A Wild Lurker Appears! Hyoi's Random Banter #232

[Anonymouswizard]

Fool's mate requires the opponent to be an aggressively and specifically bad player. Like, to the point of "why am I even playing this person unless I'm teaching them" level of bad.

Yes, that's the joke (alongside the fact that the first move, shared with Scholar's Mate, is a decent opener anyway).

[Rater202]

MArvel comics has two characters called "Gorilla-Man."

One is an explorer who was turned into a semi-immortal talking gorilla after killing the previous Gorilla-Man—it's kind of a whole thing, kill the Gorilla-Man and you become immortal at the cost of becoming the next Gorilla-Man.

One is a mad surgeon who had his head grafted to a gorilla's body as punishment for stealing organs from gorillas for use in experimental surgeries on human patients. I'm missing some context but apparently, it was the gorillas that did it.

I'm honestly not sure which one is the more "comic booky" origin story.

(The first one is a superhero, the second is a villain.)

[Fyraltari]

The second one. The "you killdd the supernatural being so, now you have to take their place" is standard fantasy stuff.

[Peelee]

New phone. Please bear with me on possible larger number of sufficient issues than normal, I need to get the keyboard dictionary accustomed to my style of speech.

[Lord Raziere]

The second one. The "you killed the supernatural being so, now you have to take their place" is standard fantasy stuff.

that would suck if it applied in urban fantasy series with like supernatural hunters. because then you have to figure out how to get rid of the supernatural being without being the one responsible for their death. like how indirect do you have to do it before the magic can't proclaim anyone responsible for the death of the previous host? like even if you devise some magical prison to keep the being locked away, if they eventually die because they were in that prison, why wouldn't the magic put the responsibility for killing them anyways? or if you arrange them to suffer an accident, will the magic still target you? something interesting to ponder.

[Bartmanhomer]

If Io was a Pokemon then he could be an uber-tier Pokemon. I think Io and Arceus would be equally matched against each other.

[Rater202]

I'm a huge fan of the Kingdom Hearts series.

There's something about it that doesn't really come up in a lot of media.

It's very cutsy on the surface. "Oh look, you get to hang out with all of our favorite Disney characters."

And you don't notice it when you're playing it, but... Cosmic Horror. All of Cosmic Horror. All of it.

Entire universes are being eaten alive by the embodiments of the evil and negativity in people's hearts and you could turn into one if you give in to your dark side or get killed by an already existing one and some mad man figure out how to mass-produce them, which also made it a thousand times easier for them to get into places where they shouldn't belong.

And then there's the Nobodies, who technically don't exist and are fueled by literal Nothingness but are paradoxically very real and right there affecting reality. And the "lesser" nobodies move in ways that look wrong(like swimming through solid matter or stretching and deforming when they take steps) with character designs that wouldn't be out of place in a Silent Hill game.

and it's not like this is a surprise. The Tutorial ends with the protagonist's home reality being destroyed, this is all presented front and center. It's not like they present it as being 100% cutsey and the horror comes as huge surprise, which you see in a lot of media, and it's not like it ever stops being something kind of cool and cutsey fantasy, there's no subversion of your Disney Movie tropes, it's just...

The aesthetic and the plot should not work together as well as they do, and I honestly can't think of anything else that pulls that off.

[Lord Raziere]

I only know Kingdom hearts through TFS's retrospective of it (and I watched the ENTIRETY of it, all way to Kingdom Hearts 3's finale) and honestly I do not see the appeal, nor do I remember the plot enough to understand it.

like its one of those complex continuity things involving time travel, multiple versions of a single dude, all for goals that aren't well explained, keyblades themselves are as far as I can tell just plot device weapons that double as something to access magic with, full of places that are metaphors/abstractions, various mindscrews, throwing in the classic bad mix of balance and light vs dark concepts that don't work, all to tell the story of Sora who is the embodiment of everything I hate in a protagonist going around to various worlds to play out boring fan fics of disney stories without changing anything, all to culminate in fighting over some fuzzy metaphysical concept/place/thing thats important for some reason I don't remember.

