#out of the vessel (ooc)

[thegracefallen]

Thinking of doing a bit of a soft reboot. Might drop most of drafts and asks (except some plotted ones). If someone has a thread they really want to continue, please let me know.

[abyss-eyes]

Behold the Abyss // As Above, So Below

[perelka-l]

Allow me to explain:

I just saw it and my soul left my body and I couldn't think straight until I was done. Thank you for your attention.

[aposthates]

what i'm currently thinking about: It's not a good feeling, you know. [...] being an abomination. i just got a taste of your future. [...] It's like you're trapped in your own body, seeing out your eyes, while someone else moves you like a puppet. and you're trying to scream, to move a single muscle, but there's no escape. until you look down at the blood on your hands...

[orphiicheartd]

Bruh, I am prolly slow on the uptake, but I'm realizing that, considering their magic is heavily influenced by imagination, it's no WONDER Kalim's magic, especially his defensive magic, is so weak.

Because he's always had everything handed to him or done for him by others, especially Jamil, of course his imagination would never compare. Bc he's never HAD to long for anything, never had to think of anything for himself besides what he was told/given, outside certain circumstances!

Is it a wonder he was able to manifest his magic at an age when Jamil was attending another school away from him? When Kalim himself WANTED to and tried so HARD at something, likely for the first time in his life, to manifest his magic to be JUST LIKE Jamil?

Tbh, the best thing that ever happened to Kalim was not really Jamil. Bc incidentally, the way they were raised, it only served to limit Kalim both in life experiences and magic, having Jamil do everything for Kalim. He never needed to work on honing his magic when Jamil could take care of potions, when Jamil could defend him and take the brunt of the grunt work.

Thus, the best possible thing to have happened to Kalim really having to make his own friends outside of him at Night Raven. Like when he used Oasis Maker to entertain Crowley with excellent control and skill ( likely something he learned to do for shows with the Pop Music Club, I bet! ). Or how when he had to make a party without Jamil's help, Ruggie let him learn how to cook with only using magic and the food STILL turned out to be a hit despite it being Kalim's first shot at it! Or how he was able to surprise Jamil by making the river to bring Octavinelle, himself and Yuu'n Grim back to Scarabia after the boy'd dismissed his Signature Spell as useless.

[ask-swansea]

*Gives Swansea a full box of Panadol*

Dad you're so me fr I'm having a headache right fucking now and my elbow feels like it's gonna explode please help

Oh, thanks kiddo. What happened? Drinkin' the mouthwash and fall or somethin'? Cmon, let's get you to Anya.

[bloodyarn]

Also sometimes I think back to convos I had with mootsies where I was like:

▌ "Hey, but what if they didn't stop the hag ritual, and she turns into one? :( "

and they answer

▌ "Yeah, that'll never happen because my muse will DEFINITELY save her. Jokes on you."

[fragmented-deity-moved]

To start with, this is a character ramble and one about fandom kind of, mostly honestly another rant at SEGA and how they put story beats that do something else than how they then portray the character in question. I have no idea how popular this will be but yeah that's what's gonna be talked on. Specifically, regarding Mephiles!!

Bc as much as he is a villain, I don't actually think he's much of a villain by choice. Sure, he manipulated Silver into trying to kill Sonic, did it himself, tried to manipulate Shadow.

Buuuut

let's roll the clock back to when he basically got first birthed? Did he try to kill the Duke? Elise? The other scientists who may have survived? No!! He ran. Away. He tried to run for freedom, possibly somewhere he could seek refuge. And what did Shadow do, after the whole thing in 06 present? Stuffed and sealed him in the Scepter of Darkness for... basically the Crime of Existing the way he does, for that Mephiles specifically, the way he does in the future ten years later. Which happens because when he could have run, escaped, been free. Shadow sealed him.

So he threatens that Shadow's death is certain. Because he's angry, hurting, traumatized.

There's no way that the Duke got that split apart of a God in one try. And I doubt it was painless. There's also no canon confirmation anywhere that the split pieces of Solaris attempted to intentionally cause the lab to explode. It's more likely that the Duke didn't anticipate there would be equal reaction in power to what's needed to split a God and keep it split. And the lab equipment couldn't handle it and it exploded.

