Character Memes
This is a repository for memes, saved tl;dr from other memes, and basically a pile labeled "Misc" for my own reference and for fun.
The Character Expression Meme
Character: Roxas
Journal: pullsheavendown
RPG: sirenspull
.happy..sad..angry..scared.
.disgusted..surprised..flirty..sexual.
.confused..shy..playful..rage.
.hurt..guilty..bored..laughing.
.sarcastic..tired..wtf..pride.
.sympathy..evil..innocent..in love.
YOURFOURFAVORITEICONS
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Snag yourself the coding here.
From this meta/essay/tl;dr meme at sirenspull_ooc
Is Roxas a good person?
YOU LIKE THE LOADED QUESTIONS, HUH. And the answer to this one could definitely vary depending on who answers it-people can have very different definitions of 'good person' of course. Now, do I think he is? Hmm, in a sense. He's good to his friends; he looks out for people he cares about, and gives more of a damn than anyone else in the Organization does when the C.O. team goes down; he doesn't do bad things. So if 'good person' can be defined as the lack of being a bad person, sure, he's a good person.
But if the matter of intent comes into play, it gets muddier, because without delving too far into his capacity to feel/care/etc. (although I can, if you want massive tl;dr), whatever sense of morality he has is far less developed than even your average fifteen-year-old (since that's how 'old' he is.) It does exist-he does have some concept of good and bad-because you can see him questioning a fellow Organization member fairly early on about the deeds they do: "Are they good deeds?" But it's fairly rudimentary and childlike to some extent. He has an abstract idea of good/bad, but if you asked him to define either, expect a lot of pauses and fumbling at words. He's flying on instinct. Friends: should be protected. People getting squashed to death in earthquakes: bad, obviously, although I already have him wondering to himself in his diary post why he is moved so strongly to help out people he doesn't even know.
But even then, he isn't moved to help out and save people the way Sora is. He does it, but it's more...reactionary, let's say? He doesn't think of it as part of his purpose or the reason he has the Keyblade. It's not that he's heartless (*rimshot*) to other people's problems, he just doesn't think that far ahead. There are many, many things about the way people interact with each other and the world at large that he just doesn't understand, and a lot of the actions he takes are about satisfying his own curiosity and increasing his knowledge as they are out of any sense of altruism. So if 'good person' has more to do with actively wanting to do good, to look out for other people because of a sense of moral right...well, maybe then he's not a good person. But he's not a bad person, either.
What does he want in life?
He wants a life. Period. In a way, that's all he's ever wanted-back in his earliest days when he decides to stay with the Organization willingly, he narrates that he'll do it for a chance to get a heart and be a whole person. But unlike the other members, he doesn't recall what it is like to have a heart; he doesn't know that he doesn't have one until they tell him. So to me it's less about him feeling its absence and more wanting an existence that matters/experiences and friends he can remember/not wanting to be a broken or incomplete thing.
And he was making pretty good headway with that just by talking and doing things with his friends and learning how to be a person and interact with other people. When Riku told him who Sora was, that threw everything into a tailspin for him, and as much as I have Roxas being pissy around and about Sora, it is nothing compared to what goes on inside him if he lets himself think about it. At the end of 358/2 Days, he knew that he had a connection to Sora and that finding him was important, but it never occurred to him that he is/was/could be Sora himself. Why would it? Roxas is an exception to most rules, and other Nobodies don't have their original selves out there, existing separately. They are their own original selves, minus a heart. But since Sora does still exist as a complete being (or complete enough), not only should Roxas not exist separately, he really shouldn't exist at all. And he knows it, and it's messing with his head. He's not trying to play 'whose life is worse' with Joe, but a key difference is that Riku and his Replica aren't the same person and never can be. But Roxas and Sora kind of are, and with the vague comments Roxas has heard about a future where he goes back to Sora, he is left wondering why he's even here, and if he should be.
So what he really wants is a life that is his and not Sora's, a life where it's okay for him to be his own person and not the shadow of someone else. That would be enough for him.
How is Roxas different from Sora?
