It drives me nuts that nobody acknowledges that James Sunderland's jacket is a specific military jacket-- the M-65 field jacket-- and not the now-standard horror protagonist "LL. Bean" jacket. (like Ethan Winters wears)

it is important because it is a specific reference to the film Jacob's ladder, where the character is a Vietnam veteran.

im really sad no one else saw the cult aspects of sh3 more compelling like i did when i first watched a playthrough of it. idk it maybe my religious trauma talking, but the constant talk of bringing salvation and being saved by god steams from the deep primal fear of the world and life and all its sufferings and just the gaping unknown of what comes after death and!!! idk it gripped me personally. along with heather’s struggles with identity, agency, and the constant themes of cycles repeating and rebirth?? 

Saint Alessa Gillespie Mother of God Daughter of God?? am i the only one who thought this went fucking hard as hell?? 

in this part of the game when we see this painting, Heather has been going through a lot of self reflecting, especially during the chapel section. We really get to see Alessa’s life was like when she was carrying God, and it’s during this part I think heather accepts that Alessa is an important part of who she is, even if she’s no longer Alessa anymore. I think she says something along the lines of “I’m not Alessa, but Alessa is still me.” at one point. I can’t help but see it as an allegory for self acceptance, specifically the acceptance of trauma/abuse done unto you. Heather’s denial of being Alessa makes sense during the beginning. She has no memory of being Alessa, and people (Claudia) who clearly want to hurt her keep insisting that she is. 

But the thing is, Claudia sees heather as Alessa: Mother of God... simply a vessel meant to carry their cult’s deity. not the true Alessa Gillespie. So as the game continues with Heather recovering more memories of her past life, along with suffering the same problems as Alessa did 17 years ago, she truly comes to accept that she was Alessa, who fought SO Hard to be and to live as heather!!! Being heather, or Cheryl Mason, was supposed to be Alessa’s hard won happy ending. After literal years of being tortured in a cocoon of pain and misery, Alessa does escape in the end too, through being reborn as heather. How can heather deny that part of herself that used to be Alessa, after all Alessa has done to get her where she is? 

the symbolism of agency and autonomy with the mother of god daughter of god stuff makes me go actually insane. The cult forcing her into motherhood, but Alessa embracing that role to birth a life that She wants to bring into the world? A life that is filled with love and joy (with harry !!! 😭😭😭), her OWN personal paradise??? WAAAAAHHHHHHHHH 

Player Choice Thoughts

I wonder if video games will ever learn ways to help the player immerse themselves and forget its a video game.

There’s a lot of content in BG3 that you can only get if you allow yourself to fail or explore an option that doesn’t seem like the best choice. There’s a lot of permutations and options to tell your own organic story.

It makes me think of how in Silent Hill 2, most players get the most depressing ending because of interacting with all objects, taking a lot of damage, not healing to save potions, lingering around to hear content, etc etc But if you put yourself in the character’s shoes FULLY, you would NOT want to do that due to the implications. The meaning of that ending would hit harder rather than being a product of modern gameplay loops.

My point about BG3 is that the game more or less gives you 3 chances with using the tadpole in Act 1, and I feel like the game intends for you to do so. But most players I talk to NEVER use it. And they miss out on additional information from their favorite companions because of it. 

Allow your character to make mistakes and exist organically in the game world, and you’ll have a more enjoyable time.

Silent Hill 2 continues now! I fell down several holes and now I'm in a prison and this is perfectly fine don't worry about it

DAILYFIGURES WRAPPED 2023!!

[image credit]

i posted a grand total of 886 figures this year! let's take a look at the hits and the flops together!

my top 10 most popular figure posts! ;

10. Kirby from Kirby by Re-Ment with 1432 notes

9. Heather Mason from Silent Hill by Gecco with 1458 notes

8. Isabelle from Animal Crossing by Good Smile Company with 1535 notes

7. Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid by Taito with 1547 notes

6. Kirby & Waddle Dee from Kirby's Dream Land by Bandai Spirits with 1568 notes

5. Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid by Taito with 1717 notes

4. Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid by Taito with 1879 notes

3. Yuuko from Junji Ito's Slug Girl by Dodowo with 2121 notes

2. Ayanami Rei & Asuka Langley from Neon Genesis Evangelion by Union Creative International Ltd with 2332 notes (special shout out to this meme)

and....this year's biggest winner!

1. Kirby & Waddle Dee & Meta Knight & Magolor from Kirby by Re-Ment with 3542 notes!!!

my top 5 least popular figure posts ;

5. Nikkari Aoe from Touken Ranbu Online by Orange Rouge with 43 notes

4. Arthur Boyle from Fire Force by Kotobukiya with 41 notes

3. Ayano Keiko from Sword Art Online by Broccoli with 41 notes

2. Jolyne Cujoh from Stone Ocean by Medicos Entertainment with 39 notes

1. Akito Izuki from Ghostwire: Tokyo by Good Smile Company with 26 notes

and ofcourse a big thank you to everyone who interacted with my blog this year!!! thank you for making this hobby extra fun for me! happy new year everyone!!! <3

[<<< dailyfigures wrapped 2022]

Smumbo's top 10 games he happened to play in 2022

Not necessarily games that were released in 2022, just my favorites that I played for the first time last year.

10: Night in the Woods (2017)

by Alec Holowka, Scott Benson, and Bethany Hockenberry

Peak fall vibes game. Night in the Woods features a compelling mystery and some great spooky moments. The setting and characters really resonated with me, so I got a lot out of it.

9: The Pedestrian (2020)

by @skookumarts

Pleasant puzzle game inspired by the signage that surrounds us in our day-to-day lives. Some of the puzzles were quite difficult, and I kind of dislike the direction the game took in its last act, but it was still a very fun and unique experience.

8: South of South Mountain (2022)

by @colorbomb

Cute & hilarious visual novel with a fantastic art style. I could not stop laughing throughout the whole experience.

