#actually no i need to add on to ven doesn’t know

[lanternlightss]

nameless bard with glasses ……. cute ……….

[brokenpieces-72]

Task force 141! Gangster x Reader

Truth or Pain

This is part 3. Part 2

Leave a comment if you want to be tagged in future posts.

You’re hanging out with Soap again and he watches you work on a your newest piece. You enjoy moments like these. You feel like yourself, and like you aren’t forcing your part. Soap was impressed with your skill. You were very good with your hands, and your work was great demonstration.

“You want to try?” You offer Soap a brush.

“You think I can make somethin as good as you?” He asks taking up your offer.

“Try it.” You say. A small voice in the back of your head suggests getting him on vandalism but you ignore it. He takes the brush and adds a bit of colour to wall… in the form of a very crude doodle of himself.

You finally take a break with him, warming your hands on the hot cup of cocoa.

“So what exactly do you guys do? Like I’ve seen you guys work but… I don’t get it.” You say, breaking the silence.

Soap thinks for a moment before answering. “We do what needs to be done.”

When he looks at you to see your reaction he finds you silently asking for more details.

“The Los Voqueros sell medicines. Simple stuff that’s not easy to afford. Painkillers, allergy meds. Ya know Farah, woman that ‘elped ‘ide us when those cops tried to grab us? She’s a bit of a vigilante, keepin some big corporation from ruin’in her neighbourhood.

“The problems with the world canna be solved by cops and white collars. They don’a’ven want to. We do. We set the world right, and we ‘ven ave a little fun on the side.”

He gives you a soft elbow to the arm. You smile. But underneath there’s a few things going on you’re not telling him. He’s given you two statements. One that can be used on Farah Karim, for aiding two criminals. The other could start a hunt for the Los Voqueros and their shipments of drugs. It wasn’t what you had been sent to find but it was a start. You might actually be taken seriously at the precinct, people might actually start having faith in your abilities. But… Farah had shown you and a few others kindness and trust. Her neighbourhood was constantly being targeted for demolition and businesses. You knew how expensive medications and drugs could be, you had needed them before yourself. As you sat there continuing to sip your warm drink, you started to ask yourself if this was truly what you wanted to do. The cops were bringing down people who were just trying to help. Sure they clubbed and partied on the side but hell, who doesn’t take some personal time?

You decide to keep the information to yourself for now, after all, Graves would only ask for a report on Soap and Ghost. Farah and Alejandro weren’t the priority.

You think back to your father. He was trying to help too. But it got him killed. You couldn’t let a bunch of gangs run free just because they were trying to help. The man sitting next to you had killed people before. He beat up good cops, stole shipments of drugs, and made it difficult for businesses to expand and grow the economy.

The rest of the day goes by fairly casually. You don’t give Graves anything on Soap, because well, he hadn’t given you anything. Nothing you could prove. Graves is frustrated, but he’s honestly too tired to care and leaves soon after.

A few more weeks go by and try to keep tabs on everything you can. The Los Vaqueros approved of the artwork you came up with, and now they were deciding where they wanted it. Hopefully they would give you a chance to be alone to work on it and you could find more evidence. Soap had mentioned helping with recent shipments so maybe you could get something from there.

The location was an old and empty warehouse, practically deserted. Alejandro and Rudolfo went with you to the location to show you where they wanted it.

It was more like where they wanted you though. Next thing you know, Rudolfo has you pinned against the wall while Alejandro is yelling questions.

“What are you looking for?”

“The fuck are you talking about?!” You yell. Rudolfo holds you tighter by your jacket. “Why are you here? What the fuck you want?!” Alejandro is pissed, but you have to stay quiet. You can’t give them anything.

“For the fucking mural! You asked me to!” You choke out. Rudolfo is ordered to drop you and you hit the floor, coughing.

Alejandro is nowhere close to being done with you. A good man he may be, but with traitors? Few could tell you how that went.

You’re met with a boot against your ribs as a warning.

“Why are you really here… out with it.” He warns.

“I don’t kno-“ before you can finish you get the wind kicked out of you.

“You know damn well why you’re here…tell me now.” He orders. Rudolfo keeps an eye out while Alejandro continues interrogating you.

“What are you talking about?!” You manage after regaining some air. He holds up his phone and shows a photo of you… in uniform.

“What are you looking for?” He asks. There’s some lenience as he lets you get to your hands and knees. Alejandro helps you stand by grabbing you and pinning you to the wall again. You try to kick him off, your heart pounding in your chest and ears ringing in your head.

“Start talking!”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“I know you’re a fucking cop!” He yells. “You’re undercover! I know you are, so start talking! Who else is undercover? What are you trying to find?!”

“Get off!” You yell back. At this point you’d have enough evidence for assault, but right now you were fighting to remain an assault victim.

“Not until you tell me who else is undercover with you.” Alejandro demands, you get punched in the gut making you cough. “Tell me and you walk away!”

“I…don’t…” another hit, this one to the face. There’s footsteps but you barely notice them. He grabs you by the jaw and gets close.

“Talk and I won’t tell Soap… you walk away and nothing happens…”

“…I’m a cop…” you admit. You were scared. You didn’t know how he knew. You weren’t supposed to say anything. When he brought up Soap though… Soap was the only one who seemed to put any trust in you. Losing that would hurt more than anything Alejandro could do to you.

“Where are your partners? Who are they?” Alejandro asks, his rage reducing a bit. Before you can answer though you hear a thick Scottish accent shouting and Alejandro pulled off of you.

You fall back to the ground and see Soap and Alejandro arguing with Rudolfo nearby trying to break them apart. You can barely make out what they’re saying, but eventually two hands grip your arms and help you to your feet just as Soap turns to you.

“Come on kid.” You hear a deep British voice say and you look to see Ghost is holding you, and lead you out of the warehouse while Soap follows not long after.

Ghost gets you to a car, telling you to get in the back which you do and you sit patiently for Soap to come along and sit in the passenger’s seat. They don’t say anything to you, just start driving.

As they get on the road Soap speaks up.

“Where we takin the cop?” He asks.

Your heart plummets when he says it. The way he says it tells you he’s pissed. With you.

“I’m taking Y/N to a hide out. The boss can deal with them.” Ghost said.

Soap looks back at you in the rear view and you look away. Not out the window, but more at the door. Your body was sore from Alejandro, and you were tired. You were too nervous to fall asleep.

When you get to the hideout, you sit up so Ghost can open the door. He jerks his head signalling for you to get out of the vehicle, and you do, keeping your head down. You can’t look at either of them.

Ghost leads you inside with Soap following behind you. He opens the door telling you to sit down, before stopping Soap from going inside and shuts the door.

“The fuck is this?” Soap asks annoyed.

“You’re emotional MacTavish.” Ghost tells him.

“Have fuckin right to be. We trusted ‘em and-“

“They were doing their job.” Ghost finishes the sentence.

“They used us.”

“You knew this was possible… like father like child.” Ghost reminds him. Soap is still pissed and kicks the ground hard in frustration. Ghost just folds his arms, and leans in front of the door frame letting Soap get his colourful Scottish phrases rattle off while tossing and kicking anything he could get his hands on.

You can hear them from outside and you consider running off, running away and not looking back. Soap and his men had given you a chance, a chance you had been waiting for. Soap was your friend, and he would defend you to no end. Any of his men tried to get handsy or get too drunk and go off he was beside you, jabbing back at them. He talked you up to Rudy and Al, assured Farah you were a good person, kept you close to his side… you start to wonder if it had all been for the case, or if you had done it because you felt like you were a part of something for once.

Ghost soon comes back inside, Soap is nowhere to be seen.

“You broken?” He asks. You fight your tears and shake your head.

“Take your jacket off and roll up your shirt.” He orders. You slowly stand and do as he says, showing a couple bruises. Ghost sighs and gets an ice pack from his freezer handing it to you along with a rag. You take it already knowing what to do, while he pulls up a chair and sits in front of you.

“What’s your name?” He asks.

“Y/n… y/n l/n.” You say shifting a little as you placed the ice pack to one of the bruises.

“…you’re a cop.” He says. You nod, despite the statement being rhetorical.

“Soap was aware that could be the case… given your father.” He says. You look at Ghost.

“You…”

“We knew your dad. All of us, including the boss. Good man.” He said as if trying to end the discussion. You two sat in silence for a bit while you mulled over what he said. Your father was a cop, did he do the same thing? Go undercover? Did Graves know?

“Keep the pack.” Ghost says standing up. You follow him to the car and he takes you back to your apartment. Before you exit the car he gives you a piece of paper.

“Text this for a ride.” He says. You take it.

“Could you tel-“

“No.” He says. “Tell Soap yourself.”

You nod and leave the car and go inside to your apartment. It’s late, almost midnight and god knows how long Graves has been waiting.

You knock on your own door and Graves soon opens it. When you walk in you hardly pay him any mind as he’s demanding to know where you’ve been. He keeps asking even while you’re getting some painkillers for your soreness and now headache from Graves.

“Nothing happened.” You say.

“Somethin happene-“

“Nothing… got into a fight that was it.” You say.

“You start it?” He asks.

“…no.”

“Who did?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter sergeant, now start talking!”

“I don’t know anything!” You yell. Your whole body tensed as it felt like you were at the warehouse getting questioned again. You flinched when he got closer. You clenched your fists digging the nails into your palms.

“Sergeant this is getting ridiculous. I have half a mind to take you off this case.”

“Then do it…” you mutter. At this point you don’t care. You’re in pain and this case made everything you had started to care for fall apart. What had Graves honestly done except tell you, you weren’t ready and remind you of the expectations you had being your father’s kid? Soap knew your dad, and never once reminded you of living up to him.

“What?” Graves looks at you stunned.

“Do it. Take me off the case. It’s probably for the best.” You say shrugging. Graves looks at you pressing his lips together. He shook his head.

“Your fath-“

“I don’t give a fucking damn about my father or how I’m his disappointment of a kid okay? You’re right I’m a fucking joke being his kid.”

“I’ve given you a chance to prove yourself!” Graves argues.

“And what have I done? Nothing! I’m a glorified tagger that’s what you said right?! Fine! Then I’ll be one! You gonna arrest me then?” You’re staring him down now. He just looks back, hiding his surprise. If Graves was being honest, he was tempted to do so.

“…I’ll be back in the morning.” He says and leaves your apartment. As soon as the door closes your pain opens. You’re hurting, he can tell. Something happened that scared you and that’s all he sees. He doesn’t know what’s going on deeper. The act was working but on him. The act of joining a gang in order to get closer, but that wasn’t an act to you. Not anymore. You clean yourself up, apply ice to your bruises, and stare at your father’s badge. How much did he know? How much did any of them know? You keep asking questions the whole night.

Price is sitting at a booth in a restaurant going over some paperwork when Johnny strides over and sits in the booth across from him. Price finishes the sentence he was reading and looks up.

“You knew this could happen.” Price says calmly.

“Don’t fuckin remind me…” Soap grumbles.

“How is l/n?” Price asks. “Simon told me he sent her home.”

“He did… Alejandro got to her before I ever could.” Soap comments.

“Yeah well, from what you told me, she won’t be for long. She has my number and if she was talking cops would be knocking.”

“Now what?” Soap asks.

“We wait.” Price tells him.

Taglist : @H0n3y_L3m0n

[fisherrprince]

do you have more thoughts on keyblade fighting that you need to put somewhere, because i have two hands ready to catch Should The Need Arise

anon: hey I heard you mention you’d analysed the combat styles in KH and what you said in the tags was already alluding to really neat stuff, but I for one would love to hear more of what you came up with!! so if you ever wanted to share any of your analysis then the floor is yours

aHAH, MY EXCUSE!!

Okay, so first some words on “standardized wielding styles”. These are styles shared by Terra, Aqua, Vanitas, Riku, and Xehanort and every other scala and daybreak kid. I will make the argument that the red style is the fanciest standard style, while the purple is seen often to make it easier on the little chibi sprites. BUT, I cannot discredit Eraqus, who uses the purple variant in bbs, nor can I discredit half of the Foretellers (Gula and Ava, at least, use this. Invi and Aced use the first type). So, two standard styles. For simplicity, let’s say one for primary offense, one for primary defense. The standard offensive style really wasn’t popular before Scala-era society.

check this difference out, specifically between ava invi and gula:

then between eraqus, hermod, and xehanort, and eraqus and terra.

These two were likely popularized and standardized for education in Scala ad Caelum for their predominant lack of obvious weak spots.

After this, we have unique styles. Those include Sora Kairi and Xion’s (similar to standard defense, but more mobile at the expense of form — Kairi takes after Sora but less confident, she hasn’t been hit that heavily yet), Ven’s (backhand, heavy range and mobility), Roxas’ (modified for two keyblades, but takes after Sora), and Axel’s (taught himself, comfortable with chakrams).

So! Let’s go.

.

Standard (offensive)

All styles have sub-variations, of a sense. Different wielders can choose where their keyblade points, and how they hold it exactly, based on what makes them most comfortable. Terra and Aqua point theirs downward, while Vanitas and Riku hold theirs above their head. What is recognizeable to this style is a hand for the sword, and a hand for guarding/blocking/items/magic.

It’s incredibly efficient. With only one hand on the weapon, you not only free up a hand for other things, but increase your range of movement with said weapon. Test it out yourself! The keyblade hand is always your dominant hand, held behind you for increased power when attacking (since you lose a significant amount of it by choosing not to grip with both hands). This style also decreases the speed of the defense you have, but with that increased mobility and swing power, along with a hand free to brace against the keyblade (defense strength up!), it makes up for it. Many people who use this also have strong barrier spells — both a testament to their preference for coverage and an acknowledgement that any directional block will take a little longer and be weaker if they try it with one hand.

The pointy end, though. What difference does it actually make, the height it’s at?

I think it’s half a matter of attack style preference and half intention. Riku, Vanitas, and Xehanort stab quite a bit. Aqua and Terra slice more. Not that they don’t do both, but it’s the first instinct. Aqua and Terra are also likely taught to hold their keyblade neutrally, in a safe position, until someone starts attacking. It’s polite! Eraqus also holds his one-handed, neutrally, until he gets into position. Riku and Vanitas learned to fight assuming everyone was out to fight them. Invi and Aced may like this style because of range (i hc she’s blind and strikes very very quickly, and he’s already very powerful with just the one arm and wants better motion).

and on character specifics: Terra often switches to two-handed, to copy his dad and add extra power to his hits without always sacrificing the empty hand. Vanitas likely was forced to relearn how to fight, as instead of solely being trained to be better at withstanding, he was constantly being made to better his own attacks. The moves Xehanort uses would best be replicated in the same style. Vanitas is wild for holding the massive spiky x-blade like that.

Now, what‘s good on this style does not correlate to what’s bad in the other. The two standard styles simply have different ways of dealing with each con they create or taking advantage of each pro.

(Here’s an interesting side note — Gula uses standard defensive, but in this instance, swaps. One hand… likely to display confidence! Wrong move, but hey. He got cocky. He’s also doing it wrong, and swaps back to two-handed to take Aced’s attack.)

.

Standard (defensive)

The main detriment of this style is the lack of ease of long range movement. Hold a wrapping paper tube out in front of you with both hands, then run. It goes to the side, or tucks in to your stomach, right? Dodge. Your legs will get in the way unless you know where to move that sword. It requires, interestingly, a little more discipline. You’d think Aqua would like that, but no, she wants movement and practicality, and she loves magic, and remember that you must take a hand off this style to grab a potion. You’d think young Eraqus wouldn’t, but remember that he’s a fancy royal lad.

The main draw, though, is tankiness, readiness, and power. You don’t need to move as much if nothing dares hit you! Ava and Gula might be attracted to this style because they’re not as physically strong, but want protection in close-quarters fighting. Using this style when your muscles aren’t as big but you still want to Hit Things Good, or when you want to be a boy you can’t knock over with a pail of water (horse stance rules), is probably solid advice.

Traditionally, this is a lot less like fencing, and a lot more like a samurai sword or kendo. Your blade is held in front of you, giving you very easy access to blocks and frontal attack/defense. In losing some twirly spinniness, you gain power and minimize your opponent’s ability to parry and block.

you gotta dodge master Eraqus so mcuh

All styles will swap between one and two hands for different moves. Eraqus, notably, swaps to a stance very similar to Xehanort when channeling a metric ton of magic.

Both of these styles require a degree of upper body/core strength, as does all swordfighting. I would be interested to see someone whose keyblade style relies on leg strength.

.

Sora, Xion, and Kairi

please look at the difference between the foretellers’ or eraqus’ two-handed grip and Sora’s. Do this with your shoulders and a top-heavy object.

They’re both in a hard stance, but hon. What are you, a gremlin? Anyways, a traditionally taught master would have… better form, even if it’s harder to learn at first. It’s habitual. Sora nearly crouches, and holds his keyblade back-pointed with two hands, which makes it easier for him to dodge roll, push off his feet quickly, and pull off those spinning combos he loves. It‘s really gonna hurt his muscles, in the future, though, since he’s doing a squat for like…. hours. Pulling on those shoulderblades and neck. Xion, too. Replicas had better have correct muscle dynamics. Kairi is brand new, so… maybe Aqua can teach her how to hold a sword so it doesnt hurt you.

Okay, now look at the grip itself. Held in front versus held to the side-back. They’re really attempting to combine both standard styles subconsciously, giving themselves more attack power while really wanting to keep that hard defensive parry, wanting to prevent all attacks to the front while also wanting mobility. It’s working for them really well, they fight like an anime character, and manage to get the best of both, with a minor sacrifice of length range that they don’t care about. We’re flexible and full of magic, baby! Holding the blade like this makes it pretty easy to let go with one hand without sacrificing that crouched defense position.

Now, Sora, specifically, is very adaptive. He’s had two keyblades, claws, guns, yo-yos, and a giant shield, to name a couple. He retains a bit of that alert crouch no matter where he goes, but Sora knows how he wants to attack and how to balance that with the most effective way to use his current weapon. He’s a smart kid! Sora has the most ridiculous shotlocks, which are also probably due to not always wanting to go standard for it. He also prefers to keep his focus on the enemy, which is evident in his reprisals and lack of very many effective “escape” moves.

Xion is very similar to Sora, but she does have some moves that are all movement. She switches to one handed for strikes a lot — using two for defending, one for smacking. In her data battle I’d swear some of those heavy hits are claymore-like. But anyways, since we’re magic, Xion cares not for the laws of exhaustion, and will ping about as a ball of light everywhere. Short range? Up in your business. Mid-range? In your business with one hand. Long range? Throws a boomerang. Hit her? No you dont. Ball of light. She’s above you and wants to bash your head in. (Vanitas also does this! A lot. It’s an easy way to catch someone off-guard. I’ll argue that the soras are very tough and strong, but not tanky. they want to avoid being hit a lot)

Another interesting note about Kairi. I say “unconfident” not because she doesn’t hit hard, but because her stance is also often tilted back, ready to dodge. It’s two handed, but almost all her moves are one. She does love spinning and throwing the thing! It looks like she’s been taking notes from the wielders she knows. It would be easy to teach her a standard style, I think. See here, she lets go on the strike, and by trying to do both, actually ends up with an advantage (being confusing) and disadvantage (losing both the power of two handed and versatility of one handed).

