#ftp:shad

this love is be or end all this love will be your downfall

inspired by the imagery of sasakure.UK's Phantasma PV

happy 13th anniversary, FtPverse!!!! 🎉🎉🎉 here's angsty Shad art to celebrate the occasion lol.... the imagery in that PV really did something to me and i wanted to flex my art muscles and just really go for it. wahoo!!!

so here's to my Shadow son and the two people he loves most - whether he should, or not, it's not that easy it's not that easy

for the most part no one asks anymore because when i did my edits to the series i made the throughline for soshad like pretty obvious but still i am just rotating my old fears / naysayers that haven't existed since 2014 if that like "ohhhh but it's so toxic shad did so many awful things to sora oohhhhhhh" like. even if this WEREN'T sora kingdom hearts who forgives everyone, like,

What is special about them? Perhaps a birthmark, a power, maybe a quality that sets them apart!

Shad's unique Keyblade, Binding Chains, and his even more signature weapon than that... a literal string of chains that he uses like a whip! "Why" look. they're badass. look me in the eyes and tell me this isn't badass.

as a whole also a lot of thought has gone into how Shad is different from Sora wrt how he fights - Sora (especially in FtPverse, where he had significantly less training time than canon) is pretty physical attacks focused, and has only a basic grasp on magic. Shad, however, is more of a long-range casting type, so he has a higher MP stat, and his command of magic is also more advanced than Sora's is.

When he's not using his magic, he's using his chains. Works great when he prefers to taunt you from afar, besides!

(er, a little belated, that is)

Is there anyone, or anything, they are drawn to — whether intentionally or not? Do they enjoy this connection or does it upset them?

THIS was the prompt i saw that made me say "oh, i have to do this" and "oh, i have to do this for SHAD", because,

Shad is connected, first and formost, to Sora, and this is a connection that is full of ups and downs. Created as Sora's Shadow, Shad's whole purpose in life revolves around Sora. he's Sora's darkness. he was born to drag Sora back into darkness. Everything he cares about SHOULD be about Sora, everything he DOES should be about Sora, and this connection... it's fine. it's not fine. it's complicated.

they have a mental link that allows Shad to keep tabs on Sora - where he is in the worlds, his thoughts, his emotions, his darkness, etc. (this link TECHNICALLY goes both ways, but Sora doesn't know how to work it nearly as well as Shad does) and it isn't until this literal connection between them is severed that Shad starts questioning things.

who is he, without Sora? Is he anything? Is that... better, or worse? All he wants, all he should want, is to care about Sora, is to care about dragging Sora into darkness, but... What if he doesn't want that? What if he wants more than that? Without Sora... who even is he!? And that's terrifying. He's tied irrevocably to Sora and he doesn't know how to define himself outside of Sora but - that's worse, isn't it? That's worse, that he's so dependent on Sora! But he can't stop being dependent on Sora, he can't stop wanting Sora. And without Sora, he has...

Nothing.

Or, well.

He has Kairi, sort of, kind of, but his relationship with Kairi is weird. She's his first friend. She's his only friend. But.

But she can't see him, she can only hear him, (it's complicated,) (being a creature of darkness tied to one person makes these things complicated - Kairi isn't the only one who can't see him), and their friendship hinges on the fact she doesn't know, she can't know, who he actually is. She can't know he's Sora's Shadow, who has hurt Sora so much, who has hurt Sora's friends so much, because if she really knew who he was, she'd hate him.

But that doesn't mean he's not still drawn to her. She's the only person who knows who he is, outside of Sora. She's the only person who doesn't know he's connected to Sora at all. She's his first friend, and he's the only friend she had in a period of loneliness, and bonds like that are important, and powerful things...

If only he knew how to leverage it. If only he gave her the chance to leverage it in return.

But he's too miserable, too caught between a rock and a hard place, too certain that his connection to Sora is all he really has, all he can ever have, that he's too afraid to find out who he could be outside of it. Even with Kairi. Even if he would love nothing more than to spend the rest of his time with her, not a care in the world...

...but to do that, she would have to see his face, and if she saw his face then she would know, she would know, and--

it's not that easy it's not that easy it's not that easy it's not

@khoc-week

Great prompt! Love to see everyone else's answers!!! Thanks!

-

@khoc-week just saw my friend do this and I was like sure! Why not!!!

KHUXOC Week Day 1: Introductions

You know what every epic-length KH fanfic series needs? A completely new and unique clone of Sora! So, meet "Shad".

FtPverse is a series where Sora falls to darkness instead of Riku, and Shad is a physical manifestation of Sora's darkness called a "Shadow" - a creature hellbent on dragging Sora back to the darkness or kill him trying. ...or, that's why he's supposed to exist, anyway. But what if he finds out he wants more to life than just dragging Sora to darkness? What happens to him once Sora returns to darkness, anyway? He's not a piece of Sora's heart - he's someone completely new! - so he's not "rejoining" with Sora the way Vanitas might with Ven. If he succeeds, will he stop existing? He doesn't know. He has no way of knowing. And that haunts him.

You may also notice that "Shad" is not, exactly, a name, by the way. He doesn't have a name - not yet - he's just Sora's Shadow. That's it. That's his whole identity. That's all he has to define himself by.

And what is Kingdom Hearts if not a medium for exploring identity when you are a copy of someone else - when you live, quite literally, as the shadow of another person. Can you even be your own person, in these circumstances? Yes, of course, of course you can. Of course Shad is. -- (Kano, he'll be named later. Kano, but not now, not yet. He's been too busy trying to fulfill his purpose of dragging Sora to darkness and straining against the confines of this purpose to really think about things like 'what would he like to be called, if he could have an identity that wasn't tied so intristically to Sora?')

I like him a lot and he's one of my favorite parts of FtPverse.

You can read the series here, or skip ahead to the fic he's introduced in here! Also, while you're at it, check out his theme song here!

shad ftpverse

hey so this is from june 2017, but for hte life of me i cannot find it on tumblr? like i just straight up didn't post it?? which i know CANNOT be true , but it's not in my archive, it's not in my tags, it's like, just gone. doesn't exist.

so here's my beautiful embarrassed son

deep cut

im listening to save rock and roll again, and I was OBSESSED with this album when it came out, yknow, 2013. which was also when the shad brainrot was real and yet

it's not that deep. but save rock and roll has such part 1 dead inside shad vibes,, it has these beautiful, violent metaphors about desecrating angels in its lyrics, such pride in being an asshole, hurting people is just what I do, and,

and it's not the album i insisted was shad's favorite. shad's favorite is folie a deux.

fondly rotating shad and kairi playing this album for the first time and kind of just excitedly gripping each other's arms and yelling because it keeps being so good

sora who doesn't DISlike kairi's taste in music but being pleasantly surprised by the stuff going on in love from the other side / so much for stardust like oh wow damn you weren't kidding. this IS kinda good. and kairi like I FREAKING TOLD YOU!!!! I TOLD YOU!!!!!

(shad is facedown on the floor because if he survived fakeout he did NOT survive i am my own muse)