Fanfic / Beyond the Borders

When your world is destroyed by Heartless and you're thrust into a multiverse filled with overcomplicated schemes that have mostly been going on since before you were born, how do you stay grounded? Rachel's answer: "With great difficulty."

Beyond the Borders (FFN, AO3) is a Kingdom Hearts Self-Insert Fic by wingedcatgirl, with heavy assistance from James CyberLink. It was originally envisioned as a Continuity Reboot of wingedcatgirl's A Decent Self-Insert, Probably, but ultimately developed into its own story. It could also, if you squint real hard, be seen as a companion piece to James's Reality Just Is.

This fic contains examples of:

• 1-Dimensional Thinking: When Sarah runs away from a collapsing building, the narration lampshades the aversion by specifically pointing out that ey's running "perpendicular to the building because ey's not a cartoon character".
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: As said in the first chapter:
  The event had shaken Rachel to the point where her friends took her out to grab a bite to eat,
  [...]
  "It really is weird," Kira said as she patted Rachel's brown-haired head like one would pat the head of a cat.
• Alliterative Title:
  • The work as a whole.
  • The chapter, "Getting Gear, Getting Going".
• Always Night: Traverse Town is explicitly stated to have a perpetual night, so that the lost people who wind up there can get some damn sleep.
• Appease the Volcano God: Conversed after Rachel first wakes up in Traverse Town; when her situation is described as "basically the worst-case scenario", she wonders if maybe that term would be more applicable to something more like "cultists planning to sacrifice me to a volcano".
• Asymmetric Dilemma: Rachel laments that she could talk to her internet friends that have more experience with plurality, if only she could find her phone... and also the internet still existed... and also those friends were still alive.^note By Kingdom Hearts physics, they probably aren't actually dead, but they're just as impossible to contact as if they had been.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In the first chapter when talking about the cancellation of Kingdom Hearts 3:
  “I dunno," Kira said, shrugging. "Maybe the darkness is somehow involved.”
  “...Really, Kira?" Sarah responded, with a worn-out expression that seemed to be the non-verbal equivalent of a painful groan. "Corporate espionage is way more likely."
  [...]
  "Consider this: Both. Corporate espionage by the legions of darkness."
• Blind Shoulder Toss: When getting armor for Rachel, Yuffie somehow finds a mail shirt. When Leon points out that stuff like that is too bulky (typical Kingdom Hearts armor being things like bandannas and ribbons), she casually tosses it aside.
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Discussed; Rachel thinks that because she considers herself "an anarchist, kind of", she should know about Molotov Cocktails. Given that she thinks this while desperately trying to remember how to make one, it seems she is not an example.
• Calling Your Attacks: Parodied; when Rachel is about to throw a Molotov Cocktail, she pauses and decides that she is obligated to call her attacks "because apparently, I live in video games now". Thus she dubs the Molotov "Garlean Firaga".
• "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate: Yuffie has a habit of dragging people into an interminable argument about some impossible hypothetical scenario about cavemen fighting astronauts on a haunted moon.
• Chainsaw-Grip BFG: For reasons unclear, the Keyblade is much heavier in Rachel's hands than in someone like Sora's, meaning she can only really use it to enhance her magic, and it requires her to hold it "one hand gripping the handguard from above like a carry-handle, the other grabbing hold of the shaft, almost like a minigun".
• Darker and Edgier: To A Decent Self-Insert, Probably, which was written more as an excuse to send the self-insert character through the Kingdom Hearts multiverse meeting interesting people and doing interesting things. BtB, on the other hand, takes a more serious tone, having Rachel react more realistically to the world falling to pieces around her.
• Downer Beginning: Kingdom Hearts III is unexpectedly cancelled, the creators of the series have seemingly gone missing, and as if that wasn't enough, the world is then invaded and destroyed by the Heartless.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Rachel finishes the fight against Demyx by having Riley cast Haste, then rushing behind him, reloading her pistol — Demyx notices the "mechanical click-clack noise" just in time to turn around and get shot in the face.
• Eerily Out-of-Place Object: Much to Rachel's surprise, one of the weapons stored in Yuffie's weapons room is an ordinary-looking Colt 1911. What such a weapon is doing in the Kingdom Hearts multiverse is unclear — Leon insists it's called a "Quicksilver", implying it was somehow independently invented, but that just raises further questions, and thinking about the implications unsettles both of them.
• Expy: Rachel is loosely based on Tempest, the protagonist of A Decent Self-Insert, Probably.
• Expy Coexistence: Rachel offhandedly mentions having met Tempest while listing some of her online friends.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: During an argument, Rachel tries to turn away in disdain. However, the person she's arguing with is currently serving as her "tutorial voice" in a Dive to the Heart sequence, so she doesn't actually know which direction "away" is and just turns in a complete circle and looks very annoyed about it.
• Foreign Language Title: Part 1.1, "Sic Transeunt Mundi": Latin for something like "Thus we go beyond the world". A bit of a play on Sic transit gloria mundi.
• Height Angst: Implied; Rachel has once offhandedly thought of herself as "freakishly tall", but so far that's all the detail we have on that subject.
• Idea Bulb: Parodied; when Aerith gets an idea, the narration notes that a light bulb does not appear, "but you'd be hard-pressed to prove that".
