#if data sora didn’t disappear then how did the story go in the data verse

[daylighteclipsed]

If Data Sora’s still in the Data Realm of Light, does that mean he didn’t disappear at the end of the data version of KH3? Is there a Data Unreality?

[fandom-rants]

Plotholes, Story Rushing, and Shoddy Writing In Keyblade Graveyard, Pt. 1 (p.s. there are SEVERAL issues to unpack here)

~~~~THIS CONTAINS COUNTLESS SPOILERS FOR KHIII~~~~

PLEASE NOTE that this will not be in perfect order; there are so many things wrong with the story in the Keyblade Graveyard that I struggle to balance it all without having a raging meltdown. As someone who adored the Kingdom Hearts franchise (yes, you read that right; past tense) and memorized all the lore and played all of the games (save Coded; I just watched that one because it does not look to be worth it at all) and loved the characters, I can only express deep and profound disappointment in the story. The rushed, chaotic garbage mess of a story.

And those who say otherwise? Have chosen to ignore the story for the sake of the ‘happy ending’ (which is a farce; a happy ending doesn’t include Sora sacrificing himself again for the damsel in distress trope).

If you thought some of my other rants were long, you aren’t ready for this one. It’s so long it needed to be split up into parts.

1. Aqua and Ven

a. Firstly, it’s good to know that Nomura is literally incapable of writing a female who isn’t a damsel in distress. Good to see Aqua go “I’m gonna prove how strong I am,” only to need immediate rescuing. Brilliant.

b. So it’s that easy to wake Ven up, huh? His heart’s been linked with Sora’s for Sora’s entire life, it’s been sleeping in Sora’s for so long that Sora has taken on Ven’s mannerisms, but they can just separate without a single hitch, huh? Just like that, huh? And there’s no problem waking up, it takes no time at all, and he can move in his body without even remote difficulty, huh? Basically, there are no repercussions to any of this, huh? I call bullshit.

c. Going back a page, it’s good to know that these guys all showed up at Castle Oblivion and didn’t even bother clearing the place to ensure there weren’t any enemies around to - /snorts with laughter/ - immediately try to kill Ven while he was still vulnerable. Who could have ever expected such a thing, amirite?

d. Why aren’t Riku and Mickey there?!?!?!

e. This was actually so anticlimactic and boring. Why wasn’t Terranort/wtf-ever there to add some drama and tension? Why was it simply ‘grab Aqua, which can be done merely by having Sora show up and beat her up, even though Riku and Mickey got their butts kicked by her,’ ‘arrive very quickly and suddenly at Castle Oblivion,’ ‘unlock it,’ ‘go inside and wake up Ven’? Why was it so boring? It’s something we’ve been waiting for since 2010, and our reward for waiting 8 years is ‘ta-da! Boom, bam, done!’ Did a child write this?

2. The Requisite Romance Scene Before the Final Showdown

a. We have to really sell this romance, or else people will be pissed about the ending! Quick! Let’s have Sora and Kairi share a paopu fruit and leave their friend completely out of it! Riku doesn’t really matter, anyway. He’s not integral to the entire storyline like Kairi!

b. To make it clear, Riku was integral to the storyline while Kairi was not. Something I’ve already mentioned several times. So why in hell did Sora say he wouldn’t have gone through the things in the games if it wasn’t for Kairi, when that girl hardly entered the storyline at all? It was Riku who started the whole story off, Riku and Kairi both whom Sora was looking for in KH1, Riku only whom Sora looked for in CoM, Riku only whom Sora looked for in KH2, Riku only whom Data-Sora cared to run after, Riku only whose concerns made Sora go through the Mark of Mastery... but yes. It was only for Kairi that Sora went through the things he did. Riku, keep sitting on the sand all night while these two pretend you don’t exist. Perfect.

