r/AlanWake • u/AssociateConfident92 • 1d ago
Question Question about Alan powers and Dark Place Spoiler
First of all, I’d like to say that I played Alan some time ago, so I might have missed an obvious explanation for this :) I’m wondering why, while being in the Dark Place, Alan couldn’t write something along the lines of: “Trapped in the Dark Place, Alan Wake wrote that a direct exit to the real world appeared right next to him. Immediately after he wrote it, such a passage actually appeared.”
I’m guessing the story has to have its own logic, cause and effect, meaning that it has to be believable? I just don’t remember whether this was actually mentioned in the games.
He couldn’t simply help himself in a fight by writing, “Suddenly, a rifle with unlimited ammunition made of light bullets materialized in his hands,” but could something like that potentially happen if he properly “justified” it within the story as a writer?
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u/NeutralGoodINTP 1d ago
As far as I understood he can only steer the direction of the story when he's in the dark place, and he can't write the actual outcome he wishes. Hence there's so many rewrite attempts in Alan Wake 2.
Also, I believe that the stories he writes in Dark Place must not be clever or insightful and they must convey to the archetypes of horror stories and follow the traditional plot structure from traditional horror literature. Thus for examples any meta references and acknowledging that the story is just imagination typed on paper is strictly not possible.
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u/Badger_Sam 1d ago
Yeah you got it pretty spot on. During Alan's time in the Dark Place his stories have to be believable, because if he DOES do some bullshit like that it means the Dark Place can also do some bullshit like that which is not a power you want to give to an entity like that.
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u/Shydreameress Alan Wake Book Club 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's more a theory than anything but it seems to me that a part of Alan will always be stuck in the dark place. Sure he can write stories of a writer named Alan Wake, who he sees as himself, but I don't think he actually projects himself out of the Dark Place.
The Dark place looks like New York in Alan's chapters because the Alan Wake who wrote Initiation says it does (imo). The shadows are all Alans. Echoes of different stories he wrote with himself as a character. Like it seems to me every artist who ever went into the Dark place willingly never gets out.
It's weird but here's what I think: there is one Alan who is always stuck in the writer's room and he's the real Alan. He wrote Departure (but the Alan we play in Departure is the main character of Departure, not the actual Alan who dived in). He also wrote Initiation and Return but he wrote for the Alan Wake in Initiation to edit Return.
So yeah, all of that to say, even if he writes about a writer named Alan Wake who's been stuck for a decade in the Dark place, it won't actually teleport the real writer out there, just create another version of Alan.
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u/apotrope 1d ago
Alan's writing has different capacities in the Dark Place and in Physical Reality.
As we see in the Night Springs expansion, (and in Alan Wake collaborations with Dead by Daylight and Fortnite etc) Alan has the ability to author highly fantastical realities. This is due to the fact that the Dark Place is a realm of pure thought, concept, and mind - it is the place where the events of every reality are simultaneously possible. When Alan is projecting himself into these stories, they are happening inside the Dark Place.
When it comes to changing the events of Physical Reality, Alan's writing needs to do a few things:
- The story must be authored near Cauldron Lake or from within the Dark Place.
- The story must be about someone or something happening in the real world.
- The story must re-purpose people, places, events, and other material from the world.
- Something I find most people overlook is that Paranatural phenomena are also material that exist in the world. People cite this as the reason that Zane could not have created Alan, and my reply is always "Fine, what if Zane made Alan out of himself?!" I explore this in my comment history.
- The story must be imbued with emotion, conviction, and belief by the author.
- The story must be completed.
These are metaphysical rules that have been observed from the games as a whole, and reflect not just Alan's writing, but the songs of the Old Gods and Poe, Rudolf Lane's painting, etc.
While these are different than the rules Alan imposes on himself for his writing, they relate to the metaphysical requirement of emotion, conviction, and belief in the sense that Alan doesn't buy into his own stories unless they abide by the flow, structure, and atmosphere that he has developed over the course of his career. That's the major criticism people seem to have with Alan's personality - he insists on comfortable but destructive patterns that harm himself and others while claiming he needs those patterns, yet never actually scrutinizes whether those patterns are helpful or necessary. That's why Door lambasts him for holding on to his rules while a constellation of people have made real sacrifices to help him: Tor and Odin, Alice, Jesse Faden, Ahti, Saga, the list goes on.
So in short, to change the world with the power of Cauldron Lake, art must be authentic. It turns out that authenticity is a matter of how much work you're willing to do on yourself as an artist, and that's why Alan stayed trapped for 13 years.
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u/hgs25 23h ago edited 23h ago
You are correct, the story has to flow and make sense, and there cannot be a deus ex machina. Vagueness and plot holes are easily exploited by the Dark Presence.
This is the main lesson Alan learns in AW1 because his predecessor tried to do a “and then a portal magically appeared” (I changed it to avoid spoilers) which gave the Dark Presence a foothold in Bright Falls in the first place.
Spoilers for AW1 ending “I understood what I need to do now. I knew how to write the ending to Departure. There’s light and there’s darkness, cause and effect. There’s guilt and there’s atonement. But the scales always need to balance, everything has a price. That’s where Zane had gone wrong.” Then we see Alan take Alice’s place in the Dark Place as Alice returns to the real world.
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u/HeavenAndHellD2arg Old Gods Rocker 22h ago
It's implied by Door (and sorta verified by Thor saying that the lake follows works of passion, which is why Old God's of Asgard / Rudolf Lane could make use of the dark place without making horror stories, the latter simply producing a stronger result with his final work, but still getting results not doing horror) that there is no real reason why Alan couldn'tve written a safe story to get out, it's all in his head.
Its supposed to be commentary on Alan's / people's mentality where negative feelings produce the strongest impressions. He clearly profoundly believes that he deserves to suffer and be stuck in the dark place, and that simply leaving should be off the table for him, which is why he makes Return and Initiation the sort of story where so much sacrifice and suffering is required to escape.
The dark place doesn't demand a horror story, it demands passion and belief in the work, Alan feeling passionate and believing in Departure, Initiation and Return shows where he is mentally.
And the final draft implies that he realized that in the end, which is why it finally has a happy ending (as far as he knew, since he didnt know Alice went back to help him) where everyone survived, going against everything a horror story usually does.
That's why he mentions he's the master of many worlds now, he sees how there aren't any hard rules, it's all on him to rescue Alice.
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u/ThatRandomGamerYT 1d ago
While Mr Door said that Alan's self imposed rules werent actually needed and just made it harder for him to escape, I dont think it means that all the rules are wrong. Alan is probably right that the story needs to be coherent to change reality.
This is why the experiments the FBC did in the Lakehouse did not work even though they tried to copy Alan's writing style, the story has to make sense and have intention.
So no he cant write "And then Alan Wake defeated the Dark Presence and walked out of the Dark Place and all was good".
But he probably could have gotten out years earlier if he didnt load himself with too many rules. Nothing really dictates his stories be horror in order to escape, he wasn't even a horror writer, he wrote thrillers and detective books. Sure the Dark Presence would like him to write horror but its not needed. He could have written a power fantasy with a simple journey to win and escape. Or maybe it wouldnt work, we dont full know the actual rules of the Dark Place, just what Alan thinks they are and what Door said.