#kakisugu

[chaoticreivingu]

There's no way to sugarcoat this, Drayton and Kieran act like bitter exes that went through a really bad breakup and use the player to get back at each other, with Kieran wanting to move on and Drayton wanting to get back together with him(he really sucks at communication though).

Seriously though, Drayton and Kieran have a lot of paralells in canon that imply they at least are supposed to be complementary to each other. Examples of this include:

Their designs(Drayton has golden eyes, white on purple hair and a black jacket, Kieran has yellow eyes, black on purple hair and a white jacket)

Not having highlights on their eyes(temporarily in the case of Kieran)

Similar tastes in food

Wearing the same kind of tank top

Their hometowns either being similar or direct opposites to one another

Their ace Pokemon being next to each other in the Pokedex and allegedly meant to resemble Black City and White Forest respectively

Not only that, but they seem to have similar pasts as well, being part of a famous lineage in their hometown, then getting rejected by the one they admire most in favor of an extremely talented foreign prodigy who understands Pokemon's hearts better than they ever did.

This imo really seemed like Drayton was speaking from personal experience, to drive home the emotional understanding they could have. Maybe that's why he's been held back for 3 years? A mix of being burnt out, running away from his family and giving up on himself, submitting to being a slacker since he's already the black sheep anyway.

Bonus sketch of the epilogue Drayton/Kieran dynamic in a nutshell:

Credit to Calem MrNazreenni for the playthrough screencaps.

[chaoticreivingu]

Tl;dr Drayton is rigid and dishonest about himself and it fucks up his relationships with people

With how accusatory and intrusive the way Drayton talks with the player is I always felt like he harbored a little resentment towards us for changing Kieran. Not even by turning him into an edgelord but changing him in general.

He definitively has a problem with stagnation, so whenever change occurs he wants whatever change happened to be gone at all costs.

And it's probably because he was lowkey infatuated by a person that he'll never see again.

This is so sentimental, he's seriously pining for the old Kieran here.

In the japanese version he even tries to recompose himself only to fawn over Old Kieran again.

So ever since the start of the DLC he's been using us for his goals since we kinda "caused" this change to happen and also because we're literally the only ones who can fix this issue. But the way Drayton goes about it is frankly pretty naive?

Like he's so sure of his plan that he thought the "Ex-Champion" line would bring Kieran "back to his senses again". That he genuinely would respond to that burn with "You're right Duwurayton I'm not a champion let's be bfs besties again".

It's only when Kieran starts crying that he sees that not only did it not work but this whole scheme might've worsened their relationship in the long run.

No wonder he feels a bit bummed out at the end, in his mind all of this(using the player, getting the others to mistrust him, mocking Kieran) was for nothing. Kieran is no longer an edgelord but he still changed. No matter how hard he tries the exact version of the person that he so desperately wanted won't come back and he has to accept that.

And yet he still has to maintain the status quo aka his pretend "idgaf" attitude.

It's probably why in between the Ex-Champions he genuinely asks Kieran if he's been eating or if anything's wrong. Even if he's changed Drayton can't bring himself to hate him no matter how he's like.

So when Kieran asks why he keeps doing this he can't bring himself to talk about his true thoughts. So he masks with a cool one liner to maintain the Drayton Image.

Credit to Calem MrNazreenni for the playthrough screencaps.