app @ etraya

[skaikru]

⏵ player information
name and pronouns: demi (she/her)
age: 28
contact: inb4circlejerk (same on discord) or pm!

⏵ character information
name: Clarke Griffin
canon: The 100 (+ crau from Come Sail Away)
age: 19-20
canon point: (originally) 04x13, "Praimfaya" — right after making a mad dash to escape a death wave, and collapsing in her pseudo-bunker covered in radiation burns | (crau style) from the prison cell in the middle of Come Sail Away endgame
history:

» canon history:
everything is toxic and the world is actively trying to kill them: a summary | i am become death, destroyer of worlds: an indept narrative about long lasting guilt and grippling ptsd by clarke griffin

» come sail away history:
Clarke Griffin was pulled from the top step of death's door after an apocalyptic event in her own world and woke up on the Serena Eterna, which was a really lovely cruise liner with endless food and amenities, and probably would have been a nice time if it wasn't for the fact the ship didn't have an engine and was powered by their pain, suffering, and deaths. She managed to make a few fast friends, died 4-5 times (once by jumping ship and drowning, once by having her arm cut off and bleeding out in a Battle Royale, once by having her chest exploded by a sigil she thought offered protection, then her body died again after being possessed, and finally by being beaten to death in a winter resort). Immediately distrustful of the entire place, she helped spearhead Team Mutiny and argued with a lot of the other passengers, most of whom found the Captain's story worth a sob (he was a formerly enslaved djinn just trying to run and hide from those who would re-enslave him). Instead of growing positively as a person, if it's possible this little warlord managed to devolve to more brutality and less optimism; she wanted to get off the ship, but without a clear idea of how to do that she was content with the idea of just burning the whole place down so this cycle wouldn't repeat with a new set of stolen, copied soul being put through hell. And she was really stubborn about this idea, pretty much nothing moved her except the preemptive grief of losing her friends.

As one of a few "mere humans" on board, Clarke set her mind to obtaining magic of her own in order to fight and protect "her people", but never quite managed it past proficiency in blood sigils and attempting to manipulate a god or two. Despite the whole ship being originally based on murdering each other, she somehow only managed to kill one person while on board (we'll call this a personal victory, considering her canon body count is near 1000) but made plenty of enemies simply by going against the majority.

In the end, she was the one who put a mysterious red string — gifted to them by a mysterious benefactor who promised to liberate them after they managed to get an S.O.S signal out — around the Captain's neck, effectively breaking the game (with mod permission), re-enslaving him and putting everyone at the mercy of a woman who collected "exhibits" and liked to trade people away. (She messed up, okay? It's fine, what's one more war crime? She'll fix it.) They failed to negotiate even a limited release of passengers, and everyone was immediately sunk into belly of the ship, caged in prison cells with no door. Will they ever escape? Some are certainly trying, but as current ship pariah, Clarke is not high on the list of people to free from their cells.

Sidenote on age: she vanished from the ship and missed her own 20th birthday, and thus doesn't know if it still counted. If applicable in game, when she reaches next October 30th, she'll start saying she's 20 with her full chest.

abilities:

» arker Everyone born on the Ark was genetically engineered to be a universal donor. They were also all born in space and exposed to the radiation that came with living in a spaceship circulating the wasteland that is planet Earth. As a result, all the Sky People can metabolize higher amounts of radiation than a normal human.
» earth skills They had classes on the Ark about surviving on the ground, and the best kind of practical exam is dumping a bunch of kids on a radioactive planet and wishing them good luck, right? Between hunting, foraging, war waging, horseback riding, water collection, finding shelter, camouflaging herself, starting cook fires, and not eating anything poisonous for fun, Clarke would ace that survivalist class.
» gunplei Thanks to some crappy shooting lessons from the one and only Bellamy Blake, she's got a decent handle on gunmanship. And can very much hold her own in a fight, despite being more inclined to talk it out instead of immediately start punching people.
» natblida So the world was ending and Clarke was pretty desperate to find a cure to intolerable levels of radiation. She recently injected herself with the synthesized bone marrow of a Nightblood, a descendent of the first Commander, Becca. Nightblood is just like any other blood, except it is jet black and somehow prevents you from outright dying when exposed to radiation? I dunno man, it's probably magic.
» medical training Clarke did an internship under her mother while on board the Ark, which went on for an unspecified amount of time, but left her quite capable. She can do everything from basic sprained ankle tests, to removing knives from peoples rib cages, to relieving blood build-up from internal bleeding, to curing infections with some seaweed tea, to deciding who's not going to make it and putting them out of their misery.
» well read, knowledgeable Clarke is intelligent; a self taught map reader and a quoter of Oppenheimer. She's one of the privileged and was accorded a quality education on board the Ark, and while she may not have the skills Raven and Monty possess when it comes to technology and engineering, she's a quick study and good at inferring things.
» oil pastel maps of escape routes She draws pretty things.

