Post by Paps on Oct 2, 2018 10:20:24 GMT -6
“Ethan, darling, you don’t have to tell people how great my cooking is. If they’ve eaten here, they should already know.”
NAME
Clair Marie Schaefer
AGE
31
GENDER
Female
BIRTH DATE
December 7, 1987
OCCUPATION
Head Cook at the Waffle Hop
LIKES
- Rockabilly fashion. She just loves those bold colors and dresses…it’s a new phase for her. She used to not wear dresses often until she got into this.
- Jazz & Blues music. She likes to play jazz when she’s at the Hop (to the irritation of the restaurant owner who wants 24/7 Elvis), but by herself she likes listening to the sounds of Nina Simone or Etta James…
- Experimental cooking. Waffles with bacon and hot sauce? That’s fine with her! There’s a reason why she allows create your own waffles at the restaurant and she’s impressed with the combinations people make, edible or not. She’s adopted a few of people’s ideas into specialty waffles.
- Ethan’s wings. They might get in the way in the kitchen but they’re pretty cute…and unfitting for him, but—
- Motorcycles. She loves riding them and treats her bike like her baby.
- Foxes. Her nickname is Vixen in her biker friend group and gained the nickname after wearing a lot of fox related clothes and accessories.
- Early 90’s Magical girl anime. She had an anime phase when she was younger and stuff like Sailor Moon and Magical Knight Rayearth are still her jam. Her childhood friend is still into that stuff and got Clair back into watching some old anime with her. (Her love of foxes also comes from anime but she doesn’t tell people that.)
- Romance novels. If only silly coincidences that brought people together happened in real life…
- Horror movies. She watched a lot during high school due to some friends and finds them funny due to how unrealistic they are.
- The Gru. She thinks they’ve livened up the place. Sure, they cause traffic and are a bit arrogant but they’ve put some color in the dullness that is Larkspur (and Printy County in general).
- Her grandmother’s recipes. Her grandmother came from New Orleans from a restaurant owning family and passed on her cooking skills to Clair. Clair’s dream is to own a restaurant where she can make those recipes for the people of Larkspur.
DISLIKES
- Talking about herself for long periods of time.
- Broken and/or abandoned motorcycles. She knows a lot of people who can fix it or buy it off…just…don’t leave them alone to rust…
- Being tied down. She just likes to do her own thing, generally.
- The Waffle Hop owner. The guy doesn’t even cook. He just has money. Clair’s expressed her opinions of some of his decisions before and…and well, there’s a reason why she’s on the late night shift.
- Being distracted while cooking. She likes full concentration so that she can make the best kinds of food.
- Excessive negativity and complaining - mainly because it affects her mood too easily, and she doesn't really want to admit that it does.
At first, Clair appears to be a confident, calm chef who is not shaken by most situations. But she’s also quite hospitable and loves calling customers and friends names such as 'darling', 'honey' and so forth. Unlike her server, she's often seen smiling - but she tends to pair her smiles with bold statements about her cooking. She's also a thrill seeker - fond of going miles over the speed limit on her motorcycle and using spicier foods in her 'experimental menu' - she likes adventure in the limited space that the invasion has given her. In her experience, these two traits have either scared people off (mostly men) or gained more customers and friends. With the latter, she loves to talk to them, learn about their lives, and give them the support they need in any way she can (usually with free food). She can come off as unintentionally flirty with her pet names and her tendency to invade personal space, but - in her mind anyway - this is just her way of expressing her friendliness. To most of her friends, she's considered a role model and a cool independent woman who also knows how to take care of the people she loves.
As people get to know her, however, they start finding out that Clair is more and more of a mystery to them. She prefers talking to people about their own favorite topics, and often changes the subject if questions about her personal life make her uneasy. She does talk about the obvious things – like her cooking, the restaurant, and her motorcycling hobby. She will give facts - like who her parents and brother are and some of the people she's dated if it's brought up - but her feelings about them are are off limits. In times like this, she is surprisingly bashful if it gets too personal and she will most likely find a way out of the situation before she confesses anything.
