What Could Have Been II

[Maraoone]

joanne!!

i don't have a lot for her really because i was really winging it with her for a lot of the time. we'd discussed possibly having her meet up with the titty brigade and that would've been fun, but not much was discussed beyond that. re: her arc, i do think she would've stayed her course on the hero-ish side of things, trying to do '''something'''. i think she would've tried stealing weapons, generally trying to get people to lay down arms, but being rash and confrontational and impulsive while doing so. what i always appreciated about joanne in her pregame when she was handled by cicada was, like, her role as someone that Tries to be good, but falls short a lot of the time, and lets her emotions get the best of her, so i was hoping for more of a continuation of that kind of arc on island.

aditi!!

i didnt have her for too long unfortunately so character-wise, there's not much i had planned. i was really interested in seeing what the ramifications of accidentally killing charelle would be, because i wasn't informed that she'd actually have to die until we were more than halfway into the thread, when the house was set on fire, so, like, i had to plan for both aditi dying and aditi not dying. i figure she would have been Disturbed, to say the least, had she been allowed to walk away from the fire, and i can easily envision the group falling apart because it's a rather catastrophic failure of leadership, but i didn't really discuss this with any fellow handlers because nothing was certain. the one thing that i was sure about was her not playing, both per handler wish, and because, like, it doesn't really fit her character. like, the terrorists stole her future from her, so to submit herself to them by following their wishes and killing would've been a self-betrayal she was incapable of.

although re: the escape, like, we were thinking of either setting a village house or the manor house on fire. the manor house actually makes more sense IC because it's at the peak of the island and it's big, so any smoke plume would probably be more visible from there. we backed off from the manor house because, iirc, there was a thread taking place there, and we were kinda worried about the possible reaction/backlash to an entire area of the island getting set on fire, so we settled with a village house.

yuka!!!

basically before i start with her, like, i just want to discuss the goal i had in mind for yuka when i adopted her. basically, like, a lot of my kids have Dark And Edgy backstories involving bullying and one (1) absent parent and general Issues, and, like, yuka was me trying to write someone that wasn't like that! she has a super supportive loving family, a great social life, etc.

but, like, i always like introducing a thing into my kids, a little issue. and, at the time, i was feeling this sort of malaise about the news, this urge to just close my hands around my ears and not listen to anything, so that's that little element of myself i introduced to yuka, this overwhelming desire to avoid unhappiness. it's something i mention briefly in her opening post, the bit about shutting off the tv and not listening to the news, but i dont think i was able to push it as much as i wanted to.

that being said, here are some ideas that were missed out on

- powerpuff girls assemble: so basically poly, ryuki, and i always intended for the girls to meet up. but, like, we split them up on day 1 so there'd be that tension of whether or not they all find each other (spoilers they didn't), and also it would've been weird for them to meet up immediately since the Other twins, wyatt and bret, had already met up. we didn't really plan much for them as a trio because rng decided to bully yuko first, so

ryuki and i got to talk more about yuki and yuka, however, since he valiantly fought off rng twice before rng finally got yuki. and, like, had they been allowed to stick around together longer, there would have been a sort of good cop/bad cop dynamic between the two sisters, with yuki being the good cop and yuka being the bad cop. you see hints of this with how they confront demetri in yuki's death thread, and that sort of dynamic would've repeated itself as they both tried to find katrina.

also, there's a bit in yuka's profile where it's mentioned that she's actually kinda jealous of yuko for being Brave and Strong while she isn't, and so she would've tried to step up to fill in yuko's shoes. too much so. like, she would've become very coddling, overprotective of yuki, enough to strain their relationship, because losing yuki too would've broken her [and then it did!!! hahahahahah aha ha ah ah aha a ;-;]. i could easily see yuka killing just to protect yuki, which would've caused yuki to just stop talking to yuka altogether out of disgust.

- yuka dies first/second: a lot of yuka's arc was v dependent on one or both sisters dying before her, on having her deal with unhappiness once she can't avoid it. and, well, that happened. but, had it not and yuka got rolled earlier on, i probably would've had yuka sacrifice herself for one of her sisters, because she really really did not like the idea of living without her sisters. this is applicable for, like, any stage/configuration of the game.

- yuka gets revenge: so, like, there's a bunch of people that yuka was on the hunt for by the time she died, but the only ones she really really actually cared about were erika and katrina, since they killed her sisters. so, had she managed to kill them/outlast them in some manner, she would have killed herself. like, my intention for her arc post-sisters dying was for her to go onto this hedonistic spiral, fucking around, taking drugs and stuff, and then she realizes that she'll never be quite as happy as she wants to be with her sisters gone, and she doesn't want to live with that reality. so, after one last night of fun, she does herself up with makeup, and then shoots herself.

there are bits of this that ended up in yuka's death, and they actually inform a lot of it. i was Very invested in the whole makeup bit, which actually is in her death post, so that's why yuka ends up bleeding out and dying alone, so she could have time to do that. there's also bits about, like, not wanting to live without her sisters mentioned in the one-shot, but due to time constraints/general writers' block, the topic isn't dwelled upon as much as i would have preferred

[MurderWeasel]

Much belated.

Sven Vee:

• Sven's story gets (even) more meta: So, my initial concept for Sven leaned a lot harder on the metafictional elements of his mental state, and specifically envisioned a more adversarial relationship with his own narrative. Whenever he had some space, he was going to have an ongoing dialogue/disagreement with the narrator, potentially digging into both metaphysical and game-focused elements. This is present to an extent in his very first one-shot, but while it was never consciously abandoned it just ended up not really fitting his vibe/story as it played out--there was enough metaphyiscal/fictional stuff already and throwing another layer on top would've been overkill and distracting besides.
• Sven's universal tour: By now everyone probably knows that every time Sven moves between threads in the the game there's a hidden one-shot (if you didn't, well, now you know!), and that each of these one-shots lives in a different section of the internet (Imgur, Pastebin, Tapatalk, the edit history of Sven's wiki page, whatever). What you probably don't know unless you dug into the archive links buried within one of those hidden interludes is that I did a big chunk of setup for Sven's wild ride before the Tapocalypse and so some of the spots he was intended to venture through were purged from existence (for example, the long-lost negaverse SOTF created during V4 as a tech test zone by some departed staffers [check out the new member info at the bottom!]) or else subsumed into the homogeneous blob (what's the fun of sneaking a post into V1 if V1 looks just like V2-6 site looks just like old Mini?). Some of these were intended to get fairly involved, but the core stuff made the jump okay.
• The longest day: So, as mentioned, Sven has weird, metafictional lapses between each thread, but being a character fairly in touch with the narrative there was an awareness of this hanging over his story. While certain points were charted (can't start a time loop you're not committed to closing!) there was actually a lot of leeway and evolution based on what went down in his threads, and this shaped his relationship with the ambiguous-extant support character who appeared in most of the interludes. Had Sven's story swung in a different way and that relationship turned more hostile, I planned to park him somewhere and have him just refuse to change threads for anything short of a DZ, probably just sinking into the play-by-play of his day if nobody was there and then having normal thread stuff if they were, as he ducked the narrative trigger for a lapse.
• Sven pulls Marco through the Tapatalk tunnels: So back at the aviary when stuff started getting heated, Sven's allegiance fell closest to Marco mostly due to empathy over the eye thing. He was also slightly more aware than he came off, at least to the degree he figured Marco was maybe a bit in over his head. I had no idea how the thread was gonna go, but at a point I planned to have Sven offer to search the upstairs with Marco while "Carl" and Tom hung out below. Out of sight, he would've basically turned to Marco and said "We can get out of here, but you have to trust me and close your eyes," and if Marco was down for that, whoops, bammo, there's the continued tag.
  
