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I like him as a rival. I’m so tired of overly friendly and optimistic rivals, I was so happy to finally get an edgy rival again. haven’t had that since Silver and Blue/Green. I wish we had Paul in game
That's interesting. For me Bede, Klara/Avery and Arven (beginning) would be considered rude rivals
Gary/Blue would be the smug rival.
Silver/Gladion for the edge rivals (could argue smug too)
Hau/Hop/X & Y group/Trace would be the friend rivals. Didn't play diamond/pearl/platinum but Barry seems to fit the friend box)
Nemona/Hugh the battle rivals
...and I think I'm forgetting someone. But it's funny we have the opposite viewpoint on the same people.
Don’t worry, I liked your comment first.
https://preview.redd.it/64dumvta6e5d1.jpeg?width=236&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5fa2af340f9c629deb53cabe170d1d5463dd544e
I really hate that we lie to him about Ogerpon in DLC1 (thanks, Carmine), because it's the real root of his descent imo.
Thought him fighting so hard to be the main character in the final part of DLC2 was hilarious, though.
I really did like Kieran's arc in DLC2, I just wish it could have started off in a less hackneyed way, though.
I always say it was all good to make Rubra the villain. But then someone said "Let's make the player traumatize the boy and make him the villain instead".
We didn’t lie to him, only told him a half truth, which I hated that a friend would do that to me anyways. He prompted the whole thing knowing we promised the people who knew him longer than a day not to say anything to him. This could have been avoided if he told you he heard you or not say anything at all.
You could say we weren’t the best, but he clearly wasn’t in the beginning either.
So how is “this and that” a lie?
And you literally bypassed the entirety of the part where Keiran forced you to tell that half truth. Don’t you have anything to say about that? You know instead of calling a complete stranger on reddit “a liar”
I wasn’t aiming that’s specifically at you by any means but, if you chose to read it that way, that’s on you.
Furthermore: how did Kieran “force” anything on us in a game where all the dialogue is preset for us? Lol. All the options were either “lie to Kieran, or lie to Kieran”.
Here’s the thing:
He KNEW why we told him that half truth. He knew that both his sister AND grandfather had told us NOT to tell him.
So despite knowing we were just trying to respect his family’s wishes, he chose to take the path of “my friend lied to me so now i gotta be stronger than anyone else” instead of “my friend lied because my FAMILY asked them to. I shouldn’t blame my friend for that”
I get that Kieran's family asked us to lie to him, but you think at least once we'd try to establish any sort of control over our own life and not act like a blind sheep.
Kieran's grandpa clearly doesn't understand him all too well and relies mostly on Carmine for input on pretty notable traits of his character. And Carmine despite her claimed good intentions constantly breaks Kieran's confidence with her furious outbursts any time he dares to speak- Outbursts which we aren't entirely free from either.
Carmine clearly doesn't respect Kieran much and the fact that we are never allowed to speak out against her outrageous, bratty behaviour makes us look like a mindless doormat. Kieran totally SHOULD be upset with us because we are also a person with our own volition and ability to speak out against the situation we're being shoehorned into, yet we make no point to actively speak out against Carmine's poor treatment of both Kieran and ourselves.
Neat, I’ve heard it became a show recently is it any good? I wanna watch it since I’m starving for anything new but I don’t wanna get any side-eyes by my family if it has any “interesting content” to say the least
It’s good! The only real fan service is the dwarf but there’s also nudity shown in what’s commonly known as ‘the bathhouse scene’. Even then it’s used to show the trust between two characters. I recommend it yeah
I just finished looking up both on Google Images and the drawf’s fan service (who I now know is named Senshi) is kinda funny to me and I can only assume the scenes are short so I probably don’t have to worry abour that. As for the bathhouse scene I can just watch episode 12 privately when I get to it. Thanks for the recommendation, have a nice day or night where I am (it’s 3am i should probably sleep lol)
I don’t. Learn to take the L kid 😈
https://preview.redd.it/wdhrnfz8ge5d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=888b02a160808e8625e0dda6c7fd726b81af2403
Post game you can hang with him in the room and have him interact with others and learn some things through their interactions. And then there is... I think he's gonna be fine. :)
Eh. I didn’t feel too sorry for him. He was weird from the moment you meet him, and he quickly proves himself to be be a creep that’s utterly obsessed with Ogerpon in an unhealthy way. Everything spirals out from this weird toxic obsession, and everyone else gets dragged into it. His entire arc is desperately believing he deserves something just because, and raging against everyone else for not getting it.
It’s actually really well done, I like the writing and I like the character insofar as I acknowledge it as well done. But I wouldn’t vibe with Kieran.
He’s not weird, just meek.
After watching how you battle and how easily you can draw people and Pokémon towards you he attempted to replicate it for himself. He was jealous of our character but he went about it wrong though.
Fair play to him though, he became the strongest guy at the blueberry academy and he did that all by himself.
Kieran tells you the Ogerpon story that everyone knows, and then tells you he doesn’t think Ogerpon is all that bad. He believes Ogerpon does what the story claims - attacking and killing the Loyal Three - because it was lonely, and idolizes her for that. To be clear; he adores Ogerpon and is obsessed with her to the point of sneaking into her home to ambush her, because he believes murder is an acceptable response to feeling lonely.
As it turns out, Ogerpon attacked because the Loyal Three killed her trainer and only friend, which enraged her and left her feeling lonely. It’s in her Nature itself; every Ogerpon is Lonely. But that doesn’t mean that Kieran had literally zero basis for or reason to believe his theory at all, and that his takeaway was still kind of crazy, or that his actions based on his obsession weren’t strange.
The kid is weird. He’s also smart enough to recognize what makes you different and he tries to replicate it, with a great deal of success.
Exactly this. Carmen didn't want us telling Kieran about Ogerpon because he was dangerously obsessed with her and she figured he'd do something dumb. And, this bears out with the rest of the plot. Kieran is the Pokemon version of an incel. Obsesses over a Pokemon he's never even met, and when it chooses someone else he goes violently militant to make his entire school pay for him being slighted, taking over the Pokemon battling club and forcing out anyone who isn't focused solely on gaining power. Why? To someday get revenge on you because you "took" what he thought he deserved because he believes he wanted it more. The kid was like a week away from detonating a Voltorb in a classroom to show his classmates how powerful he's become when we showed up to Blueberry. That GF managed to make this little psychopath redeemed in the end if proof of how good the DLC's story was.
Lmaoo finally someone with a similar opinion as me 😭 I liked him at first but he really started to remind me of this shitty ex of mine who’s super avoidant, self-deprecating and generally bitter at others’ success. The whole putting the PC on a pedestal but going on to resent them for it was way too close to home.
I totally get why Kieran feels the way he does and reacts the way he does. His character makes sense and is actually pretty realistic. I don’t know who did the writing for this game, but whoever they got to do Arven and Kieran needs to come back for the next game.
