#like you’re idolising this character because he’s played by someone you admire and like and respect. but this character is not meant +

[elyvorg]

Kieran Part 1: It’s All About Strength

I’m a longtime Pokémon fan who happily plays through every mainline game, but I’ve never been more than mildly fond of the occasional character here and there, because Pokémon isn’t much for deep and nuanced character writing. Then I played The Teal Mask DLC and came out of it with many, many Feelings and Thoughts about Kieran – enough so that it warrants a full, juicy analysis about all of his subtleties and issues. I never expected I’d write one of these character analysis rambles of mine on a Pokémon character of all things, but here we are. Colour me surprised and impressed.

For anyone reading this in the future: this was written before The Indigo Disk came out and therefore only talks about the events of The Teal Mask. Assuming The Indigo Disk doesn’t completely drop the ball on the best character-writing job that mainline Pokémon has ever done (please; please don’t), there will probably be a Part 2 to this analysis coming in a few months. (Aaaaand here it is! But you should read this one first, of course.)

(I’ll be referring to the player character as “you” here for ease of wording, but rest assured, this doesn’t mean I’m accusing you the reader of any of the questionable ways the player character treats Kieran. I was also very annoyed at being forced to lie to him, believe me.)

His weakness, and your strength

Kieran is a kid gripped with a crushing sense of inferiority and weakness. We don’t see all of where this came from, although we get a pretty good idea of part of it – his sister. So many times when Kieran tries to protest against things and assert himself, Carmine snaps back at him for doing so. Over time, that kind of thing would have made him feel like he’s wrong for trying to stand up for himself, leading to him letting people walk all over him. I don’t want to give Carmine’s behaviour all of the blame for Kieran’s issues, though, because there’s bound to be more to it than that. I expect some of it also came from him being bullied and outcast during his time at Blueberry Academy – I hope The Indigo Disk gives us glimpses into what Kieran’s life there was like before all this.

As a result of feeling so weak and inferior, Kieran admires and idolises people he sees as strong. This becomes clear early on with how much he looks up to you just for being able to beat his sister, someone else he also sees as strong. Apparently, he couldn’t stop raving about how cool you were and how he wanted to battle you all evening back at home.

He doesn’t want you to know that, though, based on his protest when Carmine comes out and tells you so. Kieran's probably rather embarrassed for you to hear how much he idolises you, after all. He also seems to think his request for a battle would be annoying and a bother – he says “You don’t mind?” in surprise when you accept, even though asking people for battles is supposed to be just what trainers do. Why would a strong trainer like you want to waste your time battling someone weak like him?

Kieran’s comment in the battle if you land a super effective move is also very telling: “Oof, ehehe… I guess I got a lot of weaknesses…” He tries to play it off as light-hearted, but, hm, that sure is A Way for a rival character to comment on you knowing about type matchups. And he most certainly does not seem to agree with his sister when she says he’s almost as strong as her.

(Fun fact: the game actually lets you lose the first battle with each sibling while still continuing the story. If you lose to Kieran in that first battle, he assumes you were holding back against him, as if that’s the only reason he’d ever be able to beat anyone. Perhaps he’s experienced people holding back against him out of pity before – maybe Carmine used to?)

He's flustered when Carmine partners him up with you, too, even though you’re the only option that he has at least a vague rapport with now – he’s still assuming someone cool like you wouldn’t want to waste any more of your time on him than you have to. Kieran worries he’ll “get in your way” if he sticks with you, so he hangs back and stays well out of your way instead. It’s a cute way for the game to justify him not actually following you around in the gameplay even though he’s supposed to be following you according to the plot, but it also just makes perfect sense for Kieran’s character. This is a kid who constantly tries to take up as little space as possible because he’s convinced that nobody wants him around. And it’s important that he seems to feel especially this way towards the people he looks up to (with the exception of Carmine, because she’s family and he spends most of his time with her already).

Then there’s the scene where he meets Koraidon/Miraidon. At first, I assumed it was there to introduce Kieran to our lizardbike friend because they’d be relevant later somehow. But they’re not! So the only reason this scene exists at all is for the purpose of illustrating to Kieran that, in his words, “you’re special”. You are A Protagonist, capable of befriending super special, rare, strong Pokémon with ease. (Just like a certain other special legendary Pokémon you’ll be meeting soon, how about that.)

Admiring the ogre

So, as you begin the trip to visit the signboards about Kitakami’s legend, Kieran starts to open up about how much he likes the ogre. Perhaps he feels safe telling you, because you’re an outsider and won’t frown upon him for it like the locals are prone to do. He probably gets that from them a lot and has learned not to bring up the ogre in town – another thing that makes him feel left out.

Even so, Kieran starts from the angle of “it’s so strong and cool because it won one-on-three”, since that’s a more acceptable reason to like the ogre that doesn’t question the validity of the legend, and is less personal to his issues. If you agree with him that the ogre sounds cool before he’s explained why he thinks so, he responds with “I knew you’d get it!” – you, who’s also really strong and cool, would obviously recognise that same strength in the ogre right away, right?

If you’re sceptical at first instead, he stresses that “it was all alone!” and still managed to hold its own – the more personal side of the reason he likes the ogre coming out just a little. By the second signboard, Kieran’s gotten a bit more comfortable with you, enough to start touching on that more deliberately. He mentions that it’s shunned, and that he likes its strength because he admires that and wishes he could be that strong himself.

Then he invites you to see the ogre’s den, something completely unrelated to the purpose of the school trip, because he trusts you enough to feel sure that you’ll get what he’s trying to illustrate about the ogre there. He points out that it seems like a lonely, miserable place to live, and that he’d happily let the ogre stay at his house if it wanted. He’s not quite explicitly saying so, but Kieran clearly empathises with the ogre because he relates to that kind of loneliness. Though he doesn’t want to outright say that the legend is wrong and the ogre isn’t actually the bad guy – maybe he’s got backlash from the villagers before for suggesting it –  he's got to believe that to be the case.

(I’ve seen one or two people suggest that Kieran fawning over the supposed bad guy in the legend is an early hint to his potential for darkness, but I really don’t think that’s it. There’s plenty of reason for Kieran to relate to and see the sympathetic side of the ogre in the story due to his own status as a social outcast, without it needing to be a case of “he just likes bad guys because he’s Edgy”.)

Later, at the festival, Kieran has a quiet chuckle to himself when Carmine’s talking about the Loyal Three being heroes, and says it’s funny that she doesn’t know anything about the ogre. Then he conspicuously changes the subject when she implies that it’s just that he likes edgy bad guys, because that’s not it – but at least now he has someone who does get it. Carmine mentions later that she feels Kieran is trying to one-up her about the ogre, and maybe this is true. Perhaps this is one small way in which he can privately feel superior to his sister, because he’s more right than her, or than anyone in the village, about the ogre’s true nature. And while that’s more due to luck and a large helping of projecting his own issues onto it than out of any genuine inside knowledge of the truth, Kieran is the one person who understands the ogre best.

Or, at least, he understands it best… for the most part. Because there is one very key way in which Kieran is actually thoroughly wrong about what Ogerpon is truly like.

Misunderstanding the ogre

This begins to be apparent at the second signboard, when Kieran’s gushing about the ogre’s coolness and says “it didn’t even care when everyone shunned it”. From meeting Ogerpon later, we know that this is patently not true about her – she’s terrified of humans because of how they see her, so really she hates being shunned! But Kieran doesn’t imagine that to be the case about her, even though he empathises with her presumed loneliness and is basically projecting his own onto her. He sees the ogre as somebody who is shunned and alone, like he is, but who, unlike him, is strong enough to not let it get to them. Someone in the same bad situation as him, but with strength that he only wishes he could have to deal with it.

In that same conversation at the second signboard, Kieran then goes on to talk about how his sister always does everything for him, and he’d like to become stronger and more independent and reliable. And, “then, just maybe… I could be that ogre’s friend.” As if he doesn’t think he’d deserve to be Ogerpon’s friend unless he was already strong, just like she is.

He mentions a couple of times that he comes to the Dreaded Den a lot but has never once seen the ogre, which might seem a little strange at first. Obviously Ogerpon kept well hidden from him because she’s scared of humans – but, did Kieran never try to call out to her? To tell her that he’s not afraid of her, that he admires her strength and she must be lonely and hey, maybe they could be friends? If he had, then surely over time, Ogerpon would have grown to trust him and shown herself – so apparently, Kieran never did try to call out to her in an attempt to befriend her. Because he felt he wasn’t worthy of her friendship, not when he’s so weak, so inferior to someone as strong and cool as her. (A lot like how he wouldn’t have had the courage to tell you how much he admired you, if his sister hadn’t blurted it out for him.)

While you’re visiting the den with him, Kieran assumes that “a powerful ogre like that would only show up if it heard some kinda battle”, leading to him challenging you again. Since he admires the ogre for its strength, he’s assuming that the ogre also values strength just as much if not more than he does, which really isn’t necessarily true about Ogerpon!

During the battle, Kieran says he’ll “put up a good fight” this time. Which is to say, he still feels so thoroughly outclassed by you that he isn’t remotely expecting or even trying to win – he just wants to at least not go down quite as pitifully as last time, not when he’s potentially being watched by his idol the ogre. And when he loses (the game requires you to win this and all future battles against him), he laments how he’s ever going to be able to beat you, and then he muses, “If the ogre saw that battle, I’m sure it’d be thinking, ‘That kid’s got some real strength…’” He is assuming that Ogerpon would like you, far more than she’d ever like him, because of how strong you are. This is very important.

(As it happens, Ogerpon was secretly watching that battle, but as for whether she’s actually thinking what Kieran imagines she is about your strength – who knows?)

Friendship! Or is it…?

By the end of the den visit, Kieran has just enough confidence to invite you to the Festival of Masks, and to his own house to get ready to go together, which there’s no way he’d have been able to do at the start of the day. He’s so surprised but thrilled to hear that you consider yourself his friend – based on that and his grandparents’ reactions, you’re likely the first friend he’s ever made, which would not be surprising. It’s lovely watching this shy but sweet kid actually smiling and feeling comfortable around you and happy to have someone he can call a friend for the first time ever. And GHHHH it is so painful in hindsight knowing where things are headed.

