Backstory and Unknown Facts

in the LITTLE Alive ALICE fic, she's only referred to as 'alive' so frequently because every time i go to type her name, i type in alive. it ended up giving her a whole meaning i didn't even think of before, and i'm quite happy with it.

For Spin:

I have a crossover chapter-episode written that includes characters from my other series Renny Boy, but it'll likely never see the light of day on this site.

Lisa was originally a vampire, Abby was originally a traveler, and Max was initially the grim reaper. However, this was back in 2005-2006, when I was just starting to flesh the story out.

Ben was based off of Bam Margera as far as looks are concerned. Except Bam isn't half cat, and I don't think he has 17 cats.

Max wants to go into engineering or some sort of technology field, but that can't happen until he's got enough money and Adam's out of the house.

Abby and Ethan were never abused as children, physically or mentally. They were just neglected by their mother, but Abby made sure to raise Ethan in a manner that their mom couldn't.

In Respect 3P Fraud, in the first draft, the two teenagers that Adam and Lisa help get together were originally Soria and Ren from Renny Boy. However, since they would end up playing a pretty major part, I changed it around and took them out. (Plus, at the time I wrote R3PF, I was just starting Renny Boy - another "fun fact.")

In the Characters section, after almost every character's biography and brief personality synopsis, it says "Voiced by..." and then an actor/voice actor. That's me being a loser and picturing them with specific voices as if Spin is already a cartoon.

In The Killing Kind, Ryan has actually loved Brendon from the start, just like Brendon has with him, but his experiences with other men and women were used to cover up his tracks because he believed that anyone was incapable of loving him.

In Starling, Louis goes on to sell carpet.

Chuck Botts and Riley Johnston of The Mighty Mosh are who I like to call "cursed characters." No story I put them in ends up being any good. Riley was originally the protagonist of Reality Check, and he ended up getting replaced in that one; that story's pretty much dead anyhow since I haven't worked on it since March. Chuck's first story was Pick It Up (which, thankfully, isn't on this site ) and that was scrapped almost immediately after I finished it.

I just got done reading over The Mighty Mosh and I grimaced through the whole thing. I love them as characters and I love putting them together as frienemies, but that story is so dumb to me. I'm most likely going to put them in a future story that I'm outlining that would suit them.

In Souls of the Damned, the young woman at Lue's mother's funeral was actually Jasmine. She only attended to see her daughter, Sasha. That'll never come out in the story, ever. Besides, I already finished it.

In Strike a Chord:
-The story was originally based solely on Ryder and his struggles as a transgender teen but became the struggles of an entire group
-Austin was originally supposed to be gay or have two mothers or two fathers, but I decided on making his brother gay instead.
-The character of Jamie was inspired by a kid in my English class
-Michael was originally supposed to apologize to Ryder, but instead Joshua did.
-The only reason Bruce dared Ryder to give Jamie a hickey was just to see Jamie's expression as it happened. Yes, Bruce is a creep
-Bruce was going to stay with Jamie. I never meant for him to realize that he loved Mason back.

For both The Tension and the Terror and The Web in Front:

• All of the first draft of The Tension and the Terror and most of The Web in Front were written over the course of a few days – basically I got out about 15,000 words of raw material really quickly (for me); what took the most time was the fine-tuning that came after.
• Any time it's unclear who "they" is referring to, it's always Jesse and John.
• I strongly considered naming The Tension and the Terror "The Web in Front" because Icky Mettle came out in November of 1993, which is about a year before chapters five through eight/nine take place – originally I wanted to name each story after a song written around the time the story is meant to happen. Eventually I decided The Web in Front would be a more appropriate title for the second story in the series. I also considered naming the second story "Such Magnificent Liars" (lyrics from "You Know How I Do" by Taking Back Sunday) and "Undone", in which case I would've included in the summary the lyrics from the Weezer song "Undone (The Sweater Song)": If you want to destroy my sweater / Hold this thread as I walk away (as I walk away) / Watch me unravel / I'll soon be naked / Lying on the floor! / Lying on the floor, I've come undone. And possibly also Get to see you lying there in your Superman skivvies. I think those lyrics are oddly appropriate for the story (the ending, specifically), but I thought they would probably throw off the tone.

