Endgame Changes Post

First, have this unfairly good song


I'm

amazed

It's so good and it's unfair

Anyway

I am here to talk about the changes made to the Endgame of Dead Inside--what made it in vs my original ideas, etc.




Namine - Deactivating vs Rewriting

So in the Initial Draft of Dead Inside('s endgame), Namine was drafted to be Deactivated. Hints were dropped towards this in Part 1, and it was also hinted in the Dead Inside trailer (among other things which were also scrapped)

After two years (three, perhaps, I suppose, considering Deactivating Namine was coined back in 2011, while Falling to Pieces was underway) I fell out of love for the idea
It was boring
It felt a little cheaty, having her "die" but not really die in the end
It gave me absolutely,,, no,,,, character development,,, from anyone

The only way I could make it matter is if she wasn't reactivated until months after the fact, which would get Riku to snap out of his "HOLY SHIT I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT NAMINE" mentality and while that would be a good thing in some ways, it would've induced a year of writing a depressed-and-slightly-suicidal Riku on me and I decided that was not worth my mental health

Also, like I said, it was pretty boring

And once I got attached to the idea of Rewriting Namine I wouldn't let go of it.

And honestly fun story time: I started contemplating it becase I was on a Mother 3 + Super Paper Mario high plus some TTYD and Stupid Mario Bros high and I spent so much time going over the endings of Mother 3 in depth + the SPM ending plus the TTYD ending imagining what it would be like
for Lucas
for Mario
to fight the person (people) they loved the most

and I was like
"So let's put Riku in that situation, yeah? Yeah."

So I decided to Rewrite Namine, instead, which made things 100x more interesting imo, plus it fixed the fact that Xemnas was a kinda cruddy final boss/climax of the story. There was no emotional pull to be presented in my universe--nothing outside "he's gotta go down the worlds are in danger" which was never the base of Dead Inside. Dead Inside was never a "world saving" story it was more character oriented than that

Rewriting Namine gave me a good final climax.

"Hey but she was still fixed and un-rewritten in the end isn't that still a little cheat-y?" Well I guess you could say it is but I still think we got more out of it than Deactivating her so

(also, updates like three years later. just. look at All that Remains, and tell me this didn't have consequences.)


Including Kairi literally everywhere

In the Initial Draft was scheduled to be kidnapped, much like Namine. In the Initial Initial Draft, she never left the islands and was kidnapped from there, but I had that fixed so she was kidnapped from HB instead (Xaldin showed up to do the job, and they were all doing good until "Cloud got stabbed in the gut and it all went downhill from there" according to the brainstorm for it.)

Except I started feeling really bad about sidelining both the girls, so I sat down and asked myself. "Do I really need to kidnap the girls??"
The answer came up to be:
Yes, I had to kidnap Namine
(well, I was sidelining her anyway in the end and I might as well go the kidnapping route at that point rather than have her tag along until getting grabbed and)

And, no, I did not have to kidnap Kairi.
Having Kairi being un-kidnapped didn't negatively affect my plot, and didn't take much reworking. In fact, in a lot of ways, it positively impacted the plot.

And as Endgame kept going, I looked at every scene and asked myself "but what if Kairi was there? That's great but what if Kairi was there?"

Having Riku and Kairi traveling TWTNW as a team was pretty neat, plus was a nice break from Riku mindlessly charging through the place
Riku/Roxas/Kairi traveling TWTNW together was an even better thought. The Riku/Roxas/Kairi dynamic is actually really fun to explore because they all are (in their own ways) stubborn assholes. Riku's just a violent asshole, Roxas a cocky one, and Kairi more stubborn than an asshole but still pretty high up there on the scale.

I also nearly left her on the Islands when Shad took her back there (after freeing her from Xaldin), which you can see in ASASch72 actually
He would've left her there, and that's great and all, but I decided nah. That was, admittedly, in part due to a tumblr post that was like "i hate how girls go ARE YOU LAVING ME BEHIND BECAUSE I'M A GIRL and then the guy comes back with a legit reason which just makes the girl look whiney and paranoid" and I didn't want to fall into that
NOT THAT SHAD ACTUALLY HAD A LEGIT EXCUSE but it was more fun to send Kairi back with him anyway, and I suppose a lil more in her character

Speaking of leaving Kairi on the islands, I nearly did that when the wolf took her back, but again inevitably decided nah

Having Kairi there for the Namiku battle not only made things a little more interesting, but also prevented Riku's death. I mean, be honest, if Kairi hadn't been there, Riku just would've let Namine kill him. really.
Kairi needed to be there to get him on his feet again (and keep Namine from killing him before he could work up the nerve to do something)


Shad + his motives

Well this was talked about in a previous post but I can't leave it out of the general "endgame changes" post

To make a long rant short

Unlike Kairi and Namine, Shad is an overall-arcing-throughout-Dead-Inside-in-its-entirety thing. Kairi and Namine’s changes were made while I was ten chapters from endgame—if not while I was on the verge of writing it. (I'm pretty sure I stopped everything just to figure out what I was going to do when it came to adding Kairi and rewritting Namine instead and)

I’d planned for a long while that Shad was going to die because he asked Sora to kill him, it was just his reasons for doing so that kept fluctuating.

First it was because he’d fallen for Kairi, and her light had tainted him and changed him—making him more sympathetic to everything and he hated it he hated being that way.

Second it was because Sora had changed him instead of Kairi—he still ended up extremely sympathetic towards things and still hated it a lot (this was inspired by Stupid Mario Brothers).

Third it was because he was Bound to Sora—this was actually decided before I’d considered the second idea for long.

Fourth was because he loved Sora—I came up with this one shortly after the idea of him being Bound, if I remember correctly, but it was more of a joke than anything else. I waffled between these two for a while (Shad being Bound to Sora vs Shad loving Sora) because while I absolutely loved the idea of Shad loving Sora, I was really afraid to put it in

But, like said previous post says, I felt like I was cheating myself by not putting Shad loving Sora in. So many other of my favorite ideas made it in (Kairi screaming nursery rhymes to drown Namine out during the battle, rewriting Namine at all, Shad's wolf, R, I could go on), so why should this not be one?

Plus, it felt... it felt right. and i'd screwed up the mechanics of him being Bound and fell out of love with Bindings in general so oo oOO

Roxas living

YES, IT WAS INDEED INITIALLY SLOTTED FOR ROXAS TO BE KILLED, AGAIN, IN ENDGAME.

When Cookie first brought up the idea of bringing Roxas back to me, he included the idea of "the iconic Roxas vs Riku fight"--a Roxas vs Riku fight still happened, though it's outcome didn't involve Roxas's Death.

The idea was Roxas and Riku would fight, Roxas would remember Xion, the failsafe would kick in, Roxas would not be swayed from attacking Riku, Riku'd kill him out of self-defense.

Magik, however, wasn't fond of this idea.

So we sat down and talked about it and she pointed out that unless Axel died + became a Somebody + got his heart back, he’d just keep trying to Rebuild Roxas because he wouldn’t have a heart to feel it was morally wrong

That lead us to figuring out how Axel was gonna die.

I suggested him yelling at Xemnas and either Xemnas himself killing him or Xigbar killing him because Xemnas? Do dirty work? Laughs.

 Magik suggested he throw himself in front of the blow that was going to kill Roxas.

(The “I thought cloaks had better protection” line is hers)

Of course the failsafe was a problem but she was like “if Axel dies it short circuits it long enough for Roxas to get it fixed??” and I decided. Sure.

Because I’d written enough for Roxas to decide that I really liked writing for him and wasn’t against keeping him alive. I'd miss the cocky little shit.