Even with you calling yourself his friend, though, Kieran still feels inferior to you. He dejectedly offers to give you his mask for the festival when you find yourself without one, even though it’s the ogre mask, his favourite, his thing – because he instinctively feels that if anyone should be the one who gets left out, it should be him, like always, and not you.

The whole time, Kieran’s bound to be feeling thoroughly insecure about this new friendship. The idea that he’s actually made a friend, and not least someone as cool as you, likely feels far too good to be true, more than he deserves, and I suspect he might be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. When he mentions to Carmine that you’re coming to the festival with him, her response is vaguely evasive, and Kieran responds to that in a very prickly, defensive way. It reads to me like he thinks Carmine is jealous of him befriending you before her, and that he’s afraid she might try to take you away from him as a result. Whether that’s actually true or not isn’t really the point (I think Carmine might indeed be a little jealous, but she would not do something that deliberately malicious) – what matters is that Kieran believes this may be the case and is liable to view all further interactions with you and Carmine in that light.

Then, at the festival, Carmine pressures Kieran into playing Ogre Oustin’ even though he doesn’t really want to. She’s probably doing this in an attempt to encourage him to have fun, but since he doesn’t find it fun (because he doesn't like this game where he's pretend-killing the ogre!), it’d be easy for him to feel like she only did it because she wanted him out of the way so she could hang out with you. And it’s while Kieran’s doing that that you and Carmine meet Ogerpon without him. Of course, that’s nothing but pure unlucky bad timing – Carmine had no idea Ogerpon was about to show up – but from Kieran’s point of view, with his obvious history of being maliciously left out of things by others, it’s easy for him to feel like there was some deliberate element to it.

At first he doesn’t know it has anything to do with Ogerpon, though. But still, when he gets back from Ogre Oustin’ and asks what you two were up to, Carmine abruptly shuts you up before you can speak and is blatantly hiding something – which Kieran takes to mean that you were laughing at him behind his back. That’s something else he must get a lot, for him to be automatically assuming it’s happening here. Really not so far off from his fear that his sister’s going to try and take you away from him, either.

Carmine’s lie isn’t done out of any malice – she is genuinely trying to protect her brother from feeling bad over being left out of meeting Ogerpon – but she sure is doing so in a way that’s going to make him feel even worse over being left out on purpose once he realises the truth. Carmine does care about her brother in theory, but this girl has zero social brain cells. And we the player are forced to play along with the lie whether we want to or not, which awkwardly turns our player-insert character into a very specific kind of character who would do so. I guess they either also have zero social brain cells, or they’re kind of a doormat who’s swayed by a forceful personality like Carmine’s. This part is frustrating, but I have to accept it because of the delightful things it does to Kieran’s arc, which really is the important part here.

Learning of the lie

The next morning, it seems like Kieran’s largely managed to brush off the weird bit last night where you and his sister were maybe laughing at him behind his back, because he greets you with a smile, ready to go see the last signboard. And then Carmine… forcefully demands that he finds somewhere else to be, because you’ve got business with her. Kieran protests that it’s not fair that you’ve been spending all your time with her lately – score two for his fear that she’s trying to take you away from him – and when she snaps back at his protest like always, he runs off.

But he doesn’t run off that far, because he stays close enough to listen in on the conversation. The discussion of Ogerpon’s story goes on for long enough – and takes long enough to get to the important part – that Kieran pretty much has to have stayed to eavesdrop on purpose, which is a little sketchy of him. Still, I can’t blame him all that much, what with his background of being mistreated, and the way Carmine’s behaviour gives him ample reason to be afraid there’s something going on here – of course he’d have wanted to know for sure. Perhaps he was even trying to hope that listening in would prove that you’re not actually hiding something bad from him and he was just being paranoid.

Except that actually, it turns out the truth is so much worse than Kieran had feared. Never mind just laughing at him – you and Carmine met the ogre without him and then hid it from him as if he didn’t even deserve to know. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it then turns out that he was right all along about the ogre being a good guy, and his own grandpa didn’t even think it was worth telling him that, and now you’re still just going to keep lying to him about it all and leaving him in the dark.

(Really, I have to side-eye their grandpa a lot more than Carmine here, because he’s a grown dang adult and has so much less excuse. He says he’ll tell Kieran the truth “when the time is right”, but what does that even mean? The “right time” would be right now! Heck, it should have been the moment he realised that Kieran had already intuited the truth!)

And all this being lied to and shunned and left out of things (like always) stings even more for Kieran because it’s coming from someone he’d thought was his friend. He’d actually dared to hope that someone – and not just anyone, someone really cool and strong – actually wanted to be friends with him? Of course that was too good to be true. Why would someone as cool and strong as you have ever wanted to befriend a weak loser like him, anyway? (After all, cool strong people only ever want to be friends with other cool strong people; that’s how it works, right?)

Probing about the lie

The correct thing for Kieran to do with this situation would have been to simply come right out and confront you about the lie. But of course he doesn’t have the courage to do that. He’s far too used to being shot down whenever he tries to assert and stand up for himself (no thanks to Carmine). And since he only learned about this because he was eavesdropping, it’s easy for him to imagine having that turned against him, and the whole situation being treated like he’s the one in the wrong for doing that.

Still, it seems like Kieran might want to at least indirectly give you the opportunity to tell him the truth. He heads off to the village shop to act like he was there the whole time, and then casually asks you what you were talking about back there. He’s maybe trying to hope that you don’t really want to lie to him and only got swept up into doing so by his sister’s forcefulness, and that you’ll tell him everything now that she’s not here, because, you said you were his friend, right? Later on, too, at the third signboard, the way Kieran brings up that his family is descended from the mask maker feels suspiciously relevant, as if he only thought to do so because he overheard the story and is trying to give you a chance to go, “Hey, speaking of that mask maker, actually…”

But no. It sure seems like you’re very deliberately choosing to keep him in the dark. As such, he’s bound to be feeling extra small and awkward at the signboard, just wanting to “get this over with” and be done spending time with you, because you clearly don’t want to waste any more of your time with him than you have to, right? The awkwardness of the third signboard photo, with Kieran obviously not wanting to be there, and your character’s very strained thumbs-up, is heartbreaking in comparison to how cute and happy the first two were.

During the conversation there, Kieran mentions the ogre being alone and treated like an outcast in a way that is very clearly also talking about how you and Carmine are treating him right now. The game pointedly lingers on his response to your comment, regardless of which dialogue option you choose. If you agree that that sounds awful, he says, “You think so too, huh?” – you think that it’s bad to treat someone that way, and yet, you sure are treating him that way anyway. If you instead mutter an awkward apology, Kieran asks, “For what?” This could read like he’s calling you out for not being able to admit to what you should be apologising for, but actually, I’m not sure that’s it. It could also be him genuinely asking that, because he doesn’t realise you need to apologise for anything. Hold this thought, I’ll go into it more in a bit.

It's because he’s weak

The other thing that happens at the third signboard is Kieran challenging you to another battle. He doesn’t really explain why, but I suspect he’s hoping that if he wins and proves his strength to you, you might just tell him the truth, or at least it’ll give him the courage to confront you about your lie. This is the first battle in which he says he wants to win and is actively trying and hoping to do so, rather than just accepting his loss before he’s even started. His optimism is pretty fragile, though, as he laments “it wasn’t supposed to go like this” if you hit him super-effectively, and “why does it have to be like this?” when he’s down to his last Pokémon.

But of course, he loses, just like he must secretly have been expecting to all along (how could he ever beat someone as strong as you?). And so he concludes, “it’s all ‘cause I’m too weak” – not just losing the battle, but everything. Why he’s always left out and shunned by everyone, why you lied to him and went behind his back about something you knew was important to him – it’s because he’s weak. He was battling you to try and prove that he’s stronger, strong enough to deserve better than that… but of course he isn’t.

A particularly important little subtlety is that he mutters “That’s why I…” – because it would have been easy to expect this line to say “you” instead. That you lied to him and shunned him because he’s weak, that it’s your fault for choosing to treat someone weak like this. But Kieran isn’t framing it that way. He’s thinking of it as his fault, simply for being weak, and that’s why he will always inevitably be treated like crap by everyone around him. As if that’s nobody else’s fault for choosing to do that, but simply the natural way of things when someone’s weak. As if he deserves this for being weak.

(So: what are you sorry for? You shouldn’t be sorry for anything; it’s his fault, isn’t it? Someone as strong and perfect as you could never be conflicted or in the wrong.)

By the end of this signboard visit, Kieran’s leaving on his own, saying that he’s got to get stronger with his Pokémon. All of this is happening because he’s weak, so he needs to be stronger – and apparently, that means “strength in Pokémon battling”. In reality, even if he did become the best battler out there, that wouldn’t necessarily make him any better at standing up for himself in social situations or being independent and reliable in other ways, but he’s very much conflating the different kinds of strength. This probably has a lot to do with his schooling at Blueberry Academy, which teaches Pokémon battling, leaving him overly focused on battling strength as the only kind of strength that matters. Perhaps he was picked on at school because he wasn’t very good at the battling classes, which wouldn’t have helped. I hope we see some glimpses of this in The Indigo Disk.

And on the topic of Kieran fixating on getting stronger at Pokémon battling: his Furret is never seen in his team again after this point. It was one of the first two Pokémon he used against you, so it’s presumably one of his closest Pokémon partners, which makes it heartbreaking that he ditches it from his team because, clearly, it’s too weak. Even worse, he’s inflicting being left out and shunned on someone else – someone he probably cared about – precisely because it’s weak. That’s just what happens to people who are weak, right? Guh. Poor Furret.

Outburst at Loyalty Plaza

Kieran most likely spends the next 24 hours alternating between fervently training as hard as he can, and stewing in his feelings of loneliness and rejection and betrayal. His grandpa mentions that he spent that night in his room after not even eating dinner, which, yeah, when he’s sharing a house with two of the people who are lying to him, not surprising. Oof. And more than just pain and betrayal, he’s got to be feeling so much anger, anger which he’s never been able to truly express, because every time he tries to stand up for himself he always gets shot down – but that only makes the suppressed anger worse.

The correct thing to do would have been for Kieran to confront everyone calmly about the lie as soon as he became aware of it. But because he couldn’t just do that, his resentment festered inside of him with no real outlet, until finally it becomes unbearable and explodes out of him and he has to do something to express it, no matter how questionable. So he steals the Teal Mask and runs off with it.

