#invidiatech evil moments

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still cannot believe that this is literally how it goes in khdr re: xehanort first leaving destiny islands.

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misc aside: jokerfying lightly because i am like 90% sure the spacetime anomaly researcher in That One Cutscene of missing link beta is related to vidar from dark road.

like. somebody else has noticed this yes? please tell me i'm not the only person going 'oh wow huh' considering nomura's entire 'yeah missing link is a lot about legacy stuff/keyblade wielder politics/etc'

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People not mentioning the Crown Armor (it's not even on the Main kh wiki's entry for keyblade armor...?) due to it being a limited run item in like 2017 despite it being /really/ interesting and imo really cool is such a shame.

also will admit the reward Phrases being what they were for these according to khinsider+the khux specific wiki is also... hm. hm!!

also i think it's notable for being the closest thing we have to a direct analogue to xehanort's specific keyblade armor, what with the crown motif

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always thinking about how scala ad caelum has ads for phonographs + what looks like older models of sewing machines up all over and how ventus in bbs has a fucking boombox or something similar. people always forget that those dark road kids are living in a taisho era equivalent from all appearances while daybreak had computers and the implications of that but just know. with the progression of time as it is though, i think eraqus (old man) has a really beat up sound system that still has a tape player in the center in whatever his room in land of departure is.

[eraqus voice] the gramophone and the mechanical sewing machine are still rather new...

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... is young xehanort's keyblade based on a peacock feather?

'what do you mean by that' the top of it. it has a 'feather' pattern, and ends in a dark blue center surrounded with a golden-brown color, and the parts leading up to it look like an abstract representation of segments of the feather of a bird.

(this uses a trimmed peacock feather b/c it's hard to find good images of single untrimmed feathers :V)

it's basically a single untrimmed peacock quill with a bunch of timey stuff piled on top of it, and a handle.

'why would it be based on a peacock feather?' look up 'animals associated with the seven deadly sins and look for the entry for superbia/vanagloria. smile.

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i don’t really seek it out but imo if there’s a mlp crossover for kh that involves the wayfinder trio, and terra and spike DON’T bond over their mutual love of eating gemstones, what’s the point.

‘wasp what are you talking about’

people can say ‘but it’s rock candy, /surely/’ all they want, that description says GEMSTONES. not ‘rock candy’. the japanese name is 'jewel vanilla'. it says 'chew carefully'. like it or not he is eating rocks.

and i can guarantee spike would fuck up a vanilla glitz. i know it. i know it's true.

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the crucial fact and key misstep they made when designing the x-blade it they made the green parts look edible. i want to bite it.

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haha. teehee ^_^

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but yeah the eventual thing is certain data true organization members (ones like xion, riku replica, you get the idea. notable outlier in this pattern is Young Xehanort, who is decidedly not friendly/never been friends/particularly buddy-buddy with sora but also serves best to illustrate the upcoming gimmick's mechanics/reasoning behind it) becoming temporary party members and the third gimmick is this:

There are methods to make the game's power-scaling closer to a normal kh games, and all of those methods relate to deliberately feigning ignorance about lore. you can also make the powerscaling even more steep by getting increasingly specific lore facts correct in dialogue options. this mechanic is laid out explicitely in a tutorial so people don't get the effects mixed up, and the specific incident to outline this is /specifically/ a nort-related fact to better illustrate /why/ it works like that (since the entire 13 xehanorts premise).

The upside to these power scalings is your guest party members? Your guys who aren't Data-Sora and Data-Riku? really strong, and will actively get buffs if you continue the correct answers. They also get /extremely/ weak if you start whiffing basic facts, like 'what is the name of the islands that Sora came from?'

The in-universe reasoning for this was going to basically be a thing where the issue is the more accurate detail in agreement with each other on Cid's computer and within Jiminy's Journal, the more 'real' each data organization member gets (which simultaneously increases the risk of gaining a true heart, etc etc), with the metaphorical panes of film laying over each other to create it. by inserting fake information, you are weakening the info/slowing the rate at which it happens, but you are also basically damaging the ability for your own party members too, and also weakening any trust/affinity built up.

