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[OOC]
Backtagging: It's all cool!
Threadhopping: As long as it's not a private thread.
Fourthwalling: You will confuse the heck out of Claudia if you do.
Offensive subjects: She's an eighth grader from a book series written for middle readers. So yeah, sure, why not? But give me a heads up if you do.
[IC]
Hugging this character: Sure.
Kissing this character: Sure, as long as they aren't too much older than her.
Flirting with this character: Yes, it's all good. Just remember she's thirteen before you try and ask yourself if you want to be a creep.
Fighting with this character: Yes, but she fights as well as an artistic thirteen-year-old.
Injuring this character: You can. You sadists you.
Killing this character: We can talk about it.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Yes, but if her thoughts are misspelled... well can't say I didn't warn you.
Backtagging: It's all cool!
Threadhopping: As long as it's not a private thread.
Fourthwalling: You will confuse the heck out of Claudia if you do.
Offensive subjects: She's an eighth grader from a book series written for middle readers. So yeah, sure, why not? But give me a heads up if you do.
[IC]
Hugging this character: Sure.
Kissing this character: Sure, as long as they aren't too much older than her.
Flirting with this character: Yes, it's all good. Just remember she's thirteen before you try and ask yourself if you want to be a creep.
Fighting with this character: Yes, but she fights as well as an artistic thirteen-year-old.
Injuring this character: You can. You sadists you.
Killing this character: We can talk about it.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Yes, but if her thoughts are misspelled... well can't say I didn't warn you.
MONAD.EXE APP
OOC Information
IC Information
IC Information
Name: Claudia Lynn Kishi
Canon: The Baby-Sitters' Club
Gender: Female
Age: Thirteen. Somehow. There's already been way more stuff happening in their eighth grade year than should be possible. But she's definitely still thirteen: mentally, emotionally, and physically.
History: Here's her wiki entry, but I'll be summarizing the important parts below. Note: I adapted this and the personality section from an app from when I played her in an AU before.
ANYWAY, Claudia Kishi grew up in one of the nicer and more affluent small towns in Connecticut: Stoneybrook. Her father is an investment banker and her mom is a librarian. The two of them are fairly conservative people. Claudia was actually the younger of two daughters—her older sister, Janine, is a certified genius! Seriously. Janine was taking college classes when she was fifteen and is basically the apple of their parents' eye.
Claudia is what you might call the black sheep. Unlike Janine, she has never had any aptitude for academics whatsoever—or any patience for school either. (Heratrocious unique sense of spelling is testament to this.) The things she cares about are things her very serious parents never understood: art, fashion, mystery novels, and junk food. Naturally, there was tension in the family. The Kishi parents expected Claudia to be serious and diligent like Janine. Claudia wanted to express her individuality in any way that she could.
Luckily Claudia had Mimi. Mimi was her maternal grandmother, who lived with the Kishi family since Claudia was a little girl. Claudia loved her very much and often felt that Mimi was the only person in her family that understood her. Mimi supported her dreams of being an artist, who made sure to always remind Claudia that even if her parents didn't understand her now, one day Claudia would grown up and find people who would.
When Mimi died when Claudia was thirteen it was devastating. She probably wouldn't have got through it if it hadn't been for her friends in the Baby-Sitter's Club
The Baby Sitter's Club, you see, was Claudia's friend Kristy's great idea, which Kristy had while watching her mother scramble futilely to find a babysitter for her little brother. Instead of her mother—and all the other parents in the neighborhood—having to try to contact all the qualified babysitters in the neighborhood one by one, why not form an organization of babysitters so the parents would only have to contact one person to reach several. Kristy swiftly recruited Claudia for the club, along with Kristy's best friend Mary Ann. The fourth founding member ended up being Claudia's new friend (and future bff) Stacey, who'd recently moved to their neighborhood from New York City. Together, the four of them—and later a couple other teens and pre-teens—would spend their seventh grade year and most of their very long eighth grade year doing a lot of babysitting.
(During said year they've already crammed in way more events that should be physically possible and she will probably believe her memories of having so many things happen in one single year is a glitch. It will remain ambiguous whether or not this is a glitch but for the purposes of Monad, Claudia will remember experiencing events from all the BSC books published by the time of Super Special #4, when she died in Monad. By pure luck, this encompasses all of the books Ann M Martin wrote herself, with the ghostwritten books starting directly after.)
Anyway, Claudia's death came about when she participated in a sailing race with one of the other members of the club, Dawn Schaffer, and some kids they babysit. A nasty storm came up when they were sailing. In canon they managed to survive the storm. For Monad purposes, Claudia, at least, didn't.