For The Tension and the Terror:

• The thing in chapter two about Jesse's sister getting a scholarship to a boarding school in Massachusetts for gifted kids and his parents subsequently rearranging the room assignments was completely, 100% ripped off from The Babysitter's Club book, The All-New Mallory Pike, which I probably read twenty times as a kid. Given my understanding of the order of Jesse's siblings, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a fair way to arrange it so that he gets his own room after years of sharing, but I always feel bad for people who have to share a bedroom and I wanted to give him some privacy.
• John's girlfriend Amanda in chapter four is named after the first girlfriend my brother ever introduced to our parents.
• I put the word count for chapter four as ~150 words, but it's actually exactly 150 words. I counted myself to check. I just felt weird about having all the other word counts have ~s. The same is true for chapter seventeen of The Web in Front; it's exactly 250 words.
• The girls Jesse referred to at the end of chapter eight are Katie and Nora. There was a scene I really liked where John tells Jesse about how Katie won't go down on him because she's saving herself and Jesse says "That's dumb. Blowjobs aren't real sex." He also mentions that Nora barely lets him feel her up. I had to cut the conversation because I couldn't make it fit right, but I didn't bother changing Jesse's question about the girls.

For The Web in Front:

• In my notes, chapters three and four are titled "Sexy time pt. 1" and "Sexy time pt. 2", and chapter six is titled, oh dear God, "finger-bang-bang you into my life". I just really like South Park, so...whateva whateva, I do what I want.
• Chapter nine is my favorite chapter, and is pretty much what the entire story/series revolves around.
• I got contacts when I was sixteen but barely wore them. After years of wearing just glasses and basically forgetting what it was like to not have them, I wrote the line in chapter eighteen about John's hand fluttering around his face like he was going to adjust his glasses even though he had contacts on. I just recently started wearing contacts again and I do that all the time. I don't know if I'm only doing it because I predicted that people who switch from glasses to contacts would do that, or if some part of my brain remembered that from the first time I had contacts, or if I'm awesome at predicting things, but I am inordinately proud of myself for writing something apparently accurate without any substantial memory of the action.
• The tense confusion at the end of chapter eighteen was intentional. I wanted to write it that way to give the feeling of falling back into the moment of the memory, because it was so significant for Jesse and he kept reliving it. I think it probably just comes off as sloppy writing, though. :\
• The "Kurt" mentioned in chapter twenty-one shows up in another Jesse Lacey fanfiction I wrote that takes place in a different universe. Kurt (unlike Jesse or John) is the same character in both universes – an irresponsible, spoiled-but-not-selfish kid with somewhat-absentee parents. He likes to throw parties and spent the 90s tremendously pleased to share a first name with Kurt Cobain.
• Alicia was inadvertently named after Alicia Simmons Way in a backwards sort of way. I decided to name her Alicia and didn't bother to nail down her looks because they didn't really matter, but eventually my mental image of her subconsciously shifted to Alicia Simmons – skinny, pale, black hair, lots of dark eye makeup. It took me a while to realize. Incidentally, Alicia Simmons at one point tech'd for Straylight Run.

The title of Shahadah is a reference to the Islamic declaration of faith, partly because I just like the word and partly because the story is a conversation with God about faith. Except it kind of isn't because the he in the story isn't supposed to be a literal representation of God at all, and the 'conversation' is more one-sided than it looks. I left the ending ambiguous even though I hate open endings because I honestly had no idea which way it would end. Still don't, honestly.

Long post is very long.

I was bored, so I compiled a list of all of the inter-story references I tend to make in my chaptered stuff. I can’t go five chapters without making at least one reference to another story of mine. -_-

Renny Boy series: (this references chapters/stories that haven’t even been posted yet for this series)
Renny Boy:
- When Plaster Caster plays at the gig Joey lined up for them, I picture Oshie and Tegan from an unposted story (Generation Why Bother) in the crowd.
- A “Kevin Slll….something” is mentioned numerous times in this story and Brendan Dude. It’s Kevin Slater of So I Got This List…. In fact, whenever this nebulous “Kevin” is mentioned throughout the series (which he is a lot, actually), it’s Kevin Slater.
- There are so many allusions and so much foreshadowing to Lukey Kid.
- Claymore Middle’s rival is Tanglewood. Tanglewood is the setting for So I Got This List…
- (Not an inter-story reference, but I just now noticed that Luke is the only member of Plaster Caster whose birth date is never directly mentioned throughout the entire series.)
- Fiberlight, a band who appears in both this and Brendan Dude, consists of three members – Lisa, Ethan, and Adam. These three are main characters of Spin. Although their personalities are basically the same, their looks are changed to suit the indie style of their Renny-Boy-universe-style music.