like at the end of it all I just couldn't care about any of it, because it made so little sense, spent a lot of time either retelling other stories or managing to make a conflict out of unclear conceptual/metaphysical/philosophical things that don't really matter. like here is thing: Disney stuff is supposed to have fairy tale quality to it, and Final Fantasy has this epic high fantasy quality to it. they combined it in a way however? that none of these worlds feel real, because they're all repeating the stories that occur without all this happening anyways. It feels like when you go into them that a fairy tale script is just being played out, and that they just repeat this story forever. while the world outside those fairy tale stories is this patchwork place just......floating here and there without really being clear how it works. There is nothing there to ground any of this and give context because its all so surreal and without any wider world.

while on the character front....I care about none of them. they're all shallow as puddles. like the literal non-existence people don't feel that special, because everyone in Kingdom Hearts feels like a character so hollow that shouldn't really existence but somehow do. while the heartless.....don't feel threatening? like their default is little cute goblin shadow people. they're just there. they're the negativity of peoples hearts? sure sure yeah, yeah whatever just keep whacking them with the keyblade kid, don't worry about it, your more competent edgy rival who can somehow use the evil darkness stuff that is trying to consume everything for good will come along to handle it.

its....its just so much nonsense, that amounts to so little that is in any way tangible. I don't recall how or if Sora grew in any way between K1 all way to K3. I don't recall if any of what anyone did had a point at the end of all it other than preserving the status quo. they told this high fantasy disney story spanning years and many games and it all amounted to......nothing to me. nothing I can emotionally connect to and or anything I can be interested in.

.....in summary: to me, the whole series of Kingdom Hearts feels like its all flash, no substance.

[asda fasda]

It's important to remember that Kingdom Heart is cross-over between Final Fantasy series and Disnay, which make that very uniqe, but also is a reason its much darker then Disnay works. I've never had chance to play it for longer (now I'm waiting form my kids to be c.a. 10 year to play with them : ) but my take from the game was that story is mostly FF-like written when environment are mostly Disney, like someone wanted to make FF game inside Disneyworld. Additionally I always interpreted this "nothingness" as destroyers of imagination, like Auditors in Discworld, so maybe less scary but more [hmm not sure of proper English world to describe this but something in between sadness and boringness and maybe depression].

But the designer who get this idea and then menagers who give approval from both squere-enix and Disnay must be very interesting people, well unless it was "oh **** we have a contract with disney and squere to produce new game but we dont have time so maybe we will merge them ?" : )

[Lord Raziere]

I mean......it didn't feel that much darker if I'm going to be honest with you? Kingdom Hearts is pretty standard high fantasy faire in terms of tone it just as a very surreal setting without any the elements that help could ground it in a world so that you can make sense of what is going on.

and to expand on my all flash and no substance point: its visually good, presentation of everything is on point, Disney is all about good presentation, it all looks good, if I cared to I'd take the more visually appealing keyblade designs and just make their own legendary artifacts out of them or take the concept of keyblades itself and figure out my own way of doing them that is more sensible to me, but to me, thats too much for a setting that I for the most part don't care about. like I was only interested in checking out Kingdom Hearts in the first place because Keychain of Creation referenced it and I wanted to see why everyone liked it and it ended up being kind of a disappointment, honestly. again, great presentation and visual design of all this, it just didn't have any substance under it to make it mean anything to me.

[Rater202]

It's important to remember that Kingdom Heart is cross-over between Final Fantasy series and Disnay, which make that very uniqe, but also is a reason its much darker then Disnay works. I've never had chance to play it for longer (now I'm waiting form my kids to be c.a. 10 year to play with them : ) but my take from the game was that story is mostly FF-like written when environment are mostly Disney, like someone wanted to make FF game inside Disneyworld. Additionally I always interpreted this "nothingness" as destroyers of imagination, like Auditors in Discworld, so maybe less scary but more [hmm not sure of proper English world to describe this but something in between sadness and boringness and maybe depression].

