Character Discussion/Appreciation: Clef

[suzanami]

This thread is all about Clef!  Discuss, critique, compare, gush, share, whatever!  Any Clef thoughts and/or feelings go here.  Spam away.

CLEF

[The Icy Darkness]

Gush? Yes.

I like how he is so calm, he is often an enigma. Even those closest to him, can't completely figure him out. *cough* Umi *cough* not to mention he is hot in either form... No, I refuse to be that superficial.

[Down]

OH LOOK it's the Do Not Let Down Respond To This Thread! Thread.

.......I am 200,000 words into the fic version of ALL MY CLEF FEELS and I still haven't scratched the surface. XD He is my FAVOURITE. The tension between his loyalty, duty, fealty - and what he believes in - just, *flails* that's my true bulletproof literary kink, there.

(Plus I have a thing for mages and lightning. XD)

.........

Even if I do spend a lot of time cursing CLAMP for never aging him up at all in the manga/anime. ^^;;; I may be used to the weird looks I get when people see images of him BUT.

*puts laptop down, steps away from the keyboard.*

[suzanami]

I always think I don't have too many Clef Feels but then I remember him in the manga, how torn up he is about the idea of the Pillar and that he wants to help Emeraude so much and just the destruction of the Knights' hearts and how much he loves his country and then I get so many feels.

[Milieva]

Any fan of the Manga who DOES NOT have any Clef feels after reading it, didn't understand him at all.  He is just so full of feels himself it spills over into us, the readers.

He is truly in love with his country and all of his students.  I always forget how deep his loyalty is, and when I remember I feel the need to just hold him.  Perhaps I need a Clef plushie i can cuddle when the feels are just too much.  It can hang out with my Griffin plushie.

[Down]

*pause to stare and alternately sigh and wail at THAT MANGA PANEL shdasgdg it's only pretty much my favourite in ALL RAYEARTH*

I can understand people not liking him/his role, because he's very....... passive, in his action. And that concept of duty-right-or-wrong which he struggles with himself over is an older fashioned one, in many ways - particularly in anything created after WW1 - but that's one of the reasons his choices and his debate with himself hit SO HARD, because he DOES struggle with them. And the way he's been brought up/living within the system makes it such a huge thing that he would try to fight it, even from within - telling Emeraude not to summon the knights, planning to tell the next candidate the whole truth - but it's one which is overshadowed in some ways by the pov of the knights and the reader who are from OUTSIDE the system and can see 'make fundamental change' as an option. I mean, that's why he's there - and here I will SIDESTEP the essay about how the themes of change-from-outside and working-TOGETHER-with-others-from-outside instead of being-invaded-by-outside-forces when the old system is broken are resonant particularly in Japan which has had so many periods of closing-off-from-the-world-then-opening-up-again-for-various-reasons through her history, trying to find the balance between being her own country and being open to the rest of the world instead of dominated by it and losing her own identity but THAT IS AN ESSAY I WILL ONE DAY MAKE MY OWN VERSION OF AND CLEF WILL BE SO IMPORTANT IN IT - but he's here to SHOW that tension, that almost BLINDNESS which comes with growing up inside a system - hell, it's the same for any kind of privilege, and the privilege the Cephirans had in that system was HUGE. Endless peace and prosperity, defended by someone else!

and and and where the heck was I even going here THIS IS WHY I AM NOT ALLOWED TO GET STARTED ON CLEF. XDDD

I think... being sent to guide the people who are going to kill his leige is an awful, awful situation and it breaks my heart every time I reread that first bit, and then the thank you/apologies scene in Rayearth 2, because I honestly think he doesn't WANT to like these girls, doesn't actually want them to win - how can he? - but he knows their losing would be worse than anything else for Cephiro even if he hates it - and that accounts for how VERY VERY short his temper is then. He doesn't want to be charmed by Hikaru's idealism, and he certainly doesn't want to face Umi's blunt honesty (we're NOTHING TO DO WITH CEPHIRO'S PROBLEMS indeed) and yet he has to TEACH THEM MAGIC

which, even just for a moment, can't be anything but an intimacy between him and them, because magic comes from the heart, the soul.

I think he's so torn at that beginning bit because he really thinks he's sending them off to die, these children. Only then the reaction of magic to them (of CEPHIRO to them?) is so strong, and Hikaru's WILL and KINDNESS is so strong, wanting to stay and help him - that maybe he starts to believe that they can do something. That maybe Emeraude hasn't chosen the wrong people - and that leads to that smile when he sends them off, but it only lasts for a moment of relief before reality and the rest of the situation kicks in again, and he knows what their WINNING will mean.

His apology is sincere, because he could have done so much more - he could have gone with them. There was no reason not to go with them! He could have faced down any one of Zagato's minions! Though his getting involved in that conflict MIGHT have disturbed what peace Cephiro had left at that point..... But he doesn't want to help them! and that's why that apology and his reaction when Umi thanks him for Mokona WHO HE DIDN'T EVEN GIVE THEM but accepted from Emeraude and abandoned with Presea was so strong and BREAKS MY HEART (and why it makes SO MUCH SENSE that they turn him to stone in the anime, because as a metaphor it's pretty damn PERFECT especially with the term 'pillar' going about - CLEF YOU ARE MY FAVOURITE FLYING BUTTRESS~~~ - and it gives him the excuse he needs to not act, and hides what would be a very very obvious LACK of action spread across that many episodes...)

and I'm being ridiculous and headcanony all over the boards when I should be editing, heh, PLEASE EXCUSE ME I SHALL DEPART THIS THREAD. >.>

[suzanami]

Down this is all wonderful wonderful stuff homg.

