BlackDandelion

It's probably a misconception to say that the light is good and the darkness is evil, I don't think either of them are really good or evil, they're just aspects of the heart with different natures. Things that are done for "the greater good" are quite often perceived as evil. For example, Eraqus attempting to kill Ven. While the act was certainly justified and may have been the best option for everyone, I don't think anyone would call it a "good" thing to do. I don't think Eraqus opened his heart to darkness when he tried to kill him either because i don't believe he did it for any kind of selfish reason, so my conclusion was the decision was made on behalf of the light. The same way that murder can be justified, so can lies. People lie to each other all the time, often they lie because they feel other people can't handle the truth. People lie to themselves even more so. If we were to simply label lying as evil then the world would be full of evil people. The master of masters has also misrepresented the truth in order to manipulate people which is arguably worse than lying anyway.

Well the biggest distinction between my idea of the light and darkness would be that the light is capable of lying and the darkness actually isnt. the darkness says ven wanted to kill strelitzia because from its perspective there is no difference between murder and any other action necessary to get what you want - ven killed strelitzia because he wanted to become a union leader more than he wanted her to be alive, therefore he wanted to kill strelitzia and thats the end of it. the darkness could lie on a whim if its just something it wanted to do for the sake of the action itself, but the darkness would not tell lies with the intent of manipulation because thinking more than a single step ahead is against its nature. The conclusion that ven killed strelitzia because he wanted to eliminates all context and nuance of the situation, but like darkness said: the circumstances of the results, intentions, and preconditions of the act are not things it concerns itself with Conversely, the light manipulates people with lies expressely for the purpose of fulfilling goals; and it does so because it can and without remorse because it does not consider telling lies to be unethical. and the same would apply to the rest of the sins obviously if my theory was right

I don't think Ven necessarily wanted to kill Strelitzia either. It's more likely that he was tempted by the desire to be a union leader and the darkness blinded him to the point where he may have not even realized what he was doing, the way I was sort of elaborating on how obsession can cause you to lose sight of what is right or wrong. All of this is completely dependent on darkness telling the truth in the scene though. The thing that really calls this theory into question is how Ven could be so susceptible to darkness when he is portrayed as such an innocent character. And considering his relationship with Vanitas it almost makes me think Ven's bipolar or something. Then again, sometimes the quiet and seemingly innocent ones are really the ones you need to look out for lol

For anyone who recently watched the new cutscene "Confrontation" we learned some peculiar things about Darkness. First of all that darkness has no goals, and secondly that Darkness is truly incorporeal and can only operate in the plane of existence by using a heart as a vessel. Why did Ven kill strelitzia? Previously it was believed that Darkness took over Ven and killed strelitzia to enter the Dandelions but if we can accept what Darkness is saying to be true then Ven may have already been willing to commit the act and either Darkness is merely what allows him to do it or Darkness amplifies those desires until Ven can't think of anything else. The point is, darkness is instinct and chaos. Darkness doesn't make plans it will merely manifest itself in a heart in the physical realm in order to exist and its presence alone will make that vessel act out their instinctual desires to various degrees. Even if Darkness knows the plan as it's written in the book of prophecies it is powerless to avoid it because it is the embodiment of instinct and desire - when it sees a potential host it must occupy their heart. It has no concept of right or wrong and it does not care if it's nature brings about it's own destruction. So if Darkness is the embodiment of instinct and chaos, then light is the embodiment of intent and order. The light that enters people's hearts grants them the capacity of "intent" - to form goals and create order. Hearts can be seen as a balance between these two - one side is intent and the other is pure instinct - or you could say it is the difference between a person who devotes themselves entirely to one goal and a person who just goes through life fulfilling every desire they have. Either way, both sides of the scale lead to obsession and can lead to atrocities. This is all simply to say that good and evil are not considerations made by either the light or the darkness, only people with hearts consider these judgement calls. Which brings me to the main point: Like the darkness, the light is willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill it's "intent", even things that are perceived as evil to create and maintain order, including all of the 7 deadly sins which are represented in the foretellers. People with hearts see greed, pride, gluttony, envy, etc as sins that lead to darkness because they are traits that a person with a weak heart naturally will possess and thus they are more susceptible to the darkness, but to a person of pure light that the darkness cannot touch these things can be seen as tools of manipulation that can be used to fulfill a goal. In fact, it may be true that beings of pure light have no concept of what sins even are - the sins would only be seen as weaknesses to be exploited. If we assume that MoM is the physical embodiment of light in this reality then it makes sense that he has orchestrated everything that has happened including the darkness. It would mean that he is using the chaos of the darkness to create the order that he wants. Things like Ven killing Strelitzia happened because he wanted it to happen, not out of a desire to harm strelitzia but because his nature as the incarnation of light forces him to seek the path that will fulfill his intent and create a reality with perfect order. What is perfect order? I think the reason why the master of master's is so exhausted from the fighting between the light and darkness is because the struggle itself goes against his nature; he exists in a reality of endlessly creating and watching his creations be destroyed. When he realizes he cannot overcome this cycle in their reality he concludes the perfect order would then have to be a reality where this cycle did not take place at all, which might be signalling a return to nothingness. Which is all reflective of the many myths of creation and destruction in real life.

