#proving that even in the first game the idea of only one keyblade is a goddamn lie they were feeding to Riku

[displacer-beasts]

Character: says false information (because they are lying, were lied to, or are ignorant of the truth)

The actual truth is later revealed

Fandom, who for some reason can't grasp the basic concept that characters don't have 100% of all information all the time:

"look at this ret con 😂😂😂"

"why did they say this when 2 games later it was changed???"

"meme about how dumb character is for not knowing this"

"OH LOOK A PLOT HOLE"

[themattress]

When did _____ jump the shark?

Because I'm a masochist, I looked through release-order cutscene compilations on Youtube to remind myself of the exact point in which Kingdom Hearts characters jumped the shark.

Sora: KH-COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

The idea of Ventus' heart becoming a part of Sora's was not a bad one, but not only is it botched by having it set up at the start by Sora's newborn heart communicating with Ventus' heart and healing it by connecting with it, this event sets the stage for "Blank Points" and its depiction of Sora as this Messianic hero who is so pure hearted that he can heal everyone's hurt, nay, is obligated to heal their hurt. Yes, it was 3D that first botched his personality, but even before that it was hard to enjoy him on the same level as before because of this.

Riku: KH-COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

Once again, a chance meeting between Terra and Riku was a good idea, but the execution proved devastating for Riku's character, as the scene completely reframes his character as this wise-beyond-his-years kid with the noble dream of venturing to other worlds to find "the strength to protect the things that matter" (protect them from what!?) This will continue to inform Riku's character going forward, and it does not work because it is at complete odds with his character beforehand, the one we saw back in the first KH who was immature and his yearning for other words - sparked only by Kairi's arrival on Destiny Islands, btw - was fundamentally rooted in selfishness. It's an overidealization that just makes Riku a bore.

Kairi: KH-COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

While Kairi's encounter with Aqua was also botched, it actually wasn't bad enough to damage her like Sora and Riku's similar encounters with members of the Wayfinder Trio were. Oh, but don't worry - "Blank Points" more than made up for that with the damage it did to her. She's only on screen for less than a minute, but what happens in that time is devastating: she smiles vacantly as Sora repeats the bullshit from the King's letter as a reason he has to leave, and in response she gives him her lucky charm again and simply says "See you soon". Um, NO. That's not Kairi; not how she was depicted and set up in KH2 anyway! Kairi had a Keyblade, she merged with Namine, she insisted on not waiting behind anymore....she even said "from now on wherever one of us goes, the other follows!" But now Nomura just pretends it never happened and rewrites her whole character into a bland love interest who won't be proactive or developed any further. No more Destiny Trio, it's just the Sora/Riku duo now.

Donald Duck: KH-COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

Goofy: KH-COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

Coded's 6th chapter was the point that game took a hard downturn in quality, which was already mixed to start with, and one of its biggest casualties was Donald and Goofy. It's difficult to explain, but something about their role in the Datascape's Hollow Bastion alongside Data Sora while actively calling back to the original KH's Hollow Bastion level really pisses me off. The game acts like it's being profound, but all its really doing is disrespecting the memory of that level's unparalleled awesomeness and cheapening Donald and Goofy's friendship with Sora by having it be so easily transferrable to a data copy who the game nonetheless insists is his own individual. While I loved seeing Sora, Donald and Goofy reunite in KH3, them and their dynamic wasn't quite the same; nowhere near as strong.

Mickey Mouse: KH-COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

King Mickey always had a serious edge to him which made him a cool character, but he was also still Mickey. That balance of whimsy and seriousness is what made him so great. But starting in 3D, the Mickey-ness gets sucked out of him and he's now a bland, serious, short-statured hero who is more or less just Yen Sid's flunky. I think the moment best cementing it is his confrontation with Master Xehanort, a guy he never interacted or even heard about in BBS but now 3D is acting like they're old rivals and Mickey is kicking himself for not realizing that of course Master Xehanort was behind everything as part of some omnipotent master plan, because it was so obvious in retrospect! And he only just got worse from there (Re:Mind excluded), with Bret Iwan painfully struggling more and more with the material he's given.

Terra: KH2-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3

In 3D, there are two scenes not too far apart from each other. One is Riku facing Ansem and out of nowhere bringing up Terra and how he still remembers him as the reason he can wield the Keyblade, the reason he wanted to go to other worlds so badly (fuck Kairi, then) and the driving inspiration behind "obtaining strength to protect what matters". And the other is the big confrontation in Organization XIII's throne room, where Master Xehanort confirms that Terra is still under his control. Together, these two scenes paint a clear picture: Terra isn't really a character anymore. He's an accessory. He's something that matters to actual characters such as his friends and Riku and Xehanort, but otherwise he's got nothing going on for himself.

Ventus: Days-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3

Ventus was a pretty iffy character to begin with, but nothing was flat-out ruining him until Union Xross came along and said "Surprise! He's actually a Keyblade wielder from the ancient past!" And as far as the mainline games go, KH3 is the one that brought that garbage into things, so it gets the nod. Ven, go play with your Chirithy and never bother us again, OK?

Aqua: BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3

Aqua was a cool character in BBS, but she didn't really have much depth or even an arc. 0.2 gave her those things, so now she's all set for greatness in KH3, right? Hahahaha, wrong! Aqua's whole shtick in KH3 is making badass declarations and then immediately getting bodied in the most humiliating ways possible. Even that depth and character arc she got in 0.2 is rendered meaningless. It's so bad that Willa Holland's already subpar vocal delivery plummets to new levels of lifelessness. So much respect for a female Keyblade Master!

Jiminy Cricket: KH-COM-KH2-Coded-3D-KH3

Jiminy discovers technology in Coded. As later seen in KH3, it was a huge mistake.

Pluto: KH-COM-KH2-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

He's just there, doing nothing. Get used to it, 'cause that's his new normal!

Yen Sid: KH2-BBS-Coded-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

In KH2, Yen Sid was just a guy giving exposition and useful items to Sora, Donald and Goofy at the beginning of their quest in Mickey's place as a favor to him since Mickey was his pupil. In BBS, we get to see Mickey being his pupil and it's said Yen Sid was once a Keyblade Master, which is a cool detail and fits in perfectly with why Sora got a second Keyblade at his tower in KH2. But starting with the secret ending of Coded, Yen Sid suddenly becomes the Big Good, the leader of the guardians of light whom Mickey actively reports to and obeys even when he isn't studying under him anymore. Worse still, he is awful at his job; foolish, arrogant and hypocritical in the most frustrating ways. He gets one cool moment in KH3, but it's not enough to redeem him, especially when MOM puts him right back in his old ways.

Maleficent: KH-COM-KH2-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

Pete: KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

The other duo that Coded's 6th chapter ruined! In just the previous chapter things had been looking fine! Pete was great, and Maleficent had an awesome entrance at the very end where she destroys Data Sora's Keyblade! But then Maleficent, following a painful joke about her not understanding the word Datascape, reveals this is part of a plan to take over Disney Castle because...she didn't get Organization XIII's castle as was implied she would in KH2, which makes her arc in that game feel pointless just like Kairi's. And then we see Pete infiltrated the actual Disney Castle, which should be impossible due to the Cornerstone of Light, which has apparently just been forgotten about. Then she and Pete initiate that awful recreation of Hollow Bastion's events, insultingly merging Riku and Kairi's roles in the process. Three strikes, they're out. And ever since their last scene added in the cutscene movie version, they've been on the same fruitless quest for the Book of Prophecies, which is doomed to failure since the new OC Big Bad is even more omnipotent than Master Xehanort!

Namine: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

OK, so on it's own, Namine's showing in Days might not have ruined her. It would just be a frustrating bit of character regression in a messily written game. But this always soft-spoken, sad and guilty-feeling, head-down and hands-clasped depiction of Namine ended up directly allowing the Data Namine we see in Coded to happen, which in turn opened up the bullshit "Thank Namine" retcon that has hounded her ever since. The poor girl deserved better.

DiZ: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-3D-KH3-MOM

"Blank Points" shows that he didn't die in the explosion that clearly killed him in KH2. It just somehow warped him to the Realm of Darkness...which is treated as the Realm of Nothingness he was banished to before even when those are different things...and he now has a black coat for some reason....and he reveals to Aqua that he put data inside of Sora that can help him heal everyone even though that makes no sense for him to have done so....and he speaks of Sora at length as if they were personally acquainted even when they never spoke to each other once....and gaaaaah, it's so stupid! If he had just remained dead, he'd have stayed a strong character and Christopher Lee's passing wouldn't have affected anything (nor would Genzo Wakayama's should the series continue with the character).

Ansem: KH-COM-KH2-Days-Coded-3D-KH3-MOM

So, let me get this straight...Ansem regained all his Master Xehanort memories (which should include that Kingdom Hearts is light, so what the fuck?) and discarded his body to travel back in time despite writing that he was doing it for the sake of knowledge. He travels back to Young Xehanort on Destiny Islands and gives him the power to travel into the future, then just stays hidden on Destiny Islands for years until it's destroyed in KH, where he also afflicts a time-traveling future Sora with some kind of curse because it was "etched" that he do so. Then later after possessing Riku and going through the Final Keyhole, Young Xehanort shows up, extracts his heart and takes it into the future where it's put into a replica body, and from this body Ansem time travels into the future so that he can attend the gathering of the "true" Organization XIII. Then after returning to the replica body, KH3 happens and he's defeated and thus returns with no memories of the future to beyond the Final Keyhole to be defeated again, still somehow not knowing that Kingdom Hearts is light....and GAAAAAAH, it's so FUCKING stupid!!! Ansem was such a great villain the way he was, why ruin that!?

Xemnas: KH-COM-KH2-Days-3D-KH3-MOM

3D strikes again in ruining an awesome villain in service of a lamer one, this time saying that Xemnas wasn't trying to claim a heart for himself and power over all hearts by becoming the supreme existence; he and the other Nobodies had hearts all along and he just lied to the others that they didn't so that they would feel empty enough to be filled with copypastas of Master Xehanort's heart when they completed Kingdom Hearts. No more tragedy and depth; Xemnas is just a bad guy working on behalf of a worse guy just like Ansem. KH3 did an admirable salvage job by suggesting that Xemnas hated being a disposable pawn to someone else and had deep self-worth issues because of it and as a result was honestly trying to become the supreme existence through harnessing the Keyblade's power (unlike Ansem, whose betrayal plan was just about surviving Master Xehanort's reset of the universe alongside a girl he supposedly cared for in his own way), but it's still not as compelling as when him being a Nobody truly meant something and when he wasn't anyone's minion.

Xigbar / Braig: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

"I'm already half-Xehanort! Except as if, I'm actually Luxu! I'm also Brain and Bragi in a certain way, both names which coincidentally sound like Braig! What's in the box, you ask? Wouldn't you like to know!" Sigh....a once interesting character, now just an irritating one.

Xaldin / Dilan: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

Lexaeus / Elaeus: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

In the newly added ending to Coded's cutscene movie version, we see Dilan and Eleaus sprawled out on the floor. They might has well have stayed that way, for what little they say and do afterward. In hindsight, it's honestly sort of a miracle Eleaus had some lines in 3D!

Vexen / Even: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3-MOM

Zexion / Ienzo: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3-MOM

I'm impressed that these two hung on for as long as they did! I guess only being major villains in COM, a game early into the series' run, before their major supporting hero role in KH3 helped with that, since their brief appearances in between never did enough to tarnish them. But unfortunately, their roles in KH3 were also very conclusive ones, so seeing them again, alongside their should-be-dead master, in MOM immediately afterwards sours me on them.

Saix / Isa: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

Axel / Lea: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

The decision to put young Isa and Lea in Radiant Garden in BBS in place of young Squall and Cloud was a horrible one which somewhat negatively impacted Saix and Axel in Days and absolutely negatively impacted them in all other games. For reference, in Days it is subtly implied Saix and Axel are in the Organization for the sake of a girl they knew in Radiant Garden (a vague idea that would later be fleshed out into something worse, like with Xion), which lessens both of them. Worse still is the bullshit redemptions they go through once restored from their KH2 deaths, which is especially bad for Axel. As Lea, everything that made Axel a great character is thrown into the garbage, turning him into an unfunny comic relief who is only part of the main cast and a Keyblade wielder because of his past popularity (something he obnoxiously lampshades in KH3), with his vices either swept under the rug or dishonestly reframed as virtues. It's sad. These two excellent villains make two lousy heroes.

Demyx: COM-KH2-Days-KH3

Luxord: COM-KH2-Days-3D-KH3

Marluxia: COM-KH2-Days-3D-KH3

Larxene: COM-KH2-Days-3D-KH3

Just like with Ventus, Union Xross bullshit popping up in KH3 ruins these characters. They're still entertaining if you just ignore it, but after all is said and done you just know that the series is going to continue on with it and it's not a pleasant prospect at all, especially for Luxord.

Roxas: COM-KH2-Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

Like with Namine, the disappointing depiction of Roxas in Days would not have single-handedly ruined him. It's how it carried over into subsequent games that did the real damage, as for some reason the game and its depiction of Roxas really caught on in Japan and thus there was high fan demand for Roxas' tragedy to be reversed and for he and his friends to have a happy ending. That's why the next few games all included Roxas in his stupid black coat and referenced the pain of losing his stupid friends whom he stupidly eats ice cream with all the damn time, and culminated in his nonsensical resurrection in KH3 that Nomura has personally confessed was done out of fan pandering. Oh, but he wasn't alone on that....

Xion: Days-BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

And we're three-for-three with a character whom was problematic in Days but wouldn't have jumped the shark if that had been it for them; in this case the biggest character in that game. If the series had just stuck to how Xion's fate was described in Days, which was being as dead and gone as is humanly possible to be, then she'd still be looked upon as an effective tragic character. Instead, we just kept on seeing her in game after game against all logic, almost always with some sad look on her face to the point her tragedy became a comedy, culminating in her nonsensical resurrection for fan pandering alongside Roxas in KH3.

Master Xehanort: BBS-3D-KH3-MOM

No further comment. We all know this one.

Young Xehanort: BBS-Coded-3D-KH3

Yes, this character actually jumped the shark in his debut. Why? Because he fundamentally made no sense. Not only did him coming from Destiny Islands and wanting more than just his small world lazily rehash Riku from the original KH which in turn negatively affects both Terra and Riku's characters, but he also makes both Master Xehanort and Terra-Xehanort feel superfluous. Why not just have this character be the villain who ends up with amnesia and becomes Ansem's apprentice? Why have him at all if you're just going to age him up only to possess a younger character's body? And if you're going to do that, then why still include this character in the plot as a time-traveling minion of his older self!? And if you're going to do that, then why then give us an even younger version who got off Destiny Islands earlier only to pointlessly return and completely retcon all the other Xehanorts' fundamental motivations!?

Terra-Xehanort: KH2-BBS-3D-0.2-KH3-MOM

Same deal as with Terra and Ansem. 3D turned Terra-Xehanort into just an accessory; a minion to Master Xehanort even though that defeats the whole purpose of his existence.

Vanitas: BBS-3D-KH3

Vanitas came SO CLOSE to never jumping the shark. But then Re:Mind just had to throw in a new scene where he references the Union Xross bullshit retcon of him being an "ancient being of darkness" who wasn't born from Ventus' heart at all! Thanks, Nomura, I hate it.

Riku Replica / Dark Riku: COM-3D-KH3

Riku Replica was good as just a character in COM. The idea 3D foreshadowed of an evil version of him being a part of the "true" Organization XIII made a lot of sense, and I would have been fine with it. But KH3 wrecked it by also including the original version of the Riku Replica, even though he, much like DiZ and Xion, should have been irrevocably dead. And it was for no other purpose but a deus ex machina to grant Namine a body she didn't need! His evil counterpart on Xehanort's side ending up being a bland let-down didn't help matters.

Master Eraqus: BBS-KH3

Young Eraqus has way too big of a disconnect from Master Eraqus. How am I supposed to believe that this upbeat kid who is also a clever chessmaster (supposedly clever; he really just cheats) is the same person as the stern zealot whose idiotic blunders did much of the heavy lifting for Master Xehanort's evil plan in BBS? And how am I supposed to believe he and Xehanort had this super close bond when Xehanort so casually murdered him in BBS?

Hayner, Pence and Olette: COM-KH2-Days-KH3

.......................Never. They never jumped the shark at all. Who would have ever guessed: out of all characters in the series, it's these three mundane civilians who stayed consistent!

[smartzelda]

Okay for the Character ask:

Riku KingdomHearts

Ooooooh my boy

Okay okay so

First impression: So DDD was my first kh game, okay. I had seen kh crossover fanart with mha and stuff before. So when I witnessed him the first time in this game I thought Riku was cool and very pretty. Instant fav.

Impression now: Still very cool. Still fav. Now he's just much more of a dork. Pretty gay dork who seems cool on the surface but cares about his best friend. Dude has been through a lot and I love him and he's just really growing up but also finally getting the chance to just *be* instead of being forced to grow up too fast. I want great things for him and would write essays for him

Favorite Moment: Hmmmm that's a really hard one (There are just soooo many good ones). So off the top of my head I'll say...the scene in the RoD in kh3 with Mickey. I'm trying not to make everything with him about Sora, but it's just one of those scenes that both proves to us the nature of his feelings for Sora AND shows how far he's come. Sure he's still got his regrets and demons, but for a boy with so much trauma and mistakes, it's...monumental almost that the realm of darkness doesn't suffocate him. He's *healing*. He's reaching the metaphorical dawn. He's finally achieved the balance of light and dark, his past is no longer an anchot dragging him down and constantly haunting him. He's accepted who he used to be, what he did, and who he is, and in a combination of his growth and his love for Sora, it's as if no other feelings matter. He can’t be afraid, because all he can feel is love. He can’t be afraid, because this place doesn't hurt like it used to. My boy is growing and accepting things about himself, and although his arc is nowhere near over, it's a moment that helps solidify how far he's come over the series.

Idea for a story: Like, story about him? Like a fanfic? Or where I would like to see him go? Au wise I've got plenty, one of my favs in the drafts being the Barbie and the Nutcracker inspired Soriku au where Riku is the once prince turned nutcracker. Canon wise, I'd love to do some explanation on how the year where Sora was missing has affected him or even focusing on him during the year Sora was asleep. Idk. At the moment though I've been working on post canon type stuff where dude is just domestic with his husband and mostly free from the responsibilities of being a keyblade master. Idk.

