#sekhan

[swordblade]

My favorite ships are the ones where there’s nothing wrong with shipping them in canon but the default/go with what’s popular fanbases treat it like it’s the most deplorable most problematic piece of fiction to exist of all time and all the shippers are horrible people, and deserve endless harassment over it.

[phaisun]

there’s a weird underlying issue in fandom culture where queer people who prefer any ship that is hetero presenting have their sexualities denied… often by other queer people AND cishet people

“You’re not a real queer person” or “you would never understand queer struggles” and it being said to a queer person THEMSELVES 😭

[inflamedrosenkranz]

Let’s Review Bi-Han’s Potential Childhood Traumas (Lack of Love and Recognition, Abandonment Issues, Dysfunctional Family Dynamics, etc.) — Part 1/2

[This first part and the second part to come, which took me two years to write—two years of drafts, hesitations, crossings-out, and moments of discouragement—contain almost all of my take on Bi-Han. I'm very happy to finally be able to publish it. By the way, both those parts will also serve as a basis for other future posts on Bi-Han.] It seems that at the root of Bi-Han's personality, worldview and actions in the game, is the lack of recognition and appreciation as well as the emotional abandonment he may have suffered throughout his life from several people.

1) From his father:

Indeed, this Invasion node reveals that Kuai Liang was their "dad's favorite":

[I'd already written a post about this before, but it was @evilbihan who discovered this node and was the first to highlight it in their post here—many thanks to them for that!] What's more, Kuai Liang's official bio also reveals that he "cherished" his father and that he is a "revered Lin Kuei warrior". However, MK1's story mode tells us that no one would support his candidacy for the position of grandmaster in place of Bi-Han, and that the clan is loyal to the latter. So if he is not "revered" by his peers, does that mean he was revered exclusively by his father?

The rule, which has become tradition (and it was probably originally established by Liu Kang himself centuries ago), is that the eldest child (or only the eldest son?) is destined to reign as grandmaster. But, if Kuai Liang was the father's favorite son, can we then hypothesize that the latter would have wanted him to succeed him, rather than Bi-Han? Out of cowardice as much as unctuous zeal, it is possible though that the father never dared to challenge tradition by imposing his own choice of successor, and thus made Bi-Han pay for it all, not only through emotional neglect—which is a passive form of abuse—, but also possibly through more overt parental and educational violence behind closed doors. I'm not saying that the father was necessarily openly physically and verbally abusive towards Bi-Han, since we have no evidence of this in the game; but it's entirely possible to imagine that this could have been the case nonetheless.

Besides, although some intro dialogues suggest that the two brothers were very close, one wonders to what extent the fact that their father apparently favored Kuai Liang over Bi-Han (who, however, needed the father's strong and loving presence and guidance even more than Kuai Liang, given he was his heir) may have nevertheless instilled resentment, bitterness, envy, and jealousy between them, which they tried to repress until their violent falling out in the Ying Fortress.

Here, a brief analysis of the dynamics between Mileena, Kitana, and Sindel is necessary because, as the game provides us with more information on this subject than on that between the three Lin Kuei brothers and their father, it therefore sheds light on it.

First off, Mileena's assertion that her bond with Kitana is unbreakable (words that Kuai Liang echoes to warn her that he mistakenly believed the same thing about him and Bi-Han) contradicts what Ashrah perceives of her true feelings towards her sister:

Mileena: My bond with Kitana can't be broken. Scorpion: I once thought the same about mine with Bi-Han.

Ashrah: I sense a jealous heart, Empress. Mileena: (scoffs) Of whom would I be jealous?

Actually, Mileena's hidden jealousy towards her twin does not come from nowhere because, in an intro dialogue, Sindel hints to Kitana that she would have been better suited for the throne than her elder sister:

Sindel: There are times I wish that you were born first. Kitana: Never let Mileena hear you say that!

Moreover, Mileena's official bio also reveals that members of the court would like to see Kitana become empress in her place, and emphasizes that because of this, Mileena must fight to be taken seriously and ultimately earn the respect and trust of her detractors—and possibly of her own mother as well (but probably to a much lesser extent):

Incidentally, respect is exactly what Bi-Han demands from General Shao. Since he most likely never received any from his father or Liu Kang, he sees helping Shao as an opportunity to show him his skills and thus get this respect from him instead. Proof that even now, as an adult and powerful leader beloved by his clansmen and women, he's still insecure deep down, and desperately seeking validation from an older male authority figure higher than him in the military hierarchy. So much for his daddy issues!

