#also something about Riku being the light in the darkness

[loxli]

Soriku Week 2023: Day 2

Ragnarok | Rebirth

[robotsafari]

a mind palace’s (unasked for) renovations [DO NOT TAG AS SHIP]

bonus under the cut:

white mushroom more like “butlershroom.”

anyway. yep! my headcanon is that the mushroom series of heartless were essentially like early versions of ansem. experiments to see if creating a heartless with a will of its own were even possible. (the mushrooms just wanna play charades and go on nice walks! they wont steal your heart because their instincts tell em’ to! they’ll only snatch it if they feel like it <3) how can you make an “immortal” successor if they cant even understand the research you left for them? so thats why they were created!

[kaiyunsim]

night to remember —

pairing : student!yushi x student!reader (no pronouns. written with male in mind)

summary : after meeting yushi thought a mutual friend, you have a hangout in a dorm with everyone, while also having a night to remember with yushi.

warnings : fluff, teasing, college au

a/n : erm… i wrote this at 2am.

~ requested ! ~

— wc: 1.4k— not proof read —

the first day of college is chaotic, to say the least. dorm assignments are a mess, people are frantically trying to find their classrooms, and yushi is already late to his first lecture. you spot him sprinting across campus, backpack bouncing wildly, his dark hair sticking up at odd angles from what must’ve been a rushed morning. he’s juggling a half-empty coffee cup and a folder that’s threatening to spill its contents onto the pavement. you can’t help but laugh at the scene, the sound of your amusement catching his attention. he glances your way, his dark eyes meeting yours for just a second before he vanishes around the corner.

later that day, as fate would have it, you meet properly. it’s outside the student union, where a group is forming, introductions buzzing through the warm afternoon air. sion, the friend who seems to know everyone, is at the center of it all. "this is yushi," sion says, clapping him on the back. "he’s a disaster, but we love him."

yushi looks embarrassed, his cheeks tinged pink as he gives a small wave. "hi," he says quietly, his voice soft and a little uncertain. his gaze flickers to you briefly, like he’s trying to gauge your reaction, before quickly darting away again.

you introduce yourself, offering him a reassuring smile, and when he reaches out to shake your hand, his grip is tentative but warm. "nice to meet you," he says, his lips twitching into the faintest hint of a smile. it’s a quiet moment, but something about it feels significant.

soon enough, a friend group starts to take shape. there’s sion, riku, ryo, jaehee, sakuya, yushi and now, you. the dynamic is lively, full of late-night hangouts in cramped dorm rooms, bursts of laughter over terrible jokes, and endless snacks shared among the group. yushi, however, often lingers at the edges, his quiet presence blending in until he warms up to the rhythm of the conversation. he’s thoughtful, his laughter always genuine when it does come, and it lights up his face in a way that’s hard not to notice.

with you, it’s a little different. there’s a hesitance to him, like he’s testing the waters, unsure how far he can go. the first time he teases you, it’s so subtle you almost miss it. the group is sitting on the floor of riku’s dorm, empty soda cans and snack wrappers scattered around. someone suggests sharing embarrassing high school stories, and you’re midway through recounting yours when yushi speaks up.

"wait," he says, holding up a hand, his voice tinged with nervous humor. "are you telling me you actually wore that to prom?"

his tone is teasing, but there’s a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, as though he’s worried he might’ve pushed too far. you cross your arms, playing along. "it was a bold choice," you say defensively. "and i pulled it off."

"oh, i’m sure you did," he replies, a small smile tugging at his lips. "but i’d pay good money to see the pictures."

you roll your eyes, but the banter feels natural, and you notice the way his cheeks pinken slightly when the group laughs. as time goes on, this playful dynamic becomes a staple between you. yushi starts sitting next to you during hangouts, his shoulder brushing yours in a way that feels almost deliberate. his teasing gains confidence, his quiet wit shining through in moments that make your heart skip.

one friday night, the group gathers at sakuya and sion’s dorm, planning to play mario kart and hang out before diving into midterm prep. the energy in the room is chaotic, filled with the sounds of controllers clicking and mock threats being exchanged. you and yushi end up on the same couch, the space between you narrowing as the night goes on.

"you’re going down," he says, holding the controller with a mix of determination and nerves.

"big words for someone who just crashed into a banana peel," you reply, your character zooming past his on the screen.

yushi groans dramatically, leaning back against the couch. "this game is rigged."

"or you’re just bad at it," you tease, your tone light.

his cheeks flush, but he narrows his eyes at you with a playful grin. "oh, you think you’re better?" he playfully nudges you.

"i know i am," you reply, throwing a blue shell that sends his character spinning off the track. you glance at him, triumphant. "see?" you nudge back, a bit harder than he did.

yushi huffs, but there’s a glimmer of admiration in his voice. "beginner’s luck," he mutters, though the small smile tugging at his lips betrays his amusement.

the game drags on, full of dramatic comebacks and loud laughter, until sion declares he’s starving and suggests a late-night food run. most of the group agrees, but you and yushi hang back, both sticking to the original plan and want to head to the library for some last-minute studying.

the campus is quiet under the glow of streetlights as you walk together, your steps echoing in the stillness. yushi stays close, his arm brushing yours now and then, each touch sending a small jolt through you. the night air is crisp, and at some point, yushi notices you shivering. it was stupid to walk outside with only a shirt.

without a word, he shrugs off his jacket and hands it to you.

"here," he says, his voice soft. "you’ll catch a cold." he continues. he still has a hoodie on so offering his jacket wasn’t going to change much for him.

you hesitate for a moment before accepting it, the fabric still warm from his body. "thanks," you say, slipping it on. it’s a little big, the sleeves hanging past your hands, and you catch yushi glancing at you with a shy smile.

inside the library, you find a cozy corner tucked away from the main study area. textbooks and notes are spread out between you, but focus is hard to maintain. yushi looks more tired than determined, his head drooping as he attempts to read.

"you okay over there?" you ask, trying to stifle a laugh.

he nods, though his eyes are half-closed. "just... resting my eyes," he mumbles.

moments later, he’s fast asleep, his head leaning against your shoulder. at first, you’re surprised, the warmth of him catching you off guard. but as his breathing evens out, you find yourself relaxing, the weight of him oddly comforting. you stay like that, letting him rest, the quiet hum of the library surrounding you.

when he wakes up, the embarrassment is immediate. his face turns crimson as he sits up, avoiding your gaze. "why didn’t you wake me up?" he asks, voice muffled as he buries his face in his hands.

"you looked comfortable," you reply with a shrug, trying to hide your amusement.

yushi groans, but there’s a small, shy smile tugging at his lips, as if part of him doesn’t entirely mind.

the walk back to sakuya’s dorm is quieter, the night wrapping around you like a blanket. when you rejoin the group, they’re sprawled on the floor, empty takeout containers littered around. sion looks up with a grin, his gaze flicking between you and yushi.

"you two took your time," he teases, waggling his eyebrows. "what were you doing? having a heartfelt conversation?"

yushi stiffens beside you, his cheeks flushing a deep red. "we were studying," he mumbles, his voice barely audible.

riku smirks, clearly not buying it. "studying? is that what they call it now?" his gaze drops to the jacket you’re still wearing, and his grin widens. "or were you borrowing yushi’s wardrobe? because you look pretty cozy in that jacket."

yushi’s eyes go wide, and he starts to stammer. "i—it was cold! i just—"

sakuya leans in with a playful smirk. "sure, yushi. let’s go with that."

the group bursts into laughter, their teasing lighthearted but relentless. yushi groans, burying his face in his hands, and you can’t help but laugh along, the warmth in your chest spreading at their playful ribbing.

as the night winds down and the group starts to disperse, yushi pulls you aside, his expression a mix of embarrassment and something softer. "sorry about... them," he says quietly, his gaze fixed on the ground.

"don’t be," you reply, your voice equally soft. "they’re not wrong."

yushi looks up at you, his eyes wide, and for a moment, neither of you speaks. then he smiles, small and shy, but it lights up his face in a way that makes your heart skip.

as you decide to stay for a sleepover in the shared dorm, the memory of yushi’s smile lingers as you glance at him sleeping peacefully beside riku, like two cats beside one another. you can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, the group is right.

[starrieisdelusional]

why kairi might be the one who manipulated sora's memory

yes you read that right, and no i did not mis-type this (if you're thinking hey that should be namine!)

i was going back a few times to kh3 and i found many patterns and cutscenes in 3 that can be compared to previous installments of the game, even side by side, this one particularly caught my eye:

crazy am i right

so remember that scene in 3 where sora falsely exclaimed "the light in the darkness" to be kairi? (it's actually riku) where sora and kairi goes enters the light to made it back to the real world

previous clip in link because tumblr isn't working with me ("riku, answer me!!" comparison with "okay! i have to protect them (aitsu)! Namine can you hear me?")

as you've seen in the comparison i realized it probably a direct paralell to namine's fake meteor shower scene back in COM Sora's side. And these lines of dialogue in particular interest me

it got me thinking, and i think that kairi purposely did something to sora's memory at some point in their lives. The exact when i'm not too sure, but she had inserted herself into some of riku's part in sora's life as sora's taisetsu na hito (special someone)

i know this sounds crazy, but i think there's a valid reason to this theory

Why??

the motive is clear: that kairi is lonely. i personally relate to her character struggle, loneliness can be suffocating, just like how namine portrayed hers that resulted to the events in COM

kairi's main theme has always been about 'seperation' and being left behind by sora and riku. so it would make sense for her to crave attention

kairi might feel sad that sora and riku doesn't pay attention to her unlike how they pay attention to each-other, so i don't see it as off character for her to insert herself into a fake picture if she had the chance, especially as the love interest of her crush

she even said this back in KH1 which sora responded with "Huh!? What's gotten into you?"

or is it done out of malicious intentions? there might be a possibility for that, but i don't think it is as it goes against kingdom hearts thematic story that stays consistent over the years, that portrays every character struggle in a sympathetic way that honestly you can relate too

(xehanort is even a subject to this in dark road)

i think that kairi felt really guilty about it and didn't realized the impact that she had done to sora and riku's relationship. or maybe she thrived for it, because even if the affection is not real, kairi is still loved and remembered by someone as their precious person, and it feels nice especially with someone like sora

snippet from kh3 novel

in the novels, there's a strong hint that kairi cut her hair because riku cut his, which contributes a lot to the theory of kairi wanting to be sora's precious person (riku) where she somewhat mimics his behavior (she probably realized deep down sora cares more about riku than her)

Passing Memories

i think this also made sense lore wise, because why else would sora suddenly lost his memory of riku? and i don't think sora's sort-of infatuation with kairi is caused by comphet alone

forgotten promises is a recurring theme in sora and riku's relationship, everything up to this point has always leads to hidden thoughts and burried memories, you have to dig deeper if you want to find a connection between sora and riku, the examples currently are:

whatever is happening between soriku

passing memories jp name of oblivion keyblade that is owned by roxas

riku is the TRUE light

necklace theory: the fact that THE necklace is everywhere in the game but is never brought up like ever

aitsu (check full discussion on the internet)

COM the game (just everything related to COM, the only game with riku and sora beside DDD? it's sus if you ask me)

compared to sora and kairi who's relationship always seems shallow and on the surface. i think it made more sense with the 'why' factor answered, because every time sora is thinking of riku, kairi would replace herself in his position, just like the light-tunnel scene in kh3

the 'oathkeeper' (promise charm) and 'oblivion' (passing memories) also reflected sora keeping his promise to kairi, but forgetting about his to riku, riku might not be affected in the same way that sora does, so this happens:

+ the multiple and many instances, riku is straight up covered by kairi

some of those instances:

kairi is true darkness (ex: sea is metaphor for darkness)

xion (is said to be kairi but proven also to also be riku)

the final world

Power?

honestly, i think kairi is more than she lets on (like LUXU), let's talk about her nobody:

i think it's already suspicious that namine has the power to mess with sora's memories (because she's from kairi's body and sora's heart?) when existing nobodies like roxas and xion for example has powers directly tied to their somebodies (kingdom key), xehanort doing xehanort things, marluxia possessing the same rose petals as his somebody counterpart, (and a lot more...)

so, with a game like kingdom hearts, does namine's powers really came out of no where? we know that sora doesn't have the ability to manipulate people's memories, so who else could it be?? kairi's powers might even be more powerful

this would also aligns with the theory 'riku is light-kairi is darkness' because even at front value the game is telling you 'hey kairi is LIGHT and riku is DARKNESS' time and time again its always the reverse in certain situations, but you never got to wonder what it actually mean

yes riku is the light, but why is kairi the darkness?? yes she sort-of brings demise as xehanort's pawn, but is it really just that?

lastly, kairi is a princess of heart, and might even came from the lost masters era as it is decorated and spammed with stars (every symbol is replaced by stars i'm not joking)

it's very on-theme with the 'traitor' plot point that has been consistent in every khux game, so... (i have a theory that kairi is master ava, or master ava is her grandma, OR kairi is mom... or skuld)

in addition to all of this, i also think that kairi can also be a creature, maybe she's actually a chirithy:

however i do think as opposed to riku as a dreameater (spirit), kairi is a nightmare chirithy, as seen in their color pallet (might be a coincidence but who knows)

[yoroshiu]

Thinking about Kingdom Hearts' narrative with communication.

