So this is a case me and [[User:Ordeaux26|Ordeaux26]] had been talking about for a while, and there is some uncertainty so this blog is being made as a neutral discussion to see where people stand.
What's The Work[]
Slender in Real Life is a YouTube series by JUNTEX, based on the games, Slender: The Eight Pages and Slender: The Arrival, however, it takes a different direction from the games.
Who Is Clem Puckett And What Has He Done[]
Clem Puckett is the main antagonist of the series, who turns out to be Charlie Matheson Jr. from the future and the one controlling Slender Man.
“Slender in Real Life” episode 1 is a dream. It is not as much of a dream as it is a message from Clem to start Charlie’s journey of going back in time. The first episode where Charlie “dreams” is just Clem telling Charlie how he needs to start the ritual.
In “Slender in Real Life 2,” Charlie wakes up in Clem’s house, or Charlie’s house in the future. Charlie, slightly brainwashed, follows a path of notes to the forest, where he gets to start Clem’s ritual of turning back time. In the time between walking from the house to the trail, Clem makes a mistake at the start of the ritual. Carl, Lauren, Kate, and a park ranger (Hunter) are sent into Clem’s time paradox instead of Charlie. Clem, never having sent that many people in at a time, loses control of his power and is teleported unconsciously to the factory along with Charlie. Clem misses his first opportunity with Charlie, leaving him weak, so when Charlie finds him and wakes him, he takes them both into the paradox almost immediately.
Because Clem is weak, he is not able to interact with everyone and eliminate the extra people in his paradox, so he uses the Slender Man to slowly drive everyone to either kill each other or direct them to the right path until it is just him and Charlie left, that is Clem’s master plan. This is why Charlie is the character who has killed the most people in the series. (Ex. Hunter, Kate, Lauren). Before Charlie killed Kate, she was fully manipulated by Clem. While she never successfully killed anyone, she drove the characters on the paths that Clem wanted them to go. Carl is also very susceptible to Clem’s manipulation, which is why in “Slender in Real Life 10,” he tries to strangle Lauren to death, whereas Clem just watches Carl strangle Lauren and lies when he said because Slender Man tells him to. Carl eventually realized what Clem was doing and tried his best to fight it off. He was successful in the end even though Clem’s manipulation was present a few times in “Slender in Real Life 14". In “Slender in Real Life 13”, Carl claims to have been possessed by the Slender Man however he was lying only to get Charlie to stop hitting him.
The reason Charlie was the easiest to manipulate was because, first of all, he wasn’t very smart, but also Clem knows his mind better than anyone else’s; Remember that Charlie and Clem are the same person. When Charlie is moments away from being murdered by Carl in “Slender in Real Life 12” Clem uses the absolute last of his strength to save Charlie, knowing that he has to take a chance to save his immortality, even though not even Clem will be able to control its outcome. There were multiple Slender Men because Clem made it happen to restart the time paradox once again and prevent further harm from happening to the younger version of himself. After all, if Charlie died, Clem would cease to exist.
Later, he is seen in the house that Charlie and Carl are in when Clem lies to them, saying he just got there, but Carl figures out that he made the bump sound. After that, Clem summons the Slender Man since he can't figure out how to defend himself anymore, then, when they leave the house, Clem makes the house disappear; Carl figures out that he did it. Clem denies everything; Carl then leaves Charlie and Carl to find Lauren before she ends up dead. Charlie then questions Clem, asking him if what Carl said is true; Clem lies to Charlie, saying he doesn't think so and just thinks Carl might be just a little angry, then asks Charlie to do something for him, he gives him a gun and tells Charlie to find Carl and shoot him in the head and don't miss like last time. There was another instance of multiple Slender Men in “Slender in Real Life 15”. This was because Charlie was walking back to confront Clem after Carl had said to kill him.
At this point, Clem wanted to end it, so he was doing everything he could to possess Charlie fully. The more Slender Men at a specific location, the easier it was to manipulate someone, but the more energy it would take. This is why Clem doesn’t show up until the very last scene because he is recovering. After the multiple Slender Men came to Charlie, Clem had Charlie kill Lauren. Charlie says he missed, even if this was an accident. Clem gloated about it when he possessed Charlie when he said it turned out even better because Carl got to watch Lauren die.
So what happened at the end? The ending scene begins with Charlie pointing the gun at Carl outside of the tunnel. At this point, Clem is in complete control to the extent that he can speak through Charlie. He basically tells Carl he was right because he thinks Carl will die moments later. However, the gun was out of ammo. Carl realizes that Clem is using Charlie as a host and tries to kill him. Towards the end of the fight, Clem comes out of nowhere to give Charlie more ammo to kill Carl. Instead of killing Carl, Charlie breaks out of Clem’s mind control and shoots Clem instead. This breaks the cycle of Clem’s eternal life. Carl knows that the only way Charlie can leave the time paradox is for him to be the only one living, so he commits suicide, knowing there will be no way for him to escape. Initially, Clem would lure Charlie in, switch bodies and then kill his older self to live in an endless cycle. This time, Clem was killed, and young, innocent Charlie remained alive. It is not known what happens after, but there is hope that Charlie will not make the same choices as Clem.
What Prevents him from being Pure Evil[]
So, a few things bring his status of qualification into somewhat unclear territory. The first is that there are a lot of aspects of the work that aren’t made fully clear initially, a lot of the stuff we have talked about in this is mostly the stuff about Clem being Charlie’s future counterpart and the various ways he has manipulated things, along with Slender Man being his proxy are all stuff that is only confirmed via Word of God, though it is stuff that does have implications in the source material.
Even then, there is still some stuff that is left somewhat ambiguous that does make things weirder; for instance, it is uncertain just how much of Clem’s persona he puts on is an act or not. For most of the series, he is on the hero side and is a pretty goofy, dumb and comedic character. But after he is revealed as evil, he does seem to be a lot smarter, and his personality changes quite drastically, so there is reason to think it was all a facade he put on. But at the same time, considering that Charlie (who is Clem’s past version) is similarly dumb and goofy with it being just how he is, there is a reasonable case to be made that it might not be fully an act. This brings doubt to how much we can say whether his comedicness throughout the series is subverted.
There is also the matter of heinousness, which is a weird thing for him. Clem’s body count is pretty small, with only four people you can assign him that he has killed, Lauren, Kate, Hunter, Carl and a dog. Lauren is the only one that is completely direct on his part, Hunter and Kate are both killed by Charlie as the result of Clem’s manipulations, and Carl kills himself at the end after realizing there is no other way to escape. It is true, though, that Clem’s purpose was to eliminate everyone else inside the time paradox and that while some of the deaths are pretty indirect, he pretty clearly did play a role and didn’t care it happened, except for Carl, who I would argue can’t fully be assigned to, but killing him was something he intended to do, he also mentioned he killed a dog which is offscreen and is presumably behind the Slender Man killing the cameraman at the start of the series. Six Deaths is still pretty small for a horror series, though. Still, it is also true Clem didn’t have much chance to do much else since there was a limited selection of people trapped in the time paradox, and there is also, in addition, some psychological torture involved, the brutal deaths and that he tried to turn the characters against each other, even having Carl almost choke Lauren to death. It also ties into the whole Word of God issue, as you wouldn’t fully know about his role in Kate and Hunter’s deaths without that.
Conclusion[]
We will let you decide.