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Oct. 8th, 2019 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feotakahariFull disclosure: I lost the plot of Kingdom Hearts when they titled a game 358/2 Days, and never really got it back. I apologize if this was addressed three years ago in a phone game.
My biggest point of curiosity about the Kingdom Hearts setting is how it actually feels to have no Darkness in your heart.
KH is pretty vague about what exactly Darkness is, but in practice, Light vs. Darkness seems to mean embracing people vs. rejecting people. “I’ll fight you to protect my friends” is more Light, whereas “I’ll kill you to avenge my friends” is more Dark. Dark stands for anger and xenophobia, but also personal ambition, and it seems to be linked to fear of being hurt and sorrow at having lost others. Using the Darkness to empower yourself is incredibly risky, but at the same time, single-mindedly rejecting the Dark is ironically a Dark mindset that can make matters worse. Most characters need to recognize their own Darkness, and two of them actually manage to wield it while maintaining enough Light to keep their sanity and emotional balance.
And then you have the Princesses, who were straight-up born without Darkness.
This doesn’t automatically make you gullible, weak, or even forgiving. Princesses can push back against unjust authority, take up arms against evil, and feel some degree of pleasure in defeating someone who’s harmed them. They’re so stable, in fact, that it can be hard to remember “Oh, right, this person literally has no darkness in their heart.”
What does that actually feel like? To know from earliest childhood that some people hate each other, and simply not feel that? When you love easily and naturally, could that actually make it harder to relate to others? You can’t hate them for it, because you literally can’t, but you can’t understand them, either, and you don’t know why you’re so different . . .
I just realized I’m working through autism feels here.
My biggest point of curiosity about the Kingdom Hearts setting is how it actually feels to have no Darkness in your heart.
KH is pretty vague about what exactly Darkness is, but in practice, Light vs. Darkness seems to mean embracing people vs. rejecting people. “I’ll fight you to protect my friends” is more Light, whereas “I’ll kill you to avenge my friends” is more Dark. Dark stands for anger and xenophobia, but also personal ambition, and it seems to be linked to fear of being hurt and sorrow at having lost others. Using the Darkness to empower yourself is incredibly risky, but at the same time, single-mindedly rejecting the Dark is ironically a Dark mindset that can make matters worse. Most characters need to recognize their own Darkness, and two of them actually manage to wield it while maintaining enough Light to keep their sanity and emotional balance.
And then you have the Princesses, who were straight-up born without Darkness.
This doesn’t automatically make you gullible, weak, or even forgiving. Princesses can push back against unjust authority, take up arms against evil, and feel some degree of pleasure in defeating someone who’s harmed them. They’re so stable, in fact, that it can be hard to remember “Oh, right, this person literally has no darkness in their heart.”
What does that actually feel like? To know from earliest childhood that some people hate each other, and simply not feel that? When you love easily and naturally, could that actually make it harder to relate to others? You can’t hate them for it, because you literally can’t, but you can’t understand them, either, and you don’t know why you’re so different . . .
I just realized I’m working through autism feels here.
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Date: 2019-10-09 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-10 03:58 am (UTC)Except, of course, that we are told multiple times and from multiple sources that is not the case.
However, given that light is equated to the "innocence of children's hearts," one could say that he makes an interesting example of how one cannot return to innocence once it has been lost: there is no going back to the past, only going into a future that models that past.
Honestly, though, I just don't think enough evidence was given to make a hard conclusion about Light (or even, in many ways Darkness). We know just enough to explain the motivations of the characters and give the audience as much freedom as we need to get ourselves invested in our own favourite interpretations.
I kind of like that about it.
Even if the lack of consistency over time did get..... grating.