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fontainespuppet · 1 year

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this had no reason being so funny god damn

#bioshock #bioshock 2 #suchong #dr suchong #bioshock my beloved

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themaddoctorappreciationclub · 10 months

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Welcome to the Mad Doctor Appreciation Club!

I am the receptionist, Mr. [REDACTED]. I hope you enjoy your stay at our highly renowned club! ... What do you mean you haven't heard of it before? That's besides the point. I'll give you the rundown.

This club, located in this old hospital, is home to the most genius of individuals whose work has been underappreciated! From the old workers from the Heilwald Klinikum, to that mercenary medic over by the operating table, every one of our beloved members has been underappreciated for far too long! We allow outsiders to visit and marvel at their ideas from time to time, but there have been certain... Incidents. Pay them no mind. It will be fine. Not EVERY member is hostile, so you should be safe.

Here is our list of current members. We are very relaxed with what can make an honorary member, too. An honorary member just means that you have never had a medical license or doctorate's degree before, but still hold the spirit of a mad doctor. If there is anybody who you believe deserves to join, either as a member or honorary member, please write their name at the bottom of this paper, in the section called "comments".

MEMBERS LIST:

•Dr. Daniel Dickens from Angels of Death

•Every Doctor from The Heilwald Loophole (Dr. Randolph, Dr. Wolfram, Dr. Hauser).

•Nurse Anne, Nurse Heideltraut, Nurse Sabine from The Heilwald Loophole (honorary members: work in the medical field)

• Dr. Steinman and Dr. Suchong from Bioshock

•Tanner from Scrutinized

•Victor Frankenstein (honorary member: never finished medical school)

•Herbert West from Reanimator (honorary member: never finished medical school)

•Medic from Team Fortress 2 (Note from Receptionist: keep an eye on him. He's so crazy, his medical license was revoked... You don't want to know why. We just call him Medic to avoid confusion with another member.)

•Dr. Takuto Maruki from Persona 5 Royal (Note from Receptionist: he's convinced he doesn't belong here. We assure you, he does.)

•Dr. Alfred Drevis from Mad Father

•Johannes Mimir Faustus from Servamp

•Dr. Zed from Borderlands (he doesn't have a REAL medical license, but he still has one. So, he is counted as a normal member.)

•Edward Richtofen from Call of Duty Zombies

•Victor Veloci from Dinosquad (research still being conducted. He seems to disappear from time to time. Recent sightings of dinosaurs reported from members of club.)

•Dr. Colress from Pokemon Black and White 2

•Dr. Yung from The Mastermind of Mirage Pokemon

•Blue Medic from Team Fortress 2 Emesis Blue (note from Receptionist: we call him Dr. Ludwig, Dr. Fritz, or Dr. L to avoid confusion with another member.)

•The Doctor from Dead by Daylight

•SCP 049 from the SCP Foundation

•Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs

•Dr. Gilbert Alexander from Bioshock 2

•Dr. Alto Clef from the SCP Foundation

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boltgunkiller-archive · 2 months

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juno you tagged your last omori reblog with glee /lh –hevanderson

HELPPP Wow omori is my favorite glee episode😄

#one time i looked up bioshock stuff but i looked up #Dr suchong glee #😔 he is a scientist in bioshock #austen 🐾#ask tag

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vvatchword · 1 year

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In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided.

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post.

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people.

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad.

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats?

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten.

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true.

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”.

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere).

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are.

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out.

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt?

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it!

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed.

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax.

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck.

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted.

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed.

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit.

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here.

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe.

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

#bioshock #bioshock 2 #bioshock infinite #bioshock infinite burial at sea #booker dewitt #subject delta #jack wynand #augustus sinclair #essays #video games #spoilers #vvatchword #vvbsreceipts

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chronicbeans · 11 months

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You know what? At this point I feel like Tumblr needs a shady/mad doctor appreciation club. Why? Because the majority of the shady/mad doctors I simp over, I found through Tumblr. I feel like this website is trying to enable my addiction to that VERY specific character trope.

Anyways... if no one else is gonna make it a thing, I will.

Current members:

•Dr. Daniel Dickens from Angels of Death

•Literally every doctor from The Heilwald Loophole

•Tanner from Scrutinized

•(honorary member, due to having not finished medical school) Victor Frankenstein from Frankenstein

•(another honorary member, same reason as V.F.) Herbert West from Reanimator

•Dr. Takuto Maruki (shady due to literally trying to change reality, even if for good intentions) from Persona 5 Royal

•Dr. Alfred Drevis from Mad Father

•Medic from Team Fortress 2 (so crazy his medical license was revoked)

•Johannes Mimir Faustus from Servamp

•Edward Richtofen from Call of Duty Zombies

•Dr. Steinman from Bioshock

•Victor Veloci from Dinosquad (Possible honorary. He's a scientist, but I am unable to find if he is necessarily a doctor. Either way, crazy enough to join the club in some capacity.)

• Dr. Zed (Doesn't have a REAL medical degree, but we'll count it. Crazy enough to make it) from Borderlands

• Dr. Yi Suchong from Bioshock

Anyways give me more ideas for more shady/mad doctors to join this club.

Editing to say that it has now happened. I did it. Lol

I made a whole new blog just to do it.

