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canary3d-obsessed · 3 years

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 20, part two

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff) (Previous Post)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

So much happens in this episode that I couldn’t stop the meta and had to break it in thirds. Part one is here, part three is here.

Owie Owie Owie

Wen Zhuliu takes exquisitely tender care of Wen Chao, despite presumably disliking him quite a lot. He wipes his tears away, saying that the tears will infect his wounds, which...isn't likely, but ok.

I will note that he didn't get the "no sting" kind of medicine, however, so maybe there's a limit to his kindness. Wen Chao screams and yells at him while he puts a tiny amount of medicine on one tiny spot of owie. It's going to be a long night for these fellas. Except it isn't because they're going to die, so at least they won't have to put more medicine on.

The candles blow out and we hear the sound of a flute, which Wen Zhuliu hilariously says is just the wind when Wen Chao starts freaking out. They have two days to go before they get to safety, and Wen Chao is pretty sure he's not going to last two days. And you know...he's right!

As usual he blames Wen Zhuliu for the situation, but then gets afraid that WZL is going to leave him, and starts making promises of status. WZL says that's not necessary. He is a loyal sonofabitch, I'll give him that.

The Man Comes Around, Redux

And now Wei Wuxian enters the scene, climbing menacingly up the stairs carrying his own hair fan, just like Lan Wangji did in the previous episode. (Gifset here). Wen Zhuliu doesn't look optimistic. When the boys on the roof see Wei Wuxian they don't look too happy either.

Wei Wuxian stops in front of Wen Zhuliu and proceeds to have a philosophical conversation with him. Wei Wuxian has come to fuck your shit up, but he has also come to pass judgement on your ethics because he is, fundamentally, still himself.

Wen Zhuliu takes the opportunity to justify his actions, giving a heartfelt statement about what he owes to Wen Ruohan. Wen Zhuliu knows his number is up and that they obviously didn't kill Wei Wuxian hard enough, but he still feels righteous.

(more after the cut)

Here Wei Wuxian asks a question that shows the fundamental difference between himself and Wen Zhuliu. In many ways they are similar: neither of them was born into their clan. Both were appreciated by the clan leader and placed in high positions. Both feel an obligation to those clan leaders. When Wei Wuxian asks "why do other people have to pay for your gratitude?" he's foreshadowing the moment when Jiang Cheng demands the death of the Dafan Wens.

Wen Zhuliu doesn't hesitate to murder people because his clan leader wants him to. Whereas Wei Wuxian doesn't hesitate to pay a terrible price--his golden core-for his gratitude to Jiang Fengmian. But he won't let the Dafan Wens pay the price of his continued membership in the Jiang clan; he chooses exile while Wen Zhuliu chooses murder.

Wei Wuxian is done talking and very very slowly brings his flute into position and starts to play. Wen Zhuliu doesn't make a move to stop him, but he might be frozen in place...everything happens at weird speeds in this scene.

Lan Wangji is super horrified when he sees what Wei Wuxian is doing with his flute. So horrified, in fact, that by the time they are face to face, he's moved past any other emotion.

Lady in Red

As Wei Wuxian plays the flute, the camera moves around him (or they spin him on a turntable) and the scenery around him shifts to a 360 view of...the burial mounds! That's so fucking cool!

You can take the boy out of the graveyard but you can't take the graveyard out of the boy. He is carrying it within him now.

He summons up the hottest ghost lady ever, to scratch the shit out of the Wens with her fancy fingernails. She's all in red, not the dark Wen red, but super-saturated bridal red.

She's not dressed as a bride, but she is very pretty and the color is awesome, particularly when she turns into red smoke. Presumably having actual ghosts attacking people is ok with the censor board as long as they are pretty ladies in nice clothes, since there are two in this episode and this one is absolutely definitely a non-corporeal being when she wants to be.

Camera Operator: What did I ever do to you?

