#parautilitarian

[veikkoalen]

polaris is math and order. hiss is organics and chaos. polaris is about the importance of the individual which comes with the progress. hiss is about the community above individual's will.

polaris didn't help dylan because she wanted jesse to succeed as an individual and not as part of faden family, because her nature is to be unique – and ultimately, alone. that's why hedron ended up being destroyed, darling sent to hell, dylan being abandoned – because polaris already has jesse, a single, most capable host who put herself into the most unique position – the director of federal bureau of control – by herself.

[proxentauri]

random control painting idea that popped into my head....um dont ask me too much about the symbolism...i just thought it would look cool. i'm actually insanely happy with how this turned out and i definitely want to make it into one of my first prints!! :0 stay tuned...

i tried to make it look like she was underwater with the surface being the hiss (you can kind of see where i was going with this in the third process shot)?? and eventually i decided it was too empty on the bottom right so i added slide 36. i tried to fit the service weapon in there first but it did NOT fit lol

[scowlsnwhiskey]

[lesbianalanwake]

true Director candidacy isn’t just about paranatural abilities, it’s about being able to bond with the Oldest House and also withstand one hundred million megawatts of nth dimensional energy having direct access to your brain.

the Board is shady, for sure, but I don’t think they intentionally kill people who pick up the Service Weapon or the Hotline. I don’t think they need to. I think it’s just a side effect of being in direct contact with them and with the Astral Plane, with the House. no one who comes into close contact with extradimensional beings escapes unscathed; the known exceptions are Jesse and Dylan, who exercise a great deal of relative control over how much access those beings have to them and who had years to build up tolerance to Polaris, so to speak.

and there’s the question of why the role of Director exists -- why does the Board bring in a middleman? the title of “Director” comes from FBC nomenclature, but it’s something that might have existed before, given what we (might) know about the Service Weapon’s appearances throughout history. it’s something to do with the House, and given what Ash says about the House needing him, how Ahti gives the Director a janitorial title instead and is equally keen on seeing the role filled, it’s something to do with placating and caring for the House, with fulfilling some need it has, something that the Board cannot do on their own.

Northmoor couldn’t cut it; he survived the gun and the Astral Plane, but the continuous exposure to all things paranatural burned him alive.

Trench was better suited to it and able to tolerate the Board’s presence well, but he was cautious about similar exposure to Objects of Power. the Hiss had to wear him down before it could get a true foothold in.

the House remained shifting and unstable under both Northmoor and Trench, only brought somewhat to heel by the Control Points.

we don’t actually know how much Dylan could cut it, since the adults in the situation fumbled it big time. but we see how much Jesse is uniquely suited for the position with Polaris’s connection to her, so perhaps Dylan is much the same way. at the very least, no entity gets very far into his head without his permission.

and given everything we know, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the House become far less prone to building shifts under Jesse’s hand.

I think Alan is uniquely suited for it too. he shows extraordinary resistance to the Dark Place, and he hasn’t been swallowed up by the light in the same way that Zane was. and the Bright Presence has an affinity for him that hasn’t been explored much yet.

as far as others go, we know that there were previous failed candidates who likely couldn’t handle the exposure, and we known that Dr. Tokui was also considered as a potential candidate because of his apparent paranatural power. we don’t really know more beyond that, but...

I’m eyeing Saga with great interest. the role of Director is filled, but if the nature of candidacy is any indication, there are certainly parautilitarians who are in a league of their own. Saga’s a wild card until we know more about her, but if there’s enough paranatural potential in her to get her caught up in the vortex of Cauldron Lake, to get Alan’s attention, then I wouldn’t be surprised if she shows a similar resistance to extradimensional energy and a similar catnip-like effect on extradimensional beings.

[a-flappy-bat]

Colored a messy Jesse x Darling sketch.

[velvetjune]

Already making up an entire Alan Wake 3 game with Alice’s perspective going to the dark place guiding Alan and others out of it with her art, and a subplot where Barry (most important character ever) comes back to Bright Falls from influence of the Blessed cult

[faultlinesurfer]

I feel that Langston would eventually manage to decode Fra's sentences, if he was allowed to. Which Jesse would probably allow since she's more on the "figure out what the fuck all this is" side of things, in contrast to Darling's and Trench's "figure out how to control/eliminate all this"

Fra does make sense, you can understand what they're saying but their speech is... Sideways, in a sense. The meaning is almost there but the language is not completely understood by them so they use words that, when analyzed, relate to the meaning of the sentence as a whole, but sound like nonsense when you look at them face on. It's like trying to communicate via fragments of a dictionary, the words, when examined, form a coherent idea, but they're not being used correctly since Fra is learning human speech (and english, specifically) as they speak, and since the impatient jackasses of the Investigations Sector just locked them up, their learning most likely ground to a halt.

