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yasuda-yoshiya · 5 years

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I haven't delved much into KH lore, but I think there's something wrong when the main character is shoehorned into a plot that's essentially the same from the previous arcs repetitively along with a character that seems to be the love interest, while several others you never got to play as (or very temporarily playable), gets much further characterization and their new resolutions. The only ones that are interesting in Sora's party is Donald and Goofy btw. Anything about Riku and Mickey though?

Hmm, well, strictly from a storytelling perspective, I think I basically agree with you! Pretty much all the really interesting plot developments and character moments in KH3 are completely divorced from the person whose PoV you’re stuck inhabiting for most of the game, and Sora pretty much spends the whole game doing absolutely nothing of any importance while all the actual plot progression happens away from him. And in terms of what makes a good story, yeah, that’s basically terrible, but I honestly feel like I can basically understand why they did it because frankly, Kingdom Hearts as a series is in a very weird position at this point. The main appeal of the series to the vast majority of the casual audience is its supposed “Disney magic” and getting to explore the worlds from various Disney movies, but the actual main plot of the series at this point is an absolutely impenetrable and convoluted mess of original characters and plot threads that’s about as far away from any kind of “Disney magic” as you could possibly get.

With that in mind, it pretty much makes sense to me that they’d want to just shove the main plot out of the way entirely for most of the game and just focus on Sora’s random adventures in Disney worlds, because it’s honestly gotten to the point where the presence of the main plot actively detracts from the supposed central appeal of the game for most people. It allows KH3 to be enjoyable as a stand-alone experience to the average person who doesn’t give a crap about the overarching mess of the Kingdom Hearts plot and just wants to enjoy some Disney fanservice (and let’s be real, this probably describes at least 80% of the people who actually bought the game). Games like KH1, Days and BBS could manage to do a passable job of integrating some characterisation and plot development into the Disney stuff without being too jarring to the casual audience, because those games told basically self-contained stories. You don’t need to be a KH Lore Maniac to follow, say, Ven’s character arc through BBS. But KH3? KH3′s plot is all about tying up loose ends and resolving the stories of various characters from other games. Nothing about KH3′s plot makes any sense or has any real impact as a standalone, and it would probably be a fool’s errand to even try to make it work as one, because it just has way too much baggage from the ongoing series-wide plot that it has to resolve. So rather than trying to give Sora a quest that actually ties into the main plot in some way, they just decided to put the plot to one side and lean into unapologetic filler instead. I can sort of respect that.

The way I see it is… well, let’s put it this way. As a Kingdom Hearts fan, I could totally draw up an alternative outline for KH3 that has Sora making more of a meaningful journey and progress throughout the game, and integrates the main plot into the Disney stuff better. The focus of KH3 is about Sora saving the hearts and healing the pain of the people connected to him, the people whose pain was forgotten until now. So why not make the plots of the Disney worlds focus more on having him come to understand these people better, to get more of a focus on why it’s so important to bring them back? Let’s have the Olympus Coliseum chapter involve a subplot where, say, Sora finds out from Phil about the time Roxas spent training there in Days, and Phil talks about how much potential he showed and how he really misses the kid. Let’s spend more time explicitly drawing a connection between the toys having hearts in Toy Story and the way Xion developed her own heart despite being an artificially created puppet. Let’s parallel Rapunzel’s situation in Tangled with Namine’s in CoM, and make the plot of that world about Sora regaining the memories he lost from CoM (heck, Marluxia’s even right there and briefly brings this up in the actual game already!), reminding him of just how much Namine suffered and how much she deserves to be saved. And so on, and so on.