She fights with Wen Zhuliu, who tries to put his core-melting hand on her, unsuccessfully, and then figures out that Wei Wuxian is the better target, so tries to put his core-melting hand on him.

Wen Zhuliu, you need to have some different moves! Not everybody has a core for you to melt.

Zidian’s Revenge

As soon as Wen Zhuliu targets Wei Wuxian the boys break in from the rooftop, with Jiang Cheng snapping Zidian up over a rafter and down around Wen Zhuliu's neck in a single move, and then hauling him up and hanging him.

This is a pretty gratifying moment; Jiang Cheng finally gets his vengeance using the weapon his mother gave him before this fucker killed her. He also gets to come back at the guy who melted his core and kill him with a spiritual weapon. All around nice work, Jiang Cheng.

Meanwhile, Lan Wangji initially placed himself between Wen Zhuliu and Wei Wuxian, which is a pretty strong show of devotion, given that his chest was directly in line with Wen Zhuliu's hand.

He watches intently while Wen Zhuliu dies...Lan Wangji is actually a pretty vengeful guy, isn't he? He's not into torture but he seems to like executing bad people, and he enjoys chopping off arms a whole lot.

Welcome Back

Having disposed of Wen Zhuliu, Team Where The Fuck Have You Been is ready to greet Wei Wuxian. This is Lan Wangji as he prepares to turn around and face him.

This is not "relieved that my soulmate is ok" or even "feeling betrayed because you didn't even send me a text." This is cold, hard, fury. He's plowed right past relief and joy into full on disgust and vehemence.

Jiang Cheng is also pissed at him, but he's so used to being pissed at him that it's not a remarkable emotion, and it passes quickly. He gives him his sword, calls him a prick, punches him in the shoulder while Lan Wangji looks grumpy Wang Yibo tries very hard not to smile, and fails.

Then Jiang Cheng gives Wei Wuxian an enormous squishy hug.

Wei Wuxian, who has probably wanted that hug for the past decade, does not return it, and looks stricken, eventually raising his flute hand behind Jiang Cheng's back.

Lan Wangji glares at him while Jiang Cheng hugs him, and then shifts to glare at the flute.

Let's talk about Lan Wangji's body language here. This scene is often talked about, including by OP, as "Wei Wuxian picks a fight with Lan Wangji in order to push him away." But since their very early days,Lan Wangji's nonverbal communication has been an essential component of his relationship with Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian has been reading his microexpressions from the very start, and he's the only one besides Lan Xichen who does that.

Lan Wangji's anger and disapproval are written all over his face and posture, so much so that even a casual observer can tell what he's feeling. For Wei Wuxian, with his extreme awareness and having shared actual literal telepathy with the guy previously, this has got to feel like Lan Wangji is screaming at him.

Lan Wangji is the one picking this fight. Wei Wuxian is trying to defuse it by giving him time to calm down before engaging. For perhaps the first time since meeting him, Wei Wuxian ignores Lan Wangji to focus on Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng asks him a bunch of questions and Wei Wuxian slides out from under most of them, giving half answers, non-answers, and what All The President's Men calls a non-denial denial.

Wei Wuxian, who is adept at sounding like he's speaking truth when he is lying, here sounds like he's lying when he's speaking something very close to the truth. He spins a particularly outrageous-sounding tale of finding a cave and learning an ultimate power there...but that's actually what he actually did, actually. Xue Yang does this "lie so much that the truth now sounds like a lie" thing by accident, years later in Yi City, but Wei Wuxian is using it as a deliberate tactic to hide the truth from his brother. Which is basically his main occupation at this point.

He acts offended that Jiang Cheng doesn't believe him, but he does it playfully to cast everything in the conversation as a joke.

Lan Wangji is not as inclined to accept utter codswallop as Jiang Cheng is, and he has already figured out an important underlying layer of the situation--the turn away from the way of the sword--while not seeing the very bottom layer, the "I don't have a golden core" layer.

