i got really into the siren games recently, and siren 2 especially captivated me. its take on the idea of clones and "dormant self" speaks to something i feel like i kow viscerally.
the game draws a pretty stark line between "reproducing", which Mother requires a live human body to do, and. well. whatever it is the doves are
the doves are essentially clones, inheriting the face Mother herself took from someone else, but they clearly have their own interiority and selves separate from her.
their "dove-ness" is framed as a dormant self inside them, but from the way it works i see it more as like. a kind of
programming
in the, in a way, cult sense. doctrines in all but names, lessons so ingrained they've become autopilot. the way you kneejerk act that you then look back at, horrified that it's still in there.
the doves are shown to clearly struggle to keep themselves in check too, at various points in the game. try their best to not put themselves on the back foot, give the autopilot a chance to engage, get so tired that they yield to the voice that says this is their nature.
that this is easier.
be Mother's good dove, do what you're sent out to do, enjoy her approval.
think like her, act like her, reinforce her views, if she wins there won't be a world out there you have to worry about at all.
the doves don's really get anything like a process of growing up at all, given that they're clones created in their final shape, but they react to this programming in pretty familiar ways.
some don't try much to break out, some thrash at the pain, some forget it in the light of the world outside until it comes up
some spend their whole lives staring at it waiting for it to bite
chained to the depth with the awareness that the autopilot in them is their Mother, living enough regardless to fill an ocean with stories of their own.
