(The Violet) Howler

Bisexual. Male. College Graduate. Fumbling my way through reconnecting with my Jewish heritage. I use this blog to post about fandom stuff, history trivia, other facts I find interesting. If you enjoy my meta essays anlyzing the story of Kingdom Hearts, consider following my Youtube Channel, Constructing Kingdoms.

[violethowler]

Kingdom Hearts and the Heroine’s Journey Masterpost

Now that I’ve completed the main core of my Kingdom Hearts and the Heroine’s Journey essays, I’m compiling a master post with links to all 10 for easier navigation.

Updated with links to my additional essays outside my main series

Main Essays

The Heroine’s Journey of Sora: An explanation of the Heroine’s Journey framework and how the story of Kingdom Hearts follows Maureen Murdock’s template. 

Ride of the Valkyrie: An outline of what the Heroine’s Journey and existing lore tell us about Yozora’s purpose in the overarching narrative of Kingdom Hearts.  

Between Light and Darkness: How the games’ emphasis on the importance of balance between Light and Darkness mirrors the core themes of the Heroine’s Journey.

Break the Wheel: An observation of how the portrayal of major adult characters in the Kingdom Hearts series ties into the framework of the Heroine’s Journey. 

Into the Unknown: An analysis of how the ubiquitousness of the Hero’s Journey and the metanarrative of the Heroine’s Journey influence fan perception of Kingdom Hearts II. 

The Greater Your Shadow Becomes: A discussion of who the main antagonist of the next act of the story is likely to be based on the tropes commonly used in Heroine’s Journey stories.

The Elephant in the Room: An explanation of how the development of romantic relationships is portrayed in the Heroine’s Journey and what it means for the Kingdom Hearts story. 

Dark Enchantress: An outline of what the Heroine’s Journey tells us about Maleficent’s role in the overall story and why she’s kept coming back despite her diminished threat level. 

Mixed Signals: An analysis of how the depiction of Sora and Riku’s character arcs and relationship fits with how the Heroine’s Journey functions as a critique of cultural norms.

The Things That Matter: A summary of why it matters that Kingdom Hearts is following the path of the Heroine’s Journey, and how important it is that the formula be followed to its proper conclusion.

Side Essays

KH Heroine’s Journey Ramblings: the mini-meta that planted the idea to turn my thoughts into a series of essays.

Some observations on the relevance of To Find Is To Lose and To Lose is To Find for the themes of the Heroine’s Journey.

Symbolic Foreshadowing: An analysis of the KH1 opening title sequence from a Heroine’s Journey perspective.

[wendylianmartin]

How do they wash themselves when they can't have showers or baths underwater

They use a scrub daddy.

[dracofeb]

Calque & Loanword

Found this. Kind of want to share.

[xclowniex2]

When a literal neo nazi starts repeating rhetoric that the pro palestine movement does (Palestinians are the real semites), the movement really needs to ask themselves "what are we doing to make neo nazis feel welcome and how can we stop that"

But they wont. They'll just go "a broken clock is right twice a day" and continue to allow literal neo nazis to associate with them.

Also quick history lesson, semite used to be a linguistic term, aka referring to a group of languages. Then white supremist "race scientists" decided to use it as a racial category for jews only. And since the holocaust, it has gone back to being a linguistic only term. The term anti-semitism was coined because the previous German term of judenhaas (jew hate) wasn't intellectual enough and was coined when the race scientists defition of semite was being used.

[tgraywrites]

[traumasurvivors]

Even if I didn’t have a solid plan, in the back of my head, I always assumed I’d kill myself.

Now I’m an adult and people my age have their lives in order and I’m stuck here, confused, because I never planned to be alive and I’m so far behind.

I feel like I’ll never catch up.

[traumasurvivors]

Hey all.

I want to make an addition to this. I made this post a long time ago.

I’m currently back in university, and I’ve made so much progress with my trauma. I’m in a loving relationship.

Things can and will get better. It’s not too late.

Nothing is perfect by any means. But I’m happy I’m still here and didn’t kill myself. I hope you get to that point, too 💕

[traumasurvivors]

The addition is important! I see the original post circulating a lot, but the addition is important!

[traumasurvivors]

New addition two years later. I’m still going strong!

I’m getting married. I’m still in that loving relationship.

