beard ひげ @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

@Mr_NutterButter their = possessive, used to refer to something owned by someone whose gender is unknown (otherwise you say her or his) or a group of people

There = lots of uses for this one, if it isn't the other two then it's probably this one

They're = mix of "they are." if "they are" works in a sentence, you can use "they're"

@Administrator don't worry it's just drool

@matana I actually really like shattered memories, a lot of people hate it but I liked how it was a kind of soft sequel to silent hill.

A question:

Sometimes you need to give huggs, not fuggs

@MoeBritannica it's funny comparing pippa's design to the others

@alyx the lesser of all evils

@TheDeathRow she would be safe in my arms

@milk I'd say the most valuable are probably the ones that don't use social media at all

@matana and the fact that i can write this much about it should tell you all you need to know about how i feel about people taking one of my favorite franchises and just plopping it into a political talking point as if team silent only had one goal in mind and that was to promote women's rights or something like that

@applejack @matana i'm referencing angela specifically, she was raped by her father and killed him. that's why she's in silent hill. there's plenty of symbolism regarding that.

@matana you said yourself you've never even played a silent hill game, let alone the one in question, so you are choosing to blindly allow yourself to agree with a redditor because you're pro-choice. i've gone balls deep into the series and back out again and i can tell you with a certainty that saying silent hill 3 is about rape is completely untrue, and saying it has anything to do with women's rights is like stretching a piece of macaroni over the entire pacific ocean. it has themes of female teenage fear, especially while lacking father or mother figures, but there's so much more packed in there that saying the whole entire game is some metaphor of women's rights is just ridiculous. it's a whole slew of things but it isn't set on delivering any sort of message.

this is like saying "the legend of zelda is a visceral metaphor for feminine power in the face of great patriarchal adversity." especially in breath of the wild, we see that zelda's father puts a lot of pressure on her and she's only able to fight of ganon at the very last moment and does so for 100 years. she's dealing with a lot of problems of not being able to connect to her powers and tries to help out in other ways that her father doesn't approve of, and eventually is able to hold back the calamity anyway when she's the only hope left. but the game (and legend of zelda in general) isn't about pushing some political point. it's about courage, overcoming adversity, the heart of exploration... and then of course all the lore that goes into it.

for silent hill, the first game is much more story-driven, as harry tries to find his daughter who was called back to silent hill he learns more and more about the town and the cult there, until eventually he finds that his daughter was merged with the other half of her soul and is the host for a new god which will basically destroy the earth and in doing so bring everyone eternal joy after suffering. harry kills the god and alessa is reborn into heather. the game is about life, death, and rebirth, as well as the lengths a father will go to in order to protect his child.

silent hill 2 takes a bit of a different turn but it is still necessary to talk about in order to understand silent hill 3. in sh2, james gets a letter from his dead wife, who died of an illness years ago. she says that she's in silent hill waiting for him. again, silent hill has called someone for a particular reason. he goes there and finds other people there with stories of misery and pain, and how they killed someone in order to deal with that pain. he continues searching for his wife and meets a woman that looks exactly like her but more sexualized (even having a similar name, "maria" vs "mary") who accompanies him, as well as a young girl wandering around who doesn't see any of the monsters but knows mary, james' wife. eventually, we find out that james killed his wife due to his own pain and misery of her not being emotionally/sexually available for him due to her illness as well as his pain and misery in seeing her in pain and misery. silent hill has called everyone here to A) punish them for their sin and B) to test their courage to see if they are redeemable, i.e. repentance. they all see different things that the town has chosen to punish/challenge them with and sometimes get glimpses into others' versions of silent hill. the other two characters who had similar stories end up dying, but james (in the good ending) realizes his fault and overcomes his guilt, leaving silent hill with the girl wandering around. silent hill 2 is a game about realizing and overcoming sin and guilt, making yourself into a better person instead of wallowing in self-pity and depression, not giving in to temptation, and also has themes of rebirth of the spirit and walking onto new paths of life.