Unfortunately, he continues to be judgy and pissed off. He says "Wei Ying" gently enough, but his body is braced for conflict.

Wei Wuxian looks at him wearily and stands up to have the fight Lan Wangji is asking for.

Maybe you were right But baby I was lonely I don't want to fight I'm tired of being sorry

I'm standing in the street Crying out for you No one sees me But the silver moon

Soundtrack: 1. Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones 2. Tired of Being Sorry, by Ringside

Writing Prompt: Who is the lady in red and what is her deal?

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #wangxian #chengxian #the untamed gifs #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs

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spaceshipkat · 3 years

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i think so much of writing respectfully and inclusively is being aware of what you’re putting down on the page. what do i mean by this? what better author to focus on than sj///m, right? i’ll start with CCity on this, since it’s the one where it’s most obvious she’s trying so hard to fix her mistakes, but the problem always comes back to her fundamental misunderstanding of why and how her shit is problematic in the first place and what she must do to fix said problematic shit.

i’m sticking this under a cut bc, surprise surprise, i rambled 😌

take, for instance, Hunt: i think it’s pretty widely-accepted he’s coded as a MOC, (potentially an Asian-coded man) since he’s given “golden-brown skin” and “angular” eyes. sj//m was trying to be more inclusive by writing him in such a way that he shouldn’t be perceived as white, but what she failed to realize is two big things: 1) the fact he’s a slave of centuries who is constantly tortured, mutilated, and manipulated by his oppressors, and 2) the fact he lusts after and is demeaned by Bruce, a white girl. furthermore, Bruce constantly makes comments about how Hunt should fight back, shouldn’t allow himself to remain a slave, and taunts him into either disobeying Micah (the man he’s enslaved to) or killing for her. it’s made clear time and time again that Hunt doesn’t like that he’s an assassin for Micah, and yet there are so many instances of him wanting to kill or hurt someone for Bruce, which not only makes his characterization inconsistent, it plays into the problematic trope of the dark-skinned aggressor (a trope that sj///m seems to be particularly fond of, what with the Illyrians).

(on the topic of Hunt, a quick side-note: the idea of the “alphahole” that comes up again and again in CCity and that antis have critiqued up the wazoo (though not with the “alphahole” colloquialism until CCity came along, but i don’t think many antis actually use “alphahole” as anything but a joke when talking about her obvious love of the hypermasculine alpha male). sj///m is clearly trying to call out her past mistakes and work to rectify them going forward, but she completely fails bc she only succeeds at 1) mocking her readers, who are often fans of hers bc they like the alpha male douchebag sj///m is infamous for, and 2) making herself sound like an idiot when she calls out “alphahole” behavior while actively writing “alphaholes” and making them (possible) endgame love interests (i say possible bc it’s anyone’s guess if sj///m will actually subvert everyone and their mother’s expectations by making Hunt endgame). Hunt is an “alphahole,” even if he’s not quite as bad as riceman or rowboat and even if sj///m thinks she’s not actually writing an “alphahole”. with his aforementioned behavior toward anyone who’s mean to Bruce (aka wanting to kill them for her), he still falls under the “alphahole” category.

but i digress.)

another example of sj///m writing without being aware of what she’s actually putting on the page is her inclusion of queer rep. sj///m queerbaits quite a lot with Danika, thanks to lines she has involving Bruce and her relationship with Bruce, not to mention how many times others wonder if Bruce and Danika are “just” best friends and not actually lovers. we have Hunt wonder about it, after all, several times iirc. one that stands out the most is when he says that they have to be more than “just” best friends because Bruce doesn’t mourn Danika like someone mourns “just” their best friend, thus implying that Bruce is mourning Danika like a lover and/or spouse (bc obviously people can’t be torn to pieces over losing their best friend in a horrific attack, right?).

here’s some lines that have romantic connotations bc i am nothing if not a historian who likes citations:

page 38 of my ebook:

Danika just said it. “If he grabs his phone to check his messages before his dick’s barely out of you again, please have the self-respect to kick his balls across the room and come home to me.”

page 45 of my ebook:

But it was Danika’s added “Love you” as [Bruce] slipped out into the grimy hallway that made her hesitate with her hand on the knob.

