MY FRIENDS ARE MY SHOWER [Kingdom Hearts]

That said literally all of these pale in comparison to the contributions of the guy I know only as Crazy Vanitas guy who has an amazing art style and has used it to draw H U N D R E D S of weird pictures of mostly vanitas, sometimes ventus.

https://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=651241

Mild crush.

 

O shit that’s a good rec list thank you so much! I’ve already read house on fire, deceitful above all things (SO GOOD YES) and of course boys, but the rest are new to me and I’ll have to check them out

@Aondeug out of curiosity, which of the above are your ships?

 

Lol that's hits on half the list dude >u< at least you know then we have similar taste and I can't lead you too far left field.

 

Basic bitch ass ships is axel/roxas and sora/riku. I don't ship anything fancy.

 

@leitstern despite the fact that I’ve never actually played one of the games, kh is one of my biggest fandoms after homestuck. The themes and relationships just hit so many of my buttons, and there’s so much good fic to read! So I ended up plowing through a lot of the best authors on ao3 and as many as I could find on ffnet.

Speaking of having similar taste tho have you read worry for me by cygna_hime? A fucking incredible vanitas-centric gen longfic with found family, meta about what it means to be made only of darkness or light, and vanitas having a lot of xehanort-related trauma

Also the beyond the ocean beach series by edmondia_dantes and rayemars. If you liked house on fire you will also like BTOB. Excellent codependent children with magical ptsd trying and failing to fit back into their home :>

@Aondeug if it ain’t broke don’t fix it

 

I’ve not read either of these things. Magical ptsd perusal will commence.

 

Kairi and Lea had that one scene sitting on a rock together at sunset in the e3 trailer and now I’m having Emotions about the fact that he STILL can’t remember Xion

Thinkin bout him feeling incredibly happy every time he sees her, and he has no idea why because the extent of their interactions so far has been that one time he kidnapped her to try to lure her bf to his death, but her face makes him feel a strange combination of peace and longing, the same way Sora does

 

why do you do this to me

 

Because if I have to suffer about fictional characters then everyone else has to suffer too

 

;-;

 

Guys! Guys I realized A Thing. D'you remeber this?

Spoiler

Turns out it was right... she really was Squidward....

 

New trailer

Everything hurts

EDIT: @theambernerd your wish came true

 

DEMYX IS THERE

MY SWEET BOI I MISSED U SO

 

Re the last shot of the above trailer -

Spoiler: Trailer

Everything I've seen seems to think that it's Roxas, what with the hunting through twilight town and Axel's tears. But I think it's far more likely to be Ventus - or at least Venitas, with Vanitas at the wheel. We know the net's closed on him because of that line involving them both, and it would just be a perfect 3 for 3 for the Wayfinder Trio.

Fuck everything! (:

 

MY BOIIII

like tbh i'm a bit :? at him being norted because talk about an ooc norting (tho like, larxene is also a pretty ooc norting, tbh most of the characters in Chain of Memories do a terrible job of pretending they don't have emotions, these bitches all emotional as fuck, and my fav fantheory that i'm probly still going to hold on as au content is that they chose who to send to castle oblivion as a way of isolating and eliminating the nobodies that were starting to show signs of having hearts again)

then again demyx's 'aww, we do too have hearts' line is more sinister as a proto-nort. he fuckin knows. he knows the gig and he's just gon let it happen

i hope they still have a good chunk of their own personalities in kh3 tho, if everyone just talks in grandiose Nort speech i'm gon be sad. As great as KIIINGDOM HEAAARTS soliloquys are i don't know if i can deal with 13 characters doing that
on the other hand that is an excellent mental image

 

SIDE TANGENT ABOUT CASTLE OBLIVION AND THINGS

Spoiler: heckin long

I adore how much ridiculous levels of subterfuge and betrayal are going on in org xiii in CoM and Days time and I love talking about it so i'm just gonna infodump

There's just. so many things that are implied but never fully expounded on so there's so much to think about??? Like. Okay step 1. in early Days, Axel is definitely in cahoots with Saix in general, friends as somebodies and all that.

This exchange and a few others confirm that Xemnas was aware of Larx & Marly's betrayal, yada yada, but the only mention of Zexion's murder is

(sidenote; there's a transcript of the entirety of the dialogue in Days!!!!! I love the person who did this so much https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/943346-kingdom-hearts-358-2-days/faqs/58579 )

So they just. Never give us a concrete reason for Zexion's death!! Axel's words to Zexion while killing him were just "You just found out way too much" which just.
We have some evidence that Axel and Saix had.. something planned together. Axel says he 'cleared the way to the top' for Saix, but there's nothing more concrete said, and Saix also expresses interest in finding what Xemnas is hiding from them..