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rapturerebel · 1 day

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❝I begged Mr. Ryan to hand Fontaine Futuristics to Atlas' boys. Instead, he's started splicing his mob up. There's an arms race on here in Rapture. It's about who became less of a man and more of a monster.❞ - Bill McDonagh

After Andrew Ryan nationalized Fontaine Futuristics, Atlas began publicly protesting against him and the city's elite. To build up his own army, the fisherman used the poor houses to recruit disillusioned citizens. His followers collected weapons, plasmids and gene tonics to defend themselves. In addition, the rebel leader distributed food and medicine to the poor of Rapture. Of course, none of this happened without Andrew Ryan noticing. To put an end to his archenemy's activities, he imprisoned Atlas and his men in the Fontaines Department Store and, with a series of blasts, sunk the building to the seabed many miles below the city. Despite this, Atlas escaped from his prison on New Year's Eve, bringing with him many Splicers whom he gained as allies while in prison. A brutal civil war broke out in Rapture. To announce his return and deal a serious blow to Ryan, he organized the New Year's Eve Riots. That evening, many wealthy citizens and many of Ryan's allies were at the Kashmir Restaurant for a masquerade ball. Most of them died or were badly injured, when several bombs were detonated inside the restaurant. In the following year this civil war escalated completely. More and more people joined Atlas' cause. Raiding parties attacked Big Daddies to kill Little Sisters for their ADAM, caused many casualties and disrupted Raptures economy. Ryan attempted to contain and isolate the rebels again, this time in Apollo Square, transforming the district into another prison, enclosed by a large gate, defended by his forces. Also, the Rapture Council had agreed to introduce the death penalty in the city for smuggling, which caused some people in Ryan's ranks to reconsider their support. In the end, Ryan had only one last plan; he hired Dr. Yi Suchong to modifying his Plasmid line to make Splicers vulnerable to mental suggestion through pheromones. This neutralized a large number of Atlas' Splicers and forcing him to retreat into the ruins of the city with his remaining men.

☞ bioshock, master of disguise, visionary villain and smuggler with an heavy Irish accent

#atlas #bioshock #b: kein interesse #userfakevz

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chezzywezzy · 2 years

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Yandere Big Daddy (1/4)

Word count ; 4.0k

*Edited.

*Dedicated to @sweetpotato-97.

Andrew Ryan slammed his hands into the wooden table. “The splices are destroying all of our hard work. Ms. Tenenbaum can only do so much to preserve the little sisters! All of you must get off your lazy arses and come up with a solution to this.”

Silence fell over the board room. Nobody was able to meet the man’s furious gaze. Sitting across from me was Dr. Gilbert Alexander, who was just as baffled by the situation. We were partners in this expedition to mine ADAM and gather more resources for Rapture, but with the surplus of splices showing up because of it, we were brainstorming how to fight back.

The little sisters were helpless in the situation. Human soldiers weren’t obedient enough to serve as a solution either.

There had to be a way to graft human strength and the little sister’s obedience into one. Perhaps a… Big Daddy for the little sisters.

I flipped a page on my notebook and began scribbling furiously. I felt everyone’s gaze watch me with intrigue, but I did not yield. I first drew a compare and contrast of the two species. I then pondered Dr. Yi Suchong’s abilities as a psychologist. Often, he ranted about conditioning, and that would most likely serve as a large part in the potential protector.

“Dr. L/n. What are you so frivolously writing about?”

I clicked my tongue in annoyance. “Shut up. I’m thinking.”

I heard his disdained sigh, but most of my coworkers were used to my rudeness. It was never my intention to be mean or cold; I just hated when people disrupted my thought processes.

Going back to the clipboard, I wrote the word ‘VOLUNTEERS’ in bold letters and circled it. I paused a moment. Humans were mammals. With what I was conjuring, I wanted it so that humans were mammals but not so much humans.

Rapture was deep within the ocean; perhaps conditioning them to forget their own speech and communicate via whale noises would serve them well in the environment. Satisfied, I drew a line from the ‘VOLUNTEERS’ and wrote ‘STEP 1 : ANIMAL (WHALE?) NOISES’.

Humans were physically vulnerable to the splicers. They would need some sort of armor that aided them in their ocean exploration but also had a fighting function. Perhaps… a drill. That would help mine ADAM, too.

I sloppily drew what my mind envisioned. A diver suit, except one hand was replaced with a functioning drill. The diver head would be large and communication would serve through that. There would be some sort of speaker while there could be colorful lights to indicate mood changes and aggression.

I thought back to my days on land, where there were street lights. Those colors would do quite nicely.

I felt someone hovering behind me. Most likely my boss, Mr. Ryan. But I paid him no heed.

I would also have to graft the human skin in with the diver suit so that the suit would function properly. As a skilled surgeon, even I was unsure of how to do the procedure thus far. But this was a brainstorming session, so I didn’t have to fill every hole quite yet.

All of my thoughts were wishful thinking, but after that, Yi Suchong would help me further by conducting conditioning with the ‘Big Daddies’ with their designated little sisters.

“Done,” I suddenly announced.

Mr. Ryan’s arm reached over my shoulder and snatched my clipboard. I leaned against the chair with a satisfied smirk, observing as he read my notes. I noticed his eyebrows raise in surprise; like usual, he had that look of ‘why didn’t I think of that myself?’

