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regallibellbright · 2 years

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b[Image ID: The first image is a screenshot from the ending of Kingdom Hearts III, showing Isa, Lea, Roxas, and Xion sitting atop the clock tower in Twilight Town, eating sea salt ice cream together and raising it in greeting to their other friends. Roxas is wearing his outfit from the prologue of Kingdom Hearts 2, and Isa, Lea, and Xion finally wearing clothes that aren’t black leather trenchcoats marking them as members of Organization XIII. For Xion, this is her first non-trenchcoat outfit ever. (Isa and Lea were previously depicted in civilian clothes in Birth By Sleep, where they were teenagers.)

The second image shows an amigurumi of Xion in her outfit from this scene, a black blouse with ruffled sleeves and a belt, a short white pleated skirt, and dark brown boots that go up to mid-calf with laces crossing the lighter brown cuffs on top. The amigurumi has light blue safety eyes, and a v-shaped smile embroidered in black yarn. She is sitting on the side of a light fixture, with her legs bent off the side, in front of a box of Cheez-Its. This picture was taken of the amigurumi as originally made in about March 2019.

The third image shows the same amigurumi with some minor modifications. Her face has been modified, as shown in the fourth image, there is now a dark gray square buckle marking her belt, and her boots now have laces running up the tongue, bows tied at the final laces across her cuffs, and two pairs of silver studded buckles.

The fourth image shows a closeup of the amigurumi’s face, showing a small smile embroidered in black embroidery floss, and an embroidered black eyebrow over her left eye, the right portion of her forehead being covered by her bangs.

The fifth image shows the Xion amigurumi, next to a matching Lea amigurumi, sitting atop a jewelry box. Lea is posed so that his left leg is raised slightly off the jewelry box, while his other leg dangles off the edge. Xion sits neatly with her legs dangling off the edge of the box. Both of them have their right arms raised, waving at the viewer. End ID]

Alright, this took a moment to break down in full and get the pictures I wanted for her, but here she is! My KH3 Xion amigurumi, now slightly spiffed up! (Lea will get his own post.)

This gets a LOT more in-depth under the cut, as I break down what I did, and also precisely why her outfit is fantastic but this project was a labor of deepest, deepest love.

First, some technical specs. She’s about ten inches tall all told, and has wire inside to make her posable, as you can see. My original design for her took... eh, a couple months? I started almost as soon as we finished Kingdom Hearts 3. This is actually my second Xion amigurumi - my first was a lot smaller, my first attempt at doing something this ambitious without a pattern, and made in winter 2018 before she finally had a non-cult outfit. (So, yes, I finished one and then almost immediately started a second.) This refurbishing took about three days, and most of that involved my subpar embroidery skills.

I was proud of her before, to be clear - she’s some of my most ambitious work, especially given I’d only been crocheting for about a year and change when I made her, and I went to a LOT of effort getting screenshots of the two scenes it appears in from the ending cutscene. Which are both lit in sunset, making properly gauging the colors difficult. I realized after the fact that I’d missed the buckles on her shoes (as opposed to the laces, which I deliberately simplified,) and figured I’d add them later. Then when I started seriously working on Lea about a year later in summer 2020, I made a couple more detailed additions to his face (He kind of needs eyebrows with that widow’s peak, where the size of Xion’s bangs when crocheted meant I could get away without,) and they’re likely to be details I continue adding for the rest of the set now that I’ve cleared up enough of the tendonitis I got MAKING Lea. So I wanted my favorite character to stand up to her friends.

(In case you’re wondering: Hypermobility plus tendonitis plus not having a hypermobility-trained PT when you first realize you have tendonitis equals ‘having tendonitis for two years because the PT exercises you were given were working the wrong muscles’. Whoops. Good news is that has since been sorted.)

Let’s start with the new work first. The changes to Xion’s face are pretty straightforward - cut off the old smile, spent like an hour deciding what the best expression and placement for her new smile was, added an eyebrow. I don’t really need a new photo for that.