Unpopular opinion: Can't say I'm too good at these because it's hard to determine if my opinions are *actually* unpopular sometimes. I guess mine is that I actually loved his Semi long look, especially at the beginning of kh3 when he was wearing his new clothes. Like obviously I'm more of a long haired Riku lover, so kh2 riku hair is more my style (although I would love him to have that kind of long hair but out of his face so it looks like he's properly caring for it), but shots of kh3 Riku semi long hair version in the realm of darkness are some of my favorites and I reject the horseshoe crab hair slander

Favorite relationship: Okay yeah this is no secret. Soriku. And in any flavor. Romantic? Check. Queerplatonic? Check. Best friends? Check. Ex best friends current angsty enemies? Check. They are versatile to so many good flavors and all I care about is that they get to be together forever, no matter the nature of their relationship. While I am a huge fan of Soriku becoming canon as long as they both get to be alive and happy with each other I could not care the nature of their relationship in canon specifically. I just want Riku to be happy.

Favorite headcanon: This is probably a dumb one, but my fav is that Riku just like could barely handle sweets until he became Sora’s dreameater. Like Terra, he's not much for sweets, but then he becomes a dreameater and has more of a sweet tooth than Sora. Riku is definitely not the only fictional character I've inflicted this headcanon on😂

[bluerosesburnblue]

I don't suppose you could explain the ending for khux for me?? i've watched it and i've been following the translated storyline for it and this ending just. does not make a ton of sense to me. i can usually figure out kh endings no problem but this time i'm just lost.

Isn't that just the state of the writing for it, where even people familiar with the series are having trouble understanding it. And, of course, the game dies as it lived: screwing over Global so we can't even compare/contrast with an official English version yet to see if it's more clear

Anyway, sure, I'll try to break it down scene by scene (Note: these aren't the actual scene titles, I just needed a way to delineate them so I made titles up)

Scene 1: The Master and Luxu

The update begins with a continuation of the past flashbacks expanding on the Case of Luxu and the Master of Masters' instructions to him. He explains that he knew that Darkness could only truly be defeated in the future, and so he made sure that Keyblade wielders would exist to fight it by recruiting many Keyblade wielders in Daybreak Town (as per the start of KHx) and then using the Dandelions to stall Darkness's takeover and give them time to make sure that the Keyblade legacy would live on. As Luxu turns to leave, though, the Master stops him with one more bit of information that he feels Luxu needs to know

He explains that back when he was younger, the being known as Darkness tried to gain the advantage in their battle by becoming incorporeal and attacking people's hearts instead of their bodies. There were 13 of these original Darkness beings, and because they lack bodies they aim to win by quantity and so created the Heartless as lesser, but more physical versions of themselves. The original 13 still haven't given up their desire to regain a physical form, however, and so they target those with strong hearts to take their bodies for themselves

The Master of Masters, knowing this and knowing that something without a physical body can't be destroyed, came up with a plan. He took in six children, his apprentices, and raised them to be a prison for Darkness. To foster light so strongly within them that Darkness couldn't possibly taint it, and then seal the strongest 7 of the 13 Darknesses within himself and his students, trapping the Darknesses inside their impenetrable hearts of light. Then, he instigated the Keyblade War. This is only my interpretation of the line, but it sounds to me like the purpose was to get the Foretellers killed in the War and the Darkness sealed inside of them along with them. How this relates to them coming back in KH3 is unclear

When Luxu asks if the War and the idea of a traitor were necessary, the Master goes on to say that the purpose of making the Foretellers believe there was a traitor was to instill negative emotions like fear and doubt in them. Darkness feeds on those emotions, and so by making sure that his students would produce them and yet not have their light tainted, he would attract Darkness into their hearts by giving it something to eat, only for it to realize that it was trapped in light that couldn't be consumed. The infighting amongst the Foretellers was bait to lock Darkness in their hearts the entire time

After that, there's only six left and so the Master chose five individuals, the Union Leaders, to be the uncorruptable lights that would house the weaker Darknesses. The final one, he would simply trap in the Data Daybreak Town

At this, Luxu flies into a rage at his master, angrily shouting that he can't possibly accept a plan that sacrifices so many people, but the Master stands up and starts talking over him. He's made it clear that he doesn't see Darkness as human, and he's seen this inhuman thing take countless lives, including people he's cared about. He doesn't believe them to be heroes, and he doesn't care. The entire purpose is just to ensure that in the end, humanity is what survives the war. He knows it's a tragedy, but for one who believes that tragedy can't be fully avoided, this is a solution that will at least save some

Luxu accepts this answer and leaves, but behind his back the Master muses on what Luxu, the traitor, needs to do. Luxu was the traitor from the lost page the entire time, given a role to take him out of the infighting so that his identity as the traitor wouldn't be discovered (or at least, that's how it seems to me considering that he needed the Foretellers to fear and doubt to attract Darkness to them)

Scene 2: Fleeing Daybreak Town

We now cut to the real Daybreak Town in the present, where Lauriam, Elrena, Ventus, and Brain have just emerged from the Data Daybreak Town into the real-world version of the lifeboat room. Daybreak Town is breaking down around them, about to be fully consumed by the aftermath of the Keyblade War which had been temporarily staved off while the Data simulation was running

Brain is attempting to enact his plan to extract all of the Dandelions from Data Daybreak Town and bring them into the real world, but he's worried that there won't be enough time to actually do it before the simulation shuts down and the real Daybreak Town is destroyed. The only thing he has time to do is get their three remaining friends (Ephemer, Skuld, and Player) out to the real world, and the only way that he can think to do this is to send Lauriam, Elrena, and Ven away to the future and to safety and then send the remaining lifeboats back into the datascape so that there's enough for the three trapped in there to use

Brain is willing to stay behind to man this operation, but he wants to ensure that at least one of the true Union Leaders (Lauriam) manages to live on in case things go wrong and save as many of them as he can, so those going to the future must be sent first. Lauriam, etching his mission to finally find Strelitzia (or even just her data) into his heart, departs with Elrena and Ven. Once they're gone, however, Brain notices someone enter the room and turns to find Luxu approaching him

Scene 3: Those Trapped in Data

We now cut to Player, Ephemer, and Skuld in the data version of the lifeboat room, contemplating how the others are doing. Just as they muse about how quiet the end of this world feels, Player turns to find that four of the remaining six Darknesses have entered the room (presumably the other two are the one sealed in Ven and the one that Luxu was fighting in the real world and who helped Maleficent, who seems to be gone by the time Brain and the others end up back in the real world)

The Darknesses, it seems, have come to politely ask the gang to open up a way out of the Data Daybreak Town for them, so that they can spread to other worlds. They don't want to fight, and obviously even if they did they'd win, so just open a gate for them to escape with already. They could always just take over Ephemer's friends and force him to watch as they rip them away until he complies

Ephemer mocks this and moves in to attack, but before he fully commits he whispers his plan to Player: he and Skuld will hold them off to buy time for Player to get into the last pod and run. To his shock, however, Player begins mimicking Darkness's speaking patterns and then goes to attack their friends. It seems that Darkness has done to Player what they did to Ven, taking them over and forcing them to act out. Player is now their bargaining chip; they'll only give Player back if Ephemer opens the gate. And since Darkness can only be defeated if it has a body, their options are to give in or destroy the possessed Player

This initiates the final boss fight against Ephemer and Skuld, Player's dearest friends who have been with them since before the war

And the duo prove no match for the Darkness-possessed Player, who taunts them about not just leaving when they had the chance. Ephemer begs his friend to stop as Player goes in to finish off Skuld, and in his desperation to protect one friend, he opens up the portal to Game Central Station and forces his fallen friend though. As it closes, Ephemer breaks down in tears, muttering apologies to the friend that he was unable to save

Scene 4: Luxu and Brain

We cut back to where we left off in Scene 2, with Luxu confronting Brain in the real lifeboat room. He introduces himself, and Brain is taken aback that one of the missing masters has finally returned. Luxu asks Brain if he's a Union Leader, and when Brain confirms that he is, Luxu then gestures to the missing pods and asks where the others are. Brain tells him that one escaped, and the other two are still trapped in the data. Luxu's confused; there should be five Union Leaders, but Brain only listed four. He asks what happened to the fifth, and Brain confirms that they were struck down

Luxu assumes that Brain is going to make his escape, but Brain denies this. They have a friend who he calls a Dandelion (even though Player did not consider themself one) who is trapped alongside the other two Union Leaders, and he intends to get all three out no matter what. Furthermore, Brain has no intention of using one of the real lifeboats. Rather, he has resigned himself to staying behind in the past and finding some way to survive the end of the world to eventually extract the rest of the Dandelions from the data as well, and wake them from their data sleep

Luxu, however, has some bad news. While normally that would be true, the Data Daybreak Town was designed to lock Darkness away. Once it's locked up, nothing will ever be able to get out of it again. If anything could get out, then Darkness would as well. It was meant to be a grave for an intangible being

Not only that, but Luxu expresses doubt that Brain has properly prepared for his friends who use the lifeboats to awaken in the future. What does Brain plan to use for mediums? Who are the memories going to come from? Brain doesn't have an answer, but he has to do this and he's willing to put his life on the line for it

This seems to earn Luxu's respect

Scene 5: The Two Who Remain

We now resume with Ephemer and Skuld in the data lifeboat room, having just sealed Player away. The two real pods that weren't used yet are digitized and sent to Ephemer and Skuld to use for their escape. Ephemer picks up the weakened Skuld and places her in a lifeboat, then looks forlornly over to the one on the other side of the room. The one meant for Player. Then he reclines back into his own pod and the two leave the Data Daybreak Town

Scene 6: "You're So Gullible"

We now join Player inside of the familiar tunnel that joined the Data Daybreak Town to Game Central Station

The four Darknesses swarm around Player, commending them for goading Ephemer into being desperate enough to open up a gateway for them, implying that Player was at least partially in control by the end of the fight. In a bizarre way, they seem to be trying to help Player as they warn them they must cast off their body if they don't want to be destroyed by the simulation shutting down

Player laughs

They ask if Darkness is always this easy to trick. After all, it can't go anywhere without a Keyblade and without a body it can't use one, either, which is why it needed one of them to open a path for it. Player turns, and locks the end of the pathway that leads to Game Central Station. And since Ephemer sealed the Data Daybreak Town end when he cast Player and the Darknesses through the portal, all five of them are now trapped in this space between worlds on the cusp of shutting down along with Data Daybreak Town. This was Player's plan all along, opening their heart up just enough for the four Darknesses to try and use them as a host and then provoking their friends into sealing them away and taking Darkness with them

Darkness flies into an anger-fueled frenzy but is unable to do anything to escape. Player collapses, and Chirithy appears. Petting them much like they did during the Keyblade War, Player apologizes for forcing Chirithy to be sealed away with them since their hearts are bound. Chirithy shakes their head, signaling that they don't hold it against Player, and the two go in for a final hug and are bathed in light

Scene 7: The Destruction of Daybreak Town

Back in the real lifeboat room again, Ephemer and Skuld emerge and are met with blaring sirens signaling that the world is at its end. The other are gone, including Brain and Luxu, and the two have no idea what happened to them (or that Luxu was involved). They simply hope that they made it out safely, and decide to check outside just to see what's going on

They're met with the destruction of Daybreak Town. Smoke is everywhere, the sky is red, and pieces of debris are being drawn into a swirling dark orb in the sky not unlike the destruction of Destiny Islands from KH1. Ephemer decides that they need to leave, now, and Skuld muses about how it takes a lot of time and effort to build something, but none at all to destroy. The two retreat back into the lifeboat room to make their exit

Scene 8: The Master's Plans

We now cut to our final continuation of the flashback of Master of Masters' talk with Darkness from before he disappeared

Darkness muses that it truly does not understand the Master of Masters at all. The Master asks if it wants to, and Darkness replies with a very clinical, "Yes, understanding your enemy is important." The Master muses if it means all of the Darknesses or just the one who is speaking, and Darkness states that it's speaking for all of them

The Master muses for a bit about how small worlds are easy to control. If this small world simply expands gradually over time, then eventually there will become parts of it that the light can't reach, but Darkness will have free reign over anywhere it pleases (much like real light can only shine so far, and anywhere it doesn't reach is filled with shadow). This skews everything in Darkness's favor when vying for control and is precisely what would happen if the world of the Age of Fairtytales continued to expand

Darkness simply notes that of course it will always be around, that's what "friends" do, but the Master says that sometimes he'd like to be left alone. And so, to get away from Darkness, he plans to flee to a world that Darkness does not know about. One where neither Darkness nor Light can be controlled. Darkness asks what this world is, and the Master says that humanity, even if their lives end, want to believe in a world that exists for them in the future. For him, this is a world of fiction and imagination. This implies that he plans to flee into the world of Quadratum, the fictional world that we learned about in Melody of Memory that exists on the other side of the "real world"

Darkness is clearly lost as it asks if he's talking about the Data World. The Master simply says that even if it started out as fiction, you can make it real. But he won't explain any more. After all, the point is that this is a world that Darkness doesn't know about. It cannot reach it, even if it tried

Of note is that he mimics what the illusory Xehanort remarks about Sora in Melody of Memory by calling this a place where neither your "eyes nor voice" can reach, much like Sora's voice could not reach Kairi in The Final World from Quadratum. His final description of it is as "a world of [symbol]." It's unclear if this is an actual term that is unpronounceable and unspeakable in-universe, or if this is simply done to censor the word for the players

Scene 9: Goodbye

We once again return to the real lifeboat room amidst the destruction of Daybreak Town. As she gets into her pod, Skuld starts sobbing and thanks Ephemer through her tears for staying with her until the end. Ephemer tells her that she can't give up until it's all over. As he goes into his pod, he flashes back to all of the time that he spent with Player, and mutters their name through his tears as their pods close and the room caves in around them

(AND THIS IS WHERE IT SHOULD'VE ENDED BECAUSE IT WAS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD UP TO THIS POINT BUT HERE WE GO)

Scene 10: Where Do Dream Eaters Come From?

Player and Chirithy are floating in a white void alongside all of the other Dandelions that were trapped in the Data Daybreak Town and their Chirithies. Some of them are familiar faces, like the "My friends aren't my power" kid and the squad of four kids that Player had befriended and their ex-teammate. As Player awakens, they watch these sleeping Dandelions revert to the forms of hearts that are then eaten by those Chirithies, transforming them into the Spirits seen in Dream Drop Distance

Player's Chirithy explains that because Chirithies are bonded to their Keyblade wielder's heart, they take on a state to match their wielder. If the wielder dies, so do they. And if the wielder falls into a deep sleep, they take on a stronger form to protect it

Contrary to what the fandom is saying, NO, Spirits aren't dead Keykids. Rather, the Chirithies are simply taking their sleeping hearts into their bodies and transforming into a stronger form to keep them safe. This is only my assumption, but I would assume that this is possible since they don't technically have bodies anyway, having been digitized. Therefore, their body-less hearts would otherwise have been sent directly to sleep with no protection, hence the Chirithies moving in

Now, this still doesn't make sense regarding Dream Drop Distance by overriding the lore that all Dream Eaters are simply the form that Darkness takes in Sleeping Worlds, which made sense from a metaphorical perspective of "you sleep at night which is dark, so dreams are darkness and both good and bad dreams are made of the same stuff." And also you can totally craft Spirits and have them explode if they take too much damage, all with zero indication that a keykid heart was involved in the creation process or released on destruction, but whatever, let's just move on

Player asks if this is what will happen to them and their Chirithy, and Chirithy responds that they have a choice. If Player doesn't want to go to sleep, then their heart will be broken down and reconstructed as an entirely new heart to live a new life

Smash cut to an unfamiliar town where a woman in purple with black hair and silver eyes hand over what is obviously a baby Xehanort to a hunched figure in a blue cloak, holding a cane. She sobs. Cut again to the figure in blue holding baby Xehanort standing on Destiny Islands' play island. Cut once more and Xehanort is now his teenage self from Dark Road on the beach of the play island. The figure in blue is standing on the ledge behind him, and as Xehanort stands up to walk to the shoreline, the figure collapses onto the ground. Xehanort does not notice this. Two more cuts, this time to the day that Xehanort found himself in Scala ad Caelum and a chess match with Eraqus

We return to Player, who closes their eyes peacefully and decided to move on to another life. Chirithy is confused, but goes in for a final hug as both of them dissolve into light, Player's heart flying off into the white void

The implication of all of this being that not only did Player reincarnate as Xehanort, introducing reincarnation into a series that it has never been a part of and overcomplicating the lore even worse, but that Xehanort isn't even from Destiny Islands in the first place, invalidating nearly all of his character motivation from the series

This is so bad that it deserves its own post though, so we're moving on

Credits Roll: Scenes From the Game Play Over It

Post Credits: Aftermath

We find our scene in a vast expanse of water, littered with debris. A lone lifeboat floats amongst the rubble. Some houses from Daybreak Town can be seen partially submerged, setting this after its destruction. The lifeboat comes to a stop and opens up, revealing Ephemer's silhouette. He looks around

It's unclear why Ephemer seems to have landed so far back in the past compared to the others, though some people have noted that he also doesn't appear to have lost his body, so it could be that his pod simply didn't activate (note how we only saw it close, not disappear into light like Lauriam and crew's) and that Ephemer didn't time travel at all but simply rode out the destruction of Daybreak Town inside the lifeboat

We see a rendition of the scene from KH2 where Diablo the raven brings Maleficent's cloak to the three fairies and she revives, showing that this scene was, indeed, her coming back from her time travel adventure

Lauriam wakes up in the field of flowers from Dwarf Woodlands, and looks confused and startled as a white butterfly flits about him. The flowers clearly a nod to his element among the Organization

Elrena is shown still unconscious along the cliffs that lead to Maleficent's castle in Enchanted Dominion. Much like Lauriam, her element is represented in the thunderstorm that rages around her

Ventus is shown unconscious in the Keyblade Graveyard, and a silhouette approaches him. Many believe this to be Xehanort finding him, though as of now the figure's identity is unconfirmed

