If we were to dissect Vivi…

Dionysos

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What would we find?

Fluff or flesh?

Are the Black Mages organic? Are they dolls? Are they mechanical?

Do they have circulatory systems or circuit boards?

We know that they are manufactured en masse, and Square Enix clearly explores the same tropes seen in Blade Runner (and a lot of science fiction) since some of the Black Mages become self-aware (particularly Vivi, though not exclusively) and express themselves just like any organic lifeform.


I believe it might be stated somewhere that they are a bit like dolls, but I’m not sure if that relates to their appearance, their artificiality, or if it is literally a case of them being manufactured as dolls and then magically brought to life through enchantments.

Are they robots underneath? Are they made up of materials which resemble flesh and bone (like the Replicants in Blade Runner)?

Thoughts?


-
And yes! I was inspired by last week's Drawgust prompt. :argor:
 
I mean... Quan was gonna eat Vivi, so let's take that into consideration :P


I read quickly through the post linked. I never watched Blade Runner but I always assumed the Garland & the Genomes were organic beings. Terra was an old and dying planet that more than likely had much more advanced technology. I don't think that they could create life, but I think that creating the vessels for the souls was obviously within their ability.

With that said, I guess I always assumed that the Black Mages were Kuja's crude versions of the Genomes. In the village of Dali you actually see some stitched together eggs being produced - what would be the purpose of the eggs if the Black Mages are just animated dolls? Additionally, when Kuja finds out that Garland has placed a short lifespan on his life, he compares himself to the Black Mages.
FF Wiki on Kuja said:
Kuja never experienced childhood, and thus his emotional growth is stunted and he cannot use Trance. Kuja is thus initially unable to empathize with others or feel remorse for his actions.

Can we also agree that Kuja is a bit 'strange' (for a lack of better words) compared to the average person/Gaian? Is it because he was created as an adult, unlike his replacement Zidane? It could also explain why the Black Mages are a bit strange themselves. Interestingly though, Vivi can enter Trance, and is able to muster a lot of emotion like he did on the cargo ship from Dali when the Black Waltz No. 3 attacked.

To draw on that more, Vivi is a bit unique compared to the various Black Mages created in the game, almost childish even. He's the only Black Mage we see enter Trance and the only of his kind that we see until the end of his game.... :hmm: The Ultimania says that he was a 'Prototype', so I'd like to think that he is the closest to a young child that the Black Mages could get, which is why he is capable of more human emotions than the various kinds we meet/encounter through the entire game.


I'm not sure if there is more to connect my theory or anything that could disprove it, but those are my thoughts! I think that if you were to cut into Vivi that you certainly would find some kind of organic matter. Who knows! With the way the eggs looked in Dali maybe even Blank was a Black Mage! 😱

dct17rt.jpg
 
I mean... Quan was gonna eat Vivi, so let's take that into consideration :P


I read quickly through the post linked. I never watched Blade Runner but I always assumed the Garland & the Genomes were organic beings. Terra was an old and dying planet that more than likely had much more advanced technology. I don't think that they could create life, but I think that creating the vessels for the souls was obviously within their ability.

With that said, I guess I always assumed that the Black Mages were Kuja's crude versions of the Genomes. In the village of Dali you actually see some stitched together eggs being produced - what would be the purpose of the eggs if the Black Mages are just animated dolls? Additionally, when Kuja finds out that Garland has placed a short lifespan on his life, he compares himself to the Black Mages.


Can we also agree that Kuja is a bit 'strange' (for a lack of better words) compared to the average person/Gaian? Is it because he was created as an adult, unlike his replacement Zidane? It could also explain why the Black Mages are a bit strange themselves. Interestingly though, Vivi can enter Trance, and is able to muster a lot of emotion like he did on the cargo ship from Dali when the Black Waltz No. 3 attacked.

To draw on that more, Vivi is a bit unique compared to the various Black Mages created in the game, almost childish even. He's the only Black Mage we see enter Trance and the only of his kind that we see until the end of his game.... :hmm: The Ultimania says that he was a 'Prototype', so I'd like to think that he is the closest to a young child that the Black Mages could get, which is why he is capable of more human emotions than the various kinds we meet/encounter through the entire game.


I'm not sure if there is more to connect my theory or anything that could disprove it, but those are my thoughts! I think that if you were to cut into Vivi that you certainly would find some kind of organic matter. Who knows! With the way the eggs looked in Dali maybe even Blank was a Black Mage! 😱

dct17rt.jpg

I had completely forgotten about the eggs!
With the patches on them, it looks like the eggs are manufactured rather than 'grown', but perhaps they hosted something resembling a developing embryo inside. They are mass produced by a truly horrific-looking machine which looks like something out of the mind of H. R. Giger (the guy who designed the Xenomorph from Alien). Having said that, I very much hope that their life-cycle differs from the Xenomorph, even though they share the associations of being a manufactured bio(?)-weapon of mass destruction!

So they are manufactured, but the presence of the egg suggests that they must 'grow' in some way and be 'born'.

To quote Ryan Gosling's character, K, in the Blade Runner sequel (Blade Runner 2049):
"To be born is to have a soul, I guess"

The Blade Runner sequel came out only the other year so has no relevance where intentional associations are concerned, but it is worth considering the distinction between being made vs being born, and when it matters (if it matters).

I'm still not sure where I stand on it though as there is clearly nothing natural about their births. The secret factory in Dali is no ordinary hatchery. Maybe after they develop in the egg, they remain inactive (like some of the Black Mages in the cargo barrels, perhaps) awaiting activation.

