Alessa: good or evil [spoilers for SH1 and SH3]

Have you seen Harry's daughter anywhere? Short, dark hair?

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Magnolia
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Alessa: good or evil [spoilers for SH1 and SH3]

Post by Magnolia »

A question which has bothered me for some time, which I have not managed to find a thread in relation to, is the simple question of whether Alessa is supposed to be good or evil. In the games, we see "The Witch" do things which indicate both.

Indications of evil?:
1. She taunts Harry for no reason and scares the hell out of people on purpose for little or no reason
2. She refuses to speak
3. She manipulates people as if they were toys, rather than simply requesting their help

Indications of good?:
1. In the end of the first game,
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
she entrusts care of ...herself... to Harry, probably to return Cheryl to him in return for his services
2. Heather does not become malicious, even after regaining her memory

Discuss.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by alone in the town »

Magnolia wrote:1. She taunts Harry for no reason and scares the hell out of people on purpose for little or no reason
She definitely has a reason to keep Harry away from her, especially after he picks up the Flauros.
2. She refuses to speak
First, quiet people were sociopaths. Now, a still tongue is indicative of evil!

Seriously, she refuses to speak or trust people because she was kind of sort of horribly mutilated and left to suffer for years by her own mother, in whom trust should be paramount.
3. She manipulates people as if they were toys, rather than simply requesting their help
Who did she manipulate?
1. In the end of the first game, she entrusts care of ...herself... to Harry, probably to return Cheryl to him in return for his services
That was God doing that, not Alessa. I'm not sure why Alessa would repay Harry anything. His actions almost fucked up her plans entirely, even if he didn't know what he was doing.
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flipain
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by flipain »

I don't remember she taunting Harry, plus when she hit him with a blast of psyquic power is because he has the flauros and is about to fuck her, even unwillingly. And he wanted finish her in that moment, because he believed she was a demon.

What is she going to say? Harry would not have understand nothing at first, and she had no time. Plus, don't speaking don't mean you are evil.

She manipulates Travis, if someone, instead of speaking with him, because she is really pised at the moment, being inmolated alive by his own mother, you know, and because it would take too much time explaining all the shit to him till he would understand.

Alessa died when the god born. The one that gives the baby to Harry, is the god himself, in his Incubator/Lady in white form, the baby itself IS Alessa, resurrected by the god, with a seed of himself planted in her, in order to survive, and have a possibility of birth in the future. He tricksted Harry, and Harry was somehow aware, but he wanted Cheryl/Alessa/his daughter back, no matter what.
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Magnolia
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by Magnolia »

actions almost fucked up her plans entirely
Wait, what were her plans again? I forget. Were they evil? :D

Serious question is serious ._.
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Shadow
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by Shadow »

If I remember correctly, her plans were to prevent the birth of The Order's God, whom she was carrying by yanking the order members into the Otherworld then destroying it around them, killing them and her and thus preventing God's birth.

So personally I can't answer whether or not Alessa is good or evil. Her actions in yanking the staff of Alchemilla Hospital into the Otherworld which caused them to fall under the influence of parasites and end up as Puppet Nurses and Puppet Doctors, while understandable (she was scared stiff of them because of the way she was being treated by Kaufmann and Dahlia) isn't good. It's morally wrong.

Attacking Harry at every opportunity, even if he was being manipulated by Dahlia into delivering the Flauros into Alessa's proximity to cut her powers off, he was only going along with it to find Cheryl. That was his aim - to find his little girl. Attacking him is neither right nor wrong.

Defending herself against Dahlia's plans on the other hand are clearly not evil. In summary, I don't think Alessa's either good or evil. She's neutral.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by alone in the town »

Everything she does is to prevent God from being birthed and ostensibly causing a world-ending apocalypse. I'd say that makes up a hundred times over for any morally-questionable means she uses to prevent it from happening. Her ends certainly justify the means, and that places her so far in the 'good' camp that I'm amazed this question exists.

Besides which, a lot of those actions, such as drawing people into the Otherworld and creating the monsters, are probably not (for the most part) things she did willingly. She's got some capacity to influence what's going on, but she's not in total control as most people seem to assume.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by AuraTwilight »

Alessa is quite possibly one of the most unambiguously morally good characters in the series. She takes active means to stop the end of the world (even though she's a devout believer and her religion says God should be born), never deliberately tries to hurt anyone unless she's being manipulated or doing so in self defense, tried to do her best to protect the people she cared about (put off her plans for as long as possible so Cheryl could be happy; tried to keep Lisa from becoming a monster), and she never raised a finger of violent intent against people like Kauffman or her own mother, the people who put her through this unending agony and torture for their world-ending evil schemes.

