Giant Freakin' Spoilerpost: Hollow Hope

I was replying to a comment on Hollow Hope, and my unrelenting urge to explain everything cropped up.

This is an urge I've had to curb, as the entire point of a Silent Hill-like story is all the unusual symbolism, and all the theory-crafting that surrounds it. If I just laid the entire thing out on the table, it would ruin the story.

That said, I love, love, LOVE explaining all the complex psychological bullshit involved, and I figure some of you want to know whether or not your theories are on the mark. To that end:

EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE IS SPOILERS FOR HOLLOW HOPE. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
This is intended to be read AFTER you've finished the story, but I'll try to address things in the order that they happened in the story.

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Chapter 1
Yes, Sunny's an unreliable narrator. This is, after all, a Silent Hill crossover, and he's basically the James Sunderland of this story. Part of it is that he has tried to forget the whole incident, just as James tried to forget what he did to his wife; but part of it is also that he doesn't want to admit to what he did. It isn't until he's confronted with the evidence of his past actions--his daughter--that he starts opening up about what happened. And it isn't until he realizes that he can still do good in the present--after taking down Daddy Longlegs--that he opens up completely.

The monster design is very deliberate. Notice that all of the griffon-like monsters that Sunny encounters are described as headless, and that they're also described as emaciated, empty-bellied. Later on, Glider mentions that griffons and ponies can't breed. Similarly, there's a reason that Petunia's infertility is mentioned in chapter 1. The pony-shaped monsters, on the other hand, are always described as covered in tumors or with swollen bellies and disfigured faces, like something is growing inside them.

Chapter 2
The symbolism of the machines and the portraits is fairly obvious once you connect the machine's state to which portrait Sunny examined. Petunia's portrait leads to a broken machine--all the 'parts' are present, but it can't make anything. Similarly, looking at Gilda's portrait leads to a machine that won't work either--because only one part of it is still trying to make it work. What's less obvious is that the machine's initial state represents the secretary.

Chapter 3
I didn't want to outright steal the Silent Hill sirens; they have important symbolism within the Silent Hill canon, symbolism that I can't use because I'm not using the same origin story. Instead, churchbells herald the transition to the Otherside, because haha get it it's all about Sunny's failing marriage.

The 'boss' monsters were designed as a pair; they're Sunny's perfect family. The first time we see the Daddy Longlegs, he's bringing home the 'bacon'; later, we see him literally tying a knot to keep his child from running away. Abstract Mother, meanwhile, stays in place and creates more children. There's a reason that Petunia's infertility is mentioned at the start of the story. Sunny has his perfect town, he's had his perfect wife (both in the form of Gilda and in the form of Petunia) but he hasn't got his perfect child.

A recurring concept throughout the story is the giddy joy of surviving in the face of danger. After each fight, Sunny and company are tired--but they're also ecstatic. They celebrate being alive, laughing despite the horror. This wasn't really an intentional thing, but it ties into the idea of Sunny being happier once he's faced his past instead of running from it.

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 is the first appearance of Long Night. I wanted every encounter with Long Night to be surreal and uncomfortable, for reasons that should be obvious once you reach the end. Oh, and the red notebook is the save point from SH1/2. I briefly toyed with the idea of Sunny dying a couple of times, and returning to Long Night each time; this ended up just being the suicide 'attempt' in chapter 11. Chapter 4 is also the first time Gilded Glider appears, immediately after Sunny and Long Night meet each other.

Chapter 5
Glider is a predator. I wanted to evoke that in everything she did--from the way she acts around Sunny to the way she acts around the monsters. I wanted Glider to be sexual, but unsettlingly so. I'd say 'yandere' but we all know what happens when you start using the Y word.

Chapter 6
"Well o' course it isn't working! You stuck a crankshaft in the battery compartment!" This line was planned from the moment Sunny found the flashlight and radio. Most of Sunny's problems can be summarized as "you stuck your crankshaft somewhere that you really shouldn't have". And "You can't just stick a crankshaft in things and expect them to work" is yet another reference to the infertility problems that have plagued Sunny's relationships. Also, "They look like monsters to you?" is lifted directly from Silent Hill 2. It's a good line.

Chapter 7
The secretary portrait bursting open is a reference to a certain event from Sunny's past. Later on, we get more context about that event from another puzzle involving a portrait of Sunny's secretary.

Chapter 8
Not only is the Abstract Mother obviously pregnant, Sunny's giving it a Cesarean section. Because the only kind of symbolism I can do is the ham-fisted variety. The little guy crawling off into the dark will come back to haunt them, don't worry.

