#someone that plays Bioshock or like

[masqueradeofatlas]

I will start this message a bit funny. Are you anti of Jatlas?

Maybe I'm writing here, because I want to know that I'm not the only who ship them, and not only them in this whole shipping thing, but did someone ever tell you're sick, you're pedo or you should go to jail? Because as an artist I was called like that so many times, even when I created and published my Jatlas art in the past and even today, because I wrote something wrong to someone reblogged post. People are stiff, or even worse. Some of them really compare fiction to reality? We can be free to do what we want in this world even? lol

Sorry if this ask upset you. I don't want mix you with something bad!

I love these cosplays. Really. And also sorry for my bad english.

Anti?

Does this look anti to you? 🤣 I’m being sarcastic, of course. No, I am not anti JAtlas. Now, is the ship healthy? No. Certainly not. But I will insert something I’ll be including in my JAtlas story called Fatherless Figures;

(Both references to the book & game.)

You might be wondering why I would consider pairing Frank(Atlas)/Jack. Frank, although involved with Jack’s mind conditioning, wasn’t fully involved with Jack during his whole (rather short) childhood. In fact, so much so that’s why Jack called Suchong ‘Papa’. Frank always had the mentality that he was too good to get his feet dirty, which is why he hired Suchong and Tenenbaum in the first place to do the work while he gave the ideas for them (such as the puppy audio and fake family). The last he actually SAW Jack was when he smuggled him to the surface. (And honestly, I don’t feel (HC) that was fully accurate.)

Again, I am not condoning abusive behavior or supporting childlike-romantic relationships. Jack has been seen drinking, smoking, and having the mental capacity to shoot and make choices without mind control. So much so, it is suggested he raised five of the little sisters. Again. A CHILD couldn’t do that. Jack has been physically around for a little time, yes, but their scientific experiments allowed him to grow faster than the average human body. At the end of the day, I am simply a person who really enjoys understanding a villain (not excusing). Not everything is black and white, and people CAN change even with their worst mistakes.

So, yes, technically at a factual standpoint; Jack has been on Earth for a VERY short time, but at a mental/scientific/physical standpoint; he is not a child according to the game/book. But for people that don’t know the game as well or simply disagree. Fine. Let them. But I find the people that do that; often tolerate ships/flaws I would HEAVILY consider questionable both at a fantasy and even a reality standpoint, but again, to each their own.

Also, thank you so much for the compliment, we plan to share more JAtlas content soon!

[ixcaliber]

trying to finish as much as i can off playstation plus before letting my subscription end and one of those things was the bioshock infinite burial at sea dlc and oh my fucking god what an absolutely atrotrious experience. incredibly somehow worse than bioshock infinite (a game i hold no affection for) and may be one of the worst video game experiences i've ever had.

[jabrose]

bioshock infinite is one of the funniest games ever 10 years later. Like i remember it being a big fucking deal in 2013 and idk if anyone even remember the main characters names. 0 cultural relevance and its just full of the most up its own ass fake deep bs ive ever seen. 9/10 from ign. love it.

[ghoulbats]

If you could sit on a couch with a friend and play through a whole video game with them (whether it’s you playing and then watching or vice versa or playing together) what would it be?

portal!! and then portal 2 bc i’m a firm believer you can’t play one without the other - i’d want to watch them playing though like as much as i want to replay portal i’m so bad at redoing things i’ve done and just end up wanting to skip so watching someone else play would be like getting to replay myself while getting to watch them experience it too :D plus i’ve never played the co-op so after they’re done we could play that together :3

[brucewaynehater101]

There's Titans Tower but Tim decides to go ahead and set up a Young Justice base as well since someone (it was Jason) ruined his ability to feel safe there and since so many people have the ability to interfere with the security settings of Titan's Tower. Also Damian and his little friends are starting to spend more time there and while Kon doesn't mind spending time with Jon, there is still a significant age gap between Tim's group and Damian's group and neither is interested in one side acting as babysitter for the other. Thus, Tim sets up Young Justice Base. It is a little bubble dome under water somewhere between Atlantis and Themyscira. They have a robot who does the dishes and light cleaning of common areas. Tim calls the robot Mrs. Mac. Cassie calls it Rosie (Jetsons). Kon goes with Rosie Mac to placate them both. Bart goes with BB (for Better than Braniac). Rosie BB Mac is not an advanced AI, she's a tiny bit more advanced than the average roomba. She does, on occasion, have to be pushed out of corners where she's gotten stuck. Bart has to be stopped from taping a knife to her. Bart rips off casinos to help fund the base. Kon goes and mines some asteroids for minerals to sell and use as building materials his part of the funding. Cassie convinces Hippolyta to led them some Amazons to help with the construction. The base may or may not have a blessing from Amphitrite and Hestia. Tim can finally have a place where he feels safe to sleep. Kon and Bart have a place that is their home where they don't feel like they're infringing on the hospitality of someone who feels obligated to them for things that aren't their fault. Cassie has a place where she can stretch and not feel confined or burdened by other's expectations. Anita, Cissie, and Greta absolutely visit. Anita brings the kids. They now have a safe place to retreat to just in case of an emergency. The kids love seeing the fish swim by and think it's just a really cool aquarium.

and if this is the Space Emperor AU then this is where Cassie stores all her ugly dishes with the team's faces on them and where the others on the team store theirs as well. If any of them go missing or get broken then there's a much smaller list of suspects for her to interrogate than if she were to keep them with her mom. Fewer questions as well for any of them to deal with.