A counter to Sora and Xion is difficult to pin down. Time? Probably. Lack of heating pads. Something that takes all their attention is about the only way to get a sneak attack in, and then you have to hit hard. A counter to Kairi would be anyone who can knock her off balance. She needs a sturdier stance. .

Roxas

Roxas is interesting. He takes after Sora for the one blade. Wielding two, however, nets him a totally different way of fighting. Roxas’ clavicle muscles n… deltoids and stuff must be Ironclad. Also, two handed means you are very fast and sharp all the time. He has the advantage of standard defense (horse stance), and the advantage of offense (range of one sword, but twice).

Roxas generally attacks in two ways — simultaneous hits, and follow-up hits. Either he hits with both at once, or hits hard with the first one, and adds the second one as a bonus smack. He can attack by hitting in opposite directions with the two, like a drum, but that will be a little awkward and leave him prone to being tangled. That established, the follow-up hit method means he spins a bunch. As do we all.

Roxas gets a little complicated because we are not in the real world. We have magic and turning into light and physics that let you become a circular saw. So, typically, disadvantages would include: being unable to let go of a weapon to grab something or use an item, having just a very big silhouette to attack on, having difficulty with close-range attacks because Oathkeeper and Oblivion are kinda long, and convenience. Roxas gets to dodge #1 (keyblades can be unsummoned) and #4 (keyblades can be unsummoned). Speaking of dodging, he also gets to skirt the difficulty of dodging and rolling with two swords because he turns into a beam of light. But he can’t dodge how difficult it is to use two swords effectively — he needs to concentrate on fighting, and nothing else, or he risks messing up. He has to be very, very coordinated, and undistracted. Luckily he’s pretty good at making his opponents shut up, most of the time. Blocking is another thing — theoretically his blocks could be strong, but Roxas has no real brace: crossing your blades and taking a hefty stab might smack one of them back into your face. He mostly uses reversals and dodges, because of this.

The takeaway to this is Roxas is built for speed and power, and he is very strong. He’s a mid- to far- range fighter who if you’re not careful can snap you in half if you’re too close (be SO careful of that cross blade scissor).

A perfect counter to Roxas would be a tank that can grapple, and also be very distracting. If you can take hits, be talkative, and get close enough to stop his blades, you have a chance.

.

Ventus

This is a bizarre choice, my guy, but I get it.

Backhanded weapons are very impractical for a lot of... attacking, mainly in mid-range combat, and Ven likes to either fight very close or throw the keyblade like a boomerang (and hey, backhand gives it a good whip for throwing). His attacks aren’t meant to one hit KO, but they do come with a bit of power to them, especially on the backslash. Like holding a knife for gouging. It’s for very close defense — pretty good when Wayward Wind and Missing Ache have hooks.

Backhand also, while retaining that empty hand for potions and guarding, gives you an extreme coverage boost. By which I mean Ven’s sword hand now has a nearly 270 degree sweep of “I see you, don’t touch me”, very quickly, based on just flicking his wrist. It sacrifices a ton of strength/sturdiness, but you don’t need that if you’re dodging. You also don’t really need to block, which is slower, but relatively sturdy when Ven does it, as he blocks with mostly the chunky hilt between crossed arms. He sacrifices (again) a bit of strength for coverage — an attack would hurt his arms, not his chest, if he were hit head-on.

His attacks often have him flip the blade around in his hand, too. Quick swaps between standard moves and backhand ones. Basically, Ventus is built for moving, protecting himself, and quick attacks that wear down the enemy, not outclass it. Likely because he’s good at fighting, but everyone he’s fought hits harder than he can! It doesn’t matter how he holds it, getting hit will hurt. So he just. Doesn’t. He’s not a buff little guy — but he is a persistent one. Ven very likely made this up on his own, in Daybreak, and it was too hard to fix his whole style, but it was enough to correct most of his form so he doesn’t hurt himself too much. He is going to have to really stretch that shoulder and wrist (maybe get a brace), though. At least his neck is ok. … not sure about his knees tho dang boy that crouch

A perfect counter to Ven would be someone big and fast, who hits hard mid-range. He’s already been sparring with Terra, though, so when in doubt, try scruffing him?

.

Axel

Theres not a ton to say about him — he‘s not a swordfighter. He uses his keyblade like it’s a frisbee. Because that’s what he’s used to! His neutral is behind his back on his shoulder, which is terrible for readiness, but okay for chucking the thing. It’s good it has a sort of… ripstik like… boomerang quality.

Axel’s fighting style is completely made up, like most of the self-taught wielders���. His strengths lie in some of the benefits of standard offensive style (one-handed), and some of the same coverage stuff as Ven, having a cocked wrist most of the time so no one can sneak up around him without risking getting whacked very quickly, and having an interesting range due to the pointy end being basically on a spinny swivel wherever his hand moves. He’s not going to be good at close-range and he knows it — his attacks are mostly distance. And the guy has ZERO defense, combined with zero coverage when idle, so it’s for the better.

Distance-wise, though, he rocks. Treating the blade like it’s a flaming throwing weapon means his idle is actually great for sudden flick-tossing and attention-guiding for sneakier attacks, and his stance itself (…nonexistent) serves a different purpose: bait. Basically a big "come hit me". Fun, when you have a lot of fire magic and two friends who are beasts and love to take advantage of a distracted enemy — distance on the blade, proximity on the burning.

A perfect counter to Axel would be someone pinging around very close <—> very far and circling him incessantly. Like, data Xion could wreck him, as he has to wait for the boomerang to come back -- he no longer has two spinny wheels. Also someone with water magic.

.

SO! In conclusion! Having a teacher who teaches you correct sword usage rather than instinct may detract from overspecific styles that benefit you most but leave weak spots, but your muscles and your oversights will thank you. Everyone is glad we have the power of the Mouse and anime on our side.

Keep in mind again that I have done cursory research, and have had minimal actual sword instruction, I am not an expert and this is all for fun anyways :]

[hxnmantii]

Class 1-A and their car habits

tw: crack/fluff, cursing

People: Bakugo, Shoto, Izuku, Sero, Kiri, iida, Mina x mostly gn!reader (Mina is the only one that’s implied female!reader)

Ratings: PG

A/n: yuuhh get into💋 I personally would like to ride with Shoto. I just wanna hold his hand👉🏾👈🏾 but not on no simp shit. Originally, this was going to be just boys but who would I be if my gay self didn’t add the queen herself? Anyways, Who would you like to ride with?

Bakugo~

Bakugo does that sexy ass thing where he drives with one hand on the wheel and one hand on your thigh and when you don’t pay him enough attention he’ll lightly squeeze your thigh. This man does NOT share the aux....his stingy ass. He says he doesn’t wanna listen “to your trash music” but will play bxmb threat and NBA Youngboy at full capacity with the windows down. If you beg enough maybe he’ll play 1 Nicki song. But he will throw a fit and act like he doesn’t like Nicki even though he knows all of the lyrics. Altough he’s really uptight about his car, he enjoys driving and picking up the Bakusquad in it because he likes to feel useful and needed. No doubt about it, this man has road rage. He’s screaming outside the window and in the car about how someone cut him off and when someone screams back him, he’s like “Pull over right now cuz those sound like fighting words to me.” Now y’all in the back of a cop car and 30 minutes late to your dinner date. You are not, I repeat, you are NOT allowed to even think about eating in his car unless he’s got that plastic wrapping on his car. He treats his car so good (at some point you think he likes the care better than you) her name is Bethany. I-

Shoto~

Shoto has one hand on the wheel and one hand in your hand, stroking your hand from time to time and kissing the back of it. He had a sleek gray sliver car with a sunroom (he never actually uses) that goes fast and he likes going real fast because what they gon do, give him a ticket??? When his dad the number one hero??? Try again. He’s also the type to flick off the cops as he driving by because ACAB. He’s always wearing a gold Rolex and you got your nails done so when you hold his, the acrylics compliment his hand and watch.(like the pictures from Pinterest) You guys ride in comfortable silence. It’s so calming riding with him because although you’re slightly anxious with how fast he’s going, you’re at somewhat ease because he’s doing it so smoothly and you trust him. His windows are tinted because once again he’s the son of a pro hero and people are nosy, neither you or him like that. Although you don’t really need the assistance with Shoto being a living AC and heater in one, his seats have buttons for each seat and you can warm your bum. His car had the clean car smell...it just smells really clean. He’s got a bunch of condiments and napkins in his glove department. He doesn’t know where they came from. His whole vibe in his car is rich and elegant. He gets his car professional wash every Tuesday and you are required to come.

Kirishima

Kiri’s got a big ass red GMC truck and he gave the truck these monster wheels so it’s a force to be reckoned with. Her name is Sophie and like Bakugo, he loves her dearly but makes it clear to you that he’s love you more than her. He does the sexy ass thing where he’s got one hand on the wheel and one hand tightly holding on to your head rest so his arms flexing and he’s backing up with a concentrated look. that is so hot to me. He’s got a sticker on the back that says “honk if you’re manly” . He definitely would let you take the aux because you guys made a playlist of songs you chose together. He would be the type to start dancing when a good song came on, almost hitting someone in the process because he took both hands off the steering wheel out of excitement. He’s got road rage but not enough to actually start shouting or flicking someone off. In the trunk of Kirishima’s car, he’s got at least 5 different protein bottles as well a case of water and some jump rope. He says “You never know when I’ll need it to work out” but he has his personal gym?? Anyways, he has a specific section in his closet for red button ups because he likes to match Sophie when he drives her😭 I hate to say it but Kiri looks like a hill billy especially since he’s got those shoulder cut out button ups. He’s cute with it and he’s happy so you somewhat tolerate it

Midoriya

Izuku has more of a family car like a soccer mom car or a dark green Ford explore because he likes to pick everybody up to hang out and he needs space since he’s got a lot of them. Not to mention, he also likes to cruise and enjoy his time with you no matter where y’all go because we all know this man is a simppp. At every stop light, he’s gently grabbing your face and either kissing you on your cheek or forehead. He tried giving you a kiss on the lips once but he got so caught on the feeling that he ended up holding up the line and everybody was honking and made at him. He was so embarrassed that he now waits til you guys get to your destination to do all that extraness. Being the big fan he is, naturally he has some All might themed seatbelts and has all might stickers all over his steering wheel. He also has little all Might figurine on his dashboard that he prays to get him out of car trouble. Genuinely think it’s works too. Izuku in his trunk has a bunch of workout gear and gaze cuz he’s sexy like that. He does not have road rage at all....maybe a little. He might flick someone off but that’s as far as it goes. He definitely gives you the aux because he loves watching how lively you get it. (Y/n) “Do you know your Megan baby?”🥰 (ZuZu) “Y-yes?”

Iida

Now hear me out...Iida has a motorcycle. He’s got a need for speed that cars can’t really fufill because you can’t weave through other cars like a motorcycle can. His motorcycle has the highest tech on it naturally. It’s all black but has lights underneath it so he can change it by phone and ofc it’s always blue. You guys also have matching helmets that are Bluetooth so you’re able to talk to one another without having to yell very much. When you guise stop, he rubbing your arms to make sure that you’re okay and/if you need to pull over. Now when he’s not riding the motorcycle he’s got a Tesla. He preaches about the law and following the rules but when he get in the car, that’s a different story. With him you better either hold on tight to him or you better get double seat belt buckles for extra protection because he’s about to try and race the flash. (And you thought Shoto was bad) You get out thanking the universe for letting you touch ground again. Iida got the type of car that if you even breathe incorrectly around it, it’s going off and waking up the whole damn neighborhood. When iida first got his car, he read everything up on it so he would be fully able to use the car to its full potiential meaning that he’s got Siri set up, he can lock the door from his car, and watch the cameras on his house through the screen of his car. The Bluetooth is automatically connected to his phone so no you will not be getting the aux but you can play some tunes form his phone. He’ll even make you a playlist on Apple Music with his rich self.

Sero

Sero’s got a red convertible with tan seats and the weather allows it, his top is always down. His car always smells so good because he uses the wild cherry air freshener in his car. He blasts bad bunny and daddy Yankee as y’all are cruising slightly over the speed light. He also likes blasting Ski Mask. He’s the type to sing you the words while gently holding your face and singing to you with a lovey dovey smile on his face. He’s very respectful and turns down his music when entering neighborhoods because he doesn’t wanna mess with the vibes. You two have matching glasses that says queen/ king on yours and king on his. He definitely has some throw dice hanging from his mirror along with a picture of you and him taped to his dashboard cuz he’s also a simp. He’s always has a packet of Extra gum in his middle console along with warm water bottles. If police pulls him over, he definitely the type to start flirting with him so the officer just to make him uncomfortable enough to let him off with a warning. For a fact, he has the Puerto Rican flag on the antenna of his car. He has Led lights and likes them to be colorful rather than on one color. Sero definitely jogs around the front to open the door for you because he’s a jester and a gentleman in one. His part of his car is that the top can go down solely for the fact that the sun always highlights your skins so well.

Mina

Do I even need to say anything about the Pink queen herself?? She has a cute pink steering wheel case with matching pink seats and ofc she has a bedazzled stick shift. She has a Jeep. She the type of person to has matching glasses with her interior and when you get in the car, she’s putting her music on shuffle: a dangerous move because you go from Brent Faiyaz to Jhene Aiki to fucking Cardi B, Flo Mili, and etc. When you unbuckle your seat to start twerking in the seat, she’s automatically going to start hyping you up. She’s got one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on your ass smacking it as you fuck it up in the passenger seat. Y’all are literally swerving from side to side and let’s be honest here, Mina is not that good of a driver so you have almost gotten in an accident multiple times. She’s the type to pull over to take cute selfies or videos with you and post them all at once captioning it with “Late nights w/bae”. Underneath seat she an emergency packet filled with makeup, clothes, hair and first aid kit supplies. Although she’s not the best driver, she takes the rules really serious because she would hate to have an accident with you in the car. Like Sero, She has led lights in her car but they only flash pink. Mina is the queen of putting falsies on so she would mostly definitely put yours on (without tweezers) once you park as well as do your edges if you ask. She just has that talent. *chefs kiss* amazing

Reblogs are appreciated!

A/n: I’m lyin I definitely would be riding with Bakugo because I have major passenger rod rage lol and you definitely don’t wanna get your ass beat TWICE

[itsillumi]

Hi Ven! I would like to start this by saying that you're a great and exceptional writer🤩😭 ILY! But yeps, can I respectfully ask what books you'd recommend us or me to read? Or somewhere u got chlorine inspired from for example? In general, just a list of books may it be thriller, romance, or sumn that you read and had your style. That would be all. Thank you so much and take care!!🤩

thank you so much! oof, narrowing these down was pulling out teeth & smoking packs, my guy. since there’s a divide between the books i’d actually recommend & books i personally can’t live without, there’s a chlorine list (a stretch, chlorine’s nowhere near as good as any of these) & some personal favorites. i hope you enjoy :)                                                       .                                                    

                                                         .

the secret history + the goldfinch by donna tartt. to absolutely no one’s surprise, ms. tartt tops my list. between the secret history’s gritty, pretentious cast of unlovables, and the goldfinch’s appreciation for art, art history, and blown up museums, tartt’s writing is fucking indelible and learned. a set of toppers for me, definite inspiration.    murder on the orient express by agatha christie. there’s nothing i love better than a good dead, rich man to start off a novel - and murder on the orient express delivers. cristie needs no intro, but this is by far one of my favorites for her: the setting, the darkness, the slow build and intelligent characters. it’s rich as hell, just like the mogul who gets stabbed a dozen times.  wuthering heights by emily brontë. sorry to anyone who hated english in school or doesn’t jerk it to classics, but wuthering heights is peak gothic romance. dark, turbulent, endlessly beautiful. paired with the ghost of lovers’ past and an antihero as its lead, brontë doesn’t miss a beat. heathcliff is your mom’s least favorite man, and my favorite byronic hero.  the night circus by erin morgenstern. this book is certainly one of those where going in knowing nothing at all is far more exhilarating than having my dumbass say anything about it. the writing is atmospheric, enchanting in the most vicious sense, and always beautiful. a book that describes itself in a sentence: “a choker of perfectly cut scarlet rubies circles her neck, putting forth a vague impression of her throat having been slit. [...] slightly morbid and incredibly elegant” (p. 73).  

                                                           . 

                                                          .

neuromancer by william gibson. this is one of my favorite books of all time, and it unintentionally informed my personal style. this is cyberpunk at its dirtiest and most realistic; sarcastic, urban, and for once, doesn’t over-estimate the future’s capacity. it inspired movies like akira (1988), so if you’re into the blade runner vibe and edgy graffiti, its for you.                                                        norwegian wood + kafka on the shore by haruki murakami. these are a perfect example of books i adore, but cannot in good faith recommend. they come with a plethora of trigger warnings. still, murakami has an unchallenged understanding of the human condition, and every book has been a visceral experience no matter how short. he’s a master of verisimilitude and it’s terrifying how well he’s able to pull you into the mundane and ruin you using it.                                                        woman at point zero by nawal el saadawi. this is also a novel that’s near, dear, and needs some caution. saadawi really doesn’t shy away from the mean, harsh reality some women have to face on a daily basis. i think this is an absolute must read. it’s impossibly beautiful and devastating. feminism at its most realistic and its most unfortunate.                                                        memoirs of a geisha by arthur golden. plenty of people know about this one, but i couldn’t help myself. this book is exactly what it says on the tin, but add to that underlying melancholy and fantastic writing, and you have a perfect book to read if you’re looking for romance, reality, and grit: all in one.

i genuinely hope you enjoy these as much as i do!

[bluerosesburnblue]

I hope you don't mind this ask, but... Any theories / speculations about the most recent story update for KHUX?

