#god i love riku

[teashoupie]

i often forget tumblr exists. Anyways.

I have this new hyper fixation called

✨KINGDOM HEARTS✨

[maibeloved]

My Heart’s Descent

[dreamsy990]

just made a post about kh making like half the cast clones so heres some clones for you

[igirisuscones]

stuck playing a simulation of you

[funtime29nm]

Soriku week day 1: Hollow

I only read the faq AFTER DRAWING THIS help ill be more on theme tmrw trust

Prompt list here and held by @sorikufanevents I believe!

[hamburger-helper-official]

It's that time of year again! Riku design created by @nikutsuneart

[daylighteclipsed]

Y’all ever think about if Sora falls to darkness that inside his heart will look like the Destiny Islands falling again

[itagakimizuki]

HAGIWARA RIKU & YAGI YUSEI | ELLE JAPAN 2023

[robotsafari]

i havent even watched legacy yet but that fucking kh world did some.. unexpected things to me (update: i watched it. the movie was okay. <- short for im deranged about it but it missed so much opportunities and omfg i cant list all of my thoughts here.)

[linagram]

sillies!!!! feat. linagram 2 characters :3

[kaisertheadvisor]

Society wants us to dress up "normally". I say, "fuck it" and say dress however you want to. Which of course, means doing all these crazy fashions that are sure to attract eyes on you:

[felikatze]

dark road's side cast. vor's arc of feeling like a dead weight to her friends so she forges her own path with the upperclassmen and come back to her friends a keyblade master - but it is her new confidence that spells her downfall, as she throws herself into a battle she could never win.

vidar starting the same as baldr, hoping for kingdom hearts to save his friend. but he realizes his mistake, that this cosmic force will not solve a personal conflict without dire consequences, and he course corrects - too late. his hesitation and his mercy have set free what he sought to defeat and doomed him.

character arcs, offscreen - felt only in echoes. never to be seen, and cut short. the tragedy of lost potential.

[isan0rt]

Hey crazy thought but maybe Kairi wouldn’t seem like such a ‘wasted character’ if this fandom would quit taking everything of narrative and thematic significance about her and assigning it to Riku constantly all the time.

(The evaluation of the ways in which Kairi and Riku are important and vital foils for each other got kind of long so it’s under a read more; to be clear, I love Riku so much, and it makes me super mad to see his narrative also being undermined by this trend, this is not a hate post.)

Kairi and Riku serve opposing but complementary purposes in the narrative. Kairi represents light, but she also represents the stagnation of the light. Many characters who are associated with just light are also associated with stagnation and a resistance to change. Hoder and Eraqus are particularly extreme examples, but Aqua exemplifies this as well. They want a predictable world where things stay as they ‘should’ be and they are threatened by changes to the status quo. Eraqus in particular refuses to change anything about himself for 60 years, only taking on students at the last minute because he’s running out of time. Kairi, like Eraqus and Hoder and Aqua, stands as the bold, sharp light that casts others into shadow.

However, the other side of “resistance to change” means that Kairi represents restoration. She is able to restore Sora in KH1, pull them home in KH2, and hold Sora back from death itself in KH3, because her power is one of restoration. She holds so tightly to their old way of being that she can stop death itself in the interest of not changing too drastically. But she is unable to move forward on her own, because she fears change too much. She wants to chase after the boys when they keep leaving her behind…but she isn’t able to keep up, because what she actually wants is for them not to run at all. 

She wants to go home, and restore their previous status quo. This desire is consistent in her for the entire series; this is also why she is unable to let go of her childhood crush for Sora, even though he’s obviously not the person she wants him to be anymore. For Sora, Kairi is the rock, she is the home that will always be there, he feels that she is the secure dock he can always return to after the storm. He relies on her not changing, which reinforces her fear of change. Lea is similar, and they can bond in KH3 over both their mutual desires to restore a prior, idealized status quo where their friends were reliably there and not at risk of disappearing on them or running away from them or changing.

Riku on the other hand embodies transformation. He represents change to the status quo, growth and development and a new way to be. Too much change is as much of a problem as too little; Kairi in KH1 sees Riku wants change, and it scares her, and he does in fact go too far. At the same time, she’s the catalyst for Riku’s desire to change their circumstances. Kairi’s arrival at the islands in the meteor shower incites Riku to dream of going to the outside world. This too is a tension that creates an anxiety in Kairi - in a way, she can see herself as to blame for Riku’s desire to change. But Riku was always going to change, because that’s who he is. He is radical change, the change that cuts away restrictive dogma so that the world can advance. Riku drives Sora to also want to grow and change, to excel and challenge himself. Sora wants to be like Riku, whose strength and internal drive he admires.

Ultimately Kairi and Riku are in BALANCE with each other. Ironically, while Kairi is themed as ‘the sea,’ her narrative purpose is to be steady as the earth. Riku’s name is ‘the earth,’ but he is changing and dangerous as the sea. They are one another’s reflections in the narrative. Kairi’s arc is about learning to let go and move forward, even though it scares her. Riku’s entire arc is about finding balance, not throwing away the comfort of the past, that inoculates him from falling too far the way Baldr and Xehanort do. Riku can drive Kairi to join them by giving her a Keyblade too. Kairi can pull Riku back from fleeing from them by seeing him even under Ansem’s face. He is able to be in contrast with Kairi in a healthy way, in a way that honors her fears while also refusing stagnation. They have to work TOGETHER to find Sora, because they are one another’s narrative and thematic opposites. Kairi is too stagnant on her own, and Riku too volatile. Sora is the healthy middle between them, the center-point that can bind the light and the dark TOGETHER for one purpose. 

Kairi is narratively and thematically important to Kingdom Hearts. She represents something, and trying to take the things that reinforce her narrative importance to the story (her representation of the light, her narrative purpose of ‘disruption’ in her arrival via the meteor shower, her position as the one who grounds Sora in opposition to Riku’s position as the one who drives Sora to push himself and achieve more) not only undermines her story, it undermines Riku’s.

[theyputbugsinhim]

Oh there we go. :) Easy. First try

[starrduzt]

‼️fic was written by @inconsistentracoon 

I just finished this and its the best Soriku fic i've ever read. It's 40 chapters, Sora whump, and soriku slow burn. Oh my god there was so much emotion and action in it. The battle scenes were written so well (and Riku getting pissed and ready to kill for Sora?? giggles) that I could clearly visualize exactly what was going on and where they were. I've started so many sketched inspired by this fic I'm going crazy. The dialog was written amazingly and so true to the characters that I could hear them speaking the whole time. It was HEAVYY on character psychology and delving into the problems the main cast has sustained from years of unaddressed trauma and i just

chef's kiss please read this 

[imminent-danger-came]

I fucking LOVE my MoM and Sora foil, okay. I LOVE IT.