SMNTY Classics: Women In Survival Horror

They're survivors. They're not going to give up. Anney and Samantha discuss some of the most prominent women in the survival horror video game genre in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
And Samantha.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
And welcome to Stuff Never Told You, a production by HeartRadio.
So today, I am doing the horrible friend thing I
do to Samantha every year, which is that, happy birthday, Samantha.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
As this comes out, it is your birthday. Yes, but
it's also the last of us day. Of course. Yes, yes,
of course.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
And so this actually was a suggestion of yours, I
will say that, to bring back. And it's on women
in survival horror, particularly survival horror video games. And I
was hesitant to bring it back because there are spoilers
for The Last of Us and The Last of Us
2 in this.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
So if you really don't want to.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Be spoiled, I've spoken before, it's kind of a strange
situation being... where the games have been out for a while,
but the show is new. But anyway, if you don't
want to be spoiled, I would say skip this one
or definitely skip the part where I'm talking.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
About The Last of Us.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
But I also had this on my mind because the
new Resident Evil movie came out, and we talk about
that in here.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
And also we're entering Halloween season.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
It's true.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
It's time.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's time.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yes. So please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
And Samantha.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
And welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You, a production
of iHeartRadio. So, Samantha, as you know, we are in
my favorite season of scary things. Although the world is
terrifying right now, but, you know, you can find a

(01:57):
haven in horror movies.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Or at least I can. You're hoping that you can.
I'm hoping. Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
And for today's question, I wanted to ask you, have
you ever played a scary video game?

Speaker 4 (02:09):
No.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Never. Have you ever been scared playing a video game
that wasn't scary?

Speaker 4 (02:14):
No.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
You've never had an epic.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Battle of Mario Kart and felt just fear in your
heart that you might be embarrassed?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Not at all.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
Because I already have very low expectations. And then I
give a disclaimer to everyone that I'm playing with. about
how bad I am at video games and or how
I could care less about most of these video games.
You know, it took the pandemic for me to actually
start enjoying these things.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
As you know.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
So because I just never cared. Of course, my partner
is really big into the video games. And he loves
like The Witcher and Zelda, all of that. So to me,
that's not necessarily scary. I know you talked about your
scary video games. And I finally watched you guys play
a couple of them. Yeah. But my over-anticipation about how

(03:08):
things are going to go bad is so high that I,
you know, I have to give warnings or I'm going
to walk out because I just don't care. I don't
want to know.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
But yeah, no, I don't typically play it like that.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
I don't play those games because I don't quite understand
them either, I think.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Like storyline-wise or mechanic-wise?

Speaker 2 (03:27):
All of those things.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
I'm like, so what's the point of having a story
if you're trying to play a game, but inevitably you're
just playing into their story, which has already been written out?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
So I've asked, because, you know, I asked you three times.
I was like, wait, what? What is this? Wait, why?
I think a lot of the question is why.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
But for like, yeah, for me, like what I enjoy
is silly games that we get to punch each other
in the face and see who wins.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
End of story. Very two-dimensional characters, too, typically.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Uh-huh.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Well, we clearly have the very opposite taste because the story,
to me, is the most important thing. Right.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
The most important thing.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
And actually, we're going to talk about one game that
really messed with, I guess, the video game mechanics you're
talking about where the story's already written. There's one game
we're going to talk about in here where they mess
with that, and it was wonderful. Yeah, I love, love, love,
love scary video games. You did get to see me
play virtual reality, the VR version of Five Nights at Freddy's.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
And that was terrifying.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
I may have to post up. I may have to
because I took a video.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
And it's not even the best video because the best
video is when you actually jump and fall backwards onto
a chair. But yeah, I definitely took a video of
you playing in which you just start screaming. And by
the way, it would be in NSFW because there's a
lot of cursing.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
It was terrifying.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, I put the headset on for like a second,
looked around. I was like, nope. And I took it
right back off.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
This is true. This is true. And that wasn't even
the game.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
No.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
It was just like the opening screen.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, I got turned around. I was like, there's a
thing trying to come up behind me.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
Those are animatronic things, which, you know, I already have
a little fear that they're going to come to life.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
And in this video game, they come to life. And
I was like, oh, hell no. Now I'm good.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yeah, no, that was fair.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
I highly recommend it, both the non-VR and VR versions
for anybody who's interested, because it was terrifying. And they're funny, also.
So today we're talking about women and girls in the
survival horror genre of video games, which is one of
my very favorite genres.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
And I'm actually.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
I'm going to put a disclaimer here that I'm going
to be very selfish in this one. Because it is
one of my favorite genres. And I'm going to talk
about the ones I have personal experience with. So I
know a lot of you will probably get angry at
some things that are not on this list. Always write in.
I'm happy to play another survival horror video game. And

(06:01):
we do have a list of honorable mentions that I know...
people are going to be like, well, you didn't talk
about this clear example. But yeah, I'm going to be
a little selfish. And I also want to put in
another disclaimer. Anyone who's played these games will know a
lot of them come from very sprawling video game franchises

(06:21):
with storylines that are really tough to wrangle. I actually
love this thought exercise of trying to explain some of
these games because they're so weird and.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
They've been retconned.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Resident Evil slash Biohazard is the one that has come
to mind.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Also Silent Hill, oh gosh.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Where they're just complicated. And again, I'm going to kind
of stick to what I know about them and the
research I've done on them. But Resident Evil, for example,
you can have one iteration of a female character that's
pretty well-rounded and then another game... she's almost completely different
and wearing heels.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
So just to put that out there.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Also, also want to put in here, a lot of
disclaimers already, that not every game or character I mention
is great when it comes to representation and feminism.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
And I do think it's.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Okay to enjoy something that isn't actively causing harm, but
always be mindful of those messages and the entertainment that
you consume. So just putting that out there as well.
And a quick trigger warning, because we are talking about
the horror genre, we are going to briefly discuss some

(07:35):
violence against women and sexual assault issues.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
So put that out there.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
And my contribution was very small, as you could have
already told, as you could already tell when we were
discussing whether or not I played these games.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
I know that there are movie versions of these games,
a lot of them.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
And I'm curious when we get to some of them,
if you've seen them and what your thoughts were.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
To be fair, I don't think I've seen them. Oh,
that's not.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
No.

