YMMV / Sister Claire

• Alternative Character Interpretation
  • Catherine. Is she a caring but overprotective character who does whatever she can to keep Claire safe or is she selfish and paranoid, uses Claire as a Replacement Goldfish for her dead sister, and makes things worse for her by refusing to explain anything?
  • King Michel. Is he a well meaning king who simply doesn't know much about the lower classes like the Word of God says or is he genuinely indifferent to the plight of Thorum Mare poorer citizens and needs Oscar and his wife to push him into helping them? Likewise, does he truly love Oscar as his child or did he only accept her because his wife's actions gave him no choice but to acknowledge her? Furthermore, there are multiple unanswered questions about his relationship to Oscar's mother, such as who she was, and did he knowingly send her away pregnant with no support? He had no idea Oscar had been born, so most likely not, but if she was an employee at the palace as some have theorised then the need to keep their relationship a secret may have cost her her livelihood. His relationship with Oscar's mother ended before he and Queen Sylvia had even met, so he's never been unfaithful to his wife at least.
• Angst? What Angst?: "Mother of the City" deals with the aftermath of the fall of Eden and the deaths of Clementine, Catherine and Michel. Sylvia broods a bit in the beginning but most of the chapter is spent focusing on her romantic relationship with Sabine.
• Anvilicious:
  • The comic's named cast is almost entirely made up of LGBTQIA+ characters, and it talks a fair bit about LGBT issues. The degree of subtlety varies but it's usually pretty transparent when the authors want to take some time to discuss oppression.
  • The missing moment "Note" has Oscar going off on a rant to King Michel about supposed discrimination in not funding health care that serves people with magick. The allusion is so thinly veiled it's bordering on Author Filibuster.
  • Witches are used as an allegory for the oppressed, particularly the queer community, and as such magick is depicted as an almost entirely positive thing which faces prejudice from bigots. In fact, suggesting that witches shouldn't use magic is akin to telling a gay person to stay in the closet and witches who suppress their magical abilities, either willingly or by force, has been shown to suffer from life threatening degradation.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Par for the course for a webcomic done twice a week. But the Myth Arc of the series ended up stalling tremendously after Claire and Catherine leave the Abby with not much really happening in between save for a few small revelations here and there that has taken the authors a long time to re-visit again. It's only near the end of Book Two does the plot finally start moving a bit.
  • The comic updates twice a week, though if the Patreon dips below $1000, then it goes on a once a week update schedule until the month after the goal has been re-reached. This wouldn't be bad if the comic's plot didn't move at an incredibly slow rate. There is an excessive number of pages where either nothing of note happens or characters have conversations where only one person speaks per page.
• Ass Pull:
  • Sister Genevieve at first was disapproving at Oscar being transgender. However, after being assaulted by Catherine she, for no explained reason, apologized about how she treated Oscar and promises to support her in the future.
  • The revelation that Claire is the reincarnation of Clementine and that her "pregnancy" was really just her powers manifesting. This creates a number of plot holes and contrivances. For example, when Clementine's powers first manifested she didn't grow a large belly or experience any of the odd symptoms that Claire went through in the beginning of the series, so Gabrielle and Catherine shouldn't have known that her powers would manifest like that or to use the "Mother of Christ" lie as their deception. Likewise, Clementine was able to use magick from an early age but Claire wasn't able to use it until after she was well over 18, so Gabrielle would have had no way of knowing when Claire's powers would emerge when she first introduced herself to her. And what's more, after the escape from the abbey there's no real reason for Catherine or anyone else in the know to keep lying to Claire.
  • Olga making a deal with Azi that could potentially threaten to turn her into a Wolf Witch if she continued hunting witches. Olga's already something of a werewolf due to a Moon Wolf (a creature who infects others via spores) infecting her in the past and Olga just barely managing to suppress it unless under extreme distress. Rendering the whole deal pointless.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Oscar is either a kickass, empowering breath of fresh air, or a fairly bland character who has all but supplanted Claire as protagonist due to Author Appeal.
