What Could Have Been: V8 Edition

[TheLordOfAwesome]

We are more than half way through V8 now, and I'm sure everyone involved has some stuff they never got to get around to writing. Be it a thread, a character arc, maybe even a whole character. Whatever it is, this is the place for folks to go on and tell people about all their ideas that they never got the chance to write or had planned but maybe changed their minds.

[almostinhuman]

Kiera was meant to be a lot more deferrent to Shu and withdrawn overall than she ultimately ended up being. I decided it made for both a more fun writing experience and better drama to give her much more push and pull with Shu before her death (which was planned from the jump; she was always meant to die on day 1). Also she was initially going to die in her very first thread (which would be just her and Shu), but I decided to let her live longer so her death would have more impact.

Jacob's never really had a solid plan for himself bc he was technically meant to be a vehicle for a Meanwhile thread, featuring his sister and his boyfriend going on a weird fucked up road trip together. Unfortunately I'm not really feeling the concept anymore so it's probably not happening. May have to figure out something else to do with that thread so it's not permanently incomplete (maybe they'll just hang at a diner or something lmao).

Jacob was meant to eventually develop a crush on/maybe make out with someone on island and feel a bit guilty for "cheating" on Francis, and perhaps get a bit more emotionally/romantically involved from there, but that didn't materialize and I don't think it would have added much anyway. Overall the course I've charted for him is the happiest I've been with a v8 kid so far.

Ingrid was meant to be a player, rather than try to escape. I changed my mind at the last minute when the version started bc I thought it might be fun to write a jerk who's nonetheless trying to do the right thing. Really wish I'd gone with my initial plans now, as she's lowkey my favorite in terms of her voice and personality and I'd love to have kept her longer, but I burnt out on writing her bc I just didn't have the capacity to deal with all the paperwork involved in escaping and write four other characters across three separate versions, including two in the same version as her and one in an Endgame. Maybe she'll get a fairer shake in SC3.

Ingrid was initially also meant to die in a big fight scene, perhaps one involving some of her listed friends from her relationship thread. However, I was having some stressful shit hitting me irl and I balked at doing anything too high-effort after how insanely poorly that went for me in Supers, so I ended up settling on the quiet little oneshot she got instead. I guess folks liked it so mission accomplished?

Corbin was kinda meant to fall in with someone who was willing to take care of him and have them influence him into growing (or getting worse) over time. He was also meant to much more openly express having feelings for boys than he ultimately really did. Neither happened and he kinda puttered out, but I guess I wrapped it up okay in the end. Another kid who may or may not get another go in SC3.

[Fiori]

Cassie Chao: Unwitting player?

So, one overall OOC goal I had with V8 was to avoid planning too far ahead with any of my characters, and let the events of the island steer them in whatever direction made the most sense. Cassie probably exemplified this the most, as she could've potentially walked a few different paths depending on how her first thread panned out. 

One thing that ended up making a big difference being her assigned weapon, since if she started with a gun there was a very good chance of her turning player, albeit one who focused exclusively on self-preservation. Less hunting down her classmates, more violently defending herself from potential threats, shoot first ask questions later kind of approach to the game. There was also a chance of her maybe turning player if Madeleine died first, or at least hardening up significantly, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't end up taking this route with her in the end.


Cassie Chao: Ice skating into eternity

One big regret I have was that I never had Cassie go ice skating on the frozen lake.

There were two scenes I sorta conjured up for this, the first being that she attempts to skate across the lake and ends up trapped on the ice, but ended up scrapping the idea when DJ Jazzy Jess went and beat me to the punch.

The other was a death idea I mused over for a very long time, where she'd don the ice skates and venture out onto the lake until the ice broke beneath her feet. I very nearly went with this idea when she was first rolled, and probably would've stuck to if it weren't for Meena's death, which put me off the idea of having Cassie commit suicide. Did manage to allude to this in her death thread, as I liked the imagery even though I ultimately opted to go a different direction with her fate.


Shawn Bellamy: Jerry Jacobs

Mentioned this one on discord, but in keeping to my V8 characters having alliterative names, Shawn's original name was going to be Jerry Jacobs. This turned into Jawn Jacobs after seeing a billboard in Philadelphia with the name, before finding out Jawn's specifically a Philly thing, and eventually settling on naming him after Shawn Michaels and the spring-legged guy from One Piece.

He also went through quite a few personality/background changes, including that of a sociopathic class clown (that also sort-of morphed into Mitch), as well as several ideas for the backstory event where he snitched on a fellow student. His personal politics were also more prominent in his first draft, before deciding to de-deemphasise them significantly. Didn't want people to hate him for being a lame strawman, when I wanted people to hate him for being a weasel.


