"i'm in a constant state of getting cut,
so why don't i feel anything?"
i've only recently noticed that i haven't been updating this lately. i don't know whether it's because i don't have anything interesting to talk about anymore, i'm just a lazy idiot who would rather lie around and do nothing or if it's because i've been tied up with my band and school and what have you. i've made myself promise...myself that i'd try to update this more often because i almost always have something to rant about, and by the time i get access to a computer so i can put all those thoughts down it's usually late in the day and i don't feel like doing it anymore.
so let's see...what to talk about, what to talk about...?
ugh, maybe i shouldn't have drank that coke. my chest feels like it's going to explode.
weird - my itunes is on shuffle and by chance, just when i was going to start talking about 358/2 days xion's theme begins to play. i think she knows...
i actually finished playing the game a week or so ago but i've never really given my analysis or full review of it yet...so i guess that's what i'll be talking about today =)
okay let's just get this straight first - i know a lot of people don't like xion, and it's easy to see why. she was a very last-minute character, another kairi-lookalike that the developers at square-enix just managed to add in a vain effort to quell the worst of the akuroku fandom. obviously their plan did not fare so well - in fact i think it made the akuroku fandom expand. i mean, for those who finished the game or are far into it - there are a LOT of akuroku-ish scenes or moments; even for those who don't support akuroku it's easy to see which parts i'm talking about. so what better than to add a new female character that coincidentally looks like kairi and naminé into the picture?i actually finished playing the game a week or so ago but i've never really given my analysis or full review of it yet...so i guess that's what i'll be talking about today =)
now don't get me wrong - i liked 358/2 days: the gameplay was fun and the multiplayer aspect of it was something new; being able to play as your favourite organization XIII number was definitely something everyone liked (aside from roxas i found larxene a blast to play as), and of course with every game there comes a few flaws too. the camera controls were kind of annoying, even when i set it to option B - but aside from that i think that was the only thing about the gameplay that irked me.
the storyline, however, i can start ranting about that to no end. despite the fact that xion really is a last-minute character there really isn't a lot of reason to hate the poor girl: i mean, the organization already hates her as it is...why can't people give her a chance? how would you like it if you found out that you were never supposed to BE a person in the first place? what if you weren't supposed to have a real face, a real personality, real feelings? what if you were supposed to just be some kind of laboratory experiment? sure, it's one thing being a nobody - at least you had some kind of an existence before. at least you had a heart and memories of having a heart. when you're nothing but an experiment, however, you've got nothing to cling onto. you were created, not born. you're more of a thing than a person, really.
but the excess hatred towards xion isn't what really bothers me; it's the fact that the developers of square-enix decided to focus on her friendship with roxas and axel that makes my stomach churn. now i'm not saying that she doesn't have the right to be best friends with them; the scene at the end where you see the three having fun on top of the clock tower is endearing and heartbreaking at the same time, especially when she begins to fade away. the thing is, why did they even bother to create xion when there's another main character the developers have yet to shed some light on? you already have sora's story: the spiky-haired, keyblade-wielding hero who's meant to save the universe from the darkness ; riku: the best friend of said spiky-haired hero who momentarily turns to darkness but finds out in the end that his friends are what matters most; kairi: the love interest of the spiky-haired hero that helps him to see through the darkness, even if she isn't physically there; and roxas: the somewhat anti-hero of the series who questions his and the organization's motives and if it's really right to be following them. we've pretty much got a good background of all of them because they're the main characters of the story. we know where they're from, what kind of people they're like and the hardships they had to go through. we practically know them inside and out. when square-enix announced 358/2 days i was psyched, not only because we were going to learn about the organization's prime days but also because there was a possibility of expanding on one of the main characters that we almost know nothing about.
who am i talking about?
naminé, of course!
who can forget about the adorable, somewhat pathetic little girl who messed with sora's memories in castle oblivion? naminé is kairi's nobody - a nobody of a main character, if i may add - yet we know almost nothing about her. the only things we DO know are:
1. she's kairi's nobody
2. she's a special nobody with the abilities to express real emotions and rearrange sora's memories and the people connected to him
3. she's quiet, shy and somewhat withdrawn; she blindly follows her captor's orders in the beginning, but when she realizes she's hurting other people she begins to rebel
4. she's lonely
5. she can be more of a damsel in distress than kairi
we don't know where she came to be, how she got her name, where she was before castle oblivion, and so many other things that square-enix has so kindly left out in the games. the thing about 358/2 days; why did they have to add an entirely new character into the story instead of expanding on an already-existing character? xion's great and all but naminé needs some love too!
