#if sora gets mixed up between riku and yozora and he has to figure it all out in his dreams--

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

kh3 spoilers:

This is purely part of my brainrot about the next game. Regarding Sora and Naminé. (links to my other two rambles)

Because— “Thank Naminé.”

Thank Naminé.

I know in-game, they made that note in the journal a year ago. And that since waking up, it hasn’t been that long between Kh2 and Kh3. So for sora to be holding onto that, to keep that in the back of his mind, isn’t completely out of the question.

But if i can clown for a moment—just for a second. In the grand scheme of things, why is sora holding onto that? Why is the /game/ holding onto that? So prevalently?

I’ve spammed about this before but i just have to wonder 😭😭😭

I’m guessing sora wants to thank naminé for helping him with his memories (or at least, telling him the truth after she fucked them up lol).

But like. Aside from just fixing his memories and telling him the truth ig, what else did namine do for sora? or what was she trying to do?

By telling sora the truth about how she had replaced his precious person, she consequently also had to tell him he’d have to remember—figure out—for himself, /who/ his precious person truly /was/ the whole time.

CoM as a whole had the theme/purpose of making Sora question himself and his memories. But naminé’s existence and actions in the story are what really focus this theme. She /embodies/ the purpose of the game: making Sora question who his precious person really is.

So when i think about how “Thank Naminé” has been carried over for so long—in kh2, in recoded, in kh3–

and when i think about CoM and its semi-unaddressed theme of “True Memories”—(oml i’d have to make a whole separate true memories post)

i have to wonder. if sora regains the memories of what naminé told him at the end of CoM. if naminé’s final message to him (plus whatever other factors come into play) are part of what help sora figure out, realize, who his precious person was all along—

if she ends up helping him in this way—

like could that end up being part of what he thanks her for??? i just—thank naminé lingers in the game and it lingers in my mind

[davidmann95]

Your power is mine: thoughts on Kingdom Hearts’ newest, oddest character

Finished Final Fantasy XV over the weekend. Mixed feelings to say the least, but it does give me an excuse to talk about Kingdom Hearts again, specifically this weirdo:

And how it feels like most of the people discussing Yozora and trying to figure out what his deal is are missing half the point. Yes, there’s the apparent connections to Sora and Riku, and there’s his meta association with Noctis and the entire real-life corporate backstory there intertwining with the in-game narrative to an unknown extent. But when he’s discussed as some kind of fusion of Sora and Riku, or a literal reincarnation of Noctis, or that Verum Rex might end up a real game, or something similarly straightforward in terms of “he’s going to be a very important central character going forward”, the ideas or at least the tone of how they’re presented seem to miss an absolutely critical component of how he was introduced to us, in a way that shapes not only him but by extension the entire future of the franchise and its thematic concerns:

We aren’t just supposed to be surprised he’s important because he’s real where we thought he wasn’t. We’re supposed to be surprised because he’s introduced to us as a self-evident gag character.

Not that we’re not supposed to take him seriously where it counts: it’s clear he has an important role going forward and is a force to be reckoned with. But no matter what deep, foreboding connections to the Keyblade and Master of Masters may lie within his backstory that may determine the fate of more universes than one, he will never not have had the hilariously inauspicious beginning of being a toy played by Rex the Dinosaur. He doesn’t even have the dignity of being introduced as a game on one of the plot-heavy original worlds! He’s a throwaway gimmick to spice up one of the filler Disney segments, literally a child’s plaything.

Even before we learn the context he’s being presented in...well, look at him. He’s like Riku, who’s cooler than Sora, and Noctis, a Final Fantasy character and therefore cooler than all this Disney stuff, but also he has a LASER SWORD and a CROSSBOW - that are clearly functioning as cool future tech instead of dopey magical powers - and his eyes are MYSTERIOUS MISMATCHING UNNATURAL COLORS and he fights GIANT ROBOTS with a dude in a fedora in a city straight out of the REAL WORLD to save a helpless lady/prize: truly, let no mistake be made, he is VERY, VERY SERIOUS INDEED, AND ALSO, RAD. TO THE MAX. He’s every attempt at reframing contemporary Final Fantasy as slick and modern and cool dialed up and up and up until the tone breaks, without the barest hint of self-awareness even as it advertises its action figure tie-ins. I don’t think that his little Keyblade pattern on his jacket being near-impossible to spot unless you’re looking for it is just to preserve the surprise, but also because the sight of the big keys with the Mickey Mouse logo on them would be anathema to his entire vibe, so important as it may be it must be squirreled away where it can’t make him look dumb. Heck, when Dylan Spouse announced on Twitter he was playing this major character in a childhood favorite franchise of his, surely knowing more than we do about Yozora, his description of the part was “I have lived out my edgy JRPG character fantasies...I even got to say ‘Sorry, but I don’t lose.’” We’re supposed to receive him off the bat as Square Enix, and more specifically Tetsuya Nomura, poking fun at themselves, going ‘yes, we suppose this is all getting to be a bit much, isn’t it?’