Especially this:

CLEF YOU ARE MY FAVOURITE FLYING BUTTRESS~~~

Jk this was actually my favorite because I never really thought about this much and just wow:

... I honestly think he doesn't WANT to like these girls...

[Sidherequiem]

just wow... everything you said is perfect Down.

Clef has so many levels, and they are subtly hidden within his being that you really on scratch the surface at any one time. I think the struggle is highly internal with him where as most of the struggles others face are external in the series.

[The Icy Darkness]

That was very.... deep and moving, down...

*never looks at his role the same way*

I used to think his mission wasn't that big of a deal in season 1.

But in season 2, I'd imagine it is: Oh. There are those girls who were forced to kill our princess. Let's stop our self-pity and think about what THEY had to go through...
That type of thing.

[Down]

STILL MY FAVOURITE FLYING BUTTRESS

.............who'm I kidding STILL MY FAVOURITE ANYTHING ugh Clef you idiot *hugs him forever*

[Revolutionaren]

Clef!!

Definitely my favourite character.

But you know what's better than Clef? Ace Clef! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

That doesn't mean necessarily that I see him as some sort of sexless being, I mean, he's probably touched a boob before.

Maybe I'm self-projecting, who knows? Who cares?

(that and, if he were in a modern day Earth AU, he'd be a great big filthy hipster. YES.)

[Down]

YAY ACE-NESS! I- don't know why I never have written Clef as ace given the over-identification issues I have (he's so fun for that, isn't he? XD) especially given some of my other early fandoms I am KEEP THE ROMANCE AWAY FROM THESE CHARACTERS OR SO HELP ME I WILL BREAK THE BACK ARROW- *ahem* UM heh.

also it took me realising I was occasionally attracted to women to work out that I was in fact only occasionally attracted to ANYONE and I was 20ish so um I'd already been shipping things for years er I STILL can't work out if the variant of Clef I'm mostly writing is actually pretty much demi-sexual. I think he is? Probably? With a side of 'well it doesn't bother me so whatever' MAYBE. Maybe.

Maybe I'm self-projecting, who knows? Who cares?

IT'S FUN THOUGH (self-projecting, that is. XD)

I have only a limited understanding of what's ~hipster~ because I am slow in cultural understanding BUT does anyone else think he'd have an instagram of, well, DISTANT AND BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES LOOKING MISTY AND MYSTERIOUS and then OLD STUFF IN MAGICAL LOOKING LANDSCAPES and then every so often just 15 photos which are blurry photos of his pet fish with which he spams the internet when he's sleep-deprived-

XD

[suzanami]

does anyone else think he'd have an instagram of, well, DISTANT AND BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES LOOKING MISTY AND MYSTERIOUS and then OLD STUFF IN MAGICAL LOOKING LANDSCAPES and then every so often just 15 photos which are blurry photos of his pet fish with which he spams the internet when he's sleep-deprived-

modern AU demi Clef as a quiet hipster in one of those apartments up on the seventh floor, with almost no furnishings but what's there is repurposed/thrifted/secondhand, and he has more books than furniture but he doesn't have bookshelves so they're stacked in towers in his bedroom around his old brass bed

he's often sleep-deprived because he's up fretting about this and that and he drinks too much caffeine at the local tiny coffee shop and Clef in hipster scaaarrrves

[Milieva]

does anyone else think he'd have an instagram of, well, DISTANT AND BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES LOOKING MISTY AND MYSTERIOUS and then OLD STUFF IN MAGICAL LOOKING LANDSCAPES and then every so often just 15 photos which are blurry photos of his pet fish with which he spams the internet when he's sleep-deprived-

modern AU demi Clef as a quiet hipster in one of those apartments up on the seventh floor, with almost no furnishings but what's there is repurposed/thrifted/secondhand, and he has more books than furniture but he doesn't have bookshelves so they're stacked in towers in his bedroom around his old brass bed

he's often sleep-deprived because he's up fretting about this and that and he drinks too much caffeine at the local tiny coffee shop and Clef in hipster scaaarrrves

I can't not bring Umi into this, because I think I BROTP them just as much as OTP, because they could have such a beautiful antagonistic relationship/friendship/mutual existance. 

But Umi either works in the coffee shop or lives in the building, but tends to invite herself around to check on him and make sure he is actually eating, while poking at his books, occasionally borrowing some, or just flopping onto what furniture he has to read them, because she can. Disorganizing them from their particular piles much to his dismay("They are organized so *I* can find them, dammit. I don't care what *you* think makes sense. They're *my* books!"), but in the end she is interested and gives him someone to talk to about them.

[Revolutionaren]

Books, vinyl records, vintage glasses he really doesn't need, side cut, multiple ear piercings and herbal cigarettes and yaasss