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compressednerve · 7 months

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Exploring Zachariah Trench's Office with @parasitefun

So many crazy white boy moments in his office so here's rambling about observations we made together. BTW we haven't finished the game yet (we're at The Prime Candidate Program and just found out who P7 is) so PLEASE DON'T TELL ME IF THESE ARE CORRECT OR IF I THEORIZE THE WRONG THING. I don't wanna be spoiled on anything >:O thank you.

Analysis, headcanons, and observations below!

What does his diploma say? Lets zoom in

DIPLOMA THIS CERTIFICATE IS PROUDLY PRESENTED TO

Zachariah Trench

One morning, when Zachariah Trench woke from troubling dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

..........oh!! oh ok, the Kafka quote about becoming so disabled you can no longer work? And you see yourself as A HORRIBLE VERMIN because you're disabled? And they put that on a diploma and proudly gave it to Trench! Jesus Christ!!! Go listen to some of The Downward Spiral, Zachariah!!! My god I'm so fucking heartbroken over how Zachariah talks about being old and frail and weak and BROKEN!!!!!!!!!!! and useless and-I could go on. I'm a mostly bedridden disabled person myself and I usually find myself relating the most to the older characters in casts of media because they're usually the ones portrayed with the same issues I have as a younghead (arthritis, brain damage/brain fog/amnesia, fatigue and exhaustion, difficulty moving and speaking, just.. yum). And being bedbound myself is something that I feel really deeply in Kafka's work. To realize Trench relates so deeply to Gregor Samsa as well is just such a juicy delicious detail for him. And it's a diploma? My head is spinning! His self-hatred is infinite...

I love that the diploma is tucked away behind the slide projector as well. I'm not sure if this is The Slide Projector that's been hinted at but it'd be neat if it was!

NOBLE SHERIFF: "There can only be one Sheriff in town" ... :rolling_eyes: ok Mr. The Only Person You Should Fail Is Yourself ok Mr. She Knows I Don't Like Relying On Other People ok Mr. I Need A Team To Clean Up My Horrible Mistakes (k!lls self to avoid taking accountability for his actions and dumps it all in Jesse's lap). He was just drinking straight from the fucking bottle at his desk!! That's so disgusting I love it, no chaser or anything. I love the tasteful rolodex, the smooth marble pen holder (with silver in the black, but, kind of evocative of The Astral Plane hmm?), his stapler, his disgusting jug of booze, and the FRESH PACK OF CIGGIES!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!! God, Trench's addictions and compulsions being literally on his desk, the most intimate and well-frequented area of his general daily life, is just so fun! Remedy does so good with environmental storytelling.

I love how even the brands he uses are manifestations of his inner thoughts. The booze label, the tool that relaxes him and dampens his inhibitions, is of course praising him. The Lone Sheriff. The Director. The Last Line Of Defense. Zachariah Trench sees himself as the sole protector, and The Oldest House his town, his community, his ward. The most likely intentional framing of the documents he was signing being splattered with blood, acting like a barrier of his Work vs his Needs (need to relax, need for a painkiller cuz booze is a great painkiller)

I got to his documents piles and literally shouted, "HE HAS SO MUCH MORE WORK TO DO!!!!". I love that the OUT pile is more full than the IN pile, Trench is so judicious with his correspondence :pleading_face: he's so tired. I bet he wishes he was still a Field Agent a lot of the time :sobbing: Looking at all the stuff on his desk like the sheer amount of documents and phone calls and other shit he has to do in a day to day as The Director must be sooo overwhelming...

It was during this moment that Paras and I realized that the greater joke of Control is about older people who stay in their jobs and refuse to make room for other workers, and they get Promoted To Incompetence! lmfao because like, Zachariah was so focused on Field Agent Stuff (in one of his Hotline calls he says, "I kept my head down. I worked my ass off." in a classic blue collar way) and being all tragic and putting his life on the line for his squad, then suddenly and forcefully being promoted to The Boss Of Everything. No wonder he has such a complex about Failing The Bureau :O

the same applies to Dr. Darling--! He's been in The Bureau for a 24 years!! He has 22 labs spread across the ever-shifting expanse of The Oldest House. He, mainly, wants to Do Research and Write Essays and all sorts of other shit that mainly revolves around being an isolated scientist with a modest team. And instead he has to make presentations for the laymen of The Bureau and he has to manage all THE ENTIRE RESEARCH SECTOR, who sends him catty memos about how their department deserves more funding (parakineseology department bribing him with his favorite booze???), and interns and junior scientists who don't know the first thing about The Astral Plane, and as Dr. Underhill complained about- The Bureau's ultimate goal is to exploit what they find, rather than actually comprehend what it is they're dealing with. Most Rangers retire due to cognitive collapse because The Bureau just shoves them in the meat grinder of trying to contain/control Everything. Ugh!

