About the SRU

The Scream Roleplay Universe is many things. It’s a fanwork with hundreds of original characters; it’s based on a TV show and it has nothing to do with it; it’s a forum-based roleplay and an interactive novel. It began in either 2015, 2016, 2019, or 2021. It’s been rebooted, revised, and renewed at least as many times as Cher, and possibly more if you don’t count I’d Rather Believe in You as a distinct era, even though you should.

What the Scream Roleplay Universe ultimately is, however, is a labor. Of dedication, of creativity, of craftsmanship and of love. This is a continuing narrative that has persisted, in one form or another, for almost a decade. Over a dozen people have collaborated on it at one time or another over the years, coming and going as seasons pass, but always leaving indelible marks of their presence in the form of characters, places, and themes.

That’s a lot of poetical pleasantness, but if you want to get bare bones about it: The Scream Roleplay Universe is a forum-based roleplay loosely based on Scream the TV Series, that was hosted for many years on FanFiction.net.

This is where we begin to run into trouble. I have frequently had difficulty explaining just what this project is because once you start, you…or at least I…run into roadblocks. You have to explain what forum-based roleplaying is, and how it’s different from the tabletop and Twitter varietals but simultaneously similar; you have to go on a tangent about MTV’s shameful attempt to copy the lightning-in-a-bottle success story of Teen Wolf with a gritty teen drama remake of a different Gen X horror touchstone; increasingly, you have to point out that FanFiction.net is still very much alive, no matter how desperately the people keeping the lights on over there want us to forget that fact.

So, in order:

  1. FanFiction.net: Was the first mainstream, widely accessible online hosting platform for fan-created writing based on copyrighted media…what we casually call “fanfiction”. On the timeline of fandom history, it occupies a fuzzy gray space between the dominance of LiveJournal and that of Archive of Our Own (Ao3) as the premier host for fanfiction on the web. FF.net is well remembered for having a contentious relationship with its userbase, most notoriously exemplified by various purges of stories deemed to violate the website’s code of conduct by being too explicit or, and this is a fun one, “low quality”. The latter category led to the deletion of what is arguably the most famous fanfic ever written. This various issues played a part in the emerge of Ao3, a fan-run and fan-curated platform that allows writers to have control over their work, and protects them from legal challenge under the banner of fair use. Ao3 is also, let’s be real, a better designed website with a sophisticated tagging system that lets you know, for example, if the 20-chapter fic you’ve been reading is about to take a sudden sharp turn into watersports. Not that I’m speaking from experience, but I will repeat I’ve been around for a while. Something FF.net has that Ao3 doesn’t, however, is forum-hosting, allowing users to create their own discussion forums to chat about their fandoms, discuss their fics, and…
  2. Forum-based roleplaying: Is, as far as I’m concerned, the most bare bones iteration of the time-honored tradition of structured pretend. Forum roleplayers don’t wear costumes, they don’t roll dice, and they rarely ever need to utilize the powers of CSS to get a vibe across. Forum-roleplayers specialize in prose writing, exchanging their characters’ thoughts and words via online message boards which, for you young’uns, was like social media, except we had one for everything and you were less likely to attract the attention of mouthy strangers answering questions nobody had asked. In the old days, forum RP’ers existed in abundance on platforms like Gaia Online, Roleplay Gateway and, of course, Fanfiction.net. It behooves me to point out these platforms still exist, but their userbases have shrunk in recent years, as the tides of change continue to favor platforms like Tumblr, Twitter X (Concerning!), and Discord, which all offer unique spins on the roleplaying formula.
  3. Scream: The TV Series: Was a two (technically three, but that’s a whole other saga) season television series that aired on MTV in the summers of 2015 and 2016. As I alluded above, it was a fairly naked attempt to capitalize on the success of the network’s Teen Wolf series, by reimagining a “vintage” horror property…in this class Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s 1996 sleeper hit Scream, which reimagined the stale slasher subgenre for the savvy, cynical Generation X.
Sorry, Brooke, but you’d have said the same if you were allowed.

However, while Teen Wolf became a cultural touchstone, helped by a charismatic, chemistry-heavy cast and endearingly indulgent camp atmosphere, the Scream series, helmed by Jill “Snapchat scares the shit out of me” Blotevogel and Jamie Paglia in its first season, suffered from stilted performances, clunky scripting, and an overall unimaginative plot that dated by the standards of a Lifetime Original Movie.

You see my trouble. That’s three obscure, outdated, and/or execrable concepts, and the Scream Roleplay Universe rolls them all into one! It’s not ideal! But we make it work anyway. The SRU is entirely and utterly the sum of its parts, which is a hokey way of saying it is made entirely by the effort and care of the people writing it.

The Beginning

Something else that’s less-than-ideal about being the self-appointed ringmaster for this whole enterprise is that even something as simple as “When did you guys start all this stuff?” warrants an answer with four asterisks.