  Now a little rule of Sven's was that no matter how wild stuff got, there had to be an in-universe plausible-by-science explanation for it because I'm big on playing nice with continuity, so in this case I figured the next thread would start with him kicking an old ladder into the bushes or something. This was the only point where I really considered dragging someone else into Sven's nonsense and I didn't say a thing because I play this stuff fast and loose and wanted to see what happened naturally; in this case that was Marco suddenly realized he didn't actually have ammo and cut and ran on his own.
• Sven's heel turn AKA the lightsaber saga AKA Lucas Diaz ends a man's whole career: So, for all of Sven's general tranquility and peaceful nature there was one really big wrinkle, which was staff rolled him a lightsaber and I'm a wee bit of a Star Wars nerd and the vagueness in the weapon description was just perfect for shenanigans. So for those not in the know there are in fact an incredible variety of toy lightsabers ranging from what are basically movie prop replicas to plastic junk sold for five bucks at Target. Absent specifics I decided Sven got one of the latter, specifically a ~circa 2005 generic lightsaber (these were ones not pegged to any specific Jedi/Sith, the better to use your imagination!).
  
  Now as the Star Wars connoisseur knows, a lightsaber's color says a lot about its wielder, specifically if it's red you are evil evil evil! And since the weapon pull didn't say, I decided that would be a fun element to play with, a sort of narrative weight/destiny weighing down on Sven--he had the lightsaber, it was red, so at some point real bad things were gonna happen. This is also why I very very specifically did not talk about the lightsaber's color at all, ever--it was set the moment I saw his profile but the first time it got flicked open and anyone else learned, stuff was gonna get real. I actually had a vague idea to kill somebody nebulously between threads--the very last thing Sven did before the exit tag, the last little detail as he followed our lucky winner out, would be he would flick out the plastic lightsaber blade and then next thread he'd turn up all alone, what a tragedy!
  
  But then, then! Lucas Diaz happened to meet up with Sven, and Lucas was collecting weird crappy fake swords, and it was his birthday, and he asked for the lightsaber. This felt like fate, so of course I had to give it to him. If you were wondering why Sven was acting like he was handing over the One Ring of Power in that scene, well, now you know--the lightsaber was in physical terms a piece of plastic garbage but in big symbolic terms it was a curse and a promise hanging over Sven, and by giving it away--something he would've never ever ever done without basically that specific pitch--he was released from a pretty grim path.
  
  The flipside of this, though, was Sven handed his entire trajectory to Lucas on a narrative whim, which left him drifting comparatively unmoored and was ultimately a big part in why he was the one who got Swapped for Darlene when she was rolled. At the very start of V7, I had a theoretical ideal death order--if everything went perfect I expected my cast to be eliminated in the order of Phillip, then Juliette, then Sven, then Darlene (though there are some wrinkles and contingencies here for Juliette's and Darlene's eventual sections). Juliette was in an okay spot to get to her conclusion but at the same time I felt like she had a lot left to do, and meanwhile Sven was drifting and also I had the Wade Wilson cameo I'd lured Adam into agreeing to with a very partial description all the way back in Pregame on deck, so I decided it made more sense to call things for Sven there.
• Sven's unrolled trigger: Each of my V7 kids had an unrolled death trigger. Some were more concrete than others (hello, Marceline!) but Sven's wasn't really like that. Basically the thing about Sven was his shtick was something I could get away with when there were a hundred kids running around and there was plenty of room for people to get involved with it or not depending on what they wanted, but it was pretty clear he'd become progressively more narratively disruptive as the game narrowed so I was fairly sure I wanted him out of the picture by the top twenty or so no matter what. If anything really perfect came along, and I'd already gotten to close all the time loops (there were a couple of these) then basically he could've dropped at more or less any time if the spirit of the narrative landed right.

It's late and I may be forgetting stuff and this may make no sense but I'm definitely too tired to fix it.

[Emprexx Plush]

Been meaning to get at this awhile and I'm sorta caught up so let's take it from the top of Death Order

B073, Jeremiah Anderson

-Jeremiah's planned arc was to land him somewhere between player and player hunter depending on how his early threads went. A recurring theme in his thoughts was the idea of fairness and who had a shot on the island still. The darker turn here if early kills/fight scenes had permitted where Jeremiah's frustration with his life long circumstances and the privilege he perceives among his classmates would have tipped into grim karmic balancing. He would have went after people he felt already had their shot to make sure they don't get off the island; this version of Jeremiah probably wouldn't have been so interested in winning as making sure those he perceives as the worst and weakest among his class lose. There is another route he could have taken where he swung that unfairness more narrowly into the killer/victim dynamic and wanted to hunt down repeat killers so that people would have more opportunity to die on their own terms. Either Jeremiah probably would have latched on to somebody to sheep to the end; the obvious choice is Nia and that's probably where the first path leads, but the latter path would have put him in more of a shepherd/protector role. If there was anyone he'd interacted with that fit the mold I would have reached out to them about it; Alexander and Amelia were my pocket picks but it never got far enough for me to approach either Boogie or Tony about it. There are notes of this in his death post, but he didn't live long enough for either path to get off the ground. I ended up repurposing some elements of this ideology into Marco.

-Nia and Jeremiah were not meant to run into each other until later in the game, and then only briefly. What Fen and I had planned was that they would both be into their respective killer arcs and have an initially tense encounter where they didn't realize they were following each other followed by a reunion. Nia would assume they were sticking together, he would decline, they'd have an argument that would come down to him not wanting her to see the ugly parts of his anger and jealousy he'd put so much effort into sheltering her from, and he doesn't want to remember her as a murderer either. They're one of the best parts of each other's lives, and he wants that to go out uncompromised regardless what happens. It was a good scene we were both looking forward to; so what happened? Well, Jeremiah's first thread bummed me out a lot since his presence was pretty much no-sold, which fits with his dynamic and the expected ableist biases that come with communication disabilities, I just wasn't in a good place to spend his entire time doing that since I was already feeling detached from spending most of pre-game in a depression. So I sent him over to Nia to have someone who could talk to him until I was feeling better, and then he got rolled p much immediately! I don't regret it at all in retrospect, the timing of Beryl's death and his death in proximity to Nia and Alexander was perfect.

-It probably goes without saying that the Nick fight had to come at some point regardless of rolls and I would have been pleased with any outcome with it, but we actually had to restructure it a couple times. Initially when Marco was rolled I was gonna swap Jeremiah in for him until Kami was gracious enough to hero me, so I'd approached Gianni about Nick killing Jeremiah in the wake of Beryl's death then. The hero came down so we went back to the drawing board and decided it would still be fun to do the fight, but they were both going to limp away from it. We didn't get super far into figuring out how if I remember right before the next set of rolls came and Jeremiah was dying again, so we ran it back to the original plan.

G080, Nikki Nelson-Kelly

-I wasn't with Nikki very long, which makes me sad since I'd say she's probably the character I've had the most fun voicing this version. Most of my plans didn't get far into planning with her since she had all of one thread that wasn't catch up one-shot or death, but the general vibe I wanted to angle for with her was an unlikely hero pulling things off mostly out of desperate can-do spirit. I wanted her to fumble a lot and have a lot of comedy in her character, but also always be looking for chances to help others and keep pushing her plans for an island jailbreak. I would have loved for her to get some real shots in on a big killer. Ditto on her getting another team together and keeping it together this time.

-Nikki linking up with Zach and having some real awkward interactions about a massacre she thought she was being blamed for would have been a lot of fun and I'm sad she didn't live long enough for me to even pitch Ryuki on it. I have no idea how that would have gone but the Nikki/Mikki mix-up was a lot of fun and I wanted to find ways to keep playing up the delusion as the island dragged on. Even if Zach had told her to her face what happened I don't know if she would have totally believed him, mostly because it's very funny if she doesn't and I'm a hack.