Chapter 9, 10, 11
Yes, Glider absolutely took advantage of him in chapters 10-11. One of the more common ways that rape victims end up dead is by suicide; an outside observer (hopefully) knows that it's not their fault, but the victim often feels "filthy" or even guilty afterward. That, and Sunny's past has been wearing on him too--in chapter 9, he had just learned that Cloudy is his daughter, dredging up the painful memories of his old mistakes--and then Cloudy punched him in the face and ran off, cementing his belief that he is an awful person.

On that note, did you ever notice how Gilded Glider resembles Gilda, acts like Gilda, but is not biologically incompatible with Sunny like Gilda is? Does that remind you of a certain *other* character from Silent Hill 2? ;-)

Chapter 12
And now Long Night is teasing him about his newly-discovered daughter. What happened to Sunny in his childhood is deliberately left ambiguous. Edgar Allen Poe once wrote that anything which is not important to the story should be trimmed away--and honestly, you'd probably come up with something much worse than I can think of.

Petunias leading him to safety? I wonder what that means? As I said, ham-fisted.

Chapter 13
This is where the references to Buddhist philosophy really kick in. Yes, the three poisons are a real element of Buddhist philosophy, and they really are considered to be the root of all evils. I had to do a lot of research for this fic, and I quite enjoyed it. The snake talisman from the Mother fight is also a reference to a real thing; there really is a snake-shaped fertility talisman, and it comes from a specific region of India, near a river in the south-east. The bit about "Bovist" monks being able to fight past a Rakshasa's illusions by accepting the loss is based on the Buddhist principle that all pain is caused by attachment to temporary, worldly things, and that you can achieve total peace by accepting and embracing the inevitability of loss.

That One Fun Coltfriend Mom Had is quite the interesting character, apparently. I've already got two sequels planned, so I dunno if I can do anything with him anytime soon. Maybe I could write a one-shot or two, though, as a warm-up...

Chapter 14
The interactions between Sunny and Cloudy in chapter 14 are deliberately left up in the air. The entire point of the scene--what creates the tension--is that Sunny isn't actually sure what to do in a situation that seems clear-cut. This continues to press on Sunny's insecurities, and his fear that he's always going to be the person who conveniently had one too many drinks, or sabotaged the condom, or stares at his daughter's ass.

Chapter 15
Chapter 15 is where things finally start turning around for Sunny. Cloudy's a brash, emotional trainwreck, but she's not stupid and she knows that she's supposed to be forgiving. Plus, she's having a hard time reconciling what Sunny's doing now with the image of the homewrecking asshole she believed her father to be. Now that she's had time to think about it, they'll be able to pick up the pieces a bit.

And then Longlegs rears its ugly head. At this point, Sunny finds the Longlegs to be insurmountable, much like his past. He can't kill the Longlegs any more than he can kill himself.

Chapter 16
He can't kill the Longlegs any more than he can kill himself. Good thing he's suicidal! Jokes aside, there's a reason that Sunny kills the Longlegs with a shotgun blast from the same angle that he used when trying to kill himself; part of the reason he tried to kill himself was that, in a way, he was trying to kill the part of himself that Longlegs represents. I read once that an effective approach when helping people who are suicidal is to ask them which part of them needs to die; often, people who are suicidal are able to create incredible positive change in their life when they reframe "I should be dead" as "This specific part of me should stop existing". In a sense, that's what Sunny's doing here; in killing Longlegs, he is symbolically killing the part of himself that he hates.

Chapter 17
And here we reveal that Sunny sabotaged the condom. Now that he's no longer afraid of himself--now that he's realized that Cloudy isn't going to abandon him completely, even if he's kind of a prick--now he can be honest with himself and with others. One of the biggest hurdles in becoming a better person is learning to admit your own faults, and forgiveness is a big help.

This is also where Sunny finally reveals everything to Petunia. Obviously, just because forgiveness *helps* doesn't mean you can expect everything to be perfect once you've aired out the dirty laundry. Things are still gonna be strained between Petunia and Sunny, even though Petunia wants to give Sunny the second chance he needs.

And finally, this chapter is the part where Long Night's calm and otherworldly facade starts falling apart. Three guesses why.

Chapter 18
This is kind of the moment where it all clicks for Sunny. The fear and doubt have been washed away by the realization that Cloudy and Petunia aren't going to simply abandon him, and in that clarity Sunny achieves a state of mind that is often associated with years of studying Buddhist philosophy. In that moment, Sunny isn't suicidal--but at the same time, he doesn't care if he dies here. Funnily enough, this gives him power over Death. He isn't afraid of Death, and so Death is no threat to him; he's free to live his best life.

Chapter 19
Yes, Kerfuffle is the one who dropped that Aglaophotis here. She's getting her own story Soon[tm]. Also, that body is a reference to a certain scene from Silent Hill 2, where James also finds his own body.