  • A close second is Hanabi. Opinion on her falls into two usual camps. One side sees her as a flawed, but well-meaning Witch just looking out for the others. The other see her as a self-rationalizing, unrepentant kidnapper and attempted murderer.
• Broken Base:
  • The Toilet Humor in the first few chapters. Funny or just off-putting? Not like it matters now as those strips were re-drawn to be more tasteful.
  • The reveal of Claire being Clementine. Some find it a interesting twist and want to see how Claire deals with this newfound revelation. Others are annoyed by it since it robs Claire of her individuality and just feels like the authors' extending Clementine's story into the present day. Claire suddenly gaining her stuttering certainly didn't help this distinction since there was no reason she had to gain it.
  • The reveal that Maman and Captain Josephine might still be alive, as well as the introduction of Nib and Magpie into the main comic. While some like the connections between the comic and Missing Moments, others are annoyed that the story is continuing focusing on Clementine's life and friends instead of creating new characters for Claire to interact with. There's also the debate over whether introducing a lot of new characters would cause the cast to become overly bloated or not.
• Catharsis Factor: After years of largely getting away with some truly foolhardy moves, the missing moment stories "Rivoluzione" and "Porto" have basically the entire cast, from Oscar, Catherine and even Gabby drag Clementine for a plan that could very well kill hordes of people.
• Cliché Storm: Take a clichéd messiah story, add clichéd nun cast, use clichéd bathroom humor, sprinkle in clichéd jokes, and you have Sister Claire. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
  • At first, anyway. The characters have been developed, the bathroom humor has been removed, and the messiah plot has turned out entirely differently to what was expected.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Many have noted that Missing Moments, which was originally created to be supplementary to the main comic, has effectively become the main source of story and character development due to its consistent and plot heavy updates allowing it eclipse the pacing of the comic. Additionally, the comic has introduced many characters and storylines from Missing Moments with little to no proper introduction or foreshadowing and a large number of major plot points of the comic have been resolved in the pages of the Missing Moments.
• Crack Pairing: Lupo and Cog met at the end of Chapter 2 and have yet to have any significant onscreen interaction but get placed in a burgeoning romance due being the only two single men in the supporting cast.
• Fridge Horror: Later revelations about Claire and the twins make Oscar and Catharine's plan to remove Clementine's essence and powers from Claire not just ridiculously circuitous, but suicidal: Claire and the twins are former shards, and Claire's usage of Clementine's powers was the only thing that stopped the twins from regressing into slavering monsters. Removing Clementine's self and powers from Claire would've put the twins, and possibly Claire, at risk of transforming into abominations, with no hope of returning to their former selves.
• Growing the Beard: The first few chapters have issues with slow or uneven pacing and a lot of low-brow, base breaking humor. Later, once the author's wife starts helping her write it, the comic's quality definitely goes up.
• LGBT Fanbase: Has enjoyed one ever since the comic's launch.
• Moe: Little Claire from the "Missing Moments" side-stories.
• Moral Event Horizon: Abraham crosses it by burning down an infirmary with patients and children inside.
• Narm: This page. It's supposed to be a tense confrontation between the sisters and a Wolf Witch, but everything comes across as extremely silly, from the little puppy dog growling at his feet, to the Wolf Witch's rather odd facial expression in the last panel.
• Never Live It Down: Despite her fleshed out backstory and sympathetic motives, some people refuse to forgive Hanabi for almost killing Oscar in her introductory page.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Olga's backstory, which includes being forced to watch her teacher get Eaten Alive by Wolf Witches.
  • "They're talking about your DEATH, Helsing."
  • "I do hope your conviction protects you from the fires of Hell, sister."
