Attention, Metal Gear fans.
I've kept my mouth shut on the topic for a while now, but after playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Series Murder of the Kojima, and replaying the original MGS for confirmation, I feel well-equiped to smackdown a certain bizarre characterization idea I see running wild across the net. It's especially prevalent on TV Tropes, the internet's second-greatest shrine to shitty memes, missing the point as completely as is possible without actually trying, and the woobification of total monsters. Which means I shouldn't really even feel the need to say anything, given that TV Tropes rejects Wikipedia's quality control as too restrictive, but since it has somehow become trendy simply to link people to that site as if it were an authority on anything, I will.
Said bizarre idea is that Revolver Ocelot is somehow a hero. He's become heroically popular with the fandom, at any rate. One troper, in his/her enthusiastic defense of his/her icon, even proclaims that "Ocelot [is] the true hero of the series."
Let's think about this for a moment. Just a moment.
The basis for this idea is, as nearly as I can tell, the revelation in MGS4 that he was working for Big Boss the whole time. This isn't all that convincing as far as arguments for goodness go: in Metal Gear 2, Big Boss openly states that his goal is to start an endless world war. Granted, he later gets a really tragic backstory, but when it comes time for Eva to explain what the hell's going on to Snake, does she say that the whole endless war thing was just a ruse, that Big Boss really had good intentions, or anything of that nature? The closest she comes to anything of the sort is saying that yes, Big Boss was trying to overthrow Zero, but both of them had missed the Boss' point entirely. Big Boss apparently took the Boss's desire to see a war free of national bounderies, and decided he'd fulfill that wish by actually bringing about that "war of all against all" thing Hobbes talked about.* This is confirmed by one of Ocelot's last lines.
"This is only the beginning, Snake. America will descend into chaos... It'll be the Wild West all over again. No law, no order. Fire will spread across the world. The people will fight... And through battle they will know the fullness of life. At last... Our father's will... His Outer Heaven... Is complete."
...And just in case you totally weren't paying attention, that confirms Ocelot's plan too. Technically, he's still partly "Liquid" there, but closer to his normal self than he's been for the rest of the game up to that point. It's him talking.
Even if we leave aside the fact of his more or less evil goal, there's still the fact that he's enthusiastic about torture to contend with. And he likes to kill people, although probably not to the extent he likes to torture them. He is sympathetic, and one could maybe call him an antivillian if not for him enjoying his work so much... but he's a bad guy. No way around it. Sorry.
Anyhow, the point of all this is that once, just once, I'd like to enjoy something slightly popular, and then get online to find out that the fandom hasn't made a hero out of a character only three steps removed from baby eating. That's all.
*I know Big Boss recants this at the end of MGS4, when he's dying. That doesn't negate his previous nastiness, and Ocelot didn't get the memo anyway.
~Chaotic Neutral
Said bizarre idea is that Revolver Ocelot is somehow a hero. He's become heroically popular with the fandom, at any rate. One troper, in his/her enthusiastic defense of his/her icon, even proclaims that "Ocelot [is] the true hero of the series."
Let's think about this for a moment. Just a moment.
The basis for this idea is, as nearly as I can tell, the revelation in MGS4 that he was working for Big Boss the whole time. This isn't all that convincing as far as arguments for goodness go: in Metal Gear 2, Big Boss openly states that his goal is to start an endless world war. Granted, he later gets a really tragic backstory, but when it comes time for Eva to explain what the hell's going on to Snake, does she say that the whole endless war thing was just a ruse, that Big Boss really had good intentions, or anything of that nature? The closest she comes to anything of the sort is saying that yes, Big Boss was trying to overthrow Zero, but both of them had missed the Boss' point entirely. Big Boss apparently took the Boss's desire to see a war free of national bounderies, and decided he'd fulfill that wish by actually bringing about that "war of all against all" thing Hobbes talked about.* This is confirmed by one of Ocelot's last lines.
"This is only the beginning, Snake. America will descend into chaos... It'll be the Wild West all over again. No law, no order. Fire will spread across the world. The people will fight... And through battle they will know the fullness of life. At last... Our father's will... His Outer Heaven... Is complete."
...And just in case you totally weren't paying attention, that confirms Ocelot's plan too. Technically, he's still partly "Liquid" there, but closer to his normal self than he's been for the rest of the game up to that point. It's him talking.
Even if we leave aside the fact of his more or less evil goal, there's still the fact that he's enthusiastic about torture to contend with. And he likes to kill people, although probably not to the extent he likes to torture them. He is sympathetic, and one could maybe call him an antivillian if not for him enjoying his work so much... but he's a bad guy. No way around it. Sorry.
Anyhow, the point of all this is that once, just once, I'd like to enjoy something slightly popular, and then get online to find out that the fandom hasn't made a hero out of a character only three steps removed from baby eating. That's all.
*I know Big Boss recants this at the end of MGS4, when he's dying. That doesn't negate his previous nastiness, and Ocelot didn't get the memo anyway.
~Chaotic Neutral