“Well, I’m scarred for life.”

Thus spake my father, in a very bemused, matter-of-fact tone, as he, my brother, and I left the theater after seeing Christophe Gans’ 2006 movie Silent Hill. It was our introduction to the series, after only previously hearing about it when my brother went to a sleepover in the early 2000s where he played it and professed it to be “the scariest video game ever.” For all its faults, the movie maintained two major things from the games: the vivid, arresting visual and auditory design of a town twisted by dark forces beyond our ken, and an emotional, human story at its core to guide us through it. Several months post-watch, my brother gave me the PC port of the original 2001 Silent Hill 2 for my 16th birthday, and a lifelong love for this strange, warped town that physically manifests people’s emotional trauma was confirmed.

Over the years, I’ve rarely found people outside the Internet who shared that love, and even when I did, we were passing ships in the night. This is not uncommon for me and the things I love; I have many close, wonderful friends who care about me and respect the things I enjoy, and there’s quite a bit of overlap in our interests, but there are a few things here or there that they simply don’t have the same deep, abiding sentiment for that I do. (And the same goes for me with some of their interests–everyone is different, no two people are not on fire, etc. etc.) One of those is Animorphs, and I imagine I’ll be posting about that on this website sometime in the future. Silent Hill is another.

Every so often, though, I find another soul called by those self-same interests. I don’t know if you’ve had that experience of meeting someone else who obsesses over a “niche interest” or “cult classic” the way you do, but if you have, you understand that sudden feeling of excitement, and oftentimes, relief: I am not alone. C. S. Lewis has always had one of my favorite comments on the matter: “Friendship is born at the moment when one [person] says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…’”

The first time Silent Hill acted as the conduit was several years after those first introductions to the series. In 2013, when I was still frequenting a Silent Hill fan forum, I stumbled upon a musician named Jonas Nicholson who had posted some original acoustic guitar music he had just released. I started following him on Soundcloud, he followed back, and when he saw that I, too, was based in the CNY area, he reached out and asked if I might want to jam sometime. I mentioned I’d just started playing keys for a progressive jam rock band named Lee Terrace, not realizing that he was already familiar with the band before my tenure with them. In fact, he was part of another local jam band, Vaporeyes–noteably, the only one from that era still active today–and in a couple months’ time, we finally met in person when our bands were on the same bill at the Westcott Theater. He remains (as of this writing) the only meatspace friend I met first online.

Jonas and I became fast friends, bonding over playing rock keyboards, our passion for progressive rock, and yes, our love for Silent Hill. Back in 2017, we played an acoustic show together, and I came up with a 2-guitar arrangement of Silent Hill 2’s “Theme of Laura” that we played together.

It remains one of my proudest musical moments, even after all these years, because of how much this series and Akira Yamaoka’s music in particular have shaped my own sensibilities as a storyteller and a composer. Every so often my dad will ask, “Hey, when are you gonna play that Silent Hill song again? The one you did with Jonas?” Sadly, I don’t get many opportunities to share the stage with someone like Jonas. But according to him, Akira Yamaoka gave our video a thumbs-up on YouTube, so at least we got that going for us.

So Jonas and I played that show, and he’s continued on with Vaporeyes (who gave me the Silent Hill-inspired jam I use as bumper music on Twitch) and his solo project Evil Key, which takes a lot of stylistic influence from Yamaoka-san. But there haven’t really been any others I could go on a deep dive into this series with–until, that is, Bloober Team released their 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2.

I’ve followed blogger Cleolinda Jones for years, and even had her on the horror podcast I used to do, A Matter of Taste, several times, so it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that we became friends because of the Silent Hill series. On the other hand, there was a period of time where we fell out of contact with each other, due to various life events, including, y’know, that worldwide pandemic you may have heard tell about.

Then, last October, I saw her post on Tumblr that she was getting into Silent Hill 2 through watching people play the remake on YouTube. She even mentioned her desire to play the game herself, despite only having played mobile games up until this point, and her interest in doing a video commentary on the game and her impressions of it. I offered her a hand in helping her get the tech side of things set up, and what ensued after has been an ongoing conversation of essay-length emails digging deep into everything from the meanings behind certain symbols and lines of dialogue to (as she often brings up), “what you call that guitar that jingles.”

If you’ve ever read her blog or listened to an episode of my podcast (or had a conversation with me in person about movies or books or the like), then you KNOW how much we love media/literary analysis. And Silent Hill 2 is a treasure trove of minute details and strong storytelling decisions that add up to the terrifying, moving video game that has captured people’s hearts since the original released in 2001. So when I reached out and off-handedly mentioned that I, too, was considering doing a video commentary for the game, she insisted that I do one alongside her, both to keep her honest about doing one herself and also to explore stuff that she couldn’t, being a complete newcomer to the game.

So that leads us to today. Tonight, I begin my stream of the Silent Hill 2 remake. Jonas and I have already gushed about the game to each other, and I look forward to more conversations with him about it. Cleo has already been posting on Tumblr and Patreon about her experience gaming for the first time, but soon she’ll be starting her own in-depth video commentary on the game and its story, so definitely keep an eye out for that.

How did that inimitable songstress Rihanna put it? “We found love in a hopeless place”? Somehow, this dark, depressing video game franchise connected me with some incredibly fantastic people that I’m so glad to count as friends. I think that’s what some of the best art does: it changes us forever, and sometimes it does that by bringing us together with people we might not have connected with otherwise–or at least, not in the same deep, unfathomable way that can only happen when people utterly nerd out over a shared interest. “Scarred for life” indeed.