#and she starts remembering bits and pieces and it’s extra confusing bcus she remembers them fondly

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

the thing about the Anastasia stage musical is that like…….. as a story it’s a real improvement on the original film. way better construction, stronger characterisation etc etc etc. but…. the same choices that make it technically a better narrative also have really weird knock-on effects on the message.

Replacing rasputin with a communist party officer who’s father was one of the ones who executed the romanov family??? UGH that’s so good that’s so juicy the dynamic between the villain and Anya is SO much more interesting than in the original film. But it leads to scenes like Still/The Neva Flows where it’s like.

“The Romanov’s were given everything and gave back nothing until the russian people rose up and destroyed them!”

*girlboss voice* “All but one. I am my fathers daughter”.

And i’m just… ok but he’s right though. He’s absolutely correct there. Factually he is accurate. But she’s the protagonist and he’s the antagonist so the framing is that she’s the one we should be rooting for here. There’s no point where Anya is like “wow my experiences growing up poor and destitute and orphaned have made me morally uncomfortable with the idea of claiming my place as the daughter of the tsar and that’s going to influence my decisions and actions”. She’s just like. Oh cool i get to be a princess??? neato.

[ofbesaid]

hi hello to everyone! i’m here with some very exciting info - my kingdom hearts verse/backstory for yuna and spira! would love to use this verse / elements of it with any kh mutuals or others with kh verses as well uwu it’s long and not formally written in the slightest (its all over the place dktjgnt) but it’s under the read more! if anyone wants to write with it or talk to my about it, i’d love love loveeeeee that huhuhu anyway, its been a couple years comin since i first thought of this verse, but i’m so happy to finally get it more solid!!!!!! anyway, before i go on too long... here ya goooo~

yu yevon sacrificed his heart so he could utilize the power of darkness/heartless, he becomes a nobody and the heartless that forms when his heart is lost becomes sin

sin is a heartless (at first) formed from the darkness of yu yevon, and later on is actually the nobodies of strong-willed summoners u n u

yunalesca is a nobody, who kept her form. she calls to the darkness in the guardians hearts and calls it forward, and makes them lose themselves to the darkness so they become strong enough heartless that can defeat the old sin. this is triggered by the loss of the summoner they've protected, who sacrifices their heart and become nobodies, in order to control the heartless that their guardian has become. the shell of the summoner is actually what becomes the new sin that heartless yu yevon uses as armor, the heartless-guardian is only used to destroy the old sin and its kinda a self destruct thing that takes them out as well as the old sin. the summoner's nobody then gets I guess... in a way, possessed/controlled by yu yevon, who turns them into an armor for the next sin.

this whole sacrifice thing has been around as long as it has been in ffx, so 1000 years lmao Spira is steadily falling to darkness because each calm that ends with sin coming back, people start losing hope and the darkness grows in the people's hearts. so it gets worse and more and more heartless appear. when sin attacks, the hearts of the people turn into heartless/fiends :’( rip spirans

in this verse, tidus never meets yuna and so yuna's only guardians are lulu, kimahri, rikku (auron never comes back because hades has him in the underworld, wakka is on destiny islands with tidus). without tidus and auron, there's no one who knows what happens at the end of the pilgrimage. rikku is still trying to find a way to stop it, but it's not enough to make yuna change her mind. so it's an actual death march thats course can't be changed due to an outside factor changing things up (we can blame hades for keeping auron captive lmao). 

when they meet yunalesca, she asks who will become yuna's final aeon. lulu volunteers but kimahri kinda just walks forward and toward lesca. rikku is still trying to get yuna to not do it ofc, and so she's trying to convince lu to not let yuna do it but lesca goes through with the process and explains to yuna what she has to do when they finally face sin (sacrifice urself, use ur new power to summon ur guardian, blah blah). due to the connection of kimahri's heart to yuna's, she's the only one who can call on his heartless for the battle. and when she realizes what happened to kimahri she wants to CRY SO BAD but she holds it together until they leave zanarkand, and there's rikku still saying not to do it because they'll lose yuna too but yuna... she just.... "we shouldn't allow kimahri's sacrifice to be for nothing..." even though GOD it hurts her but she is still so committed to her duty as a summoner and she still believes this is the only way bcus there was no one to make her doubt yevon for this verse (i love yuna, but she’s really naive when ffx starts out and yeah, while she learns a lot on the pilgrimage, she’s also subject to the brainwashing of yevon and with no one providing an outside perspective, i think it’s entirely viable for the cycle to have continued without the intervention of auron and tidus ANYWAY--)

the thing about this time in spira is that maleficient found her way here, hoping to find a princess of heart. so yuna's pilgrimage was actually EXTRA HARD/TEDIOUS I GUESS bcus there were more fiends/heartless because they were trying to destroy the world or whatever it was maleficent was trying to do. she finds yuna and gang, and proceeds to follow them because she can sense yuna's heart, which is really strong and full of light... (she's not like a princess of heart actually but she could probably become one of the new lights but that's besides the point LMAO)

soooo back to the pilgrimage, they're about to head on over to sin to start the final battle. around them Spira is just..... falling the hell apart LMAO and so this is what's been pushing Yuna to go through with the battle because she thinks it'll stop it, BUT....... maleficient shows up  right at the final battle and she's all, "it's too late, child. your world has fallen to darkness. *insert evil smile here* there isn't anything you can do... unless..."

"please, I'll do anything to stop it!" ofc....... YUNA SHE IS STILL REALLY NAIVE it's really just the nature of the pilgrimage in this verse.... and well, naive yuna falls for maleficient's ploy (spira was like actively getting destroyed tho, so imagine the stress of the situation).

"anything? very well." EVIL SMILE STILL THERE, ALL MENACING AND SHIT,  she waves her staff thing and at first it seems like something good is happening but lulu is the first to notice that it's going wrong but before she can say anything, she gets sucked into darkness and like piled on by some heartless. rikku acts quick and tries to protect yuna but maleficient puts her to sleep. she falls to the ground, and so yuna drops too to hold her and she looks at maleficient like "why are you doing this? please, I thought--"

"only children trust as easily as you have, my dear. unfortunate this pilgrimage of yours didn’t teach you better." and then she puts yuna to sleep too, then takes her and rikku through a corridor while Spira gets WRECKED

maleficent places the curse on yuna and rikku, and it makes them pixies, seriously weakening them and limiting their mobility. it also erases their memories, well more hides them, but yeah... they don't remember their old world and so! they wake up as pixies, confused but maleficent convinces them that they're on the same team. it's here that they meet paine and maleficent puts them together and makes them a team, hunting for treasure and information. the pixie form let's them sense treasure better, they can fly and teleport but it tires them out since they're so small lmao

maleficent doesn't break the spell, and they don't go back to her to ask to break it because she won't LMAO so they ask flora, fauna and merryweather and merlin helps too... it takes a while tho but eventually they return to their normal forms, but they can't break it completely so the ability to turn into a pixie stays! their memories don't come back all at once either, but in bits and pieces, and more so when there's a reminder or something that triggers a memory within them. for instance, if yuna finds herself in destiny islands, it'll probably trigger her into remembering besaid!

anyway that’s the gist of it and if you made it this far thank u i love u now let’s write something in this verse!!