~There must be easier ways to clean your skin with pumice.
Ugh I had one of those nightmares with that recurring theme I hate last night, one of the ones where I'm screaming and screaming for help and no one hears me. I don't think I got to the point where I was actually screaming out loud, but I'm pretty sure I gasped or talked myself awake at some point. blegh.
Before that though I think there was some kind of strange plot where Solidus had teamed up with Hojo to flood some kind of sports stadium with water or something, and I ended up killing Hojo in this incredibly gruesome way. Like, sort of imagine something kind of sharp and pronged on the end of a metal stick, and then shoving that in someone's face and hooking it on their jaw, and then twisting it until their face sort of tears apart. IT'S HARD TO DESCRIBE BUT EVEN IN THE DREAM I WAS LIKE DD: THIS IS AWFUL WHY IS THIS HAPPENING
then it went into some weird psuedo NES game about elevators, I dunno what that's about.
BUT ANYWAY LET'S TALK VIDEO GAMES BUDDY i should get into it otherwise I'm just going to forget everything that happened, i have such a bad memory for details
ANYWAY LET'S DO RULE OF ROSE FIRST because I'm forgetting things left and right already, haha.
So when I was playing the game, I assumed all of the self-hatred and such was because of Jennifer's feelings, but it turns out that I was actually off, it was actually another girl's feelings for Jennifer. :o Although that does make sense, that would tie into the general theme of the game of Jennifer being a passive victim who's often pushed and shoved around by everyone around her.
I didn't think that her girlfriend whose name I can't remember right now would be quite so crazy and possessive though. But all in all it's a pretty tragic little story. I should really go through and play the game again now that I know what to pay attention to, but anyway, from what I can recall, Jennifer pretty much had no one to rely on or talk to or anything, and Girlfriend was the only friend she really had. And when you only have one friend and you're surrounded by a hostile and cruel world, you stick with that one friend... even if they're cruel to you. Because you don't have anyone else, you know? I'm sure this situation doesn't sound too unbelievable to some of you, haha. I can see it, definitely. But yeah, when you're desperate and lonely and being treated so awfully, ANYone who's nice to you you got to stick with. Even if they do things you're not comfortable with.
I'm not really sure though if Jennifer returned her feelings or not, which would explain the weird ambiguity with a lot of the sexually charged scenes. The other girls would do vaguely sexualized things around her, or near her, and Jennifer would seem puzzled or a bit freaked out but never really fight, as usual, so if she didn't return those feelings (or was just confused by them) that'd add up to me. When Girlfriend started acting more amorous towards her, or expressing her love for her, Jennifer sort of reluctantly went with it but maybe didn't really understand what it was she was doing, exactly. But she was all she had, you know? What else could she do?
Poor Brown. :< I'd assumed that the "i love you forever" message was for a human, but it was actually for Brown! And that's really interesting, I think. A lot of the time animal companions sort of get the short stick, particularly if they aren't sentient, you know? While they can be important, they're never AS important as a human friend or whatever. The game played it a lot like her important person she made that promise to was a human, or maybe we just assume that sentiments like that are meant for humans, not animals. But as anyone who ever owned a pet knows, your pets can be absolutely precious to you. Particularly for a girl like Jennifer, who has no one in the world she can rely on, where everyone around her is just cruel to her all the time. She has no friends except her controlling Girlfriend who sometimes makes her feel uncomfortable or asks her to do things she doesn't understand and torments her through the Red Crayon Society, but Brown is different. Dogs don't ask you to do anything, they don't demand anything, they aren't cruel to you... they just love you. It makes perfect sense to me that Jennifer would grow so attached to Brown - he's the only one in the game who doesn't hurt her, who just loves her unconditionally. In her situation, who wouldn't cherish something like that?
And it probably says something that it was what happened to Brown that finally got Jennifer to stand up for herself - an innocent suffering because of her own lack of initiative, her passivity. She lost one of the only living things that truly loved her because she was too afraid to stop them... no wonder she'd be filled with such intense loathing. All of the self-hatred themes in the game make sense in that kind of light. And even more so, it was interesting how the game emphasized that it wasn't a mistake that could be "fixed" either. It's interesting how final that mistake was... a lot of games would let you do something about it, or fix it, or give you some kind of cathartic revelation, or something (looking at you, Silent Hill 2, who revealed that James killed his wife, then had you do a boss battle against her where afterwards she thanked you for killing her).
There was just something about the feel of it that kind of stuck with me... that it was a childhood mistake with severe repercussions, and those kind of things don't go away. Your dog doesn't get killed and you just forget, you know? Realizing what happened doesn't make it better. It happened, and there's nothing you can do. Something died because of you, and it'll never be okay. That kind of crushing guilt, the game did that pretty well, I think. It explains so much of what was going on. Although not all of it, haha. A lot of the game is still way up in the air, although replaying it might explain a lot more of it.
