So, if you are accepting any asks, I have a small question.
Who do you think was longer in The Spiral? And which kids were "born" there? Sorry if this is a stupid ask, or if someone already asked it.
Feel free to ignore! I just really like how you analyze and theorize 'bout everything of The Little Nightmares world; you realize things that most people most likely don't notice, and that's admirable to me!
Thank you so much!!! This makes me very happy to hear, I'm very grateful you enjoy my interpretations of the games. Your question is not stupid at all; it's a very good one, and I see there is a few misconceptions about children who are Nowhere born and children who come from other worlds.
I have seen argued that most children we meet must be kids of the Nowhere due to their ability to survive; for example, a child as young as the Toddler was able to survive for at least a while before being snatched away. However this is not an indicator of them actually being Nowhere born.
Noone herself explains how this is possible in episode one of the podcast. Quoting:
"I turned away from the window, which was only a hole in the stone wall of the curved passageway, that stretched on a long ways. This- odd feeling, told me to get up. But I couldn’t stand because the ceiling was so low."
"That same feeling told me I was lost inside a giant."
They are being guided by this strong instinct. Which explains why children as young as a Toddler can get around without dying near instantly: they inherently seem to know what to do and they are constantly on the move. If anything, children who are stagnant are more likely to be Residents or becoming Residents; they are the odd ones out. Remaining still means certain death, after all, unless you intend to join the Nowhere.
Here's a diagram to show in short who is what based on what we know about the world. The ones with the * are those who are uncertain.
These are the most common kind of children one can meet in the Nowhere: the ones brought from outside, either by the Ferryman or from other forces. Remember; the Ferryman is a guide, not the means.
In Episode 3, Noone was pulled into the Mall, an outside force, and in Episode 4 the Ferryman was not present at all. He is not the only way for one to get inside the Nowhere, he's merely somebody with enough power to intercept some of the children coming in to bring them away with him. I don't doubt that his role is incredibly important, as he's the reason why many children even reach the Nowhere alive, but... he's a harbinger of death, no doubt.
All these children are the nameless ones. The ones whose full journeys we'll never get to see: just segments and fractions. We saw the beginning of Noone's, and the end of RCG's and RK's. Nothing more, and nothing less.
The campfire children in particular are highlighted because of two reasons:
The comics were confirmed to be partially not canonical. Obviously not everything was cut from the comics, since the Ferryman and Mirror Man are both physically there and implied to exist, but due to the vague answer we were given, we'll have to take their tales with a grain of salt.
We could only hear two of four stories; as such, only the Humpback Girl's testimony can be counted as her not being a child of the Nowhere. We can attest this because of a few lines given from her friends:
This place is haunted, though, as well as being sealed. Someone locked the mirrors away a long time ago, but! Interestingly enough, they did not break them. Maybe whoever sealed this place away was hoping for someone to come back?
Considering that Low and Alone are also involved with mirrors, I wonder if Mirror Man's abilities are on par with the Ferryman's, meaning he too can cross the bridge between realities. It could be a reason as to why the Ferryman does not intervene until the very end here. This post is not about him though, so moving on!
Nowhere Children/Residents
Now we're getting to the interesting part of the ask. As you can see in the diagram, we only know a few children who are Nowhere born, and of them, only one of them is 100% factual. Let's go through them one by one.
The Pretender was born and raised in the Nowhere. Period. She has her own mansion, pictures with her parents, and on top of that her family at the very least part of the bourgeoisie.
While powers are not necessarily an indicator of one's belonging to the Nowhere (if Low's powers are of any indication), the Pretender herself has quite the number of supernatural abilities that seem to have been present since her youth, making it hard for her to form meaningful connections with others. She's a very lonely child. This means that these powers most likely developed from her naturally rather than being acquired from the outside, like Six's and possibly even Low's.
(Even then, one can make a small argument to counter with Six developing a small power of her own... but there's a reason as to why I set her aside from everyone else.)
Now, here's someone a lot more interesting to discuss (both on this topic and in general): Mono.
He's a real special little guy. Taking into context the etymology of his name, the meanings we get always tie back to the idea of there being one of him. A single, unique little boy. Looking at the descriptions we were given of Mono, we can find out some more about him and his backstory:
Interesting as this is on a character perspective, what I would like to direct your attention on here is the mentions of the world. Here, it's mentioned that Mono is aware that the world outside hates him. Being a single minded child living in the Nowhere this makes a lot of sense; what is interesting here is the wording.
There is never the mention of "another world" in Mono's descriptions, unlike Six's descriptions in which it is directly mentions her not originating from the Nowhere.
For Mono, it's not a world: it's the world. Almost as if there is no other world he knows by now.
His nature is also rather unique. You see, Mono is a glitch. Not in the traditional Glitching Remain way, but still not entire enough to be considered a human being. For one, he quite literally glitches multiple times: we see it happen everytime he is near a Remain and is about to absorb them, whenever he gets too close to the Thin Man, he even glitches as he channels his powers to use them.