-When Nikki and Quinn were rolled at once I sent Elle a pitch for a mutual kill centered around Nikki's incompetence and Quinn's overconfidence blending into a perfect storm where Quinn pretty easily gets her cornered and fatally wounded, but her sadism leads to her dragging out the situation long enough for Nikki to lure her in and blow her away with the shotgun flashlight. Quinn got a much hyper send out with AriJonah so I'm not disappointed that didn't work out.

-Speaking of Nikki's death, it was originally meant to be a much more serious affair and was planned for Hel. I was considering swapping them in for Marco until Fen talked me out of it, and the idea was going to focus much more on the terror and futility of the whole thing. That idea went back on the shelf between Marco getting saved and Hel getting bumped up in my priority list but I still really loved it, and when it came time for Nikki to die I only received one pitch that I didn't feel was in tone with her story. So I dusted it off and repurposed it into gallows humor; my biggest regret with Nikki is that she barely interacted with anyone before her death, but I'm pretty happy with the end result of that death.

G062, Tonya Collins

-Somer's one request when I adopted Tonya was that she never actually kill anyone. On its face this poses a pretty significant challenge when her primary motivation is getting home to her daughter and the only way to do that is to pick up her one kill, but since the assumption inherent to any SotF kid is that they're going to die this isn't so much an issue. It gave me a lot of space I wanted to play with that never ended up becoming relevant. The obvious one is the good ol' murder cuck, where Tonya's about to kill someone and then gets the kill stolen straight out of nowhere. I toyed with the idea of this happening with a consistent killer at some point, a real fucked up Charlie Brown/Lucy dynamic where every time Tonya is about to seal the deal they pop up and snatch it out from under her. My preferred choice here probably would have been Justin or Kelly, but it never got far enough to really feel it out. The other big option I wanted to play with consistently was to be in a group where Tonya does violence but doesn't seal the deal. The example here would be if Tonya, Lucas, and Kelly had been able to stay together and hunt down Val. I would have loved for Tonya to be involved in whatever terrible end they could come up with but stopping short of killing anyone, and that possibly being a vector for tension later on as to whether she has enough skin the game to hang.

-In a similar vein I had an alternative death scene in mind for Tonya where she finally corners someone and is ready to kill them, but she chokes. This one didn't come to pass 'cuz I didn't feel like there was anyone it really fit with at the time of her death and doing weird trippy dream shit was more appealing to me.

-I wanted Tonya to have more dream sequences similar to her opener and her death but the mood didn't feel right between her threads and I didn't have the time to work them into something interesting. I'm glad I didn't try to take the shot regardless because I think the sequences work much better as an opening and closing pair to this leg of her story.

G032, Helena 'Hel" Fury

(gonna slap a trigger warning for discussions of suicidal thoughts/methods here real quick)

-This is going to be a huge shock I'm sure but Hel could have killed themself at pretty much any time. I had ideas all over the island ranging from jumping from the waterfall or the cliffs, drowning, camera fuckery, intentional DZ suicide, slitting their wrists and drifting out into the lake, or just shooting themself as they frequently attempted to do. I'm glad they didn't. The primary story I wanted to tell with Hel was someone who felt haunted by an impulse for death no matter their circumstances and the struggle to overcome that out of guilt for your loved ones, and I think that came through pretty picture perfect. Nearly everyone they cared about died before they did and they still held on because of the attachment to their family at home and not wanting the wait of their intentional death on them now anymore than they did back home.

-I would have in general liked to have written more family one-shots; in my perfect world there would have been one of some sort for every in-game day. If Hel had been more involved in pre-game I also probably would have written some for pre-game only kids. My big regret is that I never got around to one or more for Kara. I have a lot of regrets about the Kara storyline in general, because I think some of the complexity ends up lost. I think Hel was in an emotionally abusive long distance relationship with someone they trusted more than they should have, since I know that situation well. I think they struggled to leave because they did not consciously want to hurt their abuser. I think they still wanted to cheat on her, arguably did, and hurt her anyway in ways she does not somehow deserve because she was abusive. Hel and Axel aren't good people and Kara isn't a bad one because of the dysfunction of their respective relationships; they're kids. They make mistakes. They get afraid. Yet that also doesn't excuse Kara's abuse. I like to believe it's something she would learn and grow from, that in a different world Kara and Hel could be friends again after years apart when they have both grown. I like to think that Hel would have apologized to Kara before they died under different circumstances, even if she hadn't done her part to earn it yet, because their emotional unfaithfulness gnaws at them. Fen and I got to communicate this some in the prom thread where Hel confronts Axel about what they've been doing. I might do a memory thread about what the actual conversation where Hel and Kara breaks up at some point. I'm kinda babbling in here now, this aspect of Hel's story is very personal and messy for me despite it more being a gestalt of situations rather than similar to any one thing I've experienced.

-I struggled a lot with whether Hel would ever kill. After all to a large degree they're a version of me, and I don't see myself as above violence. The closest we came together was approaching Maddie about Amber's death, where Hel would have played the role Erika ended up playing. In the end I couldn't justify them pulling the trigger even if they thought they were saving someone. They don't value life for life like that. There is an aspiration to that value in them that comes out of guilt to never be the son their father wanted. Like me, Hel firmly believes their father wouldn't hesitate for a moment to kill for his children, and it makes them uncomfortable but they also feel an obligation to live up to that standard, that that is what it means to protect what you love and if they are unwilling to protect someone they don't really love them. It's largely because of this notion that they don't kill themself, because that's the most effort they can muster to shield the people they care about from harm. There's some of that with Axel's death, and I think if that had played out more viscerally such as Lorenzo straight up caving in Axel's head while they stood by frozen it might have been enough of a shame spiral to override that protective instinct and kill themself. I don't think there was ever a version of Hel that walks away from those events wanting to kill Lorenzo though. They didn't have it in them.

[backslash]

Look at me, I'm one of the cool kids doing this too.

Mercy - I don't have anything for Mercy, actually. Barring some plot thread that really grabbed my attention, she was always most likely to be my first out, and while I would have been happy for her to last maybe another in-game day or so, timing and circumstances with her assigned weapon and the people she met up with basically all aligned perfectly to give her the kind of death I wanted for her.

Dolly - So this is a fun one that seems to have surprised people I've told: Dolly was originally conceptualized as a player. Pregame set her up more to be the team mom of the witch squad and by the time game proper rolled around, I had pretty much veered away from that plan, but I still got to lay some of the groundwork for what could push her towards violence (those being her fears about her own mental stability, a fascination with the morbid, and her protectiveness of her friends and loved ones). I did have thoughts about her turning towards a Lenny Priestly style of playing if she lasted long enough with someone that she was close to, killing others with the intent of getting her chosen person to the end, but she hadn't reached a point where that would make sense by the time she died.

I also considered leaving Dolly home. When final apps opened, I was really feeling Siyanda and not so much feeling her, but Siyanda had always been intended for Meanwhile and Dolly for the island, so I waffled on that a bit. I ended up going with my original plans because I had a set plan for Siyanda in Meanwhile and while ze would have been interesting and fun on the island, I think Dolly would have been less fun and interesting in Meanwhile.

Andy - Fen may have mentioned this in their notes on Axel and I already forgot about it because my brain is a sieve, but anyway. We'd discussed hypotheticals about what would happen if Andy and Axel managed to last into the late game together, and in the event that Hel was the first of the Deadbeats to die, I was pretty set on Andy and Axel getting into a fight because of feelings, and Andy intentionally letting Axel mortally wound him. Also they'd probably kiss or something.

A less sad idea I had for Andy was him accidentally or not-so-accidentally spilling the beans to either Mikki or Abe that he and Forrest had kissed at prom. In the case of the former, I wanted it to be a sort of comic relief moment where he got minorly injured and overreacted and went into full deathbed confession mode over a sprained ankle or something. With the latter, it would have been more like intentionally trying to push Abe's buttons.

