#hedron control

[honeybunchesobees]

reading a destiny swap au where the darkness are the player forces and the light the enemy (i take care not to use 'good and bad' as even canon destiny is wibbly on it)

control au where the hiss and hedron swap?

jesse has a bit of hiss in her (Atram, short for Atramentum, or latin for ink) who is her Buddy and instead of the hiss chant babbling hedron infected people are just completely eerily silent maybe? like complete muffling of any and all noise, hone in more on the body horror of the Endlessly Spiralling Fractals

am i cooking or not? probably not anyway

[kawoid]

in love with geometry

[room-665]

The poster comes down and there's nothing there.

[velvetjune]

“A prison. A cold, empty prison. Not even a poster on the wall.”

— Dylan Faden (Control)

[rangerzath]

I'm sorry Zachariah...for everything...

[a-flappy-bat]

matching astral dive suits

[pathetic-gamer]

[compressednerve]

notes about The Oldest House while i work through my other thoughts... lots of things to think about Dr. Ash as The Champion of The Oldest House VS Northmoor as The Champion of The Board and Ash's logs about how The Board is a parasite, very enjoyable. More to come later.

[saikkunen]

More of these

[ironclark]

The Remedy Set of Keyblades are Done!

LIGHT REVISION- A Keyblade modeled after the typings of Alan Wake! This Keyblade is designed to increase the damage of Light-based spells. The hilt is designed after a flashlight, with the hilt guard being inspired by the typewriter that Alan uses. The shaft of the blade is make of various typed letters, with the teeth being the lense flare of a flashlight. The token is the Clicker.

The World Logo is that of Bright Falls, where the game takes place. The name is a reference to editting a work of art as well as light itself.

CHAMPION OF LIGHT- A Keyblade modeled after the fight between light and darkness in Alan Wake: American Nightmare! This Keyblade is designed to have the effect of Light & Darkness! The hiltguard is designed after the CRTs that Scratch uses to taunt Alan throughout the game, with plumes of darkness arcing out of it to form half of the shaft. The rest of the shaft and teeth are formed from sparks of Light. The token is one of Alan's Manuscript pages.

The world logo is a based on the Arizona town named Night Springs, where the game loops itself. The name comes from the character that Alan has written himself to be, the Champion of Light.

ZERO STATE- A Keyblade modeled after the technology and fracture of time of Quantum Break! This Keyblade is designed to increase the effects of Slow or Stop on a target. The crossguard is designed after the Time Machines built by both Paul and Will in the game, with the core's patrusions on it. The shaft and teeth of the blade are designed after the visual effects of time breaking. The token is the Countermeasure built by Will.

The world logo is that of Riverport, the city in which the game takes place in. The name, Zero State, comes from when time has stopped.

OBJECT OF POWER- A Keyblade modeled after the Astral Realm of Control! This Keyblade is designed to launch targets into the air much easier! The entire keyblade is modeled after the black marble-like structures found in the astral plane, with the same golden veins in that marble as well. The teeth are made from Hedron, Polaris' counterpart in the Oldest House. The token is a slide from a Slide Projector.

The world logo is that of the Oldest House, the paranatural location that the game takes place. The name, Object of Power comes from terms used by the FBC to designated paranatural objects with supernatural powers.

CULT CLASSIC- A Keyblade modeled after the dual sides of Alan Wake II! This Keyblade is designed to have increased damage from Light-based spells! The hilt of the Key is designed after the woods that Saga Anderson traverses through, as well as the cross guard being that of the Antlers of deers that Saga interacts with. The center of the guard is the bullet hole made by Saga. The top of the shaft forms into the Angel Lamb that Alan Wake uses during his segments, with the wings forming the teeth of the blade. The token is the Cult of the Tree logo.

The world logo is a darker variant of the original World Logo. The name comes from the fact that a Cult Classic refers to a work that is extremely popular within niches, and that this game has two cults: Cult of the Word and Cult of the Tree.

[canonicallyplural]

Jesse Faden from Control (2019) is canonically plural! While they never switch (at least not to my memory), Jesse canonically has another alter named Polaris that keeps her from being infected with The Hiss and had led her to the FBC's location. She is shown repeatedly communicating with her while within the FBC.

