Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Classics: Women In Survival Horror

Transcript

SMNTY Classics: Women In Survival Horror · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: And Samantha.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And welcome to Stuff Never Told You, a production by HeartRadio.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: So today, I am doing the horrible friend thing I
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: do to Samantha every year, which is that, happy birthday, Samantha.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: As this comes out, it is your birthday. Yes, but
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: it's also the last of us day. Of course. Yes, yes,
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: of course.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: And so this actually was a suggestion of yours, I
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: will say that, to bring back. And it's on women
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: in survival horror, particularly survival horror video games. And I
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: was hesitant to bring it back because there are spoilers
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: for The Last of Us and The Last of Us
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: 2 in this.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: So if you really don't want to.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Be spoiled, I've spoken before, it's kind of a strange
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: situation being... where the games have been out for a while,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: but the show is new. But anyway, if you don't
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: want to be spoiled, I would say skip this one
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: or definitely skip the part where I'm talking.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: About The Last of Us.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But I also had this on my mind because the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: new Resident Evil movie came out, and we talk about
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that in here.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: And also we're entering Halloween season.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: It's true.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: It's time.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: It's time.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Yes. So please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: And Samantha.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: And welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You, a production
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. So, Samantha, as you know, we are in
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: my favorite season of scary things. Although the world is
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: terrifying right now, but, you know, you can find a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: haven in horror movies.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Or at least I can. You're hoping that you can.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I'm hoping. Uh.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And for today's question, I wanted to ask you, have
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: you ever played a scary video game?
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: No.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Never. Have you ever been scared playing a video game
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: that wasn't scary?
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: No.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: You've never had an epic.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Battle of Mario Kart and felt just fear in your
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: heart that you might be embarrassed?
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Because I already have very low expectations. And then I
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: give a disclaimer to everyone that I'm playing with. about
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: how bad I am at video games and or how
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: I could care less about most of these video games.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: You know, it took the pandemic for me to actually
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: start enjoying these things.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: As you know.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: So because I just never cared. Of course, my partner
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: is really big into the video games. And he loves
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: like The Witcher and Zelda, all of that. So to me,
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: that's not necessarily scary. I know you talked about your
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: scary video games. And I finally watched you guys play
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: a couple of them. Yeah. But my over-anticipation about how
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: things are going to go bad is so high that I,
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: you know, I have to give warnings or I'm going
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: to walk out because I just don't care. I don't
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: want to know.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I don't typically play it like that.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: I don't play those games because I don't quite understand
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: them either, I think.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Like storyline-wise or mechanic-wise?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: All of those things.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: I'm like, so what's the point of having a story
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: if you're trying to play a game, but inevitably you're
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: just playing into their story, which has already been written out?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: So I've asked, because, you know, I asked you three times.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I was like, wait, what? What is this? Wait, why?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of the question is why.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: But for like, yeah, for me, like what I enjoy
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: is silly games that we get to punch each other
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: in the face and see who wins.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: End of story. Very two-dimensional characters, too, typically.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Well, we clearly have the very opposite taste because the story,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: to me, is the most important thing. Right.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: The most important thing.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And actually, we're going to talk about one game that
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: really messed with, I guess, the video game mechanics you're
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: talking about where the story's already written. There's one game
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in here where they mess
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: with that, and it was wonderful. Yeah, I love, love, love,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: love scary video games. You did get to see me
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: play virtual reality, the VR version of Five Nights at Freddy's.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And that was terrifying.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I may have to post up. I may have to
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: because I took a video.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: And it's not even the best video because the best
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: video is when you actually jump and fall backwards onto
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: a chair. But yeah, I definitely took a video of
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: you playing in which you just start screaming. And by
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: the way, it would be in NSFW because there's a
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: lot of cursing.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: It was terrifying.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I put the headset on for like a second,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: looked around. I was like, nope. And I took it
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: right back off.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: This is true. This is true. And that wasn't even
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: the game.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: No.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: It was just like the opening screen.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Well, I got turned around. I was like, there's a
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: thing trying to come up behind me.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: Those are animatronic things, which, you know, I already have
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: a little fear that they're going to come to life.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: And in this video game, they come to life. And
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, hell no. Now I'm good.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that was fair.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I highly recommend it, both the non-VR and VR versions
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: for anybody who's interested, because it was terrifying. And they're funny, also.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: So today we're talking about women and girls in the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: survival horror genre of video games, which is one of
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: my very favorite genres.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: And I'm actually.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put a disclaimer here that I'm going
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to be very selfish in this one. Because it is
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite genres. And I'm going to talk
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: about the ones I have personal experience with. So I
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: know a lot of you will probably get angry at
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: some things that are not on this list. Always write in.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to play another survival horror video game. And
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: we do have a list of honorable mentions that I know...
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: people are going to be like, well, you didn't talk
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: about this clear example. But yeah, I'm going to be
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a little selfish. And I also want to put in
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: another disclaimer. Anyone who's played these games will know a
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: lot of them come from very sprawling video game franchises
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: with storylines that are really tough to wrangle. I actually
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: love this thought exercise of trying to explain some of
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: these games because they're so weird and.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: They've been retconned.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Resident Evil slash Biohazard is the one that has come
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: to mind.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: Also Silent Hill, oh gosh.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Where they're just complicated. And again, I'm going to kind
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of stick to what I know about them and the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: research I've done on them. But Resident Evil, for example,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: you can have one iteration of a female character that's
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: pretty well-rounded and then another game... she's almost completely different
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and wearing heels.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: So just to put that out there.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Also, also want to put in here, a lot of
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: disclaimers already, that not every game or character I mention
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: is great when it comes to representation and feminism.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: And I do think it's.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Okay to enjoy something that isn't actively causing harm, but
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: always be mindful of those messages and the entertainment that
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: you consume. So just putting that out there as well.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: And a quick trigger warning, because we are talking about
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the horror genre, we are going to briefly discuss some
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: violence against women and sexual assault issues.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: So put that out there.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: And my contribution was very small, as you could have
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: already told, as you could already tell when we were
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: discussing whether or not I played these games.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: I know that there are movie versions of these games,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: a lot of them.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm curious when we get to some of them,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: if you've seen them and what your thoughts were.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: To be fair, I don't think I've seen them. Oh,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: that's not.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: No.
