ITP: I ESSAY ON NOBODY
So okay, what, in camp, there's a decent population of Nobodies -- you know, THE MAIN ENEMY OF KINGDOM HEARTS II LOLOLOLOLOL-- yeah. And I'm nowhere near as active or involved in KH fandom like I was maybe about a year ago (and even then, I was usually hanging out in the fringes of the Destiny Trio OT3 parts of fandom), but honestly, you just have to be peripherially involved to know how much fandom loves on the Nobodies. I like them too! And I do think they got the short end of the stick in a lot of ways -- but these are things I blame on writing and direction, not on Sora himself. (Though he does certainly tend to get scapegoated a lot, since he is the instrument used to dispatch of the Nobodies.) QUOTING FROM THAT RELATIONSHIP MEME when I was miniessaying for Dera:
by the time Sora actually gets to killing Demyx (which seems to earn him a lot of fandom hate), all he's ever seen Nobodies DO is attack people, or try to turn them into Heartless, or steal things, or whatever! Authority tells him that Nobodies Are Bad, and everything he sees ... doesn't really prove them wrong! It's not till endgame, when he and Roxas make their peace and Axel sacrifices himself, that I think Sora really gets that maybe Nobodies can be different -- which is why he's giving Zexion a chance!
Which is ... essentially how I have decided to play Sora. My headcanon says that Sora might not be very smart, but he's still intelligent, and he's empathic. He feels for people who're in a bad situation! He wants to help when others are hurt! Kingdom Hearts is light! That sort of thing. He might not understand a long and complicated exposition dump, but he appreciates them, and he will at least try to get what he's being told. Certainly, the last fight with Xemnas must have also rattled his worldview a little, since Mickey outright admits that they fight simply because the darkness is scary, mayyyyybe Xemnas had a point -- and even DiZ sort of (sort of!) repents -- but. I think, by that point, it's not so much the Nobodies themselves Sora dislikes, as their methods. Deliberately trying to turn people into Heartless to collect the Nobody? Threatening people? Attacking his friends? They're are all things that any hero-type would be upset about, and Sora is, at his core, A Plucky Hero.
This is complicated a little since Sora doesn't actually remember half the Nobodies in camp. He never technically MET Zexion or Lexaeus, though he did take out Marluxia and Larxene. But that was Chain of Memories, and that his memories being effed with and then fixed and all those events written out of his recollection. He recognizes them as Nobodies -- and part of Organization XIII -- by their coats, but he doesn't actually remember them. So he's wary, but this is post-KH2 Sora, so he's not really going to do anything unless approached first. (Well, okay, he and Marluxia got off on a bad start since Roxas warned him, and as I've said before, Sora's instinct is to trust what Roxas says -- Roxas is him, after all, and Sora trusts himself.) But this is something Zexion did, and unlike, say, Yen Sid and DiZ, he ... explained things! "This is why we did it" and "you need to figure it out for yourself" -- which no one's let Sora do, till this point. Oh, he can decide "We're going to help these people!" or "go left instead of right," but he's been sort of guided to think a certain way about things from the beginning.
(I can also argue that the Keyblade itself is sort of a damning thing, since. In the prologue, Roxas only is able to properly fight the Dusks off when he manages to manifest the Keyblade. Granted, we know Nobodies can hurt each other with their weapons, but it depends on whether you argue them as summoned weapons and extensions of the Nobody's self -- which Iiiiii do, so. The Keyblade is technically Sora's weapon, not Roxas', but it still is able to damage Nobodies, which seems to indicate that they DO fall in the category of Things The Keyblade Master Must Deal With, but that's neither here nor there.)
I mean, maybe you can subtitle this essay Why Sora Likes Zexion but. A lot of his current attitude does go back to Zexion taking the time to explain things to him, and observing how Zexion is sort of matriarch of his own little group here, down to cooking and giving out warnings like Sora's most certainly gotten from his own mother. It helped a lot, and it made him feel a little better about not actually wanting to fight Zexion.
And the thing is ... Sora has a Nobody of his own, and he knows that, now. He's integrated with Roxas, even if in camp, Roxas is separate from him. It's like -- Riku and Kairi are his best friends, the best he'll ever have and the ones he loves the most. But Roxas circumvents that, because Roxas is him, but not-him, so ultimately, the one person who's word Sora will take above all others is Roxas. While he had Roxas dormant within him pretty much from the get-go, he wasn't aware of that, and Roxas himself was still somewhat resistant to the idea (I don't think they would've fought otherwise), but after? They're together, they're one-but-not, and Sora's got a slightly different outlook on the whole "being a Nobody" thing. Plus, Kairi's good word counts for a lot -- as a Princess of Heart, she cannot be corrupted, and so he also instinctively trusts her judgement. If she's friendly with someone, even a Nobody? Okay! No problem! Any friend of Kairi's is a friend of his!
... What this essentially boils down to is, unless the Nobodies cause specific trouble as Sora's trained to recognize it, he'll leave them alone, and may try to be friends with them instead. Because ultimately, Sora's a puppy and he'd much rather be friends than enemies, especially in such relatively confined quarters as this.
