Good afternoon, in this episode I will talk about Julie Langford, the first story NPC in Bioshock.
She is one of the main characters for the city of Rapture, it was she who came up with the idea of creating her own arboretum on the ocean floor, which creates the opportunity to breathe freely “underwater”.
Well, yes, I’m a scientist, but I’m also a woman who never turns down making money. Ryan promised that if I could raise Arcadia’s revenue, some of the profits would end up in my wallet. So I thought: we pay for oxygen when we get photosynthetic trees. Hell, we could sell the surplus to the city and undercut the prices for everyone else. Ryan would definitely love this. Fontaine’s company held on to O2 tooth and nail.
Audio Diaries from BioShock: Arcadia and Oxygen
Why is the character in the game:
Julia is needed for several purposes at once. The first and main one for the plot is giving us a “Quest to find parts” – t.e. tasks to collect an object, which is referred to as “Project Lazarus”, necessary for passing further. She also introduces us to the faith of the Saturnists, who are fans of the god Saturn and followers of the “power of the earth”; no one likes them .
The second, no matter how trivial it may sound, is raising the topic of religions, in view of the religious overtones within this story.
I’ve been killing trees for twenty years. In Berkeley, back in the ’20s. With the Japanese on Iwo Jima. But I’ve never brought them back from the grave. And now it’s done, Becky. Mommy will raise her first frankentree. I will call my creation “The Lazarus Preparation”."Maybe this will bring my career back from the dead too.
BioShock Audio Diaries: The Lazarus Drug
Religion and ADAM
Let’s talk a little about this object – Lazarus drug, why she “tried to revive her career” with them. Like many in the city of Rapture, she entered into an agreement with Andrew Ryne for certain work, but she did not trust the latter due to his ruthlessness and wanted to make a conditional “antidote” that, if anything happened, would restore her brainchild – Arkady.
What’s the use of being a damn genius when there’s no one around to appreciate it?. Only stupid people around. I created the drug, I’m 99% sure. All I need is a Gallica rose bud to confirm my test. Distilled water, a little chlorophyll, enzymes isolated from honey bees. That’s right, honey: bee saliva.
BioShock Audio Diaries: Lazarus Formula
As we can see from the game, this was useful and she was still able to implement it within the entire ecosystem of the city. So what is this – Lazarus?
Lazarus is an allusion to the Gospel of John, the fourth book of the biblical New Testament, in which Lazarus (Heb. אֶלְעָזָר , Elʿāzār, Eleazar – literally “God (me) helped”), a character whom Jesus Christ resurrected four days after death.
What is its formula or how can we assemble it??
The Lazarus project is a composite one, for it you need:
1. Bee enzyme sample – 7 pieces
2. Galika rose sample – 1 piece
3. Bottle of distilled water – 7 pieces
4. Chlorophyll solution – 7 piecesLangford
And this is where it gets interesting! The number itself seven in the Bible is sacred and it is repeated a very large number of times, thereby being an oath (week) before God (Gen. 21:30-31).
Among numbers with symbolic meaning, the https://agentspinscasino.co.uk/ number seven occupies the most important place. It is used as a symbol of completeness or completeness.
Okay, now we understand why this is such a strong allusion, but what is Arcadia then??
There is such a book authored by Lauren Groff – Arcadia and its description sounds like this:
Tiny, grew up in a commune organized by several dozen enthusiasts in western New York in the seventies. In the commune they tried to live together, raise children together, eat what they themselves grew. (parallel with the Saturnists) But every utopia comes to an end. When the commune breaks up, Krokh goes to the big world and gets used to living in it, but fate takes an unexpected turn, and many years later Krokh returns to Arcadia, which remains for him a place full of miracles, a place in which he believes, a Garden of Eden.
Labyrinth: description of the book of Arkady
Okay, so Arcadia is like the Garden of Eden, but what does ADAM have to do with it??
You don’t have to go far here Adam is the first man created by God and who had full communication with Nim. God’s grace rested on Adam, as on the crown of creation, he possessed righteousness and immortality, but all this was lost by him in the Fall.
It turns out that the Fall caused by ADAM-oh, we see in the game, it all started with a confrontation Fontaine And Ryan, as the crowns of creation, not of God, but of the Tempter, who, due to greed and ignorance, decided that they could possess everyone and everything, thereby starting a battle, and as a result, both came out losers, simultaneously bringing chaos into the created world.
