In you and I, there's a new land...

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In the days of ruin stood the Kingdom of Mages, watchers and protectors of the storybook worlds... But then one Mage grew corrupt with power, becoming an unseen God and continuously providing to the characters. So he was punished...

But then strange happenings continued. One storybook evolved and people from other worlds started appearing in the book and interwoven in to the narrative. An omnipotent mirror claimed ownership to such plots but was stopped by the Kingdom of Mages. They erased the world and reset it into a picturesque and enchanting fractured fairytale.

You are now apart of this story, isekai'd from your world and transported into the story of Starcadia. This is meant to be your new home, your new story. But who is responsible? Why is this happening? How will you adjust to your new life? The pen is in your hands: so get to writing~

A Fractured Fate (Aff) is a 20+ Discord multifandom/panfandom roleplay group with an emphasis on fating of all kinds. Your character is magically pulled from their original world, has their powers altered, and now has to traverse a new and strange place. Join together with new acquaintances, friends, and enemies and begin your new life here.

Hi, it's me again, the person who wrote that viral post about fanfiction plagiarism! Today I'm here to warn you about abuse perpetrated by bots who have stolen AO3 usernames.

There's currently an epidemic of bots going around leaving (apparently random) horrible, hateful comments on people's fics. This isn't the first time bots have invaded AO3, but the big problem with this wave is that they're using real AO3 usernames to do it.

I learned about this when another writer contacted me after receiving the following comment on their story:

Now, while that is my username, I DEFINITELY did not leave this comment (and anyone who would leave something like that on a fic should be slapped! What an awful thing to post). This fic is in a completely unrelated fandom that I have never participated in, nor has that author participated in any of my fandoms, so the probability of it being some intentional fandom drama thing to make me look bad is also low.

The writer whose fic the comment was left on enlisted the aid of some friends and tracked down other guest comments with unrelated usernames attached, which is pretty strong evidence that they are being left by bots at random.

The TL;DR: If you receive a cruel comment from a (Guest) with an actual AO3 username attached, it's most likely from a bot. Please do not lash out at or dogpile the AO3 user who owns that name, and who in all likelihood has no idea that their name has been hijacked for evil.

If finding this kind of comment on a fic, even left by a bot, is likely to upset you, I would recommend changing your comment settings so that only users who are logged in can leave comments. To do this, edit your story settings, and under "Privacy," select the radio button that says "Only registered users can comment," as shown below.

“Twisted Wonderland x Kingdom Hearts”

Finally all dorms are here!! Art works by me (DiscordyChan)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discord_Chart

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discordmatsu/

Below is an ever growing and changing list of muses and series that current members would love to see! If you're having trouble choosing a muse, this is a great spot to consider checking! But no matter what, we're excited to have you and meet your muses!

Requested Series:

A3 (Act! Addict! Actors!)

Ensemble Stars

Fire Emblem

Genshin Impact

Kingdom Hearts

One Piece

Persona 5

Project Sekai

Sk8 the Infinity

The World Ends With You

Twisted Wonderland

Requested Characters:

Izumi Sena (Ensemble Stars)

Kanata Shinkai (Ensemble Stars)

Natsume Sakasaki (Ensemble Stars)

Rei Sakuma (Ensemble Stars)

Ritsu Sakuma (Ensemble Stars)

Tsukasa Suoh (Ensemble Stars)

Wataru Hibiki (Ensemble Stars)

Sora (Kingdom Hearts)

Koala (One Piece)

Ena Shinonome (Project Sekai)

Mafuyu Asahina (Project Sekai)

Mizuki Akiyama (Project Sekai)

Kojiro Nanjo (Sk8 The Infinity)

Jade Leech (Twisted Wonderland)

Azul Ashengrotto (Twisted Wonderland)

Kingdom Hearts II is Kairi's other good game. It's (sadly enough) where she peaked.

However, many fans were and still are disappointed in KH2 Kairi. Is that reasonable?

…..Yes and no.

