I realize that my interpretation of Sister has taken many of you by surprise. I was hesitant to post this story because she's so different from the series, but decided to go ahead with it anyways.
I'd like to take the time to explain why I wrote her this way.
SISTER GRIF – A CHARACTER ANALYSIS
I remember when we first met Grif's sister. My first thought was "She's so much like her brother!" and was quickly followed by "She's just as smart, too!" These latest episodes, however, cast her in a very different light. The Sister we see portrayed in Season Five of Red vs Blue is an empty-headed, sex obsessed moron.
But before I go any further, I need to explain what Thalia and I worked out as the backstory for the Grif family. This is where my interpretation of Sister comes from.
THE BACKSTORY
Dexter and his sister (whom we named Aimee) were 4 and 1 years of age respectively when their parents were killed in a car crash. Dexter and Aimee were in the backseat and got thrown clear of the accident. It is from here that Dexter developed his initial fear of bats.
Dexter eventually found his way back to the crashed car, his sister in his arms. Their mother was dead and their father minutes away from joining her. Rather than force his children to witness his death, Dad told Dexter to walk to a rest stop they had passed minutes before the accident and to call for help. He also told Dexter to take care of his sister.
Needless to say, by the time help arrived, both parents were dead. Dexter and Aimee were sent to a foster home, one that had already taken in several other children. The couple that took them in had an eye on the money they received for each child and, while there was no physical abuse, Dexter and Aimee were not treated well. Unfortunately, they had fallen through the cracks in the Child Services system and no one ever discovered how they had been treated.
Four years later, Dexter and Aimee were adopted. They were 8 and 4 years of age. Their new family lasted for only a few years and the pair eventually were secretly abandoned by their adopted father (their new mother having been placed in a mental institute several months earlier with little hope of recovery).
With the memory of their former foster home still fresh in their minds, Dexter and Aimee conspired to keep their abandonment a secret, and lived out the rest of Dexter's school years in secrecy. Their primary guiding rule was simple: don't attract attention.
Aimee took this to mean that she couldn't be seen excelling at anything. The role of a slow student eventually became a source of entertainment and she began to expand it, taking on more and more characteristics of an empty-headed fool.
WHERE THIS COMES FROM
This backstory is based in the series, as hard as that may be to believe. It was originally conceived based on Grif alone and expanded when we met his sister. In Grif, we had noticed several characteristics:
First, Grif is extremely smart, which, for some reason, he attempts to hide from his teammates. This is the first trait we observed, and we soon found ourselves wondering why he would do this.
We see him recalling infinite details perfectly, and that when he truly cares about something, it gets done, and gets done right.
Next, we confronted the issue of Grif's status as the only universal draftee and his own claims to have signed up voluntarily. This obvious contradiction required some sort of explanation.
We also noticed Grif's extremely active imagination. We saw how he kept himself entertained, and, even more importantly, how he seemed to use this ability to hide from reality.
Grif also continuously seeks Sarge's approval. We can see right away that Grif doesn't hate Sarge, and even seeks his approval from time to time. When Sarge gives Simmons or Donut credit for one of Grif's discoveries, he gets very upset. Grif is only human, after all, and all he wants is some positive attention for once.
Unfortunately for Grif, Simmons is the only one who truly gives him that, and that only occurs when Sarge isn't around.
Grif is also the driver for the Red Team, and having seen a friend attempting to maneuver a Warthog in the Halo I video game, we could see just how complex a task this was. For Grif to be willing to even attempt to "recreate the greatest scene from the Dukes of Hazard ever!" means he must be a phenomenal driver.
Grif's protests to the naming of the new jeep were also an indicator to his personality.
In later seasons, we see Simmons beginning to break away from Sarge somewhat as he leans more on Grif.
We see that Simmons always makes sure that Grif gets taken care of, rescued, or given whatever assistance he needs.
Church views Grif as the "crafty one" amongst all the Reds, and the only chance for that opinion to be formed was during their few hours of confinement on Sidewinder during Season Three.
We took into consideration that Grif was from Hawaii, and not one of the continental 48 states.
We saw Grif converting NASA probes into skateboards in one PSA, and even declaring that he was going to build a ramp. These PSAs may not be a part of the Blood Gulch Chronicles, but the characters in them remain the same, with the same motivations and desires as in the series itself.
And all this shifted slightly when Sister arrived.
Suddenly, Grif wasn't an only child. Suddenly, we had to explain everything we'd noticed with the addition of a younger sister.
We couldn't change much of what we'd sorted out without altering Grif himself.
So we incorporated Sister into this backstory. We took everything we saw in the series and PSAs and built a solid story around these two characters. This was made easier by the fact that Sister had obviously modeled much of her behavior on her big brother, even when it didn't quite work for her.
We took the continuous "Wait, what?" responses, her admission to attempting suicide, the way she wound Tucker up and suddenly cast him away, how she tricked Doc into deciding that he didn't want to know anything about her and her past and found a highly intelligent young lady with a large streak of mischief running through her.
We looked at her and her brother and saw a girl hiding more than her intelligence from the world. We saw a girl hiding everything she was from the world while simultaneously clinging to her brother as her only remaining lifeline.
And that's why we wrote Sister the way we did.