Gods, I love underwater bases. Bioshock was a hella fun game to play because it was an underwater city. I've also tried to make a ton of Minecraft bases in the ocean.

Anyways, YJ deserves their own place that isn't associated with anyone else. They deserve either a brand new construction (like this) or a renovated one they found themselves (instead of it being an old space from other heroes). I'd live for the fluff of them slowly making the place theirs (from the weird paintings they hang up, the curtains they bicker over, the plethora of photos of loved ones, the random trinkets each one brings to decorate, etc). This is their home, and they should be able to make it fit them.

I'd also want to see some of the hurt/comfort of Tim finally losing that little bit of tension he never noticed he carries (since he's finally safe. He will be safe. No one can hurt him here).

Kon doesn't have to put on a persona. He's able to relax and simply exist.

Cassie catches herself just watching her friends with a fond smile on her face. She can't get enough of them just being around and being okay.

Bart doesn't have to try to fit himself into what others want him to be. YJ accepts him as he is, no matter what he does or how he acts.

[vvatchword]

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.

[dustiedoodles]

I like to play Bioshock level by level, last night we finished Arcadia and gotta say I think it’s my favourite Rapture location. As someone who loves gardens and aquariums it’s a stellar combo. Plus there’s so many hidey holes in that level!! I love a hidey hole! Wish Julie got to hang around a bit longer though.

[candyredmusings]

Bioshock Splicer Starters

Assortment of dialogue taken from the a from two types of Splicers in the first Bioshock game; Baby Jane and the Breadwinner

Other Bioshock Splicer starters: TBA [Dr. Grossman & Lady Smith] [Pigskin & Rosebud] [Toasty & Waders]

Baby Jane

Get away from my face! Not on my face!"

"Oh! Oh, God damn it!"

"Look at yourself! And you would do it too!"

"Talentless?! BORING?!"

"You don't deserve this!"

"I'm a star, not you!"

"You're jealous, jealous!"

"Why did you cut me?! Why?!"

"You did this to me! You!"

"I deserve it, you fuck!"

"Give me the part, you bastard!"

"Off. My. Stage! GET OFF!"

"Stop ogling me!"

"You're making me lose my place! STOP IT!"

"No, it's not perfect, AGAIN!"

"He's standing in the wrong place!"

"Get your FAT. HANDS. AWAY FROM ME!"

"Just say something, goddammit!"

"What's that? Is it him?!"

"I smell something nasty."

"Is that someone naughty?"

"Honey? Is that you…?"

"I heard that!"

"It hurts, it hurts…"

"Why did you…?"

"I'm sorry… We can do it together!"

"DARLING! I'M HOME EARLY!"

"I don't- I don't wanna- I don't wanna hear this… I- [Whimpering] I don't want to hear this…"

"Pretend you're not interested. They like that."

"Have it your way, you sleaze!"

"Well, that was good drama."

"Get a girl all bothered… for NOTHIN'!"

"That gets a girl's blood flowing."

"I'll be better next time! Please?! Don't go!"

"When we do meet, it's gonna be so nasty!"

"He's gone! They always leave…"

"When I murder you I'm gonna put your body in a dress!"

"My god, there's so much blood!"

"Aw, Jesus, what did you do to me?!"

"I'm NOT. DEALING WITH THIS!"

"No… No No No. Wha- What's- What's that? Oh, no no, no…"

"In the theater, a woman gets used to attention."

"She was up for the part as well, but then they found her in a salt pond."

"I was gonna be famous… now look at this dump!"

"Who needs to make it on Broadway? When you can make it here."

"What's the matter with me…? I'm pretty enough!"

"Hey fella'! Don't 'cha wanna take a walk with me?"

"Come on, baby! You told me you was gonna take care of me! Were you lying…?"

"I used to be beautiful. What happened to me?!"

"Why are you making this so hard for me?!"

"C'mere and say that to my face, you slimey bastard!"

"You wanna play with me?"

"Hello? Did you come to talk to me?"

"I can be nice if I want to…"

"Next time, work on your timing."

"Oh, and we were just getting to the best bit!"

"Tell me you love me! Go on, say it!"

"Just pretend, you imbecile!"

"You ruined me!"

"No one touches me! No one!"

"You won't touch me again!"

"Someone shou- should do this for me, someone should be doing this for me!"

