#I only vaguely follow a lot of these people so some details might be a little off | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

elyvorg · 3 months

Text

Kieran Part 2: It’s All About YOU

Well, looks like The Indigo Disk didn’t remotely drop the ball – it caught it in incredible style! Pokémon’s best character-writing job yet has been followed up and capped off with, if anything, something even better. Kieran is far and away the most complex and well-written character that mainline Pokémon has ever achieved, and I am here to talk about the second half of why this is, in very great detail. Consider me just, blown away. I have So Many Feelings about this boy.

This is of course a follow-up to my earlier analysis post about Kieran’s character and arc during The Teal Mask, which you can find here. Reading that before this is recommended!

(This will contain a couple of brief references to some post-epilogue lines, so if you haven’t got to that stuff yet and you really care about seeing it completely fresh, you might want to hold off on reading this for now. But there’s no actual spoilers for the epilogue itself in here, because, whoops, I think I’m gonna have to cover all of that in yet another post of its own.)

(Like last time, I will be largely referring to the player character as “you” for convenience, although I may shift into third person occasionally when I’m talking about the vague implications of a personality that they are given, since that’s a little more relevant this time.)

The gaping pit of inferiority

First, though, before getting into The Indigo Disk, I want to re-establish where Kieran’s character ended up at the end of Teal Mask, now that I have a clearer idea of exactly how that relates to where things are headed.

Kieran was always gripped by an aching inferiority complex, one too huge and unbearable for him to ever face directly. Prior to Teal Mask, he’d coped with that by clinging to the figure of the ogre as an ideal of strength. He imagined that maybe one day if he managed to grow strong enough to be just like it, the ogre would acknowledge him and be his friend – and that would finally mean that he mattered and he really was strong after all. He finally wouldn’t have to deal with the crushing pain of his inferiority complex any more.

But then, of course, you swept in with your amazingly perfect protagonist strength, ripping away Kieran’s chance of ever befriending Ogerpon and doing so in the most tragically agonising way possible that only seemed to validate and hammer home to him just how hopelessly weak he really is. Left with nothing but an even bigger gaping pit of inferiority inside him, and no longer able to cling to the idea of Ogerpon as a way for him to one day escape it, the only thing Kieran could do in order to cope was find something else to latch onto: you.

You became a greater ideal of strength to Kieran than even Ogerpon ever was during the events of Teal Mask, so now he’s hung everything on the thought of making himself strong enough to prove he’s just as good as you. If he can become strong enough to beat you, surely that of all things will be enough to prove that he matters and isn’t weak at all. It’s the only thing he can conceive of that might just free him from the grip of his terrifyingly massive inferiority complex, and he’s clinging onto it for dear life, striving for it to the point of obsession.

I saw a lot of people talk in the lead-up to this DLC like it was going to be about Kieran wanting revenge on you, but that’s not remotely it. He isn’t even able to comprehend the idea that anything you did to him could be considered wrong in the first place; that’s just how things were meant to go when you’re strong and he’s weak, right? Even though it was you who took everything away from him and made him feel so crushingly inferior, that pales in his mind next to how incredibly strong you are and how badly he needs to be like that himself. This isn’t even about him getting another shot at winning over Ogerpon, either – as much as you having become her trainer is a huge source of pain and jealousy for him, he seems to have pretty much accepted that there’s no changing that now.

What Kieran actually, consciously wants out of all this is… well, it’s extremely vague and nebulous, but that’s precisely the point, because there is no rationality involved in any of it. What is he really hoping to gain from it, when (if) he beats you? For you to decide to be his friend after all? For him to instantly become happy and finally feel strong? For him to magically turn into you and have all the good things you have that he envies about you? Obviously none of those things would necessarily happen, but Kieran is not consciously thinking any of this through to its logical endpoint. He’s not actually hoping to get a specific Thing out of beating you – he just desperately, indescribably feels like he needs to beat you, more than anything else in the world.

What Kieran really needs out of this deep down is for you, this person he’s warped himself into idolising as the Strongest Most Perfect Person Ever, to acknowledge him and his strength. It’s just like he wanted Ogerpon to acknowledge him before, shifted onto a new target of idolisation and grown far more desperately obsessive. If you of all people acknowledged him, then just maybe it might actually be true that he really is strong and worth something after all. At its most fundamental level, Kieran has always just deeply needed to gain a sense of self-worth, and yet his self-esteem is so horribly low that he’s basically incapable of doing so on his own without outside validation. But I really don’t think he’s aware on a conscious level that this is what he needs and what he’s striving to get out of all this.

(And of course there’s no way you’d ever acknowledge him and his worth as a person anyway, right? He thought you’d maybe done that when you called him a friend back in Kitakami, but any fleeting hope of gaining self-worth that way evaporated when you went and lied to him, validating his fears that obviously you’d couldn’t possibly have meant it. After all, why would someone as strong as you ever want to be friends with someone weak like him? The only way you’d ever possibly acknowledge his worth is if he conclusively proved that he’s even stronger than you, by defeating you in battle.)

Blueberry Academy

The other thing I want to do before getting into the events of The Indigo Disk itself is to re-evaluate a few assumptions I made about Blueberry Academy in the previous post, now that we’ve actually seen it for ourselves.

I was assuming that a significant part of the reason for Kieran’s inferiority complex was due to him being bullied at Blueberry, but… there’s absolutely zero indication from any of the NPC dialogue that any such thing happened. If the writers wanted this to be a fact that was relevant to Kieran’s character, they absolutely would have put something in. However, in hindsight, I realise that maybe I was primed to assume a bullying problem at Blueberry due to the Team Star storyline, when actually, Kieran being bullied there doesn’t necessarily fit. His issues about being shunned and his paranoia that people are laughing at him behind his back are so ingrained that they have to have originated from quite a while ago in his childhood – and he’s only a first-year at Blueberry.

So, scratch that part of the previous post: Kieran was not bullied at Blueberry Academy, but he was almost certainly bullied earlier on in his childhood, at whatever school(s) he attended beforehand. It wouldn’t necessarily have needed to be a really overt, physical kind of bullying either – that’s the sort of thing that Carmine would certainly have noticed and protected him from. But even something more low-key like being constantly left out of things and looked down on by others would have left a huge psychological mark on him, and would have probably been too subtle for his socially oblivious sister to do much about. (Or, in some ways, she might just have made such things worse by being so fiercely overprotective of him. Most people wouldn’t want to go near the kid with the Scary Big Sister who’ll bite their head off if they so much as look at him wrong.)

Bullying aside, I was looking for any kind of clues at all from the NPCs as to what Kieran was like at Blueberry Academy before his big change… and there’s almost nothing. Plenty of people comment on Kieran now, because everyone knows who he is as the Champion, but nobody shows surprise that it was this timid kid who rose up and beat Drayton. It seems that as far as most of the students are concerned, he just came out of nowhere. But maybe that’s the point; maybe almost nobody ever even noticed him or thought anything of him at all until he grew stronger. By the time he joined Blueberry Academy, Kieran’s default coping mechanism must have been to make himself as small and invisible as possible, so that basically nobody even really thought twice about him.

Only two whole NPCs actually make any kind of reference to what Kieran was like before he became Champion. (Well, other than Carmine, of course, and also discounting Amarys because she’d have only known Kieran through her friendship with his sister.) One of them is Drayton, who’d noticed him as the incredibly shy kid who nonetheless lit up with joy more than anyone else when watching battles. And then there is one random NPC you can find in the Central Plaza who comments on how Kieran has turned into a completely different person. That’s it. Only two people happened to have noticed this timid kid enough to realise he’s the same guy who suddenly became Champion. (And, while they both seem at least a little concerned, neither of them appear to have outright considered Kieran a friend, because of course not. You really were the first friend he’d ever managed to make, until everything went horribly wrong.)

One thing I was expecting to get from the vibe at Blueberry that it absolutely did deliver, mind you, was the culture around battling. There’s all sorts of talk about battling and getting stronger, double battles as standard to make things more strategic, and even the random NPC trainers can actually be kind of challenging. So I was definitely right that this culture must have contributed to Kieran fixating on getting stronger and proving himself to you through gaining more battling strength in particular. One NPC near the entrance also remarks that “you don’t look strong”, as if people here assume battling strength to be correlated with physical appearance, which… yeah, that explains a bit about why Kieran felt he needed to look different alongside becoming stronger in battle, doesn’t it.

Changing himself

Of course, Kieran’s reasons for changing up his appearance go much deeper than just wanting to superficially “look stronger”. In order to achieve the nigh-impossible feat of managing to match you in strength, he felt like he had to become nothing short of a completely different person. He can’t be anything like that timid, weak, pathetic kid from Kitakami who got walked all over, because there’s no way that kid would ever, ever be able to beat you.

Which means that absolutely everything about who he used to be needed to get thrown away. That hairstyle that practically covered his face and let him hide himself behind it? Gone. His country accent and way of talking due to being raised in Kitakami? That always made him feel different and outcast among the students at Blueberry already, but more than that, it’s a distinctive feature of that kid he used to be and cannot be any more, so he had to cast it away and learn to mask it. Even the unambiguously good parts of him – the way he’d always get so excited and passionate over things he finds cool! – they’re a part of his old self, so they had to go, no exceptions. Far be it from him to ever say “wowzers” any more, for more than one reason. His old hairstyle may have been the one that visually resembled a mask, but now he’s putting on much more of a metaphorical mask than he ever was before. (Putting on a mask to become stronger and hide his reasons to be cast out and shunned – a bit like a certain ogre.)

(And since Kieran’s just on the cusp of puberty, I find it fun to imagine that maybe his voice happened to start breaking in the interim between the two DLCs, so that he doesn’t just talk differently and mask his accent, his voice literally sounds different now compared to how it did before.)

Unfortunately for Kieran, no amount of fervently doing everything in his power to change and grow stronger can make his growth spurt come any sooner. It seems it hasn’t happened quite yet, leaving him awkwardly still the smallest person in the room even as he is trying to project an air of being Strong and Tough now. He gets around this as best he can by adopting a mannerism of taking a step back from people, to give him less of an angle to look up at, and tilting his head far enough back that he can kinda sorta still be looking down on them, in a sense. He is so desperate to not feel small any more.

(Fittingly – or ironically, perhaps – you are the one relevant person who is the same height as Kieran and can face him eye-to-eye. That’s bound to be feeding into his complex about you: all the other people he looked up to and saw as stronger than him were older than him and so they had a good reason to be that strong – but you and he are the same age. You should be his equal, and yet you can already do and have all these things that he could only dream of.)

And his timid demeanour isn’t the only thing from before that Kieran cast away – he also got rid of almost his entire team of Pokémon from those battles back in Kitakami. Nearly all of them went the same way as poor Furret and Cramorant before them, because they weren’t strong enough to win him that vital battle that would definitely have decided who got to become Ogerpon’s partner (right?), so there’s no way they’d ever be able to help him beat you now. The only exception to this is Dipplin, perhaps precisely because Kieran knew it was capable of evolving again and so still had more strength it had yet to show him. The rest of his team got completely overhauled, no doubt informed by his fervent studies in battling strategies to let him put together the strongest and most optimal team he could come up with.

I nearly had a whole spiel here about how excruciating it is that his new team has a Politoed, in that he could almost have kept another of his old partners from his Kitakami team if he hadn’t hastily evolved Poliwhirl into the less strategically-optimal evolution as part of his efforts to prove himself to you during Teal Mask. Except, actually, a postgame line implies that Kieran’s Politoed is also a longtime partner of his, along with his Poliwrath, like they’re a pair. So it’s not that he went and caught a “replacement” Poliwag that he was less attached to – apparently he always had two Poliwag friends from the start and just only ever trained up one of them to use against you in Teal Mask. Then, when that one had failed to be good enough for him, it was the other one’s turn to prove how strong it could really be.

As for his other new team members: Porygon-Z and Incineroar are both available in the Terarium, but Grimmsnarl is only available, to Kieran at least, in Kitakami. So that must be another one he’d caught during the school trip, maybe a candidate he’d considered training up back then but never quite had the time to alongside the rest of his team. And then there’s Dragonite, which is an interesting one, because the Dratini line is nowhere in either Kitakami or the Terarium – meaning, Kieran must have gone out of his way to trade for it in order to get one. Perhaps he was really impressed by the strength of Drayton’s Dragonite and wanted one of his own to match that? (but his has a very different build to Drayton’s, so it’s fine, he’s definitely not just copying Drayton in order to win, okay.) I like to think that maybe he got it from Carmine, who’d apparently been visiting loads of other regions with Briar during Kieran’s obsessive training arc and therefore could have been in a position to catch a Dratini.

More importantly than just catching these new Pokémon, though, would have been training them, which Kieran threw himself into so obsessively that it and studying battling strategies now consume every single moment he has, to a concerningly unhealthy degree. He’s cutting back on sleep, barely eating proper meals, because spending any more time than necessary on even things like basic physical needs is not acceptable to him. You are so overwhelmingly, impossibly strong in his mind that, in order to match your strength, Kieran feels like he has to give everything, no matter the cost to himself.

Being Champion

And, well, his fervent desperate self-destructive training did indeed make him strong enough to become Champion of the BB League. It’s only a stepping stone, a means to an end for his ultimate goal of being strong enough to beat you – but it’s something. As Champion, Kieran’s known to everyone in the school, getting awed murmurs wherever he shows up. People respect him now, because he’s proven that he's strong. (The very converse of how everyone ignored and shunned him back when he was weak. That’s how it goes, right?) And on top of that, he’s earned himself a position of authority over everyone in the League Club.

…Frankly, it’s a very stupid rule the club has to make the Champion be automatically in charge of the whole thing, precisely because of situations like this, in which the trainer who happens to be strongest also happens to be someone nobody else wants bossing them around. But thanks to that stupid rule existing, Kieran’s in charge now, and everyone else has to do what he says whether they like it or not, because he’s the strongest of all of them. Way to validate and perpetuate Kieran’s toxic worldview that having strength (battling strength) means you get to call the shots and walk all over anybody who’s weaker than you, and that’s just how things work.

Our first glimpse of how drastically Kieran’s changed, the interaction we see him having with that one poor club member, is bound to be the epitome of how he’s been treating everyone in the club these days. And he is not simply being a dick for the hell of it just because he can now and he’s turned Edgy or whatever – everything about his behaviour here is agonisingly rooted in his own deeply ingrained worldview about strength and weakness.

It's so tragically telling how he phrases his scathing disapproval of the poor guy as, “So that means you’re just OK being this weak forever? That what I’m hearing?” That’s not at all what the guy was saying, but Kieran hears it that way because he can’t help but see his own former, weaker self everywhere he looks. At the end of Teal Mask, he was trapped in that horrible pit of feeling like there was nothing he could do except be this weak forever, unless he devoted himself obsessively to becoming stronger and stronger and stronger with everything he had. Any tiny sign of weakness in anybody else reminds him of that place, reminds him that the only reason he’s not trapped there himself right now is because he’s spending every waking moment trying to claw his way out.

The guy’s reason for not completing Kieran’s training assignment wasn’t even that he didn’t want to do it. He said he’d had hectic stuff going on at home that meant he didn’t have time, which ought to be a perfectly reasonable excuse! But… not to Kieran, it isn’t. Kieran has sacrificed everything to become as strong as he is, even basic physical self-care; he would have chosen training over busy home-life stuff in a heartbeat. Anyone who isn’t willing to do the same, anyone to whom growing stronger isn’t the most important thing in the world – they’re not good enough. They must obviously just want to stay weak forever, like Kieran himself absolutely could not bear to be. So he kicks the poor guy out of the club, thus dooming him, in Kieran’s view, to really being stuck this weak forever with no chance to improve.

It's bound to be just like this for everyone else in the club, too, based on plenty of comments we hear about how Kieran becoming Champion has taken the fun out of everything, and the ridiculously strict rules he’s apparently put in place. He’s projecting his own unhealthily high standards of strength onto everyone else, then shunning them if they don’t manage to live up to that, because that’s just what happens to people who are weak, right? It is agonising to watch Kieran perpetuating the exact same toxicity that he used to always feel like he was on the receiving end of, especially as that isn’t even really why he was ever treated that way.

None of this is the behaviour of someone who is even remotely secure and confident in their strength. Despite being Champion and having the respect of the entire school, Kieran is still constantly terrified that even the slightest thing, even so much as allowing a tiny instance of “weakness” in anyone associated with him, will cause all of the strength he’s worked so hard to build to come crashing down in an instant. (One detail I really love about the scene where he’s telling that one guy off is the way Kieran’s tapping his foot at the beginning. He probably means it as a way to express impatience, but really it comes across as incredibly anxious and insecure. The animators did some excellent stuff with Kieran in this DLC.)

And what’s extra heartbreaking is that Kieran doesn’t need to be doing any of this. He’s the Champion now; he is undeniably strong; he’s able to talk to others; people notice and respect him. He is already in a position to reach out and grasp everything he’s ever wanted: acknowledgement, friendship, fun. He used to love battling – he’s supposed to love battling – so he could be having a great time with all this! If he just dropped this toxic mindset and stopped letting it turn him into a massive jerk, he could make friends with the Elite Four and others in the League Club and not be alone any more!

But he’s not able to see any of that. None of the things he’s already genuinely gained for himself truly feel like they matter, not when they’re all just a means to an end for the one thing that does – proving he can beat you. By desperately hanging his entire self-worth on the idea of becoming strong enough to measure up to you and nobody else, Kieran has blinded himself to the fact that he’s already found a good amount of what he’d always truly wanted in the first place. And it also means that, if he can’t beat you when that day comes, everything he’s done will be for nothing.

Drayton and Carmine

But although nobody is happy with the way things are now (least of all Kieran himself), it seems only a couple of people have been willing to question Kieran’s “authority” enough to try and talk him out of this.

One of them is Drayton, who’s doing this not just out of wanting his club to go back to normal, but also because he’s the almost-only person to have noticed the timid yet battle-loving kid Kieran used to be, and he genuinely wants to help Kieran remember how to have fun like that again. Unfortunately, it seems that any of Drayton’s attempts to tell him this bounced right off Kieran, because fun and excitement were a part of that weak kid he used to be and absolutely cannot be any more.

Plus, with his newfound authority and validation of his toxic worldview, Kieran would easily be able to brush off anything Drayton said to him with the excuse that he doesn’t have to listen to someone who can’t beat him. He actually mentions at one point that Drayton “always loses” to him, implying they’ve battled more than once. Apparently, in an attempt to get Kieran to listen, Drayton actually went and challenged him to a rematch at some point, or maybe even several – a remarkable amount of effort, coming from Drayton – but he still couldn’t win.

(Kieran is bound to be super jealous of the way Drayton appears so effortless in his strength, when Kieran himself had to train and strive so hard to reach this level. But on the flip side, now that Kieran is the stronger one, he can use Drayton’s laziness as another way to paint himself as superior. Obviously the reason Drayton keeps losing to him is because he doesn’t train nearly as hard as Kieran does.)

It also doesn’t help that Drayton’s attitude towards Kieran when he’s not specifically trying to encourage him to have fun again is very sarcastic and condescending, drawing from his deep frustration at Kieran’s attitude. It must be very easy for Kieran to completely overlook the part where Drayton is actually doing this because he cares – he probably feels that Drayton just hates him and wants him gone. (Just like everyone who’d always shun him and treat him like an outcast before, right.)

Then there’s Carmine, who’s been incredibly worried about the change in her brother and is bound to have done her fair share of trying to talk him out of this too, evidently also to no effect. It’s certainly easy for Kieran to remain oblivious to the fact that she’s doing this because she cares about him and isn’t just trying to bring him down, since she has, uh, historically not been very good at showing that.

It seems that Kieran has largely been avoiding Carmine since he overhauled everything about himself. No doubt a lot of that is because, what with her being part of the reason for his inferiority complex in the first place, she’s capable of triggering his insecurities more intensely than anybody else can. But maybe it’s also partly because on some level, he’s aware that she’s got a point now with the things she’s trying to say to him, and that makes him feel bad, and have doubts that he can’t afford to be having. Carmine’s certainly right to be concerned that his behaviour now would be driving any friends of his away – although she is almost definitely wildly wrong to be assuming Kieran even had any friends other than you before all of this.

(For that matter, she’s very wrong to assume that you are still his friend right now in a totally normal way; ha ha ha. But then, based on your options of “yes” and “yes” when Drayton asks you if you're Kieran's friend, it seems that you – the player character – are also somehow completely oblivious to the fact that Kieran just maybe might not consider you a friend any more on his end. Which just makes this whole thing even more excruciating.)

The dynamic between the siblings during the one brief time we see them interact here has notably changed, in that Kieran is finally able to stand up for himself more, telling Carmine to shut up when she tells him off. And yet, he doesn’t do so very forcefully, averting his gaze in a way that suggests he just sort of mumbles it. He probably realises she has a point about what she was saying – that he shouldn’t act so condescending towards you. Which on Carmine’s end, she said because she doesn’t want him to drive away the one friend he still (supposedly) has, but that’s not how it’d read on Kieran’s end, because he doesn’t believe you ever were his friend at all. He must have felt like his sister has a point only because he doesn’t have the right to act that way towards you, not when he still hasn’t proven himself to you yet (and maybe never will).

Unexpected reunion

See, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on under the surface of Kieran’s reaction to suddenly meeting you here. Literally everything he’s been doing this entire time has been for the sole purpose of defeating you when he sees you again. Which means that you showing up and challenging the BB League should be exactly what he wants and has always been waiting for. And yet.

