Another Side, Another Story
is an in-progress Crossover story of Kingdom Hearts, written by TheLoneStar since March 14th, 2021. At present, the series consists of a completed retelling of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep in which most of the Disney worlds have been replaced by other franchises, and an ongoing adaptation of Kingdom Hearts, subtitled Another Side, Another Story.
Birth By Sleep provides examples of:
- Adaptation Deviation: The overall story is actually fairly similar to the game, with one of the main outliers being that the majority of the Disney content has been replaced in favour of crossovers with other series.
- Adaptation Expansion: While not having a large focus, the protagonists generally have more detailed backstories compared to their vague to non-existent game counterparts, such as Aqua being a Lonely Rich Kid who ran away from home and Terra having a rough upbringing as an orphan.
- Adaptational Intelligence: In Birth By Sleep Terra has a pattern of meeting the villain of each world before anyone else and being manipulated into helping them. note Here, he doesn't get manipulated quite as often, and even the incident where Maleficent and Xehanort made him think he had removed Aurora's heart doesn't play out the same way with Erina.
- Bluff the Impostor: When faced with two Marios, Aqua pulls this by claiming he can't fool her because she's known Mario for years. When one of them says, "Good! So, you know it's me, then!", Aqua blasts him with Fire, exposing him as a Duplighost, before revealing that she only met Mario that day.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Ventus is thrown by how nonchalant the people of Toad Town are about Princess Peach being kidnapped again.Ventus: No offense but… shouldn’t everyone be a bit more worried?
Toad: Well, of course we’re worried! You have to understand, this happens all the time! Seems like a month can’t go by without Bowser taking our Princess away… Thankfully, Mario is always there to lend a helping hand!
Ventus: Okay, that… makes sense. - Early-Bird Cameo: Squall/Leon, Yuffie and Aerith appear in Radiant Garden when Terra saves this from the Unversed.
- Foreshadowing: Navi mentions Sora during Aqua's visit, setting up that Sora will visit Hyrule at some point after the Time Skip and presumably help Link in the Shadow Temple when he returns with the Lens of Truth.
- Mega Crossover: Aside from Disney Town and the Mysterious Tower, each of the Disney worlds have been replaced by worlds based on other franchises:
- Enchanted Dominion is replaced by Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Phantom Blood, with Dio Brando filling Maleficent's role by cooperating with Xehanort to steal Erina's heart while manipulating the heroes, and later recruiting Pete from Disney Town. In addition, Erina Pendleton replaces Aurora as a Princess of Heart.
- Dwarf Woodlands is replaced by Paper Mario 64, with Terra unwittingly helping Bowser's forces against the Unversed in Peach's Castle, Ventus helping Mario against Tubba Blubba, and Aqua joining him in the Crystal Palace. Naturally, Peach replaces Snow White as a Princess of Heart.
- Castle of Dreams is replaced by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, with the heroes helping Link at different points of his journey: Ventus in Dodongo's Cavern, Terra in Jabu Jabu's Belly and Aqua when he comes back from the future to visit the Bottom of the Well (notably, that last chapter coincided with the author reaching the same point in The Boy Without a Fairy). Terra also encounters Impa and Zelda, figuring out that the latter is one of the Princesses of Heart.
- Olympus Colosseum is replaced by Astro Boy, with Zack Fair showing up in hopes of joining a tournament against robots.
- Deep Space is replaced by Earthbound Beginnings.
- Neverland is replaced by Over the Garden Wall.
- In the scene where Kingdom Hearts appears over the Keyblade Graveyard, Terra, Aqua and Ventus hear the voices of hearts from over a dozen different worlds, including, The Blair Witch Project, The Terminator, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Psychonauts A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Truman Show, War Hammer 40000, Silent Hill 3 and Forrest Gump, among others.
- Aqua briefly encounters a Mahjarrat in Hyrule Castle Town.
- Novelization: Certain chapters, mainly set in the Kingdom Hearts exclusive worlds like Radiant Garden, are straight adaptations of the game.
- The Stinger: Two scenes following the epilogue mentioned below: Terra-Xehanort calling himself Ansem while turning Braig into a Heartless, and Aqua exploring the Realm of Darkness and fighting The Heartless for the first time, eventually stumbling on Peach's Castle.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In addition to the scenes in Disney Town, Radiant Garden and the Mysterious Tower from the original game's ending credits, the final chapter has:
- Jonathan and Erina relaxing by the river while Dio and Pete are elsewhere plotting.
- Link and Navi returning to the Temple of Time.
- Mario and his companions at a party at Peach's Castle.
- Zack's disappearance, unnoticed by Tobio, Doctor Tenma or Mustachio, with a black feather being left behind.
- Ninten reading a letter from Ana and not noticing a phone call from his father.
- Wirt and Greg waking up in the hospital with their schoolmates around them.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The seven year Time Skip in Ocarina of Time equates to ten from the heroes' perspective, going by the mention of Sora helping Link in the future.
Another Side, Another Story provides examples of
- Adaptation Deviation: The voice that speaks to Sora throughout his dream is implied (and outright stated in the author's notes) to be Ventus, in contrast to
Word of God from Tetsuya Nomura that it was supposed to be Mickey. - Adaptation Expansion: The story spends some time in locations the game rarely if ever showed us, including the Traverse Town ship hanger and inside the Gummi Ship Highwind itself.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed with Donald, in that one of his biggest jerk moments of the original game is removed, namely his refusal to let Riku join the party, which helped pushed him towards Maleficent. However, this is in part because Riku vanished before Sora could even make the offer, which in turn gives him Adaptational Jerkass points.
