What could have been- In universe edition.

[Yonagoda]

What would have happened to ypur kid if SOTF didn't take them? Will they succeed in their dream career? Suddenly turn goth? Do crack cocaine? Get married to their high school sweetheart?

(Maybe OOC what could have beens can be in another thread.)

[AnimeNerd]

So, what would've happened to RJ and Jasper had they not gotten pulled into SOTF-TV?

RJ: Honestly? Not too much interesting stuff happening here. RJ would've tried his hand at being a fully fledged author, and while he would find some moderate success, he wouldn't really become the famous kind of author he had really hoped for. He'd go into medicine and, still thinking about kids specifically getting hurt, would become a pediatrician that tries to make kids smile as he also helps them get better. That's about it, really.

Jasper: This guy, meanwhile, pretty much gets exactly what he wants in life, really. Jasper goes back to Spain immediately after graduating and starts working at the family resort, partially because he wants show his appreciation to his Abuelo, mainly so that he can actually be in Catalina's life directly rather than just as an image on a screen. He'll still be doing some gambling every now and then, and definitely flirting and "being intimate" with people, but his main focus is being a big brother that's present in Catalina's life. Once she's older, probably around 18 or so, he'd start traveling, going full time with his gambling and doing his best to make a career out of it (and his best is pretty darn good).

Whether or not either of them would end up with someone permanently, not sure really. Probably not for Jasper, and maybe if RJ found the right person, but I can't really say anything concrete.

[Yonagoda]

[+] Leah has a very long epilogue sorry

So my what could have been for Leah was… I had a lot of paths but they all vaguely follow the same plan.

After she graduates, Leah does indeed go to the University of Florida. Her parents basically sent her a large amount of money with instructions to use it responsibly, and she uses it to pay (partially because schooling is expensive in the US) for college and obtain a horticulture major while continuing the shop. At first, she is… well, she is confused on what to do. Despite being self reliant, she isn’t used to not having her mother be around her all the time, and her attempts at reaching out to other groups are unsuccessful. She manages to have a small group of friends who she mainly talks to online after graduation, but college isn’t really all that happy for her. She gets therapy, but it takes a while for her to sign up because she was too worried about what was going to happen. College wasn’t the turnaround she wanted- sure, she was free, but she doesn’t adjust well at all.

Somewhere along the way, she also gets a goth phase and cuts her hair short, because why not.

Slowly, she gets gifted the business in annual segments (to avoid taxes.) Her grandparents both died when Leah was 24-26, and she operates it fully. Except, she majored in horticulture and not business and basically doesn’t really know what to do, and the first few years of her running it were basically held up by google searches and desperately calling her mother in the middle of the night. And speaking of Leah’s mom, I think there will be some sort of tension, like, Isabella wants Leah to pay for her being in a senior home or something and doesn’t like the fact that Leah kind of went wild for a while. Her father, on the other hand, remains constantly distant until, like, when Leah's about 30 when he’s planning to retire. Even though she talks to her mom way less (and finds that she doesn’t really like talking to her much at all,) she maintains neutral, sorta-positive relationships with them and visits them when they live in the old people communities or whatever.

And then… and then it was boring for a long time. Leah just lives a plain life as a small business owner who also happens to be, like, really friendless. I think she might be a good employer, but she doesn’t really get along well with the employees all that well because of miscommunication and her just changing schedules on a whim, fucking up, just being not that good at communicating overall. The business declines a bit, but she still lives relatively comfortably. She gives up on cosplay when she gets older, and starts to let herself eat more and do things that she likes to do. Maybe she sells some cookies at the flower shop or something. But, like, nothing big really happens in her life. She gets into internet memes kind of late and learns to laugh and her own lack of friends, adheres to a bunch of philosophies a week at a time and settles on antinatalism, she stops therapy, and it’s, like, she kind of realizes that her life will always kind of be boring and sucky and there’s this dissatisfaction in her life that she couldn’t really fill. She tries online dating for just a little while because she had a little crisis about her sexuality and stuff, and fail horribly after a 2 week long relationship that ends awkwardly but amicably, but her ex-boyfriend is one of the few people that she constantly talks to because they both like the same books.

Life goes on.

