phrases like "the house always wins" and "it's on the house" but used to imply that the building you're in is alive and personally invested in the situation
This is headcanon, but I just love the idea of Ahti being genuinely in love with the Oldest House.
The idea of being an object of care, attended to and adored by one individual man, who works in service of you without expectation of a thank you, just the continued opportunity to be in your presence.
The idea of a janitor, tasked with caring for a home, but loving it regardless, and in turn is rewarded with shelter and secrets. The idea of a janitor being in better touch to the house’s needs than the bureaucratic heads supposed in charge of this grand estate.
Ugh, I need to write more fanfic about Ahti again.
"I'm an obedient head of research, just like my father raised me to be." Is probably one of the most loaded phrases Control has. It feels like hearing a gunshot go off.
i've said it before but it does make me sad how Cynthia is left out of discussions about Zane almost completely, imo how he treated her is the most indicative of his actual character beyond a facade. people act like he "turned evil" but zane's been a manipulative shithead for some time now, that's why I'm confused
The difficulty with Cynthia is figuring out which bits of Tom she remembers are “Tom the Poet” or “Tom the Filmmaker” or “Alan/Scratch posing as Tom”, because there’s a little it of all of those truths in there. She seems to have been a good friend to Tom the Poet, if a little jealous of the relationship he has with Barbara. And Tom (whichever version) does manipulate her, but he also oddly protects her. Without the Clicker and the Lamp, she would have been Taken a lot earlier. She seems to love and hate Tom, but I wonder if that’s because she loves “the Poet” and hates “the Filmmaker”.
This is probably more in line with my personal theory that there are multiple “Tom Zane’s” with the multiverse thing. The OG Tom AKA the Poet got his tragic happily ever after in the Dark Place with Barbara. A different world’s Tom AKA the Filmmaker didn’t get Barbara and also got trapped in the Dark Place, so he writes a story about Alan Wake and Cynthia Weaver being obsessed with him and all this stuff to get out. The Filmmaker is the manipulative one, while the evidence for my theory suggests that the Poet was a lot more placid and romantic.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Cynthia makes Zane SUPER complicated to figure out, and that murky complexity may put people off from examining their relationship—I admittedly say that was me as well up until recently. Zane is in the habit of using people for his escape and appealing to their sensibilities, but whether that’s a new thing or old thing, it’s hard to tell when Filmmaker Tom warps reality around him to whatever he wants.
After all if Alan can rewrite a world’s history through a story, who’s to say Zane didn’t do the same thing?
(I can’t ask normally for some reason so anon it is, but I’m no coward, this is Alphawave-writes) I’m totally curious to hear your thoughts about Zane in AW2 and what you think is up with him?
OPTIONALLY, I’d also like to know what you think about Zane and Darling together? (Interpret that statement however you like, platonic or romantic or purely work related)
Hi @alphawave-writes! And sorry about that, my notifications and inbox haven't been entirely working recently. :,) My writing's under the cut, I talk for a while and it spoils all of the AW series.
Before I get too into my ideas for him for AW2, I want to say that Zane stood out to me in the first game because he was the character who introduced my favorite concept of AW, the idea of manipulation of memory. For some reason, I assumed that art around Cauldron Lake could only alter the present and future, as that was how Alan's story largely operated, and what Alan wrote about the past was copied from Barbara’s editorial control and Zane's writing.
The moment that made me fall in love with the series was how funny the tutorial is where Zane hands Alan a gun, and the moment that got me obsessed with the series was the shoebox scene. It's efficiency in surgically removing Alan's fear of the dark as a child to scripting him to jump in the lake casts all of AW1 in a completely different light. Regardless whether you believe Zane edited Alan's memory after meeting him, created him wholesale, or some mix and match combination thereof, everything you saw in Alan's life before, the very premise of the game’s core mechanic, is an altered continuity of memory. It also made me reevaluate how the past that Alan references is Zane's writing. In the two playthroughs I've watched, the person playing the game reflexively refers to Zane as god in the tutorial. And uh, well….