The bulk of it goes in the shoes, anyway.

[Image ID: A closeup of the Xion amigurumi’s boots, showing they are dark brown with lighter brown cuffs, black laces going up to the cuffs with bows tied between them, and two pairs of silver buckles across the bridge of each shoe. The lower buckle of each pair is smaller than the upper buckle. End ID]

I’m not particularly good at tying knots by default - my shoes are all slip-ons or buckled with Velcro, and my embroidery skills are pretty limited because I struggle to do any of the ornamental knots even though they’d be VERY useful for me. So instead of actually tying the embroidery off into bows, which seemed kind of risky, I figured out how to tie a handcuff knot, tightened it enough to serve the purpose, and then sewed them on VERY thoroughly. It looks a bit messy, and it probably is still not the most sturdy method here, but it should serve my purpose and it’d be relatively easy to remake and resew if need be.

I put A LOT of work into getting those crosses straight. Especially across the cuffs, which isn’t even visible anymore with the bows sewn on, but hey. I know I did it.

[Image ID: Closeup of Xion’s boots from the clock tower scene, showing the laces, cuffs, and that the studs on the upper buckles are larger than the studs on the lower set. End ID]

Like I said, I knew I’d missed some kind of braiding or the like on Xion’s boots a while ago. The wikis didn’t have great images, so I checked Youtube for the reMind version of the ending and screenshotted them myself.

Yeah, that’s not braiding. Those are studded buckles. ASYMMETRICALLY studded buckles.

This is far from the worst ‘this outfit is gorgeous but shouldn’t be made in crochet’ moment, compared to things that I had to deal with in the original design (and Lea, we’ll get into HIM later,) but it is definitely a pain. Especially since, with the scale of the doll as she is, I couldn’t simply embroider the smaller studs on - the stitches are too big for that. So instead, I took my three-strand, medium weight acrylic silver yarn, unraveled it, crocheted with the individual unraveled strands, and hoped desperately that it would maintain structural integrity long enough to sew them to the boots, especially because I have a habit of leaving too long a tail to sew on because I misjudge how long everything will need. But this worked! Yay. They’re not strictly accurate, but they do give the same detailing the buckle studs do, and it’s about the closest I can come given the scale of the doll and the work I’d already done - to make her entire body properly scaled, the boots are in the same medium-weight yarn as the one I had for her skintone, since they are her feet, and that means the stitches are a certain size as well. Besides, I’m about to get into the main details of her outfit, or:

Why Xion’s KH3 Ending Look is GORGEOUS, But A Nightmare To Crochet.

For those of you who don’t crochet, there are a couple things to keep in mind for this.

First, crochet stitches are inherently different from knitting. By default, they tend to have a stiffer structure than knitting. This makes it the more popular craft choice for amigurumi, since it’s easy to make three-dimensional, rounded shapes that hold their shape in crochet. For example, a doll’s head or body - Xion’s head and torso are all one piece, with the arms and legs stitched on separately and the outfit crocheted overtop her main body. (The skirt is actually attached to the main structure of her torso, not just sewn on. I’ll get into that later.) Or that boot shape. What this doesn’t do well is drapery, like say... pleats. It’s also pretty iffy on ruffles, though scalloped shell patterns aren’t that bad. So you know, two of the most distinctive aspects of this outfit texturally are things that the medium isn’t very suited to.

The second thing is that while you can have some VERY elaborate stitch structures and varieties with crochet - just look up granny squares or crocheted lace - allowing for some interesting textural detailing, black yarn tends to eat ALL detail. It just doesn’t show. Not on crochet, at least, and certainly not with the medium-sized yarn weight I was using to match the size of the skintone yarn. (You can find black yarn at pretty much all sizes in any craft store without issue. Finding shades of beige or brown can be harder, especially in smaller sizes.)

