What do you think about Namine / Riku shipping?

[*TwilightNight*]

I love how this thread turned from Riku and Naminè to...

Is any of this SoRiku real?

...or not?

 

[LostArtist]

I love how this thread turned from Riku and Naminè to...

Is any of this SoRiku real?

...or not?

LOL

I mean I'm not surprised, it happens to any thread that has to do with riku and romance. And there's so much subtext in the games about it lol

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I love how this thread turned from Riku and Naminè to...

Is any of this SoRiku real?

...or not?

It’s hard to discuss a potential pairing with only a small amount of screen time. XD

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

this is honestly pretty much it. when not thinking about romance, they write believable friendships between sora and other female characters but it's like when the romance switch gets flipped they start thinking about it not as a friendship with romantic elements but a Romance~~~ or something, like they aren't characters but Roles.

^Now I don't feel the need to say more. lol

This happens a lot in writing, not just with Kingdom Hearts and I always find it kinda funny in a way. I believe there's a certain....stubbornness involved? An insistence that things must go a certain way to the point that characterization gets shafted so not to "interfere" with the story the writer thinks they want to tell.

It's a mindset you only really see with those who plan (and I mean PLAN) their story out. Those that like to just mash the keyboard and see where things go have no issue with writing good characters. Now stopping on the other hand.....

I see Nomura as more the planner type, despite the jokes how he just makes things up as he goes. While I'm positive he does, it's more that he "makes things up" to fill in the gaps between what's planned, then plans out how to use the "made up" parts for later. Which is actually a fine way of going about it, but having scenes that are really good and scenes that...come off like marking a checklist shows Nomura's too stubborn to change the planned parts to better fit his narrative.

That's how I see it anyway.

also like, did anyone else get this loading screen after that scene?

Spoiler Show

Wait? What? Is this real or are you messing with me?

 

[LostArtist]

^Now I don't feel the need to say more. lol

This happens a lot in writing, not just with Kingdom Hearts and I always find it kinda funny in a way. I believe there's a certain....stubbornness involved? An insistence that things must go a certain way to the point that characterization gets shafted so not to "interfere" with the story the writer thinks they want to tell.

It's a mindset you only really see with those who plan (and I mean PLAN) their story out. Those that like to just mash the keyboard and see where things go have no issue with writing good characters. Now stopping on the other hand.....

I see Nomura as more the planner type, despite the jokes how he just makes things up as he goes. While I'm positive he does, it's more that he "makes things up" to fill in the gaps between what's planned, then plans out how to use the "made up" parts for later. Which is actually a fine way of going about it, but having scenes that are really good and scenes that...come off like marking a checklist shows Nomura's too stubborn to change the planned parts to better fit his narrative.

That's how I see it anyway.


Wait? What? Is this real or are you messing with me?

wow, that's really interesting.


also it's obviously fake...
the real one is riku gushing over sora

 

[Deleted member]

I love how this thread turned from Riku and Naminè to...

Is any of this SoRiku real?

...or not?

Spoiler Show

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

Spoiler Show

Aqua was saved through the power of gay thoughts.

 

[silentmusic16]

Despite that a lot has happened with both Namine and Roxas since KH2 - not the least of which being Xion's entire existence - I have always been and will always remain a Roxas/Namine shipper. I know I'm biased but a few moments still felt a little shippy between them in 3 (not to mention that, at least in 2 they were something of a parallel to Sora/Kairi). I'd really rather not have Riku/Namine and Roxas/Xion, but who knows what'll happen?

 

[*TwilightNight*]

Despite that a lot has happened with both Namine and Roxas since KH2 - not the least of which being Xion's entire existence - I have always been and will always remain a Roxas/Namine shipper. I know I'm biased but a few moments still felt a little shippy between them in 3 (not to mention that, at least in 2 they were something of a parallel to Sora/Kairi). I'd really rather not have Riku/Namine and Roxas/Xion, but who knows what'll happen?

Being that I was one (as you can see by my aged signature and avatar which I am too lazy to change because I never intended on planning to stay so long in this mess once I spoiled myself galore...actually, why am I still here when I was so disappointed with 3) until I grew out of caring so much for shipping, Nomura didn't drop them for whatever reason. Unlike what some people want to believe. The Japanese line from Sora emphasized that Roxas was the most or second most to miss her, and she's important to him enough that once he spotted the Old Mansion's window where her room was, he stood transfixed gazing at it through Sora. He even flashed over him for a few seconds.

