#soras repressed bs

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

mega com spoilers kinda (early game shit), out of context rambling:

man i just loveee how /foreboding/ com's traverse town is. I would talk about foreshadowing but im mainly talking about the /feeling/ of that level. Sora getting angry at everyone talking down to him, then proceeding to just, not care all of a sudden. Aerith being her all-seeing self, knowing just a little too much, and giving sora a cryptic ass warning before it's revealed that the whole time, sora was talking to thin air.

It's. AGahahhsjka beating myself up bc i neeed to finish com so i can just play it all over again FUCK

It's such an UNSETTLING game. I wouldn't say it's constantly creepy, but a lotta the time. And i fuckin LIVEE for it. And traverse, being the first world, really fuckin sets the tone i think for the rest of the game. It's that damn aerith bit istg

basically CoM really fucks with ur head and traverse really pulled its fuckin weight imo lol

[asteriskheart]

I was thinking about this while working so here's a list of things Xehanort has done to Kairi over time, directly or indirectly

Terranort kidnapped her while in Radiant Garden, experimented on her to prove she was a princess of heart ( if you've read the secret reports, then you'll know it was heavily implied to be some fucked up horror level shit that most subjects perished from ), then tossed her ( within one of the lifeboats ) off the edge of the world into the void of space as part of some alleged grand plan.

Ansem ( who manipulated and possessed Riku ) used her heart within Sora as a key ( which killed Sora btw ) to open the equivalent of the gates of hell upon the worlds.

Ansem then told Kairi he had no more use for her and tried to kill her, Donald, and Goofy but was stopped by Riku who told her to run. She was forced to abandon one of her best friends right after seeing the other perish. She ends up losing her friends for over a year following this.

Indirectly affected by Xenmas' plans with Namine and Castle Oblivion, being all but removed from her friend's memories.

Got kidnapped by Xenmas' robed cult and stuck into a cell for god knows how long. His gang intentionally dangled her as bait to lure her friend Sora into danger. He then nearly kills her friends.

Xehanort screws up her friends' mark of mastery exams. The nuke in a bullet ( Soranort ) was narrowly dodged but it caused Sora to fail.

Almost gets taken out by Terranort, and probably had some repressed memories triggered.

Nearly dies in the heartless hurricane that full stop wasted every other guardian imo.

Gets kidnapped by Xemnas.

Xehanort manages to kill her ( for real this time ), for the bs purpose of "you require motivation" for Sora. She's not simply crystallized my dudes, she was shattered apart and had her heart ripped to shreds. It's hard to achieve a more definitive state of death than that lol.

Had to fight a difficult battle Xehanort right after being revived from experiencing That. Reminder that she's the least experienced fighter in this whole guardian party going up against a keyblade master who has the X-Blade / KH power up now.

There's just. A part of Xehanort. There. Residing within her, ready to spout cryptic nonsense. It's really like Ansem haunting Riku 2.0. Bonus round of reliving traumatic memories and needing to fight him.

[tamgerines]

ok so as a bith who has firmly believed that nomura has been making shit up in kh as he goes along recently watched re: coded cutscenes only to have her mind blown by the fact that HE HAS NOT BEEN MAKING THIS UP AS HE GOES ALONG AS MUCH AS SHE THOUGHT HOLY SHIT (except for the time travel, time travel is still bs and i firmly believe he only added it to 3d ‘cause of his abysmal failure fucking w it in final fantasy xiii-2).

basically kh coded, which came out in 2008 and ended 2010 mind u, essentially sets the foundation for and foreshadows all the games that came after INCLUDING 3. A LOT OF FEELINGS AND SPECULATION UNDER CUT. 

we basically got the entire storyline of fucking 3d from this game i mean all the talk about sleeping and awakening, and in the entire portion of castle oblivion, data roxas does the same thing to data sora that xehanort does to real sora in 3d, which is show him illusions and fucking w his brain and emotions until he gives in to the darkness.

we later find out from him (and namine) after data sora gives the correct response that data roxas is essentially a training program to get sora to handle the darkness inside him better. ofc real sora fails in 3d because he never went thru said training program and everyone and their mother knows by now that dealing w his inner darkness is gonna be a huge point of contention in 3. 

side note 1: jesse mccartney’s voice acting was phenomenal!

side note 2: i fucking love the parallels between roxas and sora. out of everyone who knows the pain of forgetting his friends it would be roxas. he keeps saying it’s easier to forget but can’t help but think roxas envies sora for being able to keep the hurt and feelings of others in his heart even if he can’t remember them.

