Fannish 5: Five Unfortunate Uses of Pregnancy

[gehayi]

From fannish5: Five unfortunate uses of pregnancy as a plot device.

CAUTION: HERE BE SPOILERS. A lot of them, really.

In no particular order:

1) Phoebe Halliwell's pregnancies on Charmed.

Comments

[shiplizard]

Re: 5, I'll say that the pregnancy horror in Silent Hill 3 is entirely intentional. It recurs from Silent Hill I, when Alessa (Heather's... um... first? Incarnation?) was catatonic and pregnant with the god Samael the first time. (Courtesy her mother, Claudia's sister.) She was prepubescent when Samael was placed into her (via the ritual that burned her) and Silent Hill took its initial shape from the nightmares she had while sleeping. A part of her escaped her trauma and had a happy life as Cheryl Mason, Harry's first adopted daughter.

Unfortunately, when Cheryl and Alessa reunited and merged, Samael was born into the world (and promptly taken out by an enraged Harry Mason).

Body horror is a big big thing in Silent Hill-- you're absolutely supposed to be disgusted and horrified at it. I mention because when I was roleplaying Cybil, it's why she of all my characters I gave a pregnancy scare. She was there (semi-conscious) for Alessa bearing Samael (and that's after she'd been possessed by one of his little spawn). I played her with a downright phobia of pregnancy due to that experience. While the original intention was for her and her husband to debate a while, it turned out that both of them never had second thoughts about choosing abortion.

(She wasn't pregnant. Stress and a bad flue spiked her hormones to miss a period and throw the test-- but it wouldn't have been nearly as traumatic an experience for any of my other female characters.)

[gehayi]

I remember Cybil and the pregnancy scare--though I wasn't conversant with the background of Silent Hill at the time, so I didn't understand the reason behind it.

Body horror is a big big thing in Silent Hill-- you're absolutely supposed to be disgusted and horrified at it.

Really? I tend to watch a lot of Let's Plays and people always seem to react to scenes in survival horror that make me cringe with "THAT'S not scary." So I got the impression that I was supposed to be creeped out a bit, but not revolted.

It's kind of reassuring that the creators WANT you to be freaked out. Makes me feel less like a wimp.

[shiplizard]

Lots of LPers try to pass themselves off as above it all. Why yes, they say, narratively and visually this is supposed to be horrifying, but I'm just too tough. I prefer LPers who play along with the emotions onscreen and don't ruin creepy/emotional/happy/sad moments. No, the whole SH series up to 4 (before an American company bought it out) was about psychological and transformative horror. Nightmare imagery.

The pregnancy scare wasn't JUST because of Silent Hill-- it was something both Heather and I wanted to try, and Johns and Cybil-- though a loving, supportive couple-- were both the least fit to be parents of any of our characters bar none. And they knew it. Even if Cybil had never been to Silent Hill she would still be a bad mother-- Silent Hill just meant that her reaction was much more vehement.

[erikalyndis]

Don't worry, you're not a wimp. Silent Hill is one of the most visually disturbing series of games out there. Even the first game, with its primitive graphics, has some real moments of 'oh god, that's JUST NOT RIGHT!' (even if it does, as Yahtzee points out, look like an arse made out of lego). If something in a Silent Hill game makes you want to curl up in a corner and cry, it just means that the creators are doing their job right.

[gehayi]

Quite a lot of the Silent Hill franchise provokes that "Oh God, that's JUST WRONG" reaction in me. (Actually, a lot of survival horror does that to me, period. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem contains some serious High Octane Nightmare Fuel.) It's good to know that that was the reaction the creators were going for.

I don't have any problem with the graphics; they're both bizarre and haunting. Also, I have learned not to listen to Silent Hill Let's Plays at night. The sound is as creepy as the graphics.

[erikalyndis]

Oh, Eternal Darkness! <3 Yeah, that's got some seriously... creepy stuff going on. Luckily, the acting is more horrific than the content, which helps lessen the impact just a bit.

The graphics in Silent Hill 2&3 (the two I own and have played) are amazing, but the graphics in the first are... less so. From what I've seen in LPs, the content and atmospher make up for it though.

[shiplizard]

The sound design of SH1 helps with those bad graphics. I'll never forget being in my sister's bedroom-- she was playing SH1 on her PC, I was bogarting the gamecube to play Mario Sunshine. And despite the happy dappy sunshiny stuff, I had half an eye on her, and when the body fell out of the locker that gamecube controller went flying.

[erikalyndis]

The sound design of SH1 helps with those bad graphics.

So I've heard (no pun intended).