It’d taken Danika a few years to save those words, and she still used them sparingly. Danika had initially hated it when [Bruce] said them to her—even when [Bruce] explained that she’d spent most of her life saying it, just in case it was the last time. In case she wouldn’t get to say goodbye to the people who mattered most. And it had taken one of their more fucked-up adventures[...]to get Danika to utter the words, but at least she now said them. Sometimes.

page 258 of my ebook (aka the line of Hunt’s i referenced above):

The silence pressed on [Hunt] enough that he asked, “Were you and Danika lovers?”

He’d been told two years ago that they weren’t, but friends didn’t mourn each other the way [Bruce] seemed to have so thoroughly shut down every part of herself. The way he had for Shahar.

[...]

Hunt turned in place as [Bruce] padded around the other end of the kitchen island, flinging open the enormous metal fridge to examine its meager contents. “No,” [Bruce] said, her voice flat and cold. “Danika and I weren’t like that.”

page 696 of my ebook:

[Bruce] swallowed, looking at the ground that was not earth, but the very base of Self, of the world. She whispered, “I’m scared.”

Danika grabbed her hand again. “That’s the point of it, [Bruce]. Of life. To live, to love, knowing that it might all vanish tomorrow. It makes everything that much more precious.” She took [Bruce’s] face in her hands and pressed their brows together.

page 700 of my ebook (and i was torn on including this one, but it’s from Danika, so i think i should):

Danika had whispered, “I love you,” before fading into nothing, her hand sliding from Bryce’s.

page 703 of my ebook (also torn on this, but it does sound a little queer, so):

But it wasn’t okay. Not even close. What had happened, what [Bruce had] done and revealed, the Horn in her body, all those people dead, Lehabah dead, and seeing Danika, Danika, Danika—

Her breathless words turned into pants, and then shuddering sobs.

also, not for nothing, but the fact Danika dies without an actual male love interest to make Her Straightness Obvious kinda also implies she’s queer, but *sips tea*

furthermore, there’s the way sj///m writes Fury and Juniper: we see the two women together in one scene, in which Juniper is fetishized and goes to sleep with some random guy. for the rest of the book, they never interact on-page and thus we are never given the chance to see their dynamic, which would provide crucial context clues to what their relationship really is by the time this exchange happens between Fury and Bruce on page 494 of my ebook:

“And yet you can still talk to Juniper?” Bryce’s throat closed up. “I wasn’t worth the risk to you?”

Fury hissed, “Juniper and I have something that is none of your fucking business.” Bryce refrained from gaping. Juniper had never hinted, never suggested—“I could no sooner stop talking to her than I could rip out my own fucking heart, okay?”

“I get it, I get it,” Bryce said. She blew out a long breath. “Love trumps all.”

i’ve talked about this scene to death, but this is written in such a way that it can be read as “just” best friends or as two women in a romantic relationship, depending on the reader. the fact that Bruce “gapes” (which faerug also does to Mor, and which i talk about below) implies that being openly queer isn’t accepted in this world, that it’s not very likely you’ll see two women holding hands as they walk down the sidewalk or kiss at a romantic restaurant. it also implies that Bruce, no matter that she says about “love trumps all,” might not be as accepting as sj///m would like us to believe. maybe sj///m has never had a friend come out to her before, but if i came out to someone and they gaped at me (and i’ve come out to several people several times now, both about my sexuality and my gender, so i have some experience here), i don’t think i would be very happy with them/want to remain their friend.

