Abuse Is A Dog: a Lisa RPG essay
INTRO
> Madness is a small cost.
For power greater than love.
- Mad Dog
Lisa is painful. Painful is also the name of the game. Today, I’m going to talk about it. I’m going to talk about Lisa The Painful. But I will also talk about Lisa the Joyful. And I’ll talk about the definitive editions! And maybe Lisa the First… You’re getting the whole package.
This is an essay that will focus on what the title implies-- the cycle of abuse in the series Lisa. I don’t intend to make any of this like a review, but may do so a bit when I get to the new content. But the focus is on the topic mentioned.
Let’s break down this essay though…
I will start with going through the story of Painful as it is- none of the new content mentioned. Once I do that, then I’ll go through the new content for that game. And repeated with Joyful. I will also give a short summary for The First.
Then I’ll give some of my own quick feelings on the new content before breaking down the narrative.
So, with that said, this is full of spoilers. You should really play this game yourself if you can, and one benefit is that the new games have an easy mode as well, so you don’t have to suffer as much with combat.
Last thing is a proper content warning. The game will contain lots of discussion of physical abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape, emotional abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and generally covering the topics of trauma and how they affect individuals.
PAINFUL SUMMARY
The game will open up immediately to show us the player character, Brad, and a brief look at his life as a child- bullied by others and abused by his father. In the present, we see Brad using a drug called “joy”, before walking off and stumbling across an infant child. When taking it back to his friends, they realize it is a baby girl- which is important, as there are apparently all women have died in this world.
His friends tell him they should say something, since this girl could save all of them, but Brad insists on taking care of her because of how dangerous it would be for her go out into the world. He says how this is his ‘second chance’, and proceeds to keep her- naming her Buddy. Through a series of scenes we see that Brad continues takes care of her, but struggles with visions of his troubles and continues to take joy pills to deal with it.
While there are happy moments, we also see how Brad keeps Buddy isolated from the outside world, and reprimands her for trying to leave.
After waking up a drug and alcohol induced black out, Brad returns home to find that Buddy had been kidnapped- his friends gone or killed. Brad immediately sets out to find her, as he knows how horrible and dangerous the world is for her as the only woman. So off the game goes.
Through the story you encounter a variety of characters, many of which want Brad dead. Be it old friends or gangs looking for the girl. Whilst the game’s story will carry a dark subject, there are many moments of humor, or characters themselves just being a bit funny.
One of the early encounters of someone who wishes to hurt Brad is Chris Columbo, one of the childhood bullies. Chris will appear a couple times, threatening Brad by making you hand things over, kill companions, etc.
As you progress through the first area, you are greeted with the walls painted with red letters or covered in posers looking for Buddy. You learn about Rando’s Army through many parts of the game- a huge gang with lots of influence who’s especially looking for her. You face many of these kinds of groups through the game, one after the other often a lead to where Buddy may be.
As you make your way through the first area, Brad eventually runs into a large group of men in an old factory. While all these guys wear strange masks, one man in particular comes up to Brad and gives him joy pills- the leader of the group, named Buzzo. And while he threatens Brad similarly to Chris, his threats are much more gruesome and consequential- including a choice between killing your companion or cutting your arm off.
While fighting through many enemies, Brad also faces numerous hallucinations related to his past and what is constantly troubling him. One showing how he’d asked his friend, Sticky, for drugs who denied him because of his problems. In a few locations there are hallucinations of a young girl in white, who eventually is learned to be his sister Lisa- often shown with a noose, or simply standing in out of reach places. There are eventual scenes that show Brad having been a martial arts teacher, and inviting a shy kid to his class. And even later on seeing one of those kids as a hallucination in a cave, with a bloody and mutilated face. All of these things tie together in the end.
There are various NPCs in the world that describe some of what the men are supposedly doing with Buddy, one group claiming to have had her in a back room, where men were able to use her-- however she had escaped by the time Brad arrives. Eventually Brad manages to find Buddy alone in a small cave. But Buddy doesn’t want to go with Brad, as his friends explained to her why she is important to the world, and that Sticky showed her-- sounding to Brad that Sticky had assaulted her. Buddy becomes upset from Brad’s angry reaction, he takes her along with him regardless.
**
Shortly after, Buzzo makes an appearance once more. He had managed to take Buddy aside, and taunts him with Joy pills and then eventually force feeding them to Brad. After he overdoses, the gang takes Buddy away, and Brad has a strange dream in which he fights a massive and grotesque version of Sticky that reflects his fear over what Buddy told him.
Moving forward, Brad has another hallucination- one of an empty funeral, with a coffin, where a person comments that Brad was the only one to come to the funeral-- the one of Lisa. After, you exit through a hallways that becomes strange and fleshy. Coming back out into the real world, Sticky is seen beat up and bloody. He talks about their friendship, but also Brad’s awful behavior and habits. Before Brad can hurt him in response, their friend Richard interrupts. The player can choose to both of kill them, or let them leave.
As if all that wasn’t enough, Buzzo finds Brad yet again, with Buddy in his grasp. The options he gives Brad are to cut Brad’s arm off, or to cut Buddy’s nipple off. If you choose the former, you get the nipple as an item in your inventory…
However you see Buzzo moments after, stating that Buddy had quickly escaped. There is one more choice to make- depending on your situation, he may take your arm, your stuff, or another companion.
Now towards the last stretch of the game, Brad faces his old bully Chris Columbo once more. And after racing him on a motorcycle, you have one last talk before he decides to kill himself. And his deer. After, you continue and collect a variety of material to build yourself a boat in order to cross the waters where Buddy is. When you sail across, Brad comes across Buddy in a small cave, with Brad’s father, Marty. He’s sitting there with bottle and pills, and Buddy says that he saved her.
But Brad is upset seeing his father, and goes to kill him. Marty at first refuses to fight back, and Buddy eventually steps in front of him. But she is pulled away, and Brad manages to kill Marty for good.
Buddy leaves again, so Brad moves on, until he finds Buddy not far off. She is being mutilated-- by a man you wouldn’t necessarily recognize, but is Sticky’s father. After fighting him in order to save Buddy, he takes Buddy with him once more until they reach Rando’s army.
