ah, the family meme... /looks at my guy CW: possible dead parent, possible child abandonment, there are a lot of questions about alan's missing father

come with me down a rabbit hole of theorizing

so canonically we have two mentions of alan's mother, Linda Wake. she was a woman who was in and out of psychiatric care for an unnamed psychological condition. she was also - from what we see in the memory where she gives alan the clicker & says it belonged to the father he never met to add to the mysticism of it - a loving mother who cares for him

other than this, we know nothing about her, but we can maybe infer things from his story Errand Boy, which depending on how much Alan drew from his life... may imply she passed away. but we don't know this for certain

there are simply just... no traces of her in his adult life as far as we can see, no photos or anything in his apartment

as for Alan's father: he never met his father, and i always kind of got the impression he disappeared before alan was even born (again, errand boy parallels)

People often mistake Alan for Thomas Zane when he goes to Bright Falls, but Thomas Zane has been trapped in Cauldron Lake since 1970, and alan was born in 1978

HOWEVER

there was a sneaky little lore drop in one of the audio logs from control

where they state that people SAW THOMAS ZANE after he disappeared...

Not unlike how people talk about seeing Alan after he disappeared

my going theory currently?

Thomas Zane also has an evil shadow double like Mister Scratch

and the double is Alan's father

so

there you go

Alan's loving but mentally unstable mother, and A Possible Evil Shadow Double for a father

(i added the possible child abandonment because i mean... if my theory is correct, he left to go commit nefarious evil shadow acts probably)

(is it possible if it's true? guess i should change it... but we also have no idea why alan's father left. it could have been unintentional)

(mysteries abound)

Also the going theory among some circles is that Linda Wake was probably a parautilitarian that had no understanding of her paranatural abilities so she was mistaken for being unstable, or perhaps became mentally unwell as a result of not having an understanding, safe support system for all of that, etc.

like... would things have been different if she was, if the FBC had known about her and brought her in to work for them? or would they have studied her?

did they already know? did they keep files on her if so?

anyway, i dunno, but there's your options for meeting alan's parents

mostly i just wanted to talk about my theory about thomas zane's double possibly being his dad haha

(also the angel lamp that is a major game mechanic in AW2 is supposedly the lamp that the clicker came from so i am hoping we will get some lore about either of his parents, preferably both)

i need to start prepping for streaming now, later nerds