Speaker 4 (08:01):
Because I probably should watch at least Silent Hill because
that is seemingly up my alley. But I feel like
the only things I've seen available are the sequels. And
that is something I will not do. I will not
see a sequel over the original, which you and I
have had discussions about. I'm appalled by some of your
viewing experiences.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yep, Samantha is very angry at me right now.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
But yeah, so kind of that's the problem, and I
probably should go back to it, but because also I
don't have a big love for these games. So I
will put that as like, I don't know what the
hell I'm talking about, but I will join the discussion
as much as I can. So, as you know, we've
talked a lot about how women love horror. I love horror,
just not video gaming, so it's kind of one or
the other for me. But I'm getting into it, y'all.

(08:47):
I am getting into it. And yet, you know that
there has been a traditional lack of representation of women
in the genre. And apparently, in video games at large.
So I do see a lot of them in that
you tell me about them, I feel like. So therefore,
I notice those more than I do anything else. I
probably know more about those games, I feel like, than others.
So I feel like I'm a one-up in that tradition. But,

(09:12):
of course, and I did get to know in this,
it gets even worse when it comes to women of
color and queer women, which seems to be a new
focus when it's not just queerbaiting to see them as
actually thoughtful characters.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Right.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
And for anyone who's listening and is like, like Samantha, oh,
I've never played these video games. I won't be able
to relate to this conversation. If you, you'll recognize these tropes. Like,
they're not even in just horror. So, never fear.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
It is all inclusive.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
We try our best to make our video game nerdery
episodes inclusive. Um, So, when women do show up in
these games, they are almost always one of two characters
in survival horror. If they're a playable protagonist, protagonist, meaning you,
a person, plays them, they're strong, smart, capable, although often

(10:07):
provocatively dressed and not dressed for the situation that they're in. Or,
if they're not that, they're the damsel in distress that
serves to lead the male character's story And also probably
provocatively dressed. A plot and set piece to up the
tension and nothing more. Male protagonists and non-playable characters are

(10:29):
almost always capable and also very rarely provocatively dressed.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
I'm always shocked by how somehow during the apocalyptic moments,
women end up being able to have perfectly cut belly shirts.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Oh, yeah. That was one of my favorite things about...
There's an interview, Mila Jovovich.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
I think that's how you say her name.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
She's in Resident Evil, which is based on the games.
And there was one movie where people were like, don't
you think it's odd? An interviewer was asking her that
you're wearing kind of this like tube top and short shorts.
And she said, well, we wrote in a heat wave
to explain it. And that just cracked me up so much.

(11:16):
And it was actually freezing. They were filming in winter
and they had CGI.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Their breath out.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
But they wanted an excuse for them to be provocatively dressed.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Like, it's not... There's not a problem in women dressing
that way.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
No, absolutely not.

Speaker 4 (11:30):
Obviously, this is for the male gaze. This is not
about women being comfortable.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
This is literally... Well.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
She is a superhero. We can't just have her being
in a t-shirt and jeans. We need to have her
in this ridiculously form-fitting leather, somehow metal, somehow chain bikini
type of thing with a pistol on her thigh strap.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Because, you know, who doesn't have that?

Speaker 3 (11:54):
I think in one of them.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
I think in one of them, it's already been the apocalypse,
and she's wearing fishnet stockings and wandering the desert.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Who doesn't fall?

Speaker 1 (12:04):
I won't.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
If you're in the apocalypse, maybe you want to feel
good sometimes. I understand.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
You got to feel good. And fishnet hoes while fighting zombies?
Come on.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Come on.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Okay. We're getting off track already.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Often these male characters act as protectors for the female
protagonist when there is one. So even if you're playing
a strong, capable female character, there's usually a male character.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
That's still stepping in to protect you.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
And also, I do use the term strong female character
a lot in this. When I say that, what I
really mean is a well-written character that isn't dependent on
men at all.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
To rescue her.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
But I know there's been a lot of back and
forth on that whole kind of phrase. And what do
we really mean when we say it? So, put that
out there too. Let's start, since we've already mentioned it
a couple times, with Resident Evil. So, Resident Evil, if
I had to explain it very shortly, is basically capitalism

(13:10):
gone really.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Wrong, led to zombie apocalypse.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Always.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
And that's, yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
The Umbrella Corporation invented this T-virus, and it got out
and made all of these zombies and all of these creatures. So,
the first game, which I've only played once, and it
is extremely difficult.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
I was going to ask, have you played this game? So,
the first, you played once. Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
I've played Resident Evil 1 through 5.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Oh, damn.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
And a bunch of the, like, side... like Crow and
Veronica and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Have you seen all the movies?

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yes, I have, and I've seen them all in theaters.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Die hard.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah. Well, and it's really funny, too, because as I
was researching this, and I'm like, feminism, Resident Evil, and
a lot of people haven't played the games, but they've
seen the movies, and there were a lot of essays about, like,
you know, these movies aren't great, but we're always saying, like,
why can men have mediocre movies and it's fine? But
we're not holding up like, well, see, these movies make

(14:13):
a lot of money. And most of the characters in
them are women, like most of the lead characters. So,
I mean, there is that.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
There is that.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
There is also interesting dressing, but there is in the
games as well. So in the first game, which came
out in 1996, she is a member of S.T.A.R.S., which
is this elite fighting.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Force, kind of like SWAT.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Wait, did you mention who she is?