Oh, I don’t mind at all! I’m glad you asked, actually, because I’ve had some thoughts, though not many new theories of my own, unfortunately. That being said, I can definitely go over how some of my old theories and some of the fandom’s hold up and my thoughts on a few of the new theories I’ve seen floating around

One thing that I’m consistently proud of is how my old guesses about Darkness’s true nature just keep ending up almost right barring some slight details. I made the claim back when Re:Mind first came out that Darkness could be a hive mind of entities that plant bits of themselves in others, and then refined that back in July of 2020 by likening it to a parasite that worms its way into people’s hearts and incorporates itself into them to control them. This past update confirmed that the Darkness we’re fighting is one part of the hive mind that wormed its way into Ven to force him to act out, and that by doing so it detached itself from that hive mind and became incorporated into Ven’s being (which Ven can then shape). So I gotta say I’m pretty pleased about that part

All that’s left to be seen from the July post is if Darkness has a connection to Verum Rex/Quadratum, but I doubt that that will be touched on by the KHUx finale. Though I will say that it’s pretty interesting that the Master of Masters tells Darkness about “a world [he] can’t even conceive,” which seems like it could easily be referring to Quadratum, which also means that Darkness knows about it

That’s pretty much all I have to say on the Ventus/Darkness/Vanitas connection, but there’s still more to cover in this update

One thing that I’ve been trying to figure out is who the cloaked figure right at the start of the update is, Luxu or the MoM. Measuring the sizes and my old guess based on the KH3 Secret Reports both say Luxu, but this brings into question “when,” exactly, the True Dandelion scene takes place as it doesn’t have the dark haze around the edges that they give flashbacks, but is clearly the real-world set of pods as they’re not destroyed AND it’s missing the pod that Maleficent already used. The True Dandelion scene has a lot to unpack, but this scene at the start does make me wonder if Luxu and/or the Master have a way in and out of the datascape that doesn’t involve the pods, otherwise the numbers don’t add up

Also related to the post of mine I just linked is the idea that the Black Box is the datascape. I believe that this might still hold true. It’s interesting to note that they show the scene from Back Cover where Luxu is given the box in the first place just prior to the reveal that using the lifeboats to escape starts the process to seal it off and have the real Daybreak Town fall to darkness, and the Master’s “hint” to Luxu involves this very process. Why would Luxu be forbidden to open the box? Quite possibly because it contains the infected datascape meant to seal off the vast majority of the Darkness hive mind. And several Dandelions. It is both the “hope” mentioned in KH3 through those Dandelions, as well as a trap to keep Darkness out of being able to interfere for quite a long time

Now, the questions that I’m sure are on everyone’s minds are “who is the True Dandelion,” and “who are the ones who use the lifeboats?” Let’s start with the True Dandelion, as there’s far less moving pieces involved in that one

I won’t take credit for coming up with any of these options, I’m just going to discuss the logistics of them. So the candidates for the True Dandelion in, what is in my opinion, the least likely option to the most likely option, are:

Kairi: I’ve seen this one floating around and... honestly don’t believe it at all due to the sheer amount of logical contortions that you have to do to make it work. To wit:

Where the hell would she even come from if it was Kairi? As can be clearly seen with Ven, is stated to be true with Subject X, and is implied to be true of Lauriam/Elrena, those who travel to the future using the pods will regenerate their bodies at the age they were when they used the pods. Which would make Kairi at the oldest a four-year-old. Four years prior to KHUx was when Brain was told that he was a Union Leader. So she either would have been just born immediately prior to the war and was just... stolen or something? And we never saw? Or just after the war, where she would probably have to be the child of a Dandelion that got teen pregnant because they’re supposed to be both kids and the only survivors? Or Luxu and Ava’s kid somehow? Like, what? The timeline is just insane with that

If she was born before the war... you would assume that the True Dandelion would be, you know, a Dandelion. Which would mean that Ava handed a Keyblade to and recruited a literal toddler. This would also retcon Aqua being the one to accidentally pass the ability to wield a Keyblade down to Kairi and I refuse to make theories predicated on “the author will retcon this.” You just open up a huge can of worms doing that

The body wrapped in white looked a hell of a lot bigger than a four-year-old to me

I am sick to death of “this character was secretly from the Age of Fairytales~” being employed by the narrative. It’s happened at least three times already (four if you count Luxu). Enough already

Ventus: Ven has some hints, though some notable contradictions to it being him

On the one had, the sheet that the True Dandelion is wrapped in is extremely similar to the one that Xehanort wrapped him in when planning to leave him on Destiny Islands in BBS and there’s a possibility that Xehanort may have found him in that very sheet if he regenerated wearing it

On the other hand: Ventus might not have even been a Dandelion in the first place (he definitely wasn’t a Union Leader, but I don’t know if it was ever said whether he was selected as a regular Dandelion or not), and there’s the timing of the scene that I mentioned above. It’s definitely after Maleficent used her lifeboat but before anyone else used theirs (when you would expect Ven to remain with his friends) and, since the scene doesn’t have the flashback effect, it’s implied to be happening concurrently with everything else, so Ven should still be fighting Darkness in the datascape while it’s happening and eliminating him from being this particular person

Strelitzia: Oh, boy, have we got some nice old hints to Strelitzia, but still a few logical contortions, just like Ven

The white sheet is coming back up again. Namely, the fact that we still have an unexplained scene where Strelitzia appears to Lauriam in a dream wrapped in a white cloak, though it’s of a different style than the one that the True Dandelion is in. That scene also featured flower petals being blown into the wind, much like a dandelion seed (though, notably, the petals that are blown aren’t Dandelion seeds)

The question is, yet again, one of timing. How would Luxu get her body? While she was only introduced in KHUx, her scenes are all flashbacks to before the war, so we know that she was struck down in the real world, not the datascape. We see her body dissolve into light and her heart be released. Now, technically you only need a heart to time travel (actually, a heart is the only thing that can time travel), but Luxu is clearly seen putting a body into the machine. A machine that only allows for time travel because it destroys the body. If he had her heart, he wouldn’t need to use the lifeboat because she’s already in a state to time-travel on her own and this eliminates the possibility of him putting her Nobody into the machine, because without a heart it would just evaporate her body leaving... absolutely no heart to go to the future with

Now, Luxu theoretically could have grabbed her heart. We know that he was hanging around Daybreak Town at the time while observing thanks to his fight with Ava, but Strelitzia is struck down just after the fight with Ava starts so it’s very likely that Luxu was too preoccupied to retrieve her heart before it was gone. Speaking of Luxu’s fight with Ava...

Ava is my current top pick for the True Dandelion candidate due to the sheer number of questions it answers and how few it raises

Ever since KH3 came out, the question of “where the heck is Ava?” has been buzzing around as a major mystery. Her last chronological point of appearance is the same as the other Foretellers: the Keyblade War itself, where she’s shown leading her Union to battle. Notably, she seems resigned to her part in this, and this is the first and only time we see her after her battle with Luxu where he reveals to her the Master’s true plans. Melody of Memory seems to imply that the other Foretellers managed to skip to the future by going to another world, Quadratum (or at least this is the most likely explanation as there’s not enough pods to send all four of the other Foretellers AND the characters that we know end up in the future to their destination). However, Ava isn’t with them and Luxu knows what happened to her

It would be easy to write this off as them trying to drop Ava from the narrative or her not being important, but her chess piece is included in the “Eraqus and Xehanort foreshadow the next saga” chess game on the far right of the board and Nomura confirms that they represent the Master’s six apprentices, i.e. the five Foretellers + Luxu. So, Ava is necessary in the upcoming saga and yet, she didn’t get to the future the same way as any of the Master’s other apprentices leaving her open to get there via a lifeboat

Ava is the very founder of the Dandelions, who all of the others look up to and defer to and was spoken of heavily in the scene just prior to the True Dandelion reveal. That’s grounds for being called the True Dandelion if I’ve ever seen one

Luxu would very easily be able to ensure that Ava would be able to make it to the future. Just like with the Master of Masters, he already has the memories necessary for her to use to regenerate a body, and either her Keyblade or her mask would make for effective mediums that wouldn’t be too difficult for Luxu to take. If he put her in the white cloth, he probably took her mask off already

Ava hasn’t been around for the events of KHUx, so there’s no timeline discrepancies if it’s her

So, now that we have an idea of who the True Dandelion could be, let’s talk about the rest of the lifeboats and how they might fit together. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that the True Dandelion can’t be one of the Union Leaders and that their battle with Darkness is taking place at the same time as Luxu is sending off the True Dandelion. I’ll be referencing an old theory of mine, while making additions now that it’s clear that there’s two sets of lifeboats: the Data Set and the Real Set

Right now, there’s an equal number of Real Pods and Data Pods: 5 each. For the Data Pods, of the seven that we started with, one was used by Maleficent and one was damaged in the battle between Maleficent and Lauriam. As for the Real Pods, one has been used by Maleficent, and one has been used by the True Dandelion. This leaves us with five each.

We can narrow this down further by eliminating people that we know end up in the future. These are:

Ventus

Subject X, who is most likely Skuld based on her description

Lauriam

Elrena* (of note with Elrena is that we actually have no idea where the hell she is at the moment or how she’s going to get into the pods. Furthermore, while every other lifeboat user sans Maleficent has been shown to have amnesia upon waking and Lauriam/Marluxia directly indicates as such applies to him, too, in KH3, Elrena/Larxene’s KH3 scene and character file short story both indicate that she recalls Lauriam and possibly Strelitzia, though she also seems surprised at the idea that she’s part of an ancient Keyblade legacy. I won’t deny that there’s a possibility that she doesn’t use a lifeboat and ends up in the future by other means based on the discrepancies)

So with three confirmed cases, we’re left with one ambiguous case in Elrena and three more possible candidates: Ephemer, Brain, and Player. Four people, and two pods

I want to make it clear that despite what I brought up against Elrena, I do think that she’ll be using one of the lifeboats if only so that KHUx has narrative consistency. They introduced Elrena, they made her part of the investigation on Strelitzia’s whereabouts, so it only makes sense that they need to show us where she ended up for a satisfying conclusion. So let’s slot Elrena in for one of the lifeboats. That leaves one between Player, Ephemer, and Brain

My best guess is that Player won’t be using a lifeboat at all. Not only are they a create-a-character that would be a HUGE pain to try and incorporate into future entries in the series without making a “canon” version and thus ruining their appeal as an avatar, but we haven’t seen or heard mention of them at all in the games set in the present-day. There’s zero indication that they made it, which makes them the most easily eliminated as a lifeboat user

That leaves Ephemer and Brain, and I still believe that Ephemer will be the final lifeboat user, and for the same reasons as stated in the theory I linked at the start of this section. Not only does Brain have the same facial sprite as Eraqus, but he wields the Master’s Defender which will be later passed down to Eraqus and I believe that this eliminates him as a time traveler, despite the fandom’s popular opinion that it confirms it

Because I don’t believe that Brain is Eraqus’s grandfather, but rather his distant ancestor who inherited the No Name and passed down both Keyblades through the ages

So let’s resolve some plot threads taking everything I’ve stated and linked to above into account

My Big Guess for the KHUx Finale

Ventus will use the fact that Darkness is tied to his heart now to give it a physical, but still mostly amorphous form that he, the Union Leaders, and Player can finally take down. Darkness will be sealed inside Ven’s heart, where it will lie dormant until he reaches the future. Eventually, Xehanort will extract it in the form of Vanitas and it will follow Vanitas’s life cycle, ending in him being reabsorbed into Ven at the end of BBS. Darkness, now back in Ven’s heart, will make brief contact with Sora during the events of Re:Mind

Lauriam, upon learning that the world will be sealed with the use of the lifeboats, will attempt to rescue his partner, Elrena. Both will take lifeboats out of the datascape and into the future, whereupon they will be recruited into Organization XIII by Luxu’s current incarnation, Xigbar, likely to keep an eye on them. I believe there might be a squabble among Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, and Player among who will use the final lifeboats (each person nominating others besides themselves), but ultimately they will settle on Ephemer and Skuld

Skuld will wind up amnesiac in the future Radiant Garden and is discovered by Ansem the Wise and his apprentices and dubbed Subject X. She becomes Xehanort’s favorite test subject due to the similarities in their amnesia and possibly some lingering memories that he has that don’t quite belong to him (KHDR Xehanort certainly seems to want to meet his “old friends” very badly)

Ephemer’s heart will wind up in the Keyblade Graveyard as I mentioned in an old theory, unable to manifest a body due to the lack of a medium present. Through this state of being just a heart (and possibly related to those old talks about him being “unchained”), he will be able to enact the Light of the Past moment from KH3, and may very well be revived for future events in the series

This leaves Brain and Player behind in the datascape. However, you may remember one detail that I brought up, but neglected to fully expand on until now. There is a difference between the Data Pods and the Real Pods. While all of the Real Pods have been used up at the time of my proposed sequence of events, the Data Pods have not been. One was never used, only damaged. This leaves open the possibility that it can also be repaired (Also, I’m just gonna say it. Player’s met someone recently who has a magic hammer that can repair anything... might not come back but also totally could). Brain and Player could then repair the final pod and, in a callback to when Player was sent to Game Central Station, have them both agree once again that Player is the more expendable person in the scenario. Brain will take the repaired pod, leaving no way out of the datascape for anyone else, while Player stays behind to be sealed away for the time being (this could also be a callback to the original KHx, where Player also stayed behind to take part in the war instead of fleeing with the Dandelions, as they refused to leave their party behind)

When Brain escapes, however, he will be met with a Daybreak Town with no Real Pods left, as Luxu used one on the True Dandelion. Now that the seven pods have all been used up and the real Daybreak Town is falling to darkness, Luxu will take a corridor out as the Master instructed, but bring the newly appeared Brain along with him (either that or Brain emerges after Daybreak Town falls, either is possible) and bequeaths the No Name onto him. Brain, stranded in the past while all of his friends have been sent to the future, will be Luxu’s new apprentice and rebuild the fallen Daybreak Town as Scala ad Caelum, then pass down both of his Keyblades: Master’s Defender to his biological descendants, and No Name to his apprentices

As for the Master of Masters? I think he’s already taken an eighth lifeboat (you’ll note that there’s space right in the center of the cluster where one more could theoretically fit) and had done so before the start of the original KHx. He’ll be revived at some point in Xehanort’s young adult life to goad him into his insane plans as seen in Re:Mind, then duck into Quadratum to hang out until the next arc in the franchise, as hinted at with his appearance in the KH3 Secret Movie

(He is most definitely not Sora. He’s clearly bound to the same rules of time travel as everyone else which means that Sora couldn’t go back in time to become him as that would be long before the point in time where Sora was born and that breaks KH time travel rules. Not to mention that the Master talks about Quadratum in this update like he’s never seen it before until it came up in the No Name’s range of vision. Sora is literally in Quadratum right now, he’d definitely know what it was already if he was the Master)

And I do believe that should cover everyone’s whereabouts by the end of the game and into the next arc of Kingdom Hearts with minimal plot holes

This is just my best guess, putting together details that I’ve been accumulating for the past year and a half or so into what sounds like a coherent sequence of events that bridge the gap between KHUx and KH3 and beyond. There may be some details I get wrong, obviously. Nomura has been known to be... unpredictable. But I think, based on the evidence we have at hand, that this is the most logical series of events to end the game on and I’m really interested to see how close this gets to the actual finale we see

[violethowler]

False Start: Analyzing Kairi’s Arc After Melody of Memory

In October 2019, I did an analysis of Kairi’s character arc as of the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 and what I felt was being set up for her going forward.

My major point was that Kairi's fear of change was holding her back from reaching her full potential and catching up to Sora and Riku, but that by the end of Kingdom Hearts III she had overcome that fear and was ready to move forward. 

In hindsight, I jumped the gun in assuming that the end of KH3 marked the definitive point where she got over her change and could truly move forward. While she had some good moments in Re:Mind, Limit Cut promptly put her to sleep for an entire year, trying to search the memories in her heart for a clue to Sora's whereabouts. 

But then Melody of Memory happened. 

When Kairi faces the memory of Xehanort, she says in the original Japanese version that Sora and the others being hurt was the result of her strength not being enough. I'll save the rant about how the English localization consistently removes Kairi's moments of self-reflection throughout the series for another day, but my main point is that this sets the groundwork for her decision to remain behind while Riku goes to Quadratum. When she chose to increase her training under Aqua, I was thrilled because finally this was the sign I was looking for that Kairi was really, truly, ready to move forward. 

A lot of people were disappointed by this decision because they felt like Kairi needing more training was the whole point of her being brought to the Mysterious Tower at the end of Dream Drop Distance. But there are a few things that set this moment apart and explain why her training in Kingdom Hearts 3 did not amount to as much as fans were hoping. 

First, it's that this time Kairi is exerting her own agency and making the choice herself. Her training in Kingdom Hearts 3 was never something we saw her actively choose. So Kairi making that choice on-screen has more weight than Riku bringing her to the Mysterious Tower for training on Yen Sid's orders. 

Second, while the memory of Xehanort notes that she did improve in the brief time she was training, the way she was being trained wasn't suited to her style. The description we get of her training in Kingdom Hearts 3 mostly seems to amount to her and Lea sparring each other repeatedly - which is exactly how Sora and Riku developed their sword fighting skills growing up. And when you look at her battle stance and the way she holds her Keyblade in Kingdom Hearts 3 compared to how she held it in previous games, her stance is an exact copy of Sora's. It's no wonder then why she changed into Sora during the final boss fight in Melody of Memory then when she was clearly trying to imitate him. 

In the 2006 Characters Report Vol. 1 book, Tetsuya Nomura's comments about Kairi in the early games identify the fear of growing apart from Sora and Riku as a major source of anxiety for her. The fact that her training and combat stance in Kingdom Hearts 3 imitate Sora so heavily indicates that Kairi is trying to catch up to Sora and Riku by trying to be exactly like them in that area as much as possible. With how much the series has focused on personal identity with regards to Roxas and Xion being their own people, it makes sense why Kairi doing that failed her in Kingdom Hearts 3. Because Sora and Riku's style isn't suited for her. 

Because she isn't them. 

For Kairi to achieve her goal of catching up to Sora and Riku's level, she needs to step out of their shadow and figure out how to be herself instead of trying to be Sora. And the best way for her to understand herself will be to understand her past. 

The Xehanort that Kairi faces in Melody of Memory is explicitly identified as a construct of her heart. He tells her that the answers she seeks "lie in memories that are long gone," and tells her that there is nothing for her to find in her heart. However, that isn't really true with what previous games have established about how memories work in this universe. Chain of Memories establishes that memories are stored in the heart, and that while the connections between them can be rearranged, they are never gone for good. 

So while Kairi may not consciously remember her childhood before arriving on Destiny Islands, the memories are still there deep in her heart. All she needs is something or someone to help her restore the connections between them. To rebuild the links in her Chain of Memories, so to speak. Kingdom Hearts 3 and Melody of Memory both specifically call attention to Kairi's first meeting with Aqua in Birth by Sleep, as well as the fact that Kairi doesn't remember it. From a narrative standpoint, the series has set up that remembering that first meeting will help Kairi regain the rest of her memories from Radiant Garden. 

But remembering her past is not the only arc the story has set up to help Kairi understand herself better. Training with Aqua also puts her in a position to interact with another teen who has a heart of pure light.

Who was also in a coma for a time while his heart rested in Sora's body. 

It's not a coincidence that Union X first revealed the existence of the entity known as Darkness just a few months after KH3 revealed that being a Princess of Heart was a mantle that could be passed on rather than a permanent state of being. Then Re:Mind revealed that Darkness is still hiding within Ventus' heart in the present day. And following the release of Melody of Memory, the next Union X update revealed that Darkness had killed Streliztia because it saw her death as the best way to grant Ven's desire for strength. The ability for Princesses of Heart to pass on their powers serves as set up for Kairi to do the same, opening herself up to struggling with darkness in her heart for the very first time. 

Kairi wants to become stronger in order to stand alongside Sora and Riku. But she has not struggled with her negative emotions the way that Riku has or that the narrative framework sets up Sora will be in the near future. But her decision to train alongside Aqua puts her in a position that has the potential to force her to go through that struggle herself should Darkness try to grant her desire for strength in ways that she doesn't want. 

