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twilight_boyVen's half of the heart can be found here. All questions about that should be directed at Tory. She likes questions. :)
As you are pulled in, you find yourself in freefall, the wind rippling your clothes and buffeting at your face. Everywhere you look, you see an endless sky, awash with the oranges and purples of sunset. There’s a part of you that thinks you should be scared – where there’s sky, there is eventually ground, and few could survive that kind of impact. Instead, you feel calm, and you can’t even tell whether that’s detachment or peace.
Then, the world tilts around you, and you find yourself standing in the middle of what looks like a town square.
Above you is the same twilight sky you saw earlier. The slanted sunbeams paint the buildings and sidewalks a burnished golden color, which spreads as far as you can see. The weather is warm and calm, pretty similar to what Beauty’s realm was like on a good day. You can hear the murmur of passerby and the clank and whistle of a train somewhere not too far from you.
Trouble is, those passerby seem… indistinct, somehow. Like images on a particularly old TV, fuzzing in and out, occasionally replaced with static. And if you look closely, none of them have faces.
A couple of feet away from you, there is a two-arrowed street sign. The arrows are labeled in clear, dark print. One is labeled ‘Train Station,’ the other something called the ‘Struggle Pitch.’ On the ground by the sign, you see a seashell. Odd thing to be lying around in the middle of a town with no beach in sight…
Off to your right, you can see an exit into an alleyway, with a skateboard propped up in front of it.
On the other side of the street, where the vendor is not, there is a brick wall. It’s a perfectly ordinary wall, light-colored and crumbling a little but not falling apart – except for that one dark crack somewhere close to the middle of it.
---
The intro is basically a world and mood-setter. Everyone's always falling in KH, but it's not really a scary or alarming sort of falling.
A word about geography: This looks pretty much like Twilight Town, but it's not a direct representation. Obviously. Same for other canon areas. Symbolism!
The Twilight Town residents are staticky and faceless because Roxas has just realized that the vast majority of his memories there are fake. His general sense of reality - mostly Twilight Town, but not just - had been shaken severely.
P.S.: No, Knife, that wasn't your fault. He was already figuring it out.
The seashell is part of a puzzle to get Roxas's memories of Xion unlocked. Axel picked it up and interacted with it. That means, Roxas will be more aware that something's missing, even though none of the ways to unlock Xion were completed. There were four shells like that scattered throughout the game. Each had one letter of Xion's name on one side, and a corresponding letter of Gale on the other. Collecting all four and putting them together so that they spelled the name would have been the win condition.
The ice-cream stand was primarily meant to be a way to get to the True Heart. But Ferris and Ryner wanted ice-cream so badly I didn't want to break their hearts. Especially considering the beach was nonexistent. I'll talk about the boots later. You guys. ;;;
Getting to the Train Station and Struggle Pitch from here is pretty obvious. Taking the alley will lead you to the Usual Spot, and taking the crack in the wall will take you to the forest.
By the end of the game, the TT residents were no longer staticky and faceless, but we'll get to that later, since the changes responsible were enacted in other areas.
The biggest change from this area is, I think, that Axel got +5 dere for interacting with the shell.
Go Alley
It seems unusually clean and sunlit for an alley. There’s some kind of entrance at the end, with a blanket hanging over it.
The Usual Spot
The room you’re inside of clearly looks like a clubhouse, if you’re familiar with that sort of thing. What little furniture there is - a sofa, two small tables and a couple of foldout chairs – looks beat up but comfortable. Most of the wall space is covered with posters, though there’s enough room left for a dart board right across from the couch and a medium-sized bulletin board with a number of pictures tacked up on it. One of the tables is right under that bulletin board, and there are markers and post-it notes and more photos scattered all over it, along with a smallish notebook bound in Emerald green. The other table is next to the couch and has a whole bunch of stuff loaded on top of it. There’s a pair of boots, the same color as the notebook, peeking out from under the couch. In the very back of the room, you can see a closed door.
---
The dartboard and the skateboard are basically dere items. Playing with them gets you dere.