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Jill Valentine, yes. Okay.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Jill Valentine. Yeah, sorry. So, she is what is considered
one of the first playable female characters in survival horror.
If you find a list of best characters, women in
survival horror, she's on there.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
I guarantee you she'll be on there. And she, I mean,
in the first game, she.
She was dressed in, like, police gear.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
I most associate her with the third game, though, which
is where she fights Nemesis, which is this huge, like,
hulking zombie. He's terrifying, terrifying. And she fights him multiple times.
He is not to be trifled with. He terrified me. Like,
I would just hear that music cue, and I'm like.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Ah, no! Run, run, run, run, run! But, yeah, she
was a.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
She was a very strong, like she had her plans
and she was going to make it happen. She was
going to fight Nemesis. She was going to take him down.
She even like steals his rocket launcher. That's an option
and shoots him with it. But yeah, she was wearing
a mini skirt and a tube top. And I really
can't think of a less functional outfit during a zombie

(16:01):
apocalypse than a tube top. I just, you're going to
constantly be readjusting. Oh, you're doing that just standing. So
I can't imagine running. Right. And she does, she wears
a sweater tied around her waist, which always cracks me up.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Maybe there was a heat wave.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
But when you are like just standing still and the
game is her, she like, pivots her hips, like kind
of sways her.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
Hips and she digs her hand. Yeah. And it's like,
look at me, look at my body here. It's so good.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Which is probably completely out of proportion and it's not
plausible in real life.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
Um, yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Breast animators, they exist. Um, so there, that's Jill. She's
also in, uh, the movies, um, And she wears the
same outfit in the movies. It's very iconic, I'll say that. Like,
every time I see it, I'm like, oh yeah, Jill Valentine.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
There it is.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Claire Redfield is another character from Resident Evil. She first
appears in Resident Evil 2. She goes into this zombie-infested
raccoon city searching for her brother. She doesn't have any training,
but she's determined. She goes on to lead the activist
organization TerraSave.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
I loved Claire.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
So the Resident Evil 2 is set up where you
play the story as one Leon, male character, and then
you play it on her side. And they kind of
intersect in that way.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
And Claire, I read a lot of interesting... I love
that these articles exist.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
But I read interesting articles about how it's almost a
commentary on male stalking. Because there's this character, Tyrant... who's just, again,
this huge zombie, and he's just following her around and
harassing her, trying to kill her. But that was interesting
to me, that take of she's having to deal with that,
whereas Leon isn't. And just this hulking thing, following her,

(17:59):
always this threat in the back of your mind.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
So that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
It is. You also have Ada Wong, who is a
spy assassin.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
But she wears a sweetheart dress and pumps.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
What are sweetheart dresses?

Speaker 1 (18:16):
So those are like plunging neckline, but kind of like
it goes down and then comes in.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Almost like a diamond shape. I'm making a lot of
gestures that.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
The listeners can't see.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
There's so much gesture.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
Like downward pointing with her whole hands.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
I'm painting quite the picture. You are.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
I'm going to have to go look at her. I
don't even know if I know what that is, but okay.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
And then there's Ashley Graham. She's from Resident Evil 4.
She's the president's daughter. And the whole game is based
on you like rescuing her. She has this plaid skirt.
the sleeveless top and a sweater tied around her neck.
I don't know why the sweater tied around.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Is it supposed to be a prep school type of thing?

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
You can frequently see up her skirt when she is underage.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Oh, nice.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she is very damsel
in distress. She is often getting carried away by other
men slash zombies, screaming, and you have.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
To rescue her.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Like it's, Because in every fight you get in, there's
the potential for that to happen. So eventually, for me
as a player, I was so annoyed by her. I
was so annoyed.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Like, can you just not?

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Get kidnapped.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
Yeah. So it's like Princess Toadstool, Princess Peach, except for
it's a PG-13 version.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Oh, yeah. And like, it's a bad.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
She's not a great feminist depiction because she is, her
voice is pretty shrill and she's like, help, help.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
It happens all the time. All the time. All the time.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Maybe I just wasn't very good at that game.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
She really doesn't have any agency.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
There's like one scene you play as her, but that's
the scene when you keep seeing up her skirt.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Oh, no.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Uh-uh. Yeah, because she crawls through things, but the camera
angles from behind, so.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Okay, then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
So those are the ones I think of when I
think of Resident Evil. I know there's a bunch more,
like Rebecca, that we could talk about, but then this
podcast would never end.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
So we're going to move on.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
To Parasite Eve, which I'm so excited to talk about.
So this was a 1998 game about the mitochondrial Eve,
which is a concept that I love. So the villain,
who can make you spontaneously combust, or she can mutate
you into a monster by activating something in your mitochondria... Eve,

(20:48):
and then you have the protagonist, Aya, who is immune.
Aya is a 25-year-old New York City cop who wears
job-appropriate clothes. What?

Speaker 3 (20:59):
And that was truly a rarity at its time. Very much.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
But, from what I understand, because I've only played the
first one, two and three really reversed and sexualized the
female protagonist. And from the images, I just did a
quick search. Yeah. Oh, wow. She's like, there's a shower scene.
You can get attacked and get your clothes ripped off
and they stay ripped off. I read a really interesting

(21:24):
article about how gamer great bros like to point out
that us dreaded social justice warriors ruin their games. But
what about when they're ruining... They're ruining the games.

Speaker 4 (21:36):
I don't need to see all that.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
I just want to see her turn people into monsters.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Can't I at least have that?

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Aya isn't a tomboy, and she really could have been.
She's capable, but she's pretty sensitive. She frequently is thinking
about the loss of her sister, but never in a
way that holds her back.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
And then there's Eve, the games villain. She is both.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
The Madonna and the whore, she's sexualized, but she's like
often monstrous. So both at the same time, and your
brain is like, oh my God, what is happening? And
then she, oh gosh, she, instead of destroying, she wants
to create. And that is an act of destruction, the
way she's trying to do it. But that's an interesting
aspect of that as well. And when you think about

(22:26):
like the miracle of life, It gets turned into something
horrific when you learn she's pregnant.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
You're like, oh, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, yeah. So those games, I actually never beat that
game either because it was really difficult, like, just playing-wise.
And I got to this crab. I still remember. I
got to this stupid crab in the sewer, and I
couldn't kill him. I didn't have enough ammo, and I
kept dying. And I think to this day, I have
that game. I bet if I tried to load it
right now, I'd be at that damn crab.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Interesting concept.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
It's my Moby Dick. The crab from Parasite Eve. I
don't think it was even a boss battle.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Jeez. Alright, so Bioshock.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
I also wanted to talk about Bioshock, which is one
of my favorite games ever. It's the one when I
said there's a game that messes with video game mechanics.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
It's this one.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
They like to troll people, don't they?