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: Because I probably should watch at least Silent Hill because
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: that is seemingly up my alley. But I feel like
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: the only things I've seen available are the sequels. And
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: that is something I will not do. I will not
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: see a sequel over the original, which you and I
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: have had discussions about. I'm appalled by some of your
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: viewing experiences.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Yep, Samantha is very angry at me right now.
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: But yeah, so kind of that's the problem, and I
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: probably should go back to it, but because also I
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: don't have a big love for these games. So I
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: will put that as like, I don't know what the
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: hell I'm talking about, but I will join the discussion
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: as much as I can. So, as you know, we've
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: talked a lot about how women love horror. I love horror,
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: just not video gaming, so it's kind of one or
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: the other for me. But I'm getting into it, y'all.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: I am getting into it. And yet, you know that
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: there has been a traditional lack of representation of women
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: in the genre. And apparently, in video games at large.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: So I do see a lot of them in that
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: you tell me about them, I feel like. So therefore,
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: I notice those more than I do anything else. I
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: probably know more about those games, I feel like, than others.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: So I feel like I'm a one-up in that tradition. But,
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: of course, and I did get to know in this,
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: it gets even worse when it comes to women of
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: color and queer women, which seems to be a new
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: focus when it's not just queerbaiting to see them as
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: actually thoughtful characters.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: And for anyone who's listening and is like, like Samantha, oh,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I've never played these video games. I won't be able
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: to relate to this conversation. If you, you'll recognize these tropes. Like,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: they're not even in just horror. So, never fear.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: It is all inclusive.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: We try our best to make our video game nerdery
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: episodes inclusive. Um, So, when women do show up in
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: these games, they are almost always one of two characters
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: in survival horror. If they're a playable protagonist, protagonist, meaning you,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a person, plays them, they're strong, smart, capable, although often
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: provocatively dressed and not dressed for the situation that they're in. Or,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: if they're not that, they're the damsel in distress that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: serves to lead the male character's story And also probably
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: provocatively dressed. A plot and set piece to up the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: tension and nothing more. Male protagonists and non-playable characters are
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: almost always capable and also very rarely provocatively dressed.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: I'm always shocked by how somehow during the apocalyptic moments,
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: women end up being able to have perfectly cut belly shirts.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. That was one of my favorite things about...
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: There's an interview, Mila Jovovich.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: I think that's how you say her name.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: She's in Resident Evil, which is based on the games.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And there was one movie where people were like, don't
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: you think it's odd? An interviewer was asking her that
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you're wearing kind of this like tube top and short shorts.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: And she said, well, we wrote in a heat wave
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to explain it. And that just cracked me up so much.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: And it was actually freezing. They were filming in winter
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and they had CGI.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Their breath out.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: But they wanted an excuse for them to be provocatively dressed.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Like, it's not... There's not a problem in women dressing
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: that way.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: No, absolutely not.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: Obviously, this is for the male gaze. This is not
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: about women being comfortable.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: This is literally... Well.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: She is a superhero. We can't just have her being
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: in a t-shirt and jeans. We need to have her
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: in this ridiculously form-fitting leather, somehow metal, somehow chain bikini
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: type of thing with a pistol on her thigh strap.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Because, you know, who doesn't have that?
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: I think in one of them.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I think in one of them, it's already been the apocalypse,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: and she's wearing fishnet stockings and wandering the desert.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Who doesn't fall?
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I won't.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: If you're in the apocalypse, maybe you want to feel
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: good sometimes. I understand.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: You got to feel good. And fishnet hoes while fighting zombies?
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Come on.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: Okay. We're getting off track already.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Often these male characters act as protectors for the female
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: protagonist when there is one. So even if you're playing
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a strong, capable female character, there's usually a male character.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: That's still stepping in to protect you.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And also, I do use the term strong female character
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: a lot in this. When I say that, what I
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: really mean is a well-written character that isn't dependent on
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: men at all.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: To rescue her.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: But I know there's been a lot of back and
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: forth on that whole kind of phrase. And what do
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: we really mean when we say it? So, put that
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: out there too. Let's start, since we've already mentioned it
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: a couple times, with Resident Evil. So, Resident Evil, if
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I had to explain it very shortly, is basically capitalism
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: gone really.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: Wrong, led to zombie apocalypse.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Always.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: And that's, yeah, that's it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: The Umbrella Corporation invented this T-virus, and it got out
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: and made all of these zombies and all of these creatures. So,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the first game, which I've only played once, and it
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: is extremely difficult.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask, have you played this game? So,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: the first, you played once. Okay.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: I've played Resident Evil 1 through 5.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, damn.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And a bunch of the, like, side... like Crow and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Veronica and all that stuff.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Have you seen all the movies?
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Yes, I have, and I've seen them all in theaters.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Die hard.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and it's really funny, too, because as I
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: was researching this, and I'm like, feminism, Resident Evil, and
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of people haven't played the games, but they've
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: seen the movies, and there were a lot of essays about, like,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you know, these movies aren't great, but we're always saying, like,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: why can men have mediocre movies and it's fine? But
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: we're not holding up like, well, see, these movies make
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. And most of the characters in
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: them are women, like most of the lead characters. So,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is that.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: There is that.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: There is also interesting dressing, but there is in the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: games as well. So in the first game, which came
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: out in 1996, she is a member of S.T.A.R.S., which
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: is this elite fighting.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Force, kind of like SWAT.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Wait, did you mention who she is?
