Survival Of The Fittest

just like you putting chemicals in the water to turn the Kermits gay

dante stuff cause hes dead:

• this isnt really a What Could Have Been but dante is a character ive had for a loooong time (way before i submitted him for V6 originally) and so he's always been very like. malleable i guess. his different incarnations have very different traits so there were always various directions he could have gone in. he is just a base template labeled Himbo and then i add stuff on top
• there were way more theoretical interactions w/ various girls that he was supposed to have in pregame especially considering his Reputation but i got kinda one-track-minded by Aurelien and the help-me-i-think-i-like-dudes stuff so a lot of that ended up not happening. i know he was supposed to be particularly close with mercy, faith, sierra, yuko, beryl and charelle and he did not interact a single second with any of them in pregame and only faith for a minute on the island, Woops
• speaking of girls i think me and jilly didn't figure out him and katelynne would have been close until dante was already dead so we were a little late on that one. might still do a memory for that at some point if i obtain the writing juice for it
• this is sort of also a What Could Have Been for blaise but its so far away from the direction they went in that its probably fine: the very long time ago basic island plan for dante was for him to wake up near a blaise who was essentially like... not in denial necessarily but just deciding to act like the murder thing wasnt happening and going off to chill on their own and ignore everyone. dante would genuinely be in denial about the murder game happening and conveniently avoid being around any actual violence until it became narratively fun for him to snap out of it. or else he'd die suddenly having never figured it out
• long after paige had long turned off that path with blaise i still considered having dante be in denial for a bit. then i put him in a thread where he got shot in the leg two minutes after he woke up so like: WOOPS
• dante and aurelien were always supposed to have met on day one, because i was almost sure he'd die on day one, because he was my obvious kid to hero/swap if necessary (he was never ever fodder and i love him with all my heart, but he realistically was always too stupid to make it very far and i never expected his story to last very long). my luck ended up being Exactly as bad as predicted and pip happened to be on vacation for like all the days surrounding that rolls period which is the only reason dante didn't die in aurelien's arms or whatever. honestly i feel like aurelien finding his body the way he did was stronger anyway so hey things work out
• speaking of aurelien finding the body that was cicada's idea actually, while the death thread was ongoing. i was originally gonna pitch aurelien stumbling on the body to pip but cicada added the fun twist of aurelien sleeping in that building overnight which i figured added Extra Sadness
• my original death plan for dante was for him to climb out the window of the house during the night while blaise is asleep because he's too worried about camila to sleep, but he can't make it that far one-legged and falls, and he's afraid calling for help would call too much attention to him and thus to his companions, so he doggedly tries to crawl to the house camila's in and winds up bleeding out overnight. paige pitched the blaise thing to me while i was still thinking thru stuff and i was like hey thats a smart idea huh
• i seriously considered for a second not swapping nia and dante because i loved dante and killing him made me sad and also nia's narrative hadn't really picked up at that point so i wasn't sure what i was doing with her. but considering dante was kind of already dying it felt like it made no sense not to swap so i did and i do not regret it
• i think this version of dante was straight at one point. like pre-being-submitted-to-v6 even
• also if he had more time he probably would have started falling for camila a little and feeling real bad about it

i was gonna do stuff for my not-dead kids that isn't relevant anymore but then this turned out to be a fuckin text wall so like another time maybe

Caroline Ford:

- She was always gonna have a pretty rough time, though I'd originally intended her illness to take more time to actually start to seriously hinder her. After reading the prologue and getting the chance to put her in various situations, I made the choice to have it be a more significant factor on the island.

- Originally I wanted Caroline to fall in with a group and begin as a voice of encouragement and positivity, a role that woulds lowly unravel as her sanity did. I'd always wanted to portray her as a strong person in spite of her illness.

- Caroline was canonically gay, but I was never going to explore it in any detail on the island. Her life without SOTF would've ended up being difficult, but ultimately I'd had a good ending for her in mind would she have not been kidnapped.

- I wanted her to stick with Regina as long as possible, and to continually test that relationship through her gradual break with reality. Caroline's story on-island was always going to be kind of a downer. Ultimately I was happy with what Tonyk and I were able to come up with and despite her short journey, I feel like it was a strong one.


Henry Sparks:

- I actually had/have several pretty detailed escape plans in mind that ended up getting sidelined. Once the neo-luddite nature of the island become apparent it was difficult to put together even the simplest idea that Henry would've actually followed through on. OOC, I had difficulty putting together a plan that wasn't assuredly doomed to fail completely and just kill a bunch of characters unrolled in a kind of lame way.

- I'd always intended Henry himself to die during any escape attempt of his, even if it worked. If the opportunity comes up in future in-game days, depending on who and what he runs into, I might still have a go at it. His current "player-hunter" mentality is more of a way for him to keep his allies in check than it is a genuine desire for him to kill off those participating in the game.

Tyrell Lahti / Erika Stieglitz

- I always knew one of them was going to be a player, but I didn't really make up my mind until I got started as to which one. Both were intended to be gray-area characters in some respects, but I'm honestly surprised at the direction they've taken. It ended up being Erika partly because of how poorly received Ty was, and partially because I found writing her personal value system a lot easier than writing someone with as warped a sense of empathy as his. I made the decision about halfway through writing "Heimweh."

- Erika's potential anti-heroic arc would've likely consisted of her forming an alliance with Faith Marshal-Mackenzie, as Frozen Smoke is all kinds of fun to write with and our pregame thread developed an interesting relationship between the two of them.

- Ty and Erika weren't originally written in a relationship, but as I realized I wanted to explore those elements with each character I found that they worked pretty well together. Writing both ensured I had control over how things developed, and I was free to pursue the ideas I wanted to pursue in writing them.

