Jul 5
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Starting the week of deep-dives with the most difficult man. I don’t know exactly how this will go, it will most likely just be a long yap so get comfy…
Where do we begin? Originally, his name was Mikkel. After a while, I realised it might be too difficult for an international audience to pronounce, so I went with the more recognisable Mads. His original character description read:
He is known for his brilliant mind and cold demeanor, a loner who only really has his job to fill his life. He is struggling in silence with his mother’s advancing dementia and having to deal with the death of his father.
Who knew that silence was gonna last almost all of three seasons? Not me… I had in mind that the cemetery scene would’ve come much earlier in the final season but alas, it never really seemed to fit in…
Anyway, his character started with Harry Hole, and more specifically with Harry in ‘The Bat’, the first book in the series. I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but the very earliest idea was of Ghita as a more established detective with an almost inhuman ability to find missing people, which took her from Denmark to South Korea, to New Zealand, to South Africa and then finally Greenland (representing all the at the time planned ethnic backgrounds of the MC). Mads was meant to be a Korean police inspector who tags along due to some personal issues—Can you imagine Mads as a Korean guy? Weird to think of now (I would have used Lee Dong Wook as inspo!)
When the story had cooked in my head a little longer, Ghita pulled more towards Denmark. I’d been watching episodes of ‘Rejseholdet’, an old Danish show, and been inspired to move the changing scenery closer to home. There’s a character on the show called Jan Boysen, a forensic pathologist played by Michael Falch, and his physical appearance was an inspiration for Mads. I was also influenced by The Snowman (2017) where Michael Fassbender portrays Harry Hole - Fassbender is the right level of sexy-rugged, I think, for a man who seems hellbent on repelling romantic entanglements.
His arc moved slow on purpose, his mind having to catch up with his heart when it came to letting a woman like Ghita, who is naturally reckless, play with his emotions. I wrote in the early documentation:
He and Ghita start off on the wrong foot and this follows them in the first season, until the main character meets him outside of work and a friendly respect/attraction starts to form. [...] He feels isolated and it’s not until he meets Ghita that he starts to see that there’s more to life than work.
I really enjoyed writing his early flirting, because he obviously knows that he’s tall and handsome and has the ability to command a room, but then to see him tense up and fumble so badly when Ghita is doing her thing… delicious, honestly. He plays it cool in season 1 (him winking at her in the season finale when he leaves her after their exchange at the station is like AAARGH, I know he was cringing at himself so bad all the way home, while Ghita genuine didn’t consider it anything but his smartass attitude) but in season 2, he’s had time to pine after her from afar for a few months and now she’s more comfortable with him and it’s torturous. Booking into the hotel and being mistaken for a couple? The discovery on the ship where Ghita presses up against him? The awkward tumble in the backseat of the car??? He was fighting for his life.
By season 3, we’re either established as a couple, or not. I chose to focus on showing them having already reached an equilibrium in their relationship (before all hell breaks loose), but I understand it’s a question of preference. I wrote The Missing like a TV show and for the sake of pacing, it wouldn’t have worked for me to show every first while also gearing up to deal with Hoyer’s death. It would have been too much of a whiplash for me to write. I prefer to show enough, not everything, and I trust people’s own imagination to fill in the gaps. Having Mads established as ‘the boyfriend’ also allowed me to show how utterly lost he is in his affection for Ghita, how dependant he is on her validation and how crippling it is for him to have to express himself emotionally in such a rigid pattern, because he has so much fear residing inside his mind about vulnerability. Which brings me to the next bit…
credit to uoyiiii
…I saw the ‘Waterlily if cast by different authors…’ and I can’t believe I got the kink card when 7B is right there??? I LAUGHED but also, damn… am I a freak? I don’t think I am. I’m sex-positive and I do think a lot of people benefit from expressing their inner lives through sex, but the last thing I would call myself is kinky. I just like diversity! And with the restraint I was building up inside Mads, I knew he would need to release the tension in a unique way. An inspiration was Harry Ambrose from the show The Sinner - I wasn’t a big fan of the first season but 2-4 were really good. I want to add that the "visions" that Ghita experiences—the trolls in the darkness, the qivittoq in the snow—this was inspired by Harry Ambrose. But also, Ambrose likes it rough. He lets a partner choke him until he passes out in season 1, which you shouldn’t do, but it said a lot about him as a character. In contrast, Harry Hole, I believe, accidentally chokes his romantic interest Rakel too hard during a sex scene in one of the later books, which is also an expression of his character.
