#he has done all those things and some even more unsavory stuff but also theres sumthin very importsnt u gotta kno about him. i love him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chikkou · 3 years

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Will you talk more about Lisa?? Lisa the character specifically but also your feelings on his feelings about Buddy? I just thought your analysis was so good and I want to hear other thoughts you have on her.

yall are honestly spoiling me rn sdhkfdjfks this is like a dream come true

i already got into the stuff with buddy in this ask here but i have a LOT to say about lisa and the connection between her and buddy so u better settle in!

ok so firstly ill start with lisa. i played the original lisa game (lisa the first) not long after it first dropped in 2012, and im not even kidding when i said it changed me LMAO.... seeing a story about a girl suffering is nothing new, but austin jorgensens approach to it was so fucking unique. you dont just witness it, you get to EXPERIENCE it right along with her. many stories that involve sexual abuse/rape show or otherwise depict it explicitly for the shock value, which is both disgusting and, in my opinion, extremely fucking exploitative. i feel that it is horrific to dignify an act so deeply evil with screentime. but lisa stood out to me immediately because, even though you know exactly whats going on, the game NEVER shows anything explicit. everything is layered in subtext and symbolism, and austin is fantastic with indirect storytelling, so you learn so much from just a little drop of information. this applies not just to the game proper, but to the character as well.

in case its not clear: i absolutely ADORE lisa. she is my favorite character in all of the games, bar none. its going to sound kind of fucked up, but as a kid around her age going through some fucked up shit, her committing suicide at the end felt like a sort of victory to me. she knew she could never escape from marty or what he was doing to her. he leaks into every single part of her psyche, everything she ever cared about or loved is ruined because of him, and even the vague memory of her mother is completely corrupted, and turned into a muddled version of him. lisa the first also had the added benefit of some religious commentary, as there are crosses all over their home and marty is characterized as an extremely religious man, which i fucking LOVE and wish had come back in the painful, but its an acceptable loss. anyway, lisa committing suicide at the end was an act of defiance against not just marty, but martys god, as suicide is considered a mortal sin in catholicism. lisa knew she’d never be free of marty in life, so she escaped the only way she could; she was defiant to the end.

ive seen people complain that the painful has a bit of a “lost lenore” thing going on, since lisas death seems to fuel the Manpain of both brad and buzzo, but i actually disagree. on the contrary, its just like austin himself said - lisa will never be gone. lisa is ALWAYS there, with brad, and buzzo, and buddy, and marty, and yado, and the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. i dont necessarily think that there is something paranormal going on in the game, but i AM going to say that, unlike other cases of a girl/woman dying for a mans backstory, lisa isnt just a bittersweet memory they can reflect on and then put away when its convenient for them. she is a presence that is felt throughout the entire game. brad sees her more than once, sometimes watching, sometimes reprimanding him. buzzo is clearly haunted by her, as he cries out to her a few times in the joyful. every character who was directly touched by lisa - brad, marty, and buzzo - calls out to lisa as they die. call it their guilt or call it her actions, but in either case, it is clear that lisa just as significant of a character in the painful as she was in the first, even if she cant always be seen. even in a meta-sense, every game in the series - even the joyful, whose protagonist doesnt even know who she is - is named after her. she is at the center of everything that happens in them.

that actually brings me to buddy, because i find the dynamic between her and lisa fucking fascinating. as i previously mentioned, brad never talked about his past with buddy, and snaps at her for bringing up his adoptive son dusty (rando), so it goes without saying that she definitely doesnt know who lisa is. in spite of that, though, lisa is a fucking massive part of buddys life, and while she may not know the person herself, i think she is aware that when people (and brad especially) look at her, they arent seeing HER.

i mentioned it in another post, but even though brad takes it upon himself to raise and “protect” buddy, he seems to almost unwittingly recreate lisas appearance, primarily by allowing her hair to grow long even though he knows what a risk that is to her safety. he also treats buddy in a manner thats incredibly similar to how marty treated lisa (sans sexual abuse, of course) - he insults her, does not let her leave the house at all, and forces her to do unsavory things that no one should ever have to do (in buddys case, this means killing at least two innocent people because brad doesnt want a “weak” daughter). the most literal comparison between buddy and lisa is the fact that they are both very young girls being essentially held captive by their father figures, albeit for different reasons, and both long for freedom from their captors.

