#Kingdom Hearts spoilers

[vexwerewolf]

I present to you Vex's Perfect Kingdom Hearts Spoiler Secrecy theorem:

Proposition: It is, practically speaking, impossible to spoil the Kingdom Hearts franchise, because any sentence that conveys meaningful information about its plot will be totally incomprehensible to someone who hasn't already played it.

Corollary: All syntactically valid English sentences have a nonzero chance of being a Kingdom Hearts spoiler.

[proffbon]

Me before learning that Xehanort is my son: Shut up, old man, no one wants to hear you monologuing about darkness again lmao

Me after learning that Xehanort is my son:

[thequibblingking13]

Im connecting dots here. Ik is probably very obvious but Chirithy, a dream eater, ushering you into the next life in KHUX and then arriving to the station of awakening in the Drop pose is so fucking clever.

[kiwibrain]

aqua kingdom hearts enjoying her blue and white hair

[i-lived-bitch-beatdown]

[dailyxigbar]

[ ID: Two panels. The top has Aced viewed from the back and pointing at Xigbar, with a dialogue box having him shout "I've heard enough! Luxu, what was your role?" In the corner of the image to the right, Xigbar is standing visible from the waist up. There is a dialogue bubble from him saying "Heh...Hope you like long stories."

The second panel has Aced grabbing and pulling on the front of Xigbar's cloak, with Xigbar partially in the frame now to the right while Aced's face is visible. Aced has a speech bubble shouting "It better not be as long as you've kept us waiting". A smaller bubble to the left of Aced is from an off screen Foreteller, saying "Aced no." On the right of Aced, a speech bubble is coming from Xigbar with the words "Tee Hee." /End ID]

February 11th, 2024

[sorrywh]

I don't want to scroll through the internet to look at reactions or discussions about anything in Doctor Who right now; I need a detox. I really need it. But for now, I'll say this:

In any work, if you see a character who wasn't there before in a particular episode or part of a franchise, and they occupy an important side character role, pay attention to what they show you and how they develop that character. Because this detail is not for nothing: no one will bother to develop a one-time character (like a tissue) for you just like that - they want you to get attached. And this is exactly what’s important – to hook you like a fish. The writer needs your emotional attachment to eventually play with your feelings and intentionally mess with your emotions. Or at least try. The goal is obvious, and I don't respect that. If your goal when writing something is merely to manipulate the emotions of your viewer/reader/player, then your work is worth nothing; it is as disposable as your character, whom you got rid of.

Xion in Kingdom Hearts is a textbook example. Kingdom Hearts doesn’t really bother with the development of character relationships very much – the trio of characters from Birth by Sleep only got one scene in the prologue that shows they are childhood friends (so poorly done that it could have been written in white text on a black background – they are childhood friends, their names are Terra, Ventus, Aqua, they train with Eraqus and take their exam tomorrow). Because their essence isn’t to be developed characters – they exist only for the villain Xehanort, to show how bad a villain he is, in case you didn’t get it from his goatee and bald head. The original trio showed their characters similarly, albeit in more detail and the execution was overral better. But 358/2 Days… no game in the franchise focused on the development of its characters’ relationships throughout the game as this game did. And, interestingly, it’s the only one where a character literally died, and their conflict revolved around this character. The development of Roxas and Xion’s relationship was central to the game, and Axel’s knowledge of who she was complicated the relationships within the trio. Why so much attention to this character? So you’d get attached to this character, and her death would be important to you as well as to the characters. At least that’s the intention. They want to influence their viewer; telling a story isn’t enough for them.

