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First Friend

For the KH3 Countdown Challenge. 

Day 9 - Friendship

It was kinda funny how Sora had never really met his first and oldest friend face-to-face before.

Sure, he had vague, fuzzy memories of talking to Ventus as a kid, but that was different from actually, you know, talking to him. Out loud. In person. Face-to-face. Like how most normal friendships went.

To be fair, though, most of Sora’s friendships were anything but normal these days. How many people had been hanging out inside his heart before he’d begun this rescue mission again? Sheesh, he really could start charging rental space like Donald had suggested. Bunch of freeloaders.

Not that he ever would. They were his freeloaders, and he would give them shelter for as long as they needed. It was the least he could do after Xehanort had ruined their lives. Ruined the lives of his beloved friends that he was determined now more than ever to restore.

And that meant it was time to return Ventus to his rightful body, and that thought both excited him and scared him. Ventus had been with him ever since he was a baby. What kind of person would he be without him?

“What will Ventus think when he sees me?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Because Ventus was this… well, this legendary figure, almost. With him since the day he was born. A Keyblade wielder long before he’d become one. A hero to be admired from afar, even while, ironically enough, he rested inside Sora’s heart.

How was he supposed to approach that reintroduction? Sure, maybe he should be more worried about the fight that was probably gonna happen if he wanted to save Ventus’s body and restore his heart. Getting back each and every one of the people Xehanort had stolen from him hadn’t been easy so far, and Ventus wasn’t about to be an exception.

But for whatever reason, he was more nervous about seeing Ventus face-to-face for the first time than he was about the upcoming battle.

Aqua patted his head and smiled, like she always used to pat Ventus’s head. She’d smiled a lot after her rescue, really.

“He’ll be thrilled to see you, I’m sure,” she said. “And Sora?”

“Yeah?”

“Call him Ven. It’s what all his friends do.”

Sora returned her smile. “Okay.”

kh theory: ava, subject x and namine are somehow related to each other.

( I want to apologize for any mistakes beforehand as english isn’t my first language )

so this theory is based on three points and they are:

ava is the traitor, but not in the way you think 

subject x might be ava

how namine might be related to ava/subject x

Ava being the traitor:

after the kh3 epilogue, i got more convinced in this theory since the epilogue basically hinted that the main villains for the next saga would be MoM and the other lost masters.

in khx, the foretellers were led to believe that following the roles and rules MoM assigned them was the only way to avoid the imminent keyblade war and the end of the world, but little did they know their blind trust in MoM made it easy to get manipulated by him and the same roles that were supposed to prevent the war only planted seeds of doubts and uncertainty in them and their unions. how? the roles conflicted with each other. and of course their inability to be independent from their master had a factor, but first talking about each master and their role would make it easier to explain :

ira: making ira the leader because he was the one who expressed his desire to stop the war and he was the most determined out of the 5 masters would be the logical choice to anyone, but ira was so obsessed about the book and what it had foretold that he became wary of every incident that happened so naturally he would notice a page was missing.

aced: MoM assigned the role of being ira’s right hand to aced despite how it was apparent to MoM that aced had an inferiority complex when it came to ira and when MoM told him that ira would be the leader, aced expressed his desire for the role as he thought h was more worthy of that role. so when MoM told him he could take ira’s place as the leader if he, aced, thought ira was unreliable knowing full well aced would seize the first chance that come his way which would make him look suspicious and this was a deliberate set up by MoM to frame him as the traitor.

invi: her role was to only to observe the other four and stay as neutral as possible while mediating between them. however, her trust in ira as their leader, since he replaced MoM, led her to side with him and  informing him about what the others were planning or doing so naturally it would rise dispute.

gula: he was given the lost page and the task to look for a traitor that might not even exist since the content of the page was ambiguous and could have been another set up by MoM to make them doubt each other more, and he was basically told to keep it a secret and not to trust anyone but himself. this was another set up because if gula trusted his comrades enough to tell them about the traitor beforehand a lot of stuffs might have prevented.

ava: her role was simple, to train the dandelions and send them off before the war and she was supposed to look after them in the other world and avoid getting involved in any conflict. and she did as she was told  without any problem, but she couldn’t stand still and let the war happens so she went off to look for MoM to stop the war.

I wouldn’t want to delve too much into it, but basically the roles they were given were set in a way that would rise doubts among them. now as i said, ava went off to look for MoM and luxu so when she finally found out the truth about luxu and MoM’s intentions of watching how the events played rather than actually find a solution ( + his plan to summon the true kingdom hearts according to the secret report 13 ) she was enraged and attacked luxu so how does this link her to being the traitor? well…. the lines from the lost page

“Unable to permit disharmony, you will be disappointed by fate”

Unable to permit disharmony > ava not wanting the war happen / ava looking for a way to break the dispute between them.

you will be disappointed by fate > finding out MoM true intentions and how he never cared to end the war / finding out this whole fiasco was set up by MoM himself in order to summon the true kingdom hearts.

in a sense, ava did deviate from her role by leaving the dandelions behind and looking for luxu.