---
Bulletin Board
The photos are small Polaroids, and you can recognize most of the people in them. Knife, Hisoka, Winter, Stealth, Viridian and Mage from Emerald. Champion from Tiger’s Eye. Rabbit from Coral. Lloyd and Mithos from Sterling. There’s a photo of Roxas with two boys and a girl his age hanging off to the side, but it’s not tacked on as securely as the others, with part of it hanging off the board. A photo of a pale, light-haired girl dressed in white could well have faded into the board, unnoticed, were it not for her vibrant blue eyes, which look an awful lot like Roxas’s own. Close to the middle, there’s another photo with Roxas in it. This one shows him with a tall, redheaded man in a black coat, whose hair goes up in porcupine spikes not unlike Zack Fair’s, only longer. Right next to it is another photo featuring those two, and… it almost looks like there might be another person in that photo, but the end with them in it must have gotten underexposed. All you see is burnt-looking brownish-black, and maybe a sleeve.
---
The bulletin board represents Roxas's friendships, in Aather and canon. The photo of the Twilight Town trio is askew because Roxas knows those relationships weren't real, but it's still there because he cares. Ferris righted the photo, so Roxas is going to keep valuing the friendships regardless.
The damaged photo would, under normal circumstances, contain Xion. That's why it felt familiar to Ryner. Putting it in the journal - "don't forget" - would have restored the Xion memories. I'm aware this wouldn't have been entirely intuitive, but heart puzzles don't have to be. :-p
---
Board!Table
In addition to the post-it notes, markers, glue sticks, thumbtacks and a small Polaroid camera, the table contains more photos. Again, you can probably recognize the people in those. Yukio from Ruby. Percy from Citrine. Beatrice from Peridot. Nessa from Sapphire. Sharon and Violet from Kunzite. Edmund from Sterling and Sion from Onyx. There are even a couple of Personae, namely the Firebird and the White Queen.
---
The art supplies and camera are basically there so that people can add notes to the board, take pictures of themselves and put them up, etc. Ferris wrote a dango recipe and an offer to help with it. Now, for some reason, Roxas will know how to make dango. Also +5 dere for Ferris.
The photos on the table are of people who've made enough of an impression on him he likes them, but he doesn't know them well enough/doesn't feel close to them, like he does with the ones on the board. Putting any of them up on the board would obviously upped his feeling close to them.
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Journal
The notebook appears to be a journal, though not a locked one. When you open it, the first thing you’ll notice is the words ‘don’t forget’ scrawled multiple times over every page. More pictures are glued in over those words, one to a page. Each is carefully labeled with that person’s name. The first four pages are taken up with Emerald-bordered photos: Cloud, Hyaku, and two blank pictures labeled ‘Ginger’ and ‘Lion.’ As you go further, you see Gale from Amethyst, Jacuzzi and Smoke from Ruby, Lenalee from Coral, President from Peridot (though there’s a smiley face on the border,) Wolf from Sterling and Wako from Carnelian.
---
These are the people lost to Roxas in one way or another, of course. No distinction is made between minor and major CR here. All are important and getting the Booked ones back is high priority to him. The photos are glued in and impossible to remove. "Don't Forget" is a reminder that he's fighting for them and he can't let himself care about them less just because they're not there anymore. Shadowchild gets a smiley cause he's gone home, not been Booked. It was a happy departure, if a departure nonetheless. The photo of Hayner, Pence and Olette will ultimately wind up here.
Ginger and Lion are blank photos because Roxas has never met Asuka or Setsuna. Pretty straight-forward. Though now, for some reason, Roxas will feel like he knows what Ginger looks like - and will turn out to be right if/when she comes back, since Ferris drew a picture of her on the blank photo. They're not CR, but being past Emeralds, they're still important.
---
Couch and the Table next to it
The couch represents romantic and sexual attraction. It doesn't have any items on it right now, since Roxas doesn't really feel a conscious attraction to anyone at the moment. The table next to it represents people who are, in some way, Roxas's type - ones he could develop a crush on, but hasn't yet.
"A black hooded coat and a green scarf are draped over the table, with a miniaturized keyblade shaped like an abstract sort of wing, a butterfly-shaped pin, an Amethyst key and a paintbrush lying on top of those."
The coat is Axel. The green scarf is Natsume (age mate and one of the teammates he feels emotionally closest to.) The mini-keyblade is Ven. The Amethyst key is Xion. The butterfly pin is Beatrice, god help me, hey she hit him in the 'it's okay to not be human' buttons. The paintbrush is Shiemi, who was awesome in the bit of Beauty's game he'd interacted with (and awesomer in the part they were separate in!), as well as a general representation that Roxas has dere for cute, take-charge girls. Sharon and Homura could also have gone here, but he hadn't interacted with them recently enough.
