Discover Top Posts Tagged with #trigger warning content

The Investment of an Antagonist - Part Three

Entry 04 continued. [Trigger warning content: post contains discussion of Far Cry 5 details for the main villains including violence, brainwashing, torture, child abuse, neglect, emotional manipulation, dark backstories, drug use, cult content, etc. Spoilers for Far Cry 5 inherent. Part 03 of 03.] [Link to part one here.] [Link to part two here.]

— Faith —

Lastly we have Faith, née Rachel Jessop, the youngest of the Seed family. The easiest themes to assign to her are unsurprisingly drug-use and escapism. She is an intriguing and complex character with some very beautifully done layers, in particular playing with gender expectations of behavior both in-world and on the meta in what may have been either intended brilliance of foresight or fridge brilliance by the dev team.

Thematically speaking though, as with the other Seeds, she is projecting her past experiences onto others and turning into the abuser in the recreation of her trauma. In this case, it could be taking up the role of a manipulator using soft-coded presentation and masking shaming techniques with positive wording and oblique expectation-pressures to get people to go along with what she’s saying...as well as making them more pliable via the Bliss. It could be that part of her escapism theme manifests as disassociation, separating one’s self and in this case Rachel from Faith, her followers from their worries and problems, and at the most extreme end the Angels from essentially their entire personality and past. In contrast to John, Faith seems to be much more so about forgetting/burying/separating one self from one’s past problems, sins, unhappiness, etc rather than facing it head on. In a way, it could potentially be interpreted as a denial of those aspects of a person, and herself, through the Bliss. This could be a better parallel to how Jacob also breaks the unwilling down in his Trials, albeit for more specifically war-like purposes than Faith. We don’t get to hear if John has opinions on how the “new recruits” up in Jacob’s neck of the woods are treated well or not, but he doesn’t include Jacob in his jab. The absence could be used to infer that John has either separate issues, less issues, or no issues with how Jacob runs things, but that’s the problem with this kind of absence: it lacks definite, concrete matter to build with. We hear only a very vague telling of the details of Faith’s life from Faith directly, which in this instance is going to be presumed to be true, albeit perhaps glossing over the details and told from a carefully crafted perspective for a desired end result. Others also have their own opinions to fill in on the details of Faith as she is and was, and her life before, including but potentially not limited to Tracey and Sheriff Whitehorse, as far as I’m aware at this time. What’s really interesting is the almost split presentation we get at times with Faith: in some moments she is the epitome of her title the siren, bright, friendly, seemingly warm and enticing. Other times she has some lines that cast very long, dark shadows. Three of the phone calls one can find in the Henbane are particularly dark, if one assumes the call with the sounds of a crying woman on the other end to be Faith. Even disregarding that third one, the other two show more of Faith’s darker aspects, as noted below: “Rachel’s so sad and alone. Once was lost, never found. She lead a faithless life and it brought her low. Faith rose up in her, but Rachel stayed low, down. Faith flies divine, and Rachel...Rachel gropes around in the darkness. I left her there, a long time ago.”

