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purplemninja · 23 days ago

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Did Six become a Nowhere Resident too in the end?

This is a combined revision of my post on the Tragic Story of Six and a depressing revelation on her ending.

Well, with the new LN lore that was given to us through The Sounds of Nightmares, I wanted to make a revision of these two things, as well as showing another similar interpretation of Six's ending using some lore from TSON on how the LN world works, as well as something that I believe I've missed previously.

Plus, while I vehemently don't believe the 'Six is the Lady/next Lady' theory, I believe that this theory on Six becoming a 'resident' works whether she is the Lady/next Lady or not.

I'm really, really putting my heart and soul into this theory.

Something that's been on my mind for quite a while is the possibility that by the end of LN1, Six too succumbed to the Nowhere's corruption and became another of the thousands of Residents of the Nowhere.

First, let's recap on how the Residents of the Nowhere function:

So the Residents are essentially like thralls or zombies to their 'base instinct' that also serves as their identity, following it with no goal, motivation, concerns for morality or question.

I made a post previously about the observations of the Residents showing little to no regard for their own survival when following their base instinct, as well as no goal or purpose in what they do for their base instincts. I'll link it instead to not make this post too long: https://www.tumblr.com/purplemninja/763255998237589504/my-understanding-of-the-nowheres-residents?source=share

And I previously theorised here that the Thin Man isn't searching for anything in particular, but rather that searching is his Residential base instinct/ID

With that said, we can all agree that Mono became a Resident at the end of LN2, the Thin Man, but what if Six did too by the end of LN1?

So it seems that the Nowhere's influence corrupts those in it and amplifies their worst flaws, turning them into Residents, but there is a protection against it:

Unfortunately it's unclear what a person's 'inner child' is in LN, and when I asked people what they believed it is, the responses were unfortunately mixed, so I'll have to speculate that it's the state that a person is in denial about how truly horrible the world of the Nowhere is, and this denial allows them to resist its corruption and still have their free will to not follow an unending pointless pattern for the rest of their existence. And we see this happen to Mono:

At the beginning, Mono wears a bag on his head to deny to himself that the Nowhere hates him and wants him to fail, allowing him to retain his inner child. His bio states that he is single-minded and rarely gives up completing a task that he sets himself on, basically stubbornness, which is what the Nowhere uses and amplifies as his 'worst flaw'.

After Six gets taken by the Thin Man and he's wounded and confronted by the Thin Man, Mono mostly (but not entirely yet) stops denying that the world hates him and wants him to fail, shedding his bag, his innocence and most of his inner child with it, allowing him to gain the confidence to use his powers on the Thin Man and win. Perhaps him getting closer to fully becoming a resident is what gives him this sudden increase in power.

The reason why his inner child isn't gone fully yet is because of Six, as far as he knows, Six doesn't hate him or want to see him fail, and that is the last bit of resistance he has. That is until Six drops him (here I give my best explanation on why she did it).

With the act of Six dropping him, Mono is left to believe that actually yes, even Six hates him and wants him to fail as well, which was his breaking point (though it's unclear if Six really truly did hate him and want him to fail, I'm just saying that Mono likely thinks so after Six drops him). And with this realisation, Mono's inner child, therefore resistance to the Nowhere's corruption, is finally gone, allowing him to become the Thin Man and another Resident of the Nowhere, searching endlessly and pointlessly as his base instinct.

The world's hatred for him was the build-up, and Six seeming to be no different was the finishing blow.

^ Who knows? And his single-mindedness making him continue doing the same thing over, and over, and over without trying another way or without giving up.

Now finally onto the part where I discuss that Six met a similar fate at the end of LN1.

So a Resident is someone who does a particular action over and over and over again with no goal, motive, concern for morality and sometimes no concern for their own survival either, like zombies. And their worst flaw becomes a feature of how they behave, such as Mono's stubbornness leading to him not trying to do something different when he (as Thin Man) goes back to the past. But a person's 'inner child' is the only thing that's stopping them from becoming that way.

So what would be the base instinct that Six would follow with no goal, motive, morality or questions? Survival itself.

Think about it, the Nowhere is a horrible place to live in, death awaits around every corner, kindness never goes unpunished and morals are non-existent. So why on earth would Six try so hard to stay alive in a place like this? Because she no longer has a choice.

Throughout the series, we see Six behave like a child at times, like kicking a ball in the school yard, drawing on the ground with her finger when idle (in LN2), playing with a music box, and hugging Nomes. Six's 'worst flaw' would no doubt be her selfish tendencies. Her inner child is still intact, but like Mono, her breaking was also a gradual process, though longer and smoother than his.

