Headcanon essay Part 1/?
Headcanon essay Part 1: Where, when and other things from a stupid BL game that I shouldn’t be obsessing over.
Doing a headcanon essay for an AO character can be difficult sometimes. A few of the characters have well-developed backstories, and some, like Zhores get a few lines of direct info and the rest of it consists of throw-away lines and comments. To be honest I could just do the typical list form and say “this is my headcanon, I have my reasons but I’m lazy”, but the time period I’m working with is a very thorny timeframe. It’s not just cold-war era politics that I’d be tripping over, but I could misrepresent and accidentally give out false information about people who had to live under Stalin.
So I’d have to be a real douche to not research this stuff and show that no, really, I don’t want to offend anybody with how I play my character. (However if I do, I want to know stat so I can stop Doing It Wrong.)
But also I can’t jump right in and mix the facts with how I apply them to my character. All the essaying in the world doesn’t help much if you get something wrong like the date or the location. That’s exactly what this is, the result of about a few months work of sifting through the script, going through books, and being called a dirty commie by a librarian.
Where
At first AO doesn’t really seem to tell us much of anything about where the hell the Louise/Kia loveshack of a mansion is, just that they perform their missions in West Germany. But the fact is that the game leaves a lot of clues around. So let’s take a look at some of the missions!
Zhores’ mission
They travel to Düsseldorf for the hotel incident, which apparently isn’t too far away from Zhores’ work. Where does Zhores work? At the national library. Why the hell is this a clue, you might ask. Simple! Before the wall fell there were three National libraries, and only one of them was in West Germany: The Frankfurt location. Sure Berlin has a branch, but it’s dedicated to new media only, and if I remember correctly, it opened after the wall fell. Another factor is that Zhores goes to a concert at a well-known opera house, which Frankfurt is also known for having. Then on top of that he drives a car into the river, I’ll get to that later.
Werners’ mission
Like right now even! During the early chitchat with Werner, Louise mentions that “the women down at the harbor” have some things to say about him. Again, why so important? Because once again Frankfurt comes up on the list, namely it’s one of the cities that possesses a harbor. …this is a little more uncommon then one would think at first.
Kia’s/Louise’ missions
A good number of Kia’s missions involve him bitching about taking a long time to get back to his barracks. Then later on we see him play tag with the Berlin wall. And oh look, his commanding officer is there! While the game does say that he’s not supposed to be there that day, I find it really hard to believe that they’d both just happen to travel to the same place. Instead it makes more sense if Kia is stationed in Berlin, but spends time on the job with Louise in Frankfurt. And Frankfurt is a hell of a long ways away.
Ali’s mission
Okay so all of that’s pretty damn circumstantial right? I mean sure they all point to Frankfurt, but they don’t come out and say it directly… Until this mission. Yep, Ali leaves to get back to his country from the Frankfurt international airport. In fact it’s this little tidbit that gives us our date.
When
In all the missions there’s these strange little facts and names that get dropped, and in most cases the translators did a rough translation on them. As much as this game needed a better set of translators/editors, the fact that they left these things in means they didn’t get localize’d out by a more “professional” team. So what do we get out of this? Well firstly there’s the wall itself. That didn’t go up until the 60’s. Another thing is Jen’s motorcycle, which has a knucklehead engine. Again, that was in production until 1961 or so. However the technology in Hagen’s operating room looks like it’s from the 70’s. Also Louise’s father talks about fighting in the war and he’s starting to go gray, so what time period are we really looking at?
Two things place it in the 70’s. The first is the International airport itself. Commercial flights at the airport didn’t start until 1972. Yes a prince might have been able to use the airport for AO’s plot convenience, but it would be a single-person plane and not a full flight that needed an announcer. Long story short, if the game took place before 1972, they’d have to take a small connection flight via a small plane to one of the larger airports, and then take an international flight.
The other is a out-of-place comment by one of Ferdinand’s maids. She comments that something is like “one of those reversible sweaters that are popular right now.” Again, this happened in the 1970’s. In fact there’s patents for new ways to make reversible sweaters from 1971 to 1973.
So for a nice, solid date I personally say the date is 1972. But why is this so important? And why has it taken me this long to write this part of the essay if I’ve been assuming this for months?
Well the problem is that the one edit that the staff DID make was with the character’s ages. In the case of Zhores and Lawless, this creates a paradox. See Lawless says that he has clear memories of his father dying in the war, in fact it’s a major motivation for his dedication to someone. However, he’s also 28 according to the little booklet that comes with the game. This means he would have been born around 1944. Far too young to remember his father. In Zhores’ case it becomes even more important because he’s 32, that would place him being born around… 1940, just a year before Operation Barbarosa.