I'm still not sure what the setting of the game is exactly, if Jennifer is dead and reliving her life, if she's just reliving her memories, if she's in therapy trying to do it, if she's under hypnosis, whatever. If she is just flipping through her memories, that might explain why things are so disjointed, but the setting still feels kind of mysterious to me. I'D HAVE TO PUT MORE THOUGHT INTO IT AFTER DOING MORE RESEARCH OR SOMETHING
Man I went into it looking for records and I found a bunch and I thought I'd be able to turn them in for a cool weapon, and no! They're just for music. Bah. >:(
Speakin of which, god there was one chapter that drove me frigging crazy with the music, it was just this scratchy victrola record OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN AUGGHH
AHA IT WAS THE FUNERAL gdit i ended up wandering that place for like an hour because i kept missing things AND THE MUSIC WOULDN'T STOP ARRRRRRRGHHHH
Speakin of which ugh the gameplay was still terrible. Also in the battle against Stray Dog, I ended up screwing up and getting the Bad End a few times, because they give you Gregory's Gun, and I already had a normal gun, right? So they give me the gun, and I assumed I had to shoot him with it. But that didn't work for some reason. So I got frustrated and was like BAH FINE and thought maybe the bad ending was the real ending after all, haha. Then I went and looked it up and you have to USE the gun, as in like an item, when he's kneeling, and THIS IS SO COUNTERINTUITIVE
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT
Didn't keep too close tabs on what Gregory's deal was, durrr. I'd have to replay and pay more attention. :B I'm still not sure how Joshua fits into the whole thing... Wendy, that was the Girlfriend's name. I guess Wendy pretended to be Joshua to control Gregory? Frick, all the details are blurring away for me now, haha.
ANYWAY I REALLY ENJOYED IT IT WAS AN INTERESTING GAME but honestly the gameplay is super frustrating, it might just be easier to watch an LP. I might come back with more after I play it again or whatever.
Also, I beat Peacewalker! Or the main thing in Peacewalker. Story, main story. I guess?
Man Kojima really loves killing the Boss, he brought her back to life just to make you kill her again. I'd chide him for it but I can't lie, I felt bad killing her AGAIN regardless. :< I actually could totally relate to Strangelove because I did want the Boss to be alive again. I'D BRING HER BACK TO LIFE AS AN AI TOO STRANGELOVE YOU'RE NOT ALONE
Also as a result whenever people were like IT'S NOT REALLY HER WE MUST KILL THE AI IT'S JUST PRETENDING i was like NO NO LEAVE IT ALONE LEAVE HER ALIVE I WANT HER TO BE ALIVE EVEN AS AN AI
i might be missing the point
even just hearing her voice made me :< so hard. I LOVE YOU AND YOUR VOICE ACTOR BOSS WHYYYYYYY
WHY WON'T KOJIMA JUST MAKE A GAME ABOUT YOU WHYYYY I WOULD PLAY A GAME ABOUT THE COBRAS FOREVER
YOU COULD CALL THEM ON THE CODEC AND EVERYTHING AND AAAAAAAAAAAA
Speakin of which, I sat through the incredibly long Eva tapes about Boss at Nasa (i swear these really could have been edited down) waiting for information about the Sorrow, and what do I get? Like a paragraph! DARN IT. I was initially very >:( about Sorrow turning Boss's spy against her, but then they said he didn't know the spy was Boss's spy, so at least it wasn't intentional. They also threw in that when the Patriots forced the two of them to fight, that they said that Ocelot would get murdered unless one of them killed the other one. For added motivation I guess. Poor Sorrow just gave up. :< I STILL WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP AAAAAA
But man pulling her memory boards was sad. :< YOU BROUGHT HER BACK JUST TO KILL HER AGAIN WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS
oh wait you're kojima, that's why
I wasn't aware that Boss was really into singing before this, but hey okay. That'd explain why Peacewalker sings sort of (and I guess the other AIs, even though they were just prototypes that didn't have her consciousness in them, so...? unless i'm missing something here). I did lol pretty hard when they opened PW's head and all these butterflies came out. HOW DID THOSE GET IN THERE
THAT'S TERRIBLE FOR THE CIRCUITRY
i thought that i heard boss's voice actor singing her final song though and that did make me a bit ;_; i must admit. NO BOSS DON'T WALK INTO THE OCEAN WHYYYYYYYY
Not entirely sure I buy BB letting her go after that, although I did lol when he was all SHE GAVE UP AND LET ME WIN, I'M NOT GOING TO DO THAT. I'LL NEVER GIVE UP FIGHTING and it's like yup you sure didn't, you got burnt to death by a rainbow flamethrower, hahaha.
Then I remembered he came back in MGS4, oops. OH WELL.
I really thought Paz was going to turn out to be evil. I'm not sure why I thought that aside from her being creepy or whatever, but I thought she would've been behind it or was a pawn for the other side or something, but I guess she really was just a big peace loving hippie creepy big eyed child? HMMMM. I remain suspicious.
I'm also sort of suspicious of Kaz, and I'm not sure why that is either. I think it's because he sounds exactly like the guy on the enemy soldier's radios, haha. I kept thinking he was going to stab BB in the back. I DUNNO I JUST EXPECTED MORE BACKSTABBING I GUESS
Well there's still some afterstory after the initial plot wrapped up so maybe things could still get crazy.
I DID LISTEN TO ALL THE BRIEFING FILES i can't believe I didn't figure out what those were until I got that far in, what is wrong with me. I thought they'd just replay the tape intro but no. It's actually an interesting way of reimagining the codec system... it just breaks up all the potential codec convos you could have into convenient menus sorted by characters, so you can just choose the conversation you want to hear instead of harrassing everyone on the codec everywhere in case you miss something. I can understand the reasoning behind it and it does make things a lot more convenient. At the same time it feels a little different? I dunno, I'm not really complaining. JUST SAYING I GUESS.
there were some really great convos though, hahahaha. KOJIMA IS GOD and the box tank is so adorable and drunk Cecile doing Miller impressions (altho wow the comments are creepy on this) and Big Boss believes in Santa Claus and man I wish the Macaroon conversation was up somewhere because there's a line where Miller comes in all MACAROONS COME FROM BLAH BLAH WORD and his voice actor reads it in the most inappropriate way and it cracked me up.
