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Not a no-body

This is a tangent to a ramble I've wanted to make for a long time regarding the Nobodies (it's always about Nobodies!) and OXIII in particular.

I've seen a lot of people who seem to think that they're sort of this immortal surreal existence. They don't need to eat. They don't need to sleep. They don't age. They just sort of exist.

Which is fair enough, but canon suggests (of course there's no hard facts) otherwise. We see them eating and drinking and taking turns making dinner in the CoM manga, for example. I think something to consider is that they may not be human and they may even be, for all intents and purposes, dead -- but they're still bodies. That's actually all they are. And bodies, as coma patients teach us, require food and drink, and age even without written consent from the people who operate them.

And, the closest thing to canon evidence we have to support this theory: Nobodies have to age, because Sora was fourteen when Roxas was created, and Roxas is definitely not fourteen now. He is clearly fifteen. Namine is even more visibly older: we see her at fourteen and fifteen in the KH manga. (Between the pair of them and Sora, in Nomura and Amano's minds, 15 is the year when you suddenly become less of a cartoon and more of a sex object!)

This is when I look at Ansem's research assistants. We know they're nine years old as Nobodies -- so are they nine years older physically? The telling ones are Xehanort and Ienzo.

I. Xehanort-Xemnas
He's telling because he's the ONLY Nobody we've seen as a Somebody. Now, Xemnas does not look old. But on the other hand, Xehanort looks quite young -- I would place him between 20-22. He definitely looks younger than his Heartless, who I could easily place as nine years older than how he looked then; maybe around 30. And Xemnas, although quite youthful looking, could pull off 30.

VI. Ienzo-Zexion
We don't know what Zexion looked like as a Somebody, but we do know that he's very young-looking, and he was old enough to be a scientist eight years ago. Now, Zexion could be anywhere from 16 up. But on comparing him to the others, specifically Axel and Demyx, I don't think he looks younger than they are -- he's at least their age and probably more. He's very short, very slender, and drowning in his clothes and his hair, but I think his appearance is deceptive.

And, furthermore. We know that he was young as a research assistant -- whenever Ansem mentions him, it's always "young Ienzo..." or "my youngest research assistant..." That isn't so odd in English, really, but in Japanese it stands out a bit. It suggests to me that Ienzo is young enough that it's noticeable... unique.

Ienzo, the cleverest and most cunning of them, the one who convinced Ansem to research into the dark, shows some signs of being a child prodigy. (Tell me you can't see him as a little boy with that Rubix cube.) It doesn't seem like a stretch to think that Ansem used "my young assistant Ienzo" the same way he would use "my young friend Sora" -- to talk to someone considerably younger, for whom "my assistant" or "my friend" would give the wrong impression.

If Ienzo was 17, then he'd be 25 in CoM.

II-V
Help me pin down ages!!

Xigbar seems to be in the mid-late 40s to me. Xaldin is tricky, but I sort of see him in his mid 30s, and Lexaeus is tricky, but I put him the same age. Vexen I see as being late 30s to mid 40s. Stabbing Xemnas at 30 and Zexion at 25 rounds out the original lot.

Thoughts? ♥

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I tend to think eat and sleep and all of that are definitely required, yeah- I mean, even machines need to "rest" once in a while, and whatever else they are. I do, however, think that they don't change physically much- a sort of "caught in an endless loop" kind of thing, if that makes sense: whatever age you were when you were changed, that's where you're stuck. The Xehanort flashback age-difference could possibly be explained as, well, taking place quite some time before his change.

(Of course I also believe that close proxmity to a Keyblade- or a Keyblade Master- could cause a Nobody to begin to grow a heart of their own without the assistance of Kingdom Hearts, and once /that/ starts to happen all kinds of other things start to happen. The Nobody bleeds, um, red instead of black, for one, or they might start to age a bit- wounds that might have healed over perfectly leave scars, etc.)

