October 24, 2025 • 19 mins
A teen walks into a mall in Silent Hill and learns she is the literal stuff of nightmares summoned by a cult. Silent Hill 3's Heather Mason handles hell with poise and style in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is any and Samantha, I want do stuff
never told you Production by Heart Radio and for Today's Classic,
I've already hinted at it, but we are bringing back
the fictional women episode that we did around Heather Mason
(00:26):
from Silent Hill three, because yes, I have been.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
On a Silent heillkick. It is.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
We're getting to the end of October, even though you
know we love talking about the stuff all the time,
but you know, October is a good time. And as
mentioned if you heard a recent Happy Hour, I said
that when we recorded this, I did not know there
was a second Silent Hill movie, Silent Hill to Revelation,
(00:57):
which hilariously is about Silent Hill three. So I like
to joke Silent Hill two, Silent Hill three. They're filming
Silent Hill two right now, so it should be there
another one Silent Hill three, Silent Hill two. Yes, this
(01:17):
movie has so much drama behind it. I'm not going
to go into it, but wow, the drama with the
directors and the writers that had to be replaced and
they bought new people in.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It has actors that.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I could not believe, like it did not know even
after watching it. Carrie I Moss is in there. Kit
Harrington is in there, and I have to say I've
really enjoyed it, but it's very terrible.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Did we not watch it together?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No, I did not know this existed. I did not
know this existed.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So I watched this before you did.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You must have. I didn't know it was the thing.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Didn't know.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I found it randomly, and I thought it was a
joke because I saw some pictures from it.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It was not a joke.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It was not a joke because I watched it pretty
immediately after I watched the first one, which we did.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Nope, I've never seen it. Les you didn't know it.
I knew it before you did. Oh yeah, it was
a wild time.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's also in three D, and it's not a good
three D That translates to watching it when you're on
your home screen. It doesn't really follow the plot very
well of the game. The characters are completely different. I mean,
the Heather is essentially the same, but everyone else that
(02:49):
is not what their deal was in the game, except
maybe Carrie Anne Moss's character. I guess I could see that,
but she doesn't have that sexy dominatrix side. I don't
know where that anyway, it's very different than the game.
The person who played Heather was a fan cast actually, yes,
(03:10):
And the person who created pyramid Head, which is kind
of the iconic villain of Silent Hell two. Pyramid Head
appears in both Silent Hell movies. The person who created
pyramid Head said after he saw this movie he wished
he'd never created pyramid Head at all.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Really harsh.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Harsh, Yes, because pyramid Head is kind of like a
sexy pyramid Head in here, and he becomes Heather's protector,
and pyramid Head is supposed to represent in the second game,
James's guilt for what he did, Like this is very
specifically supposed to be a mirror of James, and so
(03:55):
he's the creator of pyramid Head is furious at how
pearmid Head is being used.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, and remind me, it's the second one, the one
where she is a she's mirroring him or like like
fantasy level like where he's she's there, but she's not there.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Uh, I mean, Silent Hill's confusing like that. But yeah,
it's like you go into the other world.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Right, but she can still kind of contact him, like
there's there's a yes, Okay, So I did see it
was because I remember thinking Game of Thrones connections Sean
Bean and Kit Harrington, which is why I watched it
and knew it existed.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yes, well, let me tell you Sean Bean's character did
not make it in the game, but he can in
the movie. Yes, uh, yes, because she in the movie
they make it. I know I explained this in this episode,
but very briefly. Essentially, Heather is like a piece of
the Little Girl from the first one, right, a lesser
(04:55):
slash Sharon, and so he the pyramid Head, has this
connection to Alessa, who is the person they burned as
a sacrifice to make Silent Hill, and it's trying to
get all of the revenge. So he is protecting Heather,
and so she's kind of got this control over him,
and there's a big fight between him and carry a Moss.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Anyway it is.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I couldn't believe it, honestly, Samantha, I was speechless when
I saw it.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I can't believe that didn't come up because I knew
it existed when we talked about Solid Hill of movie and.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
How bad I was.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
No, I have no idea, and I did enjoy like
the visuals of Robbie the rabbit is the pink rabbit
that's often like seen with blood around its mouth or
something in the game.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And I like the like.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Carousel scene where she confronts her dark self dark Heather.