Ten years later, he's finally freed, and he absorbs Shadow's shadow. The person who all those years ago sealed him instead of helping him. And now, likely with his shade, he has an idea of every facet of Shadow's story... and it stings. Shadow was just like him once, he's an experiment. He wasn't born a normal way. And yet instead of helping them, Shadow, along with Silver, seal them away in an object and a young human for ten years.

And then when he asks, roundabout, manipulatively because he's doing what seems to work best, Shadow says he doesn't want justice. He just wants to destroy things. The second time, he says he wants nothing but destruction. Every turn, Shadow in 06 despite having become sure of himself and who he is... demonizes Mephiles and paints him as nothing but a monster.

So what does he do?

He becomes what he is thought of. And it ends in him being erased from timeline, not even allowed to exist because he did things that he was thought to be.

When he returns in mainline games years later in Shadow Generations, he doesn't seek destruction, doesn't seek to eradicate anything. He doesn't even truly play his original part in 06. He just seeks to exist. He seeks to restore himself to the timeline again, and because here Shadow is again, discovering his Scepter, of course his first thought, with probably no idea if it's true or not, is that in order to do that, he has to defeat Shadow.

He doesn't succeed in doing this, the Shadow he faces in this game is far stronger than he was back then, where he required, to overcome him, the lack of his inhibitor rings that leashed his power. Now he only required limited power, as Mephiles had not grown in any strength while trapped outside of time, sealed away and unallowed to exist within the timeline, in a space where time did not pass and so despite time passing in the timeline, Mephiles was stuck in the divine equivalent of Stasis.

So... I don't write him, even in Erased Verse, as a villain by choice. Sure, he was villain. But he did not choose that, he was painted in that light, and given he'd barely existed at the time. He took that mantle and played the part he thought was expected of him all while all he wanted was to be whole again and to seek justice on those who had hurt him and Iblis. To seek, perhaps if he didn't use justice, revenge on those who had hurt him, and however misguided, on those who hadn't done anything to help him, who had, in his mind, turned their backs on his whole self and continued to celebrate what had become a farce for ten more years during his time sealed in that Scepter. Which may have, at the time, to him, looked like they were celebrating the pain he went through.

SEGA heavily mishandled his characterization in terms of what they seemed to want him to be, as in pushing for him to be this cold, apathetic, sadistic being without compassion, they forgot to adjust or even add any context that could have explained that he'd actually always been like that. They could have added, in flavor text on a collectable somewhere, or during Sonic's story arc since Elise was there, during the time he was looking for information, that they may have misinterpreted Solaris as a benevolent deity who protected them. They could've done it even in Shadow's Story! But they didn't. They kept the meaning of the Festival of The Sun, the voice-lines in the story regarding Solaris and his role towards the people of Soleanna... but then they made Mephiles the way he was, and to me, it just looked like shoddy writing to give Sonic and co an antagonist while giving Shadow a Foil or mirror for his past self. But the characters all treat him as a heartless, irredeemable, apathetic, sadistic, villainous monster.

Which instead of coming off as "maybe Soleanna was wrong about Solaris" even when he fused back into him again. Came off more as a "You hurt me, traumatized me, and then you made me this way because I cannot trust any of you to help me. So I became the monster you wanted me to be anyway since it is all you see me as."

Mephiles is a foil to Shadow because he is essentially a mirror of him in appearance, and his past, and a what-if scenario of if Shadow had no Maria. He is, essentially, a Shadow without a Maria. Pure Darkness without a light to guide you to, instead of a shadow meant to point the way to the light.

And I think about that a lot. And I incorporate this sort of thinking into how I write Mephiles on here and on my Discord. I don't write him as pure evil without redemption. Because that's not what I believe he is. That's what, in my belief, even in SEGA writing, he was forced to be in order to give all the hogs an antagonist and to have the big finale boss for the most rushed game SEGA has ever pushed out.

[thegracefallen]

Kinda tempted to bring back my angel OC...

[abyss-eyes]

// The Blackstone Isles //

Images below are all to give vague ideas for visual appearance until more accurate art is made.