Under her calm exterior, Clair is a woman who finds it hard to really trust anybody with her negative thoughts. In the past, she had been too easily attached to others, only to be disappointed when things went south for her. She reasons that no one really cares about her problems, and that no one should, and that she should just figure out how to solve them herself. In the end, she just wants to show her cool big sister persona to the world because she does still care about what people think about her. When she feels like she cannot keep up that mask, she distances herself from others and vents it out in places where people she knows can't see her - usually by driving to some remote part of the county or drinking heavily in bars no one she knows frequents. Deep down, Clair is an emotional mess who hates her lack of progression of owning her own restaurant and the fact that her mother's insecurities about her life have haunted her since her mother died. Although she eventually reconciles with herself that she has to deal with her problems herself, what Clair really wants is someone she can feel comfortable talking to about everything - the good and the bad - and can take care of her, sometimes.
BIOGRAPHY
- Born and raised in Phlox with parents Elle and Petersen 'Peter' Schaefer (60), little brother Max (30) and paternal grandmother Manna.
- Learned to cook from grandmother until grandmother dies around when Clair is in middle school.
- Moves from Phlox to Larkspur at 18 and works at various restaurants and diners for a while.
- At age 26, her mom is diagnosed with cancer and Clair becomes her caretaker until her death 2 years later.
- Spends the next few years working as a chef at The Waffle Hop
- The Gru invade, but her life is about the same (while everyone else's isn't) until recent events.
PERSONAL HISTORY
As a child, Clair grew up mainly raised by her grandma. Her parents were busy government workers, and her little brother Max spent his time with his friends. She was shy as a child and clung to her grandma most of the time. Her grandma was a cook before she got married, so she and Clair were responsible for dinner every night. To her grandma’s delight, Clair learned cooking quickly and she boasted about Clair’s skills to others. Her grandma’s encouragement inspired Clair to become a professional cook at a young age, and maybe even run her own restaurant.
However, her mother wanted Clair to have a more stable career like the one she had, and pushed Clair to work hard in school and make the right friends. Unfortunately she didn’t excel in school and only made one good friend, still more attached to her grandma until her grandma’s death during her middle school years. Even though her mother backed off to give Clair time to mourn, it wasn’t long until she became more insistent on Clair following the future she wanted for her daughter. Clair was cracking under the pressure. She just wanted her grandma back, her cooking, her love...it wasn’t until she befriended a bunch of motorbike enthusiasts when she found a group where she felt appreciated and wanted for her cooking talent. They helped her gain confidence in herself, and in return, she looked out for them like an older sister. Her mother disapproved of them since they looked like a biker gang, but Clair would defend them, even inviting her mom to hang out with them at one point. But the arguments between her and her mom escalated as time went on, to the point that Clair decided that she would pursue her dreams of owning her own restaurant without her family’s help. She left her family's home after she graduated high school, sharing an apartment with some of her old friends.
However, Clair soon found out the financial difficulty of living on her own. Her various food industry jobs didn’t pay much more than minimum wage, her roommates didn't always pay their share of rent, and her desire for affection led her into a few relationships that in the end wasted her time and money. But she refused to go back to her parents, and she felt happier when she could party and hang out with her friends and cook her experimental dishes at home without her mom’s criticism.
She did, however, keep in contact with her little brother Max, who was traveling the country as part of a band. Eventually, said brother ended up going back to Phlox after his band broke up. He lived with their parents during this time, and it was through him that Clair started talking to her parents again. To Clair's relief, her mother seemed more understanding of her situation, or at least didn't bring it up frequently, so their relationship started to improve. However, around when Clair was 26, her mother broke the news that she had breast cancer. Since her mom had to visit the hospital in Larkspur more frequently, she and her family came to the decision that Clair should be her caretaker. Clair had to work less and move to a new apartment for her and her mother, but she wanted to make up for lost time and reconcile with her mother. She also did not want to burden Max, who unexpectedly found himself with a family to take care of.
This was harder than she anticipated, however. Although the two of them got along better than before, and Clair understood more of her mom’s frustrations toward her career due to her own experiences, her mom was still critical about her choices in life and still pushed for her to get a better paying job. With her diagnosis, though, she became pessimistic about her chances of living and often complained to Clair about the pain and her fear of death. Clair did her best to keep her mom's spirits high and take care of her, but the cancer kept spreading. Day by day, her mom's attitude started to affect Clair's, reminding her about the resentment she had as a high schooler toward her mom. She would treasure the days her dad or Max would visit just so she could get away from her mom for a while. But Clair took care of her mom anyway, until she passed away two years later.
