As I admitted, an author's choice to focus on a certain set of people implies a certain aesthetic. But the Kingdom Hearts universe can hardly be said to be populated by less than fifty people, no matter how many or how little or what sort of characters are in focus. There are clearly average joes; you can find a few in Traverse Town. This implies the existence of more, and further implied is that there are probably still way more average joes than Keyblade wielders. Case in point: Quite a few of those joes don't even know what the hell is a Keyblade. Another point I must reiterate: You are special. Just because a bunch of people know how to do something doesn't mean it's not a difficult art to master, or one that makes the practitioner unique. Again, consider the swordsmanship example. If all Keyblades were replaced with regular swords, would you not think those swordsmen special? If not, then you underestimate the rigors swordsmanship demands, and the technical intricacy of the art. To use another example... Misty, you're one of thousands of forum administrators. Don't you think that's special? Some misguided idiot might think any old shmuck can keep a forum running, but doubtless the job demands some programming know-how, a sense of good graphic design, experience in negotiation and mediating, the ability to make and enforce rules fairly... or, at the absolute least, the connections to assemble a team with that combined skill set. It's no small feat, even if quite a few people have done it. And you can do it all at only 12 years old! Of course they taught us to do that. We just did it way too much. :v
"Soul" = "heart." It's incredibly difficult to imagine what is meant by one that is not meant by the other, and in fact they're used interchangeably in many other works. How that distinction was to be made in the first place is a mystery. I doubt that the next enemy to be introduced will have anything to do with the soul. In fact, I have a feeling either Nomura or the translators are going to redact their use of it—whoever first got the ball rolling. Judging by the content of their last few games, they either didn't think it through and regretted bringing it up, or lost interest altogether in exploring that aspect. That, or perhaps you could say the "soul" is what binds the errant pieces of a person together when they're separated, suspended in stasis, or wherever else they may end up, in which case it seems less of a material thing and more of a preserved state-of-being, a back-up file of sorts. If that's true, there wouldn't be any kind of sinister offshoot off of which to base a new enemy type.
The greatest stumbling block, I think, is Alice. Tim Burton's version is very different, not to mention older. There are other inconsistencies, but none of them are quite as irksome as that. Some creative license would clear them right up. The Jabberwocky would make an excellent boss, I'd imagine, and Alice might actually be available as an ally in battle, possibly starting out weak and gaining a power-up of some sort à la Ping/Mulan. I could picture them doing this, but the real question, isn't it, is would they do it well?
Tentative reading list as of now: House of Leaves - Technically finished; in "overtime" (It's a weird book) Alchemy of Stone - Unfinished, intend to pick back up next The Name of the Wind - Not started, have to keep this on the list or Makaze will kill me Invisible Man - Nearly finished (last year), intend to re-read Good Omens - Not started ... c': Jiku angers better than me. Glad we're all agreed, that shit is terrible. My stepdad tried to make me read it on grounds that it's a "classic." No, Ray Bradbury is classic. If CitR is classic anything, it's a classic example of how not to do it. I've watched The Crucible, if that's the same thing. The screaming. D:
Just everyone who hasn't played Demon's So-*brick'd* This. Best world in anything ever. If by "boss as shits" you mean "this boss made me shit everywhere out of anger on Expert mode" then yes. I always play on "stunted growth" mode with the shield dropped, and that bastard is right in the sweet spot where I can't deal heavy damage but everything can turn me into Sora stew in three hits or less.
I SAW THAT IMAGE ON TUMBLR YESTERDAY. THE ONE IN YOUR ICON. So pwetty. ; w; Also is that your deviantart?
Also fuck the haters Wonderland rocks
I'll miss your posts and your avatar. ~= 3=~
http://kh-vids.net/showthread.php?126032-Did-MSN-seriously-just-make-me-update-to-2011&p=3721552&viewfull=1#post3721552 In case you were wondering...
Oh, you ain't even at the coo' part yet. :L
And then there's the part where he gets on his hands and knees and begs Saïx to release her. I'm not fanatical about the couple itself, but it does kind of irk me that people take those moments for granted. If he's indifferent, it's only out of relief that she's all right and/or confidence that she can take care of herself. Riku's the more pressing issue at the time because he's been gone for ages, and he went through hell besides. A guy doesn't have to be slobbering all over a girl 24/7 to be considered in love, does he? It definitely goes deeper than "hero saves princess," it just doesn't come up much. From their interactions on Destiny Islands, it's clear that she is charmed by his simplicity, and from his actions in KHII there's clearly something for her brewing in his heart. Not to mention, their hearts were unusually close for an extended period of time; that kind of thing doesn't just get handily dismissed. ...Or maybe it does, since it never comes up in KHII. It feels like there's definitely supposed to be something there, Nomura just can't decide what.
