Kingdom Hearts, Descartes, and Does Roxas Exist?

“A Nobody does not have a right to know, nor does it have a right to be.”

Thus says DiZ in the opening act of “Kingdom Hearts 2,” in reference to Roxas and his status as main protagonist Sora’s Nobody. Nobodies are the remains of a person after their heart is stolen: they can no longer feel genuine emotions, they are shunned by both Light and Dark, and according to DiZ and Yen Sid, Nobodies do not truly exist at all. Given that the player’s sympathies are with Roxas, who acts as the would-be protagonist of the game before the switch is made to Sora, DiZ comes off as being a big jerk here, rather than being insightful. Not helping the matter is that Roxas’s life, such as it is, consists of little but constant anxiety and torment: the life he thought he was living only minutes before turns out to be a virtual-reality lie, and his real life prior involved watching one of his best friends die in his arms, his other best friend more or less deceiving him, and Organization XIII, the antagonists of “Kingdom Hearts 2” and Roxas’s former business associates, driving him to the point of betrayal, leaving him with nothing. And now here’s DiZ saying that he might not even exist at all? Roxas has every right to be a little upset about that, and so might the player. But if one can get over the image of the puppy-dog-getting-kicked motif that is Roxas, it might be seen that DiZ may have a point. Maybe Nobodies /don’t/ exist, at least not in the sense that you, I, and Sora exist. The main lament of the Nobodies in “Kingdom Hearts” is that they can’t have genuine feelings, but the problem permeates further than just one of indifference: it could very well be, as we shall see, that their presence in the world is indeed just a superimposed one without any real substance. Maybe underneath those puppy dog eyes and insane cowlick, Roxas is little more than a figment of our imagination, not worthy of our pity, as his very being relies on keeping a part of Sora from being restored, and whom we should curb stomp unmercifully until he gives that power back.

Of course, curb stomping Roxas would make you the worst person on Earth. Come on, the guy is as nice as can be, identity theft notwithstanding. Still, does he have a right to be?

Into this question of Nobodies and video games comes a man who’s never heard of Kingdom Hearts, but is very concerned with the soul and existentialism. Rene Descartes was a 17^th century philosopher who pondered the idea of how confident he could be that he existed. To this end, he attempted to deconstruct everything around him until he found a point where there were certifiable truths which could not be deconstructed. This process included questioning whether he could trust what he saw, felt, thought, and experienced, and whether he could rely on any of them as proof that he existed at all. Looking at his book, “Meditations,” we can apply his thoughts on the matter to the situation of Roxas in “Kingdom Hearts 2” and see whether the Nobodies can hold up in the eyes of Rene Descartes.

When we first meet Roxas, we learn that he’s a regular teenager with a regular teenager life. He and his close group of friends (Hayner, Pence, and Olette) live in Twilight Town, and are enjoying the last week of their summer vacation. We watch as they encounter obstacles such as dealing with Siefer and the local bullies, partaking in the sport of Struggle (which entails beating your opponent with a whiffle bat and knocking orbs out of them. Fun for all ages), and trying to complete their homework. However, on the second last day of this vacation, Roxas wakes to discover that his friends not only no longer see him, but that, evidenced by a photo of the three of them without Roxas at their side, they have never known him at all. Further investigation reveals that the town Roxas lives in is a digital recreation of Twilight Town, and that all the experiences we have had up until now have been utterly fake. He had been captured by DiZ and put in a virtual reality to live out his days as his real body is slowly siphoned back into Sora. The opening of the game, then, never actually happened: Roxas didn’t really win the Struggle Championship or investigate the Seven Wonders of Twilight Town: he was just mislead to believe that he did. Yet, had there not been the big reveal as to this falsity, or had the game simply ended after the end of the fifth day with Roxas being put back into Sora without even realizing what was happening, neither Roxas nor the player would know that Roxas’s life as presented in the game was a lie, and that the true origin of his experiences were created as per the wishes of a third party.