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're going to talk about that
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
But... So as I got to thinking about this game,
and there's a lot of debate about the feminism of
this game. So this is set in kind of an
alternate reality world that's underground called Rapture, where things have
gone horribly awry. And people are addicted to this substance

(23:45):
called Adam.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
And yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll talk about that in a second.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
But to get Adam from dead bodies, you need a
little sister who has an injector and she can inject.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Pull it out of their bodies.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
And these little sisters, which are creepy little children, are
protected by big daddies who are like these huge scuba
diving things that you do.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
Not want to mess with. They will kill you.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
So, if you think about that aspect of the game,
if you look at the little sister, big daddy thing,
I've been thinking about this a lot because it's basically
a commentary on how young girls are the most innocent
because the player, you as the player have to make
the moral choice of whether to kill them or not
because you need Adam too.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Right.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
But you don't need to kill them. You could, it
will just be harder. The game will be harder for
you if you don't. And for this choice, the developers
chose a little girl.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Like that's the moral.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Right.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
So that's really interesting. I hadn't really considered it before.
I will say I'm a, I'm a big softie. I
could never kill one. I could never have killed a
little sister.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
You'll kill all the dogs.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Oh, wait. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
That's another story.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Yeah, coming up.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
And then just the dynamic of, which we are going
to talk about because it does appear in these games,
these survival horror games a lot, of the big daddy
protecting the little sister. Basically, like a grown man protecting
a little girl. And that inherent power dynamic. And of course,
there's also a commentary on capitalism in this game and

(25:29):
patriarchy on how you can get ahead by draining these
little girls. You can use this system to make you stronger.
Even they resist and they beg you to stop. And
the only thing that can stop you is the Big
Daddy is a big man. Big Daddy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
Do not mess with the Big Daddies!

Speaker 1 (25:53):
So in the second Bioshock, some of the Little Sisters
become Big Sisters, which is the Big Daddy equivalent. So
quote here, Big Sisters are the new gatekeepers of Rapture.
Born from Little Sisters, they don costumes much like their
former protectors, the Big Daddy. However, these lithe, broken, mysterious
creatures are worlds different from the hulking beasts that inspired

(26:17):
their design. And everything from the way their armor appeared
to how they cocked their head had to tell the
story of their creation. So due to the trauma of
their past, they are quite aggressive. They are erratic. You
do not want to mess with them either. Um, they
protect little sisters, but they also, uh, are kind of
like vengeance trying to take any, they'll kill anybody who killed.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
A little sister. Um, and yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
There is just the fact that this substance is called Adam.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
And then there's another substance for your health. It's called Eve. Um,
has given me a lot to think on as well.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
And then, if we look at Bioshock Infinite, you have Elizabeth,
who is the damsel in distress of the game. The
whole point of the game is you need to rescue
her and deliver her to someone else. She does have powers.
She can tear holes through space and time. She's helpful,
but most of what she does is in service to

(27:17):
the male player character, Booker's storyline. There's a lot of
caged bird imagery in this game. There's a running theme of,
is the caged bird really free? So even when you
rescue Elizabeth from her tower, is she really free? It's
a thought experiment throughout the game. They actually kind of
ask you, what do you think?

Speaker 3 (27:40):
And yeah, she is.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
pretty much at the whims of her father. And I suppose,
spoiler alert for any of these games, I should have
said that.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
At the top. Maybe we need to put that at
the top.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
No, no, no.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
I don't think we've talked about one that's recent yet.
But for this one, spoiler alert, Bioshock Infinite. She does
kill her father. It's very confusing. And this game also
has a storyline about racism that has a much debated...
It's been the source of much debate. Basically, the world
that this one takes place in is in a still

(28:12):
sort of pre-Civil War times.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
And there's an underground railroad equivalent.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
And the game starts with the player winning a contest
to throw a ball at an interracial couple, which I
think was a white dude and a black lady. In
this society, you can't be an interracial couple. And it's
a choice you can make to throw the ball at
them and blend in or throw.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
At their captors. So, yeah, this is.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
You can find people arguing that this is very anti-feminist games.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
All of them are that they are feminist games.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Lots of discourse about it. It does have one of
my favorite f * * * you endings, which I
will say, is when the developers are like... Basically, a
lot of gamer bros complained about one aspect of the
ending of the first one.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
And in this one, they were like, oh, really? We
will make it so much worse.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
I love it. There are an assortment of powerful women
in these games. There's Tenenbaum. They really built these worlds.
But you only interact with them through documents and pictures.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
So, yeah. There is a lot of ongoing conversation about this.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
You've gone through a lot. Like, I'm sitting here listening.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
I'm like, okay, okay.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Because I don't think I know much about Bioshock in general.
I just know it has something to do with something
wrong with your DNA or mixing up, you know, whatever,
atoms and such. I didn't know it was called Adam
and Eve, which I thought was funny. But I know
you got some more and I know you got.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
A real doozy.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Oh, I do.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Coming up. But first, we do have a quick break
for a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
And we're back.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Thank you, sponsor. And I'm going to do the thing
that Samantha hates the most. And I'm going to start
with the sequel here.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
I don't hate it the most, but it is a
pet peeve. I do not like watching the sequel without
seeing the first. I feel like that just... You have
to go in the timeline.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
Apparently.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Watching Carrie 2 and never seeing Carrie is a great sin.
It is.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
In Samantha's book. I cannot believe this. But it will
be rectified.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
I cannot believe this. So we're talking about Silent Hill,
which is one of my very favorite games ever. And specifically,
we're going to start with the second one because it's
probably the scariest game I've ever played.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
It's one of my favorite games ever. So, good golly,
if I had to.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Try to explain the plot of Silent Hill, oh, Lord.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Basically, there's this town.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
That was once a tourist town, but then there was
a cult and they summoned a demon and now people
go there to get punished for the sins.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Uh, it's like purgatory.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Um, and we'll talk more about the origin because it
does have a young girl, uh, at the.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Heart of it. But, uh, there are a lot of abortion.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
There's a lot of abortion imagery, pregnancy imagery, sexual assault imagery,
monstrous masculinity, um, religious iconography, um, You find a lot
of statues of Madonna, the praying woman. So, Silent Hill 2,
I found so much interesting writing on it, saying that,

