To commemorate a milestone like chapter 100, and given the fact that this week's chapters have been so Jordan-focused, as well as the fact that Jordan, while losing to Alex on the poll on ScribbleHub, did at least get a vote, I'll be using this Author's Note to go over the Creation Process behind Jordan.
Unlike Magnus and Alex, whom I started creating with templates — characters I liked from other media — in mind, Jordan was created out of storytelling necessity. And thus, I sort of figured out everything she needed to be first, then reverse-engineered her personality and background to get her there.
There was no plan for Jordan at the start.
During the first week, Magnus got "lucky" and "somehow" speed-ran the "winning Alex over" game. During the second week, he attempted the same strategy reluctantly in the hope of continuing to survive, and crashed and failed so hard that he eventually came to Alex to confess everything. She reluctantly saved his ass. But at this point, her mental state was basically: I'll help, but I really don't like this.And I only half-believed all this System-talk anyway.
So the third week upped the stakes by having him die for real before miraculously reviving.
This drastically changed Alex's take on everything, though, and she was now fully onboard with doing pretty much everything, going pretty much any length, and bending pretty much any line to keep him alive.
But with Alex fully onboard and helping Magnus, there's a potential narrative problem if I don't handle things right: because Alex is, well, Alex, what's to stop her from bulldozing all of Magnus's quests for him?
And I mean, that works if the story I was trying to tell was just a brainless, wish-fulfilling smut about Magnus having the best girlfriend ever who arranges threesome after threesome for him, which I could actually see the appeal for, don't get me wrong. As a reader, I'd sometimes read things like that. Sometimes, you just want something cozy to turn off your brain for a few hours, and if you can jerk off to it, even better.
Still, as a writer, that's not the story I wanted to tell.
So, I needed someone Alex couldn't bulldoze for Magnus.
And thus, Jordan at conception was just "Alex's rival." Originally, I was going to use her as a normal weekly Conquest Target, before I realized that if Alex couldn't bulldoze the weekly quests for Magnus, he was gonna… well, let's be honest, he was gonna die in a week.
If you're reading this, you've probably followed Magnus's journey through 100 chapters now, so you should know he's the type who could get people to like him if he had time to show them who he was.
But with just a week and no help from Alex?
Hahahahaha No!
So throwing Jordan at him with a 7-day deadline without Alex's help? That's like forcing someone to play Souls games with 1 HP. It can be done, sure, but most people are not gonna make it.
So, the Monthly Quest system was created, with Jordan being the first Monthly Quest target.
She still didn't have a name by then, by the way.
You wouldn't know it now, since in the present version of the story, Jordan was first mentioned in chapter 2, first had a short appearance (voice only) in chapter 7, and officially debuted on-page in chapter 18. But in terms of creation order, she was created after Magnus, Alex, Lila, Prof. Elena Marquez, Sofia, and Tony.
At the time I created her, I worked on her overall personality first, before choosing a name from the dozens that different AI chatbots and name generators had suggested. Jordan Hale was the one that spoke to me. So Jordan Hale she was, since it fit her image, or at least the image of her that was finally starting to form in my head.
After that, it was about deciding how long Alex and Jordan had been rivals, and whether their rivalry was something shallow and superficial, or something deeper.
As you know, I went all the way with the latter, making it a deeply rooted sisterly bond.
This, though, brought back one big problem: If Alex and Jordan had that kind of relationship, why wouldn't/couldn't Alex just tell her the truth like she did Sofia and bulldoze the Monthly Quest?
The answer I came to, as you now know as canon from chapter 17 (and repeated by Alex to Jordan in chapter 100), was that it had to be Jordan's own personality and behavior blocking that route.
If she was someone who refused to ever be controlled or coerced by anyone or anything, then Alex would choose to hide the truth out of legitimate concern for Magnus's survival.
Thus, Jordan's motto of "nobody tells Jordan Hale what to do" came into existence.
And this pretty much just sparked her backstory of how she grew up with a "dutiful military father" and a mother who "supported him at the cost of her own happiness."