3. We Arrive and Everyone Fights Against Heartless

a. Is this what we came here for? Is this what Xehanort planned when he told us to come here? To sic a bunch of heartless on us? How does this in any way complete Kingdom Hearts? How does this in any way help Xehanort’s overarching goal? Hell, ignoring that, why would he sic heartless on us when we’ve defeated them a million times? How in god’s name do we fail against them this time????

b. Can I just say that it is beyond suspense of disbelief to have Kairi and Lea finish their fights before Sora? Or that the entire group would finish, see Sora still fighting, and then just run forward without him???

4. Terranort

a. How is he back? No, seriously, let’s look at this. He was brought from the past. But when you defeat Young Xehanort, he says he’s going to return to the past and live his life up to the present. But Terranort can’t do that! Which means Terranort can’t go to the past and stay on as Ansem the Wise’s apprentice. Which means he can’t trick the other students into becoming nobodies - so how is Saix there? How is Axel there as Axel? How do the others retain their memories of being Nobodies? He also can’t become a heartless or a nobody himself, since he’s not returning to the past to do so (because we save him instead of killing him)! So how the hell could Ansem and Xemnas exist??? You can’t argue about alternative universes because those haven’t been introduced in the plotline, and even if they had been, that still wouldn’t explain how this universe had an Ansem who took over Riku and a Xemnas who existed whatsoever. What the fuck.

b. Why in five flaming hells is he just waiting there at the beginning? No, again, I’m being serious. Why? To defeat the seven keyblade wielders? Why? They’re apparently needed to clash with the thirteen Xehanort clones, so why on earth is he there? For sad plotline feels? 

c. Even that doesn’t make sense. After all, Aqua had all night to warn Ven about the state she’d last seen Terra in. Apparently, that was not a topic she thought necessary to bring up. Go figure.

d. How the fuck does Xehanort even have him??? All those who played Birth By Sleep, I can only assume you all have dealt with the same frustration and confusion as me. How did Xehanort retain control over Terra’s body after Lingering Will defeated him?? Because I did. Allllll the way back in Terra’s storyline, I defeated Terranort. So how did he show up in Radiant Garden? The blast of light (or whatever) from the end of the storyline should have, at the very least, turned him into a heartless. Right then. From the start. So how did he even survive long enough to get to Radiant Garden, let alone return to the Keyblade Graveyard? What had been the point of that final battle?

5. Lingering Will

a. I was waiting for him to show up. It makes less than no sense to have him only do so at Namine’s behest after Ven has already been KO’d by Terranort. That entire debacle in the Final World should never have occurred, simply because Lingering Will should have shown up the first time.

b. I laughed in disbelief when I saw Terra’s keyblade turn into a hooked whip and then a giant fuck-off gun. I already thought the transformations were pretty random, considering a keyblade is supposed to serve its own purpose and strength without needing to turn into a door or a frying pan or a pair of yo-yo’s, but to see Terra’s do the same thing when no one else’s had? Oof. Painful.

c. Lingering Will was Terra’s mind, but apparently he doesn’t need that to reconnect with his past body! (Even though it was never with said body; it was always separate, so...?!?!?!) Instead it disappears from the plotline (like so many other necessary details) and acted as KH’s version of Fallout’s Mysterious Stranger, apparently deciding to disappear to wherever said stranger goes after doing its duteous cameo.

6. That Entire Debacle With Everyone’s Hearts

a. There’s just... so much to unwrap here. The fact that it even happened, which I’ve already noted the plot failure there. The fact that Kairi needed protecting not once, but twice, only to fall, anyway. Is she even capable of being something other than a damsel in distress? (Looking at the rest of the story of this world, I can do nothing but snort at the fact that I even bothered typing out that question.)

b. The whole shit with Chirithy. We get it, KH. You want to peddle your stupid mobile game. (A game I’ve been playing for over a year now, like a good, dutiful KH player, only to find that the plotline shows up roughly once every 300+ “chapters.”) This Chirithy shit isn’t plot; it’s bullshit. Nice to know Kairi’s heart was definitely lost, though, because bullshit on that, too!