All of my coworkers were staring at me. As though I was going to explain it to their small, insane heads. I would, maybe, but only after receiving the green light form my boss.

“This is… brilliant. Genius. This is exactly what we need,” he announced. “L/n, a raise is due for you. Immediately. Besides that, we have no time to waste. Dr. Suchong, your job is to collect ‘volunteers’ from mental asylums and prisoners. Further details will be given when Dr. L/n and I plan further and the rest of you are needed. Meeting dismissed. L/n, come with me to discuss further.”

I rose from my seat, snatching the clipboard back. I collected my things and shoved them in my bag. Dr. Alexander and Ms. Tenenbaum bid me a farewell, but I ignored them, incredibly zoned in on the possibilities of the Big Daddy. ‘Big Daddy’ was the name I was drawn to. It made sense but was also rather catchy.

I followed Mr. Ryan out. We walked down the checkerboard floors until we arrived at the end of the hall. He opened the door to his office for me. He closed the door behind him and we sat across from each other. I placed my clipboard on the desk and flattened my uniform.

He slid the clipboard closer to him. With a pen, he pointed to ‘STEP 1 : ANIMAL (WHALE?) NOISES’ “Explain the thought process. Why this? Why not immediate grafting?”

“It’s unsafe to not condition the volunteers first. They would fight back because they are still in the mindset of being a human. Sound is one of the easiest ways to condition something. Even I know of Pavlov and his dog. But, when they have transformed, they’ll also need a form of communication with one another. That made me immediately think of whales, which are also mammals. Plus… Rapture’s in the ocean. It makes sense for camouflage.”

He nodded along. “Genius. I could not have chosen a better scientist to bring to Rapture. Now… how would the drill be used?”

“With chemical or physical cues. Although I don’t have the details down, I’m thinking that the light will go red and signal the brain to signal the arm to start drilling.”

“That makes sense. But… is that engineeringly possible, is the question.”

I shook my head and sat back in my chair. “Are you doubting me, Ryan?”

He chuckled, also sitting back in his seat. “I suppose you’re right. If your beautiful mind can think this up, you can engineer it. I’m assuming you’ll be assigning most of this work to Dr. Alexander, Steinman, and Suchong?”

“Yes. I want to be able to monitor the situation. Although they aren’t as capable and intelligent, they’re good workers,” I conceded. “In the meantime, I must be going.” I rose to my feet.

“But I haven’t dismissed you. We’re not done talking.”

“I’m dismissing myself. We’re done talking. I must rent a submarine at once to fetch authentic whale calls and also begin engineering the suits.”

“You’re my best worker, L/n. Go right ahead. Report in on how things are going as soon as you return from the expedition.”

“That’s your prerogative. I have better things to do than reporting to you, boss,” I replied playfully, opening the office door.

He bid me a good-bye, but I didn’t reply. I knew he found it amusing, as I could hear him laughing from outside the door.