And that would probably make for a much more solid and cohesive game, and give the overall plot a lot more weight… but could you actually realistically present that kind of plot in a way that wasn’t totally alienating to the casual audience? Are you really going to be able to give enough emotional context for the average uninitiated player to grasp and care about all these different plotlines just through flashbacks and exposition? Are there really that many people who actually want to see the plot of Tangled used as a vehicle to revisit the plot of a 2004 GBA game, or are people just going to be frustrated at these hugely popular Disney movies being taken over by weird anime OCs they don’t care about? Professional reviewers are quite understandably panning the game already just for the very minimal intrusions of the convoluted main plot into the Disney stuff “breaking the magic” as it is, so it’s hard for me to imagine that any more of that would really be well-received by and large, however much the story might technically benefit from it. This is the sort of problem we run into when a game has to try and simultaneously appease two distinct audiences with entirely different priorities. Giving the main plot a very minimal presence for most of the game and then shoving the entire resolution into the last few hours is an imperfect solution, but I’m also not really sure what else they could realistically have done, given the setup KH3 had to work with.

In the end, I’m basically content with the compromise. I think they did a decent job of making a game that stays mostly enjoyable and accessible as a wacky Disney adventure for the casual audience, while still tying up most of the big overall plot threads that needed to be tied up in a reasonably satisfying way (a few very questionable writing choices aside… but it’s Kingdom Hearts, what else is new). It would have been nice to have had more build-up and substance to these characters’ resolutions, and to actively focus more of the game on them, as you suggest - but the more time the game spends pandering to overall series fans, the more time it also spends alienating everyone else. I think in the end we just have to accept that the build-up and context for their resolutions was in the previous games, that the people who really care about the series’ story will have played those games already, and for the people who haven’t, it just probably wasn’t worth devoting too much effort to trying to make them care within KH3 itself. That’s my take on it, at least.

On Riku and Mickey... hm, well, aside from them obviously being OTP material as always, neither of them really got to do much in this game? So I don’t really have much to say about them in particular. I thought the idea of Riku feeling a personal connection to Aqua’s plight as someone trapped in the darkness was sweet, but then they didn’t really do anything with that or let them actually interact at all in the end, so it felt like wasted potential. The BBS characters in this game were just a big disappointment in general, really! They could easily have done much more with them than they did, without even changing the structure of the story much... but, uh, I’m talking about Riku, sorry. I feel like Riku’s never really done much for me as a character, beyond like, KH1 and maybe CoM. I can see the outline of his arc on paper, and it seems fine and potentially interesting, but the execution has always felt pretty by-the-book and lacking in nuance to me. They talk very generally about him “falling to darkness” and such, but they don’t ever get beyond that into actually having him wrestle with his guilt over specific things, like his time working with DiZ or kidnapping the princesses or contributing to Roxas and Xion’s sacrifices, so it all feels a bit too broad to particularly connect with - and it’s sort of hard for me to really give weight to things like “I wore a blindfold for a whole year because I couldn’t stand looking at myself”, when that’s juxtaposed with him flipping right back to being a perfectly functional and confident hero without much apparent struggle or lasting difficulty after just a few platitudes from Sora. It’s sort of like they flip between being broadly melodramatic about his issues and shrugging them off completely? So he’s never really clicked with me, personally.

Meanwhile, Mickey is kind of hard for me to take all that seriously as a character beyond the memes, since... I mean, he’s Mickey Mouse, so there’s a big mental block there, lol. But even if I put that aside and look at his writing in KH in isolation, he never really felt like a particularly deep or interesting character or anything, I think? His relationship with Riku is very sweet, though!

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts iii

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kakunamatatq · 6 years

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Voltron Ask Meme

Tagged by @kalluraicedcoffee, @n-trace, and @teamsincline (tumblr is shit with notifs more than usual lately but I think I got everyone? thanks y’all!)

How did you discover the show?

Through tumblr, although special mention goes to this particular ML AU piece because two months before I got into Voltron, ML was my default go-to interest.

Was it love at first sight or did it take you a while to get into the show?

Pretty much. I watched A:TLA and LoK before it, so combined with all the talk about it on here I decided to give it a go.

I think I binged half of it in a day before stopping myself and thinking I had to tell my sister about it so we could watch it together lol. The first few episodes are kind of heavy on the set-up, but “Fall of the Castle of Lions” and “Tears of the Balmera” solidified my love for starting to explore Hunk’s and Pidge’s characters more.