When they try to leave, Buddy instead turns and runs towards the Army and away from him. Before he continues, he faces his companions before going off towards Rando. He tears through the Army- in a mess of grief as he remembers Lisa, and desperately tries to save Buddy finally. When he reaches Rando, he kills him, blasting away all of his armor and revealing his face- which is horribly mutilated. His final words, and his way of speech, confirm that he was the kid that Brad accepted into his class.
After all of that, Brad keeps walking, bloody and weak. He approaches Buddy, finally telling her that its all over and that they can go home. But Buddy isn’t happy. She’s upset, and doesn’t understand why Brad is here for her now, being a good father, but wasn’t here for her before. That she hates him for killing her friends, and that she finally had a chance to get out of isolation and live for herself. Brad can’t take the words Buddy gives, unable to understand that his actions would leave Buddy to hate him.
She asks why he would do this to her in the end, and all he can do is continue to say how he was saving her from everyone else. When Buddy finally says that she hates Brad the most out of everyone else, Brad simply asks for a hug. The player can chose yes or no. Regardless of the choice, Brad cries for the second and last time in the game.
Once the credits roll we see after, that Brad has transformed into a horrible Joy mutant. He crawls towards the place where Buddy is hiding, seeing Buddy as Lisa instead when he approaches.
PAINFUL NEW CONTENT
Okay, Let’s work our was back. There were some minor changes/additions to Painful in the main part of the game that probably wouldn’t be noticed by an entirely blind new player with how small they are-- things like the Rando Army fight changing a bit.
There are campfire scenes with every companion. Some are talks with brad, some are talks between other party members, and some are just members going and doing something alone. There’s a lot of them, so I will not go over every single one! But I will bring up two in particular during the proper analysis of these games. Specifically, Mad Dog and Queen Roger’s.
The biggest part added is a dream sequence when you visit the campfire at the very start, after you get all the boat parts at the end of the game. You awaken in a dark scene of the same location. Working your way through, you can see the same Terry-hint posters but the text it all backwards. After seeing and fighting the dog you encounter at the very beginning of the game, you get into a loop when you walk back, as a figure of Lisa stands above. In order to stop it, you walk back to the cliff and jump off.
Walking again, the posters now tell Brad to wake up, and asking if you can see them. After walking through enough times, you go left and find a strange starry place filled with joy. And blue goo.
Walking into the house, you go down the rope and through a blue door, into a cave filled with vines and flowers. After repeating a few times, you walk down a hall to see Rando with Buddy, which then quickly flashes to Marty with Lisa, who is hanged. A large horrifying mutant version of Brad chases him down the cave, and then he is back to where you started, the poster now telling him to not wake up.
After climbing up and then down a long rope, it transitions to the starting scene of the game where Brad had been beat up by bullies. But back at the playground and his neighborhood, things are dark and empty. Walking down to the houses, you see a huge swarm of strange spiders, with faces of the Joy masks seen on Buzzo and his gang.
Walking all the way to the right will bring you to Brad’s grandfather, who seems to be talking to Marty based on his words. He talks down at Marty and says how he is weak, and that he will take Brad with him and make sure he is tough on him in the right way. Not the way Marty was, and that even if Brad grows to hate his grandfather as well for this continued abuse, Brad will at least be strong because of it.
Entering Brad’s home you see a similar thing from the beginning, Marty hits Brad with a glass bottle, and Brad heads up stairs. Brad can’t go through the door to Lisa’s room yet, and must go to his own where a strange blue glob-ish version of Marty sits on his bed.
A weird, abstract, and disjointed monologue from Marty ensues. He deteriorates- both the conversation starts to get weaker, and his body becomes more bloody and broken.
When done, you walk into Lisa’s room and see it filled with vines and bottles, and Lisa hanging there. Leaving, Brad can enter Marty’s bedroom, and is greeted with a long expanse of blood leading to a huge flesh mound with Marty’s head on top.
An incredibly long boss fight begins, having you fight Marty as he taunts Brad. Your companions get picked off one by one, and permanently die in this fight despite it being a dream. Once Marty is destroyed, his final words insult Brad for his weakness but also go on to desperate cries to not let go of any of this. His head rips from his body, and hanging from it is Lisa- until the rope breaks and she falls.
The scene comes back with Brad as a child, making his way down a long fleshy tendril. Through this long descent, a voice that we can assume is Lisa’s, speaks a poem. One of the repeated verses being “No friends, No brothers, No fathers, No mothers.”
After the long climb down, there is a dialog with no visuals, but is one between Brad and Lisa. Brad is talking about running away to their grandfather, and Lisa gives him the dead flower and asks him to keep it safe. We find out this is the last conversation Brad had with Lisa before she committed suicide.
The scene returns to Brad as normal in the dream, climbing up a rope and back through a hallways with blood. He comes across a very small version of the mound of flesh with Marty’s face, who says “Its just not that easy. You can’t save her. You cant even save yourself. After all, I am in your veins.”
After this, the dreams ends.
JOYFUL SUMMARY
We’re not done yet, let’s go over Joyful now. Luckily this game is much shorter…
Joyful opens with a flashback, where Brad walks back to the house with a bag. He wakes up Buddy, revealing that inside is a half dead man. He tells her that she must stab and kill him, telling her that she needs to learn how to defend herself. After killing the man, we flash to a vague conversation between two people we don’t yet know, and then to the present- right after the ending of Painful. Buddy is in a shed, and mutant Brad is there too. He goes up to Buddy, and they enter a fight, which is interrupted by Buzzo. He says he is taking Brad with him, and leaves. Buddy comes out of the shed, still in Rando’s territory.
Moving along, she runs into a gang led by a man named Bolo, but Rando catches up to Buddy, distracting them. Before anyone can do anything else, a joy mutant attacks Bolo’s men, causing them to run off. Rando join’s Buddy and the two go off, fighting through more people before they eventually approach a large wall with numerous names on them.
All these names are the Warlords who run Olathe- some of which Brad had killed already. Rando says they’ll go up ahead and find his friends who will help them, but when they go, Rando’s friends knock them both out, separating them and tying Buddy up so she wouldn’t escape. However, they also mention that they killed one of the guys with them because they tried to do something to her. Rando passes out, and when he wakes up he crawls over to where Buddy is, finding that she killed the remaining men.
Cutting to a dream sequence, we see a young Buzzo walking towards Lisa, but her form flickers to that of Buddy’s instead. After waking, we see Buzzo in a cave with the mutant Brad he took with him. We move on to Buddy carrying forward with intents to kill the Warlords. Despite Rando’s urging to not do it.
