#kipperlily was an angry teenage girl

[the-solitary-child]

Kipperlily Copperkettle analysis, this is a long one so click read more to read all of it.

Kipperlily Copperkettle. Halfling Rogue. 

The Model Minority.

Her parents work good jobs, respectable jobs. One of them is a realtor, they are charismatic and good with words and they work hard. Hard for their family, hard to keep things in order. The other works in bastion city, away from home and with the council of chosen. A noble job, one that is met with praise and awards. It is a good job, a respectable job for the greater good.

Her family is good. Her family is picture perfect, with two parents and a kid and a white picket fence.

She must be perfect, for her sake, for her parents sake. Halflings are kind. Halflings are sweet. They get along with everyone. They are peacemakers, so much so that humans and elves could come and take solace from them. Years of bloody history and violence brews in her veins, and she is supposed to be complicit and smile and act kind. She does so for her parents sake, with a slicked back ponytail and a perfect uniform and a smile too big, too unnerving.

I’m sure people tried to dissuade her, telling her that she wouldn't find more comfort in something different? Maybe a job as a clerk or a secretary, or an artificer so she could help build things for people. She has her mind set though, with her nails digging into her palms to control the bitter rage that boils in her as she is only ever underestimated. 

High school starts and it's supposed to be a new beginning. She will find her party, and she will make friends. And she does, sort of. The High Five heroes she calls them, setting herself up as the leader. She has to take control of everything. They don't really listen to her though. Oisin and Ivy are immediately their own little duo, as are Ruben and Lucy, although Lucy has made a point to include Kipperlily too, and Mary Ann just acts uninterested in everything thus far. She has to make sure everything is perfect. A fight happens during the first day of school. It results in two students death, and makes the principle commit murder suicide on both himself and the counselor in order to bring two students back. Maybe that's where it started, the jealousy and the burning hatred and the obsession. Maybe it started a little earlier that day, when Riz handed out his business cards, and Kipperlily took it. Saw his name, maybe even wanted to be friends at first. Maybe he was too busy with the case of missing penny luckstone, maybe he was too busy with the friends that seemed to care about him. Maybe Kipperlily was jealous that his party actually cared about him, whilst hers only tolerated her at best.

I think that's where it started. The jealousy, the obsession. Her anger got worse, nails digging into skin and drawing blood. She is just so angry. She has always been angry, rage and spite boiling in her blood. Her parents said she came into the world not crying but screaming, like existing in this very world hurt her. She studied him. She learnt everything about him as the year went on and she felt shame. Burning, red shame. She started seeing the new counselor in hopes of getting help. She knew this wasn't normal. She was just so angry and had nothing to do with all this rage and fury. So she talked about it, how she was jealous of him. How he got the perfect adventurers story, a dead dad and a party full of people who cared. Her parents were normal. They were perfect, blended in perfectly. They were kind and sweet and polite and possibly never home because they have busy jobs. Busy respectable jobs. They were respectable people and nothing more because the world would never allow them to be anything more.

One way or another, Porter hears of a halfling rogue with rage in her veins. One way or another he approaches her, tells her that he will help her. He sees her potential, he sees just how great she can be. Kipperlily believes him. She trains with him, learning from him, hooked on to every word of praise he gives her. She is special, she is meant for something great, this school is just unfair and hands out blatant favoritism and she has to stop it. 

Kipperlily takes the rage star, lets it fall into her chest and every petty grudge, jealousy and dislike simply turns to wrath and hatred. She gets her party to join her too, leveling them up with the help of porter and jace. She kills them. She stands over their bodies as rage stars are forced onto their chests. As their corpses are violated and they are brought back just as angry as she has always been. Kipperlily feels no guilt, this is what she is meant to do Porter tells her. She is meant to bring greatness.

Lucy is the only one who doesn't come back. That hurts her, in a way different to anything she has ever felt. Lucy always had her back, always had her side when the party was ganging up on her. Lucy was the only one who understood what it was like to be put down and underestimated. But..she stayed dead. She decided being dead was better than being with her. 

Kipperlily tries to move on but sorrow and rage just burn deep within her.

The rest is history. But one thing is clear, rage has always festered in the heart of Kipperlily, and when she tried to get help, when shame burned in her veins at how childish her rage and jealousy was, she was failed by the people she was supposed to trust. Her rage was used as a weapon, both against her and against others. She was told she would do great things, that she is special and her spite and jealousy was used in order to get her to do things had her teachers not failed her, maybe she wouldn't have done.

Kipperlily will forever have the blood of her friends, of her party members, on her hands. She will never get rid of that shame, it will stain her hands, it will stain her legacy. She is nothing more than a villain in the history books now, when in reality she was a teenage girl who was failed over, and over again. She was a teenage girl who felt rage, and felt ashamed of her rage because she was told she needed to be kind, complicit. A sweet halfling girl, something she never was and never will be. 

[r0sebutch]

i will never be against kipperlily. angry teenage girl who was upset she wasn’t special and was seeing a counselor about her anger because she KNEW it wasn’t good for her. angry teenage girl who trusted her teacher and went into the mountains and died and came back wrong. angry teenage girl who had her anger twisted and manipulated, a reflection of the goddess she now worships. kipperlily copperkettle they could never turn me against you. number one kipperlily-hater hater FOREVERRRR

[girls-gays-theys]

I wanna say something in regards to the whole "kipperlily doomed by the narrative she's just a teen girl her worst crime yada yada" thing. as a former teenage girl who has serious anxiety, ADHD, and has felt excluded for much of my life, yeah. She was just a teen girl and yeah she was taken advantage of by Porter. I understand her on a deep deep level. if jawbone had helped more maybe the events of FHJY wouldn't have happened. maybe. we don't know.

what we do know is this: kipperlily took the sigil willingly and continued to act on behalf of it even after Lucy's death. she had a hand in Lucy's death and didn't stop after Lucy's death either. yeah she's a teenage girl doomed by the narrative for the crime of being angry but she also did some really fucked up things with no self awareness or remorse (to our knowledge)

AND ANOTHER THING I have to squeeze this in here as someone coming to grips with the whole life is what you make it thing. kipperlily is mad that the bad kids go on cooler adventures and have more fucked up back stories. A) girl just go on a cool adventure I promise you'll find one 90% of the quests the gang goes on they stumble into by "accident" (yeah I know it's a plot and Brennan is guiding them there so it's not an accident but in universe it usually is) and further more B) LOOK AT GORGUG. Two loving parents, a stable home, had a girlfriend, on the bloodrush team. he's pretty much as milquetoast as you can be excepting that he's adopted. (and he died, but he got brought back, who here hasn't been revivified)

and I'm not saying that oisin or ivy or Jace or buddy are any less at fault but I have strong feelings ab kipperlily so I needed to rant