Breadwinner

"Get out of my territory!"

"Amateur! Fuckin' amateur!"

"I'm top dog, you shit!"

"GET OUTA MY FUCKIN' OFFICE!"

"You come to my town?! To MY TOWN?!"

"You're a nobody! Nobody!"

"Who the hell is that?"

"Yeah? Well, you're fired! Ya got that?"

"I was right, I tell ya. I was right, god damn it."

"Come on. Gimme a break!"

"Come on. Just let me explain, will ya?"

 "I'm too busy for this shit."

"Waste of my goddamn time."

"This isn't makin' me time OR money!"

"Goddammit, I'm bleeding!"

"Ahh. Ahh yeah, finally some service! Woo!"

"What happened to this thing?"

"Ha, it's my lucky day!"

"She should not have come here."

"Ah, a man can start a business down here, yeah. Now now, it's- it's not too late. I'll get to it."

"It's just a bad quarter. Naw, that's all. Yeah, market'll come back, huh? Yeah! Everything'll be fine. Yeah, it'll all be fine… Augh."

"I just gotta wait out the down cycle. I'm a success… I'm a fuckin' success!"

"I ain't afraid of failure… cause I ain'ts gonna fail!"

"These assholes don't get it. I'm a winner!"

"Came here to get rich… ain't gonna leave 'till I do!"

"Came down here with a dream… That dream's gonna happen."

"Aw, come on… they're gonna kill me if I lose you!"

"That's it? We're done?"

"You think that I'm dumb? Sure, sure, why not? You keep on thinkin' that."

"You think I wouldn't notice if you just waltzed in here? Huh?"

"I'll tell you what: I'll pay you to stay alive next time. How's that for a deal, you shit head."

"I earned this! Me!"

"You give it to me, you hear?"

"Just open your mouth."

"Ah, whose fault is this?"

"Look at this dump! Nothing left but nothing!"

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk Game Ideas: Shooter/Action

I will very openly admit something that is going to be quite hard to do in Solarpunk is a shooter or an action game (like hack and slash). Which is kinda ironic, because some of the other ideas I spoke about this week involved action and fighting.

A while ago someone made a asset flipped bioshock. They used the mechanics from Bioshock but put the assets of a Solarpunk world over it, making it all look quite solarpunk, but of course it did not feel Solarpunk at all. This lead to a discussion on how a Shooter could never be Solarpunk - but I disagree with this.

The Issue:

The main issue is fairly clear: A lot of people see violance as something very much apart from solarpunk, while shooters and hack and slash games pretty much thrive on violence. And while I think I made a good point in my blog this week that a Solarpunk game can absolutely feature violence, I do understand why especially something like a shooter, that feels often more real, is a bigger issue for many. It feels a lot more intimate, because compared to let's say a metroidvania, it tends to be more real in terms of graphics and perspective.

So, let's talk about this.

Idea #1: A Guerilla Gardening Game

Let me start with what might be the most creative (?) idea I had on this topic. A Guerilla Gardening Game, where instead of bullets you shoot seed bombs. My vision for this kinda goes in this direction: You do not have classical enemies, but you have areas that are "corrupted" by pollution in some way or another. Maybe it is not gonna fight you, but you might take damage through environmental hazards. And you can remove them through gardening. And you will do that through a bit of hack an slash (gardening scissors) and shooting (seed bombs). Maybe you'll have to do some stealth as you are doing Guerilla - so illegal - gardening, and there might be cops trying to stop you. But yeah, something... different with the mechanics.

Idea #2: Fighting Robots with Robots

Look, I know that I already had mentioned this in terms of the Metroidvania. But folks, this idea would also work fairly well within either hack'n slash or shooter. Again, there is a good chance that we might have some sort of AI that takes care of robots for certain manual tasks or some governmental tasks. You could play this either as "this kind of AI is a good thing, if people work less because of it" or "this is still bad, because people rely too much on it". Either way, AI gets somehow corrupted or something along the lines and you have robots running amok. We all have seen those Cyberpunk things that run on similar ideas, right? And yeah, use that as a basic for an action story.

Hell, if you do not want to make it that dire: You could also make a rogue like action game where within the game it is some sort of game or training rather than an accute situation.

Idea #3: The War for a Solarpunk Future

To bring in one idea where the fighting is a bit more dire... Make a shooter where we atually have a scenario where the people are rebelling against the capitalist entities and the neocolonial empires - and there is an rebellion or an all-out war, where basically everyone who is not the top 3% is trying to rise up, because they know that the alternative is dying a slow drawn out death. Maybe some catastrophe has happened that made people rethink and mistrust the Status Quo.

In my own pure SciFi Solarpunk world, the entire thing starts, while more and more of the former colonies that are still controlled start rebelling, because too many people are in a situation where they are gonna die either way, so they might as well fight.

And hence we can go in a war scenario, where we can also bring in politics, and maybe some roleplay aspects. Possibly even multiple endings?

