#like... not only bc of the way ven ran up to him thinking it was terra only for him to mercilessly cut him down

[haunted-xander]

There is something so foul about Terranort taking out Ven first at the keyblade graveyard

[pegasusknightsonly]

now that im at endgame i want to quickly run through my team and what i learned about awakening luna playing it again after seven or so years

what i learned:

i used WAY too many units. nice as it was to have a full second gen trip the late game it was not really feasible without a lot of grinding

its generally better to play aggressive than defensive on maps, even if it means you're not using pair up so you have better action economy. chapter 4 and chapter 9 were really tough until i went all out with the aggression.

myrmidon might actually be good in Luna bc avo+10 becomes really really good when it's cancelling out a whole bunch of hit+10s. this does not fix lon'qu's bulk issues.

map skirmishes blocking useful shops are the fucking devil and not something you can do anything about other than wait until you hit endgame. really annoying feature

DLC doesn't scale to game difficulty!! that's fun

weapon forging is my new best friend

van/ven is still ABSOLUTELY broken and Owain hard carried my team through several maps

and my thoughts on my team!!

Robin - i actually think i fucked up by second sealing at twenty instead of promoting? armsthrift is nice and i wanted it for Morgan's inheritance but robin fell off really really hard by the midgame and i never got him back so it would have been nice to have rally spectrum available when that happened. ultimately that was ok for me bc unlike the luna guides will tell you i was not solely relying on robin for the front lines but oof he fell off harder than Fred

Chrom - Chrom is Chrom. not much to say there. he didn't get to see a lot of combat early which kind of worked out in my favour bc it meant he was still in lord in chapter 12 and gave Sumia some HUGE effective dual strikes with his rapier. it might actually be worth delaying his first class change to get that?? as usual i went archer -> bow knight and he was great in both. rally skill is actually really good to have on a non-combat unit in later maps where everything has so much speed and avo, it definitely made the difference for Nah a couple of times

Sumia - MVP. oh my god she was so good. i had to grind Olivia anyway so i ran her through great knight and although i don't want her to see any enemy phase combat at this point it has been really helpful to have her fly in, kill something annoying with a luna proc and fly out again to physic or rescue. rally speed has been really helpful as well! i had to do a little hand holding with her in chapter two but early investment pays off so well and i can't think of another unit who can transition from frontliner to support as well as she can. love her.

Fred - when people say awakening luna is unplayable without using Fred are they like. are they just bad at the game? don't get me wrong he was fine but imo the Fred carry/Robin carry meta really only is true until chapter 3 which is... not long, and definitely not long enough for Fred to have the kind of reverence he has in Luna meta. idk. he was fine! i had to finagle a bit to get him and Olivia married which was a pain but then it was nice being able to give Olivia extra move via pairup in the late game.

Olivia - i normally bench her after getting the kids when i play hard bc galeforce is just better than dancing and she becomes a liability with the ambush reinforcements so it was kind of novel to still be deploying her in the valm arc, even though that was mostly just to dance Sumia so i had two actions worth of healing. i had to do a LOT of grinding with DLC to get her galeforce for inheritance which was pretty painful and her stats were never that good. dance utility for my healer has been pretty nice!

Sully - i probably shouldn't have used her and shouldn't have given her the resources that normally go to wyvern Panne but i LIKE her and she did really really well in chapter 12 after she promoted and got lance access back. Gaius s support is solid but those first few levels before reclassing were really difficult because her bases are just so low. if awakening luna slightly bumped up everyone's bases it would be a joy to play.

Panne - it says a lot about how good wyvern Panne is that i brought her back in to the team way too late and she not only kept up but then outperformed Sully who'd had so much more investment. brokenly good unit and by the time i got Yarne she had late game worthy stats. the lack of galeforce kind of hurts as does her weapon ranks - she was stuck using bronze axes for so, so long - but yeah. good unit. believe the hype.