We cut to a scene of Luxu dragging the black box behind him in the Keyblade Graveyard, much like a certain scene from the end of Back Cover. However, this time the scene continues and he removes his hood to reveal Brain's face. The implication here is that after Scene 4 above, Luxu took Brain's body as the first of many that he would steal to prolong his own life. This is why neither of them are seen when Ephemer and Skuld emerge from the datascape; Luxu has already taken Brain's body for his own and made his escape to survive the destruction of the world with the black box

We get a title card, but are treated to one final scene. Brain wakes up (sans hat) in the same town that we saw baby Xehanort being given away in. A hooded figure in strange garb arrives, holding Brain's hat, and asks if he is Brain. At Brain's confirmation, the figure returns the hat and introduces themself as Sigurd (a Norse mythology name much like the other Scala ad Caelum characters so far). They seem to have been waiting for Brain and report that they found him into an earpiece of sorts

Brain is understandably confused, and Sigurd explains that they know of the Brain who escaped Daybreak Town's destruction and that he would appear in this spot on this day. Brain panics, realizing that he doesn't know where any of his seven other friends are and if they made it to safety. Sigurd tells Brain that he's the only one who made it to this spot. Brain, utterly crushed that all of his friends have seemingly perished, listlessly follows Sigurd as Sigurd leads him to their headquarters

On the way there, however, something catches Brain's eye. He sprints to the fountain and looks up at something that's not in the frame in shock. Sigurd explains that this is a statue of this town, Scala ad Caelum’s founder (so Xehanort's actually from Scala...) and the first ever Keyblade Master, Master Ephemer. The camera pans up to show the statue of Ephemer as we know him holding the Master Keeper Keyblade that he got from Brain

Brain is overcome with emotions, and through his tears states that he knows exactly who that is. That's his best friend, and he's so proud of him for rebuilding

This is just my speculation, but what I believe is going on in the final scene with Brain is that when Luxu took his body, he ejected Brain's heart from it. A lifeboat wasn't used up, so Luxu must have either used time travel on his own to send Brain's heart to the future or simply left Brain's heart stranded and waiting in the ruins of Daybreak Town. This would let Luxu have his body, but Brain's stranded heart could make a new one with the proper resources in the future like the other hearts sent via the pods. That's what I think the focus on the hat is about. Luxu is shown without it after he takes Brain's body, and Sigurd has it. So my assumption would be that the hat was the medium used to bring Brain's body back like Maleficent's cloak was for her. It’s possible that Luxu set this up, but I can’t confirm. As for the memories, I couldn't say

I would also speculate that this scene takes place a decent amount of time before Dark Road, since Eraqus has been implied to be a descendant of Brain due to their similar looks. If Brain is in Scala ad Caelum in the past, then he could easily be the grandfather that Eraqus mentioned

My final bit of speculation is that the reason Sigurd and crew know who Brain is is because Ephemer, the founder of Scala ad Caelum and the inheritor of the Book of Prophecies, likely saw when Brain would emerge and set up a system to take care of him, knowing that he wouldn't survive to see him again

Apologies for the length, the ending was 40 minutes long. But, hopefully, I've made it clear which scenes are connected to which and what is actually happening. If it wasn't actually clear, there's two flashback sequences involving the Master of Masters that take place before KHx, the scenes in the data and real lifeboat rooms are running concurrently with each other (Brain and Luxu are having their conversation at the same time as Player is being possessed by the Darknesses, etc.) and everything else is roughly chronological with the exception of the scenes where Maleficent, Lauriam, Elrena, and Ven are revived after time traveling. Lauriam, Elrena, and Ven's scenes all must take place sometime before or around BBS (Lauriam and Elrena for their ages to match up, Ven because he's in BBS). Maleficent's is at the beginning of KH2

[narwhalwrath]

Let's talk about the KHUX finale as a whole rather than just as the piece we only just got.

So we started off with with Lauriam and Ventus alone in Ventus' room, and Lauriam is conflicted about Ventus because they have no way of knowing whether or not Ventus destroyed Darkness or whether it retreated back within Ventus (I mean we know that this Darkness is Vanitas but they don't), in which case Lauriam seems to contemplate taking out Ventus, only Strelitzia reminds Lauriam that giving into his negative emotions is exactly what Darkness wants - which obviously spooks the hell out of Lauriam and he turns around to find that she's not there. Having had time to think about this, I'd say that what I believe happened to Strelitzia after she was struck down by Darkness was that her Heart took refuge within Lauriam's, much in the same way Kairi's and Ventus's Hearts did with Sora's Heart in KH and KHBBS respectively. You might recall that Sora even saw Kairi at one point while he Heart was still within her Heart.

What does this mean though, well I believe that Strelitzia will return thanks to the Data Luxu pulled of her in Data-Daybreak Town, which is what he sent to the future via the Ark. Think of it as similar to how Roxas and Namine were brought back in KHIII, once Lauriam releases Strelitzia's Heart, it can join with the Data-Strelitzia, which is likely vacant, as the Data versions of the Dandelions were all occupied by their own Hearts presumably when they became Unchained and crossed into Data-Daybreak Town.

Moving on, Elrena is brought into the story to reveal that her Chirithy had seen Luxu and Strelitzia, which leaves hope for the others about Strelitzia, but doesn't do much more than confuse them otherwise and get her to join the party as they make for the Ark. Seriously, Elrena was completely underused in KHUX. I still think it's odd how Lauriam and Elrena act entirely different from Marluxia and Larxene, and I think it is even more odd how Nomura specified tht Lauriam and Marluxia are different characters rather than telling the interviewer who had asked the question what we are meant to believe: that Lauriam is Marluxia's Somebody.

To be clear, I don't think that he's not, simply that 4 years go by between when he, Elrena, Ventus, and Skuld woke up in the future and KHBBS and then nearly another 10 years (presumably) before Marluxia is found by Xigbar and Xaldin and Larxene is found by Xaldin and Lexaeus. We have no idea what happens then, and both had completely lost their memories, making it even more hard to say. However, Lauriam was shown waking in Dwarf Woodlands, while Elrena woke in what I assume to be Enchanted Dominion, both of which were some of the first Worlds to be swallowed by the Darkness when Maleficent began her pursuit of Kingdom Hearts at the end of KHBBS, so maybe that's how they fell to Darkness?

After Luxu sends the True Dandelion forward via the Ark, I noticed that, while Darkness explains its intention, it mentions that it plans to 'accompany the chosen one into the future to lay claim to Worlds not yet created'. This is odd, because later it explains that there are five Darknesses still in Data-Daybreak Town, and since only four of them confront Ephemer, Skuld, and Player, then that all but confirms Lauriam's suspicions. What's more, is that it engages Luxu in battle and then is missing when Brain, Lauriam, Elrena, and Ventus arrive in Daybreak Town to utilize the real Ark.

Where did Darkness go? Not within Ventus, as it would have had no opportunity to do so, and there's already an iteration of Darkness in there. Luxu is the only other candidate. It was revealed in the second part of the finale that the Master raised his apprentices in order to give the seven strongest iterations of Darkness a tangible form so that it could inevitably be struck down. This was the entire reason for the Keyblade War, and why the Foretellers had to be sacrificed. The conversation with Luxu all but confirms that those seven of the original Thirteen Darknesses were already destroyed, as they discuss how, after the Keyblade War, only the six Darkness we've now seen remained and found themselves within Data-Daybreak Town. The Master reveals this to be another part of his scheme, as Daybreak Town and its Data counterpart were constructed to act as a cage for Darkness that would be sprung as soon as the first pod of the Ark it utilized.

This trap is something Darkness knew after watching the Master compose the Book of Prophecies, the Master intentionally excluded Enchanted Dominion from the Worlds realized in the real world, instead trapping Maleficent within the Datascape much in the same way that he had done to Darkness. Darkness then helped Maleficent reach Daybreak Town via the virtual Ark in order to then have her use the real one, thereby triggering the ends of both iterations of Daybreak Town, which would motivate the Dandelions to use the Ark themselves, unknowingly providing Ventus to Darkness after another iteration utilized him to take the place of Strelitzia. While it would travel into the future to lay siege to Worlds not yet in existence, the other Darknesses in the Datascape would spread across the Data-Worlds. However, Darkness didn't concern itself with the parts of the Book of Prophecies which it considered unimportant to itself, which ultimately proved to be its undoing, because it missed out on the true plans of the Master, as Luxu later confirmed.

On the topic of Luxu, let's discuss his meeting with Brain, as well as his appearance in the Keyblade Graveyard. The most important part about these two parts is to know that, even though it appears as though Luxu possessed Brain, he didn't. Brain has just always resembled Luxu for whatever reason. I wonder if this could have something to do with iterations of the same person from two separate Worldlines? Why do I say this, because they made a point of noting the similarities between Skuld and Ava as well, on two separate occasions, and I would guess that with what we've seen in the finale, that it was intentional for this exact reason. Does this mean that all the Foretellers look like the Union leaders? I'd say no, I mean Ventus and Gula appear to bear physical similarities from what we can see (height give-or-take, jaw structure), but for sure Ephemer and Lauriam do not resemble Ira and Aced.

The two seen in the finale are clearly different because Luxu was stated in his Secret Reports of KHIII to have passed on No Name to on of the Union Leaders amid the chaos of the destruction of Data-Daybreak Town. The only one he came into contact with was Brain, so clearly Brain got No Name, thus its a done-deal, both are Brain, right? Wrong - as Brain then awakens generations later in Scala ad Caelum, not by using the Ark but by using Ephemer's memories passed down through the generations all the way to Sigurd, as his Waypoint, while his hat acted as the Medium. I believe that when Luxu claimed that Brain's life had to end, he merely passed on No Name to Brain and taught him how to unlock his Heart - or become Unchained, thereby allowing him to partake in said time travel and see through the destruction of Daybreak Town. I think what we see of "Brain" in the Keyblade Graveyard is like the scene from KHX:BC where Luxu arrives in the Keyblade Graveyard with No Name and the Box, just with his hood down, otherwise it wouldn't make sense for Luxu to have No Name, as he said he didn't have it anymore in the Secret Report.

I wonder if, given Master's Defender belonged to Brain originally and eventually makes its way to Eraqus - Brain's suspected grandson - if that means that Brain recclaims Master's Defender when he gets to Scala ad Caelum? I really felt for Ephemer toward the end because it became evident that when Ephemer and Skuld attempted to escape, Ephemer was caught in the destruction of Daybreak Town and left alone in the past. Although he created Scala ad Caelum from the ruins of Daybreak Town and began a new lineage of Keyblade wielders, it's sad that he died without the friends he had come to know throughout KHUX. I wonder also what Ephemer did with that last copy of the Book of Prophecies that Brain gave him - could it still be hidden somewhere in Scala ad Caelum?

In the end, Player had to fight Ephemer and Skuld in order to convince the 4 iterations of Darkness left in Data-Daybreak Town that he was on their side, as they did not seem to realize that their comrade had left with Ventus. This led to Ephemer sending Player and the Darknesses to Game Central Station, wherein Player trapped them and Data-Daybreak Town came crumbling down, just as the Master intended. This resulted in all the Dandelions falling into a deep Sleep, with their Chirithy's becoming the Dream Eaters we know today in order to protect them - only Player chooses not to Sleep and his Heart becomes a part of Xehanort's when he is born.

What's interesting to me about this is that we see Xehanort's mother, who looks sort of like Skuld, but I theorize is actually Brain's mother, which would thus make Xehanort the brother of Eraqus, but what I want to know is who that cloaked figure could be? Maybe it's Brain, who somehow knew about Player's Heart and took Xehanort away from Scala ad Caelum because Player's attack on Ephemer and Skuld (which I assume Ephemer would leave some note about for Brain, considering that Sigurd makes it sound as though they knew Ephemer was coming). I'm really not sure, but considering that Eraqus' grandfather isn't around anymore, that means he'd have had to have disappeared when Eraqus was young, and if it was because he was off with Xehanort, that could certainly explain it, but who knows.

Anyway I think that's everything I have to say about the finale (I hope it is at least lol) Let me know your thoughts below :) KHUXDR still has to finish later this year, so maybe these questions I have won't go unanswered for long.

[snowflake-of-destruction]

Do you ship Eraqus x Xehanort? If so, do you have any headcanons about them?

I most definitely ship Eraqus and Xehanort. The less done friends to lovers to enemies. I mean I ship other iterations too, but the eternal yearning and acknowledgement that there cannot be a happy ending? Being on opposite sides, but always believing that just maybe the other could be won over, though they respect each other more for each sticking to their own idea of what’s right/what’s good (Eraqus sticking with “good,” and Xehanort sticking to “right”--at least right for him, and Eraqus, for all he hates darkness seeing it as just that and not a fall to darkness even when it becomes almost impossible to ignore)? Betrayal followed by conflict and vacillation between eternal grudge and the helpless forgiveness of one still in love? That’s the good stuff right there.

Headcanons tend to match specific situations or story ideas a lot of the time, but, hmm, let’s think:

Eraqus was the one to find Xeganort washed up on shore in Scala (this may even be canon)

Xehanort doesn’t believe Eraqus at first when he says he can’t get a tan, even after he goads him into getting a bad sunburn trying to sunbath and sees Eraqus peel and then go right back to pale. “You just need a base. You build up tolerance”

This culminates in Eraqus, stubborn as he is, absolutely baking himself in the sun next time and ending up with even more than blisters, his eyes swollen shut. Xehanort is wracked with guilt that at first comes out at defensive anger that Eraqus shouldn’t have been so stupid, but then in him being devoted to Eraqus’s every whim during his recovery, mixing up aloe concoctions to ease his soffering, researching in Scala’s library for helpful potions and magic he could make or learn, acting as his eyes, and, by the end of it all, having fallen into a role of wrapped around Eraqus’s finger that he never leaves even when he’s doing better

Both underestimate the other at first and intend to “go easy” or throw their first chess game, only to show their real ability when they realize they have a formidable opponent

The new game we see Eraqus pull out in KH3 is not the only variation on their normal chess games he pulls out. Both he and Xehanort are constantly seeking out and learning new games to teach to each other. It’s almost a love language

The Squaresoft/Square Enix Red Sunset of Shipping is well established in Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts (at least in my mind, and one day I’ll make a photoset) but Eraqus and Xehanort’s thing is watching the sunrise not the sunset. They are both morning people and like moments of peace when everyone else is asleep. Running into each other by the water right at sunrise was an accident the first time, but it soon becomes tradition

Eraqus does believe Xehanort is from one of the other islands on Scala and not another world for the longest time and when Xehanort tries to talk him out of building a boat to sail to Xehanort’s home, his theory switches to merman before offworlder. This instance is also when Eraqus speaks about Daybreak Town, the land Scala used to be before Daybreak sank, in much more detail than what they learn in class and personal anecdotes passed through his family--trying to trigger Xehanort to admit he lived in the ruins of the sunken city.

Now, if Dark Road doesn’t actually wrap up its story (though I hope it does) I resolutely headcanon that when Xehaqus and the rest of their friends find the members of the “lost class” not all of the keyblade wielders were killed by or fled from Heartless. At least one of them just defected from the life and went native on some other planet and Xehanort and Eraqus will agree to keep their secret/report them as dead even though it’s several different types of violation

Another one to maybe be proved wrong by Dark Road: Xehanort never took Eraqus to Destiny Islands--though he does eventually tell him about his homeland--but Eraqus does visit the islands on his own after he’s a master, long after Xehanort has gone off on his own path to see where Xehanort was from. He meets Xehanort’s sister (who Xehanort never mentioned, but who bears enough of a resemblance to him that Eraqus knows she’s some kind of relative) and her own children, one of whom is Riku’s mother.

On this trip to the islands, Eraqus picks a paopu fruit after hearing the local legend. He preserves it with magic, even telling himself it’s just a random keepsake, but serves it to Xehanort when he comes to visit the Land of Departure

Xehanort gives him A Look, but doesn’t comment. He eats part of it though and leaves the rest for Eraqus

I’ll stop there. This is long. Please, feel free to prod about them some more though, whether it’s prompts or headcanons or demands for information on the To Be Written One Day list

[moved-to-void-kissed]

actually no no no I can make something positive out of this

it’s going to end up long, but I can make something positive out of this

..It got long, so it’s under the readmore, but I think I made something positive out of this

So, Aria - my main Kingdom Hearts self-insert - came into existence as my avatar/player character for KHUX. Initially, I didn’t have much story planned for her, I just knew that she would be a Keyblade wielder who used darkness - I think I still have some super-old screenshots of her first ever outfit, before even the cat-eared hair (technically it’s actually called Puppy Hair in-game) was added to the game in a Union Cross event. She initially had Naminé’s hair, then Marluxia’s, and she had the Halloween Sora wings before the Halloween Crow ones were added.

Once the person who would become the one I called my best friend joined the party I was in, and we started talking, it didn’t take long for us to see lots of similarities to each other, and we joked that we were Heartless and Nobody counterparts - which is how the thing of Aria being a Heartless came about, because hey Heartless are cool but also how (we sorted out the how two seconds later), and also the idea of a Heartless being a Keyblade wielder - you know, wielding the one and only thing designed to destroy them - could have a lot of potential

So we kept talking, and moved parties and crossed unions together, and kept playing, and Aria kept developing as her own character (yet still, of course and always, staying as me), and once Anti-Aqua was first revealed for a few fleeting moments in a KH3 trailer, I somehow ended up thinking “hey, I can put her with her, wouldn’t that be neat”. I can only assume I’d already come up with Aria getting trapped in the realm of darkness after the Keyblade War by that point, since I knew she definitely wouldn’t have been chosen as a Dandelion due to her darkness.

As time passed, the one I called my best friend and I started talking to each other less and less - no fault of either of our own, I wouldn’t say, just the natural drifting away that can happen when one of you stops being interested in the thing that brought and kept you both together for multiple years. But, part of that - or rather, the later stages of it, given that it was only last year - coincided with me finding out about the selfship community. And, I think it was safe to say I was well aware of my feelings for Aqua by the time that happened, even if my focus at the time was playing Pokémon Reborn (which is basically why Luna and Aqua were my first two main romantic F/Os), so that combined with the fact that Aria already had a lot of development as a character to all go together very well.