Xion’s blouse, of course, is black details on black panels on black. You can’t embroider the buttons on, because it’s black. The belt buckle, once I checked, is also black. Everything’s black. And tragically, my plan for the buttons when I was first crocheting her (using very small safety eyes, which would be shiny) failed because anything small enough to work was too small to stay in the stitches. I added some textural details where I could, but they don’t show up at a distance. So since I was already going to rework her a bit to add a smile and the shoe buckles, I decided I’d add a dark gray belt buckle as well just to add a little visual variety to the blouse, even if it’s probably inaccurate, strictly speaking.

[Image ID: The first image is a closeup of Xion in a later scene from the ending, showing her kneeling on a beach. Image is focused on her blouse, showing details like the size of the sleeve ruffles (very small), the collar and paneling, two lines of six buttons each running above and below the belt, and the belt buckle, which is almost certainly black. I chose to ignore this because literally no other details would show up.

The second image is a closeup on the Xion amigurumi’s blouse, taken when I originally finished her, showing that she has a collar, a closer look at the ruffles, and black raised sections marking both the central plackett of her blouse and the belt. These are not very visible from a distance, as seen in that second image way back at the beginning.

The third image shows the blouse again, now with a dark gray buckle embroidered on, as well as the white pleated skirt. End ID]

The collar exists - it’s even sewn on - but not very visible, because black. I think I just added them in by working into the side of the blouse, which was a separate piece from the head, torso, and skirt. The plackett and belt are both lines of surface crocheted black, in different directions for each. Embroidering the belt buckle was all about placement. It still took me like half an hour to place it in a way I was happy with it, but it’s straightforward.

I actually didn’t make a note at the time how I made the ruffles, but I’m fairly confident it’s the same technique described here by Shiny Happy World - Single crochet increased enough per round to make a ruffled edge. The end ruffles are still proportionately bigger than the in-game outfit, but I don’t think it’s POSSIBLE to make them smaller at this scale. Plus, I’m happy with it.

And then there’s the skirt. Like I said before, it’s actually part of the main body - I’d have to check my notes to be sure, but I’m pretty confident Xion’s body was made from the bottom up, with a white section at the beginning and then switching to tan in a row where I worked back loops only where the skirt would begin. When I was ready to make the skirt, I then attached white yarn to the front loops and searched for a method to crochet pleats.

I will note once again that crocheting pleats is REALLY difficult, and shoutout to this tutorial by Sick Lil Monkeys and this tutorial from Tales of Butterflies detailing two techniques - the first technique is identical to the previous link’s, but the extra pictures helped a lot. The end result is a skirt that’s successfully pleated and holds its shape even while Xion does what she is meant to do - sit atop tall things with her friends. The particular design makes dolls that are pretty top-heavy, though, so getting that effect tends to require something behind her to brace. (Don’t be fooled by that picture - Xion has the obvious box backing her up, but Lea is also being braced by a small plush keychain. It’s just that his posture is already compensating for his MASSIVE hair.)

At some point I really need to make some little sea salt ice creams for everyone. Probably once I finish the set - I’m thinking I break back into the dollmaking with Namine (who I wanted to make anyway, as she deserves love and friends and ice cream, and who is by FAR the easiest of the group to crochet,) and then I think it will finally be Roxas’s turn. (Unless I put him off a bit longer to do Ahiru as Princess Tutu, since I already have the yarn for that after stumbling on a PERFECT shade of pink for the underskirt. But I’ve kept the trio un-reunited for quite a while.)

MAN that outfit’s gonna be tricky, though. And the hair spikes.

I have yarn picked out so I CAN eventually do Isa but he will absolutely be last of the five. He knows what he’s done.

#Kingdom Hearts #crochet #amigurumi #Xion kh #Xion #kh xion #Xion kingdom hearts #Kingdom Hearts III #crafting with Regalli #long post #seriously under the cut it is LONG and DETAILED #the Lea post will be 50% breakdown of what I did #50% detailing the breakdown I had MAKING that damn thing #the hair spikes. the plaid. HIS FUCKING PANTS.#for another day #but I couldn't resist taking a photo of them together #Twilight Town amigurumi #Twilight Town Amigurumi: Xion Edition

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underthebluerain · 1 year

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I finally finished playing kh3

yes I know it’s been almost 4 years

no I don’t have an explanation other than I played slowly, then got sad when I figured I was near the end bc I expected it to be longer and got kind of overwhelmed and just. stopped. and then there were. so many things going on.