But the designer who get this idea and then menagers who give approval from both squere-enix and Disnay must be very interesting people, well unless it was "oh **** we have a contract with disney and squere to produce new game but we dont have time so maybe we will merge them ?" : )

The story of Kindgom Hearts is that Squaresoft and Disney's Japanese operations were working on of the same office building and Tetsuya Nomura was in the elevator with a Disney rep and they got talking and "you know what would be neet, a final fantasy game with Disney characters" came up.

And then, the paraphrase that most comes up is that some Disney executives from back home came to a pitch meeting at Square once that idea came up from the grape vine, and Nomura showed them his fanfic and if got approved.

The general consensus among the Kingdom Heasts fan community is that he's a Mad Genius and the Ultimate Fanboy: People show up to conventions dressed as his OCs

I mean......it didn't feel that much darker if I'm going to be honest with you?

So, let's talk about Winnie The Pooh. Winnie the Pooh is a stuffed bear with very little brain but quite a lot of heart. He is gluttonous but well-meaning, the only thing he care about more than 'Hunny' are his dear friends. While Pooh'series, especially under Disney's adaptations, doesn't nessesarily shy away from mature topics(usually related to growing up) Pooh as a character has a fundamental, childlike innocence that can't help but be endearing.

When We first meet Pooh in Kingdom Hearts, he's sadly trying to figure out how you're supposed to say goodbye to yourself because all of his friends have seemingly ceased to exist and he feels that he's going to "go away" himself soon.(Becuase the Pages have been ripped from his book, you see.)

That's pretty freaking dark, yeah?

Admittedly... Normally I'm loathe to say this, but Team Four Star's retrospective isn't really a good way to experience Kingdom Hearts. There's a lot of deep diving that you need to do to properly understand it and they kind of... Skim over a lot of stuff that's important in favor of making up their own narrative, which is funny, but...

[LaZodiac]

An important thing to remember about the Kingdom Hearts universe is that canonically, the reason the world is like how it is is that an apocalypse of Darkness destroyed OUR world, and the only survivors where children who grew up on Disney films and JRPGs, and that's why the world is like how it is.

The only way they could find comfort was through thinking about the happy times they had with these pieces of media, and that stirred up enough Light to reform things within the void.

[asda fasda]

The story of Kindgom Hearts is that Squaresoft and Disney's Japanese operations were working on of the same office building and Tetsuya Nomura was in the elevator with a Disney rep and they got talking and "you know what would be neet, a final fantasy game with Disney characters" came up.

And then, the paraphrase that most comes up is that some Disney executives from back home came to a pitch meeting at Square once that idea came up from the grape vine, and Nomura showed them his fanfic and if got approved.

The general consensus among the Kingdom Heasts fan community is that he's a Mad Genius and the Ultimate Fanboy: People show up to conventions dressed as his OCs

Yeah Nomura rocks, I didn't know he was responsible for Kindgom Hearths

[Rater202]

An important thing to remember about the Kingdom Hearts universe is that canonically, the reason the world is like how it is is that an apocalypse of Darkness destroyed OUR world, and the only survivors where children who grew up on Disney films and JRPGs, and that's why the world is like how it is.

The only way they could find comfort was through thinking about the happy times they had with these pieces of media, and that stirred up enough Light to reform things within the void.

Not quite. We see the reality before the apocalypse in X and Union X, the prequel phone games, and it's not the "real world" though it does seem that the Disney Worlds did not properly exist prior to the Apocalypse(though a book of Prophecy can be used to visit simulations based on them and fight begins who do not yet exist.)

And the Final Fantasy and other Squarenix characters are all reimagined to some degree in the Kingdom Hearts multiverse: The most extreme example would be Zack, from the FF7 continuity, seemingly being a native to Hercules homeworld but we still have examples like Serpithoth being a physical manifestation of the Darkness in Cloud's heart and Squall changing his name to Leon over his shame at preventing his homeworld from falling into Darkness...

...I don't understand that last one myself.