The Blackstone Isles is an unnatural phenomenon in and of itself, the islands don’t show up on any maps, satellites, or from the air, but it is a very real place. Located in the Gulf of Mexico, right in the centre of the Chicxulub crater, where the Black Marker was found the island formed after its retrieval. It is unknown when the black fog set in, there were rumours of fog -aptly named by the locals as the Devil’s Breath- for a time even before the retrieval.

The phenomenal islands are a place for the abnormal, home to one of the founding families of Unitology the Blackstones; the name was taken in honour of the abnormal formations of a black stone located all over the isles. To enter the isles the secret lies in that of the marker, to hold a piece of the marker allows you to get access to the isles but the security is tight and there seems to be some force repelling all who are not welcome on the isles.

Blackstone

Credit - Star Diopside

Credit from DREDGE

These black stones are made up of an unknown mineral that is as harder than diamond and cannot he broken or mined by natural means. It is unclear if they’re made from high pressure due to there location at an impact crater or are a side effect of the gravitational anomalies caused by the marker due to the way they grow in wild shapes and forms.

The surface of the stone is cold to touch, but hums with faint vibrations akin to whispers or a pulse, it is black in colour, so dark it seemed to draw in the light around it warping the surrounding with an otherworldly shimmer of fractured light. The light the stone absorbs dances across the stone like rippling water or sometimes in holy marker script or other strange runes and symbols, before sinking into the core and disappearing into darkness as if swallowed by the stone. The stone causes gravitational anomalies smaller pieces and dirt levitate around the formations.

Beastmaw Village

Credit is Silberius on DA

Credit from DREDGE

All who enter the Blackstone Isles enter through Beastmaw, it is a fishing hamlet on the cove of the isles which is used to access everything else. The name came from the fact the cove is surrounded by jagged teeth like rocks making the cove resemble a maw, hence the name Beastmaw, in honour of their god. The main trade is fishing, as is most sea faring islands, but also the exportation of black stone and other rare resources to well faring bidders and market buyers who have the money to afford such exotic and unique luxuries. The residents are closed off to outsiders and are fiercely loyal unitologists, it is a very closed community and all are loyal devotions to the Blackstone family who reign supreme over the island as the top of the top.

There are many superstitions within the village, as many sea hamlets are known to have. Most won’t walk the streets at night when the fog rolls in as people will be lured into the night never to be seen again. Naming and such vessel rituals are taken seriously: all hold pieces of Blackstone and marker to always find their way home, none will do anything to anger the sea, a portion of the hall is always returned to the ocean in tribute to the beast, and so on. There are strange happening to be found in Beastmaw, from the thick fog that sings in the dead of night, to the inky rain that falls and dyes all the homes black, leaking them looking dripping and infected.

The fish caught are often strange abberations pulled from black waters, often with too many eyes or teeth, with glowing pustules and oozing sores, but this doesn’t deter the villagers. Instead the stranger the catch, the more you are praised, often villagers will hold a feast and share meals amongst each other with larger hauls and butcher the prize in the streets before a cheering crowd. Children often play with fish bones and seaweed, they play games about being beasts of the deep catching the heathens, they sing about the abyss and how it will swallow it all to bring unity and make them whole, and they all grin with sharpened yellowed teeth and blackened gums with eyes far too bright for the day.

The Cathedral

Credit - Cologne Cathedral

Credit from Dead Space fanwiki

The isles has one main church all residents attend, a grand cathedral made up of Blackstone and glass to allow the aurora lights to spill inside and create a holy atmosphere. It is the central feature beyond the Blackstone mansion and is compulsory attendance for all residents and guests of the isle to attend biweekly sermons performed by the priests ordained by the Blackstone family.

The interior is like most churches of Unitology, but a lot larger and filled with an array of Blackstone decor and intricate tapestries, all decor is made from the islands resources and are astronomical in value, not to mention the main centre piece which is a Marker that is sat just behind a pool of black waters diverted from a holy spring higher in the isles and carefully moved to fill the pool. This pool is used for baptisms and rituals of all kinds, but it is known what goes in doesn’t always come out, often given in offering to the god and their marker.

