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Dec. 9th, 2011 01:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clairifyingCHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Claire Folly
Canon: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Post-game (when she returns to the point of the explosion)
Number: RNGing is fine with me!
Setting: Unwound Future is set in a fictional London that parallels our world's own London. The major landmarks are visible (Big Ben, for instance, appears in the opening cutscenes) but upon closer inspection, the more minor locations (e.g. the fictional Gressenheller University) are nowhere to be found on our maps. This world is not ours, despite how familiar it may seem.
It is, however, difficult to pin down an exact year that the game is set due to the old-fashioned feel that the game has. There are things that look like they've just jumped out from the 50s (the trains, Layton's car, drawbridges) but the presence of puzzles that ask you about mobile phones and texting leave quite a few questions. There's time travel technology involved somewhere as well, but it's all very vague with very little elaboration.
And then there's the puzzles. It's a really puzzling thing how important puzzles are in the Layton universe; you have people locking top-secret chambers with puzzles that can be solved by the main character when it's been shown that there are perfectly good normal locks that can be used. Hardly the pinnacle of security if taken literally, perhaps, but this, in a way. drives home the fact that these puzzles are less layman than we assume, but for the sake of the genre (and quite possibly our understanding), things have been dumbed down. After all, if a scientist specialising in temporal physics can substitute a human heartbeat for the ticking of a pocketwatch and no one bats an eyelid at that, belief can pretty much be suspended in this case.
History: Ten years before the start of Unwound Future, Claire was a lab assistant working on the Time Machine project with Dimitri Allen and Bill Hawks. Or rather, in her case, "lab assistant" became synonymous to "lab rat" since she was the first to personally try out the machine as well. At that moment in time, she was engaged to Hershel Layton, and was supposed to discuss details of their future over dinner— except dinner never really happened.
What happened instead was the disastrous explosion of the Time Machine (Dimitri Allen states later that it was a mistake in the calculations that caused the catastrophe) and Claire was assumed to have been killed since she'd been right at the heart of the explosion. However, in reality, she hadn't been; the Time Machine had worked right before the moment of the explosion, propelling her ten years to the future: the starting point of Unwound Future.
Her arrival in the future didn't go unnoticed, however. Dimitri was the first to discover her but he too, was the first to uncover the fact that her presence in the future was causing her problems. She was an temporal anomaly, and the molecular stability of her body was too weak to withstand the pull back into the past, back to the point of the explosion. Dimitri tried to find a way to reverse this, but in her words: "Tampering further with time can only result in more anomalies".
She came to discover, at this point, Dimitri's plans with Clive to unseat Bill Hawks as prime minister. However, there was little she could do about it herself (as she was presumed dead) and she then took on a disguise as "Celeste", estranged sister of Claire to work against it. In reality, Claire had had no sister, but with this disguise, she was able to come into contact with Layton and co. when they entered "Future London" (a fake London that was crafted to convince Layton and co that they had been catapulted 10 years into the future, yes, this is fairly confusing).
It was with her help that Layton was finally able to disable Clive's Mobile Fortress and rescue Clive, but by the time Layton was informed that "Celeste" did not actually exist, it was far too late for Claire. She said her goodbyes to Layton and disappeared— back to the moment of the explosion that was supposed to claim her life ten years ago.
Personality:
Claire is rather much of a minor character— most of her history is told through other people's flashbacks (Layton's and Dimitri's, in particular) and the only major role she plays is close to the end of the game. She's closely linked to Hershel Layton due to their romantic relationship, but has demonstrated time and again that she stands well enough as her own person— so much so that even Layton and her ex-colleagues took her lie of being Celeste, a non-existent estranged sister of hers, to be true.
Her most outstanding feature throughout the entire game, however, has to be her dedication. The flashbacks indicate that she was fiercely dedicated to her work and her relationships (both platonic and romantic). She however manages to strike a delicate balance in both, never compromising her work for her relationships (she chooses, in one of Hershel Layton’s flashbacks, to excuse herself after celebrating his entrance into the academic community as she had work to do) nor vice versa (another flashback alludes that she constantly found the time to spend with him—she’s seen in one scene going to dinner, and another meeting him to give him a love letter). She is careful in not burning bridges, however; it is hinted that Dimitri confessed to her sometime in the past and she rejects him. However, they remain close friends and colleagues and it is Dimitri who gives her shelter and helps her out when she’s catapulted ten years to the future (aka the present) and presumed to be dead. Likewise, she forgives Clive and rescues him even when it’s clear that the damage on the real London is his fault because she's aware that the fault of the scientists who worked on the time machine project was at fault too. Claire Folly is not unreasonable.
