#i was gonna work on actual things but alas. the worms have consumed what little brain matter i began with

[springcatalyst]

i just realized my rant under the club piece cut off at 30 tags even tho it let me write out more than that and i need to have this somewhere or i'll die so it is now yalls problem. alas

the fuckign. the way that the bosses each foil the main character in sifu. the intrinsic way their personalities and motivations are portrayed and told to us as the player is cool as balls anyway but their contrasts and similarities to the mc is. how u say. really satisfying

Kajar is, by all intents and purposes, a hermit. He has drawn dramatically inward in these 8 years, so much so that Yang is the ONLY one who is allowed to see him. He seems to spend all his time working, growing things. He never leaves that warehouse. Likewise, the mc is overwhelmingly alone- it's part of the pitch of the game, but really. We never get evidence that he has any friends, any family left, he doesn't really interact with people in a way that isn't violent. The most we get is indifference from the few non-aggressive npcs. A look around the wuguan shows that he just pours all his time and energy into this quest of his- finding his targets and training. There's not really room in that for a social life. The mc seems to look down on how oddly alone and holed-up Kajar is, but he does the exact same thing, just to less an extent. He's hypocritical that way.

Sean is FUCKING fascinating as a character, and even more so as a foil because he is a near-perfect juxtaposition. Both their fathers were members of the guardians... Sean took part in the thing that killed his own father. Chances are, Sean himself killed his own father. That's a far cry from the revenge we see the mc seek for his. But Sean also has people. He has built himself a community of sorts- it's imperfect and more than a little cult-like but it doesn't feel like it stems from a power fantasy of his because he abides by the same rules- he, too, is burned. Contrast this from the mc's crushing isolation, something that Sean doesn't seem to have a problem with.

Kiroki's museum is a fantastic segment and when I first played through it I stopped to read all the descriptors once I killed the enemies in an area because damn. But her art is all about duality and identity: her fight, too, separated into two distinct and opposing segments. The mc exhibits a sharp dissonance from who he is when fighting to who he is when not. It's something I really like about the game- all those small segments after clearing a level where you get to just sit alone in the quiet for a moment before continuing forward. They're very contemplative, something you don't typically see in fighting games. A fight is all ruthless motion and violence, but after the fact, he seems to be a more thoughtful person than you would expect, considering. He's clearly patient: biding his time for 8 years until he knew he could do it, until he had the ability and the knowledge to pull this off. This duality is showcased in a much sharper way in Kiroki- she goes from "I don't want to fight you" to "I'll kill you a hundred times over" in very little time. All her minibosses tell you she's past this, she's put it behind her, she doesn't want to fight. But when she gets to it, she's not only very good at it, but she DOES enjoy a fight. These two things are both true, not as hypocrisy, but as twins of each other. Speaking of twins (lol)- Kiroki's twin's death and her subsequent grief and regret, the destruction of her family and the way it follows her for years, chases her out of her home- that, too, is something that directly parallels the player character.

Jinfeng, I think, means well. Or at least, she did. She started her business and as well, her goal of killing the other guardians, to help people. But in the end she remains just another functionally useless CEO, up in her ivory tower, looking down at the people she began all this to aid. She, like the guardians she resented, keeps secrets hidden underground and uses her power to help herself, her acquaintances, and few others. Our character, likewise, began his quest with arguably honorable intentions. But he kills more than just the five that hurt him along the way, and hurts so many more. By the time he reaches his goal you have to ask: what has he really accomplished? All he's doing is continuing the same violence. All she's doing is upholding the same status quo.

Yang is the most obvious parallel to the player character. He is a direct line from here to there, from what he was to what he is- a line that the mc is following to the letter. Yang is, similarly to Jinfeng, a cycle of the same harm, the same violence. Yang was enbittered with loss and he used that to justify hurt- our character does the very same thing. He becomes precisely what he despises, and you see it coming from a mile away. But because of the different endings, he can also be a cycle broken. It depends on the choices you make. He is one thing, or the opposite. A parallel, or a juxtaposition.

And the thing about the bosses too is that the five of them together also prove something interesting, and that's that they are all so interconnected. 8 years later and their lives stay entwined, at least to an extent. Sean sends fighters to defend all the rest, particularly Kiroki and Yang, and is acutely aware of your killing of Kajar. Members of Kajar's gang are also members of Sean's club. Yang routinely checks up on Kajar, treats him for some illness that is never specified but is clearly chronic, or at least long-term. Jinfeng funds both Kiroki and Yang, and either has replicas of each other bosses' weapons, or gathers them after you kill them. Yang holds pieces of each member in his wuguan- courtesy of their talismans. They stay entwined even after their task is complete, aiding and defending one another. The main character has none of this. He is, as previously mentioned, remarkably alone. There is no evidence pointing to any allies, anyone at all on his side. He justifies and moralizes his revenge but ultimately who mourns for his death? The deaths he inflicts will cause far more ripple than his own ever would, because they are actually connected to each other. He is alone and so, as cruel as this sounds, his death would not be felt. Theirs will be and are as he stubbornly refuses to die. Of course, this doesn't have to be true: he can choose- not forgiveness, even, but nonviolence- and in doing so, chase away that isolation. But if he does what he set out to do, he stays alone just as much as they stay connected.