#(oh. and ps this is part of why i hc that Clover wouldn't call Martlet/Ceroba/Starlo mom and dad even though their friends

[rustedleopard]

What do you think clover's family was like?

This is such a broad question that I wish you were a teeny bit more specific. Like, do you want a summary of canon or my personal headcanons or what? Eh, you know me by now, I'll talk about everything.

Canon Supported Answer: We don't know what Clover's life was like on the Surface besides it being implied to be Not Good. Starlo's lumpy and uncomfortable couch brings back unpleasant memories, yet they can fall asleep on it in seconds during nap time. Seeing the dirty dishes in Ceroba's sink/the Steamworks kitchen reminds them of their duties back home/that they never did the dishes without being told. Their hat was tattered and decomposing (as pointed out by Ace). They accept Martlet's offer to take them in in every version of a Neutral Run, even if it's an aborted No Mercy Run where they were gunning down every monster in sight, AND there is no option to deny it. They abandon their mission to seek justice for the five missing children and live with Toriel in every timeline that Flowey doesn't interfere in. In the Pacifist Run, somewhere in the Ketsukane estate (the kitchen, I believe), there's a line of flavor text that comes up about Clover wondering how everyone back home is doing but they also don't really care all that much. Heck, the fact that they chose to jump into a mountain that children were known to go missing in in the first place speaks volumes by itself.

There's little things too, like how Clover moves without making a sound, how they eat inedible stuff like packing peanuts and gunpowder, the fact that they're willing to take food out of the garbage, the way that they can just... give themself up at the end of a True Pacifist Run, etcetera, that could either be just a character quirk OR something that stems from their life on the Surface (why not both?). I could go on, but at a certain point I'd just start reciting half the flavor text in the entire game. I do think it is important to note that 1.) Clover is not very forthcoming about their life on the Surface. Everything you learn about them you learn from the flavor text. I think the only time they ever get asked about it is when Ceroba is accompanying them, and whatever answer/response they gave her (I imagine it was a Look™) had her backpedaling. So they're intentionally close-lipped about it. And 2.) You never learn any specifics about it. Who's raising them? Do they have parents? Siblings? Are they an orphan? What was an average day like for them? And on and on. This is the point where you can make up whatever you want about their life on the Surface, and so long as it takes into account what comes up in the game, you can come up with something solid. And this is the part that leads to.....

My Headcanons: Woof. Okay. I don't think too deeply about every little defining moment about their life on the Surface because I treat it more as scaffolding for their character. So don't expect a complete breakdown of every aspect of their Surface life. But here's the jist of it:

Clover was born to a single mother. Their father walked out on her just before they were born because their mother and father had a rocky relationship and their father wanted to bail before a baby would "trap him into the relationship" (they weren't married or even engaged, so it was easy for him to just... Leave. He never comes back). All the anger and resentment for the failed relationship that their mom felt rebounded onto Clover, because now she's stuck raising a baby she doesn't really want unless she's with their father and they're raising them together. Clover was supposed to be the baby that glues the relationship together, not what tears it apart. Their mom became negligent of them as a result.

As Clover got older, they would make bids for attention and affection like pretty much every child does, but their mom never reciprocated. They'd keep doing it over and over and holding onto hope that their mom would look at them and be the mom that she's supposed to be, but that hope would diminish each time they were met with coldness or outright indifference. Their hopes of building a connection with their mom evaporated when their stepdad entered the equation. Their stepdad saw their presence as competition/a reminder of his girlfriend's/wife's previous relationship and is an insecure enough man to let that bother him. So he really helps to push Clover further into the margins of the family/ruin their life. "Clover is old enough to walk home from school, they don't need their mom to pick them up." "Clover knows how to fend for themself, you don't need to end the night early to go back home and make them dinner. Stay with me a bit longer." "Clover doesn't need their own room. It's the responsibility of the older sibling to make sacrifices for the sake of their younger sibling. They can sleep on the couch." (Did I mention that they have a younger stepbrother? Because I hc that they do.) And on and on and on. They hate their stepdad and mentally call him "Mom's boyfriend/husband" instead of Dad. They don't really care for their younger stepbrother either, because (even though it wasn't intentional on the baby's part on the account of the baby being, well, a baby) he was leveraged as a wedge between Clover and the rest of their family.

They had to learn how to do things for themself like cook or clean or sign their own permission slips or bandage their own wounds or etcetera because they learned that they can't rely on others to help them. This fostered a strong sense of independence in them. It also made them a bit... odd in personality in a way that made making friends difficult (idk how to say that in a polite way; neglect does change your personality though). They wake up for school on their own, make lunch for themself and eat breakfast and do their morning routine then walk to school, do their studies, if it's a shit day they'll get into playground scraps with kids who are bullying other kids, they walk themself home and let themself in with the key that their mom gave them because the door is locked otherwise, they make their own dinner and do their homework without any help, they watch their Westerns on the TV, they tuck themself into bed. They skitter around the margins of the domestic sphere that is their mom's and stepdad's and stepbrother's lives like some sort of cockroach because that's the way that they've been made to feel. Their parents never hit them. Despite that, they were able to deeply wound Clover without ever raising a hand against them.

And part three of this post: How Do I Imagine Clover Feels About This? Well, I imagine that they feel nothing for their family. Not in a nonchalant fashion, but in the depressing "I can't even muster up the ability to care about you" manner. Feeling hate and anger takes effort; in a strange roundabout sorta way, feeling negative emotions means that you do care because you have some expectations that you want to be met and that anger is you trying to fight for them/your situation to be better. In contrast, feeling nothing is far worse because you no longer care anymore. You've accepted your circumstances. Why get mad about something bad that their family did to them? They're meeting the expectations that Clover has set for them, which are in the dirt. Whatever coals of anger or outrage they had within them have burnt to the ashes, there's nothing left to spark. They wanted their mom to be a mom to them but that was years ago at this point; they've moved on. They wanted a dad to be there for them, but he was never in the picture and the closest thing they have is the man that their mom settled with. They know that their familial situation is BAD, but because their family is all that they've ever known, they don't quite get the extent of how bad it is.

That's why they're fine with marching up a mountain known for having kids go missing in it: they have a mission, justice needs to be enacted. And if they die/go missing on this mission, so be it. It's not like there's anyone waiting for them back home.