As with a lot of conflicts in story and real life, much of the most heart wrenching stuff in this series stems from a lack of communication or a severe misunderstanding between characters.

The Foretellers fall apart due to mistrust that was bred in between them, as according to the Master of Master's plan, and a lot of their interactions are full of deceit and witholding information. In an effort for most of them to do what MoM says while simultaneously realizing that they could go against his word to save the world, it inevitably leads to war.

Baldr, in his grief, is kept separate from his friends, alone until the darkness overtakes him and he ends up being consumed by it. As a result, everyone is taken by surprise and there's already too many bodies piled up by the time he's dealt with. Even when Hoder appears before him, they are unable to meet in the middle and turn on each other. He ends up killing many friends and plants a seed into what Xehanort becomes.

The basis of the Wayfinders and Eraqus is that they constantly don't talk to each other properly, pushing each other away until their tragedy becomes inescapable. Eraqus not telling his students about anything Xehanort has done, for instilling such an unforgiving view of Light and Darkness, for not telling Ventus the truth until it was too late. Terra, Aqua, and Ventus not being able to talk or clear things up until Xehanort is already beyond knees deep into his plans, and despite having their love for each other go beyond any possible discord, it is not enough to prevent unfortunate fates that befall them.

The Destiny Trio, especially Riku earlier on, suffers from a lack of communication. While not as turbulent as the other trios, it's Riku's tendency to hide away and lash out that builds the conflict between him and Sora. For one reason or another, a quite literal and physical reason for Kairi, they were unable to talk which goes on and on until RIku gets possessed. And it his shame that pushes him to hide for such a long time in the second game as well. Sora has also picked up on not saying anything, deciding to perish without letting anyone know beforehand, and the full-on effects of that have yet to be explored.

The Sea Salt Trio was built on miscommunication. Secrets, unknowns, caring so much that you believe that it'd be much better to fade away without a word than to burden someone with the pain of truth and knowledge. It drives a wedge between Roxas, Axel, and Xion at multiple points. Axel, who was stuck between loyalties, kept information to himself and ended up driving Roxas and Xion away at one point and another. Xion, who found out the truth and also made big decisions without fully explaining to the other two, also inevitably leaves a grief that digs into them even when they don't remember her. And Roxas, who was the probably the biggest victim of not being told anything, ends up barrelling forward, trust broken up until the pieces finally fell in place and he had to accept his fate in tired resignation.

But it's when love overcomes the lies, clearing them away that these groups of friends can come together and start again.

A lot of the emotional turmoil that Kingdom Hearts displays often comes from the very human act of communication with others and how often we fail to do so. The fragility that comes with one kept secret, or one mispoken phrase. How badly people get torn apart when no one says anything. Yet, it also shows how it can potentially be overcome with enough love and determination to recover what was lost, and even if it's not the same as before, there's potential to make things better.

TLDR; Connections are the basis of Kingdom Hearts. Communication is a foundation of connection. The highs and lows of communication is something that Kingdom Hearts explores extensively in the stories of its characters, and that has resonated with me so heavily that I stay up thinking about it.

[flightofthejackdaw]

I just had a potentially beautiful potentially horrifying brain blast about KH4.

So Riku's trip to Quadratum has a lot of hallmarks of Cinderella this time, including being sent by Fairy Godmother and his Prince potentially not recognizing him. This is something you're probably already aware of.

The Kingdom Key and Kingdom Key D are based on the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven from Catholicism. They also were created by Riku's heart and now belong to Mickey Mouse (Realm of Light) and Sora (Quadratum.) This is probably something else you probably already know.

The Master of Masters has the ability to summon someone else's keyblade into his own hands, as seen with Young Xehanort in Dark Road, implying that he might be able to steal keyblades. You probably already know this as well.

Do you know how the song at the end of Cinderella goes? The one that plays when Cinderella and Prince Charming dance together after finding each other and confessing their love? The song is "So This is Love" and it's very short, but it contains this sweet little line:

"The Key to All Heaven Is Mine"

I think that, at the end of KH4, either Riku or MoM will have either the Kingdom Key or the Kingdom Key D. Probably the Kingdom Key. Probably MoM, since he needs a Keyblade. And poor Sora will have to contend with his self-worth issues about not being important if he doesn't have his Keyblade to save people. We might get a Riku confession, or at least a Riku admitting to himself that he's in love... but the counterbalance might be Sora's self-worth.

What do you think? Am I maybe reaching a bit too much?

Wow, that is amazing! I’ve definitely thought about the Kingdom Key D but wasn’t sure if it was ever going to get brought up again. But you’ve just cracked open a major can of worms there, and it MAKES SENSE!

Also the thing with MoM being able to summon others Keyblades helps a pet theory I have that No Name was never his Keyblade but was always Luxu’s. That either MoM has a different Keyblade or doesn’t have one at all, which would be interesting

It does sound like reaching, but this is Kingdom Hearts we’re talking about and this kind of insane depth is to be expected and this “reaching” is exactly what Nomura wants us to do. As overanalysing and looking deeply into what he has written is such a big part of what makes Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts!

I’ll be keeping this idea of yours in mind when we get KH4. If you’re right you are so insanely smart, and we’re about to get our own hearts completely trampled over if this ends you being true

[holleighgram]

Would be pretty wild if Sora's memories of Riku are his light, and be losing them, he is also losing the light in his heart that makes him the loving Sora we all know?

Take Repliku for example- there was no Ansem in Repliku. The main thing about Repliku was that his memories of Sora were messed with.

And it made him a MASSIVE dick that just wanted marinate in Darkness.

Memories of Sora are integral to him being a good person.

What if the reverse is the same?

We all know Sora's Darkness is more prominent the more the story progresses and it's gearing up to be something he is going to grapple with. Sora has been burying trauma and hurt. He has actively been CHOOSING to forget these heartbreaking memories.

In fact, I think this memories loss/light loss is going to be a VERY important theme in the next saga.

This story is about balancing extremes.

Sora WANTS to forget the "Dark" parts of his and Riku’s relationship. But he cant just sift memories of Riku apart to forget the "Dark" and keep only the "Light".

So by willing away those Dark memories, he's unwittingly willing away Light memories as well.

Which is why we see him forget Riku's Sacrifice, and then also Riku's Light leading him back to the Graveyard.

A "Dark" memory is repressed, and so is a "Light" one.

SO

If, for whatever reason, Sora IS losing his memories of Riku-- particularly the memories of Riku being his light- it has a very negative affect on his heart? We could even see Sora temporarily becoming an antagonist.

We've fought Riku as Sora so many times. It would just be a sweet thematic balance to be able to fight Sora as Riku in order to save him.

It's been said over and over that these two art intertwined-- that they balance each other. Their memories of eachother a formative peices of their hearts. They have each shaped eachother into the person they are.

And imnlaying it all out on the table here: this is why I (personally) feel their relationship (romantic or platonic) is the central theme of the story rather than any other characters:

They are eachorher's light AND their darkness.

Their greatest joy and deepest sorrow.

Their best friend and hardest enemy. (Fighting Ansem and Xehenort weren't nearly as emotionally arduous to fight)

This is a story about accepting both, because that means accepting the entirety of the people you love-- the good and the bad. The light and the dark.

This post got away from me. What was I saying?

[idolish7imagines]

Hi! Can I request how Yamato would act when he realizes that he's in love with someone? Thank you!

Yamato Nikaido x Reader || Yamato realizing he's in love with someone

A/N: ive got yamato fever lately idk why, good timing for this ask tho- you prob were asking for hcs but i feel like it turned out better going into depth about his thoughts in drabble form

.::.

It was perhaps a bit too dramatic when Yamato left the room after Mitsuki oh so confidently claimed that Yamato had a crush on you, citing his evidence as the older man's more tolerant and 'gentleman-like' attitude towards you whether in the group chat or in person. A instances in particular being that he'd be less quick to bring up alcohol or his more sarcastic or perverted comments when you were present in any capacity.

Even more unfortunately for him, Tamaki and Sougo were also in the living room overhearing this, making the former sprout up from his seat excaiming that there's no way the real Yama-san would do that and he'd be replaced somehow. He knew it was a joke, from Tamaki that was something he could roll his eyes and laugh off, but when it became all three of them interrogating them (moreso Sogo just being interested to hear about it) and even Iori and Riku coming in to figure out what the commotion was about..

he knew he had to flee the scene...to his bedroom. Which, while not far, he could expect to not be bothered for an hour or so.

Pathetically slouching in his chair, he smothers his face in a pillow. Of course he himself knew he liked you, that wasn't something to be in denial about...it was the thought of actually being in a relationship with you that he was afraid of.

Sure, he could 'ask' for Yaotome's potentially crappy dating advice, but he's not 16, he knows what common interests you have and how to talk to you normally. Not that he's terribly confident, but he feels like if he did ask you out for real, you wouldn't say no (or at least not something worse than no)

But imagining himself actually with you officially. Cuddling with you, openly flirting with you, confiding in you in the way only a romantic partner could provide...something about that makes his stomach turn, both with butterflies and slight nausea.

Even after the whole debacle with Mitsuki and everyone else, he just...can't bring himself to spread that to you. His repressed trauma, his vulnerable feelings, the way he snapped at nearly everyone..Yamato doesn't think he could forgive himself if all of that got shoved into your life because of him..because he couldn't control himself..what if he ends up hurting you?

What if he ends up hurting you by pushing you away, even? He knows its a habit of his, its something even he gets a little frustrated when other people do, but still, can he really just dump his entire load on you?

A muted groan is let out into the pillow, aimed at no one in particular.

After his thoughts spiraling for a good 10 minutes, a soft knock is heard at the door. By now, he could easily tell it was either Sogo, Nagi, or Iori judging by how it sounds.

He didn't really have any reason to say no to any of them...unless its Iori about to attempt to 'scold' him that idols shouldn't be thinking of dating.

"Come in.." It sounded a bit whinier as intended, but if its noticed, he can write it off as waking up from a nap.

"Yamato." The accent makes it clear who it was, light creeping into the dark room as the door was slowly pushed open.

"I heard about what happened, would you like to talk about it?" A soft, friendly smile spreads across Nagi's face.

Well, even if he has to go through Nagi of all people first, this could at least be a start to finding out how he can be a good partner to you..if that happens at all.

The two talk for a good 2 hours. The other idol was always surprisingly good at giving counterpoints to Yamato feeling bad about himself and thinking you deserved better than him.

Could he force himself to be jolly and click his heels together, determined to ask you out tomorrow? No, of course not.

However, after hearing what Nagi had to say, and attempting to see things from his point of view, it sounded less and less of a bad idea to go for it.

After all, if he didn't ask at all, he'd probably miss out on a lifetime of happiness...not that he'd admit to anyone that he thinks that'd be a possibility if he got together with you-

Nagi watches with proud eyes as his friend takes out his phone, pushing up his glasses with newfound courage.

:: ::

Your phone eventually blips while you had just gotten in from work, putting your coat on the rack after coming in from the cold into your apartment.

Looking down, you'd see it was one text from your close friend.

| Yamato : Hey, u busy tomorrow? |

Seeing that makes your heart flutter, a smile gracing your features. Blissfully unaware what'd lie in store for your and his future, you quickly text back and start to plan what you'll wear.

[animesmolbean]

Guardian of Light

(Female)

Author's Note: This is not related to the story or Dune.

I'm on Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy! I am obsessed! I'm honestly considering writing a fanfic for it before Season 4 comes out in August. Which means I might have to delay the release of the Dune Part 2 story. I have to write it anyway; I only have the beginning finished.

But I am considering writing a fanfic for The Umbrella Academy!

Story inspiration here

Hope you enjoy the chapter! ♥️

〰️

Chapter 4: Off to Arrakis

〰️

It was the next day, (Your Name) was dressed in her normal outfit that was similar to Paul's as she watched him bend down to observe the grass growing on the field they were at.