Then, when she hits her late 30s to early 40s, she goes through another crisis, seeing all the people her age have families and fulfilling lives while she still doesn’t really know what’s going on. She adopts a cat. Then another cat. Then a child, who I will name, I dunno, Mark.

And I guess things just stay sort of the same but also really different because she’s a mom now. She becomes that cat grandma, and learns that it’s easier for her to interact with those younger than her, and she becomes more comfortable with interacting socially and coddles Mark’s kids and she probably peaked in her 60s. And, like, I see her dying in her early 80s from, like, lung disease or something. The shop closes and she retires, Mark grows up to be an engineer or something.

I’m just on a huge ramble here. Maybe this is incomprehensible. I might fix it later. If you are an adult and find my plan stupid, dm me to yell at me *please.*

Vasily is WIP

[MurderWeasel]

I love this concept!

TV3:

Keegan Garcia: Keegan's path sans SOTF is probably mostly dominated by a push and pull relationship with his parents, as he relies on them (alternately for direct financial support and for ins for jobs he never takes much interest to or does that well at) while at the same time resenting feeling dependent and having a tumultuous personal time with them. His overwhelming lack of ambition likely causes him to struggle time and again, while he turns the bulk of his attention towards what he really cares about: his hobbies and friends. More and more, however, he ends up feeling out of place and left behind; everyone else is growing up and he's still struggling with basics, living with his folks most of the time, and focused more than anything else on the next week's D&D session. He probably does eventually come out more officially, but probably doesn't have much luck dating long-term because his biggest focuses are niche interests and he has all those personal issues mentioned above.

Mandy Gross: Mandy's trajectory probably leads her to a lower-mid-grade college with a rather uncommon pairing of majors in fashion and mathematics. Her tendency to attach herself to others probably serves her a lot better outside the world of high school, as while it can lead her to get taken advantage of it also gives her a natural knack for networking with people who have similar interests. Probably she ultimately builds a little portfolio online and tries to get a job actually working at Disney, doing costume maintenance and stuff while secretly admiring yet also envying the face actors. In all likelihood, stuff looks pretty good for her in terms of being more or less satisfied, albeit with nothing particularly prestigious.

Bonus TV1/2 Section:

Karen Ruiz: Without SOTF, Karen probably never makes a splash anywhere in any way. Quiet, nervous, and with poor social skills and no real drive to reach further, she most likely does what she can to help support her family and spends her free time immersing herself in stories. She's a good bit less confident and less aware of her potential, and gets to do and experience a lot less in life, but also has a much better relationship with her family. She probably keeps wearing the coat until it falls apart.

Jewel Evans: Jewel probably takes a long time to get not that far from where she started. Eventually she makes it to art school, but finds herself a smaller fish in a bigger pond; she's good enough to make it a thing she does on the side but isn't famous or anything. Her friendship with Coleen has ups and downs but ultimately lasts, and Jewel remains the follower in the dynamic. She likely ultimately either stays in Oklahoma or follows Coleen somewhere else, and probably spends a lot of time trying to "find herself" without that much success. Maybe eventually marries someone and settles down; probably ends up divorced a few years later if so. All throughout, she stays super into SOTF and goth culture, but can't really get anyone outside her immediate circles to pay much attention; people get bored hearing about Zach for the fiftieth time.

Not doing Renée or Austin because it's been years since I thought about them much and I'd have to do way more brushing up on their backstories than I feel like. ><

[Cicadan]

Oooh, this is a cool and new concept, nice one Yona!

T. Torales -
Well literally my life's story is what would be a non-abducted Tim's fate.

More specifically though (some details changed but this isn't that far cry from my life's story tbh) she'll be demotivated going out of high school and fail to go to college or work for a few years, then finally get her act together under increasing pressure from the parents, likely involving her being shipped out of the United States and back to the Philippines to study there. Her politics will shift from apathetic to increasingly liberal, (stopping short of being a proper leftist) much to her own guilt and to the friendly irritation of her many more radical friends she makes online because she's lonely and doesn't relate to people in the Philippines, and she's pretty firmly anti-SOTF by the time she graduates college. Obviously she's behind the expected maturity curve, but she's able to get a steady figure job in a career she kind of likes. Transitions in her mid-to-late 20s after finally cutting through the increasingly implausible denials and her own emotional incompetence, etc.