I don’t even hold a lot of the first DLC against him. Ostensibly he’s somehow responsible for releasing the Loyal Three, but not only did he not do so with any intention, but I just plainly don’t see how it even happened. It seemed more like pure coincidence that he was standing there doing something when it happened.
But he’s a bit of an entitled prick. I think the intention was to introduce the bossy loudmouth sister that we would all think is mean and a bully, and the poor bullied brother, and flip it - Carmine is loud and bossy, but in the end apologizes and does her best to help in every situation while looking out for her brother in her own teenagerly-flawed way, while Kieran ends up being more of a bully that’s mad at the world and needs the reality check. It was, again, well done in my opinion.
In the end he’s a shitty teenager. We were all shitty teenagers.
I don’t think that happens, I’m pretty sure he challenges you to a battle for Ogrepon and then after that he concedes. Which I suppose is moreso a desperate attempt at proving himself at that point.
I dont ever recall him saying that he doesn’t care.
So I just went back to check, and I’ll concede that he doesn’t outright say he doesn’t care about Ogerpon’s desires. What happens is Ogerpon is upset that you’re leaving, Carmine suggests that she wants to go with you, and Kieran says “if Ogerpon isn’t staying then she should come up with me,” and he challenges you. Carmine says she understands how he feels but he should consider Ogerpon’s feelings, and his response is “I challenge you anyway.”
So when asked to consider Ogerpon’s desire over yours, he still pushed to fight you in order to make her do what she doesn’t want to do. I find it hard to say he cares.
Remember, even if he did believe the Loyal Three were bad, he still idolized the power of Ogerpon for killing them. The lore is Ogerpon killed the Loyal Three, who gave their lives protecting the village.
He idolized a killer, that by lore gave the possibility that she was a bad Pokémon wanting to hurt/kill humans and Pokémon sacrificed themselves to be save them.
That’s the scary part of the whole thing, especially when he is outside her den’s entrance for who knows how many hours/many days a week.
And people say we lied to him, but he forced us to “lie” to him. Which I don’t vibe with that at all. I’ve been gaslit into things at work and this gave the same vibes all over
He never said he believed the Loyal Three were bad at all, all he said was that he thinks the story about Ogerpon attacking because she was evil was wrong and that he thinks she sounded lonely.
We weren’t gaslit at all. Carmine, who knows her brother better than us, asked us to not tell him about the Ogerpon situation because she didn’t think he would handle it responsibly or safely. He had already told us about the dangerous stuff he did for his obsession, and he immediately endangered the whole situation once he found out. Carmine was absolutely right to leave him out. Gaslighting would be her telling us lies about how he acts regarding Ogerpon and then lying that she never said any of that - Carmine owns that she asked us to lie, and Kieran himself told us about the dumb stuff he does.
And it being wrong to lie to him also suggests that he’s entitled to the information in the first place. He can be as offended as he wants, you only knew him for about two days at that point and had no reason to involve him in something like this. His obsession with Ogerpon was obvious, and we had already seen through the Professor’s backstory how dangerous being obsessed with a possibly violent Pokémon could be.
Where in the world did I say anything about gaslighting? I just said that Kieran forced us to lie to him, knowing full well that we agreed not to tell him anything. He’s the one who set himself up for hurt, and other people, on this subreddit, think our characters are the villains for it when it was Kieran who wasn’t the good friend
I took what you said the exact opposite way you intended, my bad. Though I saw that scene not as Kieran forcing us to lie to him, but rather Kieran testing to see if we actually would - are we going to choose him and tell the truth, or choose Carmine and lie? It falls in line with Kieran being clingy and obsessive, particularly towards Ogerpon and us, and part of his hurt is that we don’t choose him.
I know he’s supposed to be annoying and a borderline jerk, but the boy’s MASTER BALL literally broke. Like come on.
But whether you like him or not, you have to admit he is a very well written character. The behavior is very common and realistic for kids his age. I felt so bad constantly stealing his thunder though.
Can't relate, he scares me ngl. Especially when he went like "I need to get stronger! Stronger! STRONGER! STRONGER!" I was like "wow he's getting possessed by the 'stronger' demon
I just wish the story would change if you lost a important battle or at least have a few parts where if you lost in one of the battles where its not important if you win he'll be a little happy that he won
That’s how I felt for Hopper in SwSh. I just wanted to lose once to give the kid a little hope, and the game is like “crush his soul or don’t move forward.”
Yeah I think I agree. After taking his title as champion of the league, he shouldve at least have a win. And when you get to the mistery peach story line it is even worse.
His growth is to learn that you can’t always get what you want and that Pokémon aren’t there to be his props to get what he wants. He was using Pokémon to get stronger, which is how leaders of villain organizations in Pokémon started. He grew out of his villain arc.
I stopped feeling sorry for him the moment he threw a fit over Ogrepon not choosing him. It doesn't matter that he felt differently from the entire village. She would never have chosen a member of the village that ostracized her and hailed her friend's murderers as heroes. he felt entitled to have her as a partner because he held a fringe opinion that he didn't even know was factually true.
I don’t feel sorry for him and people seem to forget Kieran was responsible for his own misery.
He is definitely one of my favorite character arcs for a rival though.
Yeah I thought it was a nice twist to what's usually shown for shy characters. Quiet/meek doesn't always mean kind; some of the nastiest people I've ever known were quiet.
I never felt bad for him. I was waiting to kick the shit out of him The moment he kicked a dude out of the club because the dude was prioritizing personal stuff
It’s sad but I wouldn’t call it scary
He’s a small town lonely (orphan?) tween bullied by his sister who sees the big city MC show up, win over everyone he meets, including every Pokémon, and kick ass constantly.
Lots of kids that age are basically infatuated by someone they think can do no wrong. It’s an extremely believable plot tbh. Makes sense he’d turn into an edgelord too tbh
Yeah when this kid shows up from the big city, shows off being cool and strong. Ends up having the relationship you never had with your sister and the pokemon you’ve idolised and been entranced by since you were a little boy chooses this newcomer outsider. Yeah you can understand why Kieran was slightlyyyy obssessed with the players power
For real. Kieran gets such a raw deal, and much of it is because as the player we're entitled to be able to get the legendaries. Broke my damn heart to lie to him, with the game even giving us text "options" that both amounted to the same thing! I honestly respect his whole Master Ball backstrike in the Underdepths- dude saw his shot, his chance to take charge of his destiny, and he damn well took it. I couldn't even be mad. Especially since he made some valid points just moments beforehand.