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I really do need to write down some of the specific weird 'writing a re:coded sequel version of remind but writing it like it's the novelization of a version that's a game with baffling mechanics related to power scaling/difficulty' situation I have stuck in my damn brain. The thing is the thing requires outlining + specifically outlining vis a vis : worlds visited order and the locations of Specific Plot Beats, and as I think i've mentioned here before writing is my nemesis and makes me ill.

For a super basic plot synopsis without spoilers for some of the specifics the concept was basically uh. (this is actively split up into parts because as it turns out i have a lot to say).

Initial section of story is post3 but pre the timescale of ReMind and MoM, and addresses that the journal still exists and addresses a thing that a lot of fics that remembers them don't (that textually, it's not just data-sora who forgot those events but likely has them etched in heart, the entire thing in many nomura interviews is that Data-Riku forgets in a similar way once the message abt Xion + Wayfinder is conveyed. bottom text.). It specifically actually uses them in a 'hey did you notice/feel anything weird when Sora (irl) disappeared' questioning by Riku and Mickey, and this planting the seed of. Upcoming things, because those bonds are /still/ etched and Data-Riku and Data-Sora would still have the feeling of being friends w/ Mickey and stuff.

ReMind starts with 3 Riku starting the damn boss rush but after a certain point when the computer is unattended, Data-Riku and Sora getting involved, with reasonings for that being those bonds to Mickey and Donald and Goofy still echoing, and a Castle Oblivion style 'I had a feeling that maybe if we came here, we could help' situation.

Hey don't worry that I'm going to keep alluding to KH2 and RE:COM in this metaphor, ok? :)

In Cid's words, the Data True Org stuff's composition is as follows: "This computer, the one in Twilight Town, and the one in the castle are all connected to the same network. They sent me all of their data and I merged it with the stuff I already had".

The castle in this statement is likely Radiant Garden. Later story stuff would actually dig deeper into /where specifically/ all the data is from in terms of where the castle and twilight town got their info, because if you take the Data Greetings serious, Scala Ad Caelum is just. In there, huh.

Data-Riku and/or Data-Sora enter one of the boss arenas, and start fighting. This is a terrible decision. For some. Later things. This being Young Xehanort's boss arena /specifically/.

The overlap of Jiminy's Journal Info (which /already/ has been shown to be able to reveal cutscenes/events that Sora was not there for as a weird world-memory thing (Riku interacting with AnsemSOD after island's fall, Riku at the clock tower in Neverland with Kairi, etc) and the info collected from Cid's vast repository of data results in something /extremely/ bad happening that initially just looks like generalized errors but quickly devolves into Bug Blox, and DS and DR being separated on two different levels.

It's at this point IRL Riku gets back. Bottom text.

Riku basically acting as mission control/the framing device from this point, with other characters coming in as things get worse and worse.

Hey remember the funny messages Data-Riku sent to Mickey. Riku does start getting those, but all they ever say is 'GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT' or 'LEAVE'. This is fine.

As a note, whoever they were fighting in the boss arena has frozen in a single place from the moment that the crashes/errors/bugs started occurring, with the boss arena visually being in the 'hub area' for what this game would be, with the boss arena basically crashed down and half submerged in the weird circuit bg and other miscellaneous debris from various worlds. Visually the hubworld riffing off End Of The World, with it becoming less luttered/chaotic at certain story beats/world completions.

Data-Riku landing in said hub world, with a framing device being Riku and Cid basically gmod prop spawning in a gummiphone so they can see info/data, since the camera is focused on Data-Sora by default. Comedy routine of Data-Riku selfie with a fucking damn frozen data greeting True Organization member. Cutscene dialogue where Riku and Cid talk about what the hell could have happened.

… Oh hey. Where did the player-controlled KH3! Sora go in all of this mess, since Riku was using that initially to interact with the garden of assemblage computer stuff. Oh well, probably got lost in the initial errors. It's fine. Surely.

