this night's a perfect shade of dark blue
So the layout's working now, except the alignment's not quite right, but I think it's supposed to be that way. Oh well.
Now? On to my deep analysis crap that I wrote last night that probably nobody cares about
So I'm fairly certain that some aspects of "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories" were borrowed from "Final Fantasy VII..
The whole "fake memories" idea and such. In FFVII, Tifa says, "A memory is something that has to be consciously recalled, right? That's why sometimes it can be mistaken and a different thing... But it's different from a memory locked deep within your heart... That's why it must be a fake." This corresponds to a bunch of lines in CoM:
- "This is a card crafted from memories locked in the other side of your heart." (spoken by Vexen)
- "I bet it's nice to peel all the worthless memories away...and awaken the true memories that lie deep in your heart." (spoken by Larxene)
- "If you remain bound by the chains of memory, and refuse to believe your heart...then you may as well throw your heart away. You're no Keyblade master, no master of anything - just a slave to twisted memories." (spoken by Vexen)
- "That thing lying there is a puppet Vexen made. Nothing more than a toy. It's laughable, really. It called you a fake, but IT was the fabrication all along." "A fake? A fake Riku?" "Fake in every way. It was only finished recently. And without any past, how could it remember anything? Its memories with Naminé were planted, not real. All this time it's been picking fights with you over bogus memories." (dialogue between Larxene and Sora)
- "I promised Naminé I'd keep her safe. Maybe my memories are fake. But they're still mine, and I'm gonna be true to them." (spoken by Sora)
The biggest parallel that I can draw is between the supposed childhood promises of Tifa & Cloud and Sora & Naminé. Early in FFVII, the following exchange occurs between Tifa and Cloud:
Tifa: "You forgot the promise too."
Cloud: "Promise?"
Tifa: "So you DID forget. Remember... Cloud. It was seven years ago..."
Flashback to Nibelheim. Cloud talks about wanting to join SOLDIER.
Young Tifa: "Hey, why don't we make a promise? Umm, if you get really famous and I'm ever in a bind... You come save me, all right?"
Young Cloud: "What?"
Young Tifa: "Whenever I'm in trouble, my hero will come rescue me. I want to experience that at least once."
Young Cloud: "What?"
Young Tifa: "Come on... Promise me..."
Young Cloud: "All right... I promise."
The camera pans up to show the starry night sky. A falling star streaks its white trail across the dark blue.
I included that last descriptive bit for a reason (taken from the FFVII script that I have saved to my computer) because it provides yet another parallel. Now, that dialogue corresponds with two scenes from CoM:
Jiminy: "Sora, it's not too late. We should turn back."
Sora: "No, I can't do that. That would be breaking my promise."
Jiminy: "Promise? What promise is that?"
Sora: "When we were little, I made a promise to Naminé. I told her I'd always keep here safe, no matter what. But I didn't remember until I started forgetting everything else. I can't believe I forgot something that important! But I can still make up for it now. From now on, I'm keeping my promise."
Sora: "We'll be okay. See, look at this..."
Sora shows Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy Naminé's charm.
Goofy: "Naminé's good luck charm!"
Sora: "There's a special memory that goes with this. One night, when Naminé and I were little, there was this meteor shower. Naminé started crying. She said, 'What if a shooting star hits the island?' So I said, 'If a shooting star comes this way, I'll hit it right back into outer space!' I was swinging this toy sword around the whole time. Naminé just smiled and said 'Thanks.' And then she gave me this."
An image of Namine appears with Sora.
Naminé: "Sora, I'm so sorry. All this, because of me..."
The image vanishes.
Sora: "Naminé said she had it ever since she was a baby."
Donald: "And she gave it to you? Wow..."
Sora: "Yeah. So I promised her... 'From now on, I'll bring you good luck. I'll keep you safe.' I really let her down..."
So now we have both Sora and Cloud promising to keep Naminé and Tifa (respectively) safe from harm. Both promises are made when they are younger while there is abnormal star/meteor activity. But there's still another similarity! It turns out that both Cloud and Naminé don't exist in a way (Cloud being a failed Sephiroth clone and all this other stuff that I don't quite understand, and Naminé being a Nobody). Taking all these similarities into account, I'm fairly certain that FFVII had some influence on CoM. Besides having Cloud show up in the Olympus Coliseum.
... And between this and the work I'm doing on my current writing project with Keira and her memory that was the target of Eltanin's experiments in memory-altering, I'm really getting sick of the word "memory."
I've decided that "The Drugs Don't Work" by the Verve could be Future!Jack's theme song on Lost...
Because, you know, he just keeps getting stoned on his pills and life isn't getting better for him. His drugs don't work. The line "But I know I'll see your face again" also can relate to Jack's future exploits, either referring to how he's taking drugs to prevent himself from seeing visions of his dead father (but it's not working) or how taking the drugs alienates him from Kate (but he wants to become close to her again). The chorus actually says "Now the drugs don't work / They just make you worse / But I know I'll see your face again" which could actually be Kate referring to Jack: how his drugs don't work, making him worse, but she knows that she'll inevitably see him again because he keeps trying to come back to her.