I feel that Kairi’s role in Nomura’s base story for KH2 is really good, barring one factor. She starts remembering Sora and even makes contact with his heart via Roxas which causes her to send her poem out to sea, she befriends Pluto and goes through a Dark Corridor to Twilight Town where she befriends Hayner, Pence and Olette, she gets kidnapped by Organization XIII and held captive in the Castle That Never Was, is rescued by Namine (the other half of herself) and reunites with Riku and in turn reunites him with Sora, is given a weapon and is able to fight as part of the heroic party, she saves Namine from fading through reassimilating her into her heart, and ultimately her poem inspiring pure feelings in Sora allows him to open the Door to Light and bring himself and Riku home after all hope seemed to be lost; he even is finally able to return her good luck charm to her as promised in KH1.

The one factor that needed to be altered was the kidnapping part. It still had to happen, but it preferably should have happened a good while after showcasing her stay in Twilight Town and fleshing out her character. The scene where she goes to Twilight Town should have happened much earlier, and we could constantly cut back to her after completing each world (maybe even have a playable moment or two with her). Do that and everything’s perfect.

However, not only was this factor not altered, but three glaring problems also transpired.

First of all, notice a pattern in all of Kairi’s major scenes?

WE GET IT. Kairi really, really likes Sora; she’s his love interest. That was a huge part of her character in KH1, but there (as I just got done analyzing) Kairi still had a backstory and feelings on matters that were unrelated to Sora and an inner life and an actual character arc that progressed from beginning to end…all of this despite Sora being the one whom she primarily interacted with! And it’s terrible that KH2 isn’t affording her the same treatment when at the same time it gives her so many other characters to interact with like Selphie, Pluto, Hayner, Pence, Olette, Namine, King Mickey, Axel and Saix. The best she gets is with Riku:

Secondly, she gets a weapon. Did it have to be a Keyblade, and did that Keyblade have to be so flowery? No, but whatever. It’s a weapon, and she can fight with it. She says so herself!

She does so against a horde of Heartless - in a cutscene. Where we only see her take out two enemies and then the remainder of the fight largely happens offscreen. Afterwards, we never see the goddamn thing again! Not even when it clearly is supposed to be there:

Come ON! We needed way more than that! And hey, game developers, couldn’t you have given Kairi a non-party battle AI? You gave one for Axel who wasn’t even supposed to make it that far into the story; so why not Kairi? It makes this whole pay-off underwhelming to many.

Third and finally, what is she doing when not fighting or having a scene centered around how much she cares for Sora? Mainly just idly standing in the back row of the party and saying “Sora!”, “Riku!”, or both. Now, this point isn’t quite as bad as the others since this is shared with Donald and Goofy rather than be exclusive to her, and the game also has several screens where you can talk to Kairi and she has text boxes with dialogue that actually showcases more of her personality beyond just being Sora’s love interest. She reminds you of her knowledge of nautical superstitions, is perceptive enough to recognize the Proof of Existence chamber as a graveyard, says she doesn’t like being left out of adventuring, says that she wants to get more skilled as Sora and Riku in combat so that they get hurt less, and outright puts her foot down and tells Sora in non-negotiable terms that from now on where he goes she goes too (please ignore Nomura totally ruining this in the games past KH2, ‘kay?)

So, that’s why people are often hard on KH2 Kairi. BUT I still say that she still deserves credit for the things done right with her, namely the important plot-relevant actions she undertakes, the fact that she gets to forge connections with so many other characters at all, the fact that she even has a weapon and gets to fight competently with it, those aforementioned text boxes, and her still getting some measure of character development through learning that “waiting isn’t good enough” (again, ignore Nomura’s post-KH2 fuckery!) Plus - her attitude!

And this leads me to my final point, which is….

Kairi in the Kingdom Hearts II manga doesn’t get kidnapped until after quite a while spent in Twilight Town and even receives a focus chapter while being held captive, her relationships with other characters are fleshed out beyond her just talking about Sora with them, she has much more impressive showcasing of her combat skills and is even outright acknowledged as possibly a fiercer fighter than Sora and Riku, she displays her character the whole way through and not just in optionally viewable text boxes, and on top of all this her facial expression are always on point, which isn’t even something that can be said of other characters in the manga! She’s got all of the game upsides, and none of the downsides.