There is a donghua that got a reputation as a tear-jerker, and not for nothing – Link Click. In the first season, events were divided into cases. And the longest case lasted three episodes. No other story in that season, before or after, paid so much attention to the client’s life and past. Guess what happened at the end of that case? You're right, there was an earthquake, and all his close ones, except for the client, were dead. Especially much attention was paid to the death of the client’s mother. All this world-building of environment and character development was to make the viewer cry. Or the main victim of the whole season – Emma. Her death was at the center of attention twice. First, at the end of the first episode, and once more at the end of the season. And each time her death was preceded by a touching scene with her family and how much she missed them. The role of Emma in the second season was taken by Li Tianxi, a girl who lost her speech due to her mother’s request not to talk about her father beating her mother. She was also killed, and she spoke only at the end, the words taught to her by her brother, who made her “well-being” his life goal. All her character traits, all her development were aimed at her being killed to make the viewer feel sorry. Such utilitarian treatment of characters offends me because it turns out that the writer is not inventing living people only because characters should be developed to be their own personality, but to exchange this development to the viewer's emotions and tears.

The same thing happened with Doctor Who in this new episode. I like Rogue, he’s a good character. Even before his death, it was clear that nothing held him anymore after the death of the person he loved, and therefore his readiness to sacrifice himself at the end of the episode didn’t seem far-fetched, as it might in other similar cases. He is well depicted, he’s interesting, there is enough material to write a decent fanfic and build headcanons about his past and how he ended up like this. Big Finish will surely produce a box set or two with Jonathan Groff. Because there is potential, there is material, he is a formed character. Hence the question – why does he have so much detail? The reader of this post already knows the answer – to make the viewer sad. This, the author of this post suspects, is also why the Doctor's infatuation with Rogue is at the center of the narrative. There’s another "red flag" that was in this episode – the Doctor invited him to the TARDIS as his companion. Doctor Who has done this before. It did similar things with Victorian Clara. There also was a romantic subtext with the Doctor, also the Doctor invited her to the TARDIS, she also was an excellently developed character, superb companion material. The author of the post didn't even mention Astrid from “Voyage of the Damned.” Ominous, meaningful ellipsis…

What the author of this post wants to say with all this – don’t develop characters with the sole intention of eventually killing them off. Especially attaching them to any form of love story – a careful viewer will be wary. Especially in Doctor Who, where no love story with the Doctor ended well.

This will be an unpopular opinion but there is a Doctor Who episode where the secondary characters and the guest companion were well developed and didn’t even die!!! Which is wonderful. This episode is “The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood.” Nasreen is a fantastic character, and the entire supporting cast is well depicted. This example shows that what this post is about is possible and feasible. On this note, I conclude my essay.

[yaeger94]

Unpopular Kingdom Hearts Opinions?

Kingdom Hearts 3 is the best game of the series.

The series as a whole is not that confusing.

Kingdom Hearts 1 has the best story of the series but might have the weakest gameplay.

Dream Drop Distance is one of the best games of the series.

Birth by Sleep is overrated and repetitive by the time you finish two of the character stories.

Any of yall got any unpopular KH opinions? By all means, share! I love seeing different perspectives for things I adore. BTW, some of the things I listed here might change except for the first thing, KH3 is the best game, and nothing will change my mind about that, not even a picture of Sora, Kairi, and Riku being happy on Destiny Islands!

[rayvenden]

I’ve been meaning to type this up but I don’t think I’m going to get this across as succinctly as I just did over discord.

Please tell me what you think (and remember this is just having fun with theories). Transcript below the cut.

[In reply to KH theories starting up again]

They’ve already started given that the intro scenes for Missing Link are out. Although most people seem to think that Remus is Luxu, I’m actually of a different opinion. I think Remus is suspicious definitely, but I think maybe the 1 unaccounted for Darkness (out of the Original 13 Darknesses, 7 are in the Foretellers, 4 are in the Data Cable, 1 is Vanitas, and 1 is unaccounted for and imo likely hanging around Scala plus my pet theory is that he’ll end up in Xehanort to become Ansem SOD, which is chronologically after Missing Link) … Anyway the 1 unaccounted for Darkness I suspect is in Remus and affecting him like the Darkness in Ventus did for him (being unaware of it). And I think Sigurd is Luxu. I’ve been meaning to make a twitter thread for posterity’s sake just in case I’m right.

