Keykid Pili Pili's blog

There are some potential Kingdom Hearts leaks making their rounds. Allegedly.

So please bear in mind that they could be real, or fake, and to respectfully not pass them around, or be courteous if you do with proper tagging and warnings.

i headcanon hanekoma and xigbar as being the same person, just as alternate selves in their respective universes

there was never any other way this could've gone

Sooo I’m pretty sure I'm justified, but my youngest won’t shut up about it.

A bit of backstory: when I (???M) was young, something big and bad happened. Lots of my friends and loved ones died because darkness corrupted the world. They all fell one by one and I was forced to witness it. This was forever ago and to this day it’s not quite clear what happened.

One thing I understand for certain: Darkness is dangerous. It’s beyond our understanding. It’s like its own sentient entity, but with ‘thoughts’ we can’t comprehend. As it spreads to others and corrupts their hearts and bodies, it does so almost mindlessly; like a parasite, it bears no ill will, but destroys others just to grow and survive. But unlike a parasite, it can’t simply be killed. Trying to fight it is like trying to fight a shadow.

However, I have cause to believe it is possible to defeat it in a way. See, I know a lot about it, personally. I know there’s mindless darkness, but there are also a group of thirteen primordial Darknesses with their own unique wills. These guys are like entities. And they’re the source from which all other darkness originates. If we got rid of them, or at least neutralized them, my hope is that we could at last stop darkness from flooding the world and protect the lives and dignity of people and their hearts.

I believe that if these Darknesses had a physical form, there would be no reason to say they couldn't be defeated. Destroy the body, destroy the entity. Problem is, they'd have no reason to take such a form of their own, if they even could. But they have been known to thrive in and through the bodies of human beings for their nefarious purposes, both short- and long-term. When merged, their lives are intertwined. You might see where I'm going with this.

Here's where I might be TA. My intention is to trick the Darknesses into seizing human forms, only then to destroy them. (Only some of them, mind you. The rest will be dealt with a different way, which is too long a side tangent for here.) The humans in question? My own disciples. But hear me out.

Now I know Reddit is gonna have a bias against me because the only people in this universe with parents are the ones who have issues about it, but our relationship is unique. I've been training them since the beginning of our relationship for specific roles, and they are all dearly loyal to me above all else. Trust me, you'd see how much we all care about each other if you met us. I have only ever wanted to see them flourish.

They are each named after a deadly sin (I gave them these names), and each embodies specific virtues and vices. I gave them each specific instructions to lead a taskforce of young people on missions to keep the world safe and prevent an impending war. They each had their gripes with their roles, but I quickly added a bit more onto each one to comfort and convince them, compassionate leader that I am. What they don't know is that those instructions are altogether bogus and are in fact designed to catalyze the war. I never intended for peace, camraderie, or the survival of all- it's just not pragmatic. I fully intend for each taskforce to turn their blades against each other and destroy the world as we know it. But keep hearing me out.

To make each of them believe they are uniquely righteous, to lead them into hatred of one another, is the best way to attract those Darknesses. Specific Darknesses, even: one for each deadly sin that they are named after. Those Vices couldn't possibly resist such expertly crafted bait. I had to ensure they'd turn against each other and become terrible people. This is their destiny. I mean, what else was I supposed to do, recruit random children off the streets? I'd never.

But listen. You may have your gripes with this, but there's more to it, compassionate leader that I am. Of course I'd never destine my own disciples as mere scapegoats to be slaughtered. I'm not planning on sacrificing anybody- I myself am included among the list of seven deadly sins! I'm working on a plan to save everyone. Can't share more details right now just in case the wrong people are listening, but believe me. I want nothing but peace, camraderie, and the survival of all the light in the world. I just have to be pragmatic.

So, AITA?

it might inform some of the bitterness she felt about being given baby sayo, on top of the shame of that whole ordeal - it wasn't the first time someone else's kid had been pushed onto her, and she didn't exactly get credit for whatever part she had in looking after rosa. how was she supposed to expect any different this time?

I think Rosa learned pretty quickly that Natsuhi wasn’t going to tolerate her complaining about the abuse and would defend her abusers. But I also think Rosa went to Natsuhi for help with homework and advice on friend drama, and that Natsuhi gave decent help and advice.

