#like a lot of stuff about kh. one thing being its sprawling plot. love it all fitting together like that

[masterfuldoodler]

girlbossed too hard.... unless...

[last-flight-of-fancy]

fatedeniedhope replied to your post “* sees people confused over various kh plot points * * is not people i...”

I would like yo know a bit. Only play kh 1 and chain of memories and half way to kh 2

oh boy there is a *lot* to cover here then!

I don’t mean that to sound intimidating, kh just has a tendency for long, sprawling interconnected plots (many of which are still unresolved even now)

i am also doing this entirely by memory, so if i’ve skimmed something i shouldn’t have its because my brain has stopped registering it as important; feel free to ask for clarification, i wrote this in one sitting because i was avoiding doing laundry XD

putting a cut because i am overviewing a Lot of game here and tbh there’s still a lot of stuff i am skimming or skipping entirely. I’m just trying to hit the highlights.

i don’t know where you stopped in 2, so i’m just gonna give a brief overview

-there is a boy named roxas

-he’s being hunted by these strangers called nobody’s

-things get weird

-turns out he’s sora’s nobody, as nobody’s are created when a person is turned into a heartless (which sora did during kh1)

-roxas returns to sora (”looks like my summer vacation is.. over...” whoops there goes my heart) and normal sora gameplay resumes.

-DIDNEY WORLDS

-turns out everyone forgot sora for a year bc of what happened in chain of memories (and also 358/2. dont worry about that yet we’ll get there). kairi sends out a bottle to “the boy she can’t remember” trying to call him home. (yes this is important)

-organization 13 (all what? eight of them left?) pops up, xemnas is cryptic, and they say their goal is to recreate kingdom hearts via sora killing heartless, since apparently only killing heartless with a keyblade sends the trapped hearts to Kingdom Hearts

      -this version of the tale persists through 358 as well. it’s.. half right.

-bla bla bla, shenanigans. there’s ansem (the boss from kh1) and a guy named diz. That isn’t who either of them actually are. It’s actually Riku (who tapped too far into the darkness trying to capture roxas for the whole twilight town scenario at the beginning of the game, thus altering his appearance to look like the guy who posessed him for a bit) and THE ACTUAL ANSEM (ie, the ruler(?) of radient garden before it fell, and the guy heartless ansem stole his name from.

-anyways

-sora goes off searching for riku, bc as far as he knows, he’s still lost out in the darkness.

-he’s not, he’s fine, but he’s super embarrassed about the whole ‘looking like the enemy’ thing and won’t let sora find him.

-sora casually murders most of the remaining organization members (only most of whom shot first)

-this continues on until axel attempts to kidnap kairi, who ends up in twilight town for a bit hanging out with the hayner/pence/ollete trio, before being slightly more successfully kidnapped a second time.

-and then she gets kidnapped again by saix. Axel apologises to sora over this. in his defence, he’s pretty desperate at this point (he just wants his friend(s) back)

-sora storms The World That Never Was, kairi is rescued by Namine.

-the trio finally meets up (namine disapeared at some point? yknow, i actually dont recall what happened to her in between these scenes), sora and kairi share a slightly awkward but sweet hug, and after a moments trepidation over ‘Ansem’, kairi tells/shows him its riku, at which point sora bursts into tears.

-i ship a lot of ot3′s, but sorikai is the OG ot3

-anyways

-namine and roxas have a very symbolic moment refusing with their Other’s, Namine opens a portal back to destiny islands so they can go home.

-everyone except sora and riku make it through, and thus commences several final fantasy style boss fights

-they win, of course, riku’s injured in the line of battle, and they limp out, having traversed several realms during the course of this battle, they’re now trapped on a beach in the realm of darkness. it’s the same beach everyone else seems to end up on in this place. There is only one beach in the RoD apparently

-they stay there a while, and then they pick up a message in a bottle; it’s from kairi, “to the boy she can’t remember”

-Feelings make a door to the light open, and sora and riku fall like actual comets from the sky and everybody’s reunited and happy. huzzah!

-.... well for a while anyways.

-should i get into the whole xemnas/xehanort/ansem thing here?

-eh

-okay so

-lets swing back into Birth By Sleep for a bit

-(im sorry if kh can’t hit any of its plot points in order i think its fair neither do i)

-BBS takes place roughly nine years prior to kh1, with the exception of bbs’s prologue, which i would estimate as being an additional four years prior to that

-during said prologue, we meet Master Xehanort, an incredibly old dude with brown skin, gold eyes, and a white beard. even newcomers to the series will probably recognise that only one type of person gets those colours in these games.

-we also meet baby Ventus, Xehanorts apprentice. He looks exactly like Roxas.

-shenanigans happen, Xehanort splits Ven’s heart in two, creating Vanitas, who is Ventus’s darkness.

