I AM NOT AFRAID OF BUGS

KIPPERLILLY

favourite thing about them: she's SOOOOO babygirl there's so many things wrong with her. she did it all evil and she'd do it all again! she's jealous and petty and single-minded and so deeply flawed in ways that i can only be an apologist for. she's also just like vriska homestuck

least favourite thing about them: brennan lee mulligan failed to consider that teenage girls can have interiority and be groomed by their teachers. huge L for him

brOTP: i've been so sold on wizardswap that i think my answer is actually just kipperlilly and all of the rat grinders. i particularly like her dynamic with mary ann in olive's kipperlilly therapy fic i think it's really good. but yes i think she could have played off the rest of TRG really well if brennan had given them the space for that in canon. ALAS. we will never know

OTP: no real otp i think kipperbees is kinda funny, i think frostbees is really beautiful doomed yuri. i think my favourite sleeper hit is kipperadaine kismesissitude. i'm genuinely always saying this those girls would bite each other to death and i want to see it happen

random headcanon: i think she bleaches her hair blonde. this is because i'm a broad believer in asian kipperlilly of all stripes but i genuinely think it adds a little bit of characterisation to her for her to have neurotically dyed blonde hair.

unpopular opinion: kipperlilly did nothing wrong

song i associate with them: ALSO because of wizardswap (shoutout olive) but it's 'the moon will sing' by the crane wives

favourite picture of them: CHEWING MY FINGERS OFF. OK MY ACTUAL FAVE IS STILL IN WIPS BECAUSE I COMMISSIONED ZACK FOR MORE KIPPERLILLY ART SO NONE OF YOU GET TO SEE IT YET BUT. IT WOULD BE THIS ONE THAT ZACK DREW FOR ME FOR CHRISTMAS. I'M LITERALLY ALWAYS THINKING ABOUT HER I MADE IT MY PHONE WALLPAPER <3

KINGSTON

favourite thing about them: KINGSTON MY FRIEND KINGSTON!! i love how unapologetically flawed lou plays his characters. kingston is my second favourite lou character, sitting behind amethar. i love him because he is DIVORCED. well. he was. i genuinely love the brennan/lou divorce arguments they always make me giggle and kick my feet. but genuinely i love how committed lou is to letting his characters make mistakes and say things that are fucked up!! i enjoy s1 kingston a lot more than s2 kingston. s2 kingston is cute still with the baby but s1 kingston is my guy.

least favourite thing about them: more of a general flaw with TUC in general, and kingston is perhaps the most personally sympathetic of them, but i don't super enjoy the kids ever after ending of TUC2. i think it mostly makes sense for him, i just think it's a little boring for the rest of them, and certainly as a set they're less compelling.

brOTP: kingston & pete save me... save me vox duo!! i like them so much. girl if you're her boyfriend how come i'm the one with the narratively assigned foils? i think it's fun when there's conflict and disagreement within the party, and the players manage it really well here where they're both sympathetic/unsympathetic for their own reasons. and then by s2 it's like woah :) they're literally mirrors of each other!

OTP: i do think he goes nicely with liz. like there's work put into building their relationship and resolving their conflict! i like them. however someone did mention kingston slash pete to me once and i'm like hm... chewing on them a little. not ever something i want to write or actively seek to read or even think would work in canon. nevertheless there is something there maybe. a little weirder than normal.

random headcanon: having to catch up on what's popular with the kids when you're several generations out of touch makes you really bad at fortnite i think

unpopular opinion: no major unpopular opinions i think! but i think people tend to not like kingston enough because they've got yaoi goggles that centres white characters so well. lol

song i associate with them & favourite picture of them: these two actually go together it's "soldier, poet, king" by the oh hellos because of this fanart by sam!!!

My idea is that we see Buffy and her friends as teenager through a mostly teenage-symphatetic pov, so we felt inclination to relate to them and theirs problems even when they are not perfect.

in later season, we see Dawn, the Potentials (like Kennedy) and the kids at school through… young adult Buffy’s eyes, and Buffy like many people who have just gotten out of her teens is not the most adapt person to emohatize with them without cringing too hard.

Which makes sense as she was forced to grow up early and quickly in her teens due to the HorrorTM, so at 21/22 years old she is not the most understanding mentor with teens, because she is closer enough in age to feel annoyed by them but older enough to understand they are immature, and also she’s fighting a war and have little time for properly mentoring a bunch of teenage girls that were literally dropped on her footsteps.

But that doesn’t change the fact that if the story was told from theirs povs we would emohatize with the Potentials!

Those are girls from age 14 to 20 with apparently no families or normal lives (except preparing to be one day a child soldier *if they will be chosen*) who were moved all across the world by theirs Watchers into the Summers eyes because they were risking theirs life at the hand of an immaterial First Evil!

We emphatize with Faith who is a traumatized teen who makes way worse choices than Kennedy, we emphatize with Kendra who was raised with the type of “no families or school or connection to the outside world” rule and the “one day if you are lucky you’ll be chosen” Kennedy also seems to have been raised with, we emphatize with teen Buffy who is a good person but also not always perfect or super mature in the early seasons (which is good! Makes her a good character), we emphatize with Buffy friends and theirs big or little problems in High School despite the fact that they were often annoying too, we emphatize with Cordelia who until her 16 or 17 year of age was a mean girl and sometimes a bully…. Why can’t the fandom makes a little effort and emphatize with the Potentials too even if theirs povs and feeling aren’t prioritized by the narrative?

Round One, Bracket 3

Propaganda below the cut:

it's ok, if tintin doesn't make it out of here it saves martine from killing him herself