The first notable thing is that he had nothing to do with inviting you here – the person responsible for that was Carmine. She probably figured that you’d be able to help her brother out, so she recommended you to the director when she heard he was looking for an exchange student to invite from Paldea. As Champion of the school, Kieran should also have had enough influence to make such a recommendation – but he didn’t.

Then, when Kieran comes to the cafeteria, he has plenty of condescending things to say to Drayton (about how taking a lunch break is a waste of time, because who needs to bother with basic physical needs like eating when they could be training instead, right). But the moment he sees you, he’s just shocked at you even being here… and then he’s very quiet for the entire rest of the conversation.

Drayton puts things to a vote among the Elites plus Kieran as to whether you should be allowed to join the BB League, and – despite that this should be exactly what he wants – Kieran is the last to vote. He only does so when he’s forced to break the tie.

(Although, it’s revealing in a different way that the Elite Four all ask each other for their opinions first, with none of them naturally thinking to consult Kieran. Despite his newfound strength and authority, he is still socially excluded – but this time he really has nobody but himself to blame.)

Kieran’s wording of how he casts his vote is so very telling. Just: “It doesn’t matter who I’m facing… I don’t lose.” – and he says nothing else before leaving in a huff. He words this in a generalised way, as if this an overarching principle of his that has nothing to do with you in particular, even though it’s always been about you. Because if he let himself think about how you in particular will be his opponent, then suddenly the statement that he doesn’t lose doesn’t feel so certain. But, put on the spot like this, he cannot show any sign that he’s afraid he might lose to you – that would be like giving up and accepting that all the effort he’s put in for all this time has been for nothing. So he has no choice but to let you join.

(Drayton totally knew he would refuse to lose face like this if put on the spot, of course, and that the Elites would vote 2-2 between them and leave Kieran with the deciding vote, which is precisely why he set things up this way. Kieran’s not unaware of this, either.)

There’s a brief interim here as you head to the front desk to officially sign up for the League. This gives Kieran a moment alone to process the fact that, welp, this really is happening, you’re really here, and, isn’t this supposed to be exactly what he always wanted? Hasn’t everything always been so that he can beat you this time? He manages to twist things around in his head, convince himself that yes, this is it, the chance he’s been waiting for, and he will win when it comes down to it, he will, because that’s what it’s all been for.

As such, when he shows up at the front desk to confirm that he’s allowing you to join, Kieran is able to be a lot more direct about you challenging him than he was in his one whole sentence on the topic in the cafeteria. Even then, he makes a comment to Drayton about how he feels like he was manipulated into this… then immediately insists that he’s fine with it because this is what he wanted anyway. If it was truly 100% what he wanted, he wouldn’t have felt manipulated!

To sum all of this up: it is abundantly, delightfully clear beneath the surface that Kieran does not actually feel ready to face you. He would never have felt ready for this, no matter how long he’d spent training and pushing himself, because your impossible unreachable strength and his own inherent worthlessness are both so deeply ingrained in his mind that he is incapable of truly believing he can match you.

But, well, here you are, and now Drayton’s trapped Kieran in this situation where he has no choice but to keep up the mask of strength and confidence he’s been putting on all this time. So he’s got to act like he’s fine with you challenging him, whether he truly feels ready or not.

Your Elite Four challenge

As you work your way through the Elite Four’s ranks to earn the right to challenge him, Kieran is very insistent that you’d better not dare lose to anybody else before facing him, or to have gotten weaker in any way since he last met you.

You might think that Kieran would be glad if you actually did lose to one of the Elite Four and never manage to make it to him, because, hey, that means he’s already stronger than you! He doesn’t even have to worry about whether he can win his battle against you! But… no, that wouldn’t be how it’s supposed to go. The way Kieran’s been building things up in his head the entire time, his whole life is supposed to magically somehow get better when he beats you. He needs to prove himself and his new strength to you, specifically. It wouldn’t mean anything if someone else beat you first, or if you’re somehow not actually still the impossibly strong person he’s idolised and fixated so hard on becoming equal to. That’d just be the most crushing anticlimax for him, in which he never gets to achieve what he’s been striving so hard for, and in which he’d have to somehow come to terms with the fact that… he’s already stronger than you, and yet he still doesn’t feel better or any less agonisingly inferior than he always did? If that happened, he’d be at a complete loss as to any other way to escape how he feels about himself.

But, fortunately for him (for some value of “fortunate”), you of course still are just as strong as you always were. On hearing you assure him of this, and also on seeing it for himself as he watches one of your Elite Four battles, Kieran gives this awful twisted grin that does not even slightly reach his eyes (because he has completely forgotten how to genuinely smile and no doubt hasn’t ever done so this entire time). Yes, he will still get to have his long-anticipated showdown with you, and winning that will still somehow magically definitely fix everything that was ever wrong in his life. Definitely.

There’s also the part where, because you come with such glowing recommendations, you get to skip working your way up the BB League from the very bottom and can start right at challenging the Elite Four. Kieran has to feel all kinds of ways about this – on the one hand, he’d tell himself he’s glad because this means he has less time to wait until the battle that he’s definitely totally ready for, and he knows full well that you wouldn’t need to waste your time on small fry at the bottom. But on the other hand… he had to painstakingly work his way all the way up from zero in order to get where he is, so it sure is something that you’re so special that you just get to skip doing that. (And if you did have to start at the bottom, then it’d give him more time to train himself, just to make absolutely sure that he really is ready to face you…)

When you’ve beaten the final Elite, Kieran shows up again and scoffs that this was kind of slow for you, wasn’t it? I believe this isn’t just posturing and was his genuine reaction – you’re so impossibly perfect in his mind that he can’t even comprehend the idea that you wouldn’t breeze through this effortlessly without a single hitch. But still, at least he can turn the fact that you fell short of his impossible expectations into condescension that helps him feel above you and definitely capable of beating you. (How long did it take him to beat the Elite Four, I wonder? Probably longer than you – but of course he’s not gonna bring that up.)

Drayton, meanwhile, has now picked up on the fact that Kieran isn’t just obsessed with winning like he’d initially thought – he’s obsessed with you. Maybe he’d have approached things a little differently if he’d been aware in the beginning that you were a lot more to Kieran than just an old friend. But, welp, bit too late to back out of what he’s set up now, whoops.

And on Kieran’s end, he hasn’t let go of the feeling of being manipulated into this, and now feels like you and Drayton are plotting against him. This poor kid’s paranoia and tendency to assume people are laughing at him behind his back has still not gone away, even if it’s taken on a slightly different form now. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t ever learn that Carmine was the one who called you here, or he’d think she was in on this supposed conspiracy too.

(But, hey, while Kieran could never do anything about it before whenever he was ganged up on and shunned by others, at least now he’s finally strong enough to fight back and hold his own, despite being outnumbered, right? Just like the ogre did.)

THE BATTLE

So now, it’s finally time: the battle that Kieran has absolutely everything riding on. Of course I’ve already made it abundantly clear here that every single thing he’s done has been for the sole goal of beating you right here and now – but it says a lot that he spends his pre-battle speech making sure you know this. He probably feels like you’re such an amazing superstar trainer that challenging someone for their Champion title is basically just another Tuesday for you, like this is nothing on your end – but this battle is everything for him, everything that he’s been spending every single moment of every single day building up towards for all this time, and he needs you to acknowledge this.

And as if that wasn’t enough, as the battle opens, Kieran screams into the sky with the sheer uncontainable emotion of how much this means to him. Everything he’s been feeling, bottling up, clinging to for so long is spilling out of him now that he’s finally here in this one pivotal moment he’s always been waiting for.

It comes spilling out in a lot more than just that scream, too; he has so many things to say throughout the battle as it all reaches fever pitch inside him. While some of his in-battle dialogue during his Teal Mask fights had fun hints at his issues in there, this one battle here absolutely takes the cake. This is quite possibly the most dialogue in any battle in any Pokémon game, and all of it has something interesting and nuanced going on that’s rooted in Kieran’s massive issues. I cannot resist taking this opportunity to talk about every single bit of it.

His first line as the battle begins is, “I know I’m making the right choice… You’ll understand that soon enough!”, which seems kind of odd on the surface. What “choice” is he even talking about that he feels the need to justify? Accepting a challenge to his Champion position is just what Champions are meant to do. But that’s not what Kieran’s thinking about here – he’s thinking about all of those times that Drayton and Carmine tried to talk him down from the entire way he was acting and pushing himself too hard. Every time they did, he insisted to himself that no, training this insanely hard is the right choice, he needs to do this, and it’ll all be worth it when he beats you. …Somehow. Definitely. You’ll see, you will, you have to…!

On the very first hit he lands on you – it doesn’t even need to be super-effective, any damaging hit will trigger it – he says, “How do you like that? See how hard I’ve trained? Not like that kid you battled in Kitakami, huh?!” In reality, the hit he lands here isn’t necessarily any bigger than the kinds of hits he dealt to you back in Kitakami – but it feels bigger to Kieran. He’s trained so hard that he feels so much stronger and so different from the kid he was back then, and he needs you to see and acknowledge this too.

Meanwhile, your first super-effective attack you land on him manages to pierce through his mask for a moment and get a “wowzers” out of him. It’s not actually any more impressive than any other super-effective hit he might receive from any other trainer – but because it’s coming from you, it feels so much more incredible, triggering his instinctive irrational idolisation of you just for a moment before he collects himself and puts his mask back up.

Then he insists that he’ll still win anyway, even if “the type matchups work out for you”. Which… isn’t how type matchups in battles work? Sure, you landed one super-effective hit, either because one of your Pokémon happened to have a good matchup, or you just had a good coverage move. That doesn’t mean that all of the type matchups in the battle are inherently in your favour. But Kieran apparently feels like they are – because, when it comes to him versus you, he always feels like everything in the world is on your side and he has to claw and grasp to regain the tiniest bit of ground against his inherent overwhelming disadvantage.

Speaking of everything being on your side, when you land your first critical hit on him (and I say “when” here because this battle is long enough that statistically you’re extremely unlikely not to at some point!), his response is delightful, raging that “even luck’s chosen you over me!” and that it’s “not fair!!!” All of his bitterness and jealousy about Ogerpon choosing you over him is still raw, evidently, so even something like you getting a statistically near-inevitable critical hit feels to him like luck itself taking your side against him, because everything always does. And on some level, he may have realised that you befriending Ogerpon was partly due to the sheer luck of you happening to meet her while he wasn’t around, so of course he’s bitter about luck because of that, too. It’s not fair, how you always get everything, so effortlessly, while he has nothing.

(He doesn’t comment at all if and when he lands a critical hit, because of course not. Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug.)

And of course, you bringing out Ogerpon herself gets an extremely strong reaction from Kieran. “You’ve got some nerve,” he snarls among broken mirthless laughter, to bring her out “NOW of all times?!” This, right here and now, was supposed to be his moment, his time to finally shine and show you how strong he is and take the victory. And yet you’re choosing this moment to parade Ogerpon in front of him, a reminder of the painful losses and inferiority he suffered back in Kitakami that he’s tried so hard to forget and overcome by making himself stronger, just rubbing it in his face that you got to have her because you’re so strong and lucky and perfect.

His expression during this line is one hell of a thing as well: shocked and wide-eyed and practically terrified, in stark contrast to all of his other expressions in this fight. He’s not only reeling from the pain of having his inferiority from back then shoved in his face, but also, he’s always believed that Ogerpon is so incredibly strong. If you’re using her against him in this battle, you and her working together… how is he ever going to be able to defeat that combination of impossible strength…?

(Apparently, Kieran’s trainer AI actually has a modification in this fight that makes him prioritise attacking Ogerpon more than an AI trainer otherwise would, which is delightful, I love that that’s a thing devs programmed in there. Of course he’d desperately want to get Ogerpon off the field as fast as he could before she utterly destroys him.)

As his back’s against the wall and he’s sending out his final Pokémon, Kieran’s still raging, with increasing desperation: “Just go down already! How are you still standing after I’ve thrown everything I have at you?!” This battle is not at all going how he’d insistently imagined it would in his head, in which he’d prove himself and win, not even though he’s giving it absolutely everything he has. (And the thought that you still won’t go down even then is terrifying to him. He really has given everything to this, he couldn’t possibly have done more – and yet, what if that still isn’t enough to beat you? That’d mean it’s just impossible for him, no matter what he does, and he’d have absolutely no idea how to cope with that.)

Just before he Terastallises his Hydrapple, he insists that he “doesn’t need the old me”, that he’s changed – here’s the way he felt he had no choice but to throw away everything about his former weaker self in order to get stronger, even the positive parts. But then he adds, “and I’ll show you I can change again!” He’s not just literally referring to the Terastallisation he’s about to do (although it’s thematically fitting that he brings up this topic as he’s doing this – and his Hydrapple’s Fighting Tera-type is a neat link to him having changed himself into being obsessed with strength) – rather, he’s referring to what he’s convinced himself will happen when (if) he wins this fight. That’ll change everything for him, right? That’ll make everything good, finally; he’s going to change for the better once he wins this, he has to…!

And then… Kieran’s animation while he’s Terastallising is an odd one. He’s remarkably expressionless about it, compared to the intensity of his expressions in the entire rest of the fight. But I think the reason for this must be: most trainers wince with the force of it as they begin charging their Tera Orb – and apparently, Kieran doesn’t want to be seen doing that, because that’d make him seem weak. So he’s trained himself to put on an expressionless mask, not even looking at the orb directly, to avoid that. (And one of the few trainers who doesn’t wince, who’s able to stare directly at the dazzling power coming from their Tera Orb without flinching, holding it up for all to see… it’s you, of course. Kieran almost certainly saw this from you a few times back in Kitakami.)

His last possible line in the fight, as he orders an attack from his Hydrapple, at which point he is guaranteed to have only one or two Pokémon left and be desperately fighting to hold on with his back against the wall, includes him saying, “I’m capable of winning too, you know!” Because that is definitely a very normal thing for a reigning Champion to need to say to their challenger. Even with all the victories he’s had on his way here, Kieran still has to fight to convince himself that he is capable of winning, because being up against you and teetering on the brink of defeat like this just reminds him of all his previous agonising losses at your hands, his inferiority complex rising up to overwhelm him with the feeling that he’ll never be able to be strong or win anything at all.

(And, hey… what if he had actually managed to win? Tragically, the game does not let you see any of his reaction if you do happen to lose to him; it just rewinds time like it never happened. But there’s no way that Kieran beating you here would truly have helped or fixed anything about that massive inferiority complex of his. He’d ride the high for a bit, but then he’d go back to the same condescending façade he’d had before and gradually realise that… he doesn’t actually feel any better about himself beneath it like he was supposed to once this happened. Funnily enough, beating you in a Pokémon battle would not have magically turned him into you.)

Everything falls apart

But, of course, because the game refuses to let you not be the Perfect Protagonist (or, perhaps, because the narrative needs to go this way in order for him to actually get better in the long run), Kieran loses. The last time he lost a pivotal battle against you that he’d told himself everything depended on, back in Kitakami, he crumpled immediately in defeat – but this time, his reaction’s a lot more drawn out. Back then, the conviction that he could never ever beat you was right there at the surface to the point that he was basically expecting to lose despite his determination. But here, he’s spent so long insisting to himself over and over that he will win this time, he will, convincing himself that things just have to go that way… that it takes him a moment to even process the fact that they haven’t. He’s just shocked, lost, dumbfounded, not knowing how to react, because this wasn’t supposed to happen…!

But then the spectators around him mutter and begin to leave, apparently because he lost, because he’s no good after all and so there’s no point staying to watch him, and this seems to be what agonisingly drives home the reality to Kieran. All the respect and esteem he’d managed to grasp for himself – in this one awful moment it feels like all of it is crumbling away before his eyes. All of his effort to get here (so much effort) was worthless, all because he couldn’t beat you. He’s gone right back down to being nothing. I adore the blurry effects in the cutscene as Kieran sways and staggers and collapses, giving a visceral sense that the shock of this is hitting him so deep that it's rendered him physically light-headed and dizzy. Guh, this poor kid.

And then Drayton has to come along and rub it in. Kieran winces in agony as he gets smugly called “ex-Champion” – though he was never doing any of this for the Champion title itself, having it meant something and made him matter, and now that’s gone like it was never there at all. It’s bound to sting especially hard coming from Drayton, whom Kieran believed was plotting with you to take him down, take away everything he had, and now that’s exactly what’s happened, because he wasn’t strong enough to stand up for himself after all.

…The fact that Drayton felt the need to be a smug bitch about this first and foremost does not remotely help Kieran actually listen to and internalise the genuinely good advice Drayton gives just a few moments later. He really was doing this because he cares, and because Kieran ought to go back to having fun with things! But of course Kieran isn’t in any state to listen to that, not after all his paranoia about Drayton manipulating him, and then Drayton rubbing his loss in on top of that; he still has no idea that the guy genuinely wants to help him. (Unfortunately, while Drayton cares about the person Kieran should be, he has been deeply frustrated by the person Kieran is being, and that comes out in sarcasm and smuggery first, hence why this completely bombs.)

So instead of taking on board Drayton’s advice, which he probably wasn’t even listening to, Kieran just starts desperately, incoherently mumbling about how he’ll win next time. It’s the only thing he can cling to – the same thing he always has, to escape the all-consuming, unbearable thought of just being achingly inferior forever and ever with no way out. He still can’t see any other way out that isn’t beating you. (But… how is he ever going to win next time, when he’s already given it absolutely everything he had and still couldn’t manage it…?)

Seeing him being so clearly Not Okay, you approach him and (probably) attempt to say something to him, but it seems like even if you try, you barely get any words out before Kieran just shuts down even more. He reacts with slumping, and with an “Aw, man…” – the same words and body language he’d often have back in Teal Mask whenever something (usually his sister) would push back at him and make him feel small. Now that he can no longer cling to his façade that he totally is stronger than you and just hasn’t proven it yet, he’s reverted right back to the state of mind he was always in back then. And it’s you in particular that triggers his inferiority complex harder than anything else right now, even if you just silently approach him, or say a few words that certainly wouldn’t have been anything cruel.

It's a bit of a shame that the game doesn’t actually let us see what you try to say to him, assuming you do. But it most certainly couldn’t have been anything along the lines of “You put up a really tough fight!”, because that kind of thing – acknowledging Kieran’s strength, even though he lost – is exactly what he’d need to hear right now, and he’s clearly not hearing it. Whatever it was you did say, he probably barely even heard it beneath his crushing sense of inferiority at being near you, and you probably trailed off pretty quickly upon seeing his reaction.

(In fact, it might say a lot that your dialogue options here are so non-specific that they’re literally just “Say something/nothing”. This suggests that the player character has no idea what to say to Kieran at seeing him in this absolute state, and they can only choose to either accept that and remain silent, or to fumble for something to try and say anyway. I believe it’s pretty important to “your” role in Kieran’s arc that the player character is extremely socially awkward and just finds themselves utterly lost as to how to deal with him breaking down like this because of them. Someone with better social intelligence would be able to say the right thing here to help him at least begin to feel better! But that someone is emphatically not you, it seems. This apparent social obliviousness also tracks with the fact that you – the player character – agreed with Carmine’s very short-sighted decision to lie to Kieran back in Kitakami, thus unwittingly setting off this whole domino effect of his issues in the first place.)

Sudden legendary hunt

If Kieran had had longer to process his defeat, maybe he’d have realised that there really is no way he can “win next time” when he already gave it his absolute all this time, and he might have begun to approach the fact that there’s nothing he can do but let things go. However, while he’s still reeling, he almost immediately gets dragged into the meeting with Briar about her expedition to Area Zero.

Kieran looks like he’s barely even listening to the conversation at first, just staring miserably into space in front of him, no doubt stuck endlessly thinking how can I ever be stronger than you when everything I had still wasn’t enough??? But then Briar mentions that they’ll get the opportunity to find a legendary Pokémon on this quest – and whoops, now Kieran’s paying attention. Because here’s the answer to his impossible conundrum of how he can beat you next time.

Make no mistake: this is nothing like Ogerpon was to him. He’d been fixated on her and cared about her ever since he was little for deeply personal reasons based on him relating to her situation and projecting onto her. Her strength was part of it, but it wasn’t that he wanted to obtain that strength by catching her; he just admired her strength and wanted to be like her, and if he could, then maybe one day she’d acknowledge that by being his friend (and therefore also incidentally his Pokémon partner). But Terapagos is nothing to Kieran here other than a source of potential strength for him to acquire for himself by capturing it, a tool that will finally let him beat you.

Nonetheless, because this is another legendary Pokémon, Kieran can’t help but draw the surface comparison to Ogerpon anyway and remember the way she chose you over him. He’s probably already imagining that Terapagos might just do the same thing, because you’re so strong and special while he’s nothing – so he tells himself, fervently, that no, he won’t let that happen again, he won’t let this chance go.

He doesn’t ever say as much, but he’s bound to be already having doubts as to if he really could ever capture such an amazing Pokémon. Legendary Pokémon – or really, any Pokémon in general – are supposed to join trainers once they acknowledge their strength; that’s what battles to weaken and capture a wild Pokémon are all about. How is Kieran ever going to get Terapagos to do that for him when he’s so weak? But even so, even if it seems too good to be true, he has to cling to this possibility. It’s the only chance he has left to still just maybe be able to beat you, to continue running away from that gaping pit of inferiority inside him that he doesn’t know how to face.

