#ROXAS GIF

[starrattlerofprydain]

This scene in reverse never fails to amuse me sdfdghdf

[grimfantas]

quick 1314 warmup

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory

[riddlerosehearts]

and the universe said, i love you because you are love

[aspaceace]

Error... Data corrupted... Memory override failed...

happy march caprice everybody :)

[nerdyperday]

Day 3056 Roxas

[friends-are-my-power]

Birth By Sleep g/t to appease the borrowers living in my wall

Part 1 (You're here!)

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

[roxaskairi]

who are you?

[catboygirljoker]

mutual ( @fooligandan ) joked a while back that this video is roxas and ventus shenanigans post-KHIII and i only just now made the vision in my head into a reality

[theforsakenprince]

Kingdom Hearts 3: Thinking of You

"Isa! Time to wake up!"

[starrattlerofprydain]

Roxas, it worked!

[goldensunset]

someone that i used to be, hanging on a thread

a blurry silhouette, i wonder

when you look at me, who do you remember?

broken memories, time we spent together?

tell me honestly, do you recognize my voice?

[thetrashthatsmilesback]

Kingdom hearts: the existentialism of knowing you're a person but also that you were never meant to exist, that you are only the shadow and memory of someone else, that you will never have your own identity outside of that person no matter how much you fight for it, that your death is seen as necessary so that another might live - so that the real one might live, that you can't live because you aren't real

Also kingdom hearts:

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory - Team Days

[aviivix]

Hey guys its been a while, I'm so sorry I have fallen pretty much completely out of Splatoon, become hyperfixated on Kingdom Hearts, and now have made an AU I am extremely invested in, in which Roxas rejects Sora in the simulated mansion and Sora awakens as a Heartless. Hijinks ensue.

As is I guess in character for me I immediately started thinking about the gameplay of a KH2 with this very strong divergence from canon. Ramble incoming, though this is pretty early days in this fixation so I feel like this will change over time. I just kind of wanted to crystalize it here.

AUDIO VERSION OF THIS RAMBLE (I have ADHD and big blocks of text are hard for me so audio version may be easier to digest)

Disclaimer: I have "played" (read: watched my gf play on stream) KH2 and have both watched the "movie" version of Days and the recent 2 hour breakdown of everything the movie version left out. I know a few events of ReCoM from skimming the wiki but we haven't gotten around to actually watching/playing it and I expect I'll have to tweak this AU to include specific ReCoM details. I also importantly have not seen anything about KH1 which is hilarious and will undoubtedly lead to funnies in this AU. :) Also we haven't touched Dream Drop Distance, Birth by Sleep, Coded, 3, or anything else not mentioned.

So far what I have changed about the initial conditions is that Sora's brief time as a Heartless weakened his heart's connection to his body. Imagine his heart is just scotch taped to his body and it seems totally fine there until it suddenly isn't. The logistics of ReCoM is a little rough without knowing exactly what happens in it, but the main idea is that Sora's physical body is separated from his heart, with the physical body immediately becoming Roxas and the heart experiencing ReCoM and being solely what is put in stasis. Potentially the issue could be less that Roxas is hoarding Sora's memories and moreso that Roxas just straight up has his body and Sora can't wake up without one, but technically I don't think the memories thing needs to change so I'm tentatively leaving it alone. I also don't know how Dumb and Dumber factor into the ReCoM side of things but it's whatever.

In the prologue of KH2, it's almost exactly the same, except for one teeny tiny insignificant little detail - instead of saying, "Sora... you're lucky." Roxas stares Sora in the face, contemplates for a moment, and says, "Sora... I'm sorry. My life belongs to me."

This act of defiance, Roxas's rejection of Sora like a body rejecting an organ transplant, causes DiZ and Riku's whole setup to fall apart, booting Roxas out of the simulation where he now has to break out of the mansion. Rejected by his body and being kept from half his power, Sora's heart is now isolated, and as the pod breaks down, the only thing left for him is the memories of the Heartless, Ansem, the Organization, and the pent up rage at what they did to him and took away from him. This creates a Heartless form around the now-abandoned heart.