Y'know what? In a way, Kairi was tragically doomed as a character from the very beginning.

"Oh, because she was a love interest and damsel in distress!"

No. Myths, fairy tales and, well, Disney movies have used those tropes for ages, and if you're doing a story where a huge point is the influence of those things, it's kind of a given that the leading lady be a love interest and damsel in distress. And the writing is smart enough to put a twist on the trope given that Kairi's distress is much less than it appeared to be because she's Sora's love interest and he's her's, and after Sora saves her she saves him right back.

"Oh, because she wasn't a playable character or party member!"

No. It would have been nice to have the playable puzzle solving-based Kairi sequence they initially planned at Hollow Bastion, but I can understand why it was removed given how it would slow down the pace following what is perhaps the signature sequence of the game. And in any case it doesn't have any bearing on how things went for the rest of the series, given that Riku also was not a playable character or party member (he just had a crappy AI when pretending to help you fight Parasite Cage all so that he could kidnap Pinocchio).

"Oh, because she was stuck in a coma the whole game!"

NO! God damn it, how much must the game beat the point into your stupid head!?

And who could forget?

Stop laughing right now.

Kairi. Not just "her heart". KAIRI. Since the heart = the person.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it exposes some serious sexism if one goes with the "Kairi was in a coma" line for KH1 and yet says "Ventus was inside of Sora" post BBS, since it's literally the exact same situation except that Kairi was always awake within Sora's heart as opposed to Ventus only waking up at the end of 3D. It's why Sora felt things regarding Hollow Bastion, why he experienced the memory of Kairi and her grandfather, and why he saw and heard Kairi multiple times. He wasn't hallucinating; that was always really her.

So, enough beating around the bush. What did I actually mean, then?

Well....let's start at the beginning.

Kairi's arc in the original Kingdom Hearts is not just told through the writing. Utilizing a video game as a visual/audible medium, it is also told through animation, voicework and music. During her introductory cutscene, we see Kairi asked by Sora if she remembers the world she was born in before being sent to Destiny Islands. "I told you before. I don't remember." She answers this sincerely. "Nothing at all?" Sora responds. That's when we see this detail.

"Nothing." Kairi is lying. She doesn't remember everything given the trauma caused by being forced out of her old home, but she does remember just enough to understand why it was traumatic. She had a comfortable life there, and a family. She was happy. And then it was all gone in an instant. Now, on Destiny Islands, she is similarly content ("Well, I'm happy here.") and fears risking that same loss. And yet a small part of her still yearns for the past. She loved what she can recall of her past, as she loves her present. She fears only the future.

Riku's fixation on his existential woes and the mysteries of the universe, while also putting her up on some sort of pedestal like she's something special, is not helping at all. Something about it feels wrong to Kairi...wrong and uncomfortably familiar. It's making her very anxious.

But Kairi has someone to lean on and help her keep up an optimistic, cheerful front, perhaps enough to talk herself into believing it: Sora. And during this scene, we hear the track "Kairi I":

This track reflects Kairi's character in this moment. While there is a subtle undercurrent of worry, her heart is strong enough to not let it get to her and look on the bright side as she looks out to the sun setting over the ocean. With Sora's reassurance, she is able to feel as though her home and friends won't change or go away no matter what happens on her, Sora and Riku's planned voyage, which allows her to feel anticipation for it. All finally feels right.

Of course, things were not right, and Kairi ended up in heart form as her body and soul were lost to darkness along with Destiny Islands. From Kairi's POV, she is now in the Station of Awakening (aka Dive to the Heart) and can do little but watch Sora's adventures as she can see them through his eyes, not fully putting it together why she can and where she truly is.

In the scene at Merlin's House, we get to hear "Kairi II".