That's from the game. You have to fight dark Heather.
So there were pieces of it that I really enjoyed.
But I talked to another Silent Hell fan, a friend
of the show, Lauren, not a fan. She she was
(06:11):
very angry.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
About the whole thing. Really, no, definitely rightly. So I
think I had passed.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I had missed the mark, like and I'd already assumed
it would be bad because the first one was pretty bad.
So I had a good old time. But yeah, if
I if I thought it was going to be good
and based on the game, I would have been furious.
But instead I just had fun. I was laughing, and
I was like live texting my other Silent Heil.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Friend, Katie. I was like, you won't believe what I'm
witnessing right now? Are yeah again?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Or are you coming like me? Knowing that it's bad
but I have no context. I was like, Okay, this
is this is cool.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, this is a weird one. It's all right. Why
is Kit Harrington acting this way? No, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Well anyway, that's my update on this that was very
excited to share.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane
Never Told You production of iHeartRadio. And today it is
time for another segment of fictional Women around.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
The World helloween edition. Hello, Yes, it's yes.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
This one is on a character from one of my
very favorite franchises of all time, Silent Hill. We're talking
about Heather Mason from Silent Hell three and buckle in
because this one is going to be just so confusing,
which I think is fun.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Sala Hill is confusing. I don't understand. Keep going. You've
seen You've seen some of the movies, right, Yes, I've
seen the first movie.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
One movie, all right, which the movie was also confusing,
So yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I did want to put in some quick notes in
the beginning here. This one is like I'm not going
to go to in depth, but they're kind of disturbing,
so just to put that out there. There's some talk
about potential miscarriages, cults, gods, evil gods. Also, if you
(08:34):
played DDR as a kid, Silent Hill three did have
a DDR song, and I was an expert at it,
and I'm sure if I did it again today, I would.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Continue to nail it.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And in fact, at an event you had a couple
of years ago, Samantha me, Yes, there was a DDR
game there and me my friend Katie, we did this
song from Sionel three. So we did not We did
not nail it, but we at one time did. Also,
we just talked about the Konami code and our spoiled
(09:08):
Saturdays on fear Street.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Silent Hill three has the opening menu.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
If you enter the Konami code, you can get some
some extras, but it does do a very sexual sound
when you put it in, so.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Let's just put that out there. And also, this was.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
One of those games where there's a lot of costuming
choices for Heather when you get to the end, and
some of them are pretty sexualized. But okay, here we go.
Heather Mason is the main playable character of the two
thousand and three survival horror game Silent Hill three, though
(09:47):
she technically first appeared in the first entry of the series,
Silent Hills. So sound Hill, like I said, is one
of my very favorite franchises. I used to play them.
I think Silent Hill two is one of the scariest
games I've ever played. But I would play them all
the time. We like my brother and my friends would
play it. We would watch each other play it. We
would just get so scared. So Silent Hill is the
(10:08):
name of this franchise of video games that revolve around
a town called Silent Hill that may or not be purgatory,
depending on your interpretation. They're very very psychological horror. They're
very very interrogating you as the player about who you are. So,
especially the ending of Silent Hills, who is I think
(10:28):
kind of a almost a judgment who you are based
on what ending you get. So in the first Silent Hill,
this guy named Harry Mason accidentally crashes his car in
Silent Hill trying to avoid a young girl on the road.