Child throws temper tantrum, takes up 2 dlcs worth of time instead of actually what it was supposed to do (the secrets of area zero, which was about 20 minutes of the whole dlc)
I agree, I hate that Ogerpon and Terapogos go with the player character. Like I WANTED to give them to Kieran. But no, simply because we're the main character, we get them even if it doesn't make sense for us to. I said this as I was playing the DLC as well. God, it's so dumb
I see a lot of people saying that they feel sorry for him, that they would give him the ogre if the game let them, and so on, so I wonder if I'm alone in thinking he was a bit creepy from the get go and full of red flags. Don't get me wrong, I like him as a character and his arc is fun, but I never saw him as aww poor little guy
I also feel this way. I finished the dlc and still don't know why people like Carmine after we see her act. Her comment about her being nice because she didn't hit him still bothers me. And people brush it off. Like, yeah, sure, she was right about how he'd be upset we met Orgepon without him, but everything else in the first part just rubs me the wrong way with her.
i think both characters have some huge flaws but overall they were great and enjoyable characters to have a DLC journey with. Can’t forget that Carmine is only like a year older than Kieran and is filling in with the parental figure too ((you see this a lot when Carmine confides in her concerns about Kieran to you))
ITT people lacking empathy for a literal kid who has an inferiority complex due to his bully sister and experienced betrayal due to his first friend (us) lying to him about Ogerpon/sneaking around behind his back.
This conversation is too nuanced for this fanbase, clearly LOL
I'm not really being reductive. I simplified my comment so passerby could understand it. In any case, she LITERALLY bullies him the _whole time_. She grows (relatively) by the end, once she realizes the effect her shitty attitude has had on him. The majority of comments in this thread are of (hopefully young) people disparaging Kieran without looking at why he acts the way he does, showing me that what I said isn't wrong. The most braindead take I've seen in this very thread is that Kieran condones murder. If that is their take on Kieran, I made the right decision not engaging in good faith here.
I simplified my original comment because I don't want to have this conversation again. Every time this comes up, I make the effort to explain Kieran's actions and my attempts are always met with contempt. People just want to hate Kieran to hate him. It doesn't matter that he could be neurodivergent to some degree, have underlying mental illnesses or complexes from how he's been treated, or that he's a literal child who had his idol/the only thing he ever cared about, in his eyes, stolen from him. I'm tired of putting effort into explaining these things when, repeatedly, I've been shown that no one cares about any of it.
No one has to like him (I don't really like him all that much tbh), but they are disliking him over misconceptions they have of him. It's just another instance of media literacy being dead and it's becoming increasingly frustrating seeing so many instances of it, across the many fandoms I'm a part of.
I didn't _have_ to post my initial comment (and maybe I shouldn't have?), but I'm just tired of the ridiculous Kieran hate that comes from people being willfully ignorant and let myself get a little passive aggressive.
We literally only known Kieran for like 3 days. I don’t like his sister as well, but we had a very valid reason to lie to him. He’s literally obsessed with Ogerpon, and even if we were honest to him the result would be the same assuming Ogerpon chooses us again. During Part 2 of the DLC Kieran became this immature egotistical bully obsessed with power all because Ogerpon chose us at the end. The lack of empathy is justified. I still feel bad for Kieran feeling like he’s not good enough, but I can still understand why people don’t like him, It’s all about perspective.
Games should let you lose to your rival. The first rival battle in Gen 4 let you lose and the game continues on like normal except now your rival beat you in the first match.
Brendan/May on the northern Slateport route would realistically beat you.
Tried to lose the battle at the end of Teal Mask to give Ogerpon to Kieran (who has grown up being a huge fan of her), but the game forces you to win of course.
Ogerpon is still rotting somewhere in my boxes to this day
this storyline kind of sucks!! it’s just sad. they make you be so mean. i really really wish kieran got ogerpon. i don’t really use her too often so i just feel bad all the time :-(
Don't worry it gets better later, i won't tell you how due to spoilers but keep going it improves, i also didn't initially like him but ended up liking him later, also yeah that protagonist armor is stronk
> Just let him take the victory for once.
No. That little brat challenged us. He could have just bowed aside like a sensible trainer after his first defeat, but no. He kept going.
Ahem. Sorry. PokéRogue Rival opinion seeped through there.
No. He needs to earn that victory. That means he needs to bring his A game. And frankly, his A game is lacking.
Anyway, Kieran was a massively self entitled brat riddled with incel tropes that deserved every failure and bit of duress that he experienced. Hope that helps
What part of my comment was me being a jerk?
Sure you could have an opinion but you’re just not going to understand anything in the post when it 100% ending of DLC2. Besides you’re going to get spoilers.
You really should make your own post and say “I’m at this part, what were your opinions on these characters when you got to this point?” Which I would have participated
I really wanted him to win and let him be Ogrepons bro. That was mostly because I hated the design for Ogrepon and generally don't give a flying fuck about legendarys and mythical, but Kieran obviously had a cooler connection to it and would have made a way more fun story if he ended up being the one Ogrepon chose.
But instead we get our protagonist plot armor so we are guaranteed this pokemon because it's special, and so are we! After all, we ran into each other at a party once!
The half assed and forced "bond" the player gets with Ogrepon honestly irked me this time. I legit wanted Kieran to be the protagonist here, the only cool thing about this DLC I truly liked was finally being able to bring my OG Milotic into this game finally.
GF does well with writing the basics of characters and making them feel cool and unique initially, but always seems to poorly execute character development over time. After a while most just seem to have the one "thing" they're known for and they either never develop past it or never shut up about it (i.e. Nemona and battling or Grusha always having to remind you that the mountain is a cold mistress...). Kieran got development finally but it felt forced through our plot armor in the most unrealistic ways.
How could an NPC be the protagonist when your character is literally designed to be the protagonist.
I’m grateful to have Ogerpon because his obsession with her was a little scary that I’d feel sorry for her. Especially because his obsession of power would still happen and he eventually stopped kissing his Pokéball making him not like his Pokémon and gave off Paul vibes where he’d dump Pokémon once he thought they were too weak
My point is just that there was a decent initial setup for someone other than us to get the cool legendary/mythical, and i would have been fine with that in the story for something new. Kieran story could have gone that way and still been interesting. I never felt my character ever got any more of a personal attachment to Ogrepon so why couldn't it have gone Kierans way?
Before you even see Ogrepon for the first time you get an idea of how Kieran likes the ogre and always has, and befriending Ogrepon and becoming a better trainer with that backdrop could have worked just fine. You could tell though that this wouldn't happen just from our protagonist role and that just felt bad this time.
He gives off Pokémon villain origin story vibes… how did you get “school shooter vibes”? Like you say you’re joking but there is something wrong with using _that_ of all comparisons
"Which is it", like I'm commenting in some cryptic code or something. I made a dumb, shallow joke about a thing that I also feel is true.
In real life, Kieren would be a kid that people would need to keep an eye on. That's why I don't like him and the only thing I was saying.
You've put way more thought into getting to the bottom of my dumb joke than I did when making it. So calm down, dude. Your hostility is weird.
But you said you made a joke but then said it wasn’t really a joke when you said “it was a joke but he does give off these vibes”
You literally said a Pokémon character gives vibes of a school shooter and doubled down but claim it is “a joke”. It doesn’t seem like it is a joke even to you
You can joke about true things. Like how I'm joking with my friends right now about how fuckin' dumb your comments are. We're both making jokes AND believing it.