In an early campfire conversation before they get going, Rando mentions his real name is Dustin Armstrong, confirming that he and Buddy are adopted siblings.
The order in which this next series of events can be made is kind of up to the player. There are three warlords each in the two areas of the game, most with little dialog worth mentioning- some commenting on how they know Rando. One of them, Dice Mahone, has been turned into a joy mutant by the time you get to him. This is one significant detail-- the world as you explore has far more mutants in it. Members of the remaining society seem to be turning from the use of the drug, and most likely anyone remaining who isn’t turned, is being killed by them.
At some point Buddy continues on her own after Rando shows more concern for her actions and she no longer trusts him. Buddy eventually comes across Rando again- but he has been tied up, hanging over a cliff. Buddy stops him from falling by grabbing the loose wire, but is confronted by Bolo. He’d set it up so that he could get Buddy stuck in one place. You’re confronted with two choices- one to drop Rando and fight Bolo, or to not drop Rando and let Bolo touch Buddy. If the former is chosen, a fight will ensue with Bolo but Rando will fall. If the latter is chosen, a joy mutant will eventually interrupt and kill Bolo. But regardless Rando will fall to his death and reveal that he had planned for her to have been kidnapped all along.
Buddy continues alone once more, and kills the remaining Warlords. Once done, Buddy will return to the list of names and come across a man playing a trumpet, then fighting a joy mutant he commands. But Buzzo stops the fight, and says that the man- Yado- has a vaccine for the Joy. Buddy finds him, and fights him.
As the fight goes on, The joy mutant in front of Buddy morphs to show Rando’s face. After the fight ends you see a long expanse of a red blood floor and white flowers. At the end is Brad, with flowers coming sprouting out of him. When Buddy fights him, he goes through different phases, all defining parts of his life with Buddy. From him at the start when he named Buddy, to Brad when he was struggling with Joy, to his happy times with Buddy, and then finally when Brad had broken down at the end of Painful as he fought for Buddy.
After, Buddy goes after Yado as he runs away. Yado implies- through this dialog and past ones now connected- that he had made Joy, and also claims that he is Buddy’s father. But he is quickly killed by Buzzo, who came to find Buddy. He rebukes Yado claim about him being Buddy’s father. Buzzo then starts to go on about his influence on Brad’s behavior, blaming himself for Brad taking Joy and so on, ultimately blaming himself for it all. He breaks down about Lisa as he thinks about her death, and turns into a joy mutant.
After killing him, Buddy sees Brad as a mutant approach, and on the other end sees Rando- though an assumed hallucination of him. She is faced with the choice to take the Joy vaccine or to not. Both lead to different endings.
Leaving them and taking the vaccine shows Buddy older, with the mutant version of Brad, and what looks to be a child. Not taking the vaccine shows Buddy as a mutant, having ripped Brad’s body apart, and sitting over the dead body of Rando. There are a few different epilogue texts you can get from the endings, but I will bring them up later if relevant.
JOYFUL NEW CONTENT
So the new content in Joyful adds quite a lot of new things to do when compared to Painful. And it works its way into the last stretch of the game, prior to facing Yado. It requires a LOT of work that you would not likely know at all if you played blind. Unlike Painful having some little dots of new things outside of the dream, Joyful only has this one new span of content that all works into the existing ending, changing it to some degree.
I won’t be talking about this like a tutorial to get this content, you will need to find a proper guide for it! But I will mention that you must be playing joyless in your run.
There are multiple items you need to find, some found in this new location and most found in existing locations. But you start by entering a new place, found behind a fence near the wall of names. Going through a dark cave you come out to a field with one flower. Pressing escape on it brings you to an empty hall with various statues on them.
Each statue has a character on it. You must hit them in a specific order- Sticky, Buzzo, Dusty, Brad, Yado, Marty, and then Lisa. After, you see the same part of a poem we saw in Brad’s dream. This poem seems to refer to the order in which you destroyed the statues too. Then you need to put the items you acquired on the pedestals. Each of the items are references to items in Lisa the First. I wanted to mention these things about the statues here, because I likely won’t bring them up much later, but its interesting to know!
After, you go down a dark and rainy place to find a boss of all the Warlords as ghosts. You have the option to kill them, or you can defend yourself for multiple turns to end it instead, where they insult Buddy for not fighting. After the fight, you can walk in one direction to get a new item, a sacred nipple.
When you leave, walk all the way back to the first village, and go all the way left, jumping of the cliff. This area was present in the original, and you could see a secret vision of Buzzo and Lisa. We see this again, but instead when walking back into the funeral room, there is a new place all the way to the left as we walk into a new door.
There is a new dream-like scene where we first see Brad’s friends as kids, talking about the events that unfolded up to this point, and also their thoughts on Brad. They mention how they set up Buddy’s kidnapping as well. Walking right shows Brad’s house, flocked by strange looking versions of Brad as a child. Walking further shows Buzzo and Dusty as kids- Buzzo saying that Dusty needs to be more more powerful and dominating rather than just strong. Which he says is how you should also treat women. Buzzo seems to notice Buddy approach, and for a moment thinks it was Lisa.
Walking into Brad’s house there is a flash of an odd scene- Buddy at the door in a suit with Cheeks, Richard, Sticky and Lisa on the other side of the room. When it flashes back, Lisa is the only one left, next to a tea set. Interaction her makes a small heart appear above her heard.
Going up stairs you can find a mark on the wall to the left, which appears to be Rando, giving Buddy some last words. Going into Brad’s room has you find a cracked child’s skull, which is remarked to feel like looking into a mirror.
Entering Lisa’s room, there is a hole leading into a hall with red patterns walls. In the center is a large mound of flesh. After placing the acquired nipple on top, you can walk into the right side of the mound. This room is also a reference to Lisa the First, where you see a similar room and flesh mound, and need to walk into the left side. Additionally, the music is an altered version of one from the First, that plays when you meet the character Tricky Rick.
You enter a white room with white flowers and stopping at the one colored flower makes you place it in the broken skull. Walking back, you go through a pink door and return to the wall of names.
