Crystal Clear [READY]

[TwoBits]

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria

Name: Crystal Clear

Sex: Female

Age: Younger Mare

Species: Unicorn

Eye colour: Byzantium purple. Though her eyesight is in fine shape, Crystal still frequently dons narrow, silver-framed rectangular glasses while working so that she can more easily catch fine details or flaws.

Coat: Cerulean

Mane/Tail: White with sparing streaks of light seafoam green; well-groomed, it has its own natural, loose waviness that requires but minimal product help to retain lush, whimsical curl through the day. Crystal typically keeps the majority of her mane bound up in a quick, twisty bun at the back of her head, leaving a small bit curving outwards and a good portion left framing the side of her face.

Physique: about average height, shapely, elegant, not very strong

Residence: Roam

Occupation: Glass and crystal ornament maker

Cutie Mark: A six-petaled, sky- and midnight-blue bermudiana flower with seven small diamonds as a center

History: Crystal Clear was born to two crafstponies deep in the central heart of Roam; Clarion Clear, a mare skilled in making beautiful lamps and lanterns, and Silverwright, a reputable jeweler stallion. Little Crystal thus grew up with a life of things shiny and glistening, and even as she barely learned to walk it became obvious that she was taking this aesthetic appreciation just as much to heart as her parents before her. She could easily spend hours entranced from watching the way light broke apart in the glass and crystal of her parents' products, and would often try to play with any gems or lantern panes left sitting out in the open before her mother and father began buying her more sparkly (and less fragile) toys. As she grew into a filly Crystal's love grew into the more manageable practice of collecting, saving for, and on occasion even begging for various shiny figurines and trinkets, which she kept guarded safe in a bookcase in her room and fastidiously tended to.

It didn't take long at all for her to know that she wanted to be like her parents, and make such wonderfully beautiful and radiant things for other ponies to cherish and love. The problem, however, was in figuring out just -how- she wanted to go about making that happen. Her many attempts to aid her parents in their work made it apparent pretty quickly that she wasn't exactly cut out for taking on either of their vocations--any lanterns she tried to make with her mother were so colorful, patterned and bejeweled that they ended up becoming moderately glowy blocks of thick blended rainbow rather than anything really practical for shedding clear light around a useful radius, and her then-short attention span and more fantastical taste in aesthetic didn't quite pan out well with the moderated, refined standards her father's jewelry and adornments required. Crystal Clear gradually became more and more disheartened, in her mind equating her inability to match up to her parents with a total lack of potential for any real calling or talent.

Crystal passed a couple more years in this manner, still collecting her precious sparkly trinkets but lacking much of her prior gusto and infatuation with the hobby. Eventually the time came when her class was assigned their monthly project: in regards to upcoming Hearts and Hooves Day, and with beauty and love especially being Roam's great cultural trademarks, each student was to craft a window ornament representing what he or she believed to be the visual representation of those two things. Here, Crystal began to really fear. All her botched crafting attempts under her parents' supervision had greatly lessened the little filly's confidence in her ability to -make- things--and besides, how was she to know what love and beauty were supposed to look like? She hardly knew anything about love--in fact, she had even -scoffed- at most concepts or traditions dealing with love for as long as she could remember! And now she was supposed to somehow turn love into something to be hung in front of a window? How could her teacher reasonably expect her to pull this off?

Crystal Clear spent most of the allotted two weeks for the project alternately fretting about her inevitable failing grade and actively trying to avoid working on the project as long as she could, until eventually those two weeks became one--then three days--then two. By that point all her worry and stress had piled up enough to where they finally peaked in a burst of panic; spurred by the urgency of the deadline and the idea of not having anything to turn in for her grade, she broke into a whirlwind of frantic activity. Though almost blindly grappling for anything she could possibly use to make a window hanger, the admittedly substantial bits and pieces she had learned about crafting from her parents stuck enough to where she was subconsciously able to start materializing more of an actual end product as she worked. Perhaps those curvy, pointed panes of glass her mother had baked for a patterned lantern window could be used as a flower for the centerpiece, if she just reshaped them a bit in the ovens; flowers had something to do with love, right? And perhaps that one pink crystal Father had set aside could be used for the middle of the flower; surely he had plenty more like it, after all.

Crystal worked almost entirely on autopilot through the rest of the weekend, first in a foggy state of frantic work, and then gradually calming down and investing more and more into the project as it began to come together, fixing or replacing mistakes as they became apparent, adding on a few sparing crystalline accents to the petals of the flower and piecing together three short crystal droplet chains to hang from the lower petals, practically ignorant to any implications of "borrowing" her parents' supplies without warning. Monday did finally come, however, cutting short time for her to build on everything else she had started thinking to do for her window hanger, and with dread in her heart Crystal Clear set off for school with her practically last-minute project, sure that the thing had turned out sloppy and that she'd be lucky just to get a passing grade. As the bell rang for class to start Crystal put up her hanger with the others and returned to her seat as swiftly and discreetly as she could, merely wanting to get the grading over with. Why, why hadn't she started working on this earlier? Why hadn't she properly given herself time to make something worthy of being called a decoration?

