#second . ven doesn’t stay on the destiny islands so wtf is this old man talking about

[daylighteclipsed]

Started replaying BBS and. Wow there’s a lot I don’t remember

[starcharmfunzies]

Xiiiiiiiooooooonn xD

oh boy okay here we go

I’ll just say it. I don’t like Xion. She’s a bad character, but it’s not her fault it’s the writers’.

My argument is divided in the following points:

She has no personality, and is only a blank slate for anyone to be able to relate to.

She has no flaws, and is never in the wrong.

Her only character trait is the “tragedy” of her story, and it’s shoved down the player’s throat so she can earn our sympathy only for it to be meaningless later on.

Her bad writing is so contagious she makes other characters around her act out of character.

She serves no purpose to the story.

I’l explain each point after the read more:

She has no personality, and is only a blank slate for anyone to be able to relate to

Kingdom Hearts characters, including heroes and villains, have distinct personalities of their own that makes them unique between them and believable. If you closed your eyes and I started describing someone via character traits you wouldn’t have a hard time figuring out who I’m talking about.

How would you describe Xion though? She’s kind, cares for her friends, is determined and has a strong sense of justice.

That could be literally anyone.

If I added to that description “cool, composed, collected.” you could already narrow it down to Terra, Aqua or Riku. If instead I added “cunning, sly, nonchalant” you could think of Axel. 

But you can’t add anything else to Xion, she just has a bunch of generic character traits that anyone could relate to, including us the player. Who doesn’t care about their friends? Who doesn’t want to do the right thing? Everyone does! While some people could see themselves in Sora or others in Riku almost any KH fan can somewhat relate to Xion because she’s very standard in personality.

She has no flaws, and is never in the wrong.

Characters make mistakes man. Terra trusted Xehanort, Aqua blindly obeyed Eraqus’ orders, Ven left LoD to chase after Terra, Riku accepted the darkness, Naminé fucked with Sora’s memories, Roxas tried to fight against the Organization by himself with no plan. The list goes on. 

You ever notice Xion never does anything wrong? Whenever there’s conflict she’s always right. Roxas wants her to come back? Can’t, she has to go to Sora. Axel tries to bring her back? She fights back (even tho she loses she still tried to not lose). She has the chance to stay alive and ditch Sora? Nope, that wouldn’t be the right thing. Overall her moral values are always right, she just doesn’t make mistakes. And no, following the organization’s orders doesn’t count as a mistake because she was brain dead when she first joined and only started thinking for herself later on.

She’s a perfect character. A character that does no wrong, and y’know what? Perfect characters are fucking boring because they never cause conflict. You know what to do with perfect characters like her? You kill them so the main character goes through development. Mufasa and Tadashi ring a bell?

Her only character trait is the “tragedy” of her story, and it’s shoved down the player’s throat so she can earn our sympathy only for it to be meaningless later on.

When you think of Xion what is the first thing that you think of? Her death, and that’s because that’s the only thing she has. What else could she possibly have? Eating ice cream in a tower? Hiding from Roxas and Axel? Nah dude, the only striking thing she has that left an impact is her death. When you think of Roxas you could think of the KH2 intro, his fight with Riku, his fight with Axel.. Roxas has a lot of amazing moments, and so do the rest of the cast!

But not only is her death the only thing she has, but the game tries real hard to rub in our faces just how tragic and sad it is oh no :v

The reason why she has such a hard time deciding to go to Sora is because she’ll pretty much disappear from existence. We know this way before she makes her choice, and the whole thing is building up the more she thinks about it and you know it’s unavoidable. Naminé even explained to her, and I quote, “There won’t be any ‘you’ to remember.” So according to Naminé there literally won’t be any trace of Xion left. At all.

Okay so you can be like, well fine, her death is the only thing she has going for her, it was sad and all so I’ll take it. 

Except she’s not fucking dead.

Despite Naminé telling us that she’d disappear for good, that there was no fucking chance she’d ever be remembered, SOMEHOW she still shows up in Re:Coded and DDD because aylmao deal with it. If there really were not going to be ANY memories of her left then why the fuck is she still “remembered” deep in Sora’s heart? And wait a minute, then that makes her super tragic death pointless! She was brought back, what was the point of forcing me to feel bad about her?

Because yes, I felt pretty forced. Even her fucking theme is shoving it in our faces.

You have Aqua, who was trapped in the RoD for a goddamn decade, almost succumbed to the darkness, lost her two friends to a creepy old man that wanted to end the world, and had to fight the embodiment of all her fears. She gets: Aqua’s theme.

You have Naminé, who was isolated for an entire year and used to hurt the only person that showed her kindness ever since she was born. Her mistake was so big and tremendous she spent another year fixing that mistake with the help of a revenge-thirsty old man that treated her like shit. She gets: Naminé’s theme.

