#140.96

This is the last of the Social Injustice Raiden codecs, I promise. And if you stay tuned to this blog, you'll find out why MGS2 Raiden's sexism is a crucial part of his characterization - not merely a gimmick to anger/enable the Anita Sarkeesians of the world (who weren't even a thing when the game was released back in 2001).

But wait, isn’t Rose the one being sexist here? “It’s not women that are strong” – you can’t get more blatantly sexist than that, right?

Actually, you can’t get more blatantly anti-sexist than that. Confused? Then consider the following:

A man with years of military training is walking down the street with some untrained male buddies when they see a woman being mugged at gunpoint. The trained man rescues her while the other men maintain a safe distance, only for the woman to remark, “I guess men really are heroic.” The trained man and his buddies exchange awkward glances as the woman’s comment simultaneously reduces the individual man’s years of hard work to a mere side-effect of his gender and burdens his same-gender untrained friends with the expectation of life-risking heroism.

Get the picture now? Congratulations, you’ve discovered the insidious trap of benevolent stereotypes that result in benevolent prejudice, including the benevolent sexism we see from Raiden in this convo. It’s “benevolent” because it says positive things about the demographic in question, but it’s still ultimately harmful because it reduces complex human beings to nothing more than a single aspect of their existence that isn't even within their control (gender, ethnicity, etc.), and fails to respect any of those people's individuality.

So when Rose says “It’s not women that are strong – it’s me,” she’s telling Raiden to stop assuming that everyone who just happens to be female must automatically be strong or that any individual female is strong only because of her gender instead of her personal effort as an individual. This is more obvious in the Japanese version, which syntactically isolates the words "women" and "I/me" to clearly indicate that Rose was taking issue with Raiden's unwarranted generalization rather than trying to brag about how she's better than other women.

For anyone who still doubts that Rose was correcting a sexist remark by Raiden, here’s a reminder that Raiden has a documented tendency to reduce Rose’s individual actions to her gender and further dehumanize other females. Raiden can’t be bothered to get to know them on a deeper level as individuals, even for the sake of getting into their pants. Again, stay tuned for future posts to find out why he behaves this way.

As the title suggests, you can get this as a random post-save call “a while after” the beginning of the game; how long that while is, I don’t know.

(Transcript under the Read More)

The lobster convo, by request. For the record, this is by far not the only convo in the game hinting at Rose's terrible cooking. The parentheticals are just the icing on the cake.

Afaik, this is a random post-save call that you can get at any time in the game.

(Transcript under the Read More)

[Homecoming party]

Rose: Jack... when you get home, let's have a homecoming party. Just the two of us. 

Raiden: Yeah, that's a good idea. 

Rose: I'll make dinner. 

Raiden: Eh? (You serious, please don't!)

Rose: What's wrong? 

Raiden: Well, that sounds good, but how about we eat out at that one restaurant instead? 

Raiden: You know, the place that we went to recently, with the amazing lobster... I really liked that place. 

Rose: Well...yeah, I guess that's okay too. 

Raiden: Whew... (relieved)

Rose: Huh?

Raiden: Er, nothing. I-I just love lobster. Yeah. Can't wait. Woo-hoo! 

Rose: ...? (thinking something's a little off) Well then, I'll make a reservation. 

Rose: Promise me you'll come back safely. 

Now I'm the first person to step in whenever someone accuses Rose of distracting Raiden from the mission with her relationship talk because let's be real here:

It's not her relationship talk that distracts him.

It's her ruthless cockteasing.

Re-translated the last line because the removal of the "I'll advise you" part makes it seem rather non-sequitur.

As stated, you can get this call if you save with the porno mag ("BOOK") equipped. 

(Transcript under the Read More)

[When porno mag equipped]

Rose: By the way, Jack...what's that you're holding? 

Raiden: Uh, well... 

Rose: Look, if it's bothering you that much, you should just say so. 

Raiden: Eh? And if I do? 

Rose: Uh hn... 

Don't worry Rose, in a few years he'll become completely incapable of ever having another nicotine craving!

