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I am mildly confused!
So over on F!S, there's a secret about how Alice shouldn't have been a Princess of Heart, Pocahontas deserved it more - and just about every single reply is along the lines of "Hey, yeah! I never thought of that before! Pocahontas should be a Princess instead of her!"
And I'm just over here going "Uh... but...?"
See, one of the things that made KH1 so great, and which KH2 really fell down on, was that every character, every world, had reasons to be there. All characters filled particular roles, and were pretty well integrated - it's why, in KH1, the Disney-Square fusion feels so much stronger. The Disney worlds, in particular, all had two or three reasons for Sora to be there other than "O HAI U HAS PROBLEMS. I FIX K. O R MAI FRENDZ HEER?" They introduced some plot element, or developed a character, or furthered the conflict... etc. (As opposed to KH2, where the majority of the worlds are "Oh, well, we need some worlds to fill out space and I think we had characters from this one, let's toss it in.") I can think of quite a few off the top of my head for Alice and Wonderland:
- Wonderland's probably the first world you're gonna go to. As a design choice, leading off with a classical world that's an iconic example of Disney whimsy is a pretty solid one. Sora's had his dose of darkness and despair already, Wonderland is playful and lightens the mood, and gives Sora a decent threat to combat without making it feel DIRE AND TERRIFYING right off the bat.
- There's a couple plot hooks you need to introduce early on: there are Heartless everywhere, someone out there has nefarious plans and is kidnapping particular girls. Wonderland fills these nicely. It seems simple and straightforward to help Alice, but then she's gone, leaving you to wonder WTF just happened, and want to go find out.
- Alice is there to be a good person, an innocent, who's coming under fire and that Sora has to save, so he can properly get his hero boots on. She's also there to then disappear mysteriously. I don't like it much, but pretty much her whole purpose is to be a victim, so that Sora can be a hero and see there's something for her to be a victim of.
Granted it's been a long damn time since I watched Pocahontas, but I'm trying to replace Alice with her and Wonderland with her world and... no. Her world doesn't serve the same you've-had-your-angst-now-have-some-silly-crack aesthetic purpose that Wonderland served. Given what I remember of Pocahontas, it would be an insult and a disservice to her to stick her with Alice's role of Victim For The Plot. It suits Alice pretty well, because Alice's whole thing was that she wandered haplessly into and got lost in a world that was FREAKING INSANE, but those aren't Pocahontas's themes at all.
Another point of contention from the secret was that Alice isn't even a princess, how'd she get to be a Princess of Heart? Uh... same way Belle, Cinderella, and possibly Kairi did, I guess. Belle and Cinderella married into royalty, if I recall? Belle especially was a simple French country girl who liked to read. (And isn't even married to the Beast yet, therefore not technically ranked a princess). We know jack diddly squat about Kairi's life in Hollow Bastion, so we don't know if she's royal or not, but even if she is I think it's pretty plain she's left all that behind. Let's not forget Ariel was a princess too, but not a Princess of Heart even though she arguably deserves the status too. And Wendy was under investigation for the possibility of being a Princess, even though she's also not royalty. The whole point of the Princesses of Heart is that they aren't necessarily literal princesses. They can be, sure, but the important thing is their hearts.
I dunno. Maybe I analyze the themes too much. But Pocahontas and her world really wouldn't work in Alice's place, I can see why they went with Alice.
There is also the matter of Pocahontas being Native American, and KH being a Japanese game made by Japanese people in Japan. Yes, it's Disney. Disney in Japan. I dooooon't think I want to see the fallout of them trying to do Pocahontas's story in KH, especially when Disney already bastardized her over here. XD;
So over on F!S, there's a secret about how Alice shouldn't have been a Princess of Heart, Pocahontas deserved it more - and just about every single reply is along the lines of "Hey, yeah! I never thought of that before! Pocahontas should be a Princess instead of her!"
And I'm just over here going "Uh... but...?"