(31:43):
first off, this game is very much a judgment of
the player, more so than most games I've ever played.
And depending on how you play the game, that's going
to determine what ending you get. And they vary wildly here.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
So it's really asking you, like, who are you?

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Oh, it's messed up.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Maybe that's why I don't like these games.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
I don't want to know.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, I'm curious what the first ending I ever got was.
Because now I've played it enough, I've gotten every ending
because I just want to see the ending. But many
people in the writings I found have claimed that this
game is a commentary on toxic masculinity.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
So let's break that down. James is the character that
you play. And James arrives to Silent Hill after receiving
this letter from his wife who died three years earlier.
We're told because of a terminal illness. However, when you
get to the very end of the game, it is
revealed he killed her recently.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Smothered her with a pillow.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Because... Basically, he couldn't take it anymore. She sometimes says
she wanted to die. You do get flashbacks throughout the game.
But she also says she didn't. He killed her because
he hated her. And he was sexually frustrated after years
of being unable to have sex with her. And he
feels guilt over this. And that's why he's in Silent Hill.

(33:09):
He's being punished. She's in this purgatory town. And I
should also mention this purgatory is of your own making.
It's from stuff of your mind. So, as you're playing,
almost all of the monsters are feminine, sexualized, or children.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
But there's one that looms above all of the other ones,
and he's known as Pyramid Head. And he has a
huge pyramid head, as you might imagine.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
He's not called that in the game, but that's just
what fans call him. And he's like this huge hulking
thing with... He carries this enormous... It's called a great knife.
It's as big as him. It makes this horrible scratching
sound all along as he's coming for you. But in
these articles, a lot of people argued that Pyramid Head

(34:07):
represents hyper-masculinity. What James thinks is what a man should be.
You know....

Speaker 3 (34:16):
He doesn't have any emotion.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Uh, he's strong and he's got this huge phallic object
that he carries around. Um, and he terrorizes James. He
fetishizes him. He objectifies him. Um, at one point later
in the game, you can pick up the great knife.
You can take it. But if you do, it slows
you down. Um, it's like a big hindrance. Like even

(34:39):
when you're not like about to use it, it slows
you down. Um, It is extremely powerful, but you're better
off without it. It not only represents, yeah, a penis,
but the weight of James' guilt. That's, maybe not, but
that's how I interpret it. Pyramid Head can also choke
James and lick him. He chases James, he forces him

(35:01):
to run, renders him helpless. Like, it's interesting, I've never
thought about it, but he's not a hero. You're not
playing a hero in this game. You're playing a killer.
someone who murdered his wife and feels guilty about it
and runs away a lot. Um, which is not your traditional, like,
male protagonist that you do, you see in these games. Um,

(35:24):
and James has to come to the realization that he
doesn't need Pyramid Head, he doesn't need this hyper-masculinity to
reject him.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
And to move on.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
If you want to get the good ending of the game,
you have to do this.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Um, Meanwhile, there's Maria, who, depending on your choices, she
can get treated very, very differently. She looks exactly like
James's wife. She sounds exactly like James's wife. Um, And
the game's almost daring you to judge her for being
the same woman leading a different life because it's implied
she's a sex worker. I don't think she is.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Well, she's not real, but, you know, it's implied that
she is. She dies a lot.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
She dies multiple times because she follows you around as
a way to torment the lead male character and demonstrate
his failure when it came to protecting his.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
Own wife, even though he's the one that killed her.
She is a very, like, male gaze....

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Of what femininity is. Again, this is James' mind. So
she's sexy, she's flirty, she's dependent on a man for help.
But James thinks he wanted his wife to be that. But,
I mean, she even says, I can be whatever you
want me to be. He soon grows annoyed by her
and tries to abandon her multiple times. She exists as

(36:47):
this reminder of his failure. And you also have to
reject her. Um, to move on and get the good
ending of the game. You have to reject, he has
to reject this false idea of what he thinks women
should be and what he thinks men should be. Um,
although you can get an ending where you stay with her, uh,
where you stay with this false version of your wife. Um,

(37:12):
defeating her is the final hurdle you have to achieve
to make peace with his wife. Um, and what happened
between them and he moves on and he adopts a
little girl named Laura. Um, So if you look at
the monsters again, they're largely objectified women or diseased women.
You shrill wife Mary, like she has this really shrill

(37:34):
scream she does in a hospital bed. She's a boss
fight too, implying he also has to reject the toxic
idea of a shrill nagging wife. Then you have an
abused woman named Angela with imagery around her assaults. And
she says to James, who tries to save her with
violence at one point, Um, you think you can save me.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
Will you love me? Take care of me? Heal all
my pain?

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Hmm.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
That's what I thought. And then she leaves him.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Um, so just this idea, he thought he had to
take on, like save her, be her protector. And she
was like, no, you really don't. Um, so it was
interesting that the reading about this and, um, Some people
wrote that it was how everyone was a victim of
toxic masculinity here, even James. The only way to escape

(38:25):
Silent Hill is to reject that and show some compassion.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Interesting.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
See?

