Character Relationships Meme

[exeggutorhead]

The Character Relationships Meme!

Because I noticed we haven't had one of these in quite a while. This meme is pretty simple! Just:

1. Post your character(s).

2. Comment to other characters asking what they think of yours right now, and answer anyone who comments to your thread.

3. Lovely CR descriptions for all!

Comments

[tapestodiane]

HEEEEY

curious on both of them!

Yagyuu on Coop

[doitrockapella]

Okay, well, the thing to remember with Yagyuu and Coop is that they first really met under some pretty dire circumstances, and so I think that really made a difference in the sort of first impression that Yagyuu took away from that. He'd normally defer to adults anyway, or at least would seem to do so on the surface, but with Coop I think it actually runs past that sort of instinctive deference into an actual level of respect for the guy.

I tend to think of Yagyuu as the member of Rikkai that you go to when something needs to get done, and you need the guy to do it. Some people inspire, some keep order, some provide an informational edge, some bring the psychological pressure, some look after the future...the whole team's got its roles to fill, and Yagyuu's tends to be "the one who you can count on to get the job done when it needs to be done". One of his teammates comments that in some ways he's their fiercest warrior, with the implication that his focus is on the end result — winning — regardless of how it takes to get there.

So I think Yagyuu respects Coop a lot not only because he's impressed by the whole FBI agent thing (he's a dork for detective stories, and knowing an American FBI agent on a personal level is pretty cool, in his opinion), but because he saw how Coop handled himself on the train and from his very first impression took away that Coop is a capable, levelheaded kind of guy — and more importantly, a guy who didn't hesitate or question a fifteen-year-old kid who stepped up to help, but treated him like an asset on equal footing and worked with him to get the job done.

It's also probably worth noting that Yagyuu has never bred his starter except for the egg he gave to Coop, and has a policy of basically never breeding his main go-to roster except for Really Significant Reasons. So that in itself is something of a show of confidence and approval, that he went out of his way to give Coop an egg from Phantom in recognition of the train thing.

All in all, Coop's pretty okay in his book. Yagyuu's not really one to rank people on a "friend" radar except in really unique instances, but it's pretty safe to say that Coop ranks above "acquaintance of interest" and reasonably into "yeah, I'm okay with this guy".

Carmen on Coop

[doitrockapella]

/cracks knuckles

So more and more, with Carmen and Coop, I'm discovering that he has a knack for reminding her of her old partner, Suhara, and as a result I am going to tl;dr a little bit on that before I carry on. SO.

When Carmen was ~17ish, she had a partner at ACME named Suhara, who was ~55 or so and was this kind of cool grandfatherly mentor-type influence on her. He taught her a bunch of stuff about how to meditate and a whole lot of the philosophy that we see her subscribing to throughout the series, and when she ended up going rogue he actually blamed himself for it, to the point where he ended up retiring for about ten years — right up until Carmen decided to bait him out of retirement for what she'd evidently decided was his own good. But even when they were on opposite sides of the law, as it were, it's clear she still really cares deeply about him; at one point she literally goes from taunting him about being too old for the job to freaking out because it looks like he's going to fall off a high balcony, and basically dropping everything to rush and try to catch him.

The thing is, Coop's philosophy and sort of easygoing spirituality is pinging her memories of Suhara pretty hard at this point, which in turn is contributing a lot to her fondness of him. He's also smart, which is an instant way of getting into Carmen's good books, and in what's quite possibly the most significant aspect of all, he's willing to actually play with her a little. He indulges her whimsy, he turns her teasing back on her, he goes along with her nerdy historical references, and that's really sort of weird to her, in a good way, because probably the closest things that Carmen has to actual friends are two mentors and two rivals (that's Suhara, the Chief, Zack, and Ivy, respectively), but Coop is somehow working his way into this new category for her, which has some of the competitive aspects of the rivalry but also some of the peace of the mentoring and this sort of overlay of...just...liking to talk to the guy.

So she hasn't quite figured out where he fits yet, in that grand scheme of things; most of the time she slots him into the "rival" category because bantering with him is probably most analogous to the way she treats Zack and Ivy, but then sometimes there are moments when he just says the right thing and the banter settles into something quieter, and then it's a little more of the inner peace thing she had going with Suhara. Depressing as it sounds, there's a good chance that if things keep going as they are, Coop will end up being her first actual friend, which in Carmen terms says a lot about her respect for him and sort of her surprise at how well he keeps up with her on a regular basis.

I also think they tend to be a funny match because I think they have a similar tendency to do that "platonic not-flirting investigative charged banter" thing where it's not so much an expression of romantic interest as it is just that they're sort of messing with each other to see what happens? Like, some of the lines Carmen delivers (and the tone in which she delivers them) could be taken as really flirty if you took them completely out of context, but in context they're just her being smarmy with people because that's how she is. So I think it's funny how there's that level of screwing around with each other on the bantering level, and in turn seeing how abruptly it disappears when the two of them actually turn the topic to something more serious.

Also the day they meet in person is going to be magical.

Just saying.

[tapestodiane]

You summed up the kind-of-flirting thing SO WELL there, just want to point that out. I think with Coop he does this kind of semi-flirting thing with people to both put them at ease (because you can get the job done a lot quicker if people like you) and to keep them on their toes just a little bit, ESPECIALLY in Johto where he gets to indulge in his playful side a lot more than he does in canon. It's a quick way of striking up a connection to work on - but yeah, it's easy to get serious. And the fun part with Carmen for Coop is exactly that, that she throws it back at him so easily but understands immediately when to drop it and discuss serious matters.
They're just really similar like that and it's a lot of fun.

ALSO re: Coop and Yagyuu I had no idea that him having Phantom's daughter was a special thing! And it makes me aaw a little. Because yeah, they're not exactly friends, but I like that there seems to be a mutual respect behind the intelligent discussions they've got so far and I'm enjoying it. c: