Saga Anderson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
makethestory) wrote2024-02-06 11:02 am
makethestory) wrote2024-02-06 11:02 am
Saga in Remedyland: Lore, Meta, and the RCU
So in trying to figure out how to define Saga for the perceptions of other characters and figure out how she interacts with other canons, I figured it might not be a bad time to try and nail down What Is Known about her and the universe she comes from, the Remedy Connected Universe (RCU). In the pursuit of SOME kind of clarity, I'm going to organize it by meta-layer and canon source.
RED for Control
BLUE for Alan Wake/Alan Wake 2
TEAL for Quantum Break
BROWN for Max Payne
For example, when I talk about characters, I'll use those colors to tell you where they're from and bold to indicate the main character/s:
Jesse Faden is from Control, as is her brother Dylan.
Jack Joyce is from Quantum Break, etc.
So in Reality:
Because the casting tells us who is actually who, as well as who's real, and what is actually canon.
So I listed out four different canons, but to be honest, most of our canon comes from Control, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break. Max Payne mostly exists to provide context and further fleshing out of ideas in some of the others.
"But wait," you say, "Quantum Break isn't legally owned by Remedy! They can't use those characters!"
...except SL is a sneaky little shit who's using Tricks to file off the numbers and get those elements of his plot back into the mix.
The original casting for 'Warlin Door' was LR. LR previously played 'Martin Hatch'. Martin is described as having the ability to "manipulate time and walk through stutters" and as having "learned to control his new state of being and taught himself how to exist in all periods of time". Warlin, unsurprisingly, is described as "is an interdimensional entity [...] who holds the power of traveling between alternate worlds while existing in all of them at once" and Mr. Door is described by Dylan Faden saw Mr. Door in every world at once "endlessly shifting between them." His face is first seen in the Bright Falls sheriff station as a flash when Sheriff Tim Breaker is basically plucked out of reality and into the Dark Place because he's about to give Saga information about Mr. Door. Which is funny because...
SA returned to play Tim Breaker when 1. that character (the nephew of Frank Breaker, the original Bright Falls sheriff...) is someone we'd never heard of before this game. Frank previously had left the job to his daughter, Sarah, who was sheriff in the first game. In a lot of ways, he seems almost 'made up' to take a slot and 2. has a name that literally sounds like 'time breaker' when the plot of QB is that time is broken and the same actor played Jack Joyce whose whole plot was about having been changed by being the event that broke time itself. Tim has memories of people who have different forms in different worlds and dreams of Mr. Door and others 'but different'. Add to this the fact that Tim honestly seems extremely chill about being in the Dark Place when he's there and has, in fact, been figuring things out on the sidelines for Alan and Saga and is not being fucked with (Much Like Mr. Door) and you've got some hints that maybe these characters are actually from that other plotline just... rejiggered. There's also a page which states that Mr. Door considers Tim to be his 'unwilling protege' which mirrors the situation from the end of Quantum Break.
Less pointed, but, third doublecast is CH as Beth Wilder whose actress plays Jesse Faden who, at one point in her game ends up fighting a 'mirror' copy of herself who notes that she's her but 'just a little wilder'. Given that Jesse canonically has traveled to other worlds through the Projector, an OOP (Object of Power) and picked up something on the way (a frequency-based life form named Polaris) [I WILL COME BACK TO THIS], she would also fall into this 'multiple realities, multiple versions' plotline from QB, especially when you take into account the fact that Jesse appears to Alan on a TV in the Dark Place AND that her brother has encountered Mr. Door and seen multiple realities.
Additionally, Max Payne is pretty blatantly supposed to be the fictional version of Alex Casey from Alan Wake's in universe fictional novels given he is a detective from NY city with a lot of terrible tragedy in his life etc. etc. etc. not to mention that many of the narrative tropes found in Max Payne show up in Alan's writing and how he talks about writing and reality and the troubles that he has, including Mr. Scratch being almost identical to a fictional story that Max follows because parallels are fun. There's also the fact that SL gave the face to both characters.
So that's how he's using those two in ways that skirt copyright issues while still clearly using them.
THAT'S A HARD QUESTION. But we do have a few clues.
