Chapter 226 Commentary

Idk I was maybe gonna talk about the Soul Eater AU but. nah.

reasons you should watch Soul Eater, though

• it's near impossible to not care about every single character in that show (or at least the ones that have more than like 10 minutes of screentime)
• you like Larxene? Medusa is basically Larxene.
• you like Repliku? Crona's basically Repliku tbh
• Crona also gets a redemption arc and I cried like a baby
• the main character is a girl who wields a scythe and wins the day through bravery alone. how cool is that.
• there was literally 0 focus on romance so if you want a nice story about kids being friends this is it
• tbh if you've liked Kingdom Hearts I can't think of a reason why you wouldn't like Soul Eater

Keep Moving Forward from caracoid on 8tracks Radio.

I was gonna post my nort mix because Xemnas is this chapter but I also decided nah.

Getting hardly three hours of sleep will do that to you, I guess

OH OH I KNOW WHAT I SHOULD SHARE THOUGH REAL QUICK--I got around to making new icons for the cast's tumblr, swapping from the limited "variations of 5 expressions" that talksprites gave me, to the much more varied option of nabbing icons from the mangas

I grabbed over 200 icons, and colored every single one of them. Am I crazy? Yeah. But I also had a lot of spare time and it's already done.

WHAT'S NEAT is it got me to solidify skintone headcanons and stuff, also a consistent look for Sora's scar

Look at 'em:

 

I mean the Riku 'n Namine ones are kinda boring but look at that. Riku looking happy. look at that i have one of him looking happy though I couldn't get my hands on one of him looking sarcastic--well that wasn't in darkmode anyway. All the ones of him in dark mode he looks either sarcastic or 5000% done with everything and

that's actually pretty accurate

THE SORA N KAIRI ONES ARE MY FAVES THOUGH

 

look at that I'm so proud of these Kairi ones I am so proud plus I love her with freckles and. hgljasdf I'm so proud

AND THEN THE SORA ONES

I'M PRETTY HAPPY WITH THESE TOO OMG like his skin probably isn't as dark as it should be tbh... and no the scar doesn't look perfect in all of them but the important thing is that it's there and it's roughly in the same place every time and more importantly

it's there

The fact that it's there is all I care about

also have a Roxas because I got him too

yeah man

Anyway Chapter

read link

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There was a thing about Vexen disabling the failsafe for Roxas but a) it didn’t flow b) timing??? + Xemnas was litearlly in the room for like the entire time and only moved Vexen when he’s like “I need to go stop Riku and need you not near a computer”

So

And there was this snippet:

“Xemnas left recently” ‘cept Vexen was like “Ve- mg. Xemnas left recently. I’m Vexen. I obviously didn’t go anywhere.” 

But I forgot what lead into it soooooooooooo

The word “practicioner” kept coming to mind instead of fighter but,,,,, practicioner is definitely not what I was looking for. (I don’t think fighter was, either, but it was late I was tired a good month ago mind you when I actually wrote this I didn’t want to sit and come up with the right word)

Just a reminder that Vexen insists on using Correct Terminology and calls Xigbar’s clone Xigbar’s Replica

GOOD RIDDANCE, VEXEN THINKS ABOUT AXEL. GOOD RIDDANCE. I’m

I DID NOT GO INTO THIS  PLANNING TO PARALLEL KH2 AND SORA AND SAIX it was spur of the moment okay but what if Xemnas pulled a Saix and I went with it and you’d maybe think RIKU’S BETTER THAN THAT HE WOULDN’T ACTUALLY yeah he would

Yeah he would he’s desperate Namine’s on the line

Pouts skin tight suits mean no picking people up by the collar of their shirts uhm

What’s Roxas supposed to do grab him by the neck?

Maybe the arm in this case

The brainstorm for Xemnas trying to convince Roxas to kill Riku was really neat and I'll try to convert it to ASAS format one day but
there's just something so sad about losing the initial brainstorm format pouts again

also Riku had this neato speech where he was like "well you know what I am Xemnas? I'm the tool built to stop whatever the heck you were doing"
but it got cut because Riku'd have to first off realize/assume that's what Vexen built him for (when it's not even 100% canon)
second off Riku'd have to ACCEPT being Vexen's tool and be okay with it enough to turn it into a dramatic biting speech which. well. that's unlikely.
plus Namine's in danger that that just makes the chances go from "unlikely" to "definitely not going to happen right now"

Actually tbh Xemnas’s smile is usually quite pleased but it’s still a regular-ish smile I’d like to think and that pisses you off because it’s one thing for a villain to be smug or pretend like they know something you don’t and that comes off in the smile—but a regular smile is something you don’t expect to see and it drives you insane

I wanted to call it a dachsted smile h o n e s t l y that was the word that kept coming to my head—dachsted which isn’t even English it’s shadow tongue

The other word that was coming to mind was dastardly but that doesn’t work either

This battle was almost two chapters but that ruined my flow worse than having this be one super long chapter with an awkward break mid-battle in the middle of it

I’m reaaaaaaally attached for this little paragraph giving myself a rough idea of the battle for some reason:

Ugh okay there’s a lot of them being thrown back but Riku starts to catch himself more often Roxas is bleeding from the mouth and bruised across the face at least but he keeps curing and curing and the trail of blood from his mouth doesn’t fade

But

Y’know the damage does

Xemnas does a lot of warping around the field but hey at least there’s only one of him

He keeps throwing up shields for himself and??? lasers??? What the heck man