The possibility that his experiences and sight were capable of being manipulated, or at least that they might not be trusted, occurred to Descartes as he sat in his chair and thought deep thoughts. He might have reason to believe that he was indeed sitting in a room by himself, that he lived in the Netherlands, and that this was the 17^th century: through immediate experience he could believe he had walked in the room and sat in his chair, and long term experience would say that he had been in the Netherlands, and that it was the 17^th century, for some time. For all he knew, all his memories and his waking moments indicated that what he saw at this moment in time was what truly was. But what if, thought Descartes, all those experiences he had which hammered home the fact that he lived where he thought he lived were somehow untrue? He might not have thought that someone like DiZ had created a virtual world for his Nobody (would that make him Dexcartes?), but it might have so happened that he was knocked on the head and suffered brain damage, meaning that his reliance on knowledge of place might be muddled. It could be that the room he walked into had red wallpaper, but due to a strange biological quirk, Descartes’ eyes were unable to see red, and thus he was not experiencing the room as it truly was. Heck, what if he was just really, really drunk, or inhaled a ton of ether, and was just hallucinating every waking moment? Experience, then, could not be trusted as an indication of existence or truth, because experience was easily manipulated. Not just via a Matrix-like machine such as DiZ had created, but through basic, real world possibility. What you see and experience on an everyday basis, emphasized to the point that you take it for granted to be true, cannot be verified beyond certainty as real, and thus cannot be relied on as proof of existence.

This deconstruction of the existence of experience critically hurts Roxas’s bid for existence, moreso than it might Descartes or any regular person. The Roxas we know in “Kingdom Hearts 2” is, for the most part, presented only as he is in the faux Twilight Town. Now, the Roxas we hang around with at the beginning of the game is a nice guy who might fumble the ball now and again, but he means well and really cares for his friends. But the thing is, the friends he cares for don’t exist. The woman who owns the candy store that Roxas talks to early on can verify that Roxas has been her favorite customer for years, but she doesn’t exist either. And if she doesn’t exist, then of course those years of patronage that Roxas had does not exist either. The day to day experiences that Roxas has, as well as past experiences which might lead to the here and now, are shown to be constructs of DiZ’s world. Everything that Roxas believes in is shown to be wrong, and thus the player has reason to believe that the Roxas they’ve been playing as is not the person they know. If the world we’ve been playing in doesn’t exist, than the actions Roxas has been committing don’t exist. He didn’t laugh and have fun with his friends, he didn’t sit on the clock tower to eat ice cream. And if all the elements that have constructed the Roxas we think we know do not actually exist, then Roxas as we know him does not exist. If not for the benefits of a few flashbacks and a separate game centered entirely around him, the player would have no idea of what Roxas was really like before he entered the fake Twilight Town. If DiZ’s world can falsify the experiences of Roxas, so too might it alter his personality, his thoughts, even his looks. The Roxas presented to us at the beginning of “Kingdom Hearts 2” is revealed to have been potentially manipulated and reconstructed in every conceivable way, and cannot be thought of as truly existing. Just as Descartes cannot trust his eyes and his past experiences, neither can we trust this representation of Roxas.

Of course, thanks to the appendix game of “358/2 Days,” we do know that there was a Roxas before being inserted into the fake Twilight Town, that he was more or less the same guy, personality wise, and had experiences of his own (unless you want to embrace the idea that all the narratives of “Kingdom Hearts” are similar fabrications, but that’s taking things a bit far). The game fills in the gap of time in between the first and second “Kingdom Hearts”: coming into creation as a Nobody after Sora’s heart is removed in the first “Kingdom Hearts,” Roxas joins a group called Organization XIII, made up of powerful Nobodies, who seek to find Kingdom Hearts so that they might regain their hearts and become complete people once again. In the universe of the game, a person consists of a soul, body, and a heart. When a heart is removed by the stock baddies of the game, known as the Heartless, the remaining body and soul form into a Nobody. The Nobody might look like the person they were previously, but they are unable to have genuine feelings: what emotions they might have are triggered by memories from their past life, and are not truly theirs. The idea of not being able to feel emotion might sound more the topic for high school poetry than metaphysics, but it triggers some interesting questions.