- Once I did write their relationship, I knew that I couldn't very well have them both together on-island the whole time for logistical and tonal reasons. Off-island Ty was kind of undergoing a bit of a redemption arc, something that Erika believed would've come to a screeching halt in their current situation; hence her setting him up. That gave me a good enough excuse to keep them apart. The apparent inconsistency between her horror at his actions on the first few days, and what she ends up doing herself, is an intentional one.

- While it read as an obvious fake-out, on day one I did give serious thought to having Tyrell just die in his very first on-island post as I'd already had a pretty good time writing him in pregame.

- There were plans for a sort of on-island truce between Lorenzo, Axel, and Ty in their collective search for vengeance for Andy's death. Lucas Brady's suicide(?) put a quick halt to that.

- The same goes for the Ivy/Ty/Carters/Claude confrontation that was collectively referred to as Gifts Part 2. Given the demise of GHHS' meatiest meatheads by day six, it remains to be seen where that storyline will end up.

- In terms of personality, character traits, and the structure of her internal narrative, Erika is the closest thing I'll ever write to a self-insert.

We goin innnnnnn

Sapphire Waters

• The plan with Sapphire was always meant to involve some degree of sanity slippage on her part based on paranoia and sleep deprivation on island, but this plan had two separate incarnations. The first form came around the time of her conception as a character, essentially that she would slowly become convinced of some sort of supernatural element being present on the island which she might seek to investigate/appease. The impetus behind this was primarily just that I wanted to just write some weird imagery. Never really got that fleshed out since the plan changed by the time I wrote my first post for her

• Mainly due to certain shifts in Colin's character, I ended up deciding to shift Sapphire into being my player. This wasn't that much of a stretch from the original concept, and I planned on having her turn toward killing be powered by a similar combination of paranoia and sleep deprivation. The plan was that she would eventually become convinced that Emmett would turn on her and would try to take him out first, beginning her on a downward spiral where she'd end up becoming a full on player, unable to trust and unwilling to die etc, etc.

• Fun bullshit idea that I came up with but thought was probably too surreal/silly to be pulled off: Essentially Sapphire would eventually begin to disassociate due to her self-perception as a good person clashing with her actions as a killer, the idea being that she would hallucinate the image of a grotesque vision of the Mothman which would take on the personality of her "killer instinct". Silly, yes, but it would have been fun to write.

Colin McCabe

• Colin was originally going to be my player kid, and this was my intent all the way up until I wrote his first post. Colin was supposed to be a deluded megalomaniac who, after inevitably failing to install himself as the leader of some group, he'd quickly devolve into basically becoming indignant and arguing with everyone he met until he eventually ended up killing someone in the heat of the moment. Deluded fella that he was, Colin would then convince himself that this was totally okay, and that given his current situation playing was the only reasonable choice.

• So yeah, that didn't happen. Essentially, come the first post I discovered that Colin's voice was a bit too cynical to pull off the initial character concept. Though Colin was still a self-important jerk a lot of the time, the character as written seemed too irritated and tired to be so over the top in his dickishness as such a nature implies a pre-existing understanding that others won't just bend to his desires even if they are correct. Thus, Colin shifted from player to wannabe player hunter, as such a goal seemed more fitting for what his mindset came off as in practice.

Meilin Zhou What-Could-Have-Beens

* Firstly: I was planning a dream one shot with her. If I hadn't heroed her, it would have been my first post with her after I'm only satisfied by the finer things in life thread. I'd have taken this chance to go batshit crazy with the dream stuff- the other one I wrote was deliberately more grounded in real people, places, and events. I wasn't planning on having such grounding with this one- though for it I would have gone for a less "unsettling nightmares" angle and more "wow that was a whack ass dream I just had" angle, but still keeping a lot of symbolism.

* If Mei lived longer, I would have had her arc center around a crisis of identity, so to speak- I hinted at it in the infirmary thread Incident. After some time on the island, guilt in her own actions and shock from the actions of others meant that she didn't really recognize anyone around her anymore, the game's changed them so much. That would have lead to a lot of paranoia, and would prooooobably lead to a split with Ace- and then potentially, considering Cam being a player wasn't really in the cards at that point, lead to a player-shift. Would it have lead to the meme-dream ballcutting scene?

...probably not, but hey.

* The motif for this sort of arc would have been reflections, especially distorted reflections.

Honestly, I might actually write the dream post anyways. I have a whole outline for it lying around.

Liberty "Bert" Wren

We got a few for this gal.

Liberty's nickname was originally not going to be "Bert".

This came about in a stroke of genius/madness on account of Cicada. My initial idea was, since I'm a terrible writer who likes being so overly self-indulgent that it's strange I haven't been arrested yet on account of public literary masturbation, that her nickname would hinge on the first syllable of her name, not the second. Her initials, LW, were a callback. Her nickname was almost "Lili." This was, of course, a terrible idea, and I'm incredibly happy that Cicada decided to intervene on humanity's behalf.

Chatlog wrote: MethodicalSlacker02/21/2018
see the catch is right
Liberty's a long name
so she shortens it

Cicada02/21/2018
BERT

MethodicalSlacker02/21/2018
ok i dont know why
but that made me howl with laughter
like legit my brother is asking me what's so funny now
"how is everything" he says
its funnier than the joke i wanted to make
i was gonna say she shortens it to the first syllable twice so I'll just call another girl "Lili"
maybe bert
you know I'll just go with Bert
Bert's her nickname now legit

Cicada02/21/2018
my influence
my finest v7 moment

Liberty almost was written partially in French.

Maybe I'm not a hack after all. I'm glad I nipped this one in the bud early. Basically, since Bert is bilingual, I was thinking that her narration would also be partially in French because she'd be thinking in French sometimes. The big hurdle with this was that I don't speak French, and thus I would have needed a couple of consultants to bolster my terrible high school French class knowledge. I got a couple of people to agree to help out, but I imagine they are secretly very thankful that their services were never required.