“A baby is a sack of screaming, shitting, crying impulses with no personality, no thoughts, no understanding of the world beyond feelings. It has no soul. You have to give it one. The only soul we ever have, we receive from others. And it is only others, who can take it away.” One possible interpretation from these two comments from Faith would be that she was very strongly shaped by her family and friends before she ran away with Tracey to join a commune out west. Not into total obedience without personality, but perhaps instead placation and appeasement behaviors, attempting to make the other people in her life “happy” as a form of self-protection coping mechanism to deal with living in an abusive home environment, and later on refined into intentional choices as these lines from her might strongly suggest: "All my life I dealt with people like you. People who underestimate sweet, innocent Faith. You see what you wanna see... a playful butterfly, a delicate flower... a child with childish thoughts. It's easier to disregard a child. Tracey made the same mistake as you. While you all ignored me, I walked right through every one of you." From Faith’s wiki page, it also states that Sheriff Whitehorse talked about “Tracey and Rachel, who were friends, 'joined a free spirit movement in the west, smoking doobies, banging on drums’. But Rachel and Tracey fell on harder drugs and fell out of favor with their community. Tracey searched for a new home and found the Project at Eden's Gate, and Faith decided to return with her to Hope County to join the cult.” From there, with Rachel going through the painful and dangerous process of withdrawal symptoms while attempting to end her addiction, it might be that she also felt that her new self, Faith, or Faith-to-be, was shaped by Joseph and the Project. That this new self was a new soul, and that her old soul, her old identity, Rachel, had been cast away. Perhaps that was another motivation for her to possibly split with Tracey, staying with the cult over staying with her best friend whom she had left her home behind with once before—the friend she’d run away with into the unknown at what was likely a rather young age. Perhaps staying with Tracey, Faith felt too much of Rachel remained. Rachel, the addict. Rachel, the powerless. Rachel, the abused. Perhaps those reminders were too painful for Faith, and she wanted to separate from them as much as possible. If she wanted Tracey to stay though...perhaps she had also hoped Tracey would have a fresh start. That Tracey would be “happier” at the Project. That the two of them would be born anew and cleansed of their sins, as the Project promises. All of the Seeds are in this interpretation trying to cope with their traumas. Faith in this aspect is perhaps the one closest chronologically in time to her trauma, being the youngest, and thus perhaps still emotionally rawer at times underneath it all. Rawer in a more youthful sense, not related to the innocence she tries to project as a front, so much as how she cries out in panic and fear during her boss fight’s finale, when the Deputy strikes the final blow, and how her tone changes when she’s threatened during the fight, talking about how Joseph threatened her and plied her with drugs. In this regard, it is very easy to read Faith as still placating, still coping, still appeasing the powers that be in her life, in this case the Project, Joseph, and the other Seeds to a degree. With being Faith, and not even the first and only Faith but at the very least the third in a series of adopted “sisters,” the danger of being killed, cast aside, or deemed unsatisfactory for whatever reason is very real, and could echo possible fears she’d harbored of her parents, other friends, and community members in her past. How much danger she was in from her parents is unstated as far as I’m aware, but that she was abused and likely was afraid is enough. Fear itself is real enough and a weighty factor in any situation where it exists, as it was meant to be by biological design. So in recreation of that potential trauma-build, Faith placates all of her followers with the Bliss and gentle words, making some members of the Resistance note in commentary that they feel special, loved, cared for. Drawn in to become a part of Faith’s idealized dream of everyone being predictably calm, and open to suggestion. While it is still technically appeasing behavior, with Faith being in control of the Bliss’s drug production and seemingly also the hallucinatory effect it has on people, she is also master of the realm and thus the one with the keys to the kingdom, and I daresay enjoys her power with how she mocks the Deputy upon their return to the Jail after the cutscene of her reasserting control over Burke and the ensuing happenings. Her methods on the surface are soft and appealing seemingly, but she is ultimately now able to control those in her region and under her power with a far more beautifully beguiling and insidious form of puppeteering. She makes a splendid contrast in that regard with how Jacob brainwashes people, with making Angels versus the brainwashed fighters of Jacob’s. Another piece of interesting dialogue regarding the Angels as mentioned by Faith in I believe the Whistling Beaver Brewery is as follows: "Have you seen their faces? On the Pilgrimage? Oh, you should see it. To see the sin fly from their heads and their faces slacken to peace. The vanity shaved from their heads, evil taken from their lips. Never to speak a sinful word, any word, again. It gives me life. Every time a bell rings..." Combining that with the above comment about how Faith believes people don’t have souls until given them and shaped by the others around them, Faith certainly seems to have grabbed the reins on shaping who people are, with the intent to “smooth out” any disagreeable parts. To the point of perhaps erasing a person’s individuality entirely, thus producing an Angel. She like her brothers is also driven by purpose, as she mentions in her first cutscene of being given purpose, and from the random encounter line below: “I’m going to tell you a secret... Eden’s Gate is not here to fix your life. That’s your own selfish dream... No! Eden’s Gate exists to save something greater than you and me. It is here for the Father to bring salvation to the world’s very existence, and you’re trying to destroy that. I put so much hope in you. I thought you’d be special. Was I wrong?” That first bit about not fixing one’s life feels like a potentially open admittance that