And then he enters the story for real.

Obviously he’s much more than a joke now, but the idea of him as something off, something that doesn’t fit in these games, endures. His episode isn’t just in a modern cityscape but skinned in the graphics of the grittier, more detailed style of the Pirates of the Caribbean world meant to evoke photorealism rather than the look of the rest of the game. He interferes with the gameplay in ways no other enemy does, stealing your items and weapons (we’ll get back to that). When he casts you into a void to be attacked by the mechs, it’s not a pure empty white but a mass of abstract polygonal space, evocative of the visuals of early game development. What details we do get of his backstory frame him as a counterpart to Sora on a parallel journey all his own, but the associations with his other source material in Noctis are considerably more...cutting. Credit to @kitsoa, whose own extensive musings on Kingdom Hearts’ increasingly overt metafictional concerns brought to my attention the obvious parallel: that Yozora being changed ‘beyond recognition’ with his heart replaced by another’s is a reasonable, albeit scathing description of Noctis’s revised character in the shift from the Nomura-helmed Final Fantasy Versus XIII to the largely overhauled Final Fantasy XV (and by the same token, the Nameless Star’s identity being stolen comes across as a shot at Versus XIII’s Stella Nox Fleuret being entirely replaced by Lady Lunafreya. Who, by sheer coincidence, would have been corrupted in planned but cancelled DLC into a monster of darkness).

While the comparisons to his source material are not only intentional but textually overt - his introduction as a real boy is literally scored to the FFXV theme music - so is the distancing from that material, given that if Nomura simply wanted to use Noctis the very premise of Kingdom Hearts as a series could have allowed him to use Noctis, and even change him to fit his original vision however he wished given the design and backstory changes to the other Final Fantasy characters involved. Yozora has a distinct role in which he’s still meant to represent that tone and aesthetic, and all signs point to that being because as that representation, he hardly seems an endorsement. He’s a parody, offered up in a demeaning context and tangled up narratively in real-life creative bitterness before being placed as an antagonist, however well-meaning (though keep in mind every secret boss of his kind before - other than Julius, I suppose - went on to become an endgame boss later on), in the player’s path. He may not be a villain, but all signs seem to indicate he’s a figure to be regarded as a contrast to the heroes.

And it’s in that role as a contrast that I have my own theories about what his deal ultimately is, thematically if not plotwise.

For those who saw this in the Kingdom Hearts tag and aren’t superhero fans, that’s Superdoomsday, introduced in Grant Morrison’s run on Action Comics about 8 years ago. One among many takes on an ‘evil Superman’ from a parallel universe, the twist with his world is that rather than a survivor of Krypton, he is literally the materialized concept of Superman - imagined by his reality’s Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen, who created a machine which could bring ideas to life - that when sold to a corporation was reimagined in service of wide public appeal into an all-powerful, uncompromisingly brutal monstrosity clad in armor somewhere between an iPhone, 90s Rob Liefeld battle gear, and Nazi regalia, who ultimately journeyed into the multiverse to stalk and kill other incarnations of Superman, seeing them as competition to his domination of the ‘market’. “The curse...of Superman...” murmurs the dying Kent of that world, “...he becomes anything you want...him...to be...our world...wanted that...”