While it's similar to "Kairi I", there is now a more somber and mysterious feel to it given the present circumstances. While she doesn't know if Sora can hear her, Kairi wistfully waxes nostalgic over how Merlin's House reminds her of the Secret Place on Destiny Islands. And while Kairi feels sad over missing that place, she's also happy that there are places like it elsewhere in the universe. She's clearly learning as much from Sora's journey as Sora is.

Finally, we hear "Kairi III" in the flashback with little Kairi and her grandmother.

And while it starts out reflecting Kairi's childhood innocence, it ends up turning...almost sad. The reason why being one of the most overlooked details of the scene: at the end of the grandmother's story, she disappears, and little Kairi is shown moving her head all around looking for her. This isn't actually part of the memory, but a reflection of Kairi's heart. She knows that she had a grandmother and that her grandmother isn't here anymore, but she can't remember how her grandmother "left". But she at least still exists...within her heart.

Speaking of which, once Kairi's heart returns to her body and Sora loses his heart in the process, Kairi puts her foot down. She may have learned how to better deal with and accept change and loss, but a line still has to be drawn somewhere and Sora is that line for her.

Thus is she able to save him. Later, we see her worry about the future and things changing again when she questions whether anything can be the same between her, Sora and Riku again after the corruption Riku had underwent. Once again, Sora boosts her optimism.

More importantly, he helps her learn, as he does, that even when separated you can take strength in keeping your loved ones (metaphorically) in your heart, and that even if things change and Kairi is cut off from the people and things she loves, they will always exist within her heart, just as with her grandmother and the story she told her about light and darkness.

This is why, in the end, Kairi is able to let Sora go and yet still feel content.

From "Hikari" (JP):

I'll stop doing pointless things like thinking about the future. Today I'll eat delicious things. The future is always before us, Even if I don't know it.

From "Simple and Clean" (EN):

 Regardless of warnings, the future doesn't scare me at all.  Nothing's like before.

This is a really good, really well done character arc.

It's also a very human character arc.

Yes, there are a lot of fantastical things going on, but when you put all of that aside, what are you left with? A young girl moves away from her old home and everything that she ever knew and loved, which gives her anxiety about the same thing happening with the new home and everything that she's come to know and love from it, which now includes a certain boy. She fears the future; she fears change. In the end, she ends up staying in her new home - but the boy moves away! However, through her time spent with him she's learned to accept this because he'll always be a part of her heart, which is something that won't ever change.

When put that way, it sounds positively mundane, and by and large the KH fandom - and Tetsuya Nomura himself for that matter - don't want or like mundane stuff like that. They want the crazy, the overdramatic, the angsty, the flashy, the anime tropeyness they're familiar with. This is why they were unreceptive to Kairi's arc to the fullest degree, as in many of them are literally unaware it even happened because they were too busy fixating on the archetypal Japanese media-style dick measuring contest between Sora and Riku (which is also far deeper than they tend to give it credit for, btw, but I digress). And if that's the case, then the question gets raised: why bother focusing on or expanding Kairi at all? She doesn't "sell".

As promised!

In Kingdom Hearts, we first meet Riku as a 15-year old. But chronologically speaking, the earliest scene he has shows him as a much younger boy. In this state, Riku is innocent.

He loves playing with his best friend Sora and, like most little boys, dreams of having adventures someday. In fact, the brilliance in showing Riku being so attached to the idea of leaving his island home for something more is that it's the exact type of motive most Disney heroes have. Ariel, Belle, Aladdin and Jasmine, Simba, Quasimodo, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan...and even ones created later such as Wilbur Robinson, Rapunzel, Wreck-It Ralph and Moana. They all have this same quality: the desire for more, to broaden their horizons and satiate their curiosity or resolve their insecurity. Riku's fate is clear: he is to be a hero in this universe. In fact, Riku himself begins seeing the signs of this destiny that awaits him.