Making Lauritzen a submissive sexual partner was a very deliberate choice and meant to underline how meaningful it is for him to fall for Ghita, even when he can't articulate it. He so bravely offers his weaknesses as a sign of trust, even when they both don’t really understand what’s going on and he's pretty much risking it all to get the girl.
His journey from their first encounter in Hoyer’s office, to receiving Ghita’s present, butt-naked and on his knees, is truly something, and I will miss this pathetic yearner a lot.
Do you have questions? Leave them in the comments or submit an ask!
Oh Yasin....... a man of many word, beautiful words, hot-tempered and still devoted, who shows respect but also has enough self-respect not to let himself be compromised beyond salvation. I love this man, kisses on both cheeks, in the sunlight and the moonlight, he is perfect!
Too perfect perhaps?
If we go back to the beginning, his character went through quite radical changes during development. I believe I already mentioned once that Anders was a much more ambiguous character at story conception. He was a person who wanted to aid Ghita in her search, but who also secretly was the father of the missing child.
As the plot took form, so did the need to refine Anders’ character and it meant splitting the ‘helpful’ persona from the antagonistic one. I was listening to a lot of Tobias Rahim at the time, so Yasin emerged as middle eastern immediately. I wrote in the design document:
Son of a local shopkeeper in the small town where season one starts. He has a Syrian background, born in Denmark and with a younger sister. He is quietly flirtatious, but also very serious when he’s in his element. He is finishing his law degree in Copenhagen, but is on a sabbatical while his dad is ill.
There were slight changes to his background and context to match the plot better as it developed, but as it were, he was meant to be a chance encounter that would merge naturally into Ghita’s life by season 3, regardless of your relationship with him. I used to watch Law and Order a lot, and I pictured Yasin as the 'Law' part to Mads' 'Order' - we didn't get to experience the two of them going head to head as much as I had initially imagined, but whenever they were in the same room, I tried to make sure it was obvious how their different perspectives clashed.
As a love interest, I went in with the purpose of creating an uncomplicated, honest and dreamy man, a character who (in theory) would “tick all the boxes” and ensure Ghita a happy ending. He’s smart and competent, absolutely smitten with her and loud about it, has a great relationship with his family and overall has his life together. There is always this unfortunate correlation between ‘a good man’ and ‘a boring man’ so despite his infatuation, Yasin always pushes back on Ghita’s nonsense (Mads is right there but let’s face it, he’s a natural pushover in Ghita's presence lol) to offer friction on the route. A more…. dramatic source of friction is that unlike Yasin, Ghita can be one hell of a problem and her potential (repeated) infidelity is a major part of their arc—can she even commit to this man? Does she even want peace? Or is she too broken? Yasin is the only one with the capacity to deal with her antics head-on (unlike both Alba and Mads, who run away at the first sign of trouble). I love/hate the “bad” reunion at Yasin’s house at the end of Season 2, it was a real bitch to write, but the emotional turmoil, angst and regret was kinda fun to read in-app. She really put him through hell.
inspo for Yasin's gorgeous face - the nose was very important.
I say he's perfect and maybe too perfect... he seems to have taken the backseat in The Missing discourse and even I'm struggling to "reveal" a lot of stuff about him because he's so freaking open. He has a jealous streak though, and as much as I think he's incredible at handling Ghita, there are more than one instance where he tenses up, uncomfortable with the knowledge that Ghita's flaws can hurt him so deeply. He's very much the ultimate lover and I, too, wanted to test how far Ghita could go. In the end, he did have a limit.
Yasin has the honour of being the only love interest to properly propose to Ghita. Though both Safaa and Mads talk about eventual marriage in their endings, Yasin was the only one whose arc was meant to have this explicitly stated. In my head, he was picturing them growing old together on their first date (while they were doing the dishes)—that man was waiting for Ghita to make up her mind about him this whole time, there was never any doubt that he wanted her. I also think he’s the healthiest choice for a partner (followed closely by Safaa) as he doesn’t have any personal issues and has the mental capacity to take on the full brunt of Ghita’s chaos.
All in all, Yasin is in my eyes, the perfect man. Ghita Davoud is a lucky girl.
Do you have questions? Leave them in the comments or submit an ask!
Commission by @hanseelie
To mark the completion of The Missing, here's Safaa and Ghita on their day off 💜
We're more than half way through The Missing Week and I want to thank everyone who's participated so far, it's been truly wonderful to be able to talk more or less freely about the story!
Today, I'm gonna talk about Alba and I'm gonna dive into some of the aspects of her arc that I think worked and some that didn't. Overall, Alba stayed true to her intended characterisation, but of all the elements of The Missing, she's the one who gave me the most trouble and whom I will always wonder what could've been.