Oh man I also did something incredibly stupid, I had to stop playing and just hold my head in my hands afterwards.
Okay there was this mission where you have to stop people from getting in your base and killin ur snake. I was mostly tranqing people left and right and such, and when I had some time I decided to drop a Claymore on the walkway. I tranq the last person, and wait and wait and stare at that Claymore, and wait. Last person vanishes, the pick up point appears past the claymore.
So I run forward into the claymore which exploded right in my face, and I didn't have a ration equipped so I died. HAD TO DO THE ENTIRE THING OVER AGAIN ARRRRGH
Anyway hugely amused at how gay Strangelove is as mentioned. SURE I GAVE THE BEAUTIFUL FRENCHWOMAN PERSONAL BATHS EVERYDAY, WHAT, IS THAT SUSPICIOUS
cecile seemed to roll with it too, haha. Also hugely amused at Huey's pathetic crush on Strangelove. I didn't know you could read his letter and I thought I'd give it to her at some point, so I'd left it alone mostly, but after the game I got curious. I felt kinda bad reading it but darn it, Strangelove had joined my base and Huey still hadn't given it to her, so I just assumed it wasn't going to happen. Anyway god Huey is almost painfully awkward, it's amazing. HE STUTTER TYPES IN A WRITTEN LETTER, HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT
It was more hilarious reading it after I listened to Strangelove talk about how Huey was spineless and passive and eager to please and how it just drove her crazy, which makes total sense to me. Strangelove seems like she likes stronger independent people who don't take nothing from no one cough Boss cough. And he even keeps using the nickname she gave him, so lovestruck, Huey. Then I went and read the letter and it's like YUP, I CAN SEE WHY YOU'D BE ANNOYED BY HIM.
What mostly interested me about Peacewalker though was probably Huey, or to be more specific, how Huey reflects back onto Otacon later. So many questions raised with him! Like for example, Huey smoked (like... pretty much everyone in the game except maybe Strangelove I guess), which makes me wonder if that's why Otacon is so anti-smoking later. :o WAS THIS RELATED
Mostly what was significant to me was that we finally got a solid year for when Otacon was born, 1980, altho not so much who his mom was. Surprisingly Huey didn't kill a woman this game! Maybe that was his son's specialty instead. ANYWAY that solid date was particularly interesting to me for a few reasons.
Otacon's age was always kind of fuzzy and undefined. In MGS1 he was said to be in his 30s (turns out he actually would have been 25) and whatever, he was just some age. However, in MGS2, the entire mess with Julie the Stepmom kicks in, and this is where the age fuzziness made things sort of complicated.
The incredibly vagueness of what happened with Otacon and Julie wasn't really helped by the age fuzziness. Otacon does give some specific dates (in 2007, he hadn't seen Emma in 10 years, and they'd only lived together as a family for 2 years), and at one point Emma says they were kids together, but that's really about all the information you get before Kojima sweeps it all under a rug and never talks about it again.
Now personally, and I know this is probably just me epically projecting all over this, I've always felt like the relationship between Otacon and Julie happened when he was younger, like a teenie, and it was abuse. That was the impression I generally got, and as a result their relationship really deeply creeped me out. However, without any solid dates, there was really no proof either way. Otacon could have been like 12 when it happened, and their family could have lived together every single day and she was like his second mother, OR he could have been like 25, and he could have been at work and only come home on weekends to see them and they were practically strangers. Really, either scenario could have been right because there were no solid numbers. Who could say either way? So I mostly kept my feelings and extensive headcanon about the Julie/Otacon thing to myself, and just tried to avoid anything and everything that dealt with their relationship in any kind of positive way.
But with a birth year set down for Otacon, that finally gives the entire thing a solid number. Namely, that Huey married Julie when Otacon was 15, and Huey drowned/Emma nearly drowned when he was 17. And when I found this out, I was like vindicated! to myself, haha. FINALLY, FINALLY, I KNEW IT, I WAS RIGHT, I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG
Even if Huey was a weird perv (seems unlikely) and married a girl way younger than him, I can't picture Julie being younger than 25. Ten years difference. And really, I'd picture her more in her thirties or something, even huger difference. And any adult who sees a fifteen year old boy (who is their stepson), lives with them with two years, and consciously makes the decision to seduce them is messed up. There's no getting around that for me.
But it's really just adding this to the greater picture that makes this so tremendously sad to me. He was fifteen. Fifteen! Depending on when he was born in the year, he could have even been as young as fourteen. Even worse, if Huey and Julie dated for a while before they got married, Julie could have known Otacon from when he was fourteen and younger. Thirteen, twelve...
All that Otacon says is that Julie "seduced" him, and that it "went on" which doesn't give any real time table for when it happened. Could have been when he was seventeen, or gone back to when he was fifteen. But it wasn't an isolated incident, Julie kept the relationship going. She kept doing it to him. And going off of Otacon's thing after Emma dies about how he and Emma both just wanted to be loved, by anyone, were waiting to be loved by anyone, it's really not hard to see how he could have easily been manipulated into continuing the relationship. She could have easily pressured him into it with threats, but she wouldn't even need to. Otacon was lonely and had no friends (according to Emma)... a phrase comes to mind. You tolerate abuse because you're afraid of being alone... how easy would it have been for Julie to frame the entire thing as the love that Otacon had been seeking? How messed up would that make you when you grew up when it comes to relationships?