Original flavor Andy was also way more of a shitlord, but once he got into pregame he had friends and morals and stuff, so he basically became a completely different person from his original concept. I'm unlikely to reuse him in a Second Chances game or anything like that either. Andy ended up so integrally connected to other characters that I think I wouldn't like him as much if he didn't have that same network going in, and he was so fundamentally different from Andy 1.0 that if I want to revisit the original concept, I feel like I should just rebuild it from the ground up as a new character.

Myles - Gaelan not going to the island was too bad, because boy there was a lot of fun baggage with him and Myles that had been festering for years and was just ripe to come out in a really disastrous way. We never really discussed actual island plans with them, but I was always sort of into the idea of Gaelan and Ivy trying to bury the hatchet and Myles ruining it in some way. Also in the vein of Myles ruining things, I wanted to try attaching him to someone that he could basically play Lady Macbeth for, pushing them into violence to cut down the competition while he skated away with minimal blame. Both Tristan and Adonis were people he might have angled towards filling that role for, but Tristan died early and his partnership with Adonis wasn't stable enough for Myles to really keep a handle on the reins there.

This may not really count as a "What Could Have Been" so much as "what I would have preferred", but after killing Declyn, Myles was supposed to gradually slip and get more erratic and more easily pushed towards violence himself now that he finally had a bit of firepower to back up his talk, and most likely would have ended up dying more or less the same way he actually did. The timing of him getting rolled just meant that the shift got squashed down into one thread and wasn't built up as smoothly as I wanted it to be.

Siyanda - For a little while, I really regretted not putting Siyanda on the island, but I enjoyed the bit I got to do with the end of zir pregame and the reason ze missed the trip. I still think there would be potential in zem having an island story though, and that is the real reason that I have considered trying to draft and host an AU on Mini for pregame-only characters. Maybe someday when I have actual free time and energy again.

Bonus winner talk: Obviously this would never have panned out, but it's fun to talk hypothetically. I only really thought about what Myles would be like as a winner, because in a scenario where Ivy died and he managed to actually push through it, Myles would definitely have tried to gun for the win. He also definitely would have tried to spin his status as a survivor for personal gain, much like V4's Andrea Raymer but worse in probably every way. I had a fun thought about him using the power of being an Influencer or whatever the kids call it these days specifically to harass Ivy's dad for being a shitty parent and then playing the victim card if/when he got clapback.

Dolly's long-lasting scenario was her trying to get someone else to the finish line, as mentioned above. If Andy was somehow the last Deadbeat standing, my plan for him was to either just kill himself, pull a suicide-by-player by putting himself in the line of fire for someone else, or that but with less heroic sacrifice by just attacking somebody that he knew had firepower and would use it. Mercy was destined to die earlyish, so I never thought about late-game stuff for her.

[MurderWeasel]

Slightly more prompt:

Juliette Sargent:

• Juliette's original, darker arc:
  
  To start off with this one (and also kinda prod at the long-term nature of some of the stuff that went into Juliette's story) here's the slightly-trimmed logs of the first time I explained her concept/arc, in PM almost half a year before V7 Pregame apps opened:
  

  [+] August 9 2017

  
  

  So, right off the bat, what potentially jumps out is that all that stuff about being Machiavelli in the school elections didn't happen. This in turn actually had tremendous impact on Juliette's arc/character, in a way that I'm much more happy with. I don't think actually-evil Juliette was necessarily a bad idea, but I think it was a lot less nuanced and fresh for me.
  
  Anyways, the thing here was, I had a couple big beats I wanted to hit. One of them was, Juliette was gonna grab whoever seemed like the best competition, and was gonna try to browbeat them into instead running for Vice President as her running mate. Basically go "Look, we can destroy each other—and I will beat you—or, because I respect the hustle, we can help each other." Another was trying to more or less buy someone not that interested off (or else maybe even encourage sucky candidates). I also wanted to play with the evolution and spread of her campaign.
  
  What happened? Well, what happened was mostly the OOC infrastructure for the election was not at all conducive to this. The votes happened at a nebulous point between junior and senior year maybe (which I forgot) and because the window from announcing candidacy to votes being held was ~two weeks and nobody else had built their arc around it from the start, there weren't any other candidates to mess with at first and then there were a ton suddenly and no time to hash stuff out. Oops. And then, the actual campaign progression got messed up in part when the interview thread set up in her first memory fell through due to scheduling, and in part due to OOC busy-ness and complications.
  
  This created a Juliette who was still pretty darn assertive and ambitious, but who was actually legitimately fairly clean and positive (flashes of insincerity and frustration aside). But, the interesting thing was, the site at large (and the other characters in her threads) read a whole lot of potential malice into her insincerity, even as there was ever less of it in my feel for her. This was really fascinating to me and ended up being what I reached for as the core of who Juliette actually became; her insincerity and hiding her true feelings remained at the core, but instead of a generalized anger/ambition a lot of her stuff stemmed from hurt and frustration at being outside of the class she desperately wanted to be an integral part of, at being pushed and prodded and assumed the worst of when she never actually did anything.
  
  This of course splashed into the game. Original flavor Juliette was conceived of as a potential killer and as a pretty ruthless force, but by the time V7 actually started (and really from about halfway through Pregame) I'd figured out she didn't actually have what it took. So killer!Juliette became wannabe!Juliette, and I resolved that whatever she said/told herself/etc., she would not be able to intentionally kill anyone. This also tweaked her ending; instead of being forced into a loss by some external factor (which is something we've honestly seen done plenty of times in probably more satisfying ways), the failure became an internal process thing. It wasn't Juliette suddenly realizing she could no longer win, but rather the revelation that she never could have.
• Plan B: That said, this all relied on basically me getting the absolute perfect setup to do what I wanted with Juliette (which I was lucky enough to have happen!). Back when Darlene first got rolled, though, I was considering dumping Juliette instead of Sven. My initial thought was that, to work, Juliette had to make the halfway point but anything further was just a bonus. I got some really good pitches for her (shoutout to backslash and Shiola) and was really mulling dropping her then in something a lot more akin to the old plan (injury leads to doubt). But Sven was stalled and I wanted to see if I could get Juliette just a bit further down the road and her thread had just been crashed by kids I enjoyed, so it was what it was.
• Juliette lives a bit longer: So I didn't plan on killing Juliette precisely when and where I did until I found out Marceline was gonna go kill Amelia. The thing was, I was pretty sure splitting with the trio was gonna kill Juliette outside of very specific circumstances, and I sneakily worked in all the little beats for her unrolled trigger in the few days spent wrapping Play With Fire 'cause dangit you don't let an opportunity like that go to waste! After the TV2 incident I was pretty hellbent on getting the scene I made Juliette for done properly, and letting her straggle on after that beat would've messed it all up. That said, a different set of circumstances could've led to her hanging around another set of rolls or two, possibly telling Marceline that Kelly had been telling the truth in her claims (which is of course nonsense; Juliette was just gonna put a finger on the scale for Kelly while also inciting some chaos).
• Juliette doesn't get the kiss: I didn't tell Maddie (or anyone) Juliette was gonna go die so there was a very real chance of her getting shot down. This would've been sad and led to a bit of extra angst but she still would've died at the same time/place.
• Juliette and Kelly, Round 2: Really wanted this to happen and it's entirely my fault it didn't—I actually intended to get Juliette into Signal Flare before Kelly and Marceline had their death battle but the waterfall thread got slower, whoops. Juliette always felt pretty fondly towards Kelly, in her own weird way, and I figured a reunion would have some nice little vibes of A Boy Named Sue with Juliette in the role of the absent father, explaining that she was actually helping Kelly, not trying to hurt her. Lots of potential angst, suspicion, and maneuvering to follow, of course.
• Juliette and Teresa, Round 2: This one never got pitched to anyone. I was working myself up to saying something to Yugi when he handed Teresa off and I dunno, I don't really feel right pitching scenes unless it's gonna be immediate. >< But the general concept here was to play Juliette's ambiguity/unreliable motivations some by having her interfere in some kind of chase/robbery/whatever Teresa was involved in. And then if questioned/accused of being a goody-two-shoes/whatever, she'd explain that, no it was actually personal, she just hated Teresa that much and anything that messed up her day was a nice little win, even if it meant doing good.
• Juliette's Unrolled trigger: I've alluded to this, but Juliette dying unrolled was contingent upon a couple things. I wanted her out before the top 25 because her throwing in the towel felt a whole lot less logical a reaction if she was really close to the end—at that point she'd maybe just try to wait it out and fast talk her way out. The other thing was, I wanted the failure to kill and ideally the kiss request. Marceline was one of the picks I had, but I also thought maybe Kelly would work for it, given their shared history and similar sort of issues.
• Juliette goes to Prom with Meka: This was again my fault, but Laure and I had gotten pretty far into discussing a Prom date between Juliette and Meka. From Juliette's end, she was gonna be torn about it for a lot of reasons but a big one was gonna be Meka's radical politics; she'd be worried that pictures would turn up in a couple decades showing her with like noted radical Meka Gibson and wreck her in some election. Lots of consoling herself with "Oh, it's okay, he's probably never gonna amount to anything." Nice messed-up stuff. Sadly my focus was really bad at the time and didn't get much of anything done without my feet held directly to the fire and this slipped through the cracks.