In the design phase, I wrote:
Alba comes off as very forward, excitable and live-each-day-like-its-the-last. She’s playful but once you get to know her, you realize that she has very low expectations of other people and is driven by a desire to be happy no matter what. She lives with her brother, and they both work for the criminal gang that becomes the focus of S3. Despite this, Alba disapproves of Ghita if she chooses to go down the path of crooked. She dreams of leaving her criminal life behind and moving to Berlin.
It was always my intention that Alba was working with the Crows and could be both an ally and an enemy of Ghita. In season 1, their date at the end of the season, if you don't take the intimate scene, Alba asks Ghita a bunch of questions about things that means something to her, and I had initially expected to use this at the end of season 3 when it's revealed that Alba was, in fact, a honeypot and was sending information back to the crows about Ghita. O would've brutally taunted Ghita with knowledge she shared with Alba, driving home the betrayal. Alas, it didn't work out in the end.
This is also why, if you don't "bite" so to say; if her honey-potting fails, then yes, she doesn't really appear on your route and you were meant to be "safer" in that final stand-off with O.
During the course of the first two seasons, Alba turned out to be harder to pin down than I had anticipated. Her naturally flighty personality meant that Ghita had to chase HER a lot, forcing her to deal with things in front of her and slowly prying her open. Despite being a physical fast-burn, Alba's emotional arc is the slowest - and for good reason! She's literally deceiving her!
I miscalculated how hard it would be to juggle this with Ghita's work taking her out of Copenhagen in the first two seaons. With Yasin, the challenge was "just" distance and I didn't struggle to articulate their bond, but Alba suffered both distance AND her deceptive nature. I think I technically succeeded in illustrating how Alba is physically present and intense, but her emotions are miles away. Her exterior is so tough for a reason, and in hindsight, I probably wouldn't have even made her a love interest. As interesting as I find her arc, it's not really suitable for the medium.
I probably should've made Saga one instead.
Hindsight is, however, 20/20, and as I've said many times, once I'm committed to my plan, I have to keep it for my sanity. In season 3, we finally got to delve into Alba's mysterious circumstances and as much as I enjoyed unravelling her emotional state across the episodes, I recognise that Ghita already had a million things to deal with and that her lying girlfriend sorta drowned in the chaos.
Despite the carefree beginnings, Alba's route is not rainbows and butterflies. If you get involved with O, there's an ominous cloud hanging over her and while she will always try to sacrifice herself in the end as a doomed apology, the cheating Ghita loses her for good. Alba's arc is overall very tragic and across the romantic paths, it's the only one where Ghita has to do 100% of the work; she has to save Alba and I'm not really sure Alba offers anything concrete in return, other than distracting Ghita from her own pain. Which was the point, admittedly, but in a VN? It might be a little too realistic as a relationship dynamic 😅
When we add Kuno in the mix, their dynamic doesn't change markedly - Alba agrees to it, not because she's particularly keen on Kuno, but because she's on a mission and can't risk losing her mark. In my head, Alba is still loyal to the Crows by the end of season 2, but she's struggling morally with what she's doing because she actually cares for Ghita and is genuinely falling for her.
By season 3, Alba is in deep crisis - She's found something real with Ghita (and Kuno) and just like Hoyer, wants to step away from the Crows, but is acutely aware of the consequences. If you're romancing her, I head canon that O made sure to involve her brother in Hoyer's murder for an excuse to kill him, solely for the purpose of keeping Alba in check. Sylvester was freshly out of jail, sober, and with a sister already planning to make a break with the gang.
O loves to see people dig their own graves.
Again, in hindsight, I would've liked to give Alba a better chance at explaining herself, but that's only something I can reflect upon now that it's over. She gave me a chance to explore tragedy and bittersweet ending, and her resilience and unapologetic character was really interesting to work with, even if she caused me a lot of trouble creatively.
A final interesting fact - very very early on, I had many more potential hallucinations planned for Ghita and one of them involved Alba as a more pronounced enemy, pulling off her fake hand and revealing a knife hidden within it. Ghita wouldn't have known about the fake hand and been paralysed with fear. I also considered the hand having a camera or listening device inside it, but it felt overly James Bond-y so I stuck with the more "normal" microphone and camera plant.
Do you have questions? Leave them in the comments or submit an ask!