(A minor nitpick I have with the game’s writing: it’d have been fun here if things had been subtler and Kieran hadn’t outright said that he wants to catch Terapagos at all. His intent would have been very clear regardless for anyone who could read between the lines – I realised what was up the moment he reacted to hearing about a legendary, because Oh No. But nonetheless, it seems like you the player character and also Carmine are both socially oblivious enough to fail to follow Kieran’s stated intent to catch Terapagos through to its obvious conclusion of “he’s still fixated on beating you”. I guess the two of you just assume, oh, hey, he’s found another legendary Pokémon to get excited about, that’s good, that means he must be getting over Ogerpon, right…? Ha. Ha ha ha. If only.)

Journey through Area Zero

As you make your way into and through the depths of Area Zero, Kieran seems to have largely lost hold of the condescendingly superior façade he’d been putting up all this time (after all, he doesn’t have the right to act that way towards you when he’s still weaker than you). This allows a few little hints of his true self to begin to rise to the surface and shine through again, at least a little bit.

He lets slip a “wowzers” on seeing the sheer alien beauty of the place for the first time, and later at the lab he’s so excited at the technology reminding him of a spy movie that he even forgets to mask his accent for a whole sentence. But both times, he’s quick to catch himself and brush it off and act aloof. That excitableness was part of who he used to be, that kid who was weak, and he's still convinced that he can’t afford to be that person any more. But, hey, getting these little reminders that he actually enjoys being his true self and has missed it, at least certain parts of it, has to help! Plus, Carmine seems happy at these moments of him being the little brother she knows and loves again; they have a bit of regular healthy sibling banter; she notices him being considerate about Briar reading someone’s private diary…

These are all good signs that Kieran’s starting to get back to normal, maybe just a little… but, not completely. The spark still isn’t there in his eyes, even when he’s smiling about the cool spy vibe of the lab. Despite the distractions, he’s largely very intent on just getting to the legendary Pokémon and nothing else. And perhaps most relevant of all, he barely says anything of substance to you, even if you try and talk to him.

He does have a notable reaction near the beginning when you mention that you came here last time with some friends of yours. Kieran had probably never quite considered the idea of you having other friends before – Ogerpon did not exactly prime him to imagine that about his idols, after all – but, now that he’s hearing it… of course you’ve got friends. Why wouldn’t you? You have everything, everything he’s always wanted so badly for himself but could never, ever have.

Then, of course, you’re the one who does all the hard work in the Underdepths to deal with the sparkling Pokémon that are blocking the way forwards. For the first one, Carmine almost asks Kieran to take care of it before changing her mind and asking you, which, ouch, that’s got to have stung. (I don’t think she did that to deliberately be unkind, though; it’s probably that she still feels a little weird and uncomfortable about her brother battling, because of the way he’s been, so she’d rather just watch you battle it instead.)

Because of all this, later on Kieran bitterly comments that he feels like everyone’s relying on you too much. Really, the only reason this is the case is because you just happen to be the one who has the lizardbike buddy that can navigate you to the Pokémon you need to defeat… but then, that in itself is another sign of how special and favoured by legendaries you are, isn’t it.

And actually, you’re not necessarily the only one who can reach the sparkling Pokémon! Kieran has a Dragonite, which must have been what he rode on for the flying Elite Four trial, so, in theory, he could go and deal with those sparkling Pokémon himself. But he doesn’t, because you’re already doing it anyway, and he doesn’t feel worthy of taking the spotlight from you. (Or, he could ask to join you on your lizard buddy as you head over there, but ha, even less chance he’s about to do that.)

One bit of optional dialogue Kieran has during this part is insisting that he could totally make quick work of those sparkling Pokémon if only they weren’t so far away. This is very true… but the fact that he never tries to do so despite actually having the ability to reach them himself tells us that his words are just desperate posturing that he doesn’t truly believe. He can’t even register the part where he genuinely has a really strong team of Pokémon that he worked hard to train, because he did all of that for the sole purpose of beating you, and since he couldn’t manage that, that means that none of it matters and he’s just useless.

Then there’s the moment near the end where Carmine tells Kieran it’s his turn to call out to you to let you know the path opened up, but Kieran miserably assumes you’d prefer to hear it from her instead. (As if who tells you that even makes any difference!) Carmine did this to try and begin bridging the gap between you, and she forces him to do it anyway despite his protest, but then when she asks if he’s got anything more to say to you, he just says no. He still doesn’t feel like he’s worthy of even interacting with you in any way at all, still convinced he must be nothing to you.

There’s a heartbreaking hypocrisy to this, too, since he knows you’re perfectly okay interacting with Carmine, and it’s not like she’s ever been able to beat you in battle either. But… but that’s different, right, because she’s already someone who’s strong and cool and worthy of your friendship. In Kieran’s head, he is the single person in the world who is so automatically, inherently worthless that he needs to prove his strength before he is allowed to Matter to you or to anybody.

Outburst at the crystal

As the group reaches the final chamber, Kieran rushes ahead into it and begins pulling at the crystal the moment he figures it even might be Terapagos, because he is so desperate not to lose this chance to anybody else (meaning you). In his urgency, completely oblivious to how messed-up this sentiment is, he blurts out that this’ll mean he can finally beat you, at which Carmine, who failed to realise this was still the reason he was doing all this until now, tries to call him out on it—

—And Kieran can’t stand that; he can’t let her try and take this away from him too on top of everything else, because this feels like the one remaining chance he’ll ever get to still have something and matter next to you. So in a kneejerk attempt to defend why he needs this, everything comes tumbling out. All of those feelings about how you have everything he’s ever wanted, and he has nothing, how he trained so so hard but even that ended up worthless because he still lost to you in the end, so this is all he has left.

(Well, it’s not quite everything that comes spilling out of Kieran here. He doesn’t say anything about why he feels he needs to beat you, and how that’ll totally magically solve everything for him – because there is no actual logic behind that part. There’s nothing he can say to make that make sense, and on some level he must be aware of that, must know it doesn’t, really. But if he admits that, admits that there really isn’t any way at all to escape from his crushing inferiority, then he’ll have nothing left whatsoever, which he cannot bear.)

Hearing Kieran’s outburst about how worthless he feels, Carmine tries to put in a good word for him about how he’s tried his best too – which is good! That’s exactly the kind of thing he needs to hear; she’s finally getting it! But unfortunately, because she herself is one of Kieran’s sore points, in regards to how you magically went and befriended her, he doesn’t properly register what she’s saying. Hearing her speak at all just triggers that thought and spurs him into venting about that, too.

His hang-ups with you befriending Carmine are interestingly reversed from how they appeared to be in Teal Mask. Back then, he seemed more low-key jealous that she might have been trying to take you, his first ever friend, away from him. But now (now that he’s convinced that you were never really his friend in the first place), it’s all twisted around into yet another sign of how perfect you are, because you managed to win over even someone as prickly and abrasive as his sister so remarkably fast. (Which, of course, has less to do with you than it has to do with the fact that Carmine’s actually a lot softer at heart than Kieran realises.)

He’s also maybe thinking about Drayton here, about the one time Drayton claimed in the cafeteria that you and he were “already tight”. That was a massive exaggeration, but no doubt Kieran filed that away as another person – someone else he finds infuriating and impossible to get along with – that you instantly won over with your magical friendship powers because of course you did. And on top of that, he’s bound to be thinking about his recent realisation that you came to Area Zero last time with your friends, plural, because of course you’d already got a bunch of friends, you’re perfect, you can do anything you want, you can be friends with anyone!

And yet – even as Kieran says this, it is objectively not true. Because you’re not friends with him right now! No amount of your amazing protagonist powers has been able to cut through his pile of issues and properly befriend him, even though you want to, because you are in fact not perfect in the slightest and have no idea what to say to get through to him and help him! But of course Kieran doesn’t realise this contradiction in what he’s saying – he's worthless, so the fact that you’re not friends with him is obviously just because you never wanted to be.

Speaking of you not being perfect, this moment here in which Kieran outright voices his jealousy and sense of inferiority compared to you is bound to be the first moment in which you, the player character, actually begin to realise that this has been his problem this whole time. (And, to be fair to your poor socially-oblivious avatar, it really wasn’t very apparent from their perspective until now! The only time Kieran ever gave any real explicit indication of his issues around you before was in Teal Mask, after the third battle when he lamented that “it’s because I’m weak” – but at the time, the player character wasn’t aware (like we the players were) that he knew they’d lied to him, so they couldn’t have known he was thinking about that. They probably just chalked his reaction down to him taking the lost battle particularly hard. The lie reveal was messy but seemed to work itself out; he was obviously upset when you caught Ogerpon but appeared to accept it well enough in the moment – then all of a sudden he showed up later being really determined to beat you for some reason??? Why.)

Another thing I love about this moment is the animation of Kieran desperately pulling at Terapagos’s crystal, the way he has to pause to catch his breath in between each huge tug, which really gets across that he is giving this every ounce of his strength. And that still isn’t enough, because it never is – he’s always too weak to be able to grasp even one thing for himself, but he is never ever going to stop trying no matter how impossible it seems.

(And I wonder if it’s going through his mind as he does this that surely this wouldn’t be nearly so hard for you. Like this is a sword-in-the-stone kind of thing, in which Terapagos would slide out smoothly like butter for someone who’s truly worthy of it, while a weakling like him is stuck hopelessly yanking on it with everything he has and just making himself look pathetic, because of course he doesn’t deserve this.)

Catching Terapagos

Except it turns out Kieran can manage to pull out the crystal after all, doing so with such force that he accidentally flings it halfway across the cavern to land between you and him. He rushes to pick it up before anyone else can, because this is his and he can’t let anyone take it from him, he can’t—

But then Terapagos wakes up, pops out of the crystal that serves as its shell… and it’s facing you. It doesn’t even see or acknowledge Kieran at all. It looks up at you adorably, like a baby imprinting on the first thing it sees, taking a few steps towards its new friend…?

(this has to be such an aching reminder of the way Ogerpon so quickly came to adore you and didn’t care about him, all compressed into one single agonising moment, ouch)

…This was not Terapagos choosing you over Kieran in any meaningful way. Kieran was behind it, such that it literally couldn’t see him and didn’t even know he existed. All it was doing was latching onto the first person it saw, which was you, because – completely by chance – it happened to wake up facing you and not him. If it’d woken up facing Kieran, it’d have seen and approached him in exactly the same way. Terapagos’s dormant crystal form is symmetrical; Kieran had no way to know which end was the head and which was the tail until it popped out.

This was, almost literally, a fucking coin flip. Only the coin was a magical crystal turtle and the winner was whoever “heads” landed facing towards.

(But then, luck has always chosen you over Kieran, too, hasn’t it?)

And so, seeing this happen to him yet again, seeing his one last chance of maybe finally having something and mattering about to be casually snatched away by you, like always, because the universe always gives you everything he wants… Kieran makes an awful, desperate split-second decision and throws the Master Ball. Because of course he does. It’s not right; it’s not fair on Terapagos – but it is so achingly understandable why Kieran would be driven to do this in this moment. The whole thing was so cruelly, rudely unfortunate. This poor kid just wants so badly to have something, to have anything at all where he’s not immediately overshadowed and upstaged by you.

(Also, shout-outs to the narrative cleverness of quietly establishing that BB Champions get given Master Balls, by the game giving you one when you beat Kieran, such that you think nothing of it at the time but can realise right away in this moment where Kieran got his from.)

Still, it’s notable how quickly Kieran was able to pull out the Master Ball, which suggests he’d had it ready near the top of his bag. It must have crossed his mind on the way here that surely, you’re going to somehow magically sway Terapagos to join you – or that it’ll just shun him, because earning a legendary’s respect involves proving one’s strength, and he’s still so weak – such that he felt he might need a way to guarantee it would become his, no matter what.

But even then, I do want to believe that Kieran wouldn’t necessarily have used the Master Ball if he hadn’t felt like he had no other option, and that he wanted to at least try to get Terapagos to join him willingly, like trainers are supposed to do. If he’d won the turtle-coin flip and it had woken up facing him, maybe he’d have been able to do so! But of course he didn’t get to have that.

(It’s kind of a shame that the characters never discuss the dodginess of catching a Pokémon from behind in a Master Ball, how that gave poor Terapagos no choice in the matter like Pokémon are supposed to have when they join a trainer. But then, pointing out that Master Balls are inherently ethically dubious gets awkward considering that the player can freely use them on anything they like, so the game was probably never going to go there. You are too silent-protagonist and Briar is too irresponsible-adult to comment on it, but maybe Carmine could at least have had a brief line questioning this? But, well, at least she does express apprehension about going in to battle with a legendary Pokémon they know almost nothing about, which is also a very valid concern, considering what ends up happening.)

Trying to beat you with Terapagos

So of course, the very next thing Kieran does is challenge you to battle him with Terapagos, so that he can finally beat you. Only… he doesn’t show anywhere near as much of that furious, fervent determination that he had for the Champion match. All that fire of his got snuffed out the moment he lost back then, and it never really came back. This isn’t the battle he’s been psyching himself up for and dedicating everything towards for months; it’s nothing but a desperate grasp at not falling apart completely. He’s kind of just… going through the motions, trying to beat you simply because it’s what he’s been clinging to all this time, and he still doesn’t know what else to do with himself if not this.

And more than anything, Kieran has to know deep down that he doesn’t truly deserve this, not after the way in which he caught Terapagos. After all, trainers are supposed to earn having strong Pokémon in their team, either by training them up from a low level themselves, or by proving their strength to a high-level Pokémon by weakening and catching it in battle. (This is why high-levelled traded Pokémon will disobey you if you don’t have enough badges – you haven’t given them a reason to respect you!) Catching a legendary from behind with a Master Ball is none of those things. Kieran has to be perfectly aware that he has not earned Terapagos’s strength in any way (just like he knew all along he’d never really be able to).

A very revealing line on this matter is that if you say you’re not ready to battle him yet, Kieran tells you, “You’d better not run away from this”. He never once implied you might run away from the Champion battle – that’d be like admitting you couldn’t win, and you’d never do that. But here, it's different, because Terapagos isn’t his strength, so even if he could beat you with it, it wouldn’t really prove anything about him. You’d be well within your rights to just refuse to indulge Kieran in this at all, and on some level, he knows that.

(…With all that said, Terapagos does obey his commands in the battle anyway. It’s sadly difficult to attribute any definitive emotions to it because it’s pretty unexpressive, but perhaps we can imagine that Terapagos is kind of just lost and confused, going along with the orders of the one who threw its ball because it’s not really sure what’s happening and battling is kind of instinctual for all Pokémon. Maybe it’s even more instinctual for Terapagos, thanks to its ability that automatically shifts it into a battle form when there’s an opponent in front of it. It doesn’t really help matters that you just sent something out to battle it without questioning things, either.)

If you manage to hit Terapagos super-effectively during the battle, Kieran scoffs that “it has a weakness? I thought this was the hidden treasure of Area Zero?!” What do you mean his super-special legendary that would let him finally definitely win this time isn’t invincible, that it’s still functionally just a regular Pokémon and it’s still possible – and not even that hard, really – for you to beat him even now.

And if you land a critical hit, oh boy: “How can you get critical hits, even at a time like this… What are you, the hero of this story?” Kieran is clearly raw with bitterness about the turtle-coin flip, about luck choosing you because you’re just so heroic, even when this was finally supposed to be his moment really seriously for real this time. It’s reminiscent of another time he compared you to a hero when you critted him, in his fourth Teal Mask battle – but back then, he said you were like the hero in “a story”, whereas here, you’re the hero of “this story”. Kieran’s realising on some level that if this were a story, you would be the hero of it, you’d deserve to win, and… wouldn’t he be the villain? Because heroes certainly do not go around throwing Master Balls at legendaries from behind.

(For the record, though? Kieran is not a villain. Stop calling him a villain, people. Not a single thing he does is outright villainous; catching Terapagos in this way is wrong, yes, but it’s an act of desperation for which his entire end goal is literally just to win a dang Pokémon battle against you. He’s barely even that much of an antagonist, if we get into that – this isn’t really a you-versus-him conflict so much as a him-versus-himself conflict that you happen to be inextricably wrapped up in.)

Kieran isn’t even that crushed when he loses this battle, just… lost and confused. He insists that “I thought if I had Terapagos, it would make me stronger,” as if catching it in a Master Ball would change anything about his strength – but really, he has to have known that wouldn’t truly be the case. And when Briar remarks that Terapagos isn’t as strong as it should be, Kieran just miserably assumes, “so it isn’t the hidden treasure?” Like, of course this was too good to be true, of course whatever Pokémon he actually managed to get his hands on was just some dud and not the real deal, because he’s never deserved to have anything worthwhile. His expression’s upset, and pleading, as says this was meant to let him beat you, still like that’d somehow fix everything, but his desperation’s become something pitiful compared to how furious it was before. He just doesn’t know what else to do, doesn’t know how else to cope with his crushing sense of inferiority if he can’t hold onto this.

Terapagos goes berserk

The only reason Kieran even Terastallises Terapagos is pretty much because Briar tells him to, and he’s at a loss for what else to do. It’s very possible that if an actual responsible adult had been here to talk him down – or, heck, even just let Carmine talk to him, since she was trying to do so again – then he’d have finally been in a state to listen and none of the ensuing disaster would have needed to happen. But Briar’s gotta see her giant sparkle turtle, because it turns out that basically her entire character exists to facilitate Kieran’s character arc having the most dramatic climax possible, and I for one am 1000% okay with that.

Kieran looks apprehensive and afraid even as he’s just beginning to Terastallise it (no emotionless mask to cover the wince this time), perhaps because he can feel that the power from his Tera Orb is way more than it usually is and isn’t sure this is a good idea. But what else can he do? He has nothing else left – so he throws the orb anyway.

Again, Terapagos is frustratingly unexpressive, such that it’s difficult to get a sense of whether it attacking Kieran once it Terastallises is an instinctive, unconscious defence mechanism, or something more deliberate. But it’s certainly more fun to imagine it’s deliberate – that this is Terapagos lashing out from anger and fear now that it’s been given a terrifying amount of power it can’t fully handle and begins to realise, wait, no, it didn’t want this. That makes this problem distinctly more Kieran’s fault, which is a good thing for his arc. (If Terapagos’s rampage wasn’t based in its emotions in any way, then this kind of wouldn’t be Kieran’s fault at all, not really! It was significantly more on Briar that he Terastallised it, after all. Kieran’s real mistake was catching it without its consent – so it’s more narratively satisfying for this to be, in part, him facing the consequences for that.)

Either way, the important part is that Kieran is bound to feel like this is Terapagos lashing out at him because he shouldn’t have caught it. He always knew deep down that that was wrong, and now here’s the proof, because of course a strong and special legendary like that would never truly acknowledge him. And now it’s so mad at him for trying to act otherwise that it tries to kill him. (This poor kid is already clearly very sensitive to rejection in general, but, ouch, that has to have been like a stab in the gut.) This is all his fault for daring to think he deserved to have any kind of strength at all.

But then you save his life, by sending out your lizardbike friend to shield him! Which on the one hand just makes you even more of a perfect hero – but this time, your heroism is a good thing for Kieran. And, more than that… you wanted to save him. You saw him as someone worth protecting? You, actually, care about him??? (Kieran has been convinced that he’s nothing to you pretty much ever since you lied to him back in Teal Mask, but, oh, hey, maybe not…?)

Not that he has much time to process that in the heat of the moment; he’s too busy freaking out over everything such that Carmine has to be the one to tell him he should recall Terapagos. Maybe on some level he just feels like Terapagos would never listen to him if he tried, because it literally just attempted to kill him – and indeed, it fights back and breaks the Master Ball rather than go back to being his Pokémon (there’s another painful sting of rejection). Of course Kieran should never have caught it or called himself its trainer. He reflexively asks “why?” it wouldn’t come back, but he knows why. It’s because he’s worthless and deserves nothing, and he should never have tried to pretend otherwise.

Facing the gaping pit

At the start of the final battle, Kieran’s just frozen in terror at what he’s accidentally unleashed, not to mention the recent shock of nearly being killed and the knowledge that this is all his fault. (Even though, it isn’t all his fault! Briar deserves at least half the blame for this! But that doesn’t remotely occur to Kieran in the moment, because he is intrinsically the most worthless person ever, so of course all the blame should be on him.) But after a little while, the immediate terror fades, and Kieran’s left with nothing but the overwhelming feeling that he’s useless, that he can’t help anyone. It’s that vast aching pit of inferiority that’s always been there inside him, finally right at the surface.

There’s nothing he can do to run away from it any more. Ogerpon didn’t want him and chose you instead. All of his efforts to make himself stronger meant nothing in the end because he still lost to you. He never should have tried to catch Terapagos, because it never wanted him either and all he’s done is put himself and everyone else in danger. There’s just no way out.

Which means that, for the first time ever, Kieran has no choice but to finally, actually face up to and confront his terrifyingly huge inferiority complex, and begin to fight against it in a genuinely healthy way.

Maybe he wouldn’t have even tried at all if it hadn’t been for the fact that he needed to help with this battle! Shout-outs to the narrative for creating a situation in which Kieran has to help after Carmine’s one remaining Pokémon goes down, because he might otherwise never have done so.

(I love that one of the things the battle camera can do while you’re idling here is cut to Kieran and linger a moment with him, with the look of either frozen terror or miserable inferiority on his face. Even though he’s technically just a background character right now for the mechanical purposes of the battle, this moment is about him, and the devs knew it.)

And of course it takes Kieran a really long time, most of the battle, to actually find the courage to fight back! His inferiority complex is so massive, so all-encompassing, the root cause of all of the desperate, self-destructive, obsessive things he’s done to try and escape it, that of course it’s so, so terrifyingly difficult for him to actually face up to it and find the strength to try and believe that… maybe it’s just wrong.

