#Sora is angry at Riku

[zabrya]

Cover

Summary

Riku wakes up in a bed, confused and dazed, what was he doing there? who was he? even if he tried to remember, his mind could not come up with any memory. Luckily someone told him what he was: a fairy. For Riku something felt out of place but he didn't know what it was. Meanwhile, Kairi woke up in a strange kind of hospital, next to her was Sora. She noticed that her friend Riku was not there, Sora woke up next to her in another hospital bed and when she asked for Riku, Sora only made a grimace of disgust…

[kingdomhearts-and-soriku-trash]

Sora is the biggest Riku defender and I love him for that.

[verathena14]

twisted wonderland soriku.... save me twisted wonderland soriku....

they are so silly battle boyfriends

[topina12]

[robotsafari]

i havent even watched legacy yet but that fucking kh world did some.. unexpected things to me

[thetrashthatsmilesback]

Sora, who has murdered people and then laughed about it (maleficent, shan yu, floatsom and jetsum, sinking several ships of actual humans in the Caribbean though to be fair this one IS kh3) when grabbed by two people lightly on the shoulders: this is so unfriendly!

[ok4ru]

Scene idea for KH4:

The Destiny trio having a group hug happy to have Sora back while Yozora getting beaten up by Namine as Stella sits aside and watches from a distance.

[grimcatician]

Finished Kingdom hearts 1 a couple days ago and holy fuck have not stopped thinking about it since then

But most importantly, have not stopped thinking about my sad, angry, beautiful disaster gay of a son 🥺

[inconsistentracoon]

Just a Cold, Chapter 4: Honesty

Fourth and final chapter posted!

-----

"Why didn't you say you were feeling so ill though?"

"I honestly didn't think it was this bad, just thought it was a cold and I was tired."

"Really?"

He turned and nodded. "Really. I am sorry though."

Sora had been pretty damn out of it at the time Riku thought to himself again. It wouldn't be all that surprising if he hadn't realised how serious things were, and he definitely hadn't had a clue what was going on when he tried using magic. Riku searched his face for a while, then smiled and nodded as well, letting Sora know he believed him. It was a relief to know he really had been too quick to assign blame, and his anger had been misplaced. He hated being angry with Sora.

Sora smiled back and then sighed, closing his eyes and rolling his head back to face the ceiling. "I didn't realise the infection in my cut had gotten so much worse either. Wish I'd checked on it again, I can't believe it got that bad so fast."

Riku's shoulders tensed and his eyes went wide. "What did you just say?"

Sora turned and frowned at him, puzzled. He couldn't quite grok Riku's expression or shift in his tone. "I said I didn't think it would get bad so fast."

"So... you knew it was infected?"

"Yeah, but it was just-"

"How long?"

"Huh?"

"How long did you know?"

-----

Full story on AO3

[purplelea]

Twewy native Pre week 2 neku and kh1 Riku would be the most toxic friend group ever

I had to specify neku as twewy native because in dream drop josh straight up said they all died and that's why they got sent to traverse town. But given his lines it's clear he's at least past peak asshole neku.

Thoughts?

OH YEAH VERY TRUE. but actually I don't even think they'd be friends, if that makes sense. Riku needs someone kind who looks up to him (like Sora and Kairi), and Neku pre-twewy... isn't that. Neku on the other hands needs people he can relate to and who share his worldviews (ex: how he got along with Joshua in week 2 and was able to have many interesting discussions with him despite, yknow, thinking Joshua murdered him). So it wouldn't actually work if there was only the two of them: Riku doesn't share Neku's values of shutting himself from people because he's scared of getting hurt & hurting them. And Neku only looks up to CAT.

[scouting4love]

☝️😀 I finished my game last night!

[daylighteclipsed]

Your KH Enchanted posts are driving me INSANE! I've never thought about the connection before but like, Enchanted is literally about a cartoon character going to the real world and finding out that her designated "perfect" love interest wasn't actually the one for her despite the fact that he should be. And then cut to SORA WAKING UP IN QUADRATUM AND RIKU THERE LOOKING FOR HIM like... it's all coming together.