I’m... I had envisioned making this post in all caps bc I just knew I was gonna be excited and a little sad but... turns out I was wrong. I’m honestly not excited or happy or even conflicted. I’m just upset.

this hurts me to say bc I’ve literally loved this saga since 2002. and I honestly never thought I’d say this. but it’s not that I’m feeling melancholic, it’s just sad, because honestly, what was this ending.

I’m also very upset at the terrible treatment of kairi, however, that I expected. but the ending??? what the hell??? literally all they had to do was get the trio back to destiny islands and have them be happy and together. and they didn’t do that.

they can’t even claim the usual bullshit like “we wrote ourselves into a corner” or “it’s impossible to please every fan” bc the ending everyone wanted was the simplest one. and given the amount of nonsensical events and characters coming back against all odds, it makes no sense that they killed sora off except for cheap drama. offscreen too. after making kairi a damsel in distress again and not even saving her onscreen.

I can’t believe this. if it was gonna end like this, the saga should’ve ended in kh II. I just cannot believe my final feeling about this saga is disappointment.

I honestly don’t care if later games fix this, I assume they do bc death is cheap in this universe and also bc obviously they wanna keep milking it all (when honestly, kh III should have been the end, a good end). the fact is they completely ruined it for me.

I’m just sad.

#kh #kingdom hearts III #my post #as usual i finish something so much later than everybody else and everybody must have moved on #but i'm feeling it now so #just unblocked all the tags i had blocked to avoid spoilers. all 34 of them (only half joking)#also consider this your announcement that i'm gonna start blogging like crazy about it #anyway I’m gonna go watch all the cutscenes from re: mind and melody of memory and see if they improve my mood

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ninewheels · 5 months

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I had completely forgotten they changed this line in Kingdom Hearts III. Why not just change "kill me" to "send me to another dimension"? In this case it would actually kind of work, at least the same way it did in DBZ.

Of all the stupid things in the game, this certainly is one of them.

#Kingdom Hearts III #Kingdom Hearts #edit: I forgot this one despite the fact that I even posted it about it on here when I first played the game

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tiderider · 6 months

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tag dump.

. arc i ⤍ pre d1 . › by the skin of our teeth .

. arc ii ⤍ d1 . › let there be violence .

. arc iii ⤍ post d1 . › here there be monsters .

. arc iv ⤍ d2 . › heart of the nonbeliever .

. arc v ⤍ post d2 . › burning in the baptism by fire .

. arc vi ⤍ d3 . › feeding the wolf its meal of hate .

. arc vii ⤍ post d3 . › through the heat of the sun .

. arc viii ⤍ post d3 . › a knife that never stops .

. 「 au 」 here to tear your kingdom down ── descendants au .

#tag dump.#. arc i ⤍ pre d1 . › by the skin of our teeth .#. arc ii ⤍ d1 . › let there be violence .#. arc iii ⤍ post d1 . › here there be monsters .#. arc iv ⤍ d2 . › heart of the nonbeliever .#. arc v ⤍ post d2 . › burning in the baptism by fire .#. arc vi ⤍ d3 . › feeding the wolf its meal of hate .#. arc vii ⤍ post d3 . › through the heat of the sun .#. arc viii ⤍ post d3 . › a knife that never stops .#. 「 au 」 here to tear your kingdom down ── descendants au .

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randomdragonfires · 1 month

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If The Sun Ever Rises | Series Masterlist

Listen to the song that inspired this series HERE

PAIRING | Aemond Targaryen x Strong-Niece Reader

SUMMARY | After narrowly escaping the Battle Above God’s Eye, Prince Aemond is now a hidden fugitive within the very kingdom he once ruled. Driven by vengeance, he plans to usurp Aegon III and avenge his family. His rage-blinded path to the throne begins with getting rid of Cregan Stark and the men who support his nephew’s rule. Having nothing to lose, he recklessly kidnaps the Northerner’s betrothed - his own niece - hoping to lure him and his men out to fight.

