Saw your art from pixilworldians dubs and now that I'm looking into it on your blog and ahfhwdgghsbrjahrgua8rjcwjruvjwozghwjxjv its fire!!!! I really like the utdr posts im general but the ones exploring clover and flowers dynamic is amazing!!! If you have any please yap about stuff relating to that I love reading about it
AAAA Thank you!!! This ask is a bit old but I hope you've stuck around. And I could yap about these two forever, especially for my AUs (yes I have multiple but only have talked about one of them).
But something that I haven't really talked about is that while Frisk reminds Flowey of Chara (who he misses and looks up to), Clover mostly reminds him of Asriel (who he fucking hates). This shapes a lot of how he treats them. He hates when they are "childish" (despite being a literal child) and when they make friends because he sees it as the kind of weakness that killed Asriel. So he absolutely abhors when they choose to stay in the Underground, because they age regress and are desperate for the love of others, something he believes made Asriel weak.
However, this projection has another effect. In canon UTY, his only goal is to either get the 5 human souls or get Clover's soul. To do this, he wants Clover to be obedient by any means necessary. But in my AUs, he has another, paradoxical goal: to make them more like him. If they are a weak, naïve kid like Asriel, they need to become the more jaded, empty Flowey. How did Asriel become Flowey? Not by anything good happening. Surely if they get their loved ones snatched away enough times, if they go through so many runs to the point that nothing feels real, they'll become like him? And he won't be alone. He goes as far as to reveal the whole "people are just lines of dialogue" and time loop thing to them, but they either go into denial or have a total mental breakdown, leading to a reset.
This gives yet ANOTHER reason why he hates them staying with Toriel or the others. Things get repetitive, they just become another NPC. He loses them.
So he wants them to obey him for him to get the souls, but he also wants them to disobey him and show autonomy so they're not just another NPC. What ultimately happens is that he's pissed at them no matter what they do :'))) But there are a few rare moments where he's in awe at how devoted they become to him or feels less alone when they surprise him and prove their humanity. And he also just genuinely enjoys their company sometimes but let's not talk about that.
About Clover's side of things. They are also of two minds about this. In this AU, they subconsciously remember runs. Gut feelings and thoughts they don't know the origin of. Obviously after Flowey killing them so many times, they develop a survival instinct that constantly screams at them to get away from him. But they can't get away from him, he is always there. So the only option is appeasing him while trying to figure out how to escape.
The other part cares about him too much. The part of them that desperately craves to be wanted. This part interprets his experimentation on them as genuine interest and care. This part sees him pretend to be nice to them and thinks he can change. This part sees into his subconscious every neutral run and feels sympathy for him. This part sees him trying to isolate them from everyone else and thinks "oh wow he really likes me :)" instead of seeing it as the red flag it is. Tbf they are a kid that couldn't know any better.
So, these instincts fight with each other each run. Reset after reset, they find that they hate him, they care deeply about him, and ultimately don't know what life would be without him at this point. And since they change a little each reset, Flowey keeps trying over and over. They are both trying over and over again to escape their situation, but there is no way out. They are in hell.
TL;DR: Both Flowey and Clover have conflicting feelings about each other, which leads to their dynamic constantly shifting between runs. Which is interesting to explore.