BUT WHAT’S RLY NICE IS GETTING TO SEE ALL THESE ANGST FLAGS: 

NAMINE SAYS THE MEMORIES OF THE OTHERS ARE DANGEROUS, THAT THEY MIGHT BREAK SORA’S HEART. she made the bugs to teach him the way to dealing with his hurt is to accept it and share the burden with his friends. the problem i have with this game is these lessons that are being taught are not. taught. to. the. real. sora. 

it’s apparent in 3d when he failed to block out xehanort and if the ending of this and 2.8 was anything to go by tbh, i feel like he’s becoming increasingly repressed and private? he’s gone on this long journey, experienced all these things, saved the worlds only to be told he doesn’t have what it takes to be a master. he seemingly brushes off these feelings but we see in kh2 that sora does have bouts of somberness that’re similarly masked by jokes. and end of 3d/ 2.8 did say he’s spent some time away to do ‘secret’ training. IDK WHERE THIS IS GOING BUT THE FACT THAT THIS IS NOT MATCHING UP TO CODED’S ENDING makes me think it could go the ‘sora falls to darkness’ route this bitch is going to die a short death because let’s be real no one dies in kh, anyways, i’m totally rdy for se to kick my  a s s with this. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

bonus discussion point for @stormdriver949​‘s data theory. maleficent tells pete jiminy’s journal = data scape = book of prophecies which 

she describes as “capable of transcribing events that have yet to take place...Legend has it that the book can conjure making an entire world filled with beings and powers that have yet to exist.” not only do i feel like coded’s datascape literally foreshadowed the subsequent games 

guess what the tagline for kh3 is

i know nothing about what any of this means. could the data just be to recreate the bodies? entire worlds for nobodies to exist? maybe do a reset on the entire kh universe (an angel beats-esque ending maybe where they’re all reincarnated and meet each other again)? i just think it’s cool to look at old games in hindsight or a game franchise backwards and notice how it affects the future games’ storylines

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

Oof the only thing better than riku game would be the "sora realizes he's gay" game OMG 😭🙏🏽

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

when we gush about how riku died for sora, only to get earfuls about how sora died for kairi too

Like cool but also sora would literally die for anyone, because this kid literally has no sense of self worth. Sora dying for people is a Bad Sign, actually.

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

a messy sora ramble that isnt as focused as i wanted it to be. brought on by seeing one of my old kairi posts, (but also i read a post about this too somewhere, i hope i remember sorry):

Sora is definitely facing the same problem as kairi. His stagnancy is just written/done much better, or in a more interesting way, than kairi's.

​as in— he technically doesn't 'grow'. he always loses his power and starts at base level. The best counter example or whatever we have to this trend is riku. Riku from ddd to kh3, retained his power. Remained strong. Was not explicitly stated to have lost his power or strength. And we know why. Because he's always been focused on gaining strength to protect what matters, and now he knows it's sora. And it pushes him to work through his struggles with darkness, which helps him grow.

Sora keeps avoiding dealing with his trauma and internal struggles. And so he doesn't actually grow. And bc this is a game, it's best represented by sora starting every game back at square one.

Not to mention, he is explicitly stated to be actually losing his power every time. It's not just a game-playability thing, or a power-creep thing. In game, sora starts all over every time bc of some shortcoming or other in his prior actions, behavior, or character.

Kh2, for example. Sora starts all over even after aging a whole year bc he chose to forget all the bs from castle oblivion, instead of working through them as well as his resulting trauma. "Make me like i was." It could not be more blatant.

Riku actively chose to remember all his struggles in castle oblivion, instead of forgetting them. Throughout the 358 days, he is working and fighting to wake sora up. And the results of his growth are plain to see in the kh2 ending.

Now sora is left constantly susceptible to darkness, both from external forces as well as his own, bc he constantly refuses to /deal/ with it. You get shit like ddd, where he falls to darkness from the get go, and you get riku, who again, fights to protect sora, pushes through the darkness with all his previous experiences with it. Uses that experience, and comes out stronger, and grows.

I wrote a kairi ramble a million years ago about how her story isn't interesting on paper, and that thats why she seems and basically /is/ a lackluster character.

But sora is living practically the same story, but like i also said in that kairi post:

"Trauma doesn’t always have to be packaged as some action-packed superhero story that’s fun to consume."