[Referring to the recently announced Steam release:] Also Bio-Roxas said this so credit goes to him but it’s coming out 6/13 because Sora has been dead since the end of KH3 Remind, one light is missing

I guess I need to at least touch on why I think Sigurd is Luxu.

First off, when Brain first showed up at Scala, he needed a medium and someone who remembered him for his heart to travel there and re-form, right? Sigurd was there and gave him his hat (the medium). I think the answer to the person who remembered him is staring right at us in that screen. The last person to see him before the Daybreak Town apocalypse. The legend himself, Luxu.

Secondly, look at the pronunciation in Japanese. Similar, no? As similar as Braig and Bragi are? 🤔

Xigbar (シグバール, Shigubāru)

Sigurd (シグルド, Shigurudo)

[lucemferto]

The dichotomy between redemption and damnation is … really stupid and has poisoned fandom discourse for so long. Like, I am still so salty and frankly confused, that someone can look at the last few cutscenes of Kingdom Hearts III - Xehanort defeated, his ideals and plans crushed, forced to realise that the "dull, ordinary boy" is more worthy of the χ-Blade than he is; HIM BEING ALONE IN THE SHADOWS WHILE ERAQUS IS EMBRACED BY HIS CRYING PUPILS IN THE LIGHT C'MON YOU GUYS THIS SHIT IS NOT SUBTLE - and think:

Yep, he got redeemed, the narrative says: "Well done, Xehanort, your ways were slightly off but you made a good effort."

Like … in what world, you guys?

[demispark]

I Swear Mickey Did Not Abandon a Woman in Hell For Over A Decade (In Defense of Kingdom Heart's Mickey Mouse)

Excellent question! @notbrucewayne48 and @mintchocolatemagic , Mickey Mouse did not do anything wrong, and I will explain why.

Firstly, please leave you The Walt Disney Company-based opinions of Mickey by the door. If you have negative opinions of Mickey as a result of him being the mascot of an evil all-consuming corporation, those don't really apply here. Mickey Mouse, in Kingdom Hearts, is the king of Disney Castle and a talented Keyblade Wielder.

People seem to have a lot of animosity towards Mickey Mouse in Kingdom Hearts. Maybe its because his reputation has been ruined by the corporation he represents, I can't say for sure. It's fine if you don't like the guy or think he's annoying, but it personally grates on my nerves when people let that color his depiction and actions in the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

This post ended up pretty long, so if this is way too long of a post, I recommend reading the first two paragraphs, watching the video, and reading the last paragraph. Maybe not as good as a TL;DR, but it should give you enough context and understanding without taking up too much of your time.

Beyond this point, SPOILERS for basically the entire Kingdom Hearts series up to KHIII, excluding the mobile games.

To begin with, what am I even on about? That title is a pretty extreme and ridiculous statement, after all. So, here's the plan: I'm going to show you the clip, and then we'll go through the relevant points on the timeline to examine the truth of this claim.

Here is the claim, made by the supposed victim herself: Keyblade Master Aqua.

Aqua claims that Mickey abandoned her in the Realm of Darkness, knowing full well what a decade trapped there would do to her. However, her statements contradict reality at multiple points, likely due to the effects that sustaining an attack filled with darkness and being submerged in the waters of The Dark Margin, as well as the mental toll of being stuck in the Realm of Darkness for over a decade.

To figure out where everything went wrong, let's turn back the clock by about 11 years, to see where this all started.

At the end of Birth By Sleep, a prequel taking place a decade prior to KH1, Aqua is with Mickey in the tower of the wizard Yen Sid. Following the final battle at the Keyblade Graveyard against Master Xehanort and Vanitas (we'll get to them later, don't worry), Aqua and her friends are in bad shape. Aqua was really the only survivor, with Terra going missing and Ventus' heart being shattered, leading it to sleep elsewhere until it could recover (we'll get to them as well). Mickey, Aqua, and Ven were blown away after defeating Vanitas and destroying Xehanort's attempt to forge the X-Blade (Pronounced the same as Keyblade, and good lord we will get to that later), and Mickey brought Aqua and Ven to Yen Sid.

