But also: new year, old fics.

I've been trying really hard to keep myself busy with writing since I finished Recovery. As previously mentioned, when I started the writing hiatus that ended up lasting two years, I wasn't sure I would ever come back to writing. Now that I'm excited about it again, I'm eager to keep the train chugging along as best I can.

I'm a solid 6300 words into a Sam/Jess/Mike Until Dawn fic that I'd quite like to finish, but it's taking some time because it's porn. I am deeply rusty at writing sex in general, since that's a muscle I had to train and not one that came naturally to me, but I also never really got a handle on how to write AFAB genitals in sex scenes. I've tried several times and only succeeded once. The success was What We Write in the Shadows, so it went great, but writing one fic is not the same as knowing what I'm doing. This means that I must turn once more to YouTube sex ed videos for research. But I'm lazy, so I don't want to do the research.

Instead, I am procrastinating writing one fic by working on another...few. I've got quite a lot of WIPs that I abandoned in 2016-2019 for essentially no other reason than that I thought I would get back to them sooner than I did. I'm happy to report that I've read through a good number of my fic documents from those years and still enjoyed what I wrote, which means they'll be a lot easier to finish than if I discovered I hated and needed to rewrite them.

As a youth I was an aspiring novelist, but as I grew up, I discovered that I don't enjoy longform writing very much. There's a reason that writing a 24k word fic took me out for two years, and there's a reason that most of my fics don't run longer than 10k. That said, some of my old projects that I still care about finishing are long ones, and that's kind of scary!

I'm currently spending my time working on an AU for Caste Heaven, a BL manga that peaked in 2016 and ended in 2021. I'm not going to pretend that I liked the original work very much, but I'm also not going to pretend that I didn't get deeply invested in the protagonist and his mother, or that there weren't good pages in the terrible chapters.

The first part of this AU, Gilded, is already up on my AO3. I think the fandom for that series was most active in 2016, which is frankly in large part to me and my good friend Ciara posting a fuck ton of fics around the same time because we were constantly talking about the series. I got a lot of really kind comments on that fic because of when it was posted, and I am afraid that I'm not going to get the same kind of attention since so much time has passed. Alas. 

But the project still means a lot to me! I'm not usually the kind of person who follows trends in entertainment (FE3H was a huge exception), so I'm okay with the idea of not having a lot of attention on this fic, even if I would prefer otherwise. I still intend to finish it one day, regardless of whether that's this year or not. All that said, I sure do hope this is the year!

This AU has always been beloved to me. Before I got into Until Dawn, this was the recovery story I always wanted to write. The original manga is, uh, trauma porn and then a really weird ending where a victim falls for his abuser, for some reason? But my AU is about getting revenge, realizing that life goes on once you've gotten it, and slowly rearranging your life until you find peace. I pulled out the two most important relationships in the original manga--the caustic protagonist and the very first friend he's ever made, and the caustic protagonist and his mother who would absolutely kill to protect one another without ever mentioning the sacrifices they've made--and made the whole fic about that.

I left off in 2019 with a full 20k unposted words of this AU split into three documents and a very thorough notes document, all of which has stood the test of time. Can you imagine if I thought they sucked?? I'm going to do my very best to finish it this time! This is also my first project with real OCs that actually matter, so I've got to try to give them personalities and flaws and whatnot. It's a good fic, and I want to do right by the concept.

Here's to a new year! I hope I can keep up the pace I've been writing at for the last couple of months, because I've really been enjoying it.

I don’t know when I became fond of Jess, because I don’t think it happened after the first playthrough I watched, but I really like Jess! I think she’s really cute. Her initial charm point is when she and Mike have that snowball fight where you can just dominate Mike. The goofy little roleplay they do where Jess pretends to be a southern plantation girl or whatever is really cute because it’s so… not what I would think a popular girl would do. It’s very silly and nerdy. I also like that everyone correctly chooses to hit Mike with a snowball instead of kissing him when given the option.