This is pretty muddled even for my usual and I'm probably forgetting stuff. Might proof/edit/add to it later, but realistically probably won't.

[MurderWeasel]

A quick, slightly unconventional one here. I didn't know what the death order was gonna be, so I did all 26. Here's the omission. Of course, can't say Alton didn't see it coming.

Michael Froese =:

Has anyone else covered as much ground, seen as many sides of the island, worn as many masks, as Michael Froese? I doubt it. Summarizing every twist and turn of his journey is an exercise in futility, one made even more daunting by the weight of chemical alteration he's labored under and his frequent—and frequently intentionally misleading—addresses to the audience. While the manic chaos has served him well for a long time, it has also carried with it pitfalls and perils, including periodic lows and false starts. Somewhere in there, he's racked up enough kills to become known as one of the bad guys in the popular consciousness, in large part due to his own willingness to castigate himself for his apparent crimes. And so, Michael is on the list of public enemies despite most likely not seeing anyone else left in such an adversarial light.

This widespread enmity is, of course, the most serious threat to Michael's success. As this is composed, he's being pursued by Arizona, whose boyfriend he killed several days ago. There's every chance things go wrong and he doesn't even make it to the final cut of this roster update. Even if he does, even if he gives her the slip, there are other Arizonas lurking in the wings to take their shots at him. Probably a quarter of the game would be all too pleased to make an attempt on his life. Setting this aside, Michael's moods and inconsistencies leave him periodically vulnerable, and all it takes is one spot of bad timing for a crash and he's done. It's come so close to happening already, again and again, and now there are few left who aren't dangerous and driven enough to potentially take advantage. But for all that? Michael is still a force, still his own wild and weird thing, and if he's still breathing, it's too early to write him off entirely.

[D/N]

NIKKI NELSON-KELLY - v7
- I have very little - I noted in my character rankings that Nikki suffers a lot from being a last-minute inclusion and lacking planning. And that's definitely true. Because here's the thing - I by and large absolutely do not expect to have specific things for the characters. As in specific stuff with other handlers, tightly-plotted storylines, anything like that. Blah on that. I like to mostly wing it. But I do like to have specific ideas in the sense of "oh, what if this happens?", and that gives me a better idea in how I'm gonna approach the character. So planning in the sense of potential ideas, feels for how things are going to go, that sort of thing. Nikki had very little of that, as I'm really discovering while comparing to old memories of my v6 and v5 kids. So really all I had was:

- Nikki's silly plan fails - Obviously Nikki's vague plan of 1) Muffle our voices and hide from the cameras, 2) ????, 3) ESCAPE was never going to work. It was dependent on I guess finding a kid who could take advantage of that to like I guess get collars off or something, whom we obviously don't have. But I like to think I could've run with it for a least a couple in-game days before it's failure really becoming clear.

- Nikki dies a terrible, terrible death - This was about the only real tangible thing I wanted to make sure I did with Nikki, which again shows how I needed to put more thought into her as a whole. So yeah, I wanted to contrast Nikki's relentless attempts to convince herself to be positive with a death that destroyed all that. Didn't really matter how it happened, but I wanted to dump all the pain//blood/sadness/misery I could on poor Nikki at her death to really turn that around. This is also because one of my real weaknesses in this game is that I seem to do nothing but try to give my kids "happy" or at least neutral ends. When they die it's always either with some vague sense of peace or sacrifice, or with a "hohoho fuck you" attitude, or with the old "they didn't even process the fact that they were dying" trope. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. So yeah, Nikki was gonna bite the bullet for my own annoyance there and I guess she got lucky with being handed off to Paige and having all of that bad stuff glossed over. BETTER BEWARE, ANY V8 KIDS I DO.

Now by way of comparison, let's take a look at v6 with a kid I did have a lot more concrete ideas for:

KAITLYN GREENE - v6
- Kaitlyn hunts the most dangerous game - A lot of my unused ideas for Kaitlyn really helped me develop my overall path with her as a character. I wanted to lead into her recklessness and thrillseeking, and had some various Most Dangerous Game knockoff ideas where she'd find someone and give them a head start only to chase them down. I also had the idea, which I would have potentially followed if she and Vanessa had worked out as a team to go after Alessio, of having Kaitlyn realize that she could have lots of fun by hunting down the REAL most dangerous game in players. The idea of an evil player hunter doing so for entirely selfish reasons amused me a lot, although by this point I would have been exploring some vague concepts of player hunting in three consecutive versions and that's not even including that Aiden ended up doing (badly) so later in v6.

- Kaitlyn gets kidnapped by a gang of Good Kids and forced to atone - I have no idea how this would've worked, but I liked the idea of Kaitlyn managing to fall into or get defeated by a group of noble kids later in the game, after she'd potentially scored another kill or two, and being forced to atone for her actions. How this would've worked again I don't really know, maybe by being coerced into going after a player or doing something dangerous, but it would've of course had the opposite effect as she would've leaned into the adrenaline of being in the situation and any attempts to show regret or atonement would just be BLATANT LIES on her part. This was never likely to work out logistically though, but again it helped me to have it as something to maybe work towards and further the character.

- Kaitlyn wins High Tide - If Kaitlyn hadn't been rolled, I still would've ABSOLUTELY tried to make High Tide at the cove happen at some point, sooner rather than later hopefully. The difference being that the other kid would be the rolled one and so Kaitlyn would end up on top and laugh heartily. It was too good a concept for me to only have in the back pocket if she got rolled before things ended up being permanent danger zones.

- Everything's coming up Kaitlyn! - This was more of a general plan to follow, but I wanted to keep building Kaitlyn as someone who was enjoying far more success on the island than she deserved, and who wouldn't have any failures that she couldn't immediately justify and blame on others. It's why I was so happy she'd been assembling an armoury of multiple weapons, plenty of food to fill her tummy and keep fit, and I wanted to make sure that she avoided getting any serious injuries, to keep building up her confidence and recklessness more as the game went on until it eventually went sideways and eventually people (if she'd lasted longer) would be cheering her death in a "finally that bitch got what was coming to her" fashion.

- Kaitlyn goes out with bang - This wasn't my idea. But while I was searching for deaths for Kaitlyn in case the cove didn't work out, Paige message me with the awesome idea of Kaitlyn and Caedyn having a fun game of musical chairs. Musical BOMB chairs that is, with them walking around the forward-exploding Claymore mine until it went off with Kaitlyn in front. Again logistically it would've been tough to pull of, but oh man it would've been fun and I would've absolutely given it a try.

