History

Daisy + Bran

Maggie was born on January 26, 1978, to Walter and Enid Anderson, farmers in the Lakewood area. Her parents sold their farm when Maggie was still very young, and were part of a wave of agriculturalists who gave up their land and moved to the expanding town center for a more suburban livelihood. Walter Anderson sold his property for a steal to his neighbor and childhood best friend Roger Lipinski and moved his family to a mid-size home in town, next door to the James family, who’d also sold their land to Lipinski.

There, Maggie made an unlikely friend in her reclusive neighbor, Brandon James. Born disfigured from Proteus syndrome, Bran’s mother Cassie shied away from sending him to school for fear of the cruelty of children. Maggie wasn’t just his first friend, she was the first child he ever knew.

They coined nicknames for each other: Brandon was “Bran” and Maggie was the less obvious “Daisy”, for the daisy chain she’d made for him as a gift ahead of their first meeting.

As time went by, and with some prying from Brandon’s older brother Troy, Cassie’s hold on her son loosened. Maggie spent many summers with the James brothers at Roger Lipinski’s farm, where Troy worked as a hand. Cassie had finally been convinced to enroll Brandon in “ordinary school”…he was due to start at George Washington High in Maggie’s class.

End of a Century

In high school, Maggie began drifting away from Bran. Pretty, intelligent and charming, she attracted attention from some of the more “popular kids”…the same kids who treated Brandon with indifference at best and outright malice at worse. By her sophomore year, Maggie was dating Kevin Duval, quarterback of the Lakewood Lancers football team.

Kevin was a typical “big man on campus” type: handsome, confident and not especially bright. Though he swept Maggie off her feet in a flurry of teenage romance, their relationship soon turned volatile, bogged down by suspicion and resentment. Things came to a head in October 1994, when Maggie confided in Bran, never once suspecting what she was setting in motion.

At the Halloween dance, Brandon lashed out against Kevin and his friends in a violent spree that ended with five dead and Kevin critically injured. Cooperating with the police, Maggie agreed to serve as a decoy in a sting that would see Bran taken into custody. She left a message for him to meet at the jetty at Wren Lake. Brandon did so and was shot in the subsequent ambush, his body falling into the water. The lake was dredged, but his remains were never recovered.¹

Given Maggie was a minor at the time, her name was withheld in the official accounts of the case, with “Daisy” becoming an ephemeral, ambiguous figure in the urban legend rapidly forming around the events of Halloween ’94.

Something Like a Life

Maggie returned to Lakewood in 1998 and reconnected with Kevin, who’d been doing his own part to cobble his life together. Though they were both barely 20, they’d already been through a lot and bonded in their ordeal. Maggie convinced herself they would take things slow, but events took a different course. By the time they were married in September of that year, Maggie was already three months pregnant.

Their daughter, Emma, was born in March 1999, and was a spark of joy in the young family, though difficulties persisted. While Maggie worked odd jobs to continue paying her way through medical school, Kevin struggled holding onto any one profession at a time, and was constantly bouncing around from place to place, more often than not staying at home with baby Emma while Maggie finished school.

She completed her residency at Lakewood General Hospital with a specialty in forensic pathology, formally beginning her career as a Medical Examiner. In the midst of this, Kevin’s situation only got worse, and he and Maggie were constantly at each others’ throats. Things came to a head nine years into their marriage, in an incident where Kevin physically attacked Maggie in front of eight-year-old Emma. Kevin, shaken by his own actions, left Lakewood and his family behind.

Coming Around Again

On the evening of October 18, 2015, Maggie reported to a scene of a double homicide on Kleinfeld Road, only a few blocks from her home. Stacy Winters, a freshman at GW High, had been killed outside her home, along with her boyfriend, Brock Carmichael. The bodies had been discovered by Maggie’s friend Paula Henderson, who lived opposite the Winterses’ and had dialed 911 after the mortally wounded Stacy had dragged herself to her doorstep.

