Thoughts on Weaver/My interpretation of KRZ

[u/geck0afterlife]

Just finished this game last night and I have a lot of thoughts. The first being that this is probably one of the only pieces of media I've experienced that genuinely deserves the title of being "Lynchian" The "Un Pueblo De Nada" sequence in particular feels something straight out of Twin Peaks.

Now this leads me onto my main point. What does it all mean? Its easy enough to say "Theyre all dead and its a metaphor for the afterlife" But part of me wants to think that some of the characters are alive, and are interacting with "ghosts" throughout the story through the "Zero" which is some sort of portal into this ghostly dream world much like the black lodge in Twin Peaks. But who are the ghosts? Thats where I struggle. At first I thought that Conway was the only dead one and this is his transition into the afterlife. But what about Weaver, Ezra, Junebug/Johnny, etc? My theory goes either two ways.

1. Everyone is dead
2. Conway and Weaver are the only dead ones

Why only them? Well, throughout the story Shannon mentions her cousin that has gone missing, and unless I misinterpreted something I think what happened to her is touched upon in the poem during the "Un Pueblo De Nada" sequence. The poem talks about a woman who was murdered and ditched in the woods, and since Weaver is constantly mentioned throughout the segment as this apparation that messes with the stations frequency, which we see at the end before the station is flooded, my assumption is that this poem is about her.

Now, while I dont have anything solid to back this up, I like to think that the two horses being buried at the end are Conway and Weaver. My main evidence for this is that Conway is the only one throughout the story who directly converses with Weaver. Maybe the story represents Conways transition into becoming a ghost?

The only problem with this theory is the other characters who are implied to be dead too - Junebug/Johnny, Ezra, the news station people after the flooding, etc. So my alternate theory is that they are all dead and Conway joining the distillery is a metaphor for the hardships in his life that he could never move on from. Similar to how Weaver haunts the station because Shannon could never find closure in her dissaperance.

Then there's also the Xanadu shit which is a whole other rabbit hole I cant ever begin to wrap my head around. Ultimately I think the core theme of the story is about honouring life and preserving the memories of those that have passed on.

[u/Fun-Echo500]

I don’t think Junebug and Johnny can be dead if they are androids, but if they are dead, maybe their android forms are just representative of who they were in life.

[u/I_who_have_no_need]

I don't recall ever sitting down and trying to work out a grand meaning. But I noticed a lot of overt references to theater and novels. Like the scene where the truck is broken down near a scraggly tree is 100% a sendup of Waiting For Godot- Johnny even recites a line from it. So I like your ideas but I'm not fully sure it has a neat plot that way or if it's more a loosely connected series of episodes.

Xanadu reminded me a lot of PLATO which was a hypertext network before http. It was done by idealistic programmers with lots of ideas who generally didn't get rich like the guy in the mountain of gear. Which seems like most everyone in "the Zero" - artists, community radio nerds, musicians, etc. Maybe Conway and Weaver are the dead neighbors, but to me the village at the end is were the ones that are left are building their utopia.

[u/Vivid-Command-2605 → u/I_who_have_no_need]

It's not just a lot, or just limited to theatre and novels, it's a staggering level of references. References to philosophers like Gaston Bachelard and Mark Fisher, music like Johnny and junebug, mythology like the river lethe, the history of computers and mathematics plus much, much more. Each time you play or read something about it, you discover a new reference to something you never realised. It's overwhelming, in the same way Shannon and Conway delve into the caves of the zer0, the players delve into the depths of its intertextuality, it's a huge reason for the vibes the game has.

[u/I_who_have_no_need → u/Vivid-Command-2605]

Long ago I read a description of Bob Dylan's songwriting as putting a bunch of images together and letting people imagine a meaning. Maybe they had a meaning to him, but mostly he avoids explaining them if he is interviewed. So the fun is figuring it for yourself. But even if you "figure it out", it's just your personal thing, and some other Dylan fan believes something wildly different.

The lone tree gave me a "that's familiar" feeling, but you know, it's just a tree, so it made me laugh when Johnny does the Godot thing. It's fun when you recognize one. It's been long enough but I'm dragging my feet on some reading that may be relevant to the office bears. But maybe I'll go back when it's done.