AwkwardMD
Belzebutts
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 1,682
When I first started seeing these threads pop up, my immediate reaction was that I wouldn’t end up making one because my stories are very personal. I obfuscate the real details, but there’s parts of me in all of them. When someone reads my story The Double Slit Experiment and says “I liked Vezza” or “I didn’t like Vezza”, that doesn’t affect me too much either way because nobody knows what Vezza means to me. If I advertise that Vezza is how I see my childhood, then suddenly people are able to make commentary on it with context and that gives it weight. I’d feel a lot more exposed.
Eventually, though, it got me thinking, and this was the only story I thought I’d have interesting things to say about because it’s got an entire behind-the-scenes aspect to it that nobody knows.
I’ve written two pieces of Fan Fiction. The first one was a Star Wars piece I wrote years ago (2017), though it only got published recently. The other one, though, is one I’ve filed the serial numbers off of. It doesn’t read as fan fiction because I wrote it in a way that allows it to be its own story.
I like video games as a medium. I think they can do a lot of interesting things with their storytelling, and every once in a while games come along that do something really innovative, or interesting, and I gravitate toward those. For example, the original Max Payne (and especially its noir-drenched sequel) were big influences on me. The way they used foreshadowing and mixed media, with first person narratives that toyed with degrees of self-awareness and fourth-wall awareness, blew my mind when I stopped to think about them.
Another really big one was Life Is Strange (spoilers from here on, though the game came out in 2015 and you would have played it already if you were going to play it). It might the biggest influence from a game, thanks in no small part to the (potential) gay romance between the two FMCs. Life is Strange has you playing a character named Max, who returns to the town she was born in. Through a chance encounter she runs into her childhood best friend Chloe, who almost immediately is shot and killed. The game is kicked off when Max discovers that she has the power to reverse time in short bursts, a power she immediately uses to save Chloe’s life.
Throughout the course of the game Chloe’s life is constantly in danger largely due to Chloe recklessly rebelling against everything and everyone, in every direction, all at once. In one scene, worried that a drug dealer will be seeking her out to get some money that she owes him, Chloe steals one of her step-father’s guns. She and Max practice shooting it in a junkyard, and a stray bullet ricochets back to hit Chloe in the stomach. Max has to figure out how to satisfy Chloe’s learning curve in shooting a gun without getting her killed. In another scene, because she’s mad at her stepfather and drags Max on a hike to clear her head, Chloe’s foot gets trapped between switching rails in front of an oncoming train. Max has to watch Chloe get run over by a train several times while she pieces together how the switch controls work in order to finally save her.
Over and over again, the game is putting Chloe in danger, and it is imperative that the player save Chloe’s life by using Max’s ability to reverse time in short bursts to make different choices. Later in the game, it explores the idea that some of these ‘Save Chloe’ choices have now, in turn, put other people at risk. Max has to make some more drastic changes in order to fix things, and sometimes it seems like there might not be a right answer. Sometimes it seems like maybe you shouldn’t save Chloe at all, a choice Chloe herself pleads with Max to make in the climax.
In one of the best sections (in my opinion), Max decides that the real problem Chloe has is that things have been going badly for her since her dad died when she was nine. Max had previously only used her powers to roll back ten or fifteen seconds, but she tries and succeeds (in theory) at making a significant change. She goes back 10 years and saves Chloe’s dad, which has a wildly different but similarly lethal (and absolutely heartbreaking) outcome.
Because the game is directly challenging you to save Chloe, I spent a lot of time rolling the plot over in my head, and I came to a conclusion. The problem wasn’t that Chloe’s dad died, it was that Max moved away within a month of Chloe’s dad dying. That part, Max couldn’t change. She was nine, and no amount of time travelling could change the fact that her dad got a new job a few hundred miles away. Chloe lost a parent and her best friend (and future (potential) girlfriend) within a short period of time.
