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tester10001000 · 6 years ago

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How KH3 could have gone and still been Nomura’s:

I’ve never posted on tumblr before, might never again, but I needed to get this out; for the sake of the catharsis I didn’t receive after 16 years with the end of KH3. The game itself was fine, in fact, I’d even rate it as a ‘great’ up until the Keyblade Graveyard. That’s when things go off the rails. So let’s rethink KH3, keeping all of Nomura’s plot points and intentions, but communicating them in a way that feels, I hope, much more rightful. I hope you enjoy this! First, the good and mostly-good. -Keep Gameplay as is—very nice. Very satisfying. Keep nice world set-up and secrets. Maybe ratchet up difficulty. Make a Coliseum in Zeus’ court to round off the whole thing as a triad. Have Yoko Shimomura write the soundtrack for real life, plz. Keep the lovely humor. Keep Sora’s excellent arc. Keep most worlds as-is: I was pleasantly surprised by how relevant and well-done most of the world’s plots were. -Cut back on the ridiculous amount of minigames that like 5% of people will be invested in and use those resources to make other improvements (like these?).-Rewrite Arendelle and Corona (and maybe Pirates?) to be unique stories–or, at least, only loosely based on the movies, while actually including important plot points. Have Pixar do it, because they kicked butt with their worlds. Include more Disney-bosses and either get rid of 100-Hundred Acre Wood, or do something more with it. -Don’t give Larxene and Marluxia magic cutscene powers like sleep and time-stopping they won’t use elsewhere. Don’t let the others, like Ansem SoD in TT or Luxord in Caribean, became decayed and cheesy versions of their prior threat. Get rid of, or explain better, why there are six new Princesses+Kairi. Explain “the Power of Waking” just a bit better. -Give us scenes between every world with more meaningful stuff re:Kairi and Riku. We haven’t really known them in awhile, so we need to be reacquainted. Have Riku actually do stuff—rather than constantly fail until Sora literally falls from the sky—like, expand on Repliku return? Or involve him in the Maleficent angle, because of his obvious and interesting connection? Maybe follow her around out of suspicion, making the Maleficent stuff feel less-tacked-on? -Have Kairi do more stuff, with more scenes expanding on her (like that lovely scene where she talks about Namine!), rather than just how Axel sees her as Xion (but still keep that, too—hence, more scenes!) -Insert a mid-climax between Corona and Monstropolis, with a return to Radiant Garden. Seriously needed to unbloat the climax and evenly redistribute the story. You could do some of this: 1. Meet the FF peeps and conclude their plot with RG’s redemption (How cool would be to hear Leon finally say “you can call me Squall”?); see how everyone is doing and how they interact with the people like Ienzo and the apprentices who caused RG to fall. We could setup the replica/sea-salt trio better here (Roxas body/who and how Xion/further Axel redemption), even though it’s probably the best thread currently, behind SDG. The FF folks were foundational to the start, they should at least be acknowledged in the end. 2. Give. Us. Sephiroth version 3.0. and resolution to that thread. 3. Have some seriously needed interaction among the Destiny Trio—(A) as individuals (sorely needed for Riku and Kairi–have her interact with her forgotten home!), (B) as a united friendship (Kairi/Riku, plz!) and © to set up the SoKai stuff better. Like, for real, we need to be able to take selfies with them—seriously, how could we have the phone and NEVER have a change to selfie with our OG friends?!) 4. Save Aqua here (don’t make her passively suck suddenly with OOC decisions) and then Ven; cement their return and relationships to everyone else (so as to stop rushing the finale and let their moment have its own power—just say they need to “rest” till the climax). 5. Tell wtf happens with Demyx. Set up Vexen/Ansem stuff better. Nomura, you could even tease Subject X girl more. C’mon. Have a tease-fight with the Org, rather than saving it all for the end.

