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elyvorg · 1 year

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Kieran Part 1: It’s All About Strength

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

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

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

His weakness, and your strength

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Admiring the ogre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Misunderstanding the ogre

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friendship! Or is it…?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning of the lie

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

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

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

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

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

Probing about the lie

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

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

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

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

It's because he’s weak

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outburst at Loyalty Plaza

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lashing out with a battle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apologies, and a lack thereof

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

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

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

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

Meeting Ogerpon

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

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

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

Staying behind

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

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

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

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

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

His final chance to be strong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon sv #kieran pokemon #pokemon kieran #the teal mask #the hidden treasure of area zero #ogerpon #pokemon carmine #character analysis #my buttons #ramble #kieran did nothing wrong #he is just a suffering kid with bad coping mechanisms #because nobody has taught him healthy ones

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pokemonshelterstories · 1 month

Note

How often do different species of pokemon crossbreed?

I know they CAN, and I know egg groups are a thing, but without human intervention how common is it? Are there Pokemon that would never crossbreed without human intervention?

in the wild, it's pretty rare. wild pokemon tend to stick to their own species unless thoroughly desperate. this is largely because of differences in social behavior more than anything else; courtship and mating behaviors are going to look radically difficult in a vulpix and a ponyta, so even though they're the same egg group and even the same type, you're not likely to see that pairing in the wild. there's also the matter of size and morphology differences making the physical act of mating more difficult. using the same pokemon as an example, it'd be really hard logistically for a vulpix and a ponyta to breed- but you might sometimes see a wild growlithe and vulpix together, because they're of a similar size and morphology and have some behavioral overlaps.

honestly, the vast majority of potential combinations would likely never occur without a human orchestrating the match- and even then, in the competitive world, a lot of those strange breeding match-ups only happen as the result of artificial insemination. champion pokemon can fetch quite the stud fee, and some trainers will pay a lot of money to have their pokemon bred to a proven high-ranking battler through AI.

just for a little fun, i do know of one particularly odd wild match-up...my friend out in orre has been collecting data on a reintroduced flock of mareep for several years, and the current flock leader has found an unusual partner in a lycanroc that was ejected from his territory by other lycanroc. ampharos and lycanroc is a bizarre matchup in the wild, especially given that lycanroc sometimes hunt mareep, but desperation is one hell of a matchmaker!

#charlietalks #pkmn irl #pokemon irl #pokemon breeding #the world of pokemon

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strwbmei · 5 months

Text

Matchup Event

Matchup for: @dukemira

Matchups: Fu Hua, Firefly, March 7th

Contains: fluff, nsfw, creampie, mentions of bondage, mentions of choking, mentions of temperature play, soft sex, public sex, mentions of nipple play

A/N: Sorry for taking so long! Honestly, with Firefly's section, I have no idea how to bake so I apologize if anything is incorrect!

Ask: Long time no see I guess? Haha, anyway it's been a while and you look good, also congratulations for your 1000 followers! Okay I'll start. I will use Mira as the name, my mbti is INFJ, and my zodiac is Virgo. I'm a listener type person, I'm not speaking that much, unless the topic is interesting (or I like the topic) for me, I'll ramble so much. Many people see me as a stoic person, like I don't really care what happened later, or right now Even if it gets me in trouble. You could say I'm a hardworking person, I'll try everything to achieve what I want. If you don't mind, I would like to choose both. My first date scenario? Maybe we watch stars and aurora while drinking hot coffee and some snack (I like quiet place, irl I always go out at night like pm and go home at 3 in the morning lmao) it's just, so refreshing y'know? I'm indeed a dominant, and more into vanilla sex, soft, gentle. (Sometimes I wanna tie them up, and close their vision) (pls don't match me with male characters) The fandom Im in, honkai impact and honkai star rail.

Fu Hua

╰┈➤ SFW ;

: ̗̀➛ Like you, Fu Hua often takes late-night walks to clear her mind. The day she decided to take a different route for a change of scenery, she had no idea that this choice would end up affecting the rest of her life.

: ̗̀➛ It all starts off as the both of you passing each other on a quiet, isolated street; things like you glancing at the woman the first time you saw her because of how rare it is to see someone else around these hours. The most you'd get were stray animals and the occasional taxis, and you liked it that way.

: ̗̀➛ Your overly carefree attitude towards life and Fu Hua's overly cautious and apprehensive nature perfectly balance each other out like yin and yang. Not one is greater or worse than the other; both are inseparable as are the sorrows and joys of living that you'd gladly experience with each other.

: ̗̀➛ Change is a fearsome thing. All of the insignificant differences come together until eventually, you realize that your surroundings have already changed beyond recognition. Fu Hua firmly believes in this, and yet, it was the same change that brought her to meet you. As such, you're also the one to introduce her to new things. It takes her a bit of coaxing, but she's willing to try anything as long you're with her.

: ̗̀➛ Generally speaking, the two of you have so many similarities and just as many differences. Somehow, though, you make it work. Not because you just happen to be the right person for each other, but because you want to make it right.

"Fu Hua?" Your voice breaks Fu Hua's train of thought. She'd been gazing up at the sky for a while now, reminiscing about the past as she does so. It's not something she particularly chooses to do the first dusk of every new year, but she always ends up doing it nonetheless.

"Ah, you're awake. Did I wake you when I got up from bed?" She turns to you with a somber yet warm smile on her face. Her gaze goes down to the two cups of hot chocolate in your hands and mutters a small "thank you" as she takes one of them. You shake your head in response to her question. "Mm. I just got a bit worried when I woke up and you weren't beside me."

"What are you thinking about?" You ask before taking a quick sip of your drink. The dark and rich taste is perfect for calm, quiet mornings like this. Last night was filled with celebrations and festivities, and now that they're done, the city has fallen asleep. The sun peeks out through the horizon to greet the start of the new year.

"It's nothing important. It always amazes me how quickly time can pass and bring change." Her gaze falls down onto the jewelry shop at the corner of the road. It used to be a small diner run by a nice elderly couple. They had a dog; a small Australian terrier named Winter. Ironically enough, Winter did not like the cold. She wonders where they are now and how they're doing.

The two of you sit in comfortable silence, the sunlight illuminating the unlit city. Fu Hua smiles at the sound of the dogs barking; it's the one thing that has stayed constant throughout all these years. She hopes spending mornings with you like this will become one of those things as well. "Happy New Year, my love."

╰┈➤ NSFW ;

: ̗̀➛ Very vanilla and traditional so Fu Hua thinks she should always be submissive, at least at first. She's open to trying out new things in bed. We all know that she'd be submissive regardless of her old fashioned mindset, though.

: ̗̀➛ Fu Hua is open-minded when it comes to kinks, so she's willing to try anything at least once as long as it isn't anything too extreme or unhygienic.

: ̗̀➛ She's really big on safe sex. Fu Hua is actually very educated on sex despite having little to no personal experience with it/things related to it, mostly because she's had to give her disciples "the talk" before.

: ̗̀➛ During sex is when Fu Hua is the most emotionally vulnerable. She accidentally slips out words that she'd be way too prideful to say in any other situation, says "I love you" a lot more than usual, and reaches out to hold your hands subconsciously.

: ̗̀➛ She can go for a lot of rounds, but afterwards, she's immediately falling asleep. She'll try to give you the best aftercare she can (even if you were the one on top,) with the energy she has left, but the most she can probably do is get you a glass of water and a towel.

"My love..." She sighs, desperate and needy. Her legs rest at either of your sides as your hips rut slowly and softly against hers. Slender, calloused hands rest on your back, clawing ever so slightly whenever you hit a certain spot inside of her.

The room is dimly lit with scented candles, your clothes scattered on the floor while sensual music plays in the background. A scene telling of the romance and passion between two lovers.

You adjust yourself to hit deeper inside of her, and Fu Hua sings. She sings your name like an angel gently comforting you with her embrace; soft, and loving.

Feeling yourself nearing climax, you groan her name and bury your face into the side of her pale neck. As if in unspoken understanding, her fingers reach out to intertwine with yours, and her legs wrap around your waist.

Your hips stutter, and you fill her deep with your cum. Her chest rises up and down as she catches her breath, and she looks ethereal. You're set on spending the rest of your life with her.

March 7th

╰┈➤ SFW ;

: ̗̀➛ You and March 7th are the epitome of the saying "opposites attract." Or so, people say. While that might seem true on the surface, you actually have a lot of similarities like two stars in different galaxies, shining with unique brilliance yet connected by the vastness of the universe.

: ̗̀➛ For example, the two of you like quiet places; only for different reasons. You like quiet places because you like being able to be at peace and be alone with your thoughts. March likes quiet places because she can often find you in them. She loves bustling atmospheres and the blinding city lights, but she loves you more.

: ̗̀➛ Her troubles affect her more than they seem to, and when she can't silence the negative thoughts in her head, it's you that she comes to for respite.

: ̗̀➛ There's something about you that makes March feel so... safe and secure. She feels comfortable telling you about things that she'd normally repress herself. You keep her grounded. You help her get through the bad times and replace them with good ones.

: ̗̀➛ You care for her and try to comfort her the best you can, but you don't really care about things like "who she used to be" and "what she even is." Human, alien, or even as an emanator, you'd love her all the same. What matters to you isn't her past, but the future that you can have together.

