Clyde Clemens

Clyde Clemens is a character in the Non-Canon battle The Fantastic Tournament: Champions Edition

Weapon/Abilities:
Clyde's preferred medium is magical oil paint (toxic if ingested, irritant, somewhat runnier in consistency; he likes working in jewel tones with lots of bleeding and dripping). Between his synaesthesia and the magical abilities of his muse, he can imbibe paints with certain abilities. Before he won the Titular Bullshit he'd discovered a highly corrosive chartreuse, flammable fuchsia, neon neons, indomitable azure, flesh-rending rufous, and of course the battle-ending null black (of which he mercifully has only a tiny, mostly-exhausted tube remaining). When he got home, he prepared for All-Stars by concocting even more shades. Colours in the world around him often "speak" to him as to what they could do in his hands – a kaleidoscope would serve as an excellent distraction/mindfuck. Sufficiently deep blacks make him nervous, although he's never seen anything close to Null. Because of its properties in affecting the spiritual plane, Clyde's muse instils in him a dislike of purples, too.

He's a dab hand with a paintbrush, and carries a full range of different-sized ones, all with hardwood handles and dagger-sharp tips. He keeps his paint in a satchel, with at least a few tubes of paint "holstered" along the strap. He's also got paint thinner, several large tubes of white (a good mixer to add bulk at the cost of potency), and some kind of foul-smelling powder in a bag which he mixes with found substances (beverages, saps, blood) to mix "natural" hues on the fly.

His muse grants Clyde eyes in the back of his head, warning the man of potential threats. Considering the way he strolls about in an apparent paint fume-derived daze, this has saved him on at least one occasion.

Description:
Clyde rocks the starving artist look pretty well, in conjunction with the substance-abusing look. Red-rimmed grey eyes from paint inhalation, short sandy hair, a dress shirt that's seen better days worn under a thin, yellow hoodie that's faded under grime. Jeans, boots, and the aforementioned satchel. He's almost certainly lost it – he was entered into the Titular Bullshit as a significantly less magical serial killer, but fell foul of one of the many malevolent spirits in the competition's fourth round – set in the crypts of the demonologist and painter Bariccia. This "muse" took a shining to the young lad, took up residence in the impressionable man's mind, and ramped his synaesthesia up to eleven just for kicks. The spirit is likely demonic in origin, possessing no name. It registers in Clyde's mind as a soothing, female voice, always helpful and never angry. For motivations unknown beyond being a simple monster, it's happiest when Clyde's getting his kill on.

Backstory:
Clyde was probably an unsuccessful artist-turned paint-huffing serial killer with a suitably tragic backstory to convince Selvsetter that his flimsy stabbing-sticks could stand up to the likes of a giant dragonfly from an age of sentient insect steampunk sky-piracy, a good-cop bad-cop duo who could only exist in reflected surfaces, a hexapod golem carrying alien technology that crashed from the stars, and some other whacky bullshit. He snagged an early, friendly, psychopathic rivalry with his fellow serial killer - a venus-flytrap-in-a-miniature-warship - and struggled with advances from a lady-scorpion who just wished he'd come right. He fell into a rather mopey and uninteresting despondency toward round 3's end, but Bariccia's "muse" set him straight come Round 4. He gutted the lady-scorpion in a dramatic round-ender and overhaul of his character that got everyone else on edge, then innovated with quirky yet logical-enough-to-not-call-bullcrap additions to his magical paint-based repertoire of attacks. He hunted down his enemies one by one, capitalising on the little advantages his Grandmaster had conferred him in the rounds' layouts (preventing his foes from congregating and mustering a capable defence). Clyde had ripped apart every contestant save the hexapod golem, who had been working his own subplot of convincing the other contestants to buy it time so it could enact its master plan in the final round. There was a climactic fight and it probably got very metaphysical but that just meant the muse got involved and, in a final desperate act, Clyde struck Tharrsh'stl'ka with Null – the Defining Black. That Which Must March Across All And All Alone. The result was… messy. Tharrsh'stl'ka's author had honestly had enough of the constant bullshit the Titular Bullshit's Grandmaster kept spouting, and was probably borderline trolling her when writing this deathpost.

The Grandmaster gave no shits. She gave her champion the Expanse, gave him Plum and Byzantium and Carmine and Cyan enough to paint doors to wherever he wished, and set the madman free. The metagaming maniac who condoned this course of action was none other than...

Tournament Information:
Selvsetter was a writer in several Fantastic Tournaments, and planned to snag a hosting spot later in the season. Her plans were somewhat interrupted by an untimely distraction, but after presumably doing something no less nonsensical and aggressive than pistolwhipping/bitchslapping the glitchy GBCE that had waylaid her into submission, she found her way back into reality. The sojourn gave her the questionably useful and disgracefully self-indulgent ability to eschew narrative control for a more hands-on approach. Claiming that Grandmasters as a whole were "a pack of fuckin' self-inserts anyway, so this is just cutting to the fucking chase, y'know?" she hosted the Titular Bullshit with an unpretentious, foul-mouthed, foul-minded, abusive, abrasive, fourth-wall desecrating positive bitch of a Grandmaster who "didn't have time for your bullshit names so just fuckin' call me Selvsetter".

This disgrace to original character tournaments ran a battle rife with lampshading, Grandmaster asides, staring through the fourth wall, irked intervention when things weren't convoluted/explosive enough for her liking (as dictated by her ever-changing whims), throwing things through the fourth wall, and really friggin' bitchy dialogues with other Grandmasters which basically brought the sum of their interactions in line with however Selvsetter felt about the host behind the omnipotent douchebag.

In some sort of protest that nobody remembers the exact instigators for (although it was probably Selvsetter's fault), the Grandmaster "locked" herself in her in-game universe – addressing only the game hosts (via likely-confused facades of the Grandmasters, whose authors probably struggled with keeping any sort of in-universe realistic quality to their exchanges with the crazy bitch) and the "Gentlemen" who participated in her game. Those "friends" of Selvsetter who care about this delusional lunatic for some reason (or just want to see her receive comeuppance) have bandied together to take her down and convince her to come back to the real world again and acknowledge what a terrible thing she's been doing.