Dianna Soriel is peak “Gundam Girl”

 

Queen of an entire race of moon people, she can improv the shit out of a speech without being preachy, and none of that Pop Singer shit like Lacus.

She sits proper, full of class, and so much composure. 

• She can feign ignorance in one breath, and command the room in a second. And it’s not cringe “girl boss“ energy, she’s a PROFESSIONAL. 
• It’s legitimate qualifications, you believe it she’s done this shit for a while as a career and is about it.

300+ Year old Queen that’s not above learning the joy of simply washing clothes lol, and will put a cap in your rump if you start rampaging in a mobile suit in her name.

She’s not having it:

"Do i even remember my parents"

Is something she says towards the end of the series, just before a battle, the finale battle. 

A very odd thing to just drop in the finale, but it’s little nuggets of character like that that puts her up there in the Gundam “character” list, not just the honorary female category, but Gundam characters period.

Now, i’m zero bullshit, the reason why she’s not as marketable among current day audiences as your Lunamaria, or Lacus, Nena, or Sayla. Is mainly exposure and sex appeal, let’s just get that out the way.

• Turn A Gundam is underrated, so it goes under the radar (Exposure)
• Dianna Soriel is too well written to be classified as a “waifu”, she’s not an infantilized idiot with a fat ass, and she’s not treated as such. (Sex appeal)
• Turn A Gundam has it’s moments of fanservice but it’s not My Sus Academia levels of Pedobear- it’s entirely context oriented and it doesn’t dwell on it. It passes, and we move on.

So she’s not a sex symbol in this franchise, and for the most part is not flaunted like a piece of meat, she’s written like a Ghibli Studios character. 

Is that enough reason for her to go unnoticed? 

Unfortunately yes, to an extent. I’m a straight male with working testosterone, i know the game. 

Just look at your top “anime girl” lists and count on five fingers how many of them:

1. Got that spot because they’re well written vs possessing some blatant form of sex appeal, despite being 2D with eyes the size of a respiratory organ
2. NOT a Shonen female character
3. Not from a mainstream anime that everybody rides because it’s mainstream 
4. Leads their own series
5. And contributes something legitimate to the situation beside being there or being hot

Cause i guaran-fucking-T you you won’t see Marlene Angel on that list, her anime has fanservice, however the anime itself is like a cult classic type situation.

People in this anime straight have sex, and the narrative function is like Attack on titan, end of the world, creatures run amok.

People are trying to feel alive in the moment because it could be their last time.

That’s the context, it’s called Blue Gender, brutal, fucked up, tragic. (First act’s the best, 2nd act drags and the 3rd pays for it but it’s something to experience, it’s a gem. The movie improve many problems I have with the series) I recommend it. 

You’re even less likely to see BALSA Yonsa on that list

And she’s a beast.

Explaining her story would take another post, just go watch her anime:

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit

So because the anime is underrated and retro, and her sexual market value is not exploited-

No, she’s not going to get her due respect.

If she was treated like Makima is, she would also have stan group on Twitter compiling entire tweets dedicated to pointing out the anime itself featuring frames of her ass, chest, her in lingerie, the whole “woof” meme, lmfao. 

Because we’ve never seen that shit before. Originality. 

Niggas calling her “Mommy” and shit, bruv chiiiill with all that hogwash.

Can’t make this up, her relevance is being a fetish mascot, fabulous.

• Writing 101: When your character is as transparent & hollow as a Ziploc bag, over compensate with sex, “that’s a neat trick”.

Can see it a mile away. Because at some point, writing wise, most people have done it, it’s definitely tempting, cause humans are sexual. And writing is freedom so you’d think, why not?

• However, the measure of a writer’s competence in this context, is choosing not to do that. 

Because giving a character depth takes more work & EFFORT vs letting your fandom project their libido onto the character because you want to misdirect the fact that she’s not much of a character. 

And her popularity is founded on that, longterm, she’ll fade into obscurity when the Makima or Akane Shinjou  is introduced.

Oh? You forgot about that weirdly “foot fetish-y” sexualized teenager that everybody was panting over not long ago? Well don’t worry about forgetting she ever existed, cause so did everyone else-

And that’s my point.