But I didn’t care what he found entertaining. I had work to do.

~~~

“Conditioning isn’t going as planned,” Suchong nervously informed. “Not only have most of the volunteers been resistant to remaining in the diving suits, they’re resistant to the vocal conditioning. Some of our volunteers have already bashed their heads in and have committed suicide.”

As we strolled down the lab, I observed the individual cells. They had sound-proof glass walls and inside in the corner was a speaker out of reach. Suchong’s point became obvious and I walked past several cells where blood was splattered agains the glass and a collapsed diving suit was hardly visible. As we walked past, there was an individual currently attempting to bash their head in.

With sudden alarm, I motioned to the volunteer. “Stop them this instant!”

Soldiers, hearing my demand, rushed down the corridor. I unlocked the door for them in the meanwhile. I dashed into the room and pressed the off button for the echoing whale noises. The speaker fell deaf, but the volunteer continued trying to kill themselves. Glass was sprawled across the ground, and when the guard pulled the volunteer away, there was blood dripping down the wall.

I stepped in front of the volunteer. I noticed that it was a man. He had stubble that had consumed most of his jaw and neck, and his face was thinning. His skin was an unhealthy pale yellow and he had darkness under his eyes. Despite his zombie-like appearance, he still had enough energy to spit blood at my face spitefully.

I didn’t flinch. Instead, I let it drop to the ground as I took a tissue out to wipe it away. “How unfortunate. Guards, Suchong, come along.”

I began marching out of the room. Despite the man’s attempt to escape, He was dragged against his will. We marched into the private lab where Steinman did most of work. Blood was splattered agains the table from another one of his unsuccessful surgeries. But, regardless, I had the man strapped to the table, despite his screams of agony.

I grabbed a syringe and unscrewed the diving helmet. I then inserted the syringe into his neck and anesthetized him. Once the man was passed out, I sternly turned my attention to the guards. “All of you should be preventing this from happening. I demand that you begin instating handcuffs to their bed so that this doesn’t happen again.” I eyed the various blood stains on their uniforms. “Also… call a janitor for Christ’s sake! Now, get the hell out of here instead of wasting more time!” I boomed.

Shakily, the guards did as told and left me and Suchong by ourselves. I let out a sigh, rubbing my forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I was trying to get the situation under control —“

“Lies! You were scared to receive the consequences of your failure,” I snapped. “Regardless, though, I have no time to be reprimanding a failure of a man like you.”

He was shaking in his boots. I liked that. I like having power over my coworkers. I liked knowing I could treat them however I wanted without consequences because I was second only to Ryan himself. I grabbed a damp cloth and began wiping the unconscious volunteer’s forehead.

“How convincing of an actor are you, Suchong?”

“An - an actor? Well, I’m a psychologist for a reason —“

“A failing one. At the bare minimum you can feign pity, can you not?”

“Y - yes, I suppose I can…”

“Good. Now, bring this man’s information. Clearly, animalistic conditioning still needs its human traits.”

“May I ask —“

“No. His information. Now.”

Suchong scurried out of the lab with his tail behind his legs. I smirked, but inevitably began unseating the man. I pulled it off from his feet and dragged the heavy metal suit to the corner. I planned to personally fix it.

A few minutes later, Suchong returned with a clipboard. I snatched it from him, reading its contents

NAME : Martín Baudelaire

ETHNICITY : French

AGE : 27

BIRTH DATE : August 3rd

OCCUPATION : Asylum Seeker

All the rest was absolutely useless. I stared Suchong down. “Look at me.” He reluctantly did, so scared out of his boots that he struggled to maintain eye contact. “What we are going to do is use what you psychologists call manipulation.

“We have to ease them into it. The volunteers are scared. Unsure. Desperate for freedom. Your job is to befriend them and pretend that you’re against this whole institution and you’re working for their freedom. But in order to do so, they have to ‘pretend’ to be progressing in the grafting. They’ll be under our control before they know it. They’ll be much more susceptible to the conditioning if they think they need to do it.”

He nodded. “I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that sooner…”

“It’s because you’re an idiot, Suchong. And that’s why I, in order to prevent as much failure as possible, will be closely working with this man -“ I scanned the clipboard once more. “ Martín Baudelaire. Asylum seeker and… feisty French man.”

He stared at me expectantly when I fell silent. I tilted my head and eyed him up and down. “Well?” I suddenly shouted. “Get to it before I fire you, you worthless bum!”

“Would you kindly stop talking to me that way?” he finally snapped, his fists balling up in anger.

“I’ll stop scolding you when you start being competent, Suchong! You’re the one who let our precious volunteers kill themselves while you just sat on the sidelines eating popcorn! Take some responsibility, you twat!”

“Stop acting like you’re better than me. Stop pretending that you have power. You can’t do shit —“

“Oh, yeah? So you’re telling me that if I sauntered into Ryan’s office and informed him that your sector of your volunteers that you were in charge of had volunteers killing themselves left and right with no solution for the past week without telling anyone, Ryan wouldn’t fire you on the spot?” I seethed, stepping toward him and jutting my finger against his lab-coated chest.

He was left speechless. He knew I was right, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“I’m being fucking forgiving. Now get your sorry are out of here and be productive. Do your fucking job, Suchong.”

He bowed his head. “…Fine.”

He turned on his heel and exited the laboratory. My glare followed him, but the moment he left, my anger dissipated into a defined annoyance. “…Bloody idiots. The whole lot of them. I swear, I have to do everything myself around here.”

I wandered back over to Mr. Baudelaire. I stripped him of his clothes and wiped away all of the blood, stench, and dried pee. For the time being, I realized that I would have to insert a pocket for urination; alas, for the first time, I had overlooked something. But it’s not like anyone else on staff remembered that human beings urinate. And besides, even I wasn’t perfect.

Afterwards, I prepared a dish of food and drinks. It was simple, as the splices had infiltrated most of Rapture’s food supply, and the rest was hoarded by the first class. I found it a tad annoying, since at the end of the day, I was working my ass off for Rapture to be, first and foremost, sustainable, but every business cycle had its crashes.

I checked my watch. I hadn’t used a large dosage, so he should be waking up in a minute. In the meanwhile, I bandaged his face wounds and prepared to be a manipulative liar for the sake of science. I conjured up as guilty of an expression as I could, pawing at his various bruises. I almost did feel bad. I knew more than most people how fragile the human flesh was.

He began to stir under my touch. My fingers ghosted over his locked up wrist. This volunteer was too thin; it made me make a mental note to scold Suchong and Alexander about feeding the volunteers more regularly. God forgive the subjects starve before completing even the first stage of transition.

“Wh…” he groaned.

I pulled away, ready to put on a show.

His eyes fluttered open. I had to say, the man was rather handsome. If we met under any other circumstances, I would have offered to buy him a drink. What, with his sharp jawline and charming stubble…

“You.”

I was brought back to reality, blinking, and meeting his furious glare. I cleared my throat. “I hope you are feeling better. I… hate seeing what they’re doing here, really,” I started.

His eyes flashed with surprise. But, his fury quickly returned, and he tried spitting at my face. But due to the incline of the chair, it only dribbled over his chin. I sighed, grabbing a tissue from my pocket to wipe it. “Fuck you,” he said with a very thick French accent. “If you hate what they’re doing, you would not be here.”

I frowned. “You’re wrong, actually. I’m being forced to work here. They’re holding my child hostage.”

“Hos…tage?”

“It means that they’re keeping me here, just like you,” I spoke slowly, enunciating my words.

His entire expression changed to a soft, sympathetic frown. “How… do I know you are not liar?”

I bit my lip. Struck with an idea, I pulled up my sleeve, revealing my many childhood scars. “They hurt me and my child. I promise… I do not want to be here.”

He licked his lips, and that’s when I realized I shouldn’t be laying it on too thick. I had to reinforce my words with kindness. I reached over to the tin table and held out a glass of water. His eyes were trained to the glass thirstily. I held it to his parched lips and slowly let him down the entire glass. I took the glass away, even though his lips followed in hope of soaking up every last drop.

“Do you want more?”

“Non… Why am I here?”

I gulped, casting my gaze away. “Well, you are in Rapture. A city in the ocean. Under the ocean are plants and energy called ADAM. There are also monsters made of ADAM. You are here to save the city from the monsters by becoming a ‘Big Daddy.’ Your job will be to protect little girls filled with ADAM from the monsters. It is a good cause, but bad people are the rulers.”

He nodded, understanding. “Is your… child filled with ADAM?”

“Yes. Maybe, if you live long enough, you will meet her,” I heaved. I grabbed a cracker and pushed it to his lips. He chomped down eagerly, not needing to ask for me to know he wanted more. I was aware that what they were being fed during stage one was raw fish and barnicals, just like real whales do; this was originally strategized by me, as it helps with adapting to life outside of Rapture and in the ocean. “I… have taken you here. Because I want to help you and everyone be free.”

His eyes widened, and tears glided down his cheeks. Gently, I wiped them away, sending him a reassuring smile. God damn, I was a good actor. I just made a grown man cry. “How?”

“I hate to say this… but you will have to fake it and listen. Only by fake-becoming stage one, speaking only with whale sounds, will you get the chance to be free. When they see you have become good they will take you deep in Rapture, where I can help set you and others free.”

“Thank you. But what about your child?”

“I… am not sure. I will try and escape with her when I set you free. We can go together.”

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “Merci.”

“De rien,” I replied cheekily.

His eyes widened, and he began to shake his hands excitedly. “Pouvez-vous Parker Français?”

“Oui. Un peu.” I went over to his suit. “I will leave you here for a while. I must fix your suit. The assholes did not make a place to pee.”

He nodded eagerly. “…Merci.”

I sent him one last smile as I pulled his suit over to the door. “De rien, Martín.”