Sub-Zero: I've helped you, but I've earned no respect. General Shao: Because there's nothing lower than a traitor.

General Shao: I owe you nothing, Bi-Han. Sub-Zero: You would still be in prison, were it not for me!

But let's get back to Mileena. She is therefore aware of this lack of appreciation and support from her mother and Outworld aristocracy, of being constantly compared to Kitana, and of not being allowed to make any mistakes for fear of stirring up unrest and calls for her to be deposed and replaced by her twin. In this regard, that Kitana's the envy of Mileena makes perfect sense, as well as the latter's fear that Kitana might betray her by stealing her power one day:

Kitana: I only want what's best for you. Mileena: Or do you secretly covet my throne?

So, even though we have little information about the inner workings of the Lin Kuei family, it would be disingenuous not to see the striking parallels between them and the imperial family of Outworld. More particularly in the hypocritical way in which Sindel (and Jerrod too?) and the former grandmaster seem to have treated their eldest children, burdening them with excessive expectations linked to their status as heirs, while implicitly making them understand that they would never consider them up to the task and that their younger siblings were far superior to them in every way, and as a consequence more deserving of their parents' affection and buoying up.

And personally, although there's nothing in the game to suggest this, I'm going to repeat what I said above, but I can't help but think that there may also have been mistrust and rivalry between the two brothers, and that their initial harmony was a way of convincing themselves otherwise and keeping their negative feelings towards each other at bay. For example, by making Kuai Liang his right-hand man and sharing his power with him, Bi-Han could have ensured that his little brother would not be tempted to overthrow him and steal his throne:

Sub-Zero: You could have ruled at my side. Scorpion: Just the thought of it sickens me.

Sub-Zero: Your rebellion stings. Scorpion: You expect less from Scorpion?

And precisely by keeping him close, he could also have gradually tried to influence him and convince him of the merits of giving the Lin Kuei a new direction. But in vain, since deep down Bi-Han seemed all too aware that Kuai Liang would remain loyal to their father and Liu Kang until the end:

Sub-Zero: Does our Father's ghost possess you? All I hear is his voice.

Scorpion: Let him die?! You said you tried to save him! Sub-Zero: A lie. Because you couldn't, and still can't, face the truth. Father had doomed the Lin Kuei to mediocrity. Now we will achieve greatness.

As for Kuai Liang, knowing his holier-than-thou self-righteousness and how arrogantly judgmental he is, I feel that he saw Bi-Han primarily as a tool for narcissistic gratification, and unconsciously projected his own excessive expectations and vanity onto him, as if he were living vicariously through his status as grandmaster. His biography, indeed, oddly emphasizes his "pride" in seeing his older brother succeed their father, rather than the sincere love or pure joy he might have felt for his success:

Liu Kang: I had such high hopes for your brother. Scorpion: As did I, Lord Liu Kang.

By logical extension, I also feel that Kuai Liang scrutinized Bi-Han to the point of demanding that he be a carbon copy of their father and nothing else, only to violently reject and devalue him when he revealed himself to be his own person, wanting to breathe new life into the clan (of course, I'm not forgetting the serious matter of Bi-Han abandoning the defense of Earthrealm and letting his father die, which makes Kuai Liang's reaction of deep rage and hatred towards him completely justified, but that's not the point at hand here). In fact, the story mode seems pretty clear on this point, as Kuai Liang insists on the need for Bi-Han and the entire clan to continue to follow the father's "teachings" and "vision", even though these were not his own per se, but those of the Lin Kuei for centuries. In all this, indeed, their father was just one grandmaster among hundreds of others throughout the generations, simply responsible for embodying this doctrine and enforcing it within the clan:

Scorpion: His teachings did not pass with him. They should guide us.

Scorpion: We must honor his vision, Bi-Han.

And it must be said clearly that there's a lot of hypocrisy here on the part of Kuai Liang and Tomáš, as well, who seemingly considered their father to be an exceptional being above all his predecessors, possessing a wisdom never seen before. But that is objectively false, since this wisdom came instead from centuries ago, and that the patriarch did nothing but parrot it, as was customary for any grandmaster to do. At the same time, they refuse to accept that Bi-Han also had his own personality and another paradigm for the Lin Kuei. This shows how much the late old man must have pampered his two younger sons for them to worship him to such an extent that they became narcissistic extensions of him, peremptorily dispensing his word like flying monkeys even after his death, all while sidelining Bi-Han in the process by undermining his authority with their untimely contradictions, just as the old man must have done to him too.

In my opinion, the father's supposed manipulation to isolate Bi-Han from his brothers and the rest of the world also led to Kuai Liang being blind, due to his privileged position as the favorite son, to his brother's suffering, and to what their father was putting him through:

Scorpion: I knew Bi-Han's frustrations ran deep. But I never thought they could inspire such madness.

However, perhaps this is primarily due to the fact that Bi-Han hid his true feelings, revealing only a tiny fraction of them, so Kuai Liang could not have guessed the true extent of his distress.

Still, I wonder if, by founding his own clan, appropriating Harumi's valuable hard work for that purpose, and doubly invisibilizing her in the process by also taking her place as grandmaster (admittedly with her consent, but still... I suggest reading @evilbihan's recent in-depth analysis on the subject), Kuai Liang did not secretly gloat over his fulfillment of his father's wish that he, at long last, was the one to succeed him and carry on "his" legacy instead of Bi-Han, thus showing the latter and the rest of the world that, as his father had always told him, he was indeed the best of his sons. Once again, this is nothing but my personal interpretation, but it's basically a psychological pattern between the two brothers that afterwards could still quite coherently fit into the MK1 story.

Now that all that has been said, let's return to the two families, Imperial and Lin Kuei, because the parallels between them don't end there (yeah I know, this post is convoluted). Indeed, as a result of the differential treatment the parents imposed on their respective children, like a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, Mileena and Bi-Han both developed a rebellious spirit, wanting to overturn tradition and disrupt the narrow norms that come with it, leading to an even more increased dislike and disapproval from their kins. On the other hand, being their parents' favorites pushed Kitana and Kuai Liang, the younger siblings, to obediently follow and enforce these norms, and be therefore considered wiser and more level-headed (mind you, because while this is objectively true for Kitana, it's not really the case for Kuai Liang, even though that's what the game's narrative wants us to believe...). Another thing of importance to notice is that it's Mileena and Bi-Han who become monsters, because it's so easy to turn into a monster when the group you belong to treats you like one. We can even see a meta mise en abyme in the game: just as Liu Kang recreated a second timeline to correct the flaws of the first, which was plagued by violence, it seems that Kitana and Kuai Liang, presented as paragons of civilizing virtue, are there to correct the flaws of their elders, who are deemed imperfect and untamable by their respective parents (and, as far as Mileena is concerned, by the court as well).

And in the end, can we even begin to imagine the unfairness of Bi-Han and Mileena's situation, when it was only out of an arbitrary respect for tradition (a set of age-old rules and customs that form a doctrine and allegedly guarantee the stability of the established order...) that their parents trained them to rule, when all the latter really wanted was for their second-born children to replace them?

Can we fathom the extremely harsh education they received, demanding that they be absolutely perfect in every way, in body and soul, in order to live up to what their future roles required of them, when they knew they would never be good enough in the eyes of their progenitors, who would always find something to criticize (whether justified or not), and some excuse to compare them unfavorably to their younger siblings?

And in Bi-Han's case, we must also take into account his cognitive dissonance when—upon becoming what was expected of him after decades of superhuman efforts constantly overlooked or belittled by the patriarch (to which must be added Liu Kang's indifference as well)—he realized that he would likely never get the opportunity to use and demonstrate his exceptional skills because Earthrealm was at peace or because the Lin Kuei were not allowed to participate in Mortal Kombat. On top of that, he had to test and train two young bumpkins who didn't have his level of martial arts mastery, and watch them from afar earn the right to actually fight for Earthrealm in his place and, following their victory, receive honors he was always denied on the grounds that the Lin Kuei must remain and act in the shadows. He also had to endure his brothers lecturing him that it was better to be useless and rot away in boredom, idleness and meaninglessness, because after all, it meant that everything was fine in Earthrealm. Well, yeah, easy to say coming from a golden child like Kuai Liang, who was so privileged that he never felt the need to prove his worth and legitimacy to anyone, nor that he was wasting his years of training and potential by being "unemployed".

But understanding what happened between Bi-Han and his father would not be complete without including Tomáš in the picture.

Here, we can assume that Tomáš was the second favorite son after Kuai Liang. After all, the father may have chosen to develop a strong relationship with him when he was a child, not only to help him heal from his trauma and flourish despite the tragedy that struck him, but also to dissuade him from seeking revenge against the Lin Kuei. Several things in the game show that, while Tomáš is not as fanatically attached to the late man as Kuai Liang, he's still very devoted to him and his legacy:

Sub-Zero: You were never truly one of us. Smoke: Were Father here, he would disagree.

Smoke: Father wanted us to be brothers. Sub-Zero: Yet another of the old man's foolish dreams.