Crucially, the single thing that does the most to trigger Kieran’s shift into courage is you – you, calling out to him, asking for his help. Hearing that you actually value his strength and need his help is exactly the kind of acknowledgement that Kieran has always desperately craved from you all along. It’s just what he needs to help him believe that, just maybe, he might actually be kinda strong and worth something after all.

But even then! Even with that, his inferiority complex does not magically vanish, because of course it doesn’t work that way! All your words do is give Kieran the courage to fight it, by holding onto the fact that you believe in him and he’s not alone. His animations here are so good; there’s tears in his eyes even as he manages to snap himself into determination, because he is still so scared and just finally being really, really brave about it!

One really lovely subtlety is that the highlight in his eyes, that little visual detail that makes a character really look alive, which was completely not there in Kieran for the entirety of Indigo Disk up until now, finally comes back in the exact moment when he finds the courage to fight. And it's neat how the game manages to re-use the same screaming animation Kieran had for the beginning of the Champion fight, with the only minor differences being the tears and that highlight in his eyes, but in this new context it communicates an entirely different kind of emotion. It’s like he’s fervently psyching himself up into believing that he is capable of doing this.

And hey, Kieran’s contribution to the battle really is pretty helpful! It’s a genuinely tough fight to the point that, no matter your level, there’s a good chance you were struggling on your own for a while, so you’re probably glad he’s here to help even just in a mechanical sense. His Hydrapple’s Supersweet Syrup ability can be useful to you as well as him, and then if it goes down, he switches to Dragonite and – because of the evasiveness drop – begins spamming near-accurate Thunders on a Terapagos who is Water-type for this final phase. Look at him go! (And another thing Hydrapple can do to support you is use Dragon Cheer, which delights me, because it’s Kieran deciding that actually he’s okay with you getting all the critical hits after all. Aww.)

Once Terapagos is defeated, if you try to not catch it, Kieran will tell you that you need to do it, that “it has to be you, not me!” It’s so lovely that there’s not a hint of bitterness to him here as he says this, just perfectly comfortably accepting it, because he never really wanted Terapagos anyway and he knows it’ll be happier with you, and that’s all that matters. Even if you don’t get that line, his encouragement of you as you go for a Pokéball is more than enough to communicate the fact that he’s okay with you doing this. And Kieran’s smiling again, cheering you on with that same animation of his from back in Teal Mask when he was super excited to watch you battle his sister! This is the excitable, battle-loving kid he always was and finally is once more! His smile is even more adorable now without his hair obscuring half of it, too.

Letting it go

In the end, Kieran’s finally able to let things go thanks to multiple factors brought about by what happened in Area Zero. There’s the part where he spent the adventure being just a little bit closer to his normal self, letting him realise that he misses being like that and that maybe there was nothing inherently bad or weak about those parts of him at all. There’s the way that Terapagos going berserk served as a very stark representation of how his obsession with strength only ends up hurting himself and everyone around him, which must have helped him see that his behaviour leading up to this was doing the same kind of thing and he can’t go back to that.

And, perhaps most importantly, you acknowledged his strength by calling out for him to help you against Terapagos, which is what Kieran really needed the most all along. By joining you in the battle, he’s finally begun to face his inferiority complex, to shoot down the conviction in his mind that he’s useless and weak and can’t do anything, and prove to himself that he’s capable of confronting scary things after all, even including his own mistakes.

I do have another small writing nitpick about his dialogue in the post-battle scene, in that I don’t quite agree with his progression from “I just don’t have it in me to be like you” straight to “finally I can let it go”. Kieran was always aware of the former, deep down, but knowing that never did anything but make him latch desperately onto trying to prove that wrong no matter how impossible it felt. Meanwhile, the latter implies that he’s always consciously wanted to let it go and just somehow couldn’t despite that, which isn’t quite it either.

Instead, I think it’d work if he first went from how he can’t ever be like you into “I guess I have to just let it go”, and then from there into “Yeah… finally I can let it go”. Feeling like he simply has no choice but to let go at first, and only from there would he reflect and realise that actually, he can now, and maybe a part of him had always kind of wanted to after all.

Delightfully, as Kieran begrudgingly accepts that he can’t ever be like you, you finally get a dialogue option that lets you tell him that he’s strong and cool and worth something as he is!!! It seems like it really did take you hearing his inferiority complex directly from him in order for you to realise that this was something he needed to hear. He reflexively tries to downplay your compliment, like he didn’t really do anything impressive at all just now, because he still instinctively feels that way about himself – again, his inferiority complex has not just magically vanished, because it doesn’t work like that! – but hearing otherwise from you of all people has to be an immense help for him in fighting against it.

And it’s this that sets Kieran off crying, from that overwhelmingly positive emotion that you think he’s really cool, aww. This seems to break something of an emotional dam for him, letting him just have a good long cry about all of it, which, yes, he has so many emotions he’s needed to let out for so long now and it is good and healthy that he’s finally able to do so! (I wish this part was better animated, alas – but believe me, I am imagining him having such a big long cathartic cry even if the game isn’t managing to adequately show it.)

Then there’s the final scene! It’s so brave of Kieran to have resolved to apologise and make amends for everything he did wrong. That is scary as hell and comes with a huge risk of massive painful criticism and rejection, but he’s doing it anyway because he wants to do the right thing. He is such a good kid at heart despite his massive issues having driven him into several big mistakes.

Now that Kieran’s returned to something resembling his old self, his anxious body language from before is back – he’s barely making eye contact with you as he speaks, his head low, instinctively trying to hide his face behind the one bit of hair he still has hanging down. But nonetheless, you can tell that he’s making an effort to fight that and push himself to be just a little bit more assertive than he was able to be before all this. As he asks if you two can be friends again, he’s grimacing, already braced for rejection, hesitating then blurting out all of it in one big go before he changes his mind – there’s still a very significant part of him convinced that you’d just never want that and he doesn’t even have the right to ask. But at least he’s now able to realise that said part is probably wrong and find the courage to ask anyway! Because he wants this, and he deserves to at least try and grasp good things for himself!

And of course you still want to be his friend, because you basically always were anyway from your perspective, and Kieran is so adorably happy to have this second chance, and I am so delighted that the two of you are able to be friends again like you always should have been all along, aaaa. I could not be more proud of my boy.

(Well, I could go into a lot more detail about just how proud of and happy I am for Kieran thanks to all of his scenes in the epilogue and postgame. But that’s enough of its own separate Thing that it ought to get its own post! So hold on for that; I’m not quite done having So Many Feelings about this boy just yet. Aaand here it is!)

#pokemon #pokemon sv #pokemon scarlet and violet #the indigo disk #the hidden treasure of area zero #pokemon kieran #kieran pokemon #trainer kieran #rival kieran #champion kieran #character analysis #ramble #my buttons #friends

232 notes · View notes

soleminisanction · 30 days

Text

I got a bee in my bonnet and spent last night crunching these numbers to confirm a long-held suspicion of mine, and now I'm going to do something with them even if it's only interesting to me. So.

I went through and tallied up all of the fics AO3 currently (as of 3/27/24) has under the tags "Trans Tim Drake," "Nonbinary Tim Drake," "Genderfluid Tim Drake" and "Genderqueer Tim Drake," since I figured that cast a wide enough net without committing myself to reading every fic vaguely tagged Trans Character to figure out which character they were talking about.

I then did the same for Dick, Jason, Damian and Bruce and, after comparing those numbers against each other and against the total number of fics each character has under their general tag, followed up with Duke, Babs, Cass, Steph and Kate, and then Kon, Cassie, and Bart for good measure.

The results confirm the suspicions I was going into check and are really interesting, to me at least:

Despite having far fewer stories overall than Jason, Bruce or Dick, Tim has by far the most stories tagging him under the trans umbrella (653 out of 58,395) and is the only member of the Bats for whom at least one full percent of his stories fall under that category (1.12% to be exact.) He actually has more total trans stories than Jason and Damian combined (308 out of 71,120 and 255 out of 42,607, equaling 0.43% and 0.59%, respectively) and outstretches the 2nd place ranker, Dick, by over a hundred (who clocks in at 438 out of 79,057 -- 0.55%). Bruce amusingly has by far the most stories overall (90,305) but the fewest trans stories (185) for the lowest percentage among the boys (0.2%).

The only one who comes anywhere close to matching Tim percentage-wise is Bart, who has far fewer stories to his name but a ratio of 62 out of 5,717 for 1.08%. I was thinking maybe Young Justice might have a higher percentage than the Bats due to their strong queer fandom but that only really proved true for Bart, with both Cassie and Kon coming in at only 0.2% and 0.28% trans umbrella percentage respectively (actual count 6 out of 2,874 and 39 out of 13,746).

Cassie's numbers correspond with the fact that women just, do not get a lot of these stories, at all, even compared to the general lack of attention they're paid by fanfiction spheres in general. Steph and Kate both clocked in at falling 0.17% under the trans umbrella (29 out of 16,638 for Steph, 5 out of 2,897 for Kate); Cass got 0.13% (21 out of 15,769) and Babs only 0.07%, the lowest percentage out of anyone I calculated for (11 out of 15,785). Duke's showing was a respectable 0.55% (34 out of 6,166) which puts him about even with the rest of the boys.

All of which I just went through to confirm a gut instinct I've had for a while: even in light of the noticeable trend in fandom towards increased visibility for trans and other queer-gendered people over the last decade and a half or so, it's a notable Thing for the DC comics fandom to explore with Tim Drake in specific.

And that doesn't even take into account things like the over 200 "Tim Drake is Catlad | Stray" fics, which almost always have some element of queered gender or at least femme'd sexuality to them, far outstripping any of the other Robin boys' spins in that AU (those counts stand at, respectively: Damian - 11, Dick - 33, Jason - 79, Tim - 242). Or the 11 fics logged under the "Tim Drake is Batgirl" tag, a category that doesn't even exist for any of the other male Robins.

(What makes that last one extra hilarious to me that most people don't know one canonical version of Tim has been a member of the Batgirls.) Part of me wants to use that parenthetic detail as a segway to ramble about the various canon snippets I think probably contributed to this, from Tim being presented as "the pretty one" who most often gets the "looks like his mother" comments to the fact that he is the only male Robin who's ever cross-dressed for an undercover mission and even though it only happened once the Internet will never forget Caroline Hill.

But this post is long enough as it is and I don't really have a point beyond I think this is interesting and cool so I'm going to leave off here for now and put my numbers under a cut so people have the raw data to look at if they'd like to.

TL;DR - Based on the numbers, the internet believes Tim Drake is more likely to be trans than any other member of the Bat-family or Young Justice, and I think that has interesting implications about his character and fandom. It's neat.

Data Taken: 3/27/24

Tim Drake: 58,395 Trans Tim Drake: 513 Nonbinary Tim Drake: 46 Genderfluid Tim Drake: 89 Genderqueer Tim Drake: 5

Dick Grayson: 79,057 Trans Dick Grayson: 399 Nonbinary Dick Grayson: 15 Genderfluid Dick Grayson: 23 Genderqueer Dick Grayson: 1

Jason Todd: 71,120 Trans Jason Todd: 286 Nonbinary Jason Todd: 17 Genderqueer/Genderfluid Jason Todd: 5 (4 have both tags and are the only ones tagged Genderqueer Jason Todd)

Damian Wayne: 42,607 Trans Damian Wayne: 215 Nonbinary Damian Wayne: 37 Genderfluid Damian Wayne: 3 Genderqueer Damian Wayne: 0

Bruce Wayne: 90,305 Trans Bruce Wayne: 180 Nonbinary Bruce Wayne: 5 (2 also tagged Trans Bruce Wayne) Genderfluid Bruce Wayne: 1 Genderqueer Bruce Wayne: 1

Total Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 653 Total Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 438 Total Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 308 (313 if you count the GQ tag separately) Total Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 255 Total Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 185 (187)

Percentage Trans Umbrella Tim Drake: 1.12% (1.11825) Percentage Trans Umbrella Dick Grayson: 0.55% (0.55403) Percentage Trans Umbrella Jason Todd: 0.43% (0.43307 or 0.44010) Percentage Trans Umbrella Damian Wayne: 0.59% (0.59849) Percentage Trans Umbrella Bruce Wayne: 0.2% (0.20466)

----

Duke Thomas: 6,166 Trans Duke Thomas: 20 Nonbinary Duke Thomas: 14 Genderfluid Duke Thomas: 0 Genderqueer Duke Thomas: 0

Barbara Gordon: 15,785 Trans Barbara Gordon: 11 Nonbinary Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderfluid Barbara Gordon: 0 Genderqueer Barbara Gordon: 0

Cassandra Cain: 15,769 Trans Cassandra Cain: 15 Nonbinary Cassandra Cain: 6 Genderfluid Cassandra Cain: 0 Genderqueer Cassandra Cain: 0

Stephanie Brown: 16,638 Trans Stephanie Brown: 27 Nonbinary Stephanie Brown: 2 Genderfluid Stephanie Brown: 0 Genderqueer Stephanie Brown: 0

Kate Kane (DCU): 2,897 Trans Kate Kane: 4 Nonbinary Kate Kane: 0 Genderfluid Kate Kane: 1 Genderqueer Kate Kane: 0

Total Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 34 Total Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 11 Total Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 21 Total Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 29 Total Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 5

Percentage Trans Umbrella Duke Thomas: 0.55% (0.55141) Percentage Trans Umbrella Barbara Gordon: 0.07% (0.06968) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassandra Cain: 0.13% (0.13317) Percentage Trans Umbrella Stephanie Brown: 0.17% (0.17429) Percentage Trans Umbrella Kate Kane: 0.17% (0.17259)

----

Bart Allen: 5,717 Trans Bart Allen: 40 Nonbinary Bart Allen: 20 Genderfluid Bart Allen: 1 Genderqueer Bart Allen: 1

Cassie Sandsmark: 2,874 Trans Cassie Sandsmark: 4 Nonbinary Cassie Sandsmark: 2 Genderfluid Cassie Sandsmark: 0 Genderqueer Cassie Sandsmark: 0

Total Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 39 Total Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 62 Total Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 6

Percentage Trans Umbrella Kon-El: 0.28% (0.28371) Percentage Trans Umbrella Bart Allen: 1.08% (1.08448) Percentage Trans Umbrella Cassie Sandsmark: 0.2% (0.20876)

93 notes · View notes

project-sekai-facts · 6 months

Note

What's ur fav piece of trivia for every* character?

(*or at least as much as you can recall off the top of ur head)

my favorite trivia for characters is usually just whatever i think is funniest so just keep that in mind. that's not always the case but you might see it become a pattern. oh the other thing is whatever is most soul-crushing so yeah.

Ichika - either the fact her name comes from how her parents met (because i think it's really sweet) or that she accidentally discovered miku when she was watching videos on her dad's tablet and opened a recording of a miku concert

Saki - she used to listen to the song Time Machine when she was in hospital (at Ichika's recommendation) to remind her of family and friends. It's the in-universe reason why she is featured on the cover. This is actually one of my favorite facts in the game overall.

Honami - she is surprisingly good at flirting

Shiho - not one I've posted before, but in Run! Sports Festival! she couldn't bring herself to throw any of the balls in the ball toss because they had cute animal designs on them

Minori - she once passed out because Haruka wished her happy birthday.

Haruka - she likes penguins because she thinks the way they waddle is cute and she likes how round a lot of penguin merch is

Airi - she followed all of Shizuku's campaigns and bought all the magazines she was featured in when she was still a member of Cheerful*Days. She insists it was just research.

Shizuku - either that she usually has a thermos of miso soup on her to eat after practice or archery club or that she isn't good at texting. i haven't posted either of these before

Kohane - again one I haven't posted yet, but her favorite photo she's taken of Count Pearl is one of Pearl eating mice. the rest of VBS are surprised that she isn't squeamish about that sort of thing (i dunno what they're talking about that sounds like a very cool photo).

An - the possible symbolism of the black stripe on her new school cardigan. hello to the person who submitted that i am still not over it.

Akito - in Cinema he's the only person to sing solo during the first two choruses, the others don't get solo parts in the chorus until the end of the song. i think about this one a lot actually

Toya - he can't swim

Tsukasa - he's the comedic relief and there's a lot of really random shit i know about him because of that, so my favorite fact about him is whatever will have the most impact in the moment if i were to mention it out of nowhere. for a less vague answer, this one although i consider it to be one of my worst posts

Emu - she's very good at replicating cartoon faces. i like this one because it raises a few questions about whether the L2Ds are still exaggerated or if she just looks like that and no one questions that she actually has a cartoon face. what if project sekai ends with them all becoming self-aware.

Nene - either the fact that she thinks the forest has good graphics or that she called rui's mom "auntie" when she was younger because i think it's cute.

Rui - i like a good reference and i appreciate that he sometimes references famous people and media.

Kanade - she's left handed. i also like that her family name was made up specifically to contrast with the rest of N25.

Mafuyu - either that it's shown one time that she can see ghosts and then it's never brought up or referenced again, or that the "mom's cooking" listed as her favorite food might refer to the bunny-shaped apple slices her mother would make for her when she was a kid. i also like the detail that her eyes being two-tone is because she inherited the eye colors of both her parents.

Ena - twitter user. also despite loving cheesecake, she doesn't like cheese. girl what the hell.

Mizuki - they started out editing by making AMVs for a magical girl anime they liked. Amia comes from the name of a character from that anime. also did you know they put ice cubes in noodles because of their sensitive tongue. ice cubes.

Bonus - some side character stuff I like

Kotaro's favorite food is strawberries but he doesn't like strawberry flavored things for whatever reason

Asahi and Sakurako's family names are Chinese mythology references

Tatsuya's hobbies are motorbiking and fishing. these are not things you expect to go together

Nagi hated tomatoes but she would eat them in front of An

Iori hates spicy food, whilst Mio's favorite food is super spicy ramen. Meanwhile Mio doesn't like cream, but Iori likes crepes (which usually have cream on them).

Souma started listening to foreign music after Arata left for America

gbr i forgot about the vocaloids for a second but before i call it a day i think it's incredibly funny that Len cannot reach the stools in crase cafe.

#asks #mod talks

142 notes · View notes

yuri-is-online · 1 month

Note

Your fantasy AU sounds fun… Do you have any other thoughts?

Mostly just world building if I'm being honest. The real spicy thoughts could count as spoilers so I'll try to put some fun things first before the building block stuff.

Yuu has a lot of physical damage on their body, and a pendant they're extremely protective of but don't remember why. I had a specific idea for that pendant was in the first outline but since I'm not 100% on this being a JadeYuu fic anymore I'm keeping it vague.

Yuu has some vague memories of being in a coma and several people talking to them, but they don't know who they were or what they talked about. It really hurts their head to think about, but they truly trust Idia and aren't afraid of him or Ortho. Somehow they know neither of them are responsible for what happened... or maybe they just don't blame them?

Idia is the one who brought Yuu to his and Ortho's house, but not everyone who should knows that they're there. Ortho doesn't know how Idia knew where to find them and has decided to not ask questions.

Ramshackle Party currently consists of Ace, Deuce, Yuu, and Ortho! Jack, Epel, and Sebek might join later but I'm undecided if they'll be permanent or temporary members. Ace is meant to be a rogue, Deuce used to be a barbarian who has been training under Trey to try and be a proper knight, Ortho is an alchemist, and Yuu is a mechanist a la FFXIV. Or gunslinger if you prefer that. Grim still follows them around and insists he's a great mage but his magic is... well you know.

Oh and Jack is a druid, Epel is an unwilling palidan/squire, and Sebek is also a palidan sworn to the oath of the crown.

Speaking of Trey, he and Riddle are influential members of the Queendom's royal guard, with Riddle being the Commander and Trey being his Second. Cater used to be a freelance information broker who has settled in the Rose Court as the chief of it's spy network, but he's publicly known as a semi famous bard. Neither Ace or Deuce know his real job ha.

Speaking of information brokers, Azul is still a merchant. He doesn't have a monopoly on physical goods since Sam is still here, but his information services can't be beat. He's actively involved in mapping the labrynth floors and has a lot of pull within the Adventure's guild. The twins still work with him but Floyd like to run off and explore the labrynth on his own for funsies sometimes.

Leona is actually a fairly influential politician in this AU, he's lacking the color scheme but he's in his Duke of the North era. He's known for being the first real adventurer in the labrynth, but how that came to happen, and all of his current personal life, are unknown to the general public. He sends Ruggie to bother Idia a lot.

No one knows how many floors the labrynth has, the S.T.Y.X. keeps detailed track of the known floors and assigns them a difficulty ranking based on things like terrain, monsters, weather etc. The Charon units are stationed at all known entrances to check if people trying to enter have the proper adventurer rank and to keep an eye out for dead mages.

Speaking of that, only mages can be resurrected if they die in the labrynth. Magicless people do occasionally venture in, but usually as merchants and never past floor 10.

The Adventure's Guild has a ranking system that determines how deep into the labrynth you're allowed go. Idia is an Obsidian ranked adventure, which prevents him from forming a party with Ortho who is only Bronze rank. Idia's party he gained that rank with has since disbanded, which makes things annoying for him as adventures are required to form a party with a minimum of four people before adventuring. Ortho has only really met one of Idia's previous party members, but he looks up to him a lot. Idia never talks about the other ones.

