Processing the Aftermath

Behind the Scenes - Part 1

Hello! Welcome to the end-of-story notes! This is part 1.

Some thank yous: To DragonMaster, Alternitive Luck, and ugcuggc for encouraging me to put the story online! To the AvA fanfic writers in general. It's been so cool to read different takes on the same group of characters and it's definitely inspired me while writing this.

I hope you'll allow me to indulge in one of my favourite things: story breakdown and behind the scenes! Hope this doesn't sound presumptuous - I'm just excited to share how I built this story with others who might be interested. I've added bolded text as topic markers. If this isn't something you're interested in, feel free to stop here, and thank you for making it this far! ^^

This all began as fun bits of character analysis on .txt files. I started with character descriptions, then started to explore how each of the stick figures would react to AvA5. I started imagining how this would happen, that imagining turned into a dialog between TCO and TSC... and here we are. Once I decided to make this a story, I aimed for five parts - one part per member of the current cast of AlansPC. I also decided to stick as close to canon as I could (within reason, of course, I'll talk more about that later).

Why "Orange" and not "Second"? I use "Orange" as The Second Coming's name because (1) IRL Alan calls him Orange, and (2) when he first met the others and heard their color names, it seemed fitting that he'd find it a little odd that his name wasn't a colour too. To fit in a little better, he probably would've insisted they call him "Orange".

Funnily enough, I wrote TCO as a rather stoic and reluctant personality before I had read any other fanfic for that character.

Why did TSC need to talk to TCO alone? Mainly for story reasons. I needed it to happen so the five could have their later conversations about it. Other reasons include Orange wanting to keep his friends out of danger. I also imagine Orange wanted some breathing room and thought the conversation with TCO would go better without constant input from the others.

You may have noticed a few inaccuracies in how the characters narrate past events.  That is very intentional - characters wouldn't remember everything the first time around, and characters may also (consciously or unconsciously) manipulate their narrative for their own purposes.

Settings: I wanted the stick gang to have a group conversation and then split up. The premises of Yellow alone on his laptop and Green alone training in his room were pretty clear to me. Blue's and Red's were much harder. The group conversation was initially written from Red's point of view. Eventually, I switched to Blue since he seemed best suited for noticing subtle body language. 

Red... oh Red. His part was the hardest to write. I did most of the brainstorming, writing, and worrying for his part when the others were almost finished. I just couldn't figure out who he was and what problems he faced in enough depth to write a story. IRL personality-wise, I am the least like Red out of the five sticks, which didn't help. I knew he did melee combat, was good with animals, impulsive, a little goofy, and loved his friends, but not anything much deeper than that. Three weeks, several brainstorming sessions, and 3.3K words later, I finally felt like I understood Red better and could give him a story. I'm still not quite satisfied with his part and might rewrite it.

Fun fact: The group conversation was originally longer and included the sticks talking about what Orange could do with his powers.  I was going to delegate the original part to Blue and the additional part to Red, but I didn't feel like Red had enough unique things to narrate in that conversation. Hence, in Red's part, he summarises the end of the conversation, then time skips to when he is alone. I've posted the deleted scene for this in the Behind the Scenes - Part 2.

I tried to make each character's narration unique. This should show the most for Red, Yellow, and Green. See above for notes on Red. Yellow uses acronyms for Chosen, Dark, and Orange in his notes, but uses actual names when he's narrating. Green narrates in short punctuated sentences.

Yellow's section was very fun for me to put together since I write code IRL! Yellow's note-taking narration is something I actually do too - pick a topic, write down everything that I can think of, and let my train of thought take me where ever it decides to go. The note-taking method was also useful to keep Yellow's (aka my) 1001 rather specific detailed ideas from bogging down the narration.

Including Blue in almost every part: I never intended for Blue to have such a significant part in the parts other than his own. It just kinda... came to be. Red needed someone to help him make sense of his feelings. Yellow needed a reminder of the friends he was fighting for. Blue, as I've imagined him, was the best candidate for both of those roles. It also makes up for the fact that Blue's part is mostly him listening in a group conversation. Retrospectively, perhaps this shows how much Blue cares for his friends and the bond they have together, and also how Blue sometimes forgets to care for himself? I do find it significant that Green remains alone in his part.

The potential sixth part would have been that promised discussion between Orange and Alan, and it would've been titled "ALAN - Context Switching." I didn't feel like I "saw" enough of Alan's character to write him. Of course, there's more than enough information to write Alan's character (all the awesome stories here are proof). However, since I resolved to stick as close to canon as possible, and because this story is about each character's perspective on a lifechanging event, I felt like I hadn't seen enough of Alan's character in the videos themselves to get a decent idea of who he is and how precisely he views the stick gang. He definitely cares about the stick crew and is fine with them doing almost anything on his computer. But, does he see them (or at least Orange) as friends, or merely as the chill dudes in the downstairs apartment with whom he has occasional game nights, some combination of the two, or otherwise? Also, since Alan is a real person, I felt a little uncomfortable writing a character when I felt I hadn't seen enough of him onscreen.

Of course, I deviated from canon in places where I felt it wasn't overly significant. The sticksfight.com backroom has a kitchen. Red has a room with animal friends from different games. The Bluetooth incident. "Sticky keys / sticks and keys / stickkeys."

Speaking of "sticky keys"... I derived "sticky keys" from the fandom exclamative "sticks!" Then I imagined that Yellow noticed the amusing connection between that and the concept of "sticky keys", started using forms of "sticky keys", and the others caught on. Orange (and perhaps Green) might use "sticky frames" instead.

I'm in an Encanto phase and I think that helped me define a couple characters. Green is Isabella; Yellow is Luisa. Green strives to be absolutely perfect and Yellow believes the stick gang's personal safety depends on his ability. It's not a perfect allusion, but useful :)

If you've made it this far, thank you <3 I hope that wasn't too overwhelming. In part 2, I'll include some of my notes and a deleted scene.