And this young girl is named Alessa, And when he
(10:49):
wakes up, he cannot find his daughter, Cheryl, who had
also been in the car with him, so he goes
he goes about this creepy, foggy town of Silent Hill
looking for her, which is also a tourist town, which
kind of blows my mind. And it seems that things
are fluctuating between reality and literal hell. Like one minute,
it's sort of a foggy town, in the other minute,
(11:10):
it's like, actually hell. Perhaps it turns out that a lessa,
a supernatural being of sorts, is being tortured, has been
tortured by a cult and Silent Hill in order to
impregnate her and rebirth a god from her, and that
her nightmares are becoming reality through all of this. So basically,
(11:35):
she's having these nightmares and that's what that hell escape
world you're seeing is. And also she lured Harry and
Cheryl there because Cheryl is the missing part of her
soul due to a ritual gone wrong, and by reuniting,
she could kill herself and prevent an evil god from
being birthed from her.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yes, this is the plot of a video game. Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Depending on her acts the actions you made as a
player throughout the game, Alessa combines with Cheryl and becomes
a demon or a potential demon.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
And just I'm condensing this like so so much.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
If you ever want to talk about Silent Hill with me,
I could go on and on and on, but for
the sake of this episode, I'm condensing it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Wait, wait, wait a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Anyway, Harry battles the gods and Alissa's mother, Dahlia, who's
the leader of this cult, and once defeated, Alyssa and
Cheryl are fused together and reborn into a single soul
and a single baby, and Harry names this baby Heather.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Of course, okay, so here we go, Here we go.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
He moves to Portland to raise Heather, so he debates
strangling her, otherwise killing her or abandoning her, but ultimately
he decides to raise her and the two love each
other and doing so. In raising her, he has to
fend off the cults of Silent Hill attempting to abduct her.
(13:08):
He dyed her hair blonde from its original brown to
conceal her identity. So, seventeen years after the events at
the first Game, Heather Mason makes her debut as the
main character in Silent Hell three. She's a teenager in
this gray hoodie with cut off sleeves an army green
mini skirt, and she's got these boots, and she's got
(13:28):
this like short blonde hair hanging out of her hoodie,
and she's hanging out at the mall. Of course, of course,
malls are never good in horror movies or horror games,
and strange things start to happen. The mall is all red,
Suddenly there's chains everywhere like very.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Creepy, very hell scapey.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
There's a creepy, bloody bunny mascot Robbie the Rabbit, and monsters,
and the building seems to be trying to trap her inside.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Every time she tries to she gets trapped inside. She
returns home. She finally gets out.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
She returns home to find that her father, Harry, has
been murdered by a monster that she then has to face.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
The cult has.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Found her and is trying to bring her back to
Silent Hill. She also confronts Detective Douglas Cartland, who is
investigating her, and she is very suspicious of him. Nonetheless,
after the murder of her father, she agrees to accompany
him to Silent Hill, and what follows is a pretty
(14:33):
horrific journey where Heather confronts her past and resurfaces these memories,
finds out these truths about who she is in her
own past. She proves incredibly adaptable to disturbing situations. She's determined,
she's tenacious and kind. The relationship between Cartland and Heather
(14:55):
becomes somewhat of a father daughter one and the endings
vary based on decisions you make throughout the game. All
Silent Hell games are like that, or most of them
are like that, but generally Heather decides to change her
name to Cheryl Mason to honor her former self. And
(15:25):
this game was pretty popular. This character has appeared in
movies and also a few other games. She's pretty blunt, capable,
quick to anger, snarky, sarcastic, a lot of things that
are often attributed to teenagers, which I think was very
purposeful the whole is it a monster adolescent trope, especially
(15:45):
at the end, because there's one ending where you're like,
oh god, if she's.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
A monster or is she just being like a teenager?
I can't tell. She's a big fan of classical literature.