But, finding out about the community here was also the initiative I needed to start thinking about what would happen to Aria in the timeline of the other games, and how her being with Aqua in the realm of darkness would actually work out and progress - them being together became almost the start of the story, rather than its very end. So, over the summer, that’s sort of when I started piecing things together - of when things happened, of what their meeting was like, of how we get torn apart and brought back together again, dancing around the timeline of the games - to still maintain what I hope is the feeling Aria’s meant to have maintained this whole time, or at least started out as having; that “there’s no reason why she isn’t canon according to what the game itself shows you” (with I suppose the only exception being the cutscenes that my most recent piece of writing replaces, since it writes out Anti-Aqua’s existence in the story).

That then led to me exploring Aria’s dynamic with Terra and Ventus, and giving her the ability to siphon darkness out of other people’s hearts and absorb it to strengthen herself, and how that tied perfectly into how she would realistically be able to make friends with them both, and prove herself to them by helping them. Then I started playing about with thoughts of her getting to meet Vanitas, of drawing him back out of Ven’s heart because of how the two had filled in the gaps left by the other and there wouldn’t have been enough space for them to go back to being one again, and giving him a chance at redemption and living for himself. And then now, at the moment, I’m thinking about other things to do with Aria, and the selfship as a whole, too - what her new outfit is like in her replica body, whether she loses the ability to wield a Keyblade after leaving Ves, how she would act on missions with Aqua, which villains she’d take down with her tactic, what she thinks of everyone else, and so on and so forth.

So, I suppose, what I was trying to say all along for this was - being part of this community has helped me develop Aria past the confines of the story of KHUX, because of how I use her to selfship with Aqua since she’s my self-insert. And so, without that, I would have technically had a whole lot more to lose now that KHUX is going down. So.. thank you all, for being here, I suppose?

[serenedash]

I started rambling about my experience with kh and then it turned into khux and then it just turned into me rambling about Ryou and my art journey????? enjoy I guess,

it’s very long but there’s art in there :)

It’s funny to think about my kh journey as a whole tbh, I grew up watching my mom play video games, which included kh1 and 2. I wasn’t allowed to play the playstation2 we owned BUT I did have a gameboy so the first game I played was CoM (after my mom finished it ofc,) so I guess you could say I’ve always been passionate about kh “””side games””” lmao but I did fall off of kh very quickly bc again, I wasn’t allowed to play our PS2 and also I Am A Terrible Gamer I’ve Never Finished CoM I’m sorry you all had to find out like this, but then 358/2 came out when I was in middle school and!!! I didn’t care and I didn’t play idk why lol

Anyway, fast forward to high school I’m like 15 and my older sister, who HAS been keeping up with kh, has a wallpaper on her phone of roxas and ventus. And bc I haven’t kept up I say “nice roxas wallpaper” and she says “thanks but it’s roxas and ventus” and I proceeded to get so mad that I was determined to prove to her that her wallpaper was just roxas twice and then I fell down the BBS rabbit hole and suddenly I was reading about vanitas and then I’m reading the fan translations of the BBS novel and I’m crying??? I am sobbing???? and that’s how I actually got into kh for real lol we are vanitas stans before we are people,

It’s so funny how I thought I was some kh super fan, knowing all this stuff that I spent so long reading and rewatching cutscene movies, but I never once, SOMEHOW NEVER ever came across khx. It’s so absurd and bizarre I seriously have no idea how I never once encountered khx prior to khux. I suppose that has to do with the fact I wasn’t involved in the fandom? In early high school I had stepped away from fandoms as a whole and I didn’t have any interest in really posting content or interacting with fans anymore bc of how burnt out I was from a previous fandom,

but khux released! and I was so hype and excited for it! on launch day I was a senior in high school, I had ran around to every “nerd” and weeb I could find in school to ask them to join my party and fun fact about me is I have crippling social anxiety I literally refuse to start conversations irl so holy shit I was OUT HERE doing the MOST

My player just originally had my name (Matt) but everyone in my party had fun names so Ryou was born! High school was one big yugioh phase for me and ryou bakura is one of my favorite characters ever so it was just the logical name choice lol I quickly started creating Ryou, the character, as well. I was also leaving my homestuck phase and that + vanitas obsession made This character design (art circa 2016)

If y’all are familiar with my kh oc’s you might notice that keyblade now belongs to my kid Monty LOL

Anyway that got scrapped quickly for the chip and dale outfit (which is where Ryou’s trademark goggles are from <3) Goggles have been a staple of my character designs for a LONG TIME so like, it had to be done, (that’s a separate ramble about a separate oc tho)

OG Ryou was an interesting guy; he was a young party leader with this overwhelming responsibility on his shoulders bc of his status as a party leader. In his original story, he also struggled heavily with darkness, much like Terra but for Ryou it was more that the darkness was controlling him and not like a source of power like it was for Terra

A big part of early Ryou I kept, however, was the crushing awareness of loss. One of my party members (the strongest one at the time,) had left without saying a word and I was very confused and hurt. This was around the time the ephemera plot was happening so I decided to incorporate it into Ryou’s story; having him experience losing a friend to darkness since it’s so normal for wielders in Daybreak Town to just disappear, and this would unintentionally become a theme for both me and Ryou as khux friends would just randomly disappear.

I was desperate for khux at this point and I decided to watch the fan translations for khx and GOD, god, was I obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about the foretellers. And I’m not going off about that here bc I already did that, but I actually started entering fandom again! I did it slowly, I started on tumblr before this blog was made altho it was me sending anons to the few khux related blogs I could have lol a friend convinced me to get twitter where I got involved with the ffxv fandom, which led me to the kh fandom and eventually the khux fandom there which is what REALLY got me going on khux.

I joined discord servers, most of the servers I’m in are khux related, and from there I joined the khux oc rp (shout out to anyone there who might be reading this lol here’s some art from the beginning of the rp,)

It’s SO FUNNY how the RP influenced me so heavily. I hadn’t RP’d in YEARS, I used to have a strict no oc rp policy, but here I was? And the funny part is, I had barely developed Ryou. I had scrapped his original story and all I had was POST WAR Ryou so I literally had to reverse write him; I had only ever written him as a depressed, guilt ridden adult, but it was a fucking blast and I have such fond memories of this rp when it was active,

But anyway, this encouraged me to get more serious about art! I started drawing, writing, cosplaying, and roleplaying when I hadn’t done any of that stuff in a very long time. The first time I ever drew a background was for a deviant art khux competition actually LOL

also! I always think extremely fondly of the drawing I did of Aced in the keyblade war. It was also one of the first backgrounds I ever drew and it felt like my real starting point in the khux fandom. It got a ton of notes on here and someone wrote a tiny fic in a reblog which just made me SO HAPPY like it really felt like people were noticing me :) I was going to draw a matching Ira but!! I just never did!! One day tho, it’s on my art bucket list to redraw this along with Ira,

Aside from my personal growth, khux was great for my social life ngl, I made SO MANY friends online and got to meet a ton of people irl over the years! It’s crazy to think about all the people I now know and talk to? It honestly makes me really emotional. I’ll never forget taking the train into NYC and meeting up with discord friends. Going to conventions and talking with people about the latest khux update? Absolutely insane and those were some GOOD TIMES, if I thanked every khux friend or even just person who made an impact on me then we’d be here for a LONG TIME,

Fun fact, for my Lauriam cosplay all I needed to buy was the wig I just owned his outfit LOL also? Probably retiring that cosplay ngl people treated me like absolute garbage when I wore him and it led to a lot of confidence issues for awhile ngl. That’s probably one of the only memorable negative experiences I have with khux; it was great when khux people recognized me but for kh fans that weren’t in khux? They were FUCKING MEAN??? fuck kh fandom at large, I only care about khux fandom,

This leads me to another huge part of my experience in khux fandom: THEORIES!! I used to write SO MANY and oh my god my brain was so full all the time. It was a huge appeal for me in the fandom; I had been previously writing theory posts in the RWBY fandom and it just migrated over to khux for me lol I had done a ton of theorizing around Lauriam tbh, it was really the only reason I liked his character at all bc initially I did not care about the dandelions, anyone who wasn’t Skuld I was like “please leave Now thanks”

A funny part of khux fandom I never intended to be apart of is the MEMES, I really only started doing memes as stress relief bc college had me so busy all I had time/energy for was these quick little shit post drawings.

The first meme I made, file name “invi despair” LOL we need to get her a girlfriend smh anyway, I think in my senior year of college I did a bunch of rapid fire memes all in one month bc the stress of finals was getting so bad afdgfhdgf as far as I know my impact on this fandom will be my memes bc all I do now is enter a kh/khux server and introduce myself and I go “yeah I draw art. here’s a meme” and everyone goes OH YOU, honestly I am nothing if not a clown

I’ve talked so much idk where I’m going with this. Khux is just a good game even if the gameplay actually kind of really sucks yknow lol but it was the first game I played where I like, REALLY got into the meta and the mechanics. I used to read so much on the mechanics and watch youtube videos on which medals were worth pulling for. I was never a whale or a top player exactly, but I could rank well if I tried lol I’ve made it to the top 100 for solo rankings, my party has made it to top 10, and in pvp I’ve made top 300. I’m not the highest level in my party but FUCK do I know how to manipulate this game LOL

And with all that hard work, the strategies, the theorizing, the content I’ve made-- it’s been my life for 5 years. I’ve logged into khux almost every single day. At the end, I have logged 1820 days in khux out of 1910 days. Kinda crazy. Crazier I’ve never spent money on khux either lol the only “money” gone into it was one time my mom gave me a google play store gift card and I used it on my birthday for a VIP xemnas medal which eventually made it to regular pulls anyway but it was nice and a little treat :)

I’m not a gacha fan, I don’t care for it, so I don’t think I’ll be touching another gacha again. But for kh? This was pretty fucking awesome, even if it sucked a lot sometimes LOL It was worth it for the people I’ve met most of all I think. I would honestly be a completely different person without khux and that’s REALLY insane to think about.

[painfulbass]

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL QUICK CROSSOVER GUIDE

So crossovers are usually difficult for a lot of people. So, because I tend to think about these things, I thought I would make this comprehensive list/guide to writing crossovers with me. This isn’t anything in concrete, but to get the ball rolling or to help make it easier for both sides to contribute to plotting. It can be hard when you don’t know the fandom.

FNF, or Friday Night Funkin’ is a rhythm based game around rap battles. The Protagonist (known as BF) is trying to prove himself and win over his Girlfriend’s (GF) Dad, and it spirals from there. Gameplay style, it is very similar to Dance Dance Revolution, and the music is a fast pasted dubstyle/chiptune soundtrack.

What a lot of people know FNF for, however is the Mods. Due to it being on Newgrounds, and the creators having it be open asset, many creators are able to make their own “weeks” for players to challenge their skills in. Ruv, and those within Mid Fight Masses, are one of those mods. You can find most of their lore scattered in the scenes of their week, or by going on their official FNF Wiki.

Now, what does this mean for crossovers? I put it under a read more, simply because this is going to be a lot. I’m going to explain crossover verses I have. How I make them, and how YOU could have your character be in the FNF verse quite easily. So go under the read more to continue reading.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  RUV IN OTHER UNIVERSES

Here are some just ideas that I came up with. While not EVERY interaction will work with these, they are ideas. They’re meant to kick start ideas and inspirations. I do not consider these full verses until I’ve talked with the other mun to make sure that they are okay with it. These can easily be changed, and swapped out for different things. My main goal here is to try and keep Ruv down to his core elements while fitting into a new setting.

POKEMON- Ruv, along with Sarv run the church- which she has turned into a sanctuary and a Nursery. Much like in Canon, Sarv is supernatural, and Ruv as a run away criminal vowed his life for all eternity to protect her. With church’s going out however, the next next step would be a PokeNursery.           Ruv acts as protector of the Nursery from trainers and groups alike. He usually is seen sitting on the roof, throwing pebbles at kids or passerby’s who irk him in some way. You can always find his Onix, his Low-Key Toxtricity, and his Absol around him or the nursery at all times. He does still have his strength, speed, and other abilities. The “face” he has is also a mask- an attempt to hide his identity as the wanted criminal.

OWL HOUSE- Ruv was a wanted criminal for the longest time. His magic, due to where he was born was a lot less like those around him. He could fit into the covens, but anything he did reflected back on him. Living alone, and learning to just modify himself he became a wanted criminal with a bone breaking shout.            However all of those times soon came to a stop as he met the winged mistress he stays with now. Protecting her (though she is much more than capable of protecting himself) she runs one of the many sects in the area. It isn’t the best building, but it’s out of the way and he usually isn’t spotted. However, unfortunately his past comes back to haunt him. He has no choice, and begrudgingly assists the Guards to repay for his crimes.           Tied to Sarv through magical bonds, he has made it clear to those in charge and to her- should something come between his duty as a guard or her, he would chose her a million times over.

DUCKTALES- Ruv is the petrified remains of the guardian of St. Sarvente. Awoken as the earth was shifted off of it’s orbit and forced into something it’s not, the callous guard is in search of the one he calls Sarvente, whom he claims is the Ruler of Souls and the one he Vowed to Protect. He is, 100% made of stone.

TOONTOWN- Stickfigures aren’t uncommon drawings. One’s as complicated as he and Sarv though usually get a few eyes. Not only that, but video game characters are always treated differently in Toontown. Maybe it’s because of a developers history, or lack there of. The story of Ruvyzvat being a heartless killer however spreads like wild flower, and while he and Sarv will primarily stay at the church... sometimes curiosity becomes too much.

KINGDOM HEARTS- FNF is it’s own world. Keyblade turned into a microphone, Ruv & Sarv are some of the first that would be met. Despite their challenge, they are rather distanced from the troubles of the Darkness and Light and would be semi-good companions. 

THE BLACKOUT CLUB- Ruv is a 16. Any day will be the day that a voice will end up taking over, merging with his mind. That’s fine. Much like how Seed-The-Grudge would want, he’ll just get revenge.

HAZBIN HOTEL / HELLUVA BOSS- Ruv ironically enough is one of the few in Hell who does not make him dead. In fact, in some cases that can make him extremely rare. This crossover he IS able to accompany Sarvente into the Underworld, and follow her on her treks through it. While most assume he is a dead sinner, he usually just doesn’t answer. However something about being here and meeting those who reside within the land sets him off. He’s a tad more feral, and a tad more willing to go to the violent answer.

PORTAL- Violence core. What else is there to say? Alternatively, him being a test subject would be fascinating, especially if he was grabbed post-vow. The man is immortal, and therefore would have messed with the tests just by the fact that there is only way for him to die. Death isn’t the worst thing to happen to a man however, and he does still feel pain.

RWBY- Ruv has the ability to manipulate sound waves, specifically his own). Trained with great strength and and even greater speed, his form of combat is continuously dodging as he looks for a weak spot. Weapons of choice are shot gun snow boots, and his sickle that doubles as a short sword.

DOCTOR WHO- Sarv has the ability to create portals. While they are MEANT to be used to intergalactive travel, but instead parallel world travel that in of itself is monumental for a lot of DW plots. Ruv and Sarv can easily go from one universe to the next, however chose to stay in the church. Not to mention Ruv’s skills in target elimination and his abilities would make for some individuals to repurpose him into a weapon. While they have been approached by UNIT on several occasions, they always refuse. However, enough time has passed that they’re starting to notice that the couple in the church aren’t aging...

FNAF- RUVYZVAT and SARVENTE were creations of Fazbear Entertainments as karaoke machines... if we want to go the robot route. If we want to go the normal person route, Ruv was hired by Fazbear’s because it’s one of the few places that doesn’t do a background check, and when he said he wanted to wear a mask as part of the work outfit they were all for it. He runs the karaoke machine though. Stays away from quite literally everyone. While he isn’t the infamous killer of children here, he does have a reputation of his own that he is running from, and that does tend to make him silent.

BATIM- Criminal on the run stumbles into the wastelands formerly known as Bendy’s. Actually enjoys it at first because the cartoon was popular when he was a child. ALT. Stickman drawing of one of the artists come to life. Usually pretends to be Lost One, but when he’s alone with another (Sarvente) they turn into their stickman version selves. Has the ability to jump between 2 and 3 dimensions, but none of the strength or voice.

PSYCHONAUTS- Agent Ruvyzvat, Russian sector. Ruv is working for the Psychonauts in some weird, turning event. Mainly because the sole woman that he trusts and saved his life, Agent Sarvente brought him in. The two are inseparable, and despite Sasha and Nein being infamous for their clinginess, these two take it to a whole knew level. Ruve’s “loud voice” is actually a psychic ability he can use outside of the mind to jumble and confuse thoughts and has no damage on anything physically in the present.

GRAVITY FALLS- Sarvente is a Demon, much like Bill. Where sa Bill desires nothing but chaos and madness, Sarvente is trying her best to keep the world like it is and preserve it’s beauty. Seeing such beauty in a runaway criminal, she and he run to the forests of Oregon. Throughout Weirdmageddon, neither managed to be captured or turned to stone, however Ruv seemingly gained his incredible voice abilities. Now, they live in a semi-collapsed church out in the forest. Sarvente always asking those who come her way to join their church, Ruv is suspicious why such events would happen in such a small town, and is distrusting of most everyone he sees.

DETECTIVE CONAN / KAITOU KID / ANY ANIME OR SERIES LIKE THAT- VERY infamous criminal. Take his “Wanted Dead or Alive” that exists in all other verses, and ramp that up quite a bit. Usually wears a mask whenever he is committing a crime. He does seem to be in it for the fun, though it’s hard to tell with the stoic and expressionless looks. That being said, he does seem to have a very clear goal of what he wants. There are no patterns to where he hits, or what he takes. From wallets of people off the streets, to priceless artifacts. He’ll find where Sarvente went, and how they were able to change her mind in such a way.... how they could corrupt her.

MODERN / NON-EXTREMELY FANTASTICAL- Ruv is honestly a rather down to Earth individual, in some terms. He is untrusting of EVERYTHING, but also due to his own strengths finds little that fear or challenges him. Keep him mind he did make a deal with Lucifer (or his Lucifer) for Immortality for protecting her. While he will always be doing things on his own, a lot of his end goals and motives will come back to her. Without her involvement, he is a walking, talking, machine of destruction with no sway on which side he decides to tear apart.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL STOPPING POINTS FOR WANTING TO PLOT

DON’T KNOW THE WORLD YOU’RE FROM / YOU DON’T KNOW MY LORE. - That’s fine. I can get my hands dirty. I can research. In fact I usually would love nothing more to. I love learning about new fandoms, or new media to get into. You shouldn’t be afraid of that. As for mine- It should take someone less than an hour to get through all of the links I have posted in the RESOURCES tab in my bio. I’ve timed it. So if you have an hour to spare, or 15, or just enough time to read his wiki that’s fine. He’s not from a long running show, or anything like that. You can catch up extremely quick.

