#and also its just really fucked up to use terras body to kill one of his best friends who is also practically family to him

[haunted-xander]

There is something so foul about Terranort taking out Ven first at the keyblade graveyard

[carnivalls]

random question but does the world of terras town have any sort of religion

swear i've been sitting on answering this one for literal months now i'm. so sorry! wanted to be in a more tt mood again before replying (i'm still not fully but nostalgia is hitting hard on this friday night. btw).

also yeah! so since tt exists as a refraction (and opposition) of the town right above it, its no surprise that its religion also has similar (and skewed) foundations. considering lev's hometown is largely christian (& catholic), aka structured around a man dying for them, surprise! tt's is all about a woman being killed by them. which actually fits into their general day to day beliefs and attitudes more than you'd think.

so, just as lev's world has Our Lord, tt has Our Lady. and god in their case came from the earths, her divine body both one with the sand and also somehow sleeping deep within it. and in popular mythos, this is how the people of terras also first came to be: chewing and tearing their way free from her flesh, and thus becoming imbued along the way with a small spark of her divinity (aka, their magic). but subsequently, for each new person 'born', god grew weaker, until eventually self preservation rose and she woke up, with the aim to swallow them all back down again and re-become whole. this is the point where the people of terras proceeded to band together and kill her to maintain their lives. bonding activities fr

anyway it's no real surprise that as a result religious virtue in tt is based less around humility and fearing your god, and more about personal pride and surpassing them. terran religion is meant to uplift the self, promote determination and senses of justice, and encourage unity in the face of greater evils, since they are literally all each other have in the middle of this cut off dreambubble wasteland. these beliefs also tie though as to why the council & upper classes in terras generally suppress or hand wave away most religious affairs - last thing they need here is the lower classes to start being like oh shit right, we are so powerful actually, we can take on those corrupt bastards in charge if we all stick together haha!!!. it's not like they'll discriminate or outright prohibit religious displays or holidays, since that tends to only breed fiercer devotion and encourage the unwanted behavior, but for each religious holiday, some other follow up festivity or something will be made to sort of remind people of their power in particular. yk. power that you can actually see and touch and fear. not the general sense of power that allowed us all to hypothetically kill a god once upon a time. so. it's also why they encourage the vitriol and suspicion people in the lower classes have for each other.

unfortunately these attempts have also sort of largely worked, since there is not a lot to be proud of when you're fighting from day to day to survive to the next - or a lot to trust when your neighbor seems keen to stab you in the back. religious people exist in terras, but they're not that frequent (esp amongst The Masses), and are also usually dismissed more as optimists.

anyway past this, there's also some other branches off this primary faith - main sub groups include people who maintain that the Lady willingly let herself be killed instead of being gloriously defeated, and that there is no honor to be found in that kind of victory and that terras town citizens should be repenting for the original sin (sounds more familiar right?) vs people who maintain that the Lady wasn't ever really killed, only pushed back into slumber, and that one day she'll rise again to swallow them all - and that the people of tt must be ready to band together when that happens and truly defeat her for good etc etc. most people in tt find the former group whiny, if not downright heretical if they too are religious (who are you to try and shame us for our proudest and core tenet?), and the second cringe as fuck, plus slightly hererical if we are being picky (the whole point is that she's fucking dead dude).

oh and also there's the breakers. right. forgot about them. they are not connected to religion so much as they are like... the science of terras town, but they're a cult so i guess they sort of count in this section too. basically their full title is the barrier breakers, they think terras and the upper world need to be unified in a great rapture, and that the first sign of this happening will be the two planes 'swapping blood.' & they are going to love lev ❤️

[thetimelordbatgirl]

So....I suffered through Fate....so by laws of this fandom that we apparently can’t hate until we watch, I can now conclude on this shitshow. I’ll be nice and list the pros....though they tiny: *Female Specialists. *Male fairies. *Uhhhh.....they got Sky being boring as fuck right I guess??? *...That’s pretty much it lol. 

Cons: *Whitewashing- for some reason, people keep acting like the show somehow excuses whitewashing....no, no it fucking doesn’t- they whitewashed Musa and replaced Flora with a white girl and her white brother to extent- there’s no excuse for this and you all know it, you just refuse to acknowledge it cause it makes you uncomfortable to acknowledge.  *Biphobia- I swear to god, if anyone proclaims this representation as good, then your apart of the problem here of why we get shitty representation- BOTH non-straight characters are with the villain while the show constantly focuses on the straight relationships, and then you got Riven as the character whose supposed to be bi, preying on Dane and getting him into drugs and alcohol and being the show’s walking stoner joke and being the walking sex references while also being an ass, while Dane starts off nice before turning into an asshole as well who like Riven, bullies Terra for her weight, which brings us too.... *Fatphobia- you’d think with how they used wanting a diverse body character to whitewash Flora, that they’d try with her writing....but no, Terra is literally bullied for her weight by Riven and Dane and its just, why- you literally could do anything but the obvious fatphobia, and you went for the obvious one, like, why. *Racist Writing- Aisha is literally the glorified helper of Bloom who gets treated like shit if she disagrees with Bloom ONCE and if she dares act like the sane one of the group by disagreeing with breaking out a murderer and taking her concerns to the teachers? BAD GUY HOW DARE YOU SNITCH ON OUR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY- just, and of course, Aisha can’t be in the right and is treated like shit by Stella until she says sorry- she has no arc, she’s treated like shit and forced to say sorry to criminal friends....just...you all really saw this and said its okay??? *Stella- did Stella hurt the writers or some shit? Cause this isn’t Stella, this is Stella clone but gone wrong. She’s literally a bitch from day 1 to Bloom, lets her nearly get killed on the way home and then gets prissy about her ring, why? Cause of a dick, aka Sky’s. And we learn Stella’s done this before, aka blinding her old roommate when she showed interest in Sky- but oh wait, no, the show insists Stella’s just like this cause of her mom so it’s okay Stella does all this. Can we just stop this trope already? Of giving assholes this excuse? It’s getting fucking old.  *Beatrix/Sam/Any new character really- all in this area cause quite frankly, they add nothing to the show besides replacing the trix and being a boring villain as a result, being Musa’s new boyfriend who only ever make out cause rushes romance and when it comes to the headmistress and Rosalind....we’ll....we’ll get to them in the stupid twists. *Bloom- Cartoon Bloom called, she’s facepalming. WHAT THE HELL WAS BLOOM IN THIS SHOW?! She starts off as typical moody teen and is nice sometimes, but then gets bitchy if someone doesn’t wanna commit crimes with her like??? And then she does that, commit crimes and....get away with it- like fuck off, fuck off with that-  *The Romance- ....it was all fucking shit, especially the love triangle THAT WASN’T EVEN NEEDED- *The Cringy Lines- as soon as I heard Mansplain TWICE, I felt my soul leave my body and I kept feeling like that at other lines- just- just actually talk to teens before you assume this is how they talk.  *The Stupid Wings- YES, THERE ARE WINGS.....but they shit so why bother....like you can literally see them struggling with the CGI as she moves around, let alone her not flying much with them and even then, Blooms the only one to earn them, cause special Bloom bullshit.... *Harry Potter reference- please stop....its 2021, stop referencing that mess... *The stupid twists- this show literally has a unhealthy obsession with upstaging the previous twist it isn’t even funny, its just annoying. First, they believe Blooms a changeling, and then that’s not the case CAUSE BIGGER TWIST. They say that Sky’s dad is dead, BUT OH WAIT- and then the whole stupid ending with Rosalind, I just.... *The Gore- I’m just gonna say right now, if ANY of you don’t like gore, this show ain’t for you- they literally show dead bodies CAUSE EDGY and show wounds being treated real up-close, so uh, just warning. 

In conclusion? This show is shit, it was already shit with the whitewashing and it just got worser when it came out. I want my hours back now, but there you go- I watched the dumpster fire, so stop acting like when I trash this show, I need to give it a chance. I gave it one- it was shit, the fucking end. 

[xiolette]

Reworking Ansem SoD and Xemnas: Fuck Xehanort

Ansem SoD and Xemnas were interesting characters when they were introduced. Remember that? I’m going to recreate that, because their entire characters being reduced to “bleh Xehanort!” pisses me off!

Xehanort’s plan to take over Terra’s body didn’t work out the way he planned. 

He was successful, for a bit, until the fight with Aqua. When Terra took control and turned his keyblade on himself, that was the end of Xehanort. 

It was also the end of Terra, unfortunately. 

Or, at least, Terra as we knew him. 

It continues as it originally did: An amnesiac Terranort is taken in by Ansem and the apprentices. The only name he remembers is Xehanort but it feels wrong. He doesn’t like it. He has a feeling that he was someone else, but its the only name he has so they go with it. It always rubs him the wrong way. 

Master Xehanort is dead. He is not an influence on Terranort, besides the little remaining memories that cling to him. The important thing here is that this is Terra. Just... an amnesiac, broken down, more susceptible to darkness after All That Terra. 

He takes to being an apprentice surprisingly well! After Ansem and the gang were able to set up some accommodations (I hc that Terra has really bad dyslexia) he’s thriving. Terra is smart, he’s just never had the opportunity to show it. Eraqus saw that he struggled with the more academic side of things and redirected him towards physical keyblade handling because that’s obviously where he thrived. (Which is accurate to an extent, but left Terra with the impression that he’s just dumb and shouldn’t bother with anything else)

In the absence of internal shame and embarrassment and with an instructor that’s actually working with him Terranort soaks up everything like a sponge. He’s guided towards the more metaphysical side of things, latent influence from both Terra and Xehanort being keyblade masters and that knowledge running around deep in his subconsciousness. 

 Ansem’s fascination with his missing memories and Terranort’s own need to figure out who the hell he is spur the experiments that kickstart the whole plot of KH. 

Terranort is being led along by the idea that the heart is important somehow that this is the key to everything. He has bits and pieces that point to something and that something becomes an obsession. This obsession in more than encouraged by Ansem who proposes his own theories and is just glad to see his young apprentice excited about something. 

Terranort convinces Ansem to use him as a test subject, because it’s his heart and his memories and he doesn’t want anyone else being dragged into this. (ha.) 

The experiment was a success.... to a point. Terranort unlocks some memories, but they’re disconnected and scattered and the lack of context leads to the conclusion that whoever he used to be was not a good person. In fact he may have killed a few people. 

This is distressing and Terranort immediately withdraws into himself. Ansem, noticing the change, put an end to the experiments because sometimes things are best left in the past. 

The added pieces of the puzzle only make Terranort more obsessed. He’s angry and bitter over who he (thinks he) used to be be and is angry and bitter over the perceived abandonment of his mentor. (A small part of his mind tells him that this has happened before.) 

Insert: the recruitment of the rest of the apprentices and the KH1 Ansem Reports. 

Curiosity and (mostly) good intentions go horribly wrong and everyone ends up jumping off the slippery slope. 

It’s so interesting when you read the original Ansem Reports how he comes across as a well-intentioned figure that just slowly lets the darkness eat away at him until he’s convinced that this is all there is and all there will be. Then he, y’know, causes the apocalypse over of it. ❤️

Lead up is different, motivations are different - end result is the same. 

Then on the other side in KH2 you have Xemnas who is treated as a villain, yes, but a distinctly tragic one. Remember when his only motivation was to get his heart back? He may not have cared about anyone else also getting their hearts back, but he wanted his. 

Remember when he wasn’t trying to turn everyone into a Xehanort clone and never intended to get his own heart and that despite the supposed amnesia he’s still Xehanort and when he didn’t do everything because of Some Grand Evil Plan? 

I’m angry

But the desperate (and Nobodies are desperate creatures) want/need for his heart despite only remembering the negative emotions always struck me. Like, one: It’s better to feel bad than to feel nothing. Two: That’s fucked up man. 

I do like to believe that Xemnas cared or at least felt a certain kinship to his fellow Nobodies, but also he can’t feel nor does he remember how to fake empathy and still saw everyone as more of a tool than an individual. 

Because that’s, y’know, interesting. 

Again, everything is pretty much exactly the same as what happens in the main games. Nothing much needs to change there, because, like I said, they were interesting characters when they were introduced. 

Post KH2 reformation we get Terranort again! And he feels like shit! (As he deserves.) 

I would like for the protagonists to deal with the fact that the Big Grand Evil Villain was Just Some Dude who was a decent person at first but just went overboard. I would also like Terranort and friends to deal with the fact that this was on him. There wasn’t an evil mastermind brainwashing their friend - it was their friend. 

Uhhhh more solid parallels between him and Riku where Terra didn’t have anyone to reign him in, but Riku did. 

I should mention in this AU Ansem SoD becomes like a weird sort of father figure to Riku that actually gives advice and tries to get him to see his side while Riku is like, “Dude. You killed so many people.” “Fair.” 

Evil father figure Riku has mixed feelings about ❤️

The end result isn’t a full redemption arc, because Terranort really can’t get that. He crossed too many lines to have a fully happy ending. He does get reunited with the BBS dudes, though, and they all have to deal with the aftermath. His memories are never fully restored and, yeah, the Terra they knew is effectively dead and there’s some dude who looks like him in his place. 

It’s messy! 

DDD who? KH3 what? Real Organization XIII? 13 Darknesses??? I don’t know them. That sounds made up. 

(DDD is just the Mark of Mastery and Sora AND Riku both dealing with their trauma. Also the discovery of Aqua and Ven who need help like NOW) 

(KH3 is just Sora and Co. rescuing Aqua and Ven and Roxas and Namine and just giving everyone a relatively satisfying conclusion. No need for a grand epic battle. Just people picking up pieces and finding ways to move on.) 

(That’s it that’s the end of the series goodnight.)

[mimiplaysgames]

save it for the morning after (3/3)

Pairing: Terra/Aqua Rating: E (Explicit) for Smut Word Count: 7,850

Summary: Aqua learns the value of being vulnerable.Terra learns to trust his body to another. Everyone gets a happy ending. ;)

Read on AO3

A/N: AAAAHHHH Happy Terraqua Day!!!! I can’t believe I finally finished this one, it always felt like it would never happen. I’m actually quite nervous - I don’t take the same kind of path of other smut and being so deviant honestly freaks me out so much. I really do pull this story into extreme directions for smut, that I wonder if I can call it smut at all. But let’s see. Hope you like. <3

~*~*~*~*~

“Aqua.”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you…”

“Go ahead.”

“....”

“Are you okay?”

“The... um, your scars...”

“They’re not yours.”

“Aqua—”

“They aren’t.”

“Please.”

“...They’re not yours.”

~*~*~*~*~

Well, damn.

Ven hones in on Terra—a ballsy move considering it’s a super-bad idea to get this close to a large opponent—but Ven skids, spinning on his knees and tripping Terra like a pet running through its owner’s legs. Ven serves an uppercut with his short Keyblade. It almost jabs Terra on the ribs if not for his lurch backward, and he lands squarely on his ass against the desk behind him. 

A pot of ink rattles and tips, spilling all over his pants and spreading up the spine of his shirt. 

Ven snorts. “You look like you shit yourself.”

Terra wipes his backside, picking up excess ink in layers. It’s slick, skating through his fingers with the weight of iron and dripping onto the floor. More of it runs between his legs, finding a way in between cracks and folds of skin, moistening up his boxers. Damn it. He slathers his hand through Ven’s hair with so much force (Hey!) that Ven waddles to stay in balance. 

“And you look like you’ve been picking through trash.”

Ink clumps chunks of blond hair together, drooling down Ven’s ears and staining his collar. It makes him look oily for lack of a better term, like someone who hasn’t taken a shower in weeks. When he touches his scalp out of reflex he flinches, wiping his coated fingers on his own shirt… before realizing what he’s doing. He groans. 

“It suits you,” Terra says. 

“I dunno.” Ven wipes the rest of it on Terra’s shirt. “Looks better on you.” Might as well. The shirt is honestly ruined. 

One corner of the offending desk is covered in globs of shiny black. Terra corrects the ink bottle and surveys the damage. The tile floor will be easy to clean, but the wood is inhaling the color. 

“Aqua’s going to kill us,” Ven mutters. “She spent a lot of time in this room.”

Weeks of time choosing which books to display on the shelves. Days researching the right chalkboard to purchase. Journeys spent gathering minerals for students to practice with: ash from a far away volcano, water from the forest river nearby, unearthed dirt from the garden, and feathers from nests settled at the peak of the tallest mountain. Aqua has a vision of this room playing the dual role of serving lectures and encouraging hands-on experimentation in a safe environment. She wants it to be respectable and impressive before the semester starts. They’re not allowed to traverse the room with shoes on, and Terra and Ven were respectable about that before one of them (Ven) started to get cocky about his fighting abilities. 

Yeah, they fucked up. “Think of it this way. We proved it’s not practical for physical training,” Terra says. 

“You’re the one who’s going to tell her that.” Ven scoffs, splaying a wet towel on the floor.

Terra pulls his suspenders over his head and lets them hang from his waistband. Pinching his stained muscle shirt off and bundling it up, he uses it as a rag to absorb the puddle on the table. What’s sinking into his socks is now warm. He ignores it.

“Do you think I could pull this off?” Ven asks as a by-the-way, twiddling a shy hand at the back of his greasy head.

“Black hair?”

“No, you’re right. It’s creepy.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Pfft, you also ‘didn’t’”—Ven bookends the word with finger quotations—“spar fairly.”

Terra considers throwing his damp shirt at Ven’s face. “I’m not at my prime yet.”

“That’s not it.” Ven flips the towel and swipes the remaining streaks with the cleaner side. “You’re holding back. You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

“I’m not holding back.” He is. Just the image of raising his Keyblade against either of his friends is enough to make him nauseous, but he swallows it to be a good sport. 

Giving it his all is something else entirely, a deeper, invasive illness. 

“I know you can hit harder than that.” Ven dunks the towel in a pail of water, clouding it. 

“I just have a lot in my mind and it’s hard to... relax, I guess.”

There’s a moment of pregnant quiet before Ven says pointedly, “I thought Aqua was helping you out with that.”

A moist squish slaps Ven on the nose.

“Now you’re being sensitive,” Ven says, pulling Terra’s shirt off his shoulder.

“You missed a spot,” says Terra, using his thumb to smear the stain across Ven’s cheek. For shits and giggles he continues upward, rubbing raccoon circles on Ven’s eyelids. “You really pull this off.”

“Do you annoy her this much?”

“She enjoys it.”

“Ugggh.” Ven throws Terra’s hands off of him, his chin tucked in so much that two layers of neck skin fold over. “Gross.”

Terra pauses. Gross wasn’t what he expected out of Ven’s mouth. 

In fact, Terra hasn’t been sure of how Ven took the news the first time. 

Oh, Ven had said when they told him Aqua was moving into Terra’s room. Okay. Cool. He shrugged as if he could have heard more exciting news, and left to take a short walk in the woods with Chirithy. The three of them never spoke about it again. Ven wouldn’t mention a word when he saw them dragging her dresser and vanity table, and seldom joined them if he heard them laughing together with the door closed. 

Things are changing in minute strokes, in seconds that cluster for as long as Terra can recognize them, until they dissipate and become something not quite foreign but never quite familiar anymore, as though where he comes from is far from home and who he thinks he knows are almost-strangers.

“Have we ever made you uncomfortable?” Terra asks. 

“What, no!” Ven waves his hand, feigning shock, staring at his shoes and everywhere else but Terra. “I mean, Aqua’s been Aqua since we got back, and you’re just weird sometimes, but—”

“Then why do you...” Terra sighs, choosing his words. “Avoid us when we’re together?”

