#like Larxene mocking Sora's desires to find and save his friends and calling him heartless

[mirror-to-the-past]

CoM my wretched beloved ❤️

Chain of Memories is SO fucked up from so many different angles and it’s astounding that it happened

Alright, I finished Riku’s side, and I loved it. It really complements Sora’s side of the game. But man, the vibe difference is crazy. Riku’s journey is very… candid. A therapy session compared to a nightmare. If Sora is stumbling through smoke and mirrors, Riku is backstage learning how the smoke machine works. (It makes sense now why Riku’s side is only accessible after Sora’s, because you lose the effect if you know how the trick works. You don’t feel the anxiety, the disorientation that Sora experiences, if you know what’s going on.)

Riku’s able to see past the lies and deceptions because he was tricked before. He can recognize the darkness in others, sense it even, because he understands his own darkness. Sora doesn’t, and he suffers. He’s pulled apart as Riku pieces himself back together. With the same basic premise — resist the bad guys that wish to turn them into puppets — the two are pretty much parallel lines running in opposite directions, towards self-healing and self-destruction. Riku emerges from this experience stronger and wiser than he begins, confident of the road he should follow, while Sora is stripped of his strength and confidence, betrayed by his greatest power, his heart. Riku rises as Sora falls.

It’s not all Sora’s fault. It’s not. Because the second he steps inside Castle Oblivion, he loses consent. People are invading his mind, his heart, wiping his memories, altering others, before he even agrees to proceed. He doesn’t lose his autonomy (although that is the end goal), but he’s gaslit left and right and has little control over his perception of reality due to his memories being at the mercy of Namine. Granted, anyone not naive or desperate would see 1 Organization member and turn right around because the chances of this being a trap are astronomical. But Sora is naive and desperate. And the further he journeys in, the harder they make it for him to back out.

The choice is always there to stop, to think, to turn around and leave, but it’s soon like trying to walk in a straight line after being spun in circles, and the Organization guilt-trips and laughs at him for bumping into walls and seeing double. They act like he should be better than this. What’s he so dizzy for; how can he forget someone/something so important to him; what kind of hero is he. Even Vexen who eventually tries to help Sora out is like stupid boy, can’t you tell the difference between fantasy and reality; can’t you see straight, when, like, of course Sora can’t. They all successfully get under his skin, chipping away at his sanity and self-esteem. His interactions with Larxene especially are very uncomfortable to watch.

So, Sora has very little control over what’s being done to him. But he still has the power to choose how he responds. The bad guys are urging him to go a certain way through insidious tactics, but nobody is forcing his hand. It’s not like the Riku Replica who has zero say over the reconstruction of his own heart (which is just a whole other layer of fucked up). Sora has choices. He doesn’t have to gamble his memories. He doesn’t have to keep giving the Organization control over him. He just chooses to every time, because it might bring him closer to Riku and later Namine (Kairi). He pushes away his real friends to chase illusions. He follows shadows of Riku and Kairi right off a cliff.

And here’s the thing: even if Sora were to realize he’s being led to a cliff — even if he were to pause and consider Donald and Goofy’s concerns about this being a trap instead of rushing in — he would still choose to move forward because those shadows might be real. And if they are, then Riku and Kairi are right there and he needs them they need him! It just so happens that every step forward costs some of his memory and by extension his sanity and by extension his identity and by extension his free will, forming a link in a chain slowly shackling his soul. But it’s fine, right? His bones are all broken at the bottom of that cliff, but it’s worth it. Right?

This is not even getting into the psychological horror of Sora seeing the physical replica of Riku — who he thinks is the real Riku — drop dead in front of him. Being forced to love Namine — someone he’s never met — to the point of obsession. Meeting all these friendly faces in the illusions he has to traverse to get through the Castle that reinforce this belief that he’s uncovering his true memories by embracing the fake memories forced upon him. Having no safeguard against the people so easily slipping in and out of his head, because personal invasion is bad enough but having no way to prevent it from happening again (and again and again), no matter how hard you fight these people, is sure to rattle anyone. God. It’s all so twisted.

Hearing Sora say “Make me like I was” instead of “I want my memories back,” in the end, when he has to choose between remembering or forgetting all of this, aches. Aside from the heartbreaking implication that he feels ruined, I think it’s because, irl, nobody has this option. We carry our experiences with us, good or bad, and they do determine the person we become, for better or worse. When we mess up, we don’t get a do over. When others mess us up, we can’t erase the damage. We have to deal, or we don’t heal. Like Riku, we have to accept what happened and accept that we’re not the same as before, and work with the person we’ve become instead of trying to get back to who we used to be.

I’m not faulting Sora for wanting his old memories back. I think I would make the same choice in his position. Who would want fake memories over the real deal, and bonus, you get to escape this whole waking nightmare through a long, peaceful sleep. But it does contrast Riku who makes the hard choice in the end, to remember everything and risk being possessed by Ansem again. He grows from this experience because he remembers it. Sora doesn’t carry these memories, so he can’t learn from them. He doesn’t have to struggle to heal, to piece his broken self together. He doesn’t change. It’s as if nothing happened.

Except, the heart remembers even if the mind forgets. And hypothetically, doesn’t that mean if Sora chose to remember Castle Oblivion (or at least didn’t have the option to forget it), he could still get his old memories back? It would just be a lot harder, take a lot longer? Considering how close he comes to losing his way, losing himself, forgetting everything that happened here doesn’t bode well. Without help from his friends, Marluxia and Larxene would’ve had Sora hook, line, and sinker.

All in all, what a disturbing experience, especially next to the relative ease of Riku’s story afterwards. If I was a kid, I think this game would haunt me the way some of the unsettling short stories I had to read in middle school still haunt me a decade later. 10/10 recommend.