And if you are interested in creative Solarpunk endeavors, I would love to invite you into the Solarpunk Creatives community! :)

[txttletale]

bundletober #15: the sunless seasons

almost halfway there. woah. living on a prayer and all that. today's bundletober is interesting in that i'm not looking at a standalone game. the sunless seasons is a blades in the dark--i hestitate to call it a supplement, it's more a play tool or as the cover proclaims, a toolkit--by eskur.

so, for those who haven't played it--blades in the dark is my favourite ttrpg. it's a heist game set in duskvol, a city in the middle of a blighted perpetually dark wasteland, a dark and brooding take on a world like that of dishonored or bioshock that embraces character competence, the over-the-table conversation, and cutting out all the parts of stories and games that aren't the fun parts.

the sunless seasons is a very short set of pages containing tables of plot hooks, vignettes, and weather conditions for each of duskvol's seasons.

the weather tracking works with a pretty ingenious hex grid--you roll to move a counter between these hexes at different intervals--you can base it off in-game time passing or between scenes for when you want a dramatic hard cut. it's a simple thing but it takes another element of 'being the world', of creating an immersive and breathing space to play in, off the sole shoulders of the GM.

the plot hooks provided on the 'weird weather' hex are very cool, too. this toolkit gives duskvol a pulse--i'm always talking about how games can be co-authors, and this is pure game-as-co-author, this is game as someone who interjects 'oh, and it's raining' at the most dramatic point. if you play blades in the dark, you should 100% read the sunless seasons, if not to use it, to get some inspiration for how you describe duskvol. even if you don't, it might inspire you for whatever ttrpgs you do play, or to include something similar in your own game.

this, imo, is better to make a place feel real than any amount of lore or timelines or family trees or could be. it's something material and present, something you use in play rather than just read and forget about. this is how you make your world feel real.

the sunless seasons can be downloaded for free through itch.io

[angellayercake]

I'm seeing your Bioshock posting. Any project your working on that's related?

(I'm excited I love Bioshock)

Thank you very much for noticing!! I have been pretty obsessed with Bioshock and Rapture since I played it last year and then I had a brainwave about how similar the descriptions of Meliora is to the concept (not the reality iykyk) of Rapture.

So below the read more are some of my rambling thoughts. This may turn into a fic one day or it may just stay an idea but who knows? I have included no spoilers for either Bioshock or Bioshock 2 storylines as most of this takes place pre Raptures construction.

source

So Jen, you might ask, how would Terzo even be invited to Rapture in the first place? Doesn't Ryan hate religion? Why would Terzo even want to be there?

And I have a very extensive answer for you! (after you chose with me to ignore all dates in canon because for this we need Terzo in his late 20s/30s in the 1920s)

To begin I must explain my headcanon for how the Ministry and the Clergy works. The Ministry was founded in opposition to the rise of the Catholic church in Italy. They opposed the strict and cruel ways the Christian church and wanted to offer an alternative and a sanctuary to those mistreated and maligned. Their numbers grew until they were noticed and forced to flee Italy.

They found a home in rural Sweden, taking advantage of the overwhelming rise of Protestantism and there they stayed, biding their time and increasing their ranks. Their congregation grew so large that they were starting to struggle to sustain themselves so the Clergy came up with a plan. The Projects were different businesses, outreach and recruitment efforts to build revenue and attract the rich and successful to their cause and it worked! They were truly self sustaining and starting to have influence in important places but the Clergy understood that they were playing the long game.

Which brings us nicely to New York in 1922. Terzo Emeritus, third son of the reigning Papa has been assigned to set up a speakeasy to make the most of the Prohibition movement. His goal is to make a load of money and convert as many sinners as he can find. He sets up his 'dance hall' which he calls his House of Sin. There are cocktails and dancers and escorts and cross dressers and all the outcasts and freaks that aren't welcome anywhere else. It gains a cult reputation as a wonderland where anything goes, seemingly built from nothing into the most inclusive yet exclusive club in New York.

Andrew Ryan begins frequenting the place, not because he has tastes for anything other than a pretty girl but because he respects their ethos. He has respect for anyone who disregards laws and social norms and makes their own rules. He is made to feel welcome as are any of the rich and powerful that frequent the club, not because Terzo necessarily likes them but because part of his work there is to recruit powerful people to the Church. He welcomes them personally, brings them the best men or women that they might desire, keeps the drinks and smokes flowing freely until he can bring the conversation around to politics, morals and values so he can see how receptive they might be to the Ministry's teachings.

With Ryan though he barely has to push, almost as if he had come to investigate Terzo's views and opinions for himself. He finds a like mind in Ryan, someone who sees the flaws in society and how they could be improved. He finds himself talking about Meliora openly much to his surprise, the gleaming metropolis of his imagination where people are unrestrained by the petty and the inconsequential, where the seven deadly sins are celebrated and encouraged.