The Perfect Storm was my attempt to sort out what would happen if Max never left. I replaced their names with the names of the voice actors who portrayed them; Chloe became Ashley (Burch) and Max became Hannah (Teller). I wrote numerous references into the story, like Max’s clothes, her affinity for polaroids and photography in general. Chloe’s interest in science. In the game it’s Chloe’s mom, but in my version Hannah’s mom is famous for her silver dollar pancakes. There's too many tiny, covert references to mention, but you'd know them if you saw them AND were a fan.
The structure of TPS is based on the ending of Life is Strange. Max’s tampering with time has created several alternate timelines, broken ones, and there are alternate universe Max’s showing up here and there who are very mad at being left with these shortsighted choices. It’s jumbled and complex.
I also took inspiration from the prequel game Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, which canonically established Chloe’s extremely effective arguing skills. Even when they were nine Chloe was pushy and aggressive, kind of an asshole, but she was Max’s asshole. They were a team. I tried to take all of their personality traits, all the things they would and might become, and then I gave them a future together (which, of course, ended badly because an unchecked Chloe is toxic). Then, because of what they’d come to mean to each other and what they relied on each other for, I put them on life paths that reflected the thing they were no longer capable of doing for themselves.
Then I gave them the opportunity to reflect, and that is the actual story.
***
I always feel like the last thing I wrote was the best damn thing I’ve ever written, only to be topped by the next thing I’ll write, but this one lingers. I’m really proud of how small it is, and how it relates to the original story. It’s 12k words but it covers an entire relationship between two complete people who grow in their own ways, both together and apart.
Not that many people are familiar with Life is Strange, and I don’t expect there are many devout fans here, but I’m not aware of anyone having ever put this together without me telling them explicitly. I even made a little joke in the middle of it where Ashley is wearing a costume, from the then-current movie Underworld, and remarks that not enough people will have seen it to know who she is even though her Selene costume is spot on.
The way that Life is Strange set up this idea for me made me feel like I was essentially re-imagining the characters. I took some of their nature but reworked their nurture, which is why I didn’t just publish it as fan fiction. It is its own tree, split off very near the roots from another, related tree, and I’m very, very proud of it.
Playlist:
Don’t Mess With Me - Brody Dale
Are You Ready For Me - Pretty Vicious
I Hear The Dead - Dolly Spartans
Bros - Wolf Alice
She Used To Be Mine - Sara Bareilles
Shaking - Hazel English
Magic Powers - Death Valley Girls
EDIT: original link might have been too subtle
https://literotica.com/s/the-perfect-storm-9
Eventually, though, it got me thinking, and this was the only story I thought I’d have interesting things to say about because it’s got an entire behind-the-scenes aspect to it that nobody knows.
I’ve written two pieces of Fan Fiction. The first one was a Star Wars piece I wrote years ago (2017), though it only got published recently. The other one, though, is one I’ve filed the serial numbers off of. It doesn’t read as fan fiction because I wrote it in a way that allows it to be its own story.
I like video games as a medium. I think they can do a lot of interesting things with their storytelling, and every once in a while games come along that do something really innovative, or interesting, and I gravitate toward those. For example, the original Max Payne (and especially its noir-drenched sequel) were big influences on me. The way they used foreshadowing and mixed media, with first person narratives that toyed with degrees of self-awareness and fourth-wall awareness, blew my mind when I stopped to think about them.
Another really big one was Life Is Strange (spoilers from here on, though the game came out in 2015 and you would have played it already if you were going to play it). It might the biggest influence from a game, thanks in no small part to the (potential) gay romance between the two FMCs. Life is Strange has you playing a character named Max, who returns to the town she was born in. Through a chance encounter she runs into her childhood best friend Chloe, who almost immediately is shot and killed. The game is kicked off when Max discovers that she has the power to reverse time in short bursts, a power she immediately uses to save Chloe’s life.
Throughout the course of the game Chloe’s life is constantly in danger largely due to Chloe recklessly rebelling against everything and everyone, in every direction, all at once. In one scene, worried that a drug dealer will be seeking her out to get some money that she owes him, Chloe steals one of her step-father’s guns. She and Max practice shooting it in a junkyard, and a stray bullet ricochets back to hit Chloe in the stomach. Max has to figure out how to satisfy Chloe’s learning curve in shooting a gun without getting her killed. In another scene, because she’s mad at her stepfather and drags Max on a hike to clear her head, Chloe’s foot gets trapped between switching rails in front of an oncoming train. Max has to watch Chloe get run over by a train several times while she pieces together how the switch controls work in order to finally save her.
