This is the only place I've publicly posted stories about the Horsemen (Caspar, Fabrizio, Yanni and Sabe), so I guess this would be the place to come. I just hope people read this and are willing to offer advice.

When the Horsemen were originally conceived, I created Caspar, Sara ~pen-to-paper-charm created Fabrizio, Filly created Sabe and a girl I'll call Daisy created Yanni. Daisy later had to leave the game due to school and passed Yanni on to Kate, who developed him further. Daisy came back a couple months before the game fell apart, though she couldn't take Yanni back at this point and played other characters; I do think it's important to mention that she eventually came back, however.

A few weeks ago, Sara tipped me off to something Kate tipped her off to: Daisy was involved in a new RPG game where she had a character nicknamed Cassie... PB'd Ryan Ross... who was depressed and suicidal.

Pardon me?

Just as part of the background, the Horsemen were initially my idea, both to involve my new obsession with Panic at the Disco, and to try and spice up my older Snyder High game. I'd ended up deciding Snyder was best left to rot and started Winston before the boys were even in Snyder a day. I still think most of those involved in Snyder who didn't follow us to Winston had no idea the Horsemen even existed. This was back in early 2007, and I still have the correspondence emails about the initial development of the boys.

Caspar was depressed and suicidal from the start. A lot of details surrounding the whole thing have changed over time, but that was always in place. I felt it justified his emo appearance; part of the emo stereotype was that the kids involved really didn't have anything to be depressed about. Caspar did, and I made sure he did, because I enjoyed the idea of him being perceived as a stereotype when only a few knew the truth. All the boys have issues (Sabe's weight problems and parents who love him but never listen; Yanni's older brother's murder and his parents subsequent distance; Fabrizio's older brother's addiction problems) but Caspar's are easily the darkest. It wasn't my intent, because again as much as his initial catalyst has been around from the beginning, the other little details and the sheer depths of his problems have developed over time.

Let me give you Cas's development points, the things I think really define his personality and behavior throughout his life:

Appearance based on Ryan Ross of Panic at the Disco
Depressed/Suicidal/plays on the emo stereotype
Gay
Hates/disrespects women (due to his mother's distance; a nanny that beat him as a child; the prostitute that raped him, on his father's orders, when he was 13)
Mixed emotions regarding his abusive father
Deeply devoted to his friends, and slow to make new ones due to his shy, secretive, enigmatic/sometimes very nasty nature
Incredibly intelligent and manipulative
Musician/Perfect pitch/photographer
diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, mainly shown through his violent fits

He's very detailed, from beginning to end, and that's what makes him my pride and joy, but the white bullets are the basis for everything.

Which brings me back to Daisy, again.

Sara found out through Kate, who was involved in the same game and was disgusted by what she felt was a bad Caspar rip off (and apparently wasn't the only one) and decided to tell someone she knew would tell me. I was given a way to go in and look and figure out how I felt about the issue myself.

Initially, I wasn't as angry as Sara and Kate were. I was annoyed, especially when Sara emailed Daisy to tell her what she thought of this character and Daisy defended it with answers that were kind of beside the point. She had to have known these accusations would come, if only because the character was PB'd Ryan Ross and nicknamed Cassie (for future reference, his full name is Cassidy, and I'll use that name to distinguish the two). That's just common sense, since she was involved in the initial Winston Game.

And then she takes it one step further, to where Cassidy also suffers from depression. She argued that most emos do (missing my initial point with Caspar where, actually, most emos don't, that's the staple of the stereotype and anyone with a sincere reason to be suicidal or depressed isn't considered emo), and also that Cassidy no longer wears make-up (despite his profile picture showing him in make-up). That one I ignored; Caspar slowly weans himself off the make-up after he and Fabrizio start their relationship, but it was never something I made obvious in game, so I don't hold that one against her.

I don't remember which came first, but I do know that at one point, Kate spoke to her and Daisy said something along the lines of "I figure all emos have those traits " which Kate and Sara took as an admission that she knew it was a rip-off.

I don't exactly see it that way, and when I told Sara so, she agreed. It just shows that she knew the similarities were there, which honestly on its own is bad enough, especially when she admitted in her email's with Sara that Caspar was Cassidy's inspiration.