the Project is not trying to fix people at least in her region, so much as to re-purpose them to the Project’s own ends, and Faith fulfills that with a gentle kind of at-times-gaslit brutality that she selectively applies more forcefully when someone isn’t playing according to Faith’s own preferences. While the doubting may also be real in her case in the later lines, it also serves as shame-based social pressure to not disappoint her, directed at the Deputy as an attempt to erode any resistance they have to conforming to doing the “right” or “sympathetic” thing—as defined by Faith anyway. Its a good bit of manipulation, leaving it blurry whether its outright just intended to influence the Deputy or if she indeed has any doubts. I lean towards the latter for added nuance of emotion, though I do think she’s more than capable and willing of violence and brutality when desired. One minor example among others that comes to mind would be the signs of violence and likely death in the Chan residence, with the implication that Faith sent some of her people to deal with Jasmine and likely kill her, per the blood on the floor and the unsent note contents: “To whom it may concern, Thank you for addressing my complaints about all that noise coming from that Eden’s Gate construction site. One of your representatives (I think her name was Faith, not sure) passed by and said she’d have a word with the people building the statue. She even said she’d make them come by to apologize in person. Although we may disagree on some philosophical matters, it’s nice to see some neighborly etiquette. I look forward to resolving this amicably. -Jasmine Chan” Aside from that, there are also other mentions such as Ethan Minkler overdosing on the Bliss (while that may be a possible accident, the point likely remains that he either died or became an Angel, much to the mayor Virgil Minkler’s grief,) comments by Resistance NPCs about how forced-pilgrims on the Path are sometimes made to crawl on their hands and knees until they bleed, the ones made to jump from the Statue of Joseph and land among the littered bodies of those who did not survive, etc. Ultimately what all of that might be mirroring is her own treatment at the hands of her family and other people in her past, as well as perhaps what Joseph, the Seeds, and the Project asked of her: not to be fixed, but re-purposed. It was never about her, but what she could do for someone, be it her family, friends, or the Project. In that, the Angels are an elegantly simple solution: they are obedient to the wishes of the Project, and are loyal to a fault without any chance of wanting anything to the contrary than what is asked of them, provided they are provided with a steady supply of Bliss (presuming they require it as a continued addiction, though that is purely speculation.) The Angel’s Grave in the Horned Serpent Cave seems to be a lake of boiling muck that is implied to be a mass grave for Angels, per the Grieving Note found therein: “Lana. Christ in heaven what they did to you. The fact that they could make you believe all that nonsense, make you forget yourself so hard. Forget your own name? How, Lana? What did he say to you? What kind of fucking dirtbag blood ritual could make you think your name was “Faith”? Doesn’t matter how, I guess. He told you you were special, but in the end he threw your body in here to disintegrate in the boiling muck, like a common Angel.” This certainly shows the Project has little to no respect for the dead, or at the very least those turned into mindlessly loyal Angel minions. It echoes back to the lack of individuality Faith may struggle with internally as a theme—it may also be that her parents abused her through the unrealistic-expectations archetype of wanting and pressuring her to be what they wanted, without any regard of who she was as an individual or what she wanted out of her life. Perhaps during her life she was treated as nothing more than a commodity, trying to forever appease and live up to her parents’ expectations. I sadly have very little on the Jessop family as a whole, so this is all once again pure fabricated speculation. This lack of personal worth through individuality does thread through the recurring instance of there being multiple Faiths before Rachel, and it is shown in the notes to the two known previous Faiths, Lana and Selena (both referenced from Faith’s article the wiki.) “You’re not the first one, Selena. You’re not the first woman he’s used up and thrown away. For years I’d been hearing this Faith Seed was tall as her brother, with black hair. Couldn’t miss her. And then I saw you in one of their trucks last week, yellow hair in the breeze, and heard them calling you Faith. He thinks he can just SWAP YOU OUT. Like you don’t got a brain of your own. God knows who you are, and so do you. Selena. I love you. Don’t lose yourself to this.” Both of the above notes have mentions to identity issues with taking on the new name of Faith, of losing oneself or forgetting oneself. With the note to Lana and the last note from one of the Faiths there is also the double mention of “being special.” “I just wanted to be special. When Joseph came into my life, I felt like you’d given me a true gift, Lord. That a man who talks to you would bring me in on your holy conversation..? And so I too the name that you gave me, Lord, through Joseph: “Faith.” And I am a woman made anew. But now, I’m ashamed to say, even though I carry this name, my devotion to the Project is..plagued. By Doubt. What do I do? I know you will forgive me, dear Lord. I don’t know if Joseph will.“ The above note titled “A Confession” on Faith’s wiki page is possibly from Rachel, though the wording has me contemplating that it’s likely from someone a bit older, and the style I’m uncertain if I’d attribute to Rachel though I acknowledge that writing and speaking can present very differently. I would expect her to write with a more direct style of wording since presumably she had internet access and was familiar with texting, speculating off of Tracey’s note in the convent that mentioned Tracey being “tired of this 19th-century-ass writing shit.” The pauses via commas and more formal-yet-casual feel of the written cadence, along with more talk of God feels like someone else’s voice rather than Rachel’s, but I could be wrong. But that’s also fitting with the theme of uncertainty of who’s who beneath the name of Faith. Therein lies the loss of individuality and lack of clear denoting of which Faith this was, or is.