YES!!!! There are so many parallels. In Sora’s dreams, the way he and Riku wake up in this huge city at night with so many lights and signs and skyscrapers… it’s so much like Giselle pulling herself up into the center of Times Square. The area Sora’s in especially, Scramble Crossing, brings to mind Times Square.

Enchanted is about a fictional character becoming real. Giselle’s from a simple, “perfect,” fairytale world. She’s designed to be a stereotypical Disney princess, and she’s a trope more than a person until she ends up in the real world, where she’s quickly challenged by the real world’s imperfections and complexities, embodied especially in Robert and through her relationship with him.

I’ve talked before about how Kingdom Hearts features fictional characters waking up and coming to life, deviating from the script when they’re not really “supposed” to and becoming real. Like Giselle, Sora starts out as a pretty stereotypical trope — the hero — but over the course of his journey grows further away from that. He’s challenged and he changes, and a lot of that is embodied through his relationship with Riku, as Riku represents change and complexity, especially in the context of growing up.

There’s a lot of parallels in the dynamics between Giselle/Robert and Sora/Riku. They’re complementary opposites, and they learn from each other. Giselle inspires Robert to believe in the messages fairytales champion about kindness, the power of love, dreams coming true, and happy endings. Sora inspires Riku to follow his heart and open his heart to others. Robert helps Giselle understand that real life is not as simple as a fairytale. Riku helps Sora see and understand the nuances in their world and in each other.

Real people are complicated, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Giselle’s thrilled, for example, the first time she feels really, truly angry. Robert makes her feel things she’s never felt before, messy things that make her feel alive, that make it easier for her to understand him and grow closer to him. KH emphasizes that experiencing grief, sadness, anger, etc. allows us to connect with others deeper, whether we’re leaning on loved ones for support or trying to understand a stranger. Pain is a necessary part of having a heart, of being alive.

Also, these scenes are literally the same. Giselle and Sora even both smile in their sleep.

Giselle/Robert and Sora/Riku’s relationships develop significantly over the course of their stories. In comparison to Giselle/Edward and Sora/Kairi, which rely on trope expectations instead of character development/actual relationship building. Giselle hardly interacts with Edward. But he’s a prince, he resembles the man of her dreams, he saves her from falling, and she can finish his duet. Surely it’s true love! I’ve already compared sharing the paopu fruit with singing the duet. Kairi is also a princess. She saves Sora from falling to darkness in KH1. And it’s pretty and perfect and Disney, with him reappearing in her arms, gently pulling away, quietly thanking her with sparkles all around them. Just like how Edward catches Giselle right in his lap, perfectly in his arms, with the tree branches forming a heart behind them.

Compare that to later in DDD after Riku saves Sora from falling to darkness and Sora thanks him… and when Robert catches Giselle from falling off a billboard. It’s the same thing, but the moments are not pretty and perfect.

Giselle takes Robert to the hard ground, with a chorus of yelps and ouches as she nearly breaks his wrists. Riku is almost bowled over by Sora’s hug, and Sora holds him tightly, loudly exclaiming his relief, reluctant to let Riku go. But the lack of “Disney fairytale perfection,” I guess, in these scenes kind of makes them better, right? Robert is willing to get really hurt trying to catch Giselle. Sora is so happy to see Riku he can’t contain his emotions. Near the end of Enchanted, we see this again, except Giselle is the one catching Robert. And it’s still very clumsy and rough — he takes her down with him. It’s not perfect, but it’s real.

That’s the biggest difference between Giselle’s relationships with Edward and Robert, and Sora’s relationships with Kairi and Riku. In both surface dynamics and appearance, one is a pretty idea. A perfect, soft, simple fantasy that doesn’t exist, that can’t exist in reality beyond little boys and girls playing Prince and Princess. And the other is grounded in reality, with all the good and bad, the joy and heartbreak, laughter and tears, that entails. Being human is hard. But there is something magical about finding someone you can be human with.

