Friday, January 29, 2016

Namine/Kairi relationship dynamics!!! WHOOHOO!!

Ok so I was having trouble ironing out NamiKai dynamic in my head so I decided to make a tumblr post about it. Since it's pretty in depth, I figured it should get ported over here.

Remember those SoKai/Namiku posts I made, like, four years ago? This is gonna be a little like that. And by that I just mean it'll have pictures, too. That's actually it. The similarities end there.

Here we gooooooo.


art by weissrabbit!

FtPverse NamiKai dynamic

Kairi’s prone to doing either extremely reckless or generally dumb things, either Because She Can or for laughs. Sora, most of the time, is resident “oh my god Kairi no” voice. Namine still provides that, sometimes (she had to learn how to, when Sora was gone) but for the most part her protests are just an exasperated “Kairi……..”

Here’s the thing, though:

Kairi does half the stupid things she does just to make Namine laugh, (because she and Riku will both agree: Namine’s laugh is a brightness in a dark room, is a beautiful sound—and at least ftp Namine does it naturally, frequently, but it doesn’t change the fact it feels good to see her smile)

Here’s another thing:

Namine fuckin enjoys it

She knows when to stop Kairi from doing extremely dangerous things but if Kairi says “I’m going to jump out of this tree and into the fucking ocean” Namine just stops and looks up and watches. She doesn’t egg her on but she doesn’t stop her either. She loves to watch it. And that’s why Kairi keeps doing it.


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Namine is like the sister Kairi always kinda wished she had. Being an only child has its perks, of course. She wouldn’t want a new mother that would theoretically have to come with the sister anyway. Sora’s a great friend, a close friend, of course he is, and this isn’t even a sort of ~they can do girl things~ which Kairi can’t do with Sora because, a) that’s dumb, b) Kairi had 14 years without Namine, Sora got dragged into “girl things” alright

Namine is another person she can share dumb 3am thoughts with, talk into eating an entire tub of icecream in one sitting, drag out of the house at night just to appreciate the stars or the shape of the moon.

They don’t come up with wild fantastical stories like Kairi and Sora do, but there are points in the week or the day where Namine just kinda stops and looks at Kairi “oh my god I don’t know what to draw” and Kairi will tell her to draw something (often borderline ridiculous, Kairi loves pushing boundaries) and Namine will do it—most of the time, anyway

Often it’s just doodles in margins, or rough sketches, but she does it


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Namine ends up hanging a lot of her drawings up in their shared room, per Kairi’s request. A good portion of them end up getting taken down after a month or so, some hardly last a week, but there’s one—framed by paper stars and flowers plastered to the wall around it, each that Kairi drew and cut out herself

It’s a drawing of the two of them, laughing and sitting on the dock, feet dangling above the waves

(It’s not the best drawing Namine has ever done, but it’s one Kairi will treasure forever)

Kairi, to Namine, is a steady source of comfort and laughter, especially when Riku is not. (Of course, we can’t pretend Namine and Sora didn’t know each other well, because, they did, just as Kairi and Riku did)

Kairi always knows what to say, always knows when to steer the conversation away from a topic Namine doesn’t like, while Riku is as fumbling and awkward as Namine herself is, even if he fakes cockiness well

Namine never dreamt of having a sister or really had any big dreams at all at the start of her life, but if you think she is only grateful to have Riku as a friend, then you are wrong (perhaps, not at fault, but still wrong). She is grateful to know Sora, she is grateful to know Kairi.

Kairi’s there to talk to her about things Riku would never think of or doesn’t know a damn thing about himself. Kairi helps her appreciate the little things, the big things, everything in between. It was at Kairi’s request she first stuck more than feet in the ocean. Kairi is someone she trusts when she isn’t sure who else to, Kairi is a steadiness and a constant when she is still finding her footing in her first months of life, and later on (being a replica w/ no memories stolen from anyone else is good but does mean you need to have a lot of silly things explained to you.)

She missed Kairi a lot in Dead Inside. I may not have written it that way at first, but listen: she did. Sometimes things happened and she went “man I wish I could ask Kairi for advice”, and when she wasn’t sure what to do she honestly probably just thought to herself “what would Kairi do?” which, yielded, well, results of varying success

(I’m losing it at the thought of “what would Kairi do if she heard my memory meltdowns might be Riku’s fault and I can never see him again if they are? sabotaging the experiment? doing so by forcing memory meltdowns? probably” being Namine’s thought process for that portion of Dead Inside) (Kairi probably wouldn’t have told her to force meltdowns, or at least would’ve told her to stop after like three. don’t overkill it Namine)


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There’s three months where it’s just them on the islands, no Sora, no Riku. They bond the most then. They are not just Love Interests but that doesn’t mean they don’t miss their boys, doesn’t mean they don’t miss their friends

They help each other fill in the gaps, sit and wait because what else are we supposed to do


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In those three months, there’s school, and there’s school other times too, of course

Namine breezes through most of her subjects because Replica, though does struggle in history. She spends most of every class doodling in the margins of notes or just, flat out doodling instead of taking notes. She probably gets in trouble for it.

Kairi asks her once for help on math homework. Namine looks at the question and immediately spits out the answer. Kairi asks her why it works and Namine stares. She doesn’t know. She’s a replica. This sort of thing is just programmed in her, she probably has a calculator function buried in her somewhere, right next to the internal clock

"guess I shouldn’t ask you, then” Kairi laughs “it’d be cheating in the same way using a calculator is” and Namine smiles. Then Kairi realizes, what she said, and she just “I’m sorry I called you calculator” and Namine laughs “it’s fine.”

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