r/AlanWake • u/zoey1bm • 1d ago
Thinking about Alan's in-universe fandom makes me go insane Discussion
This man was a crime thriller writer.
Putting the Casey/Payne thing aside for now, the real world equivalent to Casey would probably be the likes of Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole. Gritty, depressed cops trying to make sense of complex narratives. Arguably the biggest difference between the Casey books and actual modern Scandinavian crime literature is the fan response to them. Both of them gather high praise from critics, but Stieg Larsson sure as shit didn't get interviewed for magazines aimed at teenage girls. Alan did.
And it's just so wild to me because he does not fit the image of someone who irl would be beloved on tumblr at all. While the "complicated bad boy" act was something that celebrities utilized as part of their public persona, the success of it was kinda exclusive to like boys band musicians, or actors. Not writers of hardboiled detective stories ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ Rose's fansite might not actually have won awards for "best fansite ever", but with the way the reception around him is framed, Im certain that micro communities around Wake and Casey formed.
Which makes the lack of a riot over Sudden Stop so weird?? Like if you know anything about fandom history, you probably know that the first instance of modern fandom having an unhinged moment is usually credited to sherlockians harassing and sending death threats to ACD for killing Holmes. And yet everyone is mostly fine with Casey dying in Alan's last regular novel? In a fandom that apparently skews towards parasocial behaviors??
All that to ask, how in the world did we even arrive at officially licensed Alex Casey lunchboxes????
disclaimer: I know this mainly done in order to have Rose be an actual character with contributions. But let me gnaw at the implications of it lol.
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u/Nowheresilent 13h ago
In the Remedy multiverse, some events can be seen as reflections of events happening in other universes. Reflections being cast onto the sea of night.
Max Payne was a huge success for Remedy, and got Sam Lake interviews with gamer press. The Casey books being a huge success and getting Alan Wake interviews with the mainstream press is a reflection of that.
The nature of the multiverse acts to incorporate the nature of storytelling into reality itself. Sam Lake was drawing upon his own experiences as a writer to create the story of Alan Wake (as well as being inspired by celebrity authors like Stephen King), but when we look at it through the lens of Remedy cosmology it’s one universe reflecting another.
As for Alan’s superstar status being realistic, we’ve seen this sort of thing in real world authors like Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, and George R. R. Martin.
In some cases it was the work of these celebrity authors that gave a boost in popularity to the genres they were writing in. So, sure, crime novels aren’t the biggest genre in our world, but Alan may have been a big enough hit to boost its popularity in his world.
In regards to Alan’s bad boy image, he has mental health and substance abuse problems, and when these issues are combined with financial success, celebrity status, and public scrutiny it can spiral out of control and give a public image that doesn’t match the reality. The public loves stories about celebrities being dangerous and destructive. And the media desperately wants to sell these stories, because their goal is to make money. So Alan’s troubles quickly got spun into an image the press thought would sell magazines. And the public eagerly devoured it.