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE? No, but seriously, I have to preface this with a certain amount of musing/headcanon on what a Nobody really is. If you look at the rest of the Organization, Nobodies who were strong enough to retain their human forms aren't complete beings, but they're...complete-ish. I'm guessing that Axel is not being that truthful when he says that pre-heartless he was basically the "same guy", but they are pretty clearly the original beings they once were, minus a very important piece of themselves, rather than being an extra thing, a by-product caused by the loss of a heart. Roxas is different, because Sora restored his heart (...and apparently grew a new body?!) so quickly. I believe pretty strongly that if Sora had become a regular Heartless instead of the freakjob self-restoring kind he was, Roxas would have been like the other Organization members. He would have been Sora, with all his memories of Sora's life but none of the ability to feel emotion. That's something he (and I, to be honest) is still working on wrapping his head around; he's not just some dude scraped off of Sora like a shedded snakeskin, he used to be Sora. The fragments of memories he has of Sora's life aren't just because of the memory-fuckery caused by Namine and the Org, they're because the memories rightfully belong to him, too.
Sora and Roxas are not quite the same person, but they're not fully different people, either. If you cracked Sora on the head to give him amnesia and force-fed him medication to numb his emotions, you would get something similar to Roxas as the result.
That said, how are they different? Well, Roxas doesn't feel as intensely as Sora, for starters. He can't. The heart issue is another question and I already fear breaking the comment box, but boiling it down, I play it as Roxas can feel emotions-at least certain emotions-despite being a Nobody, but he doesn't understand them, and it's difficult to do so. I liken it to a coma patient having to go through physical therapy to rebuild muscles. Roxas's heart muscle is stunted; he has to learn to walk before he runs. He's already a lot better about emotions relating to friendship, because he's been working on those the longest.
Roxas is quieter and a little bit more of an introvert, although whether this is due to nature or nurture is debatable. His own uncertainty and being used to looking to the Organization for cues leave him more likely to take in and process information without comment. You can tell when he's getting more comfortable because he will start voicing his questions and confusion out loud, actually.
He doesn't have that "let's get out there and save everyone and do good for strangers and make them friends" drive that Sora has. He's helping out after the earthquake because he instinctively feels that he should, since he can, but although he is questioning why he feels this way, he hasn't come up with answers yet. Strangers don't matter to him like his inner circle does, but he's not going to walk on by and leave someone to be hurt if he sees something bad happening. He'll help and then go back to what he was doing. Whereas Sora is more likely to make them a friend and part of his circle.
Roxas is also sort of accepting of facts in the opposite direction from Sora. He can't just accept that he and Sora are different and can co-exist like Sora can-see above for more tl;dr on that-because he doesn't have the luxury of being a complete individual like Sora does. On the other hand, he has absolutely drunk the Organization's Kool-Aid and does not really question whether he can feel or not; he believes he can't, and that any emotions he has must be reflections of the real thing. (There's a scene in KH2 Final Mix that shows he does question this, but from the canon point I took him, he lacks real perspective for that.)
He's warier. He'll take an average person on the street at more or less face value, but the second someone even hints that they might want to use Roxas for something, he's going to be on his guard. The Organization was everything he knew, and after he left, despite having been to all these other worlds and retaining the ability to do so, he doesn't believe he has anywhere left to go, and they'd already proven they didn't give a damn about him as a person. He really, really doesn't want anything like that to happen ever again. Yet he's far more influenced by the structure, guidelines and belief system they gave him, more than he'd ever want to admit.
What is his greatest fear?
Being absorbed into Sora and losing his own existence. (No matter how much Riku says that won't happen. Whenever we do get Roxas and Sora interacting more, he's still going to instinctively avoid any physical contact lest he be shlurped up into Sora's body or something.) He can handle the idea of death. He doesn't want to die, of course, especially since Nobodies don't leave anything behind, but at least he would be a person who mourned, a person whose friends would be sad. But to go back to Sora, to not have anything he's said, done or experienced count anymore, to be nothing-it freaks him out more than he's even admitted to Joe. It's made exponentially worse by the fact that from the information he has, Sora was doing fine without Roxas being part of him, so if he joined with Sora, it seems rational that there wouldn't be a need for any part of him to keep existing. All the other Organization members were looking to restore a part of themselves that had been lost, and it's thrown Roxas immensely to learn that he's the missing piece, not the thing the missing piece goes back to.