The problem is that while heroism may be in Riku's nature, nurture had other ideas. Growing up on the island, Riku trained and became strong, earning the admiration and praise of all the people around him. Being destined for greatness wasn't enough; now everyone was telling him how great he was. This not only feeds Riku's ego but also creates a direct dichotomy between his dream and his reality: while everything surrounding him gives him the impression that's he's the best, how can that be true when "everything surrounding him" is just a tiny part of a much larger whole that he's missing out on? In the grand scheme of things, Riku might not be so great after all, and that fear gnaws at his heart. What's worse: his best friend Sora, whom Riku has been like an older brother / protective leader figure to and whom Riku appears to be naturally better at everything than, seems pretty chill about his place in the world. To the point where Kairi, whom Riku sees as this magical living proof of a larger universe beyond Destiny Islands, gravitates more toward Sora and not Riku, the one who appreciates her more (or so he thinks). This makes Riku jealous of Sora, and this jealousy motivates him even more in his desire to explore other worlds and secure his heroic destiny.

While the Riku we are introduced to still has some of his old innocence in him, shown by his genuine care for his friends and desire to have them with him on his adventures, there is a darkness present too. He's not pursuing his goal for the right reasons. Kairi can sense this and it unnerves her...she can't quite place why, but something about it rings familiar to her.

The guy who is behind this sense of familiarity, Ansem, then ends up appearing to Riku and goading him into attempting to open the door in the Secret Place...the door to the world's heart. It doesn't work without the Keyblade, but it does alert the Heartless to the darkness in Riku's heart...and now they now exactly where their primary target, the world's heart, is.

Riku uses the darkness that invades the islands to escape to the outside world, and shortly afterwards Destiny Islands is destroyed. This is Riku's first villainous action, but I will cut him some slack here. Not only was he directly manipulated, but it's clear that he doesn't actually realize that what's happening will destroy his home. He seems to be under the impression that it's just destroying the barrier between Destiny Islands and the rest of the universe, allowing a pathway out for him and his friends. It's callous and it's reckless, but the magnitude of the destruction it's causing is something that Riku is oblivious to at this point in time.

When we next see Riku, he's already spent some time in the company of Maleficent and her assembly of Disney Villains gathered in Hollow Bastion, having been granted a sword by the sorceress and clearly having practiced fighting with it. Maleficent ultimately leads him to Sora in Traverse Town under the condition Riku not speak of her to him. During Riku's reunion with his best friend, Riku sees that Sora now wields the Keyblade - the weapon that was destined for him - and has been traveling around the universe having adventures alongside Donald and Goofy. This infuriates Riku. In his mind, this was supposed to be an adventure that he led. He would be the Keyblade wielder, traveling the universe and having adventures alongside Sora and Kairi. But not only has Sora now gotten the Keyblade and seemingly "replaced" him and Kairi with Donald and Goofy, but he is thriving. He doesn't need Riku's protection, he isn't falling short behind Riku...he isn't the same Sora that Riku knew on Destiny Islands. And because of Riku's aforementioned ego and pre-existing subconscious jealousy of Sora, this all makes him irrationally perceive Sora as having betrayed him.

While Maleficent is manipulating Riku, it's not in the same direct manner that Ansem did, and more to the point Riku should know better. He already knows that Maleficent and her gang are villains, as we later see he doesn't actually trust Maleficent one ounce. He clearly can see that Sora cares about him, as evidenced by Sora's relief to see him again and how he argues with Donald that Riku should join them on their adventure. And if he had so chosen, he could have stuck around long enough for Sora to relay what the Keyblade actually does, that it's more than just some shiny cool weapon and that it's needed to save worlds from the same kind of destruction that Riku unwittingly unleashed upon his home world. But Riku is arrogant, envious, entitled, wrathful...and above all, immature. In the greatest of ironies, despite Riku seeing himself as more grown-up than his peers and convincing himself that exploring other worlds and becoming a hero will help make him an adult, Riku's loss of innocence has only made him more childish than ever. He didn't get his way, and now he's throwing a tantrum.