Speaker 2 (38:30):
See how deep these games— Is this the movie that's
Sean Bean? Is he the main character?

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
The movie is interesting. I will say, I have a
friend who just watched it. She's like, what the hell?

Speaker 4 (38:42):
Yeah. So, because it's been popping up on my, like,
you should watch this. But I think it was the
second one that it was advertising. And it looks like,
is it the dude, is it Jon Snow guy is
in there too?

Speaker 3 (38:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
I've only seen the first one. I will tell you
it's not good. It does have a lot of interesting
messages in it. As you can probably tell from listening.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
To me talk about it.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
Right, right. I'm trying to remember because I've realized I
also confused this, don't judge me, with the Hills Have Eyes.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Oh, oh. There's some overlap, unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (39:10):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah, I mean, it's gross. It's gross. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
I saw it in high school and never seen it
again since. But I will tell you, Sean Bean spends
most of the movie looking confused. And almost all of
the main characters are women. So there's also feminist critiques
of this.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, of the movie. But okay, let's step back. Sorry, Samantha.
We'll go to the first one.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
All right, let's go.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
So just briefly, because I feel like I have the
most to say about the second one. So in the
first one, you get drawn to this town, Silent Hill.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
And you meet Alessa.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
And Alessa is this young girl who has supernatural abilities.
She's been tortured. She's been tormented. She's been burned. She
was used for this kind of ritual sacrifice that created
this purgatory Silent Hill thing. Her nightmares in the first
one are the source for Silent Hill. And her trying

(40:10):
to escape kind of starts the whole game.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
So it is.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
female trauma turned into merciless vengeance. Because in the first one,
you didn't necessarily do anything wrong that you know of.
But she doesn't, she can't differentiate between that and who
deserves to be punished. Then there's Lisa, the perhaps overly
sexualized nurse, but does have one of my favorite death

(40:36):
scenes of all time. And Sybil, a very competent police
officer who is I guess she does get kind of
damseled in the end. But she's throughout the game very helpful.
Because yes, you are playing as a male character in
this one. However... In the third one, you play as
Heather Mason, who is the daughter of the person you

(40:59):
played in the first one. She's the adopted daughter. She's
also the reincarnation of Alyssa and Cheryl. Don't worry if
you don't know, you don't understand that because it's confusing
and I'm not going to take the time to unpack it.
She does, so Heather does wear a miniskirt, but she's
not really sexualized.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
She feels much more practical.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
And that actually plays on her fears later because this
one has a lot of abortion and, like, fear of pregnancy. Like,
it's the whole thing. She sort of, like, can give
birth to Satan, essentially. And this cult is trying to
make that happen. She does start out in a shopping mall. Like,
she's a kid in a shopping mall. So it doesn't
feel so, like, oh, why is Jill Valentine in a

(41:43):
tube top during the zombie apocalypse? I've read a lot
of people who said she's almost a direct commentary on
the schoolgirl character of the time who were usually kind
of creepily sexualized. She becomes the target of a cult,
loses her father, then has to kick some serious ass
along the way. But again, there's that father-daughter relationship that

(42:05):
just comes up so much in these.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
Well, like when you were mentioning about the fact that,
because you kind of quickly moved off from the second
one talking about how you adopted a daughter, but that
seems to be a trope with a lot of these
as a rectifying or.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah, like a redemptive.

Speaker 4 (42:20):
Redeeming a very bad character by saying, see, look, I
take care of a little girl. Not just like I'm
a protector, but it makes me a better person and
therefore you have more sympathy for me. Right.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
And it's like that innocence. Apparently, the little girl is
the most innocent thing.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
I just had never really put together until I was
making this list. Like, wow, this is everywhere.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
Now that you say that, because some of my favorite
Korean films has that same arc way as well. Like
they're rescuing a little girl who is, he is the
father figure and he sacrifices himself for her, but he's
done so many bad things that this is his redeeming quality.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
And so therefore all his past is forgiven because of this.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
Exactly. Exactly. Oh, and we're about to talk about that
a lot.

Speaker 4 (43:02):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
But first, to wrap up, Heather, she does give birth
to God. It was a monster.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
I like that was just flippantly said. She does give
birth to God.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Honestly, in these realms, this game, it's kind of, yeah, like, oh, yeah,
she gave birth to God, who is a monster that
she kills.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Right.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, I could really unpack a lot more on that
one too, but no time. I did want to wrap
up with Silent Hill 4. So I played through 5,
but in Silent Hill 4, you do have this character
called Eileen.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Silent Hill 4 is.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Actually a hilarious game to think about during quarantine because
the plot of that game is that you can't get
out of your apartment. You can't escape your apartment and
you're being tormented by these nightmares. But you do have
a little peephole and you can.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
Spy on Eileen. That's great.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
And she... is dressed for a party, there's absolutely no
real reason for her to be dressed like that.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
It's just like short, tight, mini dress. And you do.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
She does follow you around. You do have to protect her.
She gets bruised if she takes hits. And you do
get to play her for a while, but it just
feels so like.
I don't know why she's in this dress and in
heels and she's slowing me down. And the fact that you're,
as a player, getting annoyed at this kind of female depiction...
I do think is really problematic. And you do see

(44:20):
that quite a bit. And it's weird, too, because it
puts you in the position, like, I am a woman,
but I'm playing this dude, and most of the developers
are probably dudes, and I'm getting annoyed by this female character.
So it's almost like getting a peek in their mind
or something.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah. Like, this is how you view women. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
I mean, that could be said for many male directors
who do really ridiculous tropes for women of how they
see women.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
You're like, really? Have you ever really been around a woman?

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
So we do have one of my favorites coming up.
But first, we're going to pause for one more quick
break for a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor. And yes, we're back.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
With The Last of Us and The Last of Us
Part 2. So yes, I would say spoilers. If you're
trying to not be spoiled by these, I would stop here.
We're not going to get too into it, but still,
I think you can probably deduce what happens in these
games based on what we're going to say. So I'll
put that out there. So people know I love these games.