Do you have a favorite episode?

I’ll just do one* for each season because there’s just so many episodes to love.

s1: “Crystal Venom” s2: tie between “The Ark of Taujeer”, “Space Mall”, and “The Blade of Marmora” s3: “Tailing a Comet” s4: tie between “Reunion” and “Black Site” s5: tie between “Blood Duel” and “Kral Zera” s6: tie between “Razor’s Edge” and “The Black Paladins”

*I tried and failed. Horribly.

Rest under a Read More because I’m long winded:

Do you have a favorite Paladin?

Do not...do not ask me to choose between my children (if you base if off of the “frequently tagged” suggestions on my blog it’s Keith lol. But for what it’s worth, I own these Garrison trio shirts, and the tradition is that I wear my Lance one and my sister wears her Shiro one whenever we sit down to watch the latest season drop)

Do you have a favorite Lion? (If it’s different from your fav paladin, why?)

Black because of her history with Zarkon and how it parallels Shiro’s history of trauma. Also, as Abby put it, Black “is the biggest Shiro stan & I respect her for it.”

Do you have a favorite Villain?

Haggar. Even if some things don’t entirely make sense (yet...?), I absolutely love the slow build-up we’ve been getting for her. She’s been in the thick of things since the first episode/10000 years ago, and we’ve slowly seen her piece together her own past (one of the biggest reasons “Blood Duel” is a favorite, her flashback was great) and manipulate things to her own advantage; I’m so happy she’s going to be the final boss of the series (or co-final boss if Zarkon and Lotor are going to come back in some shape or form, though maybe merely as her puppets).

Do you have a favorite Alien Race? (recurring and/or minor)

Galra for their species diversity and history (not entirely fair since they’re given a disproportionate amount of focus but still lol.)

Favorite side / other character(s)- Rebels, General, Blade of Mamora, Garrison, etc?

Hira, Kolivan, Romelle, Thace, Varkon, all of Sincline, and all of the Holt family (we’ve only glimpsed Colleen in a flashback but Ihave a feeling I’m going to love her too)

How/Why did you join the fandom?

Wanted to chat with other fans of the show because I’d already bored my friends who were either casual about it or indifferent to it to death lmao. I’ve been relatively on the outskirts since I first watched it in July 2016 because I’d rather avoid fandom drama, but I’m a bit more active now and hope to write a bit for it, as rusty as my skills are.

Care to share a favorite headcanon?

Um I like a couple of popular ones like TransGirl!Pidge, past Alforan, and Yorak for Cosmic Wolf’s name. Was really big on Acxa and Keith being siblings too until s6 seemingly disproved it. 💔 Some others: - Kolivan is Krolia’s dad. (thanks @aaawunder now I’m going to be sad if this doesn’t pan out)

- Coran knew Keith was Galra ever since the Castle scanned everyone in the first episode and he had to look at the human medical data when he stuck Lance in a pod in “Tears of the Balmera”. (keeping in line with how he knew Pidge was a girl; guy is up-to-date on everything going on on his grandfather’s Castleship)

- Hunk either got his current headband from a relative who has since passed away or it was a gift from Lance after the original one he got was wrecked somehow, and that’s how they became BFFs. - Keith’s jacket and gloves were gifts from Shiro. - Lance’s jacket was a hand-me-down from one of his older brothers.

- Shiro grew up with either a grandparent to explain his “old soul” tendencies/perspectives or was raised by distant relatives that he didn’t connect with much (basically adopting @bosstoaster‘s backstory from her Spectrum series for him because it’s amazing). It kills me that Josh was able to mention the former at a panel because that means we’re probably not going to get to see much of his backstory in canon, and I’d really like to see from his perspective what his and Keith’s friendship means to him. If he was in a similar situation of isolation growing up, if he saw that in Keith, etc.

- Alteans aren’t really hung up on gender due to their shapeshifiting abilities. Alfor’s referring to Allura as a princess when she was still so young was due to personal preference whereas the majority of Alteans would refer to their kids with gender neutral pronouns until they’re roughly the Earth equivalent of eight.