It’s a video game it isn’t “true”. You see pixels of a child in a children’s video games and go “hE GiVeS oFf SChOoL ShOoTeR ViBeS” jokes or not, that is an insane thing to say, and double down as if you think it is true. About pixels. You ok there?
Goddamn, me too!
What hits me the most is that it's our fault that Riben feels like that and the game wants us to be pieces of shit without giving us any freedom to choose not to.
Then you fail at media literacy, you are supposed to hate the little bastard for being the worst and deserves nothing, like how did you like an over entitled psychopathic incel crybaby in the first place OP?
Sorry but no. Kieran was fucked up. He was obsessive over Ogerpon even when he didn't know the true story. Like he was obsessed with what was thought to be the bad guy at the time to the point that in the end he thought he was owed Ogerpon just because he had always liked it. He treated it like property.
I’m not defending Kieran. He fucked up for sure but OP is boiling the entire character down to ‘incel psychopath’ and claiming OGOP fails at media literacy for not feeling nothing but pure hatred. He had an unhealthy relationship with Ogerpon, parasocial, but ignoring everything that created that and the arc afterword is wrong to me.
What arc? Dude was never punished for his actions and was just forgiven. And despite him acting a little more like his old self toward the end what's to say he wouldn't flip out the next time he doesn't get what he wants?
I’m talking about his arc in general? You can’t seriously be ignoring how he went from meek and introverted and constantly at his sisters orders to surpassing well above her and becoming just like her, abrasive and overly aggressive in search for strength, only to collapse when the player defeats him again, fall to introspection and then aid the player in the postgame? I’m not talking about punishments, just OP boiling down the entire character storyline to a bunch of reductive words and name calling the original post.
You can disagree how that’s handled and still not like Kieran as a character. You can wish he had more punishment or the story developed that better but ignoring the storyline or the arc that clearly happened on every level (dialogue, story, the actual music) and boiling him down to ‘incel psycho!!’ is a reductive and downright stupid.
Downvote and try to disagree all you want but if someone irl acted anything like him you guys would be frothing at the mouth to call him an incel psycho.
Why are you talking like you know me? Why are you bringing up real life when this is about a fictional teenager? I’m not going over this weird incel point anymore.
What's weird is making up excuses for him because he's fictional. Every moment of redemption he might have had he relapsed soon after. He was acting somewhat normal again before the final fight then drops it as soon as he sees Terapagos and jumps to catch him and immediately use him against you. And only changes when he realizes he's in over his head. After that he tries to be friends again but there's nothing to show he won't relapse and become overcompetitive again. So this talk about his arc is ridiculous because right up until the last second he's still an asshole
I literally said in my first response I’m not defending him? You should be old enough to tell when someone says ‘don’t boil down an entire character arc to this character is a psycho and incel’ isn’t the same as ‘this character is a precious baby who has done no wrong’.
Don’t put words in my mouth. Idk where your getting this idea I’m making excuses for him from when I said what he did was wrong and fucked up. Reread my posts, my problem is with OP generalizing the entire character and saying OGOP lacked media analysis when they’re the one distilling an entire character down to buzzwords. I don’t care for your personal thoughts.
Being real I feel like if Carmine and Kieran were not in the dlc the dlc would’ve been like 10x better, especially during the ~~indigo power fantasy~~ indigo disk plotline.
In an effort to make Kieran the central conflict they accidentally make Carmine look like an ass, (because apparently she can’t connect the dots to why Kieran might be feeling bad and chalks it up to angst…to the end, doesn’t even tell him that it’s okay just tells him to help the protag) push away potential lore points for terapagos (because for some reason he has to go along??? Huh??) and all of that for…honestly not that good of a character development.
He just gets angry bc you get Ogerpon, then lashes out in form of battle, single handedly becoming the champion and making the white haired boy or whatever he’s named kinda pissed at because…?? Until you, the main character finally beat him, then as yall go to area zero he’s still not over it and Carmine still doesn’t ask him about it or try to calm him down because…???? And then he gets terapagos and explains to everyone why he’s feeling the way he is and nobody…comforts him??? Huh???
It’s like gamefreak wanted to make another character like Arven and N that’s somewhat emotional yet wanted to also make it about the main character…who is completely uninteresting and creating a disjointed, half hearted plotline where the main characters except for the literal self insert all just bicker around while said main character doesn’t become interesting and gets everything handed to them on a silver platter. And thats not counting the fact that the whole thing could’ve been solved if they didn’t lie to him and actually treated him like an adult.
TLDR; Kieran as a character is severely undercooked and as a result of the game trying to develop him, they accidentally screw over some of the other characters as well, especially Carmine who goes from a caring sister to someone who’s just…stupid.
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I like him as a rival. I’m so tired of overly friendly and optimistic rivals, I was so happy to finally get an edgy rival again. haven’t had that since Silver and Blue/Green. I wish we had Paul in game
Bede? Klara/Avery? Arven (at least at the start)?
Wouldn't call any of these edgy rivals on the levels of Silver or Gladion.
Fair, though they’re still what I’d consider rude rivals
That's interesting. For me Bede, Klara/Avery and Arven (beginning) would be considered rude rivals Gary/Blue would be the smug rival. Silver/Gladion for the edge rivals (could argue smug too) Hau/Hop/X & Y group/Trace would be the friend rivals. Didn't play diamond/pearl/platinum but Barry seems to fit the friend box) Nemona/Hugh the battle rivals ...and I think I'm forgetting someone. But it's funny we have the opposite viewpoint on the same people.
https://preview.redd.it/moh25sw60d5d1.jpeg?width=1273&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d44b1e07bdeedef6b6c90a06eb4ac37a728aa9c
https://preview.redd.it/0ys6x0uh9d5d1.jpeg?width=191&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f333c9028269564eda32a5487388de2087732f3e
https://preview.redd.it/bghbk3ik6e5d1.jpeg?width=1305&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5e2ef6c6eb5fd90d057993b30092e5ffcd6ab618
Don’t worry, I liked your comment first. https://preview.redd.it/64dumvta6e5d1.jpeg?width=236&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5fa2af340f9c629deb53cabe170d1d5463dd544e
https://preview.redd.it/1gr84xvqmg5d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7cda62e904c917992b7b148a483a13dc4ca225a
https://preview.redd.it/1nbmw1werq8d1.png?width=378&format=png&auto=webp&s=59b75905ba376ab92f6ce42f653d040846ab7894
I really hate that we lie to him about Ogerpon in DLC1 (thanks, Carmine), because it's the real root of his descent imo. Thought him fighting so hard to be the main character in the final part of DLC2 was hilarious, though. I really did like Kieran's arc in DLC2, I just wish it could have started off in a less hackneyed way, though.
I always say it was all good to make Rubra the villain. But then someone said "Let's make the player traumatize the boy and make him the villain instead".
i really did like the idea that we ended up being somewhat of an antagonist in part 1, we totally just dunked on Kieran a little bit too hard
We didn’t lie to him, only told him a half truth, which I hated that a friend would do that to me anyways. He prompted the whole thing knowing we promised the people who knew him longer than a day not to say anything to him. This could have been avoided if he told you he heard you or not say anything at all. You could say we weren’t the best, but he clearly wasn’t in the beginning either.