[2D8HP]

I just bought a 1973 Norton 850 Commando on Tuesday motorcycle, and it was almost exactly ten years ago that I got rid of my last two running bikes, a 1973 Yamaha RD200, and s '78 Honda CB550 that had a '73 engine in it (weird that they all have engines from my Kindergarten year).

When I was a teenager in the 80's living with my Dad for a time he lived near "Mean Marshall's Motorcycles" when it was on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, and when I was with my Mom for most of the '70's and '80's we were next to TT Motors, which was at Adeline and Stuart, both shops specialized in British Bikes of the '60's and '70's which imprinted on me what a motorcycle should look like, and I've coveted one at least since I was sixteen. I long ago lost count of how many motorbikes I've owned (most of them during the seven years that I worked in a Japanese motorcycle shop), but I never had one with the evocative British names or style.

I had gone up to Placerville, CA to look at a "pristine" '74 Norton 850 that was being sold for $12,000 but by the time I was up there the seller told me he sold it five minutes before (so if I hadn't bothered to look for and bring a helmet I'd have made it.in time).

So I bought a rough one in Oakland instead, I'd seen it earlier because I went into my old neighborhood in Oakland where Marshall's son and his last employee still work on the old bikes because I wanted to confirm parts availability, and that they're still local skilled mechanics (yes to the parts, and there's some but not many to the mechanics).

The Norton actually reminds me a bit of the Honda CB550 I rode, but with two less cylinders, 300 more cc's, and a LOT more style (the front wheel will need to be re-laced for balance before I learn if the legendary better handling is true).

The Norton I bought is hardly pristine, but it was much cheaper to buy, it will be a project getting it into better condition, but I don't think that I'll bother with a full showroom restoration, let it show its "grey hair and wrinkles".

It'll be at least two months before the bike is at a stage that I'll feel it's ready to ride (though I did test it a little bit), and while I've ridden far dodgier bikes before, that wasn't this decade, and not when I had a four-year-old to raise.

I got rid of my previous bikes ten years ago when my wife found us an apartment north of Berkeley that didn't have the giant garage that the place in Oakland did, plus I only rode a couple of times more after my wife was pregnant 17 years ago.

That I'm raising a four-year-old and a sixteen year old, makes this a bad time, especially considering that I had nine friends who died riding in less than a decade, so why now?

Mid-life crises really, the weeks that I was told "You have an 80% chance of advanced lung cancer" sounded like a death sentence to me (thankfully a biopsy should something else), and after that I found I valued life itself less, but living more (if that makes any sense).

There was also a really nice condition '78 Triumph (worker's cooperative era) for sale, the asking price was more, but it was all "sorted", and may have been cheaper in the long run, still since they're new Triumphs now, and while if I squint really, really hard some new ones look like the old ones, they just don't enough alike for my tastes, plus they're too heavy and they lack kick-starters, and if I'm going to ride an old British bike, I'm vain enough to want people to know it, and the "Norton" logo does that. If I find room for it, and the Norton doesn't bleed my wallet too dry, I may get the Triumph as well anyway as a loaner bike. But I imagine the Norton will have more horsepower and be a more comfortable ride. I've shown a pic of the bike to the guys at work, and the younger men ask "Is it a cafe racer", and I explain that it won't have drop bars or rear sets, and the one man on the crew left who's older than me asks if I'll "make it a chopper", and I explain to him and them that "No, it's a standard, from when standards were standard and set the standard".

Here's a pic of a pristine '73 850

and I'm hoping after it's sorted my bike will look more like that, I have tentatively named the bike "Rocinante" ("Roxie" for short, should really be "Rossi" for short to more closely match the Spanish pronunciation, but eh), but in seeing the month of manufacture on it, both "Gemini" and "June" are in the running, and "June" was the name of the most beautiful woman that I ever dated, who died young in the '90's.

FWLIW, the last bike I rode looked a lot like this one in a pic I've included, so that my basis for comparison.