Like a pesky Darkside that keeps screwing up your attempt to beat “Kingdom Hearts” on expert mode, Descartes arises once again to ruin Roxas’s life. After deciding that the world around him might not be there, Descartes wonders whether the world /inside/ of him might not be there. That is, his thoughts, his feelings, and his senses may also be deconstructed. The problems with senses trace to the problems with experience: if you cannot rely on experience, then you can’t rely on the senses you derive from that experience. You might feel awfully comfy sitting on your couch while playing video games, but if that experience of sitting on the couch is fabricated, than so too is the sense of feeling comfy. If you are inclined to believe that we are products of our experiences, and that our minds and thoughts are formed as such, than those too are under attack, or at least, not beyond the realm of scepticism. And what of the possibility of mind control? Descartes goes so far as to say that there might very well be an evil genius controlling his thoughts, which, if somewhat absurd sounding, has enough plausibility behind it to cause doubt as to the sanctity of thought.

The mind-control theory might seem a bit bogus at first, but when you apply it to Nobodies, it actually seems to work. To use an analogy, consider a table top RPG. Say my character is a knight named Dave, who is walking through the Temple of Malicious No-Goodniks. Dave encounters a large bat and instantly flies into a rage, as his family was killed by bats (which makes his family kind of wimpy, but whatever). The emotions Dave feels are anger and the desire to kill, and he attacks. Of course, Dave isn’t really feeling anything, because Dave doesn’t exist: his backstory, emotions, and current state of affairs are being projected onto a miniature as per my wishes. Dave exists only as an extension of my thoughts, and without me to superimpose a personality upon him, Dave ceases to be the Dave I have described. Nobodies have the same sort of situation as Dave, where their looks, memories, and personalities are superimposed by a pre-existing person. Vexen only acts the way he does because Even was like that first before having his heart removed: Vexen’s personality is not his own, and of course, neither are his looks. Nothing they are has been created by themselves, but are created as per the specs of another person. As such, it could be said that Nobodies really are in a state of mind control of a third party, and that their existence is not genuinely theirs, being that what they are now depends on what someone else has made them. Their thoughts come about based on what their previous selves might have thought, their personalities come about based on what their previous personalities might have been, and all they become is a projection of what someone else once was. They exist only based on what their Somebodies existed as, and thus their own existence in disingenuous. Just like Descartes believes his sensations and thoughts are potentially being manipulated, Nobodies are in the same boat of having their existence essentially meddled with, and thus may still have their existence brought into question.

By now, Roxas has every reason to hate Descartes as much as he hates DiZ, because if DiZ didn’t do him any favors, Descartes is hardly lending a helping hand either. But Roxas fans might hold up some hope yet. In his musings, and deconstructing both the act of experience, memory, sensation, and the possibility of being constantly manipulated, it seemed to Descartes that, if this was all happening, then clearly there was something there to be manipulated: you couldn’t manipulate thought if there was no mind. This idea was coined in the now paraphrased: “I think, therefore I am.” Even if everything else about him was fake, there was a mind to process that which was fake. The ability to process information could not be deconstructed, and thus Descartes knew that if nothing else, his mind existed. And Roxas might have comfort in this: he only exists because of Sora, his experiences might be completely fraudulent, but at least there is something for DiZ to mess around with. Everything else might be fake, but because Roxas is able to perceive this, than to a certain extent, he exists.

Should you decide that, the next time you’re going through “Kingdom Hearts 2,” that Roxas is ten times better read than most junior high students usually are, feel free to imagine him pointing at DiZ and shouting “I OBJECT!” as he hurls a copy of “Meditations” at his red-taped head. And then imagine him somehow earning the Summon ability early, and with it Summoning Descartes to rain down fiery existentialism down upon him. And then, standing before the still comatose Sora, you can imagine Roxas proclaiming that at least he has a mind, and that he /does/ have a right to exist.

Of course, since Roxas is obligated to have the worst life ever, Sephiroth comes down from the ceiling and runs him through with a six foot sword. Hey, just because he exists doesn’t mean his life is any better.

Denying Existence: Why Dr. Robotnik is a Credible Villain

It is very hard to take Dr. Robotnik seriously as a video game villain. Saying “Ganondorf is coming to kill us!” or “Sephiroth is attacking an orphanage!” or even “Mother Brain is eating all the cupcakes and leaving none for the rest of us!” will garner something of a reaction from the knowing gamer, because these figures have been established as legitimate threats capable of destroying planets and becoming Gods. But to say “Dr. Robotnik is coming!” will doubtlessly result in laughter and have the same reaction as saying that the Tetris blocks are having a revolution. The man simply cannot conjure the same kind of fear and instant dread that his video game peers might. His appearance is clownish, with an impossibly goofy orange mustache and a perfect spherical body that suggests he once had a past life as a bowling ball. He is constantly upstaged by woodland animals in spite of the fact that he has an arsenal of tanks and machines at his disposal. And if you were really cynical, you might ask “Exactly what are you a Dr. /of/, Mr. Robotnik?”

