#my old journalism teacher would be so proud of the way I formatted this unintentionally lmaoooo. just qtq-ing my way through this post

[snail-eggs]

It has been a month but I finally have all my thoughts together on this, so here we go.

Both Preacher's Daughter and long lost demo, Silent Hills PT, are thematically so much more similar than anyone would have ever thought. Until a month ago, they never once occupied my train of thought at the same time. But then they did and it all made sense.

We know well that Preacher's Daughter has a multifaceted narrative that tackles everything from religion to violence and familial abuse. Most of which are echoed in what little we know of PT's plot as well.

The story of Ethel Cain (the character) begins with a family marred and flawed.

"Dad was such a drag. Every day he'd eat the same kind of food, dress the same, sit in front of the same kind of games... Yeah, he was just that kind of guy. But then one day, he goes and kills us all! He couldn't even be original about the way he did it. I'm not complaining... I was dying of boredom anyway, But guess what? I will be coming back, and I'm bringing my new toys with me." -PT

In Preacher's Daughter's first track, Family Tree (Intro), the second verse sticks out to me in particular. In this verse, Cain sings: Jesus can always reject his father/But he cannot escape his mother's blood/He'll scream and try to wash it off his fingers/But he'll never escape what he's made of. It paints a picture of intergenerational trauma very early on. One inescapable for fault of the mother. And this is, to me, the most important aspect of both PT and Preacher's Daughter.

Motherhood.

PT, for all that it lacks in plot---given that its a demo for a game that will never come out (seriously, fuck you Konami)---gives us a visceral glimpse into its own grotesque depiction of motherhood. And yes, I'll get to the fetus in the sink eventually, just give me a minute here.

We're working with a family annihilation here in PT. So unfortunately, the demo's crumbs of lore focus most on the annihilator, the father, but even then we get bits and pieces of the mother. The annihilated.

"I've killed before and I'll kill again/Take the noose off, wrap it tight around my hand/They say heaven hath no fury like a woman scorned/And baby, hell don't scare me, I've been times before" -Ethel Cain, Family Tree

Our annihilated mother, Lisa, is one of two family members that shows up physically throughout the player's endless windings up and down the same hall. She appears to us an apparition. Clad in a ruined white nightgown with her right eye gouged from the socket. And she is smiling. Her hysterical laughter and sobs echo throughout the lonesome hallway. Lisa is, without a doubt, terrifying.

She was murdered, while pregnant, by her husband. He did it with a knife and there is no doubt in my mind that Lisa died a painful, gruesome death. Lisa is vengeful and, really, who can blame her?

She was dealt a shitty hand at life, there's no doubt about it, what with having to pick up the slack after our beloathed annihilator was laid off from his job. "You got fired, so you drowned your sorrows in booze. She had to get a part-time job working a grocery store cash register. Only reason she could earn a wage at all is the manager liked how she looked in a skirt. You remember, right? Exactly ten months back."

Lisa was forced to endure objectification by the man she (presumably) loved, much like Ethel's character though to a much lesser degree. We start to see a lot of similarities between the two here, down to the way they are gruesomely murdered---the only difference being, Ethel lets it all go, forgives. Its why she ascends to heaven in Televangelism but why not Lisa? Why must she remain a vengeful spirit haunting the home she was murdered in along with her children?

Its hard to say, again because we will never know PT's intended plot, so allow me to get my theory hat on to make a real reach of a conclusion here.

I think the answer is simple; it lies in forgiveness.

"I walked. I could do nothing but walk. And then, I saw me walking in front of myself. But it wasn't really me. Watch out. The gap in the door... it's a separate reality. The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you?" -PT

Ethel and Lisa, for all we can assume, are so incredibly alike. Their story arcs are almost mirrored (two sides of the same coin, like I said). They are nothing but products of their environments, likely coming from similar poor and religious backgrounds.

They both fall in love with, and are subjected to indescribable pain by the very same man they love before they are murdered by him.

"Blessed be the Daughters of Cain, bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception Blessed be their whore mothers, tired and angry waiting with bated breath in a ferry that will never move again Blessed be the children, each and every one come to know their god through some senseless act of violence Blessed be you, girl, promised to me by a man who can only feel hatred and contempt towards you" -Ethel Cain, Ptolemaea

They're subject to the contempt and anger of a man. To his senseless violence and, ultimately, it costs them their lives. So again, back to the question at hand: why does Ethel get to be at peace and not Lisa?

Well the simple, meta answer is that they're not part of the same narrative and have nothing to do with each other. But if you've read this long, I take it you're not here for simple either.

But really it all boils down to this: Ethel got her revenge. Lisa didn't.

In death, Ethel is cannibalized by Isaiah, the man who had previously drugged her and pimped her out before murdering her. And in the song Strangers, the same line is echoed over and over: "Am I making you feel sick?". We do not know for sure how exactly Isaiah cannibalized her or how much of her he consumed, but we can infer it was enough to possibly sicken him. It is Ethel's last act on this Earth. Sure, she has forgiven ("If its meant to be, then it will be/I forgive it all as it comes back to me" as we hear in Sun Bleached Flies) but Ethel's forgiveness does not absolve Isaiah of his sins he committed against her in life. This sickness, spawning from her rotting body within his insides, will likely kill him. He will get what is coming to him and have to answer for those sins in death.

Lisa though, Lisa didn't get that. She is forever trapped in the halls of what we can only assume is her home, unable to truly exact revenge or forgive and ascend because her death does not only have to do with her. Her life was not the only one lost when her husband drove that knife through her stomach.

Finally we get to the fetus in the sink. The child that Lisa was pregnant with at her time of death.

Because, you see, Lisa is not the only entity haunting that looping hall. Her baby is there with her and it is barely a baby at all. Really, fetus is still too kind a word for what the being in the bathroom sink looks like. It is malformed, barely resembles a fetus at all but through its cries we know what it is.

And we know what it represents.

Unfinished business. A life snuffed out before it had the chance (and no, I'm not getting pro-lifey here, calm down. I would never) and so of course Lisa is angry. This is a child that she presumably wanted. A child she presumably would have wanted to survive above all else. But she never got to exact her revenge against her husband because shortly after killing her, we assume off of crumbs of lore, he killed himself.

He removed himself from the equation before Lisa or her spirit could give him what he deserved. And I think that is why she is now haunting her home. I believe that Lisa is stuck in an endless loop, much like the player. She relives her death, hears the cries of her baby that will never be born and she is angry.

So she takes it out on the player.

"There was another family shot to death in the same state last month, and in December last year, a man used a rifle and meat cleaver to murder his entire family. In each case, the perpetrators were fathers." -PT "Forgive me, Lisa. There's a monster inside of me." -PT

It truly is tragic, the fact that Lisa will likely remain unable to ascend like Ethel for the rest of her existence. Forever haunted, not only by her murder, but by her child's.

But these women, their deaths. They almost feel like one and the same and it is this that I meant when I said Preacher's Daughter and PT were two sides of the same coin. It was less about the works themselves and entirely about the women within them.

"What fear a man like you brings upon (Show me your face)/A woman like me/Please don't look at me/I can see it in your eyes/He keeps looking at me/Tell me, what have you done/Stop, stop, stop, make it stop, stop/Make it stop/Make it stop, I've had enough/Stop [...]/I am the face of love's rage." -Ethel Cain, Ptolemaea

PT and preacher’s daughter are two sides of the same coin, walk with me here