BoM/TWS Message Forum

Things like Starbucks or Instagram or X-Men are, in a way, broad and vague that it doesn't really date things. Starbucks and the X-Men have been around forever and for as long as BoM has existed social media has been a thing so Instagram and Facebook aren't going anywhere. I'd also say age can help. A punk band like Margin Walker taking their name from a 30 year old punk song, for example, wouldn't date things compared to saying that someone is listening to Popular Song by Current Hot Artist.

Generally though if it's within the last decade, I try and stay away from referencing it. This can also go with other things too. For example when I first conceived Summer Nguyen way back in Student Bodies (or was it the interactive that led to Student Bodies?) she was intended to be emo. At the time she was created emo was still a thing so there was no problem but emo is long dead as a fashion and subculture so her being emo now would be out of place so the whole emo thing has just been kind of soft retconned away as far as I'm concerned. Summer Nguyen has never been emo and we have always been at war with Eastasia.

As far as things like Will going globetrotting, ignoring any of the actual logistical reasons that prevent it or would allow it to happen there's the simple fact that the setting is Saratoga Falls. I can only speak for myself personally but I don't have that much interest in taking Will and the book and jetting them off to New York or London or Paris or wherever. Not to say that those stories can't be interesting or well done though. But me personally, if I put Will in New York there's no connection between Will (and the reader) to the setting or any of the characters that inhabit it so it doesn't hold a lot of interest to me. Will meeting or becoming someone around Saratoga Falls though and seeing how that character connects to others or to the city itself is just far more interesting to me.

Doing those couple of chapters with Will becoming Kristy Carlson and working out the web of connections Kristy and her family might have was fun, coming up with ideas like Kristy's father being the city's leading real estate tycoon, Kristy having a connection to Maria through their fathers' prominence in town or her having a six degrees connection to Will through a friend who's a co-worker of Cassie. Having this small setting and seeing how it and the characters develop and connect is just more interesting to me.

To me the cast of characters in Saratoga Falls (and I'll toss St. Xavier's into that) is already large enough with plenty of characters still waiting to be developed or focused on that there's really not much of a reason to move Will around the country or globe. There's still plenty of stories to tell in Saratoga Falls because sure, Will can become another Westside student but who that person is means that the story is never going to be the same as others. Gloria Rea and Cindy Vredenburg might both be cheerleaders but impersonating one or the other leads to radically different stories and hell, even getting or trying to get a mask on Cindy can itself have tons of directions to spin off into.

So why have Will bolt for a bigger, fancier city? Again I can only speak for myself but there's just no reason to do it.