6. It would probably be too much to ask to have Kairi and/or Riku accompany Sora the rest of the way, though it would be dearly needed. So have them do something interesting and important with their time post-RG. Make RG/HB the hub world, returning to it for various stuff. Play up Repliku, Namine, and Roxas/Xion in their hearts so we feel more invested in their persons and, thus, more catharsis when they are retrieved. -Expand on the lovely “calm before the storm” moments for our heroes—especially the Destiny Trio. Have the paopu moment, but don’t rush it so much. Have Riku, Sora, and Kairi doing something together. Have Axel engaging with someone about Xion/Roxas—along with the good Isa stuff. Show us what Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are doing -together-. -At Keyblade Graveyard opening, don’t make everyone suddenly suck. Why is Aqua not reacting -at all- to Terranort killing Ventus? What was the point of Kairi’s ��infinite time training” if she just stands there so Sora can, also, not draw his Keyblade? Why are Riku and Mickey just twiddling their thumbs? Have everyone be badass, but still get beaten—then do all the interesting Final World stuff, with Riku’s words keeping Sora encouraged in death while SHOWING Kairi, as a PoH, still in the Realm of Light, somewhere in the tornado, ACTIVELY WORKING to keep Sora’s hanging on in the FW, rather than including her passively after. Or show her doing something beforehand. Just show some damn agency and the profound bonds of the Destiny Trio.

-Make the Namine scene here mandatory—I can’t fathom why they’d let that crucial plot point pass as optional.

-Keep sick final-boss rush, but don’t make everyone take a heel-turn redemption (and give us some team-up limits with everyone! Riku/Sora limit! Sora/Kairi limit! Sora/Roxas limit! SoRiKai Limit!). Marluxia and Xemnas needed to be more ambiguous in death. Luxord, Larxene, Xion, Vanitas, YX, Terranort, Xigbar, and Repliku were all great—even perfect. Saix needed to prove himself more, and there’s NO WAY Ansem SoD can suddenly be sympathetic like that. Slow it down. -Give the Xion-return moment to Kairi—not Sora. It’s perfect for her; she’d remember her because she is made of her. Gives Kairi agency and unique engagement for the both of them. Keep giving other characters agency in these moments other than Sora—let Aqua and Ven play centerstage in returning Terra, rather than Sora’s magic. Don’t make Sora the savior of every story—it feels cheap and demeans the character journeys we’ve been invested in for so long when they don’t play an active and significant role in their resolution. -Don’t have Kairi just be kidnapped again after 30-seconds of scripted fighting, after promising to -finally- invest in her immensely untapped potential. Have Saix (+Xemnas?) versus Sora, Xion, Roxas, Kairi, and Axel (also, explain how Axel got his keyblade -back-). Axel, even though he couldn’t face Xemnas, still has -powerful- character moments—at least give Kairi the same respect. Make that the last scripted battle, so that Kairi accompanies Sora to meet Mickey and Riku. -Either have Kairi use her infinite-training to join the fight with Xemnas, Ansem, and YX (to resonate that the whole Destiny Trio is together at the end, evolved, but together) or have her doing something else important (maybe with, I dunno, PoH POWERS?!). Have her ACTIVELY sacrifice herself for Sora, mirroring what he did for her in KH1, rather than MX passively killing her for no good goddamn reason while snarking at the camera that Kairi exists literally only for Sora’s motivation—even though Sora was already charging MX. Also show Riku have some damn emotion about his other best-friend. Sorry, I’m reaallly salty here. -Don’t have MX give up so easily, and get his motivation to work better with what came before in all these years. Don’t swap it out to something else in literally the last 30 minutes of the game. Don’t let the story treat flippantly him being the cause of everyone’s pain and suffering , as he is given a divine “thumbs-up” by turning into a kid with his best bud, giggling, and floating away into the light of Kingdom Hearts. What was that? Xehanort deserves better than that. Have him struggle to the end, and have our heroes really counter him—thematically, emotionally, and physically. Have Eraqus usher him away—stubborn to the end. If you want to redeem him, Nomura, you gotta be setting that stuff up WAAAAAY earlier. -Have anyone, anyone, other than Sora also care that Kairi is now missing. Have Riku and Sora go together to find her—because, you know, they’re BFFs and have the power to. Preferably explain and make it playable how they do that. Then have the lovely ending with Namine returning and with everyone together (except redeem Isa better). Keep everyone’s great new clothes, and have the whole party on the beach—end happily, with everyone (seemingly) together again in satisfied bliss. Wrap up the saga on a cathartic high note, for goodness’ sake. Then, and only then, Nomura gets to keep his ending—but in its proper place, separate in our minds from the ending-ending, in which we can feel full satisfaction for 16 years of investment. -In the Epilogue, before going to the Foretellers, show Sora, Kairi, and Riku leaving the Island. Riku and Kairi are on ahead, everything seems happy and complete (joking about Sora finally getting his mom’s dinner, eh?), when suddenly Sora hears the echo of YX telling him that “there’s a cost for it all” and that “it’s too late for him”—suddenly, Sora fades away. Show Riku/Kairi reactions -together-. Fade his fading into the dust of the Keyblade Graveyard. Do all the Epilogue. Do the Secret Ending. Everything on whatever track Nomura wants—but for us, the audience, all of us, we FINALLY GET SOLID, CATHARTIC CLOSURE FOR EVERYONE IN THIS SAGA AFTER 16 YEARS—WITHOUT IT ALL BEING TEASER BAIT FOR SOME UNION CROSS/TWEWY CROSSOVER COMBINED WITH NOMURA’s OBSESSIVE BITTERNESS OVER FFv13! Sorry, also salty about that. -Secret Ending is Riku AND Kairi going together to find Sora in Shibuya. Boom. -Also, for all our sakes, get rid of the concept of worldlines and minimize the time travel here, plz. That’s the quickest way to undermine the stakes of your story. Tl;dr: Give us more of the characters and their agency, don’t have them act OOC for bad plotting, give us a mid-climax to slow down the rushed 3-hour ending, let us appreciate what’s happening with more characterization, explain some things better, don’t fridge Kairi (and everyone other than Sora, really), give us a real, cathartic ending for 16 years of investment—then tease us in the epilogue/secret. Thoughts? Too much to ask? Too little? I tried only to make only minimal changes to Nomura’s vision, adjusted to some universally shared criticisms among fans. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and what you liked/didn’t like! If you liked this at all, I’ve been writing Kingdom Hearts at Fanfiction under the name “Marsuvees” (with hopefully increasing quality) for over ten years. I love this series deeply, and hope Nomura can get it back on track next time. He really needs to get other people involved in writing and plotting.