7: Portal Reloaded (2021)

by PORTANIS

From a pure gameplay standpoint, this was a very satisfying sequel to Portal 2, and it's possibly the closest we'll ever get to a Portal 3. Portal Reloaded introduces a third portal which allows you to travel to the same place at a different time, so certain things have been moved/removed. It gets really complicated, and I’m amazed this was able to be created as a free standalone mod for Portal 2.

6: Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery (2022)

by Grace Bruxner and Thomas Bowker

Approximately 3-4 hours of pure, unadulterated joy and whimsy. I can’t believe it took me this long to play Frog Detective, but I’m so glad I did. Everything about these games resonated with me strongly.

5: OneShot (2016)

by @girakacheezer, @nightmargin, and Eliza Vasquez

A transcendent experience. Explores the unique ways in which video games can tell stories, and the nature of free will. Features some interesting meta game mechanics which require you to interact with files outside of the game. The visuals and soundtrack are spot-on as well. Weird how there’s so many great RPG Maker games which work so well in spite of the engine.

4: Scorn (2022)

by Ebb Software

An incredible audiovisual experience. I liked the gameplay too, even though it seems like a lot of people were disappointed by it. I'm amazed that a game like this even exists. Absolutely oozing with atmosphere and symbolic meaning. The story spoke to me on an incredibly deep level despite lacking words, or even any semblance of humanity.

3: What Remains of Edith Finch (2017)

by Giant Sparrow

One of the greatest games ever made. All of the vignettes and set-pieces throughout the game are flawlessly paced, with a wide variety of gameplay and visual styles. Packed with detail, made with love, and so emotionally resonant. I loved this game.

2: Bloodborne (2015)

by From Software

For years, I would try to play Bloodborne whenever I had access to a PlayStation 4, but I wasn’t able to do a full playthrough until 2022. It lived up to the hype. This is my favorite From Software game, and it’s already one of my favorite games of all time. I really hope this gets a remaster/PC port some day. It’s a masterpiece.

1: SIGNALIS (2022)

by @rose-engine

One of the greatest horror games I’ve ever played. Amazing visuals and atmosphere, fascinating world and lore, and a captivating, mind-blowing cosmic horror sci-fi story. I especially loved the evocative UI designs throughout. Highly recommended if you like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dead Space, PS1 style games in general, or if you have even a passing interest in survival horror. This is my #1 game of 2022.

another meta dump coming your way, first shard edition. I revamped hector's first shard counterpart after giving him a mullet. the rest was history

andromache's extended vacation on the first resulted in her running across hector's shard and doppelganger, a young hunter named hero wedelia

one thing led to another and they ended up having a daughter named chryseis wedelia, paris' half-sister from another dimension. unfortunately andromache can't have nice things because I said so

lore dump under the cut:

hero–

he found andromache when she first arrived to lakeland, unconscious at the beach. he ended up saving her from being fodder for the sin eaters

lost his parents to a sin eater attack when he was a preteen, forcing him to move to the crystarium with other survivors. he had no other known family members until chryseis came along

he gets annoyed when people mispronounce his name (it's pronounced /i.ˈro/, not /ˈhi.ɹoʊ/)

he's similar in appearance to hector besides his hair color and scarring. andromache couldn't look at him for a good while without being reminded of hector

in terms of personality, he's the total opposite of hector a la maria/mary silent hill 2. where hector is quiet and skittish, hero is bold and obnoxious, sometimes a bit smarmy. hector can't defend himself in a fight, whereas hero instigates fights for fun. hero had a foul mouth and a quick temper, nothing like the mild-mannered hector

but on the flip side, hero was also fun to be around. he wasn't clingy or totally dependent on andromache like hector was. hero could make his own decisions and would fight anyone who told him otherwise. this created conflicted feelings in andromache over how she couldn't fully separate the two from each other

hero knew he couldn't live up to hector (or as he knew hector, 'the one that came before him') but he was determined to make andromache forget about him like maria would do james in sh2

hero could play the lute and sing fairly well, making him a staple at the crystarium tavern

andromache disliked him at first because he wasn't hector, and the feeling was mutual because hero believed andromache to be stuck up and difficult to work with. this caused a lot of tension between them early on, leading to sexual tension and moments of hate-sex. their relationship was toxic for the most part before they grew to accept one another

hero once tended wheat fields as a child, so he taught himself how to use a scythe in battle. his fighting style is similar to paris

he was often found drinking (and getting drunk) with his friends at the crystarium. if he was still alive he and giott would've been best friends

andromache became hero's hunting partner, and over the years they developed romantic feelings for each other

didn't expect to have a child, but he loved chryseis from the moment she was born. he had many nicknames for her ('bean', 'chrys', 'munchkin', etc.)

because of the world they lived in, hero taught chryseis how to defend herself from a young age, with andromache's help

he lost his life when a sin eater ambushed his group of sin hunters. before he could fully turn, he forced andromache to kill him before he could kill her. his final wish was for her to look after chryseis

he left his war sickle in chryseis' possession so that she could continue her training

chryseis–

only child of andromache and hero, born and raised in the crystarium. if andromache and hector had another child, they would've looked like chryseis

chryseis hates being babied, or thought of as weak. she can put up a good fight, but she's still young and inexperienced

andromache was more affectionate with chryseis than she was with paris, especially when chryseis was an infant

chryseis looks like her late grandmother, something that andromache ruminated on in quiet moments

like her mother, grandmother, aunt, and older sibling, chryseis inherited the echo. her echo manifests as an invisible shield that deflects attacks, but chryseis has no grasp on how it works yet, and it means she can't go into battle without risking getting hurt, or worse

chryseis was 9 years old when hero was killed. because of the first being so perilous, death was inevitable. chryseis didn't dwell on his death for very long, but as a way to honor her father's memory, chryseis wears the same hair beads as hero did

