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yeah you need characterization as well and to be frank, i don't see any.

Yo! I'm back.

@43 Ha! No problem, bro. You know I'm always open to explain stuff. The episode answers your question with a Freeze-Frame Bonus. When Stu visits a website about the Koekoeken, the legend says that the creature lives inside of you "for the rest of what would be your life span".

Edited by TheMadCr0w on Dec 3rd 2020 at 3:06:42 PM

So back to the Koekoeken. Could we please discuss this further? Seems were sidestepping on whether its just Fridge Horror

Edit: NVMND. Posted right as that got posted lol. Anyway take back my issue.

Edited by miraculous on Dec 3rd 2020 at 10:05:44 AM

Thoroughness appreciated my dude and with that I'm happy to give a yeah. It's not in your face about it but I'm gonna say that hinges on some And I Must Scream stuff, especially for a kids' show. Great job on the re-evaluation!

Btw would Faye count too? The whole Serial Killer targeting a school sounds nasty ?

Koekenen

Yeah, that take on Herobrine probably would've qualified under our prior guidelines for music candidates, but from what I gather, there's not enough characterization for him to qualify under our current standards. Hell, even Not Important, underdeveloped as he was, at least had a personality and a motive, however shallow and one-dimensional they may have been.

Switching to a yes on Koekoeken then.

Edited by Bullman on Dec 3rd 2020 at 12:22:11 PM

Koe.

@Mir Man... She comes close to counting, except for two things: Faye has a confirmed bodycount of only two Asshole Victims, and Faye is satisfied with only one victim at a time. Her intention was to feed on an innocent girl, but she decided to spare her when the school principal proved himself to be more tasty.

Edited by TheMadCr0w on Dec 3rd 2020 at 3:25:25 PM

And with that, I'm going to say to Koe

Koe.

So here's something I have been meaning to revisit for a while now. Now that I am caught up to Control and its DLC's, I think I could give it another shot. Especially when I'm starting to think the reasons I dropped him didn't hold up.

To preface, Alan Wake is a 2010 Magic Realisim horror game. The titular protagonist is a struggling writer and takes a vacation of the small rural town of Bright Falls with his wife Alice. Staying at a cabin on Cauldron Lake, Alice is abducted, prompting Alan to have to go all over Bright Falls and uncover it's mysteries to find her. It is discovered that there is an Eldritch Abomination known as The Dark Presence that haunts the area, and it prey on artists in hopes of breaking free into the world; it also has a bad habit of absorbing people, either killing them, or turning them into darkness infused murderous entities called the Taken.

Come 2019, the same company release Control focusing on a young woman named Jesse Faden as she seeks her long lost brother after a catastrophic event occurs in their hometown as children. She tracks him down to "The Oldest House" where ends up recruited into this SCP Foundation type organization dubbed Federal Bureau of Control; she is then made director by its otherworldly "Board" and made to fight another Eldritch Abomination called "The Hiss". Control is also a Stealth Sequel to Alan Wake and recently has had a crossover DLC called AWE which directly tied the two games together. In it, an old antagonist returns, and is the one responsible for the Dark Presence being set loose in the first place. It also ended his character arc.

Who is he ?

Dr. Emil Hartman is for all intents and purposes the human antagonist of Alan Wake. He somehow manages to be a Greater-Scope Villain and Big Bad Wannabe at the same time. To the public he is an award winning psychiatrist who runs a clinic called Cauldron Lodge, claiming to specialize with struggling artists and seeks to help them. It's soon later revealed is that he is well aware of the Dark Presence and seeks to gain control of it for its reality warping powers, using these artists as his proxies to do so.

He returns in Control in which a DLC goes over what happens between games, leading to his eventual death.

What does he do ?

Hartman started out as an assistant of Thomas Zane, a poet who visited Bright Falls in the 70's with his girlfriend Barbara Jagger. Hartman secretly knew of the Dark Presence and its power in the lake, especially the effect it had on artists. When Barbara drowned, Hartman talked Zane into writing her back to life, giving the Dark Presence its avatar and and losing it onto Bright Falls. The end result was the Dark Presence taking and/or killing countless people up until the time of the game; Hartman decides he was going to try to capitalize on it. In his clinic, he gets many artists over the years, to expeirant with the Dark Presence without driving himself insane or to death. As a result, Hartman has driven the lot of his patients insane by exposure to the Dark Presence.

At the time of the game, Hartman is has called Alice Wakt about some of Alan's issues and has take Alan to Bright Falls as a vacation. This of course is a pretext to get Alan into his clutches. After appearing as a passive annoyance, as soon as Alice goes missing, Hartman has one of his patients contact Alan, posing a kidnapper threatening Alice for a manuscript Alan is writing (in reality Alice was abducted into the Dark World to coerce Alan to write for it). This eventually gets both the kidnapper consumed and Alan knocked unconscious by the Dark Presence allowing Hartman to abduct Alan back to his lodge.

In his clinic, Hartman repeatedly drugs Alan and tries to convince him that Alice is dead, and everything he experienced so far was an elaborate illusion, as well as trying to get him to write a manuscript as part of his therapy. It also turns out that Alan's friend and manager Barry arrived to help Alan out, Hartman has him locked up. When Alan does some looking around during a breakout, he will learn of Hartman's true intentions and actions. Alan breaks Barry out and confronts Hartman in his office. Hartman tries to manipulate Alan again when the Dark Presence itself attacks the lodge. Alan and Barry flee, with Alan locking the door behind him, leaving Hartman to his fate.