I have an idea for what I want to do with Malleus but it's a bit... weird? And I'm not 100% sold on it yet. I need to think more. But I know Briar Valley doesn't have much of a presence in the Labrynth or it's nearby town as they have been able to prevent it from spreading into it's territory. Silver and Sebek do occasionally participate in some of the exploration of the lower levels S.T.Y.X does though.

#<3 asks #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #fantasy au #to be clear i know what's wrong with yuu i just haven't decided on who is “responsible”#or if i want it to be vague and write a general route and then add scenes w specific characters

34 notes · View notes

corvuschronicles · 7 months

Text

finally gonna make a post better explaining my real fake psychic shawn spencer au so this might be a long one bc in the past it was mostly rambles as i came up with ideas and trying to make them fit together

i am in the process of actually writing a fic for this and it’s looking like it may be the first part of a 3 part series, below the cut are a lot more details to give context to my au

okay! couple of important things for the overarching universe:

the supernatural exists! though the population is not as prominent as it once was, so the supernatural world learned to adapt and stay hidden, basically for every 20 claims of something supernatural only one is real, and obviously some cities have higher populations compared to others

because of the dwindling population of the supernatural and the growing population of the mundane, it is expected that both would intermingle, so it is actually a lot more common than you’d expect for people to have supernatural bloodlines, though it is often insignificant enough that it doesn’t matter. sometimes that is not the case. sometimes people are born into still active bloodlines so they grow up in that world and sometimes people never know that they even had supernatural blood, let alone that the supernatural exists. sometimes, even though someone’s bloodline may be dormant (and they are or are not aware of the supernatural) unforeseen circumstances can sort of jumpstart said bloodline

with or without knowing it, people with supernatural abilities or bloodlines tend to gravitate to each other

there are few rules that the supernatural community follows, the most important being to not expose themselves to the mundane

within the supernatural community there are different categories; creatures/those with creature blood (vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters), those with abilities (psychics, druids, witches), sentries (those tasked with keeping the supernatural hidden, and hunters (mundanes who became aware and choose to fight it)

explaining the name, real fake psychic:

when he first started working for the SBPD shawn faked being a psychic to avoid arrest

after season 4, shawn has an encounter with the supernatural that essentially gives him real psychic abilities

he keeps up his fake psychic charade because he can’t really say ‘hey guys i was faking it before but guess what? it’s real now!’

now i will go a little into some of the changes/headcanon/general facts of some characters in my au, starting with the main man

shawn:

he’s mexican! this is not central to the story really but it’s my headcanon so i will work it in because i can

somewhere down the line there is maybe some kind of long forgotten supernatural family member, meaning shawn has supernatural blood

the combination of his childhood and eidetic memory and genius is all him but it definitely gets a small push from his possible bloodline, especially in how he visualizes

after The Incident™️ shawn gets real psychic abilities, at first it’s vague and he doesn’t know what’s happening, but then things get too weird and even he can’t ignore it

true psychics are rare, a lot of people only have some aspects (like divination, clairaudience, etc) but of course, shawn ends up with more than the usual

his abilities, especially at the beginning and when they develop more, are rather painful because he is receiving so much more input now, leading to headaches at least

shawn getting real powers is the catalyst to those around him awakening as well, and now that he and the others are aware of the supernatural, it seems to be more present than they realized

gus:

he’s an amplifier

his ability is kind of a paradox, on its own it doesn’t do much because it is mostly dormant outside giving him the supersniffer, but once shawn awakens it causes a ripple effect, they are now in the supernatural world and as a result gus in turn awakens as well

he can amplify his and other’s abilities; this helps shawn because gus can help him focus on certain visions or to make sense of some things he sees, this makes shawn claim that his is now literally magic head

it is a paradox because without shawn’s powers gus’ wouldn’t have come through and gotten stronger, but he also helps shawn’s get stronger, it’s a loop

gus gets the dormant bloodline from both his parents

shawn is not the only one gus helps

juliet:

she is an empath

she is naturally an empathetic person but once she awakens it gives her more of an understanding that she never had before

juliet gets her bloodline from her mother’s side

once they all figure it out, juliet can also help shawn in a different way, as she can now feel the emotions coming through his visions

gus is able to help juliet develop her abilities more, and she develops a type of danger sense, which comes in handy in their job

her bloodline is weaker so she’s not the strongest empath, and her prolonged exposure to a shield made it harder for her abilities to develop as well

carlton

he is a nullifier

lassie’s ability is that he is essentially immune to the supernatural to a point, things like curses, jinxes, telepathy, etc do not work at all or barely affect him, most physical attacks would still work because he is still human (like poisons or tactile telepathy)

however, this also affects positive things such as blessings or good luck charms

his ability is like an aura around him, meaning that those close around him may be affected as well, such as o’hara who, as his partner, is often exposed and it put a hamper on her own abilities

shawn is also affected, but in a good way; the constant bombarding of psychic readings stop when he touches lassiter, and even just being around him can ease the headaches

this is eventual shassie

unlike the others, lassie is an anomaly, he has no actual supernatural bloodline, he is the first in his (recent) line

henry

he is a non-believing, non-aware, mundane person

he notices shawn acting stranger than usual, he also avoids coming to the house more than usual

he has his own Incident™️ in which he witnesses something that shows shawn is now telling the truth when he says he’s psychic

madeleine

is a whitexican; not exactly relevant other than the fact if goes with my mexican shawn headcanon

it is her side that had the supernatural bloodline

just like her son, if she were to awaken she would probably develop some minor abilities, most likely clairaudience

SBPD

for the most part, unaware of the supernatural

anyone born into or active in the supernatural community stays away from the police as they tend to live outside mundane laws and prefer to police their own

few key players in charge of or above the police may be aware or are a part of the community

the fact that a psychic and friends with abilities work for the police becomes controversial

chief vick is unaware but someone close to her is not

if anyone wants to add anything or simply ask questions or talk about feel free to do so! i love talking about real psychic shawn <3

#psych #psych usa #psych tv #real fake psychic au #fake real psychic au #real psychic shawn spencer au #real psychic shawn spencer #shawn spencer #burton guster #carlton lassiter #juliet o'hara #shassie #henry spencer #madeleine spencer #supernatural au #psych fanfiction #shassie fanfiction #my writing #crow talks

126 notes · View notes

am-i-the-asshole-official · 5 months

Note

AITA for inquiring after a blog that got deleted?

This happened several months ago and my friends have told me that I wasn't in the wrong, but my stupid anxiety keeps bringing it up and saying actually they only told me that because they like me. Maybe the judgement of strangers will finally get my brain to put it to rest. Repliers, please use she/her pronouns only for me, I don't like being called by they/them.

I'm keeping this vague to respect the privacy of the others involved; if you somehow recognize the situation, please do not give further details. Feel free to ask for clarification if something is confusing, but I will not be providing additional information like what fandom it was as I believe that would just risk revealing who was involved, and I can't think of any additional info that would affect someone's judgement of what I did. I would like judgement of what I did without risking violating anyone else involved's privacy. Also, sorry this is so long. It's the ADHD. I hate it too.

I'm relating the dms involved as closely as I can, but they won't be word-for-word.

I follow several roleplay blogs in the same fandom. One day I noticed one that I particularly liked seemed to have been deleted. I wasn't sure if they'd made a goodbye post I didn't see before deleting or something, so I made a post asking if anyone knew if something had happened with their mod, as it seemed to come out of nowhere to me. No one ever interacted with this post, but I have no way of knowing if people saw it.

I messaged a blog that I had seen interact with them a lot asking something like "hey, do you know if something happened with [blog]'s mod? I noticed they had deleted and was wondering if something happened." They replied with the single word "no" and I thanked them and apologized for bothering them. This one word was the only thing they ever said to me. I took this to mean that they didn't know if anything had happened, but didn't try to investigate further. I was vaguely concerned that they seemed to have suddenly disappeared without anyone knowing, but it wasn't my place to try and dig things up.

A couple days later I was scrolling back through a different blog and I noticed an old post they'd reblogged from the person who deleted's sideblog, and the sideblog had also been deleted. I sent a dm asking something like "Hey, I noticed [blog] and [sideblog] were both deleted, and was wondering if you knew if the mod was alright" and received a response just saying that no one wanted to make what happened public, least of all the mod. I thanked them for responding, apologized for prying, and said I hoped things were alright, then deleted my post asking if anyone knew what had happened, so that people couldn't stumble on it, get curious, and try and pry themselves.

Very shortly after, I received an anonymous ask scolding me for prying into the mod's business when they wanted things kept quiet and continuing after being told no. I posted the anon and explained that I hadn't meant to pry - just was wondering if things were okay - and that I must have misinterpreted that first "no", apologized if I'd made anyone uncomfortable, and made it clear I would absolutely not ask further. That was the end of it, at least as far as I know.

I think I might be the asshole because: I didn't know the mod, we'd never talked beyond their answering some of my asks, but I asked people about them anyways. I was genuinely wondering if they were okay and was careful not to ask what happened, but I know I can have trouble finding the line between normal and nosy, and maybe messaging two people was too far, even if the first person seemed to not know anything.

I think I might not be the asshole because: I wasn't asking for details on what happened, I was just wondering if they were okay or if I'd missed a goodbye post, and backed off immediately after being told it was private. I don't think it's really my fault that I misinterpreted the first person saying "no" to me asking if they knew if something had happened, since I thought they were literally answering my question.

Again, please do not try to figure out who was involved in this if you think you recognize it; I just want my brain to stop turning this damn situation over and over and maybe having strangers judge it will do that.

So. AITA for asking after someone who deleted their roleplay blog?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

46 notes · View notes

rasparagus · 1 year

Text

still into you

pairing: vernon x reader

content: friends to lovers, that’s all, very short very vanilla, one sentence that references a suggestive moment but nothing detailed or serious

word count: 608, really short, will literally take u less than 5 minutes to read

masterlist

it started back in freshman year of college, when vernon used to slip corny little notes under your dorm room door, a small sheet of paper awaiting you almost daily on the floor when you got back from class. all it took was a post-it note in his rushed, awful handwriting to erase your mind of petty professors and clueless classmates. to this day (and without vernon’s knowledge) you keep a little envelope, convincingly and vaguely labelled ‘bills n stuff’ that houses every single note you received from him. you still giggle at his aversion to the sentimental, his letters often containing a list of songs or an endearing hand-drawn meme rather than something silly like a little poem about your love.

of course, that isn’t when your love for him started—you have been positively in love with him since high school, which sadly neither of you recognized at the time. rather, university was when your sense of your relationship’s longevity began to bloom. somehow, in between fighting for your life in the coed dorms and downing bottom-shelf liquor at frat parties, you managed to keep one thing constant in that whirlwind of firsts and never-agains. friends you met in college were routinely amazed at your long-lasting friendship. friends you’d had since high school waited for a dating announcement with bated breath, anticipating the moment you two would recognize just how perfectly you meshed.

the pining didn’t start until sophomore year, when the letters stopped. the two of you no longer lived in the same building; everyone’s classes got harder and more time consuming. somehow you and vernon got even closer, though. hugs lingered longer than normal, eye contact made your heart thump a bit more than usual. soon enough, the flirting emerged, and friend dates turned into normal dates. late night study sessions morphed into sleepovers. sleepovers morphed into sleepless nights, finding every surface in vernon’s room except for his creaky bed to release your energy.

the quiet vibe worked for the two of you. whether it was to avoid inevitable teasing from the friend group or merely your natural inclinations to privacy, the dating news took quite a while to reach the people closest to you. sure, vernon was suspiciously posting you a lot more, but half of his pictures have had you in them since high school. and yeah, maybe you were coming home with a lot more cds (that suspiciously looked that all the bands vernon liked), but your roommates figured you were finally making enough money to feed your music addiction. so, to say the least, the knowledge of your romance was a shock to the entire friend group—hoshi says he got goosebumps when he saw the two of you “soft-launching” your relationship by walking around campus holding hands. hoshi and his shaky camera skills caused quite the chaos in all the group chats that day.

even now, you think vernon’s quietness is his greatest strength, how he’s able to make your heart flutter in so few words. his weekly text saying “on the way” followed by some food emoji because he knows tuesday is your busiest day. his stack of records and cds that he keeps by his front door, bedecked with a bright green sticky note reminding him to lend them to you. his notes app with a list of movies he refuses to watch for the first time without you. the white slip of paper written by his eighteen-year-old self, an off-handed joke sitting in your desk drawer years later: ‘you’re the only one i never get tired of.’

a/n: hello, all! this is my first drabble back. something really short but i like it. its about all the writing i can muster rn. but i enjoyed writing it for sure. i weirdly feel like im in a cool romantic mood these days. and i might even have a crush for the first time in like 3 years! hope you guys enjoy tho. i know my last post didn’t seem to get much traction, but i hope i can get some feedback on this one. pls send in some asks just to chat! i like talking to u guys xx

feel free to reblog and send in asks!

#seventeen drabble #caratwritersclub #vernon x reader #vernon fluff #vernon drabble #vernon imagine #seventeen imagine #seventeen imagines #seventeen fluff #vernon chwe x reader #chwe vernon x reader

181 notes · View notes

the1975attheirverybest · 1 year

Text

Heat Wave

A/N: here’s the request from earlier. Wishing the boys all the best vibes and I hope they’re all feeling better and stronger. Matty lay off the wine and drink some water please. Hoping they’re in better shape tonight.

Warning: smallllllll mentions of drugs but nothing detailed.

The ringing in Matty’s ears made the ruckus of the crowd sound like a mere distant whisper to him. His heart raced in his chest as he dragged his feet along the floor, hoping and praying to a god that he didn’t believe in, that he would make it all the way into the dressing room before collapsing to the floor. He hoped the guys were alright and right behind him, though he had no energy to turn around and check. He just wanted to be out of sight.

He bumped into a few staff members on his way in; he could see their lips moving; he became vaguely aware of someone patting him on the back; one of their sound technicians shot him a sympathetic smile, looking nervous and saying something in a soft tone. Matty reasoned that they were surely speaking to him, he felt himself nod, attempt to speak, but he has no recollection of what he responded with. His legs trudged along, seemingly without his say so, as if controlled by a puppet-master. He’d finally made it into the dressing room, the couch in the center of the of the room looked so close yet so far away. Just a few more steps. Almost there. He lurched forward, collapsing onto it instantly.

As his body came to a rest, his mind continued to race at the speed of light. God it feels so good to be indoors and off the stage. What the fuck had he done? It was the only logical course of action. But the fans must be so disappointed. This was their first time back here in fuckin ages, and that’s how he treats the crowd? He had a responsibility to himself and the band. Adam had lost track of his rhythm. Barely played the right keys. Ross and George looked awful too. Poor Ross was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. But what about his responsibility to the fans? What about that? He could’ve powered through. Should’ve stayed five extra minutes. One more song and a quick goodbye. Did he have to draw attention to himself and his current condition? Did he have to announce it to the world? This wasn’t their tour. A lot more was riding on this. Festival sponsors and organizers, people who didn’t know him or the band, he can’t just pull shit like this! What has he done? His head was pounding, he might go insane soon. He wanted to scream out loud to quiet the internal voices in his head.

“Where is he? Guys?” Her eyes scanned the room, eyeing them one by one, from head to toe.

She knew she should’ve trusted her gut. He didn’t sound good at all tonight. And it was clear right from the start. He even changed a few notes, deviating considerably from his usual performance, just so he wouldn’t have to push his vocals higher. That should’ve been her first clue. But even an idiot could’ve seen through it when he sang the opening lines of Paris, “she said hello,” and passed up the opportunity to ad lib his usual little “hello” with a quick wave to the crowd, like he always does, and if that weren’t enough, he, again skipped, his usual suggestive tongue-in- cheek gesturing at the drug references later in the song. Then, there was, of course, the cutting off of the song.

The moment replayed in her head on a loop. He’d paused, and she could see in his eyes that he was about to go off-script in that moment, he’d rejected the crowd’s applause, “yeah, yeah yeah, that was a shit idea. I’m bored of singing about heroin.” He’d announced, waving everyone off and taking off his button-down. What on earth had occasioned that confession? She couldn’t follow his thought process or figure out what was on his mind but she told herself he was fine when he jumped up and down, encouraging the crowd to do so as well, later on, during The Sound. That seemed to be a glimmer of normal Matty peaking through the strangeness of the evening. Then again, she couldn’t deny that he was barely getting by for the majority of the performance, seemingly leaning on the microphone stand for support at times. She never should’ve let him go onstage. She should’ve hauled him out of there herself. She should’ve stepped in before it was too late.

“Where’s Matty?”

George nodded towards the closed dressing room door. “in there.”

Her lips parted, she was ready to tear into all three of them. She wanted to know why none of them had said anything to her. Why they hadn’t tried to stop him. She wanted to know what had happened to all of their individual and collective judgements, how they let it get this far, how they could claim to support and look out for one another if they couldn’t all band together in a moment like this…but as her eyes moved from George’s giant frame that would ordinarily tower benevolently over everyone, she noted that he was now slumped over, leaning against the wall, caving in like and overloaded tree branch, she watched him nervously peel the label off his water bottle. A feet away, her sight moved to Adam’s bloodshot eyes and red face, and to Ross’s sore arms wrapped over his chest, she realized they were just as overwhelmed, just as worried for Matty, and just as overworked as he is. Her anger dissipated, giving way to guilt.

She walked over to Adam, standing on her tiptoes and placing her hand on his cheek. “You alright?”

He simply nodded, staring off into the distance. She wrapped her arms around his slender frame, hugging him tightly. “You’re gonna be alright.”she whispered into his ear. “You all are.”

George walked over to them and placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder, mumbling weakly and attempting to vocalize his support. Moments later, Ross nodded, sliding down against the wall and sitting by Adam’s feet.

She was glad to see them attempt to come together, no matter the circumstances, but even as she tried to console Adam, who appeared the most shaken, her mind was on the one person who wasn’t around. Matty. She needed to be with him. She needed to see him and to know for herself how he was doing. She untangled herself from George and Adam, skipping past Ross as she made her way to the dressing room door. Ross mumbled a feeble “good luck” to her as she knocked on the door twice before opening it.

“M-Matty, babe?” Her voice a squeak in the deafening silence of the dressing room. In the dull lighting of the room, she managed to make out the outlines of his body, morphing into the couch. His sweat-drenched top adhering to his chest like second skin, his collar bones glistened with sweat as he moved, his face flushed and his breathing heavy.

“Leave.” He commanded, staring up at the ceiling.

“Matty, I want-“

“I said leave!” His entire body shook, sweat dripping from his curls, as he screamed.

She stood there, in the doorway, still as a statue, silently staring him right in the face. There was no way in hell she was going anywhere.

She felt George gently tap her shoulder and whisper behind her “listen, maybe you should- give him some space? Hang back?”

“It’s okay, George. I can handle this.” She said, her gaze still fixed on her boyfriend.

Matty turned around on the couch so he was facing away from her. With his back towards her and his face buried into the corner of the couch, he mumbled. “You should listen to George and just fuck off.”

As mean spirited as he was being, she knew he needed her. Even if he want willing to admit it. Brushing his insults off, she watched him struggle to get comfortable in position.

“Or what? Hmm? What happens if I don’t fuck off?” Her voice perfectly calm as if she was asking him what he wanted for dinner. She stepped all the way into the room, shutting the door behind her. “Go on. Do your worst, Matty. There is nothing you can do or say right now that’ll push me away.” She approached the couch, one step at a time. “So, if- if you need to let it all out, go on. Be an ass. I can take it. Trust me.”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t need your help! I don’t want it! I don’t deserve it!” Matty’s tight, closed fists pounded against the couch cushions as he spoke, punctuating his words. If he were in his right mind, he’d realize that he was yelling at her, but she didn’t care. She guessed that this was the volume his internal monologue was currently at. He was angry with himself and just projecting.

She had too many questions to ask. She couldn’t understand where any of this was coming from, but she knew now wasn’t the time to get logical with him. Not knowing what to do next, she stood by the head of the couch, waiting for a sign from him. A clue of what he might need. What she could do to help.

Matty pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them and wrapping his arms around them, with his forehead resting on his knees, she heard him begin to sob.

That’s it. She was done giving him grace. She walked over to him, sitting down on the couch and pulling him into her lap. He resisted at first, attempted to push her off a few times, but eventually his exhausted body gave in, burying his face in her lap and letting his tears fall on her clothes.

Her hands found their way to comforting him softly. One in his hair, the other rubbing slow, gentler circles into his back and he wept and heaved. She wracked her brain trying to think of something to do or say, or anything at all to keep from sobbing with him. It hurt her heart to see him struggling and she wondered how she had let it get this bad. Matty was never the type of person to go from zero to a hundred in one day. He had to have been carrying this weight on his shoulders for a long time. How did she not notice? Since when did he hide things from her? She swore he seemed fine the other day. In fact, his performance the night before had included some of his strongest moments in recent history. She couldn’t understand what had changed and how it had happened so quickly. Then it hit her. Just yesterday, they were in Chile, before that, Argentina. 3 days before that, NYC, where Matty had spent 6 weeks writing, recording, performing NYC, appearing at the Brits during his time off from months of non-stop touring. During his off moments, he either went on podcast to record long-form interviews, or appeared in album and tour promo, all while, of

course, working on his solo record in between. This wasn’t an overnight thing. It’s been a long time coming.

Once his tears had stopped and his breathing evened out, Matty pulled himself off of her, wiping at his face with the backs of his hands. She stood up, walking over to the catering corner and grabbing some water out of the mini-fridge and some napkins that could be used and washcloths.

