Boy I sure love wondering how to portray third person limited with a character who thinks they can’t feel and then just straight up giving up cause Roxas was running in too much emotion to stop and wonder why he’s feeling all these things so it doesn’t really matter
If it makes you feel better I find people really suck at writing emotionless characters in general. Mostly cause A. Most people are pretty emotion based and don’t know how the frick not to be so how the frick are they gonna write a character who feels nothing at all in a legit way B. A truly emotionless character would be the most deadpan, boring thing ever so most people give them a little bit of emotion for that reason alone.
This is true of Kingdom Hearts seeing as most of the Org members display at least some basic emotion.
Also when it comes to Roxas, I like to think that it’s one of those things where you’re so stuck in your own head that you don’t know any different. Like no one ever sat Roxas down and told him what feeling was like (at least not in great detail) and only that he didn’t have any so anything he did feel was written off as not feeling because he didn’t realize what it was. Basically he had no reference point.
And the few times he does say he feels something it’s usually written off. Like the scene where he tells Axel he was worried about him only for Axel to remind him that he doesn’t have a heart and shouldn’t be able to worry.
I know this headcanon has a few holes in it but it’s the best way I can think to rationalize Roxas not realizing that he has a heart despite all the emotion he obviously feels.
OH OH, I use it for writing Nobodies as well as other ‘emotionless’ characters… there’s a chart that shows where people “feel” certain emotions in their body, and how they feel. i.e. Anger is bright and hot and it fills your chest and mouth and creeps down your arms into your hands, Happiness fills your entire body with bubbly warmth, etc.
basically I use that as a reference and instead of saying like… they felt Sad, describe how the image of sadness looks and feels. a cold, hollow feeling, with dull, sluggish pain in your chest and throat.
EDIT: I ACTUALLY PULLED THIS INTO A LEGIT POST TO SHARE THE CHART!
But they wouldn’t have that because they don’t feel anything. Everything would be numb 24/7. They have no emotion and therefore anything caused by feeling emotion wouldn’t happen.
I mean if their brain and physiological responses were enough then why would they bother trying getting their hearts back.
I haven’t written for KH in ages (and when I did I was a lot less experienced) but if I was to go back now I’d write it where I’d explain what they’re feeling but never name it (because they do actually feel things they just don’t know it because they’re told they don’t have it). They are however allowed to have likes and dislikes (because that isn’t emotion? Look the Org logic isn’t the most sound thing).
So for fear (which, okay, is probably the easiest) play it as “he doesn’t want this to happen”. We as people with working emotional understanding know the reason why we don’t want that to happen is because we fear it – they don’t have that working emotional understanding don’t so instead all they know is the REALLY don’t want x to happen without understanding the emotion underpinning it.
Happiness would be wanting to stay in that moment – again not understanding why. And so on.
Honestly I think the best way is just to use third person limited viewpoint.
Cause while the Nobodies might not feel anything (with the exception of Roxas, Axel and Xion it’s debatable which members grew their hearts back and which didn’t) they act like it.
So for example
“They smiled”, “They shrugged”, “Their eyes narrowed”, “They laughed”, “Tch, are you serious”, “They shivered”.
While none of these emotions may be felt the Nobody knows they should be feeling them and then acts accordingly.
It’s the ancient rule of show don’t tell.
If you have to protray someone’s complete thought process…I guess just focus on the inner monologue and try to downplay the amount of emotion words you use.
“Zexion thought Demyx was a bit odd. While he could be quite competent in his work; he preferred to laze around with his sitar all day. Zexion found this to be a complete waste of time and would occansionally shoot him dirty looks from across the room”
^I portrayed Zexion being both annoyed and confused without actually saying he felt those two things
Basically what you more or less said about explaining the feeling without actually naming it.
Also tbf with the exception of Roxas and Xion they do remember what it’s like to have emotions so it’s inaccurate to say they don’t have the emotional understanding. It’s more correct to say some of them are in big time denial about feeling said emotion.
Professional Peefer 