IN WHICH I ATTEMPT TO DEFINE TEAL DEER BY WAY OF KINGDOM HEARTS (AKA *BORING BORING BORING*)
CONTINUED FROM AN AIM CONVO/ARGUMENT, EVERYONE ELSE IGNORE THIS
I think the particular beef (buried largely unaddressed until this point under the pile of my several beefs, the rest of which are less er serious/moral/more academic? than this) that is stressing me out and made the debate kind of unfun is that I have an issue with the morality of the whole killing every Nobody you see situation as presented ingame.
SPECIFICALLY: Killing people is bad! This is pretty much a super tried-and-true element of like, most entertainment universe moral systems ever, especially Disney things. You can kill someone who is bad to save other people! And sometimes for other good reasons. But generally, KILLING PEOPLE IS VILLAINOUS, NOT HEROIC. This is definitely true in the Kingdom Hearts universe! Making Heartless kills people which is bad which is the whole reason why you fight both Heartless and the villians who control them in both games - you, the player, and also Sora, are in it to save lives. (You the player, maybe more than Sora. Or maybe this is the element that elevates Sora's quest to find his friends from semiheroic but personal to a Heroic Journey, because he is fighting Heartless (etc) and saving people (mostly indirectly) along the way.) Whatever. It's there, it's prominent if largely unspoken, it's important, it's a Core Moral in-universe and that the universe imparts to the player.
Killing Nobodies is not really like killing people though, the player and/or Sora are told! By, first of all, er, DiZ, who clearly is not a reliable source. (I CAN DIG UP QUOTES IF YOU WANT, BUT THIS IS A SIDEPOINT.) And then by Yen Sid who kind of shows up to brief the player/Sora vaguely and then disappears, but Mickey sent you to him so arguably this is Mickey's stance also? But they both tell you, Nobodies aren't people, they don't exist fully/don't deserve to exist, and don't have hearts/feelings and also they are VAGUELY MENACING and they wear black cloaks of probable evilness.
EXCEPT THEN, the game clearly has already shown in the prologue that they are/can be, after all, pretty peoplelike; even throwing Roxas out because he's "different" (even though how and to what degree is never articulated or explained or shown), the behavior range of the other Nobodies doesn't exactly say "clearly inhuman"/without feeling. 'Be warned - they will fake emotion!' But how and why do creatures without feeling fake fear of their own death? If we weren't told that were inhuman and without feeling, I doubt most players would register much difference between a Nobody and a normal villian. They are shown to be sentient in a very person-like way, or maybe more to the point - we are told, by apparently unreliable sources, that they are not people *but there is nothing really shown in the game itself to back this up*, and plenty shown that seems to contradict it. 'People', for the record, =/= 'good people'. Acting like a dick and doing bad things to further your own interests is not acceptable proof of unpersonhood in my book. Nor is it really good proof of some kind of racial unanimity of evil. (I think maybe at this point part of why this whole thing really bothers me may be starting to become clear.)
I'm not just talking about the Thirteen, mind you, but also the thousands of less high-ranking/human-shaped but still self-aware Nobodies you plow through; it is true that the lesser Nobodies don't play much of a role in the story of the game beyond cannon fodder, but they seem more akin to a human random encounter "monster" in say a FF game than the insentient muteness of the Heartless - they cannot be understood by Sora, but they first time he encounters one ingame it tries to speak to him, and they speak articulately and interact in sentient/human/nonviolent ways as well as, later, aggressive ways with Roxas. Although the game/game mechanics treats them more or less as akin to the mindless hordes of Heartless, they're clearly self-aware.
And the game also works REALLY HARD in places to raise the issue of, just how human/real are Nobodies anyway? As you pointed out, DiZ who is like LOL THEY ARE NOTHING is clearly wrong/a dick. And you spend the whole first five fricken' hours of game time getting to know a cute little to all apparent regards normal boy Roxas. And then Axel shows up and is all, HEY BUDDY <3. There's all this direct Nobody action the player sees in the first six hours and none of it points towards inhumanity/non-personhood in any way, and the game never really does anything to prove or demonstrate or articulate that this is not within the normal reaches of Nobody behavior, that all Roxas' and Axel's personlike attributes are unique to them and shared by no other. Sure, it's implied that Roxas is "different", but it's certainly never articulated ingame as anything even vaguely indicating "oh he is the only Nobody who is like a real person".
And then in-game you, the player, and Sora, storm their homeworld, killing everything - everyone, in fact - in sight on your way to execute the Nobody leaders who are, apparently, trying to make the world a better place for all Nobodies?
Kingdom Hearts doesn't just tell a story, any story, which can be as dystopic or utopic as it likes; KH likes to talk about moral themes and messages for the audience - whatever terminology you want to use - but it's obviously invested in telling a heroic, noble story. Heroic and noble not just in general parlance, but as Disney defines them, at least to a certain degree. Kid players are supposed to be able to look up to Sora, to take positive messages (to take messages) away from the game. It might be okay in another game to kill that human soldier random encounter because they are in between you and your lofty goal, but this is a videogame that would write around it if some similarly wholly unimportant NPC, like, the Mayor of Halloweentown flung himself between Sora and Oogie Boogie with adamant resolve. And it might be okay in any other videogame to kill that human soldier if they're under orders to kill you and it's kill or be killed, but this is a universe that deliberately chooses to avoid going there in the very first game for obvious reasons. Except, once you start to think about it, they kinda have gone there.