So my basic theory is that Saix and Axel essentially had the same plan that Marly and Larx had at first.. considering they were in Radiant Garden when the world fell to darkness as well, it's safe to assume they became nobodies at the same time as the Superiors, and it wouldn't take a lot to figure out that their essential deaths and the death of their realm was the fault of the people they find themselves reliant on as nobodies, a logical enough reason to plan revenge, even without emotion to drive it. Or, barring that, suspicion enough to want to find a way to get all the answers of what the hell's going on. So they devise a near-unspoken plan of getting Saix up to second in command and possibly, probably, eventually taking Xemnas out in the end.

But then Norting happens. By Days Saix's eyes have gone from green to orange so though he's not silvering like Xigbar (or potentially Aqua if the trailers are anything to go by) he's already getting some norting, it's possible even in the events of CoM he's being influenced some by Xemnas and the mission of the 13 darknessess even without being aware of it.

Cause what Axel does in CoM honestly furthers both the surface goal of the organization, and both his and xemnas' secret agendas. He make sure Marly and Larx are taken out, eliminating a different (and much less subtle) uprising, but he also makes sure Vexen and Zexion don't survive. On one hand, they're probably the best researchers in the Organization and were clearly more valuable members to Xemnas, and would make sense to get out of the way so they wouldn't get suspicious of anything Axel and Saix would do, and clear the road up for Saix, since thereafter Xigbar and Xaldin are the only two outranking him, and neither of them have the.. organizational role that Saix takes up.
But also, I'd say Vexen and Zexion are some of the least convincing nobodies in the organization as far as the heartless thing. Vexen literally begs for his life, and says 'I don't want to' while begging. wanting is literally emotion dude.
Zexion is also veryy emotional at his death scene, and on top of this, is definitely depicted as one of the smartest and most studious characters, which leads back to Axel's last words to him. The 'found out' could easily be Axel talking about Saix and himselfs' plans, but point to the potential of his character to discover the nature of nobodies to regrow hearts. It's convenient for Saix to have these two out of the way in one way, but since they're both, along with Marluxia and Larxene tbh (and you too namine, holy shit namine), obviously emotional nobodies.
And tbh, considering a few scenes prior to killing Zexion Axel states 'I actually felt that' after laughing to himself, he's probly figured out something's seriously up at that point too)

Castle Oblivion: where Xemnas sent the nobodies that were already growing hearts to die
The only one that's not super clear (at least to me) is Lexaeus, but he was never a suuper interesting character to me so I don't have his dialogue near memorized like i do for the rest of CoM whoops

Honestly thinking of it, it's honestly potential that Xemnas kept Demyx around partially to be a distraction from the truth; a nobody that kept insisting 'hey we do have hearts' being a lazy buffoon, what a great way to convince everyone else that the idea that you do have hearts is ridiculous

Still sorta weird that lots of these characters are norts tho

 

Hey so my friends and I are doing kh retrospective streams in prepsration for lping kh3, which we promised to do more then half a decade ago. If that sounds cool to you link here!

 

Completely random thought:
man anyone remember when people kept trying to make 'axel is riku's nobody' a theory despite like, it making absolutely no sense?

ahh, pre-358/2 Days times, you sure were crazy

 

Also!! I finally looked up a thing that had been nagging me forever, in the PS2 version of CoM when axel lets namine go and laughs he says 'hey wait, i'm enjoying this. you guys are something else!'

I was always curious if this line was in the GBA version, because timeline-wise it's the first clear line we have that indicates nobodies really do have feelings (and is very cute in context with Days, literally a few weeks into knowing Roxas Axel starts having and noticing his own emotions)
But if it was in the GBA version, that would mean that even before the release of KH2 they intended the tale of nobodies having no emotions to be lies, which tbh is more forethought than I expected from the early kh releases, especially the second game ever released in the series.
I looked up the cutscene and axel says something completely different in the GBA version though, so alas, the truth about nobodies was not there from the beginning of their presence in the games :P

That does make the PS2 release the first indication of nobodies having emotions, released in 2007 in japan, whereas the last game was 2005 kh2, so with that and the next releases being versions of Coded and Days, wherein Days' main theme is pretty much 'look at all these emotions' and if i remember right Coded has a decent lot to do with Roxas' emotions as well (at least in re:Coded, no clue on the original japanese mobile game lol), I feel like it's definitely clear that that reveal was planned at the latest after the completion and success of KH2

 

God baby me was so fucking made about that Axel and Riku thing. It doesn’t!!! Make any!!! Sense!!!
I also h a t e d Axel/Larxene but like. Less bc I was an Akuroku shipper (tho I was lol) but more because???? He clearly didn’t like her???? At all???? He didn’t kill her but he sure as fuck had a hand in her death.