Shawn Bellamy: Fucking Traitor

One particularly evil Shawn idea I don't mind sharing, since there's zero chance of it ever happening, involved having him latching onto an escape group for a while. When he inevitably gets cold feet and decides he wants out, he would've gone a step further by ratting out the rest of the escape group to AT, with the aim of getting everyone killed so that he could make off with their stuff. Obviously this would've been a MONUMENTAL dick move, both IC and OOC, so for that reason I never seriously entertained the idea.


As Lily's still ongoing I'll hold off on her for now, though I'll admit that I originally intended on her taking more of a supporting role in other people's stories whilst Cassie and Shawn were my flagships, only for her to end up on equal footing with them and ultimately supplanting Cassie's spot in the end. 


As for Mitch, the only thing I really have to note about him was that he was originally meant to be much more obnoxious and unsympathetic, but that ended up changing once I got a feel for his voice. I was also tempted to have him die via a sudden headshot, as a cheeky little reference to similar sudden deaths in The Departed and Red Dead Redemption 2. (You know the ones I'm talking about)

[Catche Jagger]

Betty Quinn Goes out halfway through the game, possibly unrolled

There’s a whole lot of shoulda/coulda/woulda with Quinn. But life is what it is and it turned out that I wasn’t really equipped to take part in SOTF for the duration of V8, adopting out when it became abundantly clear that I wasn’t going to be able to push through.

Many of the ideas I had are things that I may come around to reusing elsewhere, but I do feel comfortable disclosing that, from the moment I decided on Quinn’s direction (fairly shortly after she became a concept), she was intended to operate within a specific window of the game, namely its first half. The whole schtick of taking down potential/likely killers with the intent of keeping the number of overall deaths lower was a motivation conceived of as being only reasonably workable for the first 50-60% of the version, at which point it would become fairly untenable. And so, the idea from the beginning was that she’d always die at around that stage of the game if she made it that far. At the point prior to the version where I’d intended more characters, I was firm in the policy that she’d go out at such a stage, even if I’d already used a hero card.

[midnight_twelve]

I had a very ambitious plan for one of my v8 characters. It probably wouldn’t have ever worked- it relied too much on other handlers playing the game I wanted to play rather than doing their own thing, and I didn’t even do a good job of communicating my ideas and wasn’t active enough either- but I think the concept could have been cool. One of my v9 concepts, James, was initially dreamt up to give this idea a second chance, but he’s currently the least likely to make it to island of my five, so I’m posting it here instead.

If you didn’t cross paths with Chloé in v8, her deal was she was the student council president and spent her whole time on island trying to restore order. She set up a safehouse, fortified it and went around trying to recruit people. The in-universe idea was if they could get everyone who wasn’t ‘playing’ together they could keep deaths down and buy some time to put their heads together and plan an escape. The problem was that she wasn’t actually any good at recruiting people and her group never consisted of more than a small handful of people at any given time. Eventually I gave up and swap carded her into an early grave, but I had big plans for if I ever had actually got a decently sized group together.

First of all, the logistics. The idea was never that the whole group would move around as one - that would have been very unwieldly and the dynamics could have quickly gotten stale. Rather, people would be free to go off on their own or as a small group to whatever threads interested them, justified as splitting up to perform some duty or another (recruiting new members/hunting/ gathering resources/researching escape methods etc), and we would convene for certain events. I also liked the idea of holding in-character votes, where all the characters involved could have a say on plans for the group. In her pregame role as president I set Chloé up as someone who puts a lot of stock in democracy and ruling by consensus and I think it could have been interesting to test her commitment to that in a life or death situation where she thinks she knows best… plus I just love elections and referendums and get a serotonin rush watching votes come in.

An idea I discussed with medic early on was trying to “arrest” killers and lock them up at the sheriff’s office or something. This wouldn’t have stuck for obvious reasons (I might have had a hard time convincing a handler to stick their character in solitary confinement for the rest of the game) but it appealed to me as an alternative to the traditional “player hunting” we see a lot of. Plus a jailbreak thread could have been a lot of fun.

It’s worth noting that this concept was always tied into the idea of escape, but I never actually imagined an escape would happen, and certainly didn’t have any ideas myself. It was more an in-universe goal in my mind, a motivation to get everyone working together.

Finally, I thought a cool end to this plotline would have been a larger-scale battle than what we normally see in SOTF, potentially spanning multiple threads, like a siege of the safehouse or a fight in the church and stuff. If we could get a half dozen or more people on either side- say, fighting against Juanita’s legion, or a factional / civil war within the group, or tying into the earlier jailbreak idea with a bunch of players fighting their way out of custody- I think it could have been a fun few scenes, and would have been where I ended Chloé’s story regardless of whether she got rolled or not.