Soon, Aemond finds that memories of a first love are strong, and that he cannot steel his heart against the woman he has loved all his life.

WARNINGS | 18+; Smut; Canon Divergence - Aemond lives (but barely); Violence; Stockholm Syndrome; Mental and Physical Trauma; Angst; Canon Incest; Manipulation; No Happy Endings In This House YAY

A/N: Major thanks to @humanpurposes for being the loml, and for helping me figure out critical plot points and being with me when I needed it. I love you. :)

NO TAG LIST. PLEASE FOLLOW AND TURN ON POST NOTIFS FOR @randomdragonfics for fic updates!

Chapter 1 | To See You Again

Chapter 2 | Make Me Feel Alive

Chapter 3 | Live To See Another Day

Chapter 4 | Right Where You Left Me

Chapter 5 | TBA

Chapter 6 | TBA

Chapter 7 | TBA

Chapter 8 | TBA

Chapter 9 | TBA

Chapter 10 | TBA

Text Divider by @saradika

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tiderideraa · 2 years

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tag dump.

. arc i ⤍ pre d1 . › by the skin of our teeth .

. arc ii ⤍ d1 . › let there be violence .

. arc iii ⤍ post d1 . › here there be monsters .

. arc iv ⤍ d2 . › heart of the nonbeliever .

. arc v ⤍ post d2 . › burning in the baptism by fire .

. arc vi ⤍ d3 . › feeding the wolf its meal of hate .

. arc vii ⤍ post d3 . › through the heat of the sun .

. arc viii ⤍ post d3 . › a knife that never stops .

. 「 au 」 here to tear your kingdom down ── descendants au .

#tag dump.#verses.#. arc i ⤍ pre d1 . › by the skin of our teeth .#. arc ii ⤍ d1 . › let there be violence .#. arc iii ⤍ post d1 . › here there be monsters .#. arc iv ⤍ d2 . › heart of the nonbeliever .#. arc v ⤍ post d2 . › burning in the baptism by fire .#. arc vi ⤍ d3 . › feeding the wolf its meal of hate .#. arc vii ⤍ post d3 . › through the heat of the sun .#. arc viii ⤍ post d3 . › a knife that never stops .#. 「 au 」 here to tear your kingdom down ── descendants au .

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dailyfigures · 3 months

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Axel ; Kingdom Hearts ☆ Good Smile Company

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2023himbotournament · 1 year

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Coming to you all soon: The 2023 Grand Himbo Tournament!!

Inspired by the @nonbiney-swag-competition mainly, created and hosted by @makerofmadness

edit: guys it's already started pleas catch up I can't tell everyone who thinks it hasn't started yet dndndndndndn

Edit 2; The tournament has officially concluded! Thanks for your participation, I will still be using this blog for helping spread other tournaments, and also posting cringe

Welcome one and all, to the most ambitious tournament probably so far (that is to say, I chose way too many characters but in my defense I had found a blank template for a smash bros character roster thing and wanted to fill the whole thing up, even if I had to turn to the dark side to do so for one or two picks): The 2023 Himboff!

Round 1 Part 1 will begin on Friday, hopefully giving everyone enough time to prepare themselves for battle (I describe this as if it's a war and not a tumblr pollnament-).

EDIT: Yes I am being told that I may have included characters who may not fit the himbo criteria perfectly but in my defense i am not in every fandom and my research consisted of furious googling so if google lied to me then blame that

Now, without further ado, here is our roster!!