“I don’t want to interrupt.”

An almost-lie. “I hope you don’t think we don’t want you around.”

“Noooo. Neither of you make me feel that way.”

“But you do.”

Ven lifts his shoulders higher than his ears and drops them with the same weight as throwing books on the floor. “It’s just… nothing’s the same.”

Nothing is, what with the quiet mornings since the Master is no longer here to prepare breakfast before the sun rises, or huff at anyone when they disturb his meditation. Now they’re preparing the castle for the largest student body of Keyblade wielders it’s seen in years, something Terra thought would be a good distraction for everyone. 

But Ven’s right. Home doesn’t feel like home when the floors are re-tiled, and specific rooms are repainted, and the Master’s favorite lounge chair sits empty in the same spot in the library by the fireplace. Maybe for Ven, home is the turn right to knock on Terra’s door and the turn left to knock on Aqua’s. 

“It’s weird.” Ven grimaces. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m used to talking to you about things you promised to keep from Aqua—”

“I still wouldn’t tell her anything!”

“—and I’m used to it being the three of us.”

Terra pauses. “We’re still the three of us. We’re still best friends.”

“That’s not how it works, and you know it,” Ven says, smiling warmly. “You are one half of two. You share a language I can’t butt into.” 

Terra kneels onto one knee, brushing oily hair out of Ven’s face. Aqua would have liked this look on him: less spiky. “Ven, you’re always going to be a part of our lives.”

“Stop worrying. What you have is not a bad thing. I think it’s kind of awesome. I wish you’d give it your all in a fight. I wanna see what you and her are capable of together, because it’d be huge.”

“I’m only trying to say that we don’t want you to feel like a third wheel. You’re more than welcome to knock on our door anytime—”

“Ah. No. No thanks.” He shoos Terra away. 

“Why?”

“I don’t wanna see anything.” Ven squints.

Terra snorts. “You’re not going to see—”

“I don’t wanna hear about it either.”

“But—”

“Nope.” Ven covers his ears with his palms. “Nothing. No inside jokes. No pet names. Yuck. Keep that to yourself.”

Terra presses his lips together to zip up the snickering. “Okay, I won’t say anything.”

“Good. I don’t want any images in my head.” He wipes his hands like he’s done a good job explaining himself. “I should’ve expected it anyhow.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” Ven says slowly. “I mean, the Master kinda knew.”

“He said something to you?” Terra asks with a shaky voice. He’s flipping through memories, when he and Aqua were very careful and very private, when they didn't touch each other in case there were witnesses near. He was so certain he’d suffer punishment if Eraqus ever found out. Lists of long essays about the dangers of being reckless with emotions every time Aqua made him laugh too much. Grueling physical regiments to knock discipline into his body every time he made bad decisions based on a tug between his legs. 

“I didn’t understand it at the time,” Ven says, leaning back on his hands and tapping his heels on the floor. “We were all hanging out, and you and Aqua left, and then he got sad.

“When I asked him what was wrong, he told me you guys created a very bright Light together. A Light bonded is a Light stronger, he said.” Ven mimics the Master’s lilts in speech, using his finger to emphasize points. “But be aware, Ven. Such a blinding Light casts an equally blinding, deep Shadow. What a dangerous force that is.”

It’s a good imitation. The ache in Terra’s chest twists into his guts and warms him at the same time, like a loving hug that squeezes too hard.

“Honestly it made me think you and Aqua were doing something you weren’t supposed to.”

“Maybe we were.” Terra’s throat constricts, his voice gravelly and his shame nostalgic. “We thought the same sometimes.”

“Which isn’t fair. Why can normal people experience that but it’s such a big deal if Keybearers do it?”

Because when you elevate the person you admire to a standard you can’t match, it makes you do stupid things. Aqua had followed him world after world, expecting it would eventually lead to a fight. Too many Keyblades in a friendship does no one good. 

To-may-to, to-mah-to. They did end up fighting, it just wasn’t his own Keyblade that inevitably hurt her. What a dangerous force that is.

“So the Master did not approve?” Terra asks.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Ven rubs his cheek in thought, forgetting all about the ink. “He said your combined Light looked beautiful and warm. And that you’d have many nights where it would be enough when it gets hard... Honestly, he only wished that you keep your head on your shoulders.”

Wishes asked for are wishes granted, the Master used to say, so long as you work for them. The years Terra had wished for this exact approval had only left him with space to forge false hope. Nothing major, nothing long-winded. Just a simple, impossible wish as they placed the flower wreath on his memorial and bid their goodbyes. 

Finally, that wish is fulfilled. As Ven grants it to him, it’s hard to believe or accept, sitting on the floor of what used to be a ballroom, covered in drying ink. 

“Thanks, Ven.” Tears cascade down his cheeks, pretending to be inconspicuous. He wipes them with his clean forearm but he can’t keep up. There’s one for every moment in the last twelve years when he wanted to apologize to the Master, leaving his eyes burning. “I’m sorry, I’ll stop soon.”

“S’okay.” Ven tucks his ankles under, giving Terra time to process. Ven knows when a topic is too sensitive. But he can also tell when enough time has passed for the raw cuts to seal, when everyone’s ready to laugh. It’s his special gift. Only after Terra slows down does Ven lean forward. “Did you know you make this ugly face when you cry? You’re a train wreck.”

Terra yanks Ven’s head under his arm (Oomph, grunts Ven), locking his elbow around the neck.

Ven beats on Terra’s biceps. “Let go of me.”

Terra summons his pauldron, elbow pad, and gauntlet—for good measure. He licks salt from his lips and smirks, clutching Ven more, sinking him into the pecs. 

Ven coughs. “You smell horrible.”

“Nasty-horrible or heroic-horrible?”

“Do you make Aqua sniff your armpit? Let go of me.”

A poor mistake. Ven tumbles back when he’s let go, but he grabs Terra’s shirt before his head hits the floor. He punches it into Terra’s stomach so quickly that Terra isn’t allowed time to react or block, leaving a sprawled, black bruise over his abs. 

“Put a shirt on,” Ven says when Terra can’t rub it off. “Freak.”

~*~*~*~

Their bedroom door is ajar. Terra hears the shuffling of feet. He quiets his arrival, crumpling his messed-up shirt in a fist, and leans on the door frame to watch her. Aqua pulls a book out of a stack deftly with one hand, the other carrying a cheese pastry. She swallows a final bite, licking her fingers (something she’d never do in front of anybody else but him), and meditates on the chew before sitting at her desk. 

He likes her best like this: half-dressed, without her usual corset and sashes, down to nothing else except her shirt and shorts, simple and free. 

Her longest scar creeps out of her backless shirt. A snake, a reminder of the damage Keyblades are capable of: they never heal and barely fade. This is why wielders shouldn’t raise them against people. 

Gluing her attention to an open book, Aqua reaches over for more cheese pastry, but her hand meets a plate of crumbs. When she realizes, she snaps up, alert as if she’s been robbed, glancing over her shoulder for signs of movement. This is also something she would not appreciate anyone else seeing, how she’s afraid of being alone, how she’s paranoid that she’s actually not.

Terra steps in and taps her shoulder before she could ask him what happened to the pastry. “That looked delicious.” 

She blinks, slowly absorbing his words; she doesn’t feel well today, nothing to be ashamed of. Terra says nothing else. This way, he doesn’t bring more attention to the fact. He won’t touch her so she doesn’t feel coddled (despite how much he wants to). He won’t crack a dumb joke when there’s better moments for them. This way, she keeps her dignity. 

When Aqua sees the smears and handprints on him, her eyes finally find reality. “What happened to you?” She stands up and swipes the stain on his chest. It’s dry but not enough, leaving a mark of gray on her fingers. 

“An accident.” Terra clears his throat, trying to seem unbothered. Just another day in the castle. Everyone gets covered in ink, what’s the big deal?

If she hears the hesitation in his voice (and she should, she knows him too well), she doesn’t care, marching to their bathroom. The sink turns on. 

“What kind of an accident?” she calls. The water flow is disturbed. She’s washing her own hands first. 

“Eh, we spilled some ink,” Terra says, praying to the stars she won’t interrogate further. He tosses his ruined shirt into a wastebasket and opens the first dresser drawer for another. Gone are the days when Terra used to stuff his clothes into a heap; Aqua likes to fold every single article, his on one side and hers on the other. 

“What does that mean?”

“It’s fixable, I promise.” At least he hopes there’s some magic spell in some book somewhere that could lift ink out of cracks of wood.

He goes down one drawer for pants and it’s the same story. 

Down to the middle for socks and underwear, each tightly rolled. Tucked into the back of this one are two newly purchased books, their hardcovers wrapped in plain paper so that anyone peeking in couldn’t read the titles. Edited with illustrations of anatomy, they are lectures of techniques on what to try with your partner. Where to place your hands, how to play with your fingers and tongues, how to listen, when to take it slow and when to take it fast...

“Here,” Aqua says from behind him. She has a wet rag. It’s warm as she gently rubs it into his skin, across the spread of his chest. Her other hand is splayed on his hip. 

Just the thought of those books now, of slipping her out of that shirt, the stains on his stomach be damned—

“Am I going to get mad at you?”

Be damned. Terra smirks in a way to invite her to join along with him. “At both of us. But... You never stay too angry for too long so… Why worry about it?”

She pauses. “What are you rambling about?”

“Nothing.” He glances away. “It happened in the new classroom.”

She digs the rag into the groove above the diaphragm as if contemplating his vivisection. A stream of water drips over his belly button, into the hem of his pants, down the dips of his pelvis, between his inner thighs. Let her get mad. Be damned. 

“How bad is it?” Her voice is hard.

He caresses the small of her back, which is right now tense and stretched as she makes herself seem taller, like she’s about to take him on. “You’re smart. You’ll figure something out.” She opens her mouth to say something and he kisses the bottom lip. “I’ll do the dishes for three months. That’s enough atonement, right?”

Aqua clenches her teeth into a false smile, nails now leaving divots on his skin. “And the cooking.”

“Sounds fair.”

“And the gardening.”

“Now you’re pushing it.”

She continues to clean him, this time rubbing harder. It leaves his skin lightly raw. “You’re not in any position to bargain.”

“Do you expect me to beg?” 

“Then beg.”

Terra would be lying if he says he doesn’t find this side of her hot. She’s a splash of freshwater that would bring him back from the brink. The woman standing in front of him chooses to clean him despite the shower being paces away. She’s the same girl who would plant an extra candle on his birthday cakes, for the year to come. To her, maybe it meant little or nothing. Stars, she’s beautiful, and he doesn’t say it enough. 

“You’re doing better,” she says, leveling her voice, nodding to herself as if checking her information. That’s Aqua. Putting aside her annoyance for the sake of making sure he’s taken care of. “You’re not flinching as much.”

Maybe. Her touch is absolutely making the hairs on his neck stand. It is absolutely driving his dick insane. “You know, Ven’s okay with us.”

She stops. “He said something?”

“Kind of. He doesn’t want to know or see or hear anything.”

Her eyes go wide. “Excuse me?”

“He never said he actually heard anything.” He kisses her temple and lets it linger there, taking the opportunity to inhale her smell. Even when she sweats and spars for hours, there’s still a sweetness. Terra laughs into her hair. “He doesn’t want to know nicknames, either.”

Aqua flashes him a look.

“Now we have to,” says Terra. “We don’t have a choice.”

“What should we use?” Aqua moves to his abs, fighting an amused smile that’s twisting its way to her lips. 

“Terr-able.”

“That one is awful. I think Terr-bear fits you better.”

“So you admit I’m big, strong, and scary?”

“I admit you’re adorable sometimes.”

Terra purses his lips. “What about you?”

She shrugs. “Maybe Aquamarine.”

“How about Aquafina?”

“That’s worse.”

“Babe?”

“Absolutely not.”

“We could call him Ven-tilation.”

“Stop.”

He follows his instinct to lower his head so when she laughs with him, their lips meet. They kiss everyday, but the first taste of the hour is always the one to discharge his breath, like he’s been underwater and she’s giving him the chance to surface. 

“You’re going to get me dirty,” she says, giggling into his mouth.

He moves to her neck. “A little mess doesn’t hurt anybody.”

It’s when he brushes his fingers across her back, skating over the scar, coiled like rose thorns, that he hitches. Across from them is her vanity mirror. The scar is still red despite its age of twelve years. He’s so stupid. 

“This again?” she whispers. She’s not upset but disappointed, though in him or in herself, he can’t tell. Moments like these are weird, when he can’t read what she’s thinking. Working on the straps on his left arm, she pulls off his gauntlet, finger by finger. 

“I wish you would tell me,” he whispers back, as if having the conversation at a normal volume would shake them up. 

She turns his bracer to make its removal easier. “I already did.”

“I wish you would be honest with me.” He leans his chin on her head, feeling her fingers slide down his arm. 

“I am.” She flicks a knob and slips off the couter from his elbow. “You want me to tell you it was you who did this to me,” she continues, unbuckling the pauldron on his shoulder. “But it wasn’t.”

“I know better.”

“I know better.”

“It was done with my hands.”

To that she says nothing, rubbing the rag down his exposed left bicep. Ink had run under the armor. Darkness seeps in even with protection. 

She sighs. “Promise me you won’t obsess over it.”

He really shouldn’t but… he nods.

Aqua hesitates anyway. Taking him by the wrist, she presses his right hand on the rib under her left breast. “This one was his.” She warns with her eyes. “Not yours.”

Terra can’t feel anything through her shirt. He slips it under, running the pads of his fingers across the bumps and ridges. This one was his, this one with the gnarly tear right through the middle of the scar tissue, a ravine rupturing open. This one would have been done by that nameless silver Keyblade, with its sharp, ornate frills and that giant hook at the tip of it. It would have caught her skin as it tried to disconnect her body from her heart. And Terra? He’s had so much to lose and nothing to give back.

Terra holds his Aqua close as he continues to read the scar, how deep the hook sunk in, how she must have dodged back and broke that connection. 

“Did it hurt?” he asks. 

She sighs like she finds something amusing. Or trying to. She shudders, closing what little is left of the gaps between their bodies. “The Realm of Darkness numbs everything. I don’t think I felt it much.”

The view from their window looks over blossoming fields under mist, what’s left of snow capping just the mountaintops, everything else green. She’s lucky. So is he, ridiculously enough. 

“I should have done more to stop it,” he says.

“You can’t continue to say things like that.” She swallows and stares at the wall. “What about the person I’ve become? I wouldn’t be here, standing in this room, now. It changed me. The Realm of Darkness did things to me that I’ll never be able to claim back. I will never be able to remedy it. I never wanted it, but I don’t know if I deserved it.”

“You didn’t.”

“I couldn’t make mistakes, in case I got hurt. I couldn’t be vulnerable. I had to be brave.”

“You already are.” 

“And now I’m like stone.”

Terra presses his forehead to hers. “No, you’re not like stone at all.”

Aqua buries her face into his shoulder, anchoring herself to his waist. It’s so unlike her, to be unable to look him directly in the eyes. Whatever she has to say scares her. “You’re here, and I’m here. I give you my scars and you give me yours and… I don’t know if I would trade that for something else. For something that looks better on the outside. Every moment we shared since you woke up, how could I want to erase them? I need you, Terra. I have to chip away somehow. I’m braver now, to hold you like this.”

She says it like she has her chest cavity open, heart beating to open air. 

She’s brave for not crying. 

She’s brave for telling him what she can’t say right now. I’m braver now, to hold you like this. (I love you.)

He lifts her chin to kiss her. (I loved you first.) 

She drops the rag to hold his face. 

Before, their kisses were desperate, thirsty and famished, hoping to be found. Now, they’re deliberate, wandering but not lost. She tastes like sugar and flesh, her tongue inside with his, slow and careful. Their needs have more definition this time: please, and more, and yes, again. 

Terra indulges in the impulse to press her onto him. She should feel how greedy he is, her chest arched against his. She’s soft and he’s in love. 

“Where is Ven?” she says, breathless. 

“Probably showering,” he mumbles.

She waves her hand and the door slams shut. 

“I said probably,” Terra murmurs, but his mind turns off when she kisses him again. Who cares what Ven hears?

Aqua treads slower. She tempts Terra’s tongue to seek her out, puckering her lips around it and giving it a small tug. 

“Touch me, please,” he begs.

The sound of his pants unbuttoning makes his heart hammer, his entire groin anticipating for what’s next. When, when, when. Terra closes his eyes. Her hand glides down, palm first, his breath snagging when she wraps her fingers around his erection. His pants are at his ankles, Aqua is on her knees, and she presses a kiss right under the tip, where it’s most sensitive, before licking the entire length. Terra buckles. He catches the dresser behind him to keep standing. 

“Shhh,” she breathes onto him. It shoots a spark from his stomach to his scalp. 

Terra braces his teeth with his finger to shut himself up. He watches her work. She takes him in bite-size pieces, snail-tracking with her tongue before her lips close in on him. Fuck. She sucks while she pulls. Fuck. To see her like this, Master Aqua with poise, with grace, with affection and care—with him in her mouth. The hand wrapped around him squeezes tighter, and the other comes up to meet him at the testicles. 

He stifles another moan, staring at the ripples of the drywall, listening to the feathered tap of spring rain on the window and the noise she’s making. His erection twitches against the roof of her mouth, and he has to restrain himself from thrusting into her. Maybe he can let go and let be, finally throw himself off the cliff, ride the thrill all the way. Give it his all.

But he can’t. The moment gooseflesh spreads across his inner thighs, the moment he feels full, is the start. The floor will rip out from under him, the lights will go off, he will fall, he will lose all his fingers, he won’t remember anything, he’ll be the monster who makes her cry.

“I can’t,” he hisses, pushing her off. “I can’t.” He lurches over his knees, his insides twisting at the sudden cutoff, aching as it throbs and shrivels. He was so close. They were just laughing a few minutes ago. Stupid body, stupid mind. “Damn it,” he groans, pounding the dresser.

“Hey, you’re okay,” she says softly, holding him by the elbow. “You’re safe at home.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.” He digs his eyes into his palm, his body faraway like it’s a glass vial with his soul dumped inside. “Help me.”

Without letting him go, Aqua braces him with something cold—the rag, now on his lower back. It slaps him back to the bedroom, his beige carpet, the mist outside clearing out to a view of a forest that separates the castle from the mountains. 

She greets him with a smile. “You really did something to yourself,” she says, cleaning him like it’s a lazy weekend day and there’s a list of chores. 

Terra straightens up, shivers riding all the way up to his shoulders. “It’s so frustrating.”

“Don’t worry, Terra,” she says, softer and lower. “There’s no need to rush. I’ll wait.”

“But I’m tired of feeling caged up and stuck. I just want some semblance of control.” 

Aqua kisses him on the shoulder to shoo away the haunting for a few seconds. “I’m here, anytime you need me. Would you like me to run you a bath?”

“No.” The rag is likely caked with ink, but its iciness is unlike the chill of clammy sweat a few seconds old. Every frigid touch is a reminder that he’s alive. “This is nice.”

Aqua runs the rag up his spine. “You know what I think? If we’re going to call each other pet names in front of Ven, we should have guests over.”

Terra snorts. “That’s evil.”

“He won’t be able to bark at us in front of other people.”

“I think I’m a bad influence on you.”

“I think you’re right.”

Terra sighs at her touch, cold at his neck, at his hairline. Like a light at the front porch in the dead of night, like hot tea on a sick day, she is what it feels like to come home.