This goal-oriented personality of hers carries over even when she’s blasted to the future, except that she takes on an almost single-minded focus on achieving her objectives now. She dedicates herself to stopping Dimitri and to an extension, Clive, even though she almost comes close to (premature) death a few times. She is fiercely independent and proactive; even in a situation without friends or supportl.
Which leads to this: Claire has quite a brave streak though this does verge on the side of being reckless. She makes what can only be considered as mad decisions (using herself as a guinea pig on the prototype time machine, jumping off a flying car to rescue Clive) upon setting her mind to things and pays little heed to her own safety. Needless to say, these two decisions weren’t particularly approved of, but in at least the latter case, Layton himself admits that there would otherwise be no other way to save Clive. All decisions that she acts upon are however, premeditated and she is not the type to take a leap without understanding the situation at hand first. Claire only makes decisions that she knows she is fine with bearing the effects of—she is hardly foolish. Unfortunately, a wrong judgement call ends up being the cause of her own death.
With that being said and done, this is not to say that she doesn’t regret the things that she’s done either. She confesses at the end that her research was flawed and unethical and that her imminent death was a punishment for it. That’s why she regrets it that’s why she opposed the reconstruction of the time machine even though it was meant to rescue her from her death—what would the world become if the dead were allowed to live? It was a hard lesson to learn at the expense of her own life, but she takes it bravely nonetheless and attempts to ensure that others (notably Dimitri) do not make the same mistakes. It is quite undeniable that her decision to discontinue all research to do with the time machine does smack a little of a terribly unscientific stance to adopt, (particularly since it involved the research and innovation of a field with very large potential) but really, no one wants to make the same mistake twice.
One thing that she has taken away from her scientific background, however, is her disciplined behavior. She fusses about being punctual (“Oh, look at the time!” when she had to excuse herself from aforementioned celebration) and takes care to adhere to rules. However, there is irony in this rule-adhering behaviour—she obeys the more minor rules (i.e. putting on a lab coat) and ignores the fact that man is not meant to travel through time…or at least, not yet.
When interacting with others, she tends to be more of the casual sort, though—she doesn’t adopt any airs and despite her technical background, does not use any technical jargon. Her speech is polite, and she interjects with “My!” rather than swearing. However, Claire also has the tendency to ramble a little when she feels that she has to explain herself—she does so in what can be constituted as a particularly high-tension scene when she rescues Clive. The Mobile Fortress was clearly disintegrating but she still had the time to stand and deliver a little lecture about how this all was the mistake of the scientists and not his alone. A lecture that probably could have been better timed to when they were on the ground or perhaps back in the flying car, but she delivered it nonetheless. She also has a tendency to tease others sometimes but there’s never a malicious intent.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Claire is a regular normal Jane. She is of average constitution with no handicaps, and she keeps herself fit enough for brief spurts of strenuous exertion. This is the woman who single-handedly jumped off a flying, moving car onto a moving robot approximately twice the size of London, almost fell off the side and kept on running, after all. She may not survive energy blasts, but hell if she won’t try.
However, for all that gumption that she has, Claire can actually be rather reckless if she sets her mind to it. She was fine with becoming the guinea pig to test out the prototype time machine and it exploded with her in it. She also single-handedly leapt off a flying car to what could easily have been her death to save Clive from the collapse of his Mobile Fortress.
On a simpler note, working in a lab environment has left her with an eye for detail and she’s quite decent with working with her hands. She canonically rewires a bomb meant to go off at the absence of someone’s heartbeat to a ticking pocketwatch—not quite a logical thing, unfortunately, but it can be assumed that despite the simplicity of the puzzle, some really difficult manoeuvring was being done. She is also knowledgeable about the basics about time travel (wormholes, relativity theory etc) as it has been her field of study for at least a few years. It is never mentioned how old she is, but assuming that she’s about 25-26, it would mean that she’s gotten at least three to four years’ worth of research under her wing.
Inventory: Her glasses. She doesn't wear them as "Celeste" but she no longer has to disguise herself.
Appearance: I hope it's fine to link a picture! Basically, she's brunette, and is about 5'6".
Age: No age is specified for her, but her flashbacks (from 10 years prior) indicate that Layton was 27 then. I'd put her age somewhere around 25.
