Clara
 | This page is pretty raw LLM output. |
| Clara | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | 5 |
| Birthday | 2003 |
| Species | Cat |
| Family | |
| Debut | New Year’s Resolution, page 10 September 11, 2023 |
Clara is Paulo’s younger half-sister, the daughter Rose Muir had with her husband after leaving Paulo and his father.[1][2] In the main comic she is seen only in photographs and in Paulo’s thoughts; she has never met him on page. Even her name comes from the BCI story Relative Strangers, which takes place in an alternate version of events.[3]
Personality
The main comic does not give Clara enough page time to establish a personality. Paulo finds four cheerful photographs of her on his mother’s Facebook page, and that is as close as canon gets.[1]
Relative Strangers gives her a voice, but only inside that story’s alternate continuity. There she is an energetic, chatty little girl who charges through the front door announcing “WE’RE HOME!”, asks to go to the playground, and sulks when Rose scolds her for fooling around at swimming lessons.[3][4] She is also very literal. When her father tries to distract her on a difficult car ride by pointing out a lighthouse, Clara cheerfully corrects him: “That’s not a lighthouse, Daddy, that’s a barn!”[5]
Appearance
Clara is a small orange cat with curly blonde and light brown hair, sharing the orange coloring of her mother and half-brother.[1] In the Facebook photos her hair is tied into pigtails with bows, and one photograph shows her blowing out a number-five birthday candle.[1] Relative Strangers keeps the pigtails and bows and dresses her in a polka-dot dress at home.[3]
Significant events
Long before he knows she exists, Paulo wonders aloud in Time Out whether he might have a brother or sister somewhere.[6] He finds out on New Year’s Eve of senior year. In New Year’s Resolution, Mike suggests that Rose may have remarried, and Paulo searches for her online. He finds four photographs of Clara: with Rose among flowers, at the beach with a bucket and shovel, blowing out a number-five candle, and posing with both parents.[7][1] Paulo smashes the mouse and leaves in tears.[8] In Made Fresh, Clara appears again only as an image in his mind while he agrees to do a favor for Abbey’s sister Molly.[2]
Clara’s only speaking and physical appearance is in Relative Strangers, a what-if story in which Paulo dies after prom.[3] She is home from swimming when Rose receives the news and can only ask what is wrong.[9] Her parents take her to the funeral for a relative she has never met. She chats to Rodrigo about ducks, hides against her father while the adults and teenagers argue, and later falls asleep in her car seat on the drive home.[10][11][12]
Major relationships
Paulo
Clara and Paulo have never met. Her importance to him comes from what she represents: the new family Rose built after leaving him behind. Years before seeing Clara, Paulo tells Abbey that his mother wanted “a better family”;[13] when the photographs finally give that fear a face, he cannot treat the little sister as an abstraction anymore.
Later that night Paulo asks Abbey what it is like to have a baby sister, then breaks down to Mike over how old Clara must be by now. “She’s a whole-ass person, not a baby,” he says, before concluding that Rose “completely replaced” him.[14][15] The feeling softens without disappearing: in Made Fresh, thinking of Clara makes Paulo smile before he volunteers to help Molly.[2]
Minor relationships
Rose Muir
In the main comic, Rose Muir and Clara are only shown together in happy family photographs.[1] Relative Strangers imagines a sterner everyday relationship, with Rose threatening to cancel Clara’s classes when she misbehaves at swimming.[4] After Paulo’s funeral, however, Rose takes Clara’s hand and thinks that she will never let anything happen to her.[16]
Quotes
Clara has no dialogue in the main comic. Her lines come from the alternate-continuity Relative Strangers.
That’s not a lighthouse, Daddy, that’s a barn! Clara, correcting her father on the drive to the funeral in Relative Strangers[5]
Like vacation? Clara, trying to understand where the relative she has never met is going in Relative Strangers[5]
Trivia
- Clara’s exact age is not established. One undated photograph shows a number-five birthday candle, while Paulo later guesses that she might be six or seven.[1][15]
- In 2015, years before Clara was shown, Veronica said Paulo’s mother was “Happily married and living in Marashino!”[17]
- In Relative Strangers, Rose remembers that Clara loves apple juice, while Paulo preferred grape when he was little.[18]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 10
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 2
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Relative Strangers, page 1 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Relative Strangers, page 2 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Relative Strangers, page 6 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ Chapter 108: Time Out, page 20
- ↑ Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 9
- ↑ Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 11
- ↑ Relative Strangers, page 4 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ Relative Strangers, page 11 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ Relative Strangers, page 14 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ Relative Strangers, page 29 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ Chapter 108: Time Out, page 22
- ↑ Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 21
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 23
- ↑ Relative Strangers, page 19 🔒 (members only)
- ↑ “Ask response on what happened to Paulo’s mom”. 2015-03-27.
- ↑ Relative Strangers, page 20 🔒 (members only)