Over and over again, the game is putting Chloe in danger, and it is imperative that the player save Chloe’s life by using Max’s ability to reverse time in short bursts to make different choices. Later in the game, it explores the idea that some of these ‘Save Chloe’ choices have now, in turn, put other people at risk. Max has to make some more drastic changes in order to fix things, and sometimes it seems like there might not be a right answer. Sometimes it seems like maybe you shouldn’t save Chloe at all, a choice Chloe herself pleads with Max to make in the climax.
In one of the best sections (in my opinion), Max decides that the real problem Chloe has is that things have been going badly for her since her dad died when she was nine. Max had previously only used her powers to roll back ten or fifteen seconds, but she tries and succeeds (in theory) at making a significant change. She goes back 10 years and saves Chloe’s dad, which has a wildly different but similarly lethal (and absolutely heartbreaking) outcome.
Because the game is directly challenging you to save Chloe, I spent a lot of time rolling the plot over in my head, and I came to a conclusion. The problem wasn’t that Chloe’s dad died, it was that Max moved away within a month of Chloe’s dad dying. That part, Max couldn’t change. She was nine, and no amount of time travelling could change the fact that her dad got a new job a few hundred miles away. Chloe lost a parent and her best friend (and future (potential) girlfriend) within a short period of time.
The Perfect Storm was my attempt to sort out what would happen if Max never left. I replaced their names with the names of the voice actors who portrayed them; Chloe became Ashley (Burch) and Max became Hannah (Teller). I wrote numerous references into the story, like Max’s clothes, her affinity for polaroids and photography in general. Chloe’s interest in science. In the game it’s Chloe’s mom, but in my version Hannah’s mom is famous for her silver dollar pancakes. There's too many tiny, covert references to mention, but you'd know them if you saw them AND were a fan.
The structure of TPS is based on the ending of Life is Strange. Max’s tampering with time has created several alternate timelines, broken ones, and there are alternate universe Max’s showing up here and there who are very mad at being left with these shortsighted choices. It’s jumbled and complex.
I also took inspiration from the prequel game Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, which canonically established Chloe’s extremely effective arguing skills. Even when they were nine Chloe was pushy and aggressive, kind of an asshole, but she was Max’s asshole. They were a team. I tried to take all of their personality traits, all the things they would and might become, and then I gave them a future together (which, of course, ended badly because an unchecked Chloe is toxic). Then, because of what they’d come to mean to each other and what they relied on each other for, I put them on life paths that reflected the thing they were no longer capable of doing for themselves.
Then I gave them the opportunity to reflect, and that is the actual story.
***
I always feel like the last thing I wrote was the best damn thing I’ve ever written, only to be topped by the next thing I’ll write, but this one lingers. I’m really proud of how small it is, and how it relates to the original story. It’s 12k words but it covers an entire relationship between two complete people who grow in their own ways, both together and apart.
Not that many people are familiar with Life is Strange, and I don’t expect there are many devout fans here, but I’m not aware of anyone having ever put this together without me telling them explicitly. I even made a little joke in the middle of it where Ashley is wearing a costume, from the then-current movie Underworld, and remarks that not enough people will have seen it to know who she is even though her Selene costume is spot on.
The way that Life is Strange set up this idea for me made me feel like I was essentially re-imagining the characters. I took some of their nature but reworked their nurture, which is why I didn’t just publish it as fan fiction. It is its own tree, split off very near the roots from another, related tree, and I’m very, very proud of it.
Playlist:
Don’t Mess With Me - Brody Dale
Are You Ready For Me - Pretty Vicious
I Hear The Dead - Dolly Spartans
Bros - Wolf Alice
She Used To Be Mine - Sara Bareilles
Shaking - Hazel English
Magic Powers - Death Valley Girls
EDIT: original link might have been too subtle
https://literotica.com/s/the-perfect-storm-9
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