Let me reiterate once again that those are not existent crushes - just ones made a little bit likely in one way or another.
The boots under the table were the attraction token representing Jade. Because yeah, Jade is Roxas's type. See also: Axel. And the kiss in the Emerald truth-or-dare shot that attraction from subconscious to conscious. And Roxas went 'yeeaaahno. Bad idea.' Since Jade is a) a teammate (and Emerald does not have a teamcest vibe), b) too old even by Roxas's standards, and c) the adorable sketchy man he is. That's why Ferris and Ryner got an emotional read off the boots and not the other tokens - because something was already there. It's kind of hilarious how strong a reaction they had to the boots, cause it actually wasn't that emotional a situation for Roxas.
Ryner and Ferris then proceeded to sell the boots for ice-cream. Guys, I don't even fucking know how to interpret that. Will Roxas now associate Jade as someone who whores himself out for sweets? WTF, mate?
At any rate, the idea that attraction to Jade is a bad thing is now gone. God help me, again.
Ferris and Ryner also moved the Ven!keyblade and Xion!key to Roxas's bed in Emerald cabin. This will mean Roxas will be more likely to snuggle/co-sleep with those two, but less inclined to be attracted to them.
The door leads to Emerald cabin, which represents safety and family. If someone he didn't trust tried to enter, they would have been barred. That included Riku, for all the obvious reasons, as well as Kyouko and Naruto, neither of whom he hates, but both of whom fucked things up in Knife's heart.
The memory play as you walk through the door is "so, you guys think we'll be together like this forever?" from Twilight Town. You're hit with static when you see it because, of course, Roxas knows how that ended. It also represents his fear that, much as he loves the other Emeralds, there will come a time when they leave and he'll never see them again.
Emerald Cabin
After the memory is done playing, the static clears and you enter a room that looks an awful lot like Emerald cabin. This is the old iteration, the one from Beauty’s realm – except for the bath full of water in the back. That’s right out of Three’s domain. The cabin’s ceiling is higher up than you remember it ever being. Tall enough that, under normal conditions, your voice should echo inside this room. Despite all this, the room feels warm and lived-in. There’s a miniature bottle of alcohol on the dining room table. A pile of bloodstained Emerald jackets has been dumped on one of the beds.
---
The ceiling is tall because Roxas holds everyone from Emerald in such high regard. Not in the they're not capable of horrible things way (hahahhaha), but in the, they are the wisest and smartest people he knows way. And he perceives himself as Emerald's resident dumb kid.
The jackets represent the idea that shit happens to Emeralds. This is just seen as normal and, if not okay, then at least expected. Ryner washing the jackets reset that idea. Roxas will be a bit more troubled by bad things happening to Emeralds, including himself. Knowing my team and their registries, though, those jackets will get bloody again pretty soon.
The booze is a representation of alcohol as a coping mechanism. Thank you, Emerald. The bottle is miniature because it's not a huge part of Roxas's life, just a little bit of a one. I forget, did Ferris drink the booze? If so, it would have upped that particular coping mechanism some. The bottle would automatically refill, no matter what.
The water in the bath is erasure/a fresh start. Because that's how Roxas started at Emerald. Anything you used it on would gain a clean slate in Roxas's attitude.
Ryner taking a nap on Roxas's bed means Roxas now sees him as an honorary Emerald. Considering how much Emeraldere Roxas got in the course of this game, that's no mean feat! Ryner, we should thread more/soon!
This appears to be a sandlot-like sports arena. An event must have been in progress, with a cheering crowd gathered in the stands. There’s just one problem. Everything and everyone seems to have frozen in time, like unusually life-colored statues or a paused TV program.
… No, wait, not everyone. The small figure in a black coat sitting on the edge of the lot is still enough you might think it, but if you look closely, you can see that he’s moving. Well. By the shape of the coat, you’d guess it’s a teenage boy, but with his hood down, there’s no sure way to tell. Whoever it is has a piece of cloudy bluish-grey glass in their hand.