What is personhood? What makes humanity, that we the audience can see, in the Kingdom Hearts world? Nobodies are 'not people' except they do all these peoplelike things; they are clearly sentients with wants and goals and are capable of interpersonal relationships to some extent. The games don't really offer (here I mean, we are not shown, disregarding the things Sora/the player are told that seem to be halftruths at best as the game plays out) a single concrete thing that humans absolutely have, which Nobodies absolutely lack - except a Heart. So then is the difference between Nobody and human marked not by the ability to feel, or think, or want, or any of those traits that mark personhood in the real world, but by the lousy fantasy construction of a Heart? And if you don't need a Heart to act in ways that we identify as human - if you can walk and quack like a human (a self-interested human, but then, when are humans not self-interested) - but it is okay to kill you, because you are not a real person, because you lack this apparently actually kinda arbitrary marker of personhood - well.
Obviously I'm exaggerating/extrapolating somewhat to make my point in the last paragraph. But you see, this is why it is actively problematic to me that the Nobodies are not clearly shown and not just told by unreliable sources to be inhuman or definitely all out to kill as many people as they can, or preferably both. This isn't just a planning or storytelling or anything else issue - this is an issue of, what moral are you imparting to the player? Even by accident/ way of bad writing? I'm not saying that I think "Genocide is fun!" (lololol obviously not) is the true reading of Kingdom Hearts, or the one Nomura intended, or the one everyone should walk away with, or even the way I read it personally (hardly).
But. The game simultaneously raises the semi-human status of the Nobodies as an issue narratively while sending the player to gleefully carve through countless Dusks - in a game where that kind of treatment of human-looking people would be unacceptable and immoral. It bothers me. It doesn't make Kingdom Hearts OMG AN EVIL GAME, obviously Nobodies are not supposed to be human in-game. But they certainly act like they're in spitting distance of it. You don't get to just say, "WELL WE KNOW THAT SECRETLY THEY'RE NOT REALLY PEOPLE even though they pretty much act like people" as your justification for why it's okay to send a teenage boy in a Disney universe to end the existence of thousands of sentient beings en masse. THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH. And killing thousands of them in a game universe where killing thousands of human-looking people would be an automatically evil act makes me cringe on a level deep inside where I can't quite repress it.
BED NOW *sob sob*
I think the particular beef (buried largely unaddressed until this point under the pile of my several beefs, the rest of which are less er serious/moral/more academic? than this) that is stressing me out and made the debate kind of unfun is that I have an issue with the morality of the whole killing every Nobody you see situation as presented ingame.
SPECIFICALLY: Killing people is bad! This is pretty much a super tried-and-true element of like, most entertainment universe moral systems ever, especially Disney things. You can kill someone who is bad to save other people! And sometimes for other good reasons. But generally, KILLING PEOPLE IS VILLAINOUS, NOT HEROIC. This is definitely true in the Kingdom Hearts universe! Making Heartless kills people which is bad which is the whole reason why you fight both Heartless and the villians who control them in both games - you, the player, and also Sora, are in it to save lives. (You the player, maybe more than Sora. Or maybe this is the element that elevates Sora's quest to find his friends from semiheroic but personal to a Heroic Journey, because he is fighting Heartless (etc) and saving people (mostly indirectly) along the way.) Whatever. It's there, it's prominent if largely unspoken, it's important, it's a Core Moral in-universe and that the universe imparts to the player.
Killing Nobodies is not really like killing people though, the player and/or Sora are told! By, first of all, er, DiZ, who clearly is not a reliable source. (I CAN DIG UP QUOTES IF YOU WANT, BUT THIS IS A SIDEPOINT.) And then by Yen Sid who kind of shows up to brief the player/Sora vaguely and then disappears, but Mickey sent you to him so arguably this is Mickey's stance also? But they both tell you, Nobodies aren't people, they don't exist fully/don't deserve to exist, and don't have hearts/feelings and also they are VAGUELY MENACING and they wear black cloaks of probable evilness.
EXCEPT THEN, the game clearly has already shown in the prologue that they are/can be, after all, pretty peoplelike; even throwing Roxas out because he's "different" (even though how and to what degree is never articulated or explained or shown), the behavior range of the other Nobodies doesn't exactly say "clearly inhuman"/without feeling. 'Be warned - they will fake emotion!' But how and why do creatures without feeling fake fear of their own death? If we weren't told that were inhuman and without feeling, I doubt most players would register much difference between a Nobody and a normal villian. They are shown to be sentient in a very person-like way, or maybe more to the point - we are told, by apparently unreliable sources, that they are not people *but there is nothing really shown in the game itself to back this up*, and plenty shown that seems to contradict it. 'People', for the record, =/= 'good people'. Acting like a dick and doing bad things to further your own interests is not acceptable proof of unpersonhood in my book. Nor is it really good proof of some kind of racial unanimity of evil. (I think maybe at this point part of why this whole thing really bothers me may be starting to become clear.)
