YMMV / Those Lacking Spines

• Anticlimax Boss: Jeffiroth, who turns out to be completely pathetic when his hair gets frozen. The Grand Master Fangirl could qualify as well: she gets defeated by FF.net's terms of service.
  • And her own mother.
• Anvilicious: The point of the fic was to show off how to properly write a good fanfic, and parodying bad elements of fanfiction. But even with all of this in mind, an anvil about the Beta gets dropped. And Vexen is there to lampshade it.
  "It eliminates bad elements of fan work and it's called a BETA?" Vexen rolled his eyes. "My, isn't THAT heavy-handed?"
• Discredited Meme: "His name is Mansex? Wow, that only stopped being funny thirty seconds after Kingdom Hearts 2 came out."
• Funny Moments: The tea party sequence, with Axel recording everything on tape.
• Growing the Beard: After the author decided to focus on the story rather than trolling the fanbase.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Considering a recent reveal from Kingdom Hearts III it makes too much sense for the first Seme Gutless we see is technically named after the Latin word for Lust.
  • Zexy-poo appears to be eight years old, to the horror of Xaldin, Vexen, and Lexaeus. Two years after the fic has concluded, Birth by Sleep releases and Ienzo is shown to be eight years old. The author herself draws attention to this in her updated author's notes.
  • The protagonists' repeated angry yells of "Nobodies do not have hearts!!" turn into either this or tragic irony once you played Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]...
  • The gag with the ridiculous number of OC Keyblade wielders would come across as a potshot against χ/Unchained χ/Union χ if not for the fact that the fic clearly long predates it.
    • Similarly, the semes of the nobodies of two of the characters from that game Marluxia and Larxene are Arc Villains of that world too.
  • Xaldin becoming the hero of Toontown is oddly prescient of Episode of Bardock Abridged.
• Memetic Mutation: Several of the more memorable moments of the fic have gone on to become rather well-known around the Kingdom Hearts fandom.
  • Cake has become Vexen's favorite food (naturally).
    • You gotta do the cookin' by the book!
  • JEFFIROTH!^note He was so badass, his font was bolded.
  • "Oh hell."
  • "Did you just go there?"/"I rather think I did."
  • "NOBODIES DO NOT HAVE HEARTS."^note Before Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] one could expect to see this shouted in a review of any Kingdom Hearts badfic that featured the surprisingly-common "Nobody with a heart" trait show up. But ever since, see Hilarious in Hindsight above.
• Unintentional Period Piece: While the fic is pretty up-front with a lot of its references and shoutouts, probably the two most notable examples are with reference to actual Kingdom Hearts canon. As the author herself puts it in the 10th Anniversary upload on AO3, the fic is "ten years and 87 Kingdom Hearts games out of date!"
  • For starters, there isn't a single mention anywhere of Xion, as Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days came out three years following the publishing of this fic.
  • Second, Vexen's Berserk Button is when a writer tries to give a Nobody a heart despite clearly being established as creatures that lack hearts entirely. Fast forward to Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], and it turns out that, yes, Nobodies do get hearts.
• The Un-Twist: The Fangirl Behind The Man.
• Wangst: Zexy-poo's trademark.