The Estate

Credit

The Blackstone estate is a sprawling land area filled with a towering black stone mansion, with winding halls and doors that lead to nowhere, with shimmering stone illuminated by the sun and aurora of the night, it is a sight to behold and the main feature of the isles besides The Cathedral.

Made up of several conjoined and separate buildings the estate is broken down into the following (in no particular order): The reception, the foyer, the board room, the drawing room, the activities room, the meeting rooms, the library, the master wing, the mistress wing, the children’s wing, the guest wing, the servants quarters, the bathing pools, the stables, the garage, the trophy room, the ritual room, the chapel, the wine cellar, the holding cells, the store rooms, the specimen room, the medical wing, the main ballroom, the secondary ballroom, the inner garden, the outer gardens and lake, the kitchens, the butchers hit, the hunters quarters, the study, the dining hall, the washrooms, the linen room, the observatory, the office, the gallery, the attic, the annex, and various restrooms on various floors.

The estate is a winding complex of multiple floors and twisting halls, only the finest materials are allowed on the premises, so everything has a price tag of astronomical value. There are doors that don’t open, stairs that lead to nowhere, secret passageways and servants paths, hidden rooms and access to certain rooms and floors are locked with strange mechanisms only those of the Blackstone family know how to open. Not many get to set foot in the estate unless you’re the elite of the elite and get invited by the Blackstone’s, of which they’d have to be within the Church of Unitology; but even then most people are unable to even afford a chance due to the location on Earth and the secrecy of the isles.

[exagides]

EXAGIDES — a semi—selective roleplay blog for wikstrom of the kalosian elite four. written by robin. carrd. follows from @syringia.

[psychopomp-namine]

I was thinking the other day that man, kokuto neji is such a character and I haven't liked a writer character like this since... shang qinghua?

which naturally led me to this thought: jj fic with svsss-style au where neji transmigrates/gets isekai'd into the world of havenna. as domina, of course.

it's extra fucked up imo because at least when sqh transmigrated in his book, he made up all of those characters and they mostly stayed in the realm of fantasy. like, sure, lbh was kinda based on himself in some ways and mbj was his ideal fantasy, but they still mostly stayed fictional, you know? sqq (sy) had to fix his plots because the characters sqh wrote strayed too far from their original plotlines

but theater makes a fictional world a bit too real and personal, especially when you use real people as inspirations for your writing. with neji, he'd be looking at rukiora and see three different people (mitsuki acting as rukiora; rukiora who was written based on a younger version of neji; rukiora who is her own person in this weirdly real world of havenna). neji would see fugio and to him that is both sou acting as fugio and the fugio who grew up with poison flowers. miguel is both fumi and the guy who ran away from his neshiromi fields. the only constant would probably be chicchi. she is too much like kisa in that... well. neji didn't really have a backstory for chicchi. chicchi is a blank canvas just like kisa is as an actor.

anyway. yeah, very sv-style character arc where neji, much like shen yuan in sv, is forced to humanize the villain. except this villain was his creation and is also tied to a bunch of personal issues for neji that he Doesn't Want To Think About and also he doesn't? really understand the character he wrote tbh?

isn't art supposed to process your emotions for you!! why must he process these himself!!

can you imagine neji, who always casts himself as a seer of some sort (fortune teller, ushinoko) or someone who generally has some control over his future or his "creation" (who is mary if not just another side of neji anyway; she's takihime redux, and takihime is also. neji). imagine this dude being transported inside the play he wrote but he doesn't understand it and he has no control over it and everyone's acting both in character and out of character. he both knows and doesn't know these people. they're fictional but also... real? does he treat them as real people? is domina real? he wanted his actors to imbue parts of themselves into his characters. are these people really just characters from a script? are they his quartz classmates? is he allowed to even hope that that's the case?

it's both THE improv exercise of his dreams and also. a nightmare

[eyehunger]

Mora would not be able to survive alone in vesseled au

[azeyjah]

THERE’S SO MANY CHILDREN THAT I CAN’T PUNT

[mysteryoftwilight]

What's the Deal with London in Kingdom Hearts?

I mean is that worldbuilding poorly explained or what? Bad jokes aside, I now need to steal people's eyeballs for a moment while I gesture wildly at inconsistencies in Kingdom Hearts, specifically KH1 but I'm sure the other games as well... which is completely strange and totally new for this fandom.