“Matty? I’m gonna need you to strip down for me.” She thought he was going to talk back, so she was ready with a lecture about how his body is overheated and needs to be cooled down instantly, but Matty just nodded. She drenched the napkins in water and handed them to him, watching as he cooled himself down.

“Talk to me. How do you feel?”

He shrugged.

“Do I need to get the first aid guys? My Spanish is very rusty, but-“

“No, no. I’m alright.” Were the first words he’d said in a long while. His voice sounded groggy, getting caught in his throat several times. Fuck was he exhausted. She could just sit by.

“I’ll be back.” She simply stated walking out of the room before Matty could ask her where she was going.

He waited around for her, but she was gone a while. He’d almost fallen asleep when he noticed that she came back with a bunch of first aid supplies and some ice.

“Lay down for me?”

“What in the-“

“Turns out, my Spanish is just good enough to talk a paramedic into letting me borrow some of his stuff. She gave him a charming smile that brought Matty the first semblance of calm that he’d felt all day.

“Okay, so, he said to check for heart rate and blood pressure. Which…I think are these buttons.” She squinted as she clicked them twice to reset the portable machine. “No talking or excessive movement.” She cautioned, happy to play nurse. “This thing looks old. Wonder how accurate it is.”

Matty’s brows furrowed, he meant to object, but she placed a finger over his lips, hushing him before he even spoke.

“Is that within normal range? Probably should’ve asked him what I should expect. Then again I’m not sure we would’ve understood each other anyway.” She shrugged, jotting down the results in her phone dutifully.

“Oh. Pretty sure he said not to drink ice-cold water. Not good for you when your body is so overheated. So…drink this instead.” She handed him a room-temperature bottle, which, to Matty, might as well have been boiling water straight from a kettle.

She wrapped the ice she’d brought into a towel, fashioning a makeshift cold compress and holding it against his face as he laid on the couch, his eyes closed.

Matty appeared to welcome the cool feel of the fabric over his skin. His breathing relaxing as time went by.

“Be honest with me” he spoke suddenly. “Have I fucked things…badly?”

She felt a surge of emotions rush through her. Finally! He was opening up! She wanted to kiss him and tell him that everything would be alright. To thank him for talking to her. To ask why he didn’t confide in her earlier. Why he said nothing for days while he battled stress. But, instead, she shrugged. “Maybe?” She had to be cautious, knowing that Matty hates when she tries to push her positivity onto him, she didn’t want to overwhelm him with affirmations. He’s like a jittery puppy. You gotta let him come to you on his own terms.

“I- just-“ he sighed loudly, her hand repositioning the diy ice pack to keep up with him.

“You know what the heat symptoms reminded me of?” His eyes opened momentarily to look at her.

“What?”

“Heroin withdrawals.”

She made absolutely sure her face didn’t let on to her surprise simply remaining stoic as she let him unload.

“The swearing, the fog, the lightheartedness.. But why did I have to go on about drugs or whatever onstage?’ That was SO dramatic.” He rolled his eyes, disgusted by his own behavior. “It’s just- the stage lights were shining directly onto me. The guitar was heavy, I just fuckin gave up playin’ and let the guys do it. Was just singin.’ Then the more difficult it got, the more I thought about how difficult it was and the less focused I was on the actual singing. Suddenly, I was like- I was in my head- like out side of my body, just watching myself phone it in. And I started to think about the words of the song, right? And how ridiculous I was being, you know, absolutely killin myself gyrating onstage and flailing my arms about….singin’ about fuckin….’romanticizing heroin’ or whatever it is. when on both sides of me, my best mates are one breath away from passin’ out, and the crowds…fuck, can you imagine? Bein’ stood out there for ages. In those crowds? Jus’ to see us?” He spoke as if every sentence that came out of his lips surprised even him. “I started to panic. Felt irresponsible to just- to go on like everything was fine. I wasn’t connected to ANY of what I was doin’ up there I might as well have been lyin’ through my teeth.” He exhaled, exhausted.

“You made the right decision.” She pointed out calmly. Which was all matty needed to hear to launch into a second round of ranting.

“Did I, though? Cuz- I didn’t have to ruin the illusion of control for the audience. Some of whom have waited for ages just to see us! For us to come to their country. If you only saw the dms I get everyday from people. All around the world. I -fuck- I couldn’t keep it together for them? What kind of-“ he’d knocked the wind out of his own lungs, losing breath mid-sentence and forcing himself to pause.

“Matty! You’ve been to three countries in just as many days trying to meet and perform for as many people as you can. I think people will understand if the exhaustion and the weather have caught up to you. All of you. You, George, Adam, Ross. And everyone whose job it is to go with you. You’re a human being. You can’t expect yourself to be running at optimum pace all day every fucking day. For the most part, people are going to be relieved that you’re okay and glad that, instead of hiding and pretending everything was fine, you addressed it, called attention to it, you were vulnerable and honest with them about how you felt and about your performance. I think that’s more important than giving the perfect show every night.”

She handed him his water bottle again. A silent request for him to take a sip.

“Not everyone thinks so. I went on Twitter and someone’d said something about how, if I was so sick of heroin songs, then why not sing one of the million other tracks that I never do live, and I just-“

“Give me your phone.” She put out her open hand.

“Y’not havin’ it.” He flinched away from her, squeezing his phone tightly.

“Give. Me. Your phone.” She snatched it out of his hand forcefully. “You’re offline for the foreseeable future. All four of you. You’re gonna focus on recharging and resting up for the next show. Are we clear?”

Matty was surprised to find himself smiling under the current circumstances. But as he looked into her eyes and saw the determination she was giving him, he felt his whole world stop. Suddenly, the fog cleared up. Looking at her gave everything scale and put his worries into perspective. He caught himself thinking that he didn’t care what happened to his career as long as he got to endure it with her by his side. That was the only thing that mattered. He inched closer to her on the couch, resting his head on her shoulder.

“Would you still love me if I had no career tomorrow?”

“Hmmm…”

“Wait, what!” He chuckled, lifting his head up to study her face. “what’s ‘hmmm…’ it’s not supposed to be something you think about! The right answer is ‘no, honey, I wouldn’t care if you were a millionaire or a plumber, I love YOU; not your job.’”

She giggled “made you finally laugh, didn’t I?”

“Well played, Darling.” He smiled resting, his head back on her shoulder. “Seriously, though, what if I’ve ruined our reputation. What if no festival wants to have us cuz we’re too unreliable and mercurial? What am I supposed to do now? Can’t take it back!”

“I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do now. You’re gonna go out there and spend some time with the boys. You all need each other. You’re gonna go out to dinner. Preferably something with fiber. And drink lots of water. Just do non-work stuff for a night, you know?”

“And what will you do?”

“If you’ll excuse me, there’s a very kind paramedic who needs his stuff back”

#matty healy fanfiction #matty healy fanfic #matty healy x reader #matty healy x y/n #matty healy x you #matty healy fluff #matty healy x oc #matty healy oneshot

240 notes · View notes

scummy-writes · 3 months

Text

Scum talks about OCs

In this I'm just going to go over my Ocs in sections of their own. I'm not really using a special Oc template, I'm just talking about them and what fics they appear in, because to be blunt, I do write 'reader inserts', but some fics are written with these ocs in mind even if they're not detailed out specifically.

I'm just chatting about for fun, this will not change how I write currently. I would not expect fanfics about these characters specifically.

Amélie - Drawn by @beni-draw-ikemen-please. (Full picture is her in a chair with Isaac sittin on the arm of it, and Arthur resting his head on her lap <3 I love it)

Anju, made with a Picrew here. I think her expression is a bit too gentle here, and she would mainly wear warmer yellows or cool toned blues, not the shirt in the image.

SS from Prince of my WIP OC for it, since she's fuckin impossible to make on picrews. Her current name is Constance.

I am honestly surprised people showed some interest in this, so bear with me through my bumbling please. A lot of these say 'mc' but they are 'reader insert' fics still. Previous fandoms had 'mc' interchangable with 'reader' so...

If you have any questions, feel free to ask, just know I might not have all the answered.

╰❧ Amélie

Amélie has been around for a few years, and Beni has been a saint for letting me comm her to draw her. Because of this, I was able to make a character profile for her Here. Additionally, a much older one Here that details some vague things about her past, and including her past with Sebastian (Childhood friends).

-> Fanfics she has been 'in': Breathless Discoveries (Isaac/Mc), Mental Gravity (Isaac/Mc), Blessed Accidents (Isaac/Mc), Exercise in Restraint (Isaac/Mc), Temptations (Arthur/Mc), A Helping Hand (Arthur/Mc), His (Theo/Mc), Playful Punishments [vaguely] (Isaac/Mc/Arthur), Midnight Impulses [Vaguely] (Isaac/Mc/Arthur), Musings (Isaac/Mc), Oral Prompt with Isaac, First Steps (Isaac/Mc), The Talk (Isaac/Mc), The Shirt Thief (Isaac/Mc), Isaac Overworking (Isaac/Mc/Arthur), Awkward Dates (Isaac/Mc), and likely some other small drabbles I have missed...!

─❧ Summary: (Brief mentions of abuse/SA/Trauma but not explicit details)

A lot of her general background is covered in the second character profile I linked above. It sounds vague, and well! That is because it is a bit traumatic. I don't want to gloss over the fact that she has been through a lot, primarily SA, but I don't like focusing entirely on it to where that is the Only thing about her. Her previous job was ... an 'idol'? I never fleshed it out fully, due to self embarassment, but I wanted her to be a singer with a 'small' following, who got connected with shitty producers and signed a contract way too young without understanding the full implications of it, which caused most of her money to not actually be Hers. Due to her parents strongly against her career choice, going as far as rushing a contract ended up having her cut off from her family. With Sebastian gone, her support network disappeared completely.

She Vaguely goes over this in Patchworked Pieces (be mindful of tags), which was supposed to be a full fanfic detailing her story, but I am not meant for long fanfics at all so I posted what scenes I had typed enough with. on the chapter On Failed Attempts, she details a bit more of her experiences.

How she met Comte was through the normal opening of visiting the muesuem. She did it under distress and wanting a distraction, she was weighing options and considing some pretty awful things! I like to think Comte could tell she was beside herself and trying to calm down a little. I like to think he could sense the distress and the thing she was contemplating, and led her back to the mansion.

Which! Is rocky. She's terrified of everyone, until she sees Sebastian, and he helps ease her into her mansion life. She never tells Sebastian what she went through, due to worries and fears that he would manage to blame himself. So in her story, he never finds out.

Isaac is the primary person who knows some details, but not everything. She'd tell both him and Arthur some bare minimums, just so that when things got intimate, her panic attacks for 'random' reasons wouldn't make them believe it was because of them.

As for how they all entangle with each other? Well... Amélie is not what brings them together, necessarily.

Before she arrives, Arthur attempts to get close to Isaac. It is platonic at first, perhaps he had a crush on him but waves it off. But alcohol is introduced, they start 'drinking' together (Isaac is still a lightweight so he barely builds up his tolerance, mostly keeps Arthur some company), and...They get too tipsy and adventurous with each other. Arthur gets ashamed immediately. Not out of doing things with another man, because it was clear he was using Isaac to get over some trauma. So he avoids, hides, and their friendship crumbles.

And after that is when Amélie stumbles into the mansion.

Her friendship with Isaac is the most prevelant. And after getting on a better start with Arthur, they end up slowly getting entangled with each other. Isaac, unfortunately, deals with the brunt of her panic attacks. Finds scars, attempts to heal them.

It's through healing that they all twine together. Helping each other face their traumas, face what happened between them all.

Ironically, her love for singing was bounced in and out of the story. I wanted a few scenes where she tries to play in one of the many secluded rooms in the mansion- finds an old piano while cleaning, places a few notes. But I don't think she'd be able to any time soon. I think she would need a break for a year or two, before she started exploring music again. Or anything super creative.

I like to imagine that she is friends with a majority of the residents. When she is faring better, she paints with Leonardo and Vincent. She listens to Mozart play, reads what Dazai and Arthur write, so on so forth. I want her to live in a house with Arthur and Isaac, later on, visiting the mansion weekly or every two weeks, happy with her new life.

Sometimes I pair her with Theo, because I think they could help each other, but I think she is fated to be with Isaac and Arthur.

In AUs, I like to imagine Anju as her older friend. Anju does not tolerate a lot of bullshit with Amélie, and would be a bit like a guard dog. But. an unassuming one. She would treat Arthur very harshly until he proves himself. (I am unsure if I ever posted it, but I wrote a few chapters to go with This Au Fic for Isaac week. The second chapter, Anju was supposed to be a witch to help Amélie out after some events [was gonna have Isaac die and then it turn into a reincarnation au thing where they meet again in modern day, and in modern day Anju was gonna be around], and Anju has to help her move forward.)

I've been typing this on and off for a few hours and I am struggling with some details HAHA for now, I will stop here. She's the one OC that has a lot out there for her.

Oh. Amélie is not her 'real' name, but it is now. I am unsure if it is in poor taste or not, but in an attempt to heal she abandoned a lot of her old life. Not Herself, but trying to let go of the past until she could confront it more. She goes by Amélie until the end of her days, and only Sebas and likely Comte know her old name.

╰❧ Anju

-> Fanfics she's been 'in': Training Theo (Theo/Reader)

─❧ Summary: (Vague mentions of parental issues)

OoooOOoooOh Anju....anju....wails.

She is such a complicated Oc for me. She was originally for Shingen in ikes*n (i dont want this on the tags on accident). I still debate if the character she is now still stems from that relationship or not. Because if so, that means she left the past and came back to the present because her and Shingen didn't work out. Not in a TERRIBLE way but probably a sad mutual understanding.

It's either that, or she's just pretty sour from general past relationships not working out.

I like to imagine that she is in her thirties, and that she lives in a neighborhood where everyone knows each other in friendly ways. She is a 'seamstress' just due to how Sengoku has that set up for the Mc. I decied that her grandmother taught her how to sew, and her grandmother owned a small shop to repair peoples clothes and sew clothes for commission as well (i know nothing about how this works so). She would help her grandmother at her shop, and later on when her grandmother passed, she would take over the shop.

As for her parents, I never fully fleshed them out. I just know her mother was constantly comparing herself to other children/people around her, and that their relationship dissolved to the point of Anju refusing to aknowledge her as a mother any longer. The crux of this would cause Anju to move the shop to a different location completely to sever ties. (not move physically, but open another shop elsewhere after funds were saved with the same name).

For Vamp, she relocates her ass to France for Reasons. And here is where it is... well. I don't think a shop like this could exist, but i wish it would. pls spare me from laughs HAHA

The shop I always imagined is the type where the ground floor is the shop, and upstairs is where Anju lives. So upstairs would house her kitchen, living room, and Bedroom and bathroom, a balcony connected to the kitchen would be. great. Lower floor would have the shop, her sewing area, a room to hang up comms and etc, and the 'front' of the shop. Front of the shop is the porch and the actual like...foyer area....of the shop.

She spends a lot of her time sitting in the foyer area at a desk, if she is not actively working on sewing. .....I like to imagine she has a small sitting area set up there for people (children, family, friends, partners, etc) waiting while whoever she is working on measurements and etc with is getting their stuff. With....a lil coffee/tea area....very very small like a coffee maker and some stuff....but cozy vibes... (and she wanted a coffee machine near her while working).

She'll sit on the porch often in the mornings while waiting for customers or going through shop bills and whatever, and that is how she meets Arthur in a modern day setting. By him taking 'Vic' (or whatever pet he is on now) on a walk, Vic escaping, and running up to Anju because he wants pets HAHA.

For first meeting, Anju thinks Arthur is cute, but recognizes the fuckboy tendances. However, i feel like at this point of living as a vampire for so long, Arthur wouldn't be how he is in the game currently. As in, not entirely as self destructive and a smidgen more at peace with himself, but still has the tendencies. She doesn't think too much on the meeting, loves Vic though, and goes from there...

But Arthur doesn't. He gets hung up on her a little, and finds excuses to run into her a bit more. Nothing crazy, but primarily just walking Vic by there and seeing if he can catch her on the porch again, waving, exchanging greetings and pets for Vic. It would turn into him eventually finding an excuse to get some clothing mended, which she can very easily tell is bullshit, but she entertains it because... he's respectful the whole time. She enjoys the company and the innocent flirting.

It comes to a clusterfuck when they spot each other at a bar though. Where he sees how differently she's dressed, where it's clear she's looking for one night stands and nothing else. (He is also alarmed at her smoking HAHA). Arthur doesn't do much with this information, but she immediately tries shutting him out because. Well, she isn't ashamed to have casual sex with others, but she doesn't want the fuckboy tendancies to come back for him. She doesn't want this fake relationship to delve into sex and nothing more. So she puts up walls, and Arthur has to slowly take them down. And it is a rocky thing, because Anju is so independant and refuses to rely on anyone else, so it's a LOT of trouble HAHA a lot of dramatics.

They do fuck, because well they both enjoy sex so why not!!!!! but ah. it's complicated. I think I have a scene of that somewhere. I cannot remember if I have that happen before or after him visiting her home/shop at night when he's drunk. I think it was before.

But Arthur was supposed to go to her place, drunk, because she has such a schedule with her shop/hobbies that it's easy to piece together that she's home, and she essentially lets him stay over in pity because he's wailing about messing up his friendship with Theo.

From there it turns into awkward, more up in the air things. I played with her getting with Arthur only, Theo only, Arthur and Theo, or even Vincent! But the Arthur/Theo subplot would have been too similar to the Isaac/Arthur one in Amélie's story. (Sorry for causing you so much distress, Arthur).

I like to imagine her in her shop. Arthur flirting with her while the neighborhood granny laughs at her attempts to ignore the flirting.

╰❧ Constance

-> Fanfics she's been 'in': Sinking (Gilbert/Reader) [Descriptions of Self Harm], First Time (Gilbert/Reader), Chev comforts Mc

─❧ Summary: (Mentions of self harm, abuse)

Constance....! Is still a running name. I may change it, I may not. I'm unsure about her appearance, I know I want her to have the split hair and to dress in similar colors though, but her eyecolor I am so conflicted on...

But...! Her story is still being fleshed out, and she has changed a lot. She is now strictly for Gilbert, whereas she was supposed to be a flexible oc for either Clavis or Gilbert. (Maybe she still could be?)

So far, her story is still like Emma's so far. her and Rio friends for years, Akatsuki taking her in, etc. In my mind, she doesn't know who her parents are and is somewhat in peace of that.

I've bounced around a lot with her though, to where the Rio and Akatsuki being in her BG makes little sense. i've wanted her to be someone who writes and sings, but does not preform and instead has a friend that preforms for her. Where they have private sessions of Constance singing and exampling some of the dancing to her friend, and later on watching her friend preform the songs and bringing her visions to life. (i like this a lot but it feels...odd.)

I want her carrying a notebook around the palace, filled with her drawings and songwriting. Far in the journal, there is drawings of Gilbert- not because she knows him, but because long before she saw him slinking around Rhodolite and drew him out of facination of how he looked (did not piece together he was a Scary Dude). (would add a lot of fuel to fire if anyone saw those drawings COUGHS)

In another bouncing, I have her as a secret wrtier/artist that writes songs that are never preformed. I thought it would be funny if she wrote the erotica that Jin apparently reads??? I can never fgure out if thats canon or not because i never see it Mentioend in the game.

In both possible backgrounds for her, she is still a quiet and reserved person who suffers from a lot of depression, and struggles with herself a lot. The two toned hair was for fun at first, but now I'm realizing it would probably be a good symbol for her inner issues. How she has a lot of 'darkness' inside of her, that she feels disgusted by and upset with, while there is a purity she wishes she had (but fails to come to terms with how that is unreasonable).

To be paired with Clavis, she was supposed to be much more shy, and his antics were supposed to draw her out of her shell more.

But now it's more solidifies that she will be primarily paired with Gilbert due to the purity/darkness thing. She is a little dramatic in her thoughts with that, and is now a bit more serious toned rather than her shyness being played for antics.

She believes Gilbert over his refusal to 'lie', and that draws her in a lot.

Discussion of self harming/SA, when text is blue I am finished.

Something I am struggling with is that with many Ocs, i often have them go through some sexual trauma just due to it being an outlet for myself (i have also had sexual trauma). This may be why you see some themes of this in some fanfics I write, where there is something the reader is struggling with sexually and the suitor is extremely patient with them- it's usually tied to stuff like this (unsure of how obvious that is since no one ever says anything! which feels like an act of kindness, if it is obvious).

For her, I am struggling with adding that into her background as something that is fairly recent with her. Rio doesn't know, she refuses to tell him, and his fondness of her and constantly...hm...i don't mean this poorly, but building her up to be so 'perfect' sometimes causes a lot of issues when she reflects on herself, and she uses those words against herself often.

I don't know if the self harm would be. Due to that SA event or not. I don't know if this is soemthing that has plagued her for years, or if it spiked as her emotions got out of control.

Gilbert would not know. I don't really care if JP spoilers suggest otherwise, as there are already hints that make it clear he doesn't know Everything (he just knows a Lot). A lot of their relationship would be them struggling with self harm and the SA. A lot of her trust gets put into him (even if she dislikes it), because he doesn't lie to her like others do, and it is a comfort. (blah blah gilbert does lie blah blah)

It's hard to explain their relationship. I assume i'll have more figured out as his route comes out. Right now, she's who I imagine when I write some stuff with him, but not all of it.

With Clavis, the relationship would have been more healthy, and so would she. I think she would still struggle with both things, as it could be used as a mutual understanding when they discuss needing to be loved fully and not half-heartedly.

