#paganajay

[cielsosinfel]

cataloguing some twitter + bluesky threads about fc4/pajay thoughts (currently taking a break from revisiting it because of BG3 worming into my brain) (laugh track)

2:50 PM · Sep 18, 2023

something I've been stuck thinking about as I read all this FC4 fic from my time in the fandom a decade ago, and newer stuff written in the years since… very few people actually have Ajay go to Pagan's side over the Golden Path because of his mother

Like, outside of the secret ending. Stories mostly have him going over to Pagan because horny or because "damn the Golden Path is full of lunatics" (which bugs me for another reason lol the like. flanderization? of Amita and Sabal to the point it just reads like character-bashing

But anyway it's just like. I keep thinking about it. Ajay only goes to Kyra because his mother wanted her ashes laid to rest there. He has no idea what her relationship to the country's politics was. He has no idea who his father is at all. He just wants to be a dutiful son

And grieve, and do this for himself as much as for her. When he gets with the Golden Path, he keeps hearing Mohan Ghale, Mohan Ghale, Son of Mohan- why should this name meaning anything to him? His father was in his life for what, less than a year, he has 0 memory of him

So few people acknowledge Ishwari as a person. She's "Mohan's wife," "Mohan's child bride," I can't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure she's also mentioned disdainfully for "betraying" the GP because of everything with Pagan… no acknowledgment of her role in founding the GP

Everyone placing all of these expectations on Ajay's shoulders because he shares a name and blood with a man who may as well not exist in his life, and no one sparing a single kind word for the mother who he loved for 20+ years and lost just a few months ago

EXCEPT Pagan

When he has, on one side, Sabal who projects his ghost of a father all over Ajay while pushing him to go murder people for him, and Amita on the other who starts out hating him because of that same ghost of his father while pushing him to go… murder more people!

does it not make sense he'd get tired and upset and start considering reaching back out to the one single person in what feels like the whole country who knew Ishwari's name without Ajay even speaking it, and knew exactly where Ajay needed to go to lay her to rest

this is my tl;dr thoughts i've had all weekend

idk where i'm going with this and no one on here has even played this game good bye

if he even cared about the ethics at all, because this is a Far Cry game, ethics are kind of wishy-washy across the board

honestly i'm definitely putting more thought into ajay's emotional interiority and reactions than the game writers did

~~~~

Sep 19, 2023 at 6:39 AM

& yknow, I think there's something to be said of the fact Pagan is the only person who never asks Ajay to kill someone for him. Unless you count the moment at the end where he suggests Ajay kill him even though it'd be Boring (and I do think he was full aware Ajay might actually go through with it.)

also think it says something he spent 20+ ys avoiding assassination attempts, only to sit there literally defenseless, waiting for the last remainder of a weird broken family he almost had to shoot him. After 20+ yrs of grief warping him. I'm turning this over in my head now

Sep 21, 2023 at 6:29 PM

another FC4 thing: I thought Pagan was the only non-Kyrati-native character that pronounced Ajay's name as "AH-jay" but apparently… Paul does too………? The choice to have Paul of all characters pronounce it AH-jay, but then Noore pronounces it A-J.. I wanna know how they decided these things

Sep 21, 2023 at 6:07 PM

Will I get suspended here for talking about how horny I am for Dadson, pseudo or not, and how insane FC4 in specific is making me right now

Pagan is SOOOO ATTACHED to ajay's simultaneous benefit (never at risk of Pagan's Actual wrath) and detriment (pagan being an overbearing creep forever)

[frikynet]

My first drawing of PaganAjay x3 

[cielsosinfel]

anyway this is the song that plays when on the way to confront Pagan for the last time, at the very end of the game, in FC4

The river runs to you. Through desert, dust and you Still owe me something; more than this. The road that leads to you, As long as it is cruel. The rust and bones and trees and stones and truth. So one by one, Each path we walk in moon and sun, Each red dust rose we cut and run from; They lay us low, they leave us numb. The damage done, As every mile between us passes. At every road I cross I notice: The space beside me only grows. When will you come to me? Sajna come to me. Say you're coming back. Baby love wait for me. Sajna wait for me. Say you want me back.