Yozora is...probably not exactly a 1:1 to that. But as a counterpart to Sora, it absolutely seems as if the main factor by which he contrasts him is that he’s ostensibly the sleeker, edgier model, new-and-improved. He reworks Sora’s story arc and aesthetic into something theoretically cooler and more palatable, steals his power, ‘saves’ him by sealing him away to presumably fight in his stead and thereby take his place as the lead. He is the protagonist so many feel Kingdom Hearts has needed for years, the somber AMV-ready Secret Movie tone and aesthetic stepping into center stage at last rather than maintaining a sunshiney Disney-esque child hero lead to anchor the assorted conspiracies and horrors of much of the rest of the tale. The manner in which he is presented as to make metatextuality an in-universe concern (to call back to Grant Morrison again, his next work after Action Comics was Multiversity, where a major plot point was that the events of parallel universes were unwittingly documented in each others’ pop culture; in that case comic books, in here video games) for Kingdom Hearts to explore in the next main entry is I believe so as to ask what, in fact, Kingdom Hearts as a series should be; is it a Disney series with some incidental Final Fantasy stuff in it? A Final Fantasy spinoff with some Disney elements cluttering it up that should maybe be discarded as it grows up? Something all its own? Is it time for Kingdom Hearts to get Serious? Even if the Kingdom Hearts as imagined by a marketing executive vision of Verum Rex isn’t what’s next, what is, as things get darker and that vision is now part of the narrative whether for good or ill?

So yeah it looks like Kingdom Hearts IV is Kingdom Hearts vs. its own Gritty Realworld! Urban Fantasy AU fanfiction for the soul of the series, and I am extremely here for it.

[nadziejastar]

I’m pretty sure there might be parallels between Isa/Saïx and that anime doll in the Toy Story world. What tipped me off was the blue hair and green eyes, rabbit ears, and the cutscene afterwards stating it was possessed and attacked its fellow toys against its own will. Which makes it all the more jarring considering how much control Saïx and the other Norts all seem to have in KH3.

Angelic Amber

An unlucky denizen of Galaxy Toys that was possessed by a Marionette.Unpredictable and erratic, her moves made her a maddening foe to face. After Sora and his team freed her from the Marionette’s ill influence, she bore a melancholy expression.

I didn’t make the connection until you pointed it out, but you’re right. The doll does bear an uncanny resemblance to Isa, lol. The hair color, the eye color, the eye shape, nose and lips. Even the rabbit ears. I suppose gothic lolita fashion is the doll equivalent of Organization XIII robes, too. And I mean, hey. Yozora does look like Riku. The characters even admit it. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the doll was inspired by Isa as a reference to what he was supposed to be. Maybe as an inside joke on the part of the development team.Buzz was afraid they’d wind up like her. Forgetting themselves and attacking each other. Which he did.

“The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.”

–Lewis Carroll

Ya know, now that I think about it, it’s very common to see Alice dressed up in that kinda gothic lolita fashion in anime art. Alice in Wonderland is often used as a literary example of a “Lower World” journey in shamanism: she fell down the rabbit hole and landed in a world full of mysterious creatures and strange experiences. If taken allegorically, all the elements a shaman might encounter in the Underworld are represented during her adventure; from puzzles, to transformations, to guides and guardians and the journey itself – finding the white rabbit. 

Alice: Oh, whatever am I going to do?

Sora: Something wrong?

Alice: Yes! I can’t remember anything–not even my name!

Sora: That’s awful! And strangely familiar… Have we met?

Alice: Oh, I do hope so! Then you can tell me my name.

Sora: Your name is… Alice!

Alice: Alice… Yes, yes, that’s it! Oh, thank you! Now, if only I could remember everything else…

All these elements represent the astral world she’s journeying through. It’s very similar to the Realm of Sleep. I think that’s why Wonderland was chosen as a world in 358/2 Days and Re:Coded. So it’s possible that the doll is not only based on Isa, but an “Alice in Wonderland” version of him. It mixes Alice, who is in a strange dream world, with the White Rabbit design.

Sora: What did you do to him!?

Young Xehanort: I thought I made it clear. I am testing the strength of their bonds. In this world, toys have hearts. And those hearts come from a powerful bond. So what happens when those bonds are stretched to their limit? When they are worlds apart, can cloth and plastic hold onto their hearts? All I needed was a wedge to widen the divide—someone like you to fill them with distrust and doubt. And that chasm you created can be filled with a vast darkness. Witness it for yourself.

The possessed version even has orange eyes. It’s kinda sad that this doll does a better job representing the whole idea behind Isa’s character than the canon depiction. Because that is exactly what Isa was turned into, like all vessels. A doll/puppet for Xehanort’s heart and mind. It’s SO stupid how they were all given free will in KH3. By far one of the worst plot decisions that game made IMO. It completely ruined all that was interesting about the Seekers of Darkness. Isa would have been the first successful vessel, other than Terra and Braig. Terra put up a fight, and Braig was willing. I think Isa was the first vessel he created by turning them into an empty shell without a sense of self first. So, the doll being designed like Isa would make perfect sense.