That is a rough gist of what I have for her? I have been typing this for hours and I am running out of steam.

Annnd....That is that! At least for now. Another detail I will share for all of them is that they are all bi :) All my ocs are always bi.

Again, you guys are free to ask questions. I may update this over time as well. I don't really want criticisms for my ocs though since you guys don't actually deal with them past them popping up as the voice for some reader insert fics. they just sorta rot in my brain and I get comms of them at times.

#scums babs

44 notes · View notes

jadewing-realms · 9 months

Text

disclaimer: written pre-release

i've had this sitting in my drafts for a bit since i started playing BG3, I kept seeing a particular kind of post regarding Astarion and it really started to frustrate me soooooo. here's a vaguely coherent rant nobody asked for pff

As I got into the game, following Astarion's romance subplot, doing research on the game and characters thus far, I encountered the schism between those who love Astarion and by extension, characters like him, and those that consider said characters as little more than toxic creatures, narcissists best dealt with swiftly and harshly. The latter tends, in the posts I've found at least, to view the former as poor unfortunate souls with the dreaded "i can fix him" mentality.

Now, I'm not here to say either is entirely wrong. I think to take a side here is to do the exploration a disservice and to forget the depth of nuance in art and media interpretation.

And that's just it. Because at the end of the day, interpretation is one of the key elements involved in this discourse. In the case of Astarion, especially with the game having been in early access for so long and no complete, guaranteed details of his past or arc made public yet, with so much up in the air as the full release drops, there are worlds of interpretations that can be made regarding our infamous vampire rogue.

Is one of those interpretations that he's both emotional and literal vampire who's every action is a trap for the protagonist in order to use them, and that he's irredeemable? Yes. Is another that he's simply trying to survive in a situation he's never been in after spending two centuries living like an animal? Also yes.

The error here, I think, is to treat one interpretation like it's more "right" than another. Which is what I've seen a lot of online threads do... Insisting one perspective is superior to the other. Which is bad faith even on a good day when either perspective is based in concrete, unchangeable fact. Even moreso in this case, until there's complete canon material to bank on, and even then that will have so much variety to it since most of it will depend on the actions of the player. It's a choice-based game. There is so much space for varied experiences, and none of them will be "right" or "wrong."

I feel like in modern media discussion, when considering whether a character is actively harmful or just flawed, it can be easy to forget that some of our most popular stories are ones in which someone is deemed beyond hope or redemption, a danger to all they encountered, only for their arc to raise them from their Pit of Dickishness and set them on pedestals as some of the most memorable, inspiring characters we know.

The timeless story of the Christmas Carol gives us an absolutely despicable old geezer who literally spells out the horror he'd inflict upon the poor if he could, simply for the sin of poverty. But in an effort to fixate only on how problematic he (very much intentionally) is, we might lose sight of how the whole point of the story is to watch him be forced to confront his ways, unpack all his crap, and become better for it in the end.

Characters like Prince Zuko, Edmund Pevensie, Greedling, Steve Harrington, Boromir, James Ford, friggin Darth Vader, we wouldn't have any of them if we only read them at surface level as toxic assholes and then left it at that. But through learning the nuances of these characters and watching them confront their actions and consequences and learn from them, they not only grow and change into better people, but we love them because they hold pieces of ourselves in them, despite their sharp edges. We can understand why they are the way they are, and maybe, if we're honest with ourselves, we can acknowledge that we might have done similarly awful things under their circumstances. It makes them relatable, admirable, and cautionary all at once. It makes them human.

None of that is to say that there are never characters built purely and solely to fear and loath, not at all. True scumbags can and do exist, both in fiction and reality. To try to enforce the idea of finding empathy for a true monster is often a tactic used in reality to gaslight people into excusing said monsters' behavior.

Which leads into the "i can fix him" argument. When applied to situations dealing with real dangerous and horrid people who can't or won't change? Absolutely Not Great (though that's not to say it can't be included in a story, there are valuable themes in that on its own). Condoning this dynamic as something good is what leads to abusive relationships and innocent people staying in unhealthy situations for far too long. I'm among those who can attest to that personally.

That said, when it comes to Astarion, no one can rightly say going through his romance arc or not is condoning anything. Because it once more comes down almost entirely to perspective and interpretation, because he's a video game character comprised of pixels and a well-written script and there are limitless ways he can be interpreted and interacted with.

Like, personally, yes, there are some dynamics I'd feel uncomfy pairing him with, even with the empathy I feel for his character. Platonic or romantic, doesn't matter. Does that mean I'm going to apply my interpretation and personal boundaries to the next person playing the Astarion romance? No. That would be assuming I've somehow discovered the "correct" way to interpret the game, which I have not and can never do because RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 are such personalized experiences. People are 100% free to play a fictional game however the hell they so please, because stories are not inherently 1-to-1 reflections of reality.

Especially when it comes to the narcissism accusation, it sparks an extra layer of discomfort for me when it seems like characters who act selfishly or spin lies get called "narcissistic" when that's kinda severely over-generalizing what narcissism actually is??

Narcissism is inherently selfish, but not all selfishness is narcissism. Gaslighting is built on lies, but not all lies are gaslighting. This separation was literally bugging me so much, I talked with my therapist about it last week. And she agreed.

Some folks seem to forget is actual NPD isn't just about selfishness and manipulating. It's fragile ego and delusions of grandeur and the mind games, dysregulating highs and humiliating lows that they will weave in a web around you so that you, as a victim, can never get your mental and emotional footing. Usually for the purposes of then swooping in to offer themselves as your only source of stability. The whole "rely on me because your judgment is clearly faulty and you need to be protected from yourself" shtick.

You know. Kinda like Cazador.

The way I see Astarion, by contrast, is that he has an honesty to him that lacks such delusions. As much as he desperately tries to maintain this veneer of poise and sass and devil-may-care out of self-preservation, it's paper thin and crumples under the barest pressure. Like, the equivalent of a thematic sneeze and down he goes. Then you see him as he is. Which is just... frightened. Sad. Kinda pathetic, really. And absolutely, positively lost. All things he knows, but he legit believes he will be killed if he lets any of it show.

Comparing that to, say, Wyll, who's blissfully ignorant bluster reminds me painfully of self-aggrandizing family members that I love but can't interact with honestly because of the forest of self-delusion around them... well, it's not much of a contest.

If somebody interprets Astarion as a slimy, manipulating power-monger and gets rid of him the first chance they have, that's their story to tell and power to them for it. But the same must be said for the opposite. I don't appreciate the thought that there's a whole sect of the BG3 fandom that probably genuinely considers me "less than" or "unhealthy" or "problematic" in some way for being among those who like this character or others like him and their potential thematically and narratively. But if my interpretation is that he’s a frightened man who just wants to feel safe and free, that is also its own story and it's mine to tell if I wish. And both can be good or even powerful stories!

Is all of this based on my own personal nuances, biases, and priorities? Absolutely. And that's kinda the whole point... There's not a wrong answer with this, really. I experience these games and these characters through a lens that is mine and mine only, and I give meaning to the worlds I enter based on what makes the story feel most interesting and satisfying for me. And at the end of the day, what else is art for but to help us explore ourselves and learn a little bit more about what it means to be human. In all its glory and ugliness.

And that's a wholly personal journey nobody deserves to have micromanaged or belittled. I'm certainly not gonna go around looking down on anyone for having a different reading than mine. You do you, boo. But let me do me too.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion #my musings #in this essay i will #half of this feels incomprehensible because i added tidbits over the span of a week #but maybe someone somewhere will get something out of it #it was cathartic for me anyway #narcissism #character analysis #media literacy #art interpretation #thanks for coming to my ted talk

89 notes · View notes

dingochef · 1 year

Text

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x You (OFC)

Warnings: Swearing, Smut (MDNI 18+ Only), Angst with a Happy Ending, Stalking, P in V, oral (female and male receiving), Semi-public sex, light spanking,

Summary: You and Jake geek out at the fly in. Later things get heated and you start to realize you might be in over your head with the feelings you're developing for Jake.

Word Count: 2.6k

Masterlist

Chapter 9

Chapter 10: Vintage

Group Chat: Your favorite hoes

Members: Lydia, Beth

Lydia: How was the date with Bob, just Bob? Any good action?

Beth: It was good.

Beth: Real good.

You: Details!

Beth: Let's just say he has a bit of an oral fixation and he's definitely more of a giver, 😉

Lydia: It all makes sense. Like he knew he had to be really great at eating pussy to make up for some of the initial blandness

Beth: You're so vulgar

Lydia: But you love me for it, 😍

You: Still waters run deep…..like his tongue deep inside you

Beth: Not you too.

Beth: Speaking of the devil, he's calling. Buh-bye

It's Saturday morning and you're pulling together the last few items for your day bag for the air show. You're looking forward to spending the day with Jake and checking out the vintage aircraft. Jake is picking you up here shortly, he mentioned something about having the better car for today and purposely remained vague on details.

I'm looking out the window when you see a turquoise vintage Corvette convertible pull up with the fabric top up. You can't see who is driving as the car stops at the curb in front of your house. A familiar head of blond hair followed by a leather bomber jacket with mission patches unfolds out of the driver's seat. Jake is of course wearing his aviators. He just smiles wide and stretches his arms out presenting the car, he shouts,

"A vintage ride to a vintage air show!" as you walk out to meet him. He runs around the car to greet you with a hug and a kiss and opens the door for you.

"Ooh, vintage manners too," you coo as you get into the car. He shuts your door and walks around the car and climbs into the driver seat. He starts the car and you are off towards Chula Vista where the fly in is being held.

"You know, if you had told me you had a 61 Corvette when we first met, I might have been nicer to you," you say as he pulls on the freeway heading south from San Diego, hand trailing on the dash.

"The lady knows her cars," Jake replies.

"Of course I do, I'm the daughter of an automotive engineer from Michigan. In fact my dad worked for GM."

"And yet you drive a Honda CR-V, the store brand vanilla ice cream of cars." He teases back.

"Yeah, it's definitely utilitarian and I got a good deal on it from a friend who was moving overseas. Besides, I drive way too many miles for my job to have anything like this."

The rest of the drive passes quickly and soon you're pulling into the lot at the general aviation airport hosting the event. Jake and you walk up to the entrance and grab a map,

"So where do we want to go first? Ooh, they have a World War 2 section," you ask scanning the map. Jake hooks his chin on your shoulder to peek at the map. He scans the map and says,

"That sounds good, we'll have to make sure to see the fighters," Jake says pointing at the map from over your shoulder.

"I wouldn't dare miss that, dear," you say to Jake as you kiss his cheek. It comes so naturally to you that the intimacy of the gesture doesn't register till you start walking handing hand towards where the World War II planes are arranged on the tarmac. This has definitely moved past fuck buddies and you try to convince yourself it's just friends with benefits, ignoring the slight panic that flutters up in your gut.

There are dozens of aircraft from World War II lined up on the tarmac. You and Jake find yourself gravitating to the bombers.

“These always intrigued me because of just how many people were in a crew, how many people it took to fly these and hit targets. All of that stuff we can just do with one or two people now," you say as you wander around a B-29.

“I’ve always liked the WWII bombers for the nose art, mostly the pin up girls to be honest. I had a few posters of some of them on your wall in high school. Closest I could get to putting up a bikini model poster without my mom freaking out,” Jake replies.

You laugh at the thought of Jake as horny teenager looking at pin up girls for hormonal inspiration.

“So, you’re saying you like the pin up look.”

“I’d have you on the side of my jet, but I think the Navy’s not going to be into that,” he leans in closer and whispers,

“But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t ravage you the second I saw you all gussied up like that.”

He points up to the classic nose art of a woman astride a bomb, skimpy red dress and heels, and Jessica Rabbit style red hair. You make a mental note for later.

You’ve traversed most of the air show and you finally get to fighter jet row after lunch from a food truck. The way Jake kept catching your eye as you were trying to eat a ridiculously large Italian sausage made you nearly choke on it with laughter.

“You’re going to kill me if you keep that up,” you joke as you bump shoulders with him.

“Whatever do you mean? I just see a woman really enjoying a large girthy sausage,” he replies back with an innocent look.

As you walk through the planes it's apparent whoever curated the show did a great job with lining the aircraft up in chronological order. It’s easy to see the evolution of the planes. Jake stops when we get to a F-14 Tomcat.

“Maverick flew one of these when he was at Top Gun,” he says.

Climbing up the step ladder you check out the cockpit. All the same elements that are in the jets you work on are there, but they're so rudimentary compared to what we equip aircraft with now.

“It’s like looking back at a stone hammer versus buying one at Home Depot,” you say. “There’s actually a few guys I work with who worked on the F-16s around the time this was made by Grunnam.”

“It does give me a tiny, tiny” he pinches his fingers together, “bit more respect for the old man to have shot down as many planes as he has when he had this to work with.”

The afternoon is getting hot so you call it and head back to Jake’s car, the turquoise is easy to spot in the field of cars. As we get closer, Jake looks at you and asks,

“How about I put the top down and we can drive back by the coast?”

“That sounds good,” you quickly find a hair tie out of your purse and pull your hair back to keep it from flying around in the wind as we drive. After navigating through town you finally make it out to the main coast road that will take you back to Coronado Island. The wind noise is so loud you can’t really talk, but you find yourself looking at Jake a lot of the way back and just how beautiful he is especially with the setting sun behind him as we drive. Every once in a while he catches you staring and smiles that panty dropper smile of his.

You see a sign for a scenic turnout and you point it out to Jake. He nods, turning the car into the gravel lot and pulls to the far end of the lot. You get out to stretch our legs and watch the sunset. As you lean against the front of the car Jake wraps his arm around you and you curl into his side as the cool ocean breeze rolls in. The sun slowly sets and Jake turns to kiss you. You stand up between Jake's legs where he is leaning on against the car. He is finally at a height where you can access his lips easily. You reach in his bomber jacket and wrap your arms around his back. He grabs your hips and pulls you in close. The kiss deepens and you can feel that familiar tug low in your belly. Grabbing the lapels of his jacket you pull him in closer. The kissing and sliding of hands over each other's bodies starts to build, the heat between you rising.

Jake stands up to his full height and gently pushes you away and runs to the back of the car and starts to pull the top of the car into place. His plan becomes clear when he sits down in the passenger seat and pats his lap. You're thankful you're wearing a dress. Jake is already hauling his pants and boxers down and stroking his cock. He pulls a condom out of his pocket and rolls it on as he watches you walk up to the open door, lean down and slip your underwear off and climb in. As you straddle his lap Jake closes the door. He reaches in between you and grabs the base of his cock and guides himself into you. You sink down on him as far as you can. He pants out between groans,

"Fuck, El, so good."

Jake reaches up to push the denim jacket you have over your sundress off and slide the straps of your dress and bra down exposing your breasts. His firms hands slide up and palm your tits as he works each nipple with his mouth and rough fingers.

The pleasure of his mouth and hands becomes too much and you start to ride him, desperate to quell the ache between your thighs. Your moans get louder and breathier and Jake pants out a few words,

"God damn, El, ride my cock."

His hands have slipped down your side and are holding the globes of your ass. He pulls your dress over your hips and kneads at the flesh of your ass.

Fucking his head to yours he whispers,

"Such a pretty ass, makes me want to slap and spank it."

He grabs and holds you still against his cock as he squeezes your butt hard.

You clench around him at the thought of his big hands leaving red hand prints on your smooth flesh.

He chuckles, having picked up on your response to his dirty thoughts.

"Oh El, you dirty girl. You want me to slap your ass, make it hurt a little, hurt in a good way?"

You can't control the whine that escapes your throat while you rock into him harder. Taking your response as permission he pulls back his hand and lands a resounding slap on your soft flesh. The sound is deafening in the closed car. You whine in pleasure at the flash of pain.

"You like that?" he asks, in a soft tone.

You duck your head into his neck, a little embarrassed, but oh so turned on. Ignoring the thought of your feminist credentials being tarnished by this, you reply,

"Yes, I do."

He slaps your other cheek, and says,

"Say 'Yes, sir.'"

You pull your head back and look him directly in the eyes and challenge him and gain back a little control,

"I do, Lieutenant."

He raises an eyebrow and pulls his mouth into that smirk right before he slaps both of your cheeks at the same time. The delicious pain ricochets down through your clit causing you to clench hard around him finally breaking his cool facade,

"Fuck, so good.'

You start to lift up and down on Jake's cock at a faster pace while he rubs your ass, keeping it warm and the hint of pain lingering. Your mutual heavy breathing fills the car. Jake moves one hand to place his thumb over your clit and starts slowly rolling circles around your sensitive point. The slowness of his touch is contrast to your frantic pace. His other hand pulls your head down to him and he gives you a filthy kiss as he says,

"You ride me so good, like you were made to do that, El."

"Yes, Lieutenant, your cock is so good. Give it to me, please," you whine in response.

The tension is starting to build in your belly and you keep riding Jake even though your legs are starting to ache and shake with strain.

Jake's hand on your ass is helping lift you each time and to keep your pace going.

His thumb on your clit pushes down harder and he slaps your ass at the same time, breaking that wave of pleasure over you.

"Fuck, fuck, oh my god," you rasp as your release triggers Jake's and he goes slack under you, the tension released.

The air in the car is thick with your deep breaths as you both come down from your highs. You tuck your head into Jake's neck and he wraps his strong arms around you. You and him just exist for a few minutes, still joined.

The casual closeness of the moment startles you, the safety and security, and mostly just how right it feels to be in Jake's arms. It overwhelms you, sending a niggling sense of panic and alarm through you. That familiar wave of vulnerability and fear rolls through you and you push back off Jake's chest, desperate to get rid of these feelings. This is not what you had planned on, developing feelings for him, not for anyone after Liam. Jake's arms are still around your waist, his head leaned back and his eyes closed, he doesn't pick up on your unease.

Your next words are chosen intentionally to break the spell you're under.

"Hey there, did I fuck your brains out there, Lieutenant?" you ask as Jake comes back to reality. His cock twitches inside you as you say Lieutenant. He looks into your eyes with an expression that you can't place, almost hopeful and wistful, and you know that the enormity of the moment has surrounded him also. Your own panic and doubt starts to swell as he pulls your head down for one more deep kiss before you separate hoping to quell this tsunami of emotions brewing in you. You step out of the car and rummage around in your purse to find some tissues to clean up, handing some to Jake as you piece yourselves back together and get back on the road.

The ride back is quiet, the night turned dark. Jake has taken your hand in his and is rubbing his thumb on the back of yours as he drives. As you slow down and roll through the residential streets to get back to your house, he asks,

"Hungry?”

The question startles you from your thoughts, and you fumble for an answer,

“Yes, I was too into the scenery to think about dinner till now.”

He grins back at you full of self satisfaction as you realize the secondary meaning of your statement. You give him an affectionate eye roll in return.

“Want to hit the Hard Deck? You can’t beat the fish tacos,” he asks.

“Works for me,” you reply, happy that they'll be something to redirect your attention and thoughts when you get there.

It doesn’t take long for you to pull into the parking lot and the place is its usual level of busy for an early Saturday night. Jake parks the car and you walk over hand in hand to the entrance when Jake suddenly stops, his shoes crunching on the gravel in response the abruptness of his motion, and says,

“Shit, my squadron is here.”

Worry not my pretties, the next chapter is on deck and will be posted soon (I have no impulse control, lol.)

Chapter 11

@starswholistenanddreamsanswered

@mayhemmanaged

@callmemana

@dempy

@hangmanscoming

@lanie-k

@callsign-viper

@senjoritanana

@djs8891

@atarmychick007

#top gun maverick #hangman fanfiction #hangman x you #jake hangman seresin x reader #hangman #jake hangman seresin x you #jake seresin fanfiction #jake seresin x you #top gun smut #top gun fanfiction

73 notes · View notes

five-bi-five-mind · 2 years

Note

would you be up for a wonder woman x reader where r also happens to be immortal, and like the two meet shortly after Steve dies. r then helps Diana through her grief and eventually the start dating and fighting crime together

Maybe This Time

Fandom: Wonder Woman/DCEU

Pairings: Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) x fem!Reader

Words: 5.4k+

Summary: You've been running for so many years and your captors, who turned you into what you are, gaining on you with each passing day. Finally, you decide to seek out help to follow the rumors of someone who might be like you. Someone who doesn't age and is said to have abilities and help countless people. And when you finally find this mystery woman you can't help but notice the sadness she tries to hide.

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Brief, vague mentions of torture, kidnapping (kinda) and stalking. But all of this is pretty brief and there's really not much details there.

A/N: You asked me this forever ago anon, and I am so sorry this maybe kinda turned into a series, and it's a little different from what you requested but hope you enjoy part one! I promise part 2 won't take so long. Also... this is gonna be a little tiny bit slow burn-y

Series Masterlist || Part 2

(gif not mine, credit to the creator)

Part 1: Follow The Rumors

You heard rumors about her starting back in 1918 during World War 1. Some mystery woman who helped turn the tides of the war. When you were in captivity, that’s all your captors could talk about. You remember how they described her, how they spoke of her with fear and unease, it was a simple enjoyment that got you through the seemingly endless days you spent in their cell. You remember how you would daydream of this woman bursting into the labs to rip open the door you were locked behind and personally guide you and the others out to safety.

She never came, though. No, instead, towards the end of the war, you broke yourself out. The one thing about those experiments you were forced through, they underestimated the results. And after one too many moments of exposure to substances you still don’t know the origins of, you found that you could melt the hinges right off the door that kept you locked away. So, when you did that, you ran out in a blaze. Burning the lab that held you hostage straight to the ground as you left.

