What has Clementine turned into?
Or rather, what has your Clementine turned into?
I made this thread because a user on this forum mentioned that he thought that Clementine's character didn't get the right treatment this season and that it had turned bland. This led me to wonder which choices my Clementine has made so far and what she iss turning into because of those choices.
At the start of season 2, my Clementine did everything to earn the trust of her new group and to protect the ones she cared about, just like Lee would have wanted. This went relatively well until episode 3 and 4 happened. The little girl had to make decisions about life and death. She saw her closest friends being beaten up and getting devoured by flesh-eating monsters right in front of her. Her brave attempts at saving her friends were often in vain as the group fell cold around her, ending with the untimely demise of a young mother and a good friend of hers.
As Kenny's wife said so well; "Clementine is a puzzle." And that is exactly what she is. An intricate being which you are able to mend and bend, push and break. After everything that happened in both previous seasons of the walking dead, I am terrified, yet intrigued by what Clementine will have turned into by the time episode 5 ends and the credits start rolling.
Will she turn into a survivalist like Carver said she would? Or will she stay true to what Lee worked so hard to teach her and help the ones around her?
What is your Clementine becoming? Please tell in the comments.
Comments
I try to keep her humanity as much as I can. I help everyone, act nicely towards people I meet (even towards Troy and Carver) and try to avoid arguments and fights. She's enough tough already. Now she needs to keep Lee's legacy, to keep her feelings, to keep her soft hearts.
If Clementine is a survivalist, she has bigger chances to live. But what does your life mean when you have nothing to live for?
We all have different Clems so this varies with everyone.. But.. My Lee= Clem.. My Lee would of never stole the meds from Arvo.. That means my Clem wont do that.
I try to do the right thing as much as I can, I basically try to play her as I did my Lee.
A lot of people forget that Clementine is a dynamic character. It doesn't make to for her to be completely nice or totally bitchy and never change. Bearing that in mind, I tried to make her character development as natural as I could.
From Episodes 1-3, she was very 'heroic' in the sense that she often took risiks for the rest of the group and stood up to people like Carver and Troy. She wasn't always 'nice', but tried to do right by people. Her dialogue options were a mix of earnest good-will, snarkiness or silence; depending on the situation. That sorta changed after the Sarita incident, causing her to feel maligned by someone she cares about, lose her sense of purpose. She hit her low point after leaving Sarah behind and confronting Arvo. She's starting to get better, but only time will tell if she truly bounces back from the horrors of her last few days.
Lee would be disappointed, but he would probably understand.
Sisyphus.
She tries to do the right thing, despite the world around screaming at her that it's pointless, that she should just give up, that all her efforts will amount to nothing. She accepts that they might be right., but she can't help it. It's who she is. And so she just keeps trying. Again. And again. And again.
I try to make neutral decisions. I want her to be as humane as possible, but how long is that possible?
My Clementine has become a smart Kenny, so to say she's a complete pragmatist.
My Clem helps her friend when she can but is not afraid to do bad things when it comes to strangers (I stole the meds from Arvo).
Human . My Clem is human. She isn't a machine, she still has feelings. She is a good person, she doesn't think only about herself, like, stealing Arvo, that's not what my Clem would do, and that's not what she did.
This is basically the same thing that I did...right up until she reached her breaking point.
When she chopped Sarita's arm off it was like the world saying "Haha, fuck you and your heroics, kid! Congrats you just got someone killed...again! Hahahahah."
My Clem is trying to model herself on my Lee, so she's fairly ruthless with her 'enemies' (like watching Carver die, refusing the dying guy water). She is motivated by practicality and survival. At the same time though, she's got a lot of survivor's guilt, so she'll stand by her friends no matter what. With ep4 though, she might be starting to feel like it hurts too much to get attached to people now, just to see them die.
I wish I could say my Clementine is a morally validated hope for good, but evidence would prove otherwise. She's growing more hollow and bitter everyday. At this point she just wants to go off and live on her own. People are too far gone in that world now for compassion.
My Clem tries to help everyone around her, but they are all such dumbasses that this turns out to be impossible.
She has literally stumbled upon one of the most retarded groups ever to be seen in any The Walking Dead media.
A Girl that try her best to survive in this world while not forget to help and protect others.