What do you think is the best part of the show?

The characters and the genre.

For me, characters frequently make shows of this nature.There can be an interesting plot, but if I don’t care about at least some of the characters to some degree, I’m not as inclined to watch. As many complaints as I have about certain aspects of this series, I’ve been endeared to these characters since s1. There could always be more content (what I would give for more filler episodes for the team to just bond and chill), but with what we have been given, there’s enough there for me to find enjoyment in.

The genre acts as a supplement to that. For me, one of the best things about space-faring adventures is seeing these characters placed in (literal) alien settings and watching how they react to all the possible scenarios the incomprehensible infinite of space has to offer. (And I’m a sucker for such things, being simultaneously made to feel so cosmically huge in one’s consciousness and so incredibly small in the vastness of a universe largely unknown to us.) There’s so much you can do with that. Any hopes and wishes for future episodes / seasons?

Holy shit do I!

- Tying into the previous question, one of the things that sort of made me sad about s3-s6/the second production season is how we didn’t get to do a lot of planet exploring. There’s an entire universe to play around with, and I know it’s impossible to show everything, but with s7 effectively being a road trip season, I’m ecstatic, largely because this provides us with the chance to see civilian Galra. I’m super interested in seeing how those dynamics play out between those not involved with the Empire and all the people who suffer under Galra oppression (we see this touched upon in s3e01 with Kolivan and the BoM, and at the time I was disappointed that it wasn’t explored more, but if they’re saving it for this season I can forgive them).

- Going further, how do mixed people fare under these circumstances? I’m really excited about this because I feel like this would be the perfect opportunity not only to expand upon the VLD universe as whole, but specifically dive into the backstories of Sincline. We know at least the upper echelons of the empire wanted nothing to do with them — how many Galra outside of that hierarchy feel the same way? People of their parents’ species?

Likewise, we could see if Keith being part Galra and Krolia being around gets the team into any sort of trouble. Since Keith’s bigger on actions than words, seeing him in a situation he can’t physically fight his way out of and having to rely on his team is a scenario of continued interest to me.

This is already way too long, but I’ll end it by saying I’m so stoked about all the potential road trip shenanigans the team could get into and for them visiting Earth again. I figured we’d be going back there around the end of s4 or s5 back when seasons were still 13-episodes long, and finally getting to see that play out after two years of waiting is again, very exciting for me.

And, uh, ships. I have my preferences. If they play out, I can die happy. If they don’t, I’ll always have the quality fanon content that keeps me involved with the fandom (all you creators are great 💜)

Do you think you’ll stick it out until the end of the show?

Barring unforeseen circumstances, most definitely. Been with it since a month after s1 dropped and it became my default fandom obsession, will be here when s10 drops in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Tag your friends or someone you want to get to know better

@grandraconteur @guegetheassassin @honestlyprettychill @mischiefandspirits @nixthelapin @pipedreamprayer @purpleneutrino @spacemare @sparklingdisneyprincess @tomodachi-to-koibito @winry7

And @ any else I didn’t mention but would like to try it too (Apologies if any of you have been tagged for this already. Hmu with your answers, I’d love to read them)

#for if you're bored #Long Post #Voltron #KM Komments #VLD S7 #Tagged #Questionaire

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bookofsonder · 7 years

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Superheroes and Masks

Chapter 1: Enter Magician

I’m a superhero. I fly through the night air with my partner by my side and keep an eye out for evildoers. My name is Magician. Under this name, I am a man. I am an insatiable flirt. I am easy going, quick on my feet, and specialize in infuriating my partner, the wonderful Hummingbird. Donning this mask I am the heartthrob of teenage girls everywhere. Yes, Magician is definitely one of my more enjoyable personas. He is not the only one though.