“then with that one strike, a bell will toll for the final battle”

and attacking him thus starting the very war she tried to prevent. but this was because MoM intended for her to be the //traitor// all along. perhaps the reason why she wasn’t in the epilogue was because of this very reason, as xigbar said “ava fulfilled her role” aka being the traitor and going against MoM’s rules and plans; trying to stop him.

now according to the secret report 13; MoM true intentions is to summon the true kingdom hearts and starting another keyblade war

‘‘now at least the Keyblade War has begun, and Kingdom Hearts will open—a true and complete Kingdom Hearts, born of the clash between darkness and light.’’

ava did find out about this and since she is betraying MoM by going against his plans and try to stop him, which i assume he predicated, she ends up being the traitor. and the epilogue supported this even more with how xigbar acted and worded himself.

in the jp version, xigbar says “ava didnt show up/isnt here, as expected” more like he never expected her to be with them in the first place. and when he said the told ava about his missons he was referring to the events happened that occurred in these two scenes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAJZ7nJANmA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhXT7Ju9QZ4

also if you noticed, ava’s piece wasn’t among the chess pieces that appeared at the end of the epilogue an was replaced by another one. 

furthermore the chess piece that replaces ava’s has a symbols that is awfully similar to the one on the BoP and you also find the same symbol in yen sid study in kh3

Subject x and ava:

this part might end up get debunked or proved in the upcoming kh games or khux updates as we know so little about subject x to base our assumption on who she might be and all the clues we got from kh3 are ambiguous and vague; perhaps she could be skuld, ava or none of them. however for the sake of this theory let’s go with the assumption subject x = ava.

in khx backcover, gula mentioned a clue from the lost page on who the traitor could be and it was “ the one who bears the sigil” and assuming by the sigil it meant an ‘X’ then subject x could be ava 

subject x said the line “may my heart be my guisiding key” in secret report 1 and 3 the only characters i know of who said the line “may your heart be your guiding key’ were MoM and the lost masters. and correct me if im wrong, but skuld has yet to say this line and since we are stuck between her and ava this line makes me lean more towards ava being subject x 

the fact xigbar was the one who freed subject x from her cell and the way xigbar reacted to ava’s absence imply he knew she wouldn’t be there or rather couldn’t be there because other than being the traitor, she also could be subject x who lost her memories 

namine and subject x/ava:

so far we haven’t gotten any proper explanation of namine’s origin and her power. we dont even know how she got her name when she was supposedly born without any memories just like roxas, yet when the org found her they didn’t make her join them or did the whole x naming thingy they did with the rest. we dont even know who exactly found her and why she was in castle oblivion in the first place. and despite being only 23 days old, she was able to tell she was lonely for a long time which meant she had a complete heart by the time sora came to castle oblivion while roxas, who was born as the same time as her, took much longer than her to be able to discern his own emotions even though he had ventus’s heart inside of him. not to mention her ability to manipulate memories, project worlds in addition to being able to manipulate the datascape. and kh33 didn’t help with this and only added more mysterious to namine’s origin despite he brief appearance in the game. she was able to talk to terra twice the first was in  0.2 and the second in kh3. furthermore, in the jp version she said something among the line of “talking to terra could change fate/destiny” as if she knew sora would go back in time. all this can’t just be explained by saying she is the nobody of kairi who is a princess of heart or the way she born. unless she was related to ava and the book of prophecies. 

first let’s begin with the similarities between ava and namine:

both namine ( in com where she took the apparence of kairi ) and ava ( as seen in this this ) can shapeshift 

both can also change the appearance  of stuffs around them and objects as well  ( namine in kh2 when she talked to roxas for the third time and ava in this )

both have a similar body language and a habit of clasping their hands together

the edge of ava’s keyblade is shaped as waves and namine’s name means waves

ava might have the ability to manipulate memories like namine and it has been implied she was the one who erased the dandelions memories 

assuming ava = subject x and since xigbar took her out of the prison he might have named her as well whence where the name namine came from

subject x felt lonely and isolated and namine had the same feelings in com but the way she worded herself was as if she was alone longer than just 23 days 

now how is namine related to subject x other than assuming subject x is ava? the answer is within axel and saix action in days and thanks to kh3 we know why these two joined the organization in the first place. 

axel could have let namine go not ona whim but on purpose

this scene never made sense to me; i mean we know why saix brought up xion in order to convince axel, but namine?? i doubt saix would know axel was somehow fond of namine especially since he never saw these two interact and the way axel was muttering to himself indicated he was interested in knowing something about namine unless he knew something

not to mention the way xigbar reacted towards saix saying namine was still missing, at first i thought he was just pushing up saix buttons. however, if we link xigbar to subject x and him probably knowing about saix and axel relationship with her in additon to the fact xigbar being luxu and all f his actions has been ambiguous for a reason makes me wonder…. 