She'll return to the states and maybe try her hand at volunteering in politics (note to self to ask Namira for permission to define how SOTF-TV verse politics works), trying to help grassroots anti-SOTF movements. But I'm sure at a glance that trying to organize against SOTF in the TV-verse would be, like, trying to kill Medicare for old Americans tiers of impossible, so she probably burns out and goes on to live a quiet and uneventful life.

L. Mendoza emphasis on the L -
I'll probably have a clearer picture of this once I've played through more of her island story? Nothing's coming to mind here for now.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Jodi Hunter: Jodi continues to keep her head down and work on her studies for the remainder of her junior year. She applies to several colleges, universities, and art schools during her senior year, boasting a modest portfolio that shows the work of a promising yet somewhat basic fledgling artist. While she is denied from all of the art schools she applied to, her academic work impresses the remainder of the schools to which she applied. She decides to attend Bryn Mawr college in Pennsylvania, where she has a great time and makes lots of friends. She falls in with a crowd of situationists, and gets really into the Spectacle. She also starts to smoke weed, and it really helps her mellow out. I like to think she'd be a good artist. But I'm not sure.

Mariko Whitney: Mariko probably gets accepted to a bunch more schools than she expected and takes a gap year and gets a job in between high school and college. She'd look for jobs at game stores or comic book stores if she could, or a book store if she was really running low on options. I think she'd apply to Stanford or UCLA or some other school on the west coast, where she'd continue to play tabletop games and stuff. Then she'd switch majors a bunch before winding up in one of the sciences, or a STEM-related field.

[The Honeless Beard]

Maxine I alluded to some in her death thread, but I can see her getting a partial scholarship to a university on Softball and winding up in sports science - which results in a fairly unsatisfying job as a personal trainer in a Gym conglomerate. She plays coed softball, comes out to her parents, and is probably in a stable relationship with a woman longterm.

I'd love to think Ivan burns out hard and never goes anywhere but he's fit and has a rich dad so he has a super soft cushion. Because of his drive and basic intelligence I can see him as some sort of suit - likely taking over his dad's podcast network and trying to expand it into esports, journalism, general tech industry shit. He doesn't really stick in personal relationships because deep down I think the person he loves is himself.

[Yonagoda]

upon further thinking I think vasily would've done coke and lived in one of these queer co-op housings. Maybe comes out as agender or some lick of nonbinary in the mid-20s. I see them not really getting their dream sotf job and working most likely in communications, or something along these lines- possibly some media company of some sort. Like Leah they're going to be a directionless mess in the college years and a bit after that- they most likely would've gotten a bit of pushback from their mother from switching jobs and not deciding on a major, but eventually settles down on a white college job that can pay for an apartment in the suburbs. Chances are that they keep on having a bit of clout online their whole life, first as a thirst trap heehee funny eboy but then later on being a genuine content creator for niche communities (butterfly knife tier lists or something.)

A good chance they would've most likely hit their low point in their mid 20s, and get it together at about 30. Worst case scenario they might've cycled through a few partners of varying genders who are let's just say not very nice to them, and they won't stop joking about the shitty things those partners did once they've moved on and recovered.

Throughout the time they never stopped dying their hair and getting tattoos. One of these cool old people in pride parades kind of vibes, with a life that's ultimately a bit uneventful to some people, but certainly not dull- a decent amount of drunk parking lot fistfights, maybe an arrest or two, is a prominent figurehead in some online niche but not truly expanding beyond that, probably in a very messy polycule of goth people... idk man.

Also stops supporting SOTF in the college years, probably because right after graduation they just felt such an overwhelming sense of relief and began to feel really, really bad for the kids once they started seeing them as more "unfortunate children" than "cool badasses my age"

[DerArknight]

Totally forgot this thread existed.

I think I wrote a good outline on what might have been Sofia's non-SOTF future in her death post. A few details might have been different, like the boy she marries not being James, for example, but I believe she was on a good path in life when SOTF-TV took her and would have likely achieved most of her goals through hard work and determination.

Not going to say stuff about Chris since he is still alive and so. Will edit this some other time.