If Riku's Canonically A Dream Eater, Then It Stands To Reason He'd Look Like One In Monstropolis Yeah??

Concept art by Bill Schwab

roxas trying to kill a heartless

Wall-E (the character) is a great demonstration of how being curious about the world echoes our level of care for it. And that caring can quite literally course-correct humanity His playful fascination with what humans left behind, his ability to find "new" on a dormant planet of waste refuse-- he continues to care and be amazed by and change things in a world that has not effectively changed for about 700 years. Wall-E commemorates artifacts of life by treasuring them on their own special shelves in his home. He lovingly makes sure The Plant is secured in a way that won't crush it as he's going home. He accidentally runs over his cockroach and worries about it. He tries to make an inactive Eve comfortable at his expense, not knowing when or if she will ever wake up again.

Wall-E has such an impact on Eve and other passengers on the Axiom because he invites them to care about small interactions they took for granted. They make meaningful connections and changes in their own directive because-- simply by being interested by them and what they're doing-- he offers a new perspective of looking at themselves. (Remember when he gives the elevator robot that little wave and it's so taken with that gesture it starts to copy it? It was seen and acknowledged when its role has always been to punch numbers.)

The spark that Wall-E shared with Eve, I think, is not only symbolic of his love for Eve (though it is clear he loves Eve more than anyone). It was that care. It has to be that same care. Because if his little acts of wonder and determination inspired every other character to break from their programming, who's to say it can't overcome a factory reset?

Oh, and "curiosity" and "care" have the same etymological root, apparently

happy (belated) halloween! featuring @nikutsuneart's halloween town wolfku :)c

8, 17, and 20 for Xion :)

We meet Xion when she's like an empty husk baby so we actually see several of her firsts lmao

8. First time they took a risk, or the biggest risk they've ever taken

Her first time running away from the Organization. Early on, due to Sora memory shenanigans or amth, she loses the ability to use her Keyblade and doesn't return to the castle for several days so no one will find out. For someone who has never known anything outside the Organization and the absolute authority it holds over her, that is kind of an insane thing to do. It's also very much like a kid breaking something and lying about it so they won't get punished. And she is consciously avoiding punishment; Xion says with certainty that if the higher-ups find out, they'll turn her into a mindless Dusk. Now, this might be a bluff on Xemnas' part, since we never actually see this punishment carried out on anyone, but it's apparently not an unprecedented threat, since Axel gets threatened with it too later on. Regardless, she knew it was a risk, and it was probably a bigger one then she even thought it was. Xion's position in the Organization is secured only by the fact that she is a unique Replica. If she proved to be, in Xemnas' eyes, not only useless, but unpredictable and hard to control, they would have no reason to keep her alive. I think the only reason they keep trying with her is because all the members who know how to make Replicas die at C.O., so they can't just pull another blank off the line and slot it in her place.

It's quite sad, in that way. She's just a kid having the same hide-and-hope-for-the-best reaction that lots of kids do to getting a bad grade, or getting in trouble at school, and for most kids their feeling of it being a life or death situation is just catastrophizing. With her, it probably would have been, if they didn't still want to make use of her.

17. First favorites - favorite color, animal, movie, etc.

Favorite food: I mean, ice cream, but tbh I'm not sure if that counts because it seems ro be the only thing she's ever eaten??? I don't thinks she needs food so idk what she would have eaten otherwise

Favorite color: Blue. The color of sea salt ice cream, the color of the ocean, the color of the sky, and, assuming she sees herself how we do, her own eye color. She likes that she shares it with Roxas, too, and for her, she just kind of likes that she. Has eyes. Like they're the window to the soul and if she has them that means she has a soul idk what I'm saying

Favorite animal: I think she likes fish. Particularly pretty, decorative fish like brightly colored goldfish or koi. I can imagine her walking past some kind of stall in the Twilight Town commons and seeing a beta or smth for sale and being enchanted by the bright colors. The one she likes the most are those kinds of angelfish with the wavy fins you always see in like dentist office fish tanks

Favorite place: you'd assume the Clock Tower, or just Twilight Town, generally, but I think she likes those more for the associations then the place in of itself. I think her favorite place for its own sake is the beach. There may have been some Sora influencing her, but when she starts bringing back seashells for Roxas when he's in a coma for a while, she seems to come up with that on her own. She could've gone with like. Pine cones from the woods outside Twilight Town or ice cream sticks or something, but she goes apparently out of her way to stop by the beach after every mission to grab a shell, so I think she just likes the beach

20. First time they felt accepted/welcomed by another character

The first times Roxas and Axel call her their friend verbally, and I say times bc it was on separate occasions and i think she probably interpreted them differently (Axel's away for a good chunk of time and they don't meet until after she's known Roxas for a while.) With Roxas I honestly don't know that it was feeling accepted so much as like. Baby duck imprinting on him, because it happens on the same day she tales her hood off for the first time and it seems to be the first time she's truly conscious of her surroundings. She's more curious or intrigued about the idea of friends then anything else, and when she observes that Axel and Roxas are close she asks if she can be their friend like she's asking if she can try a bite of food.

When Axel also calls her his friend, I imagine her world opens up a little because it informs her that friendship is something she can have with everyone and not just Roxas. She's also more alive at this point so she's probably more aware that someone claiming her as a friend means something deeper then just a name, you know?

Xion does have to deal with isolation and even outright hostility later on, but at the beginning, she thankfully didn't have much trouble finding a place she was welcome, at least for a while.

Since we might lose Twitter, I had to preserve my favorite thread on Frozen 2 from the amazing Ryan La Sala whose books you should absolutely be reading!

mowse

This is my first Adobe Photoshop animation :>

watching my friend play kh2 so i wanted to doodle roxas... rucksack...