New Infinity Addendum: The Characters of New Infinity
I've always considered both Ash and Felix to be an extension of myself I put into my writing. Ash, for the most part, faces situations how I would, she's quick witted with a bit of dry sarcasm and relying on smarts more than brawn. Originally, I decided she was 15, but came to the conclusion some time in 2013, in the middle of writing the first arc, that that limits my options for her, as it'd be more interesting to write about her future, college, her career, especially with me nearing my senior year of high school at the time. Additionally, my goal for Ash was that she would have identified as bi and was originally going to be in a relationship with Franklin and end up in a relationship with a girl in her graduating class, but I gutted this and settled to make her aromantic, as I felt more comfortable writing that and it reflected my own feelings at the time.
As already expressed, Felix went through a lot of changes from his inception. At first, Felix had a pretty solid antagonistic role in New Infinity, and in the very beginning, in the arc interlude where Felix wipes Ash's memory, he does it to protect himself, cussing at her and dumping her unconscious body in the park outside the capitol. I don't have an excerpt of that anymore, and for very good reason: I hated Felix like that, and felt the character had more potential. I rewrote the interlude to imply that Felix was just concerned about someone stumbling into his workshop, and though I never mentioned exactly what happens to Ash, she is no worse for wear and he expressed regret at his actions.
Felix's backstory was a big part of New Infinity, and while the specifics go unmentioned in the entirety of the story, this was something that I had finally decided on after the first few arcs. I intentionally planted the idea of the stranger, the outsider all throughout Felix's character to highlight this idea, as his backstory and identity are so heavily unknown and left up to conjecture that he might as well be from an alternate dimension. The backstory as he explains it at the end of New Infinity is the story he's been going with for most of his life, though that doesn't necessarily make it the most correct. There is definitely more room to explore the character, I intentionally built that into the continuation because I do want to explore the truth, but at the same time didn't want to try to rebuild understanding of Felix's life 50,000 words in. Furthermore, I feel like the actual answer needs a lot more context, so what a better way to start fresh with Felix than with New Infinity 2?
Out of all of Ash's circle of friends, Franklin was the first one I came up with and the one who went through the most plot-significant changes. Franklin has, to me at least, always been a black son from a wealthy family, and I wrote him with a mid-Atlantic accent in mind. Originally, Ash was supposed to be in a relationship with Franklin, who would be killed by Francisco and the entirety of the continuation was going to feature the idea of Ash trying to live up to the example he set while coping with losing him. Once I started noticing I was writing Nathan and Franklin together into a lot of scenes, I decided I should just put the two of them together into a relationship, and honestly that was one of the smarter moves I made as I wrote it. The idea of a talented, creative individual dating a technical mind creates for a little bit of an interesting foil. I kinda regret not going deeper into their personal lives in New Infinity though did keep him alive and well for the continuation because I do want to lose myself in giving them a personal life outside of Ash.
As for the car crash he gets in during the 9th Arc, this was originally where he was to be killed, though it was never from a rain storm, he was supposed to be murdered outright (if I recall, he was going to be beaten up and thrown in front of a passing truck), but backed out due to the unfortunate implications involved. Rather, I was more using his injury as more blatant symbolism, as I always thought he stood out most out of Ash's friends, so his injury at Francisco's hands was meant to be symbolic, that Francisco was coming for what Ash holds dear. But the only major person of color in New Infinity at the time being the only one to be killed (save for Felix's doppelganger) was just too uncomfortable. Injury, especially one I could retcon at the end in a justified manner? I felt a bit better about that.
Specifically talking about Nathan, he was originally named Garrett, and if I recall an entire arc went up on FictionPress with that name intact, embarrassingly. This and the decision to call Ash's friend Isaac were mostly last minute decisions, mostly because I thought they were better names (and I would keep writing Garret differently every time). Originally, I had named Isaac Claus based on the character from the HAL Labs RPG MOTHER 3, which is still alluded to with his username, TheMaskedMan. A lot of this came from the idea that Isaac's (or Ash's, depending on how you look at it) life was kinda ripped in half by her moving to New Infinity, much like how Lucas' life is ripped in half when his brother Claus is stolen from him early on in the game. Again, the change was mostly entirely stylistic, done because I thought Isaac was a better name for the character than the incredibly European Claus, much like how Nathan was a better name than the tough to spell Garett. Is that even correct? I dunno.
