History Headscratchers / SilentHill3

*** Probably irrelevant but also bare in mind how the second game showed the Otherworld as differentfor each person, so therefore shouldn't the creatures be? Douglas only definitely sees one monster, and it may not have been anything Heather sees.

*** Harry is a writer, and not a too-famous one at that (after all, he's not exactly looking to draw any attention on himself, even if he is publishing under a pen name). I kind of feel like, even through cell phones WERE around in '97, it's extremely unlikely that they would be able to afford one in a time when cell phones were more viewed as a luxury and not nearly, nearly as prevalent as they are now. This still kind of bothers me, though, because Harry is obviously over-protective (although it is ''justified'' over-protectiveness, don't get me wrong) enough to go so far as to want Heather to call him ''as she's leaving the mall''. This troper doesn't think she had lax parents at all, and that seems pretty ridiculous. For Harry in that state of mind to not ensure that Heather had a cell phone despite the cost does seem pretty weird. I just have to tell myself that it's not something they could afford, since I think the idea of Harry being crazy enough to be worried about being "traced" by a cell phone is a little far-fetched. BUT I do want to add that SilentHill3 doesn't "officially" take place in 1997. There aren't any official dates at all until SilentHillOrigins, which attempted to give dates to the series and then failed miserably. So this could all really be a big moot point anyway.

* If Claudia is trying to arrange the birth of the cult's god (and the god itself is presumably what's making the DarkWorld appear), then isn't it disengenuous for the monsters to attack and try to kill Heather? Wouldn't her death be detrimental to bringing about "Paradise?"

** With the exception of the Missionary, Claudia's not controlling the monsters. The monsters and otherworld are all Alessa's trauma manifesting anew through Heather (as Harry said in the flashback to the first game, it's "a world of someone's nightmarish delusions come to life"). For the first half of the game, the monsters are just attacking because that's what the monsters of Alessa's nightmares do, and in the second half, the ones that are wreathed in shadows are the same as Memory of Alessa: they want to kill Heather because the part of Heather that's Alessa wants to die. All of this does play into Claudia's plans, though: since the cult's god (or the Alessa-spawned manifestation of their belief in it, either way) feeds on Heather's anger and negativity, having her slaughter hordes of monsters is making it stronger (which is why the Possessed ending relies in part on killing lots of monsters).

** With the exception of the Missionary, Claudia's not controlling the monsters. The monsters and otherworld are all Alessa's trauma manifesting anew through Heather (as Harry said in the flashback to the first game, it's "a world of someone's nightmarish delusions come to life"). For the first half of the game, the monsters are just attacking because that's what the monsters of Alessa's nightmares do, and in the second half, the ones that are wreathed in shadows are the same as Memory of Alessa: they want to kill Heather because the part of Heather that's Alessa wants to die. All of this does play into Claudia's plans, though: since the cult's god (or the Alessa-spawned manifestation of their belief in it, either way) feeds on Heather's anger and negativity, having her slaughter hordes of monsters is just making it stronger and stronger (which is why the Possessed ending relies in part on killing lots of monsters).

