#fictional alex casey

[wondrouswendy]

Why Fictional CaseyWake Is Interesting

Back by popular demand (one person asking me to continue my essay), I will continue promoting my Fictional CaseyWake agenda. The Fictional CaseyWake tiger has escaped its cage (and is doing just fine, if a little tortured).

DISCLAIMER: While some of this post involves media analysis, I am not an expert by any means. I am just a fan interpreting things. Don't take what I say as gospel. Also, I am only working with canon presented to us through the video games.

Further, this post is not to discredit or attack FBI Casey/Alan Wake. This is just my way of explaining why this other version of CaseyWake is interesting to me. Don't come at me with a pitchfork.

As a reminder, this post was made with fun in mind.

With that said, this will be a much longer post than those I usually make, so buckle up buckaroos.

I. What's the Deal With Fictional Casey?

The Casey we meet in the Dark Place in Alan Wake 2 is not the same as FBI Agent Alex Casey. There are certainly parallels between the two men, they of course share the same name, the same face, the same voice, a handful of the exact same dialogue lines, but their perspectives on life, Alan Wake, and everything in between is extremely different.

In Abhi Jha's interview with Sam Lake, Lake describes how he decided to revive his love of hardboiled fiction through the Casey we see in the Dark Place. Alan has received visions he doesn't understand of the real Alex Casey which he has then interpreted and curated into becoming his own character named Alex Casey. At the time of this creation, Alan believes Casey came from his imagination. We later learn in Vision 02 that Alan was receiving visions of the real Alex Casey as his inspiration. In Lake's words, this is "an echo of Casey he has molded... turning the knobs more, going more into that hardboiled inspirations." He is a "fictional character coming to life" who is different than the "actual FBI Agent in Washington with Saga who does have similarities and potential of being pushed in that direction but not quite. More three dimensional. With real worries and all of that."

From this, we can extrapolate that Fictional Casey is an exaggerated version of the real Alex Casey and not necessarily a one for one copy of him. Fictional Casey's worries are therefore extremely different than his source material's worries. They live in two entirely different contexts and have vastly different people around them. FBI Agent Alex Casey had an ex-wife and currently has a partner he has a close relationship with. Fictional Casey essentially only has Alan.

Also, Fictional Alex Casey has a little hair floof whereas FBI Casey does not. Their wardrobes are completely different. FBI Casey prefers coffee as his poison of choice; Fictional Casey prefers whiskey.

II. Tropes of Interest

A. Hatemance/Enemies to Lovers

If you’re looking for a hatemance, the pairing has you covered given the whole “Alan killed Casey off for shock value” situation. There’s sex appeal in that alone, but I also think there’s this tender bond between Alan and his character which I will continue to go through later. Alan calls on Casey for help in the Dark Place later on. Maybe it’s on a subconscious level, but it’s certainly there.

In the QR code videos released by Remedy and added into the remastered version of the game, Alan brings up the importance of his character, Alex Casey several times.

In Vision 01, he describes how the Dark Place tapped into his "unconscious mind." Taking things and twisting them to ultimately create a mystery for him to unravel. He specifically writes, "I needed a detective to guide me. Echoes of Casey haunted me."

From Vision 02, he writes, "I saw visions carried by the ebb and flow of different dream states, they seeped in from the reality beyond, things I had a connection to but also things I couldn't possibly know. I used them in my writing to make it real so the parts that weren't would become so. And there were visions that I knew were not real. Ideas I had lost. Often of Casey. I had written about him for years. I use them as well."

In Initiation 2: Casey from Alan Wake 2, Fictional Casey introduces himself with no aggression. To me, in this scene, he is almost acting like a questgiver, an NPC you'd meet in a game whose purpose is to be the guide for the protagonist. There's no immediate malice. In fact, he sacrifices himself to the monster that threatens them.

Casey, who's supposed to be the hero in the narrative, is killed by the Dark Presence. Alan doesn't protect him. You could argue that Casey's final lines of dialogue in this chapter are a moment in which he's breaking through the narrative, implying that he's tired of being used as cannon fodder to protect Alan and to further him on his quest to escape the Dark Place.

B. The History Between Alan Wake and Fictional Casey

For six books, Alan exclusively wrote Alex Casey's story. I would argue that most authors do not stick with a character as long as this. Authors tend to write trilogies if they stick with one character. Often, authors tend to write a story with a character for the course of one novel and then in their next novel, they may shift that character to the background to let another character take the spotlight (this happens all the time in romance novels, for example).

For Alan to write six books worth of Alex Casey, he must have enjoyed it in some way. Something must have appealed to him. His character, the universe, the mysteries. However, something changed with Alan to cause him to not only kill off his star character, but to then proverbially shit-talk him during an interview with Harry Garrett (though the argument could be made that because this interview is shown in a dream sequence that it isn't necessarily something we can reliably trust happened in the real world; if this has been confirmed to be real canonically, please feel free to tell me).

You could argue that Alan killing off Casey in The Sudden Stop threw his marriage and his life out of control. Alan experiences writer's block because Casey's gone. Now this could simply be because the well of inspiration with real life Casey ran dry, because FBI Agent Casey's life had become warped because of Alan's novels.

Alan spends an undefined time with his character Alex Casey. Six novels worth and then thirteen years in the Dark Place. That's a lot of time together.

C. Hurt/Comfort, Angst, and Whump

Alan hurt Casey, personally. He killed him off. Not once, not twice. Several times. He sacrifices Casey over and over.

Casey's echoes in Alan Wake 2 are familiar to Alan. They guide him along to create suitable plots for his escape attempts.

Even though Alan has hurt Casey so much, Casey can't help but assist him with escaping the Dark Place. Even when Casey begins to question his existence, even when Casey starts breaking the fourth wall, he doesn't

This lends itself to juicy Hurt/Comfort, Angst, and Whump potential.

D. Alan Wake: Dude in Distress

The bodyguard trope. Casey arguably functions as a bodyguard to Alan in the Dark Place. Casey is always there for Alan.

I hear what you're saying. Is it because he has no choice in the narrative? I would argue no. He has a choice. We see moments where Casey questions his state of being, he breaks the fourth wall. He acknowledges his status as a fictional character as Alan leaves Zane's theater. He knows there will always be another case for Casey. he walks off into the night's loving arms and cheekily says, "Roll credits."

In my interpretation, there's a part of Casey that enjoys this life, fucked up as it may be sometimes.

E. Forbidden and Star-Crossed Romance

There is potential for forbidden romance between these two. After all, you aren't supposed to fall in love with your creation. It isn't real in the physical sense.

If Fictional Casey isn't important to Alan, if he isn't a threat, then why does the Dark Presence continue to kill off Casey? Why does it continue to separate them, as it does in Initiation 5 when Scratch takes over Alan's body to shoot Casey? It knows that Casey is Alan's guardian angel in the Dark Place. It knows that Casey has been useful in creating plot points to help Alan figure it out.

Further, there is the potential for no happy endings with these two. Of course, that could be a turn off for some and a delicious morsel for others.

F. Sexual Tension

In culmination, these elements of their relationship create sexual tension between Alan and Casey. There's so much potential in their history for romance. Charged moments in the Dark Place.

One could argue there's a will they/won't they moment in Initiation 5 - Room 665 when Casey is pinning Alan to the alley wall. Freud did say, after all, that gun's have phallic imagery. Take that as you will.

On a more superficial level, Alan can shape his fictional character to be his vision of the ideal man, the ideal partner. Or, conversely, his ideal fling. His ideal hot mess. Maybe Alan's version of the manic pixie dream girl is a hardboiled detective.

III. The Act of Creation as a Form of Love of the Self, the Creative Process, and the Creation Itself

Prepare yourself for a bumpy ride through my philosophizing. Sorry in advance. I'm sure others could dive deeper into these particular subtopics better than I could, but I want to just throw this spaghetti at the wall and pray something sticks.

A. Love of the Self

Loving yourself is hard. It's a platitude to say it, but it's true.

Alan and his character Casey do share some qualities. Depression, alcohol abuse. Often as writers, we do draw inspiration from ourselves to add dimension to our characters. Alan doesn't need to be a hardboiled detective himself to share similarities to his fictional character. Alan is destructive, angry, confused, self-loathing, and dysfunctional all throughout Alan Wake 1 and 2. Much of Alan's worst qualities are in Fictional Alex Casey.

In Initiation 5, as Casey lays dying from Alan/Scratch shooting him, he says,

"I was dead tired. I just wanted it to be over. It was all my fault."

Circling back to Alan's writer's block, arguably Alan being in the Dark Place is Casey's fault to an extent. Something happened to cause Alan to want to quit telling Casey's story. Perhaps if Casey had continued to be a source of inspiration, Alan would have continued writing his books?

Going back further, if Alan had never created Casey, his life could have taken an infinite amount of turns. But because Casey came to life through Alan's writing, because of their history, Casey feels some degree of responsibility for how events in the Dark Place have shaped up.