» skills acquired in her previous game: During her time on the Serena Eterna, Clarke had easy access to a large fiction-filled library and several movies, so her understanding of pop-culture has expanded. She also did her damned best to steal and wheedle information about magic from anyone who'd tell her, in an effort to better understand their world and also attempt to arm herself against it. She now has an understanding of several magic systems as well as creatures she'd previously hadn't even known the myths behind. She went so far as to tattoo two blood sigils on her own body, but they were dependent on the systems underlying the ship and are thus inert here. Fitness and fighting were other priorities, and I think it's fair to say she's come away with better endurance and better hand to hand combat skills (through trial and error and death) compared to canon.

personality:

Hailing from a privileged background on the Ark, Clarke Griffin's life took a sharp nosedive after the execution of her father for treason and her subsequent framing. And she's honestly still trying to come to terms with it while also never having time to process because there's always a new crisis on the horizon. Dropped onto Earth with few means to survive, she quickly became half of the defacto leadership over 100 juvenile delinquents in their most dire hours and dedicated herself completely to the survival of her people. Clarke's journey through the show maps a pretty tragic downward spiral from an optimistic idealist to a battle-hardened survivor, often faced with awful scenarios that push her principals to the limit — and usually crossing the arbitrarily drawn "morality" line. This girl's a master of backing herself into a corner, fighting her way out bloody, and then saying "we had no choice" and crying about it.

Recognized by friend and foe alike for her strong leadership qualities, Clarke has A Reputation and a tendency to run herself ragged under the weight of that responsibility; taking on the role of medic, diplomat, and war chief as necessary. Her leadership style and general person can be summed up as messy, with a great capacity for both compassion and ruthlessness. She is incredibly stubborn and will sink to almost any level to achieve her goals and however well-intentioned they might start out, she usually walks away from them with a tiny piece of herself missing. Circumstance made her a leader, but she was still an impressionable child when this started and had to learn fast; drawing from an amalgamation of the different leaders she's encountered and mixing their philosophies, her methods and decisions often seemed harsh to those closest to her. When the people you break yourself in order to save turn around and condemn you, you pretty quickly grow a thick skin as well. Clarke tries very hard to live up the expectations she and others have placed on her, even if most of the time she's flying by the seat of her pants. She very much feels the weight of all her mistakes and knows exactly how many people she's been party to the death of — to the point of sometimes even hallucinating their ghosts — but stomps it all down and keeps pushing forward, "I bear it so they don't have to."

She's a martyr type: cutting off the better parts of herself to be an effective leader, surrendering herself if she thought it'd save her friends, subjecting herself to experiments and staying behind on a burning planet to insure others manage to get off of it. Arguably her greatest fear is being alone, and thus her greatest weaknesses are her friends. But when times get tough, Clarke gets tougher. She has learned to keep emotion out of hard moments and make pragmatic calls, like letting her mother hang or sending Bellamy Blake into enemy territory. By later in the series, she gives the distinct impression of a soldier who thrives in chaos and probably wouldn't know what to do with themselves during peacetime.

It's almost impossible for her to create any meaningful relationship and have it just be simple. Deep love, grappling power dynamics, routine betrayal, emotional whiplash, and death complicate a lot of her friendships and all of her romantic relationships. She killed Finn to spare him torture and then "caused" Lexa's death, and will be stuck on both of those losses until her end of days. Her dual-leadership with Bellamy Blake kept her centered — as Clarke eloquently puts it, she's the head and he's the heart of their operation to keep people alive. They push against each other a lot, challenge one another, and also do their best to keep the other alive. (This is codependence at its finest.)

Clarke's resilience and survival instincts are notable too, she's been through a lot. Be it faction battles or mass apocalyptic events, she's got a good head on her shoulders. And her intelligence, instincts, and overall suspicion tend to keep her one step ahead, though her trust issues and increasingly secretive nature sometimes isolate her from allies.