As the system shuts down, the pods open, and the heartless Anti Sora emerges from stasis - voiceless and angry. The two Disney idiots awaken from their stasis as well, undoubtedly shocked and wary of Sora's new form. But Sora's rage is very, very targeted. He has no quarrel with Donald and Goofy - but he has a massive quarrel with the Org-hooded Ansem-faced Riku that comes down to try and secure Sora and Roxas before they escape.

I'm still toying with how this jailbreak could go. Riku and DiZ don't really have common goons to fight, and it wouldn't feel right to put Nobodies or Heartless here, so it has to be a Riku fight most likely. Perhaps some explosions from the system freaking out, or hastiness in his actions to justify his weakness. Or, perhaps, just the fact that Roxas and Anti Sora fighting together is roughly equivalent to A Whole Sora (plus the Anti Dramatic Tension Devices aka Donald and Goofy) so they could probably keep him back enough to escape which is what the two of them really want to do. Roxas could probably intuit that Anti Sora is Sora, but there is no chance Sora understands who Roxas is. (Though the Org coat could be an issue for Sora immediately assuming Roxas to be an Org member and targetting him. Sora is rowdy and unpredictable in this form so that's not a complete bad thing but for gameplay I would like a reason to have this be a cool team fight - especially with a RC to switch between playing as Anti Sora and Roxas.)

Outside the intro, there are a few things I definitely want to explore but just haven't yet. But one I have is the idea that, although KH doesn't really do split endings, this would be a great opportunity to run that as I can absolutely see a "Save Roxas or Save Sora" dichotomy. Roxas, of course, can be killed to reunite Sora's heart with his body, allowing him to be whole again - we all cry over Roxas in this house, that's not new. But consider...

Heartless are held together by rage, hate, and darkness. With Sora, that anger is very targeted at the Org and the Heartless. Once the day is saved, though, and Sora's heart is put at peace... there's no hatred or anger left to hold his form together. So, if he doesn't have a body by then, his options are to let the world be broken so he can maintain his rage (obviously not a very Sora thing to do), or save the world and disappear forever.

...so, the Sora and Roxas fight still exists in this AU. But rather than Sora being a very very very passive participant in someone else's story (as beautiful as the scene is and as much as I understand Sora being a brick wall is thematically relevant, it just takes away from it for me. Sora needs a little more agency here imo, as it stands it just makes me root against him and make it feel frustrating that Roxas accepts his fate), Sora here learns in advance about his own fate of disappearing. Probably in the same scene where he learns this, he also learns that the only way to stop that is to find his "Nobody" and take it out so his heart can reinhabit it.

At this point then, Sora may still be unconvinced that his Nobody could even be a person - everyone around him assures him that Nobodies are, well, nobodies. But the fight with Roxas, rather unfortunately for Sora, cements the fact that his Nobody does in fact have capital-d Determination. That Roxas has a will to keep living, a strong one, fighting with the desperation of a cornered animal. He isn't just a meat suit for Sora to put back on, he's a person that Sora has to find it in himself to kill in order to stay alive himself.

If you choose to spare Roxas, then Roxas gets to be an ally and gets his happy ending. But Sora will die in the ending with Riku. But if you choose to kill Roxas, having Sora slash him down with his own claws, then Sora must confront the fact that he is willing to cut Roxas's life short for his own self-preservation. That guilt will stay with him as his body is restored and his friends rejoice at the return of Sora.

Axel absolutely has parts to play here, and in fact the plot itself is probably quite different as Sora kills Heartless without a Keyblade while other characters like Mickey have Keyblades capable of sealing the McGuffin keyholes. And now every important character is scrambling to adjust to Sora being a Heartless and Roxas still being alive. But those come later because my gf is the ultimate Axel fan and I want to do right by her lol

Also the Round Room is canonically a discord call in this AU