#with ocelot it's like you pull back the curtain to see how his brain works and there's nothing there. he's a 404 error. that's the point

[hylaversicolor]

wait just kidding i have more to say

mgs is difficult to analyze. it’s extremely hard to watch a mgs cutscene and understand what kind of character emotions you’re supposed to be feeling from it in the moment. the story isn’t exactly character driven in that the characters’ relationships are mainly established offscreen or through exposition or both, often using shorthand (we care about the boss because she has a maternal vibe which kojima exploits for an emotional payoff; the boss isn’t a strongly written character, her relationship with snake isn’t organic, she’s a walking talking thesis statement on wars and borders). her and snake’s relationship in the game consists of her explaining her motivations to him and him reacting to it, then she defects and he asks her “why did you defect?” about a thousand times until she explains herself one more time and then he kills her. there’s nothing like “remember that time we worked together in xyz place,” they have no inside jokes, no flashbacks of them training or working together, it’s all meant to be filled in by the player and perhaps their own memories of their mother or some other mentor figure they have in their life. the same applies to ocelot. he always, always wears gloves (classic trope for concealment/hiding something) and he NEVER explains himself in his own words or if he does he uses half truths or ambiguous wording, or is obscured from the camera or the viewer in some way (x).

we’re not meant to understand ocelot’s intentions based on just what appears in the games themselves. and at the same time it feels like…cheating, almost? to take words from kojima that appear outside the games (even if they did come from kojima himself) and say “this one interpretation of the words is definitively what was going on”

because metal gear is not really about what kojima says outside of the games. mgs is not meant to be clear or unambiguous. the stuff on screen is just one half of the story; by design, half (more than half?) of the story comes from the player: from from the player’s decisions and preconceived notions and lived experiences. metal gear is about the player’s interpretation of intentionally vague storytelling. THAT is why kojima relies on movie tropes for shorthand. he makes games that can easily be interpreted in a variety of ways and that is the Point!! by the nature of the very thing there isn’t a clear answer as to whether or not ocelot’s love for bb is romantic or not. but regardless of whether or not it is, ocelot STILL did everything he did for bb and died for him in the end. there is no easy answer and there is no correct interpretation. thanks