I know that I was wrong before about Kairi getting over her fear of change. But this time, I'm confident that Kairi's character arc is finally picking up momentum. What Melody of Memory has that previous games didn't is a clear sense of narrative direction. All Dream Drop Distance did was vaguely establish that she was going to start training. Kingdom Hearts 3 didn't give enough information to form concrete theories about the trajectory of her arc. 

But all the Kingdom Hearts content released in 2020 has set up foreshadowing for a very specific plotline in regards to Kairi's character growth. And not only that, Xehanort's monologue in the flashback to her childhood where he says "if you arrive in a world that is neither light nor darkness, but somewhere on the other side, your task will be far from easy" adds a significant connection between Kairi rediscovering her past and the mysteries of "unreality." Especially because Xehanort acting like it was actually possible for her to end up there instead of Destiny Islands raises the question of whether she truly went straight to Destiny Islands after Xehanort sent her off. 

Kairi's connection to "unreality" makes her the lynchpin of all the major story arcs being set up for the other characters while Sora and Riku are in Quadratum. The parallels between them foreshadow Ventus regaining his memories of the Age of Fairy Tales just as Kairi is set up to regain her memories of Radiant Garden. Ventus regaining his memories of the past logically connects the Birth by Sleep trio to Lauriam and Elrena through his role in Strelitzia's death, as well as to the Twilight Town crew considering that Subject X is heavily implied to be Skuld. Then of course there's Luxu, who is directly responsible for Subject X's disappearance, and the Foretellers, who are still with Luxu last we saw them.  

With Sora and Riku off in Quadratum with Yozora and the Master of Masters, Kairi is narratively set to step up and take charge in dealing with the major unresolved plotlines from Union X and KH3 that need dealing with. By the time Sora and Riku finally make it back, she'll be a whole lot closer to their level.

TL;DR: I was too hasty in 2019 when I declared that Kairi had gotten over hear fear of change. I only had nebulous ideas of what would come next. But now I can pick out all the subtle foreshadowing that illuminates a concrete path forward, and I'm confident that now she's finally on the right track.

[embraceyourdestiny]

I never finished this but I figured I’d post what I did get down anyway

fare warning that this was mostly rambles so it might not make sense lmao

things im noticing watching all of roxas’ cutscenes bc i love my boy

1). Sora and Roxas’ “Where am I? Who’s there? Who are you?” Literally never noticed this was them talking in Roxas’ heart the entire time

2). Things happening to Roxas and people telling him they aren’t both paralleling his time in the Org and Ventus’ time throughout bbs. I think it’s possibly a less intentional parallel on Ven’s side but just as effective because it draws similarities between them immediately; people don’t believe Roxas and Ven are experiencing the things they are (who intentionally tell them it isn’t happening) and it forces them to stray down the path those manipulating them want them to go down.

3). Considering everything, it’s still pretty funny that Riku literally jacked Roxas and as far as I know there was no reason for this lmao (I think it’s actually probably because he didn’t want him to leave the simulation if that was even possible to do with the train or because it actually wasn’t and DiZ couldn’t just make a whole Destiny Islands for him to play in which would have messed up their plans anyway, but it’s still funny lol. Also furthers Roxas’ alienation from his friends and his “life” and loops around to point two so)

4). Why?? Does the twilight gang eat sea salt ice cream?? Obviously because of Roxas but did DiZ consciously program that in?? He had to of, which just seems weird and kindly, which is very out of character for how I perceive him. If they took all of Roxas’ precious memories, then there was no need to add the sea salt ice cream right? Maybe deep down it would feel wrong but without prompting Roxas probably wouldn’t notice all that much. Then again, maybe it was intentional for Roxas to do what DiZ wanted, him planting an inkling of the bigger picture to get him to his end goal. Thinking of it like that, that seems much more aligned with the kind of person DiZ is lmao

Edit of this months after the fact: DiZ also loved sea salt ice cream so he might’ve just programmed his tastes into DTLTW lmao

4.5). Also, I think it’s really interesting how Kingdom Hearts consistently throws two conflicting messages at you in terms of memories; you’ll never truly forget what’s important but you can also completely forget everything you’ve ever known and possibly never come back from it without help. Obviously, “the heart never forgets,” but with the heart, body, mind, and soul all being present in Kingdom Hearts it’s an interesting thought to juggle with that even if you know in your heart something is right or wrong, your mind can still struggle with that concept and can easily be tricked into thinking otherwise, sometimes never coming out of that even if you know in your heart something’s amiss. It’s just really interesting.

5). Roxas sitting a considerable distance from Hayner, Pence, and Olette, showing his disconnect not only with his “life” in twilight town but his disconnect with life and general, and possibly even his disconnect from Sora

6). Roxas had an airplane in his room while Sora had a pirate ship. Besides the obvious parallels between Sora and Roxas and sea and sky, is it possible that because he was made from part of Ven’s heart and Ven was able to fly with his glider that some part of Roxas wanted to fly too? It makes me wonder how much of the room was based in Roxas’ genuine interests/subconscious thoughts and how much of it was programmed by DiZ because I don’t think he could’ve known that about Ven

6.5). More useless thoughts that probably even Nomura didn’t think of; just how much of this did DiZ program and how was that even possible? The town itself would be easy enough but the relations between the people, the banter between the gang and the tension with Seipher, how could he have done that? DiZ doesn’t seem the most... sociable person, he’s not someone who could accurately portray realistic relationships between real people, so was it like he simply got the code of the entire town and let it all play out? I guess he would’ve since in the real twilight town the gang still felt a connection to Roxas and I don’t think that would’ve been possible if they were entirely made of data, like from scratch. Wouldn’t that mean that somehow he was able to take the tiniest piece of their hearts and build from there? And that’s how they actually genuinely connected with him?

(The reason this stuck out in particular to me was the shopping scene with Pence and Olette. When Pence says “he’s stalling...” it implies that he’s done this before, which means they have history and prior experiences to go off of, and how Olette’s voice sounds when she responds. It’s teasing and knowing like a friend really would say it, so were their hearts really able to bond and determine their dynamics without actually living it? Anything is possible in KH lol)

7). ROXAS DOING VANITAS’ CARTWHEEL??? I actually screamed when this happened I never noticed it before omg!!!

Edit: part two/continued!

[hecticcheer]

Hyponatremia (unfinished T/M/A fic)

Fiveish months ago I tried to write a fic based on this scenario post I made. I’m super definitely never gonna finish it, and, it just kinda trails off at the end? Also it’s very rough. Features some American measurements in brackets that I’m too lazy to convert, if that gives you an idea. But I figured I’d post it anyway on one-slice-of-cake>no-cake principle.

As for the plot... uh. Jon has a headache; Martin tries to help, but makes it worse. For *checks notes* ~4200 words. If it has one saving grace, it’s that you can mmmmostly understand it without prior knowledge of T/M/A? Long as you know Martin’s living in the Archives to hide from an evil worm monster, you should be good.

--

As usual, Jon was the first person to join Martin down in the Archives that morning, sometime between seven and eight. And, no more unusually, Martin had twelve-plus hours of nervous energy to work off, and nobody to shed it on but his boss. “Morning. Sleep well? Tim said you still had some work to do when we left for the pub, but I didn’t see you when I got back so you can’t have made too late a night of it.” (Jon shook his head.) “Shame you couldn’t join us, by the way. Elena and Clarisse and them destroyed us on geography, and Sasha says you’re pretty good on maps and that. Maybe you could’ve saved us.”

“Doubt it,” said Jon. Martin waited for him to add more to that thought, but instead he just sort of stood there. Pinched one nostril shut and inhaled experimentally through the other. Trying to figure out which one was clogged, maybe? Tim said Jon’d said he had a headache; maybe it was a sinus thing. Not that this was exactly reliable intel. On pub-quiz Wednesday Tim always regaled him and Sasha with Jon’s latest excuses not to join them. They were always bad, but some were so bad Martin suspected they weren’t so much Jon’s lies as Tim’s lies about Jon’s lies. Probably not a great idea to mention this one, then. He’d stick to the first excuse Jon had allegedly given:

“Did you finish what you were working on?”

Jon closed his eyes, for a bit longer than the average blink, but not long enough to count as a proper wince. “Not even close.”

“Oh. What… was it?”

“Cabinet of statements from 2003. Or at least, nominally from 2003, though by my count less than a third of them actually date from that year.”

“Yikes. Need any help? Extra pair of hands, or.”

“Not right now.”

“2003,” Martin mused—“are you still looking for Mr. McKenzie’s statement?”

A short, but hearty sigh. Enunciated, practically. He didn’t open his mouth until afterward, but Martin could see his nostrils flare around it. “No. Three days ago, when I started to look through the cabinets marked 2003, I was looking for Mr. McKenzie’s statement. Now I just want to find out which statements in there I can’t send straight to the discredited section.”

Jon stood in the open doorway to his office by this point, hand on the knob as if to remind Martin of his eagerness to close it behind him. Even so Martin tried to peer past him into the office, looking for a discard pile of statements he might offer to shuttle away himself. This was pretty hard to do surreptitiously, though. He’d hoped his eyes would land at once on the tallest pile, at which time he could point to it and say, Are those the discredited ones, then? But from his vantage point all the piles on Jon’s desk seemed taller than usual.

“Right,” Martin said instead; “good luck.” He smiled weakly and returned his gaze to Jon, meaning to restore eye contact before he remembered how seldom Jon looked at people’s faces anyway. At this moment both his eyes were covered by the hand not on the doorknob. It would’ve been weird, he figured, to just duck out now while Jon couldn’t even see him, so Martin told himself to wait until he opened his eyes and only then back off.

But then Jon just stayed like that, for ages, with his fingers on one temple and his thumb on the other, blocking all possibility of sight. Eventually Martin felt like he had no choice but to say, “Are you alright?—or, I mean, how’s your head, by the way? Tim said….”

“It’s fine.”

“Ssssso it—doesn’t still hurt, then?”

“I’m fine, Martin. Thank you,” Jon said, but in one of the least thankful-sounding tones of voice he had. And then he closed the door, without even waiting for Martin to back up.

—

“Thought you might like coffee this morning instead of tea. It’s got more caffeine, and, that’s supposed to help, right? Plus I remembered what you said on your birthday about tea having tannins just like wine does. Of course, for all I know coffee might too—”

“It does.”

“Oh. Well… maybe the caffeine’ll cancel it out and you’ll break even? Or, I don’t know, maybe if you already have a headache they can’t trigger one.”

Jon’s answering Hm sounded pessimistic. Sure enough, as soon as Martin had finished his sentence he said, “I’m not that lucky.”

“Probably not,” Martin agreed with a laugh. “Still, least it’s hydration. Though caffeine’s a diuretic, so if I recall correctly you only get about half, volume-wise. That mug’s about… [twelve ounces,] I’d say? So it probably counts as about [six toward your sixty-four].”

“Yes, yes,” replied Jon, picking up his bottle of water and shaking it. When he set it down again, one look confirmed what Martin had suspected from the sound it made—it was nearly empty.

“Oh hey, look at that! Looks like you’re doing a pretty good job even without…” he trailed off, realizing too late that the most logical end to that sentence was my help, and that that was a pretty pompous way to refer to a coffee he was pretty sure Jon didn’t even want. So instead he said, “I’ll go refill that for you.” And before Jon could look up Martin scurried off to the break room with it.

The water dispenser should’ve been changed yesterday. When the water got this low it took ages to fill even a mug, much less a tall bottle like this one. It startled as a trickle, and by about halfway up the bottle slowed to a glorified drip. In his mind he pleaded with the water spout not to make so much noise; promised it he’d put in a new one as soon as he’d returned Jon’s water to him, mouthed encouragements to it. Not much farther, just to the top of the M, come on, you can do it. (The bottle was an Institute freebie, with Magnus Institute inscribed on it in black-bordered green letters. Martin had one just like it somewhere in his flat. Worm bait now, he supposed.)

By the time he brought it back Jon’s eyes were on the statement in his hands. Skimming, by the looks of it, rather than either actually reading or pretending to.

Martin endeavored to set down his refilled water audibly, but not painfully loudly. But Jon’s answering “Thank you” took him so much by surprise that at the last moment his wrist jerked and the bottle fell over.

“Ah! Sorry, sorry.” It had a lid, so, not an actual disaster? Jon did snarl at him though, or at least at the noise. His hands flew up as if to cover his ears, but he seemed to reject that idea halfway through. Just closed his fists around thin air, then leant his temple on one of them and sighed through his nose. “Sorry,” Martin said again. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jon’s emphatic blink seemed to stand in for a nod.

“Anyway, here’s a further [sixteen ounces] for you, looks like, or thereabouts,” ventured Martin, patting the side of the water bottle with one hand while holding it down with the other so it definitely wouldn’t topple again. “I’ll just leave you to it then.”

“Mm.”

“Good luck.”

—

After his stunt with the water bottle Martin had too much distrusted himself to risk making another big noise with the door, so he’d left it with its tongue sticking out rather than latching it. This meant he made almost no sound when he entered again. The first thing he noticed was that the water in Jon’s bottle still reached the top of the M. It still sat in the same place, too—not out of Jon’s reach but far enough away (Martin had told himself at the time) not to seem an imposition on his space. Almost definitely not where one would set it if one intended to pick it up again soon. His coffee seemed to have fared a bit better though. Half empty, one might say. Optimistically.

The second thing he noticed was Jon himself, who sat with his elbows on the desk, his chin on the heels of his palms, and his fingers arranged around his eyes like fence posts. Like a child peeking out at something they’re too scared to look at directly—except that his eyes were closed.

Martin snuck back to the other side of the door and knocked on it, gently. “Hey, uh, Jon?”

He didn’t look up, and opened his eyes for only a second before shutting them again. But he did drop his hands, threaded his fingers together and set them on the table, and bit his lip. “What, Martin.”

“Er—well, I know you said you’d given up looking for Marcus McKenzie’s statement, but I just realized I never asked if you’d thought to look in the discredited section. I mean, from what he said on the phone it didn’t sound like he took his dad’s statement all that seriously, so, maybe Gertrude put it in there, as, like, corroborating evidence that it wasn’t paranormal, and McKenzie senior’s statement just got misfiled?”

“Martin, I invented the discredited section.”

“Oh.”

“Anything else you wanted to say?”

“Oh, uh, nothing important. Just wondered if you’d like me to take that mug away.”

Instead of responding verbally, Jon picked up the mug and made what seemed a valiant effort to drink a little more of the coffee inside it. From what Martin could tell, he barely managed not to grimace in disgust.

“Do you like coffee? I’m not a big fan of it either, to be honest. Oh, well. If you can’t force that down you’ve still got plenty of water there, I see. Besides, it’ll wash out the taste.” (With an actual heh heh, which came out more like a small dog panting than like human laughter.)

Dramatic, snarly sigh from Jon. “Think I’ll pass. It seems to make it worse, if anything.”

“Oh. Sorry about that; must be those pesky tannins. I’ll just take your cup now then.”

But Jon only tightened his grip on it. “Water, I meant. The coffee’s fine. Not exactly my favorite beverage in the world, but, you were right. It’s a good idea.”

“Oh. Thanks, I’m glad you.” Martin smiled, then frowned. “Wait, water makes it worse?”

“Seems to.”

“Really? Are you sure it wasn’t just—too cold, or something.”

His laugh sounded bitter, hollow—theatrically so, in fact. A perfect Ha ha ha, except he didn’t say those words, didn’t enunciate them like Sasha sometimes did when Tim made a bad joke. He just made the exact sounds they were invented to transcribe. “No, Martin. I haven’t just been giving myself a brain freeze every time I.”

“…Right, of course not. Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” For a few silent seconds Martin picked at a notch in his thumbnail, carved there earlier this morning by a stubborn paperclip. Part of him wanted to tear the nail off and have done, but he knew it would bleed if he did. Nothing to clip it with in the Archives, obviously. “Are you sure you won’t try again? This water’s quite tepid, actually, since I got it literally from the bottom of the barrel—”

“Martin—”

“Sorry, sorry. Just thought it was worth—”

“Don’t you have something better to do.”

“Er… no, actually. Pretty much finished with everything, at the momen…t. Though if you’d like to give me another assignment I’d be happy to—yeah. Do that, for you. Or I mean, for the sake of the Archives; I don’t mean it’d just be, like, busy work. Not accusing you of that or anything.”

“Are you comfortable leaving the Archives?”

For half a second Martin heard this as a hint—an offer? a threat?—that Jon meant to have him transferred to another department. Then he wondered if Jon was hinting it was time Martin found somewhere else to live. “What, like, permanently?”

“No—just as long as it takes to track down and interview Georgie Barker about her role in the statement Ms. King gave us.”

“Oh. Yeah, I think so, uh. Thank you for asking? I mean, Prentiss said she was done with me, right. At least, me personally. And she already knows I’m here, so it’s not like.”

Jon replied shortly, “Yes.”

“I’d like to listen to Ms. King’s statement first, though, if that’s alright. What’d you say it was about? The Cambridge Military Hospital?”

Another short, emphatic, nose-directed sigh. Couldn’t be too stuffed-up then, Martin guessed. “Technically, yes, though Ms. King insists the building itself had nothing to do with it.”

“Huh. What was it about, then?”

“She alleges that a woman she hired to help film one of her ghost stories peeled the skin off her arm.”

“Oh my god! I mean, did you—was she okay? Did she show you her arm? Did it seem to have—you know—skin?”

“Her own arm, not Ms. King’s.”

“Oh.” Martin sighed for himself now, though with relief rather than exasperation. Managed a tiny laugh, as well. “Okay, well, that’s. Creepy as hell, but, not nearly as bad as.”

“Mm. Nor nearly as verifiable as your version.”

“T…rue, no, I guess not. Anyway do you have the tape? I’d like to listen myself, if that’s.”

Jon pointed to a small stack of tapes on the bookshelf to Martin’s right. Sure enough, the top one had M. King, 0161704 sharpied across the label on its side. “Ah! Found it. Thanks.” He had a tape player squirreled away already; on another day he might’ve pretended otherwise, but for the moment he was too relieved not to have to make a pest of himself by asking to borrow one to worry whether the absence of that request might make Jon suspicious.

Besides, Jon seemed pretty… absorbed in himself, this morning. By the time Martin turned to face him again one of Jon’s hands had crept back up to his face, where its fingers now seemed to comb the hairs of his left eyebrow. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Jon do that before, plus doubted the hairs in question needed his help to lie flat. Jon’s eyebrows had always struck him as quite neat. Plus Martin had tried that with his own eyebrows plenty of times before the mirror in his youth, and knew it didn’t work very well even if you licked your finger—which Martin assumed Jon hadn’t. So he figured he should file this behavior in the same box as the earlier fist-clenching-to-avoid-covering-ears thing. As, like, headache-soothing for people who don’t want to look weak. Or unprofessional, or something to that effect.

This gave him a sense of foreboding when he thought too hard about it. But Martin needed so badly to keep this job, now that his flat wasn’t safe anymore. It seemed wiser not to look directly at abstract threats like that. If he could make Jon feel better then it wouldn’t matter, right? Or at least could be put off til next time.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Don’t recall saying I was,” Jon muttered.