theres also the fact that both buddy and lisa have to deal with misogyny and the effects of rape culture firsthand; they both battle against men who feel entitled to do with them whatever they please, and the threat of ongoing sexual abuse looms heavy over both of their heads. neither one can seek help from anyone; the neighbors in brad and lisas town seem complacent at best, if they even know what is happening to lisa at all, and buddys only allies (sans rando) are long dead by the start of the joyful. this is not just a hypothetical or a distant possibility. this is the real, tangible fate that will befall them if they cant somehow secure their safety.

sadly, because lisa wasnt playable in either of the rpgs, we dont know if she was able to fight as brad was, but it is highly probable that she had the innate skill but was never able to learn it (as marty highly discouraged them from learning “their grandfathers karate,” and seemed disgusted whenever brad did so). however, she did have ONE weapon she could make use of, and this is a weapon buddy ends up using, as well - her femininity. she became close to bernard (aka buzzo), made him fall in love with her, and then used him as a last ditch effort to stop martys abuse by having him mutilate her face. im not saying lisa never cared about bernard - in fact, i think she DID really love and care for him - but her own fucked up experiences with “love” meant she really couldnt understand what it was supposed to be like, or that it was wrong to manipulate the people you care about. lisa did very few things wrong - it pretty much just stops at the maiming of the cat and her manipulation of bernard - but she knew that she would never get away from marty without some kind of drastic action being taken, and scarring herself was her last ditch effort before ultimately committing suicide.

buddy ends up taking a somewhat similar tack in the joyful, and like in lisas case, its simultaneously resourceful and horrific. one of buddys key moves in the joyful is to flash the enemy (which the player obviously doesnt see) in order to distract them long enough to get the kill. its fucking horrible and disgusting and makes you feel so dirty, but then, how must buddy feel having to do something like that just to survive? shes just a child, but in a world where almost every man is out to get you, she knows this has to be done to save herself, very much like lisa. unlike in lisas case, though, buddy is successful in securing her safety in this way - lisas effort is for naught, and leads to her committing suicide not very long after.

in a way, i sort of attribute buddys brutality to lisas omnipresence; all of the men pursuing buddy are just like marty, monsters who would harm a fucking child for their own disgusting ends, and i think that when buzzo said that lisa wouldve loved olathe, what he means is that she would have loved seeing so many horrible men being punished for what theyd done. so in my opinion, buddy carving out a place for herself in olathe by killing all those who would subjugate her seems very much in the mentality lisa would have had. sure, there are some innocents who sadly get roped into it, but that would definitely not be her intention; for example, if buzzo could have practiced amputation without harming a living thing, i dont think lisa would have asked him to practice on the cat. note the LACK of brutality at the beehive and the swamp bar, two of the few peaceful places in the painful and both devoid of predatory men hunting for buddy - lisa has no qualm with any of them. but marty? brad could hardly even get a full sentence out before killing him on the spot. i dont doubt that that has a great deal to do with lisas presence.

ok i talked for a while LMAO but basically i think that, in a more metatextual sense, lisa and buddys relationship really strikes me as an accurate depiction of generational trauma. of course it was intentional with the more obvious trauma chain (marty to brad to buddy), but the trauma chain of marty to lisa to buddy is rarely ever addressed due to lisa not physically appearing in the painful. however, i believe it may inform buddys actions a great deal more than people realize - after all, buddys experience is unique, but who could understand it better than lisa? who knows that sort of pain, of being alone on an island, the lone woman trapped with a man (or men) who want nothing more than to cause you harm? even without her realizing it, lisa is guiding buddy, encouraging her to take back what is hers no matter the cost, to punish those who would try to take what they want from her. lisa might be dead, but she is a vengeful presence throughout every game, and buddys actions feel like theyre meant not only to save herself, but to avenge lisa, even if she doesnt realize it. at the end of the day, buddy and lisa both get to exact revenge against all the men who have wronged them, and they succeed. they are aggressive, and violent, and selfish, and ANGRY - and they have every fucking right to be.

#lisa the first #lisa the painful #lisa the joyful #long post #yall GOTTA stop u know good and damn well i will talk about this game all fucking day hdskjdsk #rape mention #abuse mention #lisa #anya's anons

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