#feral kairi is my whole soul

[strayheartless]

Things heard in the Land of Departure part 3:

1 | 2

Aqua: you have until the count of three, and then I’m wrapping you both in duct tape.

Xion: hypothetically, if I were to, say, illegally smuggle a certain blonde haired nobody with mysterious memory powers out of radiant gardens… how likely do you think it is that I’d be pursued by the law?

Terra: extremely… why?

Xion: you may want to be wilfully ignorant of the blonde girl in my bedroom then…

Roxas: *to riku* do you think your going grey because of excess stress? Or are you just naturally that ugly?

Sora: I would like to preface this by saying that I asked Terra, who said no. So, then I asked Aqua who… also said no. But then, I asked Riku and he also said no, but in that way that totally means yes.

Riku: I really didn’t…

Ven: I just gunna hot diggity dog my way out of here and hope for the best.

Riku: I am not often proud of my acts of violence, but there is something so funny about watching Roxas get knocked on his ass by a wind spell.

Sora: “expect the unexpected” I’d rather unexpect the expected to be honest. The unexpected is getting predictable.

Kairi: I told Ven about that time I jump scared Riku so bad he fell out of a tree, and he tried to reassure me that I wasn’t to blame. Like I wasn’t fucking proud of that shit!

Roxas: I could do that yes, but the thing is, I have my heart set on being a hinderance!

Isa: sometimes I come out here just to think… but mostly I come out here to rehash arguments that happened five years ago.

Xion: I’ve had enough! When you come to write my eulogy say “she was nice, but she was shit at executively functioning.”

Ven: Vanitas can be labeled as many things: my darkness, the evil twin… the strange creature under the bed you take pity on but absolutely would beat to death with a lead pipe if it were to venture father into the room. The list is endless really.

Terra: what’s nice about getting to work with Riku as an equal is that I don’t have to stress about fucking up, he does that all in his own!

Riku: hey!

Kairi: Do you ever think about how human life is so fragile, you could end it instantly and never feel a single thing?

Everyone else: *takes a huge fuck off step back*

Riku: Being someone’s most important person is exhausting. I could decimate whole planets sephiroth style and Sora would still be like “he’s just a little guy!”

Aqua: Do not tell Sora that! mainly because he's impressionable, but also he's dumb as a brick.

Terra: when arriving in a new world there are three things you must remember: 1. respect the world order; 2. always respect the authority of those you are lending a hand to; and 3. There is a certain financial limit we expect you to adhere to when atempting to bribe local law enforcment to 'forget' what they saw Kairi just do.

Lea: Isa is the ‘moon’ to my ‘sun’, the ‘sky’ to my ‘land’, the ‘irreversible fuck up’ to my ‘realised he was evil in the first week’, the ‘I can fix him’ to my ‘let me brake his face with this chair’!

Isa: I said I was SORRY!

Lea: *mumbling* yeah well, love you too.

Sora: I don’t cry, I leak occasionally, it’s a hazard.

Riku: please get help.

Roxas: we are literally begging you.

[zephyrises]

{ re:mind thoughts & feelings!

i’m absolutely not gonna run through every single detail, especially when it comes to things i’m solidly neutral about, but i live to write about my impressions, so here they are!

**WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!!! please be cautious!!!**

negatives:

my biggest concern going in was how they’d handle kairi, and while having her be playable for the duration of a major battle is a huge step forward and you can tell they put a lot of effort into her moveset and animations, everything else felt like two steps back and i’m not very optimistic for her future. despite the entire premise of the dlc revolving around her, she says and does so little. most of her lines, if you can even call them that, are just Sounds. affirmative hums or confused, “huh?”s. which is a huge nonverbal mood, but doesn’t work as a mood for HER seeing as she’s a very talkative and forward individual. it’s almost like she was only there to be rescued, look pretty and nod along with whatever sora says! reaaaally don’t like that they put her into a coma for an entire year, either. everyone else’s roles in sora’s search seem so proactive and hers is completely idle, like usual. they could spin this around and have her traverse the sleeping worlds while she’s unconscious, but i’m not willing to give the team that much credit until i see it for myself.