on the note of queer rep in sj///m’s work, Mor is another fantastic example of trying to be inclusive through a response to criticism without sj///m being aware of what, exactly, she’s writing. Mor comes out because faerug all but forces her to by not shutting up what a good guy Azriel is and that Mor should just give him a chance. that right there is fucked on so many levels, not just because Mor is a lesbian, but bc she’s supposedly faerug’s friend. no one should ever force their friends to date someone they don’t want to (i’ve had this happen to me! i had to literally snap at my friend to get her to back off bc i wasn’t going to go to the dance with this one guy who ignored my every rejection and bought us tickets to winter formal, just bc he’s a nice guy and i might like him if i gave him a chance), but i don’t think sj///m could figure out how else to write Mor’s coming out scene, largely bc she has no fucking clue how disgusting the scene we’re given is. the problem with Mor being a lesbian is threefold: 1) she’s a woman who was tortured by her father and left to die bc she was no longer a virgin; 2) Azriel spends centuries lusting after a woman who makes it clear time and again that she does not reciprocate his feelings and yet he cannot take the fucking hint, so much so that sj///m has to now dangle Elain in front of him like a piece of meat to get him to let go of Mor; and 3) sj///m was obviously setting up Mor and Azriel to be an endgame couple in ac0maf, as evidenced both in canon and in her pinterest board:

even stans picked up on it, what with their vocal outrage over how Mor “led Azriel on” for centuries instead of just outing herself to a man she obviously does not feel safe around, and posts like these:

and fanart like this:

the tl;dr of this ramble is this: if you want to write inclusively and respectfully, you have to be 100% aware of everything you’re putting on the page. when people ask for advice on this kind of thing, my first comment is to always say they’re already on the right track bc they’re already thinking of this, rather than being unaware of problems bc a state of unawareness is where the problems begin to appear. Hafsah Faizal has talked about this before on her twitter (i wish i could find the tweet, but this is from eons ago), but if you write a character of color when you yourself are white, you have to be wholly conscious of how your white character talks to this character of color. if the character of color is constantly yelled at or ordered around or ignored by the white character, that’s a big problem. if you write a queer character when you yourself are straight, you have to be conscious of how your queer character comes out, is perceived by the reader, and is treated by the straight character. if the queer character comes out by comparing their bisexuality to forced prostitution, as is the case with Aedion and Lysandra in t0g, that’s a big problem.

the moment you share your work for public consumption, it no longer matters what your intentions are (something sj///m has a lot of trouble understanding, hence why she over-explains everything in her interviews and on tours, not to mention why she force-feeds us her opinion of her characters in canon so we’re forced to share the exact same outlook on them) bc all that matters is what you’ve put down on the page. your words, at that point, have no choice but to speak for themselves, and if they do any of the above, your work is going to come under warranted critique, and unless you learn from that critique and do more than half-assed jobs to write more inclusively and respectfully, you’ll run into the exact same problems that sj///m has with CCity.

#anti sjm #anti ccity #anti acotar #anti tog #long post #stans being stans #writing advice #writing tips #sorta

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raguna-blade · 4 years

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So, listening to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQqY7s1-pyo], and that got me thinking about Kingdom Hearts again as occasionally is the case. I’m still a bit steamed about 3 for one reason or another, and probably i should get the DLC down the line, maybe when/if I do a full series dive again since As i’ve kinda gone through it it’s occurred to me that i’ve been 1: Giving it an unfair shake due to personal disappointments, and 2: Giving it an unfair shake because god, please lord the story isn’t (when you get down to it) that complicated but these twists and nonsense make things really obnoxious and hard to track the themes and stuff which I think it does a good job on honestly but it makes it so hard to track sometimes i swear.

But this isn’t about that.

This is a fanfic idea, following the post game of Kingdom Hearts 3 and the idea is simple enough.

Sora falls into the Persona 5 setting, and ends up joining (or at least working with) the phantom thieves.

Including A Persona!

Including A Sweet Rebellion Outfit!

It’s Vanitas!

Wait, hold on.

So the general idea here is again, Sora ends up in the persona 5 world and ends up mucking around with that plotline. If anything, Persona 5R especially is probably a good fit for this considering Maruki and his goings on.

