Everybody's Aunt

(Credit also to @maxwellelvis​ and @alephnull47, and @wackd​ for creating the chat and @zarekthelordofthefries​ for posting the link to the video that somehow accidentally started the tangent that made this the funniest fucking thing ever.)

Early on in Saga Anderson’s exploration in Alan Wake 2, she runs into Ilmo Koskela. Fiercely proud of his Finnish heritage, Ilmo gregariously makes note of Saga’s Nordic sounding name and the familiar design of her knitted sweater. Perhaps a fellow Finn?

Alas no, Saga’s mom is Swedish she informs him. Immediately Ilmo’s face falls. I’m not sure if it’s actually just the animated character defaulting to his resting face, but either way the timing is too perfect. Cue uproarious laughter from me. People in the Nordics are on friendly terms of course, but we gotta have the tiniest bit of… scornfor each other. All in good fun of course. It’s traditional.

Now, I’m Danish, not Finnish, but still, I feel right at home in the towns of Bright Falls and Watery in Alan Wake 2. All of the little nods to Nordic culture and mindset feel so wonderfully familiar to me. The melancholia, the irreverent sense of humor, the affection for the Finnish and Swedish quirks of the characters. The game feels all the stronger in tone and narrative for Remedy embracing the Finnish roots of the studio.

Which is exactly why it sucks that I almost immediately saw the charm of those narrative decisions weaponised against Saga.

as much as i love alan wake, it rubs me the wrong way that scratchwake & caseywake are the most popular ships in the fandom. where andercase only gets crumbs...

YOU GET IT, ANON. It's not even SO much the lack of sipping for Saga, so much as there's not many creations of get period. She's so brilliant with the little time we had with her. She was everything Alan wasn't, and even after everything Alan (unintentionally) put her and her family through, she still didn't hate him (Casey had that covered anyway). There's still so much it Saga that we don't know, and of course all of that couldn't fit in one game with dual protags, but that's where the fandom should want to come in!

What's Saga's day-to-day life like? How was it like being raised by a single white mother? Did Saga get pregnant with Logan or did they CHOOSE to have her young by other means? What was the beginning of her partnership with Casey like? How long did it take for him to warm up to her and become Logan's uncle? HOW AND WHY DO THEY ALWAYS DRINK COFFEE IN SYNC DOWN TO THE SECOND???

The whole backstory to her, Freya's falling out with the Andersons sound very intriguing and keeps me wondering What Happened? What's Door's involvement specifically??? But you're right, even to the smaller slice of life: day to day details are fun thinking about 👀 Does Logan know about her grandmom a lot? How did Saga meet David?

anyway, this makes me think saga and david got married after logan was born and probably because logan was born. they'd have been like 21 years old. i'm sure saga doesn't regret anything, but does she ever feel like she lost her youth? :( and does that influence how eager she is to dive into the strangeness and even the danger of the bright falls case? she is very excited to be working a cult case; an excitement her partner obviously does not share. also notable to me that she says she's never taken a case so far from her family before, and i think she's simultaneously feeling guilty and excited about that too.

and then i'm ALSO thinking about how in the horror story timeline saga would have been married, raised a child for 9 years, lost that child, and gotten divorced, all by the age of 30. (and also proooobably lost her mom within that timeline, or perhaps soon after. it's unclear to me exactly when freya died.)

and oh by the way all that while working up the ranks as fbi agent. she and her husband both must've had to make such sacrifices to do that.

I always just felt that Saga wanted to have the next generation have the Anderson surname, make it something of a tradition, even. Freya absolutely adored that, even if she was desperately worried for her daughter. To want a child this young, with her whole life ahead of her. That had to be terrifying for everyone involved.

I don't think Saga regretted Logan for one second, at any point in time, but I do think she subconsciously knows she missed out on some things she just didn't have the time to do. And the youngest she could've joined the training program for the FBI was 23, so yeah, being a young, married mom with a demanding career? Phew.

Saga Anderson From Alan Wake 2.

People for some reason call her a mary sue because, She has powers and skills. Like, Okay? Then wouldnt alan wake be a gary sue??? And say that shes somehow not interesting, annoying and ugly, First off all Fuck you Shes hot Second of all, Shes not annoying, and She's pretty interesting.

