AWE posting 19.12.

[yvannairie]

(Crossposted from Tumblr)

The thing is I have sooooo many things to say about Dark Place Casey but I find myself tripping on step one – which is that trenchcoat Casey, the Casey from the Echoes, the Casey of Yötön Yö – that’s not actually Casey, our Casey, that’s just Alan again. It’s Alan, filtered through the lens of Casey, filtered through the lens of Alan.

Because everything that makes Casey recognisably himself is just… good character writing. The affect, the character voice, the opinions, the way he reasons through circumstances, all of those are the result of Alan’s familiarity with the version of Casey he thinks is his. We’re already seeing one layer down because of the way Echoes work, but even that top layer, Casey in the text, is Alan’s creation.

Which makes it fucking fascinating that Casey is in the text identified in a role that is removed from the roles hierarchy of the horror story. He is “the detective”. And if you’ve read enough detective fiction, you know that the detective rarely is the hero of the story. They’re not someone who has skin in the game. They’re rarely personally involved, their character arc rarely tied to the mystery itself. The detective may be the protagonist, but most of the time their role is to be a witness – an observer, a collaborator, the window into a broader, impersonal perspective and, when necessary, the hand of the author acting on the plot.

An outsider to Alan’s mental landscape with the face and the voice of a stranger.