The last section of new content plays out in the very end. Before fighting Buzzo, you now get an extended dialog from Buddy. She berates Buzzo for his assumptions about Lisa because she is dead and he can’t speak for her, for blaming himself for everything, and how pathetic he is being right now. The fight and moments before the final choice are otherwise the same. But the end after the credits shows a large woman figure holding Buddy. The epilogue text is new, showing a conversation where Brad tells Buddy about the dead flower he has.
LISA THE FIRST
For the sake of it, I will go ahead and summarize Lisa the First. The First is the earliest game in the series, playing like Yume Nikki with being an open map where you explore aimlessly as you pick up objects leading you to the ending. You play as Lisa, going through dream-like areas that have Marty all over the place. With the context of Lisa’s sexual abuse, these areas reflect that in various ways. Imagery, characters, dialog, and lots of other things. There are uncomfortable innuendos and bile covering the walls of many places.
The game has two endings that are very similar. One has Lisa encountering someone who seems to be her mom, but it ends up being Marty when she turns around. The other is basically the same but without the mom. The ending shows that Lisa can’t escape Marty-- physically or mentally.
THE ANALYSIS: CYCLES OF ABUSE
> "Sometimes you need to just."
i dunno.
"Eat your heart out."
"Pick yourself up."
"Do what's right."
"Be a man and suck it up."
- Richard Weeks (dream)
PART 1: OPENING THE DOORS
In some ways it’s easy to feel like inserting new content after the existing game might be bad, if you feel like the game already did its job very well. But for me, I feel like I enjoyed it because I wanted to see more from Brad, Lisa, Buddy and Marty in the context of their shared abuse. The game does work fine without this content. We don’t need to see this new content for the game to work. But even if its fine without it, I don’t think that means we can’t have it- the new content is enjoyable to me because if I do see it, I feel like it supports the existing story and characters pretty well without ruining the already existing plot.
I wouldn’t complain about this game’s lack of flashback about the characters, But seeing a lengthy exploration of their traumas in a still abstract way gave me an even stronger and even more complicated feelings. I quite enjoyed playing Lisa the First when I finished Painful and Joyful, because it was a game that at the very least, implied a lot more about Lisa’s abuse even if there was no story, and some parts of it don’t follow the later continuity. This new content in many ways made me think of The First because of that. A lot of it was quite vague and symbolic.
Truthfully, I just feel like this new content opens up so much more to think about when it comes to these characters. There is a stronger sense of struggle I find in Brad after seeing what looks like the stream of thoughts that constantly conflict in his head. Seeing the internal fight in wanting to change, versus seeing what Brad is doing in the game as you play.
It doesn’t bluntly reveal who Lisa is, it doesn’t tell us about Dusty. It’s still completely open and so I feel like its good support to the existing story. Joyful’s new content work’s in a similar way, if we aren’t looking at the Buzzo conversation.
In Joyful we still don’t know Lisa that well, and the dream-like sequence doesn’t tell you anything bluntly either. If you do know, then it can be an extra layer. If you don’t, the vague information you do know still comes in handy here, because its making you think. The Joyful content makes it obvious that Buddy is being compared to someone- Lisa- and the symbolism reflects in the existing games.
There’s other aspects to this new content aside from how I like the narrative aspect… I said this part might be a little more review-y and I’ll give some other opinions just to give a more clear stance on what I do and don’t like, because I don’t want it to sound like all I have is endless praise and no issues.
Out of all of them I liked Painless most. I did play on easy as I didn’t want to suffer my third playthrough, and I am not a hardcore gamer. It was not as vague about how to find this dream either, but I think the main issue with this new stuff is that the extra plot stuff is impossible to know it exists or how to do it, unless you look it up. *Especially* Joyful.
With Brad’s dream there is that boss fight. And while it was brutal, and it took me a long time even on easy, I didn’t hate it. That’s also because there is quite a bit of dialog given from Marty too, and I think that fed a lot into the already existing narrative the dream was giving. I think there is some kinda metaphor in there about how long it takes, but I also don’t blame people for being annoyed it was long.
There were some other small additions in Painful not not worth going over- but really I enjoyed all of what they added to Painful.
Joyful is more complicated. It was already that way before this-- people have many mixed opinions on that game. My short version is that it had poor pacing, but I didn’t mind a lot of the actual story-- just the fact I feel the pacing affected that in the end. The actual ending were the part I also disliked the most, and I actually enjoyed the epilogues more than them.
So with the new content, I think the conflicting part is that it by no means fixes the pacing issues, it can’t. You’d have to remake the whole game to fix that. It adds in some great stuff with the dream, stuff I think did actually help the game with things like Rando’s last words or Brad’s friends. It did feel like an attempt to add things that weren’t expressed originally. Of course this leads to Buzzo’s dialog as well.
I have a LOT of feelings about this one and its all over the place.
The first thought is: I like that there was a conversation on how Buzzo viewed Lisa, some of his hypocritical nature, and in general the sentiment that no one can speak for Lisa alone. It was a good topic, but whether or not it was handled well it a different story.
So the second thought is: the game already struggled to give a solid characterization on Buddy, and thats one issue with the dialog at the end. Buddy goes on a very long rant. One that honestly starts to feel a bit meta. Which is hard for me to explain without making loads of assumptions about the creator, and I feel awkward doing so here.
Third and final thought is: whether or not Buzzo’s reaction is good, if his further exaggerated regression made sense. My initial reaction was certainly like, wow thats weird. I know this part is what made many not like it and I understand why. He breaks down in the original so its not wrong for it to be there, and Buddy is giving him an intense beat down with her words. Ones that accuse Buzzo of how pathetic he is and how its shitty for him to look at Lisa this way after all this time.
I think it warrants a further reaction than before. But in my opinion, the pacing again kinda messes it up here, with the fact only so much of the ending could be extended beyond what it was and we still lack information on characters like Buzzo to know how he should act… The intensity of the regression from him is undoubtedly written in a way that sounds weird because of that fact.
It should be noted, this detail of age regression isn’t a first in the new content. It actually happens in Painful too. But I hadn’t thought about it, as it did feel fitting. I’m not going to go into that, but it sure is interesting that it happens twice.
I think thats the most I have to say about the games in general, I have little negative feelings about the new content, as conflicting as the end of Joyful was. It still has a lot of digest that I think paints a better picture on the topic of abuse. So lets get into that.
PART 2: INSIDE YOUR HEAD / OUTSIDE YOUR BODY
> When they hand you their heart. You don’t bare yours. You eat it. Consume everything.
