#idk i just like the idea of him having the capabiloty to be kind like Tenenbaum | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fan-mans · 2 years

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The Suchong rant/theory/speculation

So, I know that a vast majority of the Bioshock fandom fucking hates BAS (Especially on here) for very good reason. But, I will say that, when it isn’t being racist, destroying canon, and insulting all the characters- it does bring a few interesting things to the table. This is especially true for Suchong’s character, his motivations, personality, and his relationship to Jack and Tenenbaum.

Ever since I read the note Tenenbaum left Suchong, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’ve gone down a bit of a wiki rabbit hole, investigating Suchong and Tenebaum’s characters to answer all the questions that came up. I mean, if Suchong was really as much of a soulless bastard as people like to portray him, why would Tenenbaum try to appeal to his emotions? It makes no sense to me that Tenenbaum would try to appeal to the sensibilities of a man who has given no indication of compassion or remorse.

So, I posit a theory: Suchong and Tenenbaum both began to feel remorse for their actions at roughly the same time, leading to Tenenbaum writing the note to save someone she was friends with and could possibly aid her.

Now, I know this may sound ridiculous but, after applying a little bit of logic, Suchong showing some remorse but going on with his work makes more sense than Tenenbaum appealing to someone she knows doesn’t care about the kids and that she doesn’t care about either. And before I get into my evidence, I am using what is present in the games only as I have not read the novels, nor do I care to.

So, why would Tenenbaum even begin to care about Suchong? Well, one could argue that she just wanted help with the little sisters, but there are plenty of good people in rapture so her bothering with Suchong in particular feels important. Of course, he did do the mental programming on them, but Tenenbaum herself states that the children can grow out of it and forget, so Suchong would really only speed up the de-conditioning process.

Instead, I want to bring forward the idea that Suchong and Tenenbaum were good colleagues, and maybe even friends. Listening to Gilbert Alexander’s audio diary “Improving on Suchong’s work”, it’s easy to hear the sadness in Alexander’s voice, which can imply a lot of things, most prominently that there was some level of camaraderie between them. Other cut audio diaries from Alexander similarly imply a strong amount of sadness about Suchong’s death, furthering this point. Okay, Suchong probably had friends- so what? Well, it means he could’ve easily have had a positive relationship with Tenenbaum! Since we don’t know the date of Suchong’s audio diaries “Mozart of genetics” and “Plasmids are the paint”, we can’t say for sure how long ago those thoughts about Tenebaum were, though both are implied to be early in their relationship. Even while looking down on Tenenbaum, Suchong still very much admired her skill as a scientist, which at least to me, indicates a clear avenue for solidarity and mutual respect between them.

As there are no audio diaries mentioning Suchong and no radio messages giving her clear opinions on him it’s a little tough to gauge her perspective on her colleague. However, Tenenbaum being outright friends with Suchong, I feel, makes much more sense when you take her note into consideration. Tenenbaum’s note being an not only appeal towards someone who can make saving the little sisters easier, but an appeal to a friend, a man she respected, who she raised multiple children with, makes the effort of writing it and putting it in his secret lab make so much more sense! It makes the appeal at all make more sense as well. Tenenbaum is a very hopeful woman, yes, but if she was talking to a friend, someone she knew even somewhat intimately, over a man she barely knows or actively dislikes, then her confidence in convincing him to her side skyrocket.

Now, speaking of kids, let's talk about Jack and the little sisters. I don’t think people really acknowledge that Suchong had put just as much, if not more, work into raising Jack as Tenebaum. I personally think that though Frank was present, he did leave most of the work of raising and training Jack to those two. The little sisters, on the other hand, he had no care for other than funding. Suchong, however, is directly addressed by the girls as “papa’ multiple times, indicating that he is their father figure like Tenenbaum is their mother figure.

Alongside this- there doesn’t seem to be much outright hostility between him and the girls. Of course, in Bioshock 1, there is the ghost scene of the little sister crying about not wanting to be ‘put on the table’ and the infamous ‘protection bond’ audio diary where he slaps a child, but nuance can put those instances in a new light. First, the ghost scene has no context other than the words spoken by the girl, so, this could easily be a case of Suchong turning an orphan into a little sister- still bad, but expected of both him and Tenenbaum. The audio diary on the other hand, as well as the real time version in BaS, does require a deeper analysis.

So, prior to the event, we see Leta and Masha rescue and befriend a big daddy, creating the protector bond, the girls disappear and later re-appear, as we come across Suchong venting to his audio diary, trying to figure out his massive problem. The girls enter and enthusiastically try to get his attention. Now, let’s pause here and ask a few questions. First; why would kids he’s very cruel to regard him with such enthusiasm and second why are they trying to get his attention? My conclusion to answer these questions is as follows; Suchong was NOT as cruel as implied and he communicated his problem with the protection bond to the girls.

