some thoughts about sonic, kingdom hearts, and fandoms

i was talking briefly with a friend of mine about fandoms recently.

namely, we mutually observed there are many, many fandoms that are self-consciously built around media franchises that are… kind of bad. that’s not news to anyone, of course, but we also observed that the level of obsession, the quality and quantity of fan content, and fandom longevity seems to be inversely related to the quality of media the fandom centers around.

it’s here where my friend and i (and you, reader) should clarify our definitions, especially because i’m about to give some examples of “bad” media and I don’t want people coming for me on the streets. when i say “good” and “bad” in contexts around art, i’m not talking about whether i enjoy something or not. i enjoy a lot of “bad” art, i am repulsed a lot of “good” art. what i mean by “good” and “bad” is much closer to “artistically complete” and “artistically incomplete.” let me give two examples.

i recently watched The Lobster (2015). on the whole, i loved it. it had a great deal to say about the nature of post-modern love and relationships, and without giving away too much, it explored those ideas in a very viscerally literal, occasionally harrowing, and often funny way. i understood the artistic mission it set out to accomplish, it accomplished it, and then i left satisfied and ready to place it on the list of “good movies” in my head. it is very artistically complete.

maybe seven or eight years ago, i played Kingdom Hearts II (2005) for the first time. being a Gamer™️, i was vaguely aware of KH since getting on the internet, and i wanted to play it and see what the fuss was about. on one hand, i did in fact see what the fuss was about - i think KH2 (especially KH2FM, which is the version i played more) is extremely underrated as an action game, and deserves to be in the conversation with DMC3 and Bayonetta 1 as landmark entries in the genre. on the other hand, KH2 also has about 10 hours of cutscenes in which it attempts to tell a story.

i do genuinely love KH2, and i also have warm feelings towards the pre-2016 franchise generally, so please don’t interpret the very mean things i’m about to say as a KH hit piece. but KH2 - and Tetsuya Nomura projects in general - are pretty horrifically written, paced, and plotted from a narrative perspective. KH is the definition of “an ocean wide and an inch deep” - the poster child for style over substance. some of that is owed to Disney meddling, some of it to mistranslation, but a lot of it is owed to what is clear incompetence on behalf of the scenario and dialogue writers. this is not an opinion that i’ve developed upon reflecting - this was basically my opinion of KH from the first moment i was exposed to it.

so, with this in mind, you might be surprised to hear that the first and longest fanfiction i ever wrote was about KH2.

specifically, i was motivated to write it because really captured by Roxas as a character. i had played a good deal of 358/2 Days (the prequel DS game that centers around Roxas) beforehand just because the DS was easier to emulate than the PS2 on my computer at the time, so that and reading a few plot summaries meant i knew what Roxas’s backstory was before starting KH2. and, as KH backstories go, it’s a pretty harrowing one. (i will have to summarize some KH plot details to get to my Big Idea here, so please bear with me)

(also if you’re familiar with KH bear with me extra because i’m going to simplify some things so we’re not here forever)

Roxas is a “Nobody” - essentially a sort of soul-zombie that is created upon the death of people with “strong hearts” (see: main characters). the series main villains - Organization XIII - is made up of these Nobodies, and actively recruits new ones as they’re created. Roxas, basically immediately upon birth, is snatched up by the Organization and pressed into service for them. it’s this service that is the basis of 358/2’s plot, in which Roxas finds close friends within the Organization to confide in only for the Organization to slowly turn them against each other. at the end of the game, Roxas has lost basically everyone in the world that he trusted, and the game ends with him being kidnapped. things are not going great for our boy so far.

fast-forward to the beginning of KH2, and it’s revealed that the person that Roxas is a Nobody of is Sora, KH’s main protagonist. Sora died in KH1 briefly but was quickly revived, leading to a rare situation where both Sora and his Nobody are alive at the same time. worse yet, Sora’s currently in a villain-induced coma, and he’s at half-strength because 50% of his special sauce is still inside of Roxas. that simply won’t do if the good guys want to, y’know, save the world from the bad guys. so, the good guys decide that Roxas has to go. he simply has to forfeit his body and consciousness to Sora for the greater good.

the thing is, Roxas is clearly like, a different guy. he has his own thoughts, his own opinions, his own stupid hair style, his own baggy pants, etc. furthermore, he hasn’t exactly been invested in the “good guys” project on account of the fact that he’s been working for the villains - albeit tumultuously - from literally the moment of his birth up to like, two weeks ago. he probably isn’t invested enough to basically kill himself so some dude he doesn’t even know can wake up from a coma. you might be thinking, “wow, that’s a pretty morally complex and interesting premise for a sci-fi/fantasy story!” i did too. unfortunately that is not the premise.

Roxas doesn’t put up no fight against his fate, but he puts up extremely little fight. kind of embarrassingly little, honestly. at this point in the plot, the good guys have done basically nothing to endear themselves to Roxas (in fact, they’re pretty upfront with the fact that they don’t even view him a human being), but he’s nonetheless extremely quick to just surrender himself completely in order to revive Sora. what about his life? his potential? his summer vacation? none of it matters to the good guys, and it apparently doesn’t matter a great deal to the writers, either.

i was kind of unreasonably enraged on Roxas’s behalf. how could the “good guys” do this to him? how could the writers do this to him? i was filled with righteous anger. i mulled over the episode for years, and i was so passionate about Roxas’s cause that i wrote twenty-thousand words (and counting) of fanfiction about what would happen if he resisted. like many of its stores, Roxas’s tale gestures at potentially interesting and evocative emotional conflict that KH’s writers are clearly completely unprepared to unpack. this is why KH2 as a game, and KH as a series, are extremely artistically incomplete. there are many franchises i like more than kingdom hearts, there are many game narratives i like more than kh2, and there are many characters i like more than Roxas. why was this, of all things, the story that i attached so hard to?

after talking with talking with the friend i mentioned at the top of this piece, i think i found the answer: it was precisely the fact that Roxas’s story didn’t address the emotional weight of his situation that propelled me to believe that I had to. the emotional power of unrealized potential is often more potent than the power of artistic completeness.

once i began fandoms i was familiar with, i identified this pattern everywhere. famously, sonic is a franchise that has had an extremely fraught history, but also has some of the most rabidly dedicated and prolific fandoms on earth. the sonic community can support not one, but two yearly fangame expositions. it mobilizes en masse to create unofficial updates and PC ports for games that even SEGA itself has abandoned. it has dedicated historians, researchers, and archivists who are constantly working on new projects and are in active dialogue with each other.

i think this deeply unusual level of interest and dedication exists because of sonic’s fraught history, rather than in spite of it. if every piece of sonic media was more-or-less fully complete, well polished, and fully consistent with the franchise’s broader project, i think it would probably be better for sonic’s cultural prestige, but i can’t help but imagine that we wouldn’t have the sonic community as we understand it today. we had to have sonic 06 to have P-06. the reason why there’s a new fanmade 3D sonic tech demo every week with a different vision for what sonic can be is because SEGA has been fumbling around with what 3D sonic should be for 25 years. there wouldn’t be as much motivation for people to take sonic into their own hands if he wasn’t having so many problems in SEGA’s hands.

so, i am kind of grateful that kh2’s plot kind of sucks, and i’m grateful that sonic has been so inconsistent. it’s good to absorb art that is clean, polished, and highly-considered. it’s just as important - and in many cases even more energizing - to absorb art that is really, really rough around the edges.