#the permutations of clematis

[sweetfirebird]

unfuckitall replied to your post: I reread Sweet Clematis again today and I just... What about the AU where Hyacinth or Walter finds a bb!Clematis and raises him? (It’s less awesome, because Callalily isn’t his brother then, but it’s still an awesome AU where Clematis grows up secure and loved…)

Well, Walter and Hyacinth didn’t adopt a kid in canon, and I suppose I just thought of them as super caring but definitely also super busy. Like, they are spearheading the beings rights movement, in Los Cerros but also in most places. So I assumed they would take in lots of stray beings and humans for a while, but I never imagined them raising one. So I suppose I never considered it. 

In THAT timeline, I imagine you would get a much more militant Clematis. Maybe not angry, but definitely more willing to show his brilliance off to insecure humans. (I mean, I love H and W to bits, but they would not be the sort of parent that like, Lis is. They would want to protect him and go to PTA meetings, but they just have like, Things to Do, and the human public school system is a disgrace that must be fought!! etc etc so less of Clematis having the space to be a soft book nerd and more of him learning early about The Man. Which, in itself, sort of hilarious. Though he really isn’t confrontational. So I see him as more of an ice queen there.) 

[sweetfirebird]

another AU that’s really good is the one where kaz takes him in and rennet find out and is like, well kaz is not qualified to have a baby I guess I have a baby now. And then family rom com shinanagins happen and he gets together with John way earlier ♥️

(Gonna just. As much as I love Rennet. Gonna just say, right off the bat–Rennet and John are like… uh… not the people I would have raise a damaged kid. BUT I would love to see them raise a baby from scratch, as it were. John coolly taking calls as though he isn’t holding a screaming baby.) 

ALSO, that I see you skipped over the MOST TRAGIC CLEMATIS TIMELINE SHORT OF THE ORIGINAL CLEMATIS TIMELINE, in which a younger Clematis, maybe in his teens? Is found and raised by Kazimir, who uh… look is just… not someone who ever really addressed his own past… and would maybe be an unwitting Miss Haversham to Clematis’s Estella. In the sense that Clematis might end up knowing even more about seduction than he already does. 

(Though he would be this well-read, polyglot, cutting, beguiling creature, with that softness so so tucked away that only Kaz and Rennet can see it. And again, two elder beings who know what horrible things humans can do? Would probably only encourage him to protect himself and not like… well anyway.) 

By the way, that timeline was not my doing. I did not think up that one. I only expanded on an idea. 

(Flor, in that universe, would have absolute contempt for what the world had turned Clematis into, and it would be easy to read that as contempt for Clematis if you were Clematis, bright and hard like a diamond.) 

ANYWAY. Rennet and John raising Clematis makes for a slightly more well-adjusted Clematis, but still one in the public eye a lot. (John, you know, advancing his career and all) 

[sweetfirebird]

featheryfire replied to your post: I reread Sweet Clematis again today and I just... oh my gosh that IS the happiest, sweetest au!! :’)

And he’s only a little damaged in this one. Most of his shine fully on display, although he stays in Los Cerros. 

I haven’t really thought about where he’d meet Flor. (Or if he ever meets Arthur) . Without his survival mechanisms, i actually think he’d be fairly quiet and shy. Less trusting than some fairies, and used to humans underestimating him, but not nearly as confrontational about it as Callalily. (And you know, Ray would totally just absorb him into his little pack. Cal’s brother = pack. Clematis would love it.)