(Ah- I should add also that I don't think that the agelessness is an immortal thing- I think they eventually begin to deteriorate after a while, especially if they're weaker minded. If you can't hold yourself together, you just sort of evaporate back into the dark...)

Well, but I can't help thinking that it's visually consistent with the way Nobodies "evaporate" when they die, but it's not consistent with what we know of Nobodies, which is that they are in fact the body of a person who died, motivated into living on by a powerful will. By definition they can't be weak-minded or they wouldn't have survived. I think it's more that the body suffers too much damage to go on, and darkness consumes it.

I like your caught-in-an-endless-loop idea -- not that they stop aging, but that their bodies resist change -- because it's interesting. Xehanort is still a chink, though. The Secret Ansem Reports say that by the time Mickey appeared, Xehanort had already written most of the Ansem Reports, meaning he and the other assistants were already well on the way to darkness.

Rawr, Nomura should give us more of these things.

(Also, the keyblade master theory is kind of shiny. XD )

Well I kind of meant that more like, the longer they continue to exist, the harder it becomes to hang on to themselves, in a way, so thus the deterioration.

(Also, the keyblade master theory is kind of shiny. XD )

XD Hey, feel free to use it if you want!

*doesn't know you, but hi!*

May actually be working with something along similar lines there. XD (Re: the keyblade theory.) I'd never heard it put into words before, though~. ♥

Hee! It throws characters like Axel into interesting light, doesn't it?

One: shiny icon.

Two: You've already heard my thoughts on this, but I just don't see Xaldin being much older than late twenties/early thirties. Then again, I am so bad at guesstimating ages that it's kind of laughable to see me even try. He gives off this "facial hair will make people take me more seriously!" vibe, but that could just be the way I see it. Not that I think Dilan/Xaldin necessarily had a complex about being taken seriously, he's clearly badass anyway, but there's just that kind of vibe. Maybe I'm crazy.

Lexaeus I definitely see in his mid-thirties. He's got that kind of ageless thing going for him that a lot of guys in their thirties do. He's just... thirties. XD

I just-- the thought pleases me so much from a Zexion/Lexaeus standpoint. It's just so sketchy. And I like that! I am clearly going to a bad place when I die.

XD I... don't think that about Xaldin at ALL. You're probably crazy.

Zexion/Lexaeus: oldschool Roxas/Axel?

I suspect I am crazy! But you knew that.

And damn straight. I never understood why it's Akuroku when all the well-written stuff is totally Roxas topping, even from the bottom.

Because Rokuaku is hard to say? (It is trickier than akuroku, for some reason.) ~~And because Japanese people are crazy?~~ ;)

I've had my serious doubts about the nature of Nobodies as explained by the game for a long time ANYWAY--I mean, if hearts are made up of "chains of memories" and Nobodies are capable of REMEMBERING, then that logically indicates there must be something in the nature of a heart, however shreded or whatnot. Therefore, logically, to me, they are new people, and as such, I kind of took for granted that they need to eat, sleep, defecate, etc. Including aging. I tend to think what we SEE (as opposed to what we READ, as written by a clearly-predjudiced source) supports the theory that Nobodies would not be so 'Augh!' about it if they didn't KNOW they were Nobodies, and DiZ even admits that he really doesn't know anything after all (and then commits suicide, but).

I can't really help with estimating ages, personally, because I'm the same IRL. I can tell if you're pre-adolescent, if you're adolescent, and then everything from about 22 to about 50 all kind of blend together to me. If I had to guess, Xigbar and Vexen would be toward the further end of that range, Lexaeus and Xaldin would be around the middle, and the rest of them except Roxas, Namine, and possibly Demyx would be in their twenties. (I say possibly Demyx because I think he could be as young as nineteen.)