I always thought Otacon's choice of words was somewhat telling when he reveals what happened to him... he says she seduced him, not that she abused him. Enough to admit that it wasn't his idea, but not enough to realize (or maybe admit) that it was abuse. Even so, he still knows somewhere that it was wrong enough that he thinks his father killed himself because of it. Otacon probably never had the time or opportunity to deal with that abuse through his life... just buried it on down and pretended it never happened because Kojima threw it on him without thinking about it and then forgot about it when it bored him.
Although this does raise the other question here, and this one Peacewalker really didn't help out with - what was the deal with Huey's death? From what I saw in Peacewalker, Huey doesn't seem about to kill himself about anything he's done. He just doesn't seem like the type for suicide. He was pretty adamant about trying to fix his mistakes re: peacewalker when confronted with them.
But more so than that, what exactly would even be his motivation to kill himself? I assumed that Otacon is just blaming himself for it when he says that his dad killed himself because of what happened with Julie, but still. Even if Otacon was right, and Huey found out about what happened with Julie and Otacon... why would he kill himself? Why would THAT be his reaction? Why not just divorce Julie? Why not confront either of them about it? Why not actually try to fix the problem?
I mean, what would be the emotions that lead to that decision? Would he just feel betrayed by Julie? Would that really be enough to make you kill yourself? Or would he feel terrible about how his son was abused and he had no idea, and thus he'd kill himself for that instead of actually trying to help him? Either way it just doesn't add up for me. With what I saw in Peacewalker, that doesn't seem like something he'd do. PARTICULARLY when you consider Emma.
There are some theories that say that Huey dragged Emma into the pool with him when he drowned himself. I absolutely can't see him doing that, why would he try to drown his stepdaughter for no reason? What purpose would that serve? And Emma could swim before it happened too, so just him throwing her in there wouldn't automatically make her drown. He'd have to be making a conscious effort to keep her in there. I can't see him being so petty that he'd drown Julie's daughter in revenge for her molesting his son. That's completely ridiculous.
But if he didn't kill himself... then what happened? Assuming that they have an in-ground pool (an above ground pool makes this way more complicated), Huey could concievably have slipped in (or been pushed in, but by who?), and he could have just drowned by accident. This seems the most likely to me. Where Emma comes in is trickier, but possibly she saw him drowning and tried to help him, and ended up nearly drowning herself.
What's also weird is how Otacon didn't hear it happening because, apparently, he was with Julie. Did they just have sex in a soundproof basement or something? I mean you'd think there'd be a lot of splashing and noise when someone was drowning, and that'd probably be enough to make you stop having sex with someone. You'd think that at least one of them would have noticed. WHERE WERE THEY
Did Julie hear it and stop Otacon from going out to check? Why would she do that?
How did Huey even find out about what happened? Did he stumble across them by accident? Did Otacon or Julie tell him? Did he find out but never say anything to either of them? Did he even find out at all? Did Otacon feel so intensely guilty about what happened that he just assumed his dad KNEW somehow, and THAT'S why he killed himself, rather than Huey just accidentally falling into the pool randomly one day?
And jesus, what would that be like, to find out that your spouse had been sexually abusing your child? What kind of a revelation would that be? Maybe that guilt WOULD be enough to lead you to kill yourself, although abandoning your abused child without warning would really just make the situation for him worse.
The other part that sort of puzzles me is Otacon's mention that Julie sent letters. He doesn't seem to bear a lot of ill will towards her... even though he does say that she instigated the relationship. My guess is that he just internalized all the guilt himself and blames himself for what happened, rather than Julie. If he'd just said no, that kind of thing. They apparently kept in some contact afterwards, although god knows how awkward that would have been. Maybe Otacon just wanted to keep track of Emma, since they were both so young and were so close. Man, how would Julie feel after Huey died, would she feel responsible as well? Would she even care? She cared enough to tell Otacon that Emma was terrified of swimming.
Maybe Huey's death would have been enough to wake her up to what she was doing, and she decided to take Emma and move away. Pretty much abandoning Otacon at 17 right after his dad died, that's kind of harsh. The two of them exchanging letters about what happened, Julie always emphasising that it was wrong but it was consensual, they were BOTH responsible, something something, coaching Otacon into believing it wasn't abuse and that it was his fault it happened, so on so on.
Or maybe relating back to his ending thing about love, maybe he was so desperate to pretend that someone cared about him, or that his family hadn't completely imploded, that it wasn't abuse and someone loved him, that he was willing to pretend and exchange letters. It was the closest thing to love he had left, and he didn't really know anything else.
And if Emma was right and Otacon was a nerdy loser with no friends, that means Julie was probably his first. How sad is that?
Then you move forward to Sniper Wolf, and it could be that he fell in love with someone that was unattainable and he knew that, someone that wouldn't ever reciprocate. Someone safe he could love from afar, who wouldn't hurt him or end up hurting people around him. OR IT WAS STOCKHOLM SYNDROME BUT JUST THROWIN IT OUT THERE
And if he was never involved with anyone again until Naomi came around, yeesh. It'd explain why he was so jumpy and frightened everytime she was coming on to him. i've always thought that though
And I actually just remembered, Otakon started in 1994, which would be a year before Huey met Julie. Coincidence that Otacon got so involved and interested in anime that he named himself after an anime convention around the same time he was being sexually abused by a family member, or was it a coping mechanism? WHO KNOWS.
this got way too long BASICALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT OTACON'S BACKSTORY REALLY DEPRESSES ME and i probably put way more thought into it than kojima did, since he mentioned it once and then never talked about it again. BUT STILL
someone asked me if I'd do LET strips about Julie and teenOtacon or something and it's like no man there's nothing funny about that to me
but again i could just be projecting
GOD THIS IS LONG
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!