At this point, Riku is done as an even remotely sympathetic character. Rejecting Sora as a friend, he now clings to Kairi as the only one he has left. And yes, he does still hold genuine care for her, but I feel like this misleads a lot of people from missing what Riku is actually doing here. He doesn't want to restore Kairi's heart primarily for her. He wants to do it primarily for himself. He knows how much Sora likes her, so now he wants to have her indebted to him so that she chooses him over Sora. Thus he can flaunt her to Sora like she's some kind of trophy. His line of thinking is "Oh, you think you're a bigshot now? You think you're better than me? Well, suck it! I've got your girl! Haha!" Again, it's highly immature, not to mention vindictive toward one of his friends and demeaningly objectifying toward another. Speaking of which, he also assaults a girl, knocking her unconscious and dragging her back to Hollow Bastion to be a prisoner in exchange for Maleficent revealing the location of Kairi's lifeless body to him. It's this act that cements that Riku isn't going to be a hero, but a villain.

Now, through all this we should remember that Sora and Riku's friendship was incredibly close. They are practically brothers. So it would be bad writing if Riku 100% turned against Sora this quickly. Thankfully, the game is better than that. When they next meet up within Monstro, Riku's goal is to manipulate Pinocchio and lure him toward the Parasite Cage Heartless. In the process of doing this, he taunts Sora and makes a game out of Sora chasing him and Pinocchio down. Maleficent astutely remarks that while Riku claims he's "just messing with him", it's obvious he still cares for Sora and that denying it will do him no favors. Afterwards, Riku attempts to vent his feelings honestly to Sora, then joins alongside him in fighting Parasite Cage to free Pinocchio. But afterwards, he takes Pinocchio (whom he assumes has gotten his heart devoured) away, even heartlessly rejecting the pleas of the boy's father Gepetto to give him back. This blatantly act of villainy comes back to bite Riku.

He gives Sora the offer to join him in using Pinocchio as an experiment to see if they can learn how to restore Kairi's heart. To get back to how things should be, with Sora following his lead, being the little brother figure stuck in his shadow. But unlike Riku, Sora is unwilling to sacrifice his conscience and is ready to fight Riku for Pinocchio. This doesn't happen, as Pinocchio ends up still having his heart after all and the Parasite Cage comes back to allow Riku a chance to escape. Riku is legitimately upset that Sora rejected him, but true to egotistical form refuses to consider if maybe he's the one to blame for this. As a result, he lets the possibility of repairing his friendship with Sora go and willingly lets Maleficent amplify the darkness in his heart so that he can control the Heartless. He then goes around on Captain Hook's ship, flying through worlds and having the Heartless destroy them in search of the remaining Princesses of Heart needed to open the way to Kingdom Hearts, where the knowledge on how to restore Kairi's heart can be gained. Let me stress: Riku is now intentionally doing to other worlds what he unintentionally did to his home world. His goal of "explore other worlds" has mutated into "destroy other worlds", and he's too far gone up his own ass to notice. As long as he says it's for Kairi, he can justify any atrocity he commits.

Off the coast of Neverland, Captain Hook captures Sora, Donald and Goofy, whom Riku has condemned to the brig...but not before turning Sora's shadow into a Heartless that does his bidding as a petty act of vengeance for Sora rejecting him. He is also revealed to have had a hand in kidnapping Wendy from Neverland, and when he learns she isn't a Princess of Heart, he coldly tells Hook to dump the "dead weight" into the ocean. Finally, after Sora and his friends escape from their imprisonment and make it to Hook's cabin, Riku uses a Corridor of Darkness to escape to Hollow Bastion along with Kairi's body...but only after directly siccing Anti-Sora on Sora, leaving him to possibly be killed. Riku is evil now...and he gets worse.

Maleficent then amplifies the darkness in Riku's heart again. The result is essentially turning Riku pure evil. After attacking the Beast while he's already badly weakened, he finally takes the Keyblade back from Sora and taunts him viciously. "Maleficent was right. You don't have what it takes to save Kairi. It's up to me. Only the Keyblade master can open the secret door and change the world. You were just the delivery boy. Sorry, your part's over now. Here - go play hero with this." And he tosses Sora a wooden sword, the same kind they played with on the islands. It's a truly cruel, demented way of saying "I'm the adult, you're the child, I am superior to you and I always will be!" And when Sora still resists? He tries to murder him.