P.S. GOKUDERA HAYATO IS STILL AN ENORMOUS JERK WHO IS GOING TO BLOW HIMSELF UP ONE DAY, BUT NOT ME, BECAUSE I WILL HAVE DODGE ROLLED OUT OF THE WAY. \o/
by the time Sora actually gets to killing Demyx (which seems to earn him a lot of fandom hate), all he's ever seen Nobodies DO is attack people, or try to turn them into Heartless, or steal things, or whatever! Authority tells him that Nobodies Are Bad, and everything he sees ... doesn't really prove them wrong! It's not till endgame, when he and Roxas make their peace and Axel sacrifices himself, that I think Sora really gets that maybe Nobodies can be different -- which is why he's giving Zexion a chance!
Which is ... essentially how I have decided to play Sora. My headcanon says that Sora might not be very smart, but he's still intelligent, and he's empathic. He feels for people who're in a bad situation! He wants to help when others are hurt! Kingdom Hearts is light! That sort of thing. He might not understand a long and complicated exposition dump, but he appreciates them, and he will at least try to get what he's being told. Certainly, the last fight with Xemnas must have also rattled his worldview a little, since Mickey outright admits that they fight simply because the darkness is scary, mayyyyybe Xemnas had a point -- and even DiZ sort of (sort of!) repents -- but. I think, by that point, it's not so much the Nobodies themselves Sora dislikes, as their methods. Deliberately trying to turn people into Heartless to collect the Nobody? Threatening people? Attacking his friends? They're are all things that any hero-type would be upset about, and Sora is, at his core, A Plucky Hero.
This is complicated a little since Sora doesn't actually remember half the Nobodies in camp. He never technically MET Zexion or Lexaeus, though he did take out Marluxia and Larxene. But that was Chain of Memories, and that his memories being effed with and then fixed and all those events written out of his recollection. He recognizes them as Nobodies -- and part of Organization XIII -- by their coats, but he doesn't actually remember them. So he's wary, but this is post-KH2 Sora, so he's not really going to do anything unless approached first. (Well, okay, he and Marluxia got off on a bad start since Roxas warned him, and as I've said before, Sora's instinct is to trust what Roxas says -- Roxas is him, after all, and Sora trusts himself.) But this is something Zexion did, and unlike, say, Yen Sid and DiZ, he ... explained things! "This is why we did it" and "you need to figure it out for yourself" -- which no one's let Sora do, till this point. Oh, he can decide "We're going to help these people!" or "go left instead of right," but he's been sort of guided to think a certain way about things from the beginning.
(I can also argue that the Keyblade itself is sort of a damning thing, since. In the prologue, Roxas only is able to properly fight the Dusks off when he manages to manifest the Keyblade. Granted, we know Nobodies can hurt each other with their weapons, but it depends on whether you argue them as summoned weapons and extensions of the Nobody's self -- which Iiiiii do, so. The Keyblade is technically Sora's weapon, not Roxas', but it still is able to damage Nobodies, which seems to indicate that they DO fall in the category of Things The Keyblade Master Must Deal With, but that's neither here nor there.)
I mean, maybe you can subtitle this essay Why Sora Likes Zexion but. A lot of his current attitude does go back to Zexion taking the time to explain things to him, and observing how Zexion is sort of matriarch of his own little group here, down to cooking and giving out warnings like Sora's most certainly gotten from his own mother. It helped a lot, and it made him feel a little better about not actually wanting to fight Zexion.
And the thing is ... Sora has a Nobody of his own, and he knows that, now. He's integrated with Roxas, even if in camp, Roxas is separate from him. It's like -- Riku and Kairi are his best friends, the best he'll ever have and the ones he loves the most. But Roxas circumvents that, because Roxas is him, but not-him, so ultimately, the one person who's word Sora will take above all others is Roxas. While he had Roxas dormant within him pretty much from the get-go, he wasn't aware of that, and Roxas himself was still somewhat resistant to the idea (I don't think they would've fought otherwise), but after? They're together, they're one-but-not, and Sora's got a slightly different outlook on the whole "being a Nobody" thing. Plus, Kairi's good word counts for a lot -- as a Princess of Heart, she cannot be corrupted, and so he also instinctively trusts her judgement. If she's friendly with someone, even a Nobody? Okay! No problem! Any friend of Kairi's is a friend of his!
... What this essentially boils down to is, unless the Nobodies cause specific trouble as Sora's trained to recognize it, he'll leave them alone, and may try to be friends with them instead. Because ultimately, Sora's a puppy and he'd much rather be friends than enemies, especially in such relatively confined quarters as this.
P.S. GOKUDERA HAYATO IS STILL AN ENORMOUS JERK WHO IS GOING TO BLOW HIMSELF UP ONE DAY, BUT NOT ME, BECAUSE I WILL HAVE DODGE ROLLED OUT OF THE WAY. \o/