The himbos, in order from top to bottom, left to right:

Johnny Bravo (Johnny Bravo)

Kronk (The Emperor's New Groove)

Milk Cookie (Cookie Run)

Glamrock Freddy (Five Nights at Freddy’s)

Asgore Dreemurr (Undertale)

John F Kennedy (Clone High)

Joseph Joestar (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)

Son Goku (Dragon Ball)

Fred Jones (Scooby Doo)

Knuckles (Sonic Boom)

Chandlo Funkbun (Bugsnax)

Hercules (Hercules)

Milo (Pokémon)

Tom Dupain (Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir)

Jake English (Homestuck)

Launchpad McQuack (Ducktales)

King Dedede (Kirby)

Jonathan Joestar (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)

Lupin III (Lupin III)

Bolin (The Legend of Korra)

Big the Cat (Sonic)

Joey Wheeler (Yu-Gi-Oh)

Maui (Moana)

Phoenix Wright (Ace Attorney)

Sun Wukong (RWBY)

Terra (Kingdom Hearts)

Dimitri (Fire Emblem)

Brock (Pokémon)

Emile (How Not to Summon a Demon Lord)

Galo Thymos (Promare)

Gladiolus Amicitia (Final Fantasy)

Groose (The Legend of Zelda)

Hector (Fire Emblem)

Gonta Gokuhara (Danganronpa)

Indus Tarbella (Epithet Erased)

Tyko (Harmoknight)

Okuyasu Nijimura (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)

Toshinori Yagi (My Hero Academia)

Zeke von Genbu (Xenoblade)

Reyn (Xenoblade)

Koichi Zenigata (Lupin III)

Zhongli (Genshin Impact)

Killer T Cell (Cells at Work!)

Jean Pierre Polnareff (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)

Muscle Cookie (Cookie Run)

Flynn Rider (Tangled)

Prince Naveen (The Princess and the Frog)

Captain Underpants (Captain Underpants)

Kofu (Pokémon)

Buzz Lightyear (Toy Story)

Larry the Lobster (Spongebob SquarePants)

Ralph (Wreck-It Ralph)

King Fergus (Brave)

Kyojuro Rengoku (Demon Slayer)

Joey Tribbiani (Friends)

Steve Harrington (Stranger Things)

Jason Mendoza (The Good Place)

Troy Barnes (Community)

Kamina (Gurren Lagann)

Alfred F. Jones (Hetalia) (sincere apologies)

Andy Dwyer (Parks and Recreation)

Thor (Marvel)

Nate Archibald (Gossip Girl)

Valhallen (Powerpuff Girls)

He-Man (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe)

Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption)

Leon (Pokémon)

Sam (Stardew Valley)

Reigen Arataka (Mob Psycho 100)

Clawd Wolf (Monster High)

Guillermo (Himbo Harem Homicide)

Galio (League of Legends)

Mirio Togata (My Hero Academia)

See you all on Friday for when the Himboff commences!

#poll #himbo #2023 himboff #tournament #polls #would appreciate it if people would reblog this to help it spread :'3 I worked hard #Edit: I straight up forgot to list two of the roster members until now dnndndndnd

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gloom-kuraudo-cos · 28 days

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Sora - Kingdom Hearts III

ugh tumblr won’t load half my pics to post them and it’s pissing me off so bad. anyway i need to bring back sora soon after i fix his wig again !!

hopefully i can get my other pics to work!! the ones that won’t post are soriku so i’m just gonna call the tumblr app homophobic and call it a night

#kingdom hearts #glooms cosplay content #cosplay #kingdom hearts iii #kingdom hearts 3 #kh sora #kh riku #soriku

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ultraericthered · 5 months

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Disney's Most Hated Villain 10 Years Later

Now when I say "Disney's most hated villain", I don't mean he's the Disney villain that most people hate most, I literally mean he seems to be the villain most hated by Disney themselves. The shots taken at him in Big Hero 6, Frozen Fever, Kingdom Hearts III, Frozen II, and even recently in Once Upon A Studio all seem to suggest that there are some people high up at Disney who just really did not care for this guy, like they blame the ascendance of "twist villains" in Disney movies on him and want to take it out on him, despite how massively successful and popular the movie he was the villain of was and still is. It's just the most preculiar thing. A whole 10 years later and we've finally get another traditional, openly and bombastically evil villain in King Magnifico of Wish, and given how utterly polarizing that movie is turning out to be among all the earliest critics and audience viewers, I have to wonder if he'll now become Disney new punching bag for setting this new course! I swear, there's no pleasing folks these days!

