Why I love Brigid Tenenbaum Part 2

When we left Tenenbaum yesterday, she had survived World War II by joining the Nazis for science and survival, discovered ADAM and ignored the consequences, helped create Jack with the specific purpose of overthrowing Andrew Ryan, and had created the Little Sisters in order to create more ADAM and again ignored the consequences such as increased insanity, the fact the little girls would get killed, and how Rapture was tearing itself apart throw increased emotions and super powers.

You'd think this woman is the lowest of the low and I've grown to love a villain.

It's the next part of her life that makes her fantastic.  She changes. 

The Little Sisters reawaken her maternal instinct and she realizes just how much she HATES herself.  So, she takes a step back, reevaluates her life, and begins to change.

And by begins to change, I mean kidnap the little sisters, develop a a Tonic that allows you to remove the slug from the Little Sisters without killing them, kills any Splicer who tries to harm them, sets up a safe house in Rapture where the Little Sisters can grow up normally until she can get them to the surface, and works with the main character of Bioshock in order to beat Frank Fontaine so the Rapture nightmare can end.

And that's just pre/during Bioshock 1! 

She makes her first real impression after the first boss battle of Bioshock 1.  You have to be detoured through a room.  When you walk in, a splicer is threatening a Little Sister, and Tenenbaum shoots him.  Brigid Tenenbaum offers Jack the plasmid to save the Little Sisters.  Atlas says he should kill the Little Sisters.    She then offers advice and items (if you save the Little Sisters) throughout the levels as you learn more.  And when you are almost killed for Plot reasons, she saves your life. 

She comes up with the idea to stop Fontaine, and she gives the ending commentary.


But that is NOT the end of her journey?

Nope, because in Bioshock 2, she RETURNED to Rapture.  She figured out someone was kidnapping girls to be Little Sisters again.  She could have stayed where she was.  She could have said it wasn't her problem.

Nope, she heads down to rapture, contacts Eleanor Lamb, the first Little Sister, and resurrects the first Big Daddy with the express purpose of saving the Little Sisters and stopping Sofia Lamb from continuing her path of destruction. (I've talked about Sofia already.) 

Then, THEN, she works out a way to SAVE a Big Daddy, to turn him back to being a human (a feat thought impossible) and will use that research to find a way to...

Cure Rapture from ADAM

Tenenbaum really managed to turn herself around.  She's done war crimes, caused the downfall of society, rewrote the laws of nature...

and she also saw that all she did was wrong, should be corrected, shouldered the burden herself, and went above and beyond in order to save the city and the people she destroyed.


THAT is why I like Doctor Brigid Tenenbaum.  She's incredibly smart,  incredibly flawed, and works on fixing every problem that she caused.  She hopes for a redemption she feels that she can never grasp.  Who knows?  Maybe she can't.  She'll probably always torture herself over this.

But, the fact that she does try, and gives it her all, speaks volumes about her character.  She does whatever she decides to do, and she does it with focus, with energy, and with a growing compassion.