Personality: Claudia tends to present herself differently in different circumstances. Her favorite first impression to give people is that of mysterious and aloof figure, someone quite different from ordinary boring people. And it's true that even with people she knows well, Claudia likes to occasionally play at being the inscrutable, artsy loner. But with her close friends and with her babysitting charges, Claudia shows a whole different side of herself.
A side that is, dare we say it, quite wacky.
Claudia loves bright colors and would cover the world with them if she could. She loves putting on loud music and dancing with herself or with anyone she can persuade into joining her. She adores junk food. She also adores boys. Her parents and friends call her boy-crazy.
She also adores mystery novels and prides herself on being able to solve whodunnit faster than the detective can. She likes to say that even if she isn't scholarly, she's not stupid. She just doesn't have patience for academics. She also doesn't really have the patience for people who she feels flaunt their intelligence and can get kind of shirty if she thinks people are showing off their educations. (This is totally thanks to Janine.)
Her clothing philosophy is go bold or go home. She likes to make outfits that are memorable, experimental even. But even though Claudia believes in taking her fashion to the limit, she also respects that the fashion has to reflect the person wearing it as well. She follows this principle when she crafts jewelry for her friends.
The eccentric aloof artist and the wacky goofball both serve the same purpose, however—they're both public personas to keep people from touching the real Claudia, someone who only Mimi really knew. Underneath it all, she's a fairly earnest person who just wants people to value her for who she is. She's tired of people wanting things from her that she can't give or only want her for the person she thinks she is. One of the reasons she likes little kids so much is that the things kids want from her—a friend, someone to watch out for them—are a lot easier and less complicated than the things adults want. It's usually with little kids that Claudia is the most open with.
Deep beneath it all, Claudia is insecure. She worries that maybe she is stupid—and not just compared to her genius sister. Stupid compared to everyone. She feels unloved and unappreciated by her family, a legacy of having been compared to Janine all her life. She knows her friends care about her and she appreciates that they do, really she does, but that's not the same thing as having the love of family. Deep inside, Claudia believes that only Mimi truly loved her and Claudia still feels the ache of missing her grandmother deeply. (She's wrong, her parents do care about her, but they don't understand her.)
One of the reasons she's so boy-crazy is that she wants that same kind of deep love again. She keeps searching for it, falling for boy after boy after boy, but for some reason none of them ever seem to be right. None of them seem to be able to love her unconditionally the way she wants, the way she needs, which is not surprising since teenagers are bad at romance.
Powers/Abilities: Claudia has no actual powers, as far as one can tell, unless one counts the ability to eat so much candy and never gain weight or get acne. That may just be winning the genetic lottery, however. Otherwise, she's a really good artist for a thirteen-year-old and very good with kids. Her relationship with spelling could possibly count as an anti-ability.
Keepsakes/Mementos: Nancy Drew books. Candy. Art supplies. (The Nancy Drew books and the candy should be hidden in her room.) Her very own telephone and phone line. Lots of leggings, baggy tops, and big earrings in her closet. Mimi's tea set. A framed photo of Mimi. The tribute collage she put in Mimi's room. Pictures of her and the other babysitters hanging out.
Sample:
We shouldn't have turned around.
Those words keep echoing through Claudia's head as she fumbles to turn on the emergency flashlight. When the storm had first come upon them, Dawn had wanted to turn back towards Stoneybrook. Claudia had wanted to press ahead to Greenpoint. It was closer. But she'd let Dawn persuade her and the sky was too dark to see five feet ahead of her now, much less the far-off dry land.
The flashlight switches on, finally, though she almost drops it. She can see Becca Ramsey's worried face, Jamie Newton's own face scrunched up as tears. The wind is howling too loud to hear him sob, but she's babysat for him enough times that she can picture it perfectly.
She swings the light forward and she can see Dawn's sailboat, just long enough to think, At least I we're still together, when the wind and waves shove their boats together with a loud CRACK! Everyone clutches on the sides of their boats and somehow no one falls in the water. Somehow. But the beam of Claudia's flashlight catches on a rudder floating on the water and she can make out just enough of the color that she's got a sinking feeling which one of their boats it came from.
It takes a few more seconds for her to notice that she really is sinking.
“I'm passing you over to Dawn,” she yells to the kids. “Don't worry, you'll be okay.”
They'll be okay, she tells herself. Everyone has their lifejackets on. They'll all be okay.
Their boats are still close enough that she can lift Jamie up. Dawn's little brother, Jeff, spots what she's doing and reaches out to take him. Once he's safe—not safe, safer—on the other boat, she give Becca a boost up so she can cross over as well. Somehow she makes it.
