#oc: clarice keeny

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Art Therapy Experiment - Clarice (Age 7)

Supervised by Jonathan Crane

#alternatively: area man attempts therapy on child he directly traumatized for life #shiversverse #jonathan crane #scarecrow #batman oc #oc: clarice keeny #tw parent death

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SV Jon's very proud of his surrogate daughter, even if Clarice keeps threatening to break his nose every time he sneaks into Gotham University. Just don't worry about the fact that she's actually his half sister that he kidnapped, it's probably fine.

#jon's thought process for his little sister basically goes from “spite trophy towards mom" #to “being around a terrified child isn't as fun as I thought now I just feel like shit” #and then finally “well fuck i guess i have a daughter now” #shiversverse #jonathan crane #scarecrow #oc: clarice keeny #my art

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Giving Jonathan Crane a kid to raise is absolutely hilarious because this man's moral compass is so over the place, to the point where I honestly think he'd pick the most absurd thing to be disappointed in. This guy would have absolutely no qualms over his kid knowing or participating in human experimentation as a fun family bonding experience, but there's no way he wouldn't lose his shit if his kid turned out to be a jock.

#shiversverse #jonathan crane #oc: clarice keeny #clarice isn't exactly a jock but the point still stands #also still trying to push my Dad Crane agenda and i refuse to stop

[scarecrowdrugs]

Clarice, my awful daughter who has every disease, finally has her costume! Now, to recap Clarice's lore thus far. She's a heavily altered version of Jonathan Crane's half-sister from Year One, aged up a few years so she's around seven during that story's events. Unlike the original, Jonathan actually succeeded in murdering his entire immediate family, ending with the strangulation of his own mother on Mother's Day and the kidnapping of his baby sister.

Clarice and Jon don't exactly have the healthiest bond, considering the circumstances. Jonathan kidnapped her with the intention of spiting his recently deceased mother through the indoctrination of his little sister, only to end up genuinely viewing her as his surrogate daughter. Clarice, much to her genuine discomfort, also views him as a father figure, mostly due to the domestic abuse she both witnessed and experienced at the hands of her biological father. Unsurprisingly, she was a very unsettling child to be around, with a heavy fascination with death and horror. She was pretty much raised with the understanding that there would regularly be people experimented on in the basement, though Jonathan at the very least didn't do this in the same room as her. At the age of twelve, she was sent to foster care after accidental exposure to fear toxin during a fight between Jonathan and Batman caused her to lash out and stab Jonathan right in the stomach.

Unfortunately for her, this made things go from bad to worse for several reasons:

The foster care system in the United States is notoriously not the greatest and Gotham, being how it is, is even worse. Clarice has been through several different placements due to no one wanting to deal with the possibility of being attacked by Scarecrow.

Being related to a supervillain is bad enough, but being closely related to the Scarecrow, notorious for murder and mass chemical warfare, is even worse. Clarice had to deal with death threats, suicide baiting, doxxing, and being shunned by her peers when she finally got to go to school, leaving her with severe paranoia around other people her age. It doesn't help that she has absolutely no idea how to act around other kids, mostly a result of both her childhood isolation as well as being on the Autism spectrum.

She's unsurprisingly very mentally ill as a result of everything she's been through, and being mentally ill in Gotham City of all places carries a lot of social stigma. Clarice is absolutely terrified of having the police called on her if she's having a crisis. It doesn't help that she's not been given adequate counseling for her trauma, and she's often head to deal with medications that have made her already fragile mental health even worse. As it stands, she's mostly dealing with PTSD, severe depression, anxiety, as well as possibly BPD and OCD. It also doesn't help that she's developed many harmful coping mechanisms, such as pulling out her hair, scratching to the point of bleeding, as well as hitting herself on the head.

Despite everything she's been through because of him, she felt utterly betrayed when Jonathan didn't come back for her after going into foster care. Due to her paranoia, she eventually started to believe that he either abandoned out of spite or that he wanted to kill her just like her parents. Although despite what she thinks, the real reason he left her behind was due to a genuine fear that he'd get her killed as well as him being utterly terrified of forming attachments.

Scream Queen was mostly her way of getting control of her own life for once, as well as it being a method for acting out her violent intrusive thoughts without being judged. Clarice's true feelings are shown through Scream Queen instead of in her civilian life. Outside of costume, she tends to be extremely anxious and doesn't speak up often, sometimes even nonverbal. In-costume, she's extremely dramatic and aggressive, as well as being far more talkative.

Her main intention with becoming a vigilante, outside of taking control of her own life, is mostly to get back at Jonathan. According to Clarice, if she doesn't get to have a future then neither does he. For the most part, he's completely unaware of her identity and it's not going to be pretty on either end when he finally finds out.

She's understandably far less experiences than any member of the Batfamily when it comes to vigilante work. Her fighting ability mostly consists of two years of kickboxing training she signed up for in order to take her aggression out on something. In addition to her kickboxing ability, she eventually starts using a chain as her main weapon, starting out with having it wrapping around her knuckles and then eventually learning out to wield it as a whip.