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Jill Valentine, yes. Okay.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Jill Valentine. Yeah, sorry. So, she is what is considered
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: one of the first playable female characters in survival horror.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: If you find a list of best characters, women in
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: survival horror, she's on there.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: I guarantee you she'll be on there. And she, I mean,
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: in the first game, she.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: She was dressed in, like, police gear.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I most associate her with the third game, though, which
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: is where she fights Nemesis, which is this huge, like,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: hulking zombie. He's terrifying, terrifying. And she fights him multiple times.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: He is not to be trifled with. He terrified me. Like,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I would just hear that music cue, and I'm like.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Ah, no! Run, run, run, run, run! But, yeah, she
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: was a.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: She was a very strong, like she had her plans
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: and she was going to make it happen. She was
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: going to fight Nemesis. She was going to take him down.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: She even like steals his rocket launcher. That's an option
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and shoots him with it. But yeah, she was wearing
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: a mini skirt and a tube top. And I really
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: can't think of a less functional outfit during a zombie
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: apocalypse than a tube top. I just, you're going to
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: constantly be readjusting. Oh, you're doing that just standing. So
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine running. Right. And she does, she wears
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: a sweater tied around her waist, which always cracks me up.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Maybe there was a heat wave.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: But when you are like just standing still and the
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: game is her, she like, pivots her hips, like kind
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: of sways her.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Hips and she digs her hand. Yeah. And it's like,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: look at me, look at my body here. It's so good.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: Which is probably completely out of proportion and it's not
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: plausible in real life.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: Um, yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Breast animators, they exist. Um, so there, that's Jill. She's
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: also in, uh, the movies, um, And she wears the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: same outfit in the movies. It's very iconic, I'll say that. Like,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: every time I see it, I'm like, oh yeah, Jill Valentine.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: There it is.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Claire Redfield is another character from Resident Evil. She first
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: appears in Resident Evil 2. She goes into this zombie-infested
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: raccoon city searching for her brother. She doesn't have any training,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: but she's determined. She goes on to lead the activist
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: organization TerraSave.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: I loved Claire.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So the Resident Evil 2 is set up where you
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: play the story as one Leon, male character, and then
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you play it on her side. And they kind of
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: intersect in that way.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: And Claire, I read a lot of interesting... I love
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: that these articles exist.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: But I read interesting articles about how it's almost a
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: commentary on male stalking. Because there's this character, Tyrant... who's just, again,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: this huge zombie, and he's just following her around and
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: harassing her, trying to kill her. But that was interesting
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: to me, that take of she's having to deal with that,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: whereas Leon isn't. And just this hulking thing, following her,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: always this threat in the back of your mind.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: So that's interesting.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: It is. You also have Ada Wong, who is a
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: spy assassin.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: But she wears a sweetheart dress and pumps.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: What are sweetheart dresses?
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So those are like plunging neckline, but kind of like
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: it goes down and then comes in.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Almost like a diamond shape. I'm making a lot of
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: gestures that.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: The listeners can't see.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: There's so much gesture.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: Like downward pointing with her whole hands.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: I'm painting quite the picture. You are.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I'm going to have to go look at her. I
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: don't even know if I know what that is, but okay.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And then there's Ashley Graham. She's from Resident Evil 4.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: She's the president's daughter. And the whole game is based
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: on you like rescuing her. She has this plaid skirt.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: the sleeveless top and a sweater tied around her neck.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know why the sweater tied around.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Is it supposed to be a prep school type of thing?
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: You can frequently see up her skirt when she is underage.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, nice.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she is very damsel
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: in distress. She is often getting carried away by other
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: men slash zombies, screaming, and you have.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: To rescue her.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Like it's, Because in every fight you get in, there's
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the potential for that to happen. So eventually, for me
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: as a player, I was so annoyed by her. I
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: was so annoyed.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Like, can you just not?
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Get kidnapped.
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's like Princess Toadstool, Princess Peach, except for
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: it's a PG-13 version.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. And like, it's a bad.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: She's not a great feminist depiction because she is, her
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: voice is pretty shrill and she's like, help, help.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: It happens all the time. All the time. All the time.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe I just wasn't very good at that game.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: She really doesn't have any agency.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: There's like one scene you play as her, but that's
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the scene when you keep seeing up her skirt.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, no.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Uh-uh. Yeah, because she crawls through things, but the camera
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: angles from behind, so.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: So those are the ones I think of when I
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: think of Resident Evil. I know there's a bunch more,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: like Rebecca, that we could talk about, but then this
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: podcast would never end.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: So we're going to move on.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: To Parasite Eve, which I'm so excited to talk about.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: So this was a 1998 game about the mitochondrial Eve,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: which is a concept that I love. So the villain,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: who can make you spontaneously combust, or she can mutate
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: you into a monster by activating something in your mitochondria... Eve,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and then you have the protagonist, Aya, who is immune.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Aya is a 25-year-old New York City cop who wears
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: job-appropriate clothes. What?
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: And that was truly a rarity at its time. Very much.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: But, from what I understand, because I've only played the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: first one, two and three really reversed and sexualized the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: female protagonist. And from the images, I just did a
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: quick search. Yeah. Oh, wow. She's like, there's a shower scene.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: You can get attacked and get your clothes ripped off
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and they stay ripped off. I read a really interesting
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: article about how gamer great bros like to point out
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: that us dreaded social justice warriors ruin their games. But
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: what about when they're ruining... They're ruining the games.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: I don't need to see all that.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I just want to see her turn people into monsters.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Can't I at least have that?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Aya isn't a tomboy, and she really could have been.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: She's capable, but she's pretty sensitive. She frequently is thinking
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: about the loss of her sister, but never in a
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: way that holds her back.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: And then there's Eve, the games villain. She is both.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: The Madonna and the whore, she's sexualized, but she's like
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: often monstrous. So both at the same time, and your
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: brain is like, oh my God, what is happening? And
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: then she, oh gosh, she, instead of destroying, she wants
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: to create. And that is an act of destruction, the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: way she's trying to do it. But that's an interesting
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: aspect of that as well. And when you think about
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: like the miracle of life, It gets turned into something
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: horrific when you learn she's pregnant.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: You're like, oh, no, no, no, no.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So those games, I actually never beat that
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: game either because it was really difficult, like, just playing-wise.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And I got to this crab. I still remember. I
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: got to this stupid crab in the sewer, and I
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: couldn't kill him. I didn't have enough ammo, and I
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: kept dying. And I think to this day, I have
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: that game. I bet if I tried to load it
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: right now, I'd be at that damn crab.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Interesting concept.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: It's my Moby Dick. The crab from Parasite Eve. I
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: don't think it was even a boss battle.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Jeez. Alright, so Bioshock.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I also wanted to talk about Bioshock, which is one
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of my favorite games ever. It's the one when I
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: said there's a game that messes with video game mechanics.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: It's this one.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: They like to troll people, don't they?