The main thrust of what I'm trying to get at is that both Edwardian London (if not all of England, which I'll get to in a second) and Victorian England (if not Alice's family's estate in Victorian England) are both worlds in the KH Universe with a second point that world travel is easier than the games try to present. I'm going to break this up into three main pieces of evidence, in order of importance, before moving into conclusions and fun things it means if I'm not misconstruing the evidence. Which is possible, I'm a fallible human being but I'm going to post this anyway.

{ the rest is under a read more because I'm not an asshole and this is roughly 3,500 words so it'd clog dash. You have been warned }

Main Argument: Edwardian London exists in Kingdom Hearts, and it is not connected to Neverland, and Victorian England exists in Kingdom Hearts and is not connected to Wonderland.

Okay kiddos, let's start with some important context and definitions. When I say 'Edwardian England', I specifically mean the era of English history from between 1901 to 1914. For setting the time periods of the worlds I'll be discussing here, I am going to assume that the Disney films roughly line up with the books they are based upon. This post primarily focuses on three worlds: Wonderland, Neverland, and Deep Jungle. As you'd guess from that selection, this is very much a KH1 oriented post and I'm sure we could probably dismiss them as being later retconned but I can't think of anything that directly contradicts them so...

Also I'm assuming that the Disney films aren't too far off from the original source material, so if they are uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sorry.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, to my knowledge, does not specify a date in the text itself but considering the background of it being written for an actual real-world child, I will assume that the publication year, 1865, to be the in-text year and also the year the movie (and by extension, the year Alice herself comes from in Kingdom Hearts) takes place. This places her roughly in the middle of the Victorian era (I know I defined only the Edwardian era before but this will be important for something else later). Pinning down the year for Neverland is slightly more difficult, as its source material is from two linked sources: the original play, Peter Pan: or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, and the novel Peter and Wendy. The play was first debuted in 1904, while the novel (which is similar yet different) was first sold in 1911. Both are well into the Edwardian period, and I again cannot seem to find any confirmation of the date in-text so we're going by publication date again. Deep Jungle's source, the novel Tarzan of the Apes, does actually give a rough enough in-text year: Tarzan's birth parents are marooned in 1888, and the main plot takes place when Tarzan himself is 21, making the year 1909.

That effectively means that, roughly speaking, the London we see in Kingdom Hearts I at the end of Neverland (which is confined to Big Ben but we see the whole city below) could very well be the same one that Jane and Clayton (and presumably Jane's father but we never see him so make of that what you will) left to get to Deep Jungle.

Now that the concept is established and definitions clairfied, let's move on to my evidence for this and other Weird Things™️ that occured to me.

Main Evidence 1: Deep Jungle, the Union Jack, and the Globe

So, I'll start with Deep Jungle because it provides the biggest puzzle piece I think. I know that Deep Jungle will probably not show up again in the series, but it did in 1 and so it gets to be here. Deep Jungle is the second largest wrench into the 'world order' shtick they brought up in Wonderland (and then never again), because it is pretty clear that Jane & Clayton are not from the jungle. They have a camp, for one, and for two they are the only humans (besides Tarzan) in the entire world. Jane asks Sora if he's 'also here to study the gorillas', which mean her and Clayton came to the jungle / island / whatever it is. They also have more technology than the rest of the world would imply, a physical map of Africa, and, most damning for this post: a Union Jack on the flag pole. This means that, in the Kingdom Hearts universe, Jane and Clayton are English folk from England, as they feel the need to fly their flag. Moreover, the map of Africa (on the far wall of the tent with Jane in it) means they are aware of other continents from Earth.

Also an important note is that they have a globe in the base camp. I'm going to take this as further evidence of them coming from a place that is scientifically advanced enough to know what the continents of the world roughly look like.