Just my thoughts on the subject. ^^;

I totally agree with you that the Nobodies are less shells than they are new people -- disassociated from their past lives but still in connection with them. I rambled about it a while back: my theory is that Nobodies aren't actually heartless per se -- as Axel narrates, they just call it a heart that they're missing when they feel hollow. But they think they can't feel because they've been told they can't feel, and because they wake up and they don't care about their old lives anymore... but it's not that they can't feel. It's that they're someone new, and have no reason to care about who had this body before they did.

Anyway, rambling.

We do tend to base all our facts off of DiZ's "research," when in fact he's about as unreliable as narrators get when it comes to Nobodies, being A) full of personal hatred for them, B) never actually having a chance to experiment on them, and C) totally batshit crazy. So where does he get off. XD

Interestingly enough, there are actually a couple of psychological conditions wherein one cannot feel emotions. Histrionic personality disorder is characterized by feelings of emotional numbness, except when one has done something very extreme, such as self-mutilation, to allow oneself to feel something. Unfortunately, it's kind of uncurable, being an inborn personality disorder, so I don't WANT them to have that one. On the other hand, my personal experiences with depression have indicated that depression may ALSO create such a feeling of emotional numbness within. Given that there is some fairly masisve physical upheaval involved in becoming a Nobody, severe depression is pretty easy to see as an outcome.

This is why I feel the Org just needs massive doses of anti-depressants to feel better. *nods*

On the DiZ front, I kind of feel that DiZ is real big hyppocrite, given that in some ways he's even more 'nobody' than the Nobodies are.

And he damned well should have just screwed Xehanort senseless instead of hanging out with the Mouse, dammit! X-P

I just got the image of Org13 standing in line at their local pharmacy (which more than likely is somewhere in Twilight Town XD), waiting for their Prozac to be ready while complaining about the high cost of meds, inflation and the need for a more socialized health system. Of course, at some point they’d just get tired of it all and threaten the pharmacists. Anyway, that image just made me giggle for the longest.

And he damned well should have just screwed Xehanort senseless instead of hanging out with the Mouse, dammit!

OMG Yay! I am not the only one that thinks this! I’m not alone. XDDD

See, that's what happens when Xemnas isn't willing to shell out for DECENT insurance. X-D

...and I think most of the fandom feels that way, or at least that's what I've heard.

It never occurred to me that they might not have to sleep and eat - I suppose some of it comes from CoM manga, and some of it from just seeing Roxas in Twilight Town. That is, I figured they were human. I did sort of also think that they didn't age, though I think the first commenter explained my take on it best. And I admit that there's no actual support for their not aging, either, given, it's just that they do seem to be stuck in a sort of stasis.

Of course, the argument could be made that they keep themselves in this stasis - rather, that they aren't in stasis at all and just think they are. Actually, come to think of it, I can explain.

I suppose I look at the Nobodies as different from human because of the Creepers, Dusks, and the various servant classes of Nobody. Now, of course, we're told, and it's probably true, that OXIII is a group of higher-level Nobodies - those strong enough in will to fully recall themselves and keep themselves together. And possibly that's just the way it is. But it's harder to look at a Dusk (at least in game, thank you Amano for making them CUTE) and see something that has its own consciousness and needs to eat and sleep and is essentially a human reborn. Now, there are two ways to go with this - either the Dusks are really a lower order as the game says and therefore they're more vague shells of people who have bare memories, as in, truly incomplete people (and therefore their characteristics can't be used to judge the higher order Nobodies) or becoming a Nobody really is truly and fully transformative, creating a whole new person - and not necessarily a transformation into something resembling human.

The game doesn't particularly favor one over the other - of course Dusks have the intelligence to speak and communicate and follow orders, but we don't know how highly functioning they are or what they remember. But getting back to my original point - it's possible that the Dusks eat and sleep and age and die. But they seem less human and so it's easier to think of them as entities that just exist. And if they are on the same level as OXIII's leaders, then it makes it easier to assume that the leaders don't have to do human-like stuff, they just do.

(As a sidenote: I totally want to write something about the Dusks having a cafeteria now.)

