Tag: metal gear solid

Metal Gear Triptych: Postscript

I tried to get this comic done in time for the one year anniversary of the hit-and-run on July 22nd. Then I had a power outage in my house for nearly an entire week. Oh well, my life is just a series of challenges. This comic is something of a closer, a postscript, to my journey of healing.

One year ago I nearly died, I couldn’t walk, couldn’t trust my own brain, I was abandoned and threatened by my family. MGSV allowed me to both escape my pain and confront it. I was Venom Snake, waking up with amnesia to a world that didn’t make sense, sadly there was no Revolver Ocelot on a white horse to save me. I was Kazuhira Miller, burned by my own rage, rendered unable to walk, thankfully they were able to put pins in my broken leg and save it. Then there was the nerve damage causing a constant phantom pain all over my body.

I’m stronger now than I was before the accident, I’ve started bodybuilding, and practicing Krav Maga, I’ve nearly returned to full-time work, finally got my driver’s license and I’m trying to join the army reserves. Metal Gear saved me from suicide, it’s inspired my art and costumes and writing, it’s motivated me to live and become something formidable.

All this pain, reminds me of what I am, I’ll live, I’ll become all I need to be.

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Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater- The Boss

This was a fun project, I didn’t make this costume from scratch, I altered one I ordered from a Chinese cosplay website. I replaced the vinyl fabric buckles with metal ones, replaced the vinyl straps with webbing, and made the knife holder out of leather. All touches to give this costume authenticity. I wore it for the first time to a convention today, it’s sweaty and there isn’t much flexibility, but overall I think this costume was decent. Not many people recognised the character, most thought I was Black Widow.

Photos by Steam Kittens

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Metal Gear Triptych II: The Wounds Let the Light In

The Brain Comforts Itself (A trilogy of dreams)

After several traumatic incidents leaving me severely injured and profoundly alone, my subconscious provided me a place in which I could retreat. This place was not devoid of pain or danger. No, each time I visited I was made to overcome a challenge, face some aspect of my real pain, the difference from reality being that I had someone stronger and wiser than I was to walk with me. This phenomenon has been known by shamans all over the world perhaps before the written word itself. The ancients speak of spirit guides and tulpas, beings that visit our minds to provide us with unique guidance. 

This is an ability I’ve had my whole life, but I dismissed my fantasy worlds as childish or shameful. After my near-death experience followed by the most intense dreams of my life, I decided I didn’t want to keep these things locked away in my mind anymore, they don’t deserve to die with me. 

These characters might belong to a video game, but I don’t think that matters, these are the forms my subconscious assumed because these are figures who represent meaningful qualities to me. Snake, Miller, Ocelot, each in their turn taught me something important on my journey to recovery. 

This project took me down all sorts of surprising avenues of research, from the self-insert fantasies of Dante Aligheiri to the dissection of the subconscious by Jung. Our private relationship with our fantasies or even the fiction of others is significant, this triptych demonstrates the providence my own mind offered me as protection from my pain. 

The Dream:

The dreams I had featuring Kazuhira as I recovered seemed to mostly focus on pain and our relationship with it. I struggled often with the urge to harm myself, perhaps as a means of feeling control over my other pains. This is the wisdom Miller imparted onto me after a particularly exhausting day of battling those urges.

Part 1:

https://wordpress.com/post/traviandesigns.com/2793

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Cosplay Couture Kazuhira Miller

Photography by Vespa Photography

Despite Miller’s limited wardrobe and static body language, I find him endlessly inspiring. The challenge of portraying him through cosplay, and reenvisioning him through fashion is all about subtlety and the little details. I kept the silhouette functionally the same, but draping the trenchcoat like a cape to entirely obscure his missing arm added a touch of theatre. Essentially I built everything around the velvet double breasted blazer, it read to me as the formal fashion equivalent of his military uniform.

Most of this costume was assembled, the most work I did was cut the wig myself. I’m surprised what I could get out of a $15 eBay wig, it’s a half-wig too, it needed to be thin enough to fit under the beret. The downside is I could only cut it so short, but I think this length works for what I’m going for.

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The Hallucination

I survived the colonoscopy, they didn’t need to perform surgery beyond the biopsies, I won’t know what’s wrong with me for a couple of weeks still.
Waking up from the anaesthesia was horrific, I was drifting in between dreams and reality, both seeming to be equally real. The hospital was on fire, I called out to Snake, he stood there doing nothing. Then in reality, I kept trying to turn over on my stomach and crawl away. The doctors were yelling at me to open my eyes, I couldn’t figure out why they were getting angry at me. I didn’t understand why one of them kept poking me so hard in the ribs, I would have punched her back, but I wasn’t lucid enough. I thrashed and writhed around, the doctors all had to hold me down and sedate me, I then starting hallucinating that certain rape scene from Berserk. I woke up later in another room, still struggling to regain consciousness.
They later asked me if if I was afraid of snakes. “Why?” I asked. “You kept saying there were snakes”. I laugh, “Oh, Snake, that’s the codename of this character in this game I like”. Thankfully one of the nurses was a gamer, so he got it.
It could just be that I had a bad reaction to anaesthesia, or maybe I’ve retrained my brain having had to lucid dream so often to combat the nightmares. Big Boss is one of those “tulpas” I call on to intervene.

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