(Spoilers ahead)

She initially thinks that Hedron, the entity occuping the slide Polaris was found on, is the source of Polaris, but Hedron gets killed by The Hiss. Jesse then gets infected by The Hiss and trapped in her own mind until she finds, as the wiki quotes, "the resonance of Polaris within herself, thus preventing the Bureau's destruction." She then says (bolding mine):

Maybe Hedron put you in our heads when we met her. Maybe you were always there and she was just trying to teach me how to trigger you. Maybe I'll never understand.

("Our heads" references Dylan (her brother) and Jesse herself, but Dylan pushed Polaris out of his mind.)

Towards the end of the monologue before tackling The Hiss source, she states "I'm stronger than [The Hiss]" before correcting herself to "we're stronger".

So you know. Very plural coded. To me.

[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.

[myopinionisimportant]

Part of what I love about Control is how many mysteries are left at the end of the game.

Like okay, sure, the Hiss is a sonic/psychic mind virus, and Hedron is an opposing frequency-entity that came from the same world/plane/picture. Sure. The Oldest House is a dimensionally-transcendent brutalist maze that shifts around like a hibernating bear, and in places touches (or is touched by) thresholds, other dimensions with a tendency towards the deadly. Fine.

But like...what is Former? If it's a former member of the Board, as you might think from the name and their bad-break-up energy, why is it so much worse at communicating with the Director? Why is it binding itself to Altered Items, does it have some sort of a plan? Does the Board? What about Polaris, is she a bud/seed/copy of Hedron or just something Hedron did to Jesse? Is that where Jesse's powers came from - and if so, what's the source of Northmoor's?

And that's without even getting into the more obscure stuff, like the baddies who are out there trying to make more AWEs happen. It just leaves so much room for guessing and speculation, and I love it!

[lesbianalanwake]

Scratch is still a distinct entity from Alan. I think the Dark Presence has just found too good of a host and has itself gotten stuck - it tries to use Alan to escape, tries to leap into Casey, but Alan is able to draw it back in, and its temporary escape is colored by Alan's life and perspective, its own will wrenched into a different form by Alan's, even more pronounced than the fight over the narrative was in the first game.

It tries to escape, and Alan reels it back it. Alan tries to escape, and the Dark Presence reels him back in. Ad infinitum.

The entity called Scratch is Alan and the Dark Presence both, where they collide and get lost in and overwhelm each other. He's not just Alan's "dark side" - I think that's too literal and simplistic an interpretation, after Control very much established that beings and forces exist beyond us and beyond our reality, and when these games tend to put layers upon layers into any one thing.

I was struck by just how much of himself Alan has retained in the second game, despite everything. Even as he and the Dark Presence draw closer and closer together, taking on the appearance of the other, there's a stark difference between them still. And that difference illuminates (hah) the thread of similarity between them that has bound them together so tightly - the sheer, visceral desperation to escape, which the Dark Presence has been trying to do before Alan, before Zane, before Jagger.

The first game implies that the Dark Presence has existed for an unknown amount of time and has been trapped within the Dark Place for a very long time. Maybe it wasn't always a rageful, hateful being - isolation in the dark will do funny things to one's head, and desperation will do a number on you. (Which we see in Alan. Which is mirrored in Scratch, in the Dark Presence.)

The slidescape from which Hedron, Polaris, and the Hiss come, that Jesse calls "Hand," is desolate and empty, nothing but red sand and five pillars that Darling describes as being like outstretched fingers. I think Dark-Presence-as-Jagger is just one of those fingers reaching up from the lake, a crude imitation wearing a long-gone face to pull at the strings of Zane's grief. I think Scratch in American Nightmare is another one of those fingers, living darkness once again trying to breach reality but never quite managing to break the surface, an exaggerated parody wearing dark rumors made flesh for a skinsuit. And Scratch in AW2 is all of those fingers, the Dark Presence wearing Alan like a glove, only to find that when it breaches the surface at last, it can't take that glove off anymore.

The "Drowning" video in the Writer's Journey is one of the most brutal things to listen to in the game, and one of the clearest representations of the game as a whole, despite how incoherent it is. Thanks to some lovely voice work by Matthew Porretta, you can hear the switch from Alan to Scratch. You can hear them mirroring each other, and you can hear where the Dark Presence sounds just as despairing as Alan, even though the last several lines of the monologue don't actually leave Scratch's perspective. When it takes over, it's speaking to Alan, speaking from his perspective, speaking from it's own perspective, and Alan is speaking through it, all at once, and it gradually gets more unhinged and incoherent and despairing. I will highlight it with some thematic coloring.