This is the lowest that Riku can sink to. Trying to kill his former best friend, his brother, in cold blood. And for what? He doesn't even care about Kairi as a person anymore. All he truly wants is to prove his greatness by "opening the secret door and changing the world", as he put it. All of the selfishness, the entitlement, the darkness...it has completely consumed Riku. And this, along with the strength of Sora's heart that he showcases in a rousing speech, is why the Keyblade then leaves Riku, choosing Sora as its permanent master. After getting the ass-kicking he so richly deserves, Riku runs away like a coward, in complete shock and disbelief that after everything Sora still managed to beat him. That's when Ansem comes in and tells him that embracing all of his own heart's darkness isn't enough; Riku must open his heart up to darkness in general. He must become an avatar of darkness, just like Ansem.

And as I'm sure we all know, that last part ended up being way more literal than Riku bargained for. Ansem takes control of his body, and ultimately banishes Riku's heart, which holds his essence, out of the body entirely and into the Realm of Darkness. In short: Riku ends up damned and goes to Hell. In a grittier story, that would likely be the end of him.

However....

In the Realm of Darkness, Riku...sees the light. There is now clarity in everything that has happened, everything that he's done, and everyone that he's hurt. And he is able to keep his heart alive out of sheer remorse and sheer determination to somehow right all that he has wronged....especially toward Sora and Kairi. Now, this does not automatically make Riku a sympathetic character or a hero. It's simply him finally realizing that he fucked up, and yeah, ya think!? But, it's still the all-important first step to bettering one's self. And almost as a form of good karma as a result, Mickey Mouse appears to take Riku under his guidance. Together, they help Sora (who defeats Ansem and thus grants Riku his physical body back) close the Door to the Realm of Darkness once it has opened, preventing an untold amount of Heartless from swarming into the Realm of Light. The universe will be saved...but it comes at a price.

Riku stays trapped in the Realm of Darkness, accepting his condemnation there as what he deserves, and being content to help Sora and tell him to take care of Kairi...an overdue acknowledgement that Sora's the one who truly loved her as a person and that thus her preference for Sora over him is rightfully earned. The Door of Darkness is closed on him, and that's the last we see of him. In accepting the negative consequences of his actions and acknowledging himself as a villain, Riku comes the closest he's ever been...to being a hero.

Tl;dr: Riku was a fantastic character in the original Kingdom Hearts because he was a negative one. His character arc was one of self-damnation, without sugarcoating anything. He was a good person in his childhood and a flawed but not altogether bad person when we meet him, but he becomes a worse and worse person as the game progresses through his own character flaws and willfully bad decisions. He's being manipulated, but he mostly isn't being misled. He's making stupid decisions, but he isn't making them unthinkingly. Riku is a complex and humanized villain, but he's not a sympathetic one since his evil actions and his reasonings for them go so increasingly beyond the pale of what can be sympathized with.

And this is also why he works so well in the following games.

Not only do we know how inexcusably evil Riku was in KH, but he knows how inexcusably evil he was too. Not only do we see him continue to express remorse for his sins and make genuine efforts to better himself and make amends even if it's at a direct cost to himself, he also directly tackles the reasons why he went down such a dark path to begin with. His ego is quickly cut down to size as he develops a more humble attitude, helped along greatly by Mickey's personality rubbing off on him. His insecurity about his place in the world and how it led him to destroy his home is confronted, and he determines that he must be the own to choose his own place in the world rather than desperately trying to prove what it is to himself and those around him. His ruthless desire for vengeance is reflected back at him by DiZ, and naturally he doesn't like what he sees. And he ends up flat-out admitting his past jealousy of Sora to Sora...which is after a long period of time where he prioritized Sora over himself, openly acknowledging him as the hero the universe needs. None of this would be as effective if Riku was just some poor, misguided soul in the first game like some fans pretend he was.