"Hehe..." March looks up at the new ring you bought for her. The cold, silver metal shines when the moonlight hits it just the right way. To her, its glint symbolizes your love and the future to come. "Do you really like the ring that much?" You ask since she's been staring at it intently ever since you first got it for her. Of course, you're flattered since you also chose it, but you know March can be a bit overdramatic sometimes.

March turns to you as soon as the question leaves your lips. "Of course! You bought it for me, after all." She smiles with pride. You chuckle at her reaction and pat her head. "I'm glad you like it, but don't dote on it too much. I can always buy you a new one, y'know?" You weren't exactly rich, but that ring wasn't exactly expensive either. It was just something you bought because it seemed to be her style.

"Sure, but every gift from you is special to me. Even if you get me an extravagant wedding ring one day, I'll still treasure all of the handwritten notes you leave me sometimes." You blush at the implications of marriage. Of course it's been on your mind too, but to hear March mention it so casually has you feeling a bit bashful.

"When that time comes, let's get a big house and a whole army of pets! Ah, but that might make it difficult for the express... What about 5? Or if Pompom allows us, 10?" You chuckle at her ambition. You can already imagine Pompom going crazy with cleaning all of the fur. Still, a future like that with her sounds quite nice.

"We'll get as many as you want, March."

╰┈➤ NSFW ;

: ̗̀➛ She's not a stranger to the concept of sex, but there are a lot of things that she doesn't know about it. Despite that, or maybe because of that, she's always wanted to try.

: ̗̀➛ March 7th mostly bottoms--she counts on you to take the lead since you're more knowledgeable. She can definitely be the dominant one if asked, though. Top or bottom, her main goal is for both of you to feel good.

: ̗̀➛ Getting tied up and wearing nice lingerie are her favorite things! The intricate designs make March feel prettier, so she sometimes wears them underneath her clothes just for that confidence boost.

: ̗̀➛ She's up for it anytime anywhere mostly, but she's a bit hesitant to have sex in busier places. She likes it when there's a chance of someone spotting the two of you in the act, but she doesn't want to actually get caught. That would scar her for life.

: ̗̀➛ Loves it when you get more assertive. She loves how gentle and caring you are with her, so seeing a side of you that's so different gives her whiplash in the best ways possible.

: ̗̀➛ Her nipples are the most sensitive part of her body. She could have an orgasm just from you playing with them. A close second is her neck, though. Whether you leave kisses all over it or choke it ever so slightly, you're sure to get her gushing in her panties.

"I swear to Akivili, I'm going to kill you once all this is over!" March whisper shouts, turning to face you with an angry red all over her cheeks. Whether it's from embarrassment or arousal you're not sure.

The Astral Express had been invited to a fancy dinner, and as a result, you're spending the night mingling with the other guests; mostly the bigwigs of the planet you had just arrived on.

Or so, that's how March expected the evening would go. Now she's sat on your lap, legs spread as she gets fingered by you under the table. To others, you'd merely look like a young, naive couple in love, unaware of how her cunt drips slick and clamps down on your fingers.

Everyone turns their heads towards both of you when March whimpers in the middle of her sentence. She's quick to dismiss their concerns, and you chuckle at their cluelessness, saying March is just feeling a bit nervous.

You hold her gently by her chin and press a seemingly chaste kiss on her lips, swallowing her moans as she cums all over your hand. The rest of them are left none the wiser to the filthy acts the two of you are committing behind the scenes.

March hates how good you can make her feel.

Firefly

╰┈➤ SFW ;

: ̗̀➛ Your relationship is one full of secrets, but neither of you really mind. You understand that everyone has things that they wouldn't want anyone else to know, and that being their partner doesn't make you an exception.

: ̗̀➛ She doesn't question you when you come home at ungodly hours of the day. You don't question her when she comes home smelling like smoke and motor oil. You rush into each other's embrace regardless of the day you had beforehand. It gives you comfort and warmth and makes you feel like nothing else matters other than being in your lover's arms and the steady beating of their heart.

: ̗̀➛ Her favorite activity to do with you is baking! Neither of you is particularly skilled at it, but she finds the experience therapeutic and wants to share it with you. Firefly also has fun experimenting with the recipe to see what works the best.

: ̗̀➛ Firefly is a very kind and gentle partner, but only when she's awake. When the two of you are in bed together, (which is very rare considering how different your schedules are,) she becomes a heartless monster who hogs literally all of the blankets and pillows. Yes, blankets with an s. You've tried to solve this problem by getting your own, but to no avail.

: ̗̀➛ Honestly, it'd be pretty easy to take the blankets away from Firefly since she isn't very physically strong, but you can't. She just looks so peaceful asleep like this (despite leaving you vulnerable to the cold) and you know that she's tired. Hell, it's probably been a week or two since she's slept this well. You just don't have the heart.

"See, all you have to do is place the icing into the bag and..." Firefly rambles on about the techniques she uses when decorating pastries, even going as far as to give you a live example on the cake rolls the two of you were currently baking.

You cherish every second of these comfortable, domestic moments with her given how rare it is for the two of you to have the whole day to spend with each other like this.

However, there is one problem.

Earlier, you noticed that she accidentally put salt instead of sugar when making the batter. Should you tell her, or let her taste the consequences of her actions?

As you're faced with this life-threatening dilemma, Firefly looks up at you with a concerned expression and asks, "Are you okay, Mira...? We can always do this another time if you want."

For a moment, you almost take pity on her. Thinking of all the nights she took all the blankets and pillows (albeit unconsciously) and left you without protection against the cold, you make your decision. This blanket hogger must be brought to justice.

╰┈➤ NSFW ;

: ̗̀➛ It's good that you're more into soft sex because that's quite literally all that Firefly can handle. Seriously. Don't go rough on her unless you want her to get sent to the hospital.

: ̗̀➛ She can get a bit insecure about this and think that you deserve someone that you won't have to restrain yourself for during sex, but you reassure her that isn't the case and that intimacy isn't the most important part of your relationship with her.

: ̗̀➛ Due to how frail she is, it takes a lot of trust for her to engage in intimacy with someone. Chances are, you're probably her first time. She trusts you to not only make her feel good, but she also trusts that you'll be gentle and respect her boundaries.

: ̗̀➛ She's more on the vanilla side, but being physically weak doesn't stop her from having a few kinks of her own. For the most part, she'd be into getting blindfolded and temperature play.

: ̗̀➛ Whether Firefly is on top or not, she's way too gentle to ever hurt you, even accidentally. She's definitely the type to ask for consent/ask if you're feeling good every 5 minutes, regardless of how horny and desperate she might be.

When Firefly walked through the door with a sense of restlessness in her footsteps, rushing to take off her coat and straddle your hips as you sat on the couch, you already knew what she wanted.

Every time she's away at work (if you can even call it that) for a long time, she comes back all tense and desperate to please you. It's her favorite way to destress, she says. Still, you can never get used to your sweet and gentle Firefly being so... lustful.

Of course, you don't mind and you'd gladly help her take her mind off work, but the contrast in her behavior never fails to catch you off guard.

She buries her face into your neck, breathing heavily as her hands fumble for the waistband of your pants. "Pants, please?" You snap out of your inner monologue and help her.

Once she looks up at you, you can't help but notice the glint in her eyes. It's... different, and hungry. You can't help but be glad that you don't have to wake up early the next morning.

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turbulentscrawl · 8 months

Note

Kinda going off of your whole process behind matchups, but what do you think the ideal personality would be for some of the survivors (Alice, Norton, Eli, Naib, or whoever else you choose!) Like, what would they want/need in a partner? I feel like some of them could work well with a variety of personality types tbh…

Anyways, keep up the good work!

I don't want to give EVERYTHING way 🤭so these are a bit short. I'm also not super familiar with Alice yet, so her's are a bit more superficial. Added Andrew!

Norton

-HAS to be with someone who respects his alone-time. He does better with someone who’s overall not that clingy, but at the very least you need to be able to let him go when he says he needs space. When he asks for that, it’s largely because he’s nervous about hurting you when he’s not fully in control of his emotions.

-He can’t be with someone rich. If he was, there’s a very good chance he doesn’t have genuine feelings for them. There is a small exception to this in the manor, because it’s something of an equalizer and money doesn’t help anyone here. But outside? Norton (Aus excluded) is always going to be a frugal thrift-er, and he’d be easily annoyed by someone who blows their money like it grows on trees.

-He does better with fellow introverts too. He can do group stuff sometimes, but he prefers intimate, not-noisy environments. He’s spent most of his life alone so big events, public activities, and big social groups just feel foreign to him.

Naib

-The main thing for Naib is you not being a nosey nancy. Especially outside of the manor, he needs a partner who isn’t going to ask questions about what he does for work. He brings home the bacon and that’s got to be enough for you.

-It’s also better for him to be with someone who doesn’t mind his paranoid protectiveness. As much as he wants you to stay out of his business, he wants to be IN yours. Not to be controlling, but so he’s always prepared to come running if something happens. He can live without this trait in a partner, but it will be a constant point of tension if you don’t like it.