But this post is for some thoughts on him and why I feel a lot of people online still get Hans wrong. He's not the most competently executed and well defined case of a twist villain, nor is he the worst, most bullshit twist villain ever who needed to be excised from the film so Elsa could keep the Big Bad spot. Taking him as he is, Hans is a B grade or C grade Disney villain at most, with lots of character potential even if it doesn't fully come together in the movie itself.

By far the most common and greatest misconception about Hans as a character is the idea that the moment of the reveal that he was an evil villain the entire time, and the very nature of re-establishing and re-contextualizing his character as a villain, is meant to cast him as some devious, manipulative mastermind who was pulling strings for the film's whole present day plot and had ill intent behind his every word and deed, even if that seems contradictory to the character we'd been watching up to that point. This is false. Hans has never mastered the chessboard, only played on it. He had a firmly set goal from the moment he showed up in Arendelle - become its ruler - but he did not have any solid plan on how he was going to make this ambition a reality. So he was winging it the whole movie. I mean, he basically says as much to Anna in that scene yet so many viewers were too distracted by reeling from either shock or confusion over the outing of Hans as the bad guy that they seemed to miss that.

The crux of Hans as an antagonist in the film is that he is a broken soul who grew up miserable and with an absence of love in his life, and it warped him into a high functioning sociopath who can easily detach himself from his heart and emotions, becoming whatever the current circumstance or person he's presently interacting with best requires him to be in the ways that best advance his own interests. He's like the worst possible outcome of what Anna or Elsa could've grown up to be had their childhoods taken an even worse turn. And above all, he is a man of many masks, rarely ever showing his true face. The mask is hollow and flexible, serving as a mirror to whoever Hans is in contact with (His nice, adorkable, and worried moods perfectly match Anna's, his angry and confrontational moods perfectly match Weselton's, his saddened and sympathetic moods perfectly match Elsa's - absolutely none of it is authentic). There's only a select few times we see the mask pulled back and get to see Hans' true face, those times being these moments and shots here:

The first shot is him lowering the phony Prince Charming mask and visibly expressing that he was genuinely charmed to meet Anna. No, he doesn't have any "love at first sight" feelings for her, nor is he at the point where he plans on getting close to her and asking for her hand in marriage - it's simply an amused fondness for this quirky, clumsy Arendelle girl he just conversed with.

This next shot is him looking towards the mountain and realizing Elsa is there. In animation, there's even the briefest hint of a grin as he turns and gives orders afterwards, 'cause he wants to seize and exploit this opportunity to play the big hero for Arendelle. Also worth mentioning is that while Hans has no one he loves, he does treat his horse Sitron well. It's pretty much his only friend.

The infamous split second shot where Hans' eyes dart up towards the chandelier before he jumps to action and turns the soldier's crossbow away from Elsa and to the candelier that drops on Elsa. This is Hans as a Xanatos Speed Chess player shown in practice.

That smarmy, mean-spirited grin that comes over his face as he says the infamous, ever memetic line that reveals his villainy.

The shot when he sees Elsa has broken out of her prison cell. Again, the good guy mask is lowered to show he's not pleased.

THIS SHOT. This is Hans fully unmasked and fully unrestrained.

The last we see of him before he's thrown out of the story.

