#whoops i actually did not mean to post this yet

[skynobi]

lukeleias brainrot below

[xiepheer]

Hey this is just something for fun but I was wondering if you could write beast cookies with a reader who has a fat pet raccoon and that pet is basically like there kid ^^ (sorry for any spelling mistakes it’s late)

Beast cookies and their s/o with a fat pet racoon

Reader can be any gender!

Now being with all of them all together, they have realized something.

You have grown overly attached to the pet fat racoon you have.

They don't understand your tactics with this creature of yours but they think they could handle it.

They think.

They thought wrong and right.

Now all of this fight started when Burning Spice cookie was about to throw the thing out the window but you stopped him in time.

"Burning Spice cookie!!!?" You yell out which made him freeze his tracks before turning around with a angry expression.

"What?! This puny little thing scratched my soul jam gem!!" He yelled out loud.

"There's no need to be all angry and throwing him out! Give him!" You yelled back, snatching the big fat racoon into your arms and snuggling it to your chest.

"I'm gonna destroy that puny little thing!!! Just so you wait and see!!!" he yelled.

You carried the racoon back to your room and pet it all day meanwhile Burning Spice cookie was all upset and was trying to get the scratch off.

He does NOT understand why you treat the racoon like your kid when you can actually have some with him (😳 whoops).

Over time, he eventually got used to the racoon and even petted it sometimes if he wasn't out there destroying villages.

The beef with Mystic Flour cookie and the racoon started when it jumped on her and scratched her silky veil.

You immediately jumped in and grabbed the racoon.

She was heavily offended at the tear.

She even tried to turn the racoon into flour and that's when she realized.

The racoon isn't baked with flour.

So she couldn't do anything to it.

"Why must you keep such a strange creature here?" She asked. She clearly looks frustrated and upset at the fact that her veil was teared.

"Because eve he's so fluffy and such a stress reliever! Pet him!" You said, handing it out to her.

She eventually gave up on the idea of trying to make it turn into flour and let it rest on her lap.

Now she did gain relief upon time and got used to it being everywhere.

She just doesn't understand why you treat it like your own child.

Now her petting it is a VERY rare sight but you only catch her in her room when you're trying to find your pet.

Now you find Shadow Milk cookie trying to strangle the racoon to death but couldn't because of how fat it is.

"WHAT!? HOW!!? EUGHHH!!" He grunted as he tried. Burning Spice cookie and Mystic Flour just watched.

"Yeah I tried that before, didn't work." Burning Spice cookie said.

"MYSTIC FLOUR COOKIE!!! IT'S MADE OUT OF FLOUR ISN'T IT?!?!" Yelled by Shadow Milk cookie.

Mystic Flour cookie simply turned her head to Shadow Milk cookie and "No"

"What's up with you and that racoon anyways" Burning Spice cookie asked.

"IT RIPPED MY FAVORITE BUNNY PLUSH TOY'S HEAD OFF!!!!" He yelled

"Bunny... Plush... Toy?" Burning Spice snickered.

"WHAT. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO I DIDINT MEAN THAT!" Shadow Milk cookie exclaimed

"What's going on here?- NO NO NO!!" You exclaimed. Running and pushing Shadow Milk cookie off your fat racoon.

Shadow milk cookie slammed onto the wall like a cartoon did with a splat sound (I like this headcanon)

You carried the racoon to your lap and gave it the affections like how a parent would to their child.

Shadow Milk cookie tried many ways to get rid of it but he gave up 4 months later.

He would have it on his lap. Which was a relief and not trying to kill it.

Apparently you find out that the racoon was too fat that his strings couldn't find the nerves imbeded in the fat and couldn't control it.

So he basically gave up.

Eternal Sugar cookie and Silent Salt Cookie are still somewhere cuz they haven't gotten home yet.

Hey guys ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂)⸝♡

Sorry if the post felt a little something but I felt autistic and tried to make this funny.

So sorry if this isn't Canon or if you don't like it! I'm so so SO SORRY 😭 😭 🙏

[crescenthistory]

Second part for this fic? https://www.tumblr.com/crescenthistory/768959098903527424/can-u-do-a-remus-x-reader-where-they-are-best 😋😋😋😋😋

hi darling! i think you're asking me to comment on the fic for my 2k celebration, which i will happily do<33 but i won't write a full-fledged part two, mostly because i don't think there's that much more to write for them!

✶・•・✦・•・✶・✶・•・✦・•・✶

i will COMMENT on "A Little Push" with remus lupin

carina's 2k celebration

✶・•・✦・•・✶・✶・•・✦・•・✶

At the end of the fic, Remus and reader decide to become official and kiss to seal the deal – and then we have a little "post-credits" scene where Remus thanks Sirius

I've always found it funny to picture how Remus goes about getting from the confession scene to the hug scene

A suggestion:

Remus can't seem to get enough of your kisses now that they're free for him to take – though his hands are still trembling from the adrenaline, you're laughing into each other's mouths and kissing over and over happily.

"I cannot believe it," Remus murmured, moving to hold you tight against him in an embrace that resembled the hugs you used to share, but this time crossing the boundary into intimate that he always dreamed of. "I- I just cannot believe it."

"I mean, if you want I can just leave–" you began to tease, but were cut off by another onslaught of kisses and giggles.

"Cheeky minx," he laughed against you, holding you closer so you couldn't escape. "Do you want to know what's worst?"

You hummed in approval, letting your fingers glide up into his hair.

"That, after all this time, this – us – was Sirius' doing."

You snorted, pulling away just enough to look at him. "You should be thanking him really, because I had no idea."

Remus frowned and ducked his head to hide in the crook of your neck, nose burying into the soft skin there. "I kinda have to, don't I?"

You furrowed your brows. "You don't actually have to–"

Your brushing it off was yet again cut off, but this time by Remus pulling completely away from you and grabbing your shoulders. He gave you a dead-serious look, nodding gravely. "I'll be right back, my love."

With a quick kiss, he was out the door before you could think, leaving you to shake your head over how dramatic this group of friends was.

Downstairs, Sirius was steeling himself, prepared to get scolded and maybe even jinxed for his meddling

When he received a tight hug and confirmation instead, this boy did what he did best – he was loud, hollering and screaming with joy

I believe these were the reactions around:

"Sirius, what the fu- wait, are they finally together? HELL YEAH!"

Consequently, all witnesses joined in on the mini celebration, leaving Remus very flustered and red

At this point, the party has tied down, leaving mostly their close 7th year friends

This was not what Remus intended, though he probably should have expected it

I imagine you're sitting on Remus' bed when you hear the hollers and get a fond, lovestruck grin plastered all over your face

You walk out and lean over the bannister to the common room, looking down at the scene with an arched brow

"I assume everyone knows now?"

All attention turns to you and Remus opens his mouth – probably to apologise, poor boy – but he gets interrupted by Sirius whoop-ing loudly

Remus, now red as a beet, wrenches free of Sirius' grasp, stopping only to rough up his hair before running towards the stairs

He takes them two-three steps at a time despite his creaking hips and once he reaches you, he spins you around in his arms and carries you away towards the seclusion of his dorm

His laugh is carefree and boyish for once, seeking refuge from the watchful eye of his mates

You're utterly in love

[tyrantisterror]

After making my first favorite princess, The Thorn, tonight I made my third favorite, The Spectre! Now, you may be thinking, "That's not a logical progression," but I assure you it is! See, some of the fabric I picked for the Spectre is ALSO fabric I want to use for my second favorite princess, Happily Ever After, because Happily Ever After has the most fancy and multi-layered dress of all the princesses, and the more different fabrics, the better. But I didn't want to over use any of the fabric for the Spectre, so I figured it was better to make her first so I could be sure I had enough, and use the leftovers to add to HEA (in part because I still have, like, five OTHER different fabrics for her, greedy thing).

Besides, this popularity contest for my heart is an incredibly close race - all these princesses are just facets of the same woman/elder god, after all. And, like, the Spectre does hold the distinction of being the incarnation that made me decide once and for all that I had to save this woman in my first run of Slay the Princess (well, of the completed version that came out before the Pristine Cut, I mean - technically my first runs were of, like, the demos that only the first chapter and the intro of the second chapters).

SPOILERS IN THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS

See, you get the spectre by ACTUALLY slaying the princess in one go and surviving like a remorseless murderer, only to realize your reward is sitting in an empty room forever, which sucks ass, and then deciding to, uh, take the same way out the princess got. You return to the cabin and find out, surprise, she's a ghost now . While she (rightfully!) guilts you for killing her just because some asshole told you to, she makes it clear she doesn't want revenge - she wants a way out of the shitty cabin you were just stuck in one lifetime ago. So she gives you a choice: let her possess your body and hitch a ride as a way of apology for, you know, murdering her, and then you both can be free.

And if you agree to it - a big ask, given that you have no assurance she'll keep her word and, y'know, you did KILL her so she definitely has a reason to hurt you - she keeps true to her word. Better yet, she actually defends you when the Narrator critiques you for helping her, telling him that you're a good person trying to make things right after you fucked up, which is a remarkable amount of grace to be given by a person you fucking murdered. This cemented for me that the Princess is truly honest with you in the beginning - she doesn't want to destroy the world, she doesn't want to hurt you, she just wants freedom. After that, it was ride or die - I would not end this game without freeing her too.

...whoops, slipping back into gabbing about the game again. I did enough of that in February, let's get back to the sculpture.

Unfortunately, they do not, to my knowledge, make translucent pipecleaners (and if such a thing did exist it would probably not be within my crafting budget), so I could not make her match the semi-corporeal look she had in the game even if I bought only translucent cloth. So I had to settle for just her dress being made of translucent cloth, which I then had to layer up to hell and back to hide the fact that it was covering a partially pipecleaner skeleton. There are four pipecleaner tentacles hidden beneath all that shredded fabric to make it semi-articulate and malleable (and to connect it to her torso).

Two down, five to go!

...ok I feel bad that I rambled about why I love the Spectre and didn't do it for the Thorn when I posted her model, so I'm just going to add a post script to amend that.

SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING RAMBLE

The Thorn is the best princess because you get to actually sit down with her and really talk about all this bullshit you've both been through - the shitty situation you were thrust into, the shitty things you've both done out of fear and self-preservation, the way you've hurt each other and yet also depend on each other to get out. All the princesses have great moments where you can come to terms with them, to be fair, but I find the Thorn's the most satisfying because you can own up to all the shit you've done and tell her - honestly - that you intend to do better, and she does the same.