-Otherwise, Naib can get along with just about anyone who treats him decently. He sees the appeal in several personality types.

Eli

-Eli also works with many different types of people! He’s a very patient and calm man who makes and effort to understand everyone’s actions and opinions. The only people I straight-up can’t see him being with are those who intentionally try to bring out negative emotions as tests or pranks. He enjoys some light teasing, but if you try to rile him up or make him jealous, he’s just going to disengage from you because that’s blatantly unkind. He wants to foster good-vibes only with his partner.

-He does very much like skinship, though, so it’s best if his partner likes both giving and receiving Physical Touch as a love language.

-He’s a lot more likely to be sweet on someone who’s kind and generous. And he’s very intuitive, so he knows when this is genuine…if you’re faking it to manipulate/get in his good graces.

Alice

-As a journalist, she needs a partner who can keep their mouth shut. Like, you’re more than welcome to gossip TO HER. But she literally pays her bills by being nosey, and exclusivity of information is part of that. So don’t share things you learn from her…but DO share things you learn from others with her.

-She’s brave to a fault. Like Alice sometimes genuinely does not sense danger sometimes, so she would appreciate a partner who looks out for her when she can’t do it herself.

Andrew

-You have to be open-minded and nonjudgemental. He’s been treated poorly most of his life because of how he looks, and if he sees you treating other people with similar backstories well, his opinion of you skyrockets. (even though he won’t make it known for some time.) If you gossip to him about other people’s superficial stuff, kiss your relationship goodbye.

-Does best with someone patient and intuitive. He’s defensive and has an attitude, sometimes even without meaning to. He requires a lot of grace as far as overlooking the shit he says. His verbal communication will improve with time, and he will apologize for any slipups as his trust in you grows, but you have to be able to wait out the road bumps first.

-He also does better with a fellow introvert than an extrovert. For friendships, it doesn’t matter, but for a romantic partner he has more insecurities and concerns about you leaving him for someone else. If you like to spend a lot of time with other people, like being the center of attention, or feed on other’s approval, Andrew will have a harder time reigning in those thoughts that he’s not important to you.

#idv x reader #identity v #andrew kreiss x reader #norton campbell x reader #naib subedar x reader #eli clark x reader #alice deross x reader #idv journalist #idv gravekeeper #idv seer #idv prospector #idv mercenary

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spongeofaces · 1 month

Text

Matchup exchange for @thecurrator 1/3

---

First of the three matchups! I'm sorry for taking so long with these 🙇‍♀️

Really loved the one you made by the way, super cute.

Hope it lives up to your expectations!

Do tell me if I made any errors, I'll fix it up right away.

---

Romantic

I match thecurrator with...

🐉 Malleus Draconia 🐉

-:-:-:-

Malleus may be an absolute sweetheart of a partner, but he is also new to this kind of relationship. He does try his best, however he may not always know what is expected of him; what's too much or too little. Just be patient with him, okay? He'd wait an eternity for you, after all.

Typically, Malleus talks to others in a respectful yet somewhat cold tone, but fortunately he's comfortable enough around you to drop the polite walls he's built up. At times, he may find himself making small jokes or teasing comments that he usually wouldn't make with anyone else. Slowly yet surely, he'll become more and more willing to act childish if he wishes to, not feeling the same shame he used to when he acted in such a way. You've helped him become a lot more open with his words and actions, and he appreciates that.

As someone who has had personal experience with feeling isolated for a long time, Malleus has made it his personal mission to make sure that as long as the two of you are together, you'll never feel lonely. He needs you to know that no matter the situation, no matter the time, he is willing to be by your side. There's no need to hesitant or worry if you want to ask Malleus to spend time with you, I assure you; he'd drop anything if it meant he could be with you instead.

Malleus can take on any role in a conversation, switching between speaking and listening depending on the current mood. Whenever you speak, he is sure to pay his utmost attention, treasuring the words that leave your lips, storing away any and all information you give him in his head. You may make a one-off comment about a show you sort of like, and a day or two later he'll be bringing it up, having watched some of it to learn more about your tastes. Whether you feel like fast-paced banter, meaningful conversation, sudden rants or complete silence, Malleus is always happy to oblige.

This guy does not hold back on the compliments, always finding some sort of excuse to praise you. No matter how mudane a task you complete is he'll have something positive to say about you. Just by the look of utter adoration in his eyes, you can tell that it isn't empty flattery; he means every word of it. At this point, you find that he's truly enamoured with even your smallest actions and behaviours.

Definitely a gift giver. He'll experiment with different types of gifts, trying to get a read on which kind of trinket you treasure most. At the start, he'll stick to the default gifts, flowers, jewellery, clothes, plushies. The only thing that isn't stereotypical about the gifts he gives, is the amount. You'll be recieving something every other day, some things small, some things large. His gifts will become more personalized as he learns more about you.

He adores spending time participating in your interests with you. He'll organize movie nights or days to binge entire shows, just so he can listen as you discuss the themes and delve into the characters.

He is not going to help with your habit of getting lost in new places, if I'm honest. Pretty sure he'll just play dumb and let you lead you both off-track, feigning ignorance when you ask if he has any clue which way to go. Oh, but he doesn't have any malicious intent, he just finds the act of going on a simple, spontaneous walk with you pleasant.

He'd go absolutely anywhere if only you'd invite him. If he's the one choosing a date location, it would probably be somewhere out in nature, with a pretty view or scenery. He may start getting sappy and compare you to a flower or something, how you react to that is up to you.

Make him a music playlist, and it will be the only thing he listens to for practically the entire month. He might seek you out to talk to you about how he interprets certain lyrics and songs. He's grateful you took time out of your day to make something so thoughtful for him.

You two share the 'unapproachable' vibe. You because of the rbf, him because of his intimidating presence. But hey, at least you two know that the other isn't as scary as they look.

If you ever space out, he'll just sit in silence and watch you affectionately, wondering what could possibly be going through your mind at that moment. When class is about to start, he may poke your cheek to snap you out of the small daze.

Other options: Silver and Jade.

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst matchup #twisted wonderland matchups #malleus draconia #malleus draconia x reader #twst matchup exchange

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writing-blog-iguess · 1 year

Text

Online Matchup

Summery: Y/n thought it would be fun signing up on dating sites, just for shits and giggles. Who knew that was one of the best decisions they made, especially when they're having too much fun talking to a certain Jason Todd.

warning: swearing, unedited I think, mentions of cancer, fluff, lots of back and forth teasing

word count: 3072

a/n: I promised myself I'd post a fic today, though it's not the one I wanted, I hope you enjoy regardless.

ao3

Series master list

Inspired by this:

September 19

You matched with Jason Todd, say hello!

Y/N So, when you say you're looking for a partner in crime Do you mean, like, rob a bank and fight batman? Or like, cozy up on the couch with the fireplace going while it's raining while we try to finish the books we bought? Cuz, I can do the second one I dont think i could fight batman or any of his kids Or even what to, you know? They’re kind of scary …. well maybe one of them i would fight I say fight but its wont be Oh man, I am so sorry about this. This is not how i wanted to tell you that i am a rambler I’m just gonna see myself out Goodday

Jason Ngl this made me laugh So who would you fight but not really?

Y/N You can’t honestly be interested in who I would fight? No way

Jason Way you seemed interesting and i want to get to know you

Y/N … okay but you need to answer my question first

Jason: Lol fair. And it would be the second one. I too wouldn’t fight batman but for different reasons

Y/N: So you're a fighter?

Jason Nope This isn’t how it works

y/n: Fine but remember, you asked for this

Jason: Okay but it’s not like you have a plan on fighting all the batmans kids so i think im safe

y/n: …….

Jason: Oh shit you do?!

y/n: I plead the fifth

Jason: You just got a little more interesting

y/n: I’m going home

Jason: Damn and here i thought i’d finally found the love of my life

y/n: No, nope Don’t say that The more you talk to me, you’ll find the real me and then want nothing to do with me

Jason: Let me be the judge of that We matched for a reason and i want to find out Don’t you?

Y/n: Aren’t you a charmer Okay fine. 20 questions?

Jason: Sure but after you tell what you would do in a fight with the batfam

y/n: I was hoping you would drop this, damn Alright, you get the honour of telling me who you want to know

Jason: Nightwing

Y/N: Really? Okay. well first i was thinking of just flirting my way out, but he looks like he’d flirt back and i’m not the best at it to begin with, so I’d just get all flustered Bro’s an acrobat, i aint running from him. I aint running from all of them if i’m being honest. Nah for nightwing, he strikes me as a dork in some way. I’ll talk my way out of it. And if there’s something i’m good at, it’s talking.

Jason: So your plan is to talk circles around him?

Y/N: Yes Once i figure out what type of dork he is, imma talk until he gets confused and then i’ll run away Bro won’t see it coming

Jason: I should tell my brother He’s a huge nightwing fan

y/n: Nooooooooooo No one needs to know i don’t need other people to know how weird i am Especially your family I don't want my first meeting to be ‘hey, you’re that chick that’ll talk nightwing to confusion. Man that was a great laugh’

Jason: You think this will go that far?

Y/N: Honestly? No But i have hope You?

Jason: Ya Anyways, red robin?

