ok last one i'm tossing the various of ftpverse ship bingos and my thoughts under the cut
all of htese get the "i only like it in my specific scenerios" box becuase that is basically the "these ships literally only exist in this fashion in this fanfic i wrote" free space. you know.
what is there to say. uh.
i already made them fucked up <3 becuase everything about you were created to destroy this one guy and do literally nothing else with your life WHOOPS! CAUGHT FEELINGS FOR HIM INSTEAD!!!! TIME TO HATE MYSELF AND WISH I COULD DIE BUT I LTIERALLY PHYSICALLY CANNOT DIE isn't not fucked up, you nknow!!!!!
they make me feel insane (positive) even if my emotions lately have been picking up shadkai and holding them close to my eyeballs and saying oh tehse guys drive me aboslutely fucking NUTS becuase shadkai does drive me a little more nuts than soshad does, even though soshad is very good and did drive me nuts for like 2 or 3 years while i was writing and working up to the reveal. augh. they're fun.
what if you were created to be his fated enemy........ what if you didn't want to be......... what if you didn't have a choice....... waht if you DID have a choice because even him killing you didn't let you die actually!!! what if you lived on and he forgave you becuase he's sora from kingdom hearts he's sora, goddamn sora, who will forgive everyone, including you!!!!!!!
what if he would die for you and you don't understand why he could possibly love you after all you did to hurt him. you know? you know. i really popped off here
"basically canon" is silly when the canon is the thing I make and I made them canon but nonetheless. they are canon to me. becuase i said they were canon. it is my fic and i get to say that.
also the guy they are both fucking is kairi. sometimes a polyam triad is you (sora) your boyfriend (shad) and your best friend slash moirail (kairi) who is your boyfriend's emotional support bastard. yeah.
my god. what DOESN'T shadkai hit. they might ahve the most squares of any ship i've done on this meme, excluding maybe jademythra(asch), who like, tie.
god. i think had i filled this out pre 2022 i would not have marked basically canon to me but post 2022 im like no you know what. i don't know WAHT kind of relationship they have yet (and maybe they don't either!) but i am leaning more and more towards them not only being each other's emotional support bastards but also maybe kissing about it. so yeah. they are canon to me now. my feelings pre 2022 were . their friendship drove me nuts but i hadn't decided it was queerplatonic yet. i've decided it is now!
which like to be fair: despite the betrayal despite shad spending most of their friendship lying to kairi, the bond they forge thru sharing the same shitty scenario , a bond in which they were the only people they could be honest with..... kairi becuase thanks to Magic Bullshit no one else remembered sora on the islands, where she was trapped. shad because to everyone else he was sora's evil shadow, but to kairi she was just some dude (his identity was hidden because she could hear but not see him. don't worry about it.) and he relished in that anonymity, that chance as a newly born creature to explore ways to define himself outside of sora
which, already, you can see why that drives me nuts!!!! i think teh point i was trying to make also is a bond like that is fucking HARD to shake, so kairi eventually forgiving him leading to them being emotional support bastards that maybe kiss sometimes is. not a stretch. but also something i couldn't have articulated before writing jademythra in 2020 - i barely knew what a queerplatonic relationship was before 2017. lol. lmao.
shadkai drives me nuts. the irony is also that it does end well (thank god) but the feeling in dead inside, what makes them so juicy in dead inside is that, like, you watch them interact and you go oh this CANNOT end well, because they are by designed doomed. shad exists to drag sora into darkness. kairi would do anything to be sure that never happens again. the only thing that allows them to have a friendship is that kairi doesn't KNOW that her weird invisible friend is also sora's shadow, who btw on screen says she hates, explicitly. and he hears her say she hates him when he is sora's shadow and he jsut has to cope with that, he has to balance his friendship with her that exists only by lying about his true identity, he has to balance those lies vs her trust in him her faith in him her fondness for him when she doesn't know who he really is. they make a pinky promise in act 2 that tehy will both find who they are searching for except they are both searching for sora and if shad finds him then kairi never will, and if kairi finds him then shad will have to reveal who he is to her, so it's just DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED all around!!!
