Afraid of the Dark

Post-Story Author's Notes

Well, hello there, reader!

How was your journey through this book? Was it what you expected it to be? Did anything surprise you? Perhaps we've already met before, in another time, in another book. Or maybe we've already met before, in this exact situation, in this exact chapter. Or maybe, it's your first time here.

Either way, welcome to the after party!

I hoped you enjoyed the book. It was an absolute blast to write, and I hope it was also just as fun to read, with just enough twists and turned to keep you guessing, and just enough tragedies to shake up your feels, ha-ha!

So, let's answer a few questions which you may or may not have:

Q: How long did this take to write?

A: I started writing a little bit before the end of 2020 (cursed number right there), and continued to write through of the next two months, up until the 20th of February when I finally completed the book. However, I had spent some time beforehand coming up with the plot line of this story, so that I wasn't fluking it as I went. But as you'll find out shortly, I didn't exactly stick to my plan... either way, if you've read this whole story, then you have read over 170,000 words. That length is on par with some Harry Potter books, and if you've ever seen those, you know that they are chunky. Thiccc with a triple C in some cases.

So, well done for getting this far! I'm glad you thought this book was worth your time, as it obviously takes quite a bit of time and effort to read something of this length. I wrote this book and posted chapters as soon as they were ready, which I don't think I'm going to do again. The first book which I wrote (which was called "A Message to Scott Cawthon: Reimagined", or just AMTSC:R for short) was written in one month and had around 65,000 words, but I only released chapters when the whole story had been written. I think I prefer that way of doing it, because it gives a more regular upload schedule.

Q: What were your main sources of inspiration?

A: Videos. Videos about alter egos are some of my favourites, and I definitely took a lot of inspiration from them. You would have seen a lot of references to various videos scattered throughout this book. How many did you find? I lost count. Also, at the time of writing this, a game by the name of "Little Nightmares II" was coming out, which contained some (don't worry, there aren't spoilers here) interesting scenes showing the ability to brainwash people with static filled TV screens... does that sound familiar at all?

Q: Is this how you planned the story to go, or were there changes along the way?

A: Yep, there were a lot of changes. Quite major ones, to be honest. A lot of characters who survived were not going to originally. Ethan was going to die back in the NEC. I changed my mind, and said that he was going to go deaf instead. I changed my mind again, and he went blind. He was then going to get separated from the group after Anti manipulated TVs and radios to lead Ethan away, making him think that he was following his friends, when he was really been led to his death. Then, after changing my mind again, in the final battle, he was going to get killed by Anti as he tried to administer the anti-toxin.

Tyler, on the other hand, was never originally going to even go the simulation after leaving the gaming convention. He was going to end up fighting (as in physically fighting) Dark at one point, after I changed my mind. He was then at one point going to die after being kicked down the stairs, and he was then going to die because no one was going to save him from the freezer box.

Mark himself was going to die after trying to stop Dark from hurting Seán/Anti, because he would get too distracted and then receive a fatal injury that Dark couldn't save him from.

At one point, the anti-toxin didn't even exist, but the group would have worked out that the toxin was very acidic so it could have been neutralised with something that is the opposite of acidic (alkaline), which can be found in cleaning chemicals. This then meant that in one of the drafts, Seán was going to die from chemical poisoning.