But for sora, it is. Just, by default bc hes the mc of a game series, ig, or a more "sophisticated" reason that my monkey brain isn't processing rn lol.

But it's like /because/ sora goes on adventures on screen, it means he's moving forward on his journey of personal growth. And like. Thats not the case at all.

And it took me five ever to begin to process this. I love sora for who he is and what he brings to the kh world. Actually. You can have heavy scenes and darker, more depressing concepts, but sora comes in and you actually feel lighter. Like you can breathe more easily. Legit, for me at least. And again! I didn't even appreciate that about him until recently, i don't remember what scene(s) caused this tho.

But esp as a basic riku bitch, i used to feel a bit indifferent towards sora's character. Like "he's another happy-go-lucky mc. lowkey boring". But! When i started seeing people explain this, that sora's character is like an embodiment of repressed trauma, i was like oh! I see! That's /amazing/, actually. (And that made soriku feel more uh "deep" lol, bc it's not surface level light/dark, but actually rooted in their character and journey)

But the reason im rambling about it now, much more messily than other people have talked about this, is bc i came across my old kairi posts and was like "oh i was wrong. It's not just her."

i think sora is luckier in that, he trusts so much in his heart, and in his connections to others. he trusts his heart to guide him through struggle, even when he doesn't understand it, or chooses not to.

(the words at the beginning of kh3, that are sora's mindset at the end of that game, reflect that same trend i feel like. Sora is due for some introspection in kh4, hopefully, but even now, dead, he's still relying solely on his heart to guide him. Which isn't inherently bad, but the trouble comes when he depends on his heart alone to do that, when it'll take more than that to light his way through his darkness)

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

i was just thinking about the idea of yozora and nameless star being sora and kairi. obv i already know believe its soriku but either way, thinking about it, sora and kairi doesn’t work.

yozora and nameless star’s Whole Thing that we are shown is that one of them is dark, and one of them is light.

(so in that case, yozora being sora and nameless star being riku once again lines up lol)

but anyway, they have that obvious obvious light/dark theme, and so in my eyes, it doesnt make sense for them to be parallels to sora and kairi.

kairi is light, and sure, sora definitely has a lot of repressed/unaddressed darkness in him, but regardless of what you think, sora and kairi are never contrasted that way. sora’s darknesses, unacknowledged as it is, is never contrasted against /anyone’s/ light.

Not in the way, and definitely not to the extent to which, sora’s light is contrasted against riku’s darkness.

sora and kairi are not framed as two sides of the same coin, equal opposites, as light and darkness in balance—They even have a whole ass magical girl /light/ attack y’all, where they use the light of all the guardians. Sora and Kairi are not framed as light and dark.

Sora and Riku are. And like I said, at face value, Sora is light and Riku is dark, like how at face value Yozora looks like Riku and Nameless Star looks like Sora—but beneath the surface, Sora is definitely susceptible and has fallen to his overwhelming darkness, and Riku is shown to contain or even /be/ a blinding light, linking Sora to Yozora, and Nameless Star to Riku.

anyway its all rambling that came to mind and its all bullshit to justify my opinion, not saying its all hard facts stated obviously in-game lol

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

2/3

it’s this shit that always makes me think twice bc like, we saw earlier that sora is genuinely worried about and kinda self conscious of his memory problems. wtf is with this sprite. this face. he’s doing the thing again where he’s just? acting? like he’s confident in himself when he’s clearly NOT, like—i hate to see it man, every time, but i also get why he plays it off when clearly his memory issues bother him more than he lets on in front of others.

(1/3)

(3/3)

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

i saw a tweet saying recoded was irrelevant so here’s some old screenshots of me rambling about the exact opposite lmaooo

context: someone in chat v innocently asked about recoded’s relevance past the kh2 letter so ofc i had to write a bs essay LOL:

oml and not to mention data riku is implied to forget everything too, once the whole data-naminé thing is solved—

and man, naminé 😭 if she was relevant in those two games can she pls be relevant in riku game, i need more naminé 😭😭😭

OML and sora’s darkness wtf, i didnt even touch on that—

CoM and Coded are just waiting to kick my ass, istg

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

man riku game scares me bc like. there’s just so many juicy ass concepts available and it’s just like, “which ones are they gonna use???”

