AJ's desire to be a protective adult is unrealistic.
I know he and Clem have been through serious shit, but it can't trigger a fricking five (or six) year old into wanting to be like an adult, protector, not willing to be called "goofball" anymore etc. You only really start acting like that during puberty as a body's natural psychological preparation for living an indepent life, being on your own. But at AJ's age?? Hell no.
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I love that everyone on this forum is a psychologist.
Insert overabused Chuck quote here
i really wanna be sarcastic AF, but i might get banned. You can`t be too sure these days
Ha or a lawyer.
I agree with you OP. Next thing you know a toddler in that game can decide if they wanted to invest in their 401k or not. Haha People put way too much responsibility and faith in kid characters in this series mostly starting with Clementine being overly capable of everything at her age. When really she'd still be making a ton of mistakes if not dead or maimed by now due to the harsh environment and bad situations with bad people. What's stopping Clementine from building her own boat to make Kenny proud now? AJ is not mentally prepared to do what he is saying nor is Clementine but this game is more for entertainment than realism.
Literally every kid wants to act like "the big kids" in this case its Clem, who is strong and protective, thus Aj wants to be like her.
How do you know?
Seriously, how would you know?
He’s been brought up in a zombie apocalypse, you grow up fast or you die
"We can't be kids anymore Sarah. You have to grow up, or you'll die."
"You gotta consider her a living thing. You ain't a boy, you ain't a girl, you ain't strong or weak - you're alive."
I don't know if it's as much as him wanting to be a protector and more like him mimicking/acting like Clementine. He's trying to emulate what his protector does. The game's been pretty obvious about it too, with various scenes where AJ just parrots Clementine's actions or things that Clementine told him earlier, e.g. what he says at the funeral, or if you tell him you're still mad at Louis, he'll say whatever you told him earlier in the episode when he was angry.
That's the vibe I get from a lot of the stuff AJ says and does. They're not necessarily how he feels as much as him just doing what his surrogate mother is doing/saying.
And also, partly just because someone else made me aware of this recently: we all know that 'truth is stranger than fiction' saying, right? Every now and then, there's some actual credence to it. Like imagine a guy in WW2 charging into battle with bagpipes and a broadsword... or don't imagine it, because that actually honest to god happened.
That annoyed me as well tbf, and idc if it’s realistic or not, I just hate him trying to act older than he is
Even though Clementine's shtick was partially based around the fact that she acts older than she is?
Yeah, but she’s a teenager. Most teenagers act like adults so that they’re prepared for the future, AJ is just completely skipping over his childhood altogether
When she was 8 going on 9, genius.
It's not unrealistic, even if it might be off putting for some. Most young children want to be older than they are even if they don't fully understand what that truly entails. It's an ideal, an illusion we develop in our minds of what adulthood means, what we'd be capable of. Children have such a lack of power and control that it's instinct to be driven towards what appears to be power and control over themselves.
Think of it as a child from an abusive home. I'm certain there are dozens of mostly young boys AJ's age or even younger that have seen their mother's hurt who's instinct isn't to hide behind them to be protected from the real threat, but to assault that threat. It isn't by any means an exclusive male trait, but it's certainly more frequently seen in boys/men.
A lot of us are hard wired to prefer our own pain to seeing someone else in it, or have a strong desire to protect/defend that which we deem has value to us. Hell, I've seen people put themselves in life threatening situations for their pets. People have died rescuing animals from all age groups.
The most difficult aspect of giving AJ this personality trait is that for some that distances themselves from the 'parental' role. Some people have a stronger pull towards stepping up for the more helpless and fragile. It's recoiling to see a child who's never experienced that level of pain to shrug off a buckshot like a grizzled vet, and pulls some out of the ' we should be caring for this kid ' into the ' what the heck's wrong with this kid ' territory.