Before that though I think there was some kind of strange plot where Solidus had teamed up with Hojo to flood some kind of sports stadium with water or something, and I ended up killing Hojo in this incredibly gruesome way. Like, sort of imagine something kind of sharp and pronged on the end of a metal stick, and then shoving that in someone's face and hooking it on their jaw, and then twisting it until their face sort of tears apart. IT'S HARD TO DESCRIBE BUT EVEN IN THE DREAM I WAS LIKE DD: THIS IS AWFUL WHY IS THIS HAPPENING
then it went into some weird psuedo NES game about elevators, I dunno what that's about.
BUT ANYWAY LET'S TALK VIDEO GAMES BUDDY i should get into it otherwise I'm just going to forget everything that happened, i have such a bad memory for details
ANYWAY LET'S DO RULE OF ROSE FIRST because I'm forgetting things left and right already, haha.
So when I was playing the game, I assumed all of the self-hatred and such was because of Jennifer's feelings, but it turns out that I was actually off, it was actually another girl's feelings for Jennifer. :o Although that does make sense, that would tie into the general theme of the game of Jennifer being a passive victim who's often pushed and shoved around by everyone around her.
I didn't think that her girlfriend whose name I can't remember right now would be quite so crazy and possessive though. But all in all it's a pretty tragic little story. I should really go through and play the game again now that I know what to pay attention to, but anyway, from what I can recall, Jennifer pretty much had no one to rely on or talk to or anything, and Girlfriend was the only friend she really had. And when you only have one friend and you're surrounded by a hostile and cruel world, you stick with that one friend... even if they're cruel to you. Because you don't have anyone else, you know? I'm sure this situation doesn't sound too unbelievable to some of you, haha. I can see it, definitely. But yeah, when you're desperate and lonely and being treated so awfully, ANYone who's nice to you you got to stick with. Even if they do things you're not comfortable with.
I'm not really sure though if Jennifer returned her feelings or not, which would explain the weird ambiguity with a lot of the sexually charged scenes. The other girls would do vaguely sexualized things around her, or near her, and Jennifer would seem puzzled or a bit freaked out but never really fight, as usual, so if she didn't return those feelings (or was just confused by them) that'd add up to me. When Girlfriend started acting more amorous towards her, or expressing her love for her, Jennifer sort of reluctantly went with it but maybe didn't really understand what it was she was doing, exactly. But she was all she had, you know? What else could she do?
Poor Brown. :< I'd assumed that the "i love you forever" message was for a human, but it was actually for Brown! And that's really interesting, I think. A lot of the time animal companions sort of get the short stick, particularly if they aren't sentient, you know? While they can be important, they're never AS important as a human friend or whatever. The game played it a lot like her important person she made that promise to was a human, or maybe we just assume that sentiments like that are meant for humans, not animals. But as anyone who ever owned a pet knows, your pets can be absolutely precious to you. Particularly for a girl like Jennifer, who has no one in the world she can rely on, where everyone around her is just cruel to her all the time. She has no friends except her controlling Girlfriend who sometimes makes her feel uncomfortable or asks her to do things she doesn't understand and torments her through the Red Crayon Society, but Brown is different. Dogs don't ask you to do anything, they don't demand anything, they aren't cruel to you... they just love you. It makes perfect sense to me that Jennifer would grow so attached to Brown - he's the only one in the game who doesn't hurt her, who just loves her unconditionally. In her situation, who wouldn't cherish something like that?
And it probably says something that it was what happened to Brown that finally got Jennifer to stand up for herself - an innocent suffering because of her own lack of initiative, her passivity. She lost one of the only living things that truly loved her because she was too afraid to stop them... no wonder she'd be filled with such intense loathing. All of the self-hatred themes in the game make sense in that kind of light. And even more so, it was interesting how the game emphasized that it wasn't a mistake that could be "fixed" either. It's interesting how final that mistake was... a lot of games would let you do something about it, or fix it, or give you some kind of cathartic revelation, or something (looking at you, Silent Hill 2, who revealed that James killed his wife, then had you do a boss battle against her where afterwards she thanked you for killing her).
There was just something about the feel of it that kind of stuck with me... that it was a childhood mistake with severe repercussions, and those kind of things don't go away. Your dog doesn't get killed and you just forget, you know? Realizing what happened doesn't make it better. It happened, and there's nothing you can do. Something died because of you, and it'll never be okay. That kind of crushing guilt, the game did that pretty well, I think. It explains so much of what was going on. Although not all of it, haha. A lot of the game is still way up in the air, although replaying it might explain a lot more of it.