What I find absolutely fascinating about all of these villains is how they tell the story of the trauma and past experiences through their actions, dialogue, beliefs, and all while moving the main story forward. We do have some direct story telling in the sense of them telling us about those key moments that lead to their revelation and some backstory details, but the fact that even afterwards in a lot of what they do if not all of what they do we can potentially draw more inferences of how they came to be who they are? That is some very beautiful story and character construction in my opinion. In how the past influences their present and relatively speaking future events, so too does their present and future come circling back to tie to their past. This possible feedback loop of influence is just so neat in my opinion and is particularly pronounced here with the Seed family and how they are presented in-game. I feel it works exceptionally well for antagonists but could in theory also work for any main character. The sheer weight of how their past influences them so profoundly is really interesting, and while we all are shaped by our past, it’s particularly highlighted here with the Seeds. Often the trope of a character having a dark backstory is presented as the reason they’re doing X, or are prone to behaving in a certain way (one such popular demeanor being say brooding,) and is particularly common for villains. What I think makes the Seeds for me more interesting in that regard is how individualized their processing of their traumas is. It’s not just out to do evil because they are simply evil and have a backstory to facilitate handwaving as to why they are evil, they’re going about it in a particular way, and have all developed a nuanced system of belief relating to that and likely significantly influenced by those around them as well, with the Seeds all I would say influence each other to varying degrees. Them being a group of villains is part of that complexity with the layers of them having a family dynamic, the cult hierarchy, significantly different styles of managing their affairs while still sharing some core elements, and being such diverse personalities. The Seeds in their entirety as a group are what make or break the story in my opinion, since to have really good conflict I would say you need excellent villains or antagonists, and the Seed family fits that bill in my personal opinion very well. It feels like there was a lot of time and care put into each of the Seeds in different ways and in crafting their stories as well as fitting those stories to the main story of Far Cry 5. The speculation I personally take away from this in terms of developing interesting characters is that sometimes having a very detailed background and having it influence a character heavily and actively both in-scene and on the meta of writing the scene can be really interesting. Obviously sometimes not knowing a character’s past and leaving it a mystery works very well too. But if there’s been care put into how the character is developed and there are in-world, albeit unknown backstory reasons for their actions, words, and beliefs? Then even if we the audience don’t know the reasons, that can make for a very compelling character for audience members to speculate and fill in the blanks about. Obviously there are other builds and exceptions and such for making compelling characters and in particular villains and antagonists, but I do think this style of character construction in relation to the overarching plot is honestly quite gorgeous as a story infrastructure element in its own right and worth taking a look at should it appeal to one to examine it. It’s a really lovely echo of how much investment the dev team’s put into the characters themselves that those characters in-world also care and are heavily invested in what they’re doing and saying too, as an added accent to it all. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, hope you all have a good day/night! [Link to part one here.] [Link to part two here.]