c. Why on earth are everyone’s hearts just hanging out on other worlds? Why are they in worlds I’ve specifically already gone to in this game? Why not any other worlds from any other previous games, or worlds I’ve never been to? Oh, yeah. To bring back the annoying shit from KH1, where you enter fragments of worlds for no reason in order to fight some random heartless. Is this plot?

d. The whole ‘Dive Into the Heart’ thing being the equivalent of ‘the power of waking,’ which is also apparently how Mickey could get into the Realm of Darkness (and here I remember Mickey saying he could only do that by being in a world when it fell to darkness! Silly me). Just admit you had no idea what the hell you were doing when you made up that ‘power of waking,’ Nomura. Shit.

e. Let’s go a bit farther, because the whole “Dive Into the Heart” thing was awful. Why is that a thing? Why do you need to ‘dive’ into a heart (which, he didn’t, he didn’t, he just dove into different worlds to find said hearts, wtf) in order to save it from... what? Death? Darkness?? What the hell even happened here-

f. How is Kairi fine and waiting for us??? This actually made me think Sora had fallen to darkness (or dreaming, or what the fuck ever), because how in hell was Kairi okay? Namine said flat-out that Kairi’s heart had been lost like the others, and that such was the reason why Sora had found her in Chirithy-Verse (it isn’t any ‘Final World,’ just as it isn’t anything I’m ever going to take seriously). So how was she perfectly fine and, uh, able to... uh... meet with him??? In some sort of... Heart Realm Between??? What happened there?!?!

g. I get that this floaty, hand-holding scene was supposed to once again peddle the romance in some last-minute bid to make us okay with the bullshit self-sacrifice move Sora bounces into with all the finesse of a Sequel Coming trailer, but all it did was piss me off (as every romance scene did in this shithole of a game). There has been next to nothing on the whole ‘romance’ thing other than us being told ad nauseum that it is a thing. If you can’t even give me normal, non-romance scenes between the two, then all it’s going to be is forced trollop that you expect me to swallow simply on your say-so. If you can’t give me a lead-up to the romance, don’t be surprised if you fail to sell it to me. And if you fail to sell the romance to me, then why the hell should I ever find any part of that ending all right?

7. The Time Ret-Conning

a. This one’s a minor gripe, so I’ll just say that I despised the multiple times the game acted as if the previous failures hadn’t happened. ‘Here you go; try again!’ It makes no sense when you realize Sora actually did things to ensure we got this second chance, even less sense, somehow, when you see that neither Sora nor anyone else acts any differently to rewatching the same thing happen all over again - like, what the hell kind of time travel bullshit is Nomura writing here? Is there any rhyme or reason to this shit whatsoever?

8. That Entire KHUX Fuckery

a. I honestly cannot believe we had to watch Sora get saved by Ephemer. A lot of people loved the cameo, but the cost to the storyline is far too high. Our main character needing rescuing in his Final Battle is always bad writing; what’s the point of watching the main hero’s growth if it turns out he still needs to be protected? This other character should have been the one we followed, not the one needing rescuing! And hell, what was the point of all that growth if, in the end, it still wasn’t enough? Simply based on storytelling, it was poorly done. But the fact that he got rescued by a long-dead (I hope; everyone has a bad habit of just living forever through Bullshit Time Mechanics) character from another KH game? Disgustingly shoddy. Thanks for nothing.

b. What the fuck was that triangle spam for??? I was there when the challenge came to KHUX, for those with the highest scores to appear in the game. I honestly thought their names would just be in the credits or something, because how could you possibly add them in without making it the most horrendous bullshit possible for a video game? Answer? You can’t. That entire thing is something I’ve been trying to delete from my memory since I saw it. What a fucking travesty.

9. "I Can’t Do This Alone”

a. You are literally talking to someone, your best friend, and saying you’re alone. What the FUCK.

b. What strength did you get from Kairi, you twit? Riku, on the other hand...!

TO BE FREAKING CONTINUED... Edit: I know Nomura is BS-ing some answers to pretend he didn’t fuck up. I don’t care.