He fears he slips up bringing his religion into his ramblings but Ryan is unaffected by the revelations. He asks directly if Terzo worships the Devil and when he says yes the response he receives is surprisingly respectful. Ryan doesn't believe in God so equally he doesn't believe in the Devil but if he had to pick between the two the one who would earn his regard is the one who chose His own path and didn't just blindly obey. They spend many a night discussing the possibilities of such a place well into the early hours neither of them sure that such a place would ever exist.

Time went on and the world changed. Prohibition ends and the club goes legitimate. Slowly but surely wider society begins to take notice of their live and let live policy and don't like it at all. What was once the place to be seen becomes the place an upstanding member of society would never be seen. Business dwindles as the depression takes hold and by the time the rumblings of the Second World War reach the US they close their doors for good. Terzo returns to the Ministry and to Europe, serving the Clergy in a much more traditional capacity, that is until in 1946 when he receives an invitation from an old friend.

source

It takes a hell of a lot to convince the Clergy to let him go, most of them writing off this supposed underwater metropolis as impossible. Eventually though the curiosity and ambition win out and they allow him to go but only if he takes a company of ghouls to keep him out of trouble and who have the abilities to get him out if the worst were to happen, most leaning towards the roof caving in under the pressure of the ocean.

Rapture is almost everything he imagined Meliora to be. The grandiose architecture, neon lights and atmosphere of excitement. The only difference was the underwater setting. It was fascinating, the low blue glow coming from all of the countless windows. Wherever he went he would find himself captivated by the swaying plants on the seabed, the schools of fish or the dark shadow of a whale passing by. The longer he stays the more he starts to forget, until he looks out the window and is reminded all over again of the fascinating place he lives.

source & source

He slips back into his old life so easily, finding many familiar faces from the social circles of New York making up the elite of Rapture. He secures a place in Fort Frolic and goes about recruiting the most beautiful and hedonistic people he can find to work at his club. Anything goes there as is the case with a lot of things in Rapture and it becomes so popular that Ryan even sends his mistress to work with him when she isn't otherwise occupied with him. Everything is perfect for a time but if you have played the games then you know what is coming next.

For now I think I will leave it there. I have a lot of ideas about how he tackles some of the issues that grow within Rapture but if this becomes a fully fledged fic I will save those for that. I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings and I would love to hear others thoughts and ideas if you have any!! I will leave you with the below quotes which were where I started with this so give them a read, would you kindly?

The world since he was last seen has changed. Called Moloch by some, the great industrial machine has been grinding away, grinding everything and everyone down in the process. Spies are everywhere. Their eyes are behind the screens of your televisions and devices, their ears attentive to every frequency in the air. Everything is mediated, pre-packaged, and pressure sealed, your lives preordained. From the cradle to the grave, the world moves along as if there is free will, but this is the grandest illusion. There is no power beyond that which the all-seeing eye controls. The gods are all dead. Even art is pure commodity. But some still fight, quietly at first, but soon they will rise and make the glorious noise of the ancients, donning their masks, these nameless ghouls led by Papa Emeritus III. - Source

To build a city at the bottom of the sea! Insanity. But where else could we be free from the clutching hand of the Parasites? Where else could we build an economy that they would not try to control, a society that they would not try to destroy? It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea. It was impossible to build it anywhere else. Source

"We would sit down to studying exciting Futurist manifestos, sketched the blueprints of utopian metropoles, spiked with shiny skyscrapers stabbing at the heavens belly… Wantonly swollen zeppelins would to carry our gospel of indulgence to the farthest corners of the globe to summon and enslave. (…) Forged in nostalgia of steam and fire, this brave new world of ambition, vice, lust and greed - all so inherent to the enlightened modernity, was always with him through all these years. And it is now - when our church continues to grow stronger and wealthier under wise reign of Papa Emeritus III -  that these visions may finally be witnessed and embraced in the preaching's of  'Meliora’ - his most contemporary and humane Encyclical.” - Source

source

I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well. Source

[everydayyoulovemeless]

Another Bioshock req!! No rush ^^ How do the Bioshock characters act when they have a crush/are romantically interested in someone? Thank you ☺️

How Bioshock 1 Characters Act When They Have A Crush

➼ Word Count » 0.9k ➼ Warnings » None ➼ Genre » Romantic ➼ A/N » YES! I LOVE YOU

You can tell when Jack starts feeling a certain type of way toward you by how eager he is to help you out. It’d range from him offering to carry your bags to using small bursts of Incinerate! when you’re cold. He'll slowly find that he's happiest when you're near and will try to be around you as often as he can. He’ll invite you out to dinner, or to the movies, or on a walk - he doesn’t care! He’d follow you wherever as long as you were having fun. The little sisters will have to tug at his pant legs a lot because he falls completely into a trance whenever you enter the room. He's so embarrassed by it, but he just can't help resting his head in his hands when you start to cross his mind again.