[entropicquilibriumofchaos]

heyo cringe post incoming but:

is anyone interested in reading a snippet of my Control OC fic that I've been working on?

[infriga]

Broooooo Control was so good. I haven't played the DLC yet but damn even just the main game is hella fun and cool and the story is great too.

[thatcontrolfangirl]

Part of the appeal of the Emily wizard au to me is the idea of there being this whole other world out there, and TOH is just PART of it. An especially weird and messed up part, but just a part, and there's so much out there to explore- and Jesse gets to go out and explore it, with her girl.

The Oldest House is always only a part of the weird, wonderful world of Control. We got Bright Falls- Alan still trying to escape the Dark Place. The House leads to other dimensions. Through it, you could explore anywhere. Most of my fics focus on the House, though. But yea exploring other dimensions with your gf does sound very nice.

[riotshotguns]

thinking way too hard about the remedyverse and how quantum break does (or rather doesn’t) fit into it and i feel fucking insane nobbody talk me orlook at me

[katich-pigeon]

A little imagination about Alan's powers as a parautilitarian.

(and also don't spill a coffee in front of Casey's eyes!)

[unseemingowl]

Saga Anderson, and Nordic rep in Alan Wake 2

Early on in Saga Anderson’s exploration in Alan Wake 2, she runs into Ilmo Koskela. Fiercely proud of his Finnish heritage, Ilmo gregariously makes note of Saga’s Nordic sounding name and the familiar design of her knitted sweater. Perhaps a fellow Finn?

Alas no, Saga’s mom is Swedish she informs him. Immediately Ilmo’s face falls. I’m not sure if it’s actually just the animated character defaulting to his resting face, but either way the timing is too perfect. Cue uproarious laughter from me. People in the Nordics are on friendly terms of course, but we gotta have the tiniest bit of… scornfor each other. All in good fun of course. It’s traditional.

Now, I’m Danish, not Finnish, but still, I feel right at home in the towns of Bright Falls and Watery in Alan Wake 2. All of the little nods to Nordic culture and mindset feel so wonderfully familiar to me. The melancholia, the irreverent sense of humor, the affection for the Finnish and Swedish quirks of the characters. The game feels all the stronger in tone and narrative for Remedy embracing the Finnish roots of the studio.

Which is exactly why it sucks that I almost immediately saw the charm of those narrative decisions weaponised against Saga.

I first watched the scene between Ilmo and Saga on a lets play when I was trying to figure out if I should finally dip my toes into survival horror and buy the game. Delighted by the writing I took a look into the comments to see if people were vibing as hard with it as I was. They were. But I also saw a comment that made me frown.

Paraphrasing, it basically went, come on, like hell a guy like Ilmo would make the assumption that a black woman is Finnish. There are a multitude of reasons why I think that person was wrong, mainly that Nordic people love it when we run into each other in other countries, but it also just made me sad.

Saga being black does not negate her Swedish heritage. Formally, she is American, sure (I assume, not sure how that works in the US), but she’s raised by her single Swedish mom, of course she’s going to identify heavily with that part of her herself. It’s a profound and essential part of who she is.

But hey, I’m a white potato Dane, so I’m not gonna argue that I know much about the experience of being biracial. I’m gonna stick to what I know, which is that Saga is a very moving and beautiful example of something that I’m actually not used to seeing much of - a story about connecting with your Nordic heritage and roots. And it’s part of why I love her so much.

When Nordic people show up in big, international productions, it’s usually as Vikings, and sure, it’s fun to see our wild ancestors, but contemporary questions of Nordic identity and heritage is not something I often see explored. Not even in our own productions.

So much of Saga’s story is about family. Fighting for her current one, Logan and Casey (and sure, David too, lol), and rediscovering her first one. Tor and Odin.

Her discovering her ties to Tor and Odin is profoundly moving and made me teary-eyed several times over. And sure, a lot of those ties are fantastical in nature, but they still feel very much grounded - and what makes us Nordic if not the ties to our myths and legends that Tor and Odin have made themselves the living avatars of.

