So, since there seems to be at least potential, I have decided to propose this character here after the NPE discussion.
A lot of this is taken from the NPE discussion which I created.
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.
Mitagating Factors[]
There are a few notable things to consider. One thing I should first clarify is that much of the content I discuss in this proposal is not directly depicted in the series. Much of this was explained by the creators afterwards. Still, there are implications of all this in the series, and it isn’t just a random statement; it comes from a full video (which is essentially a Behind the Scenes video) attached to the series (and there is also a Reddit post to the same effect). So I think that is still willing to count that.
When it comes to Clem himself the only notable thing to talk about is that he does start off the series as a pretty comedic character, and it admittedly isn’t entirely clear how much of an act that is especially since his past version is pretty goofy as well. But once he is revealed as evil, the facade drops completely, so I think I am willing to lean on the side that it is an act. His defeat when he says "Oopsie" maybe considered comedic but I am not sure it is enough as Charlie and Carl still taken seriously and it is pretty small.
Heinous Standard[]
Heinous standard is a bit weird, his body count is admittedly not the largest in the world, 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. Though Clem did intend to eliminate everyone in the time paradox to take over Charlie’s body basically to achieve immortality, so while Carl’s death is pretty indirect on his part he did still intend it, in addition he also mentioned he killed a dog which is offscreen and it is not clear if the story is true or not since he was pretending to be a different person and while he says he didn’t want to kill his dog and might have felt bad, we don’t know if that is genuine, and is presumably behind the Slender Man killing the cameraman at the start of the series.
The death counter is pretty small for a horror series, but it is a point to note that there was a minimal selection of people trapped in the time paradox so Clem didn’t exactly have much opportunity to do much more heinous. 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. There is also the possibility that either this isn’t the first time Clem has done this or eventually he will need to do this again, as when he gets Charlie’s body that won’t last forever either, it does admittedly lean kind of on Fridge Horror but it is worth mentioning.
Conclusion[]
I will let you decide.