#kingdom hearts #kh3 #kh3 spoilers #sora #kairi #riku #xehanort #spoilers #cmonNomuraucandobetter #roxas #namine #xion #axel #aqua

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chicken-puff · 8 years ago

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Get to know me better

Sorry I haven’t done this sooner. I was tagged by four different people if get to know you things so I figured I would do it all in one big post. Thank you so much for tagging me as well I really appreciate it.

I was tagged by: @antivancrowe and @meadowofstars for this one Tag 9 people you would like to get to know better!

Relationship status: Single

Favorite color: A teal blue currently

Pets: My pupper Ruby (actually a doggo but oh well)

Last song listened to: Papaoutai cover by Pentatonix (the original is also really good too)

Favorite TV show: Brooklyn 99

First fandom: Probably Harry Potter or Percy Jackson

Hobbies: going on tumblr, watching youtube (drawing??? and putting it on here, hanging out with friends sometimes idk man I don’t have a life)

Book(s): I last read the Dressmaker which was my first real book in a while. I would recommend to read or watch.

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I was tagged by @holesaresentient

Relationship Status: Still single

Lipstick or Chapstick: Lip balm is the same as chapstick right

Last song I listened to: Down on my luck by Vic Mensa

Last movie I watched: La La Land (great soundtrack)

Top 3 shows: Brooklyn 99 is so funny and great, I loved the art style of Mob Psycho 100, and Stranger Things was really good too.

Top 3 characters: Kei is my salty baby and basically everyone else from Haikyuu!! tbh

Top 3 ships: kurotsuki, otayuri and bokuaka (or even bokuakakurotsuki sometimes)

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I was tagged by @kageyamoon

Nickname: Hol? I don’t really have one Star sign: Aquarius Height: 178 cm or 5′10 Time right now: 5:59 pm Favourite music artist(s): cub sport, glass animals and flume atm Song stuck in your head: retrograde because I just listened to it Last movie watched: La la land Last tv show watched: I watched Voltron and Stranger Things with my fam last night What are you wearing right: Shorts and a yellow top When did you create your blog: March 2015 What kind of stuff do you post: Lots of Haikyuu!! and YOI. Also memes and anything else I find interesting or mildly amusing Do you have any other blogs moved to / saved URL: no Do you get asks regularly: like what is an ask tbh Why did you chose your URL: it used to be somehwere-inthe-pines because I wanted to have a grungy blog but then I watched anime and that all went to hell. I have also become the weird tumblr memer in my friend group so I thought my username was somewhat fitting.