If Suchong was super abusive, why would the kids actively seek his attention? Would they not fear angering him if they bother him, especially at work? The enthusiasm the girls have and willingness to approach him (As well as Suchong allowing them to roam around freely) indicates a more relaxed relationship. Despite what he says about children sometimes, calling the girls brats, and generally regarding children as stupid and unruly, there is room to plausibly infer that he didn’t hate them 24/7. Even more so, as evidenced by both of the coded notes, the problem with the protection bond is on the Big Daddies, not the little sisters, their conditioning is well in effect at this time. With the added detail of the girls jumping to find him after the bond is made, then it stands to reason that they understood the problem and were going to tell their papa the good news. I figure that they either sensed a change in his behavior or he outright told them the problem and to find him if there was a change, leaning toward the latter explanation.

Okay, now let's go back to Suchong's death scene. So the girls bug him a bit, don’t take the hint to leave him alone, and he loses his temper and slaps Leta. The girls not taking the hint to fuck off tells me that him telling them to scram is pretty rare. What seems just as rare is slapping one of the girls- Masha rushes to Leta’s side and both seem pretty shocked at the turn. Suchong gets killed by the big daddy and the girls rush to said big Daddy’s arms once he becomes docile again- which one may say implies that they didn’t like Suchong or were happy to see him die. However, I would argue this is mostly the mental conditioning. The girls easily changed their minds about the injured big daddy, going from fear to willingly helping him in an instant. This happens again during the death sequence- what normal child would watch something that violent happen, even to someone they hate, and jump into the perpetrator’s arms? The answer is in the strong mental conditioning- so powerful it overrides any form of logic.

With that out of the way, let’s look at his relationship with Jack. Again, if he really hated the kids, why would he let Jack and the sisters call him papa? Logically, he’d want to distance himself from any kind of parental role- but he didn’t. With Jack especially, he lingered in the old baby room- likely often enough that Tenenbaum knew he’d see her note there. Hell, his damn sandwich is still fresh! I also can’t find any instances of him insulting Jack. He never calls Jack by name, but neither does Fontaine or Tenenbaum, which makes me believe he was only given a proper name after being sent topside. There is also the matter of the puppy Jack had- but we aren’t given enough context on how Jack obtained her to know why she was killed, she could have very well been killed on Fontaine’s orders. Like with the little sisters, I don’t think Suchong was outright cruel to Jack- at least not most of the time. If anything, he gives Jack more respect than the little sisters and potentially prefers him to the girls.

Now, how about Suchong’s personality? I think his personality, other than ‘cruel evil doctor’, and ‘coward’ gets overlooked by the fandom. I’d argue that Suchong isn’t a coward per se, but rather that he won’t pick a fight that he doesn’t think he’s got a chance at. He’ll really only fight people he sees as equals or underlings- caving only to superiors. This is why he made himself useful to the Japanese rather than fight them and it’s why he easily transitioned to working under Ryan after Fontaine ‘died’. He’s smart, he knows when he’s got a chance and when to pick a fight- though he clearly isn’t afraid of bitching about his circumstances or spitting sass. It’s clear that he is greedy for money like a lot of rapture characters, outright stating that it was good that he was the only one who knew about the little sisters after Fontaine and Tenenbaum went down, as well as scientific progress.

I would even go as far as to say that he may have regretted his actions after Jack left or had some weakening towards Jack specifically. I have two reasons for this, first being Tenebaum’s note and the ‘send to Ryan’ note. The verbiage of Tenebaum’s note strikes me as odd- specifically the line ‘It is in your power to be a different man’- that line screams to me that he has shown some sort of remorse for his actions prior to Tenenbaum leaving. The line ‘They are children… and yes, they will forget’ also strikes me as Suchong not wanting to Kill the sisters and having some kindness towards them. Now the big one to me is ‘What can Ryan take from us that we have not already sacrificed…?’ That tells me Suchong is afraid or hesitant to change because of Ryan. There’s also the note Suchong left for himself. He clearly planned to send the evidence of Jack to Ryan but something made him chicken out. What event exactly is unclear, perhaps Fontaine's ‘death’ or Tenenbaum's disappearance or the overtaking of his job. Whatever it was, something made him feel brave enough to start a whistleblower plan and something else made him stop.

So, with all the evidence (A.k.a. me pulling at threads) together, let’s set up a very rough timeline for Suchong. He enters Rapture, meets Tenenbaum, and begins working with her on plasmid tech. Initially the two don’t get along and he retains a low opinion of her, but slowly they begin to warm up to one another and some level of respect for each other if not outright friendship blooms between them.