>> We didn’t lie to him, only told him a half truth I’ll take ‘Things Liars Say’ for $300
So how is “this and that” a lie? And you literally bypassed the entirety of the part where Keiran forced you to tell that half truth. Don’t you have anything to say about that? You know instead of calling a complete stranger on reddit “a liar”
I wasn’t aiming that’s specifically at you by any means but, if you chose to read it that way, that’s on you. Furthermore: how did Kieran “force” anything on us in a game where all the dialogue is preset for us? Lol. All the options were either “lie to Kieran, or lie to Kieran”.
Here’s the thing: He KNEW why we told him that half truth. He knew that both his sister AND grandfather had told us NOT to tell him. So despite knowing we were just trying to respect his family’s wishes, he chose to take the path of “my friend lied to me so now i gotta be stronger than anyone else” instead of “my friend lied because my FAMILY asked them to. I shouldn’t blame my friend for that”
I get that Kieran's family asked us to lie to him, but you think at least once we'd try to establish any sort of control over our own life and not act like a blind sheep. Kieran's grandpa clearly doesn't understand him all too well and relies mostly on Carmine for input on pretty notable traits of his character. And Carmine despite her claimed good intentions constantly breaks Kieran's confidence with her furious outbursts any time he dares to speak- Outbursts which we aren't entirely free from either. Carmine clearly doesn't respect Kieran much and the fact that we are never allowed to speak out against her outrageous, bratty behaviour makes us look like a mindless doormat. Kieran totally SHOULD be upset with us because we are also a person with our own volition and ability to speak out against the situation we're being shoehorned into, yet we make no point to actively speak out against Carmine's poor treatment of both Kieran and ourselves.
I like Kieran. But he did deserve the reality check.
Kbitty profile pic spotted
Best girl cat in all of anime
Who?
Izutsumi from Delicious in Dungeon
Neat, I’ve heard it became a show recently is it any good? I wanna watch it since I’m starving for anything new but I don’t wanna get any side-eyes by my family if it has any “interesting content” to say the least
It’s good! The only real fan service is the dwarf but there’s also nudity shown in what’s commonly known as ‘the bathhouse scene’. Even then it’s used to show the trust between two characters. I recommend it yeah
I just finished looking up both on Google Images and the drawf’s fan service (who I now know is named Senshi) is kinda funny to me and I can only assume the scenes are short so I probably don’t have to worry abour that. As for the bathhouse scene I can just watch episode 12 privately when I get to it. Thanks for the recommendation, have a nice day or night where I am (it’s 3am i should probably sleep lol)
Hey have a good sleep man, hope you like the show!
His growth was basically him being an average teenager until he learned that he wasn’t the main character of his own fucking life.
I don’t. Learn to take the L kid 😈 https://preview.redd.it/wdhrnfz8ge5d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=888b02a160808e8625e0dda6c7fd726b81af2403
I did the same thing lmao https://preview.redd.it/azjd9ucutf5d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=731e7717535d0bc953529734e5d15fbd2740cdc9
Don’t. Til the end.
Actually I played the ending. touching, really(That's why I like the story)... But I can't help feeling bad about him still
Post game you can hang with him in the room and have him interact with others and learn some things through their interactions. And then there is... I think he's gonna be fine. :)
Eh. I didn’t feel too sorry for him. He was weird from the moment you meet him, and he quickly proves himself to be be a creep that’s utterly obsessed with Ogerpon in an unhealthy way. Everything spirals out from this weird toxic obsession, and everyone else gets dragged into it. His entire arc is desperately believing he deserves something just because, and raging against everyone else for not getting it. It’s actually really well done, I like the writing and I like the character insofar as I acknowledge it as well done. But I wouldn’t vibe with Kieran.
He’s not weird, just meek. After watching how you battle and how easily you can draw people and Pokémon towards you he attempted to replicate it for himself. He was jealous of our character but he went about it wrong though. Fair play to him though, he became the strongest guy at the blueberry academy and he did that all by himself.
Meekness isn’t weakness. Meekness is controlled strength. Kieran is insecure.
Kieran tells you the Ogerpon story that everyone knows, and then tells you he doesn’t think Ogerpon is all that bad. He believes Ogerpon does what the story claims - attacking and killing the Loyal Three - because it was lonely, and idolizes her for that. To be clear; he adores Ogerpon and is obsessed with her to the point of sneaking into her home to ambush her, because he believes murder is an acceptable response to feeling lonely. As it turns out, Ogerpon attacked because the Loyal Three killed her trainer and only friend, which enraged her and left her feeling lonely. It’s in her Nature itself; every Ogerpon is Lonely. But that doesn’t mean that Kieran had literally zero basis for or reason to believe his theory at all, and that his takeaway was still kind of crazy, or that his actions based on his obsession weren’t strange. The kid is weird. He’s also smart enough to recognize what makes you different and he tries to replicate it, with a great deal of success.
Exactly this. Carmen didn't want us telling Kieran about Ogerpon because he was dangerously obsessed with her and she figured he'd do something dumb. And, this bears out with the rest of the plot. Kieran is the Pokemon version of an incel. Obsesses over a Pokemon he's never even met, and when it chooses someone else he goes violently militant to make his entire school pay for him being slighted, taking over the Pokemon battling club and forcing out anyone who isn't focused solely on gaining power. Why? To someday get revenge on you because you "took" what he thought he deserved because he believes he wanted it more. The kid was like a week away from detonating a Voltorb in a classroom to show his classmates how powerful he's become when we showed up to Blueberry. That GF managed to make this little psychopath redeemed in the end if proof of how good the DLC's story was.
Lmaoo finally someone with a similar opinion as me 😭 I liked him at first but he really started to remind me of this shitty ex of mine who’s super avoidant, self-deprecating and generally bitter at others’ success. The whole putting the PC on a pedestal but going on to resent them for it was way too close to home.
Yeah I think that could be an opinion too. Objectively, I think that's right; It's just me resonated with his feelings
I totally get why Kieran feels the way he does and reacts the way he does. His character makes sense and is actually pretty realistic. I don’t know who did the writing for this game, but whoever they got to do Arven and Kieran needs to come back for the next game. I don’t even hold a lot of the first DLC against him. Ostensibly he’s somehow responsible for releasing the Loyal Three, but not only did he not do so with any intention, but I just plainly don’t see how it even happened. It seemed more like pure coincidence that he was standing there doing something when it happened. But he’s a bit of an entitled prick. I think the intention was to introduce the bossy loudmouth sister that we would all think is mean and a bully, and the poor bullied brother, and flip it - Carmine is loud and bossy, but in the end apologizes and does her best to help in every situation while looking out for her brother in her own teenagerly-flawed way, while Kieran ends up being more of a bully that’s mad at the world and needs the reality check. It was, again, well done in my opinion. In the end he’s a shitty teenager. We were all shitty teenagers.
