#how do you think he handled finding out about what happened to ogerpon's companion? do you think he wept for him?

[wildflowercryptid]

ruh oh, i'm doing it again ( getting overly invested in backstory characters that aren't even alive in a story's ongoing plot. )

[1863-project]

One of the things I really like about the Teal Mask DLC for Scarlet and Violet is that it's all about examining your biases, learning the truth, and not just going on first impressions.

Spoilers to follow.

There's both a blatantly obvious and less obvious way the DLC does this, and I actually really like how it was handled from a storytelling perspective.

The obvious case is Ogerpon. When the player first gets to Kitakami and starts learning about Mossui Town's ogre story, it's playing the Momotaro fairy tale straight - the signs feature a young human figure, a dog, a pheasant, and a monkey chasing out an ogre. But by the end of things, the player - and by extension the entire town - has learned the truth about Ogerpon and how she was framed (species is 100% female). She was the victim in this scenario, and the so-called "Loyal Three" were actually the perpetrators. We don't even know what happened to her human companion or if he even survived their attack. By the end of the DLC, we've helped Ogerpon find acceptance in the town that formerly shunned her, and she's decided to travel with the player, whom she's bonded with. It's a much more typical story about acceptance, truth, and getting the facts straight. Ogerpon deserves reparations.

Less obvious, however, is the player's relationship with Carmine and Kieran, and this is where it's really important to dig a little deeper.

When the player first walks into town, Carmine challenges them immediately. She's looking for a fight and for someone to put down, and she wants to prove her superiority over the new visitors. She's surprised to lose to the player, and runs off when the caretaker arrives. The entire time, she's keeping Kieran under her thumb, barely allowing him to speak. It's not a good first impression at all, and you come away from that interaction thinking she's just a run of the mill bully.

Your first interactions with Kieran are the opposite. He seems to like the player quite a bit, and is really shy about it but really excited to have an actual friend. He's in awe of the player's skill, and he constantly puts himself down, saying he could never compare even though Carmine herself says he's almost as good as she is. You feel bad for him, and you want to look after him, especially since his own sister is constantly snapping at him. He relates to the outcast ogre from the story, and he dreams of meeting it someday.

Once you and Carmine meet Ogerpon by chance at the festival, however, things start to shift. Carmine doesn't want her brother to be upset that he missed the ogre he loves so much, so she hides it from him, even though this causes more grief in the long run. She does actually care about his feelings on some level, even if she's terrible at showing that and still actively puts him down all the time. When she and the player learn the truth about Ogerpon from her grandfather, she's righteously infuriated on Ogerpon's behalf, and she immediately wants to set things right. You and Carmine agree to respect the grandfather's wishes about not telling Kieran yet, but Kieran has been listening in the whole time, and he deems this a betrayal.

From Kieran's point of view, of course it feels like a betrayal - he was bonding with you, and it feels like now his sister has stolen you from him and you're both lying to him about Ogerpon, even if it's to protect him instead of make fun of him, as he wrongfully assumes. He starts avoiding the player and Carmine more because he's emotionally hurt, as most people would be in his situation, and because of this, it ends up being you and Carmine who start to bond with each other - going to get the supplies to repair the mask. When Kieran steals the mask, he's doing it out of pure jealousy - this was supposed to be something he did, not you and his sister. That jealousy unfortunately awakens the covetous spirits of the "Loyal" Three, who come back to life.

After confronting the alleged "Loyal" Three for the first time and collecting information in town, you and Carmine go off to fight them with Ogerpon in tow as Kieran stays behind to tell the townspeople the truth. This is important, because you and Carmine are now actively bonding with Ogerpon, and Kieran isn't even though he's helping her out. By the end of things, once everything is set right with the townspeople and Ogerpon has all her masks back, she indicates that she wants to team up with the player, who's been the one directly interacting with her. Kieran's jealousy gets the better of him again, and he challenges the player for the right to be Ogerpon's trainer, even as Carmine tells him he needs to consider Ogerpon's feelings, too. The player ends up with Ogerpon, of course, and Kieran doesn't take it well.

At the end of things, when they have to go back to school, Carmine is cheerily saying goodbye to everyone, and she reveals that she was being so standoffish because she didn't feel comfortable welcoming outsiders into her hometown. She states she's glad to have gotten to know everyone and hopes to see the player again. Kieran, on the other hand, doesn't even show up, and is locked in his bedroom at his house, swearing that he's going to become stronger than the player and getting a somewhat malicious-looking smile on his face. Things have been completely flipped from how they were at the start.

By the time that "To be continued..." screen hits, you've got much more mixed perspectives on both Carmine and Kieran, and they're both much more morally grey than they seemed at first glance. Carmine is constantly putting her brother down at the beginning, but she does make it clear she worries about him and his feelings, and she does care about him. She becomes nicer to the player once she warms up to them, and she knows what happened to Ogerpon was wrong and gets angry over it. Kieran seems like a beleaguered younger sibling at first, constantly at the mercy of his sister, but he has a fierce streak of jealousy that causes active problems for his hometown and damages his relationship with the player even more than the secret-keeping does. Both kids clearly have issues to work through that are affecting their ability to relate well to others and form bonds, and it's tough to see - even the Mossui Town locals say things about them that make it clear they're considered outsiders in their own home to a degree, and not just because they're descended from the mask maker.

I'm curious to see how things go for them in The Indigo Disk.