#i started out her playthrough intending to romance her. but alas | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oveliagirlhaditright · 4 years

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One thing I noticed when I was reading debates on So Kai's canon status on KHinsider, was that a lot of people were vehemently insisting that both So Kai interactions and Sor iku interactions could be interpreted as either romantic or platonic. I completely disagree, but, do you think a lot of people are under the impression that this is true because of their experiences playing Final Fantasy and other games that play both sides of a love triangle?

I don’t think so. Though I could be wrong, of course. Because the only game to really do that is V*II (and even then, you have C*leriths in particular--though C*loTis do it, too--that C*lerith is totally the intended, canon pairing. And even as a C*loTi myself, if I’m being honest... I think they might be right. It just seems that if most of the developers did have to choose in the end, they’d choose C*lerith. And you get the C*lerith scenes easier than you do the C*loTi ones). Some of the other games somewhat have other love triangles, sure. Like Q*uistis likes S*quall in V*III, and you can get scenes with R*ikku and L*ulu as T*idus in *X... But even there there’s a clear intended pairing. Squall never showed any interest in Q*uistis, as he was all about R*inoa. And while you can get those scenes with R*ikku or L*ulu, T*idus of course still falls in love with Yuna canonically in the end (and also, not every K*H fan has played F*inal F*antasy). And even a lot of other media that has love triangles has their intended pairing planned out from the get-go.

Warning: This post is probably going to get salty, because to explain what I think happened with the whole S*oKai vs. S*oRiku war all the years that K*ingdom H*earts has existed. And since I wasn’t as chill in the past as I am now, some of this stuff used to tick me off and I might unintentionally unearth those old feelings here, in making myself remember it all.

But at least for the the fans who have been here from K*HI on or from K*HII... I think they saw S*oRiku because they wanted to see S*oRiku. Like, apparently there were some fans who saw it as early as the first game, and were trying to argue it was canon over S*oKai even way back then. And while I’ve been with the series since only K*HI was out, I didn’t have Internet at the time (I got it right after K*HII came out, so I found these old arguments then). And just... no. Just no. S*oKai was so clearly canon in K*HI, while as S*ora and R*iku pretty much hated each other 99.9% of the game. I don’t get where those people are coming from.

And then with K*HII, a lot of people were like “Oh my gosh, S*ora totally touched R*iku’s butt! These two are so g*ay!” And also “no” there. Guys, this is a D*isney game. In what world do you think D*isney would ever let that happen. And then there’s the infamous S*ora cries when he finds R*iku while holding his hand while he falls to his knees, that really started all of this--because don’t you seeeeeee, that S*ora reacted so much strongly to finding R*iku here than he did K*airi?!--never mind the fact that to try and push that angle, you really have to take that scene out of context. But even if you count that scene as S*oRiku, instead of somewhat as a writer’s flop, that’s really all you have pointing at S*oRiku from I-II, while you have a million things pointing at S*oKai... and yet S*oRikus were adamant that S*oRiku was canon, and people were fools for thinking otherwise.

And if these games were always going to be S*oKai, like I think they were because tbh... J*apan still isn’t very open about when it comes to g*ay couples and you definitely see that with S*quare E*nix, I wish they would have just left it like it was instead of giving us C*oded and D*ream D*rop D*istance.

Why those games are how they are, I don’t know. But we at least know K*airi was originally planned to be in C*oded, even if that doesn’t excuse that she wasn’t in the end. But tbh... And granted, I’m clearly a S*oKai, so maybe I can just never really see S*oRiku because of that (even if I have tried, to see if these people are right and I’m missing something): I’ll admit it... But while C*oded is a game many people look to to say that S*ora and R*iku are g*ay, all I see here is friendship... even when I tried to look at it through another lens.

But this game is, perhaps, where you had to start to wonder if S*quare E*nix knew S*oRiku was so popular, and started q*ueer-baiting with it to try and sell games. You could argue that that was why K*airi was left out in the end. I think it was probably more for time-constraints (which is still bull), but you could still argue it. And you have that part where S*ora’s going inside of R*iku. Which at the time, a pretty famous amv maker (who recognized S*oKai was canon and shipped it) posted that scene alone and titled it “The Reason Re:C*oded Will Sell”. And tbh, they probably weren’t wrong. And you could say that that part in particular was q*ueer-baiting. But again... I don’t know if it was. Because to do so, they would have had to be trying to give that line a double meaning--rather than it just meaning that Data Sora had to go inside Data Riku’s data. I.E. Another computer had to access another computer’s data--which I don’t think they would do, because that wouldn’t have flown with Disney. And as I’ve said above, S*quare E*nix--until the FF*VII R*emake, perhaps--usually treats g*ay couples as a joke, like with the non-serious B*arret and C*loud ship, that’s played for laughs. The only exception is, perhaps, V*anille and F*ang. But they’re never even said to be flat-out canon, and F*ang was originally supposed to be a guy... yeah. Also, sometimes it seems like N*omura doesn’t know much about what goes on in his games’ fanbase--at least not originally--because he only heard that A*kuR*oku was a big ship in the fandom a few years back, and then quickly stated that that wan’t canon. So... I don’t know if they’d really do this. But it’s up to you, I guess.

Which brings us to D*ream D*rop D*istance. I don’t know why this game is the way it is. I don’t. Though people have said they don’t think N*omura was in his right mind while making this--because this was the time that those “N*omura’s Depression” articles were coming out, because after ten years he was getting nowhere with V*ersus X*III because of the company’s shitty decisions--and F*rustrated J*acob makes the good point in his D*D*D playthrough, that it sounds like N*omura was moreso making V*ersus at the time than D*D*D, because I think this was when Yasue first became co-director. And in interviews, Nomura was mostly saying things like, “This happened in D*D*D because the team wanted it”, but not that he did. Which is the opposite of how he usually handles KH. But this was the game where even I started to feel there was some q*ueer-baiting going on (though when I recently made a post about this, palizinhas--a friend of mine who does ship S*oRiku--explained that the game moreso felt again like N*omura just celebrating how great male friendships are (a big thing in J*apan, and also in N*omura’s work. *cough* V*ersus/F*FXV and perhaps even more *cough*), and I think I agree. But still... this game, and to a lesser extend C*oded, makes me feel bad for the S*oRiku shippers, because I feel they were teased about their ship when it would never become canon, and I kind of just wish S*quare E*nix had left it alone. And I guess it’s also worth noting, that D*D*D was originally supposed to be the start of K*HIII, as was 0*2 after that... which might actually explain a lot. In a world where that had actually happened, we would have had one better balanced game. We would have had the section that focused on S*ora and R*iku’s friendship, the part that actually focused on R*iku and K*airi’s a little bit (0*2), and then the one that finally pushed the S*oKai romance forward again (K*HIII). And in a game that was about how S*ora felt his strength came from his friends, and that he didn’t think he would triumph without them... it would have made sense if said game was divided into his strongest friendships (his one with R*iku in the first half, and his one with K*airi in the second, and his ones with D*onald and G*oofy all throughout). It’s kind of sad that isn’t the game we got in the end, as that would have fixed a lot of problems. Alas.

...And I don’t really know how to end this thing, so I’m just going to randomly end it here. Yep.

Edit: And I just remembered why Kairi may have been left out of Coded and DDD: because the fandom hated her. So much.

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