We don't know much about the Boss's relationship with the Sorrow. Like, on some level it's a weird relationship, considering War makes him sad and makes her happy.
The Sorrow seems like someone who cares about how people feel about themselves, and their self-reflection on their actions, so him trying to get her to open up is. In line. With what we see of him.
But it's never clear if she ever actually did. She probably cared for him, but we have no idea if she was open about it. Or if the sex was as no-nonsense and brusque as everything else she does, with the occasional soft look and lingering glance or caress when she thought nobody else could see.
Or she told him everything and that's what she does with people she actually is in love with romantically. Which would put Strangelove in that category.
Either way, the only person we know the Boss had an emotionally open, communicative relationship of any kind is. Strangelove.
And even then she seemingly hid it and they only talked like that late at night when everyone else at Nasa was asleep, because I guess the Boss really doesn't like people knowing she has feelings.
Didn't The Boss only have a feelings talk with Strangelove only once, though? Also Strangelove made it pretty clear that The Boss didn't seem to be talking to her per se, just using her as a stand-in for her kid she had no contact with.
I thought Stranglove mentioned multiple occasions of just the two of them late at night looking up at the stars and talking.
Like, maybe the Boss is just oblivious about all that romance and feelings stuff same as John, she did teach him after all, but the setup does seem kinda gay.
Also, we heard all of this from Strangelove's perspective, so it's entirely possible that she's just making it sound romantic because she thought it was romantic while The Boss' actual thoughts were, like, reflecting on her mission and hardly paying attention to Strangelove.
It's worth noting though that Strangelove tends to play down how. Sexually aggressive and amorous she is with women.
Like, definitely with Cecille, Strangelove talks about it like she's just being. Not "gentleman"my but. Helping protect Cecille from those thuggish guards.
Cecille's the one who brings up the part where Strangelove rubbed all over her in the bath.
So when Strangelove says she and the Boss grew closer than anyone else, and the she knew better than anyone else that the Boss had feelings.
In a weird way, the sense I get from Strangelove, with the precedent with Cecille, is that she's more likely to play that sort of thing down than delude herself like that.
I think for the emotional part of it she'd rather delude herself, but for the physical part of it she'd play it down. Did Strangelove sexually harass The Boss? Probably! Do we know for sure either way? No, because Strangelove wouldn't bring it up! Also it's up in the air how much The Boss would have actually cared about Strangelove commenting on her tits.
...You mentioned her tits and I just remembered that Strangelove recognized the scar Snake put the hacksaw in as being like the Boss'.
Snake lived and fought and trained with the Boss for years but apparently didn't see the scar til Tselinoyarsk.
They pissed in the jungle together probably.
To me, I now think the real tragedy is if Stranglove and the Boss banged, but it didn't really mean anything to Joy.
When Strangelove talks about Cecille to Snake, she mentions the emotions, and how she tried to help care for Cecille and protect her, but doesn't mention the touching until Snake brings it up.
> Implying the "Be Aware of your Surroundings at all times" Boss wouldn't notice.
No, but, realistically, what would happen is the Boss would recognize the camera as Strangelove's, and then suddenly Strangelove would find the Boss in her bathroom, still naked, and wet, in order to return the camera, which the Boss recognized as one of Strangelove's sensors from the monologues and lectures about science and tech that the Boss apparently memorized and asked Strangelove questions about, on the assumption Strangelove lost it somehow.
The sensor, and indeed every camera on base, had no images of the Boss recorded on it. Not that Strangelove needed any when she was right there, naked, asking to use Strangelove's towel, having not bothered to bring her own for her impromptu stealth mission.
Somehow she didn't even track water anywhere.
We are talking S+++ rank mission complete, no detection, no alerts, no kills, Total Stealth, Extreme, Subsistence, Naked.
...I'll be honest, I just want there to be an AU where Ocelot and Strangelove are coworkers and Strangelove gets drunk at a party and gets to yell "I fucked your mom!" at him.
..Thinking about it, I could make an argument that Strangelove and the Sorrow look similar, and Joy's type is actually bespectacled albino nerds.
I don't think I'd be wrong? Strangelove's not balding like the Sorrow was by the time he died, but their fashion senses are at least adjacent to each other, tbh.
And. To be honest, Strangelove's line "She was tough, yes. But she had feelings, too. I knew that better than anyone else." It can read as delusion to an extent. But it can also read as a kind of dramatic understatement.
Strangelove's nickname apparently already started in NASA, even though I don't think the Kubrick movie came out yet, because she had a "Strange Love". Her being a lesbian was the kind of secret that wasn't.
