Clamp was born to Johan Clamp (The Astonishing Mind-Reading Johannes, at the time) and a well-to-do woman with whom Johan had a torrid affair lasting approximately fifty-two hours. It was only when the Carnival returned to her hometown some three years later that he learnt he was a father - and that his progeny had some inkling of true second sight, something that he himself could only aspire to. Doing what any responsible father would do, Johan faked his lover's suicide, robbed her household blind and kidnapped his daughter for a life on the road. Having forgotten her brief life with her late mother, the Carnival is all Isobel now knows.
She largely raised and educated herself, helped by carnies of various strokes, her father indifferent to her except as a future source of income. When she reached the age of eight, however, Johan decided that her ability to see the future was developing too slowly, stymied by her ability to see the present: his solution to this was to have both her eyes removed by a crooked doctor at one of the Carnival's stops. They were replaced by plain white prostheses.
Johan turned out to be right; his daughter's visions started to come thick and fast. Isobel struggled to control her visions and maintain her perception of reality, which Johan saw as an attempt to rob him of the income she'd already begun to earn for him. He isolated her from the rest of the Carnival, and his relationship with her grew possessive and violent.
Shortly before her tenth birthday, the Carnival returned to a previous site and Isobel had a vision: her father beaten to a pulp by men who'd lost everything having followed advice given by Johan years earlier. She elected not to tell him.
Soon after her father's completely unmourned death, she inherited their previously shared trailer and his role as psychic in the Carnival, which she continues to fill to this day.
Powers/Abilities: Isobel sees the future.
What she would tell you, though, is that she very accurately sees the past - that is, everyone's past. Her vision of a client's future is a projection of what is most likely to happen, based on that person's history and the history of the people they're going to interact with. For example, if you've decided to start walking a different route home down an alleyway that's frequented by a mugger, she can tell you with certainty that you're going to get your ass beat up and robbed sometime soon. If you've just been given a clean bill of health by a doctor who's boning your wife and has a vested interest in your premature death, she can tell you to get a second opinion, and maybe stop eating your wife's cooking.
If you're going to get hit by lightning, though? No can do. Non-anthropogenic events don't register with her. She's also incapable of predicting her own future, and it's generally more difficult for her to get a read on people from different worlds and times - though the longer they stay the easier it becomes.
Personality:
Isobel is 13-going-on-40. Knowing from a young age that she was the only person who was ever really going to take care of her has made her hyper-responsible and a great deal more 'adult' than some of her colleagues at the Carnival; she's quiet, studious and serious, and has a fondness for order that doesn't gel with her often chaotic environment. There is still a little girl in her who's been deprived of her childhood, and there's one or two long-termers in the Carnival who can bring that out, but she struggles to see fun for fun's sake as being worthwhile.
This is all deeply internalised and fraught with cognitive dissonance: for other people, leisure is a valuable release but for her it's frivolous and wasteful. For other people, disorganisation is manageable but for her it's a gateway into reckless slobbery. She holds herself to impossibly high, rigid standards. Because she hates being at a loose end, when she's not running her act she does everything she can to be helpful elsewhere, and despite her blindness has learnt to do several chores around the Carnival.
Unsurprisingly, her knowledge of the future and blindness to the present has left her with a bit of a nihilistic streak, though she rarely allows herself to indulge in those sorts of thoughts.
In day-to-day behaviour she's softly spoken and introverted but not asocial. She likes to be aware of goings-on around the Carnival and getting to know newcomers - partly because she needs to compensate for not really being able to people-watch, and partly because new arrivals from other worlds are hard to read. Her nascent sense of humour runs to the sardonic.
She hates being touched unexpectedly, and it can send her into fits of violent temper. Clients are asked not to touch her on the boards advertising her act as contact with mundane persons dampens her powers.
Inventory:
Clothes - about four outfits, all of them high-quality but about thirty years out of date.
Scrying equipment - Tarot cards, a crystal ball, a set of wooden runes and an incense burner. None of it's necessary but people will like their theatre.
Braille books x 5, including the New Testament.
Slate, stylus and paper for writing in Braille.
Cash - Isobel is paid relatively well but lives a pretty frugal life.
Isobel has also inherited her father's belongings, which include a few men's outfits, a few bottles of cheap liquor and a connoisseur's collection of pornography.