Soria Girl:
- When Crash and Kobe speculate on whether or not Travis is gay, and when Mike and Isaac speak of the Helping Hands project in the car with Soria, it’s a huge reference to Home Grown.

Brendan Dude:
- Kickback, a band that wins the talent show after Plaster Caster does, is also mentioned many times in So I Got This List…
- I Am You Are is another band that is referenced in this that plays a major part in So I Got This List…. In fact, Brendan points out some of the similarities of IAYA and Plaster Caster, making reference to how Plaster Caster originally took the part of IAYA in SIGTL… (Hooray for gratuitous abbreviations!) “ And the funny part was that they had a chick guitarist, too. I think their singer wanted to bang her, too. Weird how that happens.”
- When Brendan gets word from “Kevin” that his brothers got into a fight on their bus, “Kevin” mentions his sister. Kevin Slater in SIGTL does not have a sister, but for the sake of this story, he, as a tiny background character, does.
- Brendan’s Spanish teacher is Senora Quidera (though her name is never mentioned). Quidera is also the Spanish teacher in The Mighty Mosh.
- My poem “Bonfirefighter” and my username stems from the chapter where Joey burns nearly everything he owns. The poem was written about that event.
- Tensions (in every meaning of the word) arise between Luke and Joey in this story. They flare up once Joey becomes unstable, foreshadowing some of the shameless flirting Joey does to Luke in Lukey Kid.
- When Joey books that gig for Plaster Caster at the twins’ house party, the twins mention inviting everyone they know. Joey says, “Even Ty?” and laughs at how Ty went insane when his girlfriend dumped him. Ty is a leading character in Say It Like You Mean It! who became withdrawn from others when his girlfriend left him.
- This isn’t an inter-story reference either, but when Lindsay emails Brendan about the possibility of a Justice For Somer-like event, she is referencing a true happening. Justice for Somer was a benefit for a young girl who was murdered in the area that the Renny Boy mostly takes place in, the Jacksonville/Orange Park area of Florida.
- The “blonde who seems a little dim” that provides Plaster Caster with a live CD of their show at the twins’ party is June Turner of Say It Like You Mean It!.

Lukey Kid:
- When Aaron and Luke go out for ice cream, the cashier is Andy Allen of the unposted project Generation Why Bother. His band’s name, which Aaron can’t pronounce, is Put’emup, Put’emup!.
- When Travis comes to visit Plaster Caster, there are so many references to Home Grown, the spinoff of Soria Girl that focuses on Travis.
- When looking for Soria in Miami, Joey comes across a blonde-haired woman and an angry-looking guy who are a couple. They’re Abby Skarb and Max Ferdinand of Spin.
- As Plaster Caster sells their demos outside of the Pinn*Flixie, a scruffy guy walks up and buys one. This is Doug Tater of Bus.
- Rai, at one point, mentions that he feels like his life is being written by a teenage girl with too much time on her hands. Brendan agrees. I think this is probably the best example of breaking the fourth wall in any story I’ve ever written. However, earlier in the story Luke mentions how all of the free movies on the on-demand service they get in their hotel room are animated. (I know, I know, this story isn’t an animated movie yet. But still.)
- The frontman for the ska band The Max, CJ (or Siege, as his nickname is), shares a nickname and name with Chuck Botts of The Mighty Mosh. However, you’ll never know if they’re the same person…
- When I was in eighth grade, I wrote a quick ~10,000 word biography of Justin Bryant called Sailor Tattoos. Justin constantly makes references to the events in this, but since his biography is not posted (or anywhere near good enough to be posted)…those references are kind of useless.

Say It Like You Mean It!/A Little Bit Louder Now!:

- ALBLN – Mr. G’s is a restaurant that appears numerous times in Soria Girl, too.
- ALBLN – When Jamie runs into June in the convenience store and speaks of her “Aunt Anita and cousin Riley,” this is a reference to two major characters in The Mighty Mosh.
- ALBLN – When Sammy first meets Jake and they talk about Nevershoutnever, a musician named Olli Lolli is mentioned. Olli Lolli is a character and singer/songwriter in Lukey Kid. In fact, whenever I want to mention Nevershoutnever without the risk of being sued, I just mention Olli Lolli.
- ALBLN – When Nathan waits for June at Mr. G’s, he sees a ginger redneck and a blonde girl flirting. This is meant to be Soria and Michael from Soria Girl.