NEVERMIND THAT THE CULMINATION OF ALL THIS IN DEAD INSIDE IS SHAD IN FACT BEING FORCED TO REVEAL WHO HE IS TO HER. SO NOW SHE HAS TO STRUGGLE WITH 1) HER INVISIBLE FRIEND WAS SORA'S SAHDOW ACTUALLY 2) HOW IS HE BOTH THE AWFUL PERSON WHO HURT HER BEST FRIEND AND ALSO THE AWKWARD BOY WHO HAD CLEARLY NEVER LISTENED TO MUSIC BEFORE 3) ALL THAT AND HE WANTED TO DIE AND SHE DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE DESPITE ALL THE CONVERASTIONS TEHY HAD WHILE HE WAS ACTIVELY SUICIDAL 4) AND MAYBE ALSO HE DIDN'T TRUST HER AT ALL IF HE DIDN'T ASK HER FOR HELP INSTEAD OF COMMITTING THE SUICIDE
(the suicide didn't stick. this is kingdom hearts.)
they're fucked up they're tragic they drive me nuts! the relationship they ahve is a relationship they couldn't have with anyone else!
i don't even know what the themes are despite writing them but they also drive me nuts! is that every box? i mean they're ride or die for each other obviously (devotion) and i think they can be sweet espeically the more i rotate post atr content but even teh bit in atr where kairi really properly is forced to realize how much shad likes sora.... the way shad turns to her when he's in a crisis because who else can he turn to? the way she lets him do this, the way she helps him thru it, teh way she for once in this scene bites down her grudge to help him because he is clearly in distress and he was her friend once and he needs her help
"were we ever friends" "yes, we were, i didn't befriend you just to hurt sora. i hurt you to hurt sora but that is not why i first started talking to you" "oh." augh augh augh.
i am eating the shadkai up all the time. also i think they do/can probably enable the worst in each other even if they don't always do this. but its so easy to. especially during the bits of ATR where they don't get along lol. i could probably unmark that box but meh effort]
also we all know why i ticked the they're fucking the same guy box. they're both fucking sora. actually my onion on the matter is that soshad have an open agreement that if either of them ends up wanting to make out with kairi that's okay by them so long as it's okay by kairi. which it might be! i don't see why kairi wouldn't kiss her best friend (sora) for fun and where im at with shadkai is that the other night i imagined them passionately kissing during the music swell in hold on till may (pierce the veil) that occurs after "i would rather--" and i am infact kind of emo about it, so like,
a polyam triad can be you (shad) and the two people you love more than anything else (sora, kairi)
sokai are very "if we aren't married by 30 lets just marry each other" and had they been given more time before shad was in the picture they probably would have been each other's first sex. maybe they still are. anyway.
childhood friends who are ride or die for each other . their feelings for each other aren't really romantic but they know each other better than they know anyone else, perhaps better than they know themselves. they would do anything for each other, except like, that one time where sora said "i think we should do exactly what maleficent says" and kairi looked at him like he was losing his mind because he could FEEL the evil witch vibes coming off of her, right ???? surely????? no she ISN'T going to do what maleficent says, also, not even for you, sora.
tangentially even tho i said wrt canon sokai i think it would be fun if they enabled the worst in each other, ftp sokai is very much built on the opposite, on bringing each other back to ground level (or at least trying to) when the other's head gets too high in the clouds. no sora we shouldn't listen to maleficent. no, kairi, it's not fair if you don't give kano a second chance. etc etc etc
sora spends all of dead inside avoiding kairi because he's scared but also becuase if he talked to her it would cut sora's plotline of dead inside in half because she'd successfully pull his head out of his ass and then how would i balance the several hundred chapters of riku bullshit that was going on, you know?
i could be talked around on - probably not them being romantic, but on them queerplatonically dating. tehy are already moirails to me and that's not not dating, you know. i strongly beleive tehy would kiss just in general in this universe, whether just to try it or otherwise. they probably already have tried kissing, tbh. a polyam triad can be you (kairi) your best friend (sora) and the guy who you helped firm his first sense of self , the guy who betrayed you the guy who trusts you the guy you want to see grow and become a better person and sora's right you have to goddamn give him a chance, don't you? do those days you spent two lonely kids on the islands with him as your only confidant mean nothing? or, uh, your emotional support bastard. whatever.
