#god i wanna analyze zero so bad WHAT IS HAPPENING IN YOUR HEAD SIR

[sir-yeehaw-paws]

Thinking about Les Enfants Terribles again and how much I’d love to do a proper meta on Zero sometime if I can wrap my head around what I think he’s like a person vs what little we get of him as a whole. Because there really is just something so incredibly sinister about that whole thing, from start to finish.

Like, the whole thing is absolutely monstrous even on a surface level, but it’s this bit here that has me thinking, repeatedly, “Wow, people, be they children or adults, mean absolutely nothing to Zero as people.” If anyone sees people as tools, then I believe Major Zero would be firmly up there.

Now granted, in another post I’d like to point out he like every other character is much more complicated than that, and I do think he has some genuine feeling towards other people, but his obsession with Snake is..something else. And unlike say, Ocelot, I can’t even explain it away with something as (far easier IMO) as romantic interest and personal obsession within that. Because while Zero does think of Snake as a friend (and says so in his own private tape), he’s ultimately so desperate to keep whatever makes Snake, ‘Snake’ the perfect soldier, the ultimate weapon alive that the consequences and body count apparently matters little in the end.

Honestly, even the project title is..hardly encouraging.

That’s one way to put it, Ocelot.

Enough so that the project was considered ‘unsustainable’ and thus abandoned, after what I’m going to assume was the creation of Solidus. We know Solidus (George) was created sometime after Eli and David were. But I’m of the belief that it takes a very..particular mindset in the first place to be so desperate for someone to, essentially, procreate, that they use their DNA without their consent, suffer the trials of multiple failed subjects and then don’t even bother to make sure that the RESULT of that project (aka living, breathing human beings) are even properly cared for and looked after.

Because no. Zero does not make sure the boys are kept safe. At all.

In varied foster homes, yes. Now I know damned well that not all foster care is bad. But David himself alludes to having something of an unstable upbringing. And I don’t understand why Zero bothered separating them to begin with, but that’s another thing.

And speaking of Eli,

When Eli disappears nobody, especially not Zero, bothers to find him. They fully, willingly left a child that they created with the express purpose of one day fulfilling the goal of the perfect soldier, and even at this point just a KID, vanishes. And nobody does a THING about it.

Eli has super strength, an attitude and speaks two or three languages. But he’s also still TWELVE YEARS OLD. Meanwhile the most Zero could be bothered was to put David in various homes in the USA, and wait until he turned 18. Knowing full well that he’d probably end up in the military.

Maybe Zero figured that if Eli survived, it’d be a testament to the project at large, and a sign of how ‘successful’ it was. But that doesn’t change the fact that he just lets these kids that only exist because of HIS desires for perfect soldiers, get abandoned.

(It’s interesting to me too that the only other people we know to be on par with this kind of belief about people is Dr. Clark, though we never hear her thoughts on it, and Huey, who goes on and on to Venom Snake about how ‘much of a loss’ it’d be if Snake’s genes ‘died with him’. That’s the kind of moral ground Zero appears to be working on.)

The most detailed information regarding Les Enfants Terribles comes from MGS4, (see here, though there are no subtitles, please refer to this video to cross reference the points I make below). We know from the description Eva gives to Solid Snake in this briefing that the project was:

Designed to create the ‘perfect clone’ of Big Boss. Whom was seen as ‘the ultimate soldier’.

There were dozens of failures.

The successful egg came from ‘Dr. Clark’s assistant, a healthy Japanese woman’.

Eva willingly offered to surrogate.

I want to put some emphasis on that as well. The woman who contributed her egg to the project is never once mentioned in game by name. Now, granted, an egg donor can choose to be anonymous, but it ends up looking like Zero cares so little about people as people that who the donor is here hardly matters, as long as the end result is his perfect soldiers.

Furthermore, I’d like to refer to the MGS Fandom Wiki’s Entry on the Les Enfants Terribles Project, for some added information, namely:

It wasn’t enough for Zero and those involved to create the clones in the first place, but they had to make damned sure that those clones would never be given the freedom or autonomy of making decisions about something like reproduction, or about the kind of life they could live where they have the ability to grow, mature, and enjoy their time naturally. Because they were essentially programmed with self-destruct terminator genes to keep them from being a threat. Zero didn’t just have clones made, Zero had clones made that would eventually self-destruct and never make children of their own, because these fundamentally are not people to him, and they never were.

Nobody even TELLS David this, mind you. Now granted Zero is fully unable to communicate by the time David learns about the existence of Les Enfants Terribles, and Liquid didn’t know about the rapid aging either. Solidus somehow found out on his own. In the end, an aging David is left with Otacon to figure out the truth for himself. Going through a battery of Dr’s tests and hospital visits until they are able to put the pieces together.

Zero created, abandoned, and ultimately completely used and destroyed three people (and destroyed the trust and relationship he had with Big Boss) all for..what? To have perfect soldiers that, in the end, never accomplished what he wanted in the first place. Which if anything else is some karma for the man.

What Zero DOES care about, is control.

His specialty is controlling information, but in the same tape he tells Ocelot matter-of-factly, that if someone does find Snake, he’ll deal with them. And the tone of his voice is enough to imply that he means violently.

Liquid is defeated by David. Solidus is defeated by Raiden and David himself goes against being a soldier entirely and turns to destroying the war economy and most if not all of what it stands for. David dies, but so do the Patriots.

I’d also like to point out that Zero’s inability to see people as people appears to extend beyond the children, and while it might seem out of place in this essay, if I ever do go into my attempted meta of Zero’s character, I think it bears some mention.

It’s how Zero talks about Venom.

THAT’S AN ENTIRE GODDAMNED PERSON ZERO!! THAT IS A HUMAN BEING!! THAT IS AN ENTIRE! PERSON!! A COMATOSE! PERSON!

It’s also VERY interesting to me how subtly manipulative Zero is towards Ocelot in this tape.

So much to think about there. Another time.

It’s also telling to me that, for all Big Boss doesn’t like the kids, he still has more grace regarding them than Zero does. He does say what they are is sick, but he also makes sure Ocelot knows he still thinks of them as humans, and wants them treated as humans.

The tone of these tapes cannot be adequately conveyed in my analysis, but at the end of the day, the entire existence of Les Enfants Terribles is one of the darkest, overarching plots of Metal Gear as a whole. Watching David in MGS4 and thinking about how a man so driven by his obsession with another man, a man who at the end of the day wasn’t even superhuman, all for the sake of..what? And the trail of bodies in his wake as a result.

I do want to analyze Zero better sometime. He’s terrifying and fascinating and while we don’t get much about him, what we are given is pretty tantalizing, and I suppose I could’ve just summed all this up as “Les Enfants Terribles’ is sinister as hell.” But I’m a windbag, what can I say? And how I was feeling bad for kid Eli.