• Sex appeal by itself isn’t the issue, women are attractive, that’s not a sin. Active sexualization (especially of teenagers, cmon bruv) at the expense of presentation and characterization, is straight narrative laziness. Going out of your goddamn way is the issue.
• Laziness and wasted potential is the issue.

So Makima’s biggest contribution to the average normie is being a “Woman in a suit” aesthetic (Which i personally think is under-represented), but in the culture, that’s all the majority care about. Ass, cake, what can I upload to R34 this week.

Which is not surprising because a lot of Mangaka’s do not use their work as a proxy to share their storytelling prospects & ideas like competent writers as much as they should but instead insert their kinks to project onto millions like scumbags.

And it works, because the industry attracts and rewards that energy.

There’s no reason why Avatar The Last Airbender (one of the best shonen anime ever made, period) DID NOT come from Japan. Why? Because  Japan isn’t mature enough to handle it and nothing has changed.

And of course the characters in meta either succeed because the content is good, they're relevant for a few weeks cause they're cute, or get butt fucked in on the usual sites like danbooru for it then they're replaced by the next pinup girl.Trending today, forgotten tomorrow.

“Trending today, forgotten tomorrow.”, same with most Vtubers

Dianna Soriel does not have this problem, because she’s not written to be an eroticized effigy to pander. She’s not a proxy, she’s a character. And that’s partly why she’s under the radar for the most part. Was was written perfect? Ofc not, no one is; I personally would’ve liked flashbacks of her time before, see her as a young queen figuring it out, who preceded her era- But that wasn’t the story, everything we got was through dialogue & subtle nuggets of lore. We were told more than shown, yet due to her not being “the” main character, how much was done with her and where she ended up: fairly impressed.

 

TL;DR Put respect on her name.

Elizabeth Comstock (I hold this character in very high regard)

• The way the story smoothly transitioned her into central character focus, after making her retrieval the actual goal/game objective of the first act of the story, then a carefree NPC, then things got more interesting, she started showing more sides to her than just "uwu waifu mode".
  
  She was dynamic. Very slick.

She's a better developed Eleanor, tho Eleanor was also a cool character who pulled strings too.

Actually, deadass?

A lot of the Bioshock ladies one way or another was (co-/independently) lowkey running shit or making moves.

Sofia Lamb,

 Bridget Tenebaum

Julie Langford

 R.Lutece

Eleanor Lamb,

 Daisy "mfing" Fitzroy

Fuck that "girlboss" shit.

These ladies were beyond that, they were professionals, experts in their individual fields. From Biology, Quantum Physics, to social psychology, to just knowing how to lead.

They were qualified, not strong FEMALE characters, just solid CHARACTERS. Without the derivative labels. Love that shit when it’s done right.

And it's apparent in all three games, so it's not a fluke, the writers knew what the fuck they were doing. (But if it got a TV show now post 2020? That whole subtle well executed consistency would be turned into some dumb shit on behalf of women, when it helps the political zeitgeist quotas more than how women & girls look to society.)

And some of em are npc's, not even that deep, most prolly forgot some were in the game, but they were cool.

Usually you got characters just doing shit perfect nowadays because they:

• Believed in themselves
• Or somebody told them how special they were all along

Vs these Bioshock characters have ***credentials***, Hollywood needed more of that energy in the writers room. Still do.

In a poetic sense, Elizabeth, with all that power+knowledge, was like the accumulation of all of those characters before & technically after her, for both better and for worse.

• Cause she, our dear Elizabeth, did some questionable shit to get what she wanted sometimes.
• Just like Daisy is no stranger to bloodshed, nor Sofia.
  They're flawed, that's why they're believable.
  They're not perfect little angles who represent some feminist overtone, while the men look like idiots.

Example: There's a recording in the "Sofia Lamb - Ryan vs Lamb: Religious Rights" Pauper's Drop level in Bioshock 2 where Ryan & Sofia are having a live debate. Ryan basically states you can have religious rights but keep it to yourself, because in Rapture a man's (that includes womb-man) obligation is to himself, not tribalist convictions overriding a persons rightful state of self-affirmation.

Her comeback was basically how is his persecution of religion or disdain justified: when his "Great Chain" as a symbol (the same one on Jack's wrist) is no less a symbol of faith than the cross itself.

Ryan was technically correct, Sofia made a confident false equivalence, because faith in some messiah is not the same as having a grounded belief in your tangible work and what you earn with your own hands is the basis of your existential fortitude vs something you can't see. Which is all Ryan sought for people with Rapture in concept, you are your own master, period.

