Characters / Finding Your Roots

This is a list of characters in Finding Your Roots.

Team Hearth (Cedar, Shelly, Brawler, Nauki)

Team Hearth

Team tropes:

• Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
  • Shelly is the Cynic, pessimistic and skeptical as she is.
  • Cedar is the Optimist, always trying to keep happy and see the positive in things.
  • Brawler is the Realist, believing that anger doesn't solve everything while still having an experienced view of the world.
  • Nauki is the Apathetic, mostly just because he's young and inexperienced.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Cedar is the loud, outgoing Choleric.
  • Shelly is the anxious, pessimistic Melancholic.
  • Brawler is the calm Choleric.
  • Nauki is the friendly Sanguine.
• Non-Indicative Name: The team name is a portmanteau of "Heart" and "Earth"; their team doesn't actually have anything to do with fireplaces. Shelly lampshaded this when coming up with the name but Cedar cut her off, saying she liked the name anyways.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Cedar is the loud and strong Red Oni; Shelly is the quiet Blue Oni.

Cedar

Cedar is a Marshtomp who left her hometown of Littleroot to return an egg to the desert. Unlike most of her kind, she identifies as more of an earthen than an elemental.

Tropes:

• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Cedar's gills lacked their frilly design before Chapter 4.
• Half-Breed Angst: Cedar considers herself mostly— no, completely earthen. She frequently corrects others who clock her as a water elemental, and even wishes to herself that she were a different species altogether.
  Cedar: Not elemental enough to be an elemental. Not earthen enough to be an earthen. Why is it so much to ask for somewhere to belong?
• Idiot Hero: Cedar will do anything to protect her friends and keep them happy, but she can't control her volume, can't sense when her "best friend" hates her, and doesn't know the first thing about stealth.
• Making a Splash: Defied. Cedar firmly identifies as an earthen, and because real earthens don't spit water, Cedar tells everyone she can't spit water, only mud.
• No Indoor Voice:
  • She has a habit of startling others with her loud greetings.
  • When first meeting the Geodude tribe she's in everyone's face, blurting out introductions and Innocently Insensitive comments like, "You look like someone I beat up a few days ago!"
• Oblivious to Hatred: Both her peers in Littleroot and the friends she meets along the way range from casually racist to elemental supremacist, and laugh at her when she acts like an earthen. She still considers them friends, and she says she's just used to the mocking.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pinap berries. Sadly, nobody seems to share her enjoyment of them.

Shelly

Shelly is a Nincada from the outskirts of Rustboro. She was born without the ability to evolve. She tried seeing doctors to fix this, but all it got her was loads of debt. She joins Cedar in Chapter 3 to escape her hopeless life.

Tropes:

• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In Chapter 3, Shelly had four legs like Nincada's canon design. She was given an extra pair from Chapter 4 onward.
• Fictional Disability: Her disability is that she can't evolve, condemning her to anti-earthen discrimination which most of her species has the privilege to eventually grow out of.
• The Lancer: To Cedar.
  • Cedar wants to be perceived more as an earthen than she is; Shelly wishes she weren't an earthen.
  • Cedar is outgoing and adventerous; Shelly is skeptical and avoidant.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": Her name is Shelly, and she has a shell that she'll never be able to shed.
• Nervous Wreck: Has anxiety and is prone to avoidance. She runs away from Cedar after first meeting her, she never confesses her love to Peako, she gets last-minute stage fright when asked to perform with the Geodude orchestra, and she runs away after Cedar chooses her to fight Briar.

Brawler

Introduced in Chapter 4, Brawler the Graveler is a fighter for the Geodude tribe on Dewfish Island. Well, only in name, because his preferred pastime is nursing the young, and he's grown to be more of a pacifist. He left to travel with Team Hearth to look after the younger members; he doesn't consider himself a member, but the kids do.

