#clementine morimens

[draw-in-le-night-ubi]

Хайл, Путник!

Ну а следующей у нас идёт Клементина!

Фразы, которые мне сразу напомнили её и потому я их включила в плакатик:

"Какой отец, такая и дочь" (я не смогла это красивше перевести, сори)

"Я видела мужчину с золотым сердцем. Кстати, это мой отец"

Её собственную фразу я, кажется, вытянула из обычных атак (но тут я совсем плохо помню, потому что ещё не успела прокачать её и поиграть):

"Боль, отчаяние, смерть... Эти воспоминания на вкус как десерт, после прекрасной еды"

Hii!

The next one is Clementine!

When I saw those phrases about father, I immedeately thout about her, so I just had to include them ^^'

And from her own phrases I desided to choose this one: "Pain, despair, death... These memories taste like deserts after fine meal."

[viricent]

[🖤] | clementine stimboard.

[eliseliedl]

Let us go deeper. Layer by layer, we'll unravel your psyche. Show me your most exquisite despair, your most delicious struggles... for my contemplation. Clementine PV

[beastenraged]

Prompt #25: Chrysalis

@morimenswrite

"...are you sure that this is perfectly safe?" The Keeper's voice says, somewhat muffled, from an artificial chrysalis woven of silken blankets. "That you're not going to try to turn me into a bug again, Clementine?"

"Of course not," Clementine assures them. "This would be too blatant of a trap to use against you. Now, if I tried anything, you would feel it in an instant and fight your way out, am I not correct?"

A pause. Another muffled reply. "...I guess. So what are you doing?"

Clementine taps the soft exterior with her shoe. "Tell me, how does it feel being inside of it? Comfortable? Entrapping?"

"Um, I guess I feel..." The bundle squirms a little as the Keeper presumably shifts around inside of it. "Itchy? A little trapped. But it is warm, so thanks?"

"Oh, this isn't for you." Clementine turns to smile at the other individual in the room.

"Ready to start your experiment now, Doll?"

Doll Inferno smiles.

"Wonderful."

[beastenraged]

I LOVE YOU THAT GDOLL X CLEM SNIPPET MADE ME GO CRAZY THEY INFESTED MY BRAIN I CANT STOP THINKING ABOUT THEM

AW YESSS.

They're my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE Morimens ship, I must write more of them some point. *says as squints at a certain doc*

The fun part of it is really GDoll being SO MAD that she's into Clementine, while Clementine on the other hand is "hm. I haven't had the urge to play with my food like that for a while. What should I do about it?"

I'm pretty sure the Keeper would support this relationship, if only to 1) keep GDoll distracted from wanting to go back to ending the world and 2) keep Clementine distracted from offering more 'therapy' to the Keeper.

Will it make them both WORSE? ...hopefully?

[eliseliedl]

[beastenraged]

Now, the Bug, the Woman, the Wonder! The one therapist that is somehow a combination of every therapist I've had to talk to through my life (including the ones that made me want to kill myself)! Also the embodiment of everything wrong with armchair psychology!

Let's give it up for-

CLEMENTINE!

Or more, specifically on Clementine and why she thinks Humanity Sucks in her focused chapter in Arc 2. Because boy, does she think Humans are ugh. Why don't you want to become a lovely Insect instead? she asks, as the Insects from Shaggai reference that she is.

But what does make Insects different from Humans? As the Keeper ends up asking more than once in a frankly really trippy mental hospital brain trap.

There are really two main aspects that are focused through gameplay and visual novel parts alike that separate Humans from Insects.

Those are the Hive Mind and the Complete Metamorphosis.

The arguments made for those qualities by Clementine focus on how as a Hive Mind, the Insects don't fight each other and betray each other like Humans do. The argument for going a complete body Metamorphosis is you would no longer experience physical or mental pain like Humans do as well.

BUT there is one part of Humanity that I think Clementine wishes to avoid in particular, that the concepts of the Hive Mind and Complete Metamorphosis help her escape and that part?

Sacrifice.

Clementine claims to understand sacrifice, that it is in fact an important part of becoming an Insect. That such sacrifice is the price for survival.

She follows this up with the claim that the sacrifice is one's human nature.

But that statement is directly contradicted by another she makes (of a part of her) much earlier.

Because she does survive, that's for sure, but the human nature, the despair from it, is not what is sacrificed.

The only thing given up is Clementine's ability to comprehend reasons for those feelings. Alongside the ability to understand humans as individuals.

Because with the Hive Mind, there's no need to weep over one dying. Because all are part of the same mind, so no one is truly lost. Clementine kills countless humans in her 'sanatorium' but she doesn't see them as deaths because humanity still exists and she sees them as part of that collective.

A collective that she is colonizing, to go through Complete Metamorphosis and Rebirth as an Insect. To make it so no one has to cry because:

But what is Clementine weeping over? What is so awful that she seeks to make everyone Insects, have everyone become of one mind?

That makes her do this?

Because if Rebirth was all she sought, then she wouldn't keep asking for the Insect Hivemind to restore her memories and then erase them again.

The answer lies in what her father did, and what she did to him. That is: he sacrificed himself for her, so that she would live. And to survive, her soul, her Silver, consumed what was left of him. Used his body to reshape hers.

If the Hive Mind is there for Insects, if all are one mind, then this sacrifice doesn't have to happen. Her father continues to be part of the larger whole. He does not die for her. He does not become...

This.