She's more of a one-on-one stealth fighter if anything else, mostly relying on scaring people when she has to deal with groups in order to get them on their own.

Much like her adopted father, her main weapon is her ability to frighten people. She tends to go for unnatural movements in a fight in order to stay as unpredictable as possible, often times switching from normal bipedal movement to suddenly lunging on all fours. Most of her tools are centered around this idea, with her utilizing things such as smoke bombs and even firecrackers to keep people on their toes. Much like Shivers Jonathan, she also likes to freak people out by Blixa Bargeld screaming.

Unlike the Batfamily, she's on a tight budget and she knows it. All of her tools are things she can reliably find without too much suspicion, with her most valuable items being bought from military surplus stores.

Clarice also uses her costume to more safely stim, since she has a fairly large amount of unsafe stims. The wig on her mask allows her to safely yank on hair without pulling out chunks of her actual hair and she often uses the claws on her gloves to scratch at her suit instead of her skin.

For very understandable reasons, Batman is absolutely opposed to her operating as a vigilante, which causes a very unstable relationship with the rest of the Batfamily. Bruce views her as being an unstable viability that cares more about hurting people than saving lives, which isn't exactly untrue. Clarice already doesn't view Batman in a favorable light, with her being unable to separate him from one of the most traumatic experiences in her life. Most of the others view her as being in over her head, with Barbara suspecting her of having a death wish (also not untrue). The only one who finally manages to reach out to her, however, is Stephanie.

Clarice was designed to be Stephanie's character foil, with them both being the children of supervillains who wanted to get back at their parent but taking very different approaches to life. Clarice is a pessimistic mess of a person who has trouble seeing the good in others, while Stephanie refuses to let people drag her down and sees the humanity in others. Steph looks at Clarice and sees so much of herself as Spoiler in her, and eventually manages to reach out to her so she doesn't make the same mistakes she did as Spoiler. Though she never really gets close to most members of the Batfamily, Clarice eventually does regard Stephanie as her closest friend.

#shiversverse #oc: clarice keeny #jonathan crane #batman oc #my art #suicide tw #child abuse tw #domestic abuse tw #self harm tw #side note: jonathan crane is still not a good father #he genuinely loves clarice and treated her better than her biological father but he still quite literally kept people in their basement

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I easily could have decided to go with Clarice being Jonathan's biological daughter, but having her be based on his little half-sister from Year One is something that's just so utterly juicy in regards to the potential dynamics I get to play around with.

For one, I think the only possible way for a Crane so heavily based on Year One to not immediately attempt violent murder is his canonical tendency to show some level of sympathy for victim of bullying/abuse. Karen Keeny's husband is shown to be physically abusive in the original comic and Clarice being older meant that I was going to explicitly make her a victim of family violence, as well.

That being said, the Year One focus also means that I have to closely examine the darker aspects of Crane. As much as i love Year One, that version of Jon is still a monster. Shivers Jonathan was meant to show a version of Year One Crane that actually managed to pull off his goals in the comic, in that this is a man who had every intention of slaughtering his entire family in cold blood. Jon didn't intend on taking that long drive out of Georgia with someone coming with him. Now, I don't think Jonathan would normally go out of his way to murder a child, but he's still nonetheless a man who was fully capable and very willing to murder a small child in front of his own mother. Or rather, in the case of Shivers Jon, murder a child next to the still warm corpse of her strangled mother.

So, I think that the only possible thing that could prevent Jonathan from finishing the job is the fact that he looked into the eyes of a scared little kid and he saw himself. And he flinched.

Jonathan Crane was not meant to be a father. He isn't kind, he isn't patient, and he is a person that has truly never known any sort of love or affection.

Jonathan Crane is a man who's known from birth exactly how it feels to be utterly hated.

He only kept Clarice because he wanted to show his mother exactly how much he hated her. That's what he tells himself, at least.

But every time he sees this frail little girl flinch the exact moment he raises his voice, it feels like being stabbed in the chest.

#crane's mommy issues hitting him right where it hurts #this man deserves to have more children traumatize him back #also i <3 dysfunctional parental bonds #shiversverse #jonathan crane #scarecrow #oc: clarice keeny #batman oc #domestic abuse tw #child abuse tw

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Currently practicing writing with Jonathan and Clarice's rather disastrous first meeting and very proud of the document title.

Things are going great, by the way.

