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taranida · 6 days

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What's in the box?! Or contents of Samantha's shoebox and who wrote what

Many of my theories use evidence from This House of Dreams — how two sets of poems in the shoebox were written by two different authors. I never explained, why I use it as a fact, but I have an excuse! To this day I cannot with confidence say which font is used on the first set. Not like I didn’t try to find out, but I’m at a loss: everything authentic to the time has at least one thing that doesn’t fit. But at this point I also believe that it doesn’t really matter much. There is already enough to talk about as is, and, finally I can touch up on the topic of the Light Switch vs the Clicker.

So, let’s look at the contents of the shoebox and do some comparisons.

First time when Samantha finds it, she makes this photo:

This is where the first set of poems comes from, together with the photos of the Diver, who wrote those poems, and his girlfriend as confirmed by the Bright Presence in the dream:

“The diver from the photos appeared to me. He looked nothing like in the photos, but it was the same man. He was the poet who had written the poems as well. In the dream he floated in the air above me in the bedroom as if we were underwater. He was wearing a strange, heavy diving suit, almost like a spacesuit, and he was shining with a bright light.” “The diver told me that a dark presence had taken over his girlfriend (the woman in the photos).”

What poems he wrote from the two sets is not specified, but it’s not really needed. Let’s take a look at the photos:

Honestly, with such a blatant “the girlfriend — the woman in the photos”, I have questions. Barbara as the Dark Presence in-game is rocking black hair even at her respectable body-age of 65, the woman in the photos seems to be blond or at least light-haired.

Did the Dark Presence make some changes to Barbara’s body to match the gothic vibe more? Did the public perception of The Scratching Hag and Baba Yaga make her black-haired? Sadly, we have no other images of Barbara Jagger to confirm any of that (no, the photo from the second game with Tom the Filmmaker Seine and Baba Jakala is not a source I’m willing to accept), but the detail is quite curious. It is entirely possible that the Dark Presence having the body would be able to make some changes; after all the Bright Presence made Tom’s body so shiny, he’s a floating lamppost. The Poet and The Muse also point that some changes are possible:

In the dead of night she came to him With darkness in her eyes Wearing a mourning gown Sweet words as her disguise

I have doubts that Barbara went to swim in a mourning gown, and the Dark Presence throughout the game is still dressed for funerals, even if her body changed and aged — the clothes adapted to it, fitting perfectly.

Okay, let us move on to the poems. We have few things to establish the author of each set. Firstly, the font. From the first game we know that Alan’s typewriter accompanies him in the Dark Place:

This is the shot from the moment when Alan finds Alice’s “surprise”, that starts the argument.

This is from the very end of the game. We also can see that the font on the page is Courier; same font that is stressed in the guide:

“Wake was hard at work, adding the final edits to his manuscript. He loved the Courier font.”

Twice!

“But then other, less savory ideas began to formulate, encased in the disgusting, black Courier font.”

Second set of poems also has a page that’s pretty in-your-face:

The Courier font; the title page of the AWAN’s Return; revelation about Campbell’s Monomyth, that plays huge role in AWII (In the whole AW franchise to be fair). All of this points to Alan, of course.

Now the first set uses a different font for starters. I will put them side-by-side:

The first one is Tom’s and the second is Alan’s.

The differences do not end here. We also have handwriting on some pages. Since the title-page is the one surely marked by Alan’s hand, let’s take it as an example and put all other notes near:

I’m by all means nowhere near to be a handwriting expert, but those “T”, “N”, “K”, “U, “E” — they kinda look alike. Yes, the writing changes a bit from one page to another, giving a feeling that something was written passionately or even frantically, something — calmly, with care, something dismissively. But some letters just stay the same for the most part. I would bet it’s the same hand. And yes, I see the elephant of E. in the room, I will talk about it.

Now let’s take a look on the notes from the first set of poems:

I know it’s an abomination of a picture, but we can see, that the way of writing is different.

