The Basics
This alternate reality picks the show up after April 4, 2008, after Michael is shot and Jason asks Elizabeth to marry him. All subsequent events are explained either in the prequels or the main stories. Since for this story GH stops on that date, the following major events never happened:
– Jake did not die.
– Rebecca Shaw never came to town, because dude…stupid.
– Jocelyn Jacks does not exist. Carly and Jax have a daughter named Cecily instead, born in May 2009 rather than November 2009.
– Claudia Zacchara is not dead. Because again…stupid.
– And naturally, Jason is not dead.
These are major differences that come to mind at the moment.
I didn’t SORAS my characters, so in 2024, when the story begins, everyone is the age they would naturally be. For example, Molly is seventeen because she was born in 2006. Cameron is twenty, because he was born in 2004, etc. Morgan is twenty, because he was born in 2003 and hasn’t had his first twenty-first birthday. It helps me keep generations in line, so you don’t have Molly, born after Cameron, being ten years older.
FAQ
1. Wasn’t Tangle almost finished in 2009?
Yes. But I hate it. It’s messy, there are issues because I didn’t sit down and plot it out until long after I started writing it, so characters don’t make sense, storylines don’t work. I’ve come up with a better plot line that is much more realistic in regards to Elizabeth’s disappearance, which is going to be the major difference. Also, my writing is much better than it was 2008-09, so if I want to write the next four stories, I need the first story to be just right. There’s a reason it hasn’t been updated in five years and that would be it. It’s being rewritten as Feels Like Home.
2. What’s with Michael, Starr and Emma playing different people?
The problem with my universe is that I started it when Dylan Cash was playing Michael in 2008, and he was the most insufferable character alive. Now, Chad Duell plays him and I love him, but since I killed Michael off in my world, and there’s just no room for him, I still wanted Chad in my head. Same goes for Brooklyn Rae Silzer (Emma) and Kristen Alderson (Starr/Kiki). I have issues.
3. So these prequels. Um…why?
So my first version of Tangle had each chapter open with a flashback intended to bridge the years between 2008-2024. I couldn’t figure out how to work them into my new outline, but some of them were important, particularly the Johnny/Nadine stuff. Plus, I was always kind of curious myself about those sixteen years, particularly how Jason and Elizabeth decided to stay together in the wake of the Michael shooting. I literally started Tangle the week after they became engaged, because despite knowing better, I thought they’d be engaged for longer than six seconds, so I kept them together. How could I know how much the show would screw them up in the next six years? Not that I’m…bitter. ANYWAY. I picked out some of the storylines I thought be interesting to play with, particularly with characters that were not heavily featured in Tangle, like Sam and Leyla, and planned backstories for them. There’s no hurry to post any of these, most won’t be done until after Feels Like Home is, but I just sat down to figure out them because it was bugging me.