Thank you for sending these in! I’m going to pick Lars Alexandersson for this one! Um. This is a slight long one, because I'm a sucker for details. Some spoilers for Tekken 8.
[Ask Game Here]
🫰1.) What initially drew you to your f/o? Are you a longtime fan of the source they originate from, or did you primarily gravitate towards their source out of an interest in them?
Honestly when seeing Lars for the first time I just thought he looked cool. Nothing special, just ‘oh he’s just a typical protagonist with anime hair’. I wouldn’t say I'm a longtime fan of the source, and honestly I was only really interested in (and aware of) Tekken because of Narcolepsy representation with Eliza, who’s a vampire. Seriously, you have no idea how much that meant to me knowing there was a character like me who needed a power nap during the day. I never really got into Tekken further but it was something that gave me so much comfort.
She was a fictional other for a while but due to time, she became a blorbo and a fictionkin for me as opposed to a character I was romantically interested in. The only other Tekken character I've been romantically interested in is Unknown, who is unfortunately a non-canon character, but I couldn’t help but be drawn to her design. I know it’s just Jun Kazama with the devil gene, but originally she was supposed to be Jun’s sister, and I’m still miffed they didn’t do anything with that other than ‘evil jun but with more male gaze’.
Long story short, my interest in Tekken never had anything to do with Lars, he was just another character amongst the crowd initially. I guess it wasn’t until I started dipping into fighting games in the past two, three years(?) that I really started to care about the source media. Also that insane video by ClementJ64 didn’t help, which I argue has made Tekken even more accessible for people to get into (like me!).
I don’t really know how I fell for Lars, like I always thought he had a cool design, and upon actually playing Tekken, he is an extremely accessible character for newcomers. But the more time I spent with his play-style and spent time with some of Tekken's story mode(s), that I kinda came around to falling for him. It probably didn’t help that he was very similar to Hayate from DOA down to literally Almost everything. So… yeah I think it was a given for me to fall in love with Lars. (i am not beating the brown haired rushdown fighting game men allegations huh).
🌹8.) Do you and your f/o enjoy kissing? What circumstances do you most often share a kiss? What spots do either of you like to kiss the most? If kisses are a no, how else do you two show affection?
Alexandersson’s and Amora’s relationship is very much in the early stages and it only really starts until after the events of Tekken 8, so they’re taking it quite slowly. I do think Lars would be more favourable with kisses, but Ridley Amora on the other hand is a little more apprehensive about it. She doesn’t hate it, it’s just something she isn’t used to. Situational circumstances that involve kissing would include a ‘goodbye’, ‘see you soon’, reunion kisses, you know the kind you see at airports with loved ones/lovers, a celebratory kiss after winning a skate tournament/competition, a career milestone, and the obligatory morning kisses and afternoon/coming home from work kisses. For a relationship that is in its early stages, they are both pretty patient in expressing affection for one another. They are a tiny bit more affectionate behind closed doors, but that’s because it usually involves cuddling.
To me, Lars is a bit of a romantic, a tiny bit old school with expressing affection. Like I want to think his mother raised him around old period piece romance dramas and Jane Austen novels, so Lars tends to kiss the back of Amora’s hand or her knuckles. He does like kissing Amora on the lips, but he understands that they need to be very brief chaste/quick kisses. But when he kisses her god he wants it to last forever. Aside from kisses, Lars does sometimes initiate PDA with Ridley but it’s only really just hand holding, or having an arm around her waist. There are rare instances where he has a hand on her thigh, but that’s reserved for major social situations where someone doesn't get the memo that they're an item.
As previously mentioned, Ridley is very chaste with her kisses, mostly opting to kiss Lars on the cheek, nose and brows, but nothing exactly beyond that because again it’s a relationship in its early stages. Ridley Amora does initiate some physical affection, albeit in a limited capacity, usually just holding Lars’ hand, playfully intertwining her fingers with his own and sometimes wrapping her arms around his neck in more public settings. If in a major social setting where she's uncomfortable, Amora will squeeze his hand a little, and Lars knows that's a sign for them to leave and always honors that request. Bonus if you count her laying her head on his shoulder, or in his lap when she’s tired, as a form of PDA.
