Kotaku's Ashley Bardhan Is Dead Wrong About RE7's Ethan Winters

What the fuck is Journalist Ashley Bardhan even talking about?

Ashley Bardhan, gaming journalist over at Kotaku.com, which covers God-knows-what, authored the most idiotic article ever written this past October, claiming (in a very wokeist fashion) that Resident Evil 7 's Ethan Winters and Silent Hills James Sunderland are not only the "same boring protagonist," but also inherently terrible people - and of course, these interpretations are completely incorrect and idiotic, at least as far as Ethan Winters goes.

Now admittedly, there are many interpretations of Silent Hill's James Sunderland, because of his character's backstory and what he experiences during his time in the fictional town of Silent Hill (and why), so we'll ignore Bardhan's interpretation of him in this article and focus completely on Winters, whom she is provably wrong about on all fronts.

For those unfamiliar with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil: Village, Ethan Winters is the protagonist of both games, which tell the story of him of his family members being taken from him in a series of tragic circumstances completely beyond his control. In 7, his wife tragically goes missing while traveling for work before she mysteriously emails him three years later asking Ethan to "come get her" in Dulvey, Louisiana. (Spoiler) We find out later on in the game that it wasn't actually his wife who sent him the email. And in Village, his daughter is kidnapped and his wife murdered right in front of him by former RE protagonist Chris Redfield. (Another spoiler) We find out later that he has good reasons for doing this.

Now that we're all caught up, we can disprove Bardhan's idiotic and poorly-written article. Sorry to "mansplain" to you, Ashley, but you need a good, metaphorical slap-in-the-face with some facts and logic.

As far as Resident Evil 7 's plot goes, we wouldn't be able to empathize more with Ethan Winters even if the writers had somehow been able to make him more innocent and compassionate. Ethan Winters waited for years, hoping to hear anything, to be given any clue or sign, that his wife might be alive, even though everyone else has presumed her dead. He didn't fall in love with, or even date any other women during this time. He just waited and waited, in hopes that one day she might miraculously turn up alive. Then when after three years, when he finally was given that sign, he courageously ventured into a terrifying, abandoned plantation, in which we find out very early on in the game that terribly violent and scary things had happened. Then, even after finding his wife possessed inside the farm house in the middle of the plantation, and violently attacking him, he still didn't give up on her, and risked his life trying to find her in this house of horrors. He encountered black mold-monsters, a terrifyingly violent and strong possessed man, and even woman that could turn into an arachnid - and he never gave up. He fought through hell on earth in hopes that, somehow, he'd be able to beat the odds and bring home with him the woman he loved more than anything.

At the beginning of Resident Evil 7, we learn very quickly that Ethan Winters is no fighter. Unlike many video game protagonists, he had no prior combat training, no similar experience to this, and he was evidently terrified of what he was up against. It didn't matter - he courageously pressed onward, searching for the woman that he was still very much in love with, even though he hadn't seen her in years. And by the end of the game, (spoiler alert) we'd witnessed a true underdog story - and saw Ethan Winters realizing the full potential he had inside him all along - he was a badass, who would not let anyone or anything stand in his way of saving his wife.

But badassery in the world of wokeness is the most unforgivable sin, especially for men, whom Ashley Bardhan very clearly hates. As Bardhan herself puts it, "I wish their games would give me anything to admire or empathize within these men we spend hours playing as." I suppose fighting through hell to save your estranged wife isn't particularly admirable, according to Bardhan. But what about saving your kidnapped daughter? Well, apparently, that's not particularly admirable either.

In Resident Evil: Village Ethan Winters once again fights through hell on earth (albeit on a different part of the Earth) to find his daughter after witnessing her kidnapping and the murder of his wife, whom he'd risked his life to save years earlier.

This time, he faces hordes of mold-spawned lycans, and people-turned-science-experiments including a ten foot tall vampire woman and a man who can control metal, just to name a couple. Even though for the player, Resident Evil: Village might not be as dark and scary as RE7 was as a video game, but one would expectedly be far more scared in the former if one was actually living the situation, as the enemies are faster, far more dangerous, and there are many more of them. Understanding this makes Ethan Winters even more admirable. But even after being thrown a curveball, and finding his daughter already severed into 4 pieces in jars, he still presses onward through this living hell, on the off-chance that some sort of mold-magic might be able to resurrect his daughter from her ill-fated death.

But Ashley Bardhan is convinced that this is all some sort of poorly-written, toxically-masculine protagonist whose role really should have been replaced by his "more interesting" wife. Wow, Ashley, your opinion objectively sucks. But please, forgive me for "mansplaining" the last couple Resident Evil games' protagonist to you.

Ethan Winters gave his family everything he was, and that includes his own life, (spoiler alert) as he sacrificed it at the end of RE: Village to ensure that the mutamycete hivemind that caused all this in the first place was completely destroyed. Boring! claims Ashley Bardhan. Sorry, not admirable, empathetic, or interesting! claims Ashley Bardhan. We should've been able to play as his wife instead! claims Ashley Bardhan.

Absolutely shocking.

On a final note, to you personally Ashley, and I know you will read this eventually, because you're far too narcissistic to avoid reading an article written about you - there are actually many more statements in your article that don't even make sense at all. "I believe Ethan [... is ...] capable of accidentally inflicting death and venereal disease upon an entire continent." Uh... what? What in fuck's name are you talking about, exactly? What venereal disease are you talking about here? This makes absolutely no sense at all. Unless, (spoiler alert) you're claiming that Ethan Winter's mold-infection we learn about at the end of RE: Village can be sexually transmitted; and I see no evidence for that, as Mia and Ethan clearly had sex after the events of RE7 to conceive Rosemary Winters, and Mia wasn't reinfected by the mold. Not to mention, I had to do some serious mental gymnastics to come up with that scenario a minute ago just to attempt to make sense of your statement.

Also, "I suppose men like Leonardo DiCaprio have been doing it for decades and we still reward them with more movies and 24-year-old girlfriends." What the fuck? The last time I checked, 24 is way older than the age of consent in the country we both live in. Why does that piss you off so much? Are you bitter? And what in fuck's name does this have to do with Resident Evil? Leonardo DiCaprio can date whoever the fuck he wants to, and you really shouldn't care. Why don't you go find a handsome guy to love who's much older and richer than you, if you're truly that jealous of his girlfriends?

"In her 1993 book New Maladies of the Soul, in exploring “who still has a soul,” psychoanalyst and critic Julia Kristeva writes that “held back by his aloofness, modern man is a narcissist—a narcissist who may suffer, but who feels no remorse.” WHAT THE FUCK?!?!? I'm not even going to attempt to make sense of that paragraph, or the one that follows. Although... it's interesting how you chose a passage about narcissism... projecting, much?

And finally, "Columbus, who was famously too stupid for spatial awareness..." Even though this sentence is far from the most grammatically eloquent I've read in my lifetime, I'll attempt to address what I think is your grievance here. Just so you know, Columbus running into the continent we now call North America is arguably the most important event in scientific history. If you don't understand why, I'll direct you to this clip of Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining why on the Joe Rogan Experience. Maybe that will fix your ignorance.

Ashley Bardhan, please quit your job, you fucking idiot. Sorry again for "mansplaining."