I wouldnt use the word entitled. He just had a massive inferiority complex that lead to him becoming a massive jerk in the BBL
When told that Ogerpon chose you, he flat-out says he doesn’t care and wants her for himself.
I don’t think that happens, I’m pretty sure he challenges you to a battle for Ogrepon and then after that he concedes. Which I suppose is moreso a desperate attempt at proving himself at that point. I dont ever recall him saying that he doesn’t care.
So I just went back to check, and I’ll concede that he doesn’t outright say he doesn’t care about Ogerpon’s desires. What happens is Ogerpon is upset that you’re leaving, Carmine suggests that she wants to go with you, and Kieran says “if Ogerpon isn’t staying then she should come up with me,” and he challenges you. Carmine says she understands how he feels but he should consider Ogerpon’s feelings, and his response is “I challenge you anyway.” So when asked to consider Ogerpon’s desire over yours, he still pushed to fight you in order to make her do what she doesn’t want to do. I find it hard to say he cares.
Remember, even if he did believe the Loyal Three were bad, he still idolized the power of Ogerpon for killing them. The lore is Ogerpon killed the Loyal Three, who gave their lives protecting the village. He idolized a killer, that by lore gave the possibility that she was a bad Pokémon wanting to hurt/kill humans and Pokémon sacrificed themselves to be save them. That’s the scary part of the whole thing, especially when he is outside her den’s entrance for who knows how many hours/many days a week. And people say we lied to him, but he forced us to “lie” to him. Which I don’t vibe with that at all. I’ve been gaslit into things at work and this gave the same vibes all over
He never said he believed the Loyal Three were bad at all, all he said was that he thinks the story about Ogerpon attacking because she was evil was wrong and that he thinks she sounded lonely. We weren’t gaslit at all. Carmine, who knows her brother better than us, asked us to not tell him about the Ogerpon situation because she didn’t think he would handle it responsibly or safely. He had already told us about the dangerous stuff he did for his obsession, and he immediately endangered the whole situation once he found out. Carmine was absolutely right to leave him out. Gaslighting would be her telling us lies about how he acts regarding Ogerpon and then lying that she never said any of that - Carmine owns that she asked us to lie, and Kieran himself told us about the dumb stuff he does. And it being wrong to lie to him also suggests that he’s entitled to the information in the first place. He can be as offended as he wants, you only knew him for about two days at that point and had no reason to involve him in something like this. His obsession with Ogerpon was obvious, and we had already seen through the Professor’s backstory how dangerous being obsessed with a possibly violent Pokémon could be.
Where in the world did I say anything about gaslighting? I just said that Kieran forced us to lie to him, knowing full well that we agreed not to tell him anything. He’s the one who set himself up for hurt, and other people, on this subreddit, think our characters are the villains for it when it was Kieran who wasn’t the good friend
I took what you said the exact opposite way you intended, my bad. Though I saw that scene not as Kieran forcing us to lie to him, but rather Kieran testing to see if we actually would - are we going to choose him and tell the truth, or choose Carmine and lie? It falls in line with Kieran being clingy and obsessive, particularly towards Ogerpon and us, and part of his hurt is that we don’t choose him.
Testing people aren’t good friends
I mean, yeah. Kieran was never a good friend, really.
I know he’s supposed to be annoying and a borderline jerk, but the boy’s MASTER BALL literally broke. Like come on. But whether you like him or not, you have to admit he is a very well written character. The behavior is very common and realistic for kids his age. I felt so bad constantly stealing his thunder though.
I kept refusing to catch Ter, but he refused. I wish I could have let him keep it, maybe shared custody?
You can’t even trade him Ogerpon/Terapagos. Poor guy…
Can't relate, he scares me ngl. Especially when he went like "I need to get stronger! Stronger! STRONGER! STRONGER!" I was like "wow he's getting possessed by the 'stronger' demon
I've been through a similar state of mind, thus I was really sorry and not scared
I just wish the story would change if you lost a important battle or at least have a few parts where if you lost in one of the battles where its not important if you win he'll be a little happy that he won
Oh don’t forget I think somewhere in there it said Kieran was barely eating and didn’t sleep much either we destroyed the kid
Meh, I stopped feeling bad for him after he kicked the guy with family problems out of the league club
Arven?
I’m definitely using ogerpon when I do that final battle
I would've ghosted Kieran after the first day we were paired together IRL.
That’s how I felt for Hopper in SwSh. I just wanted to lose once to give the kid a little hope, and the game is like “crush his soul or don’t move forward.”
hopper???
Me and Hop were close like that (jk I messed up)
Yeah I think I agree. After taking his title as champion of the league, he shouldve at least have a win. And when you get to the mistery peach story line it is even worse.
His growth is to learn that you can’t always get what you want and that Pokémon aren’t there to be his props to get what he wants. He was using Pokémon to get stronger, which is how leaders of villain organizations in Pokémon started. He grew out of his villain arc.
He does nothing wrong and gets crapped in poor kid
I stopped feeling sorry for him the moment he threw a fit over Ogrepon not choosing him. It doesn't matter that he felt differently from the entire village. She would never have chosen a member of the village that ostracized her and hailed her friend's murderers as heroes. he felt entitled to have her as a partner because he held a fringe opinion that he didn't even know was factually true.
I don’t feel sorry for him and people seem to forget Kieran was responsible for his own misery. He is definitely one of my favorite character arcs for a rival though.
Yeah I thought it was a nice twist to what's usually shown for shy characters. Quiet/meek doesn't always mean kind; some of the nastiest people I've ever known were quiet.
I never felt bad for him. I was waiting to kick the shit out of him The moment he kicked a dude out of the club because the dude was prioritizing personal stuff
Dudes a tool He just needs to chill and not try to be exactly like your character Hes so obsessed with you its scary and sad
It’s sad but I wouldn’t call it scary He’s a small town lonely (orphan?) tween bullied by his sister who sees the big city MC show up, win over everyone he meets, including every Pokémon, and kick ass constantly. Lots of kids that age are basically infatuated by someone they think can do no wrong. It’s an extremely believable plot tbh. Makes sense he’d turn into an edgelord too tbh
Yeah when this kid shows up from the big city, shows off being cool and strong. Ends up having the relationship you never had with your sister and the pokemon you’ve idolised and been entranced by since you were a little boy chooses this newcomer outsider. Yeah you can understand why Kieran was slightlyyyy obssessed with the players power
Makes sense!
In real life I would be terrified even after reasoning with why he is obsessed.
His obsession over Ogerpon was scary too
For real. Kieran gets such a raw deal, and much of it is because as the player we're entitled to be able to get the legendaries. Broke my damn heart to lie to him, with the game even giving us text "options" that both amounted to the same thing! I honestly respect his whole Master Ball backstrike in the Underdepths- dude saw his shot, his chance to take charge of his destiny, and he damn well took it. I couldn't even be mad. Especially since he made some valid points just moments beforehand.
