I lived like Ethan Winters for a week to survive the horrors of the holidays

By James On Dec 25, 2023

I'm not shy about hating the holidays. Valrhona dark chocolate smells good when melted with milk, and my heart glows when decorations leave sugar-sized glitter in my palm, but there's nothing else in it for me. The sun sets in New York around 4:30 p.m., and I can't remember whether the rot under my windowsill is lamb over rice or chicken. My family is abnormal (let's leave it at that). But I'm starting to get tired of my annual misery.

I know what I have to do: I'll live as Resident Evil protagonist Ethan Winters for a week.

I would learn how to deal with it from the best. And the games are of course festive. Resident Evil 7 is about Thanksgiving because there are plates of gray junk, Resident evil village is about Christmas because there is snow – Ethan navigates the horror in both games incredibly well. I know you can't see it from the first person, but I think he's laughing with a cigar in his mouth. It's time to go full method actor to survive the holidays.

Day 1: Wash my hands

Image: Capcom via Polygon

In Resident Evil, Ethan squirts liquid onto his bloodied or sometimes completely severed hand to heal. This seems like an inherently healthy coping mechanism to me, so I went for it.

I don't own anything that could be a “healing fluid” – maybe the cloudy fluid that collects at the top of my Greek yogurt tub, but I'll save that for later. That's why I opted for accessibility and kept my left hand under the tap whenever I felt upset.

At the suggestion of my roommate Ben, I started using a water bottle for scene accuracy. I poured cold water from my metal S'well knockoff and my hand started to get very wet. Still, I became bolder and washed my hand at every opportunity. Hanging around? Wash down. Peeling potatoes? Rinse (but that time it was because I had potatoes on my hand). Salting tenderloin? Rinse (but that time it was because I had a raw cow on my hand).

Day 2: Be blonde

I wouldn't be Ethan Winters if I wasn't blonde.

I mean, technically I'm not blonde; my hair is the same waxy black as the screen of my iPhone 8. But my ex-boyfriend insisted his hair wasn't blonde, but “light brown.” And I asked Ben with blond hair and blue eyes; he looks like he wants to teach you how to pronounce Hello, I am unfruitful – what it's like to be blonde, and he said, “My hair is dust-colored.” So if all these blonde guys think they're not blonde, I have to be blonde by default.

“I'm blonde,” I told my roommate Dan.

“Nice,” he said, barely looking up from his laptop. He was excited.

Day 3: Deep pain visualization

Being blonde had helped me adopt Ethan's head, but I still hadn't gotten into it. However, it was clear to me that pain was the key to being Ethan: he is always in pain, his leg is cut off, his hand is torn in half, or his wife is kidnapped.

But I am grateful for all my limbs, and if I had a wife, I would ask her not to be kidnapped. So instead of bringing about those horrible things, I thought I could put my meditation skills to the test and visualize myself in incredible pain, pushing the limits of my psyche and body. But then I forgot and took a bubble bath. I was still covered in Thanksgiving grease.

Day 4: Kidnapping

A text from Ben to Ethan Winters that reads: “Downstairs bathroom. Come get me.” with an image of a door.

Visualizations were useless – it was time to get serious. I managed to break down my emotional walls, and I admitted to myself that I would be living an inauthentic life without getting kidnapped myself. So early in the day I asked my housemates for phase one. When I left my bedroom, Ben was gone.

“Bathroom downstairs,” he told me in a cryptic text message. “Come for me.”

The door was locked. I heard Ben make a personal phone call, and from the fumes I could tell he was drinking La Croix – he had practically disappeared. I was terrified and excited by the harsh truth of a life like Ethan Winters. So by the grace of God I became Anglo-Saxon. I brushed my teeth while humming “Silent Night.”

Day 5: Injection

Yesterday's kidnapping left me with Germanic generational trauma, making me feel more like Ethan than ever. I rode the wave and embraced a difficult choice he faced Resident Evil 7 – inject the 10% Polish person on the left with life-saving serum, or the 7% Scots-Irish person on the right?

I approached my roommates with an expired EpiPen.

“I only have one dose,” I told them. Dan went to the bathroom to pee. By default, I injected Ben by tapping him on the knee with the safety cap. He didn't notice the cap and shouted something about “don't contaminate my blood with FDA approved drugs.” Ignoring his panic, I admired the twinkling lights on our mini Christmas tree.

I… admired the twinkling lights? Who… who was I? Who did I become?

Day 6: Keywords

I knew who I was: I was Ethan. That meant that this week I was ready for my most difficult task: slogans.

Ethan has all kinds of great catchphrases. For example, when he witnesses unspeakable violence, or becomes embroiled in incomprehensible levels of bloodshed, he says, “What?” or “What the hell?”

I looked up a list of them Ethan Winters quotes on my phone, sneaking a glance at it during breakfast.

“Hi! Hey, don't talk like that,” I said to Ben. “We'll find a hideout to put you in until I can find my daughter. I guess she's in that old castle.” I peered at his scrambled eggs. “Wait a minute, that looks familiar… (I see a symbol that looks a lot like the Umbrella symbol).”

“I can't handle this anymore,” he responded encouragingly.

Day 7: Pregnant

My roommates were disappointed when my weeklong experiment was over, but I felt like I had graduated. I wanted to end the week with something life-changing and meaningful.

Resident Evil 7 And 8 both revolve around parenthood – in the first case the villain wants Ethan to be her father, and in the second case he has become one – so the only logical conclusion to my week was pregnancy… of the mind. Sorry I only committed halfway through, but my time as Ethan was only one day away and I'm pretty sure nine months is longer than that.

And anyway, being Ethan for so long gave me an idea: I may never enjoy the superficial pageantry of the holidays, but approaching it with some of Ethan's determination might make it easier to get through it to come. I don't need to change my situation immediately, just my attitude.

Even if that doesn't work out, there are some benefits to not being Ethan. Unlike him, I'm not in a video game, doomed to spend eternity getting disemboweled by mold.