Musing: games - Kingdom Hearts, Orgy XIII?

[wilderthan]

Puns about orgies over with... I've played KHI, CoM and KHII, but something I've never really been able to put my finger on is how to write any of the Organisation. I can see why people would 'ship Axel/Roxas, and I think I could probably write a decent Larxene, but most of them are really a mystery to me (including Axel and Roxas). If they don't have hearts, in the sense that they don't feel, why is anything -- other than perhaps filling that emptiness -- important to them? I read somewhere that each of them goes to extremes with something to feel as if they're real -- Larxene is sadistic, the gambling one gambles... I'm not sure where I read that, though. Roxas seems to feel things in the Twilight Town part -- what's that about, if he doesn't have a heart? Or is he just different because of Sora?

The point is, it's fairly obvious most of them fail to make an impression on me -- and I seemed to have failed to learn much about them in playing the games. How do you go about writing them? Or if you don't, can you give me any insight into their headspace?

Comments

[candeefloss.livejournal.com]

I hope this isn't too long-winded. I could talk about Kingdom Hearts for hours, if given the chance. ^^;

We weren't given much information and a lot was left open to interpretation when it comes to Organization XIII, so different people have different opinions on them. Personally, I'm of the belief they can imitate feeling because of their memories as their original selves before they lost their hearts. But they're also incredibly selfish, thinking only of themselves and unable to empathise with others. Organization XIII is only really an alliance of convenience under a common goal, as demonstrated in CoM when members were all too eager to stab one another in the back when that goal changed – Marluxia and Larxene wanted to take over the Organization in a bid for power. That was sort of a repeat at the end of Kingdom Hearts II, because in the end, Xemnas just wanted power as well.

Roxas is an exception to the Nobody rule because he's special. Not surprising, given he’s the Nobody of the Keyblade master and all that. It's been stated a few times that, unlike other Nobodies, Roxas does have emotions, and Axel goes as far as to say in a FM+ scene that he thinks Roxas does have a heart. It could be because Sora was special when he lost his heart, still able to keep his own mind even as a Heartless, and that in turn affected his Nobody and made him capable of emotion, but that's another thing left open for players to decide for themselves. In Twilight Town, he was also given a ‘fake’ personality by DiZ, to make him seem more like an average person and fit in easily like he did. His Organization XIII personality was shown to be much different.

Axel, of course, seemed like he had emotions because of Roxas, as he said himself. But he's still a Nobody and able to turn on his best friend the moment he discovers Roxas has forgotten about him, and he can kill Vexen and set Replica Riku on Zexion without as much as batting an eye about it. In the end, his death could be seen two ways: selfless heroism to help his best friend, or a selfish act, because he just couldn’t stand living without a heart and Roxas not being around any more.

Yeah, essay there. (Found you via kh_press, if you were wondering, by the way.) I only really write Roxas and Axel, because we're not given much insight about the other members. We basically just see them pop up a few times being all villainous, fight a couple of boss battles against them, and then they're gone, with tiny amounts of screentime. I'm too dedicated to canon to stray off it and create backstories/additional personality. But that's what a lot of writers tend to do, and it's fine, as long as it fits into their original character and doesn't contradict anything.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to reply in detail to any of these, at least not until I've finished my replaying, but thank you for commenting. ♥ And that did help already. :D

[candeefloss.livejournal.com]

Alright. :D I'm glad it helped! And yeah, I had to replay Kingdom Hearts II to really understand it. A lot, especially the prologue, just went entirely over my head the first time. XD I was entirely too confused to make sense of things until later.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I replayed Kingdom Hearts last week, and Sora's part of Chain of Memories yesterday... Riku's part now. :D

Yeah, I have a feeling just replaying is going to help.

[candeefloss.livejournal.com]

*mourn* I leant my copy of CoM to a friend a couple of weeks ago. She takes forever to complete games, so I'm not gonna see mine for a while. She had my copy of KH for a year once. D: But, anyway, CoM makes complete sense now I've played KHII and then replayed CoM, I think, whereas before there were a lot of questions left unanswered.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, now that I've played KHII, CoM is coming together for me a lot more than it did before. And of course, now I'm connecting up things with KHII that I didn't before. :D

[lil-1337.livejournal.com]

selfless heroism to help his best friend, or a selfish act, because he just couldn’t stand living without a heart and Roxas not being around any more.

Or a combination of both. Very few things are driven purely by one emotion.