The final yap is about season 3 and the treatment of nordic mythology. I initially wrote:
In the last season, the team is back in Denmark, it’s early summer and Ghita has settled into her detective role and her chosen romance. During a break-in, Chief Hoier is fatally shot. Mads is put on the case, but asks that Ghita and Safaa team up with him for the investigation. The trail leads to a local criminal gang called The Crows, involved in drugs and weapons smuggling. Ghita must locate one of the burglars, who has mysteriously vanished.
I had many ideas on how to shape the final season and when planning, I made several decisions to include or exclude subplots that would've dramatically changed the road to the ending. O's connection with Hoyer and by extension Ghita became the main focus, but some alternatives were:
A prolonged, organised undercover mission (discarded because it wouldn't make sense to have Ghita in the field and it felt kinda lame for her to be the backup in her own story)
An investigation into political corruption (the Danish parliament would've been the focus with Ghita infiltrating the sleezy back rooms of political deals but I couldn't really make it reflect nordic mythology so that was scrapped too)
A bigger kidnapping ring reveal (Alba's brother being involved in human trafficking so when he disappears, Ghita tackles human trafficking and manages to solve a lot of mysterious disappearances. Again, couldn't make it reflect nordic mythology, but it would've been a good way to circle back to her time with cold cases and then her mother)
A lot of these ideas still ended up as minor subplots in the third season, but as mentioned, I set out to write a folklore-inspired nordic noir crime story and by god, that was what I was gonna do.
There's been some really good asks so far this week that allowed me to dive deeper into several themes, including ragnarok, and reiterate the 'roles' assigned to the characters - O as Odin, Mads as Thor, Hoyer as Tyr - so I'll focus a little on Ghita and the role of 'vølven', the seeress.
A vølve was a real-life person back in the Viking age (end of 700 CE to 1050) who would be known in her community as deeply in-tune with 'sejd' (seiðr or the seid) which is a spiritual practice defines as travelling through other world or dimensions of the subconscious.
She (and it was always a she) would be considered to have prophetic abilities and the power to affect the outcome of situations. The practice was for some reason, I can't figure out why, connected to the concept of 'ergi' which was male homosexuality, and therefore reserved for women.
Yeah.
Anyway, what made it especially respected was that it was believed Odin himself was extremely interested in this power, potentially practicing it (secretly) but definitely consulting vølven and compelling her to tell him about the future and the destiny of the world.
He could be said to envy her this power and his insatiable greed for knowledge would bring him to her door again and again.
Another thing about vølven was that though she was respected and her powers were considered important, she was also seen as dangerous because like every other powerful woman ever.... she was a seductress.
I mean, can you really be powerful without being super horny too?? Obviously not!
In one of the poems about vølven, a warning is made about engaging in sexual relations with the seeress because you would run the risk being bound to her through some mysterious sex magic, and this would cause sickness. LOL.
While researching, I went to the national museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and visited a special exhibition they have on vølven. I recommend anyone who randomly happens to be in Denmark to go see it, it's really great, and gave a lot of insights into both the concept and history of vølven!
In season 3, the relationship between O and Ghita is informed by all of this, but made into a realistic, modern interpretation. I like to think Ghita's journey from the first season to this shapes her into the person she becomes at the end - a changer of fates, for good or for bad, who walks between world.
Do you have questions? Leave them in the comments or submit an ask!
hi! I keep thinking about it, so I decided to ask - in season 2 - was there meant to be some one-sided tension between Mads and or was I imagining it? It’s just every time they were in the same room Mads always seemed kinda cold in his responses to him, especially at the bar scene when Ghita brings Kuno to their table. If you’re romancing Mads I kinda started suspecting that he might be jealous, but he was acting like that even if he’s not your LI 🤔
*throwing both hands on the table excitedly*
Gurl.
I'll get into it on the Alba-Kuno day but lemmetellyou, glad you asked.
Kuno was flirting with Mads. That's why.
Safaa, Safaa, Safaa.... The most beautiful girl in the world. When I was putting the list of characters together, I think she might have been one of the first, if not THE first character I immediately knew the character of. She was strong and confident, in as many ways put together as a human, mature and professionally respected, but… having come to terms with her sexuality in a way that accepted its limitations within her faith, she had a hidden side from the very beginning. The original character description said:
Safaa is the MCs partner, she is muslim, very strong and professional, but sassy among friends. She is a lesbian, but not out to her family yet because of her faith. She is always the voice of reason and is not afraid to make her opinions clear, even if they go against MCs.