I think the techincal writing for Riku post KH has been hit and miss. I hate how overexposed Riku became as the franchise deuteragonist post KH2. I hate that Nomura made Riku "the true, officially ordained Keyblade Master" over Sora which goes against the whole original point. I hate how dull Riku's personality has become. And I hate Riku's current design. BUT in spite of all this, I still love and appreciate Riku on the whole. Because he's a prime example of a redemption arc done correctly - an evil person recognizes the harm they've caused and feel great remorse for it, stops doing bad and commits to doing good, and the good they do is wholly for the sake of helping others and doing what is right rather than for some kind of reward or self-benefit they feel entitled to. Other characters can learn from Riku's example.

kind of wanna reinforce this here. because i’ve seen ai writing become so popular on tik tok.

ai writing is not okay.

it’s literally theft. just like how ai art steals, ai writing steals. it’s using authors’ very real work to generate whatever you type in. and this also needs to be said as well.

writing is a form of art. fanfiction is a form of literature.

seeing this all over my fyp is REALLY discouraging. fanfic itself is already a labor of love and we love it when you interact. but please do not use ai writing for your fanfic needs when this writing literally steals from fanfic authors.

I don't understand how some people think certain characters hate some of the others in their friend trio group.

Like Riku does NOT hate Kairi. They're friends, he cares about her. If he truly hates her he wouldn't have spent so much time trying to help and find her in KH1.

Riku was being bitter about Sora since Maleficent manipulated him to think he was trying to replace him, and he wanted his friends together to explore some worlds.

So he was trying to help her because she was his friend. He wanted to explore worlds with Sora and Kairi.

And at the end of the game when Riku closes one side of the door, he tells Sora to ake care of Kairi like if he hated her why would he say that.

Then in KH 2 when Saïx took her, Riku helped her. He was feeling very isolated and insecure but he still helped her. He gave her a keyblade to help defend herself and then they fought besides each other and protected the other's back.

Then there was a battle and Kairi was about to get hit but Riku used his body to protect Kairi so she wouldn't get hurt so then it was just Sora (you), Donald, and Goofy fighting that battle.

Like if he actually disliked and hated her he wouldn't of done any of those things.

Okay. I think I need to get this off my chest; I actually really deeply love Kairi's entire character and think her lack of strength and action is essential to the themes she embodies (and starting to literally break out of).

While I 100% agree there are some parts of her character that play off of the outdated archetype of "damsel in distress", I genuinely don't think it was the intention for Kairi to embody only this trope, but to embody the opposite of Riku as a character; specifically, his curiosity and lack of fear towards the unknown. To elaborate further, I believe Riku and Kairi are the two extremes that are supposed to contrast to Sora; Kairi's extreme desire for safety and Riku's extreme plunge into danger.

//Note: this will contain spoilers for the entire series, including Melody of Memory, Re:Mind, and every other game that came before it.

I am fine with "the audience" -

downloading my fics

printing my fics

copy/pasting or screenshotting my fics

sharing your saved copy of my fics with anyone else who might want them in the unlikely but never impossible case that my fics are no longer available on ao3

making a book of my fic(s) and running your fingers across the pages while lovingly whispering my precioussss

doing these things with anything I create for fandom, such as meta, headcanons, au nonsense like 'texts from the brodinsons,' etc

I am not fine with "the audience"

doing any of the above with the purpose/intent of plagiarizing my work or passing it off as their own in any capacity

feeding my work into ai for any reason whatsoever

Save the fandom things. Preserve the fandom things. Respect the fandom things.

my dog radish has recently injured her claw and i need to take her to the vet. i don’t know what the cost will be, but any help will be appreciated. IM if interested!

ALL COMMISSIONS ARE LITERALLY ONLY $20. i will draw FULL COLLOR UPPERBODY ART. it can be OCs, canon characters, I WILL EVEN DRAW SHIP ART (of two characters) FOR $20. 

payments will be done through paypal!

 [ no nsfw, anthro, mech ] 

liking and/or sharing is more than enough help for me! i don’t know the full vet cost, but i just want to be sure that i am secure so that my dog can get the best care that she needs. please, she is the sweetest shiba inu in the whole world and got hurt out of fear of a thunder storm while i was away at work T_T

 below are examples of my art!: