I think it’d be really, really funny if the Civilians of Twilight Town keep trying to guess what Roxas, Xion, Lea, and Isa’s deal is, trying to fit them into SOME sort of even remotely traditional family structure and end up with, like, six different competing rumors even before the polite blonde girl who divides her time between “the old abandoned mansion, which they guess she owns?” and “nowhere in the area.”
And then the visiting scientist.
And the other visiting scientist.
And the scientists’ apparent son (other son?), who spends his entire trip talking with Pence about something they’ve clearly been collaborating on for at least a year despite the fact that no one’s ever seen him before.
Xion introduces a boy who looks nothing like her, currently lives with his family (not, she specifies, her family,) and has no relationship with Roxas or Lea whatsoever. Apparently they’re both the children (okay, he says creations, but Even’s an odd one) of one of the scientists. Technically, they say. They look nothing alike. They’re pretty sure he doesn’t live with the scientist, either. He does know Namine (presumed to be the scientists’ mutual daughter) but they say they’re not siblings point blank. Someone crosses Xion and Namine being sisters off a whiteboard, then considers and puts a question mark there.
Roxas’s incredibly obvious identical twin shows up and they claim to be half-brothers. Roxas will skateboard away from all followup questions. On another trip, he’ll bring a third boy who introduces himself as “the other half of (Ven’s) heart” and then immediately refers to Roxas, Xion, and Ven (but not Lea or the other boy, who nonetheless knows him) as his siblings. He claims to have been born at the dawn of time and just after the worlds shattered and also sixteen years ago. (Vanitas knows exactly what he is doing and is THRIVING off the chaos.)
Based off similar hair colors, her apparent dislike of Lea, and sheer desperation, half the town is convinced that Aqua and Isa are siblings and she sided with him during the breakup. There’s no consensus about how Terra fits into this. (Isa’s not correcting them. About any of this. It’s not worth it.)
Seifer gets back from a journey of self-discovery and asks who the newbies are and gets shown eight different, mutually-contradictory conspiracy boards in the form of family tree/relationship charts. Lauriam and Elrena have been the source of multiple schisms among the gossip mill.
By the time Sora shows up again even Hayner, Pence and Olette are having trouble keeping everything straight, and they actually know the whole story.
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So like, mini disclaimer before the post. I was not and am not a believer in the "Sonic is going to be forced to choose between his original friends and the shatterspace variants" theory, nor the companion to it "all the variants are just gonna essentially live with their memories inside the og friends' hearts"
However, I do have brainrot over the idea of Nine meeting Tails in his dreams, and some of these ideas require a prerequisite of "in which Nine exists within Tails' heart but does not currently have a body.
ㅤ
Imagine, if you will, a setting post canon in which the variants exist within the hearts of the original and (kingdom hearts style) they would just need a body/vessel of their own to exist again. Tails is sleeping, and after dreams upon dreams of meeting the variants, experiencing their fleeting memories and their hurt (their feelings about everything), he comes across Nine.
Nine... Tails has had a hard time remembering much of his dreams while awake, but when he's dreaming, he remembers that Nine has been perhaps the angriest and most conflicted of all the variants. All of them want to be alive, of course. Tails wouldn't be surprised if *all* of them have been parsing through his own memories in exchange for sharing theirs.
But none have been so volatile as Nine, harder to reason with. The others at least face him more often than not, but Nine has directly done so few times.
But...Tails can't blame him for that, especially not after what he knows. He understands how Nine likely feels (abandoned, lonely, forgotten). Perhaps he wouldn't be so agreeable either if he fought tooth and nail for a better future, and the universe denied him that (nay, punished him to watch but to never have).
But tonight...
Nine is standing under a palm tree, facing the vast ocean past the beaches of Green Hill. Tails takes a few steps down the hill he's on, and soon enough he's standing off to the side (dream logic, he understands)—where he can see Nine from the front, but isn't standing directly in front of him or obstructing his view.
It's at this moment that Tails realizes he's never seen Nine so clearly before. The tips of his ears, to his permafrown, to his 7 mechanical tails, and down to his shoes. He's fought the fox before in his dreams, seen glimpses of him, but this is the first time he's had a chance to really see him.
Nine turns his head away from the sea, and suddenly Tails is beside him, mere feet away.
Tails opens his mouth, a dozen questions and sentence starters flying through his head. What eventually comes out is just a simple, "Nine?"
Nine smiles at that, and yet...Tails can tell almost instantly that it's not because he's happy or excited to see him. No, the smile is almost...accepting, if not a little bit sad.
Then, Nine sighs. "This could have been the other way around, but...it has to be you."
Tails hesitates for a moment before pointing at himself. "...Me? Why?"
"There are so many people connected to you—all of you, if my hypothesis is correct. It often is. You're me, so...you can feel what I felt. You could...feel how I feel."
And maybe it's true that Tails can feel what Mangey, Sails, and Nine are feeling, but all that proves is that one is affected by the presence of others residing within their own consciousness.
Tails shakes his head. "No. You're you, not me."
There's a moment of silence before Nine chuckles, and Tails continues, "I want you to know that you deserve to live as your own person, just as much as I do."
"Every time we've fought—here—I've asked you the same question. Do you remember it?"
Well, of course, Tails finds multiple questions as he tries to think back, but by keeping the terms of Nine's question in mind and employing process of elimination–
Nine turns back to the sea, squeezing both gloved hands into fists at his sides. "I was angry—among other things. I just couldn't understand why I was here. After everything I'd fought for, everything we'd been through together, I couldn't understand why he chose you. And every time I asked, you never gave me an answer."
Nine's right. Tails has never given him an answer to that question.
But to Tails...that question was never his to answer, at least in his opinion. Unless Sonic told him, Tails would never know why he put in for him, Amy, Knuckles, and Rouge over worlds of new friends. All he does know (straight from Sonic's own testimony) is that Sonic would have never made the choice he did had he known it would lead to all this. Sonic had wanted home, Tails, and all his friends back, but he never meant to erase the other worlds. Even as he tries to pretend otherwise, Tails knows Sonic has been beating himself up for the choice he made ever since.
Shouldn't Nine know that—that Sonic didn't mean to hurt him, that Sonic feels regret, that Sonic wasn't intending to choose between one or the other?
"Nine–"
"Save it," Nine says, cutting him off. "It doesn't matter anymore. Sonic made his choice, but you still have that chance."
Nine turns back to Tails and holds out a hand.
Tails looks down, then back up at Nine. He hesitates for a second, but ultimately takes Nine's hand.
Tails is an observer, a spectator without form, as memories begin to play out before him in quick succession. Despite the lack of form, somehow his head begins to ache in pain that only grows over the moments.
And then, he begins to notice a pattern in the memories shown to him. Despite the pain, he recognizes the clear shift since a certain blue hedgehog—Sonic, of course—saves Nine from being hit by a train.
Each and every memory, if Sonic wasn't centered or mentioned in it, then his palpable absense was the focal point. Nine fought him, he worked with him, he almost lost him, he thought he lost him, and then he fought him again.
Nine had spent most of his life lonely, though he hadn't realized that until his life was almost over.
A waterfall of emotions hit him then, just before the highlight reel crackles into black.
And then, Tails is standing beside Nine again, head pulsing and heart pounding. He can hardly remember what he's just seen, and that waterfall of emotions seeps through his fingers as he tries to catch them, to study them.
All he knows is that he understands. Somehow, he understands why Nine feels the way he does. Now, more than before, he understands why Nine is hung up on Sonic the way he is.
Perhaps, Tails thinks, he understands how it feels for Nine to be with Sonic (and without him) far more than anyone else.
Tails musters up a look of determination as he stares into Nine's eyes, and he squeezes his hand. "I'll figure it out. No matter how long it takes, I'll make sure you—you, and Sails, and Mangey, and the rest—can walk along the beach. You don't deserve to sit here and watch like this. None of you deserved to have your lives taken."
And Nine... Nine smiles, like he just can't help it. "Don't you see? That's why it has to be you."
There's a feeling, an almost indescribable feeling, that strikes Tails' heart at that.
"I promise," Tails says.
And then, he’s sitting up in his bed, breathing deeply.
As he makes himself get up, get ready, and rush into his lab, there's little he remembers from his dream as always.
But he knows what he has to do.
I'll make sure of it, Nine.
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I have an idea that is in a similar vein to the theory that Sora was the Lich in KH3, but differs slightly - I think Sora can take on the darkness (or feed on the light possibly? I think its one of two) of others' hearts. This theory mostly hinges on how Sora takes on the pain of Ven, Roxas, and Xion. For some reason I can't find the screenshot, but I am in class so my searching skills aren't fully devoted at the moment. I'll run through cutscenes eventually, but basically I'm thinking of the scene where Sora says he is taking on the burden/pain of those in his heart.