Besides the front wheel being wobbly I can spot right away that the exhaust manifolds are loose (because of a lot of exhaust coming from where the pipes meet the engine. The seat is torn, there's a big spot of paint removed from the tank were the metal looks a little rusty, and it doesn't have both (or matching) side covers, the motor seems surprisingly strong though. Since I now work as a plumber and am having a lot of re-occurring problems with my right arm I don't plan on doing much wrenching on it myself, I'll just be a "checkbook mechanic", I wish I could hire my younger self to do the work, that kid could've used the money! As it is maybe that kid can look through this old man's eyes riding a bike that only used to be seen through windows, or the few times he dared to step inside the shop before being chased away.

[Tvtyrant]

I just bought a 1973 Norton 850 Commando on Tuesday motorcycle, and it was almost exactly ten years ago that I got rid of my last two running bikes, a 1973 Yamaha RD200, and s '78 Honda CB550 that had a '73 engine in it (weird that they all have engines from my Kindergarten year).

When I was a teenager in the 80's living with my Dad for a time he lived near "Mean Marshall's Motorcycles" when it was on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, and when I was with my Mom for most of the '70's and '80's we were next to TT Motors, which was at Adeline and Stuart, both shops specialized in British Bikes of the '60's and '70's which imprinted on me what a motorcycle should look like, and I've coveted one at least since I was sixteen. I long ago lost count of how many motorbikes I've owned (most of them during the seven years that I worked in a Japanese motorcycle shop), but I never had one with the evocative British names or style.

I had gone up to Placerville, CA to look at a "pristine" '74 Norton 850 that was being sold for $12,000 but by the time I was up there the seller told me he sold it five minutes before (so if I hadn't bothered to look for and bring a helmet I'd have made it.in time).

So I bought a rough one in Oakland instead, I'd seen it earlier because I went into my old neighborhood in Oakland where Marshall's son and his last employee still work on the old bikes because I wanted to confirm parts availability, and that they're still local skilled mechanics (yes to the parts, and there's some but not many to the mechanics).

The Norton actually reminds me a bit of the Honda CB550 I rode, but with two less cylinders, 300 more cc's, and a LOT more style (the front wheel will need to be re-laced for balance before I learn if the legendary better handling is true).

The Norton I bought is hardly pristine, but it was much cheaper to buy, it will be a project getting it into better condition, but I don't think that I'll bother with a full showroom restoration, let it show its "grey hair and wrinkles".

It'll be at least two months before the bike is at a stage that I'll feel it's ready to ride (though I did test it a little bit), and while I've ridden far dodgier bikes before, that wasn't this decade, and not when I had a four-year-old to raise.

I got rid of my previous bikes ten years ago when my wife found us an apartment north of Berkeley that didn't have the giant garage that the place in Oakland did, plus I only rode a couple of times more after my wife was pregnant 17 years ago.

That I'm raising a four-year-old and a sixteen year old, makes this a bad time, especially considering that I had nine friends who died riding in less than a decade, so why now?

Mid-life crises really, the weeks that I was told "You have an 80% chance of advanced lung cancer" sounded like a death sentence to me (thankfully a biopsy should something else), and after that I found I valued life itself less, but living more (if that makes any sense).

There was also a really nice condition '78 Triumph (worker's cooperative era) for sale, the asking price was more, but it was all "sorted", and may have been cheaper in the long run, still since they're new Triumphs now, and while if I squint really, really hard some new ones look like the old ones, they just don't enough alike for my tastes, plus they're too heavy and they lack kick-starters, and if I'm going to ride an old British bike, I'm vain enough to want people to know it, and the "Norton" logo does that. If I find room for it, and the Norton doesn't bleed my wallet too dry, I may get the Triumph as well anyway as a loaner bike. But I imagine the Norton will have more horsepower and be a more comfortable ride. I've shown a pic of the bike to the guys at work, and the younger men ask "Is it a cafe racer", and I explain that it won't have drop bars or rear sets, and the one man on the crew left who's older than me asks if I'll "make it a chopper", and I explain to him and them that "No, it's a standard, from when standards were standard and set the standard".

