Being loved is NOT a reward for being beneficial or useful in any way. You don't become less deserving of being loved if you aren't productive for a day or if you have a bad day and can't get out of bed.
I promise. Being loved has nothing to do with how you "help" the world or those around you.
It’s been years and tumblr still won’t give me my username back so its this now.
So that KH finale! I’m gonna be real honest - I played the JP KHX browser game, and I played KHUX in JP and ENG but I stopped shortly after Union Cross was released... mostly because any guild-related rewards were negligible and it went from “You need to min-max!” to “You need to pay to min-max!” very shortly thereafter. The story updates never caught up. To be honest, if I had known from the start of the ENG release that it was never going to catch up, to the very dying day, then... I probably would have stayed in the JP game. Regardless --
I’m gonna ramble about the ending now and I’m probably not right and I will take no criticism. I’m just brain dumping and I don’t need an essay about how I’m wrong. It’s just conjecture, so take it and run with it, expand upon it, if it also sparks to you, and just ignore what doesn’t.
SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT
The entire data world was a test to rig the system to having only one possible outcome. It was almost perfect.
However, even that got fucked up - intentionally - by MoM pulling back the curtain for Luxu at the last minute, to get him to act out his role as traitor. It slides from ‘no darkness gets out’ to only one successful avatar for darkness gets out.
The now awakened dark avatar of Luxu takes Blaine’s body, hoping for memories of the Book to come along - this was Luxu’s last ditch attempt at preventing MoM’s plan from coming to fruition.
Ephemera still never read the Book and he made it to the future, which is probably an oversight to Luxu. The true dandelion still made it.
I’m positive Luxu’s dark avatar wasn’t sure which vessel he should be taking, so he’s the one who thought he could rig it. He failed to rig it because Ephemera got away.
I wonder... could Ephemera inevitably be MoM...? Eh, won’t cross it off. And here’s why, in two parts: MoM would effectively be guaranteeing himself a path to the future in the misdirect that allowed Ephemera to make it. And here we thought MoM was Luxu. Silly us. Luxu got the book through Blaine but it was the one who never read it that would definitely be the next MoM -- and Ephemera deciding he’d rather follow his heart than a book means he has the spirit of the role down.
But having to deal with all that trauma... he made it... But having to harbor the heaviness of all that transpired -- that’s the birthplace of new darkness -- congrats for not breaking the cycle, fam! Ephemera learning darkness still exists after all that? Not knowing if reality is real or not? What lengths would YOU go to, to save the world from darkness? So much has already been lost - to give up now would make their sacrifices in vain. Boom, you now have the ingredient’s to MoM’s insanity.
Irrelevant misdirects: it’s worth pointing out that Skuld is not Xehanort’s mom, the eye colors are wrong. Could be a grandkid? And speaking of Skuld, we still don’t know if Skuld or Streletzia is the mysterious girl from the KH3 Lea/Isa Radiant Garden plot. We don’t know shit.
Also, could the Luxu that 'ended’ Blaine been Xigbar who got to the past ala the same way Maleficient did? Huh, that’s a stretch, you might say. Okay then. Why is Luxu tall for that scene, then, huh?
Maleficent gets to the future bc her cloak. Physical objects inspire memories. Remembering Maleficent brought her back. Is it the same with Blaine’s hat, which is handed to him in the future...?
In a way, darkness is a thing we all just can’t forget, we are constantly being reminded of it - so it keeps coming back. Most importantly, its supposed to be there. It’s part of what makes us whole. You have to reject Light and Darkness both to be rid of Darkness, but then you’re an unfeeling empty blob like that Nobodies -- and even they began to remember themselves. Hearts regrow, given any chance.
So let’s instead turn to look at our Player. Never officially a dandelion, we were a seed that should have never made it to the new world. And we did - in the form of Xehanort? And the characters around baby nort seemed to understand something was wrong with this child. And abandoned him in hopes he would never be reunited with anything that reminds him of the past:
One who knows nothing can understand nothing. Look at this tiny place. To the heart seeking freedom, this island is a prison, surrounded by water. And so, this boy sought to escape his prison, and he opened his heart to darkness. Don't bother. Your voice can no longer reach him where he is. His heart belongs again to Darkness.
Nope, silly me. Despite having it as my email handle and my connected twitter handle and all my artwork signed as that name, Tumblr still won’t give it back to me.
Nope, silly me. Despite having it as my email handle and my connected twitter handle and all my artwork signed as that name, Tumblr still won’t give it back to me.
While I was researching stuff for the Final World analysis, I had noticed that the aesthetic greatly resembled the aesthetic of Scala ad Caelum. The water, the bright blue sky, the white cube shaped structures, the way the structures were able to be turned on their head. It was all too similar.
But I didn’t really have anything substantial to go off of…until I stumbled on this:
Man-made salt mounds at salt farms. The design of Scala ad Caelum is based on salt mounds.
It’s almost as if Scala ad Caelum was trying to emulate the Final World- whereas the salt structures in the final world are based on naturally occurring salt crystals, Scala is based on man-made salt farming methods. And if Scala ad Caelum is actually a reference to Jacob’s Ladder as I’ve talked about before, this makes sense. The place where heaven and earth meet. The Final World is “Heaven”, while Scala is “earth”. Perhaps a reference to Matthew 6:10
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
It wouldn’t be the first time Christian symbolism/references were used in KH, not by a long shot. Coincidentally, there is another very relevant teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (which is where “on earth, as it is in heaven” comes from), known as the “Salt and Light” passages.
“Matthew 5:13 refers to his disciples as “the salt of the earth.” This meaning is paralleled in the following verse, Matthew 5:14, in the symbolism of the “light of the world.” Another view is that the Salt and Light passages refer to a duality of roles in the disciples to be like a light from a city, viewable from all over the world, and to be spread out as salt is: to congregate and spread.” -x
Scala ad Caelum was the “light of the world” after the keyblade war, from which “the new world was rebuilt from the light left in the hearts of children”, as the story goes. It is “the nexus from which all worlds spring”, in other words, it has spread out like salt.
Local man regains memories, becomes disconcertingly nice (also we were ROBBED by never being able to see Vexen with his hair up for when he does science things in 3!!!)
-Please do not reupload/edit/use without proper credit, ask first please-
I love nothing more than animation insiders like this! Man, you don’t realize how much math and physics go into stuff like this. Way different than traditional animation!
I know there’s huge pressure to get your life together in your twenties, but as someone in her thirties I have to say that one of my greatest inspirations is that Sephiroth was 30 when he fused with his alien half-mother to turn into an eldritch abomination bent on turning the planet into their own personal tonka truck so honestly there’s no such thing as being too old to achieve your dreams