Norting: Is it actually what we think it is? [Major KH3 Spoilers OBVS]

Discussion in 'Kingdom Hearts III' started by cstar, Feb 23, 2019.

  1. cstar stay away from my waifu

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    I don't know if this has been discussed on any other forum at this rate but this topic has been driving me crazy when I think further about it.

    So as far as what the public understanding of "norting" was. It was when someone (specifically Xehanort) put his heart inside another person and essentially seized control. We referred to the 13 darknesses having been norted respectively.

    But... were they?

    We got to see a lot of them operate and they had their own personalities, their own agendas. Some didn't even end up helping Xehanort in any form by the end of it. So it only begs the question "what did he actually do to them?"

    Unless the whole system was essentially making people "half xehanort" (like what Xigbar implied happen to him), it seemed very odd to me that this plan would have worked at all if he managed to have gotten Sora. How did we know he wouldn't pull a Vexen?

    Or would it have ended up working more like... what happened with Aqua?

    You see we ended up with the scene where Ansem injected some sort of dark thing into Aqua and it ended up making her heart fall to darkness and despair. And I feel like in a situation where Sora was hit with Xehanort's heart something similar would happen. I don't think NORTING is the act of possessing someone. I think it's the act of influencing someone's heart to fall to darkness. He just used his own heart as the catalyst. Or possibly to make them more compliant.

    The act of possessing someone's body is a different thing entirely with a different set of rules requiring someone to give up their old body in order for it to work. I've been referring to it as being "Luxu'd" now instead and I will whenever I bring it up further in this thread (but not in casual discussion because norted has become the common term). Named specifically after the fact Luxu has been doing the same thing which is how he's ended up in the body he calls Xigbar now.

    Now I could have missed something completely with how the characters actually acted but considering they seemed to have their own agendas and emotional arcs I have a very hard time believing there wasn't more than just influence to fall to darkness. But if someone has something to point out please lmk.
     
    cstar, Feb 23, 2019
    cstar, Feb 23, 2019
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  2. Explode Who?!

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    Yeah I think you're right: "Norting" is a casual term that's thrown around, but it only really happened to Terra. The yellow eyes seem to just be a sign that they've been "marked" as a vessel: more of a cult-like promise than anything.

    It also seems like the meaning of yellow eyes/pointed ears has changed over time. It used to mean "Xehanort" from what I remember from old Nomura interviews, but I don't think that's the case anymore. It probably is just a sign of corruption. We see in KH3 Young Xehanort originally had silver eyes and regular ears. This likely changed when he started going out into the Lanes Between without his armor (Xehanort Report 2). Also backed up by the fact that Xigbar retains those features after Xehanort is gone. (Side note: I don't know if it matters much, but I wonder if Xigbar was "recompleted" or just faked his death and remains a nobody. I got the sense he actually "died", but it was left ambiguous.)

    Aqua's a weird case. She goes under a much more drastic transformation than any members of the Real Org. XIII, and it looks to be on-going. Her hair is mostly white but still a hint of blue, and darkness encroaches from her limbs and clouds her mind. If it continued she may have ended up as a Darkling or some other monstrosity. To me it's less believable that Ansem SoD was able to do all that, and more likely it was a result of falling into "the great abyss" as Mickey calls it. The water below the realm of darkness is just an all-consuming abyss: supposedly the same one (or parallel to it) that Sora fell into near the end of DDD (according to Riku). Ven's armor protected him from corruption, but otherwise would've probably ended up in a similar state.

    But yeah, to actually Nort the whole Organization in the true sense, Xehanort would have to "hook them up to Kingdom Hearts" as Xigbar said in DDD. Otherwise they retain their own wills/consciousness. I assume what we see in Scala, with all 13 attacking as a single-minded unit, is the fully-realized version of that.
     
    Explode, Mar 11, 2019
    Explode, Mar 11, 2019
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