#bc girl characters have a bad history of sucking ass and being pointless love interests or damsels in distress to motivate the male mc

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

an umbrella kairi ramble:

like, they give us kairi potential—

and then they don’t do anything with it.

they give us some more kairi potential—

and then they don’t do anything with it.

they give us /more/ potential—

and then they don’t do anything with it.

but it’s not “bad writing”. it’s not “nomura hates women”.

IT’S KAIRI.

KAIRI HAS POTENTIAL BUT DOESN’T DO ANYTHING WITH IT. SHE CONSISTENTLY FAILS TO SUCCESSFULLY EXPLORE AND MAXIMIZE HER POTENTIAL BECAUSE SHE AS A CHARACTER IS STUCK.

SHE WAS INTENTIONALLY WRITTEN TO /BE/ STUCK. IT HAS TAKEN HER NEARLY 20 YEARS TO EVEN TAKE THE FIRST STEP TO BECOMING /UNSTUCK/. IT WAS GRUELING AND BORING AND ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING. BUT THAT’S THE TYPE OF JOURNEY SHE’S BEEN ON. And it wasn’t an easy one, for her or the audience.

But the thing holding her back isn’t the writing, nomura, misogyny, or any other bs.

It’s been Kairi herself.

Kairi, being the person she is, having the mindset she has, has been holding herself back. She is her own biggest obstacle, and that’s what I keep trying to explain.

And it’s not that kairi holds herself back by “being a shitty character”. She literally just has a stagnant world view that HASN’T DEVELOPED OR GROWN OR CHANGED SINCE KH1.

That is canonically her role. The one friend who doesn’t want her life, friendships, or world to change. Regardless of the reason, that’s her character. That unwillingness to change is what Kairi EMBODIES.

So it makes COMPLETE sense for people to become frustrated and hopeless. It makes sense that people are “pushing” her, begging and praying that Kairi “do something” already. Because we genuinely want her to succeed.

But think of a person in real life. Sometimes you can’t just PUSH someone to grow when they’re not ready, before it’s their time.

And that’s what i get frustrated with. I completely understand that the role Kairi plays will purposely ELICIT that type of reaction, of pushing and expecting and anticipating and pushing—only to be let down again and again.

But it’s a shame some people don’t realize that she’s been set on this path with no end with /purpose/.

And now that she’s straying from that endless path, people are sighing with relief. “Oh, /finally/, they /fixed/ her.” As if she as a character just happened to be broken and needed mending.

Like, no. She is /supposed/ to be broken. Character wise, and story wise. We even get an explanation for what broke her. But people still act like she’s just been a poorly written, unlucky girl character who got shafted for the sake of the two main characters.

Like, that’s literally the embodiment of her story. She /is/ a poor, unlucky girl who got yeeted from her home and family at like age four and she’s been traumatized and trapping herself in the past ever since.

“Well, her story should be of kairi /actively working through her trauma/, instead of just doing nothing.” Except that’s not how it WORKS. Not everyone will just “deal with their trauma” right away, or even decades after the traumatic event. Many kh characters /do/, but they’re not kairi, and kairi isn’t them. She’s living with her trauma in her own way, and I want people to understand that. Even if it’s unhealthy for her, even if it comes at the cost of making her story “boring” and uninteresting. Trauma doesn’t always have to be packaged as some action-packed superhero story that’s fun to consume. Realistically, it isn’t, and that’s why i think kairi’s way of living with her trauma is under-appreciated. She represents a story that’s underrepresented in media.

But it’s like some people “do not see it” and just, shit on her. Like, fair, you don’t have to love her or even like her. A PERSON LIKE KAIRI can be hard to love to some people. That’s a hard truth. People in real life won’t wait around for you to get your shit together, sometimes. That’s just how it goes.

But I’d like for her role, the journey/story that she embodies, to be appreciated, at least. It’s done very well, and very subtly. She isn’t written to be EXPLICITLY OR EXPRESSLY “the one who falls behind bc of trauma or weakness”. She just /IS/, and that’s why people genuinely don’t recognize that she has a role of her own. A necessary evil, in order for the payoff to be worth it once she does grow out of it.

Like, think of Riku. His necessary evil was falling to darkness. And he worked like hell to climb his way out of it.

The difference between riku’s and kairi’s necessary evils is that Riku’s is more interesting on paper. It’s Riku against an Outside Force, as well as himself.

Kairi has little to struggle with other than herself, her own stagnant character and trauma. It just isn’t as interesting when there isn’t any physical embodiment of her internal struggle for her to physically fight against (such as Riku vs Ansem). Xehanort /was/ both her internal and Outside Force, but he’s been controlling her behind the scenes. It’s all a very good metaphor imo, bc it meant Kairi literally never got to confront him face to face until recently—ONLY FOR HER MEMORY OF SORA TO FIGHT HER BATTLE INSTEAD.

Which is maybe why lots of people hate that fight.

But as with everything, it was definitely done for a reason. We just don’t know why, yet. At face value, it really just seems like Kairi was (subconsciously) unwilling to face her Outside Force, even within her own mind. This was her chance to confront the cause of her trauma face to face, and she didn’t. Again.

See what I’m saying? But maybe now she’s beginning to realize that she has to become stronger, physically and mentally, in order to steel herself against the battles to come, both external and internal.

Anyway, this is all my opinion and personal interpretation. I’m not saying my interpretation is factually correct and that i’m tryna indoctrinate people lol. And it’s only one of many rambles i’ve jotted down 😭😭😭 I just want Kairi’s role to be understood, even if it’s to understand how difficult it is to appreciate lmao.