---
This location and NPC represented Roxas's sense of loneliness and alienation. The frozen people were a symbol for him feeling like he couldn't really connect, even if he was surrounded by others. Now, this isn't actually true, and the events of the game affirmed it not being true, but his sanity and social cope had taken a hit in recent times.
Two things happened here. Natsume just... stayed and talked with the NPC, utterly jesusing him. This has undercut Roxas's belief that no matter how close he get to people they will eventually leave him, both through what Natsume said and through the very fact of him staying. Some other things Natsume said also made Roxas more willing to consider emotions and friendships based in something fake as real and precious in and of themselves.
In the course of this conversation, Natsume basically MAXED Roxas's trust in him and dere for him, to the point where the NPC's hood came off. The hoods on the various Roxi you see in game, for the record, represent Roxas's willingness or unwillingness to talk about the relevant issue. He'll now be more willing to talk about it, if he feels lonely or isolated, especially to Natsume.
Riku also, amazingly enough, did the right thing here, for all that his motives were ultimately selfish, taking the NPC to the Clock Tower, which is Roxas's Social Center control station. This earned Riku some initial points and meant that Roxas is more likely to deal with loneliness by socializing rather than withdrawing. Which is, y'know, healthy.
Oh! A word about the shards you find here and elsewhere, since I don't think I've talked about them before. They're part of a Ven puzzle, not a Roxas puzzle, so that's all I'm saying on that topic.
Train Station
The train pulls into the station right as you arrive, its conductor getting out to stretch his legs, once it comes to a halt. The sides of the train are covered with colorful, intricate designs. The conductor seems much less static-ridden than the people you saw in the town plaza. His face is pleasant though not particularly distinctive.
The station building is a stately one, with a clocktower rising from it, making it easily the tallest building in town. The doors are wide open, so that people could walk right in if they wanted.
On the right side of the door, you can see the train schedule, placed under glass. It’s hard to get a real look at it, though, since the glass is so dusty and dingy.
---
The train station is Roxas's metaphysical connection to Ven, both symbolically and literally. The conductor's less indistinct than other TT civilians as a kind of hint that you're about to leave the premises. The schedule reflects Roxas's opinion on the whole thinbond thing. Right now, it's pretty murky, since Roxas is extra distrustful of things foisted on him by KH metaphysics. It doesn't reflect at all on his relationship with Ven himself, just the empathic link. About all it's good for, as far as he's concerned, is as an early warning system should Ven ever be hurt or in trouble. If someone had cleaned the glass, Roxas's outlook on the bond would have improved, but currently, it remains as it was.
If I were to run this game again, I would have started with the train not having arrived yet, since its presence hurried people along and didn't really allow for area exploration.
If you get on the train, the memory of Roxas and Ven's first meeting plays. If Ven is with you, he starts to drift off, then disappears by the time the memory's done.
Clock Tower
Inside the station is narrow and circular. A winding staircase rises toward the ceiling. About midway, it’s broken up by a landing, and on that landing is a heavy closed door. If you squint, you can see the faint outline of a trapdoor at the very top of the stairs. Perhaps it leads to the roof?
---
As previously mentioned, the Clock Tower is Roxas's social center and the hub for fixing a lot of the things that have gone wrong in Twilight Town. This place is Axel's domain - specifically, the Axel that Roxas had met in the Sig-Pos memory. He's touchy, somewhat snarky, reasonably wise and if he likes you, he'll ask you to poke around the gear room and fix things, giving you the key to do it with.
---
You step inside. The room on the other side of the door is full of gears. Some turn sluggishly; others seem to be stuck altogether. Something glints between the teeth of two of those gears. On the wall nearby is another keyhole. It’s not precisely cold inside this room, but neither is the temperature as pleasant as it is outside.
---
An Emerald key could also have gotten you inside, but it couldn't have restarted the gear mechanism. The glinty thing stuck between two of the gears is a glass shard, and you'd need to remove it to start the gear mechanism. If you don't, the gears would just grind against it and get stuck again.
Fixing the gears restarted the sociability coping mechanism as a way to deal with the issues Roxas has been having. It recharged his extrovert batteries, so to speak, and would allow him to rely on others for company and understanding.
Riku and Mikage fixed the gears. This granted them both access to the true heart, since a major change like that would, earned Mikage some real dere points, and won Riku some points (you can't have dere until you're out of the hate spectrum altogether.)