I'm still not sure what the setting of the game is exactly, if Jennifer is dead and reliving her life, if she's just reliving her memories, if she's in therapy trying to do it, if she's under hypnosis, whatever. If she is just flipping through her memories, that might explain why things are so disjointed, but the setting still feels kind of mysterious to me. I'D HAVE TO PUT MORE THOUGHT INTO IT AFTER DOING MORE RESEARCH OR SOMETHING
Man I went into it looking for records and I found a bunch and I thought I'd be able to turn them in for a cool weapon, and no! They're just for music. Bah. >:(
Speakin of which, god there was one chapter that drove me frigging crazy with the music, it was just this scratchy victrola record OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN AUGGHH
AHA IT WAS THE FUNERAL gdit i ended up wandering that place for like an hour because i kept missing things AND THE MUSIC WOULDN'T STOP ARRRRRRRGHHHH
Speakin of which ugh the gameplay was still terrible. Also in the battle against Stray Dog, I ended up screwing up and getting the Bad End a few times, because they give you Gregory's Gun, and I already had a normal gun, right? So they give me the gun, and I assumed I had to shoot him with it. But that didn't work for some reason. So I got frustrated and was like BAH FINE and thought maybe the bad ending was the real ending after all, haha. Then I went and looked it up and you have to USE the gun, as in like an item, when he's kneeling, and THIS IS SO COUNTERINTUITIVE
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT
Didn't keep too close tabs on what Gregory's deal was, durrr. I'd have to replay and pay more attention. :B I'm still not sure how Joshua fits into the whole thing... Wendy, that was the Girlfriend's name. I guess Wendy pretended to be Joshua to control Gregory? Frick, all the details are blurring away for me now, haha.
ANYWAY I REALLY ENJOYED IT IT WAS AN INTERESTING GAME but honestly the gameplay is super frustrating, it might just be easier to watch an LP. I might come back with more after I play it again or whatever.
Also, I beat Peacewalker! Or the main thing in Peacewalker. Story, main story. I guess?
Man Kojima really loves killing the Boss, he brought her back to life just to make you kill her again. I'd chide him for it but I can't lie, I felt bad killing her AGAIN regardless. :< I actually could totally relate to Strangelove because I did want the Boss to be alive again. I'D BRING HER BACK TO LIFE AS AN AI TOO STRANGELOVE YOU'RE NOT ALONE
Also as a result whenever people were like IT'S NOT REALLY HER WE MUST KILL THE AI IT'S JUST PRETENDING i was like NO NO LEAVE IT ALONE LEAVE HER ALIVE I WANT HER TO BE ALIVE EVEN AS AN AI
i might be missing the point
even just hearing her voice made me :< so hard. I LOVE YOU AND YOUR VOICE ACTOR BOSS WHYYYYYYY
WHY WON'T KOJIMA JUST MAKE A GAME ABOUT YOU WHYYYY I WOULD PLAY A GAME ABOUT THE COBRAS FOREVER
YOU COULD CALL THEM ON THE CODEC AND EVERYTHING AND AAAAAAAAAAAA
Speakin of which, I sat through the incredibly long Eva tapes about Boss at Nasa (i swear these really could have been edited down) waiting for information about the Sorrow, and what do I get? Like a paragraph! DARN IT. I was initially very >:( about Sorrow turning Boss's spy against her, but then they said he didn't know the spy was Boss's spy, so at least it wasn't intentional. They also threw in that when the Patriots forced the two of them to fight, that they said that Ocelot would get murdered unless one of them killed the other one. For added motivation I guess. Poor Sorrow just gave up. :< I STILL WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP AAAAAA
But man pulling her memory boards was sad. :< YOU BROUGHT HER BACK JUST TO KILL HER AGAIN WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS
oh wait you're kojima, that's why
I wasn't aware that Boss was really into singing before this, but hey okay. That'd explain why Peacewalker sings sort of (and I guess the other AIs, even though they were just prototypes that didn't have her consciousness in them, so...? unless i'm missing something here). I did lol pretty hard when they opened PW's head and all these butterflies came out. HOW DID THOSE GET IN THERE
THAT'S TERRIBLE FOR THE CIRCUITRY
i thought that i heard boss's voice actor singing her final song though and that did make me a bit ;_; i must admit. NO BOSS DON'T WALK INTO THE OCEAN WHYYYYYYYY
Not entirely sure I buy BB letting her go after that, although I did lol when he was all SHE GAVE UP AND LET ME WIN, I'M NOT GOING TO DO THAT. I'LL NEVER GIVE UP FIGHTING and it's like yup you sure didn't, you got burnt to death by a rainbow flamethrower, hahaha.
Then I remembered he came back in MGS4, oops. OH WELL.
I really thought Paz was going to turn out to be evil. I'm not sure why I thought that aside from her being creepy or whatever, but I thought she would've been behind it or was a pawn for the other side or something, but I guess she really was just a big peace loving hippie creepy big eyed child? HMMMM. I remain suspicious.
I'm also sort of suspicious of Kaz, and I'm not sure why that is either. I think it's because he sounds exactly like the guy on the enemy soldier's radios, haha. I kept thinking he was going to stab BB in the back. I DUNNO I JUST EXPECTED MORE BACKSTABBING I GUESS
Well there's still some afterstory after the initial plot wrapped up so maybe things could still get crazy.
I DID LISTEN TO ALL THE BRIEFING FILES i can't believe I didn't figure out what those were until I got that far in, what is wrong with me. I thought they'd just replay the tape intro but no. It's actually an interesting way of reimagining the codec system... it just breaks up all the potential codec convos you could have into convenient menus sorted by characters, so you can just choose the conversation you want to hear instead of harrassing everyone on the codec everywhere in case you miss something. I can understand the reasoning behind it and it does make things a lot more convenient. At the same time it feels a little different? I dunno, I'm not really complaining. JUST SAYING I GUESS.
there were some really great convos though, hahahaha. KOJIMA IS GOD and the box tank is so adorable and drunk Cecile doing Miller impressions (altho wow the comments are creepy on this) and Big Boss believes in Santa Claus and man I wish the Macaroon conversation was up somewhere because there's a line where Miller comes in all MACAROONS COME FROM BLAH BLAH WORD and his voice actor reads it in the most inappropriate way and it cracked me up.
Oh man I also did something incredibly stupid, I had to stop playing and just hold my head in my hands afterwards.