~~~

Alexander, Suchong, and I strolled down the hallway. Even over the course of the week, under my strict supervision, suicides have been minimized and the lab cells were far cleaner. The volunteers under scrutiny were also calmer. I had a feeling that Suchong had a ‘thank you for being so genius’ bubbling in his throat, as the use of manipulation had greatly depleted any rebellious actions.

Alexander was intently staring at the charts on his clipboard. “There’s progress. The majority of the volunteers have already been caught mimicking the whale noises, and there’s a spike in imitation during meal times. Guards have also reported less screaming and overall disruptions.”

“Are there any notable outliers?” I inquired, clasping my hands together behind my back, shoes clacking against the floor.

He flipped over his pages. “Oh - yes, actually. First is a MeiLi Lü, who was actually one of the patients who attempted suicide. I know there’s one other… Ah, yes, Martín Baudelaire. If I recall, he’s the volunteer that you’ve personally taken under your wing?”

A smirk threatened to befall my features. “Yes. I’m not surprised. The volunteer was rather receptive toward me. This, boys, is how you get work done.”

Alexander chuckled, but I could feel Suchong staring me down angrily. I feigned innocence, clicking my tongue as I glanced over those in the cells.

“Oh - now that I see it, yes… You might want to check up on Mr. Baudelaire. Over the last day or so, there has been no reported whale imitations.”

I nodded. "Precisely what I came here to do. Also, I want to make a change to the exposure.” They were silent, waiting for me to go on. “Instead of custom whale noises, I want the speakers to be hooked up to the one on their right. That way, they are in fact, conditioning one another. That way, in the future, the they have achieved their Big Daddy form, they will recognize their coworkers easily.”

I stopped in front of Baudelaire’s chamber. I peered at the two men expectantly over my shoulder. “Well? Chop chop. I want this to be instated by the hour. Understood?”

“Y - yes ma’am,” Suchong squeaked, clearly fearing for whether I lost my temper.

Alexander gave him a peculiar stare while nodding. “Genius as always, L/n. We’ll get right to it. Good-bye.”

I turned away and took my key out of my pocket. I noticed that the volunteer rose to his feet. Even through the sound-proof glass, I could hear him bellowing out mimicked whale noises. I unlocked the door and entered. I forced an exhalation as I approached the soon-to-be Big Daddy.

“Martín. There is something I must tell you.”

He halted his whale noises expectantly. “Quelle absurdité?” his muffled voice answered.

“They are going to start recording inside here,” I fibbed, knowing damn well we already have been since the beginning. “It means I cannot talk to you anymore without being strange and getting in trouble.”

Even within the large metal diving suit, his shoulders slouched, causing a creak of the metal nuggets. “Lorsque?”

“In under an hour,” I said, bowing my head. With a groan of metal, he raised the metal arm and sympathetically patted my head. The metal arm trailed past my head to my arms, where he came to a screeching halt.