chryseis is a goofy, happy-go-lucky teenager, 2 years younger than ryne and gaia. a bit braggadocios, she also got her father's temperament and could be rather hotheaded. she rushes into confrontations without thinking of strategies, much like her older sibling paris

when chryseis first met paris, their relationship was volatile. paris had no idea andromache started a new family and thus hated their younger sister. any attempts of goodwill chryseis tried to show were shot down. but in the short time they were there, paris found themselves warming up to chryseis when she proved herself to be a capable fighter and wouldn't let her grief stop her from living her life

chryseis wasn't allowed to participate in the main story of shadowbringers, andromache wouldn't let her travel with the party because it was too dangerous

at the end of the events of shadowbringers, paris and andromache went back to the source, but andromache promised to come back for chryseis as soon as she found a way to let her safely travel the rift

paris would find time to visit her every now and then. paris is a familiar face around the crystarium as the warrior of darkness, and the denizens vowed to protect their baby sister from harm

once she lands on the source, chryseis lived with her mother from then on in sharlayan. chryseis wished to travel with paris and their friends to see the world, but they considered her too young to join in actual battles

her reaction to hector was that of shock and bottled up grief. she was awkward around him at first, and considered hector her 'other father', but hector accepted her regardless

I just wanted to say that as a person in their early 20s who only just got into resident evil after re8, it was so fun finding your blog and scrolling through all the little blurbs you’ve got. fandom elders always have the best resources and lore and make spaces a million times better, so thank u for mentioning all the little game details and fandom notes that would’ve been forgotten or missed otherwise to newcomers!!

on another note, i wanted to ask if you had any amusing/chaotic tidbits relating to the re fandom in its earlier days, whether it be speculations of scenes or character directions or interactions that people were so sure were going to happen in later re games that absolutely did not happen, fics that were really influential, insane fanwar stories, memes that used to be rlly prolific and now don’t really come up, etc. it’s something i love to discover about fandoms because it rlly is a “you had to be there,” type of information that people don’t document the way they would with canon developments that you can easily find on wikipages

Anon... I'm gonna fucking cry. 😭 This is exactly what I wanted this blog to become once I realized I was falling back into RE hell. Anything that I can do to make this canon more accessible to new people, I want to do it. I think I've said this before, but I literally cannot imagine what it must be like getting into this series this late in the game, because RE is terrifyingly huge and abstract and very old by video game standards.

As for the second part of your ask... Man, I have so many stories. I won't tell all of them, because if I try to, it'll be weeks before I can post this LMAO so let me just break this up into sections and I'll tell whatever the first stories that pop into my head are.

FAN THEORIES

So, historically, RE fandom was never big on fan theories. Fan theories and meta were something that Silent Hill people did, not so much RE people.

BUT there is one that refuses to die, and I have seen people scream about it as recently as Revelations 2.

People are convinced that Steve Burnside is going to come back. This drum has been getting banged ever since the original Code Veronica released in 2000, and even though it has literally never been hinted at at any point in the 23 years since then that Capcom even remembers that that was a possible thing that was set up, the fandom is still waiting for it to happen.

And it's all because Wesker stole his body and fucked off with it and was a complete asshole about it when he did it. That's it, that's the whole reason.

But then that also ties into the fact that there are still people who are convinced that Wesker didn't actually die in RE5 and that he's gonna come back any day now, guys, really -- and that's just a whole level of death denial I've never seen before. Dude got hit with two rocket launchers in the middle of an active volcano. YOU LITERALLY DO NOT GET MORE DEAD THAN THAT.

INFLUENTIAL FICS

Surprisingly, none. RE didn't have an "I Know What's Beneath the Snow Fields" or a "Walk This World." There were influential authors, though. I won't name them because I have no idea where they are now or if they're still around, but. I will say that there was one very influential fic writer in Cleon fandom who utilized literally so many headcanons in her fics that her characters were utterly unrecognizable. Some of the headcanons blatantly contradicted canon, even. But her writing style and her prose were so, so, so fucking good that it didn't matter. For a while, Cleon fandom almost became like a cult around her fics -- and, as someone who only dabbled in Cleon because my friends shipped it, but I had no personal stake in the ship myself -- it was really, really weird to watch this go down.

INSANE FAN WAR STORIES

I was going to go off on a huge thing about the Aeon vs Cleon wars, but seeing as how they're still fucking happening for some god forsaken dumbass reason, I decided not to.

So, we'll forget that. And while this isn't a war story, exactly, I do need to give a special shoutout to the Wesker wives of old.

If you are at all familiar with the stories of old school Final Fantasy VII fandom of girls who convinced themselves that they married Sephiroth on the astral plane -- guess what. RE fandom had those girls, too, and we called them Wesker wives.

There was one really prominent one on LiveJournal back in the day who used to get art commissioned of her and Wesker together, and she would post pictures of herself "in uniform" for him, and like. Would legitimately write as though she was actually married to the fictional character Albert Wesker. She'd answer questions from people and shit.

And she was really, really pretty, so everyone was just kind of stunned by this, because this girl very clearly took care of herself and worked out and knew how to do her hair and makeup -- she always looked really good -- and it was just like... how did someone like you fall so far off the reality wagon?

And then it slowly started to come out that she maybe had some nazi ideology behind her and kept referring to Wesker has her Aryan king or someshit, and that was about the point where my Jewish ass backed away from that whole trainwreck and stopped paying attention to it, so I don't actually know how this story ends.

MEMES

So, uh. If you've been on the fandom side of the internet long enough, you'll at least have heard of the "it's over 9000" meme, even if you're not into Dragon Ball or ever seen an episode of it in your life.

Well, the same guy who started that meme also left his mark on RE fandom, too. The whole "Jill sandwich" thing was always a meme in its own right, but "Hope this is not Chris's blood" was added onto it thanks to this video. So, "Hope this is not Chris's blood" was a big, big meme in the late aughts that I really don't see around anymore. It was used as a sort of... shitpost response to a shitpost, if that makes sense? Like, your friend sends you some obviously stupid bullcrap or a dumb meme and you just respond back "hope this is not chris's blood."