I fell asleep in that class literally whenever I had it. Freshman year it was my first class of the day, so my inability to stay awake was understandable. But Sophomore year it was after lunch. Halfway through my day! And I fell asleep far, far more times that year than the year prior. I even started sitting in front of the class in order to keep myself awake, to force myself to pay attention. Guess what? Didn't work!! I just started falling asleep more often! It is for this reason that I wrote Bert to be a morning person who likes Mondays, because someone who is good at French must also necessarily be good at staying awake, is the moral of the story.

Liberty could have gone to prom.

It's a bit weird that of all my characters, the one who probably would have had the most fun at prom was the one without any sort of prom involvement. Fact is, I just couldn't see her going without securing a prom date, and I never was able to secure that date, so I didn't have her go. At some point I thought that I'd be able to write a one-shot of her hanging out at home, but I just never was able to find the time to write it, between the Violet/Desiree Ouija board tempest and the Max/Misty wholesome virginity loss saga. I don't blame this on anyone else. My game was weak. I took the L...iberty Wren. L and W. Haha.

Speaking of one-shots I was unable to write... here's the big one.

Liberty could have had an interactive oneshot.

Long before the days of The Lines We Draw (which is absolutely still in progress, just updated today, submit commands to Cicada and I to fuel this journey of grief and suffering and licking lantern cords) I planned a different interactive Survival of the Fittest experience. Except, instead of being well thought out, it was, like most things Bert, spur of the moment. I don't have the chat log here with me, and if you find it please send it so I can include it in this post, but it came out of a conversation I was having with some people about the history of interactive things in SOTF.

I think it was probably because I was testing the idea of The Lines We Draw. Seeing how people liked that and all. And I got to thinking, now wait a second, Bert content is pretty lacking right now. She doesn't have the cool foreshadowing memory oneshot that Violet (Beast Monster Thing), Lucas (Dogwander), or Max (To Be A Brilliant Light). So I decided to knock it out of the park, do something weird, something cool, something... interactive!! And singleplayer!! It'd be a CYOA sort of thing, with text you could click on that would lead to more text, but it'd be pretty linear. It had something to say about Bert, after all. It'd focus on a typical day in the life, figure skating practice, visiting her grandma, stuff like that.

I downloaded Twine and quickly set to work. I worked on it for a few days before I got sidetracked and then I was writing on island and then I got a computer and didn't port the file over so I couldn't work on it at college and then I killed Bert so I decided y'know what, let's table this, let's officially cancel this, and let's save this for a character for whom it's more fitting, perhaps loosely inspired by a work in such a medium of fiction (cough cough Coda Taylor cough cough). But I did work on it, and I do have a history of showing unfinished shit off this version (The Quadpost if you haven't already seen it [funny that I didn't get to Bert's part in that ever {whoops}]), so, hey, why not show you guys how far I got?

So, as a Happy New Year's present to the site, and to bring to fruition another chapter in my epic quest to undermine my credibility as a writer forever, I give to you the Untitled Bert Oneshot. Enjoy!

Click here to download. :)

Here's something a little different:


Misty Browder:


Misty's Origins

So, once upon a time, my plan actually was not to last-second ditch one of my established cast members in favor of a "Wait, who?" In fact, Misty was in a lot of ways my intended backup character. I may have mentioned it, but Juliette, Sven, and Phillip were always bound for the island. Alton was always headed for Meanwhile. Lavender was in flux, but the core of her arc/character was something that spoke to me most strongly in a Pregame context (maybe more on that some other time, maybe not; it's less interesting).

Somewhere in there, discussion turned to the character cap, and the possibility of it being raised to four. To be frank, I didn't expect it to happen--seemed like a lot of work, and we were already projected to be bigger than V6 at three-cap. But at the same time, I didn't want to write off the opportunity, in case it did get bumped up.

This meant I had to make a character who I wouldn't be too bothered to see die horribly in-game, but also one who I had at least something vaguely interesting to do with in Meanwhile if what I expected came to pass and I only got to bring the three I had locked in. So, in looking for inspiration, I dug into the niches that were unfulfilled at the school, and thought what we were lacking was some of the more subtle, line-dancing forms of political provocation. At the same time, I pulled into play a headline I saw during the 2016 election that struck me and stuck with me particularly.

[+] Misty In A Nutshell

Basically, I wanted to play with the nuances of a character who for various reasons supports a cause that is actually in many ways counter to their own interests. Misty has thrown her lot in with a cause that seeks to oppress her, and is smart enough to see that, and hates it, but is at the same time too afraid of the alternatives and too caught up in the emotional release it does offer her to truly hash through the cognitive dissonance of her positions.

Also, I dig the neofolk genre of music, but exploring it is a constant game of dodge-the-nazi (I'm pretty strongly opposed to funneling money to literal nazis). This means a lot of research to make sure bands are on the cool list--which in turn entails a lot of research into those who are not. The nasty fascist side of neofolk was in many ways a preview of wider cultural shifts in recent years, bringing what was before shoved into the dark corners out into the light in all its ugliness. This seemed an appropriate thing to throw into the mix.


Misty On The Island (Or: Why Misty Is Not On The Island):

The thing is, all that thematic stuff with Misty created a specific niche for her in Pregame: conflicted antagonist. In the context of high school life, she's a villain, antagonizing and hurting others because it's what she knows and it props up her self esteem and squeezes her insecurities back under the bed. This was fun to work with, but also it pretty quickly became apparent that it was going to be an absolute trainwreck trying to develop in-game.

See, I saw two potential ways to go with Misty in-game: comeuppance, or redemption arc. Neither would've been very good.

Comeuppance is, like, the part where all of Misty's horribleness comes down on her and she dies horribly for such a jerk to everyone. The problem is, as characterized in Pregame, Misty's someone who can be very nasty but not mindlessly so. She's not stupid enough to lean on bigotry when doing so is literally risking her life--in much of what she does, there's an element of cowardice and ducking direct consequences (see: her insincere Truth or Dare apology). Plus, the math doesn't add up. The karma would not be balanced--it'd feel too revenge-fantasy-esque to kill her for her Pregame crimes if she didn't up the ante in-game, but if she did do that it'd be too simplified, too flat villain. So that side was dumped.

