Today is officially Happy Shane Day out in the Fog.

Dead by Daylight has announced Shane Wiigwaas, the game’s first Indigenous survivor, as part of its new chapter titled The Life Road. Shane is an Anishinaabe defense attorney whose story is built around justice, community, grief, and the kind of haunted family history that fits almost too perfectly inside DBD’s nightmare feel. 

Or in other words for a lot of us: FINALLY. A Native character gets pulled into the Fog and it isn’t a stoic shaman, vague feathers, and someone’s bad dreamcatcher tattoo idea from 2006.

For a lot of Indigenous horror fans, this one feels different.

Dead by Daylight has already been a favorite in Native gaming and horror spaces for years and it makes sense. The game is messy, funny, stressful, dramatic, and somehow becomes a community hangout even while everyone is being chased by a killer in online’s best hide and seek game. It is horror but it is also survival and looping and yelling “WHY WOULD YOU LEAD HIM OVER HERE?” at someone you still love as a relative. So yes, the game fits us really well.

That is why Shane’s release has felt bigger than a normal character drop. It isn’t just about getting another survivor with new perks. It is about us seeing someone who looks and feels familiar and in something we legitimately enjoy.

Members of Rezidents of Horror, a stream team made up and led by Indigenous creators with a focus on horror, are among the streamers celebrating Shane’s arrival.

“It’s amazing to see Native representation in Horror gaming and very rare to come across especially when done right,” said JessaRoseGames. “Behaviour and Dead by Daylight did an amazing job designing Shane and I can tell they put a lot of love into him. Can’t wait to play him in the fog!”

That excitement has been echoed across Indigenous streaming circles, where Shane has quickly become less of a character reveal and more of a community moment with Uncle Shane being the focus.

Frybreadqueen called the release “a huge WIN for NDN country,” pointing to the care put into Shane’s design and story.

“His look, lore, and overall vibe was made with love and respect,” Frybreadqueen said. “He is a great representation of what modern day Native/Indigenous people look like and how we work on making our communities better. Happy Uncle Shane Day!”

That “modern day” part is really important. The representation we often get  in games and horror has too often been stuck in the past with our styles treated like a costume or our burial grounds being a spooky plot device instead of real Sovereign Nations. Shane being a defense attorney gives him a grounding that feels current. He is not there to be a symbol floating around in the background. He has a job. He has family. He has guilt. He has purpose. He has fits. He has good hair. All of this is important for many.

ThatPryncess, another Rezidents of Horror creator, said the day feels especially meaningful after years of waiting for Indigenous representation in the game.

“As someone who’s been waiting for an Indigenous survivor to arrive in Dead by Daylight for many years, today is an incredible day!” ThatPryncess said. “Representation matters and it’s clear DBD heard our voices and took great care when adding Shane into the Fog. HAPPY SHANE WIIGWAAS DAY and Happy 10 Years to DBD ”

For Native horror fans, Happy Shane Day is about more than a game update. It is about being seen in a genre we have always been part of. Indigenous people have always told scary stories. We have always understood survival. We have always known that horror is not just monsters, but systems, violence, memory, land, family, and what follows you even when you think you got away.

The celebration is also going live tonight. JessaRoseGames, Frybreadqueen, ThatPryncess, and AngeeNoel will be streaming together starting at 7 p.m. CST, giving fans a chance to join these deadly aunties as they welcome Shane into the Fog properly. Which definitely means some unhinged jokes, screaming, chaos, and at least one moment where all are wheeze laughing into the microphone while being put on the hook.

The post Happy Shane Day: Native Horror Streamers Celebrate Dead by Daylight’s First Indigenous Survivor appeared first on Grim Native.

There are plenty of horror stories about monsters, demons, slasher killers, vampires, zombies, and so many other “scary” things, and that’s what I love about horror. However, for a lot of us who are part of lesser-known groups, we sympathize with misunderstood characters. These creatures are often what Guillermo del Toro calls “patron saints of the outsiders.”

Because in this story, the scariest thing imaginable is not one of those monsters but rather another nice guy who thinks he deserves a woman’s love just because he wants it bad enough.

And to be honest? That’s far scarier than any horror movie I’ve ever seen.

