Little Women (no, not the book) -Bioshock

http://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoob/works

Since I did a passage in 'There's always you' where the Little Sisters are fresh from Rapture with the Lambs and still playing, I did wonder what would happen to them in life once they returned to 'normal society'.  We see from the in-game closing scenes that they go on to live full lives, helped by Jack, and are there for him in his final moments but I'd imagine the transition would not be straight forward or easy.

So the last few shorties in my Bioshorts section seem to have been devoted to those thoughts.  Not sure always why certain aspects appeal to me, though I will say that attempting to capture the potential fragility of a Little Sister later in life did (yea, I like to prod emotions where possible).  Also, the time frame would mean that the sisters would be young women in the 'summer of love' in 1969, which is when Eleanor would be exiting from Rapture - I've implied in other works that Eleanor would have been quite 'groovy' and fallen right in with the beatnik crowd.  I felt compelled to explore some of this, that she might seek out her former sisters, though when I started I wasn't quite sure what I had to say about it but I was quite pleased with what came out.

Darker thoughts on dark circumstances (Bioshock and the Little Sisters)

Andrew Ryan's vision was of a society free of the 'petty morality' of church, government or any arbitrary authority, a society allowed to explore everything to its fullest potential no matter the cost/harm.  Life is deemed pretty much expendable in this society, for the 'greater good' of progress.  We see this everywhere in Bioshock and Burial at Sea, the Little Sisters being the pinnacle of this casual disregard of empathy.

Essentially, as a society that has fallen so far, I wonder if Ken Levine tempered his original ideas for the Little Sisters, and what such people might do to the young for a profit.  I shall assume I don't need to expand on that premise more than I have.

In a Rand-ian society, 'lessers' are expendable and exploitable.  To what level the exploitation?  Long term harm is moot when the person is destined for the dump anyway.  If society were to go to those levels of Ryan/Rand, where would it stop?  Money buys anything if someone is willing to pay and another to offer the service.

And yes, I am dumb.  It is only while writing this that the 'Ayn Rand' / 'Andrew Ryan' anagram thing hit me lol.

I hope these musing aren't TOO dark for some but I enjoy taking things to their nth level, regardless of where that may lead.

When is an Easter Egg not an Easter Egg?

In a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, there are hieroglyphs of the droids from Star Wars hidden amongst the texts.  In Jedi Knight: Dark Forces, Max from LucasArts' 'Sam and Max' is hiding in one settlement.  In Duke Nukem 2, there is a 'doomed' space marine skewered behind an altar.

These are classic Easter Eggs: little hidden nuggets of interest of no consequence.

In Portal, we see the Borealis' dry dock and reference to Black Mesa.

So I ask again, when is an Easter Egg not an Easter Egg?  At what point does a hidden piece of information become 'lore' or 'canon', rather than 'Easter Egg'?  No-one seems to be jumping up and down that Sam and Max must then be in the same universe as Star Wars, or that Star Wars precedes Indiana Jones in some Zelda-esque impossible timeline.

A hell of a lot has been made of both the direct and perceived links between Portal and HL, beyond the realm of fanfic.  But what if they are just Easter Eggs and no intention was ever made to actually follow through on such ideas?

Of course, the Borealis is cited in HL2, but that doesn't guarantee an in-game connection.  If devs followed through on EVERY idea like Aperture being in competition with Black Mesa, story lines would be a right mess.  It could have easily been an afterthought, that once Portal was ready for testing (no pun intended), some bright spark thought, "Hey, Aperture's a science facility, Black Mesa's a science facility, we're all Valve, so why don't we..." and added the slide show content in Portal 1 purely as an Easter Egg, which the 'joke' then continued into Portal 2.

Don't get me wrong, I WANT a HL/Portal cross-over, but one has to temper the vigour sometimes.  Particularly after one of Gabe's recent uncommitted interviews.