This cap from Code Veronica was a huge meme for a long time, too, and I DO NOT FUCKING KNOW WHY

And then.

There was this masterpiece. Do not watch this with other people in the room unless your willingness to let others bear witness to your own cringe is very high. It's also NSFW. And, actually, this video might be the single oldest meme in RE fandom history. The YT link I provided here is not the original source of it. It was some stupid fan edit that was making its rounds on Kazaa, and I'm not joking. I want to say this edit is no younger than OG RE2 (so 1998).

And I would negligent in my duties as a fandom historian if I did not introduce you to the glory that is Resident Evil 4 Days of Our Lives. I STILL QUOTE THIS SHIT, TO THIS DAY.

Like, this is me on plurk referencing this stupid fucking shit as I'm liveplurking my very first playthrough of RE4R:

There was a part of me that was honestly kind of upset when the two cops at the beginning of RE4make didn't actually say to Leon, "I hear no one listens to you. Is that true, Captain Cubscout?" because that is unironically the single greatest line of dialogue that was ever written to be said by any character to Leon Kennedy, and it was written by some fuckin college kids back in the mid aughts.

And that's all I can think of for right now.

Thank u for indulging my old person desire to ramble on about "BACK IN MY DAY........." I appreciate u.

ETA: ok like i know i said i was only gonna mention shit that i could think of at the time that i responded to the ask but there is one more meme that i would be remiss to not mention

The Teen Wolf Movie, Scott McCall and regret

I suppose that I should start this meta with a disclaimer of sorts. I belong to a school of thought called the cauldron of story that presents the idea that every narrative you ever encounter in your life goes into a giant cauldron to make a sort of story stew, and with practise you can see the stories that inspired it. This isn't plagiarism because it's not the stories that are the meat and potatoes of the work but the mixture of them.

So for example Star Wars is Dune + Hidden Fortress + The hero with a hundred faces and through understanding those works allows you a peek into George Lucas' mind at the time.

Every creator is a giant melange of the narratives that they consumed, ones they liked and ones they didn't and ones they over heard of public transport.

So me shrieking about Jacob's Ladder does not imply Teen Wolf plagiarised it - it just stole from it, in the same way every creator has sticky fingers.

And to understand the teen wolf movie we need to talk about Silent Hill 2 - which creates a story cluster of it's own, if you crossed Jacob's Ladder with Blue Velvet and some other things, some of which are Japanese and I can't recognise [never having encountered them] you get Silent Hill 2.

Unfortunately Silent Hill 2 creates a sort of loop in that Blue Velvet and Jacob's Ladder also inspired Teen Wolf and so it's this sort of smear where we can say that the three of them are all inspirations but we can't say which is which. For example in 3b Scott and Allison hide in a wardrobe with louvre doors which is just like the scene in Blue Velvet where the main character sees the villain through the door of the wardrobe where he was hidden - but the same scene appears in Silent Hill 2 where James first encounters pyramid head. So which is the inspiration - I don't know. Which came first, the pyramid head or the oxygen mask?

Jacob's Ladder is incredibly intrinsic to Teen Wolf [props to weasley-detectives for the leg work on that one] and it defines bardo, and many of the monsters in Allison's narrative, for example, are lifted from that film entirely. Jacob's Ladder did not inspire Silent Hill [the first game] but it did inspire Silent Hill 2 and again they're all mashed together. In season 3, after the be a better Scott McCall program, Scott starts dressing like James Sunderland [the man character of SH2] who in turn is dressed like Jacob Singer in JL, but Scott's costuming is not the same as that of Jacob.

This blending of sources is normal and annoying, generally it is better to have sources that are distinct so you can dig better and explain one source and not two.

At first I thought the Teen Wolf movie was going to be inspired by Event Horizon because I knew it would be full of mindfuckery, and I was wrong in that it was Silent Hill2. It was a few days of picking at it before I realised that it wasn't inspired by Silent Hill2, it was what would you get if you rewrote Silent Hill 2 in Beacon Hills and then had to completely rewrite your script because you can't get the actors.

Scott's narrative is Silent Hill 2 - it's not "inspired by" it's an au but it also has a chronic misunderstanding of Silent Hill 2.

Remember how Gus Van Sant remade Psycho because he wanted to see how it worked and when he did it - it didn't work. It's like that.

In Silent Hill 2 [which is considered a masterwork and work of art in its own right, and is considered to be the very best video games have managed so far] James Sunderland recieves a letter from his dead wife asking him to meet her in Silent Hill. He finds the town abandoned and full of fog but there he meets an alternate of his wife, Mary, but sexy called Maria, a child called Laura [the sh2/twin peaks knot] a bully called Eddie, a girl called Angela who is seeking her mother, and twisted manifestations of James' own emotional turmoil - pyramid head, the sexiest version of nurses etc.

James was made impotent, both sexually and emotionally by Mary's long illness and death and the town forces him to face it. It is a purgatorial wasteland where water is seen as corrupting. This is the same as in Teen Wolf [and actually allowed us to unlock the symbolism and eventually colour theory]. The town is shrouded in fog to show how limited James' viewpoint is.

Now if we look at Scott's narrative, he returns to Beacon Hills to reunite with his dead girlfriend, finds the town almost completely abandoned, she is different and doesn't know him, and he is forced to face the one enemy that made him feel powerless and he gets the girl and the innocent child after someone else defeated the monster again.

Sound familiar.

We need to look at why Void, which the film specifically calls a nogitsune but then contradicts all the canon lore about kitsune we've ever had - but the same is true of Deputy Ishida. When Void possessed Stiles and Scott thought that the possession was quiescent he went with Stiles to Coach being shot, then the explosion at the Sheriff's station where Scott sucked up the pain of just about everyone he met, and Void revealed itself after stabbing Scott, and consumed all the pain that Scott had taken in, and he mocked Scott whilst doing it.

