#I don't have a clear candidate so i'm open for different opinions

[whimsikolya]

About Kevin and the dread powers

Just to clarify, this is a post about Welcome to Night Vale and The Magnus Archives because horror podcasts won't let me sleep.

I suffer from the same curse all TMA enthusiasts are well acquainted with, which is to say I've given up on trying to interact with any new piece of media without applying fear entities to everything and everyone involved. With this in mind, I've been asking myself for ages which fear Kevin would serve, and I've come to the conclusion that everyone's favorite prophet is a hundred percent an avatar of the Spiral. I don't usually share my thoughts with the class but I've only had a couple of hours of sleep last night and I've just seen a poll asking this exact question with very, very different results and... well, greetings everyone?

I'll start by saying that I absolutely get why people have completely different opinions on this, because at first glance this man and Desert Bluffs as a whole fit so many of the fears. And sure, the dread powers are colors, everyone is bound to blur a few lines. Kevin's lines are as boiled as a bowl of spaghetti though, we're not talking about blurry spots, there are leaks everywhere.

He's Spiral aligned, sure, but the omnipresence of gore and pain in Desert Bluffs is extremely Slaughter and Flesh coded, his Smiling God sometimes sounds like a manifestation of the Dark, and it's impossible to talk about Kevin without a few dozens mentions of cults and centipedes, so he's a pretty good candidate for the Corruption as well. And then, of course, we also have to talk about the blurry line between the Spiral and the Stranger, which makes it hard to see why he'd fit one more than the other. Conclusion: it's an absolute mess. I'm so sorry for how messy and long this post is inevitably going to be.

But hey, I'm doing my best to make sense here, so let's start by ruling out most of these options in a somewhat orderly fashion.

First of all, I'm automatically going to ignore the fears that didn't make an appearance in that little introduction. I can see the influence that the Beholding or the Buried might have on Kevin, but it's simply insignificant compared to the impact of the ones already mentioned. Again, colors and all that.

The Dark is easy to rule out too, but I couldn't ignore it when Kevin's eyes are black and It Devours describes the Smiling God as "that light that sometimes shines out of cupboards and basements, a cold light". But Mister Pitch already has his cult and I think there's too much focus on sunlight and not enough on what that darkness might hide to really go with it.

The Slaughter and the Flesh are harder to brush off, mostly because of, well, all the barbecue sauce. Violence and pain are, have been and will probably always be omnipresent in Kevin's life, and he's very likely a cannibal as well - with a morning routine that goes "burying what's left of breakfast". However, I think it would be too easy to stop at that. First of all, while the arrival of the boy in recent episodes proves that Kevin has always been somewhat open to violence and bloodshed, I'd argue a lot of it came from Strex. Triptych makes it clear that there was no issue with blood and viscera in Desert Bluffs before StrexCorp. And more importantly, hiding behind these fears specifically... the Spiral does that a lot. I completely believe Es Mentiras would've been equally as able to trigger the apocalypse as the Eye, because it has the same kind of special relationship with the rest of the dread powers, but that thought would be too long and too off topic. The point is, the Spiral served us the confession of a cannibalistic priest and a whole statement about a man forced to hurt himself via eating a computer. I'm really writing too much so long story short, I'd argue it really comes down to this: what's the end goal there? In the case of a Slaughter/Flesh avatar, it would be the gore/meat/pain/violence itself; to draw fear out of these things. For Strex and thus for Kevin, when violence and blood are gratuitous, the point is, most of the time, to keep people guessing. To instill doubt, to play with them. It's a "beat your employees to a pulp the day they start their new job to ensure their self-esteem and trust are never quite there" sort of violence. It's a "trick a whole society into thinking humanity is a food chain and they better bite before being bitten" sort of cannibalism. It's a different fear altogether, and so it doesn't fit either.

The Stranger and the Spiral are not always easy to differentiate, so I get the hesitation between the two. And yet I feel like it's pretty simple in the end. The Stranger, I Do Not Know You, is about concealing - thank you, Michael. It's hiding the truth and leaving you with nothing. The Spiral, It Is Not What It Is, is about lying, about twisting the truth so that you get it wrong. As much as I get the symbolism of masks and skins, and as much as they fit Kevin, he does not.. exactly hide anything. He never lies to Carlos about the blood in his studio, he doesn't hide how horrifying StrexCorp is - but he does say the truth with a big smile on his face and in his voice. He denies nothing, but he twists the reality of what happened to him, of who he is because of it. As the Archivist himself would say, he is the question "what hides behind a smile? Is a friendship true, or is it reaching with hands that cut you?" And you know who Kevin always calls a friend? His dear double, of course. He's once again clearly leaning towards the Spiral here.

The Corruption may just be the most tricky, if only because of the shared imagery. With the Smiling God being a giant centipede, and his little Temple of Joy hosting nothing less than a cult, it's hard not to entertain the possibility of Kevin turning to the Crawling Rot, willingly or not. He seems to have had toxic relationships with both family and friends all throughout his life, too, but he himself sounds like he's doing quite well with his new family. If anything, it means that he is/was a victim of the Corruption rather than a potential avatar to me. He may even have jumped off of his metaphorical tower Mike Crew style, right into the arms of the Spiral.

There would be plenty of examples, but to keep this sweet and short I'll focus on the main thing that the two entities share here, that is to say the cult/faith part. I'm a huge believer (ah) in the idea that the Spiral is equally as fond of religious devotion as the Corruption - not saying that they are the only ones, but they are the only ones that matter here. Father Burroughs and Bethany O'Connor, but also the statement giver of Sculptor's Tools who mentions going to church, are proof of this. Both entities target those who have faith to gain power through it, but again, not for the same reasons. The Corruption targets people whose beliefs betray a lack of and longing for connection to nature/others/etc, like Prentiss or the members of the Divine Chain. The Spiral targets people whose beliefs betray their guilt, doubts and insecurities - say a priest who couldn't save a young girl, or a woman who's quick to judge someone on his appearance. They prey on different concepts entirely and when it comes to Kevin and his faith in the Smiling God, I think it's pretty obvious which side he's leaning towards.

Now I'm aware this is a "why Kevin isn't aligned with this or that power" more than a true "why Kevin is Spiral aligned" rant. But this post is so long already that I'm going to stop here before I lose the rest of my sanity and bore all of us to death. I hope a number of points that connect him to Es Mentiras still shines through this whole thing, by contrast at least. I would also be very happy to write another post focusing on each and every single thing that makes Kevin an avatar of the Spiral to me, if anyone happened to be interested in that - and/or to discuss or argue this further, even though I doubt there's an audience for dreadfully long WTNV x TMA rants. But hey, if there is, you know where to find me. My opinion is probably completely off from someone else's perspective which is always fun. I'm just a dedicated listener with a ridiculously strong hyperfixation on both Kevin and the Spiral.

Going off the air until then. Until next time, Desert Bluffs. Until next time!

[pajorko]

Let's pretend that it isn't a popularity contest at all and also let's take into consideration, that a) rules have changed and not a calendar year, but a season is taken into consideration and b) individual achievements are more important than team achievements:

Who do you think should win Ballon d'Or this year? Additionally, who would make it to your shortlist?