So anyways Zachariah Trench isn't a bad Director but then he's literally such a bad Director, the Worst Director Ever at the same time because it just wasn't his archetype. He took it way too seriously with a hammer in hand, seeing every problem as a nail. Dr. Darling fits the opposite of this niche as well in his own archetypical way- going from goofy underling to The Guy In Charge Of Everyone. They're both socially awkward, domineering, prone to pettiness/hostility, and under so so so much pressure for roles they were universally understood to not be able to fulfill.

All of the people we see in Control that are actually useful and agreeable with Jesse (who has been a dropout who mainly ever worked manual labor jobs up to and including janitor) so far are like, Ahti the mid-60yr old janitor who also just so happens to be the first friendly face you see when you enter the FBC and like, Simon? And fucking Langston (who is so hot I gotta write some Jesse/Frederick later)!

Langston, who is what I imagine is a direct parallel in a positive light compared to Dr. Darling and Director Trench, as in, how he entered The Bureau (he worked in the Postal Service of all places and an uncle at The FBC got him a job there), and Langston, like Trench, worked his ass off, kept his head down, but schmoozed enough to get a nice promotion, and then continued to work at a slow, steady incline for 15 years until he became Panopticon supervisor. He's like one of the only dudes in a high ranking spot who actually respects his position.

And of course who could forget dear Emily Pope :pleading_face: she's been Dr. Darling's underling for idk how long but clearly a while and she's so so ambitious like Darling is ambitious but she's so so so inhibited and held back by Darling's misogyny and higher ranking and having to be ordered to research shit but not actually be able to ask the real questions. You can really get a feel for how passionate Emily is in her work by like, not just how she talks to Jesse but in her correspondence and especially her research papers. The way she words documents ordered by Dr. Darling vs how she words documents ordered by Director Jesse Faden is literally night and day, but not for lack of enthusiasm. You can tell under Darling's mentorship she's soooo stifled, and with Jesse's lax permission "please just do whatever you want so long as it advances my (and The Bureau's) understanding of things". Emily's like a kid in a candy store and it's exactly what she needs to flourish.... Oh to bask in the light of a manual laborer :heart_eyes:

Another angle of his documents which I find titillating. The majority of his blood splatter landing on the IN pile... efflorescent....

THE FUCKING. BLACK ROCK PRISM ON HIS DESK. Paras has something to say about that later in a fic or some art. The other pack of ciggies that he was in the process of smoking (I counted the cigarettes. He has 8 ciggies left which means he's smoked 12 already. There are 4 in the ashtray which means at some point after opening the pack, he smoked 8 and then dumped the ashtray. This shows he keeps his ashtray relatively clean, which is a specific kind of character quirk about Tidiness and Cleanliness for Trench because chainsmokers like me and Paras are disgusting and our ashtray is overflowing by like, three packs and it smells horrible). The way it sits atop all his other shit he needs to sign, he's just drowning in documents (sort of like how I imagine Alan is drowning in manuscripts? WHO SAID THAT?)

*looks over Jesse's shoulder and realizes Trench's body is gone* *nearly shouting to Paras, who is sitting right next to me* WHERE IS TRENCH'S BODY? WHERE DID HIS BODY GO? WHY IS HIS BLOOD ON THE FLOOR BUT NOT HIS BODY? DID THE FUCKING BOARD TAKE HIM? DID THEY EAT HIM? WHO ATE TRENCH?

I've been likening Zachariah Trench a lot to Rorschach in his perpetual death-wish (he wants to die so bad but he'll fight everything that tries to kill him to the bloody end because he feels he can only die when he's ready to die ugh yum). The empty blood splatter after you come back from The Hotline Chamber for the first time (and realizing that The Hotline Chamber is DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO TRENCH'S OFFICE? HELLO?) is soooo fucking reminiscent of Rorschach's final death scene, where the blood splatter is the shape of his mask :hand_over_mouth: soooo symbolic sooo iconic. Note to self: Paras and I need to write/draw something about different people devouring Trench's corpse (yum).

(SIDENOTE: PLEASE DONT TELL ME IF THERE'S A CANONICAL REASON FOR WHY TRENCH'S CORPSE DISAPPEARS. THAT'D BE BALLER IF THERE WAS A CANONICAL REASON BUT WE WANNA FIND OUT ON OUR OWN!)

