Why does everyone ship a canon gay character with a woman now (oceleva)
cackling. second time i've gotten an ask like this. i don't know what to tell you man people just think their dynamic is fun. and i headcanon ocelot as a woman so they're transbians to me. labels aren't strict i think ocelot is still very much in love with john but she finds comfort and company in eva even if they want to tear eachother's hair out. not strictly romantic, sexual, or platonic, just Queer. it's what they do best.
helloo, fellow oceleva shipper. i just wanted to ask if u could share ur headcanons around your ocelot's transfem identity and why you see her like that? im mostly used to masc ocelot (i usually headcanon him as a trans man or a cis man depending) but i really really am beginning to get interested by the Yuri... enlighten me with that ocelot transfem beam. tell me all about your design of her and more. please rant on this information is vital so i can produce FANFICS and FANART (#AndThatsACoolThing!). Convert me into the transfem ocelot x eva yuri. Hell Yeahhhh.
OH MY GAWSH.... i'd be honored. lengthy lengthy post below.
first and foremost, i headcanon a good chunk of my faves as transfem because these typa headcanons are far rarer than transmasc headcanons. i think i got burnt out from seeing how people treat characters and how they get assigned as transmasc for having traits that can be seen as "feminine". it was ESPECIALLY bad in previous fandoms i was in (cough cough owl house and people hating transfem hunter), but in general, there seems to be a lack of understanding that: Yes, you can make your fave a trans girl the same way you make your fave a trans boy. it's all headcanons, anyway.
as for Why i do this specifically within metal gear, it's the Themes. literally just woke up so sorry if this isn't as coherent as i'd like it to be, but a lot of these characters are born forced into a role from a very early age. one of violence, or deceit, or supposed "honor". ocelot especially, since he was the child of literally the GREATEST soldier in (the metal gear) world.
it's a lot about regaining control. you were shoved down this path and you have no choice but to follow it, but you want Some agency over yourself. you can't change your profession, you'd be killed; you can't reintegrate back into "society", whatever that means. you are an outsider and will forever be an outsider. but you CAN change this little (large) part of yourself, because that's the one thing separate from the hellfire that is the endless war you grew up tied to, and that brings you reprieve. like cutting or dyeing your hair or trying out a new style but it is SO much deeper than that.
there is also the theme of masculinity and violence. i find this easier to write with raiden, who i also headcanon as transfem, than ocelot, because ocelot lives and dies as an antagonist. but, at least in raiden's case, she was bred as a weapon. as she ages, she realizes she doesn't have to be that anymore, that she can help people. and she breaks free of this imposed violence—and by extension, the gender she had lived the majority of her life. it's similar for ocelot and obviously she doesn't shy away from the violence given her role, but she gets to choose the Why. this being her infatuation for bibo lol.
as for SPECIFIC headcanons, e.g. her transition timeline, it's rather complicated. i think after mgs3 ocelot has a sort of queer awakening, but not because she realized she WAS queer, but because she realized she COULD be queer. i think she knew she liked boys, and maybe at the back of her head she wished she was a girl so she could court them, but she knew that it was inherently wrong and, like most of her upbringing, suppressed it very deeply and pretended not to be Different lest she be thrown out of the niche she was born into.
and then john came along and she went "HGOLY SHIT I NEED HIM."
that kinda overrode the self-preservation instinct that comes from being queer in the 60s, although i do think ocelot was already experimenting Before 1964. trying out hormonal treatments because they improve "cognitive function" or whatever other bullshit she's clinging onto so she doesn't have to acknowledge that she may be transsexxual. and when it starts changing her body physically, feeling immense guilt at how Good it makes her feel, to be softer like this.
post-snake eater, she keeps up with it, on and off. if she goes to the west she learns of the transsexual scene there. my friend matt showed me a bunch of great resources from the 1950s and 60s and just looking at these women, dressing up and having fun, it makes me genuinely so emotional. jesus christ. brief intermission because i gotta show these.
some faceclaims for early 70s ocelot and eva. i am in no position to put labels on these individuals, but at least for coccinelle (second), she was the first (celebrity) trans women to undergo srs in europe! in 1958!!!! she died in 2006, and she was an activist for the majority of her life. the first lady's name is ginger. i can't find any information on her, outside of her pictures in this magazine, "female mimics", published in 1965. do note that, yeah, the way transgenderism is talked about is very different from today, but even the fact that these girls are featured in a magazine like this shows incredible progress. coccinelle's pics i nabbed from this magazine, "transvetism around the world" (she's french!). and ofc i'll link the full collections because i really think they're worth a skim. (internet archive digital transgender archive) (uvic's digital repository of "transvestia", a magazine on crossdressing that started in 1960)
anyway back to ocelot.
she transitions. fully commits to it near the end of the decade, and (1969) is where my oceleva fic takes place. by then she's already presenting as a woman and has somehow weaseled her way out of questions from her superiors by saying she's doing it under the guise of "espionage" and "anonymity" (which is only partially true. a quarter true). she pays people to keep their mouths shut but otherwise she moves around so often that it doesn't really matter who or what she is.