And yet Sofia got more applause from the audience because of how she cleverly used appeal to emotion to contradict his statements, which is easier for people to accept because not only is she a woman (& that by default lowers people's defenses whether it be comfort or underestimation just as a biological rule) but she also weaponizes maternal approach to give people a sense of false security vs Ryan's cold, harsh inflection as a seasoned older man with very little capacity for empathy or even feigning compassion.

Sofia is a genius; i 100% believe she could somehow get all those splicers to work for her under the pretense of "family" & "we" collectivism/even socialist-esque mindset, the very thing Ryan did not want in Rapture: the symbol of capitalism.

See- Sofia not even on her best day, could ever hope to make a Rapture of her own. But she can corrupt & take it over, just like socialism doesn't found a U.S.A but it can definitely destroy empires after the hard work is done on part of capitalism. 

The parallels in this respect is eerie in how similar it is, and I can't unsee it when I replay Bioshock 2 these days, because it works so well without making one side the entire problem.

Tl;Dr She undermined the man in his own damn city, & you can hear it in his voice in various recordings that he recognizes that she is a problem. It wasn't cringe because she's not some 14 yr old mary sue, she's a seasoned psychologist that was SOUGHT OUT specifically by Ryan's council because of how good she is in her field, and Ryan only saw how dangerous she was after she was in the city & made it clear she wasn't going to fall in line with Ryan's core beliefs.

She knows what to say, how to say it, and why she says it because she knows how to play people like instruments.

She defied an secular egotist, but she herself is a raging condescending narcissist; the reason why she works is because she's no better than Andrew Ryan & in many ways, leagues worse than he ever was.

In short, Bioshock 1-3 as an ecosystem of characters works because: 

Everyone, one way or another, has issues.

Welcome to BIOSHOCK, enjoy your stay.

Thus, the beginning and end of Bioshock, Anna Dewitt. (Hopefully Bioshock 4 doesn't fuck up what was &/is still a open and shut & done /complete story.)

This character is pretty decent.

It's a crime she's not more appreciated on "female character" game lists. Likely too much good writing and not enough midriff, fanservice, waifu mode, D.I.D, & skintight clothes for the peons to project onto.

Infinite didn't vibe with me at first, I actually did NOT like it when finished (Still have my complaints, entirely with the enemy designs & lack of boss diversity) but "Burial At Sea" was just a trigger moment where I really looked back at what I just played & how overqualified Elizabeth is but still grounded:

Full circle, I'm a sucker for well executed time loops (because it's quantum shenanigans Bioshock 1-3 technically isn't a paradox) or perpetual cycles that don't make me roll my eyes.

Probably played BAS: Part 2 more times than I did the first game.

And as of 2025, I have played both Infinite & BAS combined more than the first 2 games and technically the 2nd game is my favorite, protector trials and everything.

And while Bioshock Infinite is not a better game than Bioshock 2, Bioshock 2 is not packing the story that Bioshock Infinite has, Bioshock 2 doesn't have Elizabeth, the quantum lore, the twins, the parallels.

Technically you playing the games over and over again is a canon event in the story itself in meta.

The difference between a girl and woman is "blood", jfc RIP to the homegirl, she was about that life to the end.
Won't spoil who died tho, if you know, then you know.

Play the game.

Since Levine (original Bioshock writer) is NOT on the project of the 4th game (And for a very understandable, even respectable reason to boot) but for some reason the 4th is being made anyway, this is screaming studio mandate than it is an organic "necessity" for the story.

Which is just MATRIX4-GREED all over again: Sure the first 3 was a complete story, but WHAT IF? We made a 4th one for no fucking reason at all?

It's a complete story, not sure where they want to take it beyond that.

All they gotta do is just fit it in after Bioshock 2 chronologically & follow Eleanor maybe or something, or what the heck is Jack up to?

Both are questions we actually don't need answers to tbh, but I sincerely hope Bioshock 4 doesn't fuck up the loop or the point of the original games frfr.

If anything they should use the 4th to fill up the 10 years between Bioshock 1 & 2 after Jack left with those Little Sisters, during Sofia's rise to power, after Delta's self-execution. That's one of few ways they could 'not' mess this up.

- 2023