WELL WHAT ABOUT A BOOK/COMIC? HOW WOULD HE FIT IN?- If we are talking about Super Hero comics, then it depends. 90% of the time I will just play up his wanted status a lot more, and make it more of a reason for an interaction. You just ran into a man who has killed hundreds. If your muse is a super hero, or a vigilante? Would you let him go? What a villain? That might make a good partner.

TV SHOW? LIVE ACTION?- Again, it depends on the type of show. Superhero follows the same above. If it’s investigative, have him be a witness. Or a falsely accused man who can prove he isn’t the guilty party. Is it more supernatural- well he did make a deal with Lucifer and is an immortal now from it. There are a million ways to spin it. Don’t look at making him a big character. Quite honestly, side characters that you pass in the street have just as much backstory, and as long as there is a plausible chance of interactions then we can work it out from there.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL IDEAS TO BE AWARE OF THAT MIGHT HELP

HE IS A WANTED CRIMINAL.- Meaning his name Ruvyzvat is known. Despite his crimes going on for decades, he is on the run and never stopped. Several city, state, countries, and possibly nations are looking for him, and looking to take him in.

HE IS ALSO AN IMMORTAL.- While he hasn’t been around forever, and nearly not as long as Sarvente has been, he HAS been around for at least 100 years, give or take some. He can be injured, but even fatal injuries heal in an almost Deadpool like way.

HE ALSO HAS SUPERNATURAL POWERS.- His speed and reflexes alone is not something to be taken lightly. He does train and fight with Lucifer on what used to be a semi-regular basis. He has moved and adapted to be able to make sure no one but the singular person he trusts is able to lay a hand on him. That isn’t to say you can’t catch him off guard. You also have his inhuman strength to worry about, but most of all his voice. His voice which could completely demolish a building, and that isn’t the full strength. He has an amazing control over it, but that certainly isn’t a trait of his to ignore.

HE IS NOT ALWAYS IN THE CHURCH. I MADE SURE OF THAT WHEN I MADE MY BLOG.- He goes on walks, and he goes on errands. He also goes to the Gym on occasion, though not as often. He enjoys walks on the beach far earlier than anyone should be awake at. What I’m saying is running into him OUTSIDE of the church is possible. That being said, meeting him IN the church is your best bet for him warming up quicker. He feels safer in the church, and therefore usually wishes to stay there.

DOESN’T FIT THE STYLE OF CHARACTERS/WORLD? - If he doesn’t fit, then I can work to adapt him into something that WOULD fit. What characteristics about him doesn’t work. This is when I would need plotting help. If, lets say it was an all animal world, we can talk about what he is, his traits, and other such things. I am always happy to not use my icons- I just like to because I think they’re neat and I worked hard on them.

WHAT WOULD HE BE DOING?- Any number of things. He likes throwing pebbles at people. He mainly guards and protects Sarvente and her things, but I know we’re talking besides this. He cannot cook, but he does actually sew, and he does read quite a bit. Working on his fist to fist fighting would be a big one. He likes secluded areas, which especially work for explorer’s and people who walk off the beaten path.

IS THERE ANYWHERE HE COULDN’T BE?- He wouldn’t be at a bar. Ruv doesn’t drink, at all. I also don’t see him at any parties unless Sarv dragged him to them. Writing starters or plotting around those are perfectly fine, but do not expect his muse to be comfortable while he’s there.

HE SEEMS OVERPOWERED.- At times, he certainly can be, but only when he feels it’s necessary. He doesn’t flaunt his abilities, and most he has are out of self preservation. If you as a mun are worried about him and what he can do, the best thing you can do is read my information, look into his wiki, and then come and talk to me. Ruv isn’t someone who will 100% abuse what abilities he has, especially since now he is trying his best to be better for her since it makes her happy.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL IDEAS TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTERS IN HIS UNIVERSE

LOCATIONS?- The Church, the back alleys, the karaoke bar (that primarily does rap battles), the Alternate dimension that Sarv made so that he can be loud and not retrain his voice.

MOTIVATIONS?- If your muse is in the FNF world, then be ready for some sick beats to be dropped. Your muse could be rescuing someone from the BBEG and going through the slew of minions to sing against. There’s always the alternative side of this of “what the hell is going on?”

MY CHARACTER ISN’T FROM THERE, SO THEY WOULDN’T FIT IN.- Well I do have a “main” verse which replaces raps with fists. Looking for someone important to them, in the search of a deep and hidden artifact within the search, the rumors of a man born 100 years ago- theres a lot to be found in the library if you looked.

WHAT DOES THE FNF WORLD CONSIST OF?- It consists of Demon Daddies, Singing Skeletons and Pumpkins, Tankmen, a Demonic Lemon Demon, Sentient Video Game Characters, and if you take the mods in you also have Demon, Angels, Ghosts, Deadly Ex’s, Bomb Headed Men-- I promise your character will fit in at the end of the day.

ISN’T HE EXTREMELY AGGRESSIVE AND HARD TO TALK TO?- He can be. He talks in very short sentences, however I do my best to give my reply enough that you can reply to. Actions, and I chose to be very descriptive with his expressions in this case. Ruv spend many years alone, and sometimes with him, actions speak louder than words. When you or your muse figure that out is up to you.

WELL WE CAN’T DO AN ENTIRE THREAD IN A CHURCH.- I never said we had to. He is more than happy to leave the church should he want, and should there be a reason. Usually, (despite what it seems) he does like helping people, so you can lure him out that way ;)

[oveliagirlhaditright]

After the Game, Fret somewhat didn't like when someone other than canon had red hair and wore purple. Canon compliant. Oneshot. Neo spoilers. KH DDD is canon to TWEWY in this fic. Though you shouldn’t at all have to really know KH to understand this fic.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33469456

For the most part… Fret got on pretty well after Kanon’s death.

It was tough, it really was, but he soldiered on by becoming the more authentic version of himself she had wanted him to be… hoping that that would be enough. And that if her soul did somehow exist somewhere, she might see that and be able to find some happiness there.

And Fret had the Twisters, of course—and Neku’s old friends Shiki, Eri, and Rhyme (who was also Beat’s sister, of course), who had really integrated themselves into the group. There was also sometimes the aloof Joshua—who helped Fret keep his head where it belonged.

That, and all the school work he had to do now, as thoughts about college and careers were coming up, and he needed to try and focus on that, lest he be forgotten.

So, for the most part, while Fret still of course mourned Kanon, he had moved on and was in pretty good spirits, considering.

…The only thing that really got him down, oddly… was seeing redheads like she had been also wearing purple. And at first, meeting the legendary Neku right after Fret had lost the girl of his dreams had somewhat been a thorn in Fret’s side, because he’d just looked at Neku’s hair and the color he so clearly favored and thought “Kanon.”

But, thankfully, those feelings hadn’t lasted. They’d had Shibuya to save, after all. And Neku more than proved why he was great to have on a team and why he was the greatest friend, and why Fret should try and let his ghosts go.

But then, Fret had met Shiki’s best friend “Eri”… who was totally cool, by the way, and a co-creator of Gatto Nero with Shiki, and Fret couldn’t even begin to tell you how much he admired her. Especially since she was so pretty and on point… but not conceded at all, and down to earth.

As fate would have it, however, she’d been wearing purple the moment Fret had met her at Shiki’s birthday party. So, they hadn’t started out well, even though it had of course gotten better, and Fret had almost come undone (as ridiculous as it was for him to still be so hung-up on Kanon, he knew).

Thankfully, Shiki had right away seen his shaking form by the punch table and had come and given him a hug, as she’d whispered sweet nothings into his ear. She had guessed accurately what Fret’s problem was, and held him—not even seeming to feel like he was ruining her party at all—while she rubbed his back soothingly. “It’s okay not to get over a loved one quickly, you know? I was certainly that way about Neku. And you have it so much harder than I did. No one will judge you for your emotions, Fret. And if you need to talk, we’re all here for you. I’ll even go get Mr. Mew for you to hold, as he always cheers me right up.” Shiki had said that last part while winking at him, and Fret had had to laugh then.

He may have been afraid of Mr. Mew when Tsugumi had been controlling him and attacking them with the doll, but now that Fret had seen Shiki with her own one more often than not, Fret was thinking he was a sweet little guy again, and could definitely understand why Shiki would think he was good therapy.

“…And I may mention to Eri that it might be a good idea for her not to wear violet anymore.”

“What? You don’t have to do that? I got used to Neku, so I can with her, too!” Fret had wanted to tell her instantly, but Shiki had already been off to get Mr. Mew for him to cuddle.

And despite everything, Fret had watched Shiki walk across the dance hall with a smile on his face. It felt good to be appreciated. It did.

And after that, Eri did stop wearing that color, and everyone seemed to prefer it that way. Fret did, for his own reason, of course… Eri did, because she didn’t even like it that much, apparently, and Neku appreciated it, who jokingly thanked Eri for getting off his turf.

So, everything was more than good for Fret when it came to those colors for a while… but then some girl named Kairi came to Shibuya: a girl with darker red hair than Kanon, it was true, but wouldn’t you know that she was also wearing amethyst?

At first, Fret had been ready to write this stranger off—just another tourist in Shibuya, that he just happened to notice walking past him—but then she accidentally ran into Beat… and it seemed to startle the girl. And good Lord, then she summoned a magic key-shaped sword to her hands, without even seeming to think about it. And she wasn’t even in the UG! (Though when Fret saw this, his first concern was that they had landed back there.)

And the moment Neku and Beat (who were with Fret to go to Molco, to get him some Tin Pins, because that was becoming a thing again) saw the redhead summon the weapon, they had both exclaimed simultaneously, “You’re a Keyblade wielder!” “Yous a Key wielder!”

Fret had had no idea what they were talking about at that point. So, Neku had hastily explained that Shibuya had actually been destroyed before—a time that he, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme had only recently gotten their memories back of—and when it had, Joshua had taken their dream fragments (the only thing that had been left of them) to another world, to try and bring them back. And there, they’d taken bodily form once again and met a “Keyblade wielder” named “Sora”, and another one named “Riku,”

Beat had then gone to explain that they’d both helped them out, and that they were probably even bigger deals than him and Neku, and Fret couldn’t believe it. Hell! He could hardly even fathom it. What would that even look like? But he didn’t have much time to try and guess, because Neku began talking to the stranger almost instantly.

“Are you Sora’s girlfriend?” Neku had asked her then, bold as you please, as he’d pulled the redhead back out of the way of pedestrians going to and fro from all the different shopping areas. “He told me that he was great friends with a redhead, who liked art like Shiki does… I think he was insinuating then that I liked Shiki back then, and I wanted to kill him for all the hints he dropped her, while maybe not realizing that he had feelings for you yet, but I think it was still there… If you are that girl he mentioned, I mean.”

And then the poor girl had had a single tear slide down her eye—and Fret almost wanted to kick himself for only being able to think “you’re not Kanon, you’re not Kanon, you’re not Kanon, you’re not Kanon. Why are you dressed like her?”, while he looked at her—and she explained to Beat, who was giving her a big old bear hug, but Neku too, that: “Yeah, I’m Sora’s girlfriend, Kairi… I’m looking for him, because he recently disappeared after he sacrificed himself to bring me back to life. I was thinking he might be here, or that there might be Heartless here that I needed to fight, but I don’t know.”

Neku had appeared to give much thought to all of that (crossing his arms over his chest and closing his eyes, Fret saw), before he finally met Kairi’s eyes with kind ones of his own. “Why don’t you come with me to meet Shiki? She’s another friend of Sora’s. And Keyblade wielders’ hearts can sometimes lead them to keys, right? Maybe there’s something there, if Sora used to tease me about us.”

And Kairi had gone with Neku and Beat to do that (while Fret had followed, aimlessly, feeling really curious, for sure, but also kind of despairing the whole way: he wasn’t going to lie). And then Kairi had found with Shiki’s help, the thing she needed that would help her lead to Sora, apparently.

It was a hockey puck, that Shiki said Neku had gotten her to help them remember old times together… And as soon as Kairi had come near it, her Keyblade had reacted—seeming almost to float over to the puck of its own free will, tugging Kairi along—and then an insanely crazy light show happened (where all of a sudden, the entire world around them had seemed to be nothing but darkness, with just a few pieces of light to speak of: coming from Kairi and the Keyhole that appeared in the sky, that she did acrobatics towards, in order to aim a laser from her Keyblade at it). Then, it was all over and the Buya returned to normal, but the girl was gone.

And Neku and Beat explained that that seemed to sometimes happen with Keyblade wielders—they’d both seen it with Sora and Riku—as they would sometimes get taken away to where they were meant to go next, before they really got to say goodbye. But they both assumed she was fine and gotten what she needed, and definitely seemed to be hoping it, too.

But Neku, Beat, and Shiki had definitely bonded with Kairi that day… and about a year later, she was back in Shibuya to visit them with Sora and Riku… and well, maybe a whole lot of other people. There was yet another girl with red hair, wearing amethyst…

And while Fret was kind of glad to see them—and was thrilled that Kairi had gotten her happy ending and she could just come her for funsies to see everyone now—he couldn’t help sitting in a park bench in Dogenzaka, sighing, as he watched the whole thing unfold.

“Hehehe. You’re in quite the mood. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were turning into Neku…” Someone else had come to sit by Fret… and one quick look let him know that it was none other than the Composer of Shibuya himself… and that he had better get it together, before the guy threw him into another Game to improve himself, like he originally had with Neku.

“Oh, uhh… Hi there, Joshua. It’s good to see you,” Fret said, putting a hand under his chin and regarding the other boy—god—with mixed feelings. “Did you see that ice is really in this season? And diamonds almost match your light blue shirts, right? I feel like if you started wearing some diamond necklaces, you’d be even more stylish than you already ar-”

But Joshua halted Fret’s attempt to somewhat butter him up, with a hand held high and a small smile on his face. “There’s no need for all of that, I assure you,” Joshua promised, violet eyes locking onto Fret’s and that, too, making the youth think of Kanon some. “If you want her back, why don’t you just ask me?” Joshua asked rather smug now.

And it was too much. All too much. Fret wanted to believe that Joshua could actually bring her back for him… but what if this was a trap? And what if Joshua meant it now… but Fret somehow made him changed his mind, when he begged him to do so and thanked him for it. What if he didn’t do everything to code?

Tripping over his words now, as he ran a hand through his hair, Fret asked, “I mean… I would love it. If you want to, and don’t think it’ll hurt Kanon to be back, I’m all for it. But can you really do that? Wouldn’t you maybe get in trouble?”

At that Joshua “hmmed”, and Fret panicked—feeling like he’d ruined his chances for real here—and he was about to kiss the Composer’s feet to try and be on his good side again…

But it seemed like Fret had started fretting over nothing, as Joshua giggled and flipped his hair once. “I’ve brought Players who didn’t win back after a corrupt Game before, so it wouldn’t be the first time. Kanon’s Soul did seem quite promising to me for a few reasons there, so I’d be interested to see how she would shape Shibuya…

“And as of now… I would not get in trouble, dear Fret. But thank you for your concern. Heh. I am the senior of a lot of angels on the Higher Plane. And right now, the ones above me are actually very much interested me and my methods, for halting Shibuya’s purification twice, but having it turn out better both times for it. So, I imagine they’d let this one slide.”

Fret was near tears at that point; of course he was… And okay, maybe he was actually crying now. It was just that this was all he had ever dreamed of after they’d gotten out of the Game, of course… Because despite what he told himself… Fret did still love Kanon. And wouldn’t it be great, to actually get back one of the friends that Fret had lost?

But now Fret had to wonder, as he scratched his neck awkwardly, “All those gingers I saw in purple… was that a hint from you to me that I could get Kanon back?” Had Fret been looking a gift horse in the mouth all this time?

Joshua was laughing once more, as he urged Fret to get up and go make nice with the Keyblade wielders, who—if Fret was hearing it right—were telling all of Fret’s friends about urban legends they had heard of in a place called Twilight Town… and then Nagi chirped back about the ones they’d seen in the Game, and Rindo and Beat jumped in to help her out with that.

Huh… Perhaps Fret really was missing something over there. And was Joshua, too?

“Usually, I wouldn’t give an answer… I would say it’s above your pay grade, or that the world is whatever you want it to be… But, no. I was not prompting you to make this choice about Tachibana Kanon. Though things seemed to work out rather nicely for you, wouldn’t you say? So you’d find the strength to ask me about her?”

“I- I do,” Fret admitted, looking down at the pavement—and then all the buildings around him—and thinking that for a concrete jungle… Shibuya was actually a masterpiece, and might have actually been heaven, as far as he was concerned. “So, when will Kanon-"

But when Fret looked towards Joshua once more, the Composer was already gone.

And Fret… he didn’t see Kanon for a while after that. And he imagined it probably felt like what Rindo had gone through (and somewhat Fret himself; all the Twisters, really), when Josh had first brought Shokie to the RG.

About four months later, Fret was beginning to dread that Joshua had forgotten his promise, or that it was impossible to bring Kanon back, after all…

And he was at 104, checking out all the new selections there, when he heard a voice behind him, “So, Fret… do you mind telling me how you really feel? And no sugarcoating it! I was proud to see how you grew, after all. And you can’t disappoint a lady by covering it up some, if you went to all this trouble to bring her back, y’know?”

Fret dropped the black hat that he’d been about to purchase (that was maybe so light black, it was actually closer to purple), as he turned around to face that voice and ran towards her to embrace her.

“Kanon!"

Author’s Note: So, the other redhead who goes with Sora and the crew to Shibuya in this story is supposed to be Ariel—in a “The Worlds Are Starting to be Reconnected” idea—and it’s mainly because she wore purple seashells (though a shirt here, of course). Not even gonna lie. But if you don’t like that, you can imagine it’s an OC… that Sora and Kairi had a daughter… or just completely ignore that part. It’s up to you.