I'm not just talking about the Thirteen, mind you, but also the thousands of less high-ranking/human-shaped but still self-aware Nobodies you plow through; it is true that the lesser Nobodies don't play much of a role in the story of the game beyond cannon fodder, but they seem more akin to a human random encounter "monster" in say a FF game than the insentient muteness of the Heartless - they cannot be understood by Sora, but they first time he encounters one ingame it tries to speak to him, and they speak articulately and interact in sentient/human/nonviolent ways as well as, later, aggressive ways with Roxas. Although the game/game mechanics treats them more or less as akin to the mindless hordes of Heartless, they're clearly self-aware.
And the game also works REALLY HARD in places to raise the issue of, just how human/real are Nobodies anyway? As you pointed out, DiZ who is like LOL THEY ARE NOTHING is clearly wrong/a dick. And you spend the whole first five fricken' hours of game time getting to know a cute little to all apparent regards normal boy Roxas. And then Axel shows up and is all, HEY BUDDY <3. There's all this direct Nobody action the player sees in the first six hours and none of it points towards inhumanity/non-personhood in any way, and the game never really does anything to prove or demonstrate or articulate that this is not within the normal reaches of Nobody behavior, that all Roxas' and Axel's personlike attributes are unique to them and shared by no other. Sure, it's implied that Roxas is "different", but it's certainly never articulated ingame as anything even vaguely indicating "oh he is the only Nobody who is like a real person".
And then in-game you, the player, and Sora, storm their homeworld, killing everything - everyone, in fact - in sight on your way to execute the Nobody leaders who are, apparently, trying to make the world a better place for all Nobodies?
Kingdom Hearts doesn't just tell a story, any story, which can be as dystopic or utopic as it likes; KH likes to talk about moral themes and messages for the audience - whatever terminology you want to use - but it's obviously invested in telling a heroic, noble story. Heroic and noble not just in general parlance, but as Disney defines them, at least to a certain degree. Kid players are supposed to be able to look up to Sora, to take positive messages (to take messages) away from the game. It might be okay in another game to kill that human soldier random encounter because they are in between you and your lofty goal, but this is a videogame that would write around it if some similarly wholly unimportant NPC, like, the Mayor of Halloweentown flung himself between Sora and Oogie Boogie with adamant resolve. And it might be okay in any other videogame to kill that human soldier if they're under orders to kill you and it's kill or be killed, but this is a universe that deliberately chooses to avoid going there in the very first game for obvious reasons. Except, once you start to think about it, they kinda have gone there.
What is personhood? What makes humanity, that we the audience can see, in the Kingdom Hearts world? Nobodies are 'not people' except they do all these peoplelike things; they are clearly sentients with wants and goals and are capable of interpersonal relationships to some extent. The games don't really offer (here I mean, we are not shown, disregarding the things Sora/the player are told that seem to be halftruths at best as the game plays out) a single concrete thing that humans absolutely have, which Nobodies absolutely lack - except a Heart. So then is the difference between Nobody and human marked not by the ability to feel, or think, or want, or any of those traits that mark personhood in the real world, but by the lousy fantasy construction of a Heart? And if you don't need a Heart to act in ways that we identify as human - if you can walk and quack like a human (a self-interested human, but then, when are humans not self-interested) - but it is okay to kill you, because you are not a real person, because you lack this apparently actually kinda arbitrary marker of personhood - well.
Obviously I'm exaggerating/extrapolating somewhat to make my point in the last paragraph. But you see, this is why it is actively problematic to me that the Nobodies are not clearly shown and not just told by unreliable sources to be inhuman or definitely all out to kill as many people as they can, or preferably both. This isn't just a planning or storytelling or anything else issue - this is an issue of, what moral are you imparting to the player? Even by accident/ way of bad writing? I'm not saying that I think "Genocide is fun!" (lololol obviously not) is the true reading of Kingdom Hearts, or the one Nomura intended, or the one everyone should walk away with, or even the way I read it personally (hardly).
But. The game simultaneously raises the semi-human status of the Nobodies as an issue narratively while sending the player to gleefully carve through countless Dusks - in a game where that kind of treatment of human-looking people would be unacceptable and immoral. It bothers me. It doesn't make Kingdom Hearts OMG AN EVIL GAME, obviously Nobodies are not supposed to be human in-game. But they certainly act like they're in spitting distance of it. You don't get to just say, "WELL WE KNOW THAT SECRETLY THEY'RE NOT REALLY PEOPLE even though they pretty much act like people" as your justification for why it's okay to send a teenage boy in a Disney universe to end the existence of thousands of sentient beings en masse. THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH. And killing thousands of them in a game universe where killing thousands of human-looking people would be an automatically evil act makes me cringe on a level deep inside where I can't quite repress it.
BED NOW *sob sob*