Disagree, on nearly all counts. Don't take Mickey's words for more than what they are. "The closer you get to light, the greater your shadow becomes." Rather than a warning against temptation, this seems more of a cautionary saying to remind Sora that he's never as safe as he may feel when "close to the light," which we can all hopefully deconstruct into literal terms without my help. In short, it's less "If you are not careful this is what you could become" and more "Watch your back or this is what could sneak up on you." It's the difference between Sora's shadow, the darkness left in his wake, and his Shadow, or the darkness in his own heart. Darkside bears a thematic closeness to Sora, not as an element of himself but as a necessary and equal-opposite adversary to what he is. It is, quite literally, the dark side. The fact that this is poorly reflected in gameplay is a nigh-unforeseeable design flaw and should not be taken into account in this context. As I said above, there's a difference between the darkness within and without. The Heartless is empowered only by the darkness intrinsic in the person of whom it is borne. Sora has almost nothing from which to draw, so his Heartless is weak. The darkness surrounding him is what is strong, not the darkness inside of him.
Was it hinted at? Barely. Could it work? Maybe. Would it be interesting? I don't think so. The only upside is Roxas potentially having a stronger connection to his life and being far more reluctant to leave, but there are several problems with that: 1) It would take time to really establish the relationship in such a way that it felt organic and made an impact on the narrative. Roxas's segment already took enough time, and to add more on to that would likely just make the player feel bored and irritated, thus the effect is utterly lost. 2) It would interfere with what 358/2 Days established, which was Roxas's declining interest in his own life and willingness to risk everything to get away and to take down Xemnas. It would have reversed his feelings, thus leaving him unmotivated to continue his struggle in a rather odd paradox (the more apathetic about his own life, the more determined to end Xemnas's). 3) It would have made no sense in context. If the Twilight Town Roxas inhabited was designed by Ansem merely to contain him until Sora was ready for him, wouldn't it have been counter-productive to give him an incentive to resist returning to Sora? Even if it did help pacify him, it would then be, at best, an unnecessary risk—and, at worst, inefficient. I call it a "maybe" because Roxas doesn't seem like he'd be interested. Not only are his emotions severely dampened in his Nobody form, I'd argue they are further dampened by the tranquility of the setting; he may not have been conscious of a history before Twilight Town, but his psyche was probably still in "fighting against evil organization with lots of deadly members" mode, which would make DTT feel like a field of tulips. An impossibly dull field of tulips on a gray, overcast day. Either he'd be totally apathetic towards her, or he'd always have his head in the clouds and won't be able to take her seriously.
I can only counter this with a logical argument, the exact nature of which doesn't strike me as particularly effective where natural selection is replaced with creative selection, but here goes: A hundred Jedi. Out of billions of people. Less than ten Keyblade wielders. Out of billions of people. Fictional works have a tendency to suffer bottleneck effects like that since, let's face it, rarely can a writer make you want to watch, read, or play from the perspective of an ordinary guy when there are extraordinary folk about. But that doesn't change the fact that the effective sample size is drastically small and ostensibly skewed. Of course, people are not naturally wired to process numbers like that, nor is it entirely sound in the case where an author, not some immutable force of nature, is calling the shots. As I said, flimsy argument, but technically sound. I think people are just holding the Keyblade wielders up on a pedestal. Rather, one a bit higher than it ought to be. Conventional swordsmen in our own history numbered in the hundreds, and perhaps thousands at one time, yet the art is and was no less revered for those numbers, and a trained or master swordsman is still nothing to scoff at. It strikes me as a certain sub-set of "missing the forest for the trees" which is perhaps more accurately characterized as "missing the splitting of the atom for the sawing-a-woman-in-half trick;" people have to believe that something is special, but the only reason they don't is because they examine it from an awkward perspective, lacking acute details. They end up dishonoring what's really special about it by demanding the elimination or mucking-up of these details, directly or indirectly. People want less Keyblade wielders; inherent in this is the generalization of Keyblade-related skills and a loss of intricacy, which makes the art less impressive. Or, to come full-circle: The higher the pedestal, the more we can fantasize, but the less clearly we can see the object. People ought to learn to appreciate what they can observe before we chase all the detail out of the universe.
We must become one again. *holds out hand*
Hop u liek my glassez 2 bby.
Yeah I need to remember to try that later when I'm not fuming, since I already uninstalled. EDIT: It works. Sanity restored. :D
... Uh, wut? ...Wow. You really are me.
sfgwregwjghiwriguwhgifjidgwhdgsg I JUST GOT DONE DIGGING THROUGH FUCKING INVISIBLE FOLDERS TO MOVE ALL MY FUCKING EMOTES AND SOUNDS OVER TO A NEW FUCKING LAPTOP FILL OUT ANOTHER GODDAMN APPLICATION AND THEN WHEN I'M FINALLY DONE I GET TREATED TO THIS YOU KNOW WHAT FUCK YOU MSN YOU JUST LOST A USER YOU CAN SHOVE 2011 UP YOUR GREASE-GUZZLING SHIT-RIDDLED KANKHOLE I AM FUCKING D O N E ┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡~┬─┬ (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ ┻━┻ (ノ °益°)ノ彡 ┻━┻ ヾ(。￣□￣)ﾂ ┬──┬ (ノ゜ω゜)ノ ︵ ┻━┻ (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ ┻━┻ ︵ヽ( ` Д Â´ )ﾉ︵ ┻━┻ ┬─┬ ︵ /(.□. \） (ノ °益°)ノ ︵ (\ .o.)\ *breath* *breath* *breath* ...Well, that was cathartic. So yeah, if you need me I'll be on Skype.
Uh ohhhh kismesissitude in the house-*brick'd*