She tells him, “Lean your head back a little,” and he obliges, letting her reach behind his ears. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips swollen, her hair frizzy, eyes blue and focused as she takes care of him. 

“I can still kiss you, right?” 

“You don’t have to ask.”

Tilting his chin down, he does. He braids his fingers into hers; from the rag they’re like icicles, and he brings them to his heart. 

They’re barely millimeters apart, but he’s still in that cage. If only he could be touched the way he needs. If only the lock trapping him inside the cage is brittle and easy to crumble. What if he tries to test it? What if he finds there is nothing at all? Stupid mind. What if there are several, each of them needing unique keys when he has none, no hope of ever knowing what real freedom is? Stupid body. 

Should he pretend? Should he try over and over, to slam his head against the bars each time? Should he submit, should he accept he will never have what he wants? 

Life has made him uneager to trust. But her lips have a deliciousness unmatched by anything he’s ever tasted, and he’s still a silly, stupid man.

“Let me try again,” he says, breathing deeply. “I want to make you feel good.”

She’s surprised. “Only if you’re comfortable.”

“It will make me feel better.”

“...Okay,” she says so modestly. Terra never figured out how to knock it into her head that he wants to give her everything, that he is so, so guilty.

He invites her into an embrace, growing desperate the more he detaches his mind. Her body, the curve from her waist to her hips. The brush of her body against his reminds him that while he is naked, she is not. He picks her up by the thighs. Lost in the momentum of deep kisses, he carries her to bed, straddling her on his lap.

She hums. “The… the sheets.”

Dry, messy layers of ink still track down his legs. He groans into her mouth. She’s grinding him, and while he really likes that, it makes it incredibly difficult to take her clothes off, one hand rising the hem of her shirt and the other deep under her shorts, cupping her ass. 

“Whatever, we can wash them later,” she says, lifting her arms up. 

Her bare breasts—stars, this is what it feels like to come home. 

“Kiss me,” she says, and he replies, nibbling down her neck, coming down to her breasts, where his lips and his tongue and his murmurs take in her nipples as they perk. Aqua stays quiet, leaning onto his shoulders. 

There’s something about her amazing body, the silk of skin draped over defined muscle, treasure and tenderness in his hands, that he’s needy for. Every time he tries to define what that means, his mind ceases to function. 

Xehanort tried to take it all away from him. If he lived, Terra would crush every tooth bloody. Damn him.

How dare Xehanort do this to him, lock him in this cage, keep him away from her? Damn him.

Why is he thinking about Xehanort?

“Are you okay?”

Terra is frozen, the nub of a nipple suctioned in his mouth. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

He lets her breast go with a pop. “I’m redirecting.” Leading her to the mattress, Terra lowers himself into her arms, but he’s halted by a light kiss and a hold of his face.

“Do you need me to check in on you?” she asks.

“No.” He smiles, kissing her with all the hope that she psychically understands his body is about to burst open, if only from the lack of space for the appreciation he keeps nurturing for her. “Thank you, but I’m okay.”

She nods, stroking his cheeks with her thumbs. “You take your time.”

Oh, he will. No more interruptions. Focus on the smell of her skin, on the collarbone at the base of her neck. Right here, it makes her bite her lip. On the hollow between her breasts, the sound of her breath getting heavy. On the slight movement of her legs as she instinctively responds, spreading them, hooking around his. The buoyancy of her breasts in his mouth. The way she arches to push them against his face. 

Under that left breast is the scar, tightly knitted.

The purpose for living is for memories, not reminders. Do not linger. Do not think about the cage. Terra lightly kisses it and continues downward. 

Terra’s fingers glide down, a caress at the hips, a squeeze of her ass, running a mile of goosebumps as he bunches her shorts and panties and pulls them off. Her skin is streaked with fingerprints of gray, at most of the places he’s been. Aqua shivers as his lips brush the sides of her waist, as he traces his tongue and inhales the dips of her pelvis, as he loops his arms under her thighs, as he kisses her between the legs. She gasps. He licks from bottom to top, sucking on the clitoris once, then starts over.

Footsteps walk by outside their bedroom door.

Aqua jerks up. “Terra,” she whispers, warning him.

“Hm?” Stars, what now? “Here.” He grabs the comforter and throws it over her head. She chuckles as she wraps both of them in hiding. “Relax,” he whispers back. “He’s not going to hear anything.” Not that Ven opts to stay; his footsteps are already fading away.

He goes back to work, and hears her sigh—it’s loud enough to make him look up but too hushed to escape the sheets. Bottom to top. Again. Again. She cloaks the sound of her moans with the comforter plastered on her face. 

It’s her taste. It’s the softness and suppleness of the skin between her legs. The way she fastens her knees over his shoulders, how wet she is. Her reaction. When he tongues the inside of her slit, she jerks, chewing her lip hard enough to make it white. Master Aqua, with poise and grace, for her there’s only love and the way his tongue curls up. 

Her fist crumples the sheet—it holds her own breast, caresses her stomach down to rake through his hair and hold him there. 

“Don’t stop,” she breathes.

Stars, that did it. He’s hard again. He drapes his arms over her pelvis, using his fingers to open her up so he has more access to her clit. She bucks, and he holds her down. 

Her entire body trembles: the first sign that she’s running off her own edge. 

Terra strokes her, the outside lips, the tease inside, the puckering motions. She’s a sweet, musky taste he can’t compare to anything else.

Aqua throws herself back on the pillow. Her thighs crush his head, and she clamps her hand on her mouth like a topper. Her mewl shudders and stops, it heaves, it mumbles. The wave rises then crashes, and she finishes with a long sigh, a release, a settlement, a tempered peace.

It feels so good to listen to her. Terra rests his head on her hip and brings a hand to his erection. A little bit of freedom paid with a little bit of control. 

“I’m ready,” he says. “I need you.”

She hums in contentment, fixing the comforter so they’re completely covered and opening her arms to him. “Come here.”

Terra crawls over her, bracketing her body like he’s a fort, tethering her fingers to his and cradling her head in a protective halo with his arms. Aqua has to spread her legs wide to take on his thick waist, and she breaks her kisses with whimpers when he enters—she’s always more sensitive after he goes down on her. 

She’s warm and tight, oh stars. Massaging him as he moves inside her. Their bodies compress into each other, hers curled up to mold against the way he rocks his hips, as though the subtle air between would have split them up too far, as though he can melt into her when he pushes, their hearts only separated by muscle and bone. He plants a messy kiss on her cheek, exhaling and inhaling in rhythms opposite of hers, her breath loud against his ear, tickling his neck.

Here it comes again, the oncoming of the precipice where he has to step off. 

Fuck.

He can’t do it.

At the sprint towards the edge of the cliff, he skids and scrambles to hang by the rockface. Terra grunts, all his muscles seizing up as he holds his breath.

Aqua strokes his hair. “Do you want to stop?”

Of course not. “Give me a minute.”

“Remember, you’re safe.”

Terra nearly chokes. “I’m scared of losing control.”

“You won’t. You’re in control.”

In control. The intent to wring his fingers through the bars, a sleight of hand to balance the padlock like it’s on strings, turning it over and pulling it out of the latch. But Terra is no escape artist. 

Terra licks his lips. He’s not in danger. He should trust she’ll catch him when he falls. In her arms, there’s no safer place to be. He has to remember this. Shut that mind up.

“I want to continue.” 

She rubs his back. It’s soothing. “Tell me what you need.”

Terra smirks. “To get back in the mood.” He takes one deep kiss. “Entice me.”

Her insides squeeze him and he trembles. “How is that?” she asks.

“Do it again.”

She wraps her ankles over his back and squeezes. He hums into her shoulder. 

“Again.”

This time, she takes back her kiss.

“Don’t let me go,” he says, and she hugs him tightly. 

He starts slow. Terra leans on his elbows, bunching the comforter in his fist so it stays in place. She looks at him with half-lidded eyes, a healthy red blush, her mouth gently open, cast in the filtered glow of a secret, sweaty cocoon. This body he’s thrusting into, the lips he’s kissing, may the stars bless her. 

“Aqua.”

“You feel so good.”

She stole the words right out of his mouth, squeezing his hips again. 

“Oh,” he moans. It provokes him to thrust harder, deeper, feel her, feel her breasts bouncing under him, feel her moans coming from her throat, the desperation in the way she squirms with her hands. She massages his slick back, her nails digging in.

There. 

Let him throw himself off. Give it his all.

“Don’t let me go,” he repeats.

“I won’t.”

He throws himself off. It’s not the wind thrashing him all the way down. Instead it’s fire, a combustion of flames in his muscles as his entire body submits to its force, leaving his knees weak. A flash of white that blurs everything he sees, a hurricane that knocks his mind into a stupor, a delicious burn that slicks over his body, trickling embers on top of sweat, hot and cool, good and better, good and fucking good. Terra shoves his face into her shoulder to muffle the sounds of groans escaping him, shuddering as the climax picks up again, a body alight in an ignition that throws him out of any awareness. 

His eyes prick when he finally remembers where he is. Aqua is safeguarding him with a strong hold, keeping him in place with her. He sighs. The cinders that continue to radiate heat leave him with a hearth to wrap himself into, a happiness that he never thought he would ever feel again.

Aqua sniffs. She wipes tears onto his shoulder.

“We really should stop crying at these things,” he says.

She snorts, refusing to let her grip on him slack. “You did amazing. How are you feeling?”

“I’m…” he mumbles. Stars, wow. His arms can’t pick him up anymore but it’s a gratifying cloud to ride. He shifts his legs, alleviating the weight of his body. “A little weak.” 

She runs a hand on the back of his head, coaxing him to rest on her chest. “When did you know?” she asks, brushing hair off his damp forehead. “That you wanted to kiss me? You must have spent some time thinking about it before it happened.”

Terra smiles into her chest. Somehow, they’ve never talked about it. “Long after I knew I was going to marry you.”

He feels her laugh. “Is that so? I’m going to marry you?”

“You will.” He looks up at her grinning face. “I can see the future.”

She scoffs. “You can see my eyes rolling at you.”

“I knew before you did.”

“Prove it.”

“I was seven.”

“You’re older than me, that doesn’t count.”

“You asked me to have a tea party with you, but the one thing that bothered you most”—he brings up his hand, pinky out—“was that I wasn’t drinking my tea right.” He mimics the high pitch of a little girl’s voice. “Pinky out. Pinky out, Terra, don’t be a slob.”

She gapes. “I don’t remember any of that.”

With renewed will, he props himself up, leaning close so their noses touch. “I knew then. That early on.”

“Since when is this a competition?”

“Still the first to know.”

Aqua interrupts what she’s about to say, like she’s about to step into cold water. She’s having an epiphany. Vulnerable again, like she’s allowing him to cut her right down the middle. 

“I love you.”

She says it like the touch of a high note on a piano, a beautiful accident. 

He leans closer, lips to lips, whispering, “I still got there first.” 

She laughs into him. “I suppose, but I was the first to say it.”

“Then I’ll be the second,” Terra says. Like coming home, a shelter to withstand the downpour, that births life to the roots, that thunders, that opens for a clear day, he brushes her hair out of her eyes. “I love you.”

“Too,” she corrects. “You love me, too.” 

A knock on their door jolts them, like a hard punch to the stomach.

“Okay, Terra,” Ven says from the other side. “I thought about it and I’m trying out this knocking thing.”

Wrong timing. Wrong timing.

“I’m going to kill him,” Terra hisses, and against Aqua’s hushed chuckles, he throws the comforter off their bodies and announces, “Ven, we’re naked.”

The silence that comes after is as loud as the crash of a chandelier. Terra can feel Ven recoil, a tea pot at the verge of whistling. “I didn’t need to know that!” Terra is about to reply but Ven groans dramatically. “I AM NEVER GOING TO KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR AGAIN.”

Ven stomps away, and if the door was actually open, he’d slam it. 

Terra sits on his knees, pinching his nose. It’s hot in this room. He feels clogged again, back at the edge of the cliff. He wants to strangle Ven for dragging the moment away from him. “Great, I pissed him off.”

“Poor Ven.” When she sits up, Terra pulls her to him, sitting her on one of his thighs. “I can’t predict if he’ll ever get over that,” she says, balancing herself by hooking her arms around his neck. 

Terra presses his lips to her ear, whispering, “But I did predict that you wouldn’t stay mad at me for long.”

She slaps his bicep. “I haven’t seen what you’ve done yet. Don’t be so proud of yourself.”

“But I am.”

“You’re still a slob.”

Slobby as he is, Aqua hugs him dearly. Hold her, you never know when the dream will end. You never know when the cage takes you back.

“I don’t know if,” Terra says, “it will be difficult for me next time.”

“Then it may be difficult,” Aqua says, kissing his forehead. “But it will be okay.”

Hold her. Not passively. Not half-minded. Hold her tightly. Hold her in the quiet, undisturbed, uninterrupted.

A drop of hot liquid spills from between her legs and drips down his thigh, almost burning. When Terra looks down to see that it’s white, Aqua jumps.

“Oh,” she squeaks.

“Oh. That would be me.”

She squeals, hiding her blush. “I’m going to wash up.” 

“Such a slob.”

Aqua giggles, looking him in the eye when she rubs his chest. “Come with me?”

“Go ahead.” He kisses her. “I’ll catch up.”

If anyone told him twelve years ago that hope feels like a long day full of small conversations, the anticipation of cleaning a messy room, Terra would have considered that cynical. A sarcastic joke, the loss of the will to dream. 

Twelve years later, it’s the sound of the shower running that teaches him to look forward to the next day, when he wakes up next to her, when he prepares dinner with her, when he kisses her in the middle of the night and play all over again. Peace is a long-distance acquaintance, a pen pal that urges you to look at your day like a spectacle.

Terra leans back to twist the latch of the window open, letting the spring haze billow in. Much better, the room is cooler now. The sky is bluer somehow, the mountains as grand as a painting.

[semblanche]

- WRITEBLR (RE)INTRO -

hey!

i’m blanche (she/her). i’ve already been on writeblr for three or so years, but decided i wanted to have a central post with info on me and my projects rather than just scattered bits here and there. so um um let’s see

BIO

i’m greek, studying in the uk

i follow from @fiddler-unroofed

talk to me about character deconstruction and literary parallels 🤤

send me discourse it makes my day

i don’t know how to make gifs or use links and it shows

TROPES

things i love to see and also usually make use of in my own works include:

blind devotion & unhealthy dynamics between characters

magic with a price

character parallels / narrative foils

body horror

religious themes

small towns

beyond that, i also really like enemies to lovers, amnesia, and bittersweet endings. no flat out angst with no resolution though

WIPS

as of rn, i have two main wips and a dozen sidelined ones of varying importance - i’ll describe a few of the major ones here, and add on as time progresses.

Terras Town —

urban fantasy

the story of a girl who falls into a parallel world and needs to find a way back. but why does she get the feeling that there's more to her fall than what's being let on? and what does it mean when the girl who's never stopped running finally starts to feel at home?

features: parallel worlds, magic with a price, non-penalized murder, teenagers that need therapy, obscure powers, low stake reveals/high consequences, lgbt characters

can be found under the #terras town tag.

you can’t get a taste of another world without it cutting your tongue.

Requiem —

dark high fantasy

the story of the girl who wants to kill death, the soldier who wants to follow her to it, and the victim who wants to shake its hand. a story that goes on past what should have been its ending.

features: antiheroes, body horror, cheating death, immortality gone wrong, power imbalance, sacrifice, a frankly stupid amount of worldbuilding, lgbt characters

can be found under the #requiem tag

if death doesn’t have the courage to look me in the eye and say i should be dead, or even why i should be dead - then they don't deserve their power over me.

Half-Dead Hope —

dark academia

the story of six girls, and the knowledge of what happens when the heart doesn’t get what it wants.

features: grey morality, vaguely religious themes, literary references, kind of unreliable narrator, 99% female cast, wlw characters, inexplicable supernatural happenings, a pretentious fucking writing style

can be found under the #half dead hope tag.

you have to believe me when i say i never wanted it to end up like this. but then again, it took me so long to believe it myself.

also, worth noting: if i think a post is more character specific than wip relevant, i might just tag it with the character name instead of the wip one to avoid cluttering. so if there’s a character you like or smth... their tag might have some gems 👁

anyway yeah think that’s everythin? i’ll probably be updating this as time goes on, but you can rb if you want :>

love y’all!

writeblrs/mutuals i rec: @llesbianwrites @akoumi @topsides @at-lxs @emdrabbles @elliewritesstories @you-are-my-neverland @haldimilks @aelenko @scribbleknots @quenvicky @carumens @katwritesforfun

[taurusborus]

someone translated more of the under the tides event on reddit if you're interested in reading wtf is going on.

I'll also add it under this in case it's easier to read.

Warning, if you don't want to leave the slightest bit of surprise for yourself when the event hits global, TURN BACK NOW!!

I made a comment thread yesterday with a story summary. However, I still left out a lot of things, so I thought I'd make a new post, add in more info about plot I left out, organize the Q&A from the thread, and link to the TLs of the new units. Hopefully a centralized hub of info will help people find the information they're looking for and dispel any of the more wild hearsay floating around.

This will be organized into a few sections, the new unit TLs, my original story summary, a bunch of (my new summaries) separate plot threads that tie into the bigger story, and then some common questions.

Skalter profile + lines TL

Gladiia profile + lines TL

Event CGs

Some good supplemental information about the seaborn hivemind

A much longer summary of each stage, 11 pages - courtesy of Lauli. If you want to know more about the townspeople, Inquisitors, and details on Kal'tsit's end conversation with the Inquisitors, take a look.

The original summary I made yesterday, the fastest crash course on the major story points. I have edited some of the references of the new factions to match the updated TLs from MrSkyblock404 so there's no confusion:

First of all, if you've ever read the manga Claymore, you now understand most of the event. Key differences are that the "Organization" is Aegir. They don't SEEM to be the villains here, and they went the Claymore route to fight the sea horrors fully knowing that their Claymores will eventually awaken into the sea horrors that need to be put down.

The "secret" of the Abyssal Hunters is that Aegirians created them as supersoldiers with the bodies of land dwellers but the blood of sea horrors. More on that down below.

The seaborn is part of the underwater cosmic horror hivemind that's been foreshadowed since the start of the game. Its interest is in learning, evolving, and assimilating everything (a la Evangelion's instrumentality more like end goal of Starcraft's zerg). It's acts primitively... robotic? It doesn't understand things like emotions and "Does not compute. We will learn what you mean" is a large part of its exposition. The church in the town is actually the Deep Sea Church hiding in Iberia and slowly indoctrinating remote towns and turning the people to sea horrors. The ending convo with Kal'tsit implies that Iberia is now completely infiltrated by the cult and if they maintain an isolationist policy, they will be destroyed like Aegir.

The seaborn shows up to impale Gladiia, and reveals the big "you [Abyssal Hunters] and I share the same blood. You are us. We are you." Skadi has a mental breakdown over the truth bomb ("I've killed my own transformed family and friends" etc. Glossing over the specifics, just know she doesn't take some past war trauma well), and it seems like the seaborn can somehow "awaken" the blood and turn Abyssal Hunters like Skadi into one of them.

Skadi is right about to awaken [and probably become Skalter, that seems to be the general consensus on CN forums right now, Skalter = Skadi if she gives in to the call] when Gladiia reveals she was sandbagging (yay superhuman regen abilities) so she could listen in on why the seaborn wanted to meet Skadi so badly. Since the seaborn revealed everything, Gladiia promptly kills it and tells Skadi to get her shit together. Skadi gets her shit together. As the seaborn dies, it says its people will learn to understand everything the Abyssal Hunters have told it, and then they will ask them to join the family again. Also, Specter is now free from whatever "control" the Deep Sea Church exerted over her, she's elated over being "free" now. She's still infected but compared to her previous half-dream state, she considers it a minor setback.