And then, onto AW2! AW2 has a much larger focus on memory, the same origin story of necromancy through erasing memory repeated over and over in different contexts. When Saga *scratched* out evidence of Logan's death, that's when it finally clicked for me.
And in that spirit, because he's the Original Guy to do memory rewrites, I think the game supports the idea that despite his claims, Zane is fundamentally the same guy. Him being a filmmaker is a rewrite----aside from the audience seeing the evidence in AW1, we can stitch this together from details such as the cabin/retirement home, and how Yötön Yö and Tom the Poet were both made retroactively, by his own admittance for the first case, with the second being "based on the writing of Alan Wake." (My personal idea is that Tom the Poet is AW1.) There is no evidence for him being a filmmaker, while we have tangible evidence of him being a poet. Zane expanding his influence to gaslight the audience is really fun, and seeing that Cynthia has the same continuity of memory as the audience near the end of Old Gods is both validating and heartbreaking.
I've heard people propose that Alan is the one who rewrote Zane to be a filmmaker, but Alan wouldn't have much reason to. Zane has plenty. Odin's journal establishes that if you rewrite your own memories, you remember all versions--even if he knows they're fake, memories of a more glamorous life, one with more time with Barbara, would be nice. There's also the idea of doing "movie magic" with Alan---if Yötön Yö worked, I think it would've resurrected Zane in Alan's place. And in the darkest interpretation, covering up his actual past erases any history with Cynthia, and only further dismisses her experiences as detached from reality.
I'm often frustrated when people discuss Zane in depth and leave out Cynthia, both because of how badly he treated her, and because she acts as a thoroughline for his character. I went into aw1 knowing how he presents himself in aw2, and he started to sound like "himself" when she describes how he manipulated her feelings for him, and he sounds a bit more like Ilkka when he’s being more cryptic and unhelpful in the bridge scene of the aw1 epilogue. In contrast, in aw2, he sounds more like his idealistic presentation in aw1 from Cynthia’s more positive memories of him. Any speculation on motivation aside, as he was the catalyst for breaking the memory of the world and the beginning of the cycle of necromancy through forgetting, having him point at his past self that we saw with our own eyes and claim that nope! Wasn’t me! Is completely in character.
And frankly, other than that difference, while he presents himself differently, as a character he has the same components by my eyes, the same modus operandi, just with aspects of his character hinted on in the first game focused on or expanded. I liked how they expanded on the femme-fatale-esque aspect of his character, of using people’s attraction to him and his sympathetic image as an axis of manipulation. On the femme note, I think making him bi and gnc was genuinely an excellent choice! It seems like Ilkka had a huge hand in that, and his thoughts on Alan vs Zane's presentation, and how happy he is that Zane is free to be himself, genuinely warms my heart.
Speaking of freedom, having him be unsettlingly carefree in AW2 was an excellent choice, expanding on how his solution from the beginning is erasing death and fear. I think part of why he hasn't escaped yet, despite being more than capable of doing so in terms of raw ability, is that he still treats forgetting and denial as a solution. Door and Alice do their best to hold Alan accountable, and balance between meeting Alan where he’s at and breaking him out of his cycles. In contrast, while it’s heavily implied that Zane is working alongside them, if he has an issue with Alan, he mocks it, distracts him, or rewrites it. Oh Alan, you get so worked up! Don't worry! Have a drink! I'll make you forget all about your fear of the dark! How he treats Alan is condescending at best, but it becomes a bit sad when you see how the way he thinks has effectively trapped himself. The only people who remembered his old self are in a nursing home. Door and Alice's areas of the dark place have tangible physical spaces, but Zane's room is solely in yet another layer of fiction through the projector, the hotel room outside of the colorful film dusty, grey, and neglected.