Redemption arc was even worse. See, to find any sort of narrative redemption/peace, Misty would have to grapple with the things that make her a bad person to begin with, which is being a bigoted troll. But the SOTF island is not really a place that lends itself to deep, sincere introspection on these topics without it feeling pretty forced and heavy-handed (and besides, I basically played that arc out in PV1). If Misty went and tried to do nice stuff and help people 'cause it's right, hey, cool, points for that I guess but it wouldn't change the fact that she spent Pregame doing gleefully bigoted stuff, and just hand-waving that all away because back against the wall she helped people wouldn't feel right. Yeah, doing good could complicate stuff a bit I guess, but... not in a way I'd feel at all good about digging into. Just way too much room to erase or ignore the problematic stuff she did, which I feel demands grappling with.

There was of course the neutral path, where she just sorta drifts aimlessly, gets rolled, and dies, but like... I felt that would be pretty disrespectful of the heavy themes I poked at with her, and also I have zero interest in writing fodder--have to be all-in on a character's island plan for them to be worth my time these days.

So basically, the problem was, it turned out Misty's themes were actually extremely ill-suited for the game, and the lack of a good way to approach them meant that if I did bring her, she'd end up the unfavored child, the one sitting in the corner twiddling her thumbs waiting for someone I liked better to get rolled so she could be Swapped/Heroed in. But, at the same time, because I'd wanted a backup plan in what I perceived as the likely event I couldn't even bring her if I wanted to, I actually had a fairly coherent, much more personally satisfying set of things to do with her not in the game (only the very start of which has been done so far--someday I will catch up on my bazillion Meanwhile plans ><). So the only choice was to dump Misty, and I had this other idea I'd been kicking around as hypothetical, and thus the events that led to my actual fourth character.


But What About That Witchcraft Thing?

So, Misty's other big notable trait was her witchcraft interest. I did loosely toy around with the idea of bringing it into play on the island, but the thing is, again due to Misty's particular character traits, it would be fairly blatant affectation as coping mechanism, if it manifested at all--she has specific beliefs about belief itself and such, but there's a real awareness of (and use of) a measure of artificiality. In short, I didn't think I could do it justice (if you want to read someone who is doing it justice I'm just gonna casually plug MS' Violet Schmidt here for getting into the subject in a more involved, cogent, and fascinating way than Misty ever could've). Indeed, much like her problematic personality traits, Misty's occult leanings became a thing I felt could only really be explored in a rounded way in a situation where her life wasn't on the line, where her actions are uncoerced and there's no grand guidance to fall back upon.

---

In short: I actually enjoyed writing Misty a lot but her themes and character were such that it became pretty clear to me that throwing her into the island would be a hot mess that failed to pay off setup I very much did not want to shrug away. She was made to pull double-duty depending on the cap changes, but Meanwhile!Misty ended up the more cogent path, so that's the way things go.

Proofreading at 2:30 am is for nerds so I'm just clicking Submit. Might clean this up later but for real probably won't.

im gonna rip off toben and talk about my non-island kids a little

okay so when pregame first started most people assumed we were only gonna get three kids so that was my assumption as well. ivy and axel were always 100% going on the island, no question, ok i memed a little about leaving ivy off just cause it would be such a dick move after everything in pregame but nah. that left one theoretical spot for four kids. at that point nia was the most likely choice but i toyed with having dante swap with her if only because i felt weird about bringing dante back from the v6 grave only to not actually use him in the version?

once we had four kids confirmed things got more complicated especially because iirc this was around when i started writing zen? and now that fourth spot was a tossup between them and dante, with nia pretty solidified in the third spot. basically what it came down to was pip; since dante/aurelien was a thing and zen/lyra was a technically-not-quite-canon-but-still-thing, i figured we'd have one couple on island and one in meanwhile, so id just go with whatever she picked. she sent aurelien and left lyra home so that made up my mind for me!

(i think there was a minute where pip was gonna leave stepney home and i have no fuckin clue what i would have done in that instance. flipped a coin maybe)

i considered artem a few times, never all that seriously. i do think he would have been interesting, his morbid sensibilities would have taken over and he'd have some similarities to where nia wound up in terms of wanting to observe people and their actions in this situation (probably not similar re: murders tho). the whole prom scene basically ended all chance of that happening. imo the point of that scene was in regards to both lorenzo and artem having to come to terms with the very real consequences of what happened there, and in artem's case that means dealing with genuine trauma. the island is nothing But genuine trauma, and if artem had gone on the trip that part of his story would kind of abruptly be forced into not mattering. since he stayed home he can deal with the trauma of his friends dying while still having to face what happened to Him, and i think that's important.

zen on the island is kinda hard to imagine at this point but i do feel like there was potentially some mileage to be had re: how people-pleasing and desperate they often were. some of that found its way into ivy and how strongly she felt about keeping ace with her; zen would have been that ramped up to 11 with the genuine possibility of them killing from someone else manipulating them into it. probably for the best i kept them home tho tbh

Bryan chases the Carters literally all over the island

I'm serious.

If rolls hadn't intervened to kill him where they did, I was going to have Bryan repeatedly follow the brothers until he either actually did get his legs broken (whereupon he would have crawled) or Ricky/Callum told me to knock it off.

Look.