I’ve learned that there’s no real timeline. It’s okay. And while it sucks that I lost time, there’s still so much for me to experience and enjoy.

[traumasurvivors]

Newest addition. 7 years after the original post!

I got married last month! My dog is laying on me snoring. I’ve learned to have healthy friendships and relationships. I’ve learned that I’m not alone and that even when things are hard, I’m going to be okay.

[traumasurvivors]

This showed up in my notes again. And here we are. 2026.

I’ve been married a little over two years. I just got home from friendships that feel like home and family. My husband and I have our own place. I have a full ass book ready to be published.

I don’t know. I’m still in a good place and I can’t believe how far I’ve come from my original post.

[penrosesun]

I think a lot of foreign relations discussions would be made vastly more productive if we all just switched to calling it “subsidized military vendor lock-in” instead of calling it “military aid”

Like. Yes, it’s also an exchange of value, sure, absolutely. It’s even an extremely worthwhile exchange of value if you’re a country like Ukraine. But so is lots of vendor lock-in?? Using Amazon cloud services is a good business decision because they are a good deal, and a bad business decision because they make it difficult for you to ever switch away from AWS. Both sides of that are true and real!

“How does sending this country free weapons do anything other than give them free weapons?” is a wild thing to have to keep explaining to people over and over again in a world where most people already understand that Google search is free because Google is trying to be an unassailable tech monopoly. The nuance here isn’t difficult to understand, and for most people it isn’t even a new concept, but for some reason as soon as you call it “military aid” everyone forgets that they’ve ever heard of such a thing and you have to start fresh and explain how it all works as though it’s Baby’s First Antitrust. There are real and substantive discussions to be had on the other side of “what even is the actual value proposition here”, and I’m getting kind of sick of always needing to start from zero for basically no reason

[prismatic-bell]

J. K. Rowling is now posting upskirt photos of trans women and making fat jokes about them. This is all because this woman blocked her on Twitter.

I hope this woman presses charges so fast it makes this bitch's head spin.

Reminder that if you're still engaging with Harry Potter, YOU ARE SUPPORTING ACTIVE SEXUAL ASSAULT.

[prismatic-bell]

You know, in light of this, I can't help but wonder if it's a good time to contact HBO and Scholastic and ask if they want their brands associated with a woman who commits sexual crimes.

[dezdemonomania]

Scholastic (@Scholastic) on X

Scholastic is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books.

[blaserables]

[noodle-the-queen]

Ao3 does not need an algorithm, you're just lazy

Ao3 does not need a 1-5 star rating system, you just want to bring down authors writing for FREE

Ao3 does not need automatic censorship, it is an archive, therefore anything can be posted

Writing or reading about something illegal does not mean the author nor the reader condones it, if that were true, you could never read a story involving anything negative

Purity culture is ruining fan culture and you all are fucking annoying

[homunculus-argument]

It's funny how american guys who got "73% Scandinavian" in a mail order DNA test once will be like "I have Viking blood coursing through my veins, I'm a natural-born warrior and I've got +5 poison resistance and I'm immune to frost damage", while the average Norwegian guy is just some guy named Lars who works in IT, rides a bicycle to work, and looks like this.

[ifyouknowmeirlgoaway]

#at this point Vikings are a scam to sell white supremacists more dubiously sourced protein powder

[aspiring-weird-old-man]

The most accurate Scandi-American guy I've ever seen:

[prismatic-bell]

White person who got "3% Native American" on one of said tests:

"Omg, I KNEW it because I'm so in touch with nature...my spirit animal is totally a wolf and I'm descended from a princess."

The actual Native people I work and live with on the daily:

"We're going up to the Canyon this weekend to visit family. You still sending postcards to that girl in China?"

[lest this get into the hands of the Outrageousie community: no, I'm not saying Native people are white or that they don't have their own culture or whatever. I'm saying on the day-to-day they also have jobs, need to do laundry, have that one pan they really hate scrubbing, and so on. They're not Legolas with dark skin.]

[pansylair]

A great place to donate to First Nations groups impacted by the ongoing wildfires 👇

True North Aid provides practical humanitarian support to northern and remote Indigenous communities in Canada through community-led project

Also consider Mikinakoos' as they're extending support beyond their traditional service areas due to the scale of this emergency!