Which, in turn, sparked another idea: if Jordan is both disciplined and rebellious, then her name could be an interesting place to have a little fun.
I asked myself: what if "Jordan" was just her middle name, but something she'd chosen for herself to be addressed as?
And I really liked that idea.
Her first name could be something feminine, girly, something Jordan herself wouldn't like and associated with her parents and their "unhappy marriage." So, I ended up picking Vanessa, though I'm not quite sure myself whether I'd been thinking of Vanessa Hudgens or Vanessa Doofenshmirtz when I picked it.
Doesn't matter, though. Vanessa "Jordan" Hale was perfect as Jordan's full name.
As soon as that was decided, I realized Alex's name could be tweaked, too. And since I'd already decided she used her mother's last name, I figured I could use her father's last name to make a pun with Magnus's (yes, the very same one in chapter 30).
More importantly, this bit could become a whole thing between Jordan and Alex, thus the whole routine where they use each other's "forbidden name" in verbal combat.
And as soon as I figured that out, I went back and added the scene in chapter 2 and chapter 7 into the draft.
I hadn't started posting this anywhere at the time, so it wasn't like the change was hard or inconvenient in any way.
And that was the rough creation of Vanessa "Jordan" Hale.
At the time of her debut in chapter 18, that was all I had.
Well, that, and a rough version of the chapter 99-100 scene of Jordan accidentally witnessing Magnus's death and resurrection.
The reason being, with Jordan being Jordan, it's highly unlikely they'd tell her the secret under normal circumstances. And she really doesn't have any reason to take them seriously even if they did tell her.
With Jordan being Jordan, I figured the best way to handle her finding out would be the most explosive way possible: having her witness the absolute undeniable evidence of Magnus's System ever.
Though the "how to explain Jordan being in Magnus's room at 0:00 on Monday" question stumped me for a long time.
He had no reason to invite her over at that hour, and what reason could she possibly have to come there at that hour on her own volition?
So I brainstormed and discarded idea after idea until one finally fit: the one that's now the canon content of chapters 98-99.
And for that to happen, Jordan had to be friends with Magnus to the point where she would visit his room first, which, in turn, meant she had to start changing her views on relationships in general.
Even though Jordan slowly changing because of Magnus subtly influencing everyone else in his life was always an underlying thread, I wanted the reason behind her changing to be something deeper.
This was around the time I wrote chapter 30-something.
At the time, I hadn't decided what Alex's "I'll do something on my end that you shouldn't know for deniability" from chapter 30 actually meant yet. So I ended up using that thread to pull Jordan's parents into the picture.
But the idea at the time was just Alex meddling somehow, which led to Magnus helping Jordan work through her family problems. I had not, however, decided on the actual nature of the family problems in question.
If you'd noticed, though, subverting expectations and tropes is something I do a lot, and thus, Jordan's next piece of backstory slid neatly into place with chapter 40's reveal, which set up chapters 47-50's investigation and Alex's comment in chapter 51, which, in turn, set up Jordan running into the beach house group (chapter 72) and her visit (chapter 80-82) that finally made the events of chapters 98-99 possible.
The scene in chapter 80 where Jordan talked to Alex in front of her room then ran away was thought of and written in advance almost right after chapter 51 (before I even got to the fight scene or the sex scene of chapter 52). It did have to be edited again when I was writing chapter 80, since I originally pictured Alex, Magnus, and the group staying at a hotel or resort owned by Sofia's family, but the dialogue was mostly intact.
So, in short, if writing Magnus and Alex was mostly imagining them as characters and running them through a simulation in my head, writing Jordan was a lot of problem-solving and reverse-engineering.
I knew what role Jordan needed to play and where she needed to go narratively, then I figured out how I could get her there in the most natural way possible.
Other fun facts, if you're the type to care about them (I don't actually bother with this when writing scenes; this was more like after-the-fact reflection):
Myers-Briggs Personality Type: ENTJ
Horoscope: Aries (March 25th)
Well, thanks again for reading my story. Hope you enjoyed reading about the creative process behind Vanessa "Jordan" Hale.