Y/N: You skipped red hood

Jason: Saving him for last

Y/N: Fair Hes smart, can’t really talk myself out of that one nor would I flirt He is too young and not my type So i use his weakness

Jason: There’s no way you know that

Y/N: No but I know the dude doesn’t have a regular sleep schedule.

Jason: How do you know that?

Y/N: Back when I worked at a coffee shop, I took his order a few times and watched him down his coffee while it was still hot I asked him once, why? Dude said, and i kid you not ‘sleep is for the week and coffee is god’ Ngl, i laughed and gave him a free coffee just for making my day

Jason: Shit day?

Y/N: Ugh you had no idea. I had two tests that day and a term paper due but i couldn’t get it printed in time so that was late Didn’t help i woke up on the couch, and my body didn’t like that

Jason: You in school?

Y/n: Ya, only two years in but i want it to end

Jason: Not a fan?

Y/N: Eh When did we start playing 20 questions?

Jason: Right, we we suppose to play after you finished your hypotheticals

Y/N: Curses Me and my big mouth Who’s next?

Jason: We’re still on RR

Y/N: Blah right I’ll just bride him with coffee and make a run for it

Jason: The fact that that could actually work is scary Are you sure you’re not a villain?

Y/N: Nope just an engineering student who could fight god with enough coffee and no sleep Honestly, RR’s my spirit animal

Jason: Robin

Y/N: Are you nuts? I’d turn myself in and then some ain’t no way i’m coming up with a plan for him He scares me

Jason: Why?

Y/N: I watched him fight a few times The dude has enough skill and rage to fight the justice league if need be I bet he could kill too He looks like it

Jason: Okay you're not wrong But if you had to come up with a plan, what would it be?

Y/N: Cannot believe you’re making me do this Fine Little dude may have a hard exterior, but years of reading and knowing people like him, he has a soft spot and use that against him

Jason: Do you know what that is?

Y/N: … I am going to die If robin finds this, I am dying by either embarrassment or by his hands

Jason: Come on, you gotta tell me I’m at the edge of my seat here

Y/N: Fine, but if i’m going down I’m taking you with me

Jason: But we’ve only just met

Y/N: Maybe so, but I actually like you But i’m starting to doubt

Jason: Aw come on, little bird

Y/N: Damnit I happened to be walking home and watched him sit in an alley playing with cats Must have been a slow night, he was there for hours

Jason: It was the little bird wasn’t it?

Y/N: So who’s next? Spoiler? Batgirl? The signal? Red hood? Oracle? Well, I wouldn’t fight Oracle, I don’t know who they are but I know they would win so I’m going to stay clear of them No, you know what? I can tell you my answer for all three of them I’d bribe them with cookies or something. Idk if they would take it but that’s my plan. Just straight up bribery. Who could resist cookies?

Jason: That’s your answer to everything huh?

Y/n: Yup

Jason: Even with RH?

Y/n: … He’s different

Jason: How so?

Y/N: Mm, okay but your not allowed to judge Or laugh

Jason: Should I be scared?

Y/N: Depends Anyways, i have a crush on him So I would shoot my shot and if i get turned down then at least I tried

Jason: You have a crush on Red Hood? Out of everyone there is, why him?

Y/N: You’re judging! You said you wouldn’t

Jason: I didn’t say shit Now tell me why him?

Y/N: Hell if I know But have you seen him?

Jason: I have but you don’t even see his face

Y/N: That just adds to the mystic that is Red Hood I just know he’s got a good looking face underneath the mask

Jason: You really are something else

Y/N: Sorry I’m a big fan of RH And I guess I like the thought of a mystery So if you want to end this now, I understand

Jason: Who said anything about ending this?

Y/N: Don’t know, a lot of people who seem interested in me kind of leave after they find out Either they don’t want to compete with a crush that I know have zero chance at or they just don’t like red hood and being with a fan isn’t something they want

Jason: They’re stupid I ain’t leaving for that And who knows, maybe you can shoot your shot one day

Y/N: HA That’s not going to happen I freeze up when I’m near someone I like I’d probably stutter and say something embarrassing and run away No thank you

Jason: Thought it out huh

Y/N: You have no idea Anyways, 20 questions?

Jason: I did promise You can ask a couple?

Y/N: Favourite colour?

Jason: Really? After what I did to you, your going to ask something simple

Y/N: Answer the question Jason

Jason: Green

Y/N: Thank you Favourite food?

Jason: What’s with the easy questions? Give me some hard hitting personal ones

Y/N: I will in time Now, answers please

Jason: Chili dogs

Y/N: Those things are gross

Jason: Hey, they are the pinnacle of street food You just have to find the right places

Y/N: Mmkay, if you say so

Jason: Alright, gonna have to take you to one of my favourite places

Y/N: That right?

Jason: Only way to convince you Where do you go to school?

Y/N: Looking forward to it Gotham University, you?

Jason: Not yet, but trying to Kind of hard when you were declared dead for a while

Y/N: Fucking what?! Gonna need that story

Jason: Nope, gotta reach at least level 10 in friendship to unlock it

YN: Damnit

Jason: Sorry little bird

Y/N: You didn’t need to say it so casually tho Who just mentions, ‘yeah i’ve been declared dead but haven’t done anything’ into a conversation And not elaborate on it This is bullshit, sir

Jason: It has happened to people

Y/N: Yeah, but they tell people why You just Dropped a bomb like that and say, not yet Whatever, i’ll drop it

Jason: You sure? Sounds like it’ll bother you until you get the story

Y/N: Yes I’m sure Yes it will bother me But like I said, I like you and I don’t want to be pushy I’m not a pushy person

Jason: Awe does someone have a wittle crush

Y/N: No You got nothing on RH

Jason: Now that just hurts, little bird

Y/N: Don’t you have a question you need to ask?

Jason: Are you flustered? I feel like you’re flustered

Y/N: Amazing weather we’re having Despite the rain and all

Jason: Alright, I’ll stop with the teasing For now Born in Gotham?

Y/N: No I am from Metropolis, moved here for school

Jason: Any other reason?

Y/N: Yeah, Superman kept destroying my apartment building I’ve moved three times and somehow, he always finds the building I’m living in Minute I graduated high school, I moved

Jason: But why Gotham?

Y/N: Gotham intrigues me

Jason: You’re so weird

Y/N: Thank you Since you’re not in school, what do you do?

Jason: Mechanic Didn’t really want my dad’s help so I’m finding my way in life

Y/N: Not a great relationship?

Jason: You can say that So, engineering huh?

Y/N: Yup I love building and taking things apart Have since I was little

Jason: Gonna change the world?

Y/N: Imma try but can’t really do that while working at luthor corp

Jason: Please tell me your joking

Y/N: Ah, not a fan I see Can’t blame you but I am not It was one of the first places I’ve applied to and hear back right away I accepted before getting my other interviews

Jason: jumped the gun a bit

Y/N: Yeah I did. I wished I didn’t but oh well I’ll find something better if this doesn’t work out

Jason: Why don’t you quit now?

Y/N: I am a broke college student who needs money If I quit now, I’m not sure if I find someone to take me Plus the hours working there are helping my schooling, so it’s kinda late to switch jobs

Jason: Can’t believe I’m saying this but try wanye enterprise I hear they’re good to work for

Y/n: I plan too eventually But at the moment, this is fine The hours I have now works with my school hours

Jason: How’s working there anyways?

Y/N: Not too bad I guess I’m allowed to work on my own projects as long as I work on the assigned ones The people are nice and all but it could be better

Jason: But you don’t like it there?

Y/N: I don’t like Lex Luthor and what he represents I guess

Jason: So you believe that he’s trying to take down superman?

Y/N: I’ve seen one of their fights Nothing to believe

Jason: Must of been some fight

Y/N: Mm So What did you mean, I can’t believe I’m saying this?

Jason: You can’t be weird about it

Y/N: Oh? I am intrigued

Jason: You’re making it weird

Y/N: I am not It’s not like I said you have a crush on Bruce Wayne or something That would have been weird

Jason: Is this how you felt when I teased you?

Y/N: Paybacks a bitch isn’t it?

Jason: I hate you

Y/N: Okay

Jason: I do

Y/N: You’re deflecting

Jason: Oh my god Fine He’s my dad, well adoptive dad

Y/N: Cool

Jason: That’s it? You’re not going to fawn over him being my dad? Ask me questions about what he’s like? Ask if the tabloids are true?

Y/N: Nope Tbh, I don’t care for Bruce Like, I applaud him for what he’s trying to do for Gotham and all But, seeing him on every magazine everywhere I go gets a bit tiring He’s just another dude that people are obsessed with Who cares if he’s rich Besides, I’m talking to you aren’t I? Who cares about Bruce Wayne I wanna know Jason Todd

Jason: You know? I think I may actually be in love

Y/N: Stooooooop You can’t say things like that

Jason Why? Cuz you get flustered so easily?

Y/N And if I do?

Jason Gotta say it’s my favourite past time

Y/N So, the reason you don’t have a great relationship with Bruce Does it have anything to do with you being dead or something?

