History

Mean Queen

Nina was born on December 18, 1998, to Chet and Tiffany Patterson. Her father was a high-powered corporate attorney with a sterling record in the courtroom, and her mother was a retired European supermodel, ensuring that Nina grew up in a privileged environment. The new money Pattersons contrasted with Lakewood’s other elite, notably the Maddoxes and the Smiths, who had long entrenched histories in the town, and considerable generational wealth. From an early age, Nina learned the power of personality, especially when dealing with people who thought they were better than her.

Armed with an unflappable demeanor, a cool confidence, and an effortless sense of poise, Nina cultivated a public image of the ultimate popular girl, earning the admiration and envy of her peers. The darker side of this meant that she indulged in acts of cruelty toward soft targets in order to cement her place in the school hierarchy. Among her many victims in school were nerds and outcasts like Audrey Jensen and Noah Foster. Nina’s aura of menace was such that very few people ever stood up to her, with Amanda Steele, an older girl who once intervened on Audrey’s behalf, being a rare exception.

For the most part, people admired Nina, or at least put her up on a pedestal as a living embodiment of the ideal young woman of suburbia. By the time Nina started high school, her cult of personality was cemented. She had built an amorphous clique of ‘close friends’, the exact roster of which shifted year by year.

Boy Crazy

Nina took Tyler O’Neil’s virginity at an end-of-summer party before the start of her sophomore year. Tyler had distinguished himself as point guard of the Lakewood Lancer basketball team the previous year, and had never been subtle about his attraction to Nina. Nina, however, didn’t fully reciprocate his feelings, being hung up on another man: Sean Coleman, the older brother of her friend Giselle.

Sean, however, had let Nina down earlier in the summer, admitting he was in a relationship with someone else. Tyler was oblivious to his status as Nina’s rebound, but Nina was so disgusted with herself that she ran out on him afterward, driving out into the countryside north of town for some air. On this panicked pilgrimage, she caught a glimpse of a young man laboring in the fields of a farm she’d been driving past: Will Belmont. The sight of him took her breath away and she became fascinated for reasons she couldn’t adequately explain even to herself. All Nina knew was that she had to have him…and Nina was well accustomed to getting what she wanted.

As it happened, Will was starting at GW High as a freshman. He signed up for the basketball team and was so impressive in tryouts that he took Tyler’s point guard position. Tyler was demoted to second string but was so insulted at being upstaged by a freshman that he quit the team in a huff.

For her part, Nina was happy to seize on Will’s athletic prowess to make him a “somebody”, moving to ingratiate him into her friend group. Including Will meant including his best friend and teammate Jake Fitzgerald, as well as Brooke Maddox, Nina’s longtime neighbor. Brooke was the mayor’s daughter and a longtime (very transparent) admirer of Nina’s social clout. Nina wasn’t that impressed, but kept her and Jake around to keep Will close.

Unfortunately for Nina, Will had his eyes on someone else. Emma Duval was a pretty girl-next-door type, not at all the kind of person Nina had time for. Will was dating Emma by homecoming, however, and Nina had no choice but to play nice.

Wandering Eyes

Unable to get her manicure into Will, Nina had no recourse but to stew in silence. Matters weren’t improved when she discovered the identity of the girl Sean had broken off their affair to be with: Amanda Steele, the dowdy mechanic who’d once made a production of “sticking up” to Nina on the schoolyard of their childhoods.

Nina devised a revenge plot to put Amanda in her place, conspiring to cause an “accident” at Big Mike’s, the garage where Amanda worked after school. Things got out of hand, however and, rather than merely frightening Amanda, the girl’s life was forever altered. A garage lift collapsed, taking out Amanda’s legs at the knee.

Making matters worse, Nina hadn’t acted alone in this. The sabotage itself had been done by Robbie, Amanda’s coworker at the garage, who had his own resentments. Robbie was in a panic over the severity of Amanda’s injury and visibly had trouble holding himself together.

