#ON STRINGS ( mun. )

[collision-of-colors-and-music]

I had no idea how I got here but I already loved this ask blog

I wanted to ask if there any way I can find lore more quickly or do I have to keep scrolling until I find it?

Long lore dump under da cut

So, In the beginning, before the whole events of the game and Paradise was even really populated, there was two beings that roamed the Isles; The embodiments of Purity and Corruption.

Or better known as the Tree and Silly String.

While Silly String sought to explore the further reaches of the world, the Tree craved something more stable.

So they fell asleep, entering a coma-like state as their roots took hold into the dirt below.

Fearing for what this meant, or worse, if he too will become some inanimate monument- Silly string vows to not let the same fate befall him. And to free his companion from it.

But he tried everything to wake Tree up. Shaking, thunderstorms, biting, tearing.

It eventually devolved into acts of chaos onto the land rather than good intentioned desperation.

But Don't worry, the Sun took care of it. Even if the consequences of doing so forced him into isolation.

But with the Tree fulfilling Tree status and Silly no longer being a threat, they left four Heros to fend for themselves.

Paradise becomes more Populated, and then the normal events of the game take place with. Little to no deviations besides every time Blixer powers up, he's split mentally between phases.

By the end of the events of the game, Square is the only one left alive, which still traumatizes it to this day.

[dreamsofalife]

She's actually the cutest baby ever. Always has a ribbon in her hair and frosting ribbons making up her hair.

I need to get used to using my new markers but I'm not sure how to do it without doing it without smudging anything or messing up. I plan on practicing so yee

[stupidiinspades]

NAME?: fen / fenor or jasper if you've known me that long XD.

PRONOUNS?: he / him / it / its. [ afab demiguy / masc nb ]

MOST ACTIVE MUSES?: as of the current? constantine and desire. though i also write on discord and play with other muses there. c:

EXPERIENCE/HOW MANY YEARS? 17 years christ alive. . . I STARTED my roleplaying hobby on a flashchat on 2007. I've been on Tumblr on and off since about 2012. You may have seen me on (currently hiatused) blogs such as @gvbricl, @sinamxris, @brxthermine, and @iintransigcnt. my video game / tv multi is currently located at @invarietas.

FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT?: honestly all of them in varied measure! smut comes through character chemistry however- i have incredible difficulty simply writing it with characters mine have just met (kkeungi is somehow an exception to this as such was how this blog started XD).

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES?: it depends on thread context, plot, muse, and the situation we put them in. however when i DO go off on essay length exposition, i attempt to write such in a way that invites my writing partner to reflect upon it in their own reply. like internal commentary on the event at hand? though i do know such can be more than empty space so i try to do so sparingly.

PET PEEVES?: aggressive / bitchy ooc; especially in rules or tags or dms. if you hit me as a sheaf of finely grit sandpaper against my brain, we won't jive well. i've been doing this long enough where i have already gone through the tetchy phase, and honestly just want to relax. this is what i do for fun. perfection is unattainable and so the whole elitist scene is obnoxious. if you are having fun and doing no harm? then you are roleplaying correctly.

another one which is more personal, is presuming that if i don't get back to you in a 'timely' manner, i'm not interested. i have literal, physical holes in my hippocampus (the memory slab of the brain) from childhood epilepsy and trauma. combine that with AuDHD and lack of object permanence I... am very aware I can try people's patience. XD All I ask for is grace when being given reminders. Passive aggression will shut me down.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE?: I used to be, in at least so far I never liked self-reflection. I do have a wit and sarcastic streak a mile wide when warranted? I also don't smoke or drink, but I DO flirt simply as a form of banter / communication. XD But I tend to save that for in person communique, and if it makes you uncomfortable just let me know!

TIME TO WRITE?: anytime i can get my brain to cooperate and I'm awake. XD Many times when in a bout of insomnia i can get the most out of my brain worms.

