#for my non kh mutuals!! some of the main characters include:

[dreamsy990]

honestly i think i was destined to be a kh fan since my favorite character type is guys with severe identity issues

[keyblade-nocturne]

Hey, hey. Super random question but can you suggest other funny kingdom hearts blogs to follow? love your blog, btw!

Glad you like it! I appreciate being labeled a funny kh blog. Unfortunately i’m still getting back into things and some of my old kh rp mutuals aren’t active anymore :(

But I’ll try to suggest a few other rp blogs that enjoy crack shenanigans! ((I assume that’s what you meant by funny blogs))

First thought is the Xigbar’s. @invertxgo @thefatalmarksman @askxigbar All know how to have fun with the character, but have different takes. It’s fun to watch them play off other characters.

There’s @xseeker and @dearlybelovedhearts who have fun interactions between Ansem and Xemnas. Toss the Ansem double @andallsoend into the mix for extra chaos.

@twilighttwin has been the main Roxas I’ve interacted with since the early days of my old blog. If there’s late night org crack on the dash you can expect them in it.

@lunsai is a fun Saix that isn’t afraid to do crack from time to time. They also write really long and detailed replies that I love to read.

@devoratrixlux (gula) and @eyesofparoxysm (master of masters) have hilarious crack and ic conversations. the current one is about an eldritch horror.

@spellweaverbladed is a nice Aqua that’s always stuck dealing with everyone elses nonsense.

@radiantmyde isn’t an rp blog, but makes a lot of crack posts. Quite a few include Demyx/Myde so you’d probably enjoy their content too.

There’s plenty of other great blogs I follow or watch from the sidelines. but not all of them rp crack threads. Usually more serious in character threads which are wonderful too! Just figured you were looking for the lighter stuff.

Please note: These are rp blogs so some of them might have rules about main blogs or non-kh blogs following them. I didn’t double check everyone’s rules before writing this. So if you’re a non-rp blog I would keep that in mind. But last I checked most don’t mind main blog following and watching the fun.

[zdbztumble]

But What About Kairi, Or: Today’s KH Ramble, Part II (KH III Spoilers)

Meanwhile...

My play-through of KH III has taken me through the last of the Disney worlds, Big Hero 6. Besides reminding me of why I’m not the biggest fan of that movie, its day/night options make for a fun mechanic, and the layout of San Fransokyo is great. Baymax has some cute battle dialogue, and Donald’s reaction to “Keyblade Hero 3” was a good laugh. Of all the non-Pixar worlds, it’s also probably the best-integrated into the main plot. The reappearance of the Replica Riku, and the revelation of yet another plot, this time a burgeoning rebellion inside the real Organization XIII, nearly made my head explode, but on balance, it’s a solid level. The unorthodox beginning to the last Gummi zone was a pleasant surprise too, though I’d say that the Gummi ship sequences were at their best in KH II.

But then we come to the Badlands of the Keyblade Graveyard, and...ooh boy.

The battle that opens this level is fun, and a worthy successor to the battle with a thousand Heartless in KH II. I may have been a bit over-leveled for it, but it was still a good time. The cutscenes that followed, on the other hand, had me sputtering in disbelief. To begin with, the fact that all of that was a cutscene is baffling. All seven Keyblade Wielders facing down Terranort doesn’t sound like a good boss battle to anyone? Or hell, just Terra and Aqua? They’ve got the real stake in that fight. And Donald’s surprise spell, which I gather was a big Final Fantasy Easter egg, made for a cool moment that would have been much cooler as something that appeared in the course of battle. But that cutscene was also baffling on a story level. The Demon Tower becoming a Demon Tornado certainly made it bigger, but all the characters reacting to it with such despair was hard to follow when the distinction between the two isn’t all that great. Sora’s total collapse was especially out-of-character. The staging of this cutscene, it’s choice of camera angles, action, and pacing, all failed to sell the supposed magnitude of this threat. Coming off of a single battle, massive though it was, didn’t help.

And then...there’s Kairi.

I’m struggling to think of another series where a character supposedly of the main cast has been so consistently mishandled the way Kairi has since the end of KH II. The writing for her has been absolutely abysmal. And it’s in abysmal in a way that, rather than souring me on the character (which has happened in other series), I’m increasingly sympathetic towards her in a critical sense looking at Kingdom Hearts as a story.

That sympathy doesn’t come from Kairi being a favorite of mine. I don’t see how Kairi could be considered a favorite character, because I don’t consider her a complete character. The best way to describe Kairi IMO is as a potential character. She has tremendous potential to do great things in this series. Her wholesome, “girl next door” personality gives her a charming if rather conventional starting point, and the fact that she’s a freakin’ princess - one of the Princesses of Light, no less - who can’t recall her past offers a wonderful hook into stories. I said before that I’d revisit the idea of a KH prequel game, and IMO, the best choice for a prequel story is to explore Kairi’s past. Imagine that; a BbS, or equivalent game, that explored her life as a princess in Radiant Garden, how she came to lose her memories and end up on Destiny Islands, and why she could wield a Keyblade at the end of KH II. Was her personality still the same before she lost her memories? Could the confederation of Disney villains been aware of her and the other Princesses even then? If the prequel must expand on the Xehanort saga, then could Kairi have had anything to do with Ansem the Wise’s research, and could that explain her amnesia?

