Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2018 17:00:50 GMT -7
hello there, my name is Clarence Corntassel but you can call me Clarence. i'm a/an professor and 78 so that makes me a Wampus alum at Ilvermorny. You could say I'm intelligent, knowledgeable, and witty but I personally think that I am taciturn, serious, and aware. People say I look a lot like Wes Studi, but I don't really see it...
Clarence James Corntassel
pronunciation:
/ˈklɛrəns ʤeɪmz kɔrnˈtæsəl/
nickname:
Clarence has no nicknames, though he strongly dislikes being referred to as “Professor”.
age:
78
date of birth:
March 27, 1946
gender & pronouns:
Cisgender male; he/him pronouns
blood status:
Half-blood
sexuality:
Heterosexual
schooling:
Clarence attended Ilvermorny and was in Wampus House. If he had attended Hogwarts in his youth, he would have been in Ravenclaw.
occupation:
For five decades, Clarence has taught Native American Magic to the students of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
wand:
11 inches, spruce with mother-of-pearl inlay, Wampus cat hair core, stiff (a Johannes Jonker wand; originally his father’s)
playby:
Wes Studi
appearance:
Although an old man, Clarence remains in good physical health. Standing at 5'11”, his build was more muscular in his youth, though he is still quite fit. His skin tone is indicative of his Cherokee descent; his short hair—once dark—is now a silvery grey, while his eyes are a deep brown. Because of his age, Clarence’s skin has become weathered and wrinkled; he additionally has a faint scar that runs along the side of his left cheek, the result of a dueling accident in his youth.
Clarence dresses well, generally wearing understated robes in neutral tones. For special occasions, he is likely to wear more traditional attire, such as a ribbon shirt. Overall, Clarence doesn’t really bother with accessories of any sort, though he keeps a pocket watch with him.
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personality
likes:
Educating others, maintaining tradition, order, Gobstones, grape dumplings, storytelling, children, Wampus cats, Herbology, coffee
dislikes:
Animagi, werewolves, those who disrespect the land or water, cultural appropriation, dealing with bureaucracy, intergenerational trauma, Muggle technology, alcohol, ageism, being late
erised:
Clarence desires to continue teaching for as long as he can, so that future generations will be able to understand the importance of the contributions that Indigenous peoples have made to the magical world.
amortentia:
Cedar, honeysuckle, and leather
boggart:
Clarence fears that he will never get closure in his sister’s death and that the person or people responsible for killing her will never be caught.
overall personality:
In describing Clarence, it would be difficult to say that he comes across as being particularly friendly at first glance. He is not, as a rule, outgoing; rather, he can seem to be quite stern and even unapproachable in his reservedness. While generally taciturn, Clarence’s silence is because he has developed a keen sense of when to speak up and when not to.
As a teacher, Clarence demands a lot from his students and pushes them to achieve what he knows that they are capable of doing. He is not unfair, however, towards them; he makes his expectations clear, not the least of which is that his students practice respect. Clarence is also willing to provide additional support outside of the classroom for those students who need it or for those who are interested in expanding their knowledge.
Around most, he keeps his private life precisely that. Where necessary, he will try to impart the same lessons that he has learned, using symbolism rather than being explicit that it is something that he himself has experienced.
While he would claim otherwise, Clarence’s beliefs about some other members of the magical community (particularly those such as Animagi, Metamorphmagi, and werewolves) are what others might undoubtedly view as being bigoted. He is not openly discriminatory towards students who fit this bill, but he does favor the Indigenous students to a degree.
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personal history
mother:
Helen Verna Corntassel, 1912-2008, former homemaker, half-blood witch, deceased
father:
Thomas Corntassel, 1900-1989, former wand core collector, half-blood wizard, deceased
siblings:
Dorothy Helen “Dotty” Corntassel, 1939-1972, former writer, half-blood witch, deceased
children:
N/A
pets:
N/A
history:
The No-Maj police said that there had been no been foul play, the usual excuse when women like Dotty went missing and turned up dead. To them, that time, they might have been right. MACUSA, on the other hand, knew better.
That had been in 1972, when Clarence’s older sister had been found murdered—the work of the Killing Curse—not far outside of Tahlequah. Aside from their school years, that was where Clarence and Dorothy had spent all of their lives.