As I’ve said before, you can probably describe my Clementine’s ideology from the beginning of season two as something of a cynic or perhaps a very darkened realist. I tried to make her time scavenging with Christa as something that affected her greatly; of course Lee’s concerns echoed in her mind daily—to try to stay away from cities, to be smart and careful. I see a child that lost a lot of their innocence and naivety as the world seemed to knock her down at each turn as she found herself surrounded by death and misery. Then she met Luke’s group and Sarah—and for a little while things weren’t so bad as there was this person that reminded her of where she had been not too long ago with her naïve sort of existence. Perhaps this is why Sarah’s ultimate fate affected her so damn much. Clementine was blunt, matter-of-fact, and sometimes apathetic (“It doesn’t matter”) throughout the season as she stated deadpan questions (“Whose baby is it?”), blunt observations (“I know.”), and survival instincts.
There is something to be said when Carver told her that she was just like how he was and while she looked the devil in the eye without flinching she was terrified of that realization. Carver was a brutal, selfish, and obsessive man but he was also a smart, experienced, and clever survivalist. In her mind, she sort of agreed with him but she didn’t want to due to the aforementioned fear regarding it. When his death was presented in front of her—she watched perhaps to see not only Carver get punished but also to see the parts that were her in Carver punished as it would be blatant that Lee would of struggled accepting part of Clementine’s worldview. As they escaped Jane became a new mentor and Clementine thought she saved Sarah from a terrible fate.
Kenny’s statements blaming Clementine also made her stop caring about his reckless idiotic self, perhaps she only took to him again was the sense of familiarity to her old life and to a time when Lee was alive. Him and Lee in my playthrough were not friends and Clementine is seeing history repeat itself in his behavior and frankly she doesn’t care. At the point in the finale, she’s lost a close friend and the only mentor she considered worthwhile has left due to their own inability to get over their fear of attachments and feeling in general. So here she is in the middle of a Mexican standoff left with little to keep carrying on.
Clementine’s romanticization of her old self is gone, it died on the deck of the gift shop.
The problem now is finding something or someone to keep pushing on.
Damn, nice explanation. Our Clementine's are sort of at the same place. She needs a reason to keep going...unless she decides to go full Jane and just avoid getting close to people in general.
I don’t think my interpretation of Clementine is at the point that she just wants to avoid attachment and people in general. I think it’s going take some time and a lot of thinking of what to do and why to go on as this is still a very damaged mentality. For me it depends how the final episode of the season goes from here.
I think I’m the only one who doesn’t see as the infant as a survival necessity though and for me that isn’t my Clementine’s “crutch” to keep moving. Originally Sarah was so you can imagine how it’s hard to reel after that.
Yeah, You'd think she might be kind of cynical about babies after what happened with Christa's pregnancy.
I feel that way for my Clementine as well, she needs a reason to keep going and find a purpose. In my case that purpose is the baby. Can she hold onto the little sprout and the only purpose left in her life or will she succumb to the weight that has been put on her shoulders by the part of the group that has died around her? The way I see it right now is that if the baby dies, Clementine's last shard of innocence dies along with any shred of hope she might have cherished in the deep depths of her dreary heart.
My Clem has stayed honest (I called Arvo out and said he was lying), but I didn't steal his meds.
I'm trying to keep Clementine strong, but to keep her humanity too. I refused to let her see Carver get his face smashed in because I didn't want her ending up the same in being that violent to other humans. With Sarah as well I had her try to save her, because I felt like my Clementine would want to help her if she could and make her stronger.
But sassy Clem does have her moments :P
I suppose that goes without saying for zombie apocalypse stories. You either adapt or you die in one way or the other.
That is the sad truth for survival situations, indeed. Looking at the current events I'm actually quite worried that Clementine might end up cold and heartless at the end of episode 5. Telltale might even create a bit of a parallel between Lee literally dying and Clementine's innocence dying, or perhaps mentally dying, leaving her to dwell on the bloody adventure she has had over the last two years of surviving and losing so many of her closest friends and family.
My Clementine is still very much following the example Lee set for her in season one, meaning she is honest, tries to be kind to everyone, tries to do the right thing and she refuses to allow the world around her to turn her into a monster, but she also knows enough to know that sometimes you have to do things that aren't necessarily going to be pleasant. One of the things I enjoy most about season two is the fact that Lee can live on (well, sort of) through Clementine's actions as she tries her best to honor his memory.
I'm keeping Clementine rational, caring, and honest just like my Lee was. Although, if an opportunity to be sassy comes along, I can't help but choose it.
"...Clementine turned into?" A walker?
