tl;cr meme

[marriagebroker]

post your character, people reply, give them the deets. you know how this goes.

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[fireball]

let's yap gamers

[phenomerom]

POPPY-CHAN our beloved cast gremlin

Honestly, I think if you mapped out Rom's opinions on Poppy on an XY axis chart, it'd be more uneven than you might expect?!

To start with, Rom found Poppy pretty promising! Not, like, in a romantic way, heavens no. But because Rom was coming into the game so out of his element -- foraging into the completely foreign territory of romance (even if he didn't come in expecting any romantic progress for himself at all), having to be in front of cameras 24/7, and in the company of numerous other non-normie people to boot -- he immediately zeroed in on familiar territory: normies that he could prod at. I mentioned it above for Edamura, but it's not that Rom finds any intrinsic gratification in the routine of being Weird around normies and getting side-eyed/admonished/treated with suspicion in response? But it's a very familiar and rote form of enrichment for him, which is why he was kinda prodding at the two of them on and off for the first week, mixing things up with a bit of genuine encouragement from time to time -- in part because he did genuinely hope they wouldn't be too cowed by all the weirdness around them, but in part to keep their spirits up so he wouldn't feel bad about prodding at them.

Anyway, none of that ended up mattering for long when it comes to Poppy, because Rom was pretty quick to realize that she's definitely not the type to just let herself be bullied ... Not that Rom minds too much! He's pretty flexible when it comes to his interpersonal relationships as long as they stay within familiar parameters (i.e. he gets to keep them at armslength), so he was totally okay with flipping the script and letting Poppy be the one to kinda bully him! No skin off his back, and it's the sort of thing he imagined would do well on television, so thumbs up emoji.

-- although for one hot second it did look like they might go straight into negative CR territory. Specifically, it was when Poppy very decisively said that she never lies and never sees the need to smooth over situations with white lies. And while it's not like Rom pinned her as a bad person or anything for saying that, it did immediately sort of put him on guard.

Because of his intrinsic nature Rom is basically someone who lives or dies by lying. In general, the ghosts of his setting need to be ignored in order to keep oneself safe; direct confrontation is avoided unless you know exactly what you're dealing with and how to ward it off, and otherwise, feigning ignorance no matter what kind of horrific sight you're faced with is the best way of surviving. At the same time, his freak level of spiritual sensitivity means it's extremely rare for others to see the same things he does, so he knows to always play himself up as a showman (i.e. spout the sort of thing most people would write off as obvious lies) or otherwise keep his mouth shut; when he was honest in his youth about the monsters he saw, it got him abandoned by his parents. Thus, Rom has learned to lie to ghosts and humans alike -- his entire life is built on very carefully controlling what he says, to whom, and how. It's also why he's so difficult to fluster -- showing fear in front of ghosts is the same as acknowledging them, thus inviting trouble, and so he's basically learned to always wear that look of uncanny calm no matter the circumstances. Poppy's attitude of 'I'm going to say what's on my mind' is both unthinkable and actually impossible for him.

And so he really meant it when he told Poppy that her way of thinking was 'blessed.' Even setting aside his own very specific circumstances, he knows that most people need the social lubrication in order to go through life -- even mundane social interactions need a little bit of flattery and sweet talking for maximum efficiency, you know? He knows Poppy must have had a relatively fortunate upbringing to have been able to maintain that sort of mindset, because it's the sort of thing that'd cause a lot of unbearable friction under worse circumstances. Which isn't a bad thing! Rom's happy for her (in an abstract, hypothetical way) if she's lived that blessed a life? But his own (admittedly pretty exhausting) approach towards honesty meant that he sort of immediately had his guard up much higher, expecting a lot of potential pushback and friction from her if she ever started cottoning onto just how much of his presentation is carefully managed falsehoods.

Hilariously, none of this ended up mattering much in the end??? Mostly because Rom was pretty quick to learn sort of how to 'manage' Poppy -- keeping things pretty light and snappy, letting himself get bullied a little -- but also because I do think that he ended up finding her company kind of fun on an entirely shallow level. Not a lot of other gamers in the group, after all, and they did have enough in common in terms of nerdy interests that as long as they focused on those things, it was easy enough keeping things with her enjoyable, even as he continued to overthink her whole blunt honesty thing a little bit.

I think what eventually got Rom to finally stop keeping his guard up was when he saw that Poppy and Shoko getting close and staying close. The fundamentals of their worlds and jobs might differ a lot, but Rom respects Shoko a lot as a sort of colleague. And while he had no doubts that Shoko would be able to charm anyone she'd want to given her general cool attitude and attractive presentation, he knows the nature of their shared job means connecting to normal people is always a more tenuous thing; Rom also knew this was a factor weighing on Shoko' mind because she'd brought it up during one of their previous conversations. So when time passed after that second match ceremony (which had disproved Poppy and Shoko as a game-assigned perfect match) and they still seemed close afterwards, it brought Rom a lot of peace of mind regarding Poppy's general attitude -- it signaled to him that she wasn't quite as frivolous or insensitive as she had initially seemed, and was probably pretty steadfast and trustworthy, if Shoko trusted her enough to discuss the matter of ghosts and spirits with her, and Poppy still hadn't balked at it.

In the end, as they depart from the game, Rom generally thinks of Poppy as a friend*!

*As in -- he does like her, and wishes her well, and will keep in contact with her, but I think he never expects their relationship to grow much deeper than playing games together and such. It's no slight against her! Even that's a lot closer than he lets most people get to him! He just gets the impression she isn't very interested in his interiority, and he's okay with that -- he's happy to keep things shallow and simple with her, and just hang out with her online once in a while so they can play co-op games together. And he'd suspect that being in close proximity with Shoko is enough supernatural nonsense for her to acclimate to that he doesn't need to burden her with any of his supernatural nonsense on top of that. (Especially since, see his above blurb to Shoko where he has complicated feelings about getting too close to Shoko because he does not want to potentially add to her big burden of grief ...) Still, he does genuinely wish well for her, and sincerely hopes she and Shoko will be happy going forth -- he'll even bother her on Discord once in a while just to make sure of it! And yes, of course he'll stream her MMO on his gaming channel, just for her.