None of the other villains really cared about Scott, they might have paid lip service to the myth, and monologued about him doing things he hadn't, before someone else took them from the picture with Scott there posturing, but only Void made him feel small. Just like Mary's illness with James Scott was made impotent, both sexually and emotionally. Allison's death rid him of his determination that they were destined to be together - even though she had chosen someone else.

Just like Mary/Maria Allison is robbed of any autonomy. Mary is defined entirely by her illness, something she resents. Maria is Mary but sexy and resents James' fixation on Mary. Allison is the twisting of the knife to Scott, she is also the one who died on his watch and the one who he loved - and chose someone else. Brought back via the nemeton she is robbed of memory and vacillates between the image of her mother sending her after the wolves and Scott's image of her. She does not remember that she broke up with him, why she broke up with him, or any of the times he manipulated and used her. She is unaware, under the stadium, that he is still manipulating and using her. He is so set on his own affection for her - which after fifteen years will be a very different creature to what it was when he was sixteen and she was alive, that he steamrolls over her arguments and rather than bring her to her father, who she remembers and trusts, he maintains the isolation until she remembers what he wants her to remember.

Allison might as well be a ghost in the movie for all the autonomy and ability to choose that she retains. She is a weapon to be aimed, first by the nogitsune-creature that is manifested [which looks so much like the green eyed fox in The Lost Tomb (series 1, which is not the first series but is the first one chronologically] that I actually cursed out loud that I can't even watch weird Chinese tomb raiding shows without Davis having seen them too. I am actually tempted to call it the Green Eyed Fox because it even shares powers and the fly caught at the end of 3b was a housefly not a firefly - you can make a solid argument that it was Scott's view of the nogitsune, and had nothing to do with Void or an actual nogitsune and why Deputy Ishida was a 900 year old kitsune who didn't know because it allowed Scott an easy understanding of how it had oni - the weaons it used to kill Allison]

Or to simplify a lot of the details in the movie might have manifested because they were Scott's understanding of those things.

And this is where the overlap with Jacob's Ladder comes in.

In the chiropracter scene Louie explains to Jacob about Meister Eckhart, a christian theologian who explains bardo really well. To summarise after death figures appear and start to burn away the things that hold people to life, if you're nto ready to give these things up the figures seem to be demons and if you are they're benevolent angels.

Scott, and his entire plotline being about wish fulfilment and regret, feeds into this because Scott won't give these things up. He is still working for Deaton, he has done everything he can to not be a wolf except when it benefits him, but given the opportunity to bring Allison back from the dead he leaps at it without questioning anything about the plan - which Deaton does.

He fixates on Allison, not as she is, but as she was and leaps into danger convinced of his own ability to sway her to his side - because he believes he loves her.

But he doesn't love her - she's been dead for fifteen years = he LOVED her.

Silent Hill 2 is purgatorial which is a term you see thrown about a lot in media, oh this did make sense it was purgatorial, or the reason that these scenes don't gel is because it's purgatorial. Often those things aren't, they're just shitty writing. Lost for example, it being purgatory made no sense whatsoever.

Purgatory is an old Christian concept which is also called limbo. According to catholicism Purgatory is where you went when you should have gone to heaven but for some reason couldn't, for example a new born baby who wasn't baptised was tainted by original sin [you're born damned in catholicism] would go to Limbo, good people who weren't christian went to Limbo, the wives of sinners who could belonged to their husbands but didn't deserve hell went to limbo. Some catholic theologians suggested that it was possible to pass through purgatory and ascend to heaven.

It's this version of purgatory that Meister Eckhart put forward and Teen Wolf calls Bardo. It is a series of between states that allows the subject to cast aside those things that held them in place - like regret, to ascend to heaven.

Beacon Hills does seem to descend into a purgatorial wasteland, like Canaan in canon, as the show goes on and Scott re-enters it to the collapse of Oak Creek [which is weird that it went from standing proud to building graveyard in fifteen years when no one demolished it], and the first person he meets is Lydia- who has been shown to be able to travel between the worlds and has one foot in the afterlife by her nature.

Yet he cannot give up the triumphs and losses of high school. His worst enemy is one that didn't care for him when he was a kid. He gets to play lacrosse in the state championship. His teenage girlfriend comes back to life. He wants kids and how convenient the only werewolf with a kid dies saving Scott.

Scott chooses to remain trapped in the past. He cannot accept the figures stripping away those things that hold him back. Even the one thing that can lead him forward -his wolf - is denied. He is still the person he was in high school - he's just older and has a car now.

In many ways that's much more tragic than killing Derek.

The movie had some really great ideas - it's a pity that the movie ended up like that with Derek beating up the green eyed fox in a location they stole from Deadly Premonition and that is one piece of media Davis can keep to himself because life is far too short to play Deadly Premonition.

My first try at sharing this story didn't get the amount of traction I had hoped. I tried to be very sparse in my description, because it is the kind of story that is meant to slowly unfold - but I am going to try to share a bit more about it, dodging spoilers as well as I can, because I think some of you might really enjoy it.

Don't Cry was born from an evening of my wife telling me about Silent Hill, especially the second game, about the symbolism and driving forces in the story. I had recently gotten into horror, and while I still can't play most horror games, I found it endlessly fascinating. And inspiring. There were things I wanted to comment on, things I would love to see explored, things that I thought could be expanded on. And I caught myself thinking that reusing Pyramid Head so much, even though he's supposed to be tied closely to James' psyche, was a bit of a coward move. I know he’s iconic, but wouldn't it be possible to make a new iconic monster to reflect a new character? Maybe more than one?

Whether or not I succeeded ... well, I suppose that's up to the reader to decide.