There's this whole.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
There are riddles in the game, and there you can
set there difficulty, and there's one that's all about Shakespeare
and the acts in there, and it's so difficult. Oh
my gosh. She's anti religious and or atheist. She's got
a lot of trauma. She's very independent, she's brave, she
(16:17):
doesn't really get scared like the part of them all
in the beginning, she's just kind of like rolling with
the punches, like okay, and she yes, she does have
so many costumes that you can find. Of note, her
main costume, wealth Feminine isn't really sexualized. A lot of
these costumes are, but her main one isn't, and a
lot of people write about that when they write up
(16:38):
about her, because she is someone who comes up as
like one of the best women in survival horror characters
you can play.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
The ending is like, okay, so.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
She vomits up a fetus.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
One has to kill it.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, so that's pretty gruesome. Her ending depends on what
you did throughout the game, as I said, but she yeah,
she generally like plays a prank on Douglas and it's
implied that they're gonna be okay. There's also the Possess
ending where she kills Douglas slash Cartland, and the UFO
ending where Harry is alive and commands aliens to destroy
(17:19):
Sound Hill. So every sound Hill game has the ending
where the aliens come in and destroy sound Hill pretty
much or the dog did it or whatever. They're like
funny ending the Dog Hill to the Dog ending yep. Yeah,
And I I really liked Heather when I played her
(17:39):
because she she's she feels to me like she's a
She's a pretty good rendering of a teenager.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
She's feminine, but not too feminine.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
She doesn't look like she kind of looks worn out
and tired all the time, which I think they did
on purpose. But she's she's funny and snarky, and uh,
she just really.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Gets things done. She's like, no, I'm going to go
do this.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And her story is revenge based a lot of it,
but then it becomes a almost empathetic to her past
self and to the sort of sister Claudia of her
past self.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So I really like it.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I think the Silent Hell games, especially the first three,
have a lot of interesting things to say. Sometimes they
did do well and sometimes they didn't. But kind of
this idea of being used your nightmares, being used your pain, being.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Used as a woman to birth a god or a demon.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Of course, is there is throughout in these games that
torturing women are using women's pain to benefit are to
create something monstrous. So yeah, maybe one day we'll do
a whole episode on Silent Hill.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I would love it.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Well, I've watched the first movie.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
That's what I can contribute.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, so you know Cheryl, who's the young girl from
the first movie.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
But yay, that's say that's all I got. Okay, Well
that's something I'm into it. Thank you, You're welcome. Wow.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
This brings us to the end of this edition of
Fictional Women Around the World. As always, if you have
any thoughts on Silent Hill of anybody we should cover
in this segment, please let us know. You can email
us That Stuff and your mom Stuff at ihartmedia dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast
or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You Things
is always too a super producer Grouse, do you know?
Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff on
(19:42):
are totally production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast from my
Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app
Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is any and Samantha, I want do stuff
never told you Production by Heart Radio and for Today's Classic,
I've already hinted at it, but we are bringing back
the fictional women episode that we did around Heather Mason
(00:26):
from Silent Hill three, because yes, I have been.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
On a Silent heillkick. It is.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
We're getting to the end of October, even though you
know we love talking about the stuff all the time,
but you know, October is a good time. And as
mentioned if you heard a recent Happy Hour, I said
that when we recorded this, I did not know there
was a second Silent Hill movie, Silent Hill to Revelation,
(00:57):
which hilariously is about Silent Hill three. So I like
to joke Silent Hill two, Silent Hill three. They're filming
Silent Hill two right now, so it should be there
another one Silent Hill three, Silent Hill two. Yes, this
(01:17):
movie has so much drama behind it. I'm not going
to go into it, but wow, the drama with the
directors and the writers that had to be replaced and
they bought new people in.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It has actors that.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I could not believe, like it did not know even
after watching it. Carrie I Moss is in there. Kit
Harrington is in there, and I have to say I've
really enjoyed it, but it's very terrible.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Did we not watch it together?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No, I did not know this existed. I did not
know this existed.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So I watched this before you did.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You must have. I didn't know it was the thing.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Didn't know.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I found it randomly, and I thought it was a
joke because I saw some pictures from it.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It was not a joke.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It was not a joke because I watched it pretty
immediately after I watched the first one, which we did.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Nope, I've never seen it. Les you didn't know it.
I knew it before you did. Oh yeah, it was
a wild time.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's also in three D, and it's not a good
three D That translates to watching it when you're on
your home screen. It doesn't really follow the plot very
well of the game. The characters are completely different. I mean,
the Heather is essentially the same, but everyone else that
(02:49):
is not what their deal was in the game, except
maybe Carrie Anne Moss's character. I guess I could see that,
but she doesn't have that sexy dominatrix side. I don't
know where that anyway, it's very different than the game.