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're going to talk about that
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: a little bit.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: But... So as I got to thinking about this game,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and there's a lot of debate about the feminism of
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: this game. So this is set in kind of an
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: alternate reality world that's underground called Rapture, where things have
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: gone horribly awry. And people are addicted to this substance
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: called Adam.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll talk about that in a second.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: But to get Adam from dead bodies, you need a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: little sister who has an injector and she can inject.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Pull it out of their bodies.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: And these little sisters, which are creepy little children, are
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: protected by big daddies who are like these huge scuba
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: diving things that you do.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Not want to mess with. They will kill you.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: So, if you think about that aspect of the game,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: if you look at the little sister, big daddy thing,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this a lot because it's basically
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: a commentary on how young girls are the most innocent
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: because the player, you as the player have to make
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the moral choice of whether to kill them or not
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: because you need Adam too.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: But you don't need to kill them. You could, it
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: will just be harder. The game will be harder for
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: you if you don't. And for this choice, the developers
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: chose a little girl.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Like that's the moral.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So that's really interesting. I hadn't really considered it before.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I will say I'm a, I'm a big softie. I
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: could never kill one. I could never have killed a
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: little sister.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: You'll kill all the dogs.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, wait. Yeah.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: That's another story.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, coming up.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And then just the dynamic of, which we are going
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to talk about because it does appear in these games,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: these survival horror games a lot, of the big daddy
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: protecting the little sister. Basically, like a grown man protecting
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a little girl. And that inherent power dynamic. And of course,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: there's also a commentary on capitalism in this game and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: patriarchy on how you can get ahead by draining these
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: little girls. You can use this system to make you stronger.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Even they resist and they beg you to stop. And
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the only thing that can stop you is the Big
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Daddy is a big man. Big Daddy. Yeah.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Do not mess with the Big Daddies!
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: So in the second Bioshock, some of the Little Sisters
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: become Big Sisters, which is the Big Daddy equivalent. So
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: quote here, Big Sisters are the new gatekeepers of Rapture.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Born from Little Sisters, they don costumes much like their
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: former protectors, the Big Daddy. However, these lithe, broken, mysterious
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: creatures are worlds different from the hulking beasts that inspired
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: their design. And everything from the way their armor appeared
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: to how they cocked their head had to tell the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: story of their creation. So due to the trauma of
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: their past, they are quite aggressive. They are erratic. You
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: do not want to mess with them either. Um, they
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: protect little sisters, but they also, uh, are kind of
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: like vengeance trying to take any, they'll kill anybody who killed.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: A little sister. Um, and yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: There is just the fact that this substance is called Adam.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: And then there's another substance for your health. It's called Eve. Um,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: has given me a lot to think on as well.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: And then, if we look at Bioshock Infinite, you have Elizabeth,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: who is the damsel in distress of the game. The
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: whole point of the game is you need to rescue
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: her and deliver her to someone else. She does have powers.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: She can tear holes through space and time. She's helpful,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: but most of what she does is in service to
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the male player character, Booker's storyline. There's a lot of
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: caged bird imagery in this game. There's a running theme of,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: is the caged bird really free? So even when you
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: rescue Elizabeth from her tower, is she really free? It's
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: a thought experiment throughout the game. They actually kind of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: ask you, what do you think?
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: And yeah, she is.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: pretty much at the whims of her father. And I suppose,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: spoiler alert for any of these games, I should have
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: said that.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: At the top. Maybe we need to put that at
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: the top.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: I don't think we've talked about one that's recent yet.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: But for this one, spoiler alert, Bioshock Infinite. She does
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: kill her father. It's very confusing. And this game also
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: has a storyline about racism that has a much debated...
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: It's been the source of much debate. Basically, the world
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that this one takes place in is in a still
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: sort of pre-Civil War times.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: And there's an underground railroad equivalent.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: And the game starts with the player winning a contest
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: to throw a ball at an interracial couple, which I
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: think was a white dude and a black lady. In
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: this society, you can't be an interracial couple. And it's
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a choice you can make to throw the ball at
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: them and blend in or throw.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: At their captors. So, yeah, this is.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: You can find people arguing that this is very anti-feminist games.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: All of them are that they are feminist games.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Lots of discourse about it. It does have one of
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: my favorite f * * * you endings, which I
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: will say, is when the developers are like... Basically, a
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: lot of gamer bros complained about one aspect of the
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: ending of the first one.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: And in this one, they were like, oh, really? We
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: will make it so much worse.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I love it. There are an assortment of powerful women
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in these games. There's Tenenbaum. They really built these worlds.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: But you only interact with them through documents and pictures.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: So, yeah. There is a lot of ongoing conversation about this.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: You've gone through a lot. Like, I'm sitting here listening.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, okay.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: Because I don't think I know much about Bioshock in general.