I don’t think Kieran actually has much of an idea of what he’s going to do with the mask. The one logical thing would have been to give it back to Ogerpon himself, but that can’t be his intent, because he doesn’t go anywhere near her den with it. And I highly doubt he’s planning to break it or anything like that, since he’d never do something that’d hurt Ogerpon. Really, I think he just wants you and Carmine to notice and acknowledge what he’s going through and what you’ve done to him – and if he steals the mask, you’re going to have to confront him to get it back.

He heads to Loyalty Plaza in particular because he’s conflating his own situation with Ogerpon’s. In amongst his pain and anger at the way he’s being treated, he’d have also been feeling a lot of anger at the injustice of how Ogerpon was and is treated, because he was right all along that she was never the bad guy, but she’s shunned undeservedly while the “Loyal” Three are lauded as heroes. Even though this outburst from Kieran is really all about his own situation, he makes it about Ogerpon first, because that’s easier for him to openly be angry about. He only brings up his own treatment as a comparison to how Ogerpon is treated like an outcast, as if the only way he can frame it as wrong in his head is by comparing it to something that’s definitely wrong. (After all, he deserves to be shunned because he’s weak – but Ogerpon didn’t deserve any of it, because she’s so much stronger!)

During Kieran’s outburst, Carmine blurts out an apology on realising that she’s hurt him – but Kieran basically just ignores it and continues to vent. Which tells us something interesting: that Kieran never did this out of any attempt to get you and Carmine to apologise for lying to him. If he’d wanted that, he’d have reacted in some way when Carmine did just that. So I think, in keeping with Kieran’s belief that all this is his fault for being weak, he doesn’t actually think you two need to apologise for anything. He’s lashing out because he’s angry and in pain and doesn’t know how else to deal with it, but he’s not consciously thinking that you and Carmine are in the wrong.

He’s also still holding onto the idea that you and Carmine were just laughing at him behind his back, which is of course not true, but when Carmine tries to say that, Kieran snaps back that she’s a liar. Given that she undeniably has lied to him about one very important thing, of course Kieran would find it easy to believe that she could be lying to him about anything and he can’t trust any reassurance she gives him. This poor kid must have such a history of being mistreated and patronised by others to jump to assuming things like this.

Lashing out with a battle

Then Kieran challenges you to another battle, promising to give back the mask if you win. Since there’s no way he is truly expecting to be able to beat you, this means that he never really intended to keep the mask forever. But he also doesn’t just want to seem like some weak pushover who’ll roll over and give in as soon as he’s confronted, so he at least wants to make you fight him for it. And based on his line at the beginning of the battle – “I know this isn’t right, but… I can’t just hand over the mask to you!” – he doesn’t want to just give up one of Ogerpon’s possessions so easily to someone who treated him like an outcast the same way those villagers back then treated Ogerpon.

Really, I think the battle – and the notably forceful way he asks for it, unlike the previous times – just comes a lot from Kieran’s anger, and his need to externalise it somehow. He even insists that he needs this battle, if you’re hesitant about accepting the challenge. There’s probably a part of him that wants to lash out with physical violence, maybe punch you or something, but he knows that’s wrong and that it’d look pathetically impotent of him anyway even if he tried. Happily, this world has a socially-accepted form of violence-by-proxy instead, so Pokémon battle it is!

As for the battle itself, Kieran’s switched up his team some more, removing Furret as previously mentioned, and adding two new members instead of just one like the previous times – but the Cramorant he uses here doesn’t stick around either. This is less sad to me than Furret, though, because he wouldn’t have been very close to it. Cramorant may even have been taken onto the team with the condition of “I’m trying out new team members to see who’s strong enough”, at which point ditching it is less of a betrayal and more of it simply failing a job interview.

(Meanwhile, the other newcomer, Gligar, clearly impressed Kieran a lot with its strength, as it becomes his ace for the final fight. Fitting that his ace there is not a long-time partner, but one obtained only after he began to fixate on getting stronger.)

He’s also more openly determined to win (despite his suppressed conviction that he could never beat you), and remains more optimistic than before even when things aren’t going so well for him. In fact, this is the only battle in which Kieran has lines for hitting you with a super effective move or a critical hit. That said, he’s still a little insecure, based on an optional line: “I need to get this right… I’m gonna make sure to give the right commands!” which tells us that he feels like his losses are his fault for making mistakes and choosing the wrong moves, rather than blaming his Pokémon for not being strong enough. He also has an absolutely great comment in this battle if you land a critical hit, which I have to highlight: “What can’t you do? You’re like the hero in a story…” It’s purely luck, but despite that, he’s seeing you as this impossibly perfect hero that he could never ever measure up to, and this delights me.

Losing the battle just seems to make Kieran’s frustration at his own inferiority even worse, to the point that he does indulge in some physical violence, towards the shrine. Which is as pathetic as he must have been expecting, and should in theory have been harmless enough. (Of course, it appears that this is what somehow resurrects the Lousy Three, but there is no way Kieran expected or wanted that to happen, so he can’t be blamed for that.) Then he gives the mask back, just as he promised he would, and (ignoring another attempt by Carmine to apologise – again, this was never about that to him) he runs off back home.

So I find it really hard to condemn Kieran for… any of his actions here? Sure, he stole the mask, but he didn’t do anything bad with it and gave it back just fine (and must have always been intending to). All he was doing was lashing out – unhealthily, but basically harmlessly – over the really very callous way you and Carmine had been treating him. And if he hadn’t done this, you two would probably never have told him the truth about Ogerpon, and he’d have remained out of the loop and never met her at all! That would have been awful!

And yet: making you and Carmine bring him into the loop about Ogerpon and getting the chance to meet her is also not something Kieran was aiming for here. Just before leaving in a sulk, he says, “Say hi to the ogre for me” – which means that he never expected to get to meet it himself. He is still, even by the end of this confrontation, labouring under the belief that you and Carmine don’t want him there with Ogerpon and that he doesn’t deserve to meet her at all.

Apologies, and a lack thereof

After you rescue Ogerpon from being bullied by the resurrected Lousy Three, Carmine shows up with Kieran in tow. Apparently she found him moping around at home and dragged him here to apologise to you about his stunt with the mask. Which, yes, does warrant an apology – but what really frustrates me about this part is that Carmine doesn’t apologise for what you and she did wrong. Sure, she blurted out a couple of cut-off apologies back at Loyalty Plaza, but those never had the intended effect when Kieran was in no emotional state to accept them. Here and now, he’s calmed down enough that he would be able to take on board an apology… but Carmine doesn’t give one. It’s possible that she already apologised at home before bringing him here, but if she’d done that, then she really ought to have got you to also apologise for lying to him, and she doesn’t – so I can only assume that didn’t happen. And you the player can choose to apologise to Kieran here anyway, but since it’s optional, it’s not given nearly the attention it deserves.

Since Kieran never gets a proper apology while he’s in a state to listen, it means he never actually ends up internalising the fact that you were in the wrong to lie to him and he didn’t deserve to be treated that way. Which would have been a really, really important thing for him to realise! As it is, he continues to quietly assume that all of this is his fault for being weak, with nobody to tell him that this way of thinking is flawed.

It's frustrating, but I do kind of get it, from Carmine at least, because she’s also a pretty flawed person. Her deal seems to be that she’s only able to be emotionally sincere in uncontrolled outbursts when she’s worked up, and when she’s calm she covers up her true feelings with bossiness and vanity. Which makes her not at all capable of apologising to Kieran when he’s in a calm enough state to be capable of registering it. These siblings’ issues do not mesh well. Still, here’s hoping that Carmine’s able to self-reflect enough to acknowledge her partial responsibility for Kieran’s suffering by the end of The Indigo Disk.

She does seem to realise her mistake here enough to make a point of trying to include Kieran in their Ogerpon adventures from here on out, at least. But it’s too little too late in terms of how Kieran views things. He seems to have assumed that Carmine dragged him here only to apologise, and not to properly meet Ogerpon or be involved in helping her out, because he expresses surprise when Carmine casually includes him as part of the Mask Retrieval Squad. He was expecting to be shunned and left out as always – what do you mean, she wants him there?

Meeting Ogerpon

The only interaction Kieran was expecting to have with Ogerpon here was giving the fixed-up mask back to her, because he wanted to be the one to do so – but she shies away from him when he offers it. Carmine comments that she’s probably scared of new people, and this is likely the truth, but Kieran’s silent response suggests that he’s not necessarily agreeing with that assessment. Remember, from earlier: Kieran is convinced that Ogerpon values strength. And he’s so used to being shunned by others, especially strong people, because he’s weak. It would be very, very easy for him to come to the irrational conclusion that the reason Ogerpon refuses him is because of his weakness, even though his sister’s suggesting something else.

Despite Kieran’s key misconceptions about Ogerpon’s values, he does continue to understand her better than most people in certain ways. When you try to head into town with her, Kieran’s the one to point out that she’s probably afraid to go in because of the way she’s been treated by the townspeople. He also comments that she’ll feel safe going to retrieve the masks from the Three as long as she’s with you. He empathises with that insecurity and social anxiety enough that, seeing it from Ogerpon in person, he can instinctively see that’s the case about her too.

And yet… seeing Ogerpon’s fear, and understanding that she’s scared of being shunned just like him (which he previously said the ogre didn’t care at all about!), doesn’t actually change the part of Kieran that is also irrationally convinced that she only cares about strength. There’s no moment in which he seems to be re-evaluating Ogerpon or realising anything new about her upon seeing her being afraid. The part where she’s shy and afraid, and the part where she’s strong and cool and therefore values strength in others, manage to be separate enough in his mind that he never actually cross-references them to realise that one of these surely can’t be as true as he thinks it is. So his false conviction that things are about strength to Ogerpon still remains, unchallenged.

Staying behind

Then, even though Carmine is making an active point of trying to include him, Kieran… chooses not to come with you on the mission to retrieve the masks. This is despite the fact that this’d be his best chance to spend time with Ogerpon and hopefully get her to warm up to him, which you’d think would be his priority when he’s quietly hoping to maybe have the chance to become her partner.

