TL;CR MEME

[retellers]

1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.

Comments

[supremity]

ha ha oh no

[bowfaire]

Snow I never expected this CR to go the way it did ever

Coming into this, Claude was honestly just interested in Hua Cheng. His IC profile card was interesting. He was interesting. He was fun to talk to. Claude is an inquisitive person with a dangerous amount of curiosity and it was really only natural he'd be drawn to Hua Cheng.

Being randomly bonded to him that one week was unfortunate because Claude is allergic to closeness but like, the two of them worked it out. I know we handwaved the two of them figuring out how long they could be apart without it getting bad and that they'd try to stick together for curfew. So it was good! Claude appreciated that because heeeeeee also noticed that Hua Cheng was dangerous in the sense that he could probably poke at Claude and figure him out real fast.

Then he ended up splintering that night and he was SUPPOSED to have Hilda with him but he ran into her and decided to turn a blind eye. He stayed with HC and XL instead and like... by that point in the night, there was no hiding what was happening to him. He was genuinely in a really vulnerable state and the two of them really looked out for him that night. He was so, so, so grateful to them and felt like he really owed them after that. He wanted to make it up to them by helping them in return.

They ended cursed to hate each other and that was real unfortunate because he really did like Hua Cheng. It was actually really easy hating Hua Cheng because laughs a lot....... all Claude had to do was hate the parts that reminded him of his fake self. But when it was all over and Claude realized he'd caused Hua Cheng even more trouble and even voted for him? After he'd helped him out before? HORROR.

Finding out Shima was behind it all, Claude felt responsible for it because he knew that while he'd been intentional, Hua Cheng was probably random. Which ended up being right lmao.

ADDING ONTO MORE TROUBLE... when Claude was starting to have his dang break down and falling apart because of his sins, China Dads really pulled through for him. I know we plotted it out to make it happen but IC, Claude didn't expect to get support from them there. As someone who's never been understood growing up, having people who could understand him was a huge deal. After that, they knew his sins though so he could never leave them. They were stuck with him. Hua Cheng was stuck with him.

MEMSHARE WEEK WAS A SURPRISE TO CLAUDE TOO. Everyone in Fodlan/Almyra stays in their own neat little boxes. Claude's one of the very, very, very few characters of mixed race in canon so he's never really met anyone like himself before. Realizing Hua Cheng was similar to him even in that context? Wild. Big surprise. He really felt for Hua Cheng and his heart resonated with him a lot.

Unfortunately by that point, Claude had started to forget some pretty big things about his past. In that memshare we actually threaded, he'd forgotten he was a prince and ever growing up in a palace! So Claude couldn't remember where memory took place exactly and he couldn't remember the conversation the guards had. He also couldn't completely understand why someone would want to kill him because as far as he remembered at the time, he was discriminated against for being mixed but he wasn't important enough to be MURDERED/ASSASSINATED??? By the end of the week, he'd forgotten ever growing up outside of Fodlan so that whole part of his past was gone.

Then they really started working together with Xie Lian too and that was just... /chef's kiss They became very valuable allies for him. He recognized them as an amazing source for information but he also noticed that they were both just incredibly reliable people. People relied on them! He relied on them! And on top of that... they were just good people. He started to see how good Hua Cheng was and could really related to him in a lot of ways even if they didn't agree. He understood Hua Cheng's anger over certain events in game. He also understood and greatly appreciated Hua Cheng offering to like... not kill certain people for the Foxes. He knew that Hua Cheng was fine with any acceptable victim and Claude really, really understood that. Claude just couldn't give him any names personally because at that point because... he wasn't the one doing the killing. He understood why the murders had to happen and it wasn't his place to make things more difficult for anyone. It wasn't his time to be selfish. His role wasn't to pick and choose who would live and die in that moment so he left it in the hands of those killing and just relayed the names the Foxes gave him.

Uuh at the end of week 5, I had Claude completely forget everything about Almyra and his parents. He was also starting to forget a new Golden Deer almost everyday until he completely forgot them all week 6. He'd already forgotten Byleth completely week 4. I mention this because basically, Claude lost a lot of context for his struggles. He still remembered being hated. He remembered living everyday just to survive. He couldn't remember why people hated him and he'd forgotten a lot of love and support in his life. All he had were his Realm relationships and a few odd relationships back home (which weren't very close ones).

We joked about China Dads and Ohana but uhhhhh... after awhile, they really were like his parents in this weird found family unit??? Not actual parents but definitely like, head figures in this weird little family and Claude really looked up to Hua Cheng and Xie Lian. He knew he wasn't like either of them 100% and he related to both of them in different ways. Like a son that takes after both of his parents but isn't completely like either one... that was was Claude and China Dads. There are two AUs out there where Claude meshes with one more than the other but in this loop, he had a nice balance with both of them.

Anyway I love Hua Cheng and Claude. Claude loves his China Dad. Thank.