See, one of the things that made KH1 so great, and which KH2 really fell down on, was that every character, every world, had reasons to be there. All characters filled particular roles, and were pretty well integrated - it's why, in KH1, the Disney-Square fusion feels so much stronger. The Disney worlds, in particular, all had two or three reasons for Sora to be there other than "O HAI U HAS PROBLEMS. I FIX K. O R MAI FRENDZ HEER?" They introduced some plot element, or developed a character, or furthered the conflict... etc. (As opposed to KH2, where the majority of the worlds are "Oh, well, we need some worlds to fill out space and I think we had characters from this one, let's toss it in.") I can think of quite a few off the top of my head for Alice and Wonderland:
- Wonderland's probably the first world you're gonna go to. As a design choice, leading off with a classical world that's an iconic example of Disney whimsy is a pretty solid one. Sora's had his dose of darkness and despair already, Wonderland is playful and lightens the mood, and gives Sora a decent threat to combat without making it feel DIRE AND TERRIFYING right off the bat.
- There's a couple plot hooks you need to introduce early on: there are Heartless everywhere, someone out there has nefarious plans and is kidnapping particular girls. Wonderland fills these nicely. It seems simple and straightforward to help Alice, but then she's gone, leaving you to wonder WTF just happened, and want to go find out.
- Alice is there to be a good person, an innocent, who's coming under fire and that Sora has to save, so he can properly get his hero boots on. She's also there to then disappear mysteriously. I don't like it much, but pretty much her whole purpose is to be a victim, so that Sora can be a hero and see there's something for her to be a victim of.
Granted it's been a long damn time since I watched Pocahontas, but I'm trying to replace Alice with her and Wonderland with her world and... no. Her world doesn't serve the same you've-had-your-angst-now-have-some-silly-crack aesthetic purpose that Wonderland served. Given what I remember of Pocahontas, it would be an insult and a disservice to her to stick her with Alice's role of Victim For The Plot. It suits Alice pretty well, because Alice's whole thing was that she wandered haplessly into and got lost in a world that was FREAKING INSANE, but those aren't Pocahontas's themes at all.
Another point of contention from the secret was that Alice isn't even a princess, how'd she get to be a Princess of Heart? Uh... same way Belle, Cinderella, and possibly Kairi did, I guess. Belle and Cinderella married into royalty, if I recall? Belle especially was a simple French country girl who liked to read. (And isn't even married to the Beast yet, therefore not technically ranked a princess). We know jack diddly squat about Kairi's life in Hollow Bastion, so we don't know if she's royal or not, but even if she is I think it's pretty plain she's left all that behind. Let's not forget Ariel was a princess too, but not a Princess of Heart even though she arguably deserves the status too. And Wendy was under investigation for the possibility of being a Princess, even though she's also not royalty. The whole point of the Princesses of Heart is that they aren't necessarily literal princesses. They can be, sure, but the important thing is their hearts.
I dunno. Maybe I analyze the themes too much. But Pocahontas and her world really wouldn't work in Alice's place, I can see why they went with Alice.
There is also the matter of Pocahontas being Native American, and KH being a Japanese game made by Japanese people in Japan. Yes, it's Disney. Disney in Japan. I dooooon't think I want to see the fallout of them trying to do Pocahontas's story in KH, especially when Disney already bastardized her over here. XD;
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Also, Gargoyles, hellsyes. (But I don't think that one will eeeeever happen.)
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And I need to watch the rest of Gargoyles... stopped on the Future Tense chapter.
late comment on Atlantis
Any time something has more than two sources, half the point of seeing it is to see how they were worked together (not to mention, given the ultimate unoriginality of nearly all plots, the more things go into a given work the better it can claim to be "original.")
Which is perhaps a long way of saying that I was pleasantly surprised by something, but...
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Gargoyles would be awesome. (As long as we're going with Disney cartoons, can we throw in a Darkwing Duck world? Because that would make my year.)