- Alien Non-Interference Clause: As usual, the World Order keeps the heroes from talking about being from another world, but it's thrown out when talking to someone who already knows about other worlds, namely Zamansis in the Runescape arc. On this occasion, Donald is rather annoyed to find out they were playing dumb for nothing.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Chapter 14 cuts away to Aqua in the Realm of Darkness, during the events of A Fragmentary Passage.
- Bigger on the Inside: The Gummi Ship, which Donald attributes to magic.
- Breather Boss: Sora's fight with Master Dimple, when compared to the Darkside or the Guard Armor. As the author admits, "Mob was literally right there and is blatantly far more powerful than Dimple or anything he could throw out. So, there was no way to keep the extremely powerful esper from wiping the floor with the malicious spirit."
- Darker and Edgier: The author notes that there would be little point in a crossover like this if all the worlds would fit perfectly into Kingdom Hearts anyway, hence the inclusion of Fist of the North Star, which does not gloss over the brutality of Kenshiro's methods.
- Evil vs. Evil: Ganondorf turns on Dio toward the end of the Ocarina of Time arc, though this ultimately doesn't have an impact on his defeat.
- Harmful to Minors: Goofy tries and usually fails to protect Sora from seeing the results of Kenshiro's pressure point attacks.
- The Heavy: Dio continues to fill Maleficent's role from the game as the leader of the Villain Teamup and Riku's manipulator.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: In Sora's dream, when Tidus asks him what he's afraid of, Sora answers, "I'm afraid of being different."To Sora, at least, it really was scary. It was terrifying for him to feel different. And he feared if the other realized he was too different, they might not like him anymore. Sometimes he felt…off…and wrong. He had no idea if the others noticed, but he was scared of the notion that they would someday.
- I Never Told You My Name: Moguro Fukuzou addresses Sora by name, giving no explanation beyond it being part of his job.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: The story opens on Sora's "Dive to the Heart" dream, with the Stations changed to the previously introduced Princesses of Heart, (Peach, Zelda and Erina) and one new one.
- Mega Crossover: As with Birth By Sleep, most of the Disney content from the game have been changed to other franchises, though these are only gradually being revealed.
- The first world hinted at is Monstro's replacement, as Jiminy Cricket has been replaced in his role as the Tagalong Chronicler by GLaDOS. Chapter 8 reveals that her world was destroyed not long after she released Chell.
- In Traverse Town, Sora encounters Tali'Zorah working at Cid's shop, Professor Membrane sitting on a bench in District 1 (and believing Sora is a hallucination), and Moguro Fukuzou in District 2 who saves Sora from a Soldier Heartless.
- Chapter 5 teases more worlds by including the story's version of the "Meeting of Villains" cutscene. None of the villains in question are named at this point except for Dio, though several of them may be recognisable from their descriptions or speech patterns.
- Sora's first world after leaving Traverse Town (roughly equivalent to Wonderland, albeit without introducing any of the Princesses of Heart) is Mob Psycho 100.
- Olympus Coliseum is replaced by Runescape, with Cloud Strife making an appearance and being manipulated by Sliske in Hades' place (though Sliske is not part of the Villain Team-Up).
- Deep Jungle is replaced by Fist of the North Star, though only insofar as the arc begins with Sora and Donald's argument that causes the Gummi Ship to crash. Shin is revealed to be a member of Dio's council (effectively replacing Hades), while Yuria is revealed to be a Princess of Heart (effectively replacing Alice).
- Agrabah has been replaced by Hyrule, during the post-Time Skip events of Ocarina of Time, with Ganondorf taking Jafar's role in the villains' council. The party meet Link and Navi on the way to the Water Temple and continue to accompany him through the Shadow Temple, Spirit Temple and Ganon's Castle. The arc climaxes with the defeat of Ganon, Link being sent back to his childhood, and Zelda being kidnapped shortly after Sora and company leave.
- Merlin has been replaced by Merlon from Super Paper Mario.
- On returning to Traverse Town, Sora visits the Valentine Detective Agency, run by Nick Valentine and Lt. Columbo, for help finding Riku and Kairi. He later learns about summons from Dr. Byron Orpheus.
- Sora's first summon is an Inkling girl.
- Mythology Gag:
- The scene in Traverse Town where Sora is hit on by a much older woman before she's attacked by a Heartless comes from the Kingdom Hearts manga.
- The Hyrule chapters include references to the author's earlier The Boy Without a Fairy, in particular Talon describing his Big Damn Heroes moment to save Link from Ingo. Subsequent chapters include Sora's fight with Buliara in the Gerudo Fortress ending the same way that Link's did (with him refusing to kill her and pointing out that that was never a requirement of their deal to free the carpenters), and the party using Sand Seals to get through the Gerudo Desert.
- Chapter 19 ends on Navi and Link deciding to fill Sora's party in about their time-traveling, Navi telling them that, "this isn't something you can tell people. It's a secret to everybody..."
- Something We Forgot: As the trio leave Traverse Town, Donald feels like they may be forgetting someone. The narration makes it clear he's thinking of Pluto (who does disappear from the original game around this point).
- Stepford Smiler: It's mentioned that Sora has been battling with depression for a long time and trying to hide it with smiles and fake energy.
- You Didn't Ask: Donald finds out that GLaDOS won't be able to help them navigate outside the Gummi ship and angrily asks why she didn't mention this earlier. GLaDOS smugly replies, "Why didn't you ask?"
- You Said You Would Let Them Go: In a case of the hero making such a promise to the villain, Kenshiro orders Spade to tell him about KING. After getting the answer he needs, he takes his foot off Spade, who still can't move and calls Kenshiro out on this. Kenshiro replies, "I am letting you go. Right into the grave!" Cue Your Head A-Splode. Sora is appalled by this, giving Kenshiro a What the Hell, Hero?, but he accepts Kenshiro's point that in this world some people are simply not worth showing mercy to.
