Heather Mason, with her stiff, blonde hair and white vest zipped all the way up, commands her self-made nightmare looking like a truant debutante. But she runs like she saw it coming. Some slumbering piece of brain must have prepared her for the carnage Silent Hill 3 forces her through. The seminal 2003 survival horror game ultimately reveals that Heather is the milkshake reincarnation — half witch, half her father’s daughter — of a perverse Virgin Mary, fated to vomit out Silent Hill’s cracked-skeleton god. But that was 20 years ago. God’s been dead for a long time, and Heather’s been reborn as a TikTok star.
“I LOVE HER SMMM,†a commenter says about one shoegaze-backed fan cam with 30,000 likes. Another TikTok with over 600,000 views shows Heather bloodstained and frowning under flickering yellow lights and over a great, black chasm.
“LOVE LOVE LOVE,†screams a comment on that video.
“DEPISH MODEğŸ˜,†another declares (“Enjoy the Silence†plays in the background).
Sure, TikTok commenters are just having fun, taking footage of a video-game character who’s covered in gore, adding their favorite slow-core song to it, and saying, “meeee!†But Heather’s fans — mostly older zoomers, 25-year-olds like me, but also many teenagers born after the advent of the PlayStation 2 — really do see her in the mirror.
“I don’t like mirrors,†Heather says at the beginning of SH3, prophetically. “It’s almost like there’s an unknown world right on the other side. And the person staring at me isn’t really me, just an imitator.â€
There’s no way around it, Heather. You’ve joined the huge list of women in horror — Pearl, that ax-swinging Dorothy, Carrie the stained prom queen, demon cheerleader Jennifer Check, etc. — featured in countless memes and Depop inspo tags because they’re girls sick of eating shit.
“Heather always reminded me of myself,†a user named Tammy told me over Reddit messages. “I was the same age [as her] when I played Silent Hill 3 for the very first time. She’s not only sassy with her own sense of humor, but also shows her intense mood swings and struggles to find her identity.â€
“She’s easy to map yourself onto,†Silent Hill fan Alaska echoed over Twitter DM. She thinks the same thoughts as modern women, many of whom are currently up against their own surreal horrors: sadistic warfare, dehumanizing abortion laws, and the jungle gym that is health and gender-affirming care. These things aren’t as tangible as the sloppy beasts that come for Heather in SH3, making her deliver memorable one-liners like “Shut your stinking mouth, bitch!â€, but they make us react similarly.
“‘Yes, I am scared, I don’t know what’s going on, forces I don’t understand are trying to take control of me and my body,’†Alaska continued, “‘and I just have to keep living.’ Heather is definitely inspiring in that way.â€
Plus, “I think a lot of people are feeling Heather’s lack of direction, disenfranchisement, and hurt in 2023,†Alaska said. “She feels a lot of responsibility for not just her own life, but everyone’s. I think, especially post-pandemic, that’s something a lot of younger people relate to heavily.â€
That’s why Heather’s influence spreads like cherry jam, slipping past TikTok’s borders and across online life. Reddit threads guess her favorite band, Pinterest collages analyze her miniskirt, and she’s the crux of YouTube manifestos about girlhood. She has the sprezzatura of an “It†girl, the “devil-may-care reputation†The Believer ascribed to Jane Birkin in a 2018 interview.
“If you’re going to be known for something, why not the bag? The song and the bag,†Birkin says in that interview. Heather, in one of TikTok’s favorite dialogue lines, exudes a similar self-confident calm.
“I don’t know,†she says after killing God. “Don’t you think blondes have more fun?â€
“[Heather] gives me a lot of gender euphoria, and she inspires me to be more brave in my identity, and just in general,†14-year-old Chloe, who thinks she was too young when she played 1999’s Silent Hill on her dad’s PlayStation, said over Twitter. “She also shows that, no matter how bad things are, you can always get through them.â€
Personally, I’m dodging slut-shaming hate comments on my FYP and taking notes on how this cool Final Girl makes fear work for her, like Dior lip oil. Those slasher staples will have eternal appeal until it’s less distressing to be a woman. Until then, girls need guidance on keeping our slumber parties as feather-light as they deserve to be. We find solace in each other, no matter how obscure our individual experiences are.
I’ve never been persecuted like Heather, made to outrun a cult and face a degloved, gooey worm monster the way she does during Silent Hill 3’s fleshy first boss encounter. But I recognize her trepidation, the way she hunches over her steel-pipe weapon. It’s how I instinctively shrivel when men stare at me on the train. I’m moving against the unfair world, reminding myself to sit up straight. These small indignities are incomparable to getting pummeled by a pus sac literally named Insane Cancer, but they often feel so laughably unjustified, you might as well make a few film-grainy fan cams about it.
That’s what I like about Heather Mason’s TikTok incumbency. It stretches out her nightmare until it’s only a sheet popped with bullet holes, only a backdrop for her mood and self-assured movement. It pairs well with indulgent journaling, sending friends a three-minute voice memo, and distorted guitar. Seeing Heather on my feed, covered in grime, but still being totally and identifiably herself, I feel safe wherever I am. I feel like, while we’re here together online, we might as well get our knee-high boots on.
The world, for women, is like a shadow puppet, always shifting into a new monster shape. But Heather doesn’t need to change. As someone with a Five Nights at Freddy’s profile picture might say, she’s already slaaaying!