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: I just know it has something to do with something
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: wrong with your DNA or mixing up, you know, whatever,
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: atoms and such. I didn't know it was called Adam
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: and Eve, which I thought was funny. But I know
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: you got some more and I know you got.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: A real doozy.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, I do.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Coming up. But first, we do have a quick break
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: for a word from our sponsor.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: And we're back.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you, sponsor. And I'm going to do the thing
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: that Samantha hates the most. And I'm going to start
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: with the sequel here.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: I don't hate it the most, but it is a
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: pet peeve. I do not like watching the sequel without
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: seeing the first. I feel like that just... You have
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: to go in the timeline.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Apparently.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Watching Carrie 2 and never seeing Carrie is a great sin.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: In Samantha's book. I cannot believe this. But it will
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: be rectified.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I cannot believe this. So we're talking about Silent Hill,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: which is one of my very favorite games ever. And specifically,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: we're going to start with the second one because it's
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: probably the scariest game I've ever played.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: It's one of my favorite games ever. So, good golly,
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: if I had to.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Try to explain the plot of Silent Hill, oh, Lord.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Basically, there's this town.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: That was once a tourist town, but then there was
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: a cult and they summoned a demon and now people
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: go there to get punished for the sins.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: Uh, it's like purgatory.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Um, and we'll talk more about the origin because it
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: does have a young girl, uh, at the.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: Heart of it. But, uh, there are a lot of abortion.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of abortion imagery, pregnancy imagery, sexual assault imagery,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: monstrous masculinity, um, religious iconography, um, You find a lot
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: of statues of Madonna, the praying woman. So, Silent Hill 2,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I found so much interesting writing on it, saying that,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: first off, this game is very much a judgment of
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: the player, more so than most games I've ever played.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: And depending on how you play the game, that's going
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: to determine what ending you get. And they vary wildly here.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: So it's really asking you, like, who are you?
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's messed up.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's why I don't like these games.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: I don't want to know.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious what the first ending I ever got was.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Because now I've played it enough, I've gotten every ending
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: because I just want to see the ending. But many
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: people in the writings I found have claimed that this
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: game is a commentary on toxic masculinity.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: So let's break that down. James is the character that
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: you play. And James arrives to Silent Hill after receiving
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: this letter from his wife who died three years earlier.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: We're told because of a terminal illness. However, when you
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: get to the very end of the game, it is
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: revealed he killed her recently.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Smothered her with a pillow.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Because... Basically, he couldn't take it anymore. She sometimes says
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: she wanted to die. You do get flashbacks throughout the game.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: But she also says she didn't. He killed her because
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: he hated her. And he was sexually frustrated after years
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: of being unable to have sex with her. And he
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: feels guilt over this. And that's why he's in Silent Hill.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: He's being punished. She's in this purgatory town. And I
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: should also mention this purgatory is of your own making.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: It's from stuff of your mind. So, as you're playing,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: almost all of the monsters are feminine, sexualized, or children.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: But there's one that looms above all of the other ones,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: and he's known as Pyramid Head. And he has a
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: huge pyramid head, as you might imagine.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: He's not called that in the game, but that's just
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: what fans call him. And he's like this huge hulking
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: thing with... He carries this enormous... It's called a great knife.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: It's as big as him. It makes this horrible scratching
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: sound all along as he's coming for you. But in
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: these articles, a lot of people argued that Pyramid Head
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: represents hyper-masculinity. What James thinks is what a man should be.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: You know....
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: He doesn't have any emotion.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Uh, he's strong and he's got this huge phallic object
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: that he carries around. Um, and he terrorizes James. He
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: fetishizes him. He objectifies him. Um, at one point later
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: in the game, you can pick up the great knife.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: You can take it. But if you do, it slows
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: you down. Um, it's like a big hindrance. Like even
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: when you're not like about to use it, it slows
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: you down. Um, It is extremely powerful, but you're better
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: off without it. It not only represents, yeah, a penis,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: but the weight of James' guilt. That's, maybe not, but
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: that's how I interpret it. Pyramid Head can also choke
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: James and lick him. He chases James, he forces him
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: to run, renders him helpless. Like, it's interesting, I've never
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: thought about it, but he's not a hero. You're not
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: playing a hero in this game. You're playing a killer.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: someone who murdered his wife and feels guilty about it
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: and runs away a lot. Um, which is not your traditional, like,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: male protagonist that you do, you see in these games. Um,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: and James has to come to the realization that he
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: doesn't need Pyramid Head, he doesn't need this hyper-masculinity to
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: reject him.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: And to move on.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: If you want to get the good ending of the game,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you have to do this.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Um, Meanwhile, there's Maria, who, depending on your choices, she
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: can get treated very, very differently. She looks exactly like
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: James's wife. She sounds exactly like James's wife. Um, And
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the game's almost daring you to judge her for being
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: the same woman leading a different life because it's implied
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: she's a sex worker. I don't think she is.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Well, she's not real, but, you know, it's implied that
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: she is. She dies a lot.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: She dies multiple times because she follows you around as
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: a way to torment the lead male character and demonstrate
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: his failure when it came to protecting his.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Own wife, even though he's the one that killed her.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: She is a very, like, male gaze....
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Of what femininity is. Again, this is James' mind. So
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: she's sexy, she's flirty, she's dependent on a man for help.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: But James thinks he wanted his wife to be that. But,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, she even says, I can be whatever you
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: want me to be. He soon grows annoyed by her
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: and tries to abandon her multiple times. She exists as
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: this reminder of his failure. And you also have to
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: reject her. Um, to move on and get the good
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: ending of the game. You have to reject, he has
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: to reject this false idea of what he thinks women
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: should be and what he thinks men should be. Um,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: although you can get an ending where you stay with her, uh,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: where you stay with this false version of your wife. Um,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: defeating her is the final hurdle you have to achieve
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: to make peace with his wife. Um, and what happened
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: between them and he moves on and he adopts a
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: little girl named Laura. Um, So if you look at
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the monsters again, they're largely objectified women or diseased women.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: You shrill wife Mary, like she has this really shrill
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: scream she does in a hospital bed. She's a boss
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: fight too, implying he also has to reject the toxic
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: idea of a shrill nagging wife. Then you have an
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: abused woman named Angela with imagery around her assaults. And
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: she says to James, who tries to save her with
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: violence at one point, Um, you think you can save me.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Will you love me? Take care of me? Heal all
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: my pain?
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: That's what I thought. And then she leaves him.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Um, so just this idea, he thought he had to
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: take on, like save her, be her protector. And she
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: was like, no, you really don't. Um, so it was
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: interesting that the reading about this and, um, Some people
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: wrote that it was how everyone was a victim of
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: toxic masculinity here, even James. The only way to escape
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Silent Hill is to reject that and show some compassion.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: See?
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: See how deep these games— Is this the movie that's
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Sean Bean? Is he the main character?
