#if you want a book where they really commit to the percival raised as a girl lore. here you go

[spouseoftherisingsun]

just reread a childhood favorite and ill be honest... ? its exactly as good as i remember, so glad to get confirmation that ive always had good fucking taste

[theblueskyphoenix]

I was looking through my old Don’t Starve pen sketches back from 2016 and I stumbled across Edward’s old sketch set and... I have to admit I started laughing at how different he is now compared to what Storm and I first drafted with these sketches. 

It’s... kind of a funny story. 

So, back in 2016 when we started doing the planning and drafting of Survive the Shadows we originally didn’t have much planned for Wilson’s family. We just knew he was estranged from them and he had issues. 

Our first pitch was he was neglected by both parents growing up and didn’t really know any form of love save from his grandfather, Percival, explaining his inability to emote well when it came to showing his feelings and not really understanding what love is. (The guy wasn’t even sure how to smile properly.) It worked okay but then other ideas came in which brought us to our second pitch. 

Second pitch, his mother cared for him along with his grandfather and grandmother but his father didn’t and was... to put it bluntly, an abusive jerk who didn’t care one bit about his son and was embarrassed by the fact he had a son like Wilson. He only married Cecelia for money and never really loved her and would eventually leave her for someone else. We ran with this for quite awhile during chapter draftings but then... 

Alright, small detour from Survive the Shadows, one of the reasons we decided to look more deep into Edward and how he ticks was because of one of the AUs Storm and I cooked up known as the Wilson and Albert AU, a Phineas and Ferb-esque AU. (Actually it’s because of this AU we decided to change a lot of things but that is a story for another time.) Anyways, this was the AU, at the time of creation, we joked was the AU where Wilson was at his happiest and his dad actually loved him. Edward got to grow as a character in this AU since he was actually a good guy but admittedly didn’t get a lot of screen time since we didn’t have much for him since with his canon counterpart, we didn’t want to get too attached because in our minds he was still the abusive jerk and he wasn’t supposed to be interesting or anything and funnily enough he was supposed to finally wind up dead in a gutter somewhere. 

... Till Storm and I started thinking. 

We started wondering how such a guy came from people like Melinda and Percival. He would’ve been raised well and taught to respect women. He would’ve been taught to be a gentlemen and if he started showing signs of being the least bit cruel they would’ve set him straight. 

So came the third pitch. Edward was originally a good father  and loved his wife and son but was driven mad by nightmare monsters because of Melinda’s connections to the Shadow World/The Constant, which lead to him resenting his family and was eventually committed to an asylum because of the insanity. This pitch came about before WnA since we started thinking of the idea when we decided Wickerbottom would be related to Wilson but WnA pushed us to try it out since again, Edward was starting to get more interesting. We left it at that but Edward didn’t have much to his character. He was rather flat as it were. Then I watched a particular movie that served as an inspiration for Edward as a character and for how him and Cecelia met. 

Corpse Bride was something I remembered fondly and rewatched while I was working on drawings for Don’t Starve content. Storm and I were watching together and we started d’awwwing over the idea of Edward and Cecelia having a similar meeting of an arranged marriage. It had always been that way from the start but we thought it would be sweet if they could meet like Victor and Victoria. Be in something that was arranged but they actually grew to love each other. Then we started playing with the idea and fell in love with it. On top of that, I started pitching the idea of Edward being a bit like Victor. Little awkward and had a gift for music. That’s when the 4th pitch came in along with his middle name.

The 4th pitch was Edward was a kind man, a great musician, loved his family and wanted to be there for them but sadly went mad due to nightmare monsters which lead to him eventually being committed to an asylum because of insanity. We were pretty satisfied and figured this would be it for Edward and that this what we would write for his entry in Book of Shadows when we got to it but of course other ideas came out after I started looking into other things like the music from The Count of Monte Cristo Musical and we brought in characters like Cato and fleshed out Maxwell.

Why would Maxwell’s fleshing out matter in regards to Edward? Well... Okay, this is going to get a little disturbing but bear in mind this is no longer canon and will never happen but it was something we thought of. 

Originally, Maxwell was going to be the one trying to possess Edward but failed and Edward still went mad because his mind was left weak and perfect for nightmare monsters to attack. Reason we even thought of this idea was when I did a concept sketch of the Shadow Maestro and we played with a small AU where Maxwell had actually done it and it fit well with what we had going on for Maxwell which was him possessing hosts every so often since the current host was growing too old and Edward would’ve been perfect since he was half shadow being. (More power, afterall.) Edward was the failed attempt and William would be the successful one afterward. (There’s a reason Maxwell picked him but that is yet another story a for another time and spoilers.) It was interesting but after fleshing Maxwell out in Fallen King and Dark Knowledge we started wondering why in all the hecks would Maxwell do that. He respected Melinda and Percival, why we would he target their son if he respected them? On top of that, Maxwell wouldn’t want to make scene or tear apart a family like that. He had been through it himself and wouldn’t want to force it on another, especially someone who was related to people he had connections with. So, we ditched the idea entirely and were originally going to go with nightmare monsters only then we thought back to Cato and thought he would be more likely to do something like that because he wanted revenge for what Maxwell did to him. Thus, the final pitch came. 

The final pitch, was Edward was a musician, a good father, a loving husband, a kind and good man who was driven mad by a man named Cato who wanted to possess him so he could have his revenge on Maxwell. A man who would spend a good number of his years in an asylum trying to hold on till a cure was found so he could be with his family once more, playing music in his cell to fight off the nightmare monsters picking at his brain, using magic he didn’t realize he possessed that he had inherited from his mother. Losing half his mind in the whole process before certain things came to pass. 

Those certain things would be events such as becoming The Count of Umbra Rosa in the Don’t Starve Together Journals Timeline and other things that I can not speak of at this time because they have not been revealed. 

So, yeah. This is what developing a character looks like. It’s a wild ride but totally worth it and fun to look back and see what happened along the way and giggle at how different things turned out from the initial pitch. Seeing how a character develops flaws, quirks, goals they have, loves, etc. This is one of the many reasons I love being a writer. 

And with that, I am done gushing. Thank you if read all the way through this long ramble of mine. Just felt like sharing. Hope this was interesting.