Kingdom Hearts

Alright, this took me awhile. I hope you're happy.

Oh God! Natural light!

...I guess that would solve Namine's problems since Xion stole her man..◊

edited 26th Jun '17 1:01:58 PM by lycropath

Ha.

Actually has there ever been any word on what Sora was at the time Roxas was running around? He didn't technically have a body

Human-shaped Heart.

Prevailing fandom theory seems to be "light Heartless", but no real official word. Roxas and Namine kinda spit on the face of all rules of Heartless and Nobodies.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Roxas is just a normal Paradox Person with some unique baggage. He was born normally, but Sora's quick revival kind of fucked up Roxas's development.

Namine is a Paradox Person squared. She's the Nobody of a person that shouldn't be able to have one in the first place.

edited 26th Jun '17 1:20:56 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Why does Namine merge with Kairi, anyway, considering that she's not even made from Kairi's body?

What does that even mean for Kairi's body at this point anyway? Is she doubled up on bodies?

Actually yeah how does Namine work too.

x2 I think a better question is how did Sora's body split into two?

Namine spits in the face of the rules of the universe. I wouldn't be surprised if she somehow ends up being a Spanner in the Works for Xehanort because of that.

edited 26th Jun '17 1:26:17 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Has any incarnation of Xehanort ever even mentioned Namine?

Nope

New theme music also a box

Xemnas probably knows of her existence, but I don't think he knows who she is.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I think Namine's gone from the plot, unlike Roxas.

I wonder if Xion comes back.

I'm not sure if Namine is gone because Nomura does whatever he wants. I do like her, but would prefer she stay gone because I think her story is over and don't think she can contribute to the story any more.

Xion is totes coming back. There's been too much foreshadowing for it.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I mean, Sora was a Heartless at first, and that's why Roxas and Namine. Happened.

Kairi's heart leaves her own body, no Nobody.

Kairi's and Sora's hearts leave Sora's body, and Sora's heart becomes a Heartless, two Nobodies.

Sora gets a hug and stops being a Heartless.

Xigbar and Saix did.

Xemnas was in the room.

The concerts basically make her an omniscient god-like figure though.

edited 26th Jun '17 1:41:21 PM by unnoun

Kingdom Hearts is Naminé

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

@Ninety, Re: "Light heartless" there is a term for it in the series, but it's only mentioned in the first game. "Being of Heart" iirc, and it isn't necessarily aligned with light. Unless you think he's something different.

edited 26th Jun '17 2:25:28 PM by illegalcheese

I don't get the Young Xehanort comics. Why is he four hours late?

Time shenanigans during his fight with Riku.

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

Sometimes he either doesn't show up to the boss fight or disappears during it. It's a weird glitch. He's just not there when the fight loads. The player controls Riku and can move him around the arena.

It happens on the 3DS, and based on the tweet earlier, in the 2.8 version as well.

He doesn't come back later, but the comics are based on a joke about where he went.

This actually isn't much of a stretch. Her powers are based on Sora and the people connected to him, and Sora connects with pretty much everyone he comes across.

If she ever came back, she could possibly Mind Wipe Xehanort like she did to the Riku Replica in Chain of Memories.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I mean, let's review. (I'm pretty sure I've written this post before, but I'll be damned if I can dig it up.) When a person falls to darkness (whether due to corruption or Heartless attack), they spawn a Heartless, which are mindless and animalistic and their strength is directly proportional to the darkness in the corresponding heart. They can be Pureblood ("natural" Heartless) or Emblem (created by Xehanort and co. and apparently also for those who got nommed by another Emblem Heartless). Upon destroying a Heartless, the heart just dicks around and eventually reforms back into a Heartless, unless they're destroyed by a Keyblade, in which case the heart either goes to the Kingdom Hearts of People's Hearts or, if the corresponding Nobody has been destroyed, reforms as a person. According to Days, Purebloods don't release Hearts, but Sora became a Pureblood Shadow and got his heart just fine. Then again, the whole point of this wall of text is that Sora-Roxas-Kairi-Namine don't make sense.

When the person who gets Heartless'd has a strong will, the body and soul left behind form a Nobody, which are sapient and emotionless. If the will is strong enough, the Nobody retains the appearance and memories of the original person, to the point where in most cases, they essentially are the same person, sans a heart. Ienzo and Zexion, Lea and Axel, Braig and Xigbar aren't really different entities. Unbeknownst to most of them, by interacting with others and forging bonds with them they can regrow hearts of their own over time. What happens to the original heart is unspecified.

Now, where things get weird. Anomaly number one: when a person becomes a Heartless voluntarily, they retain their consciousness, with the only two known cases being Sora and Terra-Xehanort aka Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. The former became a pitifully weak Shadow because he's a good boy, and the latter retained a human form, unless the World of Chaos and/or Guardian is the true form of ASOD. So, when Sora became a Heartless, in theory there was a consciousness in his body and one (the original) with his heart as a Shadow. It is also revealed in the Secret Ansem Reports that Roxas doesn't have Sora's memories because of how little time he spent as Heartless.