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: The movie is interesting. I will say, I have a
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: friend who just watched it. She's like, what the hell?
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So, because it's been popping up on my, like,
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: you should watch this. But I think it was the
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: second one that it was advertising. And it looks like,
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: is it the dude, is it Jon Snow guy is
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: in there too?
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I've only seen the first one. I will tell you
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: it's not good. It does have a lot of interesting
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: messages in it. As you can probably tell from listening.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: To me talk about it.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: Right, right. I'm trying to remember because I've realized I
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: also confused this, don't judge me, with the Hills Have Eyes.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, oh. There's some overlap, unfortunately.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: Is it?
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's gross. It's gross. Yeah.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I saw it in high school and never seen it
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: again since. But I will tell you, Sean Bean spends
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: most of the movie looking confused. And almost all of
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: the main characters are women. So there's also feminist critiques
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: of this.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of the movie. But okay, let's step back. Sorry, Samantha.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: We'll go to the first one.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: All right, let's go.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: So just briefly, because I feel like I have the
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: most to say about the second one. So in the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: first one, you get drawn to this town, Silent Hill.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: And you meet Alessa.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: And Alessa is this young girl who has supernatural abilities.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: She's been tortured. She's been tormented. She's been burned. She
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: was used for this kind of ritual sacrifice that created
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: this purgatory Silent Hill thing. Her nightmares in the first
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: one are the source for Silent Hill. And her trying
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: to escape kind of starts the whole game.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: So it is.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: female trauma turned into merciless vengeance. Because in the first one,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you didn't necessarily do anything wrong that you know of.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: But she doesn't, she can't differentiate between that and who
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: deserves to be punished. Then there's Lisa, the perhaps overly
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: sexualized nurse, but does have one of my favorite death
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: scenes of all time. And Sybil, a very competent police
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: officer who is I guess she does get kind of
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: damseled in the end. But she's throughout the game very helpful.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Because yes, you are playing as a male character in
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: this one. However... In the third one, you play as
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Heather Mason, who is the daughter of the person you
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: played in the first one. She's the adopted daughter. She's
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: also the reincarnation of Alyssa and Cheryl. Don't worry if
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: you don't know, you don't understand that because it's confusing
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and I'm not going to take the time to unpack it.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: She does, so Heather does wear a miniskirt, but she's
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: not really sexualized.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: She feels much more practical.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: And that actually plays on her fears later because this
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: one has a lot of abortion and, like, fear of pregnancy. Like,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: it's the whole thing. She sort of, like, can give
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: birth to Satan, essentially. And this cult is trying to
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: make that happen. She does start out in a shopping mall. Like,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: she's a kid in a shopping mall. So it doesn't
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: feel so, like, oh, why is Jill Valentine in a
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: tube top during the zombie apocalypse? I've read a lot
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: of people who said she's almost a direct commentary on
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the schoolgirl character of the time who were usually kind
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: of creepily sexualized. She becomes the target of a cult,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: loses her father, then has to kick some serious ass
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: along the way. But again, there's that father-daughter relationship that
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: just comes up so much in these.
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: Well, like when you were mentioning about the fact that,
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: because you kind of quickly moved off from the second
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: one talking about how you adopted a daughter, but that
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: seems to be a trope with a lot of these
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: as a rectifying or.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like a redemptive.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: Redeeming a very bad character by saying, see, look, I
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: take care of a little girl. Not just like I'm
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: a protector, but it makes me a better person and
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: therefore you have more sympathy for me. Right.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: And it's like that innocence. Apparently, the little girl is
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the most innocent thing.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: I just had never really put together until I was
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: making this list. Like, wow, this is everywhere.
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: Now that you say that, because some of my favorite
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: Korean films has that same arc way as well. Like
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: they're rescuing a little girl who is, he is the
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: father figure and he sacrifices himself for her, but he's
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: done so many bad things that this is his redeeming quality.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: And so therefore all his past is forgiven because of this.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Exactly. Oh, and we're about to talk about that
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: a lot.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: But first, to wrap up, Heather, she does give birth
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: to God. It was a monster.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: I like that was just flippantly said. She does give
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: birth to God.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Honestly, in these realms, this game, it's kind of, yeah, like, oh, yeah,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: she gave birth to God, who is a monster that
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: she kills.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could really unpack a lot more on that
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: one too, but no time. I did want to wrap
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: up with Silent Hill 4. So I played through 5,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: but in Silent Hill 4, you do have this character
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: called Eileen.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: Silent Hill 4 is.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Actually a hilarious game to think about during quarantine because
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: the plot of that game is that you can't get
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: out of your apartment. You can't escape your apartment and
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: you're being tormented by these nightmares. But you do have
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: a little peephole and you can.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Spy on Eileen. That's great.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: And she... is dressed for a party, there's absolutely no
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: real reason for her to be dressed like that.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: It's just like short, tight, mini dress. And you do.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: She does follow you around. You do have to protect her.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: She gets bruised if she takes hits. And you do
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: get to play her for a while, but it just
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: feels so like.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know why she's in this dress and in
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: heels and she's slowing me down. And the fact that you're,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: as a player, getting annoyed at this kind of female depiction...
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: I do think is really problematic. And you do see
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: that quite a bit. And it's weird, too, because it
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: puts you in the position, like, I am a woman,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: but I'm playing this dude, and most of the developers
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: are probably dudes, and I'm getting annoyed by this female character.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: So it's almost like getting a peek in their mind
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: or something.
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Like, this is how you view women. Yeah.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, that could be said for many male directors
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: who do really ridiculous tropes for women of how they
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: see women.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: You're like, really? Have you ever really been around a woman?
