Sideblog for TerraVen and AkuRoku and hatever else Iâm suddenly not allowed to ship, probably namine x anyone when it comes out she was Avaâs nobody all along lolÂ
Axel and Roxasâs ship has had one of the most bizarre fandom journeyâs i have ever come to witness. It has gone from being one of the most popular ships maybe ever, to being dead cancelled over a supposed age gap and I find that completely unfair, especially when it speaks to so many innocent people who emotionally depend on the ship, (yes innocent includes the spicy people because art literally is not a crime). So its time to defend it.
Brief Review on Nobodies vs Aging
First of all, l already explained in part 1 what the Nobodies Donât Age thing means but Iâll go over it again briefly, since it can be confusing, though also many people seem to demand their hands be held rather than use their imaginations to understand. Even so, hereâs the short version just for a review:
-A person in KH is made of a heart, body, and soul.
-The body reflects the heart in KH. (See: replica bodies taking on the appearance of the heart thatâs inside them).Â
-A nobody lacks a heart, making them just a body and soul. Theyâre advanced zombies of sorts.
Nobodies do not age because they have no heart for the body to reflect. This is why they wonât change until they form one. Change includes age
-Ergo, you can imagine any age you like for Axel to be nobodied, cuz he was frozen at that age and did not change for 10 years. Not until he met Roxas.Â
Weâll come back to this again later.
Axel Loves Roxas Canonically
Second of all, Axel loves Roxas and you are allowed to interpret that as platonic, familial, or romantic, I donât care as long as youâre not forcing that idea on others like the ship police. That said, people are allowed to explore how romantic this love potentially is.Â
And what you might like to know is that the canon is even open to this. Axelâs love for Roxas is canonically expressed, and if you would like, you can even interpret that love as romantic. See below:
We are going to look at the japanese translation because AS ALWAYS good old SENA is here for the straights and erases the gay, like clockwork.Â
In English, Axel says this:
Axel: I wanted to see Roxas. He...was the only one I liked... He made me feel...like I had a heart. It's kind of...funny... You make me feel...the same...
Axelâs line here in Japanese:
Axel: I wanted to see Roxas... I loved him. Being with him... it made me feel like I had a heart. I feel it from you, too... the same kind of....
You may notice that as romantic as the line âhe made me feel like I had a heartâ sounds, the original can be read as wAY gooier, specifically cuz of this word:
ć„œă: "suki"
Now hereâs the thing. Japanese is a pretty vague language which is why context is so important for these things, as well as what you say, and what you donât say.Â
âSukiâ is a very key word here because it is often used in romantic confession scenes.
(I have no idea what this panel is from, I apologize lol)Â
It CAN mean something casual, like âI love video gamesâ, but considering Axel is saying this with his dying breath, I donât think we should be treating it as some hyperbole. He is referring to a person and it is meaningful. However. It is still a word with plausible deniability. Japanese has several words for love, âaiâ for example being one of the most inarguable means of referring to romantic love. So choosing âsukiâ still leaves room for the homophobes to disregard it as something not romantic. Which makes it objectively inconclusive. Here is the thing though⊠they specifically chose that word, suki, a word which IS so often used in a romantic context in many anime and manga.Â
They also chose to use that word rather than something objectively platonic. Which means you also cannot conclude Axel did NOT mean it romantically. Given his devotion to Roxas, and the fact that they chose this word of all words for him to say⊠Iâm personally going to assume itâs romantic. You are free not to interpret it that way. But I am because I am considering the fact that they did not choose something strictly platonic.Â
(My translator friend actually freaked out when I showed her this, sheâs translated and seen enough confession scenes to know what connotations that particular word comes with lol).Â
If youâve read my queer coding doc, you may recall I also go over how this is one of the most important tricks with queer coding. You write something that CAN be viewed as queer but with plausible deniability for straight people to ignore it. Itâs a means of protecting oneself and the text from homophobic oppression. It is a legitimate practice. So even though it can be denied as a queer text, it can also very very well be viewed as a definite queer text. We are choosing to queer it here. It is not as explicit as it could be, but it is still very bold, suggestive coding considering the homophobic world we live in, and especially with KH2 being released in 2004.Â
âBut Age Gap!â (ughhhhh)
Weâre back to this cuz I also finally have the Japanese version of that infamous page in the Dayâs novel to look at. Â
I hope youâll forgive me if I get a little bit salty but I donât like to repeat myself lol so Iâm gonna try to keep this section short and to the point.
In this interview with Nomura, he expresses that nobodies do not age, and they exist as they were at the time of becoming a nobody. He then suggests Xemnas seems 30 ish.
Now I truly do not care to hold your hand through the process of thinking creatively because you should be using your own imagination, if you have one, to think critically and creatively about what this idea means.
Kingdom Hearts is a FANTASY game. Nobodies are a FANTASY concept. They can break ALL the rules about real life that you want them to. But I will go ahead and explain this for you even though Iâve already done it many times, in this very document even and in other meta posts.