Kitana: You are Kuai Liang's adopted brother? Smoke: His father's honor demanded that he take me in.

Reptile: Lucky for you, Kuai Liang's father took you in. Smoke: It didn't feel that way at the time.

Sub-Zero: How long are we expected to linger? Scorpion: Patience, Bi-Han. There are many demands on Liu Kang's attention. Smoke: Were he here, Father would advise us to wait without protest.

Sub-Zero: Does our Father's ghost possess you? All I hear is his voice. Scorpion: We must honor his vision, Bi-Han. Sub-Zero: Vision is what he lacked. He was blind to our superiority. We settle for defending Earthrealm when we could help lead it. Smoke: Our clan doesn't govern. It serves.

For my part, I feel that Bi-Han's animosity towards Tomáš and his refusal to consider him as his brother could stem:

from the hypothesis that his father disregarded him even more than before in order to take care of a stranger instead, when, once again, he should have focused much of his attention on his eldest son. Once he became grandmaster himself, Bi-Han may then have attempted to counteract this humiliation by rejecting Tomáš, just as he had been once again rejected by the former grandmaster and "replaced" by the little orphan:

Takeda: From what I hear, Bi-Han was a bad brother. Smoke: Because to him, I wasn't one.

Noob Saibot: You and my brother will be brought to heel. Smoke: Not today, not tomorrow, not ever!

Noob Saibot: That you are my brother's second-in-command— Smoke: Shows he understands me more than you ever did.

and from Bi-Han's fear that Tomáš might feign loyalty to the clan in order to lull it into a false sense of security so that he could better attack it from within. At least, we know from this intro dialogue that Bi-Han never stopped mistrusting him:

Sub-Zero: Your treachery does not surprise me. Smoke: It is you who betrayed us, Bi-Han.

This could also have led Bi-Han to develop his obsession with the purity of the Lin Kuei bloodline, as if he believed Tom was to blame for disrupting the family unity and that by casting him aside, he could finally re-enact this fantasized unity. A fantasy (in the psychological sense of the word) of perfect peace and concord within the clan, a group closed off from the outside world, where each member would come from the same ancient noble lineage and function in unison; and where Tom would not exist and therefore could neither threaten the clan's survival nor steal from Bi-Han the little attention, legitimacy, and adequacy that the patriarch deigned to grant him at times.

Nevertheless, if we can understand why Bi-Han, as grandmaster, wasn't wrong to doubt Tomáš's loyalty (you never know what secret desire for vendetta a man whose family was massacred by the very people who later took him in might be hiding), his feeling of being apart from the core of his family must have dated back to well before Tom's inclusion in the clan, and blaming him for that isn't fair. For it is highly likely that Bi-Han was disliked and excluded by his father from an early age. In reality, Tomáš only played a minor role in it, unbeknownst to him, at that (remember that, according to his own words, he used to idolize Bi-Han and therefore sought to be noticed and accepted by him. In this regard, he would never have accepted that his presence could hurt his adoptive older brother). That's why deep down, this fantasy of a Lin Kuei united by blood—and consequently by the soul—is a way for Bi-Han to reclaim a history and a narrative that he was told he would one day be at the center of, but to which his father symbolically denied him access. Within this context, Tom—insofar as he's an alien element—is merely a kind of fantastical scapegoat and receptacle for all the suffering that Bi-Han has accumulated throughout his life.

Lastly, I'd like to talk about the mother of the Lin Kuei bros. Bi-Han apparently adored her and she seemed to be the only person who truly supported him. Therefore, it's more than likely that she protected her son from her husband's presumed abuse.

One might also wonder whether she and the former grandmaster truly loved each other and saw eye to eye, as this intro dialogue leaves us in doubt:

Smoke: If mother were alive— Sub-Zero: She would applaud my actions.

In it, Bi-Han is implying that his mother was also in favor of breaking away from Liu Kang and putting the interests of the clan before those of Earthrealm (intentions that she seems to have hidden from Tom, and I bet from Kuai Liang too). If that was the case, then she must have been at odds with her husband, and Bi-Han may have been unwittingly caught up in the ideological war between his parents from an early age. And if he was doted on by his mother (but also influenced by her to adopt her view of things), this may explain (in whole or in part) why, by proxy, his father didn't like him, even though Bi-Han was a child and not responsible for any of this. And, given that the Lin Kuei is a traditional society, arranged marriages must have been practiced there, and this perspective would make the idea of ideological dissent between the two parents more acceptable, given that they may not have choosen each other to begin with. Of course, all of this is, like everything else above, just a theory.