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. All right.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: So we do have one of my favorites coming up.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: But first, we're going to pause for one more quick
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: break for a word from our sponsor.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: And we're back. Thank you, sponsor. And yes, we're back.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: With The Last of Us and The Last of Us
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Part 2. So yes, I would say spoilers. If you're
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: trying to not be spoiled by these, I would stop here.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: We're not going to get too into it, but still,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I think you can probably deduce what happens in these
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: games based on what we're going to say. So I'll
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: put that out there. So people know I love these games.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: It's pretty much a zombie apocalypse. Where in the first
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: one you play as Joel, who is, yes, this like
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: male protagonist who's done terrible things to survive. And your
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: job in the game is to protect Ellie, who is
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: a 14-year-old girl who is immune to the zombie virus.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: And you're trying to deliver her to the Firefly so
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: they can.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: Get a vaccine. Yeah.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So I love Ellie. Ellie is one of my favorite
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: characters of all time. And I remember the first time
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I played that game, she was such a breath of
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: fresh air. It was one of those things where I'm like,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: Know I was missing this, but here it is.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: She really subverts your expectation of young girls. I mean,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about how they represent innocence throughout this
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: and she still does but she is.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: Like not the demure.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: She curses she's feisty she's got really dirty humor she
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: can fight she's scrappy you do start out protecting her
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and Joel won't let her have a weapon even though
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: she's proven like no I can I can use one
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: I can protect myself and eventually yeah he's like nope
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: okay I'm gonna give you this weapon she really carries
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: her weight and And eventually you do spend a decent
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: section of the game playing her to protect the lead
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: male character. And it's still, you know, furthering his storyline,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: the whole thing is. But, oh gosh, and that's my
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: favorite part is when you play as her. It's much
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: scarier to me, but she is immune. So I love
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: how she uses that to her advantage.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: Like, oh, I love it.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: She is queer. She does survive an attempted rape. And
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: deals with the trauma of that. I'm glad they put
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: that in there. Because most games don't. Like, you kind
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: of just move on.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: Right. But she was clearly despondent after that and changed.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Well, not only that, but she also killed a man.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: And that traumatized her, too. And I'm like, oh, good.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: They're not just moving on. They did put, like, a lot...
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: I did witness this, y'all.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: Obviously.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she did.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: But they did put a lot of, like, depth of
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: character in that. Yeah, this is what the reality is.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: A young girl who.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: wants to be a good person is traumatized because she
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: had to survive and this is what she had to do.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: But the reality is you would have some kind of
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: trauma to you.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it's great that you... I mean,
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: it's great and sad.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: It's one of the things that makes the second one
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: so effective because then you see all of the trauma,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: what she's grown up into, and you just feel so sad,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: especially because you spent the first one protecting her. So
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: in this game, you also have Tess, who's Joel's partner
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: in crime. she's the one that convinces him that maybe
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: a cure is possible and he should take, he should
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: care enough about it to complete their journey, uh, after
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: she dies because she gets bitten. So she knows she's
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: going to die, um, and deliver Ellie to the fireflies.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: And this game also has Marlene, who is the leader
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: of the fireflies. Uh, and it does start off with
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the death of Joel's daughter, Sarah.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: Um, and.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: He, yeah, that propels kind of his like cold, violent,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: distant nature. Um, And you do spend a lot of
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: time protecting Ellie and Joel's violence, which is traditionally a
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: very masculine coded thing, is how you survive.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: More on that in a second. Let's talk about the
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: second one for a minute.
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: And these are things at least I can attest to
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: because I've witnessed it, not necessarily because I've played it.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: And we ended up having a big....
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: Deep dive about how you and I interpreted it. And
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: it was so different, like all the different ways. So
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: it was interesting to see your love and attachments and
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: my detachments and why that existed. So I will say
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: it had a very deep meaning behind your understanding of
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: these games.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Yes. In the sequel, y'all, there was a marathoning of
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: this game.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: So Ellie is the primary playable protagonist that you do
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: spend a decent amount of time playing another female character.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: And I know we're going to go into that a
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: little deeper.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: And Ellie is still a badass and awkward and funny.
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: But now you really see her loss of innocence living
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: in this world. You also have a lot of, like,
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: references to past events, but you don't exactly know what happened.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: So flashbacks are a big proponent to this game. And
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: seeing that and her really going all in on this
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: masculine violence revenge thing is a direct contrast to her
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: struggle with forgiveness when it comes to Joel, which.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: It's very painful. It's very painful as a player. I
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: did know that. The constant commentary I did have, she was.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Like, oh, no. My heart.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: My heart. And that was a lot of screaming.
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: At one point, though, we had to make an agreement
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: for me to be a present in these game playing
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: is that you have to give me spoiler alerts because
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: I cannot handle.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: bad.
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: Trauma like i just yeah today i'm like this day
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: and age right now this year i was like it's
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: too much so you have to give me a heads
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: up you don't have to tell me exactly what but
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: heads up is what i need um so that happened
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: a lot so yeah it was very painful to see
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: especially because you get connected to them as like you're
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: these people.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Um yeah and there were times when i was like
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: playing it and i was like please please please please
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: no please ellie no please don't do this And she
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: loses pretty much everything in one way or another in
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: pursuit of revenge.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Which brings us to Abby. Abby, Abby, Abby.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, as my friend likes to say, Abby and Ellie
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: are the same side of the coin. Zombies are on
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the other side. I even got a coin made for
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: her because she went into this whole thing about it.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: So Abby is also propelled by revenge of her father.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: She chose this chance at revenge time and time again
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: over a chance at happiness. as did Ellie, with her
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: ultimate journey ending when she realizes it's pointless. Ellie realizes
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: it's pointless, so does Abby, eventually, that it doesn't solve anything.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: We're not going to feel better. And Abby's determination for
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: revenge condemns all of her friends to death. Not that
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: they didn't want it to, or that they weren't involved,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: but she was the leader, and they might have let
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: it go, and she could not let it go. And
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the thing is, Ellie was innocent at the start of this,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: but was hurt in the fallout. And Abby's quest for
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: vengeance perpetuated a cycle of vengeance because Ellie later goes
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: on to threaten an innocent person, just as Abby did
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: in her determination to get revenge. So you see that
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: cycle of vengeance playing out and you see it on
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: a bigger scale with a war between the Washington Liberation Front,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: the WLL for wolves, and the Seraphite, which is a
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: religious group. So, you know, a bunch of factions of
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: people trying to survive in this apocalypse zombie world. And
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: they're warring and it's just so pointless. It's just so pointless.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: you also have Dina, Ellie's girlfriend. You do not mess
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: with Dina. She does get sidelined by pregnancy.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: But up until that point, she is a huge asset.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: And even after, with her help, deciphering and collecting information,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: her pregnancy, along with the influence of a younger character,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: is what ultimately stops Abby from her quest for vengeance,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: even after Ellie killed Abby's pregnant friend.