Continuing, he says,

"...I'd had this dark place in my head for so long. Sometimes I'd forget the pain was there. Like it was the way you were supposed to feel. I was not in a dark place. I was the dark place, the source of it all, the vessel. Me and the writer, we were the same."

Casey's final monologue in this chapter echoes sentiments Alan is experiencing. The overall metaphor of the Dark Place as not necessarily a physical or supernatural realm, but a state of mind. Some days are better than others. Some days, you're used to your pain that it feels natural.

This then relates to Fictional Casey's potential guilt. What broke down between Alan and his character to cause Alan to want to kill him off? Did writing Casey's story leave Alan feeling too depressed? Too gloomy as he tells Harry Garrett? Was it early signs of writer's block? A lack of direction?

Relating back to Alan, Alan and the Dark Place are largely one. He finds out Scratch is him. Scratch is Alan + the Dark Presence. Alan/Scratch has been the one haunting Alice, tormenting her. He is the source of it all.

Thus, there is a recursive relationship where Alan's self-loathing feeds Casey and vice versa.

However, there are positive elements of Alan's character in Fictional Casey and vice versa. Casey solves mysteries, he protects others, even at risk to himself. Alan has goodness inside him, but it is cloaked by his own self-doubt and self-loathing.

Alan so badly wants to be the hero all throughout Alan Wake 1 and 2 to save Alice (from the Dark Place and later Scratch), but he's struggling against his own narrative and the meta narrative at large. Fictional Casey is arguably the idealized hero-fantasy he has for himself, which is later realized when he sacrifices himself. He willingly goes back to the Dark Place to save Saga, her daughter, and FBI Casey from the Dark Place and its jailor, the Dark Presence.

B. Love (and Hatred) of the Creative Process

To quote a great tumblr post for the 100th time, the act of creation is like sticking your hand in a cylinder of irradiated water full of piranhas. At the bottom is a button, that when pressed, will give you the best orgasm of your life. However, the irradiated water is obviously toxic and the piranhas are constantly biting. In short, the act of creating something is a struggle. But when you manage to hit that button...

Ask any writer (and any creative person at large), there's nothing more enjoyable than being inspired and filled with energy. Writing a new story is exciting. It's often why people tend to have a backlog of WIPs, because sometimes creatives are always chasing after the next new rush of endorphins. Sometimes we fall in love with a universe, sometimes it's a character, an idea of ours.

On the other side of the coin, hating the creative process, I'll quote a tweet from one of my favorite Youtube video essayists, "I hate literally every step in the filmmaking process. The only thing I hate more than making a film is not making a film." Similarly, most authors state that the worst thing about the writing process is not writing.

Alan can't write because he has writer's block, and he has writer's block because he killed off his character, and he hates that he isn't creating. See the vicious cycle? He can't psych himself up for whatever new book he was supposedly going to write prior to the events of the first game.

C. Love of the Creation Itself

Even in Alan's nightmares, he has copies of The Sudden Stop stuffed into his car's trunk like that meme about the person who trips and has pictures of their senpai shoved up their sleeves.

Art is subjective. It's tailored to our personal experiences and vision. Alan (and on a meta level, Sam Lake) enjoy hardboiled detective fiction. Alex Casey is the realization of that love come to life.

Understandably, there are elements of this style of relationship which are not equal in power. We see these elements repeatedly with how Alan uses, yes even abuses Fictional Casey to further his own goals.

Yes, you could say that loving your own creation (no matter the medium) is masturbatory. It's self-aggrandizing. But loving something you put time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears just feels good. We as creators have a right to feel proud of our works.

IV. Interesting Parallels

I'm sorry to all my English major friends for the fumbling I'm about to commit with literary analysis.

A. Biblical

It wouldn't be a deep dive analysis if we didn't bring up the Bible. Of course I'm talking about God and Adam. Anyone creating their own original universe with their own original characters is playing God. Alan creates Alex Casey through the divine act of turning his imagination into tangible writing.

Will someone PLEASE draw Alan Wake and Fictional Casey in the vein of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam already???

B. Literary

John Milton's famous lines from his work Paradise Lost:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?

Of course, Paradise Lost is an epic poem about the story of Genesis, but this stanza in particular, spoken by Adam to God can easily be applied to Fictional Casey towards Alan. Casey didn't ask for any of this. He didn't ask to be created, he didn't ask to become Alan's guide in the Dark Place.

I’m a sucker for Frankenstein by Mary Shelley so I regret to inform everyone we're bringing it up.