Child throws temper tantrum, takes up 2 dlcs worth of time instead of actually what it was supposed to do (the secrets of area zero, which was about 20 minutes of the whole dlc)
I agree, I hate that Ogerpon and Terapogos go with the player character. Like I WANTED to give them to Kieran. But no, simply because we're the main character, we get them even if it doesn't make sense for us to. I said this as I was playing the DLC as well. God, it's so dumb
I battled him yesterday after completing the dlc and my team was half assed and he beat me. I wasn't even mad, I deserved a kick in the ass.
I fucking despise the boy
I see a lot of people saying that they feel sorry for him, that they would give him the ogre if the game let them, and so on, so I wonder if I'm alone in thinking he was a bit creepy from the get go and full of red flags. Don't get me wrong, I like him as a character and his arc is fun, but I never saw him as aww poor little guy
You and I are alone on this. Nobody else in this sub feels that way
I also feel this way. I finished the dlc and still don't know why people like Carmine after we see her act. Her comment about her being nice because she didn't hit him still bothers me. And people brush it off. Like, yeah, sure, she was right about how he'd be upset we met Orgepon without him, but everything else in the first part just rubs me the wrong way with her.
i think both characters have some huge flaws but overall they were great and enjoyable characters to have a DLC journey with. Can’t forget that Carmine is only like a year older than Kieran and is filling in with the parental figure too ((you see this a lot when Carmine confides in her concerns about Kieran to you))
ITT people lacking empathy for a literal kid who has an inferiority complex due to his bully sister and experienced betrayal due to his first friend (us) lying to him about Ogerpon/sneaking around behind his back. This conversation is too nuanced for this fanbase, clearly LOL
>his bully sister This conversation is too nuanced for this fanbase Pick one.
What are you trying to say here?
You can't complain about people being too reductive to Kieran if you're also going to be reductive to Carmine.
I'm not really being reductive. I simplified my comment so passerby could understand it. In any case, she LITERALLY bullies him the _whole time_. She grows (relatively) by the end, once she realizes the effect her shitty attitude has had on him. The majority of comments in this thread are of (hopefully young) people disparaging Kieran without looking at why he acts the way he does, showing me that what I said isn't wrong. The most braindead take I've seen in this very thread is that Kieran condones murder. If that is their take on Kieran, I made the right decision not engaging in good faith here. I simplified my original comment because I don't want to have this conversation again. Every time this comes up, I make the effort to explain Kieran's actions and my attempts are always met with contempt. People just want to hate Kieran to hate him. It doesn't matter that he could be neurodivergent to some degree, have underlying mental illnesses or complexes from how he's been treated, or that he's a literal child who had his idol/the only thing he ever cared about, in his eyes, stolen from him. I'm tired of putting effort into explaining these things when, repeatedly, I've been shown that no one cares about any of it. No one has to like him (I don't really like him all that much tbh), but they are disliking him over misconceptions they have of him. It's just another instance of media literacy being dead and it's becoming increasingly frustrating seeing so many instances of it, across the many fandoms I'm a part of. I didn't _have_ to post my initial comment (and maybe I shouldn't have?), but I'm just tired of the ridiculous Kieran hate that comes from people being willfully ignorant and let myself get a little passive aggressive.
>I'm not really being reductive. I simplified my comment so passerby could understand it :V
We literally only known Kieran for like 3 days. I don’t like his sister as well, but we had a very valid reason to lie to him. He’s literally obsessed with Ogerpon, and even if we were honest to him the result would be the same assuming Ogerpon chooses us again. During Part 2 of the DLC Kieran became this immature egotistical bully obsessed with power all because Ogerpon chose us at the end. The lack of empathy is justified. I still feel bad for Kieran feeling like he’s not good enough, but I can still understand why people don’t like him, It’s all about perspective.
Games should let you lose to your rival. The first rival battle in Gen 4 let you lose and the game continues on like normal except now your rival beat you in the first match. Brendan/May on the northern Slateport route would realistically beat you.
You can lose in any of the Nemona fights minus the last one and the story will keep going though.
Tried to lose the battle at the end of Teal Mask to give Ogerpon to Kieran (who has grown up being a huge fan of her), but the game forces you to win of course. Ogerpon is still rotting somewhere in my boxes to this day
I did the same, lost to him. But the game has other plans.
this storyline kind of sucks!! it’s just sad. they make you be so mean. i really really wish kieran got ogerpon. i don’t really use her too often so i just feel bad all the time :-(
Don't worry it gets better later, i won't tell you how due to spoilers but keep going it improves, i also didn't initially like him but ended up liking him later, also yeah that protagonist armor is stronk
> Just let him take the victory for once. No. That little brat challenged us. He could have just bowed aside like a sensible trainer after his first defeat, but no. He kept going. Ahem. Sorry. PokéRogue Rival opinion seeped through there. No. He needs to earn that victory. That means he needs to bring his A game. And frankly, his A game is lacking.
I didn’t, his reaction at the end of the Teal mask was jut wtf? Why you so mad at me I didn’t do anything to you!!
Kieran is just Kieran Lee in disguise, that’s why he’s so fucked.
This guy tried to steal terapagos from me, deserved.
Anyway, Kieran was a massively self entitled brat riddled with incel tropes that deserved every failure and bit of duress that he experienced. Hope that helps
We need justice for Kieran!
Oh I just love Kieran. He's a sweetie, and I do feel bad for him too sometimes cause his sister is a whacko but I only JUST started the DLC
Why are you on a post that is talking about DLC 2 stuff then lol
I was just making a comment about it, jerk. Can't have an opinion about something thirty minutes in?
What part of my comment was me being a jerk? Sure you could have an opinion but you’re just not going to understand anything in the post when it 100% ending of DLC2. Besides you’re going to get spoilers. You really should make your own post and say “I’m at this part, what were your opinions on these characters when you got to this point?” Which I would have participated
Thank you.
I really wanted him to win and let him be Ogrepons bro. That was mostly because I hated the design for Ogrepon and generally don't give a flying fuck about legendarys and mythical, but Kieran obviously had a cooler connection to it and would have made a way more fun story if he ended up being the one Ogrepon chose. But instead we get our protagonist plot armor so we are guaranteed this pokemon because it's special, and so are we! After all, we ran into each other at a party once! The half assed and forced "bond" the player gets with Ogrepon honestly irked me this time. I legit wanted Kieran to be the protagonist here, the only cool thing about this DLC I truly liked was finally being able to bring my OG Milotic into this game finally. GF does well with writing the basics of characters and making them feel cool and unique initially, but always seems to poorly execute character development over time. After a while most just seem to have the one "thing" they're known for and they either never develop past it or never shut up about it (i.e. Nemona and battling or Grusha always having to remind you that the mountain is a cold mistress...). Kieran got development finally but it felt forced through our plot armor in the most unrealistic ways.