There is also Annabelle, famous model, daughter of a famous designer, quiet, meticulous, well mannered and most of all submissive. That is my home life. That is the mask I show my mother, her assistant who has done more to raise me than she ever has, and all the staff on our land. I crafted this mask first. It’s the one I use to keep mother happy. Or at least, satisfied. She’s very controlling. Also very absent. This is the mask I know best.

As a famous model I also, of course, have a public face. Bell. This one is the golden girl. Sweet, innocent, playful, but full of fire and yearning for adventure. I didn’t make this mask. I didn’t need to. My mother and some consultants had it pre-made for me when I started out. This is the one that all of Bells fans know me by. This one is tedious to keep up, mainly because I’m so full of anger and disgust during my shoots. I think this might be the one I hate the most.

Or it could be the one I show my coworkers and the boys I take as lovers. This one is simply Ann. She’s a drama queen. A Primadonna if you will. She’s loud and loose and won’t hesitate to pitch a fit when things don’t go her way. She’s a spoiled brat and everyone hates her. This one is the contender for most hated because she’s the culmination of people I hate. Why would I craft such a mask? To get ahead in the modeling business. Mother wants nothing more than for me to be successful in this field and does everything to ensure that I am. Unfortunately, a pushover does not last long in this world. So, to become even more than I already am, I created the most hateful mask I could. It’s worked so far.

Of course, all this repressing of emotions leads to some undesirable breaks in character. Now I can’t be having that. So I made a new mask, purely to let off steam. Their name is Alex and they don’t conform. Not to gender ideals, not to sexual ideals, not to anything. They are the epitome of rebellion. From graffiti to brawls to simply looking like an outsider, they don’t fit in. They don’t even fit in with the outsiders. They won’t take drugs, steal things, or hurt the innocent, and surely would not join a gang. I’ve made them as contrary as possible so that none of my other masks slip.

My last mask is one I never want to wear, one I have no reason to wear, and one I make damn sure no one sees me wear, but one I can’t get rid of. Depression. The moments without an audience is when this one is worn. When I have no one to act for and my mask starts to fall. That’s when this one takes over. Unlike the others, I don’t actually wear this mask. I don’t play this character. If anything, it wears my skin. It makes me feel things I’d rather not. Loneliness, self-hatred, desperation. This one came shortly after my first mask. I can’t hate it though. Why?

Six. I have six masks. Six different ideas of who I am and what I should be. That doesn’t leave much room for me. One was fine. Two was a struggle. Three I couldn’t get used to because before I knew it there were four. By five there wasn’t a “me” anymore. By that point, number six was a piece of cake. I can’t get rid of, nor hate, the mask that wears me. Because without it I’d have to face the silence in between roles. I’d have to come to terms with the fact that I am nothing more than a mask. I know it, I always have, but to hear the silence where I should be would make it far too real. It’s easier to pretend that I am my masks.

Or it was. Back when no one cared. That’s the thing about my life. Annabelle has an absent mother and a dead father and was raised by an assistant who really could not care less about her. Bell is a picture, not a person. People love how she looks and not what she’s like. Ann is hated by everyone, except the boys who chase her tail in the hopes of getting their fifteen seconds of fame. Alex isn’t normal, and people don’t like that. Alex may be the mask most hated by others. Depression hates me, enough said. The Magician is a hero. Of course, people would fawn all over him, he saved their lives. Unlike the others though, he really is just a mask. I could die as Magician, I’ve almost died a lot as Magician, and someone else could take up the persona just as easily as I did.

Hummingbird doesn’t see it like that. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but she see’s the mask for what it is. An act. To be Magician is to be free. Unlike Alex he’s not hated by all, unlike the others he’s bound by no expectations, unlike Depression he is confident. I honestly love Magician. Maybe that’s made me complacent. Maybe this ease that comes with him has made me slip without realizing it. Hummingbird, she knows I’m not Magician. I don’t know how she see’s me. But she knows I’m not okay.