I could have made her sassier, but her nerdiness felt more defining of her character, so whenever she did something sassily, she'd get very self-conscious, and I really loved that about her. In my head, she always tempered her intelligence and kept her hobbies private to “keep the peace” if that makes sense. As an adult, she gets regular confirmation that her intelligence is valid and appreciated and she’s proud of it, but dismissing her own achievements is still a form of ingrained behavior, causing her to feel embarrassed whenever she voices pride in her abilities. Which is wildly endearing to Ghita, naturally.
Their romance is constructed as an instant-connection-but-I-don’t-want-to-ruin-it. In classic workplace crush tradition, the context of their relationship meant they had to work on becoming a team while simultaneously processing why this new person made them smile so much. Several questions would’ve come up; Is this a friend-crush or a romantic-crush? Does she even like girls? And how can Ghita approach the subject of romantic feelings when Safaa is so obviously dedicated to her faith?
Safaa is not an asexual route, but there is no sex or even sexual tension within it—it’s all emotional. This was new for me, as I personally prefer to accelerate romance with physical intimacy and when I play Romance Club myself, it’s important to me that my MC has as much sexual tension as justifiably possible. But here’s Safaa, who doesn’t fit this at all! I originally considered the possibility of them sleeping together eventually, but after talking it over with friends in the faith and doing some research through hijabi forums, I abandoned the idea. Why engage so heavily with her Muslim identity, if I was just gonna abandon one of the most commonly understood practices? And why have her struggle so much with aligning her sexuality with her faith, only to add pre-marital sex as a second thing for her to feel guilt about? It felt out of character that she would pick and choose her struggles like that.
Trusting Muslim voices on the matter was important to me, as I am an outsider. I found that in many hijabi chat forums, the subject of homosexuality was met with understanding rather condemnation, which was honestly a huge anchor in how I developed Safaa’s own journey. I also found a research paper on Somali immigrants to the US which informed my approach to Safaa’s relationship with her parents. All in all, I did my best not to go blind into this, even though I know many voiced discontent with Safaa's representation in the beginning.
One thing I was very deliberate about was to ensure Safaa was a constant in season 1 and season 2 so her absence in season 3 would be felt. Safaa is Ghita’s partner, no matter if you romance her or not. If this was a buddy-cop movie, these two would be the main characters! Which is why O deliberately isolates Ghita from the one person who could talk her out of risking it all for the truth. Ghita is already thrown into turmoil with the death of Hoyer and retreats into her pain as a way of coping (I tried to show her many evenings alone in her apartment on the couch, gradually finding it more and more difficult to share her pain because she feels she has to maintain a level of professionalism so as to not get removed from the case). At the same time, the scale of the investigation means that hers and Safaa’s responsibilities diverge. They are pulled away from each other at a crucial time for Ghita's arc. O exacerbates the situation by subtly exposing Ghita to information and situations that she would want to keep Safaa out of, like the visit to Anna-Stella’ apartment, and then later, the way Ghita is manipulated to go with the Crows to the estate without back-up.
If you’ve ever had a toxic partner, some of these tactics might feel familiar—and that’s the point. Ghita’s self-isolation starts to rub off on Safaa, who becomes anxious without understand why, causing her to blurt out the true nature of her and Ghita's relationship to her mother. It’s terrible, but to me also a testament to the strength of their bond; even if Ghita wanted to suffer alone and handle things herself in secret, she can’t really, because Safaa is subconsciously affected by it.
In the end, they find each other again, Ghita managing to reach out in the last moment, breaking through the hold that O has on her, in order to warn Safaa. Some will have noticed that some choices lead to a gentle rejection of the marriage proposal in the final romance scene, but that the consequences of being unfaithful are solely your conscience. Safaa went through so much to get where she is and Ghita may be corrupt but she would never do that to Safaa... ending their relationship a few days after she was disowned by her parents!
I tried my best to avoid condemnation and judgement of Ghita's actions because the story is about the inner destruction of her moral compass and how she is allowed to continue despite everything—just like Hoyer. Bad people walk among us and the tragedy of corrupt Ghita's arc is that the system that wronged her also becomes her. Including the choice to deceive those she love.
That was a bit of a side track..... I had several ideas for the final scene between Ghita and Safaa, among them also a throwback to season 1 of them going to a forest to read comics, and a recreation of this:
.... but in the end, another iconic Copenhagen location felt most fitting. Safaa is a Copenhagen girl through and through and they are the type of girlfriends to really make the most of the city.
She's the character I'm probably the most proud of and she represents so many things to me, trying something very different and also taking chances, so I like to think there's a future for her and Ghita where all her dreams come true. She deserves it.
Do you have questions? Leave them in the comments or submit an ask!