Why? Because my friend put forth (in response to no one believing me that femly-Shepard is only a feminist celebration if your headcanon shows her to be) the idea of talking about how Sofia Lamb is actually the ultimate, powerful female (videogame) character.
Reasons she put forth:*Completely non-sexualized…unless you have a fetish for 40/50’s hair and horn-rim glasses
*Has all of Rapture under her thumb after she brainwashed an entire population into revering Jack as a messiah-figure and convincing them that they should attack anything she says to because she’s Mom and Mom knows best! She is the leader of a cult of highly-capable soldiers! (read: willing cannon fodder)
*Is capable of ‘controlling’ the Big Sisters. If you listen to Gil, this is no small feat.
*So focused on her cause that she was willing to smother her own daughter just to kill the only person that stood in her way.
*Incredibly well-written.
*The only reason she focuses on psychological attacks is because she’s a goddamned psychologist (which is a feat considering the time-period if you want to delve into backstory).
*Throws poor Sinclair at Delta in attempts to demoralize him…after making Sinclair one of her puppets.
*Manages to keep the most powerful ‘Big Sister’ incapacitated and mostly under her control until nearly the end of the game. She also smothered the uber-splicer-Sister. (Eleanor can punch through glass that can keep out the pressure of the deep if she’s just as strong, if not stronger, than the average Sister…this is no small feat, once again!)
I feel inclined to believe this argument, really. We tend not to look at villains (given the female ones tend to fall into certain stereotypes as Sofia very well may…in a sense. It’s more that she has ‘henchmen,’ but almost all villains do!), but I have to say that Sofia, while an evil bitch that I wanted to have stomped on by a Big Daddy, is probably the uber-woman for the most part. I need to replay Bioshock 2 before I completely pick this apart, but this argument actually seems to have some founding. The same thing will be done with Brigid Tenenbaum when I get the chance…because any woman that can sneak out of Rapture with a large group of children is talented. And also the opposite of the typical female character. There’s a hint that she had some sort of odd relationship with Fontaine, but it obviously didn’t last. Not to mention the fact that her ‘maternal instinct’ seems to be born more of pity than anything (eg: She developed a conscience and decided that kidnapping and experimenting on children to make ADAM-gatherers was a bad thing!)
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I want to replay Bioshock 2: Or, women in videogames should be more like good versions of Sofia Lamb
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