Reeling, Nina found a confidante in Tyler who, despite everything, leapt at the chance to prove useful to her. He used his technical know-how to hack the security cameras at the garage to erase the incriminating footage of the sabotage. The surviving copy was saved to a flash drive, which Tyler entrusted to Nina, who saw an opportunity.

After dangling the drive for Robbie and threatening to have him sent down for attempted murder if he lost his courage and blabbed about the “prank”, Nina set her sights higher. Realizing that, between her cunning and Tyler’s tech-smarts, there was nothing stopping them from gathering more sensitive information and using it to turn a profit.

So began the secret intelligence gathering network that Nina called Lakewood Eyes. Tyler was initially skeptical but couldn’t deny the thrill of it. They were in business.

Wrapped Around Her Finger

In the first few months of Lakewood Eyes, Nina and Tyler amassed a catalog of clients big and small, raking in profits from Lakewood denizens terrified of their secrets being exposed. They weren’t always simpatico in this, however, and had a falling out over Nina’s choice of clientele around the end of 2014.

This meant the end of their romantic relationship, but Nina and Tyler were in too deep to be quits entirely. It didn’t take long for Nina to find a rebound: while Will was still out of her reach, she had no issue getting her hands on his best friend Jake. It was obviously a sham relationship, but Jake didn’t mind, relishing the perks which included knowledge of Lakewood Eyes, which the thrill-seeking Jake eagerly became the third party to.

Nina, never without a gambit of some kind, had a suspicion when she roped Jake in that he would spill the beans to Will. Jake didn’t disappoint. Will, a farmboy in a time when the local agricultural industry was withering on the vine, had dismal financial prospects which, paired with his less-than-average academic record, meant he was hanging his hopes of ditching Lakewood on landing a basketball scholarship. Jake, awash in privilege but nonetheless sympathetic to his friend’s plight, let him in on Lakewood Eyes and brought him to Nina and Tyler.

Nina offered to bring Will in, but only if he could provide collateral: something she could use to ensure he wouldn’t stab her in the back. Nina challenged him to have sex with Emma before her 16th birthday, a little over a month out. Nina relished the opportunity to meddle in Will’s relationship, regardless of whether it ended up bringing him closer to her or not.

Jake’s tendency for blabbing persisted and it wasn’t long before he blurted part of the truth to Brooke, who had known him and Will since they were children, playing together on the Belmont farm. Jake, catching himself, framed the whole arrangement as a “bet” rather than reveal the nature of Lakewood Eyes. Brooke, incensed, went to Nina to get her to call it off, at which point Nina threw Brooke’s hypocrisy in her face, accusing her of only caring because she had unresolved feelings for Will herself. Brooke, embarrassed, backed off, wary of having her childish crush exposed.

The plan went off without a hitch. Will planned a lavish Valentine’s Day date and consummated his relationship with Emma…and his loyalty to Nina, and Lakewood Eyes.

With Will yoked to Nina, there was no more reason for her relationship with Jake to continue. They broke things off, which Jake was more than happy about, having grown frustrated by the cold and sexless nature of their admittedly shallow partnership.¹

The Kissing Video

On the afternoon of October 17, 2015, Nina and the rest of the in-crowd were hanging out at the Wren Lake Overlook, Nina perched on the hood of her Benz, gazing out at town.² Emma recognized a car pulling up at the other side of the summit. The others watched as Audrey Jensen, Emma’s childhood best friend and one of many targets of Nina’s childhood bullying, made out with another girl.