(Dusks. ♥ )

You make a really good point -- you look at the Dusks and it's just very difficult to think, that's a person, it ages and eats and naps just like any person. But I think that's part of the challenge, too, because I think they are, if not the same sort of existence as a human. Great point, I hadn't thought of the fact that people would go "Axel = big Dusk = sleek and creepy and nothuman".

(Although now I'm envisioning Dusks napping in a big bendy pile, or maybe just one curled around itself like a cat. Damn you!)

....That's frighteningly adorable.

Well, you already know most of my thoughts on this front, but. Here goes.

Re: Eat, Sleep, Drink and Be Merry

I'd say the body needs sustenence. And, love of immortal creatures aside, you know I'm with you on Nobodies aging. They just -- do. Roxas did, we saw him. You can't really argue that.

But while they need to eat and sleep, I think they're missing some of the drive that makes us do these things. I'm not, for example, wholly convinced they dream. I have this image of life for a Nobody being fundamentally greyed -- just a bit paler, a bit less real. ~~So if a Nobody had sex both before and after regaining his heart, he'd probably get off harder after, because the feeling would be a shade more intense, more immediate.~~ ~~Also, they're probably driven a little less towards sex, too, unless you want to get into a psychological need to feel human.~~

And this leads into my sense on feelings.

Axel clearly has them. Demyx...sort of has them. But Saix makes it clear that he doesn't, or at least, he certainly wouldn't defend their existence like Axel did. Xemnas may not either.

It seems very Japanese to me that the only Nobodies would lay claim to feelings are those who have had their hearts moved. (The more I think about Demyx, the less I really trust what he says in the fight with you right before he gets cold and serious, but if you want to put him in this category, have fun figuring out who moved his heart. ♥ ~~Xigbar ftw, who coincidentally is another guy I see as laying claim to feelings, so~~) That the others, well, feel empty inside, a hole where their heart is supposed to be. And it isn't that they don't feel anything, but what they do feel is hollow and faded.

And the reason why I'll stick by this diagnosis, even though Axel has that monologue, is that although we see him feeling things he seems so surprised by it sometimes. (As Roxas leaves, the way his voice hitches and he drops his head -- when he's dying, how he tells Sora about the way Roxas made him feel...) There's this clear implication in my mind that these feelings are special, that before Roxas, Axel didn't feel much of anything.

He habitually lays feelings out in his speech, and he doesn't feel uncomfortable doing it, because he feels some things, the mere mention of feelings isn't enough to make him turn pale and gasp, but it sure unsettles some of the other numbers. And the part of Axel that is unsettled by feelings, that still recognizes strong ones as few and far between, will be damned before he'll admit that to anyone else.

But there are alternate explanations for why the wine has no taste, and I like them just as well. You know that. ♥

Well, I personally think there are other ways to explain that. Axel says they can feel, but he also says that they all have this sensation of emptiness. That sort of hollowness gnaws at you, it doesn't just sit there. It takes away from everything else. I think it's not a big deal to say that they can feel -- but the sense of missing something is so strong that it sucks all the good things dry. You can't be happy while still feeling like there's a huge piece of you carved out and bleeding.

But I think that in Axel's case, that explains perfectly well why he feels like Roxas makes him whole: with him the bleeding stops, the ache goes away. He can feel without the sensation of being drained by his own emptiness. And the intensity of what he feels, the suddenness and the realness, surprises him because he's not used to feeling that way. It only happens for Roxas.

(Roxas still likes his explanation about the wall of logic, but that might just be a Roxas thing. My Axel doesn't agree with him on that. XD )

On that note, I feel like some people are more prone to dwelling on that hollowness than others (Saix and Xemnas, notably) and that would make it next to impossible to feel anything good; other people are more prone to brushing it aside when possible and just moving on, like Xigbar, or concentrating with all their might on the good things, like Demyx. It's not to say they don't have that hollow feeling too -- but they're able to live around it. Other people (such as Larxene!) just took such pleasure out of the ugly things like anger and pain that don't get softened by hollowness, only sharpened by it, that little wonder she seemed normal? XD

Of course I agree with you on eating/sleeping/aging, but (note the difference in our Axels? XD ) I think sex becomes more of an item of interest. It's not so much feeling alive as feeling anything enough to forget, for a while, the void.

