Why should the great be constrained by the small?
BioShock is one of my favorite games ever, and it's taking so long for me to post it in the blog because I wanted to really dedicate myself replaying it. I don't think the following observation of BioShock characters is controversial like the rest of the content of this blog, though, unless you think Ryan is cool somehow...
I'm sure Ryan thinks he is a "self-made man" and it was the sweat of his eyebrow that built his fortune, and not finding oil in his property. He has a lot of views about himself and so proudly boast and babbles them. Socially inept, he built himself the image of the hero he wanted to be, and pathetically spent all his money to convince people of it, but he is none of that. No, Ryan is not a cold individualist that only cares about himself, he pretends to be, but he is actually an attention whore craving acceptance, and that's why he built a city and invited people in instead of building himself an ivory tower surrounded by armed men and doing whatever the fuck he wants there with no one to bother. Like all adepts of his ideology, Ryan is completely delusional about the world and people, he judges them to be as petty and small as himself, and created his whole character revolving around it. He blames other people and institution for not being the hero he believes to be, and in his Mad Max-fantasy ideal world, where he will finally be able to be the hero he dreams of, people will abide to unwritten and unenforced rules like "non-aggression principle" and whatever, because otherwise, weaklings like him would succumb... but why should the great be constrained by the small?
Then comes Fontaine, the heroic self-made man from Ryan's fantasy. Whenever Ryan talks about his virtues he is actually describing his nemesis. Fontaine was an orphan, no family to support him nor properties and luck, he had to struggle and sweat for everything he conquered, and didn't let anyone or anything stand on his way, because he indeed only cared about himself and wasn't some frustrated attention whore. Little Ryan so firmly believed to not be a sheep, he left the door open for the real wolf.
Let's not talk about how incoherent it was to hold a monopoly by force, labeling contraband the free commerce, covering it with patriotic lies - such as doing it to protect their homeland from foreign menaces, and then taking over through violence the business of a man who built everything from scrap using only his intellect and will. Let's just remember Ryan saying "My strength is not in steel and fire, but in my intellect and will" - hehehe. In truth, people only cared about Ryan while he could provide them his cool resort for them to enjoy. Even after spending all his money, it was Fontaine who really conquered the people's hearts, and he wasn't afraid of reinventing himself and starting from the bottom again, always beating Ryan at his own game even with Ryan changing the rules whenever he was cornered. Ryan spent his fortune and life to build a city, babbling some ideological fantasy, wanting people to adore him, and Fontaine just came with nothing and conquered not just the people, but also the market that Ryan so thought to be the master of. I believe the best word to describe Ryan, used by his real-world ideological partners, is "beta cuck".
In his last moment, Ryan decided that it didn't matter that you were going to murder him, because right before it he chose to die, so he won and you lost. Checkmate, collectivists!