Yet, once you get beyond the silly image and cartoony off-kilter behaviour of the good doctor, Robotnik really is quite terrifying. In fact, he has more power in his villainous acts than perhaps even he knows. Far from being an impotent baddie, Robotnik can do something which many villains cannot: he can destroy a person. And not just in the sense of rending the body and killing it: he destroys the very meaning of what it is to /be/ a person. Worse, he can inflict this state of not-being on a person for an eternity unless the gamer stops him via blue hedgehog. With enough deconstruction of what it is that he does, Dr. Robotnik stops being awfully goofy and becomes awfully, well, awful.

One of the things that can make a villain truly ominious and threatening is the size and scope of his potential destruction, how many people he can affect, and whether the gamer can see himself or herself as a potential target of this action within the context of the game. Try though he might, Bowser will never be the most horrifying of villains, because his targets are always focused on a very small group of people: even in “Super Mario Galaxy”, when Bowser finds the ability to control the universe, he still only uses his cosmic powers to nab Peach and temporarily inconvenience Mario. Compare this to Ganondorf in “Ocarina of Time,” who steals the Triforce, the very essence of the Goddesses, and in turn becomes himself a God of sorts, taking complete control of all of Hyrule and leaving literally no person in this world untouched. Even the relatively insignificant Lon Lon Ranch receives the brunt of Ganondorf’s malice. Worse still, he’s taken over the Sacred Realm, which can be read as Hyrule’s equivalent of Heaven, and corrupted it: the very promise of goodness and transcendence has been twisted by Ganondorf’s evil. You then have a sort of spectrum where on one end, you have a villain who effects only a small group of people (whether it be by stealing their purse, murdering a significant other, or kidnapping a princess), and on the other, a villain who affects everyone and everything, from people to plants to time and space. This, in turn, affects the gamer and how they identify themselves with the events in the game. Bowser might kidnap Peach, and while Mario might lament the loss of his girlfriend, the love interest is so ultra-specific that the gamer, unless they have secret fantasies about Princess Peach, does not feel that their own love life has taken a blow as a result of Bowser’s actions. Conversely, in the case of Ganondorf, the villain has taken away everything good that the world has to offer and replaced it with his own evil version. If the player has placed themselves in this world vicariously, then it doesn’t matter who they are or what they do, they’re still affected as a result of Ganondorf’s actions.

Where, then, does Dr. Robotnik fall in this spectrum? First, let’s look at what it is Robotnik does as a villain. The good Doctor acts as the threat of Man vs. Nature, in which Man is trying to destroy all that is good and wholesome about Nature, usually by exploiting its resources, rending the landscape, and replacing it with some kind of man-made structure or creation (be it building a house or pollution). Robotnik takes this to the cartoon extreme, however, in that there does not appear to be any economic or functional payoff to his wanton destruction of the environment, merely doing it because he’s a jerk like that. The key word in that sentence is “cartoon,” because the near randomness of these actions undermine the threat they might have. Surely, the destruction of the environment on a scale this massive is good for no man, if only because the air and water quality have been decimated to the point where even the most animate right-wing party member would have to call foul. Thus, the tentative argument could be made that Robotnik’s actions are indeed affecting everyone on a grand scale vicariously. Yet there are no real discernible benefits for Robotnik to go about doing this: being human (presumably), he would suffer the same detriments of this mass pollution as anyone else, so to have environmental destruction on this scale is nonsensical in terms of personal gain. You could argue that the mad doctor is, well, mad, in that there is no logic or reason to his actions, and that he is partaking in meaningless, anarchistic action, yet there seems to be some kind of rhyme and reason to his deeds: he obviously does not appreciate Sonic attempting to stop his mass pollution, indicating that he has an end goal in mind, even if said goal is just pollution for pollution’s sake. So the threat that Robotnik might provide on the environmental scale, while potent, is undermined by the sheer ridiculousness of it.