I think there’s some Frankenstein/His Monster vibes with this flavor of CaseyWake. I think there were moments where Casey resented coming to life, certainly much later on as he lives and dies over and over.

From his dying moments in Initiation 2:

"I remembered dying in this alley in a dream I had. He was just gonna keep killing me here, loop by loop. You're not gonna get what you want. You think you know. You know shit. You don't really wanna know. You're gonna get what's coming to you."

And then from Frankenstein:

"Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good – misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."

Unlike his real counterpart, Fictional Casey has no one other than Alan. He has no friends, no found family. Arguably, even FBI Casey wants nothing to do with his fictional self. He is completely reliant upon Alan. I suppose you could say we the audience are his only true friend, as we function as voyeurs into his fictional life, much like Alan (but we seem to want to take better care of him than Alan does).

C. Mythological

Pygmalion and Galatea.

The Greek sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with his sculpture of a woman. He asked the goddess Aphrodite if his sculpture could become real, and somehow the goddess of love was like "yeah sure bud." The sculpture, Galatea, comes to life, and they live happily ever after.

(This is the part where I'll make a brief Weird Science shoutout since it's a somewhat similar premise).

V. Conclusion

If you have somehow made it this far, thanks for reading.

There are likely things I've forgotten that I wanted to talk about at some point. Maybe I'll have to make a part two if I end up remembering them.

Hopefully my essay will help inspire others to create fanworks featuring this particular version of CaseyWake. I would love to hear what others think, so please don't hesitate to share your thoughts!!

And finally,

[honestlyvan]

(Crossposted to Dreamwidth)

The thing that makes me the most "run around in circles" crazy about Initiation is that Alan wrote the Casey of the Dark Place into the story to help him, and then made it so that Casey knows even less about what is going on than Alan does.

Alan never gives Casey the opportunity to get past step fucking one to help him, explains nothing to him, and Casey ends up with no idea what he's even doing here, no idea what his assigned purpose is, no idea what his narrative goals are. He's an actor given no script, no stage direction, to the point that Casey doesn't even know they're in a story, and it makes him sink deeper into depression with every passing loop with no knowledge to ground him.

And it's impossible to tell if this is because Alan didn't realise that he had the perfect opportunity to write Casey like the Diver, a living repository of Alan's accumulating knowledge about the Dark Place, a seeing-eye dog to guide him through the dark -- or if Alan did try that, and it somehow went so horribly wrong that now he and Casey can't both survive in the same narrative line without trying to kill each other -- or if Alan did try that, and it went horribly right, and now the Dark Presence can't let Casey live because Alan's bespoke perfect little detective is too good at finding out useful things.

And instead, in the story we currently have, Alan made up a guy for a specific purpose of helping him, but because Alan is the protagonist, because it's his story, his fault, his duty and his job to get himself out of it, he doesn't even let Casey fulfil his narrative purpose. What the hell else is Casey supposed to do, Alan, other than the thing you literally made him for? He's the detective -- he's supposed to solve things.

[rangerzath]

Don't hide yourself, open up to me Out of my hands and into your heart

Today's drawing is sponsored by Fictional Alex Casey. I had a lot of fun with his design. The peacock tie is especially important. I was going to attempt to hand design Casey's tie and then I figured I could find a pattern that would look better than my scribbles. Peacocks are something of a joke between Wendy and I when it comes to this character and Alan. I found this pattern I knew it was the one. Alan will give this ridiculous looking tie to his beloved Casey.

I tried to make sure he looked different from the other characters I have drawn so far and I'm pretty happy with his look. I need to do better with his hair but his face and expression came out good. I wanted to give him a tired expression because he just heard yet again he's doomed by the narrative thanks to Alan.

I'm not great with backgrounds yet so I decided to use a texture to look like an alleyway and yellow font to represent the words of power from in game. Plus it looks neon-y. So I put the title for my favorite Alan Wake/Alex Casey fic on the background.

I have been having a lot of fun with this mini character study I've been undertaking with my doodles. Stay tuned for more! (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

[thiswindingroad]

𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚛

𝚠𝚎 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚊𝚖𝚎

[imsmallfry]

ALAN WAKE!! I love confused sad writer man.

[marbiesss]

The birthday boys ❤️💙

3•27•24 🎊 3•12•24

[bryndeavour]

[vallentiina]

[fritzmetzger-reblogs]

Let me tell you something

[lost-in-letters]

Pylades: I’ll take care of you.

Orestes: It’s rotten work.

Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.