Donations for Namaygoosisagagun First Nation:

Individuals who support the goals and vision of AN7GC can make a donation. The ways to donate: call us, mail your donation, use Paypal or Ca

Donations for Whitesand First Nation:

[professional-giver-uper]

I am probably the angriest I've ever been. Let me tell you why:

America wrote and signed a treaty with Iran and during this "ceasefire" IRGC threw a big mourning party for their supreme leader, but before he was put in the grave they started shooting missiles at navies. I repeat, they ignored the ceasefire BEFORE they actually put the fucker underground.

The south of Iran is attacked everyday, places I've been to, and grown up in. Do you hear a single sound coming out of the "no war" crowd? The people who were so worried about the "infrastructure"? No you don't. But every single day we hear these fuckers + the IRGC executives talk about Lebanon. Lebanon will be fine if you freaks stop sending monetary and military support to Hezbollah. Lebanon will be fine the moment you stop your shitty proxy islamist groups from razing it to the ground. What will happen to the country you're occupying tho? You destroy it, because if you can't have it no one else can? Fuck off.

And the proverbial nail on the coffin was JD Vance talking shit about things he has no idea about. "94 million Iranians are gonna flood into our countries as refugees". Motherfucker 94 million Iranians are struggling to make ends meet. 94 million Iranians have not left Iran because it's their fucking home. 94 million Iranians are held HOSTAGE in the home that's occupied by a terrorist regime you'll be aiding by unfreezing their assets and giving them breathing room. Do I even need to talk about how fucking hard it is for us to get Visas?

The moment this war started every country came out with regulations and statements of not taking "Iranian refugees", which funnily enough was not the case for Syria, for Afghanistan, for Ukraine, for any other country but when it came to Iran, they just couldn't let it happen, which is whatever I don't give a shit but what pisses me off is the way they talk about us, as if we were waiting for this moment just to flee to other places. Y'all forget how people died because they wanted to have life in their own country.

Finishing on a heavy note, IRGC has started a new wave executions. Aref Khoshkar, Mohammad Amini Dahaghani to name two. Prisoners are going on hunger strike to protest this and I hear nothing about it on the media. Be their voice.

[insert-some-url]

And the regime has not announced a state of war in the south yet. They are forcing kids to go to school in person for the exams despite the bombs. Some kids even had their exam locations moved to IRGC bases!

The islamic regime wants to get Iranian kids killed to buy pity for themselves. Remember this before tragedy happens again

Fuck the islamic republic and free Iran 💚🦁❤️

[freegazafromhamas]

Iran saw how the world responded when a schoolbuilding, that recently was part of a still-active adjacent miliarty compound, got blown up with children inside.

And they want to see that happen again.

[prismatic-bell]

Too many people see "Iranian regime hates Israel" and go "therefore Iranian regime good."

The Iranian regime also hates the Iranian people. The Iranian regime also hates you. If you are on this website you are not enough of an Arab Islamist extremist for them. You're too white (even if you're Black), you're too Western (even if you're from Asia), you're too liberal (even if you're a Christian evangelical). They literally do not want anyone alive except their own selves.

Stop supporting the persecution of the Iranian people just because the Ayatollah said "Israel bad." Support the Iranian people, who are literally dying to be free.

[hakeism]

I'm looking for multiple manga assistants to help with my next series

it's a paid position + multiple roles available Link to the application form here

[hellboys]

Nick Offerman Answers the Web’s Most Searched Questions –WIRED, 2020

[museiums]

artist: felicia chiao

[jewish-vents]

“Egypt Manager Hossam Hassan Raises Palestinian Flag After Historic World Cup Win (3 July 2026)” 37K upvotes on this in popculturechat but nobody will talk about the fence between Egypt and Gaza and how Egyptians treat Palestinians.

.

[chutzpahchesed]

Egypt is building a new walled buffer zone more than 2 miles wide on Gaza border, satellite images show | CNN

Egypt is building a massive miles-wide buffer zone and wall along its border with southern Gaza, new satellite images show, as fears grow ov

Palestinians desperate to flee Gaza pay thousands in bribes to ‘brokers’

Fixers with alleged links to Egyptian intelligence are making a fortune in ‘fees’ from people hoping to exit through the Rafah crossing

Why Egypt won't allow vulnerable Palestinians across its border

Egypt's empty Sinai Peninsula would offer safety for Palestinian civilians. But Egypt fears refugees might never be allowed back, citing the