SOMETHING ELSE NOW. THATS RIGHT HTIS ISN'T JUST THE SOSHADKAI POST.
they're so codependent and that's how they enable the worst of eachother, becuase it isn't until namine puts her foot down and goes hey riku it's kind of weird you put my well being above everything else that riku can actually like heal and move past . that. he wasn't totally using her as a replacement goldfish but he wasn't, like, not doing that. either. you know? lmao.
and it's not just him - like he could not survive without her, and he knows that, and he is very open about that, but also. she does not want to survive without him. she finds no pleasure in that even if eventually she needs him to step back, a little, and stop putting her on a pedestal. for at least act 1 of dead inside they are. so extremely codependent. and they are pretty codependent for most of act 2, as well, and even tho it eases up after ch174 i am also looking at how part 3 shakes out and, you know. i'm not sure they stop being unhealthily codependent until sometime in ATR where - no longer in a crisis scenario - they have the space to think about what they really want and maybe it isn't this, or maybe it's this but not like this,
they're not romantic. they're not platonic. they're a secret third thing (queerplatonic). and even after they have worked out their differences by breaking up i don't think they'd ever wanna boyfriend/girlfriend about it but i do think they would probably go you know kissing WAS fun i don't see a reason to not keep doing it
he's devoted to her (given) and but she's devoted to him, too (how can she not - she was built from his data). they get in a whoel fight in dead inside because riku's hurting himself just for a CHANCE at helping her and namine's like I DON'T WANT THAT, ACTUALLY. I DON'T WANT YOU HURT. AND I ALSO DON'T WANT TO SPEND FOREVER NOT WITH YOU. i like you :(
they're sweet they're stupid they're two kids who don't know what it's like to be in love because tehy barely know what it is like to be loved to begin with. they don't know how this works. they're trying because they feel obligated. maybe it's better if they don't try. maybe if it's better if they just do it naturally, their own way, instead of trying to follow some kind of pre-established standard.
maybe it's better if you don't love one person to the point of barely loving yourself
my funny bacground npc ships
ive said it before but . there's not a lot of stuff on this bingo that isn't geared towards ships that are kind of unhinged. and alpha and amaryllis are a little unhinged (while not codependent, alpha would literally not still be alive if amaryllis had not stopped him from committing suicide, and alpha would probably consider suicide more strongly were amaryllis not around to gently needle him away from that)
there's littel to say here that won't just be me reiterating what i've said eslewhere, but, the whole appeal of them to me is that alpha is stressed out of his mind all the goddamn time and amaryllis is here to support him, no questions asked. the support is helping him with his work. teh support is making him take a break from his work. the support is doing things like kissing him (and since i've talked about sex elsewhere on this post, probably also fucking him) to keep his mind from straying down paths TOO dark,
it's gentle quiet moments stolen away. it's finally achieving your goal and being safe and moving in together. it's about devoting yourself to your partner's cause - which you care about yourself, obviously, but you care more about not seeing him destroy himself, so you stick around for his sake, more than you stick around because you believe what you are fighting for.
like amaryllis would stick around no matter waht. the rebellion is his as much as it is anyone else's. but he is so prominent i think in its plotting and execution - not because he wants to be here for the rebellion, not because he is the best choice, but because he needs to be here for alpha. he didnt necessarily care about the leadership, but taking a portion of it means that's a portion less that alpha has to worry about. you know.
there's so much juice here, and i'm only slowly unpacking it five years after i finished writing the series. get you a bg ship that means enough to you that you're still thinking about it fondly off and on a whole five years later. that's what OCs are about.
me cackling to myself as i check more and more boxes off
there is something wrong with these guys. they do in fact drive me nuts. whatever the hell they ahve going on is real and happening right now, much to the dismay of everyone who has to witness them being... them. about each other.
they're dating(?) and they're making it everyone else's problem. fuck you.