Second, Dr. Robotnik is trying to nab the Chaos Emeralds in order to help him take over the world. What exactly he plans on doing with said Emeralds is ambiguous. We know that when Ganondorf steals the Triforce, he gains control over everyone and everything. It’s none too clear as to what Robotnik hopes to do with the Emeralds in the event that he gets them. All they do for Sonic is turn him a sparkling yellow and give him the ability to fly, which, while cool, wouldn’t really do much to make Robotnik more terrifying. In fact, the sight of a roly-poly man flying about the sky like a deranged superhero would be kind of funny. So nothing overly threatening there, aside from speculation on what Robotnik /might/ do with the Chaos Emeralds.

But then you get to an aspect of Robotnik’s evil actions that isn’t so laughable. In fact, I would say that it’s not only potent, it’s threatening on a certain level that other villains can’t quite top. He takes sentient creatures (in this case, anthropomorphic animals) and turns them into robots.

This warrants some deconstructing. Ultimately, what Robotnik is doing is taking one thing and turning it into something completely different. This is nothing too shocking if all you’re doing is taking a toaster and turning into a door stop, but in this case, it’s being done with a sentient being, presumably against their will. What’s more, in the case of the toaster-to-doorstop, all that’s really changed is the function of the item and how its being used. The toaster is still a toaster, in that it looks like a toaster, is built like a toaster. All that’s changed is that it has stopped being used as a toaster. With the case of robotization, the person or thing being transformed retains nothing of what they were prior to being a robot. If a person (I’m going to use the word “person” just because it seems more, well, personal than saying animal) becomes a robot, they have essentially lost everything that made them a person in the first place. “What does it mean to be a person?” one might ask. There are enough tomes out there on the subject to sink the Bismark, and I’m not game enough to try and tackle the whole issue here. A few simplifications for the sake of argument might be made. First, there needs to be some kind of anatomy and bodily systems that make the person alive, allowing us to make a distinction between a person and a rock. Second, there should be some kind of sentient awareness of one’s own existence (or at least, the potential to have such an awareness), coupled with a brain capable of thought process, allowing us to make a distinction between a person and a flower.

But what happens when a person is robotized? The anatomy is altered entirely, the switching of essential vital organs over to machine parts, and the bodily functions and systems that made a person distinct from a flower (or brick or any other non-living item) have vanished. The higher brain functions, unique to humans (or the anthropomorphic equivalent thereof) have been replaced with circuitry and pre-programmed thought, further removing distinction of what it means to be a person. Robotnik has taken the very essence of what it means to be a person and made it nil: there is no fundamental difference, in terms of existence, between the robotized person and an inanimate object. Moreover, if we refer back to the toaster example, the toaster, even it has ceased functioning as a toaster, still retains some kind of identity of being a toaster in a past life: if someone were to see it being used as a doorstop, they would be more likely to say “What’s that toaster doing down there?” instead of “Nice doorstop.” The person who has become a robot has lost that identity entirely: it retains nothing of its past life, having lost the very essence of what made it what it was before. Any attempts to view the robot as the person it was in the past are superimposed, for the very ability to /be/ a person has been removed altogether. They cannot fundamentally be the same person they were five seconds prior to becoming a robot.

Not only has the subject been stripped of its status as a person, it’s lost its status as an individual. Personality, will, and thought are all things which differentiate one person from the next. Yet upon becoming a robot, no one person is any different from the next. Certainly, the form and shape might be different (you might be turned into a Caterkiller or a Motobug), but those are merely cosmetic differences. Everything that makes you /you/ has been rendered moot. Ideas and thought have been preprogrammed, free will replaced with systematic obedience.

If they cannot be a person, then what can they be? Simply put: a machine. The robotic body is all that’s left. Everything else has been stripped away. The subject in question has no choice in the matter as to whether they want to be a machine or not, because they no longer have the ability to be a person at all. They cannot be what they were, and thus their status as a person has been altered beyond reconciliation. The example might be stretched beyond just becoming a robot. Say Robotnik’s gimmick was he turned people into planks of wood, or marbles. He would still have the ability to shift the fundamentals of what it means to be one thing and convert it into the fundamentals of being another thing. In having this ability to upheave existence on every level, Robotnik have made the idea of being anything somewhat arbitrary: it doesn’t matter what you are now, because you can be easily made into something else. The existence of the person as a person, then, doesn’t matter, because Robotnik has managed to destroy the essence of /being/ in any meaningful fashion.