-Vanitas’ whole shtick is he wants to be reunited with Ventus, ostensibly to create the X-blade (yes it’s pronounced exactly the same as ‘keyblade’ and yes, every single kh fan ive ever talked to has found this annoying af)

-unfortunately being split in two like that puts ven in a coma, and xehanort takes the unresponiseve body to destiny islands to dump it like unwanted ravioli

-luckily for ven, “a brand new hear” hears his hurt and reaches out to help, filling out the gaps left in his and allowing him to start recovering

-the heart is sora

-actual, literal baby sora reaching out to help people before he can even walk yet. 

-the game never spells this out explicitly, which makes it an easy plot point to miss if you aren’t paying attention

-ven doesn’t recover immidietly though, and xehanort sends him to live with his old friend Master Eraqus and his two teenage apprentices, Aqua and Terra

-here’s where we time skip, ventus is fully recovered, terra and aqua are young adults and about to take their Mark Of Mastery exams for becoming keyblade masters.

-Terra fails because he has darkness in his heart and also xehanort rigged it against him

-aqua passes and becomes a master. I love her very much.

-terra journey’s out to try and figure out where the darkness comes from

-vanitas taunts ven saying terra’s leaving him bc ven’s stupid or something and ven panics and chases after him (he’s like 14 and has a bit of a hero worship thing, stupid decisions are par for the course)

-eraqus sends aqua out to both spy on terra (he words it nicer but thats the gist of it), which aqua doesn’t particularly like but trusts her masters judgement and does it, and bring ventus home, which she is more on board with

-the biggest tragedy in bbs is that no one talks to each other

-stuff happens, they learn some stuff, aqua’s route has So Many Lesbian Feels with every single princess she runs into it brings me great delight

-Ventus learns the whole ‘fight your darkness to become the X-blade’ plot, eraqus learns this too and tries to kill ven. Terra busts in at the last moment and saves ven, at this point using his dark powers fully.

-#terrawasright

-eraqus dies, which i don’t think terra fully intended to do (he just wanted to save ven) and if you recall the scene in kh1 where kairi catches a falling sora only for him to burst into a bunch of floating glitter? imagine that but with two grown men

-aqua’s just trying to figure out whats going on. she gets to meet kairi (saves her from some heartless and then puts a charm on her necklace to keep her safe) and then meets Mickey, who will be our future duex ex machina

-they all meet for the final battle.

-ven asks his friends to murder him

-no one does that

-what the fuck ven

-they fight, and a lot of stuff sorta happens at the same time

-1: terra fights xehanort, who has essentially been spending the whole game prepping terra to be his next host. xehanort is a body snatcher confirmed. xehanort wins, terra becomes the fanon-named terranort.

-2: ventus fights vanitas. vanitas reveals his face, and he looks exactly like a colour swapped version of sora. (also voiced by the same voice actor! it’s actually surprsingly difficult to notice this if you don’t have some kind of clue already because haley joel osment does and *amazing* job). ventus wins, the X-blade is not forged, but as a lot of this battle takes place in his heart, the effects are bad and ven falls into a coma (he reaches out once more, and another hearts answers. “you can stay here a while, I don’t mind” says the other heart. yes its fucking sora again. too good, too pure)

-3: aqua gets knocked out to start with, but then she fights vanitas controlling ventus’ body, which eventually gets sorted out. terra’s dissapeared at this point, and she takes a comatose ven and hides him in the land of departure, which she uses a secret mechanism to turn into Castle Oblivion (and thus, impossible to navigate  without her key)

-aqua goes to hunt down terra(nort), and finds him in radiant garden. they fight, aqua wins, but when he begins to sink into the darkness she sacrifices herself to save him (which is how he ends up as one of ansem’s apprentices and mostly without any memories)

-aqua will spend the next ten years in the realm of darkness

-bbs is such a goddam tragedy

-OKAY

-time to fast forward

-so sora and ven are connected, which is why vanitas and roxas look the way they do, which brings us to

-the case of xion

-and 358/2

-the worst game to play but my absolute favourite in terms of slow-burn pacing and emotionally investing you in the characters

-this game pretty much just deals with the year sora spent asleep, and the kids time in the organization.

-roxas wakes up with no memories, is inducted into the org, and told “kill heartless with your keyblade”. He’s more or less a zombie at first, and accepts this without question.

-a week later, a new member is introduced, named Xion, who also has a keyblade, and is also a zombie with no memories at first

-Axel, the org’s assassin, is basically told to babysit them both

-he’s not really into it at first, but those natural Big Brother instincts kick in Hard about five minutes later and from that point on he’s mostly just trying to keep them both alive.

-oh, also Lea, Axel’s somebody, met Ventus in bbs, so that was probably a little weird for him.

-as the game goes on and these kids essentially learn how to human and try to figure out what makes them different, the Big Plots stew in the background. Axel and Saix have some kind of plan that Axel apparently isn’t sticking to, and Axel questions his loyalties more as the game goes on and circumstances force him to choose between two kids Who Did Nothing Wrong, and his oldest friend.

-Xion learns they are a replica, a la Repliku, created as a backup to roxas if he could not fulfil his duty in creating kingdom hearts. their connection with roxas, and through him sora, has the unintended side effect of flitering memories and feelings into and through Xion.