• Overshadowed by Controversy: My Little Pony fans first heard of Yamino from the infamous "DerpyGate" scandal, which lead to a lot of demonization of both her and this comic from angry MLP fanboys. Even now, when someone mentions Yamino, the first thing that tends to come to mind for many MLP fans is DerpyGate rather than anything else she's done since.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: "Oscarine" for Oscar/Catharine.
• The Scrappy: Clementine had started to become this to a good majority of readers. While she has an interesting backstory, her unapologetic actions and attitude during her later years really turned a lot of readers against her, feeling she comes off more like a forceful and hypocritical brat then a messiah figure the story is trying to paint her as. Citing that they don't mind if she has flaws, but the fact that she hardly seemed to compromise with a lot of people who were just worried for her and likewise stubborn insistence ended up causing a lot of problems in the story. It doesn't help that Claire starts exhibiting these traits in later chapters though hope at the least this time, she'll learn where her previous incarnation failed.
• Squick:
  • Two words: Naked Marguerite.
  • The Twins crush on Oscar becomes a tad squicky with the reveal of them being her little sisters. Word of God says the two of them don't know their real relationship to her, and memory loss means they don't regard Catherine and Oscar as parental figures anymore. Oscar remembers though, and a livewrite shows that she would find her sisters-come-adoptive-daughters finding her attractive to be highly disturbing.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some readers, specifically older ones who read the comic since its early days, liked the more quirky tone in the beginning and find current tone very off putting as they feel it betrayed expectations and sucked most of the fun out of the story thanks to newfound Author Appeal. This didn't get any better when the updated pages were posted as said fans felt betrayed even further.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Evil Cat aka Grimm and their possession of Catherine. The storyline sputters out after they visit the healer which allowed Grim to be pulled apart from her and then revealed that all of Grimm's actions were because Grimm was jealous they (they're identified as "they" instead of a single person) couldn't get close to Claire since her former incarnation, Clementine, was Grimm's former owner. A rather weak payoff to showcase Grimm's role in the grand scheme of things. Especially since it's what drives the first act of the series.
  • The whole deal that Olga and Azi had going on which would turn Olga into what she feared most if she tried to hunt Wolf Witches again. And then it turns out it was completely irrelevant because Olga already something of a wolf creature. Many even wonder if the deal was just a sham to begin with.
  • Claire being the chosen one to birth the next messiah which was then re-directed into being a re-incarnation of Clementine. This was obviously a mid-story shift thanks to the Missing Moment chapters. But it was still a bit of an annoyance for some readers since it was what drove most of the plot of the comic. Admittedly Yamino did save herself a bit by doing the Atlantis chapter as foreshadowing.
  • In Missing Moments, Clementine constructing Eden is completely passed over. Instead, the story skips ahead a few years to when Hanabi first comes to Eden long after its been fully built and populated.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Catherine and Gabrielle know the full story about what happened to Clementine but they won't talk about it because the memories hurt them too much, which is why Claire won't press them for answers. Considering that the two manipulated and lied to Claire for her entire life, them choosing not to be open with what they know due to them not wanting to bring up painful memories makes them look more selfish than sympathetic.
  • Witches in general. As described in the Anvilicious entry above, anyone with a negative opinion on them is treated like an uninformed bigot, and that they should be free to use their powers...except more often than not, Witches are legitimately dangerous. With frequent power instability, and the side-effect of drawing in/becoming Shards. Leading some to actually side with the anti-Witch characters.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Claire is much more ordinary than the other nuns she lives with who are all very quirky in their own ways. Granted the revelation that she's Clementine's reincarnation does alleviate this a bit. But it likewise works against the series once this was revealed, because now it seems we're just following Clementine's story via another life rather than Claire's.
• Watched It for the Representation: The comic started to garner this reputation after the author, Yamino, came out as as a lesbian and her partner joined in on writing the story. Even more so when a good majority of the cast turned out to be gay, bi or trans. Yamino herself is a major advocate for gay pride on Twitter, so that likewise helped.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Despite the cute and colorful style, the comic has an edgy quality that may not be suitable for children.

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