Here's where things get tricky, though: how did they get there? As far as I can tell (looking over the dialogue from a script someone uploaded to GameFAQs so take it as you will as well as just generally looking around what you have access to in the game), they don't have a vessel that would have gotten them there, much less get them back. Did they come in a ship that just let them off there for a while, like the movie? Possibly. Hook's ship is able to do that, after all. Which just further puts a hole in the world traveling mechanics the series presented: how were they able to get their ship from England to the other world of Deep Jungle without them getting eaten by Heartless? Was their ship a gummi ship? Is Hook's ship actually a gummi ship? (Unlikely, it's too smooth and he still had it in Birth By Sleep, during which Gummi Blocks weren't a thing iirc)

Or are there other, safer ways to traverse between worlds than gummi space or the Lanes Between? Can you use a sea faring vessel to sail the Ocean Between and get to those New Worlds? Also doubtful but probably the easiest answer.

(Also, just to note because I can't think of anywhere else to say it and I thought it was interesting: Clayton's rifle is a double barreled rifle and, more to the point, a common hunting implement for gentleman hunters back in the day. The fact Sora can tank shots designed to bring down elephants is pretty bonkers. Clayton is also one of two Kingdom Hearts characters (internationally) to use a gun, the other being Barbossa in his fight in Kingdom Hearts II. Fun facts that only two people pull out actual gun-guns in the whole series... unless you're playing the Japanese version of II, then one of the undead pirate mooks uses a flintlock rifle, which is why their crossbows in the international version makes a gun sound. )

Main Evidence 2: Neverland, Big Ben, and the Absence of Wendy

Okay, so Neverland has appeared in other games so it holds a bit more water than Deep Jungle. Now, in KH1, I don't know why they call it 'Neverland', because it's entirely Hook's ship and Big Ben... which is in London. And seeing as, to my knowledge and brief searches through the scripts of Days and Birth by Sleep, they never bring up Wendy or London, and there doesn't appear to be a hint that it is otherwise connected, I am led to believe this is another case of characters that shouldn't be able to easily traversing beyond their world easily traversing beyond their world. Wendy was kidnapped as far as we're told in KH1, and maybe Pan only really met her when she was kidnapped by Hook. The bigger issue comes during the outro of the world, where Peter Pan straight up says 'oh yeah, just bring Kairi to Neverland when you rescue her!', as if it's completely normal to travel there from somewhere else. Peter doesn't seem to have an issue traveling the Ocean Between, and neither does Hook for that matter, but he's a villain so we could possibly handwave that as 'he was given those powers by Maleficent', who herself is a whole can of worms but this post is long enough.

Wendy proceeds to never be brought up again throughout the DS version of Days. I'm not sure about the manga, but I'm mostly focusing on the games so if she does uh... sorry, but good on you for reading the manga it's good. The point here is that if it was as simple as Peter says to simply 'remember Neverland and you can see me again', she probably would be some level of presence. I'll bring it up again in the Wonderland section of this post, but I think this solidifies that it is, indeed, a separate world: the worlds separate after KH1 and travel between them should be more difficult.

Now, there is the slight hole of the world map icon in both KH1 and Days having Big Ben on display (despite not going there in Days, but it seems to just be the KH1 icon flipped). I'm choosing to view that as a gameplay concession and a reusing of assets that didn't need to be changed, because otherwise we're opening another can of worms of how is Neverland two worlds connected like that? Most worlds in Kingdom Hearts are fairly uniform and aesthetically consistent due to being based on individual movies, and while that explanation would make sense, it doesn't account for Wendy not going back to Neverland and Roxas not going to Big Ben in Days (though that second one can easily be handwaved as 'fighting at the clocktower would've been a pain in the ass using a DS d-pad'. The only world that gets is kinda an outlier that goes against that sentiment is Disney Town / Castle, which is connected to the old black & white animations in the distant past (which we visit as Timeless River) and then the Country of Musketeers in the less distant past, but there's handwavey explanations for those. Other than potentially Wonderland, this would be the only world like this.

Speaking of...