But even though it would be a logical choice for Kieran to come with them, it makes perfect sense to me why he doesn’t. As far as he sees things, you and Carmine are way stronger than him and already have the fights against the Three covered – he’d be nothing but a useless third wheel hanging back, only there out of Carmine’s pity for him and not because he’s needed. And in terms of Ogerpon, Kieran is the kid who visited her den countless times but never had the courage to call out to her and ask to be friends. Of course he knows he wouldn’t have the confidence to actually try and get closer to Ogerpon, especially not when she’s already got someone she likes (someone who’s strong while he’s weak, which is clearly what matters to her, right). He knows he’ll just spend the whole time watching Ogerpon obviously like you way more than him while not being able to do a thing about it, and it’ll just make him feel even more jealous and left out.

(Trust me, as someone with social anxiety who spent a lot of my childhood being low-key outcasted by my so-called friend groups, I get it. When you’ve lived like that, integrating yourself with new people can feel downright impossible, no matter how much you may want it.)

So Kieran doesn’t come on the mission – but it’s not like he just uselessly sulks around, either. He spends the time doing something else to help Ogerpon, something neither you nor Carmine seemingly thought needed to be done: telling the town the truth that she was never a bad guy. Because of course Kieran understands best just how hard it is for Ogerpon to be shunned and outcast by everyone, and of course he has some Strong Feelings that people deserve to be told the truth, hmm I wonder where that might have come from. This task is really difficult and scary for him, too, because he hates talking to people – but he does it anyway, for Ogerpon’s sake! What a brave lad!

(I’ve seen people side-eye the fact that the villagers accept the truth and turn around their view of Ogerpon so easily, but honestly it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I get the mask maker way back when being persecuted because the villagers of the time saw Ogerpon kill the Three and made assumptions, but, like, it’s been generations. All of the witnesses who had that emotional gut reaction to the fight are long dead. Most of the people alive today didn’t even truly believe the story of the ogre was real until the Loyal Three showed up – they just thought it was a fun folktale that gives their village some unique culture. So for them to be told “hey, the ogre is real, but also the story’s backwards and the ogre’s actually the good guy”… so what? I was always sceptical of Grandpa’s conviction that the truth must never be told to the village (because… people will get angry that they were lied to? So therefore you should just keep lying to them so they never find out they have something to be angry about? Yes, great tactic, it worked so well on Kieran). Kieran basically just went and proved that there really was nothing to be worried about all along and the people should have been told the truth ages ago.)

His final chance to be strong

So now we reach the end, where Ogerpon makes it clear that she wants to stay with you, and… and even though he must have seen this coming, Kieran can’t accept it happening without trying to fight against it.

This isn’t even really about Kieran wanting Ogerpon’s friendship in and of itself. It’s more about what the concept of being partners with Ogerpon means to him. This whole time, he’s been obsessed with the ogre, and yet only letting himself imagine that maybe one day when he’s stronger, he could be its friend. He’s fixated on the idea of befriending Ogerpon as something that will mean he’s strong and no longer alone and everything is good now. Obviously this is extremely irrational and not necessarily true nor the sole way to fix his problems, but that’s how things are in Kieran’s head.

And so, with recent events making him feel even more weak and outcast than ever, you being effortlessly strong and cool enough to befriend Ogerpon on top of everything else feels to Kieran like it’s about to take away his one chance to turn things around, forever. Of course he can’t just let that happen without at least trying to have things his way. He says right at the beginning of the battle: “I know you’re probably a better trainer for Ogerpon, but I… I…” – and he can’t even voice the end of that sentence. He can’t put into words why he feels like he needs to become Ogerpon’s partner even though he knows he's being selfish and she’d be better off with you, because it’s not based in any conscious logic and is all just one big subconscious irrational mess of his issues and inferiority complex.

I’ve seen a lot of people condemn Kieran for this part, saying that he’s ignoring Ogerpon’s wishes because he’s planning to force her to join him whether she wants to or not if he wins. However, I firmly disagree that Kieran has any such thing in mind here. Remember, he’s still labouring under the misconception that what Ogerpon cares about most is strength. He thinks she likes you so much because you’re so strong (remember the previous time he battled you in front of the den, where he commented that the ogre must be thinking how strong you are if it’d seen that?), and that she refused the mask from him that one time because he’s weak. So Kieran has convinced himself that if he can prove himself to be stronger than you, by defeating you in a battle while Ogerpon’s watching, then she’ll naturally choose him to be her trainer over you. Right?

When Carmine says that he has to consider Ogerpon’s feelings, Kieran’s simply silent for a moment before saying “…I want to battle anyway.” He’s not denying that Ogerpon’s choice is what matters – he just believes, or is at least trying to believe, that her choice will be determined by this battle. And of course he doesn’t say anything like “Ogerpon will choose me if I’m stronger than you”, because – well, perhaps because a lot of this is also subconscious enough that he can’t articulate it, but even if any of it was conscious, he knows it’d sound stupid. Especially the part where he’d be talking like it’s possible for him to beat you, because deep down, he still completely convinced that’s impossible.

Plus, nowhere in this does Kieran bring up the fact that he told the village the truth about Ogerpon as a point in his favour for why she might choose him – which supports that it’s not about any kind of friendly gestures to him and he’s convinced she’ll make her decision entirely based on strength. (And it also proves that he did that out of a genuine desire to help Ogerpon, without any ulterior motives of trying to get her to like him!)

Just before the battle, he says: “Whoever wins gets to be Ogerpon’s partner… So don’t… don’t you dare hold back!” – making a point of demanding you don’t hold back, even though you might think he’d want any advantage he can get towards supposedly winning Ogerpon’s favour. But this makes perfect sense when you realise what this is about to Kieran. He believes that Ogerpon will choose (and deserves to choose) whichever of you is the strongest, and this battle won’t actually prove that if he only wins because you were holding back against him.

Kieran also thanks you for not holding back when you land your first super effective hit, which I enjoy. He’s so used to being patronised and seen as weak and pathetic, so he’s actually glad that you’re taking him seriously and viewing him as a legitimate opponent.

And, hey, he is! His team is pretty stacked: a full six Pokémon with solid movesets, and even strategic held items (at least in the postgame version). Assuming you’re not over-levelled, it’s quite a challenging fight, as it should be. Kieran is trying so, so hard to be strong enough, because this poor kid has convinced himself that all of his problems and pain are due to him being weak, and he is so desperate to fix that by proving himself even stronger than you, strong enough to win Ogerpon’s favour.

When he loses, he just crumples, and it’s heartbreaking. Kieran had so much more riding on this battle than just befriending Ogerpon – this was what felt like his one and only chance to stamp out the part of him that feels crushingly inferior and like he deserves to be treated like dirt. Guhhh.

And of course the first thing out of his mouth is, “Figures.” His inferiority complex runs so deep that, no matter how hard he’d trained and how genuinely really good his team had grown, he never truly believed that he ever had a chance at beating someone as cool and strong as you. He was just desperately trying to convince himself that he at least had a shot, because he couldn’t bear to give up without trying.

I really wish you could tell Kieran how good he was in this battle! It truly is impressive how much better he’s grown at battling since the first one, in such a short space of time, too. Just because he’s not quite as strong as you doesn’t mean he’s weak, not by a long shot. But nobody tells him any such thing, so Kieran continues to view things in that irrationally all-or-nothing way. He lost, so he's weak, end of.

Then he has to stand there and watch you battle Ogerpon in order to catch her. Before all of this happened, Kieran would have been so stoked to see his hero the ogre showing off just how cool and strong she is – and hey, her powers really are pretty awesome to behold! But here, despite the amazing spectacle in front of him, Kieran just looks supremely awkward. Like he doesn’t feel like he deserves to be here. Like he doesn’t even have the right to get to see Ogerpon’s full strength in all its glory. You’re the only one who’s strong enough to have earned this.

He does make one possible comment during the battle, if you land a critical hit on Ogerpon: “You really are good… I’m no match.” Which is a bit excessive, considering that really anyone is capable of critting Ogerpon if they get lucky – but apparently Kieran’s thoughts during this battle are still incredibly hung up on just how strong you are and how he’ll never be able to measure up to you. This goes to show that his issues at this point have shifted to be more about you than about Ogerpon. Which tracks, since his admiration for the ogre was never quite about Ogerpon herself and was more about what her strength represented to him – and now you’ve come along and given him an even bigger example of impossibly cool strength, in a much more painful way.

Once you’ve captured Ogerpon, Kieran manages to awkwardly congratulate you on it – hey, he’s doing his best not to be a sore loser! – laments once again why he can’t be like you, and then runs off. No doubt he’s feeling a huge heap of uncontainable painful emotions that he does not want to show in front of you or Carmine and needs to go let out in private. This kid is Not Okay.

So, in summary: Kieran comes out of all this with the message that all of his pain and suffering and loneliness is his fault because he’s still too weak, and he will only ever be strong enough to put all that behind him once he’s stronger than you. And to do that, he needs to get so, so much stronger, almost impossibly so, no matter what he has to do to achieve it. I’m sure this will be Just Fine leading into The Indigo Disk. (: (: (:

And one last thing: the game doesn’t let this happen, but if Kieran had won that final battle against you, I believe things might actually have turned out better. Because let’s face it, Ogerpon would probably still have chosen to go with you anyway, and if she had, Kieran would have been forced to face the fact that it was never actually about strength to her. It wouldn’t even be that hard for him to understand that, given that he’d already noticed the indications that she was scared of being shunned by the townspeople and that she liked you because you made her feel safe. This would help Kieran recontextualise things a little and stop focusing so unhealthily on gaining more battling strength as the One Thing that will solve all his problems. He still wouldn’t exactly be suddenly fixed and happy, but… things wouldn’t be quite so bad, at least. Alas, you are Too Protagonist to lose and let that happen.

[sco07ut]

i’ve got like 20 mins until my bus shows up and i’m bored so, at risk of being mobbed by that specific brand of over-30-cishet-female-mat-baynton-stans, i would like to talk about why i think transfem thomas thorne could actually be a good route for his character growth !