If you know your character was inspired by someone else's character, and their similarities are enough that you write them off that way, then they're too similar and you need to step back and figure something else out.

Plus it was kind of insulting to me that she felt that way about a character I put a lot of hard work in to.



What finally got me angry, however, was when I went in a second time to try and get more details and figure out if I should confront her and how. What I found on Cassidy's blog was a story about Cassidy becoming angry and suddenly feeling a need to destroy something special to the person he was angry with. His angry focus was interrupted and he retreated to curling up in a ball on a car ride home.

This infuriated me.

One of the last stories Daisy was involved in before she initially left the game was Caspar coming out with his feelings for Fabrizio. What happened the first go-round was very different from what you've read in the stories I've posted here. The game story featured Yanni (played by Daisy) talking to Caspar over MySpace comments and eventually figuring out the truth and telling Caspar he needs to tell Fabrizio. Later that night, Caspar does, and this leads to a breakdown that featured Caspar throwing his make-up at the wall and shattering his mirror with his fist, barely aware of Fabrizio's presence. The next day Sara played half of a conversation of Fabrizio telling Yanni about the whole debacle, then Daisy disappeared for a while before officially quitting and handing Yanni over to Kate.

In my opinion, an angry, vicious, destructive focus is something Caspar has that isn't necessarily an emo trait. It's more related to his mental disorder than to the emo stereotype. To me, that is where she crossed the line, with Cassidy having the same destructive fits that Caspar has.

The details between the two are different, yes, but I feel some of the big bases are still too close for comfort.

Cassidy is:
Emo/Depressed/Suicidal
Gay
PB'd Ryan Ross
nicknamed "Cassie"
prone to violent fits

Taking off the details, don't you see the similarities? Yes, there are differences, but that's part of what makes a rip-off a rip-off rather than a carbon copy. A few subtle differences doesn't change a similar basic characterization. That's what keeps Batman and Superman from being rip-offs of the other: They're both heroes in comic books. That's it. Superman is an alien with powers, Batman is a human being with lots of money, etc. etc. The bases are different.

And you have to understand, there are more things about Caspar that define him, to me, but he's been around longer and more deeply developed. When he was in the same beginning stages as Cassidy, their bases were EXACTLY the same, except for family situations (which, to be honest, is the reason why Caspar has his violent fits; I don't know Cassidy's reasons, since his adopted family appears to love him).

So I brought this here to the few people outside our circle of Horsemen creators to see what you think should be done about the situation. Honestly what it comes down to, to me, is that even if Daisy didn't directly INTEND to rip Caspar off, she should've had the sensibility (and integrity) to change some things around as soon as she started thinking of excuses as to why they may be perceived as similar, whether it was as she was creating the character or when Sara initially confronted her. Details are just details. Caspar having a 4.4 GPA vs. Cassidy's difficulty in school isn't enough.

You want to know the first thing that struck me? Looking at Cassidy's MySpace the first time, everything was in pictures. There were no words.

This is Caspar's MySpace as it has generally always been, minus minor alterations i.e. being in a relationship or changing his stated age: [link]

Of course the second time I went in, Cassidy's MySpace had changed, and that was after Sara's emails so I can't honestly say if the change was deliberate because someone knew (meaning she knew the similarities between the profiles) or simply because Daisy felt like doing something new. I do feel the timing was suspicious, though.

So what do you think? Do I have a case? I really think I do, but I'm not sure how to go about presenting it without running into a fight that I really don't feel like dealing with. I'm also not sure what I should ask her to do about it, outside of dropping the character or making more major changes, which is something I can't even check up on since Kate's dropped out of the game.

Most of all it bothers me because I really thought Daisy had more sense and creativity than this. As I've said repeatedly, if she knew she might get called out on the similarities, why did she continue to use the character as is? Kate, Sara, myself and someone else who was involved in both games saw Cassidy as a rip-off of Caspar. Isn't that enough to tell that something's not right?

Let me know what you think of the debacle, here in the comments or in a note, it doesn't matter to me.