Now Claudia's turn. She scrambles up haul herself into the other sailboat—
—and a huge wave swells up between them, pulling the boats apart, landing Claudia in the water. “CLAUDEE!” she can hear Jamie Newton scream, loud enough to pierce through the storm, can almost see their faces in the light of her bobbing flashlight and then the wave is pulling her away, out to sea, away from their boats and into the storm.
It's not much later that everything goes dark.
–
When she regains consciousness, she's floating somewhere far from the sight of land, any land at all. It's impossible to know where the storm has taken her. Impossible to even know when it is, if it's the same day as the storm or the next.
She wonders if Dawn made it to shore somehow with the kids. She hopes she did.
That's really all she can do now. Hope. Bob around in the ocean currents and hope against hope that someone—a low-flying plane, a fishing boat—will see her in time. Before...
So she floats along and from time to time she thinks about undoing the buckles of her lifejacket, of letting herself sink, but she knows Mimi will not be pleased if she let herself drown like that, so she doesn't. She just... floats. And no boat, no plane ever comes.
She's starting to get thirsty. It seems so strange and stupid all of a sudden to be surrounded by water but to have nothing to drink.
She thinks she might have passed out again, with the way the sun suddenly jumps from one part of the sky to another.
The next time she closes her eyes after that she doesn't open them again.
Mindset: Denial comes first. Then freaking out. Then worrying about if Dawn and the kids survived the storm. Eventually she'll calm down enough for day to day stuff. But she'll probably always be a bit suspicious about this afterlife because what the heck?
G̶̶l̨͡i̵͢t̷c͝͠h̕é͠s̷̷͡: Audio glitches of Becca Ramsey and Jamie Newton (the kids in Claudia's boat) yelling for help might be a good thing to happen. Undead Mimi would be a horribly sadistic thing to inflict on her at some point, which probably means it should happen. She had to deal with a phantom caller when she was babysitting in seventh grade, so phone calls in which the person on the other side of the line doesn't say anything would be nice and creepy. Especially if they kept calling when the BSC meetings would have been held if Claudia were still home. (MWF 5:30-6pm) In any case, some sort of glitch happening during normal BSC meeting times really ought to happen. Also, since Claudia's an artist, it probably be really cool if random art-glitches happened, like suddenly everything is cubist or crosshatched or whatever.
Canon: The Baby-Sitters' Club
Gender: Female
Age: Thirteen. Somehow. There's already been way more stuff happening in their eighth grade year than should be possible. But she's definitely still thirteen: mentally, emotionally, and physically.
History: Here's her wiki entry, but I'll be summarizing the important parts below. Note: I adapted this and the personality section from an app from when I played her in an AU before.
ANYWAY, Claudia Kishi grew up in one of the nicer and more affluent small towns in Connecticut: Stoneybrook. Her father is an investment banker and her mom is a librarian. The two of them are fairly conservative people. Claudia was actually the younger of two daughters—her older sister, Janine, is a certified genius! Seriously. Janine was taking college classes when she was fifteen and is basically the apple of their parents' eye.
Claudia is what you might call the black sheep. Unlike Janine, she has never had any aptitude for academics whatsoever—or any patience for school either. (Her
Luckily Claudia had Mimi. Mimi was her maternal grandmother, who lived with the Kishi family since Claudia was a little girl. Claudia loved her very much and often felt that Mimi was the only person in her family that understood her. Mimi supported her dreams of being an artist, who made sure to always remind Claudia that even if her parents didn't understand her now, one day Claudia would grown up and find people who would.
When Mimi died when Claudia was thirteen it was devastating. She probably wouldn't have got through it if it hadn't been for her friends in the Baby-Sitter's Club
The Baby Sitter's Club, you see, was Claudia's friend Kristy's great idea, which Kristy had while watching her mother scramble futilely to find a babysitter for her little brother. Instead of her mother—and all the other parents in the neighborhood—having to try to contact all the qualified babysitters in the neighborhood one by one, why not form an organization of babysitters so the parents would only have to contact one person to reach several. Kristy swiftly recruited Claudia for the club, along with Kristy's best friend Mary Ann. The fourth founding member ended up being Claudia's new friend (and future bff) Stacey, who'd recently moved to their neighborhood from New York City. Together, the four of them—and later a couple other teens and pre-teens—would spend their seventh grade year and most of their very long eighth grade year doing a lot of babysitting.
(During said year they've already crammed in way more events that should be physically possible and she will probably believe her memories of having so many things happen in one single year is a glitch. It will remain ambiguous whether or not this is a glitch but for the purposes of Monad, Claudia will remember experiencing events from all the BSC books published by the time of Super Special #4, when she died in Monad. By pure luck, this encompasses all of the books Ann M Martin wrote herself, with the ghostwritten books starting directly after.)