And I swear, for someone who was allegedly in complete control of himself, Saix sure does have some of the blankest expressions I’ve ever seen. He’s the only Organization member in that illustration who looks so…out of it. Like, his eyes look totally glazed over. It’s just like how Terra looked after he became a vessel. Like there’s nobody home. Even in the final battle, Isa just looks like he’s so unaware of himself. Which is actually what happens to berserker warriors. They are said to fight in a trance-like state. And when people are put under severe enough stress, their fight or flight mode kicks in, and they can enter a berserk state where the parts of the brain that control the sense of self shut down. But I’m doing a separate post on that. I think it’s relevant to the experiments.

Randall: But negative energy? Especially sadness? Give ‘em something that really breaks their little hearts, and they’ll stay sad forever. We’ll never have to worry about energy again.

It’s funny. All the Disney worlds in KH3 have such a strong thematic connection to the Xehanort Saga, but they still wound up feeling totally irrelevant. I think Nomura had all of these plans for how they would be connected to the actual story, but their implementation never amounted to anything more than half-baked ideas. You’ve got Young Xehanort who shows up in Galaxy Toys. And his interest in toys is because they are empty puppets, which is how he wants his vessels to be. And he’s experimenting on them, testing their bond.

Vanitas: My heart is made of just one thing. And the Unversed collected enough screams and sadness from those children to reconstruct it.

Then there’s Vanitas in Monstroplis, who was using negative emotions to build his heart. I found it really weird that there would be all of this talk about how the new Organization was figuring out the perfect way to get a heart to fall to darkness in the worlds of KH3. Which is what is necessary to create a vessel and presumably what Xehanort was trying to do. Yet, it wasn’t even necessary since there were so many people lining up to join the New Organization completely voluntarily. And how can anyone become a vessel for Xehanort’s heart and still be trying to atone? Like Vexen and Saix. You either have to fall to darkness yourself, or you have to have no sense of self to be a suitable vessel. If Saix and Vexen had altruistic intentions, then I highly doubt they’d have enough darkness to sustain Xehanort’s heart. Shit makes NO sense.

🦆🦢🦜Anyways, this is not in response to this question. Just something in general that doesn’t deserve its own post. I wish people would stop telling me to use “Read More” text breaks, LOL. I do! Apparently they don’t show up on certain mobile apps. Not my fault. Blame Tumblr. 🦉🦅🐦

[matthew-niverse]

KINGDOM HEARTS 3 ENDING (HEAVY SPOILER WARNING) THIS GAME IS AMAZING!!!

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS WATCH OUT SPOILERS SERIOUSLY SPOILERS

I can’t show pictures in this blog so I don’t end up spoiling anyone too busy to be playing it. (Sorry Mr. Hogan but you gave Diego Velasquez the same grade for having no pictures)