I was awake half a night, spinning monsters for a story that I would want to tell through a Silent Hill narrative - a story for me. I wrote a handful of haphazard scenes on my phone and then passed out at like three am while being a little scared.

After that, I started working on stitching everything together. Not much of the first little late night scenes stayed, but the plot points did. It became long. I started it and then did some other stuff, as I am prone to do. Then, suddenly, in summer, I got possessed with the spirit of ... I don't know, something? We had just watched Revolutionary Girl Utena, that might very well have been it. Anyway, I finished the last 50k words in a month, give or take. Then I let it rest for a few months, and ... here we are. It's done. and I love it, I genuinely really love it.

I wrote it while thinking about how it would play out if it was an actual Silent Hill game, and how to adapt that into written form. It’s got new areas, new monsters, new dark worlds, a brand new cast of characters, and a little bit of mindscrewy meta hidden in the seams if you look hard enough.

It was inspired by the original Silent Hill trilogy, though most strongly by Silent Hill 2, but there’s definitely also some Infinity Train, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and close, personal feelings in there.

You can find it on AO3. It’s titled “Don’t Cry (A Silent Hill story). I would be really happy if some people gave it a shot.

On Finishing Nevada by Imogen Binnie

What a perfect little trick of an ending. Maria wants so badly to be the after-school special she desperately needed a decade ago, and she's doing it for herself. Her life is a mess, and she wants to fix someone else about it. Meanwhile, James knows this and resents it; he's got his own life out here out west, a life that she has no respect for. There's something painfully real about the way that James exists as somebody who isn't "coastal," who isn't metropolitan in the way that matters so much to a certain sort of educated queer person. Because he grew up in this dustbowl town, because he works at a Wal-Mart, of course Maria feels as though she has to explain everything to him. Class underlies so much of the ending of this book in a way that I'd love to see discussed more. Maria has the mobility and money to go do this completely insane thing. James does not.

James has a shitty apartment without much in it but weed dust. Maria has been living in New York Goddamn City.

Anyone who was surprised by the ending of Nevada must've missed the entire chapter from Steph's perspective (a chapter that Binnie makes a point of emphasizing in new afterword from the 2022 rerelease). It all but takes the reader by the hand and tells them, to their face, that Maria is always doing this kind of shit. She disappears sometimes, runs out and has adventures, and is doing it all to fix a deep hole in herself. The Steph chapter takes place almost immediately before the second half of the novel, and it basically just...tells you what the rest of the novel is going to be.

So when I say that Nevada has a trick of an ending, really, I guess that's an exaggeration. It's not a trick if the magician sits you down and explains exactly what's going to happen.

At the same time, I don't want to be an asshole about the people who wanted Maria to be the fairy godmother (to paraphrase Binnie again in the afterword) they so desperately need or needed. In a meta sense, I suppose she does exactly what she set out to do: it's not James that she gets through to, but the reader themselves. Perhaps if I'd read this novel a few years ago, the spell would've worked on me too. As it stands, though, that isn't the book I finished reading today, and it never will be. The book I read today is about how we crave those clean answers, whether through our own self-actualization or through the desire to guide someone else, and how ultimately self-destructive that desire for the perfect fairy-tale ending is.

*Nevada* is a book that takes the traditional hero's journey (ha! not really traditional at all, but that's another conversation) and hangs it out to try in the hot desert sun.

P.S.: Why the hell do the two POV characters have the same names as James Sunderland and Maria from Silent Hill 2? Imogen, are you out there? I have questions! It's your fault that I read the entire second half of the book with the main characters reskinned to be PS2 characters, damn it, and I have questions!

A Brief Review of the Silent Hill Transmission

Silent Hill Ascension: So straight off the bat, this is the only one i think is going to be unambiguously bad based on what little we have. It appears to be y’know less game and more “interactive story”, promising YOU the players can help SHAPE SILENT HILL CANON, but also being a multiplayer online thing that releases incrementally, being by the creators of Dead by Daylight. The way they talked about the exact logistics of this wasssss non-existent, but the way they were hyping it up made it essentially sound like an MMO version of a Supermassive game and/or a democratic version of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch. I love new ideas. I love new ways of approaching games. It’s just that this particular approach happens to be fucking stupid. Also the brief look at the monster looks like a Dead by Daylight killer, and I don’t mean that in a good way. ALSO J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot are involved, and J.J. Abrams has not done a single good thing since idk Cloverfield? So we’re gonna put together the formula of The Dark Anthology Pictures games, Live Service games, and J.J. “The Mystery Box Man” Abrams in a blender and see what happens. That sounds for......a really funny news cycle if nothing else.NEEEEXT Silent Hill Townfall:  Interesting company behind it, made some fun and unique little indie story-based horror, so i’m told. Unfortunately, this was by far the least helpful trailer, and all i really got from it was the talking heads on the radio....tv....thing talking about how they were there to be punished in a way that, maybe I’m misinterpreting, but maaaaybe was veering a little too tongue-in-cheek meta for me. I don’t know though. I’m mostly indifferent, the trailer showed nothing, I cannot stress enough. Did not work up my feelings one way or another Silent Hill f (Silent Hill forte?): This is the only one i’m actually really fucking pumped for. Masahiro Ito is back, but actually going in a direction with his art that he really wants to be going and is creatively interested in, the world and art design look incredibly unique, it looks unsettling as fuck, it doesn’t capitalize on ANY previous Silent Hill iconography or indeed, even the town itself, seeming like it’s set in some rural and possibly in the past Japanese town, and it’s written by a guy who apparently writes quite disturbing shit. Apparently. Iiiiii can’t really get past the art style or genre of his previous work sorry so i’ll take people’s word for it. I’m glad they ended on this, because it gave me a lil note of hope to take away from the whole thing Various Silent Hill 2 announcements: I knew a remake of Silent Hill 2 a la the REmakes was coming, and i was fine with it, cautiously optimistic about it, even....even though they really should remake Silent Hill first since that’s the one in significantly more dire need of a re-imagining a la the first Resident Evil, but i digress. Footage looks pretty good, even though they inexplicably made James Sunderland ugly but honestly that’s kind of hilarious, my only real gripe is that it’s being developed by Bloober Team. You know, the Blair Witch Layers of Fear lads, the ones who take to plots about mental illness with all the subtlety and nuance of a napalm enema and are most widely (in)famous for making walking simulators. But, I’m willing to give them and Konami the benefit of the doubt. After all, if Capcom can do it

Then came the announcement of the movie. Another Christophe Gans joint, and all right, that’s fine the first Silent Hill movie wasn’t....well it wasn’t exactly great, but it wasn’t terrible either, i liked bits of it.

