đ
for every đ I get, I'll reveal one of the most important people in my muse's life
i wouldnât say that sheâs one of the most important people in snakeâs life, but sheâs important enough to warrant discussion, so letâs talk about sniper wolf -- specifically, sniper wolfâs death. and to talk about this, we have to talk about big boss and the boss.
so like⌠one of big bossâs huge things is that post-joyâs death he doesnât really kill his enemies. he much prefers to draw them over to his side. and i know that a lot of people say that he would have just shot quiet, and that itâs supposed to parallel the bossâs death and show how venom is different from bb; and in some ways i agree and in some ways i donât, because big boss makes an effort to recruit all of his enemies before killing them, so i think that it could also be taken to show how, put in the same situation, heâs not going to repeat himself; heâs going to take a given person and pull them close and use them.
and the thing is he does this with sniper wolf; he takes her in and he keeps her alive and fills her up with vengeance until all she wants to do is kill or be killed, just like big boss himself; he takes everything away from her but the fighting. so if snakeâs story is one of undoing the damage that big boss has done, then his killing sniper wolf in particular is very poignant, because she is a direct result of the work that we saw big boss doing in the last game, showing how the aftereffects havenât gone away just because zanzibar land was destroyed -- how outer heaven as an idea is still affecting people. it doesnât need set borders to be a driving force in the world: so long as big boss, dead or alive, can convince people that all they can do is fight, outer heaven is still alive out there.
and the fact that sniper wolf is splayed out in a field of white with snake standing over her, paralleling the bossâs death, and that snake shoots her very peacefully and consents to her wishes with an enormous amount of respect for her and her struggles marks both a similarity to big boss and a divergence from his path. the boss tearfully thanks naked snake for listening to her, but we know by peace walker that he didnât listen too well; he dismissed what she said or warped it in his head and clung to the boss that he knew before the virtuous mission. meanwhile snake is content to just hear his enemies out, and in the end, he is almost always completely impartial. however, in sniper wolfâs case, he goes out of his way to comfort her and reassure her that what she did was not evil â maybe because he was also a victim of big boss.
he also hands her her gun as opposed to the boss handing jack her gun; heâs letting her violence die with her instead of taking it, twisting it, and perpetuating it, and he respects that itâs time for her to lay it all to rest.
he also kills her in front of someone who loves her, an doesnât tear on otacon at all for it. when otacon asks what wolf was fighting for, what heâs supposed to be fighting for, and what snake is fighting for, snake doesnât even give him a concrete answer. in the mgs4 novelization, they have a conversation about this â i believe itâs when snake is in the microwave hallway, actually, and otacon says that snake never ended up answering his question. snake says that, at that time, he was only fighting for himself to feel alive, but he didnât tell otacon that, which big boss definitely would have. he didnât try to influence him at all. he didnât try to interpret the will of the woman he just killed. he just let it be.
i donât even know where iâm going with this. solid snake is good 2k16.
