I don't like Clarke acting like she's Madi's mom. Madi had a mom. And Madi is the one who taught *Clarke* how to survive and fish. At best, they helped each other. Madi was raised on the ground her whole life and had just as much to contribute to their survival team of two.

Also, Madi was not a super young toddler when her parents died. She had parents who she remembered. I like that she said in a recent episode that she knows what it's like to lose a mom, talking about her bio mom. I thought it was ridiculous and insensitive that Clarke said, "You didn't lose me" or something like that. OF COURSE she didn't mean you Clarke! Come on! Did they never talk about Madi's family in all that time on the ground? Or did Clarke just use Madi for emotional support, telling her all about Bellamy and the rest of the crew, without listening to Madi's story?

Sounds super unhealthy. Big sister? Yeah. Aunty? Also works. Adopted/second mom? Maybe. She's pretty young though for that. And it really seems like she's stepping into the role more for her own needs than Madi's a lot of the time. Bleh.

ETA:

Two things. 1) The reactions so far to this post have been a reminder for me how much we project our own experiences onto fiction. For those who have had positive adoption experiences and see that in the Madi-Clarke relationship, they have positive feelings about it.

For me, I had a "step-mom" (technically my father's girlfriend, but they'd been together for years) who nonconsensually "claimed" me as one of her kids, selfishly prevented me from continuing to have a relationship with my actual mom and other relatives who I felt safe with (unlike her and my father), and otherwise was part of my life being miserable for the three years that I lived with her. Her kids were older, in high school and moved out, when this happened, and I see that she wanted to "replace" them with me, regardless of my own needs.

My actual mom also leaned on me for her emotional needs in ways that I see Clarke doing to Madi that I now consider questionable. So a lot of the problems I have that I listed above with the Madi-Clarke relationship relate to my own negative experiences that I see portrayed on screen.

Which leads me to 2) Regardless of bio moms or adopted moms or nonconsensual moms...I don't like Clarke's parenting style. I don't like most of the parenting styles I see portrayed on television; I don't like most of the parenting styles I see in the culture around me. Explaining why in detail that would not provoke an argument (instead of resorting to shorthand like 'patronizing') is beyond the scope of this post, but I think it particularly irks me that Clarke does this certain "parenting" things that I think are absolutely not healthy for any child, when she's not even really that child's mom and that child is now almost as old as she was when she got dropped to Earth and began living much more independently.

I'm not interested in arguing about this. I think what I really want is to connect with anyone else who has this interpretation of what is going on in story, because we've probably had similar experiences with people nonconsensually claiming us as their children, and/or adults leaning on us emotionally and not caring about our needs.

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