History

School Days

Seth was born Seth Palmer on November 27, 1987, in Newport, Rhode Island. His parents were a lesser but still gilded branch of New England royalty, and there were big expectations on Seth from the beginning. Expectations which he wasn’t interested in meeting. He attended the best schools, developing a taste, not for the business and banking his father transparently expected, but for the arts.

While attending an elite prep school, Seth honed his skills as a writer for the first time, contributing to the school’s literary magazine, where he specialized in poetry and, eventually, short fiction in the genre nebulously known as “literary fiction”. He graduated the Liberal Arts program of Amherst College in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree and a furious multi-paragraph email from his father to show for it.

Seth didn’t let his disinheritance slow him, and entered the real world for the first time in his life.

It was something of an adjustment.

Student/Teacher

Seth’s second wind came in the summer of 2015, when he discovered a job opening in the out-of-the-way town of Lakewood, just outside New Orleans and lightyears away from anyone who knew him.

The local public high school, George Washington High, was hiring for a new English teacher to replace a post that had been vacant half the previous year. Seth submitted to an interview and got the job and a new lease on life, settling in Lakewood in August.

Over Labor Day weekend, Seth was taking in the sunshine on the shores of Wren Lake, the town’s sole natural wonder, when he met Brooke Maddox, a local heiress who lived in the one of the palatial houses on the lakefront. She was sunbathing and struggling to get through The Outsiders, a book she’d been assigned on her summer reading list and had procrastinated starting. Not identifying himself, he offered her some help with her study questions, before revealing he was the one who’d assigned the book and would be her teacher in a few days. Charmed, Brooke recanted her many complaints about her English teacher, and expressed a desire for more study help during the year.

Old habits died hard: Seth and his student began an affair within days of the term beginning, meeting during free periods and after school under the guise of “study sessions”.

Media Literacy

On the evening of October 18, Stacy Winters and Brock Carmichael, two freshmen at GW High, were violently murdered by person unknown. The deaths sent shockwaves through the school, and were made painfully clear to Seth in his first period English 10 class. In what could only be a macabre coincidence, Noah Foster’s paper on The Great Gatsby had sought to find thematic resonance between the novel and Lakewood’s local ghost story, the 1994 Brandon James murders.

Noah was pleased to take advantage of the presence of “noobs” to town, like Seth and transfer student Kieran Wilcox, to launch into an oral history, leading into his theory: that Brandon James’s victims were “careless people”, of the kind described by Gatsby’s narrator, Nick Carroway. This assessment got under the skin of a few of the students, most particularly Emma Duval, whose father was the sole survivor of the ’94 killings.¹

After completing some version of his planned lesson for the day, Seth was treated to a deskside visit from his favorite student. Brooke was miffed that her assignment (a racy selfie, kitted out in flapper attire, naturally) had only scraped a ‘B’. Seth took the opportunity to suggest they take a step back for the moment, given the increased scrutiny around school in the wake of the murders. Brooke wasn’t having it and made it clear she’d be seeing Seth tonight.² Brooke later texted Seth a time and a place for their rendezvous. Seth reacted to her message with a “thumbs up” emoji…but ultimately couldn’t bring himself to show.³

Appearance

Seth was a tall, leanly built young man, about 5’10, with an angular physique. He had brown eyes and very dark blond hair,⁴ usually maintained in a deceptively careless-looking coiffe.

Wardrobe

Seth’s professional attire has a distinctive preppy vibe. The day he was subjected to Noah’s opinions on the Brandon James murders, he wore slim-fit khaki pants, a salmon-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows,⁵ and a necktie, which Brooke wasted no time getting kinky with after class.⁶

Personality

Seth had a doggedly charismatic manner, disarming in its seeming effortlessly that, in fact, was anything but. A classic neurotic artist, his easy smile and witty repartee masked a nest of deep insecurities and an inferiority complex he soothed with comforting, illicit distractions.

Despite his many manifold issues, however, Seth possessed a sincere love for the written word, and struggled to evoke that same fascination in his students.

Equipment

Pen: Seth wields a four-color pen (black, blue, red, and green), which he employs in grading.⁷

Crimes Committed

Engaged in a sexual affair with his student, Brooke Maddox (16 at the time).⁸

Development

A supporting character throughout Scream the TV Series, Seth has been part of the SRU since its inception. In the 2015 Season 1 AU, he was portrayed by forum moderator Celebrity01, as one of three characters he temped throughout the game’s run, along with Maggie Duval and Nina Patterson. Given that Nina was killed at the end of the game’s second “episode”, it’s possible Seth and Maggie would’ve been next on the chopping block before the victim pool expanded to include characters who’d been intentionally claimed. However, the forum went defunct before ever completing “Episode 3”, leaving Seth’s originally intended fate ambiguous.

Though Celebrity returned for the May 2016 Season 2 AU, he didn’t reprise the role of Branson, which was taken over by newcomer Snafu Guru, who portrayed a down-on-his-luck, slovenly Branson, living on the fringes of society after his disgrace at the end of the first season. The canonical Seth Branson was killed off midway through the second season. His death was accepted as canon by the October 2016 Season 3 AU and, ultimately, the SRU.

Other Interpretations

Season 1 AU

The fact that Seth is the newest teacher at GW High, being hired at the start of the current school year, was never indicated in the TV series and was first attested by Principal Teague in the 2015 forum.⁹

In the forum, Seth takes it upon himself to break the news about Stacy and Brock’s deaths to his class.¹⁰ Any semblance of emotional sensitivity vanishes shortly after when, after Noah tells him the story of the Brandon James murders, he compares the story of Brandon and “Daisy” to Romeo and Juliet.¹¹

Trivia

Seth is introduced in The Story so Far reading Jon Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, a 2015 work of nonfiction on an epidemic of sexual violence centered around the titular town’s university football team.¹² Seth is by this point on his second ill-advised “relationship” with an underage girl.

Quotes

I want to be moderate in my reaction but, seriously, guys, what the heck?

Seth isn’t pleased with his class’s efforts on their Gatsby papers

Gallery

1. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 17 ↩︎
2. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 18 ↩︎
3. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 30 ↩︎
4. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 18 ↩︎
5. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 17 ↩︎
6. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 18 ↩︎
7. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 17 ↩︎
8. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 18 ↩︎
9. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 165 ↩︎
10. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 201 ↩︎
11. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 212 ↩︎
12. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 17 ↩︎