#faksyan talks

[faksyan]

Something that drives me a little insane is that The Boss's Will was never an actual thing. She didn't have some great wisdom or teaching or philosophy. She just lived and died by her own beliefs and then everything decided to make it A Thing and got so caught up in the fact that they were making A Thing that they completely missed the point she was trying to make. Like, The Boss's Will was such a paradox because its existence already was the opposite of what she wanted, glorifying her instead of using what happened as a cautionary tale. They decided to make The Boss two and three and four and then some when the point was to not make The Boss ever again at all.

[faksyan]

Yes to every single part of this!! I really like how they use locations, framing and space between characters in the show! (Hope you don't mind the rant I'm insane about the pie scenes.)

The first thing I thought about when watching this moment is that it reads like a direct parallel between Loki and Mobius in the same room in episode two. Loki is the one to offer they go eat together, and he doesn't even eat the damn pie himself!!! My guy doesn't seem to like it, but he knew Mobius would. And they sit in front of each other, have a heartfelt conversation, Loki having to calm down and console someone for once. And all of it makes such a nice statement on how much influence Mobius has on him as a person, from small habits to his outlook on life. (And coupled with the fact that they basically kind of torture a guy together in that same episode, the influence very much goes both ways.)

The scene with Sylvie is sort of the opposite, but the same themes are still there. They are in the same place, but are standing far away from each other and aren't even shown in the same frame once until the very end and "we are gods" line (which, by the way, is a whole another thing, because it's both reminiscent of Loki's past and new ideas of what he wants to do in life). It's mostly just close-ups of their faces, and you can practically feel how much space is between them without seeing the whole room. Loki also talks about his past here too, like he did with Mobius in the second episode, when he talked about New York!

Even all the romantic interpretations aside, it's a really interesting parallel and a cool visual way to show where the characters stand with each other!!

They way that scene between Loki and Sylvie was framed with Loki standing in front of the pie was just so goddamn meaningful. Even though Mobius isn’t physical there, his presence is still felt to the audience because of those pies and the way Loki moved to stand right by them. Loki tells Sylvie that it’s harder to fix broken things, to have hope - In season 1, Mobius was told that he has a soft spot for broken things when he was convincing Ravonna to keep Loki around. He literally showed Loki what the hard work of having patience, compassion, and most of all hope can do. He embodies that, now. AND to reference Thor’s change when he went to Earth, when Thor fell in love with Jane… while standing infront of those fucking pies. I can’t handle it. This is so fucking romantic.

[faksyan]

Oh yeah I finally listened to the last Juno episode a few days ago and I have so many feelings about it.

I love that he's ended up in the same city we started. The same one he grew up in and hated, that brought him so much trauma and that he still could come to love in the end. Really fucking resonated with me to be honest. People talk so much about getting out of their childhood homes because of how much they went through there, and that's valid as hell, but my experience is a bit. different I guess. And I've never really seen it portrayed anywhere. The place changes and you change and you heal with time and come to appreciate things. It feels really nice to see that happen to a character I really love.

Also it makes me so fucking happy that the last conversation of the whole podcast is between Juno and Rita and not someone else. That she is enjoying what she has and is content with her life without a love interest in the end, just doing something she cares about. like I absolutely adore Vespa and Buddy and Juno and Peter but also. no romance for my girl and that's alright because she has other important people in life who she loves and who love her back. It all ends with them both finding home with each other after all the years of searching. I love them so fucking much my god. maybe the true penumbra were the friends we had even before it all started but came to appreciate a lot more. what if I cried.

[faksyan]

Kaz and Ocelot's dynamic during the nine year gap is like of a cheetah that's on the brink of extinction held in captivity and the dog they gave it so it wouldn't feel lonely except the dog is insane and bites people for fun does this make sense.

[faksyan]

Huey Emmerich, mgs v cast & hypocrisy, a character analysis

Prefacing this with the fact that this is the morally gray franchise with the morally gray characters and I love how it portrays Huey Emmerich precisely for him being Like That. I think he is one of the most nuanced and well-written mgs characters and I'm pretty sure like half of it wasn't on purpose. He is the guy everyone hates for killing his wife (understandabe reason), trying to make one of his kid pilot a giant robot and almost drowning another in a pool (also understandable reason), and, most of all, for being a traitor. And with such a list, feels a bit weird that the accent often falls on that last part, doesn't it. Which is exactly how the narrative wants you to feel about his betrayal, on a surface level.

Every character essential to the Phantom Pain plot gets their "please feel bad for them, sympathize with them" moment, no matter how horrible a person they are. We get multiple monologs from Kaz, we get the 'I was the same way once' interrogation room and the ending of the Truth with Ocelot, we get Paz tapes and 'you're all diamonds' with Venom, we get Code Talker, Quiet, Eli (if they actually finished mission 51), even Skull Face, somewhat (don't even make me start on that guy. how is he less hated than Huey). The point is, the game is trying to make you feel bad for people who murder, torture, and whatever else, and parts of it are working, because it's fiction, and humans and morality are complicated and layered things! But what does Huey get? Torture sessions and tantrums that are framed as pathetic and ridiculous, even when what he is saying makes sense. Because yeah, there's some of that there. It's just that everyone else in the room deliberately doesn't acknowledge it.