Atlas hates it. It's the last thing he needs and will progressively get more and more aggressive the longer it goes on. It's not necessarily directed at you, but toward any other poor bystander who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He'll give you easier tasks - something that doesn’t require you to leave any of the revolutionary bases - and will be firmer when it comes to your safety. You're not going to be fighting in the war and you're not going to be allowed in the room while he's interrogating someone. He’ll do anything in his power to prevent you from finding out just how violent he, and the rest of Rapture, can be.

Andrew Ryan will try to court you as any gentleman should. He’ll pay your rent, ask you out to dinner, and buy you all sorts of extravagant gifts and trinkets. He's under the impression that the best way to someone's heart is by presenting them with endless options and possibilities, and he can offer just that. He'll get you modeling gigs, use your voice in the Rapture Reminders, and grant you anything you'd ever wished for. He’ll shower you with mountains of materialistic items until you realize that he truly is the best option.

When Tenenbaum begins to develop feelings for someone, she tends to be far more keen on listening to them. She has a habit of wanting to correct people whenever they make a mistake, but with you, she finds that she's worried she'll come off too harsh. She also happens to be a little bit of a hopeless romantic and will write out entire lists of things that remind her of you just so she can better chart how strongly she’s feeling it. Sometimes she may even write short poems in the corners of her documents, although, she'd never dare show them to you.

You’re going to see a lot more of your features in Steinman’s patients, whether that be for better or for worse. He feels inspired by your mere presence and will frequently send you telegrams asking if you’d like to sit in on one of his surgeries or maybe just asking if you’d like to be a model for him? He wants to run his fingers across your face so badly, besides, studying your bone structure would help him perform more successful procedures, and wouldn't that be for the best?

Sander is probably the last person you want to have a crush on you. Somehow, he’ll find a way to get ahold of you and when he does, you’ll be his central muse, his inspiration for every sculpture, painting, play, poem - everything. He’ll quickly become very controlling over where you are and what you’re doing - he has to! You hold so much importance, not only to him but to the entire artist community in Rapture! Just pray he doesn’t lose this whimsical interest in you, or you may end up dead.

Fontaine is actually quite kind. Manipulative, sure, but he’d never dream of harming you. He’s got a lot of enemies, so one of the biggest signs that he’s started to grow fond of you is how protective he'll become. You'll slowly start to realize that whenever you leave your house, you're always being trailed by a handful of suspiciously inconspicuous men. He'd hate it if you somehow got involved with his political game, so the bodyguards he has following you all about Rapture are a precaution of his. He’s also a massive gift-giver. Mostly when it comes to clothing. He’ll send boxes of beautifully made outfits just because he likes seeing you all dolled up. Especially when it’s for him, in clothes that his company made.

Julie will be super tense around you. She's got a slight perfectionist streak and will constantly seek to be her best when she's around you. She relaxes a lot more when the two of you actually get together, but for now, she'll stand up straight, smooth out her dress, and shroud herself in all sorts of perfume. There are times when she may come off a tad harsh because of how desperately she wants to appear as smart in front of you, but she'll make up for it later when she leaves a bouquet of flowers and a sweetly written note on your doorstep.

Diane's quite confident in her approach. She'll most likely just start flirting with you outright, dragging her perfectly manicured nails down the front of your shirt while she compliments your outfit of the night. Then she'll tiptoe her fingers up your shoulder, bat her eyes, and ask if you'd like to move the conversation to the bar. Never one to be afraid of rejection and adores the attention you provide to her. If you're lucky she may even leave you with a kiss to remember her with.

[onestepbackwards]

Going in the self aware direction of the characters seeing games they play I can only imagine the reaction to horror games. Like in Fatal Frame where you are being attacked by very violent human ghosts. Or Dead by Daylight where characters have to constantly run from killers wanting to kill them, and said game comes with the cheery tagline of "Death is not an escape". Or Bioshock where people can use powers to toss around electro bolts and fire, but are mutated into insane messes who kill at first sight. I've seen it joked that Kamado might see the player as a demon due to certain things they do/listen to, but I honestly think if he saw the horror games he would truly believe we are a demon and no force on earth would convince him otherwise. To him you play in these horrifying words for fun. You enjoy them. That's proof you are a demon to him. On the flip side if Volo ever thought his world was bad one look at a few of those horror games will probably convince him that he has it somewhat easy when compared to the poor souls in those horror games of yours.

As someone who loves horror games and an unfortunate large amount of hours in dead by daylight, this would be so funny/horrifying. Kamado sees you like Dead by Daylight? Just who or what are you? Why do you enjoy taking control of these innocent people and making them relive horror and pain over and over? Or... You enjoy hunting down innocent people as monsters and demons and killers if you play killer? It makes him sick.

Or Resident Evil? Just how do you enjoy watching an innocent person suffer in such a hell like place? At least you have the decency to seem upset if the person you are playing as gets hurt, he supposes.