Because that's the flipside of Complete Metamorphosis. Is that not everyone who goes through comes out 'better' or healed from what they were before. Sometimes, just like with real life metamorphosis, the lifeform going through it just dies or comes out incredibly mutilated.

And to kill such mutilations is not a 'sacrifice.' It is merely keeping the whole body of the Hive Mind healthy. Complete.

But Clementine erasing the memories, trying to redefine sacrifice, does not change what happened or the feelings she felt at the time. Even as she is an Insect, that history still persists.

Otherwise the sanatorium would not exist, no matter Clementine claims it is to heal humanity of their humanity, to make them Insects, the sanatorium's true purpose is-

Healing her by assuring her that being an Insect is the right choice, that sacrifice only means growth and not loss, that her father did not do what he did for her.

So the entire focus of this chapter is seeing Humanity through that aspect of pain and grief we all want to ignore. Because the lure of the Insect is, don't you want to stop existing in that pain?

(Stop existing at all?)

But even that is a lie, because Clementine still clearly feels that pain, she simply cannot understand it, which is what led to the creation of the sanatorium in the first place.

Because in the end-

No matter how much Clementine wants being an Insect to make her an unfeeling machine.

[beastenraged]

doll inferno x clementine snippet

In between her work on studying the eventual state of the universe and inevitably having to intervene when her poor puppy attempted to kill themselves again, Doll finds herself putting together...something.

Something because even she isn't quite sure what it is, only that it is a small medley of gears and flesh encased in porcelain that takes after her own form. Its purpose? Unknown. Its intended appearance? Unknown.

Only that she finds herself fiddling with it again and again. For some reason.

"Hm."

~

"Tell me, what does it make you feel, to working on something that you known will inevitably lead to ruin?"

Doll rolls her red eyes in the direction of a far too chirpy voice, the asker of such ridiculous questions, Clementine.

The Re-Awakened Awakener that the puppy had dragged home after a jaunt through the previous iteration's mind-palace. Mind-universe, if one wishes to be more accurate.

Formerly human, now taken on qualities of the Zerg as passed down through a certain artifact, the woman is just as irritating as the insects she professes to value so.

"Hm, I don't know, how does it feel to be on a leash for my puppy?" Doll shows a smile that's all teeth. "I know it must chafe to have your crop of minds limited so."

Clementine's ever present gentle smile doesn't even crack. Instead it only deepens. "Hm, that sounds like a concern of yours that you're mirroring back at me."

She tilts her head, a perfect 15 degrees, holding herself still. "Do you feel limited, Doll?"

"Limitations are part of science," is Doll's answer, as she tends to her notes and jars and tanks all at once. "A hypothesis cannot be tested if you do not select the correct variables to control and to change."

"If that is so...then which variable is that will change?"

Doll waves a dismissive clawed hand. "The Keeper, of course. I know their mind, they've never been through anything like this before in their dream-realm Kadath. Already they're changing, shifting, and I will be there to document every part of it."

She swings her head, her brain, in Clementine's direction.

"As you are as well, are you not? Both studiers of the Keeper."

Clementine raises a gloved hand up to her mouth as if to cover a laugh, though her expression never changes. "Oh, is that what you think? You are truly in need of my guidance in that case."

Doll narrows her eyes, bringing dark lashes down. "How so?"

"If anyone is changing, it is you, Doll. Changing enough that you might not even continue your self-proclaimed purpose, the one that always drives you to madness. Why, you might even give it up. For someone you call a puppy. Someone below you."

A mocking smile flavors the words.

How dare.

"I could scope up the brain you hide in that skull of yours, let you study it face-to-face instead through words alone," Doll threatens, looming over the blue-haired woman.

Said woman lifts up her hypnosis device, letting it gleam and glitter between her fingertips. Between them. "And I could twist your memories, make you an Insect like myself."

Doll scoffs. "Tell me how you would do that."

Bronze eyes gleam, suddenly seeming far more multifaceted. Like a gem. Like an insect.

"First I'd make you forget. Bring a gentle fog, numb all of your senses until you feel only." Fingers trace about Doll's eye sockets. "Here. Then, I would plunge my fingers in, let the pain take over, and while you're screaming...plunge a needle into your brain right there."

The hand twists, and it appears to be holding a needle. Gold, like the rest of her.

"They call them a lobotomies, you know, that treatment."

Something is rising in the blood that Doll doesn't have, thriving in the fluids keeping her brain together, becoming-

"Hello?"

They pause. Doll turns, with a creak that she'll deny until her reiteration day, towards the source: that being her timid assistant. Knowing, even in the moment, that Clementine is gone. Vanished like the moths whose wings she bears, oversized on her back.

Winkle ducks her head. "M-maybe I should come back a-n-nother time?"

With a growl, Doll snatches up the tablet on the table and throws in the red-haired woman's direction, causing her to duck even further down.

"OUT."

"Right! Eek!"

And thus her lab assistant flees, leaving Doll alone to her own thoughts. Own desires.

~

One day, at last, when she is alone, Doll finishes her strange something up. Completes it, examining her results as she does with everything else.

The fruit of her labors: a metallic moth, framed in gold for its legs and edges of the body, gray flesh woven into wings almost as fuzzy as the real thing.

It clicks, sitting on the workbench. The same sound as a certain hypnosis technique's clock.

"Hm."

Doll carefully curls her fingers into a fist. Perfectly formed, perfect for fine work.

Then she transforms them into a scythe and smashes down.

Destroying the clockwork moth in an instant.