At the core, Clarke Griffin's story is one of transformation, marked by the burdens of leadership, the pain of loss, and the relentless pursuit of a better future for her people. She has had to learn a lot of hard truths about survival very quickly, and the end all be all is, what it takes to survive impossible odds will break you as a human being.


» come sail away personality addendums: Fun fact, when you put no effort into growing as a person and devote all your energy to fighting the establishment, you don't really change all that much, even after two years! Though being murdered a few times and loudly disliked does have a tendency to push you more towards extremes. A few codependent, enabling relationships help too. All in all, Clarke is still who she started out as but her capacity for violence and deceit has taken a more front seat. Her paranoia has worsened, she's one small inconvenience away from a meltdown, and high-key possessive over her friends. For anyone canon familiar, despite her end of season 4 canon point, her mentality reflects more of a season 7 mindset — moderately estranged from her original friends, but instead of her world revolving around her adopted daughter, all she cared about are her ship-based friends, and more than willing to rampage and destroy worlds for them. She's tired and wants a peaceful life but doesn't know how to obtain that, and honestly wouldn't trust anyone who offered it to her. And, again, probably wouldn't know what to do with a nice ending if she got one.

» tl;dr: taylor swift said it best, and also here's a fun fanvid!

samples:

one — with Rita Mordio, Sails CRAU buddy
two — TDM toplevel
three — with Mizu

Comments

draft mission 3

[skaikru]

i. june 7th - june 20th

( meta ) the message from aurora had inspired absolutely zero confidence, and the knocking delivery of the plushie from the companion bots had been greeted with nothing but a sour disposition and a slammed door in their face. never to be classed as a willing participant in these missions they're tasked with, clarke still takes the little stuffed astronaut into her apartment with equal parts disdain and wariness. at least until experimentally squeezing the stuffing in its chest and eliciting a soft, gentle response of:

hey, kiddo.

it takes her a moment to place the voice. and several hours to recover from the fact she'd somehow managed to forget that much about her father in the four years since his death. she kneels on the floor, cradles the stuffy in her arms, and routinely presses her thumb into the hard little trigger of the voicebox, over and over, until the pattern of the responses are well past memorized. i miss you.

i love you, clarke.

you did your best, even when it got hard.

i'm proud of you.

she cries. and cries, and cries. eyes itchy and swollen and dry, begging for the drop of her eyelids and a reprieve from... literally all of this. and eventually she sleeps, a tight fetal position on the stiff cushioned couch with no blanket and no pillow, just the wedge of the plush helmet beneath her temple and lax fingers still splayed across its abdomen.

( a. ) she sleeps eventually. then, it's a new day. the little clock on her kitchenette microwave reads somewhere in the vicinity of 2:23 pm. some mental backtracking places the arrival of the companion bots at around 10pm the night before, and this potentially goes down as the longest rest clarke griffin has had aside from the cold 48 hour embrace of death since arriving on this planet. and in her last reality. and back in her original home world. it's an odd thing, feeling fully rested after so many years spent running off fumes.

so, by around 6pm she can be found deep in the wooded area surrounding the dropship camp. it's been established that they're in the month of june, the late spring and early shift into summer, and the sun is still high in the sky; the air warm, and it's obvious from the damp darkening of the roots of her hair that clarke's been set on sweaty work for a while. she's on her knees in front of a large mound of... is it sand? yes, but flecked with bits of grey that flitter in defiance of gravity instead of falling with every handful she manages to shovel away. ashes, it's ashes and sand — and beneath it, the partially revealed metal hood and wheel well of a severe looking vehicle. from the pile of discarded overclothes a few feet away it's obvious that clarke had set about this task with full zip sweatshirt, long sleeved shirt, and a reappearance of her favorite cargo pants from the labyrinth. just to overheat and strip them off at various intervals, now down to a tank top and compression shorts. every inch of exposed skin has turned tacky and dusty, like she'd been doused in talcum powder, but she is most at home when a bit of a mess. in the replica of a camp she and 99 other delinquents had carved out on their first earth, surrounded by spiked walls and the singe of scorched earth. ghosts don't whisper, and she can't be lonely with the little stuffed black boot of the astronaut sticking out from beneath the hood of her sweatshirt.

but where manual labor usually grates, she's in great spirits. humming idly to herself without so much as a wince when she needs to readjust aching knee joints and stand to dust off the side panelling of a door. if she spots anyone else enter the gap in the perimeter fencing, known or unknown, there is still a beat of that usual caution and an appraising once over. but she will invariably turn to give them her full attention, brushing the dust from her hands and smiling. )

Oh, hi. Nice evening for a walk in the woods, huh?