KH III has, so far, suggested that’s going to deal with at least some of this. Eventually. Maybe. If it gets around to it. But the point still stands that fleshing out one of the main characters of the series instead of inventing three new ones and pulling a third twist with the villain seems like the much more sound storytelling choice to me. A prequel game that focused on Kairi could also contain a hook that, combined with Maleficent’s unresolved fate at the end of KH II, would’ve provided a much more organic segue into a KH III story than pulling all sorts of stunts to re-open the Xehanort saga.

But that didn’t happen, and we’re left with the reality that Kairi’s backstory has barely been touched upon since the first game. Kairi herself is barely present for Coded, BbS, or DDD. In the latter case, that being a game primarily focused on the Destiny Islands gang sans Disney battle partners, Kairi’s absence seems a terrible wasted opportunity. That could be made up for if the revelation that she was training as a Keyblade Wielder had a payoff, but so far, KH III has yet to provide. She’s had two cutscenes with Axel, neither of which actually show any training, and then what little you see of her in the Badlands (more on that later.)

Once again, this feels a wasted opportunity, because this series has a precedent that would allow for Kairi to have more of a role early on in the game. Remember the Roxas segment at the beginning of KH II that served as an extended tutorial? Why not have Kairi’s training be the tutorial of KH III? It would make sense story-wise for her to be the player character as you learn or review basic controls, there would have been opportunities for cutscenes to flesh out her character (and Axel’s, much as I hate to admit it), and a clever bit of writing could’ve passed the torch on to Sora right on time for the story to begin in earnest. And why not turn the swarm of enemies battle that opens the Badlands into a multi-party affair? Start off playing as Sora with Donald and Goofy, switch after a certain stage to playing as Riku with Mickey, then to Ven with Aqua, and then to Kairi with Axel. You could go back to Sora for the finale, but this way, everyone gets included, and the character in most need of material gets to shine for a moment.

Instead, Kairi is probably the least-featured member of the party in all those cutscenes. In the moment when Aqua directs her, Mickey, and Goofy to get the wounded to safety, Kairi isn’t even in the shot. Pretty much the only time she’s in frame in that cutscene is when she’s either being saved or reaching out to Sora.

And here’s where we come to a tricky part of the issue, because I’ve seen some rather strange commentary on Sora and Kairi’s relationship. One school of thought seems to hold that Kairi becoming Sora’s love interest is what costs her any opportunity to stand as a character unto herself. I can’t follow this line of thought, for several reasons. The first being that Kairi can’t exactly “become” a love interest when it’s clear from the start of the first game that Sora has a thing for her. Being a love interest and a solid character in your own right aren’t mutually exclusive either. But I also don’t understand this argument because Sora and Kairi’s relationship has been neglected just as Kairi herself has, and that’s a real problem given its importance to the series.

In KH I, Kairi serves as the stakes and as the prime motive for both Sora and Riku. While she herself doesn’t have much to do, she is pivotal to the story, and her bond with Sora being so strong that her heart takes refuge in his, that she can restore him from a Heartless, and that they somehow find a way to promise to see each other again even as they’re separated in the finale, is the reason why. Kairi indirectly serves as the prime motive in CoM too, with Sora’s memories reworked to replace Kairi with Namine. And while she shares the role of motivation with Riku in KH II, Sora is still mindful of her throughout the game, even slipping into romantic thoughts at least twice.

Now, lest you think I have nothing but praise for the early games in the series: in those games as in the later ones, Kairi is still underdeveloped as a character. She is basically there as the love interest and little more. Being a lifelong huge sucker for first love/young love subplots in fiction, I’ve been taken by Sora and Kairi’s relationship since my first playthrough, but it works as well as it does almost entirely because of Sora. Sora is developed as a character throughout the games, as well as being the protagonist and the player character. Because he is such a charming and likable character, and because he cares so much about Kairi, that carries over to the audience, or at least this member of it. It would be a stronger relationship if Kairi were more developed as a character, which is all the more reason to do so.

But even if you accept their relationship remaining on the level of “hero and love interest,” there’s been a terrible case of neglect since KH II. It wouldn’t be a factor in BbS, naturally, but by leaving Kairi out of nearly all of Coded and DDD, the relationship drops out of the story. Cut to KH III, which does want to present that relationship as being as important as it’s ever been, and the long dry spell is felt. It doesn’t help that KH III is so densely packed with other material, much of it devoted to Organization XIII either taunting Sora or sniping at each other. Several of the Disney films selected offer parallels to Sora and Kairi’s relationship that aren’t noted, even as previous games did so and this one draws parallels in other relationships.

Which brings us back to the cutscene in the Badlands. Sora’s desperation to save Kairi is evident, and an earlier cutscene where they finally share paopu fruits was adorable, but neither has the same impact as they would have had if Kairi had remained prominent as a character, and if her relationship with Sora had remained relevant in previous games. It speaks to how well that relationship was presented in the first three games that it can still exert some sway over the heartstrings despite that, but there has been real damage done to one of the central bonds of the series by the neglect, and nowhere is that damage more apparent than when the story stresses Kairi more than anyone else when the Demon Tornado swallows up the party.

Now, I left off just as Sora emerged in Olympus after literally putting himself together, so perhaps some of this will be addressed by the end of the game. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. And in the meantime...that whole Final World sequence was trippy as all hell and those Soras damn hard to catch, but I loved it. Absolutely no idea what that cat thing is supposed to be though.