- Marty (dream)
Trauma goes deep. It’s important to see just how hard it is to get out of it. With help, or without it, it will not be a simple task. And all through that, many often fear they will become their abusers too. When abuse is in the family, it tends to carry down. A trend, a never ending cycle. From one parent’s trauma may come abuse, and passed on yet again.
Lisa does a good job of exploring characters who suffer with this. The main cast of characters deal with this problem, but the game as a whole does other things to show the long running problems.
With Brad, we really learn more about how the lack of a normal upbringing couldn’t stop the influence of abuse from his father. What he lost because of it. If the trauma has become planted in Brad so deeply, then it only further did the same to everyone else in this family. Lisa, Buddy and yes, Marty too. We can’t forget the earliest man in the bloodline that we know- Marty’s father-- Brad’s grandfather. And who’s to say what came before him?
Just because we recognize the horrible abuser doesn’t mean we brush off the source, because we are here to look at Why. Why it keeps happening. Marty’s father clearly had intentions to make him the man he says he wants to make Brad. But this didn’t happen with Marty, so Marty dealt with abuse from a father that looked down on him- much in the way he ended up doing to Brad.
Whatever abuse Marty endured made him the hateful and abusive man we know now. Marty’s behavior left Brad submissive to whatever he was told, fearing the worst by acting out- which meant he’d even reflect or recreate the abuse faced from Marty in order to avoid punishment. Whether it was being forced to drink alcohol, or implied to take part in, or at the very least witness, the abuse don’t to his own sister.
Brad already hated his father, but his anger and behavior was validated by his grandfather when he ran to him. A variety of things could cause one to turn out like their abusers, and sadly for Brad, the way his grandfather taught him abuse was excused by the need to defend himself.
His grandfather hated Marty, Brad hated Marty. Learning to defend yourself from others and prove Marty wrong by becoming tough? This all made sense. But clearly, his grandfather was no better. Brad learned how to defend himself, sure.
But he was not getting help, and his grandfather was a poor figure to look up to, because he was closed off and strict as a teacher. As Brad replicates in his own relationships with his kids, he is detached. Repeating what he went through. No physical intimacy, no closeness. He can’t open up, he has to defend himself in every possible way.
Next to Brad, we actually have Lisa to look at in this context. Lisa was horribly abused, but it wouldn’t be your first thought to think she inherited abusive or toxic behavior from those who hurt her as well, yet she did.
In Joyful and in Painful’s new content, we get probably the one and only glimpse of how Lisa acts around others. Even then its not much-- Joyful’s is the most obvious, and its one we had in the original game. We saw a variety of ways that she talked to Buzzo. Showing extreme jealousy and guilting him by claiming he didn’t love her, or was showing interest in someone else. Additionally there is the epilogue where she encourages Buzzo to mutilate her, something she did while and making manipulating him with the claim that if he did so, it meant he loved her. None of this was good, we can’t deny that just because of her abuse. But it’s not like we can’t understand why.
Even when talking to Brad in Painful’s new content, her personality is a bit weird. She’s pretty detached, is pretty normal about strange things as Brad comments, and is very particular about the dead flower, especially with the forcefulness towards Brad taking it. They’re small things, sure. But this is like a bundle of behaviors from the numerous things she went through. All victims can lash out in ways people would typically see as abusive. Yet it’s hard for many to understand that victims are not perfect, they never will be.
Stepping over to Buddy, she is just another example of other ways a child takes in their abuse, and how its reflected. There is new dialog between Buddy and Brad, where Buddy takes the flower from Brad. Brad’s reaction sparks the anxiety in Buddy that Brad will reprimand her for it. But, Buddy’s sass and bluntness afterwards while amusing, I feel reflects how a kid like her would act with a parent who doesn’t treat their child… like a child. Brad was not a proper father figure, and so Buddy’s personality reflects more maturity because of that.
With Buddy learning to not show much emotion, if at all, and to stay detached, then its pretty clear this is the case when she connected with Rando. When the two of them paired up in Joyful, Buddy lacked interest or seemed defensive. Even at one point choosing to leave him behind with ease, only becoming emotional when an extreme situation came up.
Of course, most obvious behavior learned behavior from Brad is Buddy’s ability to kill with next to no regard. Brad saw her like a student, whatever he trained her to do, she did. Sadly for Buddy, its simply what she grew up with, and she failed to see the outside world as anything but a place to defend herself from. She was isolated her whole life, and Brad told her it was dangerous, so that is why she must learn to kill. When that is your only exposure to what the outside is like, its not hard to see why she’d go on a killing spree in Joyful.
She may have understood earlier in Painful that she was important, but by the time Brad finds her, practically everyone was dead, those she loved were killed by Brad, and she had also faced loads of abuse or violence from others up to that point. If her only knowledge on how to fix things is to kill, then its what she does.
It may not have been a bad thing that there was little to do in terms of continuing the bloodline.
What’s inside matters, right? But what’s outside still leaves its impression.
> Men don't need toys. Men shape the future.
And I'll make sure his pain will be a worthy sacrifice. - Marty’s father
The world around these characters are also a part of the trauma. Even before the Flash, there is one theme that comes up a lot. Masculinity. And it carries through the rest of the narrative. As brought up earlier, Brad’s grandfather is the oldest example of where problems start. But outside of the abuse in his family, he also goes off about masculinity in general. In turn, Marty does this as well in the boss fight with Brad, as he is likely repeating what he heard growing up too. A lot of “Be a man” sentiments for Brad are voiced in this fight- where he is belittled and called weak for not fulfilling these standards.
This kind of toxic masculinity is not unfamiliar to our own society- men being expected to act certain ways, and abusive men passing down the mindset, doing just the same thing we see reflected in Brad’s family.
The game literally puts you in a world of only men, with violent gangs run by them. There is a need for control, often expressed through this violence and territorial behavior. It is backed by the fact that they are in an apocalypse situation, where they will slowly die off without any way to procreate- so the need for some kind of organization is the one thing holding it all together.
The simple fact that this world is represented by these gangs and their purpose to often inflict violence and control, is what makes a cycle in the world itself. There are many times where it is mentioned or shown how the gangs’ power and ability to intimidate, lead to insulting others for their lack of strength.