Leaving alone, and not really having told anyone at the tower where she was going, Aqua returns to her old home, the Land of Departure. There, she drops off Ven's sleeping body, and uses the Keyblade of her now-deceased Master to transform the land into a confounding castle that we'll come to know as Castle Oblivion. Following this, she senses Terra's voice and goes to a world called Radiant Garden. It is here that Aqua discovers the truth of Terra's disappearance. Terra had been manipulated throughout his journey to be consumed by darkness, which Xehanort took advantage of. Using his own Keyblade, he removed his heart and sent it into Terra's body, possessing it.

Long story short, Aqua won the fight but failed to free Terra, and he began to sink into the darkness. Aqua dove in after him, using her Keyblade Armor to protect herself and her glider to attempt to get herself and Terra out of the darkness. Realizing that herself and Terra were too heavy and wouldn't make it out in time, Aqua sent Terra ahead with her Keyblade and armor, launching him out of the darkness as she sank into it.

This will be very important later, so remember it, I won't be getting into it in this post, but it will come back later.

This is where she spent the next decade, wandering through the Dark World and the remnants of worlds that had fallen into the darkness, plagued by hallucinations, phantoms, wave after wave of Heartless, and even a dark reflection of herself that pointed out all of her mistakes and gave a voice to all of her intrusive thoughts.

Mickey didn't know where Aqua went, and it isn't easy to just enter the Dark World, so he was not able to find her. Between being the King of a world and training to become a Keyblade Master, he likely didn't have time to look for her forever, either.

Do we see Aqua sitting around waiting for help to come, as she claims? Nope.

... 0.2 - A Fragmentary Passage is an interesting game.

Anyway, silly new accessories aside, we see Aqua traveling though the Realm of Darkness, enduring the previously mentioned hardships. Here, she encounters Mickey, who slipped in via a world that was in the process of falling to darkness. He explains that the worlds are in trouble, and that he is searching for a Keyblade of the darkness, a counterpart to Sora's that will allow them to seal the Door to Darkness.

This coincides with the ending of Kingdom Hearts 1. After battling through more powerful Heartless, Aqua and Mickey see Riku running towards the Door to Darkness, and are beset by a Demon Tide, a powerful storm of basic Heartless known as Shadows. Aqua attempts to hold them off, which allows Mickey and Riku to assist Sora, Donald, and Goofy in sealing the Door from their side. Aqua tells Mickey to go on without her, before losing control of the Demon Tide and getting swept away. Her ending monologue is resolute, however, prepared to face the darkness and act as a guiding light for whomever finds themself trapped in the Realm of Darkness next.

Not only was this Aqua's choice, her sacrifice, but she stood by it. So what happened, and why didn't Mickey return for her immediately? The simple answer is that Mickey had a lot of more urgent things to worry about than assuming a Keyblade Master couldn't take care of themself.

Immediately after this, Mickey needs to look after Riku and get them out of the Realm of Darkness. This leads into Re:Chain of Memories.

Sora and Co. could help, except that they had their memories tampered with, and will spend the next year asleep while false memories are removed and their forgotten memories are put back in place.

Riku has been struggling with the darkness throughout KH1 and Re:CoM, so he isn't in the best place to be thrust back into the darkness.

Over this next year, the threat of creatures called Nobodies and the sinister Organization XII rears its head, and Riku doesn't exactly get better with his darkness.

Forced to rely on the darkness, Riku transforms into the spitting image of the man who used his darkness and possessed him - Ansem, Seeker of Darkness - and this isn't exactly great for his mental state, either.

Sora was weakened by his journey through Castle Oblivion in Re:CoM, and with the threat of the Organization looming, the hero had his work cut out for him before Mickey would even dare asking him for help.

Sora and Riku, who has finally gotten his darkness under control, end up at the Dark Margin by the end of KHII, but do not encounter Aqua there. Since Aqua was not there, the attack that overwhelmed her with darkness and sent her flying into the water that was mentioned earlier must have happened between the final world of KHII and this scene. They manage to escape, and return to the Realm of Light.