The person who played Heather was a fan cast actually, yes,
(03:10):
And the person who created pyramid Head, which is kind
of the iconic villain of Silent Hell two. Pyramid Head
appears in both Silent Hell movies. The person who created
pyramid Head said after he saw this movie he wished
he'd never created pyramid Head at all.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Really harsh.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Harsh, Yes, because pyramid Head is kind of like a
sexy pyramid Head in here, and he becomes Heather's protector,
and pyramid Head is supposed to represent in the second game,
James's guilt for what he did, Like this is very
specifically supposed to be a mirror of James, and so
(03:55):
he's the creator of pyramid Head is furious at how
pearmid Head is being used.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, and remind me, it's the second one, the one
where she is a she's mirroring him or like like
fantasy level like where he's she's there, but she's not there.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Uh, I mean, Silent Hill's confusing like that. But yeah,
it's like you go into the other world.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Right, but she can still kind of contact him, like
there's there's a yes, Okay, So I did see it
was because I remember thinking Game of Thrones connections Sean
Bean and Kit Harrington, which is why I watched it
and knew it existed.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yes, well, let me tell you Sean Bean's character did
not make it in the game, but he can in
the movie. Yes, uh, yes, because she in the movie
they make it. I know I explained this in this episode,
but very briefly. Essentially, Heather is like a piece of
the Little Girl from the first one, right, a lesser
(04:55):
slash Sharon, and so he the pyramid Head, has this
connection to Alessa, who is the person they burned as
a sacrifice to make Silent Hill, and it's trying to
get all of the revenge. So he is protecting Heather,
and so she's kind of got this control over him,
and there's a big fight between him and carry a Moss.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Anyway it is.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I couldn't believe it, honestly, Samantha, I was speechless when
I saw it.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I can't believe that didn't come up because I knew
it existed when we talked about Solid Hill of movie and.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
How bad I was.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
No, I have no idea, and I did enjoy like
the visuals of Robbie the rabbit is the pink rabbit
that's often like seen with blood around its mouth or
something in the game.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And I like the like.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Carousel scene where she confronts her dark self dark Heather.
That's from the game. You have to fight dark Heather.
So there were pieces of it that I really enjoyed.
But I talked to another Silent Hell fan, a friend
of the show, Lauren, not a fan. She she was
(06:11):
very angry.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
About the whole thing. Really, no, definitely rightly. So I
think I had passed.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I had missed the mark, like and I'd already assumed
it would be bad because the first one was pretty bad.
So I had a good old time. But yeah, if
I if I thought it was going to be good
and based on the game, I would have been furious.
But instead I just had fun. I was laughing, and
I was like live texting my other Silent Heil.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Friend, Katie. I was like, you won't believe what I'm
witnessing right now? Are yeah again?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Or are you coming like me? Knowing that it's bad
but I have no context. I was like, Okay, this
is this is cool.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, this is a weird one. It's all right. Why
is Kit Harrington acting this way? No, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Well anyway, that's my update on this that was very
excited to share.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane
Never Told You production of iHeartRadio. And today it is
time for another segment of fictional Women around.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
The World helloween edition. Hello, Yes, it's yes.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
This one is on a character from one of my
very favorite franchises of all time, Silent Hill. We're talking
about Heather Mason from Silent Hell three and buckle in
because this one is going to be just so confusing,
which I think is fun.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Sala Hill is confusing. I don't understand. Keep going. You've
seen You've seen some of the movies, right, Yes, I've
seen the first movie.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
One movie, all right, which the movie was also confusing,
So yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I did want to put in some quick notes in
the beginning here. This one is like I'm not going
to go to in depth, but they're kind of disturbing,
so just to put that out there. There's some talk
about potential miscarriages, cults, gods, evil gods. Also, if you
(08:34):
played DDR as a kid, Silent Hill three did have
a DDR song, and I was an expert at it,
and I'm sure if I did it again today, I would.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Continue to nail it.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And in fact, at an event you had a couple
of years ago, Samantha me, Yes, there was a DDR
game there and me my friend Katie, we did this
song from Sionel three. So we did not We did
not nail it, but we at one time did. Also,
we just talked about the Konami code and our spoiled
(09:08):
Saturdays on fear Street.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Silent Hill three has the opening menu.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
If you enter the Konami code, you can get some
some extras, but it does do a very sexual sound
when you put it in, so.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Let's just put that out there. And also, this was.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
One of those games where there's a lot of costuming
choices for Heather when you get to the end, and
some of them are pretty sexualized. But okay, here we go.