While Saga’s mom, Freya, had good reasons for leaving the Anderson seer magics behind, seeing them as part of what made her family fucked up, she also cut Saga off from the fullness of her capabilities. It is only through Saga reforming her family, healing its scars and fully embracing the Anderson heritage that she becomes as powerful a parautilitarian as she is at the end of the game. That’s beautiful.

And in fact I think Saga being black only deepens the richness of those themes rather than negate them or make them irrelevant. Because yes, Saga’s story would have been moving if she was a white character too, but I am very well aware that a lot of biracial people of Nordic ancestry can feel alienated from that part of themselves. Not least because questions of who gets to claim a Nordic heritage can get pretty ugly around here. There are most definitely people who share the racist mindset of that commentator. It adds an extra dimension. Which is why seeing Tor and Odin’s eagerness to claim Saga as part of the Anderson heritage is all the more moving. Through her magics, she’s just so obviously an Anderson, and they’re so damn proud to call her theirs and fight alongside her. Because they all got that wild Viking blood in them. They’re part of her and she’s part of them.

Roger Ebert, the film critic once called movies empathy machines. I think games, when they’re at their best, can be an even more intense variation of that. Which is exactly why it baffles me that some people can play through Alan Wake 2 and still think Saga is a stunt-woke character rather than someone fully and beautifully integrated in the narrative. A narrative which, at its most basic level – in my opinion – is about the mystical bonds we form with each other and the rest of the world through art and love and blood and family and heritage. All the great horror doesn’t negate that either, it amplifies it. Kind of like that clicker.

[ragnell]

Alan Wake and Control link

I just realized that the FBC was making Alan's situation worse.

In American Nightmare, Alan says that Mr. Scratch is an entity that can take his form because of the urban legends and rumors that surfaced from his disappearance. In the Remedyverse, the disappearance of Alan Wake is conspiracy theory bait, we see this idea explored by Clay Steward's book (The Alan Wake Files).

When we get to Control, we learn that the FBC tracks urban legends and actually SPREADS conspiracy theories in order to cover up AWEs. They use the America Online radio program, the Night Springs reboot, and numerous things form the communications department.

They never stopped Clay Steward from publishing his book, even though they watched him and clocked him as a minor parautilitarian according to Control collectibles.

If Mr. Scratch is able to be in the real BECAUSE of urban legends, he might very well be more powerful because the legend is being proliferated by the FBC.

Alan living in a world where fiction becomes reality, surrounded by the sort of entities that use and feed off of that, may have found the FBC's practice to be deadly, even potentially world destroying.

I've always ignored the idea that Alan wrote the Hiss Invasion as out of character. Wake is ultimately a moral character. But between the corruption and the practice of spreading conspiracy theories, he had a pretty strong motive to tear the FBC to pieces and strategically get rid of the management, the most corrupted members, and of course, the entire Communications Department.

[lesbianalanwake]

Alan Wake 2 giving me jumbled thoughts about how "objects of power" and "parautilitarians" are functionally the same thing - forces from Elsewhere brushing up against physical reality, incidentally or intentionally, and becoming embodied in a way that allows for action and change. how this is mirrored at all levels: Taken and Hiss-corrupted are functionality just "Altered Items," things with enough Concept to entangle paranatural forces acting on something like impulse - except that humans are concepts and archetypes unto themselves, enough for those forces easily to find a foothold. so often those forces are overwhelming and thus they hold sway, but sometimes the connection is stronger, more fully embodied, more full of intent.

you/we wield the gun/you. always a two-way street and a give-and-take between the physical world and the Elsewhere beyond it, but rarely equal. the cosmic force at play wields the person, and it's usually bad news for the human in question, but sometimes, just sometimes, that human can turn the gun around and fire back (Alan & co. and the darkness?). sometimes the paranatural force becomes indelibly marked by what it has wielded, becomes just as lost in intent (the thing that used to be the light, that used to be Zane, that now looks like Alan?). and sometimes, like Jesse-Polaris, the give-and-take is as equal as it can be - not parasitism and fighting for control and losing one's own shape to another, but symbiosis.

[velvetjune]

Alan being a parautilitarian the FBC wanted for the prime candidate program and to lock up; Alice possessing a possible camera OOP and requested to be taken in after her FBC visit caused Hartman to break containment; Barry joining the Blessed cult that the FBC is currently hunting down and arresting anyone involved. Gotta love a trio that are all wanted by the federal government