Here's a pic of a pristine '73 850

and I'm hoping after it's sorted my bike will look more like that, I have tentatively named the bike "Rocinante" ("Roxie" for short, should really be "Rossi" for short to more closely match the Spanish pronunciation, but eh), but in seeing the month of manufacture on it, both "Gemini" and "June" are in the running, and "June" was the name of the most beautiful woman that I ever dated, who died young in the '90's.

FWLIW, the last bike I rode looked a lot like this one in a pic I've included, so that my basis for comparison.

Besides the front wheel being wobbly I can spot right away that the exhaust manifolds are loose (because of a lot of exhaust coming from where the pipes meet the engine. The seat is torn, there's a big spot of paint removed from the tank were the metal looks a little rusty, and it doesn't have both (or matching) side covers, the motor seems surprisingly strong though. Since I now work as a plumber and am having a lot of re-occurring problems with my right arm I don't plan on doing much wrenching on it myself, I'll just be a "checkbook mechanic", I wish I could hire my younger self to do the work, that kid could've used the money! As it is maybe that kid can look through this old man's eyes riding a bike that only used to be seen through windows, or the few times he dared to step inside the shop before being chased away.

Hey man! Welcome back! I'm so glad you didn't have advanced lung cancer! The new motorcycle sounds like a great hobby.

[Bartmanhomer]

Anyway, last week I went to the doctor and I lost 9 lbs. (223 lbs. to 214 lbs.)

[Anonymouswizard]

Kingdom Hearts being post apocalyptic is one of it's more interesting elements. I just wish it had more nuance to the Light versus Darkness conflict then Riku.


I really need to stop browsing Amazon, especially since it's only a month until my birthday. But the new flat is going to have more bookshelf space, and Alien RPG....

[Fyraltari]

I really need to stop browsing Amazon, especially since it's only a month until my birthday. But the new flat is going to have more bookshelf space, and Alien RPG....

Standard reminder that if something catches your fancy on Amazon you can probably contact the seller directly and complete the transaction without giving Amazon a cent.

[Rater202]

Kingdom Hearts being post apocalyptic is one of it's more interesting elements. I just wish it had more nuance to the Light versus Darkness conflict then Riku.

It's nuanced but the nuance is subtle.

Other than the EMblem HEartless, Heartless are a natural part of the worlds metaphyics... They're just not supposed to be where they are. It's an invasive species thing.

when you're n Halloween Town, a world that's much closer to the realm of darkness than most worlds, the Heartless are relatively docile until dr. Finklestein's artificial heart experiment drives them to a frenzy, because it's closer to their natural environment.

And pretty much everything bad that happened in BBS that wans't Xehanort's direct doing happened because Master Eraqus is a Knight Templer type so devoted to the light that he sees Darkness as inherently evil and pushed these views onto his students. Terra is denied his mark of MAstery because he has a very tiny amount of darkness in himself that he demonstrates immediate control of and is told he can't be a master till he conquers this Darkness... And everyone and their grandma tells him that it doesn't work like that and accepting and controlling his inner darkness is going to be better for him in the long run. In fact, up until Xehanort steals his body Terra doing exactly that and mastering his inherent power over Darkness is treated a as good thing.

Master Eraqus is also very quick to jump towards murdering one of his surrogate children in order to prevent bad things from happening when there are alternatives he's not considering, and when he gets his ass kicked for it he blames it on Darkness instead of admitting that no, he's kind of a jerk.

And in the third game when Master Xehanort gets control of Kingdom Hearts, it's revealed that part of his reasoning for spreading darkness is because he wants to provoke a cleansing Light that will just destroy everything. (Xehanort's motivations change over time. At first it was scientific curiosity and a desire to understand darkness but by the end of his life he's just done with everything and wants to force a hard reset.)

The theme, if you pay attention, is that neither Light nor Darkness are inherently good or evil. They are fundamental forces of reality and they should be respected and kept in balance.

Darkness can corrupt... But Light unchecked destroys everything.

The reason that using the Darkness is depicted as bad is because the bad guys are deliberately upsetting the balance for their own ends and because beings from the realm of light under normal circumstances aren't insulated from its effects. "There's nothing wrong with using it, but if you don't know what you're doing it will **** you up so it's better not to mess with it if you don't have to."