I’ll also put them side-by-side:

It is another abomination, but easier to compare.

Finally, we can talk about the contents.

The first set of poems has 12 of them. And since Tumblr doesn't allow more than 30 pictures per post, I will drop the images while I can and others I'll leave as text and a link. The most famous are, of course:

The “follow my light”.

From the memorial at the Cauldron Lake Lodge:

And:

Used in OGoA’s Balance Slays the Demon (along with the memorial’s lines and the part of “follow my light”).

And those two from the second game, that are recited by Tom the Filmmaker:

In this temple of shadow and mist There's a window In the floor and A door in the ceiling There is no knowing Am I standing still Or running or kneeling

I wish it would shatter Like glass under my heels Just like a sheet of ice When I close my eyes That’s how the mirror feels Oh mercy Thousands have gone missing Beyond the labyrinth of me When you’re lost You’re lost in your own company

I will also draw attention to a bit of unreliable information, since the site of OGoA was taken down, but I find it curious. So, their albums’ names go like that:

And four of them are lines from Tom’s poems:

Until that time comes around again The shadow falls on this town again It’s barely evening But the shadow falls on me again No one will miss us Our faces inked black They’ll sell our things at the flea market They’ll never call us back So she left with them They’ll wine her and dine her We huddle naked in this alley Nothing’s for sure Fir needles tickle We bathe in rain water All the way to the ocean The memory of the slaughter Until that time comes around again The shadow falls on this town again It’s barely evening But the shadow falls on me again When I’m awake I’m barely alive When I sleep I have two hearts Your heart and mine Your two hearts and mine

The memory of the Slaughter, 1971

I go underground Follow me underground Everyone else has gone there Down to the ground I’ll take you underground They chased a mystery They are a mystery to me And you’ll think that of me When I tell you my tale What we bring with us Sorry secrets and awkward lies Wet matches A yarning for overcast skies Everything else down here Has been stolen so many times Everyone who walks down these steps dies I go underground Follow me underground Everyone else has gone there Down to the ground I’ll take you underground

Follow Me Underground, 1972

Divorce me from all that’s sane Screaming, mute darkness Descend on this frail frame I drown in fathomless black space Light never scratched The depths of this domain I see not; yet nothing could be worse Than the shades My mind calls herein Alone at my own wake The unraveling of reason’s skein

Alone at My Own Wake, 1973; The Unraveling of Reason’s Skein, 1975

Now, for completion’s sake I would drop all the poems that are left, but because I managed to get an error every time I've tried to save draft, it will be a link: here's the post of the blog with all 12 poems of the first set.

Aside from the one that starts with "We pillage and whore" (although it can be connected to the Taken), many of those poems point to Barbara being taken by the Dark Presence already. It’s up to interpretation, of course, but I see it there. I, honestly think that those poems were among others that Alan found in the shoebox in the cabin in the first game:

“Anything outside of writing is a struggle. I feel ill. I managed to make my way downstairs. There’s a shoebox filled with books and papers by Thomas Zane. It’s very hard to focus but I managed to read some of it. He’s a poet and a good one. He writes of muses and creators, summoning fabulous things from a magic lake, using its power to shape the world, of a realm of gods and dreams, and demons, dark things that wait for a chance to slip through, wearing the flesh of men as disguise. Zane writes about himself, his girlfriend being taken over by a Dark Presence, about growing scared of the lake. Zane believes it’s a mirror to the gaping void of darkness above, where some Lovecraftian presence lurks. I crawled back upstairs. I’ll borrow these things for my story. They ring true. They fit.”

Also, can’t help but wonder, why would Barbara be so happy about this poem to even draw a heart?

I mean it reads as “love is no more”. But, again, what do I know about Tom’s unique way of expressing his thoughts through art? Or the Dark Presence’s kinks.

Moving to Alan’s poems. By the way, pay attention on the poor condition of the pages; the first set is not pristine, but at least not this horribly damaged.