I Can’t Hang:
- David Veins and Crash Spencer of the Renny Boy series both appear as angels.
- A reference to Bus is made when it is revealed that the person who hit Kyle with their car was Carrie Tater. Carrie is Doug Tater’s sister in Bus.

The Mighty Mosh:
- When Wes goes to the Less Than Jake concert with “special guests” Kill the Camera and Plaster Caster, it’s a reference to the Renny Boy series, as Plaster Caster is the main characters’ band.

Spin:
- There’s are two chapter-episodes written as crossovers with the Renny Boy universe. However, one of them is complete crap, and the other…I just can’t bring myself to post something like that.
- The bus driver that Ethan flips off in “Respect Your Elders” is, again, Doug Tater.
- In “Snow Go,” Ethan releases an album on the record label Not Listening, who was the label that Plaster Caster signed to in Lukey Kid.
- Before I revamped Spin and posted it here, there were a lot of plotholes. It used to take place in a town called Claymore, New Jersey, but once I started writing Renny Boy for real, I changed that. In the really early chapters, you can probably still find mentions of the cast living in Claymore. But they don’t – they live in Earle, New Jersey, which is a real city.

Who Knows, Who Cares:
- Jeremy has lived in Claymore, Florida (the setting of most of the Renny Boy stories), Tanglewood, Georgia (the setting of So I Got This List…), and Burlington, Georgia (the setting of SILYMI!/ALBLN!).

Bus:
- When Mikey calls Doug “Geronimo,” that’s a reference to a dead project he was in years ago called Pick It Up. Kind of coincidentally, Chuck of The Mighty Mosh, Michael McEwin of Soria Girl, and Stephanie Beckett of So I Got This List were also in this dead-end.
- The movie that Doug goes to watch with Carrie and Ezra is meant to be Renny Boy. Doug does not think highly of it.
- I picture Ren Hawker of Renny Boy to be the one interviewing Doug in the bus loop.
- The day after being interviewed, Doug walks through the bus loop and describes briefly a few other bus drivers. The roadie is Justin Bryant of Lukey Kid, the “loser who lives with his weird-ass brother” is Max Ferdinand of Spin, and the New Yorker is Brady Schwab of I Can’t Hang.
- In other stories, whenever I write a bus driver as a background character, in my head I always picture then as Mr. Doug.

So I Got This List…:
- Kickback, a local band, is also featured in Brendan Dude.
- I Am You Are is kind of a giant reference to Plaster Caster in the Renny Boy series. In the first draft of SIGTL…, I Am You Are actually was Plaster Caster, but I changed the names and tweaked the personalities of the members so that they wouldn’t be too similar. (They’re still pretty alike.)
- The “bouncer” outside of the Chuck E Cheese’s party that Kevin and Cody crash is Doug Tater of Bus.
- It’s mentioned that the lead singer of the punk trio Kickback’s name is Dirk, but the other two members’ names are never mentioned. In both this story and Brendan Dude, the guitarist and drummer’s names are Smell and Cheese.
- I Am You Are and Plaster Caster share the song “Hey Stranger.” (Both of them play that song or mention it at some point in their stories.)
- The roadie/tech guy at I Am You Are’s New Year’s party is Justin Bryant from Lukey Kid.

I know I’m probably missing a bunch of stuff. -_-

In my story What They See, though it's only one chapter in, the original chapter was written on notebook paper and never made it into my Microsoft word document. Originally Caroline was named Kara and she was 17, she was the one smashing the mirror in order to show her Mom she didn't need to be in a rehab for her issues, and the main guy character (who's name I'm keeping secret for the story since that's part of the story) was supposed to end up saving her in the end (a regular knight in shiny armor) and they were going to fall in love.

Instead, she is 15, he is gay, he is the one smashing the mirror in the first chapter, and she is way more immature than I'd planned.

But I like it because it gives her more realistic flaws.

