The Patreon Letter - 30th January, 2019 (Patreon)

Hi everyone, Em here again with another belated letter. Sorry this keeps happening, I was still recovering from the late letter last time and we've been really busy with 4-podcast weekends that really just kick the shit out of me energy wise. Trying to get back into the groove of high production with Star Trek around and all. Thank you for understanding.

I thought I was over Kingdom Hearts, right up until yesterday when Kingdom Hearts 3 was released. I played the games as they came out up until 2, which was a game I genuinely didn't like even back in 2005. A few years back when all these games were coming out for PS3 I thought I would go and do a full on podcast series like what Jackson did with Metal Gear Solid. I got three worlds into Chain of Memories and decided no, I wasn't going to do that actually, and in fact maybe I just don't care about Kingdom Hearts. Which is where I've been since approximately 32 hours ago.

Maybe it was Waypoint's very good podcast about the lore of Kingdom Hearts. Maybe it was Jackson's rocky road through KH2 and 358/2 Days, which they hated and liked respectively. Maybe it was all my friends on twitter who are still very emotional for this boy with the goofy hair and the giant key. I just know that yesterday I decided I must play the Kingdom Hearts, and I'm going to play the Kingdom Hearts. 

I'm doing it the wrong way, of course. I crammed some lore explainer videos of all the games between 2 and 3, which has given me a very skewed perception because I didn't have to play any of these games. The lore of Dream Drop Distance? Incredible. Sounds like the best game on earth. I assume it's not, because most people never talk about it, but I sure do like the story in recap form. That one I intend to go back and watch a full video of, probably. After KH3. Like a normal person.

This is the third letter in a row I want to talk about embracing the joy of the present and I think Kingdom Hearts is a great example of this up and down. It was very easy in 2005 to be mad about the convoluted story of KH2, especially when they then decided to very slowly explain it in handheld games for the next decade. It was very easy to make jokes when I didn't follow up with those games about how Kingdom Hearts made no damn sense and I was over it. I played Metal Gear Solid! No damn sense is not a reason to stop anything, and either way Kingdom Hearts at its core is more about the minute to minute emotion anyway. Sora goes and helps his friends and the music plays and you get emotional. It isn't that deep, there's just a lot of Proper Nouns on top of the emotion.

Seeing people getting excited for the new game reminded me of the months I spent playing Kingdom Hearts back in the day, of how excited I was that Disney and Final Fantasy were one thing, and the very special feeling of nostalgia and wonder that came out of that first game even with all its many faults and quirks. 

It's 2019, and Final Fantasy isn't what it used to be on top of Disney is a mess of more complicated emotions considering I know now they're an evil company who owns a significant chunk of all human culture. But also simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel and that still means something too, dammit. 

Looking at all the excitement and all the conversations good and bad, I felt something not entirely like a heart unlocking. It's easy to dismiss this reaction as normal video game FOMO, but I'm pretty good at managing that. Instead it was the realization it's creeping up on two decades since Sora and his friends sent out on this big messy adventure, and some part of me in the past still cares very deeply and the me in the present wants to nurture that young wonder as much as I can in the exhausting, difficult space of 2019. I want Kingdom Hearts to be light, I want to hang out with Winnie the Pooh, and I want Sora to finally beat the Kingdom Hearts for good. That is what he's doing, right?

( I know that's not what he's doing, please don't @ me )

It's not every day we see resolutions like this. Franchises continue on forever. Hell, I'm sure they're going to make more Kingdom Hearts. But this also feels like a decisive ending in the same way people who liked Mass Effect 2 probably felt before ME3 came out, only expanded outward by a decade. I was an absolutely different person between KH1, and KH2, and now KH3. But the nostalgia for that old me, and the bittersweet memories attached to it, have always been a part of Kingdom Hearts, and they'll always be a part of me. So why not reach out to this silly boy for one more adventure, and see what possibilities are down this road along with everyone else?

With that said, I can close this letter off, and go play more game. I might write something when I'm done in weeks and weeks, but I don't expect to talk much more about Kingdom Hearts. I'll save that for the experts, of which I am not. And I hope that when the touchstones of your past rise up to greet you again, you feel as exhilarated by them as I do in this moment, exploring long forgotten feelings I thought I had lost forever. 

Until next time,

Em