But really setting wise I dig the idea because first off the creatures in the heart of mankind are basically Heartless, Unversed, and Nobodies all kind of rolled up into one. One might make the argument if the worlds are supposed to be completely compatible that Persona’s are basically filling up the last part of the triangle of things that exist with Hearts/Heartless, Bodies/Nobodies, and Souls/Personas.

That last may seem a bit fuzzy since the Link doesn’t seem super straightforward, but it seems to be that the Soul in KH is an animating force in part but also keenly tied to thoughts.

Which lines up fantastically with Persona and Shadows! They’re basically entities made up OF thoughts really when you come down to it. Thoughts and feelings shape how they act, effect the world in general, and in great numbers and concentrations create absurd entities that are a sort of crystalized idea for good or ill.

So I think that part links up well enough yeah.

But what ends up happening though? Well for the moment, the general vibe is this. Sora, now set adrift and kinda just vibing out between worlds and of course desperately trying to cling onto something ends up losing his memories. Well...Not quite losing his memories so much as, he is incredibly damaged by the absolute clownery that he pulled at the end of KH3. That shit is not without consequences, and the fact that he’s not just hot erased really speaks to both Sora’s keen ability to do things that really shouldn’t be doable as well his other critical feature of being able to befriend basically everyone and everything if they’re willing to at least take a step along with him.

Enter Rage Form and Enter Vanitas.

Now I could probably do a whole thing about how Rage Form is essentially Sora tapping into the Powers of Darkness and yet not absolutely getting lost in the sauce like everyone else and why that is...And I will actually, you cannot stop me.

So my going theory in regards to using darkness in Kingdom Hearts is that Using Darkness is, as literally everyone points out, Absurdly Wickedly Dangerous...It is not, however, inherently evil as the games kinda make it out to be. We’ve seen several people use it without going full super villain, and indeed one of the major series leads Makes copious use of Dark Power.

The Problem with Darkness is that well...I guess the way to put it is, Darkness is basically concentrated Heart in a sense. It amps up E V E R Y T H I N G, to dangerous dangerous levels, and if you aren’t paying attention it will cause you to hop off the slippery slope in a hurry because you have to do the thing and you don’t feel any different so it’s obviously not effecting your mind. And it doesn’t precisely, effect your mind and make you evil....But it does cause you to lose restraint, to more or less give into passions to absurd dangerous extents that you may as WELL be evil.

Take Riku for example. He’s probably the clearest cleanest example because he has a whole arc with it, but fundamentally when he starts using darkness it doesn’t exactly make him start being an evil jerk it makes him do the exact same thing he was doing before (looking for his friends, looking for sora and kairi and trying to wake up Kairi especially at the time) and kind of not think, to not consider things that are patently obvious because it doesn’t jive with what he’s feeling at the time.

Basically Darkness (as I think is said at some point? but certainly implied) causes hearts to rage out of control and if you’re dumb with it, if you’re not highly extremely cognizant of this fact you absolutely are going to lose it.

Back to Rage Form, back to Anti Form. Anti Form first actually, and then we can go into Rage form.

See Anti form when it was a thing explicitly was never a thing Sora really had control over. It occurred with Drives yes, but it was always an accident (and notably get’s cancelled out when you fuse with Roxas in the Final Form but another thing) which tracks with the general antics going on with it. It nukes your drive gauge (which let’s you fuse with Donald and Goofy) and it’s actually rather weak on it’s own, in no small part because part of Sora’s whole thing is series wide is obsessively IGNORING how frustrated and angry and all that he is.