Hogwarts house: Ravenclaw originally but also Gryffindor

Pokemon team: not applicable Favorite color: teal and blue Average hours of sleep: 7-9 hourse Lucky number: 9 Favourite characters: i seem to love salty assholes for some reason idk man basically everyone How many blankets do you sleep with: uno Dream job: some kind of scientist.. maybe an astrophysicist Following: 1003 (lol that’s a lot i should probably unfollow some peeps)

Okay I tag @neko-crimson, @essential-self, @lacharin, @ganseys-mint-plant, @allfandomlover, @akaashei, @agayparadox, @pmvstump and @keiththepaladin

Do whatever question or section you want :D

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thesinglesjukebox · 6 years ago

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THE 1975 - LOVE IT IF WE MADE IT [4.46] Get out your popcorn, it's time for another controversial One Nine Seven Five single...

Will Adams: What? It's just an ordinary The 1975 s- *reads lyrics* OH MY GOODNESS! [3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Matt Healy yelling Hot Takes™ in a wind tunnel as a warmed over INXS track plays is weirdly compelling, but not quite good. [5]

Claire Biddles: If anyone else tried this zeitgeist-quotes lyrical trick (it's barely a trick!) I would hate it, but a) I'm hugely predisposed to The 1975; and b) their inherent miraculousness somehow makes them the exception to every rule. The lyric tries to hold the enormity of the world and so does the music -- each electronic whoosh and whizz is a digital overspill from the heady whole, like even something this maximalist and ambitious isn't quite enough for them. [10]

Iain Mew: The sound is a great expansion of the omnivorous approach of the last album. Taking a beautiful twinkle and one shiny happy phrase and setting upon them with echo, reflections and a lot of noise, its sonic trip represents the overload of modernity in the compelling way that the lyrics resolutely don't. Maybe it's because I've been extremely online since way before The 1975 was a thing, but I'm already familiar with a great stream of context-free sourness and nonsense, and I'd rather not encounter any replications of it. If you're singing "poison me daddy" and "fuck your feelings" as slogans for satire, you're still singing "poison me daddy" and "fuck your feelings" as slogans. It's on a level with someone seeking out the most awful tweets to quote tweet them for clowning purposes, at best. [3]

Alfred Soto: Have these loudmouths gone and interpolated The Blue Nile? Sounds like it. "The Downtown Lights" relied on a steady pulse to put over its lovelorn message; "Love It If We Made It" relies on "The Downtown Lights" to pull a con job on fans born after 1985. I mean, why is this mix so crowded? [5]

Eleanor Graham: The 1975's music has this quality of dancing around your own mind in the stale air of Tory safe-seat mid-late teenhood in an endless cycle of UCAS and grey skies and girls and boys and club toilets with peeling paint. I don't expect anyone to be able to relate to that, but please don't equate my specificity with cosy familiarity. I'm talking about "Robbers" cutting straight to the core of everything that hurts about growing up within its first 30 seconds. Uncomfortable? Oh, god yeah! But when something so closely resembles the inside of your head, it is churlish to deny that you're a fan. All of this goes to say: I am incapable of being objective about "Love It If We Made It." Because it is essentially a dystopian "Robbers," with the same yearning indie thrum and a new urgency; because, well, you know, everything's decaying; because aren't we all thinking about the death of the republic on some level at all times, but don't we also need bangers? Of course, we should be cynical about pop songs that make half-hearted jabs at the administration and reference the deaths of children, which both 1975 singles have now done. In its defence, this one at least makes the statements "I moved on her like a bitch" and "thank you, Kanye, very cool" sound terrifying and surreal enough to remind me that "terrifying" and "surreal" should not have become platitudes. Is it toothless? Is it exploitative? Or will it be read in twenty years simply as addressing the elephant in the room? They've thrown the chorus in there -- raw, open, pleading, trailing off like a comet in the night sky -- to make all of those questions feel inconsequential. [8]

Juan F. Carruyo: A shocker in gloomtown, the song starts with a bang and it never lets up, swallowing everything in its path. The moody production suits the enveloping soundscape and it's worthy of mentioning how the bass plays against the keys in the refrain. By the time the song ends, it feels like this is the soundtrack for the rapture. [8]

Edward Okulicz: I'm massively fond of the 1975, but this is puddle-deep where it's trying to be ~meaningful~ and ~edgy~ and ~zeitgeisty~ and it's a hookless joy after the previous single's buzzy earworm. Big-name artists probably think they've earned the right to release indulgences, but we shouldn't pretend singles like this are anything more. [2]