The Black Mages are represented sometimes as soulless, but some of them demonstrate that they can clearly attain consciousness (Vivi, the Black Waltz's and the Black Mages from Black Mage Village are the prime examples the player is aware of). Becoming self-aware seems to happen accidentally in the cases of Vivi and the Black Mage Village residents, but the fact that they are capable of it represents the ambiguity of the nature of their existence, whether they count as living organisms and should hold the same value as those who are naturally born.

This blurry line is exactly what is explored in Blade Runner, hence the comparison I made in the other thread. The built-in limited lifespan is a major aspect of the plot of that movie too.

I think the idea that Kuja was created as an adult and never experienced a childhood is fascinating, and likely true. As you say, Vivi was a child and experienced a form of upbringing in the swamps with Quan. Vivi was able to develop memories and experience things which could serve as emotional anchor points. Kuja may not have experienced this, and most of the Black Mages (aside from Vivi and other prototypes) probably didn't too. I think Kuja probably changed the formula so that the Black Mages would be created as adults so that they didn't have memories to shape their view of the world. They were supposed to be used as mindless drones, so this was probably a way of ensuring they would be complicit in following order (similar to the built-in limited lifespan, which was probably supposed to be to ensure that they didn't live long enough to form memories and become sentient). But Kuja underestimated them.

So I'm still not sure whether the Black Mages were dolls, machines, or organic-matter. But possibly they were grown with materials (organic or substitutes), pumped full of Mist to give them the 'breath of life'.
 
Hmm. I kinda always imagined Vivi, and other Black Mages, to just be made up of a condense cloud of black mist. I always felt that if it wasn't for the clothes they were wearing, you could probably just walk right through them. Seems illogical because they walk like humans and can touch, collide, interact, etc. with their surroundings and other objects. But then, I just think that's down to the Black Mages magic just applying density to their being.
 
Hmm. I kinda always imagined Vivi, and other Black Mages, to just be made up of a condense cloud of black mist. I always felt that if it wasn't for the clothes they were wearing, you could probably just walk right through them. Seems illogical because they walk like humans and can touch, collide, interact, etc. with their surroundings and other objects. But then, I just think that's down to the Black Mages magic just applying density to their being.

This is interesting because in the back of mind when I was a child I had a similar impression.

Maybe it was because Mist was required for their production, or maybe it was because of the scene with Black Waltz 3 destroying the Black Mages on the cargo ship. When the camera focuses on one of the falling Black Mages and goes under its hat, the eyes don't appear to be glowing anymore (as if they have faded out of existence) and it zooms into an empty face.


It is a very powerful scene and one that had a huge impact on me, but it also got me thinking about the Black Mages from then on. No longer were these guys simple 'weapons', I started to see the value in all of them and feel sorry for them.
I got the impression during that scene that they might not be corporeal at all, but then the game continued and I adjusted my interpretations and eventually forgot about these impressions.

So this makes it even more interesting to me now... Were our initial opinions of them being misty clouds correct? Or do they have physical bodies?

I wonder what a Black Mage would look like if we were to remove its hat. If the shadow effect is only due to the hat, what exactly is it underneath?

I'm certain Zidane and the others must have asked Vivi questions like this while tenting it up on the world map.
 
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So this makes it even more interesting to me now... Were our initial opinions of them being misty clouds correct? Or do they have physical bodies?

When you watch the Black Waltz you can see his eyes do some sort of animation where he's narrowing them or, my personal favorite:

Herp.jpg

"O__o"

So I like to think he has a physical body as his eyes require... eyelids? (Also, are those gloves? Or his actual hands??)

However... they're (He?) the only ones who really have this animation to their eyes, so I'm not sure if it's a fair enough argument.


I'd like to point this out though:
FF Wiki said:
Mist is distributed through the Iifa Tree's roots and is in fact the Gaian souls being refused to return to their crystal and expelled to flow back into Gaia's atmosphere instead. These stagnant and tormented souls are reborn as monsters.

They were obviously infusing the mist somehow into the eggs back in Dali. I'm not sure if this means that they are monsters or if they have/are souls. Maybe they are some sort of blank doll and were just infused with souls, but with that in mind, how do monsters of the mist gain bodies? Where does the flesh come from?


I took a quick look through the list of monsters and found a few with similar eyes to that of the Black Mages. I paused when I looked at the Tonberry.

latest


Now, let's imagine him black instead of green:


NigelTonberryHere.png


Now imagine if we tossed a hat on him, and then did:

TonberryCosplaying.png


I mean, it's practically Vivi amiright? :smartass: (Also I love this)


Looking at all the monsters... they just all have such odd bodies and different functions. So it isn't too hard to believe that Mr. Blackberry above might just have dimmed out eyes if/when he does eventually die, like the Black Mages on the cargo ship.




I guess I just have such a hard time believing Vivi doesn't have a physical organic body. :P
 
I took a quick look through the list of monsters and found a few with similar eyes to that of the Black Mages. I paused when I looked at the Tonberry.

latest


Now, let's imagine him black instead of green:


View attachment 8116

Now imagine if we tossed a hat on him, and then did:

View attachment 8117

This is brilliant. :argor:

Mr. Blackberry there does look a lot like a Black Mage. Maybe the Black Mages simply are 'monsters' created out of the Mist but hatched out of the patchwork eggs. So the design of their physical bodies is controlled and they are manufactured (so remain artificial life), yet they are also pumped full of Mist (essentially soul-burps) and thus they are kind of born as well as being created.

The more I think about the Black Mages the more the line blurs...
 
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