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dorianbrightmusic · 10 months ago

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an interpretation of kieran’s mental health in the indigo disk

One thing that’s me very consistently while playing through the Indigo Disk DLC is how Kieran’s behaviour, though erratic, feels horrifyingly believable through a certain lens. Many of his behaviours are painfully reminiscent of my own memories of having anorexia nervosa—and while that’s absolutely not the sole reason someone could break down into an antithetical version of themself as dramatically as Kieran does, I think that as a reading, it can actually coexist very nicely with the actual plot reasoning of ‘competitive tunnel vision’. If anything, it would complement his competitive frenzy quite effectively.

I’m aware this is a risky and hyper-specific interpretation to share, but I’m posting my reasoning beneath the cut, since I think it’s worth sharing not just as a reading of Pokemon, but also as an intersectional look at ED pathology that doesn’t focus so much on either food or figure. Every time I’ve headcanoned a character as anorexic, it’s been because their behaviours seemed painfully perfectionistic and inflexible (see Seto Kaiba), rather than because they looked a particular way. Obviously, massive trigger warning for discussion of restrictive EDs as attempts at self-destruction.

(n.b. None of this is necessarily based on what I've read in scientific papers so much as on experience and observation of others with this disease. As such, if this feels a bit Freud-y-mumbo-jumbo-y, it probably is.)

Let’s start by looking at where Kieran starts out. In Kitakami, he’s stunningly isolated at the best of times. He thinks in extremes—good, bad; hero, villain; strong, weak. His relationship with his sister isn’t bad, per se, but she’s tempestuous and brash, whereas he’s sensitive and fearful. Her attempts to protect him from the worst of the world reinforce his sense of weakness—she shelters him in the harshest way possible, simultaneously expecting him to be tough enough to bear her toughness and weak enough to be able to tolerate nothing else. And though he attends a specialised school for battle, he’s long been the designated weak sibling; as such, he cannot, by nature, be considered admirable at Blueberry Academy. At home and school alike, he feels less than, and desperately lonely.

To cope, he renders weakness and loneliness as part of his identity, and latches onto the idea of Ogerpon as a courageous outcast, rather than as a villain. It’s an awkward, immature means of coping, as its sole mechanism of granting him any sense of worth further entrenches his isolation and inferiority complex. In defying conventional wisdom on local mythology, he’s choosing to distrust others’ judgement, cutting off any chances of accepting others’ approbation, and locking himself into his own estrangement. His sense of self is constructed around total denial of the fact that being isolated still hurts. So long as he takes up in fantasy, he can’t acknowledge the reality of hating loneliness; and, every time this loneliness and weakness is brought to his attention, he’s suddenly dealing with years of feeling worthless, as compressed into a single moment. As such, he takes defeat awfully, and, having built up very few other ways of coping over the years, gets stupendously angry.

When somebody who’s not from the village comes along, however, maybe he has room to be seen as sensible, rather than contrarian—and, when the player is accepting and kind, he realises that maybe, maybe, there’s room for him to be likeable, worthwhile, in someone’s eyes, after all. So, it’s little wonder that he clings hard to the player, and becomes painfully attached after one day. The player’s affirmation is basically all he has by way of a positive sense of self outside of his own distorted interpretation of legends. Then, cue the player lying to him and taking away Ogerpon. This moment has removed both of Kieran’s last bastions of positive self-image, of ‘maybe it’s okay to be weak, maybe I’m worthwhile anyway’. To him, this isn’t just a minor betrayal—it’s the destruction of his ability to have a sense of worth. It’s pressing on a pain that he’s been systematically ignoring, and reminding him just how much it hurts.

All he knows, though, is denial—so, to deal with this, he needs to create a new sense of self that can ignore the pain of being weak. But since identifying with weakness hasn’t worked for him, he now attempts the opposite, and takes to pursuing strength at any cost. If he’s strong, then how can weakness hurt him, right?

Except this time, the denial is more extreme, more overtly compartmentalised. He assumes a new team, a new hairstyle, a new manner of talking, dressing, acting. He builds up new rules for life, strict as can be, and brooks no exceptions for any weakness. He is trying, in every way possible, to obliterate the existence of the boy from Kitakami.

An obliterated existence/A dual self

I’d like to pause for a moment here to discuss the compartmentalisation of identity that takes place in anorexia nervosa, as I think it’s relevant here.

Anorexia is a coping mechanism—specifically, the disease promises that by supplanting some part of the self that is currently extremely distressed, it can remove the pain and control the situation. The anorexic personality comes from the original personality, but promises to fulfil its ideals by any means possible. So, seeking a sense of security, the afflicted person compartmentalises—the anorexic personality deals with this thing, the healthy personality with that thing—and reserves the healthy personality from having to deal with distress. The problem is, the illness doesn’t usually fix the problem it promised to, but creates many more. But because it allows one to deny psychic pain, it feels comforting—‘I’m in control of this situation, and the powerless part of me has been obliterated’. Rather than resolve the issues created by the illness by attenuating anorexic behaviours, the person tries to instead brute-force fix things with more anorexia; and onward goes the vicious cycle. In doing this, the afflicted person cedes control of their life to the illness, and, over time, comes to identify with it. While it blocks out their source of pain, it also bonds them to it, forcing them to acquiesce to, if not actively seek out, the increasing physical and emotional toll of the illness.

(I promise it gets better.)