[Anonymouswizard]

Standard reminder that if something catches your fancy on Amazon you can probably contact the seller directly and complete the transaction without giving Amazon a cent.

I can probably hop into Central and buy it from an actual game shop. Also might take your advice on that, but I'm actively trying not to buy anything until I've actually moved.

[2D8HP]

Hey man! Welcome back! I'm so glad you didn't have advanced lung cancer! The new motorcycle sounds like a great hobby.

Thanks Tvtyrant!

I'm actually in a better mood than I have been in a long while.

As of now I have fantasies of riding the motorcycle from California to Ohio, meeting my daughter for the first time, maybe see some old friends who are scattered across the continent (though the one I'd most like to see is in Europe).

This is more "personal woes" than "friendly banter" but I suspect that my taking such a trip would pretty much destroy what's left of my marriage, amf while she did apologize for "not being there for you", learning that my faith in what old age with her would be like was wrong, so I may do it anyway.

Trip is tentatively scheduled for 2025.

[Lord Raziere]

So, let's talk about Winnie The Pooh. Winnie the Pooh is a stuffed bear with very little brain but quite a lot of heart. He is gluttonous but well-meaning, the only thing he care about more than 'Hunny' are his dear friends. While Pooh'series, especially under Disney's adaptations, doesn't nessesarily shy away from mature topics(usually related to growing up) Pooh as a character has a fundamental, childlike innocence that can't help but be endearing.

When We first meet Pooh in Kingdom Hearts, he's sadly trying to figure out how you're supposed to say goodbye to yourself because all of his friends have seemingly ceased to exist and he feels that he's going to "go away" himself soon.(Becuase the Pages have been ripped from his book, you see.)

That's pretty freaking dark, yeah?

Admittedly... Normally I'm loathe to say this, but Team Four Star's retrospective isn't really a good way to experience Kingdom Hearts. There's a lot of deep diving that you need to do to properly understand it and they kind of... Skim over a lot of stuff that's important in favor of making up their own narrative, which is funny, but...

Your talking to someone who long ago as a child watched winnie the pooh stories.....then as a teenager and adult, don't care about a single second about Winnie the pooh and wouldn't care if vanished off the face of the earth. similar to the barney effect: everyone outside the target demographic hates him. doesn't really matter how dark it is if I don't care about the character. and even for franchise I do like Aladdin, I can't bring myself to care because its so clearly scripted out so that Sora is protag-kun who stands in for the player experiencing their disney movie again but now while playing in it and you get to save all those worlds with donald and goofy being "lovable" idiots at your side. so the darkness isn't something that affects me because I know its all going to be reversed by the heroes actions its disney there is no other way this goes.

I think your right about the TFS retrospective part being a poor way to understand this though, they do fail to understand or miss a lot of things, and are better at show analysis than videogame analysis.

[Rater202]

Kingdom Hearts is a much less complicated version of Homestuck. Complete with time travel paradoxes, chess motifs, esoteric powers, and a great deal of focus on alchemy and symbolic logic.

As for it being a dark getting... By the end of the prolog, the main character's entire home universe is destroyed and everyone he's ever known, except for the girl he has a crush on and his best friend/rival are dead... And he doesn't know where the other two are or have any means of contacting them.

Meanwhile, a coalition of villains are kidnapping Disney Princesses and ripping out their souls in order to use them to create a weapon with which to seize control of the multiverse. You consistently fail to rescue these princesses.

By the climax of the game, you have to fight your best friend who has been thoroughly convinced that you've replaced him and is working for the bad guys who have him convinced that if he helps them it'll restore the girl's missing soul to her body, then your friend gets possessed by a sentient ball of evil and negativity, then you have to kill yourself using a weapon made of the stolen souls of Disney princesses because the girl's soul has been tagging along in your own all along and this is the only way to put her right.

You get brought back because the girl as vaguely defined op princess powers, but still. Pretty flipping dark.

[Tvtyrant]

Thanks Tvtyrant!

I'm actually in a better mood than I have been in a long while.