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: Oh, you're putting a lot of spoilers up in here.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. I tried really hard to avoid it,
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: but I can't.
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: I can't.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: And Dina fights for her family.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: We get to see their little slice of domesticity, her, Ellie,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: and their son, even if only for a little bit.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: So painful.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: Why?
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: Why hard? She did scream my heart quite often.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: And I kind of just looked over like, okay, we
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: may need to pause, but she couldn't pause.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: Not Annie.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: Annie cannot pause.
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: I will say I feel like Dina may have been
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: the innocence character in this for Ellie as well.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: Because Ellie tries to protect her in that same manner.
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: But not only her, the character Jessie, who I was
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: really upset. Honestly, that one upset me more.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Than any of the others, I think.
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: But Jessie also comes in as a protective and a
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: friend and an ally because of Dina.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: To me.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: And you do have other fleshed out characters there, like Yara,
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: who I only got to see briefly because.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm out. This is too much.
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: It's painful.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: It was. And then there's Nora, Mel, and Maria.
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: And there's a lot of that within the sprinkle of
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: outside characters that come in.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: And you're like, who are they? Remind me again. Also, dogs.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: I do want to point out, as you're going through
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: that list, I realized Maria's a lot of the leaders
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: in this game are women of the peaceful places. But
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: the leader of like the WLF is Isaac, who's a man.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: So that's interesting. Okay.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: And I did want to touch on really quickly. I
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: know I've mentioned it before. There was this huge backlash
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: against this game. And it's specifically Abby.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: So a.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Lot of these games are games where the protagonist is
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: usually pulled into or propelled by a white dude. Like,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: even if you're playing a female character, you got into
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: it because of a white dude.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: And they're usually games about male violence.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: So both of these vengeance stories and sort of father-daughter
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: forgiveness arcs.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: And I was thinking about this.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: People were so ready to forgive Joel from the first one,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the man who you played from the first one, for
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: his actions.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: Because he was protecting a young girl, like you said.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: But they were so ready to condemn Ellie, and especially Abby.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Which I maintain, if you'd started the game playing from
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: Abby's perspective, this would be a different conversation. And that
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: makes sense. But also, think about that before you judge
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: her so harshly. I just had never really realized.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: And then.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: The whole father-daughter relationship thing and the apocalypse made me
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: think that men, again, are really afraid.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: They don't know how to handle young girls.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: And it is interesting how often it comes up as, yeah,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: the little girl is the ultimate innocent and must be protected. So,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: all right, I could talk about those games forever, but
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: it's going long. So those are the ones I wanted
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: to focus on. I did have a couple honorable mentions here.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: You've got Alma Wade, the psychic villain from FEAR. Miku
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: from Fatal Frame. Everyone brings her up. She's searching for
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: a brother fighting vengeful spirits. You've got Regina from Dino Crisis,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: which I played as a kid and she had pink
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: hair and I thought it was the coolest thing. Um...
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Susan Ashworth from The Cat Lady. Okay, I got to
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: talk about this very briefly. But it really plays on
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: the cat lady trope. Her only companions are cats. Lots
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: of the villains in the game, which are called parasites,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: they feel like a commentary on violence against women. One
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: male doctor kills his female patients and uses them to
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: make art.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Another eats women.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: It plays on the damsel in distress trope, ramifications of stalkers.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Sounds like an interesting game. I've never played it. But
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: after I was reading the description, I was like, I
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: am into this.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: So the name of the game is The Cat Lady.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: The Cat Lady.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's part of the problem. I'm just going to
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: put that out there.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: But, huh.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: It's an indie game. It's a small game. Okay. But
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: I'm interested.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: You have Amanda Ripley from Alien Isolation, who is Ridley's
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: daughter from the Alien movie franchise, which I have played
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: and is terrifying.
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: That's the one that can hear you.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: You talked about being, yeah.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Alyssa from Clock Tower 3, who is this
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: girl who's kind of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She's
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: destined to fight these evil entities.
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: That game was pretty scary.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: And then the game Amy, which is a game with
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: two female protagonists where every enemy is a man. Now,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: also I found some games, very disturbing games, written by
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: male developers that are all about kind of enacting violent
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: fantasies on women that are in the survival horror thing.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: We're not really going to talk about that today, but
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: I am aware that that exists.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: And just some tropes to close this out. I've noticed, like,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: these games do have a lot of depiction of trauma.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: I was even curious, like, it's hard to think of
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: a female character in these games that doesn't have trauma.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: And what does that, like, is that because of the genre?
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: Or, I don't know. That's a conversation for another day, perhaps.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Is it a driver? Like, you have to have a motivation.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: Does it have to be, though? Like, I'm curious.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Depiction of sexual assault comes up on these. Depiction of
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: mental illness, which can be very problematic in these games,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: and in horror in general. Like Alice, Madness Returns, which
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: is a game where she thinks she's in Wonderland and kills,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: she thinks she's seeing monsters, but They're not. Well, I
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: guess they are. It's a lot. We can interpret that
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: as well. Clothing choice is obviously a problem in these. So,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: that's been a real whirlwind.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: This episode.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot longer than we thought.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: I just got going. I just got going.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: I could keep going forever.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: But obviously, we must eventually stop talking about survival horror.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: But if I did miss any games that you think
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: I should play or that you think we should come
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: back and talk about, even among the ones I've included,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: if you'd like something more in depth, people are probably like, what?
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: But you can send those suggestions to our email, which
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: is stuffmediamomstuff at iheartmedia.com. You can also send them on
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Instagram at stuffmomnevertoldyou or on Twitter at momstuffpodcast. Thanks as
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: always to our super producer, Andrew Howard.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: And thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: You is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.