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

[stillnot]

Mom................. god i've been writing this for hours i keep getting distracted by chat.

As with a handful of people. Lup won Clem over with food early on. Feeding Clem became less meaningful as time went on because she wrapped her head around "there's enough to go around" and "people are just nice, here" but when she first showed up it seemed really revolutionary at the time LOL. Lup actually did reach Maternal Figure Status, which was very impressive because Clem is an Independent Feral Apocalypse Child Who Don't Need No Grown Ups, and a lot of game 4 is centered on her finding a home of Other Kids and marveling at them making it work without any grown ups.

But I wonder if she felt like Lup was more of a big sister than a mother. Clem has been without good adults in her life for so fucking long, and most of the ones she has run into were men, which I think means she's got more of an internalized longing for some kind of maternal figure because she hasn't had one since she was eight years old. But she also... Is from such a grimdark world that I think she has a harder time REALLY feeling like a person can be a caretaker and STILL be as goofy as Lup can be. A little silliness is fine and doesn't necessarily detract from how trustworthy someone is... I wonder how the best way to phrase it is. Like the difference between thinking someone would catch you if you fall if you ask versus trusting someone would catch you if you fall on their own. I think Lup would catch Clem on her own, but I think Clem's way of looking at it made her feel the opposite. THAT SAID, trusting anyone to catch her AT ALL, is still. fucking huge for Clem.

Like - it's a lategame example, but the Crab Pope stuff seemed risky to Clem because it was right at endgame. Lup had managed to be so fucking important to Clem that by then that she was nice about it, but if it had been anyone else locking in an answer like that she would have been like What the FUCK that's SUCH A BAD IDEA. So even though she accepted it - Lup's willingness to still get silly in moments when Clem was still trying to stay serious make her lean more towards sister than mom.

But, like, Lup got pet-name privilege, and I don't think anyone else even TRIED pet-names on Clem. For obvious reasons? She's mean? But even though she doesn't like being babied, when Lup called her things like Babygirl she was just like "uwu ok" on the inside. No one has really called her anything but her name since Lee...

Anyway yeah Lup was someone that she felt she could be vulnerable around. She could talk to her about stuff from home and AJ and her trauma. Although like literally every single time Lup brought up Sora when they were talking one on one she was just like [ sweats ] WHY DO YOU BRING HIM UP? Because she's stupid.

She was really glad when Lup was part of the Role Squad even though she didn't have a role, just because Clem liked her so much and despite what she says, groups are super important to her. I think in a way it's because she feels like she can protect a concept more than she can protect individuals. Like [ Team Rabbit ] would still be [ Team Rabbit ] even if Mob, Chiron, and Ochako died. So it felt a little bit easier to swallow... Although it was still devastating. And thankfully fucking nobody on Role Squad died.

Lup and Sora really did Clem's entire job for her, which Clem appreciated because it meant it got fucking done and that's all that mattered to her. When Clem was like "well I guess my Role is meaningless now lol" she wasn't insecure. To her it just felt like. Very matter of fact? Literally the only role she found was Sora. All her networking to figure out teams was from Sora. All of them seemed to already know the teams and way more than her so. She wasn't even feeling sorry for herself or moping, she genuinely thought she and Lup were just joking around........

And she was annoyed that Lup wouldn't let her Be Self Sacrificial For Fucking Once In Her Entire Life. (I say once in her life but for someone so heart set on her own survival no matter the cost, Clem really does have a lot of "take me instead" dialogue options in the games LOL) Because she felt fucking awful about sacrificing Her Group, she was really really upset. The main reason this didn't tank her relationship with Lup was because she sincerely considered Lup part of The Roles Group, which was ALSO A GROUP that she couldn't betray. Like if Lup had introduced them all and dipped, and then somehow had influence enough to try and stop her from protecting rabbits with her own life, Clem would probably have emotionally distanced herself afterwards. But Lup was PART OF THE ROLES GROUP so it was just something that upset her and then she moved on.

OH AND - wow this isn't in any sort of linear order at all is it - memshares!!!!!! Clem didn't have very much cr with Taako, but his memshare with Clem was The Perfect Day. And the whole "he is my heart" thing really REALLY vibed with Clem. Like, she heard those words and was like "oh AJ is my heart. yeah, i understand that completely," and it was just like. A very tangible feeling, I guess?

Anyway I don't know what else to say. Clem just loved Lup a lot and despite disagreements that could have otherwise made a friendship take a little nosedive, Lup always managed to make Clem feel like she could just brush them off and move on.

Going back to her canon point without walkers and with a magic elf friend is. Sure going to be wild? I've really severely broken canon but it's fine. Anyway now that Clem's world is a little bit safer and she has friends and a home, she wants to stay there and rebuild.... But I think with world-hopping she definitely visits Lup a lot and messages her stupid things that she thinks are funny.