#'mdg traveling together' 'tav in dark world' 'raxn twilight town' like these are fan prompts

[avale-reves]

if this "no news/trailers/whatever at all until the year leading up to release" is the new normal for KH i think fandom is going to like, have to massively restructure the way it works, the things it celebrates and engages with, the stuff it values and considers 'high worth', because otherwise it's just going to be years and years and years of the same discussions repeated over and over with nothing new for us to even chew on in the meantime.

i find that the kh fandom massively undervalues fanworks. maybe as a side effect of how important 'word of god' and 'canon' are to understanding the series, idk, but like i think there needs to be a real shift in fandom perspective to champion them more, and making them far more central to what "being active in kh fandom" means. And I think this both because of just the practicality of keeping fandom alive in an era where the devs are more tight-lipped than ever, but also I think it's something that KH specifically needs to do.

Kingdom Hearts is always going to be a series of "missed/unfulfilled potential". There is no way it cannot be. The concept is just too expansive, the cast so wide, and there are endless ways to spin off of what they've given us, or endless ways to imagine where it could go. Even something as simple as a Disney world has all of this "potential" in how it could be explored, how it could be utilized, how it could play or look or feel, what themes it could have, what character development it could give certain characters etc. And the games will always have to take that infinite possibility and whittle it down to a single thing. KH itself will always have to contend with right/legal issues, Disney oversight and rules, the realities of game development and budgets, etc and so in that sense, it will never be able to reach the potential. But like... we can? We as fans can take all of the potential and use it as an endless playground for us to enjoy and engage with.

Idk, I just think back to, for example, Kairi and Lea training. A concept that has a ton of potential! Very interesting fertile ground for character dynamics, fighting scenes, mentor scenes, etc etc. Obviously, in KH3 this amounted to only a couple of core scenes where the devs put the focus on just their character relationships. Many were disappointed by this, by how little we see, but like, it was always set up as a "thing that is going to be happening off-screen", that's the whole point of 'merlin made a special place where time doesnt matter and they can just focus on training'. And when we think of KH3 with its endless things it has to juggle, its huge cast, etc. it makes sense that Kairi and Lea training can only be a tiny part of it. They have a budget. They have resource constraints. They even have disc space constraints to worry about (it's why their scenes are CG even! They literally did not have any room on the disc to actual make in-game environments for them!).

Like we can look at that and be very disappointed. We didn't get to see any of that stuff. But like, idk, at the same time, the fact that we didn't see a lot of it means that almost any fanwork about that time can "fit with canon" and be "something that might've happened". Like, we can look at it as a disappointment it wasn't more defined by KH3, but we could also look at it as a fandom gift. To borrow a phrase from iconic kh fan translator goldpanner: It is a crack in the concrete sidewalk of KH canon where fanworks can grow and thrive.

Idk. I know for some, fanworks will just never count the same as canon. But, I do feel like if people in general grew to appreciate them more, and have fun with them and engage with them, and share them and make them themselves, then it could do so much to smooth out the feelings of 'missed potential' that is inherent with this series and always will be through no fault of the devs themselves. And perhaps we would find, if, for example, we had spent the 4-6 years between MelMem and KHIV having a blast as a fandom exploring 'Kairi and Aqua training' through fics, art, comics, vids, fangames, music, graphic design, etc etc. We'd probably feel that by the time it was 'defined' by canon into a single thing it has to be for the story they're telling, even if that thing is nothing that we thought or wished for, we might end up feeling the 'potential' of the idea wasn't wasted, because we explored it.