Nina took special pleasure in a bit of salacious gossip, especially considering the fondness that had once existed between Emma and Audrey. She whipped out her phone and recorded the girls’ intimate moment. Emma, offended on her old friend’s behalf, told Nina to delete the video. Nina promised to “take it off her phone”, and honored this exact words defense by deleting it from her phone, after uploading it to YouTube the next day, where it rapidly went locally viral.^{3 4}

This was the same evening as Brooke’s Beautiful Bash, a house party thrown by Brooke in an attempt to compete with Nina’s annual end-of-summer blowout which had occurred the previous month. Nina attended just for the sake of showing herself, arriving separately from Tyler, who got there before her.⁵

The party was crashed by a furious Audrey, who’d seen the video and immediately connected it to Emma and her new friends. Nina was conveniently out of the way for Audrey’s confrontation with Emma, which was broken up by Brooke on Emma’s side and Noah and Amanda on the other.⁶

Audrey had stormed off by the time Nina and Tyler resurfaced. Amanda wasted no time going after Nina for uploading the video, though Nina denied any knowledge. Exasperated, Amanda turned to Tyler and wondered why he was defending her so adamantly, given all Nina had taken from him, insinuating Nina was being unfaithful. Tyler jumped to the conclusion that Nina was cheating on him with Jake and confronted him. Jake laughed off the notion he’d ever go back to Nina, provoking Tyler into tackling him into Brooke’s pool.

Amanda and Noah ditched in the resulting confusion, and so did Nina, incensed with Tyler for not taking her word for it that she hadn’t been with Jake and that Amanda was just stirring the pot for the sake of it.⁷

Walls Close In

The next day, Nina arrived at school to find it crawling with police. In the night, about the same time as Brooke’s party, freshmen Stacy Winters and Brock Carmichael had been gruesomely killed. The tragedy stirred up a good deal of excitement, though Nina soon found she had more personal matters to contend with.

From a sleepless Tyler, Nina learned that his sister Gemma was back, and had unceremoniously moved herself into the O’Neil home. Nina bristled, furious that Tyler had been unable to keep Gemma away. She intimated they both knew what Gemma had returned for but, wary of prying ears, couldn’t get into more detail than that.⁸

After school, Nina visited the Grindhouse, where Emma worked as a barista. While she intended to grill her, Emma ended up turning the tables, taking Nina to task over uploading the video. Nina, utterly preoccupied with Gemma’s return, had no sympathy for Emma’s plight, reminding Emma that if she wanted so badly to stop the video from getting out there, she would’ve been more proactive about it. Nina added she thought it was quite rich Emma was getting so worked up over Audrey, given how they’d fallen out last year.

Audrey entered the coffeehouse during their altercation and, seeing them together, stormed off. Nina, figuring Emma would be of no help, didn’t stick around either.⁹

Appearance

Nina was a tall young woman with a statuesque build and a porcelain complexion.¹⁰ She was red-headed with dark brown eyes. A fashionista, she dressed chicly, lending to the illusion she was older than she really was.

Wardrobe

Nina wore a lavish floral-patterned two-piece swimsuit to Brooke’s Big Beautiful Bash. The ensemble, more for fashion than function, was drenched after Jake and Tyler took a violent plunge into Brooke’s pool.¹¹

The following day, Nina wore white pleated pants and a black and navy beaded top, tying her hair into a high ponytail.¹² She carried a white Dolce & Gabbana crossbody bag and had her nails done in royal blue with faux-fiamond studs.¹³

Personality

Nina is characterized by an aloof sense of maturity, deliberately attempting to appear older than she is and carrying herself like a young woman, not a teenage girl. This is derived partly from her parents, who instilled (intentionally and otherwise) an ambitious drive that she never shook off. Nina’s desire to get ahead and stay there means she views relationships as entirely transactional and doesn’t trust anybody. Even her ‘friends’ she views more as means to ends, and is constantly wary of betrayal…a fear that doubtless comes from projection.

Nina has a ruthless streak and doesn’t suffer insults. Once provoked, she becomes single-minded in her pursuit of vengeance at any cost. Despite this, she outwardly maintains a frigid, cool composure that rarely ever slips, even under extreme stress.

Equipment

Car: Nina drove a Mercedes-Benz.¹⁴

Crimes Committed

Recorded Audrey Jensen and Rachel Murray making out without their consent and uploaded the video to YouTube, where it went viral.¹⁵

Development

Nina was part of the 2015 Season 1 AU, and had a larger presence than her canon equivalent, who perished in the opening scene of Scream the TV Series’ pilot episode, in a send-up of the film series’ Casey Becker. In the Season 1 AU, Nina was spared the opening kill scene, which instead went to original character Stacy Winters.