#writing about writing #Far Cry 5 #FC5 #trigger warning content #Faith Seed #Rachel Jessop #long post is long #character study #tw content is listed at the top of the post #antagonists #villains

The Investment of an Antagonist - Part Two

Entry 04 continued. [Trigger warning content: post contains discussion of Far Cry 5 details for the main villains including graphic violence, brainwashing, torture, child abuse mention, neglect, dark backstories, swearing, mention of self harm/religiously-themed-self-harm, drug use, etc. Spoilers naturally, for both Far Cry 5 and Far Cry New Dawn. Part 02 of 03.] [Link to part one here.] [Link to part three here.]

— Joseph —

Proceeding chronologically by descending age, we next have Joseph, the middle child of the lot. It can be interpreted that he mirrors his own trauma with the Voice being Utterly Unhelpful over the course of his entire life aside from telling him about the Collapse and such. He shows up in one of each of the Heralds’ individual series of scenes, primarily to address the Deputy to tell them about their supposed choice/sacrifice/gift/etc laid before them, watching but not helping to stop the suffering of the unwilling prisoners as Hudson mentions when you first find her in the bunker after defeating John. A transcription of Hudson’s relevant dialogue during The Quality of Mercy mission to get her and other prisoners out of the bunker post-John-boss-fight:

“All...all because of him! Him. That fucking...fucking piece of shit!” [throws the picture of Joseph on the ground, shattering the glass in the frame. Crouching over it, continues,] “He would come down here and he would just stand there...and watch. We were begging for mercy and he would just...fucking...watch.” [trails off into despairing laughter.] Joseph, just watching Hudson and others be tortured and tormented, instead of stepping in to help. In the idea consideration of the Seeds all inflicting similar suffering upon the unwilling victims, this would potentially parallel the scene where Joseph heard the Voice later on in life while being mugged—and further beaten up for not having any money on him. While being mugged he grew angry at the Voice, blaming it for all his troubles. Then the Voice spoke to him again, and Joseph had his revelation, the clarity of “purpose” that came from the vision of the Collapse, and what ultimately led him to becoming the Father. In the blaming of the Voice for everything that’s gone wrong in his own life, Joseph could be mirroring that perceived chain of responsibility with permitting the Heralds to take some people and kill others, mirroring the death of his wife. Mirroring the perception that all is according to what Joseph perceives as God’s plan, and thus those the Project takes are meant to live, per their own creed, and by “divinely” granted right to decide, as granted by Joseph from the Voice, and granted to the Heralds by Joseph. As Joseph said in the second scene with Jacob, “The Lord gives...and the Lord takes.” So too could that parallel in meaning with the Project (the Father) gives, and the Project (and so too the Father) takes. His darkest action in his backstory might also be echoed in how he permits the Project members to murder and torment the various people of Hope County in an echo of Joseph’s perception of the seeming randomness still attributed to “a divine plan” that ends some lives and spares others. His permitting of the atrocities against the civilians of the county feeds very well into the other Seeds’ behaviors, and that of their followers in allowing them to behave in a chaotic but in his eyes purposeful way. Perhaps Joseph’s line about “returning to the angels we once were,” includes a great deal of darkness, destruction and violence in the nature of angels in his vision of his utopic garden. Perhaps it is relabeling the grotesque actions of the Project as just and right because of divine mandate, the way the Judge is broken and brainwashed to believe come the time of Far Cry New Dawn. Transcribed from A Scribbled Note found in the bunker while seeking Joseph’s book in FCND: You know. You know best. God tells you. If I listen to you, it’s good, and right, and I can help, and I can save people, and make it right, and everything will be okay. If I judge as your judge the judgement is right and just, the judgement is God’s Word. I see now. I am so sorry. Please give me a mask I am afraid. No one can know me. Please let me be reborn like the world, cleansed of all sin and new, and I will fight to cleanse the sin. Thank you Joseph thank you Father. But as we see in the end, and in meeting Joseph for the first time in the flesh in FCND as the Captain, Joseph admits to being wrong. In the end he crumbles as his belief in all of the suffering being worthwhile and for a greater purpose is brought to ruin with the betrayal from his own blood, and the burning of New Eden. He had gone so far to try to be right, that to be wrong was his undoing because it meant he had done evil for no reason other than a misleading belief of his, whether or not the Voice spoke to him at all. Leaving him alive to scream at the unresponsive Voice once more brings him full circle, emphasizing his initial traumatic theme, among other possible themes such as the fate of Cain for kin slaying to wander the earth thereafter, marked so that no one can harm him both for slaying his brother Abel, and for not asking God for forgiveness or seeking absolution for his sins—in Joseph’s case, not asking for God to forgive him due to the cardinal sin of believing himself to be beyond forgiveness. Sparing him is in a way a final slap in the face for Joseph thematically speaking by emphasizing that he is wrong about what justice is, his interpretation of “God’s word,” and more or less everything he’s believed up to that point. (No shade thrown at anyone who shoots him though, the game presents you with a choice and it’s valid to pick either one.)

