General Info-
I'm a 28 year old gamer/aspiring VA from the New England area. I identify as a heterosexual cis male (just in case anyone was wondering/cares). I am from Western Massachusetts and went to school in Burlington, VT (Champlain to be exact) and I currently still live in that area. My other hobbies include playing the bass and acoustic guitar. My twitter is at Dom_J_Pet (or Lt. McMuffin) for updates whenever I decide to actually use that God forsaken site.
Development of Derrick/Lukas-
Due to my studies with Game Design/Production Champlain, whenever a "hero shooter" comes out like Siege or Overwatch, I tend to challenge myself and see if I can create a character in the universe. These 2 were originally developed in the summer of 2020.
Derrick went through many changes. I wanted to make him the sibling of an existing Operator. The first thing I did was press "random article" on the wiki until I got a Siege op. After about 3 clicks going to weapons and events, the site gave me Valkyrie. I then selected a SoCal American name and figured Derrick would be a good one. As for his gadget, first he had a bow and arrow with explosive arrows, then a 50 cal sniper as a defender. Eventually I was like "Let's try to make his code name similar to Valk's...let's see...Thor...nah, too obvious….OH! LOKI! FUCKING AWESOME! AND HE CAN CHANGE INTO PEOPLE! And I'll make him the comic relief guy that plays pranks on everyone because MISCHIEF!" I then proceeded to write the character as if he were me when I started to write this story. Much of Derrick's backstory is pulled from my life like having a GF that cheated on him in HS, loving DC comics when he was a kid (and to this day), doing musicals in HS (those were my actual roles too), being a momma's boy, having Italian immigrants as grandparents (yes, they hid from German soldiers during WWII as well), Derrick's middle name is Joseph like mine and so much more. I myself don't surf and am not as good at acoustic as I wrote Derrick to be, nor was I much of a ladies man in my youth. Most of the voices that you "saw" Derrick do are ones that I myself can do (my Shaggy and Walken aren't the best though). I changed his birthday from the reddit post to be April Fools Day instead because I felt that it would make sense for his personality. You can still view the post on reddit (R6OperatorCreator), just ask me for the link b/c idk how FanFiction formats links if I post them. Some of the original backstory was changed i.e. moving his "death" up to 2022 rather than 2015 and changing his squad. You can see I left the White Mask interrogations the same too. As for picking Derrick's GF, again I selected all of the ops that I myself found to be pretty (I believe it was Frost, Ash, IQ and Mira. There might have been more but that's all I can remember) and spun the wheel again. Landed on Frost. I am also learning German and can speak a little Italian as well and decided to incorporate it into Derrick's character except I made him fluent in both.
Lukas was the one that I spent the most time on back during the initial development phase as you can plainly tell by the HUGE backstory I gave him on reddit (Again, message me for the link or search for "Amp" on R6OperatorCreator). I'm certain most, if not all, of Lukas's backstory remained unchanged (except I changed the cover band's name and how Monika saved him during the concert attack) when I brought him over to this story. Lukas also went through many changes, but I for the life of me can't remember what his original gadget was. I want to say it was a sonic gun or an undermount sonic grenade launcher. The intention was to have him and IQ work seamlessly together whenever Thatcher or Kali weren't picked and I added the feature that allowed the grenades to disrupt a reinforced wall so IQ or Lukas could shoot the Bandit batteries. I originally planned for Lukas not to be jacked but decided to change that because I thought it would be funny that the 5' 9'' IQ is the older sister (by 5 years) of the 6' 2'' jacked Lukas. As for Lukas's GF, it was originally going to be Thunderbird until I was reading Ela's backstory for some reason and felt that it would be a better idea because she seems like she's an arts person and Lukas is a musician. His original birthdate (via reddit) is the release date of Iron Maiden's Powerslave. I kept the month and day the same but (as you'll find out below) it's hard to determine the ages of the ops as I don't know what year they turned the age listed on the wiki/in game.
Scraped Ideas/Changes During Development/Future Plans:
I had a defending operator from New Zealand named Chloe "Siren" Harris who was Derrick's friend when they were in HS and she was the one who found him after his "death". She was also a lesbian but, as you can tell if you read the entire story, I scraped that in favor of making Lukas Derrick's best buddy and transferred the lesbian idea to Meghan.
Why did I make Meghan a lesbian? Because I tend to see a lot of gay or bisexual men and bisexual women in fiction (which is fine) but not a lot of strictly lesbian characters so I decided to give it shot. As you can tell, I didn't make the characterization/writing basically porn like I see quite often with LGBT women characters. I went for something more PG-13 and kept it to just kissing. Plus, it's not Meghan's entire personality either.
It's hard determining the ages of the operators. I think it's based on how old they were when they were introduced in Siege. Example, Frost's birthday was originally listed as May 4th, 1985 and she was released in 2017 thus making her 32. 32 is what the Rainbow Six wiki lists as her age. So, with that information, I just decided to keep the age that was listed rather than the birth year. Using the Frost example again, she would be 32 in the year 2023 thus moving her birthyear up to 1991 (Valk's would be 1992, IQ's would be 1985 and so on). (6/15/2022). Reworded all of this garbage to make it a lot more clear on how I decided on Operator ages. If you REALLY want to be canon accurate, Derrick is 2 years younger than Valk, thus making him born in 1988 and he would actually be 35 during the events of this story rather than 29 (if it were canon)
Derrick's original middle name was going to be Xavier until I changed it to Joseph
I gave Meghan the middle name of Jane because Derrick called her "Janey" in Chapter 3.