AND THEN YOU SMOOCH.

[vimbry-moved]

long transcript below

JF: you know, I was on- on twitter last night, and uh, you know occasionally when, you know, people leave... posts that are impossible to comprehend, you actually have to seek out, you know, who posted it? and the person who posted it wrote that they were: "shy AF". [audience laughter] and I still don't know what that could possibly mean. [more laughter]

JL: it's "auto-focus". it's a photography term. [laughter]

JF: it's all circling back to (JL: yes, to photography) just what we were talking about a moment ago. so, d- you uh, you just slept today. you slept, you did nothing?

JL: um, you know. I- I lay exhausted, next to my wife, and we- we had one of those conversations where you're just like, "(slurring) yeah, so uh-tha- that was weird. there we were on tour... and we were in... Sa-... Saskaphone, I think it's called?" [laughter]

JF: I, uh, I presented my wife with our very first piece of taxidermy. [laughter and cheers]

JL: yeah, how did- we discussed this earlier in the tour. you were not sure how Robin was gonna go for it?

JF: it's definitely one of those "take it or leave it" things? you know, I mean, taxidermy, come on, people. it's kind of- it's sort of a horrible idea. [laughter]

JL: yes. and yet, how endearing. (JF: yeah) and wonderful.

JF: so, I went to this, uh, antiques (junk) store, and found this very small piece of, uh... I'm not sure what actual animal it's supposed to be. it looks just like a tiger, if a tiger was this big. [laughter] and uh, we have determined that it will, uh- there's a special nook at the top of the stairs in the basement, where it will reside. [audience and JL laughter]

the big problem is that, if you get something like taxidermy, you either, like- you're either gonna lose the friends you have [laughter], or you're gonna have to move on to all new friends, who might... might be a little bit creepier than your current friends. [more laughter]

JL: right. but you could- you could taxidermy your old friends, so you still get to keep them. [loud audience laughter and applause] have all your- everything. keep it all.

JF: ... John, it's that kind of outside thinking that keeps this band fresh! [loud cheers and applause]

JL: think about it. problem solved!

JF: what's a little bit of cannibalism among friends! [laughter]

JL: (laughing) I didn't say- (quietly) I just said- (normal) I just said stuff them.

JF: (laughing) oho, I'd say- I'd say eat them! with a delicious--

JL: -- see, that's where--

JF: -- béarnaise sauce, I would say! [whooping]

JL: that's the basis of our collaboration--

JF: -- I would, I would, I would--

JL: -- I say "taxidermy", you say "eat". (JF: yes) (unintelligible). [laughter]

JF: I would say pair that with a nice white wine from the Loire Valley. [quiet laughter] ... so people, we got 2 sets! [cheering] but only- but only 1 epically long conversation at the beginning of the show. [laughter] so, we're gonna just, uh, you know roll up the uh, taxidermy chat, and say this was another episode of "inappropriate things to say in a public forum" (JL: yes). [cheering]

[elyvorg]

Kieran Part 2: It’s All About YOU

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

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

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

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

The gaping pit of inferiority

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blueberry Academy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Changing himself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being Champion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drayton and Carmine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unexpected reunion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Elite Four challenge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE BATTLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything falls apart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sudden legendary hunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journey through Area Zero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outburst at the crystal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catching Terapagos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trying to beat you with Terapagos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terapagos goes berserk

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facing the gaping pit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letting it go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[unhinged-domestic-raccoon]

Miraculous Rewatch Where I Overanalyze Everything: Copycat

Warning! The last point on this post gets salty! It's appropriately marked.

Hang on hang on hang on. So Marinette says "I know who'll have Adrien's number!" and then she immediately calls Alya. Now. I'd like to know why Alya has Adrien's number in this episode. This is well before DJWifi gets together. She's not really friends with Nino at this point in time. Not more than she's friends with anybody else in the class anyways. Like, watching it back in retrospective, my first thought was "oh she probably got it from Nino," but even without my weird Netflix order, this is still extremely early in the show, and she and Nino really don't hang out that much.

As a kid, I think I assumed what's actually happening here: Alya's just a real social butterfly. She's gregarious and nice and never knows when she's gonna need to interview someone for her journalism stuff, so she makes sure to keep in good contact with everybody. This is as opposed to Marinette who, while friendly enough, is anxious and weird and also actually has a sort-of job (helping her parents in the bakery), and gets picked on by Chloe and Kim and Sabrina, so she's less integrated into the group.

Anyways, possibilities for Alya & Adrien friendship here!

Continued Under the Cut:

Remember what I said about Marinette being an extremely relatable 15 year old? Yeah. I would and have thrown my phone after having to leave a scary voicemail. Even if I did okay. I just want that thing out of my sight. No more people-ing, it's the worst.

ADRIEN'S PHONE BACKGROUND IS A PICTURE OF HIM AND NINO!!!!

This is too cute! Adrino nation rise, you have been summoned! This is a level of cuteness that even Alya and Marinette don't have (at least not yet)---we know from Mr. Pigeon that Alya's background is a bunch of ladybugs and Marinette's is a sewing collage.

Adrien laughing and whooping to himself while he jumps across the rooftops as Chat is precious to me. Just an amazing character moment. He really enjoys being Chat Noir, even when there's not necessarily anybody to be performing for.

(Sorry for the blurry paused screenshot lol)

So hang on wait. If the fencing class takes place AT the school, does that mean Adrien was coming here for fencing even when he was homeschooled? I mean, that absolutely makes sense---plenty of homeschoolers joined us for extracurriculars in my high school. But this does interest me, because it means Adrien isn't as isolated and new to this whole "school" thing as I think we all assume. He already has acquaintances that go to the same school as him. He could absolutely be eating lunch with the fencing club.

This just makes it even more baffling to me that it feels like the only person Adrien is at all close with is Nino. Even if he's not allowed to go to any parties or hang out sessions, you still talk during practice. They've got to know some stuff about him. More than a lot of the class does. I mean I know why they don't---having a second large cast of colorful and fleshed out side characters is a huge waste of time in the story and of the animation budget. But it's still really jarring that all of these people are just. Completely ignored. In fanon and canon.

IDK guys, I just feel like this needs to come up at some point. We need to take a bunch of extras and OCs and throw them on the fencing club.

WOW! The absolute DISRESPECT Theo has for Chat! He fully just sculpted a statue of Ladybug STANDING ON TOP OF HIM! If that isn't a backhanded compliment, I don't know WHAT is.

Hmmmm, this is interesting. So for context, my favorite episode of Miraculous is Oblivio, which I have watched I think 6 or 7 times. In that episode, Marinette does a trick where she breathes on the phone to see the fingerprint swipe glare from the unlock screen. I feel like it's exactly this incident that made her think ahead and learn that trick. She does try to learn from situations!

Oh my gosh, Alya being completely chill with thievery is extremely funny to me! Look at her face when Marinette says she stole Adrien's phone and when she says Chat just robbed the Louvre! She is not at all scandalized, just excited. This is actually hilarious, and not really a character trait I would have given her, but she does have 3 sisters, so it kind of makes sense. Getting her stuff stolen is probably pretty ordinary and not a big deal, as long as they give it back. I love this about her so much, this is great.

Plagg, my beloved, my favorite smelly cheese gremlin. I feel that in my soul. Getting dragged away from relaxing with a yummy snack because you have to go to work is the worst. And his little face! Someday Plagg. Someday you will actually be successful at eating your cheese.

Roger being the face of the ACAB movement again! "Let the professionals handle it." WHAT DO YOU THINK SHE IS!!!??? We know Marinette isn't exactly a well-trained superhero, but HE certainly doesn't! And even if he did, and even if Chat did commit the crime: That is still a superhero with superpowers! You seriously think a bunch of regular dudes are gonna be able to handle him? Clearly not! He demonstrates that they very clearly cannot! Ladybug IS the professional in this situation! I know she has demonstrated MULTIPLE times at this point that she is the professional! Stop being a stuffed-up self-righteous egotistical twit!

Sorry, I think I may have lied in my masterpost when I said I don't hate any of the characters in this show. I hate Roger <3. They could never make me like you Roger <3.

(I mean, I know I lied because Su-Han exists and I hate him on every conceivable level, but he's in one and a half episodes, he doesn't count).

That was so smooth! "I'm clearly better than him," PSSHHH. Our boy just needed to get you off-guard for two seconds before he owned you. More of this please. I like it when Chat just absolutely wrecks shop with the akumas, it's always funny.

Speaking of getting owned! When the duo fights this guy they don't just beat him, they come for his whole career! Gotta humiliate him by stringing him up on the ceiling too! And they are smiling and laughing during this whole scene.

This is actually a pretty regular feature of the show that does NOT come up in fandom enough: LadyNoir are SAVAGE to the akumas because they know they're gonna get their memories wiped! They can be as mean and judgemental as they want as long as the person doesn't remember that. I wish there was more content out there (canon or fanfic) of the later heroes just being super shocked when LadyNoir gets mean. Just like "did they really just say that? Are we allowed to say that?"

I gave you one for Adrino, I'll give you one for DJWifi too. Look at the way Nino is looking at her! He thinks he's so charming! And you can't really see because of the angle, but Alya's body language indicates that she's absolutely reciprocating. They're so coy and cute with each other.

[SALT WARNING FOR THE REST OF THE POST]:

So this episode left me asking: What is even the moral? Because this is a show targeted at children, every episode is supposed to have a lesson that the kids can learn from. The creators have explicitly stated that this is part of their formula. (Word of God is that Marinette specifically has to make a mistake she learns from in every episode, but that's one: a stupid rule since it makes you hate your lead and two: absolute bullshit that they're clearly not following because she didn't really make any mistakes in Stormy Weather OR Mr. Pigeon. Events just happened around her).

So far, the moral's been pretty explicitly stated: In Mr. Pigeon, it's that cheaters never prosper. In Timebreaker, it's that your responsibilities are yours and yours alone to handle, and you shouldn't shirk them or hand them off to other people.