( b. ) later, in the teddy tailor, clarke gets her full build a bear experience. she listens intently to the companion bot who helps her select a nice forest green fabric and provides her a teddy-bear sized template; studiously sketches and cuts the material, and spends a solid hour hunched over a tabletop with her stuffy resting across her knees in order to make him a small suit. it turns out pretty well, despite the stitches in the seams resembling the handiwork of a surgeon rather than a seamstress, but on the little stuffed astronaut?

yeah, okay, it's more than a little ridiculous. from a spot deep in her sternum, a part of her she didn't even know existed anymore, a good natured snort emanates. the subsequent chuckle is smothered in the palm of her hand, fingers rubbed raw from thread and a few jet black beads of blood decorating the whorls of her prints from where she'd accidentally stabbed herself. )

That's so silly, I'm sorry. Let's try something else.

( the next material she selects is a knit wool blend in a soft shade of grey. a small little sweater turns out to be much easier to accomplish; ultimately still a little ridiculous draped over the bright white of the nasa eva suit, but at the same time it fits.

jumpcut to roxx, she breezes past her usual rack of comfortable, breathable, long sleeved athletic tops and black jogging leggings to paw through a line of silly little sundresses. because, you know, the weather's getting nicer and nicer by the day. clarke appraises blue florals on a white backdrop with the eye of an artist, and rubs the tulle of a pink frilly skirt between her thumb and forefinger intrigued by the texture.

but with her stuffy nudged neatly beneath her arm, the neckline of his little grey sweater purposefully large to accommodate the swell of his little helmet, it shouldn't be all that surprising when clarke eventually settles on a dress similar in fabric and coloring.

which she will later be wearing to the:

( c. ) the teddy bear picnic which is dumb, extremely dumb. and clarke subsequently keeps to the outskirts of the event, but she's still here. the seat designated for her plushie remains empty, the little astronaut firmly situated on her lap and skittish fingers unsure of what to do around the delicate curve of the teacup handle — restrained, but only barely, from just squeezing the voice box repeatedly. she's lost, y'all; she's gone. whatever magic inhabits these stuffed animals barely holds a candle to unbridled, heartfelt sentiment. to love, to longing, to loss. she is cradling this thing like it's an actual human baby. and may even be caught occasionally whispering to it. )

You would have liked it here, Dad. Supposedly all the oxygen was diverted from the city into a maze, but none of the stragglers complained about the effects of hypoxia. How was the oxygen diverted? We're in a bubble, there's not exactly vents. I think it was shut off on purpose to force us in there, and the idea there just wasn't enough to go around was a lie.

ii. june 20th - june 24th

cw: the vibes here are not ideal. this transformed plush is the personification of self loathing and guilt, and the method of delivery is just straight up verbal abuse. specifically in the second prompt it will be urging clarke to hurt herself, but she won't. other topics that may crop up are murder, genocide, and war but i will do my best to warn for these as they occur.

( meta ) but she should have known better. she should have known better, or at least should have listened. nice things never last.

one night clarke falls asleep with the little astronaut shoved beneath her head, half convinced she can hear the rumble of a heartbeat through the stuffing in it's chest, and the next morning wakes up with a severe crick in her neck. head flat on the cushion of the couch, and staring into the reflective mix of plastic and minky that makes up the gold of her astronauts helmet visor. from where it's kneeling on the other side of the coffee table, full grown and leaning over the tabletop with it's elbows, chin nestled in curved, fingerless gloved palms. when she startles, the plushie bodily perks up. )

Hey, kiddo, ( it warbles in jake griffin's cadence and tone, low and crooning and comforting for all of five seconds before an odd sort of radio feedback crackles through the air. and one voice slowly, gradually degrades into that of raven reyes. )

Don't freak out. We all know people tend to get hurt when you freak out. This is a pretty small city but like, thank god for the lack of levers around, right?

