O'BRYANT, Clarissa Lucille

[clarissa lucille o'bryant]

CLARISSA.lucille.O’BRYANT


Played by: Natalie Portman

"loner,lonely,telepath"

HEY, MY NAME IS 'MANDY' AND I'M 'TWENTY-SEVEN'. I'VE BEEN ROLEPLAYING FOR THE BIG SUM OF 'FOURTEEN YEARS+' MY OTHER CHARACTERS WOULD
BE 'TAYLOR & baby (pending)'

- - - name, Clarissa Lucy O’Bryant
- - - nicknames, Reese, Rissa, Claire
- - - gender, Female
- - - sexuality, Generally heterosexual
- - - occupation, Nothing at the moment; previously student, now something of a general help to her mom at the b&b
- - - species, human (gifted)

- - - eyes, Honey brown
- - - hair, Chestnut
- - - build, Slender
- - - weight, 128 lbs
- - - height, 5’6”
- - - fashion sense, Clarissa‘s taste is what would best be described as eclectic. She rarely wears any outfit in its entirety twice, instead choosing to pick and choose and set bits and pieces of one outfit aside to air with another at a later date. While most people express or conceal their emotions within the expressions of their face, body language, pitch and tone of voice, Clarissa tends to be a little more apparent, to those that have come to know her well enough; her mood tends to reflect itself in the style, colors and patterns of her attire and jewelry of the day, or week.

Monochromatic outfits lend themselves to a generally more morose or uneasy mindset, if she is generally distressed, uncomfortable, angry or upset with herself or someone around her, while the more multi-colored or eccentric her outfit the more comfortable she is, and the closer to content. Her styles range from a mish-mash of chic, punk, elegant, goth to the epitome of comfortable in jeans and an oversized flannel. She revels in taking the ’standard’ of any one style and throwing it to the wind.

A comfortable outfit might be denim shirts, white leggings with zebra stripes, bright pink pleather calf high boots, a white satin bikini style top, a pink hoodie, with pearl and black satin jewelry. www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=11739637 For an outfit that is one of her versions of ‘dress-up‘, it might be a charcoal satin off the shoulder tank top with worn flare blue jeans, high heeled fatigue boots, and army hat and crimson suede slim fitting jacket with accessories of leather and brass. www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=11736385

- - - loves,
+ old black and white / silver screen movies
+ chocolate (dark, then white, then milk)
+ music (a little bit of all genres)
+ classic literature (doyle, dickens, homer, poe, shelley… etc)
+ poetry
+ solitude / quiet
+ swimming
+ pizza
+ classic comedy shows (i love lucy, three stooges, i dream of jeannie, bewitched, etc)
+ graphic novels

- - - loathes,
+ romance novels
+ step-families
+ licorice
+ corduroy
+ gory movies / slasher flicks
+ technology, as a general whole
+ chores
+ dancing
+ people that live according to preconceived notions
+ crowds
- - - overall personality, Clarissa is, for the most part, or at least to most people‘s observations, overly quiet and withdrawn. She is, in truth, cautious in most things perhaps to a fault, having found it safer and easier for all involved to simply not get involved in the first place. If she isn‘t around people, she doesn‘t have to listen to them talk, or try and determine what they actually said and what random thoughts just popped into her head that they didn‘t actually say out loud or never intended for anyone to hear, for good or ill.

She often loses herself in her music, finding that the music from her ipod can do a fairly good job of drowning out the ambient noise, and she finds some comfort in the rhythms and beats, the constant repeating pattern reassuring somehow.

When actually drawn into the real world, and out of her books and music, by choice or necessity, her reactions vary a good bit depending on the circumstances. As a general rule, she tries to stay out of the focus of attention, purposefully being soft spoken, preferring to direct people towards other people or simply curtailing their interest, not above picking up what would turn them ‘off‘ of the conversation if she has to. This is not always the case, however, if someone seems genuinely interested, or kind, or interesting enough in their own right then she will try and make an effort, but it is rare indeed that anyone would get close enough to be actually considered boon friend.

- - - hometown, Dublin
- - - family,
+ Patricia O’Bryant } Mother, 40
+ Neil O’Bryant } Father, 43
+ Selia O’Bryant } Stepmother, 27
+ Natalie O’Bryant } Stepsister, 8
+ Marcus O’Bryant } Stepbrother, 3
- - - pets, N/A
- - - overall history, Clarissa was born in the town of Dublin, Ireland to Patricia and Neil O‘Bryant, once secondary school sweethearts, now at the time of her birth a few years past the honeymoon stage but still content enough., now with a second addition to their cozy little family. Jamison was two, at the time Clarissa was born, the freckle faced boy and the peaches and cream girl that were soon to be found always at each other’s sides as Clarissa grew into her toddler years. Their father worked as a chief financial officer for a company in the corporate section of Dublin while their mother cared for them and tended to the too-large house that she was in the process of reworking into what she hoped would be a blossoming bed and breakfast business.