Bryan takes his promises and responsibilities seriously okay.

hey i have more dead kids now

nia karahalios:

• Nia's original incarnation was autistic and ace/aro, and i stepped back on both of those things because i worried about leaning too hard into stereotypes on both fronts. and also it was fun writing such a self-serious character having a heart attack over a cute girl like i did in Monachopsis short-lived as that was
• Nia was originally slated to go to prom with Parker, having decided that its a once-in-a-lifetime sort of experience and thus she was obligated to experience it despite knowing she wouldn't enjoy it in the least. stuff kinda fell through there but the concept of them going to a party together kinda got reworked backward into Perfect Forward Secrecy, which is easily my favorite Nia pregame thread anyways, so it worked out in the end
• me and paige talked a lot about Nia and Jeremiah meeting up a few days in and then splitting up immediately, crossing paths a few times over the course of the game but never staying together. this was because earlier on both characters were more inherently selfish and both believed they could only really look out for themselves if they weren't looking out for each other. in their current incarnations as of the game start they would have stayed together, though stuff obvs didnt work out that way.
• Jeremiah and Nia meeting up on day 1 was purely coincidental; Nia was already in the village and paige wasn't super satisfied w/ Jeremiah's first thread so we decided to just go straight for them meeting up. we probably would have held off on them meeting for a few days if things didnt shake out that way and thus w/ the ways rolls shook out Nia would have never seen Jeremiah again, which might have shook her harder than watching him die, tbh
• Nia and Alexander's partnership was planned out months in advance mostly off of the concept of "the terrorists are assholes and would probably find it very funny to stick a blind kid and a mute kid together". we discussed various ways the partnership might go but how well they actually ended up working together came down to chance.
• me and boogie had been planning, after Jeremiah's death, on Nia and Alexander getting their first kill as a team effort, probably with Nia getting the final kill credit but with Alexander clearly being involved, and the two of them becoming a player duo. this unfortunately failed to materialize because Alexander was rolled so quickly after Jeremiah's death
• Nia has secretly had death rights on Nick for basically the whole game and im still kinda bummed that never got to happen because it would have been Nia's biggest moment but yknow, rip
• i had approached frog boy previously about Michael eventually killing Nia, and that was the plan i was sticking to right until i heroed her and realized i was already in a perfect situation for her to be killed by Justin, and leaving the scene just to get killed by Michael instead would have felt kinda contrived to me. would have been super fun for Michael im sure. hes having a great time so much all the time already
• this could go in the next section too but: i was not originally gonna hero Nia when i did. i was gonna hero Axel, because i had been planning to hero him for a while and was prepared for it. that said i felt i was stagnating with Nia, because she had no potential allies left alive and would inevitably just kinda wander until there were relevant people around for her to kill; Axel still had his friends and other interesting people to potentially do stuff with, so i felt secure in holding onto him and letting Nia go. and then the RNG was like, fuck your choices, actually, i am in charge here, do you know who i am, etc, and that was how That shook out

axel fontaine (hoo boy):

• Axel was definitely supposed to have a tongue ring i just forgot to mention it in his description haha ,,
• Original Recipe Axel was supposed to be way more of a douchebag than he ended up being. the moment at swiftball where he punches Demetri in the nose with no real provocation is probably the most indicative of what he was originally supposed to be like. like he was supposed to be at best morally ambiguous and then he ended up being a big sappy baby instead woops
• Original Recipe Axel was also NAFT's drug dealer kid's bestie-slash-enforcer which would have highlighted his worst tendencies but then NAFT went out for cigarettes
• ive told a bunch of people this but Axel was originally meant to be dating Teresa through most of pregame. their memory thread was meant originally to be a prelude to their relationship; they would have broken up shortly before prom when Axel finally pulled the trigger on his feelings for Hel. Hel's jealousy of their relationship would have been a major thing throughout pregame. this ended up not happening because me and Yugi agreed during their first thread the chemistry just wasn't really there and thus the obstacle between Hel and Axel became "Axel being an idiot" more than anything
• The Deadbeats were literally the first thing i became part of when i came back for v7 because paige like immediately invited me into a group chat with them and zee about it. when i first joined Violet Q was also part of the band, and around when i joined there was a kid who never actually materialized who was supposed to be the drummer. but in the end it ended up just being Hel and Andy and Axel and their backing drummer, the broken radiator
• Axel was definitely supposed to interact with his siblings more, he's supposed to be somewhat close to them, but i never had any real inspiration to write them or write about them and Axel had enough on-island relationships to worry about without also worrying about them, so that aspect of his profile ended up kinda unused.
• because paige was afk for most of pregame there was a little while where Axel and Myles were gonna wind up going to prom together. it would have started out with Myles kinda incredulous and not expecting anything and Axel going all out basically just to prove he can and they end up falling for each other just a little bit but then at prom they both get distracted trying to win over the newly-single Tristan, and then they end up all going home together, and then they have a threesome in the limo, the threesome was planned for so long, yall. then paige came back and obviously it made way more sense for Axel and Hel to do prom together which unfortunately missed out on there being cute bonding time with Myles and Axel but yknow. they still got their threesome at swiftball and isn't that all that really matters in the end
• i think at some point there was gonna be a specific memory thread about the first time Axel and Hel hooked up; i ended up using the bones of that scene during Axel's death oneshot. the similar scene re: Abe was originally going to be a memory but me and boogs were already writing the memory with Abe and Artem so there wasn't really time or space, so we were gonna bring it up some time on island where it was convenient, and that turned out to not have happened before the death oneshot, so we snuck it in there
• the whole Abe thing was a relatively late addition to Axel's story in that the two of them always had an awkward hookup in their backstory but we ended up working in Andy's feelings about Forrest and having Abe and Axel been really close in the past to make it this whole big Thing, and ideally we would have figured that out sooner before the game started so we could work it into pregame
• The Kiss was a thing i was planning for a long time, except it was supposed to be with Andy initially, with Axel kissing him right before he died cause, yknow, last shot, all of that. Andy died first so it wound up being Abe instead and a matter of brain damage instead of acting on a long-repressed impulse; tbh i had been assuming Hel was already dead in the former scenario since even as selfish as Axel can be his last kiss would be for Hel if they were there for it. and it was as it turned out!
• i had a very set idea for if Hel died before Axel and Andy where Axel wound up blaming Andy for it, attacking him and then abandoning him and wandering off alone on a self-destructive tear, which ended up not happening because Andy died first obviously. the thread title "my heart will be blacker than your eyes when i'm through with you" was reserved Specifically for that thread, but i'm glad i wound up finding another way to use it, because its a good fuckin title and i wont hear any differently
• as i said above Axel was originally going to be heroed where Nia was; what i didn't say was he was originally going to be heroed for Myles back when he was rolled in December. i started up the thread w/ the Lorenzo fight with the intent of that being what killed him, but gianni stepped in to hero with Camille instead, and me and tony figured we might as well roll with the fight scene anyways.
• shiola mentioned but there was discussion of Axel, Lorenzo and Tyrell getting together and agreeing to a temporary truce until Lucas B was dead, which ended up not happening since Lucas B offed himself like immediately after that
• tiny thing but i had been planning on Axel trying to duet with Hel when they sang to him for the last time, with him unable to keep up his side; then paige made that voice recording and it wouldnt have really made sense to do that at that point and also i was already so sad yall i didnt need to make it worse