When Venom just finds him, the first thing Huey says is that what happened to MSF was Snake's fault. The same during his exile - that there wouldn't have been an inspection, if there weren't a nuke to begin with. and it's like. he's not wrong. Having their own nukes as an independent military organization was a risk Snake and Kaz didn't just take blindly, they knew what could have happened. It was a gamble, and it didn't work out. If it did, it would've been their achievement. It didn't, so it's all Huey's fault, even though literally anyone could've been in his place. XOF weren't even the first to attempt to attack them, Zero was, Paz just didn't succeed. And if Skull Face hadn't either, someone else would have, the attention of the entire world was on them. It wasn't about betrayal, it was Snake and Kaz being drunk on success and biting off more than they could chew. Yes, Huey is a bastard and a traitor, but are we really going to blame all of this on him?

The answer is yes. And the reason is that they need someone to blame that's not them. The whole big theme of Phantom Pain is that Ocelot, Venom and Kaz have to do their best to keep up appearances, for the sake of Big Boss and his reputation. He is a legend, he is above everyone else, and he can do no wrong. Except after the fall of MSF everyone thinks that he can, Ocelot says as much in the briefing tapes. And they can't have that. So they blame it all on Huey. (<- all of this is a dictatorship allegory and critique of governments and military systems btw. 1984 or whatever I haven't read it. yay symbolism.) And blaming Huey is easy.

Huey is not a fighter. His father was a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was born on the same day as the Hiroshima bombing, his disability was (presumably) caused by his father's exposure to radiation. It's not that there was no choice involved in what he was going to do in life, but it was kind of inevitable that he would get involved with building nuclear weapons. And even when he says he is thinking about quitting upon being found by Snake in Peace Walker, it's Snake who convinces him not to, offering him to join MSF instead. In the PW tapes he also expresses that if it weren't for his disability, he would've been anywhere else, doing something different and living a "normal life".

He talks about the concept of nuclear terrorism there too, about nukes falling into hands of people without state who would be able to use them however they want, and I wonder if that was part of the reason for his betrayal. He didn't make the decision to bring nukes to base, he doesn't actually know these people. If maybe he thought it prevented a hypothetical nuclear catastrophe. Huey does say that he trusts Snake not to use them, that he values how honest Snake is, and is honest with him in return, even telling him things he's never told anyone before, like about his plagiarism of Granin's work. So what changed between then and the inspection, what was his motivation for betraying MSF, why was he approached about it of all people? Did he lie in the tapes, did he change his mind, did Skull Face offer him something that seemed more compelling, just threaten him? We never get to find out anything about it aside from every other character screaming that he's just a coward. No villain monolog, nothing.

Maybe it was about feeling important, like he is in charge, something that the hostility he has faced throughout his life didn't allow him. Huey is a sheep among wolves (wolf in sheep's clothing more like, but still). He does not fit in with the buff cool masculine soldiers, and even while working with Strangelove at NASA, he was regarded as obnoxious and spineless. It's not surprising he agreed to work for Coldman, since he, apparently, was the first person to actually recognize his skills. And even that later turns out to be a lie told to use him. Huey rarely if at all has been treated seriously, he is an outcast, even among people who share his ideas.

All he has is his brain and his knowledge, but it's never framed as much of an achievement (despite people exploiting it left and right), nor is him essentially being the nerd in a military setting ever really viewed as something dorky or endearing by the narrative like with Otacon, because the characters around him don't see him as such (as a result, so don't the players). On top of that, every other person uses his mobility aids to further degrade/harm/threaten him, even though he is already harmless when it comes to physical confrontation. In short, people he is surrounded with just enjoy the powerplay.

Right up until the point he actually does something that hurts them. And this is where my favorite part kicks in.

All three Diamond Dogs' higher-ups blame Huey for slightly different reasons, some maybe even believing that they are in the right and entitled to it (looking at you Kazuhira), but I am more than sure they know what it is that they're doing. And it's not like Kaz lacks self-awareness either, I don't think. Maybe it's denial that some of his actions led to the death of his friends, maybe blind belief in his own martyrdom and self-righteousness (sounds an awful lot like another character we know, huh), it still doesn't change much. How they all frame the story is the same. Huey's powerless and pathetic, but has ruined everything at the same time. And it doesn't really make sense, but everyone on the base agrees. It's the moment where individuals turn into a crowd that demands blood, but at least it's not their commanders it's directed at!

The Questioning Huey (6) tape is a good example of that. I especially like the bit where he starts talking about how DD is not actually a dog, because on a smaller scale, it shows how people on Mother Base just roll with things that are objectively false and turn on anyone who says otherwise. No, DD is our beloved mascot, and we are called dogs, he is just like us. And it's not like DD is just a wolf either, so neither of them are right here. But each of them thinks that they are.

