Characters / Opal

The characters from Jack Stauber's OPAL

Opal/Claire

Voiced by: Jack Stauber (screams only)

The title character of OPAL. She decides to brave a house that she was warned not to go into to save a crying girl called Claire and faces her miserable family.

---

• Break the Cutie: She went through a house full of horribly disturbing people to help someone who was crying in the attic, only to realize that it was really her crying the whole time, and that the horrible people were her neglecting family members.
• Cowardly Lion: Despite being terrified of Claire's abusive family, Opal keeps going deeper into the house to investigate the crying she heard.
• Cute Mute: She doesn't speak a line for the whole short and she's oddly adorable.
• Freak Out: Has one at the end of the short.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She has blond hair and ventures to the house across the street solely to find and comfort whoever the crying she keeps hearing is coming from. Granted, the one crying was her, but it's the thought that counts.
• Heroic Mime: Opal doesn't speak a single word during the entire short. Lampshaded by Claire's grandfather who questions why "Claire" isn't answering him when he talks to her.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Opal is mistaken for one by multiple members of the family using Claire as one. The ending, which reveals the two are one and the same, further uses imagery to point out that she functions as this for every member of her family: her blind grandfather relies on her to bring him cigarettes and support his unhealthy lifestyle, as his revealed eyes turn into her head, her father needs her to favorably compare himself to, so his mirror becomes her face, and her substance-abusing mother is the most direct example as her pills turn into Claire.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: Compared to other characters in Jack Stauber's work, she is VERY thin. Justified, because it's heavily implied that she's probably starving and malnourished.
• The Scream: She has a big one at the end when she realizes that she's actually the abused Claire.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: She has one just moments before her Freak Out over her realization that she's actually Claire and gets abused regularly.
• Vague Age: Her age is never stated, and her malnutrition and overall physical condition makes it hard to estimate how old she is.
• The Voiceless: Outside of a few screams, she doesn't speak throughout the whole short.
• Walking Spoiler: Good luck trying to talk about her without exposing the twist of the whole short, along with her true identity as Claire.

The Grandfather

"Y'know, it's evil to help people who don't need help Claire."

Voiced by: Jack Stauber

Claire's grandfather. An unhealthy blind old man with a cigarette addiction.

---

• Blind People Wear Sunglasses: He's blind and he wears sunglasses.
• Blood from the Mouth: Coughs up blood at one point and wipes it away, while complaining that Claire shouldn't be trying to "help" him by hiding his cigarettes.
• Eyeless Face: During Claire's Freak Out, he has Claire's face where his eyes should be, showing that she became her eyes.
• Gruesome Grandparent: He's blind and a cigarette addict (implied to be suffering from COPD), and he guilt-trips Opal/Claire by telling her that "it's evil to help people who don't need help". The ending reveals that he fails to recognize his own granddaughter, and reacts to his belief that she isn't Claire by trying to chase the poor girl out of the house.
• Irony: He complains about Claire hiding his cigarettes from him and insists that it's evil to help people who don't want to be helped as he's coughing up blood, implicitly from the same cigarettes killing him.
• New Media Are Evil: Downplayed, but in addition to ruining his health with cigarettes, Claire's grandfather spends all day "watching" television despite being blind, which doesn't seem to be helping his wretched health one bit. But while he complains that the salesmen and girls he listens to want his soul, it's heavily indicated he also likes feeling as if they're fighting over him "like dogs".
• The Scream: He screams when he falls from his recliner while trying to grab Opal, whom he does not recognize as Claire, and later when chasing her up the stairs.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: He's a heavy smoker and is an unpleasant man to be around, and that's not even bringing up the health issues he implicitly has from it. His song, titled "Why Does It Sound So Easy to Breathe On TV?", features lots of lung and mouth imagery in addition to his out-of-breath singing. He also mistakes Claire for someone else because she "smell[s] weird", implying that his smoking has ruined his sense of smell.
• Smoky Voice: It's more on the deep side of this trope than the raspy side.

The Father

^{Click here for his actual appearance}

"Hey! Just gonna walk by without saying hello?"
Voiced by: Jack Stauber

Claire's father. A Narcissist that spends most of his time looking at himself in the mirror and "perfecting himself" for the world to see.