One of the main points of wibbly-wobbly is the fact that this is a canon which explicitly states that there are multiple versions of reality as well as multiple different realities and while a square is always a rectangle, a rectangle is only sometimes a square. Add to that the fact that we have multiple beings and people who can alternately effect reality and change it and others who can see right through that and it gets very complicated. That said, we know that the threshold/place of power that is Cauldron Lake can 1. affect reality backwards and forwards in time 2. can affect much farther than just the immediate area (namely the whole world) but very very importantly 3. cannot create anything, only take real things and make from them. There needs to be an original pattern to work off of. So with that in mind, here's my theories laid out with evidence accordingly:
Tom Zane (the Poet) from Alan Wake (1) is a Fictional Creation ofAlan's Seine's
How do you know? Because his appearance is from a fictional creation of Thomas Sein's from one of his films (Tom the Poet) in the diving suit combined with the voice of Zachariah Trench.
Thomas Zane/Thomas Seine (the Finnish auteur filmaker) who appears in Alan Wake 2 is Real And Always Was
He's been in the Dark Place the whole time setting things up and fiddling with reality, hence why Jesse Faden liked poetry from Thomas Zane (the poet Tom Zane being fictional) only for it to disappear later and for her to be called out for liking someone who never existed as a poet. The FBC is aware of Seine as a paranatural criminal of sorts.
Thomas Seine "created" Alan Wake using his own appearance and the voice of Dr. Casper Darling who also got stuck in the Dark Place. Alan looks like Thomas but sounds like Darling, which is how he 'made' a new protagonist, another writer, to help him get his way out of the Dark Place. He thought he could get out by making a creation that would help get him out. Alas. Not so much.
Alex Casey is both Max Payne and a fictional Creation of Alan's Based off of a Real People (and that person is both Sam Lake and James McCaffrey) Here's where we get weird! Because REALITY (that first layer I mentioned) does play into the metanarrative of these games. Thus when Alan tried to reach into another world to find inspiration, he got Sam Lake and James McCaffrey, a fictional person trying to write fiction having to reach out to reality to get starter material.
Saga is Real, And Always has Been
She can be effected by the narrative (hence what happened to her daughter Logan and her husband) due to Alan's choice to pull her into his narrative but it can't actually change HER; she never believes for a second that her daughter is dead or that the reality where she lived in Watery, WA was true. For Reasons I'll get into.
There are some things that have been solidified in the Remedyverse that are also necessary to understand the last bit that I'm going to cover here. Most, if not all of this, is info from Control.
1. The Power of Ritual
2. It's Not a Lake, It's an Ocean / Thresholds
3. Places of Power/ the Oceanview Motel/Hotel
4. Timelines and Worlds
Saga is a member of the House of Doors AND a demi-god, existing in all realities but beholden to none who has yet to realize or grapple with all of her abilities.
Mr. Door put up with the shenanigans of canon/Alan's narrative purely to help train Saga in her abilities and to get her to understand the nature of them.
The End of the Game is Filmed Because Saga is Standing Next to Sam Lake As Much As Alex Casey
It's also why the Final Draft of Alan Wake 2 exists as it did: the game's final ending was determined by how the game was received in the real world and because the game's ending was received as appropriate, the final ending of the game allows the ending that was determined by Saga and Alan to work and defeat the Dark Presence/save Logan/free Alan.
Are Tor and Odin (and Freya, accordingly) gods or no?
1. Yes, Ahti calls them his brothers
2. Did they start that way? Unknown [MAX PAYNE CONCEPTS][potentially narrative infiltration]
3. They have powers, abilities, and the ability to see shit no one else can
4. They've dealt with beings like Door on a relatively equal footing
[to be continued]
[ rundown of color coding, etc. ]
RED for Control
BLUE for Alan Wake/Alan Wake 2
TEAL for Quantum Break
BROWN for Max Payne
For example, when I talk about characters, I'll use those colors to tell you where they're from and bold to indicate the main character/s:
Jesse Faden is from Control, as is her brother Dylan.
Jack Joyce is from Quantum Break, etc.
Reality: Like, the real one we all live in [1]
So in Reality:
- Remedy Entertainment is a game studio in Finland.
- Sam Lake [SL] also known as Sami Järvi, is a writer and creative director at Remedy Entertainment. He provided the face for Max Payne, the visual representation and physical actor for Alex Casey, and the visual representation and physical actor for... fictional!Sam Lake, the actor who plays Alex Casey in the movie version of Alan Wake's novels.
He's also in Death Stranding as the Veteran Porter BUT I'M NOT DEALING WITH THAT. - Matthew Poretta [MP] is an actor and voice actor. He provides the voice for Alan Wake and played the role of Casper Darling.