Martin winced. He had said he was alright—Martin was certain. When he’d first come in that morning, he’d said he was fine when Martin asked, and then he’d closed the door. Didn’t seem worth correcting him over it, though. So Martin just said, “Try to drink something while I’m gone, yeah? Kool-Aid, for all I care, just. You really don’t look like you’re feeling all that well. And any kind of drink other than alcohol should—oh.”

He looked up, hearing Jon swallow what sounded like a lot more than the tiny sip of coffee he’d managed before.

“Well. Great. Thank you for obliging me.”

Jon continued to gulp down water, while staring right at Martin. He paused in swallowing to breathe, but even then did not remove the mouth of the bottle from his own mouth. When he tried to resume drinking it made him cough instead, and even then he didn’t set it down.

“O-okay, well, I’m sure that’s plenty, don’t—?” Hurt yourself, Martin wanted to say, but feared that would sound patronizing. The bottle was more than half empty now. Jon paused for air again. “For god’s sake, Jon, stop—that looks like it hurts—you don’t have to—?”

At last he slammed the empty bottle on his desk—more loudly than could possibly be comfortable for a man with a headache. Leant his elbow on the table, and between pants huffed a laugh and said, “Care to refill it for me?”

On a sort of autopilot Martin chirped, “Uh—sure! No problem I’ll just,” and rushed off with it to the break room. This refill took much less time, since he’d remembered to change out the thingy. But it still took long enough that by the time he got back he worried, “You’re not going to chug this one too, are you?”

“No,” said Jon, eyes and hands both busy now with a statement hitherto hidden by his elbow. He did not reach out a hand to take the bottle from Martin.

“Okay, I’ll just. Leave this here then. See you after the, uh. Yeah.”

—

And lo, it was as he had feared. Chugging [sixteen ounces] of water did indeed make his headache worse. By ten it seemed to count turning the page of a statement as an exertion worth pounding over. True, by lunch time it seemed to have backed off a bit—until he sat back down at his desk with his fork and plate. On his way to the microwave he’d thought he must be on the mend: his head throbbed a little harder than when he’d been seated, but not so much he’d have noticed the difference had he not set out to pay attention to it. Some food, maybe an ibuprofen or two and he’d be fixed, he’d told himself.

Once he got to the break room, though, he noticed something else odd. His limbs were weak. His knees seemed made of jelly, and wobbled beneath him every time he shifted his weight; his arms were steady enough, but when he set down the pizza box on the counter after retrieving it from the fridge he felt a surge of relief, which he hardly understood until he’d transferred a slice from the no-onion half onto a plate and picked up the latter to put it in the microwave. Even these tiny movements made his arms, neck and chest ache like they do when you hold your breath too long. He leant his elbows against the counter and gulped down air until his mouth felt so dry he couldn’t bear to keep it open. Wondered if he should sit down; he felt a bit dizzy. But he had less than 30 seconds left to wait for the microwave, which he figured couldn’t hurt him.

It didn’t, but the walk back to his office did a bit. Moving his legs’ sluggish muscles made his whole body ache—again like it does when you run too long and have to stop for breath. He figured it must be in a similar spirit that his head waited til he’d sat down to unleash its onslaught. Before leaving his desk he’d grown used to thinking of his heart beat’s faint buzzy shocks like the second hand on a clock, criticizing him under its breath from where it watched behind his eyes. This was… a great deal worse than that. He tried to time the beats against the ticking of his wrist watch, but couldn’t seem to focus on that and breathe at the same time. They were fast, though, at least at first. His heart rate did seem to calm down fairly quickly, but he could swear it never got all the way back down to its earlier rate—at least not before his attention shifted from the speed to just. How much it hurt.

Was that what made his slice of pizza so tasteless? When he cut his first bite, on its way to his mouth he thought he caught a whiff of the red onions with which its tip must have shared space, and only his horror of Tim asking What was wrong with that part, then? when he brought the otherwise-empty plate back to the sink stopped him from scraping that bite off his fork and trying again higher up the slice. But when he finally forced himself to eat it? Nothing. No onion taste, thank god, but everything else too seemed… muted. Hardly worth how the exertion of chewing made his head hammer after each swallow. Jon knew the taste of food was hardly the point of eating it, but? In the absence of everything he normally liked about cheese and meat and bread and vegetables, the fact the cheese squelched in his mouth made him wish he’d never left his bed. The way leaves of soggy spinach flapped over the sides of even his neatly-cut rectangles. His stomach tightened in revulsion, so that in his throat he could feel each swallowed lump shifting from foot to foot, waiting to be let in. Not to mention how the effort of cutting it shook the whole damn table.

He told himself he could skip the crust. If Tim asked about it, Jon’d just tell him it’d gone stale. Just get through the… other part, the crumb, the filling. Between throbs the ache in his tired jaw merged with the one behind his eyes. Why didn’t it always hurt to chew? Did the pleasure of tasting food give you enough endorphins to cancel it out? Would everyone have this problem all the time if we had to live on, say, dry toast?

Right, okay, close enough. Ibuprofen now. No, you idiot—other drawer. In the fantasy versions he’d rehearsed of this moment he clapped four of them from his palm into his mouth at once, and swallowed them dry. But his blister pack turned out to have only three left. Which was fine! Just fine. Better, probably, after so little lunch.

Also, dry-swallowing was kind of a misnomer? He’d never really thought about it before, but. Turned out it would only work if your so-called “dry” mouth had spit in it. As it was the pills stuck to his tongue, leaving streaks of spicy burnt-orange when he tried to claw them back toward his throat with his teeth. When they got far back enough on his tongue he had to concentrate not to gag, and they still stuck—even when he turned his nose to face the ceiling and thumped on his chin with his hand (which, ouch)—at that point he gave up and unscrewed his water. Allowed as little of it in his mouth as would let him swallow these damn things, and wash their stains off his tongue. And it still made his head throb harder.

Jon imagined shooting whoever next told him to stay hydrated. He derived little joy from the fantasy, though; couldn’t not think of the loud, sharp noise it would make.

Returning the plate could wait, he decided; not like it would attract worms in the thirty minutes it’d take for the pills to kick in. Meanwhile he’d just… keep sorting. He took a statement off the top of the pile in front of him and blinked at it over and over, until his vision resolved into a shape he told himself hurt marginally less than the others. 9720406, Nathaniel Thorp. Christ, 1972? “Misfiled” was practically an understatement for that one. And here he’d thought Gertrude had kept that part of the century in relative good order. Still, he stuck it on the all other years pile and reached for another. 0130111, David Laylow. Nope—still not 2003. 0002610, Jennifer Wong. 0910203, Lisa Jones. 0081711, Donald Gately. 0100912, Lawrence Mortimer. 0152101, Uzma Rashid. Ha!—0030707, Seymour… Backsides. Wait a minute. Hadn’t he seen a prank statement with that name before lunch? He grabbed a stack off the 2003 pile and found… Rashid, Mortimer, Gately. Had he switched the—? Look in the unsorted pile again, he told himself. Under where he’d found Mr. Backsides’ tale he uncovered statements 0031212, 0032504, 0031809, and so on. Great. After Seymour he must’ve got mixed up. There was no more unsorted pile—not on his desk, anyway. He’d have to pull some more out of the… open filing cabinet which stood across the room with its tongue stuck out at him. Yeah, well, that could wait too. For now he’d just. Check his email.

[eretzyisrael]

Our Enemies Deploy the Cognitive Bomb

The first thing you need to know about the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that was released on 27 April accusing Israel of “apartheid” is that the accusation has nothing to do with apartheid as most people understand it, the racially-based system of oppression that was in place in South Africa before roughly 1991.

HRW is accusing Israel of “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” which are defined by a treaty called the “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,” based on a UN General Assembly resolution passed in 1973, and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

It should be noted that neither Israel nor the USA are parties to either treaty. The 1973 convention was signed by 109 countries, which do not include Israel, the USA, Canada, Australia, or any of the developed countries of Western Europe.

Here is the definition of the crime of apartheid as understood by HRW:

An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another.

A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group.

Inhumane acts.

The “inhumane acts” referred to by the definition include such things as murder, torture, “arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment,” forced labor, “deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part,” all on the basis of race or ethnicity. While Palestinians often claim such mistreatment, their claims – often amplified and lent authority (the “halo effect”) by HRW and similar NGOs – are overwhelmingly false, exaggerated, or lacking in context (e.g., the claim is commonly made that a Palestinian was “executed” when he was shot in the act of stabbing a Jew or running one down with a car).

HRW also adds that

The reference to a racial group is understood today to address not only treatment on the basis of genetic traits but also treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin, as defined in the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Human Rights Watch applies this broader understanding of race.

In other words, apartheid doesn’t have to involve “race.” Any alleged discrimination against a national group can be considered apartheid. And given that “Palestinians” have diverse origins, including Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and even the same Canaanite tribes as the forbears of the Jewish people, they don’t even fit this broader definition.

When I hear “apartheid” I think of white, black, and colored beaches and restrooms, laws against interracial marriage or even sexual relationships, laws establishing segregated housing, employment, and public transportation, denial of the right to vote or hold office, and so forth. I think of official classification of people by color. It is not an exaggeration to say that such a system, brutally imposed by force (as it was in South Africa), is a crime against humanity.

And that, of course, is why HRW, an organization that has changed over the years from a legitimate human rights watchdog into part of the well-oiled (and thickly greased with dollars and euros) machine for the delegitimization and demonization of Israel, wishes to accuse the Jewish state of apartheid, a crime that today evokes revulsion throughout the world – and which, following the precedent set by the treatment of the Republic of South Africa, justifies the boycotting, sanctioning, and total expulsion from the international order of Israel.

As the Kohelet Forum notes in its response to the report, no country other than South Africa has ever been deemed an “apartheid state” by a majority of the international community, including China, Sudan, and others that have engaged in massive systematic oppression of minorities.

None of the characteristics of South African apartheid can reasonably be applied to Israel. Everyone who knows anything about apartheid South Africa and Israel knows that. There is simply no resemblance, and HRW’s abstraction of the crime of apartheid and application of the word to Israel is dishonest and is part of the cognitive war that is being waged against her as a prelude to her hoped for physical destruction.

But never mind. Israel is being accused of seriously mistreating Palestinian Arabs, both its Arab citizens and the residents of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, simply because they are Palestinians. If that is true, it is certainly reprehensible. So we should consider if the report even succeeds in making that case.

The report is 213 pages long, so it is impossible for me to critique it in detail in a short blog. But here are some things that I noticed in the first few pages (see the Kohelet response to HRW for more):

The report says that

From 1967 until the present, [Israel] has militarily ruled over Palestinians in the OPT, excluding East Jerusalem. By contrast, it has since its founding governed all Jewish Israelis, including settlers in the OPT since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, under its more rights-respecting civil law.

This is untrue. There is no military government in Gaza – there is zero Israeli presence there at all – and areas A and B of Judea and Samaria are ruled by the PA. There is a military administration of Area C, the territory that is under full Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords, but that administration governs both Israeli communities and Palestinian ones. There is no “separate law” for the two populations.

In general, the report ignores the existence of the PA and the Hamas government of Gaza. It’s true that Israel controls the borders and airspace between the river and the sea (with the exception of the border between Gaza and Egypt). But it does not control the daily lives of all of the residents of those areas as the report asserts.

HRW criticizes Israel for not allowing free movement of Palestinian Arabs from the territories into pre-1967 Israel, and for not allowing those Arabs outside of Israel recognized by the UN as “Palestinian refugees” to enter the territories or pre-1967 Israel. It dismisses Israeli explanations that this is a consequence of the amply-demonstrated Palestinian propensity to commit murderous terrorist acts against Israelis, saying “[e]ven when security forms part of the motivation, it no more justifies apartheid and persecution than it would excessive force or torture.” Tell it to those thousands of Israelis who have lost friends and family members to Palestinian terrorists.

There is almost no mention of Palestinian terrorism throughout the full report, even though most restrictions placed on Palestinian movement, such as the Judea/Samaria security barrier, were instituted after the murderous Second Intifada, in which more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered by terrorists. The selective blockade of Gaza is criticized without reference to the thousands of rockets that have been fired into Israeli towns, or the numerous tunnels intended to infiltrate terrorists into Israel. There is no mention of the 2015-2018 “stabbing intifada” which took the lives of dozens of Israelis.

The report claims that within pre-1967 Israel, “Palestinian [sic] citizens [have] a status inferior to Jewish citizens by law” as a result of the Nation-State Law, which in fact does not restrict them in any way, and which is similar to constitutional provisions in other ethnic nation-states, including the proposed constitution for the State of Palestine. It also invents or misrepresents other laws, including those concerning citizenship and residence.

The report will probably be a prime exhibit in the upcoming “Durban IV” conference on racism which will be held this September at the UN in New York, on the 20th anniversary of the first Durban conference, which devolved into an “anti-Israel hate-fest.”

Accusations of apartheid and persecution are tremendously powerful, especially in the US in today’s climate of racial antagonisms. But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is actually a national/political one, and not a racial one (although antisemitism plays an important role). It has little in common with pre-1991 South Africa or the racial problems of the USA. It is also a small part of a much larger project by a group of nations, international institutions, NGOs, and others to eliminate the Jewish state. These antagonists are motivated by geopolitics, religion, ideology, antisemitism, or all of these. By focusing only on the Palestinians, the HRW report has the effect of hiding this broader context.

Israel’s domestic political paralysis, which has been ongoing for at least two years, makes it hard enough to respond to the military challenges it faces from its enemies. But it is impossible for an essentially leaderless nation to properly fight a cognitive war. Fixing this has to be Israel’s top priority today.

Abu Yehuda

[blackjack-15]

(Pachin)Koping Mechanisms, KuroSAWa, and Putting The Ring On It — Thoughts on: Shadow at the Water’s Edge (SAW)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. For this meta and the next (CAP), I’ll have a section entitled “The Faerietale” where I break down the issue of genre within the game and how it adds to the experience.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SHA, SAW, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SPY, GTH, Rashomon.

The Intro:

Full Disclosure: draft titles of this meta include “Yurei-sing the Tension” and “Using Your Girlfriend’s Mom’s Horrific Death For Fun and Profit”. They ultimately don’t fit the tone of the game (or the meta), but I thought they were fun…so you’re being subjected to them anyway.

Freshly out of the games of growing pains, Shadow at the Water’s Edge is the first of our two Faerietale Games, where we delve fully into Theme and Allegory and other such literary devices — which happen to support some pretty fine mysteries as well. As such, in case you didn’t see it above, both SAW and CAP will have a section diving into the Faerietale-ness of it all (partially because it’s That Interesting and partially to keep the intro section from being like 2k on its own).

SAW is interesting for a number of reasons (which I’ll go into throughout the meta) but one of the things that stuck out to me on a replay was how much it leans on Rashomon for its story about the past. For those unfamiliar, Rashomon is a Japanese film by Kurosawa Akira from the 50s that deals with the rape of a woman and the killing of her husband, a samurai, as told through four different points of view.

Nowadays called “a Rashomon episode” or “false flashback”, the idea of different, opposite points of view being shot and filmed to present to the audience is almost a cliché, but Kurosawa was the first to really bring it to film and to popular consciousness internationally.

Like in Rashomon, we’re presented with different views of the situation at the ryokan (including but not limited to Kasumi’s death) from our characters’ perspectives — and, like in Rashomon, no point of view nor opinion on what happened is ever confirmed to be the Honest Truth.

Was Kasumi’s death accidental, and on whose part was it accidental? Does the world stay the same inside the ryokan, or is it just as prone to change as the rest of the world? Is the ryokan a resort or a prison? Should you respect what your loved one wants for themselves, or is it your job to want something better for them? Takae, Rentaro, Miwako, Yumi, and even Kasumi all have different opinions on these questions, and we’re never told who’s correct, nor to what extent.

Finally, like Rashomon, the game is content with leaving a few answers undiscovered. While shooting the movie, Kurosawa was approached many times by the actors, who wanted to know what “really” happened in the movie — and each time he refused to say, wanting the story to be truly Alive in a way that it wouldn’t be if he answered their questions.

Nancy’s job is to expose the malevolent force in the game for what it is, not to heal the family, nor to make decisions for them.

And speaking of their decisions, let’s talk about what motivates our characters in this game. I know, this intro is already kind of long, and I normally keep this kind of talk for the Characters section, but given how much they intersect in this game, we’re gonna go into it here. All of our suspects here in the game are driven and informed by one thing: their coping mechanisms.

C’mon, no surprise here. It’s in the title of the meta for more than just the pun.

Because our suspects are living in the “Once Upon a Time” section of the faerietale — aka the past — it’s their coping mechanisms that drive them. Takae is driven by guilt over her daughter’s death and fear of a changing world; Miwako is driven by anger towards her family and personally-assumed responsibility over Everything That Happens; Rentaro is driven by selfish pride and concern over his loved one; Yumi is driven by avoidance and individualistic willpower.

These are all common when dealing with loss, and each of these tell us exactly how our characters are going to act throughout the tale. In a very real way, SAW is a game about how we, as humans, deal with the stories that we tell ourselves (another thing that it has in common with CAP), and how that changes the way that we perceive the world.

It’s the breakdown of Rentaro’s coping mechanism — his pride in always being correct — that causes him to Do Evil while claiming that it’s The Right Thing. Everyone else’s mechanisms are what allows for him to be as influential as he is; Kasumi is already haunting Takae, and Miwako is already feeling the world crash down around her. Even though the yurei is just wires and metal and Upsettingly Damp-Looking Hair, its presence in the ryokan isn’t physical – it’s psychological.

Remember, “a ghost doesn’t need to be real to haunt you”.

The Title:

Let’s be real here, we’re getting into the segment of Nancy Drew games where the (most of) titles just kick butt and aren’t afraid to do so. Like, Shadow at the Water’s Edge? Gives you creepy vibes right off the bat even without the yurei on the front giving you The Ring flashbacks. Properly atmospheric without being too specific, and “shadow” gives us the idea that we’re dealing with a monster that’s more ghostly, rather than flesh and blood.

I don’t even have anything negative to say about this title, that’s how good it is — plus, I mean, the acronym is literally “saw”. Awesome.

Let’s move on then to the faerietale behind the title.

The Faerietale

SAW and CAP both function, genre-wise, as a faerietale — a story with few characters, big pasts, legends and magic, and a moral at the end to tie things off. In both cases, interestingly enough, it’s our villain who gives us our “moral” — the Truth that ties the plot, history, and characters together, able to be said in a single sentence. In SAW, it’s this (rather chilling) statement from Rentaro that does it:

“A ghost doesn’t need to be real to haunt you.”

But let’s start at the beginning.

Like in a lot of faerietales, we have two sisters who are as different as can be, an inheritance (a ryokan rather than a crown or a prince), absent/dead parental figures, a wizened mentor related to our main characters (Takae), and a Monstrous Force opposing them and their ‘kingdom’. In this story, Nancy is the Dashing Outsider (not unlike the Prince from The Twelve Dancing Princesses) who vows to learn the secrets, defeat the monster, and save the kingdom, restoring balance to the ‘royal’ family and allowing them to prosper.