The movie is an adaptation of Silent Hill 2. Oh, fuck me jogging, here we go. Now look, some of the storyboards looked very promising and as with the remake, Christophe was swearing up one wall and down another that he’d suck the original’s dick with proper reverence and cradle the balls and everything, but that’s not really my main concern, my main concern is-

Huh? What’s that? Silent Hill 2 statuettes? Yeah, I mean I guess that’s-

A Pyramid Head skateboard? I mean....all right, yeah it-

What? The dog? The dog from the dog ending? A stuffed animal AND a figurine complete with control panel?

SIGH.

Yes, unfortunately, Konami are officially milking Silent Hill 2 until the sad bastard’s udders bleed. Part of me can’t help but wonder if this isn’t Konami’s fucked up Wishmaster, Calypso from Twisted Metal, Monkey’s Paw interpretation of the backlash they kept getting from just slapping the iconic images from Silent Hill 2 on everything divorced of context.

But no, more likely they just keep hearing the way people bang on and on about Silent Hill 2 as one of the greatest games of all time (which it is) and are cynically trying to re-capture lightning in a bottle in their never-ending quest for profit, somehow forever blind to the fact that if they just give passionate artists money and let them do whatever the fuck they want like they did with the original Team Silent, new lightning might strike; comparatively, sitting around all day trying to force the exact same lightning bolt from two decades ago into various newer and shinier bottles will never EVER reproduce the same effect, only ghosts of it with various degrees of success. 

This is the same thing every media company everywhere in the fucking world is doing right now, but especially horror, so it’s hardly surprising, but it is....depressing. Ten years after they cancelled a truly original Silent Hill game that also would have made them more money than God with the P.T. stunt Kojima pulled in the most baffling financial decision in human history, the fact that most of what they have to show is  THE SILENT HILL 2 SHOWWWW and an “interactive community experience” chasing modern trends is fucking depressing.

But like i said Silent Hill f i’m actually happy about and Silent Hill Townfall, goofy name aside, has Schrodinger’s quality going for it right now, it literally could be anything so fingers crossed for that

I posted 2,318 times in 2022

That's 398 more posts than 2021!

212 posts created (9%)

2,106 posts reblogged (91%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@blackbeardlovesstede

@gentlebeard-blackbonnet

@twistedsardonic

@lierdumoa

I tagged 1,904 of my posts in 2022

Only 18% of my posts had no tags

#ofmd - 996 posts

#ofmd fanart - 405 posts

#txf - 291 posts

#mulderscully - 140 posts

#btvs - 124 posts

#spuffy - 76 posts

#wwdits - 51 posts

#animals - 45 posts

#ofmd meta - 42 posts

#taika waititi - 40 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#me in silent hill strutting it for pyramid head so he can come haunt me as a manifestation of my inner sense of guilt for murdering my wife

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Ed was like “my new Boyfriend stede bonnet should get two lil’ hours of sleep while I steal a dinghy.” who invented him 😭

1,061 notes - Posted September 8, 2022

#4

See the full post

1,244 notes - Posted January 25, 2022

#3

See the full post

1,413 notes - Posted September 24, 2022

#2

I think it's really nice that Guillermo de la Cruz gets to kill some people, humans and vampires alike. I think it's very nice that he kept wooden stakes in the mini fridge in case Nandor didn't show correct levels of caring about him. It's sexy of him to be sweet and also insane and sit on the council throne. I think the others have being a vampire as an excuse but he'll just be atrocious and cute as a choice. I think it's fun and exciting that he's committed to that dick to inadvisable levels. I think he deserved to lead a huge man out of danger by the hand while going BING BANG BOOM POW SWISH. I think he's cool and unhinged and fat and I love it

2,098 notes - Posted May 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

See the full post

36,755 notes - Posted March 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Silent Hill 2 begins now!! Come join!!

I posted 668 times in 2022

That's 668 more posts than 2021!

203 posts created (30%)

465 posts reblogged (70%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ap0stle

@heather-garland

@carlyraejepsans

@friskibitz

@aether-friskets

I tagged 653 of my posts in 2022

Only 2% of my posts had no tags

#fanart - 209 posts

#op's art - 188 posts

#silent hill - 149 posts

#rambles - 134 posts

#undertale - 128 posts

#heather mason - 110 posts

#silent hill 3 - 109 posts

#safeutdr - 105 posts

#silent hill fanart - 99 posts

#frisk - 91 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#and honestly? op's suggestion of him having been a member of the order is way more interesting to me than just 'otherworld manifestation'

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

not the most extravagant piece I've ever made for something like this but. Here's a little drawing I made for Undertale's anniversary!! Like I said I would!

It would've been nice to get a piece with more of the characters but alas

Also I feel like Chara could be better but I always have trouble drawing them quite right >:|

Anyway uhhhh yeah!!

23 notes - Posted September 15, 2022

#4

See the full post

31 notes - Posted August 2, 2022

#3

so I recall this line in outlast 2 when you end up in St. Sybil one of the first times. Blake says somethin like "Great. Back in the Fourth Grade." meaning those the stuff he's reliving must've happened in that grade.

And we know that 4th graders are typically either 9 or 10

(assuming Jess was in the same grade she was only 9 or 10 as well which. damn.)