Considering the build up from the previous main entry and that Girl of My Dreams trope that popped up in Days, I just don't understand Nomura and his implications. If he didn't add any of the above for this game, it would have been fine I think.

Of course, like Kairi's heartfelt soliloquy depicting her grand love for Naminé and potential lesbian awakening, nothing came of it. It's still crazy to me how the most significant people aside from Sora connected to her didn't get their chance to interact with her whatsoever.

SoRiku is the only pair we can depend on in these trying times.

 

[Absent]

Rikunami and Sokai?

 

[Master Xehanort]

I think Nomura's really on the nose with the pairings he likes in the series. Riku and Namine, Sora and Kairi, Roxas and Xion. Xehanort and Darkness also comes to mind. Though Sora x Kairi is pretty much confirmed.

 

[Deleted member]

Honestly, I don't think Nomura even likes them, that's why they're so half-baked.

 

[Master Xehanort]

Honestly, I don't think Nomura even likes them, that's why they're so half-baked.

I think they're half-baked just because of the nature of the series and due to Nomura making stuff up as he goes along. A case could be made for Roxas and Namine when Kingdom Hearts II was new, but the invention of Xion messed that up. His indecisiveness (I assume) on whether to leave Roxas and Namine in Sora and Kairi's hearts or free them also contributed to that. I doubt he dislikes them, as he'd never even include hints otherwise. It'd be very easy for him to make every interaction platonic. But, to be honest? You might be right, I never know what's going on in his brain when it comes to stuff like this.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I think they're half-baked just because of the nature of the series and due to Nomura making stuff up as he goes along. A case could be made for Roxas and Namine when Kingdom Hearts II was new, but the invention of Xion messed that up. His indecisiveness (I assume) on whether to leave Roxas and Namine in Sora and Kairi's hearts or free them also contributed to that. I doubt he dislikes them, as he'd never even include hints otherwise. It'd be very easy for him to make every interaction platonic. But, to be honest? You might be right, I never know what's going on in his brain when it comes to stuff like this.

Idk, he seems pretty not into Sora and Kairi just by how he wrote them in KH3. There were ample moments that he could have injected their relationship into various moments as callbacks to Disney moments. Sora seems so much romance and never once does he think about Kairi in those moments as a comparison. He does at at the very end of KH3, but by that point Nomura already spent 90% of the game having Sora thinking about Riku and other pressing matters.

I think Nomura saw Sora and Kairi’s relationship as something he needed to fulfill and tie up after years of not touching it but leaving the threads there. Looking back, this felt very much like an ending rather than a beginning for their relationship.

Nomura does think of things as he goes, but he’s a chronic planner as well who always seeks to build his ideas based on specific visions he has. If Sora and Kairi were something he wanted to really develop, he would have had a plan for them.

 

[Divine Past]

Spoiler Show

I am a little surprise Nomura just did not kill Kairi off permanently so he never has to write for her ever again.

 

[kaseykockroach]

By the way, why do we still have spoiler filters here when this is the proclaimed Spoiler section? I don't mind doing such, of course, just confused. :S
I always got the impression Nomura includes Kairi because he's under some sort of obligation to, and gives the barest minimum screentime he can manage, then moves on to what he does care about (which is ice cream!).

 

[Divine Past]

By the way, why do we still have spoiler filters here when this is the proclaimed Spoiler section? I don't mind doing such, of course, just confused. :S
I always got the impression Nomura includes Kairi because he's under some sort of obligation to, and gives the barest minimum screentime he can manage, then moves on to what he does care about (which is ice cream!).

I am sort of kidding here but I think the only reason Nomura puts up with Kairi is that she is great for the opening/ending cutscenes sequences.

 

[alexis.anagram]

I lost what I was typing so you'll have to settle with Spongebob gifs for now.