(45:40):
It's pretty much a zombie apocalypse. Where in the first
one you play as Joel, who is, yes, this like
male protagonist who's done terrible things to survive. And your
job in the game is to protect Ellie, who is
a 14-year-old girl who is immune to the zombie virus.

(46:00):
And you're trying to deliver her to the Firefly so
they can.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Get a vaccine. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
So I love Ellie. Ellie is one of my favorite
characters of all time. And I remember the first time
I played that game, she was such a breath of
fresh air. It was one of those things where I'm like,
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Know I was missing this, but here it is.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
She really subverts your expectation of young girls. I mean,
we've been talking about how they represent innocence throughout this
and she still does but she is.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Like not the demure.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
She curses she's feisty she's got really dirty humor she
can fight she's scrappy you do start out protecting her
and Joel won't let her have a weapon even though
she's proven like no I can I can use one
I can protect myself and eventually yeah he's like nope
okay I'm gonna give you this weapon she really carries
her weight and And eventually you do spend a decent

(46:54):
section of the game playing her to protect the lead
male character. And it's still, you know, furthering his storyline,
the whole thing is. But, oh gosh, and that's my
favorite part is when you play as her. It's much
scarier to me, but she is immune. So I love
how she uses that to her advantage.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
Like, oh, I love it.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
She is queer. She does survive an attempted rape. And
deals with the trauma of that. I'm glad they put
that in there. Because most games don't. Like, you kind
of just move on.

Speaker 3 (47:25):
Right. But she was clearly despondent after that and changed.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Well, not only that, but she also killed a man.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
And that traumatized her, too. And I'm like, oh, good.
They're not just moving on. They did put, like, a lot...
I did witness this, y'all.

Speaker 4 (47:40):
Obviously.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah, she did.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
But they did put a lot of, like, depth of
character in that. Yeah, this is what the reality is.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
A young girl who.

Speaker 4 (47:48):
wants to be a good person is traumatized because she
had to survive and this is what she had to do.
But the reality is you would have some kind of
trauma to you.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it's great that you... I mean,
it's great and sad.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
It's one of the things that makes the second one
so effective because then you see all of the trauma,
what she's grown up into, and you just feel so sad,
especially because you spent the first one protecting her. So
in this game, you also have Tess, who's Joel's partner
in crime. she's the one that convinces him that maybe
a cure is possible and he should take, he should
care enough about it to complete their journey, uh, after

(48:22):
she dies because she gets bitten. So she knows she's
going to die, um, and deliver Ellie to the fireflies.
And this game also has Marlene, who is the leader
of the fireflies. Uh, and it does start off with
the death of Joel's daughter, Sarah.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Um, and.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
He, yeah, that propels kind of his like cold, violent,
distant nature. Um, And you do spend a lot of
time protecting Ellie and Joel's violence, which is traditionally a
very masculine coded thing, is how you survive.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
More on that in a second. Let's talk about the
second one for a minute.

Speaker 4 (48:57):
And these are things at least I can attest to
because I've witnessed it, not necessarily because I've played it.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
And we ended up having a big....

Speaker 4 (49:06):
Deep dive about how you and I interpreted it. And
it was so different, like all the different ways. So
it was interesting to see your love and attachments and
my detachments and why that existed. So I will say
it had a very deep meaning behind your understanding of
these games.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yes. In the sequel, y'all, there was a marathoning of
this game.

Speaker 4 (49:30):
So Ellie is the primary playable protagonist that you do
spend a decent amount of time playing another female character.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
And I know we're going to go into that a
little deeper.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
And Ellie is still a badass and awkward and funny.
But now you really see her loss of innocence living
in this world. You also have a lot of, like,
references to past events, but you don't exactly know what happened.
So flashbacks are a big proponent to this game. And
seeing that and her really going all in on this
masculine violence revenge thing is a direct contrast to her

(50:05):
struggle with forgiveness when it comes to Joel, which.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
It's very painful. It's very painful as a player. I
did know that. The constant commentary I did have, she was.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Like, oh, no. My heart.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
My heart. And that was a lot of screaming.

Speaker 4 (50:17):
At one point, though, we had to make an agreement
for me to be a present in these game playing
is that you have to give me spoiler alerts because
I cannot handle.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
bad.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
Trauma like i just yeah today i'm like this day
and age right now this year i was like it's
too much so you have to give me a heads
up you don't have to tell me exactly what but
heads up is what i need um so that happened
a lot so yeah it was very painful to see
especially because you get connected to them as like you're
these people.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Um yeah and there were times when i was like
playing it and i was like please please please please
no please ellie no please don't do this And she
loses pretty much everything in one way or another in
pursuit of revenge.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Which brings us to Abby. Abby, Abby, Abby.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Oh, as my friend likes to say, Abby and Ellie
are the same side of the coin. Zombies are on
the other side. I even got a coin made for
her because she went into this whole thing about it.
So Abby is also propelled by revenge of her father.
She chose this chance at revenge time and time again
over a chance at happiness. as did Ellie, with her

(51:23):
ultimate journey ending when she realizes it's pointless. Ellie realizes
it's pointless, so does Abby, eventually, that it doesn't solve anything.
We're not going to feel better. And Abby's determination for
revenge condemns all of her friends to death. Not that
they didn't want it to, or that they weren't involved,
but she was the leader, and they might have let
it go, and she could not let it go. And

(51:44):
the thing is, Ellie was innocent at the start of this,
but was hurt in the fallout. And Abby's quest for
vengeance perpetuated a cycle of vengeance because Ellie later goes
on to threaten an innocent person, just as Abby did
in her determination to get revenge. So you see that
cycle of vengeance playing out and you see it on
a bigger scale with a war between the Washington Liberation Front,

(52:07):
the WLL for wolves, and the Seraphite, which is a
religious group. So, you know, a bunch of factions of
people trying to survive in this apocalypse zombie world. And
they're warring and it's just so pointless. It's just so pointless.
you also have Dina, Ellie's girlfriend. You do not mess
with Dina. She does get sidelined by pregnancy.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
But up until that point, she is a huge asset.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
And even after, with her help, deciphering and collecting information,
her pregnancy, along with the influence of a younger character,
is what ultimately stops Abby from her quest for vengeance,
even after Ellie killed Abby's pregnant friend.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
Oh, you're putting a lot of spoilers up in here.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Yeah, I know. I tried really hard to avoid it,
but I can't.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
I can't.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
And Dina fights for her family.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
We get to see their little slice of domesticity, her, Ellie,
and their son, even if only for a little bit.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
So painful.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
Why?

