#( beyond the grave ): ooc | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yngai · 2 years ago

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ON ADA’S LIFE AFTER RESIDENT EVIL 6, SOME RETRACTIONS / SOME ADDITIONS :

going forward i’ll probably walk back a majority of resident evil 6 canon divergence, for a number of reasons including that i’m too lazy to sit down & rewrite an entire resident evil game but also that as i’ve matured both as a person & as a writer i’ve come to better understand my issue with RE6 is that an it’s an incredibly interesting story told very poorly (where the chance of the characters wrestling with their discoveries is almost always whisked away by an overdrawn, jarring action set-piece that barely advances the plot) & the way to solve my issues is not removing some of the central themes of project ada but to attempt to make good on capcom’s blunder by adequately portraying them . if you were to truly commit to rebuilding the game’s narrative from the ground up with ada in a leading role instead of a background one, then maybe some of my ideas would work but, again, who has the time to write endless drabbles about a stupid action-horror video game ?

joke’s on me, i have time

trigger warning, the following section contains mentions of implied assault, domestic abuse & forced pregnancy

my second reason is that i want to better work ada wong into the themes of resident evil 7 & 8, going in a direction for her character i’ve honestly never imagined myself considering but i think i stumbled onto a concept that’s a bit too good to pass up that involves making project ada just that little bit worse . inspired partially by the series of files on derek’s transformation whose endnote detail the family’s plans to leave him for dead in china & usher in a new heir in his place, their displeasure & disappointment in him over all the wasted resources (& potentially the building of facilities in rival economies, his obsession with an asian woman, the family does exist to ensure global stability through white/western/american hegemony) spent chasing a docile, obedient substitute to a woman who will never love him back . speaking of poorly told, by the by, the fate of the most powerful organization in the franchise after the death of its leader isn’t told to you in-game, you have to go to RE.net for it .

i doubt derek c. simmons was fully unaware that elements of the family were planning to oust him, he is meant to be the franchise’s overarching villain, with an heir prepared to take his role (a collateral descendant, i imagine), & his obsession with ada’s beauty & intellect, their compatibility as partners, tells me that he viewed her as more than just a showpiece to hang beside his throne, his desperation to have her back under his grasp because she, & only she, is worthy of being a mother to his child, of giving him a son that carries on his legacy, a child that bears their best qualities to lead the world into a future he envisions, him offering guidance from the shadows, clinging desperately to his power . without a true heir, the coup would succeed even without derek’s death as him & carla had become a liability to the family’s ultimate goal & he is nothing if not a man made of contingencies .

i think you know where this is going .

of the many secrets ada finds through the lower levels of the quad tower, destroying carla’s final experiment & her research logs detailing neo-umbrella’s plans & operations, everything to do with project ada so that the theft of her identity is erased from stated record (though some reports from tatchi note the presence of two ada wongs based on cross-referenced sightings from BSAA personnel, plus, well one is dressed in reds & the other in blues, kind of hard to change clothing so often when you’re on the run from chris redfield), she uncovers a video diary of her doppelganger, one where she is constantly oscillating between extremes, between the happiness that derek, the one man who loves her most in the world, blessed her with the gift of motherhood & with a child that will show the world the love they share for each other & the other, the inner voice of the woman trapped within that screams to cut that thing out of her, take a knife & rip herself apart & spill its guts to show derek that she won’t allow his legacy to continue . it sets the kernel of an idea she will build onto later, a child of her own incubating beneath the sea bed, a monster much like simmons, one that will destroy the world he’s created .

they stand at odds & fight as the logs go on with the inner voice ringing a hollow victory, carla realizing she can’t rid herself of the pregnancy, she has already done so much beneath simmons’ ever watchful gaze to ensure the world his & his family controls burns to the ground & failing to deliver the child would put her under too much scrutiny, she can’t allow her plans to fail . the final few videos showing her, cradling a baby daughter in her arms, one final struggle between love & hatred that’s only decided when simmons enters the frame, enraged at carla’s failure to give him a son . it’s wasted rage, he can’t afford to wait another nine months as the family accelerates their moves against him & ada averts her eyes the second she sees him raise his hand . she’s seen enough, she knows what awaits in the dark laboratory that still stands in the quad tower & every nerve in her body tells her to run away, let it all burn down to cinders, but a pang of guilt pushes her forward, some kind of sick, perverted curiosity to uncover one final mystery that plagues her need to know everything . a foregone conclusion whose answers & resolve she’s already internalized that she has to see through, for herself, for carla’s sake, for the ten thousand woman that suffered at her & simmons’ hand .