Nowi - i have really mixed feelings about Nowi's performance because it was just. so painful. her bases do not get bumped enough and at the start everything was doubling her and her awful 18HP. speed issues continued for a long long time but she eventually kind of pulled it together. a bit. not sure I'll do this again

Vaike and Lon'qu - mostly they were used to produce Nah and Yarne respectively but they were ok!! really solid backpacks. Vaike's stats were toilet tier for a long long time but he got there eventually. lon'qu loved dual striking for panne so much it got her in trouble a couple of times. it's good that they can support each other as well!

Gregor and Miriel - i put so much into Miriel lmao i love her. woteva. she was fine, bulk and survivability issues but that's pretty standard for Miriel. i also had trouble with her critting things i did not want critted. Gregor got so little investment i actually felt kind of bad for him. i promoted him after like... one or two levels worth of dual striking experience but i probably should've done it sooner

Lissa and Libra - early promotion to get Lissa tomefaire (mostly from rescue staff abuse) was worth it! really solid performance from both of them and Lissa had decent offenses on her galeforce grind. i wish I'd used Libra as a frontliner more but ultimately Lissa needed more exp than him and that's how it worked out, but it felt like a missed opportunity bc Libra in luna is really, really good.

Sumia!Lucina - i was worried about her stats on recruitment but she's been really really good and had some fantastic survivability thanks to her aether procs. great unit, does everything she needs to. i ran her through great lord for rfk + rapier access and that worked pretty well! her final class was between bow knight and paladin but surprisingly paladin has better overall stats and she didn't desperately want anything from bow knight. i don't think i would want to do anything dramatically different with her

Chrom!Cynthia - BEAST. BEAST. BEAST. ALL OVER THE SHOP

Libra!Owain - my only van/ven build and boy did he do good work with it. kind of ruined a couple of maps when the computer abandoned all reason and prioritised attacking him bc he was a staff unit which was a pain but ultimately pretty recoverable. van/ven is good! van/ven owain is good!!

Gaius!Kjelle - sadly she became mostly just a pair up bot for Owain. i never quite got her offences up to scratch to get her galeforce which was a real shame. Owain appreciated the stats and a partner with flight though

Frederick!Inigo - ugh. my only real disappointment in this run. speed!! speed!!! where is his fucking speed!!!! giving him galeforce was nice and all but he can't use it very well if he can't fucking double!!!! Inigo!!!! what's going on there!!!!!! i think Fred passed down dual guard+ which is fine but ultimately inigo would've been better with either luna (the lack of offensive procs really started to hurt him) or deliverer for extra movement for Cynthia. kind of pain to level and promote. he relied on his s support with Cynthia a LOT.

Vaike!Nah - might have been a little too ambitious to want to run her through merc and hero before bringing her back to manakete but those Vaike offenses ended up really paying off. very very slow to start cooking but so good once she got going. sightly too tanky? enemies tended to avoid her on EP which wasn't helpful. her sol proc rates also need some work but overall a really solid unit and one i might bring back to hard mode or use in luna again.

Lon'qu!Yarne - I'm glad i made the decision to bring Panne back to avoid Lon'qu/Lissa. listen. i have not asked Yarne to do too much but he has done it so well and has probably contributed the most in battles for the least exp. bless him! bless his name!!! i wish Panne gave him a better class set. he could have been everything.... that said, even if my original plan of barbarian -> beserker -> griffon didn't work out due to lack of EXP he still did really well and sat in an unpromoted class until chapter 25 when i took pity on him and went to a DLC map. really solid guy.