(And no, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in this game Nancy’s the Knight in Shining Armor when CAP and Renate’s talk about them is right around the corner, but we’ll save that for next time.)

Having established that the game is a faerietale, let’s talk about why that actually matters (beyond the fact that it’s kinda cool in itself) when we’re looking at the game.

It basically matters for a handful of reasons: it allows us to figure out the suspect Fairly easily, it allows the writers to Allude to subject matters that are a little Dark for the E/E10 rating that Nancy Drew games normally get, and provides a bridge between the (overall) concrete games of the past and the more thematic, character-development-focused games that we’re coming up on. So let’s break that down.

Assigning our characters faerietale roles lets us see immediately that Rentaro is Missing an easy assignation. He doesn’t fit the prince, doesn’t fit a sibling — he doesn’t fit anywhere, in short, which is our first clue that he’s the villain.

Even ignoring the fact that the yurei is obviously mechanical, that Rentaro has free access to the entire ryokan in a way that no other character does, and that he’s responsible for upkeeping the ryokan (which is why it’s suspicious that he’s not the one Dedicated to figuring out the mystery) — which are all excellent things that point towards Rentaro, his absence in the faerietale points to a hidden role.

Since the only role worth hiding is either an 11th hour ally or a villain, and Rentaro is present from the beginning of the game, it’s pretty clear which one he is.

Situating the game as a faerietale also lets HER play with a few more themes than they normally can, given their target audience. Starting with a rather blatant implication of suicide, the game spins on to abusive relationships, overpowering guilt, and Nancy being, well, downright mean with her questions about a family member’s death.

While Nancy’s always been a bit insensitive, the mystery surrounding Kasumi’s death sends her into the realm of bullheadedly rude (to the point where you can get a game over for it). We see why this writing choice was made in SPY (which we’ll cover in that meta), but it’s one of my favorite things about this game; it takes a slight character trait of Nancy’s and gives it a character-driven purpose.

The last function of SAW (and CAP) as a faerietale is to provide a bridge between the older and the newer games. The older games tended to be self-involved entities: they began with Nancy’s room and ended with the letter to Carson/Hannah/Ned. As the game technology improved and the player base got older, however, that started to not be good enough; Nancy and her mysteries needed to become A World rather than simply a string of cases held together with a handful of familiar names and archetypes.

The first step towards this was the inclusion of the Hardy Boys back in our Expanded games, but it’s really SAW and CAP that show an Active Transition. Faerietales are often thought of, literarily speaking, as the bridge between children’s fiction and adult fiction; they involve simplistic plots and archetypes that children can easily grasp, but teach hard lessons about the world that adults will understand and resonate with.

The earlier Nancy Drew games, on the whole (there are of course a few exceptions), are largely concrete, like the children’s fiction they’re based on. The good and bad guys are simply and easily divided,  Nancy and co. are always the heroes and always do right, and the bad guys always go to jail.

The past few games leading up to SAW start to shift slightly; while generally our heroes and villains are still sharply divided, nothing is quite as simple as it seems (look at TOT, where at least a few bad guys get away and actually profit from their bad actions).

It’s here in SAW, however, where we see that take a sharp shift. Those who should be good guys (Rentaro is a Love Interest, he enjoys puzzles, he’s a ‘fixer’ by trade) aren’t good at all; those who should be the bad guys (Takae and Miwako behave a lot like early Nancy Drew villains with their cageyness, dislike of Nancy, and ability to get Nancy to Second Chance) really aren’t.

In case this point is a bit obtuse, Logan is the perfect example of what I mean.

In SHA, Charleena Purcell has a receptionist (well-voiced by JVS) that at first prevents you from talking to her, but isn’t much of an obstacle. It’s a cut and dried ‘solve this one puzzle’ and then Nancy can talk to the author as much as she chooses — it’s barely an impediment, honestly.

In SAW, we’re dealing with another famous author, who also has a receptionist — Logan Mitchell. Unlike the receptionist in SHA, who’s just Doing His Job and exists long enough for a puzzle, Logan is a rather spiteful character who enjoys hanging up on people, and does it to Nancy with Great Joy.

As a character, Logan matters; he has his own viewpoints, loyalties (that are explored in SPY as well), and his own idiosyncrasies that make dealing with him — repeatedly — a bit like dealing with people in real life. The receptionist in SHA isn’t a character, no matter how much I personally like JVS’ voice work with him. Logan is. And that’s a huge difference in the approach of the games and the shift from the concrete, insert-puzzle-and-go nature of the older games and the more abstract, thematic nature of the newer games.

Whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you, the player, and your personal preferences. But it can’t be denied that there is a shift, and it’s the genius of SAW (and CAP)’s genre-shift to a faerietale that does it.

The Mystery:

Our mystery picks up where TOT left off, with Krolmeister sending Nancy to one of his favorite ryokans in Japan as a thank you for her help in the previous case.

This is how we find out that Krolmeister is apparently Spooky AF, as the ryokan is haunted.

Nancy decides to pick up a job while she’s there (the ‘how’ of her obtaining employment and an E-2 visa so promptly is ignored) as an English teacher to some of the cutest (and one of the most disturbing) children in Japan, which is how she spends her days — and how the game gets away with it taking place Solely at night.

The more time Nancy spends at the ryokan, however — and the more people connected to it that she meets — the more that she suspects that the ryokan might actually be harboring a malevolent entity bent on wreaking havoc and shutting down the place once and for all…

As a mystery, the game is solid; you spent most of your time “on-site” at the ryokan, soaking in the very well-done atmosphere, with only a few moments in-game spent at other locations (such as the pachinko parlor, Yumi’s apartment, etc.), and the amount of work that went into every detail of the ryokan is staggering (especially the garden).

Normally, I wouldn’t hang so much on the atmosphere when talking about the plot, but it’s actually relevant here, since the atmosphere is part of the plot — i.e., is it the ‘atmosphere’ of the ryokan that makes the hauntings happen, and did the ryokan kill Kasumi.

Speaking of Kasumi, she’s one of the biggest open-ended mysteries in this game. Did Shimizu Kasumi kill herself, or was her death an accident, or was it caused by a Paranormal Entity, leading to her becoming a ghost herself?

The game tells us how Kasumi died — cleaning a bath that she had never cleaned before, leading to her drowning — but the circumstances outside of her death like her will and her premonitions about her death speak less to an accident alone and more towards Something causing her death.

In my own point of view, Kasumi — remember, this is the Nancy Drew Universe, where ghosts are actually real — had a bit of Prescient Awareness to her, and knew that her death was coming, though not by what. While there’s evidence towards her knowing about her death that could, if looked at in that light, lead one to suspect Kasumi of suicide, it’s unexpectedly hard to kill yourself via drowning in a shallow body of water. Add to that her future plans, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Kasumi knew she would die, but she didn’t plan and execute a suicide.

Of course, there’s good arguments to be made on the other side. Whichever way you look at it, I’m just happy with the presence of loose ends, as that’s not the mystery that Nancy’s there to solve — and, indeed, without the presence of an actual suicide note from that period, is a mystery that simply cannot be solved.

The Suspects:

We’ll start with (and yes, the names will all be in Japanese rather than Western order) Shimizu Miwako, the Younger Daughter in our faerietale and the current force behind the ryokan.

As the one (via a faerietale’s rules) destined to succeed, Miwako sure does get the short end of the stick when it comes to her relationships. Her causing/contributing/worsening the rift between herself and Yumi aside, her boyfriend is actively sabotaging her and her grandmother doesn’t think she should be the one running the ryokan, no matter how good a job she does.

As a culprit, however, Miwako would have been a bit confused, given how much she likes the ryokan and the good job she does with it. For a Miwako ending to make sense, she would have had to been influenced by an actual ghost, sabotaging the ryokan without wanting to and having your usual blackouts that come with Psychic Interference. It would have been interesting, but out of the faerietale genre (and out of the Nancy Drew game genre as a whole) and thus not a very good story.

Next up is the Elder Daughter, Shimizu Yumi, who left the ryokan as soon as she could and instead sells bento boxes in Kyoto. Framed as a sort of free spirit, Yumi doesn’t see any need for her to run the ryokan and instead does something that she likes and is obviously very successful at.

As a culprit, Yumi would have, to be frank, been a major disappointment. Already taking fire from her little sister and her grandmother for the Abject Sin of not taking on the family business, Yumi would have been way to easy, both character-wise and tonally for the game as a whole. The Elder Daughter in a faerietale is usually the one who fails (the Youngest Daughter almost always succeeds), and so it’s refreshing to have everyone but herself consider Yumi a failure.

Their grandmother and quasi-mentor, Nagai Takae, is the other person who helps run the ryokan — much to her displeasure, as tradition dictates that Yumi, not Miwako, help run the family business.

Because someone who resents being there will definitely be a much better worker in the hospitality market than someone who loves the ryokan.

Takae has absolutely no head for anything but her own ideas and clings onto tradition not for its sake, but because change is scary, hard, and (in the case of her daughter’s death) heartbreaking.

As a culprit, Takae would have been interesting, but absolutely impossible — unless she was working with someone else. And as interesting as a Takae/Rentaro team-up would have been, Takae simply has no motive for scaring everyone else out. She needs the ryokan to survive, to do well, if she’s going to be able to cling on to the things that she wants.

Rounding out our main faerietale cast is our Malevolent Force, Aihara Rentaro, the ryokan’s handyman and tech expert, who secretly builds robots resembling his girlfriend’s dead mother and uses them to scare people out of the ryokan.

He’s a peach.

Not only is Rentaro our only option for a faerietale ending, but he’s also just the best option for the culprit in general. Handy enough to build a “ghost”, expected in any place in the ryokan without suspicion, and with a strong (if dickish) motive). Like all Evil Wizards/Malevolent Forces in faerietales, he wants to ruin the kingdom and steal away the Daughter — though, unlike a lot of faerietales, he’s convinced himself it’s For Her Own Good.

Which yeah is super gross, but hey, he’s our Villain. Villains should be a bit gross.

Lastly, we’re going to look at two characters who are inseparable from one another for the purposes of discussion: Savannah Woodham and her assistant Logan Mitchell.

Savannah (as we meet her in SAW) is a former ghost hunter who now writes about technology (hence her presence in Kyoto) who mentioned the ryokan in a book about the paranormal. Not being fond of interruptions, she pays Logan to be her assistant so that he can deal with the calls that she gets.

She also brings in a nice little easter egg talking about CAP, where Castle Finster is implied to be the castle she mentions in SAW.

As a character in the Nancy Drew world (as it becomes a world), Savannah is an odd presence, in that she’s a sage without being an academic. Most of the ‘authorities’ that Nancy calls for information are professors, researchers, etc., but Savannah doesn’t quite fall into that designation.

Sure, she’s written a book, but ghost hunting isn’t exactly a…respected profession or topic — and yet, Savannah is clearly the smartest person in the game (and one of the smartest people that Nancy encounters as phone friends). This is great — Nancy herself is no academic, and I do get tired of the prioritizing of Academia over actual knowledge.

Savannah also gets the best lines, and her VA absolutely smashes it out of the park. I’ll talk more about her as the Nancy Games (beginning in ASH), as a lot of her dialogue is foreshadowing for our next games, but suffice it to say that, other than the Hardy Boys and the Drews, Savannah probably fights only Alexei for the most significant NPC in the ND universe.

Her assistant is no slouch in the Significance department, though.

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR SPY AHEAD, IF YOU DON’T WANT THEM SKIP UNTIL THE NEXT ALL-CAPS PARAGRAPH.

Logan (according to him) started working for Savannah to make some money during spring break and found the job too weird to quit once break was done (according to him). He loves hanging up on people, resulting in Savannah referring to him as her “lil’ Georgia bulldog”, and would like to go out on a date with Bess (according to him).

Yeah, pretty much everything about Logan should be taken with a grain of salt, as he’s the one who tells it to us, and…well, Logan is a spy. A spy who’s assigned to Nancy at least as far back as SAW, who gets close to her friend(s) and reports back to Cathedral that Nancy’s obsessed with her mother’s death and thus will probably be used by those who want to know Kate Drew’s secrets.

He ‘fires’ Savannah from being his boss prior to GTH because his work is done; he’s completed the mission he’s been assigned and is now working on other things. Logan isn’t a ghost hunter, nor a receptionist, nor a guy who wants to take Bess out on a date — until he needs to be. Like any good spy, Logan is all things to all people, and it’s his tiny bit of backstory in SPY (easily missed if you’re not paying attention — remember, in Nik games especially there’s no such thing as “optional reading” — that makes him so significant in SAW.

SPOILERS END HERE, YOU’RE ALL GOOD TO CONTINUE.

The Favorite:

There’s a lot to love about SAW, so let’s dive right in.

The first thing I’ll mention, because I just mentioned it, is Logan, who is one of my favorite parts of the Nancy Drew universe, let alone this specific game. His VA is great, his dialogue is great, his character is great — he ticks all the boxes, and I love it.

Savannah is, of course, also a favorite; any game with Savannah in it automatically moves it up a few clicks in my estimation. Savannah (and sage-type characters like her) is where Nik’s writing really shines, and her dialogue is always a joy to read and hear.

My favorite moment is actually a tiny moment, despite it being the titular incident: the shadow at the water’s edge. It’s easy to miss, but when Nancy looks in the bath and sees Kasumi’s shadow for that split second…it’s the haunting that games like HAU and CUR really wanted to have — subtle, upsetting, and fully within the bounds of the Laws of Haunting that the ND universe has set up.

My favorite puzzle is hands-down the bento boxes. Longtime readers of this meta series (which will be two years old this summer!) will know that there’s nothing that I like better than a good logic puzzle, and the bento boxes are a great logic puzzle. It’s fun, cute, and I love that you can do it as much as you want.

I do love, lastly, that this game is a faerietale. Having read and analyzed faerietales for a good portion of my life, it’s nice to see that niche interest represented within another niche interest.

The Un-Favorite:

There are a few things in SAW that I really don’t like, as much as I think this game is great.

The most important is my least favorite puzzle: the frame puzzle. This puzzle is one of the few puzzles that actually make me white-out in Rage and refuse to play further, which is a problem given that SAW is actually a great game and I enjoy playing it. It honestly stops me from replaying the game as often as I really should, given its significance to the ND universe, and for how just good it is. I usually make my sister or my best friend play it for me, but I do actually have to leave the room while they do it because it infuriates me that much.

My least favorite moment in the game is a little different, given how good the game actually is; it’s the very end where, depending on the choice that Nancy makes, Rentaro’s apology is accepted by Miwako. Sure, Nancy says it’s unlikely that they’ll date again, but this is a case where the choice to tell on him or have him tell himself should result in the same result: him having to leave. Handymen aren’t thin on the ground, and the ryokan needs help, rather than the same toxic influence that helped bring it down in the first place.

While I appreciate the choice for Nancy impacting the end — I really do — it should say more about Nancy as a character than it should about Miwako and Rentaro. That it doesn’t is a failure in storytelling at the 11th hour, which is a shame in a game this good.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Shadow at the Water’s Edge?

First things first, I would obviously change the frame puzzle a bit. I don’t think it needs removed per se, but I would definitely shift it. Give an option to skip it, perhaps, or make it easier the more time you spend on that screen, or make it easier if you go in and out of it a few times. Heck, even having it reset when you back out (or having a reset button) would be better, since getting stuck in the puzzle results in Hours of Frustration.

Other than that, I would only change the ending choice. Like I said above, the choice is great, but it should be changed to show us exactly who Nancy is (not unlike the choice in GTH). Is Nancy the kind of person who would not trust Rentaro to tell himself and thus does it, or is Nancy the kind to give him just enough rope to hang himself?

Either way, we’re given a view of Nancy that we’ll see more and more — that she is not always kind, nor infallible, nor impartial. She lets her feelings interfere with her cases, and while sometimes that’s good (again, GTH is a prime example), sometimes the only impact her choices need to have on her is to show us her character.

All in all, Shadow at the Water’s Edge is a good, mature look at the Nancy Drew universe, and continues the thread of connecting case-to-case. While it’s ultimately imperfect, I believe it’s not only one of the most fun games to play through, but also to consider in the larger realm of Nancy Drew games and in adaptation of genre altogether.

[alphascorpiixx]

Another Dream

KHUX Week Day 7

You return to Daybreak Town as darkness spreads across the world.

Ao3

Characters: Player, Chirithy, Ephemer, Nightmare Chirithy

Gen, 2427 words, written before last update, second person pov

Warnings: death mention, drowning

Shadows play on the copper wirings inside the cables. Your adventures in the data worlds are over, the darkness banished and Candy Kingdom saved from destruction. The tunnel echoes with the metallic clack of your footsteps. You carry your Keyblade in your hand, ready for any remaining Heartless lurking in the shadows. The data worlds may be safe, but the Darkling’s presence still uneases you. Who could be their real target?

So wrapped up in your thoughts you are that you almost miss the brief flicker of the cable lights. You stop and look around. No Heartless appear, but the shadows loom on all sides. Something stutters in your peripheral vision, like the edges of the world are being pulled apart.

You pick up your pace.

The tunnel ends at a point of light. The portal back to Daybreak Town ripples with bursts of static. This isn’t right, it should have stabilized since you cleared out all the bugs. The glitched gateway twists and contorts more violently than before, at risk of closing any second. You sprint the last few steps.

You emerge where you and Ephemer started in the clocktower’s computer room. You catch your breath and look around, expecting Ephemer and the others to greet you. But the room is empty. The monitors, once displaying glimpses of all the various worlds, reflect you on their dark screens.

“Ephemer?” you call out.

Chirithy pops up beside you. “They’re probably in the Foretellers’ room. Let’s go report back.”

You leave the computer room and take the elevator down. Chirithy sits at your feet, and you rub your arms. The air in the clocktower is so cold, like something leached away all the warmth. 

The ride is silent, save for the clicking of the giant gears. You cast a sideways glance at Chirithy. “How do you know where that is?”

“I—uh.” Chirithy’s ears curl in, and they won’t meet your gaze.

“I know I’ve been here before, in the memories you’ve been suppressing.”

“I didn’t—”

“It’s okay.” You bend down and rub Chirithy’s head. “I know you just want to protect me. But I can protect myself, too.” You give Chirithy a soft smile, and they press their nose against your leg. “You’re my friend, and friends don’t keep secrets from each other.”

“I know,” they murmur against your calf.

You give their head one last pet and straighten up. After a few minutes, the gears click into place, and the elevator shudders to a stop. You hurry to the Foretellers’ room, shove the door open, and find the remains of a battle.

The stained glass window is smashed, and the grand table is splintered into pieces. Books strewn on the floor, their pages torn and scattered. Shattered vials, broken chairs. In the chaos, you almost don’t notice Ephemer leaning against a toppled bookshelf.

“Ephemer!” You run to his side. His jaw is bruised, and he gives you a lopsided grin.

