The clash between SoRiku and SoKairi is one of the most fascinating in modern game narrative:

The game constantly tells us that Kairi is the destination, but the literal framework of the plot dictates that Riku is the foundation of Sora’s actual growth. The ongoing war between both ships' dynamics is more than just a ship war. The more I read, watch, and slowly break down the pieces to analyze the way they decided to move them forward is complex. The writers essentially split two strong dynamics into very conflicting writing styles, which heavily splits the fandom in the end. 

SoKairi is written using fairytale logic, while SoRiku is written using shōnen partnership logic.

SoKairi often relies on symbols to showcase such fairytale love: the Paopu fruit, the promise, the safe haven to return to. This type of showcasing requires very little on screen development because the audience is supposed to just accept it. Many of us grew with Disney and the mentality that true love is a promise, a safe place, a soft feeling. Meanwhile, SoRiku is created into constant shared trauma, mutual rescues, and long milestones as the series progresses. Because active relationship developments have always held more weight than passive symbolism. This goes back to the root that if someone does something to hurt you, that showing you the change rather than just saying they changed is the true difference of accountability.

The story then sabotages its own intended romance. By constantly benching Kairi to keep her as this precious soft, full-of-light, and perfect romantic treasure, the writers ended up giving the heavy lifting of the emotional cinematic weight to Riku. This creates the glaring paradox by the end of KH3. They tell us Sora is sacrificing everything for Kairi, but when the story requires the actual physics of the universe, the story can't move forward without Riku. Riku continues to be the main bond to connect deep enough to track Sora into Quadratum in Melody of Memory. Which is something Kairi can’t do. She doesn’t dream of Sora and she doesn’t even actively go looking for him. Instead, they make her go into an almost year-long passive sleep to find memories, rather than searching up and down from world to world looking for Sora like Riku is said to do.

Sora and Kairi come from the longing. Their relationship is built on tragedy and separation, a poetic desire to find each other. It is love built on faith, not active action. Sora and Riku come from shared trauma. They have seen each other at their worst: possession, being broken mentally, and falling in order to get back up. They are the ride-or-die partnership forged by blood, sweat, and tears. 

The clash is beautiful on its own. It mirrors true human experiences. We all crave peaceful and gentle sanctuaries, which is what Kairi represents. But we as humans, with all of our flaws, are defined by the intense, messy, protective bonds of those closest to us and the same mental war we are. Nomura accidentally, or maybe even brilliantly, created the perfect storm by making both types of intimacy credible. He gave one group the pure soft fairytale, and the other the raw, messy, ugliest side of emotions. 

In the end, it really all comes down to what you as a person connect to the most. While some people really love the idea of purity, others really love the angst and the pain to get to their final destination.

Redid my Quadratum/KH4 Kairi design before she appears in a trailer and I explode!!

I took a lot of inspo from her supergroupies artwork and from FF7 Remake’s Aerith

Happy 10th anniversary of 358/2 days🎉

Completed KH character drawings

Kingdom hearts the game series of all time. It's a technothriller, it presents you with lore in a confusing and unreliable way because all the lorekeepers have imperfect knowledge and their own agendas, it's dripping with plurality, it's a story about how your home is cursed and you cannot escape it and you have to leave it, it's an intertextual exploration of childhood and growing up, it's got ancient clans of child soldiers with robed leaders in animal masks, it shows you ten different versions of the same character and makes you ask which ones are distinct and which ones are real and what the difference is, it defines the Heart as quantifiable discrete proof of sentience and circles edge cases and asks things like what happens when it's fractured and how does the lack of a heart impact your personhood and can you imbue a heart upon that which never had it and the answer is yes because pinocchio