But the game text ends up clearing things up again. Zhores and Lawless both use terms that indicate that Louise is a younger then them, or at least young enough that they chide themselves about giving in to his demands. In Zhores’ case being 32 fits: old enough to be a pro at his job and be fluent in German, while having a relatively young-looking body for that level of experience. Lawless is probably the mistake and he’s older then the American team assumed.
Oh look, eggshells!
So why all this fussing over when Zhores was born and my reluctance to directly say what city he was born in? Because Russian history about then has a very specific timeline. By June of 1941 Russia was under attack, on top of that there’s the matter of two of the more well-known cities in Russia. Namely, Lenengrad was entering a siege that would decimate it’s population and last for over two years, and Moscow also fell under attack later during the war. Knowing AO they would most likely choose a well-known city as his birthplace instead of a smaller location.
Early on in my research I started headcanoning that Zhores was a Leningrader. Leningrad/St. Petersburg is a complex beast, being home to the aristocracy, the intelligentsia, the start of the revolution, and then later on, the brief appearance of the NEP men and the closest thing to the roaring 20’s. In accordance to this it got hit hard by the purges, and once again after the war with the Leningrad affair. In addition there’s the nasty little issue of Moscow-St. Petersburg relations, how the people in each city feel about the other place and in many ways I can’t really imagine Zhores as being born and bred in Moscow.
However with this comes the problem of just how he survived the war. It’s horrific what people went through during the siege, and to try and come up with a way that he could have survived it just feels wrong for me. It’s like I’m cheapening a terrible event in history by trying to shoehorn him in there somewhere. So I just don’t. As is stands I’ll reference the city as he was growing up, but I’m really uncomfortable with the idea of headcanoning just how him and his sister got to that point.
Ages ago Prussia commented that about Zhores having issues with the Germans if he was born in Leningrad, and at the time I replied that he was postwar and a few other things. In a way even though the date has been set back further the result is the same. No matter where Zhores was born and raised he would be dealing with the results of the war. The adult figures in his life would have a strong influence on him about how the felt, and so on. There’s no way he could escape that. However from the events in game he doesn’t seem to possess the sort of hate one might assume he’d have. It’s clear that by this point he’s faced these issues already, and I think a good part of that is how he’s had to live in Germany for quite a few years. Do I think he still has feelings about the war? Of course I do, but when it comes to his opinions on Germans it’s a different and more complicated manner.
In closing this thing’s more like a prologue where I get my basis and THEN fly off into headcanon territory. There’s more I could say about the subjectivity of my research material, but that’s coming up in the next essay.
Doing a headcanon essay for an AO character can be difficult sometimes. A few of the characters have well-developed backstories, and some, like Zhores get a few lines of direct info and the rest of it consists of throw-away lines and comments. To be honest I could just do the typical list form and say “this is my headcanon, I have my reasons but I’m lazy”, but the time period I’m working with is a very thorny timeframe. It’s not just cold-war era politics that I’d be tripping over, but I could misrepresent and accidentally give out false information about people who had to live under Stalin.
So I’d have to be a real douche to not research this stuff and show that no, really, I don’t want to offend anybody with how I play my character. (However if I do, I want to know stat so I can stop Doing It Wrong.)
But also I can’t jump right in and mix the facts with how I apply them to my character. All the essaying in the world doesn’t help much if you get something wrong like the date or the location. That’s exactly what this is, the result of about a few months work of sifting through the script, going through books, and being called a dirty commie by a librarian.
Where
At first AO doesn’t really seem to tell us much of anything about where the hell the Louise/Kia loveshack of a mansion is, just that they perform their missions in West Germany. But the fact is that the game leaves a lot of clues around. So let’s take a look at some of the missions!
Zhores’ mission
They travel to Düsseldorf for the hotel incident, which apparently isn’t too far away from Zhores’ work. Where does Zhores work? At the national library. Why the hell is this a clue, you might ask. Simple! Before the wall fell there were three National libraries, and only one of them was in West Germany: The Frankfurt location. Sure Berlin has a branch, but it’s dedicated to new media only, and if I remember correctly, it opened after the wall fell. Another factor is that Zhores goes to a concert at a well-known opera house, which Frankfurt is also known for having. Then on top of that he drives a car into the river, I’ll get to that later.
Werners’ mission
Like right now even! During the early chitchat with Werner, Louise mentions that “the women down at the harbor” have some things to say about him. Again, why so important? Because once again Frankfurt comes up on the list, namely it’s one of the cities that possesses a harbor. …this is a little more uncommon then one would think at first.
Kia’s/Louise’ missions
A good number of Kia’s missions involve him bitching about taking a long time to get back to his barracks. Then later on we see him play tag with the Berlin wall. And oh look, his commanding officer is there! While the game does say that he’s not supposed to be there that day, I find it really hard to believe that they’d both just happen to travel to the same place. Instead it makes more sense if Kia is stationed in Berlin, but spends time on the job with Louise in Frankfurt. And Frankfurt is a hell of a long ways away.