(Your Name) suspected something was on Paul's mind. He seemed more tense, downcast and more protective of her. He gets like this when something is bothering him. She tried to ask but Paul simply brushed it off, saying he was tired. Not wanting to push him, she always let him be after that.

Paul stood up, turned to the girl and reached his gloved hand for her to take. She takes it without question, smiling softly. The two watched a ship appear from under the water. It was something (Your Name) is still in awe about.

Both of them walked down towards the beach.

When they arrive at the water, Paul removes the glove on (Your Name)’s hand, freeing it of its leather confide. Then he brought her hand up to his lips, pressing a kiss onto the back of it, before letting it go.

(Your Name) watched, with a blush on her cheeks, as Paul walked closer to the edge of the water and bent down, dipping his bare hand into the water, feeling it. She looked where he was looking and walked a bit closer to Paul until she was beside him. Sensing her, Paul stood up.

Paul smiled softly at her before his attention was brought to the sun, shining subtly, a cool expression on his face. She looked out towards the sun too, losing herself in thought.

〰️

Caladan was a beautiful place. Full of luscious plantation, beautiful skies, bodies of water to play in. Not to mention all the seasons it gets; rain, snow, the bright sun.

She would miss it dearly.

(Your Name) was outside, on the beach again. She stood where the sand was before it would go into the water, deep in thought.

Ever since the Bene Gesserit came to test her and Paul, her thoughts were running rapidly. Her dreams became more vivid, and seemed like it was a story playing visually to her with words sprinkled in. But it was still scattered and played seemingly out of order.

She remembered everything from her dreams. The people, the fighting of monsters, the villains they faced and defeated, the friends lost and gained, the sacrifices made for the people they loved most. The eventual happiness they all got once the war was over.

There wasn't much talking in the dreams, but she remembered all the words spoken. The ones that were spoken most were darkness, light, Nobody, Heartless, friends, heart, and… keyblade.

‘It must be the weapons they carry to fight.’ She thought to herself.

There were two names she remembered being said too. There were many names that were spoken in her dreams but two were said the most.

Sora and Riku.

‘They were the two that I see in my dreams the most.’

She looked out towards the horizon. Despite knowing all of this, she was still baffled. Everything seemed to make sense but it also felt so… scattered.

She sighed softly, citing words from her latest dream. When she did, she thought she would feel a presence next to her, and their voice saying it with her.

“A scattered dream that's like a far-off memory. A far-off memory that's like a scattered dream…. I want to line the pieces up - Yours and mine.”

“(Your Name)!”

The call of her name broke her out of her thoughts and she turned to see who called for her.

It was Paul.

He was dressed similarly to her, his hair pushed back just a little.

“Time to go. Father is looking for you.”

(Your Name) took one more glance out to the horizon, saying a silent goodbye, before she turned around and walked towards Paul.

Once she got to him, he offered his hand out to her. She graciously took it as they walked to the ship that would take them to Arrakis.

〰️

(Your Name) and Paul were in a hanger of a ship, surrounded by soldiers supporting the Atreides clan. They stood in the middle of them all, getting ready to walk out and greet people. The pair felt the ship shift, meaning that they have landed at their destination.

“Shield.” a voice commanded. The soldiers followed, turning on the invisible shields.

Paul reached over to (Your Name) and grabbed her hand, giving it a squeeze, making the girl smile softly. A sudden metallic groan makes the pair break apart. The hanger door was opening, the bright light from Arrakis’ sun coming through, making the teens squint and blink their eyes in discomfort.

The Duke turned his head towards the pair, giving them both a reassuring look, making them smile softly. Duke Leto then turned his head back around when the door fully opened.

“My lungs taste the air of Time, Blown past fallen sand…” Gurney quoted.

A man with bagpipes started playing a tune; one that (Your Name) immediately recognized as the Atreides theme; walking out of the ship.

Gurney walked out after, the rest of the soldiers following him. (Your Name) and Paul close behind, the girl looking around at the people of Arrakis, seeing how they had flags representing their group. Then, her attention was diverted when she saw a familiar figure, along with Paul.

“Thufir Hawat.” The duo exclaimed excitedly with matching smiles. They jog over to the man to greet the man, both of them hugging him by his side, the male returning their hug with a smile.

“Young Master, Lady (Your Name)! How does it feel to walk on the new world?” Thufir asked, smiling kindly.

“Exciting, to say the least.” The childhood friends replied with smiles.

The Duke walked up to the trio, smiling as Thufir bowed in respect, “My lord.”

Duke Leto patted his friend on the arm. “How are you, old friend?”

“My advance team has secured the city. We're still smoothing out a few rough spots.” He replied in a serious tone.

The Duke nodded his head, giving Thufir another friendly pat on his arm. The group started to walk away as Thufir greeted Lady Jessica, the others following behind the Atreides.

As (Your Name) walked beside Paul, she heard a group of people shouting something. She couldn't hear it at first but as she walked closer, she could hear it clearly.

“Lisan al-Gaib!” and “Haris Aldaw’!”

The childhood friends turned to each other confused, and the male took the girl's hand as he continued walking, making her follow behind him.

They arrive at an Ornithopter that was prepared for them. Paul and his mother get on while (Your Name) stays back watching the people shouting with curiosity.

That name again. Haris Aldaw’. What does it mean?

“(Your Name).”

Hearing her name being called, she snapped out of her state and turned to look at who spoke her name. It was Paul, a look of worry on his face.

“Are you alright?” He asked, placing his hands on the girl's shoulders, his thumbs rubbing the front of them, close to her collarbone.

She nodded, giving him a faint smile before walking up the ramp of the Ornithopter. She sat down in between Paul and Jessica.

“Let's get you out of the sun.” Thufir told them as he started to fly the Ornithopter, “The heat can kill in this place.”

As they got ready to fly, (Your Name) turned to Jessica, curiosity etched on her face. “They were pointing at us. What are they shouting?” She asked.

“Lisan al-Gaib, ‘The Voice from the Outer World’. It's their word for ‘messiah’. And “Haris Aldaw’ means the ‘Guardian of Light’. A legend that has been around for some time, and has gained recognition. It all means that the Bene Gesserit have been at work here.” Jessica explained to the confused girl.

“Planting superstitions.” Paul stated, joining in on the conversation.

“Preparing the way, Paul and (Your Name). These people have waited for centuries for the Lisan al-Gaib. And with recent sightings of shadow demons appearing on Arrakis, they call for the Haris Aldaw’ to come save them. They see you two, they see the signs.”

‘Shadow demons? Could those be the Heartless?’ (Your Name) thought to herself.

“They see what they've been told to see.” Paul's mutter broke her out of her thoughts. She looked at the boy, who was now looking down. She reached a hand out and placed it on top of his, giving him a sad smile. The action made Paul hum and maneuvered his hand so now they were holding hands.

“We're good to go.” Thufir said and the Ornithopter started hovering above the ground, before taking off and flying off to the city.

(Your Name) looked out the windshield, eyes wide in surprise at the massive walls around the city.

“Shield Wall. Protects the city from the weather and the worms.” Thufir explained, almost like he knew what she was thinking.

The girl sighed, leaning back as they got to the city.

〰️

Arrakis was so different from Caladan. (Your Name) was still getting used to it. Despite Arrakis not having any luscious green plantation or fluffy clouds to admire, the place had its own beauty.

Pale blue sky; it almost looked white. Tall, rocky mountains. The almost white sun shining down on them.

It'll take some time to get used to.

The childhood best friends walked around the city once they arrived, hand in hand. They ended up outside seeing massive palms. (Your Name) swore she heard people still chanting their given names.

“Lisan al-Gaib!”

“Haris Aldaw’!”

(Your Name) wondered if Paul could hear it too. She looked at him and he seemed to tense a bit. He hears it too.

To comfort him, she gives his hand a squeeze. Paul responded by squeezing her hand back, smiling a bit at his friend's gesture.

The pair got closer to the giant palm trees and observed them quietly. That's when they saw a guy watering them.

“Hello.” (Your Name) greeted with a wave of her free hand, her usual smile on her face. Paul smiled softly. He liked that (Your Name) was so open with meeting new people. Always smiling at them.

The male looked up from his watering, “You two shouldn't be out here at this hour of the day.”

‘Must be a peak time.’ (Your Name) thought. “They are out here.” She pointed to a cell full of people.

The man hummed. “Fremen pilgrims. They don't care about heatstroke.”

“I didn't know date palms could even be found out here.” Paul spoke up, looking up and observing the palms.

“Oh, these aren't indigenous. They can't survive without me. Each one of these drinks every day the equivalent of five men. Twenty palm trees. A hundred lives.” The gardener explained.

“Should we remove them? Save the water?” Paul asked.

“No, no, no.” The man gestured to the trees, “These are sacred.” He placed a hand on the tree. “Old dream.” He turned to the pair when he said the last part.

〰️

“The largest and most dangerous organism on Arrakis is the sandworm. Capable of reaching four hundred meters in length.” The voice from the video recording playing spoke as (Your Name) and Paul sat on their new bed together, watching.

Paul was pressed against the wall of the bedroom he now shares with (Your Name). His legs were spread, allowing his best friend to slide between them and lay against his chest. With her body now in between his legs, he wrapped his arms around his best friend's waist. His head was resting on top of hers as they watched and listened, their bent legs caressing each other's, on occasion.

“To avoid making rhythmic noises which attract the sandworms, the Freman cross desert spaces using the sandwalk, a dance-like motion with irregular rhythm. Which emulates the natural sounds of the desert.” Paul switched the recording to a different section, “What scant pain life exists on Arrakis is thanks to the Fremen, who have cultivated deep-rooted terrain plants such as saguaro, burrobush, sand-verbena and incense bush. The shepherd’s tree has the deepest documented roots, stretching more than four hundred and fifty feet deep.”

(Your Name) smiled at a small, adorable creature shown in the video. “So cute.” She cooed in a whisper. “If we find one, can I keep it?” She asked Paul, a big smile on her face.

Paul chuckled affectionately at the girl. “If it'll let you take it.” He teased, giving her waist a squeeze, making her squirm a bit in his hold, but not fighting back. She turned her attention back to the video.

Paul, however, wasn't paying attention to the video. He was looking at (Your Name). He smiled tenderly at his childhood best friend.

‘If only she knew how much I adored her.’ He thought to himself. ‘Maybe I should tell her how I feel. Tell her that I love her.’

The video continued but suddenly, Paul heard a noise, causing him to freeze.

(Your Name), sensing his unease, turned to face him. “Paul? What's the matter?” She whispered.

The boy doesn't reply. Instead, he slowly moved (Your Name), gently ushering her off the bed. She allowed him, trusting Paul as he stood up slowly from the bed as well.

“What's going on?” (Your Name) whispered again. Paul made a ‘be quiet’ gesture with his finger and moved the both of them to the video.

They moved carefully, hiding themselves in the video as Paul crept up behind (Your Name), his eyes directed towards in front of her.

(Your Name) held her breath, trying not to make a sound. After a couple seconds, something suddenly came flying directly towards her eye. The girl tensed up, frightened. Everything seemed to slow down around her.

Before any harm could be done, the door swung open to reveal a servant and (Your Name), thinking fast, dodged-rolled away from the foreign object and Paul caught it and smashed it against the wall.

(Your Name) was panting softly in a crouching position, having nailed the dodge roll. Paul opened his hand. “It's a hunter-seeker. The operator must be nearby.”

〰️

Thufir Hawat walked nervously with some soldiers behind him, dabbing a handkerchief on his temple to collect the sweat build up there.

He arrived at the designated spot where a bunch of other soldiers stood. It was an opening in the wall, pieces of it broken and on the floor. Inside the rectangular hole was a Harkonnen agent, presumably the one that sent the hunter-seeker to Paul and (Your Name).

“The Harkonnen agent was cemented into that hole six weeks ago. Ran the hunter-seeker through a water pipe inside the wall.” Thufir explained.

After everything was cleared up, Thufir stood before Duke Leto and Lady Jessica.

“Sire, I failed you today. There's no excuse. You have my resignation.” Thufir told Duke Leto and Lady Jessica, ashamed.

“You'd deprive us of your talents?” The Duke asked, appalled.

“Sir, my honor demands-”

“They tried to take the life of my son and (Your Name)! The Duke yelled in anger, “I don't give a damn about your honor. You want absolution? Go catch some spies.” He ordered.

“Your Grace.” Thufir bowed his head and went off.

〰️

Meanwhile, on Giedi Prime, Hoke of House Harkonnen, The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Baron Valdimir Harkonnen discuss their plans to rid the Atreides.

“It must never be known.” The Reverend Mother said.