• I Meant to Do That: Yuffie's weapon stash is stored behind a Portal Door that opens to an abandoned building if the key isn't used — which fact Rachel learns by watching Yuffie forget to use the key. Yuffie claims she was making sure nobody was in the abandoned building.
• I Would Say If I Could Say: Rachel thinks about Riley putting an idea in her head, and belatedly amends "...or whatever", since they're in the same head to begin with.
• Lighter and Softer: To Reality Just Is, which takes more of a Cosmic Horror Story view of the typical self-insert fic — while BtB has elements of that, it's still primarily an adventure tale.
• Literalist Snarking: Rachel relates that her father said I Have No Son! after she came out as trans — which she thought was hilarious even at the time, since the whole point of it was that she wasn't any kind of "son" at all.
• Magic Misfire: Discussed after Rachel tries casting Libra — since she screamed in pain and fell out of her chair, Aerith and Yuffie's first instinct is that the spell backfired, but Libra is an incredibly simple spell and Rachel says she just flinched because the glow (an intended effect of the spell) was eye-searingly bright, so it might not have misfired at all.
• Mirror Reveal: Casting Libra causes Volcanic Veins around Rachel's eyes, which fact Yuffie explains to her by pulling out a Fuuma Shuriken and having her look at her reflection.
• Molotov Cocktail: When trapped in a bar with some Heartless, Rachel decides to assemble a Molotov to take them out. Despite being "an anarchist, kind of", she initially has difficulty remembering how to do this. It just sets the whole bar on fire, leaving her worse off than before.
• Mythology Gag:
  • While discussing the cancellation of KHIII, Rachel and her friends muse that Nomura might have killed one of the female characters for cheap shock value. While it wasn't exactly for cheap shock value, something much like that did in fact happen in canon, though the fic very pointedly avoids naming the actual victim.
  • While trying to figure out what she knows about Aerith, Rachel notes that the one thing she knows about her in Final Fantasy VII is clearly untrue in this timeline, implying that other knowledge from the game wouldn't necessarily be useful anyway. She doesn't specify, but the obvious implication is that the "one thing" in question is Aerith's infamously spoilerrific death.
• Non-Answer: The fic summary asks how one stays grounded in the Kudzu Plot that is Kingdom Hearts, to which Rachel's answer is apparently "With great difficulty."
• Only One Name: Rachel doesn't consider herself to have a last name, due to her parents disowning her after she came out as trans. As she puts it, "My old one went bad and I haven't gone shopping for a replacement yet."
• Portal Door: Yuffie's weapon stash is stored behind a door which opens to an abandoned building if opened normally, but reveals the weapon room if the proper key is used.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Implied; when Rachel points out that nobody with sense would store a firearm with ammunition loaded, Leon looks meaningfully at Yuffie and snarks that "some people don't know that". What exactly Yuffie did from not knowing that remains unexplained.
• Shaped Like Itself: The narration notes that a banana "tasted just like a banana, probably because it was a banana".
• Shout-Out:
  • The author's notes all begin with "ATUHOR'S NOSE".
  • The vodka Rachel uses to make a Molotov Cocktail is labeled "Quintessentially Q".
  • Rachel's "share if you don't think" button is a reference to a common form of cropped image macro.
  • In a shout-out to This Very Wiki (and thus, indirectly, to Angel), Yuffie's "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate is literally a "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" debate. It also takes place on a haunted moon, in reference to a memetic tweet.
  • Riley named themself after the main character of Inside Out, because, as they remind Rachel, the film has been noted to have applicability to the plural experience. invoked
  • One of Rachel's competing responses to Yuffie's use of the term "multiple personalities" is "that's not the preferred nomenclature."
  • When Rachel unconvincingly claims to have no idea why "glow[ing] neon blue like TRON" is funny, Sora thinks "Okay, I believe you" to himself.
  • Rachel uses the phrase "Arc-level adversarial thinking", in reference to an incredibly paranoid character from CORDYCEPS.
• Title Drop: Almost once per chapter:
  • Chapter 1: The world, or what was left of it, was much smaller. Suspiciously boss-battle-arena sized, in fact. Beyond the borders of the tiny chunk of land, all she could see was the void.
  • Chapter 2: ... and Sora made a small incision into the void, allowing Jiminy to see what was beyond the border.
  • Chapter 4: In a fraction of one single second, Rachel's mind and soul were pushed beyond the borders...
  • Chapter 5: "...as long as she doesn't try going beyond the borders of this room or the en suite there, that is."
  • Chapter 9: "And then Sora came charging in from beyond the borders of the vortex..."
• Trans Tribulations: Rachel's parents disowned her when she came out to them. She is understandably bitter about this. On top of this, out in the Kingdom Hearts multiverse, almost nobody has heard of trans people, making her the only source for nearly everyone she meets.
• The Triple: At one point, in the span of a few paragraphs, Rachel thinks bitterly, scoffs bitterly, and bitters bitterly.
• Unusual Chapter Numbers: While the chapters do also have traditional integer numbers, the AO3 mirror quietly slides those out of the way in favor of "Part X.X" numbers reminiscent of patch numbers in an MMO.
• Virtual Soundtrack: The AO3 mirror has YouTube links to appropriate mood music, borrowed from various sources, mostly video games.
• Volcanic Veins: For reasons not yet known, using magic causes Rachel's veins to glow neon blue. It spreads from whichever part of her body the magic acted from (her hand when she reloads an aetheroconverter, her eyes when she uses Libra, etc) and fades over a short time.