Meanwhile Data-Sora is doing basic plot progression stuff in Data versions of some of the Disney Worlds, eventually meeting up with Data-Riku in the hub area. In my gamer-brain where I'm treating this as a game with mechanics, hub world meetup point would explain some of the initial base mechanics for people not accustomed to coded, and level selection. The gummi-phone mechanics now being used as a way to detect certain types of errors/bugs/reveal them, as well as for sections of game that are essentially Somniums. Info split between puzzle gameplay tutorials being explained via Data-Riku, and combat-related tutorials explained via Data-Sora, which is why they're split up initially so it's not a bunch of tutorials all at once.

There is a third game mechanic, but we haven't reached it yet. Smile.

Game tutorials and cutscenes slowly revealing something Very Specific about the game-scaling: Data-Riku and Data-Sora... were /not/ ready for this; the two of them are based on the Riku and Sora of /multiple games ago/, they can fight blox and stuff fine, but even the initiating cutscene implies they would have lost /horribly/ if the fight had gone on uninterrupted, and it unclear if if they would have uh. lived. Unlike the kh3 data sora, there's an issue.

Riku wanted them to leave/quit and let him just handle it, Data-Sora and Data-Riku point out that the way Riku was interacting with that data world is gone.

This conversation happens in the Hub World, and specifically mentions how Data-Riku can make portals to and out of the datascape/into other datascapes This is established early on as a thing Data-Riku still can theoretically do, despite the weird errors/glitches; outside of attacking them, whatever is going on with the system cannot intervene with Data-Riku or Data-Sora's programming, very likely because they have hearts alongside them being outside context problems.

Speaking of: yeah, the Bug Blox unlike in the previous game feel /really/ targeted, with lots of instances of stuff showing up specifically to impede progress.

But yeah, instances of true organization difficulty-wise veer into superboss territory, but in many cases they basically stick to their arenas. (some of which have basically collided into the various data worlds, puncturing through them like paper with large empty spaces and indestructible blox leading out to them. It's quite nasty, and there's this weird mixture of standard bug blox textures and the weird gummi-meaty world of chaos textures. This only gets more and more severe in the Radiant Garden and Destiny Islands sections.)

The bosses in question tend to have idle animations if left alone, typically sitting at the edge of a platform and looking out, either out into an endless abyss if one of the ones that hasn't crashed into a data worlds, or actually doing something a little bit more invested, like throwing stuff off their platforms, or straying slightly outside their arena to do something. This turns off immediately when Data-Sora or Riku are in range.

After one or two worlds are done, pretty early into the game but still with some 'game time'/plot stuff... hey so remember that super-duper frozen in place Young Xehanort? The one in the hub world and you likely have hit the 'interact' button on multiple times and probably gotten some dialogue with Data-Riku, Data-Sora, and Riku being a little bit creeped out/upset that there's just like. A dude. Yeah, that guy is gone now. It's completely unclear where he went. "Hey, Riku what do you think-" Data Riku is missing.

This is where the text limit cuts me off so. Mean cliffhanger.

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I really do need to write down some of the specific weird 'writing a re:coded sequel version of remind but writing it like it's the novelization of a version that's a game with baffling mechanics related to power scaling/difficulty' situation I have stuck in my damn brain.

The thing is the thing requires outlining + specifically outlining vis a vis : worlds visited order and the locations of Specific Plot Beats, and as I think i've mentioned here before writing is my nemesis and makes me ill.

Also, as a disclaimer: it does feature ReMind heavily, which I know is actually relatively common in re:coded aus/spinoffs, but to be very clear: the specific directions I /want/ the story to go down like.

If there /is/ another Re:Coded au/spinoff that uses the ReMind data org fights and info we get about how data-riku was chosen to protect data/information + cid's dialogue for some narrative stuff that ends in data-kairi + makes heavy usage of data young xehanort, let me know I guess, if only because I would like to see it.

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also i /will/ elaborate on the 'baldr has herissmon line in a digimon au' thing (also as a reminder: if you want to skip crossover stuff/meme posts pleeease blacklist 'invidiatech evil moments'):

... this has digimon ReArise spoilers.