The movie starts, of course, like a normal romantic comedy trope-style film. Bear is a quiet and insecure guy who is hopelessly in love with one of his best friends, Nikki. We know what happens next as he makes this wish, and normally we’d basically expect there to be a certain way this movie would go. She would be the “crazy girl” that symbolizes how women supposedly act sometimes, and then eventually we’d find out that she did in fact like him all along and he’d grow into a bold stand-up guy who gets the girl in the end after some horrifying murders and cool music scenes.

And a lesser movie may have done just that, but we don’t get that here.

After using the One Wish Willow so that Nikki would love him “more than anyone else in the world,” Bear gets a version of what he wants. The movie makes it clear almost immediately that this is a love story, but not a romantic one, as Nikki herself frames it early on. Nikki’s affection doesn’t feel natural or of her own volition because it isn’t. There are several moments in the film where she is clearly trapped inside her own body, and it’s not really Nikki who is “loving” Bear. This wish turns coercion on its head to show how truly gross and evil it is rather than treating the subject lightly.

The real horror in all of this is that Bear seems to grasp this almost right away and several times throughout the movie.

He is an effective horror protagonist in the absolute worst possible way. While the setup initially presents him as a victim of a wish gone wrong born from pure intentions, we slowly realize he is actually a monster who is willing to let Nikki suffer as long as he gets what he wants from her.

Then, in a sequence where the real Nikki speaks to him while she sleeps, begging to be freed from this life and killed, we hear the line that sums up the entirety of his character:

“What’s so bad about being with me?”

This line is so important because Bear views Nikki’s lack of consent as a personal insult against himself. Rather than asking if she actually wants this and prioritizing her well-being, he selfishly centers his own insecurity and allows her to continue being violated in a way that feels all too real. This movie understands something that a lot of us men still struggle with: entitlement combined with insecurity can become destructive and even deadly to women.

This is where we can see who the truly “obsessed” person is. It is not the person subjected to the demands imposed upon them, but rather the person willing to let someone they claim to care about suffer in service of their own feelings.

For many of us as Indigenous people, this is also why conversations around MMIP awareness are so important. Of course, this movie is not directly discussing MMIP issues, but the same underlying theme appears in both: the idea that access is more important than consent. That wanting something justifies control. That affection and what looks like “good intent” somehow overrides a human being’s autonomy.

Native women in the United States continue to face disproportionate levels of violence. According to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, more than 4 in 5 Native women experience violence in their lifetime, while homicide remains one of the leading causes of death for Native women and girls in certain age groups. The U.S. Department of the Interior Missing and Murdered Unit also notes that jurisdictional gaps, underreporting, and inconsistent investigations continue to leave many Native families without answers for years.

That is why themes involving consent, autonomy, and control hit differently for many of us Indigenous viewers. These are not abstract concepts for us. These are realities that Native women, families, and communities are still actively dealing with.

In this movie, it’s important because Bear doesn’t physically chain Nikki up or lock her in a basement. It appears less sinister on the surface, but he strips away her entire self and reshapes her existence just to serve him. That is absolutely violence. His view of women is so warped that he becomes comfortable allowing this to continue even while she is clearly suffering.

In an interview with TIME, director Curry Barker stated:

“Everyone thinks the One Wish Willow is cursed, but it’s not. Like if you worded it very, very carefully and wished for something you knew couldn’t possibly be bad for anybody, you’re probably fine. But if you’re forcing someone to feel a certain way about you, it doesn’t really matter how you word it.”

So it’s not the power itself that is inherently evil, but rather the desires of Bear. This becomes even clearer when we see the owner of the store as a relatively regular guy who already used his wish and seemingly turned out fine.

So what does it look like when someone values being loved more than they value another person’s freedom?

In Obsession, it looks like destruction, death, and harm inflicted not just on Nikki but on everyone around them. All because Bear could not bring himself to do the right thing, even until the very end of the film when he still chickens out of freeing her.

And honestly, by the end of the movie, the question somehow gets answered once again: yeah, everyone would be safer with an actual bear than with Bear.

If you would like to support Indigenous women and MMIP advocacy efforts, consider donating to Not Our Native Daughters, an organization dedicated to awareness, prevention, and support surrounding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and relatives.

The post “What’s So Bad About Being With Me?” appeared first on Grim Native.