That's why the amount of genuine Huey hate is a bit amusing to see, I guess. Because it's precisely the thing the game is trying to commentate on. None of these people are good. None of them have it figured out. The point is that it's just narrative bias that makes you belive that some are, if not good, at least better than others. In reality, it's never about morals or being correct, just perspective.

Huey himself, on the other hand, falls into another extreme - in his eyes, he's done nothing wrong. Because he can do no wrong, he's powerless, like everyone's alway told him, remember? He sees himself as the victim, because in a lot of cases, he is.

You can say that he is a lying traitor and that the truth serum didn't work on him because of some failsafe Skull Face thought of, but really, would he bother? He didn't even view Huey as anything but a traitor he despised. you know, the guy who was in charge of organizing the betraying part. the guy who put bombs in people and wanted to commit mass-murder on a scale no one has seen before. So the obvious and the most simple answer here is that Huey whole-heartedly, truly believes he hasn't done anything wrong. He thinks he doesn't possess the power to, that he isn't important enough. And it's drilled so deep into him he never acknowledges it's not really true. Even when he kills Strangelove, he still doesn't accept that it is his fault and his actions matter.

That's my favorite part about him, I think. How deep in denial he is about having an impact on the people around him, while also having a sort of god complex when it comes to his machines. How everyone around despises him for it, while being the ones who caused it and doing the exact same thing, refusing to get off the high horse. Metal gear is a messy franchise about messy people, but it's good exactly because it shows what has messed these people up so much. And more often than not, it's the system they're surrounded by, or that they created themselves in an attempt to escape the previous one. It's easy to point at Huey as just a bad person and only that, but I find the context of his whole life and the ways he's coping with it really compelling. There is a lot of complexity to it, and in the end of the day, they are all hypocrites.

[faksyan]

Been finishing watching Death Stranding for a few hours and experiencing shrimp emotions, the closest thing to this I think was me watching Everything Everywhere All at Once, how in the hell the only things I've heard about it before were that it's a delivery simulator and is boring. What are people on.

[faksyan]

I've seen people talk about how Venom continued playing Big Boss even after the Truth because he had nowhere else to go, or because he's just so loyal to Snake he didn't even consider leaving, but really, I think it was because staying in the position of power let him make a change he wanted to see in the world, outside of what BB wanted of him.

The actual Big Boss never cared about global nuclear disarmament, but mg2 clearly tells us that it did happen, and even with bits of Phantom Pain missing, the cut content makes it pretty obvious that V was the one behind it. It's easy to assume Venom spent many years being a puppet that followed orders it didn't have any interest in, but I like thinking that he got to do something that he truly cared about in the end.

[faksyan]

YES TO ALL OF THIS AND I'M TELLING YOU OCELOT'S FULL NAME ISN'T GODDAMN ADAMSKA EITHER. Adamska is not a name. It's not real. It's not Russian it's not anything. Kojima made that up (I mean maybe he didn't?? when you look it up it's all mgs stuff so I don't know. if it is it has a feminine suffix in the end either way). His name is Adam. His Snake Eater codename is also ADAM which is hilarious but not the point. They are just bullshitting each other here after beating each other up on the floor because they are weirdos. I'll stand by it with all I've got.

Hey I'm slightly confused about the John Metal Gear situation, Jack and John are both short for Johnathan? So him being called Jack but also John isn't impossible? Or is there something I'm missing about this situation.

oh no its completely 100% possible and is whats going on im just a hater and i swear i swear in game it looks like john metal gear is lying there was previous discussions about john doe and. joey back me up here u watched a lets play i SWEAR IT COMES ACROSS LIKE HES LYING THAT HIS NAME IS JOHN

[faksyan]

Men in Kojima games always gotta be all up in each other's faces touching and smelling each other and whatnot. This isn't a complaint I appreciate the vision.

[faksyan]

Do you think the reason Liquid found it easy to play Kaz was because he too is an unwanted child with nowhere to belong that has been angry at the world since the day he was born. Do you think in the brief moment they met Kaz looked at him and realized that he saw himself.

[faksyan]

I've been thinking about making something generally mgs-related to Digital Silence but now I'm thinking about just an mgs2 thing specifically. That song is stuck in my head 24/7 again it's so good

[faksyan]

Does anyone have any mgs or death stranding screenshots I can redraw or maybe just requests I've just been drawing these guys in my sketchbook might as well draw someone specific

[faksyan]

I didn't realize that Cliff Unger was a pun on cliffhanger, it sounds so natural. That's some ace attorney levels of logic, I love Kojima's way of naming characters so much

[faksyan]

A really funny thing I noticed about Big Boss's design is that they couldn't decide what his nose looks like for more than a decade and like three of the games and if you look at the art in Peace Walker and Portable ops it's different in literally every frame where you can see his profile 😭

[faksyan]

I didn't do any proper costume for today and it's late but I realized I have everything to do the funniest thing (dress up as huey emmerich)

[faksyan]

Not gonna lie at first I thought (and still kind of do) that when Snake told Ocelot his name is John in Snake Eater he lied and Ocelot did the same, and it was just a mutual joke of theirs that stuck. Because why did The Boss and Zero both always call him Jack and no fucking way anyone would ever name anyone Adamska