Which segues nicely into anomaly number two: how Sora became human again. Of course, the Doylist interpretation is that Nobodies hadn't yet been thought of in KHI, but we're pretending this series is internally consistent. Sora, as a Heartless, met Kairi, who has strong light and no darkness in her heart due to being a Princess of Heart, and she hugged him and turned him back into a human. While his body was out and about, as Roxas. This is an as-yet unexplained inconsistency, with the prevailing theory (as mentioned) being that Sora, in between being remade as human near the end of KHI and merging with Roxas at the end of the prologue to KHII, is something of a "light Heartless" (a misnomer since he definitely has a heart, but then again so do regular Heartless), with a construct of light made by Kairi's power standing in for his body and soul and keeping his heart alive. This may or may not be the case.

Numero tres: Kairi. When Destiny Islands fell to darkness, Kairi couldn't be turned into a Heartless, as there was no darkness in her heart to harness. So instead, her heart went inside of Sora's while her body remained comatose in the realm of Light. Apparently, Namine wasn't created here, since we see her body, but instead when Sora frees his heart later on. Then, Kairi never became a Heartless and her Nobody... doesn't make sense.

This is because of number four. When Sora gets a hold of the Keyblade of People's Hearts, used to unlock the darkness in people's hearts (turning them into Heartless or monsters), he uses it on himself, releasing his heart and Kairi's. This creates Shadow-Sora, Roxas, and Namine. As per the Secret Ansem Reports, Namine was created from the parting of Kairi's heart with Sora's body, with Kairi's own body never entering the equation. This a) is why she has power over Sora's memories and those of people connected to him and b) makes no goddamned sense whatsoever. Naime looks like an imperfect copy (aka palette swap) of Kairi, but both she and Roxas were made from the same body. Additionally, Namine appears to have a heart of her own — what drove her to do the Organization's bidding in Chain of Memories wasn't threats or bribes, but her own crushing loneliness. Needless to say, Roxas very definitely has a heart.

Which brings up to anomaly number five: Ventus. Ventus' heart, upon being torn in half in order to make him a sort of artificial Prince(ss) of Heart and create Vanitas, nearly collapsed in on itself, but survived by bonding with then-newborn (or newly conceived) Sora, whose light propped up the shambles of Ventus' literally broken heart. At the end of BBS, Ven's heart reforms completely, assimilating his darkness (aka Vanitas) back, and his body goes into a coma much like Kairi's, being protected inside Castle Oblivion, while his heart instead goes inside of Sora's, again like Kairi. No Heartless or Nobody involved. However, this has a very important consequence: when Sora frees his heart, and Kairi's, it stands to reason that he also freed Ventus', which was inside him for the same reason and by the same method as Kairi's. We don't know what happens to it. But then, Roxas appears to have a heart when by all reason he shouldn't — and he looks exactly like Ventus, not Sora.

And just as the cherry on top, Roxas has no memories as previously mentioned, but he can use the dark to some degree — like all Nobodies — as well as, primarily, light. He's assumed to be and behaves like a Nobody for most practical purposes, sans that whole pesky heart thing. But we already know that Nobodies can generate a new heart by forming bonds with others, which he most certainly does in Days. The question is, did he already have a heart or not? Was it Ventus'? Could he make a new one, with it becoming his "real" heart and Ventus' "on loan"? Can Sora and Roxas coexist with each other, never mind with Ventus, Namine and Xion (and Vanitas maybe)?

Finally, as noted at the beginning of this post that I'm not sure why I'm writing (this is not strictly true. procrastination is the answer.), no other Nobodies have failed to have continuity with their real selves. Axel is Lea, Isa is Saix. But Namine coexisted and interacted with Kairi as Roxas did with Sora, and even after they meet again and supposedly merge (for whatever that's worth when there's at the very least one body and a heart or two too many in the mix), they retain some aspect of independent consciousness even within their "original selves" (add more sarcastic quotes as desired), which is presented as a good, happy ending in II and as tragic in DDD. So take that however you like.

tl;dr Roxas and Namine break all the rules of Heartless and Nobodies and make no sense within the Kingdom Hearts cosmology.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

The Kingdom Hearts cosmology itself tends to fall apart when you ask too many questions as it is.

I rarely employ the MS 3 TK Mantra with stuff I like, but I think some of these discussions are a bit more complicated than we should aim for. And I love fanwank.

KH is weird, but it's still aimed at kids. Let's go with simple explanations when we can.

Ansem's true form is actually a brown robe. The humanoid appearance when we've fought him has been Riku's body shapeshifted.

I mean. Another Side Another Story was already in the initial release, and Final Mix was only, like. 9 months later that same year.

I'm pretty sure the "Who is Nobody you ask, they are the nonexistant ones" and "Nobody, the Third Enemy" were always there. Along with all the other KHII quotes.

...And, admittedly, like. They said in interviews that they wrote all those quotes and then spent the writing of KHII shoehorning them in wherever they could get them to fit.

So, like. You can argue that Nobodies weren't fleshed out or thought through. But I feel like there was always a kernel of an idea there.

My favorite one of the KHII quotes in Deep Drive is "But your Majesty, why!?" because the implication is that Mickey Mouse just did something horrible, but in KHII it's just about not telling them where Riku is.

The way Another Side Another Story's quotes had to be implemented explains a lot of KHII's writing, frankly. It's basically something they threw together out of pre-existing parts.

And there's really all sorts of ways those quotes could have been thrown together.

We could easily have gotten an Evil!Mickey Mouse at one point. If, y'know, Disney wouldn't have shut that shit down immediately.

edited 26th Jun '17 4:05:00 PM by unnoun