TAGGED BY: @griefacquainted (stealing from jesus is okay in this context) TAGGING: @gcldfanged | @byteing | @desalvar | @saturnmused | @neptunemused | @amalgamatedmuses | @endlesslyxmused | @holyhitter | @qapsiel | those with multis ofc pick whichever muse to compare to if you like. XD

[riddlesnap]

As much as I love writing and roleplaying, there's one thing that's always a struggle for me and that's dialogue which is ironic because Eddie is easily my most talkative muse by far. Sometimes I just stare at the screen wondering what to say because there are days where I easily say 30 words or less and Eddie's a muse who NEVER shuts up, lol.

[lashysdomain]

Man idk what I did to piss off lady luck but I'm sorry

[dreamsofalife]

((Thinking of changing my Cookie Run verse.

Rather than a Circus Cookie, she's a Ribbon Cookie; it's why she has the white stripe in her hair. She also works as a ribbon to sort of... tie things together?

Shy is big on connections and on learning new things; she can introduce people and tie up a situation in a neat little bow of eclectic knowledge and connection. She's the red string of fate personified, and yet it doesn't often work out for her; we all love connection, but who loves a string?))

[abyssalthreads]

"This guy. I swear he'd tell everyone to duck because he thinks his dick is that freaking big."

[mysteryoftwilight]

What's the Deal with London in Kingdom Hearts?

I mean is that worldbuilding poorly explained or what? Bad jokes aside, I now need to steal people's eyeballs for a moment while I gesture wildly at inconsistencies in Kingdom Hearts, specifically KH1 but I'm sure the other games as well... which is completely strange and totally new for this fandom.

The main thrust of what I'm trying to get at is that both Edwardian London (if not all of England, which I'll get to in a second) and Victorian England (if not Alice's family's estate in Victorian England) are both worlds in the KH Universe with a second point that world travel is easier than the games try to present. I'm going to break this up into three main pieces of evidence, in order of importance, before moving into conclusions and fun things it means if I'm not misconstruing the evidence. Which is possible, I'm a fallible human being but I'm going to post this anyway.

{ the rest is under a read more because I'm not an asshole and this is roughly 3,500 words so it'd clog dash. You have been warned }

Main Argument: Edwardian London exists in Kingdom Hearts, and it is not connected to Neverland, and Victorian England exists in Kingdom Hearts and is not connected to Wonderland.

Okay kiddos, let's start with some important context and definitions. When I say 'Edwardian England', I specifically mean the era of English history from between 1901 to 1914. For setting the time periods of the worlds I'll be discussing here, I am going to assume that the Disney films roughly line up with the books they are based upon. This post primarily focuses on three worlds: Wonderland, Neverland, and Deep Jungle. As you'd guess from that selection, this is very much a KH1 oriented post and I'm sure we could probably dismiss them as being later retconned but I can't think of anything that directly contradicts them so...

Also I'm assuming that the Disney films aren't too far off from the original source material, so if they are uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sorry.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, to my knowledge, does not specify a date in the text itself but considering the background of it being written for an actual real-world child, I will assume that the publication year, 1865, to be the in-text year and also the year the movie (and by extension, the year Alice herself comes from in Kingdom Hearts) takes place. This places her roughly in the middle of the Victorian era (I know I defined only the Edwardian era before but this will be important for something else later). Pinning down the year for Neverland is slightly more difficult, as its source material is from two linked sources: the original play, Peter Pan: or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, and the novel Peter and Wendy. The play was first debuted in 1904, while the novel (which is similar yet different) was first sold in 1911. Both are well into the Edwardian period, and I again cannot seem to find any confirmation of the date in-text so we're going by publication date again. Deep Jungle's source, the novel Tarzan of the Apes, does actually give a rough enough in-text year: Tarzan's birth parents are marooned in 1888, and the main plot takes place when Tarzan himself is 21, making the year 1909.