Then there's the Deep Sea Church leader dude who had no idea Hunters were also of seaborn blood and also has a mental breakdown. His entire life's work and dream is shattered because the cult crap he made up believed in is a lie, and the seaborn don't put any special weight on his existence and work. He turns into the SV-9 giant tentacle demon that the 3 Musketeers take down. Before he dies, he curses Gladiia and says some ominous things about how she's different and unlike the other 2, her fate is set. Then in the scene with the mirror, she's shitting on herself for being useless and still ending up like an ugly little bitch. The mirror closeup shows part of her neck starting to look like fish scales, so it seems like she's already undergoing the sea horror transformation.

The town situation

The town has fallen on hard times, and the Deep Sea Church has slowly indoctrinated the population with Iberian values twisted into a pro-seaborn slant. These towns become experimentation grounds for the Church and seaborn. Gladiia confirms that she's been busy destroying many of these experiment grounds. The Church now provides the town with food from the sea when the tide comes. There is also a human sacrifice chosen by lottery, which the Church disguises as "the sea has chosen you to take into its embrace and provide a better life." Kind of like how parents tell their kids their dead dog went to live on a farm. The brainwashed people genuinely believe they have a better life and see it as the greatest honor.

The "food" the sea provides are the "dormant" state of severely injured Dinichthys, which regress into a more resilient meaty form while it recovers. This dormant state is edible (ugh) and what the people harvest during the tide. The unlucky human sacrifice walks into the tide to be eaten by the Dinichthys and thus what the sea giveth, it ultimately taketh.

I would like to note that the Church leader has made an appearance before this event. He has a substantial role in one of the story scenes in Archetto's event. I won't ruin the surprise, but if you pay attention to the setting, you'll know which scene it is before he shows up.

Deep Sea Church agenda and the seaborn

The Deep Sea Church are likely the major instigators of this major "sea vs land" conflict. According to the seaborn that shows up in the Church, the general seaborn population are territorial and generally abide by the animal instinct of survival of the fittest, there is no right or wrong if you kill to survive. The seaborn's behavior and inability to lie show that they indeed don't give a damn about individual seaborn, the Church's plans, or even the Church leader.

Distinction needs to be made between the general seaborn population and the seaborn used by the Church, the latter which could be artificially created. The Church leader is Iberian, but somewhere along the way managed to become part seaborn, which is why the seaborn will listen to him. Being part seaborn allows him to "weaponize" the true seaborn population for his own agenda.

The seaborn themselves indeed have a goal to evolve and and expand (from Skalter's profile). But to what degree the Terra conflict can be attributed to seaborn passive expansion vs. the Deep Sea Church's hostile accelerationism is not clear.

Thus, there's an interesting 3-way disparity between how the conflict is perceived.

* Abyssal Hunters: believes all seaborn must be eradicated * Seaborn: not really interested in the conflict * Church: "it is the will of seaborn to subjugate all"

Regardless, Gladiia has constantly repeated she doesn't give a shit about the seaborn's role in the Church's schemes. Her duty is to kill seaborn, and she's not going to discriminate.

Kal'tsit creates a cliffhanger every time she shows up at the end of any event

After the church-leader-turned-giant-tentacle-demon is killed, its enormous corpse is like a beacon calling to all the Dinichthys zerglings to swarm the area. The 3 Musketeers are like "ok fuck what now" and Kal'tsit swoops in with perfect timing to call Mont3r to completely destroy and bury the ground and its secrets.

She's here to direct the 3 Musketeers to leave Iberia and rendezvous with Misery to go back to RI for a vacation (yes, she actually says they get vacations). The Inquisitors also show up to stop everyone, and after giving them her usual condescending finger-wag-and-lecture, she offers to stay as hostage/information source in an Abyssal Hunter's stead. Her agenda is to convince the Iberian powers to ask for help instead of maintaining an isolationist policy. If they continue to keep it internal, they will be destroyed like Aegir.

She has some atypical kind words for the 3 Musketeers before they leave. To Skadi, she makes a throwback to some cryptic bullshit she said in Grani event. To Specter, she makes some banter about her newfound freedom and moving forward knowing her body's state.

And then it turns out she and Gladiia planned for almost everything before the Skadi sets off for Saltwind City.

The state of Iberia and Aegir

Aegir is pretty much sunken Atlantis. Gladiia says that there's no communication in and out of Aegir after the Calamity.

The Abyssal Hunters were created as just one small piece of Aegir's military power. Aegirians are fully aware of the Abyssal Hunters' eventual fate to turn into the enemy, and have special patrols out to monitor and kill any who turned. The seaborn confirms that they had nothing to do with those deaths. The people Skadi killed and watched get killed, those were all done by her own people. This does not help her mental state.

Iberia has likely attempted to replicate Aegir's Abyssal Hunters. We don't have story on the result of this project, but based on clues in her profile, Andreanna might have some connection to it.

In Kal'tsit's "I know everything" exposition, she states that Iberia once had a prosperous Golden Age, and is now a shadow of its former glory. As stated before, the Deep Sea Church has also infiltrated all levels of Iberian government. Thorns' profile says he left because of "religious strife" and how in recent years treatment of Aegirs in Iberia has gotten worse. All the breadcrumbs are building up to Iberia potentially getting the same kind of Calamity that destroyed Aegir. (See Skalter page's TL note on Calamity.)

Bunch of misc info that don't really fit anywhere else, from yesterday's thread Q&A

It's established that Abyssal Hunters are not allowed to bleed, especially on land. The seaborn says the swarms of cannon fodder zerglings can smell the "same blood" on the Abyssal Hunters. But they're a bit stupid, so their brains only know "this is the blood of my kind, but why is it trapped inside hooman skin?" instead of recognizing it's not a trapped comrade.

Their attacks on Abyssal Hunters are attempts to "free" their kind from the trappings of hooman skin. The more the Hunters bleed, the more frenetic the swarms get, because they know they are getting closer to freeing them.

If you are a Specter fan, you will absolutely love the scenes after she wakes up. The ensuing conversations show that the Abyssal Hunters cherish their close connections like everyone else, despite their usual "stay away from me I'm dangerous" vibes. I really hate how Specter's operator record turned out, and I'll keep salting about it, but this event really did her justice.

Question: Is story Skadi already Skalter? She is wearing the same clothes.

Answer:

No, and this is the biggest misconception that needs to be cleared. At no point in the story does Skadi fully awaken. She comes close but pulls back just in time. The in-universe reason Skadi changes into her wandering songstress wardrobe is that she needs a box carrying her "instruments" (her sword and Specter's chainsaw) and to avoid suspicion while sneaking into Saltwind City. There are two high ranked law enforcement officers (something like that) after her, who know she's an Aegir and a possible threat. In story, she's still guard Skadi. Devs probably wanted to keep the red getup on Skalter to differentiate between the two units.

Question: Why did the seaborn want to meet Skadi so badly?

Answer:

It's not entirely clear thanks to hYpErGRyPh oBtUsE wRiTinG. Every time the sea heir talks about how much it wanted to meet Skadi and perhaps why, Skadi or cult leader interrupt with their mental breakdown monologue. My interpretation of its reasons is a combination of desire to share knowledge with her (learning is constantly repeated as a goal of the sea horrors), extend an invitation to join the hivemind, and ask a question, explained below.

There are flashbacks to this one suicide mission she and her Abyssal Hunter squad had against one particular sea horror. Her entire unit died and she barely made it out after landing a fatal strike on it. Based on Skadi's mental breakdown, it sounds like that sea horror is like the Zerg Overmind, a central connection for the sea horror hive mind.

There's some exposition about how the Overmind isn't really dead, and it's gone into Hibernation Mode because though it no longer responds to communication, the sea horrors can still feel its pulse.

His specific question was whether Skadi heard the Overmind say anything before it went dormant. More Skadi breakdown, because she did. It said (rough TL) "[our] suffering is eternal." The "our" is ambiguous. It could be referring to Skadi and the Abyssal Hunters, since she's the one narrating, or it could be the Overmind and the sea horrors, who Skadi is repeating. I'm leaning toward the Abyssal Hunters since "being abyssal hunter is suffering" has been a core takeaway of this event.

And then Gladiia stops playing dead and kills off our sole source of Aegir lore :)

Question: Is Skalter/Under Tides canon?

Answer:

The events that happen in Under Tides is canon. Skalter's canon status is in existential limbo. As MrSkyblock404 has reiterated, devs have directly said Skalter is a POSSIBLE future in which Skadi gives into the call.

Question: But isn't the fate of every Abyssal Hunter to eventually turn into Seaborn?

Answer:

Technically yes. The call will never fade, so the moment it overpowers the Abyssal Hunter's will to resist, it will have won. But I say technically because the other side of the tug-of-war is the Abyssal Hunter's own willpower. There are hints scattered throughout that their fates aren't set in stone. As Gladiia said to Skadi in her "get your shit together" moment, if you don't want to become a seaborn, then you won't. Not to mention, they can always ask to be killed by another's hands before they fully turn, so they can die as "themselves". This is like the black card system in Claymore. Skalter's E2 promotional record also has this part:

Well, but that's not what I want to say to you today. What I want to say is that when they want to acquire a structure, they transform in that direction.

Skadi, since those creatures can become what they want to be of their own volition ...... Then you can also not become a certain way by your own will. You can do what you want to do.

For example, an Abyssal Hunter. Or, a little more freely, a bounty hunter.

The seaborn as a collective are naturally able to "focus" their evolution toward a specific direction. So as an individual, Skadi should also have a degree of control over what she does and doesn't want to become. Gladiia is implied to still be undergoing transformation despite her obvious obstinance, but the Deep Sea Church leader says she's different from the other 2 and her fate is sealed. As one of the first Abyssal Hunter prototypes, Gladiia might not be able to resist like the later Hunter prototypes.

If you made it this far, nice job! I hope that helps the EN community understand the tsunami of information that got dumped on us in the event.

If there are questions, post in the comments and I will do my best to answer them. Corrections to information in this thread and swapping notes with other CN readers are very welcome!

EDIT: Removed the spoiler bars since I got feedback that it was annoying to click on each paragraph. I've also added a new section "Deep Sea Church agenda and the seaborn" to clarify all the relationships defined in the story.

Also loving the connections the comments are making to other media. I personally made this post because I am a massive Claymore fan. Seconding one commentor, I highly recommend Claymore, it's a gem that's passed a lot of manga readers' radars. I'm also giving Bloodborne and Dragon Age a shot after the event.

EDIT 2: Thanks to the awesome ak-lore group on the official Discord, I've since made a number of corrections on key points. They are in the sections The town situation, Deep Sea Church agenda and the seaborn, and The state of Iberia and Aegir.

[a-square-minus-one]

Honey 8

The outline for this chapter was much longer but I didn’t have time to actualize it :( More to come soon! <3

Raven can sense that things are going to go wrong the minute the tip of her toe lands gently against the pavement. She rushed over to the park, making it there much quicker than any of her teammates in order to scope out the situation. And immediately she feels anxiety wrap its fingers around her spine through her skin. She stands in front of four of her brothers, who stand in a semi-circle formation. Malchior is leaning against a tree off to the side, grinning. She looks around. They emptied the park?

“Sister, nice to meet you,” Wrath acknowledges, looking characteristically serene against the bright blue sky. He stood as if his ginormous, bulging body was weightless. Raven eyes Gluttony who’s a part of the circle but standing a little further back. His cheeks hollow as he sucks roughly on a lollipop. He’s skinny enough for the wind to blow him over even though Raven suspects he probably eats enough for eight or nine athletes in one day. He stands a foot and a half shorter than Lust and the difference is even more extreme between him and Wrath who must be at least a few inches taller than Cyborg and impossibly wider. She runs her eyes to Envy who's eyeing her from head to feet, lip twitching. His chin is tilted up and his arms are crossed over his chest. 

They aren’t fighting anyone. 

Or killing anyone. 

Or making anyone fight or kill each other.

The wind rustles the leaves in the trees around them.

“You called my team over for a conversation?” Raven asks, peaking at Malchior who winks at her. Judging by the way Lust and Gluttony are looking at the sky behind her, her team has just reached the park. Raven doesn’t look back to know they are currently getting into formation behind her.

“You came. We never beckoned you,” Wrath says, hands behind his back. Raven rolls her eyes.

“But you knew the presence of all five of you, in the open, would alert us,” Raven  clarifies. Wrath nods once, smoothly.

“Indeed.”

And then no one moves. Or says anything.

Wrath assesses her whole team much like she assessed them. A small smile plays on his lips.

“We do not have to fight one another sister.”

Raven arcs an eyebrow. 

“Join our side. We can spare your friends. Perhaps you can negotiate positions of power for them in our new world.”

“Yes because deals with the devil are almost always honored.” 

Raven notes how Wrath’s smirk never reaches his eyes. It’s more of a slight tick in the corner of his lips. It’s the most unnatural part of his appearance. He’s completely comfortable in his weight and height.  “Very human of you to make things so dichotomous. Devil bad. Human good. You know very well we can only play with people’s natural tendencies. We could never make something out of nothing.”

“Very demonic of you to think manipulation is so much holier.”

“There can be honor even amongst the worst of beings.” 

Wrath purses his lips, looking off into the distance. He rubs his hands together.

“Dragon,” Wrath says once, continuing to look off into the distance. Suddenly Malchior’s giant chest is expanding towards them, his claws pushing pounds of dirt into their face as he digs them into the ground. Terra is quick to stop the mounds of dirt from hitting her teammates. Raven has only a few seconds to put up a quick barrier as she watches Malchior inhale a giant breath. Even with the barrier the whole team is still smacked with an incredible wall of heat, like they had just opened an oven. Flames flicker up the edges of the wall of her black energy.

“Dragon!” Raven yells through her gritted teeth, looking back at Garfield. Garfield rolls his shoulders a couple times. “Anytime now,” Raven says, pushing against the force of Malchior’s fiery exhale. She focuses her attention forward, ensuring her friends are protected 

“I do this everyday,” Garfield drones. Raven rolls her eyes and looks back. She’s met with the muscular underside of Garfield’s belly: The sun reflects off of his shiny scales. Her barrier falters completely but Malchior has stopped blowing. 

“That’s-“ Raven starts, her eyes trailing up Garfield’s long neck. The sunlight behind his head is blocking her view of his face.

“Sexy,” Terra finishes for her and she has to swallow because the word fits a little too perfectly in her sentence starter. Raven shakes her head and flies up the length of Garfield’s neck. He meets her halfway and bends his head to her. She quickly straddles one of the ridges on his forehead. She places her hands on his head.

Garfield, you’ll be able to hear my voice in your head but I’m not going to be going through anything. I’ve just put up a field-

Raven’s distracted as Garfield blows fire at Malchior’s underbelly. Suspiciously close to his-

Garfield!

What? The prick loves talking about his dick so much, might as well put a spotlight on it.

I should explain the link a little-

What’s there to explain? I can hear you, you can hear me... 

Gar-

Rae, you can poke and prod- 

Garfield pauses to deflect Malchior’s fiery breath.

-whatever you want. Poke and prod whatever you need to so we can stick this asshole back in his fucking book. I trust you…but it’s kinda hard to chit chat. I’m new to this whole dragon thing. 

...I won’t invade your thoughts.

Didn’t think you would. Garfield thinks flippantly before charging at Malchior. Hold on tight. 

Garfield takes a quick, open clawed swing at Malchior, immediately forming three, long, oozing stripes in the dragon’s neck. 

Okay this guy clearly knows nothing about hand to hand.

Raven is rocked forward, her head smacks against Garfield’s.

What the-

Raven notes how the ground shifts like waves beneath them before she’s rocked backwards.

Fly off the ground, He’s trying to dislodge me.

But Garfield was already hovering above the shaking ground before Raven finished her sentence.

Clearly that man has never seen me with a few Jacks in me. If I can keep my balance then-

You’re a messy drunk; now pay attention!

Hey! Cyborg says I’m a great drinking buddy!

Cyborg? Also a messy drunk!

Hey, you’d be a messy drunk too if you-

Suddenly Garfield’s head swings around like a bobble head. He’s gurgling. Raven clenches her thighs over the ridge on his forehead and narrows her eyes towards Malchior who is a football field away. Malchior’s claws are clenched around an invisible object.

“Azarath Metrion Zinthos!” Raven calls out, wrapping Malchior’s arms in dark energy and locking them over his head. Garfield coughs, little sparks passing his lips.

Did he just? Choke me?

Will you pay attention now?!

How was I supposed to know he was going to choke me?! He was nowhere near me!

He can astrally project! 

He should see a therapist about that.

He should see a therapist about a lot of things. Astral projection is not one of them. Watch-

Garfield dodges Malchior’s frontal attack. 

-out…

Raven puts up a shield as Malchior shoots fire at her. Garfield shoots fire at Malchior’s open wound. The black dragon hisses and falls back.

 The man is terrible at hand to hand combat.

He’s...not.

Garfield grabs Malchior by the tail and tosses him, cutting a bunch of trees in half.

Are you really defending your psycho ex?

Raven purses her lips. Garfield. This is too easy. 

Raven looks around. Starfire is locked in a grip with Wrath. Nightwing and Cyborg are tag teaming Lust and Wrath. Terra is mostly just trying to block Gluttony’s attack; no one has taken the offensive against him. Aqualad is jumping between each group and filling in whatever gaps are left open.

She believed fully in her team’s potential to stop her brothers. But something wasn’t right. Garfield was able to toss Malchior like a rag doll and they’re the same weight.

He’s barely casting any spells.

You’re always saying that a good spell requires a lot of energy.

For me. Malchior has done this for centuries.

Malchior charges at Garfield. Garfield takes two quick steps backwards, kicking up chunks of Earth that Terra uses to block the two benches Gluttony hurls at the team. Garfield bites at the wounds in Malchior’s neck. The black dragon howls in pain, aimlessly spewing a stream of fire past his lips. Directly past the bulk of Garfield’s body.

Raven watches intently as the flames meet their mark several hundred feet away from Garfield. She almost brushes off Malchior’s poor marksmanship as a result of his incredible hubris. It’s a weak, last ditch effort to inflict pain from a losing opponent whose head is heavy with unwarranted pride. She’s about to move her eyes back to where Garfield’s teeth are sunk into their opponents neck when she notices something almost imperceptible in the flames. A shape. Two little deformed circles, almost parallel to each other. She squints her eyes. That’s odd.

And then it hits her.

Those are eye sockets.

Malchior had casted a spell.

They hadn’t emptied the park.

Everyone was camouflaged. 

Garfield! 

Garfield sinks his teeth deeper into Malchior’s neck. Malchior spews out another thick stream of fire. 

Garfield! The park isn’t empty.

Garfield spits Malchior’s neck out of his mouth, blood immediately begins oozing out of the black dragon’s wounds.

What?

Raven looks around. Trees were knocked over. Car windows were broken. Street lights were bent in half. Sidewalk had been ripped from the ground. Her eyes land on a playground three hundred feet away. Entire chunks of bright yellow and red steel were turned on their sides. She feels hot liquid rises in her esophagus, burning away at her body. Her skin suddenly feels too tight.

The park’s not empty. Malchior just made everyone invisible to us.

Garfield grabs Malchior by the neck and shoves his head into the ground.

