#fuck mk12 all my homies fucking HATE mk12

[crystalbeastsquidney]

Wish I was more eloquent to make this post, but It continues to infuriate me how mortal kombat as a franchise has completely fumbled the bag on recognizing Bi-Han as the immense, gut wrenching point of tragedy that he should be. 

By all accounts, he’s someone who's been denied any real semblance of meaningful choice throughout his entire life. He’s someone that was kidnapped as a child by what is ostensibly a cult, and made to do their bidding lest he be killed or worse. Then he’s murdered only to be denied freedom in death.

I think it’s in the original game’s endings where he mentions intending to leave, but then that brings to mind the question of why hasn't he done so sooner? He’s certainly capable enough to do so, even with the threat of being hunted down by the Lin Kuei for abandoning them. Did he stay for Kuai Liang? Could he even stomach the mere idea of leaving him behind? Was he afraid to risk his safety in either case; that he would die too if they left together, or that he’d be used as a bargaining chip to claw Bi-Han back if he went alone.

Do you think it ate at him knowing he was the only thing standing between Kuai Liang and the full brunt of the Lin Kuei’s manipulation and coercion? That for the longest time he was one of the only sources of genuine love and kindness in his life? 

Do you think the Grandmaster held that over his head? 

Maybe that’s why it was him chosen to retrieve the map of elements and later Shinnok’s amulet, he was the best they had because he couldn’t afford to not be.

And even then, when he did get a chance, and chose to do the right thing by stopping Shinnok and Quan Chi, he’s punished for it. A man already denied so much of his autonomy has it stripped further away until he’s nothing more than a mindless pawn. Further still, I have to wonder, was his line to Kuai Liang in mk9; that they share blood, but are not brothers, another layer of Quan Chi’s twisting of his mind to his own means—to drive a wedge between him the brother he held on for, the one person he knew truly cared—to twist the knife further for daring to delay his and Shinnok’s plans? Noob Saibot’s too cartoonish, often too over the top, practically intoxicated in how evil he is (or at least that's how his writing comes off) to be a genuine expression of Bi-Han. I wonder if some semblance of him remains trapped and vaguely conscious under that dark veneer, forced to watch himself lose what little he had left.

And even if he had survived, then what? He likely would’ve been cyberized as well, probably even killed like nearly everyone else in mk9, and turned into one of Quan Chi’s undead lackeys anyhow. It’s as if fate (doylist: I know it’s the writers…) won’t let him simply be… him.

I’d bet that when Kuai Liang remade the Lin Kuei after destroying the cyber initiative, he wanted it to be something that—if he could be so fortunate as to have his brother back—was kind enough for Bi-Han to truly call home.