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34. Angela Orosco (Silent Hill 2 Character) (20 points)
Nominated by: Inviso (1/5 remaining)


Importance: 2
Fear: 8
Snake: 10

Angela is one of Silent Hill's most tragic characters. While Silent Hill 2 was primarily viewed through the lens of James Sunderland, a great feature of that game was featuring strands of other souls gone astray, offering brief and fringe glimpses into their otherworlds and symbolism. A victim of pure abuse, Angela seeks out Silent Hill, or rather vice-versa, in a misguided repressed search of her mother and brother. In her life, Angela was molested and beat up by her own alcoholic father & brother. Her mother simply ignored everything. Angela is the first person we meet in Silent Hill 2, and rather quickly too. She's kneeling besides gravestones in the cemetery, and we can tell something isn't quite right with her. She appears to be lost within herself, socially awkward, apologizes in an excessive manner, and maybe even experiences some stunted growth with her use of the word "mama" and how she quickly corrects her words. First time players may assume Angela is in the cemetery by coincidence, but her examination of the gravestones and her words "I thought they would be here" are interesting choices and no small accident. Angela ran away from home after stabbing her father to death, and the idea of him still being alive is too much to bear for her. When we next encounter Angela, she's on the floor, looking through two reflections of herself, one in a huge mirror, and one in the blade of a knife. Angela suffers from dissociation here and suicidal thoughts, having no identity of self or personality of her own anymore. Angela prefers to look into the reflection of the knife, since it symbolizes how small and fragile she thinks her own life has become. James tries to take the knife from her, and Angela reacts in a frantic panic, a personality shift due to her dissociation and a defense mechanism as Angela presumably sees James as just like her father in that moment. Interestingly, the mirror room and rooms just outside are the first glimpses into what she sees in Silent Hill, representing her childhood apartment and room. We don't see Angela for a long time after this, but her next encounter is perhaps her most important. She's fighting with the Abstract Daddy, a twisted mass of flesh representing Angela's sexual abuse, with two figures sewed onto a bed-frame in a sexual position, with a figure of Angela on the bottom and her father on top. It's important to note we only see the Daddy through the lens of James, who sees it the way it is due to his memories of the bed-ridden Mary, but Angela sees it as something far worse, perhaps a figure just as terrible as Pyramid Head is to James. The room is filled with these holes, pistons pumping in and out, and the sexual symbolism here is obvious, a sickening, constant reminder of the non-stop abuse Angela had always received. In our last encounter with Angela, we get a first-hand experience at what her otherworld is like: a constantly burning inferno, flickering away the last bastions of emotion or hope she has left.

Silent Hill 2 may be the story of James, but it's characters like Angela that also give the game such a vibrant personality and make it one of the greatest horror experiences of all time. Angela's portrayal of PTSD and the emotional damage of sexual abuse, by one's parent no less, is shown with great care, subtlety, and understanding, and I can see her being a painful source of relatability for some players. Games, hell even most media in general, are reluctant to properly show this level of abuse without resorting to cliches or watering it down for a general audience. Despite appearing only briefly, those who have played Silent Hill 2 will never forget Angela, and the touches of pure darkness in which many of us should count ourselves as lucky as to have never experienced in our own lives.

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Bare feet on the tile with my head up in the clouds
https://imgur.com/1e1e70S