Jason Wow WOW I cannot believe you We go from what's your favourites to hard hitting questions huh? I see how it is

Y/N I told you they were coming

Jason I just didn’t think you’d use it as a deflection tactic

Y/N Yeah I want to say sorry But I’m not I’m sure you would use anything to get attention from yourself

Jason Can’t do positive attention

Y/N Eh

Jason I hear you And yes it is part of the reason why me and Bruce are not in good terms

Y/N Mm, I’m sure he’s trying

Jason In his own Bruce way yeah

Y/N Are you?

Jason I like to believe I am Why the interest?

Y/N I don’t know Maybe it’s the fact that my relationship with my dad isn’t the best

Jason You’re dad’s not Bruce Wayne’s too?

Y/N HA Then I would not be talking to you in this fashion

Jason That is true So then what?

Y/N My mom says we are too similar to each other Got the same attitude and all I believe it Growing up, it was all your useless and you’ll amount to nothing Or he’ll ignore me, and I’d prefer that over the degrading Only time he’d show his affection was if he was drunk

Jason Wow Sorry

Y/N Yeah It’s gotten better since I moved out Now it’s there, and I’m still processing

Jason Processing what?

Y/N Mm It’s a pretty heavy topic to get into with someone you just met

Jason Can’t be worse than me being dead for months

Y/N Months?! How many?

Jason Oh damn You are a lot easier to talk with then who I normally socialize with

Y/N I shall take that as a complement

Jason As you should And no, I will not be elaborating

Y/N Alright fair But I will get the story

Jason Mm, I’m sure you will So? Gonna answer my question

Y/N Last year he was diagnosed with cancer Not sure what it is, but it already spread

Jason How long did the doctors give him?

Y/N He didn’t want to know Can’t blame him for

Jason Sorry about that

Y/N Yeah

Jason You don’t sound to hurt about it

Y/N Like I said, still processing it so I don’t know how to feel With the childhood I had, I don’t know how too But I know when it comes down to it, my emotions will hit me like a truck when the day comes

Jason Well, soak up as much time as you can before you have any regrets

Y/N Trying to He is just making it impossible Whoo boy! That was a lot of emotion for one night I think I’m going to eat some ice cream and binge watch my favourite show

Jason Sounds fun, wish I could join but I promised my brothers with help

Y/N How many do you have?

Jason Do you read anything about the Wayne family?

Y/N Nope What I know about him is what is whispered between my classes and work and even then I don’t listen to them

Jason Really committed on not caring about him, huh Four brothers and three sisters

Y/N Big family

Jason Bruce likes to adopt

Y/N I can tell Anyways, have fun tonight

Jason I’ll try Would you be interested in talking some more?

Y/N I would love to

#jason todd x reader #jason todd #jason todd gn!reader #batman imagine #my writing #this was purely for my entertainment #but enjoy #online match up

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randomwriteronline · 1 year

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“Now,” Arezu began whistfully, “Not to pit two exquisite Ladies against each other, but - if they had to fight, who do you think would win between Lady Lilligant and Lady Sneasler?”

“Sneasler,” Ingo replied instantly.

There was a hot second of stunned silence.

“No hesitation, huh,” Mai noted.

“I am basing myself purely on typing,” the man began explaining as he briefly stopped carving the second wooden spoon he would give as a traditional wedding gift to Palina and Iscan: “If both had been pure Fighting it would have been a perfectly fair fight, but Lilligant has the disadvantage of being part Grass, which Poison happens to be supereffective against.”

“That’s why your Tangela hates me,” Melli commented.

“She does not,” Ingo replied.

“Why does she suffocate me then?”

“I have told you already, her hugs are not an attempt at your life, she is simply made out of a mass of vines which can sometimes result in hazardous situations despite her best intentions.”

“Is there someone Lady Lilligant could take on?” Arezu distracted them.

Ingo turned to her without missing a beat: “Avalugg, Basculegion, and possibly Kleavor, though it would be a very tight match.”

“No she could not take on Lord Avalugg!” Gaeric blurted out.

“He is doubly weak to Fighting and his Rock type would not do him many favors against Grass,” the other man replied, shattering his hopes in one fell swoop.

“But he’s-!” the warden fumbled on his words for a moment, waving his arms vehemently to find a comprehensible enough way to explain himself before having to resort to just: “Big!”

“Fair argument!” Ingo admitted. “But typing wise, he’d be done for. It’s a very unfortunate pair, mostly on account of neither type covering the other’s weaknesses. He would similarly lose against Sneasler, Arcanine, Basculegion, Electrode, Kleavor, and... No, that should be it, I believe. Ursaluna would would put up a valuable effort, but wouldn't survive the Ice. My condolences, Miss Calaba.”

The woman didn’t even move from where she napped, just gave him an ok.

Melli laughed at the disheartened Gaeric.

Mai smacked him to get him to stop.

“He’d be good against Braviary,” Sabi predicted.

That got her a gentle pat on her head, away from the braids she was getting done: “Indeed,” Ingo nodded, “Flying is weak to both Ice and Rock. He’d also fare pretty badly against Kleavor - Bugs are awful for Psychic types.”

“But he’d be good against Sneasler?”

“Oh, he��d decimate her. Both of his types are supereffective against her. Wyrdeer too, she’d have no chance against him. For more information on how weak Poison is to Psychic please refer to Melli and his many defeats at the spoons of Alakazam.” and he ducked to evade a halfhearted slap. “Also Ursaluna! Ground is another powerful weakness of the vitriolic type. Congratulations, Miss Calaba.”

She gave him a thumbs up and continued not caring.

Palina hummed, struggling for a moment with Sabi’s green hair as she tried to untangle a knot: “How’d my young Lord do?” she asked with genuine curiousity: “He hasn’t been mentioned much, has he?”

“Fire type seldom has trouble in matchups, so he’d be fairly fortunate in a fight against most of his fellow Nobles...” the expert mumbled: “Lilligant, Kleavor, Avalugg as I’ve mentioned, Electrode - Ursaluna would asphalt him, though. Together with Basculegion they are his worst enemies. In a fight, of course, I’m well aware they’re on excellent terms.”

Iscan waved a little to reassure him: “The Lord isn’t a big fighter anyways, he probably wouldn’t do too well.”

“Oh, he’d be quite good actually! Plenty of the Nobles would be in trouble against his Water and Ghost combination, he’s rather fiersome! Electrode is the only one to be a total threat to him - those two are probably the ones to look out for the most. Terrific typings, the both of them.”

His sleeve was tugged to take him out of his musings: Lian twisted his mouth at him to properly figure out how to express his question, looking particularly pissed as he side-eyed what Ingo refused to look at but knew was probably a very smug Diamond warden with a burning desire to bury the guy alive, which would have severely worsened not just inter-clan relationships but also the fairly relaxed gathering they were having.

“So - this is all just, theories, right,” the kid began.

“Yes, based on types.”

Lian hummed deeply, pressing his mouth flat, and a fairly well-known feeling he could only denominate as Oh No took over Ingo as he dreaded the question.

“So you could tell who would win between Almighty Palkia and Dialga?”

Now that was something not to be touched with a 25 and a half foot pole, as evidenced by the other Pearl wardens shooting a glare at Lian and most of their Diamond counterparts paling notably.

Ingo, bless his heart, completely lost the religious implications somewhere in the cogs of his battle-analitycal machine churning in his brain.

“That would require an actual battle to be determined, actually!” he answered without missing a beat: “Both of them are Dragon types, meaning they have at the same time a massive advantage and disadvantage on one another, so effectively the chance at one prevailing over the other just based on that is rendered null, and since their secondary typings of Steel and Water are completely neutral to one another, a fight between the two of them would end up being rather balanced. It would also probably be an incredible spectacle with a very high chance of completely tearing reality as we know it apart according to professor Laventon’s studies, so it would be best for them and the rest of the world to remain on good terms and never have the chance to settle the score between them if they had any to settle.”

The young warden mumbled an agreement.

Not the way anybody expected a bomb like that to be defused.

But oh thank fuck it worked!

“What about the third one?” Iscan asked meekly. “The worm?”

Ingo buffered for a second: “Dragon-Ghost,” he recalled. “Same exact situation as the other two. No certain prevailing, and we should hope not to find out.”

“Ghost is good against Ghost, right?” Palina intervened.

The man nodded. A funny thought striked him: “With enough determination, it could be taken down by Basculegion. And by Avalugg as well.”

Gaeric cheered at his Lord’s good honor being restored.

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akirqx · 1 month

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Matchup exchange with @isadollie !

i actually had a hard time deciding between him and iwaizumi hajime but I went with Akaashi Keiji based off of some other things you told me! :)

Slow burn !!! He would take some time to warm up to you when you guys first meet

And I feel like he wouldn’t actually realize his romantic feelings until after a while, but once he notices he can’t help but feel shy around you

Very observant. Once he knows you, he picks up on a lot of your quirks/habits

Like if he notices your social battery starting to run out when you guys are with others, he makes a note to end the conversation fairly quickly.

Definitely the type of person you can just sit in silence with and it won’t be awkward.

He actually loves every meme and reel you send him and appreciates the fact that you text first (since I feel like he wouldn’t text first unless you guys are close)

He takes your feelings very seriously and if anyone ever says something out of line to you he would definitely call them out

He knows you forgive people easily so I feel like he’s always there to remind you to be cautious of said people. And if you aren’t he is.