Maggie’s attempts at an initial examination of the bloody scene were frustrated by roving reporter Eliza Taylor, of Lakewood KLA, who pestered her with rapid-fire and vaguely inappropriate questions, nakedly eager for a chance to report on the most violent crime to occur in town since 1994. Clark intervened before Eliza could test Maggie’s patience further. Maggie and Clark briefly discussed their initial opinions of the case, Clark noting he was particularly bothered that the two teenage victims didn’t have their phones anyway near them, suggesting the killer made off with them himself. They were interrupted by Deputy Richard Steele, who informed them that Stacy’s parents, Robert and Gina, had also been found dead.²

The next morning, Maggie was beaten to breaking the bad news to Emma, who saw Eliza’s rundown on the morning news first. Emma explained she didn’t know Stacy or Brock. Despite this, Maggie could tell her daughter was preoccupied and, seized by a sudden fear, offered to give her a lift to school, though Emma politely declined, at the same time mentioning her boyfriend Will Belmont wouldn’t be driving her either.³

Appearance

Maggie was a fairly-complected woman of average height and a petite build. She had wavy blonde hair and hazel eyes. Years of laboratory work rendered her nearsighted, requiring glasses by the time she was in her 30s.⁴

Personality

A determined professional throughout her life, Maggie’s most troublesome tendency was a debilitating dependency on secrets, cultivated as a girl, particularly after her tragic experience with Brandon James. Outwardly, she affected an air of quiet competence and was loath to betray weakness of any kind.

Skills

Forensic pathology: Maggie’s stock in trade as a medical examiner. She’s proficient in forensic science and crime scene investigation, and no stranger to autopsies.

Development

Maggie was a main character throughout Scream the TV Series and consequently has been part of the Scream Roleplay Universe since its inception. Since 2015, she has been portrayed by three writers.

In the 2015 Season 1 AU, she was portrayed by forum moderator Celebrity01, and was one of three characters he temped for the duration of the game, along with Nina Patterson and Seth Branson. Given Nina was killed at the end of the game’s second “episode”, it’s possible Maggie and Branson would have been next on the chopping block before the victim pool expanded to include characters who’d been consciously claimed. However, the forum went defunct before ever completing “Episode 3”, leaving Maggie’s originally intended fate ambiguous.

Celebrity01 returned for the May 2016 Season 2 AU, reprising the role of Maggie. Along with TellatrixForever as Kieran Wilcox, Maggie was the only canon character to share a portrayer across the Season 1 and 2 AUs. Maggie returned for the October 2016 Season 3 AU, but appeared much later in the forum’s run, portrayed by ThePlotMurderer, who did not reprise the role for The Final Retreat three years later, the one instance of ThePlotMurderer taking on a character and not immediately reprising them for the SRU. In The Final Retreat, Maggie was portrayed by TellatrixForever, so that ThePlotMurderer could assume the role of Howard Jensen, who was intended to be her love interest. Tellatrix wrote Maggie through to her death in the forum’s second chapter.

As with fellow Final Retreat “early outs” Micah Hendricks and Howard Jensen, much of Maggie’s SRU continuity was written after her death, as The Story so Far was compiled.

Other Interpretations

Scream the TV Series

Maggie and Clark are not in a relationship at the beginning of the TV series, with their romance instead developing over time. The Season 1 AU quietly retconned this, having Clark think of Maggie as his “girlfriend” in their first scene.⁵

Trivia

Maggie enjoys the artwork of Vincent van Gogh, and owns a set of mugs depicting his iconic flower scenes.⁶

Maggie was the first “canon” character to die in The Final Retreat, and remains the most recent main cast member of Scream the TV Series to perish in that forum. Season 2 main cast member Miguel Acosta has died after her, but in Big Trouble in Little Lakewood.

Gallery

1. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 17 ↩︎
2. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 8 ↩︎
3. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 12 ↩︎
4. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 8 ↩︎
5. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 8 ↩︎
6. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 12 ↩︎