“Hey, you made it back all right. Everything go okay?”

“Me? What happened to you?” You cast a Cure spell, and a soft green light washes over Ephemer. He closes his eyes for a second and exhales. You help him to his feet, and he explains as you two head to the elevator. 

“We were attacked by a creature, calls itself Darkness. It had possessed Ven to get inside this world, and then came after the rest of us. It escaped out the window,” he nods to the remains of the glass, “so Brain and Lauriam chased after it. Skuld’s looking after Ven, and that’s about it.” He gives a dry laugh. “Usual stuff.”

Your mind reels with questions, but Ephemer grimances and rubs his side. Questions can wait. 

The two of you make it to the elevator when the walls glitch. Black tendrils spread over the gears and extinguish the lights. They twist and surge, something between smoke and shadow.

“It’s back,” Ephemer whispers. He pushes you toward the exit. “Go! You have to get out of here!”

“Not without you!” You reach out, but the shadows separate the two of you. A flash of light accompanies his Keyblade summon, but it’s not enough to break through the darkness.

“Ephemer!” you shout, but the storm swallows your words. You throw your arm in front of your face. The shadows coalesce into something vaguely humanoid. A Darkling?

It advances toward you. You summon Starlight and draw on your lux reserves. A familiar burn runs through your veins as lux dances around your body. Walking through the clocktower’s halls sparked something in your mind. Memories swirl in your head—pouring rain, a muddy battlefield, the burning light at your fingertips—but you push them away. You want to remember, but you can’t be distracted now, with the darkness bearing down.

“It’s you,” the figure in the dark says. “The last of the Dandelions.”

“What did you do to Ephemer?” you demand. Your body glows like a star against the dark.

“He’s lost now. Adrift like the others.”

No. He can’t be. 

You blaze up the room with a Firaga spell, but it doesn’t burn away the darkness. Tendrils rise out of the floor and slice at your face. You hit them away with your Keyblade and lunge at the figure in the shadows.

They shy just out of your reach. “This fake world is nearing its end. You may have survived the end of the world once, but I wonder if fate will bless you a second time?”

Shadows gather at your feet, restraining you to the floor. The tendrils cling to your body and force you to your knees. You can’t raise your Keyblade, and the last of you lux snuffs out. Someone calls your name. Chirithy, still by your side. 

“No! You can’t take my friend!” Chirithy cries.

The Darkness lashes out at Chirithy before they can flee. Shadows bind their little body, and pain strikes your heart. 

You scream, and everything goes dark.

*

“Hey.”

You blink. Sunlight fills your eyes.

“Get up.”

Your back is wet. You roll your head to the side and see you’re lying on a shallow ocean that stretches out to eternity. Your eyelids close again. You can’t find the energy to stand up. The sea is so peaceful, and you just want to sink beneath the surface.

“Hey. You’re not dying here. So get up.”

A paw prods your ribs. You grit your teeth and force yourself to stand up. Water ripples at your feet, but you remain standing on the surface.

You finally see the speaker, and your hand extends for your Keyblade. But nothing comes, and the Nightmare tilts their head.

“What are you trying to do? You don’t have any power here, you know.” Red eyes stare at you from an emotionless face. You remember when that face transformed into a monster bent on your destruction.

“I defeated you. What are you doing here?”

“I’m still bound to you, unfortunately. And then you went and died like an idiot fighting the Darkness, so I found what’s left of your heart and brought you here.”

“I’m—” Your heart stutters, and you can’t finish your thought. You look down and notice yourself in the water’s reflection. You’re barely a figment, a translucent form as fleeting as the clouds above your head. You hold your hand in front of your face and see sunlight pass through. 

“Oh, and I couldn’t save your body. Sorry,” the Nightmare adds, almost as an afterthought. You drop your hand to your side and look back at them. They haven’t made a move, but you long for the heft of the Keyblade in your grip.

“Where am I?” you ask, trying to keep your voice steady. “And where is my Chirithy?”

“So I guess I’m not good enough for you?” they grumble. They turn away and look up at the sky. “This is called the Final World, where fallen hearts go when they can’t move on. And like I said, you’re dead, so your Chirithy’s gone, too.” They look back and see your stricken expression and roll their eyes. “Your other Chirithy is still around. Wielders and their Dream Eaters are not separated so easily. They still exist as part of your heart.”

The Nightmare’s words bring relief. You’re still wary of their intentions, but you press your hand to your chest and feel your heart stir. In this world you have no Spirit or Dream Eater materials to give Chirithy a new form, but you take comfort in the knowledge they are still with you.

You walk around this empty world, water splashing with every step. “Ephemer and Skuld are in trouble. I need to get back to Daybreak Town. How do I leave here?”

The Nightmare skips behind you. “I dunno, I just saved you from passing on. You’ll have to figure the rest out yourself.”

“You could still help me. If you’re a part of me, you can’t go back to the real world either.”

“Actually, I can.” And without another word, the Nightmare flips into the air and vanishes. You wait for them to return, but they don’t. 

*

In this world you can’t even tell how much time passes. You walk on and on but never come to any shore, only endless ocean and sky.

You stop and sit down. The memories that overwhelmed you before now feel like an age ago. You remember the war between the unions and your own battles against the Foretellers. In your incomplete state, every emotion is dull and hollow. You should be angry. You should scream and rage and mourn the loss of Chirithy and the unknown fate of your friends. You bite back a hollow laugh. These are the memories you longed to recall, flashes of a battlefield strewn with broken keys, and they barely stir any shadow of grief.

You press your forehead to your knees and stare at the water. The ocean reflects the eternal sky, a mimicry of Daybreak Town’s seaside. The ocean of your home was a living thing, mostly calm but rising like a wild beast in the occasional storms. The sunlit surface rippled green and blue, never a single color and always hiding secrets in its depths. This world, despite the reflection of the sun, is stagnant. A mirror to hold lost hearts, not a sustainer of life.

But it might still hold its own secrets.

You place your hand on the surface, and your fingers disappear under the water. So there is something lurking under the ocean. You push your hand down. The water comes to your wrist, and you can’t see past the reflection. Your hand meets no resistance as in sinks deeper.

Sink down and down and—

You stand up. Ripples disrupt the reflection. You lift your head to the sun and close your eyes.

Then you fall backward. Water crashes around your body and closes over your head. Your eyes blink against the pressure. Bubbles race past your face and disappear into the blurry sunlight. That light’s warmth fades the further you fall, until the last trace of the surface vanishes and leaves you cold.

You sink.

Down.

And.

Down.

The weight of the ocean presses against your body, and your chest begins to ache. Air bubbles escape your lips, and your lungs seize up. You scramble for something to cling to, but there’s nothing but water.

“You’re finding all sorts of new ways to die, huh?” The Nightmare’s voice enters your mind, undisturbed by the water bearing down on you.

Help me, please.

“You got yourself into this mess. Why should I help you?”

Because you’re part of me. You reach out with your mind for the Nightmare’s presence. You feel them at the edge of your awareness. You know the truth of your words, and so do they. No matter where they go, they are part of you and you will find them. And if I pass on so will you.

The Nightmare doesn’t answer. You gulp for air but swallow water instead. As your arms flail and you sink into the depths, you realize the Nightmare was wrong earlier. You couldn’t be dead because of how hard you are fighting to live.

Something solid brushes your hand. You reach out and grab fur. You wrap your arms around the body of a beast and let it carry you back to the light. Your head breaks the surface, and you gasp in air. The creature drags you to the shallows, and you fall onto the sand of a dark shore, coughing up a lungful of water.

Nightmare Chirithy settles beside you, still in their beast form. Their fur dries unnaturally quick. You lie on the sand and let the waves wash over your legs.

“Where are we now?” you murmur. The black sky reminds you of the corridors of darkness you’d often travel within to fight Heartless. But the shore is empty of monsters, and the shadows don’t writhe.

“The Realm of Darkness,” they state. You sigh. “Well, at least you’re not dead anymore,” they add, and you raise your eyebrow at the touch of optimism. 

“So if I’m not dead but I made it here, am I part of the darkness now? Am I going to turn into a Darkling?” The possibility doesn’t scare as much as it would have before. A creature of darkness is the reason why you lost yourself in the first place, but another one saved you from the abyss.

They shrug. “I guess you’ll find out eventually.”

The Nightmare’s body contorts and transforms back into their usual form. They fix their red eyes on the sea, and you can’t help but think of your other Dream Eater. In the faint light of the distant sun, you almost convince yourself it’s you and them sitting on the hill watching the sunset.

You muster the energy to sit up. “We’ll have to help each other now, if we want to get out of this.”

Nightmare Chirithy huffs. “You’re the one who got us here. And I’m not doing this for you.”

“I know.” 

You place your hand on their head. Chirithy tenses for a second but relaxes as you scratch their ears. They lean into your side. Eventually you’ll have to find a way out of this realm and look for Ephemer. You know in your heart he isn’t gone, and you hold onto the certainty that you will meet again.

But for now the two of you listen to the slow hush of the waves.

[kitsoa]

Ven’s Missing Memories

Mmm’kay. Thinking out loud here so I’m gonna focus in on one question from the April 2nd update. Gotta consider everything about this very strange murderer reveal happening. 

Potential cause of Ven’s missing memories. 

Trauma Induced Amnesia

Chirithy Did It

They Aren’t His Memories

1. Trauma Induced Amnesia

Ven has showed he’s no stranger to locking away trauma-memories as we’ve seen in BBS. If whatever happened was traumatic (and considering a girl is murderered I’d say it is traumatic) than Ven is the type to lock this kind of stuff out. This suggests that whatever Ven saw (or did) was appalling to him. He didn’t like what was happening which helps with his clearly innocent response to things. This means either:

Ven was a witness to Strel’s murder

Ven wasn’t in control of his actions but aware of what was happening 

He’s blind to whatever happened, so much that he traumatically blocked it. The significance of this method would be that Ven can get these memories back. Just like with his Badlands memories in BBS. Simply going about this flashback or prodding his psyche in some way can push the truth out into the open. Meaning that we’ll find out soon what happened to these memories.

Considering the post-flashback scenes the momentum has dulled a bit narratively and psychologically. This variant is: Slightly Unlikely

2. Chirithy Did It

Chirithy’s are all about eating the bad dreams of the Keyblade War, it’s worth noting that something like this would definitely constitute as a bad memory to eat. Except of course: Union Leaders were the exception to this caveat. Ven has memories of the War enough to assume that his Chirithy spared him in that memory wipe even if he’s an impostor. This doesn’t remove the idea that Chirithy consumed this memory outside of their general programming.

Much like the Trauma-Induced Amnesia line of thought, Ven is either a witness or lacked agency as he is innocent. This variant changes the method of loss which impacts the retrieval process and potentially adds another external character in the process of loosing the memory. The Chirithy has the means to remove the memory but not always the ingenuity to do so. This suggests:

Someone commanded Chirithy to remove the memory. The only characters we can imagine to have that authority:

-Ava

-MoM

Chirithy chose to remove the memory to protect Ven

-This is the kh3 Chirithy which is a focused character in the canon allowing agency of choice.

-This Chirithy has an understandable and unwavered affection for Ven into the present so it would make sense and result in a them being a bigger player

Ven himself requested the removal himself.

-This then follows variant #1 in purposing and only changes the means of removal and therefore the ultimate retrieval of the memories.

Again, this ultimately changes how to get the memories back. We’d have to review if and how the Player character’s memories have leaked back into consciousness. This potentially makes it a more challenging retrieval. This variant seems: Inconclusive

3. They Aren’t His Memories.

 If the missing memories are a result of them simply not belonging to him, then we have greater reason to believe that there is a force inside him turning off Ven’s awareness in a scene. This makes Ven a vessel for an independent personality. In the spectrum of his role during this missing moment, this leans him more towards being the perpetrator though he would not be in control because Ven is innocent.

Nature of Loss of Agency

External Force “Possession”

Internal Force “Split-Personality”

As an external force, that means that there is an entity requiring a physical medium to act. This also suggests that there is a greater agent trying to tip the scales of the Dandelion conflict. As there are no known concepts in the narrative that fit this need, we need to assume that it’s a new threat.

Note: Darkness as an abstract concept in need of a vessel. 

The same shadowed figure in the original murder scene is seen in the story multiple times and dubs itself as Darkness. “Darkness” as a title is abstract enough to suggest the actual forces of Darkness at work fitting the external force. This would suggest sentience of an oft discussed force in the narrative, but it would constitute a new threat and bear the name the most literally. We know from Re:Mind that ‘Darkness’ does in fact reside in Ven’s heart still. This all but ties Ven directly to the actions of the character(s) claiming this moniker in khux. Yet the title is vague enough to bring this into hot contention whether the same ‘Darkness’ is being referenced.

As an internal force, that would mean that Ven created the independent entity at work in the missing memory. Ergo: Ven created a split-personality.

The premise of creating a split-personality, though unique to the KH narrative, can follow an easy ‘trauma suppression’ style of writing. Much like option #1, Ven’s tendency to avoid his trauma has been seen in his narrative already. He is illustrated clearly to avoid his problems and his darkness. Evidence:

Missing Ache Keyblade suggests suppressing heart ache

He frequently mentions loneliness and the bewildered sensation of friendship

He is painted as a weak outcast who can’t keep/find a party 

He hates pointing his blade at fellows--Pacifistic tendencies

Reason for back-hand grip?

PvP is appalling to him

Vanitas confirms in Re:mind that he existed before Xehanort split them apart. This means that Vanitas was an aware presence within Ventus fitting him within the suspect pool of entities that could have removed Ven’s agency from the murder scene. It also correlates to the Darkness force residing within Ventus but that’s a cursory fact in this analysis. But if he is the force that took over Ven then Vanitas is:

Either external in origin

or a creation of Ven’s own making.

Note: Ven has one other moment of seeming memory loss in Khux-- the PvP passage. He reacts dramatically to the reveal of PvP to the point that the other leaders make a note of Ven’s lack of awareness. He honestly asserts that he read the book but he didn’t remember the one part of the rules that he clearly disagreed with. Almost like he suppressed it. This makes me believe that Ven’s escapist tendencies pushed his dark feelings of anxiety deep within him resulting in a selective memory.

Furthermore, he claims humility in his skills (i.e. not ranking) early in his introduction despite having a Proud mode keyblade. If his mystified sense of worth is honest and not humility at work, then he potentially has combat memory loss as well. As conflict is where dark feelings can spark, this would make sense.

This bright-side temperament stops being a character quirk and is then a willful pattern of behaviors. Out of the two sub-variants of blame for the missing memory, I believe that it’s an internal force that is the strongest correlation to Vanitas as a preexisting personality and the “Darkness” Moniker claimed in re:mind is more of a pre-christened identity of Vanitas. 

From here the only way to discover this memory is to hear about it straight from the source. We will need a confrontation of pre-split Vanitas living in khux Ven. 

---

There’s a chance that there’s a combination of forces at work in the moment. But independently the strongest to me is #3 with the specific split personality method having the most evidence. That being said, trauma has a clear role in the function of a split personality and the Chirithy is pivotal in the interaction of traumatic moments. Because who is to say that Ven is completely unaware of the controlling force? Perhaps he could remember what his body was forced to do but Chirithy spared him of that in mercy. That would make the outcome to be a combo of all 3. 

Whew. I’m doing this to eventually place Ava in this scheme. Right now I think she struck a deal with Vanitas. I also think it’s logical to assume that a dark split-personality would be like Schrodinger’s Darkling therefore making Vanitas act in accordance to an actual force of evil in the game. 

[loekas]

struts onto the stage and grabs a microphone

Let’s imagine a Kingdom Hearts universe where Sora is never born. Kairi takes his place as the Keyblade wielder instead. How would that change things?

Disclaimer; I haven't played KH3 yet and don't know the meta in that one. But I've played most of the other games and know the story/meta of the ones I haven’t played. 

So, we start at the beginning, with Ven, Aqua and Terra. Kairi, as a newborn heart, is the one who helps Ven heal after Ventus’ heart gets split into two. This makes much more sense tbh, because Kairi is a Princess of Heart, and thus has special heart powers. Like help stabilise the light side of a heart torn into two.

Flash forward to when Ven and Vanitas have their epic heart battle, ending with the heart recombining and the Ven side being dominant, but also being on the verge of death. Again, Kairi is the one who offers Ventus refuge in her own heart. Then Malificent attacks Radiant Garden, and Kairi ends up on Destiny Islands with no memories left of her past. Kairi and Riku meet and become best friends. Terra still met with Riku on his journey as well, and still made him heir to his keyblade. 

Flash forward to the start of KH1. The relationship between Kairi and Riku is a little different than in canon, because they're both friends and rivals (instead of just friends like in canon, where the rival part is occupied by Sora) Kairi is the one Riku races on the beach, she’s the one who battles him with wooden swords.

Unlike Sora, Kairi is a-okay with Riku being better than her. Sure, she likes to win, but it isn’t necessary for her to have fun. Which is good, because it means there’s no friction between her and Riku. Riku’s competitive streak is satisfied by being more skilled than Kairi, and Kairi has fun with the games they play. 

Like in canon, the two of them are making a raft to go see different worlds. But lets add in one very important difference with canon.

Before leaving on their adventure, Riku and Kairi share a paopu fruit. Why? Because if you've shared one, then no matter where you go, you'll hearts will always be connect. You’ll always be able to find each other. (And this is true. Paopu fruits are genuinely magical. Share one and your destinies/hearts become intertwined) 

(Except this paopu fruit isn't shared by two hearts. It's shared by three. Ven is still within Kairi...) 

Ansem still tricks Riku into opening The Door of their world. The heartless still appear. 

Kairi is the one who finds Riku on the beach. Kairi is the one who begs him to leave (because this is wrong, she knows that with every fiber of her being. The knowledge isn’t conscious but she knows their world is being consumed by darkness. She knows because she’s a Princess of Heart) (She knows because she saw the same thing happen to Radiant Garden)

Kairi and Riku are consumed by darkness, and they lose hold of each other. Riku is brought to Hollow Bastion and Kairi is lost to darkness.

The darkness is broken by the Kingdom Key. By the Keyblade linked to the Realm of Light.

Who better to wield it than a Princess of Heart?

Kairi now has a weapon against the darkness. She has a weapon against the heartless swarming her.

She fights the heartless with skill she shouldn't have. She fights them with magic and acrobatic feats, she fights them as though she’s been doing so her entire life.

She fights them with the skill of Ven and Vanitas. Ventus’s heart is always there, but when Kairi holds a Keyblade, his heart surges to the foreground (but neither Kairi nor Ventus are aware of this. Kairi just knows her body moves on its own, and Ventus isn't consciously making her move like that. Ventus is still slumbering. He responds to Kairi’s surroundings and feelings, but all of it is done unconsciously) 

(Like Sora, Kairi doesn’t know that she holds Ventus’ heart. She was a newborn when they first met, there are no memories there. And when she offered Ventus’ heart refuge the second time, she did it on instinct. Princess of Heart powers are handy like that)

But while she’s ignorant of the heart within her, during that fight against the heartless on Destiny Islands, Kairi remembers her past. She remembers Radiant Garden being destroyed.