While less explicitly stated, Stormy Weather is about how we don't always get what we want and that's a fact of life we'll all just have to deal with (Alya repeatedly tells Manon no, Aurore gets akumatized over losing the competition, and Marinette doesn't get to do her photo-shoot with Adrien in the end, all of which are painted as a "well that's tough kid, but life must go on" situation).

The Bubbler is one that tries to deliver a moral, but it falls flat. It pretty explicitly states that the lesson is "kids need adults, adults protect and love and take care of children." This is screwed up by the fact that the most relevant adult to the discussion is Gabriel Agreste, to whom this does not apply. The episode tries to paint Marinette lying to make him seem like he loves Adrien as a good thing, but I think we're all aware that it's absolutely not. That's a whole horror story waiting to happen. Adrien deserves to know that his father does not care about him, because that helps him recognize that when his father ignores him, it's not okay and he deserves better.

This episode is another example of one where I think they tried to deliver a moral, but the writers just really didn't handle it well. A lot of the romantic hijinks that happen on this show---including behavior that would be appalling irl---are played for comedy. And that's perfectly fine. A lot of these moments that the saltdom latched on to, like Marinette knowing Adrien's entire schedule for how many years from now, aren't even reasonably possible. It's absurd enough that you know you're supposed to laugh at it.

This is the first episode that tries to seriously address the ways people can be unhealthy when they're in love. Theo and Chat's jealousy get Theo akumatized, and Chat lying about his relationship with Ladybug is the inciting incident. Theo's extremely creepy entitled fan dialogue is played as a bad thing, not a comedic thing. Marinette says in this episode:

"Liars are losers." The message you are supposed to get from this episode is that jealousy gets you nowhere and neither does lying. If you want a proper shot at romance, it requires honesty and communication.

But here's the thing: Marinette lies in this episode to further her romantic chances PLENTY and it's treated as a good thing. She spends this episode stealing Adrien's property to delete an embarrassing voicemail, and she never tells him about this. Her genius plan for returning his phone is to lie and say she found it on the ground, and the show treats this as an absolutely great idea! There is nothing wrong with Marinette stealing his phone!

And I have sympathy for Marinette in universe! Of course I do, I'd probably resort to something similar if I left a humiliating voicemail like that! Trying to get rid of some embarrassing evidence is an extremely different level of "crime" than lying to someone about being in a relationship because of jealousy and includes far less malice.

But if the moral of this episode is supposed to be "liars are losers," and that honest communication is the key, then why would you have Marinette lie and fail to honestly communicate in the same episode, and treat it as a good thing? It makes her come off as pretty hypocritical, and in general, I feel this episode invites comparison between Marinette and Chat, who are protagonists, and Theo who is supposed to come off as a bad crazy fan, which isn't exactly great, because now all of Marinette's silly salivating over Adrien and Chat's silly flirting with LB is being compared to a situation that's played seriously and uncomfortably.

This could be grounds for something good and interesting: if they were setting up Marinette's lies as a character flaw with plans to address it later, then this could definitely be something, but nobody calls her out on this, not even herself. Everyone says it's a great idea and congratulates her for it.

And while that does create really fun character traits (Alya being super chill with theft is a goldmine of fanfic fuel), it also means that this episode fails to set up lying as a character flaw for Marinette (even though it's absolutely one she has. Ironic given her hatred of liars). Just like it does in the Bubbler. It confuses the moral and just makes the lead come off as a bit of an asshole who escaped karma is all.

I don't know, it's possible that I'm letting my general opinion of the show and my experience with their ability to develop characters color my perception of this episode and that I'm. . . well. . .overanalyzing. This episode is overall pretty harmless. It's not like Chameleon or the Season 4 and 5 finales or anything where it seriously messes up the course of the story. But it's another straw in the stack of episodes with writing that just generally fails to achieve what it was trying to do and is indicative of the greater problems in this show.

Phew! Alright, salty time over, we'll be back to fun hijinks in the next episode right? Right? *checks episode list* Oh god, it's Pharoah. Welp, at least that one will come with me getting to research and share a bunch of REAL facts about ancient egypt!

[severus-snaps]

something i've been thinking about lately (partly because of that hunger games post and partly because of certain Takes about snape and SWM and also a post i saw about snape and the roberts family at the quidditch world cup that i cannot find for the life of me now) is like

what precisely does someone - a child - have to do to deserve being attacked from behind, rendered entirely defenceless, choked, immobilised, and stripped and paraded in front of a large crowd?

under the cut because it's a rather long and bitter-sounding ramble whoops

let's assume that the worst of what is sometimes said of snape is true

let's assume snape joined in with mulciber and avery in actively tormenting muggleborns, all the time, and he thought muggles and muggleborns were scum - and then he became a death eater (even though nobody - not lily, not the adult marauders, provides any evidence at all for this; in snape's memory he's heard about whatever was attempted just the same as lily had; sirius as an adult doesn't even seriously consider snape to be a death eater, despite the crowd he hung around with nearly all turning into DEs - presumably because snape kept himself to himself whilst with them rather than actively taking part in anything. and he did become a death eater, i'll grant you - not his finest choice - but nobody but lily even suspected that he would, so that's no reason. and don't even start on his teaching etiquette, because clearly sirius never thought he'd become a teacher either, it was forced on snape by circumstance, and in any case it happened a good deal of time after the bullying, so cannot be used as a 'reason' unless james/sirius could see the future).

let's assume snape was a possessive, toxic friend, and didn't want to let lily be friends with anyone else, let her talk to the marauders, maybe that he would've even kept tabs on her once they'd stopped being friends (even though she had other friends she was defending him to, and there's no evidence he 'stalked' her, the 'let' could've been something more along the lines of "i won't let you keep spreading their lies" or "i won't let you put yourself into danger hanging around with them", because we just don't know).

let's even assume snape was doing some dodgy dark magic all the time (even though there's not one mention, beyond the gash on james' cheek in swm and lupin's "it was snape's specialty" which was likely defensive because snape was the marauders' favourite toy, that snape was going around cutting people up for fun, or he'd have been expelled, and half the staff - including hagrid, mcgonagall, and slughorn - would never have been surprised that he killed dumbledore)

if one less of those things were true - would he still have deserved it? something more mild, maybe? something more severe?

would it matter what he did to the muggleborns? as in, would it be justified if snape had just tripped them in the halls, as opposed to if he'd cursed them? would that determine whether he deserved it?

and what if the muggleborns were also 'bad people'? if they were bullies? if they held less-than-enlightened views? this was the 70s, baby - I'm sure we all know how racist, sexist, and homophobic some of our boomer parents and grandparents can be. so then what? would the muggleborns have deserved it, if they were sexist? or homphobic? or racist? if they were just a shit person, and slipped a hand up someone's skirt to cop a feel without permission? if they spread nasty lies?

if snape had attacked a 'bad' person, would that mean he was actually 'good', like the marauders supposedly are?

if someone is a bad friend, does that mean they deserved it? do your friends deserve it if they make mistakes? if they haven't grown yet from their shitty childhood? if they have bad thoughts?

and what sort of dark magic, precisely, would be the tipping point at which snape deserved it? if he used it on other people - or if he used it at all? if it was harmful? if it could be reversed? if it was gross?

like the other post i can't find said, what if at the quidditch world cup, the roberts family had been 'bad people'? would that mean they deserved it, too? does that make the death eaters social justice warriors now?

i want to know the exact lines certain marauders defenders would draw, the exact point at which a fifteen-year-old unequivocally deserves being attacked from behind, rendered entirely defenceless, choked, immobilised, and stripped and paraded in front of a crowd. what would it take for them, personally, to defend that in real life? what sort of person deserves it? if you're a teenager, would you do it to your peers? and how can you be sure that the goalposts won't be moved? "if that type of person deserves it, then surely so do these others, and them, and them..." - until it includes people who don't 'deserve it'?

...or, is the act of attacking your peer from behind, rendering your victim entirely defenceless, choking them, immobilising them, and stripping and parading them in front of a large crowd just a morally bad thing to do, full stop? are all of these 'bad' things about snape made up - or at the very least, greatly exaggerated from the evidence in the text - just to make it seem like the marauders were good, actually, and that snape got what he deserved? i think i know the answer)

i feel like there's also more that could be said - and has been said better by others - about how this "snape deserved to be bullied/deserved swm" attitude reflects the sort of rise in (internet and irl) purity culture, cancel culture, how that prevents people from growing or learning or developing new ideas, and also JKR's framing of 'good' and 'bad' people and how that translates to 'good' and 'bad' actions - and probably more things besides

but i was just having a vent, really

[drenched-in-sunlight]

Hi there! I wanted to say your art is absolutely incredible and always brings me back to Elden Ring when I forget just how amazing the game is. I live for your depictions of Marika.🥹

I was partly just curious after you posted the recent family tree, is there a reaspn Ranni and Radahn don't make as much of an appearance in your drawings? What is your thoughts on their questline/storyline in general?

Thanks for all the cool art, you're getting better with every piece!!

tbh... i think draw Ranni a lot, she's literally the cover of my first fromsoft fanbook 🥲🥲

though most of my art of her is from 2 years ago, i wouldn't say i don't draw her often at all 😭 i've drawn Radahn 4-5 times too. i understand because i draw too much, it's easy to have an impression that i draw some specific characters less, but compared to, say, the Omen Twins or Rykard or Melina (who i keep meaning to draw but haven't got around to do so yet), Radahn and Ranni are two Carian characters i draw the most of that side of the family (well, Rellana is looking to dethrone them soon but you get what i mean aksfkjdfkj)

Radahn dudebro fans keep pointing fingers saying i hate him but i actually like him. as a guyfailure that is so obsessed with these symbols of a Lord in his father and Godfrey, yet failed to live up to any of them (*stare at that scene of Morgott whooping his ass*). his involvement in the DLC is an interesting spin on things to me, and make a lot of sense in the grand scheme of things (when i saw that we found like... 11 Miquella's Lily in places most personal to Radahn like Carian Manor and Sellia. hoo boy).

lately, i lowkey think Radagon specifically picked him for Miquella and encouraged his obsession with being a Lord. to me at least Radagon is really bitter that Godfrey is the First Lord and not him (her actual other's half! sentenced to live away from her while another man got to be her first in everything! the injustice!), so him not only discrediting Godfrey's descendants (whole thing with Hunters of TWLiD) but also preparing a whole new pair of Lord and God that should have been how he and Marika could have been from the start sounds like the kind of overcompensation he'd be doing (look honey that could be us but you tripping).

so in a way i do feel for Radahan and Miquella falling victims to Radagon's list of issues (though it's only one reason in many other reasons for them to turn out that way ofc. Radagon merely nudges the pieces into certain direction, they go barreling head first down on their own). and i actually like that i could come up with all that thanks to the DLC. imo it actually adds a lot more to Radahn and Miquella's character (depends on how you view the story though whoops).

you can say i like him (and Miq) the way one likes AC6 Iguazu... or Genichiro. the kind of hater characters that are doomed to fail from the start, but they are stubborn and will run head first into the wall again and again. and it's fun to put them in a jar and shake them.