Giselle mistakes Edward for the true love she’s been dreaming of. He’s got the blue eyes and the dark hair, and he catches her from falling. And it reminds me a lot of Sora mistaking Kairi for his light in the darkness in KH3.

It’s reasonable why Giselle and Sora would assume this… But Robert also catches Giselle from falling. He also has blue eyes and dark hair. Later, he dresses exactly like Giselle’s dream prince at the ball, and he even dances with her like in her dreams. In KH3, Riku sacrifices himself in an act of true love for Sora, and we see the light in the tunnel respond when Sora calls out Riku’s name. There’s a number of visual parallels from Sora’s dream and Dive to the Heart that indicate Riku is Sora’s light. While Giselle realizes the truth, it only seems to click for Sora a moment before he forgets. Giselle also gets a follow up parallel. Sora hasn’t yet.

Another little thing I want to point out — Giselle and Edward have a duet (that she stops singing), but Giselle and Robert have a waltz. They have the love song, and they dance to it. Sora and Riku don’t dance, but we see their hearts dancing to the song they create — a waltz version of Dearly Beloved.

Also Robert/Giselle still get the Disney singing element. It’s just not big and flashy like Giselle and Edward’s duet. Robert quietly sings a few words to her as they dance together… Sora and Riku still get the paopu fruit — it’s the keychain of Dearly Beloved (the Combined Keyblade) — but it’s not obvious like the cave drawing between Sora and Kairi is.

TLDR: I completely agree with you and I think, like Enchanted, KH intentionally plays with Disney tropes and audience expectations in order to subvert them. Like Giselle, Sora discovering his designated “perfect” love interest is not the one for him is part of his journey of awakening. It’s part of him becoming real, and growing up.

[cherrielatte]

I decided to render Sora in my RUINER!AU a little more.

INPRNT

Listen, if you havent played this game - I don't blame you. But I like it a lot and I suck at it. it made me angry many times bc its so out of my skill level. The vibe is everything. It lives rent free in my head. sometimes i boot it up, stare at the menu, & imagine playing again😂 Though if we talk about an actual AU I could probably imagine Repiku OR Riku in Puppy's place (though probs more Repliku with how often that boy gets used) and Vanitas as HER (bc I say so). Sora's out there giving cat missions.

[jojo-schmo]

I have this Kingdom Hearts Oswald design and backstory I made a few years ago and I really missed drawing him so here he is!! I gave him a Sora-inspired outfit since Mickey has a Riku-inspired outfit in KH3 :3

I love this guy so much!!! The Epic Mickey game is also so important to me adjkfladj!! I'll probably re-develop this story one day once I have more mental bandwidth :P But long story short, he was lost in the Realm of Darkness long ago and presumed dead (and also lost his Keyblade) and was slowly becoming a Darkling over time but Riku and Mickey accidentally ran into him when searching for Sora!

He's pretty angry when they run into him. I mean, Mickey has a habit of "forgetting" important people in the KH story lol. But he eventually gets a Keyblade back and gets saved. And he uses cool dark magic like Riku to complement all of Mickey's shiny light magic!

[khtrinityftw]

This is a post made to appreciate the unexpected psychological depth that the KH Trinity had, which was so shamefully discarded afterward to placate all the idiotic fans who misunderstood it.

As this post notes, the KH Trinity was big on Jungian philosophy; all about the self and the "shadow self". If you wish, you can also rephrase this in Freudian terms relating to the ego, superego and id.

Kairi and her shadow, Namine. Sora and his shadow, Roxas. Riku and his shadow, the Riku Replica (aka Repliku). In each pairing, it's the former who constitutes the ego, and the latter who constitutes the id, with no superego to act as a buffer between them. Namine, Roxas and Repliku represent their respective person's most negative attributes, their basest instincts and emotional urges. This is especially obvious in Repliku's case, as not too long ago Riku had allowed those very same instincts and urges to consume him.

The difference in outcomes is noteworthy. In the case of Namine and Roxas, they end up starting to embrace the positive traits of the ego.

Namine goes from timid and compliant to bold and defiant, like Kairi.

