#spacetimeaccordionfolder

Go have fun

I am having fun.

First idea: Kayne's solely lost the ability to teleport. Time travel isn't so useful because now he's flung himself out in space. So he has to walk places. Or get a car.

He explodes a lot of things out of frustration. What are his goals? He's not sure, he's just being annoyed at every little thing. Teleporting is his whole thing and now that bit of freedom is gone.

I suggest he's stuck in Addison. No cars, very snowed in. He's going to have to wait for a car to come in or decide to walk through the ice. The town has long burned down in his frustration. He's picking through the rubble and not even a bicycle (would be terrible in the snow anyway).

So he just sets to walking. First car he finds he explodes the person inside. Fun fact: gross. Kayne has to half-heartedly clean the windshield off. Also car's are incredibly slow (not instaneously).

And yes, of course he could take portals. But have you seen how dangerous they are?? Look at what happened to Shub? And worse, to the King in Yellow? He doesn't want to have a fragment of himself running around making friendship bracelets and calling himself Stuart.

Second Idea: I'm shoving him in an unlocked closet. He's a little completely unused to getting out of places without teleporting and not thinking the best, understandable really. So he just panics for an hour or so before sheepishly finds that he can twist the knob.

I propose he shows up at Arthur's home, Arthur realizes he has no powers and shoved him in there. Just to see what he can do. He doesn't even put a broom in front of it because Kayne is already so panicked from it.

He's making tea in the other room, discussing nothing much with John when Kayne finally stumbles out. Let's call it establishing the pecking order (though Kayne would probably nearly die just to spite another person. So basically a two Arthurs living together situation).

Third idea: This is after the last season. Everyone could kill him, but is agreeing that would unfortunately be for the worst. However, Kayne still has an awful habit of ruining people's plans and trying to kill them (still has a ton of occult knowledge). So there's a rotating schedule on who has to deal with him between the Manager, Lillith, and Arthur.

Arthur somehow ends up getting the most frequent and longest shifts (he's going to die soon so he has to pull his weight to make up for it). And everyone has independtly decided they are just shoving him somewhere until it's the next person's turn.

Arthur gets the fewest escape attempts (Kayne actually likes Arthur and he knows how to escape occult things, not ropes). When he does manage to get out of the closet/unbound/out of that coffin/unbound from magical restraints/usually a combination of everything they can think of to throw at him, he's very upset. And just walks up to them, attempts to kill them and proceeds to get trapped again.

meep morp

Ohhhhhh my god. Thank you so much for this ask.

That tag was about Zane, an Alan Wake character! Zane is one of those characters who is a "walking spoiler", so while he is my favorite character in quite some time and has been occupying my thoughts for five months straight, I'll try to be as light on detail as possible while outlining him. Don't look him up.

AW1 starts with the Wake couple vacationing at Cauldron Lake, staying in a cabin that used to belong to Zane! He was a poet and diver, and went missing under mysterious circumstances in the year 1970. Only his close friends remember him.

Alan receives dreams and visions of him in AW1 as the "voice of god", and he appears as either beams of light, or as beams of light in a diving suit.

(Clip from Holly Hollowtones' AW1 playthrough) Both Zane and Holly are really funny.

He mainly looks like this in AW2. Which...I guess is a spoiler, sorry...but he was recast between the games, and the guy who plays him presently had a lot of agency over what his more humanoid presentation would be like. He decided that he should be feminine and bi and that is #awesome.

It feels silly to say, but the most concise way I can describe his narrative presence is that he's the Gaster of Alan Wake--a mysterious figure who is both forgotten and the backbone of the world---but he's just bursting with personality and history. And arguably, I'd say he's far better at being Gaster than Gaster is, as he's far more consequential to the world of Alan Wake, AND only Alan Wake fans really know about him, AND the devs tend to mostly leave him out of marketing (THIS IS GOOD).

There are many uncertainties in Alan Wake, but because of Zane's nature, they increase exponentially around him. I've only fully agreed with someone's take on him a handful of times, and I'm still reevaluating his actions and decisions.

all to say. I'm thinking about parasitism as intimacy. and Hastur. and feeling at home inside of Arthur. And him possibly trying to crawl into one of the Arthur's bodies, curling around his not quite right heart. Would he fit? Does Arthur die around him under the strain? is he unable to crawl inside of Arthur, maybe trying but he has physically outgrown him? only some tentacles able to fit? Does he break Arthur's bones in the process?

I've been thinking about this for a bit and saw the post you made about John viewing Arthur as his home and decided to share my musings with you.