Ali’s mission
Okay so all of that’s pretty damn circumstantial right? I mean sure they all point to Frankfurt, but they don’t come out and say it directly… Until this mission. Yep, Ali leaves to get back to his country from the Frankfurt international airport. In fact it’s this little tidbit that gives us our date.
When
In all the missions there’s these strange little facts and names that get dropped, and in most cases the translators did a rough translation on them. As much as this game needed a better set of translators/editors, the fact that they left these things in means they didn’t get localize’d out by a more “professional” team. So what do we get out of this? Well firstly there’s the wall itself. That didn’t go up until the 60’s. Another thing is Jen’s motorcycle, which has a knucklehead engine. Again, that was in production until 1961 or so. However the technology in Hagen’s operating room looks like it’s from the 70’s. Also Louise’s father talks about fighting in the war and he’s starting to go gray, so what time period are we really looking at?
Two things place it in the 70’s. The first is the International airport itself. Commercial flights at the airport didn’t start until 1972. Yes a prince might have been able to use the airport for AO’s plot convenience, but it would be a single-person plane and not a full flight that needed an announcer. Long story short, if the game took place before 1972, they’d have to take a small connection flight via a small plane to one of the larger airports, and then take an international flight.
The other is a out-of-place comment by one of Ferdinand’s maids. She comments that something is like “one of those reversible sweaters that are popular right now.” Again, this happened in the 1970’s. In fact there’s patents for new ways to make reversible sweaters from 1971 to 1973.
So for a nice, solid date I personally say the date is 1972. But why is this so important? And why has it taken me this long to write this part of the essay if I’ve been assuming this for months?
Well the problem is that the one edit that the staff DID make was with the character’s ages. In the case of Zhores and Lawless, this creates a paradox. See Lawless says that he has clear memories of his father dying in the war, in fact it’s a major motivation for his dedication to someone. However, he’s also 28 according to the little booklet that comes with the game. This means he would have been born around 1944. Far too young to remember his father. In Zhores’ case it becomes even more important because he’s 32, that would place him being born around… 1940, just a year before Operation Barbarosa.
But the game text ends up clearing things up again. Zhores and Lawless both use terms that indicate that Louise is a younger then them, or at least young enough that they chide themselves about giving in to his demands. In Zhores’ case being 32 fits: old enough to be a pro at his job and be fluent in German, while having a relatively young-looking body for that level of experience. Lawless is probably the mistake and he’s older then the American team assumed.
Oh look, eggshells!
So why all this fussing over when Zhores was born and my reluctance to directly say what city he was born in? Because Russian history about then has a very specific timeline. By June of 1941 Russia was under attack, on top of that there’s the matter of two of the more well-known cities in Russia. Namely, Lenengrad was entering a siege that would decimate it’s population and last for over two years, and Moscow also fell under attack later during the war. Knowing AO they would most likely choose a well-known city as his birthplace instead of a smaller location.
Early on in my research I started headcanoning that Zhores was a Leningrader. Leningrad/St. Petersburg is a complex beast, being home to the aristocracy, the intelligentsia, the start of the revolution, and then later on, the brief appearance of the NEP men and the closest thing to the roaring 20’s. In accordance to this it got hit hard by the purges, and once again after the war with the Leningrad affair. In addition there’s the nasty little issue of Moscow-St. Petersburg relations, how the people in each city feel about the other place and in many ways I can’t really imagine Zhores as being born and bred in Moscow.
However with this comes the problem of just how he survived the war. It’s horrific what people went through during the siege, and to try and come up with a way that he could have survived it just feels wrong for me. It’s like I’m cheapening a terrible event in history by trying to shoehorn him in there somewhere. So I just don’t. As is stands I’ll reference the city as he was growing up, but I’m really uncomfortable with the idea of headcanoning just how him and his sister got to that point.
Ages ago Prussia commented that about Zhores having issues with the Germans if he was born in Leningrad, and at the time I replied that he was postwar and a few other things. In a way even though the date has been set back further the result is the same. No matter where Zhores was born and raised he would be dealing with the results of the war. The adult figures in his life would have a strong influence on him about how the felt, and so on. There’s no way he could escape that. However from the events in game he doesn’t seem to possess the sort of hate one might assume he’d have. It’s clear that by this point he’s faced these issues already, and I think a good part of that is how he’s had to live in Germany for quite a few years. Do I think he still has feelings about the war? Of course I do, but when it comes to his opinions on Germans it’s a different and more complicated manner.
In closing this thing’s more like a prologue where I get my basis and THEN fly off into headcanon territory. There’s more I could say about the subjectivity of my research material, but that’s coming up in the next essay.