Gregor!Laurent - i had such plans for a strong and bulky nostank with armsthrift and then it just... never happened. im sorry Laurent. i don't think i ever gave Gregor enough levels to make that work. he did ok promoting to dark knight instead of sorc to be Morgan's pair up bot but i kind of wish I'd managed to get him going. i have two forged Nosferatu in my convoy that i now can't use. whoops

Lucina! Morgan - less than 25 str or mag as a level 10 dark flier was not it. great crits, great aether procs but what the hell happened to her offensive stats. bizarre. probably not unfixable but she's going to close out the game as a rally spectrum bot. rip

Cynthia got the most MVP awards but Owain was just so, so good and Lucina did everything i needed her to. Sumia!!! she's so good!!!!! anyway i had a lot of fun with this run once i found my feet with it and i... honestly will probably finish it and immediately start another one lmao. it was fun!!!!

[happyendingsong]

i finally finished bbs last night! apart from the secret episode/endings bc i didnt fuckin know you had to 100% the game on standard to get them skldfjdkkjh ANYWAY here’s some notes on ventus bc i ran out of steam to discuss the rest of the game haha, i might do terra and aqua posts later

i think bbs might be the tightest game in kh in terms of story, either this or days. everything is very cohesive, everyone’s arcs are very clear and defined. maybe that’s why i feel more critical of the things they get wrong when plenty of kh games haven’t tried going for this much narrative cohesion? but i also LOVE a ton of shit in bbs, so even with the shit i don’t like it’s really fun to engage with the whole piece critically, haha.

smth i never caught before was xehanort telling vanitas “go take what ventus owes you.” this really suggests that xehanort has been directing vanitas’ rage towards ven all this time, abusing him for years and telling him it’s ven’s fault, ven STOLE vanitas’ light and he has to get strong enough to take it back by force.

but all throughout this game vanitas has been demanding that ven join with him and together they’ll form the x-blade. not to get too vanven agenda on it but during the final ven/vanitas boss fight, vanitas’ battle quotes start sounding like marital vows: “what’s yours is mine!”, “join now with your better half.” there’s such an interesting contrast there where xehanort has clearly been training vanitas to take his rage out on ventus to try to protect himself from vanitas turning on him, but vanitas doesn’t seem to have internalised that at all.

like clearly he doesn’t fucking like ventus either lmao, and i think the novels say that vanitas inherited all of ven’s self hatred so he does actively hate ventus. but there’s such a severe leap from how xehanort has explained their relationship (ven stole vanitas’ light/wholeness) and how vanitas feels about it (ven and vanitas must join together to be whole). so maybe it’s that vanitas doesn’t see himself as a whole person, he knows he’s incomplete and empty and he’s reaching out for the only thing he thinks can fix it.

like does vanitas even want the x-blade?? does he fuckin get anything out of it?? is it literally just that he was born half and wrong and this is the only clue he has towards making himself whole? like the DRAMA, the DESPERATION, god the boys are so fucked up.

also that boss fight is my favourite fuckin fight in the game, like seeing vanitas and ventus together on the station of awakening oh my goddddddd. and they SHATTER the station, the final stage of the fight fought around the stained glass fragments in their self destruction, they’ll never be whole. and the d-link oh my FUCKING god!!!!!!!!! literally fucking gasped like we LOVE storytelling through video gameplay mechanics!!!!!!!!!!! like the meta narrative of corrupting this gameplay mechanic where you team up with your friends throughout your adventure, and now vanitas has forced his way in and you’re working TOGETHER to defeat him!!!!!!! hand in unloveable hand oh my god. it’s the most in sync ven and vanitas ever get and it’s as they’re destroying each other. and ven’s theme bleeding into the boss fight music because you the player and ven himself know that you’re killing him in this fight as well. it’s so fucking good, it’s SO fucking GOOD. might be my favourite boss fight in all of kh like the fucking LEVELS, this is so professional. maybe tetsuya nomura knows how to make a video game after all.

it’s really fucking annoying that im also rereading homestuck at the moment and babes like. kh and homestuck are unfortunately very similar, as a society we just have to come to terms with that. like ven’s arc is really reminding me of john’s, sleepy bitch disease solidarity.