The Six that comes out of the tower is not the same Six that went in, she used to love playing music boxes, interacting with toys around her, and other kinds of childish behaviour. But in LN1, Six no longer cares about music boxes or toys, and none of her idle animations are something childish, all of those aspects of her inner child are gone. And she doesn't really do anything nice for others anymore. In VLN, she tried to save RCG despite being left behind by her a couple of minutes beforehand, in LN2, she sticks her own neck out for Mono several times (as does he for her), but in LN1, Six doesn't do anything nice for other people anymore, such as using a kid's cage to reach a lever with no regard to any of the kids in the cages (not that she can help them anyway).

However, her inner child is still clinging on, as she hugs Nomes like a child would.

But as we know, this doesn't last long. Her strange hunger forces her to choose between eating a sausage that she knows is made of human flesh, the Nome that is just a critter as far as she knows, or neither and starve to death.

A lose-lose-lose situation that damages her inner child even further, but it's still hanging on by a thread, as she believes that she at least was able to avoid cannibalism (though those who finished the DLC know otherwise, but Six doesn't). But as we already know, this also doesn't last long, as she's soon after forced to choose between knowingly committing cannibalism by eating the Lady or not and starving to death (or give the Lady a chance to regain her strength and kill her, but with Six now at a disadvantage with being incapacitated by her hunger bouts, and the only mirror she could use now broken).

And with this act, Six realises that there's no point to trying to deny that she can remain innocent, as time and time again, the world will find a way to make her do things she doesn't want to, finally breaking her inner child and making her susceptible to the Nowhere's corruption as well. Turning her into a thrall or zombie to the instinct to survive. Surviving no matter what immoral things she may have to commit in the process, surviving despite how awful the world is, surviving with no end goal. Completing her transition into a Resident.

And she also has the powers of the Lady to help her do it, allowing her to kill a hallway full of Guests by simply walking by without lifting a finger, perhaps the world's gift to help her follow her new base instinct to survive, which is now also her identity.

Previously I theorised that Six was stranded out at sea at the end, making all the sacrifices that were made, her struggles and suffering, and the abuse she had to endure from the world all be for nothing in the end. Which Skrappo made a more in-depth post on here.

And this may still be the case for Six's ending, but now I propose, what if it doesn't matter either way? Even if she's not restricted to the Maw, she's still trapped in some way, as David Mervik hinted here:

What if rather Six is trapped in the Nowhere entirely instead of strictly the Maw? Or what if her prison is not a physical one, but a psychological one - being a Resident. With this, I believe I really understand now what he meant when he said this.

Maybe her killing the Guests in that hallway is a victory in her eyes because it allows her to continue following her instinct and identity - survival. And we thought that Six won in the end too at first, but with this revelation, she actually didn't, but she's now too mentally warped to be able to see that.

And while I don't believe that Six is the Lady or the next Lady, this can still work for those interpretations too. After all, arguing in favour of the theory that Six becomes either the Lady or the next Lady, she didn't want to knowingly eat human flesh, which is why she ate the Nome instead of sausage, but she soon had no choice when eating the Lady, knowingly committing cannibalism. And being a resident makes her no longer have any regard for morality and amplified her selfish tendencies so that she thinks only about herself. So now that morals don't mean anything to her anymore, would she still be against a ship that kills, cooks and serves human flesh? And since survival is the base instinct she follows as a resident no matter what, wouldn't being the leader of said ship help her tremendously in her desire to survive? Again, unless the games or devs confirm it with 100% certainty, I don't believe that Six is the Lady or the next Lady, but this is how the 'Resident Six' theory can work with those theories.

And so with that, Mono and Six's endings truly aren't that different, both of them were tormented and abused by the world, making them slowly break and accept how horrible it really is and become just another couple of Residents to contribute to it - Mono (now Thin Man) obviously defeated and now endlessly searching for nothing in particular, fuelled by his amplified stubbornness to complete his task - and Six believing herself victorious in the end and now surviving with no goal or motive, fed by her amplified selfish tendencies that no longer allow her to think of others at all. Both following a base instinct which also serves as their identities, with no goal, motives, concern for morality or questions, with their worst flaws contributing to it. And both of them now trapped in one way or another.

Both have differences between them, but are also ultimately the same. Their stories are not of betrayal, but tragedy. I myself did say that Six became just another part of the Nowhere like many many other children did, as an empty, broken husk that can only think of survival and nothing else (though I didn't say that part then) in my post on her tragic story, but I didn't truly understand the severity of it until I came up with this theory.

Will we see any reference to them in LN3? We'll have to wait and see, but ultimately, both of their tragic stories come to a tragic close.

The end.

And here's the music I find the most fitting for this (arguably more depressing) revelation of Six's ending:

youtube

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