[revengerevisited]

@noneofthismakessensetome KHUX is really hard to explain, and I don’t really understand it myself despite watching every update, but the most that I can glean from it is that it’s set in the past in a place called Daybreak Town, right before the Keyblade War. (How far in the past is unknown, not helped by the fact that time travels differently in each World, but it was definitely before Xehanort was born).

There was this guy named the Master of Masters, and he’s supposedly been fighting a war against darkness for a very long time. (No idea if that’s the elemental concept of darkness, or Darkness the character). He’s the person who invented Keyblades (or one of the people. KHUX is extremely vague and likes to throw little doubts in just to make you question everything), and he gathered six apprentices (all named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins). Luxu, aka Xigbar, is one of the six. The only other relevant one is Ava. 

Five of these apprentices (not Luxu) become the Foretellers, leaders of these different Unions of ‘Keykids’ (which I don’t think is an official term, but that’s what the fandom calls them so I will too) who wield Keyblades against the Heartless to collect Lux (which is some sort of light energy). Each of them is also given a Chirithy Spirit created by the Master of Masters. 

The Master of Masters, aka MoM, can see into the future, because he put his ‘eye’ into the Keyblade No Name (Master Xehanort’s Keyblade), as well as other Keyblades like Riku’s Way to the Dawn and Vanitas’s Void Gear (if that is the name of Vanitas’s Keyblade...). Because these ‘eyes’ exist in the future, the MoM is able to ‘see’ into the future, and writes all future events down in the Book of Prophecies. He then gives copies of the Book of Prophecies to the Foretellers (not Luxu), but leaves out a certain page. He then sows distrust through the five by telling them one of them is a traitor.

The Foretellers all mistrust each other, and through a chain of events this leads to the Keyblade War, where all the ‘Keykids’ kill each other and the World is rift apart. The only ones who survive are the Dandelions, a special group of ‘Keykids’ the MoM told Ava to form, who hide in a Data version of Daybreak Town. The Dandelions have their minds wiped of the Keyblade War by the Chirithies and believe they are in the real Daybreak Town, except for the five Union Leaders, who were chosen by the MoM and given Books of Prophecy by Ava (more on that in a second...). 

In the latest KHUX update, the MoM says that it will take multiple lifetimes to defeat darkness (or Darkness), and this is probably why Luxu (Xigbar) has been hopping from body to body for all these years (centuries?). The MoM gave Luxu the Black Box (without telling him what’s inside) and No Name (to be passed down through the generations of Keyblade Wielders and eventually wind up with Xehanort before going back to Luxu). By having No Name be passed down into the future, the MoM can see through its ‘eye’ and write down future events.

So about the Union Leaders of the Dandelions, the ones the MoM told Ava to pick were Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, Lauriam (Marluxia), and Strelitzia. However, (as we saw with the most recent update) a shadowy being named Darkness killed Strelitzia and gave Ventus her copy of the Book of Prophecies instead. Ventus was in some kind of trance or had his memory wiped, and didn’t remember Strelitzia’s death until now. 

Darkness has also been helping Maleficent, because for some reason after her defeat in KH1 she wound up in the past in Data Daybreak Town, and Darkness wants to help her get back to the future (KH2) with a time machine. (The time machine, called the Ark or the Lifeboat in different translations, is the same machine used by Terra-Xehanort to send five-year-old Kairi to Destiny Islands, although in that case she was transported through space, not time). It seems that Darkness wants some of the ‘Keykids’ (Ventus, Lauriam (Marluxia), Elrena (Larxene), and Skuld (who is probably Subject X)) to be transported to the future, and somehow Maleficent will serve as their Waypoint. (I don’t understand how time-travel in KH works, nor why Darkness wants to send the ‘Keykids’ to the future, but that’s the best explanation I can give).

Anyway, the whole murder mystery about ‘who killed Strelitzia?’ has been the biggest fandom mystery in KH for a long time (I’m talking like, three years). And unfortunately, it’s still not solved because it’s still not clear just who/what Darkness is. Some believe that Darkness is Ava, who is actually the ‘traitor’ trying to stop the MoM’s plan, because she believes his plan will end in the destruction of the World (which it kinda did). This is because Darkness takes the form of Ava to speak to Ventus after killing Strelitzia, and tells him that he’s a Union Leader (when really he’s the ‘imposter’). Ava is known to have the power of illusion, which is why some fans think she may have taken the form of Darkness to disguise herself. (Just a note on all this, I can’t remember exactly what all the fan-theories about Ava are, and I may have gotten something wrong here. But the basic gist is that some fans believe Ava is Darkness).

Then there’s the second theory, which unfortunately in my opinion is the more likely of the two. We know from Re:Mind that a being calling itself Darkness is hiding within Ven’s heart, and in KHUX Brain says that Darkness (or darkness) can hide inside people. Combine this with Vanitas’s speech to Ventus in Re:Mind, about how he and Ven ‘aren’t the same like he thinks’ and how he was just ‘hidden inside Ven until Xehanort tore him out’, it seems to imply that Vanitas is actually Darkness (or a piece of Darkness) who was hidden inside of Ven, and not the dark half of Ven’s heart like we’ve believed for the past decade. Basically, if this theory is true, it completely re-writes Vanitas’s entire character, motivations, and origins, while also retroactively making him a child-murderer, and I’m sure you all already know how I feel about that.

Now, literally nothing outside of Re:Mind implies that Vanitas is Darkness, and in fact the scene in the Keyblade Graveyard with Vanitas, Ventus, and Sora right after the scene in Re:Mind seems to contradict this theory, as well as every piece of material on Vanitas released both before and after Re:Mind including his character file, so this all may be just one big misunderstanding, but that doesn’t dissuade the fact that there is literally an entity calling itself Darkness inside Ven’s heart. I can’t even begin to imagine how it got there, unless 1. It’s Vanitas after returning to Ven’s heart after his defeat in BBS or 2. Darkness somehow got into Ven’s heart while he was sleeping in Castle Oblivion. 

This is all pure fan-theory, but since the Vanitas in KH3 is a time traveling version of Vanitas from the past, it could be that the ‘real’ Vanitas is still living inside Ven’s heart (like how Roxas was still inside Sora’s heart), and if the ‘real’ Vanitas is now calling himself Darkness, then it’s possible that Vanitas was either lying about being half of Ventus this entire time or is only now just remembering his memories of being Darkness. Either way, if Vanitas really does turn out to be Darkness, then I can only imagine his entire personality will be overwritten by Darkness’s and Vanitas will basically cease to exist as a character. As in, he won’t just be dead, he’ll have never truly existed in the first place. 

And that, my friends, is why I’ve been in a constant state of anxiety, stress, and depression for the past year, and the reason I haven’t updated A Heart and a Half, because I’m having trouble reconciling the Vanitas from the BBS Novel (an abused, neglected child manipulated from birth to be a weapon) with what is potentially his true identity as Darkness (an ancient, child-murdering demonic entity). Once again, it’s still just a fan-theory... But a very plausible fan-theory.

Anyway, the third theory is that Darkness isn’t secretly some other character, but instead is exactly what it says it is— a sapient amalgamation of the elemental force of darkness. Darkness tells Maleficent that she should think of it as an ‘old friend’, leading some to believe it’s someone Maleficent knows from the future. However, it could be that Darkness ‘knows’ Maleficent because it itself is the embodiment of elemental darkness, and Maleficent is a darkness-user. In that case, it could be said Darkness is a ‘friend’ to all people who use darkness. 

Unfortunately, before anyone says this line of dialogue proves that Vanitas can’t be Darkness because Vanitas never met Maleficent, Vanitas did meet Maleficent... in the BBS Novel. In the BBS Novel, Maleficent asks Vanitas if he’s a ‘friend’ of Xehanort’s. Vanitas hesitantly says yes (because his abuser isn’t exactly a friend to him), simply because he and Xehanort are allies. He then asks Maleficent if she’s ‘friends’ with Xehanort, and she says yes (in the sense that they are allies). In this roundabout way, it could be construed that if Vanitas is Xehanort’s friend, and Maleficent is Xehanort’s friend, then that makes Vanitas Maleficent’s friend, which still fits in with the theory that Vanitas is Darkness if Darkness is Maleficent’s friend.

Even if we ignore the (technically non-canon) BBS Novel scenes of Xehanort kicking twelve-year-old Vanitas in the face and beating him with his Keyblade until he cried and leaving him isolated in a wasteland for weeks on end, and just go off of the games’ canon, the story of Ventus and Vanitas can still be seen as both literal and metaphorical child abuse, with Ven being the part of the victim who represses the trauma and Vanitas being the part of the victim who lashes out. Of course, if Vanitas does turn out to be Darkness, then he will be retconned from a victim into a scheming child-murderer just as evil as his abuser and the demon/abomination/empty creature that Xehanort always said he was! (Maybe that’s why Vanitas had such a mental breakdown in Re:Mind... he realized every horrible thing Xehanort ever told him about himself was true...). Which is why, as you can imagine, this theory causes me a lot of stress! 

Anyway, that’s the story of KHUX and the reason why I turn into a big ball of anxiety every time a new update occurs. I literally wouldn’t care about KHUX at all if Ven wasn’t in it, but he is, and everything that happens to Ven in the past is something that will effect him and Vanitas in the future, whether Vanitas is confirmed to be Darkness or not. We now know that Ven has had even more trauma forced upon him than he’d had with Xehanort, and I now have a suspicion that the reason Ven refused to create the X-Blade by using the darkness in his heart in the BBS flashback scenes was because he remembered what darkness and/or Darkness did to Strelitzia.

I really can’t imagine why Ven is in KHUX other than to connect him to this Darkness character in some way. Some fans still claim that Ven is the one who killed Strelitzia because they think he was ‘possessed’ by Darkness, but it seems pretty clear that Darkness was the culprit while Ven just stood there in a trance. Even so, I suspect that Ven blames himself for what happened anyway, even though it wasn’t his fault. I don’t know how this will play out with the future/current Ven. Is he suddenly going to remember his past and think he killed Strelitzia? Why? For the angst? Is he going to realize that Vanitas is (or is a part of) Darkness and therefore the murderer of some random girl Ven barely knows? Is Darkness just going to pop out of Ven when he’s in the Realm of Darkness with Aqua and Terra and... I don’t even know. Fight him? Gloat? Enact his evil scheme of destroying the World because you see, Vanitas never really wanted his light back, he never really wanted friends (page 378 of the BBS Novel), he was lying the entire time! Yes, he’s totally this evil monster who just wants to kill people because he’s evil~!

...Alright, I’ll stop. But seriously, I don’t know where this story is headed, guys. This update basically had the MoM tell us to stop trying to figure things out or theorize and that we shouldn’t want to know everything that’s going to happen, so who knows. Next update might throw us a curveball and reveal Darkness was secretly... idk Pete the entire time. He’s Maleficent’s friend! Or maybe it’s just Xehanort again, who knows. I just feel... really tired of KH, and I don’t really know where I’m going to go from here. Hopefully this is the last time I rant about this subject, though, because I really feel like I’ve already said all there is to say.

I want to finish A Heart and a Half, but I also feel hampered by everything that might happen with Vanitas. I also feel like managing my Tumblr blogs is causing me too much stress and distracting me from doing other things (including writing my fanfics), so I’ve been thinking of putting them both on a more ‘permanent’ hiatus after their queues run out sometime later this month. I dunno how everyone would feel about that, though, nor how long that hiatus would be. I’d certainly miss talking to everyone, and you guys make me smile whenever I get a comment or a question from you all! But I also feel like I need to focus on my health (both physical and mental) and work on things that don’t involve social media. I guess I just need a little more time to think about it.

[thekitsune]

The Keyblade Witch, Luz Noceda

Here I am with a new fic! A Kingdom Hearts and Owl House crossover fic! Honestly, I did not even have this idea until I saw some fanart of the Kingdom Hearts 1 cover, but with the Owl House characters in place of the KH characters. It was amazing, and it made me realize just how well fitting these two series are to mix together. I hope everyone enjoys this fic as I have some ideas. Plus there will be some slight KH story changes to fit the crossover. Also, note, I will use worlds from the game as well as worlds based on other Disney cartoons/movies that have not appeared in the KH series. I might also add some worlds based on anime or video games, but if I do I will probably limit the number of them. We will see... Now enjoy the fic! And remember, that I do not own The Owl House or Kingdom Hearts!

Prologue ~ Dive to the Heart~

A void of complete darkness. No matter where she looked, she could only see infinite darkness. Was she trapped in some horrible dimension. With no possibility of returning to her friends or her mom? The very idea of this terrified her. She felt cold inside at the prospect of this. All of a sudden, she felt another cold chill before she lost her footing, and she began falling backwards.

Freaking out, she began waving her arms and legs erratically as she continued descending deeper into the black void. There was nothing to grab onto and no staff to catch her. Was this where she was going to die?! Her stomach felt like it did a multitude of flips as she fell even quicker. Flashes of her mother, Eda, King, Willow, Gus, and Amity passed through her eyes as she flinched in anticipation for a collision with some form of the ground.

What she got instead was a gentle breeze slowing her descent while also pushing her into an upright position. So shocked was she, that Luz took a couple of moments to realize that she was once again standing on something. Glancing down in surprise, she began to slowly walk around to try and find out where she was. However, the moment her foot made contact with something(?), the darkness beneath her shattered and fluttered away in the form of doves. Looking around in surprise, Luz was amazed and mesmerized at the sight.

Gasping in shock, she smiled at the sight before she realized that the ground beneath her was illuminating the entire void to different degrees. Looking back down, she was surprised to see that the platform was in fact a stain-glass platform of a girl that was a few years older than her. She must have been a princess considering she was wearing a crown.

"Wow..." Luz whispered under her breath as she gazed upon the platform. Smiling lightly, she once again began to look around. Now that there was some light, she was not nearly as scared as she was before. She was clearly in some void. What it was, she had no idea. She knew it was filled with darkness, but the platform beneath her proved that there might be hidden areas amongst the darkness. These platforms might mean something as well. While she did not know who the girl on the platform was, she had to be important.

The most important question in her mind though was: How did she get here? The last thing that she remembered was going to sleep in the Owl House. King had bunked with her again, and she cuddled up under the covers as she let sleep take her. So was this place a dream? But everything in here felt way too real. This fear, the amazed feeling at the seeing this platform, the sense of touch, and... "Ow! That hurt!" pain...definite pain.

This was real. Somehow, someway, it was real. And she was trapped here alone. Feeling her pockets, she winced when she realized that she did not have anything to draw glyphs on in case of something dangerous happening. Her fingers began to twitch as the thought went through her head. She had been through various dangerous situations since coming to the Boiling Isles, but she had always had someone or something to help her out during it. Now though...

Fear. It's a common emotion to feel in a situation like this.

"Ack! Who's there?!" Luz shouted after falling backwards in shock. Glancing around, she tried to see someone through the darkness, but she knew it was futile.

Ah. There's so much to get done, but alas we have so little time. We should begin.

With that statement, Luz froze as she heard a cracking noise. Looking back, she saw a crack begin to form across the platform. Shooting up, she felt sweat beads begin to form on her forehead as she looked around for somewhere else to go. Sadly, the crack turned into a full-blown spider-web before the entire platform shattered into glass shards. "Not againnnnn!!!...." Luz shouted as she immediately fell again. Gasping, she began floundering around again before letting out a grunt as she collided with another platform.

Rubbing her chin, she pushed herself up while suppressing a groan. Once she got back to her feet, she looked down and spotted a different princess on this platform. And she was surrounded by multiple circles, each with their own little man. They were kinda cute. Giggling at the sight, she looked back around before looking up into the sky. "The heck was that for voice?!"

As you know, danger can lurk around any corner. What will you use to defend yourself?

Blinking in surprise at the complete dismissal of her question, she jumped back in surprise as three pedestals arose from the platform. A spotlight emerged above each one. One had a sword with an odd symbol on the hilt and a blue handle. Another one had a magic wand...or was it a rod? The two ends of its handle were tan with the main portion of the handle being green. The head of the rod was a blue version of the symbol on the sword. The last pedestal had a shield resting atop it. The shield itself was pentagonal in shape with a red border and a black face. Once again that symbol was present on this weapon and was sporting a red color.

"Uh...I get that I'm suppose to pick a weapon, but I want to ask a very important question. What the heck is that symbol? It's on all three of these things!" Luz shouted in exasperation before sighing and shaking her head. She really had no idea what was going on, but she should just go along with it for now. Plus...that rod looks pretty cool...

Running over to the pedestal with the rod on it, she grasped it tightly in her hand and smiled in triumph. Now she had a wand like everyone else! Deciding to test it, she tuned out the voice as it spoke again, and began drawing one of the glyphs in the air. Smiling as the glyph shone before her eyes before bursting into a bright light like it usually would whenever she drew a large version of the light glyph. As the light expanded, she felt a warm feeling in her chest at the sight of her first spell with her own wand.

Choose one to give up. Please. I am tired of waiting.

Luz finally tuned back into the voice right as her wand disappeared which earned the voice an irate ''Hey! That was mine!'' Growling in anger, Luz let out a little "Hmph" as she folded her arms over her chest and pouted. Her mind finally registered what the voice had said which gave her something to distract herself with. Looking back over at the sword and shield, she let out a little "Hmmm..."

"I have a wand now so I don't really need a sword. However, that shield looks really big and heavy. My weak, nerd arms might not be able to lift it. Hm...Oh I know!" Luz shouted as an idea popped in her head before closing her eyes. Pointing at the sword, she began her choosing process, "Eenie meenie miney mo! Catch a tiger by the toe! If it hollers let it go! Eenie meenie miney...MO!"

Luz opened her eyes and saw that her finger had landed on the sword. Smiling in victory, she walked over to the weapon and grasped it tightly in her hands. Listening to the description of the sword, she was kind of disappointed since it apparently was a sword that gave someone invincible courage and caused terrible destruction. It must be really powerful...

"Well...do I really need a shield?" Luz whistled innocently as she turned on her heel and walked over to the other weapon. Grabbing it, she winced at the weight of the object. She was right, her weak little nerd arms wouldn't allow her to use this that effectively. As she was about to announce that she chose to give this one up, the description for it rang out:

The Power of the Guardian. Kindness to aid friends. A shield to repel all. Is that what you wish to give up?