Tropes

• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": He was appointed a fighter for his tribe. However, he finds much more enjoyment from caring his tribe's young, so in reality he's more of a pacifist.
• Ironic Name: Believes in pacifism much more than his name would indicate.
• Token Adult: Decided to travel with Team Hearth because the kids need an adult to look after them.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: At the cost of his tribe's pride, he threw a battle against Tiny because he didn't want to curbstomp a kid. He also refuses to fight back against the kid grunts of Team Magma.

Nauki

The egg Cedar was caring for hatched in Chapter 5 into a Trapinch — an earthen dragon — who she named Nauki.

Tropes

• Children Are Innocent: He doesn't know what Shelly meant when she wanted to "choke" Tiny and Silver, but it must be bad because she always sounded angry saying it.
• Dreamworks Face: On the cast page, Nauki's portrait has one eyebrow lowered and an asymmetrical smirk.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Instead of antlions, the Trapinch line in FYR are just lizards.

Team Leafblade (Briar, Nimbus, Carina, Lucine)

Team Leafblade

Team tropes:

• Egocentric Team Naming: They're called Team Leafblade, which is Briar's signature attack. None of the other members have anything to do with leaves or blades.

Briar

Briar the Grovyle is the leader of Team Leafblade. As a Treecko, she was The Bully of Littleroot, but had always wanted to leave someday to become a pro fighter, and Cedar's departure set this in motion.

Tropes:

• Affection-Hating Kid: The courting culture of Littleroot was one of the reasons Briar left.
  Briar: Littleroot is SO BORING, and kids are always kissing each other and it's GROSS. I don't wanna kiss people! I wanna punch people in the face!
• Aggressive Categorism: Insists that all earthens are weak, so that's why when her teammates get their butts kicked by Cedar and Nauki, it's because they're really just an elemental and a dragon.
• Berserk Button: Being called weak. Seen in action in Intermission 1 which prompts her to threaten a team of Poochyena.
• The Bully: Puts down anyone she sees as weaker, which is basically everyone, even her own teammates.
• It's All About Me: Her first attempts at forming a team started with asserting her strength and assuming that someone would want to join, and when that didn't work she went to straight up death threats. Even after Nimbus taught her to be nice, she still named her team after herself.
• Villainous BSoD: Upon realizing she had almost killed Cedar, she blanks out, goes silent, and runs away.

Nimbus

Briar's first team member. Wanted to cut ties with her mafia boss father, so was happy to tag along with Briar.

Tropes:

• Mentor Archetype: Gives lessons to Briar in niceness and fighting.

Carina

A Slugma and another member of Team Leafblade.

Tropes:

• You Are What You Hate: She joins Briar in making racist comments about Team Hearth, even though she'll grow to be a rock earthen. When Brawler calls her out for being racist against her own kind, she denies it.

Lucine

A Wailmer and another member of Team Leafblade.

Team Starfall (Wesen, Frisk)

Wesen

Wesen is a Ralts from the secluded psychic village of Petalshade. His mother was embarassed over him getting sick all the time, so she exiled him.

Tropes:

• Abandon the Disabled: Wesen was disowned by his mother for his chronic illness.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: While Wesen knew his mother, his father is inexplicably absent. In an audience Q&A he says he never even realized he had a father.

Frisk

Frisk is a Skitty who met Wesen in Intermission 2.

Other Characters

Peako

Peako is a Wingull pirate and the daughter of Captain Briney.

Tropes:

• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In Chapter 3, Peako had a small, round body like Wingull's canon design. She was given more birdlike proportions in Chapter 4.
• Polyamory: Between chapters 4 and 6, Peako enters a polycule with 2 other birds, much to the surprise of Team Hearth.
• Talk Like a Pirate: Complete with the West Country accent and dialect. Aye, lassies!

Eclipse

Eclipse is a Solrock first seen in Chapter 10.

Tropes:

• Cassandra Truth: Eclipse's attempts to warn everyone else in the cave about intruders falls short when no one believes them.
  Solrock: Intruders? Please! You're just making that up!
  Eclipse: I am not!