But we ALSO know what year this takes place in, because there's multiple instances on papers and stuff with the year 1995 (in fact it's December 1995 iirc). I don't have any screenshots on-hand but I could totally go get some at some point lol

MeaninG Blake was 9 or 10 in 1995

We also know that Outlast 2 takes place not all that long after the first game does (due to the Murkoff Account, which, admittedly I haven't read in a while so feel free to correct me there). And we know Outlast happened in 2013.

This mean that our pal Blake is most likely 28 (or 27). Which also makes him the youngest, since Miles and Waylon are both supposedly in their "early to mid 30s" (I couldn't see the cited tweet so for all I know this could be inaccurate but it sounds reasonable enough for me to believe).

Also Waylon has two kids so I'm inclined to believe he's the oldest but like they're all like a few years apart in age anyway lol

Anyway this is probably really obvious stuff but I thought it was interesting for some reason

38 notes - Posted August 6, 2022

#2

random minor thing but I always thought that while Frisk's SAVEs are like normal manual save point saving you'd expect to see, when Flowey steals back control as Omega Flowey, the whole "File x loaded/saved" thing gives the vibes of someone using an emulator. Where you have multiple interchangeable save states that you can save or load to whenever you want, even if the game isn't normally capable of that.

In particular it makes me think back to repeatedly loading a save state in Majora's Mask because of the goddamn town shooting gallery mini game AUGh

Which I guess it kind of makes sense? Omega Flowey is artificially stealing control of the game, sort of like how an emulator gives you an artificial way of accessing a game (in the sense of like I could play a PS1 game on my pc, or a N64 game on my Wii U, for example). So not only does his save system make sense from an in-game stand point, it's kinda cool from a meta standpoint too.

At least, I think it is.

63 notes - Posted June 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

late night posting of an old-ish drawing

Psychonauts was big on my mind for a short while there and although it's not my current focus, the games are still really great!! And I still like this little drawing I did of Raz.

It was interesting trying to translate his design to my art style, because that game has a very particular look (in a good way).

also hope y'all don't mind my random mish-mash of posting and reblogging various stuff, I cannot be consistent to save my life

Hopefully I'll have some new art to share soon though!! Assuming this funk of mine dies down, anyway.

71 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Hii!!! 1, 6, 10 and 13 for the meta asks!😁😁

1. how did you discover your f/o’s content?

I think I discovered it through yt? I watch a lot of gaming videos so sometimes yt just recommends random games to me and I think wat//ch dogs was one of them. I vaguely also knew abt the graphics etc controversy because I sometimes watch top x number videos about games.

I wasn't interested in Aiden's source at the time (this must've been around 2015 or something idk I have the worst memory with dates / years) and wasn't for long time. Suddenly his game just became interesting to me and I hyperfixated on it big time. The rest is history or something.

6. if your f/o is from a series, which episode/movie/game/book of their source content is your favorite?

First game obviously.

He's also in Legion (2nd sequel) as DLC character but his design is so far off what I imagine Older!Aiden to be AND Jackson is so wildly different to what I imagined him to be at 26??

Does this look like the same person to you??? I get that ppl don't stay the same (Jacks is 8 in 1) but?? this??

Also the downgrade of Aiden just...

I'm going to say it; that beard does NOT fit him.

Aside from.. superficial stuff like this, the way his dialogue is written is far too generic (at least in main game or something? I can't shake the feeling his dialogue is off somehow even when his VA did reprise the role or I don't like change this badly lmao) and doesn't FEEL like HIM at all. Also him working WITH Dedsec as whole when in Chicago he explicitly refused is bit, wtf moment for me (yes I'm aware that both San Francisco and London Dedsec are different from Chicago!Dedsec and his mind can change but?? still??) Also I can't see Aiden tolerating Wrench at all. He didn't as DLC reveals so anyway.

Also the whole "he's in coma and his mind is this Silent Hill-esque hellscape bc he never moved on from Lena's death in last 10+ years for majority of DLC" plot is just.. I'm letting out the biggest most annoyed sigh. (Him digging his own grave in the coma dream was kinda neat as it's sad tho)

All in all his inclusion felt like poor attempt at some sort of pandering or something. No effort.

Also he's mentioned to be homeless in Legion?? When in books he has safe room in house he rents to elderly?? He has his container safe houses?? He can just steal money and rent some place??

The only thing I kinda give to Legion is canonically him & Jacks & Nicky had no contact for years. Also the fact that Jacks is bitter and angry at Aiden bc he aggravated his PTSD and other shit.

I did like his short cameo in 2, where he's stuck in cell and 2's protagonist helps him out a little so he escapes by himself (and he's explicitly there to shut down human trafficking operations).

I'm kinda iffy but kinda love how he's famous in both 2 and Legion and his name and nickname Fox is known widely in hacker circles as sorta celebrity / legend type. I love it bc it's cute & makes for sorta interesting narrative but also I'm iffy bc I want him to be able to be under radar so he doesn't have to move all the damn time but he did become famous at the very end of 1 so I guess I gotta deal.

10. if you could change one thing about your f/o’s source content, would you? what would you change?

Either have the game explore more deeply how and why Aiden acts and thinks the way he does OR Clara survives

If we don't talk about story things, I'd change the gameplay from all the damn car chases to heavily feature ´hacking and potential gunfight / sneaking opportunities

13. do you have a favorite line your f/o has ever said

Favorite line I didn't mention earlier?

"You're not the first woman to tell me that" after Clara said she'd "open his world" in reference to her phone she gives Aiden that has some Dedsec stuff that makes it easier for him to hack stuff or smth. (Clara's observation of Aiden's intimidation being "very textbook" is my favorite line of hers)

Also the lines where he wonders did he get Bedbug killed are obviously my favorite because FOR ONCE Aiden actually stops to think about larger consequences of his own actions also he sounds pretty panicked there.