Into The Fray: Season Two Post-Fic Discussion

Here's that in-detail post you asked for:

Idea One: The Comic

Very early on (before A House Divided's release) I got the idea to make a TWDG comic. I was going to base it off of a random group of characters such as Clementine, Luke, Pete, Carlos and the 400 days group. It would be non-canon to the game and they would be searching for a new home. It did carry on from All That Remains but that was about it, because Pete was missing his foot.

Nate and his group were going to be the enemies, but Kenny was going to be on Nate's side which would come as a shock for Clementine.

It was going to follow an Episodic Format. Most notably two of these episodes were called “The Enemy Within” (later used as ITF1 Ep3's title) and “The Calm Before” (ITF1 Ep4's working title before I renamed it to “Blood Runs Cold”)

The drawings I have for it are pretty terrible, so I won't inflict them upon you.

There was going to be an OC named Ethan (might sound familiar) who I think Clem's group would capture at some point because he was sneaking around their camp without them knowing.

That's about as much as I can remember other than that Clem was going to get a black eye at some point. I didn't make the comic because A House Divided came out not long after I planned it and I could never work out how to lay out comics.

That wasn't the end for the idea, though.

Idea Two: The Game & Silhouettes

After A House Divided I went on to rethink it all; Instead of going for a comic I decided to use what knowledge I had in flash I to make an incredibly simple 'game' which involved dialogue choices and what not. It would've taken place after Season Two with Clem and Luke as the main characters. They would be on their way to Fort Wainwright in Alaska, which would allegedly be safe from the walkers. On the way they'd bump into a group of people; Ed, Lydia, Alex and Keira. Ed was a middle-aged man with a bald head and a big ginger beard, Lydia was a black-haired woman in her 30s with a hooded jacket, Alex was a man in his 20s with ginger/brown hair and Keira was his younger sister of around 10. Those cover the silhouettes, and the missing one was Luke, which most people correctly guessed.

I also made slides for this project – the Episode 4 and 5 ones in particular were heavily modified to make the ITF1 slides so I don't have the originals any more, but y'know that Vince had a gun to his head in the ITF1 Ep4 slide? That was originally Luke, but I switched the heads and the jackets out. The Episode 5 slides were similar – instead of Vince and Becca walking away from a corpse, it was going to be Clementine standing over one in a way that reflected the “No Time Left” slide.

The story would go as follows; Luke and Clem wandering in the wilderness. They'd find an abandoned camp and both of them would be taken by surprise by walkers. Ed would save them and tell them to come back to his group. Blah blah blah, group bonding, they find out about the Fort which is apparently 'safe' and go on a journey. By Episode 4 bandits catch up with them and there's some capturing-tying-up-execution business that occurs, which probably sounds familiar. The bandits are led by a man of native american descent named Ethan, who has a dark cyan jacket and a hat.

I don't know what would've happened after that. I never planned that far because I didn't have the skills necessary to pull the project off, though there was a time where I replaced Clem and Luke – unable to guarantee that either would survive past “No Going Back” - with two characters called Sully and Marshall. Funny names, right?

Part Three: Into The Fray

Once “In Harm's Way” was released the idea was settled. Instead of Clementine, I'd follow up the 400 days characters while utilising those forgotten ideas from earlier projects. The general “Ethan & his bandits” subplot remained along with a few episode titles (“The Enemy Within” & “The Calm Before”) along with several characters. Keira from the Flash Game thing eventually influenced Annie a little bit. Lydia influenced Laura and the initial version of “Sully” from later on in the flash game would become Miles. Fort Wainwright was made into the Indianapolis Outpost and the name “Marshall” would be reused. Ethan's character was eventually split into two; Ethan the goon and Ivan the leader.

Part Four: Into The Fray: Season Two

First off, I should probably mention that ITF2 was originally going to be called “State Of Decay” but I named it “Season Two” so it'd be easier to find.

Whatever was left of the flash game project was incorporated into this Season, most notably the fact that “Alex” later inspired Benjamin “Sully” Sullivan and “Ed” would inspire Kiff.

So, to conclude:

Started off as a comic, never followed it through

Turned into a flash game, never followed it through

Turned into a fic, followed it through

Ethan & the other bandits were present throughout all iterations

The seeds for Annie, Laura, Miles, Sully, Kiff and other characters were sewn long before you saw them in the fic.

Yeah, I can't find the version that isn't silhouetted but he did look kinda like the Woodsman.

Did find an old file with Alex's design on it, though. Real old, odd how far I've come:

Maybe I should put him in ITF3 if I decide to write that. Change his personality and get rid of the hat so he isn't a Sully clone.

I have a very similar way of going into ideas, scrapping them, and reusing them.

For example, in the fan-fic I'm planning, the main character is a red haired man named Daniel Crelourn, who was a PI in New York City. His mother died due to complications from his birth, and his father, a police officer, died doing... something(it isn't important). He lived with his aunt and uncle and cousin Richard(who has appeared in small stories I've written), went to college and got a degree in music(of some sort), eventually became a PI mostly as a side job, was pretty good at it, comes down to Macon when a friend who moved there is injured(bitten by walker).

The stages by which I came up with this character:

A story involving vampires featured a detective named Daniel Crelourn, though the name was the only similar thing. Old Daniel was in his 40s, a drunk, and was about as likeable as a particularly offensive brick wall(also relating to the fact he had no personality aside from being stoic and not liking things).(Some 4-5 years ago)
Then, he I moved him into a story about the book of revelations, where he was a 20s something musician with red hair, and very similar appearance to modern/current Daniel, though that gradually changed as well.
I used him in a myriad of failed ideas and stories, slowing evolving his personality.
Before I even heard of Walking Dead, he was the main character in a story about zombies called "Dead Zone", where his backstory came from, mostly.
I did a remake of Dead Zone 2 years ago, maybe a little longer than that, and that was when Richard was added, as a note, last year, I did another reboot, but with Richard as the leading character. Didn't work out.
I eventually traded Daniel as my go-to main character for developing ideas with another character named Walter Menvelle, and Daniel fell by the wayside.
A while ago, around the start of Walking Dead S2, I did a collaborative Fan-fic on the TTG Forums, with Daniel as my own character. That kind of fell apart by page 100, but now, I've been planning out a solo version of the fic.


I do this with almost everything, meaning even though I've been saying for a while that i'm going to write a Fan-fic with all original characters, I've already filled 3-4 notebooks with ideas, characters, settings, and still have nothing actually written down.

I know exactly what this feels like. Half of my characters from Inferno, if not more, were hanging around in my head as ideas for other stories, so I just inserted them into the fic.