That’s not bad for a guy with a silly mustache.

With this in mind, Robotnik manages to stand up a little better when compared to Ganondorf. Ganondorf has made the existence of every Hylain miserable; Robotnik has challenged existence itself. He can make a person /not be/, essentially erasing everything about them from the world. The fan might then point out: “Yeah, that’s a little rough, but he’s still not out there killing people.” It’s a good point, to be sure, but more deconstructing is still required. Robotnik isn’t killing people, but by /not/ killing the people he robotizes, he might be doing something worse. With the death of a character, there’s at least some kind of closure. Either they go to the afterlife of their choosing, or simply die and go nowhere, or wait around in their spirit form until Yuna or some other summoner comes to Send them. If nothing else, there is an end of some kind provided for the character. This is not the case with Robotnik’s robots. Evidenced by the cute animals that hop out of the robots after Sonic jumps on them, the creature that has been robotized is still alive after the process. But what if Sonic does /not/ destroy their robot form? The state of non-being as previously described remains imposed on the creature perpetually. They are not allowed to live, but they are not really allowed to die. They don’t get to go on to a better place after Robotnik is done with them: they stay in their metal prison, still without identity, free will, or personhood. If one is inclined to believe that nothing happens to you when you die, and that you enter a state of non-being anyways, this might not be as horrifying. If it is believed that there /is/ an afterlife when you die, however, then Robotnik is committing a terrible crime: he is denying the soul to pass on. The soul present in the creature is trapped in every sense of the word: the physical body is contained, and the mind has ceased to be relevant. There is nothing left of the person for the soul to inhabit, but without the person actually being dead, the soul is unable to go anywhere and remain in robotic limbo. Robotnik has rendered the soul nil.

Tying this back to the scope of villainy, Robotnik’s status seems to grow. A good villain is measured by the size of the threat he offers, and how many people it affects. Robotnik threatens identity, existence, and the soul, threats which affect every living being. He does it on an industrial scale, mass producing robots out of sentient creatures, meaning that he can affect many people in a quick and efficient way. With the ability to destroy what it means to be a person, and do it on a grand scale, you’d best believe that Dr. Robotnik, silly mustache and all, is indeed a threat to be reckoned with. If Sonic does not defeat him, then the people he has robotized are doomed to not-be, and to not-be for eternity.

So the next time you’re zipping through Green Hill Zone and you run into the bald red-head in his drill-tank, your reaction should not be laughter. It shouldn’t even be considering how easy it is to just jump on his noggin multiple times and render his take useless. You should look at Dr. Robotnik and think about all those critters he has put into a state of non-being, and how they are doomed to a worthless existence (if they exist at all) unless you put an end to his machinations. You should feel that same hate that you feel when you walk into Hyrule Castle Town and see it overrun with Redeads. This is a video game villain that is worth your time.  Every time you blow up one of his ridiculously extravagant machines, be sure to shout “I EXIST!” into the wind. That’ll show him.

State of the Union

So, as the lack of updates over the last month has shown, I've reached another impasse in documenting wrestling. You can tie it all back to the episode of Raw after Elimination Chamber, when the show opened by claiming that Eve was apparantly just using Ryder the whole time, that she intended to use Cena (thus the kiss) and that the whole storyline of Kane's assaults over the last two months was pointless. Further, Cena not only did /not/ embrace the hate, he did not even address the Kane story at all, meaning that it didn't matter in the long run. Now, when the show admits that the best storyline it had going in years was pointless and didn't mean anything, that's a little hard to take as a guy who's main focus on wrestling was the plots. It also didn't help that the story build for Wrestlemania 28 was lackluster in general, leaving me very underwhelmed.

It basically came to the point where I don't really feel like writing my reviews of the wrestling shows anymore, because there really is no point. As such, I'm switching the purpose of this blog from just wrestling to more general topics in nerdom, like video games and movies and the such. It just gives me more things to write about and room to work. Don't worry, I'll still discuss wrestling, I just won't be focusing on it exclusively.

Thank you very much. Have a nice day.