She see’s me, me not the Magician, and that scares me. Once, I know I slipped up. I casually told her about my expendability. She was horrified that I would think that. We argued for a solid hour. Her, with venom and passion insisting I was worth more being a face for a mask. Me, confused and bewildered trying to show her that it’s not a big deal. Ever since then she’s gotten angry at me when I take hits meant for her or play distraction. Ever since then she’s been paying more attention to me, waiting for me to slip up. And that was fine. Scary and new, but fine. She still knew nothing about me, my past, or my personas. But then something weird started happening.

I found myself feeling beyond my characters. I’d be playing Ann and I’d feel the need to throw up after having one of her screaming matches. Ann is a vile and unruly bitch, but it’s never made me ill to play her. I hate her but that has never stopped me from playing her. But now? Now I want to apologize as Ann, I want to be overtly nice as Alex, I want to be independent as Annabelle, I want Depression to vanish, I want to be angry as Bell, and I want to be sad as Magician. And then the pain started. The pain when I heard someone dismiss me. When I knew I was merely an object of a means to an end for someone. When people hated or loved not me but the idea of me. When I was thought of or referred to as something less than a person I would feel pain, hurt, betrayal.

Which is ridiculous. I am less than a person. I am a body for a character to inhabit. I am a form to give an idea life. I am a walking and talking canvas, for others to put their ideas of me upon. I am not a person. I have never been a person. I haven’t felt things for years. I’ve felt nothing outside of my masks range of emotions. Even then I’ve never actually felt hope.

Last night was when it became too much for me to bear. It was a patrol night and I was a wreck. Still, I became the Magician and begged for my mask to hold. It didn’t. It was before I met up with Hummingbird. I was on top of some tall building simply looking out over my beautiful city. I didn’t even notice I was crying. I didn’t notice that I was on the very edge of the building. I didn’t notice Hummingbird land behind me. Then I noticed all of it when she yanked me backward. She was furious. She was crying. She begged me to never do that again. I promised her I wouldn’t. She cried into my shirt and asked me to please trust her, please let her help me, please just tell her what was wrong. So I did.

I told her about all my masks. One for my mother, one for the world, one for my coworkers, one for venting, one for villains, and one that wore me. I didn’t go into specifics. She didn’t ask. I told her there wasn’t enough room in this body for seven people, one had to go. She told me that she’d miss seeing me as the Magician. I laughed. That was the first time I’ve truly laughed in a long while. I told her that this mask was too important to the safety of others to leave empty unless absolutely necessary. I told her about how before I truly knew her there were only six. How “I” was the least needed out of all of us. No one knew me. I didn’t know me. No one cared for the longest time. No one needed to care now either. I asked her to let me go. She sobbed. She begged me not too. She tried everything she could think of to change my mind. But I was adamant. There were no attacks that night.

It’s been two days since then. Tonight’s patrol night. I have forced myself to be a shell once again. It’s easier this way. You can’t hurt a puppet, only the role they play. For two days I didn’t feel a thing, not even what it was normal for my role to feel. When night came around my last sliver of self was worried about how Hummingbird would be, and about how I would fill my role as Magician.

Now I am flying through the night air once again. I’m not exhilarated. I’m not happy, nor energetic, nor impulsive and lost in the moment. That doesn’t stop me from pretending I am. Or rather, that doesn’t stop the Magician from showing these traits. Hummingbird lands behind me. I turn. I wave. My body language is relaxed and just a tad flirty. My tone is jovial and just egotistical enough to be endearing. My words fall from my lips with such practiced ease it feels like they were rehearsed and sound utterly natural. Hummingbird looks at him. She sees my mask. She sees how there’s nothing behind it.

She hugs him. She cries. She apologizes over and over. Magician tries to cheer her up. He fails. She begs him to please, please, reconsider. To please not take away her friend. He looks at her. She looks through him, searching for someone else. He tells her that he’s right here. She lets out another sob. Then she turns, screams that she hates him, and runs away. That last sliver of me feels relief, then fades away.

The next day, everything is normal. All the characters are as they should be, the body they inhabit no longer rebels, and Depression is all there is in between performances. After all, the show must go on. And if one audience member detests the performance? Well, you can’t please everyone.

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