[KamiKaze]

I’ll just stick with Roxie-stuff for the time being.

#RIPball
What is #RIPball? Well, it’s a concept that I had floating around, mulled over, but never fully fleshed out, pitched, and put to action.

Some of you may remember that years ago, I once had a dream about TV2. Basically, I dreamed that my character, Nina, decided to host a costume party in the Ice Palace with rules like “players are not invited.” I remembered this, and considered doing a main site, not-dream equivalent with Roxie! Basically, she leaves notes around the island inviting people to a specific place where, at least for a night, they could hole up, make a truce, and share anything useful or fun they might still have. Kinda like a more temporary Dogtown-esque scenario, come to think of it! The intent was like, her arranging one last party with her more agreeable classmates before they likely die.

The reason why I never brought up this concept until now is fairly obvious: it has a lot of logistics to sort out. For one, what happens when a player comes by and takes advantage of the pickins’? How will stuff not escalate and implode, even without players? What if the terrorists, for whatever reason, decide to stop it by making it a danger zone or something? It’s a lot of planning and thought, and unfortunately, that wasn’t something I had in V7. As you might know, I wasn’t as active and motivated in V7, due a mixture of personal stuff and discomfort with prevailing themes in V7 pregame.

The reason why I wanted to do it with Roxie because, in a way, it fit her! See, her deal is that she’s actually accepting of the fact that she’s going to die. Not happy about it, but understanding that being on SOTF is essentially a death sentence. So, rather than fighting to survive, she’s making it a point to die with her dignity intact and not letting the game change her too much. Because fighting and killing people is just what the terrorists want to begin with. I had the idea that she’d be willing to convince others of her viewpoint and help them come to terms with their own eventual demise. However, another reason why in retrospect I might not have done it is that it didn’t entirely fit with her own MO. Maybe with the coaxing of another character, but it doesn’t fully fit the schtick she fell into in V7. That said, I’m willing to do this or a variant of it in a future version, so if it seems of interest, hit me up.

Life Moves Pretty Fast was originally supposed to be Roxie’s “prologue” rather than her "epilogue"

Fun fact about this memory: it was probably the first Roxie thing I’ve ever written aside from her profile. I actually began writing it while she was being critiqued, in fact!

An explanation about the thread’s concept: it was originally intended as foreshadowing Roxie’s character arc, explaining the deeper intricacies of her character that wouldn’t be immediately obvious in pre-game, and providing context for the aforementioned schtick about her accepting death. Each snippet has the specific theme of the emotional aftermath of her character-defining accident as she was growing up, with the motif of the Five Stages of Grief. The first part, “Denial”, takes place shortly after the accident and deals with her having childish thoughts about growing the limb back. The second, “Anger,” illustrates Roxie experiencing prejudice and her reaction to it. “Bargaining” shows a bit of her early experiments with makeup, as well as some of her insecurities growing up with scars and a physical disability. “Depression” tells the story of her experiencing guilt of her family struggling after the accident, as well as her early forays into scareacting. Finally, “Acceptance” is about her visiting a graveyard to see her grandparents’-- and implicitly her missing leg’s-- burial site.

The intent was to hint at Roxie’s emotional journey as she was growing up, and how it would impact her in the game proper. Because of that near-death experience and the various circumstances behind it, Roxie slowly became more accepting of the idea of death if not a matter of “if”, but “when.” Rather than being morose or depressed about that fact, it and her general disability-stuff played into why she was such a perky goth who liked creepy morbid things, which ultimately influenced her FX makeup art. Even the title hints at it.

The reason why it took so long for me to post it was simple: I was initially dissatisfied with it. I wasn’t sure if it was worth posting due to concerns about quality. Later, towards the end of her character arc, I found it again, realized it did work, did some touch-ups to make consistency with other things established about her, and decided to post it right after finishing her death. I know Toben is a fan of it, not sure about general opinions.

But in retrospect? I feel that in some ways it works better as an “epilogue” to Roxie’s story rather than a “prologue.” While the original point was to hint where Roxie’s character arc would go, I feel it’s better read as an ending summing up her character. Honestly, though, it’d be up to the reader to decide which order is better-- before anything else about her, or after reading her death? You pick!

Roxie was going to join film!Lucas’ shooting thread

Yeah. Nothing really to say here. I meant to join, but it took me a while to even get her approved due to me being a butt. Sorry about that.

I had some thread title ideas that I was sitting on, some of which would only be used in very unlikely circumstances.

As you might know, Roxie’s thread titles are themed after 80s-90s pop culture references. I actually had multiple unused ones, and even a few in case of unlikely/odd circumstances. A list:

[+] Potential Roxie thread titles

“Where are They? Where are the Terrorists?”- Reference to Monster Squad, same as her intro. Would only be used in the extremely low chance there’s a v4 style escape. I thought it’d be funny to reference the movie’s ending, in which it’d be revealed that the childish note a little kid sent out to the US military about monsters actually summoned them.. I just wanted to title Roxie’s first thread after a ridiculous Monster Squad reference, of course, but it sent up an obvious follow-up in case of escape. (and yes, the thread subtitle would again be “Greynolds came in my house. ):”)
“Dear Diary, My Teen-Angst Bullshit Now Has a Body Count”- Quote from Heathers. As you might guess, it would be used in the event that Roxie ended up credited for a kill.
“I Just Pulled a Giant Masterpiece for All The Arthro Taskforce Nerds!”- Reference to a real life unsolved mystery of a signal intrusion by someone wearing a Max Headroom mask in 1987. Would be used if Roxie ever got involved in escape plot shenanigans.
“This Is So Sad, Alexa, Play “Careless Whisper””- Reference to both a meme and a running gag on Glam and Gore. I used a similar joke in the thread subtitle when I submitted her profile.
“Wake Me Up, Before You Go-Go”- Song by Wham! Needs no more explanation.
“It’s Terror Time Again”- A song from Scooby Doo on Zombie Island that legitimately kicks ass.
“Should I Stay or Should I Go?”- song by The Clash. Since she’s canonically a Stranger Things fan it felt like a fitting reference.
“Cities in Dust”- Song by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Fun fact: this was the working thread title for Thriller.
“Reach Out, Touch Faith”- Depeche Mode reference.
“Dead Man’s Party”- Song by Oingo Boingo.
"Blue Monday"- Song by New Order.
"Cruel Summer"- Song by Bananarama. Would probably have been used in a major death reaction at some point.

Roxie’s easy and fun to come up with thread titles for, you just need to find an 80s-90s reference that’s fitting. Unfortunately, that means there were a ton of potential good references that I never used, whether because the circumstances behind me deciding to use them were unlikely or I just never found a place for them. However, if you see a title there that you like, feel free to steal!

May add more later.