I never really thought about the 13 actually eating, sleeping, etc. But it does make sense that they do. Roxas did and that was good enough for me. But I now wonder if they really do need to eat, sleep and so on. They could just do it because of habit, for lack of a better word. Those are functions that have nothing to do with higher brain function after all. But that theory does seem iffy. It makes them seem less conscious so I think it probably might fit for the lower order of Nobodies. Either way I agree with you, if for no other reason than because I have yet to find an undead thing that does not need some sort of sustenance (zombies, brains; vampires, blood).

Now as for immortality. Again I agree more with you. This is also because of Roxas. He does age. So the others should age as well. But I don’t know if they die too. They had the will power to keep the body from dying the first time, so why not have the ability to keep it going indefinitely? Of course, if that were the case... why would they age at all? I donno. Maybe because it feels human? It’s something somebodies do, which is also a good reason for why they might eat. They do want the aspects that make us truly human (to feel) so I can wrap my mind around them doing things to mimic humans, like even looking human.

Also I never really thought that Nobodies were heartless. I always felt that they just had new hearts. This is mostly because hearts = memories in my mind. Any good sci fi about memories wipes is gonna philosophize about whether you are still the same person after a mem-wipe. The answer is no (or at least that’s how I feel about it). I apply that to the 13. They’ve basically had their memories/hearts torn away from them. That could shatter anyone. But they had the strength, the will power, to continue. This means they suffer the effects of their loss and become new people accordingly to such experiences.

To me, that explains the hallow-ness they felt. When you forget something, it nags at you. So imagine forgetting everything? It’s going to leave you feeling incomplete (As someone above mentioned, their numbness could very well be a sort of depression). But instead of running around screaming ‘who am I!’ the 13 found more productive ways of dealing with it.

Anyway, I’m going to stop rambling now. Somewhere among all that rambling is my opinion. I don’t proclaim to know anything about it since my knowledge extends to info I find online and the two PS2 games. But I figured early on that I shouldn’t put all that much stock in DiZ’s yammering, or anyone’s yammering really. Everyone’s too busy trying to save/destroy the worlds
to really figure out what the Nobodies are really all about. It’s really much easier just to see your enemy as inhuman too.

First of all, you make some excellent points -- there's never really been even a fantasy creature that doesn't require some sort of sustenance. Roxas's aging is pretty set in stone, but the point you made about dying interests me. You're right: Nobodies are Nobodies in the first place because they were too strong to lay down and die. This is part of why I think the Nobodies don't simply stop existing after their apparent deaths in the game. (Nomura wanted them to appear in the Underworld, actually, but he didn't have the time to put that in.)

I don't think that being too stubborn to die gives them a free get-out-of-aging pass, though. They had the willpower to keep the body functioning even though the heart was gone; but if the body is still alive, still eating and resting, the cells that compose the body are still aging. I imagine that if a Nobody actually survived enough years to the point where the dying body was holding them back, they might become intangible things of darkness, like Heartless. (Heartless do not have physical bodies, after all. They're 100% mutable darkness. Only these Nobody-Heartless would have souls, etc.)

Buuut, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the second point -- even though I think you're onto something -- because the Nobodies do remember. Axel remembers being Somebody, as does Demyx, as does Xigbar, etc. It's in the Secret Ansem Reports that Roxas and Namine are the only ones who don't, because their creation was unusual; and even if DiZ isn't entirely trustworthy, he and Xemnas had a conversation about Xehanort, so obviously Xemnas remembers him.

