Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-146.90.86.5-20150917130942/@comment-64.33.250.214-20150920132724

DementedP wrote: Nuhr wrote: I don't think we should be comparing Metal Gear characters to Bayonetta.

Strangelove was killed because Kojima wanted to make Huey an evil character. He simply wanted to make the relationship between Big Boss / Venom and Huey different from Solid & Otacon who end up being good friends simply because it's more interesting that way.

And Paz was simply killed because Kojima loves doing twists. Hell I love Paz' death, it's one of my favourite scenes in the series, and that means a lot. Except that using their deaths to further the angst and drive behind the male characters' motivations is a very tired trope that works at the expense of the female characters. There's a difference in writing well-meaning deaths and one that subjects them to horrible fates while specifically using their deaths to give more development to the male characters.

Again, these ideas aren't inherently bad, rather it's their frequency in pop culture that has made it into a horrible stereotype and a form of bad writing. The fact that those two female characters from PW suffered this fate unlike the male characters which got off better makes it really jarring in retrospect. It's telling how when a male character dies, Kojima finds a way to bring them back. The only female exception is The Boss, who had very little presence beyond being an AI. Since MGS4, they've had a tendency to die in humiliating or silly ways. If the shot of The Boss's cleavage at the end of MGS3 wasn't jarring enough, the B&B Corps died (died they even die?) curled up in a fetal position. Naomi's sudden romance with Otacon made her final moments seem more melodramatic than tragic. Paz "dieing" in her underwear in Peace Walker, only to really die from a vagina bomb in Ground Zeroes. Strangelove left to suffocate to death with her former lover-turned-robot so Otacon could be disfunctional like Solid. Then Quiet, the only female main character in Phantom Pain, who died because she chose to speak.