Heather Mason is the main playable character of the two
thousand and three survival horror game Silent Hill three, though
(09:47):
she technically first appeared in the first entry of the series,
Silent Hills. So sound Hill, like I said, is one
of my very favorite franchises. I used to play them.
I think Silent Hill two is one of the scariest
games I've ever played. But I would play them all
the time. We like my brother and my friends would
play it. We would watch each other play it. We
would just get so scared. So Silent Hill is the
(10:08):
name of this franchise of video games that revolve around
a town called Silent Hill that may or not be purgatory,
depending on your interpretation. They're very very psychological horror. They're
very very interrogating you as the player about who you are. So,
especially the ending of Silent Hills, who is I think
(10:28):
kind of a almost a judgment who you are based
on what ending you get. So in the first Silent Hill,
this guy named Harry Mason accidentally crashes his car in
Silent Hill trying to avoid a young girl on the road.
And this young girl is named Alessa, And when he
(10:49):
wakes up, he cannot find his daughter, Cheryl, who had
also been in the car with him, so he goes
he goes about this creepy, foggy town of Silent Hill
looking for her, which is also a tourist town, which
kind of blows my mind. And it seems that things
are fluctuating between reality and literal hell. Like one minute,
it's sort of a foggy town, in the other minute,
(11:10):
it's like, actually hell. Perhaps it turns out that a lessa,
a supernatural being of sorts, is being tortured, has been
tortured by a cult and Silent Hill in order to
impregnate her and rebirth a god from her, and that
her nightmares are becoming reality through all of this. So basically,
(11:35):
she's having these nightmares and that's what that hell escape
world you're seeing is. And also she lured Harry and
Cheryl there because Cheryl is the missing part of her
soul due to a ritual gone wrong, and by reuniting,
she could kill herself and prevent an evil god from
being birthed from her.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yes, this is the plot of a video game. Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Depending on her acts the actions you made as a
player throughout the game, Alessa combines with Cheryl and becomes
a demon or a potential demon.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
And just I'm condensing this like so so much.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
If you ever want to talk about Silent Hill with me,
I could go on and on and on, but for
the sake of this episode, I'm condensing it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Wait, wait, wait a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Anyway, Harry battles the gods and Alissa's mother, Dahlia, who's
the leader of this cult, and once defeated, Alyssa and
Cheryl are fused together and reborn into a single soul
and a single baby, and Harry names this baby Heather.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Of course, okay, so here we go, Here we go.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
He moves to Portland to raise Heather, so he debates
strangling her, otherwise killing her or abandoning her, but ultimately
he decides to raise her and the two love each
other and doing so. In raising her, he has to
fend off the cults of Silent Hill attempting to abduct her.