Ranni... after the DLC my feeling for her is a bit more complicated. before i get why she did all those things and i like her story enough, but after the DLC as you see i come to really like Godwyn and links him closely to Marika. so now it's kinda awkward for me to insert Ranni in all the scenarios im drawing lately?

it's not that i stop liking her, it's simply that the scenario doesn't line up for me to add her in that's all. and it goes to other characters i haven't drawn tbh. not because i don't like them, i simply don't have anything in my brain about them to draw out. i don't think there's any characters in Elden Ring i hate tbh (yes i do like even the Hornsents. i find the stories in the scorpion stew and dried flower talisman really somber and give them a lot of humanity too, fucked up rituals aside).

and thank you for your kind words! my editor has been on my ass for a whole year about my art and it does help me improve a lot, im glad to know it shows in the quality of my fanarts as well!

[hey-hey-j]

uhhhh preview because if I don't post something productive I'm going to explode

One elevator ride and short walk later, Floyd finds himself sitting on the floor inside Rhonda, back pressed against the sofa as he sifts through one of the boxes John Dory has dug out of storage.

(Sometimes, on days like this, he just feels…. better sitting upright against a solid surface)

He’s smiling amusedly to himself as he does so, fascinated by the contents of the box. It’s mostly old promotional photos of the band, the four—and, after a certain point, the five of them all lined up and posing in their matching vests….

“I can’t believe you held on to so much of this stuff.” He looks up to where John Dory is currently trying to wrestle yet another box out of his closet, perched precariously on tip-toe as he tries to figure out the best way to maneuver it off the top shelf.

“Yup! Figured some of it might be valuable some day.” His words come out strained, a little distant since he’s clearly more focused on his task. He has both arms up over his head, trying to somehow grasp them around the box he wants to bring down, and—whoops, he just slipped.

Floyd lets out a strained little gasp of alarm as he watches John Dory’s body hit the floor, then tenses when the giant box falls down after him and for a moment it looks like John Dory’s about to be crushed under its weight but no, whew, the box just narrowly misses his brother and lands with a muffled WHUMP on the floor just inches away from him. Rhonda’s concerned warble rumbles in from outside, John turns his head on the floor to stare at the murderous box with eyes gone wide, teeth grit, and when he catches Floyd’s equally wide-eyed gaze he morphs that grimace into an awkward smile and a nervous “Heh….”

John Dory gingerly sits himself up, one hand going to his lower back and the other reaching up to readjust his goggles. “Well, probably a little less so now….”

Floyd’s eyes flit from John’s strained smile to the box that almost just killed him, then briefly back down to the photos and posters in his own box. He only notices now that his hands are clenched tight on the cardboard edges. He loosens them.

“You…. you don’t really mean that.” Eyes drifting back up to John Dory, now lifting himself off the ground with a small hiss and one hand still pressed firmly to his tailbone. Floyd squints. “Do you?”

John looks up from silently cussing out his back to meet Floyd’s gaze, his own eyes going soft at the worried tension still clear in his little brother’s shoulders. His ears dip down a little, a quiet sigh escaping him before he speaks again.

“And…. maybe there’s sentimental reasons too, I guess.” A soft little smile.

Floyd surprises himself—he actually smiles back.

Both of them turning back to their respective boxes. John Dory is in the process of digging a knife out of his jacket when Floyd asks, “Where did you even get all of this, anyway? You just bring it with you?”

He misses John’s nod because he’s gazing down at a new photo, a paparazzi shot of Bruce on one of his “dates” with a fan. They had clearly been caught off guard, the smile on Bruce’s face looking strained and hasty, one hand held firmly in the fangirl’s grasp as she absolutely cheeses at the camera, like she’d been over the moon to have been caught going out with BroZone’s heartthrob.

The smile that had formed on Floyd’s face dips.

“Some of the posters and stuff I already had in my bag when I took it with me.” John Dory explains as he runs the knife through the packing tape sealing his box. The sharp zzzzzrt! makes Floyd’s ears twinge. He hastily lowers the photo back into the box (turned over so he doesn’t have to look at it anymore). For some reason that small motion is enough to send a slight jolt running up Floyd’s arm and he hisses quietly to himself as he clutches that hand in the other, thumb massaging at the offending palm.

John’s still talking, oblivious, more focused on rummaging through the box like he’s looking for something in particular. “Other stuff I picked up back at the tree, and a lot of other things I just kinda found on the road.” He looks back up briefly to shoot a proud smile at Floyd. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of reach we had back in the day!”

That squeezy feeling in Floyd’s stomach again. Oh, I can believe it, he thinks, unconsciously gripping his hand tighter. He doesn’t look up to return the smile, gaze pointed vaguely downwards but not really looking at anything in particular, but it’s as his gaze is starting to go fuzzy that something John said dings in his mind, snapping him back to reality.

“Wait—you went back?”

It’s like a switch has been flipped: suddenly John Dory is tensing up, frozen half-crouched inside the box. His ears give a single quick twitch, a single quick swear slipping past his clenched teeth and coming out as a hissy whisper.

“Shit.”

Goodbye forever.

The memory echoes faintly in Floyd’s ears. His pulse is picking up, he can feel it in the ever-tightening clench of his hands.

“John.”

John doesn’t turn around.

“....John, did you go back to the Troll Tree?”

[sirenscradle]

♰𖣐♰ Devil’s catch | c.s ii

[character sheet ii. (out of five)]

pairings: exorcist!hongjoong x psychic!racially and bodily diverse reader (some ot8 x reader but heavily focused on hongjoong, trust that everyone will be intertwined though.)

genres: religious horror, supernatural-fantasy, suggestive (possible eventual smut and more intense displays at intimacy). (18+) stupid-yet-gifted friend group trope lol

summary: “the order” is a secret organization of exorcists blessed with special abilities dedicated to expelling higher class demons—located in a ancient crypt hidden beneath the vatican. when an exceptionally gifted child is followed by prophetic omens and falls into possession of an unclassified s-class demon—kim hongjoong, considered one of the greatest exorcists of the 21st century, is dispatched under the mysterious order of convincing an enigmatic psychic hiding away in a metropolis to accompany he and his team in what might be their most daunting exorcism yet.

masterlist, spotify playlist (for your leisure), chapter i. (all character sheets will be on my masterlist and are quite important to the story!) series warnings can be found on my masterlist. i will be posting several character sheets before releasing chapter ii.

taglist: @cypherluv (let me know if you want to be added! :) )

important notice: wanted to note that reader descriptions/ strega are remaining racially ambiguous and there will be little to no anatomical descriptions regarding her body type, skin color, and hair texture/type! since this is a reader insert, i want it to be as inclusive as possible. :) i encourage you to use your imagination!

jeong yunho: he who judges the weight of sin. [the executioner.]

name: jeong yunho

age: 28

abilities: if seonghwa was hongjoong’s right hand man, yunho would be the one flanking his left. yunho was blessed with an ability referred to as “the scales of judgement. he helps assist the process of exorcising in his ability to gauge which parts of the human soul are being inhabited by the essence of a demon. he can see a demons class and name most of the time, and so he’s typically the one who acts as the main identifier of The Order. yunho was the one responsible for incorrectly classing the demon yeosang and mingi were sent to exorcise on their first assignment, but we suspect he may have done it on purpose to investigate his suspicions of yeosang possibly having an ability…. and did it to provide enough pressure for him to crack. in his defense, he thought yeosang was deliberately hiding it. whoops (so much for the power of judgement ig) during special class exorcisms, however, this ability allows him to activate another portion of his gift by amplifying his natural talents so that it’s at level with whatever evil it’s weighing on its scale. given that yunho has an affinity for siphoning electricity from just about anything…. it means he can fry a demon with the voltage necessary to kill them (the scales basically amplify him to charge up to the necessary voltage to cause enough damage to exact judgement and satisfy the unbalanced scales.) though, it’s an incredibly intricate process of navigating the human soul to know which parts he can afford to shock.

while yunho is seemingly the most patient and kind of the group, he secretly harbors a level of superiority over others who are not as competent or strong. he simultaneously feels that it’s his duty as one of the most gifted to protect the “insignificant and incompetent” and is actually quite cunning. many assume that he’s much more fragile than seonghwa and that seonghwa is more capable of cruelty than him, but it’s completely flipped. however, he has enough social tack to not say any of his thoughts out loud.

fun facts: yunho was the third to join the order a year after seonghwa and hongjoong were simultaneously recruited. it took awhile for them to feel comfortable with another person, but yunho’s lax and amiable nature allowed even the ever-stoic seonghwa to soften from time to time.

yunho is equally as morally gray as hongjoong. he will do what he feels is necessary—even if it’s not in alignment with what’s considered good.

he wears a silver ring on his left hand that acts as a conductor for helping siphon and retain electricity. it’s also designed to help him aim more accurately.

kang yeosang: atlas, whomst carries the weight of a heavy stone.

name: kang yeosang

age: 27

abilities: the order had originally assumed that yeosang failed the ritual of infernal trial despite miraculously surviving it, as his talent for gravity manipulation didn’t show itself immediately. however, when a higher level demon was mistakenly classed lower during one of his first assignments, alongside mingi whom had been gravely wounded—he had instantly killed the demon and tragically its host when he unconsciously used a gravity shield in desperation at the sight of mingi’s blood and mangled body. he bears similarities to wooyoung, as he didn’t start his ability specific training until he was fourteen—but to wooyoung’s frustration, yeosang mastered his ability quickly over the years and was considered a protégé. we suspect that he unconsciously suppressed his gift of gravity due to deep seated trauma sustained after the ritual, but he hasn’t remembered yet. yeosang’s dynamic with wooyoung is complex, as he is the only one who could understand the difficulties of having a gift that can severely harm someone if not honed enough. although they’re best friends, yeosang harbors a large amount of guilt for feeling like he’s unintentionally left wooyoung behind in his journey of mastering his gift. wooyoung also tries to deny his own resentments in favor of supporting yeosang, but he’s more frustrated at himself for “not being good enough.” though gravity manipulation is a great offense ability (can push the weight of a room against someone or use it to amplify any blows he delivers while fighting— it’s a truly great strength based ability) yeosang has honed his ability so well that he could use it for defense (creating a shield enforced by gravity and can push off anything that attempts to push against it. almost like a force shield!) as he wants to avoid killing anyone else ever again. acts as the shield/ placed in defense when in team formation.

fun fact: he’s often the first one to wake up in the morning and it’s his unspoken duty to make coffee for the team, since everyone else seems to suck at it. in another life, yeosang might have wanted to roast coffee beans for a living instead of expelling demons from the human soul but he’ll take what he can get.

