That is what I mean, of you groom someone from young age, you can literally shape their emotions and mind into becoming whatever you want. That's why the case of the two bothers abused by their parents who killed them in self defense (people want a reduced sentence). This (fantasy) scenario is even more on favor of Cliff, because literal magic was preventing him from thinking by himself.
Actually, it is even worse, his character was written (by the author inside the story) to be a doll who does watever the protagonist wants. It's like you punish your DOG for giving you the paw when you taught them to do so, and dog would have been punished if they didn't learn.
Yeah, Cliff's innocent 100%.
Lmaoo he’s definitely not completely innocent. The author has him INFLUENCED not brain washed or under mind control. The literal proof of mind control/brain wash not being the case is because Killian started thinking on his own before the author even lost all their power. Sure cliff may have been innocent at the very beginning, but he’s already had a hand in things that resulted in people getting hurt. The boat incident was majority cliff’s doing, because he knew what lize wanted so he did it. She didn’t even ask him to do that.
After she lost all her influence in powers, cliff STILL loves her and even personally made a contract so that she would have the upper hand, which was that he had to defend/protect her and he couldn’t be the one to divorce her. He also was sad when they did get divorced. Also the parents still liked lize even when she lost influence over them (hence why they didn’t punish her in the novel)
This will get a bit complex, but spoiler, I still think he's innocent.
Two last points. Cliff, at this point in the story, was MADE a creep by the In-story author and nobody "unmade" the creepiness, like Edith with Killeon.
And the obvious, RLA wanted two clear-cut, no grey-area villains, SA and Cliff.
So, we have two authors and one semi-author: Real Life Author (big author), the author inside the story (Small author, In Ryse's body), and Edith. She counts as a semi author cuz she's written by RLA to influence the story in a significative way.
This is what I think happens here:
SA is a character who wrote a story, she literally created the two dudes and Blondie. Blondie was like an alter ego of herself, a fantasy she would have wanted to live. SOMEONE, probably a god inside the story made the character's fantasy a reality, SA gets to become Blondie and to live her own story (the god character wanted to give her a lesson because her characters are all unrealistic and superficial and she's a bitch).
SA doesn't get to leave the story until she learns her lesson, god sends several Edith's to CORRECT the story and teach SA to be a truly good person (and mature,I guess) and stop scheming like the snake she has become. Doesn't work. UNTIL this last Edith partly skill partly luck CAN correct the story and free the characters from SA, showing SA that's not the way.
In all this, SA and Edith, at least right now, are the only real people, all others are part of the story. This will probably change soon. Cliff was literally created, written and controlled by SA, EDITH got her hands on the rest sort of freeing them from their creator. It's not weird Cliff is a creep, which he is. It is weird he's the only creep. Probably Cliff ends up being a real person and was sent to be punished and his brother rewarded.
Two last points. Cliff, at this point in the story, was MADE a creep by SA and nobody "unmade" the creepiness, like with Killeon.
And the obvious, RLA wanted two clear-cut, no grey-area villains, SA and Cliff.
Cliff is completely innocent, cuz grooming from the author, dude was the first in line as her manipulation doll