There’s frankly not really anything interesting about the whole Mike vs. Matt, Jess vs. Emily fight scene. It’s just heterosexual teen drama, and while I understand why it’s there, it’s very boring. I think the dialogue option where Mike tells Jess that she “brings out the worst in Emily” is half of the truth: Jess and Emily bring out the worst in each other in this game.

The scene where Josh hands Mike and Jess the key to the cabin, though? When Jess says she thinks Josh was hitting on her and then gets genuinely excited when Mike jokes about inviting Josh to come to the cabin with them to fuck? Amazing. Love the idea of Jess being a virgin who is nervous about having sex for the first time but also kind of down to have a threesome. I also like the idea that even though Mike is the one who’s dated around the most, it’s Jess who’s more adventurous. I think it suits Mike to be more conservative and get pulled along to more exciting ground. Also, I want him to get pushed around by women because he’s clearly into that.

The entire walk to the cabin is really good Mike content, Jess content, and Mike/Jess content. It’s where you can start to wring out Mike’s charm points, but it’s also the prime time to see what Jess is like, since it’s the last time we really see her pre-trauma. I’m not a fan of pranks in general, but I’m especially not a fan of pranks for this group of people. For that reason, I fucking hate when they scare each other on purpose during the walk up to the cabin. That said, every other piece of dialogue is really cute. I like it when Jess teases Mike because it shows that she’s not so hung up on him that she just accepts everything he does. Also, Mike deserves to be made fun of.

Once again I must recommend not opening any gates as Mike so Jess will yell at him and tell him he pooped all over his pants. Amazing content, truly. I love that she’s out here running for her life and still has room to be frustrated that her boyfriend is being stupid.

I’m also glad that Jess has one of the extremely rare moments when someone shows a modicum of responsibility for what happened to Hannah and Beth. When Ashley talks about it, she refers to it as “what happened last year,” whereas Jess properly acknowledges that the prank is what got Hannah and Beth killed. Which is obviously true. Since Mike and Jess were two of the most central figures in the prank, it’s an important conversation for them to have. The actual words they say aren’t a great look for them, but from the performance, it’s really clear that Jess does not feel good about what she did.

The scene where Jess gets pulled through the window in the door is truly the single most frightening moment that has happened in any Supermassive game, and I’ve seen full playthroughs of Until Dawn, Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes, and The Quarry. There’s only one moment in House of Ashes that even comes close to the level of fear that the Jess scene induces, and nothing else is in the same ballpark at all. The shape of her body in that window just looks so wrong. It looks like her whole body is broken, and I was shocked that she didn’t just die immediately when she first got grabbed.

What really clinches Jessica as a good character to me is the change in her attitude after she gets dropped down the elevator shaft and wakes up in the mines. First and least importantly, I love that one of the first things she can do is try to hit Matt with a shovel. (Get him, girl!) But what actually matters is the fact that her entire attitude changes once she’s hurt. She doesn’t mess around, she doesn’t tell any jokes or say anything unnecessary, she just tries to survive.

Jessica’s credits performance is another one of my favorites. Emily and Matt mostly talk about stuff that doesn’t really matter, which has always annoyed me about their personality and writing, respectively. On the other hand, Jess talks only about survival. There’s so much weight in the fact that she ignores the police interviewer’s question and doesn’t ask if Mike is okay; she asks if he lived. Jess has an almost instinctive understanding of just how dangerous this mountain is for them, and she only needs one encounter with a Wendigo to get there.

Jess has a maturity about her that I think she usually doesn’t let show because she’s too busy with her hot, popular, mean girl persona. It has interesting implications post-game. Will she keep playing up that part of her personality? Will she become more serious now that she knows there’s more out there than regular teen drama? Will she handle her PTSD well, or fall apart like Mike and Sam are likely to do? There are a lot of ways you can take Jessica after the game, but I think she’s most interesting if she does become more serious.

The depiction of Jess in “the balance book” is really good. I have a lot of fondness for the moment when Josh looks around at all of the drawings Jess has made out of trauma and realizes they’re not all just monsters.