Roxas goes from (understandably) angry about his predicament to accepting his fate the moment he sees a sleeping Sora, because he's developed compassion and knows that Sora can't wake up without him and thus can't save all the people who need saving from Organization XIII's machinations. Like Sora, he is self-sacrificial.

In the end, this is what saves them. They completely reassimilate with their other selves, returning to being the id, except now the superego links them and the ego together rather than divide them off. In Jungian terms, Sora and Kairi don't wish to deny or suppress their shadows any longer, they instead wish to live with them in balance.

Repliku, on the other hand....

His tragedy is that he does not make that same choice. Influenced by the manipulative Axel, he remains the embodiment of Riku's negative qualities. The same qualities that ultimately drove Riku to attempt to murder his best friend now drive Repliku to attempt to murder Riku. So unlike Sora and Kairi, Riku ends up rejecting his shadow. Repliku's death at Riku's hands is a metaphor: never again will Riku allow himself to fall victim to his id. And yet, to show proof of Riku's change, he also shows compassion to his dying shadow self, acknowledging him as an equal and assuring him that his heart will make it to Kingdom Hearts just as any natural-born heart does.

Finally, we have Xemnas.

As a human, Xehanort obliterated his superego so that his ego became more in tune with the negative connotations that word is usually used with. He then discarded his id so that he could have absolute purity in his pursuit of darkness. The discarded id, Xemnas, doesn't seek to achieve balance with his ego nor eliminate it. Instead, he seeks to become not just an ego himself, but the superego of everyone in the universe. All people psychologically enslaved by Xemnas and behaving in accordance to his will. Empty shells of their former selves whom can only feel base emotions like anger and hate. It makes his other self's "eternal darkness" plan sound reasonable!

Maybe you don't like any of this and prefer the series beyond's approach where every character is simply their own person and don't really reflect on another character much, if at all. That's fine, but I will never understand it. Not when the KH Trinity is so damn good.

[winter-kh-sideblog]

The thing with Kairi is, for all of the “she has no autonomy and is barely a character” jokes, she is so so interesting if you are willing to put a little bit of effort into understanding her. And this is kingdom hearts, the fandom of digging through offhand comments from games across every console imaginable to put together snippets of backstories, so like, I KNOW there’s an audience of people willing to put in effort? So here is my little essay on why Kairi has so much potential

I think a lot of people get lost because they assume that Kairi is Sora’s girlfriend? And they say “oh well the narrative doesn’t show that, the narrative is giving us more reasons they should move on than that they should stay togehter” and it’s like!!! You’re correct!!!! The narrative IS saying that!!! This is because Kairi is not, and never was Sora’s girlfriend!!!

Most people (correctly, sadly) get the “thrown to the side, no autonomy, barely a character” vibes from Kairi. But then they just go “oh she’s a one-dimentional stock Woman ™ character” and don’t think farther

i think that, a LOT of Kairi’s canon treatment makes more sense when you realize she’s not the “hot popular girl who’s a prize to be won” trope that people think she is. She’s the dead wife.

This sounds wild at first, because she 

Is a teenager

Has never been in a relationship, let alone married

Is ALIVE

So it’s like. What the heck. How could she be the dead wife. But she IS. and i think it’s impossible to unsee once you realize it.

She’s been dead from the beginning. She’s always haunting the narrative. She’s barely present and doesn’t get to make decisions, but the things that happen to her catalyze the entire plot of almost every game?

The thing is, her stock cliche ending is not, and never was “she ends up with Sora bc she’s the Prize and the symbol of Winning and they live heteronormatively ever after.” Her ending was always. She is perfect and innocent and pure. She dies. Everyone is sad and angry for a bit. They fight for justice. Then they move on. The happy ending is catalyzed by her and she gets credit, but she doesn’t do anything, she doesn’t have autonomy, and she doesn’t get to stick around for the ending. 

And this is a REPEATING motif in her life. When she was FOUR years old she was sent ahead to stop the apocalypse. She is basically dead to her homeworld. They weren’t getting her back. She lost her memories and her family and her life.