On the one hand, the Boss does emphasize how information collection and processing is key on the battlefield, so I feel like she would be incredibly in tune with the gossip mill. She's not as ignorant as John, I think. But that could just be me. That could be a similarity between them, or just an aspect she failed to teach. Either or.
John wouldn't ask questions about how the science works for something though. Joy did ask Strangelove and want her to explain the principles. And apparently the reason John read DeCartes is because the Boss apparently maybe literally beat him over the head with the books.
So I think she knew how gay Strangelove was for her, and if she did show up to Strangelove naked and didn't reciprocate, it was just to be a dick. Which, hey, is maybe where Ocelot gets it from.
...Anyway, the biggest reason I think Strangeboss might actually be reciprocal, is the way the Boss avoids the question and seems hesitant to say where she's been when John asks about why she left him. Doesn't wanna introduce her pseudo-adopted-bear-son to the girlfriend his age.
Yeah the movie hadn't come out yet, it came out in 1964. Unless that's just part of Metal Gear's alternate history.
I dunno, I can see The Boss being absolutely aware that Strangelove was hella gay for her and still doing that without reciprocation - like, she'd either see it as a "That's her problem, not mine" situation or else she just straight-up would not consider showing up in her room naked to be in any way sexual since she's literally just here to return a camera. Like she knows what kind of effect she has on Strangelove but doesn't acknowledge it because there's no reason for her to do so.
...tbh, There's plenty of m/m ships in the series that have less going for them, including Liquid/Mantis (where Liquid literally called Mantis a pathetic man; such love) and Otacon/Snake. Where Otacon fucked Naomi in a helicopter in the cargo hold of plane that Snake was also in.
Really, the only LGBT ships that are pretty explicit and not subjective are Ocelot/Big Boss and Strangelove/the Boss, and even then it's subjective whether the latter parties reciprocated.
...Unless Peace Walker's side-ops count. Then Kaz and Big Boss fucked in a box on the beach. But Big Boss also fucked someone he thought was a teenage girl.
And there's an island with an acid-dick-laser dinosaur and talking cats.
And Miller got paid to make Big Boss take pictures of ghosts.
I just find The Boss acting oblivious to Strangelove's feelings to be more interesting than plain reciprocity. It should be noted that I rarely touch Solicon.
PW's sideops are all canon. Also there's nothing to actually indicate BB did fuck Paz considering the side op ends with him saying "I'm kind of uncomfortable" as opposed to the Kaz one ending with Kaz going "Glad to be with you, Boss~", so it seems like Paz tried to get that d and BB was just like "uhhhh but aren't you sixteen" and curved her Paz: thot patrolled
I mean, Strangelove was kind a creep anyway, so...
I don't know if it changes, but the video I watched where BB says something about being uncomfortable was one where they did max out her affinity or whatever the game called it. He got Paz's hopes all up and then goes and pulls that "but I prefer my women legal" stuff :( rip Paz
I'm pretty sure Big Boss never talks at that point actually, and the "uncomfortable" is one of Paz's lines.
Probably because fucking in a box is probably not great on the joints, but it gets Big Boss harder than anything that isn't war, so.
Strangelove isn't significantly creepier than most characters, tbh.
And, like, Cecille didn't seem to mind the baths, and probably wouldn't have preferred execution, or bath time with any of the other Peace Sentinels. Or Hot Coldman. Or Huey. Or that giant toaster called the Mammal Pod. Cecille could tell Strangelove was attracted to her, but Strangelove did seem to be trying to restrain herself and behave as appropriately as possible in the circumstances, so.
...At the very least, I want to give the benefit of the doubt that she understood the Boss well enough for that Boss A.I. to be basically perfect, because the fact that it only ever broke because of one single piece of information Strangelove didn't have access to is. Kinda impressive, in a weird way, to me.
Also even before she fed in the Tselinoyarsk data the Boss A.I. was saying some of the same dialogue about "life's end isn't it beautiful" and "go home" even though Strangelove wasn't there and has no idea what she actually said so my only guess is, based on the Screaming Mantis principle, she copied the Boss so good the shit got haunted.