-this is why putting sora back together takes so long

-Xion, between the pressure of being an org member in general, and the mental load from being caught between three+ people in a very literal sense, has a breakdown. Riku finds them, and despite a pretty rocky start between them, helps them through it.

-Xion leaves at two different points, the first time, Axel brings them back. “please don’t hold back, Axel. Promise.” “Everyone always thinks they’re right”

-excuse me i have to lay down again after thinking about how emotionally wrought this scene is.

-(the alternative is he has to kill them. he does everything he can to avoid that, but it’s clearly approaching an unsustainable situation; the org is running out of patience for dealing with the ‘clearly defective replica’, xion doesnt feel this situation is right, and axel just wants to keep everyone alive.

-yes typing ‘clearly defective replica’ physically hurt me. xion is a perfect bab and xemnas can fite me

-Xion leaves again

-Roxas, learning pieces of this but not all, runs away from the org. cue titular “no one would me” “that’s not true!” scene from 2

-(this leads to what is a hilariously depressing scene of roxas on the clocktower looking at his life and going “where could i even run to? I havent got anywhere to go” because he’s never known anything other than the organization and whoops i made myself sad again)

-namine explains to xion that sora can never wake up so long as they have his memories. The only way for them to release the memories is to die. It’s a hard decision.

-Xion meets roxas on the clocktower, feigns insanity, and goads him into fighting them (”do you see my face, roxas? is it a boys face? don’t you see. I have to make you a part of me too.”)

-cue more ff style boss fights

-xion dies

-look i can’t go into detail on this one i’ll start crying again, xion dies, everyone forgets they ever existed, and roxas gets to watch them shatter into dust in his arms.

-in the brief period where the memories are quickly vanishing but Not Quite Gone Yet roxas goes into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and storms the World That Never Was

-this is where Riku catches up to him, and from there its a pretty straight shot into the beginning of kh2

-which im sure if you played these in chronological order would be *some kind of mood whiplash* i bet

-okay what have i missed

-recoded happened. the only important part here is that malificent and pete find out about the black box and malificent being malificent of course she Has To Have It

-”but whats the black box??” you ask

-good question

-we still dont know

-its  origin point is in KHUx though, 

-which is the multiplayer mobile game set during the Keyblade War of ages past. each weilder also has a companion dream eater named chirithy

-there are five unions, each headed by a leader and represented by an animal (unicorn, bear, snake, fox, and leopard)

-#anguisforlife

-these five (plus one more, named luxu) are each given roles by their master (the Master of Masters, or also known as MoM). He also tells them there is a traitor amongst the warriors of light. it’s unclear at this point how much of this he is directly steering. He also doesnt specifiy Which warriors of light, probably on purpose so everything happens as it should.

-so figure, trying to figure out who the traitor is is a pretty direct cause to no one trusting each other and eventually going for each others throats

-there is a page from the book of prophecies he gives only to luxu, who he tells that his role is to see the future with this Special Keyblade (and specifically the Eye in it). You might recognise it as xehanorts keyblade (and then you’ll start to see the Eye in a whole bunch of other ones too, notably in soul edge, way to dawn, and void gear)

-luxu fucks off, and everyone else goes about their business

-the first half of khux details how these unions came to  be rivals, and then how they fell into war with each other and destroyed the light. the second half detailed how Ava, leader of the fox union, created a fifth group known as the dandelions, specifically picked to survive the fall of the light and rebuild.

-ventus and lauriam are two of these leaders. No, we still don’t know how they got from one point to the other.

-one of the replacement leaders, strelitzia, got murdered and replaced by someone else. i think this plot point has been resolved in japan but i havent checked yet

-strelitzia is lauriam’s sister. she also knows elrena.

-and if you’re bad at anagraming like i am, lauriam=marluxua, and elrena=larxene

-so yeah figure that one out for me

-also i love strelitzia she has like two scenes total and i was already ludicrously attached help

-(Yes i screamed very hard during that One Scene in 3. we dont even see her face but it’s heerrrrrrrr)

-anyways

-right the black box

-luxu is seen carrying it off in the Back Cover movie as he wanders into exile. we still dont know whats in it. and that’s basically that.

-which leaves just Dream Drop Distance

-sora and riku take a Highly Modified mark of master exam under yen sid.

-things go wrong almost immidietly

-sora gets trapped by the xehanorts in a deep sleep, where they plan to use him as one of their 13 vessels of darkness

-there has to be 13 for some reason

-13 darknesses, and 7 lights, and when they clash it’ll make the X-blade

-because reasons

-it’s fate or something

-riku rescues him

-there is time travel involved now

-because at this point the 13 darkness now include; heartless ansem, master xehanort, xemnas, young xehanort, xigbar, and saix.

-more time travel will be involved later, but to keep this in mind the rules of time travel here are

     -you cannot take your body with you

     -you lose any future knowledge you gain if and when you return

-things are obviously wibbly here because it’s half in the dreamscape, but just. keep those rules in mind when you play 3.

....... im sure im missing a bunch but i just spent two hours writing the most casual pre-kh3 synopsis ever i hope you can forgive me XD