This one heavily hints on Alan’s journey. Now I will drop all the other poems as well (and hope I won't hit a wall with the ammount of pictures):

I’ll just leave some of my thoughts about the poems and tie them to events of Alan’s journey a bit. You can treat it all as a wild speculation, really.

Spider time! Oh, sorry, I meant: wild speculations time!

The poem about the princess: Mr. Scratch and the Dark Presence? I’m of the opinion that Alan consumed the Dark Presence after “filling it’s heart with light” and I will eventually talk about it; but it fits. To both Mr. Scratch and Scratch in the second game. The rope-walking feels like Alan’s “I’m drowning”, his always-changing mind-state in the Dark Place and also sends back to the AW1 DLCs. Well, the king poem is obviously the desire to leave the Dark Place and the inability to do it. I have no clue what the dinning poem is about, to be honest, is it somehow connected to deer? Deer-fest? Or the Dark Place populace that might or might not feed on Alan himself? After all, in AWAN he claims he became highly knowledgeable of the inhabitants and the fauna of the Dark Place.

The end of wild speculations.

Now let’s talk about E. And I kept the last poem with no wild speculations just for that. So, we have E. and B. in the notes of the second set of poems as well; I would assume that this is the moment in Alan’s stay in the Dark Place when he goes mad enough to try to impersonate Tom or summon him this way, or even create yet another Barry from DLCs, but this time — Tom (might be with Alan’s face?). B., obviously is as dead as she can be for Alan, he probably has no idea about the private island (or forgot about it), so we have only one mention of her, one that is plausible in Alan’s opinion. E., on the other hand was in the Dark Place with Alan at the time or before.

Allow me to explain. Emil “That Arsehole” Hartman is reported missing in AWE-35 up to 2011:

The “notable individuals still missing after the Bright Falls event” here assumes that Hartman still wasn’t located by FBC after the events of AW1, but they already know about the book published in 2011. Sometime after he was arrested:

And released:

Only after that he makes his leap of faith into the Dark Place. By rough calculations year is 2011-2012, so before being spat out from the lake he might’ve been there with Alan and those notes about E. not understanding:

"E can't see it. He's view is too narrow, limited. It's not a lake, it's an ocean, darkness before the act of creation, before the Big Bang, darkness upon the face of the deep, upon the face of the waters, before light, before the primeval atom, before the word, before THE POEM. I can be a creator, the creator. It has happened before, and it will happen again, many times."

Might be genuine. Hartman jumped into the lake having no idea about its nature, tunnel-visioning only the opportunities, profits. His understanding in the recording before the plunge is narrow and limited, his overconfidence blinds him, he has no clue what he’s dealing with, he was shown glimpses of the power of the Dark Place, but was never able to comprehend it.

And it costed him greatly. Alan, assuming the role of Tom, even wrote him a warm farewell; far warmer than Alan without any splitting personalities or creating imaginary friends would have (the grin after closing the office door on Hartman in the Lodge during the attack of the Dark Presence is golden):

I would bet that E., indeed, didn’t find this funny.

And a bit more clues about the contents of the shoebox. Following the story of Samantha, we know that she found it the first time just to give it to FBC:

“In the dream, I heard the doorbell ring and went to open the door. There was a man there. He said he was a federal agent. He showed me his badge and all, just like the FBI agents do in the movies. Here comes the scary part: there was something wrong with his face; it was leaking inky smoke so that I couldn’t see what he looked like. When I woke up I realized that this image totally came from the ink-covered faces in the photos, of course (see the previous post). The man asked me about the shoebox. He said that it contains top-secret information and that I need to give it to him. I got scared that he’ll put me in jail and went to get the shoebox, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I searched the whole house but it was nowhere. Then I went to the bathroom to look for it, and saw myself in the mirror: my face was covered with inky smoke as well! And that’s when I woke up. When I think back about the dream, it didn’t say “FBI” on his badge; it said “AWE”. This is the weirdest thing of all: Now I can’t find the shoebox anywhere. I have looked everywhere I can think of. I’m sure that it will turn up somewhere, there is so much junk lying around in the house at the moment, but kind of creepy in any case.”