The children Derrick saved in the beginning weren't originally supposed to be related to Ash. I added it later during Chapter 3's rough draft.
"I'M A NAVY SEAL" is from videogamedunkey's "Call of Mountain Duty" video. I thought having Meghan say that while drunk would be funny because...you know...
During the climax, Lukas was supposed to rally everyone as the Butcher would have called the White Masks to the location but that was axed in favor of what was in the final draft. Derrick was supposed to chase him through the Facility as well and kill him outside
Derrick was supposed to steal a chopper that the Butcher stowed away in.
Glaz was going to shoot the Butcher before Derrick intervened but I scraped that early too and settled on the crew featured in the story
Lukas was not originally going to be missing for 2 weeks and masquerading as Fenrir. He was just supposed to be gone for a few days until the Fenrir/vigilante idea struck me while I was at work. His original vigilante name was "Helblindi" as well (Loki's brother in Norse)
The Ela, Tina, Meghan and Monika perspectives weren't originally supposed to happen but I felt like doing multiple Lukas only chapters would get stale. Monika's was added at the last minute during the rough draft of Chapter 12.
Ash was originally comforting Meghan when she was looking through old photos before I changed it to Monika
Tina was supposed to come on the mission where Derrick was found alive but I decided that that scene in Chapter 13 was a much better idea. I even used the Superman scene from Reign of the Supermen as an inspiration. Derrick even had a beard.
I had many different ideas for what Derrick would say when Meghan was threatened before I landed on the simple "NO! GET AWAY FROM HER!"
Meghan's speech to Derrick was originally much MUCH shorter but I had brainstormed so many ideas at work and added them all. It's based on the final scene of "Brothers"
I had an entire Epilogue scene consisting of Derrick and Tina married, Lukas and Ela married and Monika and Meghan married but I decided against it as I thought it was a tad too corny.
Derrick and Tina weren't supposed to go out until after Operation: Emerald City but I decided to set it up earlier. The sex scene in Chapter 6 was originally written to be before they went to Seattle but I moved it to after the mission instead.
Lukas and Ela were supposed to start dating at the end of the story but I was blanking for ideas for Chapter 7 because I wanted a Lukas only chapter after the Derrick only chapter so I made that event happen much earlier.
Thermite was originally going to witness Derrick's "death" but I changed it to Blackbeard
Derrick's torture was going to consist of innocents dying if he continued to remain silent but I decided against that pretty quick.
I picked random Polish names for Zofia's family, a random Spanish name for Elena's sister and an American name for Craig's wife. Same with Lukas's other siblings. (2/17/2022) It has come to my attention that Zofia's daughter actually has a name in lore, I have updated all instances of Zofia's daughter being named "Krystyna" (the name I randomly picked) to the correct and lore accurate name of "Jana"
It was just supposed to be Lukas watching Derrick after his breakdown and they were to watch Power Rangers all night.
The death of the Butcher went through a few changes too. Originally, Derrick was to jam his knife into the Butcher's chin and choke slam him on the ground.
Elena wasn't supposed to have a small crush on Derrick but I remembered how close the wheel was to landing on her I decided to add it later. Ash was originally going to share that crush too until I decided to have her have a crush on Thermite and is very self conscious about it
Flak was added as I was writing the Fenrir arc. I felt Lukas needed an endgame so I made up the character one day while I was at my job to be the Butcher's brother. He was originally called AA but I felt Flak was a better name. If you still don't get it, a Flak Cannon is an anti-aircraft weapon.
Kali is my least favorite operator in the game (other than Clash) so of course I made Derrick and Lukas hate Nighthaven. They are strictly Team Ash and always will be. (2/18/2022) The new Y7 trailer involving Zofia and Ela was released today with Ela supposedly joining NIGHTHAVEN. I updated Chapter 3 to mention this fact. I played it off as a "don't mention it" type of thing as if you looked closely, Monika/IQ was there in the lot along with Pulse. Doubt Pulse would join NIGHTHAVEN considering he's in Extraction (and so is Ela and Smoke) but w/e. If you ask me, those 3 (including Smoke) went undercover for Rainbow.
I decided to end the story by inferring that Derrick was one of the people that helped Elena develop the gadgets for the REACT (R6:Extraction) operators rather than the epilogue scene I mentioned above. Idk when Extraction is taking place but I would imagine it would be much later than 2022 because the initial outbreak was in 2018 according to lore and I don't think "several years later" means just 4. I'd imagine it's at least 7 or 8.
I am in the process of developing a sequel set before and during the events of Extraction. This one will be a 1st person Derrick narration (Lukas will still be involved) and will display how he's dealing with the Archaeans as well as his family life. It's still in the early stages of development and won't be uploaded for another month or so cause I wanna but a dent in my other 2 projects too.
If he were to be added to the game version (I'm dreaming big here, I know) players would also get contacted by Derrick to obtain parts/items for gear improvements (i.e. "Trade offer. I receive parts and other tech shit. You receive upgrades to your gear. Sound good?") and other collectables as well as other general shenanigans (i.e. "THEY KILLED GARY THE GOPHER?! OK, NOW I'M PISSED!" or "Hey, aren't those Third Echelon goggles? Sam might want them. Nice find." or "Aw SICK! That looks like an assassin's blade or something. Bring it to me, I'll see if I can figure out how it works.").
I hope you enjoyed the story regardless!
- Dom