I especially point this out for the context of Buddy’s experience in the outside world. She experienced the violence and hunger of the men in Olathe directly, and her hatred is directed at men after all that she went through. Because of it, it would be easy for her to think this is how all men will act. She wouldn’t know any better. As if Brad’s words to scare her weren’t enough, the outside proved it for sure. It shaped what she turned to even more alongside Brad’s teachings.
The things I bring up with masculinity may be an overall world issue, so the point here is how even on a societal level there can still be a cycle like that in personal relationships.
Not much, if any, characters are implied to face abuse or traumas of this theme except for one-- Mad Dog. From a lore perspective, Mad Dog’s campfire scene continues the small amount of his backstory that we knew. That he hates his sons, and apparently killed one of them for not living up to the Mad Dog name. That preexisting context applied to this dialog adds another layer to his situation. And it’s an interesting conversation that can really be applied to the entire game’s topics and characters.
While it is presented as him simply rambling while Brad is asleep, the fact it is done the way it is feels like it is just being expressed to the player alone. It feels a bit meta with its ability to be applied to other things as well, and its strange presentation as it goes on leaves a lot to think about depending on how you take it.
Mad Dog’s family seemed to have some kind of tradition where the son will eventually kill his father and take the Mad Dog name for himself. Also implying cannibalism.. I guess? He also says it is a hellacious, miserable cycle that will never stop and that it is being done to make them stronger.
I find that Mad Dog’s dialog more metaphorically applicable to what goes on in the game’s story and character relationships, a short and condensed summary. There is a horrible and inescapable cycle of abuse that is passed down over and over. And almost all of it stems from some attempt to keep yourself safe, with defense of offense. That the response to trauma being to fight and beating in the mindset of how to be strong is the solution. They are taught one way, and think that this is the solution- but its not, so it never ends.
---
After all of this, how do you think about the characters? I think its important to highlight the ways in which abuse and trauma runs through them. Even to where I get across that many of them also recreate that abusive behavior, no matter how strongly we see them as a victim or only saw them from that perspective.
You are supposed to feel for these characters in a variety of ways, there is no one answer. And I’d hope as well that it is clear that going over any of the good or bad character’s doesn’t make a black or white conclusion. Even if we can explain why an abuser became the abuser and how they were also a victim because of it, it doesn’t mean they aren’t a horrible abuser. In turn, when we find out that a victim we knew also acted out with abusive behaviors, doesn’t take away the innocent view we had of them as a victim.
Every one of these characters has been so bad, but we can see why that happened. We see that they are trapped. Its important to recognize why they are the way they are, and how this repeating cycle isn’t easy to escape.
<<<<<
PART 3: AT THE CORE
> I sense these roots have been growing for a very long time.
You've been fighting it, but it's too late.
The truth always finds a way.
- Rando (dream)
There is still so much to break down here. The hardest part is understanding what it feels like to never let go, because its what keeps you trapped. Letting go of the trauma is hard. No matter what it is, you’re told to let it go. But it is not that easy.
As early as Lisa the First, this is present. Lisa’s mind is filled with images of Marty, and the ending shows how she can’t ever let go of him- physically or mentally. She is actively being abused, and the one symptom of that is how she she cannot erase Marty from her mind no matter what she tries to do.
Brad’s character heavily explores this. Through Painful, we know that he is chasing something- literally Buddy, but also this idea of a “second chance”. His friends’ reactions seem to imply the idea is a bad one, and we get the message that he desperately wants that, and whatever that would give him. After learning more, especially the new content, we see how deeply rooted this desperation really is, and how its all rooted in trauma.
Brad really wants to change, he is clawing his way to the surface but he is so far away, and he keeps slipping. And that’s because he can’t let go of anything. Lisa and the grief he feels is a huge driving point to all the reasons why he can’t fully change. He can’t stop thinking about her when it comes to everything else. Because the grief is what influences his actions, and pulls him back over and over.
And Marty... The second layer holding him down is Marty, who is the voice and the source of everything telling him that he will never change. It is the anger- the anger that is how he looks at the world, how he feels about himself, how he looks at his past. Its validation to why he acts like this. But it is also fear. It is fear for changing at all. That visualization of Marty in the dream voices how desperate it is to keep holding on because if you let go, you’ll get hurt. It’ll hurt so bad, and you can’t have that happen! Change is painful, so its better to not change at all.
When you combine that fear with the voice in your head that continues to abuse you, you can’t do it. It is not unlike Brad talking to his own father or grandfather for help, only to be shut down and never comforted. Stop being a baby, you have to be a man about it. And being a man about it means shutting up, closing off, and staying put.
No matter how the voice of Lisa speaks to him later in that dream, we see him faced with that little part of Marty left there after the fight. A small part that threatens to grow back, just as strong as before. It’s the last thing he sees before he wakes up, solidifying how even after those words from Lisa trying to show him he must move on, that Brad truly cannot. He is still struggling, he can’t get Marty out of him and its how he still didn’t change by the time he sees Buddy at the end.
Buddy too finds something stuck inside her, and that is Brad himself, even if not blatantly shown in the same way. She is acting out in order to get away from Brad and how he acted. She doesn’t understand him- she doesn’t see all the reasons Brad is doing what he is doing. And she doesn’t need to, because she knows she just doesn’t want to see him ever again after escaping. Turning her anger towards violence is done to escape her problems, and her father. Something she was directly taught to do.
It’s done mindlessly, without proper awareness of why she is doing it, blinded by her quick response to cope with her trauma. Only to be faced with Brad at the very end of Joyful, making her break down. By the end, Buddy still doesn’t understand why she couldn’t escape him even after all that. In many ways the murder spree could be seen as a distraction from what she was running from, and only at the end does she see that it did not solve her trauma.
Through some of the added content, we also get to see the comparisons Buddy has to Lisa, and additionally how her behavior was undoubtedly influenced by Brad, and that she was too late to ever realize that and stop.
What’s interesting on the outside, with the idea of having some stuck inside you, is that Lisa herself does come up in some of this- just not a typical way. I think its wrong to say Lisa is in some sense “haunting the narrative”, as I feel it makes her seem like less of a person and more like a plot device. Lisa may not live as the toxic figure in Brad’s life, as she is the sister he mourns. Or Buddy, as Lisa is a character simply being compared to her by others.