Writing character first:


Writing gender, relationships, sexual orientation and race first:

I see your point, but I don't agree with that rigid dichotomy. All people are products of their family, their community, and their culture, and part of strong characterization is identifying and defining these collective characteristics and interpreting how they shape the individual. Even some of the better examples of conventional (mainstream) fantasy & fiction writing retains an awareness of this-- Tolkien's stories go to great lengths to integrate an interplay of differing societies and a factionalizing of lifestyles and perspectives which brings with it conflict, and in Star Wars the remote origins of Luke and maybe more pointedly the enslavement of Anakin, both occurring within the context of a larger society which is essentially hostile towards them, is a large part of what ultimately shapes them into the people that they become. Beyond that, we can look at the Classics of any society and it becomes fundamental to understanding the text that a cultural lens be applied over it, because there is a near ubiquitous concern for, and a constant investigation of, the "role" of any given person within society-- which makes sense considering the earliest modes of storytelling were predominantly intended as vehicles for social roleplaying and hypothesizing a communal structure which could be shown to be both reasonable and practicable.

That is to say, it's amateurish to think that it's possible to create a character who is non-cultured, non-gendered, and non-racialized, and naive to think that an audience will not project its own cultural readings into one's work: stories exist to reflect society, and radical stories exist as a means to argue for and/or affect change within it. Saying that these elements of a person are somehow secondary, or come after the actualization of the individual, is counterintuitive: at its worst, this theory presumes a normative baseline that can be reliably asserted as the default conceptualization of what is "human" (i.e. whatever the dominant culture prefers) absent a direct correlation to some other sociopolitical marker, which is exactly how we've all been conditioned to internalize the idea that characters are straight unless they're proven to be gay, white unless they're stated to be non-white, etc. This is why we have such emphatic histories of LGBTQ lit, Black cinema, and all varieties of genres which specifically and consciously advance a social agenda, and/or seek to identify and answer for social issues, in a way that is often not immediately observable in the real world. i.e. Moonlight is a gay, Black film: not just another movie, but with characters who happen to be gay and Black.

With that in mind, part of the problem with Sora and Kairi's, and to a lesser extent Riku's, characterization is actually just how small of a reference point they seem to have with regards to the rest of the world(s) around them. Riku is at least motivated by the dull quietude of his world of origin to seek broader horizons, which tells us something about where he came from and where he wants to go, but Sora and especially Kairi are really hard to humanize, they have no telling traits that give them a real sense of grounding in terms of what drives and motivates them as far as their personal and shared histories are concerned. Sora just seems to like being likeable (which, OK, fair enough) and Kairi seems to just really want Sora to like her. They're very Bella Swan-ish, moreso a collection of quirks and tics that vaguely resemble people, and when they're placed together this deficiency of character becomes particularly glaring. Opportunities to expand on things that could give them some grounding, like identifying some of Kairi's thoughts or feelings about the world she came from (what it means that she came from there) by maybe having her visit it while she's hanging around with a guy who also comes from that same world, are generally missed, which only serves to further highlight the poor quality of design surrounding them.

Compare that with a group of people like RAX, who each have clearly defined origins, arcs and objectives which are not just personal, but speak to and define the problem of "social" roles (which in KH are very, very broad conceptions, like...being human, or not) within the series, and it's not hard to see why they're generally considered the strongest trio. Even characters like Namine and TAV, though they're mishandled at times, at least give the sense that they're participants in the universe, both affecting and being affected by the circumstances of where they came from, and where that causes them to go. Sora has a little of that, Kairi has practically none, and that's why their romance is not great.

tl;dr, KH would be a better game series if it was a gay, Black film. Any questions.

 

[LostArtist]

Opportunities to expand on things that could give them some grounding, like identifying some of Kairi's thoughts or feelings about the world she came from (what it means that she came from there) by maybe having her visit it while she's hanging around with a guy who also comes from that same world, are generally missed, which only serves to further highlight the poor quality of design surrounding them.

nice read and yea that type of stuff does matter, nothing exists in a vacuum. And character wise 358 does seem like a more compelling story. Do you think the first game is more in line with that, cause like 358 I feel like the first game's story/characterization is pretty well done compared to the others.


Also (on what I quoted you on) yea, that would have been really nice for kairi.

 

[qbaysan]

To be honest, I thought the ship was a crack pairing before KHIII. I thought it was hilarious when they revealed Riku's design looking like Noctis last year, thinking about him and Namine possibly being shipped because of it. And then I laughed out loud when they made that Noctis/Stella parallel in the Ending of KHIII.

But then I saw the Secret Ending, Nomura wasn't kidding. If he can make his Versus a reality, he'll drag almost everything at the tip of his fingertips to achieve what he lost.