“C’est bon. Je te… fais confiance.”

As badly as I wanted to grin pridefully for successfully persuading my volunteer, I instead let my body sink deeper in feigned despair. Of course he trusted me. How could he not? I had come up with such a sad lie that nobody, not even a man who didn’t quite grasp English perfectly, could see through it.

“Promise…”

“Yes?” I looked up, meeting the foggy black glass of the diver helmet.

“Vous me libérerez. N’oubliez pas. We will… be free, you and me.”

I smiled, tilting my head, and letting my hand reside on his large metal one. “Of course, Martín Baudelaire. Je n’oublierai pas.” I disturbed the moment, stepping away and checking my watch. “I have to go. I cannot look strange. I will come see you soon. But remember, become the whale.”

The big metal helmet nodded, and he imitated the noises, just for me. I felt a sick satisfaction from his thoughtless obedience. This was going a lot better than I could have ever anticipated.

Martín Baudelaire, you were going to be my first successful Big Daddy.

#yandere #x reader #x y/n #self insert #yandere bioshock #bioshock #bioshock x reader #bioshock rapture #bioshock game #frank fontaine #subject delta #eleanor lamb #jack wynand #bioshock 1 #bioshock 2 #yandere big daddy #big daddy x reader #big daddy

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mail-me-a-snail · 2 years

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Out of curiosity because of that one post, what is your opinion on Suchong?

I THINK HE'S FASCINATING AND BRILLIANT.

i also think the bio series handles him, a korean person, extremely poorly. like for all the condemning of racism they do through out the series, especially in infinite (bas by extension), they have a walking caricature as one of their "villains".

they use his broken english as a way to make him seem the more off putting and crazy mad scientist...and btw, im asian, and asian people don't refer to themselves in the third person when they don't know how to say something in english.

he's also human! even though i dislike bas, the fact that tenenbaum wrote suchong a letter trying to dissuade him from brainwashing jack implies that there is a chance he would've listened to her. that he had at least some morals! that drives me insane!!!

yi suchong has done a Lot Of Terrible Things in canon, but god do i love seeing him be treated as more than just the mad scientist trope. he cares for the little sisters (we're led to believe he's actually quite gentle with them, right up until his death diary), he thinks of tenenbaum as a worthy colleague and friend, and he's off putting, sure, but he's brilliant in all regards.

one of the things i love to think about rapture is where our "villians" go at night. what i mean is—they aren't our villians 24/7. they do things other than stuff to advance their own personal vendettas. ryan probably actually does golf in his free time. maybe fontaine just listened to records sometimes in his office.

suchong? hell maybe he really did go have drinks and a chat with dr steinman

#bioshock #yi suchong #THIS GOT SO LONG APOLOGIES #im so. normal about wasted character potential #asks #raptures favorite sea slug

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symbioticsimplicity · 8 months

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Random ask for WIP rambles time! If the cast of Carpe Noctem could meet one character from anotherseries/media/story each, who would they want to meet?

(Bonus: The same question for the convenience store witches cause I love those two)

Oooooh this is a fun one!

Xinghua would want to meet either Celine from the Underworld series, or Bayonetta mostly because she's really gay and wants those women to step on her throat.

Ransom is a dork and he'd want to meet either Columbo or Grisham from the OG CSI.

Frost shouldn't be allowed this one but he'd want to meet Dante from Devil May Cry. He just thinks hes neat.

Trish would actually kill a man to meet the Demon Slayer cast. Or the Fruits Basket cast.

Ziggy would want to meet the actual Ziggy Stardust, from the Man Who Fell To Earth movie.

Tom would probably like to meet Andrew Ryan and Dr. Suchong of Bioshock.

Bonus Convenience Store Witches:

Seven CAN meet anyone he wants to, and for the most part HAS so I'll highlight the ones he'd like to meet again. Naruto, because they can match energy, and Sephiroth because they ALSO can match energy.

Eleven really wants to meet Snoop Dogg. Who, while not fictional, is enough of a legend to transcend into being meta?? He will, one day, but he thinks it'd be nice to meet him before then.

#this was fun!!!#thanks diff!!#my ocs #li xinghua #richard ransom #kim 'frost' yisung #leeland 'frost' mcknight #patricia arcana #ziggy vega-polvo #zigaranthias stellarblossom #thomas airius #Seven the Witch of Reality #Eleven the Witch of Soul

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cardboard-aliens · 2 years

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The cast swap AU 100% is an excuse for Jack & Tenenbaum content, but the main swaps are:

Jack - Eleanor

Tenenbaum - Delta

Atlas - Sinclair

Ryan - Lamb

The basic canon divergent background information leading up to 1960 got long so imma put it under a cut.

Big Mommas and Little Brothers are the protector gatherer duo of this AU. There are no Dads and sisters.

Lamb gathers enough followers and momentum to usurp control of Rapture from Ryan.

Ryan gets promptly thrown INTO jail with his most loyal supports.

The most important detail about Ryan going to jail is that he will not be able to kill Jasmine 😌💖

Lamb now has control of the whole city to devote into her Utopian research.