So what's with all the Hans hate, from Disney fans and Disney itself? TV Tropes' page of Character Perception Evolution states this:

I'm not sure how entirely accurate this is since from what I recall, Hans and the twist of his villainy was getting shit on from very early on. I have to disagree that the twist was not properly foreshadowed or at least not in a way that was substantial enough (aside from those "lowering the mask" parts, all of Hans' lyrics in "Love Is An Open Door" put his intentions and the angle he was playing in plain sight, he immediately flip-flops his position when Anna charges him with looking over Arendelle in the sisters' absence, and right before the reveal he straight up lies by omission to Elsa's face by not telling her that he's currently the leading authority in Arendelle and thus has the power to grant her leniency rather than "persaude the other nobles" to do so), but the execution of the reveal with his sudden shift into a totally different character than the one we'd been watching for the previous two thirds of the film absolutely should've been handled better in execution; he needed to slow it down a bit in between saying that notorious line and snuffing out all the lit fires in the room while expositing in a villainous monologue sort of way. The idea that Elsa should've been the villain rather than Hans and Hans should've been the male love interest instead of Kristoph are simply opinions, and I'm not exactly in agreement with them, more on that in a bit.

I've said it plenty of times before and will repeat: to me, the most crippling weakness of Hans as the villain of this film is that the way he's been designed, the very nature of his sociopathic character who always wears masks, mirrors other characters, and comes up with new moves to advance his interests, rendered it very difficult for us to get a good grasp on who he truly is and feel like we'd really gotten to know him by the time the movie was over. And you could make the argument this isn't a flaw so much as it is a necessary evil in order to make Hans' role in the story work as best as it could...but I feel that argument falls flat when Disney/Pixar later gave us a similar twist villain who did what Hans did but better and even more effectively as a full-fledged character in a much shorter amount of screentime.

Erenesto De La Cruz, like Hans, is first cast in a positive light and set up as a good guy in the story, though we don't meet him in person until the third act of Coco. Like Hans, he's got an amiable personality and fast strikes up a friendly relationship with the main character. Like Hans, he is very evidently not without genuine decent qualities. Like Hans, the reveal of him as a murderous sociopath who is the true villain of the story is a very shocking moment. And like Hans, he's a big factor in the climax and gets dealt a satisfactory karmic comeuppance. But the thing that set Ernesto apart from Hans is that he doesn't wear any masks to conceal he's "secretly evil". He has a public image that conceals this, yes, but for all the time he's on screen and an active agent in the story, he is his authentic self. All of the nicer qualities we see from him aren't made up, they're real parts of who he is...and who he is just also happens to be a vainglorious sociopath devoid of a conscience who will do anything to anyone under any circumstance in order to "seize his moment" and build up a legacy that keeps him the center of attention even long after he's passed away. While he's still under the mistaken belief that Miguel is his great grandson, before he learns he's actually that to Hector, he has him put away and draws a parallel to how he poisoned Hector to death as he does so - he was never at any point in life pretending to be Hector's best friend, "Hector WAS my best friend", as he puts it. And it just ultimately matters less to him than himself and his own self-interested pursuits. That is a truly chilling villainous character who leaves a strong impression after the movie's over despite how little he was on screen. Hans was almost that, but fell short of the mark because we were left with no clear picture of who he was.

Luckily for Hans, he did get other chances to show more character:

In closing, I will still have to defend Hans' position as the story's only true villain. Yes, Disney going all out with Elsa and her powers driven out of control from her fears as the primary antagonist probably would've been the best option, but once they were set on making Elsa much less of a villain than envisioned, someone needed to play the part in order to make the climax happen and it absolutely could not be the Duke of Weselton, a character so comically unpleasant and openly against Elsa and in it for his own interests rather than Arendelle's that there is no way in Frozen Hell that Elsa would ever be convinced by him of anything like Anna being dead from Elsa's own freezing powers. That lie had to come from someone who could convincingly make Elsa believe it because they'd come off so sincere, someone she'd think could have no possible reason to lie to her. It had to be someone like Hans, someone with a heart so frozen cold that he could effortlessly mimic human emotion he didn't really feel. That is a crucial part of the story's climax that, even beyond the danger to Anna's heart, was foreshadowed from the very beginning.

#Disney #Frozen #anniversary #disney villains #Prince Hans #analysis #opinion #criticism #defense #they wasted a perfectly good character

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