You know I try to keep her human, but also see myself doing things for the group. Like keeping the meds. It seems mean but at the same time we have hurt, and sick people that need help. As a leader my decisions are for the groups survival, not charity for others as cold as that sounds. If I had the option I would have offered that they join the group, and we could share them.
For fun I wish they gave us the option for a real evil little child. Like taking the gun, and blowing Arvo away. That guy was a whiny little man, and after he said we wouldn't get away with it I would have liked to end up right, then and there. In a world of anarchy you can never let someone threaten you, and walk away.
Though I do think that Clementine’s morality isn’t completely dead, it’s just in a sort of purgatory where she might think about it when the nihilistic universe just seems to be on an onslaught against everyone and everything around her. Perhaps things will get better when they find a compound or community of scavengers but that’s me being optimistic. Things will likely not get worse or better; but stay the same as it has been since Season One’s third episode. I’m a little okay with her ignoring the innocence and all of that for the moment oddly enough however. There’s just something to be said that you have to be smart and careful to survive in this apocalyptic setting.
Interesting to see how our Clementine’s end up being different considering their different perspectives on the infant.
I hope not. It would kill me to see her like that. : S
It really is very interesting to see the differences between everyone's Clementine's and how they make her react to her group. I'm glad I made this topic for that reason alone.
The one complaint I have with the community at times though is they don’t make decisions that make much sense (or they make decisions that are ruled by their own idea of ‘morality’ rather than immersing themselves into the character). But mostly threads like this are interesting and show sometimes several character study conversations that make browsing the forum worthwhile.
I want to make Clementine into a survivalist. That means sometime doing the bad thing. Sarah I left cause she does nothing and Rebbeca i shot as I didn't want the baby to be eaten.
I think my Clem is the Clem Lee would of wanted her to be. I saved Sarah and wouldn't leave anyone behind if i could help it.
My Clem is a survivor. I don't pretend to think that all this death and horror doesn't leave a mark on a child. She is young and impressionable.
So she will toughen up, make the hard calls. She will be nice where possible. Protect her group, but she will know when to bail when the group will implode. Usually side with Kenny, as he is pretty hard aswell. And he is like my second dad. Call me biased, its my Clem, not yours
My Clem was suppose to be like Lee, but things have changed.. She still has her morals in place, but is very cautious about people. That's not because my Lee told her not to trust anybody it's just how I've become. When Arvo came around I was ready kill, lucky for him Jane actually disagreed there and just took the medical bag. I took Jane's words into consideration and I'm well aware of the conditions of the group, therefore I've lost trust (not all of it)with both Luke and Kenny. In a zombie apocalypse would you really trust a random foreign stranger?? Don't be so naive to just think, "Oh, it's okay he's telling the truth because he young and has a brace, surely he does have a sick sister when he has the medical bag with him." My Lee stole the supplies in the station wagon because the group needed it.. Same deal with Clementine and her group.
My Clementine is becoming inured to pragmatism after realising that disaster is always inevitable. I wanted Clementine to remain a hopeful, compassionate human being but after the third episode the tough choices demanded of her were more casual, for me as the player, to make. *My *Clementine, then, will do what she can for others but only to a fair extent.
Haha yess sassy Clem is a great Clem.
I am sort of following in the footsteps of Lee keeping Clem as humane as I can but theirs only so much you can do. I stole the meds from Arvo because we needed them for the baby, and I watched Kenny beat Carver to a pulp because I wanted to see that guy dead after everything he had done but I guess my Clem kinda sits in the middle...
I think my Clem is the Clem Lee would of wanted her to be. I saved Sarah and wouldn't leave anyone behind if i could help it.
My Clementine has turned herself into a young innocent but cold blooded survivalist if needed to type of girl. Like in my playthrough, I have a major heart and stole the pills with good intent for the baby and gave it to Rebecca, held the baby and will look after it if I can. But on the other side, Clementine can become very cold blooded. I left Sarah to die after I gave her a chance, I wanted to kill Arvo, I watched Carver die by the hand of Kenny and others. But I also tried to fess up for the walkie talkie and such, so like I said, I always try to make a good choice. My Clementine has remembered the words of Carver and remembers the strong will survive and some have to be sacrificed for the good of the group. My Clementine also holds a grudge and finds it very hard to trust anyone. She will only trust the one who will always have her back and know the longest, like Kenny. She never fully forgave Rebecca but made peace with her when she started to treat Clementine more like an adult. She will not forget the lessons she learned from Lee.