As stated, this is a post-save call you can get with the cigarettes equipped.

(Transcript under the Read More)

[When cigarettes equipped]

Rose: By the way, Jack, are you smoking? 

Raiden: Yeah... (takes a deep drag)

Rose: I thought you quit smoking! Why did you start again? 

Raiden: There are lots of reasons... 

Rose: Look, I'm only thinking about your health, okay? Remember the last time you quit -- how hard it was? 

Raiden: Yeah... it was pretty tough... 

Rose: Wasn't it? So you should... 

Raiden: I've got it, Rose. I've thought of a way to avoid all that pain and suffering. 

Rose: What are you going to do? 

Raiden: Keep smoking. 

Rose: Jack!

Raiden: Just kidding. I know it's bad for me. I'll quit as soon as I get back. (takes another deep drag)

Rose needs to stop holding everyone else to her high standards of intelligence - just because she's too smart to be fooled by a cardboard box doesn't mean everyone else is! 

Interestingly, this is the only conversation where Rose explicitly calls out Raiden's stupidity. The rest of the time she just subtly implies it, usually with the result of her implications flying over his head and thus proving her point.

This is a random post-save call you can get with the Box equipped.

(Transcript under the Read More)

[While wearing a cardboard box]

Rose: What -- I-I can't believe this! What are you wearing? 

Raiden: Er... it's a disguise. 

Rose: A disguise? What kind of disguise? 

Raiden: Well, I was hoping I could use it kind of like camouflage... you know, fool the enemy into thinking I was a box.. 

Rose: You'd have to be an absolute idiot to be fooled by that! 

Raiden: Yeah, maybe, but there are more idiots in this world than you think. 

Rose: ...You mean like you? 

Raiden: Huh?

While the original and translated versions of this conversation have the same general gist, I feel like the nuances were different enough to warrant re-translating most of it. Personally, I prefer the original version because:

1) "putting the moves on a girl" has very different connotations from "starting a relationship," and I'm frankly disappointed that the official translation turned it into More Relationship Talk instead of what it originally was: Rose asking Raiden about game

2) the original version doesn't just have Rose ask Raiden about game, it has her describe the general process of game in enough detail (i.e. more than in the English version) that it makes you realize just how strong her game must be

3) as a result of the original convo initially being about game, Raiden has just essentially admitted that HIS GAME WEAK but we already knew he was beta

4) The original version is a lot more straightforward about what Raiden's trying to avoid: finding out the truth about a person, whether it's himself or someone else. Much more comprehensible than some vague shit about "what might be hidden inside" and "complications."

Also note the parenthetical script cues; they are quite revealing. 

This call is one that I believe you can get as an optional [select] call that triggers randomly during the bomb disposal event if you take long enough.

(Transcript under the Read More)

Considering that Rose is a Patriot spy, she almost certainly knew where the bomb was all along, which makes these two convos taken together a huge troll on her part (hell, the whole "wow how sexist" "lol jk" part in itself is top-notch trolling). Why they removed her glorious sense of humor when they reintroduced her in MGS4, I'll never know. But I blame fandumb hate.

The irony is that the whole "women's intuition" thing is in fact a pretty darn sexist thing to say - it's benevolent prejudice against women (women are really "in tune" with their irrational gut feelings) and implied negative prejudice against men (since men don't have this kind of intuition they wouldn't be capable of figuring out something like that). This is by far not the only instance of Raiden being sexist, though, so feel free to start counting.

This two-part conversation is rather difficult to get, which explains why no one except a single Japanese LPer has uploaded it. You can't get the second convo without getting the first one, and in order to get the first one you must call the Colonel three times during disposal of the final bomb. The first convo here is the third of those calls, and it only occurs if there are 10 seconds or less on the clock (which means in all likelihood that you'll game over in the time it takes to both drag Fatman off and spray the coolant). After you go through that whole rigmarole, you then have to call up Rose - not the Colonel this time - and save, and hope the second conversation comes up. As noted, you'll only get it if you haven't met the Cyborg Ninja yet, which is literally the very next event. Yeah.

(Transcript under the Read More)