Luz froze at this. She would lose her kindness? She wouldn't be able to help defend her friends anymore? The faces of everyone that she held dear flashed through her mind. Looking back at the shield, she grasped it tightly before shaking her head no. Releasing it from her grasp, she walked back to the sword and announced that she gave it up. The sword vanished from the pedestal along with the shield, but she didn't feel any different so she knew that she didn't lose her kindness.

Be aware of the dangers that surround you. They can come from anywhere. Even the shadows.

Gasping as three black silhouettes shot out around the platform, she watched as they all sped around before slowly taking shape. Stepping back, she saw one shoot pass her, under her feet, and she heard a wooshing sound. Listening to her instincts, she threw herself forward right as the creature shot up from the ground and took a swipe at where her head was. Rolling forward, she jumped back to her feet and watched as the other two creatures rose from the platform as well.

Feeling a power begin to form in her chest, she stuck her hand out and watched as the magic rod that she chose only a few moments earlier materialized into her hand. Grabbing it tightly, she narrowed her eyes as she jumped back and quickly drew three small ice glyphs in the air. Each one was focused on one of the creatures. The rod shone before the glyphs lit up as well. Immediately, a spike of ice shot from each glyph and struck the creatures dead-on.

Smiling, Luz began hopping up and down in victory. Her victory hopping was cut short as another creature suddenly jumped at her. Shouting, she swung the rod and smacked it across the face which sent it flying off the side of the platform. Breathing hard, she collapsed to her knees and let her eyes dart around to survey the entire area.

Thankfully, the mysterious voice gave her the all clear as it soon began speaking again.

Nice work. Now, there are some questions that need to be answered.

Blinking in surprise as a door materialized on the platform. Pushing herself back up, she slowly approached the door and inspected it for any kind of trap. She wanted to trust this voice, but...it's sent her falling who knows how many feet and summoned shadow creatures to attack her. Sure it provided her with a weapon, but...it was sending her mixed signals.

Sighing, she grabbed the door handle and pushed the door open. A bright light shone through which caused Luz to shut her eyes tightly to try and shield her vision. Walking through the doorway, she winced as she kept moving forward. The hard platform beneath soon changed to feel like...dirt. Was she standing on regular ground now? Peeking down, she was surprised to see grass staring back at her. Did that door really just send her to a different location...then again, Eda has one as well so it's not too surprising.

Looking up, she gasped at the sight of the Owl House. "I'm back! I'm back!" Luz yelled in excitement as she was about to run towards the place that she's been calling home for the last few months. However, she screeched to a halt as soon as she saw three figures standing outside of it. None of them made a move to look at her. Looking at them cautiously, she held her hand out and watched as the rod...wand, she still wasn't sure, appeared in her grasp once more.

"Oh come on voice! When can I go home?!" Luz complained with a pout on her face.

There was a pause before it began speaking.

Just answer the questions, and it will speed up the process.

Luz blinked in a surprise before nodding and turning to face the three people that this world was showing her: Eda, King, and Amity.

Walking over to the fake King, she saw that he had his arms crossed while running his foot back and forth in the dirt. Holding back an 'Awww,' she waited for him to ask his question.

"What are you most scared of?"

Surprised at hearing King's voice in such a serious manner, she quickly went over the question in her mind before opening her mouth to answer, "I'm scared of losing my friends and family. I don't know what I would do if that happened." Fake King stared at her before looking back down and going back to what he was doing.

Walking away from the fake version of her friend, she walked over to her teacher, well the fake version of her anyway. Fake Eda smirked down at her before petting her head in the usual manner that Luz had become accustomed too since meeting her. "Hey kid, you know I'm not the real me, right?" Surprised at how direct she was being, Luz just nodded back which earned a chuckle out of her fake mentor. They failed at capturing King's personality, but they seemed to hit the nail on the head with Eda.

"Heh, anyway, I'm going to ask some stupid question that you have to answer alright. After this, go ask the fake version of your little friend over there the last question and then move on. Some things will be going on soon, and you need to be prepared for it. Now then," she coughs into her fist before raising her hand up, "What do you want out of life?"

Luz pursed her lips and began thinking hard. She really wants to be a witch, like Eda and Azura, but was that really all she wanted out of life? That was such a hard question... "I...I'm not really sure Eda. I mean...I want to become a powerful witch, but that's not the only thing I want! Maybe...maybe I just want to make some lasting friendships with others and have people who accept me for me as well? I don't know..."

Fake Eda looked down at her before running her hand over Luz's head once more. Luz glanced up and saw that the fake version of Eda went still once more which signaled that she needed to move on. Sighing, she turned and headed to fake version of Amity.

Fake Amity glanced up at her from the book that she was holding. Nervously waving at her, Luz quickly grabbed her hand when she realized this was not her real friend and pulled it back down. Fake Amity watched silently before speaking up, "What's most important to you?"

Luz didn't even hesitate to answer, "Everyone." Fake Amity briefly smiled before going back to her book. Before Luz could react to this, the entire world began shining brighter before she was once engulfed by light.

Opening her eyes after a few moments, she saw that she was on another platform in the endless void. Sighing, she looked up and saw that this platform had a path that lead to another platform. Raising an eyebrow in confusion, she shrugged before running down the path.

"Almost there, almost there, almost there..." Luz muttered to herself as she approached the second platform. Taking a break to catch her breath, she looked around and saw that there seemed to be another spotlight like before shining down in the middle of the platform. Blinking in surprise, she slowly walked towards it.

Be careful. The closer you are to the light...the larger your shadow becomes.

Luz froze in shock before glancing back and spotting the elongated shadow that was attached to her feet. Summoning her rod, she began to draw another glyph in the air only to let out a grunt as an invisible force slammed into her gut and sent her flying backwards. Skidding to a halt, she opened her eyes when she realized her head was not lying on anything. Shooting up into an upright position, she glanced back and realized that she was almost sent flying off the platform.

Climbing back up to her feet, she watched as her shadow disconnected itself and rose from the platform's surface while transforming into a giant, hulking behemoth. Eyes wide, mouth hanging wide open, Luz almost dropped the magic rod in shock, but she quickly tightened her hold on it.

Don't be scared though. You have the power-

"Yeah yeah, 'I have the power to defeat it, blah blah,' Hush! I'm trying to concentrate on this boss fight so I don't get crushed!" Luz shouted in anger while holding the rod with both hands. Seeing the behemoth staring down at her, she quickly drew five small ice glyphs in the air and activated them which sent five ice spears straight at it. The behemoth swiped its arm down and smashed straight through them with ease. Wincing, Luz quickly ducked under another swipe and ran inbetween its legs to get behind it.

"Light spell!" Luz shouted as she drew a light glyph. Before she could activate it, she stumbled and fell to the ground as it smashed its fist into the platform. "Ughhh...stupid monster thing..." Luz grumbled before pulling her head up.

Glaring up at the creature, she tried to think of what to do before remembering something that she's done before. Looking down at her rod, she saw a small light shining at its tip. Pushing down on the platform as she stood back up, she began running around the platform while dodging the behemoth's swipes and punches. With a few close shaves, she smiled as she jumped onto its fist when it slammed it back onto the platform.

"Take this! Ice spell!" Luz shouted as she used the behemoth's momentum to send herself high into the air and right outside the glyph's area. Activating her rod, she watched as the glyph lit up before a huge pillar of ice shot out beneath the behemoth and sent it flying high into the void. Looking down, Luz flinched as she saw that there was now a massive hole in the platform. Sighing in relief, she de-summoned the magic rod and waited for the voice to say something...only to trip.

Straight into the hole.

"Ahhhhh!!!!"

[sorakingdomhearts]

I just finished watching all of the Kingdom Hearts game cutscenes in 16 days! Under the cut, my super-long analysis post.

This was such a bad idea and also the best I’ve ever had. I can no longer tell the events of separate games apart, other than the stuff I added to this post’s draft while watching, but it’s given me so much to do in the quaran-times.

I would say my favorite games at this point are KH3, BBS, and 358/2 Days. I actually played through KH3 to like 90 something percent so I’m most attached to it, but storywise Aqua, Ventus, Roxas, and Axel/Lea have the best plots. If I had to pick a top favorite, other than Sora(because. Well. Sora’s my chosen middle name for a reason) I would say it’s Axel/Lea, and Aqua is the world’s closest second.

My favorite Disney worlds are probably Traverse Town for the music, Nightmare Before Christmas for the costumes(both the wintery ones and the spooky ones), Disney Town for the character appearances and aesthetic/colors, and BH6 for the plot/dialogue. Honorable mention to Hunchback of Notre Dame for being the only one I hadn’t heard about before starting this journey AND being a friend’s current hyperfixation so I got to share hyperfix joy with them for a bit.

I think Aqua has the best voice in the series. Especially with BBS 0.2/KH2.8 there’s quite a few scenes where the only dialogue is her talking to herself and she’s got such an emotional, pretty voice to pair with her heartbreaking journey home.

Axel/Lea’s relationship with his name is the same as a trans person with their deadname and I love that for him. For example, in the end of Dream Drop Distance, he gets frustrated with Riku not knowing it’s changed to Lea again but gives up on correcting him because the rest of what’s going on is more important. I’ve definitely done that with people deadnaming me.

On the other side of that coin, in ReMIND Demyx struggles to remember it’s Ienzo, not Zexion, but he corrects himself over and over. He doesn’t seem to want to deadname Ienzo, he just hasn’t gotten used to it yet. I think that more than anything else is what proved to me personally that Demyx really was trying to do something good.

Also, with Axel/Lea, can he not make bad jokes IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS OWN DEATH? Hello?! I said this on Twitter but hey, buddy, I love you dearly but now isn’t the time.

Xion’s name is pronounced she-on, not zee-on like I thought when I read it. Idk why I thought it was that way when I read it printed but it’s not.

Donald is always cute, all the time, and he’s cutest when he and Sora are squabbling like little kids. I love him. Or maybe that’s the Ducktales fan bias creeping in...

Speaking of HEY, WAS ANYONE GONNA TELL ME HDL AND SCROOGE ARE IN MORE THAN JUST THE KH TRILOGY?!?! What a pleasant surprise to see Scrooge in BBS and to visit Disney Town.

Nobodies make the wobble sound of laminated paper being shaken. I keep thinking about that for no reason.

Does anyone else think Riku saying he can “smell the darkness” on people in ReCOM is weird? Am I just really late to the party, or are we just going to ignore that? Yeah? Okay.

Aqua’s end of Birth by Sleep has some of the sweetest, most poetic dialogue in the series imo. When Aqua and Mickey are talking about Ven, and Sora and Riku talking about hurt within the heart? Yeah. I’ll cry.

Also, another sad scene: Isa and Lea as kids when Lea explains his whole “get it memorized” thing is so he can be remembered and live on, if need be. I cried real tears at that one.

Conversely, some of my favorite sweet scenes are: in the beginning of BBS when Aqua tells Ven and Terra they’d “make the weirdest brothers,” Sora meeting Santa in KH2(I think?) which reminds you hey, these are children, the scene right after they find out Goofy’s not dead and Donald flips out, Lea summoning his Keyblade for the first time(powermove,) and of course the series of reunions in KH3. There’s at least a solid scene or two in each game that really warms my cold sad heart.

Speaking of the KH3 reunions, the best one I think was Xion, Roxas, and Lea’s. At least with Aqua/Terra/Ven they started out with hope, and Aqua and Ven at least had the ability to hold onto that hope to get them through. The ex-Nobody crowd really didn’t have anything. Just the promise that they’d meet again, and maybe not even in this life. I will cry.

Some of the voice casting is surprisingly great. Like, Nala’s voiced by Vanessa Marshall, who did Gamora in the GOTG tv series. Love her. And Hynden Walch who does Starfire is the Alice voice at one point which was such a pleasant surprise.

Also hey, Zachary Levi went so fucking HARD on his voice work. Even Rapunzel has some lines that fall a little flat compared to the tone of the original, like the KH version of the “first time outdoors” sequence. But Flynn Rider has this consistent energy to him that I really love.

In ReCoded I really liked the second-person Mickey narration. Idk why. It just made me super happy.

Hercules is a movie that frequently becomes a level in these games and like every time they continue that trend of Phil’s “I got two words for you” joke like guys, wasn’t the thing in the original that it translated to two words in Greek? Not that he couldn’t count? Anyway that’s the best reoccurring joke. I hate it and love it in equal measure.

One of the frequent things in KH that I love is there’s this sense of ridiculousness to it. Like, it’s a lovely story with excellent worldbuilding and character designs, with a brilliantly complex plot, but like. You get into scenarios like the end of ReMIND, and Sora’s time-travelled to save his dying and sorta already dead friend(Kairi). He’s cradling his other dying friend in his arms and talking about how he found his way to them by tracing the connections between their hearts. Beautiful, poetic, showstopping, right? Except it’s Mickey motherfucking Mouse. You can’t find this anywhere else.

Speaking of ReMIND, the part where Sora connects all the keyhole things? It looks like a starry sky full of constellations? Yeah. Holy fucking SHIT is that pretty. I literally had to pause it twice to absorb the visuals in that scene.

To end off, here’s some of my pride headcanons: Terra and Xion are trans, Ventus and Riku are nonbinary, Saïx/Isa is agender, and Sora is genderfluid. Axel/Lea is pan, Kairi, Riku, and Sora are poly, and Aqua is bi. ((I definitely have more of these but these ones I think are most important.))

[bluerosesburnblue]

Can I complain about the use of Laurium and Elrena in KH3/KHUX being blatant "these are good people, we swear, and we shall prove it by making them keyblade wielders long ago" and just... ignoring the whole bit on how they went on to torture Sora, Namine, Repliku, and many others? And how the two personalities are vastly different? Also as they don't remember any of this KHUX stuff AT ALL then it doesn't forgive/excuse anything they did in the present day? I feel like that bit in KH3 was thrown in for shock value. And like, I love Larxene. She's awesome and evil. But characters have been brought back who's story was over, other characters who's story was long over were brought back only to die for no reason (cough) Repliku denying he was a person was horrible (cough) and KHUX being the most "listen to my tone and not my words" that KH has done in quite some time. (And thank you 30 Rock for giving me that wonderful way of explaining it) Just ugh.

God, just... that's also what it feels like they're trying to do with Xehanort with "the reveal?" I'm not against the idea of giving a villain a sympathetic backstory, but the point of that is to give them traits that the audience will look at and see reflected in themselves and go "oh shit" and realize that they could go bad if they leave those traits unchecked. It's not supposed to be used as an excuse to gloss over all of the villainous things they did to make them a good person in hindsight. You can't buff out a game everyone's already played and known about for years

I feel like that bit in KH3 was thrown in for shock value.

Unfortunately, Lauriam and Elrena were in KHUx before KH3 came out so this whole thing was probably planned concurrently between them. Lauriam was here for a long time. There was no shock in the KH3 reveal

Thing is, Lauriam's descent into Marluxia is actually passable? There's a somewhat believable progression of "slightly conceited but still loving older brother" to "little sister goes missing, panic" to "find out little sister was as far as anyone can tell killed, start looking for revenge" to "become so obsessed with revenge that he almost kills a kid who was heavily manipulated and not actually at fault." The issue is that they tried to have him resolve that by the end of KHUx by having him realize that his acting out was wrong, leading to this weird bump where Lauriam seems to have completed a full character arc within KHUx, but for the franchise as a whole the next time we see him, he's back to the overly-aggressive-almost-killed-a-kid side. We don't get a nice, continuous progression with him, but the steps on paper kind of work?

It's just that the end of KH3 tries to backpedal him into the "realize that his acting out was wrong" stage without any of the inciting events to make that happen, so he's forced to emptily repeat the last two steps of his arc again with no motivation due to amnesia

Elrena's the one they really screwed up on by making her this, like, sweet and demure young girl (who felt bad for taking a pod!) with absolutely no lead-in to being a full-on sadistic witch. And the worst part is that they could totally have made it work and just... didn't?

It wouldn't have even been that hard. If, at the start of KHUx, we'd had flashback scenes to Strelitzia and Elrena's party where they're friends, Elrena has the KHUx personality that they actually gave her, and everyone is happy, but then relations in the party start breaking down and Elrena starts growing more and more bitter at her teammates, then you'd have something to work with. Maybe a teammate betrays them and joins a new party because they're not "earning enough Lux" or something. Elrena is only able to keep a hold on herself due to her good friend, Strelitzia, enough that she's recruited into the Dandelions (hell, maybe she's the first person that Strelitzia recruits). But then, from her perspective, her only good friend in her party goes "missing," and none of the rest of their teammates seem to care and the bitterness and anger returns full-force as she goes to look for Strelitzia by herself

Then we could have her bump into Lauriam and have her start showing signs of being her future, rude self before learning that Lauriam is also looking for Strelitzia. The two recognize each other from things Strelitzia has told them and form a partnership on their hunt for her whereabouts

If they really wanted to go dark, they could have Elrena eavesdrop on the Union Leaders (instead of just showing up to just add in the idea of Data selves existing and then snag a lifeboat) and realize that they've been suppressing people's memories and start to distrust them. Then, in the end, Lauriam would have to win her trust back enough to convince her to take a pod to try and save her (to protect his sister's dear friend), but she still ends up with the major trust issues mentioned in her character file

And then all they'd have to do is frame the KH3 scenes and accompanying deaths a little more sincerely, giving each of them a "what have I done?" moment somewhere in the middle of the story, maybe even brought on by flickers of memories of Strelitzia coming back to each of them, and then regretting things come their final boss battles. Even a "tell Namine I'm sorry" or a bitter "I've remembered someone... who would've LOVED to meet Namine... But.. I..." from one or both of them would be enough

So, not a terrible idea, even if I think making them ancient Keyblade wielders is stretching the suspension of disbelief just a bit much, but mediocre execution on Marluxia and abysmal execution on Larxene

[phoenix-downer]

Sora and Xehanort: The True King vs. The Pretender to the Throne

Sora fighting Xehanort in Scala ad Caelum was kind of like watching a king reclaim his throne from a pretender who caused nothing but havoc in ruin in the king’s absence. Credit to @rapis-razuri​ for first making the connection and then telling me about it.

Let’s back up a bit first, though. Verum Rex, the video game featured in Toy Box, means True King in Latin.