“There's no satellites over Arrakis.” The Baron's gravelly voice said. “The Atreides will die in the dark.”

Mohiam spoke up. “On that matter, Duke Leto Atreides means nothing to our order. But his wife I'd understand our protection and by extension, her son. Allow them the dignity of exile.”

“What of… the other one?” The Baron asked.

“If you can, spare her as well. Even if the Emperor wants her dead.” Mohiam replied.

The Baron sighed. “House Harkonnen would never dream of violating the sanctity of your order. I give you my word. We will not harm them.”

With those words, The Reverend Mother leaves.

A loyal ally of the Baron speaks up. “If the Duke's son lives, along with his friend…”

“No Atreides will live. Neither will that other child.” The Baron told him.

“My lord, you gave your word to the witch. She sees too much.”

“I said I would not harm them. And I shall not. But Arrakis is Arrakis. And the desert takes the weak.” The Baron sat up and slowly started to rise ominously, thanks to his machine lengthening his body.

“My desert. My Arrakis. My Dune.”

〰️

After the incident with the hunter-seeker, Paul kept (Your Name) close, becoming extra protective of the girl.

Paul had explained to (Your Name) what a Hunter-Seeker was, making the girl tremble in fear. She heard of the deadly technology but seeing it in action and how it could've taken one of their lives, scared her.

The pair walked into the meeting The Duke was having.

“Your first strategy meeting. (Your Name), who can dodged hunter-seekers coming at full speed and Paul Atreides, who catches hunter-seekers in his bare hands. Like heroes of old.” Gurney told everyone with slight pride, making the members laugh and applauding the pair when they came in.

(Your Name) rolled her eyes and playfully hit Gurney on the back as she passed by him. Paul paused before copying (Your Name)’s action, “Thanks for the humiliation, old man.” He whispered, teasing the older mentor.

“Gotta keep an eye on you two.” Gurney teased back, patting Paul's arm before the boy went to stand on (Your Name)’s left side.

“Attention!” Someone called, and everyone stood up when the Duke arrived, walking to the table.

The Duke touched (Your Name)’s back and did the same to Paul, patting it before he sat down on the right side of (Your Name). “Let's get started.”

Everyone sat down, “Thufir. Operations.” The Duke started.

“I've secured a copy of the Harkonnens’ account books.” Thufir started, making the people at the table start muttering. “The Harkonnens were taking 10 billion solaris out of here every year.”

“They shall suck at the abundance of the seas, and the treasures hid in the sand.” Gurney quoted, his hands folded on the table.

“We won't see profits like that for a while. Not with the equipment they left us.” Thufir said.

“How bad was it?” The Duke asked.

〰️

Thufir led everyone outside to where big containers of something on the ground.

“These are spice silos. We're meant to fill every crate.” Thufir explained to the group, umbrella in hand to protect himself from Arrakis’ blazing sun.

“All of them?” (Your Name) asked, from beside Paul, who was holding the girl's hand.

Thufir turned to look at her, “Every 25 standard days. Harkonnen sabotage slows us down.”

“But who's meant to arbitrate?” Paul asked, “Isn't there a Judge of Change to oversee the transition?”

“Who did the Emperor appoint?” Gurney asked joining in on the questions.

“Dr. Liet Kynes, Imperial Ecologist.” Thufir answered, “Been here 20 years. Eccentric from what I'm told.”

“I want to see these harvesting fields myself.” The Duke stated.

“I wouldn't recommend it, my lord.” Thufir warned.

The Duke gestured with his chin. “Have this Judge of Change accompany us. A meeting’s long overdue. And we'll get a bit of Imperial protection.”

“A hostage? I love it.” Gurney commented with a smile.

Paul and (Your Name) gave him a look to which Gurney slowly shrugged at the two.

Thufir pressed the chip behind his ear. He looked up with a soft smile. “He's here, my lord.”

Everyone heard an ornithopter flying above them and looked up. (Your Name) smiled, knowing who was coming.

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[andrewwtca]

a Soriku Endgame, Actually essay on Light and Darkness

Also available to read on Archive of our Own.

Kingdom Hearts, with Sora and Riku in particular, has been on my mind as of late. It’s always been on my mind, to be honest, ever since I first got into the series. It’s grabbed my hand and hasn’t let go, especially with all the new lore. And yet, I’ve been struggling to make peace with myself. 

On one hand, I don't want to get my hopes up, thinking that Sora and Riku would ever become something 'more' or that what I’m seeing is anything other than in-depth speculation. I've had my heart broken before and this series means too much to me for me to foolishly dive in like this. 

On the other hand, I can't ignore what the story is telling me, as a literary analysis enthusiast and as a diehard fan. There have been parallels established, setups finally going through, and Nomura has said before that “this series is not intended to be child-focused, and so the complexity of the story is purposely made prominent.” I can’t keep turning a blind eye, knowing everything I know, thinking everything I think. If I did, I feel like I would be doing a disservice to both my experiences with the series and my experiences as a person. 

So yeah—Soriku Endgame, Actually. Today, I’m arguing its canonicality because of the balance of Light and Darkness (or lack thereof) throughout the series. Please enjoy my messy and impassioned essay!

a sky of falling stars

The Children of Destiny is a new concept introduced to us in the finale of Dark Road. To summarize, they are people with the ability to feel what others feel, connect, and become one with them—empaths with Light. 

It appears that the Children of Destiny are all descendants of Ephemer, characterized by silvery hair. There's Ephemer, there's Baldr, there's Xehanort—and, oh yeah, there's Riku. 

Upon the release of the finale, a lot of people—myself included—quickly jumped to the conclusion that Sora is a Child of Destiny, which isn't all that wrong. If we're going by what the games have given us, Sora is very special. What other character has housed five different hearts inside his own? What other character had an entire arc in Birth by Sleep talking about how he felt the pain in someone else’s heart?

But Nomura has insisted since the beginning that Sora is an ordinary boy, that he wasn't born with anything special, explaining that he “had the premise that a heart like Sora’s exists within all the players. Sora is ‘ordinary’, therefore everyone is ‘ordinary.” (Before anyone argues Nomura is just going through a retcon, I doubt he would go through with one to this extent, given how he has had the ending to the Dark Seeker Saga in mind for years.)

Riku, on the other hand, has not been given this kind of treatment at all. He's always been painted as a golden child, better than Sora at everything, being the original bearer of the Keyblade. For crying out loud, he had a light in Birth By Sleep that was seen from space, not Sora. If you factor in bloodlines, it wouldn't be too far off to theorize that Riku is a descendent of Ephemer's line. Riku isn't who most look at first, but all signs lead to him being a Child of Destiny. 

But that doesn't explain Sora at all. He may not have been born special like Riku, but he's special somehow. After all, Nomura did finish his ‘Sora isn't special’ line with, “I figure even if you’re ‘ordinary’, for something important, everyone can exhibit a special power just like Sora.” Aqua even calls out that Sora is the one who can set things right, the boy who can touch others’ hearts. 

And that is where the necklace theory comes in.

Sora has always been associated with royalty, sitting on a throne in box art or having crowns plastered around him—or on him. From his debut, Sora has had a crown necklace that has never been explained. Despite wearing it in every outfit, it's never been addressed how it came to be.

It’s after Aqua and Terra came, judging by the BBS cutscenes of him and Riku. But it’s before KH1, as that's when his journey began. That’s a huge timeframe, from being a kid to deciding to leave the islands, but it's easy to pinpoint a time when considering something the games still never fully fleshed out: the meteor shower. 

In Chain of Memories, Sora and Riku fight over this memory they supposedly both had of Namine one night during a meteor shower. One of them promised they would keep her safe, and it's all cute until we remember that Namine wasn't actually in these memories. And Namine can't make any new memories—she can only rearrange old ones. 

Sora and Riku both share this memory. And the way they fought over this memory gave it the utmost importance. It becomes obvious at this point that the both of them witnessed a meteor shower, and given what we know about their dynamic (and that's a lot), it would make sense to assume it was Riku promising Sora to keep him safe—almost like a charm.

The necklace theory has been around for years, but it’s only after the Dark Road finale that it was expanded upon (or perhaps it’s just me and maybe three others who think this, but I don’t mind one bit.) It isn't just Riku promising to keep Sora safe. In giving Sora a necklace, a crown, Riku has metaphorically crowned Sora. He has brought Sora up to his status as a Child of Destiny, putting all his love into a charm that he hopes can keep Sora safe. 

There’s a flaw in my logic though, trust me, I know. I just said that this meteor shower didn’t happen until after BBS, and yet it’s during the game that Sora feels the pain of others, it’s during the game that Aqua says that Sora is going to be the one to set things right. But I still stand firm in my belief. Riku has always been painted as the golden child, the Child of Destiny, but his love for Sora runs deeper than his love for anything else. 

Riku’s light is the one that brought Terra and Aqua to Destiny Island but Riku’s light shines for Sora; sort of like step one to Sora’s crowning. Riku’s light rubbed off on Sora, ever since they were kids—after all, a Child of Destiny’s power is to connect hearts. Why not connect his own with another? Why not share his light?

Further, in BBS, Sora can feel Ven’s pain and take care of his heart, but he isn’t fully aware of this nor is he able to really do anything about this. It isn’t until KH1 that Sora ever exhibits a power of truly connecting to another’s heart when Sora entered the darkness swallowing Riku and touched Riku’s heart’s light to obtain his Keyblade, explained by Nomura himself. And it isn’t until KH3 that Sora finds the power to wake up Ven’s heart.

Regardless of whether or not I’m right about this, it means Nomura isn't technically wrong about Sora being normal. Sora, no matter what, doesn’t have some divine birthright, but he still has the makings of someone who can bring peace to the world—all thanks to Riku.

This helps set the tone of their relationship, of the depth of Sora and Riku’s bond. It also moves the storyline forward to how they will be the ones to instigate change—but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s first talk about who once were and who they could’ve been.

in another life

Kingdom Hearts is pretty on the nose on parallels between Xehanort/Eraqus and Riku/Sora. Besides personality, Xehanort and Riku are both Childs of Destiny who give in to the darkness and Eraqus and Sora are endless sources of light. But the parallels don't exist to make us empathize with Xehanort/Eraqus: they're to tell us a cautionary tale of what our protagonists could've been. 

So it begs the question, what actually separated Sora and Riku from becoming like Eraqus and Xehanort? Let’s start with Riku.

To recap, Xehanort was a student in Scala ad Caelum alongside Eraqus, who watched all his classmates die. He learned from Baldr about their roles as Children of Destiny and in his grief, became obsessed with wiping the world clean. He wanted a Keyblade War to create a fresh start, void of Light and Darkness, so that the world could try again. 

Riku seemed to have been walking the same road as Xehanort. He stopped fearing Darkness and started dancing on the line between it and Light. Riku was angry at the world and angry at his friends, and perhaps in another life, he may too have wanted to wipe the world clean. 

But every time I compare him and Xehanort, I can't help but think that a cautionary tale isn't what Xehanort/Eraqus is. Because I can't help but think that it just could never have happened to Riku, and it's for two main reasons: 

1) Hope.

Riku has hope in the world. When we look at all the other Children of Light, they all had a Darkness that took them down (although in Ephemer's case, it was a literal Darkness that killed him). Baldr lost himself in grief. Xehanort lost himself in rage. But not Riku. 

When Xehanort saw that the world couldn't be fixed (to how he believed it should be), Riku did not even see a world that needed fixing. Riku saw the world in all of its complicated glory. For instance, Riku is one of the first characters to acknowledge the feelings of Nobodies; their pain, and their love. He doesn't see them as an extension of Darkness or Light. They simply are. 

Riku believes in redemption. It's been his entire character arc, after all, to redeem himself and walk the Road to Dawn, a term coined way back in CoM. Ever since then, Riku has been closely associated with the sunrise—night turning into day. Darkness becomes Light. Redemption. This symbolism is shown in box art, said in interviews, even his Keyblade is called the Way to Dawn. 

The fact that Riku was even able to think of the Road to Dawn proves that he's nothing like Xehanort. Xehanort believes that there is no redemption because the world needs to be wiped clean. But Riku believes that there is a road he can walk, a road he can take to salvation because the world is not good or bad, but made for people to live and learn. But how? How was he able to walk that road? He has hope, but how was he able to use it? And that's the second reason. 

2) Sora. Riku has Sora. 

It may feel a bit obvious to say, but it's true: the fact that Riku is Riku; Sora is Sora; and their relationship is the way it is, is the key to why they would never have fallen to the same fate. We don't know the full extent of Xehanort and Eraqus's relationship, but it's safe to assume it wasn't as kind or loving as Riku and Sora's ever were. The two would play as kids, promise to keep each other safe, tell secrets—the two became princes of destiny together, destined to fight their way home.