After her mom’s death, Clair resumed working full time, at a new restaurant called The Waffle Hop, and slowly returned to hanging out with her old friends, her dad, and Max and his new family. However, she was haunted by her complicated feelings towards her mom's death - regret that she didn't do enough and yet relief that she didn't have to deal with her mom anymore. The relief gave way to guilt that she felt that way towards her mother and the regret would come back in, and the cycle would begin again. She tried to shut it out by working as much as she could and trying to act as the big sister figure as she was before her mother's diagnosis. She let others take lead in conversations, as she didn’t want her to spill out her negativity the way her mom had done to her, and if her feelings got too hard to handle, she would run away where no one could find her. Thankfully her new job kept her busy as her cooking had become popular with Larkspur clubbers and late night customers - helped, apparently, by the constant bragging by her brother's friend and new server, Ethan Hayashi.
During the Gru invasion and the months following, Clair’s life didn’t change much, as her powers didn’t manifest physical changes for a while and only affected others in a subtle way. The Gru didn't bother her personally - the only real issue she had were the weather changes which both kept customers away and, for whatever reason, brought her back to her past issues. On one such bizarre weather night - during the long stormy weather season - Clair saw her last ex-boyfriend, happily with a new girlfriend, coming out of a new bar. After drinking heavily at said bar, she found a familiar face who was as drunk as her...and the next thing she remembered was waking up next to him in some cheap hotel. Though she was able to run away then, a couple of months later, she realized that she wouldn't be able to run away from the consequences of that night.
She is currently wondering how to bring this all up...or what to do about it.
QUOTES
[li]“Welcome to The Waffle Hop, darlings."[/li]
[li]“Today we have our new special: our famous chicken and waffle recipe, but doused in 3 kinds of hot sauces! I was inspired by one of our regulars here. We even have a challenge for it!”[/li]
[li]“Ethan, that lawyer’s one of our customers. He hasn't done anything to you, has he?"[/li]
[li]“Don't worry boys, I'll take care of it."[/li]
[li]"I'm just not feeling like myself today, so I'm gonna skedaddle. Ethan, take care of the cooking for the rest of the night, kay? Ta-ta for now!"[/li]
EXTRAS
- Although Clair does act like she's arrogant about her cooking, she's always looking for ways to improve it or make it more interesting. She only acts like that because it amused her group of high school friends when her normally shy self acted all cocky. But it also makes her feel more confident.
- She currently lives alone in an apartment in Larkspur. She lives in the building next to Ethan's.
- Speaking of Ethan, she's very fond of him as an employee and as a friend, even if she's annoyed that he keeps boasting about her cooking all the time. She enjoys teasing him the most out of all the people she knows and is amused at the fact that he's oblivious to all the customers who are attracted to him from afar. He can, however, be too attuned to when she's not in the best of moods, and was the one who revealed her changes to her after he ate her waffles. After confronting Clair about what happened, she’s more conscious of what she feels and thinks while cooking and focuses on everything else besides her worries and fears.
- Isn't really interested in dating anymore due to her many failed relationships. She has seven exes in total. But it doesn't stop her from developing crushes, even if she stifles them in the end.
- Though she's famous for her American diner-style food and breakfast, she really wants to try to make all kinds of recipes. The owner forbids her from doing as she pleases, except for the experimental menu, and its another reason why she wants to have her own restaurant.
- She likes spicy food and seafood usually, but recently she's been craving and making all kinds of pizzas.
- On the third Saturday of every month, her motorcycling crew comes to the diner for the monthly meeting. Normally they discuss new models, potential charity events, and secret races held at midnight. However, with the Gru invasion they've found it harder to escape the eyes of strangers, so they haven't done it in a while. Clair has won a couple of these races, though.
COMPLICATIONS
PVP: Yes.....
Injury: Yes...…..
Death: No (gasp.)
[/ul]