Anyways, Kingdom Hearts 3 ended as I expected. Most of the characters would have their triumphant revolution, except there would still be one more threat on the horizon. After all, Tetsuya Nomura wanted this game to be the end of Xehanort’s story, but not the series as a whole. Gladly, Sora will continue to be the main protagonist of the series! Hooray! But now, who knows when the next Kingdom Hearts game will come out. Square Enix is desperately trying to work on the Final Fantasy VII remake, which they promised that information on that would be delivered after the release of Kingdom Hearts 3. Who knows how long THAT is going to take to ever be completed. Until then, we’ll likely not get anything else Kingdom Hearts related. HOWEVER, there will be free DLC added to Kingdom Hearts 3 soon, likely adding things that the past “Final Mix” versions of Kingdom Hearts games had in Japan. I expect new bosses and areas. But who knows, maybe even an additional world! Perhaps even a continuation that expands on how the game ended! But back to the task at hand. How did the game end? It was absolutely wild. Sora and the gang have put a stop to Xehanort, and many of the characters can finally relax and live their new lives. It’s beautiful and heartwarming. But during the final battle, Kairi was killed. Thankfully, Sora has the power to bring her back, thanks to the Power of Waking and the unbreakable connection that they share. However, as Mickey said, “The Power of Waking isn’t to go chasing hearts around.” Sora can easily get trapped in another realm while diving through them trying to save Kairi’s heart. As the ending theme song plays, Sora and Kairi are seen on the Destiny Island’s tree. Kairi was saved! But slowly, Sora’s figure disappears as a tear rolls down Kairi’s eye. SORA IS GONE! *Dead Crab Rave Meme* But is he really? In the Secret Ending of KH3, Sora wakes up in Shibuya, the setting of 2007’s “The World Ends With You.” While Riku wakes up in the world of “Verum Rex,” a mockup of a Square Enix game that served as just a joke in the Toy Story world visit. This “fictional” fictional game is a reference to “Final Fantasy Versus XIII,” a game that Tetsuya Nomura was excited to work on, but it was eventually turned into Final Fantasy XV, a game that Tetsuya Nomura was probably disappointed with. The next Kingdom Hearts game will likely feature Square Enix based worlds. This is exciting news, as Kingdom Hearts 3 had a noticeable lack of Final Fantasy in it. Perhaps Nomura is still unhappy with Final Fantasy. Anyways, Sora must have gotten into some trouble to save Kairi and was dropped into Shibuya. Riku must have gone looking for him, ending up in Verum Rex. It’ll be strange for him and Yozora to meet each other. They look practically the same! Parallels to the meeting between Roxas and Ventus. With the still unknown contents within the Black Box, the mysterious Subject X mentioned by Lea and Isa in the Secret Reports, as well as the secret motives behind the foretellers and the Master of Masters. AND THE FACT THAT XIGBAR IS ACTUALLY HECKIN’ LUXU? Kingdom Hearts still has quite a bit to wrap up. I was expecting to be over, but I guess deep down I still didn’t want the series to end. Hope the next Kingdom Hearts comes quick! Though I don’t think Square Enix is the right company to be asking that.

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

a tiny new addition to my Data Sora&Riku in riku’s phone crack fics. this one isn’t totally crack tho smh. The paragraph breaks don't always indicate a change in speaker, bc I'm a little shit like that, so oops if it's impossible to tell who's speaking when.

ao3 Summary: Very short interaction between Riku and Data Riku, regarding Sora's memory loss. Issue is, which one?

~<~>~

"Hey."

Riku looked down at his phone on his lap, then away again.

"It's not the end of the world."

"Sora forgot me."

"Sora forgot me, too."

"I know. You're me, from back then."

"But I'm not you. Have you forgotten? Sora and I had our own adventure in the datascape back home."

Vague recognition entered Riku's eyes, for only a second.

"When all was said and done, I told everyone that the journal, and all of its data, would be reset. And it was. Everyone in the datascape, everyone Sora and I had met, even Sora himself—they all forgot."

Riku frowned, but suddenly his eyes focused and snapped to Data Riku's. "They?"

"I didn't. But I told everyone that I would. I told Sora I would. And seeing him, talking to him, being with him, knowing he'd forgotten all that we'd been through—"

Data Riku took a deep breath.

"I was so scared. I knew Sora had grown a heart. But we lived in a world of data. When data is erased, you can't just 'remember' it. It's gone."

A breath.

"I thought Sora's memories would be gone, too. But Sora came through."

Data Riku looked into Riku's eyes with purpose. "Sora always comes through."

Riku took in a shaky breath and slowly leaned back, resting on the bench. He slowly breathed out. His eyes glistened, but there was hope in them nonetheless.

"Yeah." Both Rikus had to smile at the thought of Sora. "That's how he is."

~<~>~

jotted this down bc i CAN'T get enough of amnesiac sora oml. this is kinda working with the idea that sora's memories of riku have been lost or mixed up. (how did riku find out? hell if i know. if sora's dreaming while in stasis, and riku dove in or something and realized someone had photoshopped him out of sora's key memories, ummm)

i also can't get enough of Data Riku and his FUCKING PARTITIONS. little fucker just resets the whole journal and then pretends it's completely normal to just NOT be reset, himself. and so does everyone else (in-game lol) and it pisses me off! wtf!! whyyyyyy (edit: data riku did eventually become reset too but towards the actual end of the game)

and Riku's line about "the me back then" refers to Riku assuming Data Riku has the "memories" or data of the aftermath of Chain of Memories. And Riku is also assuming Sora's memories of Riku must have been lost in that time, too, though we know Sora never truly forgot Riku despite everything.

UGH wHY are all the memory concepts such ANGST and they are RIPE for the soriku plucking, fr. i'm TELLING youuuuu all that shit from CoM and recoded is gonna come for our soriku asses with a VENGEANCEEE