The original plan was to have four endings--one for each possible choice Sunny could make here. In the end, there wasn't enough time left in the contest, so I just wrote out the Good Ending. As soon as the story's judged, I'll see about writing some bonus chapters for the other endings. Given the response to Night Before, I expect one of the Bad Endings is gonna be more popular than the others.

Cloudy and Petunia are at odds with each other in this scene. One might wonder why Petunia's so eager to toss Cloudy under the bus here. It's because Petunia doesn't want to die, simple as that. Also, Cloudy is someone she just met today, and is an emblem of the fact that Sunny lied to her; Petunia's not a perfect pony either, and deep down she's just as willing to sweep the whole thing under the rug as Sunny was. It's awful, but this is a Silent Hill crossover; this isn't the kind of story where most people are good people.

Chapter 20 (Good End)
"Stack my FUCKING pancakes." I love that line.

Glider's mysterious disappearance here is intended to leave the question of whether or not Glider is real up in the air. In case you haven't noticed, she's the Maria to Gilda's Mary.

And Sunny is able to overpower the Rakshasa, because--again--he's no longer afraid of her. He's fully overcome his past--he hasn't made everything *right* yet, but now he's able to think of himself as a good pony who has done bad things, rather than a bad pony who will always do bad things, so Long Night can't frighten him with suggestions of what he might do. He's come to terms with the idea of being in control of his own actions, for better or worse.

Chapter 21 (Good End Epilogue)
My editor suggested splitting this bit into chapter 21 as a reference to the 21 Sacraments in SH4.

The fact that he remembers his secretary's name now is symbolic of his acceptance of the past. Sunny's stopped trying to forget everything, and is now ready to face the truth of his actions. Finally, throwing the talisman away is symbolic of throwing his old motivations away. Sunny has learned through trial and error that chasing the dream family not only harms the people around him, but makes his dream family drift even further out of reach; as he puts it, he's "paid more than enough, thank you."

Daiya Krishna is a pun. There's a real philosopher named Daya Krishna, and 'Daiya' is a brand of dairy-free milk.

[EDIT]
I almost forgot! I worked out the thematic elements of each character's monsters. It only gets mentioned off-hand a couple of times, but here's the full list:

The running theme throughout all the monsters is that they're faceless. Either disfigured, or headless, or otherwise impossible to identify.

For Cloudy, the monsters tend to be hulking, masculine, and spider-like, partly because of her arachnophobia--but also because, as she mentioned in the Mother fight, their MO is to leave their children with you and never be seen again. Of course, it's the female black widow that kills the mate and leaves the eggs in the body, but irrational fears don't really pay much attention to the details. Her monsters aren't actually all that aggressive; the problem is that they're large, and incredibly strong, and they tend to bumble about--the greatest danger to Cloudy is that, in their awkward drunken flailing, the massive many-legged stallions might step on her.

Torque's monsters, as mentioned in the story, appear to be perfectly normal ponies with impossible-to-read faces. Within the timeline I put together for Hollow Hope, Torque's arrival to the town was the result of a business deal; she and her business partner moved to Hope Hollow to open up a machinist's shop. However, her 'partner' stiffed her. She was lost in a town that she'd never been to before, unable to find the funds to move back, stuck with an old "fixer-upper" that was meant more for business than for living in. She learned to trust again--Sunny helped with that, to a certain degree, and this was long before Hope Hollow's first gray-out, so the townsfolk were good to her. What really scarred her was how far she wanted to go in revenge. She dreamed up all sorts of vicious ways to get back at the bastard who left her high and dry, and to this day she wonders if she's the only pony who would become a murderer, given the right push.

Petunia's monsters are mechanical, oil-dripping automatons. Distant and impossible to understand, they're emblematic of the worrying distance between her and Sunny. She doesn't understand why Sunny's grown cold recently, or why he seems so easily upset, and up until the moment she's reunited with Sunny she hasn't even got the first clue as to what's eating at him. Like Sunny, though, the environments she runs through are industrial and focused on creating things--she too is upset by her inability to have children. Indeed, when she finds out that Sunny has a child, she feels betrayed--not because he had an affair and didn't tell her about it, but because she had the opportunity to help raise Cloudy, and Sunny never told her about it.

Gilda does not see monsters. There's not really any skeletons in her closet. As blunt and brash as she can be, Gilda resolved all of her issues within days of learning about them; and today she's a relatively healthy and happy person.

Ramooh, as we see later in the story, only sees one monster: Death. He spent years studying Bovist and Herdist philosophy (look at all these horse puns), and he was able to accept most of the things he feared, but the thought of no longer existing, of not being able to learn and explore the world, scares him.

Harvest Rose didn't see monsters because she spent most of the story in her apartment. It turns out that if you don't go out to face the world, the world can't come in to frighten you. Her alcoholism contributed to this as well, at the cost of making more problems for Cloudy.