Enter the Federal Bureau of Control, who begin an investigation of the Bright Falls incident. It is revealed Hartman survived his encounter with the Dark Presence, but tries to continue his research, and even tries to partner up with the FBC for it. After his arrest, the FBC revokes his license and shuts down his operation. Despite this, he continues to double down and takes a dive in the Cauldron Lake himself, convinced that his "superior intellect" will give him control of the Darkness. This ends with the Dark Presence possessing Hartman into one of it's puppets, and he's taken to be a test subject for the FBC's research. He doesn't cause too much trouble save for the time he went on a murderous rampage when Alice Wake was taken to their building for an interview.

A decade later, during the events of Control when Jess Faden is made Director of the FBC, and The Hiss attacked their building; Hartman was infected as well. The Dark Presence and The Hiss didn't take to kindly to eachother's presence and put Harman through a tug of war for possessing him; this took such a toll on his body and mind, that they turn him into a momster, which goes on rampage. The crossover DLC is basically about Jesse tracking Hartman down before finally killing him, while uncovering what happened to Alan and the Bright Falls investigation and sitting through Langston's rambles. We also get a Sequel Hook, setting up another crossover.

Redeeming Qualities or Freudian Excuse ?

None, despite his attempts at being affable. Although I am covering everything prior to his eventual possession.

It's pretty clear that he is motivated by greed and desire for personal power over the Dark Presence, and listening to one of his audio tapes or read manuscripts about him, we get a clear picture of his mindset that reinforces this. He doesn't display any actual redeeming qualities, making it clear he sees his patients as projects and a means to his ends. He also sees his patients and henchmen as expendable as the manuscripts describe his thoughts on "the kidnapper". Furthermore Control makes it clear he has no remorse over what has happened when you go through his logs.

At first Hartman isn't seen as that much of a threat in game being literally overshadowed by the Dark Presence and takes a back seat to it as the human Big Bad Wannabe to this Eldritch Abomination. Hartman is seen as a greedy and power hungry scumbag for what he does to his patients, but in comparison to the Dark Presence that doesn't seem all that bad... That is until we learn his past. Hartman is the reason the Dark Presence was set loose in the first place; he knew of its power in Cauldron Lake and manipulated Thomas Zane to let that power loose. This makes Hartman indirectly responsible for all the people the Dark Presence has taken in Bright Falls over the decades.

Now at first you could say he was an Unwitting Instigator of Doom, but the context shows that even if he didn't know then what the Dark Presence would do if it got out, he sure as shit does by the time of the game. Not only does Hartman not care, but he continues trying to exploit it and its effect on people for his own benefit.

As for his eventual possession, not its not played for sympathy or an Alas, Poor Villain; instead his fate of being mind raped into a abominable monstrosity is seen as a karmic fate for someone like him. He's still portrayed as disdainful, and the "Thing That Used To Be Hartman" is just a mindless rampaging monster that needs to be put down. I personally wouldn't seriously consider his possessed rampage as part of his rap sheet, due to the impaired agency that comes with being a Taken (although the research logs suggest some of Hartman's former mind is still in there); and being tugged between The Dark Presence and the Hiss has made it so little if any of the original Hartman was in the thing Jesse kills.

Heinous Standard

Aside from The Dark Presence and The Hiss, both eldritch entities that that threatens to spread across the world; both are utterly alien to humans, those two have lesser antagonists to contend with.

There is Mr. Scratch, the antagonist of Alan Wake: American Nightmare, who goes on a murder spree of his own within that spinoff, the problem is if he really does commit those murders. It's implied that American Nightmare is a story within a story Alan wrote himself in (it's complicated). Aside from that Scratch has no agency on account of being a literal manifestation of the negative rumors surrounding Alan, an avatar of the Dark Presence, and the herald of a greater entity he is also trying to loose.

Pre Dark Presence possession and Hiss Mind Rape, he doesn't really go on that many killing sprees. Since we aren't taking his eventual possession into account, his most solid crimes boil down to him driving his patients insane by exposing them to the Dark Presence - which is bad but probably not enough; there's his more personal crimes in gaslighting Alan, and manipulating Thomas into writing his deceased wife back to life which turns her into the Dark Presence's first avatar. Again bad but not a trump card...then we find out he is responsible for the Dark Presence being set loose in the first place.

This isn't me using Fridge Horror since this is something the game made clear but questioning how much of an Unwitting Instigator of Doom he can get away with. It's because of his actions the Darkness has consumed a helluva lot of people over the decades. Since Hartman knew of the Dark Presence when he set it loose, even if he didn't know what it would do then he sure does now. In fact, he left a Mott to be devoured by the Dark Presence just to get his hands on Alan, and quite a bit is shown just how much they know about those taken. Either way, Hartman's apparent attitude to the people he got killed is one of apathy and exploitation.

I'll leave it to you guys. Either way, I sat through Langston's rambling so you don't have to.

Edited by Beast on Dec 3rd 2020 at 2:10:32 AM

Yes to Hartman.

Hartman

Zod

Hartman and Koekoeken Zod

Hartman

to Dr. Hartman

Emil

Any way to trim the EP so it's not 2000+ words?

I tried. Will try again but I am covering two games and felt context needed to be explained.

Edit: Fixed. Hopefully.

Edited by Beast on Dec 3rd 2020 at 2:05:47 AM

Yes to Hartman.

to Dr. Emil Hartman.

Hartman. Zod.

Hartman.

Yes to Hartman.