George was an under-utilized character. Admittedly, he was there to give Ash a more diverse group of friends, as he was younger and the idea was that Franklin would be a bit younger, but as I wrote New Infinity, I realized that his age kinda prevented him from being a more memorable character, as he was never in any of the classes Ash could take and couldn't easily participate in Ash's more mature circle of friends. I do want to rectify that for New Infinity 2, but it'll take a lot of work. George was originally written to mirror the person I was at about age 12, even if he was 14 or so during New Infinity. George loves Pokémon and his friends, and was just a bit sickly. George was originally meant to be albino, but I dunno, that doesn't add much to his character. Someone shoulda told that to 2014 me.
Ash's family was decided on from the get-go. Alex was meant to be a vague reference to my own older brother, who is in his mid-20s, still heavily involved with the goings on in my life as well as my younger brother's, taking interest in my passions and hooking me up with his media micro PC to write New Infinity on while my actual laptop is in the shop. He still plays a lot of video games, though his own tastes are not like my own (which is why Alex plays Dota, Ash was playing what I was playing at the time and I could not understand and did not enjoy Dota. That said, my older brother mostly plays the Mafia and Grand Theft Auto series of games), and has a technical job that pays moderately well. As for Alex's actual profession, he was written as a graphic designer, primarily because graphic design was one of those jobs I always had mad respect for, but the actual details of his job go unknown because I kinda wanted to leave the specifics up to the reader's imagination. He could be a web designer who makes websites, he could be a graphic artist who makes ads and book covers, he could be an animator like his younger sister, it's kinda up to you.
Ash's parents were some of the first few characters I designed, with her mother working for an office in “the city” and her absent father being a former sculptor. Her father being an artist and the effect he and his absence had on the rest of his family was one of the core themes I had in mind when I designed them. Ash's mother, Meredith, works a stale, nondescript office job because she feels cheated by James, whose art couldn't turn a profit in the early 2000s and had to resort to murder and theft to keep his family safe. Alex and Ash both become artists of some sort to further these ideas, that even a decade after his disappearance, he still has a heavy impact on the family and won't be forgotten. Another detail is that James' last name is Baker, but Ash and her family have the last name Smith. The key reason for this is if Ash had taken her father's name, she'd be “Ash Baker”, which plays into the idea of her being a Pyro main in TF2, but also James being a failing artist at the time, much like a baker burning their wares to ashes, James was not the man he thought he was and the truth hit him quicker than he could have ever imagined, and he panicked. And as for whether I'll ever reunite him with his family, I have no plans to do that in the continuation as that would require a few arcs to talk about and an in-universe year or two before he is fully accepted once again (because things like that take time for the family to adjust to, it'd be unrealistic to have James be universally and immediately welcomed back into his family).
I had decided from the get-go that Francisco was one of my antagonists, and a lot of this is because of how easily he acted as a foil to Ash. She has a chilled demeanor and thinks through her actions, whereas Francisco is incredibly hot-headed and reckless. The moment he hears a rumor the town is saved to a computer, he is ready to tear it all down. His inability to listen to reason and back down when he's wrong were two of the big things I needed to get the plot moving, but I ended up gutting this from him at the end because I do still think Francisco deserves a second chance. He's a character I want to explore deeper but the state he ended up in at the end of Arc 9 and into Arc 10 was nothing I could really work with. He's an antagonist not particularly because he's not a nice person, but his fatal flaw to judge quickly means that he gets pulled into Twitch's narrative easily.
Twitch is a character I had no plans for when I introduced him, originally deciding that he was a nervous wreck that knows about digitized civilizations before introducing a deeper backstory and set of skills. He is the brain to Francisco's brawn and drives a lot of the conflicts, telling Francisco what he can and cannot get away with, providing him with the means to commit all sorts of havoc for his own means, and mostly just sticking back and fixing things when they go wrong. Twitch's driving fatal flaw is the lack of trust he has in digitized civilizations, which is fully justified as the sole survivor of tests committed by the Happy Infinity Company. He fears he's going to be torn to shreds, get stuck in an endless loop, have to experience the pain of death over and over again until it means nothing to him, and destroying the town is a higher priority than learning to trust the man in the red hat. This is another character trait I gutted at the end of the series, as I wanted to get Twitch and Francisco on a level I could work with in the continuation, to find a new place for them and further explore their depths. There's a lot more I want to do with the both of them, time will only tell if we'll see it.
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