(but it’s below the cut bc it’s long discussion </3)

so obviously being infatuated with alison is an integral part to thomas’ character, aside from being a terrible poet it’s one of his most identifying traits. even in episodes where he’s tried to ‘grow out of it’ (see: s4e2) he’s still back to his original state at the end of the episode (and while this could be chalked up to the fact that you stays how you dies and therefore can’t grow as a person i would like to raise you this: he obviously was not obsessed with alison when he died, therefore i think there’s still some hope for him yet) anyway ! got off track a bit there,

thomas can’t ‘grow out of’ loving alison until he recognises why he loves alison - or perhaps, the idea of alison (now this could lead onto a talk abt why i also think and hc that tom is aromantic but people have covered that before)

let’s backtrack for a moment and review what exactly we know and/or can infer about thomas: he’s unlike the other men we see in the thomas thorne affair, his interests, opinions on romance and accumulated skills aren’t particularly masculine.

he’s very creative (just because he’s bad at it doesn’t mean the drive isn’t there), adores the arts (written word, paintings, songs), he clearly values women for who they are as people (and to a degree, their looks) and bases his affections on that, as opposed to financial gain (squints at francis button), and he clearly hasn’t had any experience when it comes to duels or fights in general and his general ‘layabout’ personality would definitely reflect the fact that rich women in the 1800s had very few responsibilities and obviously weren’t expected to work.

now, all of these aren’t inherently feminine traits, this is obvious, we all know this, i’m not saying that men can’t do these things. kindly don’t take my words out of context, but in the case of a man who lived in the 1800s, they can be seen as pretty feminine. this also isn’t the basis for my argument, i just want to point out a few things before i get into the meat of it !

and slightly less solid reasoning: mat baynton just plays him really fruitily. if you asked me to explain it i don’t think i could, but cmon just look at him

anywa, it’s pretty much an accepted part of the fanbase by now that thomas is bad at recognising what sort of love he’s feeling, and i raise you this: what if the desire he’s feeling for alison isn’t romantic, but is instead, desiring to be her.

(if you’re a lesbian, this is a familiar concept: do i want to date her or be her?)

he could potentially see elements of himself in alison, her own appreciation for art, and maybe even traces of the physical self (slim, white, dark haired? - this could also support the reasons why he was such a strong interest in lucy, who also shares these features, but hasn’t expressed any canon interest in fanny or kitty. mary is a bit of an outlier here but it’s whatever, my hc just has pockets ig). and when we have a great appreciation for someone we can tend to idolise them a little. in thomas’ mind, alison could potentially just be an idealised version of who he wants to be, and in his own confusion when it comes to recognising that fact, he could be mistaking admiration for adoration.

thomas is very clearly an idiot, the entire series is proof of that, and generally unless the facts are laid out right in front of him he doesn’t Get things. when we consider the fact that transgenderism was extremely uncommon and likely incredibly underground, thomas probably doesn’t even know it’s an option outside of the way that literally everyone ponders what it would’ve been like to have been born the opposite sex at least once in their life.

so why do i think this would be an effective way to fix thomas’s weird infatuation with alison?

well, at this point in the series it’s obvious that thomas isn’t just going to stop ‘loving’ her, there needs to be some big wake-up call that makes him stop. however, i feel that the longer ThemThere keep dragging out this part of his character, the harder it’ll be to bounce back from it. right now we’re lucky that thomas is such an avidly romantic character, his obsession with alison is uncomfortable enough as it currently stands but at least we know it’s innocent and emotional. but as the series goes on i just worry that that line could start to blur.

at this point, thomas suddenly moving on from alison seems entirely unfeasible and he would definitely need to have some element of identity rocked to really consider what it is about alison that he’s obsessed with. of course i’d be completely happy if that happened to be the fact that he’s aromantic or aroace but i just think thomas ending up transfem would be an interesting route to go down as an alternative (bc i know some people are very much ride and die when it comes to certain ships. and i’ll admit, i do appreciate a bit of romance between tom n different characters)

i feel like it would also be a better justification for his infatuation with her aside from just ‘too much love’ (thomas thorne=ashfur.?), obviously all obsessions are a bit iffy but i feel like if it came from a place of ‘i really want to be her and don’t know how to express that’ instead of just ‘i want her’ it would be a bit less weird. less creepy i think? and it’s an issue that can actually be worked through and addressed properly with ways of helping thomas transition instead of telling him to simply stop loving alison.

plus it would make all their interactions just so much sweeter !! whenever they talk i’m always on the edge of my seat waiting for thomas to make some weird remark but augh!!!!! they could b girl best friends !!!!

and it’s not like the cast is adverse to playing trans women ! gabriel and ho-tan are such beloved characters, gabriel gets her happy ending and even though ho-tan’s wish is reversed it’s still very much implied that they respect her identity (i do wish they had explored or at least addressed this more though) (however, ho-tan’s femininity is never the subject of a joke like gabriel’s is, so i suppose they even each other out)

anyway my final reason for tom being transfem is that dear god i’m jsut a simple lesbian please please let me have this i won’t ask for anything else i swear

[heartslobbf]

do you honestly think people like julian bc they agree with his actions

julian is a character that we as an audience are meant to laugh at. you’re not meant to sympathise with him, he is purposefully constructed to ridicule tories and everything they stand for. i’ve seen people say they like julian because he’s ‘good bisexual rep’ or ‘he’s such a father figure’ or ‘he and x character would be so cute together’ and that makes me uncomfortable. he’s not a good or nice person, and when i see people making out like he is all i can think is oh wow you’re a tory sympathiser. like?? why are you defending a man who is openly misogynistic, proud to be a war criminal, etc. additionally, as a queer person i really don’t like it when people say he is queer because he is literally a tory, and he likes margaret thatcher, and those two things really really don’t coincide with the kind of queer representation i want to see, or the kind of queer representation the idiots would give us. it’s actively harmful, if anything, and if you’re not bi and saying he’s bisexual for the sole reason that he shagged around a lot, maybe reflect on why you think that. it plays into biphobic stereotypes.

[aqvarius]

What are your top 5 worst voltage routes?

oh damn this is a tough one haha. i’ve definitely played routes that i find average/forgettable but it’s hard to think of 5 routes that i thought were actually bad. except for one which i’m sure anyone who has followed me for a few years knows about lmao

i was just gonna give brief reasons but then as i was typing this out i couldn’t stop my loudass brain from rambling so... sorry for all the commentary lol. i do want to preface this by saying that these are more critiques of the writing than the characters (except shinobu haha i despise him). i love many of these characters and have enjoyed their epilogues/sequels/substories. my main gripe with most of these is just underdeveloped, jarring or flimsy character and relationship development, which to me makes the process of falling in mutual love unconvincing. that’s why all of these are main stories because they are about the critical moments of falling in love (rather than future developments such as tackling conflicts together) which i think are the foundation to any further growth. so please don’t take any of this personally if any of the guys i’ve mentioned here are characters that you love!

5. main story: takane momochi - destind: mr almost right

so this is more a case of “love the guy, don’t love the route”. i have to admit that i really wasn’t big on takane at first and then i got to the end of the route and realised that i actually didn’t love the mc. i actually quite like the destind mc in rei and araya’s routes but omg takane’s route is weird. i have no problem with takane kind of being a jerk and i actually really like him but i have a couple of issues with this route. the first is that i don’t really understand nor buy into the reason that they keep seeing each other. the mc learns about takane’s true nature and finds him kind of despicable but then decides that she’s definitely gonna make him fall in love with her, which as a plot point on its own i’m fine with but the way thy go into that discussion is really weird because it arises from the mc being appalled that takane had an affair with some teacher when he was a teenager and somehow leads into that discussion. basically i don’t think that the whole “i’m gonna make you fall in love with me” vs “i’m gonna make you sleep with me” challenge is set up particularly organically. 

it also occurs about halfway through the route which i don’t really think works in term of the pacing because within the shape of the narrative i would call it the end of act 1. act 2 would be them genuinely getting closer and then act 3 would be the conflict that develops between them which results in their breakup. with the structure of takane’s route, acts 2 and 3 essentially become crammed into the remaining half of the chapters, which makes the conflict in act 3 feel confusing and abrupt. i think it would have been more effective if they had set up the personality reveal earlier on in the route and then spent more time developing the budding incompatibilities which lead to the breakup-inducing argument.

the second issue that i have with this route is the mc’s lack of development/not addressing the actual mistakes that she makes with regards to how she sees takane. the mc suffers from idolising syndrome because she’s built takane up into this perfect prince in her mind (i guess kind of like with hiroki from mlfk) even though he’s a regular old (substantially) flawed dude who struggles with the pressure of external expectations bc people don’t see the ~real him~. this is all well and good and is set up to allow the mc to accept his flaws and see him as a real human being but instead she’s just like “your flaws aren’t really flaws, they’re just another example of why you’re perfect bc you engage with them!” SIS. he’s not a character that needs validation in that way bc everyone already thinks he’s perfect. he needs someone who can see that he’s FAULTY and help him through it, not just pass off his flaws and the way he deals with them as another point of admiration. destind mc isn’t even like old school perma-optimistic voltage mcs either, she’s a little more prone to judgement so i wish she (and the writing) engaged a little more with takane’s flaws and accepting them rather than just jumping straight to YOU’RE MY HERO. 

as a character i actually prefer him to araya but the fact that i was more convinced to love araya aka mr possessive liar himself is saying something about the story. 

4. main story: genji higashiyama - in your arms tonight

i don’t have much to say in detail because it’s been like 6+ years since i played his route and frankly i don’t remember the details, but i just remember that he was kind of a jackass and i expected better. i love ex-boyfriend/hatsukoi love interests but just didn’t really like his route. 

to quote from an old comment i once made: 

“omg i thought genji had so much potential bc hot exboyf soccer player hellooooo but he was just such a jerk, he really p-ed me off :<” 

“i kind of don’t like genji because he is a bit of a doucheypants and like really arrogant and a bit of a bully :/”

i remember the mc slapped him once after they made out which i don’t remember the context for but he probably deserved it. i was extra sad because i actually really liked him in soji’s route but he’s the team B guy in that one so......... thanks voltage. also he was a dick to everyone’s sweetheart aiba. i actually like him way more after his ms lol? conceptually i love him but his main story made me sad. 