But looking at someone like Buzzo, I feel like I can apply this to him too. We don’t get too deep of a look into his mind as others, but for him Lisa was someone who left him with lots of trauma and in turn affected his behavior longterm. The negatives Lisa put on him include facing whatever emotions she needed to get out- often toxic- in response to her trauma. Additionally, he was even directly involved with her trauma too, by mutilating her with a buzzsaw when she asked. And of course, her suicide impacted him greatly.
He faced lots of guilt either from her manipulation, or from the simple fact she committed suicide. Buzzo goes off to clearly take out his feelings and trauma on other around him. Additionally blaming Brad for the suicide, and in turn hurting him for years until he breaks down at the end of Joyful. His breakdown also highly implies how Lisa also lingers in his mind, not unlike Brad, the grief directing his actions in basically the same way.
You can see the struggle across the entire story now. These are complex characters and they suffer in many many ways.
PART 4: FROM THE HEART
> (editor me: cant figure out what quote to put... >_>)
Despite every horrible things I threw out, I don’t want to leave this on a negative note. Because as bad as things are, there is a will for things to change. That's what matters most.
The core of the game shows that Brad wants something better, but we see him doing this for the wrong reasons, or without the awareness to his actions in the past. Even as players, we don’t have the full perspective on Brad’s behavior. There is a lot more to it than what you see on the surface. On one hand, we know full well that Brad’s mindset wasn’t good, because it wasn’t going to solve the overarching problem. Buddy did not love Brad like he thought in the end, and he couldn’t process why that was. Because he was so caught up in having that “second chance” instead of thinking about why it was that he wanted that and what got him to that point in the first place.
On the other hand though, you can see the utter desperation from Brad wanting to be a better person. This is reflected further in the new content, where there is one side of the dialog from his dream vision of Marty that is very afraid of changing and letting go, alongside having the voice of Lisa telling him he needs to let go. If Brad were to let go of his grief, then things would start to change, and it’d be the first step towards getting better.
Buddy is in a similar mindset but for a different reason. We see a repeat of trying to find the solution but not getting the right one, because she has no idea what she really needs to solve in the first place. Though in Buddy’s case, she has a lot less time to reflect-- the new content for Joyful gave a bit more support on trying to give Buddy vague awareness of how she’s following the same path- but the damage had already been done, much like it had been for Brad.
The internal fight for these characters is so strong, and while we could see that without the new content, its interesting how it expands on this information. And many people like Brad and Buddy don’t even know what they need to do to get this change, or if they can have it at all.
There are other sources in the new content that voices this theme of hope and change, some of which include characters speaking more directly on the issue.
The dialog from Lisa in Brad’s head is the most direct and personal one. It’s a mix of Lisa talking about herself and her role, and also comforting Brad and trying to tell him he cannot keep holding on like he has been. Though most importantly, it doesn’t completely say to leave it all and forget everything, because that isn’t the solution either. You cannot ever forget grief and you shouldn’t.
So the poem tries to say that Lisa will never be gone, even emotionally, but it can’t keep holding Brad back. Brad has not left the stage of grief that he needs to in order to find his way out. Grief is not something that just goes away, but that does not mean it will keep hurting you. It is done by understanding you cannot let the past remain present, and consume your identity.
The memories and feelings will never be truly gone, but Brad’s deepest fear is that letting go of what he’s stuck to will get rid of the person he wants to keep inside. That if the grief is gone, then Lisa will be gone too.
Living with grief means understanding it will always be there. What will happen is that you will realize that you cannot let that moment of grief be your present and future. It happened, it will not happen again. The past needs to stay the past, but that does not mean you lose it. You will eventually get to a day where it feels long gone, and you carry through knowing that weight isn’t on you. But maybe one day it hits for a moment. Maybe another day too. That old weight will not return, but there might be a prick of sudden sadness. Maybe you’ll have a moment where you need to cry. That won’t go away, it won’t ever.
And there will be times you just don’t know why you feel that grief again… That might sound bad, it might seem like nonsense for me to say the grief doesn’t go away like you expect it to. But the point isn’t to eradicate that sadness, because you’d be consumed by the goal of an impossible task. But instead you learn you can live knowing that the years of constant grief are not your waking life any longer, and that you can see your own future going forward, instead of a future that repeats the past.
While its important to the overall story to remember the poem ends with Brad not being able to let go because he can’t get ride of Marty, the message having come from Brad in some form connects the very long and complicated series of thoughts that circulate inside a mind of someone like Brad. You can go time and time again through all the stages of wanting change but its not something you just do-- however, feeling even just a hint of that means so much.
Which is why having people on the outside is important. I do think its sweet that the new content added some further connection between Brad and some companions, even if wiggling them into the story meant adding a bit more context to Brad than we had prior. It does end up giving Brad some emotional support he didn’t have, with more emotional dialog from Brad himself- which does change things a bit. It gives more sympathy. Which isn’t a bad thing exactly, because none of it validates his behavior. I personally love having more development for these previously silent companions.
Getting on from that- having people on the outside to bring awareness of these topics is helpful, and Brad didn’t have that once Buddy was kidnapped and he lost his friends. No one telling him to stop and think about himself.
Sure, it is incredibly unlikely Brad’s old friends would find the will to say anything after so long, but its hard to what could have been different had things not been pushed to the extreme.
There are two characters in particular that showed their concerns and support in this new content that I think are worth noting-- Terry and Queen.
Terry isn’t exactly a surprise, as he is the first companion in the game. His personality points at him being supportive, and not exactly one who’s questioning Brad’s goal even when he forces himself into Brad’s party at the start. The conversation between them at the campfire is an interesting take on how they’d interact, especially being Brad is the one to initiate the conversation.
It is to Terry’s surprise too, that Brad wants to ask him something. Brad expresses his anxieties in a way we didn’t get to see through the game like before- where he is questioning his actions and reflecting on what he’d done in the past. Its another piece of that idea that Brad wants to change, but he’s just not sure what’s led him down this path, unable to grasp why he’d done those things at all.
In turn, Terry vents his own life experience. It may not be directly comparable to what Brad went through- Terry talks about trying hard to be what he thought other’s wanted, only to fail. Making him realize he could not obsess over that need to be needed, and had to let go to truly be his authentic self. Its a different predicament, but the sentiment applies-- Terry was obsessed with his goal, one he could never reach. It wasn’t until he lost so much that he realized he did something wrong.