Main Evidence 3: Wonderland, Victorians, and Implications

Wonderland is keeping me up at night because of one missable interaction in KH1. If you speak to Alice while she's in the cage while you're looking for evidence, Sora and co. will introduce themselves to her and they'll have the following interaction:

Alice: Who are you? Sora: I’m Sora. Goofy: I’m Goofy, and that there’s Donald. Alice: Pleased to meet you, though I do wish it were under better circumstances. I’m sorry you got mixed up in this nonsense. Sora: Why are you on trial in the first place? Alice: I should like to know the very same thing! Apparently I was guilty from the moment I took the stand! Sora: That’s crazy! So, where are you from? Alice: Hmm, curious. I can’t quite remember. You see, I found this mysterious rabbit hole. When I tried to peek inside, I tumbled in head over heels… And I found myself here. Sora: So you’re from another world! Goofy: That’s funny. Maybe you don’t need a ship, then. Donald: I don’t get it. Alice: What do you mean “another world”?

This, if not outright confirms, heavily implies that Alice is not from Wonderland. Which... duh, that's just kinda the point of the story. But in the context of Kingdom Hearts is very important, and highlighted by Goofy: it's possible to get to other worlds without a ship. Which, again, we see later: Dark Corridors, star shards, wishing on one's heart, the Power of Waking... these are the proof in the puding, but we'll circle back to that third one because Beast also does something that makes some major implications if you don't believe in Word of God.

But why is Alice so central to this post? Because, unlike Jane, Clayton, and Wendy, she's not Edwardian. She's Victorian, and removed from the early 1900s by 44 years. Meaning (again, assuming that the above exchange is meant to imply she came from her 'real world' into Wonderland, with that 'real world' being Victorian England) that there isn't one England in the Ocean Between, but two: one Edwardian and one Victorian. Even if we say that her family's estate is simply connected to Wonderland through a rabbit hole and nothing else, that still leaves Edwardian London (and again, presumably more of England but we'll get to that) as a separate entity. And, no, Alice can't 'just be Edwardian', because of one very big thing: her dress. Alice dressed in a animated approximation of a Victorian child's dress (more of her legs are exposed, meant to allow her to run and play as she is a child and there is more of a structure to the skirt, giving it a bell jar-shape look), which would be seen as incredibly quaint in the Edwardian period (for comparison, Edwardian children's dresses had less of that structure, with the dress falling more flat against the body. This was also reflected by adults of the period, but we're focusing on children so shut up. Also I can't really draw a comparison with Wendy herself, seeing as she's in a nightgown so historical examples upon ye.)

Now, I'll admit her not knowing Wonderland is 'another world' could sink the ship... if Alice in Wonderland didn't build in an explanation: she legitimately doesn't think she's in another world, and the ending of the story has her waking up from a dream. While in Kingdom Hearts this is unlikely (as the Realm of Sleep exists, and Wonderland doesn't seem to be a Sleeping World but hey maybe KH4 will say it is and I'll firebomb Square), it's completely possible that her wish to go to a world of nonsense brought her there while she slept... or she did legitimately end up there, following a world traveler (more on them in a tangent section because I don't want to go down another rabbit hole) and was sent back to her original world after the events of Kingdom Hearts I as she also doesn't appear during the events of Days.

(I'm also sidestepping anything that happened in X or Dark Road because I don't know what happens in them that deeply, so I can't wait for that to blow a hole in my entire point here)

Tangent: Traversing the Ocean Between

Okay so these are moreso side things I wanted to point out because I made a point about the rules of world traversal making no sense and I wanted to further highlight that the World Order is, in fact, real fuckin' dumb. These are just rapid fire points tho I'm not going crazy over it.

1. Beast and the power of being a simp — Hollow Bastion has a lot of things that Break the Rules™️, but the relevant one here is that Beast survived the destruction of his world, somehow didn't get consumed by Heartless despite having a Heart full of Darkness, and just... wished real hard to get to where Belle was taken. Nomura later walked that back and said that Beast used a Corridor of Darkness, but that makes less sense because if you're not wearing the Anti-Darkness Drip™️, you get completely drained of vitality and probably become a Heartless. Either way, that seems like it shouldn't be something just anyone can do, but no one comments on it so I guess it's not overly weird.

2. Hook's Ship — I feel like we don't talk about how Hook's ship can just... sail the Ocean Between with seemingly no issue. It literally just rams Sora's ship and captures them right out of space. Again, it's not commented by anyone as an odd thing to happen, so is that just normal? If the Islands didn't get destroyed, would Sora, Riku, and Kairi be out in the Ocean Between? You evidently don't need to breathe out there, because you're on Hook's ship's deck and outside the Mysterious Tower just fine... Unless it's Spelljammer rules, actually. That could probably work, actually...

