What about you, any Pre-ICoS Boyd stories around?
I actually do. The rpg is still up but it was abandoned years ago, and I certainly couldn't vouch for the quality of anything I wrote. Also, at that time I wrote little back story pieces here and there. I refuse to share them because they are probably way too awful for words and I won't subject anyone to any of it.
This might be more than you're interested in hearing (if so, sorry!) but if you want to get a glimpse of the alternate reality:
Cedrick was a murder mystery novelist who wrote under the pseudonym Andre Bute. His first book, Red Sunset, was well-received but he abruptly stopped writing for years before eventually continuing the series with Respite of the Dead. He had a cult following but wasn't extremely well-known. The fans he did have tended to be very devoted.
Vivienne was a teenage mom of Boyd who became a young and popular model. When she was 27 she quit modeling abruptly and all but disappeared from the scene except for some bouts of acting. People speculated why but none knew the real reason. She was known as Viv Merlot. (I used Laetitia Casta as the representative of her looks)
Lou and Boyd had a friend named Eli and if I remember correctly there was a love triangle thing happening, because Boyd was oblivious, Lou liked Boyd, and Eli liked Lou, but then Boyd and Lou started having a thing and I don't remember the rest
Boyd didn't have it easy in that reality either. He was also an emo high school kid, but in his back story there, an extremely mentally unstable man named Jeremy had become obsessed with Cedrick's books to the point of believing he was playing a part in them. Due to the way Cedrick had based some of his characters on parallels of his own life, Jeremy believed Boyd was a character in the books and that he must kill him as part of the character arc. He stalked Boyd and attacked him twice when he was a kid (knife wounds to the stomach, ages 8 and 10). Jeremy was eventually put in a mental institution for years, and at the time we were writing the story, he had recently escaped. Vivienne and Cedrick were worried about Boyd, who hadn't told any of his friends about any of it and who kept looking over his shoulder while simultaneously trying to be a normal kid.
Vivienne spoke to Boyd in French when she wanted to discuss things they didn't want to be understood by others (which was basically Jeremy)
One of the characters was a serial killer but none of the players knew who it was. I knew Boyd was going to get fucked over in the future, either by Jeremy or he was going to be targeted by the serial killer. He probably would have been murdered by the end of the whole story unless other characters interrupted first.
So basically the moral of the story is: never be my character, no matter your setting.