That effectively means that, roughly speaking, the London we see in Kingdom Hearts I at the end of Neverland (which is confined to Big Ben but we see the whole city below) could very well be the same one that Jane and Clayton (and presumably Jane's father but we never see him so make of that what you will) left to get to Deep Jungle.

Now that the concept is established and definitions clairfied, let's move on to my evidence for this and other Weird Things™️ that occured to me.

Main Evidence 1: Deep Jungle, the Union Jack, and the Globe

So, I'll start with Deep Jungle because it provides the biggest puzzle piece I think. I know that Deep Jungle will probably not show up again in the series, but it did in 1 and so it gets to be here. Deep Jungle is the second largest wrench into the 'world order' shtick they brought up in Wonderland (and then never again), because it is pretty clear that Jane & Clayton are not from the jungle. They have a camp, for one, and for two they are the only humans (besides Tarzan) in the entire world. Jane asks Sora if he's 'also here to study the gorillas', which mean her and Clayton came to the jungle / island / whatever it is. They also have more technology than the rest of the world would imply, a physical map of Africa, and, most damning for this post: a Union Jack on the flag pole. This means that, in the Kingdom Hearts universe, Jane and Clayton are English folk from England, as they feel the need to fly their flag. Moreover, the map of Africa (on the far wall of the tent with Jane in it) means they are aware of other continents from Earth.

Also an important note is that they have a globe in the base camp. I'm going to take this as further evidence of them coming from a place that is scientifically advanced enough to know what the continents of the world roughly look like.

Here's where things get tricky, though: how did they get there? As far as I can tell (looking over the dialogue from a script someone uploaded to GameFAQs so take it as you will as well as just generally looking around what you have access to in the game), they don't have a vessel that would have gotten them there, much less get them back. Did they come in a ship that just let them off there for a while, like the movie? Possibly. Hook's ship is able to do that, after all. Which just further puts a hole in the world traveling mechanics the series presented: how were they able to get their ship from England to the other world of Deep Jungle without them getting eaten by Heartless? Was their ship a gummi ship? Is Hook's ship actually a gummi ship? (Unlikely, it's too smooth and he still had it in Birth By Sleep, during which Gummi Blocks weren't a thing iirc)

Or are there other, safer ways to traverse between worlds than gummi space or the Lanes Between? Can you use a sea faring vessel to sail the Ocean Between and get to those New Worlds? Also doubtful but probably the easiest answer.

(Also, just to note because I can't think of anywhere else to say it and I thought it was interesting: Clayton's rifle is a double barreled rifle and, more to the point, a common hunting implement for gentleman hunters back in the day. The fact Sora can tank shots designed to bring down elephants is pretty bonkers. Clayton is also one of two Kingdom Hearts characters (internationally) to use a gun, the other being Barbossa in his fight in Kingdom Hearts II. Fun facts that only two people pull out actual gun-guns in the whole series... unless you're playing the Japanese version of II, then one of the undead pirate mooks uses a flintlock rifle, which is why their crossbows in the international version makes a gun sound. )

Main Evidence 2: Neverland, Big Ben, and the Absence of Wendy

Okay, so Neverland has appeared in other games so it holds a bit more water than Deep Jungle. Now, in KH1, I don't know why they call it 'Neverland', because it's entirely Hook's ship and Big Ben... which is in London. And seeing as, to my knowledge and brief searches through the scripts of Days and Birth by Sleep, they never bring up Wendy or London, and there doesn't appear to be a hint that it is otherwise connected, I am led to believe this is another case of characters that shouldn't be able to easily traversing beyond their world easily traversing beyond their world. Wendy was kidnapped as far as we're told in KH1, and maybe Pan only really met her when she was kidnapped by Hook. The bigger issue comes during the outro of the world, where Peter Pan straight up says 'oh yeah, just bring Kairi to Neverland when you rescue her!', as if it's completely normal to travel there from somewhere else. Peter doesn't seem to have an issue traveling the Ocean Between, and neither does Hook for that matter, but he's a villain so we could possibly handwave that as 'he was given those powers by Maleficent', who herself is a whole can of worms but this post is long enough.