AU Clarification: N/A
Name: Claire Folly
Canon: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Post-game (when she returns to the point of the explosion)
Number: RNGing is fine with me!
Setting: Unwound Future is set in a fictional London that parallels our world's own London. The major landmarks are visible (Big Ben, for instance, appears in the opening cutscenes) but upon closer inspection, the more minor locations (e.g. the fictional Gressenheller University) are nowhere to be found on our maps. This world is not ours, despite how familiar it may seem.
It is, however, difficult to pin down an exact year that the game is set due to the old-fashioned feel that the game has. There are things that look like they've just jumped out from the 50s (the trains, Layton's car, drawbridges) but the presence of puzzles that ask you about mobile phones and texting leave quite a few questions. There's time travel technology involved somewhere as well, but it's all very vague with very little elaboration.
And then there's the puzzles. It's a really puzzling thing how important puzzles are in the Layton universe; you have people locking top-secret chambers with puzzles that can be solved by the main character when it's been shown that there are perfectly good normal locks that can be used. Hardly the pinnacle of security if taken literally, perhaps, but this, in a way. drives home the fact that these puzzles are less layman than we assume, but for the sake of the genre (and quite possibly our understanding), things have been dumbed down. After all, if a scientist specialising in temporal physics can substitute a human heartbeat for the ticking of a pocketwatch and no one bats an eyelid at that, belief can pretty much be suspended in this case.
History: Ten years before the start of Unwound Future, Claire was a lab assistant working on the Time Machine project with Dimitri Allen and Bill Hawks. Or rather, in her case, "lab assistant" became synonymous to "lab rat" since she was the first to personally try out the machine as well. At that moment in time, she was engaged to Hershel Layton, and was supposed to discuss details of their future over dinner— except dinner never really happened.
What happened instead was the disastrous explosion of the Time Machine (Dimitri Allen states later that it was a mistake in the calculations that caused the catastrophe) and Claire was assumed to have been killed since she'd been right at the heart of the explosion. However, in reality, she hadn't been; the Time Machine had worked right before the moment of the explosion, propelling her ten years to the future: the starting point of Unwound Future.
Her arrival in the future didn't go unnoticed, however. Dimitri was the first to discover her but he too, was the first to uncover the fact that her presence in the future was causing her problems. She was an temporal anomaly, and the molecular stability of her body was too weak to withstand the pull back into the past, back to the point of the explosion. Dimitri tried to find a way to reverse this, but in her words: "Tampering further with time can only result in more anomalies".
She came to discover, at this point, Dimitri's plans with Clive to unseat Bill Hawks as prime minister. However, there was little she could do about it herself (as she was presumed dead) and she then took on a disguise as "Celeste", estranged sister of Claire to work against it. In reality, Claire had had no sister, but with this disguise, she was able to come into contact with Layton and co. when they entered "Future London" (a fake London that was crafted to convince Layton and co that they had been catapulted 10 years into the future, yes, this is fairly confusing).
It was with her help that Layton was finally able to disable Clive's Mobile Fortress and rescue Clive, but by the time Layton was informed that "Celeste" did not actually exist, it was far too late for Claire. She said her goodbyes to Layton and disappeared— back to the moment of the explosion that was supposed to claim her life ten years ago.
Personality:
Claire is rather much of a minor character— most of her history is told through other people's flashbacks (Layton's and Dimitri's, in particular) and the only major role she plays is close to the end of the game. She's closely linked to Hershel Layton due to their romantic relationship, but has demonstrated time and again that she stands well enough as her own person— so much so that even Layton and her ex-colleagues took her lie of being Celeste, a non-existent estranged sister of hers, to be true.
Her most outstanding feature throughout the entire game, however, has to be her dedication. The flashbacks indicate that she was fiercely dedicated to her work and her relationships (both platonic and romantic). She however manages to strike a delicate balance in both, never compromising her work for her relationships (she chooses, in one of Hershel Layton’s flashbacks, to excuse herself after celebrating his entrance into the academic community as she had work to do) nor vice versa (another flashback alludes that she constantly found the time to spend with him—she’s seen in one scene going to dinner, and another meeting him to give him a love letter). She is careful in not burning bridges, however; it is hinted that Dimitri confessed to her sometime in the past and she rejects him. However, they remain close friends and colleagues and it is Dimitri who gives her shelter and helps her out when she’s catapulted ten years to the future (aka the present) and presumed to be dead. Likewise, she forgives Clive and rescues him even when it’s clear that the damage on the real London is his fault because she's aware that the fault of the scientists who worked on the time machine project was at fault too. Claire Folly is not unreasonable.