Another song that relates to Jack (past, present, and future) is "Scars" by Papa Roach. There's a lot of lyrics in that that perfectly describe him: "My weakness is that I care too much," "You're drowning in the water and I tried to grab your hand / I left my heart open, but you didn't understand," "I can't help you fix yourself, but at least I can say I tried." Actually, come to think of it, "Scars" could be the perfect Jack/Kate theme song, as it could describe Future!Kate's efforts to stop Future!Jack from his descent into alcohol and drugs. The first verse ("Drunk and I'm feeling down and I just want to be alone / I'm pissed 'cause you came around, why don't you just go home? / 'Cause you channeled all your pain and I can't help you fix yourself / You're making me insane") can again refer to Jack's relationship with his father, either in the past or in the future (likely the future, when Jack's drunk much more often). I think the song as a whole fits Future!Jack more, actually, because of the whole "I can't help you fix yourself" bit; Future!Jack seems much more likely to give up on fixing someone/something, unlike the Jack of the past and present, who is absolutely determined to fix everything. (Although in the season four finale you see Jack losing that attitude a bit, such as his decision to leave Jin behind on the freighter because he's so determined for rescue, which doesn't exactly correspond with his "Nobody gets left behind" idea that he had previously clung to.) But three years after the rescue, he seems to have given up on fixing himself; I'm recalling the line from the season three finale: "You can't help me!"
I'm also thinking of two other lines from non-Lost sources that sum up Jack perfectly. One is "Life always seems so much simpler when you're fixing things," from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. The other is "Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind," from Lilo & Stitch. Regarding the first quote: I would not be surprised at all if Jack turns "evil" because he could not save somebody. Actually, you kind of see that already with Sayid: when Nadia dies, he agrees to work as an assassin for Ben, whom he had previously regarded as a not-good person (Present!Sayid even says something to the effect of, "The day I trust Ben is the day I will have sold my soul") so he can get revenge against the people who killed her. You also kind of see it with Sun, though with her it's more of becoming badass instead of becoming evil: in the future, where she assumes that Jin is dead, she does all kinds of cool things like taking control of her father's company and discussing business with Widmore, whom we are supposed to believe is the Big Bad Guy. (Though we still probably shouldn't take Ben's word on anything, despite him showing a bit of humanity in season four.)
Today's also the one-year anniversary of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I'm going to celebrate by displaying three of JKR's ridiculously written sentences from HP&DH. First we have "Water filled Harry's eyes and mouth: He could not see or breathe: Then, with an awful lurch, the cart flipped over and they were all thrown out of it." There are a couple of things wrong with this. First, although I don't think it's exactly incorrect, I hate her habit in her later books of connecting sentences together with colons, especially because she capitalizes the first letter of the second sentence, which I'm pretty sure is incorrect. Secondly, why the hell does she connect THREE sentences in this way? Especially when two of them are rather short and choppy? Why couldn't she have just said, "Water filled Harry's eyes and mouth, and he could not see or breathe. Then, with an awful lurch, the cart flipped over and they were all thrown out of it." It would have eliminated a lot of unnecessary colons. Then she later decides to combine three sentences again: "He spotted Ginny two tables away; she was sitting with her head on her mother's shoulder: There would be time to talk later, hours and days and maybe years in which to talk." She actually used a semi-colon this time, but then she has to ruin it by tacking on another sentence, connected by a colon. Bad JKR, bad! The third sentence includes more absurd colon usage: "One shivering second of silence, the shock of the moment suspended: and then the tumult broke around Harry as the screams and the cheers and the roars of the watchers rent the air." Yes, I know that Voldemort's just been defeated, so maybe she should be granted a bit of creative grammatical license to convey the Drama (which is why I won't comment on all the "and's"), but that colon should NOT be there. A simple comma would have sufficed, damn it.
Despite all of JKR's failures with HP&DH, however, there are still some redeeming moments.
- "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" (Molly Weasley FTW!)
- Hero!Neville cutting off Nagini's head and all that.
- The whole chapter "The Prince's Tale." I cannot tell you how much I adore that chapter.
- Remus and Tonks getting married and having a baby. Of course, that was pretty much ruined when they got KILLED OFF ;_; I don't think I've ever been angrier about a character death (or two characters' deaths, in this case).
Oh, and I have to say that the chapter when Harry's in between life and death on the Farplane in King's Cross, I couldn't help but think of a badfic that I read (well, actually, I just read the sporked version over at deleterius) about Female!Harry stuck on Luna's Astral Plane of Love where s/he experienced constant orgasms (yes, that did scare me away from the fic). My FFX brain also immediately thought "ZOMG IT'S UNSENT!HARRY!" Because, you know, he was caught between life and death...
Okay, analysis!brain has been shut off. It needs to be put to use on The Scarlet Letter now.