The body reflects the heart. Nobodies are frozen as they are from the moment they are âbornâ, which is to say the moment they are created. Glorified zombies. They arenât going to age unless they form a heart. Why does Xemnas look 30? He has a heart! Or he was formed 10 years after TerraNort defected. You tell me. Why did Ienzo age? I dunno, you tell me! Either he formed a heart and didnât know it, (heâs passionate about his work, he loves Ansem the Wise, any number of things couldâve made him form a new heart), or he was nobodied later in life. Axel is frozen at whatever age he was when he was nobodied, all the while Ienzo couldâve been nobodied 10 years later. Itâs a fantasy, and these are fantasy rules. That scenario can happen. YOU decide. Until the canon tells us for sure, your imaginations can run wild with explanations. Even if the canon does tell us, you can still imagine whatever you want for your own headcanons. Freedom is amazing, itâs salty and sweet.Â
Now letâs talk about that annoying page in the Days novel people keep shoving in my face.
This one right here. The official english translation is this:
Thatâs not the worst translation Iâve seen them put out there. But letâs look closer at the Japanese:
 Here, Axel says he thinks Roxas is about 10 years separate from himself, but things like age don't exist for nobodies.
Already thatâs making a lot more sense to me for nobodies since we are told nobodies do not age. As such Axel speaking like he is 10 years older would feels almost contradictory when he has no heart and cannot change.Â
This wording is important. Recall me saying that Japanese is very vague so all of the context matters. No one is denying that 10 years passed between Birth By Sleep and Axel meeting Roxas. However. Nobodies donât age.
(please dont make me explain that a third time in this essay alone)
The Japanese and English both express that age does not apply to nobodies, (as discussed above^^^^) and the Japanese furthers this with its wording. They have 10 years of separation between Axel being nobodied, and Roxas existing. Â
Axel saying in English that Roxas is simply 10 years younger than himself is rather misleading considering the ambiguity of the original. I canât fault the translators too much for not understanding this nobody concept so well because it is obviously confusing. However, I do not think Axel was saying Roxas is literally, in real life human somebody terms, 10 literal physical years younger than him. He is expressing that he became a nobody 10 years ago whereas this guy became a nobody very recently, and it shows with how little he can even function right now. A zombie who has been wandering around with no heart for 10 years meets a fresh zombie wandering around with no heart for 1 day.Â
I know antis are gonna use it against us no matter what, but at least know that akuroku is not inherently pedophilia nor is it inherently an adult/minor ship.
In many of our headcanons, Axel was frozen at age 18 or 19, with Roxas being 16. Absolutely no one is required to view them with a big age gap because imagination is free and you literally have no right to police it, but also because the canon expresses these nobodies as beings outside of the realm of age. They do not operate under real life rules or somebody rules. Think of Steven Universe where Rose was thousands of years old but only âgrew upâ as a person when she fell in love with Greg, a human in his 20s-30s who asked her to consider other peopleâs feelings. Consider the mind of a nobody as a state of Neverland. You arenât gonna age unless you step out of it and change. Mature. Isnât it sad that Axel did not feel like he had a heart until Roxas? No wonder people ship it!
Coding is Obvious
Finally I wanna conclude on a simple thought. This interview right here? Iâd be curious what the original Japanese actually says lol but the english translation of it says that romantic akuroku was not Nomuraâs intent.Â
Hereâs the thing though. If you know anything about queer coding, you know that using romantic coding between 2 male characters is signaling something. It is not something you should ignore. It would not be there if the characters were meant to be viewed as objectively straight. And for something âunintentionalâ... there sure is a lot of coding at work here.
From Axel pinning Roxas down and asking him to come home in a very sexually suggestive pose,
to watching the sunset in sheer bliss together just enjoying the peace of reunion,
to watching the sunset together while talking about what LOVE is, specifICALLY romantic love,
To this. And I already told you what this was in Japanese.
Iâm not saying Nomura liedâŠ
But I am saying that a whole staff worked together to create these games, and it is very difficult for me to believe that no one thought to say âthese characters appear to be romantic, let us change the scene to be more platonicâ if the characters were not meant to be romantically suggestive.Â
Tl;Dr I wanna live in the timeline where people let you ship akuroku lol
Messing around after a show From that akuroku AU i made up where Isa drags Axel to clown school cuz he convinced him thats all he's good for, but Roxas met him at a bad party and told him he's really funny and cool, and should definitely pursue his REAL dream: being a comedic rock star~
Ah hello! I really really appreciate your kind words, thank you so much! ;w;
The shirts were super random, Iâm so glad they made people laugh the way they made me laugh thinking of them at 4 in the morning xâD
And I appreciate the comfort, it only really gets to me when real people get hurt or close to it; in general i donât give a flying fork what people think lmao, but some of this anti business is so dangerous, the things they accuse people of can ruin lives even when theyâve done nothing wrong. BUT. this particular situation iâm referring to will likely blow over anyway so lol not to big a deal.
In these trying times I do hope AkuRoku and TerraVen fluff find you though!<3 Every good person deserves their adorableness, including you especially~^^
Lea and Roxas! Years after the events of Kingdom Hearts 3 their friendship develops into something more. Considering all theyâve gone through, I think it would be sweet for them to end up together in the future!
Theyâre just happy to be near each other after everything thatâs happened.
Please no hate on this post I just think their characters are sweet together đ„°
i know these kinds of posts are annoying but i dunno how to find specific people otherwise?
I need more kh on my dash so if youre NOT AN ANTI and into kingdom hearts, specifically soriku, terraven, akuroku, soven, namixi, vanipliku, drop a like or something, iâd love to follow you~
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