In progress/to be updated soon. Since my hands are cramping up from typing.
As you are pulled in, you find yourself in freefall, the wind rippling your clothes and buffeting at your face. Everywhere you look, you see an endless sky, awash with the oranges and purples of sunset. There’s a part of you that thinks you should be scared – where there’s sky, there is eventually ground, and few could survive that kind of impact. Instead, you feel calm, and you can’t even tell whether that’s detachment or peace.
Then, the world tilts around you, and you find yourself standing in the middle of what looks like a town square.
Above you is the same twilight sky you saw earlier. The slanted sunbeams paint the buildings and sidewalks a burnished golden color, which spreads as far as you can see. The weather is warm and calm, pretty similar to what Beauty’s realm was like on a good day. You can hear the murmur of passerby and the clank and whistle of a train somewhere not too far from you.
Trouble is, those passerby seem… indistinct, somehow. Like images on a particularly old TV, fuzzing in and out, occasionally replaced with static. And if you look closely, none of them have faces.
A couple of feet away from you, there is a two-arrowed street sign. The arrows are labeled in clear, dark print. One is labeled ‘Train Station,’ the other something called the ‘Struggle Pitch.’ On the ground by the sign, you see a seashell. Odd thing to be lying around in the middle of a town with no beach in sight…
Off to your right, you can see an exit into an alleyway, with a skateboard propped up in front of it.
On the other side of the street, where the vendor is not, there is a brick wall. It’s a perfectly ordinary wall, light-colored and crumbling a little but not falling apart – except for that one dark crack somewhere close to the middle of it.
---
The intro is basically a world and mood-setter. Everyone's always falling in KH, but it's not really a scary or alarming sort of falling.
A word about geography: This looks pretty much like Twilight Town, but it's not a direct representation. Obviously. Same for other canon areas. Symbolism!
The Twilight Town residents are staticky and faceless because Roxas has just realized that the vast majority of his memories there are fake. His general sense of reality - mostly Twilight Town, but not just - had been shaken severely.
P.S.: No, Knife, that wasn't your fault. He was already figuring it out.
The seashell is part of a puzzle to get Roxas's memories of Xion unlocked. Axel picked it up and interacted with it. That means, Roxas will be more aware that something's missing, even though none of the ways to unlock Xion were completed. There were four shells like that scattered throughout the game. Each had one letter of Xion's name on one side, and a corresponding letter of Gale on the other. Collecting all four and putting them together so that they spelled the name would have been the win condition.
The ice-cream stand was primarily meant to be a way to get to the True Heart. But Ferris and Ryner wanted ice-cream so badly I didn't want to break their hearts. Especially considering the beach was nonexistent. I'll talk about the boots later. You guys. ;;;
Getting to the Train Station and Struggle Pitch from here is pretty obvious. Taking the alley will lead you to the Usual Spot, and taking the crack in the wall will take you to the forest.
By the end of the game, the TT residents were no longer staticky and faceless, but we'll get to that later, since the changes responsible were enacted in other areas.
The biggest change from this area is, I think, that Axel got +5 dere for interacting with the shell.
Go Alley
It seems unusually clean and sunlit for an alley. There’s some kind of entrance at the end, with a blanket hanging over it.
The Usual Spot
The room you’re inside of clearly looks like a clubhouse, if you’re familiar with that sort of thing. What little furniture there is - a sofa, two small tables and a couple of foldout chairs – looks beat up but comfortable. Most of the wall space is covered with posters, though there’s enough room left for a dart board right across from the couch and a medium-sized bulletin board with a number of pictures tacked up on it. One of the tables is right under that bulletin board, and there are markers and post-it notes and more photos scattered all over it, along with a smallish notebook bound in Emerald green. The other table is next to the couch and has a whole bunch of stuff loaded on top of it. There’s a pair of boots, the same color as the notebook, peeking out from under the couch. In the very back of the room, you can see a closed door.
---
The dartboard and the skateboard are basically dere items. Playing with them gets you dere.