And while yes, this is no doubt a reference to Versus XIII, I also want to consider the idea of true kings in the context of KH3. 

Sora has his first confrontation with Xehanort in Toy Box (albeit Young Xehanort). The true king (Sora) goes up against the pretender (Xehanort), and Sora doesn’t even hesitate to attack him in a sequence that shows that no, Sora is not over what Xehanort tried to do to him in DDD...

...but unfortunately Xehanort manages to grab him...

...and casts him out/banishes him, i.e. throws him into the video game where the gigas are. 

Fourth wall? What fourth wall?

But Sora fights his way out and makes his way back to his friends... much like how later in the game, he is cast out of the realm of the living... 

...and then fights his way back to his friends and rescues them.

In San Fransokyo, Sora meets Xehanort again after he finds all his friends’ hearts... except Kairi’s.

Look how hostile he is right off the bat towards him:

He just glares at him even while Xehanort... tells the truth for once and warns him what’s going to happen to him?

Sora’s not having it though and is sure to sass him:

And Xehanort’s parting words are chilling:

And then Sora goes back to the Keyblade Graveyard and... well, we all know how things went from there.

Xehanort wants power, no matter what the cost... and he’ll sacrifice whatever it takes to get it. Including Kairi.

And by the time we get to Scala ad Caelum... there’s a marked change in Sora’s interactions with him. No more sass. No more discussion. Sora doesn’t take Xehanort’s BS at all.

Seriously, almost every time he looks at Xehanort, he’s glaring at him or regarding him with the contempt and disgust he deserves. This is the man who killed the girl he loves enough to become a Heartless for - and later on in this very game actually died for! - and it hits Sora where it hurts. Like a king losing his queen when the pretender tries to take over his throne, Kairi’s loss wounds Sora deeply.

And, of course... the game of chess isn’t over if the queen’s gone - the king must be captured for that to happen - but all the same, the king’s left a lot more vulnerable without her.

But, queen at his side or not, he still has to win and beat the guy who made his friends’ lives hell and has made his life hell, too.

His eyebrows are furrowed and he has his hand on his Keyblade, ready to fight:

Xehanort is dressed in goat/ram armor for one of the battles, and goats... well, they’re associated with the devil, among other things, so the parallel is very fitting here. Sora probably felt like he was fighting Satan at this point.

Shoutout to Donald for being equally disgusted/angry with him:

The sky starting to go dark reflects Sora’s mood pretty well here:

Sora just looks at him with utter loathing and disgust, which is such a huge change from his usual friendly/cheerful demeanor:

Even when he’s looking up at him it’s with his head pulled back to make himself look as big/tall as possible. In other words, he isn’t giving Xehanort any sort of deference because he never in a million years deserves it.

Donald and Goofy are equally pissed and it really shows:

Even when Sora’s surprised/unsure about what’s going on he’s still glaring and gritting his teeth:

And when Xehanort took Sora’s light, I’m pretty sure I gasped. Not just because I really liked Rage Form in this game and love any sort of exploration of Sora’s darkness, but because...

Well, Xehanort already took Sora’s light from him. Kairi. Kairi’s his light. This moment really drives that point home. Sora’s still feeling rage and fury and grief over her death, over losing her, and that comes out all at once and boy was it satisfying to wail on Xehanort like this:

Fight darkness with darkness!

Even when he’s desperate and about to die, he’s still just furious at Xehanort and that’s reflected in his demeanor:

And finally, FINALLY, he wins. Xehanort is no longer towering over him. They’re on equal footing now. Sora has dragged him off his high horse and defeated him. Not only that, he’s actually managed to get him to collapse to the ground when before Sora had collapsed to the ground over his grief at losing his friends and then his grief at Kairi’s death. But not here. He’s the one standing over Xehanort for once. 

And he’s so tired and so done with him at this point and it was so satisfying to see someone call Xehanort out on his BS and for Xehanort to finally have to listen:

Sora demands to know what’s going to happen because he doesn’t want to hear any more lies, half-truths, or beating around the bush:

Side note: foreshadowing? 

Sora, in a way, is the World’s hope, and he is likewise lost at the end of the game, and the camera very deliberately chooses to focus on him here...

But anyway, as the scene continues, you can still really just see his contempt and disgust with Xehanort. This is the part where he basically tells Xehanort he’s not cut out to be a true leader because he thinks he can control destiny, and his contempt for Xehanort just oozes off the screen. Bonus points for them having a discussion about destiny vs. free will, where Xehanort blathers on about dictating people’s fates for them while Sora comes down hard on the side of giving people free will even if no one can really control their own destiny:

I love Sora’s line here: “A real leader knows that destiny is beyond his control... and accepts that.”

He tells it like it is, not at all afraid to mince words. Because yeah, Xehanort doesn’t deserve to rule one single bit. And in doing so Sora proves he is the one who truly deserves to rule. What do you bet he will become the eventual ruler of... something, eventually. Kingdom Hearts, maybe? 

This moment is like when the true king tells the pretender to get off his throne, an idea @rapis-razuri​ first proposed:

Yep, I’m definitely getting a “Get out of my kingdom and leave my people alone” vibe from this scene, even if Sora doesn’t know his true destiny yet. Foreshadowing? Especially when his shotlock in Second Form was called King of Hearts?

Probably. After Xehanort banished him and caused endless destruction and ruin, he’s casting Xehanort out and he’s going to make things right.

Goofy gets a moment to look disgusted, too:

And Xehanort tries to make a big show about how he’s handing over the χ-Blade because Sora did so well, blah blah blah, which... at least he acknowledges that Sora is the one who truly deserves this power?

Sora takes the χ-Blade from him:

And to Sora’s infinite credit, even though he has such a powerful weapon at his disposal, even though he could use it to summon the door and open Kingdom Hearts for himself and take full power of whatever lies beyond and be reborn as something greater than human and remake the World how he desires, if Xehanort’s reports in BBS are to be believed...

He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t want that power, and by doing so, shows he is truly worthy of it in a way that Xehanort never was or will be.

But Sora doesn’t take it for himself. He doesn’t because he despises the χ-Blade and what it represents, despises the fact that Xehanort murdered Kairi to create it, despises the fact that it was completed with her death and created by so much pain and suffering.

He could remake the World however he wishes and he chooses not to. He wants the old world back, flawed as it might be, because he wants to give people a chance. Wants to give them a choice.

And instead of trying to go it alone like Xehanort did, he calls on his friends to help him close whatever realm Xehanort opened up:

Then lifts the χ-Blade in the air...

And we get this shot. My friends are my power, indeed:

“Good riddance, I’m destroying this awful thing that represents everything I hate about what happened to Kairi plus all the crap Xehanort put my friends through, and I’m gonna do it with my bare hands.”

Must’ve been so satisfying for Sora to finally see that thing gone. In the next scene the worlds are safe, the χ-Blade is gone, and Kingdom Hearts has been sealed once more.

But even though he fought all night and it is now morning, the king isn’t through with his mission. There’s one last person he still has to save. His queen. And in sharp contrast to how he felt like he was worthless without his friends before, here he feels worthy enough to go after her alone. And he pulls it off and saves her, too.

And for my game, at least, I got this image of Sora sitting on a throne at the end. 

Sora won. He might not be king yet, but he stopped Xehanort from becoming king and restored the worlds and rescued his friends and saved Kairi, and that’s what’s important for now. The rest can happen later. Nomura does like to play the long game, after all, and he’s been drawing Sora slouching around on thrones since... KH1 days?

And... until the next KH game... we’ll just have to wait and see how this theme will be further developed...

[snowflake-of-destruction]

Imagine Roxas’s reaction to seeing Axel shirtless when he started getting buff for the first time

Enjoy the distraction of the evening and Roxas and Sora bonding, and be warned of language and reference to adult situations.

"Can I complain to you about Riku for a second?" Sora asked. It was perhaps not the ideal time to start a new conversation as Roxas was in the process of landing the gummi ship in a clear spot of grass in the courtyard outside the entrance to the keyblade academy at the Land of Departure, but that was how Sora was, keeping things in and then letting them explode forth at times that often seemed odd to others, but were simply the breaking point to him.

"No, I require at least ten minutes of complaining about Riku every week,"Roxas deadpanned, guiding the ship down between two others already parked. "You know the time table. Three minutes without air. Three days without food. Seven days without busting Riku's silver dusted balls."

"Gold," Sora chirped, unbuckling his restraints and going for the door.

"I'm going to regret this," Roxas sighed, half to himself as he followed suit,  "But...what?"

"Gold medal," Sora grinned. "Everything in that area is nothing less than first place." 

"Strongly disagree." Roxas screwed up his face in exaggerated disgust.

"You have no way of..." Sora complained as they started up to the castle.

"Please, can we get to the complaining?" Roxas cut him off.

"It's official even. The council of judges, me and Data Sora judging pictures saved on my gummi phone, awarded him the blue ribbon. I tied it..." 

"I will give you all the munny in my munny bag not to finish that sentence." It was pretty clear to Roxas that Sora was torturing him on purpose for crimes of his past lives. Sometimes he still hated his other.

"Then I suppose you don't want to hear about the ribbon cutting ceremony either? Or, well, it was more of a ribbon untying ceremony. I'm not usually good at tongue tricks like the cherry thing so I was kind of proud of myself that I managed to..."

The pattern of hasty interruption of an oblivious or happily malicious Sora continued. "For the love of sea salt ice cream, Sora, I'm begging you to stop before I hurl."

"What were you talking about before?" Sora blanked and grasped at straws of stray thought. "Tortillas?"

"What? Why would you think that?"

"It was taco night when I came up with the ribbon ceremony."

"You were going to tell me how much Riku was annoying you."

 The enlightened glow of remembrance entered Sora's eyes, but the spark of happiness at conquering his brain only lasted a moment before Sora was collapsing against the doors of the castle academy, playing up the drama of whining, "Riku is driving me crazy!"

"That's more like it! Tell me all about it."  Roxas was perhaps a bit overzealous in his support, judging by the look Sora shot him, so he tried a more nonchalant and less gleeful tone, "You'll feel better."

"He keeps looking at me like I'm going to disappear in front of his eyes. He's woken me up in the middle of the night to make sure I'm still breathing. He keeps tripping me up in battle because he's started diving between me and the Heartless, like all of a sudden I can't take care of myself. I know why it's happening, and I know he means well, but I'm not sure how much longer I can take it. Do you have that problem with Axel?"

Now, he and Axel had to work through some anxiety about being separated again. It had taken a lot of long talks, time, and trust exercises, to work through them, but now Roxas could help Sora with Riku's issues from the point of view of someone who had been there before and gotten out. Or he could just make a joke. "Well, I'm afraid he'll get caught in a strong wind one night and snap in half, but I'm trying to keep myself rational. I mean I can stick unwound hangers in his clothes to try and create a brace from something more substantial than his limbs, and I can put a bell on him so I don't lose track of him when he turns sideways, but after we take all the precautions we can, all I can do is tell him to be careful lifting his keyblade so it doesn't break his arm, and look at the positive. He and Jack Skellington wear the same size jacket and being able to trade clothes with  the King of Halloween is pretty cool."

"What are you talking about?"

Roxas steeled himself to be drawn into a serious talk anyway, taking a spot leaning against the doors alongside Sora and putting a hand on his shoulder, dearly hoping someone didn't open the door from the other side and send them sprawling. "Listen, I picked a ridiculous example, but the same principle applies. Take measures to keep each other safe--simple ones that don't stop you from being able to do your job-- talk about what his fears are, and then just try to find silver linings and agree to live your lives. You guys are going to be okay."

"Oh yeah, I know that,"  Sora dismissed, shaking off his hand. "I was just letting off steam. Riku's actually being really sweet. I just need to make him realize what he's doing before he finds a way to sacrifice himself again to keep me safe. What you said about Axel doesn't make sense though. He's ripped."

"He's a twig," Roxas countered with a scoff. "He's got the muscle mass of the jelly creature from Monstropolis, and looks like it the time it let me suck it into a large straw to make Boo laugh. I love him but he's a scarecrow. My stickman scarecrow, and I love him, but let's be realistic."

The light of dawning realization lit Sora's eyes once more, and Roxas found it a bit unnerving. He was definitely missing something. "...Haven't you visited Axel since he started training with Terra?"

"No, this is my first visit, to see Terra confer the master title on him." Master ceremonies had become a big thing now, a little pomp and circumstance to make it seem more important, Roxas guessed. Riku had missed out. Too bad for him. "He was on a journey of the soul as well as the body...Whatever that means. Terra didn't want me distracting him."

"That's what makes it more fun. When I went to retake my mark of mastery at Yensid's tower...Wait a second, Terra ordered you to do something and you just listened?" Sora's pursed lips and glaring eyes spoke more of tantrum throwing toddler than betrayed friend.

"He's a master," Roxas answered simply, though it wasn't respect for orders of a master that held him back. He could have been a master too, if he wanted, if he felt like he needed the validation of being recognized by the others and wanted to jump through hoops set up by Yensid or Aqua or even worse options. He had been named master of the keyblade by the Organization, that was enough. He and Axel had agreed they would help guard the worlds but they wouldn't play into the ranking game. Axel had changed his mind, and Roxas respected that, but he felt no compulsion to join him.

"You never listen when Riku tells you to do something. He's a master too."

"Master, my ass."

"No, master of my..."

"Why do you have to be like this?" Roxas groaned, sliding to the ground.

"Don't get pissy just because you haven't gotten laid in months."

"I didn't visit because Axel told me not to. We've been doing the long distance thing. We've done it before for stretches, like when he and Isa were working on their first book,"Roxas answered Sora's original question, loudly, to change the subject.

"But you've talked on the gummi phone?"

"Every night."

"With video?"

"Is this going back to a weird place you never leave?"

"I live in the gutter now!" Sora confirmed happily, before going back to neutral. "No, it's a serious question. Have you gotten a good look at Axel recently?"

"Same loveable bozo sleeping in a fuzzy zip up adult onesie that makes him look like a Meow Wow  he's always been. "

"You haven't seen him out of the onesie?" At Roxas's exasperated look, Sora defended himself once more. "Legitimate question."

"Some nights I don't even see him take down the hood. He has a voice for Meowaxel."

"And you were griping about the ribbon ceremony. Your sex story is much weirder."

"We don't have phone sex," Roxas's pining despair outweighed his distaste for discussing this kind of thing with Sora who was a dog that never let go of a bone without making a joke about boning. "We have an agreement. He almost crashed a gummi ship once."

"You...while he was driving?" Sora looked impressed and Roxas felt a rare flash of shame.

"New idea?" He pushed through and said the words as if they were a crack of his own.

"Great idea!" Sora's face split into a wide grin and Roxas apologized to Riku internally, the only way he ever did so. Sora grabbed his former Nobody's arm and dragged him to his feet. "Come on. We're going to spy on Axel sparring with Terra. They have a routine. Terra wouldn't deviate from it even knowing people are arriving for the ceremony tonight."

"I am always down to see my baby light someone on fire," Roxas followed Sora down the hill, pliable and, frankly, excited to see Axel as soon as possible.

"Baby? Blech." Sora pulled a face that lasted maybe half a second and rang false while it did, thrilled and supportive as always to see Roxas showing a soft spot, but attempting to play some of Roxas's own attitude back at him.

"Your pet names for Riku are worse...and you should not prove it by listing them." Roxas tacked on the latter part hastily, leaving no room for Sora to start his reign of terror anew.

" There are several riffs on Dream Eater that would make you wish you were as smart as me," Sora huffed, "But that's not what we're here for." He held Roxas back for a second with a thrown out arm, and glanced around the last bend in the hill. Roxas could hear sounds of exertion. Satisfied with what he saw, Sora withdrew the restraining arm in favor of waving his hands like a cheap magician as he ordered Roxas to, "Feast your eyes!"

Roxas ignored Sora's theatrics and stepped around him, only to stop short when he ended up following the other man's order despite himself. His eyes were feasting and there was an entire buffet in the form of Axel, stripped to the waist and hair up in a messy bun with damp loose tendrils stuck to the back of his neck, twisting away to avoid a strike by Terra (in his weird black spandex shirt like always, showing off for who the hell knew or cared) and using the momentum to whirl the rest of the circle and carry out his own blow, the flex and spring back of newly defined muscles Roxas had missed the development of covered by freckled skin that didn't quite make the definition of tan but had been cultivated into a tone more golden than ghost pale translucent on display. The first dish was broad shoulders that had always  been there, but no longer existed just to make clothes hang smoothly like they did on a clothes hanger now that they were attached to the freshly carved meat station--arms that bulged and Roxas was going to declare illegal to ever hide under bunched neon fleece or a thick black coat again. He'd call Axel's new abs the salad bar because he wanted to charge like a bull and then start grazing, but they could also be the drink station because there was definitely a six pack there much more appealing than the beer Hayner had developed a fondness for, and Roxas was remarkably thirsty looking at them. Axel's waist was still comparatively small (Dorito. Delicious. More buffets should include snack food on the side. Jokes weren't over. The man was a snack.) but then there was perhaps the most shocking addition of all had popped into existence below it.

"Bite the buns and have a popsicles for dessert," Roxas whispered under his breath, awed, unable to even be embarrassed by half consciously daydreaming out loud because his eyes had continued their journey and found out there was now meat on the stork (too long to be chicken) drumsticks Axel walked around on.

"Think he's safe from the wind now?" Sora taunted.

"Time for you to leave." Roxas shook himself out of his daze to return fully to the present.

"What?"

"Run up to the castle," Roxas gave the same order in new phrasing as he walked on ahead and waved to Terra, yelling, "Time to leave."

The scene that ensued was bordering on comical as Terra froze, caught off guard and was smacked full in the face with head turning force by the flat of Axel's keyblade, an act that was accompanied by an apologetic, "Oh shit!" and widened eyes that spoke to Axel trying to cut his actions short but being unable to stop the blow, just lessen it. Terra stumbled and Axel reached out to steady him, but then appeared to change his mind or become irrevocably distracted halfway through as Roxas's presence sank in fully. His keyblade disappeared in a shower of sparks, Terra fell, and the lovers ran to be reunited. 

Roxas found himself lifted off the ground like he weighed nothing and his soul left his body, leaving him not responsible for the happily sighed word that he used to greet Axel, "Arms."