3. main story: satoru kamagiri - 10 days with my devil

i mean this one was bad but i’m weirdly fond of satoru? i have no issues with sadists and i kind of like him (after having read substories). but this route was weird and the pacing felt a bit off to me. basically i have no idea what made him fall in love with the mc?

because i guess he starts being nice to you when he has to nurse you when you get sick and he genuinely feels bad and cares about you but do you really expect me to believe he was already in love with you when he made a date with you but decided to go hang out with other women leaving you standing in the rain for 6 hours? nah fam.

i also don’t remember what the climax of the story even is because i’m still hung up on being left waiting for him in the rain for 6 hours while he goes other women so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. main story: seiji goto - my sweet bodyguard

i’ve talked a lot about the issues i have with this route (including a couple thousand words of review here) but i’ll just summarise. this is definitely another case of love the guy, don’t love the route. in the GREE version, you meet him from the first time at the beginning of his route and gradually learn about his past, but in the standalone app version, you basically get thrown into the route with no exposition, meaning that you have to already have prior knowledge of goto and his backstory. i had known about it so it wasn’t as confusing as it could have been, but you really just get tossed into the mix expecting to already know about kazuki (goto’s dead ex). plus he’s already nice to you from the start because you’ve known each other for a while so there’s less of the actual seeing his behaviour change bit (which is my favourite part of all main stories - in case you couldn’t tell because all of my criticisms about routes are about lack of proper relationship development). kazuki and goto’s relationship is basically the thing that underpins the entire narrative of the route which is why i find it an issue that you don’t get much insight into it going into the route blind. 

it’s difficult to feel like goto and the mc are actually gradually getting closer in the route because it doesn’t feel like there’s one narrative line that’s building throughout the entire route as much as separate events, more or less. she just... looks after goto a lot? also basically goto is interested in you because you remind him of kazuki and when he starts to like you, it’s not actually very evident in his actions - you find this out because kurosawa basically tells you lmao. 

i actually wanted to leave him and date subaru because honestly subaru in goto’s route especially reads like a much healthier relationship option, but then goto runs in and interrupts a date with subaru and drags you straight off to kazuki’s tombstone and then... it’s a happy ending? his confession feels like it comes out of nowhere because his behaviour towards you doesn’t explicitly change but you just have to believe he likes you now as he confesses in front of his ex-gf’s grave and tells her he’ll see her soon. come on bruv you can do better than this lol. 

1. main story: shinobu narita - serendipity next door

this guy fucking sucks, dude. i can’t think of even one single redeeming quality he has. he’s the reason i stopped playing voltage games for like years and went on hiatus and more or less abandoned my blog until i discovered scm. i know there was a lot of controversy about whether or not he could be considered abusive and i threw that word around a lot back in the day when i liveblogged his route but DAMN at the very least he is just the WORST. the mc wakes up in his bed after getting wasted at a rooftop party and he convinces her that they had sex when she was drunk and then blackmails her into being his girlfriend by threatening to tell the entire apartment block that they slept together. he proceeds to snoop around in all her business, maliciously making fun of her and her work at every single chance he gets (he literally RIFLES THROUGH HER BAG to find her work and mock her about it) and then she looks at one document or picture of his and he gets all uppity about it because he’s a big ol hypocrite. basically he hates the mc because she’s so pure and he’s jaded because one time he confessed to someone and she ghosted him? so he deliberately acts nice to her sometimes so she’ll let her guard down and then follows it up with a common or action so malicious i wanted to choke him. all i’m saying is that there are a number of relationships that i never got closure on and it’s never made me want to blackmail a drunk person into dating me so i can mess them up emotionally  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the thing is, i have played other guys who are a bag of suck at first and then get so much better because of character development. and this is what is totally lacking in shinobu’s route. the mc falls in love with him bc of stockholm syndrome... and basically bc omg he’s so sad and damaged and she wants to heal him i guess? it sucks. they literally have no bonding moments where they genuinely connect except for the times when he’s super mean and manipulative to her and and she’s like omg but he’s so saaaaaad uwu. throughout the route, there is absolutely no character development on shinobu’s part, he’s just the same sadistic bastard who enjoys seeing his mc being hurt the whole way through lol but SUDDENLY you guys are in love? but literally at the end the mc tries to escape from him by moving out and instead of letting her go because he’s the worst, he chases her moving truck down? also he’s weirdly possessive even by voltage standards. 

btw this isn’t even just sadists not being my type - you know i adore kaga and eduardo and even people who take ages to warm up (cough shinonome). and you know i love men who tease and manipulate you a bit (because they’re doing it out of a d o r a t i o n not spite) . i also have no problem with outright assholes as long as we see them change, develop and genuinely fall in love. my biggest issue with this route is that i don’t think pity is the same thing as love, or that someone with his personality can get his happy ending without genuinely changing and redeeming himself in some way. i’m not a fan of romanticising guys who are mean to you because they’re so dAmAgEd and want to take it out on you. (the reason i love people like hue is because even though they’re riddled with grief and trauma, they’re mature enough to handle their emotions and you don’t need to fix them!!!) i genuinely think voltage bombed it with this route lol. it almost makes me want to go back and replay it just to see if it was really as bad as i remember but (1) i never transferred it to love 365 (2) it was on my old iphone and i use android now (3) i don’t want to spend money repurchasing a route that i’m 85% sure i’ll feel is a waste of money (4) i spent £2.49 on the route back in the day when voltage was cheaper and i don’t want to spend almost double that now lol. 

also the last time i read his route i abandoned this blog and stopped playing all otome games for a really long time lmao so................................ 

[kateywlo]

The Mornings of the Siblings

@gsnkfandomweek GSNK FANDOM WEEK DAY 7: Manga/ Manga-Only Characters — The Mornings of the Siblings

Words: 1312 Characters: Sakura Towa, Sakura Chiyo, Kashima Rei, Kashima Yuu, Nozaki Mayu, Nozaki Yumeko, Seo Yuzuki, Seo Ryosuke, Hori Masayuki and Nozaki Umetarou (both only mentioned) Ships: Slight phrases of HoriKashi Summary: (In chronological order) The mornings of Sakura Towa, Kashima Rei, Nozaki Mayu and Yumeko, and Seo Ryosuke.

-----

Coughing, Sakura felt herself sobbing by the fact that she was unable to attend school and see Nozaki nor help him with his manga. Meanwhile, Towa grudgingly ate his breakfast in attempted peace over his noisy sister’s wails.

“Towa,” she sobbed for the 100th and last time, “How am I supposed to see Nozaki-kun today?!”

“Onee-chan, you’re so noisy,” he sighed, glancing her way reluctantly. And it’s 2x worse today, he thought to himself, gazing at his sister who had been crying and talking about how admirable Nozaki was.

Towa, on the other hand, had no idea why his sister Chiyo was so in love with him. He was just a model and was certainly beyond her reach. Massaging his temples, he wondered how she would’ve coped if Nozaki got a girlfriend from the world of models. It certainly wasn’t an impossible reality and that… was one of his most recent concerns. What if Nozaki had become so popular that he disregarded Sakura and her feelings towards him? With him as a model and she as a regular high school student, they were worlds apart, especially since he had always received such a large range of love letters and portraits while a number of people competed for his autographs. Raising himself upwards from his seat, he entered his room and returned to the kitchen, shoving his neatly folded sports uniform into his bag and hoisting his tennis racquet over his shoulder.

“Onee-chan, I’m going,” he said.

“Take care Towa,” she sighed wistfully and he knew for certain that she was thinking of that model again.

--------------------------

Rei began braiding the smaller ends of her hair as she began preparing herself early in the morning. Her school was 3 stations away from Roman Academy after all so she needed far more time to prepare than her sister. She wondered how her sister, Yuu, was doing. Smiling to herself, she thought to herself that Yuu would be sleeping peacefully in her room. Recently, her older sister had been focused on club activities despite being so lax about it previously. She wondered if she found someone she had fallen in love with, perhaps a senpai or something of the sort. Rei couldn’t understand since she went to an all girls’ school but she had several male teachers and was always instructed to not touch males by them.

She was certainly very surprised when she had found that the the person she idolised, Yumeno Sakiko, the manga artist of ‘Let’s Fall in Love’ was a male rather than a female. Finishing her hair, she pat down her uniform and glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked ready to set out after breakfast. Popping bread into the toaster, she began packing her bag, placing in all that she needed for today then smearing butter onto the toaster as she began setting off. Heading to the doorway, she felt herself be embraced from behind.

“Rei, are you leaving already?” Kashima said, snuggling onto her sister’s shoulder comfortably.

“Onee-sama,” Rei pouted as she slipped on her shoes, “I can’t be late for my train.”

“Wait for me Rei, I’ll be done in a minute,” Kashima said, instantly standing upwards and returning to her room. She instantly came back, dressed in the familiar black jumper and navy blue skirt. Her sister was fast at redressing, as one would expect for a drama club member, she’d have to quickly change costumes to continue acting.

“Onee-sama, on the school festival… I’ll see you act, won’t I?” she inquired as Kashima opened the door for her like a proper gentleman.

A smile played on Kashima’s lips as she remembered the school festival from when she was still in middle school. She had specifically chosen to enrol into Roman Academy due to witnessing Hori’s exceptional acting and was delighted when he scouted her. “Of course you will,” she replied. “Maybe you’ll even get to see Hori-senpai’s acting… I’m so happy when I’m on the stage with him that I can’t stop smiling.”

Rei beamed at the way she had spoken about her senpai. Perhaps that was the reason she had become more motivated for club activities. Giggling to herself, she asked one more question. “Do you love him?”

Kashima paused until glancing at her sister whilst beaming as she thought about Hori. She always became motivated when he was on stage with her and always felt motivated regardless of his role; he could’ve been her lover, her rival, her pet or some other role and she’d still be ecstatic. Taking all of those factors into consideration, she grinned. “I do!” she replied enthusiastically.

---------

Mayu was tired… well, rather than tired, the more correct term would’ve been lazy. He was in his spotted pyjamas and wasn’t even bothered enough to eat. The only reason why he would’ve looked forward to school today is because there was judo club activities today and as the captain and a sports enthusiast, he had to attend. Groaning and reluctantly parting from his bed, he headed to the bathroom whilst beginning to nod off as he squeezed out toothpaste onto his toothbrush. After brushing his teeth, he sat on the dining table, still dressed in his pyjamas. His little sister, Yumeko, was already dressed in her middle school uniform though. Donning on a green dress over her white shirt, a ribbon tied near her collar.

“Onii-chan,” she said, “You’re still wearing your pyjamas.”