You thought that was your key to safety, to freedom. But really, after your escape, you never stopped running. You learned pretty quickly that the people who captured you were not too keen to give you up. You were a fool to think that burning down one lab would stop their whole operation. The problem is, you don’t even know who these people were.

One year on the run turned into many, and over time it became very apparent that you didn’t age. When one year turned into 30, and you still looked like you were in your mid-20s, you realized, not only did they give you superhuman abilities, but they made you incapable of aging. You could still get hurt though, you could definitely still bleed. And oh did you have some horrible moments where you bled. A lot. And each time was due to them. It was always a moment where they got too close. You often thought about moments where you might stop fighting, you might not age, but you were pretty sure, in extreme cases, you could die from your injuries. But each injury you got was caused by them, and you knew they wouldn’t let you die. You’d be damned if they captured you again. So, you kept running, and you kept trying to survive, year after year, decade after decade. And to your dismay, their organization kept chasing you and each year they got a little stronger, a little faster, a little wiser until almost 70 years passed by, and now you found them practically breathing down your neck. In all your years, you couldn’t recall being this desperate since your escape. You needed help, so you decided to seek for it. You finally decided to follow the rumors.

Rumors of her didn’t stop in 1918. It seemed like when any major historical event happened, a rumor of this mystery woman surfaced. It didn’t take you long to realize she was immortal. You wondered if she was just like you. Except, she stayed and fought where any injustice happened, whereas you never stopped running, fearing the evil that stayed close on your heels.

It took years of following those rumors, with tons of dead ends and close calls along the way, but now you stood, feet rooted in place, as you looked up at the building you were sure housed your mysterious “wonder woman.” Funny how you spent so much time having to move forward, only to be stuck in place when a moment you’ve been dreaming of is just right on the other side of the door in front of you. At least… you think it is. This clue seemed the most promising. You were sure you found her this time. Diana Prince, she worked here at the Smithsonian and you were able to follow a trail of picture that looked eerily of the same woman, only each picture was a decade apart, and she hasn’t aged a day.

Let’s be real, you also didn’t have a game plan. You didn’t know how to approach the subject. You couldn’t just say, “oh by the way, I’m immortal, so it’s okay to tell me if you are too.” First, if you were wrong, that will just make you look crazy. Second, if the same people are after her, then she wouldn’t trust you for a second. Then there’s also the possibility she works for the people hunting you, but you had this feeling deep down that if she knew they existed and learned about the atrocities they inflicted on innocent people… well, they probably wouldn’t exist for much longer.

What you seriously didn’t expect was to literally be knocked off your feet by the woman you’ve been searching for. In your utter panic on what to do next, you ended up just standing and staring at the door, so when the very person you were meant to find smacked right into you, you landed straight on your ass and all you could do was peer up at her in shock.

“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!” She extended a hand to you, “are you hurt?”

You just shook your head and hesitantly took her hand, as she helped you up with ease.

“Are you sure?” She checked you over as you brushed yourself off, her voice filled with concerned.

“Yeah- yes, I’m fine. It was my fault, I shouldn’t have just been standing there.” You finally manage to say. You felt your heart pounding and your body buzzed with nerves as she stood tall in front of you. This was it, this was your moment. You had to believe deep down she’d help you, she’d be your hero. Maybe finally you could stop running. Maybe finally you wouldn’t be alone.

That thought shook you. You were getting ahead of yourself, you hadn’t even introduced yourself, and you were already thinking about… what? Being her best buddy? Her sidekick? You didn’t know.

“Why were you just standing there?” She gives you a curious look, her head tilting and a slight smile plays on her lips. You just stare at her for a second like an idiot.

“I… um… I guess I was a little lost, I’m looking for…” you pause, pretending to recall her name as if you hadn’t memorized it already and daydreamed of this moment. “Diana Prince.”

“Oh! You must be the new assistant. I’m Diana Prince.” She extended her hand to you yet again, “It’s nice to finally meet you, miss (Y/L/N).” She gave you a brilliant smile and in that moment you really began to take in just how stunning she was. However, as you looked up into her eyes, you couldn’t help but notice her smile didn’t quite reach them. There was a sadness in them, a tiredness. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a while… that she possibly has been crying. It was subtle, but you knew the look all too well, you’ve worn the look too many nights. You’ve gone days without sleep, you’ve woken from nightmares that have left you in tears. Maybe to someone who hasn’t been what you’ve been through, it wouldn’t be noticeable, but you noticed, and you feel your heart sink for her. A curiously strong feeling for a woman you literally just met.

“Yes, it’s good to finally meet you,” you say as you slide your hand into her own after a brief pause and offer her a shy smile back.

When she lets go of your hand, she immediately turns on her heels and motions for you to follow her back into the door of where she came in.

“Come, let me show you around, and we can talk about what your position entails,” she said as she continued on in a brisk pace. You struggled to follow, but you trailed behind her regardless, your entire being buzzing with nerves at finally finding your mystery woman.

She showed you around that day, briefing you on your new job and what you’d be doing to help her. You couldn’t help, but be mesmerized by her. The way she held herself, the way she talked, her kind smile. Everything was so much more than you imagined. The stories didn’t do her justice. She was a goddess in your eyes. Yet, you still caught that same look in her eyes. You weren’t sure if she realized you were still watching, but something would come up and that look in her eyes would be back. And as your first day turned into your first few weeks… you realized what that look was. It was loss. You knew it all too well.

You wondered who it was exactly that she had lost, but you never dared to ask. When you were working alongside her, you would talk, but only about little things, unimportant things. When she asked you about deeper things, you would dodge the question or come up with something general. Rarely did you give her something real, but you noticed how she did the exact same thing.

Three months had passed since you first smacked into her, and you got into a routine with her. You’d bring her coffee in the morning and you two would chat about your day, then come noon she would insist on taking you to lunch to “pick your brain” about an issue or an artifact. Being alive for as long as you have, you’ve had a lot of spare time to read, even on the run, so you tended to educate yourself on all sorts of matters. You realized Diana enjoyed this about you, found it fascinating, in fact. She would ask you how you know all this stuff, and you would give her a vague answer or brush it off with just a giggle.

You were getting so closer to her so quickly. Whenever she flashed you a dazzling smile, you couldn’t help the butterflies you felt in the pit of your stomach. You realize it could possibly be that finally you found someone like you, someone who might help you stop running. Finally, you felt like you wouldn’t be alone, so maybe that’s where the feeling came from. Or maybe it was because you two just really clicked. It felt natural to talk to her, you felt so close with her so fast. Or maybe it was because she was absolutely gorgeous, and you couldn’t help but trip on your words when she was near.

Yet, as time went on you kept seeing that look of loss more and more. She would be talking to you, the conversation would be normal, casual, relaxed even, and then suddenly her eyes would fill with sadness as she looked at you. It would be brief, fleeting, but you still noticed it. You still chose not to pry. She mentioned briefly she lost someone dear after you’d been working there for two months. You realized, she opened up just a little here and there the more you worked with her. She said the strangest comments about it sometimes, though. Comments you didn’t quite understand, but you decided it wasn’t your place to ask. You’ve lost people too, so many people. Your entire family, in fact.

When you escaped the lab all those years ago, you knew you couldn’t return to your old life, you couldn’t see your family. When they had captured you, you assumed your family believed you to be dead and that was how it should be. If you ran back to them, it would be the first place your captors would look to find you again, and it was safer for them if you never appeared. Over the years you did, however, learn things about your loved ones. Your siblings got married, your parents passed, then eventually your siblings passed too, and their babies grew up. There was a time, when you were foolish and feeling more lonely than usual, where you visited the grave of your parents. That mistake will never be made again, that’s for sure. You still shudder at how close that call was. But thinking back to that time, when you finally threw caution to the wind and saw the place where your family was buried, you remember that night well. You remember them buried in a beautiful area, you remember the fields to one side of you, the small pond to the other. And more than anything, you remember catching your reflection as you walked past it, you remember seeing the look in your own eyes. The same look that Diana wore as she stared right through you at times.

Yes, you know that she felt loss the way you have. She had to, if she were the ageless woman of rumors.

“Hey can you-” You let out an embarrassing squeak when a voice interrupted your thoughts, and you nearly jumped out of your skin. “I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, no it’s okay,” you stammer as you look up to see Diana standing right in front of your desk. “What did you need?”

“Oh, yes,” she gives you an apologetic smile as you looks down at you. Her eyes flicker to your balled up fists laying on your desk and as you follow her gaze, you take a deep breath and force yourself to relax them. You hated how jumpy you’ve always been, and you’re kicking yourself for letting her see that. “I hate to ask this, but can you stay late and help me with the intake on some new artifacts? There’s a lot of paperwork, and we’re working on a deadline.”

“Yeah, of course.” You return her guilty smile with a forced one of your own, trying your best to fake composure even as your heart hammers away in your chest. You’ve been letting your guard down recently, and it never ends well when you do. With her nearby, you can’t help but feel safer, but as you try to calm yourself from something as silly as her catching you lost in thought, you’re reminded all too well that there are people still after you.

You need to tell her about them, you need to tell her about you. Every time you think of it, you feel like you want to puke. After all, you’re not even sure you can trust her. She’s given you no reason not to, though. Watching her as you work alongside her, you’ve been able to see the true kindness she holds for others. What you are sure of, however, is that she’s the woman from the rumors you spent years chasing. You did your research, she matched everything ever said about her. Not to mention, whenever there was crime nearby, she’d mysteriously be missing. Maybe others might underestimate her, but not you. You paid attention, and you were more sure than ever that she’s who you’ve been searching for all these years. She’s finally your chance at safety. She could be your hero, if only you told her. Her compassion for you seemed so great, even in just a short few months. Surely, she cared for you enough to help.

You think back to a couple of weeks when she asked you about your family again. You told her you had none, that they had passed. Years alone have helped you train your emotions, show what you wanted to show and hide what you didn’t, but when she looked at you with such genuine sympathy you couldn’t help but break a little. You still think about the way she slid her hand across the table to place on yours. The comfort you felt, the warmth… the spark. That moment made the hope inside you grow, as well as other feelings you’ve slowly started to notice whenever Diana was nearby. So, you just needed to find the courage to finally tell her the truth about who you are.

“Thank you, (Y/N). I truly appreciate it.” You just nodded in response and watched as she turned to leave. When the door to your office closed behind her, you let out a big sigh of relief and shook your head. Soon. You’ll tell her very soon.

What you missed, however, was the way she watched from the window of your office as she passed it by.

Hours passed, and the sun had long gone down. When she said there was a lot of paperwork, she really wasn’t kidding. Most of the people in the office had long gone home. You know that Diana was probably somewhere busy working away on her portion of the work in her own office, and it brought you probably too much comfort than it should to know that she was nearby. You were okay with silence, though, you were used to the silence. It was big crowds of people that made you nervous, you never knew who could be there. If someone was hiding within a group of people, waiting to get you alone, waiting to take you back. Yes, you got lonely. Sometimes that feeling would be so heavy you could barely stand it, but lately, you’ve felt it less. Lately when you feel lonely your mind drifts to Diana, and suddenly, you find yourself focused on her until all you can feel is warmth and that strange fluttering feeling of butterflies in your stomach.

You let out a big yawn as you flip through more papers. You’re almost done, and you’re definitely feeling tired. Pushing off from your desk and standing, you gather the files you have and decide now was a good time to relocate them and to also stretch your legs. If you stayed sitting in your office any longer you were sure to fall asleep.

With everyone but you and Diana having gone home, the halls to your side of the building were dark. Most lighting was either dimmed or off. You were pretty familiar with the building at this point that you didn’t really need the help of the extra lighting, and as you made your way through the halls you only flipped on a light or two here and there, so you weren’t in complete darkness.

You were so dead on your feet, you didn’t really focus much on your surroundings. You missed the slight click of a door opening and closing slowly. You missed the shadow of a figure walking carefully a few paces behind you, and when you turned into the room you were headed towards, with shelves and shelves filled with files, you didn’t notice as you turned down a row of shelves, someone was not far behind. You didn’t notice a thing until you were placing a folder on the right shelf and seeing a flash of something dark zip past the shelves on the other side.

You couldn’t stop the gasp you let out as you saw it and without thinking you dropped the remaining files in your hands. If you didn’t make it obvious that you knew someone was there now, the sound of papers scattering on the floor definitely did. You held your breath for a second, listening carefully to hear where they might have gone. You hear one step, then two, coming from the other side of the shelves you currently faced. Your stomach dropped, you had no idea who this person was, but there should only be you and Diana in the building. Wouldn’t she announce that she was in the room with you rather than lurking in the shadows?

You immediately turn to leave. You don’t run, not yet, but you’re basically power walking at this point as you leave the room and head down the hall. Now you’re all too aware of whoever is following you. The footsteps aren’t as silent anymore, the pace isn’t a run either, but whoever it is, they’re gaining on you.

Your pace has become a light jog, and you know, you just know if you can make it back to Diana, all will be well. She’ll protect you. She has to. Of course, you could also turn and fight, but you hate using your abilities. It always draws even more attention. That doesn’t stop you, however, from feeling the heat rise in the palm of your hands, ready to burn whoever is following close behind you.

When you reach her office, you come to a sudden halt, realizing the door is wide open, and she’s nowhere to be seen. Your heart sinks, and your only thoughts are if she’s okay. You know you need to turn around and keep moving, but you’re so shocked by the lack of her presence that for a moment, you forget to run.

Then you realize the sound of footsteps behind you has stopped. You look to your left, and then to your right. For a moment, you hope maybe this was all just in your head, but as you’re about to turn to check behind you, strong hands reach around your face. You get ready to scream, but before you can a cloth is placed over your mouth and nose and then… everything goes dark.

…

You woke up with a start. Your head snapping up as you took in your surroundings. Were you… in one of the Smithsonian’s warehouses? You noticed the print on some of the wooden crates that were scattered around you. You definitely were in one of the warehouses. The second thing you noticed was that you were tied. Your arms were held painfully behind your back and your ankles were tied to the chair legs that you found yourself in. You tested the rope around your arms. It was tied well, you couldn’t use strength to get out. You were going to have to burn them off, which was going to hurt like hell, but it’s not like you haven’t had worse. The third thing you noticed, however, was someone standing in a dark corner not far away, watching you. If you were going to make your escape you needed to do it smart, catch this person off guard.

“So you’re awake.”

The voice startled you, and immediately upon hearing it, it felt as if you got punched in the gut. You knew that voice. You knew exactly who that was.

Diana steps from the shadows, a serious expression written on her face. You gulped. Sure she was intimidating, but this look was almost murderous. You felt as your body began to tremble with fear.

You were kicking yourself so much right now too. You thought, in all your time getting to know her, she was different. You knew she was special… that she had some abilities on top of being immortal, but you didn’t think for one second she was working for them. Your current situation said otherwise now. Cleverness was not going to be enough to get out of this situation. You weighed your options, you could wait and see what her moves were, but you were at a clear disadvantage there. You could fight, but from the stories you heard… were you even a match? You didn’t like your options, and panic was setting in.

She steps closer, and you can literally hear your heart hammering in your chest. You’d been scared before, there were so many moments you came close to being captured again, but not like this. This felt different.

She walked behind you, cutting the rope on your hands, and you twisted your head to try and give her a confused look, but before you could meet her eyes, she jerked your hands forward and held them firm with just one hand. With the other, she reached for something on her belt and when you saw it, you couldn’t help the gasp of wonder. She pulled out what looked like a rope, but shimmered a beautiful, bright, glowing gold. You were so astonished by the item you didn’t have time to realize she was tying it around both your wrists. As she tightened the knot and stepped back you snapped out of it.

“Diana,” you gave her a pleading look. “Why are you doing this? You can let me go. I’ll disappear I promise. Just let me go, please.”

You felt truly pathetic. You were begging for your life, you already had tears running down your face, and you were visibly shaking at this point. Yet, you didn’t care. All you wanted was to never fall back into the hands of those monsters, and right now, it was looking like that’s exactly what would happen.

“What do you want from me?” your voice sounded weak, terrified, and it threw Diana off for just a moment.

“I should be asking you that,” Diana finally answered, stepping back with the other end of the glowly rope in her hands. “What do you want from me?”

“Your help!” You felt yourself blurt out before you could even process what you wanted to say. Diana just looked back at you, her brow furrowed and head tilted.

“I checked up on you. There’s things that don’t add up with your background. Dead ends I tried to follow. And you have a terrible poker face, I know you’re hiding something. So tell me, who are you really?”

“My name is (Y/N).” You felt compelled to say. “I used my real name for the first time in years when I applied for the job.”

“And what are you?” She asked darkly, her grip never faltering on the other side of the strange rope.

“I don’t know.” You hung your head down as you muttered your answer, embarrassed that you admitted it out loud. “I was human… once. Maybe I still am?”

That definitely shocked her, but she was quick to hide her surprise. You still caught the way her knuckles seemed to relax their grip on the rope ever so slightly.

“What do you mean once?” She pressed.

“They experimented on me. I have… abilities now and I don’t age. I don’t think that counts as human.” You answered, looking back up to meet her eyes as you basically spilled your guts to who you still believed might be the enemy.

“Who’s they?“

“I don’t know.” You felt the answer forced out of you. “But don’t you? If you have me captured, aren’t you going to send me back?”

Diana’s whole demeanor changed at that. Her grip on the rope relaxed even more. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her other hand and muttered to herself something you couldn’t quite understand before looking back at you.

“I’m not sending you anywhere.” She finally answered as she stepped back up to you. She knelt down next to where you sat and put her hands over your still tied wrists. “Tell me,” she looked at you with a much softer expression now, her voice only sounding tired rather than its once stern tone. “What’s going on?”

“I came to you,” you whispered, you still felt the same strange compulsion to answer, but you also felt more willing to give them yourself, now that the more this conversation has unfolded, the more you realized it could possibly be some big (incredibly unfortunate) misunderstanding. “I… I don’t know if you’re like me. If they made you in a lab like me. I remembered hearing about you, back in World War I, so I didn’t think so… but I did think you could help me. They’ve hunted me for so long, ever since I escaped at the end of the first great war. They’re getting smarter, though. I know they’re close. I… please, I just want your help. What they put me through… I can’t I… They can’t find me again.”

You completely broke, your tears started flowing even more now, and you knew you were a miserable sight. In all your years, you thought to yourself that you should have more composure, but after what they put you through… thinking about being so close to reliving it just moments ago, you couldn’t stop yourself from falling apart.

In your fear, you didn’t notice that Diana was making quick work at untying you. Her shimmering rope fell from your wrists, and then she moved to your ankles to set you free. You slumped forward, your head falling in your now freed hands, as you continued to sob and shake. When she put a tentative hand on your leg, you jumped, and she started to pull her hand back. You darted your hand to catch hers, trying to let her know it was okay. The situation was… terrifying to say the least, but you knew from her reaction she wasn’t the enemy. So now, to feel her, as fucked up as it may be considering what had just happened… it was anchoring.

“Please…” you kept your head down and spoke between sobs. “Please, help me.”

Her heart broke at the sight of you. Diana couldn’t begin to express the immense amount of guilt she was now feeling. How could she even for a second think you were a danger? In the time she spent with you, you finally started to bring her smile back. You brought her out of the dark cloud that had been following her since she lost the man she loved, and what was her response? She knocked you out and tied you up to interrogate you, thinking you were after her. Ever since her experience with Barbara and Max Lord she felt more paranoid with people’s intentions than she should. But now her mind was racing at all she had learned. When she realized, pretty quickly, that she was drawn to you, it definitely caught her off guard. Then she started to notice a little more about you, and she began to think you were too good to be true. There was definitely something off… but now that she knows everything felt different. You were immortal just like her. That changed so many things for her. What you didn’t realize was that, while she was giving you hope, you were doing the same thing for her. And right now, as you sobbed next to her, her heart still hurt for you, but she couldn’t help the rush of relief that came with knowing the truth.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” She repeated, and without much thought she took you into her strong arms. Immediately, you fell apart even more at the feeling. “Shh, little dove, it’s okay I will help you.” Her arms tightened around you, and you felt yourself hold on to her for dear life.

Your head now buried in her chest, all you could do was sob and mumble “thank you” over and over again as she held you tight. You felt her press a kiss to the top of your head, and it just made you break even more. You were so sure you were about to be sent back to the hell you had once lived through and now… the same person who just scared you to your utter core was holding you and letting you fall apart, and you’ve never felt such profound hope and safety in the many years you’ve been alive and alone. You sobbed for the fear you had just endured, you sobbed for the pain you’ve felt for all these years, and you sobbed for the woman who was currently holding you as if you were the most precious and fragile thing she’d ever touched.

“No one will hurt you again.” She whispered these words as her lips pressed against the top of your head again, a stern edge in her voice as she spoke. She pulled back, only to cup your chin in her hand and press her forehead to yours. An action that completely caught you off guard. “I’ll make sure of it, little dove.”

You didn’t miss the way her jaw tightened as she spoke those words or the single tear that slipped down her cheek. Her voice was so filled with emotion. Anger, determination… fear. At that moment you wondered, maybe there was something more here. Between you two.

You didn’t let yourself dwell on it for now though, all you focused on was the feeling of her lips pressed against your cheek before she returned to holding you. You stayed like that, in her arms, for what felt like hours, until you had no more tears left to cry.

A/N: if you want to be tagged for updates go to the series master list and make a comment!

#diana prince x reader #wonder woman x reader #wonder woman #fanfic #wlw #five-bi-five-mind #maybe this time series

449 notes · View notes