Various people take issue as the notion of everyone being reborn into one collective mind comes forth. Mostly Sinclair, who can't make money as a pile of ADAM goop, so he uses his resources to arm citizens. Wanting to take advantage of the split in the city for his own plays for control.

Fontaine is pissed he didn't take over the city from Ryan, and has to reconsider all his plans, since they were built around Ryan. Ultimately abandoning his contingency plan to fake his death earlier.

Lamb takes over Fontaine's assets once he's gone for ADAM research, and starts funneling out any problematic staff to be turned into ADAM goop so they can be part of the collective.

Tenenbaum has been unimpressed with Fontaine, Ryan and now Lamb , and was preparing the gatherer cure to try and do some damage to the program. But then Ryan goes to jail, and Tenenbaum knows Fontaine's weapon only served a purpose with Ryan in the picture. And then Fontaine 'dies', and Lamb seizes the company and Tenenbaum doesn't trust her to be any more humane to the children. So she tries for a mad dash to disappear with Jack before Lamb discovers Project WYK.

This escape attempt goes poorly, and they get caught. Lamb assumes Jack is just your average gatherer that Tenenbaum was defecting with, and since Tenenbaum is CLEARLY going to be a problem Lamb is like "You wanna hang out with a brother so much I can arrange that" and ships them off tho the protector and gatherer programs to be bonded. (very much like mark and cindy)

There is now an opening for a lead scientist at Fontaine Futuristics that needs filling. No one is qualified for the job, and Lamb takes someone Ryan had a target on: so say hello to Dr. Johnny Topside. Who knows some marine biology which was good ENOUGH for this understaffed department.

Suchong hates working with Topside, and complains about how under qualified he is constantly. And he complains about Lamb's research goals, and how she cancelled his previous projects to focus on ADAM's memory properties.

Suchong's work load gets smaller as more of his projects get handed off to Topside, which makes him even more irritable. And then he starts to suspect Lamb is phasing him out to turn his egotistical behind into a pile of ADAM.

So Suchong disappears, trying to find refuge in Persephone with Ryan (b/c Ryan IS charismatic, and is doing well enough for himself in prison) trying to barter for his own safety by telling Ryan about Fontaine Company secrets, mainly about Project WYK and how Ryan's flesh and blood was put into the Gatherer Program.

Johnny Topside can't keep track of what's going on, because one minute he mapping the ocean floor, the next he found atlantis, then he's been branded a spy, next he's the lead scientist in a department he doesn't understand, and now his life is being threatened if he doesn't experiment on children. He just wanted to collect rocks samples.

The little brothers are baby and he is NOT on board with their treatment, and starts digging into what research was left behind by the woman who had this job before him--and he finds Tenenbaum's research on the Little Brother cure. Which he then picks back up to finish development, and then prepares to go on the run to save as many brothers as he can.

Sinclair and Lamb have been raising their own tensions across the city, proving they're just the same as Fontaine and Ryan as fights break out. Which ultimately escalate back up to riots breaking out against Lamb's rule, headed by Sinclair this time around.

The chaos causes a lot of canon typical events to happen, Rapture is in decline, Ryan can leave prison to kill a big momma and drag his gatherer son to prison to ride out the war, and Johnny takes a run for it to get away from Lamb with a handful of children.

(For convenience sake Eleanor is her BS2 age in 1960, otherwise she'll be like. 9 or 10. and not able to actually fight. and I want her to do COOL BATTLE STUNTS) Eleanor has been paying CLOSE attention to her mom this whole time, and watching her boil people down into ADAM, experiment on children, and manipulate the people to throw their lives away fighting for her has done a lot to disillusion her from Lamb's way. Some come 1960, she's got a gun, a dream to see the sun, and figured the best way to beat her mother is with the enemy of her enemy: Sinclair.

#bioshock #bioshock 2 #bioshock au #cast swap au #big momma au #cardboard cutouts #THIS GOT TOO LONG im not sorry #and none of this is even like. the MEAT that i'm invested in. it's just rapture's set up

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vvatchword · 11 months

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So reading your essay defending Infinite has me hankering to replay. As of writing, it is currently installing on my computer. Thank you for getting me to want to play through the whole thing once more (not the DLC, I never actually picked up the DLC. Maybe that's for the better)

Aw golly you gave me the warm fuzzies! I'm hankering for a replay now myself, I got so into my own bullshit. I might yet. I want to play it again just to re-examine my own premise and look for more material. Furthermore, although originally I hadn't intended on writing fanfiction for Infinite, I now intend to out of spite. And that requires a fresh eye and at least two play-throughs, in my experience.

I struggle with recommending the DLC because it depends on what you want. On one hand, the gameplay is great! I had a wonderful time making people honk-shuu. Dr. Suchong was a treat. And I got to see Atlas, holy shit. Oh, and Atlas' train spike. ha

On the other, uh, the story is broken as hell. I mean, the good news is that it was probably the timetable and not the studio. The bad news is that the story makes Daisy Fitzroy's death WORSE.

But there's a source of fun even in the broken story. It's oddly fun to try and figure out what the fuck was going on behind the scenes. You ever experience a piece of art where you feel like you're looking through a window at the artists themselves? That's how it feels to me.