Wendy proceeds to never be brought up again throughout the DS version of Days. I'm not sure about the manga, but I'm mostly focusing on the games so if she does uh... sorry, but good on you for reading the manga it's good. The point here is that if it was as simple as Peter says to simply 'remember Neverland and you can see me again', she probably would be some level of presence. I'll bring it up again in the Wonderland section of this post, but I think this solidifies that it is, indeed, a separate world: the worlds separate after KH1 and travel between them should be more difficult.

Now, there is the slight hole of the world map icon in both KH1 and Days having Big Ben on display (despite not going there in Days, but it seems to just be the KH1 icon flipped). I'm choosing to view that as a gameplay concession and a reusing of assets that didn't need to be changed, because otherwise we're opening another can of worms of how is Neverland two worlds connected like that? Most worlds in Kingdom Hearts are fairly uniform and aesthetically consistent due to being based on individual movies, and while that explanation would make sense, it doesn't account for Wendy not going back to Neverland and Roxas not going to Big Ben in Days (though that second one can easily be handwaved as 'fighting at the clocktower would've been a pain in the ass using a DS d-pad'. The only world that gets is kinda an outlier that goes against that sentiment is Disney Town / Castle, which is connected to the old black & white animations in the distant past (which we visit as Timeless River) and then the Country of Musketeers in the less distant past, but there's handwavey explanations for those. Other than potentially Wonderland, this would be the only world like this.

Speaking of...

Main Evidence 3: Wonderland, Victorians, and Implications

Wonderland is keeping me up at night because of one missable interaction in KH1. If you speak to Alice while she's in the cage while you're looking for evidence, Sora and co. will introduce themselves to her and they'll have the following interaction:

Alice: Who are you? Sora: I’m Sora. Goofy: I’m Goofy, and that there’s Donald. Alice: Pleased to meet you, though I do wish it were under better circumstances. I’m sorry you got mixed up in this nonsense. Sora: Why are you on trial in the first place? Alice: I should like to know the very same thing! Apparently I was guilty from the moment I took the stand! Sora: That’s crazy! So, where are you from? Alice: Hmm, curious. I can’t quite remember. You see, I found this mysterious rabbit hole. When I tried to peek inside, I tumbled in head over heels… And I found myself here. Sora: So you’re from another world! Goofy: That’s funny. Maybe you don’t need a ship, then. Donald: I don’t get it. Alice: What do you mean “another world”?

This, if not outright confirms, heavily implies that Alice is not from Wonderland. Which... duh, that's just kinda the point of the story. But in the context of Kingdom Hearts is very important, and highlighted by Goofy: it's possible to get to other worlds without a ship. Which, again, we see later: Dark Corridors, star shards, wishing on one's heart, the Power of Waking... these are the proof in the puding, but we'll circle back to that third one because Beast also does something that makes some major implications if you don't believe in Word of God.

But why is Alice so central to this post? Because, unlike Jane, Clayton, and Wendy, she's not Edwardian. She's Victorian, and removed from the early 1900s by 44 years. Meaning (again, assuming that the above exchange is meant to imply she came from her 'real world' into Wonderland, with that 'real world' being Victorian England) that there isn't one England in the Ocean Between, but two: one Edwardian and one Victorian. Even if we say that her family's estate is simply connected to Wonderland through a rabbit hole and nothing else, that still leaves Edwardian London (and again, presumably more of England but we'll get to that) as a separate entity. And, no, Alice can't 'just be Edwardian', because of one very big thing: her dress. Alice dressed in a animated approximation of a Victorian child's dress (more of her legs are exposed, meant to allow her to run and play as she is a child and there is more of a structure to the skirt, giving it a bell jar-shape look), which would be seen as incredibly quaint in the Edwardian period (for comparison, Edwardian children's dresses had less of that structure, with the dress falling more flat against the body. This was also reflected by adults of the period, but we're focusing on children so shut up. Also I can't really draw a comparison with Wendy herself, seeing as she's in a nightgown so historical examples upon ye.)