Wait, why exactly is Rapture heaven??
Everything is quite simple, we need to believe and pray, because the word “Rapture” or “Rapture” (the same as Admiration) – Christian term for an event that removes the world’s "chosen" people from society and transports them to Heaven.
Who then is the main character Jack??
We know that he is not only Ryan’s son, but also the result of Fontaine’s creation with Dr. Suchong – t.e. an experiment that got out of control. Relatively speaking, he allows us, through himself, cognize world and understand good and evil, but at the same time serves the “dark forces” that are trying to overthrow paradise, turn utopia into dystopia.
Parallel with “The fruit of knowledge” suggests itself.
It turns out that Jack is the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil”, who descended to the city of Rapture – “paradise” with the help of Fontaine – the “tempter” and, with the help of ADAM, arranged the “fall from sin” in order to accept and understand “good and evil”?
It turns out that biblical references ¯\(ツ)/¯
Psychological portrait:
Let’s look at its basic features – it “Ambitious” in her desires, she is driven by ideas in the development of her field of knowledge, but this does not look like “Obsession” as an obsession, but more like a little excessive passion for her projects to achieve her goals, but she is ready for many things donate, which in fact is already a problem.
But this is not enough, let’s dig further.
She’s enoughGreedy” that can forget about morality for a salary, although I think, given Ryan’s generosity, it was significant money, but the fact that she is ready to “close her eyes” for the sake of money confirms the hypothesis about obsession with financial gain.
Today Arcadia was closed to everyone except visitors with money. This man hires me to grow a forest at the bottom of the ocean, and then turns walking through the forest into a luxury. Ryan asked: "Shouldn’t a farmer sell what he grows?? Shouldn’t a potter make a profit on his pots??"I started to argue with him, but then I remembered who writes my checks. It’s bad to be a hypocrite, of course, but being an unemployed hypocrite is even worse.
Julia Langford
Mental disorders
Oddly enough, but from the point of view of psychoanalysis, this character is the most “normal“Of all of them, she does not have any pronounced disorders that could cause problems, or, on the contrary, there are too few introductory notes to judge anything, so further information may seem to you “pulled out of thin air,” but I did a little research on the topic of such individuals and came to interesting observations that will be further in the text.
While this is a bit untrue, based on her characteristics I would identify a possible personality disorder based on.. ambition and greed.
Separately, such a disorder does not occur on its own; it is a consequence of the process of a person’s adaptation to his living conditions and refers to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which is reflected in her personality, in different types and properties, for example, in her stinginess – t.e. combination of thrifty traits, unrestrained thirst for enrichment and greed for resources, which she apparently needs for research.
Although I repeat, I cannot judge how stingy this character really is due to the lack of such information, except for the huge financial support for her research for Rayan industries. But here’s a joke for you, Freud wrote about such people that they have – “Anal-retaining type", which characterized by tenacity, stubbornness, frugality, a tendency to hoard, frugality and collecting.
The study of such individuals touches on how people with character traits NKR are considered authorities. Usually they calmly follow the instructions of authorities, since for them they “pay them a salary,” but having reached such power or “force” themselves, they can be authoritarian towards those who are under their control or towards those whose status is lower than their own.
Roughly speaking, they may not take into account at all interesting people other than themselves, in part, but this property of Julia manifests itself when she humiliates the Saturnists:
They dress themselves in leaves and call themselves Saturnians. Go crazy. They drink human blood and chant: "Let’s tame the flame, tame the fog!"and believe that they are led by the ancient gods. Ha. Aging majors who revel in plasmids and call it ambrosia.
Audio Diaries from BioShock: Saturnism
At the same time, such people are prone to “rebellions” – t.e. ideas that we call actions from harmfulness. What I mean here is that Langford’s relationship with Andrew Ryan is somewhat strange, judge for yourself: she could be infinitely pliable to the one “who pays money out of his own pocket,” but at the same time she was freely ready to go against him, for the sake of other goals, even if because of this she could easily die.
My personal opinion is that the general malleability and tendency towards contradictions that people with NCD often experience makes Langford’s character both a victim and a predator who is ready to do anything to achieve his goals, even to submit to another.