- Red white royal blue, Casey McQuiston / Anne Carson, Euripides

[veikkoalen]

fuck marry kill but it's alex and casey and aleksi

[wondrouswendy]

FBI vs Fictional Alex Casey

I'm glad to hear that Sam Lake himself even sees the difference between FBI Casey and Dark Place/Fictional Casey--as opposed to how sometimes the two are conflated as being the same person.

He acknowledges himself that FBI Casey has more of a safety net around him which prevents him from becoming like Fictional Casey. He COULD become something akin to Fictional Casey, it's not outside the realm of possibility, but Agent Casey has people like Saga (and later Kiran Estevez) who serve as his support group.

Even Fictional Casey isn't Max Payne. Casey's character concept (the FBI Agent and the Fictional Version) is based on the film noir hard-boiled detective, but to differing levels of influence. Fictional Casey is based on visions Alan received (but didn't know how to parse) and turned into his fictional stories. Alan wasn't 1 for 1 recreating Casey's life; he was using it for inspiration in the same way writers get inspired by real life all the time... In Alan's case, it just has a supernatural foundation (that he isn't aware of until later).

To my absolute shock (and joy), I noticed that AO3 finally created the relationship tag Fictional Alex Casey/Alan Wake at last. I'm the only one using this tag at the moment (but here's hoping maybe other people will use it now too???). SO... I guess that means Fictional Alex Casey/Alan Wake is a rare pair!

I've used both Alex Casey/Alan Wake and Fictional Alex Casey/Alan Wake tags for fic Out of My Hands and Into Your Heart since the latter didn't exist until recently apparently. I used the Fictional tag for Casey because I wanted readers to know that this story would follow Fictional Casey and his relationship with Alan, not his FBI counterpart (as I've always seen these people as separate individuals).

But it's good going forward there will be two separate tags for both FBI and Fictional Casey.

Hopefully other fic authors will start using these tags more frequently now that Sam Lake has confirmed they're both their own men in their own right!

[honestlyvan]

(Crossposted from DW)

There’s some interesting parallels to be drawn with the way Scratch is an aspect of Alan, just like the Casey of the Dark Place is. One reflects all his darkest fears, the most self-destructive narratives he can tell about himself, and the other encapsulates the skills and virtues he needs to push himself forward, one wearing his face and another one wearing the face of someone he admires.

So you could do quite a bit with Scratch inheriting that obsession with Casey from Alan, but in a furious, bitter, jealous form where Casey is an interloper, a challenger to Scratch's ownership of Alan, coming between him and his Alan, a stranger, an intruder. Because that's what Casey is -- a tool and a shield, the impression of someone Alan trusts -- someone for Alan to cling to, someone who can disrupt Alan’s internal narrative, and he's taking Alan from Scratch.

Casey is just as much a prop to Scratch as he is to Alan, he's just there to be the hero so Alan can be the victim and Scratch the monster. And just like Scratch's love of Alan is a warped mirror image of Alan's hatred of himself, Scratch's jealousy of Casey is a mirror of Alan's suppressed desire to be a better person. To be a hero, to drive the story forward on his own terms, to have agency.

Which is how you get Scratch hissing “You're not going to get what you want” against Casey's lips, shoving him against a wall in an alleyway when Casey has once again showed up as a diversion, letting Alan run away, taking Casey away from Alan the way he took Alan from Scratch. “You think you know. You know shit. You don't really wanna know”, while bleeding venomous jealousy into the air because he is Alan and Alan is him and Alan is his and this outsider thinks he can take Alan from him. Like Alan isn't just using Casey, too, like Casey is something more than a just an empty vessel for Alan's wants when that should be Scratch, that should have been Scratch from the start.

Because Casey doesn't hate Scratch any more than he loves Alan. His role is to have compassion for the victim, to protect him, to move the plot forward for him, just like Scratch's role is to antagonise and delay and stop Alan from progressing. Scratch knows what he's dealing with. But there's more to Casey than just what he got from Alan, he is a reflection of the real Casey through the lens of Alan – and that’s the really fucking offensive part. That Alan can so scarcely accept himself that he’ll bring in this outsider, discarding Scratch, using a stranger’s face instead.

Scratch is Alan, after all. He has Alan's face and he has his voice, and he knows Alan better than Alan knows himself. “You're going to get what's coming to you”, he tells Casey, loop after loop, until he can get him out of the way for good.

[hussyknee]

[thiswindingroad]

𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚒'𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎

𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚞𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚏𝚎𝚎𝚕

───── ꩜ ─────

[wordwanderlustsg]

when he’s arrogant, annoying, and pretentious but he says shit like…….

“History, huh? Bet we could make some.”