Like in canon, she ends up in Traverse Town after the destruction of her world. And the meeting with Leon and co is much more emotional because THEY KNOW EACH OTHER!!!! They come from the same home. 

Kairi realises she isn’t alone after all. She hasn’t lost everyone. Yuffie and the others are still alive.

So is Riku. Kairi knows that through knowledge born from the paopu fruit. She knows that Riku is alive in the same way she knows how to breathe.

She has to find him.

Kairi meets Donald and Goofy, and goes on a quest to find Riku. 

Meanwhile, Riku still ends up with Maleficent, and still ends up manipulated by her. Things proceed mostly like in canon. Maleficent feeds the darkness in Riku’s heart and makes him jealous of Donald and Goofy. 

Unlike canon, Riku only sees Kairi from a distance. He only sees her through scrying spells, through images shown by Maleficent (Maleficent claims she can only scry for Kairi, she can't determine her exact location. This is a lie)  (Unlike canon, having Riku meet with his best friend would be counterproductive to Maleficent’s plans. She can’t turn Riku against Kairi in the ways she could turn him against Sora in canon. She has no leverage in the form of a third best friend. So she takes a different route to getting Riku in the shape she needs him to be)

Kairi and Riku only meet after Riku has already become skilled at wielding darkness magic (and thus, has left his heart vulnerable to that darkness. That’s the only way to wield it after all). They only meet after Maleficent is confident it won’t ruin her plans.

By now, Maleficent has fed onto Riku’s OVERWHELMING guilt at opening the door his world, at letting the heartless in. One of the reasons she can shape Riku to her liking so completely is because Riku is struggling SO HARD with guilt and denial and horror because he DESTROYED his world! He killed everyone he ever knew and loved. 

Everyone but Kairi. Like Kairi, Riku knows that she’s alive in an instinctive manner. He clings to that knowledge even more than he would have if they’d just been seperated. He clings to the idea that if they just get back together, everything will be alright again.

But he's still drowning in guilt. Worse, he’s in complete isolation. Maleficent is the only one he has significant contact with. The deck is stacked against him here. Even if he avoided being manipulated in one way, he couldn’t avoid all the other ways.

The most insidious manipulation is this. Maleficent, who lied about Hollow Bastion, who claimed this to be a remant of her world, tells him; if we open Kingdom Hearts, all the worlds destroyed by the heartless will be restored. Your world will be restored... 

So when Kairi and Riku finally reunite, there are, first, a lot of hugs and tears (they've missed each other so much). But then the cracks in Riku start showing. He struggles with his jealousy towards Donald and Goofy (and Kairi doesn't understand that jealousy because she loves Donald and Goofy in a different way than Riku. And Riku is way more important to her than they are, he’s her best friend. So why be jealous?) but the real breaking point comes when he shares his plan to find Kingdom Hearts with Kairi. Riku tells her, and her immediate reaction is this.

The Kingdom of Hearts must never be opened.  

She says it without thought, she says it on pure instinct. But every part of her knows it's true. The Kingdom of Hearts must never be opened. (she knows this because she's a Princess of Heart. She's a remnant of the key that once opened the Kingdom of Hearts)  (She knows what will happen to the universe if the Kingdom of Hearts is ever opened again)

And Riku breaks because how can she say that? Doesn't she want their world back? Doesn’t she want their parents back, their friends? 

And Kairi doesn't know how to explain because yes she wants her home back, she wants her adopted parents and friends back, she wants it so much but the Kingdom of Hearts CANNOT be opened! Even if it means the loss of her home and family, even if it would mean losing Riku, the Kindom of Hearts cannot be opened. 

Eventually, they fight. Unlike canon, Riku doesn’t manage to call the Keyblade away from Kairi (because no matter how much better he was at things than her, Kairi has never felt inferior to him. Because she’s a Princess of Heart, and the Kingdom Key belongs to the Light as it belongs to no one else)

Kairi beats Riku. Riku might be incredibly talented, but he’s fifteen years old. He hasn’t been training with magic for years. 

He doesn’t have the experience Ventus does. And Kairi is fighting with the skill of Ven and Vanitas both.

Riku can't handle the loss. He was ALWAYS better than Kairi at stuff like this. Except he no longer is. She's leaving him behind, she's pulling away from him and she no longer needs him.

He can't handle that. Not after destroying his world, not after fixating so hard on the idea that everything would be alright again if he just found Kairi again, if he just found his best friend. But everything isn’t alright, she’s fighting him and she’s trying to stop him from restoring their world! He can’t deal with that.

And finally, Riku is in the state that Maleficent wanted him to be. He’s on the verge of being consumed by darkness, on the verge of becoming a heartless. But he isn’t one just yet.

That is exactly the state that Ansem needs Riku to be in.

When Ansem approaches him after the fight, Riku agrees to open himself to darkness. And Ansem possesses him.

This is where the real fun begins. See, I have elaborate headcanon on the Ansem we see in KH1. In later games, we learn that this Ansem is actually the heartless of Xehanort. But this Ansem came into existence after Xehanort had already taken over Terra's body. 

So, I headcanon that this heartless is actually a combination of Xehanort and Terra. His goals are still that of Xehanort (find Kingdom Hearts) but Terra's wants are there as well. Except they've been twisted because he's a heartless. The part of Ansem that used to be Terra still wants to find his friends, Aqua and Ven. But what he feels for them is no longer true love. It's possession, it's obsession. They're his and no one else's. 

And this desire is why Ansem is very interested in Kairi. While observing her on her journey, he recognised her fighting style. He recognised Ven’s and Vanitas’s moves. 

And now that Ansem FINALLY has a body back, now that he can finally use a Keyblade again (headcanon that the reason he needed a body is because he couldn't use a keyblade otherwise), he can act on his need to get Ven back.

(But because he used to be Xehanort as well, he first makes that special Keyblade that contains the hearts of the six Princesses he and Maleficent have already captured. Only after does he go after Kairi)

Ansem has deduced that Kairi holds Ven's heart, and he wants Ven back. So he fights with her, he taunts her. He uses Terra’s Keyblade against her (I know he didn’t use it in the game, but this is an exercise in having canon make sense. And seeing as Riku was the heir to Terra’s Keyblade, it makes sense for Ansem to be able to use that Keyblade after taking over his body) (Riku being Terra’s heir is the whole reason Ansem went after Riku in the first place...)

Ansem keeps taunting Kairi. Or rather, he taunts Ven. He calls him out, uses the names Ven and Vanitas (and Kairi hesitates because she knows those names. Somehow she knows them, somehow she knows what they mean) (She hesitates because Ventus does)

The hesitation is quickly shaken off and replaced by rage. Because this isn’t Riku, this is someone who took over his body. He’s controlling Riku and he will give Riku back! (He’ll give Terra back. Because Ventus recognises that fighting style in the same way Ansem recognised his. Ventus isn’t conscious, not truly, but he rages because he knows that keyblade, knows that magic, he knows the monster that stole his friend!) (The monster will give his friend back)

Kairi and Ventus are in synch as never before. 

It isn’t enough. Terra and Xehanort have always been stronger than Ven and Vanitus. 

Kairi and Ventus can’t beat him. 

After awhile, Ansem goes; well, this was fun, but it's time for you to come home, Ven. And he uses Terra's Keyblade to unlock Ven's heart. 

Except he fails. Because Kairi stops him. She does it on instinct, she does it in a way that shouldn’t be possible. Keyblades can't be stopped like this. 

Not without the power of a Princess of Heart. 

And Ansem realies. Kairi is the final Princess. The one they lost all those years ago, the one they've been searching for ever since. He gets it now, the reason Kairi was hidden from all scrying spells is because of Vanitas. Ventus' heart slumbers within her own, and Vanitas' darkness hid that Kairi possesses no darkness of her own. 

Ansem laughs. What a fortunate twist of fate. The final piece to his plan was right in front of his nose all this time. 

He attacks Kairi again. He uses his keyblade against her heart again. Except this time he uses the Keyblade created by the Princesses of Heart. 

This time, he aims at Kairi's heart instead of Ven's. 

Kairi’s heart is consumed.

And Riku is back control of his body. Because Kairi's power is no longer being contained by her body, because he has a direct link to that power by holding the Keyblade that holds her heart. Because they shared a paopu fruit and that created a magical bond. (And Ansem screams because Ven is lost! There was only a brief window in time to capture his heart as Kairi's was unleashed, and because of the switch in control, that window is gone! Ven is gone. Ansem rages) (Ansem is powerless as long as Riku keeps hold of that Keyblade) 

 And Riku, who was screaming inside Ansem the entire time he was fighting Kairi, goes no, no, no, this can't be happening. I can’t have killed Kair, can’t have killed my best friend.

I need to save her. 

In this world, Riku is the one who breaks the Keyblade and returns the Princesses their hearts. 

And Ansem is back in control. 

Things go mostly according to canon again, with Kairi going after Ansem (because he will give Riku back!)  (because the Kingdom of Hearts must never be opened) 

It ends with Riku and King Mickey closing The Door on one side, Kairi, Donald and Goofy closing The Door on the other side. But before closing it, Kairi makes Riku promise that he'll come back to her. He promises that he will (which is a good thing, because Riku is pretty suicidal right now and things would not end well without this promise) 

Kairi and Mickey close Kingdom Hearts. And Kairi returns to Radiant Garden (because that's her original world. That's where she was born). Donald and Goofy go to that world instead of their own as well, because Kairi instinctively uses Princess powers to keep their hearts with her. The final image is Kairi, flanked by Donald and Goofy, looking up at all the stars that are back. 

End act 1. Now, we get to the good stuff. Now, the butterfly effects really come into play. 

Kairi is a Princess of Heart. They are incapable of creating Nobody's. So when her heart was released from her body? Nothing happened.  

In this world, Naminé doesn't exist. 

Roxas does. 

Except he's not Kairi's Nobody. He's Ventus. He's a heart that exists without a body, something possible only because of the connection he has with a Princess of Heart. 

But without being inside Kairi’s heart, that connection isn't enough to protect him. Slowly, Ventus is turning into a heartless. 

The part of him that is Vanitas is TERRIFIED. That part of him remembers how hollow he always felt, how it always felt like something was missing. How that feeling only went away after merging with Ven. He doesn't want to go back to that. This desire is unconscious though, because Ventus/Roxas has lost his memory. 

Roxas is still found by Xehanort, Ansem's Nobody. Roxas still becomes the thirteenth member of Organisation XIII. 

But Kairi never goes to Castle of Oblivion. She never has her memories manipulated by Naminé. There’s no failed coup within the Organisation. So when Kairi finally does meet the Organisation? 

Things look very different indeed...

And that’s all I have on this. Thank you for coming to my TED talk! If anyone wants to speculate on what happens next, be my guest!

[minijenn]

Keys to the Kingdom Preview

Fuck I just realized I forgot to post a preview for this chapter. From the prom chapter wtf am I doing here???? Anyway, enjoy some preamble setup stuff that eventually help us get to the cute fluffy fancy shit later on ahaha: 

“Um… guys?” he decides to speak up not long after they arrive. He trails alongside Donald and Goofy, near the back of the group as they head down a lightly wooded road. The path stretches toward a sizable town up ahead, and, resting even further beyond that, a towering, radiant castle, practically glowing against the early evening sky. “What are we doing here?”

Aqua and Ventus exchange a brief glance at this question as they continue leading the way. Ultimately, Aqua is the one to offer an answer to it. Or at least, make an attempt at doing so. “Well, we’re, um… We came here to…”

Ventus can only shrug apprehensively when she looks to him for help. Fortunately, Mickey manages to fill in with a fitting explanation, something they’re both lacking, just in the nick  of time. “That’s easy,” the king says with a bit of a small chuckle. “We’re back on the hunt for the rest of those Keys, remember?”

“Ok, great, but one problem,” Sora points out with a frown. “There isn’t any Key in this world.”

“Uh… how do you know?” Ventus asks. He tries as best as he possibly can to make his smile not come across as nervous. To not let their scheme be seen through before it’s even truly begun. 

“Well, I have this sort of… Keys Instinct that’s been helping us find them so far,” Sora explains. “I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s like this… feeling, I guess? Point is, it’s something I’ve felt in every world where we’ve found a Key, but I’m not feeling that here, so…”

“So maybe we should just move on then?” Kairi infers, finishing off where he leaves off. 

“We can’t leave yet!” Ventus exclaims, perhaps a bit too intensely. He backs down a bit at the curious glances most of the others send his way. “Um, w-we can’t leave without… at least looking around, right?”

Ventus falters under the incredulous look Sora sends his way when he says this. He has a pretty good reason for what’s behind that look too, a reason neither of them can really say, as much as Ventus might want to. And of course, what Sora says next is nowhere near close to that. “We can always look in some other world where there actually is a Key,” he stops short, preparing to turn back toward the ship and hoping the others follow suit. “I don’t think it’s a great idea to be taking a shot in the dark in a place where we might not even find one in the first place. Not when the Organization’s out there looking for them too.”

“Actually,” Riku speaks up, his tone cool and even. “I think Ventus has a point. There’s no harm in checking, just to be safe.”

“B-but… my Keys Instinct…” Sora protests earnestly. And for that earnesty, Riku approaches him, placing a steadying hand on his shoulder. 

“I trust that instinct, just like I trust you,” he assures with a soft smile. “But we need to be thorough just as much as we need to be fast. What if there is a Key in this world, but it’s just so well hidden that your instinct didn’t pick up on it?”

“It would pick up on it though,” Sora insists. “That’s… just how this works. Right, you guys?”

Donald and Goofy both nod when Sora glances back at them for support. “Yeah, yeah, it’s worked so far,” Donald says with a dismissive wave of his hand. 

“With every Key we’ve found yet,” Goofy adds much more affirmatively. “And after finding 8 of ‘em, we should know.”

“I understand that,” Riku acknowledges the pair before turning back to Sora. “And I’m not saying you’re making a mistake by not sensing one here. But I still think it’s worth our while to take a look anyway. After all,” he pauses for just a beat, sparing the briefest of intentional glances between Sora and Kairi, standing nearby. “You never know what we might find if we do.”

“...Well, whatever we find, I doubt it’s gonna be a Key,” Sora muttered, not following the hint. 

“So what’s the plan here?” Axel pipes up. “Are we staying or are we heading out?”

“We’re staying,” Aqua asserts before any further protests can be made. “Ven and I actually have a few friends here we’d like to catch up with. Better yet, they might even be able to help us out if we ask.”

“They can help us find a Key?” Kairi asks, curious. 

“...Something like that,” Aqua mutters, turning back toward the road ahead with a small, knowing smile. At the same time, Ventus mouths a subtle ‘thank you’ to Riku as he passes by, a thanks that comes from pushing their plan along. A plan that, outside of the two of them and Aqua, none of the others have a clue about in the slightest. 

Sora narrowly stifles a frustrated sigh as the rest of the group continues to move on. He eventually does the same with some silent urging from Donald and Goofy, though he’s far from happy about it. Searching for a Key in this world is a fool’s errand; he knows that, even if the others don’t believe it. They’re wasting precious time embarking on that search here, time that would be much better spent elsewhere, better spent actually finding Keys where they actually are. Time that Sora knows he doesn’t have much on his side anymore to stop a longstanding conflict that’s waging violently against him from the outside in.  

Time that’s quickly running out to stop his heart from slipping into the shadows before anyone else can suspect a single thing about it.

[melonseed11art]

Sora (KH1) - Cat (Mix Breed)

KH Animal AU Headcanons for Sora below the break!

DO NOT REPOST MY ART HERE OR ON ANY OTHER SITE!! Reblogs are awesome though! <3

More information on my Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy Animal AU (some pictures however are currently only on tumblr as I’ve yet to post them on DA): https://www.deviantart.com/melonseed11/gallery/70992086/kingdom-hearts-animal-au

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Core rules of the universe:

-Most of the time, animals will stick to their own species as a preference (though many can forgo this rule, it can still be frowned upon by the Purebreds).

-Magical creatures are more rare, but they do indeed exist along side the normal animals. A long time ago, pre-Keyblade War, in the Age Of Fairytales, there used to be a lot more mystical creatures. It’s still a bit of a mystery as to why there are so little left now.

-Any animal can use magic to varying degrees of talent, but If you’re a mystical creature then you have an affinity to it, and they’re considered more powerful too.

-Most animals fight using their teeth, mouths (to hold things such as Keyblades and other weapons), claws, strength and magic. Certain animals can use their tails to fight/ hold weapons too.

Some can also wield their weapons via magic, like levitation.

-The plot is exactly the same as canon, just with a couple differences and the fact that everyone is an animal.

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Sora headcanons/ info:

-Sora’s cat breed is a mix breed. His mother was a purebred Turkish Angora, while his dad was a mix, too.

-While Sora can be rather lazy (like most cats), he’s also quite energetic and excitable. It’s believed that this is due to having Ven residing in Sora’s heart (Ven is actually half dog. See more on his profile: *Coming soon*). Of course, he didn’t find that out till much later in his life. He always assumed he was just weird that way.

-Due to a slight birth defect, his ears droop down naturally.* He is more than capable of holding them up when he needs to (particularly when he needs to hear better), he just doesn’t bother most of the time. His droopping ears make also him look even lazier than he is, unfortunately.

People used to tease him about his ears as well as being different from a normal cat in general (some from bullies, some of it light hearted teasing from his best friends). Generally Sora doesn’t care what others think, but it can still bother him sometimes, making him get a little angry or pouty. Riku and Kairi still tease him about it a little, but Sora never really minds this because he knows It’s just best friend banter.

Whenever people DID make fun of him, Riku, and especially Kairi, would always come in and defend him (despite the fact that Sora was constantly reassuring them that he could handle them on his own.). He may not outwardly express it, but he’s secretly appreciative when his friends fight back for him.  

As he gets older, his ears slowly start to naturally stand up a little more like a normal cat’s (this is to imitate his human counterpart’s hair spikes slowly rising up over the course of the games lol).

*Due to Vanitas having the same appearance as Sora, he too has this ear problem. However, if anyone ever points it out or, heaven forbid make fun it, they would quickly regret it.

-He’s very nimble and athletic, and a great fighter, being mostly self-taught. He fights with his Keyblade in his mouth most of the time, but for certain moves he’ll use his long tail to hold the Keyblade (or Blades, in double forms). In addition to keyblade fighting, he’ll use his claws to strike enemies. He fights in a variety of ways, wielding both magic and his own physical strength (this is meant to reflect Sora’s fighting style in the games, depending on how the player fights as him. I personally use a lot of magic but also some brute force lol).

-Sora has an anti form/ rage form that only comes out when he’s running on the lowest of health (like a last ditch effort) or sometimes when trying to change into his Drive Forms. His fur is completely blackened with white ornate designs on it, with glowing amber eyes, and his teeth and claws grow in size.

During this form, he completely ditches his Keyblade and uses animalistic attacks instead, like clawing and biting. He’ll use dark magic too.

((Might add more later as I think of them!))