[jupiterswasphouse]

Let's Talk About: The Isopod: A Webbed Spin-off Demo!

[Image ID: The steam header image for the game, with the text "isopod" and an isopod rolled up into a ball /End IDs.]

⚠️ The following post contains spoilers for the content within the demo of "Isopod: A Webbed Spin-off", if you're already sold on this game and would prefer to avoid spoilers, I would highly recommend playing it and then coming back to this post once you've finished the demo! There's about an hour of gameplay, up to two or three hours if you do everything there is to do, so it won't take long!

(Also apologies if some of these screenshots are blurry, I was playing on relatively low settings and things that aren't too close or far away from the camera appear out-of-focus anyway)

Finally, Isopod has a demo out! I've been eagerly looking forward to this one since the first reveal, as I really loved the developers' previous game, Webbed!

In this 3D platforming collectathon, you play as Winston, a union man with a magnet on his back and quite possibly the fastest isopod in the vast land of Australia; In his journey to stop the Fire Ant Conglomerate from destroying and polluting his home land, you will have to master curling up, rolling, boosting, spin-attacking, slamming, wall-jumping, and building momentum/swinging around via magnetism. This momentum-heavy movement system, admittedly, both brings the game up and pulls the game down somewhat.

The gameplay can be speedy and smooth; It's really a blast once you get used to it! Momentum mechanics are always welcome and you can get pretty creative with it, plus it doesn't seem like it's particularly glitchy either. It's a great system all things considered! Provided they iron it out a bit, as it takes a hot minute to get used to, and you can get flung all over the place, end up in the water, and get stuck in places in a heartbeat; and sometimes it feels a little bit clunky. There's also a few places where I thought the invisible walls weren't quite in the right spot—Although that's really only a problem if you're really thorough, as 80% of the time I hit an invisible wall it was on top of a wall, it's just that it was a bit too close to the edge of the platform and could have either been moved back to provide extra space so the player doesn't fall off or replaced with a respawn barrier off the other side of the wall. These complaints are by no means a deal-breaker, of course, can be fixed with updates, especially given the actual, full game isn't out yet!

Another thing that can be changed is, of course, the actual glitches! Of which, I didn't really experience all that many for something as early on and movement-based as the game is. One of them was literally just that an ant enemy somehow got into the water, and was just walking around down there, not too big of a deal, didn't impede any progress. When the other glitch occured, it was in the middle of a race with a tiger beetle, during which I boosted directly into the beetle—aaand the game crashed, no clue why!

Speaking of the tiger beetle, though, let's talk about the bugs you meet in the demo! Starting with your main allies, what appear to be bulldog ants! (Although, admittedly I'm not the best at identifying ants, and I did call these "trap-jaw ants" the whole time I was playing, whoops).

[Image IDs: Two in-game screenshots of a pair of ally bulldog ants, one in a soldier's uniform—saying "I think watching that pipeline explode is the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life"—and the other in a construction uniform /End IDs.]

A charming choice for allies for sure, and one that's native to Australia (Where the game takes place—as previously implied—and the homeland of the development team)! It's one of these bulldog ants, in fact, that straps the all-important magnet to your back. Super helpful bunch all around! Meanwhile, as previously mentioned, on the other side; You will be fighting against some ants as well.

[Image ID: Another in-game screenshot, this one taken from the game's store page, showing the fire ant enemies /End IDs.]

This specifically starts out with the standard melee enemies, which I can only assume are Solenopsis invicta, aka red imported fire ants! These, as you may expect, can only bite and sting. Soon enough, however, after making quick work of the pipelines pumping pollutants into your homeland's waterways, these are joined by their own allies, their long-range counterparts...

[Image IDs: Two in-game screenshots showing the yellow crazy ant enemies, one in going in for a melee attack, and the other preparing to spray acid /End IDs.]

Anoplolepis gracilipes, yellow crazy ants! This feisty, conveniently color-coded bunch can hit you with a melee attack, just like the fire ants, but these guys can actually spray acid on top of that; Something that they, surprisingly, can do in the real world as well! You may notice, too, that these are actually also both invasive species in the lands of Australia! I have to say, great attention to detail there, as is the case with the accuracy of the models themselves.

This conglomerate of ants is, of course, lead by some queens; Specifically including a crazy ant CEO, who I! Didn't get a screenshot of. But all you need to know is that this CEO came to the land in the humble name of progress... and the promise of a potential 400% increase in profits, but y'know, progress! I appreciate double-meaning here, teaching about the dangers of actual invasive species to a particular environment, while also comparing the rich decision-makers to them as well, displacing and oppressing the workers of the union... The bit may not be for everyone in their funny little Isopod video game, but I like it!

Still, those aren't the only species you meet! As already mentioned, you also meet Crash, the tiger beetle! I'm no beetle expert either, but with some light research, this may be Rivacindela hudsoni!

[Image ID: An in-game screenshot showing Crash, the tiger beetle, saying "It takes me 75 seconds to comete this course. Think you can do better?" /End IDs.]

This family, and species, would make a lot of sense for a character who wants to challenge Winston to a race, as tiger beetles are extremely fast! The fastest runners in the insect class. To quote a note from the honorable Wikipedia: "The fastest known species of tiger beetle, Rivacindela hudsoni, can run at a speed of 9 km/h (5.6 mph; 2.5 m/s), or about 125 body lengths per second"

The race can be quite difficult if you don't know your way around and aren't used to the mechanics yet, but it's a great way to figure them out! Follow the checkpoints around the area, and you'll be able to smash Crash's record in no time; just try not to get swept away by the river.

Finally for the species count in our initial area, we meet a fascinatingly freaky character! This one is based on a creature I've encountered myself, that I've wanted to see represented in video games for a long time... Optica, the junk bug! The larval stage of green lacewings.

[Image ID: Another screenshot, this time showing Optica, the junk bug, carrying their pile of "junk" around, with a curtain in front of their head, parted to either side /End IDs.]

You can see this odd little shopkeeper carrying around a pile of stuff, which notably contains parts of other bugs, some parts of it more distinguishable than others. This, again, is accurate to the real thing, as this group is often referred to as "junk bugs" due to the camouflage they wear on their backs, a heaping pile of bug parts (Typically aphid parts, though not necessarily exclusively) from other creatures they've killed and eaten. This makes it rather concerning, then, that the pile contains isopod parts—one of which being the face of a Cubaris species, ie a rubber ducky isopod—as well as those of some beetles, at least one possibly being a Coccinellid; and what appears to be Catacanthus incarnatus, the man-faced stink bug.

What, perhaps, makes it more concerning, is the fact that they either seem to speak for these parts as "masks", or the parts themselves actually speak. Especially with this line in particular:

[Image ID: A screenshot, focused on the man-faced stink bug part, labelled "Distrusful Mask", saying "Careful with that river. If our hero got swept away, I don't know WHAT we'd have to do..." /End IDs.]

... That said, we need not care about what our dear shopkeeper does in their free time! What we care about is those sweet, sweet cosmetics!

[Image ID: A screenshot of the cosmetic shop menu, showing the currency of Junk, as well as the Pridesopod, Dairy Cow, and Clown cosmetics, plus a mystery one as well /End IDs.]

That's right! Our strange friend is happy to lend us a new look for the low price of some of our junk—and how do we collect junk, you ask? Well, as our equivalent to coins or rings, junk can be found scattered across the map, in crates, or as a reward for doing certain things.

That's not the only thing you can collect, however! The game also presents you with pottery shards, which I couldn't find a use for yet in the demo but may be a rarer form of currency later on in the game; leaf litter, which functions as armor, for up to three additional hits; puzzle pieces, which are one of this game's more scavenger-hunt type objects, hidden in four places in the demo (Spoiler: Yep, that includes the classic spot behind the waterfall); loudspeakers, which are less of a collectable I suppose and more of a smashable, a couple of which certainly test your ability to handle the game's mechanics; and a video game cartridge, which I imagine will be joined by other various singular objects you find in the dirt, used for purchasing the Roly Lo-Poly cosmetic.

It sounds like a lot for sure, but I can promise you that it doesn't feel bloated or anything like that! Seems like just enough to test the player's collectathon'ing mettle and further get them used to exploring the world presented to them, in my opinion. Whether that will continue to be the case in the full game, that remains to be seen.

I could go on about the goals and sidequests laid out for you in the demo, but I think I'll save my remaining thoughts for when the full game comes out, and I can fully articulate them. For now, I leave you with a solid recommendation for this game, if any of this has you interested! It's not for everyone for sure, but it seems to be a great game for the bug lovers, momentum mechanics enjoyers, collectathon fans, and/or union members!

[azucar-skull]

How Many Sorrys Does It Take To Fix This?

(written for @tmnt-write-fight for @dorky-pals)

Fandom: Rise Of The TMNT (post movie)

Prompt: I don’t know how to apologize., any turtle angst

Word Count: 963

Posted on AO3 too!

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

Leo was never one to say sorry. In most cases, his pride had always been first and foremost priority in any argument or fight.

Yet there he was, his neck clutched around Raph’s kraang arm. Lowering his hands to his side.

“If this is it, I want you to know I finally understand… A-and I’m sorry…”

And now…here he is, hours after saving the world and getting his ass whooped by the Kraang. Sitting at the dinner table with Raph on the other end. And…eugh boy…did Raph want to have a talk with him.