Kid has no idea how to actually use his rage in a constructive useful way. As a result, antiform while edgy and possessing some interesting qualities, isn’t really actually all that useful for untrained still stupidly uncannily powerful Sora (Like...I know it’s probably a whole other discussion but I kinda feel like the games both underplay how ridiculous Sora actually is while still at least kinda nodding at the fact that yeah this Kid has single handedly absolutely and somewhat literally decimated every single foe he has come across with disgusting ease? No one takes him seriously and then he’s basically breaking you across his knee, it’s hilarious)

But Rage Mode...? Rage Mode is actually QUITE handy. Offer’s a quick health boost, lots of teleport shenanigans (combo wise yes but hey) offer’s a move to get stronger at risk of health and is an emergency save both in game and story, and while the exact reasoning that he has it is never stated outright, I think it’s also fair to say that Sora as of 3 Is both Coming to grips with the frankly Absurd amount of bullshit that is laid at his feet when he really just wants to chill out with his friends and fuck off for a while (It’s a little unmentioned since Sora spends a large amount of time knocked the hell out but I’m pretty sure from his POV it’s been like the most hellish year possible)

Rage mode is Sora acknowledging the bullshit of his life and actively using it to do things and accomplish his goals, which at the time were basically beat the living hell out of heartless, nobodies and Xehanort (13 times)

It’s an active deal with darkness that may yet actually have severe consequences, but for Fic purposes, we connect from Rage Mode to Vanitas.

Now Vanitas is, for whatever else he may be (and the Unversed Certainly are weird), still a part of both Ventus and Sora’s heart. His Mirroring of Sora appearance wise (and indeed being the opposite of him in that While he may work with others he is decisively something of a loner I think, to contrast Sora’s Friends Everywhere thing).

And I thought, personally, when he was fading away at the end of KH3 that there was something of a lost opportunity. Vanitas was perfectly happy being Darkness, whatever that may exactly mean. But hey, if we’re going with my idea that Darkness=Heart Unrestrained here, then I think it’s not unreasonable to track what’s going on here.

Ventus and Sora both got extremely raw deals, and Vanitas unlike them was able to express that anger, rage, and just...Immense seething I suppose. Taken as a whole really, that’s more or less what his role WAS, to be the outrageous out of control fury of Ventus and Sora, targeting everything that hurt them which, frankly, was pretty much everyone and everything constantly (to say nothing of whatever is going down with the Mobile game for ventus who apparently is involved there so that’s you know...Not helping)

Vanitas being Satisfied as the Darkness of Sora and Ventus (and of course his own being) tracks then. He really would be fine kicking it because he was spent basically. Those two had more or less at that point burned out the rage and fury and overwhelming emotions, had brought it to heel, had taken it under control and all that.

But I can’t imagine Sora willingly letting someone fade like that. It’s not that he’s soft, or won’t put down bad guys. He absolutely will and does. I don’t think he’ll be happy about it, but he’ll do it, and I think if he has any idea of what’s gone down with Ventus and Vanitas he would be willing to, if the opportunity arose, basically give Vanitas a place to crash for all intents and purposes.

So. Remember when I said Sora has a Persona, a Rebellion Suit, and that it was Vanitas?

Part of the entire thing with Persona is, in fact, dealing with your shadow self. Shown primarily with dealing with negative aspects of yourself, but it involves all untapped aspects of you right?

Vanitas is a near perfect Shadow of Sora, being about as far on the opposite side of the spectrum as you can get. Arrogant, Self Absorbed, Callous, Lonely, yeah? But also, genuinely skilled and powerful, more than capable of reading others, and a solid lone operator. And thus, as a Shadow of Sora he’s basically perfect for a kid who is now on his own.

But Persona’s aren’t shadows precisely. I mean they literally are, but they’re shadows put to purpose, controlled, a specific mask put forward to the world to deal with it.

And Sora right now, alone, forcibly separated from his loved ones again, and much more permanently this time, turns to someone who he took in in his heart for perhaps not kinship at least commiseration. And Vanitas in turn responds in kind. Sora’s a nice kid but he’s not really properly in touch with the darker aspects of himself. This is a problem, not because ooooooo you gotta have darkness edge edge edge, but more because Sora has already USED darkness before. At the time it was safe enough because he was focused had a goal and all that.