She writes about it as a dream, but it did happen, here’s the whiteboard from Control:

Then there was yet another dream:

“In the dream I was visiting the previous owner of my house at the nursing home, only in the dream the owner wasn’t a sweet old lady, he was a man, and he wasn’t old, he was a young man with a dark hair – very good looking in fact. I remember that he was wearing a funny jacket with old-fashioned elbow patches. I was there to find out about the shoebox, but he was very agitated and didn’t listen to me. The place was brightly lit, it was sunny outside, but he was still very anxious and wanted me to turn all the lights on. He kept going on about the place being too dark. I remember being certain that all the lights were on already, but that didn’t calm him down. In the end he was screaming for me to turn the lights on. I was also starting to freak out, starting to think that something horrible was coming to take us away, and that’s when I woke up.”

Hard to miss those give-away elbow patches, so Samantha had a dream about Alan a week before she got the shoebox back. Here are the contents:

“When I found the shoebox again, there were more poems inside, and a battered, old device: a switch of some kind. I actually had to go and ask about it in the local hardware store to be sure what it was. It’s an old light switch. When you flick it, there’s a solid, satisfying click. When I flicked it the first time after finding it, all the lights in the house went out.”

What in the Dark Place is this Light Switch? I’m still trying to figure it out. We know that the Clicker washed ashore after 2013; if Alan wanted the Clicker in our world, he could arrange it: it was there, in his possession in 2012; why was this sent in the shoebox? It might be explained in the future or it might not. But I will still refer to it as Zane’s Light Switch and call the Clicker Alan’s. Because as much as Odin says that the Light Switch (meaning the Clicker) was cut of “Tom’s lamp”, he also calls Alan “Tom”, so which “Tom” are we talking about there?

The only theory about the Light Switch I have: it’s an OoP that’s bound by the real Thomas Zane and has no use for Alan or anyone else, since Thomas is partially alive and can maintain the connection with the item. Or the Bright Presence might be its new wielder. In any case, this at least somewhat explains why Samantha, of all the people, was shown the story about the Last Dive. I don’t think she bound the item, but she did use it, causing the power outage for the whole neighbourhood, might be enough to summon the Bright Presence. Otherwise I can’t stop wondering why Samantha, being so important as to learn the story of the Last Dive, never showed up again.

But, who knows, after all, her blogging time ends with:

“I know that something amazing is coming, that something wonderful is going to happen, and at the same time I know that when it does, it will be something totally different from what I’m expecting, something I could never have imagined. And I know it might take a long time before it does happen, but no matter how long it takes, I’ll be here, waiting.”

#alan wake #alan wake 2 #alan wake game #alan wake ii #alan wake remastered #rcu theory #remedy connected universe #remedy entertainment #remedy games #thomas zane #control remedy #control game #control 2019 #this house of dreams

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rnainframe · 6 years

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Too Bright - Alan Wake AU Drabble

Mild American Nightmare ending spoilers, for anyone who cares about that!

The familiar hum of distant static is gone. He feels off. Power once surging through him at all times ebbs away, weakening with each breath. Shadows wreathing his form sizzle and dissipate with the rising sun.

…the sun. He needs to get somewhere dark — a hotel room, the woods, somewhere. At least he seems to be close to the woods, judging by the very nearby sound of the breeze disturbing leaves.

He feels heavy and groggy; his head is stopped up with metaphorical cotton, the dull ringing of what humans call a migraine making him unwilling to do much but futily try to will himself to move away from the growing amount of uncomfortable light.