As of now I have fantasies of riding the motorcycle from California to Ohio, meeting my daughter for the first time, maybe see some old friends who are scattered across the continent (though the one I'd most like to see is in Europe).

This is more "personal woes" than "friendly banter" but I suspect that my taking such a trip would pretty much destroy what's left of my marriage, amf while she did apologize for "not being there for you", learning that my faith in what old age with her would be like was wrong, so I may do it anyway.

Trip is tentatively scheduled for 2025.

No offense but I feel like if after having a massive cancer scare your wife would end the relationship over seeing your daughter... You are probably best off either immediately going to couple's therapy or starting wrapping the relationship up.

It sounds like a fun trip though! If you go through Oregon give me a holler :)

[Lord Raziere]

Kingdom Hearts is a much less complicated version of Homestuck. Complete with time travel paradoxes, chess motifs, esoteric powers, and a great deal of focus on alchemy and symbolic logic.

Rater. that sentence does not help its case. first I understand Homestuck better than I do Kingdom Hearts, second: Homestuck is widely regarded as one the hardest to explain stories ever. saying how simple something is by saying its a less complex version of Homestuck is like saying its a less tall mountain: it doesn't matter because its still a mountain. and I'd rather keep climbing the one I'm already on, thank you very much.

on the darkness and again I say: Disney. darkness happening in Disney is like someone dying in DBZ: we all know it doesn't matter because it WILL get reversed though magical nonsense at the end. and whaddya know, that is exactly what happens. I think your forgetting how much of a mitigating factor a bright and shiny hero played straight is in terms of dark tone here.

[Keltest]

As far as Darkness(tm) goes, darkness is more of a tone than any sequence of events. The Star Wars universe is objectively a pretty grim and terrifying place, at least during the OT, but i wouldnt say any of the works get particularly dark. ESB is easily the closest, but it still ends on an optimistic note.

[Peelee]

Thanks Tvtyrant!

I'm actually in a better mood than I have been in a long while.

As of now I have fantasies of riding the motorcycle from California to Ohio, meeting my daughter for the first time, maybe see some old friends who are scattered across the continent (though the one I'd most like to see is in Europe).

This is more "personal woes" than "friendly banter" but I suspect that my taking such a trip would pretty much destroy what's left of my marriage, amf while she did apologize for "not being there for you", learning that my faith in what old age with her would be like was wrong, so I may do it anyway.

Trip is tentatively scheduled for 2025.

Congrats on not having cancer! That's always good news. As for the rest...well, I hope everything works out.

[2D8HP]

[...]No If you go through Oregon give me a holler :)

Okay, will do!

[Rater202]

Rater. that sentence does not help its case. first I understand Homestuck better than I do Kingdom Hearts, second: Homestuck is widely regarded as one the hardest to explain stories ever. saying how simple something is by saying its a less complex version of Homestuck is like saying its a less tall mountain: it doesn't matter because its still a mountain. and I'd rather keep climbing the one I'm already on, thank you very much.

on the darkness and again I say: Disney. darkness happening in Disney is like someone dying in DBZ: we all know it doesn't matter because it WILL get reversed though magical nonsense at the end. and whaddya know, that is exactly what happens. I think your forgetting how much of a mitigating factor a bright and shiny hero played straight is in terms of dark tone here.

...I'm wondering if this is a situation like the very first Treehouse of Horror special.

Unlike most Simpsons Halloween specials, the first one had a proper framing device of the kids in the treehouse on Halloween telling ghost stories, meanwhile, Homer is sitting outside listening to them in secret. After being dissatisfied with Bart's attempt at horror stories, Lisa recites Poe's The Raven..

Once it's over, BAt dismisses it as not being particularly frightening and he and Lisa have a brief discussion about how standards of what is "scary" change over time... Cut to Homer in bed that night unable to sleep because the story chilled him to the bone.

The story hit him differently than it hit the children, so it had a profound effect on him.

I'm wondering if the story of Kingdom Hearts is just hitting me differently...

Or maybe I'm not explaining it right.