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Bulletin Board
The photos are small Polaroids, and you can recognize most of the people in them. Knife, Hisoka, Winter, Stealth, Viridian and Mage from Emerald. Champion from Tiger’s Eye. Rabbit from Coral. Lloyd and Mithos from Sterling. There’s a photo of Roxas with two boys and a girl his age hanging off to the side, but it’s not tacked on as securely as the others, with part of it hanging off the board. A photo of a pale, light-haired girl dressed in white could well have faded into the board, unnoticed, were it not for her vibrant blue eyes, which look an awful lot like Roxas’s own. Close to the middle, there’s another photo with Roxas in it. This one shows him with a tall, redheaded man in a black coat, whose hair goes up in porcupine spikes not unlike Zack Fair’s, only longer. Right next to it is another photo featuring those two, and… it almost looks like there might be another person in that photo, but the end with them in it must have gotten underexposed. All you see is burnt-looking brownish-black, and maybe a sleeve.
---
The bulletin board represents Roxas's friendships, in Aather and canon. The photo of the Twilight Town trio is askew because Roxas knows those relationships weren't real, but it's still there because he cares. Ferris righted the photo, so Roxas is going to keep valuing the friendships regardless.
The damaged photo would, under normal circumstances, contain Xion. That's why it felt familiar to Ryner. Putting it in the journal - "don't forget" - would have restored the Xion memories. I'm aware this wouldn't have been entirely intuitive, but heart puzzles don't have to be. :-p
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Board!Table
In addition to the post-it notes, markers, glue sticks, thumbtacks and a small Polaroid camera, the table contains more photos. Again, you can probably recognize the people in those. Yukio from Ruby. Percy from Citrine. Beatrice from Peridot. Nessa from Sapphire. Sharon and Violet from Kunzite. Edmund from Sterling and Sion from Onyx. There are even a couple of Personae, namely the Firebird and the White Queen.
---
The art supplies and camera are basically there so that people can add notes to the board, take pictures of themselves and put them up, etc. Ferris wrote a dango recipe and an offer to help with it. Now, for some reason, Roxas will know how to make dango. Also +5 dere for Ferris.
The photos on the table are of people who've made enough of an impression on him he likes them, but he doesn't know them well enough/doesn't feel close to them, like he does with the ones on the board. Putting any of them up on the board would obviously upped his feeling close to them.
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Journal
The notebook appears to be a journal, though not a locked one. When you open it, the first thing you’ll notice is the words ‘don’t forget’ scrawled multiple times over every page. More pictures are glued in over those words, one to a page. Each is carefully labeled with that person’s name. The first four pages are taken up with Emerald-bordered photos: Cloud, Hyaku, and two blank pictures labeled ‘Ginger’ and ‘Lion.’ As you go further, you see Gale from Amethyst, Jacuzzi and Smoke from Ruby, Lenalee from Coral, President from Peridot (though there’s a smiley face on the border,) Wolf from Sterling and Wako from Carnelian.
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These are the people lost to Roxas in one way or another, of course. No distinction is made between minor and major CR here. All are important and getting the Booked ones back is high priority to him. The photos are glued in and impossible to remove. "Don't Forget" is a reminder that he's fighting for them and he can't let himself care about them less just because they're not there anymore. Shadowchild gets a smiley cause he's gone home, not been Booked. It was a happy departure, if a departure nonetheless. The photo of Hayner, Pence and Olette will ultimately wind up here.
Ginger and Lion are blank photos because Roxas has never met Asuka or Setsuna. Pretty straight-forward. Though now, for some reason, Roxas will feel like he knows what Ginger looks like - and will turn out to be right if/when she comes back, since Ferris drew a picture of her on the blank photo. They're not CR, but being past Emeralds, they're still important.
---
Couch and the Table next to it
The couch represents romantic and sexual attraction. It doesn't have any items on it right now, since Roxas doesn't really feel a conscious attraction to anyone at the moment. The table next to it represents people who are, in some way, Roxas's type - ones he could develop a crush on, but hasn't yet.
"A black hooded coat and a green scarf are draped over the table, with a miniaturized keyblade shaped like an abstract sort of wing, a butterfly-shaped pin, an Amethyst key and a paintbrush lying on top of those."
The coat is Axel. The green scarf is Natsume (age mate and one of the teammates he feels emotionally closest to.) The mini-keyblade is Ven. The Amethyst key is Xion. The butterfly pin is Beatrice, god help me, hey she hit him in the 'it's okay to not be human' buttons. The paintbrush is Shiemi, who was awesome in the bit of Beauty's game he'd interacted with (and awesomer in the part they were separate in!), as well as a general representation that Roxas has dere for cute, take-charge girls. Sharon and Homura could also have gone here, but he hadn't interacted with them recently enough.