and the namine files we have yet to see it get revealed and why was axel looking up these files in the first place

An artist’s perspective on the Xigbar reveal (Spoilers)

Now, I know the fandom likes to joke that Nomura writes by the seat of his pants but given that Birth by Sleep was in the works when Kingdom Hearts II came out, I’m convinced that the Xigbar is Luxu reveal was planned all along. There is one simple reason why I believe that whatever else was improvised or not, Xigbar’s immortality was planned: the design of his Keyblade.  I’m studying animation in college, and character design is a prerequisite course to graduate. One of the things I was taught is that every prop designed for a specific character needs to have a connection to their role in the story.

Looking at back at Birth by Sleep, there’s a common theme in all the character designs: for every Keyblade Wielder we see in the game, the color palette of their Keyblade matches the color palette of their outfit. Aqua. Ventus. Terra. Eraqus. Even Vanitas’ Keyblade both in-story and in his Remnant bonus boss form matches the color scheme of his outfit. Out of seven Keyblade Wielders in BBS, the only two that don’t fit this pattern are Master Xehanort and Mickey Mouse.

Mickey is easy to explain. Even if all the details in the story didn’t straight-up imply it, the design of the Star Seeker is blatantly evocative of the iconic pointed cap worn by Yen Sid in the games and that pop culture associates with Mickey’s Fantasia outfit. So even if it doesn’t directly match the color palette of any of his outfits, it never clashes with them because its design creates the impression that he’s wielding his most iconic headgear in Keyblade form.  

Xehanort on the other hand, has no such exceptions. While he certainly made the effort to dress all in black, the fact that he had white and red underneath his coat meant that in theory, his Keyblade should have had been designed with those two colors worked into the concept art somewhere. Instead of black with silver accents, there should have been more of a blanace between black and white with some red mixed into the design. But those colors were never worked into the design of the blade, because it wasn’t originally his to begin with. Even before the added cutscenes of the HD 2.5 Remix confirmed it, the character designs of Birth by Sleep were telegraphing that No Name wasn’t the Keyblade that Xehanort had started out with.

In a game where almost every other Keyblade matched the color palette of its owner’s wardrobe, and the only exception was a Disney character whose Keyblade complemented their outfit colors by calling back to their most iconic attire from Disney media, the clash between the designs of Xehanort’s outfit and his Keyblade sticks out.

But Xigbar is another story. Seeing him with the No Name in his hand at the epilogue of Kingdom Hearts III struck a chord in me as an artist. Something that fundamentally shouted into the void for anyone with the artistic or design sense to see that the creative team behind Kingdom Hearts has specifically made this weapon with Xigbar in mind. Popular fanfics and fan art of Xigbar/Braig with a Keyblade have depicted one matching the color palette of his guns, but when you compare the silver-gray highlights on the No Name with the similar streaks in Xigbar’s hair, and the way the black coat of the Organization meshes with the black of the No Name, it’s clear that this Keyblade was intentionally designed to be Xigbar’s Keyblade from the start.

Xion and Naminè

Just sayin’ Square..just sayin’..

Costume design for Cinderella’s work dress by Marc Davis

Brave Exvius: Final Fantasy X

The Keyblades of Kingdom Hearts 3

I am once again bored so have some random Headcanons about each of the boys

-Sky is the biggest thrill seeker out of the chain, despite what everyone would think. Kid fucking leans into the bends on rollercoasters and actively launches himself out of a catapult multiple times. Kid is a thrill seeker

- Wind has the ability to see Ghosts / Spirits with relative ease and can see the spirits of those who trail behind each hero. He doesn’t say anything about it but he has had a lovely conversation with Mipha without Wild knowing

- We all know Legend is anti-killing seagulls, but He’s also against the idea of killing rabbits. Sort of a similar situation of “Walked a mile in their shoes” and tends to just avoids them when he can.

- Hyrule is a natural fairy magnet. He manages to find fairies the easiest out of everyone in the chain (only Rivaled by Time) but it’s still wild how naturally they just flock to him. He actually holds the most fairies in the chain at any time just because they like being with him most

- Warriors Can’t swim and refuses to admit it. He’d rather come up with some vein excuse as to why he doesn’t want to be in the water than just admit he never did learn how to swim. Picking his battles

-Speaking of swimming, in speaking in terms of best to worst: Sky > Wind > Time = Twilight (Both with Zora tunics) > Four > Legend > Wild > Warrior > Hyrule. It shocked everyone that Sky was a better swimmer than Wind considering Wind was raised on an island but it’s just how it is.

- Hyrule knows the most history out of everyone in the chain, but that’s soley because his Zelda’s study a lot of the ancient history and tend to info dump to him a lot. It’s the main reason he knows so much about Legend & Time.