#i feel i have some amount of clever analysis to give on ventus

[happyendingsong]

i finally finished bbs last night! apart from the secret episode/endings bc i didnt fuckin know you had to 100% the game on standard to get them skldfjdkkjh ANYWAY here’s some notes on ventus bc i ran out of steam to discuss the rest of the game haha, i might do terra and aqua posts later

i think bbs might be the tightest game in kh in terms of story, either this or days. everything is very cohesive, everyone’s arcs are very clear and defined. maybe that’s why i feel more critical of the things they get wrong when plenty of kh games haven’t tried going for this much narrative cohesion? but i also LOVE a ton of shit in bbs, so even with the shit i don’t like it’s really fun to engage with the whole piece critically, haha.

smth i never caught before was xehanort telling vanitas “go take what ventus owes you.” this really suggests that xehanort has been directing vanitas’ rage towards ven all this time, abusing him for years and telling him it’s ven’s fault, ven STOLE vanitas’ light and he has to get strong enough to take it back by force.

but all throughout this game vanitas has been demanding that ven join with him and together they’ll form the x-blade. not to get too vanven agenda on it but during the final ven/vanitas boss fight, vanitas’ battle quotes start sounding like marital vows: “what’s yours is mine!”, “join now with your better half.” there’s such an interesting contrast there where xehanort has clearly been training vanitas to take his rage out on ventus to try to protect himself from vanitas turning on him, but vanitas doesn’t seem to have internalised that at all.

like clearly he doesn’t fucking like ventus either lmao, and i think the novels say that vanitas inherited all of ven’s self hatred so he does actively hate ventus. but there’s such a severe leap from how xehanort has explained their relationship (ven stole vanitas’ light/wholeness) and how vanitas feels about it (ven and vanitas must join together to be whole). so maybe it’s that vanitas doesn’t see himself as a whole person, he knows he’s incomplete and empty and he’s reaching out for the only thing he thinks can fix it.

like does vanitas even want the x-blade?? does he fuckin get anything out of it?? is it literally just that he was born half and wrong and this is the only clue he has towards making himself whole? like the DRAMA, the DESPERATION, god the boys are so fucked up.

also that boss fight is my favourite fuckin fight in the game, like seeing vanitas and ventus together on the station of awakening oh my goddddddd. and they SHATTER the station, the final stage of the fight fought around the stained glass fragments in their self destruction, they’ll never be whole. and the d-link oh my FUCKING god!!!!!!!!! literally fucking gasped like we LOVE storytelling through video gameplay mechanics!!!!!!!!!!! like the meta narrative of corrupting this gameplay mechanic where you team up with your friends throughout your adventure, and now vanitas has forced his way in and you’re working TOGETHER to defeat him!!!!!!! hand in unloveable hand oh my god. it’s the most in sync ven and vanitas ever get and it’s as they’re destroying each other. and ven’s theme bleeding into the boss fight music because you the player and ven himself know that you’re killing him in this fight as well. it’s so fucking good, it’s SO fucking GOOD. might be my favourite boss fight in all of kh like the fucking LEVELS, this is so professional. maybe tetsuya nomura knows how to make a video game after all.

it’s really fucking annoying that im also rereading homestuck at the moment and babes like. kh and homestuck are unfortunately very similar, as a society we just have to come to terms with that. like ven’s arc is really reminding me of john’s, sleepy bitch disease solidarity.

anyway ventus embodies the birth by sleep theming most literally, in that he’s actually physically asleep in the end waiting for his birth by sleep and for sora to pick up all the pieces. so his narrative arc starts with him leaving home for the first time, and there’s that question the whole time of if he’s ready to leave and learn about the world, learn about his own past. ven never had a chance to ask that question himself, it was already decided by the adults in his life. he wakes up in a self discovery sense when he’s made to remember xehanort tearing him apart, and this awakening causes him physical pain like he’s screaming in agony.

so ventus has his adventure, leaving the nest for the first time and facing real dangers, and he can’t unknow this knowledge he now has. he has to fully acknowledge his mortality and ask his friends to kill him rather than allow the x-blade to be forged. he’s going on this identity quest, embracing his agency to try to save his friends, learns about these terrible truths in his past finally. just as soon as he’s learning how to be an independent person, he has to face this literal objectification where his only use is as part of a weapon. this was always his fate and he never actually had a choice, he’s been pulled along by xehanort this whole time.

the last choice he has, the only choice he can make, is to destroy himself to stop the x-blade coming together. and by the end of the game he’s an object again, this lifeless husk hidden away in castle oblivion waiting for other people to put his pieces back together again. he’s left where he started: asleep.

i forgot all the times they directly allude to ven being like a fairytale princess falling asleep. like i remembered that theme but i forgot the DIRECT visual parallels between him and snow white and aurora, it’s so sweet,,,,, i luv how intentional it is lmao, sometimes kh knows what it’s doing. so ventus falling asleep again would imply his personal development isn’t finished yet, he’s not ready for that transition into adulthood.

actually this is my tumblr post so i’m gonna dig up my thesis notes on classic disney and lesbians from last year, you are legally obliged to bear with me.

"In major life changes such as adolescence, for successful growth opportunities both active and quiescent periods are needed. The turning inward, which in outer appearance looks like passivity (or sleeping one's life away), happens when internal mental processes of such importance go on within the person that he has no energy for outwardly directed action. Those fairy tales which, like "The Sleeping Beauty," have the period of passivity for their central topic, permit the budding adolescent not to worry during his inactive period: he learns that things continue to evolve. The happy ending assures the child that he will not remain permanently stuck in seemingly doing nothing, even if at the moment it seems as if this period of quietude will last for a hundred years." (p.225)

Bettelheim, Bruno, 1991. The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales. 3rd ed. London: Penguin Books.

this book is really interesting actually, but i think bettelheim got in trouble bc he cites his child psychiatry clients throughout the book when it turned out he didn’t have any psychiatry qualifications and never had any clients LMAO? mad bitch. he goes off the rails in parts but there’s a lot of inchresting stuff in it anyway.

ANYWAY. using fairytale signifiers, i think ven’s sleep might be a bit more hopeful than i originally thought? like the game is still a tragedy, it’s a tragic outcome. but ven is after destroying himself in his quest of learning how to be a whole ass individual, so it’s gonna take some time to recuperate from that destruction of the self again. he isn’t dead, after all; he’s asleep. he can be woken up.

there’s a lot to mull over with kh3 linking sleep and death so closely, but i’d say it’s like sleep represents a death of a sense of self and taking time to heal. we see it with sora and roxas too. and the way to reestablish a sense of self and wake up is through fwiendship :) in kh, friends carry pieces of each other in their hearts and their memories. so when someone falters and loses themselves, they can be brought back through their friends believing in them and reminding them who they are.

in any other story i’d worry that ven having to rely on another heart to fix his own after having this whole half-a-person identity crisis for a game bears some ill omens, but in kh your identity really is made of your bonds with other people. you don’t exist outside all the others who came before and all the friends you made along the way. like IF you have an identity outside of your connections with other people it just doesn’t really matter, what matters is friendship bitch.

again going back to fairytale shit, eternal sleep is woken through true love’s kiss, and i think that’s true in kh as well. like kh3′s focus on acts of true love, whether it’s platonic or familial or what as long as it’s transcendental. everyone in this series loves each other very much! what a nice video game series!!