tricksterocelot replied to your post
Well I mean first of all you know how I feel about that because he’s pretty damn explicit about how he feels about The Boss in MGS3. His feelings for her only seem to become fuzzy and confused years later, when she’s 90% legends and what other people have told him. How many times have people made wild guesses at what their relationship was? EVA does it, she presumes they were lovers, and he has, almost, the energy to correct her, in a private setting before he was closing people out. Post-Snake Eater? How many people told him they were lovers? How many people presumed they understood his love? How long before it all started to get jumbled up in his head without her at his side to keep things clear? Probably not too long tbh.
John likes boobs, and he likes butts, but it seems to be in a super vague kind of way. He never really responds to her entire self as attractive, and he can shake off his interest in her various fat deposits at a moment’s notice. EVA is legitimately baffled by the idea of someone “resist[ing her] charms”, but John... isn’t really resisting her, that implies that he’s fighting something. He just doesn’t care until after she pulls through for him. (Man, Ocelot actively looked after him and keep his ear to the ground AND built up a new business for 9 years, no wonder he was irresistible when Snake woke up).
John would be just as happy in a muddy tent as he would be a 5 star resort, as long as what he NEEDED was there and he could survive and smoke.
Ocelot, and I feel this has a lot to say for his comparative mental stability in the series, seems to need those moments of staring out to sea, those gestures of memorial in the form of the Stars-of-Bethlehem, he wants to get away, sleep in a bed, in a room, surrounded by paintings and landscapes that he enjoys. He NEVER fixated on the battle is everything concept that John did, he LIKES a life outside of all that, and it gives his mind a rest.
That’s why John just got worse and worse and why Ocelot, who has plenty of issues, is still not that much drastically different over the years. He grows, he develops, but the guy dying at David’s feet in 2014, is still the kid who gives John his name and gun in 1964. Because more things mattered to him than war. He cares beyond just ‘does my body work? Yes? I can fight.’ He spends time making sure he looks, and feels, good in and of himself.