But Now? Oh now Sora is basically in a situation where he might reasonably reach out for those dark powers and he is not in the right headspace to try and do that safely 1 and 2 I don’t think genuinely has a good enough grasp of his own less than great inclinations that could lead to him SCREAMING off the slippery slope into bad time junction.

Now Vanitas isn’t really fully doing this out of the kindess of his heart here. He want’s to do what he wants and that’s cause a degree of mayhem, get into fights, just in general kind of fuck off and do his own thing in the same way that Sora does except you know kind of more maliciously (though I genuinely suspect that a Vanitas without an immediate thing to do probably would just kinda...go somewhere and be moody. He seems the type. With a task though well different story, but sans one? And hey, the old man isn’t around to push him around anymore)

So Vanitas functionally becomes his Persona Here, which ties back to the way earlier mentioned point. Sora is a little broken here, but he has a certain understanding of both what’s going on with Tokyo when he get’s there (something stupid is happening at the bottom of mementos involving a heart. Guess it’s Heartless Stomping Time) even if he’s not fully on board with everything because of yet more missing memories, but for the moment, he doesn’t have the full power’s he really had before. He needs to lean on darkness here not just to stay as a whole person, but to also find his way home. And of course, this requires darkness.

Some of you may be seeing the grim and stupid pieces lining up here, so for you, just hold your head in shame and prepare the finger wagging.

So we have vanitas as a persona, more or less. Cool, fine.

And predictably, his rebellion outfit would more or less be a flavoring of Vanita’s armored up form, albeit probably a bit more kingly given Sora’s king motif.

But he’s not a royal here no. He’s looking for something. Going after a thing hidden deep in the darkness.

And as a proper phantom thief needs a code name, Why not call the guy who’s seeking something in the darkness. Why not call him a-

Why not Code Name Seeker for Sora the Phantom Thief eh? eh?

And that’s about the limit of what I got on this idea honestly. I know that Sora is still his lovable goofball self in a general sense, because Edgy Angst Sora isn’t really fun or I think true to the character really, but I think he’d probably be at the very least a touch more bitter than he has been, and perhaps for once in his life, just not feeling making friends at the outset. Up until a problem occurs and he see’s these other kids dealing with both unmitigated bullshit and being absurdly way over their heads.

Also, Yaldabaoth getting his carefully cheated game absolutely derailed, perhaps much sooner letting Maruki do his thing, perhaps letting him do a slower more thorough and less rushed job of things and having the Phantom Thieves + Sora + Akechi Have to deal with it is kind of fun.

Especially since Maruki as Antagonist in this case would be interesting considering probably 1, Akechi would Almost Certainly Be Alive (unambiguously), 2, Haru’s Dad would probably be alive leading to Shido getting his shit wrecked way sooner (I would expect that Haru’s still going to mostly deal with the same general problems given her dad would be in jail albeit still alive. At least in a broad sense, the specifics will very certainly be different), 3, It’d let Akechi get in on the fun of having his “dream” world realized in gaining the phantom thieves as perhaps genuine friends minus at least the baggage of him being the murderer of someone they personally know. He’d still need to atone, and I can’t imagine them letting him off the hook for that, although in the immediate sense absolutely yes they would because Maruki pulling antics (probably more hidden this time I would imagine), and until they fix things at least it’s not like he actually CAN turn himself in because Idealized World is bending over backwards to absolve him which is probably still bullshit in his eyes (He did the crime he’ll do the time damnit!)

And meanwhile Sora is busy dealing with his PTSD basically, while Vanitas crashes on his mind couch and occasionally steers while Sora deals with the mess going on on the inside.

yeah.

Feels good to get that out of the system for the moment.

#Kingdom Hearts #Persona 5 #a fanfic idea that just kinda keeps popping back up #Spoilers #Vanitas #Sora #Some Kingdom Hearts meta

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