speaking of love, ever since the announcement of 358/2 days a lot of people have been hopping onto the roxion bandwagon. now i'm not saying that's a bad thing - if you support the pairing by all means support it - but in my opinion it's basically masturbation, just like soroku and namiri. xion and roxas are practically the same person, so that's basically doing it with yourself, isn't it? but yeah, anyway that's just my opinion - back to the main point...
i don't really know what roxas and namine's real relationship is in the games, but i'm only going to assume it's like sora and kairi's relationship since they are their respective nobodies. i mean, if tetsuya decides that roxas and namine's relationship is a familial one wouldn't it be kind of weird for them when sora and kairi finally confess their undying love for each other? i'm just saying that the possibility of them having romantic feelings for each other are very likely - a lot of people that don't support the pairing only see them as a brother-sister kind of relationship because they've only known each other for like six days or whatever, which is fine and all, but most of those people are either namora or akuroku fans. i'm just giving out a general observation, based on people's comments on fanmade youtube videos - yes, i do my research. i'm in the journalism program at school, after all. haha.
what i really thought should have happened in 358/2 days is somewhat of a forbidden love story between roxas and naminé. yeah yeah, i know what you're thinking: just 'cause i support rokunami means that i'm in dire need for some interaction in between the two. honestly that's PART of the reason why - i'm not going to lie to you - but another part of me is speaking realistically. it makes sense, doesn't it? roxas is sora's nobody, naminé is kairi's nobody; sora and kairi obviously have romantic feelings for each other...blah blah blah i don't want to get into it because it'll just get more complicated from this point. basically i think that if the main plot of 358/2 days was a romeo and juliet thing between our favourite blondes it would make a lot more sense. like, look what they did to xion: they made her best friends with roxas and axel, only to have her completely erased in the end. total waste of character creation, right? her personality develops throughout the story and everything, and in the end she's wiped clean from everyone's memory. what is up with that? not only is that unfair to xion but it's also a bit of a blunder on the developers' parts: they kind of just wasted their own time, when they could've just expanded on naminé's background.
okay, this is what i THOUGHT should've happened: mind you i WILL be writing a story on this so expect it to be up after we're all mad here is completed =D
-naminé means born from the waves; 'nami' means 'ocean wave' in japanese and 'né' means 'birth' in french. not only is this an allusion to kairi's name, this also gives me the impression that she was born on destiny islands. xemnas finds her, just like he did with roxas, and he gives her a new name and brings her over to the world that never was, where he explains everything about the heartless, nobodies, darkness and such.
-sometime later xemnas finds roxas and he joins the organization as the thirteenth member. somehow he and naminé meet and they grow closer as friends...for now.
-now if my memory is correct axel is only present in the game for around 20 or so days before he leaves for castle oblivion...which means that naminé leaves too. this is where the romeo/juliet aspect kicks in and they get seperated, but they promise to be together again in the near future.
-the castle oblivion hoopla happens and naminé meets sora, roxas' other half; he reminds her of roxas and she feels all lonely and such and she feels like a dick for messing around with his memories, blah blah blah you know the story haha
-when axel returns from castle oblivion he tells roxas that no one survived, which obviously breaks the poor boy's non-existent heart
-meanwhile roxas is struggling with his distant memories of sora's past and figuring out what his role is in organization xiii, along with axel and xion's (i'm still including her in the plot since she's now officially a character...i can't just omit her) strange behaviour. he eventually finds out what xion's purpose is and goes out to find her...they fight and before she fades away she tells him that naminé is indeed alive, which spurs him to completely leave the organization and embark on an epic search for his beloved blonde witch!
-he encounters riku and demands to know where naminé is; riku, being his emo self, tells him something cryptic and foreboding and starts a fight. they fight, roxas loses, riku takes him to the mansion where DiZ orders naminé to erase his memories and replace them with fake ones; naminé feels bad but she knows it's for the best...
