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...science is risk... 
- ― Diana Marmont
Diana Marmont is a character in the Alan Wake 2 expansion "The Lake House." She was an FBC scientist and head of the FBC facility dubbed The Lake House, a position she shared with her husband Jules Marmont. Their primary goal was the study of the threshold located at Cauldron Lake, originally with the intent to find a way to contain it. However, after they lost contact with FBC headquarters they decided to deviate and pursue their interest in establishing a stable, interdimensional link with threshold that they could control.
Profile[]
Diana Marmont was like most FBC researchers; Passionate about her work and driven to understand the mysteries of the paranatural world but obsessive to the point where she would violate human decency or risk the lives of her own colleagues if it would get her the answers she seeks.
She and her husband originally were a dynamic duo and rising stars in the scientific community with Diana providing the technical know how and the more charismatic and personable Jules handling bureaucratic side of their field in order to get funding.
However, at some point into their assignment at Lake Cauldron, either naturally or through the supernatural influence of the lake their once loving relationship turned into a toxic antagonistic one.
While Jules felt that he wasn't given the proper credit for his contributions and Diana was angered that Jules received any credit at all as she did most, if not all the heavy for the science side while Jules handled the administrative side.
Regardless of the origin of this animosity, the influence of the Alan Wake's writing and the reality altering properties of Cauldron Lake amplified these feelings between the 2 into an all out war. Both sides became obsessed with being the first to create a stable link with the threshold with each side breaking off into their own team. Diana's project, dubbed Arbutus, was to control the threshold by recreating perfect copies of Alan Wake's writing with generative ai-like technology dubbed ATD (automatic typing device)
To achieve this she used already existing copies of Alan Wake's work in their possession, kidnapped playwright Ed Booker (who humorously thought he was simply at an immersive writing workshop), and quantifying art into a definite form.
Both Jules and Diana resorted to monsterous inhumane actions in their scientific pursuits with each one trying to undermine the other. Diana was particularly infuriated at Jules sabotaging her project by actively hiding and withholding manuscripts.
Eventually Jules project proved to be successful, albeit with a horrific price; Jules had managed to force a link with the threshold by unintentionally torturing the painter Rudolph Lane into creating a gruesome self-portrait with his blood as he died by suicide. While this painting contained the emotional energy needed to connect to threshold the emotions were nothing but intense rage and hatred at the Marmonts for what they had done to Lane. When it connected to the threshold Lane was resurrected as vengeful living painting that unleashed his vengeance upon the the facility. Those not killed by Lane's attack were turned into Taken from the Dark Presence that had been simultaneously been released. Diana and Jules in particular were turned into a particularly powerful pair of Taken, with Jules roaming the halls of the facility killing any he came across in an attempt to "protect" his work.
Eventually, Kiran Estevez, and FBC agent sent to Bright Falls to investigate the resurgence of the Dark Entity, made her way to sub level 5 in order to put a stop to the experiment where she was confronted by a Taken Jules. Diana, who until that time had remained relatively hidden, surprised the agent by appearing and angrily killing her husband by brutally bashing his head in with a rock before turning her attentions to Estevez who killed her after a length battle.
Personality[]
Diana was known for being incredibly technical and emotionally cold with a desperate need for control, even by FBC researcher standards. While she was passionate about her work and filled with curiosity she also had the iconic trait of an FBC scientist which is the single minded pursuit of scientific advancement at any cost without consideration of risks or ethics. This did not come from a place of sadism but rather a laser like focus at achieving results for the sake of knowledge. She was fearless in her pursuit to the point where she ignored obvious signs of danger such as a manuscript that detailed her death, the manuscript in question was one of Wake's infamous manuscripts which were well known to warp reality into what the manuscript detailed. In other words, Diana of all people should have known that a manuscript detailing her death was something that was almost certainly going to happen, yet she pushed ahead regardless.
Even before she was seriously influenced by the corrupting powers of Cauldron Lake, she had requested permissions to outright abduct artists and hold them prisoner for her experiments. This notably happened when the rest of the FBC lost contact with The Oldest House, FBC headquarters, something that was most definitely a sign of something dangerous, yet her reaction was not to try and figure out why HQ had gone dark (even though all signs pointed to a dangerous attack, and given the purpose of the FBC, a dangerous attack that could take out The Oldest House would most likely mean a world ending threat) but to take advantage of the situation and go forward with her plan of kidnapping artists that the FBC had strictly forbidden her from doing.
Logs and recordings depict her as someone who believes so reverently that all of life can quantified and defined that she is adamant even humans can be calibrated like a machine. Because of this, she is unable to understand the actual purpose and value of art, even as she and her husband were constantly theorizing on the topic's relationship to Cauldron Lake. This is can be seen in Diana believing that the work of Ed Booker's wife Tammy (an author of several true crime books) would influence the lake more as it was considered more commercially successful than Ed's own writing (a failed playwright fixated on social commentary) and therefore must be "good" art. She, as well as her husband, failed to see why their hollow duplicates had no effect on the lake.
She viewed people, especially those used in experiments as nothing more than tools to the point where after seeing how Rudolph Lane's self-portrait he created during his death from suicide produced unprecedented results she immediately made plans to torture Ed Booker to yield similar results.
Trivia[]
- Diana and her experiment is an overt commentary on the controversy surrounding AI generated art
- The ADT's function EXACTLY as generative AI; putting numerous references into it in order to create a copy of someone else's work, which is then refined and resubmitted until it looks like the original piece.
- She talks frequently of defining and quantifying art into a technical term and "calibrating" people like machines. One of Ai's biggest critiques is that neither art nor humans can be defined or quantified, and the idea that this is possible shows a deep misunderstanding about art.
- She considers Booker's writing as "bad" due to it not matching Wake's writing exactly. One of the biggest criticisms towards AI artists is that to simply try to recreate art from other's work thinking it only needs to look like someone else's to be "good" without understanding why the original piece was considered good in the first place.
- Wake describes their work as "..not art, just content for the experiment." This is the biggest criticism of AI art as a whole and the view of the artistic community; That ai art is not art, but hollow superficial generic content devoid of creativity.
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