Just to get this out of the way this has nothing to do with romance or ships. I don't care about any of that stuff and it's not the point of this thread. Basically I'm wondering what the community would think about an M or a T rated kingdom hearts game/novel. Obviously this will never actually happen, I'm asking the question because I'm wondering if people think the theme of the story would be enhanced as a result. I think one of the things holding back the series thematically is darkness isn't really "dark". "Nothingness" doesn't really feel like "nothingness". It's easy for a game to highlight the goodness of "light" because we have the real world to compare it to, but darkness in the game is sort of underwhelming isnt it? And the savagery of darkness (and light) isn't given much room to be explored. As far as the light goes there is only the keyblade war and the scene where Eraqus tries to put down ven. Because of the way the series is formatted, the few savage moments there are feel out of place. What would otherwise be a bloody massacre instead amounts to just a large scale keyblade battle. Strelitzias death, very sad, but its the only real death in the whole series that I can think of and it happens in a phone game. you also have Xion, but she really just evaporates to rejoin Sora, and then she comes back in KH3. There is no real savagery or weight behind these losses so the atmosphere of the worlds never really change. On the other hand, you have this secret movie (at the end of kh2 i think?) that really highlights the desperation of terra, aqua, and ven and the savagery of xehanort. Xehanort drops vens frozen body off a cliff. In KH3 the most savage thing to happen is he strikes kairi once and she evaporates. There has also been a huge issue in my opinion really showing 'worlds falling to darkness' and what that really means. It seems to happen so frequently now that I find myself just not caring, and maybe it should be feeling inevitable but there should still be some weight behind losing places that we've revisited many times. KH3 did have some good moments, but they were also undermined within a couple hours of each other. The desperation I felt in the first few games has been replaced with the sort of desperation I feel watching Goku fight anyone in Dragon Ball Z, knowing that all the characters can be revived using the dragon balls. I've always felt like Kingdom Hearts is at it's best when the character's are struggling the most. Stuff like aquas experience in 2.8, xion fighting roxas, the above graveyard battle, etc really contrasts with all the lighthearted disney worlds really well. Unfortunately the way that a lot of these plot points get resolved has been through the power of friendship, or something like it - and it really undermines the character's struggle. Aqua being returned to normal by Sora after years in the realm of darkness is a perfect example of this. As far as we know right now her long inner struggle didn't even lead her to have any sort of revelation about the darkness. Among the masters now, Riku alone is the only one who seems willing to use darkness which is sort of strange given all of their experiences. There is plenty to say about the general writing and implementation of the Disney worlds, but all of that has been discussed a thousand times. I'm also not suggesting that the disney worlds should be thrown away, I think they have their place in the story, I just think that the parts of the story that strictly deal with things unique to the Kingdom Hearts lore would be enhanced if it wasn't held back by the E rating.