Or Silent Hill. Just imagine realizing there are worlds out there that have towns that spawn your own inner demons. He feels sick. If he thinks you are a god, he feels even more horrified. His view on you is... Not good. Volo isn't much better. Seeing these worlds has him feeling a bit ill, glad that he at least is safe in his own one, despite feeling hurt about all that had happened. (And the horror of being aware itself. At least he isn't self aware in one of those other games.)

[tealtreesthriving-ttt457]

A retrospect on We Happy Few's main characters: The terrible people fleeing a terrible world, Part 1.

We Happy Few is a game made Compulsion games under the publishment of Gearbox Entertainment.

Part 2 here: https://www.tumblr.com/tealtreesthriving-ttt457/762050158773043200/a-retrospect-on-we-happy-fews-main-characters?source=share

In terms of gameplay, a demonstration and alpha build was introduced in 2016, before seeing and actual and official 2018 release.

As a game in the Open-world/Survival/Walking Simulator genre, it was not received as well in that department, as Ubisoft games has brought an ever-increasing negative light to the prospect of open-world games with vast and somewhat boring landscapes. That, and the bugs, the loading times, the length, it was a long game.

It consisted of 3 Acts, and most consumers may have been invested in Act 1: Arthur, while not playing the last 2, due to its longevity and the flaws of the game and its genre sinking deep.

However, that's way too known, so let's focus on the characters, and gameplay characteristics, and retrospect on how to view their character.

______________________________________________________________

Arthur Hastings: The Straight Man with skeletons in his closet.

Arthur is the first character we play as, and works as a basics into We Happy Few without the other characters' hindrances, which we will get into.

He is unburdened and lanky fellow, capable of blending in, dealing enough blunt force trauma and murder, and the such. He's rather fit except for the poor culture of smoking as a child that got into the 20th century and back then, and still persists.

Basically, he is the everyman, although he has a goal: To find his brother Percy.

Percy is a plot device in a way that's part of the story and for Arthur's own reasons. It breaks him out of the trance of living in Wellington Wells, an enclosed civilization in Europe that does drugs to conform and stays quite conservative within its own walls, effectively being Rapture from Bioshock, but with different problems.

His sudden concern for his brother stems from an overarching event for the whole society: that they had to orphan their children to the Germans during World War 2, under the threat of artillery fire. His iconic memory is of his brother pleading for him and a round Bobby preventing him from getting on the train with Percy, as to why he still lives. He is known to some as the only child to leave the train station.

To add more context to their relationship, Percy is mentally challenged, slow in articulation and internalization, somewhat deaf to social cues, and values the wisdom of his young brother, Arthur. The latter was the more aware but less moral of the two, being aware of a plot by the Germans from the adults, providing advice on how Percy deals with certain issues, and valuing him, mostly. They both knew the train visit was inevitable and sought to support each other in Germany if they could.

Arthur is an awkward by enthusiastic fellow. He's quick to converse without trying to raise tension, most of the time, so it's rare when he gets heated. He acts like he doesn't belong there, in a violent and dystopic world.

When he gets heated, it's usually an act of his, in terms of his popular trait of just lying, and when he is genuine, it's towards a specific someone, Sally Boyle. He and her were best friends, Sally having a more boyish and adventurous personality, something girls her age didn't like during the early 20th century nor her mother.

She also survived not going on the train, due to circumstances with her family, so she stayed with Arthur's. Now, the reason for this spontaneous tension is that Sally, a minor, slept with Arthur's dad.

Now, in a modern society, we blame the adult. In a sexist society, Arthur blames the young Sally. This demonstrates Arthur's messed up priorities which are important to Sally's story, but demonstrates the emotional cracks.

As Arthur leaves and gets his way out of Wellington Wells, the logic that has persisted in others about his quest begins to bring doubt onto himself: What if Percy isn't in Germany? It's been a decade and more. What could've happened to him? Is this an excuse to get out?

And, we know the verdict. It is.

Through a second encounter with the round Bobby that brings great trauma to him, it's revealed through his clearer memories, that even though Percy is older, Arthur advised him to go with him. He managed their passports but inquired with the Bobby that he was just dropping Percy off, lying about his age and how he was Percy. When the officer challenges his mental condition based on having his information card, Arthur begins to mimick Percy's stutter and slow articulation, framing himself as an innocent boy with innocent ideals about wanting to be with his brother up until the end. He asks if he could go to inquire with his mother, until the Bobby groans and holds him, telling him how this was going to be a day that many will regret, and on his moral conscience, not put Arthur, another child, onto that train.

This is evil, even for a child. Arthur has manipulated an adult and his brother to frame himself as an innocent child merely doing his task and wanting to care for his brother, spitting on an unaware Percy's deathbed as he screamed "No!" as the train went.