I can't see Xehanort and Eraqus as anything more than students in a fucked up situation. Because when things got bad for Xehanort, he didn't think of Eraqus as his guiding light. He only thought of what he lost. There’s even a line in Dark Road of Xehanort hearing Eraqus crying in the other room, yet he never comforts him, never approaches him. They suffered alone, too afraid or perhaps too blind to reach for one another.

When things got bad for Riku, he saw Sora. He saw how Sora loved Kairi and sacrificed himself for her, and he saw that Sora was forgiving towards him. The reason why Riku and Sora didn't end up like Xehanort and Eraqus is that they simply aren't them. Their bond is deeper and their love is stronger, and Riku’s hope is simply stronger than Xehanort’s ever was.

It’s important to emphasize that this truly is a feat that only Riku (and Sora, one day) could’ve accomplished. It's natural to us that Riku, one of the series' protagonists, was able to do this. It's easy to shrug off the balance he managed to strike between his Light and Darkness, but for so many actually in the series, it's an incomprehensible thought. Mickey even stated in CoM, that Riku introduced Light and Darkness in a way nobody has ever seen before. To understand how this affects Sora and Riku’s relationship, it’s important to understand the way things currently are.

the light we pass down

Light and Darkness are the very core of this series. Light represents the connections you make with others, while Darkness represents the lack thereof—those with Darkness in their hearts are those who walk alone, while those with Light are those with many friends around them. Darkness is selfishness, and Light is selflessness. 

Darkness is usually framed as an inherently evil source in many stories, but it's something that cannot be extinguished. Light needs to be there to balance it. 

But Kingdom Hearts seems to be going down the path less taken—yes, Darkness isn't 'good', and it isn't desirable to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. But the series is asking the question many like to ignore: when does Light become Darkness? 

In nearly every game, you can trace one character fed into the illusion that Light is good, everything else is bad, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. MoM to his pupils in Union X; Odin to Baldr in Dark Road; Eraqus to his children in BBS; Yen Sid to Mickey in forbidding him to speak of Aqua; Donald and Goofy to Sora in telling him that their ship runs on happy smiles. It is generational trauma. 

A cycle of hypocrisy has been forced on not only the 'defenders of Light' but 'agents of Darkness.' Xehanort doesn't care who he hurts as long as he can get his own idea of balance in the world, believing his judgment to be supreme to others—despite his initial thoughts in Dark Road, that unless someone's heart is pure Light, how can one know for sure what is right and wrong? To which Eraqus responded that they as Keyblade Wielders held the supreme judgment towards morality. 

Again and again, this cycle of defending what they believe is good and Light repeats, hurting themselves and hurting others, and even Sora is not free of this hypocrisy. While he doesn't go out of his way to hurt others the way Xehanort has, he is capable of hurting others: Riku was hurt by Sora in KH1 when he was silent when Kairi suggested leaving him behind or when he shrugged off Riku going missing in Traverse Town. In CoM, when the idea of him ‘abandoning’ people was presented, he acted out harshly and completely rejected the idea (this is all another parallel to Eraqus!)

He even denies the idea that Riku has hurt others. Despite Riku acting out of his own free will, the reason he feels the need to atone and walk the path to redemption, Sora believes that the Darkness was forced on Riku by others.

Sora has been carved into the same mindset as so many others, the idea heavily tackled in Dark Road, that Darkness is only brought upon by others, and that it needs to be expunged. Sora is a firm believer that the Darkness is something to be eradicated, such as with his encounter with Vanitas in KH3. When Vanitas states that he is simply Darkness, Ven is quick to understand and even accept. Sora, on the other hand, rejects this and insists that it isn’t okay. 

Even our series’ protagonist is unable to shake himself from this self-righteous, black-or-white thinking. Riku is the only character in the series who has formed an actual balance in himself, with all other characters having to pick one side. Lea, Xion, and Roxas leave the Darkness of Organization XIII and become Keyblade Wielders. Terra embraces his Light, Aqua leaves the Realm of Darkness, and Ven is literally separated into a being of Light and Darkness (although not out of his own volition).

The series is not framing any of these things as negative—there’s nothing wrong with embracing Light. However, these characters are falling into the same cycle that the generations before have; they will once again be faced with a Darkness too deep to defeat and ignore. It must be talked to, reckoned with, and faced with open arms. Riku has been the only one able to return the hug and walk away.

We’ve explored what makes Riku’s character arc so significant and what Sora’s flaws are, and it’s time to dive into the murky waters of the future.

when does the sun become the night?

Sora. Oh, Sora. I love you, Sora. Now let me tear you and your smile apart. 

The parallels between Xehanort and Riku are very on the nose and easy to distinguish; meanwhile, Eraqus and Sora are a bit more challenging. 

In BBS, Eraqus is the Master of Aqua, Terra, and Ventus. He forms a bond between them, as one would expect, mentoring and looking out for their well-being. The Light in his heart is strong due to his connections with them, alongside being a Keyblade wielder. Although not perfect (feeding into Terra's insecurities about his Darkness, cough), he does care for them. But when the world falls to Darkness, Eraqus doesn't hesitate to be selfless, to give up his connections, the Light in his heart, to kill them to save a greater good. As long as someone somewhere can benefit from his actions, he isn't harming.

But is that selfless? Is sacrificing for a 'greater good' truly selfless? Is there a line between the needs of the many and the needs of the few? Or is there a certain ‘darkness’ that comes with these acts? Disregarding yourself, disregarding others, selfless yet selfish; it's not the right thing to do, and the series doesn't hesitate to frame it as that. What Eraqus did was wrong. He hurt others, even if he refused to acknowledge it.

And yet, no one seems to make any noise toward Sora. 

Sora is a Guardian of Light. He is the cheerful protagonist who makes everyone smile and feel better. Ever since the first game, when Donald and Goofy (although not with ill intent) told him that the Gummi Ship runs on happy faces, he's been under the precedent that his emotions do not matter in the greater scheme of things. In the long run, what matters is that others are safe, the people he cares about. 

Once again, like how Xehanort and Riku deviated in terms of having hope, this is where Eraqus and Sora begin to deviate from their parallels. While both are selfless to the point of ‘darkness,’ they show it in dramatically different ways. Eraqus is willing to hurt the people he cares about (and by extension, himself) to serve this 'greater good', but Sora is only willing to actively hurt himself. 

I feel the need to remind everyone that this is a teenager we're talking about. If we weren't in a franchise partially owned by Disney, I feel like more people would be willing to call this what it is: suicidal. This is not Light.

We've already seen ways that this harms Sora outside the narrative and the whole getting sent to Quadratum thing in his Rage form. Sora transforms into a drive form that’s oddly reminiscent of his time as a Heartless and can unleash powerful attacks that lower his HP (hmm). Furthermore, this form only appears when his HP is low (double hmm) and stated by Nomura, “based on him going into a rampage state, controlled by feelings of anger (triple hmm).”

Back inside the narrative, the climax of KH3 was Sora believing that he's worthless without his friends, genuinely worthless, and unable to fight at all. This is the very definition of a Light gone too far when remembering that Light is the connections you form with others. With too much Light, Sora lost himself. He couldn't find himself past who he was for others.

In the section prior that broke down generational trauma as it appears in Kingdom Hearts, I mentioned that Sora does not only end up hurting himself but passively hurting others around him, most notably Riku. Sora is unable to understand that Darkness is not the absence of all good but rather the shadow that simply follows you around. Sora cannot understand that Darkness is not something to be shunned, to never talk about. (This could also be tied back to his Rage form—while he does not actively channel his anger to hurt, that is what happens; only to never be acknowledged by him.)

(Off-topic, but I find it funny that Sora, who is so keen on the idea that Darkness is Not Good, was only ever to have a proper conversation with Riku in the Realm of Darkness. It’s very telling to their characters.)

Kingdom Hearts is setting up a narrative that Light and Darkness cannot exist in excess. That Light doesn't exist to balance out the Darkness, to stop it from becoming too strong—you need Darkness to exist as well. 

Sora has gotten this far along the story and still hasn't managed to learn this, because it’s just not something you can learn (or unlearn, rather) on your own. Because this kind of thinking isn’t undone with hours of contemplation; in a fitting Kingdom Hearts fashion, it’s connections that lead to the revelation.

the roads we walk

Xehanort and Eraqus fall out with each other. They stop talking and sever the connection with each other. That was a core reason things got as out of hand as they did for each other; they weren't keeping each other in check. Xehanort's Darkness left him blind and unable to see that there was Light after all, and Eraqus's Light blinded him and left him stumbling with a Keyblade for a 'greater purpose.' Their hearts fell too far to one end of the balance, leaving the scales unbalanced.

Riku and Sora do not have that. They have a connection like nothing seen in this series before—Riku had literally raised Sora to become a Child of Destiny alongside him. The Light of their hearts is just so awe-strikingly bright. 

Sora, however, has lost himself in all his light. He is stuck in the same bright room that Eraqus was, stumbling around with his Keyblade. But where Eraqus was forever lost, Sora can be found: because where Riku had Sora to guide him to the Light, Sora will have Riku to guide him through the Darkness. 

Riku spends the majority of his character simply proving that he is capable of redemption. It takes him the ending of a game to realize the errors in his ways and another game to figure out the solution he must fight for, and these weren't revelations he finds on his own—he found the first with Sora and the second (in CoM) with Mickey and Namine.

For Sora to even have the revelation that he cannot keep shutting out the Darkness in him unless he wants more pain for himself and others, he needs someone to help show him that is an option. And who else but Riku, who is living proof that existence isn’t just black-or-white, Light or Darkness?

Riku is Sora's foil. A foil is a character who either has pronounced differences between themselves and the protagonist or is so alike that a contrast appears. Riku is the ladder, similar enough to Sora that one can begin to make assumptions about where the story is heading. Their similarities aren't hard to find: they both hail from Destiny Islands, they both have a love for adventure, they both were assumed to walk a path of Light for the rest of their lives, and they both care deeply for each other. The contrast begins in KH1 when Riku begins his fall to Darkness while Sora remains firm in his standing.

Riku’s arc ended with acceptance; he needed to accept the Darkness and the Light inside him to find peace. It’s only natural that his foil, struggling with the same imbalance, would go through a similar arc but still different enough to be his own.

It isn't just the story telling us this. Riku has always been associated with imagery of dawn, the breaking of Darkness into Light, and Kairi is always associated with imagery of dusk, the breaking of Light into Darkness (which is a conversation all on its own). Sora, on the other hand, is associated with a large blue sky (his name, after all, does mean sky.) It's not hinting towards a journey of any kind—not a redemption like for Riku.

He is the daylight. He is the Light in everyone's lives. But ‘Sora’ doesn't mean the day sky. It simply means sky. Sky, at day or night—and I don't mind if you call me reaching at this point, but it feels like it's calling out to the fact that Sora needs to accept that he is both Light and Darkness, the way the sky is both day and night. 

Nomura has even stated in an interview before when asked about the two different versions of the Dream Drop Distance illustrations that he “wanted its composition and look to remind [the player] of the title’s catch copy, ‘Darkness becomes light, light falls into darkness.’” The parallel structure of the tagline serves to mirror the parallel structure of Sora and Riku’s paths, Sora’s road to night and Riku’s road to dawn.

But I digress. Exhaustively, it’s very apparent that Sora is heading toward a climax, a Darkness he cannot ignore. His breakdown in KH3 was left unspoken, unresolved, and his disappearance only contributes to the fact that he’s heading toward another breaking point, where the cheerful protagonist can no longer remain cheerful. But like in KH3, something is going to be the same: Riku.

At his lowest point, it was Riku who was next to him, telling Sora that he believed in him. It was Riku who carried on when Sora couldn’t. Riku is going to be key in Sora's journey to night. Riku was able to find his Road to Dawn by remembering Sora. He was able to walk by remembering his love, his passion, his everything, and it was because of Sora that Riku found balance. He found the Light within himself, and he learned to accept that the Darkness would always be a part of him, the way it is for others. 

Sora's arc will be spun into motion because of Riku. The next installments of Kingdom Hearts are setting up that Riku's dreams are the key to finding Sora, implying perhaps that it may be Sora and Riku all alone in a world. Whatever the case, Riku is going to be by Sora's side, as that is where they are at their best, to face Sora’s worst.

And it's fitting. Riku had to go from Darkness, defined as a lack of connections, to a balance with Light, having connections. He went from his isolation, wearing a blindfold and not being able to face anyone, to being the charming Riku we all love, fighting alongside the Keyblade wielders. His journey would have him open up, so he would be joined by memories, ghosts, not by people until he began to embrace others.