I'm lost. I'm lost in the dark. Drowning. I'm drowning. I'm drowning. No way out. There's no way out. Sinking deeper. Deeper and deeper. This is hell. I'm in hell. I died. I wish I was dead. Let me die. I just want to sleep. Please let me sleep. I'm so tired. I just want to go home. I've written so much. I write and I write. There's nothing left. It's all gone. I don't know how to write. All the words are gone. There's no more words. Where did they go? Did I eat the words? I don't recognize these words anymore. Are the words moving? This is familiar. Why is this familiar? I've been here before. Have I said this before? I've read this somewhere. Where am I? Who am I? Alan Wake? Wake? That's a strange name. A. Wake. That sounds like a character's name. Did I write the name up, did I make that name up? I don't want to be a character. I don't want to be in this story. Just write me out of this story. Ram these words down your throat. Make you choke on these words. I know the words. Secret words. You can't take the words. I eat the words. These are my words! Stop using the words! The words! Cult of the Word! This isn't your story. It never was your story. The story is a monster. The story will eat you alive. The darkness is coming! The darkness inside. This is my story! You're in my story! Get out of my story! You are a character in my story! You can't stop the story. This story will go on forever. There's no escape! You will never escape! You will drown here. You're stuck in a loop. You don't have a clue. You're lost. You lost the plot. I'll show you.

The Dark Presence is stuck. It's been stuck, been drowning, for a very long time, and now it's irrevocably tied itself to Alan. It can't get away from him, anymore than he can get away from it.

The end of the loop that we play through is a recognition of that, so perhaps later steps in the spiral will be steps to reintegrate Alan with pieces of himself that have gotten scattered - the pieces in Scratch, the pieces in whatever the hell "Zane" is. Maybe even steps to reintegrate the Dark Presence with its own lost pieces - the pieces in Scratch, the pieces scattered within and corrupting the Dark Place, the pieces in the light? I don't think either of them will be able to truly breach the surface and escape a neverending death by drowning without that.

While playing AW2, part of my brain became fully convinced that the "dark" and the "light" used to be a whole being that shattered and split at some point, and the "fight" alluded to in the first game and in American Nightmare was simply failed reintegration, over and over again. Because we see the Dark Presence splinter (into itself and Jagger and and Scratch and Alan), and we see the light / the "Bright Presence" splinter into almost nothing of itself anymore ("until nothing remains," into Zane and Alan), and we see that there's still a unity in that fracturing and dissolving (Alan and Scratch and "Zane" all having the same face).

We see that there's a light in Alice now - a photographer capturing light on a canvas, delivering a light switch through a shoebox, speaking cryptically across videos and phone lines. She's slipped into the role that light plays in the story, that Zane used to play, illuminating and guiding Alan up and down a spiraling path.

So maybe reintegration and unification is waiting somewhere down the road - Scratch and Alan, Alan and Alice, the memories and pieces of self that Alan and Alice have lost in the darkness, the "Dark" and "Bright" Presence, the dark and the light, constantly circling and never quite reaching each other until at last the branching spiral path reaches its end.

[velvetjune]

I want the hiss to Not be the main enemies in control 2 but logically i don’t know who else would be the random hordes of enemies to fight if the gameplay is similar to the first game

[alittlesliceofcucumber]

Imagine...

You've started playing Control 2. The Hiss have finally been eradicated and Jesse is trying to formally settle into her new role as Director. She has a routine: sign documents that need her approval, perform janitorial duties, deal with any out of control Altered Items, visit Emily Pope- her closest friend in the FBC and assisstant to Head of Research Dr Casper Darling, visit Dr Darling to discuss ongoing research-

Polaris flares wildly. Jesse counters with what do you mean? It's just Dr Darling, he's been here for years. He's always been a bit weird. He writes poetry in his spare time? Yeah, so what? He's a valuable part of the bureau and is allowed to have hobbies.

But Polaris insists that something's not right, and Jesse trusts her. Wait. Didn't she make Emily Head of Research?

Polaris guides Jesse to unlock her memories of the real Dr Darling. The one whose videos she'd seen, the one who ended up exposing himself to "Hedron" and presumably ascended to another plane of existence. The one who acted nothing like the man who is currently Head of Research and has always been, according to everyone else's memory. Jesse slowly realises and comes to terms with the fact that the Dr Darling in The Oldest House is an imposter, or at the very least not the original Dr Darling, and reality has been changed to reflect the switch. It's like the original never existed, like this new version has overwritten the old one.

something something your friends will meet him when you're gone