“Uncast  the spell,” Raven threatens, using her powers to hover the sharp end of a street light over Malchior’s eye. Malchior looks towards the rod, chuckles and crumples it. Garfield shoves his head deeper into the ground. Malchior spits some blood into the ground. 

“You tethered me to that book. The walls were my only companions! We could have ruled the world!” Malchior screams, spitting blood in her face. She grabs him by the neck herself. 

“Uncast. The. Spell,” Raven says, trying to reign in her desire to tear the dragon apart limb by limb between each word. 

“No.”

Raven, you have to tell the rest of the team before they accidentally hurt anyone else.

He’ll transform you. 

Not if I detach his head from his body first.

Raven notes how Garfield tightens his palm around the semi-conscious dragon’s neck. 

Garfiel-

Get Aqualad. He’ll cover my ass.

Raven makes quick work of teleporting Aqualad over to the group.

“The park’s not empty. Malchior cloaked everyone in an invisibility spell.” Raven tells him before he can even steady his feet. “You need to stay with Garfield while I inform the rest of the team and figure out how to reverse the spell.”

Be careful Garfield.

She places a gentle hand on her friend’s forehead. 

I’ll do my best. 

[agentsix606]

Echoes - Chapter 1: Slade’s Return

Damian's arm shook as he tried to hold up his katana if only he had maneuvered his landing so he wouldn't dislocate his shoulder. Rookie mistake, had he still been with the League, he would've paid for that dearly.

He snatched his sword with his other arm, hoping that his broken wrist would handle the weight of the blade. It could not.

He felt utterly useless watching Raven try and spell Deathstroke away. His attack had been devastating on the Titans. To his right, Beast Boy, Blue Beetle, and Starfire attempted to fight a controlled Terra Markov. Apparently, Deathstroke had survived the demolition of Brother Blood's cave. Terra had not. He used a Lazarus pit on her and warped her mind to make the Titans seem like villains.

Nightwing was in worse shape than the Robin himself. He had protected Damian and subdued horrible injuries when Terra hurled a boulder at the teens. He didn't have time to focus on that though, he had to help Raven, who visibly struggled against the assassin. Tt, of course, Slade had read up even more on Raven's powers.

She had a stream of red dripping from her nose, an indication of exhaustion. She was bound to be low on stamina. Damian slammed his shoulder into the pillar beside him, relocating his shoulder. He was an Al Ghul, for fucks sakes, he could handle this fight with these injuries. He picked up his katana again, the pain shot straight to his shoulder, but he ignored it. His only focus had been Raven, who was nowhere to be seen. 'Wait- where did she go?' he asked himself silently.

She had been fighting Slade- where did Slade go?

His questions had been answered a milli-second later when Raven went flying into him. It was not a fun experience. She quickly pulled herself up as best as she could.

Slade laughed loudly, pointing his katana at the teens, "Teen Titans? More like Babies in costumes club!" he took a few steps forward, "Well, you might not be bringing me my pipe, but I got your old teammate for that, besides you two are pains in my ass." He brought the sword down on Damian's cheek; a small cut stung his face, "too bad you two never got together, you would've been cute, and it would make killing you a little more satisfying."

Raven hurriedly moved her hand towards his shoulder, healing the joint as best as she could.

"Who should I kill first?" he waved his sword between the two, "Al Ghul?" he pointed it at Robin, "Or witch?" he brought it to Raven's chin, lifting it. Her lip trembled, and hands shook. He laughed, "oh, look at you, standing there, shaking like a scared little girl!"

"I am afraid," she admitted, stepping forward and pushing the blade closer to her throat, "but I'm still standing here, and I will protect my family, no matter how afraid I am."

"Oooo, watch out guys, we have a badass over here!" Slade taunted, "You really think you can protect him? In two weeks, he'll turn his back on you, and you'll have saved him for nothing!"

"That's his decision, not mine. I choose to call him my family, and we protect our family! You can cut me down, but I'll come back stronger." She smirked, "and I will show no mercy, should you hurt my family ever again." She growled, her skin starting to turn red.

"I accept your challenge, demon." He placed his blade horizontally on her neck, threatening to slice.

She reached forward, grasping the sword, and crushing it with a quick "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

"Impressive, little birdy!" he reached for three throwing stars and rested them in between his fingers.

"Heads up!" he threw them at the young girl, hoping to distract her enough to attack Damian from behind her, only she put up a barrier surrounding her and Damian. "Not bad, Kid! Perhaps I should keep you alive." he walked around her shield, tilting his head to the side, "If only just to have some fun, you are a magnificent creature."

Raven, angered, expanded her forcefield, letting its edges lash against Deathstroke. Her eyes turned to fire, and another pair appeared above her eyebrows. "I will kill you, scum!" a demonic tone overpowered her strong voice. A stream of black magic flew towards the assassin, catching him off guard, cuts appearing all over her body.

Damian was proud of the work she had done.

The demoness sent a hand filled with dark magic at Slade, crushing him.

"Raven!" Damian yelled, "Stop! You're going to kill him!" although he wished Slade dead in the worst way possible, he didn't want that burden on Raven's shoulders.

"Stupid boy, my daughter may hold feelings for you, but should you try and stop me, I will kill you without a second thought." Trigon sneered, crushing Slade with his spell. Damian picked up his sword and moved to the side, hoping to find a way to will Raven back.

"Raven, you have to fight him!"

"Enough boy!" the demon spat, grasping Damian with his other hand, squeezing.

"Please, Raven, you can do this! Your family believes in you!" he wheezed, the hand crushing him.

"You cannot fight me, daughter! I will-" the demon stopped mid sentence before howling in pain. "-I will kill the boy if you do not stop, child!"

"I won't let you!" Raven's voice screamed, clutching her head and letting both assassins go. She fell to her knees, gasping for air as she fought her father for control. Damian, concerned, tried to get closer to her. However, Deathstroke had recovered quickly and ran towards the girl, katana in hand.

Grasping his sword with all of the strength he had left, Damian sprinted to Raven and blocked Deathstroke's attack with a swift upstroke.

Using his right leg, he kicked Deathstroke's hip, causing the assassin to stumble backwards slightly and drop his left arm. His right arm now holding the weight of the sword. Damian lifted his sword up, forcing Deathstroke's sword away from Raven, before turning around and slicing into his chest. Now in a crouching position, Damian slid on his left knee, using his right to trip Deathstroke after spinning around behind him. Now facing Raven, he dragged his sword towards his opponent and placed its blade against his throat.

"Tt, I guess you're the one who dies today." He swung his sword along his throat and watched as he bled out. Breathing out heavily, the boy ran towards Raven, who was staring at the body in shock. "Raven, are you alright?"

Breathing quickly, she looked up at him with wide eyes, "I'm so sorry," she whispered, "He hurt you." She reached out to touch his cheek.

"I'm alright Raven, just catch your breath." He placed his hand on her shoulder and sat beside her, exhaustion filling his body.

"Terra is down, Beast Boy and Blue Beetle are recovering, Deathstroke?" Starfire asked, flying over to the pair.

"Dead," Damian announced.

"Oh." She whispered in shock, "Dick?"

"Alive but injured," Raven whispered. Her hands were shaking violently, her voice wavered as she tried to heal Damian.

"Raven, you must conserve your energy! you are also hurt."

"I gave you these wounds. I should heal them," Raven muttered, a black mist circling Damian's body.

"No, you will rest, and my wounds will heal eventually." He threw her arm around his shoulder, helping her get up. "Do you need help to get to the Med Bay, or will be alright?"

"I'll be fine, Damian." Raven sighed, clutching her head and limping towards the hallway.

Sighing, Damian limped towards his brother, whom Starfire was crouched beside.

"What'd I miss?"

"Terra's back and Slade is dead. I killed him, Grayson."

The adult's eyes widened, "Dami, I thought we had this figured out we don't kill!"

"He deserved it! He would have stopped at nothing to kill Raven and me. He almost did." Damian winced, his wrist twisting uncomfortably, "I had no choice." The teen looked down at his feet, feeling slightly ashamed.

Dick softened his gaze, pinching his nose. He sighed, "we'll talk about this later, right now, we all need to rest and heal."

"Yes, everyone, let's head to the Med Bay! We need to make sure no one is too horribly injured then you're all off for the night!" Kori ordered. "Where's Raven?"

"Heading to the Med Bay," Damian answered.

"Great! Let us all head there!"

"Tt, I'm fine," Damian grumbled.

"Try that again, and I'll get Alfred to sedate you." Dick retorted, pointing his finger at Damian.

Growling under his breath, Damian walked with Dick, Kori, Jaime and Gar, who had been carrying an unconscious Terra towards the Med Bay.

[weebsinstash]

What anime have you watched recently?

Unfortunately I've been having a lot of trouble motivating myself to do things, so I haven't really been watching... much of anything at all :( well, the new Animaniacs is cute, I used to watch that with my sister on Saturday mornings, so it's nice to get that show back. On the mental health front,, thankfully I'm starting a new psychiatrist on Thursday and I hope to get back on medication so I can actually... feel joy again

It might not be an anime, but back in June I started playing Arknights, which is one of those anime-inspired gacha mobile games. It's a tower defense which actually gives it a surprising amount of replayability depending on what kind of games you like to play because the different types of combat styles gives you a lot of "mix and match" potential, which I like a lot. I was playing Food Fantasy for like 2 years and like, there are definitely games where you straight up run out of shit to do after a while

Arknights has a lot of neat character designs, powers (called Arts), and most characters are based off of a specific animal. When you "Promote" a character for the second time, you unlock special art that, is constantly just gorgeous. I literally want to level up all my characters just for the cool art. Here's my Blaze who I just promoted recently, and some other examples

The characters themselves are often really interesting and cool as well! It's packed with badass female characters in STEM and robotics and all sort of hobbies like gardening and astronomy, and the overall plot of the game is pretty compelling too. In the world of Terra, there's a metal called Originium that's toxic to organic life capable of giving something the Infection, a transmittable and fatal disease where Originium crystals will eventually start forming in a person's body, in their blood, on their skin, until they die. This has led to the Infected being massively discriminated against out of fear to the point where some governments and communities carry out mass-genocides to dispose of the Infected communities before the disease can spread. There's also a war between Ursus (very explicitly supposed to be Russia) a massively shitty country full of slavery and shit, and Kazdel, a country also ravaged by war and poverty and is the home to the Sarkaz race who face racial discrimination, often called things like "devils". This game has in fact made me cry with its writing. I'm not going to be over Chapter 6 for a good while.

I'm not crying, you're fucking crying

It also has great music! They have tracks with some big names in them, like Christina Vee and Jeff/Casey Lee Williams. My favorite track so far is either the main theme for Twilight of Wolumonde or Burn Me To The Ground, though if you've seen any of the YouTube advertisements then you've probably heard the "main theme" of the game, Speed of Light

Anyways, if you're interested in playing and seeing for yourself, the 1-year anniversary event began today, and it's giving tons of goodies to players new and old! It's definitely a great time to pick up the game, especially since, just today, they rolled out a bunch of brand new features! So yeah, if you need something new to kill time on, maybe it's worth checking out uwu

[bigskydreaming]

It really, really, really can not be stressed enough, what a disservice fandom has done to the complexity of Dick and Slade’s canon comic book relationship, by simply reducing it to your fairly standard hero/villain trope. As well as making it just a master/apprentice dynamic like in Teen Titans. Their comic book dynamic is just not remotely interchangeable with that one. At all.

Among other things in the comics, in all of their encounters, Slade’s very presence is a constant living, breathing reminder of three of the outright worst moments in Dick’s life, and a walking embodiment of some of his biggest issues, all rolled up in one package.

1) Slade’s entrance to Dick’s life is the accompaniment to one of the greatest betrayals Dick has ever experienced. In order to get revenge for the death of his son, Grant, that he wrongly blamed the Titans for, Slade enlisted Tara Markov as his accomplice BEFORE any of the Titans ever met her. When her ultimate allegiances were revealed in the Judas Contract, and she singlehandedly took down and captured practically every Titan except for Dick, who escaped Slade when the latter saved him for himself....Dick, along with the other Titans, had to reconcile the fact that this woman they’d called their teammate, their friend, that they’d shared so much with, told so much to...had never been one of them. 

Not really. She’d been plotting their betrayal and deaths from the literal first moment they ever met her. With Dick having to shoulder the additional burden that like...he was the team leader. He was the one who ultimately was responsible for approving her addition to the team, who made the decision, who vouched for her and said okay. I am giving you my trust, and by extension, telling everyone of my teammates who puts their trust in me to do right by them, that it is safe for them to trust you as well. Whether or not Dick needed to heft that much responsibility for Terra turning out to be a traitor is really not the point in this specific instance. All that matters is that he did.

Now, as an example....how many fics that touch on Slade and Dick’s relationship in comic book settings in any capacity....how many of them offhandedly reference the fact that Slade is unique among many villains or enemies of the Justice League, Titans and Batfamily, in that he knows Dick’s secret identity...and by extension, has long since figured out those of every other member of the Batfamily?

Now with that in mind.....how many of those fics ever do anything with the fact that....Slade only HAS this knowledge in the first place....because TERRA told him Dick’s secret identity way back when....after Dick trusted HER, his teammate and Slade’s secret plant from day one....with his identity and by extension, Bruce’s as well, and Jason’s, and every other member of their family who was later added in the future?

Like, it isn’t just something where Slade figured it out on his own, or Dick told him....this highly crucial, critical and rare information that Slade has when few others have it, even other heroes....Dick never voluntarily gave to him. Its stolen goods, effectively, with Slade only having gotten it by virtue of Dick’s mislaid trust in someone else entirely.

My point being.....we talk a lot in fandom about how Dick is so trusting, but the reality is....even while Dick does make a point to give people the benefit of the doubt and extend his trust at times to people with not so great reputations....this is a willful, deliberate choice on his part, a conscious effort, and not evidence of Dick having an easy time trusting people or being naive.

The reality is, Dick has massive trust issues, born in large part of the fact that his team once all almost died because he put his trust in the wrong person.....and SLADE IS QUITE LITERALLY THE FACE AT THE ROOT OF MOST OF DICK’S CANON TRUST ISSUES.

(It also needs to be acknowledged that this was while the team was very much the TEEN Titans, and Slade’s earliest appearances absolutely made not at all veiled inferences that Slade seduced Terra and used a sexual and/or romantic relationship to manipulate her and get her allegiance in the first place. When she was very much a teen herself. She was a victim as well, and Slade predatory in his interactions with her. It was statutory rape every bit as much as Liu with Dick. Like.....it is what it is guys, and you might not want to go with that take for him yourself, but no different from when people choose to focus on instances of Bruce’s abuse, you can’t get upset at people who DO want to acknowledge this aspect of things and be like....fuck any kind of Slade redemption or Slade positivity.)

2) Slade also happens to represent one of the single worst moments of Dick’s life, and what he’s often regarded as one of his greatest personal failures.....and that’s Joey’s death. Joey was possessed by the evil spirits left over from Raven’s home dimension after the team finally banished Trigon for good, with his own possession powers having made him particularly vulnerable to them possessing him en masse, and they over time took more and more control of him until he was effectively just a helpless passenger in his own body for a period of months, maybe even longer than a year. 

While these spirits went about using his body to infiltrate and then hijack control of The Wildebeest Society, a group made up of former Titans foes for the express purpose of defeating the Titans.....and then as leader of the Wildebeest Society....having them systematically hunt down every Titan to ever exist, past or present, murdering many of them and capturing most of their superpowered members for the intended use of their bodies as hosts for the spirits sharing Joey’s body.

Now, not only is this a pretty direct parallel to Dick’s own experience being a brainwashed mole of the Church of Blood for over a year, secretly working to undermine his own teammates without any conscious control or even awareness of his own actions there, and with none of his teammates any the wiser, just as Dick himself hadn’t suspected anything wrong with Joey leading up to this reveal....

But after the Wildebeest Society had successfully either captured or killed every other Titan, Dick infiltrated their headquarters in disguise, in an attempt to free his teammates....only to be be caught and imprisoned by ‘Joey.’ With the latter then revealing the truth of why he was acting like this....and then continuing to keep Dick as his prisoner, chained up right by his side and tortured and helpless for over a week, as he and his minions continued with the rest of their work in preparing the carefully drugged/comatose Titans to be the spirits’ new hosts.

Let me reiterate....for over a week, Dick was the prisoner of evil spirits parading around in the body of one of his closest friends - the literal first person Dick chose to place his trust in again after it was first broken by Terra’s betrayal in the first place - while these spirits, did all of this in front of him with Joey’s face and body....gloating, taunting him, trying in every way imaginable to break him and his spirit. The whole time callously speaking of their intentions for the rest of Dick’s closest friends and their bodies, as they went about the final steps of their plan to basically use Dick and his team as the very tools they used to destroy everything they’d ever worked to protect and save.

Dick was only able to stop this and wake up the rest of his team...with Slade’s help, when the latter came in search of Joey himself. And at the end of it all, Joey was able to retake control of himself long enough to beg his father to kill him, before the spirits were able to overpower him again and use him to fulfill the rest of their plans.

Right in front of Dick.

Dick of course had spent the entire time he was a prisoner, trying his best to get through to Joey, believing with all his heart that Joey was in there still and could be saved, and of course, blaming himself for not seeing that something was wrong with Joey and stopping all of this sooner.

And then and there, Dick saw Joey resurface just as Slade did.....but while Dick saw this as proof that Joey was still there, could still be saved, they shouldn’t give up on him....Slade believed that doing the right thing then and there meant honoring Joey’s wishes for one of the first times ever in his life....even though that ultimately meant....also running Joey through with his sword. Again.....with Dick right there, still powerless to do anything to get up and help Joey, stop Slade, or propose another plan of action. He watched one of his best and dearest friends killed by his own father, because...in Dick’s own eyes....he’d failed to come up with an alternative in all the time he was prisoner....and failed to stop things from getting to that point in all the time before that, while Joey was possessed.

My point being....in the comic books, whether Dick and Slade are currently on good terms, bad terms, or neutral terms....they always exist for each other as a constant reminder of the death of one of the most important people in their lives. With that death being something they each blame themselves for and consider one of their greatest failures...as well as that death also being something they each at times have blamed each other for, for failing to come up with a way to save Joey, or protect him before he got to that point.

3) And finally, the third item of importance that I’m gonna gloss over for now as its more directly relevant to a post I wanna make about this later.....Slade’s direct involvement in the destruction of Bludhaven literally can’t be stressed enough. Whether you deem it in character or think he was written largely out of character at the time, with a case to be made for either stance, I think, the point remains that if you’re referencing Bludhaven having been destroyed at all, to any degree....Slade is once again at the heart of that matter, integral to every step of how that ultimately played out....with his position as the Society’s point man on that operation and his own personal grudge with Dick over various things, as well as Dick’s training of his daughter Rose - at Slade’s own insistence, but in ways Slade wasn’t pleased with, since Dick helped cultivate Rose’s actual heroic inclinations and instincts, which Slade did NOT sign off on - like, these things were directly step by step the path towards the Society ultimately following through and dropping Chemo on Bludhaven. With like, that being something that Slade absolutely could have stopped, thanks to his position, and even promised Dick as part of the agreement they made, that he WOULD keep from happening....only to renege on his word there.

In conclusion, Dick and Slade’s relationship and dynamic is SO SO SO SO SO MUCH MORE complex and varied than its basically ever made out to be in fanfics, and stems in large part from this one specific little tidbit that hardly ever seems to make it into fics’ final cuts.....