Max Rudolph:

Max could've died earlier.

The plan was to hero Max whenever Darlene got rolled. This was the plan since probably Day 3 IC-time. Max, really, is a character about sacrifice. He's about a lot of things, but sacrifice is a bit of a motif, so having him die for Darlene was always sort of the plan. It wasn't always going to happen the way it did (well, I did want to use the man-catcher to explode a collar since like the day I got it), but it was going to happen. Darlene got rolled during the eleventh rolls, and I was about to get to her when I saw that MW played his swap. Max's extra day or so alive didn't really matter much to his overall story. Maybe he could have found his way into the Jonah/Arizona/Quinn fight?

I could've made better decisions with my time and money.

I've commissioned like 50 dollars worth of Crusader Chan art at this point. I also have several Crusader Chan picrews. What, you may ask, am I planning to do with all of this? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Or, well, you'll have forgotten all about it by the time anything happens.

The whole ][ thread thing.

Oh my god okay so here's the thing with this.

My first mistake was in reading the title of the thread. ][, to me, combined with the subtitle of the thread being "Open", lead me to believe that it was yeah sure a roman numeral thing but made out of two open brackets? That's a super open thread. My second mistake happened when I read the second post of the thread. I was, well, incredibly unaware of different island happenings at this point. When you read it now it has a nice mass-entrance tag at the bottom, but when I read it that wasn't there. I, in my absolutely baffling stupidity, thought this was all one person.

There isn't a specific third mistake. Sorry to all you Rule of Three fetishists out there. Believe me, I know.

So, what do I do? I lead three more people into a thread that is already six people deep. Naturally, Condor bailed immediately. We considered having Max's group also dip, or scatter or something, but in the end we came up with several post-orders at once that formed this honestly really great web of insanity. I think it went pretty well.

Charity Oneshot.

Max's charity habits are loosely alluded to in his profile and his pre-game run, less so on the island. I initially wanted for a while to include a one-shot in pregame where he went and spent time at a soup kitchen, or a food bank. To humanize him, a little. It'd bring Max into open conflict with his bigotry. Among the sick and needy are people that Max looks down on, people that he views as less than human. Yet, in spite of himself, he would help these people. There would be a good deal of personal struggle and internal strife during this, as he deals with progressively less desirable people, and has to offer the same help to everyone. Eventually people that he fully believes do not deserve to exist would get served, too.

The reason I didn't write this was because, put simply, it sucks.

For starters, it's cheap. I understand Max as someone who believes he is a hero, who does good things, but is a pretty bad person all things considered. I don't support or endorse the things that Max believes in. This thread would be a tacit endorsement of Max's beliefs. "It's okay to be a fascist and a bigot, as long as it doesn't keep you from doing good things occasionally." Setting aside a few hours on a Saturday to be good is not enough to offset the relentless hate that Max spews on a daily basis. Max is a vile person. He isn't an outrageously bigotted person on the outside, but his worldview is poisonous. In The Noble Eavesdropper he only refers to Siyanda with pronouns at all when ze does something good for him and helps him with a book. Acknowledging the identity of someone he hates is a reward for being "one of the good ones" to Max. This is to say nothing of how he regards Artem. He doesn't say slurs at them, he doesn't scream at them when his book isn't there, but he is hateful and disgusting towards people regardless. The volunteering thread would no doubt place Max in contact with lots of people he despises for some reason or other. This may be hard to believe, given that I write Violet Schmidt (and given what I write in general), but I don't like it when writers beat the audience over the head with the point. That's what this would be.

Also, I didn't believe there was enough of Max's negative side in pre-game to justify what would be effectively an exclusively positive portrayal of Max as a tragic "hero" and self-styled "white savior" sort of person. He's a piece of shit to Ari in Disc Rot, he's an annoying simp to Faith in the Facebook thread, he basically suggests that he believes in a Nazi-flavored accelerationist ideology to Parker on the bus to DC, but this is already balanced with his behavior with Misty in their prom threads and the relatively sympathetic start-of-darkness-ish oneshot To Be a Brilliant Light memory thing. Given how I knew his island run would play out, I didn't want to tip the scales too much in favor of Max as a person, so I scuttled the thread idea.

There are a few more scuttled Max pregame ideas—I'm going to link the Quadpost in every single one of these—but this is the big one.

Max as a Winner.

Before I settled on Max sacrificing himself to save Darlene, I briefly entertained the idea of the kind of epilogue I'd write for Max if he won. This post is already pretty long so I'll keep it brief;

SOTF's very own Kyle Kashuv.

Oh and I almost forgot:

Max was almost short for Maximilian

Camilla Bell What-Could-Have-Beens

* I've talked about this before, but Camilla's very first concept was almost a complete 180 of what she ended up being. Yeah, she'd still be an introverted gardener, but she wouldn't be the resident grandma who really wants friends, she'd be more of a jerkish misanthrope. Somewhat unrelated but tying into this- I also said I didn't expect love to play such a huge role in her story. In fact, I made her acearo solely so she wouldn't end up in a romantic plot. And she didn't, but honestly, I'm happy with how it turned out.