Just always there for you in general

If you guys are having a conversation with other people and you get ignored or talked over he’s the type to ask you to repeat yourself or tell the others to be quiet so he could hear what you wanted to say

He enjoys when you yap to him because if he’s overthinking it’ll distract him and keep him grounded

He’s usually the one memorizing little details about people so when you actually do the same for him it catches him off guard (in a good way ofc)

I feel like he unintentionally says things that get you flustered and when you tease him back he gets all shy

Like he’s the type to say his favourite color is green just because that’s the color of your eyes

And if he sees you doubting yourself he knows just what to say, its so natural for him

The relationship is just so wholesome

He’s also a fan of literature so if you ever recommend a book you bet he’s going to read it.

Even though he’s more on the quiet side, he makes it evident how much he cares for you through small actions

He appreciates everything you’ve ever gifted him !!

He noticed that you check multiple times to see if you locked your door so he made it a habit to leave after you so he can make sure the door is locked in case you ever did forget

Caries extra of those small hand sanitizers for you

I feel like it’s hard to make him laugh but because it’s you he always chuckles (or at least smiles) at your jokes, even the unfunny ones

Will get protective if someone crosses your boundaries

IM SORRY IT TOOK LONGER THAN EXPECTED😓 I hope you like it !! 🫶🏻

#haikyuu #fluff #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu matchup #matchups #akaashi keiji #akaashi fluff #haikyuu akaashi #akaashi x you #hq akaashi #matchup exchange

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whiskersz · 7 months

Note

I absolutely love your stuff (sent in a matchup and request already) and was wondering if you could do a Husk x reader who almost immediately after seeing him decides that he's their father now (he isn't) the reader is either in their late teens to early 20's and is pretty chaotic and clingy at the same time with them constantly wanting to be around their "father". Have a wonderful day/night!

Hello and thank you so much for appreciating my works! This request was adorable, I went with HCs because I’m a bit uninspired lately? But maybe I’ll add to it in the future :3

Father Figure! Husk x Reader - Platonic

♠ Husk never really thought of being a father, much less in literal Hell. During his life on earth he has always been a bit of a free-spirited individual, travelling from left to right, spending his days in bars and his youth performing magic for others. In Hell, his ‘life’ became a bit more stable, spent inside the Hazbin Hotel serving the residents at the bar, but he still didn’t consider himself a good example or somebody in the condition to care for another soul. So, when you came along and decided to see him out of all demons as a father figure, he was pretty surprised.

♠ Especially considering how different your two personalities are, with him being a grumpy and lazy old man and you being a pretty young and clingy individual, he thought that you two would never get along.

♠ On your first day at the Hotel though, you felt pretty out of place, and the moment he saw you struggling he felt pretty bad for you, so he decided to give you some advice to get along with the others out of the goodness of his heart.

♠ From that moment on, you two became inseparable. Now, you always want to be around your ‘father’, and find excuses to hang out with him at the bar even though he doesn’t allow you to drink alcoholic beverages. He found this a little annoying at first, but with time you and your behaviours grew on him, and he’s always got something non-alcoholic prepared for you on the side!

♠ He also got pretty used to your turbulent personality; if someone questions your behaviour, he'll reply with something along the lines of; "Heh, no need to worry. They're just being themselves."

♠ If you accidentally call him ‘dad’ in front of the others, they will poke fun at you a bit but ultimately think it would be adorable if he was actually your father. Meanwhile he’ll be too stunned to speak; he’ll probably give you a pat on the back and send you on your way, trying not to seem too happy about it, but he’ll be thinking about it all day.

♠ When he went after Angel Dust and came back at the Hotel all beat up, you were very worried for him, and refused to leave his side until all his wounds were completely healed; fortunately the healing process only took a couple hours as they weren’t serious wounds, but you still made him promise to take care of himself and to get into as little fights as possible. He begrudgingly did, giving you a pat on the head.

♠ You also looked out for each other a lot during the Extermination, with him trying to shield you from attacks with his wings and you watching his back while he was occupied fighting against a group of Angels.

♠ He really made sure to let you know how much he appreciates you before the fight, even though he’s not really the type to talk about his feelings. The affection you feel towards him moved him though, so he decided to let his pride aside for once.

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin x reader #x reader #husk x reader #husk hazbin hotel #husk x reader platonic #platonic #hazbin hotel husk #husk hazbin #hazbin hotel

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pinejayy · 6 months

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ꕥ ONE PIECE MATCHUP (part 2)

@firstdivisiongirl || part two for the matchup!! bad guy addition || I match you up with

|| -ˏˋ♥̩͙♥̩̩̥͙♥̩̥̩ ⑅ 𝕽𝖔𝖇 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖈𝖎 ⑅ ♥̩̥̩♥̩̩̥͙♥̩͙ˊˎ

・❥・This cold hearted man is ruthless even when it comes to you. And when Lucci found out you were a hopeless romantic he laughed at your face. I mean this man is mean, and how pathetic do you have to be? To crave for something like love and affection. But he doesn’t know what you did or how you did it but it seems like he’s fallen for your cheap tricks such as being in love. But despite him being cold he does care about you to a certain level. He didn’t know he was even capable of falling for someone, let alone someone below him. But as time goes on this man will soften up for you but of course not in front of other people and definitely not in front of cp9. Him being romantic and intimate is something private and it should just be for the two of you. With that being said he won’t appreciate kisses in public. Maybe a small kiss on your forehead but that’s about it. But please don’t mistaken his harsh cold attitude for anything bad it’s just the way he is. And Lucci is going to do everything in his power to protect you. And considering you’re weak compared to the guy. No offense but he’s going to do everything to protect what’s his and his alone.

・❥・This man can appreciate a good conversation with you. Especially if he’s had a long day of work. He’ll just sulk into his chair and you’ll rub his shoulders and talk to him about your day. Trying to distract him of work and the outside world. He can listen to your voice for hours. And please cook for this guy. And he’s going to be very thankful for it but of course he won’t show it. You’ll just get a simple “Thank you.” And!! This man will spoil the heck out of you!! I mean he would buy anything your heart desires! The most expensive dresses!! Jewelry and makeup!! Even though he seems distant he will love you to the very end.

・❥・HEADCANONS

He prefers having any kind of intimate moments in the privacy of your guys room. When’s he’s in public he won’t be all lovey dovey towards you. But the second you’re alone in a room with him he has his hands all over you. Placing kisses all over you body. And he can’t help it but kiss you hungrily…almost animalistic.

This man can get very pity towards you, if you remotely talk to a other member of cp9 he’ll get jealous and if you try talking to him he’ll just have his bird talk you and of course you get livid. “Don’t have your stupid bird talking for you!!”

He’s definitely a jealous type of guy. You belong to him and him alone. And I can see him using that possessive energy towards you in the bedroom. He’s definitely going to bend you over and make you cry out in pleasure. He’s going to remind you that you belong to him and him alone.

He’s definitely going to spoil you like I said, he can’t have his baby girl wear normal clothes and eat normal food. You’re going to have the most expensive stuff! And honestly I can see him using a lot of pet names to tease you. Like “Baby Girl, Princess, Darling. And his personal favorite is Dear.”

#x reader #headcanons #one piece #op #anime #matchup #matchups #rob lucci #lucci

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crystalelemental · 1 year

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Character Analysis - Carmine and Kieran

I have been trying to write something on this for the majority of the week and haven't been able to organize it in a way I like. So this will not be coherent, but since I've had my second go through the DLC story, I have...a lot more to say on Carmine and Kieran.

Seeking Strength Kieran's big focus by the end is on not being strong enough, and needing to become stronger than you. I think it's largely accepted that this is to defeat you, that he has it out for the protagonist. I disagree.

Consider why strength is important, and when it became clear. The first time Kieran mentions strength, it's in front of the ogre's cave. He talks about wanting to battle, thinking maybe that could impress the ogre. And he loses. Which is whatever, the ogre didn't show. But then it does. To you, and to his sister, but not to him. Internally, the connection is clear: the ogre doesn't trust me, because it sees me as weak.

This goes back even further, though. Think about your introduction to him. Carmine battles you to kick you out, and you win. Carmine's response here is interesting. She comments on everything, and actively makes fun of you if you use a not very effective attack, snarking that you must not know your type matchups after all. She oozes confidence and control, to excess. But when she loses, there's a bit of a fist shake, but rather than anger, she turns away and looks...sad. Losing upsets her, and while she bounces back, that moment suggests a deeper vulnerability and need to seem strong.

And to Kieran, she does. She's constantly in control, and by and large, he seems to follow her pace. If she asks him to do something, and by asks I mean tells, he generally follows through. And he saw someone beat her. There's someone stronger than his sister now. And that's interesting. I think there's a lot more to it, but I'll save that for a later section. For now, the point is, Kieran's always been focused on strength, because he admires Carmine's strength, and wants to be more like that.

I think this recontextualizes your final fight a bit, too. Carmine tells Kieran that he can't make Ogerpon go with him, she has her own will to choose. Kieran still insists he needs this battle, and it seems like the perception of this is "he's ignoring it." But I don't think he is. At this point, he's lost multiple times, each time thinking it's his lack of strength that resulted in him not getting what he wanted. It was, at first, to meet and befriend the ogre. And yeah, he'd still like to. He's still trying, given the stipulations of the fight. But he's also fighting for his sense of self-worth. He feels he's not strong enough, and that lack of strength is holding him back. He's seen his sister lose twice now, yet she's still confident. But he lost, and feels like he's losing more of what little he had to start with.