Slade respects Dick. Even when he doesn’t like him.

And I know, I know that fics pay a lot of lip service to this idea, but for the most part, its not substantiated. Or its clarified as though Slade respects Dick’s potential, or what he could be with Slade’s help or instruction....but that’s literally not the point of their canon.

The point is despite Dick being decades younger, Slade respects Dick as an opponent. As someone who has beaten him, bested him, in various ways and at various points. As well as respecting Dick as being a person who Slade’s son respected, and trusted, and valued a great deal. With a lot of Slade’s own memories of his son transferred onto Dick at times as a proxy, with Dick essentially acting as a stand-in for the son that Slade regrets never taking the time to get to know better...and here’s Dick, who knew and understood Joey better than just about anyone, certainly better than Slade. Which I personally believe Slade resents and even hates Dick for, for being someone that Joey both trusted and loved when Slade knows that likely wasn’t true of Joey’s view of him.....but I believe its also why Slade has never been able to bring himself to actually try and kill Dick and be rid of his threat to his plans for good....because doing so would be like killing the last real link Slade sees to the son he himself killed by his own hand.

Dick Grayson, for Slade....also happens to be the man who had every reason to not want anything to do with anyone associated with Slade, after Terra broke his trust, because of Slade’s own machinations.....while at the same time...Dick Grayson and his willingness to still extend that trust to Slade’s own son not long after that....are the very reasons that Joey ever had the opportunity to be the hero that Joey had always wanted to be....and that people ultimately remembered him as. There’s a reason Slade wanted Dick to be the one to train his daughter, after all - with the reason he was pissed at Dick for it ultimately being that Dick ended up being better at it than Slade had hoped, and Rose ultimately siding with Dick instead of Slade herself.

And even more importantly, IMO, Slade - even at times when he resents Dick for it at the exact same time - respects Dick for the choices Dick makes. For the precise fact that they aren’t the choices that Slade himself would make, that they’re choices Slade often thinks he couldn’t make.

He doesn’t disdain Dick for his choices or priorities or look down on him for them. Dismiss him because of them. They’re the heart and soul of WHY Slade respects Dick....and the fact that even with those extremely different priorities that Slade often doesn’t agree with...Dick STILL manages to come out the winner in a lot of encounters.

So this Slade Wilson who grudgingly admits that Dick Grayson has potential, but that its stunted and wasted without his own training, and because of the ‘weak, ill-advised’ choices that Dick makes and the things Dick prioritizes.....

Like, that has as little to do with actual canon pre-Flashpoint Slade, as the actual canon pre-Flashpoint Dick has to do with the depiction of him in many of these fics. Where Dick feels hopelessly outmatched and inadequate next to Slade or when facing him, like, he desperately starts praying the second Slade enters the fight cuz that’s the only way he’ll survive....or else he feels naive and dumb, or thinks how foolish he must look to Slade, or how raw or untrained or novice.....not to mention the times he’s focused on viewing Slade as a reflection of Bruce in various ways, or his dynamic with Slade as having anything to do with his dynamic with Bruce.

Again...umm, what? No. That’s not how Dick has ever been shown viewing their relationship either. The times he’s in conflict with Slade, he’s not questioning himself or second-guessing his abilities or praying he survives - he’s usually just PISSED, because of whatever thing has brought him into conflict with Slade this time. And not in that fanfic way where he’s unreasonable or irrational because of his anger and it clouds his judgment...in the way where he uses his anger to hone and focus his skills and just keep him going no matter how many hits he takes. Slade is an opponent whose skills Dick absolutely knows better than anyone else, and by extension respects those skills absolutely - but he is at the same time an opponent Dick has faced many times before, AND WALKED AWAY FROM EVERY TIME. 

No, Dick doesn’t take his victory or even his survival against Slade for granted, but he’s not remotely fear-stricken or rendered inadequate by the possibility of failure....he knows that there are no guarantees of success, but by the same token, he’s equally aware that Slade’s reputation is no guarantee of his own failure....with his own track record with the man being proof of that.

And at the same time....when they’re not directly in conflict....Dick does not feel invalidated or naive or dumb when around Slade, because of their age difference. He isn’t suddenly rendered like he feels like he’s a little kid sitting with a grown up. He’s usually just tired. He has as little illusions about Slade as Slade has about him. Dick KNOWS better than ANYONE, just how much Slade doubts and second-guesses his OWN choices, regrets his OWN priorities and decisions at times. So by extension...Dick doesn’t take their encounters OR Slade’s opinion as reason to feel inadequate or second-guess himself? He knows damn well that Slade has a higher opinion of choices that Dick himself even regrets making, than Slade does some of his own decisions. 

There’s not this.....gap between them experience wise, not in the sense that Dick can remotely compare to Slade’s much vaster library of life experiences, but rather in the sense that like.....Dick doesn’t care, you know? That’s not the point. Dick’s never comparing himself or his decisions to Slade’s with a measuring stick any time they encounter each other, because each encounter they have is so vastly more weighted by what they both represent to each other, their shared tragedies and personal failures and regrets, and their mutual awareness of these things and what they embody for each other. Dick - just like Slade himself is - is usually too preoccupied being focused on every thing that being around the other brings up for him....to have any mental energy left over for all this other stuff.

Comic book Dick and Slade, for each other, just carry too much knowledge of the life experiences they both have in common, because of their past interactions and shared connections.

Anyway, I will do another post soon about the comic book Renegade arc in particular, because its SO much more interesting than just the ‘Dick was Slade’s student or apprentice’ facsimile that I think people assume it to be. Like, Dick didn’t go to him as a supplicant, and Slade didn’t for a second think he was actually turning traitor. Slade asked him to train Rose in exchange for Slade’s help with his own plans, in part because Slade RESPECTS Dick’s skills as a trainer of heroes, not seeks him as a student for himself....but ALSO as a kind of manipulation - personally, I think he was hoping to use Dick’s inevitable concern and compassion for Rose as a buffer to keep Dick from betraying Slade or tripping him up when he tried.....and of course Dick actually ended up getting ROSE to turn on Slade instead? 

But at the same time, its not one sided at all, because there was a particularly clever bit about how Dick faced off against Superman as Renegade, and tried to use his heartbeat to send Clark the message that he wasn’t actually betraying the heroes and not to listen to the words he was saying, but the fact that his heartbeat showed that he was lying....except Slade had ANTICIPATED this, and had rigged the glove of Dick’s Renegade costume ahead of time to be like, wirelessly linked to a remote he had as he watched Dick and Clark’s interactions through the video feed on Dick’s mask.....and Slade used this remote to send wireless signals through Dick’s glove that matched the sound of Dick’s heartbeat and in essence let Slade alter the rhythm of what Clark thought was Dick’s heartbeat....but was actually just Slade literally clicking buttons. 

So Dick was getting more and more confused about why even though he was saying all this stuff about being too jaded by the League’s failures and done with heroism, like, why was Clark actually BELIEVING him instead of realizing he was clearly lying from the sound of his heart....and Clark was actively getting more and more upset as he talked and actually trying to FIGHT him and Dick eventually had to flee with Clark actually like.....furious with him, and Dick had no idea why. With this, I think, being one of the things Dick actually full on HATES Slade for the most (and I think what directly motivated Dick getting Rose to turn on her father) - like, Clark has been Dick’s number one support and fan from day one, even when Bruce wasn’t at times. He’s the one person who has pretty much ALWAYS believed in Dick no matter what. 

And Slade managed to take that away. To get Clark to literally look at Dick as the enemy. To not believe him, believe in him. Like. That’s something I don’t think Dick has ever forgiven Slade for or ever will.

So yeah. There’s so much more to Dick and Slade’s dynamic than fics represent, and I wish people delved more into this other stuff, because its so much more INTERESTING in my opinion than just like, your usual ‘older supervillain toys with younger outmatched superhero’ or master and apprentice stuff, etc.

[ravenaveira]

Just wanna clarify a few things after my long review/rant at the end for KH3 Re:Mind

My comments about the Sokai stuff I stand by, but I wanna be clear because I see Sokai shippers claiming antis complained about the lack of Sokai for it to be a believable relationship and now that Sokai has more moments we’re complaining about them shoving Sokai down our throats.

I cant speak for all antis on this, so I’ll be strictly speaking for myself on this issue and anyone else who feels similar to me. Warning it gets long again so be ready.

Yes Im one of those antis who complained about the lack of Sokai which made it underdeveloped and unbelievable, and yes I am also complaining about them now shoving Sokai down our throats.

Why? because Kingdom hearts is not a romance, and throughout every single game so far romance has taken a severe back seat and handled very subtely. For example Sora’s drawing in the cave of him giving Kairi the Paopu fruit, Riku teasing him about wanting to give one to Kairi, Sora saying hes always with her and promising to come back for her, Roxas calling Kairi ‘the girl he likes’ etc

All these moments were very short, subtle, and to the point. It was not a primary focus nor was it blatantly shoved in your face like

I mean in almost EVERY shot they were together Sora was holding her hand, which isnt something he usually does? keep in mind Sora and Kairi’s feelings have been known to eachother since KH2 and Sora still didnt behave the way he is now. He was always very awkward and uncomfortable/shy when it came to romance.

In KH2 Sora didnt hug Kairi, nor did he hold her hand, it was KAIRI who initiated the hug out of relief and happiness to see Sora again and that hes ok. Sora did not show the same sentiment and treated her like he always has, just casually walking up to her and just nonchalantly saying ‘You are different Kairi, but Im just glad your here’ as if she wasnt kidnapped and being held hostage this entire time. He should have showed the same concern for her as he did for Riku and Kairi for him but he did not, he just said that and then turned away and apologized.

But in KH3 Sora/Nomura pull a complete 180, Sora hugs Kairi to shield her from Terranort with his body instead of pulling out his keyblade and blocking his attack. Him hugging Kairi there was not only stupid, but it doesnt even defend her, Terranort will just kill Kairi AND him now. That was just a forced out of place Sokai moment for the sake of shoving a Sokai moment that was completely unnessecary and could of easily had the same impact by having Sora do the common sense thing and BLOCK with his keyblade like he did for Riku when they were in THE EXACT SAME SITUATION.

See the difference? good, then I need say no more.

This is only one of many situations where they would shoehorn in a Sokai moment that was completely out of place, didnt make any sense, or just forced in trying way too hard to convince you how much Sora cares for Kairi and how much they love and want to be together forever etc etc

Another example being when everybody ‘dies’ in the keyblade graveyard being swept away by heartless. Sora only loses his mind and breaks down emotionally after Kairi is the last one swept away, he then says the most inconsiderate line he could have ever said.

He says this while RIKU IS RIGHT THERE BESIDE HIM, even if you were arguing he was just speaking figuratively thats still no excuse, he was NOT alone but at that moment he just completely disregarded Riku as if his presence there was the same as being alone.

Not only that but seconds later he does one of the most out of character things for him.

Sora just WATCHES Riku risk his life holding back the heartless to protect him and Sora just WATCHES him fighting off this huge horde of heartless BY HIMSELF and not ONCE does Sora make ANY attempt to get up and help Riku despite knowing his life is at risk trying to hold them back alone.

Even if you wanna argue Sora was in shock, when has that ever stopped him before!? when have you EVER known Sora to just sit back and watch his friends put their lives in danger and NOT help them?

What makes this worse is thats not even the first time he does it, he sits back and watches AGAIN as Axel gets bodied right infront of him just to have him exhausted next to Kairi because you know, Sora’s never fought strong opponents and gotten right back up to protect his friends before.

Remember Terranort? Sora was overpowered by him and still made the effort to run over and hug Kairi to shield her from his attack, but Axel and Riku? nah just gonna chill and watch. This is BEYOND out of character for Sora.

When Axel told Sora to hurry and save Kairi, who was being held hostage by the organization and was in danger, Sora refused to leave him and stayed behind to help him fight. Sora chose helping Axel over Kairi, he put saving his enemy before his own friend/love interest.

When Neku betrayed him, Sora still helped and protected him when he was in danger

When Riku stole his keyblade and Donald and Goofy followed him and left Sora behind, yes Sora was discouraged but when he saw Beasts determination to save Belle no matter what, it encouraged Sora to do the same for the people he cared about

I could go on but you get my point, Sora saw Riku risking his life, literally dying and he did NOTHING, try to justify that all you want but that was incredibly out of character and was obviously put there to show how losing Kairi broke him.

I know your probably gonna argue it wasnt just Kairi it was everybody, and to that I say this, if it wasnt just about Kairi why didnt Sora snap when Ven and Axel got bodied? he froze for a few seconds but then snapped out of it thanks to Riku. After that everybody gets swept away, but the game made sure to put EXTRA emphasis, slow motion and all, to Kairi and Sora reaching out to eachother and then Kairi being swept away by the tide.

THATS when he snaps, if it truly werent just about Kairi they wouldnt have made sure to put emphasis on her being swept away, EVERYONE would have gotten the same treatment if it were truly their deaths also that made Sora fall apart. Im not saying he wasnt upset or heartbroken over them, Im pointing out how they made sure to single out Kairi as the most DEVASTATING loss out of all of them.

Yet again, he has Riku one of his closest bonds if not the closest right beside him yet he doesnt even acknowledge him? he says hes alone even though Rikus right there? you cannot justify that as anything other than downplaying Riku to boost Kairi up.

You do not see the other trios treated this way, every trio has equal focus for ALL of them and even the romantic hints for some of them [Roxas/Xion, Terra/Aqua, technically Namine/Repliku] have all been treated equally and did not feel forced or out of place but very natural and they still made sure to focus on the friendship bond between them overall.

Axel doesnt get played down in importance to Roxas just to boost Xion up, their friendship and bond with eachother are equally important to one another despite whatever ‘romance’ there might be. Same applies to Terra and Aqua, Ven is not played down in importance to them. As for Namine and Repliku they arent a trio but their romance was still handled well and it didnt overshadow their platonic bond or attempt to play down the real Riku or vice versa to boost the other, Namine was equally important to both of them.

So balancing romance and friendship CAN be done in their trio, but for some reason Nomura insists on pitting one against the other and playing down one over the other, in Sokai’s case thats Riku, which is an insult to his and Sora’s bond. The same way Sokai shippers felt the over-focus on Sorikus bond was a disservice to Sora and Kairi’s bond, its the same issue.

But lets get back to Re:mind because besides a few bad moments, overall KH3 was atleast passable with the Sokai nonsense. Then comes Re:Mind and oh boy...the damage control was strong in this one.

Again as I said earlier the Sokai moments in this game were very forced and out of place and in many ways out of character for Sora.

For starters the excessive hand holding, why? to convince us their a thing? but Sora suggests otherwise

Even after all the excessive hand holding, the hugs, the forced moments etc, in the end Sora still calls Kairi a friend. After aaaaall the forced Sokai bs they shoved down our throats Sora still friendzones her, which is it Nomura? you either want them together or you dont, stop playing games and pick a side already.

Dont get me wrong Im glad he hasnt made it official yet but after all this its like enough is enough, either follow through or cut this shit out and go back to being subtle like before.

Another huge insult was Sora constantly saying how his journey started with Kairi, since when? I remember Sora losing Kairi AND Riku that day not just her. I recall Sora not going back to Destiny Islands with Kairi BECAUSE he wanted to continue his journey to find Riku, but apparently in Re:mind it was just all about Kairi, nothing about his journey involved Riku no it was only Kairi that was his main motivation, gtf outta here man.

You can say something over and over but that doesnt make it true, Sora’s journey started with BOTH of them, lets stop playing down Riku’s importance to once again boost Kairi up.

That hug when Sora finally reunited with Kairi after restoring her was so obviously trying to make up for all the years of people complaining about Sora’s lack of reaction to Kairi in KH2 in comparison to Riku, so having him hold her for several seconds floating in the sky should rectify that right? you believe he cares about her now right? fuck off man. If your gonna do damage control than atleast dont make it so obvious that thats what your doing because then it comes off disingenuous, forced, and fake.

But my biggest issue is the ending where they really shoehorned Sokai where it didnt belong, literally stalking everyone else with the exception of returning Namines heart and Sora helping to reunite Chirithy with Ventus. But in Twilight town, why were Sora and Kairi there? they werent with Roxas but just sitting above them

Why were they at Mickeys castle? again their just in the background sight seeing.

These scenes were completely unnessecary and completely out of place and made the ending WORSE rather than better. Why? because these are Sora’s final hours ALIVE whether you argue only for a day or a couple days, in all of these ending scenes only one thing matters to Sora and thats Kairi.

Before we assumed everything that was shown all happened the same exact day and we didnt see Sora with any of them. But now we have confirmation Sora WAS there yet he only spent his last remaining time with Kairi in the background while quietly stalking everyone else? even if he didnt spend time with anyone else, he should have spent his last remaining time with Kairi AND Riku, after all hes his best friend and would like to spend what little time he may have with Sora too but we dont see any of that. Hell this contradicts Soras own danm words to Chirithy prior to this.

Instead of just shoehorning a bunch of Sokai in the background why not show the three of them FINALLY all together again like the old days? this is wtf Im talking about. We saw ALL the other trios together but the Destiny trio? hell naw fuck Riku lets have Sora spend all his remaining time with Kairi, thats the only one who REALLY matters here. After being separated from eachother constantly, now they finally have the chance to be together again and spend time together as friends and they DONT.

Instead Sora decides to take Kairi around the worlds hes visited, something he said he wanted to do with Riku as well, and just spend all his remaining time with her, even though in the base game before the final battle Sora was concerned why Riku was all alone and not spending time with them together. But here? nah fuck Riku. I remembered how important it is to share moments with friends only applied to Kairi.

So personally idc that theres more Sokai moments, my problem is the execution. It doesnt feel genuine, it feels forced and awkward and just doing damage control to pander to the rabid fanbase thats been screaming for this type of content for years, well congrats, you got it.

My problem is Kingdom Hearts was never about romance, it was always subtle and not shoved in your face, it felt natural and not forced and like there was atleast SOME heart behind it, but this? just felt hollow and forced.

Just stop, Im glad in the end Kairi just sleeps for a whole year and probably still will be sleeping when the next game comes out and the focus will shift to Riku and his search for Sora along with the other keyblade wielders doing their part as well.

So Im thankful it seems like we’re done with this crap and getting back to what ACTUALLY matters and what people really wanna see from this series.

Notice how nothing in either of my posts had to do with Soriku as a couple but about their bond as friends, enough said.

So dont try to twist this into just being about pairings because its not, its about what this series has always been about being forgotten for the sake of a fucking trash ship that nobody cares about besides rabid shippers and Sora’s bonds with his other friends being completely thrown out the fucking window to shorehorn in a bunch of unnessecary Sokai moments as a desperate attempt to convince people that these two love eachother which at this point if you have to try so hard to CONVINCE people of your pairing its obvious your doing a very shitty job at it.

Im done, this is my last long post about this for a while but I really needed to get that all out there since nobody else seems to be calling it out for what it is. My anger and frustration is still very fresh and it shows so I really need to stop talking about it because at this point? Re:Mind just ReMinded me why the Destiny trio is the worst out of them all, it is the most unbalanced and quite frankly feels more like Riku is a third wheel at this point and not even a part of the trio anymore. Before Kairi, it was always Sora and RIku yet hes the one whos being pushed aside and forgotten about in all this. That pisses me off.

So Im done with this topic, I need to cool off for the next couple of years till the next game comes out where hopefully Kairi stays asleep the entire time and NOT ruin another game.