---

• Abusive Parents: He's a childish, narcissistic, and egocentric man who insults and belittles his daughter to make himself feel/look better in comparison, while never even having a two-way conversation with her.
• Ambiguous Situation: His song suggests his Start of Darkness came when "They turned me down." What exactly this means, and whether or not the audience ought to take a twisted narcissist at his word, is left thoroughly unexplained. It's also unclear whether or not the look at his face visible as a Freeze-Frame Bonus ought to be read literally.
• Camp Straight: He's a VERY flamboyant man, as far as wearing makeup. But he's married to a woman and other than his flamboyancy, there's no sign of him being anything other than straight.
• Glamour Failure: Claire's father's normally very high and soft voice frequently and suddenly turns extremely deep and ominous whenever Opal does something that draws his attention, or when he's projecting his own self-loathing onto her, only to instantly switch back to its usual tone split-seconds later.
• A God Am I: If the lyrics to his song are to be believed, he's starting to think this of himself, as he proudly claims that God is in [his] Skin" and he's "crafting the world its next new savior.
• Irony: He often talks about himself as if he were a child or teenager, something still small and growing, and not a full-grown man with a wife and child. Bonus points for saying these things with a straight face to a child, his own neglected child in fact.
• It's All About Me: He makes most conversations with his daughter about him and his appearance, while constantly passive-aggressively putting hers down.
• Manchild: He refers to himself as a "small, growing thing" to Opal/Claire, an actual child.
• Motor Mouth: He talks faster than everybody else, and his song is the most fast-paced.
• Narcissist: His biggest personality trait.
• Nightmare Face: He's shown to have one in a split-second shot, where he looks like a rotten corpse who lost both his eyes; whether it's supposed to be read literally or metaphorically is ambiguous.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: His scene has one during the dialogues, plus one that ends his song as a Last Note Nightmare.
• Self-Harm: Is heavily implied to do this to himself in the belief that it's "fixing his appearance;" his song features imagery like brushing makeup onto an eyeball and beating his own skin until it begins to spurt blood. If the Nightmare Face shown during Claire's Freak Out is his actual face, this horribly backfired.
• Stepford Smiler: While he's definitely the cheeriest of the family, he's an shallow narcissist that never takes responsibility for his actions just like the rest of the adults in the family.

The Mother

"Our adversaries are in denial..."
Voiced by: Jack Stauber

Claire's mother. A neglectful drunk who uses Claire as a way to make herself feel better as a person.

---

• Abusive Parents: She grabs Opal's/Claire's ankle, possibly in an attempt to beat her so she could prove her point about Opal/Claire being "powerless". Her song reveals she's a neglectful drunk who only views Claire as a tool to make herself feel better and uses her as a therapist of sorts for herself.
• Addled Addict: She's heavily implied to almost always be in a drug and alcohol-induced haze.
• The Alcoholic: She's a really heavy drinker, and washes down whatever pills she's taking with it.
• Children Raise You: Invoked, but horribly subverted. Claire's mother likes to think of her motherhood as the best thing that ever happened to her and to herself and Claire as kindred spirits, but it's clear to the audience that she's just as abusive as the rest of Claire's family, and her song not only features the imagery of her pulling her daughter close as both of them sink and drown in water, but lyrically makes it clear that she only loves Claire in utilitarian terms and expects her child to take care of her rather than the other way around.
• Dark and Troubled Past: During her song, there's a burst of different events occurring for a few seconds, some things that can be made out of it is someone falling, someone yelling, and a hand dialing 9-1-1.
• Generation Xerox: Invoked; she often claims that Claire is like her and going to turn out like her someday. If she doesn't drink alcohol like her mother, this is already the case.
• Irony: She sees herself as a forgiving person who tolerates everything everyone does around her in a "virtuous cycle", but it's clear that she's also the most directly abusive of Claire's relatives.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: Her song is a sinister lullaby about how she needs her daughter to take care of her.
• Junkie Parent: Does drugs alongside alcohol and is Claire's mother.

Opal's Family

^{Click here for their true appearance}

"We see you Opal, your troubles are miles away.
We see you Opal, and in our eyes you'll stay!"

— Opal's family singing to her at the beginning and end of the short.

Voiced by: Jack Stauber (all three of them)

Opal's family. They adore her and see her for who she is. Unfortunately, they're all part of a fantasy Claire created to escape her abusive and neglectful family, and only physically exist on a billboard for Opal's Burgers across the street.

---

• Creepy Good: With how off-putting they are and the way they insist Opal shouldn't pay attention to the crying coming from the house across the street, you might think they have something sinister going on underneath the surface. They actually are a Deconstruction of this, as they're Claire's escape mechanism from her horrible home life in the real world, so of course they'd try to keep her happy and safe from the realization that her actual life sucks, but if she actually obeyed them, she wouldn't have any chance to solve her own issues.
• Dysfunctional Family: Averted, they're pretty much a run-of-the-mill family. This aversion is justified, as it's a fantasy created by Claire to escape her abusive family.
• Escapism: Claire created them to be this for her.
• Good Parents: Opal's mother and father are very loving and kind, always supporting and encouraging their daughter. In stark contrast to Claire's actual parents, who view her as someone to vent their frustrations to at best.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Opal's grandfather seems to be a bit senile, but still a good man at heart. As her real grandfather is a blind couch potato who treats her like a servant, Claire can't imagine a more functional idea of a grandparent.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Their eyes are always wide open and they stare unflinchingly at Opal as they interact with her. This might be because the people on the billboard they're based on always have their eyes wide open as well.
• Walking Spoiler: While it isn't as bad as Opal/Claire, they are still prone to having many spoilers attached to them.

---