The anorexic personality is split into pieces—the healthy self, and the anorexic self—and the healthy self is usually still dealing with something, so doesn’t feel healthy enough to deal with the things the anorexic self deals with. At first, these selves can be very distinct—the anorexic self often be strict, perfectionistic, and tight-lipped, unwilling to burden others with the original self’s vulnerability. Strict rules and schedules often come to dominate the person’s life while they’re ill—must work this hard, do these things and these times. Over time, the boundary between the healthy and sick selves becomes increasingly murky—one’s mind is invaded from the inside—and the original personality changes further to accommodate the illness. To complicate things further, anorexics tend to not only conceal their distress from themselves, but conceal their illness—and the underlying upset—from others. This is much easier to pull off if you’re isolated to begin with. Recovery thus isn’t merely physical, but psychological, trying to rehabilitate and reintegrate the original identity after a period of being compartmentalised and fragmented. This involves abandoning a coping mechanism and confronting pain that had been abnegated throughout and prior to the illness, so is more complex than just trying to attenuate anorexic cognitions and behaviours.

Another look at Kieran

Kieran is unbearably lonely, and has long been trying to deny this loneliness in some way or another. Even when he’s identified with the loneliness, he’s done so in order to try to avoid the associated pain. It’s not really acceptance, in that it’s volatile, so much as unsophisticated avoidance hidden by a veneer of acceptance. This unbearable loneliness is his underlying problem—and even back on Kitakami, he’s very much trying—and failing—to push it down. The events of The Teal Mask are enough to show him that denial through surface acceptance isn’t going to cut it, as his relationships with the player and Ogerpon (or at least the idea of Ogerpon) have reinforced how incredibly alone he is.

When he flips on his axis to pursue strength, he’s not pursuing any more sophisticated a means of coping than before, but he’s being much, much more overt about it. Though the source of his angst is, in fact, loneliness and an inferiority complex, he’s convinced himself that the problem is not that he’s alone, but that he’s weak. If he can deal with the weakness, why would he care about feeling lonely? And since the boy from Kitakami was weak, that personality has got to go. Kieran develops a second self, and hands control of his life over to this self, expecting it to resolve the problem that he’s weak. He becomes brutal, because if he can tolerate his own brutality, why should anyone else struggle? He used to be weak, weaker than any of them, after all.

Pokémon training, realistically, is a form of exercise. And as weak a kid as he’s always been, he’ll make himself stronger, now, so he’ll train, however much hell it is for his team, his classmates, his sister, however much strain it puts on his body, as he barely rests, barely sleeps, barely stops by his room to cook himself anything. Does he need sustenance, when the whole point of this work is to bury his weakness, starve the kid inside himself of his own name and face? Externally, he’s attempted to obliterate the appearance of the kid he used to be – not just in the sense of changing his appearance and his demeanour, but also trying his best to alter his reputation. Physically and behaviorally, he needs to change, he thinks, to block out his weakness, lest it be obvious to an onlooker. Anything less than being a perfect champion will destroy him.

What happens, then, when the player takes his title, and Drayton ridicules him as ex-champion? Kieran has been hoist with his own petard—with his title in shreds, his identity, too, is in pieces. The player has destroyed him. He’s destroyed himself. And years, years, of abnegated misery now come crashing down once again. So, he makes one final attempt to seize glory with Terapagos, for indeed, other than glory, he has nothing. For the first time, he has to confront the fact that he has nothing. That’s terrifying. What can he do but lash out? He’s been pressing down the scared kid inside for a long time, and as such, that scared, angry part of him is in a state of prodigiously arrested development. So, he screams and he screams. And then, at last, he can start to repent. So, he helps the player. And then, the two of them get to start over—as friends, rivals, family.

This is recovery: desperately clinging to dysfunction, only to reconcile with being powerless, and, at last, to choose to come back, to walk away from the wreck made of oneself. Kieran must go home to Kitakami—he had no choice, because there was where his real issue—loneliness—had started. (If he didn’t attend a lot of therapy throughout this time, I’ll be amazed.) And, in his time away from school, after finally breaking down and admitting before Terapagos, before the player, before Briar and Carmine, that he had nothing, nobody, he was always going to have to learn, somehow, how to have something, someone, and how to pay respects to the absent space left for both in the meantime. And when he finally comes back to Blueberry, he’s integrated bits of both of his selves. The timid boy from Kitakami is still there, but now has a spine. The tough, one-track-minded champion helps him stay focussed, but doesn’t seep into his personal life—or at least, not to the exclusion of the kinder part of him. He’s not the same kid he used to be—part of that kid died somewhere along the way, in some sense—but at last, he can acknowledge what he really was—scared and lonely—and, with the courage and strength he once misapplied, he can finally move forward, and learn how to breathe again.

#i like writing about recovery as well simply because it’s not really something we see much in media #and i think the thing is. kiki gets a lot better and at the same time he will never be able to change how much the DLC sucked for him #but he moves on. and he gets much better #again. this is a reading. it is largely based on my own experience. It assumes Kieran’s autistic (and that he might be developing bpd)#it is not canon and shouldn’t be read as such #but after seeing it noted that the guy was neglecting sleep and food to train my brain just went ‘oh. he’s got AN’#it was just like ‘bam. very clear decision’. and analysing the rest of his arc through that lens is interesting to me #not gonna tag this with the fandom. if people find it yay. but given this is a weird and slightly disturbing take I’mma just leave it here

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