The Character Expression Meme
Character: Roxas
Journal: pullsheavendown
RPG: sirenspull
.happy..sad..angry..scared.
.disgusted..surprised..flirty..sexual.
.confused..shy..playful..rage.
.hurt..guilty..bored..laughing.
.sarcastic..tired..wtf..pride.
.sympathy..evil..innocent..in love.
YOURFOURFAVORITEICONS
WANT TO DO IT TOO?
Snag yourself the coding here.
From this meta/essay/tl;dr meme at sirenspull_ooc
Is Roxas a good person?
YOU LIKE THE LOADED QUESTIONS, HUH. And the answer to this one could definitely vary depending on who answers it-people can have very different definitions of 'good person' of course. Now, do I think he is? Hmm, in a sense. He's good to his friends; he looks out for people he cares about, and gives more of a damn than anyone else in the Organization does when the C.O. team goes down; he doesn't do bad things. So if 'good person' can be defined as the lack of being a bad person, sure, he's a good person.
But if the matter of intent comes into play, it gets muddier, because without delving too far into his capacity to feel/care/etc. (although I can, if you want massive tl;dr), whatever sense of morality he has is far less developed than even your average fifteen-year-old (since that's how 'old' he is.) It does exist-he does have some concept of good and bad-because you can see him questioning a fellow Organization member fairly early on about the deeds they do: "Are they good deeds?" But it's fairly rudimentary and childlike to some extent. He has an abstract idea of good/bad, but if you asked him to define either, expect a lot of pauses and fumbling at words. He's flying on instinct. Friends: should be protected. People getting squashed to death in earthquakes: bad, obviously, although I already have him wondering to himself in his diary post why he is moved so strongly to help out people he doesn't even know.
But even then, he isn't moved to help out and save people the way Sora is. He does it, but it's more...reactionary, let's say? He doesn't think of it as part of his purpose or the reason he has the Keyblade. It's not that he's heartless (*rimshot*) to other people's problems, he just doesn't think that far ahead. There are many, many things about the way people interact with each other and the world at large that he just doesn't understand, and a lot of the actions he takes are about satisfying his own curiosity and increasing his knowledge as they are out of any sense of altruism. So if 'good person' has more to do with actively wanting to do good, to look out for other people because of a sense of moral right...well, maybe then he's not a good person. But he's not a bad person, either.
What does he want in life?
He wants a life. Period. In a way, that's all he's ever wanted-back in his earliest days when he decides to stay with the Organization willingly, he narrates that he'll do it for a chance to get a heart and be a whole person. But unlike the other members, he doesn't recall what it is like to have a heart; he doesn't know that he doesn't have one until they tell him. So to me it's less about him feeling its absence and more wanting an existence that matters/experiences and friends he can remember/not wanting to be a broken or incomplete thing.
And he was making pretty good headway with that just by talking and doing things with his friends and learning how to be a person and interact with other people. When Riku told him who Sora was, that threw everything into a tailspin for him, and as much as I have Roxas being pissy around and about Sora, it is nothing compared to what goes on inside him if he lets himself think about it. At the end of 358/2 Days, he knew that he had a connection to Sora and that finding him was important, but it never occurred to him that he is/was/could be Sora himself. Why would it? Roxas is an exception to most rules, and other Nobodies don't have their original selves out there, existing separately. They are their own original selves, minus a heart. But since Sora does still exist as a complete being (or complete enough), not only should Roxas not exist separately, he really shouldn't exist at all. And he knows it, and it's messing with his head. He's not trying to play 'whose life is worse' with Joe, but a key difference is that Riku and his Replica aren't the same person and never can be. But Roxas and Sora kind of are, and with the vague comments Roxas has heard about a future where he goes back to Sora, he is left wondering why he's even here, and if he should be.
So what he really wants is a life that is his and not Sora's, a life where it's okay for him to be his own person and not the shadow of someone else. That would be enough for him.
How is Roxas different from Sora?