* I contemplated changing Cam's romantic orientation to demi mid-pregame but decided it was too late to change it.

* Since Camilla as we know her really solidified in my mind, I planned for her to snap on the island after going through a Lot Of Shit, with the breaking point specifically being killing someone in her care. This is basically what ended up happening, but in the original plan, Cam's context for doing it was very different. Basically, part of said Lots Of Shit would include one of her friends dying, and some time after they do, she decides that if [cherished friend] couldn't live and be happy, then nobody had the right to live and be happy.

* I also mentioned this, but I did briefly consider Cam off-limits to becoming a player, at the start of her meeting with Justin. Why? I felt like in the threads she was in up to that point, she came across as an underdog who people wanted to see succeed, and that she'd carried on that mantle for too long. That if I had her go villain mode now, it'd be too rushed and would disappoint people. I think it was about that time that Meilin had her darker aspects come to the forefront, and I mentioned it in her What-Could-Have-Beens, so I considered shifting gears to make Meilin my player instead of Camilla.

* Not really a Cam could-have-been, but I genuinely didn't foresee the gardening club becoming the tight-knit group it ended up being. Seeing it grow into that was no doubt the best surprise I had writing here. With it shifted a whole bunch of my themes for Camilla, but into something that made a surprising amount of sense. I'm eternally grateful for it.

Ultimately, I'm very happy with where Camilla actually ended up, and I think even if any of these came to pass, it wouldn't have been nearly as good as what ended up actually happening. Cheers, everybody. Thanks for such a great first version.

Well, first time doing one of these, but here we go anyway.

Julien Leblanc (and yes, it is in fact Leblanc):

- Julien was originally intended to be what is in retrospect a much more cookie-cutter character, plainly nice to just about everyone he met and not going near the depths of violent anger that he actually reached in practice. As time went on and he got involved in more things, however, that changed as I kept taking him to the polish wheel to make him shine more and more, and I find the resulting benevolently violent, self-destructive disaster which Julien came to be to be far better as a character for it than if I had followed the alternative.

- Being able to read into others the way that he does and being so stubbornly forward about things, in some of what I feel are the better threads I sent him through, was also a development that happened in flux. When he's talking with Forrest at the hotel or tearing strips off Ashlynn before going in for the kill, the way he perceives things is notably different from his very first thread back in pre-game with Alton and Morgan, or him talking with Nia in the museum, something I feel to be a personal low point of my tenure with him.

- Chef Leblanc, as Chad so eloquently calls him, also wasn't planned to be an aspect of him until it was. After his crossing paths with Myles came about, I figured he would at least have an idea of what would come about and so pointedly did not want to think about Faith. The idea that who better than Sierra came to mind, and the rest is history. Him and Blaise being a thing is also something I'd have liked to explore more, although Paige sadly wasn't around for much of pre-game.

For game itself, there's a different can of worms to be opened. It likely isn't everything that could have differed, but it's what comes to mind at the time of writing this.

- I had wanted for him to meet up with either Madison or Marceline at some point, after certain developments in their times on the island; one would have been to try and further elaborate on certain things about why he thought and acted the way he did, and the other would have revolved around their connections to/thoughts on Blaise and what they had done.

- His meeting with Faith originally would have been a much more pleasant one, owing to the friendship they had. But then he got up close and personal with Ashlynn, became even more of a mess than he originally was and it occurred to me that with his aims on island and the sort of person he was it wouldn't make sense for him to act that way.

- There were several kills and deaths I considered for him along the way, most of which didn't pan out owing to the conditions they hinged upon. Among them was the idea of him working with Lucas Diaz to see Erika killed, which I would have proposed to MS and Shiola had circumstances permitted it. How he came out of it would depend on whether he was rolled or not. Another notable one would have been Ace/Myles and Ivy killing him. If either of those possibilities, his final thread would have been a very different one in tone, mindset and the way he acted throughout. It would touch upon themes and character ties which I felt had already been used plenty to good effect, however, so I wanted to go for an opportunity to showcase a different aspect of him. It also allowed for something which hadn't come about in V7 until then, as it happened, so things were all the better for it.

- Speaking of his death, there were actually several ways it could have panned out at Blaise's hands. Some of the ideas floated around included their pulling his nails out with tweezers; that one was discarded owing to him effectively having done it to himself already during his burying Ashlynn. Making him dig his own grave and being forced to claw his way out of it to get something like a peaceful end was also put out there, but what came about simply worked the best between the characters involved accounting for the points they were both at and the bond they had between them.

Claudeson Bademosi:

Pregame:

So Claudeson was probably the most challenging concept that I've tried to write to date. I am not religious, nor am I someone who has first-hand experience with fighting mental illness, so he required a lot of R+D on my part. I did a lot of reading about how different kinds of people deal with depression and anxiety, as well as people who repress their inner feelings and how people who grow up in the church experience mental illness. I did a lot of online searching around his conception and it was some tough stuff to read. He was written as my take on a pre-made player. It was never a question as to whether or not he would play the game, it was simply a matter of when. One place where I'm fairly certain I succeeded with him was writing him in pregame as someone who was not outwardly objectionable, a well-known and well-to-do student who personified good in his outward actions. His internal monologue was probably a bit more conservative and less accepting than he came off in public, and I tried to colour it with a dark side that would bubble to the surface occasionally. His trajectory never changed throughout the course of pregame and the actual version; he was to start with the occasional bubble of darkness and he would spiral as pregame wound down.

The existence of the trip changed my plans a little, as it allowed me to have him enter the trip in full-on crisis mode and set the table for his eventual manic breakdown in game.