-and then the game, or story, or whatever ends with roxas spending his first day as a seemingly normal teenage boy in twilight town with naminé solemnly looking on from a near distance *cue utada hikaru's passion*
of course that's a very generalized explanation - when i start writing the story there'll be more stuff squeezed in between but i'm not gonna put all of that stuff in just now. i don't want to spoil the story for you, do i? =) but yeah, that's what i thought should've happened. i don't think xion should be taken away from the plot since i've grown to like her and i don't have the heart to remove her from the story altogether. i guess in a way it'll still be 358/2 days, just modified a little bit so that naminé has more of a purpose in the story.
holy crapola, i wrote a shitload today didn't i? and it's all about 358/2 days too! phew...well, time for my featured song:
amazing, AMAZING band - and they're from my home country too! i'm absolutely in love with these guys - i've seen them live and they give out a hell of a lot of energy. i've featured one of their songs on my earlier entries - we are the sound - which i also think is my personal theme song for organization XIII and the castle that never was. the lyrics just seem to fit with their situation and everything.
this song was one of the first songs i've heard from them - dallas' voice never ceases to amaze me, and george's screaming is so fun to kick around to. i might see them again, along with billy talent and against me - two other great canadian bands - next march. really stoked about that!
okay, i think that's enough writing for one day. i reeeeally need to start writing my other stories...
the storyline, however, i can start ranting about that to no end. despite the fact that xion really is a last-minute character there really isn't a lot of reason to hate the poor girl: i mean, the organization already hates her as it is...why can't people give her a chance? how would you like it if you found out that you were never supposed to BE a person in the first place? what if you weren't supposed to have a real face, a real personality, real feelings? what if you were supposed to just be some kind of laboratory experiment? sure, it's one thing being a nobody - at least you had some kind of an existence before. at least you had a heart and memories of having a heart. when you're nothing but an experiment, however, you've got nothing to cling onto. you were created, not born. you're more of a thing than a person, really.
but the excess hatred towards xion isn't what really bothers me; it's the fact that the developers of square-enix decided to focus on her friendship with roxas and axel that makes my stomach churn. now i'm not saying that she doesn't have the right to be best friends with them; the scene at the end where you see the three having fun on top of the clock tower is endearing and heartbreaking at the same time, especially when she begins to fade away. the thing is, why did they even bother to create xion when there's another main character the developers have yet to shed some light on? you already have sora's story: the spiky-haired, keyblade-wielding hero who's meant to save the universe from the darkness ; riku: the best friend of said spiky-haired hero who momentarily turns to darkness but finds out in the end that his friends are what matters most; kairi: the love interest of the spiky-haired hero that helps him to see through the darkness, even if she isn't physically there; and roxas: the somewhat anti-hero of the series who questions his and the organization's motives and if it's really right to be following them. we've pretty much got a good background of all of them because they're the main characters of the story. we know where they're from, what kind of people they're like and the hardships they had to go through. we practically know them inside and out. when square-enix announced 358/2 days i was psyched, not only because we were going to learn about the organization's prime days but also because there was a possibility of expanding on one of the main characters that we almost know nothing about.
who am i talking about?
naminé, of course!
who can forget about the adorable, somewhat pathetic little girl who messed with sora's memories in castle oblivion? naminé is kairi's nobody - a nobody of a main character, if i may add - yet we know almost nothing about her. the only things we DO know are:
1. she's kairi's nobody
2. she's a special nobody with the abilities to express real emotions and rearrange sora's memories and the people connected to him
3. she's quiet, shy and somewhat withdrawn; she blindly follows her captor's orders in the beginning, but when she realizes she's hurting other people she begins to rebel
4. she's lonely
5. she can be more of a damsel in distress than kairi
we don't know where she came to be, how she got her name, where she was before castle oblivion, and so many other things that square-enix has so kindly left out in the games. the thing about 358/2 days; why did they have to add an entirely new character into the story instead of expanding on an already-existing character? xion's great and all but naminé needs some love too!
speaking of love, ever since the announcement of 358/2 days a lot of people have been hopping onto the roxion bandwagon. now i'm not saying that's a bad thing - if you support the pairing by all means support it - but in my opinion it's basically masturbation, just like soroku and namiri. xion and roxas are practically the same person, so that's basically doing it with yourself, isn't it? but yeah, anyway that's just my opinion - back to the main point...
i don't really know what roxas and namine's real relationship is in the games, but i'm only going to assume it's like sora and kairi's relationship since they are their respective nobodies. i mean, if tetsuya decides that roxas and namine's relationship is a familial one wouldn't it be kind of weird for them when sora and kairi finally confess their undying love for each other? i'm just saying that the possibility of them having romantic feelings for each other are very likely - a lot of people that don't support the pairing only see them as a brother-sister kind of relationship because they've only known each other for like six days or whatever, which is fine and all, but most of those people are either namora or akuroku fans. i'm just giving out a general observation, based on people's comments on fanmade youtube videos - yes, i do my research. i'm in the journalism program at school, after all. haha.