The minute the DLC started, with its over-the-top positive Jack flashbacks, my hackles went straight up: this can't be right. This doesn't feel right. This feels like someone made a request. This feels like... CORPORATE RESEARCH. I suspect I felt that way because outright positivity is anathema to BioShock. When I tell you I can only think of one wholly positive event in BioShocks 1 and 2 that comes without horrifying baggage, would you believe me?

Everything about the DLC feels calculated and impersonal, even cynical in parts. It was about the point where the only Little Sister you care about for no specific reason is looking down at you with enormous shimmering My Little Pony eyes that I wondered if I were actually experiencing some kind of joke.

Anyway. Feel free to come on by and tell me how the game goes. Hell, if you see anything I didn't cover or missed or whatever, feel free to say so. I only played the thing once. Lord knows I probably skipped... jesus so much. Hell, I didn't even touch on gnosticism and that shit's everywhere. (Fun treat: check out the Bibles all open to John, the most gnostic of the Gospels lol)

#bioshock #bioshock infinite #bioshock infinite burial at sea #vvatchword

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jackjolene · 2 years

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BioShock/Sinking City: Building a Life on the Surface

I’ve been planning on continuing my series of Sinking Cities headcanons, by making it into a crossover between it and the BioShock games. I’ve been sitting on this post for months, and I finally found the inspiration to finish writing it and post it.

The inspiration for this crossover came from these little Easter eggs: In BioShock 2, there are references that point to it being a Lovecraftian universe. In There’s Something in the Sea, one of the Little Sisters was kidnapped from Innsmouth. And in The Sinking City, there’s a reference to a “Z.H. Comstock”, who is fittingly a member of the KKK.

Note, this will include my headcanons on Jackabeth, the ship between Jack and Elizabeth. Basically, Jack brought Elizabeth back from the dead using the sample of her hair and the prototype Vita-Chamber in Suchong’s secret lab.

After escaping from Rapture before Dr. Sofia Lamb’s take over, Jack, Elizabeth, Tenenbaum, and the forty former Little Sisters they saved began the long sea voyage to the States using some modified bathyspheres. They made landfall on the coast of Massachusetts, near a city by the name of Oakmont.

While trying to get on their feet in the strange new city, they meet an older man by the name of Charles Reed, a now-retired private investigator. He is somehow able to sense that they’ve been through a lot and offers his aid via the connections he’s made among the city’s elite.

Jack is able to get a job as the keeper of the Grimhaven Bay Lighthouse. Elizabeth moves in with him, as do the five former Little Sisters that finished off Fontaine and saved him: Masha, Leta, Sally, Daisy, and Annabelle (the latter two couldn’t remember their names, so Elizabeth picked two names for them). The rest of the girls were taken to a local orphanage, with Tenenbaum tagging along to continue helping them (and to keep an eye on the orphanage staff).

Along with being a lighthouse keeper and making sure that incoming ships had a beacon to follow in the darkest of nights and storms, Jack has a side gig as a amateur mechanic, his hacking skills helping greatly with the work. In his spare time, he takes up photography as a hobby, helps Tenenbaum at the orphanage with the girls, or spends time with Elizabeth (who he calls “Liz” to her delight) and their adopted girls.

When not helping Jack with the lighthouse or Tenenbaum with the still-orphaned girls, Elizabeth works at the Oakmont University Library as the assistant of the librarian, Joy Hayden Reed, Charles’ wife. With her whole life now ahead of her, Elizabeth intends to go to Oakmont University and use her knowledge of quantum physics to earn a physics degree.

Both Jack and Liz learn the ins and outs of Oakmont from Charles, who comes to be something of a father figure to them both, especially Liz. Just as the Seed connected him to a world beyond imagining and horror, so too as the ADAM in their plasmids and gene tonics. As such, they are able to use the phone booths scattered throughout Oakmont to teleport around the city, and facing off against the denizens of the city’s dark underbelly allows them to evolve and become stronger yet.

Despite its recovery from the “Storm” in the 1920s and its current status as a tourist attraction, the “Venice of North America” is hiding a very dark side. Its history is full of blood, secrets, and dark magics. Strange shapes can be seen in the canals at night, cultists meet in basements and secret rooms, and monsters, both Human and otherwise, prowl the dark places.

Oakmont is not the ideal place to settle down, raise some children, and move forward with your life, especially when one is an “outsider”. However, Jack, Liz, and Tenenbaum are not swimming in options, and besides, they have survived the worst that Rapture could throw at them. Jack and Liz’s powers and weapons, combined with Tenenbaum’s intelligence and experience, will not only ensure their survival, but their prosperity too.

Thoughts?

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prettydead · 8 months

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Booker’s fist slammed against the elevator button. Carefully, he stepped back as he took in his compatriot. It was rare that he was asked to help in an official capacity. Overall, he was used to working alone – being alone. It just so happened that the FBI and his investigation seemed to coincide. Girls had been disappearing from their homes – and coming back wrong.

That included the girl Booker cared for as a daughter – Sally. He was determined to find out who was doing this, no matter what the cost. After a failed confrontation at Dr. Suchong’s office, he was angry. All the circumstantial evidence leads to the Doctor. But they don’t have anything truly tangible. “Shit…So what now?” He was used to moving unofficially. He didn’t think that Scully would approve of torture. No matter how much Booker wanted to get his hands on the quack.