i deleted my gender to make space for video game lore

in my drawings, i feel like i'm really cruel to naminé.. i constantly like to bounce back in forth between her own self pity, her beckoning for others to pity her, and her own actions of self sabotage. it's just what i love the most about her, sometimes... i think she's hurting a lot, and it's a particular combo of emotions and circumstances that hit all too close to home. hurting someone you care about, knowing you're hurting them and not knowing how to stop in the moment, wanting to be loved and desired by that person, but when you take responsibility for your actions - it still hurts when you're, reasonably.. rejected, in your eyes. you did the right thing, the thing that you should have done from the start, and.. you're not rewarded for it? it stings, because even though you wanted to be good, you know that if you did the more selfish decision - you'd continue to be loved, even if it's not an honest love.

and you can't help but compare yourself to who that special person in your life Really cares about. there's something wrong with you, and you're not like your somebody, and you're only a shadow - and the worst part is, you tried to play into it. i think something i like to focus on is a sort of violent and boiling anger that builds up in naminé towards marluxia, not for *hurting* her so to speak, but moreso for "making" her like this. i like to focus on naminé's insecurities alot where she believes herself to be a monster, who keeps on hurting people. ironically enough, even when she's actively pushing herself to fix sora, she's still resigning herself to disappearing - like she still has so much more to make up for. she says putting back sora together could take years, but she's put him back together in just about one. working day and night, under so much pressure - under a clock, spent alone and with no other purpose to motivate your existence. you were just born, and you've already messed up..! when you're lonely, and you're hurting, and you can't possibly know what's going to happen next, it's hard to feel confident in what you want. even desiring the person you've hurt feels just terrible, because you feel like you can't come back from the awful person you believe you were. and wanting that, you feel disgusting, like you deserve punishment. of course, i've related to that quite a bit, in the most vulnerable way that i can say it without going into my personal life.

roxas and naminé..

i like the difference between naminé and how she carries herself in kh2 compared to her behavior in CoM. she's a lot more confident, a lot more 'in control' of her emotions. i like that she's gotten a lot more confident in doing things that she shouldn't. of course, she's also resigned to the sort of fate that her and roxas are going to share. so she's more 'comfortable'. bolder, in a way. in fact, i think she has a tendency to be a bit persistent more than people would expect. given that she's watched roxas for a little while, i drew this with an idea of her taking the lead in conversations just a little more. it comes off a bit controlling, but i'd probably like to think of it as buildup for needing it after feeling so helpless back in castle oblivion. i don't think naminé is shy, so to say... just insecure, and incredibly stressed out. all the time.

2. lauriam and naminé

sort of a drawing with the same feelings as i've had behind this one

i've also went into depth about marluxia and naminé's dynamic here

that being said... i think with how short naminé's existence has been, i like focusing on her focusing on what kind of person marluxia was before he became a nobody - considering the fact that marluxia acted empty and behaved with no sentimentality tied to his actions, it's hard to make sense of why he behaved so cruel and condescending the way he did to naminé. i think, in the most miserable way possible, i wanted naminé to insert herself uncomfortably in a (delusional) fantasy where she could have met that young boy marluxia used to be. someone she could look up to, in this case - lauriam's always taken on the role of a big brother, responsible for others even when he didn't ask for it. if lauriam was so kind and gentle and reliable, i found it interesting to think if naminé would fixate on that memory of him, if she so happened to discover it. given that i usually associate naminé's painfully clear self-hatred with her dynamic with marluxia and his manipulation of her emotions/holding her captive, i think this would be a dangerous scenario of something that teeters onto 'self harm' and 'You really should not be thinking about this stuff because I think it's just going to make you more depressed. Like There's No benefit to dwelling on your abuser's past. Ok? Ok' ... so it's really pitiful, actually, isn't it. again, it's sentimental on my end

3. naminé and ventus

eesh. (looks to the side) I have really complicated feelings about naminé and ventus. i don't necessarily know if i feel like talking about this one, but i will link a sketch (that is unrelated to the drawpile sketch) that i'd hope to finish/add onto someday

that's all though.. i've always really liked portraying naminé as a sort of unstable girl. i think she's going through a lot for a person that was just born, and she's under a lot of stress and circumstances that not a lot of other people can understand. a lot has happened in only these past two years in canon.. i hope to see plenty of her in the next game...