He sighed and returned back to his room then returned back with his white polo shirt and pyjama pants. His expression was one of believing that changing was tiresome… unless it was for judo. Therefore, old enough to understand that factor, Yumeko decided that it would’ve been best to leave him alone instead of sending him to go back and change into his school pants. She was looking forward to the new chapter of ‘Let’s Fall in Love’ that was being released today in the stores. Her older brother, Umetarou, would probably be dropping by in the afternoon with the volume, sighed and everything. She truly did wonder why he always lied about saying he was ‘Yumeno Sakiko’. He’d never be able to fool her but he was getting better at copying Yumeno’s signature. It was even the spitting image. She watched her brother head out while still eating his breakfast and made no comment, deciding to trail after him so they could walk to school together.

----------

Seo awoke to the sound of plates being returned into the cupboard repeatedly. Her brother, Ryosuke, was probably awake and was about to head to university or work. Opening the door, she glanced at him from afar who had begun to tie his hair back as he washed the dishes, already finishing breakfast. Ryosuke wiped down the dining table, a habit from his work and double checked his bag. He had his waiter uniform in the larger back pocket and the rest of his school supplies at the front. He wondered whether Miyako was going to be attending today’s lesson and brushed it off. She was probably busy with her own work… as a cabaret lady along with that man named Nozaki. He still couldn’t believe that she was a cabaret lady but he was relieved that she and Nozaki weren’t a couple. Glancing at the clock, he realised that he was going to be running late for his morning shift if he didn’t leave now since classes were in the afternoon.

“Crap,” he thought aloud as he quickly yet clumsily slipped on his shoes and staggered out the doorway as he attempted to leave while still putting on his shoes. “I’m leaving!”

Closing the door behind him, he knew his little sister Yuzuki would’ve been able to take care of herself. Smiling to himself, he guessed that she was probably still asleep in her room.

[wastedyears-endlesstorment]

Why Ichigo/Orihime is completely unconvincing

There’s just so much wrong with Ichigo and Orihime ending up together, I can’t understand how IchiHime fans are completely fine with how their story played out. 

1- Ichigo never shows feelings for Orihime that are beyond friendship, right until the very end of the manga.

There has never been a moment in the manga that shows on Ichigo’s side that he cares for Orihime as more than a friend. He cares for her, but what’s disappointing to see is that there’s no special place that Orihime holds. She doesn’t have that inseparable emotional bond with him like Rukia does, she’s not the rival that still sacrifices everything to help him like Ishida, she never made a pact with Ichigo to protect him til’ the very end like Chad. 

The fact that Kubo himself never included any insight on Ichigo’s feelings for Orihime is what makes me feel like he never planned it out properly; he has Orihime and Ishida discussing how ‘to Kurosaki, Rukia isn’t just a friend. She’s a very special person to him,’ as well as countless little poems in Ichigo’s perspective ‘I wonder if I can keep up with the speed of the world without you in it’, ‘that’s right, nothing else can change my world’. 

--- I’m not saying that Orihime needs to do something extraordinary or sacrifice herself further for Ichigo, she’s a wonderful companion and Ichigo cares for her, but to be the main characters love interest? There’s nothing that allows the readers to see through Ichigo’s eyes and what he sees in her, no moment that makes us go ‘Ah, he really values her, she’s special to him’. Which brings me on to my next point:

2- Rukia and Ichigo’s relationship and emotional bond set the bar too high for Ichigo and Orihime.

What I think is that Kubo really, really loved Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship. He loved their moments of connection, their talks, their sacrifice for each other. He loves Rukia to death as a character, and I think he just felt really good writing and expanding Rukia and Ichigo’s moments and lines. I don’t think he realised how deep he made their bond seem, how inseparable, and when he tried to include the aspect of Orihime’s feelings for Ichigo, it didn’t work too well because it felt so bland and insubstantial compared to this thing Ichigo has for Rukia.

Every single emotional scene for Ichigo, his powers, wanting to protect people, his mother’s death (!!!) has always been with Rukia. He talks to her, which I think is so, so freaking important. She listens, understands, and I cannot get over Memories in the Rain. It was so difficult for Ichigo to explain his mother’s death and Rukia handles it beautifully, makes it a moment he remembers ages later. I think that was the chapter that did it for me - they share such deep, personal moments together that just aren’t there for Ichigo and Orihime.

It’s plain to see that Rukia is literally someone he can’t live without, their bond is so much deeper than friendship or romance - their souls are connected. She understands what’s going through his mind without words, she makes him happy, Orihime says it herself. She chases his fears away, with words. They have their dramatic moments but what I love is that they build each other up through words. Ichigo talks to her when he tries to save her in Soul Society, tells her that he is going to rescue her, no matter what. He sees her afterwards, tells her it’s fine if she wants to stay, she can, he smiles at her, thinks ‘looking at her now, I remember exactly why I wanted to save her so much,’ - not because she gave him his powers, or because he owed her, but because he just wants to see her happy. 

I could go on and on about Rukia’s importance in Ichigo’s life, but the bottom line is that Rukia is and will always be the focal point in Ichigo’s life. It’s always Rukia. Orihime notices it herself, it brings her to tears because she can’t replace Rukia, she doesn’t know how to give strength to Ichigo.

It’s just such a strange, sad dynamic to have Orihime so infatuated with Ichigo, only for him to have such a deep, emotional bond with someone else. It’s unfair and terribly cruel to her. Kubo should have either limited the interactions between Ichigo and Rukia or included more emotional ones with Orihime and Ichigo.

3 - Orihime is not close to Ichigo at all.

By that I mean that she knows so little about him. Their interactions beyond fighting and saving are so minimal and emotionally disconnected that it’s impossible to see these two actually have a conversation about something. The things that Orihime knows about Ichigo are always second hand (Ichigo’s mother’s death from Tatsuki, him getting his Shinigami powers from Rukia, his desire to get his powers back from the Fullbringers. She’s never at the forefront of anything when Ichigo needs help. 

4 - Orihime admires/idolises Ichigo too much to get close to him.

She sees him as her protector, someone strong and brave and I guess that’s why she likes him? It’s never really clear. Why is she so in love with this grumpy orange-haired highschool kid that she’s willing to give her life away to help him?She says she wants to heal all his pain, but she doesn’t know what pains him in the first place?

They’re not close at the beginning, Ichigo refers to her as Tatsuki’s best friend, and Orihime is always seen to have funny fantasies and dreams about him. Later on, their interactions are very stilted and awkward. She bumbles and flushes around him, which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, and Ichigo kind of just...ignores it? To me, they don’t fit well at all, at least now how Kubo shows the sides to their characters.

Orihime is so bright and caring, why can’t she really talk to Ichigo about his worries outside of battle? Why do their interactions have to be comic relief (her dress, which was extremely awkward)? Does Ichigo even know anything about her beyond her family situation? Does he even bother to talk to her about something casual? 

Ichigo is not always strong, he can’t always play the protector for her. The Hueco Mundo arc was a great example - she screamed out for his help, he had to rise to help her. Earlier on, when the Arrancars invaded, he couldn’t protect his friends and he had to apologise to her for failing to protect her. It just screams power imbalance - she couldn’t protect him either, when her powers are more suited to it. Why didn’t she apologise, too?

Maybe it was supposed to be romantic, it didn’t work for me. It’s just funny how the stark comparison to Rukia and Ichigo, where she gives him strength and hope through her words, where he’s comfortable showing her his weakness with the hollow mask is so much more natural. 

5 - She feels jealous of Rukia’s relationship with Ichigo.

Not just her breakdown, but panels that Kubo drew which show her watching Ichigo looking down at Rukia while she’s healing, emotion so clearly in his eyes, and turning away. It’s just --- why make her jealous of Rukia if Rukia and Ichigo are supposed to be just friendship? It complicates everything and it makes the readers think ‘Oh, Rukia and Ichigo must have something going on if Orihime is jealous of her. Ichigo must really care about Rukia.’ 

6 - Ichigo is not good for Orihime.

The fact that her insecurities are never cleared makes me laugh. She ends up marrying this dude who still sees Rukia on the daily - she’s still facing those feelings of jealousy. Rukia is so clearly his kindred soul, if he wants to marry someone else and have them sit through watching their husband share such a deep connection with another person, then that’s absolute shitty of Kubo.

He makes her feel “inadequate”, literally, because she can never compare to Rukia. It’s just. Why. So cruel to her, there’s literally nothing she can do about it. He’s always pushing her to the back, never facing her full on like a normal person. It’s always over his shoulder ‘Stay here, Inoue’ and I just--- ugh. She’s so wonderful. Beautiful, happy. She deserves someone who will laugh at her jokes, taste her funny food (come on, Kubo. You could have had like a two-page spread where she feeds Ichigo something weird and they have a laugh over it, something natural), makes her clothes (ahh, Ishida.)

I’m not here to promote Ishida/Orihime, but she’s so natural around him. He thinks about her, considers her feelings. She protects him with her shield, fights beside him as an equal, not ‘Inoue, you’re on defence. I’m counting on you.’ 

7 - There’s no development for Orihime.

I don’t know what she got out of Bleach, tbh. She went in infatuated with this image of Ichigo in her head, came out in the same position. She’s endured painful feelings of jealousy, helplessness, meeting other people. She made bonds with people, like Ishida, or Ulquiorra, who could have developed her character in some way. Made her think that hey, I’m worth someone directing all their attention and feelings towards me, too. I’m worth being thought about, considered. Ichigo literally does not have the time of day to notice her feelings for him, her jealousy. He’s oblivious or preoccupied and unforgiving about it. 

She’s forced to wear some seriously provocative clothing by Urahara, in which she is clearly uncomfortable, just to get his attention. He doesn’t even say anything to her. Chad has to say, ‘Yo, Ichigo. What do you think of Inoue’s clothes?’. It’s so freaking embarrassing and awkward for her that I really want her to leave Ichigo behind. He’s not worth it.

I know that Bleach is a Shounen manga, but seriously. Kubo tried to incorporate some romance when he really didn’t have the right idea of how to go about it and ended up butchering Orihime’s character, Ichigo and Orihime’s pretty solid friendship, and left the reader feeling baited with Rukia/Ichigo. In his head, friendships are sacrifice, you changed my world, for her I’ll go through a thousand blades, that’s the man you are in my heart, show them that despair can’t stop you while romantic love is Orihime pouring her heart out to the guy that still doesn’t know how to pronounce her first name.

Whatever floats your boat, shippers. 

[thelioninmybed]

If I'm not too late for fic meme, can I get "Stories for Children", the early bit where the cousins are all interacting, from "She did feel for him" to "sex, death and betrayal"?

Stories For Children

She did feel for him - most of the soldiers she trained with herself were too embarrassed to cross blades with a man and those few who would refused to take him seriously. She’d gone easy on him herself until he’d dislocated his own shoulder struggling out of an armlock and then, when she’d released him in horror, sunk his teeth into her wrist down to the bone. Man or not, she could respect that blind dedication to inflicting violence.

[In some ways Cierza is a good cousin. Sort of. If you squint a bit. She (much like Gil himself) is sexist as heck but willing to make exceptions]

Still, sometimes it was difficult.

She usually thought of him as a sexless blur of poorly controlled anger but seeing him now, water pooling in the hollow of his collarbone, damp clothes clinging to the contours of his body made her uncomfortable and ashamed. He was athletic and tall for a man but still so slight and delicate compared to her own bulk. It wasn’t honourable to hit boys, her mother had always said, and she found herself regretting the fresh bruise rising on the plane of his cheek.

[He’s your cousin Cierza, don’t make it weird. …Weird was very much the goal here though, please enjoy this casual objectification, I’m taking a leaf from the ‘breasted boobily down the stairs’ school of narration]

He caught her staring and frowned. “What?”

“Just admiring my handiwork,” she said lightly, gesturing at the bruise with a laugh to cover her disquiet. She clapped him on the back and threw the practice swords to a waiting servant, then together they strolled up onto the terrace that overlooked the gardens.

The air smelt damp and earthy there, of rot and growing things, and someone had had the decency to charm the temperature down to something manageable. The gardens weren’t at their best in the heat but there was still much to admire; tiny phosphorescent toadstools in half a hundred colours gave the area an unearthly glow, illuminating gorgeous lacy frills of fungus and tall, elegant mushrooms with stalks as delicate as a boy’s wrist, interspersed with great speckled behemoths as large as any surface tree. Further away, out of sight, was the euphemistically named herb garden where less attractive but more useful fungi were grown for the kitchens, for medicines and potions and for poisons.

[Mushrooms! Okay maybe I do overuse them some]

Tehaneth and little Chanali were already on the terrace, sat at a table piled high with books. Her half-sister ignored them but her cousin looked up at their approach with clear relief. It was a heavy, musty old tome he was reading and she couldn’t blame him for wanting an excuse to be away from it. He had neglected to take his usual care over his appearance and wore a loose, simple robe, his hair pulled back from his face in a single, fraying braid, wisps falling free about his face and dancing in the breeze. She tried idly to imagine Tehaneth armed and armoured, screaming at her from across the training field and smiled at the improbability.

[Although she has far more in common Gil than Tehaneth, Cierza’s more comfortable with the latter; just as Cierza is very good at performative femininity, so he is with masculinity, while both Gil and Chanali fall short]

“You should go and get cleaned up,” he told his brother. “You know how it upsets Father to see you like that.”

“That’s the idea,” Gil said, drawing up a chair and putting his feet up on the table.

Tehaneth tutted. “You’re such a child.”

[The events of It’s Always Hardest On The Children really fucked Gil up (and Tehaneth, in less obvious ways). But even before then, Gil idolised his mother and saw the way she abused his father as if not justified then proof that men are weak and invite such treatment (and Mathis’ terrible parenting certainly contributed to that impression)]

Cierza poured herself a glass of wine from the decanter on the table, disturbing a fly that had been crawling across its rim. Kadja, Tehaneth’s familiar, twitched at the sudden buzzing and scuttled down from her master’s shoulder to stalk it across the tabletop.

[Kadja is my favourite non-character, she does amazing hair (NB I would rather die than have a hairspider however stylish the results]. Tehaneth, unlike Khazri, has proper training and did actual formalised spells to bind Kadja, and so she serves as an extension of his will and not a dangerous animal that follows him around and sometimes eats soap]

Gil glanced between spider and fly, looking ready to swat whichever came into reach. “We can’t all be as mature as you, little brother.”

“What’re the books?” Cierza asked quickly, thrusting a full goblet into Gil’s hand.

“Old ghost stories,” Chanali said. Steam had condensed upon the lenses she wore to aid her reading and she paused to wipe them clear. “Do you remember the Xaloc warehouse?”

[It wouldn’t be too hard to fix her eyes and lord knows her family have the skill and the funds, but with her mother dead and no one else to advocate, it was decided it would be a good learning experience leaving Chanali to either figure out the magic herself or raise the capital to have someone do it for her. She’s working on it!]

Cierza grunted. She’d been trying to forget. Bad choices and the ghosts of murdered slaves had almost gotten them all killed, and Tehaneth was still sulking over the gown that had been ruined when a possessed mercenary tried to tear his throat out with her teeth.

[One of the first stories I wrote in this setting. There’s 10k+ of but I’m not sure I’ll ever finish or post it - it’s a little too D&D influenced and not really where characters are at now. Suffice to say though, Cierza is really underselling just why Tehaneth might be upset, in general, and at her specifically]

“We thought it couldn’t hurt to do some research,” Chanali twittered on. “So we’ll be better prepared if it happens again.”

Tehaneth tucked a tendril of hair back behind his ear. “None of them have been very helpful, alas. They’re heavy on the allegory and light on practical tips.”

Her studious little sister digging for prestige, and her viper of a cousin, digging for a chance at vengeance. They were probably trying to work out how to loose the hungry dead from where they’d bound them and set them free in her chambers. Which was, upon consideration, a very good idea just as long as she did it to them first.

“Boooring,” she drawled, as obnoxiously as possible.

[An asshole but a carefully calculated one. Cierza is kind of the opposite of Khazri in that, rather than being based on a D&D character, I played a D&D character based on her after the fact (the character was slightly nicer though)]

Chanali put on her offended face. “Some of the stories are interesting, they’re just not helpf-”

“I don’t think you heard me. ‘Boooooooooring’.”

Gil sniggered.

Tehaneth smiled blandly at them. “I have one I think you’ll like. It’s about sex, death and betrayal.”

[Tehaneth doesn’t ever say what the betrayal was, because he’s a smug asshole, and I’m not sure I made it clear enough in the story. NB that the priestess has two bags of gold at the end though, and the daughter has inherited everything. That’s how business is done in Zalach’ann]

[mezimraky]

for the literary asks (if it's not too late!): i - 3, 16; ii - 5, 6; iii - 4, 12, 19. also a bonus offtopic question: have you ever played any ttrpgs? ☀

(literary preference questions)

i. 3) favourite book …that you read before the age of thirteen?                       chata v jezerní kotlině (a cottage in the lake valley) by jaroslav foglar. it’s a book that i have had a soft spot for ever since i’d read it, much like i had for all of foglar’s stories (all usually concerning young boys running around being adventurous, honest and brave in the everyday setting of foglar’s contemporary time)– this one is however exceptionally special to me for the tender friendship it conveys, between two boys who at first appear too different to get along but who end up becoming friends for life, connected by the same romantic ideals, same charming awe in regarding the world around them. the book has it all, a friend (someone to last your whole life), and a lovely spot of nature no one else knows of besides you and the aforementioned. a paradise of sorts if you ask me.

i. 16) favourite book …that feels spooky?                         well, if i am to be honest, i don’t much enjoy reading things that scare me, or i do not get scared that easily and when i do, it’s no longer enjoyable. so it’s difficult to determine the spooky levels, however– john connoly’s the book of lost things is definitely up there with the spooks. i don’t know. might not be scary enough to you but having known it as a kid, i was pretty spooked and scarred by it.

ii. 5) what book is …the book you’re most likely to recommend to someone regardless of who it is?                         i have in another post mentioned another book, let me now fish out another one from my memory, simply because i always want to scream my favourites into the world. stephen chbosky’s perks of being a wallflower is one of them, your classic growing-up story. this one is special for its form of letters and just that overall– genuine aspect of it. it feels real, and again it is very important to me personally. if i wanted someone to understand me, this would be a book i’d ask them to consider.

ii. 6) the one you’ve read the most times over?                         this one! i am actually sure about! one answer i do not have to think about too much! because it is oscar wilde’s the picture of dorian gray for sure. i have at a point posessed four different editions of the tale, right now i am at two (uncensored & censored), though i am still very much tempted to invest into the limited edition manuscript edition, even if i have been able to keep myself from buying any others. (it’s not my fault that some covers are prettier than others and it’s so easy to give in to temptation.)

iii. 4) character who …you look up to most now?                           going to cheat a bit here and say that it is emmanuel, whom i have made up some years back as a comfort character and he’s grown with me into something more, or precisely into that, hard to say. it’s just that after all this time i feel a sense of calm coming over me when i think of him, he is an angel, a bright soul that has hope for the world and the power to change the little things, the power to make people better just by believing in them, and a bottomless well of tenderness in his heart. i admire that, he’s been through a lot, seen a lot of bad things, but still he goes on believing, treating the world with kindness.

iii. 12) character who …you have profound sympathy for?                           basil hallward, any day. that man deserved so much, that man is the reason why i kept reading the picture of dorian gray over and over, hoping perhaps that one day the ending would change for him. he had in him a tendency to idolise people, but also to see the best in them, he had in him all that artistic wonder, depth in perception of the world, and it was his feelings that overtook him in the end. he was a gay man in victorian london, who should have been closeted to the bone, but he did not want to be just that. he allowed his love and gentleness to shine through because he cared. and yet.

iii. 19) character who …you would want to be friends with?                           the older i get the harder it becomes to make friends, and keep friends, i slip into solitude like it’s a coat, and i feel comfortable here more often than not. i like being friendly, it just wears me out to be so all the time with all the people i come into contact with, especially the times when i realise that the people i come into contact with are not precisely the sort of company i’d choose willingly. if i could pick a character to befriend and be around, as little as i am in the company of people, it’d have to be a dreamer sort of little girl. either lucy pevensie, or anne shirley, or momo from michael ende’s book of the same name. each different, but all of them idealists through and through, hopeful sort of creatures. i’d love to hang around someone hopeful like that.

bonus question from my hidden friend !! have you ever played any ttrpgs?                             i would have loved to but i never was around a group of people that did and it’s always difficult to get into something by yourself... i’d recently gotten a set of dice but that’s as far as i got in planning to rectify this. let’s hope i can do more in the future...