Sora will be going from Light to a balance with Darkness. He'd be going from connections to a lack (though not in the same extremes that Riku did), in a sense. Understandably, he can’t do it alone, make such a drastic change; he'd need someone.

This change, this balance, this emphasis on connections, it’s guiding us to what the narrative has been trying to tell us all along.

we can be the darkness, and the light, and the sunsets and sunrises too

When asked about the theme of KH3 and the entire series, Nomura answered, “It’s in the title: hearts. The consistent theme across the whole series is ‘What is a heart?’”

Kingdom Hearts is going to be doing something unprecedented in not only a lot of media but in its world itself. While the idea of Light and Darkness existing within characters is not new, the characters aren't exactly behind that idea. Most of the Keyblade Wielders and Guardians of Light cherish the Light above all else—while all the primary villains worship the Darkness. They fight for a balance but don't fully grasp that within (nearly) all of them lies both entities. 

Riku seems to be more accepted in the world, as he did join the Light in the end. But what Sora would do is... just absolutely bonkers. He will be embracing a Darkness in him, the same kind that Terra and so many others were taught to push out. Sora will be... well, a teenager. Happy and angsty and all the things teens are.

This is where Kingdom Hearts has the chance to seal the deal, to fully welcome this balance of Light and Darkness: a relationship between Riku and Sora. 

For all Guardians of Light, there is a generational trauma hanging over their heads and haunting them, and Sora will need to accept his Darkness to combat it, but the story can't end there. The games have been building up the idea that Sora will be the one to bring change to the world, that Sora will be the one to end this cycle. He won’t just accept his Darkness but lead a new age. He will be the one to show that there's a different way (or really, only one other way) to move forward:

Love. 

Unconditional love. Not love depending on whether they fit the wielders' definitions of Light and Darkness, not love depending on the amount of Light in someone's heart, not love clouded by hypocrisy. Just pure love, forever forgiving and growing.

So who better for Sora’s love than Riku?

Let’s get all the arguments for Kairi out of the way first. Some may say that Kairi could still fulfill this role of spreading love in the next games, but that’s only if her role in the story is completely revamped. She represents friends growing apart as they grow older yet remaining close. While Sora and Riku represent a balance between Light and Darkness, Kairi represents holding a Light close to your heart, even when it's so far away; fitting for her story of being ripped apart from her home.

The games keep pushing the friends' growing apart narrative rather than pulling from it, having Kairi remain with Aqua to train while Riku goes after Sora. There is little space for Kairi to suddenly walk a road to dusk that leads to romance. Especially because it’s Sora and Riku who are the Children of Destiny, they are the ones who will connect to other hearts and bring change, not Kairi. Her lesson would be for herself, not for the world to see. 

A relationship between Kairi and Sora would just be backtracking on this message. Sora needs to accept his Darkness, but joining forces with a Princess of Light does not challenge any norms, it does not provide a new answer. It makes sense because the core of Kingdom Hearts isn’t a Prince and Princess of Light—it’s two boys who saw the night sky fall one day, two boys who grew up together, two boys destined for something greater who write their own paths anyway. It’s Sora and Riku. Nomura himself has stated that “Sora and Riku represent the theme of the Kingdom Hearts series, which is the ‘light and dark sides of the heart,’” the essence of this essay. 

Carrying on, some may stop me here and say that their love doesn't need to be romantic for a point to be made. But I argue that there is no other way.

Romantic love in stories often serves as the culmination of the story’s themes. In Leigh Bardugo's books, her romances serve to show the importance of love and healing. In the Shadow & Bone trilogy, Alina has the options between the Darkling, representing power, Nikolai, representing nationalism, and Mal, representing love. Just love. Not one befitting of a Saint, someone to change the world, but that’s not who Alina wanted to be; she just wanted a happy ending. Shockingly, she picks Mal. In Six of Crows, Kaz and Inej's romance, both traumatized teenagers, serves to show that you can heal and you can love. They're both scared of people, scared of intimacy and yet they still love with all their scars on display.

In Revolutionary Girl Utena, the romance between Utena and Anthy reaches its climax at the end of the show, displaying the vulnerability of both girls and the rawness of their feelings. But most importantly, it drives home the message: that the power to bring revolution is not the power of a prince or a witch. The power to change the world is love. The only way to change the world to be suitable to live in is through love. The power, a revolution, brought by love.

Romance is a revolution. It’s often saved for the last act of stories because of how it acts as a thread between all of the themes. In Kingdom Hearts, the theme needing weaving is balance: balance between yourself and others, balance between selflessness and selfishness, balance between Light and Darkness. Sora and Riku getting together would be Yin and Yang—a boy who had to accept his Darkness and a boy who had to fight for his Light. They complement each other and fill where the other lacks. 

Likewise, a relationship between them stresses the importance of connections. Tai Yasue, co-director of the series, has stated that “the theme of the KH series is ‘connections of the heart,’” and the narrative will take advantage of any opportunity to let that theme shine. Previously, many defenders of Light would sacrifice their connections with others for a greater good. But Sora and Riku choosing to love each other, choosing to love the Light and Darkness in each other instead of trying to chase away their Darkness, is showing that love is their other option. 

Sora getting with Kairi challenges nothing. It tells the others that Light must be with Light, that good must be with good. Even their grand attack in Re:Mind is two giant angel wings where they proclaim, “Light!” Sora and Riku, however, show that Light does not mean good. It shows that people can do bad things, and it doesn't make them bad, because people are not black and white. Like two kingdoms forever at war with each other, finally coming together and realizing that the other side is human and that you can't simply demonize them.

Sora and Kairi say there is nothing wrong with the world. To carry on. Sora and Riku say that there isn’t anything wrong with the world; it’s the people looking the wrong way. There is nothing wrong with what’s around us. Nothing wrong, nothing right. “Nothing is whole, and nothing is broken.” It’s simply being: being Darkness, being Light, being both, being neither.

It has to be Sora and Riku. It's always had to be them. Riku brought Sora up to the status of a Child of Destiny, and their journeys were led by each other, their character development taught by one another, and their acceptance will come from (an eventual) conversation between the two about their pain and hurt and Darkness, it’s all always been leading here. To this moment in time where they show the world all the hurt they hold and how they carry on with.

All of that, and loving each other? 

They are crossing the line, as Hikaru Utada sings in Don't Think Twice. They are going to be crossing every line established in Kingdom Hearts, and this is their power. Their revolution. Their predetermined yet self-made destiny. The payoff for years and years of searching and yearning and pining and chasing is a love that brings revolution, and oh...isn't that just romantic? 

That is the answer to “What is a heart?” The heart is the love you have, despite it all. The heart is the connections you make, despite it all. The heart is your Darkness and your Light and your experiences and your fights, despite it all. The heart is Sora and Riku, despite it all.

grant us the power to bring the world revolution

A lot of this analysis really depends on whether or not you believe Sora and Riku are in love with one another, I realize. You may agree with me that it seems fitting that their coming together as a pair would catalyze all the themes in Kingdom Hearts, but you disagree that it means they'd ever be a pairing. Which, I'd like to thank you for at least hearing me out. 

The queerness of their relationship means there will always be naysayers to them getting together, there will always be people claiming that I'm reaching. I do not care if you see them as brothers or ‘just’ really good friends. I see a love story. I see a love story and a love story saying to love, above all else. Do not judge others for you don't know what is wrong or right, for you are biased, for you are flawed, for you are human. Love others for that is the heart's will. Love.

I see that their getting together would be a testament to that love. To that forgiveness, to those flaws we have. It would be an acceptance of Riku's pain and Darkness that he mysteriously doesn't want to acknowledge, it would be an acceptance of Sora's pain that he's been bottling up ever since the beginning of his journey, and it would be an acceptance to the Light they both share. It would be the balance that so many generations have looked for and couldn't find because they did not practice acceptance, only judgment. 

Sora and Riku getting together is acceptance and it's proof that love is the answer to a generational trauma that has been around ever since the beginning of time. So yeah: Soriku Endgame, Actually. 

Thank you so much for reading! I’m a really big fan of stories about light and darkness and the balance between them, stories about love, and just Kingdom Hearts in general. I didn’t want to keep these thoughts in the back of my head and I’m glad I wrote them all out, even if it’s messy (and a shocking 6k words long...) Kingdom Hearts is a bit messy, after all.

If you're interested in more about Sora and Riku's relationship or just literary analysis of KH in general, please check out Constructing Kingdoms on YouTube, as it helped give me the words to write a lot of this essay. Further, if you're in total denial that there is any queer text in Kingdom Hearts, please check out this amazing video essay on Riku being gay. 

That's all I have. Please feel free to share if you have any disagreements or if any parts really spoke to you, or if you have anything to add, or anything really. These two live rent-free in my mind, and I don't mind talking about them or about how they're just so perfect to change the world.

Thank you. Spread love (and the Soriku agenda.)

[organizationhimself]

just kinda having some thinky thoughts about how dark road totally rewired eraqus's character and what a phenomenal job they did.

like here's your problem you have. you need to take this cloistered old man who raised his students in the jedi way, somehow put up with Old Man Villainy being That Way presumably on the regular, lost every last iota of his shit and turned on the Apocalypse Child he adopted as well as his surrogate son who was infested with The Evil (which the series has long established as not necessarily being good or bad without context) to say nothing of the headtrip he gave his direct heir, and you need to reduce him to a version of himself as a child that is. like. fun. someone who has a genuine friendship with xehanort and is regarded by xehanort as someone who is a "sly fox," i.e. not the sort of buffoon who tests for mastery of the keyblade by child-proofing some orbs of light.

where do you even begin?

YOU TRAUMATIZE THE UNGODLY HELL OUT OF HI--okay i'm getting ahead of myself, let's start with principles.

because eraqus is principled. he believes really firmly in the light in a way that's nearly sora-adjacent in its intensity, but the thing is that sora has this flexibility that eraqus was simply not raised to appreciate. yes, nomura, we understand you like the bright sunshine one and the wry brooding one, you did it with sora and riku, god knows what you did to axel's spine to fit him into the sunshine kid's mold next to isa as brooding anti-crybaby, and now we're doing the same thing to eraqus. ok. i love it when you're optimistic, let's do it.

so first we need confidence. easy; he's a smug little rich kid. worked for riku didn't it? (source: kh1 manga, and the fact that you cannot convince me anyone can maintain a kid with that build on a budget) but we also need to see how dark road changed him as a person. let's contrast his uptight stick-up-his-ass future with a present day class clown who doesn't take things seriously; a headstrong fighter who jokes that he'll just run away. and hey speaking of emotional damage, let's start easing into the inevitable terrible, horrific, unspeakable traumas we're going to visit on this defenseless creature with a little one as a treat:

HIT HIM RIGHT IN THE GRANDPA.

and there you go! we now have a source for eraqus's rejection of the darkness that is not simply a function of his career as a jedi keyblade master, but has an actual personal experience he can point back to in order to say "hey, darkness is the pits!! here is why." it sets the stage early for him to be already butting heads with xehanort, who takes a much more flexible look at the worlds and the way they work and is more willing to view things from the perspective that he is not an authority on the moral peculiarities of whatever world he is currently inhabiting.

xehanort is also a child of destiny [citation needed]. an isolated visitant who was born for finer things but never slept a day in his life without waking up with sand in his mouth until he reached out and took his fate in his bare hands and let it drag him all the way to scala.

where he met the blueblooded child of a keybearing legacy thousands of years in the making, just like his.

and suddenly what you have are unwitting equals. we're ready to set them both up at the chess board; eraqus's legacy is plain, he moves first and he makes no apologies for it because it's his birthright. but xehanort's half of the board is still buried in shadow, implied but never stated, never surrendered to eraqus's probing questions or revealed by his moves, but already aimed at a clash with destiny, fated, inevitable.

shall we say, already written.

and this is brilliant!! now we have a source for our "sly fox," a reason for xehanort to be extremely familiar with the way eraqus thinks (and not to star wars on main but the obi-wan kenobi series did something really similar to this narratively by using anakin and obi-wan's familiarity with each others' fighting styles to predict the actions they would take in a situation, and i will actually never be over it in my life, absolutely stealing it for a xehaqus fic sometime, just shamelessly mugging ewan mcgregor in the street for that solid gold good shit). not only that, but we also have an explanation for xehanort's motivations as described by kh3. he is not looking at the fight from the perspective of one of the pawns; he is looking at the fight as a player, deciding which pawn gets taken. selecting which rook to sacrifice in exchange for the queen.

and eraqus is opposite him, doing the exact same thing (sort of, kh3 was a little cerebral with that), but there's an important difference here that we'll come back to later on.

so, okay. we have a vague outline in the shape of a sunshine kid now. he has confidence tied to his role in society, his legacy gives him perspective, his trauma ensures that he will one day calcify against the darkness with such emphasis that he will unwittingly pad the therapy bills of an entire generation. so far so good.

but uh, yeah, his kids? he fights them? like okay, axel has his differences with his kids too but he's not trying to kill them (mostly). eraqus really definitely for real is, and ven is defenseless. so that'ssss...hard to square with the sunshine kid we're building, nomura, how do we explain that? we really can't handwave it as amnesia this time, we're not working with ansem the wise here.