I wanna lick the blood off his desk and phone. Oohhhhhhn n the way it drips down the edge of the desk. I want to give him so many head wounds here. He spilled his final blood all over his classified documents and telephone and finished work and desk that he sat at a lot :pleading_face: and he was only 64 years old wah. He was so tragic and so sad and what if there was a dude who was so sad he DIED because his boss was like "put the gun to your head and see if we still like you" and Trench was like "oh good, finally, an opportunity to see if I'm still worthy" AND HE FUCKIN. WAS PROVED. UNWORTHY? OUCH, DUDE!!! HARSH!!!

Zachariah's Personal Signature Rubber Stamp (CUMS UNCONTROLLABLY)

Dude I had no fucking clue he had a picture of himself when he was younger (and healthier, and happier, and) with his kid that he accidentally killed. Like what??? He's so miserable and he sits at his desk with TWO packs of cigarettes and a giant bottle of like i'm guessing whiskey or scotch, and he just sits there and gets nosebleeds from using The Hotline and chainsmokes and stares at his Former Glory. MY GOD!

...............pistachios :pleading_face: he eats pistachios. he has pistachio snack. he enjoys pistachios. there is a bag of pistachios at his desk. he had to have gotten that at a vending machine. zachariah trench had to either ask someone to get him some pistachios (vulnerable) or he had to get up and go to a vending machine and put his money into the vending machine because he wanted a snack and he chose to get pistachios and he had to bend over and get the pistachios out of the bottom of the vending machine. zachariah trench eating pistachios. he has to crack the shells open and dispose of them somehow. pistachios are green. he eats pistachios. he wants a snack. i am literally a shell of a human being.

Imagine the smell of his nice leather briefcase. The weight of it in your hand. The privilege to watch Trench open it up and rifle through the papers, or *gets lightheaded* being able to hand him a document that he then has to place in his briefcase. I can't breathe. I like the pneumos in the background too. He has a very natural gentle clutter to his desk, like I imagine how he perceives the clutter of his mind. There's so many things to keep track of, and he's so tired... :weeping:

I'm so utterly enraged that he didn't finish two of his cigarettes. He didn't even finish his ciggie before he died!! are you fucking kidding me?! I was somewhat bewildered because the texture of the inside of the ashtray (the ashtray) looks... wet? and the two finished cigarette butts are visibly wet (distorted color, swollen cotton) and Paras said that the ashtray probably has a sort of perpetually wet sand inside it. Works for me!

Did you know if you shoot the Prism, it's breakable? I didn't know that. Makes the screenie a bit goofy but I don't care. Look at his over half-finished pack of ciggies. I would pay. kind of a lot of money. for like a collectors edition of real Black Pyramid Cigarettes are you kidding me? What kind of nightmare dimension tobacco do they put in those things?

He looks so moe here receiving his gay little medals or whatever's happening (idk if this has story relevance and gets revealed later or not). His hairdo is so cute??? Did he... did he bleach his hair? It looks like his roots are showing thru old bleach... is... Yung Trench a bleached hair baddie? I'm gonna pass out.

Me: look at that! Trench is watching the presentation! Paras: LOOK AT HOW SMOKY THE ROOM IS! HE'S HOTBOXING HIS OFFICE WITH NICOTINE! Both of us: *gagging*

So first of all this is such a big moment in terms of setting up Zachariah and Casper's relationship to each other, and how they interact with each other. Jesse uses The Hotline, and then we're treated to an interdimensional 3D Memory Flashback of observing Trench. He's sitting in his office, which is dimmed so the projector can play. He's chainsmoking so much that the ENTIRE VOLUME of his MODESTLY LARGE OFFICE is FILLED with CIGARETTE SMOKE. I genuinely am so disgusted and enamored by Trench's hardcore nicotine addiction, his.... dedication to the Ritual of Smoking. So anyways, engaging in his comfort ritual of Smoking, sitting in his nice chair and watching Darling's presentation. Imagine him ordering Darling to put together research on The Hotline immediately after his first call with The Board... and he's the only one who can communicate about what the experience is like... and then when Dr. Darling is done he delivers the video to Trench and then Trench sets aside specific dark-room-and-smoking time JUST to watch The Presentation? CAN IT GET ANY MORE HOMOSEXUAL THAN THIS? I *will* be writing about this later.

Sidenote the perspective of viewing behind his head like this is so intimate. I feel so voyeuristic, I want to hover closer to the back of Trench's neck and feel/see the hairs rise up in extrasensory response to my presence. I want to nibble on his ear.

I need him. to blow smoke in my face.

...

Well that's all the screenshots I have at the moment! Thank you for reading my post and please feel free to contribute your own ideas and observations to this because I LOVE META!! And I love hearing other people discuss it too >:3

#zachariah trench #remedy control #compressednerve writing #jesse faden #dr. darling #casper darling #emily pope #ahti the janitor #simon arish #frederick langston #meta and analysis #parasitefun

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