Let me reiterate once again that those are not existent crushes - just ones made a little bit likely in one way or another.
The boots under the table were the attraction token representing Jade. Because yeah, Jade is Roxas's type. See also: Axel. And the kiss in the Emerald truth-or-dare shot that attraction from subconscious to conscious. And Roxas went 'yeeaaahno. Bad idea.' Since Jade is a) a teammate (and Emerald does not have a teamcest vibe), b) too old even by Roxas's standards, and c) the adorable sketchy man he is. That's why Ferris and Ryner got an emotional read off the boots and not the other tokens - because something was already there. It's kind of hilarious how strong a reaction they had to the boots, cause it actually wasn't that emotional a situation for Roxas.
Ryner and Ferris then proceeded to sell the boots for ice-cream. Guys, I don't even fucking know how to interpret that. Will Roxas now associate Jade as someone who whores himself out for sweets? WTF, mate?
At any rate, the idea that attraction to Jade is a bad thing is now gone. God help me, again.
Ferris and Ryner also moved the Ven!keyblade and Xion!key to Roxas's bed in Emerald cabin. This will mean Roxas will be more likely to snuggle/co-sleep with those two, but less inclined to be attracted to them.
The door leads to Emerald cabin, which represents safety and family. If someone he didn't trust tried to enter, they would have been barred. That included Riku, for all the obvious reasons, as well as Kyouko and Naruto, neither of whom he hates, but both of whom fucked things up in Knife's heart.
The memory play as you walk through the door is "so, you guys think we'll be together like this forever?" from Twilight Town. You're hit with static when you see it because, of course, Roxas knows how that ended. It also represents his fear that, much as he loves the other Emeralds, there will come a time when they leave and he'll never see them again.
Emerald Cabin
After the memory is done playing, the static clears and you enter a room that looks an awful lot like Emerald cabin. This is the old iteration, the one from Beauty’s realm – except for the bath full of water in the back. That’s right out of Three’s domain. The cabin’s ceiling is higher up than you remember it ever being. Tall enough that, under normal conditions, your voice should echo inside this room. Despite all this, the room feels warm and lived-in. There’s a miniature bottle of alcohol on the dining room table. A pile of bloodstained Emerald jackets has been dumped on one of the beds.
---
The ceiling is tall because Roxas holds everyone from Emerald in such high regard. Not in the they're not capable of horrible things way (hahahhaha), but in the, they are the wisest and smartest people he knows way. And he perceives himself as Emerald's resident dumb kid.
The jackets represent the idea that shit happens to Emeralds. This is just seen as normal and, if not okay, then at least expected. Ryner washing the jackets reset that idea. Roxas will be a bit more troubled by bad things happening to Emeralds, including himself. Knowing my team and their registries, though, those jackets will get bloody again pretty soon.
The booze is a representation of alcohol as a coping mechanism. Thank you, Emerald. The bottle is miniature because it's not a huge part of Roxas's life, just a little bit of a one. I forget, did Ferris drink the booze? If so, it would have upped that particular coping mechanism some. The bottle would automatically refill, no matter what.
The water in the bath is erasure/a fresh start. Because that's how Roxas started at Emerald. Anything you used it on would gain a clean slate in Roxas's attitude.
Ryner taking a nap on Roxas's bed means Roxas now sees him as an honorary Emerald. Considering how much Emeraldere Roxas got in the course of this game, that's no mean feat! Ryner, we should thread more/soon!
This appears to be a sandlot-like sports arena. An event must have been in progress, with a cheering crowd gathered in the stands. There’s just one problem. Everything and everyone seems to have frozen in time, like unusually life-colored statues or a paused TV program.
… No, wait, not everyone. The small figure in a black coat sitting on the edge of the lot is still enough you might think it, but if you look closely, you can see that he’s moving. Well. By the shape of the coat, you’d guess it’s a teenage boy, but with his hood down, there’s no sure way to tell. Whoever it is has a piece of cloudy bluish-grey glass in their hand.
---
This location and NPC represented Roxas's sense of loneliness and alienation. The frozen people were a symbol for him feeling like he couldn't really connect, even if he was surrounded by others. Now, this isn't actually true, and the events of the game affirmed it not being true, but his sanity and social cope had taken a hit in recent times.