Okay there was this mission where you have to stop people from getting in your base and killin ur snake. I was mostly tranqing people left and right and such, and when I had some time I decided to drop a Claymore on the walkway. I tranq the last person, and wait and wait and stare at that Claymore, and wait. Last person vanishes, the pick up point appears past the claymore.
So I run forward into the claymore which exploded right in my face, and I didn't have a ration equipped so I died. HAD TO DO THE ENTIRE THING OVER AGAIN ARRRRGH
Anyway hugely amused at how gay Strangelove is as mentioned. SURE I GAVE THE BEAUTIFUL FRENCHWOMAN PERSONAL BATHS EVERYDAY, WHAT, IS THAT SUSPICIOUS
cecile seemed to roll with it too, haha. Also hugely amused at Huey's pathetic crush on Strangelove. I didn't know you could read his letter and I thought I'd give it to her at some point, so I'd left it alone mostly, but after the game I got curious. I felt kinda bad reading it but darn it, Strangelove had joined my base and Huey still hadn't given it to her, so I just assumed it wasn't going to happen. Anyway god Huey is almost painfully awkward, it's amazing. HE STUTTER TYPES IN A WRITTEN LETTER, HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT
It was more hilarious reading it after I listened to Strangelove talk about how Huey was spineless and passive and eager to please and how it just drove her crazy, which makes total sense to me. Strangelove seems like she likes stronger independent people who don't take nothing from no one cough Boss cough. And he even keeps using the nickname she gave him, so lovestruck, Huey. Then I went and read the letter and it's like YUP, I CAN SEE WHY YOU'D BE ANNOYED BY HIM.
What mostly interested me about Peacewalker though was probably Huey, or to be more specific, how Huey reflects back onto Otacon later. So many questions raised with him! Like for example, Huey smoked (like... pretty much everyone in the game except maybe Strangelove I guess), which makes me wonder if that's why Otacon is so anti-smoking later. :o WAS THIS RELATED
Mostly what was significant to me was that we finally got a solid year for when Otacon was born, 1980, altho not so much who his mom was. Surprisingly Huey didn't kill a woman this game! Maybe that was his son's specialty instead. ANYWAY that solid date was particularly interesting to me for a few reasons.
Otacon's age was always kind of fuzzy and undefined. In MGS1 he was said to be in his 30s (turns out he actually would have been 25) and whatever, he was just some age. However, in MGS2, the entire mess with Julie the Stepmom kicks in, and this is where the age fuzziness made things sort of complicated.
The incredibly vagueness of what happened with Otacon and Julie wasn't really helped by the age fuzziness. Otacon does give some specific dates (in 2007, he hadn't seen Emma in 10 years, and they'd only lived together as a family for 2 years), and at one point Emma says they were kids together, but that's really about all the information you get before Kojima sweeps it all under a rug and never talks about it again.
Now personally, and I know this is probably just me epically projecting all over this, I've always felt like the relationship between Otacon and Julie happened when he was younger, like a teenie, and it was abuse. That was the impression I generally got, and as a result their relationship really deeply creeped me out. However, without any solid dates, there was really no proof either way. Otacon could have been like 12 when it happened, and their family could have lived together every single day and she was like his second mother, OR he could have been like 25, and he could have been at work and only come home on weekends to see them and they were practically strangers. Really, either scenario could have been right because there were no solid numbers. Who could say either way? So I mostly kept my feelings and extensive headcanon about the Julie/Otacon thing to myself, and just tried to avoid anything and everything that dealt with their relationship in any kind of positive way.
But with a birth year set down for Otacon, that finally gives the entire thing a solid number. Namely, that Huey married Julie when Otacon was 15, and Huey drowned/Emma nearly drowned when he was 17. And when I found this out, I was like vindicated! to myself, haha. FINALLY, FINALLY, I KNEW IT, I WAS RIGHT, I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG
Even if Huey was a weird perv (seems unlikely) and married a girl way younger than him, I can't picture Julie being younger than 25. Ten years difference. And really, I'd picture her more in her thirties or something, even huger difference. And any adult who sees a fifteen year old boy (who is their stepson), lives with them with two years, and consciously makes the decision to seduce them is messed up. There's no getting around that for me.
But it's really just adding this to the greater picture that makes this so tremendously sad to me. He was fifteen. Fifteen! Depending on when he was born in the year, he could have even been as young as fourteen. Even worse, if Huey and Julie dated for a while before they got married, Julie could have known Otacon from when he was fourteen and younger. Thirteen, twelve...
All that Otacon says is that Julie "seduced" him, and that it "went on" which doesn't give any real time table for when it happened. Could have been when he was seventeen, or gone back to when he was fifteen. But it wasn't an isolated incident, Julie kept the relationship going. She kept doing it to him. And going off of Otacon's thing after Emma dies about how he and Emma both just wanted to be loved, by anyone, were waiting to be loved by anyone, it's really not hard to see how he could have easily been manipulated into continuing the relationship. She could have easily pressured him into it with threats, but she wouldn't even need to. Otacon was lonely and had no friends (according to Emma)... a phrase comes to mind. You tolerate abuse because you're afraid of being alone... how easy would it have been for Julie to frame the entire thing as the love that Otacon had been seeking? How messed up would that make you when you grew up when it comes to relationships?