OOUUUUGHH god see this is such a concept because of the emotion john is dealing with and putting forward vs repressing in the dark world. like what you were saying about his whole "kill, take, rule" thing—there's just something about how the construction of the whole citadel is on its surface an act of ownership, while simultaneously being a way to recreate using arthur's body as a shelter, a place of worship, even tho he doesn't acknowledge the second part directly. and in that vein...

there is something so so tasty about imagining what john would feel as he attempted to crawl back inside arthur's body again. is he admitting, at least to himself, that he misses it? that he would rather be inside him? is it a moment of weakness where the grief and pain outstrip the anger and he just wants to be comforted, wants to be held? and so he allows himself to stop trying to play the role of hastur, allows himself to be small and weak and seek sanctuary within this pathetic human's body.

...and then if arthur does die in that process, if he spends his last moments confused and terrified and in agony. is john... okay with that? happy about that? does he admit to himself that he wishes arthur had been okay with it too, that he wanted arthur to welcome him, to tell him he wasn't a monster for wanting to nest in the quiet of his ribs? or does he continue to pretend that all along he wanted him to be afraid the whole time, that this was just another way of making him suffer before he died. that he didn't hate this body for being so sprawling and alien and incapable of taking the comfort he desperately wanted.

Im still kicking my feet over your fic. Also not directly related but there's a line I misheard and ever since I realized this I've been disappointed

Ive been hearing "the perfect strike that fits the hunger on your face" when it's the "horror on your face" and my disappointment is immeasurable

Anyway yeah Butcher Vanity goes INSANE and everytime I see a fic titled with it's lyrics I get excited.

... anyways there's a piano in The Waylay.

Ooo. That is a very good song. I'm not sure how exactly to fit a time loop in here but there are options:

•Just playing Arthur different music in the Wager to see if it changes anything. He doesn't care anymore he's stuck in this loop forever, here's a song about how he'd fail if he could even try. Arthur being surprisingly more friendly during this one. An agreeable broken hysteria that matches what Kayne is doing.

•Kayne caught in a loop of trying to kill Azathoth and just ending it over and over again. He can't stop. He won't. But he's started to make jokes about his own inevitable failure. Shoves the song into one of the scenes he shows Arthur. It's no longer about the magic of Christmas it's now about teaching Arthur about the atom bomb. He's not the worst threat to mankind out there! Really!

Hey do you want to think about how alone Kayne is and how he keeps sabotaging any attempt to be closeish to another being, how he always will establish a pecking order or will keep something separate in some way, can't just ...be?

Here. Have some liquid bandage. It could help.

Hi. Yes. I think about this all the time. Because there's exactly two problems Kayne has and he's made it so he can't chase one without making the other one worse. The hierarchy thing is like a weird bandaid slapped on to fix it and it still doesn't work.

He needs connection and he needs absolute independence and how does he solve that with all the grace of a toddler beginning to learn socializing? Just make himself the most powerful being in any situation and never let anyone forget it. Surely this will ensure he gets the connection he wants and not alienate him from anyone he could have a conversation with while also meaning that he constantly has to maintain his idea of having power (it doesn't matter how much he has, it matters how much everyone else remembers it, because if they're lulled into forgetting it because he's gotten too close to them, how can he ensure he's as autonomous as possible??).

If he just let things be he'd be giving up control or leaving it to fate. He can't do that. He hates Azathoth. He needs to have control. Solely him. So he's on top now.

And he keeps lulling himself out of it. Arthur has to remind him that there's supposed to be a catch in his deals. He doesn't want to have to maintain a power structure (that's not independent, he's constrained by the structure he instituted). He just wants to hang out.

So he has to roll it all back. And he keeps forgetting to. Or wants a random burst of connection. Keeps making excuses to show up in the beginning just to chat. Arthur doesn't need to take his hand, Kayne could just teleport him away, but he so badly wants some connection. He hands Arthur a dagger, and more importantly, a coin to contact him at anytime.

I think he has to immediately regret that. That's too close. By the next visit, Kayne avoids Arthur being awake. And then he's much less friendly afterward. Too much connection makes him claustrophobic.

But he can't possibly give up the reins. Arthur stops playing the piano after he just asked him to, he needs to reassert how dangerous he is (also one of the few times he uses an angry tone. He's in a vulnerable place, he's telling Arthur some details about himself, and there goes Arthur taking something he sees as control).

Kayne is constantly shooting himself in the foot because his ants keep getting close to him and that's scary. He wants it so badly, but what if he somehow gets hurt? Preemptive lashing out. He follows the same logic with his wager. Something might kill or hurt him so he's going to do it first.

Kayne is so reactionary. He has all the power any being could ever hope to achieve, but it doesn't feel like enough because he's putting himself on the back foot. He rarely makes the first move with anyone he's interacting with (ignoring the other Nyarlathoteps he killed. Which don't matter because he set out to kill them).

He knows how Arthur works so he sets up things so he reacts properly and he can keep things going in the direction he likes. Obviously Kayne is in charge. But he's also basing all of his actions off what an ant will do. He doesn't need Arthur to go along with anything. But he wants that connection. So he's structuring everything in the attempt to get it.