Now, I'll admit her not knowing Wonderland is 'another world' could sink the ship... if Alice in Wonderland didn't build in an explanation: she legitimately doesn't think she's in another world, and the ending of the story has her waking up from a dream. While in Kingdom Hearts this is unlikely (as the Realm of Sleep exists, and Wonderland doesn't seem to be a Sleeping World but hey maybe KH4 will say it is and I'll firebomb Square), it's completely possible that her wish to go to a world of nonsense brought her there while she slept... or she did legitimately end up there, following a world traveler (more on them in a tangent section because I don't want to go down another rabbit hole) and was sent back to her original world after the events of Kingdom Hearts I as she also doesn't appear during the events of Days.

(I'm also sidestepping anything that happened in X or Dark Road because I don't know what happens in them that deeply, so I can't wait for that to blow a hole in my entire point here)

Tangent: Traversing the Ocean Between

Okay so these are moreso side things I wanted to point out because I made a point about the rules of world traversal making no sense and I wanted to further highlight that the World Order is, in fact, real fuckin' dumb. These are just rapid fire points tho I'm not going crazy over it.

1. Beast and the power of being a simp — Hollow Bastion has a lot of things that Break the Rules™️, but the relevant one here is that Beast survived the destruction of his world, somehow didn't get consumed by Heartless despite having a Heart full of Darkness, and just... wished real hard to get to where Belle was taken. Nomura later walked that back and said that Beast used a Corridor of Darkness, but that makes less sense because if you're not wearing the Anti-Darkness Drip™️, you get completely drained of vitality and probably become a Heartless. Either way, that seems like it shouldn't be something just anyone can do, but no one comments on it so I guess it's not overly weird.

2. Hook's Ship — I feel like we don't talk about how Hook's ship can just... sail the Ocean Between with seemingly no issue. It literally just rams Sora's ship and captures them right out of space. Again, it's not commented by anyone as an odd thing to happen, so is that just normal? If the Islands didn't get destroyed, would Sora, Riku, and Kairi be out in the Ocean Between? You evidently don't need to breathe out there, because you're on Hook's ship's deck and outside the Mysterious Tower just fine... Unless it's Spelljammer rules, actually. That could probably work, actually...

3. What does unlocking the paths do, actually? — I know it's just a gameplay mechanic to keep you more or less knowing where to go at any point in time, but in-universe it seems like you only need it if your preferred method of travel is a gummi ship or Keyblade Glider. I mean, Hell, the Guardians of Light have their own answer to corridors of darkness, as seen in Birth by Sleep and the mobile games.

4. No One Cares Your a Duck and Dog and that's also weird — No one ever points out that there's walking anthropomorphic animals with Sora. I'm willing to ignore it rarely coming up (the only instance that sticks out in my mind is Minister Frollo, who was desperately close to using a slur) that Sora has weird fashion, but I'm pretty sure Donald and Goofy would turn heads in like... a good number of the worlds we visit? Like. Are anthros a common sight? How are they getting around? Or do people just assume they're related to Moogles? What the actual fuck does your average denizen of Port Royale think of the humble Moogle? They're shopkeepers that operate through holograms and that's weird.

So we have established that the World Order is bullshit and discarded for good reason. Let's move back to my main point.

Final Evidence: Worlds are Bigger than Seen in Game

This is kinda a given and more than a little obvious, but I thought it worth highlighting. We can't land on the streets of London when we visit in KH1, we see more jungle in Deep Jungle but again, can't go that way. Twilight Town apparently has access to a beach that we straight up never see. We don't go through the Imperial City in the Land of Dragons to get to the Imperial Palace, despite it being visible from the mountains and checkpoint. Scala ad Caelum has a bunch of areas we don't get to explore, even in ReMind... you get the picture. I'm not using that to dig at the games; they're games at the end of the day, and a 1:1 recreation of a realistic setting or areas that don't have anything going on aren't fun to anyone but people like me who enjoy verisimilitude, but even I say that there's a point where it becomes completely redundant and not fun. I'll fill in the blanks myself because it's fun to me, but I don't expect a game not about simulation to do it.