I always thought Otacon's choice of words was somewhat telling when he reveals what happened to him... he says she seduced him, not that she abused him. Enough to admit that it wasn't his idea, but not enough to realize (or maybe admit) that it was abuse. Even so, he still knows somewhere that it was wrong enough that he thinks his father killed himself because of it. Otacon probably never had the time or opportunity to deal with that abuse through his life... just buried it on down and pretended it never happened because Kojima threw it on him without thinking about it and then forgot about it when it bored him.
Although this does raise the other question here, and this one Peacewalker really didn't help out with - what was the deal with Huey's death? From what I saw in Peacewalker, Huey doesn't seem about to kill himself about anything he's done. He just doesn't seem like the type for suicide. He was pretty adamant about trying to fix his mistakes re: peacewalker when confronted with them.
But more so than that, what exactly would even be his motivation to kill himself? I assumed that Otacon is just blaming himself for it when he says that his dad killed himself because of what happened with Julie, but still. Even if Otacon was right, and Huey found out about what happened with Julie and Otacon... why would he kill himself? Why would THAT be his reaction? Why not just divorce Julie? Why not confront either of them about it? Why not actually try to fix the problem?
I mean, what would be the emotions that lead to that decision? Would he just feel betrayed by Julie? Would that really be enough to make you kill yourself? Or would he feel terrible about how his son was abused and he had no idea, and thus he'd kill himself for that instead of actually trying to help him? Either way it just doesn't add up for me. With what I saw in Peacewalker, that doesn't seem like something he'd do. PARTICULARLY when you consider Emma.
There are some theories that say that Huey dragged Emma into the pool with him when he drowned himself. I absolutely can't see him doing that, why would he try to drown his stepdaughter for no reason? What purpose would that serve? And Emma could swim before it happened too, so just him throwing her in there wouldn't automatically make her drown. He'd have to be making a conscious effort to keep her in there. I can't see him being so petty that he'd drown Julie's daughter in revenge for her molesting his son. That's completely ridiculous.
But if he didn't kill himself... then what happened? Assuming that they have an in-ground pool (an above ground pool makes this way more complicated), Huey could concievably have slipped in (or been pushed in, but by who?), and he could have just drowned by accident. This seems the most likely to me. Where Emma comes in is trickier, but possibly she saw him drowning and tried to help him, and ended up nearly drowning herself.
What's also weird is how Otacon didn't hear it happening because, apparently, he was with Julie. Did they just have sex in a soundproof basement or something? I mean you'd think there'd be a lot of splashing and noise when someone was drowning, and that'd probably be enough to make you stop having sex with someone. You'd think that at least one of them would have noticed. WHERE WERE THEY
Did Julie hear it and stop Otacon from going out to check? Why would she do that?
How did Huey even find out about what happened? Did he stumble across them by accident? Did Otacon or Julie tell him? Did he find out but never say anything to either of them? Did he even find out at all? Did Otacon feel so intensely guilty about what happened that he just assumed his dad KNEW somehow, and THAT'S why he killed himself, rather than Huey just accidentally falling into the pool randomly one day?
And jesus, what would that be like, to find out that your spouse had been sexually abusing your child? What kind of a revelation would that be? Maybe that guilt WOULD be enough to lead you to kill yourself, although abandoning your abused child without warning would really just make the situation for him worse.
The other part that sort of puzzles me is Otacon's mention that Julie sent letters. He doesn't seem to bear a lot of ill will towards her... even though he does say that she instigated the relationship. My guess is that he just internalized all the guilt himself and blames himself for what happened, rather than Julie. If he'd just said no, that kind of thing. They apparently kept in some contact afterwards, although god knows how awkward that would have been. Maybe Otacon just wanted to keep track of Emma, since they were both so young and were so close. Man, how would Julie feel after Huey died, would she feel responsible as well? Would she even care? She cared enough to tell Otacon that Emma was terrified of swimming.
Maybe Huey's death would have been enough to wake her up to what she was doing, and she decided to take Emma and move away. Pretty much abandoning Otacon at 17 right after his dad died, that's kind of harsh. The two of them exchanging letters about what happened, Julie always emphasising that it was wrong but it was consensual, they were BOTH responsible, something something, coaching Otacon into believing it wasn't abuse and that it was his fault it happened, so on so on.
Or maybe relating back to his ending thing about love, maybe he was so desperate to pretend that someone cared about him, or that his family hadn't completely imploded, that it wasn't abuse and someone loved him, that he was willing to pretend and exchange letters. It was the closest thing to love he had left, and he didn't really know anything else.
And if Emma was right and Otacon was a nerdy loser with no friends, that means Julie was probably his first. How sad is that?
Then you move forward to Sniper Wolf, and it could be that he fell in love with someone that was unattainable and he knew that, someone that wouldn't ever reciprocate. Someone safe he could love from afar, who wouldn't hurt him or end up hurting people around him. OR IT WAS STOCKHOLM SYNDROME BUT JUST THROWIN IT OUT THERE
And if he was never involved with anyone again until Naomi came around, yeesh. It'd explain why he was so jumpy and frightened everytime she was coming on to him. i've always thought that though
And I actually just remembered, Otakon started in 1994, which would be a year before Huey met Julie. Coincidence that Otacon got so involved and interested in anime that he named himself after an anime convention around the same time he was being sexually abused by a family member, or was it a coping mechanism? WHO KNOWS.
this got way too long BASICALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT OTACON'S BACKSTORY REALLY DEPRESSES ME and i probably put way more thought into it than kojima did, since he mentioned it once and then never talked about it again. BUT STILL
someone asked me if I'd do LET strips about Julie and teenOtacon or something and it's like no man there's nothing funny about that to me
but again i could just be projecting
GOD THIS IS LONG
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!