- James McCaffrey [JM] (RIP) was an actor and voice actor. He provided the voice for Max Payne, Tom Zane in Alan Wake (1), and Alex Casey as well as... fictional!Alex Casey. He played Zachariah Trench.
- Shawn Ashmore [SA] is an actor and voice actor. He played Jack Joyce and Tim Breaker.
- Lance Reddick [LR] (RIP) was an actor and voice actor. He played Martin Hatch. It was intended that he play Warlin Door before his ill health changed the casting.
- Ilkka Villi [IV] is an actor and voice actor. He was the visual representation and physical actor for Alan Wake and played the role of Thomas Zane in Alan Wake 2.
- Courtney Hope [CH] is an actress and voice actress. She played Jesse Faden and Beth Wilder.
- David Harewood [DH] is an actor and voice actor. He played Warlin Door.
- Martti Suosalo [MS] is an actor and voice actor. He played Ahti and a fictional character in Tom Zane's film work in shown Alan Wake 2.
- Melanie Liburd [ML] is an actress and voice actress. She played Saga Anderson.
- Poets of the Fall [POTF] is a Finnish rock band, whose frontman, Marko Saaresto, is a really good old friend of SL's. They exist in the RCU as POTF, but three of the members have fictional alter egos as the band Old Gods of Asgard. Marko serves as visual representation and singing voice of Odin Anderson, Markus Kaarlonen as the visual representation of Tor Anderson, and Olli Tukiainen as the visual representation of Bob Balder, at least for their younger forms. The older forms are aged versions of them (Tor and Odin, as Bob died earlier) and are voiced by other people for their performances in Alan Wake/Alan Wake 2.
Because the casting tells us who is actually who, as well as who's real, and what is actually canon.
What is Canon? [2]
So I listed out four different canons, but to be honest, most of our canon comes from Control, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break. Max Payne mostly exists to provide context and further fleshing out of ideas in some of the others.
"But wait," you say, "Quantum Break isn't legally owned by Remedy! They can't use those characters!"
...except SL is a sneaky little shit who's using Tricks to file off the numbers and get those elements of his plot back into the mix.
The original casting for 'Warlin Door' was LR. LR previously played 'Martin Hatch'. Martin is described as having the ability to "manipulate time and walk through stutters" and as having "learned to control his new state of being and taught himself how to exist in all periods of time". Warlin, unsurprisingly, is described as "is an interdimensional entity [...] who holds the power of traveling between alternate worlds while existing in all of them at once" and Mr. Door is described by Dylan Faden saw Mr. Door in every world at once "endlessly shifting between them." His face is first seen in the Bright Falls sheriff station as a flash when Sheriff Tim Breaker is basically plucked out of reality and into the Dark Place because he's about to give Saga information about Mr. Door. Which is funny because...
SA returned to play Tim Breaker when 1. that character (the nephew of Frank Breaker, the original Bright Falls sheriff...) is someone we'd never heard of before this game. Frank previously had left the job to his daughter, Sarah, who was sheriff in the first game. In a lot of ways, he seems almost 'made up' to take a slot and 2. has a name that literally sounds like 'time breaker' when the plot of QB is that time is broken and the same actor played Jack Joyce whose whole plot was about having been changed by being the event that broke time itself. Tim has memories of people who have different forms in different worlds and dreams of Mr. Door and others 'but different'. Add to this the fact that Tim honestly seems extremely chill about being in the Dark Place when he's there and has, in fact, been figuring things out on the sidelines for Alan and Saga and is not being fucked with (Much Like Mr. Door) and you've got some hints that maybe these characters are actually from that other plotline just... rejiggered. There's also a page which states that Mr. Door considers Tim to be his 'unwilling protege' which mirrors the situation from the end of Quantum Break.
Less pointed, but, third doublecast is CH as Beth Wilder whose actress plays Jesse Faden who, at one point in her game ends up fighting a 'mirror' copy of herself who notes that she's her but 'just a little wilder'. Given that Jesse canonically has traveled to other worlds through the Projector, an OOP (Object of Power) and picked up something on the way (a frequency-based life form named Polaris) [I WILL COME BACK TO THIS], she would also fall into this 'multiple realities, multiple versions' plotline from QB, especially when you take into account the fact that Jesse appears to Alan on a TV in the Dark Place AND that her brother has encountered Mr. Door and seen multiple realities.