** With the exception of the Missionary, Claudia's not controlling the monsters. The monsters and otherworld are all Alessa's trauma manifesting anew through Heather (as Harry said in the flashback to the first game, it's "a world of someone's nightmarish delusions come to life"). For the first half of the game, the monsters are just attacking because that's what the monsters of Alessa's nightmares do, and in the second half, the ones that are wreathed in shadows are the same as Memory of Alessa: they want to kill Heather because the part of Heather that's Alessa wants to die. All of this does play into Claudia's plans, though: since the cult's god (or the Alessa-spawned manifestation of their belief in it, either way) feeds on Heather's anger and negativity, having her slaughter hordes of monsters is just making it stronger and stronger.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Of course they look like monsters!]]
* This is more about the fandom, but why do so many people believe the 'They look like monsters' theory? I mean, Vincent was wrong about several important points, and could have been crazy himself. Also, in each game, you can kill hundreds of monsters. If there was someone killing hundreds of people, they would have nuked the hell out of Silent Hill. How am I suppose to believe that a 17 year old girl is capable of killing HUNDREDS of people, and several dozen dogs?
** Leonard is/was definitely a human. The [[NoExportForYou Book of Lost Memories]] says that the Missionary boss is a transformed cultist. The Scraper enemies are basically lesser versions of the Missionary, so they're likely to be humans. I don't think that the other monsters are human; rather, they relate to Alessa's memories and the forthcoming birth of the God, as in the first game.
*** The key here, though, is "transformed". Some of the monsters used to be human, but that's a different matter from the theory that all the monsters actually are human and the heroes are running around on psychotic killing sprees.
** Wait, wait; you can't believe that a seventeen year old girl could kill hundreds of ordinary humans, but you ''can'' believe that a seventeen year old girl could kill hundreds of ''extremely dangerous monsters''?
** I might be misremembering, but I thought ''Douglas'' was the first to say, "They look like monsters to you?" Then, Vincent echoed it later. Again, I might be wrong, but if two people did say this and at least one of them isn't insane....
*** Vincent's the only one. Douglas said "what ''was'' that monster?" after the mall changes back to normal. If anything, Douglas confirms that at least one other person besides Heather thinks they're monsters. Even Claudia knew what Heather meant and didn't act surprised when Heather referred to them as monsters before that, when they first met.
*** The "they're actually innocent people" thing sort of reminds me of the "Ferris Bueller is a figment of Cameron's imagination" theory: people latch onto the mind-blowing aspect of it, but they don't give it any actual ''thought''. When you do, you quickly realize that the "monsters" of Silent Hill really will attack and kill you if you let them, none of the other "monsters" panic or flee for their lives when you bludgeon one of their number to death with a steel pipe, and that a bunch of uniformed "monsters" never show up in police cruisers to put a stop to your murderous rampage at any point. They look like monsters, yes, but they also BEHAVE like monsters. It gets a good shock out of Heather, but it holds very little water as a legitimate answer for what the monsters are and what they're doing in the town. All told, "Vincent's just fucking with her" seems a much more credible theory.
** I personally have always held the idea that the monsters are "angels" within the cult's religion. When Heather asks Claudia about them, she says "They have come to witness the beginning. The rebirth of paradise, despoiled by mankind." This suggests that they are certainly not human. The fact that the Missionary and Scraper enemies still retain mostly humanlike characteristics suggests that they have partially been transformed into the image of these angels. I think, to Vincent, the monsters look like beautiful angels, which fits in with the whole "Silent Hill is different for everyone" theory.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:And the lesson is... revenge is awesome!]]
* Is it just me, or is Heather kind of a KarmaHoudini? It's always bugged me that she never really comes to her senses regarding what she came to Silent Hill to do. She never has a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment that could have, I dunno, actually developed her character. With all of the disturbing foreshadowing of what her hatred is doing to her, she never stops to consider the consequences of her actions. Considering how the previous game was a soulful exploration about the nature of guilt, the fact that the scope of SilentHill3 was narrowed to "OMG revenge!" was very... jarring, to say the least.
** Why should she feel remorse? Yes, revenge is one of the more selfish of motivators, but in the end, she still [[spoiler:saves reality from a dark god.]]
** Yes, but her selfish motivation is the exact reason why it came into existence into the first place.
** Exactly. Heather's moral failing in her quest for revenge is that it doesn't really feel like it's about justice - just extermination. Just look at the way she talks about going to Silent Hill to "kill her myself". It's almost perverse. [[GrandTheftAuto Other games]] handle revenge in a way that is somehow more comfortable than the contrived way that this one did, despite the fact that most of those games' characters have a much broader history with immorality.
*** And she didn't even get revenge anyway - Claudia offed herself before Heather got the chance. It was never very clear whether Heather would have been able to go through with killing a defenseless Claudia and, as it turns out, she never had the chance to find out.
** Could be kind of off here, considering I most recently played the game in German and I'm not sure if every line translates directly, but if you look at [[spoiler:Harry's covered corpse]] in the apartment before [[spoiler:leaving with Douglas to Silent Hill]], Heather remarks something along the lines of, [[spoiler:"I'll make her pay for what she did to you. I promise. ...I wonder, what would you think, if you knew I was thinking this way?"]]. Regardless, though, it's a pretty lame, half-assed attempt at making her look like she's even really thinking about it at all, and it's never really even mentioned again. There's an even more half-assed attempt in the cut-scene directly beforehand.
--->'''Douglas''': Revenge doesn't solve anything.
--->'''Heather''': Maybe not, but that's what I'm going to do.
*** Keep in mind, Heather's a teenage girl. She's hormonal, impulsive, and most importantly, her dad was just killed. If she ''didn't'' want to make someone pay, I'd have to say she's either extremely level headed or just a sociopath.
* Did you not watch the ending? Did you miss the part where she stumbles away from the scene of the final battle, weeping and crying for her dad, because killing the cult's god didn't actually do anything for her? Remember that Heather has her memories back by that point, and has a very different moral perspective (hence the Possessed Ending, where Heather assumes her mantle as the Mother of God and the right to judge, forgive, and punish others). By the end of it, she ''wasn't'' out for revenge; she was just trying to end the suffering it had inflicted on her for ''three lifetimes''.
** I did watch all of that, but I think I was too distracted and angry, in a way, from the HighOctaneNightmareFuel to really care. It's true that killing the demon didn't do anything for her, and, by extension, the people who had followed ''SilentHill'' from the beginning. It never would. But wouldn't it have been better to prevent it from being born in the first place by not giving in to the hatred? I have a theory that Heather was slightly corrupted by Alessa wanting to get revenge on the Order itself for the suffering that it had inflicted upon her for three lifetimes, even if it was to the detriment of Heather herself, and possibly the world. [[MindScrew Damn, this is confusing]], but that's what I'm working with now.
*** Well, if she didn't give into the hatred, it would've been weird for a couple of reasons: one, because she's a teenage girl whose personality did not lend itself to just letting things go, two, because the other option is letting it slowly grow inside her and slowly feeding on the sufferings of everyday life until she birthed it in her own kitchen when one of her kids announced he's seriously dropping out of Harvard in order to devote himself to becoming the first transsexual zoophiliac to have genital contact with a porpoise in a zero-G environment or something, and three, because if it were that easy, there wouldn't be a game. Alessa, after all that time, was the one creature in Silent Hill that was ultimately still good; she was willing to sacrifice "her" well-being in order to make sure the god could be born incomplete and therefore mortal enough to BE killed. If it hadn't been forced into an incomplete maturity, aborted, and then birthed from the wrong vessel, it would eventually have grown to full power and been unleashed on the world outside of Silent Hill. It didn't work out for Heather, obviously, and it didn't satisfy the anger and hurt of all the people who suffered, but that was never the point: the point was to ''solve the problem'', not to comfort the masses. That's really the difference between the good guys and the bad guys in Silent Hill: the good guys get shit done, the bad guys use the balm of faith to gloss over the ugliness of the reality of what's going on.
[[/folder]]

