“One must die and one must live. No victory, no defeat.” – Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

[For this guest post, I am delighted to welcome Jaylee Warren for the first time. Jaylee is a queer comics writer from the Pacific Northwest. Her work focuses on queer resilience and portrayals of radical joy in trans life. You can find her on twitter as @JustJaylee.]

It didn’t take long after finishing Metal Gear Solid 3 for me to fall headfirst into its rich fanbase on Livejournal. This was one of my first experiences with online fandoms, and while I appreciated the creativity fans poured into works of fiction or art, what kept me coming back were the discussions on plot and character. I was floored by the sheer amount of analysis and speculation on Snake Eater and its place in the Metal Gear Solid Saga unfolding in the comment sections. I was still an incredibly shy teenager at the time, so I remained a lurker in spite of my desire to engage. Still, I desperately wanted an outlet to share my own ideas untangling the complicated series mythos with like minded fans. So I came up with a plan to get my real life friends on the same page: I would host the four of us so we could experience the game together. 

Metal Gear Solid 3 is too long to start and finish in a single night, so we had to spread the game over a whole weekend. Luckily, It was just as engaging to watch someone else play the game due to the cinematic flair the series had refined since its inception. MGS3 felt like an experience that was meant to fuel dozens of water cooler conversations. There are cover ups, double crosses, potential time paradoxes to discover and even an incredibly problematic queer villain. What more could a teen in the Oughts want?

We revelled in how campy Snake Eater was. The game itself is a pastiche of cold-war era spy thrillers with a healthy dose of series creator Hideo Kojima’s signature supernatural weirdness. Awkward dialogue is delivered with such sincerity that it was easy to fall for the disarming charm of these characters. Charm that makes the juxtaposition of younger soldiers like Snake and Ocelot with the COBRA Unit all the more heartbreaking. Each boss we triumphed over was a solemn reminder that soldiers like Snake don’t get a happy ending. You give everything you have for the mission, including your life.

While the supernatural aspects of the Cobra unit are far from subtle, they’re important in illustrating the loss of humanity these characters suffer as they continue to be used as tools by their government. None of us were particularly political at the time. I was a queer closeted kid in a conservative town trying her hardest not to deviate from what my family heard on Fox News, but I remember the game’s message felt effective at countering the post 9/11 hero worship that was so prevalent in the media. It was exciting to be engaged with a more multifaceted look at soldiers and war than I ever had been, one that asked questions I was ready to contemplate. The game made me want to dig deeper and think critically. Discussing and unpacking these themes with each other finally got me to care more about what I believed as opposed to what I was told to believe.

Sharing a piece of media you love with people whose opinion you care about is nerve-wracking. Experiencing Snake Eater with my friends helped me realize the value in making space for open discussion. Allowing people to be vulnerable and honest in this environment gives them room to grow. It wasn’t an easy lesson to learn, but now I know better than to let fear of embarrassment keep me from engaging in fan communities. 

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Top of the charts for week ending 5 March 2005:

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