3. What does unlocking the paths do, actually? — I know it's just a gameplay mechanic to keep you more or less knowing where to go at any point in time, but in-universe it seems like you only need it if your preferred method of travel is a gummi ship or Keyblade Glider. I mean, Hell, the Guardians of Light have their own answer to corridors of darkness, as seen in Birth by Sleep and the mobile games.

4. No One Cares Your a Duck and Dog and that's also weird — No one ever points out that there's walking anthropomorphic animals with Sora. I'm willing to ignore it rarely coming up (the only instance that sticks out in my mind is Minister Frollo, who was desperately close to using a slur) that Sora has weird fashion, but I'm pretty sure Donald and Goofy would turn heads in like... a good number of the worlds we visit? Like. Are anthros a common sight? How are they getting around? Or do people just assume they're related to Moogles? What the actual fuck does your average denizen of Port Royale think of the humble Moogle? They're shopkeepers that operate through holograms and that's weird.

So we have established that the World Order is bullshit and discarded for good reason. Let's move back to my main point.

Final Evidence: Worlds are Bigger than Seen in Game

This is kinda a given and more than a little obvious, but I thought it worth highlighting. We can't land on the streets of London when we visit in KH1, we see more jungle in Deep Jungle but again, can't go that way. Twilight Town apparently has access to a beach that we straight up never see. We don't go through the Imperial City in the Land of Dragons to get to the Imperial Palace, despite it being visible from the mountains and checkpoint. Scala ad Caelum has a bunch of areas we don't get to explore, even in ReMind... you get the picture. I'm not using that to dig at the games; they're games at the end of the day, and a 1:1 recreation of a realistic setting or areas that don't have anything going on aren't fun to anyone but people like me who enjoy verisimilitude, but even I say that there's a point where it becomes completely redundant and not fun. I'll fill in the blanks myself because it's fun to me, but I don't expect a game not about simulation to do it.

I bring this up to highlight that it's impossible to say if the London we see at the Clocktower in Neverland is all there is to that world, or if it's more of England, or even the entire United Kingdom. Because the rules are so flimsily established and so quickly discarded within the games themselves, I'm left gesturing aggressively to an unsolvable mystery. While my personal headcanon is that each 'world' is roughly the size of a dwarf planet, I obviously don't have any evidence to back that up. It also falls apart because it doesn't answer how their suns work, because how do they have suns?

Hell, KH4 could introduce a world themed after Treasure Planet or even Star Wars, and then we're really fucked because they're in space. Do we make every world something like the Spelljammer Crystal Spheres, where each world has its own solar system but from an external viewpoint you only see the important location in that place? That'd probably be the cleanest solution, but it doesn't feel right.

Conclusion: There are no Rules, Put a Three Kingdoms Period China World in Your Fanfic so Sora can interact with Liu Bei or something

In review, it seems like there aren't any hard and fast rules for what can and can't be a world. Every major historical period for every culture under the sun and every story ever could be its own world, as evidenced by Alice's Victorian England being in the same universe as Wendy's Edwardian England. It also doesn't seem like there are as many hard boundaries between worlds if you know how to do it: Alice came to Wonderland by falling into a rabbit hole that connected the two, similar to Gates in something like old Forgotten Realms lore (or folklore but I've already leaned into old D&D lore I might as well go all the way), Beast either simped his way to Hollow Bastion or used a Corridor of Darkness, Hook's ship can just Do That with no given explanation. Hell, we don't even know how Cloud gets from Olympus to Hollow Bastion (presumably from wherever he ended up after fighting Sephy but I'm not even 100% if that's canon).

So, ignore what purists say, put anything as a world in your Kingdom Hearts fanfic and it'll fit if you handwave hard enough. It's the ultimate isekai, you don't even need to involve god-like beings. I myself have added a Sengoku Jidai world to my fanfic and no one's any the wiser /j

...I feel like a KH Musou game would fucking slap, though...

[tidesfate]

Need to make more horror media mora aus