Additionally, Max Payne is pretty blatantly supposed to be the fictional version of Alex Casey from Alan Wake's in universe fictional novels given he is a detective from NY city with a lot of terrible tragedy in his life etc. etc. etc. not to mention that many of the narrative tropes found in Max Payne show up in Alan's writing and how he talks about writing and reality and the troubles that he has, including Mr. Scratch being almost identical to a fictional story that Max follows because parallels are fun. There's also the fact that SL gave the face to both characters.
So that's how he's using those two in ways that skirt copyright issues while still clearly using them.
So Who (and What) Is Real? And What Came First? [3]
THAT'S A HARD QUESTION. But we do have a few clues.
One of the main points of wibbly-wobbly is the fact that this is a canon which explicitly states that there are multiple versions of reality as well as multiple different realities and while a square is always a rectangle, a rectangle is only sometimes a square. Add to that the fact that we have multiple beings and people who can alternately effect reality and change it and others who can see right through that and it gets very complicated. That said, we know that the threshold/place of power that is Cauldron Lake can 1. affect reality backwards and forwards in time 2. can affect much farther than just the immediate area (namely the whole world) but very very importantly 3. cannot create anything, only take real things and make from them. There needs to be an original pattern to work off of. So with that in mind, here's my theories laid out with evidence accordingly:
Tom Zane (the Poet) from Alan Wake (1) is a Fictional Creation of
How do you know? Because his appearance is from a fictional creation of Thomas Sein's from one of his films (Tom the Poet) in the diving suit combined with the voice of Zachariah Trench.
Thomas Zane/Thomas Seine (the Finnish auteur filmaker) who appears in Alan Wake 2 is Real And Always Was
He's been in the Dark Place the whole time setting things up and fiddling with reality, hence why Jesse Faden liked poetry from Thomas Zane (the poet Tom Zane being fictional) only for it to disappear later and for her to be called out for liking someone who never existed as a poet. The FBC is aware of Seine as a paranatural criminal of sorts.
Thomas Seine "created" Alan Wake using his own appearance and the voice of Dr. Casper Darling who also got stuck in the Dark Place. Alan looks like Thomas but sounds like Darling, which is how he 'made' a new protagonist, another writer, to help him get his way out of the Dark Place. He thought he could get out by making a creation that would help get him out. Alas. Not so much.
Alex Casey is both Max Payne and a fictional Creation of Alan's Based off of a Real People (and that person is both Sam Lake and James McCaffrey) Here's where we get weird! Because REALITY (that first layer I mentioned) does play into the metanarrative of these games. Thus when Alan tried to reach into another world to find inspiration, he got Sam Lake and James McCaffrey, a fictional person trying to write fiction having to reach out to reality to get starter material.
Saga is Real, And Always has Been
She can be effected by the narrative (hence what happened to her daughter Logan and her husband) due to Alan's choice to pull her into his narrative but it can't actually change HER; she never believes for a second that her daughter is dead or that the reality where she lived in Watery, WA was true. For Reasons I'll get into.
[ Interlude: Some Facts ]
There are some things that have been solidified in the Remedyverse that are also necessary to understand the last bit that I'm going to cover here. Most, if not all of this, is info from Control.
1. The Power of Ritual
2. It's Not a Lake, It's an Ocean / Thresholds
3. Places of Power/ the Oceanview Motel/Hotel
4. Timelines and Worlds
What Is Saga Then? [4]
Saga is a member of the House of Doors AND a demi-god, existing in all realities but beholden to none who has yet to realize or grapple with all of her abilities.
Mr. Door put up with the shenanigans of canon/Alan's narrative purely to help train Saga in her abilities and to get her to understand the nature of them.
The End of the Game is Filmed Because Saga is Standing Next to Sam Lake As Much As Alex Casey
It's also why the Final Draft of Alan Wake 2 exists as it did: the game's final ending was determined by how the game was received in the real world and because the game's ending was received as appropriate, the final ending of the game allows the ending that was determined by Saga and Alan to work and defeat the Dark Presence/save Logan/free Alan.
Are Tor and Odin (and Freya, accordingly) gods or no?
1. Yes, Ahti calls them his brothers
2. Did they start that way? Unknown [MAX PAYNE CONCEPTS][potentially narrative infiltration]
3. They have powers, abilities, and the ability to see shit no one else can
4. They've dealt with beings like Door on a relatively equal footing
[to be continued]