Canon

here's where i overanalyse the hell out of what tiny scraps canon has given me involving these two. strap in!

my holy grail

when you fully exhaust all game content known to man, there's only one place to turn: official novelisations. luckily, mgsv has one! unluckily it's only available in japanese. so of course me and my beginner's level understanding of japanese decided to roughly translate the whole thing in an unholy combination of machine translation, months of line by line editing, and something between spite and insanity. (you can find the whole thing here, if you'd like)

anyway, i'm really glad i did it mostly because there is a comparative wealth of skull face content, but also because i found one (1) single zeroskull scrap that i hold very dear to my heart.

during the infamous jeep ride when skull face is rambling about his master plan venom's thoughts focus on skull face being "so drawn" to zero, and i quote: "He calls it revenge, but it's no different than abnormal affection. That was the most frightening thing to Snake." i've agonised for hours over the specific term of abnormal affection or 異常な愛情, which i've found is the exact (and very literal) translation used for the japanese name of the movie dr. strangelove. it's also a term that seems to crop up in a lot of manga and movie titles to refer to varying types of creepy, obsessive or perverse relationships.

maybe one day i'll ask a fluent speaker how they would best translate the term and explain the exact connotations but for now i'm just going to keep relishing in this one tiny acknowledgement of skull face's weird, fucked up feelings towards him and the concept of venom snake tuning out everything else he was saying to be like "damn, these bitches gay".

XO & major

so if you've read my fics you'll probably already recognise that their use of titles drives me insane.

zero never calls him skull face. only ever XO. even when he's mad at him. even when they haven't spoken in forever and there's no reason for him to even consider him his XO at this point, because of the whole ground zeroes thing (zero never giving him much more than a slap on the wrist for that is also another matter entirely lol).

obviously the name skull face isn't his real name, and while it's how the game refers to him we can only assume it's a name diamond dogs came up with themselves. whether he went by this name or another name is unknown, but to zero he is only ever XO. i love this as a demonstration of their relationship - he's never a monstrous nickname to zero, who uses a military sort of title in place of any name. it's a reminder of what he means to him, while also being a reminder of what he is to him - a second in command. a name of honour and a reminder of his place. humanising or demeaning depending on the perspective.

(i also love the way skull face's model forces his coat to always be covering part of the XOF patch, introducing him with the letters XO alone showing. spelling out to us exactly who he is, even before we know it! it also shows merely the back end of the fox emblem, the fox's tail itself. hehe.)

as for how skull face refers to zero, well, he's zero, even cipher, to others. but only ever major when they're talking in person. so very deferential, even when it's clear he hates him and wants nothing more than for him to suffer. also, he says the word nine times within a nine minute call, meaning one major per minute, so make of that what you will. as for me i will be melting into liquid over here in the corner.

(i'm also rather smitten with their japanese titles, which i see in so many fanworks. ゼロ少佐と副官 ♡)

the phone call

considering it's the entire foundation of the ship and their only canon interaction i suppose i should talk about it.

i love their call as a representation of so much about them - a look into not only how things are between them now, but how they used to be. skull face slips so easily into the role of sycophant at the start, so cordial towards him while so very deferential, though there's a certain playful warmth to him (even though zero seems well past the point of reciprocating that). zero's uptight, almost nervous energy while skull face asks him if he likes his gift with mocking, almost smug charm, so softly asking if there's something wrong as he pricks his finger, acting so humble and charitable to him that he eventually gets zero to loosen up and talk to him more comfortably.

and zero's idea of speaking comfortably is discussing plans, ideology, all while shooting down skull face's suggestions, responding to his weaselly attempts to seemingly offer his services and get back into his good books with nothing but bluntness. my favourite moment is when skull face tries talking back, the "but i-" where zero cuts him off, stern as anything as he tells him, "don't be quaint, XO." you can practically picture skull face's frustration, and understand immediately the reasons why he is doing this.

(it's also fun to hear skull face get scolded, and i remember watching a playthrough where the people playing were shocked that there was a person even skull face would let himself be interrupted by and talked down to)

it's so easy for zero to go back to how i imagine he acted towards him in the past - engaging with him as a confidant, a person with whom to exchange ideas, but above all, an underling who ultimately still has to do as he's told. skull face plays the part so well up until the reveal of the parasites lacing the pin that i can only see it as a way of demonstrating exactly how things used to be.

i also see the ease with which zero returns to speaking to him like this as a sign of his nostalgia and longing for how things used to be. he's hardly surprised when skull face infects him, but he's complacent the whole way through. the man who locked himself away and dropped contact with almost everyone he'd ever known did seem very quick to open up, all because of a pin from his past and a pure assumption that it was skull face who sent it to him. not to mention that this is after ground zeroes (somewhere in 1976, to be exact), by which point zero has already exiled skull face to south africa as punishment. though i assume he doesn't understand the full extent of skull face's machinations at camp omega and his intent behind them, he does seem to be rather lenient with him.

a very special man

speaking of post-ground zeroes leniency...

in 1977 zero visits big boss in hospital. his mind is already pretty deteriorated from the infection, but while he can, he takes his chance to tell big boss, still asleep, the truth about operation snake eater and the other team he had working behind the scenes.

"I never told you this, but... I had another team at my disposal back then. With a very special man leading it. Maybe he didn't like the arrangement."

major you are driving me insane. he could have called him literally anything. in japanese he seems to just call him a "certain man", and yet i owe the english translators my life for the decision to translate it like this. i wish i could pick their brains and ask what the exact motivation was here.

regardless, i am fixated on this line; on the entire way he refers to skull face during this one-sided conversation, actually. "I don't mind about myself. But what he did to you, I can never forgive." the implication that he could have easily forgiven him for eroding his mind with parasites in an act of sheer hatred. "I've sent him to Africa. And I doubt he's coming back." i can't tell if this is complacency or the truth. he'd never bother the real big boss again. zero's scheming made sure of that.

the lack of animosity gets to me. he talks to big boss like he's a child, softening his descriptors, all while never really recognising he did anything wrong. "maybe he didn't like the arrangement", indeed. the plans to get his revenge on him are already in motion, but zero still can't seem to talk about him with much more than a hint of bitterness, and it's never anything personal concerning himself. i don't think zero ever really understood him - what he wanted, how he felt, or why things turned out the way they did. much like with big boss, he thought that friendship and kindness would be enough to make him happy, and make him stay loyal.

mutually assured destruction

skull face's ultimate goal was to destroy everything zero wanted to create. one of the final things zero could set in motion before his mind succumbed to the parasites was to destroy skull face. venom snake, diamond dogs, all of it was to protect the real big boss from him, and to let them work as his proxies to destroy him.

much to think about.