Also, the entire story was inspired by a church sermon that an old youth minister had done nearly a year ago at my fiance's church while I was there. He wrote on mirror and distorted the images and wrote things like lonely and desperate and disgusting and hurt and etc before smashing the mirror. It was an awesome lesson that I could totally understand. I got to think about it the other day and this story that's based off the similar symbolism was born! :)

Egyptian Cotton Sheets was written three years ago, the original version anyways. When I saw a contest with the perfect picture for it I just flipped and rewrote it. It was originally written for my Mom who was divorced at 16 after he left her and her son. She read the original three years ago and bawled like a baby. It's always been dedicated to her since then, every version I've written, and there have been many!

Because I Love You was supposed to only be about a couple committing suicide together and then BAM, while I was writing it, it changed and when I looked back I never once put anything in it that was the wrong tense or plural when it shouldn't be so I think, subconsciously, I was planning that particular twist ending. :) lol

In 365 Dog Days, Frank has read "The Secret". The book was a Christmas gift and after having skimmed through it, he decided he didn't believe in that particular self-help technique. However, in his "last resort" thoughts, he considers the fact about the Universe and how it's supposed to grant you whatever you wish for - which is what he perceived that book to be all about.

In an unposted/unfinished/uneverything Frerard, Gerard and Frank have a cat.

The cat is an overweight tuxedo cat - this is a sort of amalgamation of my cat and my boyfriend's cat [mine is fat, his is tuxedo].

The cat's name is Boris, which comes from Boris Karloff who played various roles in horror movies in the 30s.

This cat is everything.

In For the Monsters that I've Been., Gerard says that he has a prescription to get three different types of pills. This is a lie. He gets the pills by sucking off his drug hook-ups. That's why they're never in pill bottles.

Also, contrary to any accusations or suspicions of Mikey's, after the last chapter in Suffer he never intends on hurting Frank. Not because he gives a f*ck, but because he knows it makes Mikey happy to have him. However, he does not, necessarily, feel guilt for his previous actions in regards to Mikey. In this story, he and Mikey have legitimate personality disorders.

In this story, Gerard writes almost all of his lryics for or about Mikey.

In Jazz Hands, the reason that Gerard is so uncomfortable hanging out with Frank and Mikey alone not only is from the fact that the two very clearly leave for long periods of time to mess around with each other. He could ignore it for a while, but on tour, in a dressing room, he walked in on Frank going down on Mikey and is scared to get drunk with them in fear of seeing it again.

In the same story, Gerard is actually quite jealous of Mikey, because he sees him as being happy without actually trying. Regardless of this, he is convinced that he loves Mikey (in a strictly brotherly way) more than Frank ever could and resents the latter for spending so much time with his brother.

This is actually one of the only stories that I've written where the Way brother's feelings for each other are strictly platonic and probably the only story where Gerard is legitimately straight.

In Envision the Magic, when Lisa tells Frank she's looking for an extra job, she'd already looked into a job as a cocktail waitress. Since she told him she wanted something "both decent and worth the bother", it obviously didn't appeal to her.

However, in Masterpiece, Frank's good friend Ava is a cocktail waitress, and she pretty much took the job Lisa said no to. Ava was also originally a character in another story of mine that didn't happen, but I really liked the girl and had to include her in something

Hmmm, in Last Life, my character, Sammy, has a crush on the Thundercat, Wilykat, but I never go into full detail about that and my main character, Catrina (aka Lina) has a doll that her mother gave her when she was little but I never went into full detail about its history because it wasn't that important to the story.

Kori of Sanctuary was once involved with another Thundercat called Bengali but it was only a very short time and it was hinted at in chapter five I think.

In Bus, Doug moved to Yuma when he was fresh out of high school because he had an older cousin named Sal who lived over in Phoenix.
Sal, however, mere months after Doug moved to Arizona, was hit by a bus.

Nearly every single story I write has a huge, major backstory. It's not always there when I first start writing my characters, but by the end I know exactly what each and every single character's childhood was like, what they all enjoy and hate, and pretty much every detail. Sometimes these backstories get so huge I have a hard time picking through them and deciding what doesn't need to go into the story since everything is important to my characters.

For example, my character Zeke in my newest story Hanging Over, only has bits and pieces of his past dabbed here and there into the plot line. In reality, I'm aware of his whole past including a secret that I'm still debating whether it should be included or not.

In an unposted/untitled/this hasn't even been written down yet story:
Drew's major flaw isn't his schizophrenia; it's his larger than life dependence on his older brother and his inability to function properly without his brother.

In Renny Boy, the guy who gives Plaster Caster their first (rather unsuccessful) gig is named Aiyedan, purposely spelled obnoxiously.