silent hill 3 is a combination of the two. it continues the story of the first game with heather being harry's daughter, therefore she's alessa, the child that was meant to "birth" god. she's plagued by nightmares and is in general an anxious, stressed out teenager nearing adulthood. she knows nothing about her past or her father's past and, long story short, ends up getting home to see her father has been murdered. she finds out that it was claudia, a member of the cult, and heads to silent hill to enact her revenge. of course, this was claudia's plan all along, because she needed to get heather in silent hill so she could become the host for god. the story unfolds much like silent hill 1, where she learns more about her past and about the town, as well as the cult from other characters and other lore items. where the silent hill 2 aspect creeps in is that the town is tailored to heather, she sees things she is afraid of that dig deep not only into heather's subconscious mind with things such as being alone, having self-image problems, and of course pregnancy and reproduction, but also alessa's, such as being abused and burned alive, not being able to die and constantly being reborn, suicidal thoughts, and horrible experiences with cult members and just general insanity. eventually she overcomes these fears with the help of her father's memory, hearkening back to harry's willpower and courage to save and protect her, and purges the god that was implanted inside of her. in doing this she becomes stronger in spirit than alessa was, and even mentions that she and alessa don't think alike at all. heather is strong willed just like her father and just like james, despite everything horrible that they have been through. this is the strand that ties the games together. yes, silent hill 3 (and 1/origins to a lesser extent which is a whole other topic) deal with themes of maternity and femininity, but it's not the whole entire point of the game or anything.

the message of every silent hill is about having courage and fighting your fears in order to accomplish your goals. the message of some silent hill games is becoming a better person than the sum of your parts, undergoing some sort of redemption or rebirth (james and heather do this throughout their stories and the concept still exists within harry's). the games often have contrasts to the protagonist in this regard and it's clear, at least to me, that it is the highlighted point of the character progression, and is meant to be identifiable to the player even if they aren't a woman, or even if they haven't done something as drastic as killing someone. we have all experienced fear, guilt, suffering, sadness, and silent hill has a sort of cathartic way of expressing that and resolving it as well, whereas most horror games are far simpler in their design and tone, either meant to unravel a crazy story about mutant zombies and government experiments or just scare your pants off.

that's why i kind of take issue to just simplifying a game as complex as silent hill 3 to "it's about women's reproductive rights." heather's not fighting for her rights or anything, she went to silent hill for one purpose and that's to avenge her father at any cost and, later, to deal with the cult before shit hit the fan, which mirrors what her father did in silent hill 1: tried to save her at any cost, and tried to deal with the cult as well. the game obviously has a lot of symbolism when it comes to the aforementioned maternity stuff, but it has so much other fucking symbolism in it of so many other things that go beyond a simple "hurr durr abortion and women's rights!" that saying that's what the game about is completely retarded.

@matana ONE PLOT POINT

@applejack @matana silent hill 2 is much more about rape than silent hill 3 is.

@matana one singular part of the lore is that the order is trying to summon god to the earth and use alessa as a vessel to "birth it" although it's not really a "birth" so much as it is alessa being the host (god rips out of her back in silent hill 1 and in silent hill 3 claudia becomes the host after heather rejects god and claudia physically turns into god).

there's still a decent amount of imagery regarding female reproduction but i always read it as silent hill preying on heather's fears/angst as a young woman nearing adulthood. somewhat similar to beverly in IT. it's not like the game has a message about women's rights or anything like that, just the town sinking into those fears. there's certainly not NEARLY as much as there is for angela in silent hill 2, who was raped by her father and killed him. there's an enemy called "abstract daddy" that looks like a guy fucking someone on a bed and a section of the game angela's in that has pistons shooting through holes everywhere. like that's 100% a "visceral metaphor for rape" but it's also not the whole point of the game. there's nothing that even comes close to that in SH3.

like i said, alessa "birthing" god is just one plot point, and i think it's probably done more for the horror factor and a cool story element rather than "hello my fellow gamers, we here at team silent are pro-choice!"

there's so much more to silent hill and just saying the whole game is some sort of allegory to abortion or something is extremely reductive, not to mention annoying. there's the town itself creating horrors based on the psyche of the person there in order to test their courage and/or aiding in carrying out their repentance, a LOT of religious/mythological iconography and parallels, the importance of children and the way them being abused/neglected has rippling and permanent effects, plenty of gray characters with varying degrees of evil or good that often have their own motives or theories on silent hill as well as the cult and what motivates them...

there's just so much to unpack. yes, heather literally pukes up ("aborts") the manifestation of god that was lurking inside of her and it looks like a gross fetus thing. and she like uses a coat hanger in a puzzle. that's literally it lol. meanwhile there's this lurking sub plot the whole time of a guardian of god watching over heather and making sure she's able to get from point a to point b as she is trying to avenge her father's death, who was killed by claudia, there's this strange detective guy that is hired by claudia to find you but then turns out to be a good guy and a dude named vincent who is pretty knowledgeable about the cult and helps heather find claudia... like seriously there's a reason i think it's one of the greatest games of all time and certainly in the top 5 horror games ever created... so when i see someone just say "oh yeah the game is all about women's rights" it's just annoying, like did they even play the game or are they just reading waaay too much into a single plot point and stretching it to the entire game so that they can feel good about a game dev aligning with their politics?