⛓️💥2.) Do you or your f/o suffer some form of bodily harm? Be it from engaging in battle, ending up in an accident, maybe dealing with chronic pain? Is the other good at nursing the injured party?
This is Tekken we’re talking about, people are going to get hurt participating in a martial arts tournament /lh.
But yes, both Lars and Ridley experience some form of bodily harm especially when engaging in hand-to-hand combat confrontations with a wide net of familiar allies, foes and strangers. The degree of said injuries is not always consistent, I mean this is the series where you can fight against a bear or panda, sometimes your opponent can just emit a laser beam from a third eye or their forehead, sometimes you're facing a boxing kangaroo or a boxing raptor. Again the range of injuries the duo receives is a pretty wide net, and usually includes the standard scrapes, bruises, scratches, cuts, concussions, or a limb being dislocated. Okay maybe getting a broken limb isn’t out of the question in the tekken world….
The most drastic of injuries either party has received are the many times when Lars puts himself in harm's way to protect his comrades (you’d be surprised how many times he does this in Tekken 6’s campaign mode). There’s a particular instance that stands out to me in Tekken 8’s narrative, where Lars tries to hold the line against True Devil Kazuya and gets blasted with a powerful beam of energy, almost twice, the second one could have killed him if it weren’t for being saved by his nephew, Jin, in the nick of time.
The most severe injury Ridley has ever gotten is being badly bruised (black and blue) by the Mishima Zaibatsu soldiers who captured her during her stint at the start of the Fifth King of the Iron Fist Tournament (TK5). During Tekken 3 and Tekken 4, she’d been sabotaging and interfering in the tournaments, as a form of protest against the Mishima Zaibatsu. They are after all, a billion dollar corporate conglomerate that has a private military and has rumours of animal testing swirling around them, amongst many other shady shit. However, the Mishima Zaibatsu smartens up, analyzes their mistakes and plans a trap at the start of the fifth King of the Iron Fist Tournament, which leads to Ridley Amora being caught and finally identified. She is then blackmailed into participating in the Fifth King of Iron Fist Tournament, which she had no choice but to accept.
Injuries inflicted during a martial arts tournament or hand-to-hand fights, aren’t the only kinds of injuries these characters can receive.
Ridley Amora frequently skateboards, meaning she is used to getting surface level injuries after messing up a specific trick, leading to her falling and injuring herself. She knows how to clean and tend to these injuries, although they are pretty surface level ones, like scrapes, bad scratches, bruising, cuts etc. She does carry a backpack with her that has a heavily prepared first aid kit, so she usually tends to her wounds asap. She can tend to Lars’ injuries from fights to some extent, but again only knows how to nurse surface level injuries. She can’t exactly deal with much larger wounds, or deeper cuts.
Lars is a leader to a rebel army of thousands of soldiers, he’s putting his life on the line constantly, so it's not surprising when he feels the graze of a bullet zipping past or being sliced at with a bladed weapon. That, plus his role as commander, it’s mandatory for him to know how to use first aid materials. He has a lot of experience in tending to the more harsher wounds of an injured comrade/s. So patching up Ridley’s more serious injuries is a given, in fact it’s a common sight at the Yggdrasil base to see both their commander and the skateboarder both patched up, talking to each other and just overall enjoying each other’s presence. Sometimes one of them will have all of the injuries, and their other half is playfully/lightly scolding them for getting ‘too reckless’.
I will say sometimes Ridley’s injuries aren’t always the result of fumbling skateboard tricks, or from sparring or an actual fight.. Sometimes they are accidentally self-inflicted as she professionally works with fabrics for a living, as a dressmaker, designer, screen-to-fabric printer, tailor etc. Essentially, a lot of that manual labour can result in accidents where she hurts herself, and while she will patch herself up it’s kinda done in a hasty way. So, when she comes home to Lars after work, he often re-attends to her injuries, no matter how superficial they are. He will also massage Amora’s hands with his own, especially since she is prone to cramping them thanks to the manual labour of her work - honestly Lars does a pretty good job at attending to her injuries. TDLR: they do their best to take care of each other's wounds.