Their childhoods had been filled with nothing but support from the elders in their community, and being raised in a magical household added to the knowledge that they understood to be part of their very identities as Aniyvwiyaʔi (Cherokee) people and members of the Cherokee Nation. They were raised surrounded by family members—both blood relatives and not—and were kept from the Native American boarding schools of the time.
Thomas, Clarence and Dotty’s father, had always had a particular affinity for felines and was one of the Cherokee men responsible for helping to procure the Wampus cat hair used by noted American wandmaker Johannes Jonker for the cores of his wands. Clarence grew up assuming that he would follow in his father’s footsteps, and he was ecstatic to be chosen by Wampus House when he arrived at Ilvermorny, although he could have just as well been in Horned Serpent.
In school, Clarence was a good student, improving his standing as the years went on. He was particularly interested in more hands-on forms of magic, but especially those subjects that pertained to the generations of his people who had come before him, including Herbology and Astronomy. By the time that he graduated, he was trained in Occlumency by one of his professors, under whose tutelage he remained for the following summer before returning to Oklahoma.
Back in his own community, Clarence found work in a number of jobs, working for a time as an apothecary and then as a potioneer—work that he ultimately continued well into his twenties, up until the time that his older sister, Dotty, went missing. Such an occurrence wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, particularly with the settler No-Maj population, but it was something that Clarence had never thought much about until it had actually happened.
He had seen his sister just a few nights before, in fact; she was working on a side project, a book, alongside her usual journalism work and had seemed thrilled with her progress. The next thing Clarence knew, Dotty was gone—disappeared and then dead. MACUSA was able to intervene after the No-Majs who had found her body and the police who had initially investigated her case had found little to suggest anything other than natural causes as the reason for her death, though even the magical authorities couldn’t conclude much about her killer. She had been married once, when she was straight out of school, though that had ended on amicable terms. She had seen other men since—nothing ever as substantial as the marriage that hadn’t lasted—but, again, that hadn’t given MACUSA much, in the end.
As for Clarence, he had dated a few times and had been in a relationship with a No-Maj woman when his sister was killed. Desperate to leave Oklahoma, he ended things with her and packed his bags at the first opportunity he got. His destination was Ilvermorny, where they had been seeking a professor of Native American Magic.
Initially, Clarence’s goal was to go back to Massachusetts and distract himself for long enough to come to terms with the murder of his sister. Continuing to draw upon his own knowledge from his community in his teaching position helped him to reconcile himself with having left Oklahoma, and his initial guilt turned into a sense of fulfillment that he was able to educate future generations of Ilvermorny students. One year at his new job turned into two, until such a point that the job was far from “new” to him anymore. Teaching multiple children from the same family over the course of a few years was one thing; being able to say that he had taught two generations in some families was an accomplishment that he had never considered until it happened.
While the faces changed and the times did, too, Ilvermorny remained relatively constant. America avoided serious war because of the destruction that had been caused in Britain—once and then twice. Upon his father’s death in 1989, Clarence inherited his wand, which he licensed for his own use. Being that it was an original Jonker wand, his father expressed his wish that it not be buried with him. Instead, he wanted it to be used until it would eventually wilt.
Time ticked into the new millennium, and it seemed as though—where the magical world was concerned—there was, for once, some semblance of peace. Clarence began to push MACUSA to reopen the investigation into who had killed his sister decades earlier, but he was told that there was little that they could do for him. Every so often, he kept trying, putting pressure on their officials once more. After his mother’s passing, it became even more important to him. The longer he waited for answers, the less likely he was going to be able to get them.
In more recent years, the goings-on at Hogwarts and in wizarding Britain as a whole have been of concern to Clarence, who feels that not enough has been done to protect students, in particular. Taking up the offer to continue teaching his subject at Hogwarts for the year while MACUSA assesses Ilvermorny’s damage, Clarence is concerned about what this means for the magical world, going forward. Having lived through his fair share of conflict already, he would prefer for MACUSA not to get involved, but the strengthening ties between America and Britain appear to be making any hope of neutrality less and less likely.
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alias
name:
Audrey
age:
20
time zone:
US/Canada Central/Eastern
reference:
Current member
other characters:
maxima ruqayyah greyback, parvati patil macmillan, @oona, honey satheesh varma, kaylee māhealani mahi'ai, @ezekiel