[khtrinityftw]

Part 8: The Impotence of Xehanort

Ironically, perhaps the worst part of the whole Xehanort Saga turned out to be Xehanort himself. He was way too overutilized by Nomura, and the character was completely destroyed as a result.

Xehanort was introduced in Kingdom Hearts as Ansem, the scientist king of Radiant Garden, whose research into the darkness of peoples' hearts corrupted him and ultimately turned him into the Heartless known as Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, and a Nobody known as Xemnas, the Superior of the In-Between. But in Kingdom Hearts II, it was retconned that he wasn't Ansem at all, but Xehanort, Ansem's top apprentice who stole his identity, with the real Ansem the Wise resurfacing under the name of DiZ.

This was a typical Nomura twist that was done solely to surprise people, and while some give it flak to this very day, I actually think it works really well.  Mainly because it doesn't actually change that much about the character: he's still a scientist who lived in Radiant Garden castle and undertook research into darkness that corrupted him and turned him into a Heartless and a Nobody, he still wrote those reports we read in the original game and he still did all of those things we heard and saw him do. Really, the only differences the retcon brought are that his name isn't Ansem and that he's not a king.  And those changes are a small price to pay for a much deeper insight into him than the original game ever provided, and a fascinating new character in Ansem the Wise, voiced by Sir Christopher fucking Lee himself.  Circling back to Darth Vader, imagine if it was never retconned that he was Luke's father and they just stuck with the story that he killed Luke's father? We'd miss out on one of cinema's most iconic twists and all the rich story potential for the character that twist provided.

Nomura, however, completely failed to take advantage of the rich story potential offered by the character of Xehanort that had been created. After deciding that the Xehanort we knew was a freakish amnesiac hybrid of the Keyblade warriors Terra and Master Xehanort, upon which said character was officially redubbed Terra-Xehanort, Nomura decided to exclusively focus on Master Xehanort as a character and as the series' Big Bad.

But there isn't anything interesting about Master Xehanort. He was just a rip-off of Star Wars' Palpatine who was given Riku's original backstory and motivations and whose plan didn't even make a whole lot of sense. Master Xehanort is only interesting in the context of helping to create Terra-Xehanort, and yet Nomura just kept adding and adding onto him, with each addition only making the character worse and insulting the legacy of the one he had before.

He had Master Xehanort resurrected after the defeat of Ansem and Xemnas...somehow, even though Ansem and Xemnas were Terra-Xehanort's Heartless and Nobody, not his. And he revealed that he masterminded a convoluted plan where Terra-Xehanort turned into Ansem so that he could follow the ludicrous rules of time travel and go to the past to recruit Master Xehanort's teenage self to the cause of evil. When Ansem got back to the present, he was to capture the Seven Princesses of Heart while Xemnas completed his Kingdom Hearts in order to put Xehanort's heart inside the rest of Organization XIII, because it's now revealed that when 7 hearts of light and 13 hearts of darkness clash, the X-Blade is "properly" forged.  And even though Ansem and Xemnas were defeated, Young Xehanort used time travel to recruit back-ups for the 13 hearts of darkness anyway, including Ansem and Xemnas themselves, so the heroes are boxed into a corner and everything went according to Xehanort's plan.

The most apparent problem with this story, beyond what an absolute clusterfuck it is, is that Ansem and Xemnas' plans were not written as part of Master Xehanort's plan back in the KH Trinity, and this attempt at rewriting them as such rings false as a result. If Terra-Xehanort became Ansem in order to travel back in time, why write otherwise in his reports? If Ansem just needed to capture the Princesses, why did he leave them behind once they'd unlocked the way to the Heart of All Worlds? Why would he even want to absorb the Heart of All Worlds to begin with? And why did Xemnas carry on with his plan to complete and absorb the Heart of All Men even after the death of both Ansem and many of what were supposed to be the 13 vessels for Xehanort's heart? It makes no fucking sense, because Ansem and Xemnas' plans and motivations were written as their own, not Master Xehanort's.

The next problem is that if you do decide to swallow this bullshit, then what was even the point of what was accomplished in the KH Trinity, or any previous game like BBS for that matter? Everything went according to Master Xehanort's plan; his defeat in BBS, Ansem's in KH and Xemnas' in KH2 only ensured this outcome, everything that the heroes - and by extension, you as a player - did only helped him. Master Xehanort has become one of the biggest villainous Mary Sues in history: there's nothing that can realistically stop him because he's so omnipotent in his planning and is increasingly overpowered; Kingdom Hearts III even claims that he is now "the most powerful Keyblade Master of all", which makes one question why exactly he ever needed to take over Terra's body to begin with beyond the time travel-related excuse of "it's been etched" (the fuck does that even mean!?) It all seems like a cheap tactic to make KH3 the end-all, be-all, and all that does is increase disappointment when it inevitably can't meet those lofty expectations.

But the worst problem here is that for all of the convoluted detail given to his planning, we still know next to nothing about who Xehanort IS as a character. It's impossible when every game keeps adding new and usually contradictory details to his backstory, personality and motivations. Ansem and Xemnas, the two halves of Terra-Xehanort in the KH Trinity, were really pretty vague in the specifics of how their plans operated, but that didn't matter because we understood who they were and where they were coming from as characters. Ansem was an arrogant scientist who justified his god complex with the results of his research that he believed proved him to be in the right for what he aimed to accomplish. Xemnas was an empty husk of a man who justified his god complex as a means to justify his miserable non-existence. And both of them shared the root cause of Terra-Xehanort's own personal insecurity, the fear that unless he does what he does then he'll be just a tiny speck in a vast universe who will never escape from the shadow of his esteemed mentor whose name he stole for himself.

Who exactly is the Xehanort that we have now? Does he want an equal balance of light and dark in the world? Does he want darkness to reign forever? Does he not care what the outcome of the world is and just wants scientific answers? Does he want to rule the world with all of its darkness so that all of its light is protected from the darkness of "the weak"? Does he even want what he thinks he wants or is Luxu and/or the Master of Masters controlling him? Is he fucking possessed? Is he just fucking insane!? The games have presented a case for any one of these options to be true, but it's impossible to peg down which one is. We also don’t know if he’s meant to be a misguided Anti-Villain or a Complete Monster, or what his backstory is when the details on that keep on changing with each game. Nomura clearly has not thought this character through at all.

And that's especially ironic because Nomura has always held a disturbing identification with Xehanort. Even back in the original game, despite its actual writers clearly portraying Ansem as a fool blinded by his own hubris, Nomura thought he was really profound and accurate. It was the same with Xemnas, despite Kazushige Nojima having him outright called a fool within the script. And with Master Xehanort, Nomura took his favoritism to the next level, turning the entire Kingdom Hearts series up to Kingdom Hearts III into a saga based around him. He may have begun by claiming the Dark Seeker Saga was about Sora saving everyone from Xehanort, but he quickly reversed this and made it about Xehanort and his grand plan...all while never coherently defining who the hell Xehanort even is. 

I guess that's the ultimate thing Nomura has in common with him: they're both confusing bastards who make everyone around them miserable and ruin perfectly good stories.

[the-empress-of-nothing]

The full story

(Heya all! This is litteraly the full story of Maeddrona up till the point im rping her, I just kinda took this moment to word vomit everything I made for this character, she’s been developing in my mind for about six months, So, yeah. OOC super Long post under the break!)

Maeddrona is a literal incarnation of the void, previously I mentioned it being old, but the void is old and a God actually looked around as the universe got more and more busy and full- It just kinda.. stopped. Once humans became a thing it looked at mortal life and envied humans for achieving so much with so little time, it looked at the smaller picture of happiness humans could carve for themselves amidst a bloody history. So it just kinda, gave up it’s greater power and sentience, it’s essence possessing humans every once in a while.

These humans would usually barely live passed the age of 15, their lives being ended by some odd coincidence one way or another. It seemed as if dark reality had no place for hope and optimism. There was one that lived to be older, in about the 2nd Millennium *cough*  but she was murdered but someone very close to her.

Now, Maeddrona was growing up on her planet of Fortuna a little bit before Emps has started his rise on Terra. She reaches about age 35 and is the first Void-Born to awaken to her powers.

The entire planet is wiped clean of animal life and the planet itself is shrouded in an odd bubble-ish thing of space so warped you can look at it and see the stars behind you. This is only an illusion, and a result of the explosive amount of power awakening her, but she is left alone on this planet and with the isolation of the Age of Strife, no-one’s gonna show up. (if someone did show up, it would look almost like a black hole might be there, and they’d turn right the fuck around, because whatever that is, we’re not fucking with it)

So Maeddrona, now awakened to her void powers, realizes she... can make things happen by thinking about them on the Planet. Nothing big or overly huge- but time seems to have stood still since she gained her powers, but if she focuses on a plant growing and producing fruit, that’s what that one plant will do until she stops thinking about it. So she can at least survive- just, things are... wrong here. She also begins to have dreams, memories of each past life. Not movie-style, i mean boring, day by day, feels like real time dreams until she wakes up. It it does feel like she is this person, not like she’s watching from outside. She doesn't quite understand what these dreams mean. but she begins to write them all down in a journal.

Though, with Maeddrona being void, have discovering she can utilize a pocket dimension of just empty space, and that putting anything besides herself in there will slowly desolve it. A being with power like this and also who just caused an entire planets worth of population to die would be very interesting to atleast one God i can think of...

So Tzeentch enters her head, uninvited, occasionally, and tries to find out what the fresh funky fuck is happening in THIS corner of the galaxy! Maeddrona is convinced she’s going crazy and the eldritched fuck is all for it. Eventually Maeddrona says something like “prove to me you’re a god of knowledge and not my mind going mad, give me the knowledge I need to escape this fucking planet.” So she stands there, waiting for her mind to suddenly ascend with understanding and learning.

Then a book drops to the ground next to her.

Then another.

Then it starts RAINING BOOKS and she just runs to hide in a building, Fully believing a god was in her head now.

So, now, she starts reading and begins making a ship. It takes her the better part of  50 years (when she awoke to the void her body stopped aging, but more as a “she is nothing, neither alive nor dead” kinda thing) with non-stop work and learning and failures and dedication to get SOMETHING functional. (Thankfully she has an entire worlds worth of resources all to herself) Then she starts fucking with how to FTL travel- because she doesn't have a warp drive. She couldn’t actually make one- so she fucks around with the void, and finds she can travel trough the void while going through the warp as a bit of a substitute. (Its similar to how the Tau FTL travel) So she ends up getting to another planet! But she enters in so close to the planet that she kinda crashes. not far from her crash she finds a few dying people- she (correctly) assumes this might be her fault and tries to fix it, attempting to do something with her powers to save them. She saved one. She makes the first Void-Touched. The void changes her hair, and it tells her a name that she likes far better than her own, and is so grateful to Maeddrona that she wants to follow her when she leaves. Maeddrona isnt alone anymore

(at this point I should mention I take a lot of things from Warframe- specifically names, weapons, frames and abilities. I just love it so much!! but that’s all I really take.)

So for the next long while Maeddrona flies about space, making another deal with Tzeentch to get dreams from people dying that are compatible with the void (she doesn’t question how he knows who is and who isnt, he’s a God *shrugs*) and gets about 30 people in her little family. Occasionally they run back to her Fortuna because it’s their planet now and no-one else knows its there. (Yes, i have all of these as OCs, i know all their plots and stories;;;;)

Then one dream leads her to Terra, where a small boy is dying. Foolishly, she goes. She has much better control over her powers now, masking the ship with the same warped gravity look to try and mask their presence as they go to the biggest hornet nest in the galaxy.

And she is not surprised when the warmongering ruler of the planet does interrupt her in the middle of saving a child. He questions her, and she answers honestly. But her soul just feels... wrong. off. like it’s not there, but obviously something is!

She smiles, and offers her greetings. She does not prostrate herself before him, does not whisper rumors and legends and feats of his beings.

She smiles and patiently waits for him to respond. through their conversations an interest grows. Both are old souls and both hold immeasurable power.

And both consider themselves human.

When she says she is void, he asks if she is Chaos, ready to destroy her if needed. She gags. As by now she knows the intentions of the voice in her head, He and the 3 others have stolen a few of her Void-touched. “I am no God.” would come her reply, Honest.

He would then decide, though not entirely honest, she is no threat, And that these powers she speaks of are interesting, He asks if she would mind being studied,

of course she says yes

the fool she is

Eventually a relationship does form, and while their views are fairly different on many topics (read: most if not all) they balance each other out when they are willing to listen to one another, as both are incredibly hard headed and stubborn. He lets her in on the Primarch project, wanting her insight on raising children as she has been motherly to most if not all her Void-touched.

And he even offers they should make a child from her genetics, to raise along with the Primarchs. She will be human- or Void-born as Maeddrona would call her. But she loves the idea.

Then, tensions rise a bit. the primarchs are still being developed, but Emps wishes to increase the reach of his Imperium a bit as well. there is a system he wishes to acquire- and Maeddrona offers her and her children to do so instead, they can get there faster and her children are very effective with their abilities and such. But he refuses.

This is not the first time this has happened, she thinks he is afraid of the Void, afraid that it is too similar to chaos to be fully trusted on battle. And then, Tzeentch speaks to her once more, agreeing with her, She’s right! Of course she’s right! She should just get there first and do it before he arrives anyway. Show him he’s wrong, give him undeniable proof.

So she does. And... the conversation she has with the Emperor is less than pleasant, It is long distance, but he has been aware of Tzeentch talking to her for some time, he was growing worried that she wouldn’t shoo him away and would sometimes humor his asinine conversations. But now

Now she’s starting to listen to Tzeentch.

He tells her they will have a talk when he arrives, and plans to give an ultimatum as she is so close to falling and she doesn’t even know it. While waiting for Emps to arrive Maeddrona makes a discovery that she is pregnant, this being incredibly exciting news as she believed the void made her infertile.

When Emps finally arrives and she is sent for, and he feels something is wrong. When he sees the presence of two souls, though masked and hard to make out from the void, his mind is not on pregnancy, it is on her fall. He assumes she has allowed Tzeentch to at least semi-possess her and makes a decision, he grimly faces her smiling self and names her an enemy of the Imperium.

At first she is stunned into immobility- but then he begins approaching her, and she flees. She uses the void to go back to her ship and tells all her family that the Emperor is going to kill all of them- So she uses her power and uses escape pods to put them all in Void-stasis (it’s like a Schrodinger's box really, while it’s closed, whatever’s inside of it does and does not exist at the same time until someone opens it and everything exists again. So, they arent even sleeping, just not existing.) and sends them out, one by one, because she doesn’t understand and thinks he’s here to slaughter them because of the void.

She then send out two pieces of equipment, a head accessory known as the “Halo of the void”, and her giant two handed long sword, the “Blade of void.” She then separates her soul into three pieces among herself and these things, using her emotions  as separation points.  Her confusion and shock go into the Halo, her anger and feelings of betrayal go into her sword, leaving her with her fear. Her incomparable fear. She sends these two pieces out into their own pods

And the Emperor boards her ship. It is quiet, eerie as he walks. It is not a warship. This is their home. This is where they lived, had comforts and hobbies. The walls are lined with pictures and drawings, many areas are made to be comfortable lounging areas, doors are stuck open from the commotion, leading windows into shared rooms of her children.

This was their home. And he must walk through it to get to where Maeddrona is hiding. And when he does she is a mess, curled up on the ground and sobbing uncontrollably. It’s too late for words as she approaches her, but he stops. He cares for her enough to want a near painless death for her- but curled up like this she has made it impossible, so he contemplates how to go about this,

His pause gives her hope, and she uncurls for a moment, bleary eyes looking up at him,

And she says his name. She says his name. She knows his name yes of course she knows his name. Spoken with hushed voice only to him in their moments of privacy and passion.

Now said breathlessly

As his sword is already plunged through her.

As this happens, Limbo, the first Void-touched Maeddrona ever made, enters, trying to save Maeddrona and escape together. And she screams. Rushing to her mother’s side, crying, bawling, and screaming at the Emperor.

He leaves, he does not need to kill her child- then she screams about what Maeddrona was going to tell Him.

About her pregnancy.

And he does stop in his tracks at that, the truth of the second soul’s presence now dawning on him. But he only stops for a moment before continuing back, through the halls of a ruined home, with his mistake and his mistake alone.

He then returns to Terra to find the Primarchs scattered.

And that’s where this story turns, The Emperor basically dies with the Heresy, his soul shattered. Then one small part, one tiny bit, that loved Maeddrona, that never stopped loving Maeddrona, finds her small soul in the warp. As the void is like permanent marker- you can never really get it off once it’s on something. So he finds her, attaches his soul to hers and uses what of his power he can to give her a stable body in the warp.