what i really thought should have happened in 358/2 days is somewhat of a forbidden love story between roxas and naminé. yeah yeah, i know what you're thinking: just 'cause i support rokunami means that i'm in dire need for some interaction in between the two. honestly that's PART of the reason why - i'm not going to lie to you - but another part of me is speaking realistically. it makes sense, doesn't it? roxas is sora's nobody, naminé is kairi's nobody; sora and kairi obviously have romantic feelings for each other...blah blah blah i don't want to get into it because it'll just get more complicated from this point. basically i think that if the main plot of 358/2 days was a romeo and juliet thing between our favourite blondes it would make a lot more sense. like, look what they did to xion: they made her best friends with roxas and axel, only to have her completely erased in the end. total waste of character creation, right? her personality develops throughout the story and everything, and in the end she's wiped clean from everyone's memory. what is up with that? not only is that unfair to xion but it's also a bit of a blunder on the developers' parts: they kind of just wasted their own time, when they could've just expanded on naminé's background.
okay, this is what i THOUGHT should've happened: mind you i WILL be writing a story on this so expect it to be up after we're all mad here is completed =D
-naminé means born from the waves; 'nami' means 'ocean wave' in japanese and 'né' means 'birth' in french. not only is this an allusion to kairi's name, this also gives me the impression that she was born on destiny islands. xemnas finds her, just like he did with roxas, and he gives her a new name and brings her over to the world that never was, where he explains everything about the heartless, nobodies, darkness and such.
-sometime later xemnas finds roxas and he joins the organization as the thirteenth member. somehow he and naminé meet and they grow closer as friends...for now.
-now if my memory is correct axel is only present in the game for around 20 or so days before he leaves for castle oblivion...which means that naminé leaves too. this is where the romeo/juliet aspect kicks in and they get seperated, but they promise to be together again in the near future.
-the castle oblivion hoopla happens and naminé meets sora, roxas' other half; he reminds her of roxas and she feels all lonely and such and she feels like a dick for messing around with his memories, blah blah blah you know the story haha
-when axel returns from castle oblivion he tells roxas that no one survived, which obviously breaks the poor boy's non-existent heart
-meanwhile roxas is struggling with his distant memories of sora's past and figuring out what his role is in organization xiii, along with axel and xion's (i'm still including her in the plot since she's now officially a character...i can't just omit her) strange behaviour. he eventually finds out what xion's purpose is and goes out to find her...they fight and before she fades away she tells him that naminé is indeed alive, which spurs him to completely leave the organization and embark on an epic search for his beloved blonde witch!
-he encounters riku and demands to know where naminé is; riku, being his emo self, tells him something cryptic and foreboding and starts a fight. they fight, roxas loses, riku takes him to the mansion where DiZ orders naminé to erase his memories and replace them with fake ones; naminé feels bad but she knows it's for the best...
-and then the game, or story, or whatever ends with roxas spending his first day as a seemingly normal teenage boy in twilight town with naminé solemnly looking on from a near distance *cue utada hikaru's passion*
of course that's a very generalized explanation - when i start writing the story there'll be more stuff squeezed in between but i'm not gonna put all of that stuff in just now. i don't want to spoil the story for you, do i? =) but yeah, that's what i thought should've happened. i don't think xion should be taken away from the plot since i've grown to like her and i don't have the heart to remove her from the story altogether. i guess in a way it'll still be 358/2 days, just modified a little bit so that naminé has more of a purpose in the story.
holy crapola, i wrote a shitload today didn't i? and it's all about 358/2 days too! phew...well, time for my featured song:
amazing, AMAZING band - and they're from my home country too! i'm absolutely in love with these guys - i've seen them live and they give out a hell of a lot of energy. i've featured one of their songs on my earlier entries - we are the sound - which i also think is my personal theme song for organization XIII and the castle that never was. the lyrics just seem to fit with their situation and everything.
this song was one of the first songs i've heard from them - dallas' voice never ceases to amaze me, and george's screaming is so fun to kick around to. i might see them again, along with billy talent and against me - two other great canadian bands - next march. really stoked about that!
okay, i think that's enough writing for one day. i reeeeally need to start writing my other stories...
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