Silent Hill series

Walter is basically one of the cult’s leftovers. Even after they became defunct they continued to spread misery.

I mean, the Cult is defunct in 1 actually.

Alessa killed them all but for Dahlia and Kaufman.

Which is part of the retcon of 3 that a few of them are still around.

Note: Homecoming established Shepard's Glen as having its own branch of the cult and they had to offer regular sacrifices to keep the monsters at bay. Which makes no sense based on Silent Hill one's backstory.

Though it should be noted that the cult leader in 3 is actually one of their child victims who grew up. She helped revive it to give the suffering she endured some meaning.

Claudia was also a leftover of the cult.

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2022 at 9:31:21 PM

Random aside: One element I like about the Cult is that it is also fairly clear if you bother looking into it THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. I love the Call of Cthulhu element to it that they have a little knowledge and magic but everything they believe is generally nonsensical.

Alessa is some sort of god or psychic but what they do to her isn't making things better.

And it's very likely Baphomut or the God only manifests the way it does because of what they believe.

Like I said, the cult is just a bunch of idiots trying to exploit the town's tulpa making properties.

It's even worse in a way — all of the misery in the series is due to a bunch of idiots messing with something they don't understand.

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2022 at 9:48:17 PM

Given that there are references to pre-contact Native Americans being aware of it, though, the Otherworld's power in that particular area seems to vastly predate both the cult and the town itself. Alessa's agonies appear to have kicked it into high gear, though.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Oct 25th 2022 at 9:11:13 AM

The cult caught on to the fact that pain seems to be what the region responds to the most. And since they were assholes they decided the best way to exploit it was via horrific child abuse.

It also seems like people sufficiently touched by the power can sort of "take it with them" out of the area, ie. Walter and the Shepherd's Glen founders.

The Otherworld leaves its mark on people.

Conversely, some people also leave their mark on it. It might justify why some monsters are recurring even if the traumas of the characters are different. Past visitors left some of their pain in the Otherworld.

I think its mostly because Walter and Heather/Alessa are powerful psychics, so they can punch right through whatever boundary exists between the physical world and the "Otherworld". Silent Hill just amplifies their powers. Walter was powerful enough to basically create his own plane, but I think Alessa could only ever make it look like a distorted physical world.

The Otherworld appears to be everywhere, but most people can't access it unless they're in a place where the border between the worlds is weaker. Such as Silent Hill. Or a rural town in 1960s Japan, apparently.

Edited by SilentColossus on Oct 25th 2022 at 10:28:06 AM

I think the main thing that gave Walter more control over a Dark World was that he died to make it happen. He became a bonafide ghost.

He essentially turned himself into a tulpa.

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2022 at 11:01:48 PM

Random aside: I think that Walter's Otherworld being wholly different from 1 and 3 makes sense.

After all, those should be Alessa/Cheryl's Otherworlds not his.

The cult just wants power, like real world fascists; it doesn't matter to them that their beliefs don't make any sense after a moment of critical thinking. They want the power to kill anyone who would stand in their way.

The cult's corruption and nonsensical beliefs can be interrupted as a Take That! to fascism... which probably wasn't Team Silent's main motivation at the time (as opposed to delivering a general horror story). I'd argue that 3 leans more into the theme of "theocracy is bad", though perhaps I only think that way due to how much theocracy is creeping in on our modern lives in recent years.

And what else can this power bring if there's no one left to oppose?

I'm not sure you need to say fascist when it's already a crazy cult.

Claudia's one of the more tragic characters even though she's responsible for a particularly awful event for both Heather and a player of the first game.

She's an abuse victim who is repeating the harm committed by her abusers in a desperate attempt to validate her suffering. She wants what happened to her and Alessa to have some meaning. To make it somehow "worth it". "Good" damage, as Diane's Bojack Horseman once put it.

But there's no such thing as "good" damage. There's just...damage. There's no meaning behind what the cult did to Claudia and Alessa and Walter and other kids except that the cult were awful people.

That's true, and I think Walter's dream world is a perfect example of how Silent Hill can and should be different from game to game. My point is that Walter seems to have greater control over his realm, while Alessa and Claudia could only ever warp the physical world by mixing it with their nightmares.

Walter seems more powerful in certain ways, and I had forgotten that his suicide made him more powerful until M84 pointed it out.

Then again, Walter was trying to perform the rituals himself, while Claudia was just piggybacking off what Dahlia had done. And unlike Walter, Alessa/Heather were trying to resist it.

Edited by SilentColossus on Oct 26th 2022 at 10:40:38 AM

Weird showerthought: do Silent Hill monsters smell bad, you think? They're mostly nasty rotten things, but they're also creations of the minds of certain people, so maybe they don't smell like anything?

They probably do smell bad to the people they target. Everything about them is meant to make their targets uncomfortable. That should include smell.

They may also smell bad to anyone who encounters them in the Dark World regardless. The whole thing about the Dark World is that it's meant to be unsettling to people.

Edited by M84 on Jan 15th 2023 at 8:48:23 PM

based off a dream I had when I played Silent Hill's demo when I was younger I think they have a smell like dried blood,coppery and metallic

I imagine they would smell differently depending on the person. Some of Alessa's might smell like burnt flesh or blood, while James' would smell more like mold, or a rotten corpse.

James' would probably all smell a lot like a hospital.

So would Alessa's, come to think of it.

Edited by M84 on Jan 15th 2023 at 9:03:28 PM

James's world would be devoid of smells but it would feel like there's feeling of something weighing you down

I know we've accepted that P.T. and Silent Hills are deader than dead, but...

TIL that not even the pause screen is hallowed ground. Because if you stay there for a few minutes, LISA GETS YOU.

Makes you wonder what were Kojima and GDT smoking when they came up with P.T., because Jesus Christ...

I guess that you're not allowed to take breaks.