the draw of oceleva to me is this solidarity that comes from 1. both being transgender women, 2. both being Spies, and 3. both being OBSESSED with mr. john metal gear. i love bboceleva but i love oceleva MORE because their bond is so complicated and multifacted and it really appeals to me, someone on the aroace spectrum, for these girls to be tied together in a way that is not strictly romantic, sexual, or platonic. i've said this in other posts before but it's somewhere between queerplatonic (if such a term existed back then), friends with benefits (because they do fuck narsty, pleasure is pleasure), and soulmates (because. c'mon. you can't extricate one from the other). and also it's cute for a confident girl like eva to relentlessly tease a tsundere like ocelot. they're catty they're besties they wanna tear each other apart BUT they truly enjoy one another's company and there's really no one else that understands what it's like to be in their (heeled and/or spurred) shoes.
now here's where i jump ahead a little. i'm still playing through peace walker and i only have a General idea of what happens in tpp, but after the whole fucking helicopter incident, which naturally devastated ocelot because the object of her affections is in a fucking COMA, she begins to detransition. part of the reason she transitioned in the first place was because she felt Free being in love (lust?) with this guy, allowing her to take the leap and finally go through with this change. but now that john is gone, or at least inaccessible to her, she needs to forget that part of herself. the hypnosis comes with her making herself believe that she was never a woman, that the physical changes she experienced were all a result of genetics or "exposure", and, at best, ocelot is no one but a cisgendered bisexual (or bicurious) man.
maybe this is what felt right at the time. to distance himself as far as possible from this identity so the pain of losing the john he knew was less. but it's chipping away at his sanity (as many other things are). should state that i think detransition is completely legitimate but the internalized queerphobia was at play here. and also the. hypnosis and body-doubles and co-commanding a pmc etc etc.
so when that thin shell cracks, when 1984 happens and it all comes crashing down, when she vows to stick by big boss' side to the end, she goes back to it. of course, she is severely mentally ill at this point because of how much she fried her brain with hypnosis and drugs, but this lets her regain control again. late 90s, i think she finally gets srs. she's Older but it's never too late and it makes her feel so much more grounded in her body. i think she still likes the androgyny (the mustache stays) but being a Woman is so important to her. this particular ocelot i call lottie <3 her pseudonym for Spy Reasons is charlotte rivers. lottie is derived from "ocelot", of course, but that's a diminutive of charlotte, so. oh and "rivers" because it sounds like "revolvers". lol. i call younger 60s/70s tgirl ocelot "ocelucy", because the pseudonym she chooses Then is "lucy". ocelucy and lottie have different headcanons bc they're kinda aus of one another (lottie came first, i self-ship with her teehee) but the timeline is more or less the same.
so that's!! a good chunk of why/how i headcanon ocelot as transfem! as for design, i have a toyhou.se for both lottie and ocelucy, and many many pinterest boards for my oceleva bliss. this one for hair/outfit inspo and this one for just general vibes. and a spotify playlist. of course.
on a bit of a personal note, it's funny how making my sona, echo (who i ship with lottie), a fagdyke made ME a fagdyke. being on t has made me so much more comfortable with femininity when these were things that made me dysphoric before. for the record, i ID'd as "sapphic" when i was younger. and somehow i've circled back around to it, just a little bit to the left. i'm happy. i truly am. and i like making my faves women because i like women. and fandom misogyny/transmisogyny isn't gonna stop me from doing so.
thank you for the ask!!! i hope that answers... something.
oceleva where like a year or so after Ocelot starts estrogen Eva's like "you know... you kinda resemble the boss a bit" and Ocelot only then realises that was her mother
HELLPPPP MEEEEEEEEEEE. OH MY GOD. matt you're gonna make have to rewrite my entire fic that's too good. i totally forgot that they look REALLY FUCKING SIMILAR. even WORSE when this girl grows out her hair. ogghhhhgghhgh my god. The Drama.
At a glance i always think ur pfp is jeffy because the blue looks like his helmet and i think the ciggie is the pencil up his nose. Im sorry.
im glad google immediately showed me who you were referring to because with no further context i went "the killer???" but also LMFAO i see it now... jeffy if he was a stoner transsexual. (nodding sagely)
mutuals ilu for backing me up when weird anons come into my inbox bitching about me transfemming my faves. are we really doing headcanons discourse in the big '25. metal gear fans get less misogynistic/transmisogynistic NEOWWWW!!!!!!!
i am indeed! i dont talk about it much outside of some social circles but i do post the occasional art (if i make art At All, college has me Busy lol)
i have like. four different metal gear sonas for it. im not exclusive or anything i dont care about "sharing" discourse, it's just kinda silly to me.
my mains are revolver ocelot (the lottie i post about sometimes!), quiet, and (not from metal gear) jean vicquemare disco elysium. honorable mentions: major ocelot + eva (xof sona), the sorrow + the joy (war ghost sona), and liquid + mantis (foxhound sona). lottie + quiet are for my main dd/armstech sona, echo. and jean is for livine, my pfp teehee. i can talk more about them if you want!! i have some doodles here and there...
ok so i blocked that anon and im not gonna give them the pleasure of posting the Other anon they sent but it was complaining about me making eva fat and "misunderstanding" that she's supposed to be hot. no i know. i think she's a fucking goddess. i need her to bend me over. if you don't find fat people hot that's a you problem but don't bring it to Me.