(BALDR. BALDR IS HOW--

ok but wait wait wait, before we even get to baldr, there's something we can do:

make eraqus impulsive.

and i mean impulsive. make eraqus spoil for a fight with so much unmitigated howler monkey energy that he will fight his friends just to vent. (this isn't even a unique thing, riku and xion and even sora do it all the time, and we're not here to talk about ven's crimes against miners but it's clear that violence is a spoken language in kh.) eraqus is fluent, so we're making it so that all of eraqus's intensity and passion can be focused on a single point if xehanort pushes exactly the right switches in his head.

and then, y'know, yeah. make baldr slaughter all of his classmates, several of them right in front of him, because of unchecked darkness and baldr's own inability to see past his own grief and resentment for long enough to understand that all he's really doing is inflicting his own suffering on other people in a murderstorm of nihilism and bitterness. unrelenting trauma conga line, check.

and now we have almost all the elements. eraqus's principles can't allow him to accept darkness, both because his grandfather was lost to it and because it left him (by all accounts a bourgeois slacker at the bottom of his class, someone vidar doesn't even consider as a candidate for one of the lights despite what baldr has to say about eraqus as a light source) one of the only survivors of an event that completely resculpted his life and community. time to pack him off to the jedi temple land of departure to be least okayest teacher of the year, right?

well...no. we need eraqus to wait.

because he doesn't take on students. and doesn't, and doesn't, for decades. first he fights xehanort, and as we have established he is spoiling for that fight (white moves first!). and then when xehanort finally visits him to drop off that half-dead kid he found (ven was like that already shhh), he's kind of like politely like "oh, you have apprentices. they seem...bright," like he's congratulating eraqus on finally reaching a life stage that eraqus should have hit approximately 50 years ago, and eraqus is like "yeah yeah whatever shut up anyway YOU'VE got one too now right." (yen sid talks about the role of "seeker" like it's a different thing from "keyblade master" so that's where i'm extrapolating this distinction from, but regardless i don't think anyone ever seriously expected xehanort to take on students.)

my point here is that eraqus waited until the last possible opportunity to take on students. to carry on the legacy that was so important to him as a child, and to re-experience the closest thing to the camaraderie he had as a keybearer-in-training that he could ever have back. that is how impactful baldr's actions were for eraqus.

i'm veering completely into speculation now but i think eraqus was terrified. how could he not be? his class wasn't even taking the mark of mastery and still got decimated by it. how could he risk going through that again, but from odin's perspective this time? what guarantee would he ever have to avoid the same tragedy his master had failed to prevent?

so, NOW we know why eraqus's mark of mastery was a handful of light pinatas and a duel. (i like to think xehanort felt a certain level of professional embarrassment for him and wanted to make it just a little more like a real challenge.)

(this is a sidebar and i'm going to talk about my other blorbo for a second but terra has a beautiful dream of being a sly manipulator. that's why he doesn't worry about investing himself in villain schemes, because he assumes he'll see the snare coming before he gets his head caught in it, but it's never coming from directly in front of him like he expects. so this is a dream that will never come true, but he has it, and i think given what we knew about eraqus as early as blank points, its only possible source is a master who was strict and exacting, but--very occasionally--also a sly fox who secretly delighted in his students' nascent abilities to surprise and outwit him.)

back to the trauma, we also have, obviously, the explanation for eraqus's attitude towards terra, and later ven. terra is a tragedy in slow motion that eraqus has seen happen before. baldr was unable to control his darkness; it overwhelmed him, and eraqus does not have the context that xehanort does, that baldr was in some ways a product of his own darkness-shunning society. even if eraqus does have that context, i can't really see him agreeing with it--and even if he at one point agreed with it, he would have gotten that context from the same guy who last showed up at his house talking about kicking off the apocalypse for the vine.

so like. eraqus has never seen any damn thing in his whole life that doesn't confirm his bias against the darkness. does that make him innocent of parenting Incorrectly? no, he is a Bad Dad. does it explain his hopelessly unsuccessful parenting strategies? yes, it does.

what it reinforces is also that eraqus didn't want to have to fight terra and ven. the original bbs is honestly not very good about establishing this: he cries one Sad Tear. yawn. still child abuse, asshole! the stakes in bbs are also not very well established, because there's approximately six people in it and some of them are just the same guy over again, so we don't really have a sense that terra being taken over by the darkness is like...gonna mean something to eraqus that is sincerely worth the personal cost of killing him. since we're clearly no longer worried about ven, there aren't other students to protect (besides aqua, but she's a really hard sell on the "needs to be protected from terra with so much urgency he must not live another moment" front). there is no immediacy to ven's status as Apocalypse Child; if anything vanitas seems like the obviously more important threat, and maybe eraqus should be less concerned about weeding out students and more focused on vetting friends like Old Man So Clearly The Villain My Guy. bbs eraqus is just genuinely hard to like as a character.

but now we have dark road context.

and white moves first.

eraqus is not seeing terra or ven in that moment, he's seeing baldr. he's seeing the summoning of kingdom hearts that almost was, and he is gripped by meticulously prearranged, bone-deep, irrational, traumatized, unbridled impulse. the emotion must vent. the thing he was powerless to stop has returned to haunt him and he must resist it. he knows what will happen if terra strikes him down here and heads back out into the worlds in search of other hearts, other lights. he knows.

but terra resists, using the full spectrum of his strength without remorse, and it is only when eraqus's keyblade is ready to fall from his hand that he realizes the truth:

My own heart is darkness.

and when this happened in the original birth by sleep all i could think was yeah star wars dad!! nailed it your heart IS darkness you fuckin dillweed, about time!! what took you so long!!

but after dark road, this context is completely changed. eraqus is not just realizing that he fucked up.

he is realizing that he fucked up the exact same way baldr fucked up.

that he let his own grief and suffering cloud his judgment and guide his blade to strike out at his loved ones. that instead of finding a way to live with what's already happened to ven, what was long ago fated for terra, he turned his resentment outward and gave that darkness leave to consume them both whole.

but unlike baldr, eraqus regrets it.

it is that moment that xehanort cuts him down anyway, not because eraqus can't be saved the way baldr couldn't but because xehanort is cleaving away the last of his own attachments to the world so he can follow through with the rest of his plans, and i am SO NORMAL ABOUT THI

but okay anyway. eraqus has exactly one move left.

he can't see the board. unlike xehanort, he has no extra pieces of himself he can just bandy about; the warriors of light must assemble without any of his direct input, chasing the echoes of eraqus's students and pushing and pulling in reaction to xehanort's steady advance through the center. he has only one chance. he can't afford to waste it.

the kings are meeting in the middle of the board. the stalemate will come any moment, when they're both out of moves and out of time, leaving the fate of the worlds undecided.

and it is at this moment that eraqus pulls the same penultimate move that xehanort himself used on baldr, confronting him with the first victim his darkness ever struck down. eraqus almost doesn't have to say anything, at all, because xehanort has to know what it means. has to know what it says.

xehanort resists. the world is too far gone. too many horrible things can happen in it; it must be reset. not purged and filled with darkness, like baldr wanted, but returned to a state that can never mutate into the conditions that made baldr exist in the first place. that doomed all their classmates to die. it's too late.

For us, perhaps...but not for them.

and now we go back to the distinction.

the thing that makes xehanort's chess game different from eraqus's is that, for xehanort, it's only chess. the pieces he's moving have ceased to exist in his mind as individuals. they are pawns on a line of white and black squares, and they may weave away from his will here or there but they cannot be swayed from their march.

eraqus never forgets.

and it's actually eraqus's capacity for forgiveness that i haven't even touched on yet. this isn't a word i ever expected to associate with him, but eraqus spends dark road forgiving. five minutes after any altercation he's already forgotten about it. name-calling. arguments. rejection. opposition. full-on fighting.

murders.

when xehanort kills baldr, eraqus is still calling out for him to stop. when xehanort later strikes out at him with darkness (the thing eraqus is scared of the most!!), permanently disfiguring him, eraqus has already forgiven him before seeing him the next time in person.

he does not forget that baldr is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want him to be killed for it. that terra is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want to see it consume him. that ven is a person in spite of the darkness that was cleaved from him, and eraqus doesn't want to see it return.

(if you think about it the real tragedy is that we were robbed of him looking aqua in the eye and telling her that she isn't tainted forever, that it did not take her, and even if it had, that will always, always matter less than her finding her way back. i refuse to believe terra was not already made aware of these facts.)

but he also does not forget that xehanort is not a faceless player in the skies, impossible to convince of the significance of a pawn; he remembers that xehanort, too, is still a person.

this point is important because eraqus's last move is not a checkmate (I KNOW HE SAYS CHECKMATE but it is not checkmate), but it is calculated to produce something else: a concession. he doesn't need the board to support his win or xehanort's loss; he needs the player on the other side to put down the pieces and follow his beacon out of the dark.

and that is how nomura shows us our sunshine kid at last, fully formed, as he takes xehanort's burdens from him and spirits them both well beyond the reach of the board.

anyway yeah microwaving him in my brain along with axel (and also roxas and terra because if i don't collect all my blorbos AND their hot mess dads i'll never fill out my pokedex).

[mythicalartistx]

So people blame Terra....

And it's not his fault.

Like essentially he wanted to do good and he wanted to help people.

Maleficent manipulated him like she did with Riku.

Terra and KH1 Riku are actually similar

Xehanort was probably a mentor he looked up to and he didn't know he was bad. Like from the viewer everyone is like he screams bad guy it's Xehanort— but Terra didn't know this.

Xehanort planted the seeds in his head and had him use darkness. Though Darkness isn't inherently evil, Eraqus was only worried.

Because of DR events where the darkness killing all of Eraqus and Xehanort's friends, Eraqus was worried for Terra. Xehanort , however, by experiencing that and seeing that went astray after the fact. Eraqus however knew this about Xehanort.

Maybe he thought he changed with putting Ventus in his care.

But because of DR events, Eraqus was worried and wanted him to be safe (he viewed him like a son) and would rather him just stay at the land of departure.

That's why he tasked Aqua with watching him. But at kh3 Eraqus admits he shouldn't have done what he did.

First seeing BBS you think oh he's a bad teacher when actually he's one of the better ones. He's just worried they will turn out like what happened in his and Xehanort's past. He only knew darkness as bad at this point too, they didn't have anyone like Riku who is in the light but also used Darkness for good

He keeps Ven sheltered, asks Aqua to bring them back and watch over them, and has Terra go out to prove Eraqus is wrong.

But by having them leave, Xehanort takes advantage of it.

Eraqus admits he was a foolish teacher and asked so much of them.

The reasons Terra was different from Riku is that he knew that darkness was bad and didn't want to use it. He then uses darkness to protect Ven something Riku probably would have done and that's when Eraqus realizes what he did was sorta wrong too and that he shouldn't have raised his hand against them.

However, Xehanort, takes that opportunity to attempt and kill him as Eraqus hides in Terra's heart.

Xehanort set the three of them on a path that led to distrust and separation.

It's no one's initial fault. It's bad circumstances.

After the final battle, Aqua saves Terra by sending him and her armor to the world of light.

And before anyone says she shouldn't of done that because he ends up causing his problems with Xehanort obtaining his body, Aqua didn't know that would happen.

Literally none of the characters knew the outcome of things. They didn't know Xehanort was filled with darkness, trying to sway them. Ventus lost his memories from being split from Vanitas.

They trusted their master for some reason let Xehanort around, that's the only thing I honestly really question.

He probably was just wanting to reconnect with their tragic yaoi

I see people hate on Aqua too but it's not her fault. She didn't really let being Master go to her head, she just wanted to do what was right and what she was told. Again because of separation there was distrust.

Anyone it's just Xehanort's plan, no one is at fault.