This goal-oriented personality of hers carries over even when she’s blasted to the future, except that she takes on an almost single-minded focus on achieving her objectives now. She dedicates herself to stopping Dimitri and to an extension, Clive, even though she almost comes close to (premature) death a few times. She is fiercely independent and proactive; even in a situation without friends or supportl.
Which leads to this: Claire has quite a brave streak though this does verge on the side of being reckless. She makes what can only be considered as mad decisions (using herself as a guinea pig on the prototype time machine, jumping off a flying car to rescue Clive) upon setting her mind to things and pays little heed to her own safety. Needless to say, these two decisions weren’t particularly approved of, but in at least the latter case, Layton himself admits that there would otherwise be no other way to save Clive. All decisions that she acts upon are however, premeditated and she is not the type to take a leap without understanding the situation at hand first. Claire only makes decisions that she knows she is fine with bearing the effects of—she is hardly foolish. Unfortunately, a wrong judgement call ends up being the cause of her own death.
With that being said and done, this is not to say that she doesn’t regret the things that she’s done either. She confesses at the end that her research was flawed and unethical and that her imminent death was a punishment for it. That’s why she regrets it that’s why she opposed the reconstruction of the time machine even though it was meant to rescue her from her death—what would the world become if the dead were allowed to live? It was a hard lesson to learn at the expense of her own life, but she takes it bravely nonetheless and attempts to ensure that others (notably Dimitri) do not make the same mistakes. It is quite undeniable that her decision to discontinue all research to do with the time machine does smack a little of a terribly unscientific stance to adopt, (particularly since it involved the research and innovation of a field with very large potential) but really, no one wants to make the same mistake twice.
One thing that she has taken away from her scientific background, however, is her disciplined behavior. She fusses about being punctual (“Oh, look at the time!” when she had to excuse herself from aforementioned celebration) and takes care to adhere to rules. However, there is irony in this rule-adhering behaviour—she obeys the more minor rules (i.e. putting on a lab coat) and ignores the fact that man is not meant to travel through time…or at least, not yet.
When interacting with others, she tends to be more of the casual sort, though—she doesn’t adopt any airs and despite her technical background, does not use any technical jargon. Her speech is polite, and she interjects with “My!” rather than swearing. However, Claire also has the tendency to ramble a little when she feels that she has to explain herself—she does so in what can be constituted as a particularly high-tension scene when she rescues Clive. The Mobile Fortress was clearly disintegrating but she still had the time to stand and deliver a little lecture about how this all was the mistake of the scientists and not his alone. A lecture that probably could have been better timed to when they were on the ground or perhaps back in the flying car, but she delivered it nonetheless. She also has a tendency to tease others sometimes but there’s never a malicious intent.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Claire is a regular normal Jane. She is of average constitution with no handicaps, and she keeps herself fit enough for brief spurts of strenuous exertion. This is the woman who single-handedly jumped off a flying, moving car onto a moving robot approximately twice the size of London, almost fell off the side and kept on running, after all. She may not survive energy blasts, but hell if she won’t try.
However, for all that gumption that she has, Claire can actually be rather reckless if she sets her mind to it. She was fine with becoming the guinea pig to test out the prototype time machine and it exploded with her in it. She also single-handedly leapt off a flying car to what could easily have been her death to save Clive from the collapse of his Mobile Fortress.
On a simpler note, working in a lab environment has left her with an eye for detail and she’s quite decent with working with her hands. She canonically rewires a bomb meant to go off at the absence of someone’s heartbeat to a ticking pocketwatch—not quite a logical thing, unfortunately, but it can be assumed that despite the simplicity of the puzzle, some really difficult manoeuvring was being done. She is also knowledgeable about the basics about time travel (wormholes, relativity theory etc) as it has been her field of study for at least a few years. It is never mentioned how old she is, but assuming that she’s about 25-26, it would mean that she’s gotten at least three to four years’ worth of research under her wing.
Inventory: Her glasses. She doesn't wear them as "Celeste" but she no longer has to disguise herself.
Appearance: I hope it's fine to link a picture! Basically, she's brunette, and is about 5'6".
Age: No age is specified for her, but her flashbacks (from 10 years prior) indicate that Layton was 27 then. I'd put her age somewhere around 25.
AU Clarification: N/A