This would tie in nicely with the “we love you and we will take you” and the “In the end you will thank us” slogans and graffiti we see here and there, including in John’s bunker. Both are very aggressive and unhealthy potential echoes of the Duncans adopting John and “teaching him the power of Yes” (ie beating the tar out of him and not giving him the option to say “no” with said option being respected.) The flaying may have come about as an evolution from self flagellation/whipping/flogging in order to earn the Duncans’ approval—which also potentially feeds into the possibility of John having some scars on his back and perhaps other locations on his body, such as the shoulders. After the Duncans died (through either natural or unnatural means depending on your headcanon), John either started or was already living a rock n’ roll lifestyle. Further speculation of themes and underlying motivations for John could include the following: Was he ashamed of his scars, as part of his self-loathing that’s mentioned in the Book of Joseph? Perhaps part of the rock and roll life style was that if he and his partner(s) were all high, maybe no one would notice or comment on them. It would also feed into living the lie of being “John Duncan” as John and Joseph may have seen it. Perhaps he was ashamed that his skin bore such obvious marks of his suffering, inflicted by his own hand and by the Duncans in one way or another. Perhaps transcending that shame is part of his whole “courage” trip. Perhaps that’s why he likes to scar and flay others, so that he’s not the only one with the marks. Maybe it makes him feel more “normal” by inflicting his version of normalcy on others to make it a more widespread experience—though that can be said of all the Seed family. For John in particular though, Sloth could be said to be his original sin in the sense of spiritual abandonment of self-cultivation, healing from his trauma, etc in running from his self-hatred and how his past overshadows his present day reality into the foreseeable future, but perhaps Joseph meant a different one rather than Sloth when he spoke to John at the Baptism scene. Perhaps it is Envy. Envy of the people who have not yet truly, deeply suffered through his idea of torment for their “actual” sins as he perceives sin. Envy of the people who won’t know the suffering and torment he endured for false sins—the ones who don’t “understand.” Envy of the people who don’t “care” about these matters that have shaped his entire world view and life whether he wanted them to or not—echoed in how he also inflicts them on people, willingly or not. That could feed into Wrath by inflicting harm on others, too, for added sinning-points. But that could feed right back into his supposed original sin of Sloth in the spiritual sense, since it could be said he’s seeking to change the world in a harmful fashion instead of seeking how to induce positive change in his own attitude from within. Which really just makes Joseph seem like he’s giving cryptic mystic-on-a-mountain-stereotype advice of “don’t take the dark path young padawan” instead of reining John’s activities in and actually telling John how to fix it...which mirrors Joseph’s relationship with the Voice again, and how the Voice effectively does not seem to offer moral guidance when Joseph goes full ham with the cult’s actions, pre-Reaping, during the Reaping, and after. Then we have Joseph’s recorded phone message to John, left at the Seed Ranch outpost: “After all the atonements, all the confessions, all that you’ve done for me and Eden’s Gate, it’s not enough, is it John? Cast away your past. You need to open up your heart. You need to see that there is more love all around you. All the pain and suffering you spread will not help us in the long run. These actions will only feed the sin inside you. It will grow stronger, it will convince you to do wicked things. Those you scar too deeply, they will heal. They will become the carriers of your sin. They will spread that sin to others. I’ve seen your death in a vision. You are destined to be slayed by your own sin. It will come back around in a new form. It’s only a matter of when. I’ve seen you die young. I’ve seen you die old. The difference between the two outcomes is how much love you let into your heart. I want to see you become an old man in the paradise we prepared for. I love you brother. I love you.” One other thing Joseph points out in his phone message he sent to John is “Those you scar too deeply, they will heal. They will become carriers of your sin,” which very much echoes John becoming the abuser, as the Duncans were to him. Most ironically would be that Joseph’s lines are also applicable to Joseph’s own self with this possible interpretation of thematic motive and choices, among other interpretations. This also is likely sending mixed messages despite Joseph’s words being more positively-tagged in the words of brotherly love and all that, if Joseph’s idea of morality is skewed via labeling as stated above. I personally find this message and Joseph’s...inaction as the cult leader to be very conflicting. On the one hand, it sounds like a clear acknowledgement that Joseph is aware that morally, John’s actions are fucked up, dark, and bad objectively. This would easily be extended to Joseph also understanding that all of the dark things the Heralds do are indeed dark and fucked up, since he is arguably very aware of what all the Heralds are up to. So if he knows, why does he do nothing to stop or to guide the Project and its Heralds onto a better path? It could be a messy nuance that he knows it is wrong, but doesn’t know how to do better as of yet in the actual mechanics of the situation while still achieving their goals. Not having a better answer, as it were, despite knowing logically there must be a better way. But conflicting as it may be, it does fit if Joseph is perhaps unconsciously choosing to act as “the Voice” metaphorically (and literally) to the Heralds and his followers. Basically, “you’re doing it wrong, go do it right” without really giving clear orders tailored-to-the-individual’s-psychology as to how, so as to get them to successfully want and start moving past their trauma. They have all internalized and recreated their past suffering, so...Joseph telling John to cast away his past is both hypocritical and ultimately unhelpfully vague in this interpretation of them. Another potential additional theme for John is that his actions may tie back to his past as an addict—presuming he’s largely off of all the more heavy hitting addictive substances and has curtailed the obvious overindulgence-behaviors (but may still drink in more restrained fashion, iirc I think he had alcohol in the form of whiskey at the Seed Ranch? Weed isn’t being counted in this case,) it might be that underneath it all he’s still got those base patterns of high-chasing from his addictions but in a new form. Another possible option that Joseph is referring to as John’s sin is rather his continued addiction behaviors, via the “it’s not enough, is it John?” noted earlier in the phone call message. That line from Joseph could be interpreted as noting how chasing highs can be an essentially endless pursuit with no real clear ending, where there’s no such thing as enough. This would fall neatly into Sloth within the theme John has for classifying people’s sins. In this case, it could be the new addiction to getting people to say Yes. An addiction to the thrill of victory, of learning things about others that no one else knows about—a power trip. The sheer exhilaration John has with getting that Yes from Nick, and flaying the man? The way he needs a moment to clean up and catch his breath before moving on to the Deputy’s Atonement (it’s also great pacing for the scene imo.) The way John says Wrath is the Deputy’s sin? Maybe Wrath for John is one of the most addicting highs of the sins, anger and violence fueled by the adrenaline rush and power over others’ lives, to end them as the Deputy so chooses. As John says shortly after the Deputy escaping the bunker in the Confession sequence, "Your sin consumes you. Blinds you to all the harm you inflict. It allows you to dispense of human life so easily. Have you ever given so much as a second thought to killing?” Combining that with John‘s earlier comment during the Confession: “But it was Joseph who showed me just how selfish I was being. Always receiving. Always taking. The best gift isn’t the one you get, it’s the one you give, and giving takes courage. The courage to own your sin. To etch it on to your flesh and carry its burden and when you have endured—when you have truly begun to atone—to cut it out like a cancer and display it for all to see. My God that’s courage.” It could be interpreted that John is projecting his addictive tendencies onto the Deputy, an addiction to Wrath as it were. To killing. To violence. Addicted, without consideration of the people it hurts, much like how more severe addiction cases might drive a person to partake in similar veins of behaviors with violence, theft, etc (but obviously less high in the body count department since this is an FPS game.) Perhaps John’s world view also includes seeing all people outside the Project as being addicted to their sins. Perhaps what John thinks as owning his sin is to admit to his addictive tendencies and trying to turn it towards purposes that are “for the good of the Project and others.” Joseph apparently doesn’t agree, and could indeed be looking at it as John still chasing the newest high in another form as theorized earlier. Maybe Joseph recognizes some form of John’s behavior from his time working at a psychiatric hospital—that’d be dark, now wouldn’t it. A possibility though, mayhap. Of course there’s also the option of “Why not both” interpretations of the Envy and Sloth ideas, to add even more nuanced layers to John’s motivations. Whichever it is of those options in this particular examination, it does all tie in to John repeating his experiences as a theme for how he brainwashes and tortures people in his indoctrination process. It is perhaps a tad ironic that John might still have underlying themes of addiction though, given that Faith’s method of brainwashing is very heavily drug-based with the Bliss, with a hearty heaping addition of emotional manipulation. Perhaps that’s part of a possible motivation of John not liking Faith much given the little dig he has for her via the line also during the Confession mission, “In the east...well. Let’s just say too much Bliss can go to one’s head. Faith created her “Angels” but she never did treat them all that well...” This line is certainly part of the basis forming John’s animosity in A Cold and Broken Hallelujah towards Faith. If anything, it creates a very interesting line of contrast between John and Faith, and perhaps it is a matter of John hating something about Faith that he hates about himself. [Link to part one here.] [Link to part three here.]