There’s a lot of awkward silence for a long moment, only the ticking of the kitchen clock making any sound. Leo would do anything to get out of this.

“So…how’s your eye?”, Leo draws out.

“It’s healing.”, Raph nods. His eye is still covered in gauze and there’s high debate about how it’ll affect his sight.

Leo nods slowly. “...Cool.”

More silence. More awkwardness. Leo drums his digits against the table.

“Soooo-”

“I’m sorry.”, Raph speaks up.

Leo blinks. Twice. Processing what Raph just said. “...What?”

Raph takes a heavy sigh. “I don’t know how to put this. I don’t know where to even begin with this so I might as well just come out and say it.” His eyes meet Leo’s. “I’m sorry.”

Leo pauses for a moment, brows furrowing as the gears are turning very slowly in his head. Did I get a concussion back in the prison dimension or something?? And the way Raph isn’t speaking in the third person let’s Leo know he’s been super serious.

“What could you possibly be sorry for?”, Leo asks, more confused.

“I don’t know! Beatin’ you up? Tryin’ to actively kill you?”, Raph throws his hands out more agitated. “I mean, c’mon, Leo!”

“But that wasn’t you.”, Leo argues. “You were under Kraang’s control. The last thing I remember you doing was…” Leo glances down at the table, clasping his hands together. “Was you saving me when I went to get the key. If anything I should be sorry. You had to use your escape pod on me when I abandoned mine. I should’ve listened to you.”

“No. No.”, Raph argues back. “You were just doin’ what Casey Jr asked you to do and warned us ‘bout the Kraang. I’m the one who should be sorry, I couldn’t protect you-”

“You wouldn't have had to protect me if I actually listened to you when you said “I got it”. I was so focused on being cocky and trying not to bruise my pride that I messed up the entire mission and caused the apocalypse-”

“That shouldn’t be on you! That should’ve never been on you, Leo, ever! It was my fault, okay? I should’ve taught ya to be a better leader instead of arguin’ with you over a pizza stack competition-”

“But that was on me! I made Donnie and Mikey ditch out on training to do some stupid activity because I didn’t want to listen to you, I was being petty-”

“Ya weren’t listenin’ because I didn’t help you prepare enough. We got into another fight and you took it upon yourself to help cheer up our brothers-”

“Our brothers who should’ve never been involved in the first place. But they had to because I was too stubborn to let you knock me down a peg and get me to listen-”

“But I shouldn’t have fought with you! I let my anger take over and couldn’t control myself. I should’ve never had use my strength against you or any of our brothers-”

“ENOUGH!”

Leo’s anger spills over in a shout. The bickering stops. Raph stares wide eyed at Leo, noticing how he’s leaning over the table with clenched fists. The slider sighs and flops back in his chair.

“Just…enough.”, Leo laments. “I’m tired of fighting with you, Raph.”

Raph's expression softens, recognizing that tired look in his little brother’s eyes.

“You want to keep coming at me? Go ahead. I’m done fighting you.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore.”

Raph sits back in his chair, unclenching his fists. He heaves a heavy sigh, shutting his eyes to hold back tears of the memory.

Leo’s brows upturn more, frowning sympathetically.

“Can we just admit we’re both in the wrong here?”, the slider asks the snapper. “I’m sorry for not listening and you’re sorry for pushing me so hard or not pushing me enough or however to get me to listen.”

Raph sighs. “I don’t want to fight you anymore either, Leo. I just… I just care ‘bout you so much. It would kill me to see ya get hurt.” His eyes scan his brother up and down at all his bandaged wounds, scars, and cracks on his shell. “But I guess it didn’ even matter.”

“It doesn’t. Our injuries are the result of both our failures.”, Leo nods. “But we fail together.”

Raph can’t help but smile at that. “We fail together.”

Raph gets up, walking across the table to Leo’s side. He holds out a hand with a sad but warm smile on his face.

“Brothers?”

Leo’s eyes widen for a moment before smiling back, standing up and taking Raph’s hand. He nods. “Brothers.”

Raph chuckles as he pulls Leo in for a hug, rubbing his knuckles against his brother’s head which gets a laugh out of him. But Leo’s laugh is cut short when Raph hugs him just a bit too tightly.

“Ow! Raph, Raph, be careful. My shell!”, Leo winces.

Raph immediately pulls back from the hug. “Omigosh I’m so sorry!”

“No, no you’re good. I should be sorry, I wasn’t being careful-”

“No, I’m sorry because-”

“Oh my GOOOOOOD we’re never gonna stop saying sorry to each other, are we?”

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

I have that one Justion Bieber song stuck in my head now

[tiddygame]

hello im sorry i wrote more for @myriadblvck ’s streamer au ghoap

I time travelled and around 4,000 words magically appeared in a document titled: "you didn't juju on the fucking beat soap" I think I was possessed by something. anyways here’s that:

tw: is it a panic attack? is it just typical ghost angst? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ just be careful it's mostly fluffy (ghost is mean to himself cause he almost kissed soap on the forehead)

also i just realized after i wrote this whole thing, this is based on my general knowledge of dog tags… as an american. writing about the british military. so if you know your shit about the british military, uhh sorry in advance. my bad. from a very brief search i think a lot of it’s the same or at least same enough but this might hurt for people that know a thing or two. whoops!

fun fact: did you know for a brief stint (iirc, >40 years from around 1960s to 2010ish) the american military was printing soldiers’ ss numbers on their tags? yeah can’t imagine why they switched back to serial numbers.

Ghost had been pacing outside of his office for three minutes before he actually entered. When he did, he didn’t say a word. Just sat down in one of the chairs, fidgeting. It wasn't that uncommon of an occurrence, he was normally either gathering his thoughts before talking to Price about something more personal or hiding from what/whoever he didn't feel like dealing with.

When it came to mission debriefs, he was clear and concise. However, personal matters were a different story, and based on the way he anxiously opened and closed his hand, he'd guess this was a personal matter.

Price didn’t ask. He knew that whatever it was Simon needed to say would come out eventually. For now, he continued filling out paperwork and trying to figure out what it was that had Ghost so worked up.

Honestly, there wasn't much guesswork involved. Chances were, it was probably yet another leave request. He knew from Gaz (who was such an awful gossip he sometimes wondered how the man made it through interrogation training) that Simon had been visiting some social media person he had taken a liking to.

(Look, yes, Price knew about Twitch and live streaming and everything. He’s not actually that old. However, as long as he kept up the front of the old man who complained about the keyboard on his phone being too small, he didn’t have to deal with social media. Sure, it caused all of them to joke that he was geriatric and on his last legs, but he was able to convince Roach that he doesn’t know what TikTok is, meaning he wasn’t in charge of reviewing all the bullshit he and Gaz posted. A fair trade if you ask him.)

He also knew that Gaz was convinced the two were in love to the point that he and Roach had a bet going to see when they would get together. Price thought it was rather stupid, but he had to admire their ability to keep it under wraps; if the lieutenant found out they’d been placing monetary bets on his love life, he had a feeling he would need to find replacements for the 141.

Regardless, Price hoped that one day Simon would tell him about the friend but, until then, he was happy to fill out any paperwork that would get the poor man off base. God knows that idiot needs a vacation.

Simon was bouncing his leg, messing with his fingers, and staring off into space.

Three of his nervous habits at once? He must be even more worked up about this than Price thought. But, he was a patient man. It was about seven minutes of companionable silence before Simon spoke.

“I need replacement dog tags. I seem to have lost mine.”

Price looked up. He could see the chain around his neck and the outline of them still under his shirt.

"You do?" Price shuffled his documents around, eventually finding a blank piece of paper he could write on.

"Yes sir."

“And do you know what happened to them?”

“I believe they were knocked off during the fight from the last mission. I didn’t notice until later that night when we were back at base.”

Price paused and looked up from where he had been writing.

The last mission had been an odd one. Ghost normally stuck further away, their eagle-eyed lieutenant typically stayed at long to mid-range, watching for hostiles and making sure whoever else was in the field wouldn’t get caught off guard by someone they hadn’t seen.

During the last mission, he decided to engage at close range, a far cry from his usual approach of sniping hostiles from the shadows.

At one point, their lieutenant had been tackled and almost strangled. The fight had pretty much ended, his attacker was the only one left there. Ghost, being The Ghost, dispatched him with ease, but it stuck out to Price. Ghost may prefer to stay further back, but that didn’t mean that his hand-to-hand combat skills were lacking by any means.

He remembered thinking at the time that it was a clumsy mistake, that Ghost would have had to be intentionally trying to fuck up to get knocked down. He assumed the man had just been caught off guard, but he knew that theory wouldn’t hold up to any scrutiny. Ghost isn’t one to get caught off guard.

What was stranger yet still was Ghost specifically pointing it out in his mission report, calling even more attention to it.

Price set his pen down and leaned back in his chair.

“You planned this?”

“I plead the fifth,” said the British man.

Price just continued to stare, curious to see if this was actually going where he thought it was going.

“Is this off the record?” Simon eventually asked.

“Of course,” almost everything the 141 did was of dubious legality. Not reporting a conversation about possible wasted assets was far from the worst thing that had been swept under the rug.

“Then yes.”

“Why?”

Simon didn’t answer. Price waited, giving the man time to gather his thoughts, but based on the way his mouth opened and closed before he slumped in his chair, it seemed he didn’t know what to say at all.

Price had an inkling he might know what this was about.

“You know, Gaz likes to keep me informed,” Ghost looked up at him, somewhat panicked yet resigned, like he already knew what Price was going to say.

“He tells me you have a certain someone you’ve been visiting?”

“Yes.”

“Is this person a friend or…?” Ghost once again paused, calculating the potential consequences of his available responses.

He didn’t answer.

“Hmm,” Price paused, wondering how far to push before he continued, “You want to give this person your old dog tags?”

“Yes.”

Of course he would pre-plan “losing” his dog tags. Price mentally chuckled, leave it to Simon to be such a sap that he wanted to give someone his dog tags yet still make sure to follow protocol so he never actually risked going without them.

He had to hand it to him, it wasn’t a bad plan.

Price had a smile now, knowing his grumpy hard-ass lieutenant had a sweetheart he wanted to be sappy with.