Arthur looks and sounds like an everyman because he's lying. He's a snake in the grass, preying on innocence without much actual personality in him than lying. Granted, all the characters lie, but it's literally built into him.

Even you could infer his gameplay is so straightforward because unconsciously, he is unburdened. Sally, as we'll talk about later, has someone to care for, and is burdened for not doing so and neglecting them. Arthur is fueled by a goal of countries beyond where he stands and a distance he can't see, and maybe that's why it's so easy to move forward. Percy is likely to be dead, for all that matters, but the dying prospect of him being alive looks more plastic than gold.

The silver lining is that he's aware of how bad he is, and is advised to live on and to understand that in the first place. Life going on is the mercy, and he just has to simply go through it as his punishment.

Arthur is extremely bad yet self-reflective, though the ending provokes one into thinking if his casual attitude should be shed off. The after-credits scene shows us Arthur practicing his iconic "Lovely Day for it!" as he walks down a path, before interacting with a child, and he tries it on him. The child remarks how it is not such, and how it's raining. Arthur smiles and admits it, embracing some kind of enjoyed truth and genuine happiness for once, despite his guilt.

[seeminglydeathlessredshirt]

Ramblings on Bioshock Infinite

So, I've decided to start writing down how I feel about what I'm playing here rather than wait for my friends to be online so I can infodump at them.

Anyway, Bioshock: Infinite. The original was pretty alright. I didn't get all the way through it because I was getting a bit tired of Rapture and some other little annoyances, but it was a perfectly decent experience. Skipped past 2 because once again, not in the mood for spending a dozen more hours underwater, and went right to the one that people fuss about all the time to see what the fuss is all about.

I shouldn't have gone out of my way to see what all the fuss is about.

Spoilers for an 11-year old game will follow, but I do not recommend going out and checking this out yourself.

To its credit, the game does have a very strong opening. The welcome centre/church you arrive in offers absolutely gorgeous visuals and a strange yet interesting blend of Christian motifs and the weird sort of reverence built up around the founders of America. "Gee," I thought, "maybe this will be a game that finally tackles religion in an interesting and nuanced way that doesn't just feel like it was written by a 14-year old who just discovered Reddit." Unfortunately, it doesn't(if anyone knows a game that does, please let me know.) After a level where you walk around and take in the sights of Columbia(an experience that feels like walking into a veritable wasp nest. Either one, take your pick), you're thrust into your standard action game plot shenanigans. Kill a bunch of guys while someone rants at you over an intercom, go through various setpieces, all that good stuff.

Is the killing actually all that fun? For a certain stretch of the game, yes. You have some okay abilities, a good selection of weapons to choose from, and takedowns are pretty cool as well. The skyrails scattered around some maps are gimmicky, though a welcome addition(the irony of a game like this leaning heavily on what are basically rollercoasters is not lost on me.) But somewhere past the halfway point, it takes a steep nosedive. The weapon list gets bloated to hell and back, and a combination of the carry limit of two plus the tendency to only ever give ammo for everything you don't want to use drags it down. Enemies also seem to get substantially spongier and more numerous, which makes fights incredibly unsatisfying. Bioshock was already firmly in that grey area between immersive sim and combat sandbox, and Infinite is neither of those. Everything feels so much less versatile, there's no thinking outside the box to be done here.

As for the rest of the story, you may have heard about how centrist it gets, and I am sad to report that everything they said was true. What really gets me is how it's already setting up the "both sides are the exact same thing" even before the characters would have any reason to think that. They're literally basing this entire viewpoint off of "oh, the workers are being violent about overthrowing their oppressors, that's super bad, right????" This game also does try to tackle things like racism but I don't exactly have a good eye for whether or not something tackles that matter maturely, so all I'll say is that it feels very surface-level and inconsequential. "Inconsequential" can sum up everything else in this paragraph too because it's all eventually abandoned for !!Dimensional Shenanigans!! This is what the last few levels are taken up by entirely and all it accomplishes is covering over a weak attempt at social themes with an even weaker attempt at sci-fi themes. The ending is certainly a bit more batshit than you'd expect for your standard seventh-generation slop, but it can't salvage this. The fanservice just reminded me of a somewhat better game. I would make a joke about this game only having two characters, but then it goes out of its way to say "yes, there really are only two characters."

I am not playing the fucking DLCs.

[hollowtones]

Do you have any opinions abt bioshock? Big fan of ur destiny takes and am kind of obsessed with ur objectively correct video game swag energy

Original "Bioshock" has fun enough gameplay and art design and I think its writing is kind of middling at best. It feels like it's constantly at odds with itself about what it's trying to say. I have a laugh any time I think about it being toted as a shining example of "letting the player make interesting moral decisions in video games" given how the moral choices are "WOULD YOU KILL A CHILD? YES OR NO"

I've never played the second one, but I'd like to eventually. "Bioshock Infinite" seems so bad that it's maybe funny. Someone gifted it to me years ago, so I think about hate-playing it every now and then.