they wait for her, lost in a corner of the laboratory that has yet to burn, a room off to the side where something can be so easily forgotten,

whatever carla’s motivations were, the benefit of studying the offspring of a chrysalid mutant for the development of enhanced c, the strain used to turn simmons into what he always meant to be, or maybe a kind of unwanted bond formed the moment derek rejected his daughter, much in the same way he rejected carla despite her devotion to him in favor of ada (something to speak for a remnant of carla’s humanity), much like her reason for involving ada in her plans, either to see her burn with the rest of the world & pay for simmons’ obsession with her or because carla knows ada will put her life on the line to keep chaos from engulfing the planet, calling upon her as a way to quite literally stop herself, ada can’t parse it, not really . she does like to guess, of course, & she’s the only character in RE6 that shows carla any kind of understanding & sympathy (what the hell did simmons do to you? / i don’t condone your actions carla, but at least now i understand them), aware that she can only really lay blame at the feet of simmons & trying to at least affirm carla’s humanity before she completely sheds it (but it was your conscience carla, that saw you fail. after all, isn’t that why you brought me into this? which is an oddly written & delivered line, but far be it from me to suggest RE6 isn’t the most well considered game in the franchise . ada turns sour on carla the second she becomes an active threat, but there is a solemn goodbye to the carla that was after she starts biting back, some guilt in it too) . which is why she carries out the only part of carla’s plans that should be seen through to its conclusion, ending simmons .

a young girl, two, maybe three years old at most, cowering away from the destruction right above them, left without carla or the scientists that took care of her . the final unknown, the answer ada didn’t want to find . a palpable fear hangs in the air, a dread that settled within her ribcage, she wished that the shadows could hide her, that she would only be a brief silhouette in the doorway that vanishes the second its seen but the flames flicker brighter, her face is shown in the fire, blood & dirt & watering eyes, & the child runs to her, she clings to her & it’s like a chain around her ankle, a weight to drag her down & a single word echoes through the chaos, softly spoken, relief, sadness, happiness, something that sinks ada’s soul, she drowns beneath the waves, in depths of herself left undiscovered—

in mandarin, “ mother ? ”

a sound like shattered glass, sharp & piercing, plunging its way into her heart, a new wound from which to bleed through, whatever & whoever ada wong is now . she closes her eyes, daring not to glance below, tightening the grip on her MP9, placing her finger on the trigger . it was her first thought, how she could end it all right here, project ada, simmons’ legacy, the decade of pain & suffering that led to marhawa, edonia, tall oaks & tatchi, but then she would become a monster too, wouldn’t she ? beyond sympathy, beyond humanity, a hypocrisy that rings in her ear, makes it hard to hear whatever else the child says, the happiness of their reconnection, her cries of an undelivered promise, that they would one day leave this lab together . she recants, a heavy sigh that brings no relief with it, as if from new lungs & she finally looks down, into a mirror of something she’d thought lost . what she sees in that child is not carla, nor derek or the monstrosity that led to her birth, but ada’s own eyes reflected back . an unwanted child born to a woman unfit to be a mother . it’s a shock through her body, a jolt that forces her to act, holstering her gun & grabbing the child’s hand instead, another of carla’s promises she intends to keep .

another mess she has to clean up .

there’s a life out there waiting for them, one of many she’s built up over the years as a contingency, far too many times forced into hiding by those like simmons (as i doubt project ada was the sole outlet for his lust & obsession, why settle for a replica when you can have the real thing ? & derek is a man used to getting what he wants), who would want to claim ada wong & her secrets all for themselves . a small, tight-knit cantonese speaking community occupying an apartment block in singapore, where a travelling business woman returns home once every couple of years, now with a kid in hand . there was a kind of slight heartbreak in hearing how “her” daughter could only speak mandarin, when so much of the ada wong persona is intertwined with growing up in cantonese-speaking hong kong, its culture, its cinema, her youth spent learning & performing cantonese opera, & the disconnect she felt in spite of it all, with a han chinese father & a mandarin name . she wouldn’t expect simmons to have understood that, nor carla, it just lends itself to another way her identity had been perverted, degraded, lessened into a parody of itself that took center stage over the original act . she can’t afford to be ada wong anymore, at least for now, & there is something at stake other than herself for once, a new purpose, a new way to be that has to be learned as she goes, & thus sheng ming hui & her daughter settle into a domesticity that is as much a welcome respite as it is a prison for a woman who has lived her life always wanting to spread her wings .

the child’s name is mei, a reference to the ada wong persona’s chinese name, 黃美芬 (wong mei-fan) & ada resolves to complete it with a flourish of her own, mei-li, something taken from her own mother’s name (judith yuen li-zhen (袁李贞), which, yes, is lifted directly off maggie cheung’s character from in the mood for love, i am nothing if not wholly unoriginal) . though the surnames change as they move around the world in an effort to stay hidden, in time ada does begin affectionately calling her meimei .

