Stumbled onto this Gamefaqs forum topic about Masahiro Ito "confirming" that the Good ending of Silent Hill is canon, and that Cybil is supposed to die. Many fans apparently see this as absolute validation of their dogmatic opinions on the topic, and that to argue otherwise is moronic. I don't understand why there is so much vitriol thrown towards people who support the Good+ ending and Cybil's survival. Why does the fanbase want Cybil dead so much?

There are three key arguments that I hear in defense of the "Good is the only canonical ending" position:

Book of Lost Memories - regarding the aglaophotis pendant
Why do fans want Cybil dead?
  1. Harry wouldn't have known what the Red Liquid does until after he sees Kaufman use it on Alessa, and so he couldn't have used it on Cybil earlier.
  2. If Harry used the Red Liquid to save Cybil, then he couldn't have had any left over to solidify into the pendant for Heather.
  3. Cybil does not appear in any subsequent Silent Hill. She is not referenced in SH3, and in Silent Hill Homecoming, Deputy Wheeler refers to a female police officer who went to Silent Hill and never returned. Clearly, this means that Cybil is dead.

To many fans, these three arguments are bullet proof! At this point, they've practically become gospel (along with Pyramid Head's well-known rape antics).

But how well do these arguments really stack up to scrutiny? Let's play Devil's Advocate...

I'm going to start with Masahiro Ito's comments on the issue:

On Mashiro Ito's Twitter feed, he "confirms" that Cybil is dead.

Masahiro Ito confirms Cybil's death on Twitter: 'Yes, I remember Cybil is dead'
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The depiction of the town of Silent Hill in its titular game has lead to a lot of confusion and over-analysis from many casual and some hard-core Silent Hill fans. The stories of the first few games are told in very indirect manners, with the player often being shown the story through the acquisition of clues and context, rather than being directly told what is going on by an objective character or outside narration.

One of the most common misconceptions about the games is the idea that the “Otherworld” in Silent Hill is some kind of “parallel dimension” that exists in conjunction with, but separate from, the “real world”. Alternatively, some fans claim that the games utilize some kind of “parallel perception” mechanism, in which everything that happens in the games that is even remotely supernatural is all just happening inside the character’s mind, such that separate characters can be in the same place at the same time, but see things differently. These interpretations have lead to many misunderstandings about other elements of the town and events, such as Alessa having hostile motivations, the residents of Silent Hill being turned into monsters, or that the people who visit the town can never truly leave.

Silent Hill - Harry in Nowhere Silent HIll - Lisa dream sequence

These ideas are all fallacious, and they are derived from fundamental misunderstanding due to how the game presents information, or by a reliance on out-of-game information that presents a false picture of what is happening in the games.

What’s worse, these misguided ideas have found their way into “official” Silent Hill material, including the motion picture and all of the post-Konami-developed games in the series.

...

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