#alright bye bye for now ima have brainworms about this all day

[mushroom-winners-proof]

I'm genuinely curious, if you were to rewrite Ansem and Riku to have more actual genuine interactions before the 'I'm going to miss you' thing how would you do it? I have a lot of thoughts on it because I really wish it DIDN'T come out of nowhere after they've been getting into nothing but fights for the last several games, and I'm interested to hear how you'd take it!

oh my god UNFORTUNATELY i have no creative bone in my body when it comes to writing; despite wanting a more built-up relationship for ansem and riku prior to their final fight i have no clue how we could've gotten it and it feeling natural and believable

i'm gonna throw a bunch of my ramblings about riku and ansem's relationship below but for a tl;dr there is a sound potential to actually create even a small relationship between them or even just a nice moment, it was just never capitalized on and i wish we did get something. if you guys have any thoughts i'd love to hear them because i do love the relationship ansem and riku had and the potential it could've had

we always see ansem reaching out to riku but we know that comes from a position of a Tiger In The Bushes situation so to speak: he's waiting for the opportune moment to get riku in a moment of weakness to take his body or to get him to give into darkness again- which is why riku's assertion that he'll miss ansem in the first place feels so off. riku doesn't have a clear reason to miss him in the first place when all he's done is be a menace to him. we can make assumptions as to WHY but that's all they'll be, assumptions.

expanding on those assumptions a bit though we can say that riku saying ansem reminds him of "someone" (i.e. terra) could give him that sense of familiarity that he'll miss. something more specific to ansem though ansem is what honed the darkness inside riku and undeniably darkness is a huge part of who riku is. we've been shown that darkness can be ugly but we've also seen it used for better and witih good intentions and know riku's use of darkness is how hes able to protect the people he cares about. even if riku doesn't want to acknowledge the darkness in him, acknowledging the relationship he has with it and ergo ansem could be a start to build something- could be a reason why he's mounrful about ansem leaving. he KNOWS ansem's not a good guy by any means, but he also knows he had his place in riku's life.

it's kind of like a toxic parent/child relationship a bit: for the bulk of the kid's life the parent's been nothing but vile to them, yet for some reason as the parent and kid get older there manifests that weird I Wish Things Were Better situation (or at least that's the impression we get from the goodbye in KH3. we can se a bit of that in DDD when riku actually talks to ansem and doesnt just insult or be angry at him). not every toxic parent/child relationship is like that mind you but it's a fair enough base for trying to describe what was going on between them and how things progressed so we can understand how to build off what we do have in canon

what they certainly did need was a moment like lea and saix: just a one on one before the fight to really talk to each other, maybe reflect (after all ansem does point out how they've had 'quite the journey' together, and he's right frankly)

moreover ansem already said he knew riku was too strong to be affected by his influence anymore (in that sense you could say riku's really grown up past the lonely, angry kid he was into an adjusted young adult), there would be no need for him to try to manipulate him anymore. it could JUST be a moment for reflection or the sort

i want to say that would be enough to warrant riku missing ansem even the slightest, though i know a greedy part of me would like to see more scenes beyond that (but i cant fairly say id have any idea where those scenes could even be)

#snap chats #this IS a lot of rambling im sorry #i should just put all my ramblings in a doc and then make a concise post but i mean #there are probably important to SOMEONE i unno- plus i like having you guys review my thought process #i trust yall when it comes to putting things in check and giving good insight #alright bye bye for now ima have brainworms about this all day