** You know, I recall Heather at one point actually mentioning wishing that one of the shops with a locked door was open, because there was something in there she wanted. So Heather at least ''thought'' about looting the place. And if we take into account all the item collection then Heather is already stealing stuff in the game as it is.
*** [[spoiler: If you decide to take Shattered Memories as canon, then it also shows that Heather is not above shoplifting.]]

* This is more about the fandom, but why do so many people believe the 'They look like monsters' theory? I mean Vincent was wrong about several important points, and could have been crazy himself. Also in each game you can kill hundreds of monsters. If there was someone killing hundreds of people, they would have nuked the hell out of Silent Hill. How am I suppose to believe than a 17 year old girl is capable of killing HUNDREDS of people, and several dozen dogs?
** Leonard is/was definitely a human. The [[NoExportForYou Book of Lost Memories]] says that the Missionary boss is a transformed cultist. The Scraper enemies are basically lesser versions of the Missionary, so they're likely to be humans. I don't think that the other monsters are human; rather they relate to Alessa's memories and the forthcoming birth of the God, as in the first game.

*** Cell phones existed in 1997... hell, they existed in the '80s! But the games kind of imply that cell phones wouldn't work in Silent Hill anyway. The Movie made sure to point that out as well, except unlike the games it was blatant and without question.
*** I vote for untraceable myself, even still to tack on more dates for you officially SilentHillOrgins is set in 1972, SilentHill1 is in 1980, followed closely by SilentHill2 in 1994, then finally by SilentHill3 in 1997. There is a few [[ContinuityNod time line acknowledgments]] made in SH3 about when everything actually happened.

*** Harry is a writer, and not a too-famous one at that (after all, he's not exactly looking to draw any attention on himself, even if he is publishing under a pen name). I kind of feel like, even through cell phones WERE around in '97, it's extremely unlikely they would be able to afford one in a time when cell phones were more viewed as a luxury and not nearly, nearly as prevalent as they are now. This still kind of bothers me, though, because Harry is obviously over-protective (although it is ''justified'' over-protectiveness, don't get me wrong) enough to go so far as to want Heather to call him ''as she's leaving the mall''. This troper doesn't think she had lax parents at all, and that seems pretty ridiculous. For Harry in that state of mind to not ensure that Heather had a cell phone despite the cost does seem pretty weird. I just have to tell myself that it's not something they could afford, since I think the idea of Harry being crazy enough to be worried about being "traced" by a cell phone is a little far-fetched. BUT I do want to add that SilentHill3 doesn't "officially" take place in 1997. There aren't any official dates at all until SilentHillOrigins, which attempted to give dates to the series and then failed miserably. So this could all really be a big moot point anyway.

** Or to put it another way, Alessa and Heather aren't separate people. Heather is Alessa with IdentityAmnesia and "Memory of Alessa" is a StarfishCharacter created by the conflict between her memories as Alessa and her current personality as Heather. Alessa stepping in to save Harry would really be Heather unconsciously using her powers, and Heather didn't know Harry was in danger.