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

yo but fr fr if yozora gave nameless star her necklace,,, and since he’s mixing up sora and nameless star—

if yozora like tells sora that he gave sora his necklace—in like an attempt to make sora remember—or like in passing bc yozora is emo and reminiscing—

and sora has to confront the missing memory of where he got his necklace—

YALLLL

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

com, kh3 spoilers:

PFFFF been meaning to ramble about this since i first started com but like

i know sora’s self esteem issues aren’t new and that the build up of it has been there since day 1. it’s the whole reason he wanted to share a paopu with kairi, bc riku was always besting sora and sora wanted to beat riku at something for once

gonna say it now, girls/partners aren’t fucking trophies fuck off.

lol anyway, SORA’S self esteem issues!! at the beginning of CoM! omg i love this detail sm—

CoM has a whole different combat system right? So when sora sets foot into castle oblivion, he forgets all his fighting knowledge and abilities. literally.

and he has to learn the new system, the card system (card system my beloved). and i just LOVE—ABSOLUTELY LOVE—how the player’s inexperience with the new system, their unfamiliarity, translates IN GAME, to sora being out of his depth.

what does this result in? every step of the way through traverse (the first world), everyone is calling sora’s skill into question. the first org member we encounter, who gives us our first tutorial. Donald and Goofy, notably, say sora’s skills are getting rusty (i think? it was the beginning of the game ok i don’t remember the exact quote lol). Leon, doubting sora with every other sentence.

and what’s most interesting is sora’s reaction! bc it GETS TO HIM at first! we see that he’s uncomfortable, that he doesn’t fully have confidence in himself all of a sudden. He gets angry, offended,

and it all reads like it’s just grown ups teasing the kid hero, and the kid hero being all pouty and huffy about it. but kh isn’t that. sora isn’t that.

he clearly doesn’t fucking like this, doesn’t like feeling weak, but esp doesn’t like people thinking he’s weak. it’s fucking crazy! that this is just there! in fucking card game world.

and EVEN CRAZIER—

is that we get to see the fucking moment sora flips his switch. he goes from being angry and defensive, to suddenly being cocky and cheeky, self assured, SO certain that so and so needs his help, etc.

like it happens right there in traverse! you KNOW that he’s fucking forcing it, bc where the fuck did his anger disappear to? sora ISNT a happy go lucky kind of guy, he FORCES himself to be.

he’s forcing his confidence, literally fucking acting, lying through his fucking teeth, and it’s INSANE. bc it’s so SO obvious seeing the cOMPLETE change in attitude. it’s a whole ass 180 !!

im obv making it sound like he’s going Hulk on screen which he’s not, it’s just after being more familiar with his mental state, that beginning part of CoM is suddenly, such an eye opener, for me personally. i just love that i got to see it.

i can see how people would think his kh3 breakdown was ooc or came out of nowhere but when you see shit like this, in a fucking gameboy game, it’s amazing. the repressed anger, the defensiveness that initially comes across as tropey, the cockiness that’s uncharacteristic in regards to himself.

(like, sora is a cheeky little shit, don’t get me wrong, but usually it’s all in good humor, during moments with his friends. when he plays up the act RIGHT after four people in a row tell him they doubt he can handle himself, it’s obviously uncharacteristic.)

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

Haven’t gotten through all of Halloween town yet but I’m at the true memories potion thing. That doctor guy smelled the potion and supposedly that’s what spawned the heartless, but if that’s true why would that be? Is it like, bc these characters are projections of Sora’s heart, that subconsciously if Sora even begins to recall his true memories, heartless spawn? Sora’s darkness? Pain? Angst? What?

Update after beating oogie boss: he drank the potion? And had a fucking attack? Of some sort? He said he felt something welling up in him, and he suddenly became scared of Sora? Or the party? Wtf Update: “overcome with fear”

Now Sora refused to drink the potion bc ? He told axel he’d remember on his own? Bruh Sora your heart be hella trying to talk to you but you don’t LISTEN wtf

The doctor guy insists it isn’t the potion that failed, as sally suggests. He says oogie reacted the way he did bc he found his true memories. “True memories must unbalance the heart and cause unpredictable changes within.”

I’m reading into this in regards to Kh3 and the Sora’s broken heart theory. Hmm. Esp since these are all projections of Sora’s heart.

“What about me? What happens when my true memories awaken?”

“Perhaps something even more terrifying.”

Wtf...

Now jack, after asking if the doctors theories scare Sora. “Fear and insecurity are signs of a strong heart.”

Huh? I realize this is Halloween town yes but it won’t stop me from reading into it.