there’s very few that know of ada’s fate after tatchi, among them :

jill valentine (@goetiya), her confidant, the only person allowed a peek beneath the veil in their mutual dance, a playful romance that dragged itself out from those precious few months before the raccoon city incident, who ends up taking mei-li under her own care after ada’s survival is discovered by the “ organization ”, the seedier underbelly of the federation of pharmaceutical companies that have begun sinking their teeth into the BSAA, as per my village verse . through her, of course, other characters learn of mei-li, though not her connection to ada wong (subject to plotting, naturally), jill saying she has taken the child of “one of her contacts within the bioterror underworld” under her care, for a time . chris redfield, rebecca chambers, barry burton & most importantly claire redfield, who ends up spotting in for jill as a babysitter when she’s at the beck & call of a darker BSAA . it’s a risk assumed, how ada casts her shadows over jill’s life, forcing her to withhold the truth from the people closest to her .

leon s. kennedy (@knnedy), whom ada drags to singapore one faithful autumn day, two years into her exile, a way to say goodbye, a way to air out the existential horror of carla radames to the man who stands the best chance of understanding it, something they both share, like raccoon city, like spain, yet ada knows her wounds run deeper than his . maybe she’s grown softer, spending time as a mother to a child that shouldn’t have been born, maybe there’s still a few knives she’d like to twist into his back, some blame she would like to place, a way to motion guilt from herself onto him, but there’s an absence of choice here & so she serves him a warning, the cost of his bleeding heart .

mia winters (@terrorgone), an old contact from ada’s days investigating tricell in ‘09, a riskier, more self-destructive side to her that’s shown after jill’s “death” . a tumultuous relationship she holds no pride in that scorched prague for a month, someone she would be happy to forget about as she moves on to new marks & new identities but fate plays funny tricks on people & mia ends up being more significant to the world than she has any right to, in ada’s mind . after dulvey, trading hands between various BSAA safehouses before being settled in romania, mia spots a familiar looking young girl following jill around as she’s interrogated at the BSAA’s north america branch . she’s smarter than ada gives her credit for & she knows her & jill have something in common, peering down ada’s eyes up close . it’s a chance to put a knife to ada’s throat much in the same way she once put a needle to her neck back in prague, to see the woman beneath the mask after ada didn’t give her the right .

anyone else is open for discussion .

some final thoughts, what, did you think we were done ? :

on the surface level the notion of ada wong as a mother is laughable, to me, but that’s usually because the avenue to motherhood people use is her relationship to leon & if this post wasn’t long enough i could list out all the reasons why it wouldn’t work, but like anything regarding the ada/leon romance you have reduce both characters to tropes they subvert in order for it to function & make their dynamic that much less interesting & that much more intense in a way that it isn’t portrayed on-screen .

hopefully i’ve argued my case for taking her character in this direction, because keeping in with ada’s overall subversion of the femme fatale archetype, it’s not the narrative that treats motherhood as the end of her character (as her story goes on well into the events of village), but herself, she views it as a punishment, as a prison, as an end to the illustrious career of super spy ada wong when that’s not really the case, small joys though she finds in playing a doting mother to an unloved child, she can’t keep away from her calling & she continues observing the motions of the world from afar, as well as her side hobby as a grey hat hacker trading in sensitive information to dismantle legal & criminal organizations alike . her inability to reconcile with her new life eventually leading to her capture & her separation from mei-li before the events of RE8 .

i think it gives ada more of an in with ethan winters & a reason to help him over the course of RE8 beyond just using him as a way to get to miranda & her research, as she too, like him, like miranda, is a parent desperate to reunite (or just reunite, in ethan’s case) with her daughter . a woman otherwise unfit to be a mother (miranda, alcina) that does what she can with the broken pieces of herself to make a life for her child (mia) . it also serves to tie an overall narrative between games that feel like they’re from different franchises, RE6 & RE7, through the uniting theme of family & the children who grow up in resident evil’s rendition of our very own global forever war .

anyway, i think that’s my piece, thanks for reading !

#* file // : OOC — ( 𝐓𝐇𝐄 ��𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑'𝐒 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐀𝐃𝐄 . )#* file // : 004 — ( 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 . )#* file // : 005 — ( 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀 . )#part headcanon/part meta/part drabble you know how it is with me i know no such thing as structure or cohesion i just speak #this is the story of how carla babytraps ada from beyond the grave #implied assault /#domestic abuse /#forced pregnancy /#pregnancy mention /#drug use /

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