And that is the Maeddrona I have as my muse :)

[fandom-rants]

Plotholes, Story Rushing, and Shoddy Writing In Keyblade Graveyard, Pt. 1 (p.s. there are SEVERAL issues to unpack here)

~~~~THIS CONTAINS COUNTLESS SPOILERS FOR KHIII~~~~

PLEASE NOTE that this will not be in perfect order; there are so many things wrong with the story in the Keyblade Graveyard that I struggle to balance it all without having a raging meltdown. As someone who adored the Kingdom Hearts franchise (yes, you read that right; past tense) and memorized all the lore and played all of the games (save Coded; I just watched that one because it does not look to be worth it at all) and loved the characters, I can only express deep and profound disappointment in the story. The rushed, chaotic garbage mess of a story.

And those who say otherwise? Have chosen to ignore the story for the sake of the ‘happy ending’ (which is a farce; a happy ending doesn’t include Sora sacrificing himself again for the damsel in distress trope).

If you thought some of my other rants were long, you aren’t ready for this one. It’s so long it needed to be split up into parts.

1. Aqua and Ven

a. Firstly, it’s good to know that Nomura is literally incapable of writing a female who isn’t a damsel in distress. Good to see Aqua go “I’m gonna prove how strong I am,” only to need immediate rescuing. Brilliant.

b. So it’s that easy to wake Ven up, huh? His heart’s been linked with Sora’s for Sora’s entire life, it’s been sleeping in Sora’s for so long that Sora has taken on Ven’s mannerisms, but they can just separate without a single hitch, huh? Just like that, huh? And there’s no problem waking up, it takes no time at all, and he can move in his body without even remote difficulty, huh? Basically, there are no repercussions to any of this, huh? I call bullshit.

c. Going back a page, it’s good to know that these guys all showed up at Castle Oblivion and didn’t even bother clearing the place to ensure there weren’t any enemies around to - /snorts with laughter/ - immediately try to kill Ven while he was still vulnerable. Who could have ever expected such a thing, amirite?

d. Why aren’t Riku and Mickey there?!?!?!

e. This was actually so anticlimactic and boring. Why wasn’t Terranort/wtf-ever there to add some drama and tension? Why was it simply ‘grab Aqua, which can be done merely by having Sora show up and beat her up, even though Riku and Mickey got their butts kicked by her,’ ‘arrive very quickly and suddenly at Castle Oblivion,’ ‘unlock it,’ ‘go inside and wake up Ven’? Why was it so boring? It’s something we’ve been waiting for since 2010, and our reward for waiting 8 years is ‘ta-da! Boom, bam, done!’ Did a child write this?

2. The Requisite Romance Scene Before the Final Showdown

a. We have to really sell this romance, or else people will be pissed about the ending! Quick! Let’s have Sora and Kairi share a paopu fruit and leave their friend completely out of it! Riku doesn’t really matter, anyway. He’s not integral to the entire storyline like Kairi!

b. To make it clear, Riku was integral to the storyline while Kairi was not. Something I’ve already mentioned several times. So why in hell did Sora say he wouldn’t have gone through the things in the games if it wasn’t for Kairi, when that girl hardly entered the storyline at all? It was Riku who started the whole story off, Riku and Kairi both whom Sora was looking for in KH1, Riku only whom Sora looked for in CoM, Riku only whom Sora looked for in KH2, Riku only whom Data-Sora cared to run after, Riku only whose concerns made Sora go through the Mark of Mastery... but yes. It was only for Kairi that Sora went through the things he did. Riku, keep sitting on the sand all night while these two pretend you don’t exist. Perfect.

3. We Arrive and Everyone Fights Against Heartless

a. Is this what we came here for? Is this what Xehanort planned when he told us to come here? To sic a bunch of heartless on us? How does this in any way complete Kingdom Hearts? How does this in any way help Xehanort’s overarching goal? Hell, ignoring that, why would he sic heartless on us when we’ve defeated them a million times? How in god’s name do we fail against them this time????

b. Can I just say that it is beyond suspense of disbelief to have Kairi and Lea finish their fights before Sora? Or that the entire group would finish, see Sora still fighting, and then just run forward without him???

4. Terranort

a. How is he back? No, seriously, let’s look at this. He was brought from the past. But when you defeat Young Xehanort, he says he’s going to return to the past and live his life up to the present. But Terranort can’t do that! Which means Terranort can’t go to the past and stay on as Ansem the Wise’s apprentice. Which means he can’t trick the other students into becoming nobodies - so how is Saix there? How is Axel there as Axel? How do the others retain their memories of being Nobodies? He also can’t become a heartless or a nobody himself, since he’s not returning to the past to do so (because we save him instead of killing him)! So how the hell could Ansem and Xemnas exist??? You can’t argue about alternative universes because those haven’t been introduced in the plotline, and even if they had been, that still wouldn’t explain how this universe had an Ansem who took over Riku and a Xemnas who existed whatsoever. What the fuck.

b. Why in five flaming hells is he just waiting there at the beginning? No, again, I’m being serious. Why? To defeat the seven keyblade wielders? Why? They’re apparently needed to clash with the thirteen Xehanort clones, so why on earth is he there? For sad plotline feels? 

c. Even that doesn’t make sense. After all, Aqua had all night to warn Ven about the state she’d last seen Terra in. Apparently, that was not a topic she thought necessary to bring up. Go figure.

d. How the fuck does Xehanort even have him??? All those who played Birth By Sleep, I can only assume you all have dealt with the same frustration and confusion as me. How did Xehanort retain control over Terra’s body after Lingering Will defeated him?? Because I did. Allllll the way back in Terra’s storyline, I defeated Terranort. So how did he show up in Radiant Garden? The blast of light (or whatever) from the end of the storyline should have, at the very least, turned him into a heartless. Right then. From the start. So how did he even survive long enough to get to Radiant Garden, let alone return to the Keyblade Graveyard? What had been the point of that final battle?

5. Lingering Will

a. I was waiting for him to show up. It makes less than no sense to have him only do so at Namine’s behest after Ven has already been KO’d by Terranort. That entire debacle in the Final World should never have occurred, simply because Lingering Will should have shown up the first time.

b. I laughed in disbelief when I saw Terra’s keyblade turn into a hooked whip and then a giant fuck-off gun. I already thought the transformations were pretty random, considering a keyblade is supposed to serve its own purpose and strength without needing to turn into a door or a frying pan or a pair of yo-yo’s, but to see Terra’s do the same thing when no one else’s had? Oof. Painful.

c. Lingering Will was Terra’s mind, but apparently he doesn’t need that to reconnect with his past body! (Even though it was never with said body; it was always separate, so...?!?!?!) Instead it disappears from the plotline (like so many other necessary details) and acted as KH’s version of Fallout’s Mysterious Stranger, apparently deciding to disappear to wherever said stranger goes after doing its duteous cameo.

6. That Entire Debacle With Everyone’s Hearts

a. There’s just... so much to unwrap here. The fact that it even happened, which I’ve already noted the plot failure there. The fact that Kairi needed protecting not once, but twice, only to fall, anyway. Is she even capable of being something other than a damsel in distress? (Looking at the rest of the story of this world, I can do nothing but snort at the fact that I even bothered typing out that question.)

b. The whole shit with Chirithy. We get it, KH. You want to peddle your stupid mobile game. (A game I’ve been playing for over a year now, like a good, dutiful KH player, only to find that the plotline shows up roughly once every 300+ “chapters.”) This Chirithy shit isn’t plot; it’s bullshit. Nice to know Kairi’s heart was definitely lost, though, because bullshit on that, too!

c. Why on earth are everyone’s hearts just hanging out on other worlds? Why are they in worlds I’ve specifically already gone to in this game? Why not any other worlds from any other previous games, or worlds I’ve never been to? Oh, yeah. To bring back the annoying shit from KH1, where you enter fragments of worlds for no reason in order to fight some random heartless. Is this plot?

d. The whole ‘Dive Into the Heart’ thing being the equivalent of ‘the power of waking,’ which is also apparently how Mickey could get into the Realm of Darkness (and here I remember Mickey saying he could only do that by being in a world when it fell to darkness! Silly me). Just admit you had no idea what the hell you were doing when you made up that ‘power of waking,’ Nomura. Shit.

e. Let’s go a bit farther, because the whole “Dive Into the Heart” thing was awful. Why is that a thing? Why do you need to ‘dive’ into a heart (which, he didn’t, he didn’t, he just dove into different worlds to find said hearts, wtf) in order to save it from... what? Death? Darkness?? What the hell even happened here-

f. How is Kairi fine and waiting for us??? This actually made me think Sora had fallen to darkness (or dreaming, or what the fuck ever), because how in hell was Kairi okay? Namine said flat-out that Kairi’s heart had been lost like the others, and that such was the reason why Sora had found her in Chirithy-Verse (it isn’t any ‘Final World,’ just as it isn’t anything I’m ever going to take seriously). So how was she perfectly fine and, uh, able to... uh... meet with him??? In some sort of... Heart Realm Between??? What happened there?!?!

g. I get that this floaty, hand-holding scene was supposed to once again peddle the romance in some last-minute bid to make us okay with the bullshit self-sacrifice move Sora bounces into with all the finesse of a Sequel Coming trailer, but all it did was piss me off (as every romance scene did in this shithole of a game). There has been next to nothing on the whole ‘romance’ thing other than us being told ad nauseum that it is a thing. If you can’t even give me normal, non-romance scenes between the two, then all it’s going to be is forced trollop that you expect me to swallow simply on your say-so. If you can’t give me a lead-up to the romance, don’t be surprised if you fail to sell it to me. And if you fail to sell the romance to me, then why the hell should I ever find any part of that ending all right?

7. The Time Ret-Conning

a. This one’s a minor gripe, so I’ll just say that I despised the multiple times the game acted as if the previous failures hadn’t happened. ‘Here you go; try again!’ It makes no sense when you realize Sora actually did things to ensure we got this second chance, even less sense, somehow, when you see that neither Sora nor anyone else acts any differently to rewatching the same thing happen all over again - like, what the hell kind of time travel bullshit is Nomura writing here? Is there any rhyme or reason to this shit whatsoever?

8. That Entire KHUX Fuckery

a. I honestly cannot believe we had to watch Sora get saved by Ephemer. A lot of people loved the cameo, but the cost to the storyline is far too high. Our main character needing rescuing in his Final Battle is always bad writing; what’s the point of watching the main hero’s growth if it turns out he still needs to be protected? This other character should have been the one we followed, not the one needing rescuing! And hell, what was the point of all that growth if, in the end, it still wasn’t enough? Simply based on storytelling, it was poorly done. But the fact that he got rescued by a long-dead (I hope; everyone has a bad habit of just living forever through Bullshit Time Mechanics) character from another KH game? Disgustingly shoddy. Thanks for nothing.

b. What the fuck was that triangle spam for??? I was there when the challenge came to KHUX, for those with the highest scores to appear in the game. I honestly thought their names would just be in the credits or something, because how could you possibly add them in without making it the most horrendous bullshit possible for a video game? Answer? You can’t. That entire thing is something I’ve been trying to delete from my memory since I saw it. What a fucking travesty.

9. "I Can’t Do This Alone”

a. You are literally talking to someone, your best friend, and saying you’re alone. What the FUCK.

b. What strength did you get from Kairi, you twit? Riku, on the other hand...!

TO BE FREAKING CONTINUED... Edit: I know Nomura is BS-ing some answers to pretend he didn’t fuck up. I don’t care.

[rxcusant]

Lol explain Kingdom hearts to me. Like all of it. Cause I'm confused as fk. Not KH3 tho cause I'm still going through it.

buckle up lads

so theres a buncha keyblade masters called foretellers and theyre all runnin round like headless chickens cause their master disappeared and nobodys telling each other anything so they all start fightin (except this one guy luxu voiced by max mittleman, he grabbed a box and high tailed it outta there) and then it sparks a keyblade war for all the light in kingdom hearts i think ??? and then i legit forget what happens from here because i hate ux with every fiber of my being but it made this cool place called a keyblade graveyard, its pretty dope.

fast forward 1000 years and we got the cool wayfinder trio all living in land of departure about to take their mark of mastery except terra doesnt pass because Mark Hamil Said Darkness Sucks. also we meet this old guy Xehanort he kinda sucks a lot. theres these enemies called unversed rolling around and mark hamil tells aqua and terra to go stop them but ventus said HEY IM COMING TO and ran after terra so aquas left to be the mom to bring them both home idk and its revealed ventus is made of pure light and xehanort literally split the darkness form his heart and it made vanitas-- hes responsible for all the unversed, he sucks, we dont like him but we love him-- in an effort to forge this thing called the X-Blade (PRONOUNCED LIKE KEY BLADE I HATE THIS SERIES) that will open the door to kingdom hearts, and the x-blade can only be made when pure light and darkness clash, and like... restart the keyblade war and bring about balance?? idk. And xehanort wants to live long enough to see this happen so he literally possesses terras body. Cool! Just what the poor guy needed. Ven and vanitas fight and ven sacrifices himself so he goes to take a Very Long Nap and vanitas just dies like the bitch he is. But ven’s heart finds his way to baby 5yo sora who decides HEY ILL HOARD YOU IN MY HEART FOR THE NEXT 11 YEARS and thats why roxas looks like ventus. Aqua yeets him in the land of departure and then like..locks the world up and it turns into castle oblivion.  meanwhile terra and aqua punch each other and terras about to fall into a darkness pit but aqua sacrifces heself to get him out and so she ends up trapped there for 11 years and terra??is now terranort and has amnesia and this old dude Ansem The Wise finds him and adopts him and an apprentice. yeah. bet he wont regret that decision ; )

10 years later kh1 happens and sora and riku and kairi are chilling on destiny islands until it explodes and riku fucks off to the darkness and kairi fucks off to soras hearts -- i hope she said hi to ventus in there-- and sora ends up in traverse town where he meets donald and goofy. YOU SEE king mickey of disney castle also fucked off because worlds are disappearing to darkness and he left donald and goofy a note to go find The Key cause thatll help. so they do and they journey around with sora and become good buddies i love the trinity trio so much. eventually they meet riku at hollow bastion again and hes been posssessed by this dude Ansem whos not Ansem the Wise but is actually Xehanort’s Heartless (i hate this fucking series) and they find kairis comatose body chillin in the corner and they have a fight scene thats engraved in the memory of Everyone whos ever played PS2 KH1 KAIRI! KAIRI! OPEN YOUR EYES! ITS NO USE. THAT GIRL HAS LOST HER HEART. SHE CANNOT WAKE UP. oh my god why didnt they add a skip scene button. anyway they punch the possession outta riku and sora stabs himself with the keyblade to release kairis heart BUT it also releases his own heart which created his nobody, Roxas, who got vens heart???who thats why he looks like ven?? and it created namine who is kairis nobody because??i honestly forget i hate this goddamn series. anyway soras a heartless for a few minutes but kairi got her heart and life back and wanted to get some sweet sweet screentime and so she saved sora and restored him Thank you kairi. so sora dumps kairi off at traverse town and goes to give Ansem / Xehanort’s Heartless a good ol ass whopping ad they win and restore the worlds but kairi and sora are separated again I’LL COME BACK TO YOU, I PROMISE! I KNOW YOU WILL! WHEN YOU WALK AWAY YOU DONT HEAR ME SAY PLEAAAAAAASE OH BABYYY DONT GO oh also riku and king mickey and sora closed the door to kingdom hearts and trapped riku and mickey in the realm of darkness, that was a thing.

and then chain of memories happened. theyre in castle oblivion!!! whoa!! we meet the organization for the first time! whoa!!! we meet namine!! whoa!!! so like namine has sora-memory powers and can tinker with his memories and the memories of everyone hes connected to (AND HOLY FUCK IS THAT BOY CONNECTED TO A LOTTA PEOPLE NAMINE IS VERY POWERFUL) and the organization is making namine rewrite soras memories as he progresses throuhg castle oblivion to turn him into marluxias pawn so he cna use sora to like..overhtrow the organization, i think?? i hate this seriees. but it all works out in the end except soras memories are so scrambled he decides to sleep for a year to get all the right ones back. MEANWHILE RIKUS IN THE BASEMENT OF CASTLE OBLIVION and hes fighting his own demons i mean darkness i mean ansem i mean xehanorts heartless and he meet up with mickey a few times and then he meets DiZ and he also meets a replica of himself--yeah by the way the organization is making replicas, That Sure Wont Ever Be Referenced Again : )-- and its this game that rikus like YEAH I CAN USE THE DARKNESS AS POWER AND STRENGTH and HES GONNA WALK THE ROAD TO DAWN and then every riku rper put dawn in their url and i got confused trying to keep them all straight lord please help me im a little ol sammi

then we have 358/2 days for the DS which i never replayed cause it was tedious af which is all about the organization and roxas’s time in the organization and meeting his best buds axel and xion and saix standing in the corner being a jealous little binch PLEASE SAIX JUST BE NICE THEYLL GIVE YOU ICE CREAM TOO IF YOU ASK POLITELY Xion is another replica except shes a replica of sora but something got messed up and she got his memories of kairi which is why she looks like her but with black hair for whatever reason, i think nomura just wanted a cool goth girl to add to the series and we all thank him for it, and she and roxas become so close they kinda start influencing that weird memory shit going on and xion keeps trying to leave the organization to set things right but axel always gets stuck with the icky jobs and we got the iconic GO ON YOU JUST KEEP RUNNIN BUT ILL ALWAYS BE THERE TO BRING YOU BACK and i think around this time roxas is also super fed up with the organization and decides FUCK YALL IM DONE and punches saix and leaves. but xion finds him and they have a cool boss battle sequence got i love you xion you are a POWERHOUSE but roxas defeats her and she dies and its the saddest thing in the world AND NOBODY REMEMBERS HER WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ABOUT!!!! anyway roxas decides hes gonna punch kingdom hearts next cause it was xions last wish but riku, who is sporting a cool blindfold for edge, is like HEY WE NEED YOU TO WAKE UP SORA and roxas is all SORA THIS SORA THAT I DONT GIVE A FUCK and tey fight! and riku loses cause roxas has two keybladees! OBLIVION IS THE BEST KEYBLADE IT LOOKS SUPER COOL I LOVE IT SO MUCH WOW but riku rips off his blindfold and summons the darkness and he takes on ansems, xehanorts heartless, appearance and he squeezes roxas until he passes out and then they yeeted roxas into a data twilight town for a few days.

so enter kh2 with the 6 hours roxas tutorial in the data twilight town until he goes to find sora and returns to him. SO FINALLY AFTER AN ENTIRE YEAR sora wakes up with all his proper memories and so does donald and goofy and theyre like COOL LETS GO FIND RIKU AND KING MICKEY and they go journeying around the worlds again to stop the organization. meanwhile axels gettin desperate to see his best friend for life roxas again and kidnaps kairi but shes like HEY I AINT HAVING THAT and runs off and ends up in twilight town but axel finds her and kidnaps her anyway but then saix kidnaps her to the world that never was. and so soras like WE GOTTA GO SAVE KAIRI AND RIKU NOW cause by the way earlier like midpoint of the game maybe Mickey was like SAY FELLAS DID SOMEONE MENTION THE DOOR TO DARKNESS and its one of my favorite quotes in this hell franchise, so like THYE KNOW KING MICKEY IS OK that just leaves kairi and riku and stopping the organization. so they find kairi and they find riku and sora cries a bit and im just happy the destiny trio is together again. And DiZ showed up again, hes actually ansem the wise, and he talks about computers and hearts and research and xemnas, the organizations leader, is likeI WAS YOUR APPRENTICE! BUT YOU DIDNT LET ME DO ILLEGAL HUMAN EXPERIMENT SON HEARTS SO I KICKED YOU OUT AND RREMOVED MY OWN HEART AND THATS WHY THERES A HEARTLESS AND A NOBODY OF XEHANORT and ansem the wise is like YEAH BITCH and he explodes and riku turns back to normal but he also really needs a haircut. so they go punch xemnas in his zebra coat and riku and sora chill in the realm of darkness for about ten minute son the beach, i guess aqua was hanging out somewhere else, and they get a message form kairi in a bottle and the door to light opens and they go home and it was literally!!!!! a better fucking ending!!!! than kh3!!!!!!!!! thats my tea!!!!!!

so then we have KH3D, dream drop distance, which begins telling us ‘hey when you kill a heartless and a nobody that person is gonna be recompleted so uhhhhh xehanorts coming back Thats Not Good, make sora and riku do their mark of mastery test in the realm of sleep to get the power of waking’ and thats the whole game but its great because flowmotion! dream eaters!  TWEWY TWEWY TWEWY T W E W Y!!!!!! playable riku!!! fun worlds!!! soriku!!! except KH3D’s fatal flaw is THEY INTRODUCED TIME TRAVEL INTO THIS FUCKING COMPLEX HELL HOLE I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THEM FOR THAT. anyway rikus been doing a great hecking job!!!! except sora ended up in twtnw and kept chasing the dreams into the deepest pit of slumber and the organization broke his heart so they use him as one of xehanorts vessels [gesutres to my blog with will smith arms] yeeah babey. and riku is understandably like HEY GIVE ME MY FRIEND BACK and xehanort is like FUCK OFF TWINK and mickey and donald and goofy and axel, whos been recompleted as lea, arrive and steal comatose sora back form xehanort and xehanort monologues about the X-Blade split into 20 pieces- 7 of light, 13 of darkness- and so hes gonna make 13 vessels of darkness with his heart inside them and the guardians of light gotta gather 7 lights to clash and bringg about the keyblade war or bring about kingdom hearts, i-- i literally hate this series so much Why do you think i went on a year long hiatus??? i needed to calm the fuck down-- either way xehanort yeets off with his darknesses and soras STILL comatose and rikus like I WILL DIVE INTO HIS SLEEP AND SAVE HIM BECAUSE DEARLY BELOVED IS PLAYING AND if i continue this joke someones bound to get mad at me for ‘’’pushign a soriku agenda’’’ BUT YKNOW WHAT, RIKUS A REAL MVP AND PUNCHES A NIGHTMARE VEN AND SAVES SORA AND SORA HUGS HIM AND ITS GREAT AND I LOVE MY SONS SO MUCH and the kh3d ends with them saying ‘hey look kairis gonna do something!’ but Little Did We Know.

and thats your summary of what the fuck happened in kingdom hearts. i hate this game so much.