Two things happened here. Natsume just... stayed and talked with the NPC, utterly jesusing him. This has undercut Roxas's belief that no matter how close he get to people they will eventually leave him, both through what Natsume said and through the very fact of him staying. Some other things Natsume said also made Roxas more willing to consider emotions and friendships based in something fake as real and precious in and of themselves.
In the course of this conversation, Natsume basically MAXED Roxas's trust in him and dere for him, to the point where the NPC's hood came off. The hoods on the various Roxi you see in game, for the record, represent Roxas's willingness or unwillingness to talk about the relevant issue. He'll now be more willing to talk about it, if he feels lonely or isolated, especially to Natsume.
Riku also, amazingly enough, did the right thing here, for all that his motives were ultimately selfish, taking the NPC to the Clock Tower, which is Roxas's Social Center control station. This earned Riku some initial points and meant that Roxas is more likely to deal with loneliness by socializing rather than withdrawing. Which is, y'know, healthy.
Oh! A word about the shards you find here and elsewhere, since I don't think I've talked about them before. They're part of a Ven puzzle, not a Roxas puzzle, so that's all I'm saying on that topic.
Train Station
The train pulls into the station right as you arrive, its conductor getting out to stretch his legs, once it comes to a halt. The sides of the train are covered with colorful, intricate designs. The conductor seems much less static-ridden than the people you saw in the town plaza. His face is pleasant though not particularly distinctive.
The station building is a stately one, with a clocktower rising from it, making it easily the tallest building in town. The doors are wide open, so that people could walk right in if they wanted.
On the right side of the door, you can see the train schedule, placed under glass. It’s hard to get a real look at it, though, since the glass is so dusty and dingy.
---
The train station is Roxas's metaphysical connection to Ven, both symbolically and literally. The conductor's less indistinct than other TT civilians as a kind of hint that you're about to leave the premises. The schedule reflects Roxas's opinion on the whole thinbond thing. Right now, it's pretty murky, since Roxas is extra distrustful of things foisted on him by KH metaphysics. It doesn't reflect at all on his relationship with Ven himself, just the empathic link. About all it's good for, as far as he's concerned, is as an early warning system should Ven ever be hurt or in trouble. If someone had cleaned the glass, Roxas's outlook on the bond would have improved, but currently, it remains as it was.
If I were to run this game again, I would have started with the train not having arrived yet, since its presence hurried people along and didn't really allow for area exploration.
If you get on the train, the memory of Roxas and Ven's first meeting plays. If Ven is with you, he starts to drift off, then disappears by the time the memory's done.
Clock Tower
Inside the station is narrow and circular. A winding staircase rises toward the ceiling. About midway, it’s broken up by a landing, and on that landing is a heavy closed door. If you squint, you can see the faint outline of a trapdoor at the very top of the stairs. Perhaps it leads to the roof?
---
As previously mentioned, the Clock Tower is Roxas's social center and the hub for fixing a lot of the things that have gone wrong in Twilight Town. This place is Axel's domain - specifically, the Axel that Roxas had met in the Sig-Pos memory. He's touchy, somewhat snarky, reasonably wise and if he likes you, he'll ask you to poke around the gear room and fix things, giving you the key to do it with.
---
You step inside. The room on the other side of the door is full of gears. Some turn sluggishly; others seem to be stuck altogether. Something glints between the teeth of two of those gears. On the wall nearby is another keyhole. It’s not precisely cold inside this room, but neither is the temperature as pleasant as it is outside.
---
An Emerald key could also have gotten you inside, but it couldn't have restarted the gear mechanism. The glinty thing stuck between two of the gears is a glass shard, and you'd need to remove it to start the gear mechanism. If you don't, the gears would just grind against it and get stuck again.
Fixing the gears restarted the sociability coping mechanism as a way to deal with the issues Roxas has been having. It recharged his extrovert batteries, so to speak, and would allow him to rely on others for company and understanding.
Riku and Mikage fixed the gears. This granted them both access to the true heart, since a major change like that would, earned Mikage some real dere points, and won Riku some points (you can't have dere until you're out of the hate spectrum altogether.)
In progress/to be updated soon. Since my hands are cramping up from typing.