Two Women Talking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

This is a feature excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly #197. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Interior, kitchen. Sofia (woman, no older than 40) is sitting at the kitchen table while Padma (woman, any age) is fixing coffee or tea at the stove. There is a sofa to one side, the living room.

Sofia: It’s about men. STALKER is a series about men. You never see a woman anywhere. You might hear one mentioned occasionally as a mother or a lover. But everyone you meet, everyone you talk to, everyone you see walking in the distance is a man. And there’s this masculine fantasy about apocalyptic fiction. It’s about the boys getting together and adventure. It has to be apocalyptic because on some level the modern world has to be wiped away. What’s left is a wasteland of men.

Padma: Yeah, and there’s a parallel with Westerns, right? Getting a posse together and all that, a very boy-coded thing. I mean, even the movie Stalker makes a point of putting women outside it while the men venture into the Zone.

S: And it’s desert of everything feminine. It’s only the boys out there. It’s a totally masculine reality. Permeating the Zone. A substrate.

P: A miasma.

S: Yes! It’s a miasma of masculinity.

P: But not manliness? There’s a difference between manliness and masculinity. Manliness is this kind of brawny stereotype, Beowulf and Conan and all that shit. I think masculinity is a broader, softer thing.

S: Sure. And it takes different shapes, smells different. I mean, I’ve never felt like one of the boys. Like, I’ve tried. It always felt weird and kind of bad. Like I was performing. When I was younger, outside the apartment building, almost every night there would be this circle of young men in the back. All sorts of guys. They would smoke and talk for hours. I would hear them laugh when I tried to do my homework. That’s what it’s like.

P: But it can’t be just that all the characters are male.

S: Well, there’s the fact that the Zone is… y’know, an exclusion zone.

P: A heterotopia.

S: Yeah. And you and I are excluded from it in the same way as we are distinguished between that circle of men in the parking lot. One of the key distinguishing features ends up being that women aren’t there. That makes it a seedbed for that kind of male camaraderie. There’s literally a side quest where you help a stalker fit in with a crew. You Cyrano De Bergerac it. It’s very… Bros. The boys are back in town. Guys being dudes. You sit down around that campfire, man, and the guitar, and there’s just this irresistible glow.

P: There’s a note in the game where a guy literally describes that, as this special, important moment in his life. “There was a strange familiarity to it. A sense of unity.”

S: It’s infectious.

P: I can’t tell if you think this is positive or not.

S:…It’s neither, really. But it’s part of the series. It’s very much a game about men. And also for men, in a lot of ways.

P: Women can obviously enjoy it. I mean, I like it, for one.

S: Oh, I like it too! I’m looking forward to finishing this one. They’re great games.

P: Sure, but I’m saying, like, I think there is a feminine layer to this in some ways. There’s stereotypes about the games trans women like, and STALKER is one. I think a lot of people who are raised as men are attracted to things like this for a reason. There’s something vaguely subversive about them that attracts someone who might be figuring out their identity. It’s somewhat familiar but it also feels subversive and different. Do you get what I’m saying?

S: Not really. I mean I do, but I don’t really see it.

P: I’m just saying girls also like STALKER.

S: Listen, I obviously like these games. And I’m not a man. The fantasy is geared towards men though. It’s full of men. It’s full of guys. It’s all geared toward men and a fantasy for men. It feels like… I don’t know, almost sexual.

P: (laughs) What the fuck are you talking about?

S: I’m serious!

P: You think STALKER is gay?

S: No! It’s totally heterosexual. There’s very little homoeroticism in there, weirdly. I mean, Richter feels kind of gay but… What I mean is more… psychosexual.

P: Shooting guns, shooting rope?

S: Honestly, yeah. It feels like… The Zone is almost yonic. Like a vagina dentata. It’s this inviting, sinister thing. And all the stalkers swarm to it. And they’re all men, so it’s all kind of phallic. The monolithians literally make erections. So, there’s all these men swarming to the Zone. They’re spermatozoa. And there’s been research about the egg. That it calls the sperm to it and guides them. The Zone has this pull to it like a big hole, like lust.

P: The Zone’s a pussy?

S: No! It’s more abstract. This masculine tension with destruction. I think the fascination with the Wish Granter is kind of an envy. Part of womb envy is the resentment towards us for doing what they cannot, which is creating life. It’s kind of dumb, but also, I kind of feel it in that first STALKER game. The Wish Granter is this mystical, unexplained object beyond our understanding. And what it does is create. It can make things happen. The men in the Zone, all they can do is destroy things. That’s why the creative, libidinal power of the Wish Granter is so seductive to them. They call it a sarcophagus, but it’s a womb…

P: (sips, pause) …But you know, there are women in Stalker 2.

S: What!? There is!?

P: A few. There’s Agatha. She’s a pretty important character, actually. And various merchants.

S: Holy shit! (moves to sit on the floor)

P: Don’t act so shocked!

S: I am! This changes everything. I remember actually seeing a photo of a woman in the game. It really took me aback. Took me aback? I was surprised. I look in a drawer, and there’s this woman looking back at me. In the photo. It freaked me out.

P: Really?

S: Yeah! It felt so strange and surreal. Almost sad. So much of what you see in these games is decaying and rusted or whatever. And you see this, this vivid photograph of a woman, in this rotting wasteland of men… I don’t know. It was startling.

P: Huh. Funny.

S: (gets up from the floor) …So I guess that kind of undermines my whole reading.

P: I mean, not really.

S: But like my whole vision of this like… this miasma of men. That’s totally disrupted.

P: Those women are there, but none of them are stalkers.

S: Oh, I see. So they’re just—

P: They’re vendors or scientists. But they’re not stalkers. And none of the stalkers we see wandering around are women. The Zone is still mostly for men. And what few women are there can’t really lay claim to it. They’re not stalkers.

S: So, the feminine… I’m not sure it still works. The idea of the feminine Zone.

P: I think it still does. But like… I don’t know. Don’t you think there’s something to be said about the invasion? I know development started before it, but still. The Soviet history of Ukraine feels so present. In all of them. And the emissions reminded me of air raids.

S: Definitely. I mean, it’s the first game to have a Ukrainian dub and not Russian.

(By this point, Sofia is on the sofa, and Padma is washing dishes)

P: And war… You mentioned the Zone being yonic. But to me it’s almost… I’m thinking about Bataille, and l’anus solaire. And how the irradiation of the Zone is a form of excess. I mean, a nuclear power plant melting down in Chernobyl in 1986, what greater sign of excess is that? One of the departures from Roadside Picnic and the movie is that we know where these mysterious forces come from. They come from us. They’re all manmade.

S: Man made!

P: Ha, yes. But they were experiments. Human activity. Not God or aliens. That’s what radiation represents in a lot of ways to us. It’s something we brought into the world. It’s a human blight.

S: A miasma.

P: Kind of. Radiation is this outward force. Bataille would call it excess. And a nuclear meltdown is a core being overrun by excess. So, it just explodes all that energy outward, like the Sun, like the Zone. All this energy exploding out of it. The game literally starts with your apartment being blown up by the Zone from however many miles away. It’s expanding, it fires off around you, it infects our minds, it—

S: Do you want help with that?

P: Oh. You’re too late. (she finishes cleaning)

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vehemently is a pseudonymous writer in the Pacific Northwest, writing on games, culture, and philosophy. Find them at their website or on Bluesky.