My longest sequence yet, pretty much entirely because I split the group in two and did alternating POVs within the main group to get more story. I had story with Elsa and also one with Anna. I split the group firstly in the most logical way I could think: Kairi, Namine, and Roxas with Anna; Sora, Riku, Xion, Axel with Elsa.
First I wanted to split up the couples because there always is someone who freaks that their counterpart is not there. I wanted to send Axel to Elsa because of the contrast in ice and fire. I also wanted Riku to have the opportunity to talk to Elsa about dark pasts. Sora's great at bringing even the most stubborn person to a place where they'll talk. And I couldn't just have all the boys go one place and the girls another, so Xion went with them. Plus, that enabled me to have fun with the Xion-Axel dynamic. I love their friendship. It's fantastic. This split allowed Namine and Kairi to become suspicious of Anna's "I just met him but I want to marry him" antics, and also allowed them to be terribly suspicious of Hans, but Roxas, who misses those social cues, would be rather oblivious to it. It also allowed for Roxas and Kristoff to kind of bond in a weird way over how women behave weirdly.
Of course, after they all meet up in Elsa's ice castle, everyone gets to talk to everyone. Namine and Elsa talking is particularly a necessity. (That and Namine fixes Anna's memory issue--something that I didn't think solved in the movie.) Then, when the guards come in and everyone gets split up again, it doesn't stick with the original splits, because I thought that would be weird. Granted, Namine and Xion were the only two that swapped, but that's how the battle ended up lining up.
Me doing a Frozen story was in part because I knew Frozen was popular and it fit well into the Kingdom Hearts universe. The other reason I did it was because I thought that the original story of Frozen had a lot of plot holes in it that putting it into the bounds of Kingdom Hearts could fix (granted, the movie itself could just have parts rewritten to be better, but this was my golden opportunity so I took it.) And I stuck pretty close to a story that Kingdom Hearts got a hold of. The most major difference I think was Hans' ability to use Fire. Something that I added because I saw a tumblr most months ago postulating that Hans might have fire powers, due to him always wearing gloves and how that would make for an interesting plot twist.
The biggest things that I chose to "fix" were Anna and Elsa's relationship to each other, the events in the ice castle, and Anna's trip to the trolls. I wanted some real stuff to be solved in the trip to the ice castle, not a whole bunch of people not listening to each other. Namine fixing Anna's memory and informing Elsa about it was also part of it and obviously something that can only happen in my canon. Even without that, some sort of explanation about why Anna can be told now would have been nice as far as the actual movie went. I took out everything unnecessary regarding the trolls (which was most of it as far as the middle of the movie was concerned.) All that needed to happen was the bit about true love--no obnoxious shipping songs, no bunny trails, just straight-to-the-point moving the plot forward. Fluff is nice, obnoxious shipping songs are not.
And I'm sure ya'll hate me now because I've critiqued Frozen. But I don't care. I rewrote this to make myself feel better about some SERIOUS issues with the writing. Come on, Disney, you're better than that.
And during all that I also have Cloud being more of a reasonable human being instead of his broody self. I'm not sure why he started acting happier, but he did. He started taking blows as they came instead of worrying about the next sixteen of them. Even Hades' hellhounds didn't put a damper on his mood.
Then I also have Terra, Aqua, and Ven poking around on Kuin's homeworld. I was thinking of a place that they could go to learn something about Xehanort and I remembered that he'd taken particular offense to Kuin's people so there was as good a place as any. They also had the overlaid negative feelings because negativity was a motif for this part of the fic. And Terra being able to recognize them was great. And then they run into Kuin--they run into Kuin more than anyone else this fic, go figure--and they talk some sense into her. Kuin's not been doing so hot because the events of the past 20 years are catching up to her. And the three of them are so great, they convince her that working together is better than not working together.
Ima take a moment and talk about Axel's relationship with Xion. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again anyway. I love their friendship. It reminds me of me and a friend of mine actually. The age difference (his and mine and the apparent age difference between Xion and Axel) is definitely something fun to play with. It's almost brother-sisterly, but at the same time it's very much friendship based. And they just poke so much fun at each other it's great.
I also love Xion's reactions to the World around her. Because her time in the Organization didn't really give her a good idea of what any of that was. And then she went to Riku's place and spent all the time that anyone else would be sleeping reading books and so she has a bit of a skewed sense of reality and it shows up in funny moments. Like when the trolls started mentioning true love.
And just when you thought we weren't going to deal with a Remnant for a while, I throw one at you and he tries to Nort Aqua. Obviously it's not effective because Aqua's heart is strong and she puts up a great struggle (and Kuin very nearly becomes a huge coward) but Aqua now has a bit of Xehanort's memories to paw through and a lot to think about.
Then I've got quiet expansions in Hollow Bastion. Not taking too much time out of the story to go over minutia, but the school foundation has been found, Space Paranoids is being expanded (I half wanted it to include something like int he world of Wreck it Ralph, but I didn't have the time to do that in the fic as a whole.) Additionally, the magic is returning to the place, and everyone's quietly taking bets as to what Zack is up to. Oh, and Cloud's perkier.
Things I'm down with:
-The idea that there are some Worlds not touched by Heartless
-Sora channeling Goofy
-Riku insisting to Elsa that he's seen worse
-Xion being blunt
-Sora, Riku, Xion, and Axel helping Elsa get control of her powers
-Cloud getting better
-Cloud trying to get rid of the hellhounds by stopping random places inside and outside the Betwixt and Between
-Kristoff being shocked that Roxas, Namine, and Kairi have seen worse and weirder than his current situation
-Terra's ability to recognize that negative feelings were probably a result of external forces
-The line "butt singed through the ice yet?"
-Axel flipping Xion off
-Namine downing an ether before she gets down to business
-Axel setting fire to a staircase
-Aerith just casually saying Denzel can stay (but meaning it very seriously)
-Yuffie telling Denzel that "they'll tell you when you're older"
-Sora somehow managing never to wake up in prison until Arendelle and Riku's bafflement about that
-Xion wondering why Kairi uses "perhapsy" words
-Xion expecting Anna and Kristoff to kiss because that's what happens in the books
-Kuin deciding to go after Xigbar with utmost determination
-Xion correctly assuming that the others are in prison though having no way of proving it until later
-The line "Hey Sora, how about you come find me and save me the trouble of finding you."
-Axel telling Elsa that not feeling is not cool, because he would know
-Them all poking fun at Hades
No comments:
Post a Comment