(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.

[motherofcatsandmess]

[66sharkteeth]

me these last few episodes btw

[66sharkteeth]

a lot of people took this as like "take a break if you need it!" and while i do have extreme senioritis rn, the tears are more so over the fact i'm officially working on the epilogue of a story i've been working on since technically middle school

[66sharkteeth]

i dont think it will TRULY hit until i've finished and had my break, then sit down to "work" and realize there's nothing left to draw. rn i just kinda feels like i'm wrapping up another season

that said, i'm not completely done w/ CoB yet! The book is still on the horizon with new scenes and art! <3

kinda funny, just as i'm ending the webtoon, i'm basically restarting from the beginning with the book. maybe i will truly be working on cob the rest of my life lol

[beardedmrbean]

[datclassydame]

Can @raccoonmilf vouch for this? Super rad if true.

[raccoonmilf]

Yes it’s true

[sophsun1]

Happy Pride 🌈 | The Golden Girls (1985-1992)

[tired-biscuit]

you know that trope where it’s princess + knight, but they’ve both been captured by the bad guys and the princess is now gripped by the jaw by the villain, receiving a thin cut to her cheek while remaining completely still with a defiant look in her eyes even as a droplet of blood begins to trickle out of the wound, all while 3 people AT THE VERY LEAST need to have their hands locked on the knight because he’s thrashing around like a wild animal, trying so so so desperately, violently, to get to her?

yeah, that’s porn to me.

[spicycheeser]

"A marriage ending isn't a failure at all. I spent eleven years with her. We were so in love that we couldn't image life apart from each other. We got our own place, adopted a dog, and supported each other through school. I thought if tow people loved each other enough the rest would fall into place, except... love isn't everything.

And I didn't want to believe that, but we were sitting in counseling one day, talking about our future and I realized we were describing two completely different lives. Where we'd live, what kind of life we wanted, what made us happy. And it hit me that- I love this woman and this woman loved me. And after eleven years of loss, grief, career changes, we were so deeply in love... but we weren't aligned. And I kept thinking 'We just need to try harder. We can find some compromise to make this work,' because that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone, right?

But the reality was, we had just become different people. Her trade school took her in one direction, my graduate degree in another and trying to force us back into who we were five years ago wasn't coming from a place of love. It was coming from a place of fear. Fear that, if this ended, it meant we wasted eleven years. But sitting there across from her, I realized: That's not how love works.

Those eleven years happened. They were real. The dog, our home, showing up for each other through grad school and trade school. I wouldn't change a single thing because loving someone doesn't mean you're meant to stay with them forever. And letting go doesn't erase what you had. We measure marriage by whether it lasts forever or not, but what if we measured it by whether it mattered?

What if we measured it by the love we gave, the life we built, and the people we became? Because love's job isn't to last forever, it's to help you become fully completely yourself, and sometimes the most loving thing you can do is give each other permission to be yourselves, separately. But the dog doesn't know were' divorced. He just gets two Christmases now."

Pulled this from this guy Preston Rakovsky's Instagram (@prestonrack) because it is a beautiful perspective on love, marriage, and relationships in general.

[drpepperwhoree]

remember that pride is still a protest

[raptorific]

I see how it is. Rihanna can wear a shiny, completely transparent dress in public and everyone loves it, but when I did it, I was “wasting saran wrap” and “ruining Easter, Daniel.”

[it-was-ady]

This post is transmisogynistic. Literally you could have just left out the name and it would have been a harmless joke but, alas, man in a dress punchline, hilarious

[raptorific]

ten years on I’m finally comfortable publicly making fun of this person who called me transmisogynistic for using my own name to refer to myself in a joke post, because they thought the joke was that I was a man wearing women’s clothing, and not that I showed up to a religious holiday with my dick fully visible. Happy easter, everyone!

[dumnslut]

[hydrattan]

I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

[ambertea]

I did that job once.

[pepsimayo]

What are your pronouns and would you like to join my union

[lactose-intolerant-nihilism]

i love how this is always showing up on my dash entirely free of the context that the ood’s response to this question is ‘the beast shall rise from the pit and make war against god’

[khml]

and here’s a gif just of xehanort and eraqus holding hands for all the real ones out there

[thepie]

This fic was so good it made me giggle

Based on fic by @celeste-fitzgerald link under cut!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

This was so fun to draw. It’s so hard to make interesting compositions oh my 358/2 days

Happy late birdthay to aforementioned game too wow omg yay

PS. If anyone has other short fics or stuff that they want me to draw I’ll take suggestions

[its-emimi]

Happy Pride month! 🌈

[violethowler]

Me and my roommate are back with another Constructing Kingdoms KH2 livestream! Come join us as we play through Kingdom Hearts 2 and talk about the story!

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories Trophies Finish the game on Beginner, Standard, and Proud Mode with Sora and Riku