As far as pregame is concerned, my only real regret is that I didn't make more of an effort to establish at least one or two relatively strong friendships for him. It occurred to me mid-way through the game that he didn't really have any friends; most of his interactions were very surface-level and with just a slight degree of detachment. Originally Camila was supposed to be this person, but Cicada and I didn't really get around to writing them very much at by that time, it was too late.

Game:

Claude's demise

So thanks to pregame, Claudeson entered the game having a predetermined fate. No matter what happened in the game, he was always going to die at the hands of one of three people: Tyrell Lahti, Wyatt Carter, or Bret Carter (in that order). My ideal situation for his death after Deamon was gracious enough to allow me to kill Bret was to have Tyrell and Wyatt put aside their mutual loathing and work together to kill Claudeson. Naturally, thanks to the dice rolls and what I perceived as a lack of interest in the other two handlers working together post-Gifts, that never came to pass. Once Wyatt died, Claudeson had two ways his story was to play out. Either he was to die to Tyrell, or he would fall totally into his nihilism hole and start attacking literally everyone he came across until he was taken down. If that had come to pass, I was likely going to hero him off and try to seek out a more heroic, quieter character to do the deed.

When he and Tyrell were both rolled at the same time, it made planning the death easy - though my original plan was that he would spiral down into total despair and go out with his beliefs shattered and his faith gone forever. With that being said, I thought a lot about it and realized that just because someone is in a spiral and has rejected their beliefs does not mean that when the chips are down, they would not return to those beliefs and cling to them for comfort in their final hours. If I'm being honest, writing Claude as an uncaring nihilist isn't at all in my wheelhouse and was utterly exhausting, probably attributing to a little bit of the reason that I ended up disappointed in his last few threads - outside of Meka's demise, not a whole lot happened. That's nobody's fault, that's just circumstance. A few times, I lost his narrative voice and had to extensively reread him to find it again, which didn't help either.

Lori

I had toyed with several ideas when Claudeson and Lori were paired together. At one point, I had thought that maybe he would make a clumsy pass at her; or vice-versa, which would likely sever their partnership. The idea that I had thought for Lori and Claudeson would be that Claudeson would show her affection and kindness while simultaneously involving her in these terrible acts, like killing Meka. Unfortunately, a few slow threads and no luck with pitching didn't lead to anything panning out. Hindsight being what it was, the duo should likely have split up after the Emeka death as I think it would have serviced both characters better. At least Rugga seems to have been able to get a few beats out of another human abandoning Lori, so I hope that it ended up being at least a little worthwhile!

Other musings:

In my original, as-of-V7's-start preferred death order, Claudeson was either the last or second-to-last to go. My hope is that he would have had a bit more of an impact player-wise and could have been a bit more of a spectre lurking around that people dreaded finding. Obviously I had never planned any kind of epilogue or anything with him, but he was the only kid of mine that I foresaw a bad ending for, much like he would have had without the trip. Had he survived, his entire family would have disowned him and he likely finds himself involved in organized crime outside of the United States, in jail, or institutionalized. My intention was to tell a sad story with him, one that was occasionally uncomfortable to read. It was at times certainly rather uncomfortable to write, so hopefully I managed to pull that off.

All in all, I'm like, 80% satisfied with how things turned out, which is pretty good!

First time ever doing something like this, so might as well use it to talk about Lucas well after anyone cared about him. No Sierra though since I never really had that much in way of plans for her sans a potential epilogue.

Lucas Abernathy

Pregame

During pregame I had this idea for a story arc revolving around Lucas making a movie. It was to be around four threads long and I had various ideas for what would transpire for the plotline, going from the first day of shooting to the eventual wrap party. Unfortunately, no one participated in this storyline, with the storyline basically ending after one thread (of which only one other character was present) that ultimately went no where due to time constraints making it impractical to post future thread regarding it. Canonically, Lucas still made his movie, but it was done offscreen given that no other threads were made in connection. Threads would have been named after found footage movies.

Game

When writing both my characters I took a very hands off approach as to how their characters would develop, allowing the situation they found themselves affecting their characters rather than having a set end goal idea for where I want to take their arcs. This is why Sierra hadn't ever really changed from start to finish, but with Lucas his character arc became more and more clear as he found himself dealing with the horrors of the island. I had basically two potential paths I was leaving it open for Lucas to go down: hero or villain. The hero path would have seen a more noble and selfless Lucas, who would have actively tried to find a way to escape the island or at the very least try to ensure someone he actually cares about manages to survive to the best of his abilities. Had Lucas found Camille alive, especially early on, he'd like have been set down on this path. Ultimately, this path was cut from possibilities when Camille died, setting him firmly on the villain path.

Through the course of V7 I wanted to reflect his worsening mental state on the island. This was to be reflected in a series of dreams titled Unbreakable, Split, then finally Glass. The first two threads were made, but Lucas died before Glass was ever created. Unbreakable was made to reflect his mental state at its strongest, which happened after he suffered from the trauma of seeing Beryl die, Split reflects his mental state beginning to crumble, which came about after discovering Camille's corpse and learning Roxie died. Had he lived long enough, Glass would have came about sometime after learning of Ivy and Myles' deaths, which would have reflected his mentality finally cracking and fully succumbing to madness, going from trying to kill people out of revenge to simply trying to kill everyone and win.

At this point, Lucas would have begun subconsciously emulating horror villains as a means for him to cope with the horrors of the island. This would have seen Lucas become noticeably more silent, as well as stalking/watching people from a distance. If he could, he would have made or worn a mask to help complete this image. One thing I wanted to due in this phase of his character development was to deconstruct the Implacable Man trope that many horror villains use, with Lucas getting increasingly injured as the game went on and only through sheer willpower does he keep going. This would have gone on until endgame where, if he had somehow managed to win, he would have collapsed on the spot as he had no further need to keep going and (depending on how injured he became over the course of the game) would almost die from the extent of his injuries and would have faced real long term health consequences depending on the nature of his injuries. I had consider the possibility of just him dying after winning, but I'm sure everyone would have been mad at me if I had done that.