“Romantic or platonic?” Price tried again.

“… I don’t know,” he’d never seen Simon look quite so… forlorn.

Hmm… That would explain his hesitancy.

He was pushing how much Simon was willing to divulge.

“And does this person know the significance of you giving them your dog tags?”

Well, curiosity killed the cat…

“No, they don’t.”

…But satisfaction brought it back. How interesting, the plot thickens.

“Do you plan on telling them?”

There was a long pause, after which it dawned on Price, “You want to give them your dog tags because they don’t know.”

It wasn’t a question, he already knew. Simon somehow slumped further, attempting to hide his face as if he weren’t wearing a balaclava.

His grumpy hard-ass lieutenant. Absolutely smitten with someone yet too shy to say anything, deciding on a quiet confession, one they likely wouldn’t pick up on.

Price chuckled, jotting down the necessary information he would need when he got his hands on the right paperwork, polishing up some of the details of Ghost’s story to make it more believable, before reading off what he had written to Ghost to make sure he got everything right. Ghost nodded once, and that was that.

“Replacement tags will probably be here in two to three weeks.”

“I would like to request leave for two to three weeks from now.”

Price handed him the form, having already grabbed it. He noticed how the man seemed to calm at just the thought of getting to visit his mystery person.

Oh, he thought to himself.

I am definitely joining Roach and Gaz’s bet.

<><><><>

They were lying on the daybed in his streaming room, or, well…

No, that’s not quite right.

Simon was lying on the daybed.

Johnny was lying on top of Simon.

His computer was still softly playing quiet (non-DMCA) music from where his stream had just ended. Instead of turning it off, he had decided to unplug his headset and leave it on, the music just loud enough to be heard.

Simon was sleepily scrolling through his phone, trying to pretend like he hadn’t almost dropped several times while dozing off, desperately trying to stay awake. Johnny had watched his struggle and decided to lay down right on top of Simon, not even trying to pretend like he was trying to fit on the remaining space on the daybed. Why would he when Simon was right there?

It was meant to be a joke, having thrown himself on top of him to annoy the man into sleeping on an actual bed (he claimed he wasn’t tired but the comically loose grip on his phone and the waking world said otherwise.) However, unfortunately for said sleepy man, Simon was very, very comfortable.

His head was resting on Simon’s chest, arms under his back like he actually was just a pillow, one hand reaching higher to feel where Simon’s hair had begun to grow out slightly.

I wonder if he would let me help him cut it…

Simon had said he was like a clingy cat, his free hand running through his hair in the same manner one would pet a cat to prove his point. The joke's on him though, he likes it.

Simon had tried to stop but Johnny didn’t let him, threatening to tickle him if he did.

(“I’m not ticklish, I just don’t want you throwing a tantrum.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever you say,” he was definitely ticklish, and one of these days he was going to prove it.)

At some point, Simon had given up on keeping a grip on his phone, letting it drop to the side. They would probably have to go digging through the cushions to get it out of whatever crevice it had fallen to. As of right now, the idea of ever leaving his spot was comical at best.

The sun had begun to set, orange and pink tinted light filtering through the sheer curtains, making everything look more like a dream. Or maybe it was just the proximity to the man below him that was making him feel so serene.

Johnny took a second to inhale and exhale slowly, appreciating the moment. He hoped that this memory, this beautiful tranquility with Simon, would be something he cherished for a long time to come.

He knew that they had things to do. Soon, Simon would be catching a flight at some ungodly hour, headed back to save the world yet again. But for now, he was happy to nap away in their own little bubble. He never was a religious man but here in the arms of Simon Riley, he was tempted to think heaven was real, and that it was right in front of him.

“I almost forgot,” Simon mumbled, not sounding any more awake than he looked, reaching up for the collar of his shirt. Thankfully, the hand that was running his hair remained. He didn’t like proving the cocky bastard right, but he probably would have thrown a tantrum had he tried to remove it.

“They had some fuck up along the line or something and accidentally printed me an extra set of dog tags. I was just gonna toss ‘em but thought you might want—”

Johnny was now wide awake, sitting up and yanking the chain out of his hands.

“Don’t you fucking dare throw them away, of course I want them!” Simon’s face reddened, a frequent treat for Johnny now that he had gotten more comfortable going without the mask. Simon might have been good at keeping a poker face, but without his mask, he was a blushing mess.

He wondered if the blush was from his obvious jubilation at the gift or if it was because he was now straddling the man. Such pesky details, however, (even ones that would keep future Johnny awake at night) were far less important than examining the necklace in his hands.

It was obvious this was the older set, the metal worn and dented in some spots though the writing was still clearly visible.

“Calm down, I’m not going to take it from you,” the gruff tone was severely undermined by the aforementioned blush. It was hard to sound tough while half asleep on a daybed and being used as another man’s pillow.

Johnny stared at them for a little bit longer, feeling every dent and wondering the story behind how they got there, before putting them on.

He smiled at the man under him, “How do I look?”

He was going to joke, asking if he looked like a rough and tough soldier ready for war, but something in Simon’s eyes made him stop short.

He was looking with… with… Reverence was far too intense of a word for the softness of the moment but it was the only word that came to mind.

Simon reached up with his hand, grabbing the tags, his knuckles grazing his chest.

Well, that’s just fucking unfair.

Simon was supposed to be the blushy one. Not him, goddammit!

Though, he thinks when they make eye contact, they end up tied for who is blushing the most. They stare for a while, maybe it should have felt awkward but it was too adoring for either to feel any form of uncomfortability.

Neither moved.

It was Johnny that broke first, smiling at him, yet again tracing all of the scars he could see. It was his new favorite hobby, especially when Simon would blush making the scars on his face all the more visible.

He took one more second to sleepily appreciate the man before him, then went back to using him as a pillow. His hands went back to where they were before, one under Simon’s back and one playing with his hair. His head, however, did not fall back to his chest, instead resting in the crook of his neck and shoulder.

Simon’s hand returned to running through his hair, his other now coming up to rest on his back, rubbing up and down a few times before the sleepiness from earlier fully returned with his hand stopping somewhere around the small of his back.

Johnny leaned up slightly and gave a chaste kiss to the part of his neck that he could reach, then settled back to where he was. The hand in his hair paused.

“Thank you, Simon.”

A second of delay, and then the hand continued.

“You’re welcome, Johnny.”

Simon shuffled slightly, getting comfy before—

A kiss, on his forehead.

He couldn’t stop the blush and smile if he wanted to. He snuggled closer before drifting off to sleep.

When he woke, he was in his bed, practically tucked in. His window had been opened slightly, blackout curtains that had been drawn closed now swaying slightly with the breeze. When he focused, he realized he could smell petrichor and hear heavy rainfall outside with the occasional grumble of thunder.

There was a note on his nightstand. As he expected, it was Simon’s handwriting, apologizing for not waking him up before he left. It said that he had made breakfast for him (pancakes, with enough for when his sister would inevitably try to steal them), that he made sure to lock the front door, and left the window cracked.

He giggled sleepily at the last line. Regardless of the context, it always made Simon anxious to have the curtains open, much less to leave a window open. But, he also must've known how much Johnny loved the rain and set his worries aside, just this once, so he could wake up to the rain.

He set the note down and flopped back onto his pillows, his hand felt something cold and he remembered.

The dog tags.

John MacTavish is no stranger to crushes and heartbreaks.

He's had high school sweethearts, been in and out of love, he knows his way around the world of dating. Which is why he most certainly does not squeal and kick his legs while holding the tags like some kid with their first crush.

He did it like a grown man, thank you very much.

He grabbed his phone and sent Simon the worst pun he could think of; it was tradition at this point to send him some god-awful joke before his flight.

Simon has probably already forgotten about the whole exchange. He probably woke up and assumed he threw them away when he noticed he wasn't wearing them. It was probably stupid, an insignificant gesture with no meaning. But to Johnny, it felt like everything.

He sighed dreamily at the ceiling and felt the cool metal once more. Thunder roared outside. He thought about how he had felt in the man's arms. Thought about how much he wanted that again.

God.

His phone dinged and he immediately reached over to grab it.

I'm fucked, aren't I?

<><><><>

Elsewhere, Ghost was in an airport terminal, having far too much time to think.

Over the weekend, it was almost impressive how many times Ghost had talked himself into and back out of giving Soap his dog tags. He really hoped he hadn't made a mistake.

Simon felt the spot that Johnny had kissed and wondered if he remembered it. Wondered if he had meant it.

Simon thought about how Johnny had looked cradled in his arms when he carried him to his room, the way he had reached out for him when he laid him in bed. The way he had grabbed his wrist and clung to it, grumbling when Simon tried to pull it back.

If asked, he'd say that he had woken up late and that's why he was so far behind schedule. He'd keep the part where he sat there, kneeled in front of Johnny's bed, waiting for him to fall back into a deep enough sleep to pull his arm away all to himself. After all, it would have been rude to wake him up, no?

He had made sure to plug up his phone and, upon seeing the forecasted weather, hesitated before opening the window. It was only barely cracked, just enough for the sounds of the outside world to shamble in, but not so wide as to worry about water damage. He stared at it, convincing himself not to worry and that Johnny would like waking up to the fresh air.

He turned back to make sure the man was still asleep, still comfy, but stopped for a moment. He approached the bed and hesitated before running his fingers through his stupid haircut, almost wishing the man would grab his arm and give him an excuse to stay.

He didn't. Simon did, however, lean in to give him one last kiss on the forehead as some stupidly sappy goodbye, before his brain turned back on and he ripped himself away.

What the fuck is wrong with you? What? He grabs your arm in your sleep so you feel entitled to be able to kiss him?

Simon backed away, staring at the hand that had just been in his hair. He felt dirty.

For fuck’s sake, relax. It's not that big of a deal, you did it earlier; the man fell asleep in your arms, a forehead kiss isn't too much of a stretch.

He went to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands for a while, only stopping when he thought about how much water he was wasting. He still felt dirty.

Not a stretch? You don't get to decide that. How would you feel if someone tried to kiss you while you were unconscious? If they said that they felt they should be allowed to do so because you fell asleep?

He had started making pancakes. Something quick, easy, and reheatable for when Soap woke up. Like making him breakfast would make up for trying to kiss him in his sleep.