Strangelove got away with the Cécile thing purely because Cécile was kind of into it. Keep in mind that she also sexually harassed Paz (multiples times) and did not know that Paz was not, in fact, a teenage schoolgirl. Kinda works out for her because she really isn't, but she doesn't find that out until way later. Whoops! Plus she's still obsessing over The Boss almost ten years after she died... nevermind the last time she actually saw her. Even if they had been straight-up married that's still a little excessive. Building an AI version of your dead love from scratch is kinda creepy no matter how you cut it. So yeah Strangelove is one of the creepiest characters in MGS and the whole fandom gives her a pass on it because, let's face it, she's a woman. If she'd been a man and did the exact same things no one would like her. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
The Boss AI getting haunted by The actual Boss was a plot point in PW, remember? It's literally how that arc ended. Granted the only person who openly acknowledges it is Dr. "A tad fucked in the head" Strangelove, but that's still how it went down.
Like, the Paz shit is creepy, but most of the characters do the same sort of thing with her. BB can fuck her in a box, and Kaz is giving her suppositories and showing her "the real Kazuhira Miller". Granted he's the only one who knows she's with Cipher (although it's slightly unclear to me whether he knows her real age as a corollary to that). If I was going to condemn Strangelove, I'd condemn most of that game's cast.
Which, to be fair, I do. Part of the plot is how they become terrorists and warmongers. All kinda awful people. They still get to have at least something positive in their lives.
And Big Boss spends all of Peace Walker obsessing over the Boss, and in MGS4 literally dies over it.
Don't get me started on Zero.
I think what the MGS fandom really does is condemn Strangelove for shit that all of the male characters constantly get a pass for.
...Also, some people want to have their consciousness preserved in an A.I. there are entire internet communities about it, so.
Oh yeah, I looked it up and Paz is the one who says she feels awkward.
...that's still way more ambiguous than the Kaz one.
Pretty sure it was heavily implied if not outright stated that he knew her age, her at least knew she was older than she claimed to be. Plus iirc Kaz never actually touched her while Strangelove did.
That's presented as a bad thing. Like, unambiguously. His obsessing over The Boss is what leads directly to him becoming A VILLAIN later (chronologically) in the series. This is doubly true for Zero.
Literally where is Strangelove getting condemned for shit male characters get a pass for. Where is Strangelove getting condemned in general. The very, very few times I have seen anyone remotely criticize Strangelove's behavior the critic gets shouted down. Most of the fandom lionizes her as a tragic character who didn't do anything wrong and will rarely, if ever, acknowledge her behavior towards Paz and Cécile, and never acknowledge how weird her obsession with The Boss is.
There's nothing to indicate that The Boss would have actually wanted that, but I guess since she (briefly) haunted her AI that means she was chill with it after all. Or just completely willing to use it to stop a nuclear apocolypse which, y'know, not out-of-character...
I mean, they're all tragic; that's what makes it interesting.
And I guess where Strangelove gets condemned is what she basically says herself: She's the Woman Who Sold the World.
I don't know how much of her work is involved with the Patriot A.I., I know I've mentioned this before but now I keep going back to it and the only thing I can figure is that the Truth tapes are at odds with the rest of the game, or there's some detail that's unfinished or something (but then, what's new) but at the very least she felt responsible by the end.
...I mean, Kaz may not have touched her, but I dunno man. Going into her hospital room and starting to take off his pants to show her how to apply a suppository seems weird.
Even if he knows she's an adult spy, that still seems like entrapment or some shit.
EDIT: Oh god I have no idea what the metaphysics of MGS haunting are like. Like, do the ghosts have a choice in the matter or how much, and what's the difference between that and the necromancy with Frank Jaegar and John, and the ghost arms and...
I never said Strangelove wasn't an interesting character. I actually like her a lot. But she is deeply, deeply a flawed and most of the fandom won't acknowledge this.
Okay. I guess she does take some criticism for that. But that's an entirely separate issue...
Kaz is a whole 'nother can of worms entirely. And while there are (annoying) fans who think Kaz is a perfect sad little angle uwu, from what I've seen most people are able to acknowledge that that's, like, super inappropriate. I mean, the fact that it's super inappropriate is where the humor comes from in-game. Also on a slide scale of wrongness flashing an adult is less wrong than groping (someone you're under the impression is) a kid, even though it is still wrong. Basically MSF really needed some kind of anti-sexual harassment sensitivity training and both Strangelove and Kaz needed to be sent to it.
Honestly? I think The Last Days of FOXHOUND actually got it right, with the whole "a spirit can only posses a body that belongs to them" thing - it did explain the arm thing rather neatly, and with The Boss AI that could, since it was so similar to her in terms of 'personality', be easily considered a "body" (if you define body as "vessel"). It does seem like a voluntary process on the ghosts' end, though. Also wasn't it explained that Fox and BB just straight-up weren't actually dead? Almost dead, sure. But not dead dead. Still had brain activity.
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