KH Meta: because I broke the LJ comment wordcap.
No, really! I did! Um.
ANYWAY so on my last post starcrossed_sky said: Actually, Xion explicitly states that she was absorbed into Roxas (and thus into Sora) in her "goodbye" speech in the Days ending. So presumably she could do something from there - but I don't know if she would, and since no one remembers her, they wouldn't intentionally draw her out the way they might Roxas or Ven (or Vanitas, for the villians). She's not quite dead.
And, well, my response took about two hours, including a freezeup (but not crash!) of Safari and is ~1.2K words. And thus won't fit into a LJ comment.
But here it is: Mmm, yeah, true. But if you see her death scene vs Eraqus' death scene they're. Really, really similar. Body dissolving into light and everything - Eraqus' is the warm soft light he so loves, Xion's is a hard, cold, crystalline light, but I think those things are more a reflection of them personally rather than what's happening to them. So you end up with Xion in Sora's head along with everyone else, but it's more through having nothing of herself left (like Axel, she's used up everything that kept her together), so I really do think it is fundamentally a 'death', as opposed to an 'absorption'.
Well, not 'death' exactly; Nomura has explicitly stated that there's no concept of 'death' in the KH-verse. But that's the closest word we have for it in English. It's 消えた not 死んだ in the Japanese, and sure a literal translation would be perhaps 'disappeared' (but that implies not a final end but just a move to somewhere else - someone falling off the grid 'disappears' but they're still alive somewhere - or, say, a pen disappears, but that's something different again, object not anything like a subject). 'Destroyed' seems to get used a lot, but that's entirely in the realm of objects. Things are destroyed in a physical sense, not people. People can only be destroyed in the emotional sense, which is why when you have translations with people being destroyed-as-in-killed it always sounds a bit off. (And yeah, Xion's a doll, but she has too much agency for that to ring true to me. The Replica is also an artificial construct - slightly different, but only slightly, really - and I can't see him as being 'destroyed'. He dies. Fades into the dark - like the rest of the nobodies, and given his pose Axel in particular - but it's definitely a death. [Given that 'fades' is one of the definitions given for 消える in my dictionary that's, uh. Possibly even a properly accurate way of putting it!)
Sidenote: this is also why you get things like Ven saying 'put an end to me' in the English BbS dub. Which is even worse than 'destroy', really, but I can see why they wanted to avoid 'destroy'! And since Nomura's kind of banned the use of 'death' I can see why they'd want to avoid 'kill'... translation is complicated! Though even something like 'eliminate' would be better, if slightly awkward. (Like 'put an end to me' isn't awkward!) But 'please kill me' is the only way I can think of translating that line that feels right both in terms of Ven's likely vocabulary and accuracy of translation.
Anyway! Roxas (and Naminé) don't 消える, they return to [Sora|Kairi] (帰る). (I think it's 帰る; I haven't played KH II/KH II FM+ in any form of Japanese yet. The manga just uses 消える, but that scene with Naminé is truncated, and I'm not sure if I trust the manga as far as I can throw it, either.) Anyway, that's a fundamental positive/negative difference, which comes out in how it's portrayed on all levels - Xion's death is a defeat - a loss, in all senses - she loses control of her actions and in trying to kill Roxas forces him to kill her: which is what she wants him to do, she wants him to kill her, because he's more important to her than she is herself. More to the point she has to be killed by Roxas, she has almost nothing in the way of choice - whether you think she tries her hardest to let Roxas in and kill her or embraces the battle fully, she dies by his hand either way, because her body (and maybe her mind) has left her control so much she can't stop it. She's ultimately passive, and her death is a tragedy.
Roxas is the opposite - he's got about as much choice as Xion, but even so he has to be proactive about it. He has to go to the mansion, he has to fight (and defeat) Axel, has to win and then he has to step into the room himself, and be sacrificed unto God return to Sora. Which is the whole narrative setting him up to have a positive ending - sure, he's no longer the MC and has been absorbed by Sora (who is the real MC), but that's a good thing! He's found what he's been looking for!
