In the wake of, well, Alan Wake 2 coming out and me having wanted to play the first game and Control for a while now, I finally started playing through the games. And having Alan Wake still fresh in my memory I found something kind of strange while going through the Ordinary AWE area in Control.
There is a recording of a therapy session with Jesse titled "Jesse Therapy: Polaris" and at the beginning it mentions Thomas Zane:
Psychiatrist - "You mentioned a poem last time we talked... by Thomas Zane."
Jesse - "Yes. Beyond the shadow you settle for, there's a miracle illuminated."
Psychiatrist - "Hmm... I looked the poem up, only I couldn't find a poet by that name. I did find a Europen filmmaker who moved here in the sixties named Thomas Zane?" cont.
The recording later talks about Polaris "returning" to Jesse.
Why did i find this weird? We know from Alan Wake that everything related to Thomas Zane would be removed from existence unless it was placed in a shoebox. And from the case file "Bright Falls Summary" we know that the events concerning the Dark Presence caused by Thomas Zane happened sometime in the 1970s.With Jesse being born around 1990-1991 (being 11 years old at the time of the Ordinary AWE in 2002) there's no way she could be aware of Thomas Zane from before the initial Bright Falls event happened. So my question is; did her family keep a shoebox of Thomas Zane books? Or did Polaris' protection somehow "restore" memories of a world-altering AWE? Is Polaris somehow connected to Cauldron Lake (besides the Old Gods of Asgard making a song about her through the Dark Presence's influence)?
I say all this as I am currently playing through Control without having finished it (and neither having finished AWE, which I know features Alan Wake) and haven't had a chance to start Alan Wake 2 yet, so take all this theorising with a grain of salt. I just thought I'd write my thoughts on all this while it was still fresh in my memory.