Nina was portrayed by forum moderator Celebrity01, and was one of three characters he temped for the duration of the game, along with Maggie Duval and Seth Branson. It’s possible that, since nobody ever formally claimed any of the “temps”, all three of them would’ve been killed in the first half of the game. As written, Nina was the only one to be killed, being taken out at the end of the game’s second “episode”, along with her boyfriend Tyler O’Neil. Nina and Tyler were the only playable characters killed off in the Season 1 AU, outliving their canon counterparts by the equivalent of two episodes.

Nina’s death was adapted in one form or another in all later games, with her slightly later-than-canon murder being adapted for the SRU when The Story so Far adapted the Season 1 AU in 2019.

Other Interpretations

Scream the TV Series

In the series, Tyler is identified as Nina’s ex-boyfriend. The subtext is he isn’t satisfied with this arrangement, and may have helped her upload the kissing video to get back into her good graces, a gambit Nina saw through and dismissed. In the Season 1 AU, they are very much still dating, however acrimonious their relationship may be.

Following Nina’s death, Brooke casually reveals to Emma that Nina and Will had been involved, having sex while he and Emma were on a “break”. The SRU dropped this element, with Lakewood: Year One establishing that, while Nina was interested in having Will for herself and was uncompromising in getting her hands on him, their relationship never gained a sexual dimension.

Season 1 AU

Nina isn’t nearly as much of a mastermind in the Season 1 AU as she is, either in the television series or later in the SRU. For one thing, her role in uploading the kissing video is heavily downplayed, partially due to a long stretch of play where Rachel Murray wasn’t claimed, leaving it ambiguous whether there was a video at all.

For another, her first scene in the game concerns Nina being victimized by a rumor spread by Amanda Steele that she’s been cheating on Tyler with Jake.¹⁶ Though it was left ambiguous for a while, it was eventually confirmed there were no grounds at all to Amanda’s claim, which she’d made solely to get back at Tyler for making fun of her disability.

Trivia

Nina is a One Direction fan. Brooke tells Emma she had to “surrender” Liam Payne to Nina early in their friendship.¹⁷

Quotes

Sorry, Robogirl, but diagnosing your delusions is way above my pay grade.

Nina to Amanda

There is no ‘me and Jake’, Tyler, and if you had even a speck of respect for me, you’d take my word for it over an ex-fundie paraplegic with a bitch gripe…

Nina lambastes Tyler for trusting Amanda’s word over her own

I happen to have an entirely separate, deeply rich life that has gone on before you and goes on independently of you and, if I should be so lucky, will go on after you. 

Nina reminds Emma her life doesn’t revolve around her

Look, the sordid saga of you and Droopy Jowels Jensen, thrilling as I’m sure it might be to middle grade readers ages 10 – 12, is none of my business.

Nina couldn’t care less about Emma and Audrey’s falling out

Nobody is going to tell you you’re too mean or too pushy. You can dress in…whatever and people will call you pretty, and no matter what you put on, nobody’s gonna call you a slut. If you don’t like someone, you grin and move on because you know that, even if you’re not gonna check them, someone in your corner is bound to feel the same way with less restraint, and they’ll handle it so you can keep on keeping on, everyone’s favorite sunshine girl!

Nina is fed up with Emma’s “Nice Girl” shtick

Gallery

1. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
2. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
3. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 2 ↩︎
4. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 29 ↩︎
5. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 7 ↩︎
6. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 1 ↩︎
7. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 4 ↩︎
8. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 14 ↩︎
9. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 29 ↩︎
10. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 29 ↩︎
11. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 4 ↩︎
12. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 14 ↩︎
13. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 29 ↩︎
14. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
15. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 2 ↩︎
16. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 16 ↩︎
17. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 2 ↩︎