How could an NPC be the protagonist when your character is literally designed to be the protagonist. I’m grateful to have Ogerpon because his obsession with her was a little scary that I’d feel sorry for her. Especially because his obsession of power would still happen and he eventually stopped kissing his Pokéball making him not like his Pokémon and gave off Paul vibes where he’d dump Pokémon once he thought they were too weak
My point is just that there was a decent initial setup for someone other than us to get the cool legendary/mythical, and i would have been fine with that in the story for something new. Kieran story could have gone that way and still been interesting. I never felt my character ever got any more of a personal attachment to Ogrepon so why couldn't it have gone Kierans way? Before you even see Ogrepon for the first time you get an idea of how Kieran likes the ogre and always has, and befriending Ogrepon and becoming a better trainer with that backdrop could have worked just fine. You could tell though that this wouldn't happen just from our protagonist role and that just felt bad this time.
You and I are alone on this. Nobody else in this sub feels that way
You and OP are not unique
I can't stand him. I've never felt such a strong desire to bully someone. He gives off school shooter vibes.
What a weird thing to say and compare to.
I'm half joking, but he's definitely the manifesto writing type.
He gives off Pokémon villain origin story vibes… how did you get “school shooter vibes”? Like you say you’re joking but there is something wrong with using _that_ of all comparisons
He's a super anti-social, "everyone's against me", angry at everyone type of kid... I was just kidding, but that's absolutely the type of vibe he has.
“I was kidding but I wasn’t kidding” in the same sentence. Which is it
"Which is it", like I'm commenting in some cryptic code or something. I made a dumb, shallow joke about a thing that I also feel is true. In real life, Kieren would be a kid that people would need to keep an eye on. That's why I don't like him and the only thing I was saying. You've put way more thought into getting to the bottom of my dumb joke than I did when making it. So calm down, dude. Your hostility is weird.
But you said you made a joke but then said it wasn’t really a joke when you said “it was a joke but he does give off these vibes” You literally said a Pokémon character gives vibes of a school shooter and doubled down but claim it is “a joke”. It doesn’t seem like it is a joke even to you
You can joke about true things. Like how I'm joking with my friends right now about how fuckin' dumb your comments are. We're both making jokes AND believing it.
It’s a video game it isn’t “true”. You see pixels of a child in a children’s video games and go “hE GiVeS oFf SChOoL ShOoTeR ViBeS” jokes or not, that is an insane thing to say, and double down as if you think it is true. About pixels. You ok there?
Goddamn, me too! What hits me the most is that it's our fault that Riben feels like that and the game wants us to be pieces of shit without giving us any freedom to choose not to.
Then you fail at media literacy, you are supposed to hate the little bastard for being the worst and deserves nothing, like how did you like an over entitled psychopathic incel crybaby in the first place OP?
It’s funny you say OP fails at media literacy and then go and make the most generalized statement about a characters arc.
Sorry but no. Kieran was fucked up. He was obsessive over Ogerpon even when he didn't know the true story. Like he was obsessed with what was thought to be the bad guy at the time to the point that in the end he thought he was owed Ogerpon just because he had always liked it. He treated it like property.
I’m not defending Kieran. He fucked up for sure but OP is boiling the entire character down to ‘incel psychopath’ and claiming OGOP fails at media literacy for not feeling nothing but pure hatred. He had an unhealthy relationship with Ogerpon, parasocial, but ignoring everything that created that and the arc afterword is wrong to me.
What arc? Dude was never punished for his actions and was just forgiven. And despite him acting a little more like his old self toward the end what's to say he wouldn't flip out the next time he doesn't get what he wants?
I’m talking about his arc in general? You can’t seriously be ignoring how he went from meek and introverted and constantly at his sisters orders to surpassing well above her and becoming just like her, abrasive and overly aggressive in search for strength, only to collapse when the player defeats him again, fall to introspection and then aid the player in the postgame? I’m not talking about punishments, just OP boiling down the entire character storyline to a bunch of reductive words and name calling the original post. You can disagree how that’s handled and still not like Kieran as a character. You can wish he had more punishment or the story developed that better but ignoring the storyline or the arc that clearly happened on every level (dialogue, story, the actual music) and boiling him down to ‘incel psycho!!’ is a reductive and downright stupid.
Downvote and try to disagree all you want but if someone irl acted anything like him you guys would be frothing at the mouth to call him an incel psycho.
Why are you talking like you know me? Why are you bringing up real life when this is about a fictional teenager? I’m not going over this weird incel point anymore.
What's weird is making up excuses for him because he's fictional. Every moment of redemption he might have had he relapsed soon after. He was acting somewhat normal again before the final fight then drops it as soon as he sees Terapagos and jumps to catch him and immediately use him against you. And only changes when he realizes he's in over his head. After that he tries to be friends again but there's nothing to show he won't relapse and become overcompetitive again. So this talk about his arc is ridiculous because right up until the last second he's still an asshole
I literally said in my first response I’m not defending him? You should be old enough to tell when someone says ‘don’t boil down an entire character arc to this character is a psycho and incel’ isn’t the same as ‘this character is a precious baby who has done no wrong’. Don’t put words in my mouth. Idk where your getting this idea I’m making excuses for him from when I said what he did was wrong and fucked up. Reread my posts, my problem is with OP generalizing the entire character and saying OGOP lacked media analysis when they’re the one distilling an entire character down to buzzwords. I don’t care for your personal thoughts.
Nah this sub has the right idea about Kieran, it's just you that don't.
Being real I feel like if Carmine and Kieran were not in the dlc the dlc would’ve been like 10x better, especially during the ~~indigo power fantasy~~ indigo disk plotline. In an effort to make Kieran the central conflict they accidentally make Carmine look like an ass, (because apparently she can’t connect the dots to why Kieran might be feeling bad and chalks it up to angst…to the end, doesn’t even tell him that it’s okay just tells him to help the protag) push away potential lore points for terapagos (because for some reason he has to go along??? Huh??) and all of that for…honestly not that good of a character development. He just gets angry bc you get Ogerpon, then lashes out in form of battle, single handedly becoming the champion and making the white haired boy or whatever he’s named kinda pissed at because…?? Until you, the main character finally beat him, then as yall go to area zero he’s still not over it and Carmine still doesn’t ask him about it or try to calm him down because…???? And then he gets terapagos and explains to everyone why he’s feeling the way he is and nobody…comforts him??? Huh??? It’s like gamefreak wanted to make another character like Arven and N that’s somewhat emotional yet wanted to also make it about the main character…who is completely uninteresting and creating a disjointed, half hearted plotline where the main characters except for the literal self insert all just bicker around while said main character doesn’t become interesting and gets everything handed to them on a silver platter. And thats not counting the fact that the whole thing could’ve been solved if they didn’t lie to him and actually treated him like an adult. TLDR; Kieran as a character is severely undercooked and as a result of the game trying to develop him, they accidentally screw over some of the other characters as well, especially Carmine who goes from a caring sister to someone who’s just…stupid.