Nobody’s ever gotten in trouble for me before.

Stacy to Brock

History

Early Life

Stacy was born on February 24, 2000 in Lakewood, to Robert and Gina Winters. She grew up in a pleasant suburban home on Kleinfeld Road, in the upwardly mobile district of “west Lakewood”.

During her eighth grade year at Garfield Middle School, Stacy was a victim of bullying, particularly concentrating on her fluctuating weight, poor skin, and braces. She overcame adversity however and, by the time she entered George Washington High School in September 2015, was dating football player Brock Carmichael, a longtime crush of hers.¹

Murder

On the evening of October 18, 2015, Stacy was waiting for Brock to arrive at her place for a movie night. While scrolling through her phone, she came upon a recently uploaded video depicting two girls kissing, clearly unaware they were being filmed. Stacy realized Brock had liked one of the many comments mocking the girls. Concerned, she texted Brock, who called her back apologetically and apologized for his callousness, promising to have the friend who posted the comment delete it. The gesture touches Stacy, and reaffirms her love for him.

Moments later, Stacy received a text from a mysterious number, inviting her to play a game. Stacy reflexively ignored the texts only to receive a call from the same number, which she automatically answered. The mysterious caller identified themselves as a “friend of a friend” and claimed she was been nominated to receive a prize if she played along. All she had to do was answer a few questions, beginning with “who is the most important person in your life”. Stacy selected Brock and the caller abruptly hung up.

Stacy knew only a moment of confusion before getting a video call from Brock’s phone: Brock was knocked off his bike, bound and gagged. Her “friend” spoke out of sight, informing her Brock was her prize and she could “win” him if she answered the next question: “who’s always got your back when the chips are down”.

Off the phone, Stacy realized her laptop’s webcam was recording of its own accord. Thus wary of calling the police, Stacy considered the question, deciding it’s a reference to her parents. She dialed her mother but the call went to voicemail. Her “friend” texted her a congratulations, somehow apprised of her answer, and Stacy heard the garage door open.

Stacy ran down and found Brock’s mangled bike in the garage. Brock himself was in the driveway, the wheel of his bike shoved around his neck. Stacy panicked and ran out to her boyfriend to help him. Her well-intentioned actions only caused the metal spokes to dig deeper into Brock’s neck, severing his jugular and killing him before her terrified eyes.

The killer gave her another call from Brock’s phone, chiding her for “spoiling her prize”. He asked her a final question: if he had the remote that opened the garage, what else is he likely to have? Stacy saw the front door open, though this realization is chased by another point: the killer doesn’t need to get into the house.

Stacy was promptly ambushed by her masked assailant, who stabbed her in the abdomen. Her baby fat cushioned the blow somewhat and she dragged herself across the street to the patio of her neighbors’. The door was opened by Paula Henderson, who screamed at the sight of her. Stacy bled out shortly after.²

Appearance

The specifics of Stacy’s appearance at the time of her death are deliberately kept obscure in the text. It is known that she hadn’t completely shed her “baby fat”, and was still somewhat pudgy. In eighth grade, she was marred by acne and braces, but both “afflictions” had been put in the past by the time of her murder.³

Personality

Stacy is a morally upstanding young woman with a surprising pluckiness and a certain amount of resilience. Having endured the cruelty of her peers in middle school, she is sensitive to the suffering of others. While conscious of her weight, she doesn’t display actual resentment toward her appearance at the time, only the way she was treated because of it.

Stacy is capable of thinking quickly on her feet and, despite ultimately failing Ghostface’s “game”, manages to put two and two together about the unfortunate fate of her parents…for all the good it did her.

Development

Stacy was created by Celebrity01, the moderator of the original 2015 Scream forum. Appearing in the first ever post of the Season 1 AU, on September 6, 2015, she has the distinction of being the first character to appear in any Scream roleplay forum.

Not quite an NPC, she was nonetheless not meant to be long term character and was created solely to be Ghostface’s first victim, thereby sparing the players from surrendering a character at the very beginning of the story, while maintaining the Scream franchise tradition of opening with a kill scene. Contrast with the May 2016 Season 2 AU, which foreshadowed its canon equivalent by not opening with a murder.

Other Interpretations

Like many details from the 2015 forum, Stacy and Brock were subjected to a fair amount of retconning when they were adapted into the SRU via The Story so Far.

As originally conceived, Stacy and Brock were juniors, and were generally treated as being in the same class as the main characters. There was confusion during the forum’s lifespan as to what grades the core characters were meant to be in. The Final Retreat cemented the core characters as sophomores during the events of Volumes I and II, while The Story so Far delineated which characters were exceptions, including Stacy and Brock.

Stacy was described as a “girl next door”, putting her more in line with her film series counterpart Casey Becker than the TV series’ Nina Patterson. Like both young women, Stacy shares an ill-fated boyfriend who briefly predeceases her. Like Casey’s Steve Orth and Nina’s Tyler O’Neil, Stacy’s boyfriend Brock Carmichael is killed offscreen, leaving the terrified Stacy to discover the body in her final moments…with poor Stacy even playing an unwitting role in finishing Brock off.

Stacy is painfully wholesome. The reader is led to believe she’s joking about withholding sex from Brock as punishment for him complaining about watching Sleepless in Seattle for movie night, only to learn Stacy is merely threatening to eat all the popcorn.

The game Ghostface plays with Stacy in the forum’s introductory post is horror movie trivia, a sport not preferred by the Lakewood Slasher of the TV series. Stacy ends up damned by vampire movie trivia: she guesses Twilight, but Ghostface was thinking of The Lost Boys. In the murderer’s defense, Stacy didn’t give him time to finish his question before screaming the answer.

Stacy’s original murder was somewhat more elaborate: she was chased to her room, stabbed in the side and then fell out the window while trying to escape, breaking on the hood of Brock’s car.⁴

Trivia

Debuting on September 6, 2015, Stacy is the first character to appear in the entire SRU. She also has the dubious distinction of being the first to receive a phone call from Ghostface in the continuity.

Stacy has minimal cinematic knowledge and claims Brock is always ragging her on not being a film buff. Her pick for her fateful movie night was Pitch Perfect, and she only recognizes Kevin Bacon as the villain from X-Men: First Class. She had recently been watching Sense8 on Netflix.

While the “original” killer of the 2015 AU was never determined, The Story so Far retroactively confirmed Stacy and Brock to have been killed by Piper Shaw. Piper’s motives for these killings have never been fully elucidated.

Quotes

“I’ve been there, you know? I’ve been the girl who wakes up famous for all the wrong reasons and it isn’t fun.”

Stacy to Brock

“I’m not a big film buff. I know, my boyfriend’s always bugging me about it.”

Stacy to Ghostface

“He was good, you son of a bitch! Even when the rest of them made my life hell, he looked at me and he saw something.”

Stacy to Ghostface, about Brock

1. The Story so Far, Vol, I: Prologue ↩︎
2. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Prologue ↩︎
3. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Prologue ↩︎
4. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 1 ↩︎