Herissmon's basic digimon reference guide entry is as follows:

"It is brimming with curiosity and will lose sight of its surroundings once it finds something to fixate on, although it is also highly cautious and will make its hard, needle-like quills stand on end when it is afraid, curling up into a ball until no sign of danger remains. However, it gets very attached to those it has warmed up to, and will show them its favorite treasures that it keeps stashed in its fur. It seems to have a habit of going on guard whenever it spots a Tailmon, due to having been bullied several times in the past. Its Special Moves are attacking the opponent by shooting lightning-coated quills (Lightning Fur), and curling its body up into a ball and charging forth (Kenzan Dive)."

okay, cute! similar color scheme to hringhorn and baldr's own, and the sort of disposition we seem to know of pre hoder stuff baldr.

... THAT IS. not the only reason.

Herissmon's digivolution line is split, as many digimon partners are, into a 'good' outcome, and a 'bad' outcome at the end.

... so let's look at the bad one.

Rasenmon: Fury Mode's entry is as follows:

"A ruthless, nine-tailed Ultimate Digimon that became unable to control its power of darkness when large amounts of negative emotion data flowed in from others while it was evolving from a Perfect Digimon. It is a destroyer that gave in to its rampaging power of darkness when it finished evolving, instinctively devastating its surroundings. It suffers from inner conflict stemming from its fear of and attempts to reject the swirling negative emotions inside of itself, which gave rise to its destructive impulses and subsequently its vicious personality."

... There's actually even more stuff with ties to ReArise's story mode that would fully spoil the game but. point being is Baldr's digimon is Herissmon. definitively. absolutely.

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misc aside:

i would personally argue that a lot of the stuff that xehanort and assorted others from the xehanort bunch say about data seems like. /really/ unreliable, in the same way yen sid's statements on nobodies in kh2 are extremely unreliable?

like...

[young xehanort voice] data CANNOT dream 😡 are you stupid [young xehanort voice like, what, two days later in-canon?] puppets and replicas are okay though. puppets are fine. <-he wants to ignore the fact replicas is just data in a body with an initial fake heart put in soooo bad

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data xehanort is just a really funny concept to me because i think the idea of a fic where the like. Theming/arc words are 'is this not the 14th you wanted'? would be REALLY funny.

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also am realizing that now that i have a dedicated 'people can ignore this because it's a shitpost' tag that i can explain why i got so freaked out about a lighting error/weird coloring thing in the data fights in kh3 ReMind. because it is something that i /do/ want to write fic about still, but also i have calmed down enough to realize it's a lighting error.

OKAY so like.

as i think is obvious in some of my posts, i'm a re:coded fan. to be even MORE specific: i am a re:coded and coded fan who is Very Normal (lie) about data versions of characters, and the implications of how data characters like data-sora, data-riku/jiminy's journal, data-roxas, etc.

i am ALSO someone who will latch onto random details.

so, imagine my shock and horror, when, perchance, ReMind comes out and i watch the boss cutscenes. all well and good!

... and then i finish dark road. and i rewatch the ReMind boss fights.

and i get to the young xehanort one. and i... notice the eyes look... kind of weird, yeah? like, there's a weird similar thing going on to the thing in ddd where it's implied MX takes over or s/t? they're weirdly lit, kinda silver. definitely not gold with the way they are, anyway. I go 'oh haha, it's probably a lighting error everybody shares'.

... all the videos i can find (i sadly did have the game to test this on my own time when i was thinking about this :[ ), and literally nobody else had this lighting issue from what i could see.

...this results in me connecting dots in my head about 'and a 14th' line in KHDR. Naturally.

Especially with the super suspicious line from Cid that's like, "I must be better at this than I thought 'cause their data, it's so powerful, I can't access any of it". this is a normal thing to say about data in kingdom hearts. this is an especially cool and normal thing to say in the dlc for a game that had sora say the line "a heart can live on, even inside data."

at this point, i'm pretty sure it IS just a weird lighting error, but it's a really funny one, and one that i'm surprised other people didn't also freak out about.