#faksyan talks

[faksyan]

One of the funniest metal gear 2 screenshots to me. he really was.

[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]

[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]

Bringing this one back for this do you remember. who the fuck are half of these guys.

was looking for persona 5 posters and found this hidden gem🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[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]

I am sorry for this but I need something settled. I know joey and ashen will vote for no I need more than two people's opinions on this.

I am talking on model, objectively. please choose with utmost seriousness.

[faksyan]

Ocelhira is so funny as a concept if you headcanon that neither of them have ever gotten together with BB, but think the other did. There's all this jealousy and bitterness and mind games and then they talk about it like seven years into their partnership and have an oh. moment

[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]

Long ass essay about my ocelhira vision because they don't leave my brain and I have Thoughts.

It's alway weird to me when they are unironically portrayed to be unable to communicate, agree on anything, or outright hating each other pre-Venom reveal, because there's next to nothing to suggest that besides like. two arguments they had. One of which was about Quiet (you know, the supernatural super-soldier assassin they were letting stay on their base), and the other about the kids they rescued, both very complicated and sensitive topics. Kaz is bitter and angry and snaps at everyone past his rescue, but it couldn't have been all like that for the whole duration of their partnership, obviously.

They were each other's life lines for almost decade. Imagine thinking you're the only person in the world who has devoted their life to BB to such an extent that you'd do everything for him, only to find out there's someone else who gets it. From Ocelot's perspective especially. He's never been properly allied with anyone, he trusts no one and has never had anyone to rely on, aside from Snake (and I'd say even that was pretty one-sided), always the spy and always hiding. And then, when he learns that BB is in a coma and it's like his whole world is crashing down around him and he truly doesn't have anything left, in walks Kazuhira Miller. Even the circumstances in which they both met Snake are similar. They tried to kill him, he beat them into the ground, and then spared them, when he absolutely could've not. They are both insane about him in the same way. Forget jealousy or animosity, that might just be the only person in the entire world who can come close to understanding Ocelot.

Yes they are murderers and torturers and horrible people, but it's still explicitly shown that they do not treat the ones they look out for the same way they do their enemies. The idea of them hitting each other with hammers is fun, but what about them having no choice but to hang on to one another, because there's no one else left, and if one of them gets too hurt, or dies, or walks away, it's all over. If one sinks, both sink, and I definitely see either of them trying to drown themselves throughout the years, just to drag the other down. It's toxic co-dependency, in a way where they have to keep each other going. So they lick each other's wounds when needed, take turns dragging each other's dead weight forward. What they have is hanging on by a thread that is Snake, but at the same time, their relationship is ultimately good for them. In a sense working at gunpoint is good, because it reminds you that you actually want to live, keeps you being productive and doing what you are supposed to do. Maybe it's not really loving or caring, but it also is, in a very profound and fucked-up way (it is loving and caring to me. if you care).

They made Dimond Dogs together. Like, all of it. Sure, after Venom's awakening he gets them more funding and more people, but the rest? All them. And they keep it afloat for years, built on nothing but their dedication to the same man. They're both shown to have played an equally important role in it, meaning they both spent (presumably) more time with each other than with BB. Kaz trusted Ocelot to a point where he didn't ever visit BB in the hospital and didn't doubt Ocelot would take care of him. Probably against his will, of course, but still. if he could stomach working with Ocelot for so long, there couldn't not be some trust that he'd keep the most important person in their lives safe. Kaz agreed to be the bait, believing Ocelot would get Venom out and organize his own rescue. Ocelot kept Kaz's glasses on him throughout all of Cyprus and trip to Afghanistan.

That's what makes the betrayal all the worse - that it wasn't just some rivalry or reluctant cooperation, not after a decade. At that point what they shared wasn't out of necessity. It was a nine-year bond, longer that either of them spent by Snake's, or anyone's side. From the beginning both of them knew they would choose Snake over each other if it ever came to it. But I don't think Kaz thought it would. screaming into the void.

[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]

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]

I think someone should draw bosseva. please. if you're seeing this it's a sign. I will also do it but everyone should do it with me. snake eater yuri

[faksyan]

It would be so cool if they made Unus Annus 2 actually. Like it doesn't even go against the message, it would be something new and different, and in the end it would be gone. Circle of life and whatnot. It was covid when they initially made it, they obviously didn't get the chance to do everything they wanted to, and they've talked about it, so is it really letting go if parts of it went forever unfinished, and you keep thinking about it. It's fine if they never do it, what was there was great. But it would be so fun if they did.

[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]

Opened my laptop and there were metal gear men kissing in my drawing program? does anyone know anything about that?