Alessa pretty much doesn't have an evil bone in her body, which is part of why she's so eerie and, excuse the pun, otherworldly. It's another thing that separates her from Heather.
[quote="BlackFire2"]I thought he meant the special powers of her vagina.[/quote]
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by Soulless-Shadow »

Magnolia wrote: 1. She taunts Harry for no reason and scares the hell out of people on purpose for little or no reason
Taunting Harry? Do you mean the few times Cheryl is seen and heard? I think it's up to personal opinion, but I like to think there's a very small part of Cheryl left within Alessa, and that's the part that reaches out to Harry (phone call and on the tv in the mall). That would also explain the "to school" note Harry finds, as well as various other things he finds that point him in the right direction. They could be subconsciously created by what little is left of Cheryl to get her father to help her/Alessa. At least that's what I like to think...
Magnolia wrote:2. She refuses to speak
After everything she's gone through I think it's understandable that she wouldn't be one for idle chatter.
Magnolia wrote:3. She manipulates people as if they were toys, rather than simply requesting their help
I wouldn't say the manipulates anyone. Sure, she gets Travis to go through his own hell in order to get her the Flauros, but that was necessary. Who else was going to help her? He had already saved her from the fire, so she probably thought she could trust him. I admit she could've spoken to him, but I got the impression she was a shy child. Understandable considering her upbringing.
Magnolia wrote:Indications of good?:
1. In the end of the first game,
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
she entrusts care of ...herself... to Harry, probably to return Cheryl to him in return for his services
That wasn't Alessa. She no longer existed at that time. Besides, it would've been very out of character and reckless of her to give the God another chance at being born. Sure, she might not have know if was still within that child, but any chance, however small, is still too much to risk to take.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by Doctor Eggnog »

Good. Alessa is the victim, and Dahlia is the one who manipulates Harry. The way Origins and the movie depict Alessa is incorrect.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by Uyrikeustek »

I definitely think she's neutral in SH1. I haven't played all of Origins, but she seems kinda evil to me. In the movie, she's just vengeful.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by KageReneko »

I'd like to know what makes Alessa evil in SH0... She looks angry and i can't understand that, after all she was just burned alive...

Besides that I don't see them killing puppies or anything...
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by AuraTwilight »

It doesn't help that Origins Alessa keeps giving evil grins and the world goes to hell when her power is unsealed.
[quote="BlackFire2"]I thought he meant the special powers of her vagina.[/quote]
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by krakalackin »

Ignore the Alessa of SHO. Alessa is good.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by KageReneko »

AuraTwilight wrote:It doesn't help that Origins Alessa keeps giving evil grins and the world goes to hell when her power is unsealed.
I though the PS2 version corrected the evil grin... Having in mind that Alessa used the alternate, dark and rusty world in order to hide herself from dahlia in the first game; isn't obvious that she would unleash this dark layer after recover her powers?

Alessa never was a normal girl, the other children feared and attached her, her mom abused her; a dark and malicious personallity is comprehensible in a girl like her, is hard to believe that she continued being good after all the shit that she lived...

Yes, Alessa was a bit creepy in her encounters with Travis, but remember that Alessa doesn't trust the adult people, she is just using him in the same way that the adult people used her during all her life... We can say that Alessa just had 2 people that were nice with her, Lisa and Travis; do you remember in the end how Alessa looks to Travis with gratitude while he smiles her again... Would Travis smile to a girl who was "Evil" to him?

In fact, I never saw Alessa torturing ot attacking anybody (Just the dead boss at the theater); in SH0 was Dahlia the one who was hiding the Flauros pieces, nor Alessa; somehow Dahlia managed to know about the past of Travis and placed the pieces there in order to make the scavenger hunt harder for him, maybe was Silent Hill itself who did that... If Alessa was evil she could just kill Travis after she regained her powers; instead of that she allowed him to escape from Silent Hill same that Dahlia, Kauffman and the order cult members... She used her powers to escape; not for revenge... Is that evil?
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by flipain »

She isn't evil, nor in origins. Alessa had very hard moments in her life, she was forced to kill people, she can't be a normal person after that.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by AuraTwilight »

I like how the two posts under mine don't realize that I'm so far into the "Alessa is Good" camp that one of my reasons for making Origins non-canon is that they left the issue "ambiguous" and are thus preaching to the choir.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by krakalackin »

AuraTwilight wrote:I like how the two posts under mine don't realize that I'm so far into the "Alessa is Good" camp that one of my reasons for making Origins non-canon is that they left the issue "ambiguous" and are thus preaching to the choir.
I was reply to the original post not yours and I agree that Origins is not canon.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by Tillerman »

Aren't questions about whether a certain character is "good" or "evil" kind of silly? I mean, who's to say that the cult wasn't right that the world needed to be cleansed and that god should have been born? I mean, I wouldn't, but it's not as simple as "good" or "evil." Alessa isn't he-man and the cult isn't skeletor.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by alone in the town »

>the cult isn't skeletor.

Actually, my biggest gripe with the Order is just that--they are depicted as almost completely evil. The only member who wasn't 110% Evil was Claudia, who at least demonstrated some regret for her actions. Well, there's also Vincent, but Vincent is, at best, amoral. Pretty much everybody else affiliated with the cult is totally bad guy material.

Who's to say the cult isn't right? Well, I dunno about you, but I sure don't like the idea of the world dying by fire at the behest of some redneck's god.
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Re: Alessa: good or evil

Post by Tillerman »

I don't like the idea of dying to some redneck god either. But it's just, I think putting the characters into categories like "evil" and "good" is kinda missing the point. The characters behave the way they do because of their motivations, and then it's just a question of whether those make sense from their point of view. Yeah, maybe the cult members are written a bit lazily in that it's very easy to make a religious cult do the worst things imaginable and use the religious thing as an excuse.

And as for Alessa, she's basically on the protagonist's side so it's hard not to call her "good" in that sense. Personally I would have preferred if she were a bit more morally ambiguous, but that's just me.
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