Still, perhaps it was in response to this that Bi-Han and Sektor did not marry—and that this is a factor to be taken into account when considering Bi-Han's aversion to the clan's traditional doctrine. On the other hand, since Sektor is not of aristocratic stock, the former grandmaster may well have disapproved of the relationship, and Bi-Han resisted an arranged marriage with a woman other than Sektor until the very end. I have written about this before:

Post by @inflamedrosenkranz · 2 images

💬 3  🔁 3  ❤️ 25 · Come to think of it, it's possible that one of the reasons Bi-Han holds such a grudge against his father and the tradition

We can also theorize that the mother's death which, we assume, greatly affected Bi-Han, was a way for the father to justify being even more present for Kuai Liang and Tomáš and to further isolate his first-born son, thereby increasing his loneliness and abandonment issues. His fallacious reasoning could have been that, being younger, they needed him more, and that Bi-Han, being the eldest, would get over his grief more quickly and, as a future leader, needed to toughen up. But perhaps the mother's death also made Bi-Han even more vulnerable to active abuse from his father. Again, this is just speculation on my part.

Besides, the absence of their mothers is something Bi-Han and Sektor have in common. In the following post, I analyzed the relationship between Sektor and Madam Bo from this perspective, and speculated on how Bo's departure from the clan for Fengjian, when Sektor was presumably still young, may have been the source of the latter's obsession with perfection, that Bi-Han also shares:

Post by @inflamedrosenkranz · 2 images

💬 0  🔁 8  ❤️ 49 · Abandonment Issues and the Trap of Perfection: A Psychological Portrait of Sektor · Initially, I intended this breakdown t

Generally speaking, many aspects of Bi-Han's psychology (and not just his perfectionism; his rejection of tradition and parternal authority figures, whom he nevertheless seeks to impress and earn praise from, like Liu Kang or General Shao; or his desire for unity and purity bordering on totalitarianism), reveal a profound emotional deprivation early in his life, made even more severe by his special status, which required the adults responsible for his education and care to pay much more attention to him than to an ordinary child. Perhaps one day I will set about cataloging all his personality traits and linking them to this original trauma. In a near future, I'd also like to share my view of the father's supposed personality, which I've outlined above: that of a narcissistic man who I believe had two faces, a good one for his favorite sons and society, and a bad one that he showed only to Bi-Han. Furthermore, I know that people will argue that at no point in the game does Bi-Han reproach his father for ever being abusive, but I have an explanation for that as well.

But that will have to wait for another time, as this post is already far too long. The second part will focus on Liu Kang's lack of recognition towards Bi-Han. In any case, when we consider all the possible hardships Bi-Han faced while growing up, it's easy to understand why he lost his shit in MK1 and, prior to that, why he seized the first opportunity to get rid of his father.

[monstergoat]

❤️ SEKHAN Sketches~ 💙

They finally got me and can't go back!!

I see them as a toxic couple but sweet at the same time, enjoy! 🌸

(I made Sektor without her current armor bc these are supposed to be before the fight with Kuai and the cyber stuff ofc, if you are confused)

[fsfghgee]

"How can any woman love a man like that?" THE MAN:

.....

[jvlie77a]

"Bi Han doesn't love Sektor"

Bitch have we seen the same game? 🤨

How Bi Han looks at the others:

How Bi Han sees his big sweaty guardian alpha Girlfriend:

(He's probably laughing and kicking inside)

[slavicdollie]

Sekhan gives off coworkers, chemistry of a carpet💀istg he had better chemistry with Nitara and that says alot lmao another reason this ship is forced nitara literally refers to him as one of her bedfellows💀💀were sektor and nitara sharing dih🥀

All their intros are work/lin keui related, and tbh I think sektor only likes Bi-han for his power and will most likely usurp him in future games, just because two characters are similar doesn't mean they belong together I hate Ed and NRS for teasing bireena in the past just to give us this forced ship. If they actually thought Bi-han and sektor made sense they wouldn't have been so p*ssy to genderswap sektor. In no way am I being misogynistic I actually like that sektor and cyrax are women now but the forced romance???

[livingdeadgirly]

I have a theory one why mortal kombat writers made sekhan canon because they're pandering to their dude bro fans.

In Johnny's announcer voice he refers to Sareena as "Bi-hans future bestie" and he refers to kenshi as "BEST FRIEND" it's obvious that if they made bireena canon fans will take this and connect it to johnny and kenshi dating which bro dude fans would hatee. So yes I believe this ship stems from homophobia which is literally why sektor was genderbent

Anyways stan my faves