Anyway, Claudia's death came about when she participated in a sailing race with one of the other members of the club, Dawn Schaffer, and some kids they babysit. A nasty storm came up when they were sailing. In canon they managed to survive the storm. For Monad purposes, Claudia, at least, didn't.
Personality: Claudia tends to present herself differently in different circumstances. Her favorite first impression to give people is that of mysterious and aloof figure, someone quite different from ordinary boring people. And it's true that even with people she knows well, Claudia likes to occasionally play at being the inscrutable, artsy loner. But with her close friends and with her babysitting charges, Claudia shows a whole different side of herself.
A side that is, dare we say it, quite wacky.
“I think clothes make a statement about the person inside them. Also, since you have to get dressed every day, why not at least make it fun? Traditional clothes look boring and are boring to put on. So I never wear them. I like bright colors and big patterns and funny touches, such as earrings made from feathers. Maybe this is because I'm an artist. I don't know. Today, for instance, I'm wearing purple pants that stop just below my knees and are held up with suspenders, white tights with clocks on them, a purple plaid shirt with a matching hat, my high-top sneakers, and lobster earrings. Clothes like these are my trademark." (BSC#2)
Claudia loves bright colors and would cover the world with them if she could. She loves putting on loud music and dancing with herself or with anyone she can persuade into joining her. She adores junk food. She also adores boys. Her parents and friends call her boy-crazy.
She also adores mystery novels and prides herself on being able to solve whodunnit faster than the detective can. She likes to say that even if she isn't scholarly, she's not stupid. She just doesn't have patience for academics. She also doesn't really have the patience for people who she feels flaunt their intelligence and can get kind of shirty if she thinks people are showing off their educations. (This is totally thanks to Janine.)
"Nobody, but nobody, dresses like Claudia. At least, nobody in our grade. (We used to have a friend, another member of the Baby-sitters Club, named Stacey McGill, who dressed kind of like Claudia. But Stacey moved back to New York, where she used to live. And anyway, trust me, Claudia is unique.) The best way to get this point across is to describe to you what Claudia was wearing at lunch that day. It was her vegetable blouse: an oversized white shirt with a green vegetable print all over it - cabbages and squashes and turnips and stuff. Under the blouse was a very short jean skirt, white stockings, green anklets over the stockings, and lavender sneakers, the kind boys usually wear, with a lot of rubber and big laces and the name of the manufacturer in huge letters on the sides. Wait, I'm not done. Claudia had pulled the hair on one side of her head back with a yellow clip that looked like a poodle. The hair on the other side of her head was hanging in her face. Attached to the one ear you could see was a plastic earring about the size of a jar lid." (BSC#17)
Her clothing philosophy is go bold or go home. She likes to make outfits that are memorable, experimental even. But even though Claudia believes in taking her fashion to the limit, she also respects that the fashion has to reflect the person wearing it as well. She follows this principle when she crafts jewelry for her friends.
The eccentric aloof artist and the wacky goofball both serve the same purpose, however—they're both public personas to keep people from touching the real Claudia, someone who only Mimi really knew. Underneath it all, she's a fairly earnest person who just wants people to value her for who she is. She's tired of people wanting things from her that she can't give or only want her for the person she thinks she is. One of the reasons she likes little kids so much is that the things kids want from her—a friend, someone to watch out for them—are a lot easier and less complicated than the things adults want. It's usually with little kids that Claudia is the most open with.
“Anyway, I wore the coolest tuxedo I'd recently bought in a thrift shop, including a silky, piped shirt and a bright red velvet cummerbund. I removed the shoulder pads from the jacket, which made it really slouchy (I love that look). Then I bought a pair of white socks with silver glitter.
I decided to wear a pair of red sneakers to match the cummerbund. I swept my hair up and fastened it with a rhinestone barrette in the shape of a musical note." (BSC#85)
Deep beneath it all, Claudia is insecure. She worries that maybe she is stupid—and not just compared to her genius sister. Stupid compared to everyone. She feels unloved and unappreciated by her family, a legacy of having been compared to Janine all her life. She knows her friends care about her and she appreciates that they do, really she does, but that's not the same thing as having the love of family. Deep inside, Claudia believes that only Mimi truly loved her and Claudia still feels the ache of missing her grandmother deeply. (She's wrong, her parents do care about her, but they don't understand her.)