Which, no he hasn't - unlike the rest of the Organisation Roxas was looking for answers (which he didn't really get either), not a heart. And even if he was that entire thing is a tragedy - he has to lose not only his freedom, but his friends (even the ones he can't remember) and his autonomy to get it. But I'm getting off topic.
Ven and Vanitas 消える as well, but that's really more like 'destroy' or 'break' in all the English senses - they've become an object - an object with a will, sure, but the x-blade is fundamentally just that, a keyblade, and if I'm remembering right Xehanort was going to grab it for his own purposes, probably destroying any remnants of personality when he did so.
Not sure wtf is up with Xehanort and Terra, but there's clearly something going on there. I don't care about those two as much as everyone else, so I haven't really thought it through.
As for drawing her out... yeah, I think you're right on that. Mickey is definitely looking for a way to make things right for Ven, Aqua and Terra, and the end of KH II - shoehorned in and forced as it felt to me - does deal with Roxas being happy/fulfilled in his situation. But no one remembers Xion, so no one can make it right for her, as things stand now.
Vanitas... I am ashamed and appalled I forgot him in my post! D: Bad fangirl, no biscuit! But there's also that thing where I think the only people who remember him are on the 'good' side? Mickey, Yen Sid... Donald and Goofy maybe, in the 'heard the name' sense. I don't think he talked to any of the secondary villains - I don't even know if he talked to Braig, though obviously they were aware of each other. (Uh. I mean at all; they didn't interact on screen.) Vanitas was pretty fucking focused - mess with Ventus/become the ultimate weapon and start a war, play with the spare, kick the shit out of that fucker that interrupted his first fight with Ventus, serve Master Xehanort. Roughly in that order.
And, coupled with the fact that Mickey is the one with the dark-realm side of the x-blade I think the only one who could 'intentionally draw [him] out' would be Mickey - and I don't think he ever would. Even aside from the fact that their morals are diametrically opposed Vanitas tried to kill him three time. And almost succeeded the second.
SO UH TL;DR - technically yes, true, but I don't really think it's entirely accurate.
ANYWAY so on my last post starcrossed_sky said: Actually, Xion explicitly states that she was absorbed into Roxas (and thus into Sora) in her "goodbye" speech in the Days ending. So presumably she could do something from there - but I don't know if she would, and since no one remembers her, they wouldn't intentionally draw her out the way they might Roxas or Ven (or Vanitas, for the villians). She's not quite dead.
And, well, my response took about two hours, including a freezeup (but not crash!) of Safari and is ~1.2K words. And thus won't fit into a LJ comment.
But here it is: Mmm, yeah, true. But if you see her death scene vs Eraqus' death scene they're. Really, really similar. Body dissolving into light and everything - Eraqus' is the warm soft light he so loves, Xion's is a hard, cold, crystalline light, but I think those things are more a reflection of them personally rather than what's happening to them. So you end up with Xion in Sora's head along with everyone else, but it's more through having nothing of herself left (like Axel, she's used up everything that kept her together), so I really do think it is fundamentally a 'death', as opposed to an 'absorption'.
Well, not 'death' exactly; Nomura has explicitly stated that there's no concept of 'death' in the KH-verse. But that's the closest word we have for it in English. It's 消えた not 死んだ in the Japanese, and sure a literal translation would be perhaps 'disappeared' (but that implies not a final end but just a move to somewhere else - someone falling off the grid 'disappears' but they're still alive somewhere - or, say, a pen disappears, but that's something different again, object not anything like a subject). 'Destroyed' seems to get used a lot, but that's entirely in the realm of objects. Things are destroyed in a physical sense, not people. People can only be destroyed in the emotional sense, which is why when you have translations with people being destroyed-as-in-killed it always sounds a bit off. (And yeah, Xion's a doll, but she has too much agency for that to ring true to me. The Replica is also an artificial construct - slightly different, but only slightly, really - and I can't see him as being 'destroyed'. He dies. Fades into the dark - like the rest of the nobodies, and given his pose Axel in particular - but it's definitely a death. [Given that 'fades' is one of the definitions given for 消える in my dictionary that's, uh. Possibly even a properly accurate way of putting it!)
