Clementine: Actually Just Retarded

so in new walking dead, clementine is Older:tm: and AJ, the annoying baby from the last two seasons, is now visibly a Child:tm: and clementine's job is to raise him in a zombie world. since there's no word for 'zombie' in this universe, the word they use for zombies is 'monsters.' throughout the game clem can teach AJ how to survive and how to interact with people and shit. the game implies that if you're a Bad Example he'll become a Bad Boi, and if you're a good example he'll be a good boi.

so near the beginning, while looking for food they find a stash that's rigged with a Bomb and the bomb summons zombies from nowhere. clem and aj end up in a car accident while fleeing from zombies and a bunch of kids at a boarding school treat their injuries and let them stay at their place for a while. things seem good, altho its literally just yet another group of dysfunctional assholes that clem has to solve the problems of. one such problem being the recent disappearances of two of their members, which most of the kids chalk up to them getting eaten by zombies. still tho, clem & aj are making friends. the guy who leads this new group of teenage dysfunctional assholes is named marlon and we know he's evil because he's a Bad Biker Boi lookin' ass who has a mullet.

the kids go into the forest to Hunt and find that the traps they set up were compromised by some creepy asshole living in the woods. they end up freaking out because their source of food has been fucked over. so clem's like "hey i found this house full of food before you found me dying" and the kids go and raid it. while taking food, clem is confronted by the guy who compromised The Traps and either lets him take food or shoots him or whatever. he's not relevant for the rest of the episode.

so when they get back, marlon's second in command, a girl named brody, learns where they got the food from and flips the fuck out because "what if that guy comes back for More" or whatever. reasonable concerns in an apocalypse, but she's treated as being unreasonable by the narrative because she's having a panic attack over it, because as we all know, telltale has a history of hating children who react to stress. later that day, clem and aj go to bed only to be woken up by the sounds of arguing coming through a pipe that leads into the basement.

clem goes to check it out and finds marlon and brody arguing about something. brody's like "marlon gave those two people who disappeared away to raiders, that guy you met was probably one of the raiders. also he planned on giving you and aj away to the raiders because fuck you." and when brody says this, marlon bludgeons her in the skull with a flashlight and kills her. he then locks clem in the basement with the reanimated brody, who clem has to kill.

so then clem gets out of the basement and goes outside to find marlon flipping his shit in front of the entire dysfunctional teenagers group plus aj. also aj is flipping his shit because clem's been gone for a solid half hour by now, so he's like holding a gun at marlon. once clem jumps into the crowd, marlon punches aj in the face and steals the gun and points it at clem. they have a Confrontation:tm: and clem reveals what marlon did and was planning to do and everyone's like "dude what the fuck" and marlon's like "AH WAS JUST TRYIGN TO PRoTECt AWL oF YEW"

something something clem appeals to the other kids & beats the shit out of marlon. marlon drops aj's gun and surrenders. just as clem's like "okaaaaaay but no voice" ...

AJ FUCKING SHOOTS MARLON IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD FOR NO REASON.

ppl rationalized it as like "HE NOT KNO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MONSTAR AND ZOMBO"
but like i'd think by this point the difference is pretty clear

imo it'd go beyond "irresponsible guardian" territory into "Actually Just Retarded" territory if clementine failed to specify that the Monstars are decomposing corpse people