(13:08):
He dyed her hair blonde from its original brown to
conceal her identity. So, seventeen years after the events at
the first Game, Heather Mason makes her debut as the
main character in Silent Hell three. She's a teenager in
this gray hoodie with cut off sleeves an army green
mini skirt, and she's got these boots, and she's got
(13:28):
this like short blonde hair hanging out of her hoodie,
and she's hanging out at the mall. Of course, of course,
malls are never good in horror movies or horror games,
and strange things start to happen. The mall is all red,
Suddenly there's chains everywhere like very.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Creepy, very hell scapey.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
There's a creepy, bloody bunny mascot Robbie the Rabbit, and monsters,
and the building seems to be trying to trap her inside.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Every time she tries to she gets trapped inside. She
returns home. She finally gets out.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
She returns home to find that her father, Harry, has
been murdered by a monster that she then has to face.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
The cult has.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Found her and is trying to bring her back to
Silent Hill. She also confronts Detective Douglas Cartland, who is
investigating her, and she is very suspicious of him. Nonetheless,
after the murder of her father, she agrees to accompany
him to Silent Hill, and what follows is a pretty
(14:33):
horrific journey where Heather confronts her past and resurfaces these memories,
finds out these truths about who she is in her
own past. She proves incredibly adaptable to disturbing situations. She's determined,
she's tenacious and kind. The relationship between Cartland and Heather
(14:55):
becomes somewhat of a father daughter one and the endings
vary based on decisions you make throughout the game. All
Silent Hell games are like that, or most of them
are like that, but generally Heather decides to change her
name to Cheryl Mason to honor her former self. And
(15:25):
this game was pretty popular. This character has appeared in
movies and also a few other games. She's pretty blunt, capable,
quick to anger, snarky, sarcastic, a lot of things that
are often attributed to teenagers, which I think was very
purposeful the whole is it a monster adolescent trope, especially
(15:45):
at the end, because there's one ending where you're like,
oh god, if she's.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
A monster or is she just being like a teenager?
I can't tell. She's a big fan of classical literature.
There's this whole.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
There are riddles in the game, and there you can
set there difficulty, and there's one that's all about Shakespeare
and the acts in there, and it's so difficult. Oh
my gosh. She's anti religious and or atheist. She's got
a lot of trauma. She's very independent, she's brave, she
(16:17):
doesn't really get scared like the part of them all
in the beginning, she's just kind of like rolling with
the punches, like okay, and she yes, she does have
so many costumes that you can find. Of note, her
main costume, wealth Feminine isn't really sexualized. A lot of
these costumes are, but her main one isn't, and a
lot of people write about that when they write up
(16:38):
about her, because she is someone who comes up as
like one of the best women in survival horror characters
you can play.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
The ending is like, okay, so.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
She vomits up a fetus.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
One has to kill it.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, so that's pretty gruesome. Her ending depends on what
you did throughout the game, as I said, but she yeah,
she generally like plays a prank on Douglas and it's
implied that they're gonna be okay. There's also the Possess
ending where she kills Douglas slash Cartland, and the UFO
ending where Harry is alive and commands aliens to destroy
(17:19):
Sound Hill. So every sound Hill game has the ending
where the aliens come in and destroy sound Hill pretty
much or the dog did it or whatever. They're like
funny ending the Dog Hill to the Dog ending yep. Yeah,
And I I really liked Heather when I played her
(17:39):
because she she's she feels to me like she's a
She's a pretty good rendering of a teenager.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
She's feminine, but not too feminine.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
She doesn't look like she kind of looks worn out
and tired all the time, which I think they did
on purpose. But she's she's funny and snarky, and uh,
she just really.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Gets things done. She's like, no, I'm going to go
do this.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And her story is revenge based a lot of it,
but then it becomes a almost empathetic to her past
self and to the sort of sister Claudia of her
past self.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So I really like it.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I think the Silent Hell games, especially the first three,
have a lot of interesting things to say. Sometimes they
did do well and sometimes they didn't. But kind of
this idea of being used your nightmares, being used your pain, being.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Used as a woman to birth a god or a demon.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Of course, is there is throughout in these games that
torturing women are using women's pain to benefit are to
create something monstrous. So yeah, maybe one day we'll do
a whole episode on Silent Hill.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I would love it.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Well, I've watched the first movie.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
That's what I can contribute.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, so you know Cheryl, who's the young girl from
the first movie.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
But yay, that's say that's all I got. Okay, Well
that's something I'm into it. Thank you, You're welcome. Wow.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
This brings us to the end of this edition of
Fictional Women Around the World. As always, if you have
any thoughts on Silent Hill of anybody we should cover
in this segment, please let us know. You can email
us That Stuff and your mom Stuff at ihartmedia dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast
or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You Things
is always too a super producer Grouse, do you know?
Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff on
(19:42):
are totally production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast from my
Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app
Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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