#writing about writing #Far Cry 5 #FC5 #trigger warning content #Joseph Seed #long post is long #character study #John Seed #tw content is listed at the top of the post #antagonists #villains

The Investment of an Antagonist - Part One

Entry 04. [Trigger warning content: post contains discussion of Far Cry 5 details including cannibalism, graphic violence, brainwashing, torture, child abuse mention, neglect, mentioned fatalistic/suicidal character pov, dark backstories, etc. Spoilers naturally. Part 01 of 03.] [Link to part two here.] [Link to part three here.] I was cooking dinner and had the sudden EUREKA moment of trying to figure out what exactly I want with regards to an antagonist for an original fic setting. Originally I was going to have a general state of conflict between two nations/city-states/etc on a larger, more impersonal scale, but that didn’t do anything to really interest me in that level of conflict. So I was thinking on why Far Cry 5′s villains and the conflict interests me so, and the eureka moment was realizing that they as villains have a personal stake in all this, and go about it in ways that are reflective of their stories. Specifically for the Seeds, it has me realizing it’s more interesting to me when the villain is acting due to personal motivations of an emotional nature and/or relating to their belief system, and in ways that compliment those internal motivations that can build out into or off of their backstories and other areas of the tale.

Obviously one can make some assumptions of Whitetail Militia imagery being used here, particularly given that one of the slides on the projector screens during the Trials includes a picture of Eli with antlers iirc (that may be only during the later trials or the last one, I am uncertain.) Ties right into the whole “the weak must be culled,” and “you are meat,” slogans Jacob’s got all over the place. The “only you” slogans and graffiti could also serve to foster the loneliness and isolation aspect of making the choice “to make the sacrifice” ie, the symbolic choice of killing Miller, or his surrogate equivalent in the case of everyone else that Jacob puts through his trials. I haven’t seen a lot regarding Miller’s ties to Jacob from in-game content but I could have missed something easily. The wiki labels Miller as Jacob’s friend, though I wish we had more detail on that. Most certainly, Miller was a member of Jacob’s unit, which based off of some reading and browsing on the internet, should still be a pretty close tie whether or not they were friends. The following speculation is based on my own interpretations of the matter and I have no history of serving in the Armed Forces, so if I’m mistaken or such feel free to drop me a line to let me know. Continuing: even if they theoretically hated each other’s guts, they were still a part of the unit, a part of the Army. That means they and their other brothers-in-arms lived together and fought together. They ate as a group, slept as a group, watched each others’ backs while on watch or during a firefight, fought along side each other, and did their best to keep each other alive while fulfilling the mission objective, working together as individuals brought together in a cohesive unit that also was a part of the whole. They all knew they had each others’ backs and that the others did the same for them in turn. Shifting between life-or-death situations and more peaceful times, it creates a bond and social structure that is very unlike most common, modern civilian social structures. There certainly at least seems to be a bit of culture shock in the US between the two environs, and Jacob seems to have experienced that, based on what we hear of his backstory in The Book of Joseph of having little to no support once back in civilian life (ie: deeply traumatized and staying in veteran hospitals until he ran out of money and ended up in homeless shelters) after being discharged from the Army. In the Armed Forces it’s about the group, rather than the individual. Imagine having that, knowing that, after being through all that Jacob has potentially been through. To have brothers in arms if not by blood by his side who he protects, who also protect him against the hostility of the world they’re fighting against. This is not to ding Joseph or John as characters by the way, all three of them were children at that point and shouldn’t have had to deal with any of that. Jacob loses what ties of family he holds dear with his blood brothers once he’s put into Juvie, perhaps makes friends there but is likely on his own once he’s out again, with very poor prospects given his history, and then he enlists. He’s alone and without support before he joins the military, and then suddenly he’s in an environment where there IS a form of support, and it’s predictable and structured down to the last bootlace (note: that’s a very broad statement and does not include variance and personal experiences, nor possible issues with potential power abuse or other flaws that might arise in such group structures.) Imagine Jacob being in the Army long enough to get used to that, to enjoy that aspect of it all, to share the camaraderie of bitching about the heat of the sun, sand in their socks, and getting yet another package of their least favorite MRE while trying to wheedle a trade with someone else for something better. Imagine him doing that with Miller, knowing how the other man likes the sugar cookie desserts in one MRE package and hates how the chocolate bars melt from the desert heat in another. Knowing what each others’ tells and bluffs are from playing poker on their down time while on a tour. Swapping stories about home...and noticing who doesn’t want to talk about the life they had before enlisting. Talking about the things they miss, the people they miss. Knowing who snores, who’s a light sleeper, all those things you learn when you’re in close proximity to a person for perhaps up to two years or so depending on deployment length. It could also be they’ve been deployed together more than once, as Jacob certainly went out on multiple tours per The Book of Joseph once again. Imagine Jacob knowing all of that and more about Miller. Then, day after day after day of being lost in the desert, with starvation eating away at their rationality, that hollow pain in their guts as their bodies start burning through their own cells and reserves to try to stay alive, running out of water and having to take chances with any drinking source they can find in the environment and having to expend precious energy to try or die early from dehydration, probably not sleeping well from the hunger, exhaustion, stress, possible enemy presence, dangerous wildlife... The brain starts shutting down real quick once we don’t have the resources it needs to run optimally. Some faster than others, but in Jacob and Miller’s case, their ordeal is definitely long enough to put them into that mindset of feeling that primal fear of a slow death by famine, weakness, scarcity. The psychological toll would have been heavy without a doubt, and that might’ve been compounded by experiences in Jacob’s childhood if his parents were not dutiful in buying food more regularly, which easily could be the case. Old Mad Seed needs more whiskey this month to fuel his raging, drunken fits of spewing biblical verses in a tyrannical fashion? There goes the money for the last few days of food. Easily could be how Jacob got into stealing candy (and likely also food in that case) for himself and his brothers. So Jacob would have a good idea of some of what’s coming down the pipe in that case. He knows how long the trip is, can reckon how fast the two can travel. Maybe he starts out hopeful in a grim way to start... ...but over time as things get more and more desperate (and it could be a familiar desperation he’s felt before as a kid going hungry, only worse,) “And I looked at Miller and I could tell we were as good as dead. And I accepted that. And in that acceptance...came clarity.” That clarity could very well be that Jacob decided that morality was futile if it meant you didn’t survive, which could very well be a very world-breaking revelation for him, since he is mentioned in his backstory to have had a praiseworthy sense of honor among other things. Certainly is potentially spirit breaking to go from being the older brother, the brother-in-arms who relied on and was relied on, who was trusted, to being a