we’re retconning vanitas being the wholehearted manifestation of ven’s negativity and darkness now, huh?? he was his own entity beforehand, you say?? they’re not halves of a whole anymore?? okay. cool! absolutely detest that with every fiber of my being and it makes zero sense, but great! canon is only established to be rewritten on a whim, after all! (it’s NOT! not like THAT! what the ever living HECK!)

plot holes, awkwardness and rushed nature of the climax and ending is still grossly present. there’s nothing anyone could have possibly done to remedy that short of reworking all of it entirely, so i wasn’t expecting it to be remedied, but it sucks to relive it for the 358th time.

the ~20 minute segment where it’s all base game gameplay and unaltered cutscenes is torture.

when you consider the price of the base game and the fact that the ~4-5 hour long story campaign was so thoroughly padded with re-used content, $30 is kinda steep.

not to be mean, or anything........ but............ all of the story content in particular.............. probably should have been in base game kh3 in the first place.........................

positives:

terra and riku recognized and talked to each other! ven and roxas shared compliments! those are DREAM interactions, right there.

exploring scala was amazing! everything was expansive, detailed and beautiful and it was very nice to receive explicit confirmation that it was built up from the ruins of daybreak town, even if that was pretty obvious.

visuals and aesthetics were gorgeous in general. kh is always really good about that.

for as many issues as i had with kairi’s writing and presentation, her and sora were ADORABLE. that floaty, twirly hug! their finisher! their added cameos in the ending sequence! PRECIOUS....

battling as an op version of roxas filled me with carnal energies i haven’t experienced since i was 16 years old and i’m honestly living for it.

voice acting was prime! i had some beefs with base game deliveries but everyone really brought their A game for the dlc, however little or much they spoke. naminé, vanitas, yozora, yuffie and cid sounded the best, imo. master xehanort’s new voice actor also did such a wonderful and standout job even though he had two massive pairs of shoes to fill. rest in peace.

it has lots of limitations and there are a couple of design decisions i don’t agree with, but photo mode is a PARTY and i’m gonna be going absolutely feral with it when i have more time/energy.

the uncontested BEST PART was the guardians of light working together to battle off the xehanort replicas. it screamed personality and charm and left room for cute little character interactions that the cutscenes didn’t. i’m super impressed with how well they pulled it off from a technical standpoint and would adore seeing more segments like it in future installments.

Little Ven Things(tm):

really appreciated sora lunging to try and catch ven when he was flung through the air because that’s probably as close to a canon hug as i’m ever gonna get.

not sure what to make of the “Darkness” lurking in his heart because i don’t ux outside of what i hear from friends, but i’m so ridiculously interested to see where it goes. his arc’s not over yet, kids!

hearing ven say, “vanitas. you’re coming home too,” destroyed me on the spot. that’s gonna be playing on loop in my brain nonstop to infinity and beyond.

i like my vans and vens with a healthy dose of banter and to have vanitas go on a contrary monologue in response to ven’s extension of kindness, then see ven turn around and say, “okay! fine! fuck you, actually! go away, then!” was RIVETING. ripped straight out of my soul. 10/10. absolutely do not endorse the retcon nonsense that prompted it, but i’ll take what little i can get.

he and aqua were such a good combo in battle and i never got tired of watching their limit. i’ve complained before about how limits were one of the biggest things missing from bbs and this really made it up to me.

HE WORE HIS CAPE!! it was only for a split second but HE WORE IT!! AND HIS ARMOR!! my son is off to the realm of darkness to find his crush and he’s gonna look dashing as hell the whole time he’s there.

ven and riku are the oldest of the minors and their heights are still so wildly different. i eat seeing them next to each other up and re:mind did it at two different instances. god bless.

i’m sure i’m forgetting a subject or two, but that’s definitely the gist of it!

all in all, i went in with pretty low expectations since base game kh3 let me down so badly. re:mind disappointed me too. i’m just not gonna let it bother me much! regardless of the path canon takes, doing the things with ven that i wanna see done is still my MO. that’s why i roleplay in the first place!

anyway, i wanna end on a good note, but i’m honestly unsure of what else to say since i’ve rambled on for so long, so here’s some snaps from the very first scene i made in photo mode! }