[Maraoone]

my gay leaf eating son................................ (diego)

was hoping not to have to type this post but rolls happen so

diego's start: i feel this was the happiest of accidents.

diego's overall path was set off by his beginning, by witnessing chris' death, throatbite2k19. it inspired me to write the oneshot where he's basically like 'yeah i'm not dying here' which leads him to go off and follow lorenzo which leads to the bad decisions that make up his storyline today.

if diego had woken up near one of his gardening friends, if he had met one of them sooner, i feel he would have made a pretty loyal member of the team, considering all of them had managed to group up without diego. i feel if he'd found the gardening club, he would not have been as set on the path of violence he'd chosen.

aka i blame cam for not finding him soon enough

smh

but also i feel like the chance of this happening was already low because

diego and men: a fairly involved paragraph in diego's bio discusses how diego has a fear of men. this is because of his internalized homophobia and fear of being outed, and also a lack of understanding of the nuances of social interaction with men.

when i first conceptualized diego, i'd planned on giving this aspect of him much more focus. i didn't set out wanting to write about internalized homophobia and his struggle with that, but i feel like the lorenzo plotline set me on the path of that.

i'd planned on leaning into this by placing him in a thread that was just men. the best candidate at the time that diego was approved was 'dead clicks,' richard smith's starting thread, but it was well enough into progress that i felt uncomfy starting there and interrupting things, and i didn't really have an idea how to introduce diego. and then skraal started off a brand new thing called 'love and money' and i felt much more comfortable starting there. and i was already committed to starting there by the time a few female characters had posted there.

the reason why i wanted to start him in an all-male thread was because i was hoping to place him in an all-male group. another important part of diego's bio is his awkwardness with group interaction, and i wanted to place him in a situation where essentially he has to socialize or die in the most abrasive circumstances possible. but he ended up being much more of a lone wolf rather than finding a solid group, and i'm pretty happy with how he ended up

diego and the gardening club part 2: 'the bell tolls for our funeral' was actually supposed to end in diego separating from the group. that was how it was like when it was conceptualized. i changed my mind midway through writing this thread with blizz. the reason why this changed was because, basically, i'd just come off of reading axel's death, and it'd made me incredibly sad for reasons that still kinda mystify me. but part of that sadness was, like, i realized that the kids i had at the time were really getting the short end of the stick, and i wanted to throw diego a bone, so i let him stay with the group a bit more.

on that note, i wanted him to actually get to reunite with the club. 'untrust us,' the first diego/ty thread, was meant to be a temporary hours-long detour ic, but the thread ended up taking longer than expected, more time passed than expected, friendly talks were had, all of a sudden theo is dead and cam has a bka. (on that note, i wanted him to have a kind of moment where he comes back to the group all sobby and like 'i'm so stupid' while his friends console him for being stupid with boys. a lot of my thread ideas are like this, where i have, like, a single moment in mind and nothing else)

and finally the friendly talk thread with cam, 'love is just as innocent as roses in may.' that was always supposed to happen, even before cam was rolled, but it was just supposed to end in diego knocking cam out and running away. but then rolls happened and blizz and i were mutually like so

the oneshot: i will not elaborate on which oneshot i am referring to. if you know you know.

i was inspired to finally actually make it because kermfrog falsely accused me of horni crimes so i decided to give him a horni crime for his birthday, but in reality, i'd had this oneshot in mind for the longest time. i thought the scenario would be a good one to explore diego's self-disgust at himself for being gay, and tbh, scenes like these are a weird marrying of, like, temporarily setting aside all of that self-hatred just to feel good for a bit, just to self-indulge, the slightest hint of self-acceptnace, only for all the self-loathing to come flooding back once it's done.

the first time i'd wanted to make this oneshot was in the temple when diego first meets lorenzo, but i actually only thought of the scene shortly after he'd left the temple, so it was a bit too late for me to put it in place. also there were two other people sleeping in the vicinity and i feel like they would've heard things so maybe it's for the best i didn't think of it in time.

the second time was in the dock when diego finds the shovel [diego x shovel shipping intensifies]. when he '''rests''' on the dock, that was what i meant to edit in, but i chickened out, and also i felt it wasn't the best timing for it because the swimming oneshot takes place immediately after ty sets diego on the tentative path toward self-acceptance, so it would've felt like a bit of a backstep without adequate reasoning, if that makes sense.

all in all i'm glad i was able to post it when i did because i feel it works best with the added context of Everything that had happened to diego in the first ten days of the island.

tidbits regarding diego's death scene: my ideas regarding this were very scattered. i had two main ideas, both mutually exclusive. one is that he be choked out, which happened, and the other is that he have a long sad death convo with someone else who is dying, which did not happen. i was hoping to have this with marco because marco has a plotline that parallels diego's in several ways, and paige had made a pitch to me for if marco was rolled beforehand also involving Sad Gay Shit. but the thing about that idea was that it was very much geared for a duo scene, and diego's death scene is a trio scene, so we set that aside for the fight scene we have now, which i'm very very very satisfied with. i think i would've had diego ask for a kiss if the sad death convo happened. just, like, one bit of intimacy before he goes.

he got choked so close enough right?

[MurderWeasel]

I missed a few things in the last go so I'm adding them here:

Sven Vee (Addendum):

• Sven text-fights someone like it's V3 except both sides are trying to lose: Basically precisely what it says on the tin. In V2/3 there was this trend of text-fighting, where you put a bunch of attacks and counters and and contingencies and stuff into a post turning it into this huge blocky mess of a flowchart to resolve a fight. This was a product of the era, specifically in that characters would often die unrolled if it made sense and also I'm given to understand SOTF shared some membership and philosophies with a site that basically did this all the time as like a fighting tournament thing. It's fascinated me for a long time and Sven was playing with various things and so at a certain point I wanted him to get into it with someone and just slip right into that mode.
  
  Except, Sven is not exactly an example of extreme physical power, so my thought was that rather than trying to kill each other, I'd pick someone else who kinda sucked and while our characters tried to fight seriously, we the writers would be doing our absolute best to instead lose. "Sven adjusted his grip and swung the lightsaber at his opponent's head. Since it was made out of hollow plastic, any movement away from it would turn it into the gentlest of glancing blows. If instead the foe met it head-on, the toy would shatter, leaving Sven relatively unarmed. If the enemy dodged entirely, Sven's forward momentum would carry him on to collapse in the sand like a sack of potatoes. If a counterattack came his way, he'd eat it straight on the chin and fall over." "Sven's lightsaber hit Bubba in the head and shattered. The jagged plastic drew furrows of blood! Bubba howled and lowered his head to charge, but the blood in his eyes meant he was going the wrong way. If left unchecked, he would continue until he tripped over a horse bone and face-planted into the swamp. If Sven intercepted him, his comparatively low mass would cause him to rebound, leaving him at his foe's mercy." That sort of thing.
  
  Would it have been great to read? Probably not, unless you're also fascinated by this very particular era and style of SOTF fight scene. Would it have been pretty funny anyways? I hope so! This actually got pitched to someone but the pieces were never quite in place to have it happen.

Juliette Sargent (Addendum):

• Juliette vs. Dolly: This was an early-game thing that I at no point mentioned to either Maddie or Backslash because I think it's funnier when terrible situations arise out of the blue. It was also another case of Juliette doing horrible awful things with... ever so slightly less horrible and awful intentions. The idea here was pretty much that, if Juliette ever encountered Dolly (with Marceline or otherwise), she'd try to get her aside for a little private chat. And if she managed it, she'd say something roughly to this effect:
  
  "You love Marceline, right? You better. Well, here's the rule: you're not allowed to die before she does. Do whatever you want, kill yourself or try to escape or whatever, I don't care, but you must outlive her. Because if you don't? I will track her down, and I will kill her in the most slow, horrible, agonizing way I possibly can. She'll be crushed by your death, so she'll be helpless. I'll make it slow and I'll make it hurt. But, good thing we won't have to worry about that, because you're not going to die first. Right?"
  
  This would of course be a bunch of lies. Juliette would've... sort of kinda talked herself into believing them if it happened (not the torture bit, just the killing, and that actually did happen in-game), but would've been exactly as unable to follow through. Why do this, then? Well, because Marceline's speech about what would happen if she lost Dolly all the way back in Pregame made an impression on Juliette, and in her not precisely healthy way of looking at things, fear motivates better than being honest and positive. So she'd basically be trying to keep Marceline from experiencing this great loss she feared so much by threatening to torture her to death. "But what if Dolly put Marceline down herself because of it?" Meh, everyone's gonna die anyways, in the arms (or at the hands) of the one you love is a pretty good way to go, right?