BUT

I still think you're onto something. XD Roxas alone makes it clear that a Nobody is NOT the same as their Somebody; they're a different, separate, unique person, because he's just NOT Sora at all. So you have this person you USED to be, who you REMEMBER being, but you're totally detached from them -- you probably start out feeling pretty emotionless. And then there's this sensation of being empty, changed, not the same, not HUMAN, and it all builds up until you feel like you've been fundamentally changed, and it's awfully easy to blame it on the fact that an hour ago a Shadow ran away with your heart. XD

...now I have this wonderful little mental image of Axel chasing a Shadow that's got a heart in its mouth, and Axel is screaming, "Come back here, you little @$@#$@#~!!!!"

I don't think that being too stubborn to die gives them a free get-out-of-aging pass, though.

I agree with you on that point and all the others. I suppose the people who might disagree are the ones that consider them more dead than alive. All bodily functions stop after death so they could be in a form of bodily stasis...? I donno. I just really like considering different opinions. However I like yours and Yashahime's the best. :3

...they might become intangible things of darkness, like Heartless.

I like that theory way better! I think it makes a lot of sense too. I always wondered why they retained human form too considering some of the lower order Heartless have better bodies. I mean, yeah, they’re not overly attractive but they can get things done that might be harder with a human body.

...the Nobodies do remember.

I didn’t know that. I probably should have. >.> That does throw my theory out the window doesn’t it? XD But I completely agree with your fixed up version of that theory. It makes a lot of sense. One minute your this person, now you’re not and you’re like WTF. Of course you’re gonna feel upset and all sorts of bad things. *nods* Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

It amuses me that no matter how inhuman they say they are, that fundamentally they are still very human. Blaming someone else. So human. :3

You know, I really need to stop missing the / in those tags >.>

Actually, I strongly disagree that sleep, in particular, has nothing to do with higher functioning; it has been repeatedly proven that dreaming is an intense part of higher functioning. Current theory is that it is essentially the sort-and-store function of the mind, and it is so important that if you go long enough without sleep, you will fall into what is known as "micro-REM," where literally in the middle of talking, typing, whatever, you fall into extremely short periods of REM sleep. (Two seconds is the average time.) I know I probably shouldn't apply Earth logic to video games, but I can't help feeling that even if the Org has alternate sources of sustenance, their minds would still need sleep, because every animal that has anything like higher functioning sleeps and dreams, from small birds up to primates.

I completely agree with you with the sleep stuff. I remember going through all that in my psych courses and would have applied it to them if it weren’t for one uncertainty on my part--whether they are dead or alive. If they are truly are living beings than yes they need rem sleep and the such to survive. But if they’re not, if they’re undead, then they might not need rem sleep, they might not dream at all. They might need sleep to rest the body or recharge it or whatever reason you’d like, but it wouldn’t be the same as it is for a human. I don’t really know what they are since they came about in unusual means but I keep apply my undead ideas with fantasy. I keep thinking of vampires and zombies and other undead things. And as where vampires sleep and might dream, zombies don’t even sleep.

But because I agree with you I just figure they’re a different kind of undead. Roxas did say he had dreams. He dreamt of Sora. And as long as that didn’t have anything to do with the DiZ or Namine or the AU Twilight Town, then I take it as they need REM sleep to function.

I guess I hadn't considered mythology associated with various forms of undead. They're not really my kink, so to speak, so I never particularly thought about their functioning. ...I mean, I play with vampires sometimes, but it's pretty much ENTIRELY based on White Wolf, which while fun, would not particularly be considered representative of the full range of vampire lore. I would think, though, that if the creature is capable of planning or any form of creativity, it must have some sort of function that is similar to dreaming, even if it takes place while awake.

...great, now I have micro-REMing zombie office workers in my head....jeeze LOUISE I need to bleach my brain one of these days...

That was awesome and thought-provoking.

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Not a no-body

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Spoilers or something! But the post is already spoily so!

Re: Spoilers or something! But the post is already spoily so!

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