Ultimately, I’m relatively satisfied with how Chloé’s story turned out. I think she kind of works as a tragedy about someone trying to do the right thing and failing until the stress and pressure and paranoia gets to her, and her being so unsuccessful in her plan actually helps with that. She has some flaws and rough edges and things I’d change but I’m not like, kicking myself for never getting this more ambitious Chloé to work. If anyone wants to incorporate any of these ideas into future versions, go ahead! I’m still not confident they’d really work in such a collaborative story, but for my part I’d be excited to take part.

[Fiori]

I had a very ambitious plan for one of my v8 characters. It probably wouldn’t have ever worked- it relied too much on other handlers playing the game I wanted to play rather than doing their own thing, and I didn’t even do a good job of communicating my ideas and wasn’t active enough either- but I think the concept could have been cool. One of my v9 concepts, James, was initially dreamt up to give this idea a second chance, but he’s currently the least likely to make it to island of my five, so I’m posting it here instead.

If you didn’t cross paths with Chloé in v8, her deal was she was the student council president and spent her whole time on island trying to restore order. She set up a safehouse, fortified it and went around trying to recruit people. The in-universe idea was if they could get everyone who wasn’t ‘playing’ together they could keep deaths down and buy some time to put their heads together and plan an escape. The problem was that she wasn’t actually any good at recruiting people and her group never consisted of more than a small handful of people at any given time. Eventually I gave up and swap carded her into an early grave, but I had big plans for if I ever had actually got a decently sized group together.

First of all, the logistics. The idea was never that the whole group would move around as one - that would have been very unwieldly and the dynamics could have quickly gotten stale. Rather, people would be free to go off on their own or as a small group to whatever threads interested them, justified as splitting up to perform some duty or another (recruiting new members/hunting/ gathering resources/researching escape methods etc), and we would convene for certain events. I also liked the idea of holding in-character votes, where all the characters involved could have a say on plans for the group. In her pregame role as president I set Chloé up as someone who puts a lot of stock in democracy and ruling by consensus and I think it could have been interesting to test her commitment to that in a life or death situation where she thinks she knows best… plus I just love elections and referendums and get a serotonin rush watching votes come in.

An idea I discussed with medic early on was trying to “arrest” killers and lock them up at the sheriff’s office or something. This wouldn’t have stuck for obvious reasons (I might have had a hard time convincing a handler to stick their character in solitary confinement for the rest of the game) but it appealed to me as an alternative to the traditional “player hunting” we see a lot of. Plus a jailbreak thread could have been a lot of fun.

It’s worth noting that this concept was always tied into the idea of escape, but I never actually imagined an escape would happen, and certainly didn’t have any ideas myself. It was more an in-universe goal in my mind, a motivation to get everyone working together.

Finally, I thought a cool end to this plotline would have been a larger-scale battle than what we normally see in SOTF, potentially spanning multiple threads, like a siege of the safehouse or a fight in the church and stuff. If we could get a half dozen or more people on either side- say, fighting against Juanita’s legion, or a factional / civil war within the group, or tying into the earlier jailbreak idea with a bunch of players fighting their way out of custody- I think it could have been a fun few scenes, and would have been where I ended Chloé’s story regardless of whether she got rolled or not.

Ultimately, I’m relatively satisfied with how Chloé’s story turned out. I think she kind of works as a tragedy about someone trying to do the right thing and failing until the stress and pressure and paranoia gets to her, and her being so unsuccessful in her plan actually helps with that. She has some flaws and rough edges and things I’d change but I’m not like, kicking myself for never getting this more ambitious Chloé to work. If anyone wants to incorporate any of these ideas into future versions, go ahead! I’m still not confident they’d really work in such a collaborative story, but for my part I’d be excited to take part.

Can't help but empathise with you here, had a similar idea in mind with Jenna back in V5.

Same kind of deal for the most part: Form a group, try to get word out for everyone to get together and form something of a community on the island, with the intention of trying to last long enough for the supposedly inevitable rescue to occur. Main divergent point being that she ends up taking a more draconian approach, with said community going very Lord of the Flies as she takes increasingly extreme actions to maintain some sense of order amidst the chaos.

In the end though, I didn't put any real effort into actually arranging anything or even pitching the idea to anyone (that I recall, I honestly can't remember if I ever spoke to anyone about it). It was mostly a thing I knew she was angling for, but it never really took off beyond her initial group, though I at least managed to allude to the direction her goals would've taken had things panned out better for her.