Throughout the series, Sora has had a unique ability to hold others in his heart, it's the basis of the "Sora is the Lich" theory from kh3. This leads me to wonder about the actual mechanics of him taking on not only hearts, but specifically hearts in pain on the verge of death.
Sora isn't the only one in the series with hyperempathy, notably both Baldr and Xehanort both experience the ability that Sora has of feeling other's pain across unbelievable stretches. Both of these fell to darkness due to the extreme feelings they were experiencing- to take on another's pain is to eventually overwhelm yourself and fall. It's possible that Sora has yet to have this occur due to the nature of the hearts within him - namely Ventus and Kairi, the hearts of pure light.
When playing kh3, you do not have to use rage form until the forced moment at Kairi's death. Prior to that moment, it is entirely optional, almost as if Sora is able to hold himself back from falling into it. While his rage over Kairi's death would make sense after everything he had just done to save everyone, it's also notable that the only instance of forced rage form is after Ventus is gone from Sora's heart.
Many have commented on how sora's darkness has grown through the games, and I'm the past I've wondered if the growing darkness also aligning with how close we are to Ventus waking up are connected, and I'm beginning to believe firmly that they are. I think that Sora is able to draw on the dominant power of the hearts around him in order to maintain balance of light and dark within his heart. As Ven grew closer to waking up, his heart of pure light was strengthening and healing- and in tandem sora's darkness grew. He took on the hearts of Roxas and Xion, both of which would hold some darkness, which makes me wonder if their hearts were helping contribute darkness to keep sora's in balance while holding Ventus's.
If someone with the hyperempathy only takes on the darkness of others' hearts, then they are more susceptible to being overcome by darkness, but if Sora has been slowly taking on both dark and Ventus's light, then it could explain why he has kept from overloading with darkness thus far despite all his trauma. "My friends are my power," what if they really are - what if Sora can literally draw light or darkness from those around him. Sorry if this was rambling or incoherent, I haven't slept.
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i am so curious. whos your favorite of organization 13 (the original but the "real" is fine too if u have any particular favorites) . i feel like roxas and xion are obvious answers because if you hate either of them you're just sucks. but other than them
xion is 100% my favourite org member hands down, both her role in the original and the 'real', but if not her then larxene literally showed up for one game, served cunt, was a bitch, and died. and then came back. and i love her so fucking much for it. when she dies in 3 she literally just admits that she didnt give a shit about xehanort shes just there for the drama and i love her so much for it, she also has cool ass knives which i gotta respect her for
she's also just like. an ACTUAL antagonistic original kh female character!! kairi, aqua, xion, namine, olette, and the other original kh girls are all protagonists or at least on the side of light which is cool but it leads to a lot of similarities in characterisation and not much variance. but larxene. she fucking kicked a child then threatened another with her knives. UNAPOLOGETICALLY. then comes back in kh3 in the frozen world and actually makes a good point about having to autonomy of choice. but in general she sucks and i love her for it!! i was recently thinking about either a com roleswap between her and marluxia/a personality swap with them (theyre already relatively similar being co-conspirators and all but slightly stoic and mysterious/ominous larxene and marluxia being more of a taunting bitch about someone sora forgot about and constantly withholding that information just out of reach (which would be a good parallel to his own experience with strelitzia and his whole past) is a dynamic i would love)
her voice acting is also very enjoyable AND my favourite spell is thunder so i gotta give her that. one thing i will say is that i was kinda sad that her remix of the 13th struggle in the kh3 data bosses is the most similar to the original and she doesnt get anything too unique. especially given the fact that saix has ELECTRIC guitars and not her, i really think it wouldve gone hard. my one wish for her in the future (since it looks like ux characters will be relevant) is that they dont just completely erase her personality and let her keep some of that edge, i dont want her to be washed down to another demure, generic supporting female character.
i can also say that my very very least favourite org member is xaldin because i have a strong personal grudge against david dayan fisher (xaldin's eng va) that i cannot say without revealing some very personal information. when i say personal grudge i dont mean theres like an obscure fact about him that i wont ever actually experience or be affected by that i dont like, i mean this is a very real/personal thing that i do not like him for. in person (its not that serious but i love being a hater. and i will never forgive him)
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