( and what follows this moment are several days of torment. clarke can only stay in this small one bedroom one bathroom apartment while the astronaut waltzes around, intent on dressing her down — i don't know why you still try, it remarks, in front of the swath of lists and maps and ideas she'd taped to the wall from day one. if you were smart enough to keep up, and capable of saving anything or anyone, i wouldn't be like this, would i? you made me like this, i hope you understand. — eventually she needs to leave. to walk around, to get out of this oppressive box, to distract herself. to... anything.

but of course, it follows.

( a. ) follows her all throughout the city. sure, at first it makes for a pretty comical tableau: a 5'5" blonde being hounded down the street by a 6' ambulatory stuffed astronaut with an oversized head and a fluid, too-human range of movement. she jogs, it never seems to break out of a walking stride yet somehow always manages to keep close. from across the street it plays like a weird segment of a saturday morning cartoon. up close though, clarke is very obviously crying. big, hot tears stream down her face and collect underneath her chin, a few fly away hairs sticking to her cheeks when she whips her head around to keep eyes on her casual pursuer. if one gets close enough they can probably hear an exchange along the lines of: )

Shut up. Shut up!

Come on, Clarke. When everyone you love inevitably dies, and even your projections hate you — we can all recognize what the common denominator there is, right?

( when she locks herself in the bathroom of the big belly burger, the astronaut can be spotted lingering outside, gently tapping its plush, fingerless hand on the door.

when she starts to feel a little light headed and gives up on running in favor of trying to sit in a corner booth of the diner, it sits opposite and stares at her while she stares at a greasy burger she cannot will herself to touch.

when they pass by the sector 5 church, an odd little duo, it stops for a second to marvel at the architecture. and a second longer to remind her: )

There are forgiving gods out there, just so you know. You're just not worthy of any of them.

( ( b. ) at some point she can be found a half mile into the foliage of the outskirts, back against a tree and knees drawn up to her chest as the astronaut looms over her. the vocals continually degrading, almost impossible to tell where one voice starts or the other begins; if they're speaking singularly or in unison. clarke's got her head bowed, breath hitching, and hands pressed tight over her ears but it's still unable to completely block out the continued barrage. )

Look at you, weak and pathetic. Lexa would be so disappointed in you, ( a combination of abby griffin and john murphy condescend. then the woman in question deigns to speak up, sharp and hateful, so unlike the soft croon of the sirens the month previously. ) I guess it's for the best you got me killed early on.

I'm sorry...

( maya vie picks up the slack. ) You keep saying that. Over and over, any time you do something terrible you say you're sorry, but I don't think you even know what those words mean anymore.

I do. I am.

Well, it's not good enough. ( comes the sharp disgust of octavia blake. ) Put your money where your mouth is, Princess, ( finn collins chimes in. ) Prove it. You have a knife. You remember how this works.

( ( c. ) but somehow she makes it out of the woods in one piece. back in the city proper, clarke griffin walks like she'd died back in the woods anyways; shoulders slumped and not even protectively curled forward like she could flinch away from the astronaut and its criticism, eyes rimmed with purple and a grey hue of bloodshot across her sclera — but bone dry. she's all cried out. all the progress made on her sleep debt had been summarily snatched away the second her plushie had grown several feet and started talking, and she sways as physical and emotional exhaustion compound; numb, but aching all at once. the loop of atrocities has been talked through over again, and by this point she can almost manage to focus entirely on the pulsing static undertone rather than the words actually levelled at her.

the creature dogging her steps seems to have realized this, and switches up its tactics the second they're surrounded by people again; shifts its focus and begins waving the rounded edge of a stitched hand at everyone they pass. while also hissing in clarke's direction — ) Oh, look at them. Look at all of them. You know when it comes down to it you're probably going to kill every single person here, right? Do you feel anything about that, when you walk across the street from them just like an average civilian? You'd level this entire bubble to save your world, and chalk it up to just another episode of "no good choices", just an average Thursday for Clarke Griffin.

Please stop.

And none of them know it. That's not really fair, is it? We should fix that.

Wait —

( but she's too late to cut off the voices. the astronaut raises its hand, paying no mind to the few busted stitches and balls of fluff escaping like fat, white fingers at the end of its black glove pattern. and it calls out to the first person it sees: )

Hey! Want to meet a mass murderer?

iii. wildcard

( feel free to take some liberties with prompts, and use this space to toss me your aftermath shenanigans. alternatively, hit me up on plurk (inb4circlejerk or the plotting post for specifics. )