Pinned
Some thoughts (in an effort to actually loredrop): I thought I would talk about the ASVRA.
The ASVRA is the masked alter ego (of sorts), of 115. He’s a merc, he’s a vigilante, he’s an operator for a shadowy anti-corp netrunner collective- and a protector to Night City’s people. He overcharges rich clients, helps out people who aren’t but need him to for free. He finds missing people, reunites families, avenges fallen innocents, gets people access to the cyberware they need by taking it all back from scavs and overpriced corps- all while contending with every force imaginable trying to stop or undermine him. NC law enforcement, other mercs, gangs, corpos- and more. He works at night, and looks scary as hell doing it.
But there’s reason to the mask and look (cool aesthetic and so forth aside). In his faith, an asura can be seen as a typically bad entity. The antagonists of some stories, mere troublemakers in others. So why choose a figure like that to represent someone who has (his entire life) been victim to and is actively fighting the system? Someone who’s actions are, by his code, for a greater good?
Because he, in opposition to said system, would be painted as the bad guy. Because to the wealthy, who often assign no meaning or worth to lives apart from their own, someone who puts their enforcers to the blade, takes money from their pockets to give to people who need it, and is relentless in his pursuit of revenge is their boogeyman, their nightmare fuel, their “villain”.
He doesn’t try looking like a classic, nearly flawless hero because it paints a prettier picture than what actually exists in his world. Many fictional heroes often condemn revenge as a futile thing that only needlessly perpetuates cycles of violence; with the ASVRA/his story, it’s not painted that way. To condemn revenge and dismiss it so readily is a privilege, in this case, only the comfortable or priveledged are afforded. To the ASVRA, it’s necessary, it’s resistance, it’s a brown man taking back control when so much of it was taken from him most of his life. (In another post/future posts, i’ll delve further into this as it involves 115’s story and background prior to the ASVRA existing) It’s a means to stop the violence -which originates with the oppressive entities- from harming other people. Its the evidence that he believes in a better future and has the actual guts to fight for it.
Few details about him, his story, or even his design are coincidental. Home is a place that was taken from him -and he from it-long ago. He hangs onto his faith and identity with all his might despite the distance and forces that violently put that separation in place. For a time his memory is in pieces and sense of himself in ruin; something done to him by the same manner of entity responsible for the above. Corps; rich, destructive, greedy things that take/steal and destroy.
When someone betrays the collective he belongs to, he’s the one initially suspicious of them. His eyes are opened to the performatives; (people who pretend to sympathize with people whose struggles they do not understand at all) and how they love to infiltrate spaces that aren’t theirs, yet they would never truly fight for.
And all this is just the tip of the iceberg so To Be Continued