Crystal was sure she would be mocked and lectured for what she felt was an absolute failure of an assignment. It took her a while to distinguish that the noises coming from her classmates were not snide jeers and laughter, as she expected, but rather hushed and awed, almost reverent. She dared to look up from her forehooves, and saw, almost to her disbelief, that it was her hanger they were all admiring. Somehow, they all thought it was pretty, even amazing. Crystal took a while to fully register this, before turning a refreshed eye to the glass hanger. Yes, the flower petals were arranged a little asymmetrically around the gem, yes, some of the panes had scratched a little in her hurry to get the thing built, and yes, the droplet chains weren't entirely the same length--but now she was able to take in little details that she hadn't bothered to appreciate before, such as the pleasant contrast of clear glass and diamond against pale coral pink and gold chain link, or particularly the way in which flecks and rays of light bounced off of the many facets to dance softly and radiantly through the classroom.

It seemed that despite the rush through the weekend and despite her own certainty that she would not be able to make something properly beautiful, Crystal had come through and done just that. Despite failing to mimic the style in which their parents went about their trades, her own had developed in a way just as unique, and it showed now in the admiring, awestruck whispers from her peers. Bathing in the warm pride and relief of the moment, Crystal knew that this was what she had been trying to achieve for so many years. Maybe she wasn't meant to be a lamp maker or a jeweler, like her mother or father, but--she realized then--maybe she was meant to excel in something entirely her own, making pretty and delicate little things, ornaments and the like, that could enrapture ponies with their fantastical beauty and strike a chord of something soft and sacred in their hearts. Right about then one of her classmates happened to look in her direction, and, with an exclamation of excitement, pointed enthusiastically at the little unicorn's flank. Crystal twisted around to find her cutie mark settling in a fading, glistening glow.

From then on Crystal Clear's life soared by at a much faster pace, buoyed by the exuberance of finally knowing what her life's work would be. She began avidly studying the trades of glassblowing and gem curating, at first from her parents and then taking apprenticeships under other craftsponies more in line with her aspiring trade, and just a couple years after leaving primary school she was already starting to turn a tidy profit from the decorations and trinkets she was producing. Selling them as gifts or momentos to lovestruck touring couples and neighbors was fine and all, but after a while Crystal decided that she could achieve even more by expanding her consumer audience beyond the romantic sphere. And so, even as she continued to run her little shop in Roam, Crystal Clear began stashing away a portion of her earnings each month, hoping to eventually pack up shop and relocate the Wishing Star Glassblowing Emporium right into the very heart of unicorn culture and elegance--Canterlot.

Character Summary: Crystal Clear has matured finely from her days as a dreamy, absentminded schoolfilly. Now much more attentive and adaptive, she is a disciplined and hardworking tradespony with a fine eye for detail and a love for the iridescent, fairy-tale beauty of dreams and fantasy. This reflects itself in her products--while she certainly has more than a few structured, symmetrical window hangings and the like, many of her little glass statuettes and figures tend to flow more naturally in form, oftentimes taking the shape of things such as flowers, hummingbirds, merponies rearing out of swelling waves, and the like. Crystal herself devotes a great amount of love to her ornaments, fawning and caring for them from the very first day of creation, right up until they leave her shelves to find a new home with a gentle buyer; she is not even above talking or singing to them as though they were living things, capable of responding. Such dedication does foster great fussiness, however--she has developed stringent standards of tidiness in keeping her trinkets clean and in fine shape, to the point where even a faint layer of dust or a smudged cafe window can distract her attention and cause her slight irritation.

She has little to no patience for more rowdy, rough-shod ponies (perhaps from years of anxiously watching animated customers move about the display stands in her shop), and will make no illusion about preferring the company of more careful-hoofed, refined folk. In her social interactions Crystal is airy and lighthearted, and for the most part could be considered less prickly than the typical high-class unicorn that reputation has shaped. She is something of a peacekeeper by default, avoiding conflict and aiming to keep other ponies happy and content, almost to a fault--when something does happen to shatter her easy-going, whimsical little "reality shell", she is somewhat lacking in great or even good coping mechanisms. She will react to unfortunate circumstances with fretful whining, angry indignation, and a loss of motivation, usually requiring a while to pick herself back up and get rolling again; and woe to the pony with soon-to-be-ringing ears who has the mischance to chip or break one of her ornaments in her shop.

Despite living the entirety of her life thus far in Roam, Crystal has a surprising disregard for notions of love or romance. While she can certainly appreciate the beauty in a love sonnet or in an oath of everlasting fealty, she tends to view the genre of romance as a potential consumer audience rather than a thing she herself ever aspires to attaining someday. She's perfectly happy now as a single pony with a successful business--why complicate things by bringing a stallion into her personal life?

Along with the usual levitation magic, Crystal has also trained herself in light-making magic, for the purpose of testing the effect different qualities of light will have on reflecting off of her glass and crystals. She has become quite adept at simulating a variety of colors and intensities for these illuminations.

Unbeknownst to her (or really, to any of her currently living family) Crystal Clear has traces of crystal pony in her heritage on her mother's side. Introduced during the era of peaceful trade before King Sombra's reign, the crystal pony genes have diluted and lessened over time to where they have minimal--if any--effect on the ponies in its line. In Crysal Clear specifically, it manifests in her talent working with gemstones and glass and in her desire to instill beauty, awe, and inspiration in the souls of other ponies. Her coat does not have the sheer, prismatic effect of crystal ponies, nor would she even be aware of this heritage without EXTREME digging into her family genealogy, possibly even requiring a venture directly into the revived Crystal Empire archives.

[Bellosh]

Just one small nitpick; Hearts and Hooves Day is the proper name for Equestria's annual celebration of all things romance. Other than that, very good job with this app. Despite that one error of yours, I feel comfortable moving this app up the chain.

[Armony]