** Or it could be UST between Alessa and Lisa. Think about it, Lisa was one of the few people Alessa saw on a regular basis after she was put in the hospital. There was also a chance that Lisa was still her nurse till she was 14, and hormones start to kick in. It could be SitchSexuality, especially since Lisa was quite good looking. Heather even goes as far as to refer to her as being [[LesYay 'Heavenly']].

*** The Seal of Metatron is what Alessa was using to seal off the town in the first game. That said, it's just "the seal of Metatron", a name for a magical mark. There's no mention of the actual angel named Metatron having any involvement, and the entry on it says it's a neutral power can be used for both good and evil.

** Well, considering she also throws up the fetus later, it's probably reasonable to assume it's not developing in the same manner as a normal baby... I always assumed it was a kind of spiritual entity incubating inside of Heather's own spirit (hence why Claudia needed to "fill her soul with hatred," etc) and that it only gained a physical form when it was forced out - either by birth or by aglaophotis.
*** Yeah, considering I'm fairly certain your digestive and reproductive systems aren't connected, this is what I buy!

** Could be kind of off here considering I most recently played the game in German and I'm not sure if every line translates directly, but if you look at [[spoiler:Harry's covered corpse]] in the apartment before [[spoiler:leaving with Douglas to Silent Hill]], Heather remarks something along the lines of, [[spoiler:"I'll make her pay for what she did to you. I promise. ...I wonder, what would you think, if you knew I was thinking this way?"]]. Regardless, though, it's a pretty lame, half-assed attempt at making her look like she's even really thinking about it at all, and it's never really even mentioned again. There's an even more half-assed attempt in the cut-scene directly beforehand.

*** Keep in mind, Heather's a teenage girl. She's hormonal, impulsive, and most importantly, her dad was just killed. If she didn't want to make someone pay, I'd have to say she's either extremely level headed or just a sociopath.

*** Well, if she didn't give into the hatred, it would've been weird for a couple of reasons: one, because she's a teenage girl whose personality did not lend itself to just letting things go, two, because the other option is letting it slowly grow inside her and slowly feeding on the sufferings of everyday life until she birthed it in her own kitchen when one of her kids announces he's seriously dropping out of Harvard in order to devote himself to becoming the first transsexual zoophiliac to have genital contact with a porpoise in a zero-G environment or something, and three, because if it were that easy, there wouldn't be a game. Alessa, after all that time, was the one creature in Silent Hill that was ultimately still good; she was willing to sacrifice "her" well-being in order to make sure the god could be born incomplete and therefore mortal enough to BE killed. If it hadn't been forced into an incomplete maturity, aborted and then birthed from the wrong vessel, it would eventually have grown to full power and been unleashed on the world outside of Silent Hill. It didn't work out for Heather, obviously, and it didn't satisfy the anger and hurt of all the people who suffered, but that was never the point: the point was to ''solve the problem'', not to comfort the masses. That's really the difference between the good guys and the bad guys in Silent Hill: the good guys get shit done, the bad guys use the balm of faith to gloss over the ugliness of the reality of what's going on.

**** Some sources say that Silent Hill 3 is set in 2000.

*** The "they're actually innocent people" thing sort of reminds me of the "Ferris Bueller is a figment of Cameron's imagination" theory: people latch onto the mind-blowing aspect of it, but they don't give it any actual ''thought''. When you do, you realize that the "monsters" of Silent Hill really will attack and kill you if you let them, none of the other "monsters" panic or flee for their lives when you bludgeon one of their number to death with a steel pipe, and that a bunch of uniformed "monsters" never show up in police cruisers to put a stop to your murderous rampage at any point. They look like monsters, yes, but they also BEHAVE like monsters. It gets a good shock out of Heather, admittedly, but it holds very little water as a legitimate answer for what the monsters are and what they're doing in the town. "Vincent's just fucking with her" seems a much more credible theory, all told.

** Keep in mind, Heather's a teenage girl. She's hormonal, impulsive, and most importantly, her dad was just killed. If she didn't want to make something pay, I'd have to say she's either extremely level headed or just a sociopath.
* Did you not watch the ending? Did you miss the part where she stumbles away from the scene of the final battle, weeping and crying for her dad, because killing the cult's god didn't actually do anything for her? Remember that Heather has her memories back by that point, and has a very different moral perspective (hence the Possessed Ending, where Heather assumes her mantle as the Mother of God and the right to judge, forgive, and punish others). By the end of it, she ''wasn't'' out for revenge; she was just trying to end the suffering it had inflicted on her for ''three lifetimes''.

** Or to put it another way, Alessa and Heather aren't separate people. Heather is Alessa with AmnesiacDissonance, and "Memory of Alessa" is an EnemyWithout created by the dissonance between her memories of being Alessa and her current personality as Heather. Alessa stepping in to save Harry would really just be Heather unconsciously using her powers, and Heather didn't know Harry was in danger.