Sidenote: this is also why you get things like Ven saying 'put an end to me' in the English BbS dub. Which is even worse than 'destroy', really, but I can see why they wanted to avoid 'destroy'! And since Nomura's kind of banned the use of 'death' I can see why they'd want to avoid 'kill'... translation is complicated! Though even something like 'eliminate' would be better, if slightly awkward. (Like 'put an end to me' isn't awkward!) But 'please kill me' is the only way I can think of translating that line that feels right both in terms of Ven's likely vocabulary and accuracy of translation.
Anyway! Roxas (and Naminé) don't 消える, they return to [Sora|Kairi] (帰る). (I think it's 帰る; I haven't played KH II/KH II FM+ in any form of Japanese yet. The manga just uses 消える, but that scene with Naminé is truncated, and I'm not sure if I trust the manga as far as I can throw it, either.) Anyway, that's a fundamental positive/negative difference, which comes out in how it's portrayed on all levels - Xion's death is a defeat - a loss, in all senses - she loses control of her actions and in trying to kill Roxas forces him to kill her: which is what she wants him to do, she wants him to kill her, because he's more important to her than she is herself. More to the point she has to be killed by Roxas, she has almost nothing in the way of choice - whether you think she tries her hardest to let Roxas in and kill her or embraces the battle fully, she dies by his hand either way, because her body (and maybe her mind) has left her control so much she can't stop it. She's ultimately passive, and her death is a tragedy.
Roxas is the opposite - he's got about as much choice as Xion, but even so he has to be proactive about it. He has to go to the mansion, he has to fight (and defeat) Axel, has to win and then he has to step into the room himself, and be sacrificed unto God return to Sora. Which is the whole narrative setting him up to have a positive ending - sure, he's no longer the MC and has been absorbed by Sora (who is the real MC), but that's a good thing! He's found what he's been looking for!
Which, no he hasn't - unlike the rest of the Organisation Roxas was looking for answers (which he didn't really get either), not a heart. And even if he was that entire thing is a tragedy - he has to lose not only his freedom, but his friends (even the ones he can't remember) and his autonomy to get it. But I'm getting off topic.
Ven and Vanitas 消える as well, but that's really more like 'destroy' or 'break' in all the English senses - they've become an object - an object with a will, sure, but the x-blade is fundamentally just that, a keyblade, and if I'm remembering right Xehanort was going to grab it for his own purposes, probably destroying any remnants of personality when he did so.
Not sure wtf is up with Xehanort and Terra, but there's clearly something going on there. I don't care about those two as much as everyone else, so I haven't really thought it through.
As for drawing her out... yeah, I think you're right on that. Mickey is definitely looking for a way to make things right for Ven, Aqua and Terra, and the end of KH II - shoehorned in and forced as it felt to me - does deal with Roxas being happy/fulfilled in his situation. But no one remembers Xion, so no one can make it right for her, as things stand now.
Vanitas... I am ashamed and appalled I forgot him in my post! D: Bad fangirl, no biscuit! But there's also that thing where I think the only people who remember him are on the 'good' side? Mickey, Yen Sid... Donald and Goofy maybe, in the 'heard the name' sense. I don't think he talked to any of the secondary villains - I don't even know if he talked to Braig, though obviously they were aware of each other. (Uh. I mean at all; they didn't interact on screen.) Vanitas was pretty fucking focused - mess with Ventus/become the ultimate weapon and start a war, play with the spare, kick the shit out of that fucker that interrupted his first fight with Ventus, serve Master Xehanort. Roughly in that order.
And, coupled with the fact that Mickey is the one with the dark-realm side of the x-blade I think the only one who could 'intentionally draw [him] out' would be Mickey - and I don't think he ever would. Even aside from the fact that their morals are diametrically opposed Vanitas tried to kill him three time. And almost succeeded the second.
SO UH TL;DR - technically yes, true, but I don't really think it's entirely accurate.