In kingdom hearts one, she dies in the apocolypse and becomes motivation and a prop for Sora and Riku. She doesn’t get to fight, she doesn’t get blood on her hands, she isn’t faced with messy decisions.

In kingdom hearts 2, she’s again kidnapped to start the plot. She doesnt get to be with sora or riku or even know what’s happening for most of the game.

And then of course in kingdom hearts 3, she’s literally killed, and it’s like. It’s not even a fight. She’s literally just slaughtered for no reason other than Sora fight motivation.

She’s the symbol of home and family to Sora. It’s not just a matter of romance, there’s not even romance between them? Not really? It’s about childhood and closeness and the promise of forever.

And the thing is. She clearly doesn’t want to be the dead wife character. I don’t think anyone would??? But it is ALL she’s good at. And that’s the problem. She’s a princess of heart, which is defined by absence. She doesn’t have darkness. She doesn’t have evil or badness or anger or malice or anything. And it’s just so?????? She’s narratively destined to die young before she has the chance to get older and get involved in anything messy or morally dubious. Her “job” is to be perfect and good enough that people miss her when she’s gone.

And then???? They don’t????? That’s the whole thing with melody of memory. They let her stay in a coma for an ENTIRE YEAR. Her friends are upset when she dies, but Sora’s the only one actually fighting to bring her back. No one else makes an effort to be with her???? It doesn’t seem like Riku makes any effort to contact her at all in the time between kh1 and kh2 when Sora’s in a coma for an entire year???? They fight and kill to wake Sora up but not Kairi anymore?????

They can't even make a kairi GAME without making her basically dead because that's her Role.

And it’s like????? What do you do when you’re the dead wife. When everyone theoretically loves you but only for what you’re not. When they love you because you’re fragile and pure and have never done anything wrong. When you’re not allowed the chance to live enough to become anything complicated, and people act like that’s for the best?

What do you do when you’ve been dead since the beginning, when everyone has already mourned you??? When they've all reached the acceptance phase and you're not sure if they want you back? They've spent too long learning to be Without you to remember how to be With you and now you're an inconvenience and a reminder of closed wounds?

What do you do when you’re alive but you never learned How to be alive, because you weren’t Supposed To survive????? What do you do when no one knows what to do with you??????

I think a lot of people who want Kairi to break free from the narrative are the ones who keep saying things like “oh she needs to move on from Sora and get better friends” but Sora is one of the only people who gets it?????? He’s been one of the only people that we see onscreen???? making any kind of attempt????? To love her like she’s alive?????? Its not much but its literally ALL shes given?????? And i dont fault her for holding onto that?????? And cherishing it????

And I do think it can be very cool to see her move on???? But i dont think people understand that,,,, if Sora and Kairi were to end up together, it wouldn’t be playing into the cliche, expected ending. Kairi LIVING is already breaking free of the tropes. Kairi being allowed to be messy and hurt and heartbroken,,,, being allowed to want things for herself,,,, being able to ask for help IN THE MOMENT instead of having people guess what she would have wanted after she’s gone,,,, being loved as a person rather than as an idea,,,,, Thats breaking free of the narrative tropes in such a profound way. And i don’t even think it matters much whether it’s romantic or as bffs or as teammates???? It’s just about being chersished as a human person and given a support system.

So yes, i do want to see Kairi make new friends and get some self confidence and move past her layers and layers of survivors guilt and make an identity for herself that doesn’t revolve around a man???? But also????? I think that its 2023 and people should stop pretending that sokai is inherently the boring or cliche expected ending when they’re LITERALLY doomed by the narrative already. Like do you guys actually not realize how subversive it would be if they were to end up together. The romance of staying alive for each other and breaking the cycle out of pure love and spite. The rebellious act of LIVING and taking up space while you're alive, of being a person instead of a concept to be idealized.

You can ship what you want and whatever sparks joy but PLEASE for the love of everything do not call sokai the boring ending. Please stop saying that letting kairi continue to exist and be alive will make the games suck or be cliche. Please.  Just like put a little bit of effort into themes and narratives i beg of you. It is so much more fun.