#local murderer currently horrified from realizing he sees himself when he looks at a child he just traumatized for life #jonathan crane #shiversverse #oc: clarice keeny

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So I've lately been trying to come up with things for Shivers Jonathan to affectionately call Clarice and I tentatively was going for him calling her either Girl or Child, but I was re-reading Year One and uhhhhhhh

Y I K E S

#i mean I still might keep it just for the sad parallels #look headverse jonathan isn't nearly as bad of a parental guardian as great granny but I'm not going to say that he's exactly a good father #i mean outside of the obvious “killing your mom and her husband and then kidnapping your half-sister” aspect of him and clarice's bond #this man isn't exactly the most emotionally open individual to be around and is also quite literally a murderer #shiversverse #jonathan crane #oc: clarice keeny

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Finally filled my entire sketchbook and the last page gets to feature Shivers Jonathan and his kidnapped baby sister adopted daughter, Clarice

#is headverse jonathan a good father? fuck no #is he a loving father? yes #very much going with the theme of “genuinely trying to break the cycle of terrible parenting and then failing in new and exciting ways” #as much as Jonathan tries to not be like Granny #raising a kid that you kidnapped after killing her mom is absolutely going to fuck her up mentally #this man isn't dodging the reckless child endangerment charges #shiversverse #jonathan crane #oc: clarice keeny #my art

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.....You know, I had a huge essay in my head for the character dynamic between Clarice and Stephanie Brown once she finally becomes Scream Queen, but I've recently been haunted by the realization that it's literally just this

#i'm sorry but SA2 permanently changed my brain structure when i was 6 #listen....rivalry between teenager with an issue with authority and another teenager who's traumatized and misanthropic #fighting each other until traumatized teen eventually regains their hope in humanity #and also maybe Crush 40 is playing in the background #shiversverse #stephanie brown #oc: clarice keeny #batman oc

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Clarice Keeny pictured at the exact moment she tracked down the only remaining video rental place in Gotham and slammed down as many slasher movies as she could find on the counter while excitedly staring down the resident stoned cashier.

#i think being raised by Scarecrow basically ensures that you lose the ability to smile like a normal person #shiversverse #oc: clarice keeny #batman oc #my art

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Imagine being like eight years old and waking up in the morning with the intention of doing something really nice for your mom for Mother's Day and then ending the day with two dead parents and a surprise adoption by your absolute freak of an older brother. Not to mention the fact that the only reason your older brother didn't point blank you was because you've witnessed and been a victim of domestic abuse from your father.

Being Clarice Keeny is hard

#i've always found it interesting that Jonathan Crane canonically gets bothered by people with similar trauma #considering Study Hall and Joker's Asylum it seems like it does make him make sort of an effort to help people #since she's both older than her original version and her father is canonically abusive to her mother #I thought it'd make sense that Clarice would be visibly emotionally affected #and since Crane occasionally seems to be capable of showing some sort of kinship with those with similar trauma #I thought it'd make some sort of sense for why he doesn't go through with killing her #oc: clarice keeny #jonathan crane #batman oc #shiversverse #my art #child abuse tw #domestic abuse tw

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Physically unable of being normal about SV Jonathan's dynamic with his little sister/daughter figure. This man literally panicked when his family murder plan got thrown off the rails by a small child dredging up all of his childhood trauma and decided to cope by surprise adoption. Meanwhile Clarice is shotgunning the five stages of grief after getting kidnapped by the guy who killed her mom and comes out of this with a father figure against her better judgement, which only happens because her biological father somehow managed to be worse at his job than the feral mad scientist that likes to chug nightmare juice. These two have so many issues.

#shiversverse #jonathan crane #oc: clarice keeny #tragic father and daughter dynamics are like catnip to me #episode 9 of the magnus archives influenced so much of these two's dynamic #my art

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Making Scarecrow a father figure in the Headverse was the best decision I’ve ever made. Imagine having to deal with an awful nightmare man warmly greeting you in the morning in full Scarecrow gear. Have a quick Scarecrow and his angry half-sister/daughter figure.

#jonathan crane #oc: clarice keeny #batman oc #shiversverse #my art

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Some assorted SV Jonathan sketches I've made over the past few weeks, along with Clarice, his half-sister/daughter figure/kidnapping victim

#jonathan crane #oc: clarice keeny #shiversverse #side note: he actually does wear glasses. I just don't know how to draw them lololol #disclaimer: don't kill your mom and kidnap your sister #it turns out children hate that #SV Jonathan's early character arc is darkly hilarious #character arc of “It turns out raising a child to be just like me has consequences” #this man wasn't ready for his family murder plan getting disrupted by an seven/eight year old girl triggering his PTSD #and then panicked and stole an entire child to compensate for feeling actual emotions towards a family member #the entire ride back to Gotham consisted of a grown man and a small child dissociating in a car in complete silence #they probably had to stop at McDonald's #this grown man really stole a child to spite the mother he just murdered and then freaked out when he realized he actually got attached

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Huh, just realized that I could easily have used Cheryl instead of Clarice but I'm too attached now to change it lol

#it probably would've made for a great double reference to silent hill and sheryl lee #but I've had Clarice as her name for like years now so.....oopsie #oc: clarice keeny

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Dropping my playlists for World's Most Dysfunctional Family Unit.

#shiversverse #jonathan crane #scarecrow #oc: clarice keeny #batman oc #Spotify