Dont get me started on the one comment i saw where someone was like "ugh! I cringed when alan said that she can stop it he should of been a dick to her" like, First of all, Did you like play alan wake 2 with your eyes closed?? Saga was literally pulled into helping alan escape and Second, God Forbid a Black women is an actual hero and a protagonist.

Honorable Mention: Someone saying that alex casey should of been the protagonist instead of her.. like its giving the "Yeah! Im not racist and this isnt about race but heres 5 white characters who should of been black characters role"

Furthermore, She's often sidelined or erased in fanworks. That, or shes even turned into being a fujoshi for the white men, or is turned into a racist sterotype in favor of the white men.

Like, Look i get it that alan wake is a protagonist but like.. Saga is right there and shes a protagonist! Yet she gets nothing.

Well tbh i feel like, and this might anger some people but like, i feel like in general the alan wake part of the fandom is kinda shit when it comes to female characters.

Alice is sidelined or sometimes treated as the girl geting in the way of Yaoi, Barbara Jagger is often erased or deluded into being a tool that tom doesnt need any more, Rose is dumbed down to being Scratch's love interest and I already talked about saga.

It just pisses me off, There are a lot of really good and interesting female alan wake characters but yet, They're often just pushed out of the way in favor for the white male characters.

how can i make every microtrend in the art community about alan wake

"That's what they want you to think!"

Data from private employers with 100 or more employees showed that, as of 2020, between 50% and 55% of workers who classified themselves as nonbinary were in a low-paying category of jobs, those paying less than $30,679 a year, said the California Civil Rights Department. In comparison, 32% of male employees and 43% of female workers earned less than that amount. And between 35% and 40% of nonbinary workers were in the lowest-paying category of jobs, those paying $19,239 or less, compared with 22% of male employees and 30% of female employees.

2024 data: "5-10% of all reported non-binary workers were reported in the highest pay band, while 40-45% of all reported non-binary workers were reported in the lowest pay band."

Taryn versus Taryn (she/her) versus Taryn (they/them): A Field Experiment on Pronoun Disclosure and Nonbinary Hiring Discrimination

Nonbinary people have a gender identity that falls outside the male-female binary. To investigate hiring discrimination against this group, thousands of randomly generated fictitious resumes were submitted to job postings in pairs where the treatment resume contained pronouns listed below the name and the control resume did not. Two treatments were considered: nonbinary "they/them" and binary "he/him" or "she/her" pronouns congruent with implied sex. Hence, discrimination is estimated against nonbinary and presumed cisgender applicants who disclose pronouns. Results show that disclosing "they/them" pronouns reduces positive employer response by 5.4 percentage points. There is also evidence that discrimination is larger (approximately double) in Republican than Democratic geographies. By comparison, results are inconclusive regarding discrimination against presumed cisgender applicants who disclose pronouns; if discrimination does exist, it is of lower magnitude than discrimination against nonbinary applicants who disclose pronouns.

Workplace Experiences of Nonbinary Employees

The majority of nonbinary adults in the workforce are under age 35 (87%), and half (51%) are people of color. About three-quarters (74%) of nonbinary people in the workforce are making less than $50,000 a year. Our analysis [n=163] indicates that employment discrimination against nonbinary employees is persistent and widespread. At some point in their lives, about six in 10 nonbinary employees (59%) reported experiencing discrimination or harassment at work (including being fired, not hired, not promoted, or verbally, physically, or sexually harassed) because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Many nonbinary employees reported recent experiences of discrimination and harassment. Within the past year, 16% of nonbinary employees reported that they had been fired, not hired, or not promoted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and 20% reported experiencing harassment at work. One in four (26%) nonbinary employees reported experiencing adverse treatment because of their LGBTQ status at their current job. Many nonbinary employees also reported engaging in actions to avoid discrimination and harassment, including hiding their nonbinary identity and changing their appearance or behaviors. Nearly half (45%) of nonbinary employees were not out to their current supervisor, and 17% were not out to any of their co-workers. Two-thirds (67%) of nonbinary employees reported downplaying their LGBTQ status at work by doing one or more of the following: changing their speech, mannerisms, appearance, or how they dress at work; avoiding work social events; or not talking about their outside activities at work. Nearly six in 10 (58%) nonbinary employees have looked for another job because of how they were treated based on their sexual orientation or gender identity at work, and half (50%) reported leaving a job because of such treatment.

The labour market outcomes of transgender individuals