Will Rivitz: Leave it to The 1975 to build off an earth-shatteringly good teaser single with a follow-up nearly as bad as the first was good. Look, I'm all for politically conscious songwriting, but these lyrics could have been written by any of the interchangeable and smugly ineffective liberal Facebook pages my high school friends repost material from. I can overlook the awful lyricism of "Give Yourself A Try" ("Like context in a modern debate, I just took it out," eurgh) because a) it's only occasional and b) is utterly drowned out by an ecstasy of electric guitars, but here Matty Healy's slacktivist garbage piles are given main billing. One point for the Lil Peep shoutout, one point for the glorious jangles after the second chorus reined in too soon in favor of a bridge that is somehow worse than the verses, and absolutely nothing else. [2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I have to give credit where credit is due: this is an evil song that utilizes its structure as a means to elevate and justify its conceptual gambit. Matt Healy reads off a list of provocative phrases that act as a simulacrum of the discouraging news headlines, ironic shitposts and self-impressed hot takes that crowd numerous corners of the internet. The pulsating beat and claustrophobic mix amplify that particular dread, and the swirling harp is the only sound that feels unstuck from it all. It hints at a hope that is later projected in the chorus, but it turns out to be nothing more than a red herring. I don't expect Healy to provide answers -- I'd argue that he took the more effective route in providing a moment of release over anything concrete -- but I don't believe him at all when he says he'd "love it if we made it." This is the sort of dude who finds joy in crassly exploiting the tragedy of others for the sake of art, and it finds its roots in how he decided on the band's name. When the chorus finally breaks free from the monotony, his voice has a smugly arrogant tone that snaps everything into place: Healy is eager to be the source of relief for the trigger warning-necessary lyrics that he doled out in the first place. He can only be a savior for the bullshit he pushes on you, and he'll cover it up by touting we instead of I. As a political statement, this has virtually no worth. As a piece of music, the bridge makes exceedingly clear that this is just an edgy "We Didn't Start The Fire." As a depiction of narcissistic manipulation, this is excellent -- perhaps the best of the year. [0]

Vikram Joseph: Even without the viral billboard advertising campaign, "Love It If We Made It" is much larger than life, but offsets its pretensions with self-aware hyperbole and a streak of pitch-black humour. The genuine venom towards a society that permits Donald Trump and "a beach of drowning three year olds" is undercut by an awareness that we're all tied up in this mess -- they can get away with railing against modern existence without sounding aloof or curmudgeonly, because they're so self-evidently part of it, and, to some extent, in love with it too. The chorus is equal parts earnest optimism and grim humour, which just about epitomises their brand. There have been a lot of "We Didn't Start The Fire" comparisons, but it actually makes me think more of a half-speed, tongue-in-cheek "Ignoreland"; The 1975 feel better having screamed, don't you? [8]

Lauren Gilbert: See, I wrote an entire blurb about how this is "New Americana" v. 2018, and then promptly deleted it to write about what it means for modernity to have failed us. Spoiler alert: Modernity has not failed us, but the specific iteration of modernity of which Healy writes is certainly Not Great. Capital M Modernity is more (and less) than drugs and borders and Trump. At the risk of sounding like the pedantic graduate student I am, modernity is characterized by industrialization, market economies, nation states, individuality, and secularism (surely not the "Jesus save us!" Healy mentions). Healy's Modernity-as-characterized-by-this-song is not that. He's writing about the dissatisfactions of a left-leaning person in the Trump/May/dear-god-why-is-Boris-Johnson-still-around era, a modernity grounded in the specific sociocultural norms and events that shaped how certain rich English-speaking countries experienced in 2018. And if we consider that particular experience of modernity as the only possibility we have, it's pretty easy to conclude "modernity has failed us" and write a "We Didn't Start The Fire" of terrible things. And I'll give Healy some credit; "Love It If We Made It" does sound and feel like living in twenty-fucking-eighteen. But modernity the concept does not imply that we must live in our specific instance of modernity; we do not have to accept Trump and income inequality and in-the-future-everyone-will-be-famous-for-fifteen-minutes Modernity. And more than that, that specific (miserable) modernity is not even the only modernity happening right now. Around the world, people are living longer, healthier lives; fewer people live in extreme poverty; there are fewer wars. Healy's Modernity may feel like a prison, where we are trapped forever in endless cars on endless roads to places we don't want to go, but it is not the only game in town. I (and many others) am alive today because of modern(ity) medicine & honestly, I'll take Donald Trump and Brexit and "thank you, Kanye, very cool" as the price of being alive. Perhaps it's too much to ask for a band known for its cynicism to consider a fuller context, and the very real positives in the world we live in, but hey, why give themselves a try? [4]

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#the 1975 #music #new music #music writing #music reviews

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