On a more lighthearted note! I LOVE Zane and Darling together. They're super fun on both a meta and character level. Despite each of their evils they're genuinely really cute together, and seeing them flirt was wonderful. And sincerely, I think that they're what each of them needs, in terms of a relationship! Even if Zane is repressed on the emotional front in a different direction, he's an extremely harsh contrast from Trench, especially in being very positive and affectionate. Facts and evidence have been shown to be an effective method of escape, and even outside of escape, being with a scientist romantically could potentially help ground Zane back in reality. Zane loves exerting power over people, Darling is drawn to people and objects of immense power. They're perfect for each other!
There’s two elephants in the room with their relationship, though. One is that they might be responsible for the localized apocalypse in Resonant. Maybe. But the more factual one is that neither of them have great track records for their personal relationships. However, if one or both of them shows up in Resonant, I honestly think it would be more impactful if they're doing well and continue to be sincerely happy together. If Dylan gets to see that Darling moved on and found happiness and love, while he's still contending with and suffering from the childhood he gave him, it would be devastating.
Anyway…I don’t really know how to end this on a happy note. It’s Zane. I like him a whole lot. He sucks. Thanks for reading if you made it this far, and thanks for asking! :]
This was a really lovely read, and I absolutely agree with your interpretation with my own two cents under my read more
There’s a lot of allusions in AW2 that Alan and Zane are the same, and I personally take it one step further, in that Zane is (or more likely WAS) an alternate world version of Alan, one that grew up in Finland instead of the US. It doesn’t change his story or his background, it just explains their parallels. Which came first, chicken or egg, it doesn’t matter because they technically came about in the same “time”, just across many worlds.
And what you’ve mentioned about Zane reinventing himself ties into what you articulated better than I have, which is that he seem to be escaping reality. Making himself a “better man” by falling deeper into fiction. It makes sense then to transition to a filmmaker because poetry is very vague whereas film affects reality more precisely. But his falling deeper into fiction traps him in the Dark Place.
My personal theory is that to escape the Dark Place, it is NOT to create a piece of true fiction or art, that’s just what people THINK happens. What I believe ACTUALLY gets people out is love, whether that be for a wife, a family, a friend. Alan in AW1 and AW2 loves Alice, but that is all swallowed up in his misery. It’s only in New Game Plus that he finally recalls her love and reciprocates in heart, fuelled with the knowledge it’s her bullet of light, and that’s how he becomes the master. His heart is now full of love.
Zane has been mentioned to be a miserable person until he met Barbara, and I do think that to be true to his character. When the Zane we meet loses Barbara, he cannot escape that reality, so (in my interpretation) one version of him writes the happy ending in the pits of the Dark Place, and another reinvents himself to be the filmmaker, a different version of himself that puts on the mask of carefree ease. It’s not his lack of skill that traps him though. He’s lost Barbara, and he cannot relive the happy memories he did have. Filmmaking does not provide him true joy. He is in a “dark place”. And so is Darling.
Which is where my personal Zaneling feelings come in, because for their collaboration to actually let them escape, they HAVE to love each other, in whatever shape or form that is. I’d love to imagine that they are in love in some romantic way, but the evidence in canon portrays their partnership as inevitable. Two opposites that find each other. Art and science. The imaginario and freedom of creativity, and the logic and bounds of reality, together. It’s only love that will free them, and neither of them find it in their work. Maybe only in each other.
But you know. Art and science together to create an “unstoppable force”. It’s very possible, even likely, that their love dooms the world. And I mean I’ll take that for the old man yaoi. A natural consequence, I feel
My personal theory is that the Actor, depending on routes, “embodies” a character from Control. In these instances, I think he embodies Northmoor, perhaps even referencing the tragic moment before Northmoor got contained in the NSC. There’s another route that sounds suspiciously like what happened to Darling.
Zaneling as a ship is really funny, because this is a ship with a solid amount of evidence. Like on multiple narrative and metanarrative levels Zane and Darling are destined to meet and work well together. It’s on the precipice of canon, the pieces are there, we’re just missing the final one for the jigsaw to complete.
Except I don’t want it to be CANON canon, because the same evidence heavily implies they’re going to destroy all of humanity and ruin everyone else’s lives.
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