The Thin Man causing him to glitch is especially interesting because when he motions to grab him, Mono does not split in two like Six does. There is no body to be left behind: instead, he flies into Thin Man's hand and you can visibly see his body go both entirely glitchy and instantly limp.
(You can see it for yourself in this video; pay attention to him struggling when other enemies grab him vs how quickly he stops moving as soon as the Thin Man gets his hands on him.)
This indicates his nature as not being human the same way Six is, for example, but rather a product of the Nowhere. Due to how his cycle works, this makes sense: for the Tower to have a continuous of energy supply and access to the power of the Transmission, Mono needs to live through this experience over and over for as long they deem fit. This could also explain some other odd factors of his, such as not having to take a break when running and his almost grayish skintone.
While it can be argued that at the beginning of this whole mess Mono was a Visitor rather than a Resident, at this point in time many factors point to the version of him we play as being a Nowhere child.
The Refugee Boy is, as for the campfire kids... complicated to expand on due to the dubious nature of his story: nevertheless, I will still bring forth my evidence.
When the children begin telling Six their stories, the Refugee is the first to narrate his tale and he begins doing so by showing her a memento of his previous life outside of the Maw. This comes across as being peculiar on its own as no other child that we know of has anything of the like.
As you can read here, children in his village are given charm against the North Wind that one day suddenly stop working. This implies that, unlike the Mirror Man, the North Wind has always been a tangible threat looming over their birth land.
It could be easy to chalk this up to N.W. being a local legend where the boy used to live and he had a nightmare about him, but it is then mentioned that he and his sister have been running away from him for years. Much longer than any of the dreams Noone ever had.
This was a long pursuit. We know thanks to the LN III trailer that "normal" looking adults and cities existed in the Nowhere; this explains away both the Refugee's village existing and the other groups of people that chased them away when they brought around the North Wind.
While this evidence is good enough to stand on its own, it has a couple of points against it, which is why I marked the Refugee as "unsure".
The narrator could be considered unreliable. In this same screenshot I added right above, the narrator states that the siblings were welcomed everywhere, but we can visibly see them be chased away by the villagers. This can be interpreted as meaning "they were originally welcomed, but when the North Wind arrived as a consequence, they were chased off", but we don't have enough substance to back this up.
^ Supporting the above take, the narrator also says that the children have been running for years, but we visibly see that they remain the same during all this time. The sister not changing makes sense as the Ferryman has taken her place, but the Refugee also doesn't change at all. We don't know how fast time passes in the Nowhere, so it could also be attributed to that, but it must be mentioned for fairness' sake.
The Refugee's words: I'm not running anymore. This sentiment has never been echoed before, nor will it ever be echoed again. As I said earlier, being stale in the Nowhere only leads to two things: death or permanence. His surrendering could indicate that he has chose to remain in the Nowhere after being stuck in it for a long time, thus becoming an official Resident. If this is the case, he could classify as a "Visitor turned Resident".
With this, I suggest we move on to our last and currently final segment:
Visitors turned Residents
This one is an interesting breed. We don't get to see the act of a child turning into a permanent part of the Nowhere all that often; Noone could count as that, but we don't yet know if she ultimately decides to be still in the Nowhere or if she'll regret her choice.
We do have the most importantly character of this narrative as an example to this, however.
Six, my dearly beloved... what a terrible path she's gone down to. I have already displayed the evidence stating that Six is from a different world than the Nowhere up un Mono's section so I won't dwell on it.
Thin Man splitting her in two is what doomed her and, as hard as she tried to fight it, her trip to the Maw was the nail in the coffin. No matter how far away from it she gets: she will never be free from the influence it had on her person. When it comes to the LN I ending, this is what the writers had to say on it:
(From this interview. It's an interesting one; they also confirm that the Signal Tower and the Maw were not places that were "built" but that exist for various reasons, which supports the idea that they are entities rather than buildings.)
I think Six is not leaving the Nowhere anytime soon. If at all. She might have left the Maw, but at this point, she's ventured too far in to turn back to the person she was before. To think none of this is even her fault is saddening, to say the least, but horrifically realistic.
Sisi... is an incognita. I've only put her in this category to be fair, since we don't know anything about her. There is a possibility that she has grown up to become a Resident, but it's just as likely that she may have died off somewhere, like many others before and after her.
I will not be dwelling into the adults for now, but we do have reason to believe that some of them are most definitely Visitors turned Residents. Most notable is the Lady who, in her character description, directly expresses discomfort with how nonsensical the Nowhere is － a sentiment only someone who knows alternatives to it can have.
It also indicates a surprising level of self awareness to some extent; most Nowhere inhabitants do not question the nature of their world, not even important and powerful beings like, say, the Thin Man.
I hope this answers your question!