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE? No, but seriously, I have to preface this with a certain amount of musing/headcanon on what a Nobody really is. If you look at the rest of the Organization, Nobodies who were strong enough to retain their human forms aren't complete beings, but they're...complete-ish. I'm guessing that Axel is not being that truthful when he says that pre-heartless he was basically the "same guy", but they are pretty clearly the original beings they once were, minus a very important piece of themselves, rather than being an extra thing, a by-product caused by the loss of a heart. Roxas is different, because Sora restored his heart (...and apparently grew a new body?!) so quickly. I believe pretty strongly that if Sora had become a regular Heartless instead of the freakjob self-restoring kind he was, Roxas would have been like the other Organization members. He would have been Sora, with all his memories of Sora's life but none of the ability to feel emotion. That's something he (and I, to be honest) is still working on wrapping his head around; he's not just some dude scraped off of Sora like a shedded snakeskin, he used to be Sora. The fragments of memories he has of Sora's life aren't just because of the memory-fuckery caused by Namine and the Org, they're because the memories rightfully belong to him, too.
Sora and Roxas are not quite the same person, but they're not fully different people, either. If you cracked Sora on the head to give him amnesia and force-fed him medication to numb his emotions, you would get something similar to Roxas as the result.
That said, how are they different? Well, Roxas doesn't feel as intensely as Sora, for starters. He can't. The heart issue is another question and I already fear breaking the comment box, but boiling it down, I play it as Roxas can feel emotions-at least certain emotions-despite being a Nobody, but he doesn't understand them, and it's difficult to do so. I liken it to a coma patient having to go through physical therapy to rebuild muscles. Roxas's heart muscle is stunted; he has to learn to walk before he runs. He's already a lot better about emotions relating to friendship, because he's been working on those the longest.
Roxas is quieter and a little bit more of an introvert, although whether this is due to nature or nurture is debatable. His own uncertainty and being used to looking to the Organization for cues leave him more likely to take in and process information without comment. You can tell when he's getting more comfortable because he will start voicing his questions and confusion out loud, actually.
He doesn't have that "let's get out there and save everyone and do good for strangers and make them friends" drive that Sora has. He's helping out after the earthquake because he instinctively feels that he should, since he can, but although he is questioning why he feels this way, he hasn't come up with answers yet. Strangers don't matter to him like his inner circle does, but he's not going to walk on by and leave someone to be hurt if he sees something bad happening. He'll help and then go back to what he was doing. Whereas Sora is more likely to make them a friend and part of his circle.
Roxas is also sort of accepting of facts in the opposite direction from Sora. He can't just accept that he and Sora are different and can co-exist like Sora can-see above for more tl;dr on that-because he doesn't have the luxury of being a complete individual like Sora does. On the other hand, he has absolutely drunk the Organization's Kool-Aid and does not really question whether he can feel or not; he believes he can't, and that any emotions he has must be reflections of the real thing. (There's a scene in KH2 Final Mix that shows he does question this, but from the canon point I took him, he lacks real perspective for that.)
He's warier. He'll take an average person on the street at more or less face value, but the second someone even hints that they might want to use Roxas for something, he's going to be on his guard. The Organization was everything he knew, and after he left, despite having been to all these other worlds and retaining the ability to do so, he doesn't believe he has anywhere left to go, and they'd already proven they didn't give a damn about him as a person. He really, really doesn't want anything like that to happen ever again. Yet he's far more influenced by the structure, guidelines and belief system they gave him, more than he'd ever want to admit.
What is his greatest fear?
Being absorbed into Sora and losing his own existence. (No matter how much Riku says that won't happen. Whenever we do get Roxas and Sora interacting more, he's still going to instinctively avoid any physical contact lest he be shlurped up into Sora's body or something.) He can handle the idea of death. He doesn't want to die, of course, especially since Nobodies don't leave anything behind, but at least he would be a person who mourned, a person whose friends would be sad. But to go back to Sora, to not have anything he's said, done or experienced count anymore, to be nothing-it freaks him out more than he's even admitted to Joe. It's made exponentially worse by the fact that from the information he has, Sora was doing fine without Roxas being part of him, so if he joined with Sora, it seems rational that there wouldn't be a need for any part of him to keep existing. All the other Organization members were looking to restore a part of themselves that had been lost, and it's thrown Roxas immensely to learn that he's the missing piece, not the thing the missing piece goes back to.