[soratsuart]

grisps yyou

CHrome lore

Twst and kingdim

LooLookLooks

It did sent :)

Warning for long ass rant, there is So Much I got to say about Chrome <3

Also here are some YEARS OLD REFERENCES JEEZ I NEED TO DRAW THEM AGAIN, these are from before I even used my current art program 😭

Anyway, long rant under cut, you've been warned! (Also, Salt, I know you don't know much about KH, so feel free to ask me any clarifications you might need)

Chrome comes specifically from Union X because it's my favourite game story wise (gameplay it's KH3 if anyone cares) and they were originally supposed to take the role of the Player with only a few adaptations for their story. Many things have changed since then, although whether they become a character outside the player or if they still take up their role but with many changes and rewriting to fit their story it's something I still have to sort out.

Anyway, on to their story. Chrome comes from Not The Best background, which is reflected in their personality. They are initially a very gloomy and depressed kid, very insecure and shy. They were rather lonely and an easy target for darkness, which is something they struggled with for the better part of their first arc. Things start to change for them when they become Gula's apprentice (super self indulgent, I know, don't @ me)

There is A LOT that happens from here as it follows the events of the game, but it would be too long to explain. I guess most important stuff to mention is Chrome befriends or at least meets all the relevant characters for after the war BEFORE the war happens, so they're friends with them all, but specially Ephemer (influence from them originally following the main story as the player character), in fact, he's the one who gifts them their scarf! They also have many insecurities and expectations on them which they carry through the entire story and play a big role by the end of it all.

Long story short, they end up like the Player character only in their case they did actually get possessed by the Darkness. However, due to reasons, they manage to end up in the present time. How??? Well... Remember that one time we thought we get reincarnated as Xehanort??? Yeahhh, that's too good of a concept to not use, so I kinda took it and adapted it. Basically, their heart time travels to the future when Xehanort is born and they pull a Ventus, hiding inside his heart for a long time while their body falls into the darkness as a Nobody and they remain in the Realm of Darkness wandering alone without being attacked since they don't have a heart until KH 1, when they manage to cross back to the Realm of Light and end in Traverse Town, although without any memories except their name (they also had an encounter with Aqua at some point, but not very important rn)

From here they're helped a bit and through interactions with others they start to form a new heart. Their biggest connection initially is with Riku since they feel a strange familiarity with him (gee, I wonder why), which is great for Maleficent since she wins another pawn (they don't trust her). Of course, they come around and along with Riku they help Sora close the Door to Darkness, and later on end up in Riku and Mickey's team for CoM and KH2.

There are a lot of events happening here but they're too long to explain. The main take away is that, as Chrome's new heart forms and they regain their emotions and personality, they become motivated by the wish of recovering their memories and finding out who they are and where they came from. Throughout the saga they discover more and more about themself, their relation to Xehanort, their missing original heart and the people from the very few memories they manage to recover (specially after Castle Oblivion). By the end of KH3 and Xehanort's defeat they recover their original heart and theoretically their memories too, although that last part is happening at a very slow pace that is making them impatient and anxious, but they're doing better at least.

Now, as for their crossover with Twisted Wonderland? I like to imagine it happens either in the one year Kairi is asleep revisiting her memories or directly after MoM ending and Riku leaving for Quadratum. I imagine Chrome somehow finds this strange world (maybe fictional much like Winnie The Pooh book?) that is Twisted Wonderland, a world where the villains they knew succeeded, and are alarmed by it, so they're sent to investigate by Master Yen Sid and find a big focus of darkness within NRC, which is why they decide to enroll there (originally taking the role of Yuu again, but sometimes I like to mix them with Yor being there too).

Now, Chrome is not the same sad kid they once were. They're now a Keyblade Master, much more confident and cheerful than before. They're kind and soft spoken and the kind of person who screams "should have gone to RSA" with their every action, but alas. They are trying to investigate this new world as they deal with NRC students, the history that is so different from what they know and the darkness lurking in the shadows, and througj it all help thesw characters who are in the middle of everything while trying to get their memories back. I include Heartless and more KH lore for this specific crossover tho, so it's always fun to see some charas like Crowley and Lilia recognize what a Keyblade is from legends (also, I'm so tempted to say Crowley's stuff is a Keyblade since it looks like one anyway, but I have no clue what to do with that idea so it remains an idea)

Anyway, that is a very, VERY, summarised summary of Chrome's story and their appearance in Twisted Wonderland

[blowingoffsteam2]

not to be that person, but to be that person - do we think there’s a potential for Riku to end up being a “prince of light”? sort of like how the disney princess’ + kairi are referred to as the princesses of light? Basing this off of the “riku is the light” theory as well as the potential discussion of his lineage in kh4….maybe he’s really royalty? OR maybe he’s Sora’s prince of light since Sora pretty much ended up becoming a child of destiny via touching Riku’s light and that’s why Aqua told Sora to take care of Riku when they were kids ? Idk it’s very much giving a prince ( Riku ) and knight and shining armor ( Sora ) vibe. What do you think ?

Oh absolutely there’s potential for something like that. I don’t know if it would be exactly the same as the princesses of heart (could they even use darkness like Riku can?) but I definitely think he’s /something/ special. Seeing as the crown necklace was almost definitely Riku’s- and the Kingdom Key- him being some kind of royalty wouldn’t be surprising at all. It’s just a question of what exactly the sort of royalty are we talking about here? On one hand I think there’s a strong possibility Riku is a descendant of Ephemer, and according to what we know about missing link, his descendants are basically treated as royalty or an upper class at least. But I also think there’s more going on with Riku than just that. His body might be descended from Ephemer but what about his heart? Well there are theories that he is “the True Dandelion”, the child of destiny, even the avatar of Kingdom Hearts itself analogous to Data Riku being the avatar of Jiminy’s Journal. Honestly he could be all of these things.

One mystery that I think could be connected too is the “seven crowns” that were brought up only once in khux. Could it just be a gender neutral term for princesses/princes of heart? Maybe. I’ve also theorized it is referring to the seven pieces of light that were shattered from the original x-blade which iirc are what the 7 hearts of light protect

[pretty-weird-ideas]

Xehanort and Friendship

I’m such a big fan of the concept that Xehanort and explicitly Terranort do think that his friends are his power. But more specifically him abusing his friends is what gives him power. 

Because when you look throughout Xehanort’s story and how far he’s gotten you see how his power is built by taking the good will, love, and acceptance that others have given him and using it for the power of evil. It’s not that he doesn’t use the power of friendship. He just doesn’t give his ”admirers” (and those that worship him out of fear) much in return.

His friend’s being his power is why he consistently is seen rubbing shoulders with others. Why he calls the organization his “Friends”, why he choses to hunt those who he has connected with in the past. He didn’t kill, maim, and later puppet around random “Nobodies” (unintended pun). He chose to hunt for people he knew intimately for years. The people he had known since he was a baby(Ventus, Marluxia, Larxene), the children he saw grow up (Riku, Ienzo), he didn’t just chose the guys next door. He chose people that cared for him too much to hurt him at first. He chose those whose hearts he could see into.

Xehanort’s dynamic with Eraqus in BBS (and the 23 year old timeskip in DR) and Terranort’s speech in KH3 was so important to his character. In KH3 quite literally says, “The chains of your friendship is what binds you” while using chains to bash them into the floor in the KH3 climax. He knows that they care too much to hurt him when he’s in BBS and Terranort. His ability to hurt them is because of how close he is to them.

In BBS, Eraqus is hopeful that he can “fix Xehanort” but Xehanort’s aware that Eraqus is attempting to do so. He completely takes advantage of Eraqus’ willingness to accept Xehanort. Eraqus’ hope for better, his savior complex is a part of his plan. I could go on for hours about how Eraqus’ savior complex and self-confidence that he will essentially talk-no-jutsu Xehanort out of his issues is how Xehanort and Eraqus end up where they are in BBS. Eraqus thinks that he can just hug the problems out of Xehanort. In fact, Xehanort barely hides his evils for a second around Eraqus, and yet Eraqus still forgives him unflinchingly. He has literally admitted to great villainy while Eraqus makes googly eyes at him at age 82! That’s some commitment to the “I can fix him” ideology.

This issue is brought to light even further in DR where Xehanort and Eraqus fight over Vor thinking about leaving the group. Eraqus tells Vor that it’s best that friends remain friends forever, while Xehanort mocks this idea wholesale and verbally tells Vor to ignore him and leave. Here, Xehanort questions the idea if being close with Eraqus is as “good” as a deal as he advertises. Eraqus sees himself and friendship as a whole, as a permanent and neverending good. Something that can fix every issue, heal all wounds. And Xehanort disagrees, seeing friendship as something that changes, and also something that can be unhealthy. He sees a neverending friendship with Eraqus as a trap, even when he is currently friends with Eraqus. When Eraqus  pitches a fit over Vor drifting away as a friend, Xehanort gets very snippy, and equates being his friend as a type of imprisonment of sorts. He confronts the idea that Eraqus’ savior complex in it’s early stages is an ends up controlling and trapping his friends. (This later becomes deeply hypocritical as Xehanort quickly veers into literally turning his friends into meat puppets... but ya know). But this is where Xehanort’s opinions of friendship being a tool rather than being an emotional relationship becomes apparent.

(Don’t get me started on how the MoM quite literally talks to Xehanort about how people can love you as a type of darkness to cast doubt on Eraqus’ relationship with Xehanort, while also forshadowing Xehanort manipulating Eraqus in return. The MoM names things like jealousy, possessiveness, and attachment issues, as things that are soon to follow in their friendship.).

Xehanort, especially since his powers hinge on other’s hearts, sees love and friendship as transactional. It’s all about what he can get out of it. Sora is using the power of friendship, Xehanort is abusing it. He’s aware that these people would kill for him, die for him, even become him. He simply doesn’t care. Xehanort is very convinced of the power of friendship. He’s just selfish and knows that people can give him power, and he can give nothing in return. That’s a huge part of his martyr/God complex mess he has going on. 

He is quite literally the: “I would die for you,” “You will” interaction personified.

[yoroshiu]

Moments of Love in KH That Make Me Lose it Just a Little (Only Just a Little I'm so NORMAL About This I Promise) (In no particular order)

Player willing to act possessed by Darkness so they can sacrifice themselves because they KNEW Ephemer wouldn't attack them otherwise. To trap the rest of the Darknesses, they trapped themselves altogether until the end. THEY KNEW WHAT THIS WOULD MEAN FOR THEM.

RIKU DREAMEATER RIKU DREAMEATER RIKU DREAMEATER What do you mean that, EVEN WITHOUT KNOWING, this guy SENSED that Sora was in danger, DIVED into his dreams, and became HIS DREAMEATER, a being that PROTECTS SOMEONE from NIGHTMARES. And I must reiterate that Riku did NOT know until told.

So you're telling me that even though Xion was SUPPOSED to be completely wiped from people's memories, Axel/Lea's grief ran so deep that he still could vaguely recall her and shed tears at just the blurry sight of her. Roxas kinda makes sense since both he and Xion were inside Sora at this point (still hits me like a truck anyway), but something about this happening to Axel/Lea in KH3 makes me tear up a bit!!!

TERRA, through the SHEER WILLPOWER of wanting to protect his friends and make things right (+ Doom Slayer type rage), was able to leave a will that possessed his empty armor and beat THE CRAP out of Terra-Nort to the point of AMNESIA. Not only that, he was willing to destroy his own body if it meant if he could protect Aqua and Ven. Bro endured YEARS of being torn apart and spread to different people and places, but still was able to help others in those times of need (When Aqua fights Terra-nort (though you can defeat him without encountering the Terra thing), when Aqua was in the RoD, when the Guardians of Light were in Trouble, etc.))

And that's not even mentioning what Aqua and Ven did for the sake of the others in their trio. Aqua saving Terra and letting herself fall into the RoD, or Ven willing to completely shatter his heart for Terra and Aqua if it meant taking down Vanitas.

Riku Replica, even though he learned that his own existence and memories were farces, still cared for Naminé so genuinely that he fought to give her a body so she can go on living.

When everything went to crap and Sora and the others pretty much died, Kairi had managed to HOLD onto Sora so he could still remain in the world

Sora is so concerningly self-sacrifical that this guy can easily STAB himself AND break universal taboos that lead to him being wiped by the universe to save his loved ones (he should really stop doing that >.>)

Also Sora telling Roxas that he deserved to be his own person has me going FERAL, I am BITING and SCREAMING. The fact that through EVERYTHING, the reality of the existence of Nobodies hits him, and he takes away that Roxas is his OWN person (and this was right before Roxas dumped all his memories on him) and tells him as such word for word. I AM IN SHAMBLES.

And there's so many examples I could go on about! I've definitely missed a lot of big ones. I promise I'm normal about this series, I promise!!!!