Thinking Through the Darkness

Episode 6 and I think we've always known what's in the box. We just missed it. Going back through my old theories, I stumbled across something in a Kingdom Hearts 3 cutscene that's been sitting in plain sight the whole time. Maleficent, in Thebes, tells us exactly what she thinks is in the black box. And given that our villains in Kingdom Hearts almost never actually lie to us — they obfuscate, th...

Episode 5 and we're going somewhere that's going to make some people uncomfortable. A comment on the Kairi video got me thinking about something I've wanted to address properly for a while — the question of what counts as canon in Kingdom Hearts, and whether it's ever acceptable to exclude games from the conversation because they're inaccessible. The short answer is no. But the longer answer is mo...

Episode 4 and we're going deep into the secret reports. Specifically Secret Reports 12 and 13 from Luxu — because there's a word in there that I can't stop thinking about. And that word is reenact. Because if the Keyblade War in Kingdom Hearts 3 is a reenactment — a staged event, a play, a depiction of something that already happened — then what we witnessed isn't a real war at all. It's manufactu...

Episode 3 is the one you've been asking for. Why Kingdom Hearts? Why this franchise, of all things, to dedicate this much time and intellectual energy to? The honest answer is that I don't know if I chose Kingdom Hearts or if Kingdom Hearts chose me. What I do know is that it found me when I needed it. I started at 2 because I saw an advert, hit two hours in without even reaching the opening credi...

Episode 2 is here and we're going somewhere a little different this time. We start with some of my core difficulties with Kingdom Hearts as a series — specifically the cognitive load of games like Chain of Memories and why certain design choices genuinely lock some players out. And from there we end up somewhere broader: a conversation about accessibility and adaptability in games, and why so many...

Thinking Through the Darkness — Episode 1: The Maleficent Problem This podcast exists because you asked for it. You wanted more candid access to how LoreBySpec actually works — and this is it. Thinking Through the Darkness is the pre-production process made public. The part before the script. The part where the threads get pulled and the holes get found and the thinking happens out loud. A quick n...