Why can't you just be normal?

Eventually, and after a run-in with Soap’s hell-spawn of a twin, he had to leave. The time on his phone showed that he should probably already be halfway to the airport by now but he has always been a selfish man.

He had snagged some paper and left Soap a quick note, hoping the apology would make him feel better about worse sins than not waking him up. It didn't.

He stared at the man for a second, admiring him, before he reminded himself that he was a fucking creep and left.

The storm left the flight delayed by 1.5 hours. Ghost had sat waiting, wireless headphones on and connected, but not playing anything. He had far too much time to think.

Simon thought about how Johnny had looked, his dog tags around his neck, silhouetted by the fading light, the sun behind his head as if even the stars knew they could never compare to him.

He stood and started pacing. Amongst the screaming children, feuding families, and people who think they're entitled to listen to their music without headphones, one middle-aged man having an existential crisis didn't stick out.

He thought about how he had never understood weighted blankets so well until Johnny had thrown himself on top of him. It should've hurt. He should've been annoyed. Instead, Simon selfishly hoped he would never get up.

It took him a while to put his finger on what he had been feeling exactly. Finally, he realized.

There, in that moment, he had never been so happy to be alive. It was a startling emotion to discern amongst the swath of negativity he normally felt. It startled him so much, he had snapped out of his reverie and stopped short in his pacing. When he checked the time, he saw he had one missed text from Johnny.

Soap (art streamer): i was trying to think of an airplane joke but none of them landed

Simon chuckled and sat down; he almost forgot about their dumb little tradition.

Ghost: Disliked.

Soap (art streamer): everyone is so mean 2 me 💔

Ghost: It is not my fault your pun was so Boeing.

Soap (art streamer): well i thought i could wing it

Ghost: Did you look up what giving do-

Ghost: About the tags, you

Ghost: I think you make me want to live

Ghost sighed and fell back further into his seat, coming to a conclusion that his subconscious had long ago discovered.

I'm in love, aren't I?

Soap (art streamer): speechless huh? finally, the Wright reaction to my comedic genius

Ghost: Absolutely awful, Mactavish.

Soap (art streamer): :D

Took you long enough, dumbass.

<><><><>

Soap’s twin spent a good bit of time staring at her brother's new accessory.

“Is something wrong?” he challenged, hoping she wasn't in a bothersome mood.

She failed miserably at hiding her shit-eating grin but didn't care.

“Nope!” she replied.

She had run into Ghost early that morning before he left.

"Detergent."

She was pretty sure he never even learned her name, just jumped straight into calling her detergent.

"Ghoul," she greeted, glaring at the man.

Being required by law to not trust him, she checked on her brother as he was still gathering his things and noticed the necklace.

“You gave him your dog tags,” she accused, like she was framing him for murder.

“Yes, I did,” he replied casually, as per usual robbing her of the fight she so desperately wanted to pick.

“Did you tell him what it means?”

“...What does it mean?”

Damn, he was good. If she wasn't convinced that he was the devil incarnate, she might have fallen for his feigned ignorance.

“100 bucks and you buy my silence.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“200 then.”

“It doesn't even mean anything.”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose you might be right… JOHN!” their neighbors were probably going to complain.

“What the fuck are you doing?” ooh he was getting panicked now.

“If it doesn't matter then you won't mind me telling him to look it up,” she started walking to his room, “JOHNSON!”

“Fucking Christ, woman! Just— Fucking— Here.”

He pulled out his wallet and started counting bills. Damn, that was easier than she thought.

“What did you say? 100?”

“Nope! That was before inflation. Now it’s 300.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? You said 200!”

“So you admit you tried to scam me?”

“Just take the 100 and g-”

She didn't even get to yell, he reached for more before she could finish taking a deep breath in.

“Just shut the fuck up! Here! Three fucking hundred!”

She was tempted to raise her price further, but she was no gambler, she was a strategist. She knew a defeated man when she saw one. If she played this right, she could extort money out of him for a long time to come.

Something, something, vampires not fully killing their victims and all that.

She took the money, counted it, and then held out her hand to shake.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Wraith!”

He didn't shake her hand.

“Christ, both of you are awful.”

He packed his stuff and left, broke, broken, and defeated.

She ate as many pancakes as she could, rich and victorious.

She thought about how much power, how much blackmail she had in this moment.

“I’m fantastic actually,” she walked to her room.

I am going to be so fucking rich by the time they get their shit together.

[scoy-supremacy]

Pit Babe Ep 10

This wasn't watched all in one sitting, but I wanted to post all of it together

If Babe races does that means that there's a chance hes the one that gets hurt and not Charlie?

I kind of want Charlie to win ngl, oh right i forgot hes gonna die in a car accident. Whoops.

I trust Jeff i trust Jeff i trust Jeff 🙏 😭

Charlie wont actually die hell be fine. It's okay, right? Like hes fine? I know I heard he would die but not yet right? They wouldn't do that to me would they? They wouldn't make Babes last word to Charlie be 'im dissapointed' right?? THEY WOULDNT HURT ME LIKE THAT WOULD THEY??

AND BABE KNOWS WHEN HE DIES BC HIS POWERS COME BACK NOOOOOOO

Im distressed now, chest hurty.

Dont answer this, but did Jeff orcastrate this knowing Kenta would be watching? What if he made the accident worse on purpose, or maybe they gave Charlie a 'pretend to be dead' drug, or maybe I need to accept hes dead. I won't do that though, im going to be delulu until the day I die.

I always do this. I go into a show knowing X character dies and then they still become my favorite character and i convince myself that they won't really die, that them being dead is a Fandom joke, or it just won't happen when I watch the show. I get so delulu about it everytime.

What if Kenta saved Kim, that would be great. I need one win from this ep plz and I've been waiting for Kim to be saved for too long. Im still sad Sonic and North couldn't get him out.

Kenta needs to bail on this bullshit anyways, he wants to beat loved by Daddy Tony so bad but its just not going to happen. It's not his fault things aren't working but he gets punished no matter what.

I cant handle Babe crying, it hurts me in a way him being angry or mean just never could.

Idk Babe, i dont think you should be alone, you haven't really been alone since before Charlie popped up. I really really dont think he should be alone.

WHY ARE THEY HAVING A FUNERAL THATS NOT ALLOWED CHARLIE ISNT DEAD HES NOT ALLOWED TO BE

Charlie had to have been lying about only being able to give back power if he dies right? This is a big plot right?? Cmon guys i can only tolerate his absence so long, give me back my baby.

I cant handle Babe crying at Charlie's grave I think my heart is actually breaking rn, I can't remember the last time I cried this much watching a drama, and im not even doen with the episode im like 20 min in or something

Im so glad Kim is finally free and I get to see Jeff and Alan together again, they're every cute.

Jeff is so cute wtf, cheek kiss and then run away, i love them your honor they're keeping me from having a mental breakdown over Charlie lowkey.

Babe watching Charlie's crash over and over, its time for more hurt after that comfort I see. I was starting to get delulu about Charlie being fine again and the writers went 'no no, hes dead and Babe is hurting'

Ah right to Way, that's not a bad move. I dont necessarily think Way is a bad person at his core. I think he was being manipulated (like all of Daddy's children), and really did love Babe. He went about everything the wrong way. But I dont think that makes him a bad person.

Dean is allowed to be upset but also... dude. A person died?? What am I saying. No he didn't hes not dead. Hes fine, everything is fine

I take it back, fuck Dean in particular.

He could just be angry and upset and quit, he didn't have to KILL MY BABY BOY IM SO UPSET

oh good more Jeff Alan to save me in the next episode

[fours-writings]

cw a little suggestive. maybe

but i had to. explain this idea for a moment.

so everyone’s scared of moon. it’s common sense in the plex bc bro he is scary and evil looking. a little gremlin that would pounce on you without hesitation.

now. everyone is scared of him. and that is because he will attack you. he is fully capable of murder, being security for a reason. he is all bite and no bark. silent but murderous yk

but what if. everyone’s scared of him. but only because he’s scary.

they avoid him at all costs because they think he’s this super strong bastard that will eat them.

however, because of this, no one know he is not actually strong at all.

yes sun and moon look after children and they’re big massive hunks of metal. but what if the lankiness is true lankiness.

sun is able to pick up kids bc, well, they’re kids. lightweight. weak. moon has never actually had to attack an intruder bc they always run at the mere sight of him, and the glamrocks usually take care of any truly dangerous intruders before he even gets to them bc the glamrocks are usually the targets in the first place (want some high tech parts? let’s go attack the big animatronics with teeth and claws like total idiots!!)

now. if you couldn’t tell by now, i just love to hc moon with a thing for being absolutely manhandled. get pinned evil clown man.

now imagine just. human night guard y/n. is scared of him. obviously.

but then they make friends with sun, so of course they should make friends with moon, right? sun even convinces moon to take it easy on the human bc “they’re not like the others” (moon calls total bull on that but begrudgingly tries to tolerate them)

sun’s super touchy. attention starved and stuff. he hugs you a lot, and he’s strong enough to pick you up.

then. you find out he’s also light enough for you to pick him up. (or maybe you’re just strong enough. buff y/n time)

of course, you realize this means you can also do the same with moon.

and yet, it takes you a long time to build up the courage to even attempt anything of the sorts bc. yk. claws.

by that time you get a little closer. totally on friend grounds. they definitely aren’t blatantly pining for you. (at least, moon isn’t.)

one day, you end up getting super excited for whatever reason while with moon (you get some good news like a game coming out finally or a big creator liked one of your posts. maybe moon admits he’s your friend. whatever)

you instinctively pull him into a bear hug, and before he can protest you’re picking him right up off the floor and spinning him around in your excitement.

it takes you a moment to realize you did this, and you immediately drop him again, apologizing profusely, while he just. stands there. it’s like he’s completely blue screened.

then you hear his fans turn on.

whoops. you usually only heard that when you starting randomly praising sun. (bc he deserves it. bestest boy)

“Um… wanna pretend this never happened?”

“Mhm.”

you start picking him up and carrying him around more often after that. every time it sounds like he’s about two seconds away from combusting. but he never tells you to stop, and whenever you ask if he’s okay with you doing it it’s always a resounding “yes im fine” so you don’t stop.

just.

unknowingly weak moon <3 He thinks he’s strong. he’s not.