#idk what else to tag this as but i think i got evrything LMAO

[chikkou]

late to the discussion but what do you think about buzzo?

im definitely not as passionate about him as other characters in the series, but i find him pretty interesting... its fascinating the way he scapegoats brad for his own guilt about what happened to lisa, and then after brad mutates, has to come to terms with the fact that brad was not the monster he built him up to be in his head, and that he basically drove him to joy addiction and his untimely death for no reason

buzzo was at his peak power in the painful, and while its cool to see, i actually find it better as a build up to his downfall. he had most of olathe under his thumb, he was living this out this life of twisted hedonism with no one to stop him, and its not until he encounters brad after a long while of not seeing him that the whole thing starts to unravel. note his initial reaction when brad first encounters him in the painful - after doing his creepy drug dealer schtick, once he actually sees who hes talking to, the whole persona drops for a moment and he simply states, “oh... its you.” brad doesnt recognize buzzo, but buzzo recognizes HIM, and i think the sight of him brought back memories that buzzo wanted to leave behind him, thus why he began the game of torturing brad with impossible decisions (party member or all your stuff, party member or your limbs, etc). 

but that cant last forever. as much as buzzo wants to blame brad, deep down he KNOWS brad was not the one at fault for lisas death. he fights against that though, and keeps torturing brad until it kills him - but that isnt justice. it doesnt bring lisa back, or make up for the sins done to her, and he isnt even targeting the right person. he seems to have realized that in the joyful - hes miserable pretty much the entire game, and doesnt smile at all anymore (whereas in the painful, that big smile was his default sprite). he sleeps with brad beside his bed because brad is the last living tie he has to lisa, and torturing him had been the only way he could still feel connected to her before that. i think realizing that is what makes him change his mind about olathe and yado, and leads to him getting himself killed to stop yado. 

i definitely was a much bigger fan of buzzo in the joyful, because while he is formidable and threatening in the painful, in the joyful we get to see his entire web unwinding and the truth spilling out. he never really grew up properly. he was so wrapped up in that trauma, he never learned how to cope or move on, and it corrupted him from the inside out. he blames himself so much, he projected all that onto brad because he had to blame anyone else, and brad was a convenient sponge. but its himself that he really hates. this is most easily seen when he mutates in front of buddy and barely attacks her during the battle; he spends most of the fight crying, calling out for lisa, and biting himself to kill himself faster. 

speaking of buddy, its also interesting to note that he has zero interest in her, in ANY capacity - the only times he interacts with her were specifically designed to torment brad. he forces brad to choose between cutting off her nipple or killing all of his party members, and has one of his men hit her with a club in order to force brad to consume several joy pills. but he doesnt want her, and surprisingly, he is actually one of the less cruel characters to her. he is still cruel, of course, but i would put him pretty far down the list - he doesnt come anywhere near mr angoneli, who scars her face and wounds her eye, or yado, who killed her mother and abandoned her to use her as a pawn in whatever game he was playing with olathe. even brad technically does worse, since apart from making her kill at least two innocent men, he also kicks her so hard she flies across a room, and then beats her so badly she visibly begins bleeding while she is trying to protect marty. 

but he has no qualm with her. he actually helps her in the joyful, and more than once - he saves her from brad after he mutates (its unclear if brad would have seriously harmed her, but as there is a battle encounter between the two of them before buzzo steps in, its possible he could have), explicitly tells his joy boys not to touch her when she enters their hideout, and later saves her again from sweetheart, taking mortal damage in the process. i definitely think her resemblance to lisa is a big part of why, but more than that, i think buzzo at this point has become genuinely regretful - he knows he has done wrong, and a lot of it, but he cant just walk back all the things hes done. he helps buddy in such a way that it doesnt seem cognizant at first; after all, if hed wanted to harm her, he could have easily done so right at the start. buddy was alone and trapped between both buzzo and brad. but that was never his goal; his motivation, like brads, is almost exclusively centered around lisa, but when he has finally slain the last person who had any direct connection to her, he realizes that it is much, much too late. 

at the end of the day i guess what i find most interesting about buzzo is the parallels between him and brad, and his little “relationship” with buddy. brad and buzzo deal with near-identical guilt, as the only two people who knew what lisa was going through but didnt (or couldnt) stop it - but while brad internalizes that pain and primarily focuses on dulling the pain with drugs and alcohol, buzzo externalizes it and makes all those around him suffer instead. its heavily implied that his trauma from mutilating lisas face and practicing amputation on those animals gave buzzo some kind of amputation fetish, since many of his joy boys are missing one arm, and if buddy talks to them with her joy mask on, one of them will compliment her for having both arms, suggesting that buzzo does this somewhat regularly. he doesnt know what to do with those feelings, so he makes everyone in his life suffer as he is suffering, something that brad does unintentionally. theres just SO much to get into with him that its really hard to narrow it all down LMAO