🕯🍂🌙🥀🖤🥀🌙🍂🕯

May the autumn months bring you closure, understanding, and a feeling of contentment.

today is the day that percy and annabeth had their underwater kiss

According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.

sheds a single tear

every august 18th my notifications break and i go, fuck, tumblr has failed me once again, but it hasn’t. it hasn’t failed me. it’s just the taking the hobbits to isengard-iversary. happy 12 years

No offense summer, but 🖤🎃🍂🕷🔮🕸🌙👁🦇🔪👣⚰️💀🖤🕷🎃🍂🕸🌙👁🦇🕷💀🖤🎃🎃🎃🖤🕷🕸⚰️🦇👁🖤💀🕸🌙🍂⚰️⚰️⚰️🔮🍂🍂🍂🔮🔮🎃🖤🖤🕸💀👁🔪👣💀🖤🍂🎃 🕸💀👁🔪💀🖤🍂🎃🔮🕸🌙👁🦇🕷💀⚰️🖤🕷🖤🕸🔮🕸🌙🦇🕷🎃👣💀🍂🖤💀🕷🕷🌙🌙🎃🍂👣🍂🕸🌙👁🎃🎃🦇🎃💀🔮🕷🌙

Aqua’s experience in A Fragmentary Passage and subsequent Norting changed the entire way I look at Light and Darkness in the Kingdom Hearts series.

Up until now, the light/darkness dichotomy was only ever something I interpreted as being a plot-specific force within the narrative. Sure, we had characters verbally telling us that darkness is related to negative emotions, light is related to friendship and positivity, etc. but beyond characters getting powered up for battle after verbally making those connections (“My friends are my power,” basically anything that comes out of Ansem SOD’s mouth), we don’t really get a chance to see what that means.

A Fragmentary Passage connected the emotions to the forces in a much more obvious way, for me at least. I’ll never forget playing the mirror level that has Aqua’s inner monologue going the whole time and realizing that, holy shit, this game is about depression! And then we see the E3 trailer from this year. For her to get Norted, we know she had to succumb to The Darkness, and because we have her experience in AFP as a background, we know how she got to that point and exactly what she was feeling when it happened. (Yes, AFP ended on a more hopeful note, but … I still think this is probably what happened).

I’m playing through all the main games again, and suddenly, the rest of the series has a LOT more context. The Xehanort/Eraqus arguments get a lot more nuance. Honestly, I think Xehanort has a little bit of a point? Light and Darkness (ie: positive emotions and negative emotions) existing in a balance seems WAY healthier than just trying to have ALL POSITIVE EMOTIONS ALL THE TIME. This could apply to “The closer you get to the light, the greater your shadow becomes.” The more you try to push down or hide your negative emotions in an attempt to remain positive 24/7, the more that negativity festers beneath the surface and can explode out of you. Maybe this is what happened with Terra. Dealing with the Darkness is something that has plagued him since he was a kid, but because light-obsessed Eraqus basically raised him, he had to repress negativity until it sorta just exploded in BBS. (As someone with mental health problems who grew up in a family that didn’t talk about problems or emotions and just pretended everything was fine all the time… my most recent BBS playthrough hit me kind of hard.) Along these same lines “hearts of pure light” don’t seem totally healthy either? Maybe it’s different for Princesses of Heart, because they’re Naturally Occurring, but it makes total sense why my boy Ven was so fragile after Vanitas got ripped out of him. In any case I am REALLY SCARED for Sora. I know he was close to getting Norted in DDD, but if he just tries to stay positive all the time because so many people are counting on him my boy is going to BREAK.

Now, when I see the darkness cloud animation emanating off a character, I have context for what that means and what that feels like. When Terra uses his dark command styles, I used to think “well yeah, he’s mad” but know I get that he’s pissed. When a Nort uses dark attacks, I get that he’s channeling his greed, his feelings of superiority. When Sora goes into Anti-form, I get that this is his moment of release, where he physically can’t be his happy-go-lucky self. The black cloaks, which protect people when travelling in corridors of darkness, have the power to shield people from negative emotions. Does turning into a heartless feel like being overwhelmed with hopelessness and dread?

This also makes Riku’s arc way more interesting to me! His “road to dawn” becomes a road to recovery!! Instead of pushing down his negativity, he lives with it! He uses it to his advantage without letting it overtake him!!! He doesn’t pretend to be sunshine and rainbows, and his friends still love him!!!!

I don’t really have a conclusion to this. I’m just really glad that they did what they did with A Fragmentary Passage.

May I add:

Namine told data Sora in recoded that the memories she found in Sora’s heart could break him. The boy doesn’t have the capacity to handle so much pain. Being positive and happy all the time doesn’t mean you have mastery over heart. It doesn’t mean you have resiliency. 

To truly beat depression you have to have resiliency and a will to fight. That’s what Riku has, that’s why he was named Keyblade Master. He slipped deep into the depths of depression and made horrible decisions as a result, but when he was given a second chance he did everything in his power to amend his mistakes. 

If you really want to understand what living life is like for someone who has depression, look at Riku. He intentionally isolated himself from everyone during Days, but what he truly wanted was his friend back. In KH II Riku helped his friends from a safe distance. It wasn’t just because he didn’t want them to know about his appearance, it was because getting too close to them hurt. He didn’t feel worthy to be their friend and he was afraid they would reject him.

Depression will make you push everyone you love away for fear of being hurt. However, what you really want is for someone to see you for what you really are and accept you anyways. 

Also just gonna add this: Eraqus and Xehanort were supposed to be the bickering devil and angel on Terra’s shoulders. 

i was speaking to a customer in Japanese once at work and my coworker overheard me and later in the break room he said to our other coworkers “man Andrew was over there speakin Naruto”

hoodies are one of the most powerful and underappreciated articles of clothing. cold? put on a hoodie. raining? put on a hoodie. no bra? put on a hoodie. nothing to wear? hoodie. cripplingly low self esteem? you already know. so versatile! so multifaceted!

They like to steal each other’s stuff

ArtFight Revenge for @itsbobbah !

I have died and gone to heaven, the cuteness of my babies has killed me. thank you so much <3

anyone else fucking LOVE BEING IN BED???

bitch im in bed right now!! how did you know!!

reblog if ur in bed

People: WOW it’s August already, happy August everyone

Me internally: Halloween 🎃 Autumn 🍂 Halloween 🎃 Autumn 🍂 Halloween 🎃 Autumn 🍂 Halloween Autumn 🍂 Halloween 🎃 Autumn 🍂 Halloween 🎃 Autumn 🍂 Halloween

so it’s august 3 (in my timezone) and that means it’s 179 days until release

179*2=358

358/2=179

in other words there’s 358/2 days until kh3 is released