I am newly fascinated by the idea of Jess undergoing a classic Big Chop once she's satisfied with her therapy progression and ending up with a fluffy bob a la Kristen Bell afterwards. I think it would be really cute :)

Our girl Sam got such a fucked up last name. RIP

I got into horror as a genre after I first experienced Until Dawn, so Sam was actually my first final girl. I say this with nothing but affection: Sam is boring, but she’s so likable. I don’t mean she’s boring as a character–like everyone, she’s been through enough shit to be interesting by default–but as a person, she would be boring. Especially in this group of assholes who prank each other to death. But she is also their heart and their conscience, so they need her desperately.

I honestly think it’s really cute that Sam lacks humor but is obviously the kindest and most caring person in their group. There is truly no way in hell that she is close friends with any of the popular kids in their group (you know, the ones who were most directly responsible for killing her best friend?), but I bet they all know that they can come to Sam for anything if they really need to.

It means something that Hannah was Sam’s best friend, not anyone else’s. It tells you about Hannah, even though we barely see anything of Hannah’s character aside from her big crush on Mike. If Hannah was Sam’s best friend, that means she must have been kind. That means she must have cared about things, because Sam wouldn’t be best friends with someone superficial or mean. We get to see how caring Beth is during the prologue, which is why you immediately understand what a loss it is for her to have died. It’s different with Hannah, who you only get to know through sad journal entries that aren’t even really about herself as much as they’re about Mike and Josh. A lot of Hannah’s personality is understood through her connection to Sam.

I always appreciate how clear-headed Sam is, even when faced by terrible terrible news. She’s always known who was at fault for Hannah and Beth’s disappearances; she may even have forgiven them, for all we know. At least she doesn’t seem to hold a grudge, which is impressive. She doesn’t freak out about Emily’s bite. When she realizes Mike is in danger, she goes after him. She saves him from a Wendigo attack (twice). Honestly, I think the emotional work is harder than fighting off monsters in a lot of ways. 

Knowing that Sam is a final girl and knowing that she can’t get physically hurt in a way that matters until the very end of the game, Sam kind of has it easier than most of the group over the course of the game. It’s still incredibly physically exhausting to run around scared and have to climb huge ass rock walls, but at least she’s never at risk of getting her eyes gouged out or her jaw ripped off. But the night at the lodge is the end of “easy” life for all of them, 

Some of the most brilliant scenes in the game are Sam scenes. The entire final sequence with the Wendigos is an absolute masterpiece from start to finish, and that’s a big part of what makes the game so good and so memorable. But as far as acting goes, the single best moment in the entire game is Sam’s first section of the credits where she talks about Josh and not needing therapy. It’s just a few lines, but it says so much about the year before and the state of her mind. The way she talks about Josh is full-on tragic; she’s in mourning, she’s been betrayed by someone she loves, and she believed that she was getting closer to him the entire time that he was plotting this whole revenge scheme. It changes her, and the consequences of that are immediately clear.

There’s nothing that beats the execution of Sam’s “I said I’m fine” line. It’s so obvious that she’s not fine, and it really sets up what the rest of her life with PTSD is going to be like. Initially, Sam doesn’t seem like the type who would refuse therapy if she needed it, but she also doesn’t seem like the type of person who would stoically take a monster (who used to be her best friend!!!!) screaming in her ear over and over while she slowly makes her way to safety. Sam contains multitudes.

It’s not like she’ll stop being the conscience of the group, but she goes straight into burying her trauma with the kind of commitment that only Sam can manage. And because it’s Sam, you know she’s going to be successful in burying her traumas and pretending she doesn’t need help, which is only going to affect her negatively. She seems like she would be too smart to fuck up her life this way, so everyone is going to believe that she’s carrying on the way she is because it’s actually better for her. And they are going to be so very wrong to believe that.

I think that Sam will be okay eventually. But I also think that Sam will have a lot of really hard, self-sabotaging months or years ahead of her while she’s in mad denial about how bad her PTSD is. Of all the cast of Until Dawn, I most believe in Sam’s ability to have real friends who actually care about her. That said, I hope those friends are able to be there for her in the way she’ll need them to be.