Sora and Riku rest back at their home, the Destiny Islands, during the events of Re:Coded, and eventually receive a message from Mickey calling them to Yen Sid's tower. These boys need to get better, hopefully becoming Keyblade Masters, in order to rescue the fallen Keyblade Wielders from their fates and prepare for the upcoming final battle. Dream Drop Distance comes and goes, and Riku is named a Keyblade Master.

Prior to the events of Kingdom Hearts 3, Mickey relays his experience in the Realm of Darkness with Aqua, to which Riku angrily questions why Mickey never told him or attempted a rescue.

You should know the answer to that by now.

Mickey explains that he respected Aqua's wishes, just as he did for Riku in the past, stubbornly refusing to tell Sora anything about his missing friend during KHII, as Riku was dealing with the whole Ansem and darkness thing and made Mickey promise not to tell Sora.

Yen Sid also chimes in, pointing out that if Sora and Riku had found out, they would've recklessly tried to find a way into the Realm of Darkness to stage an ill-fated rescue mission.

Now, however, the time has finally come. Since Mickey's Kingdom Key D is a Keyblade from the Dark Realm, he could use it to enter the Realm of Darkness without having to use the incredibly unreliable and dangerous method of waiting for a world to fall into darkness.

Mickey and Riku suit up in some new darkness-resistant threads made by Yen Sid and the Three Good Fairies (of Sleeping Beauty fame), and set out for the Dark Realm.

This doesn't go well, to say the least, leading to Mickey and Riku's Keyblades being damaged. Mickey's is recovered and used to create the Star Cluster (which Aqua can be seen picking up in the video shown at the beginning of this post), while Riku leaves the pieces of his behind and recieves a brand-new Keyblade.

Second time's the charm, and now we are all caught up to the aforementioned clip from KHIII.

Anti-Aqua happens, Sora shows up via the power of friendship and following his heart (oversimplification, you know KH isn't that simple), and Aqua is finally rescued from this dark hell.

So, to wrap it all up, Mickey very much did not abandon Aqua. Aqua disappeared off the face of the worlds - literally all of them - for ten years, sacrificed herself to protect Mickey, Riku, and the worlds when Mickey finally did find her, and then Mickey simply did not have the time or resources to stage a rescue mission that actually would've worked in the year or two following his original trip in the Realm of Darkness.

Thank you for joining me on this rather long-winded case. I feel like my writing ended up being a little stiff due to all of the recapping I was doing, so if you have any critiques I would love to hear them!

Until next time, may your heart be your guiding key.

[shibee-inu]

hi kingdom hearts fans, would someone be able to explain to me if this isn't how it works...... I've seen people say that the 'Luxu is Brain' thing doesn't make sense and I'm genuinely unsure if this take is wrong or not???

[proffbon]

Nomura, what the fuck?

[kazooie]

I know it's an ancient talking point now but it drove me crazy when KH2 came out and everyone was mad about Sora's reaction to seeing Kairi vs when he found Riku, like I'm pretty sure if my friend went home and I saw them again I'd be like "yay! :D", but if I had another friend who I saw fall off a cliff into some sharp rocks disappearing into the rapids below, and I found them alive years later? I would be sobbing and screaming.

He knew Kairi was safe, he had no idea of Riku was even alive.

(also don't laugh at me for tagging this as spoilers, the games just came out on steam so it might be a spoiler to new players idk)

[looliuus-epic-gaming]

Man I finally just played kingdom hearts melody of memory and the GROAN I unleashed when they said kairi can't go with riku... dude... I don't care how inexperienced she is sora was out here fulfilling his magical destiny or whatever and he didn't know a damn thang. If anything kairi is much more prepared considering she has formal training lol.

And like... I thought she was hellbent on never being left out of another adventure with her friends?? Why would she not wanna look for her best friend with her other best friend that sounds nothing like her

It's cool and all that she's gonna play with Aqua apparently but damn why do they keep leaving kairi out of all the interesting stuff even in a game that's all about her

[i-lived-bitch-beatdown]