He presses the heels of his hands into the dirt, clammy fists balling grass between his fingers for some leverage as he tries to push off the ground. His ears ring and vision blurs as a direct ray of sun dazzles him at the new angle he's sat himself at, a painful motivator to force himself up quicker.

Now sitting up and resting wearily on his knees, he silently thanks a thick tree branch for casting a shadow over his head, cooling the painful heat buzzing around in his temples after waking up face-down on the edge of the woods. He looks down at himself, lip curling ever so slightly in distaste at dirt and grass stains rubbed into his rather expensive outfit, sticking out like fresh bruises. Sure, he's experienced with getting tough stains out of clothing, but they're annoying.

Memories he recognizes to be not his own (did someone in this hick-infested hovel pop his name in something? That's the only explanation he can think of for that.) interfere with ones he's grown used to, only worsening what he can only describe as the sensation of a terrible hangover. That is, implying as if he's ever had to experience that type of thing before.

And he hasn't.

Fuzzy images linger in his mind: some sort of hand-waved reasons as to why he's waking up here, why he's here at all, where he's been. Who wrote this crap? It's just lazy. Rushed. He's seen writing like this in him before, when that old hag had him under her spell, but that couldn't possibly be it.

He's not comfortable with how human these fleeting memories make him out to be.

The only thing human about him is the fact he's sentient and looks like —

…he should be dead right now. He got torn apart by fake sunlight blasting from a movie reel. In Night Springs. A fictional town that only existed for one night three times in a row. Yet here he is, in the outskirts of Bright Falls, a very real town that exists every night and every day.

A sly smile curls up the corners of his mouth. Right. He should be dead. But he isn't.

He grabs onto a low-hanging branch, rising to his wobbly feet by clinging to it and pulling, using an arm to shield his eyes from the sun. Isn't there something he can use to help that? Sunglasses, is that the word? Not that he can find any without having to figure out which direction the town is in.

Oh well. Might as well attempt to get there.

He pushes off the tree, going deeper into the trees, giving an exaggerated sigh of relief as he can feel energy returning to him, thanks to a sheath of darkness. It's not nighttime level shadow, but enough to make him almost forget about the fatigue from minutes before.

In no time at all, he's stepping out of the trees once more, the shadow of a delivery truck protecting him from the unpleasant morning light. It isn't as intense, now that he's more awake, but it still makes him feel wrong standing in it. But it isn't killing him. That's new. He can get used to that.

Before him stands a small diner. He's been there before, wearing the same face but different clothes. Laying low. Giving old “friends” a taste of having their missing author buddy back, only to relish in their second-guessing, their assumptions that they were seeing things.

A hand shielding his eyes from the sun, he tries to eyeball who's in there from afar. No one too familiar, as far as he can tell, but something in his gut makes him question whether he should go in at all. That's a new emotion. Anxiety? Nervousness? Ugh.

He approaches and steps inside, internally recoiling at the loud chattering already going on inside. The sun is barely up, yet…

Someone notices him. He puts on a grin. Oh, boy. Back to the old antics, shall we?

“Oh my God! Is that really you?” A fan. Excellent.

“I sure am! What, do you want an autograph or something?”

The eager fan nods, pulling out a pen and — Alan doesn't do TV anymore.

“...wait, what are you making me sign?”

“You… are him, right? I can't remember your name— embarrassing, right? It's on the tip of my tongue— but aren't you the twin of that author that's in town? I'm a big fan of Night Springs. Never expected to meet an actor from it, though..!”

His blood turns to ice. He fights the impulse to grab this kid by the neck and squeeze. Keep up the act, he thinks to himself. Act like it's just another day in the life. Figure out what the hell is going on later. Attention is attention.

“You got me! Just call me Scratch, kid.” He takes the pen, clicking it. Huh. So that's what “Scratch” actually sounds like.

“I can't believe I got to see both the Wake brothers in person!”

This better not be permanent.

#alan wake #alan wake's american nightmare #mr. scratch #p0key's writing #scratch wake au

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