One of the reasons she's so boy-crazy is that she wants that same kind of deep love again. She keeps searching for it, falling for boy after boy after boy, but for some reason none of them ever seem to be right. None of them seem to be able to love her unconditionally the way she wants, the way she needs, which is not surprising since teenagers are bad at romance.
Powers/Abilities: Claudia has no actual powers, as far as one can tell, unless one counts the ability to eat so much candy and never gain weight or get acne. That may just be winning the genetic lottery, however. Otherwise, she's a really good artist for a thirteen-year-old and very good with kids. Her relationship with spelling could possibly count as an anti-ability.
Keepsakes/Mementos: Nancy Drew books. Candy. Art supplies. (The Nancy Drew books and the candy should be hidden in her room.) Her very own telephone and phone line. Lots of leggings, baggy tops, and big earrings in her closet. Mimi's tea set. A framed photo of Mimi. The tribute collage she put in Mimi's room. Pictures of her and the other babysitters hanging out.
Sample:
We shouldn't have turned around.
Those words keep echoing through Claudia's head as she fumbles to turn on the emergency flashlight. When the storm had first come upon them, Dawn had wanted to turn back towards Stoneybrook. Claudia had wanted to press ahead to Greenpoint. It was closer. But she'd let Dawn persuade her and the sky was too dark to see five feet ahead of her now, much less the far-off dry land.
The flashlight switches on, finally, though she almost drops it. She can see Becca Ramsey's worried face, Jamie Newton's own face scrunched up as tears. The wind is howling too loud to hear him sob, but she's babysat for him enough times that she can picture it perfectly.
She swings the light forward and she can see Dawn's sailboat, just long enough to think, At least I we're still together, when the wind and waves shove their boats together with a loud CRACK! Everyone clutches on the sides of their boats and somehow no one falls in the water. Somehow. But the beam of Claudia's flashlight catches on a rudder floating on the water and she can make out just enough of the color that she's got a sinking feeling which one of their boats it came from.
It takes a few more seconds for her to notice that she really is sinking.
“I'm passing you over to Dawn,” she yells to the kids. “Don't worry, you'll be okay.”
They'll be okay, she tells herself. Everyone has their lifejackets on. They'll all be okay.
Their boats are still close enough that she can lift Jamie up. Dawn's little brother, Jeff, spots what she's doing and reaches out to take him. Once he's safe—not safe, safer—on the other boat, she give Becca a boost up so she can cross over as well. Somehow she makes it.
Now Claudia's turn. She scrambles up haul herself into the other sailboat—
—and a huge wave swells up between them, pulling the boats apart, landing Claudia in the water. “CLAUDEE!” she can hear Jamie Newton scream, loud enough to pierce through the storm, can almost see their faces in the light of her bobbing flashlight and then the wave is pulling her away, out to sea, away from their boats and into the storm.
It's not much later that everything goes dark.
–
When she regains consciousness, she's floating somewhere far from the sight of land, any land at all. It's impossible to know where the storm has taken her. Impossible to even know when it is, if it's the same day as the storm or the next.
She wonders if Dawn made it to shore somehow with the kids. She hopes she did.
That's really all she can do now. Hope. Bob around in the ocean currents and hope against hope that someone—a low-flying plane, a fishing boat—will see her in time. Before...
So she floats along and from time to time she thinks about undoing the buckles of her lifejacket, of letting herself sink, but she knows Mimi will not be pleased if she let herself drown like that, so she doesn't. She just... floats. And no boat, no plane ever comes.
She's starting to get thirsty. It seems so strange and stupid all of a sudden to be surrounded by water but to have nothing to drink.
She thinks she might have passed out again, with the way the sun suddenly jumps from one part of the sky to another.
The next time she closes her eyes after that she doesn't open them again.
Mindset: Denial comes first. Then freaking out. Then worrying about if Dawn and the kids survived the storm. Eventually she'll calm down enough for day to day stuff. But she'll probably always be a bit suspicious about this afterlife because what the heck?
G̶̶l̨͡i̵͢t̷c͝͠h̕é͠s̷̷͡: Audio glitches of Becca Ramsey and Jamie Newton (the kids in Claudia's boat) yelling for help might be a good thing to happen. Undead Mimi would be a horribly sadistic thing to inflict on her at some point, which probably means it should happen. She had to deal with a phantom caller when she was babysitting in seventh grade, so phone calls in which the person on the other side of the line doesn't say anything would be nice and creepy. Especially if they kept calling when the BSC meetings would have been held if Claudia were still home. (MWF 5:30-6pm) In any case, some sort of glitch happening during normal BSC meeting times really ought to happen. Also, since Claudia's an artist, it probably be really cool if random art-glitches happened, like suddenly everything is cubist or crosshatched or whatever.