Clarissa was four when her brother fell ill, and even at such a young age she can remember the smell of the hospitals, the over bright rooms, the sickly pastel colors, the sounds of the machines beeping and chirping like a mechanized forest of steel and plastic. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, considered even more of an anomaly in children, and within eight months of his original diagnosis of a meningioma tumor, he had passed. Life grew strange, distant somehow for Clarissa in the next year, as her parents became strangers to each other living in a house that reminded him all too much of what he had missed during his work hours, and her mother fought the grief that threatened to reach out of the ground and swallow her whole at the loss of a child. She fought with depression and anxiety for some time, during which her marriage dissolved.

When it came time, Clarissa asked, simply and quietly, if she could go with Da, and there was at that point not enough fight left in her mother to argue with her child‘s request, as much as it might pain her to do so.

Clarissa and her father moved to Belfast, which to Clarissa might as well have been an entirely different continent as she entered school, and enjoyed the quiet contentment and rapport that she developed with her father. He, with his busy work, and she content to sit alone in their apartment and do her schoolwork or play with her toys, reading her books, or taking walks in the surrounding boroughs. Life in those pre-pubescent years were somehow the most peaceful that she remembers, even with the loss of her brother there seemed some sort of symmetry. A pattern, and structure that she could hold to, and with her instinct guiding her through the day she managed to avoid either the limelight or trouble. She came to rely upon her instinct, that gut feeling that just coaxed her away from one person, the feeling that they would be trouble proving itself to be true before long, or knowing which game to play, which she could or would win.

It was as she grew older, and as her body began to change around and beneath her without quite asking her permission, as she developed curves where before there had been only straight lines before, that she began to suspect there was something more to her ’good luck’ than just chance, or gut instinct. What wer eonce vague impressions, quiet nudges in the back of her mind formed, stuttered whispers, catches of half-formed sentences, sighed or whispered day dreamed thoughts… and she began to realize that they were just that, that they were not her thoughts or dreams, or unspoken agitated or weary thoughts, but of those of her classmates, her friends, her teachers, all around her.

By the time that she reached the age of thirteen, she began to lose the ability to control her ’talent’, one that she had tried to hint at to her father on random occasions, but which were brushed aside as he turned to focus again upon the portfolios and cases that he had brought home from work yet again. It became harder for her to determine what was spoken aloud, and what was merely thought, causing more than one uncomfortable and awkward situation with the few friends that she had, always on the outskirts of the ’cliques’ of the school, she found herself pushed out even further onto the edges. Silence became her friend, and ally, drowning out other people’s voices with her music any time that she could, withdrawing to the table furthest away from others at the cafeteria or grounds, taking the chair in the last row of the classroom.

She had to admit that there were some advantages to what she found mostly to be a nuisance; she rarely scored less than a b on any test or pop quiz, which allowed her to skim through even the courses such as math and science that she disliked with a fair enough grade average that kept her again off the radar as either exceptional or in need of ’special attention’. She learned to live in the middle; in the neutral territory of social and academic lands that left her in that blind spot that most people would tend to overlook. Even as her tastes in fashion became more eccentric, she still managed to be just someone on the outskirts, often able to ‘hear‘ trouble coming and circumvent it or simply disappear.

Her relationship with her father remained in the static status quo, occasional quiet dinners, he with his reports, and her with her book, over a takeout pizza or home cooked pot roast. Then, much to her dismay, things changed. As she reached the end of her senior year, her father found what he had come to believe was his new and true love… the red-headed, saccharine sweet and dumb as a sack of rocks (in Clarissa‘s oh-so-unbiased opinion, at least) Selia, and her two children… a ready made family, the way things should have been, could have been, wrapped up with a bow…. And her world exploded, imploded, invaded by little curls and grubby fingers and a trio of voices that seemed always and constantly grating on what had been the content silence of their home. He couldn‘t help it, Clarissa knew, there was a loneliness in him, an emptiness that could never quite be fixed, could never quite be repaired, but that did not man that she had to like it, that she could not resent him for trying, for replacing her,.

She tried, as best she could, to adapt, to rearrange life and schedule and home to accommodate the new trio, the new family, and it was not that they were truly awful… it was just not the way things should be, had been. After graduation, she spoke again to her parents, her mother having come to attend the ceremony and celebration afterwards, and confessed that she needed time to rethink, time to figure out what it was that she was going to do with her life, and asked Patricia if she could move back in with her while she tried to work things out for herself.

Of course, her mother agreed, even though the two had had something of a distant relationship during their years apart, Patty informed Clarissa that there always had been, and always would be a place for her in their home. So it was, that just a few months past her eighteenth birthday, Clarissa found herself once again in her original home town of Dublin, Ireland, barely remembered and yet pretty much exactly the way it had been before, trying to figure out who, what she was, and where to go from here.