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Why hard? She did scream my heart quite often.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (53:06):
And I kind of just looked over like, okay, we
may need to pause, but she couldn't pause.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Not Annie.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Annie cannot pause.

Speaker 4 (53:12):
I will say I feel like Dina may have been
the innocence character in this for Ellie as well.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
Because Ellie tries to protect her in that same manner.
But not only her, the character Jessie, who I was
really upset. Honestly, that one upset me more.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
Than any of the others, I think.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
But Jessie also comes in as a protective and a
friend and an ally because of Dina.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
To me.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
And you do have other fleshed out characters there, like Yara,
who I only got to see briefly because.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
I was like, I'm out. This is too much.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
It's painful.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
It was. And then there's Nora, Mel, and Maria.

Speaker 4 (53:44):
And there's a lot of that within the sprinkle of
outside characters that come in.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
And you're like, who are they? Remind me again. Also, dogs.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Sorry.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
I do want to point out, as you're going through
that list, I realized Maria's a lot of the leaders
in this game are women of the peaceful places. But
the leader of like the WLF is Isaac, who's a man.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
So that's interesting. Okay.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
And I did want to touch on really quickly. I
know I've mentioned it before. There was this huge backlash
against this game. And it's specifically Abby.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
So a.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Lot of these games are games where the protagonist is
usually pulled into or propelled by a white dude. Like,
even if you're playing a female character, you got into
it because of a white dude.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
And they're usually games about male violence.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
So both of these vengeance stories and sort of father-daughter
forgiveness arcs.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
And I was thinking about this.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
People were so ready to forgive Joel from the first one,
the man who you played from the first one, for
his actions.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Because he was protecting a young girl, like you said.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
But they were so ready to condemn Ellie, and especially Abby.
Which I maintain, if you'd started the game playing from
Abby's perspective, this would be a different conversation. And that
makes sense. But also, think about that before you judge
her so harshly. I just had never really realized.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
And then.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
The whole father-daughter relationship thing and the apocalypse made me
think that men, again, are really afraid.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
They don't know how to handle young girls.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
And it is interesting how often it comes up as, yeah,
the little girl is the ultimate innocent and must be protected. So,
all right, I could talk about those games forever, but
it's going long. So those are the ones I wanted
to focus on. I did have a couple honorable mentions here.
You've got Alma Wade, the psychic villain from FEAR. Miku
from Fatal Frame. Everyone brings her up. She's searching for

(55:51):
a brother fighting vengeful spirits. You've got Regina from Dino Crisis,
which I played as a kid and she had pink
hair and I thought it was the coolest thing. Um...
Susan Ashworth from The Cat Lady. Okay, I got to
talk about this very briefly. But it really plays on
the cat lady trope. Her only companions are cats. Lots
of the villains in the game, which are called parasites,

(56:13):
they feel like a commentary on violence against women. One
male doctor kills his female patients and uses them to
make art.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Another eats women.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
It plays on the damsel in distress trope, ramifications of stalkers.
Sounds like an interesting game. I've never played it. But
after I was reading the description, I was like, I
am into this.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
So the name of the game is The Cat Lady.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
The Cat Lady.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Maybe that's part of the problem. I'm just going to
put that out there.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
But, huh.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
It's an indie game. It's a small game. Okay. But
I'm interested.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
You have Amanda Ripley from Alien Isolation, who is Ridley's
daughter from the Alien movie franchise, which I have played
and is terrifying.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
That's the one that can hear you.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
You talked about being, yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Yeah. Yeah. Alyssa from Clock Tower 3, who is this
girl who's kind of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She's
destined to fight these evil entities.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
That game was pretty scary.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
And then the game Amy, which is a game with
two female protagonists where every enemy is a man. Now,
also I found some games, very disturbing games, written by
male developers that are all about kind of enacting violent
fantasies on women that are in the survival horror thing.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
We're not really going to talk about that today, but
I am aware that that exists.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
And just some tropes to close this out. I've noticed, like,
these games do have a lot of depiction of trauma.
I was even curious, like, it's hard to think of
a female character in these games that doesn't have trauma.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
And what does that, like, is that because of the genre?

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Or, I don't know. That's a conversation for another day, perhaps.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Is it a driver? Like, you have to have a motivation.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Does it have to be, though? Like, I'm curious.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Depiction of sexual assault comes up on these. Depiction of
mental illness, which can be very problematic in these games,
and in horror in general. Like Alice, Madness Returns, which
is a game where she thinks she's in Wonderland and kills,
she thinks she's seeing monsters, but They're not. Well, I
guess they are. It's a lot. We can interpret that

(58:10):
as well. Clothing choice is obviously a problem in these. So,
that's been a real whirlwind.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
This episode.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Yeah, it's a lot longer than we thought.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
I know.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
I just got going. I just got going.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
I could keep going forever.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
But obviously, we must eventually stop talking about survival horror.
But if I did miss any games that you think
I should play or that you think we should come
back and talk about, even among the ones I've included,
if you'd like something more in depth, people are probably like, what?
But you can send those suggestions to our email, which
is stuffmediamomstuff at iheartmedia.com. You can also send them on

(58:51):
Instagram at stuffmomnevertoldyou or on Twitter at momstuffpodcast. Thanks as
always to our super producer, Andrew Howard.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
And thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told
You is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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