anyway ventus embodies the birth by sleep theming most literally, in that he’s actually physically asleep in the end waiting for his birth by sleep and for sora to pick up all the pieces. so his narrative arc starts with him leaving home for the first time, and there’s that question the whole time of if he’s ready to leave and learn about the world, learn about his own past. ven never had a chance to ask that question himself, it was already decided by the adults in his life. he wakes up in a self discovery sense when he’s made to remember xehanort tearing him apart, and this awakening causes him physical pain like he’s screaming in agony.

so ventus has his adventure, leaving the nest for the first time and facing real dangers, and he can’t unknow this knowledge he now has. he has to fully acknowledge his mortality and ask his friends to kill him rather than allow the x-blade to be forged. he’s going on this identity quest, embracing his agency to try to save his friends, learns about these terrible truths in his past finally. just as soon as he’s learning how to be an independent person, he has to face this literal objectification where his only use is as part of a weapon. this was always his fate and he never actually had a choice, he’s been pulled along by xehanort this whole time.

the last choice he has, the only choice he can make, is to destroy himself to stop the x-blade coming together. and by the end of the game he’s an object again, this lifeless husk hidden away in castle oblivion waiting for other people to put his pieces back together again. he’s left where he started: asleep.

i forgot all the times they directly allude to ven being like a fairytale princess falling asleep. like i remembered that theme but i forgot the DIRECT visual parallels between him and snow white and aurora, it’s so sweet,,,,, i luv how intentional it is lmao, sometimes kh knows what it’s doing. so ventus falling asleep again would imply his personal development isn’t finished yet, he’s not ready for that transition into adulthood.

actually this is my tumblr post so i’m gonna dig up my thesis notes on classic disney and lesbians from last year, you are legally obliged to bear with me.

"In major life changes such as adolescence, for successful growth opportunities both active and quiescent periods are needed. The turning inward, which in outer appearance looks like passivity (or sleeping one's life away), happens when internal mental processes of such importance go on within the person that he has no energy for outwardly directed action. Those fairy tales which, like "The Sleeping Beauty," have the period of passivity for their central topic, permit the budding adolescent not to worry during his inactive period: he learns that things continue to evolve. The happy ending assures the child that he will not remain permanently stuck in seemingly doing nothing, even if at the moment it seems as if this period of quietude will last for a hundred years." (p.225)

Bettelheim, Bruno, 1991. The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales. 3rd ed. London: Penguin Books.

this book is really interesting actually, but i think bettelheim got in trouble bc he cites his child psychiatry clients throughout the book when it turned out he didn’t have any psychiatry qualifications and never had any clients LMAO? mad bitch. he goes off the rails in parts but there’s a lot of inchresting stuff in it anyway.

ANYWAY. using fairytale signifiers, i think ven’s sleep might be a bit more hopeful than i originally thought? like the game is still a tragedy, it’s a tragic outcome. but ven is after destroying himself in his quest of learning how to be a whole ass individual, so it’s gonna take some time to recuperate from that destruction of the self again. he isn’t dead, after all; he’s asleep. he can be woken up.

there’s a lot to mull over with kh3 linking sleep and death so closely, but i’d say it’s like sleep represents a death of a sense of self and taking time to heal. we see it with sora and roxas too. and the way to reestablish a sense of self and wake up is through fwiendship :) in kh, friends carry pieces of each other in their hearts and their memories. so when someone falters and loses themselves, they can be brought back through their friends believing in them and reminding them who they are.

in any other story i’d worry that ven having to rely on another heart to fix his own after having this whole half-a-person identity crisis for a game bears some ill omens, but in kh your identity really is made of your bonds with other people. you don’t exist outside all the others who came before and all the friends you made along the way. like IF you have an identity outside of your connections with other people it just doesn’t really matter, what matters is friendship bitch.

again going back to fairytale shit, eternal sleep is woken through true love’s kiss, and i think that’s true in kh as well. like kh3′s focus on acts of true love, whether it’s platonic or familial or what as long as it’s transcendental. everyone in this series loves each other very much! what a nice video game series!!