betrayer of that trust. A Judas, one could say, as he calls Pratt in his video after Pratt has helped the Deputy escape. And what does Jacob make the Deputy become, in relation to Eli? Eli, the man the Deputy was rescued by, was aided by, has been working alongside this entire time. Eli, who trusts and relies on the Deputy. Eli, who it could be said betrayed Jacob’s friendship with him by choosing not to hand over the Whitetail Militia and join Eden’s Gate (from Jacob’s perspective, based on his final fight dialogue.) “Hey. Only you could have gotten this close. Only you could have earned his trust. It was always only ever you. Good work. You did it. You passed your test. You made your sacrifice. But now...you’re alone. And you’re weak. And we know what happens to the weak.” That might seem contradictory at first, since in theory making the sacrifice should make one “strong” by Jacob’s line of reasoning, one might think. But the Deputy is a “traitor” now—to the Whitetail Militia by brainwashing (temporarily as we the audience know, pending Jacob’s death,) and to Jacob by choice, if one takes the following lines from Jacob into consideration: “You’ve forgotten your purpose, Deputy. You were on the path of the Chosen but now you’ve strayed. Fear did this to you, but don’t worry, I can help with that. I can remove your fear and give you strength. It’s not too late. Come back to me. Remember your purpose.” ”Deputy, know that I still have hope for you, but if you continue to support Eli and his merry band of cowards, that hope will cease to exist. Your judgement is cloudy because your mind is weak, but I have confidence you’ll make the right choice in the end. If not—you’ll all pay in blood.” Link to the audio for the above two lines here (credit and appreciation to hopecountyradio once more.) As with the other Seeds, Jacob starts out trying to persuade the Deputy to “see the light” and join the Project, but as with all of them, as the resistance meter rises and we draw closer to the final confrontation with him, he and the others abandon that idea in favor of trying to end the Deputy instead. So in this possible interpretation, it could be that Jacob views both the Deputy and Eli as traitors both. However...the two situations while both likely quite weighty with the Deputy being “the chosen one” to kick off the Collapse (or a herald of the Collapse if one wants to be cute with wording,) and Eli being an ex-good-friend or perhaps even ex-best-friend of Jacob’s, are potentially vastly different in emotional weight to Jacob. The Deputy is all tied up with this Collapse business, and while Jacob isn’t sure if Joseph talks to God, he does support him, what with being a Herald in the cult and all that. It involves the fate of the family, and in particular, Jacob’s family—his brothers and sister. Eli, however, Jacob has known for a while, likely years, back during the construction of the bunkers which Eli helped with, possibly and likely before then. I personally lean towards interpreting that as they struck up the beginning of a friendship, and Jacob hired Eli and his crew to help with the construction of the cult’s bunkers. Where they had their falling out is less clear as far as I’m aware. It could be it was during or after construction that Eli got a bad feeling about all of this Eden’s Gate business, or perhaps even as late as the beginning of the Reaping if that’s when Jacob gave Eli the “chance” to hand over his Whitetail Militia members, as mentioned in his final boss battle red-bliss section. That could’ve been the breaking point for Jacob and Eli, and if Jacob was expecting Eli to side with him due to friendship and perhaps some shared beliefs...perhaps Jacob took that...poorly. And by poorly I mean went full out on revenge of having Eli killed by betrayal of someone he’d chosen to trust—someone that Jacob had already gotten his hooks into. Someone Eli needed, in this fight against Jacob. Someone like the Deputy. The Deputy, who’s been put through starvation, exposure, and ingrained through conditioning and likely a liberal use of Bliss to facilitate said conditioning, to hunt. To train. To kill. To sacrifice. “You take away a man’s basic needs, and he will revert to his primordial instinct in just ten days.” [Chuckles.] “Ah, that’s a difficult thing to understand unless you’ve lived it...” This is what Jacob is putting the “recruits” and the Deputy through—his revelation. His experience. His choice. In the end as Jacob succumbs to his injuries, he is weak, he is dying, and he knows it, looking at the Deputy in his final scene. This time, he is the one who is sacrificed, by the Deputy, and in Jacob’s eyes by Joseph, to either try to end the chaos spread across the county, or to break a seal respectively. Jacob’s death is a means to an end—as Miller’s was. And Jacob “accepts that,” as he puts it. Does he accept it because now he’s betrayed the trust and faith of potentially two people he might’ve been close to? Miller, and then Eli? Is Jacob conditioning the Deputy during that red-bliss sequence of his boss fight to kill Jacob, based on how there are bliss-hallucinations of Jacob to shoot while destroying the beacons? There’s the generic Whitetail fighter, Judges, and Jacob himself scattered across the landscape before ending that sequence as far as I’m aware. Both Jacob and the Whitetail fighter present could be interpreted in this line of thinking as echoing the supposed betrayal of both sides and being “alone” against the world in a nightmarish fashion while Jacob potentially tries to break the Deputy through talking and said nightmare. The way Jacob talks though...is he strictly speaking to us, or is the Deputy actually a mirror as it were, with the things Jacob says being applicable to himself? “Don’t you find it ironic that everyone you try to help ends up worse off? Eli...Pratt...Tragedy just follows you. If you really wanted to keep people safe, be a hero...you’d just off yourself. Safer for everyone that way.” Is Jacob REALLY talking to us, or to himself through a medium? Through a glass darkly, as it were. He “tried” to “help” Eli and Pratt, in his twisted fashion, by trying to get Eli previously to join the Project and to make Pratt strong enough via brainwashing to also join the Project, which in Jacob’s perspective if he’s following his and Joseph’s dogma, is the only way to survive the Collapse. But Jacob has failed, repeatedly, to protect the people he held dear—his family. His friends. He’s become the threat they need protecting from. He has irrevocably perhaps proven to himself that under the right circumstances? He’s willing to betray people he holds dear for his own survival. Would he betray his family? That is the question, isn’t it. Perhaps Jacob fears finding out. Maybe he fears, that under the right circumstances, he would. Maybe that’s why he goes so willingly to be Joseph’s sacrifice, in part. Maybe having orchestrated Eli’s death, the death of yet one more person whom he was once friends with, yet one more person Jacob himself has betrayed, maybe Jacob doesn’t want to continue either. Maybe that’s the last straw, the nail in the coffin of underlying beliefs that Jacob is inherently not someone who can be fully trusted. Maybe he genuinely thought Eli would join him if given the chance. Maybe Jacob was still hollow and brittle as hell from the first time he’d killed a friend, when he killed Miller. All the Seeds bear the weight of their pasts heavily, and Jacob’s no exception. Jacob survived the first time, barely. He survived the second time, but not by long. He starts talking about his potential death at the Deputy’s hands quite early on during the red-bliss segment. Neither John nor Faith nor Joseph to my knowledge do so. Maybe he was waiting for the Deputy to be strong enough to finish what no one else could. Maybe that was what he wanted. “There’s no “win” for you here. It all ends bloody. For everyone. You die now, or you die later. It’s up to you. But either way? You won’t die a hero.” Perhaps that line from Jacob also is one of the things he fears most—dying without purpose. Dying being not a hero, a person who’s done good for others, but rather the opposite. Ironically so, given that he and his family are all in the torture and brainwashing business, but Jacob in particular gave up on being a good person a long time ago, I think, even by the cult’s standards. [Link to part two here.] [Link to part three here.]