Apply this to Brad, it fits just right. The build up to the end of the game progresses towards losing everything. When he reaches Buddy and is denied by her, he’s truly left with nothing. But Terry pulled himself up, he realized where he went wrong. And now he’s here with Brad, and the most he can do is say something, just a little something, even if we know its too late.
Even though Brad may have failed to apply Terry’s words in a way that’d help, Terry has the hope that maybe Brad will change, that maybe what he said will do something. Clearly, you can change. Terry is proof of that. But its just not easy.
The one thing that’s entirely missing from Brad’s life- the one thing that could have saved any of them- is love. It sounds cheesy, I know. But when yoy look at a family suffering from abuse, that is what it lacks. What it means to have love in this context is… a huge list of things. For Lisa and Brad it could mean having a parent figure they could go to who cared, could listen, and be comfort. A child growing up without that will not develop like others, because they have nothing to keep them safe. And so they must learn to be the parent themselves. Perhaps it means having another outlet-- friends or outside family who can bring them that safety instead.
Relationships that loved are entirely absent from their early lives. Even when you see Brad with his friends, this wasn’t a scenario where it would quote unquote fix this. He’d already become cemented in his problems because his childhood developed this way. Those friendships were not able to dig him out of his issues. It isn’t his friends’ responsibility to be those people who need to love hard enough to help Brad.
You’re left with a character like Brad, who clearly is missing this in his life. And he seems to know deep down its what he wants. Its what he wants with Buddy but its never shown that Brad knows that Buddy sees him as that. I’m sure he’s made himself think this without questioning it further, but as we know Buddy did not get the loving relationship she should have had, as much as Brad does deeply love her.
She had a father who made her take a more mature and defensive role in the world far before she should have. She was forced to understand that she needed to be prepared to be alone and fend for herself. But isolated, she had no opportunities to grow outside of this. Her only positive relationships were her uncles, who she lost-- leaving behind more trauma of the loss of the few people she did love.
Love is important. In Queen’s campfire scene with Brad, he goes into this hard. And sadly for us it opens up a whole new can of worms regarding the affect of abuse on Brad and how its made him treat other people.
Queen’s conversation starts casually and has him asking Brad about intimacy- complimenting his looks and even talking about sex. But he drops the topic when it becomes clear that Brad is uncomfortable. While an assumption, its seems likely that Brad’s issues with intimacy overall likely made him never form any kind of relationship that would even lead to sex, which would not be surprising. But even when Queen goes towards the topic of simply being hugged, Brad talks about it in a way that we find out he was never even hugged.
More than that, when he was hugged by two people-- presumably Dusty and then Buddy-- he reprimanded them for doing so. He states that it would not be tolerated because he is their teacher and not a parent, and allowing it would show a lack of respect and weakness towards him. We see very well how this affected Buddy’s feelings about Brad in time, based on what did. Brad inherited this behavior from his grandfather who was also his teacher, who never acted like a parent either. So in the end Brad was set up to live with two abusive parents-- neither of which took the roll of a parent.
When Queen continues, he gets the idea of love across in a very emotional way. What Brad doesn’t have is someone he can go to. Someone he loves, who loves him back. He hasn’t had it, and every time it could come to him and denies it. He is detached and dismissive of any need for these feelings to where he doesn’t really even know he wants it.
What Queen says summarizes a lot of the issues faced in the series overall in terms of mindset, words that definitely refer to the things everyone is facing post-Flash and as well as how the men in this world think. Which this issue only keeps everyone stuck and unchanging at all. Brad and everyone struggle to ever get past this because it is so ingrained in their world. And he says that while the world is like this, and that you will face all of this shit, you can make it a little better when you have that one person you care about, to be close to.
To say “dead is dead” is a reminder the reality may not change. Being dead is still being dead despite finding someone to hold, and even then it won’t be your cure. But the difference is knowing that inside all of the fight for power and strength, dread of your nightmares, drowning in guilt-- you have that positive. Brad does not have that. Brad is haunted by the guilt of his mistakes. Brad is tormented by nightmares. And there is nothing outside of that for him. He has pushed himself so far away from everyone, and now he’s alone to face everything Queen describes, with no support or love.
And as many can see, the dialog ties in to the very end of the game where Brad asks Buddy for a hug. Considering we have new context that Brad failed to see that denying hugs from his own kids was not normal or good for them, makes the choice even harder to look at. Regardless of the choice though, I think we all know that it doesn’t actually matter in the end. It was far too late for Brad to ever take things back. Which is certainly the point from Queen’s dialog-- Brad facing all of his turmoil and only just realizing how badly he needed someone to hold. But you cannot just have that, no matter how much you needed it.
CONCLUSION?
Its hard to even write this without making it sound wholly negative and hopeless because in the moment of the games, these characters do feel that way. You are supposed to feel how they are trapped and how they can’t find anything getting better. And to slowly see why it feels as hopeless as it does, not just from the way the world works, but from the way those character’s were raised and how it makes them interact with the world.
The Lisa series is regarded for how awful everything is, because its title sure isn’t wrong about how painful it is to go through that story. But I do think it’s important to come out of that story knowing there is a deep analysis to be made about the characters’ issues, and not just how its awful but also how there is a struggle for the positive as well. Watching a character struggle feels different when you can see that they desperately want to not struggle anymore. It’s painful, its sad. But it can also create that feeling of wanting to root for them. Creating empathy to have for complex characters in complex scenarios that some may have never been put in a place to think about.
Trauma, abuse, and the results are not simple nor are they pretty. The characters in this game show what people may find hard to accept about victims-- which is that under certain circumstances it is hard to get out of what hurt you. Repeating what you were taught will hurt others, and without the right help and support it can be near impossible to become aware enough to help yourself. In media, its hard to find representation of imperfect victims and its even harder to show them without an audience no longer seeing them as a victim in the way they would see it with a character that’s on the opposite side of that take.
And I absolutely love that Lisa covers such hard topics, and doesn’t skimp on making the main characters as awful as they are. And dig in deep as to why. Situations like these, a family stuck in a cycle, are completely real and complicated.
My hope is that players come of that game, and its new content, with an understanding of a struggle they may not have felt, seen, or thought about. It’s a lot to take in but its an experience well worth having. It the moments it may be hard to see something good for the characters but, its important to know that everything that happens can leave you with a better perspective on how or why the characters end up the way that they do.