I bring this up to highlight that it's impossible to say if the London we see at the Clocktower in Neverland is all there is to that world, or if it's more of England, or even the entire United Kingdom. Because the rules are so flimsily established and so quickly discarded within the games themselves, I'm left gesturing aggressively to an unsolvable mystery. While my personal headcanon is that each 'world' is roughly the size of a dwarf planet, I obviously don't have any evidence to back that up. It also falls apart because it doesn't answer how their suns work, because how do they have suns?

Hell, KH4 could introduce a world themed after Treasure Planet or even Star Wars, and then we're really fucked because they're in space. Do we make every world something like the Spelljammer Crystal Spheres, where each world has its own solar system but from an external viewpoint you only see the important location in that place? That'd probably be the cleanest solution, but it doesn't feel right.

Conclusion: There are no Rules, Put a Three Kingdoms Period China World in Your Fanfic so Sora can interact with Liu Bei or something

In review, it seems like there aren't any hard and fast rules for what can and can't be a world. Every major historical period for every culture under the sun and every story ever could be its own world, as evidenced by Alice's Victorian England being in the same universe as Wendy's Edwardian England. It also doesn't seem like there are as many hard boundaries between worlds if you know how to do it: Alice came to Wonderland by falling into a rabbit hole that connected the two, similar to Gates in something like old Forgotten Realms lore (or folklore but I've already leaned into old D&D lore I might as well go all the way), Beast either simped his way to Hollow Bastion or used a Corridor of Darkness, Hook's ship can just Do That with no given explanation. Hell, we don't even know how Cloud gets from Olympus to Hollow Bastion (presumably from wherever he ended up after fighting Sephy but I'm not even 100% if that's canon).

So, ignore what purists say, put anything as a world in your Kingdom Hearts fanfic and it'll fit if you handwave hard enough. It's the ultimate isekai, you don't even need to involve god-like beings. I myself have added a Sengoku Jidai world to my fanfic and no one's any the wiser /j

...I feel like a KH Musou game would fucking slap, though...

[epitomees]

I find it so interesting that after Athena transformed into Minato's Orpheus, she was able to utilize Orpheus' more mechanical parts and mechanisms on his body to short circuit Metis' electrical systems. The guy has speaker on his chest, he has one making up his lower torso, I have WANTED to see Orpheus use the power of sound as a weapon. This was so PLEASING and GREATLY SATISFYING to see!!

[haresvoid]

WORM TIME !

Omg look its Ome as a baby frfr

[dreamsofalife]

((My friend @fcrgottn lined, colored, and shaded my doodle of Ribbon Cookie!!! I'm adoring these colors and this is just. Canon. Canon Ribbon.))

[abyssalthreads]

"Adam, I don't wear my hair up anymore actually. The Duckbutt jokes are no longer relevant."

@originemesis

[ask-archer-idv]

Omg, did I hear it's your birthday, Nez? Nezzy nez Nez nezumi?

*Rattles your silly head*

We gotta celebrate by caushing chaos! (With Mandi ig) Let's go Nez!

-Your friendly neighborhood spider [Aka Kory]

//can I have my chaotic little drink for the chaos

[swordpact]

behold my other bg3 mc right now: eiravel, a wood elf paladin who is Jacked As Hell

[dreamsofalife]

Tfw ur the weird young spinster in your decrepit mining town and you find a will o'the wisp in the woods. And you're wondering why you're the one doing this instead of some highschool kid like in the books. Oh and also there's some deep political intrigue going on in the background with gold smuggling, secret children, and you're pretty sure you're in a Heaven Casteel novel.