Belonging and Isolation Carmine's hostility toward outsiders is, as expressed, a matter of feeling like her hometown is becoming a tourist trap. I think what often gets missed in this is that Carmine herself is...fairly traditional. She cares about the customs of the village, the sanctity of the crystal pool, and the prominence of the Loyal Three. She even remarks that obviously she likes the three better, Kieran just likes the ogre because he's a ten year old boy and they're always into weird monster things. She considers integration with the village something important, and deep down, cares about it as a whole.

That's not to say she gets along with everyone. The Caretaker seems more than happy to make the conversion if it helps the town thrive, and Carmine actively disagrees with that. Her hostility is clear to us, and she makes her reason known, but it's not clear how much the villagers seem to understand this. They tend to treat Carmine's responses as part of an attitude problem, more than anything. The Caretaker is pre-emptive in calling out Carmine to get along with everyone. They know she's not happy about it, but expect her to just deal with it, and kinda treat her like they expect problems. Calling them the "Lousy Three" gets an almost exasperated comment about her attitude and a correction, like they fully expect her to be this way, and don't consider the why behind it.

By contrast, Kieran...successfully talks them into abandoning their ancient beliefs and understanding of the past in the course of a single afternoon.

For all the emphasis on Kieran seeming lonely, and I do believe he himself feels that way, Kieran...seems pretty well accepted by people. Think about how significant it is that they're willing to listen to him, with such seriousness, that they'll believe him when he says their understanding of history is wrong.

I think this plays into an interesting dichotomy with the siblings. On the one hand, Kieran is pretty well accepted, but genuinely lonely. On the other, Carmine seems perfectly fine being by herself, and doesn't seem to interface well with the others. But when you look at what they want? Kieran doesn't seem to care that he runs contrary to everything the village stands for. The ogre is cool, he likes that best, and sees little of interest or value in the three. He doesn't really care to integrate with the village. But Carmine does care, and isn't successful at it. By all accounts, she doesn't seem to have friends either. But when a new kid rolls in, and her brother takes an interest in them, she still focuses on him first.

Justice and Fairness Carmine is, at her core, pretty focused on what's right. Despite being more aligned with tradition in her village, when her grandfather reveals the truth, she's immediately furious on Ogerpon's behalf. She has no reservations about telling the rest of the village, until he appeals to her sense of reason, and she understands where the concern might be.

Carmine's reactive, but she's not a fool. She's pretty grounded, but in that way where I think it causes her to miss some things and seem unconcerned with feelings. But she does care about how people feel; quite a bit, really. When Kieran tries to give his ogre mask to you, Carmine intervenes and tells him not to. That's his favorite mask, and he shouldn't have to go without. Besides, practically speaking, we just buy the new kid a mask they like at the festival. It's pragmatic. But it also misses that Kieran was okay with sharing his mask for his friend. She cares about his feelings, enough to worry about him giving up something he cares about. But it's in a more...avoidant sense. More on that later.

By contrast, Kieran seems focused more on fairness. It doesn't matter the reason or intent, you left him out of what you knew. You didn't tell him about the ogre. You ran off with Carmine and pushed him aside, and that's not fair. He was your friend first, and he cared about the ogre first, and it isn't fair that suddenly that all doesn't matter. In that sense, he's very emotional, but doesn't really consider the rational cause of things. It's all about how he feels. This runs very counter to how Carmine is, being very emotional, but focusing more on the practical reason than how she's feeling.

I think you can also see this in how they express themselves. Kieran has no trouble opening up the instant you're on your own with him. He'll tell you all about how he thinks the ogre is cool, and that he was only scared of getting yelled at for going to the mountain. But Carmine legitimately struggles with it. She has a tough time being honest with people, and her sense of what being mean to someone is, boils down to "I didn't hit him." It's as if she doesn't really understand that her words can hurt people, or perhaps why someone would be hurt by them. The idea of "What you're saying was rude" is secondary to the practical outcome. If it's true, it doesn't matter how I say it. If it's what has to happen, it doesn't matter that it comes out as "Kiki, get out of here." Her mentality seems to be that she knows best, and is going to act on that, and there's no reason for people to be upset with her if she's right.

Sibling's Bond In one of the earliest scenes, we get a very good sense for the dynamic the siblings have. Kieran has taken an interest in the player, but barely speaks to them, turning his face away and not even listening to them. Carmine intervenes by explaining what he's thinking and asking for you to battle on his behalf. Kieran shies away, Carmine takes control, and Kieran is more than willing to cede that control to her. In this situation, it works out, as he gets to spend time with a new friend. It is the first, and only, time this dynamic works in their favor.

Every other instance of this particular dynamic coming into play hurts more than helps. When Carmine interrupts you talking about the ogre, and insists Kieran not find out, that's her assuming control like usual. Same with telling him to just leave the next morning. Kieran shies away from staying to help with the mask quest, rather than confront that someone else gets along better with Ogerpon. This is a dynamic they've had for a long while, and there is evidence to prove it.

"I hate when he gets like this." Carmine's clearly annoyed, but the phrasing evokes the sense that this isn't just something that happened before, it's happened often. And she's not happy about it. Kieran running off crying is the only time she really expresses anything truly negative about her brother, and it's telling of what she herself can't handle.

If Kieran's crying, it's because something's bothered him, and as the one who takes care of him, that feels like it's her fault. I talked about how Carmine is integrated with the beliefs of the village, if not its people, but there's a bit more to it. Carmine's generally apathetic about whether people like her, she's more concerned with being right, and doing right. Carmine cares about being a good person. And if her brother's throwing a fit, it's putting her in the position of the bad guy, and criticisms about being nice to him evoke an outrage. "It's not like I hit him" isn't just telling of her lack of awareness for how her words come across, it's indignation that her grandfather is implying she's at fault. Kieran crying is the one thing that she cannot tolerate.

And for Kieran, that makes it a very effective play. Because I keep going, I need to be clear: I am not saying Kieran is being manipulative. He's like ten, and highly emotional. He's not sitting around thinking that if he just cries, Carmine will do whatever he wants. He's just having an emotion, and Carmine has a reaction. It's the dynamic that turns this into a recurring feature of their relationship.

The behavioral term is Negative Reinforcement: an outcome that increases the chance of the behavior occurring in the future, by removing an aversive stimulus. When Kieran wants something, and it doesn't happen, he'll get emotional and cry. Carmine, feeling guilty or responsible, folds to make him stop. The initial aversive - not getting what he wants - is removed as a consequence of his crying, making it more likely to occur again. But the same is true for Carmine. She cannot stand that crying, so when she gives in, the crying stops, reinforcing capitulation.

It's a situation where neither is really at fault. They're both kids, and have that sibling dynamic. Older siblings take care of the younger ones. When you have an older sibling who feels responsible for the wellbeing of the younger, and cares deeply about taking care of them without knowing the difference between "helping them do it" and "doing it for them," you get Carmine. When you have a younger sibling who is particularly emotional and withdrawn alongside them, you get Kieran.

And the DLC is the breakdown of this dynamic.

Another really fun behavioral term: Extinction Burst. Extinction refers to when reinforcement is removed as a consequence of a behavior. Effectively, you decouple the behavior and what typically happens. An extinction burst is the oft emotional blowup that comes as a result of a behavior no longer meeting its typical, expected reinforcer. Think about when your computer won't turn on. How many times mashing the button does it take before you check the power cord? Do you stay calm during that or start cursing it out, maybe worrying that something's broken and desperately hoping it turns on if you just hit it right, or hold it long enough? That's the extinction burst in play.

That's what's going on with Kieran. He's finding his independence, but as part of that, he's learning what it means to have it. Sometimes things don't go your way, and you have to live with that. Even crying won't get the situation to change now, and he...hasn't figured out what else to do. Unintentionally, by handling things for him, Carmine's left him in a situation where he's unequipped to manage circumstance. All he can think is pushing for strength, and battling you over and over and over in hopes that this time, he'll win.

By contrast, Carmine's doing...really well. She adapts well, makes quick friends with the player as well, assumes a sort of leadership role in the quest, and demonstrates the reality that for all her bluster, she does care and is fairly well adjusted. She's had the experience to manage frustrations and setbacks, even if they're difficult, to the point that by the end of your last battle, she can earnestly smile and congratulate you. Her dynamic with you is thriving. And, for a while, your dynamic with Kieran was too, before his perception of inadequacy interferes. It's sad but worth noting: the happiest we see either of them is when they're away from each other.

I don't have any profound thoughts beyond this, nor guesses to how Indigo Disk might play out. But I think it's interesting how they managed to create a story with a compelling conflict, where these is no true "bad guy." I was initially kinda down on the DLC, I felt like the legendary stuff was kinda bland. But I've really come around on these two, and look forward to the next part.