Fontaine then entrusts them with the Little Sisters program, putting them in charge of children for higher ADAM production. With the addition of children, things get complicated. The more immoral side of their work begins to be less excusable as before the little sisters, they really only experimented on adults. The kids are hard to care for but a necessary evil to continue producing Adam to meet customer demand. They cannot sedate the girls so Suchong attempts to alleviate some of the struggle of working with them, as well as encourage his ‘Adam recycling’ by implementing mental conditioning in the girls. This works to an extent, but they nevertheless remain children, in both mental capacity and physical strength.

Fontaine, seeing this mental conditioning, then entrusts the WYK program to Tenenbaum and Suchong. The girls at the orphanage already referred to Suchong and Tenenbaum as ‘papa’ and ‘mama’ respectively, but now they have even more responsibility and intimacy in raising this child. In an attempt to stave off the growing softness for the child they are now raising as a killing machine, Tenenbaum and Suchong don’t name him, only calling him ‘baby’. They recognize the growing instinct they have for the children both in themselves and each other, but do not discuss it, likely because of Fontaine’s eye over them.

Suchong breaks first, giving baby Jack a level of affection that he does not show the girls. Tenebaum sees this but does not say anything, intending to protect her colleague. Fontaine begins to notice Tenenbaum going soft, however, and sets Suchong up to keep lot 192 a secret from her. Project WYK wraps up and they send the baby to the surface, Suchong and Tenenbaum shoving their feelings back down and returning to work on the sisters. Still, Suchong cannot get the baby out of his head, often returning to the child’s secret room to the point of Tenenbaum noticing. Nonetheless things are normal.

Tenenbaum has a change of heart and her actions become far gentler with the girls, which gives Suchong the strength to re-asses and begin a whistleblower plan. That is until Tenenbaum disappears, sapping all his confidence away as Fontaine becomes increasingly erratic. The civil war breaks out and Fontaine vanishes. Suchong is the only person aware of the sisters now, without an employer and needing somewhere to go until Ryan forcefully takes his job over.

At the same time things get bad in Rapture, the Little sisters need protection from being harvested. Suchong can build the big daddies to protect the girls but cannot get them to imprint. The girls are too terrified, despite their mental conditioning, to interact with the big daddies. He explains this problem to the girls, hoping some level of self-reporting may give him a leg up. Mind still stuck on baby jack, he returns to the secret room and finds a note from Tenenbaum, encouraging him to change his ways. Suchong, perhaps feeling betrayed by her simply leaving, rejects the letter and leaves to figure out the big daddy problem angry, leading him to lose his temper at the girls when he normally wouldn’t. Or, perhaps he is stricken with fear, knowing Fontaine is still alive and watching his back. Either way, he dies at the hands of his own creations, at least knowing the girls will be protected now by the big daddies.

So yeah. TL;DR: Suchong, though not the best person, wasn’t entirely evil either and may very well have had the same revelation as Tenenbaum but no chance to act on it/may have backed out because of Fontaine. The way the girls and Tenenbaum act display a certain level of complexity to his character, a hidden softer side where he may have acted much better than his audio diaries initially let on.

One last thing: I want to point out that applying any sort of soulless/heartless characterization to an Asian character like Suchong (The only Asian character in Bioshock 1 and one of four Asians in the entire series) comes with some very nasty racist baggage. Now, it’s no surprise to any of us that Ken Levine is a racist bastard, so his writing characters of color as racist stereotypes is expected. However, I’m disappointed to see no one has directly addressed the fact that the portrayal of Suchong as ‘cold and heartless’ is in and of itself a very old racist stereotype. Everyone seems to only shit on BaS and Infinite’s racism (For good reason) but no one seems to point out the inherent racism in the first Bioshock game. So, my first instinct is to break that stereotype, even if it goes against canon. Because, in the end, when it comes to keeping the integrity of a racist canon versus breaking it and fighting stereotypes in fiction as well as what resides in the racial consciousness of the society I live in, breaking canon will always be the better option. A canon that is shitty should be improved upon by fans, not upheld.

#yi suchong #tbh he deserves a more nuanced characterization #even if its through my crack headcanons/theories #idk i just like the idea of him having the capabiloty to be kind like Tenenbaum #like i think them starting down the same route and going through the same journey #of slowly being affected by their descisions #but going down different paths in the end #would've made a much more interesting character dynamic and foil setup #bioshock #idk but thats my opinion #please dont take this too seriously tho #i know its flawed but im having fun okay?

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