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#what oleander doesnt see is the years and years of experience the man has and all the work he puts into learning
basic-braining · 3 years
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I've always wondered, how do you think Oleander sees Ford, as in what you do think he thinks of Ford as a person and why?
That’s an interesting one! Ford is an elder, a veteran, typically someone who is to be respected in Oleander’s eyes. But he’s also the one who had the final say in having him work at the summer camp, a place that, in Oleander’s mind, is the place useless Psychonauts go to work because they can’t do anything else right.
Sure, Oleander made himself the top dog there, yelling and taking his anger out on mere children, but because of the decision to put him there, any respect he had for Ford had diminished long ago.
Ford put him there not as an insult, or a taunt, but because his temper was so much, and he tried so hard on missions, he wound up hurting everything in the process. He put Oleander there in hopes that it would help calm him down. Oleander gets to lead and call the shots! And all of his peers are shorter than him, and therefor, much less agitative! It should have been a good choice. But Oleander never saw it that way. To him, it was the last place you go before you’re tossed out with the trash, so he had to try, and he had to try hard to whip these soldiers into shape, and of course, took all his pent-up anger and frustrations out on them in the process.
So imagine how satisfying it was for him to see Ford himself stepping out of the plane or bus to start working there. The big guy in the Psychonauts, the prodigy, the one who stuck Oleander in the camp and broke his trust, thrown into the same trash bin as him. Catharsis.
He walks up to Ford, now a bit older and frailer than he was when they last met, and he smiles all big and smug and starts chatting away. “Well! Look what we have here! The leader of the Psychonauts himself here at good ol’ Whispering Rock to rake the leaves and clean the latrines! How’s it feel, Ford?”
And Ford turns and looks at him, his brow quirked in a way that spelled confusion.
“Hah! Didn’t expect you’d wind up here with me, did ya? You couldn’t deal with me so you put me here, and it looks the same thing has happened to you!”
A few more minutes of this taunting passes, until Ford breaks his own silence. “Do I know you?”
And it’s like a steak knife had been driven straight into Oleanders heart. Was he really so small and insignificant in Ford’s life that he would completely forget him? As with all things at this point in his life, he reacts with anger.
But Ford just waves him away, tells him to go play with the other kids and leave him to do his work.
Oleander has no idea about Ford’s mental state, about the battle that shattered his mind and his memories, and maybe he still doesn’t by the time the events of Psychonauts 1 take place. All he knows is that Ford doesn’t remember anything about him- all his training, all his missions, all his angry outbursts- and that he just insulted him by calling him a child. And as much as Oleander could dish them out, he really doesn't take insults well at all.
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