Darlene Silva:

• Darlene does the Ash Morrison/Gabriel Lee Special: So, Darlene is the character for whom I had the fewest plans, despite the fact that she was the one I intended to keep longest (more on this later). I had absolutely no clue what I was gonna do with her on island but thought I might play off some arcs that didn't quite work in the past and try to get them to cooperate more. I think the reason hider characters tend to suffer as reading experiences is they're typically not only not doing very much, they're not all that fun to read. I think you can get away with a pretty level, "standard" voice if you're doing cool stuff, but if you're not doing anything you to play with tension and pacing and voice and make sure you nail every post on just a micro reading level. So I was gonna have Darlene drift around, lurking on the fringes of scenes and thinking about approaching, or shooting, or, or something! But then run away or hide more instead. But two things happened: 1. she got noticed in her first interactive thread really quickly and 2. I by complete fluke dumped her in a thread with a character she trusted by name but didn't know by sight, and then that got revealed, and that's how we got the whole Jonah focus. Total chance! Had the dominoes not fallen just so, she would've probably run away in a post or two after being spotted.
• Darlene's heel turn: The funniest part about this is that it actually mostly happened but due to dubious competence and a lucky choice of targets Darlene escaped blame for most of it. I had a loose idea that Darlene might go down a violent route from fairly early, because she does poorly with pressure and became super reliant on a small group of people and then that got taken away in a traumatic way. There were a lot of possible permutations, but she wouldn't be a super calculating player, more a semi-competent opportunist who gets more and more broken as time goes on. Yes, I considered a situation where she's cat-and-mousing someone in the caves or another dark place humming and/or singing to herself out of sight. Could've been fun times. I think this is one for Kermit's folder.
  
  What happened, then? Well, basically, things just never aligned quite right. This is why Darlene shook off Stephanie after Max's death, and her next thread sows the seeds when she drive-bys Jonathan out of the blue based on terrible reasoning. She relinked with Jonah and Arizona but the guilt from the drive-by was still simmering, and then Jonah dying set her off again; she was more or less on her last rope even before the unsettling Amelia exchange (and strongly considers shooting her a few times there). But after that I tossed her at a random thread at the lake, again with no real plans, and a whole host of bigger problems, returning friends, and so on happened, and ultimately that stabilized Darlene a lot and got her back in check (apart from that one tiny little unfortunate incident later). And because she never succeeded at murdering a stranger from nowhere for no reason, she got to stay on the good guy team, kinda. But it wasn't for lack of trying; I sent I think two or three death pitches but honestly none of them fit that well and I prefer where she ended up.
• The Original Danya Baby: The one-shot where Darlene asks the terrorists to make her a PBJ if she wins BKA was the only plan I actually had for her from early in the game. It couldn't happen before the first announcement, because Darlene had no idea about the prize food, but from then on she would often quietly stew in jealousy that other people were getting nice food while she had to eat soggy crackers. At first, this was going to play into the heel turn and have a much more sinister character; Darlene would basically beg for her favorite food and insinuate that hey, if this time wasn't good enough, maybe next time might be? As it evolved, the scene was I think better and had a nicer focus; disposing of the guns gave me something more concrete for her to do, and her motivation was different (basically her plan became to try to make the events a bit less meaningless by destroying the BKA weapon, eating the food, and then shooting herself).
• Speaking of...: Had Darlene won the last BKA she was gonna destroy the gun, eat the food, and then shoot herself. It was lategame and I had no interest in taking Darlene to Endgame. If she'd been rolled where she was, hey, perfect! If she hadn't, I would've taken a look at stuff and reacted accordingly—if there were good scenes to be had still for her story, I would've probably kicked the BKA pickup later in the day and had stuff happen en route; if it was time I'd've just done it unrolled.
  
  Perhaps a more interesting possibility, however, would've been a tie with Ace for Lunch 2: Electric Boogaloo. My pitch for that would've been ideally to have Darlene get there first and Ace turn up to an already-trashed weapon and a picnic spread. Conversation could've proceeded and built off the last meeting, culminating in a few different ways: either Darlene tells Ace she's gonna shoot herself, and does (before or after he takes off) or else her display of sneakiness and unpredictability is enough to convince him he can't let her walk this time and she gets bullets for dessert.
  
  If the terrorists granted some/all of her requests, she'd be happier or sadder. Ideal is to go and sit down by the dog before the end.
• Death order/Darlene's unrolled trigger: Darlene had no plans, which meant she could live the longest, because everyone else was inevitably bound for doom on a shorter time scale. However, Darlene had no plans, and everybody else needed to hit a certain stage to be satisfying for me. In this way, she was kind of Schrodinger's character, both the "flagship" and the most disposable. I wouldn't have loved it, but I'd've probably ditched her for any of the other three if that was what it took to get them to their spot in the story, because without a clear path of her own Darlene wouldn't be losing out a ton. On the other hand, by the time she got rolled I had things set up for the others more and after some serious considering I decided to put my focus more in her court.
  
  Darlene didn't have a super duper defined unrolled trigger, like it wasn't like "Okay, first she kisses Marceline..." but I did think if there was an opportunity to have a good scene and push someone else's story I'd jump on it. Actually, one I loosely had floating around had to do with Jonah, Arizona, and Quinn. My thought was that, if the group reunited before the showdown, it could be a good spot for Darlene to step up and have a good showing, seem to take down Quinn... then get killed unrolled by the horror movie stinger, leaving Jonah and Arizona to finish the job. Ideally nobody would know it was coming OOC, and I didn't mention this to anyone (and I was not spoiled on the Quinn stinger, either; it was just thinking with genre along the same lines). The way stuff lined up, though, there was absolutely no way to even approach that without screwing up a much more important beat in Jonah's and Arizona's stories and stealing the spotlight. Oh, and Darlene and Quinn were rolled at the same time and this was an idea I would only do unrolled, so that made it impossible to boot.
• Darlene vs. Michael: Before the actual Darlene/Michael meeting (which I like better than all this stuff) I did have a few ideas for how things could go. Most of them involved Michael killing Darlene. The big point I wanted to hit was her creatively interpreting events and insisting that Beryl had told her to shoot, which is true in roughly the same way that Darth Vader killed Luke Skywalker's father and which I was pretty sure was not going to get an incredibly warm reception from Michael.
  
  I did have a very loose idea for a turnaround in which Darlene gets Michael instead, basically by bluffing him ("Here, I'll show you what happened" and then going through the description to a point before turning the gun on him). This was not very developed because I neither expected nor wanted Darlene to outlive Michael.
• Darlene vs. Stephanie: One of the other killers for Darlene I had in mind was Stephanie, especially after Darlene ditches her in the wake of the nailbat cave incident. This wasn't very developed, but Stephanie was someone Darlene had pretty legitimately wronged and also might get hostile towards later and I thought that could be a pretty great setup for a death. Stephanie got rolled first, though, so this never really went anywhere even at a planning level.
• Darlene gets Home-Aloned in DC and has a Meanwhile spanning the entire game trying to hitchhike back to Tennessee: So I did not ask staff about this because it was explicitly against the rules but boy was it tempting. Basically the idea was that, when the buses home get filled, Darlene would be in the bathroom or have to run back for something and because she's pretty unobtrusive get forgotten and just end up standing around at the hotel, alone, with all her stuff and her phone on the bus. Then the buses vanish because of SOTF, and meanwhile she's having a total breakdown just trying to get back home. I have no idea what this would look like, because I only kicked around casually, but I thought it'd be pretty funny.
  
  That said, another big point against it, besides that the rules spelled out in no uncertain terms that if you went on the trip you went in the game, was that Darlene turning up to begin with was sorta this weird surprise thing and turning around and immediately going "Hah, just kidding, this character isn't going to be used after all!" would be pretty pointless. I think even if this setup were allowed, it'd need a character with a different trajectory to that point.

I somehow feel like I'm still forgetting stuff and I definitely did not proofread or edit this but /shrug here it is.