I think that Natsuhi cared much more than Rosa’s actual parents when Rosa got sick. Maybe it was just because she felt responsible for Rosa’s health in a way Rosa’s parents didn’t, or maybe it was rooted in genuine affection, but either way it felt the same to Rosa. I imagine a tiny Rosa trying to offer Natsuhi comfort, since Natsuhi is one of the few people who offer her comfort, especially during the early period of Natsuhi’s marriage where every day was a fresh humiliation

I imagine toddler Rosa struggling with Natsuhi’s name, and Natsuhi eventually giving her permission to call her “auntie” even though they’re technically sister-in-laws

I think Rosa developed anger issues at a fairly young age and that Natsuhi was the only one to treat her anger as anything other than bad behavior, to try and resolve conflicts rather than punishing Rosa. Natsuhi understands anger, understands how unfair it is to be treated as over emotional and crazy for expressing reasonable frustration. Or maybe she sees herself in Rosa in that way and hates it, and treats Rosa’s anger as harshly as everyone else.

I think she treated Rosa gentler than she treats Jessica, since there wasn’t the pressure of raising her up to be the head. I think maybe seeing how Rosa turned out made Natsuhi more strict with Jessica. Jessica will not be abandoned by the father of her child. Jessica will not be unable to control herself. Natsuhi will do better this time, she has to. Jessica must have a better life than Rosa.

I think Rosa’s accidentally called Natsuhi ‘mom’ many times, even as an adult, and that the two of them have never addressed it, not once

oh absolutely. i think it also really says something that natsuhi is so often harping on her belief that kinzo never cheated on his wife, that his relationship to beatrice was completely innocent and respectable...framed in this particular context where natsuhi also has this vision of kinzo as someone who secretly respected and was proud of her as though she were his own child. knowing that, factually, natsuhi is wrong about kinzo's relationship with beatrice on several counts...frames her own idea of what kinzo thought of her in a new light. we don't really know what kinzo thought of natsuhi, other than a red truth telling us he didn't much respect or care for her while he was alive

i kind of wonder if the sentence "natsuhi is truly fit to bear my crest" is a deliberate garden-path sentence there, meant to make you guess with horror about how it's supposed to end, because like. it's the only time i can think of where the crest is referred to as specifically kinzo's - it tends to be referred to as "the one winged-eagle" or "the family crest" or things like that. kinzo taking ownership of the crest in this sentence and creating the phrasing "bear my" feels. purposeful in this context for the reasons you said

and even with that specific reading aside, there is a level of ownership implied by "my crest" as though it brands her as not only an ushiromiya, but directly adjacent to kinzo specifically. which natsuhi of course would regard as an incredible honor, as someone who respects and loves kinzo as her own family, but is horrific in a lot of the context of umineko

and of course having natsuhi raise his child is so obviously fucked from the start (natsuhi is seemingly infertile for what, eleven years at that point and her only recourse is to accept the illegitimate child of her father-in-law as her own??? jesus christ) and i think the undercurrent here is even more obvious in lion's timeline where we see how that theoretically plays out - we don't really know too much about krauss' presence in lion's life, but we know he's not exactly much of a family man and isn't really involved much with jessica that we can see, so it stands to reason that he probably wasn't exactly the dad who stepped up for lion either. and we know that lion is very accustomed to dealing with kinzo's moods, implying the two were close or at least around each other quite a bit especially as kinzo was preparing lion to accept the headship. in this way, lion was likely parented primarily by the combination of natsuhi and kinzo, rendering the overtones of kinzo figuratively fashioning natsuhi as a mistress really overt

the thing about kinzo is that it seems like he recognizes that assaulting kuwadorian beatrice was an incredibly horrific sin and regrets it deeply, but he still cannot move past a lot of the core misapprehensions and attitudes that led him to do that in the first place - i mean, most obviously, in using sayo to seek atonement for that sin, he quite literally turns sayo into her dead mother and imposes upon her his feelings which she does not and cannot understand in order to process his grief for kuwadorian beatrice. it's an incredibly obvious parallel and a sign that even in his dying moments he didn't truly understand what he had done. to see this, in another form, happening to natsuhi (who was also denied the majority of the important context for the baby she was given, and, in lion's fragment, denied even the ability to ultimately become the wife of the head as the succession skipped her generation entirely. which i'm sure she had no feelings about whatsoever, particularly after having a mistress-like role imposed upon her by kinzo) is really...telling as another layer of this pattern of behavior by kinzo

"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."