[major Alan Wake 2 and Control spoilers here]

So I played Alan Wake 2 pretty recently and LOVED it. I've been devouring lore videos about the Remedyverse and listening to the 13-minute version of Herald of Darkness basically nonstop. And with that, this set of themes is speaking to me...

* Planting the Seed? Try the coffee... * Decay? Oh, you mean entropy, the thing that Ahti constantly battles and you help with in Control as his assistant? * Recharge? Those big energy blocks that power everything, anyone? * Depths? How about you go into the depths of the ashtray maze... * Salvage? You've got to salvage the story to escape the dark place! * Doors? MR. DOOR, anyone??? * Send Signals? Do you mean like The Board, or how Saga and Alan Wake speak with one another, or how the clicker sends signals from art to the world? * Keep It Together? That's all Alan tries to do! * Out of Order? Like Coffee World, or like exploring in Time Breaker? There's probably an out of order sign object of power somewhere, too... * Wild Magic? Speaking of all of those objects of power, they're all pretty wild... Oh, and "this is the ritual to lead you on" says hello. * Side Effects? Seriously, try the coffee. Or jump in a lake that's actually an ocean, see what that does to ya... * Garden? Okay yeah I'm not sure how this connects, other than the grand scheme of things where you reap what you sow, certainly easy to connect to creating art in the dark place, or what happened to the Marmonts in The Lake House... * Trade? You trade between Saga and Alan, sure, but Alan also traded himself for Alice * Waves? What do you think the lake that's an ocean does, just sit there? * Bottomless? That spiral could be bottomless... As is the hopelessness that the darkness has for people. Or just the bottomless darkness itself. Or that bottomless cup of coffee that you should try, really... And poor Pat Main whose memory loss becomes bottomless... * Companion? You mean how Alex Casey is a companion to both Alan and Saga? Or how Control and both Alan Wake games have an awesome Old Gods of Asgard song to accompany them (or more than one)? * Layers? Oh come on, these games are layers upon layers upon layers of meaning throughout all of this. * Anchor? You literally battle the anchor in Control!

Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees that all of this has actually been done by Alan Wake, written into existence to help him escape his spiral in the dark place.