You have Kairi, who lost her home, has no memories of her early life, lost both her best friends after their first journey and was left behind by herself for a year with no idea of whether they were alive or not, and was later used as fucking bait to lure Sora into danger. She gets: Kairi’s theme.

And then you have Xion, who had to fight Axel and Roxas like once, and then died but not really because she came back. She gets: MUSIQUE POUR LA TRISTESSE DE XION.

jfc talk about subtle.

Her bad writing is so contagious she makes other characters around her act out of character.

You remember what happened to Riku after Chain of Memories? When he found Sora asleep, he was determined to do anything to help wake him up. Anything. And that included beating the shit out of Roxas with no room for debate, conversation or argument, relying on the power of darkness so much he changed his appearance into the guy that had tortured him for the last year, kidnapping Roxas and aiding Ansem in placing him inside a fucking computer so he could die.

When Riku spotted Roxas about to try and set Kingdom Hearts free Riku did not play around and did what he had to do. He didn’t tell Roxas to think it over, didn’t sit down with him and tried to come up with a better solution. Nah dude, he beat the shit out of him.

And yet, what happened when Riku encountered Xion? He knew Sora needed her too to wake up. But instead of being as merciless as he was with Roxas he gently cradles her in his arms, brushes her hair out of her face, and talks with her about what she wants to do. Uh, excuse you? Why on earth would you give her the choice of not going with Sora when you want him to wake up? What if she decided to not go? Would he have let her? Well either way, the same Riku that kidnapped Roxas would have kidnapped Xion too, especially since he found her unconscious and would have been pretty easy. But no.. this is Xion, she’s special, she needs to make her choice. Ugh.

Riku is not the only one affected by this. When Roxas found out Axel was hiding information about him he got fucking pissed. He lashed out at him, yelled at him, accused him of not being a good friend because friends shouldn’t keep that kind of secret from each other. Roxas was not having it, and he let Axel know.

But when Xion kept avoiding Roxas without saying why? No that’s okay! Roxas is just worried and he wants her to come back! It’s okay! 

Wtf dude? He had all the right to be angry at her too! She’s clearly hiding something from him, something that is a huge deal. Why is he not getting angry at her too? Why is Axel the only one that gets put in his place? I’ll tell you why, because this is Xion and she’s special, and she has the right to make her own shady choices that affect her friends.

She serves no purpose to the story.

And so we find ourselves here. Have you thought about it for a second? How exactly did Xion affect the story? Because obviously she did, didn’t she? After all, her death had a huge impact. What was that impact? In her final moments just as she’s vanishing, Xion asks Roxas to set Kingdom Hearts free, and thus that’s why Roxas left the organization. If it hadn’t been for Xion, Roxas would never had been pushed to do so.

Except that’s not true.

Prior to Xion’s death, Roxas was already getting distraught, impatient and angry because of all the questions he had about himself. Why is he so special? Why can he wield the keyblade? What does the organization want with the keyblade? Who is Sora and why is he so important? 

Axel was not giving him answers, and he was definitely not going to get any from the organization either. Even without Xion’s death, Roxas would have eventually reached a limit and tried to search for answers himself, thus betraying and leaving the organization. Xion’s death only made it happen sooner than later.

So then, what did Xion do?

Let’s try to figure it out. If you were to remove Xion completely from the story, from the franchise, would anything change?

If for example we removed Terra Xehanort would never have found a young body to posses, Terranort would never have become Ansem’s student and the emblem heartless wouldn’t have been born.

If Kairi was removed Sora and Riku would never have been motivated to leave Destiny Islands, after arriving to Traverse Town Sora would have gone to search Riku directly instead and would have joined him when he found him during his second visit to Traverse Town thus avoiding the conflict of Riku thinking he got replaced by Donald and Goofy. Sora would never have sacrificed himself to save Kairi, and Roxas and Naminé would never have been born and it only snow balls from there…

If Axel was removed Naminé would never have escaped from Marluxia and Larxene in Castle Oblivion and wouldn’t have been able to help Sora. The organization’s plans wouldn’t have been foiled, and Sora wouldn’t have been able to make it to the World that Never Was by himself to save Kairi.

So now that we have a few examples, let’s think it over again. What would change if Xion was completely wiped from the story?

Nothing. Maybe Roxas and Axel would have remained as a duo instead of a trio of friends, but that makes no difference since KH2 was originally written with that in mind anyways. And maybe Xehanort would be one darkness short in KH3, but if he really wanted to he could pick Demyx, Vexen or bring another version of himself from the past.

When you have a character in your story that contributes with nothing you have a huge problem there. You either change that character’s influence, or you remove the character entirely. You can’t leave things as they are.

So there you have it. Unless Xion is given a crucial role later in the franchise (which I seriously hope she doesn’t), my opinion on her won’t change. She was pointless, served no purpose, and is overall a bad character in my eyes. 

I want to clarify though that it’s not her fault, she just had bad luck and was the character that got stuck with bad writing.