#pokemon #carmine #kieran #teal mask #pokemon scarlet and violet

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yxstxrdrxxm · 8 months

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SYNOPSIS: To Lyney, secrets must be kept hidden. Maybe it's why, in the end, this 'love' feels like a sense of betrayal.

TW/s: Yandere behavior, Lyney becomes a bit of a ‘detective’ lol, toxic sibling dynamic (not inc/st god fucking no, just twisted morals on siblings + family), Lyney is fucked up and deranged. NSFW warnings include mentions of graphic description of violence, puppet moment™, implied trafficking (might not be here but be warned), arson, the whole nine yards.

NOTE FROM HR: A matchup with ties to the background of MixMatch… How curious. Now, this may be tame from some of these entries, but be warned, there may be things that can trigger someone.

Lyney is one of those that people underestimate a lot more than they’d like to admit. And for one thing, they wouldn’t be blamed… Much.

After all, he looked quite innocent, and wouldn’t seem to be the type to have any malicious intent for those he’s with. Which, if they knew him well, they would see that it’d be the biggest lie they’ve ever been told in all of history.

Including himself, ironically enough.

To Lyney and his siblings, he's a dead man walking. His intentions are not as pure, but his ambitions make up for it. All he wanted was to provide answers and insights for their Father, Arlecchino, and if it meant they had to work in the establishment… So be it.

This led to him speaking to Eros and Cupid—both matchmakers who, in his eyes, never signed up for the changes they were presented in front of them. In Cupid’s case, they were simply hired for the sake of alluding the crowd with the potential of MixMatch, and with who they can be with. Sure, the selection is tight and there’s been shady scandals in the past with Celestia Inc., but it was all fine, right?

As for Eros, he gathered from Freminet when he was speaking to her that he’s in charge of what goes truly with the ‘transactions’ from both client and rented ‘boyfriend’. She even mentioned how Cupid is also tied into it as the messenger, which was an irony, considering the Boss had his days numbered due to such an exploit before both came to work.

Speaking of, he was seeing them both now to see who his match is, and it looks like he got a catfish— courtesy of Cupid telling him and was now apologizing rapidly because the person he was matched it never really existed. It looked like they were groveling on his feet for forgiveness.

What a sorry sight.

…

How odd, mused Lyney, as he noticed the bandage on Cupid’s left cheek. It looked like something happened there, but he knew he couldn’t bring it up, lest it’d spark up suspicion that he was ‘looking into things he shouldn’t be’.

“No need to apologize,” he told them, watching them frown and shake their head once more. “Please, I must apologize for this mix-up. Eros and I were working overtime to set up these matches for you and everyone, and I feel as though it's my responsibility for what happened. Please forgive me, Lyney. You were meant to be with someone else.”

Someone else?

“Well, what’s done is done, little Cupid,” he says, patting their head. “You’re still getting used to things, so I’m sure I’ll be able to manage who you assigned me to. Now, you were saying that it’s ████████, right?”

“Yes, ████████. We don’t know their full name, but maybe you’d know them better than I do—you did tell us that you knew them.”

“Oh, that I do,” he added, his eyes twinkling as he reached to tilt his hat. “In fact, I met them long, long ago. It’s such an irony that now I’m matched with them. I thought that man would keep them locked shut in his little ‘team’.”

“I’m… Sorry?”

“Haha, nothing! Anyway, where are they? Did they tell you where they’d go?”

When Lyney managed to reach the venue, he had a few things in mind. Catfishing is never taken lightly in the corporation, and they were taught how to deal with those who pretended to be certain people and ditched when they had to meet their match.

The one thing, though, is that he had additional help.

"So, you're sure that the catfish used a fake profile to try and get into the bigwigs of MixMatch?" asked Lynette, raising an eyebrow as she watched him prepare for the surprise he had. "And here I thought that Father warned us to not be too rash. We still have a few things we needed to keep an eye on while you're working for them."

"I know that, Lynette, but I can't help myself! Having to impersonate someone and even getting my hopes up... Only to strike it down is a crime," he said, but the twins knew that he was merely pretending. With a sigh, he placed his hand on his heart, the other one holding some wire cutters.

"Oh well. It's not like it'll be such a bother, not with the bag of tricks we carried. Isn't that right, Lynette?"

"... You brought me with you, though."

"Ahaha! Nonsense! Besides, it's not just you. Freminet is with us, but he's working on the distraction as we three discussed," Lyney tutted, sauntering to the house and preparing the surprise. "Now, Lynette, would you be a dear and help your big brother cause some mayhem?"

The latter sighed. She knew her brother wouldn't back down for his need of doing something 'fun', and especially when his 'fun' involved committing enough crimes and getting suspicious people back to their... Hideout.

"... Fine," she muttered, donning a mask as she went to the back door. "Don't mess this up, brother. We need to be swift before people catch sight of us 'cleaning' this house up."

"Oh, I know."

When she was in position, he was quick to cut the wires, letting the lights go out inside the house. The voices coming from within were muffled, but he could already hear the anticipation from them. Tossing the wire cutters back to the bag, he grabbed a few things and heard a few thumps— that must mean that Lynette has done her part.

A sound of breaking glass, panicked voices, and he managed to get to the door. It was already unlocked, courtesy of their carelessness to locking the damn door, and he had simply tossed bombs that looked like mice. He could simply relish the screams as they went off, magenta smoke, sparkles, and splatters coming out when its timer reached zero.

He could hear them panic as she done quick work from the inside, the fumes travelling upwards and to the second floor, causing the house to be fogged up. Counting down a few seconds, he grabbed a few more and sent the next batch in.

Their plan was to cause a bit of mayhem as they 'cleaned' up the place. After all, their tricks only served to have cause the illusion, and it was nothing more than that. Although, the crime of impersonation and fooling him, an illusionist, is far bigger than those that the judge would state in the entire expanse of Teyvat.

After a few bombs, some things exploding and the fire starting from the inside and glass smashing, he saw Lynette come out with a body. Seems like she was unconscious too. With a nod, the twins left the house as swiftly as they came, but not without the illusionist tossing one more surprise.

A plush.

Upon making contact with the flames leaking from inside the house, it seem to blow up from the seams, wrecking it even more and urging the flames to consume more than the house as they escaped.

Running down to the streets below, Lynette caught whiff of soot and the special (flammable) smoke they made and scowled.

"Did you really have to use that?" she asked, scoffing. "You smell rancid in that."

"Hah! Like you're one to talk, my dear sister," he taunted back, lugging the bag up as they both saw Freminet coming out from the phone booth. He was carrying a receiver and his mechanical penguin, though his face looked rather grim.

"Lynette, Lyney... ██████ is calling us."

Their faces became serious.

"What is it?"

"I'm... Not sure. She said that we need to come back... Urgently. It's about the suitors and their involvement."

Lynette remained stone-faced. Sparing a glance to Lyney, she adjusted her grip on the body.

"I see. I'll be returning post-haste. Brother, can you make it there in 3 days?"

Lyney seems hesitant, but he nodded. If ██████ needed them, then he had to settle a few issues in the corporation. Turning his gaze to the watch, his brows furrowed at the time they had left.

"I need to return to Celestia Inc. Lynette, Freminet, please inform him that I need to file a leave before I can get there. After all, I am still apart of the corporation, and it'd be bad if the boss caught on."

The two nodded.

"Of course. I'm sure ██████ will understand."

If not, they have their methods to do such a thing.

It was 3 days too late when the meeting was set, but ██████ didn't mind when the oldest was late. After all, the company he was tied with willingly wouldn't allow any sort of leave unless there was definite proof of such a thing.

"Lyney, do you have any updates for the clients matched with you and the other 'suitors'?"

Lyney bowed, his expression remaining serious as he looked up towards her.

"██████, some of the clients have been killed by them. The others wound up missing, and no one knows where they are. Asking the two 'matchmakers' yielded no results either, as they are uninvolved of the process."

"I see. Lynette, how are the others that we've 'rescued'?"

"They are safe, ██████," she replied, lowering her head as she bowed alongside Lyney. "Some are a bit shaken as they didn't expect it to happen, but the suitors who saved them are cagey. A few have threatened me and Freminet from getting too close to them because of the danger that we 'possess' to them."

How interesting.

"And for those who were killed?"

"Buried 6 to 12 feet under. Some are left in docks and inside wells," Lyney was the next to respond. "There are others who's faces were mutilated. It was troublesome to confirm their faces. And the rest..."

"... I see."

██████ placed down the folder full of evidence she had. Most of it had been from the clients, and it came from one of the two sources itself.

"██████, what should we do? Freminet and I have our matches, but we can't be sure that the boss wouldn't try and assign them with someone else if he catches on."

"No need to worry, Lyney."

Grabbing one of the papers, the three could see ██████ smile.

"After today, that company will be in ruins. All I need is to tip off a few investigators and act as an 'unknown' source, and everything will fall into place."

It was a wonder for the three, Lyney included, for how devious ██████ can be. But they all nodded and bowed once again, concluding the meeting.

If there was one thing that Celestia Inc. didn't took account for, it would be the growing restlessness of their workers and those who managed to 'get in' without suspicion.

Just like in chess, the King is in position. Every other unit is now in place.

All it needs is a scapegoat to start the domino effect.

@.throw-letter-away | do not republish or repost my works anywhere | 2024

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